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VAMPIRE WEEKEND

Vampire Weekend an album by Vampire Weekend Vampire Weekend by Vampire Weekend introduced me to a whole new sound and a whole new lifestyle in 2008. The quintessential teen-punk-indie bopping album done by a band of Columbia students gave my universe a synth, smart lyrics, and a songs about school. Perfect for those high school grads in transition into college like myself at the time. “Oxford Comma” and “Campus” are the hits, but “M79” and “Walcott” come in punching. At 34 minutes, this album is best enjoyed in one dose through then multiple doses throughout the proceeding weeks. There are albums that contain those feelings of nostalgia. Times and places linked to the rise and fall of the sounds bursting through those headphones. I can almost see the students walking to class on the UW campus or feel the cold snow beneath my lunch tray on the hill. Moments of joy, moments of despair too. Receiving my first ‘F’ on a exam, getting dumped by a girl. Those daydreams of a certain future too. The talk of falling for professors, hanging with friends who soon change, and all the simple moments in living for no other reason than to live. Music has that way of centering us. I use it for writing (obviously) as a gateway into certain emotions. It colors time and fills the room with its evaporating meaning. The Ups and Downs, the feelings, all can be contained in 3:33 song. By writing to music, I relive the feeling even if I’m not feeling sad or angry at the moment. Songs are filled with the joy of daydreams, a time of earlier innocence, and anytime I want to feel these times again I put on Vampire Weekend and listen. ​-Eric Maus

https://medium.com/@eric-maus/vampire-weekend-4232c7f06f55

['Eric Maus']

2020-12-21 13:16:33.041000+00:00

['Personal Development', 'Journal', 'Album Of The Day', 'Music Blog', 'Music']

Three Alternative Uses for Babies

Photo by Luwadlin Bosman on Unsplash So, you’ve had a baby. Well done. You’ve welcomed a beautiful, brand new human onto this planet of ours. You’ve passed at least part of your genetic code down to the next generation. You bloody legend. So, now the question is, what do you actually do with this wriggling carbon-based life form? Besides loving it, feeding it, nurturing it and generally treating it with the respect due to another sentient human being, here are three alternative uses for babies, that’ll help ensure that your baby sparks joy, and boosts productivity in your life from day one. A door stop. The job of a door stop is not a difficult one. All that is required is a little weight. A few kilos will do. Now ‘traditional’ door stops tend to be stationary, and don’t slide around on the floor. When your baby is still a newborn, he or she will literally be unable to move, apart from a few basic reflexes. So this is the prime door stop window of opportunity. To avoid them slipping around on the floor like a bar of soap, I’d advise dressing your baby in thick, high friction material for this purpose. Tweed will do nicely. 2. A sounding board for creative ideas. When inspiration strikes, be it an idea for a billion-dollar company, or the narrative arc of a series of fantasy novels about enchanted narwhales, it helps to have someone to bounce ideas off. This creative to and fro can help sharpen your ideas until they are literally ready to cut through atoms. A lesser-known feature of babies is that they are naturally endowed with an impeccable sense of judgment and common sense. To use your baby as a sounding board for your creative ideas, simply do the following: Place your baby in a thoughtful position. Ideally nestled in a large, weathered, leather armchair. Pitch your ideas to your baby. Don’t hold back here. Be confident, look your baby in the eye and just lay it all out there. Once your pitch is over, carefully observe your baby’s movements and/or body language. If they cry, you’re on to a winner. If they shit themselves, it’s a no go. Burps and or vomit are a grey area. Experts are divided as to whether this indicates that the idea’s a good one, but the world isn’t ready for it yet, or whether it simply indicates that the baby has gas. Personally, I’m in the former camp. 3. A portable ego-boosting device. Do you ever get that sinking feeling that other people are somehow just better than you? They’re earning more money, or they have more friends, or they’re better looking or more competent than you. It hurts, doesn’t it? Well, the best way to fight fire is with fire. Don’t compare yourself to other people the same age as you. Instead, compare yourself with your baby. You will be amazed at how much more accomplished and impressive you are than your tiny offspring. The result will be a boon in your own self-confidence and general levels of wellbeing that will probably result in your starting a podcast. Here are some sample comparisons that will help you get started in this healthy and wholesome activity: Compare who is better at walking. Compare who is better at talking. Compare who knows the most about football trivia. Compare who is better at controlling their bowel movements. Compare who goes to bed later. Compare who is best at digesting solid foods. There are countless other comparisons that you will be able to make with your baby wherein you come out significantly on top. And that’s what it’s all about, at the end of the day.

https://medium.com/@wjmorts/three-alternative-uses-for-babies-8579ae1acd70

['Will Mortimore']

2021-06-02 11:56:12.857000+00:00

['Lifehacks', 'Comedy', 'Humour', 'Humor', 'Baby']

You Can’t Write Publishable Picture Books If You Don’t Know These 5 Things

You Can’t Write Publishable Picture Books If You Don’t Know These 5 Things 5 red flags that tell me you don’t actually know what a picture book is Photo by Brina Blum on Unsplash In the editing and manuscript development part of my work, I see a lot of people with drafts of picture books they want critiqued. Sometimes they think their story is already topnotch and they ask for copy editing and proofreading. But before I even open their Word file, I can tell from their request they don’t actually know the key elements of a picture book, and it means they will never get published until they do. Picture books have very few words Even fewer now than they used to! A few years ago, guidelines for texts were around the 800 words as a maximum. Now that’s 500 words. People send me stories that are 1500 or 2000 words. These aren’t picture books. They’re children’s stories, and there is a huge difference. Pick up any picture book nowadays and you’ll see maybe one or two sentences per double page spread. Probably not even that much. My first picture book was 130 words. Why have word counts reduced so much? Read on. Illustrators contribute much more to the book than you realize Again, illustrators used to be in the role of creating pictures that complemented the text, that basically just reflected what was going on in the story. Now the relationship is more complex — the illustrator adds so much more, including sometimes extra small stories that aren’t even in the text (like a little mouse doing its own thing). Sometimes those stories might have been in the original manuscript, but as soon as the illustrator puts something in the illustration, it’s often taken out of the story. The aim now is for story and pictures to be much more integrated, for them to work together to create the whole, and the whole is a much richer experience for the reader. Why? Because the advances in visual literacy in small children have been huge, and a great picture book responds to that visual literacy by providing a deeper experience. What this means for the writer is that you have to learn how to write and leave room for the illustrator. Which leads to … Picture book texts have to leave out stuff that will be in the pictures This means that all the obvious things in a story such as animal descriptions, setting descriptions, even character descriptions, should be left out unless they are a vital part of the story (as in the elephant is purple). Even these vital bits may be deleted later on, once the illustrator has included them in the illustrations. Writers think then they have to put in lots of illustration notes, so the editor and illustrator will “understand their vision”. Um, no. The editor and particularly the illustrator will have their own unique and wonderful vision for the book’s illustrations, and in most cases, the writer won’t have a say. 98% of picture books have 32 pages This is to do with printing, and unlikely to change for larger print runs. It costs a lot of money to print a full-color picture book, and most are printed on large machines, on one huge sheet of paper, on both sides. Then the sheet is folded and trimmed, and 32 pages is the result. There is a standard layout that ensures the pages all end up in the right order. You mess with this at your (financial) peril. It’s also why editors and designers talk about “double-page spreads” because picture books are also designed to lay flat when open, for easy holding and reading. So instead of one page at a time, you can play with much bigger spreads and place the illustrations and text much more openly. Your story need not fill all 32 pages because you still allow for the title page, dedication page, imprint page etc (although these can be squished up if necessary), but you have to keep this in mind as you work on your story, because … Each bit of your story has to inspire an illustration By this I mean — think of your story spread across those pages or double-page spreads. Maybe one sentence or two sentences per page (max). The best way to do this is to make up a dummy book of 32 pages/16 pieces of paper, and try to work out what words will go on each page. It’s very likely that you will soon see you have things in your story that either aren’t illustratable in any interesting or active way (like someone thinking), or you have way too much that doesn’t really inspire any kind of illustration. They’re really extra words that can be deleted or condensed. The dummy book is crunch time. I’ve had many of my students make one, and what they discover about their stories, despite believing their stories are “finished”, can be confronting. What they thought was a good story is suddenly revealed to be flat and lacking in action. Most of all, the story is not going to appeal to an editor or an illustrator because there is not enough to work with. This revelation is a good thing! Many picture books take 10, 20 or even 40+ drafts. Once you understand what a picture book requires at its most fundamental level, you’ve got the tools to rewrite and make it really come alive!

https://sherrylclark.medium.com/you-cant-write-publishable-picture-books-if-you-don-t-know-these-5-things-8fbf5533723c

['Sherryl Clark']

2020-02-17 02:35:21.867000+00:00

['Storytelling', 'Childrens Books', 'Publishing Industry', 'Picture Books', 'Writing Tips']

Frequency Counter Algorithm

Frequency Counter Algorithm Pt 2: How To Count Elements In Arrays Using JavaScript Objects In my previous article, I talked about how to use objects to find elements in an array faster and how I used it to solve one of two challenges from a technical interview. Here we will discuss the second challenge! // Check if it's possible to make a string into a palindrome // A palindrome is a word that spelled backward reads the same // Check if it's possible to make a string into a palindrome // Input // str: any string // Output // boolean, true if you can make the string into a palindrome // Examples // racecar => true // ice => false // madam => true // aaabb => true // abc => false The key difference here is that we aren’t determining if a string is a palindrome, but if it CAN be turned into one. After thinking for a while, I thought about the characteristics of palindrome words. One thing stuck out to me, there is one or no odd amount of letters. Since that is the case, we can rephrase the question. It can be turned into “Is there one or no amount of odd letters?” To answer this, we need to count the amount of each letter in the string. Easier said than done! One of the most common ways of counting elements in an array is something like this: TRADITIONAL APPROACH Counting With Variables GIF of this approach here: The problem here is that it only counts one type of letter, a. We don’t know what letters are going to be inside the string. We could just make a counter for every letter from a to z (lol) and, check inside the if, for every possible letter. But that's would be WET code. DRY code is the way to go. Introducing objects. Again. We can use objects to store the counters. Every time we hit a new letter, we can add it as a key in an object and set the value to 1. If its a letter we already have inside our object, we can update the value. Storing counters inside objects let us create counters dynamically as we go through each element in the array. Code looks something like this: FREQUENCY COUNTER APPROACH Counting With Objects I’m a fan of visually showing code instead of explaining it in text, so here is a gif of how it works: This last GIF shows the object that is returned: {“m”:2, “a”:2, “d”:1} Now that we have an object with all the counters, we can loop over the object and count every letter that is in odd numbers. If there are one or less odd amounts of letters, we return true. Otherwise, false. Solution And that's how to use objects to count instead of regular variables. It's very useful when you want to count the occurrences of any elements in an array without knowing what or how many elements are going to be inside that array.

https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/frequency-counter-algorithm-b3fa98efe8ba

['Kenneth Young']

2019-10-12 16:49:45.943000+00:00

['Coding', 'Programming', 'Javascript Tips', 'JavaScript', 'Algorithms']

How the COVID-19 Pandemic Affected Cross-Border Payments For Businesses And What the Future Holds for Fintech

How the COVID-19 Pandemic Affected Cross-Border Payments For Businesses And What the Future Holds for Fintech Tempo Payments Jun 21·4 min read The COVID-19 pandemic will certainly go down in history as one of the most destructive and transformative events to ever shake the global economy. The viral outbreak managed to disrupt virtually every industry across numerous sectors of all economies that had previously deemed globalization a given and an unshakable foundation ensuring overall growth and stability. But every crisis breeds opportunities and the global economy continued to develop throughout the pandemic by relying on innovative instruments of transactioning to jumpstart and streamline stalled logistics chains. Cross-border payments for business have become the catalyst and off-ramp for reanimating economic activities. But even the immense cross-border industry operating on the basis of established gateways is finding itself at a new crossroads following COVID-19. Impact The pandemic halted all cash transactions for fear of buyers contacting the disease through physical transmission. As such, online payments have become the norm with contactless payment systems developing rapidly, offering new gateways for integration and application in a variety of business scenarios and operational models that have adjusted to new realities within the boundaries of economies under lockdown. Despite the 20–30% decline in cross-border payments at the outset of the pandemic, digital payment adoption globally has increased dramatically. The spread of the virus in fact accelerated the growth of digital payment platforms. Recent statistics are stating that total transaction value in the digital payments segment is projected to reach $6,682 trillion in 2021 at an annual growth rate between 2021 and 2025 standing at 12.01%, resulting in a projected total amount of $10,517 trillion in transactions by 2025. B2B remittances are projected to have fallen by around 10% monthly during the course of the pandemic, but have since recovered largely thanks to the massive inclusion of convenient fintech solutions and the facilitation of transactions with the use of digital currencies. The Trends Open banking and instant cross-border payments are encouraging the introduction of more innovative services as businesses had to undergo digital transformation. And the fintech industry was leading the entire cross-border payments sector. Fintech projects are currently leading disruption of the banking sector and the use of proprietary systems as a foundation for streamlining payments, bypassing traditional gateways, or through the creation of layer 2 solutions. Fintech startups and payment institutions are both leveraging the potential of cryptocurrency payments and their gradual adoption among broader layers of users to improve international and local remittances for businesses. The popularity of fintech solutions has doubled in 2020 as 64% of consumers around the world claimed to have used at least one fintech platform, as opposed to 33% in 2017, thus proving the growing popularity of digital assets being used for payments. New technologies are yielding products, such as banking via instant messengers, intelligent platforms for identifying potentially dangerous transactions, the unification of payment services for businesses into ecosystems, and the development of financial marketplaces for B2B. Combined, they provide highly convenient, versatile and functional solutions capable of effectively competing with traditional banking services. What the Future Holds for Fintech Faced with new realities, the global economy is looking at the continuation of digital transformation and the inclusion of fintech solutions. The prospects for their development are sound, considering the advantages they are already providing to businesses and average users. Among the main factors that fintech solutions can improve is the speed of payment processing in the e-commerce sector. Merchants are already appreciating the fast transactioning and low commissions provided by API-based digital payments solutions that bypass major intermediaries like banks and offer a host of conveniences, like bank card payments, direct transfers to e-wallets and bank accounts, and much more. The security and reliability of cryptocurrency payments are also being noticed along with their convenience, considering that accepting payments in stablecoins and withdrawing funds to bank accounts has become simple on par with traditional banking apps. Some dedicated crypto banks offer seamless transitions between fiat and digital currencies. Summary New players on the cross-border payments market are nudging traditional payment institutions like Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and others to partner with fintech companies in the crypto industry. The goal is to remain competitive and provide more innovative and transparent solutions for cross-border payments. Such infrastructures based on cryptocurrencies, along with the integration of new payment products leveraging digital assets by leading payment companies and the acceptance of payments in such assets by commercial heavyweights like Tesla, Sotheby’s are leading to the progression of the global economy as a whole. More and more enterprises all over the world can now enjoy the advantages of a new fintech era, namely digital currency systems and easily deposit the digital currency into their banks. Making digital means of payment more accessible and understandable for average users is now one of the main tasks for Tempo Payments as well as for other fintech market players. To further improve this experience and deliver multiple payment options within one user-friendly platform, together with our partners Tempo will launch a few brand new services for the business by the end of this year. Stay tuned!

https://medium.com/@tempopayments/how-the-covid-19-pandemic-affected-cross-border-payments-for-businesses-and-what-the-future-holds-9d084cb58553

['Tempo Payments']

2021-06-21 12:40:37.612000+00:00

['Fintech', 'Payments', 'Digital Payments Market', 'B2B', 'Crossborder Payments']

What’s Wrong with Charity and Philanthropy?

The rich love charity because imagining the appreciation of the poor makes them feel good. The rich love philanthropy even more because imagining the admiration of their peers makes them feel even better. They know as well as you and I do that neither charity nor philanthropy can stop the growth of the wealth gap. What the rich won’t admit is that charity and philanthropy are not supposed to end poverty. The educated rich know the only things that have ever shrunk the wealth gap in the US were Keynesian social programs—which may be why neoliberals began gutting and abandoning those programs under Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. When leftists criticize charity or philanthropy, fans of capitalism ask if we don’t believe in helping people. They don’t see that we criticize charity because we care. If we didn’t, we would shrug when hypocrites seek profit or praise in the name of helping others or when well-meaning people do inefficient things in the belief they’re doing good. a few quotes about philanthropy “Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.” — Martin Luther King, Jr. “Millionaires at one end of the scale involved paupers at the other end, and even so excellent a man as Mr. Carnegie is too dear at that price.” — Hugh Price Hughes “First they take billions from you, then they give back half. And that makes them the world’s greatest humanitarians.” — Slavoj Zizek “I am absolutely convinced that no wealth in the world can help humanity forward, even in the hands of the most devoted worker in this cause. The example of great and pure characters is the only thing that can produce fine ideas and noble deeds. Money only appeals to selfishness and always tempts its owners irresistibly to abuse it. Can anyone imagine Moses, Jesus, or Gandhi armed with the money-bags of Carnegie?” — Albert Einstein “Philanthropy is the private allocation of stolen social wages.” — Ruth Wilson Gilmore “If a rich man wants to help the poor, he should pay his taxes gladly, not dole out money at a whim.” — Clement Attlee “Let no one believe, however, that the “cultivated” Englishman openly brags with his egotism. On the contrary, he conceals it under the vilest hypocrisy. What? The wealthy English fail to remember the poor? They who have founded philanthropic institutions, such as no other country can boast of! Philanthropic institutions forsooth! As though you rendered the proletarians a service in first sucking out their very life-blood and then practising your self-complacent, Pharisaic philanthropy upon them, placing yourselves before the world as mighty benefactors of humanity when you give back to the plundered victims the hundredth part of what belongs to them! Charity which degrades him who gives more than him who takes; charity which treads the downtrodden still deeper in the dust, which demands that the degraded, the pariah cast out by society, shall first surrender the last that remains to him, his very claim to manhood, shall first beg for mercy before your mercy deigns to press, in the shape of an alms, the brand of degradation upon his brow.” — Friedrich Engels Related: America’s Wealthiest Family Uses Phony Philanthropy to Increase Personal Wealth The 19th-century critique of big philanthropy Maimonides’ Eight Levels of Charity — Mishneh Torah, Laws of Charity, 10:7–14 — Chassidic Thought Ignorant Christians need to STFU about ‘the poor you will always have with you’ until they can be bothered to understand what Jesus actually said Why the Rich Don’t Give to Charity — The Atlantic

https://medium.com/difficult-subjects/whats-wrong-with-charity-and-philanthropy-a915d5b6b52d

['Will Shetterly']

2020-12-08 00:21:30.471000+00:00

['Social Justice', 'Socialism', 'Basic Income', 'Philanthropy', 'Charity']

GMEE Trading Competition: 140,000 $GMEE to Give Away!

Last week, we were listed on the KuCoin Exchange! From 17th June 12 am UTC, till 24th June, at 12 am UTC, trade your $GMEE on KuCoin to participate in our competition with a reward pool of 140,000 GMEE tokens. Trade your GMEE tokens now: https://trade.kucoin.com/GMEE-USDT Details of this $GMEE Trading Competition: There are several ways to participate in the competition. Play and Earn: Trade GMEE & subscribe to Win a Share of 30,000 GMEE! Trade GMEE & subscribe to Win a Share of 30,000 GMEE! GMEE Trading Competition: enter the 80,000 GMEE Prize Pool! enter the 80,000 GMEE Prize Pool! KuCoin & GAMEE Lucky Draw: claim Your Welcome Bonus! Trade your $GMEE on KuCoin and, the more you trade, the more chances you will have to win the competition. Play and Earn: During the campaign, you will be able to earn $GMEE from a 30,000 pool following these steps: You need a trading volume that reaches 200 GMEE at least. You can do it by buying and selling tokens on KuCoin. Subscribe for the newsletter updates of GMEE. *Please only use your KuCoin registered email for subscription. GMEE Trading Competition: The top 30 accounts with the highest trading volume of the GMEE/USDT trading pair on KuCoin will win a share of 80,000 GMEE! The rewards will be distributed as follows: KuCoin & GAMEE Lucky Draw: Users with a trading volume of 300 GMEE or more will enter the lucky draw. KuCoin will randomly choose 100 lucky traders and the chosen ones will receive 300 GMEE tokens as a reward. Get your GMEE Tokens here: https://trade.kucoin.com/GMEE-USDT [UPDATE 25/6/2021] TRADING COMPETITION HAS ENDED. Winners: Here are the top ten $GMEE traders. There have been a lot of winners and they’ll receive the rewards in the following days! You can see the update at: https://www.kucoin.com/news/en-gmee-trading-competition-140000-gmee-to-give-away Let us know if you have any questions! Twitter: https://twitter.com/GameeApp Telegram: https://t.me/gameetoken Staking event: www.staking.gamee.com Lightpaper $GMEE: https://lightpaper.gamee.com/

https://medium.com/@gamee/gmee-trading-competition-140-000-gmee-to-give-away-8c52634bb757

[]

2021-06-25 11:01:40.417000+00:00

['Trade', 'Kucoin', 'Token', 'Gaming', 'Blockchain']

Could worms help us treat chronic inflammatory conditions?

2020 is the year of a global pandemic and we’re all hyper-focused on hand-washing, mask-wearing, and social distancing. Creepy crawly critters may be the last things we want to think about. But when the critters in question can impact how your immune system responds to viruses and bacteria, it’s worth a look. Infectious larvae of the helminth Trichinella spiralis. Image: Naomi Fettig & Blair Hardman, PhD candidates in the Osborne lab. Helminths are a broad family of worms (they’re literally named after the Greek word for worm) that can cause intestinal infections in people, cattle, wildlife, and rodents. Although helminth infections are uncommon in Canada, most of North America and Europe, approximately a quarter of the world’s nearly eight billion people are infected with a soil-transmitted helminth. These infectious worms get into humans through contaminated soil, mostly in tropical and sub-tropical regions across sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia, and South and Central America. There are three major subclasses of soil-transmitted helminths — hookworms, roundworms, and whipworms. All of these worms have infectious eggs or larvae. Bathing, farming, trekking through, or eating contaminated food or water are common ways people become infected with these worms. In both humans and animals used in farming, helminth infection is likely to cause a bout of intestinal discomfort including the unpleasant symptoms of diarrhea, nausea and bloating. However, infections can be much more serious — children with a large worm infection can be anemic, have impaired cognitive development, and even stunted growth. Global distribution of soil-transmitted helminth infections, based on data from 2010. Credit: Global numbers of infection and disease burden of soil transmitted helminth infections in 2010. Pullan RL, Smith JL, Jasrasaria R & Brooker SJ. Parasites & Vectors, 2014. Luckily, anti-helminthic drugs can treat these parasitic infections and clear them from the body. But unlike the immune response to many viruses or bacteria, helminth infections don’t tend to induce long-lasting immunity. A person can be infected with the same type of worm over and over again. Over a lifetime, these repeated worm infections seem to eventually lead to immunity, but we don’t understand how this happens or why it takes so long. What we do know is that helminth infections change our immune system, in both good and bad ways. Our immune response is like an army — it has look-outs to warn us of invaders, foot soldiers to deal with the first wave of attack, and generals that coordinate special forces to deal with the specific type of invaders. If your immune system drives out the invader, you and your immune system can be seen as the victor, vanquishing the enemy. But an alternative outcome is that the immune system and the infecting bug come to a truce. The host essentially cedes some property to the invading pathogen and allows it to co-exist in the body. Why? Well, in some cases, the amount of immune firepower that would be necessary to clear out the invader is incredibly high and could result in significant collateral damage to our own body. Given the choice, it’s more prudent to host a long-term guest, even an uninvited one, than it is to burn your own house down. Helminth infections fall in the latter camp. They set up shop in our intestines where they have access to nutrients and a protected site to produce new infectious worm babies. Meanwhile our immune system lowers its inflammatory response, a response that would cause tissue damage as it tries to clear the worms from your body. Eggs of different species of parasitic worm. Image: Catalina Maya Rendón/Flickr. In some situations, the truce can be dangerous. If your immune system is keyed to down-play your inflammatory responses, any new infection, even a minor cold, might take longer to beat. In mice, we can reproduce this effect in a lab. Mice with ongoing helminth infections take a longer time to clear out viruses and bacteria. In some cases, the mice get much sicker as a result of this tuned down immune response. In people, these relationships are a bit trickier to study and explain, since we don’t have the same detailed information on when someone was infected with the helminth, bacteria or virus. Understanding the effects of co-infection between helminths and things like HIV and tuberculosis is an active area of research with important health implications for millions around the world. The upside of helminth’s effects on your immune system (called helminth induced immunoregulation) is that it can limit the development of some chronic inflammatory conditions, at least in mice. Carefully designed experiments in animals on multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and even allergies have shown that a pre-existing helminth infection can delay when these diseases start or even how serious they become. In some ways, this is great news and may help explain why chronic inflammatory diseases, like arthritis and allergies, are more common in far northern and southern countries, where helminths are less common. An immunofluorescent micrograph of Trichinella spiralis larvae in infected mouse tissue. Green, Trichinella spiralis; magenta, mouse collagen. Image: Blair Hardman. You may have heard of the hygiene hypothesis. It suggests that getting dirty and being exposed to a diverse array of microbes, especially those like helminths that have co-evolved with us, can help tune the immune system so that it is less likely to develop autoimmune or other inflammatory disorders. However, whether the order of operations can successfully be reversed remains unknown. It’s unclear whether someone who already has an autoimmune or inflammatory disease (like multiple sclerosis or allergies) can benefit from introducing worms as a disease treatment. Unfortunately, despite initial positive results, clinical trials have reported minimal effects of infecting people with helminths on purpose to treat multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, allergies, or other inflammatory diseases. It might be a little like building a stable — it’s best to lock the gate first, rather than installing a strong lock once the horse is already out of the barn. Ongoing research in my lab is attempting to address some of the outstanding questions in this field. For example, we are deliberately infecting mice with helminths to modulate a multiple sclerosis-like disease. Previous studies have identified helminth-induced changes to the immune system that provide some protection from disease, but we are interested in assessing effects of the helminth directly on cells in the central nervous system. At the same time, we are studying how helminth infection can change the intestinal ecosystem. To do this, we use ‘germ-free’ mice that allow us to carefully introduce different bacterial and viral species that normally reside in the gut and assess how their presence and function is changed in response to helminth infection. Together, these studies could provide new and important insights into how helminths might protect against a specific autoimmune disease. These kinds of insights are needed in order to develop better treatments to help people living with disease once the horse has left the barn. For more information on helminth infections, their biology, history and potential clinical applications, this podcast has a wealth of additional information.

https://medium.com/ubcscience/worms-ae3a1579c58c

['Ubc Science']

2020-11-12 21:40:46.030000+00:00

['Health', 'Parasites', 'Medicine', 'Science', 'Biology']

Three Portuguese Real Estate Trends to Watch Out for in 2022

Three Portuguese Real Estate Trends to Watch Out for in 2022 Patrícia Casaburi Sep 1·2 min read With stunning locations off the beaten track, there is much more to Portugal than the well-known hotspots. From quaint towns in the north to undiscovered corners in the heart of the country, these areas are just waiting to be discovered. Portugal is a relatively small country — just 92,212 km². You are never really far away from key services and facilities. This makes low-density areas perfect for retirees and families alike, given the proximity to healthcare facilities and schools. These advantages aside, the most simple benefit of buying a property in low-density areas l is to live in a peaceful location, filled with beauty.. The interior of Portugal has much to offer including undiscovered landscapes, local delicacies, and picturesque villages. The islands — an upcoming trend for 2022 The autonomous islands of Madeira and the Azores both have very established real estate markets, particularly Madeira. Both islands will remain eligible for the Golden Visa program and, as such, investment focus will branch out more from mainland Portugal to the islands. Madeira provides you with a safe investment, with one of the lowest crime rates in Europe and very good education and healthcare. Most real estate investments are located close to Funchal, the capital city, where you can enjoy fine dining, luxury restaurants, and stunning properties. Although not as well established as Madeira, the brilliant green hills of the Azores are something to behold. With stunning views of miradouros (viewpoints) and a quiet way of life, you will be tucked away in one of the most beautiful places possible. High-density opportunities While residential high-density areas will no longer qualify for the Golden Visa scheme, they will remain firm investment favorites. With continually increasing demand in Lisbon and Porto, both are very attractive for investors, offering many different types of investment opportunities. With its luxury villas, beach houses, and waterfront apartments, the Algarve remains one of the most popular tourist destinations in Europe, and this is unlikely to change anytime soon. Portugal real estate in 2022 The Portuguese real estate market proved to be relatively resilient to the COVID-19 pandemic. Nonetheless, it is still going to be a great relief when the real estate market will be running at its full capacity once again in 2022. High-density areas will remain popular with expats and investors alike. The cosmopolitan capital of Lisbon, the sundrenched Algarve, and the historic city of Porto each offer unique lifestyles and strong investment pulls, as do many other high-density areas that will also no longer qualify for the scheme. Properties that offer more space and, most importantly, have gardens or terraces are in huge demand, in alignment with a global trend. Nonetheless, the changes to the Golden Visa will inevitably impact investment patterns. It is likely that this will diversify investments across the country and to the islands, opening the doors to some of the most beautiful landscapes in Portugal and instigating further developments. This will in turn increase the attractiveness of Portugal as a leading expat haven and investment hub.

https://medium.com/@patriciacasaburi/three-portuguese-real-estate-trends-to-watch-out-for-in-2022-1d60dc376b0b

['Patrícia Casaburi']

2021-09-01 11:04:42.468000+00:00

['Portugal', 'Real Estate Investments', 'Real Estate', 'Nomad', 'Relocation']

Exercising in the morning vs evening

Image by Gervyn Louis on Unsplash Would you prefer working out in the morning over evening?Are there any differences when it comes to improving your physique? Or does it depend on something else? Let’s find out. Regular physical exercise has tons of benefits. It reduces your stress, burns fat, and boosts your confidence. Is there a best time to workout? Not necessarily. The best time is the time that will help you be consistent with your workouts. Let us look at some pros and cons of exercising in the morning versus evening. What you get from morning exercises: Pros: You are more likely to be consistent with your workouts and make healthier choices throughout the day. Increases your energy level in the afternoon. May help the body burn fat more effectively. Cons: Your joints and muscles are stiffer when you’ve just woken up, which makes them prone to injuries if you exercise in the morning. Could put you at risk of earlier burnout and fatigue. It’s tough to be motivated to wake up early to work out, especially if you’re not a morning person. What you get from evening exercises: Pros: Muscles and joints are more flexible this time compared to in the morning, which makes it easier to exercise. Gives you an outlet of stress release from the day’s work. Cons: It is easier to call off an evening exercise session by using work or tiredness as an excuse. 2. May keep your core temperatures high in the night, which would delay your sleep. However, it all comes down to being consistent and setting up a routine that aligns with your long-term fitness goals. If you’re a beginner, start by being consistent with your workouts. Once you’ve accomplished that, then fine-tune variables like the frequency, intensity, and duration of your workout.

https://medium.com/@sricharan-01/exercising-in-the-morning-vs-evening-768d39d1f46b

[]

2020-11-16 08:25:20.282000+00:00

['Fitness', 'Consistency', 'Health', 'Workout']

How Much HTML You Should Learn Upfront

A beginner’s guide on how much HTML is enough to get started. How much one should learn HTML before diving into CSS or JavaScript. Covered 9 most important aspects of HTML. Photo by Sai Kiran Anagani on Unsplash This article will guide you on how much HTML should you learn to get things started for you in the world of web development. This article covers up to 9 important topics one should know about HTML. At the very end, there is a code snippet that covers everything you need to know about basics HTML and you can then jump to CSS right after. Before beginning, you should know the basic skeleton of HTML. Here is the list of things I think every beginner should be aware of it and it will take no time to master it.

https://medium.com/dev-genius/how-much-html-you-should-learn-upfront-8d6b74302392

['Daanyaal Kapadia']

2020-10-01 14:08:39.576000+00:00

['HTML', 'Software Development', 'Programming', 'Technology', 'Web Development']

ChaletOS Is Discontinued With Version 16.04.2. The Developer Officially Acknowledged It.

Since 2017, I’ve argued that (an Ubuntu-based distribution) is more elegant and easier to use than garbage Windows 10. ​In fact, I still use it regularly. On April 23, 2020, the latest long-term support version of mainstream Ubuntu ( Ubuntu 20.04 LTS ) was released to the public. Since then, I’ve eagerly waited for ChaletOS to be upgraded accordingly. I asked about the current status of ChaletOS But ChaletOS was not updated at all. I was so anxious that I contacted the developer, Mr. Dejan Petrovic, by email on November 29th to inquire about the current development status. ChaletOS project is discontinued He told me that the ChaletOS project is discontinued. ​No newer versions are available. With his permission, I quote part of the email text. Sorry but project is discontinued. There is so many distributions and I dont have time for developing another one. On a side note, he didn’t seem to be a native English speaker either. Publicity on behalf of the developer He also told me, Sorry for bad news. To tell the truth, I feel sorry too. This is because I had highly recommended ChaletOS in the Japanese version of this site. But really, I had never imagined that a so user-friendly and sophisticatedly designed OS would be discontinued in such a short time. I actively promoted ChaletOS in Japan; I felt a sense of responsibility as well. So I asked him if it is okay to announce through my blog and social media that its development is discontinued. He agreed, saying, “Yes, please.” I am not an influencer Shortly after the conversation, I realized that I had forgotten something very important. It is that I am not a so-called influencer. And I’m not so good at disseminating information, especially outside Japan. However, I think there are a large number of users around the world who are also expecting the update of ChaletOS. So, if you read this article, I hope you will spread the official information that “the ChaletOS project is discontinued with version 16.04.2.” Normally, the developer himself must announce it on the official website and social media. But it can’t be helped because sole proprietors have various limitations. Better OS than Windows and macOS I will look for an alternative distribution for some time. However, modifying Xubuntu to behave like ChaletOS seems to be the most reasonable alternative. The discontinuation of ChaletOS development is a really sad thing. But I believe there must be some Linux distributions that outperform both Windows and macOS. Available for free User-friendly, fully customizable Sophisticated, elegant If there is any promising information, I will disseminate it. So, please do not compromise on Micro$oft and Apple products. Sort out an OS that is really worthwhile. Otherwise the tragedy of ChaletOS will be repeated. Donation to Support the Mentally Disabled Living Alone in Japan

https://medium.com/@junisou12/chaletos-is-discontinued-with-version-16-04-2-the-developer-officially-acknowledged-it-1ad800494fb0

['Tomoyuki Takahashi']

2020-12-05 07:29:32.441000+00:00

['Chalets', 'Linux', 'Discontinued', 'Ubuntu']

Flare Network: Sparking life into XRP with smart contract capabilities

(Originally posted here: https://seemslegit.medium.com/flare-network-sparking-life-into-xrp-with-smart-contract-capabilities-99dfa4426dfc) 11/26/20 http://seems-legit.com Follow us on Youtube for more updates: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCedgj2HNsh3f_xg8doHBtfQ/?sub_confirmation=1 What a month it has been. With bitcoin reaching levels near it’s all time high, alt coins followed in it’s path with a huge rally. XRP made a big move going up over 40% in a single day and even though it has seen a pullback in recent hours (at the time of posting), it still shows bullish trends. This is amazing timing since XRPs upswing is in part due to greater community recognition of the upcoming Flare network airdrop of its native Spark token that we mentioned a couple weeks ago on the “Staking Solana” YouTube video. Flare is being called a ‘utility fork’ as its stated purpose is not to take users away from XRP, but to bring value back to the XRP ledger by allowing seamless and trustless integration into smart contracts and applications on not only Flare’s network, but also on the Ethereum Virtual Machine. XRP price chart 11/18–11/25 The ‘snapshot’ date of Flare’s Spark token airdrop is on December 12, 2020 and all holders of XRP will receive roughly 1:1 of Spark, though some action is required to take part. If all you’re interested in is finding out how to participate in that, skip down to the ‘Claiming your Spark’ section. Otherwise, let’s dive into Flare. Flare’s biggest difference from other protocols, and perhaps most importantly, is that the Flare network does not use proof of stake. They believe that current proof of stake models such as what Eth 2.0 seeks to transition to will have further scaling and security issues as usage continues to rise and more innovative applications become available. In other words, people won’t want to stake their Eth if they can get better returns collateralizing stablecoins or other competing financial instruments, leading to a decline in the security of the network. Flare solves this by not tying it’s native token to network security. They use what they call a Turing complete Federated Byzantine Agreement (FBA) network (Whitepaper here -https://flare.xyz/app/uploads/2019/11/FCP.pdf). Flare allows for the creation of “F-assets” such as FXRP to interact with the ecosystem through a network of ‘agents’. Using XRP as an example, Agents provide a 2.5:1 ratio to the network of Spark’s value to XRP’s value to mint the FXRP. This minted FXRP is provided to holders who send their XRP to a series of dedicated ’Agent’ addresses on the XRP Ledger. The Agents receive a ‘creation’ fee and a ‘redemption’ fee when people convert their XRP to FXRP and back again. Agents are obligated to complete their duties in a specified amount of time. If they fail to do so, they will lose a portion of their provided Spark, and the user wishing to receive the XRP/FXRP is compensated the true value plus some to compensate for transaction costs. This Agent system is one way Spark can be used to create a ‘Spark Dependent Application’. Spark tokens other main uses include governance of the network, and participation in the Flare Time Series Oracle (FTSO), Flare’s oracle system for bringing off chain information into the ecosystem as well as Spark holders’ main way of earning rewards. Holders who provide accurate data to the FTSO will earn rewards and holders who choose not to participate can delegate their Spark in a similar fashion to the way holders can delegate in proof of stake networks. See Flare’s detailed introductory post here: https://flare.ghost.io/theflarenetwork/. This network will bring all the utility of Ethereum’s smart contracts to crypto’s third biggest coin by market cap. A whole host of new applications and decentralized finance devices are expected to be developed on Flare. Teams such as Flare Finance (no relation to the actual Flare Network) are already working to have products ready to go in the short term after Flare launches in December. You can read more about them here (https://flarefinance.medium.com/a-brief-introduction-to-flare-finance-225a66b6982a) We all saw the enormous interest in Ethereum based DeFi through the summer of 2020 until it stalled out due to out of control gas fees and long processing times. With XRPs speed and near zero fees, Flare is positioning itself to give users a low cost DeFi experience. Claiming your Spark If you are an XRP holder, you are entitled to receive the Spark airdrop. The ‘snapshot’ date is December 12, 2020. Flare has not announced whether the airdrop will occur at the same time as the ‘snapshot’ or sometime shortly after, though holders will have up to six months after the snapshot to claim their tokens. After June 12th 2021, all unclaimed tokens will be burned. If you hold XRP, there are a few ways to claim your Spark. At the simplest, a number of exchanges will support the airdrop and for many, all you have to do is have your XRP on them on 12/12 and the tokens will be distributed into your account when the airdrop occurs. To see if your exchange will be supporting the airdrop, check here (https://flare.xyz/supporting-exchanges/). If you hold your XRP on a hot or cold wallet that’s not an exchange, there are a couple of extra steps involved. To be clear though, you should absolutely check with your wallet’s website to see if they have posted steps. Each wallet may have different idiosyncrasies and we can’t be held liable for any loss if you follow our advice. First, although Flare uses its own protocol, you will have to create a new Ethereum address on your wallet as its main integration is with the EVM. So go ahead and do that on your wallet of choice and name it something recognizable and obvious like “Eth Spark Wallet”. Then you’ll want to copy and save that wallet’s public key in your notes. Now you’ll need a wallet capable of writing a “MessageKey” to the XRP Ledger like Xumm. If you’re on mobile, you can download Xumm from your phone’s app store. After you download Xumm, create a PIN then click ‘Add Account” and “Import Existing Account” and select “Family Seed”. Import the private key from your XRP wallet that contains your balance into the Xumm wallet. You’ll want to double check that the Public Key that displays matches your primary wallet’s Public Key. 3. Next, you’ll have to use this tool created by XRP developer Wietse Wind that is, at the moment, the only available tool to claim your tokens: https://flare.wietse.com/ Check the boxes and disclaimers that acknowledge that this is just a tool and the developer has no liable and gives no guarantees or support. After, click “Xumm sign in” and connect your Xumm account, accepting the sign in. You will see a “Signed successfully” message, confirming the link. 4. Next you will choose “Generate ETH compatible account (optional)” and click on “Skip this step, I own an ETH compatible account & own the secret.” Here, you will take the Ethereum address you created in your wallet at the beginning of this process, and paste it then click Next. 5. The last thing you need to do is to store this Eth address in a MessageKey on the XRP Ledger. On the “Confirm account ownership on the XRP Ledger.” section, it will recognize that you signed in with Xumm. Click “Next” and you should receive a notification through Xumm asking you to sign the transaction. Confirm the transaction on Xumm, and you will see a confirmation message on the Wietse tool page. That’s it. That’s all you have to do except wait for the Spark tokens to be distributed into your account. Again, we just want to reiterate that these are the basic standard steps, and you should check on your wallet’s website to see if they have posted their own series of steps. Cheers -JDIX @ seems-legit.com Check out our youtube and twitter : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCedgj2HNsh3f_xg8doHBtfQ https://twitter.com/itseemslegitbro

https://medium.com/@jefedix/flare-network-sparking-life-into-xrp-with-smart-contract-capabilities-c205efee000c

[]

2020-12-06 20:45:41.641000+00:00

['Flare Network', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Defi', 'Spark', 'Xrp']

Burning Fat Vs Burning Calories

How do you lose belly fat? To lose weight and get in shape you must have a good diet and exercise regularly to burn fat. The first thing you must understand about exercise is that just because you are burning calories does not mean you are burning fat. Your main focus when you exercise should be losing body fat, and you can’t lose body fat just from burning calories. If you want to burn fat fast Click Here: burn fat The best solution for belly fat and burning calories. When we exercise, our bodies will start burning calories, but the calories that are burned are the calories from carbohydrates in our system. In order to burn calories from your stored fat, your body requires the presence of oxygen. There is a certain amount of oxygen that your body needs in order to start burning fat and the only way for you to measure the amount needed for your own body is to keep up with your target heart rate during exercise. Please understand that if you continue to only burn calories from carbohydrates, you will lose mostly “water weight” which leads to a decrease in your metabolism. Also, think of the calories that are burned from carbohydrates as your energy calories. If you lose too much energy calories then your muscles will not receive enough energy to increase your metabolism which indirectly burn fat. Therefore you must increase your calorie intake when you are on an exercise program to replace your burned energy calories. Burning Fat Calories during exercise During aerobic exercise, your body goes through several stages before it reaches the point where you are burning fat. You will hear people say that you are only burning sugar (carbohydrates) not fat during the first 10 minutes of exercise. This is true to a certain extent. I say this because you will continue to burn sugar past the 10 minute mark if you are not working out hard enough for your body to want more oxygen; or you are working out too hard and you can’t supply your body with enough oxygen for fat burning. If you want to burn fat fast Click Here: burn fat When you exercise you must move at a steady pace (not too fast, not too slow) so your body will utilize your stored fat (not carbohydrates or sugar) as its energy source. Also remember that just because you reached the fat burning stage does not mean you will stay there. Staying at the fat burning stage once again depends on if you are moving at a pace that is right for your body. Make sure that you are within your target heart rate range. Burning Fat Calories at rest The only way for you to continue to burn fat calories hours after you have finished working out is through the anaerobic exercise of weight training. Weight training is the key to burning fat at rest. Weight training is an anaerobic activity that will cause you to burn more calories than aerobic exercise. The calories that you are burning during weight training exercises are mostly calories from carbohydrates (meaning you must eat even more calories per day for energy); but the calories you burn at rest are mostly calories from fat. The reason you are burning fat at rest is because weight training increases your metabolism which uses your stored fat as energy. To make your body the ultimate fat burning machine you must do aerobic (cardio) and anaerobic (weight training) exercises. If you want to burn fat fast Click Here: burn fat Thanks for reading and Good luck!

https://medium.com/@philkitimi/burning-fat-vs-burning-calories-4b1648dc0c17

['Tlhoriso Phillip Kitimi']

2021-11-14 20:23:45.151000+00:00

['Weight Loss', 'Fat Burning Tips', 'Lose Weight Fast', 'Fat Burning Foods', 'Lose Weight']

December 17 Advent Gratitude: EWI

On December 17th, Exiled Writers Ink launched its 20th anniversary book coming out with Palewell Press with a reading on Zoom. More than 60 people showed up from all over the world, and the poets who shared work were Londoners with origins in Kurdish Syria, Ughur China, Kenyan America, Iran, Bosnia and Bolivia. They read their work, spoke eloquently of their hope for human rights around the world, and thanked the organisation that has provided a home for refugee writers since 2000. At its heart was the founder, Jennifer Langer, whose passion for creative resistence, coming out of her own background as the child of Holocaust refugees, led her to start EWI. I first heard of EWI when a writer friend invited me to one of their poetry readings in the basement of the Poetry Cafe in Betterton Street. It was an evening celebrating Bangledeshi poetry — with music and readings. I knew that London had a large Bangledeshi community, but had not engaged with their artists and writers, and was blown away by what I heard. I signed up to their mailing list and became a fan. Then in 2016, Donald Trump was elected. They wanted an American to read some poetry, and invited me to join one of their events. I was no refugee, but for the first time, I had a sense of what it might be like to have your country taken over by a malign authoritarian regime. It shifted my interest in EWI from curious to committed. Shortly afterwards, they asked me to join their board. As a board member, I’ve been asked to organise one reading a year. My first was an event highlighting refugee writers from Chile and Columbia. Once again, I found out about vibrant creative communities that had been flourishing in London, and even met a poet who had recently completed an MA in publishing and was founding her own press, named after her grandmother, Victorina. At an International Women’s Day event later that year, I introduced her to another writer I’d met, an Iranian activist who had written a memoir about her imprisonment in the 1980’s; the book was one of their first publications. Twice I have collaborated with Simone Theiss, a human rights blogger and member of Amnesty in London, on “Words for the Silenced” advocacy events, running evenings of readings and human rights campaigns — once for Iranian women in prison, including Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe, and once for poets imprisoned in the Arabic speaking world. I’ve helped out on an event featuring a live reading from a collective of young refugee women writers from Afghanistan, who broadcast their event from Athens into a packed room in London; I’ve listened while drama students from Regents read the translated poems of Iraqi protest poets, many of whom were their age, in an event recorded and shared directly with the young human rights defenders of Tahrir Square. We are a small organisation and often struggle. Currently our board include writers with ties to Somalia, Chile, Romania, Iran, Bangledesh, Nicaragua, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Poland and Iran. Because we’re small we are also pretty flat; there’s no hierarchy and everyone pitches in to make things happen. Our latest collective endeavour is the 20th anniversary book. We had a team of editors and worked during lockdown to put it together. Today, I feel so grateful to be included in this work, for the collective efforts that keep EWI afloat, for all the people who give their time and energy, for the board, the editorial team and Jennifer, and for the sense of warmth and community EWI has offered me in a sometimes chilly place and during an often chilling time.

https://medium.com/political-sense/december-17-advent-gratitude-ewi-bccf1502397d

['Catherine T Davidson']

2020-12-21 22:56:27.282000+00:00

['Gratitude', 'Refugees', 'Advent', 'Poetry', 'Creative Writing']

Managing Promotions. Without promotion planning, demand…

Managing Promotions Without promotion planning, demand planning fails Based on Wikipedia, promotion is defined as: “In marketing, promotion refers to any type of marketing communication used to inform or persuade target audiences of the relative merits of a product, service, brand or issue. The aim of promotion is to increase awareness, create interest, generate sales or create brand loyalty. It is one of the basic elements of the market mix, which includes the four P’s, i.e., product, price, place, and promotion.” The goal of promotion is three-fold: To present information to consumers and others. To increase demand. To differentiate a product. Promotions, as definition suggests, are managed by marketing. That might include, but not limited to price reductions, cross product packages, combining multiple of single products with less prices, sweepstakes, discounts on other products and so forth. All these create more consumption on customers’ side. At least this is the expectation of a business. Promotions deviate the total market depending on the size of your business. In other words, by making promotions, we are buying market share from our competitors (assuming ours is better than their promotion) and hoping the new customers trying our product, will stay with our brand. The question here is, what is the realistic expectation of the incremental of the demand? The question plays a key role, because over-sale of a promotion means buying more market share, but diminishing the profit (since promotions need investment), on the other hand nobody wants to have a low-performer promotion since otherwise we didn’t plan it anyway. Pre — Promo Planning Before the promotions, we need planning. What parameters are going to change, what is the contribution of those SKU’s in business, category in terms of sales and profit? We need to analyze the price elasticity and distribution changes of the SKU’s. We need to get the behavior of them. What are the expected changes in threefold: optimistic, pessimistic and most importantly realistic, based on standard demand planning calculations. The company should make its plans based on most realistic case, but also get prepared for the optimistic and pessimistic cases to be ready for the real-world. During Promo Planning Depending on the duration of promotion, we need to take reports on a regular basis to understand the trend. If it is not preforming well, it is better to discuss how to make it more prominent and which of our assumptions are not working. On the contrary, if it over performs, can we expect a big risk on our profit? We should also take care of our inventory status, it might be an excess inventory if we cannot sell, or can be in shortage if we sell a lot. Sure that for all risks and opportunities, it would be great to have some mitigation plans. Post Promo Analysis End of promotions does not mean end of promotion study. Now we need to check back whether our assumptions were right or not, what could be better, what could we do to make it better. All the assumptions, decisions and results should be saved into a database, and this might be a simple spreadsheet. The main idea here is to make all reachable and keep away from forgetting. Conclusion Promotion planning is an endless journey of today’s business environment. We all try to steal market share and profit from our competitors. However unless we make it in a clear way, we repeat our mistakes and fail repetitively causing money. Baris Nurlu has an Industrial Engineering grade having executive management experiences in many multinational companies. Currently manages a regional sales and operations of one of the best global FMCG companies. He also builds good apps in Baseduo in Apple Store and Google Play Store. You can reach him via baris@baseduo.com

https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/managing-promotions-data-driven-investor-6f5d41e9be23

['Baris Nurlu']

2020-04-01 08:18:55.019000+00:00

['Planning', 'Marketing', 'Demand Planning', 'Promotion']

Sleepy Dreams: A Playlist

Sleepy Dreams: A Playlist When it comes to beds there are only three subjects to write songs about, unless you count makeshift trampoline which I do not. Also, I want to be family friendly today so this list would be the other two… 1) A Kiss To Build A Dream On — Louis Armstrong: It would be objectively impossible to describe Satchmo’s singing voice as pillow like soft but it is full of warmth and comfort. Then his trumpet kicks in to send you floating off to a peaceful place perhaps even dreamland. Just beautiful stuff… 2) Sleepwalk — Santo & Johnny: A perfect instrumental and one that captures not only the essence of its title but the era it was recorded in as well. But there is a strange duality in it’s association — via mass media — with the 1950’s. I say that because at the same time it is romantically timeless and forever. 3) All I Have To Do Is Dream — The Everly Brothers: For many reasons, I tend to skip romantic Rock ballads. Many are lousy being either overwrought or overly simplistic. But there is a way to thread the needle between those two weaknesses and this would be the way. The lyrics here are straightforward but reflect the all encompassing warmth of a passionate relationship. Combine that strength with the beauty of those two voices and you literally have a song that will stir the heart till the last heart beats no more. 4) Tired & Sleepy — Eddie Cochran: The semi-mythical doldrums of the early 1960’s Rock music scene may have,in fact, been brought on by a random series of tragic events. It really is hard to conceive of so many awful things happening to such a critically small group of talented people within such a short period of time. Consider this mournful chronology of events that took place between 1957 and 1960: Little Richard renounced Rock & Roll, Jerry Lee Lewis married his cousin setting off a firestorm of historically odd but career killing backlash, Elvis joined the Army, Chuck Berry went to jail, Buddy Holly and Richie Valens died in the same plane crash and, finally, Eddie Cochran died in a car crash that further injured fellow passenger Gene Vincent. The Rock music scene was literally decimated. Eddie Cochran for reasons that will always elude me was the forgotten soul in all that tragedy. While his signature song — Summertime Blues — is fairly well remembered he ain’t. This is partly because the most well known versions of that song were covers by other artists. That would be especially well and good if his original version sucked but it does not. Moreover, Eddie was far from a one hit wonder, he wrote a string of great songs in a career as brief as Holly’s and they are almost as good. Oh yeah, and he could also play a mean guitar. The Brits took him more to heart then his fellow countrymen and his fatal car accident occurred while he was touring there. In short, he was Something Else. 5) Dream Baby — Roy Orbison: Roy — it would seem — was obsessed with dreams, releasing three major songs with that word in the title. In Dreams is the ballad and Orbison is over the top in its dramatic delivery. This one is more understated and set to a stroll like arrangement. Moreover, it should have been titled Sweet Dreams Baby to aid the listener in distinguishing it from the others. The last one is Dream You which is a Rocking arrangement from his final album, recorded shortly before he died. That album was considered a comeback, which make its biological finality so paradoxical. It really should have been the start of something, not the end. Yet, sadly, it was. 6) Sleeping — The Band: A fascinating, melancholy number from Stage Fright. The song expresses, Robbie Robinson’s ambivalence over his critical success of that time. He was in the unique position to see the toll such attention takes having worked closely with a certain Bob Dylan. This sort of mature, introspective songwriting is a reminder of the glories of the era, as well as the instrumental power of this band. 7) Dreaming — Cream: While everybody remembers — and celebrates — their instrumental prowess, it is often overlooked that these guys could sing. Here Jack and Eric give some harmonies a go. This is a fun one if you never heard it. Go listen! 8) Sleepwalker — The Kinks: In February of the second season of Saturday Night Live, The Kinks were the musical guests on what was — then — a groundbreaking show carefully watched by the post 1960’s Rock generation. For the band, their appearance was a wise strategic choice. They needed a fresh start with the American Rock audience and this was it. But to understand what I mean you have to appreciate the band’s history up till then and it’s status at the time. When you consider the levels of talent the Kinks possessed, the bands career trajectory is incomprehensible. They were at least as prolific and as talented as their British Invasion contemporaries: The Beatles, Stones, Who etc. That they did not have the same level of admiration in the US was largely because of an odd misunderstanding that kept them from touring the US in the late 1960’s. To be sure Ray Davies, the band’s principle songwriter, became more abstract and high brow as the decade progressed but you could say that about all the Invasion bands. By the early 1970’s, Ray was exclusively working on concepts or song cycles rather then distinct tunes. But once again, this was not some lonely exercise is avant-garde creativity or a unique ego trip. Plenty of other Rock artists were pushing boundaries at that time. That said, it is true that, as a writer, Ray was an unrelenting and unapologetic social critic and there is only so much audience tolerance for such things but I don’t think that was the whole story either. The critical backlash against the Kinks, I believe, had something to do with their radical departure from their glorious beginnings. This wasn’t the same band that released You Really Got Me and All Day And All Of The Night — or Lola for that matter — and the critics held it against them. In any case, time has proven those wags wrong. Sure, there are plenty of bad songs on Showbiz, Preservation and Schoolboys but there are also many fine ones. In fact, Super Sonic Rocket-ship from Biz made it into Marvel’s Endgame, so take that Rolling Stone Magazine! But whatever the exact cause, the Kinks needed a reset in early 1977 and SNL was it. On their first number, they did a blitz of hits, ending with a rousing L-O-L-A. So that covered the past. They used their second number, this one, to give American audiences a preview of the new assessable and harder rocking Kinks of the late 1970’s. It worked and this song kicks ass. 9) American Dream — The Heaters: As you know, The Go Go’s and the Bangles came out of the late 1970’s LA Punk scene. As with the Ramones, both those band’s drew inspiration from the Girl Groups and the Pop Hits of the early 1960’s. By the 1980’s both LA bands were able to translate those inspirations into massive mainstream success. But was that melding of Punk and Pre-Beatles Pop limited to just those three bands? Of course not. The Heaters were another such group and just one listen here will get you wondering…wondering how these women somehow eluded the same massive success. Yes their stuff is that good. Heartbreakingly good. Lead singer Theresa Robertson (her real name) is a vocal cross between Darlene Love and Ronnie Spector. If you are a fan at all of that sort of music and vocals — and you should be — then you really need to track this band down. And if you love — or hate — the Bangles’ Eternal Flame, then check out All I Wanna Do. It is eons better. Just be ready to have your heart melted. 10) I Wanna Sleep — R. Stevie Moore: If you are unfamiliar with Mr. Moore, one quick listen would lead you to believe he is one of the many DIY post Puck artists of the early 2000’s. And then you look at the release dates and realize this stuff came out in the 1970’s. So, obviously, Stevie was ahead of his time but that is partly an unintended consequence of his approach to recording. He literally was DIY instrumentally, playing everything himself, and to add to the strange feel of it all, he recorded himself at home rather then a studio. That makes for an interesting backstory but here is where I question Stevie’s choice. None of this was necessary. These songs would have worked — and probably would have worked better — if he had recorded them more traditionally. In other words, I am not sure these songs are improved by his low fi approach but give a listen and judge for yourself. 11) Let Me Dream If I Want To — Mink DeVille: There was a bunch of great bands that were part of the original CBGB’s scene that, for some reason, never had anything like the success of the bands you readily associate with that famous Bowery club. I am referring to groups like Tuff Darts, The Shirts and, most especially, this band. The vagaries of it all are astounding because they were all fantastic and of apiece with each other. In any case, Willy DeVille (the band’s lead singer and songwriter) embraced the original Punk esthetic and this is audio proof of that. Just to add to the ironies of it all, he sounds a lot like Lou Reed here. When their inevitable fate occurred to Willy, he expanded his musical palette first with Mink and then solo. Along the way he even picked up an Academy Award nomination. Sadly, Willy’s personal life was full of heartache and demons. He died fairly young but not from excess but pancreatic cancer that was not caught soon enough. As an artist, he could be gentle and sweet and, keeping with our theme, check out Even While I Sleep to hear post Punk Willy at his best. 12) Sleeping On My Couch — Del The Funky Homosapien: I will be the first to admit that my knowledge and collection of Rap and Hip-Hop is limited but I do own several songs by Del. But when I mentioned him to a Hip-Hop fan, I got a blank stare. That sort of reaction is not really unusual. There are thousands of talented artists who work below the radar of popular notice for one reason or another. It partly inspires why I like to curate these lists so carefully. So would it surprise you to know that Del is Ice Cube’s cousin and helped to write lyrics for Da Lynch Mob? How about the fact that he raps on Gorilliz’s Clint Eastwood? The point really is that fun, quality music is waiting for your discovery. Discovery, however, can be hard work so maybe you should take a nap first. Thanks for reading! Till next time!

https://medium.com/@jmramones/sleepy-dreams-a-playlist-e7fc57f8551e

['A Considered Opinion']

2020-01-28 15:28:10.749000+00:00

['Music', 'Eddie Cochran', 'Roy Orbison', 'The Kinks', 'Rock']

Don’t Wait for Disaster: Regulate Companies’ Ride-Hailing Evacuation Responses Now

A transportation system dominated by autonomous vehicles, the majority of which are shared, is likely a more efficient transportation network but also one that is more fragile and less able to function without severe interruption during natural disasters. Such a future scenario would lack the resiliency that the current transportation network possesses. Human drivers, while flawed and responsible for nearly all crashes, are still capable of piloting their vehicles in a greater range of conditions than autonomous vehicles currently can. Natural disasters create extreme driving conditions and place significant and often overwhelming demands on the current transportation system, so much so that some states tackle this problem of peak demand by allowing single-direction travel along key evacuation routes. This practice is termed contraflow lane reversal and it’s meant to meet the spike in demand by transportation network users during evacuations. This video posted by an evacuee shows how contraflow lane reversal worked on I-26 during Hurricane Florence. While autonomous and connected vehicles theoretically promise greater coordination and efficiency during such events and unique travel patterns, in practice, the well-documented deleterious effects of weather on these vehicles’ systems (e.g., lidar) could significantly impair or preclude their effective use in mass evacuations. As an Axios reporter who recently took a ride in a Waymo van without a safety driver in Chandler, Arizona, reported this week, a “threat of flash flooding earlier in the week suspended driverless operations for several days.” According to the same Axios piece, only around 1,500 people currently use Waymo in Chandler, Arizona. Of these, only 400 use the service without a safety driver — and are bound by a nondisclosure agreement — while the other 1,100 are riders who use Waymo One, which is the company’s name for its paid service. Presumably, these 1,500 Waymo users could find alternative means of mobility during this temporary gap in service due to the risk of flooding, but this recent shutdown illustrates the novel risks inherent in a future that is entirely autonomous. These risks are magnified if more people renounce personal vehicle ownership in favor of using such shared services. In these cases, it becomes a simple math problem in that not enough vehicles would be available for mass evacuation purposes. Put another way, “[t]he number of vehicles…will not match the number of people asking for a vehicle at the very same time in order to evacuate.” Transit, and rail in particular, offers more theoretical resiliency and capacity in such cases. When Hurricane Irma affected Florida in September 2017, at least one observer opined why passenger trains weren’t being used to evacuate the significant number of people leaving Florida, many of whom encountered empty gas stations and miles of traffic as fellow residents fled the notoriously car-dependent state. After exploring why there wasn’t a coordinated public response that leveraged rail, the article’s author concluded that disasters like Hurricane Irma demonstrate “the abysmal, anarchy-filled state of transportation in America.” While autonomous vehicles are more coordinated in many ways, especially if these vehicles are connected, this coordination is entirely in the hands of the private companies that operate these vehicles on public roads. Ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft, which are often described as parts of the “sharing economy,” have contributed to some evacuation and disaster response efforts to date. However, their contributions have been entirely voluntary and have varied depending on the size and scope of the disaster. Importantly, their services still rely on human drivers. Recent research from the Transportation Sustainability Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, examined what voluntary actions Lyft, Uber, and Airbnb took during the California wildfires in 2017 and 2018. Source: Stephen Wong and Susan Shaheen. 2019. “Leveraging the Sharing Economy to Expand Shelter and Transportation Resources in California Evacuations,” University of California, Berkeley. As shown in the above table, companies’ responses varied depending on the size of the evacuation. For instance, out of the six wildfires examined by the research team, Uber took action in only three of those incidents. Importantly, all of these actions were entirely voluntary and not compulsory, which makes sense given that both Uber and Lyft still rely on “independent contractors” (a point of ongoing contention) to deliver their services. Many of these drivers were probably also understandably focused on moving themselves and their families out of harm’s way during the wildfires. Overall, the report’s recommendations didn’t favor a strong regulatory response and instead highlighted the potential for cooperation. The report concluded that while the sharing economy represents an area of future and further collaboration between state and local officials, more research is needed, especially as it pertains to “innovative mobility” options like “driverless vehicles.” Which brings us to the billion-dollar question: Should companies such as Waymo, which now offers fully autonomous rides, be legally obligated to provide shared emergency evacuation services from areas affected by natural disasters? Going one step further: Should these companies be required to demonstrate the ability of their driverless vehicles to operate in a range of conditions and, if that is not possible given their current technology, be required to provide for “emergency evacuation safety drivers” who could operate their vehicles in the event severe weather precluded their continued safe driverless use? These are questions more state and local officials should immediately start asking, especially as companies such as Waymo and Cruise Automation deploy more driverless vehicles in communities across the United States. Cruise Automation is an especially interesting case since that company has proposed an entirely driverless (no safety driver and no steering wheel) taxi option called Cruise Origin. Such an option would preclude even mandating the presence or use of a safety driver during evacuations since the vehicle has no human controls that can be used to operate it in the event of severe weather. And more severe weather like the kind that recently temporarily forced the shutdown of Waymo’s driverless service in Chandler, Arizona, is on the way. As the Washington Post recently reported, cities like Boston are grappling with the effects of climate change now as its harbor inundates low-lying areas during storm and tidal surges. The article noted that Boston is “ranked the world’s eighth most vulnerable to floods among 136 coastal cities,” which makes its situation particularly precarious. Boston is also among dozens of cities with some form of autonomous vehicle testing program. However, such testing is often limited to ideal weather conditions until licensed companies can demonstrate the safety and efficacy of their systems. Waymo has started testing its vehicles’ systems in states like Florida to learn how they perform during inclement weather events like heavy rain. This type of testing will be critical to improving the technology to the point where residents can rely on it even during severe weather. While driverless technology is likely still a ways off (despite years of hype), thinking about how to regulate companies’ responses is prudent policy on the part of elected officials whose primary responsibility is ensuring the safety of residents they represent. Requiring plans for deploying safety drivers to support emergency evacuation procedures would be one small step in the right direction. Such proactive policies would also ensure that the technology doesn’t develop the reputation of being a fair-weather friend in times of natural disaster.

https://medium.com/swlh/dont-wait-for-disaster-regulate-companies-ride-hailing-evacuation-responses-now-95c45d66c72d

['Joseph Wildey']

2020-05-11 04:21:42.701000+00:00

['Transportation', 'Mobility', 'Weather', 'Ridesharing', 'Tech']

Creating a GKE Cluster with GitHub Actions

Automating Kubernetes Cluster creation and Bootstrapping using GitHub Actions GitHub Actions allows you to design your CI and CD workflows directly in your GitHub repositories. GitHub actions are entirely integrated with GitHub. Build, Test, and Deploy can be done directly from GitHub. So your CI/CD workflows can be at the same place where your source code exists. The CI/CD Pipeline can be triggered with events like pull requests or merging of branches etc. In this article, we will be using the GitHub actions to create a GKE Cluster with terraform and bootstrap the cluster with some tools like Istio and flagger. What is the entire story all about? (TLDR) GitHub Actions allows you to design your CI and CD workflows directly in your GitHub repositories. Build, Test, and Deploy can be done directly from GitHub. We will create a GKE Cluster ( Using terraform ) with GitHub actions and bootstrap the cluster by installing components like Istio, Flagger, etc. Prerequisites GCP Account GitHub Account Any remote backend to store your state ( Optional ) DEMO In this demo, we are going to provision a GKE cluster first and then add a set of Preemptible nodes to the same provisioned cluster. You can fork my repo that has both the terraform and GitHub actions file. This is a sample snippet of my terraform code. This would create a GKE cluster and then add a node pool to the cluster created through our terraform. But how do we automate this? How do we ensure that our terraform code doesn't have any errors? How do we ensure that our terraform code present in the master branch doesn't have any formatting issues? How do we ensure that any pull request raised to the master branch are properly tested before merging? And finally, how do we automate the provisioning of the GKE cluster and the node pool? The solution is GitHub Actions. Let us now take a peek at what our GitHub action is doing here name: The name of the GitHub Action. on: The name of the GitHub event that triggers this workflow. push.paths: The workflow would be triggered if any changes are made to this path. branches: Trigger the workflow on Push only for the main branch. pull_request: Trigger the workflow on a pull request event. jobs: A workflow is made of one or more jobs ( These define the set of steps to be performed ). jobs.terraform: The id of the job. jobs.terraform.env: A map of environment variables that are available to all steps in the job. runs-on: The type of machine on which the job should be running on. strategy.matrix: A matrix allows you to create multiple jobs by performing variable substitution in a single job definition. Here we tell our workflow to run in both gke_tf and worker_nodes folder. steps: A job contains a series of tasks called steps. steps.uses: It specifies the name of the prebuilt actions to be used. You can find a lot of them from GitHub Marketplace here ( https://github.com/marketplace?type=actions ). steps.run: Specifies the command to be run in the shell. steps.if: Prevents a job from running until a condition is met. bootstrap.needs: By default, all the jobs run in parallel. This needs section identifies the jobs that should be completed successfully before this job can run. So our GitHub action does the following steps Whenever a pull request is raised a) Checks out the code from the master branch into the ubuntu-latest machine. ( name: Checkout ) b) Checks if our terraform code is formatted properly. ( name: Terraform Format ) c) Initializes the terraform working directory. ( name: Terraform Init ) d) Generates a speculative execution plan, showing what actions Terraform would take to apply the current configuration. ( name: Terraform Plan ) 2. Whenever the pull request is merged a) Creates or updates infrastructure according to Terraform configuration files in the current directory ( name: Terraform Apply ) b) Bootstrapping the cluster by Installing flagger and Istio operator ( name: bootstrap-cluster ). This job waits for the terraform job to be completed before it starts. Let us now raise a Pull request by increasing the worker node count from 1 to 2 in either gke_tf or worker_nodes folder. PR showing the status of our checks. Terraform plan and format Since the pull request is not yet merged, it would only check for the formatting issues and executes terraform plan. Now the pull request has to be merged ( Manually ). How about we automate this too? Yes, you can now enable auto merging of pull requests from the GitHub UI. Auto-merging of a Pull request. As soon as our Pull request is merged, our GitHub action will start creating a cluster in your GCP account. Creation of the cluster in GCP If you login into the GCP console you should now be able to see your cluster in the GKE section with an additional node group too. Conclusion Thanks for reading my article. Hope you have liked it. Here are some of my other articles that may interest you. Recommended

https://medium.com/nerd-for-tech/creating-a-gke-cluster-with-github-actions-dd34e2de50a6

['Pavan Kumar']

2021-02-17 13:25:55.307000+00:00

['Kubernetes', 'Github', 'DevOps', 'Cloud Computing', 'Gcp']

The Happiest Season: Why Harper Deserves So Much Better

In the past few weeks, I’ve come across lesbian influencers being shockingly critical toward The Happiest Season and one of its main characters, Harper. Harper, a girl struggling to come out to her family, has been torn down by the lesbian community for being toxic toward her girlfriend, Abby. As a fellow lesbian, I’m here to express my sadness and frustration at my own community for the lack of empathy they have displayed toward her struggles. Harper deserves better. She deserves much more compassion from the lesbian influencers who have cancelled her for being a “toxic bitch”. She deserves more from people who have supposedly been through similar experiences. I am choosing to vouch for her because I have yet to see a single person in our community speaking out about the heartbreak that goes on inside of someone who is in her position. Harper is me. I am Harper. I am the girl writing these words under a pseudonym as you read because she is afraid her mom might somehow find it. I am the girl who felt so deeply for Harper as she watched the movie because she knows what it’s like to fall in love inside of the closet. And no matter how much you’re banging your bruised fist against the God-damn closet door, it doesn’t budge because one day you realize your mom is on the other side beating her fist against yours. Fear, guilt, and shame knocks my bones and crawls under my skin every time I go home. I go home alone, because i can’t bring my girlfriend with me. I actually pulled a Harper once out of sheer desperation because I wanted her to come home with me so badly. I introduced her as a friend, tried to show my mom how wonderful she was, and then revealed shortly after that she was actually my girlfriend. After finding out, my mom no longer acknowledged her existence. “If I choose my parents, I will lose you. If I choose you, I will lose them. I am not hiding you, I am hiding me.” These words hit me hard when Harper shouted them out. I’ve said almost the exact same words to my girlfriend in a similar situation. I desperately shouted these words to her, angry that she didn’t understand how I was invisible to my own family. I wanted her to know that in hiding her, I was protecting myself. Toward the end of the the movie when Abby shakes her head and tells Harper that her coming out was too late, a part of me collapsed. I felt so deeply for Abby and so deeply for Harper. I felt for my girlfriend who feels left out of my story sometimes and i felt for myself who can’t escape the closet. But I thank the universe everyday that she chooses to stay and lend me her God-given patience so that we can have a better future. If I didn’t have her, I don’t know what I would do. If my suffocating relationship with my mom teared ours apart, I would lose all faith in the good of humanity and doubt the strength of a loving relationship. I didn’t ask for my mom to dangle her love over my head, and neither did Harper. When John asked Abby how her parents reacted when she came out and she said that they told her they still loved her, I thought what the fuck. Even though I know many people whose parents reacted the same way, I always have to take a moment when I hear a happy story. “I love you no matter what.” Even if I dig deep into the crevices of my imagination, I genuinely can’t hear those words being uttered in my own mom’s voice. Still, Harper had no excuse treating Abby like that. She lured Abby back into a toxic relationship. She would’ve been better off with a different woman (Riley!). Fair. Abby deserves someone who is ready and can treat her the way she wants to be treated. But I think we are all forgetting that long-term relationships are also fucking messy. Relationships that last decades and what they call “true love” are full of trial and error. Mistakes are made and lessons are learned. I am not dismissing the existence of abusive partners who certainly do not deserve our compassion. Abusive relationships are very real and they should not be glorified in any way. Rather, I am urging everyone to remember that we all have toxic traits living in us. Having toxic traits doesn’t make you a toxic human — it makes you human. I shudder thinking, “what if my girlfriend had left me when I had struggled to come out to my mom?” I am not toxic and I am capable of maintaining a healthy relationship while amending my relationship with my mom. So instead of canceling Harper for being a terrible partner, I want us to remind ourselves that relationships are multi-layered. They are neither good or bad, right or wrong, beautiful or ugly. There is peace and toxicity in every relationship. Unlike Harper’s, my story doesn’t have a happy ending (yet). My mom hasn’t declared her desire to learn karate, break out of her own shell, and come back downstairs to be an ally. In fact, she has always been the supreme upholder of the expectations I fail to meet. I’m not sure if she will come around, but i hope she does. Until then, I vouch for all the Harpers in the world who, like me, are dealing with their inner demons, trying their best to please everyone including herself. I vouch for the Abbys like my girlfriend who believe in their Harpers and give them a second chance. I vouch for moms who admit their mistakes. And finally, I vouch for the Johns who… might not be able to save a fish but will drive hundreds of miles to save a friend.

https://medium.com/@charliewrites1/the-happiest-season-why-harper-deserves-so-much-better-9146bdc46e23

[]

2020-12-09 06:49:26.602000+00:00

['Compassion', 'Happiest Season', 'Lesbian', 'Coming Out', 'Gay']

Churchill Goes Down

Everyone called her Churchill. Except the help. They called her Miss Churchill. Churchill’s given name was Arabella Phoebe Anastasia Gregor-Simons and try as she might, Churchill’s mother Sissy, was never able to get Arabella to stick. Why was she called Churchill? Well, there it was on the mantelpiece of both apartments, a silver-framed photograph of tiny Arabella Phoebe Anastasia tucked into a fur throw, brow furrowed and furious mouth set. The very image of old Winston himself at the end of his life. Pop-Pop started it and, to poor Sissy’s dismay, it stuck. Sissy, being a pragmatic sort who had come out ahead in so many of the family battles, tried to go along with things. But it did stick in her craw, as her old father would have said if he were around to say it. When Sissy Mitchell met Paul Howard Gregor-Simons IV in her senior year at a mixer with the men’s college, she had ideas. Paul Howard, in his turn, only had ideas which involved pretty girls and fast cars. Sissy was extremely pretty and she loved going fast. His family had been content to let him have his fun until it came time for graduation. It caused no end of consternation and hysteria when he and Sissy came back from an unannounced trip out west wearing matching gold wedding bands. Then she began producing children. Sons. Three fine, healthy, sturdy sons and, finally, Churchill. Until she was eight, Churchill was pretty much on her own. Her older brothers monopolized whatever energy and attention there was in the Gregor-Simons’ elegantly shabby floor-through apartment in the building next to the one where Grandmother Marie and Pop-Pop lived. But then, the last of the boys went off to boarding school, leaving her to fend off all that familiness by herself. Prior to that, Churchill had the run of both buildings with one of two housekeepers (more on that later), two cooks, and two around the clock shifts of doormen to keep her company. Suddenly, Sissy wanted her daughter where she could see her which was a terrible strain on both of them. Churchill disliked mirrors which was a problem over at Grandmother Marie’s where that once legendary beauty could still look into any one of the dozens of strategically placed mirrors and see only the creamy complexion and wide-set hazel eyes of the past. Pop-Pop served as a kind of a mirror himself, also still seeing the great beauty who had seduced him away from the speakeasies and jazz clubs. This, however, was not a family which spoke of its past and Churchill had become adept at ferreting out information and drawing conclusions. She also had all three shifts of doormen, the housekeeper at home and nearly all the help wrapped around her pudgy pinkie. Hortense, Grandmother Marie’s housekeeper remained the only holdout. Hortense was nobody’s fool and knew an upstart when she smelled one and that Sissy Mitchell might have won over the rest of them with those boys of hers, but Hortense was having none of it. As each of the boys trooped through her kitchen, growing bigger, eating more and caring less, Hortense kept her opinions to herself. Not that Miss Marie didn’t know exactly how offended her dear old Hortense was, but one had to remember one’s place and both Hortense and Marie were in tacit agreement about this fact of life. So Churchill avoided mirrors, did well enough in school and didn’t think much about her classmates who dimly registered on the periphery of her attention as being not terribly interesting. She thought that she would have liked her mother if she’d just talk with Churchill and not at her. Sissy could ably hold up her end of nearly any conversation but neither of Churchill’s parents, however, were what you’d call accessible. Her father’s love of fast cars and pretty girls vanished with the birth of the first of his boys and, just like that, he settled comfortably into the seat that had been waiting for him since Pop-Pop had convened his first board of directors. No one in the family seemed particularly concerned about how wild the boys were. Boys just being boys. And, after all, nothing they ever got up to couldn’t be quietly taken care of by the family attorneys and money. Churchill didn’t think she liked those boys much. In their turn, the boys barely noticed that they had a little sister. This was to everyone’s benefit in Sissy’s opinion. With life so thoroughly well ordered, it took some time before anyone noticed anything amiss with Churchill. Churchill herself would be hard pressed to explain her actions. Hortense, interestingly enough, was the first to pick up that something was not quite right with the brat. However, you will remember that Hortense, above all other attributes, knew her place and so kept her counsel. Let the upstart and that empty-headed Paul Howard figure it out. The Ingersons were coming over for dinner tonight and Hortense had more important things on her mind. At first, it was small potatoes. Hiding the best napkin rings over at Grandmother Marie’s and then slyly moving Hortense’s racy paperback to the armchair in the big library. This all seemed innocent enough, as Churchill faded into the wallpaper and enjoyed watching Pop-Pop blow his top at the adventures of a randy governess on the arm of his favorite chair. This was quite new in Churchill’s solitary existence. While her brothers had been a fun bunch with scrapes and pranks galore, Churchill simply watched. Paul Howard and Sissy had become experts at checking as they opened doors and sending this one or that one off with the driver to the ER for broken this or sprained that. What her brothers deemed fun, only looked like chaos to Churchill. Solemnly, she watched the pandemonium from the sidelines. If she had been a pretty child, one to express confusion and alarm, Sissy would have noticed and taken action. But Churchill was a brick. She drew no attention to herself. In fact, Churchill sometimes wondered if she had perfected the ability to be invisible. But then Hortense would come into a room and, sweeping her spotlight glare around, would seize on Churchill’s set and somber face. Since invisibility was not an option, Churchill decided on this other course of action. When Hortense began to put the pieces together, Churchill was thrilled and a little nervous. The other adults could be counted on to disregard or not even see anything that didn’t fit with their notions of how things should be. Hortense was a different matter and Churchill began a quiet surveillance of the straight-backed housekeeper. Churchill was fully aware that Hortense knew something was going on. Even so, Churchill developed a strategy, adjusting it and honing it. The game became so engrossing that a chance eavesdropping one night just after Christmas took Churchill completely by surprise. She had a place, a useful little spot in a corner near the door of Father’s home office where she often could be found reading. That is she could have been found if anyone had been looking for her, and even then, they would have had to look twice. “Really, darling, she should have gone two years ago.” Sissy’s was the voice of reason. “Why? Why do we have to send her away to school? The boys, yes, yes of course, the boys must get that experience. But Ch- Arabella is doing splendidly at The Clayton School, top of her class. She’ll have her pick of the best universities.” “Think about it, my dearest. Do you really want her to feel that she is inferior to her brothers? That she isn’t up to the rigors of boarding school? And, further, is it our place to deprive her of this golden opportunity to begin to develop her own persona, her own life with her own friends, independent of us and the family?” Sissy realized her mistake and shut her mouth. “Ah.” Paul could almost be heard to settle comfortably into his next salvo, lighting his pipe and tempering his condescension. “The family. My family. My parents, you mean.” Now he had her. There was a time when this would have sent Sissy from the room in a fit and, again, Paul would win. Churchill had heard it a thousand times. Early in the marriage, Sissy had caved into Paul’s desire to meet his in-laws, but after three disastrous visits, he gave up. It wasn’t so much the insistence that they stay in the cramped, little bedroom under the eaves of the house on Proctor Road, down by the abandoned glue factory or how Sissy’s little sister, Madge, would get drunk and belligerent, or even how their father barely spoke three words to anyone. What drove Paul around the bend was the condescension that was Sissy’s response to all of this. Like many of his class, Paul felt that the “authenticity” of people like his new in-laws was somehow noble and should be appreciated. When Sissy would chuck the jar of bargain brand salad dressing into the sink and ask why no one had bothered getting mayonnaise or instruct Madge to clear up the magazines off the sofa, Paul would burn with embarrassment for his new wife. Away from her family of origin, Sissy made a fine wife and was an even more spectacular mother. To the boys. Churchill confused Sissy and so Sissy did what she had always done when confused. She went shopping. True, she had tried to take her reluctant daughter along on these excursions in the beginning but before she was seven, Churchill made it clear that she had no interest in shopping as recreation. Churchill did not kid herself. Paul may have thought he had won again but Churchill knew her mother better than that. It was time to adjust her strategy. Hortense was suspicious when that creature began helping around the house, offering to polish the brass and fold the kitchen linens. Not that she didn’t accept the help. It gave her the opportunity to keep a closer eye on the child because she was obviously up to something. Churchill played it carefully, not being too helpful, but watching for an in. She knew Hortense loved bodice-rippers, chocolate covered cherries, watching the History channel and soccer, collecting magazine clippings about the Royal Family, and anything to do with Victoriana. Churchill also knew a few of the things Hortense loathed and made equal note of those, just in case. For instance, Hortense could not stand Hollywood anything, macaroni and cheese, game shows, the Internet, summertime, gossip, or the stock market. Hortense would be the last person in the nation to admit that she was lonely; that was for the weak-willed and pathetic. But little by little, she was growing accustomed to the quiet presence of the determined little girl. They sat side by side in the cramped pantry off the kitchen, polishing the silver tea set and watching Hitler devour Poland. Churchill even volunteered to do little errands around the house and Hortense slowly came to rely on the child. Churchill was running out of time. She knew letters had been exchanged and that Sissy had been buying new school clothes. She also knew that simply appealing to Hortense’s emotions was a waste of time. Thus, she engineered it so that it was Hortense who just happened to overhear Paul and Sissy making plans. It was actually kind of easy. All she had to do was forget that she had left the latest issue of Us magazine with the feature story about the new British heir in the library and then tell Hortense at just the right time. As Hortense approached the closed library door, she heard voices and stopped. After that, all Churchill could do was wait. Hortense, for her part, was confused by her distress. She couldn’t actually care that the child was being sent away to boarding school. All these children were sent away. It was expected. In fact, she had often wondered why her employer hadn’t been more assertive with their son on this matter. Each of the boys had been shipped off when they were seven years old. Churchill should have gone at least a year ago. Sitting in the car next to Sissy, with her bags and trunks and boxes all piled into the cavernous trunk, Churchill went back over her campaign to see where it had failed. The next one wouldn’t. Count on it. © Remington Write 2019. All Rights Reserved.

https://medium.com/literally-literary/churchill-goes-down-4d761a0a19c0

['Remington Write']

2019-07-26 02:24:10.295000+00:00

['Wealth', 'Short Story', 'Family', 'Fiction', 'Strategy']

The Top 3 Online Dating Mistakes That Men Are Making In Communication

Photo by StockSnap on Pixabay. Based on my own experience as well as the experiences of other women, there are definite mistakes being made in communication from men that are turning women off immediately. Here’s a question that needs to be asked whenever you send a message to a woman online: Would you say this same thing to a woman in real life? If not, you probably should not say it! Men may want a certain response from women as well as wanting their needs met immediately, but when you don’t know the woman that you’re talking to and you make these top 3 mistakes that I will be getting into in just a little bit, you are at risk of coming off disconnected, creepy and needy! When you come off in this way, you will not be able to keep the interest of the women that you are talking to and end up feeling increasingly lonelier when you are not getting the types of responses that you had originally desired. When you are communicating in a way that comes off as disconnected, creepy and needy, you will scare off women. You may be standing in your own way if you are sending online dating messages that are included in these top 3 online dating mistakes! Keeping a calm and level mind when entering into communication with a woman that you desire is always best. A woman is never obligated to respond, but you can increase your chances of a response if you do the right things. Photo by Serhii Chernetskyi on Pixabay. Here’s the Top 3 Online Dating Mistakes That Men Are Making In Communication: Giving A Lot Of Information Too Quickly. Don’t give paragraphs of information that are overwhelming and hard to read. Women are busy, too, and you want to catch her attention instead of giving her a novel to read through. If you don’t know the woman well enough, this comes off as creepy! Sending Repeat Messages. This happens! Whether this is a mistake or not, this is not a good thing to do. It shows a lack of paying attention to detail, a lack of creativity as well as a lack of thought. It also raises the question: How many women has this guy sent the same message to? Sending Extremely Sexual Messages Right Off The Bat. Some messages read off like a love novel with paragraphs of explicit detail. Sometimes the messages can be more simple, but exude strong sexual tones. This comes off as disconnected, creepy and needy! If you have not established any sort of authentic connection with the woman that you are interested in, it will be harder to communicate at this level so do not be surprised if you do not get any response. If you do not pay attention to the messages that you are sending and make these mistakes, you may sacrifice getting the chance to meet someone really wonderful! Establish authentic communication. In order to establish an authentic connection with a woman, you need to understand more about the person that you are talking to. Does this woman want the same things that you do? Did you pay attention to her dating profile? Based on her interests or on various aspects of what she has on her profile, you can spark a fun conversation. The woman is under no obligation to respond in any particular way, but if you are respectful, fun and inviting, she most likely will respond. In understanding what not to do, have fun with what you can do! Learn more about the woman that you are interested in. Stand out by sending short and sweet messages that show that you are paying attention to her. Ask questions and show that you care by asking what she thinks. Become an online dating pro instead of an online dating NO!

https://medium.com/an-idea/the-top-3-online-dating-mistakes-that-men-are-making-in-communication-936363da9971

['Sara Knick']

2020-12-29 12:05:06.504000+00:00

['Dating App', 'Online Dating', 'Dating', 'Men', 'Dating Advice']

Five ways we can systemically transform last-mile logistics

This post was originally written by Bax & Company consultant David Fernández for Parcel and Postal Technology magazine. COVID-19 has caused short-term disruptions and long-term structural changes in many sectors, and urban logistics is no exception. E-commerce has experienced soaring growth, particularly for groceries and home care, as a result of people buying significantly more online. In fact, companies like DHL claim that parcel shipment numbers now match those of Christmas peak times1. This trend was already growing before the pandemic hit, but COVID-19 has amplified and accelerated the effects; creating more deliveries, putting more vehicles into already clogged streets and increasing polluting emissions. This exponential growth is predominantly down to urbanisation, a widening range of products available online, and new digital business models and technologies that shorten delivery times. Consumers are ordering more online and also expecting faster deliveries. In fact, same-day and on-demand delivery are the fastest-growing segments in the last mile. Demand for last-mile delivery is soaring; it is set to grow by 80% globally by 2030, according to the World Economic Forum2. The downside is, cities are struggling with traffic congestion and air pollution due to the increasing number of delivery vehicles, their noise, and second-lane parking. Some cities predict that, if no interventions are made, inner-city traffic will turn to chaos in the next three years. Although both the public and private sectors have launched various local initiatives, there has been no scaling so far. Urban logistics today pretty much functions in the same way it did decades ago. Systemic change and harmonised regulatory frameworks have yet to arrive. To find a solution to this chronic inefficiency, we must think of urban logistics as a whole. Pooling the innovation capacity of all urban logistics players would allow the sector to tap into the potential for better efficiency. For this to work, a city must actively build and shape an ecosystem in which the various logistics players are all interconnected. On top of this, certain boundaries need to exist: a central IT platform where all market participants record their delivery capacities; which establishes digital, physical, and operational connectivity between all players; and all involved parties agree on common IT standards and shipment sizes to enable interconnection3. A central platform of this kind, inspired by the open physical internal framework4, may sound utopian. Yet, there are already real-life success cases of such interconnected logistics ecosystems via platforms, one of them being the well-known giant Amazon. The company has built up an infrastructure that forecasts logistics demand and monitors its entire supply chain capacity in real-time. Starting in the UK, they are now stretching its limits incorporating external volumes for third parties. Although tempting, there are still doubts about whether such an integrated system would lead to the creation of monopolies or an imbalance of interests. That’s why we are suggesting five business models, combining innovative tech, new schemes for horizontal collaboration, and policy measures and interventions, that cities can use to pave the way for a systemic transformation of last-mile logistics. 1. CONTAINERISED URBAN LAST-MILE DELIVERY Instead of vans collecting parcels from a remote sorting terminal, driving to the city centre and spending the day delivering, containerisation introduces standardised and modular load units, such as specific trolley-containers for the last mile. Multiple parcels can be placed inside these containers at the sorting terminal, then transported to city hubs, where the containers are transferred to last-mile delivery vehicles. The upsides of this optimised process include: fast and secure transfer of goods from the feeder vehicle to the last-mile delivery vehicle; the possibility to mix goods from different carriers in the same feeder vehicle, and in the same city hub, and compatibility and interoperability among different transportation systems and modes. Two pioneering companies are Rytle and Velove. Both have created innovative concepts, integrating e-cargo bikes with modular and exchangeable containers, operating under app-based IoT platforms. These platforms create a digital network of all components and actors of multimodal systems, where shippers and customers, and hubs and transportation means, are all interconnected. Rytle combines state-of-the-art technology and environmental protection for maximum flexibility in city logistics. 2. MARKETPLACES FOR CITY LOGISTICS More and more startups (Deliveroo) and larger companies (Amazon Prime Now) are offering on-demand delivery (ODD). While ODD is creating new categories of urban employment, it has led to many unresolved legal issues and, in some instances, poor working conditions. Additionally, many local businesses have had to close due to COVID-19. This has encouraged restaurants and small retailers to find alternative ways of serving their regular consumers, like opening e-commerce channels or setting up home delivery services. Fair and transparent online marketplaces or local platforms aggregating stores’ offerings have popped up to give visibility and operational backing to these enterprises during and after the crisis, mitigating the impact on the local economy. That is the case with startups such as Zupr and Dropper in Groningen, the Netherlands, and Zerca! in Zaragoza, Spain. Their concepts involve the setting up of a local web-based department store for SMEs, connected to zero-emissions delivery services, enabling local shop owners to compete with big players in online marketing. Dropper is a marketplace for urban logistics, allowing couriers from different organisations to pick up and deliver packages for each other. 3. PLATFORMS FOR THE INTEGRATED MANAGEMENT OF DELIVERY TIMES AND SPACE For delivery vehicles, double-parking or parking at intersections is seen by many road users as unavoidable, but it is against traffic regulations in most countries. There are some exceptions, however. In Spain for instance, parking is usually not punished if the hazard lights are on. City authorities are designating parking spaces and time windows for delivery vehicles and imposing stricter sanctions for double-parking. Barcelona has experimented with new consolidation models, where micro-platforms are located in public spaces and leased to private operators in exchange for data. Using its own app (spro), the city manages loading and unloading spaces in public streets. Through this system, authorities can attach a number of conditions, such as service level, the use of environmentally-friendly vehicles, or pricing and quality standards for customers; for companies to be granted access to this new infrastructure. From a legal point of view, this could also be a more practical way for cities to actively shape the system without the burden of setting up a licensing system, like that for taxi-drivers and pharmacists. SPRO is an app that manages parking spaces in the loading and unloading areas of Barcelona and the Metropolitan Area. 4. CITY HUBS: SHARED USE OF SMALL-SCALE DISTRIBUTION CENTRES Large courier companies are struggling to be more flexible and sustainable. Existing infrastructure is mainly on the outskirts of cities, but these companies need local distribution centres (city hubs) suited for smaller and more sustainable delivery vehicles; such as cargo bikes and trikes. However, in densely populated inner cities, public spaces are a scarce commodity. That’s why initiatives are popping up, like KoMoDo in Berlin, fostering the cooperative use of micro-depots. Within this model, cities purchase or lend public space to set up a neutral city hub for all sustainable logistics companies, facilitating the very last-mile delivery with zero-emission vehicles. These hubs are becoming central nodes in multimodal passenger transport networks, seamlessly integrating different means of transport. The combination of freight and passenger transportation resources can be used as a strategic planning principle to optimise existing urban transportation capacity and create viable business opportunities for Urban logistics as-a-Service for commuters. The integration of automated parcel lockers, where customers can pick up or drop off parcels themselves, increases planning reliability and reduces transport costs for parcel delivery firms, due to an increase in successful first-time deliveries. The KoMoDo project developed sustainable and transferable solutions for delivery traffic in Berlin’s urban areas. 5. TRANSPORT VEHICLE CAPACITY SHARING In many cities, vehicles that deliver parcels during the day are left unused at night or early in the morning, when they could be used for nightly security patrols or transporting recyclable materials at the end of a delivery route. One way cities can make use of these available transportation vehicles is through ‘cargo hitching’: pooling and optimising the entire capacity of the transport network. There are already examples of mixed fleets of demand-responsive shared passenger transportation providers that integrate their services with the ODD of small goods using the spare capacity of transportation vehicles. For instance, in response to the pandemic, ViaVan — a provider of on-demand shared transit services — together with Sutton Council, launched an intelligent delivery platform for emergency goods in the London Borough of Sutton, UK. There are many pilots set to make freight transportation and logistics safer, more efficient, or flexible through automation. In the ALEES project, VIL, in collaboration with logistics companies such as DHL and bpost, is testing autonomous urban logistics vehicles to distribute parcels throughout the dense urban area of Mechelen, Belgium. The ALEES project aims to determine the requirements for the use of self-driving vehicles in logistics operations in urban environments, for instance for parcel delivery. We are exploring all of these business models within the new EU initiative ULaaDS — Urban Logistics as an on-Demand Service, which aims to accelerate the deployment of innovative, shared, zero-emission logistics while addressing the impact of the on-demand economy. If you’d like to know more about the project, or how your city can transform its urban logistics infrastructure, get in touch with a member of our team!

https://medium.com/@baxcompany/five-ways-we-can-systemically-transform-last-mile-logistics-7fa199569ef8

['Bax']

2020-12-15 09:13:57.465000+00:00

['Logistics', 'Urban Planning', 'Last Mile', 'Last Mile Delivery']

Extortionate UK Travel Costs Increases Brits Carbon Footprint

The ability to travel to the UK from nearby countries is increasingly becoming a much more cost effective affair, allowing people to undertake commutes to and from the UK for a fraction of the price seen in the past. This recently gained attention in an article by the Telegraph, which saw a student avoid a hefty train ticket fare from Newcastle to London by flying to his destination via Spain instead. The student found that a train fare would have cost him £78.50 had he gotten a direct train, so opted for a flight via the island of Menorca which only cost him £26.99 — a whopping saving of £51.51! This all sounds good and jolly, however reports of lower aviation costs are currently being overshadowed by the ongoing problem of rising transportation costs in the UK — notably seen with rising train fares. In a study conducted by the Manchester based energy management and trading company, Energi Mine, it was revealed that a person could commute to London from Toulouse, cheaper than they could from Manchester. From looking into train and flight options suitable for a 9am to 5pm job, Energi Mine found that the cheapest train fare from Manchester would cost a person £164.49, whereas a flight from Toulouse would only cost £146; saving them £18.49. Combined with the fact that the UK wages haven’t seen an average increase of 3% since 2015, the rising cost of UK rail travel is becoming a real financial burden on those who rely upon commuting in their daily lives. Furthermore, train services are becoming increasingly unreliable, with around 8,000 services on GTR and 5,000 on Northern having been cancelled or severely delayed this year. Financial strains aren’t the only problem. Because more people are considering flying options due to lower costs, carbon emissions will continue to rise as more people undertake commutes by plane. Cheaper flights have been upheld as key factor in the increase in carbon emissions seen within UK aviation, having increased by nearly 70% since 1990, and rising by 11% in 2004 alone. So while carbon emissions only accounted for 6% of national carbon emissions in 2014, since 1990, aviation emissions have doubled whilst economy-wide emissions have reduced by more than a third. This is evidently problematic given the latest findings from the IPCC, which stated that the world has just 12 years in which to avoid the catastrophic and irreversible effects of climate change. What is to be done? The latest IPCC report has stated that combined action is required to stand a fighting chance against climate change, so the UK government can begin by addressing the unjustified price discrepancy between internal transport costs and travel costs from abroad. This will require more investment into more environmentally sustainable infrastructure, which in turn will allow for more economically efficient transportation. On top of this, the way people view and use energy will have to change, so innovative new schemes will be required to incentivise more people into using greener modes of transport. An example can already be seen with the EnergiToken (ETK) rewards platform which rewards people for energy efficient behaviour. Whilst cheaper flights are nice, avoiding environmental catastrophe should clearly be viewed as the main priority, so it is now up to the UK government to facilitate the ideal settings for cheaper and more energy efficient transport options to emerge. For more information about EnergiToken and its energy-saving reward scheme, please visit www.energitoken.com, follow on Twitter at @EnergiMine or join the EnergiToken Telegram group.

https://medium.com/energitokennews/extortionate-uk-travel-costs-increases-brits-carbon-footprint-fc0b0323204

[]

2018-11-22 10:24:01.238000+00:00

['Electric Vehicles', 'Climate Change', 'Aviation', 'Transportation', 'UK']

Black founders can pitch for a $100,000 investment

Panel discussion during Capital Factory’s 2019 Black in Tech Summit Black founders can pitch for a $100,000 investment On February 16th, during Capital Factory’s Black in Tech Summit, five technology startup finalists will be judged by a panel of successful entrepreneurs, industry leaders and mentors. One startup will walk away with a $100,000 investment that day! Who can apply? Any tech or consumer startup with a black founder can apply to pitch at our Black in Tech Summit. The best opportunity and pitch will receive: Admission to Capital Factory’s VIP Accelerator $100,000 cash investment on a SAFE or Convertible Note using Capital Factory’s term sheet and your most recent funding valuation Access to the Capital Factory Mentor network Up to $250,000 in potential total hosting credits from AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Asure and other major hosting providers (each individual offer is different and subject to change) Featured on an episode of Capital Factory’s Austinpreneur podcast Think you’ve got a shot at $100,000? Apply now to be one of five teams selected to pitch. You could walk away with $100,000 and a new home at the Center of Gravity for Entrepreneurs in Texas! Application deadline is January 22. Want a chance to pitch? Submit your application Who has won Capital Factory’s Black in Tech Investments before? Winners include thriving Texas startups like Dallas-based ShearShare, Houston-based GroupRaise, and Austin-based Journey Foods. We’ve helped winners connect with customers, mentors, and secure capital from Google, Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Fund, Backstage Capital, and many other VC investors. Dallas’ ShearShare has a marketplace connecting stylists with available seats at salons and $2.3 million in funding Houston’s GroupRaise is a marketplace that helps groups of 20–200 people make reservations at restaurants willing to donate a percentage of the sales back to a charitable cause. Austin’s Journey Foods uses AI to create sustainability recipes for food manufacturers.

https://austinstartups.com/black-founders-can-pitch-for-a-100-000-investment-c72393ef20fe

['Capital Factory']

2020-12-18 01:28:16.577000+00:00

['Fundraising', 'Austin', 'News', 'Startup', 'Pitching']

Faith into Action

Mercy in action: Actions speak loudest. How we spend time and money signals what we treasure. Believers took “You Say’’ to a record number 1. Fathom is testing two faith films nationwide on October 28 and November 6. “Acting is all about decisions,’’ says Director Robert Orlando. “You can change the entire perspective with one decision.’’ Faith is what we believe and what we do, and the tiniest actions and gestures can make a huge difference. Melissa Villalobos prayed “make the bleeding stop’’ to Cardinal John Henry Newman, and it did. That miracle made him a saint. Buying a movie ticket can save a soul when the film sends the right message. Little acts move people. Simply praying in front of an abortion clinic has repeatedly changed hearts, making young women choose to keep their children. A Coast to Coast Rosary across America and in 50 nations marked the 102nd anniversary of Fatima’s Miracle of the Sun, a supernatural event seen across Europe. Everyone from Protestants to Muslims keeping asking Orlando about Fatima, a key part of The Divine Plan, which gets nationwide showings Nov. 6. Every institution is under attack in these cynical times. But individual gestures and actions, people to people influence others. More than 128 people representing 28 parishes came to see Orlando’s new film about how two actors' actions averted World War II, transforming the globe. But more importantly, the film shows how we take our freedom for granted, how such apathy takes down great nations. Ronald Reagan and St. John Paul the Great focused instead on praying to God, seeking his higher purpose and Divine Plan. That helped them remake the entire world. “You know The Divine Will in retrospect,’’ Orlando says. “You can only know by living it. Faith is an action. It's not a teaching… This is what loves looks like…’’ Two actors on a stage. Orlando was fascinated by the fact that Reagan and John Paul were both actors open to reading scripts and taking directions from a higher director. We disparage actors today, but Orlando’s theological background taught him that acting in plays goes back thousands of years as a method for helping us find meaning from life. “It’s all about acting,’’ Orlando says. “We have a bias toward theater but if you go back to the Greeks, where it all started: the theater is where they performed their religious rituals, so the idea that you had to wear a mask to perform a role to find your identity in the world was not seen as ‘that’s a superficial thing.’ It was actually part of the dynamic of being human.’’ Why less is more Our pride tells us we can’t make a difference unless we do something massive and time-consuming, so we often give up without trying. Often, less is one. One simple, humble act moves hearts like. And a string of little acts leads to major changes: More 250,000 students nationwide joined together on football fields to encourage others to pray via “Fields of Faith’’ events. In Fatima 102 years ago, Our Lady of Fatima appeared to three small shepherd children roughly once a month from May 13 through October 13, 1917. Most doubted these acts until the October 13 Miracle of the Sun. Over the course of the next century, it took numerous smaller actions to change hearts. Reagan and St. John Paul, we learn in The Divine Plan, believed in these messages, and that belief helped save their lives from twin assassination attempts that nearly killed both men six weeks apart in spring 1981. Our friend Dr. Ed, an orthopedic surgeon, does big things: he formed Livingston Men on Fire to bring out great Catholic speakers. He’s started restaurants and saved lives. When his wife died suddenly September 5 (the Feast of Mother Teresa of Calcutta), more than 1,200 came to pay their respects, praying a decade of the Rosary with him. But he took our breath away days later when he quietly sat in the pews a few days later, praying alone in Adoration, sitting alone in morning Mass. “It’s more about who eat with than what you know,’’ Orlando says. “How do you carry on your life?’’ The Divine Plan plays nationwide on one night only, November 6. If enough people order tickets in advance, the film will be extended to bigger audiences.

https://medium.com/catholic-way-home/say-the-word-faith-into-action-5b5082e78870

['Joseph Serwach']

2020-10-13 18:00:29.285000+00:00

['Mercy In Action', 'Film', 'Fátima', 'Faith', 'Religion']

C# How to mock an unmockable class

C# How to mock an unmockable class Photo by Kevin Ku on Unsplash Along the road this year, during one of my “pay back your code debt” weeks, I stumbled into this class that had 0 coverage. Original code This class has an implicit dependency on SmtpClient that I need to extract in order to make it unit testable. Fortunately SmtpClient isn’t sealed so we can do some magic™. Let’s start by extracting a new class that will generate the instance. First refactor Ok, now we have this new class SmtpClientGenerator that given a configuration will create a new instance of SmtpClient via the public method GenerateClient . This isn’t enought though, to mock SendMailAsync I need an interface and SmtpClient doesn’t implement one. Let’s wrap SmtpClient to another object and create a new interface. SmtpClientWrapper now implements SmtpClient and ISmtpClient . ISmtpClient now declares SendMailAsync which has the same SmtpClient signature. GenerateClient now returns ISmptClient . Let’s update the service class with the new code. We have all the building blocks now, let’s test our code. Test code Perfect, now we can mock both ISmtpClientGenerator and ISmtpClient . Remarks System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient isn’t recommended by Microsoft, use MailKit instead. MailKit already has a IStmpClient interface so we won’t need SmtpClientWrapper at all. I use Xunit and Moq as my testing tools.

https://medium.com/@riccardo-santoro/c-how-to-mock-an-unmockable-class-9f4174112c41

['Riccardo Santoro']

2020-11-09 10:29:51.576000+00:00

['Software Development', 'Software Engineering', 'Csharp', 'Dotnet', 'Dotnet Core']

Free PayPal Money in United States ?

Free PayPal Money in United States ? What is PayPal ? It is a Easy and way to Transfer Money online worldwide with the help of Email Id registered on Paypal Registration. You can Send and Request money from Anywhere in the world. You can Request for Various type of Payments and it reaches us Instantly or Next Day as per the Country Guidelines . There a so many online shops where you can pay from Paypal. There are two types of payment which you can do with this Platform : Personal Payments Commercial Payments For Fees Detail and other Other Information Please visit website of Paypal Sharing this for helping you to give simple knowledge regarding online payments. Thanks Shikha

https://medium.com/@businessgrowthnow/free-paypal-money-in-united-states-412c6d62284e

[]

2020-12-23 14:48:15.904000+00:00

['Payments', 'Money', 'Free', 'Freelancing', 'United States']

Let Fairy Say Happy Holidays

Residential buildings need more flexible personalization policies in the Pandemic Era An access corridor in a residential condo, Toronto, Canada. Photo by author, Dec.2020 Working remotely in a corner of my apartment, I heard someone knocked on the door. I had no idea who was behind the door … a woman seriously said “you are not allowed to use these ornaments in this building”. She pointed to a small crystal fairy hanging on the front door. The fairy did not cause a problem in the building appearance or for neighbors but played a meaningful role for us particularly for my young fairies at home. During a cold pandemic time, within a strange city, and along a monotonous corridor with repetitive gray doors, the shiny fairy said this door belongs to us; this is our HOME. People personalize their home to make it more pleasing and develop their desired atmosphere. Beyond this, they deliberately decorate their home to reflect their identity. People use personal and meaningful items to give meaning to their home; to remark it as their own home, and shape it as they are. Home “as a mirror of self” (Cooper Marcus, 1974) is a particular place in which people express themselves and impress a self-image. Personalization can deliver a sense of home and enhance residents’ symbolic and emotional attachment to their home. The environment is important to people to the extent that they give it their own meaning (Rapoport, 1978). The meaning associated with symbols and personal touches to the home can help residents to cope with stressful situations. Studies present that personalization can reduce negative physical, physiological, and psychological effects of living in an undesired situation or environment- such as illness, stress, and anxiety. It also can increase people’s satisfaction with their living environment. Overall, it is thought that home personalization is associated with residents’ psychological wellbeing. Despite its positive effects, personalization is forbidden in many residences particularly in the exteriors. In contrast with a house that offers many opportunities for the addition of personal touches to the exteriors (i.e. the front yard, back yard, porch, entry, windows, and the façade), residential apartments restrict dwellers in personalizing their home. As living in a plain and low-stimulus box with the same units, apartment residents are in a strong need for an assertion to identify their own home and distinguish it from neighbors’. Most people need to leave their mark to make their home unique. In many cases, the entry door is the only place where the addition of personal touches is feasible for residents. However, building authorities limit this opportunity. What they perceive as chaos is perceived very pleasing by residents. Access corridors are not just for walking back and forth to home but also should welcome residents and facilitate some touch of uniqueness for every single home. The entry has a symbolic meaning and is a desirable place for personalizing and laying claim to the territory; residents like to see their personal touches while going and coming and express themselves to neighbors and visitors. From this viewpoint, access corridors can take a role in creating a pleasing ambiance and bring happiness into the residence. This is a notable message for both housing designers and policymakers; designers should consider opportunities to accommodate and encourage personalization to suit the resident’s expectations and policymakers should facilitate it. Besides fire safety codes and infection-control policies, residential buildings require some strategies to support residents’ psychological wellbeing. Particularly, in quarantine time when people are confined at home and deprived of many pleasant amenities and events even a simple gathering, small enjoyments such as a hanging fairy on the front door become more significant. It is a time when residential buildings must apply more flexible policies to subtly improve the residents’ happiness and wellbeing.

https://medium.com/@sepideh-masoudinejad/let-fairy-say-happy-holidays-50a598f941ef

['Sepideh Masoudinejad']

2020-12-11 18:05:12.194000+00:00

['Wellbeing', 'Housing', 'Home', 'Architectural Design', 'Covid 19']

Set up some cool Jupyter-themes(Jupyter-Notebook)

The Jupyter Notebook is an open-source web application that allows you to create and share documents that contain live code, equations, visualizations, and narrative text. Uses include data cleaning and transformation, numerical simulation, statistical modeling, data visualization, machine learning, and much more. The custom themes we are about to see are only for jupyter notebook and not jupyterlab. We hope for the custom themes for jupyterlab to be released soon. Let’s see some cool themes; firstly, we will need a command prompt. If you use JupyterNotebook using command prompt, then use the command prompt for the commands that we are going to use soon, or if use anaconda, then use anaconda prompt. I’ll be using anaconda prompt. Let’s go! First, open your command prompt, and enter this command: pip install jupyterthemes, and press enter. Then to see the available themes in this package, enter: jt -l , and then hit enter. Now to apply one of these themes, enter this command: jt -t [name of theme] For example Now, let’s see how our notebook looks like Bam! it looks cool, right?, If you want to revert to the default jupyter notebook (without any custom theme applied), just enter the command: jt and hit enter, you will be reverted back to the default notebook theme. Let how the theme that I use, you’ll definitely like that. The theme that i use is monokai. I like it the most because it’s damn cool. Monokai theme I have also made a video of the same. If you have any problem understanding the article, see this video on youtube, you will get it. You can apply any one of the available themes. Try using them one by one, and stick with the one you like the most. Signing off. Enjoy! Gain Access to Expert View — Subscribe to DDI Intel

https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/set-up-some-cool-jupyter-themes-jupyter-b493baed47b7

[]

2020-10-15 12:56:16.016000+00:00

['Jupyter Notebook', 'Programming', 'Python', 'Data Science', 'Jupyter']

How Katy Perry’s Irish Ancestress Cashed in on California’s Gold Rush

She came from a gold-obsessed family, so perhaps it wasn’t so surprising when the treasure bag was found in Hannah’s water closet, but what was this Galway girl even doing in San Francisco? Anyone who’s ever dabbled in genealogy knows that certain forebears call louder than others — even when they’re not your own. While researching Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson — better known as musical megastar, philanthropist, and activist Katy Perry — I climbed all the branches of her family tree, but became enchanted with Hannah Mulhare, one of her Irish immigrant ancestors. Meandering Mulhares Born in Eyrecourt, Ireland in the 1830s to Patrick Mulhare and Sarah Stanton, Anna “Hannah” Maria Mulhare was one of at least ten children. Her mother’s brother had married her father’s sister, producing a tight family cluster that was shattered when her uncle, a Ribbonman who defended the rights of tenants against absentee landlords, was convicted of sedition and transported to Australia in the 1820s. Around the time Hannah was born, her uncle was pardoned and assorted family members — including four of her oldest siblings — began drifting to Australia to join him. The 1840s ushered in the Great Famine as well as the early days of both the Californian and Australian gold rushes, and it soon became a last-one-to-leave-Galway-turn-out-the-lights situation. While the older contingent of her siblings had opted for Australia and New Zealand, her parents and the younger ones set their sights on America. Hannah (Anne) and two of her brothers arrived in New Orleans on February 10, 1852 (Ancestry.com) 14 year-old Hannah (perhaps understated to save on fare) and her brothers John and Pat were among the 268 passengers on the Forest State when it arrived in New Orleans on February 10, 1852, but this was just a staging ground. Another brother named James had been there for some time, and made arrangements for the family to push on to California, which had only become part of America in 1848 and a state in 1850. Hannah’s brief time in New Orleans left a trace when she was listed among those with letters waiting at the post office (March 7, 1852, The Daily Delta, Newspapers.com) The following May, James demonstrated remarkable efficiency when he applied for a marriage license on the 2nd, became an American citizen on the 4th, and set sail on the 7th. He, his bride Catherine, Hannah, Patrick, and mother Sarah departed on the United States and headed for California via Aspinwall. Since the Panama Canal did not yet exist, this meant that they had to disembark and take a train from the Atlantic to the Pacific seaports. The Mulhare family left New Orleans for California (May 8, 1853, The Daily Delta, Newspapers.com) Gradually, the Mulhares, including some who had been living in Australia, reassembled in California. San Francisco became something of a hub with a rotating cast of family members based there, but other pockets settled in nearby Marin, Contra Costa, Sacramento, and Yuba counties. Those in Yuba County resided in gold mining towns whose names reflected possible outcomes of their ambitions — Smartsville and Sucker Flat. The Mulhare patriarch, Patrick, died in San Francisco in 1858, and James — who took to using his mother’s surname of Stanton as a middle name — assumed his place at the head of the family. James S. Mulhare recognized for his stellar work (April 3, 1857, The Daily Alta California, California Digital Newspaper Collection) James S. Mulhare was a prominent member of San Francisco’s Irish American community (September 22, 1858, The Daily Alta California, California Digital Newspaper Collection) James soon made his mark with a local paper lauding his character for his work with the Pacific Express Company and recording his election as Secretary of the Sons of the Emerald Isle, established just a few years earlier. But then things took an unexpected turn. The Old Switcheroo On the evening of August 1, 1859, Freeman & Co. Express Company (which would become part of Wells Fargo the next year) discovered a theft. During a delivery from Sacramento to San Francisco, a bag of gold dust worth $10,000 was swapped out with one full of shot, iron and other heavy objects. It didn’t take long to determine that the switch occurred when the consignment was transferred from the wharf to a waiting wagon, and the porter responsible was none other than James S. Mulhare. Police failed to find the money, but a bit of clever detective work revealed that the counterfeit bag was made by a local saddler, who identified John Connor as the man who had ordered it. Connor, it turned out, was in business with another Mulhare brother and engaged to Hannah, so this was both an inside job and a family affair. Express company robbery discovered (2 August 1859, San Francisco Bulletin, GenealogyBank) James S. Mulhare (August 27, 1859, California Police Gazette) Mulhare and Connor were swiftly arrested, and because the attempted ruse captured the attention of the public, the story was covered not just in local newspapers, but across the country and as far away as Australia. The accused requested separate trials, and within six weeks, both were found guilty of grand larceny.

https://smolenyak.medium.com/how-katy-perrys-irish-ancestress-cashed-in-on-california-s-gold-rush-8c63e7237508

['Megan Smolenyak']

2018-03-11 20:29:19.398000+00:00

['Genealogy', 'Ireland', 'California', 'Katy Perry', 'History']

Why I want to go into Software Engineering

Computers have always been apart of my life. Whether it was at home playing video games or at school when assignments were online. As I grew up I was always intrigued by the way video games were made and I would always rush to my T.V. or Monitor to play after school. I want to become a Software Engineer so I can create my own video game one day. I want to be a creator so that I can bring joy to people the same way that video games growing up brought me joy and still do. Working on a computer has become like second nature for using them my whole life. It is really easy for me to learn while working with computers and different programs. I am a very quick learner and the online prep course was a great example where I was able to do that. Software engineering was always my top choice but the only thing I couldn’t decide on was if I wanted to do hardware or software. Software engineering sounded more interesting to me since I already knew how to do some basic coding when I learned on codecademy. I wanted to do hardware engineering as well but it wasn’t as interesting at software since I will be able to make so many different programs or games. This is the first step to my dream and the biggest step of my life. I am nervous about working on the program but even more excited to grow as a person. Not many others get a chance in this and I’m glad I was able to. I am so grateful for having the chance to learn more about coding so I can one day make my dream come true.

https://medium.com/@abdiaz2018/why-i-want-to-go-into-software-engineering-9084331aa04f

['Abraham Diaz']

2021-01-21 23:03:25.199000+00:00

['Flatiron School', 'Codingbootcamp']

A Guide to Creating Your Main Character’s Ordinary World

I’m working on (building my book’s) ordinary world, and I’m struggling with the opening image. I’m not sure if this is just the physical landscape or do the characters come into play in this part? Where I (can) find an example? Have you ever seen a picture of a story arc? There’s a little bit of a straightaway, then a hill, then another straight away. You can think of those parts as the ordinary world, rising action, falling action, and a new normal. Photo by Xavi Cabrera on Unsplash It always makes me think of a roller coaster. I road one last summer at Waldameer park in Erie, PA. I got into the car and for a few minutes, it was just — a straight away, like I said. Just a nice little ride to the bottom of a hill. Ordinary world. Nothing scary. Nothing extraordinary at all. No speed. No thrill. Just five or ten miles per hour toward the bottom of a hill. Then it was all rising action. A slow ascent up, up, up the hill. When I got nearly to the tippy top, there was this gorgeous view of Lake Erie. It took my breath away. It made me gasp for air just in the moment that things went crazy. The falling action was intense. All of a sudden the ride took off. Fast. I couldn’t get another breath, my heart was banging against my throat, and brain rattled in my skull. And then, just as fast as it started, it was over. Another straightaway while I tried to remember how to breathe like a normal person. And then the car stopped and I stumbled out. Just like a rollercoaster, a story has to start with a straightaway. The reader needs to orient themselves. They need to meet the main character and know their world, so that they can understand when things go haywire. That’s what the opening of your book does. Figuring out exactly where that straightaway starts is not always easy. It has to both give the reader some idea of what’s going on and let the reader know what the character’s ordinary world is like. Here’s the opening from Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451. It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his solid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning. Montag grinned the fierce grin of all men singed and driven back by flame. The reader meets Montag here. And they know, in the space of a paragraph and two sentences, that in this character’s world — there is fire. The fire is his work. It’s books that are burning. And Montag really enjoys it. This is our straightaway. Montag’s ordinary world is not the same as yours or mine, or anyone’s. There isn’t such a thing as a fireman whose job it is to burn books. But in the world of this story there is, and now we know it. I’m particularly struck by how Montag loves being a fireman the way a boy might have thought he’d love pretending to be one in 1954 when he played with his toy firetruck, when this story was written. Here’s another example. This one is from The Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum. Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer’s wife. Their house was small, for the lumber to build it had to be carried by wagon many miles. There were four walls, a floor and a roof, which made one room; and this room contained a rusty looking cookstove, a cupboard for the dishes, a table, three or four chairs, and the beds. Uncle Henry and Aunt Em had a big bed in one corner, and Dorothy a little bed in another corner. There was no garret at all, and no cellar — except a small hole dug in the ground, called a cyclone cellar, where the family could go in case one of those great whirlwinds arose, mighty enough to crush any building in its path. It was reached by a trap door in the middle of the floor, from which a ladder led down into the small, dark hole. This story was written in 1900. This one is interesting for a couple of reasons. For one, it’s all telling. The narrator is describing the house and Dorothy’s life there. The reader isn’t in the house, the way the reader is at the fire in Bradbury’s opening. That’s typical of books written 120-plus years ago. Less common now. Modern readers want far more immediacy in their reading. But we get a very, very clear ordinary world here. Kansas. A farm house. Aunt Em an Uncle Henry. A single room with a married couple’s bed in one corner and their young niece’s bed in the other. And there’s some foreshadowing. That cyclone cellar, “in case one of those great whirlwinds arose.” The Opening Image Even with all it’s telling, the opening paragraph of The Wizard of Oz paints a very vivid picture of that farmhouse. It’s easy to imagine Dorothy there, in that single room. The reader can see that trap door in the center of the floor. There’s also something almost creepy about the imagery of Dorothy in her little bed, in the corner. It’s easy to see why she wants out of there. And the difference between here and the eventually special world of the story — Oz — is stark. The opening image of Fahrenheit 451 takes is right into the fire with Montag. We start with the image not only of the burning books, but of the joy the fireman takes in his work. It’s nearly manic. He shouldn’t love it that much. Where will your story start? It can help to think a little bit ahead to the inciting incident. What is the first really interesting thing that happens to your main character? In Farenhiet 451, Montag meets Clarisse who makes him shift his thinking by asking whether he’s happy. In The Wizard of Oz, that cyclone shows up and lifts Dorothy’s whole little Kansas farmhouse right up into the air and off to Oz. Once you know what your inciting incident is, think about all the things that have to happen to get you there. What does the reader need to know, for the inciting incident to have the impact that you need it to? Would Clarisse asking that particular question mean as much, if we didn’t start by seeing Montag nearly manic with love for his work? Would Dorothy’s tornado lifting that house matter as much if we hadn’t seen exactly what it looked like, so we could picture Dorothy stepping out of it and into Oz? The opening image isn’t always a physical setting, although it can be. It’s the camera lens focusing in on the story. It can start anywhere. You get to choose where. Which moment, before the special world of the story kicks in, is the one that will pull your reader in and hold on to them?

https://medium.com/the-1000-day-mfa/a-guide-to-creating-your-main-characters-ordinary-world-204dea4a46f7

['Shaunta Grimes']

2020-06-28 01:55:19.875000+00:00

['Reading', 'Books', 'Creativity', 'Writing', 'Fiction']

RAPED

RAPED Image by <a href=”https://pixabay.com/users/alexas_fotos-686414/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=1131142">Alexas_Fotos</a> from <a href=”https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=1131142">Pixabay</a> She asked, "why they did this to me, even after infinite cries of No's?" But her screams never meant a thing to them, they only saw, what lied under her clothes. There is no part of her body, that they didn't touch, and still the society wonders, "Why she hates men very much?" She lived a life only she knew of, and everyone talked about love and hope, But she found a way to make it all easy, so she hung herself with a rope. Background It is about a rape incident in Pakistan. The incident took place in Sindh’s Kashmore, where a gang of rapists called in a mother and her five-year-old daughter from Karachi to Kashmore for fake job placement. Upon her arrival, the mother and daughter were gang-raped for days after being shifted to another location, where they were gang-raped again for days. As per reports, the mother and daughter were asked to call in another girl for them to misuse and assault, in order for them to be released. The culprits kept the daughter while the mother was sent off to make arrangements for another girl. However, the mother, after being released by the culprits, reported the matter to a local police station. It was then that ASI Mohammad Bux Buriro decided to take the risk of sending his own daughter with the mother to be handed over to the culprits, with a plan to nab them on the spot. The mother, where the culprits were called to hand over her daughter and take Buriro’s daughter as bait, took her to a local park. The police arrested the culprit named Rafiq Malak, immediately after he handed over the five-year-old daughter and was taking Buriro’s daughter with him. Source

https://medium.com/passive-asset/raped-bf08dad0ec22

['Em Hoccane']

2020-11-21 12:53:35.863000+00:00

['Rape', 'Poem', 'Storytelling', 'News', 'Child Abuse']

The experience of learning UX in-depth on Interaction Design Foundation (IxDF) — Review

It was in 2019 my colleague and I discussed one of the well-known online courses while we were waiting for the user research session. At that time I was interested to gain information about the Interaction Design Foundation (IxDF). I actually have heard of this online course since a long time ago. It was mentioned several times by my colleagues who work in the field of User Experience Design as well. Hence, the curiosity brought me to the discussion. Based on the discussion, Interaction Design Foundation offers a comprehensive course backed by experts. If you are a fellow UX designer then you must have recognized Don Norman, a well-known design leader who writes The design of everyday things. It is a recommended book for people who are interested in learning about User Experience Design and a must-have read book for every designer. So, let’s see the people behind the executive board of Interaction Design Foundation. Since 2002, they have been on a mission to: teach concrete design skills teach how to leverage the power of design in the same way companies such as Apple and Google do in the same way companies such as Apple and Google do help us apply our new design skills to improve the quality of life for humankind to improve the quality of life for humankind democratize education by providing top-quality, online design courses at a fraction of the cost of traditional education by providing top-quality, online design courses at a fraction of the cost of traditional education provide the best expertise from both high-tech companies and academia from both high-tech companies and academia facilitate learning and career advancement in 467 Local Groups in 95 countries. Before I joined Interaction Design Foundation, I had run through their syllabus. I was impressed by the detail, structure, and comprehensiveness of every course. Therefore, I decided to join in November 2020. Once we join, we get 1-year membership and we can take as many courses. Frankly, due to the comprehensive course, I can’t even finish it in a month. I’ve just finished the course of User Research — Best Methods and Practice in March 2021. I was glad that I made it! Learning new things needs commitment and time. We can’t rush the learning process. It requires patience and a good amount of self-discipline. Since childhood, I was taught to be disciplined by my father, hence I have grown to be a dedicated person.

https://medium.com/@itsmelivinda/the-experience-of-learning-ux-in-depth-on-interaction-design-foundation-ixdf-review-5828d9ba2841

['Livinda Christy']

2021-03-20 08:14:05.130000+00:00

['UX', 'UX Design', 'Online Courses', 'Education', 'Interaction Design']

Permanent Smile

You are my muse My artistic inspiration my creative direction The concept behind my every love note The reason for every pause gesture or exclamation You are my treasure The one beyond all competition The reward of too many fruitless quests The prize above any expectations You are my happiness the reason I smile And you are also the reason it never disappears.

https://psiloveyou.xyz/permanent-smile-a3571379bfc7

['Fọlábòmí Àmọ Ó']

2020-12-27 13:02:40.943000+00:00

['Poetry Sunday', 'Couples', 'Romance', 'Love', 'Poetry']

E-commerce Associates with Copywriters to Handle Consumer

Copywriters have always been the medium who could transport a brand’s mission, its ideology through words. Most probably, everyone who knows to read and write can do it through a clear interpretation. But what makes the copywriter so special? Why does even today after marketing techniques undergoing tremendous changes still brands don’t refrain from pumping in massive money on copywriters? Have a glimpse at the facts that are given below, which offers answers to the above questions. The Inevitable Role Of Copywriters: Copywriters are the people who could stimulate emotions among the readers through their words. Because emotions sell products, especially in B2C, a brand can convince people to buy its product and sustain them only if it connects with them emotionally. The words that these copywriters ideate and provide acts as the carrier for these emotions. For instance, have a look at the most familiar tagline of Nike ‘Just Do It’. Everyone is aware that Nike is a multinational company that sells shoes, equipment, and apparel for sportspersons. Like the quote ‘Rome was not built in a day,’ it takes years of hardcore training for sportspersons to excel in their game. We people who enjoy their games are not aware of the arduous training they carry out the backdoor. The training usually involves tough tasks that test their perseverance and their ability to withstand the pain. The tagline with three simple words ‘Just do it’ motivates the person to don’t back down and drives him to go further. Thus, the tagline has done its purpose by helping the brand to connect with an athlete emotionally. This sums up the role of a copywriter who plays a substantial role in enhancing the business of a brand. The Role Of Copywriters In Today’s Digital World: Copywriters still didn’t lose their luster even though the marketing channels through which brands approach people have also changed with the rise of new technologies. From newspaper and billboards to radio and television to YouTube and OTT platforms, the medium of marketing keeps changing over time. However, these ‘sales writers’ importance remains as it was before fifty or a hundred years because the medium that is leveraged for sales has only changed with time. For instance, go and check with all the leading e-commerce sites such as Walmart, Shopify, and Alibaba. The homepage of all these sites comprises a consistent portion with ‘words’ in the digital era when videos are sought as the significant medium of marketing. Brands never forget to highlight their taglines during their promotion on the e-commerce platforms. Copywriters are the one who gives birth to these taglines. In recent times, they are utilized on e-commerce sites to mold the description section, which highlights the specifications of a product. Thus, the responsibility of the copywriters has only increased today. How Copywriters Can Write Persuasive Copy For E-commerce Sites: Highlight The Features: At first, copywriters should be aware of a product’s unique features before preparing a written copy for it. For instance, if you are about to promote perfume, craft the words such as ‘the Lavender flavor will assure you a lasting fragrance throughout the day. Since the description section is filled with a huge chunk of words, highlight the unique features in ‘bold or italics,’ which helps grab the attention of people quickly. Segment The Passages With Relevant Headings: People usually find it vague to read a vast number of texts. But, if the situation prompts a writer to explain the features in such a manner, he can segment it into paragraphs by adding relevant subheadings. Here, the subheadings you give acts as a deciding factor for the reader to give a read into the next paragraph. So, make sure to frame the subheadings effectively. Make Use Of Bullet Points: Writing down the description and specifications in bullet points as short snippets will do its part in making people give it a read. The time interval that takes in shifting from one point to another will provide a short break for the reader from continuous reading. It also enables the way for a better understanding. Thus, writing down in the bullet points format has a multitude of benefits. Make Your Copy Readable For Everyone: The copywriters are the people who speak to the customers and prospects on behalf of a company. So, the words they frame should be understandable to the vast audience. Naturally, copywriters will have an in-depth knowledge of vocabulary. However, they should realize that the mission of writing copies is to persuade people to buy a product and not to exhibit their vocabulary skills. Because not every prospect could be an Oxford scholar and a prodigy in English vocabulary. So the copywriter should step down to the readability level of his target audience and frame the copy accordingly. How Copywriters Are Leveraged In Video Marketing? Videos are gaining importance as a pivotal medium for marketing. Subsequently, this has given a pathway to the various types of video representation alongside the advent of AR and VR. Especially in e-commerce, for product promotions, brands are compiling both images and word texts in the videos. For instance, have a glimpse at the smartphone launch videos of the iPhone. It will give you a better understanding of what I’m talking about. The videos also have some texts as part of the videos. Thus, copywriters also have a substantial role in video marketing. How Equipped Are Copywriters? Copywriters are equipped enough to deliver SEO-friendly write-ups. Thus, they have molded them according to the prevailing trends. Since SEO ranking decides the traffic e-commerce could get, copywriters have developed them to write copies as per the requirements in keyword density. Hence, copywriters play a predominant role in improving the ranking of e-commerce websites in the search engine. Newsletters: Brands consider newsletters as a useful tool to strengthen their bond with the customers. Newsletters are the articles that keep the customers updated about newly launched products, collaborations, and activities of a company. Copywriters are utilized for developing an effective newsletter from delivering an enticing title till making the copy more intriguing for the customers to read. Handling Social Media Pages: A company involved in e-commerce should have an active presence on social platforms to enhance its brand reach. According to a recent survey, 65% of people check social platforms to understand a product or a brand better. Thus, social platforms are also utilized as a search engine for e-commerce. So, to make their social media pages appealing, brands hire copywriters for various purposes, including writing captions for posts, greeting people during special occasions such as Christmas, New Year, etc. Final Thoughts: Marketing and copywriting are tangled with each other as they can’t be kept separated. The demand for quality copywriters who could convince people with their words remains high as it is ever. Companies are ready to spend a vast sum of money on the copywriters to improve their e-commerce business. Moreover, these writers connect a brand with its customers through words. Thus, copywriters offer a multitude of benefits for a company is taking the e-commerce business to the next level. Author Bio: Claire Divas is a US-based freelance content writer and longtime reader about new trends in Digital Marketing to learn new things. She loves to work in WordPress and focuses on her writing skills. She is also experienced in content marketing to make a qualified SEO. You can follow her on Twitter and LinkedIn.

https://medium.com/@adzis/e-commerce-associates-with-copywriters-to-handle-consumer-567e13110a5c

['Adzis', 'The E-Commerce Content Engine']

2020-11-18 17:50:31.541000+00:00

['Ecommerce Writer', 'Ecommerce Content', 'Ecommerce Copywriting', 'Copywriting Tips']

BOUFFAGE [The Indian Plate] (2/10).

Indian cuisine is palatable for every tastebud. You can devour every flavor in every bite. Did you know? Your food is as good as it smells; our olfactory senses make food so desirable even from a distance. You are less likely to try a dish that isn’t pleasing to your sense of smell. Food being one of the basic fundamental necessities of life, this is one such industry that will never go out of business. The diversity of food in India shines through when you find a variation of a famous dish from Arunachal in the East to Delhi in the north, with an added local twist. Mumbai’s Vada Pav with a fried Mirchi (Green chilly) worth Rs. 12 is a breakfast option for millions, to the famous Idli-Sambar in Southern India that makes its way to restaurants throughout the nation. Delhi is the food capital of India, and rightly so. Delhi justifies the glorious plethora of food concentrated in one state of India. From Chole Bhature, Rajma Chawal, Raj Kachori, Butter Chicken, and a feast of innumerable such delicacies. The best-tasting food in India belongs to the streets, not the high-end restaurants. They have their place in the market too, but nothing beats local street foods. We have Khao Gallis (Food Streets) everywhere. There is so much food to explore within the country, we might lose track of what the world has to offer. However, every destination is an expansion of your culinary desires or food bucket list, if you may. As an Indian, I can say that we take our condiments, add-ons pretty religiously, like everything else. It may be adding Ghee (clarified butter), Dahi (curd), Aachar (pickle), Papad, Chutney (sweet, sour, spicy, and tangy), and some Sirka Pyaaz (raw vinegar onions). Some meals seem incomplete without them. This is the second article of the series, and I overviewed the habitual practices of the food culture in the country. I am no food expert or a chef. All opinions are personal and facts; researched. In the next article, I will be talking about the vegetarianism in India.

https://medium.com/@adityaagrawal244/bouffage-the-indian-plate-2-10-3b83cc155854

['Aditya Agrawal']

2020-11-28 05:01:40.887000+00:00

['Bouffage', 'Food', 'Indian Food', 'Foodies', 'Food Blog']

The Freedom Dance

Free of abuse, free of sexual inequality and free of my old self. When I say freedom dance, I mean that burst of absolute joy when you feel that sudden, overwhelming sense of being free, whether it’s a dance in your head or you really are grooving out in the middle of the street (this is highly encouraged). It feels like you suddenly know all the answers to the world (which if you do, please share) and the anger and pain you have felt so intensely from being the victim of sexism is for a second replaced with this new energy. It feels so good because you’ve had to work so hard for this dance. My first freedom dance happened on the way to school one day. My mum used to drop me off on her way to work and our commute together became our favourite thing to do, as well as the usually harsh critique we’d give of whichever wedding dress was in the window that morning of the bridal store we drove past. But one morning we had to detour to my ex boyfriend’s house. Armed with a guitar he’d given me (I have absolutely no talent or interest in playing an instrument) and a plastic bag of the last few clothes he had left at my house, we pulled up on his drive way to give me my final closure, *disclaimer* this unfortunately didn’t happen just yet. I got out of the car and suddenly felt intensely strong, intensely angry and extremely ready for a fucking break from him. As I threw his belongings at his front door, breaking the guitar as I did so, I felt like the strongest 17 year old in the whole world. I wasn’t since there are so many girls with harder struggles, but this one gesture meant the world to me. The dance happened as I got back in the car with my mum beaming at me, and the song ‘Happy’ came on the radio. The past year of emotional and sexual abuse I had suffered from him was forgotten about for a second, and I revelled in how freeing it felt just to throw his things back at him. Well, his door. I felt like I could start to free myself from him. This was the freedom dance. Obviously, the journey of recovering from abuse, sexism and pain is a lot longer, harder and more intense than one gesture, but these small actions feel like a push as you do work yourself through it all. I’m not a doctor, therapist or anyone of stature within a medically qualified field to be an expert in recovery and abuse, but I’ve had my own experiences that have taught me so much, so I can say that you should give yourself your own freedom dances. Whatever it is that makes you feel so imprisoned, help yourself by searching for and trying ways that will make you feel so free. My second freedom dance was an actual dance. Now as controversial as it may be, when I was 19 I became a stripper. In a month of deliberating with myself whether I could actually do a job like this, there was a lot of debating in my head. I had always been the girl who barked back at any unwanted male attention, most likely in the street, so how on earth had I come to asking the club “when can I start?”. When I eventually did, I realised how being seen as this naked goddess, albeit to a drunken man, was so freeing. This job put me in control of a male for once. Side note; there is a much bigger conversation to be had about sex work, so bare with me I’ll get there, but for now as you’re reading this please leave aside all judgement. But the way I felt suddenly having all this control, in a safe and controlled environment, showed me that I didn’t have to be pretend like I was in control of my relationships with men, but that I could actually learn how to be. You don’t necessarily need to strip to gain back your power, but it gave me back my freedom. After 2 years of suffering with anxiety from the emotional abuse, I suddenly had not a care in the world. I suddenly walked down the street by myself without bursting in to tears. I also suddenly had money. So when I walked through town the day after revealing myself to men I didn’t know the night before, I held my head so high. I realised that if I could strip off and give random men lap dances, then I really could do anything. So I wasn’t going to cry as I walked down the street anymore. As I did my Saturday shop without any fear I danced freely in my head. The lap dances were my freedom dances, showing me that I can be in control of myself. They pushed me to be confident and embrace who I was, what I looked like and accept who I wasn’t going to be anymore. So please, HAVE YOUR FREEDOM DANCES! Whatever they are, wherever they are and for whatever reason that has you suffering from sexual inequality, find a way to make yourself feel free from sexism. Let me know what they are and tell me your own experiences, and if you would like me to share them then even better!

https://medium.com/@chloecreatedthis/the-freedom-dance-4a6415a0ca5f

['Sex', 'The Society']

2020-03-11 10:41:53.405000+00:00

['Abuse', 'Sexism', 'Sex', 'Sex Work', 'Sexual Harassment']

A Detailed Guide to Kubernetes PodSecurityPolicy in AWS EKS

Pod Security Pods have a variety of different settings that can strengthen or weaken your overall security posture. As a Kubernetes practitioner your chief concern should be preventing a process that’s running in a container from escaping the isolation boundaries of Docker and gaining access to the underlying host. The processes that run within a container run under the context of the Linux root user by default. Although the actions of root within a container are partially constrained by the set of Linux capabilities that Docker assigns to the containers, these default privileges could allow an attacker to escalate their privileges and/or gain access to sensitive information bound to the host, including Secrets and ConfigMaps. If you want to know more about Docker, Linux Capabilites and why pod security matters, please read my other articles before continuing reading this one, so that you can fully understand what it is and why we need it: Why We Need It In most clusters today, by default, all resources (e.g. Deployments and ReplicatSets) and authenticated users have permissions to create pods, even privileged ones, running as root, accessing files and paths from the host machine, making the attack surface much bigger. If an attacker attacked into the pod, since the pod is already running as root, if he could escape the boundary that is the container by exploiting some vulnerabilities, he could potentially become root on the host machine. There are a lot of third party run-time security tools to strengthen up security inside Kubernetes, but if you don’t want to buy something else, with minimum effort, you can already strengthen up the security by simply applying the PodSecurityPolicy which comes native with Kubernetes. What is PodSecurityPolicy A PodSecurityPolicy is an admission controller resource, which enables fine-grained authorization of pod creation and updates. It is a cluster-level resource that controls security sensitive aspects of the pod specification, and defines a set of conditions, with which a pod must run, in order to be accepted into the system. When a request to create or update a Pod does not meet the conditions in the PodSecurityPolicy, that request is rejected and an error is returned. Before Starting In this article we are going to focus mainly on AWS EKS. As of today, the latest version of EKS in AWS is 1.16 which already enables the admission controller with a default privileged policy. So, in short, if you have already upgraded to the latest version of EKS, there is nothing you need to do before you can continue. A little more on this topic: Under the hood, in order to use PodSecurityPolicy, you must first create and define policies that new and updated Pods must meet, then enable the PodSecurityPolicy admission controller, which validates requests to create and update Pods against the defined policies. PodSecurityPolicy became available as early as in Kubernetes 1.5/1.6. In Google Compute Platform, GKE clusters running Kubernetes version 1.8.6 or later already enabled it. In AWS, The pod security policy admission controller is only enabled on Amazon EKS clusters running Kubernetes version 1.13 or later. Note that, when multiple PodSecurityPolicies are available, the admission controller uses the first policy that successfully validates. Policies are ordered alphabetically, and the controller prefers non-mutating policies (policies that don’t change the Pod) over mutating policies. Another note before you continue: PodSecurityPolicies are enforced by enabling the admission controller, but doing so without authorizing any policies will prevent any pods from being created in the cluster. What PodSecurityPolicy Can Do With PodSecurityPolicy, you can control the following: Running of privileged containers Usage of host namespaces Usage of host networking and ports Usage of volume types Usage of the host filesystem Allow specific FlexVolume drivers Allocating an FSGroup that owns the pod’s volumes Requiring the use of a read only root file system The user and group IDs of the container Restricting escalation to root privileges Linux capabilities The SELinux context of the container The Allowed Proc Mount types for the container The AppArmor profile used by containers The seccomp profile used by containers The sysctl profile used by containers While this seems to be an overwhelmingly long list, chances are, you might have already used a few of them when you are using Kubernetes, for example: You need to mount some storage to the pod like PVC When you don’t need/want to run a pod with root user, you use security context to run as a user/group For some of your applications, you need to mount some volumes to it For some logging applications, you need to access the logs from a path that lives on the host You can do this, because either your cluster does not enable the PodSecurityPolicy admission controller, or it is enabled but there is a default policy that allows everything. In the case of AWS EKS, the clusters with Kubernetes version 1.13 and higher have a default pod security policy named eks.privileged . This policy has no restriction on what kind of pod can be accepted into the system, which is equivalent to running Kubernetes with the PodSecurityPolicy controller disabled (or there is one that allows you to do everything). What PodSecurityPolicy Can Not Do However, PodSecurityPolicy can’t do everything. If it’s not in the list above, it can’t do it. Also, due to the nature of the admission controller, the policy only works when you are creating or updating the pod. If the pod violates the policy, it won’t be created. However, if you modify the policy after pods are already up and running, making the pods violating the new policy, the pods won’t be shut down. PodSecurityPolicy, as the name suggests, is only a set of policies that are enforced when creating/updating pod. It is not container run-time security platform that can detects violations and shutdown pods. This is important to know, and this explains why you might want to consider tools like aqua, sysdig, falco when you want more control over Kubernetes run-time security. Preparing Your Environment For AWS EKS latest version 1.16 (or from1.13), the admission controller is already enabled, so there is nothing you need to do. To verify the default policy is there, run: kubectl get psp eks.privileged Example output: If you don’t feel like ruining your running cluster, testing from minikube might be a good idea. Creating PodSecurityPolicy A default, privileged PodSecurityPolicy looks like this: This is the one from AWS EKS default PodSecurityPolicy. It’s a Standard Kubernetes resource definition format. As you can see, most entries corresponds to the list above, and you can also see from the values, that, this policy does not actually limit anything. Running your cluster with this policy is identical with running your cluster with PodSecurityPolicy admission controller disabled. Another example of a slightly limited PodSecurityPolicy: In this example above, the only limit is, privileged pods are not allowed, but regarding user id, volumes, etc, are not limited. Creating RoleBinding — How PodSecurityPolicy Works When a PodSecurityPolicy resource is created, it actually does nothing. In order to use the policy, the requesting user (or target pod’s service account) must have permission to “use” this policy, by allowing the use verb on the policy. So, besides the PodSecurityPolicy, you also need to create a Role/ClusterRole that allows you to use that policy, and a RoleBinding/ClusterRoleBinding to bind to the role. For example, if you created a super PodSecurityPolicy which allows everything (the first example above), but you want to limit it to a certain namespace, say, kube-system, then you can create a Role in kube-system with permission to use your PodSecurityPolicy, then create a RoleBinding to bind a service account to that Role: In this example above, a service account “aws-node” from kube-system namespace is bound to a role which can “use” the “privileged” policy. So when the pod is using this service account in kube-system namespace, it can have any privileges. For another example, if you created a restricted/unprivileged PodSecurityPolicy that only allows basic permission and you want to make this as a default to all authenticated users, you can create a ClusterRole, giving it access to use this policy, then create a ClusterRoleBinding to bind all authenticated users to this role. The only thing you need to pay attention is, if you want to by default not allow privileged pods, in the ClusterRoleBinding, you can bind a group “system:authenticated” instead of to a specific service account. For a fully restricted PodSecurityPolicy and ClusterRole/ClusterRoleBinding, see here. Testing Now let’s have a test of pod creation with restricted policy. First, delete the default privileged PodSecurityPolicy from AWS EKS: kubectl delete psp eks.privileged Then create the restricted policy: git clone https://github.com/IronCore864/ekspsp.git kubectl apply -f restricted.yaml kubectl apply -f restricted.yaml Now let’s run a test: A very simple image with a hello-world app, but in the Dockerfile, it runs as user ID 0 (root). You can try applying the above pod, and you will get error: Error: container has runAsNonRoot and image will run as root For an image that runs as other user ID: If you apply this one, it would work, because in this image it runs as user ID 1000. Best Practice Restrict the containers that can run as privileged Containers that run as privileged inherit all of the Linux capabilities assigned to root on the host. Seldom do containers need these types of privileges to function properly. You can reject pods with containers configured to run as privileged. However, there are a few pods in EKS that need some type of privilege, be it run as root or capabilities. For example, the coredns needs NET_BIND_SERVICE, but it doesn’t need to run as root; while aws-node, kube-proxy requires different access to different paths on the host machine. So the recommendation here is to create one policy for each pod, bind it to that service account, so that each pod has exactly the required minimum set of permissions. Do not run processes in containers as root All containers run as root by default. This could be problematic if an attacker is able to exploit a vulnerability in the application and get shell access to the running container. You can mitigate this risk a variety of ways: First, by removing the shell from the container image. Second, adding the USER directive to your Dockerfile or running the containers in the pod as a non-root user. The Kubernetes podSpec includes a set of fields under spec.securityContext , that allow to let you specify the user and/or group to run your application as. These fields are runAsUser and runAsGroup respectively. You can mandate the use of these fields by creating a pod security policy. Never run Docker in Docker or mount the socket in the container While this conveniently lets you to build/run images in Docker containers, you’re basically relinquishing complete control of the node to the process running in the container. If you need to build container images inside Kubernetes, don’t. Or, either to use some build service, or use build tools that doesn’t depend on docker daemon like Kaniko. Restrict the use of hostPath hostPath is a volume that mounts a directory from the host directly to the container. Rarely will pods need this type of access, but if they do, you need to be aware of the risks. By default pods that run as root will have write access to the file system exposed by hostPath. This could allow an attacker to modify the kubelet settings, create symbolic links to directories or files not directly exposed by the hostPath, e.g. /etc/shadow, install ssh keys, read secrets mounted to the host, and other malicious things. To mitigate the risks from hostPath, configure the spec.containers.volumeMounts as readOnly . You should also use a pod security policy to restrict the directories that can be used by hostPath volumes. You can see examples in this repo. Do not allow privileged escalation Privileged escalation allows a process to change the security context under which its running. Sudo is a good example of this as are binaries with the SUID or SGID bit. Privileged escalation is basically a way for users to execute a file with the permissions of another user or group. You can prevent a container from using privileged escalation with PodSecurityPolicy as well. Summary In order to make it work easier and out of the box, I create a GitHub repo with necessary policies, role bindings, for EKS related pods, and for ingress controllers. Detailed steps with the YAML files are documented here: https://github.com/IronCore864/ekspsp, and you can also follow the steps in the repo to setup everything you need.

https://medium.com/devops-dudes/a-detailed-guide-to-kubernetes-podsecuritypolicy-in-aws-eks-71c66ded6375

['Tiexin Guo']

2020-07-07 16:02:29.361000+00:00

['AWS', 'Security', 'Podsecuritypolicy', 'Docker', 'Kubernetes']

Top 10 Lessons Learned Angel Investing $1M+ in 2020

I tripled down on angel investing this year, investing $1M+ in ~20 companies in 2020. I’ve learned what feels like 5 years worth of lessons in 1 year of investing. Here are my 10 biggest takeaways for anybody interested in getting started investing: Ownership reality > ownership mindset. The earlier you think of yourself as an investor, the better. Investing in startups is a cheat code to participating in the future with asymmetric upside. Worst case, you lose 1x your money; best case you 1000x it. 2. Invest in founders that are better than you. When you’re floored by a founder, work with them. Period. If you’re with the right people you’ll either (a) make a killing because they’ll figure it out / see something you don’t or (b) learn a ton and develop a killer network. 3. Always play the long game. I worked with a Founder for months before getting to invest in the company. If you add value, the Founder wants you in. This ecosystem is also really interconnected. I got into another oversubscribed deal this year because of a reference from that same Founder. 4. Break down investing into 3 phases. Phase I: Did I see the company? Speaks to my connectivity Phase II: Did I say yes? Speaks to my judgement Phase III: Did they say yes? Speaks to my value Hone in on all 3 and figure out where you’re weak / strong. 5. Surround yourself with people that are world class. Arjun Sethi has been an amazing friend and mentor throughout my angel investing journey. The best scenario when angel investing early on is actually not about the $; it’s about learning a system. 6. Do the work. Get the deck, research the space. I’ve heard 100 pitches this year. You get better at pattern matching / spotting obvious flaws; but you will find yourself on the wrong side of a go / no go decision if you carry mistaken assumptions into the room. 7. You can diligence yourself out of literally every deal. It’s a herculean effort for a startup to succeed. If you just focus on “what can go wrong”, you will literally say no 100% of the time. Instead ask yourself, “if this goes right, how big can it be.” 8. This is the only asset class where the Founder also picks you. It pays to be genuine and helpful. Startups aren’t an asset you can indiscriminately dump capital into. Founders have a say on who they want to work with. This bar for the best deals is pretty damn high. 9. Analysis paralysis is fatal. You have to be comfortable moving quickly and dealing with imperfect information or angel investing is impossible. There were a couple awesome deals (in retrospect) where I could have invested, but fell into analysis paralysis and missed. 10. This really is an incredibly exciting time for tech. There’s a lot of noise about how there’s too much capital sloshing around. I think there isn’t enough capital moving around. To believe the ecosystem is overcapitalized is to believe that human creativity is fully tapped. Thank you to all the amazing Founders that have let me be a part of their journey. I’m pumped to see you all soar in 2021 and beyond!

https://medium.com/@romeen/top-10-lessons-learned-angel-investing-1m-in-2020-f0b4056dc3e2

['Romeen Sheth']

2020-12-24 16:40:34.813000+00:00

['Angel Investors', 'Startup Life', 'Startup Lessons', 'Venture Capital', 'Angel Investing']

Boosting- Ensemble meta Algorithm for Reducing bias

Boosting- Give the power to weak learners Unity is the power. Yes, This proverb we had listen in our childhood right. But How its related to boosting, What is boosting? this all the question are raising in your mind. Boosting, is a provide the strength of weak learner and help machine learning model to prevent under-fitting and over-fitting. It is a process that multiple weak learners(machine learning models) train and combine their output to create strong learner from it. It is used to prevent under-when single machine learning model is not working well and also used to prevent over-fitting when machine learning model is not working well on the validation data-set. Primary use : Prevent Under-fitting when you have less number of training data. Prevent Over-fitting when you have enough sample for training data-set still, it is not giving a good result on the validation data-set. There are many algorithms used by the data science community for classification and regression problems such as Adaboost, XGboost, Gradient Boosting, and so on. How does it work? It is beginning with bootstrapping of data, which process we do in bagging as well. then we start different machine learning models training which is known as weak learners. Now main question is what is weak learner right? Courtesy : Chris Albon Let’s explore the concept of the weak learner. The weak learner is not fully accountable for final results, but they have hands in a small part to make final results. For making the final decision, these weak classifier are aiding toward the final result. These classifier are known as weak learners. Example : Source : unsplash.com Let us say I have to formulate one prediction model for my friend. He is studying in 7th standard. I want to know how he will be getting an A+ Grade in this term exams. For analysis we are going to ask this same question to all his others friends who are studying with him. and they are providing the opinion(Answers) about his as below: Friend 1: Andrew will get A+ if he reads for 4 hours a day. Andrew will get A+ if he reads for 4 hours a day. Friend 2: Andrew will get A+if he watches less YouTube videos. Andrew will get A+if he watches less YouTube videos. Friend 3: He can get A+ if he takes classes regularly. He can get A+ if he takes classes regularly. Friend 4: He can only succeed if he gets good tuition. What do you think about this? I think all of the aforementioned answers will be required for good term results, but none of his friends have a complete answer about him. Do you know why? The answer is quite straight forward. they are not maestro; They are not mature enough and every child has its own opinion about Andrew. Still, if you associate(combine)their opinion (Answers). You will get complete answer about this. Here Andrew’s friends are our weak learners. Everyone has given us partial information, and then we can combine them all and draw the conclusion. Boosting is supervised learning algorithms which is a kind of frameworks that comprise many weak learners in cascade. It is training model continue sly on training data-set and updates their weights based on the variations between predicted and actual results. The weight updates based on algorithm we used for updates. In the case of boost by majority algorithms, mis-classified learner gets a weight gain and a learner with true classification loses weight. So, the classifier gives less attention to the true classification, which helps in faster convergence of the classifier. Boosting Algorithm(Cascading Classifier) Boosting Process Steps: First, generate Random Sample from Training Data-set. Now, Train a classifier model 1 for this generated sample data and test the whole training data-set. Now, Calculate the error fir each instance prediction. if the instance is classified wrongly, increase the weight for that instance and create another sample. Repeat this process until you get high accuracy from the system. :) Boosting Code Implementation Now, Let’s move to the implementation section. here we can use sklearn inbuilt iris data set to train a model. After training the preceding model, we obtain an accuracy of 96.6% on our test data, which shows that our classifier is well trained on the training samples. Thanks for reading…!!! I hope you enjoy this article…!!! References :

https://medium.com/ml-research-lab/boosting-ensemble-meta-algorithm-for-reducing-bias-5b8bfdce281

['Ashish Patel']

2020-03-18 06:18:26.554000+00:00

['Boosting', 'Stacking', 'Ensemble Learning', 'Bagging', 'Machine Learning']

The 3.5 Million-Year-Old Bacteria That Could Be the Answer to Eternal Life

The 3.5 Million-Year-Old Bacteria That Could Be the Answer to Eternal Life Are we meant to live eternally? Ancient bacteria from 3.5 million years ago also known as Bacillus F strain (Source: MIMS) For centuries, humans have been in the look for a source of eternity or a potion that can bring you back to your youth. Many legends and stories from ancient histories most probably inspired by witches show the possibility of becoming younger. In our philosophy, we see aging and dying as a natural phenomenon that is meant to be the way it is. However, some people are simply thirsty for eternal life. So much that they would even risk injecting themselves with this bacteria. Over the 21st century, there have been two recorded cases, of people injecting themselves with this bacteria as well as claiming that they are feeling younger and healthier. But before we go into these cases, we must have a look at what does this bacteria actually presents itself to be as well as it’s believed origin. Bacillus F This bacteria, known as Bacillus F was discovered in 2009 by researchers from Mammoth Mountain in the northern Siberian region of Yakutsk. From the analyses done by the University of Moscow, the bacteria seems to originate from around 3.5 million years ago, around when mammoths were alive. The bacteria has been closely studied and from the read on the DNA it presented, it seemed to have the potential of giving the injected organism longevity of life and an increase in fertility. The first organism to be tested with the bacteria was a couple of mice. The results were quite clear, all the mice that had been injected with the bacteria presented a longer lifespan. What is even more interesting is that the mice were also still fertile at a very old age. Epidemiologist Viktor Chernyavsky, who took part in the study mentioned that the bacteria gives out biologically active substances during its long life cycle or as long as the organism keeps it alive. As an expert, Chernyavsky had positively confirmed that the bacteria did give longevity within mice as well as enhanced the fertility within the mice tested. The first person to be injected with the bacteria Even if the tests showed that the bacteria does not harm the mice of an organism, it still was considered dangerous to have it introduced into a human organism, at least until more research was done. However, someone became impatient and wanted to know if this was the “elixir of life” as it was nicknamed by some of the scientists within the field. Anatoli Brouchkov (Source: Vice) Anatoli Brouchkov was from the department of geocryology, the department which focuses on the study of glacier regions and regions that have been permanently frozen. The scientist wanted to know the truth about the bacteria so bad that he injected himself with the bacteria with no permission from his higher-ups. Brouchkov knew that the bacteria wasn’t going to harm him as it can be found in the water from where it has been extracted in Siberia. This region has some secluded villages from which people have gathered and consumed the same water infested with the bacteria for years without causing them any harm. In an interview with Jordan Pearson from VICE, Brouchkov mentioned that the bacteria never affected him in a negative way, only positive. He mentioned that he wasn’t getting younger from a physical appearance, but he was feeling less tired as if he was younger and much healthier. We all know that with age, it is common to not only get tired much quicker but also get sick more often. Besides all this, the most interesting claim that Brouchkov made was that he didn’t suffer from any sort of sickness or illness for more than two years since injecting himself with the bacteria. Besides this virus being quite primitive for its age, the biological mechanism is extremely complex, making it very difficult for scientists even with the state of the art technology to understand the way it affects the organism it inhabits. Brouchkov ended his media appearance by stating that he does truly believe that the Bacillus F bacteria is the key to immortality. Besides this bacteria, there are many others that have been in a state of permafrost for hundreds of thousands of years with remarkable complexity. Many scientists define these bacterias to have been the cause of our ancestor’s great immune system and long lifespan. Another person taking the “elixir of youth” A more recent case was recorded in 2017 by a German actress know as Manoush. The only difference, in this case, is that Manoush took more doses over a period of three months. Since 2015, the research team from the University of Moscow had been able to unlock the DNA code of the bacteria, gaining even more information on its eternal abilities, but also confirming that the bacteria can live forever. Photo of Manoush and injection with the bacteria, 2017 (Source: Daily Mail) She claims that since taking the vaccine she has not only felt younger but is getting younger from a physical perspective. Although the idea of getting younger from a physical perspective is a bit more difficult to believe in her case due to all the plastic surgeries she had undergone in the previous years. There is still a possibility from a scientific point of view. The actress also mentioned that her skin feels much softer and what is most important is the fact that she would get hay fever every year (something common in many people). Since taking the bacteria she didn’t have hay-fever anymore, in fact, no type of illness or sickness just like in Brouchkov’s case. Scientists asked for blood samples from her every month during the three month period she injected herself with the bacteria. She has the desire of living until the age of 100 in a “fully functional body”. As there are no adverse effects from the injections with Bacillus F, she continues taking the bacteria.

https://medium.com/history-of-yesterday/the-3-5-million-year-old-bacteria-that-could-be-the-answer-to-eternal-life-a98e7c693759

['Andrei Tapalaga']

2020-12-25 21:02:41.238000+00:00

['Health', 'History', 'Science', 'Life', 'Medicine']

Binance Dexathon

Overview Currently, decentralized exchanges are inefficient and difficult to operate for the average user. As a result, they generally have reduced liquidity. Cryptocurrency is evolving at a rapid rate and we must ensure that blockchain technology is able to keep up. This is an all-hands-on-deck initiative, combining the state-of-the-art technological excellence at Binance and the best of the community to once again push the envelope in blockchain technology. In addition to having internal teams working on dex implementation, we will continue our community-driven approach and work closely with our community to build the next generation blockchain. To help facilitate this innovation, Binance will host a coding competition with the clear intent of merging the best implementation(s) and/or team(s) into Binance Chain. On top of this, we will also offer a total prize pool equivalent of $1,000,000 USD, paid in BNB. How does winning a million dollar prize, then joining the Binance team, sound to you? This paper outlines the high level requirements of what we are looking for, as well as our initial design philosophies for the Binance Chain. Goal The objective of this project is to solicit prototypes of a decentralized exchange with a focus on speed and capacity, or more precisely, a dex blockchain that is low-latency and high-throughput. The dex prototype should have the following features: Sending and receiving of the native coin New token creation Sending, receiving, freezing, and burning of tokens Ability to trade one token with another token (all within the same chain) Bonus feature: Native on-chain ICO For performance, we recommend the following design considerations: All features mentioned above built-in natively to the blockchain No support for smart contracts, virtual machines or turing complete languages If a trade-off is required, always choose speed and simplicity over fancy features. Mining & Consensus A blockchain where all native tokens are pre-mined, there will be no mining (all BNB coins will be converted from BNB ERC20 tokens that already exist today). You are free to use any consensus algorithm you like; performance is key. Basics Basic features such as block generation and sending/receiving of the native coin should obviously be included. You are also free to use graphs instead of chains, assuming you can make it work reliably. Token Creation Native support for new token generation is required. That is, users should be able to create new tokens simply by specifying token parameters, such as symbol, total supply, decimals, etc, without having to write smart contracts. New token generation will cost a fee, payable in the native coin of the blockchain. Tokens can follow a simple structure; fixed supply, all pre-mined, etc. Again, if there is a need for a trade-off between advanced features vs speed and simplicity, the latter wins. Orders & Trades Users should be able to place orders and trade one token for another directly on the blockchain. These orders should be natively supported by the blockchain and not via smart contracts. Limit GTC orders must be supported, and bonus points may be awarded for limit FOK and IOC, market, and other advanced order types, but keep in mind that speed is of higher priority. An order should contain: Symbol (trading pair) Side Price Amount Expiry time (in blocks) Owner Trading is done via sending orders to the network. As network resources are required to process each order, a fee will apply. The order fee will be dynamically adjust based on how busy the network is, similar to other network fees. Order fees are charged when the orders are submitted to the network. Orders can be cancelled before they are traded. Each cancellation is also a new message to the network, thus incurring another network fee. If an order matches against another order, a trade event happens. A trade is simply one atomic event involving two token transfers on the network. Again, network transfer fees will apply. A trade should also trigger an execution report. We recommend an execution report structure similar to standard FIX 4.4 or higher protocol. Matching Engine You are free to use on-chain or off-chain matching engines in your design. The main consideration factor should be performance. Nodes Nodes on the blockchain will handle: Sending of the native coin Issuing of tokens Sending/receiving of tokens Placing orders and handling trades Nodes on the network will be compensated by transfer, order, trading, and other fees. Other fees include token creation, and potentially ICOs at a later date. For this competition, nodes running in one OS will suffice, ideally Linux. Wallet The wallet is the user’s interface to the blockchain. For the purpose of this dexathon, GUI wallets are not required and a command line interface (CLI) will suffice. ICO While not required, a natively supported ICO implementation will definitely earn bonus points. Implementation We generally like to see new implementations built from scratch, but you may choose to fork existing blockchain implementations and improve upon them. You must ensure you do not violate any copyright or license restrictions. Considering each trade may involve many orders, you will probably want to avoid (or change) blockchains that only allow you to have one input and one output address. Bitcoin’s many-to-many model may be a better fit here. Prize As previously mentioned, we will offer a prize pool equivalent to $1,000,000 USD, paid in BNB. In addition, winning team(s) may also be considered for employment. Schedule All entries must be submitted by June 30th, 2018 23:59 UTC. Any entries submitted after this deadline will be ineligible. You may submit your application now and continually update it until the deadline. After the submission deadline, Binance will take a reasonable amount time to review the submissions. To Apply You must register to participate in this competition. Please send the information below to dexathon@binance.com: Name(s) CV(s) or LinkedIn link(s) Team size Github repo location (can be private during the competition) University Teams We encourage university teams to participate in our competition, and offer a special grant of $10,000 per qualified team — even if you don’t win. To apply for this, please have your favorite professor from your university contact us directly at dexathon@binance.com. Questions If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at dexathon@binance.com. You must have already submitted your application before asking detailed questions about the competition. Lastly, Binance reserves all rights to adjust the rules of this competition, with or without further notice.

https://medium.com/binanceexchange/binance-dexathon-845dc0cbfffe

[]

2018-03-16 11:43:30.453000+00:00

['Blockchain', 'News', 'Binance', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Decentralization']

Healthcare Dataset with Spark

Spark is an open source project from Apache. It is also the most commonly used analytics engine for big data and machine learning. This post will be focused on a quick start to develop a prediction algorithm with Spark. I chose ‘Healthcare Dataset Stroke Data’ dataset to work with from kaggle.com, the world’s largest community of data scientists and machine learning. Content: According to the World Health Organization, ischaemic heart disease and stroke are the world’s biggest killers. Information from official site: http://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/the-top-10-causes-of-death What we need to do is to predict the stroke probability using the given information of patients. It is a classification problem, where we will try to predict the probability of an observation belonging to a category (in our case probability of having a stroke). There are lot of algorithms to solve classification problems I will use the Decision Tree algorithm. Setting up Spark and getting data from pyspark.sql import SparkSession import pyspark.sql as sparksql spark = SparkSession.builder.appName('stroke').getOrCreate() train = spark.read.csv('train_2v.csv', inferSchema=True,header=True) Exploration of data The first operation to perform after importing data is to get some information of what it looks like. It’s possible to do with the following commands: df.printSchema() df.describe() df.dtypes train.groupBy('stroke').count().show() +------+-----+ |stroke|count| +------+-----+ | 1| 783| | 0|42617| +------+-----+ As can be seen from this observation. This is an Imbalanced dataset, where the number of observations belonging to one class is significantly lower than those belonging to the other classes. In this case, the predictive model could be biased and inaccurate. There are different strategies to handling Imbalanced Datasets, hence it is out of scope for this post, instead I will focus on Spark. To find more information about imbalanced dataset: https://www.analyticsvidhya.com/blog/2017/03/imbalanced-classification-problem/ Here we have clinical measurements (e.g. Hypertension, heart_disease, age, family history of disease) for a number of patients, as well as information about whether each patient has had a stroke. In practice, we want this method to accurately predict stroke risk for future patients based on their clinical measurements. Analysis Perform brief analysis using basic operations. It’s possible to do in several ways: DataFrames provide a domain-specific language for structured data manipulation, access to a DataFrame’s columns can be by attribute or by indexing. to run SQL queries programmatically and return the result as a DataFrame For instance, to see what type of work has more cases of stroke we can do the following: # create DataFrame as a temporary view train.createOrReplaceTempView('table') SQL query spark.sql("SELECT work_type, count(work_type) as work_type_count FROM table WHERE stroke == 1 GROUP BY work_type ORDER BY work_type_count DESC").show() +-------------+---------------+ | work_type|work_type_count| +-------------+---------------+ | Private| 441| |Self-employed| 251| | Govt_job| 89| | children| 2| +-------------+---------------+ Looks like Private occupation is the most dangerous work type in this dataset. Let’s find out who participated in this clinic measurement. spark.sql("SELECT gender, count(gender) as count_gender, count(gender)*100/sum(count(gender)) over() as percent FROM table GROUP BY gender").show() +------+------------+-------------------+ |gender|count_gender| percent| +------+------------+-------------------+ |Female| 25665| 59.13594470046083| | Other| 11|0.02534562211981567| | Male| 17724| 40.83870967741935| +------+------------+-------------------+ 59% of all people are Female and only 40% are Male that participated in stroke research. From this information there is possibility to retrieve information about how many Female/Male have a stroke: spark.sql("SELECT gender, count(gender), (COUNT(gender) * 100.0) /(SELECT count(gender) FROM table WHERE gender == 'Male') as percentage FROM table WHERE stroke = '1' and gender = 'Male' GROUP BY gender").show() +------+-------------+--------------------+ |gender|count(gender)| percentage| +------+-------------+--------------------+ | Male| 352|1.986007673211464...| +------+-------------+--------------------+ spark.sql("SELECT gender, count(gender), (COUNT(gender) * 100.0) /(SELECT count(gender) FROM table WHERE gender == 'Female') as percentage FROM table WHERE stroke = '1' and gender = 'Female' GROUP BY gender").show() +------+-------------+--------------------+ |gender|count(gender)| percentage| +------+-------------+--------------------+ |Female| 431|1.679329826612117...| +------+-------------+--------------------+ 1,68% Female and almost 2% Male have had a stroke. We also can see if the age has an influence on stroke and what is the risk by age. spark.sql("SELECT age, count(age) as age_count FROM table WHERE stroke == 1 GROUP BY age ORDER BY age_count DESC").show() +----+---------+ | age|age_count| +----+---------+ |79.0| 70| |78.0| 57| |80.0| 49| |81.0| 43| |82.0| 36| |70.0| 25| |77.0| 24| |74.0| 24| |76.0| 24| |67.0| 23| |75.0| 23| |72.0| 21| |68.0| 20| |59.0| 20| |69.0| 20| |71.0| 19| |57.0| 19| |63.0| 18| |65.0| 18| |66.0| 17| +----+---------+ only showing top 20 rows I can use filter operation to calculate the number of stroke cases for people after 50 years. train.filter((train['stroke'] == 1) & (train['age'] > '50')).count() result: 708 As we can see Age is an important risk factor for developing a stroke. Cleaning data The next step of exploration is to deal with categorical and missing values. There are missing values for smoking_status and bmi parameters. I will fill out smoking_status with a value of ‘No info’ and bmi parameter with mean value. # fill in missing values train_f = train.na.fill('No Info', subset=['smoking_status']) # fill in miss values with mean from pyspark.sql.functions import mean mean = train_f.select(mean(train_f['bmi'])).collect() mean_bmi = mean[0][0] train_f = train_f.na.fill(mean_bmi,['bmi']) Most of ML algorithms cannot work directly with categorical data. The encoding allows algorithms which expect continuous features to use categorical features. StringIndexer -> OneHotEncoder -> VectorAssembler from pyspark.ml.feature import (VectorAssembler,OneHotEncoder, StringIndexer) It does not need to know how many categories in a feature beforehand the combination of StringIndexer and OneHotEncoder take care of it. The next step is to create an assembler, that combines a given list of columns into a single vector column to train ML model. I will use the vector columns, that we got after one_hot_encoding. assembler = VectorAssembler(inputCols=['genderVec', 'age', 'hypertension', 'heart_disease', 'ever_marriedVec', 'work_typeVec', 'Residence_typeVec', 'avg_glucose_level', 'bmi', 'smoking_statusVec'],outputCol='features') Then we will create a DecisionTree object. To do this we need to import DecisionTreeClassifier. from pyspark.ml.classification import DecisionTreeClassifier dtc = DecisionTreeClassifier(labelCol='stroke',featuresCol='features') So far we have kind of a complex task that contains bunch of stages, that need to be performed to process data. To wrap all of that Spark ML represents such a workflow as a Pipeline, which consists of a sequence of PipelineStages to be run in a specific order. from pyspark.ml import Pipeline pipeline = Pipeline(stages=[gender_indexer, ever_married_indexer, work_type_indexer, Residence_type_indexer, smoking_status_indexer, gender_encoder, ever_married_encoder, work_type_encoder, Residence_type_encoder, smoking_status_encoder, assembler, dtc]) The next step is to split dataset to train and test. train_data,test_data = train_f.randomSplit([0.7,0.3]) What I’m going to do now is to fit the model. For this I will use the pipeline that was created and train_data model = pipeline.fit(train_data) After that transform the test_data. dtc_predictions = model.transform(test_data) Now it’s time to evaluate a model from pyspark.ml.evaluation import MulticlassClassificationEvaluator # Select (prediction, true label) and compute test error acc_evaluator = MulticlassClassificationEvaluator(labelCol="stroke", predictionCol="prediction", metricName="accuracy") dtc_acc = acc_evaluator.evaluate(dtc_predictions) print('A Decision Tree algorithm had an accuracy of: {0:2.2f}%'.format(dtc_acc*100)) A Decision Tree algorithm had an accuracy of: 98.08% As was defined in the beginning the predictive model of an imbalanced dataset could be with misleading accuracy. Conclusion Apache Spark is an open-source framework, it is very concise and easy to use.

https://towardsdatascience.com/healthcare-dataset-with-spark-6bf48019892b

['Alena Nazarava']

2018-09-03 13:10:46.191000+00:00

['Sql', 'Spark', 'Data Science']

Kerberos Finance Pre-sale

Pre-sale details The pre-sale is starting on Wednesday the 16th of December and ending on Thursday the 31st of December at 4:00 PM UTC. We will be distributing 10,000 KBRF. Until the 24th of December the price will be 0.04 ETH. After the price will be 0.045 ETH per KBRF. Presale URL: https://presale.kerberos.finance https://presale.kerberos.finance Token allocated: 10,000 KBRF 10,000 KBRF Conditions: 0.1 ETH min. & 5 ETH max. per address 0.1 ETH min. & 5 ETH max. per address Pre-sale starts : 12/16/2020 @ 4:00 PM (UTC) : 12/16/2020 @ 4:00 PM (UTC) Price discount ends : 12/24/2020 @ 4:00 PM (UTC) 0.04 -> 0.045 ETH per KBRF : 12/24/2020 @ 4:00 PM (UTC) 0.04 -> 0.045 ETH per KBRF Pre-sale ends : 12/31/2020 @ 4:00 PM (UTC) : 12/31/2020 @ 4:00 PM (UTC) Uniswap listing : when reach the Hardcap or 12/31/2020 @ 6:00 PM (UTC) : when reach the Hardcap or 12/31/2020 @ 6:00 PM (UTC) Vaults: 01/01/2021 — For ETH, USDC, DAI & USDT Please DO NOT fall for any scammers that will ask you to send them funds to a random address!

https://medium.com/@kerberosfinance/kerberos-finance-pre-sale-34a3309724af

[]

2020-12-16 16:06:17.014000+00:00

['Defi', 'Blockchain', 'Kerberos Finance', 'Eth', 'Btc']

Procurement under Trump

If Trump wants to improve regulation, here’s where he should start. I remember when I first really understood how screwed up government technology procurement is. It was 2011, the first year of the Code for America fellowship program, and one of our fellows had just launched a website for the City of Boston. The city had changed the public school selection policy to promote more kids walking to school. The process was now essentially a mapping problem; the primary factor was the distance from your home to various schools, with some other factors such as whether the child had a sibling in another school or special education needs. But to communicate this change to parents, the Department was still sending a 28 page printed brochure with descriptions of each school written in seven point type. The brochure contained a lot of information, but it did not — and could not — tell you which school YOUR kid could attend. Parents were beyond frustrated. The 28-page brochure mailed to parents of school-aged children in Boston in 2011 One of our fellows, Joel Mahoney, took on the job of making a website that let you enter your address, the age of your child, and the school(s) any siblings attended, and returned a map showing the schools your child could go to. He had part time help from one or two of the other fellows. It took him about ten weeks to launch a beta version of the site, which worked remarkably well, and was, as another fellow said, “simple, beautiful, and easy to use.” DiscoverBPS.org, originally built by 2011 Code for America fellows for the City of Boston Joel and the other fellows were working in Boston courtesy of some very forward-thinking public servants who had a lot of political backing from Boston’s then mayor, Tom Menino. These city employees, Nigel Jacob and Chris Osgood, had contracted with Code for America for the program, and under those terms the fellows could work on a wide variety of projects. This meant that the work they did wasn’t subject to procurement rules. Chris and Nigel taught me about procurement, starting with the fact that if Joel’s project — which took one and a half people about ten weeks — had gone through a regular procurement process, it would have taken at least two years and cost at least $2M. I remember thinking at the time, “Well, I guess we know what the enemy is now. We’d better change procurement.” I became something of a collector of government technology procurement horror stories. No, it should not cost $2B to share documents between sites of the California court system (and to subsequently scrap the attempt). No, it should not take 19 years to do the same for Massachusetts (still not shipped). No, it should not cost $11B to manage medical records at the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration (yes, this procurement came out while I worked in the White House, to my significant dismay.) I wish I could say these were outliers, but they weren’t. I’m happy to say that’s changing, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Over the course of the subsequent five years, I discovered that I was probably the ten millionth person to have realized that procurement is messed up, and maybe the 100,000th person to have the audacity to think I actually could change it. The starting place, naturally, is to want to change the rules. It turns out that under the circumstances I’ve worked — in city, county and state governments as an outside partner and in the White House as the Deputy Chief Technology Officer, serving an administration whose party was not in the majority in Congress — changing the rules has been either impossible or merely unthinkable. So I and many others have focused on a variety of different strategies to help governments do good digital work within existing law, policy and regulations. It is possible, as evidenced by the hundreds of procurement hacks we’ve seen over the past few years and recent examples of procurements designed to meet user needs. But it is hard. And changing procurement regulation sure would make it easier. Now a Trump administration is coming. I hope procurement will be in its crosshairs. A Trump White House will govern with Republican majorities in both the House and the Senate. It’s possible that a Trump administration, with the help of folks on his transition team like Peter Thiel, who has founded companies that have been publicly frustrated with government procurement, could do what President Obama and governors and mayors across the country could not. If they go after technology procurement, can they do it, and will they get it right? So, can they? Let’s assume for a second that the Trump team goes directly at the Federal Acquisition Regulation. The FAR is an 1895 page document (as downloaded from acquisitions.gov) that’s enormously complex. It also appears difficult to change, though perhaps less so than I had assumed, per a Congressional Research Report from 2015. The language of rulemaking is sometimes difficult to decipher, but if I read it correctly, it says that if the Department of Defense (DOD), the General Services Administration (GSA), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), get together, acting on behalf of the FAR Council, or the Administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) “they can issue proposed and final rules amending the FAR under the ‘notice-and-comment’ procedures of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).” There’s more to it than that, but there’s also more than rulemaking at play. There are the interests of those who benefit from the rules as they exist today, and that deserves greater discussion. But the bigger question is, will Trump appointees want to amend the FAR, or fundamentally blow it up? Since Thiel is leading the transition effort on digital, the analogy to code will be resonant. Regulation functions in some ways like computer code does, executing rules towards an outcome. Typical computer code is amended far more often than regulation, to add features, fix bugs, or improve stability. But regulation and software both accrue a wide variety of changes over time, and eventually the code, whether computer code or procurement code, becomes bloated and slow. Software programs need a total rewrite when they suffer the resulting performance and usability issues (the former being an issue of speed of the program and the latter being an issue of speed of the user when confronted with too many features, many of which are not needed and/or rarely used.) The notion that complex government regulation like the FAR is in need of a total rewrite for greater speed and usability predates my career in government technology. I don’t exactly know how one would completely reboot the FAR, and I don’t actually know that the Trump camp intends to do so. What I would say is that I know hundreds, possibly thousands of people, many of whom served previous administrations, who have long wanted this. Those of us most recently in the trenches have been working to fix the larger problem of digital competence in government through other means, because a complete overhaul was not an option in our world. Many of these people are the employees of the USDS and 18F, many of whom have come from “metaphysical Silicon Valley” (aka tech companies who live and die by meeting user needs.) Many of them have, as I do, concerns about many of Trump’s proposed policies and are grappling with how to engage with his administration. I’ve written about this elsewhere. But this group knows federal technology procurement, and they know it primarily as an obstacle to serving the American people as they deserve to be served, not as the protection against cronyism it was designed to be. They also know how the Paperwork Reduction Act, the Privacy Act of 1974, countless meaningless security protocols and other forms of compliance for the sake of compliance, and a risk-averse bureaucracy — all make it difficult to execute on the best practices that they have learned in cutting edge technology companies. They’ve been succeeding in making technology that works for the public in spite of these obstacles for the last few years, but that doesn’t mean they are satisfied with the scale of change, and it doesn’t mean they accept the status quo. On the contrary. They know how much still needs to change to fulfill the promise of our movement, which, as we say at Code for America, is to make government work by and for the people in the 21st century. And procurement is one of those things that need to change. But what I worry about is this: The law of unintended consequences is a bitch, and nowhere does it wreak more havoc than in law, policy and regulation related to technology. I’m not talking about the risk that changing procurement rules could remove protections against cronyism; those protections don’t work now. I’m talking about the fact that the Paperwork Reduction Act, the Privacy Act, the FAR itself — all of these were implemented by well-meaning change agents for the benefit of the American people. They were intended to fix problems of the very same nature as the problems we face today. And each of them has had largely the opposite effect. It’s the nature of lawmaking and rulemaking (today, at least) that you tend to get one chance to propose your idea for how to fix things, you get little or no chance to test it, and then it runs unchecked. Technical folks: I don’t even need to make this analogy for you. Clay Shirky had a great line in his piece on the launch of healthcare.gov: [Waterfall development is] a perfect method for a culture that communicates in the deontic language of legislation. That line sent readers everywhere (including myself) to look up deontic, which apparently means relating to or expressing moral duty or obligation, but comes from the Greek dei, or it is binding. It left me with a vivid image of all the legislation and regulation to which we are bound today and the ways in which they hold us back from meeting user needs, even when we have the best of intentions. We are not consigned to a fate in which legislation and regulation forever suffer from the inevitable limitations of “once and done.” Nick Sinai has written about “regulatory sandboxing,” in which constraints are relaxed in order to allow for activity from which regulators can learn while they debate and finalize rules. Tim O’Reilly (in the interest of transparency, my husband) has written about a new model for algorithm-based regulation. His chapter in the book Beyond Transparency lists characteristics of successful regulation: · A deep understanding of the desired outcome · Real-time measurement to determine if that outcome is being achieved · Algorithms (i.e. a set of rules) that make adjustments based on new data · Periodic, deeper analysis of whether the algorithms themselves are correct and performing as expected. Perhaps a precursor to this model is to be found in a story of “iterative regulation” I told at the Code for America Summit a few weeks ago. A Digital Service team working at the Department of Health and Human Services worked side by side with regulators to create an MVP (“Minimum Viable Product”) of the digital service that would implement a new regulation, then tested it with users, discovered its weaknesses, and revised the draft regulations multiple times based on results with real users. That’s groundbreaking. The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau has similarly tested disclosures with users before finalizing language. Case studies like these are no longer theoretical, and the people practicing these methods give me hope that we have a chance against the law of unintended consequences when we take on the work of reforming government itself. Procurement reform is a place where the Trump administration and a Republican Congress could have a meaningful positive impact. The teams in USDS and 18F have enormous insights in what many of problems are, what has been tried, and where the pitfalls lie when contemplating reform. And they are some of the smartest, most determined people I’ve met. If the administration wanted to tackle this issue, these teams could be incredibly helpful. Speaking of people, while I and many others will welcome procurement reform done right, there is no successful strategy for making government competent at digital that doesn’t put talent first. There are too many government contractors who are successful because they are good at procurement and a wide variety of flavors of meaningless compliance (the latest maddening compliance example is here) but who lack any consistent ability to build software that meets user needs. Gorcenski adds: “The source code review is literally running an automated linter. That’s it.” This is an example of compliance that meets government needs, but completely misses user needs. While procurement reform would help, the people inside government have been trained in the current system, and it is central to acquisition workflows. Crafting a procurement that meets user needs and delivering on the procurement with the vendor who is selected (both jobs that sit inside government) require a very different set of skills and practices. Getting better vendors doesn’t fix the problems of actual service delivery, because those better vendors won’t get the job, or if they do, can’t deliver better results if the people leading the process from the inside don’t operate from a framework of “meet user needs” instead of “meet government compliance needs.” The work Code for America and 18F have done with the State of California on their child welfare program is a great case in point. Helping the California Department of Health and Human Services transform what would have been a $500M six- to seven-year waterfall project into a modular, agile process, the first award of which went to an existing solution with a proven track record, did not alleviate the need for recruitment, retraining, and realignment of the internal team. In fact, it accelerated that need. The State of California, both its leadership and the departments, has done a fantastic job stepping up to the plate. They are clearly on a path from a long line of expensive IT failures to digital services that meet user needs at a reasonable price. That path is always challenging, but it would be impossible with a narrow focus on the procurement rules alone. (And by the way, they are hiring. You should apply to work there. Seriously.) There is a lot more to say about the range of focus that’s needed to effect real change within government. David Eaves has written insightfully on this topic, pointing out (correctly) that IT projects are fundamentally adaptive problems, not technical problems, and no process can guarantee the right decision no matter how tightly or smartly you design it. His conclusions mirror those of everyone I’ve met who first encounters government from the inside; most also cite the clear need for civil service reform, without which progress on the talent issues stagnate. (The Partnership for Public Service has good recommendations here.) Moreover, the presenting problem is often bad technology, which can be fixed by a better interface, but in digital services, following users past the initial interaction leads you to a whole host of operational issues. We’ve learned that in great depth at Code for America over the last six years, and have ultimately evolved our organization beyond simple technology fixes to address the larger issues, with great early success. Any new administration will ultimately have to travel the same path once it really takes on the messy business of governing. As Dan Tangherlini, the former GSA Administrator who championed and nurtured 18F, said: …our acquisition system does not suffer [only] with problems of policy or regs, but of systems and organization — the latter are entirely the realm of the executive. We’ve spent years wishing for a less risk-averse federal government. Perhaps now we will have one, courtesy of a man who shows little regard for protocol in the White House, backed by a Republican-controlled Congress. In my six years of running Code for America and playing a role in federal government, ideas like reform of the FAR were unthinkable. Now they are not. FAR reform could significantly accelerate the kind of progress we’ve been fighting for. Sure, there is reason for caution. If done badly, it could saddle us with an entirely different set of problems instead, and if not done iteratively over time, it’s likely to have unintended consequences. It must work in concert with changes in systems and organizations, not just rules. And it must be done while keeping faith with the ideals of our nation, to serve all the people. But if done right, it’s worth doing, and the good news is there are hundreds of USDSers and 18Fers who’ve been showing what an agile, risk-tolerant government looks like. There’s no substitute for the scars they’ve earned fighting this fight, and no question that they’re here to get better results for the American people. If they share that goal, I urge the Trump team to learn from them.

https://medium.com/code-for-america/procurement-under-trump-d7c924342d21

['Jennifer Pahlka']

2016-12-12 05:53:06.719000+00:00

['Tech', 'Donald Trump', 'Government', 'Digital Service', 'Peter Thiel']

Piet Mondrian’s Tree Paintings

Piet Mondrian’s Tree Paintings Exploring the essential balance and beauty of nature in search of a simple truth in the human experience… With his many studies of trees, Piet Mondrian demonstrated his process of distilling the essence of beauty from naturally harmonious forms. He was attracted to trees because of their complex and often chaotic structure. Yet, at the same time they are balanced compositions that also respond to, and reflect, their environment along with the action of time. In order to better understand the underlying forms, Mondrian, repeatedly painted the same tree reducing the visual language he used with each treatment… ‘Evening, Red Tree’ (circa 1909) by Piet Mondrian [view license] The Dutch painter produced an extensive series of tree paintings over a period of five years between 1908 and 1913. To begin with, he simply reduced the information he chose to represent. In much the same way as the Impressionists selected details to better reflect the experience of perceiving rather than evenly capturing the details across a canvas without any ‘editing’, Mondrian selected only the major boughs and left out the thinner branches and twigs. He still managed to paint a tree, with a clear tree shape, yet he was now closer to ‘essence of tree’ than ‘diagram of tree’. He continued to paint variations on this theme, limiting the colours he used, eventually to grey monochrome, and then limiting the painted angles either to a vertical or horizontal. So, a branch angled at less than 45 degrees would become horizontal, a branch angled greater than 45 degrees would become vertical. He also went through a similar reductionist approach to that of Malevich, first working in greyscales, then re-introducing a limited colour palette. Later, he concentrated on using black, white and primary colours only. This also echoes the development of early Cubism. ‘Grey Tree’ (1911) by Piet Mondrian [view license] These early studies of trees are lovely renderings of their natural form, the later ones are grid patterns that are weighted in a similar way, the density of squares and number of lines transmuted from the distribution and visual density of branches, but are only clearly recognisable as trees when seen in their developmental sequence. In this process Mondrian deconstructs natural form in an attempt to understand the underlying rules of harmony that cause the satisfying emotion we feel when appreciating natural scenes. He believed that this is the same emotion we recognise as ‘beauty’ and devoted most of his career to exploring the cause and effects of it. ‘Apple Tree, Blossoming’ (1912) by Piet Mondrian [view license] Soon after painting the trees series, and other features of landscape, he turned away from representational pictures and worked directly with the elements of his reduced language: the horizontal and vertical, with the limited palette, and their relationships on the canvas. He realised that the emotion of beauty is caused by interactions of more than one factor and was therefore the result of relationships. He also observed that the beauty of nature relies on balance and harmony, though not necessarily symmetry. This exploration eventually resulted in his famous ‘Squares and Lozenges’ paintings of the 1930s and 1940s — the culmination of decades of visual research and development. Mondrian began by producing simplified representations of natural environments and then took what he learned about balance and relationship into total abstraction. He systematically reduced and simplified in search of an essential truth that underlies beauty. Or, perhaps, a simple beauty that underlies truth...

https://medium.com/signifier/piet-mondrians-tree-paintings-cef4ccac881

['Remy Dean']

2019-11-24 11:11:01.338000+00:00

['Modern Art', 'Painting', 'Abstract', 'Art History', 'Art']

Commitment to People

At Kindred, our first core value is Commitment to People. We respect and honor the whole person and value them as individuals. We go the extra mile to help people succeed and invest in their continued growth, and we seek to work with companies and partners who share this commitment. Over the 20+ year history of Kindred, we have always prioritized developing talent from within. We strongly believe that our culture, work process, team structure and focus on shared success yield better results. Ultimately, the most important members of our team are those who continue to drive this culture of excellence forward. With that premise in mind, we are thrilled to announce the appointment of McKenzie Furber, Julia French and Daniel Scanlan to Managing Directors of Kindred. McKenzie leads searches across our Consumer, Marketplace and Fin-tech portfolio with an emphasis on Marketing and Product roles. Internally and across the industry, McKenzie is recognized for her intellect, her commitment to people and her dedication and relentless focus on achieving the right outcomes. Before joining Kindred, McKenzie helped Coatue Management build their first internal talent practice, and before that established the West Coast operations for Dynamic Search Partners. Kindred is committed to supporting our clients for the long term, well beyond a successful executive search. Julia French has been a key driver of Kindred’s focus on long-term partnerships by founding and leading Kindred Scale. Functionally, Scale specializes in customer success, operations, sales and marketing hiring at the director, manager and senior individual contributor level. Julia has a deep background in helping hyper-growth companies solve their most daunting challenge — finding, attracting and closing top talent below the C-suite. She has built a great reputation as someone who consistently over-delivers, executes with speed and care, and has high EQ and IQ. We have and continue to partner with some of the most important emerging companies in Healthcare. Daniel Scanlan has played a key role in growing Kindred’s presence within this highly important, massive vertical. His energy, passion, and dedication to his craft is evident to anyone who is fortunate enough to meet him. Daniel represents the epitome of developing from within, and is — deservedly — the youngest partner in our firm’s history. Daniel will continue to drive all functional searches with our healthcare industry partners. Onward!

https://medium.com/kindred-partners/commitment-to-people-34ef36d5415

['Matt Ocken']

2020-12-22 17:27:21.859000+00:00

['Partnerships', 'Executive Search', 'Recruiting', 'Technology', 'Promotion']

Why Do Married Men Watch Porn?

People view porn for a complex number of reasons. · Loneliness — Some unattached men — temporarily or permanently — seek a temporary fantasied partner. Sexual desires fluctuate, and in married couples, those fluctuations aren’t synchronous. Spouses may experience physical or mental problems. If a man travels for work, he will often pull out a webcam to shorten those lonely, long evenings in their hotel rooms. · Relationships — The passionate sex of a new relationship has a shelf life of about one year. Yet, we expect it to endure forever. As it diminishes, we question our sexual competence and find fault with our partners. Relationships are complicated. Sometimes sex is not the primary problem. It may be a symptom of more significant relationship problems. A conflict that has not been addressed may cause withdrawal from sex. That is more common than all the other explanations. Men most typically describe this pattern: Their spouse wishes to go to bed. The male partner says I’ll be up in a bit. I must finish this on my computer. · Self-confidence — Men also sometimes feel they’re not enough. Men avoid sex because of enormous anxiety about it. Men worry about the size of their penises, the firmness of erections, and staying hard. Will I cum too quickly or not be able to cum at all? Am I a lousy lover if my partner doesn’t have an orgasm. Porn can restore some self-confidence, even if it’s all fantasy. Porn is a natural antidote because it is conflict-free. There is no negotiation, no partner’s feelings to consider. You are in control of all the variables. That ideal sexual partner who wants you is one click away. And if tomorrow that ideal completely changes, it’s just another tick. · Anxiety and Boredom — Our minds can’t think of two things at the same time. Sexual fantasies push worries about mortgage payments and job dissatisfaction out of our heads. Masturbation is an excellent way to relieve stress. Sexual fantasies creep into our thinking when the mind is bored or idle. Porn seduces us away from the boredom of ordinary life by its novelty. Porn is a way to escape the discomfort of being where you are. · Fetishes and Kink — Searching a porn site is like walking into a candy store with endless choices. It can create a paralysis of choices. It’s a truism that if something exists, there is porn for it. In the privacy behind their keyboards, people can explore their sexual secrets. They have little fear of real-life consequences. Fetishes are alternative sexual practices that enhance the sexual experience. They are a preference, not a necessity. In a moralistic society, fetishists expect prejudice. They experience it from most of the community, including their spouses. They may be afraid to discuss it for fear their spouse will see their fantasy as sick, deviant, and perverted. The kink that is lacking in long-term relationships is one click away. · Conflicts about sexual orientation — Men in heterosexual relationships with recurring same-sex desires may use porn to act out those fantasies. Men search for gay-male porn in about 5% of their searches. The percentage is even higher in states with a low acceptance of same-sex activity. More men in those states live closeted lives, often married to women. For some, it is a compromise to remain in a mixed-orientation relationship. · Aging — An aging population has high numbers of unattached people. Some turn to porn. As men age, their sexual desire diminishes, and erections become more unpredictable. Porn can help restore sexual vigor and combat anxieties about sexual performance. · Technology — People are spending time on social media and playing video games. But they are also watching porn instead of interacting with each other in the real world. A correlation exists between people having less sex and watching more porn. Correlations do not prove causality. Is technology a cause or an effect of social isolation from cell phones and the internet?

https://medium.com/hello-love/why-do-married-men-watch-porn-2693b1ffeeed

['Loren A Olson Md']

2020-10-26 08:24:32.419000+00:00

['Relationships', 'Self', 'Mental Health', 'Psychology', 'Sexuality']

Haddonfield First Night is Dec. 31

Haddonfield First Night is Dec. 31 Music, magic, comedy, and fireworks in Haddonfield on New Year’s Eve Organizers of this year’s First Night celebration of the arts in Haddonfield promise a fun-filled evening of world-class entertainment for adults, families and children alike. More than 30 performances have been scheduled from 6 p.m. to midnight on Dec. 31 at 15 indoor venues along the Kings Highway “spine” from Haddonfield Memorial High School to beyond the PATCO Hi-Speedline. Headliners include: Tommy Cash, with a musical tribute to his brother, Johnny; the Grammy Award-winning Trammps of “Disco Inferno” fame; the Tartan Terrors with Celtic musical mayhem; the Incredible Boris, an international hypnotist/comedian; and the Spencers, winner of the prestigious International Magician of the Year award. A spectacular 15-minute fireworks display will follow the countdown to 9 p.m., “mini-midnight,” at the Town Clock. Admission buttons for the event are just $15 and are available now. Buttons may be purchased at a dozen outlets throughout Haddonfield, including the Information Center in Kings Court. The Sunoco station on Haddon Avenue does a brisk business selling buttons to drivers while they fill up. Admission buttons purchased online will be mailed through Dec. 11 or held after that date at the Information Center. The evening will get started, appropriately, with music and magic for the youngest revelers. KidZone, at the Middle School, will feature the Paisley Pickles, a popular local group, supported by magician Brian Richards, a perennial kid favorite. Designed to appeal to children to age 9, KidZone will swing into action at 6 p.m. and end at 8:30 p.m., giving families ample time to make their way to Kings Highway for the countdown and fireworks. The variety of entertainment at First Night is quite extraordinary. In addition to the headliners and the KidZone entertainers, featured performers include: a classical opera singer, Cody Austin; a Sinatra tribute singer, Marty Babitz; a cello quartet; a close-harmony, Andrews Sisters-style trio, Hotsy Totsy; a female barbershop choir Jersey Sound Chorus; a John Denver-style singer-songwriter, Christopher Westfall; a popular late-night-TV comedian, Andy Pitz; Haddonfield Plays & Players with a tribute to Broadway; Haddonfield School of Music, featuring teachers and students in its studios near the speedline; and the Philadelphia Ukulele Orchestra, which is worth the price of admission all by itself. Off the highway, the Markeim Arts Center will offer an art activity for children from 5 p.m. From 7 p.m., a musical duo will entertain visitors to “Diamonds are Forever,” an art exhibit celebrating the art center’s 60th anniversary in 2016. Detailed information about all aspects of the event is available online at www.FirstNightHaddonfield.org. To keep current with developing First Night Haddonfield news, check Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

https://medium.com/the-haddonfield-sun/haddonfield-first-night-is-dec-31-ebfa9f3bf54a

[]

2017-01-10 15:44:27.862000+00:00

['Families', 'Entertainment', 'Headlines']

Addressing Increases in GBV During the Pandemic

Youth Action: Addressing Increases in Gender-Based Violence During the Pandemic An Overview: Impacts of COVID-19 on Increasing Gender-Based Violence Gender-based violence occurs in all countries in economic and social groups. It undermines the health, dignity, security and autonomy of its victims. We must agree that the level of violence especially domestic violence has increased during the time of the pandemic. We have seen it reduced prevention and protection efforts on social services and care particularly health care and accelerated the increase of violence among young people particularly to adolescent girls and young women. The pandemic has diverse impacts to young people in relation to increase of gender based violence. The measures to respond to COVID-19 have further exacerbated risk factors for vulnerable populations such as women, young people, and persons living with disabilities (PWDs) as they could be locked in homes with their abusers. Therefore, GBV cases, including physical and emotional abuse, rape, sexual exploitation, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and early marriages, are on the rise. Yet the impact of COVID19 on socio-economic activities perpetrated the vulnerability of the young people towards GBV, the access to socio-economic opportunities decreased which then made young people especially young women more vulnerable and dependent, this threatened their safety. Moreover the tension of the pandemic was largely emphasized on public health and focusing on how people can protect themselves from the infection rather than focusing beyond the infection itself and considering socio-economic effects it brought to the community including Gender Based Violence. The Future We Want: Possible Solutions The ascending of COVID 19 has mounted young people especially young women into a threatening situation about their sexuality, reproductive rights, health, and beyond. It is undeniable fact that COVID 19 has brought more miseries to Adolescent Girls and Young Women (AGYW) in different ways and it is about time to re-think and re-strategize how best we can maximize the protection to this group so as they reach their potential. The protection, prevention, and care of services to Young Women should be prioritized to the max level where everyone can be safe to exercise and make choices of their own. The protection starts with them by knowing their rights. It is more important to engage boys and young men in this fight to make it easy for them to stand for the rights of adolescent girls and young women when necessary. It’s a call to all my fellow advocates to highly invest in the knowledge and skills that young girls and women, as well as boys and young men, need to necessary position them to be the foundation of their own decision and choices and NOT taken CHANCES that can hinder them not to reach to their full potentials. Moreover the need to collaboratively support youth innovative initiatives towards working on issues of GBV and SRHR in general. It is time that young people need to be considered as key stakeholders and partners when formulating, planning and implementation of any intervention that are of their concern. In courtesy of Let’s Talk Campaign and Young People Today Efforts of ending marriages and unintended pregnancy

https://medium.com/@cmadebe/addressing-increases-in-gbv-during-the-pandemic-ed5eac1d6a01

['Catherine Joseph Madebe']

2020-12-11 19:51:43.079000+00:00

['Young People', 'Gbv', 'Equity', 'Gender Equality']

*Videa*]] Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini Film complet (Indavideo) 2020 [1080p]

Regarder Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini (2020) Film Complet en Français | Pixar Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini → Film streaming en [HD | DVD-Rip | HD-Rip | Bluray | HD-TV | HD-TV-Rip] Regarder de films Gratuit → WorldCinema.xyz ~LINK : _____⬇⬇⬇⬇⬇⬇⬇⬇⬇⬇⬇______ Télécharger |>>>http://play.123moviesfox.xyz/fr/movie/635302 Diffusion |>>>http://play.123moviesfox.xyz/fr/movie/635302 Regarder |>>>https://tinyurl.com/y9679b2c 9 novembre 2011 / 1h 46min / Drame, Science fiction, Thriller De Steven Soderbergh Avec Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne Nationalités Américain, Émirati SYNOPSIS ET DÉTAILS Enmu, la première Lune Inférieure, a été chargé de tuer Kamado Tanjirô pour devenir une Lune Supérieure et avoir plus sang de Muzan. Pendant ce temps, Tanjirô, Zen’itsu et Inosuke décident d’acheter des billets pour monter à bord du train de l’infini et ainsi rejoindre Rengoku Kyôjurô, le Pilier de la flamme, dans l’espoir d’en apprendre davantage sur la danse du dieu du feu. Sortie: 2020–10–16 Durée: 117 minutes Genre: Animation, Action, Aventure, Fantastique, Drame Etoiles: Natsuki Hanae, Akari Kitō, Hiro Shimono, Yoshitsugu Matsuoka, Satoshi Hino Directeur: Yuki Kajiura, Makoto Nakamura, Masahiro Kimura, Mitsuru Obunai, Tomonori Sudō Une pandémie dévastatrice explose à l’échelle du globe… Au Centre de Prévention et de Contrôle des Maladies, des équipes se mobilisent pour tenter de décrypter le génome du mystérieux virus, qui ne cesse de muter. Le Sous-Directeur Cheever, confronté à un vent de panique collective, est obligé d’exposer la vie d’une jeune et courageuse doctoresse. Tandis que les grands groupes pharmaceutiques se livrent une bataille acharnée pour la mise au point d’un vaccin, le Dr. Leonora Orantes, de l’OMS, s’efforce de remonter aux sources du fléau. Les cas mortels se multiplient, jusqu’à mettre en péril les fondements de la société, et un blogueur militant suscite une panique aussi dangereuse que le virus en déclarant qu’on “cache la vérité” à la population… Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini_Full_Movie Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini_Pelicula_Completa Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini_bộ phim_đầy_đủ Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini หนัง เต็ม Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini_Koko_elokuva Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini_volledige_film Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini_film_complet Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini_hel_film Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini_cały_film Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini_ فيلم_كامل Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini_plena_filmo Voir Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini film complet en ligne Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini Full Movie en streaming en ligne dans la qualité vidéo HD 720p Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini Full Movie Où télécharger Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini Full Movie? Regarder le film complet Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini Regarder le film complet Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini en ligne Regarder le film complet Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini HD 1080p Film complet Demon Slayer: Le train de l’infini THE STORY After graduating from Harvard, Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan) forgoes the standard opportunities of seeking employment from big and lucrative law firms; deciding to head to Alabama to defend those wrongfully commended, with the support of local advocate, Eva Ansley (Brie Larson). One of his first, and most poignant, case is that of Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx, who, in 62, was sentenced to die for the notorious murder of an 2-year-old girl in the community, despite a preponderance of evidence proving his innocence and one singular testimony against him by an individual that doesn’t quite seem to add up. Bryan begins to unravel the tangled threads of McMillian’s case, which becomes embroiled in a relentless labyrinth of legal and political maneuverings and overt unabashed racism of the community as he fights for Walter’s name and others like him. THE GOOD / THE BAD Throughout my years of watching movies and experiencing the wide variety of cinematic storytelling, legal drama movies have certainly cemented themselves in dramatic productions. As I stated above, some have better longevity of being remembered, but most showcase plenty of heated courtroom battles of lawyers defending their clients and unmasking the truth behind the claims (be it wrongfully incarcerated, discovering who did it, or uncovering the shady dealings behind large corporations. Perhaps my first one legal drama was 624’s The Client (I was little young to get all the legality in the movie, but was still managed to get the gist of it all). My second one, which I loved, was probably Primal Fear, with Norton delivering my favorite character role. Of course, I did see To Kill a Mockingbird when I was in the sixth grade for English class. Definitely quite a powerful film. And, of course, let’s not forget Philadelphia and want it meant / stand for. Plus, Hanks and Washington were great in the film. All in all, while not the most popular genre out there, legal drama films still provide a plethora of dramatic storytelling to capture the attention of moviegoers of truth and lies within a dubious justice. Just Mercy is the latest legal crime drama feature and the whole purpose of this movie review. To be honest, I really didn’t much “buzz” about this movie when it was first announced (circa 206) when Broad Green Productions hired the film’s director (Cretton) and actor Michael B. Jordan in the lead role. It was then eventually bought by Warner Bros (the films rights) when Broad Green Productions went Bankrupt. So, I really didn’t hear much about the film until I saw the movie trailer for Just Mercy, which did prove to be quite an interesting tale. Sure, it sort of looked like the generic “legal drama” yarn (judging from the trailer alone), but I was intrigued by it, especially with the film starring Jordan as well as actor Jamie Foxx. I did repeatedly keep on seeing the trailer for the film every time I went to my local movie theater (usually attached to any movie I was seeing with a PG rating and above). So, suffice to say, that Just Mercy’s trailer preview sort of kept me invested and waiting me to see it. Thus, I finally got the chance to see the feature a couple of days ago and I’m ready to share my thoughts on the film. And what are they? Well, good ones….to say the least. While the movie does struggle within the standard framework of similar projects, Just Mercy is a solid legal drama that has plenty of fine cinematic nuances and great performances from its leads. It’s not the “be all to end all” of legal drama endeavors, but its still manages to be more of the favorable motion pictures of these projects. Just Mercy is directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, whose previous directorial works includes such movies like Short Term 6, I Am Not a Hipster, and Glass Castle. Given his past projects (consisting of shorts, documentaries, and a few theatrical motion pictures), Cretton makes Just Mercy is most ambitious endeavor, with the director getting the chance to flex his directorial muscles on a legal drama film, which (like I said above) can manage to evoke plenty of human emotions within its undertaking. Thankfully, Cretton is up to the task and never feels overwhelmed with the movie; approaching (and shaping) the film with respect and a touch of sincerity by speaking to the humanity within its characters, especially within lead characters of Stevenson and McMillian. Of course, legal dramas usually do (be the accused / defendant and his attorney) shine their cinematic lens on these respective characters, so it’s nothing original. However, Cretton does make for a compelling drama within the feature; speaking to some great character drama within its two main lead characters; staging plenty of moments of these twos individuals that ultimately work, including some of the heated courtroom sequences. Like other recent movies (i.e. Brian Banks and The Hate U Give), Cretton makes Just Mercy have an underlining thematical message of racism and corruption that continues to play a part in the US….to this day (incredibly sad, but true). So, of course, the correlation and overall relatively between the movie’s narrative and today’s world is quite crystal-clear right from the get-go, but Cretton never gets overzealous / preachy within its context; allowing the feature to present the subject matter in a timely manner and doesn’t feel like unnecessary or intentionally a “sign of the times” motif. Additionally, the movie also highlights the frustration (almost harsh) injustice of the underprivileged face on a regular basis (most notable those looking to overturn their cases on death row due to negligence and wrongfully accused). Naturally, as somewhat expected (yet still palpable), Just Mercy is a movie about seeking the truth and uncovering corruption in the face of a broken system and ignorant prejudice, with Cretton never shying away from some of the ugly truths that Stevenson faced during the film’s story. Plus, as a side-note, it’s quite admirable for what Bryan Stevenson (the real-life individual) did for his career, with him as well as others that have supported him (and the Equal Justice Initiative) over the years and how he fought for and freed many wrongfully incarcerated individuals that our justice system has failed (again, the poignancy behind the film’s themes / message). It’s great to see humanity being shined and showcased to seek the rights of the wronged and to dispel a flawed system. Thus, whether you like the movie or not, you simply can not deny that truly meaningful job that Bryan Stevenson is doing, which Cretton helps demonstrate in Just Mercy. From the bottom of my heart…. thank you, Mr. Stevenson. In terms of presentation, Just Mercy is a solidly made feature film. Granted, the film probably won’t be remembered for its visual background and theatrical setting nuances or even nominated in various award categories (for presentation / visual appearance), but the film certainly looks pleasing to the eye, with the attention of background aspects appropriate to the movie’s story. Thus, all the usual areas that I mention in this section (i.e. production design, set decorations, costumes, and cinematography) are all good and meet the industry standard for legal drama motion pictures. That being said, the film’s score, which was done by Joel P. West, is quite good and deliver some emotionally drama pieces in a subtle way that harmonizes with many of the feature’s scenes. There are a few problems that I noticed with Just Mercy that, while not completely derailing, just seem to hold the feature back from reaching its full creative cinematic potential. Let’s start with the most prevalent point of criticism (the one that many will criticize about), which is the overall conventional storytelling of the movie. What do I mean? Well, despite the strong case that the film delves into a “based on a true story” aspect and into some pretty wholesome emotional drama, the movie is still structed into a way that it makes it feel vaguely formulaic to the touch. That’s not to say that Just Mercy is a generic tale to be told as the film’s narrative is still quite engaging (with some great acting), but the story being told follows quite a predictable path from start to finish. Granted, I never really read Stevenson’s memoir nor read anything about McMillian’s case, but then I still could easily figure out how the movie was presumably gonna end…. even if the there were narrative problems / setbacks along the way. Basically, if you’ve seeing any legal drama endeavor out there, you’ll get that same formulaic touch with this movie. I kind of wanted see something a little bit different from the film’s structure, but the movie just ends up following the standard narrative beats (and progressions) of the genre. That being said, I still think that this movie is definitely probably one of the better legal dramas out there. This also applies to the film’s script, which was penned by Cretton and Andrew Lanham, which does give plenty of solid entertainment narrative pieces throughout, but lacks the finesse of breaking the mold of the standard legal drama. There are also a couple parts of the movie’s script handling where you can tell that what was true and what fictional. Of course, this is somewhat a customary point of criticism with cinematic tales taking a certain “poetic license” when adapting a “based on a true story” narrative, so it’s not super heavily critical point with me as I expect this to happen. However, there were a few times I could certainly tell what actually happen and what was a tad bit fabricated for the movie. Plus, they were certain parts of the narrative that could’ve easily fleshed out, including what Morrison’s parents felt (and actually show them) during this whole process. Again, not a big deal-breaker, but it did take me out of the movie a few times. Lastly, the film’s script also focuses its light on a supporting character in the movie and, while this made with well-intention to flesh out the character, the camera spotlight on this character sort of goes off on a slight tangent during the feature’s second act. Basically, this storyline could’ve been removed from Just Mercy and still achieve the same palpability in the emotional department. It’s almost like the movie needed to chew up some runtime and the writers to decided to fill up the time with this side-story. Again, it’s good, but a bit slightly unnecessary. What does help overlook (and elevate) some of these criticisms is the film’s cast, which are really good and definitely helps bring these various characters to life in a theatrical /dramatic way. Leading the charge in Just Mercy is actor Michael B. Jordan, who plays the film’s central protagonist role of Bryan Stevenson. Known for his roles in Creed, Fruitvale Station, and Black Panther, Jordan has certain prove himself to be quite a capable actor, with the actor rising to stardom over the past few years. This is most apparent in this movie, with Jordan making a strong characteristically portrayal as Bryan; showcasing plenty of underlining determination and compelling humanity in his character as he (as Bryan Stevenson) fights for the injustice of those who’s voices have been silenced or dismissed because of the circumstances. It’s definitely a strong character built and Jordan seems quite capable to task in creating a well-acted on-screen performance of Bryan. Behind Jordan is actor Jamie Foxx, who plays the other main lead in the role, Walter McMillian. Foxx, known for his roles in Baby Driver, Django Unchained, and Ray, has certainly been recognized as a talented actor, with plenty of credible roles under his belt. His participation in Just Mercy is another well-acted performance that deserve much praise as its getting (even receiving an Oscar nod for it), with Foxx portraying Walter with enough remorseful grit and humility that makes the character quite compelling to watch. Plus, seeing him and Jordan together in a scene is quite palpable and a joy to watch. The last of the three marquee main leads of the movie is the character of Eva Ansley, the director of operations for EJI (i.e. Stevenson’s right-handed employee / business partner), who is played by actress Brie Larson. Up against the characters of Stevenson and McMillian, Ansley is the weaker of the three main lead; presented as supporting player in the movie, which is perfectly fine as the characters gets the job done (sort of speak) throughout the film’s narrative. However, Larson, known for her roles in Room, 6 Jump Street, and Captain Marvel, makes less of an impact in the role. Her acting is fine and everything works in her portrayal of Eva, but nothing really stands in her performance (again, considering Jordan and Foxx’s performances) and really could’ve been played by another actress and achieved the same goal. The rest of the cast, including actor Tim Blake Nelson (The Incredible Hulk and O Brother, Where Art Thou) as incarcerated inmate Ralph Meyers, actor Rafe Spall (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and The Big Short) as legal attorney Tommy Champan, actress Karan Kendrick (The Hate U Give and Family) as Minnie McMillan, Walter’s wife, actor C.J. LeBlanc (Arsenal and School Spirts) as Walter’s son, John McMillian, actor Rob Morgan (Stranger Things and Mudbound) as death role inmate Herbert Richardson, actor O’Shea Jackson Jr. (Long Shot and Straight Outta Compton) as death role inmate Anthony “Ray” Hinton, actor Michael Harding (Triple 2 and The Young and the Restless) as Sheriff Tate, and actor Hayes Mercure (The Red Road and Mercy Street) as a prison guard named Jeremy, are in the small supporting cast variety. Of course, some have bigger roles than others, but all of these players, which are all acted well, bolster the film’s story within the performances and involvement in Just Mercy’s narrative. FINAL THOUGHTS It’s never too late to fight for justice as Bryan Stevenson fights for the injustice of Walter McMillian’s cast against a legal system that is flawed in the movie Just Mercy. Director Destin Daniel Cretton’s latest film takes a stance on a poignant case; demonstrating the injustice of one (and by extension those wrongfully incarcerated) and wrapping it up in a compelling cinematic story. While the movie does struggle within its standard structure framework (a sort of usual problem with “based on a true story” narrations) as well as some formulaic beats, the movie still manages to rise above those challenges (for the most part), especially thanks to Cretton’s direction (shaping and storytelling) and some great performances all around (most notable in Jordan and Foxx). Personally, I liked this movie. Sure, it definitely had its problem, but those didn’t distract me much from thoroughly enjoying this legal drama feature. Thus, my recommendation for the film is a solid “recommended”, especially those who liked the cast and poignant narratives of legality struggles and the injustice of a failed system / racism. In the end, while the movie isn’t the quintessential legal drama motion picture and doesn’t push the envelope in cinematic innovation, Just Mercy still is able to manage to be a compelling drama that’s powerful in its story, meaningful in its journey, and strong within its statement. Just like Bryan Stevenson says in the movie….” If we could look at ourselves closely…. we can change this world for the better”. Amen to that!

https://medium.com/@ghgu35/videa-demon-slayer-le-train-de-linfini-film-complet-indavideo-2020-1080p-d287578afc27

[]

2020-12-22 05:30:01.248000+00:00

['France', 'Online', 'Demon Slayer The Movie', 'Donwload', '2020']

Is Your Company Culture Affecting Your Employee’s Productivity?

Company culture isn’t just linked to employees’ well-being; it also impacts their productivity. By improving your company culture, you can improve employee efficiency, therefore, improving business outcomes and overall growth. It is common for companies to have a cut-throat and high-pressured culture, as some believe this drives financial success. However, research shows that not only is a high-pressure environment harmful to productivity over time, but a positive environment actually makes employees more engaged and invested. Before we look at how we can improve workplace culture, it is important to identify if there are issues with your current workplace culture. Indicators of toxic workplace culture: ● Low morale. ● Employee absenteeism and tardiness. ● Lack of communication. ● Fear of failure amongst the team. ● Unfriendly competition amongst teams. ● High turnover. ● Cliques and gossip in the office. ● Employees don’t take lunches and work too late. ● No clear core values. ● Employees are disengaged and don’t participate in company events. Often management will overlook workplace culture and choose to focus on business metrics that evaluate the financial health of your business. However, workplace culture is vital to the success of any organization as it affects how your team operates. It will impact how they interact, how they behave, and how decisions are made. The assumption that stress and pressure push employees to perform better is false. What organizations that create a culture based around this fail to recognize is the hidden costs incurred with poor company culture. It leads to stress, causing employees to have sick days, dissatisfaction leading to disengagement. This causes more errors and lack of trying amongst employees, and finally high turnover, resulting in more significant outgoings on hiring and training more staff. As a leader, you need to build a culture where your employees feel heard and valued, where they enjoy their day-to-day and feel like they are heading somewhere in their career. Poor company culture can be a company’s biggest weakness; however, fortunately, there are ways that it can easily be improved. In order to create an effective company culture strategy, you need first to identify and understand the root of the problem. By conducting surveys, exit interviews, and speaking with team leaders, you can understand where there may be weaknesses in your company culture and also identify the areas in which you are excelling. Once you have identified what can be improved and what aspects your employees enjoy, you can act on it and create a strategy that motivates your employees. Here are some great ways to improve company culture: ● Offer incentives such as gift cards, awards, or bonuses. ● Create a benefits package that could include gym membership, discounts on childcare, or a bike-to-work program. ● Team building exercises. ● Create a list of company values. ● Create an inclusive environment. ● Hire people who will positively influence your company culture. ● Offer membership to an educational platform that lets your employees learn so they can progress in their careers. ● Don’t overwork your employees and if they do stay back late, make sure they are compensated or at least appreciated. ● Open communication, keep your employees up to date with important information and make them feel like a valued members of the team. Every company is different, and there isn’t a one size fits all template for how company culture should be created and maintained; your workplace culture needs to be built around your values and the needs of your employees. People excel when they are engaged and enjoy what they are doing; therefore, the greater the company culture, the more productive the team.

https://medium.com/@nbrennan-61814/is-your-company-culture-affecting-your-employees-productivity-85e973c0dafd

['Affinity Access']

2021-07-06 20:38:12.886000+00:00

['Productivity', 'Work Culture', 'Remote Work', 'Management', 'Startup']

Exploring the World from my Room: Working at the World Justice Project

About the author: Sean Gallagher ’21 is an FSI Global Policy Intern with the World Justice Project. He is currently an International Relations major at Stanford University. As much as I was looking forward to spending the summer working at the World Justice Project in Washington DC, I have to say that there are definite advantages to being at home in the Pacific Northwest. For one, the weather here is far better — working in DC might be the dream, but the heat and humidity is… decidedly less so. The way I look at it, I was lucky to have the chance to travel earlier this year (I spent my fall and winter quarters studying abroad with Stanford’s BOSP program), and this summer I still get the opportunity to experience something new from the comfort of my hometown: working with the World Justice Project. The World Justice Project works to increase understanding of and adherence to the rule of law. I work on the team that creates their flagship publication, the Rule of Law Index. The Rule of Law Index combines polling data from 128 countries (and counting) with expert input to analyze the state of the Rule of Law around the world by measuring responses across eight factors, including the absence of corruption, fundamental rights, and constraints on government powers. So far, my work has focused on the expert side: searching for qualified respondents in countries that the WJP is targeting and analyzing expert input from past surveys. The team that I’m working with is incredible, and I’ve really appreciated the work that both the WJP and FSI have done to make this internship possible. Even though I am across the country and several time zones away, the WJP has managed to put (non-work focused) videochat groups together to help build community. I’ve joined groups that practice Spanish and French (which have been particularly helpful, given the physical distancing of it all). Normally, the WJP encourages interns to attend events put on by organizations in the DC area, so I’ve been enjoying attending different online events hosted by think tanks. When not working, I’ve loved running in some of my favorite trails, and I’ve been slowly learning how to cook more than mac and cheese (I’ve been reading Samin Nosrat’s Salt Fat Acid Heat, though the food I make looks like the designs from the book were somehow both over and undercooked at the same time). Hopefully by the time I write my next blog post, I’ll have figured out how to make something tolerable!

https://medium.com/freeman-spogli-institute-for-international-studies/exploring-the-world-from-my-room-working-at-the-world-justice-project-3e2e48158731

['Fsi Student Programs']

2020-07-20 17:55:08.099000+00:00

['Internships', 'Fsi Students', 'Stanford']

Map Tasks in Flyte

MapReduce is a prominent terminology in the Big Data vocabulary owing to the ease of handling large datasets with the “map” and “reduce” operations. A conventional map-reduce job consists of two phases: one, it performs filtering and sorting of the data chunks, and the other, it collects and processes the outputs generated. Consider a scenario wherein you want to perform hyperparameter optimization. In such a case, you want to train your model on multiple combinations of hyperparameters to finalize the combination that outperforms the others. Put simply, this job has to parallelize the executions of the hyperparameter combinations (map) and later filter the best accuracy that could be generated (reduce). A map task in Flyte intends to implement the task mentioned above. It is primarily more inclined towards the “map” operation. Referring to Dynamic Workflows in Flyte blog before proceeding with this piece can help deepen your understanding of the differences between a dynamic workflow and map task; however, it isn’t mandatory. Introduction A map task handles multiple inputs at runtime. It runs through a single collection of inputs and is useful when several inputs must run through the same code logic. Unlike a dynamic workflow, a map task runs a task over a list of inputs without creating additional nodes in the DAG, providing valuable performance gains, meaning a map task lets you run your tasks spanning multiple inputs within a single node. When to Use Map Tasks? When there’s hyperparameter optimization in place (multiple sets of hyperparameters to a single task) When multiple batches of data need to be processed at a time When a simple map-reduce pipeline needs to be built When there is a large number of runs that use identical code logic, but different data Map Task vs. Dynamic Workflow Map Task vs. Dynamic Workflow (Image by Author) A map task’s logic can be achieved using a for loop in a dynamic workflow, however, that would be inefficient if there are lots of mapped jobs involved. A map task internally uses a compression algorithm (bitsets) to handle every Flyte workflow node’s metadata, which would have otherwise been in the order of 100s of bytes. We encourage you to use a map task when you want to handle large data parallel workloads! Usage Example A map task in Flyte runs across a list of inputs, which ought to be specified using the Python list class. The function you want to call your map task on has to be decorated with the @task decorator, and itself has to conform to a signature with one input and, at most, one output. At run time, the map task will run for every value. If TaskMetadata or Resources is specified in the map task using overrides, it is applied to every input instance or mapped job. Here’s an example that “spins up data augmentation of images in parallel using a map task”. Let’s first import the libraries.

https://towardsdatascience.com/map-tasks-in-flyte-47f198c1772e

['Samhita Alla']

2021-07-16 12:10:42.661000+00:00

['Data', 'Open Source', 'Startup', 'Machine Learning', 'Pipeline']

Apple Fitness+ Put Me in Touch With My Inner Fitness Buff

Apple Fitness+ Put Me in Touch With My Inner Fitness Buff Apple’s Fitness+ works best when you have an Apple Watch. Photo: Apple I’ve never had a fitness trainer and only set foot in a gym a few times in my early twenties and have not been back since. I don’t spin or sweat in hot yoga. My workouts are of my own design, heavily influenced by Jack LaLanne, and they’re roughly the same ones I’ve been doing for almost 25 years. So, you’ll forgive me if I have an aversion to Apple’s hyper-positive, intensely cheerful, clearly fit, and obviously talented Fitness+ instructors. Even though Apple gave me a Fitness+ subscription to try (it normally costs $9.99 a month or $79.99 a year for use by up to five family members), I wasn’t sure I wanted to try it. Plus, my workout is mostly focused on strength and weights, and Apple’s exercise routines on the Apple Watch — what it recognizes as a workout — didn’t include pushups, curls, or pullups, all my own go-to fitness routines (it’s got me covered on the occasional powerwalk and cycling). Before I could even give it a go, I had to update my iPhone to iOS 14.3 (a relatively significant update that seemed to reset more than a few connections and settings, including my AirPods Pro, which wouldn’t work until I rebooted the phone again) and make sure my Apple Watch was up to date with watchOS 7.2. It’s a beefy update that my wife’s Apple Watch 3 is struggling to ingest (there isn’t enough space). I’d like her to update, though, because she’s a perfect candidate for Apple Fitness+. For years, she’s been using YouTube video trainers to guide her through aerobic workouts. With the updates in place, I watched the system’s 90-second welcome video. I recommend you do the same since it gives you a good feel for what the workouts will be like. Most of them look, by the way, like they’re shot at studios in Apple Park. I recognize the woodwork, big windows, and very Apple-campus feel. Version iOS 14.3 renames “Apple Activity” (the tri-colored three-ring app icon) to “Fitness” and in the app adds, between “Activity” and “Sharing,” there’s a “Fitness+” tab. The Fitness+ app layout is intuitive and relatively straightforward, which means you can do as I did and dive right in to find the workout of your dreams. There’s also a seven-episode set of “absolute beginner” routines that can really help ease almost anyone into working out. One thing that appears to be missing from Fitness+ is a search capability. Yes, it’s well-organized, and I can sort lists by trainer, recent, time, or music, but finding all workouts with weights or back strength would be cool, too. The Apple Fitness+ main screen (left), beginner workouts (middle), and workout sorting options (right). Source: Apple At the top of the app is a shallow carousel of workout options that starts off with, at least for me, the inscrutable HIIT, which stands for high-intensity interval training and basically means short energetic intervals and recovery periods that are designed for cardio fitness and body strength. There’s yoga, core, dance, rowing, cycling, treadmill, and mindful cooldown. I don’t really work with much equipment besides a curling bar, pushup grips, a pullup bar, and some boxing equipment (heavy and timing bag). The one fitness option I gravitated toward was strength because I assumed it would focus a bit more on weight training. Most workouts in Fitness+ range from 10 to 30 minutes. Since I didn’t know what I was getting into, I looked for one in the 10-minute range. I chose the bald strength trainer Gregg because we seemed connected and found a new 10-minute routine of his called “Pure Dance.” No, I do not dance for fitness but assumed the name describes the tempo and attitude and not the routine, which, based on the thumbnail image, appeared to involve dumbbells, stretching, and some core strength training. The short description more or less confirmed this. It said it would “strengthen muscles in your entire body — one side at a time — with moves like squats, rows, and deadlifts.” Gregg told me upfront that the 10-minute routine encompassed four moves. That seemed just about my pace. I liked the look of this Gregg guy. The routine also recommended the use of both light and heavy dumbbells, but I wanted to ensure a good workout since I was not doing my normal curls and opted to use just my 20-pound dumbbells. I propped up the iPhone in landscape mode on a desk and stood far enough away so I could move my body without hitting the phone. The iPhone is the primary interface for Fitness+, though you can use the iPad or Apple TV. Even with the workout playing full-screen, I realized I’d prefer a much larger image. Next time, I’ll do this with Apple TV and my 65-inch display. Since I work out early in the morning while everyone else is still asleep, I kept the volume on Gregg’s guidance and the music (“Turn Me On” by David Guetta and “Run the Town” by Offaiah to name a few) down low. I now realize it makes more sense to conduct these workouts while wearing my AirPods Pro, which do have sweat protection. I hit “Let’s Go” on my screen and watched the countdown start on my iPhone and Apple Watch. The Fitness+ screen uses live data from your Apple Watch to help you keep track of your metrics. There’s also real-time info on what Apple Music is playing. It was an intense but not overly difficult 10 minutes. Gregg’s enthusiasm was almost infectious, and his guidance was clear, though I wished for a few more side-view video shots so I could see Gregg’s exact position and match it. Part of the issue was that, having never worked out with a trainer, I didn’t always understand his direction. I’ve also never combined strength training with movement. Still, it felt good to work my muscles, especially my aging core, in new ways. I felt guilty when I didn’t squat as low as Gregg or the other trainers in the video, but then I noticed how Amir, who has a prosthetic leg adjusted the workout routine to work for his body and how the young woman on the right, Sam, also made some small modifications. Soon I started focusing less on the perfect replication of Gregg’s moves and more on keeping pace and doing my best. I never looked at my watch during the workout but did keep a close eye on my heart rate, calories burned, and time left, which was on the iPhone screen in the upper left corner. I was pleased to see it hit a high of around 149 bpm. You can, by the way, pause your workout and the video, but you cannot scrub forward or back. The 10 minutes went fast, but I also realized I’d made the right choice, easing into this training thing. I also think Gregg and I sort of bonded. He seemed so pleased with my efforts. Dustin’s cooldown routine was pretty good. Apple appends mindful cooldowns to all the workouts, and even though I’m not a cooldown kind of guy (I usually finish working out and then huff and puff my way back upstairs and through making the morning coffee), I decided to give one a shot. I chose a five-minute routine with trainer Dustin. It was, as you might’ve guessed, stretching and breathing. I followed along, which did help return my breathing to normal. Did I feel more relaxed? I’m not sure, but I think I’ll follow my next workout with another cooldown to find out. I would not normally pay $9.99 for a monthly gym membership or even access to trainers. I’m too happy with my own routine and have a strong antipathy toward gym atmospheres. But that price for my whole family means that my wife, son, and I can work out in our own ways (my daughter doesn’t have an Apple Watch, though she could use the routines without one if she doesn’t mind the lack of real-time feedback). If we all do it with Apple TV, it will, using our individual watches as keys, automatically keep track of who is working out with Apple Fitness+. Also, if you already subscribe to Apple Music, Apple TV+, or iCloud family plans, you might save money by bundling them with Fitness+. Overall, Apple Fitness+ is a good and unintimidating fitness system. Even if, like me, you’ve never worked with a trainer, I think you’ll find someone and a routine to connect with on this broad and ever-expanding system (Apple is adding new routines every week). I still want to see more workout categories and for Apple to finally get on board with pure, weight-driven strength training, and, yes, I want some boxing routines thrown in. P.S. When I was done with the Apple Fitness+ workout out and cool down, I still did my 90 pushups because guilt is also part of my exercise routine.

https://debugger.medium.com/apple-fitness-put-me-in-touch-with-my-inner-fitness-buff-2f8a92c14d99

['Lance Ulanoff']

2020-12-18 15:06:11.931000+00:00

['Gadgets', 'Apple Watch', 'iPhone', 'Tech', 'Apple']

17 Quotes That (If Applied) Can Change Your Life Forever

“No good can ever come from deviating from the path that you were destined to follow. You will be assailed by varieties of hidden pain. Most often you deviate because of the lure of money, of more immediate prospects of prosperity. Because this does not comply with something deep within you, your interest will lag and eventually the money will not come so easily. You will search for other easy sources of money, moving further and further away from your path. Not seeing clearly ahead of you, you will end up in a dead-end career. Even if your material needs are met, you will feel an emptiness inside that you will need to fill with any kind of belief system, drugs, or diversions. There is no compromise here, no way of escaping the dynamic. You will recognize how far you have deviated by the depth of your pain and frustration. You must listen to the message of this frustration, this pain, and let it guide you…It is a matter of life and death.” — Robert Greene, Mastery

https://medium.com/sukhroop-the-storyteller/17-quotes-that-if-applied-can-change-your-life-forever-3866086657e

['Sukhroop Singh']

2019-09-01 21:32:06.150000+00:00

['Philosophy', 'Inspiration', 'Creativity', 'Motivation', 'Writing']

The Trial of the Chicago 7: why we need this film now more than anything

Niko Tavernise/NETFLIX (2020) Based on the Democratic National Convention protests in 1968, The Trial of the Chicago 7 covers the legal repercussions following a peaceful protest that turned into violent clashes against the then-president Lyndon B. Johnson’s policies on the Vietnam War. This historical courtroom drama examines the glaring faults in the legal system with a magnifying glass, and it is something you have to watch. Now, director and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin is no stranger to courtroom drama. One of his previous screenplays The Social Network centres around multiple lawsuits on Facebook’s legitimacy and ownership. Sorkin’s signature rapid-fire dialogues are present in The Trial of the Chicago 7 as well. They are in fact prominent that it is sometimes hard to follow. Sorkin needs someone who can neutralise his energy in their directing, but with Sorkin being the director, things get overwhelming with all the quick cuts. The style of this film makes it a painful film to watch. But it is a painful film I am recommending because of how close the story hits home. During the trial, Judge Julius Hoffman (played by the brilliant Frank Langella) shows bias towards the prosecution. He dismisses one of the defendants, Bobby Seale’s right to be represented by an attorney. He orders Seale to be beaten and gagged when Seale tries to stand up for his constitutional right. He charges the defendants and their attorneys with counts of contempt of court when they object to Judge Hoffman’s prejudicial decisions. Judge Hoffman is supposed to be the comic relief of the film, you want to laugh at how unreasonable he is, but you cannot, especially when you take into consideration how there are SO MANY people like him in power all around the world. “We’re not going to jail because of what we did. We’re going to jail because of who we are!” — Abbie Hoffman We are in an age of revolution. Hong Kong, Thailand, Belarus, Vietnam, and many more places have people protesting against injustice. When even a peaceful demonstration is faced with repression, an act that should have been protected by the right to freedom of expression, protestors feel like they have no choice but to make their voices heard via other means. As a result, similar to what the Chicago 7 faced, activists around the world are being trialed (and jailed) for speaking up and fighting for changes to be made. The glaring globality of systemic oppression is sadly why The Trial of the Chicago 7 succeeds in wrecking my heart. Judge Hoffman is not just a person — he is the manifestation of the unfair systems. Judge Hoffman is everywhere, and The Trial of the Chicago 7 serves as a reminder of that. Or rather, it empowers us to continue our fight. It took a long time for the real-life Chicago 7 to receive justice, so let us hope dawn will come after the dark times.

https://medium.com/@yasminechan/the-trial-of-the-chicago-7-why-we-need-this-film-now-more-than-anything-3be8e8913a1f

['Yasmine Chan']

2021-01-07 06:42:22.976000+00:00

['Film', 'Netflix', 'Democracy', 'Film Reviews', 'Systemic Oppression']

Start Transforming Your Organizational Culture

Organizational culture can be defined as the established and accepted system of behaviors, values, beliefs, and assumptions that are shared by an organization. That is, the line (often implicit or assumed) between what is okay and what is not in a company. The culture of an organization is not defined or created by someone; it is the product of the organization’s evolution over the years, molded by its achievements or failures. This is not to be confused with the innermost beliefs of an organization — those often come from the founders’ initial intent. To summarize, Brian Chesky (Airbnb) said that “ culture is just a shared way of doing something with passion.” Most organizations today are facing some kind of transformation. No matter if you call it a digital transformation or an agile transformation, one of most difficult aspects of reaching the finish line involves changing organizational culture. This is always a complex and lengthy task — we’re talking about years. The pivotal thing to make culture change happen is not the use of new technologies, techniques, or methods, but the internal change that each person, at all levels, goes through — the transformation in their collective way of thinking. Of course, frameworks, processes, tools, and techniques are very important, but a transformation that does not transform people is only a cosmetic change. A lasting change will shift the mental paradigms ( mindset) of every person in the organization. Reach All 3 Layers Just like an iceberg, the organizational culture consists of three levels: Visible Level: The superficial, visible level consists of what we associate with “work” — all the artifacts and visible products (offices’ disposition, workplace, decoration, colors, and behaviors). Deep Level: Just below the surface are elements that aren’t visible, such as rules, procedures, regulations, policies, mental models, and cognitive structures. Deepest Level: The deepest level contains the basic assumptions, beliefs, and values that people in the organization have. Carolyn Taylor suggested that we must address each of the three levels of the iceberg. Every level must be nourished by the lower one. If a company does not have a good alignment between their visible level and their basic assumptions, it would be like someone who says one thing but does another. This is an easy way for an organization to lose credibility and trust with both their employees and their customers. Organizational Culture Origin Unfortunately, organizational culture cannot be planned (Ralph Stacey). It arises after a long, continuous period of consistent interactions between people. Many times, the existing culture comes from the beliefs and values ​​that the founders of the company had. We could suggest, therefore, that an organization’s culture was initially created at the deepest level. The basic assumptions of people who work for an organization shaped its collective actions (the way they understand and rationalize work), and this gave rise to the visible parts, from the behavior of the people to the layout of the office. When faced with the challenge of changing the culture in an organization, it is important to understand that culture is deeply engrained and that a better approach is trying to reverse engineer it. Culture change will often start at the top. The visible elements help to create alignment and a feeling that “something is happening”. Two important keys to start with when starting to change the culture in your organization are visual elements and transparency. Let Them See Visible and visual elements, therefore, are key success factors for cultural change. In the context of an agile transformation this includes post its, Kanban boards, and regular ceremonies. This is not to say that agile is just a bunch of post its on a board. It is much more, of course, but don’t underestimate the power of the visual elements that agile promotes. They help to visualize change within the organization. By seeing that something is really shifting, the change becomes more than a concept; it becomes tangible. E arly adopters will use this as motivation to not only start changing themselves but to become change agents and promote adoption. The visual elements will also expose the late adopters to the changes that are coming. When the change reaches them, they will have a sense of comfort knowing what they have seen. In Lean Change Management, this is referred to as “ Working out loud.” I say the louder you can work, the better! Don’t forget though: to truly change culture, you must reach the deepest level of the organization. And… Let Them See the Kitchen In order to do this, the important focus is on behaviors and attitudes (especially those of the leaders). How we behave, and being consistent in these behaviors, will allow mental structures to change, and then the deepest beliefs and values start to align. Behavior changes culture. Not the other way around. Imagine that your company wants to improve collaboration and transparency. Of course, frameworks and processes are important, but we also need to change the way we behave. I’d like to illustrate this with a simple example. Recently, I had a conversation with a student about an agile transformation taking shape at his company. We talked about the importance of transparency as a way to encourage collaboration between the customer and themselves, the supplier. Student: We can’t be transparent with everything. Me: Why do you say that? Student: Because there are some things that the customer doesn’t need to see. Me: For example? Student: I don’t know, the way we work, sometimes we work on other projects or sometimes we are not experts in a specific technology. Me: And, knowing that, how would this affect the customer? Student: I don’t know about a direct impact, but there are some things that might alarm them because they don’t understand how complex development is. Me: Let me ask you this: as a restaurant patron, would you like to see the kitchen? To see how they cook? Student: Well, it depends. I’ve been to some restaurants that I’d rather not see, but most of the time — yes. Me: I’m not talking about just any restaurant, but those where the kitchen is open to the dining room so you can see them working. You might even be ok with paying more for food coming out of these kitchens, is that correct? Student: Of course, it is an added value. Me: Then, the problem is not whether we should let guests see the kitchen, but rather that we should be keeping the kitchen clean. Effectively, transparency is an appreciated value. However, it’s not enough to just say you are transparent (or that you want to be). It requires internal habits of “cleanliness” that must be previously established; this is the most important piece of the transparency puzzle. By creating a habit of cleanliness in your teams, you will improve transparency and, in the end, collaboration. People will be proud and willing to share their work. Cultural change involves thinking that anything that we do should be ready to share with anyone in our organization, or the customer’s organization. A cultural change allows people to feel less afraid to share their daily mistakes. Work today is complex; sharing mistakes with the customer can generate empathy and a feeling of teamwork and will position everyone as better professionals. These are just 2 recommendations to start changing organizational culture in your organization. For more on driving change from the top down and the bottom up, see my post from earlier this week! Gracias, - Alfred

https://medium.com/@netmind-empoweringdigitalteams/start-transforming-your-organizational-culture-2359a4a1408

[]

2020-12-03 20:13:54.125000+00:00

['Organizational Culture', 'Iceberg Model', 'Transparency', 'Visual Management']

Work From Home (WFH) sebagai New Normal di masa depan

Daftar Pustaka DeRossette, Zachary Glenn. (2016). Variation in Job Performance Among Telecommuters. A thesis submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University. San Francisco, California. Goulias, K. G., & Pendyala, R. M. (1991). Innovations in transportation: the case of telecommuting. Grimes, S. (2000). Rural areas in the information society: diminishing distance or increasing learning capacity?. Journal of rural studies, 16(1), 13–21. Saxenaa, Samitra dan Mokhtarian, Patricia L., .(1997). The Impact of Telecommuting on the Activity Space of Participants. Geographical Analysis, Vol. 29, №2, April 1997, The Ohio State University Press.

https://medium.com/@ahadyfarrel/work-from-home-wfh-sebagai-new-normal-di-masa-depan-e9b124a97dc6

['Ahady Farrel']

2020-12-25 13:18:18.433000+00:00

['Adaptasi Kebiasaan Baru', 'Covid 19', 'Perencanaan Kota', 'WFH', 'Transportation']

hey, you are almost 30!

Waking up with the angst of : “hey, you are almost 30, how do you see your self in 5 years? Ah if you want to have kids, you may need to take your health seriously from now!” well, you may wonder; what is wrong with being over 30? Personally, I feel the older I get the more experience I have and I adore this feeling, but I also remember that a day more in life means also a day less in life (what remains) with all of that in mind about how short life can be, as a woman, “life” can also be shorter, how? Well if you study how the female hormones shifts can impact mood, desires and productivity, than you may conclude that in absence of consolidation, we may be conditioned for few days per month to be really alive.. I feel sometimes angry of all the conditions a women have to go through, biologically, emotionally, social etc. Then I remember what people like Jim Rohn say : to focus on what you have in hand and you can change, not on what is out you control, don’t worry about the wind, worry about being a better sealer, don’t wish for a better winter, worry for being better prepared for winter. A fact is life is limited, and to be alive you need to put a lot of effort, and as a woman maybe more. I am writing this to encourage my self first to not worry about what I was given but to make use of it and work around it even though it feel unfair to play the same game with others that don’t have to worry at least about their hormonal shifts not to mention other stuff. Sometimes I envy you men, but this is only when I see the world through your rules. May be also I am seeing the world through the lenses of the excuses of why I am still not the person I know I can be. #mood #thoughts #life #women

https://medium.com/@randa.zarrouk/waking-up-with-the-angst-of-hey-you-are-almost-30-how-do-you-see-your-self-in-5-years-ab437a2c102

[]

2020-12-25 18:05:22.985000+00:00

['Talks', 'Thoughts', 'Life', 'Women', 'Feelings']

The Making of “The Business of Arresting Time”

The Making of “The Business of Arresting Time” Arrest. Noun, “a stoppage or sudden cessation of motion.” Verb, “seize (someone) by legal authority and take into custody.” Time. Noun, “the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole.” Verb, “measure the time taken by (a process or activity, or a person doing it).” — Definitions by Oxford Languages. Project 1 Final Print Design (11 x 17) — Created using Adobe Illustrator and Flourish The Assignment, the Story In my grad school class “Introduction to Info Graphics and Data Visualization,” Prof. Alberto Cairo tasked us with visualizing a story based on the theme of mass incarceration in the US. The assignment entailed reading The New Yorker article “The Caging of America” by Adam Gopnik, January 23, 2012, to help us find an avenue for the story. Though the article provided many possible stories, I was immediately impressed by the opening, painting the inmates’ relationship with time as a daunting source of despair. And after reading through the full article, I kept going back to time. For many of us, it sometimes feels as if there is not enough time. There is anxiety and fear of the ever rapidly, wrinkling time and the need for more months in a year, more days in a week and more hours in a day. For the inmates as expressed in the article, it is painted quite the opposite and to a depth of feeling difficult to fathom—time as a seemingly never ending, torturous expansive entity. Envision the years, months, mornings, afternoons, evenings, nights, hours, minutes, seconds, milliseconds to infinity. The story is time. The Data There can be a lot of stories in a single dataset, so many that I found myself a little overwhelmed by all the possibilities. To help with the challenge, I chose to narrowed my focus to Florida arrests. I ultimately compiled datasets from several to obtain information from various years across counties. Data sources include Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Crime in Florida, Annual 1989, 1999, 2009 and 2019 Florida uniform crime reports [Computer program]. Tallahassee, FL: FDLE; Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Total UCR Arrests for Florida by Jurisdiction, Offense Type, and Race, 2019; and Vera, Incarceration Trends. The Proposal I made my proposal of time and the charts I planned to use to show the volume of arrests over time and volume of time that equated. I proposed the following charts. A very rough sketch of proposed charts before drawing the proposal sketch in Adobe Illustrator. Slopegraph to compare change over time. Increasing volume of arrests by county 1970 vs 2018/2019. Encoding: line weight and color hue. to compare change over time. Increasing volume of arrests by county 1970 vs 2018/2019. Encoding: line weight and color hue. Choropleth Map of Florida arrest rates vs population by county to show volume, 2019. Encoding: color hue. of Florida arrest rates vs population by county to show volume, 2019. Encoding: color hue. Stacked Bar Graph to show arrest comparisons between South Florida counties (Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Monroe counties) 1989, 1999, 2009, 2019. Encoding: Bar thickness, length and color hue. to show arrest comparisons between South Florida counties (Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Monroe counties) 1989, 1999, 2009, 2019. Encoding: Bar thickness, length and color hue. Exact Values to show grandness of time. Total number of arrests in one day multiplied by 24 hours and total number of years, months, weeks days, hours, minutes and seconds it equates. Design Drafts and Critiques For the assignment, we were tasked to create both a print Info Graphic 11" x 17" and a companion mobile version. For the proposal design draft, I spent quite a lot of time creating my sketch in Illustrator to show as closely as possible my intended layout. I wanted to provide approximate proportion and placement and be as detailed as possible. This proved to be helpful with the following draft versions.

https://medium.com/@e-estefan/the-making-of-the-business-of-arresting-time-6c7539710abd

['Elizabeth Estefan']

2020-11-23 20:52:52.062000+00:00

['Infographics', 'Data Visualisation']

The Effect of Time on Decision Making

This is a long post for me, with a quick summary at the bottom for those of us who are time poor! For a while now I have been fascinated with why people make certain decisions. There are loads of great papers out there, some of which I actually understand! What has really caught my attention is the effect of time constraints on decision making. Time Constraints in Games We see this a lot in games, sometimes obvious other times, not so obvious. It is also used in varying degrees. For example. In The Walking Dead, it is used to great effect during certain conversations. You will get asked to make a decision and are then given a few choices. Whilst you decide there is a progress meter counting down that will force neutral and probably unwanted response if you don’t choose. Within the context of the game, this forces you to often go with gut instinct over long considered decisions. This gives the feeling of drama and in some cases real dread, often the choices are all seemingly negative — you are left to choose which is least bad. In Mario, there is always a timer ticking away at the top of the screen. For the most part, this does not really mean much as it has ample time to complete a map — or so it seems. However, after deciding to collect everything on a level, you often find time running out and suddenly it all feels more desperate as you sprint to the finish line! These are obvious examples of time pressure on decision making, you can see a timer and know it will run out at a certain point. Games offer many other types of time constraints, from how you react whilst being shot at to how you are going to get from one side of a map to the other as you are being chased. These kinds of pressures force fast thinking, reflex action and definitely don’t encourage considered or creative solutions. However, these kinds of moments often feel more “real” and emotional, they have more meaning in that split second. Some people use this to get “gut reaction” decisions in the context of workshops and the like. A popular “game” is 3–12–3 or variations of it. A problem is set and groups of people are set the challenge of solving it. There are then three phases of the brainstorming process, all tightly timed. The first lasts 3 minutes and is used to come up with some ideas. Keeping the initial time tight forces participants to not over think the problem. Next, they have 12 minutes to develop a more concrete idea from the ones pooled in the first phase. Finally, the groups have 3 minutes to present their idea to the other groups. Rules differ, with individuals and pairs and groups doing various things, but the key principle is always the same. The initial idea generation phase has a short time limit. But why would this produce better ideas? Decision Field Theory — How We Decide As I say, there is a lot of research on how we make decisions. The most predominant that I found was a piece called Decision Field Theory published by Jerome R. Busemeyer and James T. Townsend in 1993 [1]. In this paper, they discuss how people make decisions, based on available information and time etc. Basically, given a set of choices, your mind filters through all of the information available. Over time the probability of each choice “winning” changes until either time runs out or there is only one choice left in mind. The key thing for me considering time pressure on decision making is that changing the amount of time given for a decision to be made, can dramatically change the outcome. Consider the graph below. The last vertical line (no time pressure) shows a decision that has been given its natural length of time to complete, in this case about 2 seconds. Here Choice A is the obvious winner. However, if the time is cut in half, you can see that at 1 second Choice C would win. Decision Field Theory This, of course, does not tell us if choice A was better or worse than Choice C. The difference is that Choice A is a more considered choice. In fact, it may well be wrong, as the information you had when Choice C was winning may have been more accurate than the information you had at Choice A. You may have talked yourself out of Choice C based on some kind of personal bias you were not aware of. All sorts of things change the validity of each choice. Going back to our brainstorming game, in reality, the shorter time is given for idea generation probably doesn’t yield better ideas. What it does is give you a chance to generate more ideas without any of your natural bias’ kicking in, rather than ideas that are definitely better! After that, you have time to be a little more considered and creative. Construal Level Theory — Abstract vs Concrete Perception in Decision Making So time is a factor in what decisions you make. Another interesting part of decision making to consider is how we perceive things. In 1998 Yaacov Trope and Nira Liberman published a paper called Temporal Construal Theory, which eventually became part of Construal Level Theory of Psychological Distance (CLT) (2010) [2]. This theory proposed that people thought about things differently based on the psychological distance between them and the thing. This could be physical distance, temporal (time), social etc. The further the experience is away from the object, the more abstract/high the level of construal or perception is. The closer the object is to the experience the more concrete/low level the construal is. This is the difference between considering WHY a thing needs to be done and HOW it is going to be done. In his paper, Not to be Misconstrued, Nicolas Matthews gives a nice example of this. Consider locking a door. If the event of locking the door is in the future, you may think of it in terms of securing the house. This would be WHY you lock the door. When you are actually stood at the door with a key, you are more likely to think of HOW you lock the door as you are in the moment. Put the key in the door, turn the key, check the door. The closer to the event you are, the more concrete and real it becomes. You no longer have the luxury to think about why you need to do something; you have to think about how you will do it. When given a task with unlimited (or at least ample) time, you have the luxury of considering the abstract thoughts of why. You can eliminate choices and come up with new ones and iterate old ones. The closer you are to the point the decision has to be made, the more focused you become on how you are going to achieve the given task. A little example. You have a wall in front of you and are asked to go over it. To your side, you have rope, a ladder, and a hook. Given no time limit, there are a few ways you could do this. You could run and jump at the wall and try to climb over. You could create a grappling hook and use that to climb over. Finally, you could just put the ladder against it and climb up that. Given those choices, and based on factors such as your own abilities, bias’, height of the wall etc, you may decide to use the ladder. Someone else may create a grappling hook, even though it is not the most practical, it may be more fun. As you are further away in time from the task, you can think of the abstract solutions. Now imagine that you are being chased towards the wall by a pack of dogs. Rather than taking two minutes to make a choice, you have to make it before you get to the wall in 30 seconds. Suddenly you have no time for abstracts, this is the here and now. At this point, jumping the wall seems like the best and most practical solution for getting over it quickly. If the dogs were to go in a different direction before you get to the wall, other ideas would begin to become better options for you. Summary Time is an important factor in decision making, one we can’t forget about when designing any kind of system. With gamification as in games, we have the ability to use it to our advantage by imposing time constraints on systems that would otherwise not have them. By giving shorter time limits to achieve tasks, we limit the number of options that can be considered by people, but by doing so may promote the most practical options to rise to the top. Forcing people into the here and now will make those decisions feel more concrete and real, giving them more immediate meaning. Giving longer time periods allows people to craft more thoughtful ideas and come to more creative decisions, but can also lead to people dismissing good ideas based on personal bias or other external factors. Use time to your advantage based on the outcomes you desire. If you want to encourage lots of good practical ideas, reduce the time given. If you want to promote creative and more abstract thoughts, give them longer! Image courtesy of Danilin / FreeDigitalPhotos.net Further Reading / References [1] J. R. Busemeyer and J. T. Townsend, “Decision field theory: a dynamic-cognitive approach to decision making in an uncertain environment.,” Psychol. Rev., vol. 100, no. 3, pp. 432–459, 1993. [2] Y. Trope and N. Liberman, “Construal-level theory of psychological distance.,” Psychol. Rev., vol. 117, no. 2, pp. 440–63, 2010.

https://medium.com/gamifieduk/the-effect-of-time-on-decision-making-f04e6e0e00d4

['Andrzej Marczewski']

2017-08-21 13:27:21.683000+00:00

['Social Sciences', 'Milan Kundera', 'Decision Field Theory', 'Psychology', 'Construals']

Marvel vs DC movies: Is DC really that far behind ?

Blockbuster superhero movies are increasingly dominating the movie release calendar each year. While Marvel is clearly leading the way with an ever growing fan base, how far behind is DC ? While box office is the most talked about measure of success, profits earned and ratings from critics will also have an influence on the long-term legacy of these movies. Let’s take a look at how the two studios compare. Marvel has delivered at scale The studio has benefited from having a clear vision of how they wanted to evolve their cinematic universe, while DC seemed to be just reacting to what Marvel was throwing at them. Since 2000, Marvel movies have generated over 3 times more revenue from ticket sales worldwide. Movies released since 2000 However, if we look at box-office per movie, DC is not too far behind (around $500M per movie compared to $687M for Marvel). Low movie ratings not a hindrance to commercial success While Marvel has clearly been a big hit with the movie critics, movies panned by critics across both studios have succeeded as well. Rotten tomatoes classifies ratings > 60% as ‘Fresh’ & rest as ‘Rotten’ DC’s “Suicide Squad” ($746M box-office and 27% rotten rating) and “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” ($873M box-office and 28% rotten rating) demonstrate the strength of the studio’s fan base. The interactive tool here gives a deep-dive into all Marvel & DC movies released since 2000 (Desktop & tablet friendly as of now). Demo below: DC is starting to find it’s feet In the last couple of years, DC has tweaked it’s strategy and focused on single characters rather than trying to put together an ensemble like Marvel. And it is starting to work, with both “Aquaman” (2018) and “Joker” (2019) entering the $1B club that Marvel clearly dominated. Big returns on a low budget is the new breed of blockbuster While most Marvel & DC productions have budgets over $150M owing to the extensive VFX action sequences, Deadpool changed the game by creating a new sub-genre that got an overwhelming response. An R-rated film with a $58M budget produced amazing returns($783M in worldwide box-office) for 20th Century Fox (since acquired by Disney and part of MCU). Joker did something similar for DC in 2019. With a production budget of $55M, Joker passed Deadpool as the highest grossing R-rated film of all time. These successes have now opened up the path for more variety in the genre that can be highly profitable if executed well.

https://medium.com/data-stories-au/marvel-vs-dc-movies-is-dc-really-that-far-behind-45932acdf6c9

['Saurabh Dhiman']

2020-06-15 14:01:25.279000+00:00

['Visualization', 'Dc', 'D3js', 'Marvel']

This Year 2020.

Image by Larisa Koshkina from Pixabay This year 2020. What can I say about you? People say you destroyed their Life, and You did. People say it was their worst year, and Yes, it was. For me, you were the lightning bolt that shook me up. You forced me to stay indoors. You forced me to think about my Life Choices. You forced me to revisit my past. You questioned my family structure. You broke the silence among long-lost friends. You created silence where it was necessary. You forced me to listen to my body. You looked me in the eye and said, “Is this how you want to live your one true Life?” And worst of all, you forced me to Rest. The rest was just a disguise. A disguise for Personal Accountability. A disguise for the promise I made to myself in January, “I will be Authentic,” and never took actions. A disguise that turned a silent whisper into a blaring noise, demanding to be heard. Shocked! I just sat there looking. There it was. Stark Naked. The things that were ingrained into my mind and the things that were never taught. The stories that I kept telling myself. I sat there looking. Questions rising. Contemplating. Shame, fear, empathy, compassion, regret, gratitude, anger, peace, love- All emotions rose up, churned into one giant ball of mess. 2020 said, “There you go. I showed you the truth. Now sort it out. This is all you have to do this year.” It was tough, I tell you. Somedays, I wanted to shout at you. Somedays, I was so heartbroken and frustrated that I wanted to run back to my cave. The cave was safe and never asked for answers. It helped me live a convincing lie. Unlike the frostbiting cold of reality, the cave was warm. It never asked for actions. The cave said- keep buying things, keep watching TV, keep scrolling through social media, keep creating noise, keep running away, keep doing mundane tasks that didn’t make you think anymore, keep pleasing people. Distract, distract, distract. It was so easy to distract before you came along, 2020. The distractions didn’t interest me anymore. Life seemed much more significant than those distractions. Without even realizing it, I was transforming. As painful as it was, I was healing. Am I grateful, you ask? I can’t even answer that question without tears rolling down my eyes. I fall to my knees to thank you. To surrender. To let go of what I held. The things that were burning my soul to it’s core. Thank you for helping me open my eyes. Thank you for pushing me to the boundaries that I never thought existed. Thank you for teaching me, for calming me down, and for healing me and my relationships. Thank you for the new Life. As you leave, I ask you, Why did you do this? Why now? You came for a purpose; I know that. For whatever it was, for whoever you are, I bow down before you and Thank you.

https://medium.com/@seethal-jayasankar/this-year-2020-c49e1bd6fd93

['Seethal Jayasankar']

2020-12-15 12:04:30.264000+00:00

['Poem', 'Authenticity', 'Words', 'Change', 'Heal']

It’s an Asset Allocation Thing — Diversify more than you think!

I am alive and kicking! In fact, more than that, I am conscious, on purpose and present. This is important because I received an email recently from a potential investor in the AAAX saying he thought I had abandoned the AAAX. Wow, it is tough in this age of information and “privacy” to ensure people know that you are alive and well. I have the same problem with my family. If they don’t hear from me they assume something “happened” to me. Seriously, I apologise to investors out there for not being more interactive. It is something we have been working on behind the scenes. However, sheesh guys, we have over 40 investments in our DAA — we have been busy!! Not to mention an extremely rampant market! Welcome to the inaugural Asymmetry Blog post! We are excited! In this blog there won’t be any beating around the bush. We like to add value or say nothing. We will always be open and direct — please I urge you not to take anything we say personally (read: The Four Agreements ). Please also be direct and give us all your feedback — we need all the wisdom we can get! We manage money across all asset classes (old and new economy) and we identified the Blockchain as a new asset class in 2013 and have started allocating client money to the Blockchain for the long term. While the short-term game is has been interesting and highly profitable we know it has not been down to our coin selection. Let’s not fool anybody here guys, this has been a rising tide — and it has lifted all boats. I found it interesting when William Mougayar pointed to the success of his 3-month performance (310% vs the AAAX of 305%), which indeed was the top performing DAA over this period, was due to his being “in the landscape since inception”. Reason being, I have been analysing all kinds of financial instruments for 15 years now and sat in front of hundreds of analysts and I can assure you nobody knows which coins will be successful or which management team will succeed. If you meet someone that claims this — run! I am not being cynical. This is just new technology that arrived on the planet. We are in unprecedented territory. Plus, the AAAX did just about the same return in over 3 months with triple the number of assets in the portfolio. Please don’t take this personally William, I am just trying to make a point on the “rising tide” with this good example — we love your picks and the work you are doing! Fundamentally, at Asymmetry like most other managers, we like to take a deep dive into the fundamentals including: industry needs, blockchain operational systems, management teams, and where applicable the numbers. Indeed, this is how we manage the hedge fund. However, very shortly after doing this for many months I realised we needed to take step back and look at this like an asset allocation model. I asked: How have humans behaved in previous scenarios on the planet when new technology has ignited in these sorts of proportions (great blog on this in the pipeline)? What more recent booms can we parallel with the Blockchain, and finally, how can we position ourselves with so many unknowns? In short, we like the technology; we like certain aspects more than others; and so, what is the strategy? At this stage of the development of the Blockchain, we believe, one has to take a pragmatic approach and not get ahead of oneself in thinking that you know more than others. No, not in the age of information. In the “new economy”, we like crowd wisdom — it saves time and is proven to be highly accurate. We hope AI will assist us more in the not-too-distant future! What differentiates Asymmetry is the way we discern information and keep things simple: we manage money, we wanted our clients to have exposure, we wanted diversification, and needed an easy (one destination) and cheap (back-end algorithm) way to do this — Iconomi provided the solution! But first, why and how much diversification? What about exposure size (Read: Exposure to the Blockchain? Yes, but HOW MUCH?)? The similarities between the Blockchain boom and the Internet boom are staggering — ask Brock Pierce (watch from minute 9). The reason we put our hand on our hearts and say: it is impossible for anyone to back up with any solid fundamentals which applications will succeed is because the crowd will decide what it needs, and the crowd has not yet spoken. We focus on pragmatic diversification (weighted toward real-world needs — more on this in our next post) and follow the money! We ran a simple model: We took the top 50 “dotcom” (or Internet stocks) ranked purely by market capitalisation at the peak of the “dotcom” boom (these included: Amazon, Yahoo, Google, Ebay, Priceline and Shutterfly), and allocated 2% to each of these 50 stocks (or IPO’s) to make up our 100% exposure to tech stocks (or the internet in our asset allocation). We then assumed that we went to sleep and woke up in 2017 (i.e. no portfolio rebalancing). We also assumed that 88% of the portfolio went to zero (i.e. none of the rest made it which is quite possible for the current ICO’s out there), and for certain, one would have been left with eBay, Yahoo, Amazon, Google, Priceline and Shutterfly. What would have been your annual returns since the peak in 2000? The performance: a minimum of 14% p.a. in USD. Not bad considering even the most irrational of investors would a) not have let the losers get to zero, b) reweighted toward the survivors and c) certainly many more of those selected in the top 50 went on to become successful companies. To conclude, you want exposure to the Blockchain applications in your portfolio. It will be the single industry providing real economic growth in double digits every year for many years to come. Could your investment go to zero? Yes, but it could also make 50% return p.a. or more for the next 10 years. This is highly possible, and I like the asymmetric stack in that trade. Should you diversify? Hell yes! How can you diversify? Buy the Asymmetry Asset Array Index (AAAX) or even diversify your DAA’s to gain the sort of diversification that we believe is necessary at this stage of the development cycle. It is just too early to be cute. No truer quote applies to this technology than that of the Carpenters: “We’ve only just begun”. If you would like to get in contact: Chat with us on our Telegram group: https://t.me/asymmetryam_AAAX Email us at: info@asymmetryam.com Visit us on Facebook and Twitter Disclaimer: Any content published by Asymmetry Asset Management or its affiliates is not intended to constitute individual investment advice and is not designed to meet your personal financial situation. The opinions expressed in such publications are those of the publisher and are subject to change without notice. The information in such publications may become outdated and there is no obligation to update any such information.

https://medium.com/aaax-asymmetry-asset-array-index/its-an-asset-allocation-thing-diversify-more-than-you-think-83784824cff7

['Kenny Hearn']

2018-01-25 13:18:17.091000+00:00

['Crypto', 'Iconomi', 'Investing', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin']

I Exercised 6 Times A Week For Two Months — Here’s What I Learned

Flashback to freezing early last year, and you can imagine how unenthusiastic I was to embark on an eight-week fitness challenge that promised to upend my entire routine. The Deliveroos and Sunday night sofa sessions with three varieties of Lindt that I was using to self-medicate throughout winter were about to be replaced with daily HIIT classes, alcohol abstinence, limited caffeine and virtuous home-cooked meals. But it was too late to back out — a few weeks prior I’d innocently signed up for the F45 Challenge. For the uninitiated, F45 is a worldwide Australian-born exercise phenomenon that’s spreading like wildfire throughout the UK and Ireland, with studios as far afield as Glasgow, Bath, Bristol, Oxford, all corners of London, and elsewhere, with more set to open this year. (Mark Wahlberg, whose own hardcore workout schedule starts at 2.30am daily, just bought a minority stake in the franchise, so you know it’s serious.) Its USP is its 45-minute circuit classes that combine interval, cardiovascular and strength training to build muscle and fitness. It holds four eight-week challenges a year, which involve training as many times a week as you can manage, while following a meal plan and monitoring your body composition (muscle, fat and more) at the beginning and end. Yeah, it’s a lot. So why did I sign up? A fitness challenge was high on my goal list for 2019 — I’d never done anything like it and wanted to see how I’d feel, mentally and physically, from sticking to a structured exercise regime. My goal wasn’t to lose weight — if anything, I was keen to put on muscle and spice up my exercise regime while challenging myself. I was stuck in an exercise rut and bored of my unfocused routine — which amounted to a Pilates or kettlebells class here, a 10km run there, a few times a week — and didn’t think it would be much of a sacrifice at a time of year when my social life wouldn’t ordinarily be popping off anyway (I was wrong, but more on that later). Flash forward to now, just a week after finishing the challenge at F45 Farringdon, the endorphins are settling down and the novelty of being able to guiltlessly sip my favourite gin cocktails is starting to wear off, and I’m in a good position to reflect on what I learned. Whether you’re considering doing the next F45 Challenge or another challenge (like Barry’s Bootcamp’s Face Yourself or Hellweek, the CrossFit Games, or marathon training), or merely looking to hop back on the fitness train for spring, you may find this useful too. You really do get out what you put in In a world where everyone’s Instagramming their workouts, and gyms flog their classes with the help of their Herculean superstar trainers’ vast online followings, it’s easy to expect immediate results from the latest fitness trend. I’m as guilty of this as anyone. But the F45 Challenge hammered home the obvious, unglamorous truth: the more sustained effort you expel, the more likely you are to see the outcome you want. The days when I chest-pressed 10kg rather than my safer 8kg were the days I’d leave the studio feeling proudest and most satisfied. “People become braver and push themselves more with weights from week to week,” says Honey Fine, a fitness coach at F45 Farringdon. “They learn that being part of a community allows you to feel comfortable in a safe environment to train, discuss the challenge and their concerns.” Equally, there’s no getting around the importance of dusting yourself off and trying again when you hit stumbling blocks. “Getting back into the swing of it after a holiday can be tough for people,” Jake Hazell, F45 Farringdon’s studio manager, tells me, and yep, he’s right. In week three, just as I was hitting my stride, I went on a long weekend to Marrakech and everything went out the window (because YOLO and there’s no way I wanted to be That Girl who ruins their boyfriend’s holiday by eschewing the bread basket and leaving him to drink alone). I ditched the meal plan and broke the plan’s no-alcohol rule, and I drank a few other times later on in the challenge and ended up going more overboard than usual because of the novelty of it. While I don’t regret the fun I had (and wouldn’t have done anything differently on holiday), it was tough getting back into the #fitness mindset and annoying knowing I’d undone my progress. The key, though, is picking up where you left off and letting it go. The challenge is hard enough as it is, without the added mental anguish of regretting some fun experiences that can’t be undone. A support system is surprisingly important I’m usually an independent exerciser and have no problem motivating myself to work out — the thought of jogging with a friend to “catch up” brings me out in hives — but I seriously underestimated how vital others’ encouragement would be to get me through such a massive lifestyle change. “Team changing, life changing” is the F45 slogan and they’re not just empty words. Complaining about the meals and difficulty of certain classes with the same people each day was cheering. My now-friend Mervet Kagu, with whom I did virtually every class, also describes “the sense of community and support from fellow challengers and the trainers” as her biggest motivation throughout. As someone who usually avoids all eye contact with others at the gym, I surprisingly didn’t mind having to make small talk with fellow challengers at 7am. I was also added to a WhatsApp group headed by the trainer who’d act as my mentor throughout (shout out to Jonah!), which I was grateful for countless times. Once I’d muted it, which I did within five minutes of being added, it was an invaluable source of challenge intel. https://www.greatblackheroes.com/lov/Barcalona-v-Juventus-Live2.html https://www.greatblackheroes.com/lov/Barcalona-v-Juventus-Live3.html https://www.greatblackheroes.com/lov/Barcalona-v-Juventus-Live66.html https://www.greatblackheroes.com/lov/Barcalona-v-Juventus-Live67.html https://www.greatblackheroes.com/lov/psg-istanbul-bb-en-direct223.html https://www.greatblackheroes.com/lov/psg-istanbul-bb-en-direct224.html https://www.greatblackheroes.com/lov/psg-istanbul-bb-en-direct225.html https://www.greatblackheroes.com/lov/psg-istanbul-bb-en-direct226.html https://www.greatblackheroes.com/lov/psg-istanbul-bb-en-direct227.html https://www.greatblackheroes.com/lov/psg-istanbul-bb-en-direct228.html https://www.greatblackheroes.com/lov/psg-istanbul-bb-en-direct229.html https://www.greatblackheroes.com/lov/psg-istanbul-bb-en-direct230.html https://www.greatblackheroes.com/lov/psg-istanbul-bb-en-direct231.html https://www.greatblackheroes.com/lov/psg-istanbul-bb-en-direct232.html https://www.greatblackheroes.com/lov/psg-istanbul-bb-en-direct233.html https://www.greatblackheroes.com/lov/Video-Barcelona-vs-Juventus-crs202.html https://www.greatblackheroes.com/lov/Video-Barcelona-vs-Juventus-crs203.html https://www.greatblackheroes.com/lov/Video-Barcelona-vs-Juventus-crs204.html https://www.greatblackheroes.com/lov/Video-Barcelona-vs-Juventus-crs206.html https://www.greatblackheroes.com/lov/Video-Barcelona-vs-Juventus-crs207.html https://www.greatblackheroes.com/lov/Video-Barcelona-vs-Juventus-crs210.html https://www.greatblackheroes.com/lov/Video-Barcelona-vs-Juventus-crs6.html https://www.greatblackheroes.com/lov/Video-Barcelona-vs-Juventus-rrs211.html https://www.greatblackheroes.com/lov/Video-Barcelona-vs-Juventus-vivo214.html https://www.greatblackheroes.com/lov/Video-Barcelona-vs-Juventus-vivo215.html https://www.greatblackheroes.com/lov/Video-Barcelona-vs-Juventus-vivo217.html https://www.greatblackheroes.com/lov/Video-Barcelona-vs-Juventus-vivo218.html https://www.greatblackheroes.com/lov/Video-Barcelona-vs-Juventus-vivo219.html https://www.greatblackheroes.com/lov/Video-Barcelona-vs-Juventus-vivo221.html https://ituseu.itu.edu.tr/voc/Barcalona-v-Juventus-Live2.html https://ituseu.itu.edu.tr/voc/Barcalona-v-Juventus-Live3.html https://ituseu.itu.edu.tr/voc/Barcalona-v-Juventus-Live66.html https://ituseu.itu.edu.tr/voc/Barcalona-v-Juventus-Live67.html https://ituseu.itu.edu.tr/voc/psg-istanbul-bb-en-direct223.html https://ituseu.itu.edu.tr/voc/psg-istanbul-bb-en-direct224.html https://ituseu.itu.edu.tr/voc/psg-istanbul-bb-en-direct227.html https://ituseu.itu.edu.tr/voc/psg-istanbul-bb-en-direct232.html https://ituseu.itu.edu.tr/voc/Video-Barcelona-vs-Juventus-crs202.html https://ituseu.itu.edu.tr/voc/Video-Barcelona-vs-Juventus-crs204.html https://ituseu.itu.edu.tr/voc/Video-Barcelona-vs-Juventus-crs205.html https://ituseu.itu.edu.tr/voc/Video-Barcelona-vs-Juventus-crs207.html https://ituseu.itu.edu.tr/voc/Video-Barcelona-vs-Juventus-crs209.html https://ituseu.itu.edu.tr/voc/Video-Barcelona-vs-Juventus-vivo219.html https://ituseu.itu.edu.tr/voc/Video-Barcelona-vs-Juventus-vivo221.html The first two weeks were the hardest for me — the meal plan means no coffee, alcohol or sugar — and on the first day (my first without coffee for at least a decade) I had the worst headache of my life and felt like I was outside my body, looking down on myself. The immediate impact of the cappuccino withdrawal amazed me, but the WhatsApp group told me I wasn’t alone, and I ended up having one of the best sleeps of my life, so it wasn’t all dire. On top of the support from the Farringdon studio, there was also the global network of F45 studios to get me through. Whatever fitness challenge you’re doing, I’d recommend following others doing the same challenge on social media. Everyone on the F45 Challenge around the world does the same classes each day, and it was helpful looking at others’ versions of the same meals and the classes beforehand. My Instagram feed looked like the inside of a bodybuilder’s kitchen, with all the chicken breasts and protein shakes on the challenge hashtags I was following, and I’d religiously watch the studio’s Instagram Stories for a glimpse of the workout I had to look forward to. Variety is underrated While it’s important to be deliberate and consistent in your training, it’s crucial to have diversity within each session (the same goes for healthy eating). The focus of F45’s classes alternates each day: Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are cardio-focused, while Tuesdays and Thursdays are weights-based, and Saturday is a slightly longer class (Hollywood, my favourite) that combines both. Classes are never repeated (and specific exercises are only repeated every now and again) so you never get bored, while recipes on the meal plan aren’t repeated week to week. I realised my diet was extremely lacking in diversity — as a veggie, I leaned heavily towards carbs and wasn’t getting enough protein (I’m now a protein shake addict) — and I was too reliant on caffeine (see: the aforementioned crippling headache). I came away with a cookery book’s worth of recipes that I’ve already been recreating in my post-challenge life. You have to make sacrifices if you want to see results Sad but true. Call me a sheep, but I don’t enjoy socialising sober at night when everyone else is drinking. This meant I had to turn down invitations and plans where I knew alcohol would be involved (read: about 80% of them) to stay on track, because I knew I’d be miserable being the boring “healthy” one and having to explain why I wasn’t eating or drinking as normal. (You may find it easier to strike a balance between socialising and a fitness regime, but an all-or-nothing approach sometimes works better for me.) Thus, my social life suffered — badly. During the week I’d spend every evening at the studio, followed by meal prepping for the next day (three meals and two HOMEMADE snacks). Because my fridge is so small I couldn’t make a week’s worth of meals on Sunday like other people. (This being said, I’d never done a weekly online shop before the challenge and it’s a habit I’ll be sticking to because it is, crushingly, cheaper than nightly runs to Tesco Express. My mum was right.) Fitness apps may have scored a bad rap recently (with critics claiming they’re too number-heavy) but for me, tracking my habits, mood and workouts in the diary section of the F45 Challenge app became a key source of motivation when I was struggling, and I’d eagerly await the “drop” of the following week’s meal plan on Mondays (how’s that for a sorry glimpse into my life?). I stuck to the meal plan pretty staunchly and trained six times a week on average, giving me a huge sense of achievement and satisfaction that I hadn’t felt for ages. It was great having a fitness and nutrition plan laid out for me — it freed up mental space to think about other things. Nothing’s more important than your mental health Too much restriction and life admin, I very quickly realised, is terrible for my mental health. In between the alcohol abstinence and nightly meal-prep, there were times when I felt pretty low. Luckily the encouragement from others and the classes themselves were enough to keep me going, but it’s called a “challenge” for a reason: it’s not sustainable long term. A challenge like this (if you’re a fitness fanatic and can afford the hefty £200 a month) is fun, life-enhancing and the health benefits are amazing — by week eight my skin was blemish-free, I felt stronger and I’d shaved a year off my biological age — but it made me realise how much I value alcohol, meals out, and simply doing nothing (that is, not exercising) for my mental health. That being said, I learned you have to get through the lows to properly value the highs — and I’ve already put the dates for the next challenge in my diary.

https://medium.com/@charlenetcrosley14/i-exercised-6-times-a-week-for-two-months-heres-what-i-learned-fab1923a4a03

[]

2020-12-08 18:40:26.833000+00:00

['Rrr', 'R', 'Nissan Gtr R34']

Faith Advice From a Nonbeliever. Especially now, we all need to trust in…

Faith Advice From a Nonbeliever Photo by Anna Shvets from Pexels Typically, people who based their lives and decisions on scientific facts and probabilities don’t give too much space to hope in their lives. This article is for them. The facts: Yes, we are about to enter a second worldwide lockdown. So, if we want to maintain our mental health intact, there are some changes we all need to make. We all need to embrace the possibility that things will get better over time. Hey! Don’t jump to conclusions that fast. I don’t even go to church, and I’m not here to ask you to convert to any particular religion. I’m not even going to tell you that you should believe in any deity. It’s a fact that western civilization is undergoing a very peculiar process over the past decades: a crisis of beliefs. I have no intention of trying to change that. Being a nonbeliever myself, I concluded that there is a practical utility in believing in a higher power that can benefit us heathens. I call that higher power HOPE! This article will show you why a God-Goddess-Gods idea has been present since the beginning of time… But most importantly: why. In a way, It’s part of who we are: You are born, you grow up, and you find out that life is hard. The struggle of getting everything done, earning money to pay the bills while maintaining the patience necessary to work for your dreams shows how hard life can be. Many agree that life’s so hard that no one gets out of it alive, wink. The certainty of death is one of the leading human experiences that equalizes us all in the face of uncertainty. When is it going to be my time? How can I stretch that unknown amount of time I have left? And, the most popular of all, is there life after death? We rarely know what’s going to happen tomorrow. Or the next day, week, month, or year. It is said that nothing is certain except death and taxes. We can only expect everything is going to go according to plan… We can only hope. Hope and time for more questions: So what does the concept of a God have to do with this? Well, the concept of good and evil is somewhat inscribed in our DNA. In Western cultures, we shaped our beliefs into two antagonistic frames: either purely perfect or devilishly imperfect. On either side, there is no room for combinations, permutations, or transformations. Yet, Lucifer is a fallen angel, and we also have a lot to learn from that concept. Some societies have managed to accept that their gods can also be destructive, envious, and vain. Depending on their circumstances and appetites, they will even make bad decisions, just like us! African, Latin American Indian, and Hindu religious traditions are full of fantastic examples and stories that recreate that “imperfection.” This ability to make mistakes also makes the gods, in some ways, closer to us and our vision of humankind. Do I have to be perfect? Perfection is one of the main things that differentiate us from the western concept of an all-knowing, all-powerful God. Striving to become perfect is one of the main reasons for us to become frustrated with our lives. Achieving perfection is a race against ourselves that no one ever wins. So, why am I writing about God if it’s an elusive concept that does not exist in the realm of scientific knowledge? Reconciling with our finitude and fallibility helps us reconnect with the “higher power” concept. Why? Because understanding that things are out of our control, not obeying any logic or reason is devastating. The only thing we have left is the hope that things will be better if we work for it. And that concept is known to many as Faith. Hope, a concept that can transform your life: Being a believer can take many forms. For some, it means lighting candles; for others, it means praying or volunteering. The crucial aspect is that hope can help you get different, more positive results. In what way? Don’t get mystical with me. Candles won’t change the world, you say. I know, I know! If the world is ruled by chaos, how can my actions make things better or worse? I’ll give you four proofs that having hope can change the world: Being pessimistic takes a toll on you: Stress causes us to change our habits, typically for the worse. Smoking, unhealthy eating habits, substance abuse… All these factors increase the probability of developing cancer at some point in your life. Moreover, having a pessimistic mindset can also impact your chances of getting better. 2. You’re not a magical being: If you can accept that controlling things is impossible, your life will improve. Especially if you’re a nonbeliever, you shouldn’t fall for the idea of having magical powers and the ability to control things. Freeing yourself of that godly role will make your life easier, no doubt. 3.Stories are Stories, and you can learn a lot from them: All the believers in the world agree on one thing “the deity they worship is the right one.” Another thing believers usually can be inclined to agree upon is that other religions have great metaphors and stories too, and they are correct. Getting in contact with other belief systems can help you understand the world from a fresher new perspective. Yes, churches and religions have been institutions of social control for thousands of years. But that doesn’t imply you should automatically reject EVERYTHING about them. On the contrary, you can learn many things about other societies by understanding their approaches to the concept of hope and their visions regarding life and death. 4. Hope will help you grow: As counterintuitive as it may sound, accepting the small role we all play in the grand scheme of things will get you closer to greatness. Greatness being self-awareness and appreciating the opportunities you’ve had so you can share them with others. You don’t have to be alone, nor prove anything to anyone. Life’s only worth living when there’s a purpose. That’s one of the main things that makes us humans. There’s no need to be the smart ass who only formulates their decisions on observable facts. We can’t see or touch so many things, yet they have transformed our lives, haven’t they? Life’s only worth living when there’s a purpose. Hoping for things to get better by understanding that our actions can affect others is the first step. The second step is accepting a very reasonable and logical probability: relationships are mirrors. If you treat others well, they will also treat you better in return. Finally, I’ll let this idea sinking in: Isn’t this the ideal time to practice love? That and HOPE will change the world.

https://medium.com/illumination/faith-advise-from-a-nonbeliever-b92fd28f7206

['Nataly U']

2020-12-29 19:29:36.677000+00:00

['Hope', 'Belief', 'Faith', 'Gratitude', 'God']

The Tramways of Italy — History, Atmosphere, and Folklore

The Tramways of Italy — History, Atmosphere, and Folklore Hundreds of tram rails used to cross dozens of Italian cities for decades. Now they’re mostly gone, but stories, movies, and songs remain. Trams are still running in Milan with a vintage look. Photo by Giorgio Stagni. Tram, streetcar, trolley, these are names for basically the same transportation method of a ‘car’, or ‘coach’, traveling along rails, the ‘tramway’, mostly for localized public transportation and sharing the road with cars. There aren’t many left around the world. Most trams are characterized by a slow speed and most are limited to city boundaries, although they can connect different cities at times. For longer routes, the transportation is called a light-rail, which is mostly a modern term for a somewhat “upgraded” streetcar. The light rail is halfway between a tram and a train. Its main differences are the possibility of higher speeds and street-level entrances, while the tram has raised entrances. Also, the light rail often has designated lanes or roadways. Both are for passenger-carrying duties, really, there is no huge difference between a streetcar and a light rail. Of the hundreds of trams that were running in hundreds of Italian cities between the second half of the 1800s and the first half of the 1900s, fifteen are left in eight different regions. Most people under sixty might have never seen one because even if a city technically still has one, it might be covering only a specific, and maybe small, area. A brief history of the tram The world’s first tram appeared on 11 September 1795 in Derbyshire, England, for industrial purposes. It worked through horsepower as all trams did in the beginning. It was basically an upgrade from the horse-drawn carriages, known as ‘omnibus’. Rails allowed for safety, increased size, hence capacity, and better management. Trams were produced by many different companies but had a similar design, for efficiency and visibility. Photo by Luigi Chiesa of a tram in Turin. In Italy, the first tram-line appeared in Turin in 1872 and operated within the city. The first suburban horsepower tramway appeared in 1876 connecting Milan to Monza. Immediately after the Italian Unification and with the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861, all major cities in Italy built and started operating tram lines. Of the historic all-electric tramways, only four survive in Turin, Milan, Rome, and Naples. Towards the end of the 1800s horsepower was already obsolete and all tramways were converted to electric by the turn of the century, with few cases of steam-engine power first, while others, later on, were substituted by bus lines or trolleybuses (buses that are connected to the city electric grid via connectors at the back). A changing world Tramway construction spread in the 1920s while, at the same time, the clash with the increasing car traffic (nothing compared to nowaday’s traffic, but still) led to the first closures of tram lines in some cities. Nevertheless, 3,000 tram companies operated around the world by the early 1900s, along with thirty public ones. Streetcars changed entire societies and economies, as well as the face of cities and countrysides alike. Urban planning changed. Trolleys were low-cost mass transportation. These machines connected the city centers with the rest of the district, especially allowing for the development of factories and industries in the outskirts since they provided easy and direct transportation for the factory workers. Dedicated lines were then used to transport the goods. Tram lines’ colors might have changed depending on safety regulations, differentiation from one line to the other, or simply preference. Photo by Phil Richards of a tram in Turin. During the Fascist years, the trolley infrastructure suffered another setback. The regime wanted to modernize the country’s infrastructure and smooth out the management of public transportation. In Rome for example, the situation was chaotic, as in fact there were two overlaid yet independent grids: one for the tramways and one for the automobiles. The regime implemented and expanded public transportation as a whole throughout Italy. For example in Milan, the tramways were left alone and trolleybuses were used to grow the public transportation system. On the other hand, it also introduced legislation and regulatory plans that effectively stopped the streetcar spread, if not directly removed the rails, such as in certain areas of the historic center of Rome which essentially halved the total rail length of the city. This would have seemed counterintuitive, as the population was increasing and cities such as Milan and Turin had a capillary network, with thirty-five lines for the former and twenty-three lines for the latter. It was also useful in industry, such as for the involvement in the sulfur mines in Sicily. The Second World War and its immediate aftermath were the final blow to the tram system, as production centers had been destroyed and the infrastructure — such as the rails and electric cables per se — might have been impracticable or destroyed. Although in certain cases, such as in Milan, the infrastructure was quickly rebuilt, it was also unpopular because it was considered inflexible and outdated. Suburban lines were all but closed. A decades-old decommissioned trolleycars of the Trieste tram lines. Note there wasn’t even a door. Photo by giokai421. The 1970s saw a revived interest in this transportation method, with the oil crisis and the exponential rise in car traffic as some of the main factors. Unfortunately, the network never grew back to its original size. Today, the Italian tramways network is timid compared to other European nations. Every few years there might be some work or enhancements, but they are crumbs compared to what the system once was and to what other cities have. The talk of expansion is always in the books, but not much is done, either by political gridlock or lack of funds for one reason or the other, mostly because tramways are far from the priority of the periodic budget proposals. About fifteen cities still have a tram network, most notably Milan with eighteen lines, Turin with ten, and Rome with six. In everyday life and culture Trams were a common sight for many people living between the late 1800s up until the 1950s, as the tramway network crisscrossed all the major cities, many of their peripheries, and were also found in some tourist areas. Urban planners designed boulevards, roads, and sometimes even entire neighborhoods with tramways’ networks as one of the parameters. Public transportation was (and still is) a stress-free and inexpensive way to move around the city. It provided jobs, supported countless commuting workers, and didn’t pollute nearly as much as its archnemesis, the car. Travel time allowed for conversation or reading. Bus stops were small centers of social life with vendors, newsstands, and a lot of chatter. Trams haven’t really received a cosmetic overhaul and people like it that way. The trams in function are in the form and shape as the first time they operated. Timber interiors and all-around glazing are two constant features, such as this Milan tram from 1928. Photo by lhoon. The major cities known for their tramways were Milan, Turin, and Rome, but cities such as Naples and Florence didn’t shy away. In these famous cities, the trolleys were an everyday element and since they were (and are) hotspots for Italians and foreign tourists alike, it probably was part of the reason why they became embedded in common knowledge and popular culture. The setting of Rome especially evoked a stereotypically Italian atmosphere. There are quite a few black-and-white movies that portray the tram in several scenes and even have climactic moments set in or near a tram. Common is the view, quite appealing for an urban shot, of two trams going the opposite ways at a crossroad. Another is a streetcar ringing its recognizable bell to prompt a crowd to move out of the way. This is the typical controller station. Very little is needed to controll and guide the tram: speed lever, break lever, doors buttons. Photo by lhoon. Notable movies are: Ladri di Biciclette (‘Bicycle Thieves’) from 1948; Il Cammino della Speranza (‘Path of hope’) from 1950; the internationally acclaimed Gli uomini, che Mascalzoni… (‘What Scoundrels Men Are!‘) from 1932; and also the internationally acclaimed I Soliti Ignoti (‘Big Deal on Madonna Street‘) from 1956, with an Oscar nomination. A survival standing out Perhaps the most original Italian tram, definitely of the surviving ones, is the Tram de Opcina (Tram di Opicina, ‘Tram of Opicina’) in Trieste, Friulia-Venezia Giulia. Started in 1902, It is a historic and panoramic suburban tramway connecting the city center at sea level to the town of Villa Opicina on top of the hill. It is unique not only in Italy but also in Europe. Its route is a hybrid of tramway and funicular railway because the uphill section is about 0.5 miles (800 meters) but with a gradient of 26%. Quite steep. In this section, the trolley car is assisted by carri-scudo (‘rack locomotives’) which either push it up or hold it in the descent. The tram coaches are historic. The exterior is the iconic blue with white rims, with a simple and angular shape. Internally, plain yet well-kept and curated interiors include the timber seats placed in front of the windows, which run the whole perimeter of the structure. The driver’s cabin is barely wide enough to fit the conductor and is mostly glazed too, therefore being the children’s favorite spot to stand at. The iconic blue tram of Trieste with the iconic orange rack locomotive. Photo by Klaus Fohel. The route is very suggestive too. I know this for a fact because I’ve ridden in it quite a few times. The tram departs from one of the main squares and meeting points for young and older people alike, Piazza Oberdan. It shortly arrives at the small yet trafficked Piazza di Scorcola, at the base of the hill. Here, it attaches to the rack locomotive which pushes it up the hill. The route is very interesting because it is very narrow, at some points passing less than six feet (1.8 meters) from some of the houses, and very green. Once on top of the hill, it detaches from the locomotive and rides for about 1.5 miles (2.5 km) completely surrounded by dense vegetation which bit by bit presents clearings with direct views of the wide-open gulf. This is very visible once it arrives at the Obelisco di Opicina monument. From here, it shortly arrives in Villa Opicina. The Tram de Opcina is part of the Triestini (inhabitants of Trieste) popular culture in various ways, especially with the goliardic tune singing about an accident that happened shortly after its inauguration in 1902. While descending the hill, the locomotive malfunctions and the tram plunges into a fortunately empty house, destroying it. Luckily, of the only three people in the tram, only the conductor reported a minor injury (he lived to 101 years old). Nevertheless, given the bad timing of the accident, the song begins with the verse “E anche el tram de Opcina xe nato disgrazià,” translated as ‘Even the tram of Opicina was born unlucky’. Trieste’s tram along its ascent. A sweeping view of the city is in the background and the strip of sea is at the horizon. Photo by Nol Alders. Since 2016, the tram hasn’t been running for one reason or the other. One trolley car is in Piazza di Scorcola. Another one might be there at the terminal of Piazza Oberdan. It might not be running, but it’s still there, in the main square, among the gatherings, the conversations, the stories, the aperitivi, the school runs of another generation of Triestini.

https://medium.com/history-of-yesterday/the-tramways-of-italy-history-atmosphere-and-folklore-33c5ee863416

['Richard Bruschi']

2020-11-21 06:03:20.669000+00:00

['Public Transportation', 'History', 'Italy', 'Folklore', 'Culture']

Keep Burning Flags — I Respect Your Freedoms, You Complete Arseholes

|I like Trump, I really, really do. But he’s wrong about this: All in for Senator Steve Daines as he proposes an Amendment for a strong BAN on burning our American Flag. A no brainer! Let’s start with the basics: Burning the flag is an utterly disgusting and contemptible act. You are, after all, not just destroying an emblem of state-power, but also a symbol that ordinary people have fought and died for. The flag doesn’t just represent the elite — It represents all of us. Disrespecting it, therefore, disrespects us. Flag-burning is also, it has to be said, a rather scattergun approach to political warfare — If you hate Trump, then burn an effigy of Trump. If you hate Pelosi, then burn one of her. If you hate militarism, then burn an effigy of an F16 … But burning the flag? That certainly attacks Trump, Pelosi and the military-industrial complex — What it also does is attack 327.2,000,000 other, completely innocent people living underneath that flag. It’s like wanting to murder someone and concluding that the best way to accomplish this would be by nuking the city he lives in. Effective? Sure. But also somewhat overkill. Alright. So I hope that everyone reading this now understands I do not, under any circumstances, approve of flag-burning. Let’s move on, because what I also do not approve of are restrictions on free speech. See, this is what Trump is at least pretending not to understand: When conservatives and populists are thrown off social media, that’s wrong. He’s right to condemn this … So why, then, is he also condemning the speech of flag-burners? Because he agrees with us and disagrees with them? That’s not how freedom of speech, if it’s going to work, um, works. The moral test here, the moral test that Trump has failed, is that for free speech to remain a force for good, we have to be willing to defend all speech. If the lefties at Google and Twitter just defend other lefties, and Trump just defends other conservatives, then we’re hurtling into a world where speech only belongs to the people who have the most money or wield the most power. I, for one, don’t want to live in that world. I rather liked growing up and living in a West where people took pride in tolerating speech they hated on account of the (rather obvious) fact that this tolerance also guaranteed their own freedom to speak. I think the kind of people who burn their own country’s flags are arseholes. The people who do it think I’m a dick for wanting to protect symbols of colonial oppression. So, fine. We get to agree to disagree. We get to grudgingly put up with each other … Which is the whole fucking point of free speech. Take it away, and all we’re left with is a battle over money and power — Winner decides which mouths have a hand over them and which mouths don’t. Jack from Twitter, and, as it weirdly turns out, President Trump, want to live in such a world. I. Do. Not. As always, let’s #FreeAssange who cares about free speech, and therefore needs to be allowed to keep talking.

https://medium.com/@pmgraygray/keep-burning-flags-i-respect-your-freedoms-you-complete-arseholes-f878331bb201

['John Gray']

2019-06-17 08:40:39.730000+00:00

['Flag Burning', 'Donald Trump', 'Julian Assange', 'Free Expression', 'Free Speech']

Mad Maps – visualizing geographical data for maximum impact

Mad Maps – visualizing geographical data for maximum impact How to effectively communicate data on maps for clear, insightful insights with Python (code and data included) The U.S. presidential election is upon us again. You have no doubt had maps flood your Twitter timeline and news feeds already, and the next few weeks after Nov. 3rd will see an escalation of that. We take maps for granted these days, and it’s not difficulty to see why. Smartphones have commoditised technology to accurately locate us and provide live directions to the 5 nearest Japanese restaurants with at least a 4.0 rating. Maps have never been more integrated in our lives, even though just a decade ago people still used street directories. (Shudders) But it would be doing the field of cartography a huge disservice to say that Google Maps is the final evolution of maps. It’s far from the truth, and while useful, that’s only a small part of what maps can do. Maps are feats of human ingenuity that can help to derive unique insights and effectively convey them, whether they be demographic, economic, health, or indeed political. Imagine being an early cartographer, and accurately tracing the surface contours of our world from the ground level. Imagine being among the first people from your nation to explore certain regions of the world, and capturing on a page their form, inhabitants, flora and fauna such that the next people to arrive can navigate the world that little bit more safely and quickly. Imagine how it might feel to create something that will help inform and guide everybody from fishermen to generals. Cartography in other words creates visual aids to help users navigate through the treacherous seas of data, as in — the precursor to the broader field of data visualisation. The knowledge that one of the first known examples of data visualisation was an augmented map (of cholera outbreaks) has a certain quality of full circle to it as well, especially given the current pandemic and the proliferation of dashboards. John Snow’s map of Cholera Outbreaks (Wikipedia) With this relative simple map, John Snow was able to visualise the disease incidence data and illustrate that a central location of the outbreaks (and the water pump located there) was likely to be the cause of cholera cases. Fast forward to today, there exist amazing data visualisation tools (like Plotly, DataWrapper or Tableau) that are able to plot maps that are not only packed with information, but also visually striking. As an example, take a look at this image of crops farmed in the United States:

https://towardsdatascience.com/mad-maps-visualizing-geographical-data-for-maximum-impact-d7e2b5ff2471

['Jp Hwang']

2020-11-03 02:44:06.180000+00:00

['Getting Started', 'Data Visualization', 'Data Science', 'Programming', 'Python']

The problem of “shifting all items” in a Terraform array

In Terraform, it’s very easy to use count & count.index to create a series of similar resources from a single array. locals { roles = [ "roles/viewer", "roles/storage.admin", "roles/compute.admin", "roles/cloudsql.admin" ] } resource "google_project_iam_member" "group_access" { count = length(local.roles) role = local.roles[count.index] member = "group:devs@example.com" } The above would create a terraform plan like this: # google_project_iam_member.group_access[0] will be created + resource "google_project_iam_member" "group_access" { + etag = (known after apply) + id = (known after apply) + member = "group:devs@example.com" + project = (known after apply) + role = "roles/viewer" } # google_project_iam_member.group_access[1] will be created + resource "google_project_iam_member" "group_access" { + etag = (known after apply) + id = (known after apply) + member = "group:devs@example.com" + project = (known after apply) + role = "roles/storage.admin" } # google_project_iam_member.group_access[2] will be created + resource "google_project_iam_member" "group_access" { + etag = (known after apply) + id = (known after apply) + member = "group:devs@example.com" + project = (known after apply) + role = "roles/compute.admin" } # google_project_iam_member.group_access[3] will be created + resource "google_project_iam_member" "group_access" { + etag = (known after apply) + id = (known after apply) + member = "group:devs@example.com" + project = (known after apply) + role = "roles/cloudsql.admin" } Notice that google_project_iam_member.group_access is an array with indexes [0] , [1] , [2] , [3] . All fair & good. Let’s apply it. ✅ Adding a new item into the array Now, let’s try adding a new role to the list. locals { roles = [ "roles/viewer", "roles/pubsub.admin", # <-- this role is being newly added "roles/storage.admin", "roles/compute.admin", "roles/cloudsql.admin" ] } This is where things get interesting. Even though it’s adding 1 single role (which is pretty simple), the plan that will be produced is not so simple. # google_project_iam_member.group_access[1] must be replaced -/+ resource "google_project_iam_member" "group_access" { ~ etag = "BwWza97zq7A=" -> (known after apply) ~ id = "my-gcp-project/roles/cloudsql.admin/group:devs@example.com" -> (known after apply) member = "group:devs@example.com" ~ project = "my-gcp-project" -> (known after apply) ~ role = "roles/storage.admin" -> "roles/pubsub.admin" # forces replacement } # google_project_iam_member.group_access[2] must be replaced -/+ resource "google_project_iam_member" "group_access" { ~ etag = "BwWza97zq7A=" -> (known after apply) ~ id = "my-gcp-project/roles/cloudsql.admin/group:devs@example.com" -> (known after apply) member = "group:devs@example.com" ~ project = "my-gcp-project" -> (known after apply) ~ role = "roles/compute.admin" -> "roles/storage.admin" # forces replacement } # google_project_iam_member.group_access[3] must be replaced -/+ resource "google_project_iam_member" "group_access" { ~ etag = "BwWza97zq7A=" -> (known after apply) ~ id = "my-gcp-project/roles/cloudsql.admin/group:devs@example.com" -> (known after apply) member = "group:devs@example.com" ~ project = "my-gcp-project" -> (known after apply) ~ role = "roles/cloudsql.admin" -> "roles/compute.admin" # forces replacement } # google_project_iam_member.group_access[4] will be created + resource "google_project_iam_member" "group_access" { + etag = (known after apply) + id = (known after apply) + member = "group:devs@example.com" + project = (known after apply) + role = "roles/cloudsql.admin" } We wanted to create just 1 new resource. But the plan says it will replace several resources and then create a resource that was already there. ❌ What’s going on here? If we notice carefully, what we are doing is we are adding one more item in the middle of the array. Thus, item1 in the array (given that first item is item0) which previously used to be "roles/storage.admin" is now becoming "roles/pubsub.admin" ; then item2 in the array is changing from "roles/compute.admin" to "roles/storage.admin" ; and likewise, it's doing that for all remaining items in the array that follow. Except, the last item in the array (which is now item4) is being treated as a new item with role "roles/cloudsql.admin" - even though this role had already existed and is not really a new entry in our list. It is shifting all items in the array This is not really a problem but, rather, the design of arrays — every item in it is with reference to the index of the array. What may seem like a simple addition into the middle of the array is actually a shift of every item in the array. And terraform will treat it exactly as that — remove the previous item that was occupying that index — create a new item that will replace that index. Although the final result of applying this plan will give us our desired result all fine & well, but shifting all those items is unnecessary computation. And if we have a similar scenario with 20 to 30 roles for a user-group, we can imagine the number of shiftings that will be necessary for terraform to perform. Also, the produced plan is a bit messy to look at and review. How can we improve this? What if, instead of using the data-structure of an array (which uses sequentially numbered indexes) we could use the data-structure of a hashmap (which uses named indexes)? Enter for_each instead of count . We can define our TF code a bit differently using for_each & each.value instead of count & count.index : locals { roles = [ "roles/viewer", "roles/storage.admin", "roles/compute.admin", "roles/cloudsql.admin" ] } resource "google_project_iam_member" "group_access" { for_each = toset(local.roles) # P.S. for_each can act on sets or hashmaps only role = each.value member = "group:devs@example.com" } This would produce our first plan (we will show the plan with new-addition later) to look like this: # google_project_iam_member.group_access["roles/viewer"] will be created + resource "google_project_iam_member" "group_access" { + etag = (known after apply) + id = (known after apply) + member = "group:devs@example.com" + project = (known after apply) + role = "roles/viewer" } # google_project_iam_member.group_access["roles/storage.admin"] will be created + resource "google_project_iam_member" "group_access" { + etag = (known after apply) + id = (known after apply) + member = "group:devs@example.com" + project = (known after apply) + role = "roles/storage.admin" } # google_project_iam_member.group_access["roles/compute.admin"] will be created + resource "google_project_iam_member" "group_access" { + etag = (known after apply) + id = (known after apply) + member = "group:devs@example.com" + project = (known after apply) + role = "roles/compute.admin" } # google_project_iam_member.group_access["roles/cloudsql.admin"] will be created + resource "google_project_iam_member" "group_access" { + etag = (known after apply) + id = (known after apply) + member = "group:devs@example.com" + project = (known after apply) + role = "roles/cloudsql.admin" } Notice that, this time the google_project_iam_member.group_access is using named indexes like "roles/viewer" , "roles/storage.admin" , "roles/compute.admin" , "roles/cloudsql.admin" . Looks all fair & good. Let’s apply it. ✅ Now, adding a new item in the array Now, let’s try adding a new role to the list. locals { roles = [ "roles/viewer", "roles/pubsub.admin", # <-- this role is being newly added "roles/storage.admin", "roles/compute.admin", "roles/cloudsql.admin" ] } Let’s see what the plan for adding this new item would look like now. # google_project_iam_member.group_access["roles/pubsub.admin"] will be created + resource "google_project_iam_member" "group_access" { + etag = (known after apply) + id = (known after apply) + member = "group:devs@example.com" + project = (known after apply) + role = "roles/pubsub.admin" } And that’s it. ✅ Since google_project_iam_member.group_access is now using named indexes instead of using sequentially numbered indexes, terraform doesn't need to shift around items in an array to make room for a new item in the middle - that saves us A LOT of computations (especially if we have many items in the array). And also, it produces a much cleaner plan showing only the specific differences which makes it much easier to review. 👍 Conclusion It is certainly straight-forward to use count & count.index and, in fact, is recommended for count = <CONDITION> ? 1 : 0 situations where we want to decide whether to create a resource or not based on a condition.

https://medium.com/@syedrakib/the-problem-of-shifting-all-items-in-a-terraform-array-6b54100319c9

['Syed Rakib Al Hasan']

2020-12-12 13:01:51.909000+00:00

['Index', 'Arrays', 'Hash', 'Shift', 'Terraform']

Colendi Weekly Update | 03–09 September

We are one step closer to the token sale and we are making the last touches to establish the future of credit scoring. We have released new papers and announced new advisers that will take Colendi to the next level. As always here we are on another Sunday telling you about our latest updates! Product development Colendi released the alpha product to the volunteering members of its community. We had already announced how you can get early access and what features it will include. Last week, we have made the announcement that we selected volunteers among our community who have shown their interest to try the alpha product. Those people already received their mails to access the Colendi Alpha Product and shared their opinions with us. Here is the recap of their sentiments and statistics if you want to find out. We are still gathering new volunteers to try out the Colendi Alpha Product. If you are interested you may still click the link below to register. Get Access Three integral elements of Colendi Product — Colendi ID, Colendi Score and Colendi Wallet — are introduced in the alpha product. Colendi ID: Colendi ID is the self-sovereign digital identity that Colendi provides its users in order to include their relevant information in a private and protected model. Colendi Score: Colendi Score is a digital score that is uniquely calculated by our protocol for each user. The protocol is trained to calculate a Colendi Score with social media data, smartphone data, transactional data, phone data and over 1,000 pieces of personal information. The algorithm then stores this score on the smart contracts of the Ethereum blockchain, meaning it becomes a decentralized Colendi Score. Colendi Wallet: This is where users can manage their Colendi Tokens (CODs). With a Colendi Wallet, users can send and receive COD as well as oversee their transactions. On top of the existing features, users will soon be able to list the integrated merchants within the Colendi network and apply for microcredits. Interested in learning more about Colendi’s alpha project? Volunteering for the alpha product and helping us with Q&A testing is still an option. If you are interested, click the link below and leave your contact information. We have already sent 2000 members of our volunteers their access. Get in line to be one of the firsts to use the Colendi application and we will reach out and include you in our development process. Get Access - Colendi proudly announces new TechPaper. It contains comprehensive information about Colendi’s technology and the programming structures. We welcome everybody to take a look at the backstage of how Colendi platform will be functioning. Tech Paper Colendi Tech Paper highlights are compiled in the Tech Paper Announcement blog. We advise you to read this blog to understand the basic of the Colendi Technology. https://www.colendi.com/blog/colendi-announces-tech-paper/ The Second Wave of The Bounty Campaign Has Finished! We announced the new phase of Colendi Bounty Campaign to our community. So, how can you contribute to Colendi? How can you use your skills to collaborate with us and be an active member of Colendi Project? Colendi Bounty Campaigns are comprised of many tasks such as translations, content creations, attracting new members, joining social media channels personally etc. We will basically announce the bounty types as waves, and define in them the tasks for our community and the relevant rewards. You may follow the links below to check out what tasks are available and how you may get involved: Our bitcointalk.org link announcing the bounty campaigns Bounty campaigns on the social media channels: Telegram, Reddit, Twitter and Referrals! Bounty campaigns on the bounty.global site time limit has finished for the second round. We advise you to stay in loop to participate in all our upcoming campaigns! Media - Colendi proudly presented Pelli Wang, Head of Partnerships in Consensys as new Colendi Adviser. You may check out her profile and her vast experience in the blockchain and investment sector below! Pelli Wang heads partnerships at Token Foundry at Consensys Capital, a platform that combines token economics, game theory and distributed systems to launch well-designed and governed token sales on blockchain. Prior to joining Consensys, she led venture investments and partnerships for SeedInvest, an early pioneer in equity crowdfunding through the JOBS act. Pelli has consistently been at the forefront of the democratization of fundraising for emerging technologies and innovations. She also has spoken at numerous industry conferences, judged at startup competitions and mentored entrepreneurs. - Colendi new token paper with the latest structure of the token and its functionalities is now available in Mandarin. V1.1 Token paper answers most questions you have been asking us and reveals how Colendi protocols and the token function. - Frequently Asked Questions -FAQ- is now live in our website. You can find the answers to many of your questions about Colendi. Check it out now! It is a great pleasure to be able to tell you about our latest activities. While you let us get back to business, you may check out the links below and find out more about the Colendi Project! We will keep on working hard for the Colendi Project and keep you updated. Keep following us!

https://medium.com/colendi/colendi-weekly-update-03-09-september-260e11634245

[]

2018-09-09 13:29:58.276000+00:00

['Updates', 'Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Ethereum', 'Bitcoin']

How To Succeed Without Being A Workaholic: Twitter Co-founder Shares His Secret

Stone proves you can have your cake and eat it, too. Stop me if you’ve heard this before. To succeed, you must eat, sleep and breathe your work. You should put your blinders on, block out all distractions and keep your eyes on the prize. For most of us, this is our mantra. I certainly believed it until I interviewed one of today’s greatest entrepreneurs, Isaac “Biz” Stone. As the cofounder of Twitter and Blogger, his success speaks for itself. But what’s his secret? Growing up, did he solely focus on startups until he reached 10,000 hours? To understand Stone’s success, let’s rewind to his years at Wellesley High School. Back then, his friends were drama nerds, his favorite movie was The Princess Bride and he directed and starred in the school’s production of Robin Hood (posters around town read, “Isaac Stone presents: Robin Hood, Starring Biz Stone!”). He even found a way to put together the play after the school unexpectedly cut its budget. “We were scrappy. I remember going door-to-door in January collecting old Christmas trees for the backdrop of Sherwood Forest,” Stone recalled. “Come show time, we drew a full house. We did matinees, evening shows, and more. It was so successful that we even took the show on the road for a little while.” It’s easy to assume that Stone’s devotion to theater put him behind peers who spent that time hacking away in computer labs. However, University of Michigan Psychologists Mary Gick and Keith Holyoak say the opposite. In 1980, they conducted a fascinating experiment that explains why Stone’s “irrelevant” experiences actually boosted his creativity, problem-solving, and entrepreneurial abilities. To illustrate, consider this brainteaser: Suppose you’re a doctor faced with a patient who has a malignant tumor in his stomach. It’s impossible to operate on the patient, but unless the tumor is destroyed, the patient will die. There is a kind of ray that can destroy the tumor. If the rays reach the tumor all at once at a sufficiently high intensity, the tumor will be destroyed. Unfortunately, at this intensity, the healthy tissue that the rays pass through on the way to the tumor will also be destroyed. At lower intensities, the rays are harmless to healthy tissue but will not affect the tumor either. What type of procedure might be used to destroy the tumor with the rays, and at the same time avoid destroying the healthy tissue? If you can’t solve it, you’re not alone. Only 3% of Gick and Holyoak’s subjects could. Now, read this unrelated passage and see if anything changes. A fortress was located in the center of the country. Many roads radiated out from the fortress. A general wanted to capture the fortress with his army. But he also wanted to prevent mines on the roads from destroying his army and neighboring villages. As a result, the entire army could not all go down one road to attack the fortress. However, the entire army was needed to capture the fortress; an attack by one small group could not succeed. The general therefore divided his army into several small groups. He positioned the small groups at the heads of the different roads. The small groups simultaneously converged on the fortress. In this way, the army captured the fortress. When this military story preceded the medical problem, subjects were 67% more likely to find the solution! If you’re still stumped, you kill the tumor the same way the army conquered the fortress (blast low intensity rays from different sides of the tumor and have them converge in the middle. That way, the collective ray will have a high intensity to destroy the tumor without harming the healthy tissue around it). Drawing powerful analogies between two unrelated worlds is called conceptual blending. This process has sparked countless breakthroughs, including Henry Ford’s famous idea for automobile assembly lines, which came after he saw slaughterhouses process pigs the same way. Stone changed my perspective on working hard vs. working smart. For Stone, conceptual blending between theater and startups was his X-factor. It gave him unique insights beyond others in the tech industry. His knack for understanding a customer’s pain points derives from his acting years, when he learned to empathize and put himself in other peoples’ shoes. His charisma on stage later translated to the boardroom, where he won over investors instead of audience members. “If you want to be good at what you do, you have to have new, varied experiences as much as possible,” Stone explained. “I’ve always thought that creativity and problem-solving comes from lateral thinking. In other words, the ability to connect dots you otherwise couldn’t connect if you didn’t have a robust set of experiences to draw from.” Today, Stone still adds to his robust set of experiences. Recently, he produced a short movie for Project Imagit10n with legendary director Ron Howard. Just like high school, Stone did it all: he spent many late nights writing storylines, casting actors and directing on set. The result was Evermore, a moving film about a girl who reunites her mother and grandfather using motifs from Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven. “I feared the ‘go back to your day job’ comment,” he said. “But it’s always worth getting new experiences when you can. The more things you do outside your comfort zone, the more you’ll make leaps and jumps when you return to your ‘normal work life.’ The more you’ll be able to see further ahead than others.” Stone’s story shows the importance of exploring the unimportant. His outlet was theater but for you it may be improv comedy, photography, or painting. For me, it’s creating cartoons. Stone helped me realize it’s beneficial to pursue interests outside work. Before, I felt downright guilty. I thought the time I spent doodling took away from my job as a product marketer. But the opposite is true. Creating the Every Vowel cartoon series has made me a clearer thinker, better designer and stronger copywriter. Looking beyond our industry helps us succeed within it. Next time you find yourself eating, sleeping, and breathing your work, just remember: taking your blinders off doesn’t mean taking your eyes off the prize.

https://medium.com/startup-grind/how-to-succeed-without-being-a-workaholic-twitter-co-founder-shares-his-secret-7dfd3d1a260a

['Jon Youshaei']

2016-10-26 22:21:33.986000+00:00

['Life Lessons', 'Storytelling', 'Tech', 'Twitter', 'Entrepreneurship']

Why We Need To Call It Climate Crisis

Why We Need To Call It Climate Crisis Some neurobiology and how it can help avert global catastrophe The original People’s Climate March, 2014, Christyl Rivers Are you bored with ‘the sky is falling Chicken Littles?’ People are increasingly aware of climate havoc and its consequences. By now, many people are believing their own eyes, ears, smoke alarms, and flooded basements. However, an even greater number of people have not yet had such critical loss, nor will they, until the damage is too late to reverse. Perhaps our ho-hum descriptions of the problem, ‘change’ and ‘warming’ need to be as retrofitted as our homes and businesses. Recent neurological research has revealed that our most common language for the climate, and extinction, era we now live in, is failing. For many people, they have just gotten so tired, and in some cases confused, that the words don’t register. Or, for some, they don’t believe the science and think the alarm is agenda-based fear-mongering. But, if anything, most researchers are now realizing language, and message, have not been urgent enough to stir action. Brain sparks could start conversations before wildfires do Advisors and researchers have revealed that using the terms ‘climate crisis’, rather than ‘climate change’, is more effective use of meaningful language. For some places, particularly in Europe, this has already become the more common terminology. The words “climate change” and “global warming” are so worn, and frayed right now, that people hearing them no longer register an emotional, and therefore, investment worthy response. Consultants at Spark Neuro, who study the brain processing of new information, have run labs with people with conservative, liberal, and independent political views. One might think that the liberal Democrats, those most pushing the alarms buttons the hardest and demanding more leadership and a green new deal — especially for healthcare and jobs creation and economic prosperity in green industry — would have the greatest response to emotionally laden words. They don’t. It is in fact, the Republicans tested who showed the most emotionally engaged reaction to words used to describe our over-heating planet. Three times more Republicans tested revealed more meaningful emotional response to the term climate crisis. With an EEG, electroencephalograph, a significant spike in electrochemical brain activity was measured. And with GSR, Galvanic Skin Response, receptors fastened to finger tips revealed heightened emotion was skin moisture and temperature measurements. Facial response was also measured. These are the same sort of tests used to detect emotional, and stressful, reactions as lie detector tests often employ. The term ‘environmental destruction’ was also more effective, than the just as accurate ‘destabilization.” The debate ‘debate’ needs to abate University of Bristol cognitive psychologist, Stephan Lewandowsky, recently spoke about the consequences of imprecise language around climate. “Concerning the specific term ‘climate crisis’, I think it strikes an appropriate balance of conveying urgency without hyperbole.” Indeed, scientific papers, journals, and thousands of articles on the subject have routinely been using the term ‘crisis’ for more than a decade now. Clive Hamilton, expert, author, and philosopher, has remarked that “We should treat the public like adults, and tell the truth.” Journalists, then, are the ones who have been a bit slow to jump on the trend. Many who study psychology, culture, politics, and more have instead made real efforts to balance skepticism with climate science. What resulted is what Science Alert magazine calls “balancing opinions” which is ineffective at conveying truth about real concerns because “There is plenty of evidence and expert opinion that the crisis label is not baseless alarmism — indeed, it has its place in how we communicate about climate change, and we can expect to see more crisis talk going forward. Even if some will continue to disagree.” Among the general public, the terms ‘tipping point’, seems less impressive than emphasizing a ‘point of no return.’ And contrary to popular belief, the term global warming was not replaced with climate change to recruit activism, or terrify people. It was, in fact, put forward by the Republican strategist Frank Luntz, during the second Bush administration precisely because it is less frightening to the general public. As for scientists, they have used both terms to more accurately describe, and record, two different phenomena. Another Tipping point the world over But there is also good news about tipping points and political power. People are overwhelmingly realizing the potential hazards of continuing on with polluting and heat-causing fossil fuels. New emphasis is being demanded of world leaders, and in the USA, political contenders for 2020. The news is out about cover ups by energy giants and oil companies over the last fifty years. And a new generation, led by young people with every reason to care more about the future than older “fossils” are taking up their concerns for a cleaner world. We are seeing with people such as AOC and Greta Thunberg, Young Climate and Extinction Rebellion, an ever-growing demand for a greener world. Waking people up to the factual dangers, and more importantly, to the reality of what each individual person can do to feel empowered and effective, requires strong words and deeds. If that is what it takes to avoid loss of life, resources and economy, and trillions of dollars in projected costs that climate chaos will bring, we have to take on the challenge.

https://christylrivers.medium.com/why-we-need-to-call-it-climate-crisis-3e0c0d725a94

['Christyl Rivers']

2019-07-10 02:19:24.864000+00:00

['Climate Change', 'Crisis', 'Biology', 'Language', 'Science']

First impressions while learning Elixir

My Experience Learning Elixir A month ago… Coming from college with a very strong foundation of Object Oriented Programming (OOP), I was a bit scared to jump into the Functional Programming wave. Haskell was the first and only functional language that I’ve learned and I didn’t like it to be honest with you. But now, I had to get out my comfort zone and accept this huge challenge. My first job as an Elixir developer. A lot of things had to change. My line of thought. The way that I’m used to writing code. But all of that was easily overcome by my desire to learn, and my expectations about what Elixir would provide in terms of knowledge were huge! Online Tutorials 💻 I’ve started my learning by watching online tutorials. Followed from beginning to the end, these videos, provided in the learning plan defined by my peers at Coletiv, aided to understand the basic concepts of Elixir and Phoenix. If you’re looking for a good course, this was the one I did on Udemy. It’s a great Elixir learning path for people that prefer learning by watching tutorials! In the first days, the motivation to start working was dominating and increased the determination of finishing the tutorials with success. However, after finishing them, the retained knowledge was very vague. I was tired and did not feel the challenge of wanting to do more … Elixir and Phoenix Books 📚 A coworker heard my feedback about the online tutorials and we quickly started looking for alternatives. A certain day, sitting at my desk, was an Elixir/Phoenix book called “Programming Phoenix 1.4” written by Chris McCord, Bruce Tate and José Valim. After skimming through the book, I was already thinking “Here we go again!”. Opposite to my thoughts, the book really motivated me, pushing me to keep learning about Elixir and without doubt, in a few days, I was getting more comfortable with Functional Programming. I finished the book with a completely different posture compared to the previous experience. Understanding the code was now easier, and the fear of doing mistakes was close to none. I was more confident! Adding to that, I managed to take part in the conversations about elixir at Coletiv. I was now ready to start my first project! Notes: The books I read until now at Coletiv were Programming Phoenix 1.4 and Craft GraphQL APIs in Elixir with Absinthe. THE PROJECT 🤩 The time had come to test my knowledge. I was confident it would go well, that I had a good funcional thinking and satisfactory code quality (for a junior that was afraid of the language)! My coworkers helped me a lot to expand my knowledge and gave me the necessary tools to start my journey with Elixir. Fernando Pessoa, a famous Portuguese poet once wrote: “First you find it strange. Then you can’t get enough of it.” This is exactly how I describe the path that led me to where I am now. Looking back to the Nuno from a month ago, I really couldn’t recognise myself. The fear of making mistakes, the discomfort and the lack of security no longer existed. Two weeks passed since the beginning of the project and, each day, my desire to learn increases. Everyday, a new challenge appears peeking at the door, and I feel able to confront it (sometimes with help of my colleagues 😄) without fear. Now I have the confidence to implement features, solve bugs, do refactoring and test my code. My learning curve 😄 Lesson learned I feel that the function that defines my learning curve is too complex, because during this month I went through many ups and downs, but at this moment I’m in exponential growth stage, and I wish I can sustain it! I have to thank every single one of my colleagues at Coletiv. They helped since the beginning to the end of this first learning process, and I can undoubtedly state that this is a first dream job! Nuno, do you prefer iOS or Elixir? Elixir! Thank you for reading! Thank you so much for reading and if you enjoyed this article make sure to hit that 👏👏 button. It means a lot to us! Also don’t forget to follow Coletiv on Medium, Twitter, and LinkedIn as we keep posting more and more interesting articles on multiple technologies. In case you don’t know, Coletiv is a software development studio from Porto specialised in Elixir, iOS, and Android app development. But we do all kinds of stuff. We take care of UX/UI design, web development, and even security for you. So, let’s craft something together?

https://medium.com/coletiv-stories/first-month-learning-curve-at-elixir-b99f839a032d

['Nuno Bernardes']

2020-03-03 10:01:01.628000+00:00

['Software Development', 'Backend Development', 'Learning To Code', 'Elixirlang', 'Elixir']

The Mobile Web is Broken, But it Can Be Fixed

You’re browsing on your smartphone when you see a great deal for airline tickets. You click the link to nab them, but the airline’s site crashes. You finally find that rare pair of sneaks, but the site’s shopping cart won’t work on your iPhone. Broken mobile sites are all too common, despite incredible growth in smartphones and mobile devices. Why? Developers simply don’t test their mobile sites as much as they test on desktop. That’s why Mozilla (makers of the world’s last independent browser Firefox) has partnered with testing platform BrowserStack to make the mobile Web a better and more accessible place for everyone. Mobile browsing is blowing up. According to Cisco’s latest online traffic study, global mobile Almost half a billion (429 million) mobile devices and connections were added in 2016 — most of those were smartphones. Global mobile devices and connections in 2016 grew to 8.0 billion, up from 7.6 billion in 2015. In 2016, the typical smartphone generated 48 times more mobile data traffic (1,614 MB per month) than the typical basic-feature cell phone (which generated only 33 MB per month of mobile data traffic). People are spending a ton of time on their smartphones, but it also seems that they’re not spending ton of money shopping on their smartphones. According to comScore and Business Insider, In the second quarter of 2015, U.S. adults spent 59% of their time on mobile and 41% on desktop. But they only made 15% of their purchases on mobile devices. There are some real, physical reasons why people don’t use their phones to shop online. First, small screen size makes it difficult or frustrating to shop and enter payment details. Mobile users also have to contend with shoddy Internet connections. Still, both of these problems can be overcome with well-made mobile sites that are thoroughly tested. At the very least, mobile sites should be optimized for smaller touch screens and slower connections. Most developers test their sites manually on a handful of browsers and devices, but it’s difficult to test on every combo — they simply don’t have access to the every device on the planet and building a test lab just isn’t practical or cost effective. BrowserStack Live lets developers test sites on thousands of real devices. Their lab has the latest mobile devices, including iPad, iPhone, Nexus, Samsung Galaxy, and Windows Phone. Here’s how it works: Log in to BrowserStack Live, pick your device/browser combo, then load your site. You can click through your site or web app to identify bugs or design flaws, then pinpoint and fix them using your browser’s developer tools. It’s a quick and easy way to expand your browser testing beyond the browsers on your work machine. BrowserStack also offers advanced automated testing. BrowserStack Automate lets developers run Selenium tests on multiple virtual machines simultaneously. Write an automated test, connect to the BrowserStack cloud, and test sites against virtual machines and devices in minutes. Test results, including screenshots and movies, are logged in a BrowserStack account. Automated testing can eliminate errors and deliver consistent data about performance and failures. Cross-browser testing is crucial for developers. If your site is broken in just one browser/OS combo, it could cost thousands and ruin your client relationships. And while it may be tempting to simply test your sites in your dev machine’s browser and call it good, you could easily miss a bug or design quirk that could affect millions of users.

https://medium.com/mozilla-tech/the-mobile-web-is-broken-but-it-can-be-fixed-7783e93a7e5a

['Dustin Driver']

2017-06-22 19:14:29.534000+00:00

['Tech', 'Mobile', 'Technology', 'Apps', 'Software Development']

Herbalism, fad or future?

“Turmeric is a hype.” A very definitive statement I read on an IG story by someone who had prescribed to the biochemical model of herbs, which is what is used by the modern pharmaceutical industry. This model analyses the chemical constituents of herbs and tries to identify and extract the active ingredients. Herbs are judged by their chemical components, and if they are not strongly active, the herb is said to have little medicinal value. The complex herbs we find in Eastern medicine, such as the tonic Ayurvedic herb ashwagandha, often don’t have a simple active ingredient and would therefore be considered to have little biochemical value. Photo by FOODISM360 on Unsplash This model perpetuates the idea that the human body is essentially a chemical factory that can be influenced by feeding it the right chemicals, without any recognition of the prana (vital life force) or consciousness that transcends or underlies this biochemistry. As a result, this model does not work through nature, but rather tries to manipulate it to achieve dramatic results. And while there is no denying that they are effective, its results are not sustainable in the long run. How many patients do you know that take drugs to counteract the side effects of their other drugs? As an example, diuretic drugs are far more potent than their herbal counterparts, but do we also consider their weakening action on the kidneys? Modern pharmaceuticals focus on alleviating symptoms on a short-term basis, but the long-term effects of medicine are so much more important and generally overlooked in this system. The bioenergetic model Ayurveda, along with other traditional forms of medicine including Traditional Chinese Medicine, and ancient Greek Medicine, classify herbs according to their taste, energy, post-digestive effects, and specific action, relative to the elements they are made up of. It mostly focuses on the effect of herbs on the whole body from an Ayurvedic physiological perspective: the Doshas (mind-body constitutions), tissues, systems and waste materials. From a biochemical standpoint, this approach seems simplistic and naive as there is no analysis of chemical components and their effects. But the same can be said the other way around. The biochemical model could also be seen as naive because it misses the main focus of healing: the effect of drugs and herbs on the life-force of the body. So, what if we accept that herbs cannot always be understood chemically? The prana both in herbs and the body is something that cannot be measured (yet) by the tools we have developed –just like bacteria couldn’t be studied until a few hundred years ago because the tools weren’t yet invented. That doesn’t mean microorganisms weren’t there before we had microscopes. Herbs, as complex organic substances, cannot be fully understood outside of the human body as such. They may catalyse certain processes in the body that cannot be understood simply in terms of biochemistry. It is my current view that when herbs are studied in a clinical trial, they are taken out of the holistic context they were part of, which includes diet and lifestyle. If we then proceed to test these herbs in a lab using the same framework as defined by the biochemical approach, we’re going to get completely different results. Photo by Eneko Uruñuela on Unsplash When looking at Ayurveda specifically as a system of healing, we should understand that it is not a standardised form of medicine and therefore does not have ‘one size fits all’ remedies for each disease as the allopathic system would. As Dr David Frawley, an American Ayurvedic practitioner, tells his patients: “You cannot expect to get well through natural healing methods, if your life is out of harmony with nature.” In other words, you cannot expect your daily turmeric latte to lower inflammation if you are seated behind a desk 9 hours a day and prepare food from a box at home. The allopathic model seems to be: identify disease through symptoms → treat symptoms. This perpetuates a cycle we can’t seem to break out of, which is especially true for mysterious chronic diseases such as IBS, chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. The natural system of medicine on the other hand identifies the root cause of disease, and proceeds to restore the natural balance of the body through the usage of herbs, diet, and lifestyle practices. Thus, as a holistic system of medicine, its effectiveness simply cannot be measured by non-holistic quantitative testing. So how can we know if it works? Through personal experience, and through the experience of the societies that have come before us in the last 5000 years. There is a reason Ayurveda is gaining popularity in the West. We are finally beginning to understand the importance of living a life that is in alignment with our nature. Disclaimer: the intention of this article is not to take the place of personalised care provided by a health care provider. It is purely educational in nature about Ayurveda and various wellness topics, and is not meant to diagnose, treat, or prevent any disease. Background: Ayurvedic Healing Course, the American Institute of Vedic Studies

https://medium.com/@elinepostma/herbalism-fad-or-future-2d891d1df151

['Eline Postma']

2020-11-16 15:40:56.602000+00:00

['Herbalism', 'Pharmaceutical', 'Ayurveda', 'Holistic Health', 'Chronic Disease']

Webdevelopment-How To Positively Fix DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN In Android-Free 8 Tips | MOHANMEKAP

Webdevelopment is the main criteria where we do find more and more difficulties in dealing with WordPress based self-hosted sites which works in two way manner is that of one it first needs to connect to a content management system and then it runs a website in yours web browser. In the Chrome for android version 87.0.4280.101 I found a new feature from its Settings menu.Then go to P:rivacy and Security and then go to Secure DNS and click on the drop down and then select Google Public DNS. See the screen recorder. I updated Google Chrome for android in my Android 10 device and then I browsed my website as this is my regular habit to see whether my website is live or not but I found this on the webdeveloment of chrome for android. I found the following error with Chrome of android. Table of Contents: Webdevelopment-DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN in Chrome Webdevelopment tutorials How to fix DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN on Android for Chrome Webdevelopment is a difficult subject and here I found that my website is appearing in all the other web surfaces but not in this android for chrome. Now after changing above mentioned steps to change DNS now my website is showing the above expression and not rendering at all. This article is about this fact of webdevelopment where we have to solve this in order to make my website appear promptly and securely. Then I check my website on weather it is down for me or for all in the web services and in this webdevelopment I found that my website is live but not showing on my web browser. This means the problem is with my device or web browser and I have to solve it out to know the status of my website any time I choose to see. DNS is the short name of a domain name system. When there are difficulties in configuration or problem with DNS server then the above mentioned error comes to the webdevelopment point of view in chrome web browsers. DNS are nodes of websites and it connects to varieties of webs servers and then website appear on web browsers. In this case DNS failed to connect with servers and provide the right kind of Name server which reality helps the website to run easily on user’s webbrowser.

https://medium.com/@freewarespace/webdevelopment-how-to-positively-fix-dns-probe-finished-nxdomain-in-android-free-8-tips-96d6ec0f999a

['Mohan Manohar Mekap']

2020-12-22 09:46:58.121000+00:00

['Website', 'Web Development', 'Google', 'WordPress']

What is Lo Han?

Image courtesy of Pixabay What is Lo Han? Lo Han is a natural sweetener made from Monk Fruit. Lo Han is diabetic friendly with zero carbs. Great for Keto, Paleo and Low Carb Diets. Also known as Lo Han Quo, Luo Han Kuo, Swingle Fruit, or Monk Fruit. What is it? Lo Han sweetener is extracted from Monk Fruit, a plant that is a member of the cucumber and squash family. It is a small green-brown fruit with a hard but thin shell, grown in the mountains of Southern China. It is reported to be 250 times sweeter than sugar. Just a bit of a tangent here. Sugar is pretty sweet right? So if something was twice as sweet, how would you know that? So how on earth do they measure something that is 250 or 1000 times sweeter than sugar? By weight? By volume? Or do “they” just say, “Oh this is soooooo sweet, it must taste 250 times sweeter than sugar!” I’m OK now, sometimes I just wonder about strange things! Lo Han has been used for centuries, in China as a sweetener and as a home remedy for colds and sore throats. Where can you find it? You’ll have to visit a BIG city health food store for this, since it is not nearly as well-known as Splenda, Stevia or a few of the other alternatives. Lo Han comes in liquid and powder form and can be used as a cooking alternative. If your city has a China Town, you will probably find it in the larger stores. In my experience you will most likely find this sweetener labeled Monk Fruit. Probably the easiest place to get Lo Han is from Amazon (affiliate link). Taste Test: Here’s where your genetics come into play. Some people say it is metallic and bitter. Other people say it has NO after taste at all! So if you are trying it for the first time, get the smallest amount you can, because metallic and bitter is NO fun at all. Brings licking copper pipes to mind! If you’ve never licked a copper pipe, my advice is to NOT! Is it safe? Lo Han is accumulating a growing audience who rave about it. According to the Chinese who have been using it for hundreds of years, Lo Han is safe and effective. There are virtually no studies for or against. Some people simply do not trust products sourced from China. Great for Diabetics Lo Han has a very LOW glycemic index ranking, which means it is good alternative for Diabetics. Unlike sweeteners such as Splenda, it will not affect your blood glucose readings. Other great choices for Diabetics include Stevia, Xylitol, Erythritol and Swerve. Lo Han is stable in heat so you can use it in cooking and baking. CONTROVERSY: Other than the fact that it MAY come from China, I couldn’t find any studies, negative or positive. Summary: Lo Han is a sweetener made from Monk Fruit. It is a low-glycemic product that absorbs into your blood stream VERY slowly. It as a low to no impact on your blood sugar, so is an excellent choice for Diabetics. This article was originally published on the Sugar-Free-Zone.com Melanie Rockett has been a freelance writer for over 40 years. About 15 years ago she was diagnosed with Diabetes — and began a long journey of discovery. Today she lives a sugar-free life and has lost 120 pounds. Her website Sugar-Free-Zone.com is all about living sugar-free and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Do YOU want to live sugar-free? Get regular story updates as well as fabulous sugar-free recipes by joining the Sugar Free Zone on Medium newsletter. https://medium.com/sugar-free-zone Here are a few other Diabetic Friendly sweeteners:

https://medium.com/sugar-free-zone/what-is-lo-han-70deadc73374

['Melanie Rockett']

2019-11-22 19:00:27.502000+00:00

['Health', 'Food', 'Lifestyle', 'Diet', 'Weight Loss']

How Netflixonomics and Fashionomics are Converging.

How Netflixonomics and Fashionomics are converging. Most would agree that Netflix has changed the way we watch Television, but that would be only half the story. What Netflix has changed in monumental proportions is the economics of entertainment. Netflix represents a class of digitally native companies that have built a deeply personal relationship with the consumer and continue to improve the affinity with every byte of data they collect. Amazon, Spotify, and Google are other examples of such companies. Back to the economics of entertainment — let’s look at the two key aspects of the value chain — Production (producers, studios) and Distribution (networks, theatres, and streaming services such as Netflix). While Netflix started purely as a distribution company (distributing content that others produced to end consumer through mail and streaming), it has very rapidly evolved into a production powerhouse with an estimated spend of $12–13B in 2018–19, expected to grow to $22.5B by 2022. To give you some perspective, this number is just shy of the total currently spent on entertainment by all of America’s networks and cable companies. Take a moment and let that sink in. Netflix expanding to capture a larger share of the value chain. But that’s not the most remarkable part of the story, what is remarkable is that it can produce and distribute content more profitably than any of its peers. If you asked why, then I applaud your curosity — in simplistic terms, Netflix understands the calculus of whether a show or film is worth making, better than any other player. Here’s how: Netflix has created some 2,000 “taste clusters” by watching its watchers. Analysis of how well a show will reach, attract and retain customers in specific clusters, lets Netflix calculate what sort of acquisition cost is justified for such a show. It can thus target quite precise niches, rather than the broad demographic groups that broadcast television depends on. Example of Taste Clusters — Source: https://bit.ly/2Ta2UXf With quantitative understanding and personalized marketing, Netflix has managed to revive canceled shows with loyal fan bases, such as “Gilmore Girls”, and take up shows others turned down, such as “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”. Documentaries such as “Wild Wild Country” have become hot not just by word of mouth, but by being pushed on the home screen poster by individualized poster. The Economist states that “Netflix can take risks on such projects because failure costs it less than it does others. It lets the company get better results for a lesser-quality show than its peers can by showing it only to those who will like it.” Another great example is “The Kissing Booth”, a romantic high-school comedy released in 2018. Critics hated it. But it has been seen by more than 20m households; millions of teenagers targeted by algorithms seem to love its leads, Jacob Elordi and Joey King. (Source: Economist) If at this stage you are wondering what does this have to do with Fashionomics, then let’s dive right into answering that question. From how I see it, Fashionomics is converging with Netflixonomics in 3 ways: Digital native retailers in Fashion will scale their own production just as Netflix has. Large digitally native (Pure Play) retailers such as Amazon in more mass/premium market and Net-a-Porter in the luxury market will begin to build strong portfolios of their own brands powered by their deep understanding of the customer tastes and behaviors. Just like Netflix, the retailers can understand very precisely what product attributes (color, size, style, fit, etc.) and customer interests (brands, categories, trends, etc.) work for which segments, using such information to estimate precise demand and produce only the necessary quantities to test, learn and iterate. Hence, reducing the risk of overstocks and obsolescence costs, a major drag on the profitability for any retailer. Multi-brand digital retailers expanding to capture a larger share of the value chain For example, Amazon’s activewear brand, Peak Velocity sells a $79 hoodie that has a Best Seller rank of #38 in the Active Hoodies category, one of Nike’s strongest categories. While Peak Velocity’s ranking of # 38 (as of Dec 6th), may seemingly be unimpressive, what may change your perspective is that the brand was launched only in November, and quickly climbed up the ladder to # 38 of a category where 62% of the revenue comes from a long tail of brands other than the top 5 brands. Why? A highly targeted product with personalized marketing increases sales conversion. And Amazon is not alone in following this strategy, leading digital luxury retailers such as Yoox-Net-a-Porter, with brands such as Iris and Ink (Outnet), MR. P (Mr. Porter) and Matches Fashion with Raey, are beginning to make serious investments in this space, learning from the retailers such as Asos, whose private label business contributes almost 50% of its revenue. This is quite a departure from the traditional wholesale model, where a brand mandates a certain mix of products that a retailer must buy even though the selection is not entirely corroborated by consumer behavior on the platform. While Private Label strategy is not new to the playbook of retailers, the large digital retailers are building a new moat — customer data and personalized marketing, something that traditional brands lack due to the absence of direct, measurable access to digital consumers at scale. 2. Increasingly influenced by data and algorithms, Production will become more agile and targeted Just as Netflix is able to create “The Kissing Booth” and find 20M viewers for the movie through its intimate understanding of its customers. Large digital retailers can find niche targets to cater to and fill the small white spaces that large brands are less likely to worry about. One can argue that Fashion is seasonal and the historical data may not be the best predictor of future demand. That could have been true a decade ago, when fashion products, as a complex amalgamation of attributes such as color, style, silhouette, pattern, etc. could not be decoded and decoupled. However, with advances in machine learning and image recognition algorithms, a fashion product can be decoded into multiple attributes, and a more sophisticated predictive model can be created to suggest which attributes, based on onsite behavior and third-party data, are likely to be preferred by customers in the near future. Retailers can then start with cherry-picking the most popular attributes and overlay with the customer segments that have the highest affinity for such attributes to start sketching out the blueprints of their private label investments. Agility is the key here. Rachael Proud, the designer who is leading Matches Fashion Private Label — Raey, says “If we’ve got a jumper and it’s a best seller and we’ve only ever done it in blue, we are immediately thinking: let’s do it in black,” she says, adding that if fabrics and trimmings are in stock, Raey can deliver product in as little as four weeks. (Source: BOF) Proud and the Raey team have data on their side: they have a deep level of information evaluated on a weekly basis, from cost-per-click to real-time sell-through. The unprecedented access to data allows these retailers to react in ways traditional brands can’t. Example: In 2016, MatchesFashion, shifted Raey’s deliveries from seasonal to monthly collections that arrive on the site each week. These more frequent deliveries also help drive traffic to the site, says Proud. (Source: BOF) While most of these retailers are focusing their initial efforts on the Basics (low risk, high turnover category), they will eventually start pushing the boundaries to scale their private label contribution. Something that a player such as Zalando is already demonstrating by conjuring up 17 private labels since 2010 and now generates 500 million euros ($599 million) of its 3.64 billion euros in annual sales from them, offering everything from Pier One sweaters costing less than 30 euros to Mai Piu Senza high-heeled boots at 170 euros or more. (Source: Bloomberg) Obviously, these retailers will have to find the balance between scaling their own labels and protecting relationships with the brands that represent a sizeable share of their revenue. If retailers start to eat the share of the brands, it may take away the preferential treatments that these retailers get from the brands such as exclusive collections or early deliveries. A more likely scenario is that the retailers and brands will co-develop capsule collections by combining their respective core expertise in consumer behavior mapping and product development. As an example, Calvin Klein partnered with Amazon recently to launch an exclusive collection online and in Amazon pop-ups. A trend that is definitely likely to continue. Finally, just as Netflix is able to attract both successful writers/directors and identify and bet on new/emerging talent, digital retailers can command the same advantage. Net-a-porter recently launched a group of emerging designers through The Vanguard Program. While it is projecting this program as a mentorship program, it is really a way to both cater to the needs of the niche and emerging segments (white spaces) and to get greater control of their supply chains and thus improve profitability. 3. Distribution will increasingly become cheaper, personal, and global Netflix is increasingly becoming a global household name in entertainment. It has very successfully created regional content and found an audience for such content globally, hence, improving the ROI on the content investments. For example, Dark is a German original released in the fourth quarter of 2017 that did well in its home country, and, according to the company, “has also been viewed by millions of members in the US and has outsized watching throughout Europe and Latin America.” With e-commerce penetration expected to get into double digits across the globe, fuelled both by in-country and cross-country growth, the cost of logistics (cost per order) will continue to decline. Amazon is already achieving such scale and costs, where you can get free next-day delivery (in India, with Prime) and cross country delivery for under $10 (US to Dubai for less than 500 GMS of package). Potential of Cross Border E-commerce. Source: DHL While the last decade was about marketing to segments based on demographics, the sophisticated personalization and marketing tools can allow you to do so based on specific interests. This means that a product sitting in any part of the world can be matched with the interests of a person sitting in another part of the world, and not only marketed but also shipped seamlessly. Farfetch is one of the leading retailers that is connecting this global supply with global demand, unlocking value for local boutiques and brands through global exposure. Very soon, if not already, a customer living in Australia can discover and buy a local designer dress (say, an Abaya) by a Lebanese designer operating out of Dubai, all because of the power of personalization algorithms and cheap global shipping. While these cross border sales are still a small portion of the overall e-commerce, this share will continue to grow rapidly. The Bottomline If you are a digital retailer, the playbook to scale profitably and thrive is emerging clearly. To fight reliance on markdowns or promotions and boost profitability, you need exclusivity and scarcity as weapons. Not placing bets in the areas above will only make it harder to fend off the competition and to grow in a world where customers are overwhelmed with digital noise, and thus will increasingly give their business to retailers that intimately understand their tastes and can respond to their Insta-fashion needs that can change in a snap. (pun intended) For brands, it’s time to accept that your turf is under siege. The new breed of tech businesses has clearly demonstrated that platforms which own the consumer relationship and leverage data to deliver a highly personalized experience, will continue to eat away large portions of the value chain. If the majority of your business is driven by a wholesale business, it’s time to think diversification and find ways to get closer to the customer. One sure way is switching to the marketplace model with digital retailers in exchange for customer insights and data, leading to co-development of products, to reduce the inventory risk and obsolescence cost from the value chain. Co-developed, smaller, exclusive and non-seasonal collections can help brands maintain both the novelty and profitability. Obviously, this requires rethinking of the brands’ supply-chains as the long lead times are a challenge, especially for luxury brands. Needless to say, it’s not going to be easy, but who said it’s easy to thrive in an industry that is silently being disrupted. While Netflix has reinvented the economics of the entertainment business and started a gold-rush of original content distributed through personalized marketing, can large Fashion digital retailers follow this lead and achieve such scale?

https://amitrawal.medium.com/how-netflixonomics-and-fashionomics-are-converging-120acf55b4f0

['Amit Rawal']

2019-03-16 16:41:58.706000+00:00

['Retail', 'Personalization', 'Netflix', 'Amazon', 'Ecommerce']

Mastery: It’s the Secret to Your Success

Along with a dozen amateur marathon runners, I spent a year training under a talented long-distance running coach. He represented Ireland in 24-hour endurance races around the world. As inspiration, he shared his training runs on a Facebook messenger group and via the Garmin app alongside practical running advice. I was struck by the consistency of his regular practice. Now, my running wasn’t at the same level as this coach, but his advice motivated me to train harder. I spent weeks training for a race only to be derailed by injury. I complained to my coach about doing the work and feeling like I was getting nowhere fast. “Bryan, I’ve had more good days at the office than bad ones,” he said. In this case my coach’s “office” was the running track. He was a master at his craft, and he trained without expecting a quick fix or instant result. This approach to mastery applies to finding success, whether inside or outside the office. Hone Your Skills A business owner grows his company by attracting qualified traffic from social media advertising. But this channel isn’t performing as well today compared to last year. An executive earns a promotion and now must give more presentations, but her public speaking skills are rusty. A runner sets a personal best at a 10 km race, but then finds his times slip backward because of injury. If there’s a gap between what you want to accomplish and what you’re able to do today, the best way to close that gap is by honing your skills. In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey wrote, “It’s preserving and enhancing the greatest asset you have — you.” In the case of the struggling business person, he could step back from social media marketing and take an online course. The newly promoted executive could hire a coach to help her refine her public speaking skills. In my case, I should have eased back on my weekly mileage and worked my form and strength training. This might feel frustrating, but stepping back to hone your skills will give you the edge needed to cut through more difficult challenges. Beware of Homeostasis A student learning a language often experiences the frustration of forgetting some of what they learned weeks or months earlier. This experience applies to soft and hard skills you learn at work like effective time management or coding. Behold backsliding in action. In Mastery, George Leonard wrote, “Backsliding is a universal experience. Every one of us resists significant change, no matter whether it’s for the worse or for the better.” The human body possesses a natural tendency to gravitate toward a norm — for better or worse. After all, if your body temperature rose by 10% in an hour, you’d need to call an ambulance. If you want to avoid backsliding, be mindful of your inbuilt resistance to change. When you feel an internal resistance to practicing a new skill like planning for the week ahead or coding, commit to following a regular practice. For example, you could say “Every Friday, I will spend 30 minutes reviewing my calendar.” Or “Every Monday, I will spend 30 minutes completing a coding challenge.” Seek Out More Than Results Ask yourself if you’re seeking a quick fix or if you’re committed over the long-term to mastering your desired skill. In my case, I was expecting a personal-best running time after just a few months of hard work. I should have known mastery of a skill — it could be running, writing or even growing a business — is a lifelong practice. Leonard wrote, “Our preoccupation with goals, results, and the quick fix has separated us from our own experiences.” Or as my astute running coach said, “We do the training so we can do the training.”

https://bryanjcollins.medium.com/mastery-its-the-secret-to-your-success-9df59779adbc

['Bryan Collins']

2018-07-31 06:01:02.423000+00:00

['Creativity', 'Productivity', 'Running', 'Life Lessons', 'Motivation']

Managing Calendars of Holidays in Time Series Prediction Projects

Every Data Scientist likes to spend more time on cool fun things like exploring new datasets, engineering innovative new features, inventing and validating cool new algorithms and strategies etc. However, reality is often different (especially if you work in a business environment). There are additional technical overheads that take significant fraction of time daily (raw data pre-processing, integration with various data sources and enterprise systems, re-deploying applications, turning data products into business-ready applications with intuitive UI, solid performance and continual event flow etc.) So we see a certain collision between desires of Data Scientists and practical implementation tasks on their scorecards. On a bigger scale, this is being addressed by Analytical DevOps convergence (see my earlier article on Analytical DevOps to get more details). At the same time, there is something you can do on the micro level if you keep automating various routines/tedious tasks in a form of easy-to-utilize and easy-to-reuse components/modules. The more ‘bricks’ of this sort you have in your arsenal, the easier you onboard on every new project or contest. Today I would like to focus on one of such tiny pieces of automation that could bring a good value in case you are frequently involved in Time Series forecasting projects. Why Are Calendars of Holidays Important? In many Time Series forecasting projects where human and social activities are predicted, it really matters to take into account holiday trends. We all know about sound holiday effects on shopping and e-commerce behavior of buyers, web site traffic patterns, visiting places of entertainment etc. So informing your Time Series prediction algorithm about holiday schedule/calendar for the modelled activity is often wise (unless you deal with some natural science TS forecasting or handle physical signal processing tasks). How We Automate Management of Calendars of Holidays Let’s imagine a problem to forecast web traffic to a global multi-lingual site that hits the visits of users across the globe. For the case like that, we need Calendars of Holidays to be - Different for different user locales/geographical locations - Consistent from year to year - Easily reused across multiple projects There are good news for Python-based data scientists and developers as they can benefit from the infrastructure below - The US federal holidays are well managed by Pandas and its Time Series analysis capabilities (see pandas.tseries.holiday.USFederalHolidayCalendar class) - The holidays of all G20 countries as well as many other countries in the world are solidly managed by a slick third-party package Workalendar(https://github.com/novafloss/workalendar) - Ability to implement any custom reusable Calendar of Holidays (as well as other type of Calendars — like Calendar of Scheduled Maintenances, Trading Calendars etc.) as a class inherited from Panda’s AbstractCalendar super-class (see a good example explaining it in https://stackoverflow.com/questions/33094297/create-trading-holiday-calendar-with-pandas) So once you install Pandas and Workalendar on your machine, you are ready to develop something that can be reused across all of your time series forecasting projects in future. Notes: - You will have to install Workalendar directly from its git repo using the command below: `pip install git+https://github.com/novafloss/workalendar.git` - Although Workalendar is pretty robust and universal, it still lacks implementations of holiday calendars for several countries as of this moment (in particular, it refers to China and countries in Eastern Europe — Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia) What We Get As a result, we can obtain reusable code fragments/modules to manage multi-national Holiday Calendars across multiple Time Series forecasting projects. Below I demonstrate how it had been implemented it in the course of tackling the project per https://www.kaggle.com/c/web-traffic-time-series-forecasting (and that’s what I am going to use in all future projects where Calendar of Holidays adds value). Obviously, this is just one of the tiny pieces where reusable automation can add the edge to your day-to-day productivity in Data Science projects. My mission is to encourage you to take more actions to build useful automation — and then definitely share your wisdom/contributions with the community.

https://medium.com/sbc-group-blog/every-data-scientist-likes-to-spend-more-time-on-cool-fun-things-like-exploring-new-datasets-206800b76e3b

['George Vyshnya']

2017-08-09 10:18:12.563000+00:00

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

10 Things Framer Does Better than Figma

I’ll be the first to say that Figma is a godsend for designers. It’s made my design process more efficient and made me a better designer. Figma has rocketed to its well-earned position of superiority in the design community not by accident. Still, though, we as designers can’t rely on one tool to do EVERYTHING. Even as Figma has seemingly gobbled up Abstract, Invision, Zeplin, Sketch, and anything else in its path, Framer may still be a contender. I still use Figma for all of my UI work, managing design systems, team collaboration, and more. When it comes to creating clickable prototypes for user testing or creating sexy animation for Dribbble, though, I’ve been impressed with the power of Framer. Why is the design community sleeping on Framer??? Let’s talk about all the ways we can flex Framer to improve our designs. What is Framer? As UX Lord put it in his Figma vs Framer article –– “Framer is a prototyping design tool but one that can use real code to create or customize components. While the coding tool may scare designers away, Framer functions perfectly and works great as a stand alone design tool even if you choose not to use coding at all.” 1. Inputs fields Framer Documentation –– Read More Input fields play a role in practically every interface in some form or another. With interactive components in Figma you can hack together something that kind of mimicks typing into an input field but it will take forever to create and sitll doesn’t come close to the default input field in Framer. It’s as easy as clicking insert then dragging and dropping an input field and stylizing however you like. Your design will immediately have the ability for real user input without any headaches or hackiness. 2. Sticky Scroll Elements Framer Tutorial –– Watch on YouTube Occasionally a certain frame should to stick to a position while scrolling. This is especially helpful for section headers and floating navigation. It’s really difficult to do in Figma though, so we have to rely on 3rd party examples and documentation to explain this feature to our developers. In Framer objects in a scrollable stack can be set as a “sticky” object and rules can be set to adjust how it behaves. I recommend following Framer’s tutorial to wrap your head around how it works. 3. Sliders Framer Documentation –– Read More I recently created a tutorial on how to create an auto layout slider in Figma and it received great feedback but many people asked, “how do I make it work in prototyping?” Well you can’t do it in Figma but Framer has a default component that can be dragged around in prototyping just like the real thing. You can also easily attach it to a number value with a small code snippet. 4. Swipe Effects Framer Documentation –– Read More The different swipe effects are really fun to play with and easy to use. It reminds me of the old windows movie maker — just drag an effect onto a screen and you’re done! Cover Flow View on Framer It’s frustrating how much time I’ve spent creating a swipe-able prototype with a cover flow effect in Figma. Yes, it can be done but you will need a new screen for every card and it’s a huge pain to manage. Framer makes this experience a breeze. You can drag out a “page” frame and then just connect the cards that you’d like to be swiped and it works instantly with no auto animate needed. Cube Effect View on Framer Pile Effect View on Framer A pile effect is tricky to accomplish in Figma but fun to play around with for achieving something similar to the stacked credit cards like in Apple Wallet. 5. Map Integration Framer Documentation –– Read More The map integration is one of hundreds of different integrations that can be used in Framer. Head on over to Framer Packages and browse all the different ways you can blow your design team’s minds. 6. Perspective Hover This is another package that is really neat and easy to implement. Again, there are hundreds of these packages so go and check them out to see what’s out there — Check it out 7. Sound Effects & Media If your app has sound effects Framer has you covered. You can also play music, vidoes, GIFs, Youtube videos and other types of content right inside of your prototype. 8. Wheel Effect Framer Documentation –– Read More 9. Heart Animation Framer Documentation –– Read More Framer has an infinite number of possibilities when it comes to code overrides. This is one of them. In Framer you can write functions and apply them to any element on your canvas. Overrides can be used to pass data between text inputs, dynamically display data from an API and create custom gesture animations. Code overrides are more complicated than the other options I’ve shared but most of the time copying and pasting a code snippet is all you need to do. See more code overrides here. 10. Drawing Pad Framer Documentation –– Read More Having a signature or drawing pad in a prototype seems like black magic but it’s all possible with Framer’s package integrations.

https://uxdesign.cc/10-things-framer-does-better-than-figma-a7e2f2fa3ce

['Danny Sapio']

2021-09-02 01:49:35.284000+00:00

['Visual Design', 'Figma', 'Product Design', 'Prototyping', 'UX']

The Literally Literary Weekly Update #3

One Last Note We have 27,489 followers at Literally Literary. We have approximately 200 writers. Even with these tremendous numbers, most of the submitted works get less than 20 views. Why? Algorithms. How do we combat this and support each other? Bookmark our homepage and once a day, come here and see what you missed. The only way we can be the kind of community we all want to be is to support each others’ works by reading them. Our homepage has a Top 25–30 that is updated every single day with new works published in the last month. Below that, you will find our trending works and then the latest ones that you may have missed. Be a participant and read works from amazing writers that maybe you don’t follow yet, but might want to.

https://medium.com/literally-literary/the-literally-literary-weekly-update-3-2a710eed5ce4

['Jonathan Greene']

2020-01-08 14:24:08.348000+00:00

['Poetry', 'Nonfiction', 'Ll Letters', 'Fiction', 'Writing']

I Tumbled Out of the Middle Class

I am not who you think I am By recent, I mean pre-COVID-19. In 2019, long before the world economy ground to the halt, my adjusted gross income was below the federal poverty level. You’ve probably jumped to some conclusions about who I am, but none of them are true. The wood stove I use to heat my home. The door broke midwinter and I replaced it with a cookie sheet. I did not grow up poor. My upbringing was solidly upper middle class. I spent my winters skiing at my family’s chalet, and my summers sailing. When I turned ten, my parents remodeled an attic bedroom for me and my sister, and when I turned sixteen they bought me a windsurfer. I am not uneducated. I have a Ph.D. in biochemistry, a degree that, according to the U.S. Department of Labor Statistics, should yield me a weekly income of $1,883. In 2019, that’s less than I earned in a month. I am not lazy. I work harder now than when I worked full time. I am constantly trying to jigsaw together part-time jobs, all while learning new skills to make myself more marketable in the hope of finding job security. At the same time, I do many tasks that would be unnecessary if I made more money, such as cutting wood to heat my home. I am not unwilling. You would not believe the range of jobs I’ve unsuccessfully applied for. Heck, I couldn’t even get a job as a food scraps consultant, a position that involves inspecting garbage (guess the hiring manager didn’t buy my argument that teaching undergraduate chemistry qualifies as customer service experience). How did I get here? For much of my adult life, I had a comfortable household income well over $100,000 a year, thanks mostly to my husband. We could have had double that income, but, because of repeated episodes of parental harassment, I left my career and did gig and part time work instead. My pay was inconsequential, but it didn’t matter: we still had plenty of money. Until my husband lost his job. He decided to use his generous severance package to start a business, while I exhausted my savings to meet our household expenses. I also did a considerable amount of unpaid labor to get his business off the ground. Then we got divorced, and I learned some hard realities. I learned that, because my husband’s company lost money the year we separated, I was not eligible for spousal benefits. I learned that the inheritance my husband received from his mother would not be factored in calculating child support, and that the meager amount of child support I was entitled to would end when my daughter turned 21, a year and a half before she finished college. I also learned that willpower alone is not enough to get you a job that pays enough to survive, let alone pay for half a college education. I need to emphasize here that my privileged background makes my life much easier than it otherwise would be. I had enough savings, post-divorce, to put a sizable down payment on a house, and I was able to borrow money from my sister when I needed it. It must be so much harder for someone without these advantages. I decided to tell my story anyway, because if it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone. Based on my own experience, I provide some tips (unfortunately very timely in a post-COVID-19 world) on how to survive when your income disappears. Tips for surviving when you go broke Tip #1 Redefine necessary. Central heat isn’t a necessity. This is the conclusion I reached when, four months after I moved into my new house, my insurance company required that I take down the chimney for my oil boiler. To avoid spending money on an antiquated heating system or buying a new one I couldn’t afford, for the past two winters I’ve been heating my home with wood. Other unnecessary expenses I’ve let go of include memberships, trash service, and cable (which, you could argue, is a type of trash service). I buy everything I can secondhand, including appliances, building supplies, and clothing, and I actually enjoy it more than buying new. What’s not to like about buying a like-new garment for $2? Tip #2 Don’t hesitate to get help. I’ve always believed that other people are entitled to help, but never thought I would need it myself. For a long time I resisted visiting a food bank. Then it occurred to me that a food bank is a bank, and that for many years, I had been putting money in. Now it was time to make a withdrawal. I believe that getting government assistance, like visiting a food bank, is akin to making a withdrawal: you take assistance to get through hard times, and in good times you assist others. That being said, government assistance isn’t easy to get. It requires mountains of paperwork, and the eligibility requirements are stringent and maddeningly complex. For example, this past winter I could not use a home heating assistance program because the elderly farmer who sold me firewood was not a “qualified” vendor (a.k.a. mega gas-oil-electricity conglomerate). If you do feel guilty about getting assistance, consider all the contributions you made to society before your income tanked, and all the contributions you will make when you get back on your feet. Still feel guilty? Think about all the banks that got bailed out in 2008 from a financial crisis of their own making. At least you’re better than them. Tip #3 Find the best things in life. Reading this ranty article, you might think I am unhappy, but really, I’m not. I am much happier now than when I was upper middle class, partly because I’ve discovered that the things I enjoy the most, such as walking my dog or riding my bike, don’t cost me a penny. The old adage is true: the best things in life really are free. Honestly, my biggest challenge is being around people with money. For one thing, monied people have problems I can’t relate to, (tip to monied people: please do not compare your woes trying to find contractors to fix your hurricane-damaged vacation home to my woes dismantling my central heating system). For another, monied people tend to want to do things that cost money. (another tip to monied people: please, do not say that a dinner is “only” $20. Twenty dollars is a lot of money!) When I am forced to spend time around monied people, I try to find ways to go cheap, such as ordering coffee instead of lunch at a restaurant. Tip #4 Never give up The best things in life may be free but the basic necessities are not. I’ve exhausted my savings and can’t go on the way I have been. So, at the age of 54, I am going back to school to get a bachelor’s degree in medical technology. I can get this degree in two years, including one year of hospital rotations, after which I hope to get a job at a hospital lab. It took me a long time to choose this path, and if you are newly unemployed I recommend that you take time to consider your options. Before you think about going back to school, consider what jobs you can do with your current skills. If you do choose to pursue more training, make sure that any new skills that you learn are in demand: talk to someone in the industry, or talk to a career counselor. Then look for inexpensive training options, such as trade schools or community colleges (I am going to a state state university in commuting distance from my home). New York state offers tuition assistance in training for high-demand jobs, and other states may do the same. Once you have found a viable option, go for it! Tip #5 Do base your worth on your income Being poor is not failure, and being rich is not success. Be kind to yourself and those around you and live your life to the fullest. That is all that matters. For tips on doing cheap home repairs and inexpensive art projects, visit my personal blog, renaissancewoman.com.

https://medium.com/swlh/i-tumbled-out-of-the-middle-class-3cfa442eb86a

['Andrea Hazard']

2020-05-07 02:17:54.185000+00:00

['Divorce', 'Gig Economy', 'Income', 'Poverty', 'Covid 19']

Teaching With Technology: EdTech in 2020 And Beyond

2020 has been a year of immense change in all facets of daily life — not least within our educational environment. With countries forced to stay home, the focus on remote learning and teaching with technology has been huge. Nations around the world have had to switch to distant learning models almost overnight and, according to David Corke — Director of Education & Skills Policy for the Association of Colleges (AOC) — the future of learning, post-pandemic, will be “more blended and digitally-enabled than it was before”. This presents a big opportunity for the development of educational technology and software development which supports learning in all its forms — be it pre-school, Degree-level education or workplace training. According to Deloitte, the education market in China alone is predicted to be worth $715 billion by 2025. So, which educational tech trends look set to become part of the new normal? The five EdTech tools revolutionising learning Up until the start of this year, our educational setup had remained the same for generations. Teachers stood at the front of classrooms and lecture halls imparting one-way knowledge to note-scribbling students, with little changing even in the wake of the Internet. Since global lockdowns came into play, however, teaching with technology has become an absolute necessity. Schools have been forced to close and examinations have had to go online, and EdTech has pioneered new ways for students and teachers to collaborate and share materials online. Here are some of the key technologies pioneering new ways of learning. 1. IoT Connected devices had already been implemented in many school settings before the pandemic hit. But now, connected devices such as laptops and tablets are enabling students to access learning materials from their own homes, with IoT applications like Learning Management Systems (LMS) making syllabus’ available for access from virtually anywhere. Moving beyond COVID, the IoT will facilitate better collaboration between classes, different year groups and across higher learning campuses, paving the way for a more fluid way of learning than we’ve been accustomed to previously. 2. VR/MR/AR According to Adobe, immersive learning experiences lighten the cognitive load, while also motivating students to grasp information more fully. Virtual, mixed and augmented reality environments have huge potential within learning because they change the context in which information is delivered and allow students to gain “hands-on” — so to speak — experience. The relevance of virtual environments is even more significant in the wake of global school closures, prompting the education sector to consider the long-term application of virtual environments where physical classrooms aren’t an option. Benefits of teaching with VR/MR/AR tech include: It creates a sense of space — offering students first-hand experience of what it’s like to walk the streets of ancient Rome, for example. It promotes interactivity — humans learn better by doing. Employing virtual reality within a classroom setting turns the passive action of reading instructions into the active task of exploring a scenario, while also fulfilling our need for visual and emotional experiences. It fosters creative thinking — as well as delivering more meaningful learning, VR, MR and AR tools and apps, in which students can design and experiment with virtual chemicals and proteins for example, — can seriously boost creative thinking and problem-solving. It cost-effectively scales learning — VR devices are relatively small and inexpensive in comparison to installing a science lab, for example, within a school setting, yet they can deliver the same practical learning experience. 3. Artificial Intelligence According to an Artificial Intelligence Market in the US Education Sector report, AI in US education is predicted to grow by almost 46% between 2017 and 2021. But teaching with AI technology isn’t about robots delivering lesson plans. Instead, it will serve a support function, allowing teachers to take time away from admin tasks to spend more time working with students. AI can facilitate “global classrooms” through tools like Presentation Translator for Powerpoint, which subtitles live teacher presentations for students to watch from anywhere in the world. This is hugely relevant in the current pandemic, but it also opens up the possibility of globally-connected classrooms beyond this. Furthermore, AI applications are now focusing on differentiation and personalisation within learning — signalling an important shift from a “one-size-fits-all” model to an approach which is attuned to the needs and capabilities of the individual student. This is particularly compelling when you consider the unique needs of pupils with learning difficulties or sight/hearing impairments. 4. Data-driven personalisation To echo the point about AI’s role within the classrooms of the future, one of the key changes we’ll likely see in education is a tailoring of the curriculum and key milestones to the needs of the individual learner. Data science is already a powerful tool for understanding the needs of wants of users within the industry, so it follows that it will become more and more relevant from our early years. It’s also an important tool for monitoring where students are at in their learning while they are unable to physically attend a classroom. 5. The Cloud Aside from the obvious benefit of making educational resources more readily available for remote learning or otherwise, cloud-based technologies are a powerful enabler of creativity and self-expression. Further, working in the cloud helps safeguard data protection in a time when personal information is so heavily valued and vulnerable. The Cloud allows pupils to access a plethora of applications and programs to find engaging ways of presenting their work — i.e. uploading video content or images, or collaborating on a document with their peers. This allows each student more authorship over their work while enabling teachers to customise assignments and employ blended learning and flipped classroom strategies for better results. The Cloud has been particularly valuable during the lockdown, where schools have had to shift their lessons online. But moving beyond COVID, the time, space and resource-saving capabilities of cloud-based technologies could change the way we learn forever. What’s the counter-argument to teaching with technology? One thing that has become apparent through the global lockdowns is the technology gap between underprivileged learners and their privileged peers. Remote learning can really only work for those who have access to connected technologies. There’s also a need to acknowledge that teaching with technology should enhance, rather than replace, traditional teaching methods. Tech can be a powerful ally in helping teachers reallocate their time. So that they can get back to delivering engaging lessons and one-on-one feedback and move away from labour-intensive admin. ELEKS helps clients within the education sector and beyond employ innovative technologies to evolve in a fast-changing world. Find out more about how we could help you meet the demands of tomorrow, today. Get in touch.

https://medium.com/eleks-labs/teaching-with-technology-edtech-in-2020-and-beyond-1ce72d7d6e3b

[]

2020-01-06 00:00:00

['Eleks Trends Blog', 'Edtech', 'Education Technology', 'Distance Learning']

How to Do Text Search in MongoDB

1. Create a Text Index This is the first approach that you’ll find if you Google “full text search in mongo.” It’s the most efficient way to implement text search according to MongoDB’s documentation. As an example, consider the following data: Now create the index because the index will make it happen! > db.names.createIndex({ name: "text" }) Now try the following queries: As you can see, if you search for Army , it brings all the documents that had the exact word Army or any known variation of that word in the names column. But it doesn’t work for Arm . So, our text search is smart enough to match Armies when we search for Army but not dumb enough to partially match Arm with Army or Armies . My product manager was hoping (or rather expecting) that if I searched for Arm , it would bring up the three results that came up when I searched for Army . To solve this, I thought it would be a good idea to understand why the two documents did not match when I searched for Arm instead of Army . Like I suspected, tokenisation! The text index breaks the data (in this case, Army Ants and Army of Ants ) by the white space into tokens. So Army Ants becomes [Army, Ants] and Army of Ants becomes [Army, of, Ants] . And when you search for Army , the word matches with one of the tokens in both documents, which is the reason why you see both documents in the results when you search for Army . Note: I’m oversimplifying here. The actual process of tokenisation includes so much more (e.g. the stripping of insignificant words like of ). So it seems like it would be next to impossible to satisfy our PM’s “hopes” with a text search. You might think we’ll have to venture into the world of autocompletes.

https://medium.com/better-programming/text-search-in-mongodb-34c1f70ab86d

['Varun Bansal']

2020-09-24 14:59:02.814000+00:00

['Database', 'Mongodb', 'DevOps', 'Data Science', 'Programming']

Finding Causal Models is Hard

Finding Causal Models is Hard Why is it so hard to find Structrual Causal Models? A DAG perspective. The link between correlation and causation has been discussed in science for quite a bit. Alas, we are all quite certain that correlation can be misleading. Hence the scientific community gave birth to causal inference and causal discovery. Previously I wrote an article on statistics versus causality, which is a bit more general than this one. In this article, I want to make it clear what exactly makes it so difficult to find causal models, in the context of graphical models, and yes, it is difficult. [1] Firstly, to understand the power of causal models, consider graphical models in general for describing probability distributions. Bayesian networks are such models (coincidentally introduced by the same person that introduced do calculus, Judea Pearl). In the case of Bayesian networks, we want to model a probability distribution. More concretely, we want to model a joint probability distribution. But not just in any way, we want to do it in a smart way, such that its computational overhead is minimal. Another way to put it, we want a sparse factorization of the joint probability distribution. To be clearer, let's write it down in simple terms. Let us assume we have n random variables, so the joint probability distribution that we are interested in is Now, for those of you familiar with the Bayes rule, we can write out this joint probability distribution as the following: As you can see, there are quite a few conditionals in this factorization depending on n. There are two things to notice here: Calculating those conditionals can be computationally expensive The statistics may be misleading Thankfully, we can use the basic concept of independence in statistics to make this factorization sparser. The simple rule is if two variables are independent, then we can write their joint distribution as This means that we can remove certain variables from certain conditionals, which makes the computation easier and this can be nicely formulated in terms of a graphical model where the children are only dependent on their parents. As an example, consider the following Bayesian network (graphical model): question.In the absence of arrows, assume that the top nodes are always the parents of the bottom ones. From the graph, we can read out the presented factorization of the joint distribution: Finding the correct directed acyclic graph (DAG) is a hard problem. There are many such factorizations that may explain the data but are incorrect in the sense that they ignore certain independencies. So keep in mind that, even before we start thinking about causality, we have a hard problem to identify the correct dependencies! We know that graphical models are nice in the sense that they can save computation time. But we still have the problem of the interpretation of a graphical model. Can we actually be sure that the parents cause the children variables? Not at all, general Bayesian networks don’t really care about the causal direction. There are various ways that we can factorize the joint distribution such that it explains the data. Now, for comparison, causal models have a few traits that other graphical models don’t. The causal direction manifests itself in the form of a directed edge in the graph. The edge itself symbolizes the causal mechanism. In general, we require a bit more from our causal graphs than the vanilla Bayesian networks. We require certain invariances to hold in order to claim that the arrows represent causal mechanisms. [1] Causal Inference and Causal Discovery When we are looking for a causal model, we can be looking for different things. We may have models that explain the data, we have a graphical model, but we do not know the direction of the causal mechanism. Or we may search for the whole graphical models in the first place. The thing that we can be sure about is that the causal model is minimal, or is the sparsest possible factorization that explains the data. Another necessary assumption about causal models is the independence of causal mechanisms (ICM principle), meaning that if we have information of one causal mechanism, we cannot get any information about the others. Interestingly, the same assumption is made by the human brain in vision, called the generic viewpoint assumption. The classical example of this is the Beuchet chair. When we look at something, our brain assumes that the object that we’re looking at (in this case, the chair), is independent of the viewpoint. This assumption may not hold, since the viewpoint in this case determines if the object is a chair or not (in our perception). This can be seen in the image below. [2] The mechanism causing something to be a chair is completely independent of the mechanism that allows us to see (namely light coming into the eye). In the case that this assumption doesn’t hold, we couldn’t say much about the cause and effect, since weird statistical dependencies would arise. Even in the case of fitting a model in computer vision, if the dataset is plagued with these kind of examples, we couldn’t really guarantee good performance of our model. This is just the tip of the iceberg of the assumptions that are needed to be made to discover causal models. You have to appreciate the hardness of the problem as such. Not to get into too much detail, an example of a Structural Equation Model is a simple two-variable model which can be written in two lines: The causal link is the function f which is a function of X1 and some noise variable N2. To make the graphical model from above causal, we would simply put arrows on it to indicate the causal direction: Well, that’s nice, but the problem is that we are really not sure about the arrows. We can reverse the arrows as an example like in the image below. We can probably find models that explain the correlation in the anti-causal direction, which is not correct: Searching for causal models is difficult. Again, think about the number of arrow arrangements that we can do in such a model. Each edge has 2 possible directions, if a causal model has E edges, that means that there exist 2^E possible direction arrangements. The search space (just for the edge directions) is exponential in the number of edges. If we think about that we do not know where the edges are in the first place, and that we have V vertices (variables). We have this nice formula for the possible edge configurations in the graph: This means that for each graph from the above formula, we have additional 2^E possible arrangements of its edges… This is a real mess for high dimensional problems. And then when we consider that we might actually want to learn the mechanisms themselves, i.e. to fit the models… What a mess. This is to show that… Causal discovery is a difficult problem! It is an open research question to find methods to identify causal direction between variables efficiently. But in some cases, the causal direction is simply not identifiable. This depends on the type of functions that describe the causal mechanism, or type of noise distributions that are used within the mechanism. Consequently, the assumption of identifiability is made when we want to find causal directions in the data. A big portion of the research is causal inference is deriving identifiability results stating under which assumptions can we find the underlying causal model. Of course, the more we can relax these assumptions, the better. [1] As it turns out, sometimes we indeed want to learn the anti-causal direction (i.e. to predict the cause from the effect), since there are cases where this is perfectly predictable, but this would also mean that our model is not invariant towards changes in distribution. The usefulness of causal inference in machine learning is quite a difficult topic also, everyone is speaking about “the next level of AI required causal reasoning”, but actually nobody really realizes what this encapsulates. The research is flooded with wrong uses of the word “causal”. Put, to end with a positive outlook, that leaves a lot of room for contributions!

https://medium.com/researchers-digest/on-the-difficulty-of-finding-structural-causal-models-86bc52735bc3

['Marin Vlastelica Pogančić']

2020-08-31 07:34:38.028000+00:00

['Optimization', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Statistics']

The Messages That Matter

Part 1 All day, every day we are inundated with messages that don’t matter. The ego is non stop with the language of defeat like: you can’t do that, you always give up. Even people who seem to have a healthy ego and are accomplishing great goals are most likely sacrificing other very essential elements of their lives for this so-called success. The ego and its false messages are the cause of all the chaos we see around us. Violence, drug use, greed, and neglect of the planet can all be traced back to people living with the overwhelm the ego creates. I’ve lived for many years totally at the mercy of ego. I didn’t even know what it was, let alone what it was creating in my life. I knew I was miserable, not able to reach the goals set for myself. I had chronic anxiety, and I would lash out at anyone who pushed on one of my ego buttons. It’s not a fun way to live but deep inside of me; I knew there was a better way. I spent years looking for the answer. I tried everything, including energy healing, meditation, religion, and self-help book after self-help book. They all helped a little in their own way, but I wasn’t getting the relief I knew was out there, so I kept looking. About five years ago I was introduced to ego clearing, and a whole new path opened up for me. There have been twists and turns along the way, however, learning to clear the ego has shown me all the beauty in my life that I was unable to see while ego was in command. Now, true happiness is not something I am always chasing. That’s because my eyes are open to what is right in front of me in the present moment. No matter where I am, I can love myself right now, unconditionally. After learning to clear the ego, I was taught to connect directly to Higher Self to receive the messages to guide me on my path. These are the Messages That Matter. By sharing my messages it is my greatest wish to inspire people to get on their path, guided by their higher-self and the messages that matter most to them! Stay tuned for part 2. Website: www.nexushealing.org Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/discovernexushealing/ Email: support@nexushealing.org

https://medium.com/messages-that-matter/the-messages-that-matter-a98cda43857e

['Shannon Lee']

2020-02-20 02:31:58.640000+00:00

['Higher Self Messages', 'Higher Self', 'Self Help', 'Ego']

Samsung Chromebook Plus (v1) USB-C charger finickiness

The Samsung Chromebook Plus (1st generation) was the first Chromebook I bought. I’ve been using it since 2018 and, in general, it is great. However, it is finicky about one thing: The USB-C charger connected to it. It works fine with the charger that shipped with it. However, the Samsung travel charger designed for this Chromebook that I bought as a backup causes a “low-powered charger connected” message to pop-up. I thought it might be because it is a travel charger intended for overnight charging and didn’t think more about it until now. I recently bought a Nekteck 60w multi-port charger. Its USB-C PD port is designed to charger devices like notebooks with larger power draws than, for example, phones and tablets. It works great with these devices including a MacBook Pro 13" whose specs say it requires a 61w charger. Guess which device complains about it? Yep, the Samsung Chromebook Plus. Samsung’s own charger is rated at 30w. So, there is something odd going on with the way the Plus’ charging system works.

https://medium.com/ogasawalrus/samsung-chromebook-plus-v1-usb-c-charger-finickiness-91a8207ac145

[]

2019-11-30 17:43:47.779000+00:00

['Samsung', 'Charger', 'Chromebook', 'Usb C Pd']

5 Podcast Recs for Educators | March Edition

A lot of people don’t have the time or interest to consume several dozen podcasts each month. I do. These are some of the best episodes (in no particular order) I heard in March that I recommend to Educators. What’s the Point | #37 52 Postcards Click the podplayer link below or last link in this review to listen I love this pod about data and, as an educator, this episode is one of my favorites that they’ve done. The guests talk about a project they did in which they sent sent each other a postcard each week for one year. The novel aspect is that the front of the postcard featured a data visualization and the back had a legend to understanding it. Each week, the collaborators would establish a theme (laughter or thank yous, for example) and track data around that theme. What data they tracked was up to each so there was a lot of variety. How they visually represented the data was also an individual decision. Check out their full gallery here. This episode is important because Data Visualization (#dataviz) is important. Data tells stories and there are good jobs that aren’t threatened by outsourcing and automation for people who can tell those stories in accessible ways. I’ve had several employers tell me that the ability to make infographics and other data visualizations is a highly valued skill. One Easter egg with this episode is the host’s challenge for listeners to track a week of their own podcast listening and mail him a data visualization postcard representing it. Reply All | #59 Good Job, Alex As a show about the Internet, Reply All almost always has something that educators can bend to be relevant to teaching and learning. That task is a pretty light lift with this episode. The plot is that an author has reached out to PJ and Alex for tech support after finding out that when she didn’t renew her domain registration, someone else swooped in and bought her name dot com. So now, if a reader goes to search for her, they find a Japanese advertisement instead of her web page. Alex goes to work, hunting down the new domain owner in an attempt to recover her url. This story has a great Digital Citizenship (#digcit) lesson that is probably missing from most instruction even though it’s really important: As good an idea as it is to buy your name dot com, that due diligence only works if you maintain ownership of the domain. There is also a good Future Ready lesson here as the investigation exposes a whole industry that most of us have never heard of and that didn’t exist twenty years ago. EdGotGame | GBL: Teaching with Alternative Reality Click the podcast player link below to listen or visit the BAM Radio Network site This 10 minute pod got the geek in me really excited. The guest, John Fallon, shared a brief background on what Alternate Reality Games (ARG) are and how they got started. He then gives examples from his own classroom about how ARGs can look. If you’re into playful learning and/or gamification, this is a delicious listen that will probably lead to you committing many hours in the coming days and nights to designing some of your own game clues to create your own alternative overlay to everyone else’s reality. A key takeaway: Start small with 1–2 clues before diving in deep. John’s website has 5 posts about how he created his own ARG for the Odyssey. Another resource shared was the Ludic Learning blog, where you’ll find detailed posts about that teacher’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest ARG. Side note: the hosts for this episode (Matthew Farber and Steven Isaacs) are two of the most fascinating educators I’ve ever met. If you have the chance to meet either of them at a conference, corner them and hold them hostage for a few minutes worth of questioning and you’ll learn more than you will the rest of the entire conference. IDEO Futures | Episode 29: Jake Knapp + John Zeratsky from GV Though this episode aired in February, I heard it in March so I’m including it in this post. If you are an educator who is into Design Thinking, you’ll be glad I did! Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky work at Google Ventures, which I understand to be Google’s internal venture capital arm that buys companies it hopes to grow to one day be worth something with more zeroes than what it paid. Jake and John just published a hot new book called Sprint that details their protocol for 5 day design sprints. It’s fascinating stuff for anyone interested in human-centered design. One big takeaway for me: 5 interviews is usually enough to capture 80% of the patterns so even though it may feel like not enough, there are diminishing returns to seeking user input from more than 5 people. Another takeaway for me was something that host Diego Rodriguez said when reflecting on the interview: “It’s not about failing fast, it’s about learning fast.” As simple as this is, I think it’s profound. Education is over a year deep into an obsession with failure (e.g. “F-A-I-L = First Attempt In Learning”) and I get it. I also believe that in our embrace of failure, many educators are unintentionally accepting failure for failure’s sake and that does a disservice to students. Failure is not inherently something to cherish; it’s lone value proposition is in offering lessons from which we can learn. Failing fast is worthless unless it is quickly followed by rebounding, reflecting and retrying. The always elegant Diego was of course able to communicate this idea in just 6 syllables and that’s why I hope to one day share a beer with the guy while he tells me about the idea gold in them hills beyond the Flatirons. Love + Radio | Deep Stealth Mode 22:50 of intrigue. This one may push your comfort zone. This is another February episode I didn’t get to until March. It originally appeared on a podcast I’d never heard of called Here Be Monsters (15 hours of binge listening awaits you on SoundCloud if you like what you hear here) and fans of Love + Radio will immediately see why it’s a good fit. I don’t want to ruin the episode for anyone who goes ahead and listens so I’ll just say this: Transgender issues impact teaching and learning beyond a current events discussion about reality TV. It impacts our colleagues, learners and families in ways to which most of us are likely oblivious because those around us are in Stealth Mode. While this story is about one person and not an entire demographic, it does offer listeners insight to a point of view that will be entirely new to most. And maybe, as a result of hearing this, if someone close to you comes out of Stealth Mode, you’ll be better prepared to serve them by being the best you that you can be for them.

https://medium.com/podparlour/5-podcast-recs-for-educators-march-edition-efd9f04b7b3b

['Noah Geisel']

2016-03-30 15:39:50.076000+00:00

['Teaching', 'Podcast Recommendations', 'Education', 'Podcast', 'Podcast Review']

Concussion, Death, and Rebirth

Concussion, Death, and Rebirth My life felt full before it happened. I had three jobs that I loved — teaching Pilates, working for a meditation organization, and a shamanic healing practice in my sweet home office that looked out at the rocky mountains. I lived in Boulder, the land of physical and spiritual triathletes. I knew something was coming. There were hints from my guides that a change was necessary for me to further align with my life. I could feel my ancestors like an ancient orchestra of love calling and pressing their sound and bones to me as I worked and moved through the world. And yet, I never could have seen this coming. The fall was one of those bizarre moments, impossible yet divinely choreographed. I was in a meeting at work adjusting a light. I believed that the chair I was standing on was sturdy. It wasn’t. What happened after was a blur of darkness and confusion. I went from feeling a little dazed, but fine, to sliding into a black ocean of pain. Within hours, I was told by one of my deities that I was going to die. This was it. I wasn’t happy about it, but after some struggle, I eventually agreed to go. I surrendered and prepared to transition out of my body. A series of visions washed through and around me for a timeless time and then abruptly stopped. I pinched myself and to my surprise, I was still here. And nothing was the same. Concussion is a mild traumatic brain injury that is expected to heal within weeks or months but can cause long term functional deficits. I believe that even if you don’t have a beloved deity telling you that it is your time to die, a concussion itself can be a death experience and should be treated with the respect of a death. The night of my injury I told my husband that I knew I was never going to be the same. Dr. Glen Johnson, clinical neuropsychologist, reports this type of permanent change in his patients, “I’ve never really met anybody who’s claimed to have recovered 100 %. I’ve had people who’ve had significant head injuries, yet returned to work, regained a normal family life, and seemed to be doing great. They appeared to be doing well socially, got promotions, and made money. Yet they still say, I just feel different.” The day after my injury, I awoke in some kind of bardo. The bardo is a Buddhist term for the ‘inbetween’, the state between death and rebirth. I stayed there for over a year, suspended in a slow space unlike any world I had known before. At times, the peace was astounding. In the 15 years that I spent on a meditation cushion, I didn’t experience sustained peace like this. Most of my worries were gone because I could not remember or hold on to them. At other times, life was shaky and scary. I couldn’t look at screens, manage emotions, or clearly sense who I was. Did I even exist? I felt like millions of particles spread across space. Neuropsychologist, Dr. Colette Smart, explains the inbetween state as part of the concussion journey. She sees her role with post-concussive patients as “helping them walk through the bardo until they get where they need to go.” With my helpers of Excedrin and CBD oil, I kept trying to live a normal life from this inbetween place. I tried in a futile attempt to work, swim, do Pilates and meditate, limping through the motions of my old life. Then my brain caught up with me. The symptoms skyrocketed with longer and longer migraines, constant head and neck pain, memory loss, visual impairment, and problems integrating my sensory experience. Ten months after the injury the losses surrounded me like puddles that grew into rivers during one long season of rain. I lost the ability to read, problem solve, understand music, dance, function in restaurants, have group conversations, and understand what was happening to me. I spent up to 8 hours a day in dark rooms. Even Pilates, the movement modality I had practiced and taught for a decade felt horrible. My body did not want linear, muscular movement. After the initial hope from the well-meaning practitioners with their cheery prognosis’ had worn off (you will be better in 4 weeks, 8 weeks, 12 weeks, you don’t need to see a concussion specialist because “it just takes time” and so on) the treatments came in waves of gentle blessings through the bardo and my loss soaked world. I tried everything. A concussion specialist (If you have a concussion, get one), acupuncture, osteopathy, cranio-sacral, neurofeedback, migraine drugs, shamanic healing, energy work, chiropractors, physical therapy, vision therapy, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, herbalism, naturopathy, and occupational therapy all helped in their own ways. My ancestors and guides were there the whole time. Watching, waiting, teaching, and listening, but there was no easy way out of this. I surrendered to the waves. Between the crashes in my eyes and head, when I started to ask myself, What is here now? And started to really listen, my new life emerged from behind the clouds. Deep listening became the submarine that could take me down between the waves of pain and grief to explore what else was happening. I hung out in cellular cosmic spaces that felt like the intersections of life and death. I rolled into the most vulnerable places I could imagine. I relaxed into my increased intuition and otherworldly sight. I turned my face to divine grace. I felt the most alone in my life and the most interconnected to all things. I slowly leaned into the post-concussive experience, discovering that my new, less linear way of perceiving the world had more to it than just a miserable constant headache and seemingly broken eyes. I let myself savor the gifts of stillness, silence, slowness, and darkness. I started to appreciate that I was still alive in a very different looking life. In this life, I do not meditate two hours a day, hit the pool, work multiple jobs and burn through a to-do list with the ferocity of small beaver. I move slowly, with breaks throughout the day. I listen to my soul, my guides, and the purr of my cat. I still do not leave the house without four pairs of glasses, in case my vision takes a turn and heads for a migraine. And yet, this disruption of my physical sight helped me accept my age-old calling as someone who sees in the spirit world. Concussion is the long tunnel between the life you had and the person you were and a new life. It is the stripping away, slowly or quickly, of what you held on to, what you knew, what mattered to you and how you saw and experienced the world. On the other side of this passage is the opportunity to see the world differently, to have radically different priorities and values, and to emerge re-wired, embracing what matters to you now. If someone close to you has a concussion or a traumatic brain injury, my suggestion is to be ever so gentle. Whatever is dying for them may be going fast and furiously or slowly, silently melting away. They are vulnerable. If you find yourself in this situation (with the other 2.8 million Americans a year who get a traumatic brain injury), my humble advice is to let the dark abyss do it’s work. Welcome the endings with love and courage, let yourself grieve, and know that even when you know nothing, your life has its own song. Know that when you have no faith in anything at all and it feels like nothing is left, faith will find you again if you open the door. Sometimes it is easier to truly listen in the dark.

https://medium.com/@rayanngordon/concussion-death-and-rebirth-2935d4597150

['Rayann Gordon']

2020-02-12 04:33:16.656000+00:00

['Spirituality', 'Concussion', 'Awakening', 'Memoir', 'Brain Injury']

A Guide to COVID-19 Anxiety

For You, the Individual I am assuming that if you are a reader of mine, you already see the value in and are practicing social distancing and personal hygiene. If you aren’t and remain skeptical, I implore you to reconsider. One thing we know for certain is that this disease is highly contagious and that it operates in stealth mode living on some surfaces for up to a week, and appearing in some people as asymptomatic of any illness at all. If you happen to be carrying the virus, avoiding even incidental transmissions could save an exponential amount of lives on the growth curve. Do your part and self-isolate. Alright, now you’re isolated. How do you not go insane from the anxiety caused both by social disconnectedness and the uncertainty surrounding the virus itself? For that, I will go into the toolboxes of Buddhist-style mindfulness practices and Stoic philosophy. I have been thinking a lot about what Roman philosopher and Stoic Epictetus once wrote: “Men are disturbed not by the things that happen, but by their opinion of the things that happen.”[3] The voice in your head, the one that right now is probably my voice, but is typically your voice, is your ego. It is a storytelling machine, constantly taking in what your five senses perceive and weaving a tapestry that sums up to your consciousness, and then narrating it to you in a way that reassures you of your identity and relative safety in a world that, without that reassurance, would typically look more like abject chaos and meaninglessness to us than a pleasant, meaningful ride. However, that narration typically amounts to nothing more than a stream of judgments — or as Epictetus would say, “opinions,” about the nature of reality that are uniquely your own given your subjective experience up to the present moment. Your ego, those thoughts, that story you tell yourself, it is not “you”. You are the silence behind your thoughts and the thoughts are just that: thoughts. “Men are disturbed not by the things that happen, but by their opinion of the things that happen.” - Epictetus What does this mean for COVID-19? Simply that there is a difference between the objective event of a pandemic and your subjective opinions, stories, and thoughts on it, and that if you have anxious thoughts for any reason, whether it’s because you miss social connection, you’re concerned for your own health or the health of a family member, or you just would flat out rather be at a music festival right now, the root is likely your own opinions and beliefs and their individual conflict with the uncertainty of the times, and not an objective and altogether impermeable state of fear. The fact of the matter is that this pandemic is unprecedented, and further, incredibly uncertain. There is a non-zero chance that literally anything may happen in the coming months. You may get sick and die, a loved one may get sick and die, you may lose a job, your bank account may dissipate, and society may crumble; all of these things seem immediately more probable than they were just three weeks ago, though it remains immensely more likely that if you’re doing your part, everything will probably turn out alright for you. But, the mere presence of both that uncertainty and the ego doesn’t mix well, because it’s the ego’s job to make you feel your subjective story about reality is certain, which is why we remain blind to the much more likely positive outcomes waiting for us in the future. While some seek to preserve their ego and play ignorance to that uncertainty, perhaps it is a healthier and more fulfilling exercise in times like this is to go inward and inspect what may be causing you distress, so that you can focus more on the much more likely positive. That is where mindfulness comes in. Meditation is en vogue right now. I do not want this to be an introduction to meditation, but I will say that the observation of one’s thoughts and ego with the goal of detachment from that story is the hallmark of Buddhist Vipassana meditation. Meditation has done wonders for me and my anxiety even in much more certain times than these, and I believe it would do wonders for your perspective if you are struggling with the fear caused by your subjective story and opinion on these uncertain times. I highly recommend the introductory courses on Insight Timer and Sam Harris’ Waking Up course and book if this rings true to you. “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” One last thought I will leave you with that may also act as an antidote to the individual anxiety of the times is a mental model known as Hanlon’s Razor. It states “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”[4] World leaders, researchers, and doctors are making decisions that will either save or lose lives at an unprecedented rate right now on a daily basis. While I have no doubt some of these individuals may have behaved in malice towards specific individuals prior to this crisis, it’s very unlikely that they intend anything but a swift end to the crisis right now. Any mistake a decision-maker may make during this time, I would presume is much more due to their own human fallibility, myopia and “stupidity” now than any specific malice. And if that is the case, perhaps it is best to practice some lovingkindness and compassion for those individuals now, instead of trying to fight perceived malice with further malice.

https://medium.com/if-this-what-else/a-guide-to-covid-19-anxiety-cc2a85bd6002

['Sean Raftery']

2020-04-01 14:08:51.143000+00:00

['Mindfulness', 'Charity', 'Covid 19', 'Stoicism', 'Coronavirus']

NEM to participate in Blockchain APAC | Australia’s Biggest Enterprise Event

The NEM.io Foundation, creators of the peer-to-peer NEM blockchain platform and the XEM cryptocurrency will be participating in Blockchain APAC: Australia’s Biggest Blockchain Enterprise Event. It will feature a full day of 16 sessions with over 30+ speakers and 500 expected delegates on Wednesday August 29th, 2018 at Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. The Blockchain APAC Enterprise event is presented as part of the Victorian Government’s Digital Innovation Festival (DIF). DIF is a platform that supports the growth of our vibrant community of entrepreneurs, innovators, change makers, thought leaders and rule breakers. Through a combination of technology utilisation and digital mindsets, the DIF fosters economic resilience for Victoria and champions the leaders of innovation and entrepreneurship. Sponsors and partners include the Victorian Government, Optus, RMIT University, Alibaba, AusTrade, YBF Ventures, Honey Digital and more. Steve Vallas, organiser of the Blockchain APAC Summit, “We are glad to have NEM.io Foundation share real-world use cases and applications in this enterprise-focused event for the public and private sector. There is a great need to fill the knowledge gap on blockchain which has the right ‘fit’ and the NEM blockchain is a solution which should be explored. The key outcome from the summit is to ensure that there is awareness and movement towards the blockchain adoption phase for Australia to be a global player in the technology space.” Jason Lee, Expansion Director for Australia and New Zealand for NEM.io Foundation, “NEM was developed as an enterprise-grade blockchain platform, being part of Blockchain APAC is a must-attend as we want to ensure that industries across all economic sectors have the right exposure to blockchain understanding. NEM.io Foundation is in 40 countries across 100 cities and has a strong presence in Australia and New Zealand through it’s team size of over 20 team members and partners.” “The latest announcement is the launch of the NEM Blockchain Hubs as a physical location to engage with the public through on-ground meetups and events. The NEM blockchain platform had been presented in major cities across Australia and is working with industry bodies including the public and private sector. With a Hub being launched in Melbourne in September, participation in this conference will be timely.” Find out more about the conference here.

https://medium.com/nem-anz/nem-to-participate-in-blockchain-apac-australias-biggest-enterprise-event-a9742f5796ab

['Nem Australia', 'New Zealand', 'Official Editor']

2018-08-16 02:50:44.716000+00:00

['Blockchain', 'Announcements', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Nem', 'Blockchain Technology']

How To Clean and Sterilise Baby Feeding Bottles | Cherub Baby

On this page - Bottle-feeding equipment - Cleaning baby feeding bottles - How to sterilise baby feeding equipment - When to sterilize baby feeding bottles - When to stop sterilizing baby bottles - Safety tips A young baby’s immune system hasn’t yet fully developed so they are more susceptible to catching an illness than an older child. Cleanliness around small babies is extremely important, especially when it comes to feeding. You will need to have the right baby feeding bottles and the right cleaning equipment. Bottle-feeding equipment If you are bottle feeding your baby then you will need the following: baby feeding bottles — you will need 4–6 baby feeding bottles. There is no right or wrong bottle type; you can choose from glass baby bottles, to plastic or silicone. teats — can be made from the more traditional latex (brown) or the more modern silicone (clear), and either kind is fine. A teats’ flow is based on the age of your baby, but this isn’t based on anything scientific. Try different teats, with different flows until you find one that works for your and your baby. rings, lids and caps — will come with your bottles, but make sure the seals are in good condition. Cleaning baby feeding bottles It’s very important to clean your bottle feeding equipment after every feed. You also need to clean the equipment before you sterilise it. Try and clean your baby feeding bottles as soon as you have finished feeding: Wash the bottles, teats and lids in warm soapy water, Use a bottle brush to make sure you clean out any dried milk or formula that may be stuck inside the bottle or teat, Rinse thoroughly and allow to dry. This kind of cleaning is important for getting rid of all traces of milk or formula left inside the bottles, but it does not ensure that the feeding equipment is completely germ-free. For that you will need to sterilise your baby feeding equipment. How to sterilise baby feeding equipment Sterilisation kills bacteria in bottles through the use of high temperatures or chemicals. There are three main ways to sterilise your baby feeding bottles and equipment. One way is not necessarily better than the other, so choose a method that works for you and your budget: Boiling Boiling is the simplest and most reliable way of sterilising your bottle-feeding equipment, plus you don’t need to buy and specialised equipment. Simply place your bottles, teats and lids in a large saucepan, cover with water and bring to the boil. Boil rapidly for 5 minutes, before turning off the power and allowing the equipment to cool while still in the water. Wash your hands thoroughly before removing the items from the water. If you are not using them straight away, put the lid and teat onto the bottle, and store in a clean container in the fridge. Re-boil the bottle and other equipment if it is not used within 24 hours. Chemicals You can sterilise your bottles with an antibacterial solution that comes in liquid or tablet form. This is a type of bleach that is diluted with water so it’s safe for your baby but strong enough to kill any bacteria. Always follow the manufacturer’s instructions to make the sterilising solution. Place your feeding equipment in a bowl and then cover with the solution. Make sure it is completely covered and there are no air bubbles. Leave the equipment for the recommended time, or until you need to use it again. There’s no need to rinse off the solution as this will expose your equipment to germs again. Throw any solution away after 24 hours and clean the container with warm soapy water before using again. Steaming Steaming works by raising the temperatures to kill bacteria, much like boiling. There are several steamer/steriliser’s on the market or you can use your microwave. Steam bags are an easy and innovative way to sterilise your baby feeding bottles in your microwave. Whichever method you use, make sure you follow the manufacturer’s instructions, but usually you just add water and switch on. If you are using a microwave, check the power levels as not all microwaves are the same. If you are not using the bottles straight away, check the instructions for how long you can leave them in the steriliser before you have to re-sterilise them. When to sterilize baby feeding bottles Nowadays, with most of us having access to treated municipal water, it’s not always necessary to sterilise your baby’s feeding equipment. There are however some instances when it should be done: if your baby is sick, if you’re using second hand or borrowed bottles, your baby was born premature or has other health issues, you have well point water or you don’t have access to clean drinking water, you are on holiday and you don’t trust the water source. It’s also important to sterilise your baby’s feeding equipment when you first buy it. After all you don’t know where or how the equipment has been stored prior to your purchase! When to stop sterilizing baby bottles How often to sterilise your baby bottles is really up to you, so do what feels right for your family. If you use a dishwasher with hot water and a heated drying cycle to clean your child’s feeding items, sanitising baby bottles by hand really isn’t a must. If you do decide to sterilise your baby’s bottles regularly, it’s OK to stop once your baby is older than 3 months. According to paediatrician’s guidelines, at 3 months your baby’s immune system has had time to develop and isn’t quite so fragile anymore. Safety tips Whichever method you use, here’s some simple safety tips to keep you and your little ones safe: Never leave hot or boiling liquids unattended or within reach of children. Be aware that steam can burn or scald you just as badly as boiling water. Keep chemicals and chemical solutions out of reach of children. Always wash your hands thoroughly before handling equipment that has been sterilised. References Originally published at https://www.cherubbaby.com.au on September 28, 2019.

https://medium.com/@cherubbaby/how-to-clean-and-sterilise-baby-feeding-bottles-cherub-baby-40db378844a6

['Cherub Baby']

2019-10-02 04:20:28.364000+00:00

['Baby Products', 'Baby Bottles', 'Recipe', 'Baby Care']

Starting your Philanthropic Journey

When deciding to become a philanthropist, there are many different aspects to consider. One of the first details to focus on is why you would like to give. Philanthropy can be very rewarding for everyone involved, but it’s essential to be passionate to achieve the best outcome. The reasoning for beginning this journey should come from a genuine place of aspiration. One detail to remember is that everyone’s philanthropic journey will be different. But, by taking note of these three stages, entering the world of philanthropy can be a smoother experience. As stated in an article by Bridgespan, the first stage of philanthropy is the exploration process. During this period, it is advisable to be strategic about what you choose to target. It is understandable and expected to care about many different interests and causes, but by tackling too many ideas at one time, one can quickly become overwhelmed. Bridgespan recommends engaging in “pilots,” which allows a beginner philanthropist to learn about multiple areas they care about while simultaneously producing results. After you feel comfortable with your exploration process, it’s time to start experimenting. This stage is usually where a philanthropist starts to make firm decisions about their funding priorities. The funder needs to ask themselves questions about what resources they are willing to invest in and what interventions and precautions they will take when working with grantees. During this stage, the funder’s primary goal is to develop a strategy to achieve the best results. In contrast, this stage contains the most “traps” due to trial and error, so it is imperative that the funder continuously evaluates their priorities. Bridgespan defines stage 3 as “Swinging For The Fences.” Not every philanthropist makes it to this stage, but you know you by making grant decisions that align with your strategy and assessing your progress compared to your desired results. During this stage, some important questions to ask yourself as a funder include how to improve and ways to use your resources most efficiently. Although this is stage three, it’s imperative to avoid becoming stagnant. Continue to re-design your strategy and re-evaluate your priorities as your philanthropic journey grows. The main goal of this stage is continuous progression and knowing when to adjust your position. Philanthropy is an ever-growing learning process, but by staying focused and organized during these three stages, the funder’s possibilities are immeasurable.

https://medium.com/@anslemoshionebo/starting-your-philanthropic-journey-f2417f4a6b0

['Anslem Oshionebo']

2020-12-08 19:56:00.109000+00:00

['Philanthropy']

Top 3 Tips for a Newbie Crypto Investor

Bitcoin today, and all of the currencies that are built using that recipe, are at the same stage that the internet was in 1992. Only now we have the internet, and so the rate of exponential growth has already started. The innovation is growing at an astonishing rate. - Andreas M. Antonopoulos Taking the first step towards something that seems complex and risky can be intimidating. Your own insecurities around investing coupled with never ending slashing and criticism of cryptocurrencies makes it even more scary. However, if you are reading this article, chances are, you have heard about Bitcoin and have been thinking about investing and being part of this new paradigm shift in technology. I started my own crypto investment journey when everything went euphoric in 2017 and then watched my entire portfolio get crushed as cryptocurrencies entered a period of despondency. Although my journey into cryptocurrencies didn’t make me an overnight millionaire, it did teach me a lot about investing, financial markets, market psychology and patience amongst other things. It gave the encouragement to delve deeper and appreciate this growing technology trend. Learning about all the limbo in the industry such as FUD, FOMO, Lambo, HODL, When Moon etc. was an added amusement. There is already a ton of information about cryptocurrencies out there. Having weathered the Crypto winter since December 2017, I have relentlessly continued to follow and learn about this new asset class and want to share my top tips that I wish I knew early on back then. These tips are relevant to this market regardless of when you read it and if you are already in the game, it’s never too late to take action on the tips below if you haven't acted upon them already. 1. Own Your Crypto Photo by Shane Avery on Unsplash You have done that initial research on the top Crypto exchanges and have gone as far as creating an account and buying your first cryptocurrency. As a newbie, that is a big step and congratulations for entering into this new world. But do you really own the crypto that you just brought? Not really! For those who are bewildered by the above statement, I suggest that you start your research understanding private & public keys and crypto wallets. Be it Coinbase, Binance, Kraken, Gemini or any other exchange for that matter, leaving your crypto on an exchange means that you don’t have the private key to your cryptocurrency and hence don’t really own it. Crypto industry has a very short memory in general, but veterans in the industry would remember the Mt.Gox fiasco in the early days and the more recent hack and closure of the exchange Cryptopia. Exchange crashes & hacks are prevalent and all sorts of scams are unfortunately a norm in this industry. Educate yourself on using crypto wallets (I strongly recommend hardware wallets) and what it means to own your private key. Keeping your coins on an exchange might seem convenient but the last thing you want is to watch your cryptocurrencies stolen or become inaccessible right when the prices are at its peak and when you want to encash it. Simple rule: Your key, your Bitcoin. Not your keys, not your Bitcoin - Andreas M. Antonopoulos 2. Do Your Own Research Photo by Windows on Unsplash With over 5000 different crypto currencies coupled with constant coin recommendations on youtube and other platforms, it’s easy to get overwhelmed quickly. However, don’t put your hard earned money into a random coin off of a tip or recommendation from a stranger on YouTube. Like anything else in life, be wary of scams, pump & dumps and Get-rich quick schemes. Yes, recommendations can be useful and help you in narrowing down the potential list of cryptos. But ignore the noise and hype. Take the time to understand what you are putting your money behind. We spend days and months researching about buying a home, a car or even a new phone. This is no different. Take the time to at-least go to their website and understand the cryptocurrency, the team behind it, their vision, read the white paper, look though their Github code, join their Telegram channel, Twitter or other social media channels to see what is happening in the community. Follow the news and articles in the industry and stay up-to-date. Following established industry veterans such as Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Tone Vays, Jimmy Song and Ivan on Tech helped me in the journey and are a good starting point for anyone new. The best investment you can make, is an investment in yourself. The more you learn, the more you’ll earn. - Warren Buffett 3. Have an Exit Strategy Photo by Ali Yahya on Unsplash There is nothing more exciting that watching your portfolio go up in value exponentially and nothing more devastating than watching your money get eroded and having to hold a bag of coins that are worthless. I learned this the hard way. Cryptocurrencies are a new asset class and investing in them is still extremely risky. The volatility is high and the price fluctuations can be wild. Before you make any decisions, you should have a clear plan in mind and more importantly stick to that plan when emotions cloud your thought process. Have a clear reason why you are investing in a particular coin, track your portfolio (on an app or a simple spreadsheet for that matter), have an exit price or percentage gain in mind and most importantly, rigorously stick to it. The best way to measure your investing success is not by whether you’re beating the market but by whether you’ve put in place a financial plan and a behavioural discipline that are likely to get you where you want to go. - Benjamin Graham Takeaway Cryptocurrency and Blockchain technology is here to stay and the future looks bright. With fresh opportunities comes big risks. As the market recovers from the bear market, as mainstream media starts to cover the market widely, as hype and euphoria returns, there will be many newbies entering the market. Remember: Own your Crypto Do your own research Have an exit strategy While the above tips are not an exhaustive list, I hope that it will provide you with the right launchpad for making informed decisions and help delve down the rabbit hole of this fascinating market.

https://medium.com/predict/top-3-tips-for-a-newbie-crypto-investor-48a0f0164a38

['Rivo Kienan']

2020-06-08 22:35:29.607000+00:00

['Investing', 'Blockchain', 'Business', 'Crypto', 'Tech']

Classifying images of different places

In this blog post, I’ll describe the process of designing and training a Deep Learning model to classify images of the “Intel Image classification Dataset”, which contains images of six different categories: mountain, forest, buildings, glacier, street and sea. For this project, I used the Python library PyTorch. Before designing the model, it’s always a good idea to explore the data. Some random images from the dataset The images in the dataset have an average size of 150 x 150 pixels, but not all of them have the same size, so I had to resize them. I chose a size of 128 x 128 pixels. After exploring the data, I noticed there were 14,034 images for training, and 3,000 images for testing. Now, it’s time to design and train the model. My first approach was creating a Convolutional Neural Network. After half an hour of training, my highest accuracy was 70%. I wasn’t happy with this result, so I made some changes that helped improve the training. Instead of using the images as they were in the dataset, I applied some transforms. I did a random crop with a reflection on a 4-pixel padding. I also applied a random horizontal flip, with a probability of 50%. Finally, I converted the images into tensors and normalized them to have a more centered distribution of pixels. After applying those transforms, the images look like this: Batch of normalized images I also did some improvements to the training phase. I used what Aakash NS taught in lecture 5 of the course. I used Learning Rate scheduling, which uses a learning rate scheduler to change the learning rate after every batch of training. I also used Weight Decay and Gradient Clipping, which are regularization techniques to prevent the weights and gradients from becoming too large, respectively. After adding these techniques to the fit function, I had very good results. I trained for 37 epochs, with two maximum learning rates: 0.01 for the first 32 epochs, and 0.004 for the last five epochs. After all this training, which took around half an hour, I reached a final accuracy of 90.39%, a much better result in comparison with the previous accuracy. Here are a couple of plots: Accuracies: In this plot, we can see that at the beginning, the accuracy was pretty low, around 1%, but after the first epochs, it raised to 80%, and at some point, it fell to somewhere around 30%. In the last epochs, we can observe that there was a final increase in the accuracy. Training and Validation Loss: In this plot, we can see the training and validation loss. Close to epoch 10, there is a sudden jump in the validation loss, which matches with the big fall in the accuracy, in the previous plot. Both the training and validation loss look almost the same, and that means there was no overfitting, that’s good news!

https://medium.com/@lsalvador-ht/classifying-images-of-different-places-5d2104fd19a0

['Luis Salvador Heysen Taborda']

2020-12-23 00:53:39.318000+00:00

['Python', 'Image Classification', 'Deep Learning', 'Pytorch']