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NYC day in my life: Day 1

NYC day in my life: Day 1 Hi everyone!! My name is Ava and I live in nyc! Since many people want to move there and love the city living, I wanted to document what I do everyday! Today I woke up at around 11:00 am and went to Joe in the Juice in Tribeca. I got a latte with vanilla milk (SOOO GOOD). The next place I went to was soho! I love soho so much from the beautiful buildings to the massive selection of stores, it’s hands down my favorite neighborhood in NYC. I went to return some things I got for Christmas and then I went to La Esquina for a chicken quesadilla! La Esquina is the coolest little resturant with graphiti and stickers on the walls and a secret club in the back. Such a fun place to go for a night out (not during covid lol) or just for a bite of delicious Mexican food. Highly recommend. After, I took an Uber home and sat with my dog while looking at Pinterest. I ordered some amazing healthy snacks from thrive! I loveee the sriracha hippeas. I decided to go to bed early tonight so I sat in bed and watched a little Netflix and that’s it! Hope you enjoyed my first post! Let me know what I should write about next!

https://medium.com/@fuviuipus/day-1-9028296e5938

['Ava In Nyc']

2020-12-27 03:58:26.637000+00:00

['Day In The Life', 'City Living', 'New York City', 'New York', 'My Day']

My Problem Isn’t Writers Block. It’s Marketing Block.

Photo by Alejandro Escamilla on Unsplash Only you can see this message This story’s distribution setting is on. Learn more My Problem Isn’t Writers Block. It’s Marketing Block. Lynn Rasmussen Nov 15 · 4 min read I have a big fat body of knowledge that transforms lives. I have something to say and I love to write, but I haven’t produced anything substantial for ten years. I woke up this morning with a flash. My problem isn’t writer’s block. It’s marketing block. I don’t want to “market” myself or my work. I don’t want to “build a platform.” I don’t want to develop a marketing plan and do five things on the list every day. I don’t want to email, post, podcast or tweet. I don’t want to go on a speaking circuit. I did all that and I don’t want to do it again. Ten years ago I published a book, Men Are Easy, with Greenleaf Book Group. Borders’ Southern California contact for promoting new authors booked a store tour and we sold a case (32 books) plus their stock at each event. Three cases delivered to the Honolulu International Airport bookstores outsold the newest Harry Potter. But every store manager told me that they will order 20 copies and get two. It sold like crazy in local boutiques, but gift reps won’t pick up single books and Greenleaf didn’t have a gift catalog. It won two independent book awards. Then Greenleaf sent a notice that Borders was no longer paying their bills, to consider them a marketing expense. Each television appearance, post, and tweet sold a few books on Amazon, but all that got old fast. The distribution system wasn’t working. The book wasn’t a winner. Burned out, with a bad taste in my mouth, I gave it up. Over the years, I learned to program and built a couple of apps. I wrote a few conference papers. I did good things. But four thoughts nagged me. First, a juror for the annual Writer’s Digest independent book award contest called my book “refreshing” and “hard to put down.” In her notes, she said to keep writing, that the first book never makes it. Second, the book is so profoundly universal. One publisher turned it down, saying that the systems stuff is blowing smoke, that it is just common sense. Later, a Christian woman asked me what nonChristians thought of the book, thinking it was based on the teachings of Jesus. A few churches in Tennessee and California used it in their marriage workshops. A yoga teacher said that it was the teachings of the yogis. A Buddhist practitioner accused me of ripping off the teachings of Buddha and calling them my own. Third, even now, every week or so, someone says something about how the book helped them. About half say, “You know, the book is much better than its title.” Fourth, its time has come. Twenty years ago I couldn’t explain to people what a systems process was. Ten years ago, people were starting to get it. Now, it’s firmly in the lexicon: We network and bond. We create boundaries. We experience chaos, tipping points, and emergence. A couple of weeks ago, I pulled up the old final copy, and the book is better than I remembered but with big flaws. I’ve retitled it to How to Be Married — or maybe, How to Be (Married). Examples that were from one couple, Jenn and Mike, now include Jane and Michelle, Jack and Mitch. “They” and “them” replace he/she and him/her. I thought I’d have to update or expand on the systems reasoning, but I don’t. I’ve added a section to the first chapter, “A Definition of Love.” I don’t think that I had come up with that definition a decade ago. So I’ve done it. It’s ready to go. It’s the right thing to do. It’s perfect for the wedding market. My daughter, 38, with a Cornell degree in product development, cheers me on. I contacted former literary agent, now coach, Michael Larsen. He sent an email. Sure, give him a call. Attached was his great ebook, Writing Success Guaranteed: How to Deal Yourself Five Hearts to Win the Publishing Game. I read through it last night, and I don’t want to do all that. Maybe I’m afraid that the book isn’t good enough, or that I’m wasting my time and my life, or that I’m just another silly older woman with a book in her. Or maybe “marketing” just feels wrong. I have a responsibility to get the book out there. Even if it helps one more couple with one child, it’s worth it. Maybe the problem is the resistance to the old way. Maybe it’s time to do it all differently. To only do what gives me and others joy. Maybe it’s not about “marketing” at all. Maybe it’s about giving. According to Seth Godin, I need to grow “a tribe.” A thousand people who love the book and pitch it for me. If each person who reads it, gives it to one other person, and then one of those ten gives it to another person, the result is a geometric progression to widespread sales. This morning after tai chi with my artist friends, I complained about the marketing issue. They commiserated. Then, when describing the book, I found myself getting really excited. They both want to read the new version of the book and their feedback will be invaluable. Cynthia suggested using gender-free names like Chris and Pat. Linda suggested running it by her college-age former granddaughter, now grandson, who is attending the New School in New York. It felt good. Like a fresh start. WRITTEN BY Author, “How to Be Married.” Working on “Toward a Science of Systems: A Field Guide.” Write the first response More From Medium Also tagged Book Marketing Judith Deborah inStorius Magazine Nov 3 · 12min read 249 Also tagged Systems Thinking Cristiano Rastelli inbadoo_tech Nov 12 · 14min read 289 Also tagged Systems Thinking Jessica Lynnin The Startup Nov 12 · 3min read 399 Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage — with no ads in sight. Watch Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore Thank you for being a member of Medium. You get unlimited access to insightful stories from amazing thinkers and storytellers. Browse AboutHelpLegal

https://medium.com/@lynnrasmussen/my-problem-isnt-writers-block-it-s-marketing-block-28eaabd5ca6f

['Lynn Rasmussen']

2019-11-17 08:14:39.073000+00:00

['Book Marketing', 'Writing', 'Writing Life', 'Systems Thinking', 'Writers Block']

Republicans Don’t Convict Trump Because They Don’t Have To

Final vote count on “Abuse of Power”, breaking completely along party lines except for one: Mitt Romney (R) UT, who voted to convict Trump Republicans Don’t Convict Trump Because They Don’t Have To By the end of Trump’s trial in the Senate, pretty much the only one still claiming the President’s conduct was “perfect”, was Trump. Although now that the trial is over, and Trump’s skated, the White House seems to be trying to resurrect that narrative: Trump’s current National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien insisting the President never asked Ukraine’s government to investigate Joe and/or Hunter Biden. Just “corruption” in general. To which we say (as the President often has recently) “READ THE TRANSCRIPTS!” Because in the “rough transcript” of the phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky, released by Trump and subsequently touted repeatedly by Trump, the President says: We took a photo of the official White House release so there’s no doubt we’re not making this up But at least O’Brien got us and others to repeat allegations against the Bidens. And we guess now that Trump’s acquitted (though still impeached), anything can be true. And we guess if you wanna prove to the President you’re not gonna end up being another John Bolton (who preceded O’Brien in the job), it’s probably good to go out and publicly say things like this. Back in the Senate, Utah Republican Mitt Romney was the only crossover. From either party. He voted “guilty” on “Abuse of Power”. And significantly is the only Senator in U.S. history to vote to convict a President of his own party in an impeachment trial. (It’s likely some would’ve gone against Nixon if he hadn’t resigned first). What did Romney accomplish? Well, at very least he made it impossible for Trump to say the impeachment process was totally partisan, and he was totally vindicated. (Although Trump probably will anyway.) And maybe Romney just did the right thing. No Democrats crossed over and voted to acquit Trump. Is that surprising? We’re not sure. Seems to us Democrats, at least, had little choice after Trump’s anti-unity State of the Union speech the night before. Took Romney only one short sentence to sum up his decision: You can watch his entire floor speech by clicking here or on the photo below: More representative of where Republicans landed is somewhere in the neighborhood of: Democrats in the House didn’t do the impeachment properly in terms of procedure, and… Yeah, Trump did something, but let’s let the American public be the jurors, in the fall Presidential election, not us. We watched a lot of the speeches leading up to the acquittal, but no one put it more plainly than Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. Who expanded upon a statement he’d made a few days ago when he rejected the idea of hearing from witnesses like Bolton: “There was no need for more evidence to prove something that I believed had already been proven and that did not meet the United States Constitution’s high bar for an impeachable offense. There was no need for more evidence to prove that the President asked Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. He said this on television on October 3, 2019, and he said it during his July 25, 2019 telephone call with the President of Ukraine. There was no need for more evidence to conclude that the President withheld United States aid at least in part to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.” Watch here: And so the Devil’s Bargain Republicans made with Trump moves forward: as long as he continues to appoint new conservative judges at a breakneck pace, (“and we have many in the pipeline” he ad-libbed in his State of the Union address), and throws in the occasional giant tax break, he can do whatever the hell else he wants to do because nothing else matters, really. Other Republican priorities like taking a hatchet to programs like Social Security, and Medicare, and Medicaid will take care of themselves. Because even though the President continues to swear up and down he’s not going to touch them (although somehow Medicaid mysteriously disappeared from that pledge in the State of the Union speech), with the trillion-dollar annual budget deficits Trump is running, there’s no way those programs can remain sustainable as they are even at current levels, much less expanded, which they’ll have to be since the population is aging. And more importantly, Republicans know they wouldn’t have pretty much half the country utterly under their spell without Trump. And they have no clue how they’d even begin to duplicate his astronomical approval ratings with Republican voters. (Interestingly, those Republican candidates who tried most faithfully to replicate Trump in building their own personas, by and large have lost because people find them to be really obnoxious and self-serving). Which is why the question we always hear about “wouldn’t Mike Pence do the same basic stuff?” is one of the stupidest questions ever. This is looking way far ahead: but if Pence intends to run for President in 2024, and wants to win, his shot will come from making it known that his role in the White House will be as proxy for a term-limited Trump. Trump’s contract with his supporters is a little bit different. Judges play into it, but in a more indirect way. His appeal here is largely centered on religion and guns. That is, in encouraging the strictest antiabortion laws possible, and breaking down the division between church and state. One of the few concrete promises he made during his State of the Union address — most everything else was boasting about stuff — was to put prayer in public schools. That also seems to mean he’s completely off any kind of gun legislation, which he has at times toyed with after mass shootings, (even once chiding fellow Republicans of being afraid of the NRA, and asserting he wasn’t), but doesn’t seem to be anymore. Both those priorities are interesting, because if you look back at Trump’s positions prior to becoming President, he doesn’t seem to personally care much about either of those issues. But they do coalesce into a theme the President has always been big on: protection against an unbelievably dangerous world. Out to take advantage of, if not outright destroy ordinary Americans. Because we are such a good-hearted people, and everyone else is so jealous that we’ve got it so good. And guess what? Those evil outside forces have already infiltrated America on many levels. Beaten down the doors particularly in cities where you might see people of very different colors, very different religions, very different lifestyles, very different life philosophies. All of them threatening. Because their intent is not attaining the American dream for themselves, it’s to do it at the expense of Americans who have a “real” claim to call themselves Americans. And ultimately to take over. The self-promoted image of Trump as protector is what allows him to say things like he “saved” coverage of pre-existing conditions, and have some people believe it, while at the same time he’s supporting a court case that’s trying to get rid of it, and the Supreme Court’s set to consider very soon. Trump paints his picture more vividly and more dynamically than anyone else out there. There’s no disputing that. It’s just whether or not you buy into that BS. Trump has also presided over the creation of a lot of jobs. And that’s obviously a positive. We won’t discuss today whether he deserves full credit for it, but he’s not hesitant to take it, and that sure helps people feel more secure too, and care less about what the President does in his spare time. We’ve seen in the past two decades just how willingly people completely and freely have given up any semblance of privacy in their daily lives, in exchange for security. (Even though it’s a very imperfect security). The next step from there is handing over the once-cherished tradition of having a say in how this country is governed, in exchange for someone just telling everybody what to do, and maybe more importantly blocking people from living lives you don’t agree with. Not just blocking them. Punishing them. And with that level of protection firmly in place, whatever the hell else the President does, or how corrupt he may be, or how he behaves or treats others, doesn’t matter a lick.

https://ericjscholl.medium.com/republicans-dont-convict-trump-because-they-don-t-have-to-24c3ebd339ef

['Eric J Scholl']

2020-02-14 15:54:50.692000+00:00

['Senate', 'Impeachment', 'Republican Party', 'Donald Trump', 'Politics']

Machine Learning Player v1.1 is out!

Hello! Today we are pleased to announce the second release of our Machine Learning Player. As you may already know, ML Player can be used for visualizing the output of machine learning models. Here are the features that we have added: ML Player can now be run on Windows, macOS, and Ubuntu (previously, ML Player was exclusive to Ubuntu). ML Player now supports Object Detection models that return bounding boxes. You can specify the processing rate: for example, if the processing rate is 1, then every frame is sent to a model. If the processing rate equals 100, then only every 100th frame is sent to a model. If you run ML Player on CPU, it can be useful for increasing FPS. Fig 1. ML Player on Windows We have also fixed a couple of bugs, one of them occurred when a user was in the Camera mode. The slider was fixed as well: navigation was made more precise. Fig 2. ML Player on macOS Let’s look closer at bounding boxes. A bounding box is a rectangle that indicates an object in a frame. Bounding boxes are often used for object detection in Machine Learning. Fig 3. Object Detection in ML Player There are ML Player demos for all the technologies that we develop. You can download and try them yourself! Here’s the link. Fig 4. Object Detection in ML Player (2) If you read our previous article, you should know about plugins. To create a plugin for a model that returns bounding boxes, you need to add a couple of structures to the header file. struct FrameImage { uint8_t *data; uint64_t frameNumber; int width; int height; int bytesPerLine; int format; }; /// required only for plugins that have "return_type": "bounding_boxes" struct BoundingBox { char *className; float score; int x1; /// top-left x int y1; /// top-left y int x2; /// bottom-right x int y2; /// bottom-right y }; /// required only for plugins that have "return_type": "bounding_boxes" struct BoundingBoxArray { int size; /// the size of the array BoundingBox *boxes; }; extern "C" { PLUGIN_EXPORT void *processFrame(FrameImage *frame); /// frame processing PLUGIN_EXPORT void release(); /// deallocate resources here } Then, just implement the processFrame function that returns a pointer to BoundingBoxArray containing all the bounding boxes for the current frame. You can find more information and examples in the documentation on ML Player. We hope you found this article interesting! You can download ML Player here. Contact us if you have any questions. See you soon!

https://medium.com/deelvin-machine-learning/machine-learning-player-v1-1-is-out-1e9b1469c144

['Viktor Shwartskop']

2020-11-17 13:01:09.785000+00:00

['Ml Player', 'Machine Learning', 'Object Detection']

Appeals courts, rather than SCOTUS, often determine workers’ fate

BY MARK GRUENBERG Unions oppose confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court but are also aware that the Appeals courts have often been for Trump reliably anti-worker in their rulings. | AP While attention focuses on the fight over GOP President Donald Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court, the reality for workers nationwide is that federal appeals courts often determine their fate, instead. As a matter of fact, Kavanaugh, who was a Republican political hack for George W. Bush, illustrates that. His 12-year record on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia — the court that handles most labor-law cases — is consistently anti-worker. That’s led the AFL-CIO and other unions, and workers nationwide, to oppose right-winger Kavanaugh’s bid to replace the High Court’s “swing vote,” Justice Anthony Kennedy. It’s also shown the importance of the 12 federal appeals courts, and their rulings, to workers. Lawyers will tell you appellate court rulings, almost all from 3-judge panels, govern cases only in states those particular courts cover. That’s both literally true but also, in practical terms, understating the case (pardon the pun). That’s because both judges and lawyers cite other appeals courts’ rulings when making arguments or writing decisions. One outstanding example: The Chamber of Commerce got a federal judge in rural red-state Texas to issue a nationwide court order to kill the Labor Department’s “fiduciary rule.” The Obama administration rule ordered financial advisers to workers and pension funds to put their clients’ interests first, ahead of their own. On March 15, Judge Edith Jones of the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans upheld the court order. The fiduciary rule, designed to rein in corporate crooks who take advantage of workers and pensioners, is dead nationwide — though that important case never reached the Supreme Court. Many other recent appellate rulings have gone against workers: Can a union sue because a government visa program lets more foreign visa holders compete for jobs? The answer, from D.C. Circuit Judge Karen Henderson to Wash Tech, a Communications Workers local working to organize high-tech workers, is “yes.” The government issues F-1 student visas for foreign students, and it lets the students stay and work here for three years after they graduate. WashTech argued the Obama administration’s 2016 decision to almost double such “optional practical training” visa-holders, to 92,000, for science, technology, engineering and math grads, deprived its members of job opportunities. Lower courts dismissed WashTech’s suit, saying the union itself wasn’t hurt. On June 8, Henderson revived it. She said the decline in job opportunities hurts its members. Norwegian Air International can fly around the U.S. Norwegian is hiring flight crews in Singapore, using the lax labor rules from its Irish charter to low-pay them, and generally undercutting U.S. airlines, especially on Trans-Atlantic routes. NAI also wants to fly all around the U.S. It asked the Obama administration for a permit to do so, and transportation unions opposed that. They said the “flag of convenience” NAI would do to airline workers what “flag of convenience” shipping firms did to the higher-standard well-regulated U.S. maritime industry: Wreck it. But Obama’s Transportation Secretary OK’d NAI’s permit. Three pilots unions and the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA sued current Trump Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao in the D.C. Court to overturn the permit, arguing NAI’s “business model and labor practices are not in the public interest.” Judge David Tatel, writing for the panel, let them sue Chao, and then ruled against the unions. He said, despite international air treaties governing U.S.-Europe traffic, including treaty provisions on pay and working conditions, that NAI satisfied DOT’s requirements for a permit. Did a theatrical union steer job opportunities to workers at a firm it was trying to organize — and is that legal? Yes, it did, and the National Labor Relations Board must hold “an evidentiary hearing” to find the facts and rule if that’s legal, the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel in Chicago ruled in June. Theatrical and Stage Employees Local 2 was conducting an organizing drive among stagehands at Chicago-based Jam Productions in late 2015, Judge Ilana Rovner explained. As part of it, IATSE made sure Jam workers got jobs when slots opened up at union-covered area theaters, Jam alleged. That could skew the unionization vote, the company charged. The union won the Oct. 4, 2015 vote 22–10, but there were 13 challenged ballots, five from IATSE and eight from Jam. The problem, Jam said, was that Local 2 made sure part-timers at Jam’s “Shaw Crew” got better-paying jobs in their “downtime” at other IATSE-represented theaters. The company said that’s illegal. The board backed Local 2; Rovner and the other judges didn’t. “Although the standard of (judicial) review is deferential” to the NLRB’s expertise, “we believe Jam presented enough evidence to obtain an evidentiary hearing and the board abused its discretion by refusing to hold one,” they said. And offering potential higher-paying jobs to potential voters “could plausibly be seen as an inducement” to vote for Local 2, and that’s illegal, they added. A notable “gig economy” case hits the courts — and workers lose, at least for now. On May 11, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out Seattle’s ordinance allowing drivers for Lyft, Uber and other ride-sharing services to unionize. The Teamsters had been conducting successful organizing drives among the drivers, whom the ride-share firms called “independent contractors” and thus barred from unionizing. The Chamber of Commerce — not the city — challenged the ordinance. Appellate Judge Milan Smith’s decision left one question unanswered: Did the Seattle ordinance break labor law? Smith’s panel ruled Seattle’s ordinance broke the Sherman Antitrust Act because Washington state had to OK the idea first, and didn’t. But “the panel affirmed the district court’s dismissal of claims the ordinance was pre-empted” — i.e. outlawed — “by the National Labor Relations Act,” Smith wrote. The key word is “dismissal.” The judges sent that part of the case back down to the lower court for trial. You can’t discipline a fast-food worker for a one day strike just because you didn’t receive the official announcement. LeReda Hayes, manager at the Burger King on East 47th Street in Kansas City, Mo., tried that against workers Osmara Ortiz, Susan de la Cruz Camilo and West Humbert for participating in Fight for 15 and a Union’s one-day strike in mid-April 2015. Hayes claimed she never got the written notice the three were striking. The judges of the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis noted, three years later, that Hayes knew the three were union activists, that the strike was publicized — and that Ortiz had participated in another one-day strike at another fast food restaurant Hayes had managed. Given all that, the NLRB ruled for Ortiz specifically and so did the judges. They said Hayes illegally disciplined Ortiz for taking collective action to protect her rights as a worker. After a takeover, you can’t hire a bunch of part-timers and throw them into the bargaining unit in order to claim the union doesn’t represent most workers. That’s what Publi-Inversiones de Puerto Rico tried to do at El Vocero after it bought the newspaper at a bankruptcy sale. The News Guild-CWA’s Local 33225 represented the paper’s 100 workers and PI rehired 24 of them, out of 36 bargaining unit positions available. The local said PI is a “successor employer” that must pick up the contract and bargain with the union. PI said it isn’t, because it also hired 51 part-time low-paid no-benefit “inserters” to put plastic-wrapped supplements into El Vocero and so the union doesn’t represent a majority anymore. The NLRB agreed with the union, noting PI must bargain with “an (their emphasis) appropriate bargaining unit.” The rehired workers were an appropriate unit, NLRB said. So did the judges. “In a successorship case, as in any representation case, an historical unit” — the local had represented El Vocero’s workers since 1975 — “can be rejected only if it is ‘truly inappropriate,’” Judge Laurence Silberman wrote. Courts force workers into mandatory arbitration. In early June, the Supreme Court — by the usual 5–4 majority with all five GOP-named justices voting against workers — said firms can force workers into mandatory one-on-one arbitration of job complaints, despite labor law. It barred workers from banding together in class action suits over those issues. Statistics show workers lose arbitrations to bosses more than 90 percent of the time. Following that decision, the appeals courts started enforcing it and workers are losing. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta was among the first. On June 26, it threw out former Cowabunga Pizza delivery driver Chadwick Hanes’ class action suit against the Savannah-based firm for paying him — and other drivers — below the minimum wage because it shorted him and the others on car expenses for delivering pizza. The NLRB ruled for Hanes, but the new Trump-named NLRB majority there reversed course. The appeals judges, citing the High Court’s decision, ruled for Cowabunga. Ironically, the case took so long — it began in 2015 — that both sides agreed to collective arbitration beforehand. In an upset, the arbitrator ruled for Hines and 563 other drivers. The same day, the same appeals court ruled against the NLRB’s and former Everglades College counselor Lisa Fikki’s suit against the college for forcing her to sign a similar forced arbitration agreement. She wanted more time to review it with her lawyer. The lawyer was unavailable by the college’s deadline, so Everglades fired her. The NLRB sided with Fikki, the for-profit college sued, the judges sided with the college — and with forced arbitration — and Fikki is now out of a job. Unpaid pension plan contributions aren’t collectible “plan assets.” Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Michelle Friedland said so in a March decision involving almost a dozen Painters pension funds, Accuracy Glass & Mirror Co., of Nevada, and its two owners, who were also pension trustees. Pension plan language between the unions and the firm said unpaid contributions were plan assets. But Friedland, in San Francisco, relied on a similar three-year-old case from the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston. That court also ruled for the firm and its trustees and against the unions seeking unpaid pension plan contributions, and the Supreme Court upheld that decision, without comment. Read more at People’s World

https://medium.com/peoples-world/appeals-courts-rather-than-scotus-often-determine-workers-fate-bc9243a88984

['Peoplesworld Social Media']

2018-09-02 20:00:11.856000+00:00

['Politics', 'Justice', 'Supreme Court', 'News']

What’s in my Hiking Backpack?

Ensuring I get the best I can on a Hike I come prepared. This is a question I don’t get asked a lot. And because people don’t think to ask they come ill-prepared for a hike. Rather than a checklist of items, I decided to dissect my Hiking Backpack for you. They say if you have an early start, you should prepare the night before. Let’s pretend I don’t hastily pack 5 mins before I leave for the muster point. (I have packed for a hike too many times I do it with my eyes closed *smile*) So I usually have 2 bottles of water, a soda, an energy drink, a pack of biscuits, a camera, a phone, a power bank, some Bin bags, a face towel, sunscreen, my wallet and more recently portable speakers, comfortable shoes and a whistle. Two bottles of water. Because it’s important to stay hydrated. You don’t want to run out of water and find yourself drinking from a murky stream, justifying it in your head that if the locals can drink it, it won’t kill you either. It won’t, don’t worry. Two 350 -500ml bottles can usually last me up to 6 hours, taking sips. Two is ideal. Better than one. A soda. You need glucose in any form for energy. Most hikers don’t eat before a hike and your energy has to come from somewhere. As with the water, I sip sodas at rest points to refuel. RIP to my no soda diet, hiking destroyed that. An energy drink. This is a backup for the soda. One cannot sip either alone on a group hike. You’ll always have to share. I usually save my energy drink for the final stretch of the hike to fuel up before heading home. Have you ever been hyper on a hike but walked into your house like you just survived a near death experience? I have. Energy is needed to get home as well depending on how intensive the hike was. Water and soda is a must! Photo Courtesy: AnnaTakesShots A pack of biscuits. This is for the hunger pangs and sugar refuel. But usually I don’t get hungry on Hikes. I may get Hangry. Sweets like chocolates might help too. A Camera. Because I live for the breathtaking scenery. I take shots. I have a DSLR (Persephone) and she’s a chubby girl. She adds weight to my backpack and when I sling her on my neck. I have a modified shoulder sling that works fine most of the time. Other times I leave her at home and use my phone instead. A Phone. One of the most important items and it’s not just because of social media addiction. It’s needed for emergencies. I have made calls to check for lost hikers and also when I got lost. Or when Otedola needed to confirm that contract. I track my Hike with an exercise app. I play music to keep me moving, I use the camera for taking some great pictures. Best to have a phone with a good battery life. And a back up power bank so you don’t get stuck with no way to get help. The most important thing is to keep your phone away when moving. I have seen brand new phones roll into densely covered ditches, roll down steep rocky hills destroying the screen and some just slip out unnoticed and it’s lost forever. A Whistle. Great for alerting people and probably scaring away animals. But I got one as a hike leader for administrative purposes. But it has been useful for solo hikes. A Face Towel. For wiping off sweat. No need looking like your struggle in those selfie shots. Looking effortless is the goal. And there’s also the first aid application as a tourniquet or for stopping a bleed. Sunscreen. Black people need sun protection too. A Wallet. You need your ID for many number of reasons. And you need money in case you need to make a hasty escape. Hikers have gotten Okada (motorcycle) rides from the hills back into town. Or bought fruits and vegetables direct from the farmers we encounter. But you should keep cash because you don’t want to be stranded at the end of a hike. Don’t be a part of the problem. Keep your waste till you are back down. Photo Courtesy: AnnaTakesShots Bin Bags. Let me not bore you with the bleeding heart speech but don’t litter on Hikes. It damages the environment, hurts animals and indirectly poisons us too when these materials get to the aquifers. Leave no trace! The rule is put any waste you generate back into your bag till you get to a bin back on ground level. I take a bin bag to keep the waste apart from my stuff in my backpack and also take on waste from other hikers. These are the main things I carry in my backpack and it might make my bag a little heavy sometimes but I imagine they are weights making my hike more intensive. Plus it makes a great uneven pillow when you need a rest. But on occasion I take my own portable speaker for music. Music is great motivation and also chases animals away before you arrive. I recently started packing a pair of slippers which I leave in the car. Hiking boots can take their toll on your feet. Imagine all the jumping, running and uneven cracks you squeeze your feet into. It’s a relief to take the boots off and you can take them off as soon as the hike ends and slip into something more comfortable. There you have it. The things I ensure I have packed in my Hike Bag for every Hike. Do you pack some more items than I do? Let me know in the comments! Have a good one!

https://medium.com/@annabellaatseyinku/whats-in-my-hiking-backpack-a101bf9d0015

['Maryann Atseyinku']

2019-01-23 20:18:27.141000+00:00

['Travel', 'Fitness Tips', 'Nigeria', 'Hiking', 'Outdoors']

The ROI of Focusing on Customer Satisfaction

nDash.co Leads Content Marketing Platforms with 90th Percentile Customer Satisfaction Continues mission to help marketers and agencies drive more sales through content marketing BOSTON (PRWEB) April 17, 2018 A quarterly customer feedback analysis revealed that 70% of nDash’s customers are “extremely likely” (a 9 or 10 on the scale) to recommend nDash to others. nDash, a company built with the purpose of helping companies to create amazing written content, relies on customer feedback to continuously improve the user experience and customer-focused services and is excited to see such positive results. nDash.co’s Net Promoter Score™ of 52 puts them in the 90th percentile for the software industry, alongside top brands such as Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, and Google, according to Delighted. By providing brands and agencies with the tools to manage their content creation, as well as access to an on-demand community of freelancers, nDash enables marketers to create impactful content and scale their marketing efforts. The survey’s feedback provided critical information on where nDash can continue to improve. The company found that the fragmentation of content management solutions is a pain point for marketers and digital agencies. Based on this feedback, nDash has started identifying critical platforms to begin rolling out standard, premium, and custom integrations. nDash aims to launch features ensuring that whether collaborating with coworkers, an existing team of freelancers, or their community of vetted professional writers, nDash has the software and services to continue to support your team’s marketing and sales growth goals. Growth & Milestones Achieved 40% quarter-over-quarter growth in managed services Maintains double-digital quarterly revenue growth Expands customer list to include Hitachi, Toyota, LinkedIn among others Continuous product improvement with Q1 launch of Verified Writers, Content Calendar Named a Top Marketing Agency in Boston About nDash.co nDash, a privately held company based in Greater Boston, Massachusetts, provides leading brands and agencies with the tools, talent, and topics they need to scale content creation. To learn more, please visit https://www.ndash.co.

https://medium.com/ndash/the-roi-of-focusing-on-customer-satisfaction-e4c4b0a55d05

['Matt Solar']

2018-05-01 18:26:10.494000+00:00

['SaaS', 'B2B', 'Company News', 'Net Promoter Score', 'Content Marketing']

-> Japanese From Zero! 1: Proven Methods to Learn Japanese with integrated Workbook and Online Support by George Trombley -> Available in Hardcover \ Kindle \ Paperback \ AudioBook

-> Japanese From Zero! 1: Proven Methods to Learn Japanese with integrated Workbook and Online Support by George Trombley -> Available in Hardcover \ Kindle \ Paperback \ AudioBook Lallana Aug 27, 2019·1 min read Just For Today get free read 30 days !!! Japanese From Zero is an innovative and integrated approach to learning Japanese developed by professional Japanese interpreter George Trombley and co-writer Yukari Takenaka. The lessons and techniques used in this series have been taught successfully for over ten years in classrooms throughout the world.Using up-to-date and easy-to-grasp grammar, Japanese From Zero is the perfect course for current students of Japanese as well as absolute beginners.In Book 1 of the Japanese From Zero series, readers are taught new grammar concepts, over 800 new words and expressions, and also learn the hiragana writing system.Features of Book 1: * Integrated Workbook with Answer Key* Over 800 New Words and Expressions* Learn to Read and Write Hiragana* Easy-to-Understand Example Dialogues* Culture Points about Japan* Bilingual Glossaries with Kana and Romaji…and much more … (More info! -> https://ebookfirstbestpopular.blogspot.com/?book=0976998122)

https://medium.com/@2lallana/japanese-from-zero-649b8df1b71d

[]

2019-08-27 06:11:16.833000+00:00

['Japanese']

Moving from AI to IAI

In a short post of Matt Webb he pinpointed the new Artificial Intelligence (AI) that is emerging. He refers to another article in the Wired of Stephen Levy were this specific new form of AI is spelled out: not the human brain is duplicated, the own computer generated intelligence is flourished. I think this interesting stuff. And I like to connected it to a development Jesse Schell coined in one of his recent presentations: the Curiosity Gap. He stated that we develop to a situation where we all have easy access to all the knowledge we need, and the successful people will be defined by the level of curiosity to find the knowledge and be open for it. Others have coined it the new You-web where knowledge will be relevant and connected to your profile. I use the term Impulse Shaped Services for some time now where services adapt to the context of that one user. In all approaches you can see that we go from a so-called Artificial Intelligence to an Available Intelligence. Smart people use this available intelligence to relief non-critical tasks and distinguish from non-users. Available Intelligence is used ad-hoc and on demand, profiled. So we can say we will live with Augmented Intelligence. The smart people are those that know which drawer to pull to use the available knowledge and transform this to value. The trick will be the instant character. The intelligence will be defined by the relevancy and of the knowledge and even the predictive character of it. Services will be providing us with the entrance to these source of instant intelligence. So we have a kind of Instant Available Intelligence.

https://medium.com/target-is-new/moving-from-ai-to-iai-360f2f9e15c3

['Iskander Smit']

2016-05-03 01:39:49.834000+00:00

['AI']

Christmas 2020 is Going to Suck — Just Do Your Best

Christmas 2020 is Going to Suck — Just Do Your Best Christmas 2020 is going to be an odd one for most of us who celebrate it — unless you are lucky enough to live one of the small number of countries who seem to have the Covid-19 pandemic under control. Here in the UK things are uncertain. Initially, the Conservative government led by the uncertain, flip-flopping Boris Johnson decreed that, for five days, up to three households could mix indoors for Christmas celebrations. It seen as a relief after close to the entire year spent in a mix of national lockdowns, local lockdowns, and confusing fluctuating restrictions. (I can’t see my parents indoors socially, but they are allowed to provide childcare for my daughter. If I started a business and hired them as employees, though, I could see them on a daily basis.) Of course, as soon as this was announced questions were raised. The “tiered” system of regional lockdowns had actually done little, over recent months, to stem the flow of new cases, hospitalisations and deaths. Was it really wise to let rip with a week of wild celebrating, particularly when it would involve cross-country travel for many — in some cases travelling from strict “tier 3” lockdown areas to looser “tier 2” or “tier 1” regions (and vice versa)? On Friday, Johnson bowed to the inevitable — particularly because of the discovery that a new, more virulent strain of the virus had taken hold in some parts of the country. London and parts of the south-east were put into the newly-created “tier 4”, with restrictions broadly similar to the two national lockdowns. Household mixing was done. Chrismas was cancelled. “Tier 4” residents are permitted to see one member of another household outdoors. With a week to go, with food bought, money spent, travel booked and plans made, people were having to hastily rearranged. For the rest of the country, tiered restrictions remained. Christmas was not quite cancelled, but certainly cut short. Gone were the five days of three households mixing, cut to just one day — Christmas day. For my family, thankfully, not much has changed. Our planned celebrations were already low key — seeing my sister-in-law on Christmas day itself and my parents either on Christmas Eve or Boxing Day. Now, we’ll just have to squeeze both visits into one day if we can. I appreciate that, even with that restriction, we have more than others. I have friends in “tier 4” areas who have had to bin their plans at the last minute and are now set for a solitary Zoom Christmas. That said, I am on tenterhooks anticipating further changes. Already, there are calls from the scientific community for another national lockdown. Thus far the government have resisted doing so — but they did that just before the two previous lockdowns, too. The bottom line: whatever happens, Christmas is going to suck, at least relative to the ones we are used to. All we can do is try and make the best of it. My plans? I’d like to make a gingerbread house with my daughter on Christmas Eve. Wake up with her early on the day itself and play with whatever presents most take her fancy. See whatever relatives we can (if any at all), Zoom call those we can’t. In the evening, when she is asleep, watch some probably-terrible Christmas television with my wife, and maybe some more Zoom calls with some “tier 4”-trapped friends. Low-key. Quiet. Safe (or at least, as safe as we can be). It won’t be a memorable Christmas (or if it is, it won’t be for the right reasons) and maybe not even a “good” Christmas. But Christmas has always been, at its heart, about celebrating survival. Strip away the presents and the decorations and even the religious stuff and what you have are families, friends, tribes, sitting together on one of the darkest, coldest days of the year and celebrating just getting through another year. That’s what we’re doing this year. Maybe just with our households or on our own. Or maybe we’re lucky enough to see family safely. Or maybe we’ll just be looking at faces on a laptop screen. Whatever we do, and however we do it, we’ll still be celebrating making it through a tough year — the toughest year many of us have ever known. Raise a glass to making it through, and hope that Christmas 2020 is the last one like this.

https://medium.com/family-matters-2/christmas-2020-is-going-to-suck-just-do-your-best-8e4fbe55327d

['David Fox']

2020-12-21 23:05:15.346000+00:00

['Politics', 'Christmas', 'Covid 19', 'Resilience', 'Family']

Integrity Breached

Sadness in watching alleged leaders Integrity breached by so many of them Focus on power, ignoring good of people, Sadder still observing their followers Taunts and violence in support of them. Portends dismal days for our democracy When not accepting votes as legitimate Seeking to subvert majority’s will Nefarious schemes hatched even by leaders Disrespecting our new president-elect. Warmer hopes for better days ahead As generations of new leaders take hold Perhaps innovative visions, better actions Can invigorated our damaged democracy And inspire more confidence in populace. Restoring integrity in public life When it’s been so rudely breached Should be priorities for new leaders As they begin orchestrating new days.

https://medium.com/politically-speaking/integrity-breached-19671c97c654

['Randy Shingler']

2020-12-19 20:01:56.552000+00:00

['Leadership', 'Democracy', 'Politics', 'Integrity', 'Poetry']

When God is with us, who can be against us?

The past 3 – 5 days I have been working on SushiVid’s plan B due to CoVid-19. It is inevitable that every business, across the globe, would be affected in big and small ways. For a startup our size, of course, our burn isn’t too much but we are also hand-to-mouth in a lot of ways. Meaning, this months revenue determines next month’s payroll. As I fuss about the whole Plan B and worse case scenarios, it dawned on me that had we not close multiple folds in December, I would be in a way worse position than I am today. Many people were complaining Dec was a slow month, but we didn’t feel that. In fact, we were so shocked at our billing! But you know what, it wasn’t puzzling to God. He knew… and he prepared for us ahead of time so that we would have enough. In fact, the revenue we closed in December, a huge chunk client has already prepaid in advance! That’s how good God is. I just can’t help but share this story because I really genuinely believe God breathed into my situation and alleviate my worries. Praise The Lord. #startuplife #crisis #testimony

https://medium.com/@yuhwenfoong/when-god-is-with-us-who-can-be-against-us-a1755dd97b0d

['Yuhwen Foong']

2020-02-20 15:00:28.498000+00:00

['Christianity', 'Testimony', 'Founder Stories', 'Crisis', 'Startup Life']

Content Gorilla 2.0 Review: An Automatic Content Creation Tool

Blogging is really fun, until you come at a point when you have to be consistent. You start getting good and organic traffic. You have to hold on to your audience and also grow at the same time. But now you are out of ideas or content. No matter how passionate you are about blogging, this kind of situation often comes in the life of every blogger. Especially, when you reach at a stage, when you have built good number of audience around your contents. You cannot just let it go. So, you have to be consistent with high quality content. But writing a good content involves reading, researching, writing, proofreading and refining. Now, that is a painstaking task. In this article, I will introduce you all to a very simple and fun way of writing a great quality content. And i.e. through YouTube. Yeah, you can use YouTube as your source for content. Well, you may think how is that possible? Or, do i have to go through every second of the video and write down everything said in the video? Isn’t that a painstaking task? Because, that will include a lot of writing, proofreading, refining in loop. Well, not necessarily! Let me introduce you to a tool Content Gorilla 2.0. What is Content Gorilla 2.0 ? Content Gorilla 2.0 is a cloud based software that allow you to convert YouTube videos into a blog. Basically, it converts the transcript of the video (caption/subtitles) into a blog i.e. high quality, human readable, grammatically correct, fully formatted and search engine friendly. And you can also add images to make your blog more relevant. On top of that, it has built-in scheduler that helps you put out targeted content to different social media sites. So, Content Gorilla 2.0 allows you create blog literally within minutes. There are already some software that allow you to download the subtitles on YouTube… but there is absolutely no punctuation or formatting in the text. And we had to spend so much time formatting, adding punctuation, fixing grammar and then publishing the content. So you will definitely notice this big advantage, Content Gorilla 2.0 offers. With Content Gorilla 2.0’s three-step process, creating content is as simple as it could get Step 1: find the video Step 2: convert it into a post Step 3: publish K ey Features of Content Gorilla 2.0 Content Gorilla supports creation of blogs in all 105 YouTube supported languages. Quick search, Deep search filters allows to search videos at more deeper level. You can also sort results by relevance, views or creative commons. Converts any YouTube video into fully formatted blog in 60 seconds. Supports 1-click grammar correction and also add punctuation to make it readable. 1-click content spinner to make sure every blog is unique. Image related to your keyword search gets automatically added into the middle of your content. You can add more images by simply dragging & dropping. The YouTube thumbnail image will be added as featured image for the blog. You can change that to your own custom image. Ability to create instantly or schedule up to 10 posts for up to 10 days. Provides built-in social media integration to simultaneously share your content across multiple social media platform(Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn,+) Fetch Tags from the video and add as Post Tags. This will help in higher search engine ranking. Automatically inter-link related content. This will increases your website backlink count and thus higher search engine ranking. Also supports multi publishing at once i.e. you can select multiple videos and post at the same time. Watch Demo Video of Content Gorilla 2.0 FAQs Q: Will Content Gorilla work with any YouTube Video? A: Yes & No — Content Gorilla will work with all YouTube videos that contain closed captions. Q:What if I need help with installation? A: We have full documentation and video tutorials showing step by step everything — from installation to configuration to usage. If you get stuck anywhere, we have a support team ready to help you out. Q: How many sites can I use Content Gorilla On? A: You can use Content Gorilla on up to 10 websites. If you need more — you can contact our support to purchase an additional one-time package. Q: What is the liability of content created with Content Gorilla? A: With Content Gorilla you have full control over the kind of videos you use. You can use videos with creative common license and we also have a built-in feature that allows you to give attribution to the original owner of the video. Besides that, we also have a built-in spinner to make sure the variation of content you use is unique. Q: I already have Content Gorilla — do I get upgraded for free? A: Old 1.0 customers can purchase the main 2.0 version at 50% off (discount code is available for a limited time when you log into your Content Gorilla account) Old 1.0 PRO customers automatically get upgraded to the 2.0 version (incl the PRO version). So if you have the PRO version, you don’t need to do anything — your account is automatically upgraded at launch time. Q: What has been added in Content Gorilla 2.0 since the 1.0 launch in June 2019? A: A lot of new things (including stabilization) have been added, but more specifically, these features (which are also described above): - Multi publishing at a time with one click — NEW - Punctuator included — NEW - Post Archive — NEW - Integrations (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook Pages & Groups) — NEW - Create an image for posting (FE) — NEW - Internal Linking — NEW Q: How many social media accounts can I integrate? A: You can link up to 5 social media accounts — 1 for each social media channel. So 1 Facebook page, 1 Facebook group, 1 Twitter account, 1 LinkedIn personal and 1 LinkedIn Company Pricing & Bonus Details of Content Gorilla 2.0: Front End: Content Gorilla 2.0 One-Time Plan — $47 (click for details) Monthly Plan — $27 (click for details) Note: The price has been updated. Conclusion Content Gorilla 2.0 is a great automatic content creation tool for blogger. It helps to break the monotony in the life of any blogger by automating almost every process of blog writing. The blogs are not only created within minutes but also rank highly in search engine. So, I highly recommend this tool to any blogger who wants to write high quality blog without struggling a lot.

https://medium.com/@pawanblogs/content-gorilla-2-0-honest-review-an-automatic-content-creation-tool-9330c760b616

['Pawan Patel']

2020-12-17 05:52:48.776000+00:00

['How To Start Blogging', 'Content Creation', 'Content Creation Tool', 'Automatic Writing', 'Content Gorilla 2 Review']

Doctor Who — ‘Can You Hear Me?’ [12x7] ★★☆☆☆

Doctor Who — ‘Can You Hear Me?’ [12x7] ★★☆☆☆ Where to begin with this nonsensical and overcomplicated episode? “Can You Hear Me?” began reasonably well, with The Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) dropping her companions back home and going on a solo adventure to 14th-century Aleppo, Syria. I expected the story to bench Graham (Bradley Walsh), Yaz (Mandip Gill), and Ryan (Tosin Cole) entirely for a week (wishful thinking?), with The Doctor investigating a giant Chagaska monster attacking Syrians like young Tahira (Aruhan Galieva) singlehanded… but then the narrative fractured to follow each companion’s homelives… Ryan was reacquainted with old mate Tibo (Buom Tihngang) who I don’t recall meeting before but he was briefly in “Spyfall: Part 1”; Yaz caught up with her younger sister Sonya (Bhavnisha Parmar) to celebrate an anniversary (of what?); while Graham played cards with two friends called Fred (Michael Keane) and Andrew (Anthony Taylor). Things got more interesting once Graham started to hallucinate the image of a black woman, Rakaya (Clare-Hope Ashitey), trapped in some kind of orb as two planets collide. And why is Tibo saying a bald man from his dreams has been appearing in his bedroom? Or why, for that matter, is Yaz now dreaming of a lonely country road in the hills surrounding Sheffield, and seeing the same bald man in her room? For a while, there was such a lot of confusion and competing ideas that it was at least intriguing to see if the mystery would come together. The bald dream maker, Zellin (Ian Gelder), was revealed to have detachable fingers that could levitate and plug into people’s ears to apparently siphon their nightmares. But how is he involved with the giant Chagaska terrorising Aleppo? By the time the story reached the halfway point, I was optimistic “Can You Hear Me?” would pull things together in a smart way. The atmosphere and strangeness were definitely working and kept me interested in seeing where things were heading... Ultimately, The Doctor and Tahira travelled in the TARDIS back to Sheffield to pick up her frightened companions after they each called her in distress. And after hooking Graham up to the TARDIS psychic circuits, they arrived aboard a space platform in the distant future — where two local planets were colliding and a black woman was trapped between them in a blue orb. Zellin then appeared to explain what’s happening, and the story instantly fell apart into a mess of ridiculousness and malformed ideas being rushed through. Deep breath… Zellin and Rakaya are Gods, or Eternals, the latter imprisoned by the civilisations on two worlds that used to worship them before growing to hate them —so built a prison for Rakaya by pinching her between their colliding planets. Zellin has been trying to free her for aeons and has kept her alive on the stolen nightmares of humans. And then The Doctor’s unwittingly unfastens a corporeal lock keeping Rakaya imprisoned and duly frees her, so the two Eternals can gloat before strolling around modern-day Sheffield with a plan to feed off human nightmares together forever. But despite being tied up back on the space platform in the distant future, The Doctor escapes because her sonic screwdriver defies the laws of gravity to fly up into her hand from her coat pocket — or so it appeared, in a woeful case of the writers painting themselves into a corner. But why not just shake the sonic into The Doctor’s foot and have her kick it up into her hand? It would’ve still been a bit unlikely but it would’ve made physical sense!

https://dansmediadigest.co.uk/doctor-who-can-you-hear-me-12x7-7987cc8623af

['Dan Owen']

2020-05-09 17:07:52.160000+00:00

['Doctor Who', 'Television', 'Review', 'Culture', 'TV']

New Disney+ Star Wars Series: Logos Analysis

New Disney+ Star Wars Series: Logos Analysis Disney Investor Day brought with it many new announcements that filled fans’ hearts with joy. Star Wars brought a lot to the table that has left fans speculating over every last detail. Some of the best hints at what’s to come are hidden in plain sight… Any Star Wars fan will easily recognize the iconography on a surface level, but for the more casual viewer, here is a breakdown of the easter eggs hidden within. We may not have gotten the behind-the-scenes look at this new spin-off series at Investor Day but the logo reveal itself has some very telling information. For one thing, that reveal? On a black screen, the title of the series is revealed through grains of sand blowing in the wind until they form “Obi-Wan Kenobi.” We already know that a good portion of this show will be taking place on Tatooine while Obi-Wan is in exile and watching over Luke as he grows up. But other than that, no other kinds of locations will be revealed. The final thing to note in this logo reveal is the last letter in Obi-Wan’s last name. The ‘I’ in Kenobi appears to be the same shape as Obi-Wan’s lightsaber. We didn’t get an investor behind-the-scenes or concept look but that short clip is still pretty telling. Ahsoka just made her live-action debut played by Rosario Dawson in Disney+’s The Mandalorian, but she has a long legacy behind her that fans of the animated series (The Clone Wars, Rebels) are well aware of. The most glaring thing in this logo is the connection to the world between worlds; a time-traveling aspect of the force that has only been explored in Rebels and saved Ahsoka from certain doom at the hands of Darth Vader. Concept art by Molly Denmark The lines, stars, circles and especially the Jedi text along the outer circle are all indicative of this dimension of the force and that Ahsoka’s first time through it isn’t her last. The ‘O’ in Ahsoka’s name also seems to be hiding it’s own secret. From the end of Star Wars Rebels Ahsoka is directly comparable at this point to Gandalf, as stated many times by Filoni himself who is a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work. Her last appearance in Star Wars Rebels had her holding a staff with a similar circle shape on the top point. It could also indicate a portal with someone inside; in this case, it would likely be Ezra Bridger as that is who Ahsoka was last seen searching for besides Thrawn as she mentioned in The Mandalorian. Ahsoka was saved by Ezra in the same way. Rangers of the New Republic is another series taking place in the same era as The Mandalorian. The Rangers logo stems from something newer in the canon. The logo is indicative of traditional military logos and is something new for Star Wars’ association to the light side of galactic conflicts. Cara Dune was rumored to be getting her own spin-off and there are signs she may be in this new series with her earning a badge. From The Mandalorian Chapter 14 Cara Dune herself said that these “stripes” mean something and it looks like there may be different ranks based on color per the logo. Lando has always been one for capes and this logo takes everything from his newer appearance. The details are vague, but it looks like we may see more from Donald Glover’s version of the character, red belt and all. From Solo In the same vain as Rangers of the New Republic’s logo; this one is vague but does include a look at an early version of the Rebel Alliance’s symbol incorporated into the name. Cassian Andor will be a deep dive into the rebellion’s darker side, so the incomplete symbol shows us that they are not quite the heroes we saw them as in the original trilogy just yet. This one is similar to Obi-Wan Kenobi in that the animation is a detail in of itself. The burning away of the Clone Wars to reveal an ashy title is the basis of the show, which promises the fall of the Republic in the same animation style as the Clone Wars TV show. The texture on the logo looks like a venator class star destroyer roughed up and destroyed. Rogue Squardon is quite self-explanatory, but the thing to note is that the X-wing in the logo is specifically one of the newer X-85 models from the sequel era. It could even be an entirely new model, signifying Patty Jenkin’s promise that this will take us into the future of the franchise. The Acolyte is the final of all the logos to analyze, as Visions is an anthology and Taika Waititi’s movie is still in the works; both have no real direction in the logos. There is more to take away from the name itself, but the very edgy look to the letters, the red, and the uneven lightsaber slice through them are all signs of a Sith. Specifically an ‘Acolyte’, the Sith equivalent to a Jedi’s Padawan. Taking place at the end of the High Republic era, this could very well be the first time we see the story from the side of a dark side user. The future of Star Wars is quite secret as new shows are being announced and teased all the time (i.e. The Book of Boba Fett). The few hints we get from the creators are just the tip of the iceberg. Getting a good look at these logos is giving us a hint at what’s to come. Boardwalk Times will be providing more speculation and analysis in the months ahead so stay tuned for more! Special writing credit for the Obi-Wan Kenobi section: Sara Edwards is the Star Wars Writer for Boardwalk Times. Giovanni Delgadillo is a columnist for the Boardwalk Times.

https://boardwalktimes.net/new-disney-star-wars-series-logos-analysis-fbddbe590f0e

[]

2020-12-21 19:38:24.776000+00:00

['Star Wars', 'Disney Plus', 'Disney', 'Lucasfilm', 'The Mandalorian']

Counting to 100,000 — The Evolution and Success of MrBeast

On December 19, 2020, Jimmy Donaldson, a 22-year-old from Raleigh, North Carolina, opened up 300 burger restaurants across the United States. The official MrBeast Burgers is a delivery-only eatery, servicing customers via Grubhub, Doordash, and its own MrBeast Burgers phone app. But Jimmy didn’t start with the idea of burgers. Donaldson started his YouTube carrier in 2011 at the age of 13, making gaming videos with titles such as “Scary Minecraft pigskin!” and “Black ops 2 Patch news!” He continued to produce videos for six years, never getting more than about a thousand views for his videos. Jimmy’s tipping point (see Malcolm Gladwell) came in 2017 when he filmed himself counting to 100,000. Note: this was a year after he filmed himself counting to 10,000, which he did for getting 50 retweets. Still, this was not the groundbreaking video for Jimmy. That would come a year later. Today, Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson has a net worth of $30 million, not to mention the millions he’s given away on his channel and the $20 million his foundation raised to plant trees. I can attribute Jimmy’s success to 5 words beginning with the letter P: perseverance, personality, pioneering, partnership, and philanthropy.

https://medium.com/business-teaching/counting-to-100-000-the-evolution-and-success-of-mrbeast-b1b7a1d7080b

['Ryan Dejonghe']

2021-01-11 18:57:18.325000+00:00

['Personal Development', 'Self Improvement', 'Perseverance', 'YouTube', 'Personal Growth']

Importance Of Graphic Designing In Digital Marketing

Despite your skepticism, a large number of studies show that a well-built website will generate better customer traffic and an improved user interface will increase conversion, driving new business at an exponential rate. But how? How can something as superficial as the design of your business website affect the success of a business? There are many reasons why a well-designed website will attract your ideal customer and promote dialogue with your company. Let’s talk about the importance of Graphic Designing. Navigation Browsing a website can make or break a site, which is especially true for solid websites with many pages. Website navigation generally includes a navigation bar or tag list that differentiates the pages of the website. Good navigation should be easy to find and understand, allowing quick and easy travel around the website. Brand consistency If your company has a logo and this logo is frequently used on printed materials (e.g. business cards, brochures, letterheads, etc.), the logo, the logo/brand colors, the brand message, and images used for printing should be included in the website design. It is important that your clients are able to recognize your brand in all forms of communication so that they associate your position and your promise with your business. Reading and SEO models Most people are comfortable reading a web page in the same way that they read a book, top to bottom, left to right. Web designers also take this into account when designing a website and promoting their services. Many designers make sure to put the most important information in the upper left column. This will help get your message across more effectively to website visitors who could be current or potential customers. Through this blog, we have discussed The Importance Of Graphic Designing In Digital Marketing. For more information regarding Graphic designing and other digital marketing services visit Propel Guru, a Digital Marketing Company.

https://medium.com/@utkarsh-us2021/importance-of-graphic-designing-in-digital-marketing-70dc1799be03

['Utkarsh Sharma']

2020-12-22 10:36:09.633000+00:00

['Digital Marketing', 'Graphic Design']

Comments on “Rethinking the Power of Maps” circa 2011

Catherine D’Ignazio (kanarinka, me) made these comments at a meeting of the American Association of Geographers in 2011 on Denis Wood’s book Rethinking the Power of Maps. Republished here because I found it laying about… So Denis says that Map Art is a genre. I was going to say it wasn’t a genre but then I looked on Wikipedia (the authority) for examples of what is a genre and if Chip Art and Digital Painting and Horse Art can be genres then Map Art is definitely totally at least a genre if not then a whole movement. But the reason that I was going to say that it wasn’t a genre is that it feels more like a topical cross-section of art history over the past 100 or so years rather than a genre because the reasons that artists use or make maps are widely varying, informed by tons of different reasons and deployed in many different milieus and contexts and geographic locations. So, in that sense maybe map art IS kind of like horse art. When you look at just a few examples of horse art you can see just how different each work truly is. They are made on different continents, in different time periods, with different emotional and political motivations. This is exactly why it makes looking at history with the lens of map art so challenging and also so interesting. I wish there were more art history that would dispense with movements and instead trace things like maps and horses and try to figure out why they keep showing up, over and over again, in different places at different times. So for this reason, Denis’ work on map art is refreshing and fascinating. But the chapter on map art tries to do both art history in a somewhat traditional sense — tracing movements — and art history in the more exciting, interesting sense (from my perspective) — which is tracing artists that have worked with maps over the last 100 years. And it’s all in 30 pages which is totally crazy. There’s really not enough room to talk about all the major 20th century art movements and discuss the individual works of art and catalog an exhaustive list of exhibitions and profile some contemporary map artists. What the chapter is wildly successful at is convincing the reader that map art is and has been everywhere and that its contemporary practitioners are diverse. What it risks by going so quickly is reducing so many works of art to being about — as Denis says — “the falsity of the maps’ presumed objectivity” — which is to say reducing the works to being about maps themselves — rather than about fear in public space, private contractors in Colombia, solitary journeys, measuring the passage of everyday life or critiquing the autonomous art object among hundreds of other things. Since there is no space created to really explore the works in depth, it is easy to lump them into all being about “stripping the mask off the map”. And I don’t disagree that map art by and large does strip the mask off the map. The first couple chapters of the book do a great job of dissecting the power of the map and presenting us with the anatomy of why the map functions so well to convince us that what it depicts is “real” and “the way things are”. However Hannah Hoch’s Cut with Kitchen Knife collage is radically different from Robert Smithson’s nonsite projects which are radically different from Lilla LoCurto and Bill Outcault’s project where they scan their bodies into map projections. So yes, they may all strip the mask off the map, but what else? It would be fascinating to explore both the similarities AND the differences for the how the map is deployed, appropriated, asserted, questioned, and so on in these projects. I think there is more to say than stripping the mask off the map, both more parallels to draw and more variation to make apparent. It’s clear that Denis has done an enormous amount of research so I guess I’m being selfish because I would like to see Denis write a whole book about map art where there is time and space to trace the map through history (what about an exhibition??? Even in the exhaustive history of exhibitions it didn’t look like there was a modern/contemporary one) and also, importantly, expand the “What is this all About?” section. I comment on “What is this all About” — a section in the map art chapter which is only 4 pages long and explains the explosion of map art & map exhibitions — because I am left wondering where is the Internet, Google, consumer GPS, and mobile phones in the whole “What is this all About” equation. That feels like another huge factor in the explosion of map art and map art exhibitions in the past ten years: the ability to and obsession with locating oneself technologically with relatively affordable consumer devices. Curators and artists are also consumers and I think it’s no coincidence that Confluxes and a revitalized psychogeography scene started happening after mapquest, googlemaps, and consumer GPS devices, were around for a little while. I’m very curious as to Denis’ take on the connections between those two phenomena and whether the widescale corporate deployment of maps to consumers changes any of the power relationships that he discusses, namely the idea of the map in the service of the state. So if “Maps Blossom in the Springtime of the State” what happens to them in the “Springtime of the Corporation”? Likewise, as I outlined in my article for the Encyclopedia of Human Geography, I see an increasing number of artists and designers using cartographic metaphors while mapping informational territories such as the stock market, the human genome and the Internet itself. While ostensibly disconnected from the earth’s surface these territories are not disconnected from the complicated relationships of authority, representation and power. Indeed their complexity and hyper-organized visual beauty can often act as a seductive device to convince the viewers of the truth or reality of their assertions. While I recognize that this is taking Denis’ project into a different territory, I do feel like these are spaces in desperate need of “power of maps” critical thinking. Finally, just a note that the final chapter of the book about “Mapmaking, Counter-mapping and Map Art in the Mapping of Palestine” is extremely powerful. It is fitting to be the last chapter (although I think it also could have been the first) because it is the case study that puts into play all of the ideas discussed in the rest of the book and makes those arguments and ideas apparent in a way that is concise, pragmatic and totally clear. The only thing I’m not sure about is whether teachers will assign it to their students since some of the final words include “It’s the state that’s fucked up” and “Could we dissolve the state?” Now that’s just crazy talk but perfect fodder for an art project.

https://medium.com/@kanarinka/comments-on-rethinking-the-power-of-maps-circa-2011-287053a05865

["Catherine D'Ignazio"]

2019-01-23 18:25:01.428000+00:00

['Maps', 'Ethics', 'Data Visualization', 'Power']

Reasonable Pricing on Smart Device — How to Match the Market

Pricing your smart home appliance, or, in other words, creating an efficient revenue model, is one of the key components of your business strategy. It determines the channels through which a company gets compensated for the resources that it spent on developing and promoting its product. At the same time, articulating a smart device price is more than just coming up with its monetary value that meets the market supply and demand. In this article, we share some useful insights on how to decide on a reasonable price for a smart device that would match the market. According to a recent report, around 60% of online shoppers make their final purchasing decision based on how well the product price reflects its value and features. What is more, nearly all shoppers spend a sufficient amount of time comparing the prices of devices that they plan to buy in order to ensure the best value for their money. That is why the price is an important factor that can influence your business model, relationships with customers and, in the long run, the position of your company on the market. Modern smart home companies view pricing as a connected strategy that takes into account various factors from industry trends to customer preferences to market competition. Thus, being a part of this rapidly developing industry also means to challenge your company with unconventional approaches and models of smart device pricing. The following steps will help you to come up with an effective pricing strategy for your appliance. Face Your Competitor One of the first steps in developing your revenue strategy is to understand how your competitors price their devices. There are many reliable websites which offer accurate pricing information and allow its users to search, analyse and compare the findings among each other. Collected data will effectively illustrate the most recent market patterns and pricing structures used by your immediate competitors. Advanced price tracking engines, such as Prisync, also offer a variety of useful functions and automated tools that can boost your product growth and give all necessary information about other connected electronic companies on the market. Price Your Catalogue Approaching your catalogue on a product-by-product basis can be a very advantageous strategy. Remember that pricing is a very flexible category, which allows you to raise or lower it based on your competitors’ politics and market dynamics. Moreover, IoT device price is often more sensible towards industry trends and tech innovations. It might be a good idea to regularly consult your sales managers and marketers in order to keep your smart device price up-to-date. IoT projects and cross-discipline knowledge Do not underestimate the significance of a well-thought pricing strategy for your device’s revenue potential. Your final choice can depend on a number of factors, such as target audience, product positioning, marketing budget, company reputation, etc. Remember that each strategy serves its own purpose and works in certain business environments. Below we will describe four most widespread strategies used by smart home companies. Prestige Pricing Prestige pricing model is used when a company wants to set a higher price than its competitors. It is most effective when you would like to highlight your device’s unique features or advanced architecture that differentiates it from similar products on the market. As a result, you make your customer believe that your smart device has a higher value than other products because your price is higher. At the same time, it can also be a risky strategy, because if your device is not unique enough, you are betting that your potential customers will not find out your product’s real value. Economy Pricing As opposed to a prestige model, economy pricing keeps the price of your smart device lower than average due to decreased production costs. It is often used by large and medium size businesses which have enough resources to keep their product prices low compared to other companies on the market. You can minimize your expenditures by cutting advertising and promotional costs and thus make your product more affordable and attractive for customers with a lower income level. Bundle Pricing Bundling strategy allows company to sell multiple smart devices at a lower price than if a customer was to buy each device individually. This model can be very advantageous for IoT smart appliances which are often inter-connected between each other. What is more, bundling builds up value for every purchased device in the eyes of the customer because they are buying it for a lower price. Make sure to discuss a potential bundling strategy with your marketing and sales team who would come up with effective promotion and reasoning for why your customer needs to buy a few products at once rather than each product individually. Maintain Communication Developing effective communication channels with both external and internal stakeholders (teams, vendors, investors and suppliers) is essential for a well-thought product pricing. Many companies make a big mistake by ignoring their loyal customers’ opinions and expectations towards the product price. Customers are one of the key contributors so it is important to communicate with them and be as transparent as possible. Value Proposition Your future IoT partner will have to work in a multidisciplinary environment and solve the upcoming tasks in a timely manner. Thus, it is essential that the software partner you decided to collaborate with has an ability to perform tasks within given time frames. In case your potential vendor fails to meet the deadlines during a trial period, it is a good idea to think about changing a partner. Clearly communicate your needs and expectations to your vendor and make sure that IoT software partner follows the deadlines and requirements. Marketing and Promotions Did you know that 9 in 10 customers check their emails at least once per day? That is why a well-thought promotion strategy is essential for every successful company. You can use pricing as a part of marketing campaign and attract new customers with attractive offers that are hard to resist. Making sure that your smart device pricing remains competitive throughout the year is a crucial part of every successful business strategy. Final product price is often a result of negotiations and compromises made with your team, investors, suppliers and customers. Thus, it is essential to spend enough time reflecting on your product pricing strategy as well as goals and plans your company pursues when setting the final price.

https://medium.com/@brainbeanapps/reasonable-pricing-on-smart-device-how-to-match-the-market-e7c55acc82ab

['Alexey Pelykh']

2020-04-01 13:03:49.140000+00:00

['Internet of Things', 'Consumer Electronics', 'Smart Devices', 'Pricing Strategy', 'Smart Home']

Why not a GST Rebate?

The 2019 Coronavirus has presented itself to be one of the most trying times this young nation has ever faced. The fallout from the virus has produced innumerable challenges as borders shut and the world’s economy grinds to a halt. With unemployment rife and businesses closed, it is a test of our resolve and citizenry and it continues to test the political and economic systems that we have set in place 50 years ago. For decades our government has preached fiscal and monetary prudency so that we can be well prepared for black swan events such as these. We were able to draw out an unprecedented $52 Billion dollars from our reserves without having to go into debt. This enabled millions of ordinary Singaporeans to tide through the economic hardships they were facing during the pandemic lockdowns. Today, Singapore is cautiously easing towards phase 3 where more economic activity can resume. This is so that we can start to recover some of the economic losses that we have suffered as a result of the lockdowns. To further encourage economic activity, MAS has lowered our Singapore Dollar policy band which results in the ever decreasing amount of interest rate you can receive from your ordinary savings accounts you have at the bank. While a low interest rate environment has proven to be effective and we start to see sectors of the economy come back to life. It is time we consider a use of policy mix, combining fiscal and monetary policies in order to speed up the process of our economic recovery. In order to achieve this, the government should implement a nationwide GST rebate system pegged to a dollar amount which can vary depending on the amount of economic activity they desire. While we may lose out temporarily on GST revenues, we may see an increase in the money multiplier effect as well as the velocity of money without costing much to the taxpayer. This enables us to see a semi-organic growth in the economy as it disincentivises the hoarding of cash. Our government could even take a step further by reserving our yearly cash distributions in the form of a GST Voucher to lower income families or those who have not claimed the GST rebate. This will also ensure that we are able to effectively use our tax dollars to uplift those who are truly in need. As a nation that thrives on trade, it is paramount that we facilitate an economy reflective of the times. Demand does not change overnight, but we can nudge towards it. The world is moving towards 2021 with a vaccine on the horizon, will Singapore be ready then?

https://medium.com/@wesleypgoh/why-not-a-gst-rebate-9bfe03634bf

['Wesley Goh']

2020-12-15 09:26:24.928000+00:00

['Singapore', 'Covid19 Crisis', 'Opinion', 'Economics', 'Economy']

13 Employee Engagement Lessons from Best Employee Brands

It ain’t what you don’t know that will hart you. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. -Mark Twain Are your employees giving your company their all? Do they believe that what they’re doing is important? Do they feel appreciated? Do they show up for work each day filled with passion and purpose? If so, you should share employee engagement lessons with this community. A red flag should go up if you answered “no” to any of these questions. Why? Business owners who aren’t taking care of their employees are missing out on significant cost-savings and profits. And like Mark Twain says, don’t assume you know. Do your research and listen carefully. According to Scarlett Surveys, “Employee Engagement is a measurable degree of an employee’s positive or negative emotional attachment to their job, colleagues and organization that profoundly influences their willingness to learn and perform at work”. Here are some surprising statistics we found recently. Only 31% of employees are actively engaged in their jobs. That fact is amazing to us. These employees work with passion and feel a profound connection to their company. People that are actively engaged in helping move the organization forward. 88% of highly engaged employees believe they can positively impact the quality of their organization’s products, compared with only 38% of the disengaged. 72% of highly engaged employees believe they can positively affect customer service, versus 27% of the disengaged. Engaged employees feel a strong emotional bond with the organization that employs them. This is associated with people demonstrating a willingness to recommend the organization to others and commit time and effort to help the organization succeed. It suggests that people are motivated by intrinsic factors (e.g. personal growth, working to a common purpose, being part of a larger process) rather than simply focusing on extrinsic factors. So what engages employees? The drivers differ regionally as well as person to person, but employee engagement is largely about social connections happening within the organization. But there are factors unique to certain winning businesses have in common. Today’s best employee brands make it a priority to get to know them so they can provide whatever’s needed to keep their employees fully engaged in what they do. This creates wins for everyone. With that in mind, here are 13 lessons for creating and sustaining employee engagement: Employee-owned business Publix is the largest employee-owned company in America. For 83 years Publix has thrived by delivering top-rated service to its shoppers by turning thousands of its cashiers, baggers, butchers and bakers into the company’s largest collective shareholders. All staffers who have put in 1,000 work hours and a year of employment receive an additional 8.5% of their total pay in the form of Publix stock. The Publix compensation grants shares of a store-specific bonus pool every 13 weeks. The exact amount varies, but typically 20% of quarterly profits go into that larger pool; 20% of the pool is then paid out in cash to the store’s employees. When competition opens up across the street and sales are impacted, they’re impacted. So employees are incented to make sure they’re doing everything they can to serve that customer to the best of their ability. Open, honest communication At Lockheed Martin, where I was a management leader for a decade before my retirement, we were expected to have meetings with employees every week or so. This was for the explicit purpose of communicating status and information to employees. Communication was core to our culture. Employees were trained to understand the ‘why’ behind their jobs, what they were expected to achieve, and why it was important to the business. The collaboration was emphasized and valued. All leader managers were expected to listen carefully to employee feedback and encourage it. In short, communication was a core element of employee engagement. Show appreciation DHL Express is an example of a business that improves employee engagement through employee appreciation. Its culture of thanking employees, whether through monetary rewards, honoring top performers at business events, or simply pinning simple thank you’s for the extra effort on the company corkboard. Career development At Publix, employees are encouraged to develop professional goals and connect with colleagues, contributing to growth in all jobs. This demonstrates to all employees there’s a long term future. They almost exclusively promote from within, and every store displays advancement charts showing the path each employee can take to become a manager. Fifty-eight thousand of the company’s 159,000 employees have officially registered their interest in advancement. Associates are encouraged to rotate through various divisions, from grocery to real estate to distribution, to get a broad sense of the business. A former cake decorator in a store bakery is now in charge of all strategy for its bakeries. A distribution-center manager overseeing 800 associates got his start unloading railcars. There are 34,000 employees who have more than ten years of tenure. Understand employee thinking Using employee surveys are just one of the ways the best employee engagement companies can keep close to the pulse of their workforce. That was a staple of the IBM culture where I worked for over 17 years. We had companywide surveys every 2 years and then manager leaders put together action plans with employees to improve employee issues. On the other hand, others like Recreational Equipment use social media to get intimate with employees. Its online ‘company campfire’ offers all employees the ability to share their thoughts and participate in open debates and discussions. Over 5000 of its 11,000 have logged in at least once since it was launched. Having voice matters in employee engagement. Combine work and play Google offers its employees a workplace that combines work and play. Complete with scooter parking stalls, free late afternoon espresso shots, healthy snack bowls, and a full-service gym, Google is working to provide a workspace that people appreciate and ultimately work harder for. Sure it is an investment for Google to offer these perks to over 50,000 employees all year. However, the investment is clearly worth it with Google stock selling at $889 per share and consistent reports of the year over year increases in growth rate. Provide perks SAS employees, and their families have free access to a massive gym featuring a weight room and a heated pool. They also have an on-site health care clinic, staffed by physicians, nutritionists, physical therapists, and psychologists–all for free! Deeply discounted childcare is available and additional no-cost work-life counseling is offered to employees. They’ve had 37 consecutive years of record earnings coming in at $2.8 billion in 2012. Self-recognition and rewards Employees of the Wegman’s grocery food chain are encouraged to reward one another with store paid gift cards for good service. Many workers like it there so much that one in five employees are related to each other, as so many referrals take place. Wegman’s has also been known to offer chartered jets to fly all new full-timers to Rochester to be welcomed by CEO Danny Wegman. Let employees be themselves Zappos has a casual work environment where employees can be their most authentic selves. The dress code is relaxed so they can feel comfortable. As long as their outfits are respectable and work-appropriate, employees have the freedom to express their individual style. You’ll see styles spanning from fashionista to jeans, shorts, and T-shirts. You’ll even spot pink and Mohawk hairdos. Employees may also decorate their desks to create their “home away from home.” On any given desk, you might find pictures of family, friends, and things they value, or office toys and colorful décor. Empower employees with tools to succeed Full autonomy in customer-service decisions also increases employee engagement. At Northrup Grumman, where I worked the last 6 years before final retirement from the aerospace industry, leadership empowered employees to make choices as necessary to serve customers. Regardless of what position they hold, employees were given access to the same tools as managers to live and deliver WOW — in every interaction. This applied within our company, whether it is a customer, employee, or vendor, we wanted them to say “WOW.” We always tried to go above and beyond. Empowering employees makes it feasible to scale the business to provide the highest level of service. Communicate the brand’s stories We like to follow Southwest Airlines because of their success with company employees as well as customers (one breeds the other, yes?). Having a culture of fun and friendly is a big part of their DNA. A strong employment brand and culture attracts the people they are interested in employing. Whether it is participating in community events, celebrating coworkers, or creating open communication Southwest works diligently to build a culture where employee engagement is a top priority. It creates a great place to work that both insiders and people on the outside easily recognize. Offer flexible work options The nine-to-five office culture that developed in the 20th century may be nearing the end of its reign. Sure, people are expected to put in their 40 hours and complete projects on a deadline, but they’re no longer tethered to a desk chair. Best Buy Corporation exemplifies this shift toward flex scheduling. The Fortune 100 company switched to a result-only work plan (ROWE) in 2002 that allows participating employees to set their own schedules as long as their work is consistently finished on time. Since then, corporate departments involved in ROWE experienced a 35 percent boost in productivity [source: Brandon].

https://medium.com/@mikeschoultz/13-employee-engagement-lessons-from-best-employee-brands-1449620d84ef

['Mike Schoultz']

2019-10-11 13:06:29.239000+00:00

['Lessons Learned', 'Employee Engagement', 'Employees', 'Brands']

How to Create a Firebase Project and deploy a React.js App on Firebase.

After that you have to select the platform for which you are creating the project I will select web because we are hosting a react.js app as shown in figure below. select web base option Now write a nickname for your project I write the same name as I write for my project name previously and click Register button after that click continue as shown in figure below. Congratulate! you have successfully created a Firebase hosting Project. Now moving toward hosting the project phase. How to Host a React App on Firebase First of All we have to unsure we have created a React App so if you have already created a React App that fine so make sure to be in root directory of React app from Command prompt but I will be starting from scratch by creating my React App with name of firebase_hosting and host it with following steps. Create React App(no need if already have a project) First of All I created a React App by writing the following code: create-react-app firebase_hosting Install Firebase Tools After creating a React App we will move towards apps root directory in cmd in my case root directory was D:\React\firebase_hosting now we will install Firebase Tools which allow you to deploy your app on Firebase npm install firebase-tools -g Login to Firebase Now after installing firebase tools you need to login to your Firebase by your Command prompt. You have to enter your email and password if you’re not already logged in. Run the following code to login: firebase login Initializing Firebase Now you have to intialize firebase in your react app by writing following command in your terminal firebase init after which you will be asked do you want to proceed you have to write Y and press enter as shown in figure 3. figure 3. After pressing enter you will given multiple option by firebase but have to select Hosting: Configure and deploy Firebase Hosting sites as shown in figure 4. figure 4. After selecting press enter and enter option list appear and their we have to select use an existing project and press enter because we are hosting current project after that we have to select our firebase project in my case project is fir-hosting-9c4d3(firebase-hosting) and press enter as shown in figure 5. figure 5. After that you have to answer some question. First you will asked What do you want to use as your public directory? By default, Create React App will generate a build folder that will contain the production assets. Unless you changed the default configuration, you’ll want to enter build for this option. Second You will be asked that Configure as a single-page app (rewrite all urls to /index.html)? You’ll want to enter y for this option. The last question is Configure as a single-page app (rewrite all urls to /index.html)?. If you haven’t created a build for your app yet, then you won’t see this option. You’ll want to enter N for this option as shown in figure 6. figure 6. You have successfully initialized the firebase now just one step away from deploying your project. Deploy on Firebase Now for final step deploy on firebase just writing following code firebase deploy after that you get a hosting url just copy it and open it on your browser as shown in figure 7. figure 7. Congratulation! You have successfully deployed you React.js Project. Conclusion We learned how to Create a project in firebase hosting and how to host a react.js project in firebase. If you liked my Blog you can Connect me at Linkedin and Follow me on medium for further blogs.

https://medium.com/@mzaintariq/how-to-create-a-firebase-project-and-deploy-a-react-js-app-on-firebase-42d30e0f0c27

['Muhammad Zain Tariq']

2020-12-09 19:59:20.931000+00:00

['React App Hosting', 'Web Hosting', 'Firebase', 'Firebasehosting']

What are Regression Algorithms in Supervised Machine Learning?

Regression algorithms are a subset of Supervised Machine Learning technique which are used to predict output values based on the input labeled data. Opposite to classification technique which is used to make predictions where the output variable is a category (yes/no, spam/not spam), regression models are used to predict a continuous value (real numbered output — temperature, stock price, weight, etc). So, regression is one of the most widely used statistics and machine learning tools for deriving intelligence from data. Which are the main applications of regression models in machine learning? to predict real estate values based on location, size, price, and other factors; financial forecasting trend analysis marketing time series predictions Which are the most popular types of regression algorithm? Simple Linear Regression; Lasso Regression; Logistic Regression; Support Vector Machines; Decision Tree Regression Random Forest Regression Multivariate Regression algorithm; Multiple Regression Algorithm; Polynomial Regression. Resources:

https://medium.com/bite-sized-knowledge-delivery/what-are-regression-algorithms-in-supervised-machine-learning-7923cd2f8ff8

['Micro Learning']

2019-05-12 18:14:37.066000+00:00

['Supervised Learning', 'Machine Learning', 'Regression']

Addiction: The Power of Denial

Looking Back Let me share with y’all a part of my journey when I was in total denial. During my last year of active addiction; I fought tooth and nail to control my drinking habit. In truth, I didn’t want to stop. I went as far as going into a treatment facility to learn all about alcoholism in hopes of being able to drink successfully. Haha! Talk about being in denial!! Not only did I learn the harmful effects of acute alcoholism, I saw graphic pictures of the internal damage it caused to the body, in particular, the liver. It scared the crap out of me. No more drinking for me, I proclaimed, but at the same time, my mind was in a whirlwind trying to figure out how to numb the pain that was apparent now that I wasn’t drinking. I was able to fool the staff and other clients in the facility, but inside, I had a battle of wills and needed something to ease the cravings I couldn’t control. I didn’t realize that I should have been paying more attention to the coursework and therapy sessions that discussed the psychological issues which propelled me to drink in excess. I kept my mouth shut because, in my mind, there were no issues to discuss. My focus was on getting through my stay at the rehab so that I could get high. It was the only way to numb the pain. All the while, everybody else was talking about their issues; I was trying to figure out another way to use drugs successfully. I knew I couldn’t drink anymore because my family would know from the smell if I did, and cocaine was out of the question. I tried it once and didn’t like it, I rationed. However, Heroin was the answer because it was known to have similar effects like alcohol. It would numb the pain, and no one would be the wiser. As soon as I got out of rehab, I went straight to the dope spot and bought me a bag. My first experience was indescribable. Okay, I could get used to this, I thought to myself. But the euphoria that the drug provided was short-lived. Heroin is a potent drug, and I was hooked before I knew it, and not only that, I had to increase the intake to keep from having withdrawals. Why couldn’t I get this thing right? I didn’t understand it; I couldn’t get control of my habit. I just wanted to feel good, carefree, happy. But instead, I was hurting. I panicked! I was spiraling out of control; this dilemma was way worse than when I was drinking. I could not use Heroin or alcohol for that matter successfully, so I could not dull the pain. Eventually, I hit rock bottom, with no way up and out of my mess. I had to surrender, to accept that I was in denial. I would never be able to use Heroin successfully. I had to find another way to ease the pain. Here I was still in denial and never gave one thought of going back in treatment. I kept experimenting but all failed and finally, I decided to get the help I needed.

https://medium.com/saved-by-grace/addiction-the-power-of-denial-11fcf4daf511

[]

2020-01-31 17:32:37.140000+00:00

['Denial', 'Awareness', 'Acceptance', 'Addiction', 'Addiction Recovery']

Beginner’s Guide to Custom Environments in OpenAI’s Gym

Beginner’s Guide to Custom Environments in OpenAI’s Gym Photo by Omar Sotillo Franco on Unsplash OpenAI’s Gym is (citing their website): “… a toolkit for developing and comparing reinforcement learning algorithms”. It includes simulated environments, ranging from very simple games to complex physics-based engines, that you can use to train reinforcement learning algorithms. OpenAI’s other package, Baselines, comes with a number of algorithms, so training a reinforcement learning agent is really straightforward with these two libraries, it only takes a couple of lines in Python. Of course, there is not much fun in only using the built-in elements, you either use the algorithms as benchmarks when you test your own algorithm, or you build a custom environment to solve your own problem with any of the available algorithms. Right now, we are interested in the latter: we are going to set up a custom environment in Gym with Python. You might assume you can just follow guidelines in the Gym Documentation, but that is not entirely correct. I had to hunt down and compile the information from multiple sources (documentation, GitHub, Stack Overflow, etc), so I figured I should write a clean and simple summary. Apart from the OpenAI Gym library, we are also going to use a package called Stable Baselines — a project that started as a fork of the OpenAI Baseline library’s reinforcement learning algorithms, with the intention to make it more documented and more user-friendly. One more source that I used is deeplizard’s step-by-step guide on implementing a simple Q-learning algorithm — we will use this code to test whether our environment can be trained on. All the code can be found on my GitHub, most importantly in gym_basic_env_test.ipynb. The rest of the repo is a Gym custom environment that you can register, but, as we will see later, you don’t necessarily need to do this step. What This Guide Covers After working through the guide, you’ll be able to: Set up a custom environment that is consistent with Gym. Develop and register different versions of your environment. Decide what exactly needs to go in the environment class — in my opinion, this is the trickiest part of the whole project! Train a simple Q-learning algorithm on your new environment. Utilise Stable Baselines in the environment, use the package to verify that your custom environment is Gym-consistent, and train a more sophisticated algorithm. (Just to manage expectations, I’d like to mention that the environment we set up is going to be the simplest “game” I could come up with, with one singular choice — our aim is just to understand the structure.) What We Won’t Cover I won’t go through the reinforcement learning basics, you will need to be familiar with at least the following terms: agent, environment, state, action. The following concepts will also indirectly come up when we do the Q-learning algorithm, but they are less important: Q-values, epsilon-greedy strategy, learning rate, exploration vs. exploitation. If you are not familiar with these terms, there are tons of good materials out there. The Stable Baselines Documentation has a list of useful links, and I personally used the code of the Q-learning section on deeplizard, they also have nice summaries of the basic stuff. Install Packages We need to install Gym and Stable Baselines before we start working. Gym Quite straightforward, you can follow the documentation. The most convenient method is to use pip : pip install gym That’s it. Stable Baselines This one is trickier. For starters, you’ll need some prerequisites, have a look at the documentation. Once that’s done, you can pip install the package. If you are on a Mac, this is all you need to do: brew install cmake openmpi pip install stable-baselines[mpi] Now, the issue comes when you are starting to use deep learning algorithms that are built on top of tensorflow — as of 2020 December, the Stable Baselines package only supports tensorflow up until version 1.15.0. There is a warning message on the Installation guide page, and if you are interested, you can read more about the cause of the problem on GitHub. Bottom line is, you need an older version of tensorflow. I did not use tensorflow for anything else, so I just installed an older version like so: pip install tensorflow==1.15.0 Now that we have the libraries, we can start working on the custom environment. File Structure If you try doing a custom environment from the official guide, chances are, you will start with building this file structure: gym-basic/ README.md setup.py gym_basic/ __init__.py envs/ __init__.py basic_env.py basic_env_2.py Why is this Important? The thing is, it’s not… You don’t actually need to worry about this whole file structure thing, the only thing that really matters is basic_env.py . When I started working on this project, I assumed that when you later build your environment from a Gym command: env = gym.make(“gym_basic:basic-v0”) something magical happens in the background, but it seems to me you get the same result if you simply initiate an object from your environment class: env = BasicEnv() (You need to import it first of course.) My understanding is that the main advantage of registering your environment in your Gym package is that you can keep all your environments in one place, and you can also run Baseline RL algorithms (original OpenAI and Stable Baselines likewise) in one line: python -m baselines.run --alg=<name of the algorithm> --env=<environment_id> [additional arguments] So if you want to register your Gym environment, follow this section, otherwise, skip ahead to the next section, The Environment Class. You can use the documentation for this part, or my GitHub repository is basically also a Gym custom environment (if you ignore the two Jupyter Notebooks). You need to set up a setup.py , two __init__.py 's, and most importantly, your environment file(s), which we will do in the next section. Pay attention to the difference between the two __init__.py ’s, they handle the different versions of your environment. For your convenience, I’m copying the content of the three files here. In this example, we are setting up an environment called basic, and do two versions of it. Naturally, just change the string to whatever you want to call your environment. gym-basic/setup.py from setuptools import setup setup(name=’gym_basic’, version=’0.0.1', install_requires=[‘gym’] ) gym-basic/gym_basic/__init__.py from gym.envs.registration import register register(id='basic-v0',entry_point='gym_basic.envs:BasicEnv',) register(id='basic-v2',entry_point='gym_basic.envs:BasicEnv2',) (We will have two environments, BasicEnv , with id = 'basic-v0' , and BasicEnv2 , with id = basic-v2 . This way, you can keep different versions of the environment in the same registry.) gym-basic/gym_basic/envs/__init__.py from gym_basic.envs.basic_env import BasicEnv from gym_basic.envs.basic_env_2 import BasicEnv2 README.md Hang on, there was another file in there, the README markdown, what do I put in there? Well, that is just your git repo readme file, it has nothing to do with your Gym environment. How to Register your Environment As long as you have the corresponding environment files in the envs folder ( basic_env.py and basic_env_2.py in our case), you can register your environment. Just navigate up in your terminal to the folder that contains gym-basic , and use pip : pip install -e gym-basic If you update the environment .py files later, it should update your environment automatically. All right, we registered the Gym environment. We can finally concentrate on the important part: the environment class. The Environment Class Here, I think the Gym documentation is quite misleading. There are parts in the foo_env.py template they provide that you don’t need to include, and there are missing parts that you need. Stable Baselines has a better template, but it was still not entirely clear to me. Once again, my aim is to create the absolute minimum environment here. What you Need in a Gym Environment The environment needs to be a class inherited from gym.Env . . In __init__ , you need to create two variables with fixed names and types. You need a self.action_space , and a self.observation_space . These two need to be of Gym’s special class, space , which is not outright tricky, but not entirely straightforward either. Have a look at the documentation, there are basically two types: a one-dimensional called Discrete , and an n-dimensional called Box . In this example, we will keep things simple and only use Discrete . (One could argue that you can always re-code your spaces to one-dimensional id codes.) , you need to create two variables with fixed names and types. . These two need to be of Gym’s special class, , which is not outright tricky, but not entirely straightforward either. Have a look at the documentation, there are basically two types: a one-dimensional called , and an n-dimensional called . In this example, we will keep things simple and only use . (One could argue that you can always re-code your spaces to one-dimensional id codes.) The reset function returns a value that is within self.observation_space . This is the function that will re-start the environment, for example, at the beginning of a game. In my environments, I call the variable that keeps track of the current state… well, state , but there is no restriction there, you can call it whatever. If we use a Discrete observation space, this state value needs to be an integer. With a Box , it can be a numpy.array . function returns a value that is within . This is the function that will re-start the environment, for example, at the beginning of a game. In my environments, I call the variable that keeps track of the current state… well, , but there is no restriction there, you can call it whatever. If we use a observation space, this value needs to be an integer. With a , it can be a . The step function has one input parameter, needs an action value, usually called action , that is within self.action_space . Similarly to state in the previous point, action can be an integer or a numpy.array . This is the response function, the agent provides the action they want to take, and the environment returns the state it brought them to. The return value is a 4-tuple, in the following order (the naming does not matter, but the variable type does): - state , same type of variable as the return of the reset function, of self.observation_space ; - reward , a number that informs the agent about the immediate consequences of its action; - done , a boolean, value that is TRUE if the environment reached an endpoint, and should be reset, or FALSE otherwise; - info , a dictionary that can be used in bug fixing, and as far as I know, the baselines algorithms don’t use it. You need to provide these variables, but they don’t all have to have “proper“ values. For example, the info can be just an empty dictionary. It’s important to note that you can have as many helping functions within your class as you want, and it doesn’t matter what you call them, as long as they don’t use any of the reserved names. What you DO NOT Need in a Gym Environment Now, I’m not saying that having these in an environment is a bad idea, but I think it’s important to distinguish between “absolute requirements” and “things that you will probably need later”. I’m a big fan of trying not to mindlessly copy code and clutter our projects with unnecessary stuff. So next is a list of things in the Gym documentation that you as a beginner probably won’t need right away when you start playing with custom environments: metadata = {‘render.modes’: [‘human’]} : This line simply defines possible types for your render function (see next point). : This line simply defines possible types for your function (see next point). You don’t actually need a render function. I mean, naturally, it comes handy when you try to do bug fixing, but in terms of training a reinforcement algorithm, as far as I noticed, the baseline algorithms don’t assume it to be there, and they are not using it. If you think about it, the purpose of render is simply to convert your state variable to something more readable. function. I mean, naturally, it comes handy when you try to do bug fixing, but in terms of training a reinforcement algorithm, as far as I noticed, the baseline algorithms don’t assume it to be there, and they are not using it. If you think about it, the purpose of is simply to convert your variable to something more readable. Similarly, you don’t actually need a close function either. The GitHub page of the core environment has some comments on this function, this would be called for additional cleanup when the environment is closed or picked up by the garbage collector. function either. The GitHub page of the core environment has some comments on this function, this would be called for additional cleanup when the environment is closed or picked up by the garbage collector. Same with the seed function. This will be useful when you want to have reproducibility in an environment that uses random number generators. Please note that the class from which you inherit (gym.env) will have these functions implemented, with a single pass line in each of them. So strictly speaking, you will always have these functions, but don’t need them to do anything. Environment Example All right, and now, let’s see a custom environment! As I mentioned earlier, this is going to be very simple. We start at state = 0, and the agent can choose between 5 actions, numbered 0 to 4. If they pick action = 2, they get a reward of 1, otherwise, the reward is -1. (If you would like to see something that’s a tiny bit more complicated, have a look at basic_env_2.py in my GitHub repo.) The way you can code it as a Gym environment: import gym class BasicEnv(gym.Env): def __init__(self): self.action_space = gym.spaces.Discrete(5) self.observation_space = gym.spaces.Discrete(2) def step(self, action): state = 1 if action == 2: reward = 1 else: reward = -1 done = True info = {} return state, reward, done, info def reset(self): state = 0 return state That’s it, you have a Gym environment! Note that the state is always kept within the scope of the function that uses it, and it’s implied that if the environment takes a step (via the step function), it moves from state 0 to 1, and then the “game” immediately ends. So there is no need to keep track of the state within the object in this simple game, but generally, you would want to have a self.state variable. As mentioned above, you can create an object with either env = gym.make(“gym_basic:basic-v0”) if you registered the environment (see File Structure section above), or simply with env = BasicEnv() if you have not registered it. In the remainder of the post, I will assume that env is initiated and is a BasicEnv Gym environment. Verifying Environment with Stable Baselines One cool thing about Stable Baselines is that it comes with a function that verifies if your environment is Gym-compatible. Running this checker is as simple as: from stable_baselines.common.env_checker import check_env check_env(env) If you followed the tutorial, the function will not return anything. Which is a bit weird, but it means that everything is OK. You can test what happens if you change any of the elements in your environment. For example, if you don’t have a reset function, you will get a NotImplementedError . If you don’t have a proper self.action_space and self.observation_space , for example if you defined them as a regular list instead of the special space class, you will get this error: AssertionError: The action space must inherit from gym.spaces . Notice how the checker function did not complain about not having any of the stuff we listed as unnecessary earlier! Testing with a Simple Q-Learning Algorithm I am following the Q-learning algorithm implementation from deeplizard. In this section, we are repeating the tutorial, but we replace the environment with our own. Just like with the built-in environment, the following section works properly on the custom environment. The Gym space class has an n attribute that you can use to gather the dimensions: action_space_size = env.action_space.n state_space_size = env.observation_space.n q_table = np.zeros((state_space_size, action_space_size)) print(q_table) returns: [[0. 0. 0. 0. 0.] [0. 0. 0. 0. 0.]] These are the environment’s state-action Q-values. Please note that the first row, corresponding with state 0, is the only one we care about, the second row of state 1 is the end state, no action will be taken there. I’m not sure if this is usual practice or not, it seemed logical to me to keep the end state separate. I’m not going to copy the whole code here, please refer to my GitHub repo. After the model is trained, the updated Q-values look like this: [[-0.94185026 -0.89058101 1. -0.92023356 -0.91137062] [ 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. ]] Which indicates that the model indeed learned the environment, and identified action = 2 as the optimal action to take. If you think that this was a slight overkill, you are right, but I think it is interesting to see how the environment would work in practice. Plus, wait until what we do in the next section! Testing with a Stable Baselines Algorithm In this section, we are going to dial up the overkill a bit, and train a Proximal Policy Optimizing Algorithm on our humble environment. (Full disclosure: I have no idea how this algorithm works, or what its advantages are, I simply picked it because it is in the tutorial.) Long story short, taking the code in the Getting Started Guide on Stable Baselines, and replacing the env with our own (once again, by running either env = gym.make(“gym_basic:basic-v0”) , or env = BasicEnv() , this code works perfectly: from stable_baselines.common.policies import MlpPolicy from stable_baselines.common.vec_env import DummyVecEnv from stable_baselines import PPO2 model = PPO2(MlpPolicy, env, verbose=1) model.learn(total_timesteps=10000) obs = env.reset() for i in range(10): action, _states = model.predict(obs) print(action) obs, rewards, dones, info = env.step(action) env.render() (Our render function does not do anything, so I added in a line to print out our action.) Quite reassuringly, the model was able to learn how to play our game correctly, and picks action = 2 in every case. References

https://towardsdatascience.com/beginners-guide-to-custom-environments-in-openai-s-gym-989371673952

['Mate Pocs']

2020-12-16 20:13:48.573000+00:00

['Python', 'Openai Gym', 'Machine Learning', 'Reinforcement Learning', 'Towards Data Science']

Me & Harvey Weinstein

It is the fate of a woman long to be patient and silent, to wait like a ghost that is speechless, till some questioning voice dissolves the spell of its silence. -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow There were four ten-year-old girls playing in a field in Bosnia in the early nineties. A Serbian jeep pulled up with four soldiers in it. The soldiers got out of the jeep and called the girls to come over, in a strong soldier kind of way. Three of them stepped toward the men. Their obedience was immediate. It was a reaction to years — generations, actually — of men telling women to do something, and the women doing it without consideration. Reaction. The fourth, the one I brought into our home, turned and ran into the woods. She is the only one who survived. Flash-forward to Harvey Weinstein. “Wait,” I hear you ask. “Are you seriously equating the raping and murdering of Bosnian women by Serbian men to Harvey Weinstein?” Yes. Yes, I am. I think the tenets of how women react to men’s directives are all part and parcel of our DNA — and something we can and must program out for future generations. So women went up to his room for meetings. At last count, more than ninety women have now told this story, and as far as I can tell, the ending is mostly the same: they ran away, got away, pushed him off, or put him off with a delayed promise of succumbing after an Oscar win. Not one has said they did as asked. Without judging these accounts, would it have changed the way you viewed their stories if they had? If some of the women said, “I did what he asked, and I don’t know why. But I didn’t think about it, I just did it.” Is it possible the ones we’re hearing from are the ones who knew to run? Like the one young girl in Bosnia who was the only one to react against what she was told to do? Is it possible there are so many others who didn’t, and because of the ‘shame’ of their actions, aren’t speaking up? Or, are some too ashamed to tell the whole story? Repulsive as this might sound in this particular context, is it possible that there could be something in the female DNA — the same DNA that inclines us towards nurturing — that when called upon to obey (do we have to re-visit hundreds of years of marriage vows?), we might just do it? If I’m honest with myself, and I’m truly not proud of this, but if I’d been in the shoes of these women (thank God I wasn’t), no matter how disgusting it would have been, I fear I might have done it. I hope I wouldn’t. But I’m not sure. Maybe I would have watched him take a shower. I would have then put it out of my mind and tried very hard to not “go there” and evaluate my own behavior, let alone his. I had a high-powered job at one of the big eight accounting firms in the early eighties. I had a boss to whom I was fiercely loyal, a partner. He was being audited by the firm for his expenses (he was fired… we are talking felony avoiding fired) and he asked me to go to a hotel room and help him create the back-up for his expense accounts while they were auditing him. I did it. I never once stopped to think about it. I just did it. I did it because he told me to. He didn’t ask me; he was a mess. He told me. Forcefully. Firmly. And, I did it. A few weeks later, he asked me to put that hotel room on my company American Express. I refused. My brain kicked in then — putting the expense on my card triggered something that made it feel different (versus my earlier complicity, where I was reacting). Looking back, I felt no responsibility for my “accessory to a bad thing” status. I had zero ownership of that night in my own head. It belonged to him, and I was another pair of hands. I see now that it’s worth exploring, and that there are oh so many other examples in my life of the same reaction in me to things I don’t wish to own. I am just now finding what I want stand for, and what my boundaries are, and I’m sixty-six years old. Better late than never? We women have really been dealt a psychological blow, forced into playing defense for far too long. Centuries of self-preservation, love for the male species, and/or a desire to be liked, accepted or… considered for a well-deserved role in a movie we worked our whole life to get to, make us react, without thought. Turns out, sometimes, the best offense might just be a good offense. And just to clarify: whether we act or react, the true shame belongs to the perpetrator. Let’s not forget that. What I’m interested in is mentoring the generations who’ve come after mine to stop, look, and listen before they act — in a way that might diminish the power of a perpetrator. When I think back to that night in the hotel, my biggest regret stems from the ground I gave in the self-esteem department — a loss multiplied by the possibly hundreds of times I didn’t use my power, or my voice, around men like Harvey Weinstein, who have been part of the fabric of my life since I was a child with a forceful father, who made full grown men quake in their boots; I was never even on the spectrum of standing up for myself. I’d like future generations to be spared those kinds of regrets. That young ten-year-old girl who ran into the woods in Bosnia? Her shame, she told me, was that she didn’t wait for the others to follow — or go back to help them. That they didn’t get away, and she did. So even the one who acted courageously was consumed by guilt, assuming responsibility for the others’ reactions. Over the years, I saw how she punished herself. I believe she never felt that she deserved her survival, when in fact, in my opinion, she should take taken to the rooftops celebrating it. She is a hero of mine. So, women of today, may the women speaking up in so many factions of our society serve as the inspiration to us all. Let’s vow from this day forth to obey the better angels of our own voice and power. We might just change the trajectory of those who come after us. And, Heaven knows, there’s no shame in that.

https://christinemerser.medium.com/me-harvey-weinstein-c906e6506cbd

['Christine Merser']

2019-04-02 22:59:48.498000+00:00

['Harvey Weinstein', 'Short Story', 'Nurturing Females', 'Feminist']

Behind the Curve: Breaking the Science

Behind the Curve: Breaking the Science When Isaac Newton comes up with the revelation of gravity, it does not start with a robust scientific thinking or a complex mathematics finding. Instead, laws of gravitation were discovered when an apple fell down to his body while he was asleep under the tree and beg him a question of “why this apple falls down from a tree?” (not exactly what he said, but according to the graphic story of him that I read when I was little). Through this phenomenon, people began accustomed by the idea of gravity. It is not because they understand Newton’s mathematical finding, but simply because they do see an apple dropping from a tree. Every revolutionary discovery that surrounds us in this modern era, in the past, came upon all the worldly experiences of overcurious people. These people may have gained a certain level of expertise that enables them to come up with phenomenal scientific innovation. Even so, what they have created (or invented) is widely accepted because it becomes significant to people’s everyday lives. Then it is fair to say that, science is acknowledged not essentially by the quantification of math or the sophisticated scholarly notion. Rather, it is accepted because we all see similar experience in our daily life. Spherical Earth from Space. Source: https://newatlas.com/gallery-photograph-earth-from-space/50704/ As science takes us into this modern life, they too have transformed into something beyond our everyday experiences. An apple dropping from a tree turns to a realization that we live in a giant ball that has no ends. This concept of the spherical earth has been around since the Hellenic period of the Pythagorean school and has since evolved. Nevertheless, Pythagoras does not show us a direct picture of the spherical world as it is known only by those who have the fundamental knowledge of math. Instead, the acceptance of ‘the world is round’ is pointing to the first image of space in 1946, when Apollo 8 visited the moon for the first time and gave the people of the world the first image of the place that they live in. Truman Show (1998), a depiction of the world as a large planetarium The knowledge that is not seen here, sparks a contested debate by those who cannot see the curve of spherical land that suggested by the scientist. These people are Behind the Curve and described as Flat-Earthers. As stated by the name, they believe that the earth is flat. They projected that earth is just a large planetarium planar where the sun and moon are not circling around but rather, spinning above us. The Netflix documentary Behind the Curve shows us that flat-earthers are battling against science, which they referred to astrophysicists and basically all the people in NASA. Science, according to them, is a big conspiracy by the government (or, powerful people) that instruct us to the truth that they constructed. This, naturally, ridiculed by the subject as they refute back on how flat-earthers do not perform their research scientifically. As in, they neither follow the acclaimed methodological approach nor process that researchers do in proving a scientific assumption. Though, flat-earths do conduct their experiments scientifically. This may be the other side that has always been left out of the depiction of them but the documentary offers us a glimpse of how science is also part of them. Within their existing knowledge of what they can see, they bustling around to find relevant and supporting findings. While the claim seems utterly ridiculous, it is apparent that we do not experience the curve of the land that we step on in our daily life. Solely by our bare vision, the earth is as flat as a wood board, and these people are endlessly trying to prove that. They conduct a series of publication, discussions, even experiments to prove that the image of the earth does not necessarily prove that it is round. The struggle of the flat-earths, depicted in the documentary, led me to doubt the understanding of science as terms. Science in Newton’s age began with something that we would all encounter in our own bodies. Today, it has become something beyond our comprehension. It is understandable how flat-earths have come to terms with their beliefs that the spherical world is not what we see nakedly by our own eyes. The only thing they have struggled to do is to crack current prevailing understanding of what science encompasses. In retrospect, people in science seemingly grappled to diminish the flat-earthers. Besides all the mockery, they refuse to deal with them within a scholarly manner. They cannot provide a satisfying answer to those who cannot comprehend the knowledge that is not seen and resolved to denial. The science that supposed to make sense of all, only, and solely, be understood by them. It is then, sure, that the superiority of knowledge is held by them and all of us (who is not in science) is only able to grasp the information fed by them. For me, Beyond the Curve is not just a snapshot of a flat Earth society, but a glimpse of science has come to be. The presence of them in a way shows that today science is struggling to shape the truth. It is no longer a revolutionary eureka moment, but rather a repetitive and continuous process of maintaining the current and proven reality that has come about. It still is, of course, a continuous struggle for flat earthers to prove their reality. But it will only be a matter of time in their growing community that they are able to find compelling findings that the world is flat. Well, unless the people in NASA are sufficient to persuade them otherwise.

https://medium.com/@meagainstheworld/behind-the-curve-breaking-the-science-e9b7d1216e61

['Naifa Rizani']

2020-11-26 19:27:32.621000+00:00

['Flat Earth', 'Science', 'Documentary', 'Earth', 'Movie Review']

4 Things I Wish I Knew Before Racing a Marathon

1. Plan your race and course well. Now, this should go without saying — know where you are running. Use something like Strava’s route-calculator to make sure your course covers the distance. You should know your route well before race day. Make sure it is safe for you to run. Running a marathon puts your body through a lot of stress and your focus and reaction time will take a big hit. So finding a place to run without having to worry about cars in tight corners is essential. You also don’t want to run somewhere where you get chased by a dog as I did. I find running multiple loops ideal for a long-distance race. In my case, I had a 10.5 km loop which allowed me to dial in after the first 1 or 2 loops so that I’d be prepared and focused for when it started to hurt.

https://medium.com/runners-life/4-things-i-wish-i-knew-before-racing-a-marathon-7aca4f063cf9

['Phillip Steixner']

2020-11-11 14:46:41.797000+00:00

['Training', 'Sports', 'Health', 'Marathon', 'Running']

’Tis the season to be charitable

Photo Credit: Matt Collamer December — the month of fun, festivities and in recent years, food banks. According to charity the Trussell Trust, December 2017 saw a four percent increase in food bank usage compared to the year before that and, sadly, it is expected to rise again this year. Further, between 1 April 2018 and 31 March 2019, their food bank network distributed 1.6 million three-day emergency food supplies to people in crisis, a 19 percent increase on the previous year. More than half a million of these went to children. With an abundance of adverts showing yuletide greetings and blissfully happy families, it can be easy to get caught up in the baubles, bucks fizz and Bublé. But Christmastime is also a period when family tensions rise, domestic abuse rockets and more people — including 130,000 children — face homelessness. While these crises can’t be solved overnight — nor is it solely our responsibility — more can, and should be done by us as consumers to help. Money talks, and if it really is to be the season of giving, Christmas should be more than just exchanging gifts with your nearest and dearest. Many of us claim to be time poor, but as a nation we are cash ‘rich’. In the financial year ending 2019, the disposable income of UK households rose by 1.4 percent. While this can be seen as modest growth, by being savvy with our seasonal spending, we can put this extra dosh to better use to make what can be an incredibly difficult time for some feel a little less bleak. Retail companies see a huge increase in footfall and website visits over the festive period and with a little extra effort, we can wield our cash for good and focus on shopping with organisations that offer initiatives to give back to those in need. Turkey: a necessity in some households and controversial in others (turkey stew for breakfast, lunch and dinner anyone?). Regardless of your own approach, this Christmas staple and all the trimmings can be bought from the Co-op. The company’s supermarkets offer you the opportunity to add extra food to your basket and donate it post-checkout to local food banks through their national community initiative. If you’re a Co-op member — joining costs £1 — you’re also able to donate one percent of your spend on selected branded products and services to support local causes through their Local Community Fund. Marks and Spencer has followed suit and now also offers a similar opportunity through its Festive Food Collection and free Sparks Card membership. If you love animals but aren’t quite ready for the commitment that comes with getting a kitten or a puppy (they’re for life, not just for Christmas remember), you can get a temporary fix and do a good deed by buying your greetings cards or crackers from an animal shelter such as the Dogs Trust or the RSPCA. For those who like to look extra jazzy on the actual day (I’m with you) and want to give back, ASOS has confirmed expansion of its marketplace charity shop partners. The initiative began in May of this year with Barnardos, clothes recycling organisation TRAID and Oxfam. This season now sees the arrival of two new partners; Save the Children and British Red Cross. Each charity will release a series of seasonal products through the platform, from Christmas jumpers and Christmas gifts to unisex clothing. Similarly, Little Black Dress has adopted Refuge as its charity partner and is aiming to raise £5,000 through sales of selected dresses and Christmas giveaway. Glitter and goodwill all round! Companies like Lush, Avon and The White Company also have selected ranges that donate a portion of sales proceeds to charities such as CoppaFeel! and the Prince’s Trust among others. Perfect for stocking fillers or if you just simply want to treat yo’ self. Finally, you can’t be expected to do much rockin’ around without a tree. For those who have yet to purchase their spruce don’t panic, The Christmas Forest has you covered. The company supports Tree Aid; for every real Christmas tree purchased from the company, a tree is grown in the drylands of the Sahel region of Africa, meaning you’ll be truly green fingered. If, after buying everyone’s presents, you have anything spare, first — I salute you. Second, consider making a trip to the newly opened Choose Love store in London’s Covent Garden or online site. The first of its kind, the charity allows you to purchase much-needed items like coats and tents that will be sent to refugees across the world who have been displaced due to war or natural disasters. While this list is by no means exhaustive, think about how you can make your money go that little bit further while you’re eating that fourteenth mince pie of the holidays and rewriting your gift list for the eight time. After all, Santa will know who’s been really good this year.

https://medium.com/@gotacommonname/tis-the-season-to-be-charitable-e45afd0acd45

['Rachel Murray']

2019-12-17 08:18:16.331000+00:00

['Giving', 'Writing', 'Poverty', 'Charity', 'Christmas']

Amal Totkay

A challenge only becomes an obstacle when you bow to it ” When we hear the word TOTKAY, we just feel that, there is something about shortcuts or something like that, but It is completely not like that. Amal totkay are like the things which if you learn and understand, then you can face any resistance confidently and success will come to you automatically. So let me introduce these “5 TOTKAY” which help us to develop a growth mindset; 1- SELF TALK: Self-talk reflects your innermost feelings. When we talk about self talk, we observe 2 types of self talk. POSITIVE (+) NEGATIVE (-) There’s a big difference between positive and negative self-talk. Positive self-talk tells you things like “I’m doing my best” or “I don’t feel too great today, but things could be worse.” It allows you to look at the bright side and encourage yourself. On the other hand, negative self-talk makes you feel bad about yourself and your overall life. For example, you might say, “Everything is terrible right now” or “I’m not smart enough to do this. I should do better.” 2- GET OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE: “The only thing that is stopping you from where you are to where you want to go is your comfort zone.” Getting out of your comfort zone means doing things that you don’t feel comfortable with doing , Encouraging yourself to push yourself in unfamiliar places to do. With this we develop our inner strengths, build our confidence, Makes us more adaptable to change and makes us more creative. 3- CREATE NEW HABITS; Start Simple — Don’t try to completely change your life in one day…. With a small amount of initial discipline, you can create a new habit that requires little effort to maintain. Here are some tips for creating new habits and making them stick: Commit to 30 days Make it Daily Start Simple Stay Consistent Not only are habits important. They grow stronger and stronger over time and become more and more automatic. So make sure you have the right ones! 👍 4- ASK PEOPLE HELP: Healing takes time, and asking for help is a courageous step. … Sharing personal information and problems, demonstrates to others that we like them and want to develop the relationship. … People who are willing to share information are seen as more trusting, friendly, and warm. This will make your circle big and PR more strong because they start valuing you more. 5- FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT: What simple and ordinary lives we live, underneath the shadows of projection screen and artists. It is actually like to portray yourself like the person you always wanted to become. Challenging yourself to perform a task which you are not good at. These things will move you towards growing mindset. Before joining this academy, i wasn’t know about these. But now i feel like blessed and want to go with at least 2 of these TOTKAY’S. Thank you for reading…

https://medium.com/@raheeladil493/amal-totkay-2cfeac81fb60

['Raheel Adil']

2021-01-08 18:48:01.867000+00:00

['Amal Totkay']

Wanna earn money as a writer on Medium? Play SimCity

Wanna earn money as a writer on Medium? Play SimCity Photo by ben o'bro on Unsplash One of the things that SimCity and other Real-Time Strategy games teach you is to invest in the long term. You don’t simply plot one unit of a residential area to instantly be handed a million simoleons. Earning money takes a long time. Not only do you start with laying down roads and eventual residential, commercial, and industrial areas. There’s much more to do. Hospitals, fire, police, taxes, utilities are just a few things you’ll need to invest in. Also, the constant concern of plummeting into negative funds is usually somewhere in the background of your mind. Keeping said negative funds long enough will lead to a possible foreclosure of your city. However, this can all be avoided if you take your time and play the game with the long-term result of having a metropolis in mind. With consistent spending and keeping the interests of you Sims at heart, this goal can be accomplished. Playing the long-term game is how you thrive on Medium as well. Honestly, this is the same for any social platform or content repository. Whether it is writing articles on Medium, uploading videos to YouTube, posting about your brand on Instagram, or even live streaming on Twitch. You start with nothing but as long as you keep dishing out content consistently, being yourself without completely giving in to the algorithmic overlords then you will eventually thrive. It might be next month, year, or even a possible decade later but you will find your plot of land and craft out your metropolis from nothing.

https://medium.com/@skycraw25/wanna-earn-money-as-a-writer-on-medium-play-simcity-a3c2e357f642

['James Crawford']

2020-12-11 01:15:11.096000+00:00

['Writing', 'Simcity', 'Writers On Medium', 'Long Term Thinking', 'Long Term']

How we organize our software development process

At OnMyBlock (our previous startup) and at Airbnb, we used Scrum (with a few tweaks) as our software development process. Every 2 weeks, our team would get together to review all the work that was done in the previous sprint (a time-boxed window usually 2–4 weeks long) and then plan for the upcoming sprint. This meeting is typically called sprint review and sprint planning. Here is how we conducted the sprint review and planning: Before the meeting, the scrum master (a single person responsible for project managing the stories during a sprint) would ping everyone to make sure they updated all their stories (aka tasks) in our project management software. At the start of the meeting, each person goes around and shares what they shipped, what work they couldn’t finish, and explain why they couldn’t accomplish the unfinished work. Then, the scrum master leads the team in discussion on which upcoming epics (aka features) are most urgent and important Everyone independently plans what they will deliver by the end of the next sprint, choosing from a list of prioritized epics. Each person is allotted a fixed number of story points. If you are allotted 13 story points (we used Fibonacci numbers to scale our story points), you can only commit to stories that have a total sum of 13 story points. Story points are values assigned to a story (aka tasks) that attempt to provide a sense of how difficult it will be to accomplish that story. After everyone is done planning, each person goes around and shares what they are committing to delivering in the upcoming sprint. Sprint schedule There are usually “stand-ups” in Scrum, which are short daily meetings for the team to update each other. Our team felt daily stand-ups were too frequent and unproductive so we cut it down to 3 per week except we have 2 per week on the weeks where we have sprint review and planning. Our stand-ups follow the typical agenda where each person goes around and shares what they did yesterday, what they are working on today, and if they have any blockers to their current story (aka task). Pros of how we did Scrum Engineers had more ownership of the features they were responsible for and this resulted in better performance reviews because we were assessed on which projects we led and delivered end-to-end. There was clear accountability because if someone commits to work that they didn’t finish, they would be responsible for explaining why they couldn’t finish it by the deadline. Less knowledge was required to accomplish tasks because an engineer can fill up their sprint with tasks that were related to their area of expertise; such as backend, frontend, data, ML, different services, specific languages, etc. Cons of how we did Scrum Estimating the difficulty of stories was rarely accurate, which led to frequent over estimating and underestimating of the work. When we pre-assign ourselves stories, we typically chose stories that belonged to an epic we were responsible for. Many of us ended up working in silos, which decreased collaboration during the implementation phase of projects (we had a lot of collaboration during the design phase). Entire features shipped slower because the concentration of effort was spread out across multiple epics at once. It was difficult for our team to quickly adapt and change course mid sprint since we planned 2 weeks in advance. The process today At our current company, Mage (AI application development tool), we use a hybrid of Scrum and Kanban with a few tweaks. The tool we use to manage this is called Airtable. Once a week, we hold a meeting called “Mage Force” where we review all the features we shipped last week and then prioritize the features we need to deliver in the upcoming release. Before we start the meeting, we hold a trust activity where the goal is to build trust amongst ourselves and to build each other up (one of our core virtues of “give people power-ups”). In contrast to having a 2 week sprint, we have 1 week release cycles where we ship as much product as possible that our customers need. Magic Here is how we plan our release cycle:

https://m.mage.ai/how-we-organize-our-software-development-process-4fbd4530b3f4

['Tommy Dangerous']

2021-03-19 19:00:38.602000+00:00

['Startup', 'Product Development', 'Development', 'Engineering', 'Teamwork']

10 Essential Skills for the Modern UI & UX Designer

Typography involves much more than choosing a great font. When used effectively, it can enhance usability by improving readability, accessibility, and hierarchy within an interface. If you’re reluctant to create typography guidelines from scratch, try the Material type scale generator to generate font sizes for paragraphs, headings, buttons, and so on. To create type scale guidelines for a UI project, here’s how I do it: Select a font to work with. My favorite places to get high-quality UI fonts are Google fonts or Adobe fonts. Avoid more than 2 typefaces. Instead of introducing new fonts to the interface, use font families. Fonts from the same family are designed to work together, so they’re flexible and consistent. Establish a base font size. I start by establishing the most commonly used type scale for body copy and determine a suitable line-height. Line height. Keep line-height range between 130% and 150% for optimal readability. This isn’t always true, but it’s a good place to start and then make adjustments as needed. Define a scale. A scale provides consistency, rhythm, and hierarchy because they are predictable. To set type scale for h1, h2, h3, body, captions, buttons, and so on, we need a scale value to multiply by our base font size. Common scales for type are 1.250x,1.414x, 1.5x, 1.618x. Test scales on devices. Test font with different scales on multiple device sizes to decide on the right value. 4. How to craft a perfect case study View a case study template I created — View Figma. The ritual of crafting a comprehensive case study at the conclusion of a design project is a design project in and of itself. Documenting the design process has become so ingrained in many up and coming designers that it seems designers go out of their way to use as many colorful sticky notes as possible to take the perfect picture for their case study. Here is a format that I use for case studies: Intro Overview. Provide a high-level description of the project. Client. Who was the client? Who was the solution for? Role. What was your role in the project? (i.e., Lead UX Designer) Duration. How long was the project? Tools. List the tools you used for the project. (i.e., XD, Whimsical, Defining the problem Hypothesis. State what problem was hypothesized that lead to the project being started. Create a problem statement. In exactly one sentence, sum up the problem you’re aiming to solve with your design. Discovery. This is the initial validation of our hypothesis. In the discovery phase, we research our problem and find existing solutions and possible opportunities for improvement. Testing Interviews. Assuming there have been potential opportunities uncovered in the discovery phase, it would now be time to interview potential customers. Outline the number of interviewees or surveys, age range (if applicable), gender (if applicable), and interview duration. Goals. Indicate the different discoveries that were trying to be made during the interviews. Insights & Opportunities Journey map. A journey map will help uncover these insights to refine your understanding of the users’ pain points and find potential opportunities. In your journey map, be sure to outline the opportunities in the user’s journey. Opportunities. Through discovery, research, and interviews, we’ve uncovered many potential opportunities for our product. Outline 3 key opportunities that your design could help solve. Solution State the solution. A solution statement that outlines how the design will solve the core problems people are encountering. Design Design principles. What principles guided design decisions? MVP. Show the minimum viable solution that you created to solve the aforementioned problems and opportunities. Gathering feedback. How did you gather feedback on the MVP? (i.e., user testing, hotjar, google analytics, surveys, etc.) Testing insights. Describe the findings that came out of your testing of the design. Include quotes from users as well. New iteration responding to feedback. The design process is inherently iterative and ongoing, so I like ending my case studies with updated designs based on initial feedback and a mention of roadmap features for the future. Conclusion Sum up your findings, challenges, client quotes, and other notes to bring it all together. 5. How to write effective UX copy In a perfect world, UX writing is the task of professional UX writers. However, companies often rely on their UX team to convey clear messaging instead of hiring UX writers. If your team has a UX writer, great! If not, I have some tips you can use to convey clear messages to users. Write all copy at once. It can be tempting to write the copy ad hoc while designing the product, but this can often lead to mixed tones and a lack of cohesion in the messaging. Create one document for all alerts, messages, modals, explainer text, and so on. It can be tempting to write the copy ad hoc while designing the product, but this can often lead to mixed tones and a lack of cohesion in the messaging. Create one document for all alerts, messages, modals, explainer text, and so on. Keep it short and sweet. There is likely fluff in UX copy that can easily be removed with a quick audit. Instead of saying: “Only Premium members have access to this feature” saying “Join Premium to Access” will keep it concise and to the point. There is likely fluff in UX copy that can easily be removed with a quick audit. Instead of saying: “Only Premium members have access to this feature” saying “Join Premium to Access” will keep it concise and to the point. Keep it consistent. When addressing the user, be sure to remain in first or second person, whichever was chosen. So instead of “edit your location in my account” say, “edit your location in your account.” When addressing the user, be sure to remain in first or second person, whichever was chosen. So instead of “edit location in account” say, “edit location in account.” Avoid jargon. Unless we’re designing an app for experts. Avoid industry-specific terminology like “buffering” or “configuring.” Unless we’re designing an app for experts. Avoid industry-specific terminology like “buffering” or “configuring.” Write in present tense. Instead of saying: “message has been sent” say, “message sent.” Instead of saying: “message has been sent” say, “message sent.” Begin with the objective. When a phrase describes a goal and the action needed to achieve it, start the sentence with the goal. Instead of saying: “Drag a photo to the trash to remove it from this album” say, “To remove a photo from this album, drag it to the trash.” 6. How to give design critique Giving constructive feedback and responding to less-than-constructive feedback is a critical skill that can be uncomfortable for new designers. Lack of awareness about basic feedback skills leads to clients providing vague and useless feedback like “can you make it pop?” To provide effective feedback, there are a few things we can do: We must be clear and specific. “The imagery you used on the careers page doesn’t represent our culture well. Let’s show a playful and relaxed graphic to connect better with the candidates we hope to attract” is more useful feedback than “make it pop.” “The imagery you used on the careers page doesn’t represent our culture well. Let’s show a playful and relaxed graphic to connect better with the candidates we hope to attract” is more useful feedback than “make it pop.” Present the designer with the problem, not just the solution. At first glance, we may think that we know the solution and request the designer “use this graphic for the careers page instead.” However, when we start by presenting the problem, the designer can understand why we want to change the graphic and can suggest ideas we may not have considered. At first glance, we may think that we know the solution and request the designer “use this graphic for the careers page instead.” However, when we start by presenting the problem, the designer can understand why we want to change the graphic and can suggest ideas we may not have considered. Give high-quality examples. It’s always helpful to share patterns from other companies or designs we’ve found in portfolios. Not because the designer should copy these, but it can be a helpful reference for how the design can be improved. It’s always helpful to share patterns from other companies or designs we’ve found in portfolios. Not because the designer should copy these, but it can be a helpful reference for how the design can be improved. Don’t forget compliments. As designers receiving a list of comments, revisions, issues, and so on can be daunting. Be sure to balance our feedback by calling out the parts of the experience that we think is working really well. For example, “I really like how you’ve laid out the welcome screen — it flows perfectly from the previous screen. However, it took me a second to notice the login button at the top. Can we make that button more prominent?” As designers receiving a list of comments, revisions, issues, and so on can be daunting. Be sure to balance our feedback by calling out the parts of the experience that we think is working really well. For example, “I really like how you’ve laid out the welcome screen — it flows perfectly from the previous screen. However, it took me a second to notice the login button at the top. Can we make that button more prominent?” Tone matters. How we present our feedback and format sentences can greatly impact how designers (or people in general) respond to them. Instead of saying, “using that icon to represent a delivery doesn’t make any sense.” We could say, “the delivery icon is confusing to me. I’m used to seeing a package for delivery. Is this the best icon to represent delivery?” 7. How to create an unmoderated remote usability testing plan Many different user testing methods can be used to gather findings. Some common tests are usability testing, card sorting, tree testing, a/b testing, and feedback surveys. To understand the different options for testing, I recommend reading Quantitative User-Research Methodologies: An Overview. In this example, I will provide a template that can be used when conducting a qualitative test. Define the goal The first step in creating a remote user testing plan is to define what we hope to achieve from the test. Writing a statement that defines the goal will be our guiding light when constructing the test. Write a simple statement like “explore if an onboarding flow is the best experience for onboarding new users.” 1. Hypothesis Just like those science fair experiments in middle school, we should prepare a hypothesis. This will form the basis for what we are testing against. Continuing with the last example, our hypothesis might be, “users appreciate a seamless experience to welcome them into the app and explain the features as opposed to exploring for themselves.” 2. Screening Questions Screening questions are asked to potential participants to ensure they’re a good fit for the test. For example, if we’re testing a workout app, then we may want to ask questions like, “do you currently use any workout apps?” or “do you exercise regularly?” If the tester answers no to these questions, they wouldn’t be a good fit and wouldn’t continue to our test. 3. Scenarios In this step, we need to define the different scenarios that a tester would go through to help us uncover insights. For example, a scenario might be testing out the app as a new user without an onboarding experience, exploring features on their own. Another scenario might be testing an onboarding experience that ushers new users through the app and explains features. 4. Tasks & questions for each scenario Initial — Gather the tester’s expectations and explain the scenario. Gather the tester’s expectations and explain the scenario. Questions & tasks — Explain the tasks to complete and define questions that will be asked throughout the test. Explain the tasks to complete and define questions that will be asked throughout the test. Final questions — Ask how the experience compared to their expectations. It can help to see what they liked, didn’t like, were confused by, and final thoughts. 5. Final questionnaire Gather final thoughts and ask any final questions to tie all the scenarios together. Which option did they prefer? How would you rate each experience on a scale of 1–5? Be sure to show visuals again to remind testers of each scenario. 6. Results Here are a few tips for gathering the best results from remote user testing: Not all users are tech-savvy , so it’s crucial to create tests that don’t require overly complicated tasks. , so it’s crucial to create tests that don’t require overly complicated tasks. Ask detailed screening questions to ensure we get the right testers. Or better yet, recruit our own users or target customers. to ensure we get the right testers. Or better yet, recruit our own users or target customers. Always use simplified phrasing as opposed to technical terms. as opposed to technical terms. According to Neilson Norman Group, we only need to test 5 users to uncover 85% of usability issues. 8. How to design for development When designing for development, there are considerations, constraints, and best practices we should keep in mind throughout the process. Considering development will make us better designers to work with and improve the overall quality of the products that we ship. Some steps to ensure a seamless handoff and easier lift for developers: Consider reusable patterns unless unique designs add real value. During the design process, we should audit our design when introducing new conventions, elements, animations, and so on. If these additions aren’t bringing additional value to the user, then they should be reconsidered. The elements that we do include; buttons, inputs, screen layouts, flows, and so on, should be reused as much as possible for consistency and to save time. unless unique designs add real value. During the design process, we should audit our design when introducing new conventions, elements, animations, and so on. If these additions aren’t bringing additional value to the user, then they should be reconsidered. The elements that we do include; buttons, inputs, screen layouts, flows, and so on, should be reused as much as possible for consistency and to save time. Take advantage of collaboration tools like Zeplin for code snippets, inspection, easy asset downloading, and more. Figma, InVision, Adobe, or Marvel will also work just fine. like Zeplin for code snippets, inspection, easy asset downloading, and more. Figma, InVision, Adobe, or Marvel will also work just fine. Avoid introducing new, unnecessary features . Don’t introduce features that will overcomplicate the development process while bringing no additional value to the application. Focusing on the business objectives, user needs, project scope, timeline, and how products are developed will help prioritize which features are essential. . Don’t introduce features that will overcomplicate the development process while bringing no additional value to the application. Focusing on the business objectives, user needs, project scope, timeline, and how products are developed will help prioritize which features are essential. Organize all screens into sections in Zeplin and the design file. in Zeplin and the design file. Name all artboards sequentially and appropriately for easy discovery and understanding. and appropriately for easy discovery and understanding. Mark assets for export. Keep an archive of old screens and ensure all new screens are up to date. 9. How to make low fidelity wireframes Wireframing with a tool like Whimsical is faster and more lightweight for throwing ideas together and getting a feel for the layout and hierarchy of our design. It’s harder to fall in love with a design when it’s only a wireframe, so we can take criticism and feedback while holding on to our dignity. Whimsical has predefined guard rails that make it easy to add components and define the hierarchy, layout, and content of screens — but not be distracted by the small details. Whimsical restricts us from getting caught up with colors, selecting typefaces, adding our own icon family, and so on. The simplicity helps keep me focused on the overall experience and not get sidetracked by the little details like spacing and colors as I would in Sketch. 10. How to become a better designer every day There will always be new trends, tools, design libraries, startups, product updates, and all the other things that we’re sure will make us a better designer. Here are a few things I’ve done to help me improve my design skills by leaps and bounds:

https://uxdesign.cc/10-essential-skills-for-the-modern-ui-ux-designer-ee6e9b53fcf9

['Danny Sapio']

2020-12-14 19:11:24.033000+00:00

['Visual Design', 'Design', 'UI', 'UX', 'Product Design']

Get Great Prices On Items Online With These Tips

With the use of the Internet in daily life becoming more prevalent, it’s hard to deny the convenience and ease of online shopping. However, it is also very possible to make mistakes and become disappointed with a purchase. Read this article to avoid that, so you can shop online happily! Double-checking your anti-virus protection to ensure it's fully updated is a smart thing to do before you start shopping online. Online shopping provides a haven for scammers. Some people build online stores just to infect computers with malware. No matter how safe you think a website is, it is best to be cautious and have your antivirus updated. Never give out your Social Security number to an online merchant. This number is not required for placing orders online. Giving an online store your Social Security number can help them use your personal and private information to steal your identity. To prevent that, if you go on an online store site and see that as a requirement, do not buy anything from them and shop somewhere else. If you’re considering buying a product online, check out the reviews. The reviews from other people that have used the product will be able to give you a good idea about the product. You may be able to find out the quality of the product, if it worked as described, and if you should make the purchase. Target Coupon is great for those who shop online frequently. The membership is an affordable price, and you get quite a bit for your money. Membership entitles you to free 2-day shipping and discounts on expedited shipping. You can also stream movies for free from their extensive library. That means even more money saved. If a deal seems too good to be true, it is. Keep in mind that anyone can launch an online store and not all stores all reputable. Do more research on different stores before deciding where you want to purchase your products from. Do not choose a very affordable product if it is sold by a store with a bad reputation. If you shop with particular online dealers, try planning your purchases around the times when they offer free shipping, if they have it. Shipping is a major cost when it comes to online shopping, and sometimes that can make a cheaper order much more expensive. Getting free shipping on your items can save you a lot of money, which you can use for other items, so you should take advantage of it when it’s offered. Do a quick web search for promo keys and discounts prior to making any online purchases? Often, there are discount keys out there that you may not be aware of! This could save you 10% to 20%, or offer you things like free shipping or a discount on a secondary item. Instead of falling for schemes or accidentally making it possible for someone to steal your information, shop online safely. As said in the beginning of this article, it is easy to become disappointed if you aren’t careful! Remember the tips in this article to make the best of online shopping.

https://medium.com/@sarrah-william/get-great-prices-on-items-online-with-these-tips-4eb401dc0fb4

['Sarah William']

2021-02-02 05:45:41.976000+00:00

['Coupon', 'Online Shopping', 'Discount', 'Shopping']

Announcing SpaceNet 5: Road Networks and Optimized Routing

Determining optimal routing paths in near real-time is at the heart of many humanitarian, civil, military, and commercial challenges. This statement is as true today as it was two years ago when the SpaceNet partners announced SpaceNet Challenge 3 focused on road network detection. In a disaster response scenario, for example, pre-existing foundational maps are often rendered useless due to debris, flooding, or other obstructions. Satellite or aerial imagery often provides the first large-scale data in such scenarios, rendering such imagery attractive in the quest to aid disaster response. Consequently, the SpaceNet partners are pleased to announce SpaceNet 5: Road Networks and Optimized Routing. This public competition will challenge competitors to automatically extract road networks from satellite imagery, along with travel time estimates along all roadways, thereby permitting true optimal routing. Figure 1. Optimal paths in Khartoum. Left: Simple shortest distance path between start (green) and end (red) locations. Line widths are proportional to speed limit. Right: Path optimized by travel time, rather than distance. The very different paths taken in this plot illustrate the need to extract speed limit and route time estimates for all roadways. Motivation The automated extraction of roads applies to a multitude of long-term efforts such as: improving access to health services, urban planning, and improving social and economic welfare. This is particularly true in developing countries that have limited resources for manually intensive labeling and are under-represented in current mapping. Updated maps are also crucial for such time sensitive efforts as: determining communities in greatest need of aid, effective positioning of logistics hubs, evacuation planning, and rapid response to acute crises. Using artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically extract road networks from aerial or satellite imagery at regional and city scales remains a surprisingly difficult yet critically important challenge. Entities such as Google Maps and OpenStreetMap (OSM) provide useful maps of the world, yet accurate road labeling on these platforms is manually intensive and often slow to update in dynamic scenarios. For example, following Hurricane Maria, it took the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) over two months to produce a fully validated map of Puerto Rico, even with a team of thousands of volunteer mappers. Furthermore, large regions of the world remain poorly mapped. Competition Structure Current approaches to road detection from remote sensing imagery tend to focus on just the road pixels (e.g. 1, 2, 3), or topology (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4). While these approaches are are a very useful first step, they they fall short of addressing automated routing, as they cannot be used directly to assess optimal routing since travel time estimates are lacking. We will therefore ask competitors to output a detailed graph structure with edges corresponding to roadways and nodes corresponding to intersections and end points, with estimates for route travel times on all detected edges. Including estimates for travel time permits true optimal routing, not just the shortest geographic distance. This challenge will help fill the capability gap between semantic segmentation of roads and optimized routing for disaster response, among other scenarios. Figure 2. Left: Road network for sample SpaceNet chip. Right: Satellite imagery overlaid with roads colored by speed limit. The SpaceNet 5 challenge will run for two months, with an anticipated launch date of September 3, 2019. Data labeling for new SpaceNet cities is ongoing now, and will be publicly released as the competition launch nears. Evaluation will occur with a modified version of the APLS metric, tuned to optimize travel times between nodes of interest. Stay tuned for more updates on SpaceNet 5, and in the meantime read up on those graph theory techniques.

https://medium.com/the-downlinq/announcing-spacenet-5-road-networks-and-optimized-routing-10ca8538cde9

['Adam Van Etten']

2019-07-23 17:09:30.362000+00:00

['Disaster Response', 'Satellite Imagery', 'Computer Vision', 'Maps', 'Machine Learning']

Data for Africa: Open data portals listed and reviewed

Data for Africa: Open data portals listed and reviewed Tool Review What open data is out there? Where do you find it and what can you do with it? We review ten South African and African open data portals. Johannesburg Train Station From Randlords by Paul Saad (Creative Commons) The Open Government Declaration, signed by 11 African states from 2011, states that ‘people all around the world are demanding more openness in government’. The African Development Bank says on its open data portal that “reliable data constitutes the single most convincing way of getting the people involved in what their leaders and institutions are doing.” Open data is data that can be freely used and shared by anyone. The theory is that more open data means more transparency, and more transparency means a more accountable and better government. In Africa, some governments have committed to making their data open. But the Open Data Barometer puts African countries at the bottom of their rankings. In many cases, the issue isn’t just openness — it’s that the data hasn’t been collected in the first place. Questions have also been raised about whether increased transparency is likely to lead to more accountability without more government commitment. As you can see from our review below, looking at what has been done so far, many of the open data portals are still difficult to navigate, especially on mobile phones which is how most people get online. As one African Union report puts it, we still need a data revolution in Africa. So what South African and African open data is out there? How useful is it and where do you find it? This list is a work in progress. Please contribute and comment: What portals do you use or run? What portals do you “rate”? And which ones are just not worth the pixels/bandwidth? How have you used, or tried to use, open data? Please share your experience and ideas in the comments below, directly via email to civictech@journalism.co.za , or join the discussions on our Facebook page. Below you’ll find seven South African and three international open data portals: Municipal Money, Municipal Finance Data, Municipal Barometer, Wazimap, City of Cape Town Open Data Portal, South Africa National Data Portal, The NRF’s SA Data Archive, OpenAFRICA, DataBank from the WorldBank, and African Development Bank Groups’ Open Data for African portal South Africa 1. Municipal Money Municipal Money is National Treasury project that takes municipal finance data and makes it available to the public in an accessible way. The stated goal of the portal is to take complex and extensive spending and budget information, to crunch and reformat it (in graphical ways) so it doesn’t require an economics or statistics degree to interpret, and to let users drill down to information at the individual municipal level. What data is there? All the data on the portal is reported information, submitted to National Treasury by individual municipalities. Generally you can access information on an area’s audit status, income sources, cash balance, and spending (by category) including wasteful expenditure, as well as a “resources” section. This includes links to data sources such as financial reports in PDF and Excel format. Depending on which municipality you look at you may find missing information which as the site makes clear may be an indication that the municipality failed to provide data to the Treasury (which is informative in itself). What can you do with it? Find your municipality, or choose one of interest, to see summarised information with supporting graphs and graphical ratings (using smiley and unhappy faces, and a red, orange and green colouring key). Each metric provides the year(s) of data available, an explanation of the metric and outgoing links. Ease of use The site is simple and well designed, and the “traffic light” colour code aids understanding. The “Did you know” boxes and linked explanations will help orientate new data users. At the time of visiting (May 2017) the location-detection appeared to be non-functioning, but search was simple and accurate. Viewed on a low-end Android smartphone*, the site is generally mobile- friendly with only minor blips in the layout of some graph keys. 2. Municipal Finance Data The Municipal Money tool (above) draws its raw data from this site, the Municipal Money API website. Here users can access the original datasets that Municipal Money is built on. What data is there? There are 12 datasets to access, including audit reports, cash flow and capital acquisition. The site promises four years of data, covering 278 municipalities. What can you do with it? Drill down to specific months and years, within a category or dataset, and download the raw data. Ease of use The interface is a lot less user-friendly, in comparison to Municipal Money, and is clearly not aimed at a “general” audience. That isn’t to say that it is a big mess (it isn’t your typical government department website) but there has been a lot less attention paid to supporting a non-expert user-experience. The site is clear and readable, but fails the mobile test with many of the dataset blocks breaking or displaying run-over text. Once you click through to the datasets themselves, it’s best to rotate your screen for landscape viewing — or, better yet, if you have access to a PC, give up and access it there. 3. Municipal Barometer Municipal Barometer was developed by the South African Local Government Association (SALGA). It publishes economic, social and governmental performance data down to a ward level. It’s intended audiences are both general interested individuals and municipal staff who can access the information for informed planning purposes. What data is there? There are three “tools”: the data bank, a benchmarking tool, and reporting tool. Information in the data bank is divided by year and area, and includes demographics, financial info, access to social and basic services, and “economic growth and development”, each with their own subcategories. The data itself is largely drawn from the last available census, currently, 2011. What can you do with it? Once you’ve made your various selections (and you can select multiple categories), you’ll end up at a page that lets you see the data in graph or table format on screen, or download it in PDF and Excel spreadsheet formats. Ease of use There is a lot of clicking involved in the data bank section of the site (four steps, each with their own choices) and some users are likely to find that click-path confusing. Two steps and three submenus in I caught myself wondering “where was I going with this again?”. That means it’s a lot of work for a merely interested citizen, but a good resource for a more confident data spelunker. The mobile experience on the other hand is a complete write-off. 4. Wazimap Wazimap was developed by Media Monitoring Africa with Code for South Africa (now OpenUp), and takes census and election data and links it to a map of South Africa. You can use the clickable map interface or search for a specific area to access the information — at a provincial, city and even ward level. What data is there? Wazimap incorporates census 2011 data from Stats SA and election data (national 2014 and municipal 2016) from the IEC. You’ll be able to see how votes were split between parties, as well as demographic and financial information. The census data has some quite revealing insights with metrics such as language, citizenship and the very specific and granular, like “head of household” information or household goods ownership (TV, radio, fridge, etc). What can you do with it? With each metric, you can click to see the data on which the graph is based (in table form) and get a handy embed link, so you can slot it into your journalistic stories or external websites as needed. This is why it’s proved such a popular tool with local journalists already. Ease of use The site is simple and intuitive, and the graphs simply presented. The mobile experience is smooth and clear — easy to read numbers and responsive graphs even in portrait orientation. 5. City of Cape Town Open Data Portal In line with the city’s open data policy, to support transparency, the City of Cape Town has created an open data portal for city information. What data is there? There are 92 data sets and counting, including information on land administration (aerial photographs), spatial planning, health, finance, and even call centre statistics. What can you do with it? Browse and download images, documents and spreadsheets, or visit the “mini-sites” that are built off the back of this data. Ease of use The site is surprisingly active and deep, and the three lists on the front page (recently uploaded, most popular and featured sites) a pretty useful navigation “extra” (in a prompting kind of way). It’s not the most modern or attractive site ever but it is clear and “navigable”. A pleasant surprise is that it doesn’t all fall apart when accessed via mobile, despite its reliance on table-format in the data set area. But it can tend towards a bit of a “data dump”, with most data for download only, rather than viewing on the site. 6. South Africa National Data Portal A project of the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA), the South African National Data Portal is part of the country’s commitment to the Open Government Partnership — along with the principles of transparency and accountability. What data is there? It hosts departmental data and links to external data sources. There are 409 data sets on offer, with download links, of varying usefulness. For example, if you want to see the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry’s PDF list of South African varietal seed crops (from December 2013), then you’ve come to the right spot. Having said that, the Departments of Energy, Environmental Affairs, Higher Education and Labour have all contributed data sets. What can you do with it? Download a huge variety of official information from an official government source. Ease of use The front page presents 409 datasets grouped into ten themes, such as Human Settlements and Economy and Employment — which is great in theory. But click on any theme and you get zero datasets. This leaves you with the option of clicking the “See all 409 datasets” and browsing or searching if you know the name of the set you want. The presentation format is at least a clean and simple table, with document name, theme, file type, and uploaded date rows. The site is pretty responsive, but best viewed in landscape on a mobile. 7. The NRF’s SA Data Archive The National Research Foundation’s South African Data Archive (SADA) proclaims to act as “a broker between a range of data providers … and the research community”, with a view to preserving info for future use and safeguarding data. What data is there? The site promises data sets on labour and business, political studies, social studies and surveys and censuses, but currently all the links to the data sets are broken (as are many other links on the site). We reached out to the NRF and they promised that the site was still operational, but said they were “experiencing problems with our IT”, and promised this would be “resolved soon”. What can you do with it? Nothing right now, but the potential for a data archive that pools the huge amount of research that falls under the NRF banner is exciting. So, fingers crossed that they can exorcise their IT demons soon. Ease of use Not currently available to review. Africa 8. OpenAFRICA openAFRICA is volunteer-drive, run by Code for Africa, and says it “aims to be largest independent repository of open data on the African continent”. It is a private, not-for-profit repository of data collated (or “liberated”) from public sources. What data is there? A large variety — 2544 data sets including from Western Cape dam levels, local airport locations, World Bank data, a Sustainable Development Goal baseline survey, and greenhouse gas mitigation strategy information. What can you do with it? Users can access and download data sets, and even upload their own to store it or make it widely accessible. They also have social sharing buttons on source pages, so you can get the word out. Ease of use It’s a pleasure to use on a computer, with a strong uncluttered interface. At first glance, I thought the mobile experience would be just as good. The front page is responsive, but it all falls over though once you search or browse the datasets — with none of the table text displaying. 9. DataBank from the WorldBank A searchable repository of WorldBank data, gathered from hundreds of countries and 55 databases. What data is there? This is probably the world’s largest collection of comparable country-level economic and development data with 63 databases covering 264 countries**, and accessible in 1504 data series dating back 57 years. Of course, not all areas will have all years, or the same availability of metrics, but there is a tonne to peruse, including data on health, poverty, inequality, jobs, economics, governance and ease of doing business information. Its often the case that African data is a lot less current than that from other countries in the global south, an indication of the continental challenges faced by national statistical offices and other data collection agencies. What can you do with it? Generate charts, tables, and time-linked data, create reports, visualisations and shareable graphics from a wide variety of metrics and categories, with mapping and pivot table-like functionality added in. Ease of use The interface screams “serious” — wordy, with reams of blue and grey text, clickable list items, and next-to-no images (you can make your own data chats and maps once you get in that far). It promises to be tablet-friendly, but is not responsive on a regular mobile phone screen. 10. African Development Bank Groups’ Open Data for African portal This platform hosts data from 54 African countries with a strong focus on developmental matters and socio-economic statistics. What data is there? Data is gathered from partners and their own sources, and is reported at country and regional levels. Clicking on a country link will open a country-specific subpage of the portal with some top-level stats, like unemployment and GDP figures. Dig into the catalogue page to find themed data, demographics, health statistics, gender splits, birth rates, and so on. What can you do with it? Users can see, compare, and analyse data, create visualisations, and share outputs on a wide range of data. Search for country-specific info or browse data catalogues per country. Ease of use The site navigation is a bit lacking, and it’s not immediately clear if there is a way to do cross-country comparisons on the site. The visualisation options though are a nice touch. The site is not mobile-responsive, but the design in clear and simple enough that if you are prepared to do a lot of zooming in and out, mobile users should still be able to get value from their visit. Best viewed on a laptop or desktop, though, if you have one. *For mobile-friendliness assessment, the same low to mid range market Samsung Galaxy Grand Neo Plus device was used to access all of the sites. ** Yes, there are not 264 countries in the world. We suspect this number may include historical data (countries that have changed) and possibly duplicates. We have reached out for clarity and will update when/if we hear back.

https://medium.com/civictech/data-for-africa-open-data-portals-listed-and-reviewed-277b92134284

['Kate Thompson Davy']

2017-10-05 17:18:29.322000+00:00

['Civic Technology', 'Open Data', 'South Africa', 'Civictech', 'Features']

When Your Partner Has More “Me Time” Than You Do

We all know about the importance of “me time”. We know it’s healthy to carve out time for ourselves, to do our own thing, even if it’s just to slow the heart rate between the never-ending demands of work, home and life admin. But what about when you have to barricade yourself in the bathroom just to get a few minutes to yourself? What about when your partner heads for the gym, then out for a drink after, while you stay home fighting the avalanche of “stuff” you have to do? What about their cheerful goodbye makes you burn with resentment? How Do I Know I Need More “Me Time”? By definition, “me time” is the space you get (or carve out or beg for) to do things you want to do — when you bust free of the Cycle of Duty and act for yourself. Frustration at a lack of “me time” is commonly raised in therapy, as people (more commonly women, but men too) battle life’s relentless noise. And it’s a valid concern. When we don’t get a break — time to unwind — we raise the risk of burnout — emotionally, physically and in our relationships. Here are the signs you’re heading down that path. You can’t name when you last had fun. You constantly feel irritable with people you love. You can barely face taking a phone call — even from a good friend. You feel constantly overwhelmed and ineffective. You’ve become more negative and cynical about people and life generally. You’ve lost your motivation to stick to healthy habits (e.g. eating well, drinking in moderation, regular exercise). Even when you get “me time” you can’t get fired up about using it. What IS “Me Time” — and what ISN’T? “Me time” is simply time free of obligation. But as life gets more frantic, there’s a tendency for anything we can squeeze into our days without partners or family is squared off as “me time”. Do you recognise any of these? * Haircuts. Once long ago, when people had time, getting a cut/colour while flicking through a magazine was a relaxing thing to do. But times have changed. Hair salon is now another name for virtual office. Catching up on emails isn’t “me time.” * Doctor’s visits. Seriously? You’re sick. Or you’re checking in on your physical health. Getting a Pap smear or a prostate check are not “me time”. * Date night. No, date nights are for the benefit of your partner too. Hopefully. * Therapy. Yes, therapy is valuable time to focus on yourself. But anyone who thinks therapy is chill-time is dreaming. It takes courage and emotional energy; it can be intense, it can make you cry. The coffee you treat yourself to after, though, does count. * Exercise. Exercise is “me time” IF YOU LOVE IT. But for most of us, it’s duty. It’s body maintenance. It’s to counter our penchant for cheese. It’s essential to our mental function. It’s not filed under category “fun.” So How do I Create More Time For Me? Here are the four essential strategies. 1. Rate yourself. Know you are worth spending time with — and on. That’s the only way you will prioritise yourself — and your use of time. 2. Know what’s fun for you. Don’t be someone who doesn’t know what to do with your time when you get some. “Me time” can — and should — be exactly what YOU want it to be. Some people want to socialise, some like to sit alone in a movie theatre, others have a facial or a massage or a bath. Pick what works for you and ask the people you love to help you find time for it. 3. You don’t need heaps of time. There are times in our lives when we’re Just So Busy. So don’t aim for hours of “me time” because you’ll be left permanently discontented. Just make sure what you do is (1) regular and (2) refreshing. 4. Guard your time like a lion. Don’t bail on your “me time” plans as soon as someone demands something of you. When you diary and keep your plans, your self-respect will rise. So will the respect others have for you. And that may be the biggest win of all. Thanks for reading! Join my email list here if you’re interested in practical psychology for everyday life.

https://medium.com/on-the-couch/when-your-partner-has-more-me-time-than-you-do-24692f26e47f

['Karen Nimmo']

2020-06-01 12:06:01.502000+00:00

['Mental Health', 'Psychology', 'Love', 'Self Improvement', 'Relationships']

What it takes you to be a great Coach Manager?

As per the popular saying — People do not quit a job, they quit a boss. Research shows people are more likely to switch jobs when they have a terrible boss. Jaime Roca, Senior Vice President, Research & Advisory, Gartner HR Practice. “Our research shows that employees who report to managers who coach effectively are 40% more engaged, exhibit 38% more discretionary effort and are 20% more likely to stay at their organizations than those who report to ineffective coaches.” The Institute of Coaching cites that over 70% of individuals who receive coaching benefited from improved work performance, relationships, and more effective communication skills. Gallup started studying managers many years ago (including an analysis of 49,495 business units with 1.2 million employees across 22 organizations in seven industries and 45 countries) and found that great managers are completely different from adequate ones. In brief, they are not bosses. Bossing is the least of what they do and a last, unwelcome, resort. Rather, these managers are coaches. Coach managers create opportunities for people to use their strengths. A manager should become aware of the strengths and areas for improvement of their team members in a much deeper way than is possible by just observing and evaluating their performances. Such heightened awareness and knowledge may help the manager assign jobs, identify potentials, and prepare the team more effectively toward a long-term vision. Tameka Williamson of the Forbes Coaches Council said, “This knowledge becomes the power you need to strategically align your team in a way that fills in the gaps. Then you can empower them to take ownership and solve problems under your guidance, focused on working together as a high-performing and solution-oriented team.” A manager can be so aware only when he dons the hat of a Coach and takes the mantle of Coaching his team to be better rather than just managing them. Let us explore together as what it takes to be a Coach Manager and how can we develop the relevant skills to be good at that. # 1: Shifting the focus: The difference comes from focus. In managing an employee, the focus is on being directive: here’s what needs to be done, here is how I would like you to do it, here is when it needs to be completed. The challenge with being a directive manager is that you create a syndrome of “Mother May I?” (Remember the children’s game, where no one could move until they said, “Mother May I”?) Employees learn to always ask the expert, which in this case is the manager. But the manager becomes frustrated. “Why do I have to have all the answers? How is this efficient if everyone is asking for my guidance on every little task?”. Micromanagement becomes the feedback loop because employees cannot manage to move without the boss’s ok or approval. If the manger’s/ leader’s bandwidth is taken away in micromanagement, wonder when the strategic thinking would happen and when the vision of taking the organisation to the next level would be thought through! How to put in practice? — Coaching takes on a collaborative and empowering approach, pointing team members towards their resourcefulness and insight. Instead of providing knowledge on processes, procedures and necessary tasks, the coach manager asks the employee to self-identify and self-direct towards what is missing. The idea is to make the unconscious conscious, as the employee discovers blind spots and opportunities (rather than being told, scolded, or critiqued in a particular direction). The coach manager’s agenda is insight — the kind of knowledge that comes from the inside — and behavioural change. Insight is critical because, in my experience, if someone does not see something for themselves it does not exist. You can get compliance from directive management. But if you want to inspire the hearts and minds of your employees, it is time for a different approach, hence Coach! # 2: Listen, Listen, Listen! Employees who feel their voice is heard are 4.6 times more likely to feel empowered to do their best work, according to this Salesforce survey featured in Forbes. At least 50% of every conversation is listening…unless, of course, you are a manager who is passing out instructions. Listening is the often-forgotten skill that managers lack. How to put in practice? — Can you listen to your team members without judgement, no matter what comes out of their mouths? That is tricky! The impulse to correct, fix and change is a strong one ineffective manager. Effective coaches understand how to listen at a deeper level. What would happen if your team felt that you were listening to them? Does not mean you have to grant wishes or let the inmates run the asylum. But hearing other viewpoints can shape your own, as well as impacting the effectiveness of the entire organization. So, practice to keep your biases out of the way and truly listen. It is the most difficult skills to acquire, but not an impossible one. Step back whenever you then you are getting in your bias trap or have a strong impulse to correct. Regular practice would help to be better at it soon. As Nelson Mandela said — “It seems impossible until it’s done”. # 3: Challenge your perspective. We all have a perspective, that reflects how we see the world. That perspective (also called a premise, or point of view) is the reason we move forward or stay stuck. Having a rigid perspective about the world and people is one of the reasons why people fail to evolve and be better. Moreover, having a rigid perspective to the ever-changing world and people’s behaviour is itself a wrong premise! How can we have a fixed perspective towards something ever-changing? How to put in practice? — An effective coach practices self-leadership, to recognize that we all have limiting beliefs. Luckily, when those beliefs are seen and understood objectively, a new viewpoint emerges. You can only help your team to leave a limiting premise behind when you have been able to resolve the same at your end. Be aware of your thoughts when your team member is stating something opposite or not in tune with your perspective. Once you are aware, take a step back and restrain to pass judgements and use your skill to listen without being judgemental. Once you have mastered this skill; you can help your team to leave a limiting premise. Will they commit and agree to new behaviour? Because of the commitment comes from them, you are headed in the direction of new results. On a personal note, I believe that Coaching is a great skill to develop. It helps one to look at one’s bling spots objectively, recognise them and then work on them. It is a way by which one becomes more open-minded, a great listener and above all an individual whose focus is to bring out the best in others. Originally published on https://aitd.amity.edu/insights.aspx

https://medium.com/@vaani-gandha/what-it-takes-you-to-be-a-great-coach-manager-8c112e5ac985

['Vaani Gandha']

2020-12-15 10:17:34.655000+00:00

['Great Manager', 'Manager', 'Coach', 'Mentorship', 'Coaching Skills']

INSECURITY 💔

INSECURITY 💔 Chapter One Introduction Hmmmm, looking at the word insecurity could be in diverse ways, e.g low self-esteem, marital insecurity where either of the spouse feel that his or partner is cheating, it can also be the one we are facing as a nation in Nigeria. The low self-esteem part has to do with not being confident in one's abilities and capabilities, which breeds uncertainty in one's mind. Everyone at a point in our lives have faced this, be it our place of work, school- inability to face the crowd ( this is so me😢), and so on. The marital part, I don't know much cause I'm not married and that's not the main body of this work but the national insecurity faced in Nigeria. Keywords: Insecurity, sovereignty, sovereign Chapter Two What is Insecurity? Insecurity is the act of not being sure or confident about one's self and abilities. Since we would be talking about national Insecurity, we won't be using this definition. National Insecurity is when a country is in chaos and it's vulnerable to threats and danger from external forces e.g Boko Haram. To me, sovereignty law is broken here, it's not a sovereign state any longer. Sovereignty is when a state has the ability and capability to exercise authority and power and also maintain law and order within its state without external interference. So from this definition, you can see that the country is not a sovereign one. When there's Insecurity in a country, be it within or outside, then it's not a sovereign state, because there must be law and order within a state before you can call it a sovereign one. Keywords: conflicts, terrorism, Boko Haram sect. Chapter Three Conflict and Terrorism as major factors of insecurity. It can start as a conflict when not settled, can escalate into insecurity where lives and properties are not safe; conflict could be within a country or a state or between two different states or country. In the case of Nigeria, we have tribal conflict e.g the Nnamdi Kanu followers fighting for the emergence of Biafra and also the Sunday Igboho followers fighting for the Oduduwa emergence; this is happening within the country. Terrorism is a form of manipulation involving threats, chaos and violence. Example is the Boko Haram sect in Nigeria. We also have the religion differences, this is where the Boko Haram sect comes in, they are terrorist, they said they are fighting their religion belief and also against the westernization. They have terrorized us severally, even till date, have you heard of this saying on the news the unknown gunmen, yes they are the ones. For Nigeria, we are facing both inter and intra type of conflicts, which as now resulted in insecurity in the country. Conflict and terrorism are the major factors of insecurity. We also have the Niger Delta militants, though theirs is for a good cause but they have allowed their anger to take over, so it has become bloody. This factors have resulted in the increase of IDPs in the country, most especially the northern part.

https://medium.com/@odekoyaenitan/insecurity-82ca584ac568

['Odekoya Enitan']

2021-07-02 15:33:12.099000+00:00

['Sidehustle Internship', 'Side Hustle', 'Life Lessons', 'Temispire', 'Life']

7 Reasons Why We Need to Celebrate More Often

We are used to celebrating only specific occasions, such as birthdays, weddings, promotions at work, etc. However, aren’t there many more situations we can and should celebrate? Are we not forgetting us when we ignore the small positive moments? We have to celebrate the little things, our little victories. When we finish a difficult task, it deserves to be celebrated. When we manage to change a difficult habit, it deserves to be celebrated. When someone praises us, that moment deserves to be celebrated. Celebrating our small victories is an efficient way to stay calm and happy. There are many reasons why we should celebrate all of our small achievements, here are a few. 1 — To live more in the present moment If we only celebrate on specific occasions we do not fully enjoy the joys that happen to us daily. It’s important to celebrate the good things when they happen, because postponing the celebrations to the future will diminish the impact that these joys can bring us. 2 — Because joy creates energy As we celebrate our small achievements in the present moment we will enjoy it more and that joy will generate more positive energy for us. That energy will help us to carry out the tasks at hand. It will make the present easier and also facilitate the next steps for us. It’s a double win. 3 — To feel more fulfilled If we learn to celebrate our small victories, the number of happy moments in our lives will increase a lot. As a result of those celebrations, we will feel that the outcome of our days will become much more positive. If we maintain this attitude, the days will become more pleasant and, at the end of the week, when we look back, not only will some unpleasant moments come to mind, but also the many positive moments we celebrated. The impact of the positive moments will decrease and the impact of the happy moments will be reinforced, we will feel that we had a good week. 4 — To make others happier When we are sad or angry, other people feel it, right? So, if we celebrate more we will become happier, and that effect will be felt also by the people that are around us. The other people will feel our positive energy and will also be encouraged to have a more positive attitude, to feel more joyful. 5 — To have better relationships Celebrating our small wins bring us closer to others. Our relationship with others will improve, will be fueled by those moments of joy. Think about this: who are the people you most like to be with? The ones that are always telling you all the terrible things that happen to them? Or do you prefer to be with the ones that like to share with you happy things and that can improve your mood? 6 — Because it is easy As we are used to celebrate only big occasions, we tend to think of the act of celebrating as something complicated, as something that requires work to do. We think it’s necessary do a lot of tasks to celebrate something, that we have to plan, invite, schedule, confirm, spend a lot of money, etc. A celebration doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, the simpler it is, the better it will be. Celebrating our victories can be simple and easy, it doesn’t have to be complicated. Here are some simple ways to celebrate that can help us practice this healthy habit: Buy something you will enjoy, an object or a book for example Go to lunch in a place you like a lot and don’t visit often Go to see an exhibition Choose a place at random to visit so you can be surprised Make lunchtime a little longer Take a stroll in a garden, feel the joy and life of nature Have a coffee with a friend Have a coffee with yourself, create your own moment Call a friend Do meditation to savor our joy even more Give a gift to someone you care about Give a hug to those who love us (you will get one too) The simpler the ways we find to celebrate, the better. We will enjoy our celebration more and it will be easier to make it into habit, into something we can do many times. 7 — Because you deserve it We deserve to celebrate, we have the right to have happy moments in our life. Many. We need to celebrate and that is fundamental to our physical, mental, and emotional balance. We often think of this as a something that must be done only to others. We remember that we have to buy a gift for our children when they manage to get a good grade at school, for our partner when he receives a promotion or is distinguished at work. We also remember to congratulate our friends when they celebrate their birthday or when they reach some important goal in their lives. We have to make a habit of doing it also to ourselves. To do it many times. We must not miss any opportunity to celebrate our small victories and achievements. These are the moments that can fill our lives with joy and peace. We need to celebrate more, we are entitled to that and we will benefit a lot from this attitude. We will take better care of ourselves. Celebrate more To feel better with ourselves and others is essential to cultivate moments of joy frequently and with simplicity. To celebrate the small wins is essential for us, even if we forget it more often than we should. When celebrating, we will not only accumulate joy and positive energy, but also release the tensions that we accumulate in moments of stress or sadness. We will contribute to our internal balance and, at the same time, improve our relationships. Let’s learn to celebrate more — over and over again.

https://medium.com/know-thyself-heal-thyself/7-reasons-why-we-need-to-celebrate-more-often-fee755091f30

['Zen Michael']

2021-02-14 15:31:38.727000+00:00

['Mindfulness', 'Mindset Shift', 'Stress Management', 'Happiness', 'Celebration']

The Revolutionary Impacts of Karl Marx’s Visionary Theories

Political philosophers often leave ambiguous messages revealing the realities of our society and the ways to address them. Karl Marx was one such philosopher who, although he desired to change the entire structure of society and create a more egalitarian one, never really predicted a utopia awaiting humanity in the future as people generally credit him for. Instead, he warned society of the severe repercussions that will undoubtedly be caused by the ongoing capitalist production model. Marx was born in the house of Heinrich Marx, a Protestant lawyer who was a man of the Enlightenment, in the Kingdom of Prussia. As a classical liberal, Heinrich was heavily interested in the ideas of German Idealism forwarded by the likes of Immanuel Kant and Voltaire.[1] Heinrich actively participated in several agitations and demonstrations demanding for a constitution in Prussia. His involvement in such proceedings contributed to the philosophical development of the young Karl Marx who witnessed strong socialist ideologies at such a young age.[2] Moreover, Marx was born merely thirty years after the famous French Revolution. The intellectual environment of Europe was going through a massive shift, in both its ideologies and its figures.[3] The role of religion in the society had taken a turn for the worse. Christianity had become a central constitute of the rising German nationalism. Marx’s father himself converted to Christianity from Judaism in order to be included in the higher sections of the society. Such activities linked religion and classism and motivated Marx towards atheism.[4] As Marx describes in his revolutionary Communist Manifesto, by the time humanity entered the 19th Century the majority of social classes and hierarchies had vanished, leaving behind just the bourgeoisies and the proletariats. The power was even more unevenly distributed amongst the different sections of the society than it was a few decades ago. This situation led to Marx’s belief that since society has finally been divided into two drastically different parts, it is time for the proletariats to rise against their oppressors.[5] Marx, being an inquisitive philosopher and economist, was deeply moved by the works of his predecessors and his peers alike. Marx was heavily influenced by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in his youth. Hegel’s theory of idealism, which promoted the moral outcome of society based on the moral thoughts of its members, baffled Marx as he could only observe the influence of materialism in his surroundings. This motivated Marx to develop his theory of Historical Materialism which argued that the historical development of the society is a result of materialistic actions rather than ideological movements.[6] While historical philosophers such as Hegel definitely shaped Marx’s theories, a major influence on him was the work of his long-time academic partner and friend, Friedrich Engels. Engels’s 1845 publication The Condition of the Working Class in England provided one the earliest structured studies of England’s industrial working class, which informed Marx about the realities of the class struggle and imprinted in his mind the idea of proletarian revolution as the only solution to end this struggle.[7] Karl Marx’s political ideologies progressed and transformed over the years of his life, leaving behind a vast collection of socioeconomic analysis methods. Unlike his influencer Hegel, Marx believed that a human being’s “active nature (is) embodied not in thought alone, but in ‘sensuous human activity’.”[8] Since humanity is dependent on materialism, Marx believed that the progress towards a more idealistic society can only be approached through materialistic interventions, that is by getting actively involved in the development process. Marx believed that the materialism theorized by him differed from the existing ‘contemplative’ materialism because according to him, “the chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object, or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively.”[9] Marx’s theory of Alienated Labor stemmed out of his theory on materialism. According to this, when a worker in a capitalist society realizes that the fruits of their labor are not under their control, but their employer’s, they feel alienated from, even dominated by, the products of their own labor. This leads to an eventual alienation from the labor, then their self and finally, society itself. The only freedom that remains is in the consumption of commodities.[10] According to Marx, the capitalist society not only alienates the workforce but also exploits them. This is done systematically by extracting ‘surplus value’ from them. Marx theorized that the “surplus value is the difference between the value a labor produces and the value of his labor power.”[11] While the theories described so far portray the working class’s miseries, Marx’s theory on Historical Materialism deals with the relationship between an individual and the constituents of the economic force, namely the forces of production (raw materials, land, machines, labor power) and the relations of production (ownership distribution, owner-worker relations). According to this theory from Marx, an individual unwillingly and indispensably enters into these relations with the constituents of the economic force, forming the economic structure of the capitalist society. Moreover, this economic structure is the basis of the entire socio-political structure of that society. Hence, materialistic actions, and not ideological movements, have contributed to the historical development of the society.[12] The Theory of Class Struggle is considered to be Marx’s most popular and profound theory. Marx begins the Manifesto of the Communist Party with his most memorable quote, “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”[13] Marx describes that since the beginning of civilizations, the story of mankind is the story of the clash between different classes — “freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf … in a word, oppressor and oppressed”.[14] According to this theory, the actual barriers in society are not religion or language, but class itself. Marx believed that it is this clash between the classes that leads to the identical thought process of the working class all over the world with a common interest against the oppressing ruling class.[15] Building on his theory of class struggle, Marx formulated his theory of the state and the revolution. Marx observed that throughout history, whenever a new property owning class brought about a revolution in the mode of production, that too in the name of the entire society, that particular class ended up being the ruling class once the new modes of production had been established. Hence, Marx believed that the proletariat class was the universal class and the only hope to revolutionarily establish a classless society with no private ownership, which will only be achieved by capturing state power from the bourgeoisie.[16] Karl Marx’s ideologies have been thoroughly misinterpreted and travestied by some of the leading powers of our world leading to orthodox, oppressing ideologies — namely the Chinese and the Soviet communism. Both of these communist governments have failed to provide a free, classless society which is favored towards the proletariats. On the contrary, both of these nations are governed by an authoritarian regime. On a separate note, despite several predictions from Marx regarding an impending proletariat revolution, the capitalist societies have not been disheveled — either due to the long-lasting colonialism or the welfare state established by many capitalist societies.[17] With the introduction of stock ownership and the disaggregation of workers into different types, modern economies have increased the involvement of more individuals in the capitalistic ownership of production. This contradicts Marx’s prediction that the proletariat class would increase in numbers because of the ever shrinking ruling class, leading to a massive proletariat revolution.[18] Marx has been criticized by several modern political analysts for believing that class struggle is the only flaw of a capitalist society. Critics believe that social movements, such as the fight for women’s equal rights, should be at par with the struggle for a classless society since women not only faced discrimination based on their class, but also their gender.[19] Although Marx has been criticized for many of his theories, it cannot be denied that most of “the 20th century sociology or political economy has been a response to Marx’s questioning of class”.[20] Marx was also farsighted enough to predict the inevitable inequality of distributed wealth in the future. For instance, “in the United States, the pay of chief executive officers of companies has increased by 300 percent over the last 15 years, whereas wages have increased in the same period by only 5 percent and minimum wage workers have seen their pay fall by 6 percent.”[21] Marx is undoubtedly one of the most prolific visionaries in humankind’s recorded history. It is a feat to be able to forecast the future that the capitalist society holds, that too in such an excruciatingly detailed manner. Nevertheless, that does not justify the avid misinterpretation that his theories promise an egalitarian future. Society should instead take heed of his warnings and sincerely avoid the practices that continually create differences, inequality, and suffering all over the world for the working class, the everyday people. [1] “Karl Marx.” History.com. A&E Television Networks, November 9, 2009. https://www.history.com/topics/germany/karl-marx. [2] Lewis S. Feuer, and David T. McLellan, “Karl Marx.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., May 4, 2020, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Karl-Marx. [3] Lewis S. Feuer. [4] “Karl Marx.” [5] Lewis S. Feuer. [6] Shefali Jha, Western Political Thought — From the Ancient Greeks to Modern Times, 2nd ed (Noida: Pearson India, 2019), 224. [7] Lewis S. Feuer. [8] Jha, Western Political Thought, 217. [9] Karl Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach”, Essay, In Early Writings: Karl Marx (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981). [10] Jha, Western Political Thought, 220. [11] Jha, Western Political Thought, 223. [12] Jha, Western Political Thought, 224. [13] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (Chennai: Indian Universities Press, 2019). [14] Manifesto of the Communist Party. [15] Jha, Western Political Thought, 227. [16] Jha, Western Political Thought, 228. [17] Jha, Western Political Thought, 229. [18] Jha, Western Political Thought, 229. [19] Jha, Western Political Thought, 229. [20] Jha, Western Political Thought, 230 [21] Jha, Western Political Thought, 230.

https://medium.com/illumination/the-revolutionary-impacts-of-karl-marxs-visionary-theories-2e3e718073b7

['Shashwat Jha']

2020-08-05 12:25:17.921000+00:00

['Marxism', 'Economics', 'Communism', 'Politics', 'History']

How To Create Appealing Designs For Social Media

We’re all attracted to the beauties of life; whether they be sleek cars, beautiful women, gorgeous homes, or an aesthetically pleasing image on social media. This is because as humans, we are visual beings. We’re led by the things that we can not just hear but see, which is why people are glued to their phone screen for countless hours a day, scrolling through their social feed to see and share interesting content and designs for their friends to see. What then does this mean for the business owner? To get the right dose of shares, clicks and engagement on your social media content, you have to create designs that are not just attractive and easy on the eyes but also relevant. Why? Because image is everything! Your social media content is 40 times more likely to be shared on social media when paired with a relevant image. Facebook posts with a design get 3 times more engagement and tweets with images have up to 150% engagement! So, how do you improve on your social media designs with no form of expertise? Here’s how. Pick a tool you’re comfortable with. Whether it be Canva, Photoshop, Corel draw, etc. pick a design tool and learn its nitty-gritty thoroughly. This is your first and major step towards creating impeccable designs. Stick with the guidelines. Every brand has its unique guidelines and it is important that you learn and adhere to them. Non compliance to guidelines will have your designs without a form of direction and strewn all over the place. Plus, not only do sticking to brand guidelines make for easy identification but it also creates a strong top of mind awareness for your brand. Case in point, GT Bank. Get the right dimensions. Each social media platform is different in its presentation and layout. What works on Facebook may not fit well on LinkedIn. Get the right dimensions for posts, cover designs, etc. so parts of your designs are not cut out or at most rejected. Learn the lingua. When designing for digital assets, there are quite a number of terms you’ll come across and it is important that you learn them and know where they fit in on your design. E.g : CTA, Body copy, etc. Use the right images. Plagiarism is a huge no-no and you certainly wouldn’t want your brand caught in the web of plagiarism so from the get go, you need to know what kinds of images you would be using; whether stock photos, templates, or photography. For further guidance, on how to create appealing designs for social media, be sure to download our graphical guide to creating social media designs right here and if all of this sounds like a tall order to you or you’re simply swamped by wearing many hats, we would love to meet your every design needs and more by taking the stress of creating designs off of you. So be sure to get in touch with the relentlessly creative humans at Digiengage Nigeria

https://medium.com/the-plot-twist/how-to-create-appealing-designs-for-social-media-c09e9536fb0a

['Funmi Agbana']

2017-07-20 14:48:32.424000+00:00

['Online Solutions', 'Digiengage', 'Design', 'Social Media', 'Digital Marketing']

Content-Based Recommendation Systems

Photo by Jeff Sheldon on Unsplash Content-Based Recommendation Systems Michael J. Pazzani and Daniel Billsus This paper discusses content-based recommendation systems in general. It explains how to represent items with structured data, and how to generate structured data from non-structured. For example, for natural language text, the tf-idf method it’s discussed. Afterward, it discusses two approaches to keep a user profile, with a model or a history of the user’s interaction. Finally, different popular models are presented as ways to create a content-based recommender system. Decision trees, KNN, Relevance Feedback, Linear Methods, and Naïve Bayes are proposed as classification learners. The methodology for content-based recommender systems is explained as follows: … [the models] learn a function that models each user’s interests. Given a new item and the user model, the function predicts whether the user would be interested in the item… Isn’t that inefficient? To provide recommendations for a user, with this approach the system would pass all items through the model to see if they are a match or not for the user. Some pre-computation seems necessary, as the number of items can be really large. For all the models presented, there is no scalable way of adding new items for the users, the only way would be to recompute the model all over again from scratch. You would like for example your Decision Tree to adapt to the new items that the user likes. It’s surprising that the Naive Bayes method does well as the authors claim. That's because, for text, the algorithm assumes that all words are independent of each other, and that is of course not true, as some words are extremely more probable if they are present after another particular word. Maybe some way to address this would be to group all words that tend to appear together (with some clustering method maybe), and use only one as representant of the group.

https://medium.com/recommender-systems-iic-3633/content-based-recommendation-systems-62a1d89c9740

['Yoav Navon']

2019-08-29 02:51:46.471000+00:00

['Data Science', 'Recommendation System', 'Machine Learning']

Fair Treatment to the Humanity.

This morning I read a very philosophical as well as an interesting question, Do you believe that violence is a” natural “part of being human? If so, why do you think so? If not, why do you think violence, especially against women, is so prevalent in human society? This question makes me think back to the old debates that carried out by lot of philosophers over the centuries, Aristoteles argued that morality is learned, and that we’re born as “amoral creatures” while Sigmund Freud considered new-borns a moral blank slate. Hobbes describes humans as ‘nasty’ and ‘brutish’, needing society and rules to reign in their instincts in order to thrive Later Rousseau openly criticized him, arguing instead that man would be gentle and pure without the corruption of greed and inequality caused by the class system imposed by our society. It is still a great conversation to discuss whether a human were born naturally good or bad, so to answer the first question, I will draw on a study conducted by the Infant Cognition Center at Yale University. Their research shows that babies will take on traits from their caregivers. In order to that, I believe that violence is a natural part of being human, because a child has the right to choose what kind of “caregiver” character to guide his life. However, the violence must be adapted to the place and circumstances. Violence against the natural person is still not allowed. Violence against women is a major public health problems and violations of women’s human rights. WHO indicates that at least 1 in 3 women worldwide have experienced either physical and / or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime. Besides, According to the Annual Notes of the National Commission on Violence Against Women in Indonesia, cases of violence against women are an important issue in Indonesia. In fact, the number of cases of violence against women was increased by 6% in 2019, which amounted to 431.471, this number also increased compared to the previous year which amounted to 406.178. Around 75% of the cases are cases of domestic abuse. By law, Indonesia has passed law №23 of 2004 on the Elimination of Domestic Violence but still, it remains as the most handled cases every year, especially in the COVID-19 pandemic where everyone is at home. Sheila (an alias) said that this pandemic was a great suffering for her. Since her brother and father returned to their house due to losing their job, Indah became the target of her sibling’s anger, even at the point where she had to lock her door because she was afraid that her brother would kill her while she was sleeping. Domestic abuse happened because some people or even the victims think that the moment they wanted to report this violence to the authorities, this kind of violence is still considered as a “disgrace” for the family itself. Which can discredit their family name in the society. This private sphere has always been a problem in resolving domestic violence cases. Reporting this violence has become a taboo subject to reveal to the public. The importance of a knowledge for gender equality and a sense of belonging to each other is one of the answers to this case. The social construction that makes men play a “stronger” role than women makes some men out there doing an abuse of power. as well, from a religious perspective, it also teaches that the role of a wife should always follow what her husband commands. Gender stereotypes that have been attached to men and women, often trap both sexes in a difficult position. If inequality and injustice in placing the positions of men and women are the constructs of society, then violence is part of that construction. Society is responsible for learning about how to be male, so that men actualize their masculinity through a macho, manly, strong, and aggressive self-image. So now is the time for society to change this gender labeling to be more humane, so that ways of self-actualization also become more assertive in society. Thus, gender justice as a condition and fair treatment of women and men can be realized.

https://medium.com/@cindyindira/fair-treatment-to-the-humanity-c242cdcf042e

['Cindy Indira']

2020-11-16 01:15:01.228000+00:00

['Human Rights', 'Violence Against Women', 'Women Rights', 'Humanity', 'Violence']

Democrats lost because although they wanted to get rid of Trump, watching the hypocrisy and right…

Democrats lost because although they wanted to get rid of Trump, watching the hypocrisy and right wing behavior of Democratic politicians who criticized Trump with their mouths and voted for the evil he inflicted, with their hands. Democrats could have used the Trump years to show the difference between Democrats and Republicans, by working for the (Progressive) policies the country wants and needs. Instead they used them to exhibit faux outrage so they could fundraise, while continuing to oppress their constituents gleefully. Democrats did not deserve any wins. They destroyed the candidate the people wanted, and gave us the now senile man who crafted the bills that put us in the many of the horrible positions we are in, from mass incarceration to the crazy and cruel fact that student loan debt, which we are paying until we die, cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.

https://medium.com/@SqueakyMouse/democrats-lost-because-although-they-wanted-to-get-rid-of-trump-watching-the-hypocrisy-and-right-fc512bea7fb1

[]

2020-12-25 20:23:15.012000+00:00

['Democrats']

Air Cooler VS Air Conditioner — Which One is Best For You?

Are you confused about buying a comfortable appliance during summer? Besides ceiling and table fans, air conditioners and air coolers have become popular summer appliances across India. However, there are some issues to use both of these. This is why we are making a detailed comparison of air cooler vs air conditioner in this blog. Depending on your place’s climate, your financial condition, and usage, you need to choose the right appliance. After reading this blog, you will be able to decide which one should you buy as per your requirement. Air Cooler VS Air Conditioner: Detailed Comparison As we mentioned before, we will make a detailed comparison of air cooler vs air conditioner to help you to choose the right appliance. In the following, we are covering the six most essential topics. Let’s find out: Air Quality One of the most important topics of this comparison is air quality. In today’s world, where pollution has become a critical issue, we must need to check the air quality of the summer appliance. An air cooler provides 100% fresh air that is produced from the environment. On the other hand, an air conditioner recirculates the air of a room and it becomes stale and dry while functioning this process. However, a cooler is much better to provide fresh air. Cost When it comes to cost, we have to be careful about it. An air cooler costs between Rs. 5000 to Rs. 15,000 in India. However, the cost of an air conditioner starts from Rs. 25,000. Moreover, it depends on your budget although. If you have a tight budget, go for air cooler. Maintenance Maintanice is another crucial topic in this air cooler vs air conditioner comparison. If you don’t have enough time, then air cooler is not the ideal appliance for you. You needs to fill buckets of water everyday before using cooler. On the other hand, air condition maintenance is a lot easier than cooler. Climate Being a part of the sub-tropical region, India has some high humidity areas. So, you cannot use all types of air coolers everywhere. Cause these appliances are not designed for humid climates. However, many companies now claim that they are producing cooler for all types of climates. On the other hand, an air conditioner does not need a preferable climate. So, you can use them everywhere. Energy Efficiency After investing in buying an appliance to get a comfortable summer, you have to be careful about energy efficiency. An air conditioner takes a lot of energy while a cooler needs 10x less energy to function. So, if you want to save your electricity bill, an air cooler is ideal for you. Carbon Emissions Besides other factors, eco-friendliness is another important topic of air cooler vs air conditioner comparison. Air coolers are 100% eco-friendly. So, they don’t have carbon emissions. On the other hand, air conditioner releases CFC gas that is harmful to both nature and human species. Conclusion Finally, you know about all the features of an air conditioner and air cooler. So, if you want to buy a cost-efficient, eco-friendly, and energy-efficient home appliance for the summer months, go for an air cooler. On the other hand, if you are from a humid place and don’t have enough time for cooler maintenance, the air conditioner is good for you.

https://medium.com/@ruchirasarkar/air-cooler-vs-air-conditioner-which-one-is-best-for-you-ca1930a3009b

['Ruchira Sarkar']

2021-07-25 08:12:05.172000+00:00

['Home Improvement', 'Interior Design', 'Air Conditioning', 'Home Decor', 'Summer']

How to Write a Meta Description That Gets Clicks

The main thing to do to get your web pages to appear in the Search Engine Results Pages is to optimize them for search engines (SERPs). However, it does not guarantee that people who find your article through a search will click on the link to read it, instead of reading similar other articles. Of course, you create web pages to be read, not just to be displayed to a large number of people. This is why you must concentrate on meta descriptions in addition to writing excellent content while keeping search engine optimization factors in mind. A meta description is a 160-word summary of the content that attracts search engine users. Meta descriptions play no direct role in search engine optimization. However, it becomes extremely important once you write an SEO-friendly article and it appears on Google’s first page. When a user searches for something on Google and finds ten articles with nearly identical headlines, how does he or she decide which one to click on? Of course, by looking at the meta description beneath the link. Search engines prioritize articles with a high click-through rate (CTR) or the number of people who click on the article. The audience is given a brief overview of the content via meta descriptions. You will be able to pique their interest in your post and persuade them to read it over the others if you write these 160 words correctly. Hence, as a Jacksonville SEO Company, we will show you how to appropriately write the meta description for your content in this article. How to Write a Meta Description That Gets Clicks? Make use of appropriate keywords If you publish content that is optimized for search engines, you are already familiar with keyword research. If not then first you to learn about how to approach keyword research. You must include relevant keywords in your text naturally. If you use the proper keywords in your meta descriptions, Google will readily understand the fundamental idea of your content and will rank your article at the top of its search results when people search for the keywords in your meta description. The keyword is also highlighted in your meta description by Google. The keywords must, however, be used naturally in the meta description, just as they must in the text. That means, the meta description should be as reader-friendly as possible, and not stuffed with keywords unnecessarily. Add one or two keywords for each meaningful phrase. If you insert all the possible keywords here and there in your meta description, it will look spammy, and Google will lower your website ranking. Jacksonville SEO experts will suggest you try to write in a conversational tone. You can use Ubersuggest for keyword research. Don’t make the mistake of using the same keywords for nearly similar web pages. Using different keywords will help each of your pages to appear on Google search for the specific keywords. For example, if you have a digital marketing agency that provides SEO services, the relevant keywords of your webpage would be “On-page SEO”, “On-page SEO services”, “SEO services” etc. 2. Don’t worry about the word count As mentioned earlier, the maximum word limit of meta descriptions is 160. But that doesn’t mean you must write that much. If you can convey your message in fewer words, with relevant keywords correctly inserted, don’t hesitate to stop much before the word limit. At the same time, if you cannot complete your sentences meaningfully in that limitation, feel free to write more. But keep in mind that Google will cut off the extra portion than 160 characters (not words ), and the users won’t see that portion in the search results, so add the keywords and relevant details in the first 160 words. Let us take the example of the digital marketing agency again. Suppose you are writing on “how SEO helps business”, you can write a meta description like this, “SEO makes a business website get on top of search results. People trust a business more when they see it again and again. SEO helps to build brand awareness and to get potential customers to the website easily. It eventually increases the conversion rate.” But on Google, it will show like, “SEO makes a business website get on top of search results. People trust a business more when they see it again and again. It helps to build brand awareness and to get potential customers to the…….”. It doesn’t mean that if users see the truncated results they would not click on the links. Sometimes they are tempted to read those articles with trimmed meta descriptions out of curiosity. But generally, it is advised to write shorter meta descriptions and longer articles to have a greater chance to rank on Google. 3. Optimize your webpage for rich Snippets Creating snippets will enhance the chance of your article getting clicked. Your article will stand out from the crowd when you add snippets along with the right title, URL, and meta description. Webpages with snippets appear much more engaging to Google than those without them. It gets to recognize the key information provided in your content and places it in the search result accurately. To create rich snippets, you need to put structured data markup to the web pages and write what your content is all about. You can also insert additional information here, which would otherwise overload your article. Here is an example of a rich snippet. If you search “what are the top 10 SEO strategies” on Google, you will find some key points on SEO in bullet form before the first link. That’s the featured snippet. This link will, of course, get much more clicks than the rest. Now, you need to keep in mind that not every topic will make a rich snippet. Some types of content like recipes have much more scope here. 4. Do not duplicate There is a strict warning while writing meta descriptions. Never copy your competitors’ descriptions, regardless of how similar the main topics are. Duplication of meta description hampers the search engine optimization ranking of your website badly. As mentioned earlier, do not copy your meta description for other close web pages as well. They all will then compete for the same keywords you use and the overall click-through rate (CTR) of your website will decrease. So, make sure that you write a unique meta description for all your web pages. It is true that the job of writing a summary of each web content in only 160 words that too with necessary keywords inserted organically, is pretty challenging. According to the Jacksonville SEO Company, if you are not confident enough about your writing abilities, it is better to leave the meta description part completely. Google will automatically fill that portion from your content then. The best idea would be, however, to hire an SEO expert for this purpose. 5. Use Interesting Words To grab the attention of potential readers, you must use striking words or phrases, just as you do for headlines. You can take inspiration from your competitors’ websites. At the same time, never compromise with the amount of information you can give in that small space, to make your meta description linguistically interesting. Think of yourself as a Google user. When you search with certain keywords and look through, take ten different meta descriptions on the first page. Which one would you click on? Which words in the meta description compel you to do so? Write those words in your meta description. Many content writers prefer using words like “best”, “popular”, “top”, etc. Words like “learn”, or “know” work well too. Of course, you need to include these words in your content only when they are relevant. Another important thing that you need to add to your content is a call-to-action or CTA. These words like “Click to know more”, “Buy now”, entice people to click on your article and read it. Conclusion Though it is not directly related to search engine optimization, you cannot deny the importance of your content’s meta description in ranking your webpage on the first ten search results and gaining more organic traffic. Remember that when a search engine user goes through all of the search results on the first page, he or she quickly gets a sense of what each content is about based on only the title, image, and meta description. Because everyone is busy, users only click on article links whose meta description appears to be interesting and capable of meeting their needs. Each of your web pages should have a distinct, interesting, and informative meta description. You should also include meta descriptions on your product pages. If this seems like too much work, at the very least include the meta descriptions of your home page and the most important pages. Even if you follow all of the above tips, keep one thing in mind: if Google thinks it doesn’t fit with the search, it will change it and place a more relevant portion of your text instead. However, your web pages will undoubtedly receive more clicks if you write the meta description of your page according to tips and techniques are given in the guide.

https://medium.com/@jacksonville-seo-company/how-to-write-a-meta-description-that-gets-clicks-975ead0a73b9

[]

2021-11-30 08:49:56.533000+00:00

['Social Media Optimization', 'Jacksonville Social Media', 'Internet Marketing Tips', 'Internet Marketing', 'Social Media']

How does Blockchain work?

How does Blockchain work? In the simplest terms, a blockchain is a distributed ledger that is open to anyone. It is called ‘blockchain’ because data is entered into ‘blocks’, which are linked using cryptography, thereby making a chain of blocks. Once data has been recorded inside a blockchain, it becomes very difficult to change it. This property is called ‘immutability.’ What exactly is inside a block? Data: Typically, the data that is entered into a block is transactional data, but this varies from blockchain to blockchain. In the case of the most popular cryptocurrency in the world, Bitcoin, the data recorded on the block would be the sender, receiver, and the number of coins. Cryptographic Hash or Hash: A hash is a cryptographic function that converts an input of data into an encrypted output of fixed length. A hash is comparable to a fingerprint and is used to identify a block and its contents. Once a block is created on the blockchain, its hash is also created. Changing anything inside the block, even as little as adding a period, will also cause the hash to change completely. Hash of the previous block: The hash of the previous block is also included in the succeeding block, effectively creating a ‘chain of blocks.’ This is the technique that makes blockchain so secure. If a previous block has been tampered with, the hash of the block changes, so changing one block makes all following blocks invalid. Is Blockchain cryptocurrency? A common misconception made by those unfamiliar with crypto or blockchain technology is that blockchain and cryptocurrency are the same thing. The same people will also typically use the terms interchangeably. Blockchain is the technology that cryptocurrency runs on. It is blockchain technology that allows for the existence of cryptocurrency. Although blockchain technology can be used for purposes other than a distributed digital currency (cryptocurrency), that remains its most popular use. Some uses of blockchain technology beyond cryptocurrencies include smart contracts, the monitoring of supply chains, digital voting, immutable data storage, and proof of ownership. Why is blockchain capable of working automatically? One of the most unique and valuable aspects of blockchain technology is how the network operates, executes, and confirms transactions without the need for a central authority or intermediaries. In essence, blockchain is a peer-to-peer (P2P) network. The reason blockchain technology is able to operate in this manner is because the network is secured and executed by a consensus algorithm. This is a mechanism that allows nodes within the network to communicate and coordinate in a distributed manner. In the case of Bitcoin, Ethereum 1.0, and Jax.Network, the consensus algorithm is called Proof of Work. With regard to blockchain, Proof of Work is a mechanism that requires nodes on a network to process a time-consuming and costly piece of data that is then easy for other members of the network to verify in order to add a block to the blockchain. Typically the first node to accomplish this costly task will be rewarded with cryptocurrency, it is through this process that is called ‘mining’ that new coins are minted in a blockchain network. Proof of Work is a safeguard that mitigates tampering with the network by slowing down the creation of new blocks, so that computers can’t keep re-calculating the hash once a previous block has been tampered with.

https://medium.com/jax-network/what-is-blockchain-19b94bbefed8

[]

2020-12-15 18:01:46.814000+00:00

['Jaxnetwork', 'Crypto', 'Blockchain Technology', 'Blockchain', 'Jaxnetworkblockchain101']

Autoencoder architecture optimization by genetic programming.

Photo by Sander Weeteling on Unsplash One of the main challenges in the development of neural networks is to determine the architecture. That means how the different layers are connected, the depth, the units in each layer, and the activation for each layer. In the following post, I will show a method to optimize the architecture of an autoencoder by genetic programming. Autoencoder An autoencoder is a type of neural network that is trained to learn itself. The advantage of this kind of training is the generation of a lower-dimensional space that can represent the data. That means that an autoencoder can be used for dimensionality reduction. In this post we are going to use the MNIST data set to train an autoencoder with the following constrains, the first and last layer of the autoencoder will have the same size as the input, and the bottleneck representation will have two dimensions. First, we are going to train a vanilla autoencoder with only three layers, the input layer, the output layer, and the bottleneck layer. The vanilla autoencoder will help us to select the best autoencoder generated the optimization strategies. To train the vanilla autoencoder we use the following, setting the training epochs to 25. The vanilla autoencoder can be also found in the Keras blog. Neural network generation To dynamically generate a neural network first, we split the autoencoder into two functions one the encoder and the second model will be the decoder. Each function will take an array of integers, the length of the array will be the depth of the network, and each integer will represent the number of dense units in the network. Then a third function will work as a wrapper function, it will join the encoder and the decoder model and train the network. And will return the encoder model, to visualize the bottleneck representation and the full autoencoder network to evaluate the fitness of the network. Optimization strategies. The optimization of the architecture of a neural network is an integer optimization problem, as all the parameters, depth and units are integers. Such problems can be solved by integer programming, or by a metaheuristic approach. Genetic algorithms can be classified as metaheuristics methods, we are going to use two methods: a single tournament search and a modified version of the differential evolution algorithm. A key advantage of genetic algorithms is the ability to handle hard problems, problems that don’t have a derivative, and the simplicity of the implementation in some cases. However, the biggest disadvantage is that genetic algorithms do not guarantee that an optimal solution is ever found. Tournament search In this method a population of possible solutions is generated, then the fitness of the population is measured. In this case, the fitness will be the loss at the last step of training. Then the individual with the best performance is selected as the solution to the problem. Evolutionary approach The algorithm starts by creating a population of candidate solutions, best solutions are selected based on its fitness. Then the selected solutions are mutated to generate new candidates solutions. Also, new randomly generated candidate solutions are added to the population. The algorithm finishes when the number of generations is reached. To optimize the architecture of the neural network, both strategies will return a vector with the number of units in a dense layer, and the number of elements in that vector will be the depth of the network Optimization results With the performance obtained from every iteration from each method, we can evaluate the performance of the models and the improvement in comparison with the vanilla autoencoder. On the plots, the height of the bar represents the percentage of improvement and the width represents the number of parameters. Tournament search optimization With that visualization strategy, we can focus on selecting the best performance with the least number of parameters, or to select the best model and have an idea on the number of parameters needed for the model. Evolutionary optimization Now you can apply a genetic algorithm to optimize the network architecture of a small variational autoencoder network, how to visualize the results, and compare several neural networks. And in the next post of this series, I will show you how to analyze and optimize the weights in a trained neural network.

https://tavoglc.medium.com/autoencoder-architecture-optimization-by-genetic-programming-529a378dd771

['Octavio Gonzalez-Lugo']

2020-01-29 19:31:01.218000+00:00

['Machine Learning', 'Optimization', 'Mathematics', 'Neural Networks']

BLockchain will be knocking on your doors by 2021

Blockchain is the biggest opportunity set we can think of over the next decade or so.- Bob Greifeld, Nasdaq Chief Executive Blockchain Startups Coming in Large Numbers Blockchain technology in the future will alter every attitude of businesses, but this is a slow process that requires time and patience. Gartner predicts that most traditional companies will keep an eye on blockchain technology but won’t plan any actions, waiting for more examples of blockchain technology’s best applications. The reason for this is that classic enterprises require more conversion for blockchain deployment than newly-appeared businesses. According to Gartner, only 10% of old companies will achieve any radical change with blockchain technologies by 2023. Economy and Finance Will Lead Blockchain Application Though the concept of blockchain is easy, it will bring considerable savings for banks. Blockchain technology will allow banks to reduce enormous bureaucracy, conduct faster transactions at lower costs, and improve their secrecy. Blockchain is used for launching new cryptocurrencies that will be coordinated or controlled by monetary policy. Banks always want to reduce the competitive advantage of standalone cryptocurrencies and accomplish greater monetary policy control. Blockchain Integration Into Government Agencies The distributed ledger’s idea is also lovely to government authorities who have to administrate vast data quantities. Each agency has its split database, so they must continually need information about residents from each other. However, the implementation of blockchain technologies for adequate data management will raise the functioning of such agencies. Estonia has already implemented blockchain technology on the government level. Almost all public services in Estonia have an approach to X-Road, a decentralized digital ledger that contains information about all residents and citizens. The technology uses advanced encryption technology and includes 2-factor authentication, enabling people to control their data and ensure security. Blockchain Experts Remain in High Demand Although blockchain is on the top of its popularity, the job market lacks blockchain experts. Upwork, an online freelancing database, has reported a fast-increasing demand for people with “blockchain” skills. If you enter the industry and achieve some experience in blockchain technology, it will deliver you well. Many people will adopt to quit their current job to work on a blockchain project. Blockchain Meets the Internet of Things Blockchain technology provides a secure and extensible framework for communication between IoT devices. While modern security protocols already appeared to be accessible when implemented to IoT devices, blockchain has already approved its high resistance to cyber-attacks. Besides, blockchain will grant smart devices the to make automated micro-transactions. Due to its distributed nature, blockchain will handle transactions faster and cheaper. IoT devices will leverage smart contracts to enable transferring money or data, which will be considered the agreement. Law Integration Into Smart Contracts Besides cryptocurrency, blockchain technology helps us with another acceptable possibility, such as “smart contracts.” The central concept of smart contracts is their automatic execution when conditions are met. For example, delivering goods after the payment is received. However, other states should automatically monitor other states of contracts. Insurers AIG is now piloting a blockchain system that allows creating complex insurance policies. It would advise if you also kept in mind that smart contracts are decentralized and aren’t managed by any authority. But what should parties do in case of any disagreement? Participants of smart contracts usually agree to be bound by governance, but what if friction presents between parties from different countries. Now, it remains to be hazy about how should settle contractual disputes. Thus, the rule of law should be imposed into smart contracts shortly for resolving any disputes between the parties. Birthvenue has been working towards adding value to India’s blockchain ecosystem by contributing not only through our enterprise solutions work but also through our learning and development division. We have built platforms to accommodate multiple use cases and deliver our solutions through robust partnerships with industry leaders. Reach out to us at admin@birthvenue.in to discuss any potential ideas you might have. We will be able to actualize those ideas for you and bring them close to fruition.

https://medium.com/blockchain-for-everyone/blockchain-knocking-on-door-52e2ca74444e

['Lakshay Taneja']

2020-12-29 09:27:58.244000+00:00

['Blockchain', 'Blockchain Application', 'Blockchain Startup', 'Blockchain Development', 'Blockchain Government']

Joe Galloway Catholic Author Publishes Personal Finances Book for Catholics

How do you survive and even thrive in these challenging times? How do you find the peace that you truly want? Common advice to find happiness is to buy more things and go on exotic vacations. That’s great, but it probably costs a bit more than you really can afford. And that causes financial stress. Money worries cause stress and anxiety, and are a major cause of a family’s breakdown. In his second book, author and financial expert Joe Galloway offers a practical and spiritual roadmap to finding the peace of mind we all seek. It’s Not Your Money: Finding the Peace of Putting God First on Amazon by Joe Galloway will challenge your thinking and strengthen your faith by teaching you what God says about money and possessions — a topic mentioned over 2,500 times in the Bible, more than any other subject. Joe gives you the tangible advice you need to follow those teachings. If you are interested in comparing and contrasting what God says about money with society’s best advice for attaining happiness and success, then get this book on personal finance told through the lens of a Catholic Christian spiritual perspective. Changing your attitude about assets and income will change your heart. Your life, your marriage, and your family will be transformed. That will change your community and the church for the good of all. This book provides the key to that transformation.

https://medium.com/catholic-financial-advice-with-joe-galloway/joe-galloway-catholic-author-publishes-personal-finances-book-for-catholics-cf9540c5262a

['Joe Galloway']

2021-02-02 04:08:47.166000+00:00

['Joseph Galloway', 'Personal Finance', 'Catholicism', 'Joe Galloway', 'Catholic']

The Anatomy of a Wrong Surface Event

Gross Anatomy The word anatomy is from the Greek ana temnein, meaning, “to cut up.” Just like in the medical connotation, we can dissect and study this event for the benefit of all. That’s exactly what we did when we published the Anatomy of a Wrong Surface Event animation series on the Runway Safety Pilot Simulator. A trait we all share as humans is mortality. In facing that, some of us choose to donate our remains to science, or the aviation equivalent of sharing our flight information, in the interest of training future doctors or pilots. Thus we contribute to advances in medicine or aviation, and in making positive impacts on future generations. The FAA’s Compliance Program facilitates that sharing through an open, problem-solving approach that allows safety problems to be studied though an exchange of information. When you share safety-related information, we get better at identifying the things that threaten aviation safety. When you share safety-related information, we get better at identifying the things that threaten aviation safety. Let’s look at how we dissected this event, what we learned about it, and what it means to you. The Human The pilot in this case had been flying an average of 37 hours per year for the past 33 years. However over the past four years, the pilot had averaged about 15 hours per month, and even more so over the past 90 days. The private pilot was instrument current, was a certified pilot in other foreign countries, and had some glider hours logged as well. With a valid medical certificate, a good training record, and no history of violations, you’d be hard pressed to find a better example of a general aviation (GA) pilot. How do you relate? Are you a “rustier” pilot, or perhaps less experienced? Are you a seasoned pro with more experience and qualifications? Would you be surprised if I told you that it didn’t matter? It doesn’t matter. The ego-busting trait we share as pilots is the fact that we’re all humans. Humans make mistakes, and given the right combination of variables, we’re all susceptible to the same traps and errors. The Machine The five-year-old aircraft in this scenario was a well-equipped, high-performance, complex, single-engine airplane. Like the pilot, it had a good maintenance record, no history of discrepancies, and you’d be hard pressed to find a better example of a GA aircraft. Does it matter? Yes! Most runway incursions or other surface incidents like this wrong surface event (WSE) involve airplane single-engine land aircraft with less than 400 horsepower. Multi-engine and sea airplanes are still well represented, just to a much lesser extent. What kind of aircraft will you be flying next? The Setting This event occurred mid-morning in visual meteorological conditions (VMC) conditions within busy Class D airspace. This matters too, because nearly all WSEs occur in daylight VMC conditions in Class C or Class D airspace. The trend clearly indicates (pun intended) that we humans have some visual acuity issues. Few of us have had a close call. All of us are susceptible to the same traps and errors that can lead to them. It really could have been you. So trust, but verify! Check out the article, “Safe and Sound on the Ground” in this issue to learn what you can use inside the cockpit to verify what you see outside of it. The Sequence We encourage you to refer to the Runway Safety Pilot Simulator animation Anatomy of a Wrong Surface Event; Episode 1 to see how this event played out. Following the completion of a practice RNAV (GPS) approach to Runway 28L, the pilot was instructed to circle south of the airport making right-hand traffic for Runway 10R. The Air Traffic Control Tower (ATCT) was also working with a helicopter in left-hand closed traffic on Runway 10L. Due to the hangar location, the pilot requested Runway 10L. The ATCT replied, “Have your request,” but then cleared the pilot to land as planned on Runway 10R. The rest is history. Eureka The word eureka, from the Greek heurēka, means “I have found it.” Picking up where we left off, you secure your airplane and then call the ATCT in response to the “possible pilot deviation,” aka the Brasher Notice. The purpose of the Brasher Notice is not to give angry controllers the opportunity to scold pilots. The intent is to give you an opportunity to make note of the event and to collect your thoughts in preparation for a conversation with a Flight Standards Service inspector. The conversation with Flight Standards is all about information sharing and analyzing the many factors that contributed to the event. That’s where the Compliance Program really begins, and where you first recognize the FAA’s evolution towards a “just culture.” During the conversation, you and the inspector review the Air Traffic Control audio of the event and retrace every detail of the flight. There is consideration of honest mistakes, and a very positive interaction. You’re relieved to find yourself speaking with another mere human, one who can totally relate to your experience! In this case, the investigation reveals several contributing factors. 🛩️ Unusually complex airspace that forced you to modify the circling approach. The airspace offers limited space for base and final approach legs. 🛩️ Loss of situational awareness when you failed to recognize several radio transmissions that should have alerted you to the presence of the helicopter operating on the parallel runway. 🛩️ Expectation bias when you requested the more convenient runway (10L), but never mentally acknowledged that you were cleared to land on the parallel (10R). You’re reminded that ATCT phrases like “roger” and “on request” are not approvals or clearances. Eureka! For the Benefit of All The Compliance Program is all about accountability and correction, not blame and punishment. Based on the results of the investigation, you and the FAA took the following actions: ✔ You voluntarily submitted a detailed NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) report. ✔ You voluntarily completed several applicable online courses via the FAA Safety Team (FAASTeam). ✔ You agreed to participate in a Remedial Training Program with the FAA, where you accomplished a flight review with the local designated pilot examiner. ✔ You maintained your spotless pilot record. ✔ The FAA published a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM), which proposed changes to the local airspace that provide additional protections for circling. ✔ The FAA created several outreach products that bring awareness to the common factors associated with wrong surface events.

https://medium.com/faa/the-anatomy-of-a-wrong-surface-event-5c2bd6403b0d

['Faa Safety Briefing']

2021-03-01 13:42:54.843000+00:00

['Accident', 'General Aviation', 'Faasteam', 'Simulation', 'Airports']

Robot/Cobot in 2020

What are cobots? Collaborative robots are defined as robots that are capable of collaborating with humans. This collaboration is meant to reinforce human abilities in a safe way. They will even be programmed to prevent when a person enters the power where the robot operates. This successively results in unwanted delays in operational or production, which may be avoided through the utilization of cobots. Most cobots have six or seven DoFs. Collaborative robots are capable of monitoring the environment and co-existing within the same facility alongside humans without sacrificing performance or safety. The industry development of cobots is ongoing in several many areas. Faster response time, more exact movement patterns, orientation capabilities, capabilities in imitating humans — of these aspects contribute to advancements in cobot development. additionally, the brain-computer interface is an exciting area that has made significant progress recently. When brain signals are often read with high precision and transferred to the robots, we’ll be ready to collaborate with them in a completely new way. Where cobots will offer the most value: Cobots offer the foremost value in situations where a person must be in close proximity to the robots. This includes human-robot collaborations where a person guides the robots, monitors the method, or maybe learns from the robots as well. Robots in 2020: Jivaka-healthcare Jivaka is launched by the Parel Workshop of Central Railways. It is designed to handle COVID 19 patients and can reduce the exposure of healthcare workers to COVID patients. Jivaka, a remote-controlled rover, also can follow a marked line to maneuver to the patients’ beds. It works as a virtual healthcare worker to try to do various activities associated with the patient’s care and monitoring of vitals like measuring vital signs, Oxygen saturation level, blood heat, etc. 2. C-astra — healthcare C-Astra is referred to as a smart LIDAR-based autonomous navigation enabled robot which uses UVC light to disinfect buildings. It can make stores safer and free from all the microbes including coronavirus. Astra is provided with powerful UVC light that’s extremely effective against the virus but safe for human operations. The robot can navigate around a store making every inch free from coronavirus. 3. Vyommitra — Space application Vyommitra, a female humanoid — is something that has an appearance resembling an individual’s appearance but is robotic — built by ISRO for ISRO’s first unmanned Gaganyaan mission. Vyommitra can monitor module parameters, alert astronauts, and also perform life support operations. It is often referred to as a half humanoid because it doesn’t have legs. It can only bend sidewards and forward. It’ll perform certain experiments and may always remain in-tuned with the ISRO command center. 4. Ballie — House assistant Designed as a little ball, Ballie uses on-device AI capabilities to provide a fitness assistant-like experience in conjunction with a mobile interface. The device patrols homes and acts as a far off control for smart devices. At the same time, it also uses built-in sensors and AI algorithms to understand the fitness activity of users. A video presented by Samsung during its CES presentation manifested Ballie communicating with smart curtains, switching on the TV, and recognizing the users. It had been also shown to work with other connected devices and even allowing users to determine what their pets do during the reception. Cobots in 2020 Jaka Zu Series Cobot Specifications 6 axis cobot The wireless collaborative robot control system Mobile terminal APP based on Andriod, iOS, Windows 3kG payload,7kG payload,12kG payload Real graphical programming based on movable programming modules Support C# language programming for system integration Integrated driving control Integrated joint module Wide industry application Zu series robots pioneered mobile terminal APP control mode, freeing the normal bulky teaching device and lengthy control lines, making the teaching process within the local space more convenient. Support remote programming control collaboration without geographical restriction. It realizes the control of multiple robot bodies via one mobile terminal. Through the web network, one mobile terminal can release program commands or task packages a variety of verified safely Zu series robots worldwide. 2. Flexiv Adaptive Robot-Rizon Rizon is the world’s first adaptive robot that fuses high-performance force control, computer vision, and AI technology. It can adapt to changing and unsure environments and automate complex tasks with ‘hand-eye coordination’ a bit like a person’s. Compared with traditional and collaborative robots, Rizon has three distinguishing characteristics: a high tolerance for position variance, high disturbance rejection, and transferable intelligence. Weight -19/33 Kg Payload -4/10 Kg Reach -780/920 mm End effector force accuracy -0.1N/0.03N There has been a boom in the market of robot manufacturing and research in the year 2020. The pandemic has surely given a boost to the robotics industry and we will continue to see this trend for many years to come.

https://medium.com/@harshad-dabhade/robot-cobot-in-2020-45b42e6ec7bd

['Harshad Dabhade']

2021-01-05 08:28:41.770000+00:00

['Cobot', 'Robotics']

150 Best Job Search Engines & Boards for Finding a Job 2021

150 Best Job Search Engines & Boards for Finding a Job 2021 Momentswithbren Jun 1·7 min read If you are unemployed or underemployed, freelancing may be an option for you. You may be looking for remote job online out of necessity if you’ve been furloughed or laid off and are stranded at home. If you’re concerned about going to work in hazardous conditions, you could be even more driven to locate a safe and well-paying career that you can perform from home. Know that you’re not alone, and that there are remote jobs available to you. If you’re drawn to the variety of jobs that allow you to work from home, you might already assume that remote work is the way to go. Even if working from home isn’t for you, there are alternatives. In any case, remote work doesn’t have to be a pipe dream — the jobs are real! Difference between work from home jobs, telecommuting jobs, and remote work. A. Work from home jobs are just that: employment that you can accomplish from the comfort of your own home. This word refers to the idea that work are either done in a typical office or from your living room (and there are lots of other possibilities in between), but working from home is a fantastic remote alternative for many people. B. The phrase “remote work” refers to work that may be done from anywhere in the world. We prefer to use the term “remote work” to represent any employment that does not need being attached to a single office or workplace because work from home and telecommuting employment are subtypes of remote work. It’s remote work if you work from home, but it’s also remote work if you work from a co-working space, a public space, your garage, or a bubble tea shop. C. Telecommuting jobs often allow workers to work from home or abroad for local businesses or organizations. A classic example of telecommuting is a position where someone works in an office three days a week but works from home the other two days. Freelancing Tips: A. Define your goals for freelancing: Know your goals for starting your freelance business. So if you start freelancing part time or on the side, you give yourself time to create the crucial relationships you’d need to make a full-time living freelancing. B. Choose which skills you’ll start freelancing with: Whether you’re set to become a freelancer full time or on the side, your business will be built around the unique skills you have to offer. Those skills are your greatest asset. Do a skills assessment and write your top 10. Identifying the different skills you’ve built over the years that other people may not have and want to pay YOU to use. Start with a simple spreadsheet. In the first column, start listing each individual skill you can think of. It will be easiest to start with all of the skills that you’ve already been paid to leverage. It doesn’t matter if the job was full time or part time, as long as you were being paid. If an employer was willing to pay you to do that work, chances are that you’re pretty good at it! C. Narrow down your list of skills: Once you have a list of all the skills you’ve been paid to use, taught yourself, now we can start to narrow down that list. First, prioritize (deprioritize when necessary) the list by which skills you WANT to get paid for the most. You can create a new column in your spreadsheet and rank them in order, starting with number one. It’s good to be aspirational here. If it were up to you (and it is), what would you want to be paid to do each and every day? Next, you want to do a little bit of research. D. Think about your last several jobs, volunteer experience, internship, school projects, social media campaigns and community work: what were you doing? E.g. customer service, graphic design, workshop facilitation, digital marketing, photography, writing. If those roles required creativity or use of a specific software, it’s even more likely that someone would be willing to pay YOU rather than take the time to learn that skill themselves. Some common software would be Adobe Photoshop, Figma, Sketch, MS PowerPoint & Excel, etc. E. Start freelancing with skills outside your job description When you’re thinking about your previous jobs, don’t limit yourself to the job description or main responsibilities. In most jobs, people find themselves doing things that weren’t originally in their job description. E.g, if you were responsible for running a company’s social media accounts, you probably picked up some writing skills too. So instead of only thinking about your social media skills, you may also be suited for copywriting or marketing work. Add every specific skill to the list. F. Start freelancing using your self-taught skills Your skills aren’t limited to just what you’ve been paid to do. Go beyond the things you’ve already gotten paid for to things you’ve taught yourself, or even your subskill. G. Know Your Competitive Advantage: When it comes to freelancing, having competition is a good thing to make you keep upskilling. Look through sites like Upwork, Upwork, Glassdoor, LinkedIn or Fiverr and search for freelancers using the top five skills you’ve identified. H. Define your target clients: Once you’ve identified the skills that will be the most profitable and enjoyable for you, it’s time to think about who is going to pay you to use them. Do an empathy map in your freelancing career to help you better understand your customers. Your goal is find a specific, significant challenge that people are ALREADY facing and then become an expert at helping them overcome that challenge. And as long as there are people wanting to solve that problem, there will be a lucrative demand for your services. I. Have a e-portfolio Your portfolio and testimonials are two of the most important tools you’ll have for getting online writing jobs. Create a few samples for the kind of writing work you want to do, then use them to land more work. Always ask your clients for a testimonial! You are going to have to pitch a lot, no matter which freelance platforms you use. Set a goal to send project bids or proposals. Freelancing doesn’t end on online marketplaces. You can also transition into owning your own small business if you can/want. Good luck in your career! Are you job hunting and considering remote and freelance work? Check these job platforms and start earning: Flexjobs 2. SolidGigs 3. JustRemote 4. Dynamite Jobs 5. LinkedIn/LinkedIn ProFinder 6. Remoteok.io 7. Remotive.io 8. Weworkremotely.com 9. Remoteglobal.com 10. AngelList 11. SkiptheDrive.com 12. Remote.co 13. Jobspresso.co 14. VirtualVocations.com 15. Themuse.com 16. CloudPeeps.com 17. Workew 18. Outsourcely 19. Workingnomads.co 20. Triplebyte.com 21. Stackoverflow.com 22. Nodesk.co 23. Epicjobs.co 24. Remotehunt.com 25. 100telecommutejobs.com/telejobs/ 26. Remote4Me.com 27. Remotejobsclub.com 28. Indeed.com 29. Twitter (use hashtag and follow industry experts or recruiters) 30. Powertofly.com 31. Authenticjobs.com 32. Sitepoint.com/jobs 33. Joinrise.co (for women) 34. Landing.jobs 35. Gun .io 36. Dice .com 37. Fiverr 38. Upwork 39. Dribbble.com 40. 99designs.com 41. Mediabistro.com 42. ZipRecruiter 43. SimplyHired 44. Monster.com 45. Idealist.org 46. Translatorscafe.com 47. Glassdoor 48. EuropeRemotely 49. Travelmassive.com 50. Hitmarker.net 51. Remoters.net 52. Mturk.com 53. Businesstalentgroup.com 54. https://github.com/yanirs/established-remote 55. meerkad.com 56. Behance 57. HackerNews 58. Facebook groups 59. Staff.com 60. Toptal.com 61. Careerbuilder.com 62. Freelancermap.com 63. Theremotenurse.com 64. fonemed.com/nurse-career-opportunities/ 65. ttstechsolutions.com 66. Boards .greenhouse.io 67. us60 .dayforcehcm.com 68. Jobsearch.covance.com 69. Careers.unitedhealthgroup.com 70. Mckesson.com/Careers 71. Coniferhealth.com/careers 72. Maximhealthcare.com/careers 73. Carenethealthcare.com/careers 74. Broad-path.com/careers/ 75. Scribendi.com 76. Enago.com 77. Cactusglobal.com 78. Scribbr.com 79. Nicetalk.com 80. Clickworker.com 81. Scribie.com 82. Lionbridge.ai 83. Transcribeme.com 84. Waywithwordsjobs.com 85. Crowdcontent.com 86. TheContentPanel.com 87. Textbroker.com 88. Wordsofworth.org 89. Skyword 90. Hireable 91. Sologig 92. Freelancer.com 93. PeoplePerHour 94.Textbroker 95. ProBlogger 96. Guru 97. ConstantContent.com 98. Writer Access.com 99. iWriter.com 100. Scripted.com 101. Contently 102. Crowdspring 103. Business Talent Group (BTG) 104. Compose.ly 105. Truelancer.com 106. Design Crowd 107. Design Hill 108. Crew.co 109. Evanto Studio 110. Toogit.com 111. ClearVoice.com 112. Codeable 113. Hacker Rank 114. CodementorX 115. Rent A Coder 116. Topcoder 117. Lemon.io 118. Supersourcing.com 119. Starkflow.com 120. FreeeUp.com 121. HourlyNerd 122. Cloud Peeps 123. MMO Freelance 124. Consultingheads 125. Talmix 126. Aquent 127. Crowded.co 128. Nexxt 129. Thumbtack 130. WorkBetterNow. com 131. Upstack 132. BizSugar Advisor Directory 133. Arc.dev 134. ClickWorker 135. JustRemote 136. Pangian 137. SkipTheDrive 138. Jobscribe 139. Wfh.io 140. WAHM. com 141. VA Networking 142. Assistant Match 143. Zirtual.com 144. FancyHands.com 145. Serveteam.co 146. WoodBows 147. Getmagic 148. Premiumhelp.co 149. Virtalent.com 150. Facebook Marketplace

https://medium.com/@moments-with-bren/150-best-job-search-engines-boards-for-finding-a-job-2021-9ebfcf2058b7

[]

2021-06-01 21:12:29.372000+00:00

['Freelancing', 'Remote Working', 'Solopreneur', 'Work From Home', 'Side Hustle']

TONCommunity.org Project Update

We base Telegram Blockchain(TON-tech). Welcome to visit http://TONCommunity.org to understand the project history. You can trade $TON on Uniswap.io、Bithumb Global、Gate.io、Loopring.io You can check $TON info on CoinMarketCap、CoinGecko、LiveCoinWatch ✅Done Task 1, Network Monitor, for developer review network status. 2, Node Update Fix some bugs and recompile and upgrade the new C++ client; 3, Governance was started through snapshot.page off-chain. 4, Vote for main network and native token max supply is 400 million. 5, CoinMarketCap supply update Please check: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tontoken/ 6, Cooperate with CCTip.io CCtip.io is the largest bot encryption platform in the Telegram ecosystem. CCTip has 2 million encrypted world users in the Telegram (as of 10.2020). $TON as an event point, $TON Token can transfer, red package and tip in Telegram group chats. You can log in https://t.me/cctip_bot try. This cooperation expands the coverage of $TON and the actual usage scenarios; 🔘Next Task 1, Depending on the server configuration, the node has different degrees of memory leaks. The order is delayed, causing memory overload. Solution: It is being solved. 2, In the process of node synchronization, the transmission data load of the communication module is higher than other blockchain projects Solution: Improve the server configuration of the validator. 3, The TON-tech consensus protocol is catchain, which restricts one-third of the validator of the network from being disconnected. If the validator does not go online after being disconnected, the ledger will be permanently suspended and stop producing blocks. Solution: Increase the number of pledged validator. 4, TON Blockchain can not allow network forks. System upgrades may only be upgraded through on-chain governance. 5, More partnership. ℹ️At present: 1，You can still try to connect Test net of TONCommunity.org：testnet3； 2，Developers please pay attention to the Github library and participate in the announced Tier 0 Program Looking forward to more people joining our TONCommunity.com project. Read More: Try to fight with The Great Wave.

https://medium.com/@TONCommunity/toncommunity-org-project-update-46f78ff3f200

[]

2020-12-08 10:37:34.359000+00:00

['Blockchain', 'Toncommunity', 'Ton', 'Eth', 'Telegram']

Dry Food or Wet Food for Cats

Every cat owner has come to this dilemma at least once: shall I go for dry food or wet food for my cat? I have asked and have been asked the same question as I own a cat (a beautiful lady). The easiest option is dry food, but it is usually not the best for your pet. Here, we will talk about if the ease, affordability and cleanliness that dry food brings along is worth it. Closer to Natural Food The easiest way to answer the question of wet or dry food is by comparing it to what us humans eat. What would happen if we dry up everything and eat them like biscuits and crackers? Wet food, whether canned or cooked, is closer to what a cat — or us — would eat in the wild: a mixture of liquids and what the pet needs in food. Of course, it is not unhealthy to feed them dry food from time to time, but it can create sever problems if they receive only dry food. Not all cats like to drink enough water, and if they do not receive some amount of water through food, they could face health difficulties, particularly kidney problems. And sometimes they want to eat things that are toxic for them! Hydration All living creatures must stay hydrated, and cats are no exception. It is not the easiest to make sure your pet drinks enough since most people work outside the house and cannot even provide fresh water all the time. The cat has to be careful not to spill the water, splash it around, or make it dirty, which is too much to expect especially from kittens. Wet food, either canned or freshly cooked, can guarantee that the pet gets some of the necessary hydration, even if it does not drink water at all until the owner returns home. There are hydration drinks that can help with the process too. Yet, if a problem can be solved by natural ways, it is the most efficient way to pick. The pet-specific drinks might take some time to show problems that they can cause, as the long-term effects cannot be predicted in some cases. Water, on the other hand, is the safest thing to depend on for hydrating your cat. Kidney and Infections Urinary tract infections and kidney problems are the prominent disadvantages of feeding pets with dry food. They become much more prominent when your cat is not much into drinking water. Using canned or cooked wet food can reduce the risk of kidney problems and infections. Here, too, freshly cooked food is a better option as it has no preservatives and other chemicals. One can even freeze or refrigerate the food for a few days to avoid having to cook everyday (especially that sometimes the smell sticks around the house for a little while). In general, the more the cat’s nutrition approaches natural ways, the lower the health risks would be. Another point is the calories that the pet receives with each type of food. Calories and Obesity Dry food, obviously, has more calories. If your cat does not burn the calories through activities, they might slowly get obese. Cats are not as active as dogs and do not need walks; however, you have most probably seen “fat” cats. Unlike the popular argument that dry food is cheaper, it is more cost-effective to feed your cat with wet food. Do the math: less expensive dry food plus hydration drinks, or more expensive wet food, less calorie-burning activities required, and water. If the cat gets obese, other problems will arise as well. A Few Points on Obesity Obesity and ways to control it are beyond our scope here, but it is helpful to briefly highlight a few points. Your cat’s intake of calories and its activities should always be balanced. The regular visits to the vet can determine both. Feeding in a scheduled manner is usually better than free-feeding and always having plenty of food on the ground. However, if you do have scheduled feeding but your pet is still suffering obesity, you can reduce the time you leave the food for the cat to eat. For example, if you leave it for 20 minutes, slowly reduce it to 15 and then 10. Reduce the number of between-meal snacks too. Some cats love it. Lastly, make sure the food is wet unless there is a health reason, like a stomach problem, that the vet advises strictly against wet food. Your cat will eat the same amount of wet food, but receive less calories and more liquids. Normally, wet or fresh food has more vitamins and minerals too. Higher Dose of Vitamins and Minerals Personally, I cook for my cat. She loves smashed chicken breast or neck mixed with broccoli or carrot. Normally, the meat that you use to feed your pet with is a natural sachet of a variety of minerals and vitamins. I mix 80% meat and 20% veggies to make my cat food. She loves it. Animals like our pets have been living on raw meat for hundreds of thousands of years, and they are evolved into creatures with meat-compatible systems. True, now we don’t feed raw meat to them because of health reasons, but it is still the closest thing it can be to their original food. Their digestion system, health requirements, and teeth are all entangled with the fresh-food diet. Teeth and Dental Care The last health factor that we pint out here is the dental health. Feeding only dry food to your cat can cause gum problems and teeth tartar. For example, a cat might even need to undergo anesthesia to have its dental and gum problems resolved. The reason is, like I said, the natural system that is not made for surviving on dry food. Some believe that dry food cleans the teeth, but the reality is that it does not have cleaning capabilities. Of course, there are some “brushing” treats that are harder and supposed to remove the tartar, but normal dry food doesn’t do that. Plus, you need to brush your cat’s teeth to prevent dental problems. Do We Need a Conclusion? I think I obviously showed my stance with dry food. :D I don’t feed it to my cat. I even make treats using tuna fish, chicken liver, catnip, etc. So, dry food might be cheaper to buy, but its side effects might have both financial and health costs that make it considerably more expensive than wet or fresh food.

https://medium.com/@haydenwriting1995/dry-food-or-wet-food-for-cats-a4b15093f2a

['Hayden Norman']

2020-12-21 12:38:11.162000+00:00

['Cats', 'Cat Food', 'Pet Food']

Employees Say They’d Quit Without Workplace Appreciation [Survey]

If you are wondering how to keep employees engaged, productive, and happy in the workplace then a little dose of gratitude might be your answer. Recently, we surveyed over 250 CEOs and employees to grow awareness of the importance and impact of gratitude in the American workplace. 90% of the CEOs surveyed feel it is important to lead with gratitude. In addition, 88% believe their employees would give them high marks for doing so. However, just 37% of the employees surveyed indicated they are satisfied with the level of gratitude expressed in their workplace. Saying ¨Thanks¨ or sending a gesture of appreciation, like a free Uber ride on a rainy day, or comfort food delivered when an employee is under the weather makes all the difference. In fact, 55% of the employees surveyed said that they are only thanked a few times a year, once a year or never. Without showing your constant appreciation, employees can become less productive or even worse turnover rates increase. “In a time of drastically low unemployment, it is more important than ever for business leaders to retain talent,” said Brendan Kamm, CEO, and co-founder of Thnks, “While a summer outing or a year-end gift is nice, smaller, more frequent expressions of gratitude and individual recognition can be more impactful, especially in establishing a company-wide culture of appreciation.” How To Increase Workplace Satisfaction The numbers don’t lie as both CEOs and employees need gratitude to thrive. While it’s tough to hit your goals in a high-pressure environment, here are three quick ways to express gratitude to keep employees happy and productive: 1. Send Consistent Personalized Gestures of Appreciation Does your employee like golf? Or would the person appreciate a nice bottle of red wine or a week’s worth of coffee? Knowing their interests shows that you care for them as a person just as much as the business results they produce. Employees work hard all year round so there’s no need until the holidays to show them your gratitude. Surprising them with appreciation creates motivation to produce consistent results and to stay for the long haul. 2. Use Feedback Opportunities to Express Appreciation Most believe that feedback sessions are a time to highlight the negatives, but the most effective practice is if you express gratitude. Use the opportunity to praise your employees´ high performance by showing appreciation. As leadership expert Simon Sinek puts it, “An employee wants recognition for effort. If a boss recognizes effort, they will get even better results.” Even if they aren’t achieving great results you can express your concerns through constructive questions. Asking for example, ¨What do you think is going well, what didn´t go so well?” can put your employee in a state of appreciation rather on the defense. You can use video calls from time to time, but they can’t replace face to face non-verbal language. Through gestures, body positioning, and voice tone your gratitude can be felt on a deeper level. 3. Lead Employees With Gratitude Leading your team with gratitude while being humble enough to listen to constructive criticism increases productivity. In a growth mindset, you’re able to have an honest relationship that is built for long term success. This instills overall trust in everyone’s ability to thrive in their role and be accountable for their results. Thnks makes it easy to incorporate gratitude into your daily workflow. In just a few seconds you can search for the perfect gift, personalize a note, and send it off via SMS or email. If you are interested in learning more, sign up for a demo today!

https://medium.com/@thnks/employees-say-theyd-quit-without-workplace-appreciation-survey-d662dae7e1da

[]

2019-02-15 16:42:08.081000+00:00

['Workplace', 'Employee Engagement', 'Employees', 'Workplace Culture', 'Leadership']

Power’s off

Power’s off a poem about PG&E’s decision to shut off power to hundreds of thousands of homes in northern California. Photo by Joshua Newton on Unsplash We have no power in our town – no water from the well, no lights, no toilets, no refrigerator, no stove. The inconvenience goes on and on. But neither are there tankers in the sky or toxic smoke and embers erupting from wildfire tornadoes creating their own weather like a surprise from hell, no to-go bags in the car, or worries that we won’t get out in time. So, I could not be more grateful for the blue sky, for a quiet day that isn’t like the last one for a California town as the winds pick up.

https://antoinettenevitt.medium.com/powers-off-ef9d6503d601

['Antoinette Nevitt']

2019-10-10 21:15:43.391000+00:00

['California', 'Current Events', 'Poetry', 'Climate Change', 'Wildfire']

Five Signs It’s Time to Get New Running Shoes

Bald Treads This might seem like an obvious sign, but how often do we really look at the bottom of our shoes? I know I don’t regularly examine the treads on the bottom of my kicks. Taking the time to look at the treads of your running shoes will let you know if you need a new pair or not. Bald or smooth treads means you definitely need a new pair of running shoes. Running with no treads on your shoes can lead you to slip or even fall. It doesn’t matter if you’re running on concrete or running on a trail, you don’t want to slip. Nothing is worse than ruining a run by falling. Additionally, the soles of sneakers last far longer than any other parts of a shoe. That’s why it’s a safe bet to make that if your treads are bald, the rest of the shoe reached its limits a long time ago. Not only do you have a high possibility of falling, but the cushion and shock absorption of the shoe are definitely gone. As a general rule, any sneaker that has bald treads should be discarded. Slipping doesn’t just happen when you’re running. It can happen at the grocery store, in your home, anywhere. Shoelaces Did you know some companies design the life expectancy of their shoes by how long the laces last? If your shoelaces are starting to split at the ends, becoming difficult to tie or the aglets have fallen off, it might be time for a new pair. I know you’re thinking, “Why not just buy another pair of shoelaces and save some money?” I had the same thought a few months ago when the laces broke on my Nike React Infinity Run Flyknits. I bought a new pair of shoelaces to replace them and after two more runs, the hole that I put the laces through broke. Lesson learned. My motto for this is: “When the laces are done, get a new one.” High Mileage A great rule of thumb for high mileage on your running shoes is between 300 and 400 miles. But an accurate calculation can be difficult to measure. Instead of calculating the mileage yourself after every run, you can use technology to help you. Most running apps these days allow you to input your running shoes and mileage and the app will keep your data for you. Once your shoes reach a certain level of pre-set mileage, the app will notify you about it. Pain This is another obvious one. You’re not sore from running, you’re in pain from your shoes. Some people, myself included, think that every kind of leg soreness after running is from your muscles being tired. This isn’t true. You can feel a similar pain just by running in shoes that are lacking support. If you’re experiencing pain after your runs and you’ve had your shoes for a while, it might be time for a new pair. Not only will you continue to experience pain, but you could also really mess up your back. Twist Test Since pain is subjective, you’ll more easily be able to figure out how worn your shoes are by doing a twist test. Simply take your running shoes by both ends and give them a good twist. If it feels firm, you’re good. If not, you need a new pair. Note: If you’re using a pair of shoes that was lightweight and twistable from the point of purchase then this test won’t be as accurate. Tips For Extending The Life Of Your Running Shoes Rotate your shoes: Having a rotation of 2–3 different pairs of shoes will make each shoe last longer. It’s because the same shoe won’t take a beating every day you run. The rotation of shoes will share the beating. Air-dry your shoes: Water damage to your shoes is a pain in the ass to deal with. Making sure your shoes air dry completely before using them again is a great way to make sure this doesn’t happen. This ties in with the first point about having a rotation. A good rotation of running shoes will allow each pair of shoes ample time to dry completely. Only wear your running shoes when you run: It can be tempting to throw on a pair of running shoes to go to the mall or the grocery store but don’t do it. This only adds wear to your running shoes. Use a different pair of shoes for your errands outside and save the miles on your running shoes for actual runs.

https://medium.com/in-fitness-and-in-health/5-signs-its-time-to-get-new-running-shoes-a4d26f738600

['Marx D.']

2020-12-21 20:02:09.117000+00:00

['Fitness', 'Running', 'Health', 'Sneakers', 'Running Tips']

Why Investing in Home Security Cameras is a Good Idea

Home security cameras have helped reduce crime significantly, but are they the best way to protect your home? Many homeowners wonder if these small, inexpensive devices are really effective in deterring criminals and preventing property damage. In reality, the best home security cameras have multiple functions and offer many different features, all of which are meant to enhance your home’s security and protection. If you’ve recently invested in-home surveillance cameras or have been thinking about them for some time, it’s important to learn about the different options available. Here are the most common options and their most important features. Motion-activated security cameras capture footage by detecting movement and automatically sending a signal to a remote receiver or monitor. Some home security cameras are infrared-based, which provide a clearer picture with less light emissions. These types of cameras also tend to work better in low-light environments, since they require less energy to operate. Most wireless security cameras today are also easy to install, thanks to their slim designs. Wireless systems usually use digital video recorders to store the footage, so you’ll be able to watch the footage for hours or even weeks (or even months) without having to worry about the hassle of DVDs or VCRs. Home security cameras with wireless components have even more benefits. These cameras don’t require you to run wires throughout your house, which makes for easier installation. Additionally, a wireless home security cameras system is often easier to install than one that uses hard wires. You won’t have to worry about running cables over hallways and through walls, which means you won’t need to deal with the potential hazards that come with digging holes and crumbling. Some new wireless systems include advanced features such as “panic buttons” and telephone dialers, which can help to protect the most vulnerable areas in your home. Home security cameras Most people think that wireless home security cameras only come in one color — white. While there is no reason that all wireless surveillance cameras should look the same, most of them do. In recent years, however, many manufacturers have started building surveillance cameras that are not only stylish but also incorporate features such as remote monitoring, facial recognition, automatic shut-down, touch screen functionality, and other helpful features. Depending on the type of camera you purchase, it may also be possible to integrate the surveillance camera with a computer system, so you don’t need a special license to operate it (although most states require you to get permission before installing a surveillance camera in a private residence). If you’d like to protect your family from intruder invaders but don’t want to pay for an expensive Home Security System, you’ll likely appreciate the convenience of wireless surveillance cameras. These devices will usually only cost you a few hundred dollars to purchase and install. For this reason, they’re an excellent option for homeowners who live in apartments or for homeowners who aren’t interested in having to install a complicated security camera system. As long as you have a power source and a laptop with an internet connection, you can start recording video footage right away! Although you’ll never have real “time” with a wireless security camera, you will have valuable time footage if your camera captures an intruder coming into your home at night and if it captures someone breaking into your apartment after hours. Home security systems are very popular because they provide homeowners with peace of mind. Homeowners who invest in high-quality security systems will often be able to sleep better at night knowing that their families and homes are safe and secure. This increased security will also make burglars think twice before attempting to break into your home. For this reason, many homeowners with expensive security systems consider adding surveillance cameras to their systems. In fact, if you’re concerned about crime in your area, you should contact your local government offices and request information on crime prevention and crime statistics in your area.

https://medium.com/@rhodiumcctv99889/why-investing-in-home-security-cameras-is-a-good-idea-7686f4ff9084

['Rhodium Security']

2021-07-12 07:14:19.441000+00:00

['Security Camera Systems', 'Home Security Cameras', 'Best Cctv Camera System', 'Home Security Systems', 'Security Cameras']

The MSM Main Stream Media are intentionally ignoring Bernie Sanders in my opinion.

The MSM Main Stream Media are intentionally ignoring Bernie Sanders in my opinion. He represents the people. ABC as part of the MSM is corporate controlled and is against Bernie as representative of the 99% of us and is terrified that Bernie will cut into corporate profits. It’s only logical that the MSM doesn’t want the trajectory of profits touched by any of the progressive candidates and most of all Bernie. The Washington Post ignores Bernie completely save for one or two mentions. In an article not long ago they named Biden and Warren as front runners, no mention of Bernie at all. An economy based on income equality between all peoples, a focus on vigorous restructuring of the justice system especially for those in prison and a full bore effort to address climate change are desperately needed if we are to save the planet and regain out democracy. Bernie Sanders knows that our economy does the best when the middle class flourish in all areas of life. It feels like the Corporate - Wall Street — Military Industrial Complex are cementing their power with the GOP to strangle democracy to death. I long for the days when the League of Women Voters moderate the debates. Let’s bring them back.

https://medium.com/@the-kai9/the-msm-main-stream-media-are-intentionally-ignoring-bernie-sanders-in-my-opinion-5d98ba64f80e

['Frank Ontario']

2019-09-14 02:24:12.803000+00:00

['Media', 'Climate Change', 'Bernie Sanders', 'Diversity', 'Equality']

EOSIO Weekly Featuring Danny from Dark Country

In this weeks episode Corey and Jimmy D are jump into some news headlines from around the EOSIO space, and there is quite a bit happening if you have not been paying attention. Wrapping that up, or rather, as much as they could get through, Danny from Dark Country jumps on to give us all the scoop on what has been happening with this very exciting and innovative collectible card game built on WAX.io but incorporating so much more. And of course it wouldn’t really be an episode about Dark Country without us trying it out and trowing ourselves in the ring together for the first time ever in play. Simply jump in below to catch the replay from the front row. Dark Country is based on the classic Collectible Card Games (TCG), but upgraded to the modern age with blockchain and the integration of NFT’s. It’s a free-to-play no barrier to entry game with a combination of different game genres and supports WAX with plans to support EOS, Ethereum, other networks in the near future. Weekly News Stories Boid Partners with BlockBase with goal of building a large scale multiplayer strategy game. The finer details are yet to be disclosed but what we do know is it will be a team type strategy game making use of NFTs for team prizes and overall game cosmetics through customization. Being stored on BlockBase and powered by the Boid Network, it is sure to be a pretty powerful and another interesting first in the space. Genpool.io Spotlight: Interview with Colin Talks Crypto about the current state of the EOS main net and some both positively bullish and critically worrying views, thoughts, and solutions. “The voting branch on EOS has been completely renewed in just a few weeks. This is not only thanks to the new votes of Block.One, but also to the DFS community proxy that continues to collect votes, and is now at 55M proxied EOS.” EOS Go: EOS Mainnet Voting Rally Proxies Continue The genpoolproxy on GenerEOS offering 3.29% APR. Sign up for this or any of their other proxies at GenPool.io and get daily EOS + REX + GEN rewards deposited directly to your EOS account daily. Land is Scarce. Land is Special. Land is Available for a Limited Time Only: The Alien Worlds Land Sale Prospectors Boomtown Challenge Comes to an End and it was a both a resounding success and great test case for future Boomtown adaptations to the game: Tombstone Crossed the Finish Line Bratz IP to join the WAX ecosystem: https://twitter.com/BlockchainCards/status/1333817187887312896 Tribal Books Lights the Secret Fire of Symbols and Announces NFTs Staking. All packs will be burned aproximately December 4th and gone FOREVER. See the countdown timer at tribalbooks.io. Did you miss the EPIC Hero Report #23? The full replay is up with ALL the juicy details on what you can expect in the Blockchain Heroes First Strike series! Get all the juicy details from the First Strike Plan Revealed! Uplift.Art Prosperity Pricing Haitian Roots Funding Sale Ending December 6th, 2020 Shout out to Adrian Krion and friends over at Wombat featured in last weeks episode for their recognition from Block.One’s #BuiltOnEOSIO feature How Spielworks Built a Crypto Rewards and Loyalty Platform on EOSIO Some pretty interesting community speculation on this Twitter thread announcing Binance P2P Adds Dai and Removes EOS. And yes, we realize this has no bearing on the main exchange, and no, we are not trying to FUD. Just so you get it we will help you read between the lines; it’s off the wall speculative comments to the post that we love. And also just want to say thank you to Integral on Emanate (https://emanate.live/integral). Really digging their vibe when putting this all together. Let’s just say they were an integral part of this post ;D EOSIO Weekly And don’t forget, every week you can interact with EOSIO Weekly on Chirp at https://chirp.la/channels/EOSIOweekly by dropping news stories you think worthy of coverage and a chance for some sweet Chirp Tips and other goodness depending upon the time and our mood. Don’t forget to tune in next week as we continue on the path towards perfection in our relay of the key news and issues to fine tune in the EOS and EOSIO space.

https://medium.com/@kansaikrypto/eosio-weekly-featuring-danny-from-dark-country-c6e1fe331de7

['Jimmy D']

2020-12-03 15:47:22.416000+00:00

['Eosio', 'Eos', 'Dark Country', 'Nft', 'Upliftart']

Let takeout menus be your soul’s balm as 2020 comes to a close

I like reading menus. Online, in person, plastered on the street-facing window of a dive café — it doesn’t matter, I love it all. I adore the descriptions of items offered at a given establishment, and I derive a perverse pleasure in picking out obvious typos that would normally aggravate my grammar-fanatic, copy-editing self in the real world. And I especially love the will-they-won’t-they tension of struggling to settle on a menu item when a waitress stands over me impatiently — though that feeling is rare as I am wont to look up a restaurant’s menu and handpick my desired meal days before visiting said spot. You see, when it comes to reading menus, the world becomes mere background noise — a sort of spa for the mind that’s created in the world of fonts and foods. And, frankly, with the way this year has been going, I would say that almost everyone needs some sort of mental spa day to unwind and forget the outside world for a bit. October 2020 hit my partner and I squarely in the face with swift and precise punches, jabs, and right hooks. First, one of our two beloved cats developed a urinary blockage that, over the course of 24 hours, had spread to his kidneys and had stopped his ability to urinate entirely. Sobbing through our masks at the emergency vet clinic by our house, we held him in our arms as the vet eased his pain and put him to sleep. Returning home to just one furry face with an unbearably light, empty kennel in tow, sorrow ripped through us as we stood by our apartment’s coat closet and cried into each other’s shoulders. That night, we were emotionally shattered but hopeful that the worst was behind us. However, more bad luck piled up on us and those in our close circle. Later that week, my sister’s car was broken into; my largest freelance client went under, buckling under the budget cuts caused by the pandemic; and my father’s feet worryingly swelled up to three times their size due to some unknown cause that was later revealed to be gout. Then we got the call. My mother-in-law’s battle with lymphoma had taken a turn for the worse and, after putting up a strong fight and a brave face for two years, she had gone on to glory. Her ability to make light conversation with anyone she met was unmatched, and her generous spirit allowed her to always crack jokes about any and everything — even when things seemed the darkest for her. But cancer doesn’t care about her unbreakable spirit, just like it doesn’t care about the amazing qualities of the millions of patients it affects every year, nor can it ever care about the pain and suffering it leaves behind when a loved one succumbs. It’s a disease, so obviously it can’t know the wrecking ball-like path of destruction it paves on the lives of cancer patients and those in their inner circle. Unfortunately, we’ve all come to know that pain all too well. Overwhelmed by the curveballs that life had thrown right into my face over the course of a week and a half, I sat dazed and numbed in front of my computer and devoured the online menu for a new vegan restaurant that my sister had volunteered to get me dinner from in an effort to lift my spirits and distract me from my tears for a few hours. And the strangest thing happened while I took in the succinct descriptions of ramen bowls, Vietnamese subs, and dairy-free Thai iced teas: though the font began to blur and swim in my field of vision as tears flooded my eyes, a sense of inexplicable calm began to settle in my soul as though a loving grown-up had placed a weighted blanket around my shoulders. True, the world had stopped making sense months ago when toilet paper shortages first popped up as a real event and not a headline on an Onion article, and my life began to make less and less sense as the month of October marched on for me and my partner. But I still had to eat, and what I put in my body — and where I opted to buy that sustenance from — were still meaningful choices that I had to make every day, and that small amount of control that I still wielded made me feel hope. All I had to do was make a decision and choose something to order from this menu. The world — and 2020, in particular — changes constantly and so rapidly, causing us to careen helplessly down emotional roller-coasters every day. Some days, you start out feeling way up, as though you’re on top of the world, only to be defeated by news of yet another instance of police brutality whose emotional and practical effects cross borders and oceans. Other days, you wake up knowing that you already feel off. Your eyes open and you can already tell that your spirit is heavy after having been weighed down over the last 12 months by constant news headlines that create a low but constant hum of anxiety. You feel you can’t take any more bad news, yet bad news still manages to find you, and you feel your heart expand a bit to accommodate the new sorrow you feel. And, miraculously, some days you start out feeling completely neutral, like you’re finally back on solid ground during this insane year, despite feeling potentially numbed by the news of rising cases of Covid-19 contracted during the pandemic’s second wave. On this roller-coaster, you’re bound to do an emotional loop-di-loop or two, going up by watching a few heart-mending videos of otters holding hands or cats being jerks to their owners before coming down hard with the news of a loved one’s passing or the realization that this holiday season is going to be one spent apart from your family. Given the year we have all had, it’s easy to feel like you’ve lost control of your life. During tough times some may try to re-establish a sense of control over things by establishing a new workout routine, delving into a new hobby, or indulging in some good, old-fashioned day drinking. But for a quick and easy fix when things seem too overwhelming this season, consider the humble restaurant menu. I’m sure you have a few copies of your local Chinese takeout place’s menu tucked away in your junk drawer — or, if not, open up your Skip the Dishes or GrubHub app. Hell, type into Google the name of your favourite restaurants and click on their online menu. Now, let the descriptions of the sweet and sour pork comfort you like a blanket of so much fluorescent orange sauce. Bask in the judgment-free zone that is your favourite pizza joint’s description of their Mediterranean pie — all of those toppings for the taking, and not one of them is anxiety. Look at your local Caribbean spot’s menu and take in the write-ups about the oxtail, the curry goat, the patties. So much flavour, so much possibility and so much tranquility — and not one mention of world politics or climate change. Let the mundane worry of not knowing what to order replace your fear of what 2021 may have in store for you. Slow your breathing and calm yourself as you take in the details of all of the sodium-rich delights that await you, and block out for a little bit all of the other worries that have been taking up your time and energy. You’ve got to eat, after all, and in this arena, you’ve got all the control. Those other worries will still be there afterwards, but for now, just focus on the zen world where the fonts and the foods meet on paper (or on screen), and let your mind drift for a bit. You and your belly will thank me later.

https://medium.com/@gisellewedemire/let-takeout-menus-be-your-souls-balm-as-2020-comes-to-a-close-96fefb10dede

['Giselle Wedemire']

2020-12-22 21:06:15.014000+00:00

['Self Care', '2020', 'Takeout', 'Pandemic', 'Personal Essay']

Why We Moved From Lambda to ECS

After many months of development, my team just announced the general availability of our platform. That milestone seems like a perfect opportunity to look back and reflect on how the infrastructure that supports Prismatic has evolved over time. (Spoiler: We ended up moving our most important microservice from Lambda to ECS.) In this post, I’ll dive into what went well in Lambda, what challenges we faced, and why we eventually made the decision to migrate some services from Lambda to AWS Elastic Container Service (ECS). What Problem Are We Solving? For some quick context, our product is an integration platform for B2B software companies. That is, we help software companies build integrations and deploy those integrations to their customers. A simple integration might look something like this: Step 1: Pull down an XML document from Dropbox. Step 2: Process the XML with some custom JavaScript code. Step 3: Use some stored credentials to post the processed data to a third-party API. Our users can configure integrations to run on a schedule, or they can trigger them via a webhook, and our platform takes care of running, logging, and monitoring the integrations (and a whole bunch of other things). The Early Days The first incarnation of Prismatic used LocalStack. We knew that we wanted to eventually host Prismatic in AWS (with the possibility of moving to Azure, GCP, etc. as needed), so the ability to spin up our platform locally to simulate AWS was appealing. The LocalStack service that approximates AWS Lambda was easy to iterate on and ran without any major hiccups. It gave us a great development feedback loop, so we could prototype and test very quickly. We used Lambda to execute each “step” of integration, and the steps leveraged SQS to pass data and trigger the next step. So, an integration execution would look like this: Run a Dropbox “fetch a file” action to grab an XML file. Save the contents of that XML file to SQS, trigger the next step. Run a customer’s custom JavaScript code to process the XML. Save the resulting transformed data to SQS, trigger the next step. Run an action to post the processed data to a third-party API. Save the results of the final step, trigger the end of the integration. Within LocalStack, this was a very quick process. We could define a 6-step integration, run it, and see results within a couple of seconds. Our Migration to Real AWS Lambda Once we had a proof of concept working, we devoted some time to moving Prismatic to an actual production environment, with real Lambdas, queues, databases, etc. We were still a small team, and we didn’t want to dedicate a ton of time to DevOps-y, infrastructure problems yet. We wanted to dedicate most of our time to our core product, and Lambda let us do just that. Lambda was attractive to us for a number of reasons. We didn’t need to worry about CPU or memory allocation, server monitoring, or autoscaling; that’s all built-in. We were able to throw .zip files full of JavaScript code at Lambda, and AWS took care of the rest. Lambda let us compartmentalize our code into a series of microservices (a service for logging, a service for OAuth key renewals, a service for SMS/email alerting if integrations error out, etc.), so we could keep a good mental map of what code is responsible for doing what task. Costs were pretty reasonable, too — you just pay for compute time, so rather than running servers 24/7, we just paid when our prototypes were executing something. After a few days of monkeying with Terraform, we had our second incarnation of Prismatic in AWS. Our integration runners ran on real Lambda and were triggered via SQS. This is the point at which we started running into performance issues with our integration runners. Why Lambda Didn’t Work for Us We had a number of issues, ranging from speed to SQS size limits and lack of process isolation in Lambda, that caused us to reconsider its effectiveness as our integration runner. Let’s talk about each of those issues: Speed. Remember the 6-step integration that I said took a couple of seconds to run within LocalStack? It took a full minute using real Lambda and AWS. The actual Lambda invocations were quick — usually a few milliseconds. The writing of step results to SQS and subsequent execution of the next step, though, ended up taking multiple seconds every step. For more complex integrations, like ones that looped over 500 files, that was a show-stopper — who wants their integrations to take minutes (hours?) to complete? We tried a number of things to get our Lambda invocations to go faster. We followed guides to keep a number of Lambda instances “warm”, and we cranked up the number of vCPUs powering our Lambdas to the highest we could at the time (6 vCPUs / 10GB RAM), but those things only shaved single-digit percentages off of our integration run times. SQS Size Limits. SQS limits message size to 256 kilobytes. The amount of data being passed between steps of integration often exceeded that size (after all, it’s totally reasonable for an integration developer to pull down a multiple megabyte JSON files to process). We were able to work around this size limitation — the recommended solution that we followed was to write out payloads to S3 and pass references to S3 objects via SQS — but this extra API call to S3 only compounded our slowness issues. Process Isolation. This was the issue that surprised me the most. At first, AWS Lambda seems appealing as a stateless compute engine — run a job, exit, run another job, etc — scale horizontally as needed. We naively assumed that Lambda invocations were isolated from one another, but that turned out to only be half true. Concurrent invocations are isolated (they run in distinct containers within Lambda). However, subsequent invocations reuse previous “warm” environments, so an integration runner might inherit a “dirty” environment from a previous integration run. That’s especially a problem if you let customers write their own code as we do for our customers’ integrations. It turns out that if one customer writes some bad code into their integration — something like this, global.XMLHttpRequest = null; , then subsequent integration runs on that same Lambda that depends on the XMLHttpRequest library error out. This is a big deal since one customer could break something like Axios for another customer. A customer could even be malicious and execute something like global.console.log = (msg) => { nefariousCode(); } , and other integrations that execute on that same Lambda will run nefariousCode() whenever they invoke console.log() . Yikes! We tried a few things to get around this issue of shared execution space. We toyed with forcing our Lambdas to cold-start every time (which was a terrible idea for obvious reasons), and we tried spinning up distinct Node processes within chroot jails. Neither option panned out — spinning up child Node processes in a Lambda took 3–5 seconds and partially defeated the purpose of being in Lambda in the first place. Our Move to ECS Lambda had served us well with development — we were able to iterate quickly and get a prototype out the door, but with the myriad issues we faced in Lambda we decided to bite the bullet and dedicate some dev time to cloud infrastructure. Our team got to work expanding our existing Terraform scripts and moved our integration runner to AWS Elastic Container Service (ECS). Within an ECS container, we could easily (and quickly!) chroot and isolate Node processes from one another, solving the process isolation issues we were seeing in Lambda. To get around the SQS size limit issues we faced, we swapped in a Redis-backed queuing service. We had to reinvent some wheels that Lambda had given us for free - like logging, autoscaling, and health checks - but in the end, we had our 6-step test integration back to running in under 2 seconds. Now, ECS hasn’t been perfect — there are some trade-offs. For one, ECS doesn’t seem to autoscale as quickly as Lambda. A “scale up” seems to take about a minute or so between API call and AWS Fargate pulling down and initializing a container that’s ready to accept jobs. We had to pull one of our devs off of product development to work on cloud infrastructure, and there’s a ton more to juggle with regards to CPU and memory usage, autoscaling rules, and monitoring, but at this point in product development, the pains are worth the gains to give our customers a speedy integration runner. What Remained in Lambda We didn’t move all of our microservices out of Lambda — plenty still remains in the serverless ecosystem and will for the foreseeable future. Our integration runner didn’t fit Lambda well, but there are other tasks for which Lambda seems like the clear choice. We kept all-important integration services that aren’t critical to the actual execution of the integration in Lambda. Those include: A logger service that pulls logs from ECS and sends them to DataDog. A service that writes metadata about integration executions to a PostgreSQL database. A service that tracks and queues scheduled integrations. An alerting service that sends SMS or email notifications to users if their integrations error. An authorization service that renews customers’ OAuth 2.0 keys for third-party services. We didn’t want any of these services to block the execution of integration, and for all of them, it’s fine if they take an additional second or two to run, so services like those fit Lambda perfectly. Conclusion Our infrastructure definitely changed over time, but I think the decisions we made along the way were the right ones: LocalStack’s “Lambda” service let us develop and iterate very quickly, and our first deployment into AWS was simple enough that our small dev team could Terraform our infrastructure without losing a ton of dev hours to it. Lambda seemed like an attractive solution for hosting and scaling our microservices, and for many of them, especially asynchronous services that might take a second or two to run, it still remains the correct choice. For our integration runner, though, we learned that the size, speed, and process isolation limitations of Lambda made ECS a better option, and it was worth the dev time it took to create an ECS deployment for that particular service. Lambda let us concentrate on product development early on, and when the time was right the transition to ECS was a fairly smooth one. Even with the issues, we faced in Lambda, I’m glad we took the path we did.

https://faun.pub/why-we-moved-from-lambda-to-ecs-b84674f31869

[]

2021-05-12 12:19:39.949000+00:00

['Development', 'AWS', 'Lambda', 'DevOps', 'Cloud Computing']

Say Goodbye to 2020 with a sincere apology

When 2020 started, it was the new year, the new decade. It was as clean of a start as many can hope for a few times in a lifetime. It was going to be the year, we finally got our sh*t together. Started that dream, quit the job, and became a morning person. It wasn’t long until the entire world start to crumble. No more eating outs, no more shopping, no more friends and gatherings, and no more toilet paper. The pandemic just happened and exploded into our lives. For all we know, life is never the same ever again. Though 2020 is disappearing into the wind, what it brought to the world will last till next year, and some will last forever. Each of us owe the world we live in a sincere apology. Growing up in abundance of everything I need, I was never the person to fully understand scarcity, and deprivation. If I want something new, I will buy it. Do I need it? Was it made out of plastic? Why does it matter? I need a bottle of water. No worries, I’ll can get 40 bottled water for $3.97 at Costco, that come out to a dime per bottle. So cheap, what a great deal. It’s a dime that kills. Kills ecosystems, whales, turtles, lands, and eventually the beautiful earth we stand upon. Convenience, consumption, and consumerism are the norms of our daily lives, and the fast food for the beautiful planet we live in. 2020 was a wakeup call to many. It has finally unleashed the panic monster. Say Goodbye to 2020 with a sincere apology to our nurturing mother earth, and make 2021 the year you treat her with love, care and respect.

https://medium.com/@lavatheball/say-goodbye-to-2020-with-a-sincere-apology-f40ec3f81e31

['Ball Lava']

2020-12-27 16:50:46.772000+00:00

['2020', '2021']

Five Ways to Improve Your Meeting Attendance

Meetings are a fact of life. Many organizations, especially nonprofits without staff, need to accomplish tasks at meetings. Poorly attended meetings are a sign that the organization itself is not healthy. Every organization needs their board members to attend every board meeting. This is how things get done. If you are going to have effective meetings, then you need all of the players in place to make that happen. If board meetings are poorly attended, then the organization does not have all of the firepower it needs at every meeting. The board has been carefully chosen to reflect a range of skills and experience. If any of those people are missing, then the full range of expertise is not being brought to bear on the issues being discussed at the meeting. How can you get board members to come to every meeting? 1. First of all set the expectation that full attendance is required at every meeting. Let it be known that board members are expected to attend each meeting held each year. Explain that missing a meeting should be a very rare event. Establish consequences for missing meetings. 2. Make it easy for board members to remember to attend meetings. Do you offer a virtual option for people who are not close enough to attend in person? Do you send out meeting reminders a few days before the meeting so that people can check in with their schedule? Do you plan your meetings well in advance so that board members can check their availability ahead of time? The second Wednesday of every month is an easy way to make sure that your board members can keep the time available for the meeting. 3. Make the meeting productive. Avoiding drama is an excellent goal for most organizations. A meeting where participants leave with a sense of accomplishment, is a meeting that will be well attended next time. Everyone needs to feel that their time is being well spent. I have written other articles on how a strategic plan helps to make sure that meetings are well attended, because each meeting moves the organization forward to achieving their goals. 4. Avoid unpleasant meetings. All board members should be trained in respectful conversations. You want to be discussing the issues not anyone’s personalities. A meeting should be a safe space for people to share their views and have a discussion that does not involve name calling or other disrespectful behaviour. Board members should feel comfortable to express themselves at a meeting without anyone attacking them. 5. Respect time limits. Board meetings should be scheduled for a specific time and the meeting should not extend beyond that. The best way to do this is to stick to the agenda that was created for this meeting. The agenda should be sent out ahead of time so that board members can determine if there is anything on the agenda, where they could have a conflict of interest. Once that has been established then the full board package would be sent out to each board member so that they can prepare properly for the upcoming meeting. Well prepared board members lead to quicker meetings because you do not have to wait for people to read the material and understand the issues. If you implement these five strategies, then your organization will have better board meetings.

https://medium.com/governance-guru/five-ways-to-improve-your-meeting-attendance-2b73366cda07

['Debi Peverill']

2020-12-10 02:52:05.839000+00:00

['Governance', 'Board', 'Productivity', 'Meetings', 'Agenda']

Two Magicians

structured poetry from All She Wrote Image credit to darksouls1 | Pixabay He slipped through her loopholes, One oh then another, Sleek as an eel, Like threading a needle. She dealt from the bottom, Left him adrift in denial, Bereft of excuses, Then tossed him a lifeline. He found her worst weakness; She searched for his good side. They took vows of silence And made love in a mime field. He sliced her in half With a sword named Surrender, But she had the last laugh In the hall of black mirrors.

https://medium.com/@paula-light/two-magicians-88bd210fb3c0

['Paula Light']

2020-12-14 03:15:58.179000+00:00

['Magic', 'Poetry', 'Relationships']

Random Acts of Kindness

“A simple act of kindness can make a tremendous impact on a person’s life” What is kindness? Kindness means the quality or state of being kind to someone. It involves being nice to other people, making them happy, and doing the right thing and the good thing as often as possible Wikipedia defines kindness as: “a behaviour marked by ethical characteristics, a pleasant disposition, and a concern for others.” Acts of Kindness: As we all did a lot of kind acts daily when it’s come to start counting the acts it becomes difficult whether it is an act of kindness or not. Today I am gonna share with you my five acts of kindness that I performed on February 20, 2020. Giving a lift to a Stranger: Story begins when I was going towards the office and on the way I saw a stranger who was asking for a lift, but I saw no one stop to help him. I was also going to pass him and then I realized that maybe he was going to be late from the office at that time. I stopped my bike and asked him to come. I saw his delighted face for not being late. I dropped him off at his office near to my office. He thanked me and he was gone. I was feeling happy to help a stranger. 2. Pay Greetings to lower rank people: I usually go to the office without meeting someone whom I don’t know but on that day after helping a stranger I was confident and paid a salam to all guards that was on my doorway to the office and they also replied to me humbly. 3. Forward a Resume of a Jobless Friend: One of my friends is unable to find a job in the software industry, when I know that there is hiring in my office for react developer and android developer. I called him and asked him for his resume. I got his resume and sent it to hr of my company on the basis of my reference. I also assured that HR will appoint his interview. 4. Helping Poor: After the shift we friend decided to have a dinner together we go a restaurant near to my office at there their a some beggars whom asking for help I give them some money so they can eat the food. 5. Share my meal with cat: Basically the restaurant is at the bank of road so a cat was there when we started eating it came close to us. At that time I thought it was hungry and I gave it a chicken piece. It started eating. After doing all these acts I feel very grateful to Allah Almighty who considers me to help others.

https://medium.com/@mateen.qayum140/random-acts-of-kindness-95ebf9cb6b47

['Mateen Qayum']

2020-03-06 19:57:14.922000+00:00

['Helping Others', 'Random Acts Of Kindness', 'Positivity', 'Kindness']

Dating During Quarantine Has Actually Given Me Hope

I remember the first night I held Anthony in my arms, the first night we had sex. The sex was hot, but more than that, it just felt good to be touched by a human nearly five months into the pandemic. If the consequences are disastrous for a baby who isn’t held and touched, is it really any better for us adults? Feeling his heartbeat and his beads of sweat running down on me, I breathed a sweet sigh of relief. My coronavirus dry spell, officially broken. For a moment, I forgot about the global pandemic. I met Anthony on Scruff — the slightly, well, scruffier cousin to Grindr in the realm of gay male dating apps. He called me “mad handsome,” and the playful banter began. We met up in person in August. We agreed to both get Covid-19 tests before jumping into bed together. (I should note that Covid-19 tests aren’t foolproof — there are still risks, of course, to swapping saliva.) At the time, I was looking for casual. I wanted to explore my transgender body. I hadn’t been with anyone since starting testosterone and moving back to the Bay Area from L.A. Anthony was fun and great in bed, and it was clear to me that he’d been with transgender men before. He was respectful and treated me as an equal. He was the perfect partner to dip my toes back into the Bay Area dating waters, where I hadn’t ventured since my early twenties. Sign up for The Bold Italic newsletter to get the best of the Bay Area in your inbox every week. Somewhere along the way, my therapist began to accuse me of “catching feelings.” I dismissed his accusations. Anthony was handsome, with a five o’clock shadow always etched onto his face. He was the first gay man I’d ever been with. (Prior to my gender transition, I’d dated straight men.) It was meaningful. Anthony was very bright. We’d have deep conversations about the stars and the universe and if astrology is bullshit (his take) and whether civil war was imminent in the United States. We connected on more than one level. We ate many meals together via Covid-friendly Uber Eats. He’d help me bake. We played piano together. We agreed to keep sleeping with other people. We both kept getting tested for Covid-19 frequently. Again, this was not perfectly safe, but I had decided that it was a risk I was going to take. I’m sure our system was flawed, but when I asked someone from Grindr to get tested before we got intimate — and he got a positive result — I knew at least something was working. I wondered at times if gay men were the most well-equipped to be dating during a pandemic. We’d been here before. We know something about having to move on with dating even with the threat still looming. As August turned to September and summer gave way to fall, I started to feel a nudge that I might want something deeper. I spent a week in Mendocino, basking in nature. Sitting outside one morning, listening to birdsong, I realized what I wanted and what I needed had changed since I’d met Anthony just three months prior. I was craving deeper layers of connection and commitment, but I wasn’t so sure Anthony was a willing candidate to give it. I’m also bisexual, and I felt curious about dating women again. I wasn’t sure where Anthony fit into this. To test the waters, I simply started to ask more of him. He quickly failed the test. I knew our relationship had an expiration date; I just didn’t know when. I tried for as long as I could to hold out on the obvious conversation: Just what are we doing here? I asked Anthony if we could talk. My stomach sank a little when he replied, “Yeah, I’ve been meaning to talk with you, too.” We met at Lake Merritt around sunset one day. At one of my best friends’ urging, I told Anthony he should go first. I sat back and listened while he cited a whole host of reasons he wasn’t available for more in a relationship right now. He was living at home with his mom, still somewhat entangled with an ex (my words, not his), and our lifestyles were different — “You’re sober,” he said, and, well, he was sort of the opposite of that. I nodded in agreement, knowing this wasn’t going to work. He was 28 and living at home with his mom; I’m 33 and was kicked out of my mom’s house nearly a decade ago. We were in two different stages of life. (But hey, no shade if you’ve moved home during this pandemic!) We agreed to end it. He said, “Let’s be friends.” I said, “Maybe.” It was amicable and kind. It’s hard to be angry when two lives are simply moving in different directions — no one’s at fault. It’s never easy to end a relationship, and because of the pandemic, we struggled to actually call it quits. I suspect I’m not the only one who caught feelings along the way. I’m not here to declare that I’ve mastered the art of pandemic dating (or breaking up). After one failed attempt to end it, I found the strength to walk away — making space for what I really want and need. In this era of social deprivation, it wasn’t easy to walk away from an okay relationship that fulfilled some sexual and emotional needs. But if I found pandemic romance once, I am confident I can do it again. Maybe this time with a woman. Maybe this time with a different, more available man. Maybe I need a minute by myself. Maybe dating during the pandemic is a terrible idea. Or maybe it is helpful with all that superfluous societal noise now quieter. Whatever the case may be, I’m grateful for Anthony. Our time in quarantine together certainly made this year a lot less lonely. Dating Anthony felt like dipping just a toe into unknown waters—maybe now I’m ready to stick in my whole foot. I’ve downloaded new apps and have added queer women to my dating pond. I just had my first socially distanced hike with a woman I met on another dating app. She was delightful — grounded, beautiful, outdoorsy, and kind. A certain candidate for a second date. As a grown, queer man in my thirties with a little more confidence under my belt after Anthony, I’m optimistic about what the future may hold. But a new dating prospect in the times of coronavirus always raises the anxiety-ridden question: When is the right time to take off your masks? No matter how many Covid-19 tests you take, there is still going to be risk involved. This was a risk that Anthony and I agreed to take (and discussed with my roommate) in the spirit of much-needed intimacy and human connection in the times of a global pandemic.

https://thebolditalic.com/dating-during-quarantine-has-actually-given-me-hope-d0bd33739038

['Daniel Lyons']

2020-12-18 09:32:12.993000+00:00

['Quarantine', 'Relationships', 'Dating', 'Pandemic Dating Diaries', 'Love']

Max Scherzer could be on the trading block this winter

By Andrew Vigliotti latimes.com As if David Price trade rumors wasn’t enough, it looks like Max Scherzer could join the southpaw on the open market. According to sources who told CBS Sports, the Tigers could be willing to entertain trade offers for the right-hander. Scherzer, who finished the regular season 21–3 and is the front runner for the American League Cy Young award, could be on the block. Why would the Tigers want to part with a key member of their World Series-caliber rotation? Scherzer will be entering the final year of his contract in 2014, worth up to $15-$20 million. Even for a 21-game winner, it’s a huge price to pay when three other players (Justin Verlander, Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder) are making that much per season. The Tigers are unlikely to re-sign the talented starter after his contract expires, so they figure to get something in return. Many teams are looking for an ace to help anchor their rotation. However, they’d likely have to give up some key pieces to make it happen. Not many teams are willing to deplete their farm system for a possible one-year rental of a Scott Boras client. Look for the Yankees, Angels, Blue Jays, Nationals and Braves as a possible destination for Scherzer in a trade, The Tigers could be looking at some significant changes to their roster, especially if they lose Thursday’s Game 5 against the Oakland Athletics. This was by far Scherzer’s best season, so they could use this as an opportunity to build towards the future, save money and still field a contending team for 2014. Andrew Vigliotti is the co-founder of Outside Pitch Sports Network and outsidepitchmlb.com and can be followed on Twitter @Andrew_Vig

https://outsidepitchmlb.mlblogs.com/max-scherzer-could-be-on-the-trading-block-this-winter-dc29b5295b8e

['Mlb.Com Blogs']

2016-11-07 14:36:20.099000+00:00

['Baseball', 'Max Scherzer', 'MLB']

4 Things You Can Do To Help You Ace That Interview

Having worked in the corporate world for the last 14 years, I’ve had my fair share of going for interviews to be hired, as well as, conducting interviews to hire others. For some, it’s an enjoyable process because it tests their personality and how they handle the pressure of answering difficult questions that are posed to them. For others, just the thought of going for a job interview makes them sweat and nervous because they’re just not confident enough. They admit defeat even before they step into the interview room. I started out as the latter. I think most of us do, especially if we’ve not had much experience in that respect. But later on, I became the former. I started going to interviews just to see how well I can do in them, even when I wasn’t looking for a job. I just wanted to keep my interview skills sharp and also to keep abreast of what the interviewers are asking in their candidates. To be fair, I’ve been offered jobs that I had to politely decline because I wasn’t looking to change jobs but the experiences that I’ve got over those interviews will be good for me in the future when I do want a change of scenery in terms of my career. But for now, I’d just like to share with you 4 things that you can during an interview which could potentially help you to get the job that you want. 1. Search up on the company and position that you’re interviewing for One of the first things that I always get asked about when I go for interviews is why I’m interviewing for the position and why the company. If you have no idea what the company does or what the position is for, don’t bother staying for the rest of the idea because your interviewer will not waste their time with a candidate that doesn’t show any effort on their part. Do a background search of the company. You can usually get all the information you need from their corporate website. Do a search on what the position is for. Are you interviewing for a sales position? What does a salesperson do? What can you bring to the sales team if you’re hired? Why did you pick to interview with the company? Although we all know the reason is that you need a job but by showing them that you actually know about the company, what it does, what it stands for, it shows you’re serious about the role and would leave a good impression on them. A quick search won’t take up much of your time but could be a big help along the way. 2. Dress for the occasion I’ve been in an interview where the person being interviewed came in his gym clothes. You may be shaking your head but the position he was interviewing for was actually as the caretaker and supervisor of my company’s gym. We didn’t specify what he should wear but personally, I thought that was a smart move because he dressed for the occasion and he knew his stuff. All the other candidates came in suits and although that is professional, I just didn’t see the need for that because of the position that they were interviewing for. I’ve also seen candidates interviewing for more professional roles but coming in jeans and sneakers. Don’t do that. Dress for the occasion. If you’re interviewing for an executive-level position and above, come in a full suit if possible. Wear a tie, do your hair nicely, shave, and put on some cologne. If you’re a woman, wear a skirt that’s of an appropriate length (usually either just above the knees or below the knees), tie your hair up nicely if you have long hair and put on your best perfume. Some may say that it’s sexist to ask men and women to dress a certain way but it will help you to give off a good first impression when you step into that interview room. Good first impressions matter more than you think. What is the position that you’re interviewing for? Dress for that. 3. Show confidence throughout the interview It’s not really a dealbreaker but when a candidate shows confidence in themselves throughout the interview, it puts confidence in those conducting the interview as well. And one way to have confidence is when you know your stuff. That’s why it’s important to do your research. When you have the answers, you will have the confidence no matter what the question is because you know that you’re prepared. Carry yourself well. Speak well, sit well and hopefully, everything will go smoothly. 4. Ask questions that show your interest in both the position and the company At the end of the interview, you would most probably be asked if you have any questions for them. This is the opportunity for you to impress them further with your questions. One thing that you can ask if where does the company see itself in 5–10 years time? What is the company’s vision for the future and what can you expect should you really excel in your new position upon being offered the job? Asking questions about the future of the company, the direction it has shows that you plan to stay long in the company. One thing employers look for in a potential employee is also longevity. If the candidate hints that he/she won’t be staying long and is just using them as a stepping stone, then their chances of being hired would be significantly reduced. But if you show genuine interest in the company and show that you’re in it for the long-run, you increase your chances of being the selected candidate. With the way things are in the world right now due to the pandemic, competition for jobs are higher than it has ever been before. Crushing your interviews will be very crucial in giving yourself the best possible chance of getting a job. To recap, these 4 points could potentially help you to ace your interview: Search up on the company and position that you’re interviewing for Dress for the occasion Show confidence throughout the interview Ask questions that show your interest in both the position and the company Do these and hopefully, it will give you the best chance of impressing your panel of interviewers and possibly, getting you a job. All the best!

https://medium.com/the-partnered-pen/4-things-you-can-do-to-help-you-ace-that-interview-ae3ccd73365e

['Benny Lim']

2020-10-17 13:38:44.649000+00:00

['Jobs', 'Life', 'Interview', 'Careers', 'Lessons']

All the Small Things: How mastering small things is the key to mastering big things

All the Small Things: How mastering small things is the key to mastering big things Daniel Villa Follow Nov 13 · 5 min read Photo by an_vision on Unsplash Gravity operates equally on the apple as the heavenly bodies. The same little force that nonchalantly plucks the apple to the ground is responsible for tethering together a star and a globe of billions of intelligent life forms. The force on the apple, however, was so small that it took these intelligent life forms a few millennia to even realize it was there. I believe gravity is a good analogy for how we should approach life, and of course, our engineering careers. Accomplished Navy Seal and modern entrepreneur Jocko Willink touches on this idea with his saying: “Unmitigated excellence in every area.” So let’s explore the idea with some concrete code. The CodeWars.com platform is built for devs to practice their skills and learn from each others solutions. I believe that we’ll find a popular but false understanding of what is excellent code. Of course, the authors of the code solutions probably wouldn’t make that claim, but it is what most community members are likely taking away from their experiences there. There is a question on Code Wars which is as follows: Write a function, which takes a non-negative integer (seconds) as input and returns the time in a human-readable format (HH:MM:SS) Here is the top-most ranked JavaScript solution with the most votes in two categories: “Best Practices” and “Clever”. Here is an alternative solution. I believe the second is a “less popular” solution and is unlikely to get many votes. Perhaps because is obvious and therefore boring. It is not clever. However, Bob Martin author of Clean Code, and a few other seasoned veterans would tell you that this code is more of a “Best Practice” precisely because it is obvious and not to mention far more testable and maintainable. It took longer to write the second solution; it was the pursuit of excellence that produced it. But let’s be real, if you took one look at my lawn you would wonder how a guy like that could write a thing like this. Ain’t to nobody got no time for that. However, this idea of excellence, like all good and true ideas, was not discovered in modernity. As early as the 18th century we find a quote like this: “whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.” The author goes on to include “even down to dancing and dress”. Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash As engineers, solving the problem is part of our job, but not all of it. If you want career success; if you want to move planets; writing code is just the apple from the tree. We tend to think of admin tasks as not worth doing — certainly not “well” or “excellently”. Things like documentation, presentations to peers, unit tests, and refactoring take a side or back seat. As you level up your career the technically week co-worker or unpopular employee might might suffer the same treatment. Two things we can draw from this quote: priority and what is “well”. Is it worth doing? I promise you there are things on your list right now that are simply not worth doing. Either because someone else can do it (it is not worth your time) or it is not in the top 3 things to do today or this week. If it is not in the top 3, remove it from your list. With your shortened list, are you convinced you can do them well? Or to borrow from Jocko’s language, excellently? In the case of engineering, and I suppose any other field, our point of reference is always the Pro and the Thought Leader. The Pro has actually build an enterprise system. The Thought Leader influenced the Pro and has built many systems themselves. Find these people and study them. For the record, unit tests and documentation are both worth doing and worth doing well. However, doing them well means applying them correctly. There are many books about that. This idea of excellence goes even further back into the reaches of history and still has lessons to learn. In the Old Testament there is a passage that says “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might”. The lesson here is one of letting go and accepting what fate may bring us and committing to living well in the midst of circumstances we cannot control. How often do we find ourselves doing things we did not plan to do? Daily, at least. Photo by Simon Migaj on Unsplash Ok, so you voted for NodeJs but the team chose Java. You have a choice. You can get your knickers in a bunch about it and become an anchor to the team, complaining, looking for everything opportunity of “I told you so”, and posting every single security article on the team chat. Or you can determine to be the best Java dev on the team. Imagine another scenario: You wind up as the dev lead on a team that you did not build and that you do not like. You can mope through the process like the living dead — yes, that is an option — or you can commit to being the best dev lead. You never know what you might learn about others, yourself, and soft skills you thought were not very important. We don’t know where our life will ultimately lead, but committing to doing all things well nearly guarantees success no matter what you find yourself doing. I think at times we think too much of our plans. We construct a career path wherein we expect ourselves to do X and then Y, then building on Y we should reach Z in 1 year. Plans are good and needful. Plans are always wrong. The risk we run is that we overlook a seemingly useless situation because of what we think it means for us. Mentoring that struggling coworker is a perfect example. Or learning to work with difficult people. Mastering these difficult situations can perhaps launch you further in your career than you thought possible. Back to gravity. As the saying goes, any success a series of small success. Any good system is a series of small good parts. I would submit that any leader of great things has learned to lead himself or herself in tiny daily tasks and personal relationships. Like gravity, mastering the small things, like the falling of an apple, is the best way to learn how to prepare to take on moving entire worlds. So, here’s to all the small things! 🍻

https://medium.com/dev-genius/all-the-small-things-how-mastering-small-things-are-the-key-to-mastering-big-things-7a05be451d3a

['Daniel Villa']

2020-11-14 01:16:20.693000+00:00

['Career Advice', 'Software Engineering', 'Software Development']

Trust and how to get it.

George Shultz turns 100 today. He celebrated with an op ed in the Washington Post. Shultz has been U.S. secretary of labor, treasury, and state. And looking back on his life and career, he says he discovered that “Trust is the coin of the realm.” “When trust was in the room, whatever room that was — the family room, the schoolroom, the locker room, the office room, the government room or the military room — good things happened. When trust was not in the room, good things did not happen. Everything else is details.” Shultz identified 10 lessons he learned in acquiring and nurturing trust. Three have special application for public relations people. Genuine empathy is essential in establishing solid, trusting relationships. Telling a story helps make your case in a way no abstraction can: A story builds an emotional bond, and emotional bonds build trust. The best leaders trust their followers with the truth, and their followers trust them back. Trust me, he’s right.

https://medium.com/beyond-buzz/trust-and-how-to-get-it-623fde9b80fc

['Dick Martin']

2020-12-13 16:52:20.549000+00:00

['Leadership', 'Public Relations', 'Trust', 'Communications']

How to get published on Coinmonks Publication?

Process of publishing a story on Coinmonks Send me your draft/story at gaurav@coincodecap.com We will add you as a writer on the publication Once added, you can submit your draft/story using the following steps. Go to your story Bottom right on your story there will be 3 dots. Click on them. You will see “Add to publication” Select Coinmonks and submit You can also reach out to me on our Telegram group. Explore Coinmonks Medium publication + RSS Feed Motivation behind Coinmonks We started the Coinmonks publication in Feb 2018. The purpose of the publication is to create a knowledge repository for decentralized technologies and its new economy. Coinmonks is a non-profit publication that thrives on its writers and readers. if you ❤️ reading Coinmonks you can donate to us. Coinmonks is read by more than half a million crypto-fans every month. What we publish? In one short line, we only publish crypto-related educational content. Tech Tutorials, development stories (Related to decentralized tech only) Ideas, Insights and futuristic view on Decentralized technologies Crypto/Token economics Project insights and analysis (Educational content only) Crypto trading strategies (Educational content only) Opinion pieces related to above ❌ No news and flashy articles❌ ✔️ Original content (Written by you) ✔️ Wrote something useful around crypto? mail us, do not hesitate.

https://medium.com/coinmonks/how-to-get-published-on-coinmonks-publication-bdf172add414

['Gaurav Agrawal']

2020-12-03 11:49:30.667000+00:00

['Cryptocurrency', 'Writing', 'Medium', 'Publishing', 'Bitcoin']

Abortion and the 2018 midterms

What’s the problem? Many are familiar with Roe v. Wade as the case that legalizes abortion nationwide, but it encompasses more than just the issue of law. Roe v. Wade was decided 45 years ago on the right of privacy and the personal freedom that is “a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” In 1973, it was a crime in nearly all U.S. states for a person to terminate their pregnancy unless it was within the restricted allowances: to preserve the person’s health, in instances of rape or incest or if there was fetal anomaly. Source: Guttmacher Institute In the case of Roe v. Wade, however, the Court recognized that there were several psychological, mental and physical detriments that would be imposed upon pregnant women by denying them autonomy over their own bodies. As such, the former ruling outlawing abortion nationwide was overturned and found unconstitutional, allowing safer and more accessible abortion services for Americans. Source: Business Insider In 2014, nearly 790 abortion clinics were available throughout the nation. With the increase in hostility toward clinics practitioners as well as obstructive laws being made, however, many of those clinics have shut down in recent years. Source: Guttmacher Institute

https://medium.com/grafiti/abortion-and-the-2018-midterms-abcd90edc3d1

['Mae Yen Yap']

2018-10-26 16:44:18.931000+00:00

['Politics', 'Abortion', 'Elections', 'Women', 'Reproductive Rights']

June Platform Updates

Hello, Sapiens! It’s a new month, so it’s time for another set of release notes. This is a very special edition of our updates because we haven’t made updates to the platform, but we released a brand new homepage to greet our visitors and better communicate the vision we’re building here. You probably already saw the site on your way here but for those who missed it, please enjoy a simple walkthrough of our beloved site: Please meet our new tagline: “The social community platform for creators” We also built a beautiful story that’s set around campfires and designed to delight and intrigue visitors. We wanted to vividly communicate our vision for helping people establish new connections, have amazing conversations, and build strong bonds of community with each other. Here and in the top navbar you’ll notice we’re seeking out a few kinds of people in the world: Do you have a podcast with avid listeners hanging on your every word? Do you make videos for an adoring audience? Are you someone who knows how to rally people together online? We’re looking for people with golden throats, the future Chloe Zhao, the digital movers and shakers who want a better way to congregate, collaborate, and converse online. If any of this sounds like you, fill out the form at the bottom of the site! We’re building something cool for you and need your help building a social community platform for the future!

https://blog.sapien.network/june-platform-updates-1ed887a4261f

[]

2021-06-17 13:49:42.448000+00:00

['Creators', 'Social Media', 'Ethereum', 'Social']

Why e-cigarette should not be treated as a replacement for smoking: Vaping a public health concern

Photo by Gabriel Ramos on Unsplash Having a medical background, I often end up looking at health-related news online. If you also follow the same, you must have come across news about people getting hospitalised due to vaping related illness in the USA. One day, while browsing through the news, Indian Government’s recent announcement to ban e-cigarettes caught my eye. Since then, I have heard, read and seen people arguing for and against the e-smoking ban. Out of curiosity, I started researching about vaping and its effects on health. My approach of secondary research gradually shifted from reading the generic articles to the more research-based published articles along the way. This blog is my take on e-smoking and its health effects. Before reading further, pardon me if the reading becomes little jargony from time to time. I have tried to keep it simple without medical terminology, as much as I can. Read along! What is vaping and how it works? Before digging deep into the harmful effects of vaping, let’s first understand how these Electronic Nicotine Delivery devices (ENDS), scientific name of e-cigarettes, work and what we inhale through them. An electronic cigarette or ENDS is a battery-operated device used by people to inhale aerosols. A typical e-cigarette consists of a cartridge filled with e-juice or e-liquid (which comes in various flavours), a heating element, a power source which is battery operated, and a mouthpiece to inhale the aerosol. The puffing activates the heating of the liquid, turning it into an aerosol. The aerosol is then inhaled and exhaled by the person, much like the process of smoking. The aerosol typically contains a mixture of nicotine (not always), propylene glycol with or without glycerol, flavouring agents, and other chemicals. E-cigarettes are available in the market in different sizes and shapes. Some look like a traditional cigarette, while others resemble a pen or a USB memory stick. When and how did vaping begin E-cigarettes were launched in 2007 in the USA, as a tool to help middle-aged smokers, quit smoking. At the time, it was publicized as a revolutionary product capable of controlling tobacco smoking and related diseases. The popular belief of e-smoking being safe lead to increased popularity e-cigarettes among teenagers and youngsters in the last few years. According to the surgeon general report, e-cigarette use among middle and high school students increased by 900% from 2011 to 2015 in the USA. Top reasons for the increased use of e smoking are, Overall enjoyable experience of e-smoking with no unpleasant aftertaste and throat irritation (usually found in regular smoking). Availability in multiple flavours like bubblegum, fruit punch etc. The popular belief that e-cigarette help quit smoking and is safe to health. “The report suggests 4.9 million teens were using e-cigarettes in 2018 — an increase of 1.5 million from the year before.” What caused the concern: Recent mysterious lung illness among vapers in the USA Impact of vaping on human health was merely a topic of academic research until recently. With a recent report of about 805* lung injuries in ten states of the United States of America, the harmful effect of vaping suddenly became mainstream. Sadly, It took us a decade to realise the harmful effects. So, where did the health regulatory bodies go wrong? Did the government fail to identify the problems early on, or did they release an unfinished product in a hurry to the market? I am sure the health professionals and regulatory bodies must be pondering over these questions. The aspects of medical regulations are out of the scope of my current blog, and hence I won’t be commenting on those for now. As for the health effects of e-smoking, academic researchers were always concerned but there were no reported real-cases on e-smoking illness. So the next logical question to ask was, were the concerns of academic researchers pointless or the health system was missing something. Then I got to know that the clinicians were missing to ask about the e-smoking habit during their preliminary examination. Let me explain, Clinicians usually take the case history of the patient, as a part of medical examination (before diagnosis and treatment plan). During this, they ask questions related to patient’s health habits, past medical history, etc. The connection between lung diseases and vaping established only when the clinicians started asking incoming patients with lung illness about their e-smoking habits. According to the CDC, all patients with mysterious lung disease had a history of using an e-cigarette. Symptoms reported by the patients The symptoms in lung injury cases due to vaping ranges from respiratory (breathing related, 98% cases) to gastrointestinal (related to stomach and intestine, 81% cases). The most commonly reported respiratory symptoms were, shortness of breath, cough and chest pain. The most common gut-related symptoms were nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea and abdominal pain. Most of these cases also reported additional symptoms like fever with increased heart rate (heart rate 55 to 146 beats per minute) and respiratory rate (respiratory rate range, 15 to 48 breaths per minute). At least 15 of such cases also reported symptoms of ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome), a condition in which fluid gets accumulated in the air sacs of the lungs making breathing difficult. The most alarming concern was the low median age of patients. The average patient’s age was 19 years (as per CDC data) with no previous significant medical history. Analysing the health effects of vaping Under this blog, I am going to cover two main aspects of e-cigarettes, Health risk of e-cigarettes to users and non-users; Efficacy of ENDS in helping smokers quit smoking and nicotine dependence; 1. Health risk of e-cigarettes to users and non-users We have already discussed the symptoms of recent lung illness caused by e-smoking in my previous section. Under this heading, I am going to talk about the health effects of two main ingredients: nicotine and formaldehyde-containing hemicital. Do note that nicotine is not always present in e-liquid but there are e-liquids containing nicotine available in the market. Due to its highly addictive properties and harmful effect of nicotine, I am including it in this section. Apart from this the fuming process also produces harmful chemicals. One such chemical produced in the process is formaldehyde-containing hemiacetal. It is important to note that the amount and absorption of these toxic chemicals vary depending on, the voltage used for heating and individual’s puffing behaviour. Puffing at a higher temperature is found to be more dangerous. “ Battery voltage & unit circuitry differences can result in considerable variability in the products’ ability to heat the solution to an aerosol and, consequently, may affect the delivery of nicotine and other constituents, and may contribute to the formation of toxicants in the emissions.” ( Electronic Nicotine Delivery System, WHO report, 2014) 1. a) Harmful effects of nicotine (in nicotine-containing e-cigarettes) Not all e-cigarettes have nicotine and hence this section only applies to e-cigarettes with nicotine. Nicotine exposure has long-term harmful effects on brain development both in the fetal and adolescent group. It is usually advised to not use nicotine products in children, adolescents and pregnant women. Moreover, many studies suggest that nicotine is highly addictive, and even though it is not carcinogenic, it may function as a tumour promoter. 1. b) Health effects of formaldehyde-containing hemiacetal (a degradation product of propylene glycol ) Research published in “The New England Journal of Medicine” explains the production of formaldehyde-containing hemiacetals when e-smoking. During vaping, propylene glycol (one of the ingredients used in e-cigarettes) breaks down to produce formaldehyde. At high voltage, the formaldehyde further reacts with already present e-liquid chemicals, propylene glycol and glycerol to produce hemiacetals. It is still unknown how this formaldehyde-containing hemicitals affect the respiratory tract, but it is marked as group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. The New England Journal of Medicine (Jensen RP et al. N Engl J Med 2015;372:392–394) E-smoking became highly popular among the young population because of its marketing as a smoke cessation tool with no health hazards. The next section of my blog will highlight more on the effectiveness of ENDS product as a tool to help in quitting smoking. 2. Is vaping efficient in reducing traditional smoking? When first launched, e-cigarettes was marketed as a tool to help smokers quit tobacco smoking. But does it help smokers in quitting smoking? There are small scale studies suggesting e-cigarette as an effective tool to quit smoking. One such study was conducted among 886 participants, who were given a choice to use e-cigarettes or nicotine patch to help them quit smoking. The objective was to find which one is better smoking cessation tool: nicotine patch or e-cigarette. The research revealed that the rate of quitting was 8% more in e-cigarettes users as compared to the nicotine patch users. Even though the rate of quitting traditional smoking is more in case of e-cigarette users, the rate of complete cessation was not. The same study also that 80% of e-smokers started using e-cigarettes regularly, after quitting smoking as compared to only 9% of nicotine patch users. It concludes that e-cigarette is more addictive as compared to the nicotine patch. The use of ENDS might help some smokers to quit, but studies suggest that for a sizeable number of smokers, ENDS use will only reduce the cigarette frequency rather than complete quitting. The users trying to quit smoking with the help of e-smoking usually end up using both e-smoking and regular cigarettes. As for health benefits, the number of years spent on tobacco smoking is more harmful than the intensity of smoking, the dual-use of both traditional and e-cigarette smoking have much smaller beneficial effects on the overall health. Due to the above reasons, e-cigarette is not recommended by health agencies (including FDA and WHO) as a quit-smoking tool. My personal views on e-smoking (conclusion): Due to lack of sufficient scientific research, recent entry of ENDS in the market, and relatively long lag time for disease onset conclusive evidence on the harmful effects of chronic e-smoking will take time and might not be available for years. It took us decades to understand the harmful effects of tobacco smoking. Chances are if the health effects of vaping are not studied, and its use is not regulated, we will find ourselves in the same situation. Health agencies need to plan a comprehensive, long-term study to evaluate the safe use of e-cigarette before allowing the long term use of e-cigarettes. “We don’t really know what the effects of chronic vaping is on your lungs.” Updating after Corona Virus Pandemic: We are on a verge of global crisis where millions of people worldwide are suffering or going to suffer from previously unknown disease/ medical condition caused by a coronavirus. The new disease is named COVID-19, which can cause life-threating, rapidly spreading pneumonia in serious cases. The disease is more severe in people with comorbid conditions or with weakened lungs. Here is some food for thought- “ Do you still think that vaping was OK and does not weaken your lungs?” I hope you all are staying safe! Citation: List of research publications/articles, I read along the way of my research on e-smoking and its effects.

https://medium.com/all-about-health/why-e-cigarette-should-not-be-treated-as-a-replacement-for-smoking-vaping-a-public-health-concern-acc34f0bd384

['Dr Surabhi Bhati']

2020-03-28 15:05:08.715000+00:00

['Coronavirus', 'Health Effects Of Vaping', 'Corona', 'Vaping', 'Covid 19']

What a Week of Watching Subtitled Movies Is Like

What a Week of Watching Subtitled Movies Is Like And some other random thoughts about the Cannes Film Festival Climax In the buildup to this year’s Cannes Film Festival, which launched its 71st edition last Tuesday, there was a lot of industry talk about the fact that the hallowed, glamorous festival — the biggest on the annual movie calendar — was losing its luster. First, Cannes opted not to include Netflix films as part of the official competition — although the streaming service would have been welcome to screen their movies in out-of-competition slots, which is where Solo: A Star Wars Story is playing — which prompted Netflix to pout, take their ball and go home. Then, after the festival’s slate was announced, many speculated that, with very few American or star-studded movies on the docket, Cannes was going to be a lot less glitzy this year. One U.S. journalist attending Cannes even went so far as to email colleagues privately that this year’s edition “may possibly turn out to be the most underwhelming Cannes festival of all time.” Put another way, a lot of American critics were about to face a daunting proposition: They’d have to spend their two weeks at Cannes watching a lot of movies with subtitles. As I’m writing this, I’ve been at the festival for seven days and seen 19 films. Not one of them was in English. Foreign-language movies are a regular part of my diet as a critic, and this is my fifth Cannes, but this has probably been the longest stretch in which I’ve exclusively consumed subtitled films. No big stars, no Hollywood blockbusters — just a lot of words on the bottom of the screen. And I have to say I’ve found the experience to be surprisingly informative. I’m not gonna advocate that normal filmgoers do something similar, but I think it’s given me a new relationship with films — how I see them, and what they mean to me. The cultural stereotype of foreign films is that they’re dry, pretentious bores that don’t make any sense and drag on forever. Basically, when people think of a foreign film, they’re thinking of this old Bud Dry commercial: But that musty cliché isn’t accurate to the actual experience of watching foreign-language movies at Cannes. Thus far, I’ve seen movies in Spanish, Ukrainian, Arabic, Russian, French, Polish, Turkish, Mandarin, Korean and Farsi. I’ve seen thrillers, road movies, dark comedies, crime dramas, love stories, spy films and pseudo rock musicals. Not one of them was anything like that arthouse parody of sad clowns and navel-gazing musings. I’m also, however, not gonna pretend that they don’t require a certain amount of concentration that your typical Hollywood film doesn’t. If anything, being at Cannes this year has been a reminder of just how distracted we can get as moviegoers when we speak the same language as the movie we’re watching. In the States, I can look away from the screen for a second, even a couple minutes, and let my mind drift — I can basically get the gist of what’s happening. Not this year at Cannes: To keep up with what’s going on, I’ve had to maintain a laser focus, not just on the images but on the bottom of the screen, where the dialogue can sometimes go whizzing by. This is one of the reasons Americans don’t like foreign films: People go to the movies to escape, not to read. For a lot of viewers, foreign films feel like work — and they are, in comparison to what we’re accustomed to. But a concentrated dose of foreign-language films this week has given me a greater appreciation for the effort any movie has to make to connect with an audience. And if you watch too many Hollywood movies, it becomes clear that they expect that you’ll be entirely passive: They come to you, full of explosions, action, loud jokes and really easy-to-follow storylines that usually have happy endings. You don’t have to do anything — it’s the film’s job to do all the heavy lifting to keep you entertained. Plenty of the films I’ve seen at Cannes have been entertaining, but the division of labor is a little more evenly split. The straightforward drama Yomeddine, about a leper trying to find his family, digs into modern-day Egypt, looking at how religion and poverty affect the nation. (A supporting character is named Obama — “like the guy on TV,” he says.) The espionage thriller The Spy Gone North expects the audience to know a decent amount about the history of North and South Korea over the last several decades. I always do my due diligence before watching a movie, but seeing foreign films, inevitably, puts me in contact with foreign cultures — and those filmmakers may not be necessarily interested in making sure I’m comfortable as much as they want to share their stories about their cultures. There’s an arrogance that we have in America about how entertainment works. With the rise of digital culture and streaming services, there’s become an assumption that we should be able to have access to everything all the time — essentially, artists work for us and should accommodate our needs and demands. But watch enough subtitled films and you remember that that’s not actually accurate. The initial frustrations we have — “I don’t understand all the cultural context! Wait, I’ve got to read?!?” — are reminders that it sometimes takes effort to empathize with people with whom we don’t share a language or customs. It doesn’t take much to bridge that gap, though — we just need to watch their movies, too. That’s all I’ve been doing this year at Cannes: taking little journeys into other parts of the globe to see how they operate. And because I’ve had to be focused on the screen at all times, I felt like I was connected more intimately to these movies than I to, say, Solo, which is probably be a little “easier” of a movie to watch. But it’s worth the effort. Here are a few other takeaways from Cannes. #1. Time’s Up has come to Cannes, too. Before the premiere of Girls of the Sun on Saturday, one of the few films in the Competition directed by a woman (Eva Husson), two-time Oscar winner Cate Blanchett — this year’s high-profile celebrity leading the jury that will pick the winners from the Competition slate — and 81 other women took to the famed red carpet of the Palais, the festival’s main venue, to hold an impromptu women’s march for equality. The number 82 was significant: That’s how many female directors have been part of the Competition since Cannes began in 1946. (By comparison, 1,866 male directors have been in Competition.) Blanchett was one of the primary speakers, which was easily the most-covered event at this year’s festival. (Around the same time, Christopher Nolan was giving a masterclass that failed to generate much news at all.) Specifically, Blanchett and fellow jury members like Kristen Stewart and A Wrinkle in Time director Ava DuVernay were trying to shine a light on 5050 by 2020, an initiative that encourages gender equality in industry jobs. “Women aren’t a minority in the world, yet the current state of the industry says otherwise,” Blanchett said to the large crowd. “We stand together on these steps today as a symbol of our determination to change and progress.” If it’s true that the 2018 edition of Cannes hasn’t been very noteworthy, at least the festival’s biggest name decided to use her platform for a worthy cause. #2. Gaspar Noe made the festival’s craziest movie. Argentine writer-director Noe has made a career out of crafting extreme films that freak a lot of people out. His 2002 drama Irreversible featured a 10-minute rape scene. In 2009, he released the hallucinatory Enter the Void, which included a POV shot from the main character’s perspective as he comes out of his mom’s birth canal. And 2015’s Love was in 3D and featured multiple extended graphic sex scenes. For Noe, anything doing is worth overdoing. Noe is back with his first film since 2015, and it premiered in Cannes a couple of days ago. It’s called Climax, and it takes place over one insane night as a dance troupe goes through their routine and then enjoy one crazy blowout party. The high-energy opening dance sequence, which is done all in one take, is at least 10 minutes long. From there, the movie rarely slows down, especially when the troupe discovers that someone has laced their sangria with LSD, causing them to turn on one another, have passionate sex, get increasingly violent and generally lose their mind. One character starts cutting her face and arm with a knife. Another, who swears she’s pregnant, is kicked multiple times in the stomach. Still another character has a prolonged screaming match with herself as she throws herself around an empty hallway. And then there are the shots when the camera is upside down, turning the whole scene into a waking neon nightmare. The producers just released the first trailer for Climax. But trust me, this barely scratches the surface of what a feverish head-trip this movie is. #3. I won’t believe that Terry Gilliam’s long-awaited Don Quixote movie is premiering at Cannes until I see it for myself. For decades, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Gilliam has wanted to make a Don Quixote movie. His obsession is so well-known — along with his frustration at not getting the project off the ground — that a documentary came out about it called Lost in La Mancha, which chronicled how snake-bit the production was, including bad weather, insufficient funding and injured actors. The crazy thing? That documentary came out in 2002. Sixteen years later, the Brazil director is still bound and determined to make the movie. And it finally looked like it would happen, with Adam Driver and Jonathan Pryce in the leads. The movie, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, has been selected to be Cannes’ closing film, premiering on May 19. Happy ending, right? Well, not so fast. These are all the things that have happened in the last few weeks: One of the producers sued the festival, claiming that he owned the rights and, therefore, could block Cannes from showing it. Amazon, which was to release the film in the U.S., announced that it would no longer be distributing the movie. Gilliam was suddenly rumored to be hospitalized because of a stroke, although another producer on the film clarified that it wasn’t a stroke but, rather, a combination of stress and illness. On May 9, a French court ruled that The Man Who Killed Don Quixote can, indeed, screen at Cannes, so the premiere is now back on track. Until the next disaster, of course. #4. Who had the best tweet from Cannes? Oh, only me. On the day that Cannes gets underway, it’s customary for the jury to do a photo shoot and press conference, where they answer questions from journalists and talk about what an honor it is, etc. During the photo call, somebody managed to capture a quick moment of Kristen Stewart seemingly looking adoringly at Blanchett. I noticed it when the picture went online, and as a joke, I sent out this tweet: Within minutes, the tweet went viral, attracting the attention of other journalists, including Irish Times critic Donald Clarke, who featured the tweet as the lead of one of his dispatches from here at the festival. Needless to say, I’m flattered to have been part of a lot of people’s Cannes social-media experience this year. Though, I guess it’s a bit of a dubious honor—being one of the most interesting things at what’s purported to be one of the most boring Cannes of all time. But hey, I’ll take what I can get. Tim Grierson is a contributing editor at MEL. He last graded all the going-back-to-college movies. More Tim:

https://medium.com/mel-magazine/what-a-week-of-watching-subtitled-movies-is-like-1c59a8a06773

['Tim Grierson']

2018-05-15 11:01:01.153000+00:00

['Film', 'Cannes Film Festival', 'Movie Review', 'Movies', 'France']

Holding the new Panamanian president to his public commitments

Ahead of the elections, President Cortizo signed a list of anti-corruption promises. Now he needs to deliver. View of Panama City (Image: flickr/Ron Reiring) Status quo: why anti-corruption reforms are needed Earlier this month, citizens in Panama elected Laurentino Cortizo as their new president. He will assume office on 1 July, at a time when the need for anti-corruption reform in the country is more urgent than ever. Panama scores below the regional average on the latest Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) and has been engulfed in various corruption scandals in recent years, including the Odebrecht bribery scheme, wiretapping by former president Martinelli and, of course, the ‘Panama Papers’. The Panama Papers revealed the role of a number of Panamanian law firms in hiding wealth, often of murky origins, for the global rich and powerful — while vast parts of its own population, especially in rural areas, continue to live in poverty. Transparency International’s chapter in Panama has been working hard to keep anti-corruption on the agenda, before, during, and after the elections. Time to act To fix this, the most important step that needs to be taken is the passing of proper anti-corruption legislation. Transparency International Panama (TI Panama) has carried out assessments of state institutions and worked together with legislators. Based on this, it has compiled a list of necessary legislative reforms, including laws on public contracting, conflicts of interest, whistleblower protection, asset declaration for public officials, as well as anti-bribery laws for the private sector. Especially in the building and construction sector, rigged contracts and other forms of corruption are a widespread problem. Then president-elect Laurentino Cortizo signing the Transparency Challenge and committing to anti-corruption measures Strengthening legislation and rule of law Citizens’ faith in democratic institutions can only be restored by taking strong anti-corruption measures and following through on promises. Political leaders need to commit to concrete steps against corruption. Four months ahead of the general elections, TI Panama launched “Reto Transparencia”, the Transparency Challenge, a list of anti-corruption commitments across five areas: Anti-corruption legislation Transparency and accountability Public contracts Justice Access to information, open governments and open data All major Presidential candidates committed to the recommendations on this list, including President Cortizo. It is now up to his administration to deliver on these commitments. Mr. Cortizo has promised a constitutional amendment correcting the balance of power between the three branches of government, which would be a welcomed step. A proper separation of powers and parliamentary control mechanisms form the backbone of a healthy democracy and are key to preventing corruption from undermining it. TI Panama participated, as representatives of pro-democracy CSOs in the Consejo de la Concertación Nacional, the National Agreement Council, to negotiate and craft a constitutional reform package, which was concluded on Monday June 10thand will be presented to president-elect Cortizo next week. The new administration has a window of opportunity, and must seize it to create change for the better.

https://voices.transparency.org/holding-the-new-panamanian-president-to-his-public-commitments-36d644610287

['Libertad Ciudadana']

2019-07-02 14:20:38.277000+00:00

['Politics', 'Panama', 'Anti Corruption', 'Transparency', 'Corruption']

Cómo lograr un pensamiento creativo en 8 pasos

Si el artículo te gustó, por favor, regálame un 👏 y compártelo en tus redes sociales ¡Muchas gracias! Gustavo Martin Hey, I’m Guss. Public speaker about creative thinking. Creative Consultant. Workshops, courses and conferences. Fan of branding & innovation. Director of Plums: boutique brand design agency. The priority is to sow; innovation is a consequence. Our motto is: to sow the seed and it will grow. You can visit my website www.gussmartin.com

https://medium.com/@gussmartin/c%C3%B3mo-lograr-un-pensamiento-creativo-en-ocho-simples-pasos-9c312251edc2

['Gustavo Martin']

2020-12-09 20:16:16.188000+00:00

['Español', 'Creative', 'Creatividad', 'Creative Process', 'Motivation']

The Dawn of Cheap and Easy DNA Writing

The Dawn of Cheap and Easy DNA Writing These startups are developing new ways to reprogram biology by producing custom genes from scratch. By Lauren Gravitz The 4,000-square-foot suite, tucked into a small office park in the heart of San Diego’s biotech corridor, is about as small and unassuming as a university biology-lab classroom. But the 16 people who work here at Molecular Assemblies are chasing a goal that could revolutionize synthetic biology: the ability to write DNA molecules using enzymes. The field of synthetic biology has, for years, been promising the ability to custom-design organisms that serve as everything from new antibiotics to plastic eaters. But despite substantial advances in both sequencing and editing DNA, one of the big holdups in fulfilling this potential is that whipping up DNA to order is slow and-especially for long molecules-expensive. In truth, the way scientists write DNA hasn’t changed much since the process was first developed in 1981. It’s slow, laborious, and environmentally hazardous. But several startup companies believe they can do it cheaper, faster, and more accurately with a new method. They believe that using enzymes, which is how DNA is written in nature, is the way to go. Molecular Assemblies recently raised $12.2 million in an initial round of funding, though it’s far from alone in its quest to use enzymes for building DNA. At least seven startups are trying to do it. Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, who have published the only paper so far to describe a successful enzymatic approach, founded Ansa Biotechnologies to commercialize it. Ansa, like Molecular Assemblies, is building its business model around providing DNA to customers who send in orders. But another contender, DNA Script, recently announced $38.5 million in a second round of funding for a benchtop machine that would enable labs and hospitals to build DNA themselves. Today, commercially available DNA synthesis uses a process called phosphoramidite chemistry, which relies on toxic, flammable reagents that create hazardous waste. The process has important limitations-most companies that build DNA this way top off at lengths of about 100 to 150 base pairs, which isn’t even as long as many genes, and the harsh chemistry involved in adding each A, G, C, or T can start to degrade the already-written part as the molecule grows longer. This method also produces molecules that aren’t compatible with water-based biology. That’s acceptable if you want to use DNA as a form of data storage, but to be useful in biological applications, DNA made through phosphoramidite chemistry has to be put through additional processing, which increases the cost. “It’s amazing that they get chemical synthesis of DNA to work,” says Andrew Hessel, president of Humane Genomics, which is developing new cancer therapies by reprogramming viruses, and co-founder of Genome Project-write. GP-write, as it’s known, an international effort to explore the prospects of redesigning human cells, just concluded its annual meeting in New York City. “The reality is that nature uses enzymes to write DNA, and that is an incredibly complex process. Every time a cell in your body divides, it has to write a whole human genome perfectly without any additional modifications.” As synthetic biology advances, researchers want longer and longer segments of DNA-ideally, at least the length of genes. The longer the DNA molecule, the fewer the segments that scientists have to stitch together to make a desired sequence, which should reduce the cost and the chances for errors to be introduced. Those involved in Hessel’s GP-write project have their sights set on writing full genomes, which would allow them to engineer human cells (and other organisms’ cells) so as to better understand health and disease. For example, some scientists involved in GP-write are exploring ways of making cells resistant to viruses. Others are investigating how cells could produce essential nutrients that people now have to derive from food. But making genome-length DNA-even bacterial genomes-using chemical synthesis is currently cost-prohibitive. William Efcavitch, chief science officer and co-founder of Molecular Assemblies, helped lead the development and commercialization of the original phosphoramidite method in the early 1980s, but now he says it’s clear a better approach is required. “Rather than trying to push 35-year-old chemistry to make longer strands, we said: Let’s start with an enzymatic process that can already make long strands and teach it to do it in a user-friendly fashion,” says Efcavitch. “You have to control the enzyme and tell it what to write. And that’s tricky.” —Andrew Hessel The challenge is that in their natural habitat within a cell, enzymes don’t create DNA from scratch. Instead, they duplicate a pre-existing strand by pulling nucleic acids, one by one, to the growing molecule. So Molecular Assemblies and most of the other companies have turned to the only enzyme known to build DNA without a template. This DNA-creating enzyme, or polymerase, is called terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase (TdT). Typically found in vertebrate immune cells, it is responsible for building the new and ever-changing antigen receptors a cell needs to fight unfamiliar viruses and bacteria. TdT evolved to make long strands of DNA in a random fashion, but the new breed of DNA-writing startups think they can program it. All of them, however, are still working to figure out exactly how. “The challenge with enzymatic synthesis from scratch is that you have to control the enzyme and tell it what to write,” Hessel says. “And that’s tricky.” Chemical synthesis uses a computer to control a system that adds A, G, C, or T-one drop at a time-in a four-step process: The DNA molecule is extended by one nucleotide held in place with an unstable bond; then the incomplete end is capped off; then the newly linked nucleotide is stabilized; and then the molecule is prepared for the next addition. Enzymatic synthesis eliminates two of those steps: the polymerase just needs to be stopped and started for each additional nucleotide. “Right now,” Efcavitch says, “we’re trying to optimize those two steps.” The enzymatic synthesis startups have shown modest success. Ansa has built short DNA fragments called oligonucleotides (or oligos) of 50 base pairs. DNA Script has hit 200, and another company- Camena Bioscience -recently announced it had reached 300. Molecular Assemblies won’t specify how long its oligos have gotten other than to say they haven’t yet reached 150. The companies’ claims remain largely untested by the synthetic biology community. “There have been almost no publications,” says Calin Plesa, a synthetic biology researcher at the University of Oregon. “It’s been very difficult to know what’s been going on inside these companies.” Plesa himself is a heavy user of synthetic DNA for building DNA libraries, as is Sri Kosuri, a synthetic biologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and co-founder of a startup called Octant. Kosuri describes himself as a “synthetic DNA addict” whose lab consumes large amounts of oligonucleotides to explore the relationship between DNA sequences and their functions. He appreciates how the companies pursuing enzymatic DNA synthesis are trying to improve the accuracy of the technology. “Accuracy is an issue. It’s what limits even our own work,” Kosuri says. But he adds that it doesn’t yet appear that the DNA-writing startups have gotten the enzymatic process near the accuracy of phosphoramidite chemistry. George Church, a geneticist at Harvard University who is a cofounder of both the Human Genome Project and GP-write, says chemical DNA synthesis methods generally induce an error every 1 in 300 bases. Error-correction methods can improve the figure to 1 in 10,000. When enzymes naturally copy a strand of DNA in cells, however, the error rate is close to one in a billion. But he agrees with Kosuri that no enyzmatic synthesis company has come even close to such low error rates. “Right now, there’s no evidence than enzymatics is more accurate [than chemical synthesis]. I think it’s likely but not proven,” Church says. Today, the longest oligonucleotides being produced are coming out of South San Francisco-based Twist Bioscience, which has miniaturized the chemistry using a silicon chip with thousands of tiny wells, creating a platform that that can make one million oligos simultaneously. They are used for screening, diagnostics, therapeutics, and genetic research. Twist can now make oligos up to 300 base pairs long in these wells, more than twice what most enzymatic companies are capable of at the moment. But Twist Bioscience CEO Emily Leproust says that if a better method of synthesizing DNA presents itself, Twist’s method can accommodate it. “We don’t really have a dog in the fight,” she says. “If there is better [synthesis through] enzyme chemistry, I’ll be the first customer.” Once the approach reaches one of any number of milestones-longer, fewer errors, or faster production-she’d be on board. “I’ll take cheaper but frankly I’ll pay more if it’s faster or better or longer.” She’s confident that one or more of the companies pursing the enzymatic approach will hit the target eventually. “I don’t think they have to break any rule of physics to get there-I think it’s just engineering,” she says. “It’s a question of how much money do you need, and how much time do you need, and can you recoup that investment in commercialization.” Church and Hessel both agree that enzymatic synthesis will start to gain traction soon. “I fully expect that bacterial-scale genomes will be within anyone’s reach within the next 10 years,” Hessel says. And that would be just the start. “I don’t think we’ve started to unlock the possibilities here. I can’t wait to see how these tools and technologies change the world.”

https://medium.com/neodotlife/the-dawn-of-cheap-and-easy-dna-writing-6bec4a8d3939

[]

2019-12-03 19:39:18.593000+00:00

['Future', 'Biotechnology', 'Science', 'Genetics', 'Business']

“Get on Your High Horse”:

“Get on Your High Horse”: First off, you are probably wondering why someone would say, “get on your high horse” vs. “get off your high horse” I’ll cover that later. Next, you may be asking what “palpating” is. Palpating is another word for manipulating as in physically moving or adjusting. Lastly, you might also want to know what the “Hyoid Bone” is. The Hyoid Bone is located in the front of the neck underneath the chin. It’s horseshoe shaped with the tips of the “U” pointing towards the back. Now that we have covered the terms, let’s get down to connecting these terms and the quote! Palpating the Hyoid One day while at work (before the pandemic), I noticed pressure in my neck and throat. I cocked my head back to feel around as my physician has done. My fingers fit nicely in the space between the outside of my neck and around the vertebrae. I noticed that it felt like things had shifted — like the bones or muscles or something was like a Jenga tower. So, I gently tried to nudge the pieces back into alignment. There was popping! In. My. Neck. It was creepy, but also satisfying. The pressure instantly alleviated and things felt like they were no longer a jacked up Jenga tower. Over time, I started doing this any time there was a twinge in my throat and neck. I had never heard of anyone doing it and did not think much of it until most recently when I went for my physical. I mentioned that my lymph nodes had been up and down in the last couple weeks…did it have anything to do with adjusting the front of my neck? My physician had never heard of someone “adjusting the front of their neck,” and ordered an ultrasound. Nothing came back on the ultrasound. While I awaited those results, I searched the internet. My physician’s comment about never hearing of someone doing the “adjusting” kept nagging me. Lo and behold, I discovered it’s a technique called “palpating the hyoid.” I felt vindicated and fascinated. The hyoid floats in the neck, but is held down by muscles and connective tissues (see the diagram to the left). It is integral part of digestion, in that it assists with swallowing and moving the tongue (verywell health 2020). This bone also helps with breathing and respiration. Reading this information, I wanted to know more. This is where the “high horse” comes into play. “Get On Your High Horse” Fran Griffith is a Rider Biomechanics Coach, a person who trains people on how to ride a horse. Fran has a blog where they instruct people on different aspects of horse riding. The main focus is posture. Perfect posture is an integral part of horse riding as it helps decrease bodily injury and muscle weakness. In the “Hyoid” blog entry, Fran details why good posture in the neck, stemming from the hyoid bone can make or break horse riding: When our hyoid bone drops down and forwards, our chin juts out and our neck and upper back respond by collapsing and curving forward. — Fran Griffith While horse riding is a small subset of the population, Fran’s advice can be applicable to various areas of one’s daily life and routine. Maybe you sit in a cubicle for most of your day (or at home because of the pandemic)? Maybe you are on your feet all day? Maybe you are at a job where you are on your feet most of the day, but also bending down, over, sideways? Either way, having good posture while doing any or all of these activities can only help alleviate injuries, aches, pains, and muscle weakness. So, moral of the story? Get up on that “high horse,” work on your posture, and go forth riding confidently on this intriguing knowledge about the anatomical parts of your neck! I’ll meet you at the sunset for some good ‘ol savasana/R & R/siesta with proper posture of course.

https://medium.com/@tolbertmbb/get-on-your-high-horse-1b3519b85576

[]

2020-12-23 17:39:21.637000+00:00

['Posture', 'Neck Health', 'Horseback Riding', 'Adjustment', 'Wellbeing']

COSS UPDATE: 20th November 2019

API & other improvements An improved API documentation has already been circulated among a few members of the community for review. Their feedback is being incorporated. We are aiming for a release of the new documentation by next week. The COSS platform has brought onboard additional specialist resources. Their priorities cover resolving issues like: - resolving issues faced by the CCXT platform in interacting with our APIs CCXT is a library of exchange APIs. The COSS API is verified by CCXT and can be used by platforms integrating more than one exchange at a time. This bypasses the need to integrate each exchange’s APIs individually. There’s a long standing issue reported by several CCXT users integrating COSS on https://github.com/ccxt/ccxt/issues/5591. Resolving this issue will allow more trading platforms to easily integrate COSS and also resolve issues faced by Gimmer users trying to trade on COSS. Error codes included in the API also require an update, allowing users to identify and resolve any errors faced when performing an integration. - improving API performance Large traders, market makers and liquidity providers regularly request a lower cancellation limit via our API which currently limits cancellation to 10 seconds since placing the order. This allows them to respond to market movements quicker. Once a solution is deployed, we will be able to accept requests from traders who wish to be excluded from these limits. It will be made available to all API users by default at a later date. We will begin to plan other major improvements and upgrades on the exchange following addressal of a few other important tasks assigned to the new resources. Which includes…

https://medium.com/coss-official/coss-update-20th-november-2019-7641160aedfa

[]

2019-11-20 14:58:29.773000+00:00

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

Why visual storytelling is more relevant than ever

#startup #media #tech #storytelling #image #photo #journalism A picture is worth a thousand words. That’s a popular saying that seems even more relevant when we look at the way we, as readers, relate to news and facts shared in the media. When information can be visualized, it becomes easier to grasp. Especially when reporting on a complex topic (such as the Covid-19 crisis), images, illustrations and graphics can be strong elements to help people understand and engage better with a story. At NMA, we have a wide range of startups in our portfolio developing tech solutions to innovate the media industry. Check out some of the companies that can help publishers, agencies, broadcasters (and other companies) to improve the storytelling in a visual way: Comics for news If you think comic strips are only suitable for fiction, be aware that they can be a fine resource for publishers to report on topics (such as the ongoing pandemic crisis) in a straightforward, uncomplicated way. Tebeox already allowed several publishers to share news through digital comics — check out the examples and get in touch to work on new ones. Getting images right Frameright is an editing tool that allows content creators to make multiple, intelligent crops in images and photos to be used in articles shared online — it is not just a matter or ending headless portraits, but also to be socially responsible when sharing them. Visual and social Visual stories are especially important when reporting through social media — and Cutnut story editor allows media houses to edit, publish and preschedule nicely designed stories for Instagram and Google Amp. Reproduction from cutnut.net Art meets journalism Journalists, bloggers and content producers in general can commission illustrations to use in their articles through Minty’s platform. See how we can fight Corona with art. Minty’s Instagram profile features some of the illustrations: check out @tasteminty Interacting with data What better way of dealing with lots of data and numbers than by having them nicely displayed in interactive graphics? 23degrees has already partnered up with publishers and broadcasters to power up their interactive data reporting on the latest developments regarding developments of the Coronavirus pandemic.

https://medium.com/next-media-accelerator/why-visual-storytelling-is-more-relevant-than-ever-92030f8503c5

['Next Media Accelerator']

2020-03-24 12:01:15.704000+00:00

['Innovation', 'Startu', 'Covid 19', 'Media', 'Tech']

A Shout Out to the Westside of Whoville: Why Majority-Black Neighborhoods Exist

I am a fan of the Christmas classics, especially from the Temptations, the Whispers, Nat King Cole, and others. I also enjoy old tunes reimagined as hip new grooves by singers such as Chris Brown, Mariah Carey, Fantasia, and Christina Aguilera. However, this year, I noticed a lyric from a Christmas song by Busta Rhymes and Jim Carey, Grinch 2000, that made me reflect on America’s history of housing segregation. At the end of the song, Carey gives a “shout out to the Westside of Whoville.” Even though this lyric made me laugh at first, I began thinking about America’s oppressive policies that racialized space. The “Westside of Whoville,” then, represents the collection of cities across America that consciously created majority-Black neighborhoods through forced segregation and housing discrimination. Many people take pride in being raised on the Black side of towns in places such as the Southside of Chicago or the Westside of Detroit, Atlanta, or Las Vegas. While property is a path to accumulate wealth; our residency also creates a sense of belonging and identity. So, pride in our upbringing and shared identity is a good thing. However, we cannot take pride in how low-income neighborhoods of color were created. Black enclaves were consciously designed to put “social distance” between certain ethnic groups and others and sanctioned by federal policy, systemic racial exclusion, and ongoing efforts to restrict the resources and networks that make the American dream affordable and accessible to all. More specifically, these Black enclaves, also called “the hood,” exist because they have been victimized by bank redlining, real estate steering, restrictive covenants, income inequality, disinvestment, and generational poverty. Without our government’s purposeful imposition on racial segregation, other causes such as private prejudice, white flight, and self-segregation still would have existed but with far less opportunity for expression. Therefore, the Westside of Whoville shares the history of property ownership built on the violent colonization of Indigenous People’s lands, the brutal enslavement of Black people, and America’s broad exploitation of laborers. These dynamics work together to suppress Black economic mobility. Black homeowners in West Las Vegas As citizens in this democracy, we bear a collective responsibility to enforce our constitution and rectify past violations whose effects endure today. Whatever routes we or our particular ancestors took to get us to this point, we are all in this together now.

https://medium.com/@kenadie/a-shout-out-to-the-westside-of-whoville-why-majority-black-neighborhoods-exist-58af7dbf516d

['Kenadie Cobbin Richardson']

2020-12-27 05:00:41.083000+00:00

['Redlining', 'Housing Discrimination', 'Segregation', 'Racial Justice']

COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials, we need to invest now in systems to ensure equitable global vaccine delivery

Asthe world awaits the results of COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials, we need to invest now in systems to ensure equitable global vaccine delivery. Sixteen vaccine experts from the vaccine industry, academic and regulatory agencies interviewed… https://www.reddit.com/r/RealMadridvsInterlive/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Liverpoolvsatalanta/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RealMadridvsInterlive/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Liverpoolvsatalanta/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RealMadridvsInterlive/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Liverpoolvsatalanta/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Liverpoolvsatalanta/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RealMadridvsInterlive/hot/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RealMadridvsInterlive/new/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RealMadridvsInterlive/top/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RealMadridvsInterlive/rising/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RealMadridvsInterlive/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Liverpoolvsatalanta/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RealMadridvsInterlive/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Liverpoolvsatalanta/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RealMadridvsInterlive/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Liverpoolvsatalanta/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Liverpoolvsatalanta/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RealMadridvsInterlive/hot/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RealMadridvsInterlive/new/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RealMadridvsInterlive/top/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RealMadridvsInterlive/rising/ A safe and effective vaccine is a critical tool for stopping the spread of COVID-19. While there are still things we don’t know about the COVID-19 vaccine, we do know that there is much we can do now to prepare, and we are not starting from scratch in Vermont. We will build on a strong existing primary care and medical home infrastructure, our experience with vaccine distribution in past public health crises, and valuable partnerships across the state with health care and community partners to help make sure all Vermonters have access to the vaccine. Putting Safety First The global push to find a vaccine for COVID-19 is unprecedented, but this urgency can not outweigh the importance of vaccine safety and efficacy. That is why we keep a close watch on the vaccine development process and put science above all else when it comes to distributing any vaccine in Vermont. Before it is given to anyone in Vermont, a vaccine must meet strict U.S. Food and Drug Administration safety standards and be recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)(link is external). All newly developed vaccines must also be monitored continuously for safety. Identifying Priority Groups Based on what we know now, it is likely that the initial supply of COVID-19 vaccine will be limited, and will be distributed to states in phases, with early vaccine going to certain groups of people. Those groups may include: people who provide direct care to others (for example, health care professionals) people who are critical to the COVID-19 response (for example, people who work at COVID-19 testing sites, people who process COVID-19 specimens at laboratories) people who are essential to maintaining a functional society (for example, first responders) older adults and people who have chronic illnesses and are at the highest risk for developing severe illness from COVID-19 We will look to recommendations from the National Academies(link is external) and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices(link is external), and gather input from organizations and partners across Vermont, to determine what these groups will be in Vermont. Ensuring Equitable Access When a COVID-19 vaccine is more widely available, we will work closely with the health care providers, pharmacies, and others who will provide the vaccine in Vermont, to ensure access across the state. We will also collaborate with community organizations and other partners to make sure people who are disproportionately affected by COVID-19, including Black, Indigenous and people of color, have equitable access to the vaccine. Sharing Information with Vermonters We are committed to sharing ongoing updates with Vermonters as we make plans for vaccine distribution, and as we learn more about strategies at the national level. Below you will find our draft interim COVID-19 vaccine distribution plan for Vermont. For a quick look at the plan, read the executive summary.

https://medium.com/@xaaiqjvsleprib/asthe-world-awaits-the-results-of-covid-19-vaccine-clinical-trials-we-need-to-invest-now-in-6233a07e7ae1

[]

2020-11-25 18:22:07.428000+00:00

['Covid 19', 'Vacation', 'Sports', 'Social Media']

Disparate Impact Claims — What Employers Should Know About Unintended Racial Inequality

The idea that your company’s practices could be found to be racially discriminatory, despite having no intent to discriminate, can be quite the “eye opener” for executive management. No doubt, 2020 has been a challenging year all-the-way-around. A contentious presidential election, a worldwide pandemic that has killed over 225,000 U.S. citizens and, to top it all off, racially charged protests spawned by the deaths of African Americans at the hands of overzealous police officers. The protests, riots, and violence have sparked memories of the 1960’s civil rights movement and renewed calls by many for changes to our country’s political, law enforcement, and social systems that, for all their successes, seem to still provide less protections and benefits to minorities than to their white counterparts. Employers are not immune to questions of racial inequality; far from it. The civil rights movement spawned the 1964 federal Civil Rights Act and, in particular, Title VII of that law which protects employees from various types of discrimination, including racial discrimination. Yet, over fifty years later there are still widespread claims of race discrimination in the workplace. In 2019, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) investigated over 24,000 charges of race discrimination filed by employees, which represents over one third of all employment-based complaints the agency received. However, that is not to say that progress has not been made. Most employers today know that race discrimination in the employment context is illegal (under both federal and state law) and therefore make a concerted effort to not discriminate against their employees and job applicants. However, the full scope of racial equality contemplated by our federal and state civil rights laws escapes many employers because they still view race discrimination exclusively as an intentional act (e.g., termination, failure to hire, failure to promote, unwarranted discipline, etc.). In truth, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act also makes “accidental” race discrimination unlawful. But what does it mean for discrimination to be “accidental” in the employment context? Background: Disparate Treatment v. Disparate Impact Racial disparity in this country has a long and sordid history. Beginning with slavery in the seventeenth century, racial inequality is a foe we as citizens continue to battle. The long-stated social goal of “racial equality” sparks images of the 1960’s civil rights marches, police shootings, “Jim Crow” laws, voter suppression, and segregated public schools. No wonder that when most people think about preventing race discrimination in the workplace, they envision the illegality of such intentional acts as refusing to hire based on race, racially motivated terminations, intentionally underpaying minorities, etc. Without question, Congress drafted the Civil Rights Act to make such racially motivated decisions unlawful. However, Congress also recognized that to eliminate racial discrimination (particularly in the workplace) it would have to also address the inherent racial bias that had been “baked into” our workplace culture through centuries of inequality. Thus, Congress created two types of unlawful discrimination claims: (1) disparate treatment, and (2) disparate impact. Disparate treatment is just as it sounds — the intentional mistreatment of an employee based on that person’s race, gender, religion, etc. Disparate treatment race discrimination requires a discriminatory intent (e.g., the company fired the employee because of the employee’s race). By contrast, disparate impact requires no such intentional discriminatory intent. All that is required is that an employer’s program, policy, or plan have a statistically significant discriminatory impact on a racial class of employees — even if that discriminatory impact was completely unintended. Potential Disparate Impact “Pitfalls” Disparate impact race discrimination claims often arise in the employment setting due to an employer’s “facially neutral” practices. But what degree of racial disparity constitutes a disparate impact? According to the EEOC, a good guide is the “four-fifths rule of thumb” according to which a “selection rate” for a protected group of less than four-fifths (or 80 percent) of the most successful group’s selection rate is considered evidence of discrimination. For example, wellness programs, aptitude tests, diploma or education requirements, etc. that meet this statistical test create an inference that there is a “disparate impact” on the protected category of employee in question. However, that “inference of discrimination” is not, standing alone, sufficient to prove a claim of disparate impact discrimination. Employers have the chance to “rebut” that inference of discrimination by showing that its policy or practice has a legitimate business justification. However, the valid business justification must serve a significant and legitimate goal of the employer. Disparate impact race discrimination claims can theoretically apply to any practice, policy, or plan. The troubling aspect of these claims is that most employers are completely unaware that their practices might be inadvertently discriminating against a protected class of individuals. Most employers do not realize the disparate impact of their practices until they are sued for discrimination. Protecting Your Company from Disparate Impact Claims Disparate impact claims can be expensive. Since the basis of the claim is discrimination against a “class” of employees, such claims often involve class actions or are brought by the federal government (i.e., the EEOC) because of employee complaints. Savvy employers should not wait for a lawsuit to be filed, but should take proactive steps to stave off claims of disparate impact. Some suggestions include the following: Ensure that all job requirements, policies, and selection processes relate to business or operational goals and are “racially neutral.” If your company used pre-employment “personality” tests, make sure they have been validated by the EEOC. Conduct recruiting efforts from a wide and diverse applicant pool, including using local resources that provide access to minority applicants. Use measurable experience, competency, and education checklists for each position and make sure the job requirements you impose are necessary for the role (e.g., don’t require an advanced degree if it really is not needed). Review employee participation in company sponsored plans and programs (e.g., health insurance, wellness, 401(k), etc.) to see if there is a lack of participation among your workforce along racial lines. Evaluate compensation levels along racial lines to make sure pay levels seem merit and experience based. Generally, take stock of your workforce. Is it racially diverse? If not, you may want to dig deeper into your company’s policies or practices. The Expertise to Get it Right Trying to evaluate the racial makeup of your company and deciding whether any of your policies, programs, or practices are to blame for a lack of diversity sounds like a daunting undertaking — particularly for companies with employees working in different locations and even in different states or countries. Fortunately, companies do not need to walk down this path alone. The professionals at C2 Essentials are experienced at evaluating discriminatory practices and can help evaluate your workforce on any number of different bases. Evaluating the degree of equality among your workforce can not only help avoid costly litigation, but can help fulfill one of the outstanding promises of the Civil Rights Act — racial equality among our nation’s workforce. C2 provides strategic HR outsourcing to clients who want to develop optimal workforce strategies and solutions to allow them to be more competitive and profitable. C2 blog posts are intended for educational and informational purposes only.

https://medium.com/@c2essentials/disparate-impact-claims-what-employers-should-know-about-unintended-racial-inequality-dcfbc654efb2

[]

2021-02-04 16:22:28.569000+00:00

['Claims', 'Racism', 'Disparate Impact', 'Racial Equality', 'Civil Rights']

The Kaingaroa Rock Carvings

Since I was a small boy, I’ve had a keen interest in ancient civilisations and archaeology. As an adult, I have been fortunate to be able to travel overseas and visit some amazing historical sites in Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Tunisia, Italy, United Kingdom, Thailand, Cambodia and several of the Pacific Islands. My homeland, New Zealand, is a relatively young country and is believed to be one of the last lands to be settled by humans. It is a lush and fertile country with spectacular mountains, lakes, forests and coastline. It has cute little towns, beautiful cities and great people. However, with the Maori people discovering New Zealand only around 800 years ago and having a fairly primitive level of technology based around wood, bone, flax and stone, my curiosity for ancient sites was going to have to wait until I was overseas again. Or so I thought. It will come as quite a surprise to many, but it turns out that New Zealand has numerous sites containing unusual stone formations and rock art. The theories and stories surrounding the origins of these sites vary wildly, ranging from naturally formed volcanic rock formations, to civilisations that may have predated the Maori, to giants and fairies. Regardless of what one believes to be true, the sites themselves are incredibly interesting. I’ve spent the last few years slowly tracking them down have visited the Kaimanawa Wall, Raglan Petroglyphs, Takiroa Rock Drawings and Weka Pass Rock Drawings to observe them firsthand. My most recent hunt was for the Kaingaroa Rock Carvings. It can be fairly difficult to locate the site as it is unmarked and cannot be seen from the road. Unless you know where to look, chances are you will drive right past the little track that leads from the roadside to the rock shelter. I certainly did. About six times! With a little help from my friends Google and Google Maps I was able to gather just enough information to help me roughly figure out whereabouts to search for the path. Even then, I searched on the wrong side of the road for an hour or more due to the vague information available. Eventually, just as I was starting to get low on petrol and was considering giving up, I was able to locate the track entrance. While it is not signposted, once you have found it, the trail to the rock shelter is well trodden and easy to follow. The path is about a 10 minute walk from the roadside to the rock shelter. When the shelter first came into view I couldn’t help but feel very excited! What a fascinating site, that barely anyone knows about!

https://john-mills.medium.com/the-kaingaroa-rock-carvings-888713bdcfe1

['John Mills']

2019-11-26 11:33:53.145000+00:00

['Archaeology', 'History', 'Ancient History', 'New Zealand']

ERC Token Standards for Dummies, Like Me

Ethereum based tokens which can be bought, sold, or traded, have become the backbone of Ethereum ecosystem, innovative companies use them as internal currencies within their ecosystem. Some are listed on exchanges and act like shares of the company and some become collectibles, as in the game of CryptoKitties. But still people aspiring to join the crypto race, are troubled by questions like these: Which type of Token best suits my idea? How many types of token standards are circulating in the Ethereum community? What are the advantages and disadvantages of various ERC token standards? How different token standards work? If these questions linger in your mind too, or otherwise you’re just a scholar aiming to expand your knowledge, here is a technical introduction to various ERC standards popular in the Ethereum community. But, do you know what is ERC? KEEP IN MIND BEFORE YOU PROCEED: The code present in this blog is solely for educational purposes and not written in its entirety. Please do not implement it in production applications! First, what is ERC? ERC stands for Ethereum Request for Comment. Every open source community needs a proposal request-approval system to accept revolutionary changes put forward by its users and improve itself. ERCs serve this purpose for Ethereum, they include some technical guidelines elaborating suggestions about development of the Ethereum network. Development is a step by step process Developers of the Ethereum community propose new standards for the Ethereum platform, by submitting an Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP). This includes protocol specifications and contract standards. Once that EIP is approved by a committee and finalized, it becomes an ERC. The finalized EIPs give the Ethereum developers a set of implementable standards. This allows Smart Contracts to be built with these standards, which a common interface can access. My Assumptions After this part of the blog I’m going to make some assumptions, while explaining token anatomy concepts, if you don’t, you should skip the anatomy part for each token standard, they will be as follows: Reader should have basic knowledge of Solidity’s syntax. Or at least you should be a developer who could relate to it. You are able to refer to a subject explained in a previous section of this blog and relate it to the current subject to further your understanding. You know about standard zeppelin contracts, if you don’t you should be able to browse the following Github handle to understand my references: ERC 20 ERC 20 is the most well-known among all the standards present within the entire crypto community, and most tokens issued on top of the Ethereum platform use it. Helping developers to accurately predict how new tokens will function within the larger Ethereum system. The impact that ERC 20 therefore has on developers is massive, as projects do not need to be redone each time a new token is released. Rather, they are designed to be compatible with new tokens, provided those tokens adhere to the rules. Developers of new tokens have by-and-large observed the ERC 20 rules, meaning that most of the tokens released through Ethereum based ICOs are ERC 20 compliant. ERC 20 Anatomy Here’s a basic interface describing function and event signatures of ERC20 contracts, which is followed by the explanation of each function: contract ERC20 { event Transfer( address indexed from, address indexed to, uint256 value ); event Approval( address indexed owner, address indexed spender, uint256 value ); function totalSupply() public view returns(uint256); function balanceOf(address who) public view returns(uint256); function transfer(address to, uint256 value) public returns(bool); function allowance(address owner, address spender) public view returns (uint256); function transferFrom(address from, address to, uint256 value) public returns (bool); function approve(address spender, uint256 value) public returns (bool); } totalSupply Public function totalSupply , is accessible to all, and it displays the number of tokens in circulation. Since, it is labelled with a view modifier, calling it won’t consume any gas. So you can know about the total tokens in supply for any ERC 20 based token, for free. Zeppelin implements this logic by updating the value of internal variable totalSupply_ every time new tokens are minted. Its value can be accessed as follows: // its value is increased when new tokens are minted uint256 totalSupply_; // access the value of totalSupply_ function totalSupply() public view returns (uint256) { return totalSupply_; } balanceOf Function balanceOf is another public function with view modifier making it accessible to all and gas free. It takes in an Ethereum addresses and returns the number of tokens allocated to that address. Zeppelin maintains an internal mapping for this purpose, as follows: // Updated when tokens are minted or transferred mapping(address => uint256) balances; // Returns tokens held by the address passed as _owner function balanceOf(address _owner) public view returns (uint256 balance) { return balances[_owner]; } transfer Function transfer is different from the above two functions because it will consume gas, since it will result in a state change within the Ethereum Smart contracts. It is used to transfer tokens from one address to another, when called by respective token holders. _to address is the recipient of the tokens of value amount, in the following representation taken from Zeppelin: function transfer(address _to, uint256 _value) public returns (bool) { // Check for blank addresses require(_to != address(0)); // Check to ensure valid transfer require(_value <= balances[msg.sender]); // SafeMath.sub will throw if there is not enough balance. balances[msg.sender] = balances[msg.sender].sub(_value); balances[_to] = balances[_to].add(_value); // Event transfer defined in the ERC 20 interface above Transfer(msg.sender, _to, _value); return true; } allowance, approve and transferFrom Lastly, functions allowance , approve and transferFrom offer some advanced functionalities and are used to authorize some other Ethereum address to utilize your tokens on your behalf. This other Ethereum address could be a smart contract designed to handle tokens or just another account. Following is the implementation by Zeppelin solidity, incorporating the required logic for these functions: Function approve is used by a token owner, to allow some spender to use a particular value of his tokens on his behalf. is used by a token owner, to allow some to use a particular of his tokens on his behalf. Similarly, allowance can be used to check spender's allowance for a particular owner can be used to check allowance for a particular And transferFrom can be finally used by spender to transfer allowed number of tokens. What was the problem with ERC 20? Now that you have gone through the basic functionalities of ERC 20, we can start discussing it flaws and the different requirements which resulted in various flavors of token standards present in the Ethereum driven market. To be true, there were many. Not that ERC 20 has many flaws, but it is the most basic standard for tokens, and to solve specific problems, many upgrades were needed. Here we will first discuss various improvements suggested by ERC223. ERC 223 ERC223 is built on top of ERC20 and is backwards compatible, meaning it incorporates all the functions mentioned above in ERC 20 section, it solves the following problems: Problem of lost tokens It happens during the transfer of ERC 20 tokens to a contract. When people mistakenly use the instructions for sending tokens to a wallet and send them to a smart contract which is not designed to handle it, their tokens get stuck in the smart contract. What’s worse? Since, the contract was not designed to handle these tokens, these tokens will be stuck there forever. Here is an explanation of the problem from ERC 223 official github page: Reducing energy consumption The transfer of ERC223 tokens to a contract is a one step process rather than two steps process (for ERC20), and this means two times less gas and no extra Blockchain bloating. Anatomy of ERC 223 After understanding the problems solved by ERC 223, let’s look into a simple implementation to understand how it works: contract ERC223 { event Transfer( address indexed from, address indexed to, uint value, bytes indexed data ); function totalSupply() public view returns(uint256); function balanceOf(address _owner) public view returns(uint256); function transfer(address _to, uint256 _value) public returns (bool); function transfer(address to, uint value, bytes data) public returns (bool); } ERC223ReceivingContract Standard ERC223ReceivingContract must have a function tokenFallback , the sample interface would be like this: contract ERC223ReceivingContract { /** * @dev Standard ERC223 function that will handle * incoming token transfers. * @param _from Token sender address. * @param _value Amount of tokens. * @param _data Transaction metadata. */ function tokenFallback( address _from, uint _value, bytes _data ) public; } transfer Functions totalSupply and balanceOf have been discussed in ERC 20 the change comes in implementation of the new transfer function. function transfer(address _to, uint _value, bytes _data) public { assembly { codeLength := extcodesize(_to) } if (codeLength > 0) { ERC223ReceivingContract receiver = ERC223ReceivingContract(_to); receiver.tokenFallback(msg.sender, _value, _data); } require(super.transfer(_to, _value)); } In the above code, our new transfer function takes in an extra parameter compared to the one mentioned in ERC 20, i.e. _data . It is used by assembly to retrieve the size of the code on target address, for a contract address codeLength will be greater than zero and tokenFallback function will be invoked for it. The token transfer will fail if the recipient is a contract but does not implement the tokenFallback function or the fallback function to receive funds. In short, ERC223 checks for byte code length of the address tokens are being transferred to, and if it is a contract, it looks for a function with the signature of tokenFallback , hence solving the problem of tokens stuck in contracts. ERC 827 ERC 827 is a standard which rivals ERC 223, it can be used to solve the same problems solved by ERC 223, moreover it offers flexibility to transfer data along with tokens to smart contracts and execute them. This means it can be used to solve specific problems other than tokens getting stuck in smart contracts. In recent times ERC 827 seems to be winning against ERC 223 as it has been included by zeppelin in its open source contracts, while ERC 223 is still not present in the tokens provided by them. The motivation stated in ERC 827 ERC/EIP is as follows: This extension of the ERC20 interface allows any tokens on Ethereum to be re-used by other applications: from wallets to decentralized exchanges. The ERC20 token standard is widely accepted but it only allows the transfer of value, ethereum users are available to transfer value and data on transactions, with these extension of the ERC20 token standard they will be able to do the same with ERC20 tokens. To understand the usage of ERC 827 token let’s think of a hypothetical shopping cart on a merchants website. Shopping cart on a merchants website This cart has items waiting to be bought stored in it. But it cannot proceed to checkout unless user has the required number of tokens. When someone transfers tokens to the owner of the cart, some data is passed with the cart, which calls another function present within a contract which checks whether the cart owner has enough balance and proceeds to checkout for the items saved in cart accordingly. Anatomy of ERC 827 A sample implementation of the ERC 827 contracts implemented by Zeppelin is as follows: contract ERC827 is ERC20 { function approve( address _spender, uint256 _value, bytes _data ) public returns (bool); function transfer( address _to, uint256 _value, bytes _data ) public returns (bool); function transferFrom( address _from, address _to, uint256 _value, bytes _data ) public returns (bool); } The ERC827 contract here inherits the standard ERC20 contract. Hence becoming backwards compatible it updates the signature and logic behind only three functions of the ERC 20 contracts- approve , transfer and transferFrom . We will discuss them in detail one by one: approve It allows to approve the transfer of value and execute a call with the data sent during the approve function call. Beware that changing an allowance with this method brings the risk that someone may use both the old and the new allowance by unfortunate transaction ordering. One possible solution to mitigate this race condition is to first reduce the spender’s allowance to 0 and set the desired value afterwards: function approve(address _spender, uint256 _value, bytes _data) public returns (bool) { require(_spender != address(this)); require(super.approve(_spender, _value)); require(_spender.call(_data)); return true; } transfer It transfers tokens to a specified address and executes a call with the sent data on the same transaction. It will return true if the call function is executed successfully. function transfer(address _to, uint256 _value, bytes _data) public returns (bool) { require(_to != address(this)); require(super.transfer(_to, _value)); require(_to.call(_data)); return true; } transferFrom Like transfer function it also transfers tokens from one address to another and make a contract call on the same transaction. But this can be used in coordination with approve function and execute different logic while approving and transferring tokens. function transferFrom( address _from, address _to, uint256 _value, bytes _data ) public returns (bool) { require(_to != address(this)); super.transferFrom(_from, _to, _value); require(_to.call(_data)); return true; } ERC 721 ERC 721 presents a totally different concept from ERC 223 and ERC 827. To understand it properly readers must grasp the concept of fungible and non-fungible items. Difference between fungible and non fungible? An item can be considered fungible if it can be exchanged with another item of same type. This means the value of two fungible items is same in everyone’s eyes and they’re interchangeable. Consider a 100 Rs bill. Fungible 100 Rs This 100 Rs is interchangeable with another 100 Rs bill with a different reference number. So, it is fungible. Non-fungible Healey Westland Non fungible comes from the word “not interchangeable”. Lets try to understand this with a Healey Westland, one of the rare collectible cars. The value of two different Healey Westland may vary on their age and conditions. They may vary from collector to collector. This makes Healey Westland a non-fungible item. ERC 721 based Cryptokittes Now, we’re ready to understand the usage of ERC 721, which portrays the concept of non-fungible tokens. You cannot differentiate between two ERC 20 based tokens, they’re one and the same for you, but ERC 721 proposes a concept by which token holders will be able to differentiate between the tokens they hold. One famous example is CryptoKitties, it is a game in which players can buy, sell, trade, and breed digital cats. Each cat is unique in some way and this uniqueness makes the CryptoKitties extremely collectible, as someone could take interest in the characteristics of several kittens and wish to own them. However, there are various other cases too, when non-fungibility of tokens tokens, can prove to be an asset. For instance, tokens can be used to represent real estate objects, intellectual property rights, etc… And each token might have some different parameters added to it. Or they can be used to represent items on a merchant’s website where an Adidas shoe will be different from a Nike shoe. Even different shoes within the same brand can be represented in a similar fashion. Adidas vs Nike ERC 721 Anatomy Now we know why we need ERC 721 tokens so lets understand how they work. Here is an interface of ERC 721 followed by Zeppelin, followed by the explanation of functions mentioned in the interface, as implemented by zeppelin. contract ERC721 { event Transfer( address indexed _from, address indexed _to, uint256 _tokenId ); event Approval( address indexed _owner, address indexed _approved, uint256 _tokenId ); function balanceOf(address _owner) public view returns (uint256 _balance); function ownerOf(uint256 _tokenId) public view returns (address _owner); function transfer(address _to, uint256 _tokenId) public; function approve(address _to, uint256 _tokenId) public; function takeOwnership(uint256 _tokenId) public; } balanceOf In the following snippet ownedTokens represents the list of token IDs owned by a particular address. And balanceOf function returns the number of tokens owned by a particular address. mapping (address => uint256[]) private ownedTokens; function balanceOf(address _owner) public view returns (uint256) { return ownedTokens[_owner].length; } ownerOf Mapping tokenOwner takes in tokenId and returns the owner of that ID, but since it's visibility is private, ownerOf function is used to make the value of this mapping available publicly. It also includes a check against zero addresses before returning the value. mapping (uint256 => address) private tokenOwner; function ownerOf(uint256 _tokenId) public view returns (address) { address owner = tokenOwner[_tokenId]; require(owner != address(0)); return owner; } transfer This transfer function takes in the new owner’s address as _to parameter and _tokenId of the token being transferred, also note that it can only be called by the owner of token. It must include the logic to check whether the transfer clears approval check, required for a transfer. Then comes the logic to remove token’s possession from current owner and add it to the list of tokens owned by new owner. modifier onlyOwnerOf(uint256 _tokenId) { require(ownerOf(_tokenId) == msg.sender); _; } function transfer(address _to, uint256 _tokenId) public onlyOwnerOf(_tokenId) { // Logic to clear approval for token transfer // Logic to remove token from current token owner // Logic to add Token to new token owner } approve Approves another address to claim for the ownership of the given token ID, this is another function restricted by a modifier onlyOwnerOf , which means only a token owner can access this function for a particular token. Variable tokenApprovals is a mapping from token ID to approved addresses. Similar to the transfer function discussed above approve too, takes in _to (the new token owner’s address) and _tokenId as input parameters. It checks new owner must not be the same as previous owner of the token then if any one of the addresses among _to and previously approved address passes the address(0) check, it updates the tokenApprovals mapping and fires an event named Approval . mapping (uint256 => address) private tokenApprovals; modifier onlyOwnerOf(uint256 _tokenId) { require(ownerOf(_tokenId) == msg.sender); _; } function approvedFor(uint256 _tokenId) public view returns (address) { return tokenApprovals[_tokenId]; } function approve(address _to, uint256 _tokenId) public onlyOwnerOf(_tokenId) { address owner = ownerOf(_tokenId); require(_to != owner); if (approvedFor(_tokenId) != 0 || _to != 0) { tokenApprovals[_tokenId] = _to; // Event initialised in the interface above Approval(owner, _to, _tokenId); } } takeOwnership Function approvedFor has been explained in the previous section, function isApprovedFor returns a Boolean value depending upon the response of condition approvedFor(_tokenId) == _owner . Function takeOwnership takes in _tokenId and applies the same check on message sender, if he passes the check logic similar to the transfer function is applied to claim the ownership of given _tokenID . function isApprovedFor(address _owner, uint256 _tokenId) internal view returns (bool) { return approvedFor(_tokenId) == _owner; } function takeOwnership(uint256 _tokenId) public { require(isApprovedFor(msg.sender, _tokenId)); // Logic to clear approval for token transfer // Logic to remove token from current token owner // Logic to add Token to new token owner } Summary Ah, this must have been a pretty intense read. So, congratulations on reaching the end. Now you should be having some basic knowledge of the popular token standards circulating within the Ethereum community. Congratulations!!! For those who need to choose a particular Token standard for their application, please keep in mind that at the time of this writing most of the standards explained in this blog, i.e. ERC 223, ERC 721 and ERC 827 are still not accepted officially and may undergo revisions. Sources

https://medium.com/deqode/erc-token-standards-for-dummies-like-me-b6b8ace0f303

['Ayush Tiwari']

2019-01-31 12:00:57.893000+00:00

['Token Sale', 'Smart Contracts', 'Token', 'Ethereum', 'Erc20']

Gluu wins 2020 Couchbase Independent Partner of the Year Award

Gluu wins 2020 Couchbase Independent Partner of the Year Award Couchbase, the creator of the enterprise-class, multi-cloud NoSQL database, today announced at the Connect Conference that Gluu was acknowledged with the Couchbase Independent Software Vendor Partner of the Year Award. Guest judges for the Couchbase Community Awards included Carl Olofson, Research Vice President at IDC, and Jon Reed, Co-Founder of Diginomica. Open to Couchbase’s network of more than 300 partners, the award recognizes partners’ work in bringing differentiation and innovation to customers, and leading them to successful outcomes. The Couchbase database is used for Gluu Server authentication and authorization requirements that requires extreme concurrency and “active-active” multi-datacenter replication. “Couchbase and cloud native technology has enabled Gluu for the first time to achieve true horizontal auto-scaling,” said Michael Schwartz, CEO of Gluu. “It’s a great honor to win this award, because it recognizes the sustained efforts of our combined engineering teams to make this accomplishment a reality. Couchbase has enabled Gluu to make performance into a competitive advantage. We’re crushing the competition in both transactions per second and total cost of ownership. You can’t do this stuff with ancient LDAP servers, no matter how much lipstick you put on them.” Learn more from Gluu and Couchbase’s previous joint press release: Open Source Gluu Server and Couchbase Shatter Billion-Login-Per-Day Threshold “We are excited to not only continue, but to strengthen our long-standing partnership with Gluu,” said Matt McDonough, Vice President of Business Development at Couchbase. “Through Couchbase and Gluu’s cloud native approach, we’ve been able to split services and workloads to support auto-scaling easily enough to surpass the 1B authentications in a single day milestone. Together, we will continue to optimize the Couchbase platform along with Gluu’s robust, industry-proven solution for single sign-on and two-factor authentication to deliver the next billion authentications in a day.” Read the press release: http://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/10/15/2109259/0/en/UPS-Tesco-and-Infosys-Among-Winners-of-Inaugural-Couchbase-Community-Awards-and-2020-Couchbase-Partner-Awards.html

https://medium.com/@gluufederation/gluu-wins-2020-couchbase-independent-partner-of-the-year-award-82cd46013159

['Gluu Federation']

2020-10-15 22:58:06.111000+00:00

['Gluu Server', 'Couchbase Award', 'NoSQL', 'Identity']

HOPE — Breathing Life. HAIKU TALE

Haiku Tale Photo by Lina Trochez on Unsplash Numb voice of silence Like chime of thoughts in process ; Hope born from ashes. Magic which it floors Like a fragrance from abode Lantern’s light called — Hope. The tale seems endless If art lies in pursuance Hope — Never gives up. To the Life it breathes Hope calms the storms of duress Like ease in pitch-dark. To hold onto Life And rise with the wings of time Garner — Hope — as guide.

https://medium.com/haiku-hub/hope-breathing-life-ab3d92f9897b

['Swati Suman']

2020-05-22 16:28:06.027000+00:00

['Personal Growth', 'Life Lessons', 'Contemporary Haiku', 'Poetry', 'Hope']

The Trump-Cuomo Grief Monster

The Trump-Cuomo Grief Monster When he died of Covid, two of his children blamed Trump, and two blamed Cuomo. Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash They split in their response. They wanted to charge Trump with a crime against humanity. They wanted to sue Cuomo. They wanted to sue China. They wanted to sue the US government. “It’s a pandemic,” said the eldest grandchild, a lawyer. She was dry and emotionless. “No one will take accountability for his death. That would open the floodgates to more lawsuits.” The siblings were divided. Two believed the other two did not deserve their inheritance, because they supported the man who killed their father. They looked on the internet and on YouTube for any evidence they could find. The Trump-Cuomo grief monster infiltrated their lives and filled them with rage. A Zoom funeral would be more responsible. No, they should go there in person and have an event as a “fuck you” to Covid. No, they should just bury him and do a large mass later, “when this was all over.” No, this would never be over, because the Chinese would release another virus and then we would lose more freedoms. We needed to fight back now, or his death was in vain. Nothing was right. They all tried to loop back around to “what he would have wanted.” “He would not have wanted us to risk our lives for his funeral.” “He would not have wanted us to live in fear.” He would have wanted this or that. And on and on they went, putting their own desires into a dead man’s mouth…masking their own desires by making a statement that could never be proven true or false. SSRIs were prescribed. An overwhelmed grief counselor could not handle all the tears. Senseless. Senseless death. Senseless doom. The grief counselor tried to help them frame the death, to make it into an inspirational story. But there was no frame — Her attempts fell into nothingness, like dry sand. He could have lasted five or ten more Christmases, five or ten more Thanksgivings. And there was blame. Blame on politicians, blame on siblings for not taking him in and for putting him in a home, blame on so-and-so for voting for what’s-his-name. “How could they vote for someone who called our father stupid for dying?” The disease ravaged on. Two of the children (who were on opposite sides of the political fence) developed a combination of anxiety and depression. One insisted the virus was not real, and that he was a person of interest. The other insisted the virus was real, but created and released intentionally, and that it was created to target her genes in particular. Both of them felt hunted by the government. Neither applied for unemployment benefits, even though they both qualified. The other two seemed all right, but they were afraid of having to carry the emotions of the other two. They were barely holding it together. They couldn’t take any more weight. Christmas came and went. Those on SSRIs handled it all right. They were fine with cooking small birds and staying in. The other two made large meals for just a few people and sighed at their big, empty houses. They did and didn’t want to carry the others. It was complicated. The drive to file lawsuits fizzled out. The lawyer in the family was right, maybe. Life was moving on. The healing was not over. Just the rage had dulled. The pandemic was still here. They were still living through it, and now they had to protect their children, their mother. Life kept going. The pain didn’t subside, but this thing kept on going and going. They would get away with what they did, whatever it was they did, whoever they were. One more meaningless passing in a ravaged, moaning sea of souls.

https://medium.com/are-you-okay/the-trump-cuomo-grief-monster-a2b253d23a2d

['Lisa Martens']

2020-12-27 23:19:12.356000+00:00

['Family', 'Short Story', 'Covid 19', 'Grief', 'Fiction']

Life Insurance For Newbies

As you consider the wide range of life insurance coverage available, you may wonder what type really fits your needs now, and what will suit your needs in the future. A good, first step is to ask yourself why you are buying insurance, and how it will fill your personal and family financial security requirements. Do you want insurance to cover a new home or mortgage? A college education? A business investment? Your retirement? Your final expenses? Once you have the answers, you can look at the basic types of coverage, whole life, universal life, and term. Whole Life Insurance — Cash Value for Your Dollar Whole life insurance helps provide not only security from financial hardship in the case of a death, but also a “living” savings and investment vehicle for the policyholder. As cash value insurance that links insurance protection with savings, premium dollars paid contribute to the combined program. Premium payments first pay the cost of pure insurance coverage, including expenses and mortality factors of the insurance company; the company then invests “leftover” dollars to build the policy’s guaranteed cash value. In addition to the guaranteed cash value buildup in the policy, policyholders are provided with regular dividend payments, the result of lower expenses, lower mortality rates, and higher investment results than were predicted when premiums were set. Another whole life insurance feature is predictability of expense: Premium payments at inception of the policy will not change and will continue until the policy endows (when the cash value of the policy equals the face amount of the policy). Or, an “accelerated” payment plan may be chosen, which permits payment of premiums later in life out of withdrawals from the dividend balance rather than out-of-pocket. A guarantee of insurability comes with any whole life insurance policy. Once the individual to be insured provides initial evidence of insurability — and as long as premium payment responsibilities are met — the insured is guaranteed coverage for life in accordance with the terms of the policy. Evidence of insurability will never be necessary again, as long as the original policy remains in force. The final feature to consider is the value of whole life insurance as a “creditor,” if necessary. Funds may be borrowed against the cash value of the policy at any time, but outstanding loan balances will be deducted from the death benefit in the event of the death of the insured. There are numerous variations on whole life insurance as it was originally conceived. In keeping with the changing investment philosophy of policyholders, universal whole life was created. This policy provides all of the above benefits of whole life, and adds the possibility for the policyholder to change both the amount of premium payments and insurance coverage as individual needs change. The policyholder does accept the investment risk associated with the investment portfolio choices available, which can include growth, income, money market, equity income, and diversified mutual funds. Either conservative or aggressive return options are thereby available for policyholders. Term Insurance — Pure Protection for Your Dollar As the name implies, term insurance provides pure insurance protection for a specific period — or “term” — of time. It does not generally offer any guarantee of premium, death benefit stability, or right of renewal. It does provide some of the lowest cost protection available, and it is this cost factor that is its most beneficial feature for some. There are one-year policies offering a right of renewal at a slightly higher premium paid each year to reflect the higher age of the insured. There are also decreasing term plans available to cover mortgages and loans. This means the face amount of the policy decreases as the mortgage or loan obligation decreases, thus moderating premium payments. Conversion to a whole life policy without a medical examination is generally permitted with most term policies. Your Personal Life Insurance Needs Contact your financial and/or insurance professional who can help you determine the short-term or long-term nature of your needs, as well as how the life insurance coverage available can help fulfill them. He or she can analyze your current cash position to assure the life insurance coverage you choose is appropriate and affordable for you. A Quick Look at Life Insurance Needs Have you ever wondered how much life insurance is “enough”? One general rule of thumb says that you should buy an amount equal to five to seven times your annual income. Sure, it may be a reasonable guideline, but this method does not relate life insurance needs to your personal financial goals. A better method may be to implement a “needs analysis.” This process helps you determine the future short-term and long-term financial needs of you and your family. Once your needs have been identified, you can design a plan to help assure that money will be available to meet those objectives. Needs analysis is not the highly technical financial planning associated with business ownership or planning for the conservation, distribution, and coordination of wealthy individuals’ assets. Rather, it is appropriate for everyone. By assigning a specific dollar value to each item or “need” you want to provide for, needs analysis zeroes in on what may still be required, in terms of additional capital, to get the job done. Through specific questions designed to identify areas of concern, you will be able to establish your financial priorities. Here are some examples: What is most important to you? How would your objectives be affected in the event of the premature death or disability of you or your spouse? Is your current savings program adequate to accomplish your financial objectives? Personal and Financial Perspectives For most people, needs typically revolve around attaining and maintaining a comfortable lifestyle. This often translates into a good home, the advantages of a college education for your children, enough income left over for leisure activities, and last but not least, a retirement income sufficient to maintain your lifestyle when your working years are over. While saving and investing will undoubtedly be part of your overall planning strategy, it takes time to accumulate a pool of capital. One advantage of life insurance is that it creates an instant estate, which helps assure that money will be available to aid in meeting specific goals in case an untimely event (such as an early death) deprives you of the time required for wealth accumulation. A complete needs analysis helps determine what is important in creating and protecting the lifestyle you and your family enjoy. Even if current income doesn’t stretch far enough to satisfy all of your future financial objectives, the needs analysis process will help you establish and focus on your priorities. Your insurance professional can guide you through this comprehensive analysis to identify your goals and to show you how life insurance can help to meet each of your objectives. By initiating a plan of action, you can create an estate that will provide financial assets should you no longer be able to do so yourself. Customizing Life Insurance with Policy Riders When many people consider life insurance, the first thought that usually comes to mind is, “How much is enough?” However, there are other aspects of life insurance policies that can provide important benefits. For example, riders essentially allow policy owners to give themselves and their beneficiaries’ added protection if certain events happen. Among the surprisingly large number of riders that life insurance companies offer, one of the more frequently utilized is the “waiver of premium.” The waiver of premium rider protects you in the event that you are disabled and can no longer afford to pay your life insurance premiums. This rider has been compared to having a miniature disability policy on your life insurance contract. Not only does the insurance company pay your premiums pursuant to the terms of the contract, but if you own a whole life policy, the policy cash values and dividends generally continue to grow. These increasing policy values are a ready source of income that can be used to help pay your expenses if you are disabled and can no longer work. You could access these values through loans or surrenders. (Note: Loans and withdrawals may result in adverse tax consequences and loans carry interest. Cash values and death benefits may also be affected.) Eligibility Requirements Like a life insurance applicant’s insurability, the availability of the waiver of premium rider may also be based on certain risk factors, such as general health and past medical history. In addition, once issued, most policies contain important eligibility requirements before the waiver of premium rider will take effect. Policies generally contain a specific waiting period (e.g., six months) before premiums begin to be paid under the rider. Some policies apply waiver of premium coverage differently for a disability occurring prior to age 60, compared to one occurring between the ages of 60 and 65. Under many policies, the waiver of premium provision terminates at age 65. While the waiver of premium rider on term and whole life policies will generally waive the entire premium, the waiver may work a little differently in other types of policies, separating the premium waiver for the cost of insurance from that associated with the cash value or investment fund. The definition of “disability” in your policy is also crucial, because it determines when your obligation to pay premiums ends. The key is usually whether you are “totally disabled” under your policy’s definition. While some policies consider you totally disabled when an illness or injury leaves you unfit for the type of work that you have always done, other policies may contain a clause that says you must be unfit for any type of work. Riders to the Rescue Policy riders tend to take a “back seat” when planning insurance needs because the main focus is to obtain coverage for adequate protection. Determining adequate protection, however, should also involve customizing your life insurance policy with riders that can provide additional benefits to help meet your needs. R. Kenner French, is an executive of VastSolutionsGroup.com, an author of two books, a keynote speaker, and lives on an island — Bainbridge Island, WA.

https://medium.com/@vastsolutionsgroup-com/life-insurance-for-newbies-29afc0d7550

[]

2020-12-11 17:03:35.959000+00:00

['Financial Planning', 'Life Insurance', 'Insurance', 'Wealth', 'Retirement']

The Threat Of Freedom And The Forgotten Value Of Being Powerless

“Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God.” — Martin Luther Newsflash: sometimes, I can’t get what I want. Let’s envision getting what I want as a two-step process: 1) Discover what the cause-effect relationships that govern reality are. 2) Figure out how set the right cause-effect relationships in motion. At step one, I can’t attain my objectives due to a lack of knowledge. If I don’t understand how reality works, I can’t identify what it is that I need to do to reach my goals. If I set out to build a house, then I need to comprehend something about gravity to make an adequate design. At step two, I can’t reach my goals because I’m incapable of executing the tasks that need to be done. I might know what is required, but lack the skills to successfully perform the necessary actions. Although I understand gravity, I am not able to build a spaceship (or a house, for that matter). The solution? Science. All hail science At step one, science fills knowledge gaps: it finds out how reality functions so that I can recognize how to manipulate it to get what I want. Thanks to such knowledge, for example, we now know that praying for health is not super effective and that vaccinating is a better way to avoid sickness. At step two, science frees us from technological obstacles: it designs appliances that allow me to manipulate reality in the way that fulfilling my intention requires. These days, if I would like to cross the ocean by boat, I am no longer at the mercy of weather gods but can always turn on the engine. Science brings the world under our control: we can do more than ever. Science, therefore, liberates us. Empowerment = freedom..? The inference that science increases freedom builds on a specific idea about human freedom. On this view, human beings are free when they can get what they want. Thanks to science, both our capability to discern the cause-effect relationships that underlie reality and our capability to influence these relationships is increasing. Our environment no longer consists of inscrutable developments — Getting sick? The Gods must be angry — but of processes that we can understand. Consequentially, we have more power than ever to ensure that reality unfolds as we want it to. Sciences frees us, because it improves our ability to get what we want. Our bodies are just objects “We can construct a railway across the Sahara, we can build the Eiffel Tower and talk directly with New York, but we surely cannot improve man. No, we can! Man must look at himself and see himself as a raw material, or at best as a semi-manufactured product, and say: ‘At last, my dear homo sapiens, I will work on you’.” –Leon Trotsky, Sochineniia (1925) For science, the human body is just like other objects that the universe houses: simply something we can influence to get what we want — something that we can manipulate to reach our goals. In that spirit, science seeks to unravel how our machines work. Once that project is complete, we will be able to change our physical bodies in accordance with our heart’s desire. We will no longer be forced to take our corporal characteristics for granted: nose size, voice sound, skin color — all those personal aspects will be something we can choose for. Once we know how our bodies work, we can treat them like we treat our cars: keep the parts we’re pleased with, and replace or repair the components that we would like to be different. Thanks to science, our physique will be completely malleable. This is liberating, because it increases our ability to get what we want. There will be nothing about the human body which must be taken as a given. Next step: our brains. Disenchanting the human mind Science treats human beings as a part of the natural world; it tells us how we work. Once we know how we work, we can develop technologies of self-transformation: ways of making our bodies and our minds more pleasing to ourselves. After all, our brains determine how our minds work. Therefore, if we control our brains, we control our minds. Once we understand the neurological basis of desire, we can manipulate its causes in the brain: a science of the mind yields a technology of the mind. That would allow us to change what we want in the first place. If we cannot get what we want, we can simply change some chemical stuff — change the secretion of these or those neurotransmitters or whatever — thereby changing our desires and freeing ourselves from this unattainable need that we were so silly to harbor. This is not some far-fetched, futuristic fantasy. To give one present-day example: anti-depressants such as Prozac influence the level of serotonin in our brain. This affects all sorts of emotions, reactions and attitudes. By taking it, people can deal with, for example, their low self-esteem or their desire to remain with abusive partners not by satisfying it, but by destroying it. Such desires need no longer be taken as a given: we can simply decide not to have them. What a wonderful illustration of the liberating power of science! Surely psychiatric drugs can free us from unwanted mental states just as the discovery of penicillin once liberated us from the terror of tuberculosis? Choice overload “I believe that much of the distinctive value of the natural world and of things related to it, depends on their relative imperviousness to rational control.” — Stephen Darwall There’s one small problem. Instead of contributing to a better life, this newly won freedom might remove the meaning from it. The philosopher David Owens writes: “Science invites us to exercise control over our lives by finding out what we want, working out how to get it and then acting accordingly. But now we are being told that we shouldn’t take our desires as given, that we can act to change them as well. But if we change what we want, what basis is left for choice or decision?” Think about this question for a minute. When the technology of the mind is complete and we can alter our desires as we like, how shall we judge what to value in life? After all, when the science of our brains is complete, we could control which desires, needs and wants we have to begin with it. What seemed like an expansion of self-control, threatens to rob us from any grounds for making a choice. Without unchosen desires, when we don’t need to take any value judgment as given, what is left as a basis for deciding how to live and what to do? Here’s Owens again: “If man is just a bag of chemicals, once we know what these chemicals are, we can re-mix them at will. And by re-mixing them at will we can give ourselves whatever character we like. But if we can choose a character at random, our current needs and interests lose their authority as grounds for taking any decision. And what other grounds for taking decisions are there?” My choice That I — deep inside — harbor a bundle of personality traits, needs, desires and values which we cannot willingly alter makes my decisions meaningful as my decisions. Too much control that personal aspect from our decisions. It seems that the ability to make a meaningful choice — a choice that is distinctively mine — requires that this choice is subject to some constraints which I cannot influence. This unchosen core is me, and without such an unchosen base there could be no decision being made by me at all. The very possibility of personal choice requires that there are unchosen restrictions on this choice. These unchosen aspects of me make me uniquely me. And, perhaps contrary to the narrative of science as the big liberator, there is nothing regrettable about finding oneself, in the ultimate analysis, left with a fundamental core against which one is powerless. Without such a constitutive essence, the rationale for categorizing life’s most important choices as my personal choices evaporates. We’ll all be every-one — we’ll all be no-one.

https://medium.com/the-understanding-project/powerlessness-5fdeb607e831

['Maarten Van Doorn']

2019-06-17 18:58:44.713000+00:00

['Philosophy', 'History', 'Self Improvement', 'Life', 'Psychology']

For Founders, by Founders

We get it! It used to be great fun when it was just you and your co-founder working out of the garage on the initial MVP. But then it got complicated as the team grew, investors started asking questions, and product market fit continued to be elusive. That’s ok! You’re not the first company to experience this and definitely won’t be the last. It really doesn’t matter if you can’t do it all. What matters is how and when you bring in the best people to set your business up for success. And with current events, it’s never been more important to access experienced people willing to roll up their sleeves and help you get through the challenges ahead. In fact, we’ll shortly launch a special version of EV Evaluate™ for founders needing assistance. We understand you don’t want a bunch of consultants telling you things you already know. You want real-world experience to fill knowledge gaps in your team and ready access to exceptional resources to help scale your business. That’s why we created Exit Velocity. We’ve founded and exited startups in the US, UK and Australia. We’re also experienced mentors, advisors and angel investors. We’ve raised capital, grown sales and engineering teams, managed international manufacturing and distribution and got numerous products to market both in the consumer and enterprise space. We’ve lived the same extreme highs and lows of daily startup life. We’ve got a wardrobe full of startup T-shirts and now we want to use that knowledge and experience to help other exceptional founders. Our mission is to help companies to grow, scale and thrive. To become strong, confident and successful businesses. We do this by working alongside the founders, initially to understand and resolve key business issues, and then over the long-term to support the business as it grows to maturity. We’re a unique personalized business accelerator and our results speak for themselves. If you’re a good fit for us, we would love to dig in, see what makes you tick and get you heading in the right direction to Grow, Scale and Thrive. Get in touch today to see if we can help. Celebrating our launch overlooking Silicon Valley. Mark and Stu

https://medium.com/@exitvelocity/for-founders-by-founders-103ae8d17798

['Exit Velocity']

2020-04-06 21:41:17.869000+00:00

['Scaleup', 'Venture Capital', 'Accelerator', 'Startup', 'Founders']

Brands have an easy choice: Better product stories or die.

DNVBs point the way to sunny, direct-to-consumer future and it all starts at the PDP Friends and co-founders Chris White and Jens Nicolaysen launched the outrageously UNPC partywear brand Shinesty from a UC Boulder college apartment in 2014. Today, this world-leading purveyor of denim-look jeankinis and pink pineapple formalwear has taken four rounds of venture investment and is still growing at breakneck speed. Shinesty: Proud inventors of the product description you can’t unsee. The Shinesty mantra: entertain first, sell second Shinesty doesn’t attribute their success to a whizbang retargeting strategy, powerful suggestion engine or frictionless cart functionality. It’s success came from its ability to quickly draw a huge and devoted community of followers thanks to their insanely entertaining PDP copy and email newsletters. Their product stories and newsletters that “don’t suck” became so famous in fact, they garnered Shinesty a feature on Good Morning America while they were still a 2-man show operating out of Chris’ apartment. Two years later, it landed them their own MTV reality show. Then beer brands like Budweiser (see the beer in Buck’s hand above) and Guinness came knocking wanting product placements on Shinesty’s PDPs in order to reach the young, lucrative millennial customers that love Shinesty and tune out traditional advertising. When I tell people I’ve spent most of my career helping brands tell better product stories, I wish it was Shinesty’s product pages they conjured up in their imaginations. Sadly, more likely than not, it’s something akin to the lifeless Payless PDP below they imagine. Laces for a good fit? This is the kind of product description that — years after landing a good job — still lives in its parents basement. In Payless’ defense, the text above does accurately describe the shoe to its left. But the subtext tells shoppers: “We don’t care about our products and neither should you.” For over 60 years payless was the place where people who didn’t care about shoes went to buy them. Unfortunately for them, the world has a new place to buy all the things we don’t care about. It’s called Amazon.com. Selfie light. Black earbuds. Air purifier. White earbuds. Don’t care. Don’t care. Don’t care. Don’t care. By selling the stuff we all need but don’t care about Amazon has scooped up an estimated 38% of all US online sales. That stat has many brands quaking in their digital shopping carts. But there’s a young crop of brands like Shinesty that aren’t only surviving Amazon, they’re experiencing explosive growth right there in the shadow of the largest retailer the world has ever known. 300% growth anyone? They’re called DNVBs (Digitally-Native Vertical Brands). Some, like Glossier and Everlane, have nine-figure revenues and billion-dollar valuations. Others, like Tracksmith and Shinesty, are still early in their growth trajectory. But as a group they’re growing nearly three-times faster than total U.S. e-commerce (Source). And they’re all backed by VC funds who simply don’t invest in companies that aren’t — at a minimum — doubling revenue each year. How are these companies experiencing explosive growth while so many mature retailers with far greater brand recognition are barely scraping by or worse? The key is to understand that, when we talk about being “digitally-native,” it doesn’t just mean they have a better handle on the latest digital commerce technology — though that’s usually the case. Being digitally native goes deeper. These DNVBs are a very different kind of company from the inside out. And they approach the market very differently than their competitors that rose to dominance in the wholesale era. “Content is at the heart of everything we do at Glossier.” – Emily Weiss, Glossier Founder DNVBs: The story doesn’t just sell the product. It is the product. DNVBs like travel brand Away understand the affluent, influential young customers you need to grow a strong DTC channel don’t buy ‘what you make,’ they buy ‘why you make it.’ These customers believe in voting with their dollars and want to know your products are a worthy cause created by a trustworthy brand. If you gain their trust, you’ll gain their loyalty. And the content they produce is the rock that trusted relationship is built upon. Which is why Emily Weiss quote, “Content is at the heart of everything we do at Glossier,” is echoed by most every DNVB founder. Most of us have heard the mantra “content is king.” For DNVBs it’s no marketing cliché; it’s the golden rule. Their content — and the editorial point of view that guides it — is the most valuable asset these brands own. Paging through their ecommerce site and reading their product stories feels more like you’re listening in on a conversation between two friends than a slick sales pitch. The story you get if you ever find yourself on Glossier’s Eye + lip cream PDP (There’s plenty more below the fold too). It sounds like one human speaking to another about something they’re excited about and believe in. It’s full of chatty language, specific details and interesting facts — just like the real-life conversations we all have. It tells the backstory of why Glossier created it and how it actually does what it says. It also tells readers Glossier really cares about and thinks through the products they make. Turn to a friend or coworker and say out loud, “Playing with color has never looked so good.” Then watch their face. The story that comes with a similar product sold by Glossier’s legacy competitor L’Oréal, on the other hand, is written as if it were a print ad torn out of a ’90s glamour magazine (above). It’s short, to the point and full of meaningless marketing speak. I’ve never used a twist-up lip crayon and never will. But I guarantee could’ve easily written this in less than three minutes with no prior knowledge of the product. (Side note: based on long experience as an overworked copywriter, it’s very likely that is how this description came into existence.) Rapha: Short descriptions don’t sell. Long descriptions don’t sell. Stories that show you know what it’s like to race in cold, wet weather do. The fact that all of these DNVBs have deep, well written product stories on every PDP isn’t a coincidence. It’s the core strategy they use to outmaneuver competitors hundreds of times their size. In an interview on the website leanlux.com, Tracksmith founder Matt Taylor says, “Tracksmith is more committed to the little things that don’t have an immediate return but that do pay dividends establishing a connection with our customers and instilling our brand values.” Escape into the luxuriously well-appointed world that is a Tracksmith.com cotton graphic Tee PDP. The professional investors pouring billions of dollars into these brands agree. They see their focus on getting the small, day-to-day interactions — like the product page story — right as a key competitive advantage. It’s easy for big players to launch a high-profile media campaign. But it’s much harder, on a global scale, to speak authentically to each customer in every corner of your brand. Still think DNVBs aren’t that different than other brands? Consider this: 20% of Glossier’s workforce on LinkedIn are writers, editors and proofreaders.(source: LinkedIn Sales Navigator) In her medium post, Camille Kriebitzsch, Principal & cofounder of Eutopia, a venture fund dedicated to investing in DNVBs says, “The inherent promise of the DNVB model is…to offer a buying experience as memorable as the product.” She goes on to highlight the role of the product story: “Content is specialized and created by experts allowing for a more pertinent conversation with each visitor.” (Translation: if your product managers are writing your PDP copy it may already be too late.) Makers of this Men’s PRO Thermal Jersey (name withheld) have mere seconds left (in ecom time) to pull up on the sticks and save their brand. I know you’re probably thinking: “We just don’t have the budget and people power to create that much great content on every PDP. Besides, management is so tied to our wholesale channel, committing resources like these to DTC is out of the question.” DNVBs and their investors know you’re thinking that too. In fact, they’re betting on it. Seeing as it’s the #1 most influential factor in purchase decisions, the question isn’t ‘why do DNVBs care so much about their PDP copy?’ The question is ‘why the hell doesn’t everybody else?’ That is precisely the reason they see such a golden opportunity. They know there will be thousands of legacy brands so chained to the old, wholesale way of doing things they won’t be able to make the sharp turn it takes to reach the new DTC promised land. And it’s already opening up miles of running room for digital native challengers. In commerce as in life, the small things are actually the big things. DNVBs and their investors understand that interesting product stories on every PDP are to building a devoted community what nightly dinner conversations are to building a tight-knit family. As a kid, would you rather take a trip to Disneyland once or twice a year with an otherwise-absentee mom? Or would you rather have a mom who takes the time to chat with you every night about what’s happening in your life and helps you solve your problems? If you’re not sure the answer to this question ask a family therapist. Look mom, no advertising! The same is true with customers. Glitzy ad campaigns are great. But like trips to Disneyland, they’re meaningless unless they’re built on a strong foundation of thousands of smaller, positive interactions. Customers — especially millennials and younger — put a much higher premium on companies that listen to their needs and show it day-in-day-out by reflecting what they’ve heard on every product page.

https://medium.com/swlh/brands-have-an-easy-choice-better-product-stories-or-die-a7417c2c2d10

['Brian Hennessy']

2019-12-07 21:23:15.776000+00:00

['Dnvb', 'Online Retail', 'D2c', 'Dtc', 'Ecommerce']

The Fake Backlash to Fake Meat

The Fake Backlash to Fake Meat Food activists angry about the processed nature of new plant-based meats are missing the point Credit: Robyn Beck/Getty Images Earlier this month, Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol explained that his company’s restaurants won’t offer plant-based meat like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods “because of the processing.” It’s a strange position for Chipotle to take. First, it is not obvious to me why mixing and manipulating plants, as Impossible and Beyond do, make fake meat any more processed than the other ingredients served at Chipotle. I enjoy Chipotle from time to time. I have enjoyed their white flour tortillas. I have enjoyed their cheese, made using genetically modified enzymes and refilled throughout the day from bulk packages of a pre-shredded mixture. I have enjoyed their offerings of Coca-Cola, made from corn syrup, and Diet Coke, flavored with aspartame. I have enjoyed their sous vide beef. I have enjoyed their gypsum-infused soy tofu sofritas, which you could also call plant-based meat. You get the idea. Second, it is odd that a company that has long wrapped itself in the mantle of sustainability would refuse to serve plant-based meat but continue serving animal-based meat. Livestock production accounts for the bulk of the agricultural sector’s environmental impacts. Beef, which Impossible and Beyond aim principally to replace, is by far the worst offender, with order of magnitude higher water, land, and climate footprints than most foods, including other kinds of animal meat. Chipotle is, of course, free to serve whatever food it wants, but if Niccol has chosen to prioritize arbitrary food processing preferences over empirical environmental concerns, he should be honest about that. Chipotle isn’t the half of it. That plant-based meat is “ultra-processed” or “hyper-processed” is a criticism I’ve heard more and more frequently over the past year or so, as fake meat has migrated from the high-end kitchens of San Francisco and New York to fast casual and fast food locations like Red Robin and Burger King. Just a few years ago, fake meat was a luxury, the signature ingredient of a $20 hamburger at San Francisco’s Jardiniere, something reserved for conspicuous eco-consumption. Now, somehow, the $6 Impossible Whopper offends a different sensibility. Fake meat is no longer an elitist extravagance. It is now, we are told, a hyper-processed threat to healthy, natural cuisine. A few days after I read the Chipotle news, I was struck by this tweet from Mark Bittman, popular food writer, editor of Heated, and former New York Times columnist: Years earlier, Bittman had actually heralded the coming of fake meat. “Isn’t it preferable,” he wrote at the time, “to eat plant products mixed with water that have been put through a thingamajiggy that spews out meatlike stuff, instead of eating those same plant products put into a chicken that does its biomechanical thing for the six weeks of its miserable existence, only to have its throat cut in the service of yielding barely distinguishable meat?” I believe that the problem with fake meat isn’t so much that it is ultra-processed as that it is mass-produced. I can’t help but notice that when fake meat was the purview of food utopians and visionary chefs, thought leaders were enthusiastically in favor of it. But as soon as fake meat hit the plastic trays at Burger King, they were fretting about how over-processed it was. So what’s going on here? I believe that the problem with fake meat isn’t so much that it is ultra-processed as that it is mass produced. The conflation of exclusivity and goodness is actually endemic to large swaths of food culture. “Myths about superior taste and nutrition,” food scholar S. Margot Finn observed in a recent essay in the Breakthrough Journal, “mostly help the middle classes distance themselves from the poor.” (My research organization, the Breakthrough Institute, publishes the journal.) This distaste for mass production may be classist, but that’s not all it is. The new complaints about fake meat seem based on the notion that it doesn’t go far enough to fix what ails modern food systems. But I have a feeling the problem here isn’t that plant-based meats aren’t good enough; it’s that they’re too good. If we can simply replace livestock production and its heavy environmental footprint with a technological alternative, we don’t need to completely overhaul the agro-industrial complex. If the food system can more-or-less keep humming along as it’s been doing, just without the emissions, then all sorts of critiques of the system collapse. This exposes another wellspring of the antipathy towards mass-produced foods. In his book The Wizard and the Prophet, historian Charles Mann identifies the size and scale of a technological systems, not the technology itself, as the root of a certain kind of environmental opposition. As Mann told me last year, the fundamental objection is “the scale and the sort of centralization and the representation of big institutions in which you don’t have very much local control.” The complaint is with the very core of how we produce most of our food: large-scale, centralized, and with modern technology. It all falls apart rather quickly. Obviously base classism doesn’t sell, and any food systems capable of feeding over seven billion people are going to be large-scale in some degree. That’s why critics of fake meat and other food reformers rely on vague epithets like “processed.” Food processing, after all, is a category so wide as to defy useful definition. As Finn puts it: “While it’s true that some of the ways we process food reduce the content or availability of some nutrients or add carcinogens or other toxins, much food processing reduces the risk of contamination, enables people to extract more nutrients, or concentrates and preserves nutrients that would otherwise degrade.” What Bittman and his ilk always seem to talk about when they talk about processed food is fast food, store-bought food, packaged food — which is the food that most people in rich countries eat most of the time. Certainly, food products loaded with excess sugar, sodium, preservatives, saturated fat, and exotic ingredients could more easily be labelled “ultra-processed” than foods that contain, well, lower portions of those ingredients. But that’s exactly the problem. It’s not clear to me, nor, seemingly, anyone else, where to draw the line between unprocessed and processed foods. As food historian Rachel Laudan put it: “Absent such a criterion, it is easy for ultra-processed to mean ‘industrially processed,’ ‘low class,’ or ‘not to my taste.’ Soft drinks are ultra-processed, wine not. Snack cakes are ultra-processed, home made cakes not.” From Frances Moore Lappé’s Diet for a Small Planet to Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma to the booming popularity of the Food Network, I would argue we are seeing a reaction to an alienation from food production. By shopping at farmers markets and going wine tasting and picking apples, we imagine food that is more beautiful and less processed than what most of us eat on a typical day. The archetypes take a stubborn form. Anything that is local, slow, and unprocessed is good. Anything that is remote, made in a lab, and hyper-abundant is bad. We’ve already seen this play out with fake meat in a different form. When Impossible Burgers were just starting to catch the public’s attention, Friends of the Earth and other environmental organizations made hay of their opposition to Impossible Foods’ use of genetically modified yeast to produce their key ingredient, soy leghemoglobin, which gives the meat its juicy, “bloody” texture. As Breakthrough’s executive director, Ted Nordhaus, wrote at the time: “There is no actual evidence that heme produced in this way might have negative effects. But for Friends of the Earth and other GMO opponents, the absence of evidence does not constitute evidence of absence. Nor must the wildly speculative risks they invoke be considered in the context of the well established environmental and health risks associated with beef production and consumption.” Representatives from both the factory farming and organic beef sectors also oppose plant-based meat. All fall back in some way on the naturalistic fallacy: the idea that unprocessed, or unmodified, or pasture-raised (or not) are the more natural form of beef production and therefore the superior one. (That and, presumably, because it stands to eat away at their market share over time.) For these reasons, I fear that even attempts to market plant-based products as more “natural” will backfire. Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown seems to think differently. In a recent podcast interview, he said that their plant-based formulas “kept GMOs out, kept artificial flavors out, kept anything that’s not natural out of our products.” But as we’ve seen, that has done nothing to vaccinate against anti-processed food sentiments from Niccol, Bittman, and the rest. If the plant-based meat industry accepts the natural-versus-processed premise, it is likely setting itself up to fail. It is a frustrating arrangement, one seemingly designed keep radical food reformers occupied with their critique in perpetuity. In a world in which mass production and scale are going to dominate, these sorts of misguided ideas and obfuscations make it much harder to shape that system in ways that are more sustainable, healthier, and more humane. And the choice, ultimately, isn’t between large-scale mass-produced and small-scale non-mass-produced. It is between mass production that is more sustainable, healthier, and more humane — and mass production that is less so. Is there a future in which plant-based meat and other innovations fit into a vision the food reformers would support? On this question, I find Fordham University’s Garrett Broad more compelling than most. In a recent essay on the politics of fake meat, published in the journal Geoforum, Broad writes: “… animal product alternatives are most likely to be incorporated as food security reforms within the dominant corporate food regime and are generally incompatible with food sovereignty perspectives. However, active efforts to use these alternatives as a force to promote environmental sustainability, nutritional health, and economic equity could offer a model for a future of ‘food tech justice.’” Broad proposes that food system reformers find a way to adopt technological innovations, specifically meat alternatives. In Broad’s specific advocacy for things like more open patenting systems and publicly funded agricultural research, I find little to disagree with. But when we find fault with a clearly beneficial innovation slotting neatly into modern food systems, perhaps the problem isn’t with the system, but with our own idealized vision for what an equitable, healthy, appealing food system should look like. Surely there are excesses and failures with the status quo, in the arenas of nutrition, corporate governance, worker rights, treatment of animals, and more. But while we work to actively address those issues, we might consider whether the systems we have designed over generations to feed billions of humans aren’t doing a relatively good job at that task already. After all, global hunger and undernourishment have been trending downward for decades, an achievement we should surely take into account. In the meantime, I would ask that we at least reclaim the concept of food processing as a feature, not a bug, of modern food systems. Doing so would prevent pointless squabbles over vague, value-laden categories and allow for honest, outcome-based efforts to produce healthy, affordable food that leaves behind as small an environmental footprint as possible. In a free society it is fine if some people still wish to differentiate themselves by eschewing these efforts. But the rest of us don’t have to take their tastes seriously. Disclosures: Medium CEO Ev Williams is a partner at Obvious Ventures, which is an investor in Beyond Meat. For a complete list of Obvious’s portfolio visit here. All original Medium publications have editorial independence.

https://onezero.medium.com/the-fake-backlash-to-fake-meat-f53098bfb71b

['Alex Trembath']

2019-08-12 11:01:01.130000+00:00

['Impossible Foods', 'Food', 'Industry', 'Sustainability', 'Plant Based']

Data Stories for U.S. Election 2020

Introduction The idea of applying data analytics for the United States 2020 Presidential Election was sparked when I picked up Qlik Sense, a powerful data visualization tool. “Nothing beats getting your hands dirty.” Even though I am not a very political person, I figure this is a great chance to challenge myself by applying and upskilling my newly honed knowledge. I started my work on 6th November, the third day since Election Day, while the world was much concerned and uncertain about what was going on with this race. Disclaimer: The election has come to its finale with the confirmed winner Joe Biden when this blog is edited. This blog thus only intends to share the analytical views based on data acquired on 6th Nov. from a neutral point of view. Datasets The first thing to start off is to acquire datasets with adequate dimensions for data analytics from credible sources. I checked on the live-update results from well-known press media such as Bloomberg, New York Times, and Reuters where they usually specify the data sources of their results. However, it turns out that their data sources are acquired from either research companies or individual jurisdictions. The Federal Election Commission and the Electoral College do not provide the voting results but only the campaign finance data and legal resources about the presidential candidates. Therefore, I resorted to 270toWin, a nonpartisan website that provides up-to-date results data. My preliminary goal is to visualize the results map on the state level, on top of which I continue to build the insights. Unfortunately, the website does not allow web scraping with Selenium. For that reason, I had to manually collect the results data of 50 electoral states and Washington D.C. into an Excel file. With efforts and research on several federal and state government websites, I managed to gather the following datasets. Results by state from 270toWin from 270toWin Campaign finance from the Federal Election Commission from the Federal Election Commission Ballots breakdown from Michael McDonald, Uni. of Florida from Michael McDonald, Uni. of Florida COVID-19 cases & deaths by state from CDC from CDC Demographics by state from Census Bureau from Census Bureau Exit Polls from New York Times For the rest of the resources, I was able to batch download or use Python Pandas to read and export into a tabular format. Data Wrangling & Statistics Aggregation Before I could dump the datasets into Qlik for analysis, they need to be transformed into a consistent and neat structure for the cross-table association without unnecessary fields to speed up the analysis. The methods of doing so are mainly Excel functions, Pandas data frames, and preprocessing functions by Qlik Sense. An example step is to aggregate the results by state data which originally stored in individual sheets into a single table. Sample Raw Result Data Table (Alaska) Hence, I have 51 such sheets on hand and have to unpivot them into a single table with rows of states and leave the columns only for Democrat, Republican, Independent/Minor, and Write-in. The process is handled by Pandas with the resource code shown below. #create an empty df to store the unpivoted data df_unpivoted = pd.DataFrame(columns = ["state"]+ parties) candidates = {'Democrat': 'Joe Biden', 'Republican': 'Donald Trump', 'Minority': {}, 'Write-in': 'Unknown'} minority_votes = {} #iterate over each state for state in states: df_state = pd.read_excel('./results by state.xlsx', state) state_result = {'state': state} #iter over each party voted for index, row in df_state.iterrows(): candidate = row['Unnamed: 0'] party = row['PARTY'] votes = row['VOTES'] #percent = row['PCT.'] if party in candidates.keys(): #if democrat or republican state_result[party] = votes else: #if a minor party/independent candidates['Minority'] = {'party':party,'candiate': candidate} state_result["Independent"] = votes if candidate not in minority_votes.keys(): minority_votes[candidate] = votes else: minority_votes[candidate] += votes df_unpivoted=df_unpivoted.append(state_result,ignore_index=True) Unpivoted Result Table Analysis 1: The Results & Unsettled States The first dashboard I built was the high-level overview of the results as of 6th November. Result Overview Page On the top, it gives an overview of how many votes for senate and house seats each party has secured. The left bottom corner shows the results map whereby a gradient of blue/red color indicates the percentage of votes won by Biden or Trump. A tooltip shows the electoral votes of the state since different states have decisively different weights in this race. On 7th Nov., the election still had no projected winner, leaving 5 pivotal states unsettled while counting their mail ballots. Charts for the Unsettled States With a closer look at the ongoing results, the closing situation counts on the outstanding mail ballots. From the histogram, it proves that a majority of returned mail ballots go to Biden, who had advocated mail voting for his supporters amid the pandemic. For the outstanding mail ballots, Biden enjoys an advantage in all states over Trump except that Georgia does not report its result breakdown. Vote Results Polarity To forecast the decision among these swing states, a comparison between 2016 and 2020 might also tell us something. In 2016, Trump wins Clinton by a significant amount in these states except Nevada. However, the previous firmly red states lost all their advantage and even flip into blue with a decisive amount of mail ballots left to count, which gives a hint of Biden’s awaiting success. Analysis 2: Election Amid Pandemic: what has been affected? COVID-19 Page 2020 is an unprecedented year with uncertainty and pressure. The effects of the pandemic shifted people’s faith in the candidates and the way the election is conducted. From the map, clearly, the general pattern is Trump wins states with a more severe situation while Biden wins the better-controlled states. This may be explained by their respective diverged COVID policy and proposition. The bar charts on the right further illustrate that states with top cases per 100k almost all voted for Trump while states with the least cases mostly come in blue. I have also made an option of showing the cases per 100k during the week before the election instead. But the result has no clear pattern, which means voters probably do not deviate their decision by near-term factors. Mail Ballots & COVID-19 Severity Correlation Based on the assumption that the COVID-19 severity may have a positive correlation with mail ballots demand, a scattered plot interestingly rejects my hypothesis. There is no clear linear correlation shown between the percentage of mail ballots requested over total registered voters and cases per 100k. Nonetheless, we can see that Democrat-winning states do follow Biden’s advocate and requested for more mail ballots. Analysis 3: Campaign Finance Campaign Finance Page The election in the United States is a cash-burning game. To some extent, the campaign finance reflects how “bullish” a candidate is deemed to be by industries and financing investors. Trump raised his fund in an even manner even closer to the election month, whilst Biden received drastically increasing receipts since March 2020, which is exactly the time when the U.S. started to experience a worsening pandemic situation. Among all candidates since 2008, Biden raised the record highest finance to arrive at his today’s success. In terms of spending, the trend is similar to that of fundraising, Biden made a final dash near to election day at a high monetary cost and support. The cash-on-hand summary approves Biden’s solid financial strength ever since he joins the game. Analysis 4: Electorate Demographics Distribution Electorate Demographics Page Last but not least, combined insight into the demographical distribution of different states is worth exploring to understand which candidate wins which group. With the data extracted from the U.S. Census Bureau, the map covers categories of Race Age & Sex ratio Education level Child/Old-age dependency ratio Household income level Yearly Household Income with 200k+ by State Some patterns are identified such as the map above shows that on the east coast, states with more rich upper classes tend to support Biden over Trump. This contradicts the fact that Biden’s claim he would legislate higher taxes for the richest top 1%. Therefore, the income level may overlay with the education literacy factor, meaning that these states may also happen to be the most well-educated population. Education Demographical Distribution Looking into the education distribution, it is identified that the states with the lowest percentage of college degree attainment are all taken by Trump. This is consistent with the exit polls conducted by New York Times as shown below. Biden is more trusted by people with a college degree while the other group makes a tie between the two. Exit Polls: Education Attainment Groups 2016 vs 2020: Which States Have Flipped? With the dots representing results of 2020, we witness that Democrat keeps all their states but Republican loses its previous weakly supporting swing states such as Arizona, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Although the exit polls tend to be controversial for being not representative of the actual voting results, it is still valuable to see how the mainstream values and certain social groups make their voices by choosing the side of candidates. For example, election 2020 is reported to be a unique election where gender division is at an all-time high. Conclusion This has been a great full experience from data gathering to uncovering insights with data-backed storytelling. Looking into a relatively holistic scope of perspectives in such a short time was really challenging yet enjoyable. With the hands-on practices, I have upskilled my knowledge of Qlik Sense’s advanced topics such as set expression, master items, interactive page navigation, and dynamic field association. Based on the analysis, Biden holds a prominent advantage ahead in the race and we see more division and shift of trust in different states in accordance with different identities of voters. After all, the election is tremendously complex with an uncertain and intractable pool of factors. Hence, the above analysis might be superficial or simply fundamental. To have a more accountable prediction or in-depth analysis requires multi-disciplinary expertise and larger datasets. Some possible future work for this project is to get more granular datasets such as historical voting results with timestamps to model the result trend and thus a predictive model for the next election. Social media listening can also be applied by using Twitter’s API to analyze sentiment movement during the election period. Github repo: https://github.com/yingjiebyron/U.S.-Election-2020

https://medium.com/swlh/data-stories-for-u-s-election-2020-d324e3f6ac4c

['Yingjie', 'Byron']

2020-11-10 17:15:13.736000+00:00

['Election', 'Data Analysis', 'Qlik Sense', 'Data Visualization', 'Covid 19']

The benefits of exercise

Exercise which is the best way to keep a person healthy and strong. It has a profound effect on our lives. Exercise has been around since ancient times. With the passage of time, there has been an innovation in the way of exercising. Goes to the gym regularly for exercise. There are many benefits of exercise. It can reduce obesity. Excess body fat can be reduced. Continuous blood is fine. With exercise, a person gains physical vitality and at the same time, the mind also begins to sharpen. We will illustrate this with an example. Suppose there is a pit of clear water and that water stays in one place, which means that the water is not moving, so what will happen? The water will change its color by hand. It will start producing foul smelling substances, which will make the water unusable and useless. In the same way, if we do not embrace the thing that is blessed in movement, walk or exercise, we can lose our beauty and longevity by suffering from various diseases. Now, as soon as you hear the word exercise, the question will arise in the minds of most people that maybe going to the gym and doing an activity is called exercise, then it is not so. Exercise can be done in different ways. 1) Walking, whether at home, on the street or in a nearby park, falls into the category of exercise. 2) Children in school who run breaks and play sports, such as football, cricket, hockey, catching each other, that is, all the sports that students run and play, are all the best source of exercise. 3) For those who have a double storey house, going up and down the stairs again and again is a good exercise. We often see people in distress that their children become obese at an early age and look older than their age. Similarly, women complain of obesity and double chin. There are thousands of such problems that can be caused by exercise or Yoga can be reduced. The benefits of exercise are as follows. 1) Regular exercise solves the problem of shortness of breath. 2) The body is beautiful. 3) The bones are strong. Excess body fat can be reduced. 4) Exercise can reduce bloating. 5) Mentally, a person begins to feel calm. 6) Diseases can be prevented to a great extent. 7) Age can be longer than normal posture. When a person stays active, he can live longer due to avoiding diseases. 8) Exercise makes a person look beautiful and attractive. 9) Exercise makes you look younger than your age. 10) Exercise improves blood circulation

https://medium.com/@nosher-atif/the-benefits-of-exercise-8809821b0ae

['Atif Nosher']

2020-12-17 21:10:09.363000+00:00

['Walking', 'Gym', 'Exercise Benefits', 'Exercise', 'Running']

Tips to Renting a Car Dubai | Rent a Car Fast

Tips to Renting a Car Dubai | Rent a Car Fast Whether or not you are setting off to a distant country or another city for business or bliss, there are different preferences to renting a vehicle. Exactly when you rent a vehicle, there are some critical factors you should think about, promising you to get the best course of action subject to your intriguing itinerary items and money-related arrangement. The chief tip when you rent car Dubai is to promise you to pick the best vehicle that tends to your issues. If you are going as a couple, by then picking a negligible vehicle that can without a doubt oblige you and your stuff will be more favorable and moderate than enrolling an enormous family vehicle. Pick the vehicle subject to what you need taking the number of people and stuff into thought to promise you to have a pleasing drive any spot you are wandering out to wherever on the planet. Book your vehicle select early. Immense quantities of the vehicle enroll associations offer brief riser specials, which enable you to rent a vehicle at a restricted expense. This can save you a broad measure of money as time goes on, enabling you to capitalize on your move away, travel all through the zone, and have some extra experiencing money in your pocket. Search at the best expenses. Review, not all rental vehicle associations offer comparable vehicles or comparable game plans. Looking and inspecting a few options can help you with recognizing which plan is the right one for you. Look for vehicle types, expenses, and consolidations; this will give you a fair understanding of which association will offer you more for your money Dubai rent a car jlt. Another tip when you rent a car Dubai is to discover however much about the vehicle enrolls association as could reasonably be expected. You have to recognize their standing and assurance the association you pick will give you the best assistance and sponsorship, offering you the best vehicle enrollment experience that you should use reliably later on. See what is associated with the rent a vehicle contract. A couple of associations will offer you an enormous gathering of extra things, which are completely associated with your rental expense, for instance, boundless mileage, crisis helpers, and pariah insurance. See what you get for your money and consider choices that will give you more for your money as time goes on, yet also from associations that have picked up a reputation for giving shielded, all-around kept up and redesigned vehicles that you can trust. Get some data about the overall cost when you rent a vehicle. Realize that a couple of associations will have covered costs that they may not diagram for you and that you should be cautious about. Be masterminded and ensure that when you accumulate the vehicle and when you return it, the primary worth payable is the worth you were at first referred to. Traps to pay special mind to is the fuel. A couple of associations will give you a vehicle a full or half tank of fuel on the understanding you return it with a comparable total, promise you to do this, if the vehicle rental car association needs to finish off the vehicle, they may charge an additional charge and they will charge a higher aggregate for the fuel than you would pay at the service station. Finally, the last tip with respect to renting a car in Dubai is to perceive if the association offers a get and variety organization and given that this is valid, do they charge for it. The more dependable associations will give you this favorable help absolutely free.

https://medium.com/@al-emad4719/tips-to-renting-a-car-dubai-rent-a-car-fast-f3ca52514df5

['Al Emad']

2021-12-24 10:19:42.836000+00:00

['Holidays', 'Travel', 'Cars', 'Dubai', 'Vacation']