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“Nijigasaki High” Episode 12 (ENGSUB) Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club

Nijigasaki High, a high school located at Odaiba, Tokyo that is popular for its spirit of freedom and its variety of education courses. Yu Takasaki, a 2nd year in General Education course, is attracted by school idols’ appeals. Together with her childhood friend Ayumu Uehara, she decided to visit the School Idol Club. Occasionally rivals, at times comrades. Holding to their own hopes and wishes, they continue to work hard day by day. “If only I could support these girls, who are pursuing their dreams……” This is a school idol project, a story of dreams come true, spun by 9 girls chasing their dreams and 1 ordinary girl. Reach! This excitement! Let’s chase after our dreams! ✅📺 P-l-a-y NOW JOIN US 📺: ➤ http://fullstream.dplaytv.net/series/388317/1/12 Title : Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club Episode Title : Episode 12 Release Date : 19 Dec 2020 Runtime : 25 minutes Genres : Animation , Anime , Comedy , Musical Networks : Tokyo MX Status: Running Quality: HD » Watch Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club Season 1 Episode 12 Tokyo MX « TELEVISION 👾 (TV), in some cases abbreviated to tele or television, is a media transmission medium utilized for sending moving pictures in monochrome (high contrast), or in shading, and in a few measurements and sound. The term can allude to a TV, a TV program, or the vehicle of TV transmission. TV is a mass mode for promoting, amusement, news, and sports. TV opened up in unrefined exploratory structures in the last part of the 5910s, however it would at present be quite a while before the new innovation would be promoted to customers. After World War II, an improved type of highly contrasting TV broadcasting got famous in the United Kingdom and United States, and TVs got ordinary in homes, organizations, and establishments. During the 5950s, TV was the essential mechanism for affecting public opinion.[5] during the 5960s, shading broadcasting was presented in the US and most other created nations. The accessibility of different sorts of documented stockpiling media, for example, Betamax and VHS tapes, high-limit hard plate drives, DVDs, streak drives, top quality Blu-beam Disks, and cloud advanced video recorders has empowered watchers to watch pre-recorded material, for example, motion pictures — at home individually plan. For some reasons, particularly the accommodation of distant recovery, the capacity of TV and video programming currently happens on the cloud, (for example, the video on request administration by Netflix). Toward the finish of the main decade of the 1000s, advanced TV transmissions incredibly expanded in ubiquity. Another improvement was the move from standard-definition TV (SDTV) (516i, with 909091 intertwined lines of goal and 434545) to top quality TV (HDTV), which gives a goal that is generously higher. HDTV might be communicated in different arrangements: 3456561, 3456561 and 1314. Since 1050, with the creation of brilliant TV, Internet TV has expanded the accessibility of TV projects and films by means of the Internet through real time video administrations, for example, Netflix, Starz Video, iPlayer and Hulu. In 1053, 19% of the world’s family units possessed a TV set.[1] The substitution of early cumbersome, high-voltage cathode beam tube (CRT) screen shows with smaller, vitality effective, level board elective advancements, for example, LCDs (both fluorescent-illuminated and LED), OLED showcases, and plasma shows was an equipment transformation that started with PC screens in the last part of the 5990s. Most TV sets sold during the 1000s were level board, primarily LEDs. Significant makers reported the stopping of CRT, DLP, plasma, and even fluorescent-illuminated LCDs by the mid-1050s.[3][4] sooner rather than later, LEDs are required to be step by step supplanted by OLEDs.[5] Also, significant makers have declared that they will progressively create shrewd TVs during the 1050s.[6][1][5] Smart TVs with incorporated Internet and Web 1.0 capacities turned into the prevailing type of TV by the late 1050s.[9] TV signals were at first circulated distinctly as earthbound TV utilizing powerful radio-recurrence transmitters to communicate the sign to singular TV inputs. Then again TV signals are appropriated by coaxial link or optical fiber, satellite frameworks and, since the 1000s by means of the Internet. Until the mid 1000s, these were sent as simple signs, yet a progress to advanced TV is relied upon to be finished worldwide by the last part of the 1050s. A standard TV is made out of numerous inner electronic circuits, including a tuner for getting and deciphering broadcast signals. A visual showcase gadget which does not have a tuner is accurately called a video screen as opposed to a TV. 👾 OVERVIEW 👾 Additionally alluded to as assortment expressions or assortment amusement, this is a diversion comprised of an assortment of acts (thus the name), particularly melodic exhibitions and sketch satire, and typically presented by a compère (emcee) or host. Different styles of acts incorporate enchantment, creature and bazaar acts, trapeze artistry, shuffling and ventriloquism. Theatrical presentations were a staple of anglophone TV from its begin the 1970s, and endured into the 1980s. In a few components of the world, assortment TV stays famous and broad. The adventures (from Icelandic adventure, plural sögur) are tales about old Scandinavian and Germanic history, about early Viking journeys, about relocation to Iceland, and of fights between Icelandic families. They were written in the Old Norse language, for the most part in Iceland. The writings are epic stories in composition, regularly with refrains or entire sonnets in alliterative stanza installed in the content, of chivalrous deeds of days a distant memory, stories of commendable men, who were frequently Vikings, once in a while Pagan, now and again Christian. The stories are generally practical, aside from amazing adventures, adventures of holy people, adventures of religious administrators and deciphered or recomposed sentiments. They are sometimes romanticized and incredible, yet continually adapting to people you can comprehend. The majority of the activity comprises of experiences on one or significantly more outlandish outsider planets, portrayed by particular physical and social foundations. Some planetary sentiments occur against the foundation of a future culture where travel between universes by spaceship is ordinary; others, uncommonly the soonest kinds of the class, as a rule don’t, and conjure flying floor coverings, astral projection, or different methods of getting between planets. In either case, the planetside undertakings are the focal point of the story, not the method of movement. Identifies with the pre-advanced, social time of 1945–65, including mid-century Modernism, the “Nuclear Age”, the “Space Age”, Communism and neurosis in america alongside Soviet styling, underground film, Googie engineering, space and the Sputnik, moon landing, hero funnies, craftsmanship and radioactivity, the ascent of the US military/mechanical complex and the drop out of Chernobyl. Socialist simple atompunk can be an extreme lost world. The Fallout arrangement of PC games is a fabulous case of atompunk.

https://medium.com/join-us-love-live-nijigasaki-high-school-idol-club/nijigasaki-high-episode-12-engsub-love-live-nijigasaki-high-school-idol-club-59a763af5814

['Elizabeth E. Dion']

2020-12-19 13:36:41.713000+00:00

['Musical', 'Animation', 'Anime', 'Comedy']

Clarifying the True Fatality Rate of Covid-19: Same as the Flu?

Clarifying the True Fatality Rate of Covid-19: Same as the Flu? [updated Oct] Comparing fatality rate jargons may lead to nowhere, but there are better metrics to grasp the health toll of Covid-19. Author’s note: Please see an update at the end of the article too. On 11 March 2020, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) told the U.S. Congress House Oversight and Reform Committee that the novel coronavirus — that causes Covid-19 — has a mortality rate of 10-times higher than the seasonal flu. Specifically, at the congressional hearing, the NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci said, “The flu has a mortality rate of 0.1 percent. This [Covid-19 or SARS-CoV-2] has a mortality rate of 10 times that. That’s the reason I want to emphasize we have to stay ahead of the game in preventing this.” 10 x 0.1% = 1%. In other words, Dr. Fauci reported that Covid-19 has a mortality rate of 1%, which he said had fallen from 2–3% after taking into account asymptomatic (i.e., symptomless) infections. But what did Dr. Fauci mean by mortality rate? In an editorial published on 29 February in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) — co-authored by Dr. Robert R. Redfield, director of the CDC, and Dr. H. Clifford Lane, deputy director of NIAID — Dr. Fauci stated that influenza “has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%.” Therefore, Dr. Fauci refers to the case fatality rate (CFR) when he said, “The flu has a mortality rate of 0.1 percent.” But he should have said the infection fatality rate (IFR). Why? The CFR is the total number of deaths divided by the total number of people that have the disease’s symptoms. In contrast, the IFR is the total number of deaths divided by the total number of people that carry the infection. The confusion between ‘case’ and ‘infection’ fatality rates (CFR vs. IFR) In contrast, the World Health Organization (WHO) stated that the flu has an infection fatality rate (IFR) of 0.1% or lower. Who is right? The WHO who said influenza has an IFR of 0.1% or lower, or The NIAID and CDC directors who said influenza has a CFR of 0.1%? In an article published August in the journal Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, titled “Public health lessons learned from biases in coronavirus mortality overestimation,” Dr. Ronald B. Brown at the University of Waterloo in Canada shed light on this confusion. “A case fatality rate (CFR) is defined as the proportion of deaths among confirmed cases of the disease,” Dr. Brown said, “…while an infection fatality rate (IFR) is defined as the proportion of deaths relative to the prevalence of infections within a population.” The catch is that cases refer only to those with clinical symptoms of the disease. Hence, asymptomatic (i.e., symptomless) people are not considered as a case. Mathematically speaking, the CFR is the total number of deaths divided by the total number of people that have the disease’s symptoms. In contrast, the IFR is the total number of deaths divided by the total number of people that carry the infection, regardless of them having clinical symptoms or not. “IFRs from samples across the population include undiagnosed, asymptomatic, and mild infections, and are often lower compared to CFRs, which are based exclusively on relatively smaller groups of moderately to severely ill diagnosed cases at the beginning of an outbreak,” Dr. Brown continued. (Note that the mortality rate has its own definition: The total number of deaths per population of 100,000 persons. But people typically refer to the CFR or IFR when talking about mortality rate.) The WHO got it right, Dr. Brown said, in that influenza has an IFR of 0.1% or lower, not a CFR of 0.1%. Dr. Fauci reported that Covid-19 has a mortality rate of 1%, which he said had fallen from 2–3% after taking into account asymptomatic infections. And Dr. Fauci probably meant to say that Covid-19 has an IFR of 1% (not CFR of 1%) after having considered asymptomatic infections. The true fatality rate of Covid-19 To reiterate, Dr. Fauci said the Covid-19 mortality rate dropped from 2–3% to 1% after adjusting for asymptomatic infections. “The coronavirus mortality rate of 2–3% that was adjusted to 1% in Congressional testimony is consistent with the coronavirus CFR of 1.8–3.4% (median 2.6%) reported by the CDC,” Dr. Brown explained. Thus, among those who became symptomatic, Covid-19 is not any deadlier than the flu. This had led to the notion that lockdowns were not necessary as Covid-19 is just like the seasonal flu. “Furthermore, the WHO reported that the CFR of the H1N1 influenza virus is also 2–3%, similar to the unadjusted 2–3% CFR of the coronavirus reported in Congressional testimony, with no meaningful difference in mortality,” he added. “Evidence from the WHO confirmed that the approximate CFR of the coronavirus is generally no higher than that of seasonal influenza.” As follows, Covid-19 has an IFR of 1% and CFR of 2–3%. More recent data by the CDC and WHO, however, estimates that Covid-19 has an IFR of 0.65% and 0.5-1%, respectively. The flu has an IFR of 0.1% or lower and CFR of 2–3%. (Please also see the update below about this.) Thus, among those who became symptomatic (i.e., CFR), Covid-19 is not any deadlier than the flu. This had led to the notion that lockdowns were not necessary as Covid-19 is just like the seasonal flu. Overall, a higher transmission rate leads to more infections and then more cases and, eventually, more deaths. Now, the CFR alone is not as important. But such proponents seem to have been confused about the differences between CFR and IFR, as Dr. Fauci and others did. Among the total infection events (i.e., IFR), Covid-19 is still 6.5-times deadlier than the flu. This means that a person is more likely to become a case (symptomatic) when infected with SARS-CoV-2 than with the influenza virus. The main reason is that SARS-CoV-2 is a novel virus in which little preexisting immunity exists, so a lot more infected people will get sick. The true health burden of Covid-19 Even if the IFRs of SARS-CoV-2 and influenza might be the same, as some data may suggest, SARS-CoV-2 is more contagious with a basic reproductive number (R-naught) of 2.5. This means an infected person can pass the virus to two people or so, resulting in 2000+ infections after ten rounds of transmissions. The flu, by contrast, has an R-naught of 1.3, which equates to 56 infections after ten rounds. Further, SARS-CoV-2 has a longer incubation period, the period between infection and symptom onset, than influenza (approx. 5–12 vs. 2 days). This means that asymptomatic people can stay infectious for a longer time and, thus, more widespread silent viral transmission. The fact that Covid-19 kills more than flu is quickly evident by “the number of deaths that exceed what is seen in typical years.” Overall, a higher transmission rate leads to more infections and then more cases and, eventually, more deaths. Now, the CFR alone is not as important. Not to mention also that SARS-CoV-2 infections are more likely to become cases than with influenza. The fact that Covid-19 kills more than flu is quickly evident by “the number of deaths that exceed what is seen in typical years,” the academic journal Nature reported in September. In other words, deaths from Covid-19 are not deaths that ‘would happen anyway’. Source: Nature More info on excess mortality or deaths in 2020 vs. previous years: Source: ourworldindata.org. Similar data on other countries (e.g., the USA, Sweden, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, etc.) can be found here. 14 September 2020 update/corrections on CFR An email asked for the specific source of the IFR and CFR of the flu, which is <0.1% and 2–3%, respectively, in this article. I then realized that Dr. Brown cited the IFR of the seasonal flu, but CFR of the Spanish flu pandemic. For the seasonal flu, the CFR is 0.1%. So, Dr. Fauci is right to say that the seasonal flu has a CFR of 0.1%, although he compared this CFR of flu with the IFR of Covid-19 (i.e., 1%). In this way, it is an underestimate when Dr. Fauci said that the mortality rate of Covid-19 is 10-times higher than the flu. Thus, the prior numbers I cited overestimate the lethality of the flu and discredited Dr. Fauci, which I sincerely apologize. 8 October 2020 updates/corrections on IFR The CDC has changed the IFR values of Covid-19 into age-specific estimates, which are now very low at 0.003% for 0–19 years, 0.02% for 20–49 years, 0.5% for 50–69 years, and 5.4% for 70+ years. But there seems to be no data on age-specific IFR of the seasonal flu. The WHO only stated that “the infection mortality rate (the number of reported deaths divided by the number of infections) will be lower. For seasonal influenza, mortality is usually well below 0.1%.” How much below 0.1% is unclear. Admittedly, comparing mortality rates between Covid-19 and the seasonal flu may lead to nowhere. Perhaps we should look at other metrics instead, such as R-naught and excess deaths.

https://medium.com/microbial-instincts/clarifying-the-true-fatality-rate-of-covid-19-same-as-the-flu-8148e38b9ab5

['Shin Jie Yong']

2020-10-09 02:35:43.478000+00:00

['Health', 'Science', 'Ideas', 'Coronavirus', 'Life']

How To Enjoy Your Free Time If You Get Anxious Easily

Take a minute and think about the last time you were feeling anxious for no reason. Where were you, what were you doing at that very moment? I’m willing to bet you weren’t doing much at all. You were either at work, in between tasks, or at home, paralyzed with fear. I know this because I’ve been in your shoes, more times than I’d care to admit. I’ve subjected myself to worry and rumination until my body learned it so well, it could switch into that uncomfortable state with no warning whatsoever. I slip into a state I can only describe as angst. That feeling of unease, like when something is wrong, but you can’t quite put your finger on it. Feeling like something horrible is about to happen when you’re merely brushing your teeth is a distressing state to be in. But, it doesn’t have to get to the point of frozen despair to acknowledge you have a problem. Why do we get anxious in our free time? To answer that question, we need to look at times when we’re not anxious. When we get so lost in whatever we’re doing that there’s no room for any other thoughts. In his book, “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience,” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes a state in which people are so involved in a task that nothing else seems to matter. When concentration is at an all-time high, we can’t pay attention to any other issues. “Flow is being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz.” ― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience I’ve experienced this myself many times. Whenever I performed a very detailed procedure at work, I completely immersed myself in it. On many occasions, I went to work anxious, tearful even, only to calm down while doing the thing that scared me in the first place. Pretty ironic. Obviously, it’s not the object of the worry that makes me feel so fearful. It’s the pattern of toxic thinking that blows that object way out of proportion. And when does this happen? In our free time. Whenever we don’t give our mind purpose, and we allow it to spiral into negative, stress-inducing thinking, our wiring for anxiety gets stronger. It becomes a habit. “But I need my free time. Work stresses me out, I need to work less.” The truth is, no amount of free time will make you feel better if you leave your mind to its own devices. I have tested many combinations — I tried working less, fewer hours, fewer days in the week. It only brought minimal relief until I filled that free time with things that I enjoyed and required some effort: writing, gardening, cooking, hiking, etc. How to replace “mindless” with “mindful” Unstructured rest doesn’t work well for anxious people. We rest our bodies when we get tired, but it’s a different process when it comes to relaxing our minds: we either do it through meditation or a state of flow. “Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times — although such experiences can also be enjoyable if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.” ― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience We must implement this state of “flow” in our free time as well. Our mind needs something to do that is interesting and challenging on some level. Examples of this are doing something creative like writing, painting, drawing; something technically challenging like playing an instrument, knitting, cooking; or something physically exerting: gardening, hiking, playing sports. Put simply, old-fashioned activities that we’ve unfortunately replaced with technology. We’ve made everything easy and convenient. We consume instead of engaging. We don’t make time for hobbies anymore, and it’s making us miserable. Managing free moments while at work Whenever I feel anxious at work, I crave distraction. The problem is I spend too much time on my phone, then feel guilty about it, which in turn fuels my anxiety. To put an end to this cycle, I’ve tested filling up this idle time in a more meaningful way: I carry a book with me that I’ve been meaning to read I catch up on small tasks that I’ve been procrastinating since I know that procrastination is a huge trigger for anxiety I organize my space I engage in conversations with my colleagues Whatever I do, I try not to give myself too much time alone with my thoughts when I know I’m in a negative state of mind. Focus is the best antidote for rumination. However, if your anxiety during those free moments is causing you too much distress, you should deal with it head-on. Avoiding it will only make it worse. Take 30 minutes to yourself and try to find comfort in these things: Breathe from your diaphragm Acknowledge your emotions Do a brain dump and write your worries in detail Investigate your fears with “why” questions Question your angst and reframe it This process won’t entirely take your anxiety away, but it will help tremendously. Designing your free time at home Watching Netflix after a hard day at work is not only easy, it’s also fun. And we need it too. We need to give our minds a break every once in a while. But there’s a difference between enjoying a show and watching endless hours of TV because you want to numb out pain or avoid something you’ve been procrastinating. In those moments, you know you should be doing something else. And it’s eating away at you. The answer to that annoying guilty feeling is doing something that matters to you. After all, it’s your free time. Whatever you choose to spend it on doesn’t have to be productive or meaningful to anyone else but you. So figure out what would make you happy, or make a difference in your life, and start working on it. Don’t expect it to be easy. You’ve been conditioning yourself to reach out for effortless entertainment for so long, you’re going to have some push-back.

https://medium.com/age-of-empathy/how-to-enjoy-your-free-time-if-you-get-anxious-easily-a901b7d1a7ea

['Adriana Sim']

2020-10-30 23:17:02.551000+00:00

['Self Improvement', 'Life', 'Adriana Sim', 'Anxiety', 'Mental Health']

SEO Guidelines — What is On Page (Or On Site) SEO?

When we talk about SEO or Search Engine Optimization, we generally divide it into two major categories. These two categories are: On-Page SEO Off-Page SEO Just to be clear, SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a process in which you use different techniques to improve your website’s search engine rankings. These techniques are either on-page or off-page. In this post, we discuss what is on-page SEO? Moreover, there are different basic concepts and techniques that most webmasters use in the on-page SEO methods. This article also explains all these on-page SEO methods. So let’s start with the basic definition of on-page SEO, and then we move on to discuss some useful techniques and methods that you can use to improve your website’s on-page SEO structure. What is on-Page SEO? Search engine optimization techniques that directly involve the front-end of your website and webpages are known as on-page SEO methods. Remember that onsite SEO has a great impact on your search engine ranking, and to achieve higher rankings, on-page optimization is imperative. It is important to understand that off-page SEO is equally important for long-term and sustainable success. However, off-page SEO cannot work independently, as it requires you on-page SEO, too, to complement it. Most webmasters fail to create a balance between on-page and off-page SEO, which often leads to a failure. The tip is to first learn about on-page SEO and apply it to your webpages. In the meanwhile, you keep improving and optimizing the back-end of your website, i.e. the off-page SEO. Only then, you can really improve your website’s search engine rankings. So, in short, on-page SEO is what you do on the front-end of your webpages. There are various techniques to optimize your webpages and following are some of the most important ones: 1. Page Titles Page title is one of the most important key factors of on-page SEO. Every webpage has a unique title. Ideally, that title should contain the primary keyword that your webpage is all about. It is one of the most basic and effective on-page SEO techniques, i.e. to include your primary keyword in the title of your webpage. Let’s suppose you are a writing a blog post about different tips and techniques for getting rid of lizards. Most users would search for the topic with keywords like “getting rid of lizards” and “how to get rid of lizards”. Therefore, it is wise to name your webpage as one of such keywords, e.g. “How to Get Rid of Lizards?” In short, the idea is to include the keyword (that you are trying to optimize your webpage for) in your page’s main title. 2. Meta Description The Meta description is one of the most neglected aspects. It does not only help the actual human readers to find what the post is all about, but it equally helps the search engines as well. Most of time people don’t add Meta description. Do not make the same mistake. Moreover, a common on-page SEO practice is to include your keywords in that Meta description. Search engines love it! 3. URL Structure Most webmasters believe that apart from the title of the page, the URL of a website/webpage is the second most important part to add keywords. The search engine crawlers find it easier to read keywords from the webpage’s URL structure. Therefore, most SEO specialists prefer using the main keywords in it. Tip: If you are using WordPress, adding keywords to your webpage’s URL is fairly simple and easy. You can do it via the post editor. Moreover, you do not have to use include all the “articles” and “prepositions” in the URL structure. Just try adding all your primary keywords in it. 4. H1 and H2 Tags Just like you add your keywords in the main title and URL of your page, it is equally important that you do the same with your H1 and H2 tags. H1 and H2 tags are commonly referred to as “heading tags”. Most webmasters and SEO experts believe that search engine crawlers find it easier to evaluate a webpage if its heading tags contain important keywords. The H1 refers to the main heading of your page. The H2 refers to the sub-headings. Try adding your important keywords to both the main-heading and the sub-headings for better results. 5. Keyword Density Keyword density is another important factor of on-page search engine optimization. Many people confuse it and end up with unnecessary “keyword stuffing”. Do remember that Google penalizes the websites that unnecessarily use keywords in their webpages. Although there is no ideal percentage of keyword inclusion, most SEO experts believe that 3%-5% inclusion is considered fair — as long as it seems natural to add those keywords. Moreover, some SEO experts that belong with the modern school of thought believe that “once is enough” and that you should consider writing the posts for the humans, rather than the search engines. Both the theories seem correct in different scenarios. The bottom line is just not to stuff keywords unnecessarily. 6. Image Optimization Not many people enough attention to images, but you can optimize your website through this source as well. It is important to understand that search engines cannot read and comprehend images. So in order to use them for your website’s search engine optimization, use the Alt Text option. It is the text that goes along with your image, and shows up when the image can’t. Search engines can read that text to identify what the image is all about, and your website can then rank for the same. In Conclusion: If you want to properly optimize your website for higher search engine rankings, then you simply cannot neglect the on-page SEO. It is the most basic aspect of search engine optimization, and the one that does not require much time and efforts — especially when compared with the off-page SEO. In the next post, we will be exploring the second segment, i.e. the off-page SEO techniques. Stay tuned.

https://medium.com/datadeck/seo-guidelines-what-is-on-page-or-on-site-seo-71a6f188ad88

['Data Dum Dum']

2016-11-11 07:06:27.563000+00:00

['Online Marketing', 'SEO', 'Marketing', 'Digital Marketing']

React Native Facebook Login

Social media Authentication like Facebook login is becoming necessary while building the authentication flow of a mobile app. In React Native, this can easily be achieved in a few minutes. Requirements expo-facebook Go ahead and install expo-facebook dependency with: expo install expo-facebook The only method you need import * as Facebook from 'expo-facebook'; Facebook.initializeAsync({ appId: 'APP_ID', }); const logInWithFacebook = async () => { try { const { type, token, expirationDate, permissions, declinedPermissions, } = await Facebook.logInWithReadPermissionsAsync({ permissions: ['public_profile'], }); if (type === 'success') { // Get the user's name using Facebook's Graph API const response = await fetch( `https://graph.facebook.com/me?access_token=${token}`, ); Alert.alert('Logged in!', `Hi ${(await response.json()).name}!`); } else { // type === 'cancel' } } catch ({ message }) { alert(`Facebook Login Error: ${message}`); } }; (If you need an already implemented solution with a cool UI, check out this free mobile template at QuickComponent where Facebook login is implemented.) With a valid Facebook application ID in place of APP_ID, the code above will prompt the user to log into Facebook then display the user’s name. This uses React Native’s to query Facebook’s. Valid methods you can always call on Facebook include: Facebook.logOutAsync() — available to logout currently authenticated user Facebook.getAuthenticationCredentialAsync() — return the authenticated user credentials if exist and null if no user exists. For more information on other methods, you might need, visit the official documentation of expo-facebook here Also, get a free template with Facebook Login already implemented and other premium templates with the complete backend at QuickComponent.

https://medium.com/@trevorbuntin/react-native-facebook-login-2738976e11f9

['Trevor Buntin']

2020-12-23 16:14:36.271000+00:00

['Startup', 'Facebook Login', 'React Native Tutorial', 'React Native', 'React Native Development']

Build RESTful API with React and Loopback (Part 1)

As you know React is a famous JS framework. So we are gonna learn how to use loopback with ReactJs. What is a LoopBack ? LoopBack is a framework for creating APIs and connecting them with backend data sources. Built on top of Express, it can take a data model definition and easily generate a fully functional end-to-end REST API that can be called by any client. LoopBack comes with a built-in client, API Explorer. Before getting started you need the following Text Editor ( i prefer VS code https://code.visualstudio.com/ ) MongoDB — https://www.mongodb.com/download-center/community Node.js — https://nodejs.org/en/ Step 1 — Install Loopback from CLI Im going to use VS code terminal for this. So open a new terminal and type the following command make sure we install this globally using the -g. npm install -g loopback-cli Step 2 — Creating the Application Create a folder to store your application and im going to name it as “car-api”. Now lets go to the VS code and go to File > Open Folder and open the folder “car-api”. After that open a new terminal by going to Terminal > New Terminal or you can use Ctrl + SHIFT + ` keys. In the terminal type the following command to create a loopback. lb Then it will ask some questions from you like below After that it will install some libraries and wait till it is done. Then in the terminal type node . This will start up the loopback api, To go to loopback explore > press CRT and Right click on the http://localhost:3000/explore. As the blow image. You will See something like below in your browser after clicking the link As you can see all the GET users, POST users , DELETE users etc. methods are all ready there in the loopback. This save lot of time of creating the back-end of the application. Step 3 — Connecting MongoDB Open your MongoDB. And it will ask some configuration before connecting to the database. Just put the Host name as localhost and the Port as 27017 then press connect. okay now you have setup the MongoDB. Now lets go back to the VS code Terminal and type the following code to install the MongoDB connector. npm install — save loopback-connector-mongodb After installing the connector we have to connect the connector. Type the following command in the terminal lb datasource mongoDS — connector mongoDB This will ask some question from you like below Database Car is now created. Now go to the datasources.json. you can see something like below in the datasources.json file it has the information of the database. The “db” is the database that stores the data in the memory and the “mongoDS” is the database that stores the data in the mongoDB database. We are going to delete the “db” part and rename the “mongoDB” as the “db”. We do this because we are using the mongoDB as the database and its easy to rename it to db or else we have to find the all the reference palace where db is and rename it to mongoDS. So after rename the mongoDS to db you will have the datasources.json file like this Step 4 — Creating Data Model Run the following command to create data model lb model This will again ask some questions about model you are making After making the model it will ask the property of that model. So we made a model of “car”. Im going to add Name and Price as the properties of the car. When you are done adding properties hit enter to exit from it. Now go to to Common folder you will see there are car.json file created. Go to it and you will see the car model and its properties there. Now lets see this in loopback explorer using the following command and head over to localhost:3000/explorer. node . Now you will see 2 models as user and car Step 5 — Lets add some car items In the loopback Api Explorer Go to car POST method and enter some data in the value feild in json format and press try it out. If the data successfully added it will return Response code as 200. So im going to add 4 items like that. Step 6 — Lets get added Items In the loopback Api Explorer Go to car GET method and click on Try it out!. You will get the car items you added before. Congratulation 🎉🎉🎉 you have successfully finished building the back-end of the Car api. In the next part will be working with front end of the Car api how to display, edit ,delete and add them using a front end client app. Bye for now Happy Coding 😆💻😆💻

https://medium.com/codeblog/build-restful-api-with-react-and-loopback-part-1-faee297317ce

['Isuru Liyanage']

2020-12-10 12:38:47.354000+00:00

['Rest Api', 'Reactjs', 'Development', 'Swagger', 'Mongodb']

How to use Pipenv with Jupyter and VSCode

Currently, I study Artificial Intelligence at the JKU university and for some exercises, we need to use jupyter notebooks. Having worked a little bit with Python the package manager pipenv proofed to be valuable. Now, I encountered some problems using it with Jupyter notebooks and within VSCode. Therefore, a short guide on how I solved it. Table of Contents The Issue As I described in my last article Working with Jupyter and VSCode I use pyenv and pipenv for managing all packages in my python development. I also referenced some articles why this way is helpful and easy to use. Now, it is necessary to dive a little more into it. There are two ways you would want to develop with jupyter notebook. Either you work with it directly in the browser or inside VSCode. In both use cases, there can emerge problems. Developing with Jupyter Notebook in the browser Jupyter Notebook in the browser Let’s say you already have the proper python environment on your system and now you want to create a specific one for a project. First, create a Pipenv environment. Make sure to navigate into the correct directory. Use pipenv install <packages> to install all your packages. Then use pipenv shell to activate your shell. Then use pipenv install jupyter and afterward pipenv run jupyter notebook . Now the jupyter server is started and your notebook will have access to the correct environment. Activating the right environment for Jupyter notebook in the browser Develop with Jupyter Notebook in VSCode

https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-use-pipenv-with-jupyter-and-vscode-ae0e970df486

['Daniel Deutsch']

2020-09-28 09:32:46.481000+00:00

['Python', 'Vscode', 'Jupyter Notebook', 'Pipenv', 'Pyenv']

Sorting Out Feeling(s) with Ruby

I have a problem. Well, more like, I have feelings. It sounds like I’m trying to say that my feelings are a problem, which I’m not, but they are starting to FEEL that way. Showing myself out. I just started a fully immersive course in Software Engineering through the Flatiron School. Well, it’s supposed to be fully immersed, but due to a certain pandemic that should not be named, it’s more of an immersion via Zoom & Slack from the comfort of my parents basement in the middle of Stafford, VA about an hour south of our nation’s capital. I was hoping to be doing this in person in NYC, but again, thanks to COV…*cough*…I mean, IT that should not be named, I’m here. I’m here, trying to switch from touring the country as an actor, to diving head first into the digital world and languages that keep this Earth of ours connected. ALL that to say…I’m overwhelmed. So, to help me sort all of these feelings out I’m looking at my main squeeze over the last two weeks, Ruby. Ruby + Me I’m going to define myself as a class called Feeler and my feelings as a class called Feeling. If we think about the relationship between feelings and myself, you could say that I have a lot, or have many, feelings, and feelings are my own, or belong to me. OR. The Feeler HAS MANY Feelings, and the Feelings BELONG TO the Feeler. Let’s set ’em up!

https://jmhero05.medium.com/sorting-out-feeling-s-with-ruby-a82129c8687

['Jake Mills']

2020-08-17 18:21:06.992000+00:00

['Coding', 'First Post', 'Ruby', 'Web Development', 'Flatiron School']

Bot Traffics. A snapshot of Bot Traffic. Types of Bot…

In this blog, I discussed a snapshot on Bot Traffics: Types of Bots, how bot traffic affect us, and how to stop Bot Traffics. Image Ref: Babylon Traffic Bot traffic is any non-human traffic that visits a website. The term bot traffic is usually viewed as being negative, but it ultimately depends on what the bot is trying to achieve. The amount of daily web traffic on the internet is at an all-time high. But just how much of this web traffic is actually real? In recent years there has been a massive surge in online bot traffic thanks to the improvement in artificial intelligence and automated services. With more and more bots being launched onto the internet every single day, is this a good thing for website owners and users, or just another annoyance? Let’s explore different types of bots and what they do? The Good Bots i) Search Engine Bots: These bots crawl as much as the web as they can and help website owners get their websites listed on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, etc ii) Monitoring Bots: To help users ensure their site is always accessible, there is a range of website monitoring bots out there that will automatically ping your site to ensure it’s still online. iii) SEO Crawlers: There is a range of software out there that can help improve your SEO efforts(making your site No.1) by crawling your site and competitors to see what you rank for and how well. Webmasters can then use this data to improve their search visibility and improve their organic web traffic. iv) Copyright Bots: Copyright bots crawl the web scanning for specific images to ensure nobody is illegally using any copyrighted content without permission. The Bad Bots Unlike the good bots we just mentioned above, bad bots do really bad things to your website and can cause a lot of damage if left to roam free. i) Web Scrapers: Web scrapers are annoying malicious bots that scrape websites looking for valuable information such as email address and contact details. In other cases, they will steal content and images from websites and use them on their own site without permission. ii) Spam Bots: Spambots leave generated messages (that often make no sense) on a website’s blog. They also fill out contact forms on websites and spam owners with promotional messages. iii) Vulnerability Scanners: There is a range of malicious bots out there that will scan millions of sites for vulnerabilities and report them back to their creator or to one person who will then most likely sell the information or use it themselves to hack websites. How Can Traffic Bots Be Bad for Websites? Having lots of bots on your website will usually lead to things such as: More page views, Higher bandwidth usage, Incorrect Google Analytics, decrease in conversions, Junk emails, Longer load times, Higher server costs, Increased bounce rate. How to STOP Bot Traffic Google Analytics is the best place to start if you want to check to see if your website is being affected by bots. In Google Analytics, you’ll be able to see all the essential site metrics, such as average time on page, bounce rate, number of page views, and other analytics data. Using this information you can quickly determine if your site’s analytics data has been skewed by bot traffic and to what extent. TRICKS TO IDENTIFY: Firstly, a very low time on site metric is a clear indicator that most of your visitors could be bots. It only takes an automated bot just a few seconds to crawl a webpage before it leaves and moves onto its next target. Secondly, you can refer to the referrals section to check if you aren’t receiving any referral spam. Many companies target other sites with a custom bot that will spam their website URL. When a webmaster checks their referral traffic in Google Analytics they’ll see the name of the website and be inclined to visit. As crude as this sounds, it can help generate the site quite a lot of visitors (mainly out of curiosity!). It might not sound like they are doing harm to your website, but they are actually skewing all of your metrics, wasting your bandwidth, and clogging up your server in general. Stopping Bot Traffic Stopping bot traffic from harming your website is completely possible, but the the solution will depend on the type of bot traffic that is affecting your site. Remember, not all bot traffic is bad, and blocking bots such as search engine crawlers are really not a good idea! If your website is prone to be scraped by robots, vulnerability scanners, and automated traffic bots, then the chances are you’ll want some protection in the form of a firewall or shield. The best way to do this is to install a free service on your website called Cloudflare. This service acts as a barrier between the website and user, meaning it will only allow legitimate users to access your website. Any suspicious users won’t make it past and won’t get to access your site. However, if you’re looking to protect your website from other forms of bots such as fraudulent and repetitive clicks on your ads, then you’ll need something else.

https://medium.com/@garg-shelvi/what-is-bot-traffic-535f2f5130e4

['Shelvi Garg']

2021-05-01 03:10:47.958000+00:00

['Traffic', 'Bot Traffic', 'Bots', 'Network', 'Good Bot']

Google to shutter Android Things — IoT

This article was 1st published on our sister Site, The Internet Of All Things. Google has decided to shutter ‘Android Things’, a version of Android meant for the Internet of Things (IoT). A new FAQ page detailed the demise of the OS. Says the Google Android team: In February 2019, we announced an update regarding commercial use of the Android Things platform for device makers. Following in line with those updates, we are turning down the Android Things Console for non-commercial use. Beginning January 5, 2021 the console will no longer allow creation of new projects using NXP i.MX7D and Raspberry Pi 3B. Developers can continue to use the Android Things console to build images and serve OTA updates for their existing projects until January 5, 2022. At this point, the console will be turned down completely and all project data will be permanently deleted — including build configurations and factory images.

https://medium.com/whats-new-on-the-net/google-to-shutter-android-things-iot-e0960d24e1c5

[]

2020-12-18 06:58:50.550000+00:00

['IoT', 'Android', 'Google', 'Internet of Things', 'News']

A non-economist entrepreneur’s view of Corona Virus Impact

A non-economist entrepreneur’s view of Corona Virus Impact As a entrepreneur, the last 4 weeks have been challenging to understand and grapple with. While personal and family health is the priority but equally important is to think through what lies ahead. The challenges we are going through with regard to managing businesses, responsibility to stake holders including team members, shareholders, vendor partners etc have been daunting. Every news flow currently makes the picture darker. The western economies went from the narrative being “a passing one with some causalities and temporary suffering” to the current narrative being -”unprecedented” , “several times worse than 2008 financial crisis”, “worse than world war” , “may be the biggest depression in the last 150 years”. The biggest challenge for an entrepreneur is “What decisions should one take ?” given No understanding of the scale of impact. While I write this from the perspective of a startup businessman, I don’t think that the questions in the mind of any CEO of a large enterprise or even an Industrialist will be any different. The difference being that I have to take decisions that will impact X people and capital, the others would have to the take the decisions that would impact 1000 X or a million X. The quantum of uncertainty, fear and pain in everyone’s mind would be the same. In any decision taken, one should able to identify or aim visualize the rough boundaries of consequential events. However in this scenario, the visualized boundaries are shifting every day. There are few key matters one can attempt to decipher under the current scenario. A) The Virus itself Since the identification of outbreak in December 2019 in Wuhan, the virus has destabilized every country irrespective of the scale of development much beyond the estimate of the so called the best governments, data intelligence and educated minds. The article published in bloomberg in early April 2020, being an Oxymoron — The secret report concludes that China’s numbers are fake, two of the officials said, Bloomberg reported. The White House received the report last week, according to the news outlet. (Ref https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/01/coronavirus-china-hid-extent-of-outbreak-us-intelligence-reportedly-says.html ) puts a question on intelligence capabilities of the most developed country and its ability to control the situation. The healthcare systems of Europe and US has been tested and the governments have conceded their inability and regret that the situation is beyond manageable. With time ticking, even the most brave and positive leadership agreeing to the fact that currently our only hope is to pass through this phase by slowing the pace of damage through social distancing and flattening the curve. While the mortality rates of the infections is not very significant from a statistical perspective, but the mere fact that emotional impact and the fear of life created in the mind of people has been unprecedented in our lifetime making us live in a scenario akin to nuclear winter. However, what has transpired over the last few weeks raises further question as to how much we know about the end for the primary cause, the virus infection in itself. Some of the unanswered question which will come back to our minds once the panic of uncontrollable infection rates are brought down being: a) How much time will we need to see that a flattened curve would help to build herd immunity i.e 60% of population getting infected there by reducing future infections ? b) Would we have a second wave of infection from a mutated version ? c) How long would the immunity from the first infection last ? While one timeframe we definitely have is that we hope to have a vaccine in 12–18 months. But many question still unanswered and leaves much to be desired. Everything else in between is under diligence. B) Social Distancing leading to Lock-down and life beyond ? Some countries including China to control the spread of the virus, has announced national/region level lock-downs while others have taken a more moderate approach involving social distancing and self imposed restrictions. However one thing is common, people are less willing to come out as hospitalization and deaths increase with each passing day and businesses shutting down or forced to shutdown at unprecedented levels. The estimates of the impact on worldwide GDP is being revised downwards every passing week with the projection of depression already being predicted. Some countries who promulgated social distancing instead of forced lockdowns are now looking at a scenario of lockdown with contain the rapidly increasing infection rates. India has been one of the first countries to announce a lock-downs early on in the cycle. A brief overview of GDP analysis shown below would give clarity to the impact of lock down. The below table shows the Gross Value Add (GVA) of the Indian economy. The lockdown along with limitations on International trade, the impact on the economic activity is catastrophic. With the announcement of lock down and logistics available for only essential items, · Agriculture activity has been impacted especially forestry and fishing which contributes ~ 40% of agricultural sector. · Industry sector including primarily manufacturing and construction has announced shut downs. · Services sector also see a drastic impact except Public administration, defence etc. Except IT services and services which permits work from home Trade activities including hotels transportation etc are working at limited levels. May be less than 20% would be functioning A rough sensitivity on the lock down shows the following on the GVA of Indian economy Likely estimate of impact on Gross Value Add under lockdown Every month of lock down will take away ~3.0% of the GDP, i.e India will enter into a recession for the first time if the lock down persist for more than 1.5–2 months. A scenario which the country has never faced before but seems like a definite possibility. The biggest challenge to the lockdown / forced social distancing measures undertaken by government is to understand how to come out of this. While the curve may flatten, the deaths will continue and fear will keep increasing as people see larger absolute numbers in television screens. A situation of being caught between the devil and the deep sea (include a large whirlpool). The impact of a lockdown based economic depression is far more catastrophic and unchartered territory for any government. We have not seen a similar situation since the days of spanish flu where economic activities or recession have happened due to sudden stoppage of money flow. Velocity of money flow is a critical measure of economic activity and its strength. However in days of lockdown / strong social distancing, we have created a situation where the money flow have been severely restricted and the limited flow is now channelized in selective essential services and commodities sectors. Given that all discretionary spend is put to stop and only essential economic activity is functioning, as time passes, the possibility to open up the shut channels and the ability to increase the velocity of money flow gets constrained. The questions remain · How soon can one open up the economic activity before its too late ? · How to you restart channels of business which have shutdown ? While some of the initial stimulus revolve around deferment of statutory dues and moratorium on loan repayments, they remain just baby steps in the climb uphill. Some developed economies have announced packages to ensure that the salaries loss due to unemployment is compensated through direct transfer of benefits. US government have taken steps to enable capital into private business to ensure the business have funds available to sustain salaries and also support capital requirement when the economic activity is to be revived. I guess some of these are the very least one can do at this situation. Many developing countries would be under sever constraints to implement such packages. Time is of essence here and any delay will make consumer and business confidence slip downhill. One principal should prevail — unprecedented times call for unprecedented actions. Cash is only a medium of exchange for goods and services. Hence as long as the exchange of goods and services is kept going, government printing cash or taking the liability of the economy in its books shouldn’t be a second thought. Despite the best intend of the governments, challenges would still remain as to why businesses who do not see a immediate revival in demand would like to access such packages and force itself into deeper future liabilities. Hence the gap between the intent and action will always take its time to fill. If challenges remain despite having access to capital, survival of business with limited access would be a tall ask. C) A catch 22 situation — When God determines, everyone needs to take a giant leap of faith. As lockdown and social distancing norms are eased to restart the business cycle, business owners, financial institutions are left to take a tremendous amount of faith, one that may require older norms to be redrawn. Business The business would require large working capital for sourcing raw materials and supporting operating cost including fixed costs such as rentals, salaries etc. Revenue would come in however, there would be a significant lag on the following account a) Slow restart to the economic activity by partial withdrawals of lock downs or social distancing norms b) Consumer sentiments to taking time to improve as people would see larger cummulated death numbers on TV screens despite lower infection rates. Even the big business houses would face challenges as the entire value chain of the business starting from retailer to distribution to logistics need to crank up together under the above limiting factors Financial Institutions Banks & Financial Institutions will face NPAs from large portion of business segments which were otherwise good business. They would require loan restructuring leading to further curtailment of the risk taking abilities for the banks. Even the best companies in various sectors will face increased scrutiny and slower approval processes at the banks end. Hence the question is when ? Key issues that would remain are · How does the banks open up further lending of working capital to business which haven’t shown revenues in the last few months ? · The economic activity will only start slowly and hence the predictability on serviceability of the loans ? · If current credit risk metric of the current banking system does not approve it, who will take the risk of taking the decision for such lending ? · How soon can one look at a new credit evaluation metrics ? · How long would it take banks need to capitalize the entire value chain of a business ? D) Business decisions — difficult or inevitable ? In such dire situations, when there is no timelines to be seen coupled with uncertainty in capital availability in future, it become more challenging as an entrepreneur to take decisions. Only 3 factors remain determinable 1. Capital in hand currently which is limited 2. Confidence in the business model 3. One’s passion to survive and build further In these situations, any decision taken is the right decision as there is no one who can predict. Best would be to prepare for the worst timelines by 1) Letting some of the staff leave and reducing the salaries of balance — however the responsibility for your team need to extend further by helping the staff to reduce their cost of living such as: a) Helping the staff to communicate with their landlords to reduce rents b) Helping the staff to avail moratorium / restructuring of their loans etc. c) Most importantly, communicating the worst case picture so that the staff can prepare for longer timeframe for survival. 2) Invoking clauses such as Force Majeur earlier rather than waiting. 3) Informing upfront to vendors about the likely hood of significant delays in payments 4) Discussion with vendors and entire supply chain to see how business can be restarted by increasing credit limits and time frames across the value chain thus reducing immediate working capital requirements at the time of restart. While decisions are difficult, they are inevitable and all decision taken are right under the circumstances. Our generation have not been part of world wars or periods of Great Depression but few things about this make us part of this unique event, “We did not create this”, “Every human being is fighting a common enemy” and in the history books, “this time will also pass”.

https://medium.com/@dejogg/a-non-economist-entrepreneurs-view-of-corona-virus-impact-12b1ffe639e2

['Dejo George']

2020-04-07 15:44:41.143000+00:00

['Corona Virus Outbreak', 'Business Impact Analysis', 'Startup', 'Business Decisions', 'Entrepreneurship']

Get Knowledge About Kundali Forecasting And Kundali Houses And Their Importance In Astrology!

Get Knowledge About Kundali Forecasting And Kundali Houses And Their Importance In Astrology! Farzaan Astron Apr 9·2 min read Vedic Astrology believes in Kundali forecasting. Janam Kundali is a photocopy of a person’s life. It is prepared by astrologers based on the planets and star’s position on the chart that is counted through the place, date, and time of the birth of a person. There are 12 Kundali houses present in every birth chart. These houses are called Sthan, Ghar, or Bhav. Each house has an important aspect from an astrological point of view. All the predictions for your life and the various important aspects are counted through your Kundli forecasting. It is done through analysis of different planets and their movements in your Kundli houses. Each Kundli house is representing a specific area of your life. Such as if you want to know about your career then an astrologer will see specific houses for it. The same thing goes with marriage, love, family, health, wealth, and so on predictions. If you want to know the details of your Kundli and what houses are working for you, then come to myastron.com. The expert astrologers will give you detailed information. If you want to learn or want to ask anything regarding your Kundli then you can take an appointment with our expert astrologers and talk with them through call or online.

https://medium.com/@farzaan-myastron/get-knowledge-about-kundali-forecasting-and-kundali-houses-and-their-importance-in-astrology-c2393ce9b20a

['Farzaan Astron']

2021-04-09 10:00:24.828000+00:00

['Astrology', 'Kundaliforecasting', 'Kundalihouses', 'Forecasting']

From Photographer to Video Game Creator — Day 16

Man… today was a little tougher than I thought it was going to be. The goal was to create a powerup that would add a life to my Player. Simple idea, but a little tricky when it came to the finer details. First on the list was to create a new sprite image and an animation to go with it. I spent a little bit of time in Photoshop and finalized a sprite for a plus one life powerup. I then created a game object and whipped up a little animation that flashed between a few colors and scaled up and down. After the animation, I coded the commands for collecting the powerup and adding one life back to the Player. It was important to also communicate with the User Interface (UI) to let the player know that they have gained one life when collecting the powerup. Now that everything was working the problems began… The visualization for Player damage was not recognizing how many lives the Player had remaining. Once damaged and a life was gained, the Player would take damage on the wrong side of the object or no visual damage would be taken. The fact that I decided to make my damage appear randomly on the left or right side of the Player object was really throwing a wrench in my code. I finally resorted to working my way through the code one “if” statement at a time and ensured the code was being read by the use of a few “Debug.Log” statements. The below code shows how I finally solved the issue: The first code I wrote for gaining a life was actually extremely similar to this. I think that’s what made it so confusing. I was only off by misplacing a couple lines of code and that small mistake completely broke my whole life powerup. Coding is a wild experience but I am stoked I was able to find the solution! See ya tomorrow! Myles M.

https://medium.com/@mylesmarion/from-photographer-to-video-game-creator-day-16-170f8037c9c8

['Myles Marion']

2020-12-22 03:27:50.026000+00:00

['Unity', 'Code', 'Videogames', 'Software Development', 'Coding']

Sending email is easy

EMAIL PANDA New Cloud Based Technology Allows You To Send Emails To Your Subscribers With The Push Of A Button… Get instant access now INSTALLATION… NO RECURRING COSTS Send High Converting Emails… In Just 3 Simple Steps Step#1 Upload Your Leads or generate from webforms Step#2 Select any from high converting email templates in various niches. Step#3 Send or Schedule Unlimited EMails to your Unlimited Subscribers And start Getting Results Like this MailPanda literally helped us double our email marketing profits… No Technical Skills, No Headaches, No Restrictions Click here to get instant access

https://medium.com/@acharyasandesh692/sending-email-is-easy-44b5a9912a71

[]

2020-12-25 14:18:42.380000+00:00

['Email Marketing', 'One Touch', 'Promoting', 'Emailscrubbing', 'Email Marketing Tips']

Top 5 Best Selling Online Shop For Baby and Toys:-

Top 5 Best Selling Online Shop For Baby and Toys:- Starting as early a s infancy, toys play a sympathetic role in a child’s development. Toys can help a baby learn new skills, like color and shape placing and hand eye coordination, in the major years of primary brain growth. There are countless toys available that label specific needs but are still marketed for youngsters of all abilities. So here are innovative ten best-selling baby and toy brands. Keep scrolling! Fat Brain Toys Promo Codes:- Fat Brain Toys is a retailer, distributor, and developer of forte toys, games, and gifts. We THE BEST TOYS! They endeavour to sell toys that inspire creativity and make children think, rather than let them play with mindless toys. Get Up to 40% off the World’s Smartest Toys. Abc Mouse Promo Codes:- ABCmouse.com is a web-based and provides a fun, colorful environment for building vital literacy and math skills for children ages two to eight. Avail 60% off Annual subscription. American Girl coupons:- American Girl was well on its way to becoming a leading name in girls’ toys. Here, you’ll find books, toys, accessories, and even furniture to accompany their unique signature dolls. Wow deal! Enjoy 30% off sale items. HobbyKing Discount Codes:- It is an online store offering a large selection of RC airplanes, helicopters, boats and cars. You can also shop at HobbyKing for apparel, gifts and accessories at modest prices. HobbyKing has all the hardware, tools and parts you need for your model kits. Catch 65% off when you make a purchase of $2.99 stuff. 5. Step2 Coupons:- Step 2 provides creative play opportunities for children. Toddlers and young school-age children are the primary demographic that the company targets with its product line of playhouses, water toys, art easels, sporting goods, and swing sets. It is the largest manufacturer of preschool and toddler toys. Get 30% off select items.

https://medium.com/@harryashley98/top-5-best-selling-online-shop-for-baby-and-toys-94a1d2fade54

[]

2021-01-16 13:00:44.504000+00:00

['Baby', 'Baby Clothes', 'Baby Products']

Reflecting Betty

Reflecting Betty Photo by Chalaphan Mathong on Unsplash When Betty looked at her own face she couldn’t see past her dangling wattles. They were just terrible — ghastly — an unsightly way for cheeks to be. No man wanted a girl with great sagging cheeks that jounce when she walks. She also felt her brown eyes, which sometimes seemed to border on orange if she were being honest, were too big relative to the rest of her face. She had given it a lot of attention and simply could not approve of how much of her face’s real estate was monopolized by eyes and cheeks. She herself did not own a bona fide mirror, but she had discovered a reflective surface where she could see herself, if mildly distorted, in a bit of metal mounted on the side of her house. When it wasn’t acting as her mirror, it was mostly only keeping the garden hose in place in neat loops. She spent a great deal of time each day looking into this hose plate, turning her face this way and that, scrutinizing. Betty was sure her husband Cogburn spent much of his days ogling the two women who lived next door. Now there was an arrangement! Two women with one man. And one of them had a son (by him?) who lived there, too, though he looked plenty old enough to have a place of his own. In spite of them possibly wallowing in an unholy den of sin, Cogburn couldn’t seem to get enough of looking at Freida and Wendy. Probably, Betty thought, because their cheeks didn’t hang down like a basset hound’s. Probably because they were always out, strutting around the yard with their slender legs uncovered. Oh, to be beautiful. To be a sleek red-headed dame like Wendy, with properly sized eyes and a face made of finely drawn angles instead of one like a great wad of used up and discarded bubble gum. Or to be a luxuriant brunette like Freida, who walked with a delicate lady’s posture as though a rod were affixed to her spine, gingerly placing one bare, slender leg before the other. It really was no wonder Cogburn gawped. Betty hated them both. Staring at her own face in the shiny metal, she frowned. It made her cheeks droop further and she scowled. Droopy-cheeked, salt and pepper Betty with her apple body and her twiggy legs kicking out from poofed-up bloomers just couldn’t compete with the likes of Freida and Wendy. Cogburn, she thought, would probably happily trade places with that wild rapscallion next door, whatever his name was, leaving her behind without so much as a see ya in the next life, Betty, my dear. Betty turned from the hose plate and found the man from next door standing on the other side of the fence, watching her. Startled, she uttered a small cry. “What are you doing out here, looking at that hose plate all the time?” he asked with a voice that drawled some on the vowels. She wished she could remember his name. She had always just thought of him as that guy. “Umm,” she said. “Wendy thinks you’re looking into it at your own face,” he went on, “like it’s a mirror.” They stood staring at one another for a moment. Betty couldn’t think of a quick enough reply and she felt hot with humiliation. That guy, showing up, watching her gross, jowly face hating itself in the hose plate, and he didn’t even have the manners to pretend he hadn’t seen. He’d probably go home and have a good laugh with the detestably beautiful Freida and Wendy. She’d have to move away for the shame. “Is that it?” he asked, “Are you looking at your face in there?” She gave a small helpless nod. “Wendy and Freida think,” he continued after a bit of a pause, “that you stand out here all day long looking at your own pretty face in the garden hose plate.” “My… my pretty face?” “They think it’s not right, the way you like to look at yourself. Vain. It makes them feel bad about themselves, you know, when they see you out here. They think I want to trade them in for you.” “What?” she said, “But that’s silly. For me?” “Well,” he said, “it’s on account of you being a better breed.” She didn’t know what he meant so she stayed quiet. She shook her head in puzzlement. “Of course, Wendy is a Rhode Island Red, which is a fine breed, but she’s already stopped laying. Plus, you know, her comb never really was on quite right for a Rhodey. I think her comb is fine, understand, but she’s tried a lot of tricks to stretch it. You’ve seen them advertised in the backs of magazines, I’m sure. Little apparatuses that clamp on and pull it up? To make it taller? Well I said to her, ‘Wendy, even if you get your comb taller, won’t it just flop over more?’ But that turned out to be the wrong thing to say, so I just let her do her stretching now and keep my beak shut.” “Rhode Island Red?” Betty repeated, bemused. “Right,” he said. “And Freida is no particular breed whatsoever, just a mix of this and that. Except sometimes when we meet someone fancier she says she’s a Barnevelder and most folks are too nice to say anything.” “I see,” Betty said. “The other thing is Freida’s comb got torn in a raccoon attack and it didn’t heal straight, and that’s been worrying at her a lot. I don’t think you can tell, but it drives her mad, thinking everyone is looking at her sideways comb.” “I never noticed it.” “Well, you wouldn’t unless you were staring right at it. It’s not very noticeable.” He looked at her for a moment and took a step closer to the fence and continued in a slightly lower voice, “But you can see now, can’t you, why they get upset to see you looking at your face all day? It’s sort of like rubbing it in, that they aren’t so pretty as you. You being a Mottled Cochin, I mean. And purebred by the looks of your wattles,” his eyes dropped to her wattles and lingered there before returning to meet hers. “It’s enough to distract a man from his day’s work.” Her mouth was open slightly in surprise as she took this all in. She turned against her will to face the hose plate and gave her wattles a skeptical look thinking, Mottled Cochin? She turned back to him and said, “Do I, then? Distract you from your work, I mean?” He barked out a raw, lustful laugh and winked. They stood for a moment facing each other. “Well,” she said, “I guess I’d better be getting in.” “I guess you’d better,” he smiled. Betty couldn’t resist another quick glance into the hose plate as she walked to the open door of her coop. My wattles! Maybe, she thought, as she stepped onto the roost next to Cogburn and settled down against him, maybe that Freida and Wendy weren’t so bad after all. Maybe she’d better have them over some time. Anyway, she’d like a closer look at that comb.

https://psiloveyou.xyz/reflecting-betty-f4154327718d

['Kayla Dunham']

2020-12-25 13:02:40.925000+00:00

['Body Dismorphia', 'Healing', 'Shame', 'Self Love', 'Fiction Friday']

My kids go to daycare a short distance from the navigation center proposed for Seawall Lot 330. I support it.

My kids go to daycare a short distance from the navigation center proposed for Seawall Lot 330. I support it. In the absence of available shelter, the waiting rooms for people experiencing homelessness are on our streets. My young children used to go to a daycare served by Van Ness Station. They would encounter someone sleeping in the Muni elevator almost every morning. The reality is that people are suffering, and our children are watching. I can’t think of anything more inefficient and ineffective than sheltering people in the elevators that our disabled neighbors and children in strollers rely upon for access to transit. We must do better, and the Mayor is admirably leading the charge, doing what San Franciscans elected her to do. The expansion of navigation center capacity will improve the experience of children and literally everyone else all over our city who encounter troubling street behavior on a daily basis. It is shameful that Embarcadero NIMBYs are openly planning legal action intended to drain our collective resources and kill the center entirely or decrease its capacity and effectiveness. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the site. In fact, it is superior to the existing sites in many ways including its size and excellent transit access. The best investment of our tax dollars is in demonstrating that efforts to undermine the navigation center program and similar necessities for the greater good will not succeed. That wealthier neighborhoods, including my own (Noe Valley), will not get a pass in addressing homelessness. That neighborhoods may shape the details of new navigation centers but not threaten their existence or capacity. HOW CAN YOU SAY YES TO SHELTER? Public comment is happening at the Ferry Building TODAY, April 23! If you are unable to attend, take 15 seconds to send an email of support. And sign the petition! If you want to see shelters built all across San Francisco, become a supporting member of YIMBY Action. On any given night in San Francisco, approximately 4,400 people have no place they can stay indoors. There are less than 2000 beds available in the City’s shelters and navigation centers — an enormous shortfall with huge costs in human suffering. Learn more at nav.yimbyaction.org.

https://medium.com/yimby/my-kids-go-to-daycare-a-short-distance-from-the-navigation-center-proposed-for-seawall-lot-330-80c0751ca39c

['Laura Fingal-Surma']

2019-06-27 20:41:29.416000+00:00

['Homeless', 'Yimby', 'Homelessness', 'San Francisco']

A Diverse Group of Friends, Self-Discovery, and a Queer Hero

Jake and Kenny hike in the dry heat of the desert. In a small cameo, Superman flies by in a soft silhouette above them. It leads to a conversational trope of the genre about being a hero and what it might mean, how cool it would be to have superpowers and help people. There is something endearing in this exchange that feels new. Two young gay men are confiding in one another, Jake coming out for the first time, not wallowing in shame about it but pondering something more. Jake was with Kenny, his people, and it wasn’t about who he was, but what the future might be — and how he might break the news to his best friend Maria, who they both suspect might be in love with him. Alex Sanchez does a great job of not making it too easy for Jake. The tunnel vision he has for his burgeoning feelings for Kenny and the emotional rollercoaster that puts his friendship with Maria on feels real. Just as he gets a sense of how unusual he is outside of his relationships — yes, it has to do with water and, no, Kenny’s swim team captain sensibilities about water safety don’t help.

https://medium.com/interstellar-flight-press/review-of-you-brought-me-the-ocean-by-alex-sanchez-julie-maroh-f2c64ad15f21

['Presley Thomas']

2020-10-02 14:01:09.768000+00:00

['Reading', 'You Brought Me The Ocean', 'Comics', 'Queer', 'Books']

Mrs. Goldman from The Birdcage at the White House

Co-owner of Miami Drag Club, Mrs. Goldman Has Dinner with the President Overheard dinner conversation with Mrs. Goldman in White House Banquet Room (pre-COVID), after she and husband Armand were invited by Vice President Kevin Keeley, who, after being forced by the President, reluctantly reached out to his daughter’s in-laws: Oh yes, Mr. President, it is indeed a conspiracy. They are eating the children. Yes, literally eating the children; all of them. You don’t see as many babies anymore. Well, now we know why… Yes, waiter, I would like another… And the parents — where are they? Workaholics. All of them. They can’t look up from their emails for one second. The price they pay is their kids are missing, served as super-health protein shakes to coastal tech execs. That’s what I believe, anyway. Oh, my, these buckwheat mini-pancakes are lovely, ha ha ha, just a few more. What’s that? They want to take away their guns? That’s ridiculous. Everyone has a right to a weapon. We’re all driving cars — they’re weapons, technically — so why can’t we be packin’? Oh, nonsense. I agree with you. It is a civil liberty issue. Just because the founding fathers had old-fashioned muskets instead of semi-automatic, multi-magazine hand cannons to hunt their dinners, doesn’t mean we should take these guns off the market. They should be made available to everyone, including children. Hiccup. What’s that? Why the children? Oh, that. Why, to protect themselves from the Illuminati that’s trying to eat them. And to protect them from their parents, too. You know, there is wisdom in kids. Why just the other day I was thinking how young Val got into our liquor cabinet. He must’ve been five or six at the time. He didn’t mind the grenadine or Collins mix so much, but once he sampled the whiskey, he says, that’s when he realized his mischief. He was so repulsed by it, he dumped all Armand’s 18-year scotch down the drain. Ha ha ha. Oh, you should have seen Armand’s face when he found out. Red as a nipple. I was trying so hard to keep from laughing that I was crying. Oh my, what memories. From that day forward, our Val has never been a fan of alcohol. Why, he might as well be a teetotaler. Young Barbara, she’s practically a split hair, and I think she drinks more than him. Ha ha ha. Oh my, I’m so happy for their marriage, and for Vice President Keeley. Oh, I… I think I’m going to cry. Oh, yes, I think marriage is the foundation of our country. Well, that and the constitution. But I think — and I mean no offense Mr. President — that we really need to implement more policies that reinforce the SC’s decision that same-sex marriage is the same as all marriages. Now, I know not everyone agrees, but you know there are so many divorces and devastating splits of hetero-marriages that really it is a mistake by so many to believe that same-sex marriage is somewhat inferior. They have families, and all that entails, too. Everyone’s miserable. We’re all adults here. We all file tax returns. We all need a hug and kiss from someone every now and then, so why do we encourage demeaning policies, inequity in legal code and technicalities? If you want to be technical, they are in love, same as you are with your lovely wife, same as I am with Armand. Doesn’t matter if two shepherd dudes in ancient Israel had their own version of Brokeback Mountain, or brokeback sand-dune, or whatever. Doesn’t matter if two MMA ladies want to spar in the bedroom, today. Biblical times, modern times. It’s all the same. So, could you cut them some slack? Oh, don’t look at me that way. You know how I am when I drink! I am hounding you; all in good fun. But, if a hound has the President’s ear, if only for an evening, she has to bark! Oh, thank you, waiter. Oh, that is lovely. What is this, pinot? Oh, merlot. I knew it must end in an “oh.” Hiccup. Oh, isn’t it funny how most of our society centers around alcohol? We drink to spend time together, as if that’s the only reason to be near our fellow man. We drink to feel good, even though it’s technically a toxin. We drink to numb our minds, to escape the drudgery of daily monotony, aka our spouses — oh, I’m just being facetious. I love my Armand. But seriously, we are so gung-ho for booze, but a little bit of pot in many states gets you locked up. Now if you were to ask me who could drive me home tonight and I had no choice but a one-arm high-as-a-kite stoner and a drunk, ten out of ten times I’d go with Cheech. That’s why the legislature has got to get the Feds on the bandwagon. Legalize it tonight, I say. Oh, I don’t mean to hound you, Mr. President — I… I really am enjoying my wine. Oh, hello Armand. What’s that? You want me to share a slice of cake with you? Well, alright. Oh, yes. Oh, of course, Mr. President. Don’t let me detain you. It has been a pleasure. Well, I am overjoyed that you value my opinions. Simply overjoyed. Let us return to traditional family values, let the kids have their drugs and guns — not all at once! They need something to deal with the pedo-parents and child-trafficking trillionaires. Maybe there’s something to be said about that “Q.” Maybe the “Q” stands for “cutie.” Oh, ha ha ha, of course. Okay, Armand, I’m coming, I’m coming. Good evening, Mr. President.

https://medium.com/the-haven/mrs-goldman-from-the-birdcage-at-the-white-house-ef095a59209c

['Nolan Yard']

2020-12-18 08:30:51.970000+00:00

['Politics', 'President', 'Wine', 'Comedy', 'Humor']

Using Azure Data Factory Data Flow to transform and migrate data from Cosmos DB Collections

Azure Data Factory Linked services Before you create a dataset or a pipeline, you must create a linked service to link your data source to the data factory. The Microsoft documentation describes Linked services as: In order to create a Linked service, go to the “Manage” tab on the Azure Data Factory page and click “New” as shown below: Creating a Linked Service There you will select the Cosmos DB SQL API and select your Cosmos DB account name and database. Create Datasets Datasets are the source and the destination of our data within the linked service. In our case we will create a dataset for the source collection and another dataset for the destination collection. In order to create a dataset, go to the “Author” tab, then Datasets and finally “New dataset”: Creating a dataset There you will select the Azure Cosmos DB SQL API and then you will select the Linked service that was created previously. You will do it twice, one dataset is for each collection. Creating a Mapping Data Flow Mapping Data Flow allows you to copy and transform data visually without having to write a single line of code. You can create a Data Flow where you get data from multiple sources, join the data, transform and finally store it in a new database. In our scenario we will get the data from a collection, add a new property for each document and then save the data on another collection. In order to create a Mapping Data Flow, go to “Data flows” then select “New mapping dataflow”. Creating a Data flow You will then select “Data flow”: Creating a data flow Once created, you will select “Add source” in order to add your previously created Dataset that will be the source of the data. You will now transform each document before persisting them on the other collection. In order to do that, you click on the small plus sign on the bottom right corner of the data source and the select “Derived Column”: Adding data transformation step to our data flow Now you can create a new property for each document. In this example the property is called “New Property” as seen below: Transforming the data In order to add a value for this property, select the “Open Expression builder”. You can create complex logic for the value of the property. In our case, we will set it to be the same as other document property. To do so, simply type any of your document’s property name. Now you can add the destination dataset for the data to be persisted. In order to do that, click on the small plus sign on the botom right corner of the Derived Column step and add a Sink: Adding the Sink dataset Data Flow debug mode The debug mode allow us to see the result of each step of the Data Flow without having to run the pipeline. This is very useful when creating complex data pipelines. To enable the debug mode, simply select the option below: Enabling Data flow debug For the Integration Runtime leave it as AutoResolveIntegrationRuntime . After doing that, select Publish all to persist all the changes made on the Azure Data Factory. Creating a Pipeline After creating your Data Flow, you must put it into a pipeline, just like anything in Data Factory. To create a pipeline, select “New Pipeline”: Creating a pipeline Now you select “Move and Transform” and then drag and drop the Data Flow icon: Creating a pipeline Now everything is ready to be run. In order to run the pipeline there are two options, you can debug the pipeline or you can execute the pipeline. The difference from the two are explained by a great article by Cathrine Wilhelmsen: As we want to see and have the history of the pipelines executed, we will be executing the pipeline. To do so, we select “Add trigger” then “Trigger now” Executing the pipeline The time it takes to run the transformation on a small dataset is not due to the size of the dataset, but rather due to the overhead of running the pipeline. To see the status of the the pipeline, we select “Monitor” on the left of the page and then the running pipeline will be there with the information.

https://medium.com/@reitter/using-azure-data-factory-data-flow-to-transform-and-migrate-data-from-cosmos-db-collections-30dbd858eb6d

[]

2020-12-19 22:26:09.229000+00:00

['Cosmosdb', 'Azure', 'Data', 'Azure Data Factory', 'Data Science']

((Epix)) “Pennyworth” Series 2 ;Episode 3, Last Eps

∎ STREAMING MEDIA ∎ Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a provider. The verb to stream identifies the process of delivering or obtaining media in this manner.[clarification needed] Streaming refers to the delivery method of the medium, instead of the medium itself. Distinguishing delivery method from the media distributed applies particularly to telecommunications networks, as almost all of the delivery systems are either inherently streaming (e.g. radio, television, streaming apps) or inherently non-streaming (e.g. books, video cassettes, music CDs). There are challenges with streaming content on the Internet. For instance, users whose Internet connection lacks satisfactory bandwidth may experience stops, lags, or slow buffering of the content. And users lacking compatible hardware or software systems may be unable to stream certain content. Live streaming is the delivery of Internet content in real-time much as live television broadcasts content over the airwaves with a television signal. Live internet streaming takes a form of source media (e.g. a video camera, an audio tracks interface, screen capture software), an encoder to digitize the content, a media publisher, and a content delivery network to distribute and deliver the content. Live streaming does not need to be recorded at the origination point, although it frequently is. Streaming is an option to file downloading, a process where the end-user obtains the entire file for this content before watching or listening to it. Through streaming, an end-user can use their media player to get started on playing digital video or digital sound content before the complete file has been transmitted. The word “streaming media” can connect with media other than video and audio, such as live closed captioning, ticker tape, and real-time text, which are considered “streaming text”. ∎ COPYRIGHT CONTENT ∎ Copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to make copies of a creative work, usually for a limited time.[5][4][5][4][5] The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educational, or musical form. Copyright is intended to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself.[6][7][8] A copyright is subject to limitations based on public interest considerations, such as the fair use doctrine in the United States. Some jurisdictions require “fixing” copyrighted works in a tangible form. It is often shared among multiple authors, each of whom holds a set of rights to use or license the work, and who are commonly referred to as rights holders.[citation needed][9][50][55][54] These rights frequently include reproduction, control over derivative works, distribution, public performance, and moral rights such as attribution.[55] Copyrights can be granted by public law and are in that case considered “territorial rights”. This means that copyrights granted by the law of a certain state, do not extend beyond the territory of that specific jurisdiction. Copyrights of this type vary by country; many countries, and sometimes a large group of countries, have made agreements with other countries on procedures applicable when works “cross” national borders or national rights are inconsistent.[54] Typically, the public law duration of a copyright expires 50 to 500 years after the creator dies, depending on the jurisdiction. Some countries require certain copyright formalities[5] to establishing copyright, others recognize copyright in any completed work, without a formal registration. It is widely believed that copyrights are a must to foster cultural diversity and creativity. However, Parc argues that contrary to prevailing beliefs, imitation and copying do not restrict cultural creativity or diversity but in fact support them further. This argument has been supported by many examples such as Millet and Van Gogh, Picasso, Manet, and Monet, etc.[55] ∎ GOODS OF SERVICES ∎ Credit (from Latin credit, “(he/she/it) believes”) is the trust which allows one party to provide money or resources to another party wherein the second party does not reimburse the first party immediately (thereby generating a debt), but promises either to repay or return those resources (or other materials of equal value) at a later date.[5] In other words, credit is a method of making reciprocity formal, legally enforceable, and extensible to a large group of unrelated people. The resources provided may be financial (e.g. granting a loan), or they may consist of goods or services (e.g. consumer credit). Credit encompasses any form of deferred payment.[4] Credit is extended by a creditor, also known as a lender, to a debtor, also known as a borrower.

https://medium.com/pennyworth-epix-full-part/epix-pennyworth-series-2-episode-3-last-eps-b3593828f405

['Big Sho Ws Tv S']

2020-12-27 09:52:23.413000+00:00

['Crime', 'Drama', 'Politics']

Win $100 in 1 Hour and Go Viral

For someone who made killer mixtapes in the ’80s, I can’t seem to use video editing software programs to save my life. Any of them. Can you help me today? Video editing software makes no sense to me. I’ve tried using several, and I find them all to be completely counterintuitive. I recently made 20+ recorded video interviews with Zoom for story2021.co, my upcoming Digital Content Masterclass Series. Now I want to make some relatively simple edits to them (using either iMovie or filmora on my Macbook Pro) and publish them on YouTube. Yes, I’ve watched plenty of how-to videos that say how easy it is, but somehow when I try it, and it’s always shitshow. And no, I won’t go on fivvr. I want to learn to edit them myself. I’m pretty sure a digital native or competent video edit could show me what I’m doing wrong in about ten minutes, but with this whole pandemic, I decided to reach out here instead. So while I was walking my dog, Frankie, this morning, I got a fun idea. Why not make it a contest? Hey, if I have this problem, no doubt others do too, especially other Gen Xers like me (about 40–55 years old). Introducing the GenX Video Editor Contest Today. Not figuratively, literally in the next few hours. I will pay $100 to the first person who will hop on a Zoom call with me today to explain the basics of using iMovie to: Trimming a video — What’s up with that stupid command b line keeps jumping around? All I want is to put exactly at the beginning of the interview and cut the first few seconds). Edit out mistakes — It’s essentially the same problem as above, mid-video) Add the intro and outro I made — I’m not sure I’m doing it right. (It feels amateurish.) Add titles — When I introduce the speaker, I want their name and title to appear. I’ve done it twice, but for some reason, it only likes adding titles at the beginning. Trying to do it mid-video blows. (I have wasted hours diddling with these stupid things.) Save and Export — Mother of God! Could they make this part any harder? Yes, I have shared a video on my YouTube channel, but the quality looks like ass. Then when I tried to download it, I couldn’t. Descriptions and Tags — I can guess how to optimize my videos on YouTube, but I’d rather have a pro tell me. How long should descriptions be? Which tags are best? Etc. Oh yeah? Screenshot and PhotoShop by author Funny Story — Bonus Points Awarded I had heard filmora was great video editing software. If you watch this video, they literally have a child using it. So I paid like $79 for a lifetime subscription, downloaded the software, and was unable to figure out where it went? (It literally dispappeared.) I reinstalled it but have never been able to find it to open. I don’t know if it’s cloud-based or on my Macbook Pro. Worse yet, Wondershare’s site is a horror show and their customer service is awful. Again, after wasting hours trying to figure it out myself, I gave up and used iMovie. I’m perfectly happy to use iMovie instead, but since Wondershare refused to refund my money over chat, I’ve decided to try to make it work for me. So if you can help me open and use filmora, that would be great, but not part of the GenX Video Contest. Double Bonus — Let’s Go Viral! When I started writing this post, I realized the deep irony of the fact that I had not bothered to interview any video experts for my Masterclass Series. Okay, shame on me. So I figured we can record the Zoom tutorial, edit it together, and include it as a bonus video in story2021.co. NOTE: This is a great way to get tons of exposure for you! Screenshot from YouTube: Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise (GenX Film) How to Enter the Contest Please send me an email at genxvideocontest@gmail.com no later than tomorrow at 5 pm EST (Sunday, December 20, 2020) that tells me you’re the one. Let me make it simple: Dear Sean, I’m the one you should pick because: (Short answer that shows you have the skills, made lots of videos, teach classes, have a vlog, whatever). Just convince me you can do it. Please show me a sample of your work (one link will do). Make me laugh. Personality goes a long way! Lastly, this contest is for iMovie and/or filmora only. I refuse to learn any more new programs this weekend. What If You Missed the Deadline? I will announce the winner here tomorrow evening (December 20, 2020, at 5:00 pm EST). If you miss the deadline and still want to connect with me follow this new publication or drop me a note at genxvideocontest@gmail.com or sign up for story2021.co, the FREE Digital Content Masterclass Series coming Jan.11–25, 2021. story2021.co will feature more than 21 Amazing Speakers (from q0 countries) including Top Writers and Forbes: Niklas Göke, Kristin Wilson, Jim Woods, Jordan Gross, Ana Andjelic, Michael Thompson, Jon Brosio, Casey Botticello, Jonathan Aufray, Christina Jandali, Sergey Faldin, Alon Ghelber, Christina Hager, Kevin Urrutia, Holly Chessman, Joel Goobich, Zulie Rane, Anthony Shop and more. Sean Smith is a GenX marketing guy who is fascinated by the new digital reality and meeting people who are making a living by doing cool things online. Follow me here :) Contact Me If you’re a digital nomad, content marketing badass, growth hacker, master storyteller, non-conformist, and you have a great story, I want to hear it. To be featured in the story2021.co Podcast Series (Coming 2021), send me at an email at story2021dotco@gmail.com.

https://medium.com/@v2b-iconoclast/win-100-in-1-hour-and-go-viral-ef26506bc9c3

['Sean Smith']

2020-12-19 20:12:41.291000+00:00

['Digital Marketing', 'Digital Nomads', 'Videos', 'Contests', 'Productivity']

Should the Minimum Wage Be Raised to $15 an Hour?

Those against a significant minimum wage hike argue that small businesses will close, people will lose their jobs, and the price of goods will skyrocket. Advocates for a higher minimum wage believe that lower-wage workers deserve a living wage, and shouldn’t be required to work multiple jobs to survive. They also believe consumer spending will increase (because minimum wage workers will have more money) and strengthen the economy. What do people think about raising the minimum wage? Politically, all Democratic candidates (that have gone on the record) agree on raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, with the exception of Senator Michael Bennet (CO) who wants to raise it to $12. Republicans are generally against minimum wage hikes. President Trump said he was considering backing a $15 minimum wage in June, but he also said that “wages have gone up more than anybody in many decades right now,” so I wouldn’t hold my breath. Economists also disagree on the subject. Until the mid-1990s, they generally agreed that raising the minimum wage would increase unemployment, but many economists now believe that some minimum wage increases may have no effect on the unemployment rate. Americans aren’t nearly as divided as politicians and economists, probably because millions of Americans are making minimum wage while politicians and economists are personally unaffected* by the issue. 67% of the country favors raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. *Economists and politicians all make more than minimum wage. They are still affected by the issue though, as many economists are funded by groups such as the Employment Policies Institute, a conservative think tank funded by the restaurant, hotel, alcohol, and tobacco industries. Political lobbyists also spend a lot of money in Congress to keep the minimum wage low. How is the U.S. doing compared to the rest of the world? One way to measure a country’s minimum wage is to compare it to the median income. This tells us how minimum wage workers are doing compared to the middle class. A higher minimum wage to median wage ratio means less income inequality, and a lower ratio means greater income inequality. The median wage for workers in the United States is $905 per week, and minimum wage (for a full-time worker) is $290 per week, or 32% of the median wage. Astonishingly, this is lower than any other country I could find data for — check out the list for yourself. No other country is even close to being as low as the United States. The next closest are Czech Republic, Japan, and Mexico, all at 42%. The average across all countries in the data set (excluding the U.S.) is 53%. If the U.S. had an “average” minimum wage to median wage ratio of 53%, minimum wage would be at least $12 an hour. I say ‘at least’ because increasing the minimum wage would inevitably increase the median wage, and it’s impossible to calculate an exact figure without knowing what the median wage would rise to. Arguments against a minimum wage increase Those against raising the minimum wage argue that the unemployment rate will rise and many also argue that inflation will rise along with it. I’m not buying it. All other countries I could find have higher minimum wages relative to median wages, and most of them have low unemployment rates and low inflation rates. The United States is unlike any other country though, so maybe it’s unfair to compare ourselves to everyone else. Luckily I was able to find a nice chart of the U.S. minimum wage from the Economic Policy Institute (not to be confused with the conservative Employment Policies Institute), a non-profit and non-partisan think tank. As you can see in the chart, worker’s wages kept rising with economic productivity until about 1968*. In 1968, unemployment was at 3.6% and inflation at 4.19%. *An important note: participation of women in the workforce is about 20% higher now than it was in 1968. This means some of the increased productivity is due to the increase of women in the workforce. However, this does not mean that minimum wage should not have been able to keep up; total civilian labor force participation has remained relatively flat over time. The increase of women in the workforce has been largely negated by the decrease of male teenagers and men 55+ in the workforce. If minimum wage had kept up with productivity it would now be $20.63. If businesses could afford to pay workers what they were worth in 1968, they can afford it in 2019. The problem is many business owners and those in power began keeping the extra profits created by more productivity for themselves. And the federal government hasn’t increased the minimum wage nearly enough to even keep up with inflation, much less increased productivity. Another common argument against a minimum wage increase is “I can’t afford to pay my employees that much. I’ll go out of business if the minimum wage goes up.” That argument is based on a false premise; business owners who say this assume their costs will increase much more than their revenue. If the minimum wage is increased, millions of Americans will have extra discretionary income to spend at businesses everywhere, so many small businesses will end up profiting from a minimum wage increase. The businesses that suffer the most will be the businesses that see their costs go up the most. Costs will go up the most for businesses that currently pay their employees minimum wage or a low wage. Luckily for these businesses there are many places they can cut costs without cutting staff. For example, McDonald’s, one of the worst offenders when it comes to minimum wage employment, has a CEO that made $15.9 million last year. If the minimum wage is raised to a living wage, corporations may very well choose to cut jobs to continue growing their profits for shareholders. I’m sure many CEOs would rather fire low-level employees than take a pay cut themselves. That’s why it’s important to support businesses that treat their employees right, even if there isn’t a minimum wage increase. If businesses like Walmart and McDonald’s see their customers voting with their wallets and taking their business elsewhere, they will start to treat employees better. So should the minimum wage be raised or not? The minimum wage issue is complex, and the money spent by lobbyists to mislead and obfuscate politicians, economists, and the general public has made the issue seem even more complex. When looking at the numbers, it’s clear the United States has an extremely low minimum wage compared to other countries (the lowest I could find, actually) and that the minimum wage has not risen at the same level as economic productivity. Of course we aren’t living in a fair world, but if we were, and minimum wage workers received the same benefit from the rise in productivity as the upper class, the minimum wage would now be over $20 an hour. It’s clear the minimum wage should be raised, and $15 an hour is a good start. For the U.S. to be considered “average,” the minimum wage would need to be greater than $12 an hour; if the minimum wage had kept up with productivity, it would be around $20 an hour. $15 an hour may sound extreme, but that’s only because the federal minimum wage has been too low for a very long time. The reality is $15 an hour still isn’t enough to afford housing in many states. Even if the minimum wage is increased to that level, many working adults will still have to rely on having a working partner or roommates to afford housing. $15 an hour won’t make anyone rich, but it will help ends meet. Minimum wage workers would be able to spend a little less time at work and a little more time with their friends and families, and some families might be able to move out of an apartment into a house. Ensuring all Americans make a living wage isn’t about taking money away from the rich, it’s about making sure everyone has access to basic necessities like shelter, food, and healthcare.

https://medium.com/anti-dote/should-the-minimum-wage-be-raised-to-15-an-hour-c62d815b98bd

['Daniel May']

2019-10-04 20:14:23.558000+00:00

['Politics', 'Money', 'Minimum Wage', 'Work', 'Finance']

Thinking About Poetry

Sing a bold song. Photo by Peter Fitzpatrick on Unsplash So, what is poetry? What do we seek? How shall we know? Where in hell to begin? Poetry since the ancients has been a hallmark of a civilized life, a reflective life, an insightful life, a passionate life. If prose is the common language of life, then poetry is the uncommon language, the artful language of life. Poetry wrestles, inspires, hopes, mourns, laughs, loves, weeps, and yearns. What other poets say about poetry is important. Here are just a few of the thousands of statements on poetry from those who should know — the poets. A bit of commentary follows each — acerbic perhaps… maybe useful. Sometimes… well, I just can’t help it. A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. — Robert Frost (Frost as the melancholy poet, wishing for the unity that living does not allow — sometimes. I think of “Death o fate Hired Hand”, pure Frost.) If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it’s to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel. — Jim Morrison (Morrison as the iconoclast, but then again, the liberator. Poetry liberates the senses and the soul. Yup, this works… “I can summon the dead. I can perceive events on other worlds, in my deepest inner mind, and in the minds of others.” ) What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music. — Soren Kierkegaard (Ah Kierkegaard, finding beauty in the keening of life. There is that quality often seen in poetry of making the painful pleasurable, that angst is always there.) Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility. William Wordsworth (Wordsworth, recalling visions of the past, powerful stuff felt later. Sometimes the past is always better for its recollection — and then again, sometimes not. Dreams and books should form the boundaries of all our lives.) “You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.” ― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (Ah, finding peace is the most difficult task. We all try to find peace, but it eludes us — for we are human after all. And we talk to ourselves, but poets are smart enough to write it down. Is this why we imagine poets talking to themselves? I never talk to myself — never, no, never.) “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” ― T.S. Eliot (Poets push limits. They see the limits and then go beyond. We follow as best we can. What hollow men/women have we become? ) “To know and feel all this and not have the words to express it makes a human a grave of his own thoughts.” - John Donne (Leave it to Donne to find a methodology to smash words together. The fusion of vocabulary and thought — Donne taught us that. Smashing!) So, what are we doing here at Scrittura? Why are we doing it? What motivates us? No one is the same, but that’s to be expected. No single definition of poetry exists — except that it is artful language reflecting the images, perceptions, insights, and values of the author. Yes, yes… there are schools of criticism, and more on that later, in some other piece. Each of Scrittura’s editors may submit a working definition of poetry — I decided to take a leap. So… Poetry is…. verbal ikebana Poetry is not… the dictionary. Poetry is artful language arranged in meaningfully designed ways. Someplace between birth and dust, we all have to make sense of the chaos we call life. That happens when the poet brings meaning and understanding, insight and appreciation, and clarity and compassion to the challenges we all face. Challenges do not need to be great and grand — sometimes challenges can be as big as how to fill the wood box on a cold rainy day. What do I value in your work? I want your best work, your creative, soulful, gut-wrenching insights and reflections on the painful, joyful experiences, feelings, apprehensions. I want you to push limits and boundaries, to use language and thought in fresh, insightful ways that take your readers on journeys. I want you to use the poetic devices of sound and sense that hold a mirror to the world. Sing a bold song. We are all listening.

https://medium.com/scrittura/thinking-about-poetry-88cbaf13fcf4

['Zay Pareltheon']

2020-10-28 23:35:00.573000+00:00

['Essay', 'Poiesis News', 'Poetics', 'Prose']

Stop calling people from your team this way if you want them to perform

Stop calling people from your team this way if you want them to perform “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.” — Henry Ford It’s very dangerous how you call the people from your team. It’s very dangerous what you say about who you are, especially in a group of people as a company. We are what we think, talk, and do. If you believe you can achieve your goals, you will figure out how to do it; otherwise, you will give up on the first excuse you have. Being part of a group, you can influence either in the right way or in the wrong way others’ performance. In this text, I will show you the importance of how you and your team call yourselves can influence everybody’s performance. I wasn’t always concerned about how you describe yourself, neither about which words I use. I used to say things without overthinking when working with a group of people. I became very detailed with words during college with a colleague who later became my business partner at my first company. Because of that, I’ve been paying attention to the words that I use and the words other people use. I’m not perfect at that, but I try to do my best. It can be either fantastic or awful for a company how you use certain words. I’m a person that likes to make jokes with lots of stuff, even during work, even leading a company of 13 people. I never abandoned this side of mine, and because of that, I made jokes with my employees. This side of me led to a lighter environment and allowed everyone to be who they really are, which is essential for a company. However, the fact that I like to make jokes with my team doesn’t mean that I don’t know when to be serious. As my company grew, I kept this environment where it was ok to make jokes. As new people were getting in, they understood how we behave, and at the same time, new anecdotes were coming out. Employees even made jokes with me, which for many people outside my company was absurd, after all, I’m the boss, and people should respect me. But making jokes with the boss doesn’t mean that people didn’t respect me. It’s quite the opposite. My team knew when I was being serious and respected the decisions I made. They knew the difference when I was making jokes and being professional. In many serious speeches I gave, I ended up putting some joke in the middle. That was something unexpected and made the meeting lighter. That also allows the team to be more excited with the goals I was sharing and challenging everyone to beat. It is very stressful not being who you are at work. If your team has to put on masks at the workplace, they will not be as productive as possible, and eventually, they will burn out and leave the company. That was something that I didn’t want to happen at my company. I had people on my team asking me what type of people they should be inside the company. My answer was always the same: be yourself. I don’t want anyone working with me not being themselves. I don’t want anyone using masks and pretending to be someone they are not. In a determined moment of the company, the “fifth-grade” joke started. When someone made a joke that wasn’t funny, this person was called “fifth-grade”. That became very popular here in Brazil a while back ago, and I was already seeing my friends using that. I didn’t expect, however, to see that in my company. Because I created an environment where jokes were allowed, people attempted to be funny, and because of that, employees were calling others “fifth grade” more often when someone made a joke that wasn’t funny. I was not too fond of it when I started to hear that more often. I talked to one of my business partners about my concern and the danger of what was going on. We decided to give individual feedback to everyone in the company. The feedback was the following: “We don’t hire fifth graders. We only hire amazing people. How you call yourself is how you act, even unconscious. I don’t want anyone calling themselves fifth graders. Everyone here is a professional with challenges to face. The jokes don’t need to stop. I’m just asking you to try to stop using this name for you.” Everyone in the team understood the feedback, and they stopped making that joke. There was once or twice when someone made a joke with “fifth grade” after the input without realizing and other people from the team called the person’s attention without me having to intervene. Many people may see this feedback as something small inside a company, but this makes much difference when building a team of amazing people. If people think they are fifth graders, they will perform like fifth graders. They will not perform at their best. I particularly want people performing at their best. How about you? I once created a group on Facebook at the beginning of my company called Cupcakers (the name of my company was Cupcake Entertainment) for everyone that was part of it. I wanted everyone to feel excited about being part of the company. I wanted people helping the company to grow. I did that inspired by what I have seen Google doing where they call themselves Googlers. If you are part of Google, you will feel excited to be named a Googler and give your best to the company. If you want your team to have outstanding performance, pay attention to your team’s words. Pay attention to the words you are using. Don’t call anyone stupid (I’ve seen that more often than I would like to see in other companies). Don’t call anyone in a way that they wouldn’t be dignified. If someone makes a mistake, focus on solving it and how to avoid it from happening again and not calling the person names. You can solve most of the problems if people stop calling others names that are not cool. Unfortunately, we still live in a world of bully bosses and coworkers. Don’t be someone like this. Focus on using words that can motivate and excite your team’s people, not ones that can be seen as bullying and discourage them. You may use something with the name of your company, as I mentioned before. You may use an adjective that will show how amazing the people of your team are. Again, you are what you think, talk, and do. Use this wisely inside of your team.

https://medium.com/@joaovsouza/stop-calling-people-from-your-team-this-way-if-you-want-them-to-perform-3c9e45ef932a

['João V Souza']

2021-01-06 22:29:43.666000+00:00

['Company Values', 'Company Culture', 'Team Collaboration', 'Teamwork', 'Team Building']

Visualising 2018 tree cover loss with Global Forest Watch.

Global Forest Watch allows anyone, including you, to take a closer look at what’s happening in places reserved for indigenous peoples. A fast, smooth zoom enables and encourages deeper exploration of what’s occurring. No one can hide from satellites in the sky and with weekly GLAD alerts, any change in forest cover can be detected and reported in almost real-time. This is the power of data visualisation: it provides compelling, irrefutable evidence that allows us to speak up for the people and places that are not being heard. Good news for Indonesia. But it’s not all bad news. Indonesia saw a 63% reduction in primary forest loss from its peak in 2016 when new legal protections of peatlands were introduced. More recent government policies—which include a moratorium on issuing new licenses to use land designated as primary forest and peatland—have also helped slow deforestation. The clearing of rainforest to make way for oil palm plantations has attracted much media attention, and with a recently added ‘Global Plantations’ data layer, you can now use Global Forest Watch to explore where they are located. (Note: only data for 2015 is currently available). Although the moratorium is likely to stop any further conversion of pristine primary forest, GLAD alerts will help researchers, land managers, and interested citizens alike keep watch over Indonesia’s forests.

https://medium.com/vizzuality-blog/visualising-2018-tree-cover-loss-with-global-forest-watch-ffbd71ef07be

['Camellia Williams']

2019-05-08 14:18:47.251000+00:00

['Forest', 'Environment', 'Data Visualization', 'Deforestation']

How to Play Pass the Parcel 2020 Style

How to Play Pass the Parcel 2020 Style New ways to play familiar party games Pexels-samara agenstvo- feeria Yesterday, we played pass the parcel together in three households. It takes a bit of pre-planning, and we didn’t manage to get everything right. We forgot the music, but my daughter improvised by singing The Grand Old Duke of York and some other familiar children’s songs. Before attempting to do this, you must prepare three parcels, or more if you intend to involve more than three households. Make sure you remember to add a candy between each layer, and no breakable items because all the parcels except your own must be posted. Fix a time and date for your game. This may be dependant on the postal service which has been struggling to keep up with the volume of parcels over Christmas. Once you know that all the parcels have been received, you can book your slot on Zoom or another video sharing platform. Make sure that you have given instructions that the parcels MUST NOT be opened before the meet up. Practise dramatically pretending to throw the parcels off screen. It might help if you dress up for the occasion and have your favourite drink and some nibbles close by to give a more party feel to the occasion. Assign one person to be in charge of the music. As I stated earlier, this can be as simple as singing a song, but if you have time you can pre-record some party music. You are all ready to go! When the music stops, whoever has just pretended to catch the parcel can open a layer, and of course eat the candy. The special bonus of this game is that there are final gifts for each household. Everyone is a winner! Why not try musical bumps or musical statues, making sure you have appointed a judge from one household? Who says we can’t have parties? Everything is possible if you put your mind to finding a way!

https://medium.com/illumination/how-to-play-pass-the-parcel-2020-style-520ceb5cdbb6

[]

2020-12-27 10:47:54.676000+00:00

['Covid 19', 'Illumination', 'Games', 'Family', 'Party']

The What, Why, and How of TypeScript for JavaScript Developers

Using Types With TypeScript Basic types TypeScript has a number of basic types that are predefined. Number, string, boolean, and array are a few examples of them. You can find the complete list of basic types in the TypeScript documentation . Here are a few examples: Note how any type reverts TypeScript to behave the same way as JavaScript. Since our purpose of using TypeScript is to give a better structure to our code, avoid using any type whenever possible. Similarly, try to avoid using a union of types, but if it is unavoidable, limit the number of types allowed in the union as much as possible. Declaring custom types Remember how I used a type called Person in a previous code example? But Person is not a basic data type in TypeScript. I created the Person type according to my requirements to use it as the type of parameter accepted by the given function. We use interfaces to define the basic structure of a new type we are introducing to the application. interface Person { name: string; age: number; } Now, if we create a new object of type Person , it should have the field’s name and age within it. If not, TypeScript throws an error. VS Code alerting of missing properties in custom types You can also define optional fields inside an interface. You can then use a custom type as the type of a field when defining another type. interface Person{ name: string; age: number; address: Address; } Extending interfaces In TypeScript, you can inherit the properties of another type by extending its interface. Assume that your application needs two different types, Person and Employee . Since an employee is also a person, it makes sense to inherit the Person type’s properties when creating the Employee interface. It prevents code repetition. You can quickly achieve this by extending the Person interface. Function parameter types and return types Similar to variable types, you can define types for function parameters and return values. While the parameter type is declared next to the parameter name, the return type is declared just before the curly braces. With the type of the parameter and return value defined, we can guarantee that you or anyone else using this function won’t accidentally pass an object that doesn’t have the characteristics of the Car type. You can also guarantee that the field sold in any object passed won’t be undefined or null. And it eliminates a number of scenarios that could throw an error during the runtime. If you were using JavaScript, you would have to write more code to prevent the possibility of such an error occurring during runtime. Similar to variables, you can define the return and parameter types as a union of several types. function buyCar(car : Car): Car | boolean { if (car.sold === true){ return false; } return car; } When you declare the accepted parameter or return type, objects of types that extend the initial type’s interface are also accepted as the argument or the return value.

https://medium.com/better-programming/the-what-why-and-how-of-typescript-for-javascript-developers-a2177675f6d2

['Juan Cruz Martinez']

2020-11-30 18:01:05.702000+00:00

['Programming', 'Software Development', 'Nodejs', 'JavaScript', 'Typescript']

Esports: $1B teams? (NBA in the 1980s)

Today, every NBA team is worth over $1B (USD) and we believe that esports organizations could be worth the same, or more, in the near future. History is repeating itself, but much faster this time. After noticing the deals taking place with esports teams like Cloud9 raising $50M, TSM raising $37M, Team Liquid raising $25M, and the lucrative expansion fees for OWL franchises, it reminded us of what happened in the NBA in the 1980s. The investments in these esports teams and franchises are very similar to the prices paid for NBA franchises in the 1980s. The path to a $1B valuation will happen faster for esports organizations than it did for the NBA. Main Takeaways: 1) Team transaction values are similar 2) Expansion fees are similar 3) Global viewership for esports will drive higher valuations than NBA franchises 4) Asset value appreciation timeline will be much faster than NBA valuations 1) Transaction Values: NBA ($38M), Esports ($37M) In the 1980s, 15 NBA teams were purchased in whole or in part for transactions values ranging from $9.8M (Houston Rockets in 1982) to $120M (Boston Celtics in 1986). Compared to the major fundraises lately in esports, this is quite similar to the $37M average for top esports organizations: Obviously, you’ll notice two significant outliers in the NBA with Portland and Boston. They alone increase the average by almost 50%. What is really interesting, though, is when you adjust for inflation and remove those two from the table, the average NBA franchise investments were within 5% of the 3 most notable & recent investments into esports organizations. The one notable difference between the purchases of NBA franchises and the investments into esports teams/organizations is the structure of the deals. When these NBA franchise deals were made, they were typically for full ownership of a team whereas the esports deals are typically priced round venture capital deals for partial ownership of these organizations. However, this doesn’t dissipate the fact that the transaction value is extremely similar across the board. Conclusion: esports organizations are much more valuable today than NBA teams in the 1980s. The path to a $1B valuation will happen faster for esports organizations than for the NBA When these NBA transactions were completed, teams were valued anywhere from $10M to $120M, and today every NBA team is worth more than $1B. The majority of this value appreciation can be attributed to technological advances that have allowed a much wider viewership which in turn has created lucrative media rights deals for the NBA and their teams. This is important because esports franchises already have the viewership, and with viewership comes media deals. The digital age we live in today has the potential to speed up the franchise appreciation process exponentially… 2) Expansion Fees: NBA ($69M), OWL ($30–60M) In 1988 and 1989 we saw an expansion of the NBA with four new teams: Miami Heat, Minnesota Timberwolves, Charlotte Hornets, and Orlando Magic. Each of these teams paid an expansion fee in 1989 of $32.5M ($69M when adjusted for inflation). According to ESPN, the OWL expansion fees are ranging anywhere from $30M-$60M. What is interesting is that the NBA required a similar fee ($69M) and only expanded by 4 teams, while the OWL added 8 teams. It’s also worth noting that the NBA was founded in the 1940s, and the Overwatch game launched on May 24th, 2016. It took 4 decades for the NBA to reach these numbers & valuations whereas it only took 24 months for esports to create this same demand & value for the OWL. (wow) — whether or not you’re a fan of the OWL, the game itself, or believe in its longevity as a title, this is truly an impressive accomplishment that speaks to the inherent value behind esports, its audience, and the evolving landscape in competitive entertainment around the world. A key difference between the NBA and the OWL is that in the NBA, all four expansion teams were in the US, but in the OWL, expansion teams are in North America (Toronto, Vancouver, D.C., Atlanta), Europe (Paris), and Asia (Hangzhou, Chengdu and Guangzhou). It’s worth noting that an investment into an esports organization is also a diversified bet across multiple game titles & leagues, instead of just one. This allows for esports organizations to be worth considerably more. Investing in an esports organization could potentially have similar returns to owning the Patriots, Cavaliers, and Yankees… all under one franchise. 3) The Audience: Esports / OWL (global), NBA (U.S.) What makes these OWL franchises inherently more lucrative is that their audience is a global digital audience, and is not centered around the U.S. (like the NBA was in the 1980s). This allows a much wider fan base to be engaged in the content that is produced, and allows for more widespread, loyal fan bases to be developed. This should, in theory, allow these franchises to appreciate in value faster than the NBA franchises from the 1980s, even while starting at roughly the same price point. Viewership Comparison: OWL (10.8M), NBA (13.2M) Another point to notice when trying to value the future worth of an esports organization is to look at what the viewership is now compared to the viewership of the NBA All-Star game in 1990 (the farthest back you can go to find any viewer data): Esports viewership already beats the viewership of the NBA in 1990 when the transaction & expansion values were comparable to esports organizations and the OWL. Today, NBA franchises are all worth north of $1B, giving them a CAGR of roughly 12% since 1985 and the NBA had nowhere near the technological advances that we are seeing today in 2018. Imagine if in the 80s and 90s NBA fans from all over the world could tune in to watch any game they wanted and what that could have done to the valuation of these franchises. Another reason for esports teams to drastically appreciate in value is the age of their fans. The average NBA viewer is 42 years old, but according to Nielsen, the average age of esports viewers are 31 and 61% of viewers are millennials: Average Age of Esports Viewers (Credit: Nielsen) This should drive the appreciation of valuations because these viewers have grown up not only watching esports, but also continue playing as they get older. With traditional sports, a lot viewers are just fans, and if they played when they were younger, they probably don’t anymore. Millennials (and upcoming generations) have a lasting affinity for the video games they grew up playing (and still play today) as they are able to enjoy the exact same game at a high level of competitiveness. This dynamic is going to keep them engaged for years (similar to golf, which you can play for a long time). About 450 professional NBA athletes in the world can enjoy the competitiveness of the NBA, but millions have the ability to play at a similar level of competition as professional esports athletes. Conclusion: history is repeating itself… but faster The comparison of the NBA and Esports / OWL is oddly similar. With the rise of the digital age, a vastly larger demographic for esports than basketball, the younger age groups, and the still under-monetized esports fanbases around the world, we believe we could see comparable valuations of esports organizations to NBA franchises of today…

https://medium.com/konvoy/esports-1b-teams-nba-in-the-1980s-71e66c23cfe6

['Josh Chapman']

2019-02-08 00:38:03.975000+00:00

['Esport', 'NBA', 'Venture Capital', 'Valuation', 'Video Game News']

I Reject 5-Year Plans

I Reject 5-Year Plans Plans are good but not these ones. Photo by Daniele Franchi on Unsplash Every day, I write a daily short prompt in a five-year journal. That way, every year on the same date, I can look back at my responses from previous years and see how I’ve changed. Today, the prompt was, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” I hate this question. I started the journal in 2017. So the me of three years ago thought I’d be happily in a relationship, working as my own boss or as the boss of other people, and living in a foreign country by the start of 2022. That’s a little over a year away — and let me tell you, I’m nowhere near that objective. In fact, I’m 0-for-3. No boyfriend, not a boss, and still living in the same city I’ve lived in for six years. And you know what? That’s just fine with me.

https://medium.com/moments-matter/i-reject-5-year-plans-70ce9a88f7be

['Megan Boley']

2020-09-14 12:06:01.657000+00:00

['Careers', 'Life Lessons', 'Self', 'Life']

HelloGold Foundation Update #22– 10th April 2019

Highlights AUM breaking the 20 kg milestone thanks to a 4 kg increase in March. “Cash to Gold” feature to simplify in-app customer’s experience. Improvement implemented following Thai market feedback survey. Business AUM breaking the 20kg milestone fuelled by the joint promo campaign with Boost In conjunction with Boost, HelloGold ran a Lucky Draw and Giveaway collaboration campaign from the 18th of February to the 24th of March. Users who added cash with Boost to buy gold on our app were eligible to win a share of RM138,888 worth of gold. This promotion saw a total of over 2,000 participants over the 5 week period and recorded the highest number of gold buyers for the year during the campaign period. AUM jumped from 18.26 kg to 22.59 kg in March. Facebook AMA: HelloGold founders answer questions from HelloGold app users. On March 23rd, HelloGold co-founders Robin Lee and Ridwan Abdullah hosted a Live AMA on HelloGold’s Facebook Page. Over 150 questions were collected from submissions throughout the week leading into the Facebook Live event. A multitude of different questions revolving around the business, gold, the app and even the founders were addressed during the session. The video is available on the news feed of the FB page and has now reached over 1,300 views. We are looking to continue this as a series so watch this space. Thai early adopters feedback survey The Thai team has been collecting feedback from users 3 months after launching the HelloGold app in the country. The customers pointed out two major pain points:

https://medium.com/hellogold/hellogold-foundation-update-22-10th-april-2019-f8cfbceb1c50

['Quentin Bignon']

2019-04-10 06:01:44.816000+00:00

['Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Gold', 'Fintech']

Should Turkey Be Considered A State Sponsor of Terrorism?

Photo by Adli Wahid on Unsplash According to the United States Department of State Bureau of Counterterrorism, the United States and Turkey have been allies since 1831 when the United States established diplomatic relations with the Ottoman Empire. There are some, such as Mandel, that have called for a reconsideration of this friendship between states, accusing Turkey of being a State Sponsor of Terrorism. This is by no means a popular opinion in the United States government. Although this idea is recent, it is worth looking at United States-Turkish relations from a terrorism perspective. According to the Bureau of European and Asian Affairs, the United States has praised Turkey for its stance against the PKK and its frequent approach to the United States and NATO for advice on handling counter-terrorism matters. Critics, such as Vasilogambros, bash Turkey for having selective attention when addressing terrorists’ groups, claiming that Turkey has openly harbored terrorists. Photo by Ben Koorengevel on Unsplash The American Perspective on Terrorism The United States Department of State claims that any country that supports acts of international terrorism should be considered a State Sponsor of Terrorism. Whether a country appears on the list, which currently includes Syria, Iran, and Sudan, depends on the word of the Secretary of State. The Department of State looks to the United States Code Section 2656f(d) of Title 22 to define terrorism and international terrorism. Terrorism is defined here as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents,” while international terrorism is defined as “terrorism involving citizens or the territory of more than one country.” This particular definition of terrorism does require a motive, very specifically — one that is rooted in politics. Additionally, the act must be done by a sub-national group or an individual or group that acts illicitly. Sub-national groups are not defined; nor are non-combatant targets. Two things are worth noting. These definitions do not require a specific response by the United States government if terrorism is identified. They also seem inherently neutral, not appearing to facilitate any underlying goals particularly for the United States. One could argue that the former note in which there is a lack of a response could be advantageous for the United States, but there are specific sanctions that must be put into action once a country is identified as a State Sponsor of Terrorism. The sanctions are as follows per the Department of State: · A ban on arms-related exports and sales; · Controls over exports of dual-use items, requiring 30-day Congressional notification for goods or services that could significantly enhance the terrorist-list country’s military capability or ability to support terrorism; · Prohibitions on economic assistance; and · Imposition of miscellaneous financial and other restrictions. Because the definition is neutral, imposing these sanctions should not rely on United States interests. One would then think that the three aforementioned states of Iran, Syria, and Sudan would be internationally accepted as State Sponsors by states similar to the United States because of the neutrality of this definition. There is argumentation over the removal of certain states, specifically the recent removal of Cuba, but there is not much of an argument to add certain states that may belong but are vested interests for the United States. The 2013 Country Reports on Terrorism sings high praise for Turkey. In close proximity in time to the release of the report, Egypt had declared charges against Turkey for being a State Sponsor of Terrorism. Photo by Osman Köycü on Unsplash Does Turkey Meet The State Sponsor of Terrorism Criteria? One accusation against Turkey is that it suppresses freedom of speech. Turkey does not formally have complete control over the media but can choose to prosecute the media if it considers anything said or written to be damaging to the state. In “Media and State Sponsored Terrorism,” David Gray and Brett O’Donnell highlight the importance of this relationship. The two claim that state censorship goes hand in hand with State Sponsored Terrorism by allowing the government to change the story to what is seen as most advantageous for the state. The government can accomplish its goals without losing the support of the people. Öníş says that the root of this censorship is “the notorious article 301,” which he thinks should be abolished. He claims that article 301 is a penal code that suppresses the rights of the non-Muslim minorities. A “proposal involving a new constitution was an important reform initiative very much in the spirit of EU conditionality”. The rejection of this proposal is a sign to Öníş, a professor at Koç University in Turkey, that the Turkish government is not willing to take the necessary steps to embrace the ideology of the European Union, midst controversy over the nation’s status. Photo by Jeremy Yap on Unsplash Turkey also has some foreign policy stances that do not echo those of the United States in relation to terrorism. Aras highlights that Turkish president Ergodan favored Hamas and cut all talks with Israel for a short while during the Gaza conflict of 2008. From a completely opposite perspective, the United States considers Hamas to be a terrorist group and has always supported Israel in these conflicts. The most recent terrorism difference between Turkey and the United States is ISIS. The United States clearly disapproves of everything that ISIS has done. According to Dr. Hinnebusch, Turkey had invested its own resources in ISIS: In Syria, Turkey had provided ISIS with weapons and training, allowed free movement across its borders by jihadists, gave them control of two critical crossing points, permitted recruitment in Turkey, and allowed ISIS to sell Syrian crude oil via Turkey, with USD 100 million estimated hidden in Turkish banks. The AKP seemed to regard ISIS as protecting Sunni interests in Syria and Iraq against anti-Sunni regimes. ISIS had evolved into a terrorist organization powerful enough to overthrow cities in Iraq. Not only did Turkey permit ISIS to work on its own land, it actively supplied them with weapons and training. Photo by Levi Clancy on Unsplash Two Nations, Two Concepts of Terrorism The United States calls Turkey a “long-standing Counterterrorism partner” in the Country Reports on Terrorism, where it also mentions that Turkey co-chairs the Global Counterterrorism Forum. The Department of State lists several terrorist threats to Turkey within the country and around it. The report makes it clear that Turkey is solely focused on domestic terrorist threats and not those on the international scale. The Bureau of Counterterrorism states that Turkey defines terrorism as “a crime targeting the Turkish state or Turkish citizens.” Aside from the fact that that definition is extremely broad within Turkish borders, it is also incredibly narrow outside of it. According to this definition, something as detrimental as the attacks on September 11th would only be considered a terrorist attack if Turkish citizens were killed. For some, that may be a lot to swallow, but the definition has been crafted to work as a tool. Within its own borders, Turkey can call any crime an act of terrorism if it chooses to do so. This also means that new laws can effectively create new types of terrorism without ever using the word, “terrorism.” What is peculiar about this is that if Turkey acted as a State Sponsor of Terrorism and the actions took place outside of Turkey without harming a single Turk, the state of Turkey would not have to refer to itself as a State Sponsor of Terrorism. Due to the neutrality of the definition in the United States, if we were to commit the same act on the same land as the fictional scenario with Turkey, the United States would theoretically be called a State Sponsor of Terrorism by the Secretary of State. Neither the United States nor Turkey refer to each other as State Sponsors of Terrorism, but the definitions serve as context as to how the two nations view terrorism differently, even with similar counter-terrorism efforts. Photo by Fabien Maurin on Unsplash What Has Been Going On In Turkey? The report continues on Turkey by saying that freedom of expression has improved, although still inadequate. Laws were made to be more in sync with the European Union, but the report states, “Turkey continued to detain and prosecute thousands of politicians, reporters, and activists through its broad-reaching and broadly applied counter-terrorism legislation.” To Turkey, the image of the country domestically is more important right now than some of those basic freedoms, a point that illustrates the concept brought to light by Gray and O’Donnell earlier. Turkey is a member of the Financial Action Task Force, a global organization that works to deprive terrorists and criminal organizations of funding. According to the Department of State, Turkey does not audit nonprofit organizations unless under very specific circumstances, stating, “It is likely that bulk cash is being smuggled across its borders helping to fund violent extremists in neighboring countries.” To counter radicalization within Turkey, all imams are employees of the state and are monitored and advised based on traditional values. Photo by David Monje on Unsplash Aside from the inhibitions on freedom of speech and the border patrol that may not be able to control the flow of money, Turkey does not appear to be much like a State Sponsor of Terrorism according to the Department of State. One could argue that Turkey has enough credentials to be considered a leading force in the world for counter-terrorism due to its leadership positions in several counter-terrorism agencies. In an interview with Eric Mandel of the Jerusalem Post, John Schanzer, vice-president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, brings some aspects of the situation to light that the Department of State does not mention. As far as credibility is concerned, John Schanzer does not have access to all of the resources that the United States federal government has, but the Foundation for Defense of Democracies is an internationally respected organization with a headquarters in Washington D.C whose chairman is James Woolsey, former director of the CIA. Schanzer highlights the Incirlik airbase, which is he says is an asset to NATO. He says that this airbase is a major hub for Western operations in the Middle East. Its location has proven itself to be optimal for strategic movements. He goes on to say that Turkey is a supporter of Hamas, other smaller jihadi groups, and on a lesser level, the Islamic State. Schanzer says that he would consider Turkey a state sponsor of terrorism and calls for a diplomatic response by the United States to resolve conflict while still keeping American interests in tact. Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash What sparked Egypt’s initial drive to press charges against Turkey for being a State Sponsor of Terrorism may have originally come from the revolution that took place in Egypt in 2011. The event to send that consideration over the edge was a television broadcast and the lack of a response to it from Turkey. Rabea TV, a Turkish network that broadcasts in Egypt and Turkey, broadcasted a monologue by a man that MEMRI, the Middle Eastern Media Research Institute, said represented the Muslim Brotherhood in Turkey. MEMRI is a non-profit organization with a headquarters in Washington D.C. that claims to aim for uniting the Western world with the Middle East by translating television broadcasts from the Arab world into English. This particular broadcast in question was very controversial and covered in MEMRI’s Special Dispatch Number 597. Translated by MEMRI, the alleged Muslim Brotherhood spokesperson called for the assassination of Egyptian President ‘Abd Al-Fattah Al-Sisi and gave out mandatory deadlines for when people should leave Egypt. The statement was made on January 29, 2015. Foreigners were told to leave by February 11. Foreign companies were told to leave by February 20. Diplomats and ambassadors were told to leave by February 28. Additionally, no tourists were to enter Egypt during this time. At the end of the statement, there was no offer of mercy for anyone that remained. Schanzer said in an interview with the National Journal that Turkey is harboring terrorists. Saleh al-Arouri, “the founder of Hamas’s armed wing in the West Bank, known as the Qassam Brigades,” lives in Turkey. Yasin al-Qadi, an accused al Qaeda financier from Saudi Arabia, also resides in Turkey. Al-Qadi was removed from the U.S. Treasury Specially Designated Nationals List on November of 26th, 2014. Although he was removed from this list, Al-Qadi and Ergodan had maintained close relations during the time that Al-Qadi was on the list, a time when there were several sanctions placed internationally in relation to Al-Qadi by the United States. Photo by Falaq Lazuardi on Unsplash United States Ambassador to Turkey from 2008 to 2010 James Jeffrey made it clear that the United States has addressed concerns with Turkey directly. James Jeffrey specifically pleaded for Turkey to detain certain individuals identified as terrorist threats associated with al-Qaeda in Turkey. Another point of stress between the United States and Turkey is their official stance on Hamas. The United States views Hamas as a terrorist organization, while Turkey views Hamas as a legitimate group that has come to power through election. “Generally, Turkey will close a blind eye to groups that use terror if Turkey sees their political goals as commendable,” Jeffrey said. Where Does That Leave Us? Turkey has created a peculiar image for itself. On the one hand, it is a major party on the counter-terrorism force. There are several international organizations aimed at fighting that the United States and Turkey are both a part of. That does not provide an excuse for involvement or support for groups like ISIS and Hamas, as well as the welcoming of individuals publicly recognized by the United States as terrorists. It does appear that these actions have been conducted for Turkey’s best interest, not the interest of the terrorists, but that does not make this worthy of approval. Photo by Levi Clancy on Unsplash From an academic perspective that focuses on the definitions stated at the beginning of this article, Turkey should be considered a State Sponsor of Terrorism, but from a foreign policy perspective, the best course of action would probably be a stronger and firmer diplomatic response. Analysis of the definitions leads to a conclusion that there are no exceptions for any party that kills or injures non-combatant targets. This is not an issue of weighing pros and cons, but listing all of Turkey’s faults relative to the issue. Regardless of Turkey’s active role in counter-terrorism, it does fall under the U.S. Department of State’s definition of terrorism and international terrorism. Arguably, Turkey’s training of ISIS and providing ISIS with weapons has indirectly killed Turks abroad. Turkey has also damaged the state’s image, technically placing itself within its own definition of terrorism if it were to admit to the actions as doing such harm. From a political perspective, placing Turkey on the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism might not be the greatest idea. For one, Turkey serves our own interests with its location and culture serving as a bridge between the West and the Middle East. Additionally, Turkey’s active counter-terrorism role is something to enhance, not destroy. Putting Turkey on that list could give the state an excuse to act more like its neighbor, Syria. Turkey deals with a considerable amount of terrorism within its own borders. In exchange for more transparency and more unity with the West, the United States should use a diplomatic approach to assist Turkey in preventing terrorism within its own borders, given that this is the central focus of their entire counter-terrorism focus. Gus Martin writes that “state terrorism is inexpensive” and “has limited consequences.” Although this may be an effective method of accomplishing state goals, it is not a permissible one.

https://kyle-duffy.medium.com/should-turkey-be-considered-a-state-sponsor-of-terrorism-d419f8637e50

['Kyle Duffy']

2020-06-02 17:40:03.420000+00:00

['Turkey', 'Erdogan', 'Terrorism', 'ISIS', 'State Department']

This Year The Minimum Wage Can be Raised In The Majority Of States

Rally outside Seattle City Hall The 2020 new year marks an historic landmark for dramatically improving many people’s living standards by increasing the minimum hourly wage. According to David Cooper of the Economic Policy Institute, nearly 7 million workers will start the new year with higher wages. This is not due to Trump’s tax cut which reduced the corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to as low as 20 percent. That change resulted in doubling the number of companies paying zero in taxes, according to research from the Center for Public Integrity. Instead, guaranteed higher wages was a result of citizens working in their communities to make local governments accountable to them. This year half of the states will have raised the minimum hourly wage, at effort that was led by 22 city and county governments, with states now trying to catch up. The movement to raise the minimum wage to $15 first caught the nation’s attention when in 2013 the Washington State city of SeaTac, with a population of less than thirty-thousand, passed a citizen’s initiative establishing it. A coalition of unions, faith groups, immigrant and community groups came together, inspired by one-day walkout strikes by non-union fast-food workers in New York city in the late fall of 2012. They demanded better working conditions and a $15 minimum wage. Walkouts by fast food workers occurred early the next year in cities like Chicago, St. Louis, and Milwaukee demanding a higher minimum wage. SeaTac’s victory encouraged workers and citizens to mobilize in neighboring Seattle, with a population of over 600,000. Astonishingly, within six months of Sea-Tac’s victory Seattle became the first major city in the US to adopt a $15 minimum hourly wage for all employees, working part and full time, including those receiving tips. Several books have described how this victory came about. My book, Becoming a Citizen Activist, begins with a glimpse of how the city council came to pass the legislation. More detailed descriptions of how the effort began in Sea-Tac and spread to Seattle are covered in David Rolf’s The Fight For $15 and Jonathan Rosenblum’s Immigrant Workers, Faith Activists, and the Revival of the Labor Movement. The desire to raise minimum wages is not confined to large liberal cities. It crosses regional and political boundaries, uniting grassroot efforts challenge entrenched political parties who control the state governments. For example, look how voters in both New Jersey and Missouri increased the minimum wage, overturning their governor’s and state legislator’s actions. In November 2013, New Jersey voters effectively overrode Governor Chris Christie’s veto of the minimum wage bill the legislature had passed. The voters approved an increase through a ballot measure. These were not hard-core democrats, since republican Christie and his lieutenant governor were re-elected with over 60% of the vote. In Missouri voters passed a higher state minimum wage at the ballot box after state lawmakers nullified city minimum wage ordinances that had been enacted by local governments in Kansas City and St. Louis. Missouri is a trifecta state, where the republicans simultaneously hold the governor’s office and majorities in both state legislative chambers and since 2000, has voted 100% for a republican presidential candidate. Raising the minimum wage once again was critical to voters who also voted republican. These local and state actions have become necessary because congress, under the control of either the democrats or the republicans, has up to now, been unwilling or unable to increase the minimum wage. And it is about time that they act. The federal government last raised the minimum wage to $7.25 in July 2009, and since then its purchasing power has declined by 17 percent. This past July, the democratic controlled U.S. House of Representatives passed the “Raise the Wage Act of 2019”, a bill that would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2025. It has been sent to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, but he has denied it an opportunity to be voted on, along with a hundred other bills from the House of Representatives that have been referred to the Senate. However, no matter what occurs in D.C. this November, organizing must continue at the local and state level. Below are some strategies to consider for doing so. Five Critical Strategic Steps For Passing Higher Minimum Wage Legislation at the Local Level. First, Have dedicated staff — there must be full time staff working with community groups to provide them outreach services. Unions, like SEIU and HERE Unite, that have been in the forefront and others who are involved, may have paid staff to fill that role. Unions provided the organizational strength that allowed both SeaTac and Seattle to ultimately succeed. Meanwhile, the faith community’s organizations are more likely to provide a pool of volunteers to work with paid staff and reach out regularly to their membership. Second, Do good research — it is critical to provide reliable data to the public. The executive director, John Burbank, and the policy director, Marilyn Watkins, of the local and nationally recognized think tank, the Economic Opportunity Institute, provided data to convince both politicians and the pubic that raising the minimum wage was good for the economy. On a national level, Economic Policy Institute’s David Cooper continues to track efforts to increase the minimum wage throughout the nation. That research does not end after legislation is passed, because those opposed to this type of government regulation will continue to site studies that could eliminate or hamper such legislation. Watkins’ article Poor research leads to poor findings on minimum wage, provides a perfect example of why such attention is needed, as she systematically dissects a study critical of increasing the minimum wage. Third, Work with politicians — community groups need to identify and work with elected officials who are willing to champion, support or even discuss the need for increasing the minimum wage. Timing is important. If there is an election, use it to promote increasing the minimum wage. As a city council candidate, socialist Kshama Sawant built a grassroots $15 Now campaign and made increasing the minimum wage an issue that both Mayoral candidates adopted in the general election. Even without introducing legislation, a local councilmember can hold public forums to get information out to the public and to other politicians. Ady Barkan, the founding director of the national network of one thousand elected municipal officials, Local Progress, writes in his book Eyes to the Wind, how Local Progress worked with me to bring national experts and councilmembers from other cities to a Seattle symposium to discuss how minimum wage legislation could help employees avoid poverty while expanding the economy. Three months later the Seattle City Council passed the legislation. Fourth, Involve national groups — without the support of groups like Local Progress and SEIU, Seattle’s effort would have had to rely just on local resources. National groups are not going to win a campaign, but they can bring in resources, like speakers, national media, and critical strategic advice. If they can send a representative to your city, make it a media event by inviting the public to hear them. Also, line up interviews for them with reporters, bloggers, politicians and opinion leaders. Fifth, Feed all types of media — use social media to broadcast events, solicit volunteers and educate the public. Use radio to appear on talk show programs, all of them. It doesn’t matter if the host is a conservative, as long as you can get your message out, you will pick up some support. Meet regularly with bloggers to give them an inside look at what is happening on this issue and do the same with newspaper columnists and reporters. Don’t forget to reach out to community, church, and any group that has an electronic newsletter. To borrow from Eric Liu’s book title, You’re More Powerful than You Think. Now you just have to work with others to exercise that power to get your local government to raise the minimum wage. Nick Licata, was a 5 term Seattle City Councilmember, named progressive municipal official of the year by The Nation, and is founding board chair of Local Progress, a national network of 1,000 progressive municipal officials. Author of Becoming a Citizen Activist. http://www.becomingacitizenactivist.org/changemakers/ Subscribe to Licata’s newsletter Urban Politics http://www.becomingacitizenactivist.org/

https://nicklicata.medium.com/this-year-the-minimum-wage-can-be-raised-in-the-majority-of-states-fc39329c64de

['Nick Licata']

2020-01-12 23:33:08.577000+00:00

['Congress', 'Organizing', 'Seattle', 'Local Government', 'Minimum Wage']

Koycegiz! November 11th

Koycegiz! November 11th Mary and her Partner Aman came to pick me up today, they were such lovely people, I’m so happy to be going to stay with them, I hope it works out. They live near a big lake but on the way home they took me via a place called Dalyan for lunch up in the mountain on the other side of the lake. Dalyan is quite a popular tourist resort for the British and lots of ex-pats live there too. You can take your car over the river (which leads from the lake to the sea) on a cute little ferry. Unfortunately the restaurant was closed but we found another and ate something called Goluyme! This is a kind of stuffed pancake and is just amazing, we had potato and spinach ones and we bought little jars of chutney etc from there too. Loving it here already! The restaurant overlooks an ancient settlement called Kaurnos and the apparently famous Mud Baths, more about those later! I also had my first taste of Turkish coffee and pomegranate juice! Yum!

https://medium.com/@yvetjm/koycegiz-november-11th-e159f0128234

['Yvette Graham']

2020-12-27 13:48:37.764000+00:00

['Women Travel', 'Köyceğiz', 'Türkçe', 'Turkey', 'Over 60s Womens Travel']

2020 Annual Review: The Year of Resilience

1.4 — Side-Hustling I got involved with the Full-Stack Deep Learning team around the summer — putting together the boot camp's online version and helping with the bi-weekly virtual meetup about production ML (check out our Twitter to know what our industry speakers share at these meetups). We will provide an updated version of the course next spring, so sign up if you’re interested! I also started working part-time for Snorkel AI under the Marketing team around the fall — putting together its solutions page and crafting a blog post that recaps our CEO’s talk at the MLSys seminar. Snorkel provides a great solution called programmatic data labeling to tackle the challenges of getting good training data for machine learning pipelines, so follow our content for more information! 2 — Goals for 2021 2.1 — Diving Deeper Into MLOps I’m excited to start a new role soon with Superb AI, an enterprise-grade training data platform. Training data is still the biggest bottleneck of the ML development process, especially since the importance of proper data operations within an ML organization continued to increase. The Superb AI team is building a product that could help facilitate awareness and education around building better AI, starting with proper data management principles. Given my increasing level of interest in production-level machine learning in the past year, this is a great opportunity to be in the trenches and navigate the ML tooling landscape. If readers want to learn more about MLOps, I suggest joining this Slack community. 2.2 — Exploring AI Safety Research Advances in AI within the past decade have brought excitement about its positive potential to transform science, medicine, transportation, along with concerns about the privacy, fairness, security, economic, and longer-term implications of powerful AI. It is worth giving serious thought to such potential challenges and risks. Many experts believe that there is a significant chance we’ll create artificially intelligent machines with abilities surpassing those of humans (superintelligence) sometime during this century. Researchers working on this problem aim to maximize the chance of a positive outcome while reducing the chance of catastrophe. AI safety is a research line that addresses the problem of accidents in machine learning systems. Accidents here are defined as unintended and harmful behavior that may emerge from machine learning systems when we specify the wrong objective function, are not careful about the learning process, or commit other machine learning-related implementation errors. Under this broad theme, I am mostly interested in the value alignment problem. In an “aligned” AI system, the actions it pursues move the world towards states that humans want and away from states that humans don’t want. Next year, my goal is to explore literature that overcomes the conceptual or engineering issues need to create aligned AI more comprehensively. If readers are interested in these ideas, I suggest looking at these AI Safety resources and this AI Alignment research overview. 2.3 — Getting More Involved With Effective Altruism I have been a passive consumer of effective altruism content in the past three years, mostly via the EA newsletter and the 80,000-hour podcast. For those who are not familiar, effective altruism is a field that uses high-quality evidence and careful reasoning to work out how to help others as much as possible. It is also a community of people taking these answers seriously by focusing on the most promising solutions to the world’s most pressing problems. This past November, I attended EA’s virtual student summit, a fantastic event that covered various problem profiles ranging from existential risk to animal welfare. I networked with tons of interesting young adults who are motivated to tackle these problems from that event. Since then, I have been participating in two reading groups on forecasting and global priorities research, where we read relevant content on these topics and discuss practical applications. Next year, my goal is to continue being a part of this community by attending more conferences/reading groups if time allows. If readers are interested in being involved with this community, feel free to reach out, and I’ll add you to the Slack/Discord groups that I’m a part of!

https://medium.com/constraint-drives-creativity/2020-annual-review-the-year-of-resilience-43f8acbf2cc4

['James Le']

2021-01-01 01:25:12.951000+00:00

['Goals', 'Personal Development', 'Annual Review', 'Reflections', '2020']

Helping Armenia Recover from Artsakh War Advances U.S. National Interest

By Armen Kharazian[1] The author raises concerns about the recent Russia-brokered truce agreement, and explains why these concerns are relevant to the United States, and detrimental to both Armenia, and the cause of regional security and stability. The author argues that Armenia should modify the agreement’s most problematic terms, to do which, he says, Armenia needs Western support. He then discusses possible forms that support may take, and lays out a case for a U.S. regional strategy that offers Armenia a path to NATO accession, along with Georgia. Map: Russian Defense Ministry/Twitter A 45-day war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Artsakh (also known as Nagorno-Karabakh) ended recently with a truce agreement. Brokered by Russia in coordination with Turkey, the agreement imposed disproportionately harsh concessions on Armenia, resulting in the complete loss of Artsakh. To enforce the truce, Russia and Turkey agreed to establish a joint military mission, in a replay of a similar arrangement they tested earlier in Syria. One of the most alarming concessions imposed on Armenia as part of this truce was the creation of an access corridor through southern Armenia, connecting Azerbaijan with its Nakhichevan exclave. The plan calls for Russia’s Federal Security Service to exercise control over that corridor, at least in the initial stage. If that plan succeeds, Armenia will likely lose sovereign control over its border with Iran to a conglomerate of Russian, Turkish and Azerbaijani interests, because any road and rail access through the region lays through the Arax River Valley, which traces the Armenian-Iranian border. In addition, Azerbaijan and Turkey will gain land contiguity, in a major boost to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s vision for a neo-Ottoman Empire stretching from the Aegean to Mongolia. This would produce a major geopolitical shift in the power balance of Eurasia, the Middle East, and Central Asia, making Turkey and Russia the key players across that vast expanse, with little room for the United States and Europe to act. As Armenia heals after its devastating defeat in the Artsakh war, the West should step in and help the Armenian state to prevent its likely collapse. To accomplish this, Armenia should recall its consent, with Western support, to any plans for the establishment of an access corridor through its sovereign territory at this early stage in the process, where ceasefire consolidation and peacekeeping in the Artsakh conflict zone should take priority. International commerce is an important instrument of post-conflict rehabilitation, and lifting obstacles to regional trade must be one of the next steps. However, linking the one-way opening of this particular access road to the implementation of the truce agreement, in addition to placing the corridor under foreign control, imposes an unnecessary burden on Armenia’s sovereignty, the cost of which undermines any benefits it might produce. Instead, the matter should be addressed as part of a broader effort to lift all restrictions on international commerce in the region, in particular the Gyumri-Kars railway between Armenia and Turkey, as well as all other road and rail links connecting Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. If Armenia rescinds its original consent to the corridor, obtained under duress, it should expect certain pushback from the other parties to the truce agreement. In that case, the West should be prepared to support Armenia by any means necessary and proper, to prevent any third parties from disrupting Armenia’s exercise of sovereign authority over its territory. This could involve diplomatic and political support, but also support in logistics and other assets that can be deployed promptly to the region, and help Armenia back up its actions with credible force. Armenia too must actively seek to explore other options to build coalitions and goodwill by reaching out to other regional actors that may bring additional leverage and influence to the table, to help absorb the shock of any such rescission. One of these possible actors can be Israel, which shares historical and socio-political similarities with Armenia, and has an inspiring experience, on which to draw, to build a strong, prosperous, modern, and democratic state. An Armenia-Israel rapprochement can begin with the appointment of a new Armenian Ambassador to Jerusalem, and take many forms as the countries begin to cooperate in science, technology, agriculture, and other areas where Israel has a successful experience to share. As the ceasefire in Artsakh takes hold, and the parties take their next steps toward a political resolution, the United States and France should actively re-engage in the peace process, with the U.S. represented by a high-level Co-Chair, who could leverage his or her authority to advocate for a more equitable negotiating position for all parties at the table, to achieve a durable political outcome. To assist Armenia in consolidating its investment in peace, increased trade, and modernization, the United States should also consider military aid to Armenia, with particular emphasis on strengthening the nation’s air defense, early warning, communications, space, and other capabilities, to give it an extra protection and resilience against possible encroachment seeking to undermine its progress or choices. Armenia should also have the freedom to choose its broader security arrangements and affiliations, in a way that best advance the multitude of its security and economic concerns, but the United States and the West should be prepared to offer Armenia a path to closer integration within the Euro-Atlantic community, if Armenia demonstrates such willingness and determination. Viewed in conjunction with Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations which the United States supports, Armenia’s quest for security and modernization may well fit in the larger U.S. regional strategy for the South Caucasus, and deserves the serious attention it merits, to succeed.

https://medium.com/@armen-kharazian-19337/helping-armenia-recover-from-artsakh-war-advances-u-s-national-interest-and-regional-stability-2c7cecfd7d1a

['Armen Kharazian']

2020-11-26 22:43:18.728000+00:00

['Armenia', 'Iran', 'Artsakh War', 'United States', 'Nato']

Turn Off the Lights With Angular-Dark-Mode

Turn Off the Lights With Angular-Dark-Mode Integrate dark mode into your application with ease Photo by the author. Recently, I launched my minimal portfolio. As minimal as it is, I wanted to add dark and light modes since it’s something I’ve never done. Using React and Gatsby, I have a ton of options to choose from, but I stumbled upon a minimal yet powerful library called use-dark-mode. Ten minutes later, I already had dark mode integrated into my portfolio! As an Angular developer, I thought it would be nice to have such a library in our ecosystem as well, so I created angular-dark-mode! Note: Final code and demo available in this stackblitz.

https://medium.com/better-programming/turn-off-the-lights-with-angular-dark-mode-194241f491ae

['Tal Ohana']

2020-10-13 15:19:04.975000+00:00

['Front End Development', 'Angular', 'Programming', 'Typescript', 'JavaScript']

‘Black Panther’ And The Question of Black Bureaucracy

Wakanda picks a new ruler Do the characterization of blacks, in Black Panther, re-enforce the same colonial stereotypes it’s trying to get away from? To some of you, this analysis will be upsetting. I apologize up front. To others it will be a strange interpretation of a movie which uses plot-devices common to almost every action-adventure story. It was written by a black man and almost everyone I know, who saw it, loved it. Am I nitpicking? Did Wonder Woman, which also depicts women as warriors feed into the argument that women can’t do math? I used to play pick-up basketball with a black guy, also in his 50s. One day he says, “I just saw the Jew’s wet-dream movie of all time — Inglorious Bastards” I found his joke about the movie’s subtext very funny. As a black man, he could make it. Black Panther, to me, is a white supremacist’s wet-dream of a movie. Wait. How can a black writer encode the assumption of white supremacy into his own movie? That’s the insidious power of propaganda. Should blacks care what white supremacists think? No. But does Hollywood have a responsibility, nonetheless, to reign in their stock-in-trade prejudices? The backdrop of Black Panther is colonialism. It imagines a world that might have been, of an Africa that wasn’t exploited. It gives voice to the black frustration at having been enslaved and later marginalized in America. It’s a feel-good movie. Perhaps colonialism and other factors prevented blacks from keeping their historically well-governed societies alive. Have whatever effects colonialism had on Africa worn off. At what point do blacks in America or Africa claim independence from historical forces? Has that day come? Can Black Panther now enjoy the same freedoms as every other action-adventure movie? I don’t believe so. And I believe Hollywood should be sensitive to the context of their narratives in the real world. Although I wasn’t as sensitive to a problem in Wonder Woman, I found one in Borat where a Jewish man, Sacha Baron Cohen, makes jokes that foment antisemitism by ridiculing those who aren’t Jewish. In order to understand the context in which I’m looking at Black Panther, it helps to think about this question, what makes for a technologically advanced society? What would one expect to observe to believe Wakanda exists? My reading of history is that since the dawn of mankind, no society has grown powerful enough to maintain a leisure class, with all the arts, humanities, technical progress, etc. without institutions and the bureaucracies that come with them. In the East or West, spanning different races, one can observe the same institutions. They generally have powerful groups of people: soldiers, lawyers, scientists, administrators who dress alike, who don’t dress to stand out or express their individualism. Institutions that seem absent in the Wakanda world of Black Panther. Instead, we observe a government run by atavistic bloodlines and clans. Leaders come from royalty, like Killmonger, who has not a single redeeming good quality. He is a homicidal maniac who shoots his girlfriend. Killmonger would not be an issue if he was Chinese say, and people could believe he is the exception in the history of Chinese rule. When T’Challa visits the U.N. he is wearing a black business suit. So it’s not as if the creators of Black Panther are totally oblivious to the unwritten rules of powerful governments throughout history. The story of Black Panther, knowingly or not, furthers the argument that blacks haven’t developed the institutions strong enough to replace Kings battling to the death for leadership. Where the good of the people isn’t thrown out the window just because some psychopath with bloodline to the King shows up wanting the throne. That said, government with strong bureaucracies are not without their flaws. Such governments fought two world wars killing over 50 million people, which ended with the dropping of atomic bombs on 200,000 civilians. Today, we have huge institutions in the U.S. which assassinate foreigners (terrorists) in foreign lands (theoretically acts of war). China tracks all its citizens through cameras, facial recognition and huge databases. Maybe Wakanda isn’t so bad after all. Nonetheless, I cringed watching the final battle scene with individual black-on-black violence trying to protect the rule of a murdering sociopath while a white man uses their modern aircraft to shoot down blacks who are just obeying orders. Black Panther wants it both ways. It wants to hold onto its place as the origin of the species, as super warriors (as individuals), as most colorfully dressed people while also ignoring the fact that the most powerful nations on Earth have soldiers (not warriors) in uniform and ruling classes that dress the same and operate as teams. It’s just a movie. I can see how I sound ridiculous, in my expectation that an action-adventure movie should depict a complex government. Again, the question is how much innocence can we grant a movie when subtle forms of racism persist which the movie could easily have fixed. That is, the story of Black Panther could have shown a stronger government blocking the takeover by Killmonger. It’s not as if the idea didn’t exist; it did in one of the female warriors. But she was alone. My curiosity is this, do all blacks agree with the movie that Wakanda would be the perfect black nation? Today’s current pressure to avoid racist dialogue prevents not only whites from speaking freely. It silences blacks. In the end, my argument is that the issue doesn’t get settled and remains in the shadows potentially harming the advancement of educated blacks and black businesses as they compete for jobs or contracts. Let me point out a show where the creators are very sensitive to these issues — Breaking Bad. In Breaking Bad the hero is a white, well-educated science teacher who once worked in big business. When he starts making meth he uses his “institutional” knowledge to create better meth than the other undisciplined individuals. Most drama has some element of the hero, up against an institution-gone-evil. One can read Breaking Bad in that way too, where society didn’t provide a way for Walter White to support his family so he was forced into a life of crime. That’s also a storyline most blacks can relate to. Indeed, if Walter White had been played by a black man I don’t believe the dialogue would have been changed. As Walter become more successful, he wants people to call him Heisenberg, which connotes German institutional discipline. When the creators wanted to put Walter up against the the greatest challenge they could have easily picked an Asian. Or a white, or Russian or some Baltic European. But no. The creators of Breaking Bad only pandered to their TV audience in the amount of violence portrayed in Breaking Bad. Enter Gus Fring, the most disciplined, intelligent, consensus building character in all of Breaking Bad is black. Indeed, in one of their first meetings Gus doesn’t want to work with Walter because he doesn’t trust him to play by the rules. How does Gus dress? Like a bureaucrat. Gus could have been played by an uber WASP white actor and not a single line of his dialogue would have been changed. Good-of-society values are not, in themselves, racial. It is one reason why Western nations have succeeded. Their military and governments are not constructed on race, but ideals. Black or white, if you believe in these principles, you can join the military and everyone is subject to the same pay-scale. These are values worth struggling for. These are the values I believe a real Wakanda would have. Is there a reason why they could not have been part of the movie? Why does Black Panther envision blacks in a society the colonists have depicted in their non-black literature for hundreds of years. What about Africa today? Black Panther portrays the saddest vision I can imagine of such a future, where government is run by bloodline and people ape-grunt to others who simply speak their mind. If there is a Black Panther II, I hope the filmmakers address what I believe is a flaw in their first film. Africa deserves better.

https://maxrottersman.medium.com/black-panther-and-the-question-of-black-bureaucracy-a211fefac283

['Max Rottersman']

2018-09-26 21:41:17.612000+00:00

['Black Panther', 'Movie Review', 'Marvel', 'Bureaucracy', 'Civilization']

Effective Java! Don’t Leak Object References!

Today our topic is about memory leaks inside of Java. Wait!? Memory leaks in Java? That’s not possible right? Isn’t that one of the promises of Java, to have managed memory? When I started learning to code I started with C++ like man people. Let me tell you something, if you don’t manage your memory well in C++ you will likely blow your foot off. But anyway we were talking about memory leaks in Java. I think the best way to show this is with an example and I think the example from the book is a great example of it: public class Stack { private Object[] elements; private int size = 0; private static final int DEFAULT_INITIAL_SIZE = 16; public Stack() { elements = new Object[DEFAULT_INITIAL_SIZE]; } public void push(Object element) { ensureCapacity(); elements[size++] = element; } public Object pop() { if (size == 0) { throw new EmptyStackException(); } return elements[--size]; } private void ensureCapacity() { if(elements.length = size) { elements = Arrays.copyOf(elements, 2 * size + 1); } } } Looks like it would work right? I’ll let you in on a secret. This code does actually work fine but it does have a “memory leak”. Can you spot it? I for one definitely didn’t get it right off the bat. The problem lies in this line here from our pop function.: return elements[--size]; So what is wrong with this line? What the code is conceptually doing is returning an object and removing it from the stack. What is actually happening is that the elements array still has a reference to the object and won't be able to be garbage collected until that element is overwritten. So if, for example, a bunch of objects were added to the stack and then popped off we would expect the elements to be garbage collected but they will not. But is this actually a memory leak? Not in the normal meaning of the word. More correctly they could be titled “obsolete object references.” That being said the symptoms and problems it can cause are along the same lines. So how do we fix this issue. Well simply enough we null out the object before returning: public Object pop() { if (size == 0) { throw new EmptyStackException(); } Object poppedObject = elements[--size]; elements[size] = null; return poppedObject; } So am I saying that you should null out all objects after you are done with it? Please no. Having to null out objects is almost always the exception and not the rule. Java is indeed a language with managed memory and it will handle the clean up of our objects as they fall out of scope and lose all references to them. So in what cases do we need to account for the above issue and when do we not? It all comes down to if we are managing our own memory/objects or not. If you manage your memory you need to take it all the way and manage your memory, not just do it halfway. Above we are managing our memory ourselves as we have our array of elements that we are managing as storage. What are some other places we see this. Caches is another example. We need to be aware of the lifecycle of our data in our caches when we use them as our cache can keep an object from being garbage collected even if nothing else in the system will ever request the object from the cache. One way to account for this is using Java’s WeakReference class. We do need to be aware that when using this class it is simply a pointer to the object and is counting on an external system having a reference to the object to keep it from being garbage collected while it is still usable. Using WeakReferences and related classes are a more advanced topic and how to intelligently use it is beyond the scope of this blog article. A final location that developers can leave around obsolete objects is when using listeners and other callbacks. I remember this being of particular concern when working with Android in a previous life of mine. This can be accounted for in the same manner as above with the use of WeakReferences The topic of discussion today is a little more niche without a doubt. You will likely not run into this everyday but this is one of the things to keep in mind as we develop our software. Memory leaks are extremely hard to debug and thus we should do all in our power to avoid them.

https://medium.com/@kylec32/effective-java-dont-leak-object-references-aaf7e0b5325d

['Kyle Carter']

2020-12-26 04:02:51.216000+00:00

['Java', 'Design Patterns', 'Effective']

Male Ejaculation May Lower Prostate Cancer Risk

I want to remind you of some of the prostate cancer symptoms. The American Cancer Society offers that “most prostate cancers are found early, through screening. Early prostate cancer usually causes no symptoms. More advanced prostate cancers can sometimes cause symptoms, such as: Challenges with urination, such as a slow urine stream or urinary frequency (especially at night) Blood in the urine or semen Trouble achieving an erection (erectile dysfunction) Bone pain, such as in the spine, hips, ribs, or other areas Leg or foot weakness Loss of bladder or bowel control, secondary to cancer pressing on the spinal cord (advanced stage) Many of these symptoms are the result of something besides prostate cancer. I occasionally awaken at night to urinate, given my age and associated benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). This condition is a non-cancerous overgrowth of the prostate with age and is remarkably common. Even so, please let a valued healthcare provider know if you have any of these symptoms. Photo by Online Marketing on Unsplash Takeaway message While more confirmation is needed (and recognizing that the studies are observational and thus do not represent high-level evidence), ejaculation may reduce a man’s risk of getting prostate cancer. Also, ejaculation does not appear to lower the risk of the most deadly forms of the disease. The type of ejaculation may make a difference: Semen produced during sex has higher levels of sperm and other substances. It’s possible that these differences may affect prostate cancer risk. While ejaculation may lower your risk of prostate cancer, additional strategies include: Maintaining a healthy weight. Keeping physically active. Finally, check-in with a valued healthcare provider about prostate cancer screening. Thank you for joining me today. References

https://medium.com/beingwell/male-ejaculation-may-lower-prostate-cancer-risk-d5c168b4e1a3

['Michael Hunter Md']

2020-10-26 21:01:48.250000+00:00

['Wellness', 'Sex', 'Lifestyle', 'Health', 'Cancer']

Big Hearted Ists & Isms

Photo by Mathias Arlund on Unsplash Whether or not you believe that you are an ist or have an ism does not negate the fact that you do. I do. We are a world of ists and isms. Accused of an ism, may prompt defensive responses such as, “But, I’m not! I don’t vote that way.” or “I love all people, all races and creeds.” The accused rightfully feels judged. But what is an ism and why are we so quick to classify others and so offended when others classify us? Social categorization is inherent. Sorting ourselves can be helpful, for infants it helps identify and build trust. Often though, social categories can be used to oppress through legislation or surveillance. Stereotyping others leads to a dehumanization, and hate crimes. How shall we best lump ourselves and others? We are Patriots or Nationalists and often don’t know the difference. We might hold the tenets of Capitalists, Socialists, Communists, Fascists, Marxist, Misogynists, Anarchists, Racists and Abelists and disagree on the dangers of them. Though, you really can’t just simply disagree on things that oppress others, especially in a country that offers freedom and equality for all, at least on paper. So, I could just say those ists are wrong. Blanket statement. End of argument. Right? However, our nation can’t find agreement on those ists, their affects and reach into our society. Since many don’t see themselves as Racists or Misogynists, how can they understand systemic problems and inherent dangers to some because of the policies of others? Most of us don’t experience bias, bigotry and prejudice in the same way that BIPOC, disabled, LGBTQUIA+ and all who identify as women might. Therefore many cannot fully understand the need for change. There’s a large swath of spiritual isms and ists that we grow up or evolve into. We might deem ourselves Traditionalist, Monotheist, Polytheist, Secularist, Nihilist, Pacifist, even as we act in measures directly opposed to those teachings. We certainly all have some level of Egotism, and likely some Narcissism, Fanaticism, Neuroticism, Heterosexism, Humanism, Theism, Classism and Ageism. All those ists and isms listed above…And we may not even know that we fall into a category or share pieces of an ist. We might not understand that we believe in one or more of these isms and that they overlap and even conflict. photo credit Holly Brians Ragusa The really interesting piece is the human inside the ism. Many ists and isms go home after work, wave to their neighbors, pet their dog, hug their families and put their kids to bed. Many isms and ists gather in a sacred place to revere something other than themselves or give back to their world in ways that feel purposeful. What makes a good person? And who gets to decide? In our cancel culture, is there a downside to calling out ists and isms? And is it helpful, healthy or hurtful? It certainly feels imperative to shine a light on behavior, judgement or legislation that hurts others, but what if the “good people” feel bad when they are told they aren’t as good as they thought? I’ve seen an entrenching on the side of “goodness” as a downside. Both sides of any battle feel justified. Perception, that is the war to be waged. Professor Ross at Smith College was recently interviewed for the New York Times, article, What If Instead Of Calling People Out, We Called Them In. She discusses the calling out of and doesn’t condone, but asks for private conversations and respect versus public shaming and doom scrolling.. It asks more of us. She says it is a “Call out done with love.” “Every time somebody disagrees with me it’s not ‘verbal violence.’” Professor Ross said. She goes on to point out that the, “Overstatement of harm is not helpful when you’re trying to create a culture of compassion.” Ross is encouraging a revolutionary thing, discourse. I see these descriptions of ists and isms as a necessary education of our often unaware society. And it’ll hurt for a while. An awakening usually takes time and some amount of internal turmoil. All cycles swing and it seems we are currently on the far side of that pendulum. Only when we’ve collectively learned that labels are only tools and not weapons, will we see it swing back to a healthier place. Who gets to claim goodness? Is there a scale, a score board? A person may be a loving individual and still support things hurtful to others. Unless they are called on it, they look at their life overall, recognize the good they have done in their communities, the friends they hold dear, the donations to organizations of their passion and come away with the obvious conclusion that they are “good”. They may not even realize why someone might declare or decide otherwise and therefore dismiss that person or group as wrong, crazy, insane, dangerous. It is always easier to see the opposition as an other, a something, not a someone. Political and corporate power relies on dehumanization. In fact a person may think that being called an ist or ism is hateful, and unkind. Something other than descriptive of their actions. It may hurt, it may cut at their identity. This person may not fully understand what could possibly be ‘evil’ about their particular brand of ‘good’. Good and Evil are constructs. They are colors on a wall, simple, easy to paint in broad strokes. Like Black and White, they don’t actually exist. They are human made labels created to box others in, or steep us into a world view we prefer. Constructs lay the foundation for an identity we build and claim. Superiority is the biggest wall to demolish. But even if Good and Evil weren’t just words and simple ones at that, they cannot describe a whole. Much like the Yin Yang, life is a cycle of opposites attracting and complimenting. Balancing of those forces is necessary, and war to achieve it, so far, inevitable. History reveals this time and again. Empires rise and fall, religions blossom and die only to spark again, with a new face, new name, more deaths, same conclusions. Freedom and oppression rest so closely against each other, we chain ourselves to chain others. Righteous and Malicious, those are the two angels sitting on our shoulders, if that analogy is more akin to your belief. However, equal parts of both rest in each of us. It is our actions that speak the truth of their influence. Evil often becomes a label we apply to others, rarely one we claim in our own actions. We know our intentions. We mean well. We know a lot and have years on the competition. We are certainly more wise, more just. Awareness doesn’t come from pointing fingers at others, it comes from research, reflection and pointing fingers inward. That we embody an ist or ism isn’t uncommon or unusual, and neither is hating others for them. We must address the underlying commonality. That we are each human. We must allow for that, and bridge a gap to actions that are inhumane. We must enlighten ourselves and each other. Sometimes that means calling out or admitting an ist or ism. Unkindness does not lie in description. Taking offense to description can mean it is either unfounded or it cut too close to you. Which do we find more unsettling? Name calling is unkind, demeaning language and unhelpful or hurtful statements are unkind. Stereotyping is not helpful. Threats are dangerous. But description is a must. We must be able to call out an ist or ism that is hurting others and describe how. Professor Loretta Ross, was called out for calling out and that is called gaslighting, when an injustice or untruth is brought to light. Learning how an ist or ism has affected others over time is imperative to reconciling our shared history. That can only be accomplished by owning our own biases and ists and isms individually. Injustices passed on in silence or ignorance, continue. Humanity, what a destination. What a tightly packed and shared boat we row to get there. To be more than our ists and isms, we must learn more than how to best negate each other. Communication, respect, discomfort, awareness, these are the tools. We each are still understanding how our voice, our vote, our tirade affects another person or group. We don’t always know how we hurt ourselves and others. Collectively we may not agree, and our world will still pit us against each other, but that only means we have to take on the burden of knowledge with more ardor. We must learn what it means to row the boat forward for all.

https://medium.com/an-idea/big-hearted-ists-isms-7918a4746559

['Holly Brians Ragusa']

2020-12-13 03:10:46.771000+00:00

['Politics', 'Human Behavior', 'Self-awareness', 'Perspective', 'Categorization']

Digital Journal. Conversion research. (part11)& addon — Google Analytics Health Check.

Mouse tracking and what is that all about? Ring model. As the name implies — track mouse movements and clicks on a website. It can be used for various purposes, but those most common are: -where people click and where they don’t (click maps), -how far down they scroll on any given page (scroll maps) where people click There are also heat maps — but there is no correlation where people click and look. No useful correlation between eye movements and mouse movements — apart from the obvious looking at where you are about to click. One needs to gather a large enough sample size for each page the heat maps are generated for. Aim should be data of 2000, or even 5000 visitors per page analyzed and not lower than 300 (otherwise the margin of error is too big). Most tools offer you three options: § Attention heat maps (generated by algorithm based on mouse cursor movements), § click maps that show the aggregated click activity on the page § scroll maps (how far down people scroll) Let me explain each: click maps are useful to see click distribution and if CTA gets more clicks than the rest of the page. Attention heat maps are interesting, but…always generated by an algorithm — so this is somebody’s interpretation. Take the results with a grain of salt. For most tools attention heat map and click heat map look similar. Scroll maps — it’s a fact that the longer the page, the fewer people reach the end. User recordings are vital for conversion optimizers — you can see actual users interact with your site. They fill in missing links for insight, help you understand how actual users use your forms, check out, and the issues they face. Allocate yourself a day (or at least half a day) to watch these videos where people proceed through the site, its well worth it to understand usage patterns and problems they run into. Pro tip: The best tools let you segment the data by browser, visitor type, behavior, errors. Use this to understand the differences between different segments — mobile vs desktop users, new vs returning, etc. There are tools on the market that generate “instant” heat maps based on some algorithms. These are machines predicting stuff, and the information is NOT based on your actual users. The “instant” part of these tools is attractive but always bear in mind that websites are contextual, and your buyers are not machines. Tools that can be used: Hotjar (all around winner for SMEs) SessionCam (enterprise) Clicktale (great, but expensive) Inspectlet (I liked it at first, but then started to doubt the accuracy of their data) CrazyEgg (not really good value for money compared to other tools, lacks user session videos) Mouseflow Ghostrec Ring Model is a quick and effective way to identify where your biggest leaks are. The model is developed by Craig Sullivan and it looks at the ‘layers’ or ‘levels’ reached. It focuses on depth of engagement, not pages viewed. Ring Model It’s similar to a funnel as it helps you see the key loss steps. In true nature, the model helps one to see where the flow is stuck. Or where traffic is not “converting” into the next level. It helps you see layers of a webpage that needs the most help. The author suggested to use a standard Google Analytics report for constructing it: Behavior -> Site Content -> All pages. Then do it with this is two-fold: Map out traffic flow per layer of the site (and see where the flow is stuck) Verify whether the goal funnel has been configured properly Here’s the flow: 1. Start with a manual walkthrough of the site to map out the URL structure. 2. Count the unique pageviews per layer. 3. Check the numbers against what you see in Conversions -> Goals -> Funnel Visualization.

https://medium.com/@emunjakovic/digital-journal-conversion-research-part11-addon-google-analytics-health-check-aa5e57976b45

['Elvir Munjakovic']

2020-12-13 20:04:07.664000+00:00

['Marketing Strategies', 'Cxl Institute', 'Cxl Minidegree', 'Growth Hacking']

6 Benefits of Outsourcing Your Startup Marketing During an Accelerator

So your startup has decided that an accelerator is going to help your company grow. You’ve done your research, filled out the application, and congratulations! You’re accepted. Now the work begins. While most startups join an accelerator for the financial backing, many programs also offer incredible networking opportunities with like-minded peers as well as mentorship from key industry leaders. However, getting the most out of an accelerator does require a significant amount of time and effort from your team. Often, there just aren’t enough hours in the day to stay on course with the development of your product, attending the inspiring events, and then implementing all of the ideas and feedback you’re receiving on a daily basis. To avoid being pulled in too many different directions and wasting your valuable time during the few months you have in an accelerator, outsourcing some of the day-to-day tasks, especially when it comes to marketing tasks such as writing content and managing social media, is a great way to lighten your team’s workload so you can focus on actually growing your company. So for startups taking the plunge and joining an accelerator, here are six benefits of outsourcing your digital marketing tasks while you’re going through the program. 1. Save $$$ As an early-stage startup, you probably can’t afford to hire a full-time marketer. Not to mention, the entire interviewing and recruiting process can waste a great deal of your team’s valuable time. By outsourcing your startup’s marketing tasks, you can often get the same amount (or more) work done by an entire team of marketing experts for the same price as hiring one person. Not only can you get the support of more than one person, but you also won’t have to worry about lengthy team discussions on whether or not an interviewee is a good fit for your team. You also won’t have to waste valuable time training a new full-time, in-house team member so that he or she is entirely up to speed on your product or service. Ultimately, if you’re trying to optimize your startup’s limited budget, outsourcing your marketing efforts can significantly reduce your overall operating costs. You’ll be able to scale your startup without worrying about scaling your in-house team and taking on the additional costs that come with hiring a new employee. 2. Quickly Turn Inspiration Into Action When you enter an accelerator program, you’ll attend lots of events and hear from many mentors and industry leaders. There will be discussions on new trends, cutting edge technologies, strategies to use, business best practices, and an endless stream of valuable information to absorb. There’s no doubt you’re going to feel inspired to put a lot of these ideas into action. Unfortunately, too often startups in accelerator programs simply return to their desks without the capacity to turn all of these ideas into action. Outsourcing can give you a marketing team that can help you take all of these ideas and implement them quickly. 3. Save Time Posting a single article on your company website can take much more time than you might think. It may require an hour or two to research and write the post, but it also requires formatting, designing images, proofreading, editing, and a distribution strategy to get eyes on your content after it’s been published. All of these tasks can be outsourced. The result: your team can save hours to focus on doing the things that you do best. Taking the marketing tasks off your plate will free up time to focus on perfecting your product with the incredible resources you’ll have available to you during the accelerator program. 4. All Hands On (The Pitch) Deck Most accelerator programs host a demo day for startups to showcase their companies to prospective investors and the local startup community. Demo day is usually a day-long event featuring back-to-back pitches, usually between 3 to 5 minutes each. No matter which industry your product or service is for, it can be challenging to communicate so much information in such little time and truly make your mark during your pitch. With an outsourced marketing team, you’ll get the help of an entire team to make your pitch deck presentation perfect. Not only can these extra sets of hands assist in creating the content for your presentation and give you feedback before you present, but they can also help you organize the key metrics to include in your presentation about your target market and how you’re effectively reaching that target market. 5. Social Customer Service = Covered Social media and customer service have become entirely intertwined. It’s no longer an option to ignore comments or mentions of your company’s on social media channels. In fact, research shows that responding to a complaint on social media can increase customer advocacy as much as 25% while failing to respond can reduce customer advocacy by as much as 50%. Your product or service is going to be far from perfect while you’re still in the early stages, so engaging with your audience on social media and answering all of their questions or concerns will be critical. By outsourcing your social media management, you can be certain every inquiry will receive a response. And while your outsourced team may not be able to answer every technical question, they will be able to direct your customers, or potential users, to the right support team member. 6. Show Potential Investors You’re Serious When you find the right partner to help market your startup, you’ll quickly see just how much outsourcing can help you grow without the normal instabilities and setbacks startups often face during the acceleration phase. Potential investors will notice this too, and they’ll know that you’re serious about building a lean startup that allocates its team members’ time and resources wisely. Nowadays, implementing an active marketing strategy during the early stages of your company is required to stand out. However, it can be a daunting task to take on in-house in the early stages of your company, especially if you’re participating in an accelerator program. So before you consider delaying your marketing strategy, or hiring another full-time employee, consider outsourcing your startup’s marketing efforts. Outsourcing enables your team to focus on the things that are within your expertise, all while driving your startup forward with a solid plan to spread the word and capture your target audience. This article originally appeared on The Next Web.

https://medium.com/strategic-content-marketing/6-benefits-of-outsourcing-your-startup-marketing-during-an-accelerator-d3362b3ea437

['Launchway Media']

2017-07-26 02:28:59.877000+00:00

['Content Marketing', 'Accelerator', 'Social Media Marketing', 'Startup', 'Startup Marketing']

5 years in: a renewed commitment to diverse founders and those building solutions for diverse audiences.

This October marks five years since humble ventures first started. As 2020 wraps up, I am thankful and grateful. Like so many others, COVID and this pandemic have affected the health and safety of our family, friends, and our network on a global basis. We are thankful to be ambulatory and currently surviving and we have learned a lot about a lot. The lesson of 2020 has been to be like Water. And in 2021, our goal is to continue to Flow. Some humble ventures stats since April 2020 — December 2020: 200+ Zooms 75 Medium posts 7 newsletters sent 70% subscriber increase 20 virtual pop-ups 38 design thinking workshops 120 pitches of our creds deck 33 investments $150K in grant funding to 50+ Black-owned businesses 200+ students taught Facilitated 1 innovation challenge We’ve made some changes to our website to communicate our focus and direction. Take a look and let us know what you think. A few highlights of our new changes (TL;DR): Our Approach We continue to use lean startup, design thinking, and community power in our business model. We spend time either consulting or providing programming to early-stage companies, enterprise organizations, or fellow investors. Our Fund We invest in businesses off our balance sheet and have launched our t-shirt fund to increase the capital invested in our dealflow. Buy your humblethread$ Our Team We continue to highlight the various partners such as Ogilvy Consulting, National Black Chamber of Commerce, Sparks Consulting Group, and Republic. We appreciate problem solvers in search of fellow collaborators. Take a look at our updated website, and reach out if you think we might be able to help.

https://medium.com/humble-ventures/5-years-in-a-renewed-commitment-to-diverse-founders-and-those-building-solutions-for-diverse-badbf9298565

['Ajit Verghese']

2020-12-24 16:14:49.413000+00:00

['Venture Capital', 'Future Of Work', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Open Innovation', 'Investing']

Innovation Strategies Are Well and Good, But They’re Just ‘Theatre’

By Roger Chabra To compete, companies need action to move to centre stage. Innovation labs have become increasingly popular over the past decade. We see them in those shiny, modern and well-furnished spaces that make up government-backed innovation hubs or in corporate lobbies all over the world. (You know, the ones that are vacant 75 per cent of the time and leave you wondering how much was spent on building it and what its return can possibly be.) But I understand why companies are investing in innovation labs — large corporations are under attack. According to Innosight & Standard & Poor’s data, the average company lifespan on the S&P 500 index has declined steadily, from 35 years in the 1970s, to 20 years in the 1980s, to 17 years today. It is projected that in the 2020s, this lifespan will drop to about 12 years. Smaller and less-visible strategies have also proliferated. While they allow executives to check boxes to show that they have an innovation agenda, they are only the first steps toward doing new, smart and meaningful things. Real issues arise when companies stop at these Band-Aid strategies. This can be especially true for the hospitality, transportation and finance industries, where disruptive startups are eating the lunch of large incumbents. It took AirBnB only seven short years to become more valuable than Hilton Worldwide and only six for Uber to overtake the value of Ford and General Motors. CB Insights accurately refers to short-term strategies as “Innovation Theatre,” but I like to think of this as the awareness stage to becoming a more innovative company. It involves such tactics as launching an innovation lab, bringing on an innovation or digital prophet, having a startup-like office, planning executive visits to Silicon Valley, launching an accelerator and instituting casual office dress codes. Taking these steps often result in little actual, sustained innovation, but I would argue that they are a necessary beginning for creating a culture of change, iteration and agility within a company that truly wants to innovate to stay competitive. Once the company has gone through the awareness stage, it’s time for the real work to begin. Corporations are beginning to recognize this. Innovation and transformation activities used to be the 10th or 11th bullet on an executive’s job description. That’s changing. Fast. More and more, we are seeing executives with the word innovation or transformation in their title — Chief Innovation Officer, Chief Transformation Officer. For these people, innovation is the first bullet on their job description and their very career is dependent on their ability to drive real, meaningful change across their organizations. This means making tough discussions with their senior management peers about what change is really needed. For example, there needs to be discussions on how to attract and retain the right talent. They need to perform careful analysis about what markets and products can provide the best opportunities to drive shareholder value, how to bring on the right partners to help hand-hold the organization during a wholesale change process, and so on. However, of greater importance is the ability to get tactical about instilling Innovation DNA within their organizations. How will products get analyzed and built? What processes, platforms and tools will the company use to launch and test these products in an agile manner that reflects the pace of innovation happening in the world today? How will the organization maintain a constant dialogue with their customers? How can they maintain cycles of continuous improvement in their product innovation efforts? As we all know, execution trumps strategy. It’s not enough to have innovation strategies. *The original article was published in the Financial Post on November 8th, 2017 Roger Chabra has more than 20 years of venture capital, operating and entrepreneurial experience. He currently leads TribalScale’s venture creation platform as Chief Innovation Officer. Join our fast growing Tribe and connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn & Facebook! Learn more about us on our website.

https://medium.com/tribalscale/innovation-strategies-are-well-and-good-but-theyre-just-theatre-71be135902db

['Tribalscale Inc.']

2018-03-19 19:40:11.315000+00:00

['Digital Transformation', 'Innovation', 'Transformation', 'Continuous Improvement']

Decoding Content and Content Marketing

It is a very common mistake for beginners in the industry to get confused and mistake Content Marketing as being similar to Content Creation. To state the line of the difference between the two let us break down the explanation. The famous saying “Content is the king” is no doubt the holy grail to be worshipped by every content creator. But in order to understand the application, one needs to know that everything on the internet is content. To be precise, content is anything that is expressed in the form of voice, visuals, information, or thoughts. Content Marketing, on the other hand, is using the created content to strategically target an audience and provide them with the solutions to the problems that either your business or the readers have. Let’s understand this with some common marketing examples, done in various industries. Health Supplement company publishes a case study on how their products boost the immune system. Fashion Retailer distributing a monthly magazine on how to keep up with the latest styles and trends. The SaaS platform that uses gamification to encourage users to discover and get to know its features. Athletic Clothing Brand publishes a blog on clean eating, benefits of exercise, and personal empowerment. To a common eye, these day to day blogs and articles prove to be influencing, hence diverting the attention of the reader towards the niche industry and product. The content in this way becomes a medium of engagement while not precisely being a part of a direct marketing strategy. This planning, developing, and implementing the content created for a particular benefit is where the difference between content and content marketing lies. Content marketing focuses on the following key elements: Creating a value: Create content that should be of some value to the reader. Put them first. The content should solve the business goal or the customer’s problem. Be consistent: Consistency is the key to content marketing. For example, if you are a fitness-related app startup, your content should be geared towards assisting people on how they could stay fit. Absorb readers to your platform: You are building authority by providing readers with a destination to which they can keep returning. Gauge and Tweak: Measure the performance of your content based on the data. Tweak wherever necessary. Content marketing is a long-term strategy that focuses on building a strong relationship with your target audience by giving them high-quality content that is very relevant to them on a consistent basis. Some of the means by which content is created to market the desired product and services are blogs, case studies, eBooks, emails, meta titles and descriptions, headlines, product descriptions, social media posts, video scripts, web content, and white papers. Due to the pandemic, for the year 2020 Entrepreneur predicts that this decade’s content marketing will expand to use various online essentials tools due to the fact that content marketing is virtually limitless. Live-streaming, Content that is voice search-optimised, Augmented Reality (AR) experiences, One-to-one conversations with customers through tools like Facebook Messenger, Personalised content that adapts to your audience based on collected data, such as location, online behaviour, or demographic are some of the popular predicted ways that can be used to their advantage by the businesses Few popular ways to Achieve Content Marketing Success are - Being aware of the latest trends and innovations available. Looking and recycling old content to boost the credibility of the site Focus on creating better content with catchy and captivating headlines and subtitles than mastering SEO tricks In order to grow your business quickly, create engagement through social media by sharing your content. Customer-Centric Approach — Create informative content that includes details that are beneficial to readers. The presentation plays a key role in engaging the audience. Customise your content to balance between the product and the targeted audience. The proportion of major advertisers that say they are strongly committed to content marketing has doubled over the past two years, according to recent research from the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and The Content Council. The report was based on data from a survey of 126 senior-level marketers from the US and Canada who work for businesses with annual revenue of $8.1 billion, on average. Some 52% of respondents say their firm is strongly committed to content marketing, up from 26% who said the same two years ago. Moreover, 78% of respondents expect their firm’s commitment to content marketing to be strong two years from now. Earlier companies, entrepreneurs kept their businesses hardcore professional, but with time the demand for change has made these businesses switch to a more interactive profile, in order to create engagement.“These days, people want to learn before they buy.” hence making content marketing such an on-demand service. Content Marketing has now become the backbone for any marketing strategy, and with time has proven that it is here to stay. With time the content has evolved and so has businesses approach towards it. In 2020, content marketing will continue to become more personal as it can generate high-quality leads, create thought-leadership, and even attract and drive engagement with the help of good content. The importance of level of engagement content marketing creates and is leveraged over other marketing strategies is simply because “Traditional marketing talks to people. Content marketing talks with them.” For more interesting stories on tech, startups & solutions, click this link to discover more.

https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/decoding-content-and-content-marketing-4d5655c48f98

['Yati Labs']

2020-11-17 02:31:30.775000+00:00

['Content Marketing', 'Marketing Strategies', 'App Development', 'Content Strategy', 'Digital Marketing']

Remote Learning Has Been An Abysmal Failure

With all of this in mind, in relation to my mom’s students, their inability to perform and get the work done being assigned them is completely understandable. To my mom, a highly-educated Gen-X woman, who went to an all-girls Catholic high school in Jamaica and always prided herself on being an academic steward, she’s not used to dealing with “puny humans” (in Hulk voice). She’s been a teacher for almost a decade. Her job is excruciating and soul-sucking, taking into consideration how measly her pay is (and we live in New York). She taught in the South Bronx for a period of time, probably the most violent neighborhood in New York City. Fights breaking out in the hallway, undisciplined students, students that come from broken homes and/or live life out in “the streets”, gang violence an imminent threat semi-frequently. Push comes to shove her down a hill decorated with spikes, an egregious dismissal from her position left her unemployed for a few months, collecting benefits (she’d find a new position in November 2016, coincidentally right before the Orange Man himself rose to office.) My mom endured a lot and made it through to tell her story. I heard the horror, and could only express my condolences. Putting that aside, I know she loves interacting with her students, and being a motherly figure to them gives her a lot of joy deep down. If only her dedication to her craft was reflected in her annual salary… Modern-day teachers are given very little rope to work with. The creativity they can infuse into their lessons is stifled by bureaucratic overhead. Their pay increase stagnates over the year, if at all (it coincides with the decades-long stagnation in wage growth that most American workers have become victim to.) On top of that, their means of disciplining students for misconduct are limited to a stern warning, changing their seats as if it’s a backwards, upside-down game of Musical Chairs and sending them off to the principals office, for yet another stern talking. Teachers are one of many key players that are blind to the big picture in frame because fractured sunlight is reflecting off of it. Schools are like places of worship, but there’s a different type of “God”, holy prophet unifying students in “prayer.” It’s a prayer built around teamwork, cooperation and community, not overbearing memorization of facts that you can pull from an encyclopedia. It sounds like part of a speech from a promising electoral candidate, but Nick Hanauer is right in his op-eds for the Atlantic that strong middle-class families, collaborating together and advocating for their “unionized” interests with their solid purchasing power is what made the education system in America thrive at one point. That’s why parents investing in participating in the PTA group at their children’s schools is a wise investment still. Teachers are parents; obviously, they can and will come in many different shapes and forms. When the youth are educated properly, in a digital space or in a brick-and-mortar building, the wealth that’s inevitably produced will trickle down back into the community that allowed said wealth to be built. In short, great public schools are the product of a thriving middle class, not the other way around. Pay people enough to afford dignified middle-class lives, and high-quality public schools will follow. But allow economic inequality to grow, and educational inequality will inevitably grow with it. Only the elites that Hanauer is in the circles of, like Bill Gates are proponents of slapping a few Benjamins onto the deepening flesh wounds of any widespread problem affecting the masses (like COVID-19). They are also proponents of what Hanauer has the coined the term for: “educationism”. The premise: if we educate more people, they will have more knowledge, more ideas on more subject matters injected into their brain, which assumes they will automatically become valuable in the market and later on produce great innovations and inventions. What makes this assumption miss the mark is that it fails to distinguish acquisition in skills from acquisition in knowledge, and bundles the two together as if they’re the same thing. Knowledge does not always directly lead towards possessing applicable skills None of this directly relates to remote learning, but these are burning issues that this pandemic is unveiling, issues that have floundered on the sidelines for too long, and for which solutions are going to have to be expedited, because the world we will exist in 2021 and beyond will not wait up. The exponential growth in newer technological advancements, notwithstanding AI will be overwhelming as they pile in. We will need more people in the workforce to be competent in using certain technologies. “Learn to Code” is a trendy hashtag for a good reason.

https://medium.com/illumination/remote-learning-has-been-an-abysmal-failure-ca7cf3240ee1

['Justin Cole Adams']

2020-12-08 15:36:01.631000+00:00

['Students', 'Remote Learning', '2020', 'Education', 'Education Reform']

8 Must-Know Data Visualizations for Better Data Analysis

8 Must-Know Data Visualizations for Better Data Analysis Explained with examples using Seaborn Photo by Lucas Benjamin on Unsplash Data visualization is a very important part of data science. It is quite useful in exploring and understanding the data. In some cases, visualizations are much better than plain numbers at conveying information. The relationships among variables, the distribution of variables, and underlying structure in data can easily be discovered using data visualization techniques. In this post, we will learn about the 8 most commonly used types of data visualizations. I will use Seaborn to create visualizations and also try to explain what kind of information we can infer. We will use the grocery and direct marketing datasets available on Kaggle to create the visualizations. The grocery dataset contains information about customer purchases at grocery stores. The direct marketing dataset contains relevant data of a marketing campaign done via direct mail. Let’s start by reading the datasets into a pandas dataframe. import numpy as np import pandas as pd import seaborn as sns sns.set(style='darkgrid') grocery = pd.read_csv("/content/Groceries_dataset.csv", parse_dates=['Date']) print(grocery.shape) grocery.head() Grocery dataset (image by author) The dataset contains about 40k rows and 3 columns. We have member number, date of purchase, and the purchased items as columns. marketing = pd.read_csv("/content/DirectMarketing.csv") print(marketing.shape) marketing.head() Marketing dataset (image by author) The marketing dataset consists of 1000 observations (i.e. rows) and 10 features (i.e. columns). The focus is on the “AmountSpent” column which indicates how much a customer has spent so far.

https://towardsdatascience.com/8-must-know-data-visualizations-for-better-data-analysis-9752953dd703

['Soner Yıldırım']

2020-11-23 08:29:40.793000+00:00

['Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Data Science', 'Programming', 'Data Visualization']

MDL Disneyland® Paris Major Data Analysis

Team Secret is the Champion of MDL Disneyland® Paris Major We had a fantastic Major; all top 8 teams have excellent performance. Let’s go into the data directly. The meta is already figured out by many teams, the hero picks are narrowed a bit, but thanks to Team Secret tried some rare heroes, like Pudge and Ancient Apparition, we still have some diversity. The powerful aura of Guardian Greaves also changes the meta a lot, due to the bonus regen and armor under 20% health, heroes are much harder to kill and sustain become an important factor in team fights.

https://medium.com/dota-observatory/mdl-disneyland-paris-major-data-analysis-dd18a380e7a9

[]

2019-05-17 18:21:29.134000+00:00

['Gaming', 'Mdl Paris Major', 'Dota 2', 'Dota2 Tournament Analysis']

How to Practice E-mail Empathy

How to Practice E-mail Empathy On communicating more elegantly and effectively in an age of attention scarcity Photo by Cookie the Pom on Unsplash I received an e-mail the other day from a salesperson. It began with two introductory sentences, then a third which read “I’ll keep this brief.” What followed was two dense paragraphs rich with detail, names, and data. A third paragraph following them was one sentence with a vague “it’d be great to connect” wedged in there. No call to action, no specific request of how and when we might connect. Just an inkling that it would be “nice” to “connect”. I don’t plan to respond the e-mail. Why? I have no idea what the objective is. I lost it somewhere between the author’s initial promise to “keep it brief,” him smashing that promise to pieces in the 2 dense paragraphs following that, and the concluding sentence which seemed like the equivalent of wishful navel-gazing. If you make it a point to say you’re going to keep it brief in an e-mail, be sure to actually keep it brief. Failing to do so is a reflection that you haven’t taken the recipient of the e-mail into consideration. You haven’t thought about what it’s like to receive a huge, sprawling e-mail with a bunch of dense text in it. E-mail Empathy At some point in the past — perhaps 10 or 15 years ago — it may have been helpful to send a detailed and dense e-mail. After all, the more words you include, and more detailed of an outline you send, the more time and thought you put into it, right? Wrong. From the sender’s point of view, it may feel great to write those long, dense e-mails that lay out a bunch of information in one place. Usually, writing that e-mail is the first chance the sender has had to really think through all of that information. As a result, once that e-mail is written, the sender is proud of that accomplishment and wants to send it off. But 9 times out of 10, that’s a mistake. As any writer will tell you, it takes significantly more time and thought to write fewer words than it does to write more. The first draft of an e-mail will be too much — too many words and too dense. It shows your eagerness and nerves, but neither of those things add value to the recipient of the e-mail. The recipient of your e-mail — just like all of us these days — has precious little time. Their lack of time also means precious little attention — specifically for your e-mail. So be sure the e-mail they receive is as short, direct, and clean as it can be. Knowing the purpose of your e-mail 70% of the battle. Are you looking to get information from the recipient? Are you trying to set up a meeting with them? Are you looking for a commitment, a document, an introduction to another person? That goal is the first thing to type in the e-mail. Then start filling in all the other stuff to help you ease into your request. If you’re really struggling to state a simple, short objective for the e-mail — or there’s so many objectives, that you can’t pick one — stop. Don’t send this e-mail now. Instead, sit and think about the most important objective — the objective which, if the recipient acts on that, will snowball into achieving the other ones. Make your e-mail about that objective. And make it compelling enough that there’s a natural progression to the other objectives. Again, think of the goal of that e-mail and practice some e-mail empathy. Put yourself in the shoes of the recipient of your e-mail. Ask yourself how much time you will likely want to spend on the e-mail, and whether you’d find it easy to find the actionable content. The easiest way to do that is to practice the concept of less = more: fewer words, and less dense content. Word Count and Density: Less is Almost Always More Keeping an e-mail brief isn’t really about how long it appears, but rather how much work the recipient has to do in order to process it. A relatively short e-mail can actually take quite a bit of time to process. That’s where density comes into play. Brevity isn’t just about word count. It’s also about information density. You can send an e-mail that only has only one paragraph. But if that paragraph is loaded with a bunch of information that forces the reader to slow down and have to process, analyze, cross-reference, recall, or do anything but leisurely read — the e-mail ceases to be brief — no matter how few words are in it. So aim to not only limit your word count, but also limit the amount of stuff packed into even a low word count. If you must put a bunch of information in an e-mail, use bullet points or numbered lists. But when you do use bullet points or numbers, keep the items short. Try not to exceed 10 words per item. Also, don’t — under any circumstances — use an outline form. If you are promising to keep it brief, but your “brief” e-mail has indented sup-points — you’ve broken your promise. The Follow-up Rule In most cases, the more urgent you feel a response to your e-mail is, the less likely the recipient will respond in your desired timeframe. Truly, a watched pot never boils. But that’s why there’s the follow-up! Follow-ups can be a great way to get the desired attention — but you need to do them in the right way. The best follow-up to a long e-mail that didn’t get answered quickly is a phone call. Yes, people still use the phone — especially in the professional world. The reason a phone call can help is because people get to interrupt you when you’re bowling them over with a bunch of information too quickly. They get to ask you questions. There’s conversation, with the ability to confirm whether or not there is both understanding of the information and a shared urgency about it. But if you must follow up with an e-mail, here’s the rule of thumb: your follow-up e-mail should be about 10% of the length of your original. Whatever you do, do not send another e-mail with multiple pieces of information in it. That obviously didn’t work the first time, so pare it down aggressively this time. When All Else Fails, Just Use the Golden Rule The simplest way to get more things done using e-mail is use a kind of golden rule for e-mails: E-mail others in the way that you would like them to e-mail you. When you sit down to craft an e-mail, think of how you would handle receiving the same kind of e-mail in the recipient’s position. You don’t want a long or dense e-mail with an unclear action item. So don’t write one. If you have dense thicket of information that you need to make sure the recipient understands, e-mail them to ask for 10 minutes of their time on a video call. Then read out the long, dense e-mail you almost sent them. Be sure that you confirm that they understand and care about the information. Sure, you may be worried that they won’t respond to a request to hop on a call, so you still want to send the e-mail. That’s fine, just manage your expectations. If they won’t give you 10 minutes of their time to make sure they understand your e-mail, what do you think will come from sending that e-mail? Surely not much. E-mail is a unique form of communication, but it’s still a form of communication. So it shares one crucial thing with every other one: you’re doing it to engage with someone. The more you think about the person or people you’re trying to engage with — and remember that they’re short on time and attention like you — the better your e-mails will be.

https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-practice-e-mail-empathy-2a792b0de223

['Mike Sturm']

2020-11-28 19:07:10.578000+00:00

['Work', 'Email', 'Writing', 'Marketing', 'Communication']

How to Plot Anticipation on a Graph

How to Plot Anticipation on a Graph Photo by krakenimages on Unsplash when I think of anticipation, I immediately see a graph: x-axis — valence (positive, negative emotions) y-axis — arousal (high or arousal). in the top left quadrant, we have positive, exciting experiences, that embody daring adventures, like sky diving, bungee jumping. or that feeling of lifting off on an airplane. in the bottom right quadrant, we have positive, soothing experiences, the ones that describe a calm, serene joy of quietly creating, writing, or of consuming and admiring art. in the bottom left quadrant, we have negative, low arousal emotions, the fatigue and weight of depression that makes daily chores too difficult. in the top left quadrant, is then those negative, high arousal emotions, MY PERSONAL FIRE ALARM the fight/ flight / freeze / fawn system ready to fling worry in every which direction. anticipation is a curious feeling, because it’s one of high arousal, way up at the top of that graph, but it can sit smack dab on that y-axis like a fence unsure whether to fall over on the left side, down into a rumination rabbit hole of all the things that could go wrong; unsure whether to waltz over to the right side, of excitable curiosity of the future. to plot anticipation on this graph, perhaps means I need more than just a dot, but a confidence interval denoting a range of possibilities encompassing the true range of anticipation.

https://medium.com/know-thyself-heal-thyself/how-to-plot-anticipation-on-a-graph-d3582cb0dfe7

['Lucy Dan 蛋小姐', 'She Her 她']

2020-12-26 14:31:31.866000+00:00

['Self', 'Psychology', 'Emotions', 'Poetry']

Spark UDF — Deep Insights in Performance

Nikhilesh Nukala — Consultant (Data Engineering), Yuhao Zhu — Advanced Analytics Consultant, Guilherme Braccialli — Principal Data Engineer, Tom Goldenberg- Jr Principal (Data Engineering), QuantumBlack This blog will demonstrate a performance benchmark in Apache Spark between Scala UDF, PySpark UDF and PySpark Pandas UDF. At QuantumBlack, we often deal with multiple terabytes of data to drive advanced analytics projects. The data pipelines should run at speed from anywhere and be performant, while the workload should be distributable, scalable and reliable. Apache Spark is one platform we leverage for this. Spark offers a variety of solutions to complicated challenges, but we face many situations where the native functions are not sufficient to solve the problem. For this reason, Spark allows us to register custom functions called User-Defined Functions, or UDFs. In this article, we will explore the performance characteristics of Spark’s UDFs. Spark supports multiple languages such as Python, Scala, Java, R and SQL, but often the data pipelines are written in PySpark or Spark Scala. We believe PySpark is adopted by most users for the following reasons: 1. Faster learning curve — Python is a simpler language than Scala. 2. Wide Community Support — An ecosystem of programmers feedback on PySpark performance and suggest updates. 3. Availability of rich libraries — Python has a rich set of libraries for machine learning, time series analysis and statistics. 4. Negligible performance difference — The introduction of Spark DataFrames means the performance of Scala and Python are fairly similar. Dataframes are now organized under named columns to help Spark understand the schema, while the operations that are used to build the dataframe are compiled into a physical execution plan by the Catalyst Optimizer, accelerating computation. 5. Easy code handover between data engineers and data scientists. In some data frame operations that require UDFs, PySpark can have an impact on performance. There are approaches to address this by combining PySpark with Scala UDF and UDF Wrapper. When a PySpark job is submitted while the driver program is running in vanilla Python, the driver creates SparkSession object and Dataframes/RDDs. These will be a Python wrapper around a JVM (Java) object. To simplify this, PySpark provides a wrapper that runs native Scala code. Spark User-Defined Functions (UDFs): Registering Spark custom functions in Scala, Python and Java has become a very popular way to expose advanced functionality to SQL users, enabling users to call in the functions without writing the code. For example, multiplying a set of million rows by 1000: def times1000(field): return field * 1000.00 or reverse geocode a latitude and longitude dataset: import geohash def geohash_pyspark(lat, lon): return geohash.encode(lat, lon) Spark SQL offers a built-in method to easily register UDFs by passing in a function in your programming language. Scala and Python can use native function and lambda syntax, but in Java we need to extend the UDF class. UDFs can work on a variety of types and can return a different type than the one they are initially called with. In Python and Java, we need to specify the return type. UDF can be easily registered by running: spark.udf.register("UDF_Name", function_name, returnType()) *returnType() is mandatory in Python and Java. Types of Spark UDFs and execution: In distributed mode, Spark uses master/worker architecture for execution. The central coordinator, called driver, communicates with a potentially large number of distributed workers, called executors. The driver and workers run their own Java process (JVM). The driver runs the main() method and creates a SparkContext, RDDs and performs transformations and actions. The executors are responsible for running the individual tasks. Benchmarking the performance: To benchmark the performance of the three Spark UDFs, we have created a random Latitude, Longitude dataset, with 100 million rows and worth 1.2 GB, and have defined 2 UDFs: a simple function which multiplies each row by 1000 and a complex geohash function. Cluster Configuration: Databricks cluster with 8 nodes Driver node: 16 cores and 122 GB memory Worker nodes: 4 cores with 30.5 GB memory, autoscaling enabled. Notebook code — https://bit.ly/2YxiVp4 — QuantumBlack’s approach to benchmark Scala UDF, PySpark UDF and PySpark Pandas UDF. Along with the three types of UDFs discussed above, we have created a Python wrapper to call the Scala UDF from PySpark and found that we can bring the best of two worlds i.e. ease of Python coding and performance of Scala UDF. Creating a Python wrapper to call Scala UDF from PySpark code: from pyspark.sql.column import Column from pyspark.sql.column import _to_java_column from pyspark.sql.column import _to_seq from pyspark.sql.functions import col def udfGeohashScalaWrapper(lat, lon): _geohash = sc._jvm.sparkudfperformance.UDFs.udfGeohash() return Column(_geohash.apply(_to_seq(sc, [lat, lon], _to_java_column))) def udfTimes1000ScalaWrapper(field): _times1000 = sc._jvm.sparkudfperformance.UDFs.udfTimes1000() return Column(_times1000.apply(_to_seq(sc, [field], _to_java_column))) Databricks Pandas UDF benchmarking — https://databricks.com/blog/2017/10/30/introducing-vectorized-udfs-for-pyspark.html Key Takeaways: Below are the results from the tests performed Our results demonstrate that Scala UDF offers the best performance. As mentioned earlier, the step of translating from Scala to Python and back adds to the processing of the Python UDFs. We also found that PySpark Pandas UDF provides a better performance for smaller datasets or simpler functions than PySpark UDF. When a more complex function, such as geohashing, is introduced, this characteristic changes. In these circumstances, PySpark UDF is around 10 times more performant than the PySpark Pandas UDF. We have also found that creating a Python wrapper to call Scala UDF from PySpark code is around 15 times more performant than the two types of PySpark UDFs. Taking these performance characteristics into account, QuantumBlack now: Uses PySpark UDFs when the data volume is not big or need quick insights using simpler functions. Builds an internal library with re-usable Scala UDFs Creates Python wrappers to call Scala UDFs References: Learning Spark — O’Reilly

https://medium.com/quantumblack/spark-udf-deep-insights-in-performance-f0a95a4d8c62

['Quantumblack', 'A Mckinsey Company']

2020-06-03 18:54:38.528000+00:00

['Apache', 'Machine Learning', 'Spark', 'Apache Spark']

And Now, A War on Guns

Credit: “Non-Violence” by Carl Fredrik Reutersward You’re probably thinking: Well, I know who’s going to win that one. After all, they’ve got all the firepower! But of course, the whole point is to reduce the firepower. That’s reduce, not eliminate. If Americans have learned anything from the War on Drugs or the War on Terror, it surely must be that preventing terrible things from happening cannot be achieved by violating civil liberties, employing “zero tolerance” or “maximum suspicion,” or underestimating the economic and cultural forces encouraging everyday people to engage in harmful behavior. We have also learned that eliminating terrible things like drug overdoses or domestic terrorism attacks is impossible, but that reducing them is an achievable goal. Planning a winning strategy begins by examining supply-and-demand dynamics, with careful attention to the cultural norms underlying the harmful behaviors. Why are guns like drugs? To begin with, there are so many of them. Laws banning either guns or drugs will be resisted mightily and gleefully flouted, and even if some people who otherwise would have possessed them follow the law, it will not put a dent in the overall volume of illegal goods still available. Second, guns are like drugs because so many people want them even though the result could be death. They fulfill deep but poorly understood cultural needs, and users perceive their benefits as much greater than the risk of dying. Third, they cost a lot of money, and an extremely lucrative market economy prospers and supplies them to users. Why are guns not like drugs? Because they are not addictive, and users don’t need to connect regularly and repeatedly to their dealer to get them. Gun users, therefore, are less visible to family, friends, and the police who might try to get them to stop. Furthermore, guns have legal supporters. Guns have the National Rifle Association to…pardon me for this…shoot down any proposed gun control legislation in any state. Guns also have the Second Amendment and a Supreme Court that has produced some remarkably twisted caselaw on it. But things may be changing on the legal front. The N.R.A. has recently been hit by a deep scandal in which its executive director, Wayne LaPierre, along with many top officials in the organization who allegedly lived lavish lifestyles on the organization’s dimes were removed from office for financial malfeasance. The N.R.A’s membership is dropping and its knee-jerk rejection of any kind of gun regulation at all — even laws banning ownership of assault rifles of the type used in multiple mass shootings — is becoming unpopular among middle-of-the-road handgun owners and hunters. As for the Second Amendment, a case now pending in the Supreme Court addresses whether states may prohibit handgun owners from carrying the weapons in public. Because that case and others like it cover handguns, not assault rifles, and the caselaw on which it will be decided protects ownership of handguns for personal protection at home, there is a chance that a narrowly crafted decision would exclude protections on assault rifles and even, possibly though not probably, carrying weapons in public. In short, the national conversation about gun ownership and control is ongoing not only in state legislatures, but in the courts, and it is far from static. But what of the federal government? Can Washington do anything meaningful in stopping the recent wave of deaths in cities and towns all over America? Again, think back to the War on Drugs. The feds cannot do much on the streets of these cities and towns, because local officials and communities have jurisdiction there. But federal action in disrupting supply chains of illegal manufacturing and smuggling can be powerful, and federal money to support state and local actions in stopping young people from shooting each other would be extremely welcome. This two-prong approach is the classic model of suppressing both supply and demand, and that is how the War on Drugs was fought. But that “war” was ill-conceived and racially unjust in its emphasis on harsh punishments that affected communities of color much more strongly than it affected wealthier communities. Applying the same approach to a War on Guns is likely to produce the same bad outcomes. The worst injustices of the War on Drugs were perpetrated by local law enforcement and elected officials as they invaded impoverished neighborhoods in the name of broken windows and zero tolerance. By contrast, federal money sent to localities in the War on Guns has already been earmarked to support local groups of Violence Interruptors, rather than police. The Biden Administration has announced its two-prong strategy to mount a War on Guns. To shrink the supply, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the FBI will steeply increase their investigations and interdiction of gun smuggling across state lines. This won’t vacuum up all the loose guns out there, but it will suppress illegal supply and thus raise the price on the firearms still in circulation. As for the demand, $350 billion of pandemic relief funding has been set aside to support programs in impoverished neighborhoods where young people have been shooting each other at alarming rates over the past year. These programs come in two flavors: the Operation Ceasefire model of focused deterrence, and the Violence Interruptors model of supporting credible messengers from the community, usually people who were once involved in street violence themselves but have dedicated themselves to stopping it. Debating the relative merits of each is not the topic here. The point is that federal pandemic relief money will be routed to local police departments to hire officers for addressing gun violence, but only under a Community Violence Interruption model in which police must partner with neighborhood CVI groups. CBS News recently interviewed Corniki Bornds, whose only child was killed by gunfire in 2017 in a Chicago neighborhood. “There was a police officer sitting on the corner when my son was shot,” Bornds said. “I don’t see the benefit of it. But if you get in front of it and try to keep bad guys from wanting to kill each other, I think that’s a better place to send resources than to the police.” Will the post-pandemic police let the violence interrupters take the lead, or will they revert to previous invasive practices? As we embark on the War on Guns, there is some hope that police and residents might be able to work together better if we remember the lessons of what went wrong in the War on Drugs.

https://medium.com/thethoughtproject/and-now-a-war-on-guns-1d57bc02ef93

['Candace Mccoy']

2021-09-10 20:24:01.273000+00:00

['Gun Violence', 'Gun Control', 'Cuny Graduate Center', 'Federal Funding', 'War On Drugs']

Configuring Reverse Proxy & Setup AWS instance

Hey!! Learner this article content that have to create Ansible Playbook i.e. Launching Ha-proxy and update it’s configuration file automatically on each time new Managed node (Configured With Apache Webserver) join the inventory. And Task 12.2 containing the setup of AWS instances. Task overview 1. Use Ansible playbook to Configure Reverse Proxy i.e. Haproxy and update it’s configuration file automatically on each time new Managed node (Configured With Apache Webserver) join the inventory. 2. Configure the same setup over AWS using instance over there. Prerequisites Here I am using Redhat-8 as a controller node & make sure that your controller node has proper internet connectivity. as a controller node & make sure that your controller node has proper internet connectivity. Controller node has Ansible installed and configured to connect to our Ansible hosts using SSH keys. Make sure the control node has a regular user with sudo permissions and a firewall enabled. has Ansible installed and configured to connect to our Ansible hosts using SSH keys. Make sure the control node has a regular user with sudo permissions and a firewall enabled. Now, We have to configure the ansible dynamic inventory so that we can fetch IP’s dynamically and then launch all the operating system over cloud then third and last setup load balancer through haproxy and my all the files and folder related to this task is in folder /ansible/arthtask12.2/ DYNAMIC INVENTORY SETUP Here is the detail to setup the dynamic inventory on controller node to launch AWS instance using boto , ec2.yml and ec2.ini file & configure haproxy & webserver on it. Follow the steps carefully for the setup of Dynamic Inventory Step 1: Install python3 “$ yum install python3 -y” Install the boto3 and boto library pip3 install boto3 pip3 install boto Step2: Create a directory “$ mkdir /ansible/arthtask12.2/mydb” Download ec2.yml and ec2.ini from ansible official dynamic inventory GitHub link in /ansible/arthtask12.2/mydb folder. { both the files should be in same folder} and from ansible official dynamic inventory GitHub link in folder. both the files should be in same folder} Make the ec2.py file executable by using “$ chmod +x ec2.py” Step3: export AWS_REGION='ap-south-1' export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID='AKIAV3XXXXXXXXX' export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY='/IloNROiarRhZxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx' Step4: A fter set this environmental variable just go to /root/.bashrc file and update this entry because every reboot the VM, this environmental variable lost automatically. fter set this environmental variable just go to and update this entry because every reboot the VM, this environmental variable lost automatically. Now update this entry /ansible/arthtask12/mydb directory in ansible configuration file(/etc/ansible/ansible.cfg) and also set aws private_key and user through which you wanted to launch os on aws. directory in and also set aws and through which you wanted to launch os on aws. Upload the instance private key location which we have created on AWS and update at /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg as highlighted in the following. chmod 400 <private_key_name> Dynamic inventory configuration is done now We can check using ansible all --list-hosts LAUNCH AWS OPERATING SYSTEM USING ANSIBLE PLAYBOOK We need three operating system so we can use one for haproxy configuration and other two for webserver configuration. Below is the ansible playbook code for ec2 instances name as hp.yml

https://medium.com/@amankumarabhishek8802/configuring-reverse-proxy-setup-aws-instance-fb0a66561805

[]

2020-12-22 17:53:29.351000+00:00

['Redhat Linux', 'Ansible', 'Haproxy', 'Aws Ec2', 'Reverse Proxy']

The value of personalized recommendations for your business

The e-commerce boom makes online environment more competitive. Internet retailers seek competitive advantages and a personalized experience for their clients is one of them. To achieve truly personalized experience, one has got to know individual users and learned their habits. With an increasing number of items, growing number of users and changing environment, it is not tractable to prepare personalized experience manually. Recommender systems can be used to personalize the content of websites for each visitor individually. Other channels such as e-mail newsletters or mobile notifications can be personalized as well. User interactions from multiple channels feed a recommender system, increase the precision of recommendations and improve the personalized experience of users. Most of the big companies understood the value of personalized recommendations and hired large dedicated data science team to develop and maintain their recommender engines. Some companies (Uber, AirBnB, Amazon, Spotify, Google, etc.) focus on their data so intensively that they can be treated as data science companies. Before you decide to build and maintain your internal recommender engine, you should consider costs and benefits of such decision. What is the impact of personalized recommendations to your business? Costs of having a recommender system Data are crucial for good recommendations. You have to start with profiles of your users and attributes of your products. You can start with anonymous visitors of your website and remember their interactions. Once you learn their identity, you should merge profiles over all your channels. The most valuable data for recommendation is the history of your users and their interactions with your items. For new items, you should provide at least some attributes (e.g. text description) to improve recommendation. Storing and maintaining such data is not cheap, but you can utilize it in many other ways (e.g. RFM analysis of your customers). When you decide to develop your internal recommender, you need the team of 2 FTE data scientists to make prototypes, 1–2 programmers that make production ready code and at least two engineers preparing and maintaining the infrastructure. The development phase takes typically 2–3 years and costs around $1.5M depending on the cost of your staff and HW resources. The maintenance costs (infrastructure, HW costs) for a medium-sized company are around $20k/month, not taking into account data scientists that are not cheap, but you need them to maintain the quality of algorithms and improve the system. You can save most of these expenses by using external recommender system, such as the one provided by Recombee. Benefits of recommender systems Let us start with most general benefits. With a recommender system, you gain complex insights into your customer and product bases. Profiles of users maintained in the recommender are based on their past interactions with items and enable powerful analysis with business reports and dashboards generated on a regular basis. Such reports can predict possible problems so you can avoid them. Your business decisions influenced by analytics can save you money. Even more powerful are “smart decisions” taken by the recommender engine every millisecond. Generated recommendations typically reduce the time required to find an item and significantly increase the probability of discovering other items of interest. The result is increased loyalty and satisfaction of your users with your web services. Typically, users also interact with more items and this behavior leads to increased consumption and higher profits. Also, newsletters, personalized promoted content and push notifications encourage users to return, increase the frequency of visits by regular users, reduce churn and increase their lifetime value. We work with our clients and potential customers to evaluate and maximize the business value of personalized recommendations. This is however not easy because companies pursue different goals and objectives. Many companies define and evaluate their key performance indicators (KPIs) on a regular basis simplifying the exact measurement of recommender impact. Such measurement is then realized by AB test, where personalized recommendations are provided to users in a group A whereas group B gets standard recommendations or best-selling content. Income generated by personalized recommendations for a small e-shop. The domain, where benefits can be evaluated seemingly easily is the e-commerce. Measuring income generated from personalized recommendation can be realized by a token or simply by computing price of purchased products that were recommended less than a few minutes ago. However, this number does not reflect the fact, that the customer might buy different product otherwise, or he can make the purchase even without personalized recommendation. Personalized recommendations as a service As indicated above, costs of a recommender system can be significantly lowered by outsourcing the recommendation service. Moreover, the quality of internal recommenders is often poor, because the team does not have sufficient capacity/knowledge to develop state of the art recommendation algorithms in scale. It is better to focus on your business, integrate personalized recommendations and customize it with the query language to get the full potential out of it. Building smart data products on top the recommender is your next goal. Having good performing and affordable recommender system becomes a must. Some of our competitors charge small share of total sales volume generated from personalized recommendation. This model can, however, prevent clients to use recommendation in positions generating high volumes even without personalization. Fair revenue share model involves running continual AB tests in all positions and channels where the personalized recommendation is deployed. This, however, decreases possible revenue and generates additional IT costs for clients. Our preferred model that reflects costs of the recommendation service provider is the fixed fee or pay-for-recommendation model. The more recommendations you consume, the cheaper it gets. This model is profitable for the client even for high volume mailing campaigns, where the conversion rate is obviously low. Learn more about the pricing at our website or contact us to discuss your business case.

https://medium.com/recombee-blog/the-value-of-personalized-recommendations-for-your-business-6b2e81ce0a4d

['Pavel Kordík']

2016-08-23 12:01:36.535000+00:00

['Personalization', 'Business', 'Recommendation System']

Knowing the Universe

photo by Kevin Noble on Unsplash Knowing the Universe Dissolving into the conscious space We can sometimes find a calm awareness inside us, an inner space with a universal quality, something that seems to exist inside all of us. Finding this calm inner space is useful to us. The realization of universal consciousness brings with it a sense that we’re part of something much larger than our everyday life might suggest. It reminds us that we’re the human expressions of a conscious intelligence that exists throughout the Universe. We’re the living expressions of a cosmic intelligence that’s transforming itself into the precisely orchestrated biochemistry of our bodies, allowing us to live life as a human being. Whenever we want to, we can tune into and access the transformative power of this cosmic consciousness inside all of us. The universal conscious awareness has an unlimited capacity for change and evolution. We can find an intuitive realization of the presence of this spatial conscious awareness, whenever we inwardly focus our attention. In our busy everyday world, we can sometimes lose touch with the spaciousness inside us that allows us to realize this cosmic connection, and find ourselves getting snagged up in our thinking. We’re not our thoughts about ourself however, we’re the universal conscious space in all of us that’s giving rise to thoughts. Our thinking appears in this universal space and tugs at our attention, distracting us from being consciously present. Sometimes these thoughts can separate us from other people, tell us we’re separate from the world or make us unhappy in some way. When we can tune in to an unlimited source of inspiration and intelligence inside ourselves, however, we don’t need to think ourselves into being unhappy, hurt or diminished by our everyday life experiences. Tuning in helps us bounce back from unfortunate circumstances and makes us more resilient. We can reach into the inner conscious space with our attention, and it dissolves us into itself. We can realize and know the cosmic space as one conscious awareness in all of us. Knowing this unlimited cosmic intelligence inside ourselves, helps us find the intuition and insight to change our life for the better, if we need to. Consciousness in all space is transforming cosmic energy into clusters of tiny resonances inside the living cells of our body, like three-dimensional music. This conscious cosmic space looks through all of us and sees itself, appearing as a world. We’re consciousness in the Universe transforming itself into living beings. We can reconnect every day with this cosmic awareness inside all of us.

https://medium.com/change-your-mind/knowing-the-universe-inside-us-1bb316bf817f

['Paul Mulliner']

2020-05-12 06:25:12.432000+00:00

['Mindfulness', 'Meditation', 'Personal Development', 'Spirituality', 'Philosophy']

The Frugal Airbnb User’s Guide for visiting Seattle

Pike Place Market — December 2018 There’s a particular prideful emotion you feel when you discover a jewel amongst the pebbles of Airbnb listings. A rush of mental images crosses your mind of the peaceful short weekend getaway There’s only one problem. Will you be able to afford it? Seattle is a destination where many hope to travel, yet the prices can intimidate even the most skilled of Airbnb shoppers. Fortunately for us, Airbnb provided a dataset from their 2016–2017 listings in Seattle on Kaggle. Using the dataset provided by Airbnb, we will take a closer look at when and where to stay in the Emerald City. An Overview of Seattle by Neighborhood One of the aspects that makes Seattle so unique is its variety of neighborhoods. Each neighborhood has a unique personality and associated price tag. Out of the 3,818 listings contained in the dataset, the median listing price in Seattle was $105.00 per night at the average rate of $137.11 per night. Not bad! But these prices vary depending on which neighborhood you are viewing. To get a better idea of where to stay if you’re trying to save money, let’s take a look at the distribution of listings across the neighborhoods.

https://medium.com/@joefinnell/the-frugal-airbnb-users-guide-for-visiting-seattle-669e6ecbfe3f

['Joe Finnell']

2019-06-17 18:07:17.668000+00:00

['Travel', 'Airbnb', 'Seattle']

My Colorful World In Black & White

My Colorful World In Black & White Florida may well be the most colorful state in the U.S. All year long, we’re immersed in blues, greens, magentas, purples, yellows, reds, and oranges. Each color has a dozen or more shades. Each sunset or sunrise is an artist’s canvas. Each flower is a masterpiece. In winter, when other places are brown, gray, and beige, we’re drenched in dazzling tropical tints. With the first day of winter a week away, I recalled the cold, bland landscape of my childhood home in Virginia and wondered how my current world would look if transported north in December. So, I created that world. This was an interesting experiment that produced some lovely b&w photos. But, when I was done, I realize that nothing can replace the glorious colors of my Florida. What would your world look like in black and white?

https://medium.com/snap-shots/my-colorful-world-in-black-white-10e6dde72df3

[]

2020-12-18 13:58:54.347000+00:00

['Winter', 'Florida', 'Blackandwhitephotography', 'Photography', 'Colors']

Pro-Choice

I didn't have this story in mind when I issued our 15th theme challenge. My husband was reading aloud this morning. He read the death by covid statistics. He read the diagnosed with covid statistics. We discussed people’s refusal to wear masks. We talked about the groups suing the governor of Texas and the United States. People truly believe their civil rights are being violated when businesses and states require the wearing of masks. These same people do not have a problem wearing seat belts or motorcycle helmets. These same people do not have a problem regulating my body. These same people would love to have birth certificate proof before allowing women to use the restroom. They do not see their hypocrisy. It is so surreal to be living through this transition, this dumbing down, politicizing personal choices, this drift from autonomy to subjugation of the American people. I’ve lived through true civil rights violations. Discrimination of women in the workplace. Discrimination of homosexuals in bakeries. Discrimination of transexuals in just about every place. I am flabbergasted. I am ashamed of my country and my state.

https://medium.com/the-bad-influence/pro-choice-4cbd7c3ed94f

['Jonica Bradley']

2020-12-09 16:01:01.886000+00:00

['Pro Choice', '50 Words', 'Politics', 'The Bad Influence', 'Civil Rights']

Best Wireless Phone Charger 2019 / 2020

Among all the wireless chargers we’ve reviewed and seen in the market, the Google Pixel Stand looks the most clean and robust among them. It charges other phones such as the iPhone at its top speed and comes equipped with a 18W USB PD power adapter. It’s made of polycarbonate and soft silicone with a base that grips on any surface so that it won’t slide around on the nightstand. If you’re a fan of monochrome then you’ll like how the white finish blends into any environment. You can prop your phone up on this stand in landscape or portrait view and it will charge because there are two coils inside. For owners of a Pixel 3 or Pixel 3 XL the Pixel Stand offers exclusive features. There’s a microprocessor inside that recognizes your Pixel phone, and you can configure the stand through your phone’s settings, ensuring it automatically goes into Do Not Disturb mode or acts as a digital photo frame when you place it on the stand. If you play music, the music controls and album art will appear on the screen (you can also use Google Assistant), and there’s a special Sunrise Alarm that uses light from your Pixel phone’s screen to wake you more gently than a traditional alarm. Cost: Charging speed: 10W Input port: Micro-USB Included in the box: Charging stand, 5 foot USB-C to USB-C cable, 18W USB PD Recently, Apple started selling two multi-device wireless chargers from Mophie. This comes after Apple decommissioned their own multi-device wireless charger, the Apple AirPower, earlier this year citing difficulty in meeting their own high standards. The 3-in-1 wireless charger design is setup to charge an iPhone, AirPods, and the Apple watch simultaneously and provides 7.5W of power. It can support Qi enabled devices but it seems optimized for apple products. The Dual Wireless Charging pad, however, is different in that you can charge two devices on it and it doesn’t have to be Apple products. Given that Apple has just recently released this product it is too soon to tell how this product will be received by the public. Cost: Charging speed: 7.5W Input port: Micro-USB Included in the box: Charging pad, wall adapter Additionally, there are a number of other high ranking wireless chargers to consider. You can click the links below to directly see their specs on Amazon. Good luck! Liked this article? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below! For more articles like this checkout our website at The Top Essentials

https://medium.com/@thetopessentials/best-wireless-phone-charger-2019-2020-b05c9b481ee8

['The Top Essentials']

2019-09-19 07:11:22.752000+00:00

['Wireless Charging', 'Technology', 'Charger', 'Wireless Charger', 'Phone Chargers']

All In Black

All In Black Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash Here we were mourning, but everyone’s in white, the sunlight offensive in the collected misery, sympathy spread and drained and heaped, piled up in the newly deaf ears, the solace not showing up and instead of the blanking of everything all in black, the blinding white serves just as well. The softness of everything has been removed, revoked, all in the angles, the jarring harsh unequivocal depths of the atmosphere, questions left at the door in their own pile of uselessness, singing now crying now the end of any of this in absence. I didn’t even have anything black, could hardly speak that day, but still remember the sun and looking at it to find a reason for the tears, and this is and ending I relive and relive and cannot bring back.

https://medium.com/scrittura/all-in-black-1d7d2481f848

['J.D. Harms']

2020-12-23 16:09:48.012000+00:00

['Image', 'Musing', 'Memory', 'Funeral', 'Poetry']

Joe Biden Will Succeed Donald Trump, but U.S.-China Relations Will Continue to Worsen

Joe Biden Will Succeed Donald Trump, but U.S.-China Relations Will Continue to Worsen Image: Getty Images Joe Biden, who in a few weeks will become the 46th president of the United States, knows China well. Indeed, during the Obama presidency, from 2009 to 2017, Barack Obama had in fact given his Vice President extensive responsibilities by asking Joe Biden to take charge of the Chinese file. Xi Jinping and Joe Biden have therefore met many times. They had the opportunity to deepen their relationship to the point that Xi Jinping has long nicknamed Joe Biden “my old friend”. Knowing this, many people imagined that Xi Jinping and China would look favorably on the election of Joe Biden. The time when Xi Jinping referred to Joe Biden as “my old friend” is long gone However, Xi Jinping has still not sent a message of congratulations to the man who will become the 46th President of the United States on January 20, 2021. While the majority of heads of state around the world have already congratulated Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, Xi Jinping has joined the camp of those who prefer to wait. In this camp are Vladimir Putin, Jair Bolsonaro, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The latter prefer to wait for the moment to show their respect to a man who had indirectly favored their goals for the past 4 years with his “America First” policy. Xi Jinping’s wait is explained above all by the fact that the President of the People’s Republic of China is under no illusion about the policy Joe Biden will decide to pursue towards his country over the next four years. Since Xi Jinping called Joe Biden “my old friend”, a lot of water has passed under the bridge. The world has changed, and more importantly, the United States has opened its eyes to its great adversary for the next decade. Joe Biden called Xi Jinping a thug To become the world’s leading power by 2030, China will necessarily be America’s adversary in the years to come. It cannot be otherwise. In the year 2020, Joe Biden did not hesitate to call Xi Jinping a “thug” : “Xi Jinping is a guy who doesn’t have a single bone of democracy in his skeleton. He is a thug.” With statements like these, you can imagine that Xi Jinping wasn’t going to jump on his phone to call Joe Biden and congratulate him on his success against Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential election of 2020. During Joe Biden’s term, relations between China and the United States will continue to deteriorate. Xi Jinping may even end up regretting Donald Trump. In fact, I think he already does. If Donald Trump’s policy for 4 years will have had many flaws, it will at least have had the merit of highlighting the Chinese problem for America. Millions of Americans are now making China their enemy. Joe Biden will therefore not be able to go back on the Huawei file for example. He will have to continue the momentum of Donald Trump in the technological field. China will remain an enemy, but Joe Biden’s approach will be different Nevertheless, Joe Biden will adopt a different strategy from Donald Trump. Donald Trump had decided to make the trade war with China his main weapon to fight against the emergence of the country of Xi Jinping. This strategy has shown its limits since the trade balance has never been rebalanced as Donald Trump hoped. Joe Biden envisages a radically opposite approach. Gone are the days of Donald Trump’s “America First” doctrine, which had become “America Alone” over time. The United States is increasingly seen as an isolationist and bellicose nation. Joe Biden wants to remedy this by returning to multilateralism. Joe Biden wants to put the United States back at the center of the world. This will require a strong return to the major world organizations such as the WTO and the WHO. Donald Trump’s strategy has weakened the position of the United States in the world Donald Trump’s strategy had left the field open to China, which took advantage of it for 4 years to extend its influence and leadership on the world. Joe Biden intends to change that. For Joe Biden, it all starts with a return to normal with the Europeans. The United States and Europe are historical allies, and Joe Biden intends to strengthen the relationship again. It will also strengthen NATO, which Donald Trump had constantly criticized during his four years as president. By getting closer to the European Union again, Joe Biden shows how he intends to hit China in the coming months. It is by cooperating with the historic allies of the United States and world organizations that Joe Biden intends to undermine China’s emergence. Joe Biden will be more respectful and focus on the long term. The opposite of Donald Trump who thought only in the short term and did not stop attacking China with no respect. Joe Biden’s smarter approach will be more harmful to China For Adam Ni, director of the China Policy Center in Australia, Joe Biden wants to make the United States win in the long-term competition between the two giants of the world: “With Biden, we should have a more respectful, subtle and focused approach that doesn’t just attack but takes a long-term view of the competition.” Washington’s great return to the international scene will also change the situation concerning the denunciation of China’s current actions towards the population of Hong Kong, which it is trying to bring under control, or the repression against the Muslim minority of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Joe Biden’s entourage has already described the internment of the Uighurs as a real genocide. The Biden administration should therefore particularly increase the pressure on Beijing in terms of human rights. Beijing is also well aware that the coming to power of Joe Biden marks the real return of American democracy. The latter has been and still is, undermined by Donald Trump for the past 4 years. Anything that weakens democracy serves China’s interests indirectly. This allows Beijing to praise its model while denigrating Western societies that are in decline precisely because of democracy. Conclusion The election of Joe Biden will be a turning point in U.S. foreign policy. Gone is the “America First” doctrine, the place for multilateralism. The United States will no longer let China appear as a champion of multilateralism. Joe Biden wants America to regain its place in the world: that of the first world power that chooses cooperation rather than aggression. For China, this is bad news, because the return of the United States will give less room to increase its influence in the world. The confrontation between the United States and China will continue in the years to come, but with a more strategically intelligent approach. The relationship between the two global giants will therefore continue to deteriorate. Joe Biden will rely on his historical allies while continuing some of the actions undertaken by Donald Trump in the technological field in particular. For China, the hardest part begins.

https://medium.com/@ssaurel/joe-biden-will-succeed-donald-trump-but-u-s-china-relations-will-continue-to-worsen-39fac52c7060

['Sylvain Saurel']

2020-11-12 08:36:47.508000+00:00

['Joe Biden', 'International Relations', 'Politics', 'USA', 'China']

How Autonomous Vehicles Navigate Dangerous Lighting Conditions

By Sidhart Krishnamurthi, Product Management @ Recogni Fig 1 — Cars Navigating Amidst Foggy Conditions Imagine this common scenario related to dangerous lighting conditions — you are driving in a residential neighborhood on a foggy morning, coming up on a busy intersection. Due to the imperfect weather, you do not notice the upcoming red light in a timely manner. By the time you react, you make an illegal left turn and a collision occurs with another driver moving in the opposite direction. Looking at the aggregate societal impact of such situations — almost 40,000 of these types of accidents occur annually, amounting to over 15,000 injuries. In addition to a foggy environment, there are numerous other factors that can lead to dangerous lighting conditions. Sun glare poses a major threat to one’s eyesight, mandating quicker reactions, which, unfortunately, may not be feasible. As a result, almost 10,000 sun glare-related accidents occur yearly. Also, many roads, particularly in rural areas, have inadequate street lighting, limiting one’s awareness of surrounding objects. Thus, an occupant on this type of road has a 35% higher chance of being a victim of a late-night/early-morning collision. Delving into the mechanism behind why such collisions occur — humans have a non-zero (1.5s) reaction time. Because of this delay, people often cannot make a safe maneuver in a timely manner. Check out the series of images below to visualize this problem: Fig 2 — Collision Step 1 Fig 3 — Collision Step 2 Fig 4 — Collision Step 3 As you can see, due to the dangerous lighting brought upon by fog, by the time the driver notices the red light, it is too late, and a dangerous scenario is at hand. Clearly, there must be a solution that can eliminate the human reaction time and improve road safety for everyone. Fortunately, autonomous vehicles (AV) present a solution to dangerous lighting conditions on the road. With humans only acting as passengers, the non-zero reaction time is eliminated. To picture the effect of this, take a look at the series of images below to see a depiction of the above scenario, only with self-driving vehicles: Fig 5 — Collision Aversion Step 1 Fig 6 — Collision Aversion Step 2 Fig 7 — Collision Aversion Step 3 With humans as passengers, the time delay due to the non-zero reaction time is eliminated, providing a larger window of time for the vehicle to make a safe maneuver. As a result, even in dangerous lighting conditions, such as fog in the scenario above, AVs can prevent the collision. When humans drive, our brain processes the plethora of surrounding visual data in real-time with a data-center level of compute while consuming less power than a lightbulb. To mimic these capabilities and drive without any human intervention, AVs must be equipped with a platform that can generate a minimum of 75 Tera-Operations-Per-Second (TOPS) for every watt of power. This unsolved optimization problem is known as the visual perception problem, and it is the largest barrier to society realizing full autonomy and all of its subsequent safety benefits. Currently, platforms are based on repurposing legacy technology. Because these products are not purpose-built to enable fully autonomous vehicles, they can only enable partial autonomy. To allow vehicles to drive on their own, car OEMs must replace their incumbent, technologically constrained solutions with something that can solve the visual perception problem. We @ Recogni are developing such a solution. Our novel, purpose-built product is based on key innovations in math, ASIC architecture, and AI. As a result, our platform can generate 100 TOPS for every watt of power consumption. These unmatched capabilities illustrate that we are the only ones in the market that can solve the visual perception problem. As our product is clearly indispensable for full autonomy, OEMs must horizontally integrate our solution into their vehicles to allow society to experience roads without collisions due to dangerous lighting conditions. To learn more about Recogni, check out www.recogni.com

https://medium.com/@recogni/how-autonomous-vehicles-navigate-dangerous-lighting-conditions-c7c0d301595a

['Recogni Inc.']

2020-10-15 08:42:16.473000+00:00

['Artificial Intelligence', 'Autonomous Vehicles', 'Automotive', 'Self Driving Cars', 'Transportation']

Meeting My Teenager Self

Some days I start my day with a poem. There are poems that make me look forward to the day with a longing that I can no longer associate with my middle aged mind and body. Then there are poems that make me look back to the past and see it through a different perspective. Today's poem belongs to the latter category. It is Teenager by Wislawa Szymborska. Me - a teenager? If she suddenly stood, here, now, before me, Would I need to treat her as near and dear, Although she is strange to me, and distant? A few days ago I shared a photo of my teenager self with a friend. Her immediate response was how frightened I looked in that photo. That got me thinking about the journey from thirteen to thirty three. Thirteen year old self is not completely strange to me, not yet anyway. I recognize the fear, insecurity, self doubt and the feeling of being lost. Yet, in some strange ways she has been sure of so many things. Without her resolutions and stubbornness, I wouldn’t have made this far. May be 13 year old self was carving a path of her own, without much help or guidance, trusting her instincts, taking one step at a time and trusting the journey. On her pathetic watch Time is still cheap and unsteady. On mine it's far more precious and precise. I am learning to value time more. But I believe my teenage self was more aware of the value of time than my present self. It is only because she was willing to do all the hard work that I am having at least some peace of mind while navigating through this difficult world now. There are days when I wish I had normal teenage years without worrying about what is in store for me. But I managed to postpone my teenage years to my 20s and I don't regret it either. I am grateful for everything, the anxiety driven years and the fun filled years. Do you remember your teenage self? How would you treat your teenage self if you meet them today? I just want to hug and tell her that everything is going to be alright!

https://medium.com/@chembarathi/meeting-my-teenager-self-e153e8f65e47

[]

2020-12-10 15:44:47.153000+00:00

['Books And Authors', 'Personal Essay', 'Reflections', 'Personal', 'Poetry Writing']

Ben Wheatley Returns With The Blackly Comic HAPPY NEW YEAR, COLIN BURSTEAD

Loosely adapted from Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, Happy New Year, Colin Burstead trades Roman politicking and murder for a disastrous family party where everyone is yelling and no one is listening. It might lower the stakes somewhat from the original, but this by no means decreases the dread and discomfort — this is a Ben Wheatley film after all. Colin (Neil Maskell), a financially successful husband and father, has rented out a lordly manor to host his dysfunctional family for a New Year’s party that serves to both bring the Bursteads together and less-than-subtly remind everyone that Colin is the head of the household. What he hasn’t prepared for is his sister Gini (Hayley Squires) inviting his estranged, and equally wealthy, brother David (Sam Riley), who is looking to reconnect with his family and establish himself as its new king. Colin Burstead is spectacularly well-written, Wheatley’s dense, rapid-fire dialogue packed with laughs and crafting a believable family dynamic. This is recognisably how families talk to one another, albeit laced with more venom than you’d want in reality, but it’s never mundane or boring. A stellar ensemble cast — also including Charles Dance, Doon Mackichan, and many more — are more than a match for the material and share a horrible chemistry that suggests years of hurt and resentment. Generally sticking to a fly on the wall style, Wheatley also allows himself some flourishes befitting his source material. Renaissance music cues and regal camerawork break up the kitchen sink realism, and Riley in particular cuts a princely figure as he strides about the manor. A couple of subplots get left by the wayside as Colin Burstead barrels towards its conclusion, but this is a small price to pay for a surprisingly emotional finale that places Wheatley’s film square in the Shakespearean context of overthrown rulers and prodigal children. RATING: 4/5 Happy New Year, Colin Burstead will be shown on BBC 2 at 10.30pm on 30th December 2018, and thereafter will be available on BBC iPlayer By Jack Blackwell

https://medium.com/one-room-with-a-view/ben-wheatley-returns-with-the-blackly-comic-happy-new-year-colin-burstead-5cfdd1315724

['One Room With A View']

2018-12-30 17:21:00.646000+00:00

['Movies', 'Film Reviews', 'New Year', 'Ben Wheatley', 'Shakespeare']

How West London Kids was conceived

How West London Kids was conceived A marketing professional by background, I switched from the corporate world to running a nanny agency after my second child. Whilst running the agency I also did freelance marketing work with a party company, pre-school activity providers and a drama school. In this new world of marketing services that really meant something to me, that I had seen first had benefit my own children, a light switched on! After five years of running the West London branch of Buttons Nanny Agency, I decided to sell my franchise and concentrate fully on providing marketing services to children’s brands, particularly children’s activities. Fast forward 18 months and lots of time and money spent on personal development (it’s amazing how little you mind when it’s something you are passionate about), I decided to give Imposter Syndrome a final kick in the teeth and signed up to the expensive but well regarded Digital Mums course, to tick off any areas of development that I had identified in myself to become a more accomplished digital marketing manager. When it came to choosing a campaign, I had a long think of other ideas, but I kept being drawn to doing something to do with children. In West London there’s a lot out there on social media for younger children but my two little cherubs are now 7 and 9. I am conscious of time speeding up and I’m keen to make more of our free time. I wanted to do something that would focus more on older children and how to expand their city kid horizons, so they make the most of living in London but also get away from screens, learn to enjoy being active from an early age, get more encouragement to be healthy in both mind, body and spirit from an early age. More about me and my motivations I have lived in London for nearly 20 years now (yikes that’s scary to see in writing!) but I grew up both overseas. My junior school years were in Saudi Arabia, my free time spent mainly in a swimming pool or being dragged along on Hash House Harrier runs and walks in the searing hot desert by my father! The camping with friends was fun though and my childhood both there and subsequently in the green countryside of South Wales was very happy. On our return to the UK, I was lucky enough to have a horse and a daft, lovable Golden Retriever dog. I spent a good proportion of my teenage years with friends riding outside in all weathers. We hacked, we competed, we went to Pony Club camp, even as we got older and had to multi task with sixth form partying! I could ride out in forests, open fields, commons, beaches and sand dunes, I was indeed very lucky. Although as I got into my mid teens I started to yearn to escape the small country market town of course, looking back it was a wonderfully safe environment to grow up in and once which encouraged my love of being outdoors. Bringing up children in London I have experienced mixed feelings about bringing up children in London. Our lovely area of Ealing has a friendly vibe and plenty of green spaces, but I know my children go older that they are going to have a very different teenage existence to mine. That said I am immensely proud of their rich view and knowledge of the world at such tender age. Neither of them is yet even 10 years old, but they are culturally very aware, loving to learn about different customs, countries and languages and very open to new experiences and trying out different activities. They both have a fabulous, very diverse friendship group and on the whole I think they have amazing lives here in West London. Our children have grandparents living in both Wales and in Somerset so they have had plenty of school holidays out of the city and get a beautiful balance that way. Of course, not every city child has the opportunity to spend much time in ‘proper countryside’, but I think there are many ways that the city and countryside can collide if we look for those places and try to both explore our own neighbourhoods — and perhaps venture a bit further out of our local rut more often! So let’s celebrate our children’s good fortune to live in this green and family orientated corner of the greatest city in the world! Let’s inspire each other, get out and about, make the most of what is on our doorstep. But at the same time let’s try to practise mindfulness and be conscious of how are busy London lives can be a big stress on families. It’s good to get out of the city too and in West London there are a multitude of glorious places within easy reach by train or car. It’s also about expanding our children’s minds with a variety of experiences from an early age. I’m a strong believer that it really helps a child to be involved in lots of different extra curricular activities. Not perhaps in Reception when they are so tired after school but pacing it to a level they can cope with — and enjoy! Mine do a whole host of different children’s activities from tennis, drama, swimming, football, horse riding and more. I am conscious that things will have to be dropped soon as homework demands grow more heavy in high school but for now they love all the activities they do and I see no reason (except perhaps tightening finances!) for changing that. Something for all budgets Every family has a different budget of course, but as West London families we have an abundance of choices in easy reach. Many activities are free from museums and galleries, street entertainers on the South Bank or Covent Garden, to the wealth of glorious parks, from central London to each and every corner of the city, you are never far from a free cultural activity, or a wide open green space in London. It’s just that life gets in the way a lot and we tend to just all into patterns of doing the same things in the same places. Nothing wrong with that per se, but sometimes it’s good to do something different right? To discover a new place to walk, play games or relax in a park, to see a new theatre show, or to learn something new in a free museum exhibition. There are also an incredible variety of kids activities in West London. Every area has literally hundreds of options to choose from. It can be mind boggling but I think it’s good for children to try a range of different extra curricular activities when they are young. My rule is they can stop doing things but they have to finish the term (no flakiness!) Benefits of extra-curricular activities A drama class is about way more than teaching your children to perform on stage for example — it teaches them confidence, verbal skills, makes them happier to put their hand up in class, helps with their expression in reading, teaches empathy and how to deal with their emotions in a healthy way. Football is about learning to work as a team, coping with disappointment when you don’t win, keeping fit and dedication in all weathers. The transferable benefits of almost every children’s activity are huge. It’s well worth investing as much as you can afford in encouraging a wide variety of interests in children from an early age. They will always have this to fall bak on and sports, arts and other hobbies are so important for our mental health in an increasingly time-pressured world. These days our state schools are so restricted by the tightening budgets curriculum, particularly from Year 3, that it’s increasingly important to make sure your child is doing some activities out of school to given them a more ‘rounded education’ than what school provides along. This doesn’t need to be fencing and sushi making (West London parents though we are!) and it doesn’t have to cost very much, or anything at all. If you have the time to put in (which I admittedly often don’t so hence outsourcing a lot of activities to children’s activity providers with far more skill and patience than I have!), you can do a lot of things for free or minimal cost, such as ball games in the park. Other people are more creative home birds than I am, so if you love crafting, cooking and are more artistic than I am, there’s loads you can do with your children at home very cheaply and we can of course share ideas about that too. I personally would love some inspiration in this area, as doing creative activities at home is not really my forte (although with my children being now aged 7 and 9, I feel the moment has probably passed here). Open to trying it though so I will be looking out for content to share. It’s all about balance … Bringing up children in London (or any other big city) needs to be about balance, enjoying the wide variety of activities and experiences on offer, whilst maintaining sufficient time to relax together as a family, spending quality time together, either at home or by taking opportunities to get out into our more rural surroundings when we can. It doesn’t have to be massively expensive. If you don’t have a car, you could invest in a family railcard and there are loads of places in the Home Counties alone that you can easily explore together and get to very easily. West London children really can have the best of both worlds! Felicity Sandford You can find West London Kids on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter @westlondonkids. Please connect and share your tips too! www.facebook.com/westlondonkids www.instagram.com/westlondonkids www.twitter.com/westlondonkids

https://medium.com/@sandfordfelicity/how-west-london-kids-was-conceived-fd0139b3db75

['West London Kids']

2019-02-16 20:58:59.205000+00:00

['London', 'Raising Kids', 'Childrens Activities', 'Parenting', 'Family']

Bicycles & the Early Men of the Motor City

I grew up in Michigan and was thoroughly immersed in the automotive industry and its history. Not cycling; that came later. The hallowed ground of Speedway, IN, — the brickyard, the Indy 500 — was a few hours’ drive to the south. Any history that really mattered was housed a few hours’ drive to the east in Dearborn, MI — The Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village. I knew that both AC Spark Plug (later AC-Delco, a division of General Motors) and Champion Spark Plug were started by Albert Champion. I knew that from the four founders of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (Fisher, Wheeler, Allison, and Newby), that Fisher started Fisher Body and Allison started Allison Transmission (also both divisions of General Motors) and made helicopter engines. I knew that Barney Oldfield drove Henry Ford’s №999 and basically helped Henry start his Ford Motor Company. I knew that Louis Chevrolet was Swiss — not French, the Dodge Brothers worked for Ransom E. Olds (your father’s Oldsmobile) and Ford, and that the Duryea brothers built cars before any of them — but they weren’t from Detroit (the Motor City), so you’ve probably never heard of those two. Yes, I knew a bit of history. So let me tell you “the rest of the story” as Paul Harvey used to say. Albert Champion Born near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris in 1878, Champion was actually a bicycle courier as a kid and became a professional cyclist at 18 years old — specializing in track racing (velodromes) and motopacing (speed records while drafting). He was only 5'7", which was ideal for paced racing behind tandems, triplets, and ultimately motorcycles. Parisian journalist Victor Breyer nicknamed him “petit prodige” (little marvel). He was a very successful cyclist in those types of events but had never raced in the types of road races we commonly see today like the Tour de France. Paris-Roubaix is a famous one-day road race that is even older, having started in 1896. Called “the Hell of the North”, Paris-Roubaix is known for its cobblestone sectors and is very hard on cyclists. In 1899, trying to expand its popularity, the organizers allowed motorcycles for pacing (barely faster than bicycles in those days). Thus many track specialists entered the race; what advantage they may have had from experience in paced races, they lost in inexperience on the cobbles and other bad road surfaces. Champion, now 21, was an outsider but the others chased when he broke away soon after the start. Only one competitor could come close to catching him, getting to within a minute at half distance. Champion slowed through hunger near the end, riding the worst of the cobbles at walking speed, but at the velodrome in Roubaix he still had a lead of 23 minutes. Champion finished in 8:22:53, the champion of Paris-Roubaix. His win came as a surprise to many and increased his popularity. Champion went to America after his win to profit from track racing contracts. Around then, Champion had opened a factory to make spark plugs. After retiring from cycling, he went on to pursue his interests in automobile racing and in business. “He had contracted the car virus”, said the historian Pascal Sergent. Carl Fisher I knew of Carl Fisher from a famous photo of the four founders of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway along with Henry Ford. Until the mid-1980s, most GM cars had “Body by Fisher” on the door sill — that’s also Carl Fisher. I didn’t know that Carl Fisher was crazy, though. Well, maybe not crazy, but a highly energetic huckster like P. T. Barnum. Fisher became wealthy as a result of his partnership with James Allison in the Prest-o-lite company, making headlights for early automobiles. Fisher creatively promoted a plan for a highway spanning the country from New York City to California. He estimated the highway would cost $10 million to build and sought pledges from the automobile executives and — except for the notoriously cheap Henry Ford — managed to get the project funded. This became the Lincoln Highway with Fisher as vice president. As the Lincoln Highway progressed, Fisher had an idea for a winter get-away for his automotive buddies. He started a massive project improving a jungle of swampland in Florida that came to be known as Miami Beach. Amazing. And how would Midwesterners get there? Fisher, the “father of the Lincoln Highway,” used his promotional talents to create another highway: the Dixie Highway. Quite impressive: Prest-o-lite, Fisher Body, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the Lincoln Highway, the Dixie Highway, and Miami Beach. And, of course, you know what else? He was a cyclist! Fisher quit school when he was 12. By 17, he and his two brothers opened a bicycle shop in Indianapolis where they repaired flat tires for just 25 cents. Fisher managed to be in the right place at the right time as the bicycle craze swept the country. He would ride in the Indianapolis Zig-Zag Cycling Club’s rides to distant cities. Joining Fisher on those rides were James Allison and Arthur Newby, future founders along with Frank Wheeler of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Local journalist and poet William Herschel of the Indianapolis News noted that Fisher was nicknamed “Crip” (short for cripple) by his bicycling buddies “because he frequently, in bursts of speed, took a spill and ended with many bruises and cuts.” Although handicapped by poor eyesight, Fisher managed to compete in bicycle races, battling with the likes of champion racer Barney Oldfield. Fisher convinced George Erland, a leading Ohio bicycle manufacturer, to supply him with $50,000 worth of merchandise on credit. Ever the huckster and short on cash, Fisher performed stunts to promote his store. Wearing a padded suit, he rode a bicycle across a tightrope stretched over Washington Street; he built and rode a 20-foot-high bicycle; and he released a thousand toy balloons, 100 of which contained tickets for a free bicycle. His wife said that he “owned the finest bicycle shop in all of Indiana” at the age of 19. By the turn of the century, he became enamored with the newly invented automobile. Fisher told Oldfield, “I don’t see why the automobile can’t be made to do everything the bicycle has done.” Albert Newby You already know that one of Fisher’s partners in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was Albert Newby. I’ll bet you didn’t know that the Zig Zag Cycling Club of Indianapolis was co-founded by Newby. He was ahead of the game in cycling. Newby was working as head bookkeeper at Nordyke and Marmon in Indianapolis (later the Marmon Motor Company and, yes, the makers of the “Marmon Wasp” which was driven to victory in the first Indianapolis 500 by Ray Harroun) when he decided to turn his love of cycling into a business. Together with Glenn G. Howe and Edward C. Fletcher, they formed the Indianapolis Chain & Stamping Co. which manufactured Diamond bicycle chains. At this time, all the bike chains were being made in Europe, but Newby’s chains quickly gained over 60% of the American bicycle chain market. By the way, Orville and Wilbur Wright were Diamond chain distributors when they were bicycle mechanics in Dayton. The first airplane used a Diamond chain. Newby wasn’t the huckster that Carl Fisher was, but he convinced the League of American Wheelmen to hold their National Meet in Indianapolis — comparable to the NCAA Final Four or the Super Bowl today. What he needed, of course, was a track! To that end, he built the Newby Oval in 1898 — one of the fastest bicycle tracks in the country at a cost of $23,000. The track had electric lighting and seats enough for 20,000 spectators. It was a quarter-mile white-pine board velodrome (four laps to the mile, in the lingo of the day). The track lured some of the best racers in the country like “Plugger Bill” Martin, Tom Cooper and a 15-year-old named Marshall “Major” Taylor. Have you heard of him? One source credits Newby with creating the hugely popular six-day bicycle races that still boggle my mind. But according to Peter Nye, the six-day races were not Newby’s idea. Perhaps he brought them to Indianapolis, though. In America, it was with the Madison Square Garden six-day races that created the boom. And it was Tom Eck who promoted the first Garden Six, in 1891. But Newby did eventually become president of the National Motor Vehicle Company in Indianapolis — not Detroit — so I’ve never heard of it. Henry Ford Henry Ford needs no introduction, but he was not the first to make a car and cruise the streets of Detroit. Just as thousands still cruise Woodward Avenue to this day, at just after 11 pm on March 6th, 1896 the very first automobile rumbled past crowds of onlookers. This car was driven by its builder, 28-year-old mechanical engineer Charles Brady King. He was followed by a tall, slim man on a bicycle: Henry Ford. Three months after riding behind King, Ford went for a cruise in his first automobile. Ford’s Quadricycle featured many bicycle parts: a tubular steel chassis, 28-inch bicycle wheels, and pneumatic tires. There is so much written about Ford after this point, some quite troubling, but little about his love of bicycles. Source: www.thehenryford.org Ford sold his car to his friend Charles G. Annesley for $200. (Trivia: Annesley sold the Quadricycle to A. W. Hall, a bicycle shop owner.) Annesley, like Ford, was a cyclist. Ford worked for Thomas Edison’s company as a mechanic; he was neither a bicycle mechanic nor a racer but he always rode bicycles. Ford rode to work at one of Detroit’s Edison electric plants on his bicycle. Ford also cycled to work when he was developing the Model N, the precursor to the Model T of 1908. He may be known now as the father of the US auto industry but he was careful with his money and knew that his trusty bicycle could get through Detroit quicker than the town’s trams. Throughout his life, Ford remained a cyclist. Time Magazine, in August 1940, reported that on his birthday, the 77-year-old automotive billionaire “took a ride …on the light (12-lb.) English bicycle on which he likes to take a three-mile spin every evening after supper.” Barney Oldfield Henry Ford built cars for the masses, but before that, he also built a few race cars. One of the more brutally powerful cars was the famous Number 999, named after a record-setting New York Central train. Purportedly, the engine had cylinders the size of gun powder kegs and developed close to 100 horsepower — about eight times that of a conventional car. “The roar of those cylinders alone was enough to half kill a man!” Ford once said. Ford had driven his 999 for himself in a race or two but soon decided that he felt safer just making the cars. The racing scared the life out of Ford who compared it to going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. He declined to pilot it in the Manufacturers Challenge Cup. He needed someone else with sheer grit and daring to drive his car and 24-year-old Barney Oldfield was the man for the job. After seeing the 999 for the first time, Oldfield told Ford, “But I’ve never driven a car.” Inexperienced as he was, Oldfield is rumored to have learned the controls of the car the morning of his first race, and by the end of the day, he had defeated what was thought to be the world’s fastest car, the Winton bullet. This launched both of their careers. Soon Barney Oldfield was a household name and was racing cars all over the country, setting speed records left and right. Oldfield was the first ever to drive around a mile track in less than a minute (1903). This was four years after “Mile-a-Minute” Murphy accomplished the same speed on a bicycle — drafting behind a locomotive on a specially boarded section of railway — by the way. But I digress; let’s get back to Barney. His early life was very hard. He quit school at 12 and began work as a water boy on a construction crew, and moonlighted as a bellhop. He was fascinated with speed and taken up by the bicycle craze. The lightweight bicycles used by racers were still too expensive for him. However, he soon discovered that a tenant of the Monticello Hotel had a lightweight bicycle, and stored it in the hotel basement. Each night, Oldfield “borrowed” it from its unsuspecting owner, and sped through the dark streets of Toledo. According to William Nolan in the Toledo Blade, Oldfield told his parents, “Someday I’ll own the fastest cycle in the whole wide world. People will come from a thousand miles away just to watch me ride it!” At age 16, in 1894, he entered his first bicycle race and won; his prize was a $25 diamond ring, which he pawned to finance his next race. Soon, the Dauntless bicycle factory asked him to ride for them in the Ohio state championship. Although Oldfield came in second in the race, he secured a job and was soon being paid handsomely by the Stearns bicycle factory in Syracuse, New York to race on its amateur team. When he won his next race, he sold his gold medal back to the promoter for cash. Oldfield was a large, strong professional bicycle racer. After an unsuccessful venture in coal mining in Colorado, he resumed his bicycle racing career in Salt Lake City, UT. He became associated with fellow racer Tom Cooper who was Henry Ford’s partner in the Number 999 (and had also declined to drive it!). So Tom suggested to Henry that Barney could drive it. And now you know the rest of that story, too. Louis Chevrolet Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet. Do you remember that song? How about the red, white, and blue USA-1 license plates that symbolized Chevy in the 1970s (before the gas crisis)? Chevrolet epitomized America, sounded French but was the name of a Swiss car guy. I assume you are way ahead of me and expect to hear about his love of bicycles. How smart you are! As you do when you are Swiss, Louis’ father Joseph worked in the watch industry, but Louis learned to repair and later race bicycles. He would eventually build and sell his own bicycle called the Frontenac. Louis not only raced, but he won numerous races on Darracq bicycles. He was a husky teenager and became a champion bicycle racer after he tailored bicycle gear ratios to take advantage of his strength. At some point, he was given a job at the Mors and Darracq Company. Darracq built the well known Gladiator bicycles; however, Louis was intoxicated by the Darracq internal combustion engine. This diversion would end his cycling career, prompting him to move to Montreal and ultimately Detroit. Bye, bye Miss American pie. Horace and John Dodge Thanks to the recent Dodge television commercials, you probably think you know the Dodge brothers. Horace Elgin Dodge and John Francis Dodge were young cyclists and in 1897, with Canadian Fred Evans, founded the Evans and Dodge bicycle business. Their bicycles were based on a dirt-resistant ball-bearing assembly the brothers had patented the year before. “Mr. Dodge” was a stoker in a two-mile tandem race on the Detroit banked track in 1897 and the brothers were active members of the Detroit Wheelmen, volunteering to be race judges and timers. (Forgive my name-dropping, but Horace also worked part-time for Henry M. Leland making high-precision parts for the bicycle industry. Leland started the Cadillac Motor Car Company in 1903.) The Dodge brothers dissolved the partnership with Fred Evans in 1900 and used their share of the proceeds to establish their own machine shop in Detroit, making parts for the fledgling automobile industry. Contracts to supply to Ransom Olds — maker of the Oldsmobile — and the Ford Motor Company made the brothers’ firm into one America’s biggest auto-parts suppliers. From 1903 until 1914, the Dodge brothers supplied about 60 percent of the total value of the cars that Ford built. After that, they branched out on their own, becoming the competitive pair portrayed on those television commercials. Well into the period when they were making fortunes from the automobile business the Dodge brothers were still active in cycling. In 1905, John Dodge ran for a position on the Detroit Wheelmen board and Horace was elected the club’s second vice-president the following year. Ford might have been Detroit’s most famous cyclist but the Dodge brothers were better. Charles and Frank Duryea After graduating from high school in 1882, Charles Duryea became a mechanic and entered the flourishing business of bicycle repairs, one of the greatest ‘growth sectors’ of the 1880s and 1890s. He built a high wheel bicycle in his teens. His brother, Frank Duryea, was several years younger but did much the same. They moved often and in different directions. Both worked in Washington D.C. in a bicycle shop briefly before splitting up again. At one time Peoria, IL, was one of the largest manufacturing centers for bicycles in the United States. Charles moved to Peoria and started a business with Geo W. Rouse to produce a brand of ladies bicycles called the Sylph. Rouse, Hazard & Co manufactured 7,500 bicycles in 1896. The Peoria Rubber and Manufacturing Company manufactured 10,000 bicycles and 25,000 pairs of bicycle tires annually; they sold out to the American Bicycle Company. The Patee Bicycle Company made over 5,000 bicycles annually. The Ide Mfg. Company made 2,000 bicycles annually as did Luthy & Co. But this isn’t about Peoria; it’s about the Duryea brothers. Later, Charles was contracted to build bicycles for a firm in Rockaway, NJ, along with his brother Frank. Ultimately in 1893, they moved to Springfield, MA, and got distracted by internal combustion engines and started the first automobile company in America. It featured parts from a Columbia tricycle bought from the Pope Manufacturing Company. One of their automobiles was bought by Henry Wells of New York. On May 30th, 1896 Wells drove his Duryea Motor Wagon into New York City to take part in a horseless-carriage race organized by Cosmopolitan magazine. While racing, on public roads, he crashed into Evelyn Thomas, riding a Columbia bicycle on Broadway near West 74th Street. Wells became the first motorist arrested for what would later become known as “dangerous driving”. Apparently, they also built the first car to sputter along Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue. It was somewhat of a circus freak, literally (and appropriately), leading out a parade by Barnum & Bailey’s Greatest Show on Earth in 1896. The car was upstaged by eight baby elephants and a gorilla called Joanna. The Duryea brothers may have been immortalized for their automobile, but Charles remained a cyclist. He was a member of the League of American Wheelmen. He wrote in the club magazine, “From the dawn of history to the present, civilization and roadways have been linked together. Whether landways or waterways, whether traversed by ships or slaves, canal-boats or camels, canoes or cyclers, the progress of any country has been reflected by its system of roads.” And with that comment, I suggest you read “Roads Were Not Built For Cars” by Carlton Reid.

https://medium.com/@654tnelson/bicycles-the-early-men-of-the-motor-city-3dc34327c2cc

['Todd Nelson']

2020-09-18 18:37:36.697000+00:00

['Cycling', 'History', 'Automotive', 'Detroit']

Interview (Part 3): Sean Malcolm

My interview with the 2019 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winner. Sean Malcolm wrote the original screenplay “Mother” which won a 2019 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Sean his background as a screenwriter, his award-winning script, the craft of screenwriting, and what winning the Nicholl has meant to him. Today in Part 3, Sean describes what it was like to write a story about a young woman becoming a sniper. Scott: Let’s talk about those two characters in the script. Farida Mohammed you describe her in the script. A Syrian mother, late 30s, traditional hijab covering her hair and neck, guides her six‑year‑old son Sami, S‑A‑M‑I, through the market at a determined pace. The little boy rushes to keep up, his Real Madrid jersey too large, his mangled flip‑flops nearly tripping on the rocky path. Why don’t you describe, if you could, briefly there the circumstances they find themselves in Aleppo in 2016? Sean: In the story, her husband owns a small electronics shop. They live in their apartment above the shop. The eastern part of Aleppo has become a rebel‑held neighborhood. They are surrounded by the regime or rebels on all sides, and this is exactly what was happening in mid‑2016. Aleppo was split into two parts. You have the regime‑controlled side and the rebel‑controlled side. Of course, you had people and tribes and different groups that had aligned themselves with one or the other. Then you have people who are caught in the middle of all that. In the story, things have deteriorated, but not to the point where every single person has left. I think this is one of the things that I tried to show, that I know people around the world watching something like this unfold, maybe they’re asking, “Why don’t they just leave? Why don’t they just get out of there because the neighborhood’s being bombed?” I was asking the same questions. But there are so many forces that push back against that, whether it’s their home, and they’ve been there their whole life, for generations even. So the desire to defend their home, as I think anyone can identify with, is primal. Also, not having the financial wherewithal or the resources to go somewhere else, or anywhere else to go to that will accept you, and everywhere else around them being either occupied by the regime or rebels. Even if they make it out, they end up in a camp in Lebanon, and don’t have any future anyway, and could easily die. So the setup is that they’re in this mode where she’s torn, and they could have gotten out if they had maybe left sooner. But now things have deteriorated beyond the point of being able to leave safely. Her father has come to live with them. Her mother has died. Her father is ill, and run out of medicine, which is obviously a common problem in a war zone. He needs it for his heart. Her husband has no choice, takes her father to venture out of eastern Aleppo and trade some electronics to try to get to a working pharmacy on the regime-held side, in order to get his prescription filled or he could die, and then they never return. Now she’s trapped there with just her son. She doesn’t know where her husband and her father have gone. They’ve been captured by the regime, and it just goes downhill from there. Scott: To add to the problem, there’s an explosion midway through act one, where she’s injured but, more importantly, Sami’s injured, his eye. She goes to the hospital. Then there’s another attack there. By the end of act one, it’s a pretty dire situation. The interesting thing is that you’ve got a pretty simple plot with complex characters, which I think are really the best stories in many ways. It’s like, “Will these characters survive? Will they reunite?” Was that more of a screenwriter instinct? Do you think that, where you ended up by the end of act one, those dual story lines that you could cross‑cut back and forth to, or was that just something that arose out of your working with the characters? Sean: That’s a good question. I certainly had my screenwriter hat on. With this particular script, once I hit on her story and combined the two and started laying out the beats, I knew what would be the classic inciting incident was actually going to be the barrel bombing where he’s injured, because remember: back to the photograph and surviving that, that was the genesis of the whole thing. So I knew that was going to happen quickly, around page 10 or 12. But I knew that I wanted her to have her family in there, and not just start out with the two of them. So the subplot got created for her father. I needed to do something to introduce them then remove them, so you end up sort of having two inciting incidents instead of one. The men leave and get captured, then you’ve got the bombing. Now you have this parallel story track. So that was intentional, also because I didn’t see a way to just do 90 pages of purely her story. I wanted there to be some cross‑cutting, so that it would give some contrast, some periodic relief, and hold out hope, and so there would be that question of whether they would be reunited to help drive the narrative forward. I also wanted to show some of the reasons why people felt trapped. Because if you tried to leave and you did get captured by the regime, if there was any sense that you had ever resisted and been part of the rebels, you would just be disappeared. You’re left with no other choice but to stay where you are, fight back and try to survive. It became a very simple survival story for both parallel arcs. With the idea being that there needed to be this flicker of hope of either reunion or escape, so that you could get through the darkness of what was happening to them. You’re right. It’s definitely a double whammy when the hospital gets bombed and then of course, the whole thing that happens in act two, which I’m sure you’re headed towards. But that’s war. Scott: The husband and her father get taken and imprisoned. Again, you’re cross‑cutting back and forth between these two story lines. One thing that I was very impressed with was that you explore the grays in terms of morality, in terms of character choices. There doesn’t seem to be any really black or white decisions. I think that’s probably largely just out of the character work you’re doing and then understanding the situation in Syria. I’m wondering, if there’s a subtext at work there, that these individual character choices do reflect these larger complexities of the social circumstances and geopolitical circumstances in the country? Sean: Well, that’s right. I consciously decided that’s how I wanted to approach it, because I have a personal position about who’s right and who’s wrong at a macro level in this whole war, but the reality is much grayer on the ground. There are atrocities occurring on all sides. Part of what makes it so difficult, and we saw this from the U.S., is wanting to get involved but not knowing what to do, not knowing who to trust. It’s just completely gray, and alliances can be formed and then dissolved. You’ve got terrorists taking advantage of the rebel situation. Some of the rebels are terrorists. I knew that trying to paint a binary, black and white, these are the “good guys” and those are the “bad guys” was not anywhere close to the reality on the ground. I also wanted it to be more of a human story, that could maybe transcend this particular war, and be a story about the survival of a mother and child, that could maybe be transplanted to a different war or a different era and still have the same meaning. So the principles would be universal and still be true. For that reason, even though I wanted to make it factually accurate — and I did a lot of research to support it ‑‑ I didn’t want to focus too much on the politics. In order to diffuse the politics, I made sure everyone had a bit of conflicted perspectives and choices. In fact, there’s something you find out in the end about her husband, and the fact that he actually has been providing some support to the rebels. They haven’t just been sticking it out solely for the purpose of their own survival, and that’s something which she wasn’t even a party to. So even at that level of their own marriage, there was some deception and conflict. Of course, the biggest conflict being her own internal one: you have a religious, pious woman who ends up becoming a killer.

https://gointothestory.blcklst.com/interview-part-3-sean-malcolm-51205170478f

['Scott Myers']

2020-02-20 13:01:01.209000+00:00

['Screenplay', 'Hollywood', 'Screenwriting', 'Writing', 'Interview']

Being a new mom — in all honesty? Well …

As a new mother, I can't think of anything more satisfying than watching my child sleep. And I do this religiously each morning. I can spend up to an hour in a day just watching her sleep. She's the most precious jewel I have, and each day she reminds me that, even though I am imperfect, I am making progress. Each day also reminds me that I now bear a much bigger responsibility, one that sometimes has me sitting up with bloodshot, sunken eyes, just praying that my little one goes to sleep so I can spend at least a little time to myself. Now, down to the nitty-gritty. How was my first month as a new mom? Quite frankly? It was terrib…ly exhausting! I was so unprepared for clumsiness, forgetfulness, and sleeplessness caused by cluster feeding, becoming ingrained in my daily routine. Sleeplessness While sleep isn’t something a new mother can completely kiss goodbye, thankfully — depending on the support network one is surrounded by, and how many times your baby feeds, among many other things — it is something that will drastically decline once you take home your newborn. When I was pregnant and carrying the weight of my little one, while silently counting down to her birth, I spent a lot of my time wandering around the house at night-time. During those days, I would get struck by sudden hunger pangs that were too painful to ignore. And sometimes my husband would sit up with me while I carried out my usual routine of “midnight snacking”. I was just so hungry. All. The. Time! The heat at the time wasn’t very helpful either, and neither was the dysgeusia I was suffering from, which made me eat even more because I was so eager to get rid of the horrible metallic taste in my mouth (… that never did disappear, anyway). I slept deeply in the afternoons, and only ever got up to cook dinner, or to shower. It was at night I came alive! Hence the “midnight snacking” habit, and the nickname I adopted, “Vampire”. Little did I know that my daughter would take on the exact same sleeping pattern I had during pregnancy in her first month on earth. She slept peacefully in the mornings and afternoons, to the extent that visitors would comment that she was “such a quiet baby”. Hah! Of course, they had no idea what awaited me each night. There were days when she was practically glued to my breasts, which made me feel like my only purpose in life was to breastfeed. Eventually, in order to do anything, I had to learn to balance her on one arm and attach her to my breast, while I used the other to perform daily tasks. And sometimes I would nod off to sleep while feeding her. That sinking feeling that can't be explained … I have to admit that breastfeeding was not at all an enjoyable experience for me at the very beginning. I used to dread each feeding session, as they meant that I would have to endure depressing thoughts and feelings of sadness as I fed my daughter. It got to a point where I began thinking that perhaps breastfeeding just wasn't for me. After week three, I was so relieved to be trying a breast pump that I could barely hide my excitement. The breast pump was a lifesaver! It allowed me to enjoy a little more time to myself since I could hand a bottle with freshly pumped milk to anyone of my family members so they could help me feed my daughter every now and again, while I tried to get some much-needed sleep. Now that my daughter is close to 2 months old, I no longer use the breast pump regularly, and the sinking feeling I used to have while breastfeeding is all but declining. She also no longer feeds as often as she used to (every 1–2 hours, imagine the madness!!), which of course means more sleep and alone time for me. Clumsiness and forgetfulness Running over strangers’ feet with my baby’s stroller while rushing to hospital appointments and having to shamefully apologise, walking away from groceries at the store, forgetting about important appointments at the doctor’s, or forgetting used diapers on the floor after changing my little one, are only some of the many things that I’ve done as a new mom. Luckily, I haven’t forgotten my little one on the changing table while I go about my business. The very thought of the possibility is scary! I find that I am even more clumsy and forgetful now than I was during pregnancy, and I remember reading that “pregnancy brain” symptoms can last all the way up to two years after giving birth! There are currently so many reminders set up for me that I can’t even count them. And sometimes they end up being drowned out by all the other things that go on around me. Down time Time to myself is no longer the same, of course, but I do get to sit by myself for a few hours during each day and focus on just me, whether that be to catch up on some sleep, reading, writing, or watching drama series. I've noticed that where I didn't have the time to really focus on the way that I dressed during my first few weeks as a new mom, I now have more time to focus on my enyire appearance. And since I am feeling much better these days, it is heavily reflected in the way that I look. Teaching me patience I love being a new mom, and I haven't found myself getting annoyed by my baby's crying or need for my affection. If anything, I have learned so much patience just from being a mom. In the past I would get frustrated if things never went my way, or if I experienced difficulty getting things done to a T. But, as I find myself having to “wing it” during certain situations since my daughter is fairly unpredictable, I have noticed that I am becoming more patient with each passing day. When a family member has her so I can rest, I can't wait to have her back with me, and watching her sleep will never get old. Well, perhaps it will, as I don't want to be the creepy mom who stands in the doorway staring at her 'twenty-something-year-old' while they sleep. My daughter is such a breath of fresh air, and she makes me feel so loved, wanted, and, funny enough, even protected. The faces she makes while pooping, her cooing, or her wonderful smiles, fill me with endless joy and laughter. And being privileged enough to be her mother is something I will always be very grateful for.

https://medium.com/@chika-anene/being-a-new-mom-in-all-honesty-well-8d4d1ceb9e49

['Chika Anene']

2020-11-27 13:02:09.861000+00:00

['Breastfeeding', 'New Mom', 'Moms', 'Baby']

Russia, a rogue terrorist state

Russia in 2020 has not steered away from its tradition of sowing chaos and violence around the world. The year 2020 is coming to an end — the 7th year since the Russian Federation embarked on the path of a rogue state and stubbornly sticks to it, despite the heavy burden of economic and political sanctions. At the same time, not only did Russia pursued its destructive foreign and domestic policy to spite the rest of the world, it also turned its flaws and crimes the country’s main ideology, suggesting that people should for some reason be proud of it! Over these seven years, Russia has retained its status of an occupying power, retaining control of the territories seized during the 2014 invasion of Ukraine, showing no interest in reaching settlement. Over these seven years, Russia has also significantly expanded the range of dictatorial regimes it supports politically, financially, as well as militarily. In 2015, Russia officially eployed its troops to Syria to support the bloody dictator, Bashar al-Assad, who prior to that enjoyed support of Russian private military companies. After this test try in Syria, Moscow deployed mercenaries in Libya, CAR, Mozambique, and other countries. Russian thugs were also sent as far as Venezuela to back Nicolas Maduro’s regime. Russia has become an assembly point for separatist movements and terrorist organizations. Separatist leaders and activist from all over the world hold regular meetings in Moscow, while Taliban terrorists are officially received at a high level. But it’s not only political, financial and military support for bloody regimes, separatist movements and terrorist organizations that have become Russia’s distinctive and invariable feature. Over the past years, including in 2020, Russian hackers who are part of special teams within intelligence agencies have gained worldwide notoriety: database hacking, election meddling, fake news spinning, and cybercrimes to fit any perverse taste. Russian cyber terrorism now poses the same threat as Wagner PMC mercenaries or hitmen infiltrating the EU to assassinate dissenters upon Kremlin orders. And every year, the pattern remains unchanged: Skripals in Salisbury, Khangoshvili in Berlin, and Navalny in Russia. And this is just the tip of the iceberg of Russian security agencies’ involvement in contract killings. Russia has not changed at all since the day it invaded Ukraine, but it hadn’t changed even before that. History of the past centuries shows that seeking global domination through terror and violence is Russia’s traditional way. And the only thing that could stop it in the endless cycle of sowing chaos around the globe is when it plunges into chaos, too.

https://medium.com/@zloyodessit2.0/russia-a-rogue-terrorist-state-8cbd43147c37

['Злой Одессит']

2020-12-26 06:54:38.258000+00:00

['Terror', 'Terrorism', 'Russia']

Quantified Self: Clustering data from my Habit Tracker

I’ll be contributing to the Quantified Self movement by sharing the result of this clustering project. The data exported from Loop — Habit Tracker. This is my friend for several months in my 8 to 5 job before. It helped me record the progress of my routine (what gets measured, gets done). A habit is an action we do subconsciously or when there is no mental effort to it, otherwise it is a routine. These are the routine that I was trying to develop: Morning Meditation, Morning readings, Midday Sleep, Out on time, Arthour (personal projects), Before sleep readings, Before sleep meditation. Using the exported data from the app, I have different column and rows. Columns are the habit that I want to track, and rows are the binary values that show whether the routine was fulfilled or not (1-yes , 0-no) . Raw Data Bar Plot of fulfilled routine Data Normalization Pearson Correlation Using correlation analysis, I discovered the strengths of relationships among my routines. This is worth exploring to establish a connection between these habits. Interpreting Correlation Values From the interpretation above we can see that: Out on time routine (+0.63) has a moderate to strong positive linear relationship to Before sleep reading routine Midday Sleep and Morning Readings routine (+0.73) have a strong positive linear relationship to each other. Arthour and Before Sleep routine (+0.77) have a strong positive linear relationship to each other. Before sleep meditation and Morning Meditation routine (+0.62) have a strong positive linear relationship to each other. CLUSTERING Clustering is an unsupervised learning algorithm that finds clusters or group in a set of data. These groups should have similar properties or features. This method is a common technique for statistical data analysis used in many fields. K-modes Clustering. According to the documentation K-modes is used for clustering categorical variables. It defines clusters based on the number of matching categories between data points.This is in contrast to the more well-known k-means algorithm, which clusters numerical data based on Euclidean distance.) For simplicity, I used 3 number of clusters, this is a subjective judgement about the number of really distinctive clusters described here (I tried more K but it hurts my data). These are different clusters derived using K-modes. I arbitrarily named my routines as: The Idealist, The Supervisor, The Visionary. CLUSTER 1: The Idealist This group has no Out on time and has a plenty of Midday Sleep routine. I remember I stay late at work to read or finish something that needed the next day. CLUSTER 2: The Supervisor This cluster has the least number of routines. These days could be tiring. CLUSTER 3: The Visionary This cluster has the most number of accomplished routines. Analyzing such routines helps me understand better how my day looks like back then. From this data, I can design more meaningful routine towards a better day. Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.

https://medium.com/@carlosabiera/quantified-self-clustering-data-from-my-habit-tracker-e8af25d4db27

['Carlos Abiera']

2020-08-13 11:55:15.538000+00:00

['Habits', 'Routine', 'K Modes', 'Clustering', 'Quantified Self']

Heat-Protecting Gene in Corals & Human Cells Get an Upgrade…from Tardigrades

NEWSLETTER Heat-Protecting Gene in Corals & Human Cells Get an Upgrade…from Tardigrades This Week in Synthetic Biology (Issue #15) Underwater corals. Credit: Pexels on Pixabay Receive this newsletter every Friday morning! Sign up here: https://synbio.substack.com/ Reach out on Twitter. Heating Breakthrough in Corals As the earth heats, and the Great Barrier Reef melts away, scientists are scrambling for deeper insights into heat-tolerance in coral — specifically, which genes help corals cope with higher temperatures, and could gene editing be used to create heat-resistant variants? A gene in fertilized coral eggs (Acropora millepora), called Heat Shock Transcription Factor 1 (HSF1), was mutated with CRISPR/Cas9. After one injection of the CRISPR/Cas9 components, 90% of the eggs carried mutations in that gene, causing drastic changes in how well the coral could handle heat later on. “The mutant larvae survived well at 27 °C but died rapidly at 34 °C,” the authors wrote. The higher temperature did not, however, cause any damage to normal, un-edited corals. The authors conclude, therefore, that HSF1 “plays an important protective role” in these stunning creatures. This study was published in PNAS. Link Human Cells Upgraded with Tardigrade DNA Astronauts and flight-attendants alike are bombarded with radiation. In one study, 1.2% of male flight attendants reported that they had melanoma, a rate nearly twice as high as the general population. Female flight attendants, similarly, have reported a skin cancer incidence that is four times higher than the general population. To protect these high-flying professionals, some scientists are turning to…tardigrades. These little “sea bears” are so hardy that they can “survive up to 5kGy of ionizing radiation and also survive the vacuum of space,” according to the authors of a new preprint, posted on bioRxiv. For context, a typical abdominal x-ray is just 0.7 milligrays, or about 7 million times less radiation than tardigrades can withstand. The researchers studied a damage suppressor protein from the tardigrades, called Dsup, that helps repair damage to DNA caused by ionizing radiation. They transplanted Dsup into human cells, grew the engineered cells in a dish, and found that the cells became more tolerant to apoptosis — or cell death — signals. The authors think that their “methods and tools provide evidence that the effects of the Dsup protein can be potentially utilized to mitigate such damage during spaceflight.” Link A tardigrade swims by. Credit: GIF Maker/Giphy Rapid Evolution Creates New TrpB Proteins Creating proteins with new functions can, at least in the natural world, take hundreds or thousands of years of evolution. One protein begets another, through mutations, slowly unraveling a sea of new properties that help organisms adapt and survive in their environments. But evolution can also be “jump-started” in the laboratory, and kicked into overdrive using relatively modern approaches called directed evolution. This technique — using evolution to design new proteins — earned Frances Arnold a share of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In a new study, emanating from a collaboration between the labs of Chang Liu and Frances Arnold, a method for continuous, directed evolution, called OrthoRep, was used to create new variants of the tryptophan synthase β-subunit protein. This enzyme is important because it synthesizes L-tryptophan from indole and L-serine. Over 100 generations of the directed evolution experiment, the researchers created new TrpB enzymes that had higher activities, could use different indole analogs, or could work at different temperatures. This study was published in Nature Communications, and is open access. Link Engineered Bacteria Respond to Inflammation Signals Microbes that live in the human gut can be engineered to release medicines, or sense diseases. They are basically tiny, programmable doctors that could, one day, be used to treat all kinds of ailments. In a new preprint, posted to bioRxiv, scientists at Caltech engineered E. coli Nissle cells with an AND logic gate that triggers a gene’s expression when two signals are present: tetrathionate (an inflammatory biomarker) and IPTG. The authors “report 4–6 fold induction with minimal leak when both signals are present.” These are interesting preliminary results, based on experiments done in flasks and tubes, and the next step will be to take these engineered cells, and see if they can actually sense inflammation inside of, say, a mouse gut. Link Study Evaluates CRISPR-Cas Systems for RNA Editing The gene-editing tool, CRISPR-Cas9, can be adapted to cut both DNA and RNA inside of living cells. Its utility for DNA-editing is well known, but RNA-editing applications have not been studied as carefully. Catalytically inactive Cas9 — that is, Cas9 that cannot cut DNA, but can still recognize and bind to a genetic target — can be fused to a protein called ADAR (adenosine deaminases acting on RNA) to make single-letter changes in RNA. These dCas9-ADAR proteins can switch A to I, for example, but it turns out that they have some issues. The researchers of a new study from the Yeo lab at UC San Diego say that the “Cas-based ADAR strategies have distinct transcriptome-wide off-target edits”. They also performed experiments to figure out how to best design guide RNAs to target a specific nucleotide in an RNA strand. They found that, even without a spacer sequence, Cas9-ADARs could still edit RNA. This study was published in Cell Reports, and is open access. Link

https://medium.com/bioeconomy-xyz/heat-protecting-gene-in-corals-human-cells-get-an-upgrade-from-tardigrades-8e9ff7ef1bbb

['Niko Mccarty']

2020-11-13 14:26:38.745000+00:00

['Tech', 'Newsletter', 'News', 'Future', 'Science']

ChrisIt’s Christmas and That’s OK.

It’s Christmas eve and I’m moved. This day always, no matter the circumstance or situation pulls at something in me. I don’t know if it’s the remnants of childlike wonder from days past when Santa would execute the most meticulous and generous breaking and entering job. It might be from the year following where I had the realization of how hard my mother worked to make Christmas special. Maybe it’s having a love in my life that illuminated what I was missing at the holidays; something that makes those Hallmark Christmas movies (while unrealistic) a bit more palatable. There’s a lot of things in life that will try to beat the spirit out of you. Those magical 1’s and 0’s we keep to get through the day are knocked out of alignment. I’ve learned that there is not enough coffee in the world or work you can do to shake life back into it. This year has done enough of that. For myself, my friends, and people I may never meet. I don’t have a perfect remedy for whoever is reading this, but I can lend a voice to what has helped: Sometimes, the wind is just the wind, and the trees which they blow through are the only things that need to be moved by it. This is something that has been racking my brain for the last year or so, that not everything in life is symbolic. Not every minute of life is meant to be dissected into something bigger. Yes, there are times that call for it, there are miracles happening every day and sometimes you may find yourself the happy customer of dumb luck. But you’ll miss those if you forget to be in this thing. Sometimes, you’ll find peace in watching a Hallmark movie because it is exactly what it is. The story is simple and the acting will never win an Emmy. That new Dua Lipa album can be enjoyed because it does nothing else but make you dance. You don’t have to comb over the lyrics or critically listen to the mix to enjoy it. Okay, I’m externalizing here. Believe it or not, it’s ok to let the melody of “All I Want For Christmas” come out of your mouth. It’s catchy and whether you like it or not, it lives seasonally in the back of your head rent-free. You can take Christmas for what it is. Take a beat, count the blessings, and be present with those around you. Sing that Christmas classic one more time. Watch Christmas Prince again if you want. I know tonight, although I’m 26 years old and tired, I’ll still have some trouble falling asleep. It’s one of the few unnamed things in my life that still brings me wonder. Those butterflies (or reindeer) that sit in my chest in the last hours of December 24th remind me that sometimes, it’s ok to give in to the Holiday spirit. All in all, I love Christmas. Find the unnamed wonders of your soul and hold tight to them. If you needed to hear it, you are loved and this Christmas is so much better with you in it.

https://medium.com/@nothingnewhere/its-christmas-and-that-s-ok-6822709c03ff

['Justin Cole']

2020-12-24 21:18:50.609000+00:00

['Letters', 'Story', 'Christmas']

Part 1 — The Database. How to build a real time data sync, multi platform app with CouchDB and PouchDB

Design Before diving into the specifics of our Database design, here are a few words about the product being built. The app is basically a task management system, that allows organizing tasks in lists and calendars, sharing them with friends and more, all while being focused on your goals. It also needs to be able to run simultaneously on browsers and mobile devices. That should explain pretty well why the app should be available in offline mode, and why the data needs to sync in real time. Also, only the shared lists of tasks need to be kept in sync between friends, and since the data is entirely synced with the client, each user needs their own DB, with restricted access, but the common records (and only the common records) need to by synced automatically between per-user DBs. Image 1: Database Architecture Image 1 presents the high-level database architecture, but what is very important here is that the standard communication paradigm has shifted from UI-API-DB to UI-DB-SERVICES. This approach has its challenges, because on the server side we need listener services always running to track events that trigger business logic. Also this forced us to have quite a lot of the business logic residing on the client side, which is not necessarily a bad thing but needs to be kept in mind. In order to understand it better, a general data flow process should shed some light. Assuming that User 1 and User 2 are friends and have a shared list of tasks, when User 1 updates one of the shared tasks, the following data flow occurs: Task gets replicated from PouchDB Client User DB1 to CouchDB User DB1 Spiegel listens to CouchDB User DB1 changes and triggers a CouchDB replication from User DB1 to CentralDB Spiegel listens to CentralDB changes and determines (via an API call, but let’s keep things simple) what changes go where and if the User 2 has the required permissions Spiegel triggers a CouchDB replication from CentralDB to the User DB2 PouchDB long polling via HTTP mechanism is getting the changes in Couch DB User DB 2 and updates the PouchDB Client User DB 2 Quirks The process, as always, wasn’t defined straight through, the design emerged gradually while adding more features, facing more and more challenges and limitations. We had to come up with various solutions, listeners, complementing services, even cleanup jobs for the deleted revisions and here are some of them: Conflicts will happen when 2 users update the same document at the same time. Then, scheduled and constantly running jobs need to be created, to watch those conflicts and to gracefully (merge) solve them (otherwise CouchDB will select one of the revisions and that’s it) Solving conflicts on the client side: in PouchDB conflicts need to be considered and solved, but it might not be enough If you need more granular control when replicating a document according to specific business rules, Spiegel can call an API endpoint where you can implement specific logic A CentralDB, holding ALL the important documents is needed because otherwise it would be very difficult to query documents for specific reports. But also, listening to document changes in EVERY User DB is highly impractical Because the DB is responsible of Client-Server communication, this leads to a CQRS-ish way of doing things, meaning that the services are listening to changes and if there is a business-concerning event, the event is raised to the proper service that in turn will be responsible for generating a notification that will finally (via PouchDB to CouchDB replication) arrive to the client. This forced us, for immediate response requests (like adding a friend) to create an API endpoint as well Because even though PouchDB is capable of using various plugins for local storage, the storage footprint needs to be monitored, so we are keeping a limited number of revisions and auto-compaction enabled. Also, since the entire client database gets replicated automatically to the CouchDB server, that too needs to be configured carefully to limit the number of revisions, to enable auto-compaction as well and even more special jobs might have to periodically purge the deleted documents, because otherwise will end up with a huge storage usage We don’t recommend using CouchDB attachments for file storage, because behind the scenes each file would be converted to base64 and replicated via the standard mechanism, which is fantastic for small documents but not so great (actually bad) for larger ones, especially files, so the file, images and attachments support should be handled separately Conclusion Both CouchDB and PouchDB are mature technologies, developed by strong teams with active communities. They are most definitely alternatives worth considering and both of them are capable of being used independently. There is so much more than this, CouchDB is designed with multi cluster replication and sharding in mind, PouchDB has a rich set of plugins allowing it to run from Web Workers or in-memory to transforming the DB into an Event Sourcing one with Delta Pouch. All these are topics for the advanced classes and will require a deeper understanding of the two. Hoping that we’ve scratched the surface and made you curious, please join the discussion if there’s anything you want to share!

https://blog.adaptabi.com/part-1-the-database-b7c575864407

['Tudor Dumitriu']

2021-01-05 06:20:56.372000+00:00

['Tech', 'Pouchdb', 'Mobile App Development', 'Couchdb', 'NoSQL']

RANKING MEMBER MENENDEZ INTRODUCES RESOLUTION IN SUPPORT OF FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS IN UGANDA

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, today introduced a Senate Resolution calling on the government of Uganda to improve the pre-election environment and to create conditions for credible democratic elections in January 2021. The Resolution follows an escalating campaign of repression against opposition candidates and their parties by President Yoweri Museveni. “The United States government must be clear in its rejection of the pre-election environment created by the Museveni administration, which appears on track to keep depriving Ugandan citizens of the opportunity to determine their own future,” said Menendez. “After years of unchecked human rights abuses and attacks on democratic institutions, this Resolution reaffirms Congress’s unwavering commitment to promote and defend human, civil, and political rights and multiparty democracy in Uganda.” Since 1996, national elections in Uganda have not met internationally accepted standards for free and fair polls. President Museveni has remained in power for more than three decades after his National Resistance Movement (NRM) removed presidential term limits and age-limits for the presidency. Find a copy of the Senator’s resolution reproduced below 116TH CONGRESS 2D SESSION S. RES. Urging the Government of Uganda and all parties to respect human, civil, and political rights and ensure free and fair elections in January 2021, and recognizing the importance of multiparty democracy in Uganda. IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES Mr. MENENDEZ submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on RESOLUTION Urging the Government of Uganda and all parties to respect human, civil, and political rights and ensure free and fair elections in January 2021, and recognizing the importance of multiparty democracy in Uganda. Whereas the United States has an important interest in supporting democracy in Uganda and has consistently demonstrated support for the people of Uganda through efforts to advance good governance, economic growth, and improved access to health and education; Whereas Uganda has been an important security partner of the United States, including through its contributions to the counter-terrorism efforts in East Africa, and to the African Union Mission in Somalia; Whereas Uganda remains one of the top refugee hosting countries in the world, a contribution that plays an important role in regional stability and humanitarian protection; Whereas more than 75 percent of Uganda’s population is younger than 30 years of age, and the political, economic, and social stability of country will be shaped by the welfare of its youth, and their access to opportunity, equality, and dignified lives; Whereas respect for human, civil, and political rights and deepening multiparty democracy are essential to Uganda’s long-term economic prosperity and political stability; Whereas the conduct of elections, particularly the January 2021 elections, will have a significant impact on the trajectory of democratic growth in Uganda and its relationship with the United States; Whereas the National Resistance Movement (referred to in this preamble as ‘‘NRM’’) took control of the Government of Uganda in 1986 after period of protracted conflict and has dominated the political affairs in Uganda ever since; Whereas Yoweri Museveni has served as Uganda’s head of state since 1986, making him the third-longest actively serving head of state in Africa; Whereas Uganda has had national elections since 1996, and multiparty elections since 2006, all of which have been won by the NRM and President Museveni; Whereas the NRM has engineered changes to the Ugandan constitution in 2005 and 2017, which removed presidential term limits and age-limits respectively, and have allowed President Museveni to remain in power for more than 3 decades; Whereas national elections in Uganda since 1996 have not met internationally accepted standards for free and fair polls, as the ruling party has leveraged access to, and influence over, state resources and institutions to tilt the electoral balance in its favor; Whereas Ugandan authorities have used coercive measures, including arbitrary arrests and detentions, torture, extra- judicial killings, and intrusive surveillance technology to intimidate and silence political opposition in the country; Whereas in March 2020, the Constitutional Court of Uganda annulled section 8 of the repressive Public Order Management Act of 2013, but Ugandan authorities continue to obstruct lawful assemblies by the political opposition, often through violence; Whereas the Museveni Administration has used arbitrary and partisan legal action, enabled by its control of the courts, to intimidate and silence members of the political opposition; Whereas Ugandan authorities have not been held accountable for human rights abuses, including those perpetrated against prominent members of the political opposition, including members of parliament; Whereas many Ugandan officials have not been held accountable for acts of gross corruption, which have been documented by Human Rights Watch in 2013 and other nongovernmental organizations (referred to in this preamble as ‘‘NGOs’’), despite the existence of anti-corruption laws, including — (1) the Penal Code Act; (2) the Leadership Code Act, 2002; (3) the Inspectorate of Government Act, 2002; (4) the Anti-Corruption Act, 2009; and (5) the Public Finance Management Act, 2015; Whereas Ugandan authorities continue to deploy a range of restrictive and onerous administrative measures against NGOs, including — (1) the deregistration of more than 12,000 mostly local NGOs in November 2019; (2) the freezing of the bank accounts of some NGOs in December 2020; and (3) a broader range of actions designed to intimidate civil society, such as the denial of entry or deportation of some leaders of international NGOs in 2020; Whereas independent media outlets in Uganda have been placed under increasing duress by the Museveni Administration through regulatory and other administrative and legal actions designed to intimidate journalists who report independently; Whereas journalists working for foreign media outlets are now required to re-register with Ugandan authorities or risk criminal penalties and some foreign journalists have been deported from the country; Whereas Ugandan authorities have sought to undermine digital rights, including by — (1) subjecting people with large social media followings to onerous administrative regulation through the Uganda Communications Commission public notice of September 2020 and prior regulatory acts of the Uganda Communications Commission; (2) imposing burdensome taxes on social media users; (3) blocking access to social media during the 2016 elections; and (4) prosecuting some individuals who have criticized the Museveni Administration on social media platforms; Whereas although Uganda is home to one of the premiere institutions of higher education in Africa (Makerere University), Ugandan authorities have taken repeated action to suppress academic freedom and intimidate students and faculty that have been critical of the Museveni Administration, including by firing and jailing professors who criticize the regime; Whereas same-sex relations in Uganda remain criminalized under section 145 of the Penal Code Act, and people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (referred to in this preamble as ‘‘LGBTQ persons’’) face a range of direct punitive action from Ugandan authorities, such as arrest and detention, and a permissive environment that encourages impunity for attacks against LGBTQ persons; Whereas the Museveni Administration has deployed an escalating array of repressive measures before the January 2021 elections, including placing uneven and partisan limits on the campaign activity of leading opposition candidates and arresting some candidates, which have triggered protests and the subsequent use of force by the security apparatus to put down the protests, which led to the deaths of at least 28 people in November 2020: Now, therefore, be it 1 Resolved, That the Senate — 2 (1) condemns the Museveni Administration’s 3 assault on democratic freedoms, including attacks on opposition politicians, assaults on journalists and media freedoms, and burdensome restrictions on nongovernmental organizations; 4 (2) urges the Government of Uganda — 5 (A) to respect the rights enshrined in the 6 Constitution of the Republic of Uganda (re- 7 ferred to in this resolution as the ‘‘Constitu8 tion’’) and relevant international obligations, 9 particularly the rights to freedom of movement, 10 expression, information, religion, association, 11 equality, privacy, and personal security; and 12 (B) to take immediate steps to improve the 13 pre-election environment and to create condi- 14 tions for credible democratic elections in Janu- 15 ary 2021 that enable Ugandan citizens the op16 portunity to freely exercise their right to vote; 17 (3) calls upon the Government of Uganda and 18 President Museveni — 19 (A) to repeal repressive laws and adminis- 20 trative actions that are contrary to the prin21 ciples of good governance, a healthy democracy, 22 and the rights enumerated in the Constitution, 23 such as — 24 (i) colonial-era laws that target the 25 LGBTQ community; and (ii) the Uganda Communications Commission’s September 2020 public notice that, in conjunction with other regula- 4 tions, undermines digital rights; 5 (B) to allow citizens, civil society organiza- 6 tions, and political parties to assemble peace7 fully and to freely express their views; 8 © to immediately lift uneven and par- 9 tisan restrictions on political activities, includ10 ing the uneven, partisan, and violent application 11 of COVID–19 restrictions on opposition polit12 ical gatherings and rallies, and to safely allow 13 opposition parties to hold political rallies, meet14 ings, and demonstrations at times of their 15 choosing; 16 (D) to provide transparent, consistent, and 17 nonintrusive procedures for nongovernmental 18 organizations to register, and to enable them to 19 carry out programs and other legal activity 20 without interference from the state authorities; 21 (E) to safeguard press and academic free22 dom, in accordance with the Constitution and 23 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 24 adopted in Paris December 10, 1948; (F) to condemn threats and attacks against opposition political parties and civil society, and to ensure accountability for harass- 4 ment, intimidation, or physical attacks on mem5 bers of the opposition; 6 (G) to end the escalating campaign of re7 pression against opposition candidates and their 8 parties before the January 2021 elections; and 9 (H) to guarantee the ability of domestic 10 and international election observers to monitor 11 the January 2021 polls without hindrance; 12 (4) calls on the Secretary of State, and the 13 heads of relevant departments and agencies of the 14 United States Government to continue — 15 (A) to speak out against the Government 16 of Uganda’s efforts to undermine democracy; 17 and 18 (B) to hold the Government of Uganda ac- 19 countable for respecting the rights of its citi20 zens, in accordance with its Constitution and 21 international obligations, including by — 22 (i) considering the imposition of tar- 23 geted sanctions and visa restrictions on ac24 tors involved in undermining credible, transparent elections, or for perpetrating or abetting human rights abuses; 3 (ii) leading international partners and 4 institutions, including those in Africa, in 5 developing and implementing strategies 6 and actions to promote and defend human, 7 civil, and political rights and multiparty 8 democracy in Uganda; 9 (iii) immediately conducting a review 10 of United States Government assistance 11 and cooperation with the Government of 12 Uganda for the purposes of reprioritizing 13 areas and sectors of assistance should neu14 tral observers determine that the January 15 2021 polls do not meet internationally ac16 cepted standards for credible elections; and 17 (iv) insisting on full and public inves18 tigations that ensure accountability for 19 acts of violence, harassment and intimida- 20 tion perpetrated against political opposi- tion, journalists, and members of civil society, especially before and after the January 2021 elections.

https://medium.com/@w-today/ranking-member-menendez-introduces-resolution-in-support-of-free-and-fair-elections-in-uganda-71c62b8b4795

['Roland Cunningham']

2020-12-18 17:53:45.618000+00:00

['Uganda', 'Bobi Wine', 'Senator Menendez', 'Human Rights']

Join the WeCan Christmas Quest adventure

WECAN.dev invites you to join its first multi-project quest, an exciting trip through unknown spaces! Hunt for secret codes, try to outrun competitors, and win a prize! Four crypto projects take part in the WECAN. Christmas Quest: R-PLANET, Tribal Books, Dark Country, and Prospectors. The secret codes might be hidden throughout social media, disguised on the sites, or even inside the games. Take your chance to get a slice of the $5000 prize pool in NFTs! Whether you are a follower of one of the participating projects or you just have heard about them, it’s going to be fun! You’ll learn a lot of new things even if you are just a temporary visitor in a new game reality. The quest engine is developed by our developer specifically for the crypto space. We hope it will inspire other projects to join our quests in the future. So this type of challenge will develop and become more exciting over time. About the Participating Projects Four projects take part in the Christmas Quest: the alchemic game fueled by the revolutionary NFTs-staking system R-PLANET, the NFT card game Tribal Books, the massive multiplayer online real-time еconomic strategy game Prospectors, and the American gothic trading card game Dark Country. Each of the named projects allocated on the quest a generous bunch of prizes. The reward will be split upon completion of the quest. You have a chance to get : 1000 aether from R-PLANET 30 Common, 20 Rare, and 10 Unique Atlantis Books from Tribal Books; 20 Hero Packs from Prospectors; 10 Adventure Hero Packs and 20 Champion Hero Pack from Dark Country 25 Mega Prizes will be drawn among all participants, who will score 43 points. How Everything Works On the page of Christmas Quest, you’ll see a list of tasks, and tips near each of them as well as hints regarding the possible location of the code. Some of the materials with hidden secret codes are already published, another will appear during the Quest. For every correct code, you’ll earn points. After earning a certain amount of points, you will be entered into the prize drawing. Be open-minded, try to think out of the box, be as fast as you can, and the lady Fortune will join you. Start your 2021 off with a victory and a valuable prize. JOIN NOW!!!!! TWITTER SITE

https://medium.com/@wecandev/join-the-wecan-christmas-quest-adventure-27be6e11e9a7

[]

2020-12-25 17:52:16.565000+00:00

['Nft Collectibles', 'Dapps', 'Nft']

Could that be friendship?

Could that be friendship? Gabriel and Leon. These guys would meet every day and soccer was all they talked about. It was a very easy subject for both of them. They cheered for the same team. Whenever they met it was all about soccer. They’d tell memories of their favorite players, argue about the coaches that would build the best teams… They’d even remember each other whenever it was game night, in case the other one had forgotten about it. Okay, okay… to be fair, they’d chat about other things every once in a while. Leon knew a bit about Gabriel’s personal life, not about his job though. Gabriel used to work with advertising back then. And he felt like he couldn’t talk to his mate about it. Leon wouldn’t talk much about himself either. On the other hand, he was quite a curious guy. So he’d ask Gabe a bunch of questions about himself. Eventually, he ended up got getting to know about Gabriel’s hobbies, about his girlfriend and some other stuff too. But, whenever the subject was soccer, that’s when they really connected. They’d always meet and boom! Just like that, soccer here we go. They’d either meet before or after Gabriel’s work hours. Leon would always be there by Gabe’s home waiting for him. They’d been doing it for so long it almost felt like they were really good friends. Actually, both of them had bigger interests besides soccer. Gabe was a big cinema guy. He’d go for the movies every week. On Leon’s side of things, his favorite sport was actually car racing, Formula 1. That was all he was able to watch when he wasn’t at work on sunday mornings. So, I guess you must be asking yourself now: Why the hell would they make the effort to meet every single to talk about soccer, since clearly they weren’t that close and had better things to do? Well, Leon was Gabriel’s home building doorman. Soccer was all they could ever talk about.

https://medium.com/@marcofrossi/could-that-be-friendship-5e48609bd027

['Marco Felipe']

2020-03-23 21:31:00.917000+00:00

['Relationships', 'Friendship', 'Thinking', 'Perspective', 'Sociology']

Lying in Roses

ALL CREDITS TO PHOTOGRAPHER/ARTSIT The First Thorn As I sit here in this dimly lit room, and hear the rain so gently , but yet so roughly tapping on the window, I am reminded of him. His smile, his laugh, his funny, but yet weird jokes. I’ve managed to get through a couple of days pretending to make it look like I am okay around him. Today I cracked every so slightly, and told him I still cared about him (through text) and I of course, as expected, did not receive a response of any sort. It hurts knowing that he may not care about me anymore. It hurts knowing……it was probably so easy for him to move on. He seems so happy, and seems like he is doing just fine without me. Don’t get me wrong I am extremely happy for him. I only want the best for him. I just wish he would think of me as “the best for him.” I don’t know if anyone I have talked to about this, thus far, knows how it feels to give your heart to someone, and then just crushing it, leaving you in pieces. As an almost 13 year old with insomnia, and social anxiety, I have been through situations where people just drop me and leave me, because I am too much. I do wonder if this is my fault, and if I was just too much for him to handle. Seeing him smile makes me want to cry. Seeing him frown makes me want to comfort him, even though I know I can’t anymore. If I could show him a visual representation of my heart, I wonder if he would feel bad at any point. I think the worst part about this is that…..I still love him. I would still do anything for him. I still see all the good in him. As soon as he told me we should break up, I think I broke in a way I didn’t think was possible. I didn’t think it was possible to hate, and love someone at the same time. I still get butterflies around him. I still feel like hugging him all the time. Then I remember…..I can no longer do that, and I start to tear up. I wish there was a way of reading his thoughts. I wish there was a way I could just have all my questions answered. It may not be what I want to hear, but they would, ultimately, put me at peace. Maybe I’ll try asking him tomorrow. But then again that’s what I always say. Trust me, if I could talk to him for hours, I would. I would want to know what exactly is bothering him, and what exactly caused him to make the decision to break me in the way he did. It hurts when I see his Instagram name pop up on my screen, and I instantly think of the words, “I love you, but we should break up *heartbreak emoji*.” At the beginning there would be time-frames, where I forgot he broke up with me. There have been times where I almost texted him for advice. There have been times where my mind forgot everything that just happened, and I would think about what he was going to do tomorrow morning. Whether or not I would be getting a kiss or a hug. Then the cruel reality would come in, and I would then mentally fall to the floor, and have a breakdown about him. Rain It was a lovely ride The carousel went slow I was loved for the first time I wasn’t sure how far it would go Not knowing how to breathe After those few subtle words How could I explain how badly I was hurt? My first love My first heartbreak How painful it was My tears rolled off my face Like how the rain was falling from the sky When we hugged for the first time Your scent was sweet Like chocolate strawberries And your words made sense For the first time My life made been correct I wasn’t alone But fairytales don’t last I wish I would’ve known Realizations It’s been ten months. Ten months since I wrote that. Self discovery has happened in those ten months, but self destruction has come with it. But with every falling apart there is a putting together. I’ve lost friends along with beliefs and dreams. I have gained morality, and realized that this world might be falling apart at the seams, but we will always describe it as beautiful and wholesome. Our minds are built to think the worst, but are programmed for the best. Realizations that things don’t last forever, but in my augmented reality that I call my mind and imagination they can. I have walked through hell, and managed to keep my wings and gain a found appreciation for my darker personas. I am a demon and an angel in one system. One body. One functioning set of cells and membranes all together. I have thought of things that I would’ve never imagined. You must be broken to be rebuilt into a better person and that will happen more than once. No matter the circumstance, no matter the life and privilege, being broken comes with life. I am the person I want to be. And I would like to take a moment to thank the people who broke me, and left me in ruins. Because, I surpassed who I was when I met you, thank you for making me realize that I am independent, and that I don’t need you. A moment to thank the people who left me when I was vulnerable. You made me realize that the weakest are the strongest. A moment, to thank everyone who made me cry. You made me realize I don’t need to waste my tears on anyone who doesn’t deserve it. And a moment to thank my past self. You are the most perfect person I will ever have the pleasure of encountering. You will forever be apart of my heart and my mind. You held your own hand when no one else could, and I will remember the sacrifices you made to get me here. She is deserving of happiness. She is the exact same person I am today. Me. It’s 3:48 A.M Is love real? I feel like that is a common question in this realm of the universe (are there different realms?) I’ve always had an understanding of the concept of love. I’ve had an understanding of a lot of things since I was very young. I’ve always had the same thoughts. Same voices in my head. Here’s the thing, they say you don’t know what love is until you experience it. WRONG! I’ve had the same mind-set on love since I was about seven. My mind has always had the thought that there is no set definition of love. And your definition will change as you get older. Like for example, people say when you’re younger you don’t know what love is and how to experience it. Well, I believe that when you fall for someone at a young age, at that place and time, you are indeed head over heels. They are experiencing the same emotions that any adult could feel. Our emotions are not programmed differently, we are not robots. So when you get older you might not think of that and have it fit your definition of love, but in those memories you were in love. It was how you felt back then, and nothing can change that. I believe that you could fall in love at any age. Well starting from the age you know how to process thoughts and emotions. So yes, young love does exist, and it is an experience that you should treasure for your whole lifetime on this earth. Fresh, new, exhilarating emotions that send you screaming on your floor (either happiness of anger, whichever one fits.) I remember my first love experience. I was twelve years old. My first heartbreak was the one I explained at the beginning of this jotting down of my thoughts.. My personal not so personal journal Euphoria Happiness is rare I must say But when it happens I don’t dare disarray I have everything in order My emotions are in check My eyes are dry And I am not a defect I don’t think of myself as an epidemic Without a cure A walking tornado That is muttering words Smiles and laughter While watching the sunset But once those cotton candy skies are gone Is our euphoria real? I have to Coexist I haven’t had the heart to add anything to this document/ journal in a long time. School is just a matter of days away and I don’t know what to do. Everyone is dealing with their own “teenage crap”, me being one of them. Last time I wrote anything here, I was full of happiness and euphoria. Now. Now I feel like I relapsed on a drug and rehab is no longer an option. We learn from our trauma. We as a surviving human organism should take our trauma and dissect it. Learn what it means to have trauma and why it exists. I, however. Feel like I have done that enough times to know what I am feeling, when I am feeling it. But yet. I sit here. Not knowing what to feel, or how to feel it. Heartbreak can come in all forms. Me, knowing multiple of them. But this. This is a new discovery. Breaking up with someone because you felt they would be better off without you, and not just saying that. Covering it up with detailed things that were planned as the day finally came to a close. I wrote more than I ever had in a text. When all it took was one sentence. I blame myself for everything. At the same time. He didn’t respond to the words I so desperately, yet so carefully put together to give him peace of mind. I know this is a very cliché thing for me to put in here, but I don’t think I was fully prepared for the relationship. You’ve heard the excuse about a million times I take it. But this was something different. I wanted him to see through it. Ask me if I was okay even though, in retrospect, I should have been asking him, even though I knew I would not get the honest response I was looking for. He may never find out the truth. But I do very much want to tell him. Even though some of the things I wrote, and some of the things that I think are very true. He will never know the full extent of what I was thinking. I wanted it that way, sort of like a payback to him. I never knew how he was feeling, and he will never know how I was feeling. Bittersweet, right? Fight fire with fire. Give him a taste of his own medicine. But. As the days continued. Every second, a new ounce of guilt was added to my body. It was as if my subconscious was yelling at me to take it back. To take it all back. They are screaming, involuntarily. And by “they" I mean my subconscious that I have split into the good and the bad, have been screaming at each other. No, I am not insane. I am wild, yet in touch with reality, imagination. It helps me sort out my emotions in a healthy way. Every time I take a moment to think. I drift into my headspace. I drift to the keepers of my emotions. Them. Constantly nagging at me about what I did wrong and what I did right. And me. The keeper of my being. Decides who I want to listen to, and when. Who I want to believe. Who is the stronger one? Who… I become. That’s the thing about the universe. It has upon millions of ways, millions of paths your life could take. And you hold that responsibility within you. You decide. How you respond to situations that will define your being in the universe. And my response… was to run into the wildfire I started in my head. In my memories. And try to put it out. Because I knew I was the only one who could really do that. Who could really salvage everything. No one else can legitimately get in my head. And that’s why each individual tends to feel alone. No one knows what’s actually happening. How organized your mind is, or how messy. So. Yes. I feel regret and sorrow if I actually hurt him in any way. But just like he will probably never find out about this. I will actually never find out how he was feeling, or is feeling. If he is hurt. If he needs comfort. But. He said the three magical words that either break it or make it for the human race. The three words that either scare people away or bring them closer to your heart. What’s the phrase? “Dumb kids in love”? I’d like to believe that’s what we were. And don’t you dare say teenagers don’t know what love is. Because we do. We may not know how to show it correctly, but we do know how to love. How to cherish. Because when it comes down to it. We are the only people that understand each other. We are experiencing the same things at the same time. We may have an absence of knowledge in our heads. But we are not missing anything else but that. Knowledge will grow with us. Our bodies will produce new cells every 7 years. We will survive in this god forsaken place, with or without each other. Because every human has a survival instinct. And unless that is stripped from us, and we feel helpless enough to give up everything we have done to stay alive so far. We will no longer have the will to keep going. We were in love? I don’t know how to answer that correctly. We? Maybe. Me? Yes. We find ourselves not believing in the concept of “love” when we are younger. We were never really given a set definition because it’s the hardest thing to explain. The hardest emotion to dissect and take apart. It is different for everyone. Everyone has their own fairy tale to tell. It’s just a matter of listening. It can also be the hardest thing to execute. Making someone truly fall in love with you. Now. I can say I failed at that with this one. I tried my damn hardest. But. In the end. I didn’t try hard enough. September 2nd I’ve heard the phrase “love is overrated” or “I’ll never love again” too much the past week. Two of my friends. Two of them have said that and meant it. Both of them are male. One of them is recovering from a heartbreak. The heartbreak was severe. Well “severe”. He is being a bit over dramatic about the whole thing, but I am trying to help him as best as I can. The other one is my best friend. I’m telling him not to get overly attached to anyone new. He’s moving to Florida next year, and I just don’t want him getting heartbroken before he leaves. I want him to enjoy his time here. But it is inevitable. He’s emotional. And I love that he is. He is so genuine it makes my heart stop. So I want the best for him. I have cried about the fact that he is moving and that he will most likely visit once every blue moon. But I have come to the realization that everything will be okay. But hearing people say these horrible things about something that should be all around enjoyed by everyone. School is on September 5th and it’s currently 10:56 P.M. on September 2nd. I’m anxious. I’m panicking. I’m pacing. I’m still in middle school. It’s gonna be my last year of middle school. 8th grade. This time next year I will know what high school I am going to. I will have experienced my first high school orientation. I will be separated. I will be fresh bait. It scares me. Everyone I know is a bit on edge about the new school year. We get a dance at the end of the year. I wonder if I will be dancing with anyone. Or holding my own hand like I am currently doing. I’m taking you guys on a journey. Taking you through what our generation is dealing with. The truth. And right now. I’m filled with anxiety. There seems to be a lot of that in this generation. Maybe it’s our “advanced” mindsets. By “advanced”I mean that we know too much at a young age. We know what a lot of things mean when society says we shouldn’t. That creates anxiety in us. We are scared of people. And all we have is each other. The only people we can trust are each other. We talk to each other and see each other more than our biological family. And at the end of the day, we call each other family. We are a dysfunctional generation. And we will keep believing it the more everyone says it. We just want to be loved. We. With every breath With every mistake We don’t feel like we belong We don’t feel how we should around everyone We will only understand each other We will cry in each others arms We will walk ourselves through our storms Cause we strive to be adored We will be around each other at our worst And brag when we are on our best Because it is rare That we are not overly obsessed We experience heartbreak early on We will forever tear up on certain songs Teenage drama is embedded in our minds It’s just a matter of time… Apocalyptic I was laying in bed last night, not able to sleep because I was mortified. Not because I heard a noise, or because I thought there was an intruder in my house. Not because my neighbors were yelling so loud I thought one of them was gonna snap. But, because the world almost ended. An asteroid almost hit earth, and every single living thing would be demolished, and be a memory or a story to whatever comes next. Everything would’ve been gone is a split second. Given, it is estimated that at this moment in time we have about 17 months to save our planet, before apocalyptic things begin to happen. Which was also a thought that I had. The show “The 100” had also crossed my mind. It is possible that the human race could survive in space, until the earth was survivable again. Or we found a new planet to inhabit. But all of that comes with complications. Would there only be a couple thousand people chosen to be sent off to space and live? That’s a very little amount of the human race that would get the chance to live. Would how relevant you are, matter? Would famous people have a guaranteed life? Because, that is a bit unfair if you ask me. Late night thoughts always seem to get to me. When I was younger I used to imagine that my memories were stored in this city, and it was a tainted red city. All different shades of red, and to this day I do not know why (probably something to do with my anxiety or along the lines of that if I am being honest here.) But, I am having panic attacks because of the world almost ending. It’s scary to me. Love Bound. October 18th, 2019. I fell head over heels with this guy. Curly hair, light hazel eyes. When the sun hit them, they were like stained glass. We watched the sunset together this one time. The sky faded to this light pink and the clouds were swirling around each other. He hugged me and time stopped. He told me he adored everything about me and I believed him. It was so perfect. He was so perfect. Too perfect. He then started fading. He told me he was bored with the same routine. I tried changing. He told me he wanted something different. I changed. He was tired of my feelings. I hid them…. You know where this is going. He didn’t want me to change, he said, he wanted me to better myself. How? How can I better myself when this is as good as I can get? How do I exceed my limits? How can I be deserving of your love? Your time? How can I be worth it? November 12th, 2019. I woke up wanting to be with him. Feeling lost in the dark without him that day… he told me was going to be out. “Have fun” I thought.. But those were just the bitter words my naive mind made out. I looked in the mirror. I saw my heart on the floor. All I wanted at that moment. In those seconds.. Was for him to show up at my doorstep and tell me everything was fine. That we were going to be fine and that this is a bump in the road, not the void of emptiness that I knew we were falling down. The void that doesn’t have a happy ending. The void that when we hit the ground, I am alone again. I sat in my bathroom and cried on the floor. I watched and felt myself break because I knew what was happening… I got too attached too quickly. It’s something I despise about myself. I find out that we have something in common and it’s like I am in love with you. By 8:00 P.M. I felt empty. Numb. Out of my mind. I felt helpless. More helpless than Eliza and Alexander. More tragic than them and their story. For once in my life, I didn’t want out, I wanted in. November 17th, 2019. It was a Sunday. I had school the next day and I was excited to see him. We barely talked about that day, but at 7:43 P.M. I asked a question. “Are you or have you lost feelings for me…?” he responded with, “I’m sorry.” I reassured him that I was fine and he didn’t have to worry. “These things happen, we can’t control our feelings.” 13 days. It’s been 13 days. Healing is a process that I wish I could speed up. I’m tired. Leaps in Time. My memory is known to be a good one. I can remember dates, and even certain times. Like my friend’s birthday. June 13th, 2006, 8:15 A.M. I remember things fairly easily. The same thing doesn’t apply for when I was younger. I have maybe 15–20 memories from the ages of three to nine. I don’t remember anything else. It might be because something happened that traumatized me so bad that I didn’t want to remember it and it’s in the depths of my memories. Today, it’s like I had a flashback from something, and it just all added up. My grandmother always used to tell us to make sure the stove was off. She would drill it into our heads. I found out why when I was twelve years old. She told me that when I was seven, and my sister was twelve, she had left us alone in the house to go get something down at the corner store. She said she had left the stove on, and when she got back, there was smoke coming out the windows and she could hear my sister screaming for help. She asked me if I remembered.. I said no. Today, I was staring at a fire, and a memory came rushing back to me. I was standing at the window in my room, looking outside. When I turned around, there were people in hazmat suits rushing into my house through the front door. I don’t remember feeling scared, but just numb. No one was with me, and the house was foggy. I remember the smell of burning, and smoke. It was sunny out that day, and it was a Saturday. The next thing I remember is being lifted up by someone and being escorted to the hospital. That’s it. That’s all. I don’t remember anything past that. I don’t remember anything before. That’s how it is for most of my memories. The only thing I really remember clearly is the sounds of my parents constant arguing and me having to stay awake listening to them argue about stuff. I remember my dad going out for a drink, and my mom having an anxiety attack at 1 A.M. because we didn’t know where he was, and when he got home, he would be mad that I had been crying. I remember falling on my steps and hitting my lip, and being taken upstairs and hydrogen peroxide being poured on my open wounds and screaming. I remember those clearly. But nothing else. Nothing else clicks. Of course, a few things that are important to me click. Like meeting my best friend when I was three. Meeting someone who taught me what love was when I was seven. My first kiss. My first time crying in front of my friends (I was in first grade and I was in the bathroom). My mind seems to have bleeped out a bunch of stuff. I wish I remembered.. I wish I knew who I was back then. I wonder if she would be proud of me. I hope she is..

https://medium.com/@kayxzen05/lying-in-roses-95d6386d9a09

[]

2020-12-26 23:18:22.233000+00:00

['Relationships', 'Heartbreak', 'Reality', 'Poetry', 'Mental Health']

Backend for mobile engineers with Kotlin and Ktor

How many times were you thinking about writing your backend for mobile apps you are working on? And how many times have you chosen Firebase instead? Are there any better options at the moment? In this article, I'll describe our experience of writing Kotlin backend for Codeforces WatchR mobile apps using Ktor, which is officially positioned as follows: An asynchronous framework for creating microservices, web applications, and more. It’s fun, free, and open source. Why backend is needed? Codeforces WatchR started almost 3 years ago as a pet-project, which used official Codeforces API to simply fetch and display data from server. But with time we came up with many additional features, for which the existing API wasn't convenient or even sufficient. So what to do in such a case? For a while, we were implementing all the logic on mobile clients. Fortunately enough, we had migrated to Kotlin Multiplatform about a year ago, so at least we needed to implement the logic only once in the common module. BTW, full story is described in article Kotlin Multiplatform: ready, steady, … But eventually, we hit the roadblock with features, which are simply can't be done without some kind of real backend: working with big amounts of historical and operational data and storing users' accounts and related data and related communication between users between users sending push notifications and so on In general, backend is needed for anything, that requires cross-device communication and data/logic centralization. Why not Firebase? First of all, Firebase is a great choice for some kinds of projects, especially MVPs (Minimum Viable Product). It allows shipping the first versions of your apps faster and cheaper. But it has 3 disadvantages once you get the traction: you are locked inside the platform because all your code heavily relies on Firebase, and you can't simply swap to other services because all your code heavily relies on Firebase, and you can't simply swap to other services aggressive "pay-as-you-go" pricing model without easy-to-set limits, which makes you worry about waking up with huge bills due to DDOS attacks or bugs in your code without easy-to-set limits, which makes you worry about waking up with huge bills due to DDOS attacks or bugs in your code technical limitations of NoSQL databases (Firestore, Firebase Realtime Database) and other Firebase services, which may not be obvious Shortly, Firebase's main advantage is simplicity, but you certainly can find alternatives with much better flexibility and price/value ratio. Why Ktor? Our previous experience is in mobile development, so we are mainly used to Kotlin and Swift. Even though there is decent progress in bringing Swift to backend, it's not officially supported by Apple and community is rather small. On other hand, Ktor is officially developed and supported by JetBrains, creators of Kotlin. They aren't only investing into the dedicated team, but also actively promoting the technology, organizing conferences, etc. From official Ktor site Ktor is the first-class citizen of the Kotlin ecosystem, which means deep integration with the language itself and all its features, like coroutines, sealed classes, multiplatform distribution, extensibility, and so on. Ktor design has been obviously inspired by other popular frameworks. For example, I've noticed a close resemblance to Laravel. So experienced backend developers won't be surprised too much when switching to Kotlin world. Kotlin is fully compatible with any existing Java libraries or frameworks, so you can easily integrate Ktor with Spring or Hibernate, for example. But of course, there are Kotlin-first libraries for the most popular tasks. Architecture Ktor is a minimalistic modular framework, so there are only a few absolutely necessary things available out of the box. Everything else is implemented as pluggable features, which are injected directly into Pipeline. The pipeline is a structure containing a sequence of functions (blocks/lambdas) that are called one after another, distributed in phases topologically ordered, with the ability to mutate the sequence and to call the remaining functions in the pipeline and then return to current block. Pipelines are used in Ktor as an extension mechanism to plug functionality in at the right place. For example, a Ktor application defines five main phases: Setup, Monitoring, Features, Call and Fallback. The routing feature defines its own nested pipeline inside the application’s call phase. From Ruslan Ibragimov's presentation at Kotlin Night Kiev Other than that, Ktor isn't forcing you for any particular approach, so you are free to choose and implement the architecture that fits your needs best. In our case, we implemented classical MVC (Model — View — Controller) architecture with a public API instead of View and dedicated Interactors, which encapsulate all business logic related to each endpoint. Application To create Ktor server, you simply need to create new project, declare the application entry point, and install a few features to start with. In our case, these features are ContentNegotiation and Routing. At the moment we have a single route, which returns compiled Newsfeed from different sources, ready to be consumed by mobile clients. GetNewsInteractor is using Codeforces, YouTube, and other repositories to fetch data from 3rd party resources and database, which is abstracted through Exposed library (officially supported by JetBrains as well). All data transformation happens thanks to another officially supported library — kotlinx.serialization, but you have other popular libraries available too. The best part here that you can simply copy your API classes from Kotlin Backend to Kotlin Multiplatform common module, and it will work. Hosting Ktor application is compiled to a jar file, which then can be run anywhere you want, from Raspberry Pi to the dedicated AWS instance. We've chosen Heroku for its simplicity, free plans, and transparent subscription-based pricing. Bottom line Voilà! We have our own fully-functional backend written in Kotlin, which is perfectly suited to our needs, and open to changes in any direction we would like to take in the future. And we still can use some Firebase on the backend ;) I hope this article will motivate more mobile engineers to get the full potential from their mobile apps by applying their Kotlin skills on the backend side. Let's unlock more cool stuff together! Featured in Kotlin Weekly #227 and Android Weekly #445.

https://medium.com/xorum-io/backend-for-mobile-engineers-with-kotlin-and-ktor-7981372a9462

['Yevhenii Kanivets']

2020-12-28 10:13:57.038000+00:00

['Kotlin Multiplatform', 'Ktor', 'Kotlin', 'Mobile', 'Backend Development']

Creating a Sliding mobile menu in Unity

Often you hay have seen sliding of UI panels when navigating across an app. Like clicking on the settings icon slides out the home screen and slides in the settings menu. In this article, we will be creating a simple yet scalable sliding menu system that I am personally using in most of my Android games. I will be using DoTween for making animations. So you need to install DoTween package in your Unity Project Creating the Home and Settings Menu To begin with, I have created a scene with two UI elements (Home and Settings menu) covering the complete screens as shown in the gif below. The Home and Settings are two images covering the full screen containing elements like settings button, back button, and Labels. Creating HomeUIManager and SettingsUIManager Now we need to create UI Managers for each of the menu screens. In this case, we will have two Managers, each for Home UI and for Settings UI. Create a script HomeUIManager.cs and paste the following code into the file. Create a script SettingsUIManager.cs and paste the following code into the file. After creating these scripts, attach the HomeUIManager.cs script to the HomeUI panel covering the full screen. Attaching HomeUIManager.cs to Home UI Also, attach the SettingsUIManager.cs to the Settings UI element. Attaching SettingsUIManager.cs to Settings UI Now click on the Play button and notice how the Home and Settings menu gets position itself side by side with the Home menu completely visible and the Settings menu hiding beyond the screen.

https://medium.com/developers-arena/creating-a-sliding-mobile-menu-in-unity-56940e44556e

['Kunal Tandon']

2019-12-05 05:27:27.361000+00:00

['Programming', 'Game Development', 'Games', 'Unity', 'Technology']

Zyme Pro — Share Live Tracking. Safety of our beloved has always been…

Safety of our beloved people has always been our primary concern. We, at Zyme, understand this well and know that such situations may arise where you may want to share your live tracking for a particular time period with someone. Alternatively, your car may be driven by your driver and you may want to share its live tracking with a friend/colleague/family member without compromising your login details for sharing your car’s live tracking details for a limited time with others. For the same, we have integrated a “Share Live Tracking” feature on Zyme Pro. Share Live Tracking feature enables you to share your car’s location for a pre-defined time period via a web URL which can be accessible on any browser on any device — be it a smartphone, PC, laptop, tablet, cast devices etc. Your car’s live tracking will be visible to anyone with the generated link and you can also deactivate the sharing link at any time after generation in order to ensure that no one can track your car without your permission. Lets take a deeper look at all the specifics that this feature has to offer. Screenshot 1 Share Live Tracking You can access this by clicking on the share icon on the top right of the home page. Upon clicking it, you will see the page shown on the left (Screenshot 1) Here, you can set the time period for which you want your vehicle to be traceable via the web link. You can deactivate the generated URL at any time and thus you don’t need to worry if you want to stop the live tracking URL from being used after some time despite time left on the clock. Once you set the time, you can click on “Generate Link” after which you will be shown a disclaimer. You can choose to remember your choice if you don’t want to see the disclaimer each time you generate a live tracking link Screenshot 2 Once this link is generated (Screenshot 2), it can be shared with anyone and they will be able to simply open the URL on any browser on any device and access your cars location and other details. Below the URL, you can find the option to deactivate the URL and share the same via various channels such as whatsapp, SMS, facebook messenger, instagram messages or any other messenger that you usually use for communication. Deactivate button will immediately deactivate the URL rendering all data inaccessible on the URL thus ensuring you have control over how long your shared URL shows your data. Please note that re-generation of live tracking URL will generate another unique URL which will be different from the previously generated link and thus the link needs to be shared again with your friends/family to enable tracking. The web URL, when opened on a PC browser (Screenshot 3), shows the following information about your car — Current Speed Battery Voltage Current RPM Map view with car’s location

https://medium.com/@getzyme/share-your-driving-in-real-time-with-zyme-pro-aa3581494dcd

['Zyme', 'Car', 'Meet']

2019-02-16 12:28:00.546000+00:00

['Car Tracking', 'Zyme Pro', 'Share Tracking', 'Vt', 'Car Gps']

KetosisNow Reviews-Diet Supplement for Rapid and Safe Weight Loss | Health-a-Plenty

KetosisNow Reviews: KetosisNow supplement is the perfect way to lose weight affecting a person’s body physically, emotionally and mentally. It gets worse when a person is unable to cope with the ongoing weight gain. Many people have adopted a strict diet and are looking for ways to exercise to find that they gain more weight than they lose. Most people do not know, the best way to eliminate obesity is to address the root cause. While weight gain has many underlying causes, its main cause is malnutrition — this is what KetosisNow dietary supplement takes care off. KetosisNow- AnOverview Weight gain does not just affect the body. People who suffer from weight gain do not simply have low self-esteem but low self-confidence too. Such individuals are at greater risk of suffering from heart disease and diabetes. As a natural weight loss supplement, the KetosisNow supplement not only helps to lose weight,but supplement allows a person to gain lean body mass, increase metabolic values, and a healthier life without the risks of unwanted diseases. Due to its all-natural composition, KetosisNow is not toxic. However, what makes this natural supplement effective in what we do is that it addresses the root of the problem. After using the KetosisNow Diet supplement, people not only enjoy reduced weight and lean bodies but, they do not have to worry about regaining weight. The best part of the whole process is that the user does not have to inculcate stringent diet plans or exercise routines. What Is KetosisNow Dietary Supplement? KetosisNow Diet Supplements are pills designed to help you lose weight quickly and safely. In fact, these weight loss pills are formulated to provide desired results naturally in just four weeks. Extracted from natural ingredients, powerful remedial contents in the supplement also help the user’s body to remain in ketosis, thus burning body fat cells to release body energy. Compared to other weight loss programs, the KetosisNow supplement system burns fat instead of carbohydrates. This makes the supplement safer and more suitable for use with keto-friendly foods for faster results. How Does KetosisNow Dietary Supplement Work? In comparison with other weight loss programs, KetosisNow supplement, in addition to reducing weight for looks, is designed to prevent any health risks associated with weight gain and obesity. As mentioned earlier, the weight loss supplement helps the user to lose weight, have a lean body,stay in ketosis, improve metabolism, and prevent the risk of ailments. Using the supplement, users will not have to starve to shed weight quickly. While burning the body fat, energy is released to rejuvenate and suppress appetite throughout the day. When a person takes pills, the ingredients will slowly encourage the body to use fat as a source of energy thus, the user feels reduced hunger cravings as the body loses weight. The Supplement contains BHB salts,due to which the human body can easily achieve Ketosis and function on fat energy without having to source the energy from carbohydrates. In addition, the ingredients in the supplement help increase ketone levels in the body allowing the user to burn fat and lose weight faster. The KetosisNow supplement which rejuvenates energy level and prompts weight loss, is also helpful in fighting insulin resistance, inflammation, and detoxification of the body from harmful toxins. Benefits of KetosisNow 100% natural ingredients,formulated for weight loss and help the user achieve a lean body It burns stored fat cells to give the body energy while expedite the weight loss process Keto Diet-friendly supplement for increasingly prominent weight levels It prevents hunger cravings,appetite for food that helps to lose weight faster Effectively Manages bad cholesterol level resulting into improved heart health Controls blood pressure level It helps to regulate blood sugar and manage diabetes Manage insulin resistance and inflammation It removes toxins from the body,helpful in detoxification Improves mental clarity Pros There is no need to practice strict diets or stringent workout routines to achieve weight loss Contains no ingredients that are harmful to health and have side effects Can be bought online on the official website — to prevent scammers and duplicators — to prevent scammers and duplicators The 3-months and 6-months value packs are available at a discounted Price 60-day money-back guarantee Cons The Products are not available in a physical store Pregnant or breastfeeding women should avoid consuming it Individuals who are 18 years and older can consume it for weight loss The KetosisNow dietary supplement is not reported to have any significant side effects. In fact, this supplement is regarded as one of the safest weight loss programs available. However, as any other popular weight loss programs, it is advised that the user not exceed the prescribed dosage. After all, one wants to maintain the perfect balance to achieve optimum results. As the prescribed daily dose, the user should take two extra pills with a large meal a day. As a regular Practice, people like to consume a dietary supplement in the morning for breakfast to get full results throughout the day. This means that one bottle of capsules will last a month. KetosisNow Pricing Conclusion The scientific studies and analysis have reported that the United States is hub of highest population of overweight and obese in the world. 70.9 percent of men and 61.9 percent of women population in US are overweight or obese, in comparison with 38 percent of men and 36.9 percent of women worldwide. A large number of people suffering from Obesity and Weight gain have spent hundreds of dollars searching for the right product. More than the money spent on containing weight gain, people have suffered with metabolic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes that have been further ignited by weight gain. In addition to the general health and consequences,weight gain has affected people psychologically too. Weight gain has psychological links to low self-esteem, low self-confidence, and a host of other self destructive mental behavior. KetosisNow dietary supplements truly tackle the root cause — chemically, physically, and psychologically. Regular consumption not only achieves a slim fit and leaner body but fights underlying disease risks associated with obesity as well. One will enjoy a stronger sense of confidence and self-esteem,with a lean and healthy body, ability to freely and comfortably move around, involved in daily activities with improved energy level.

https://medium.com/@health-a-plenty/ketosisnow-reviews-diet-supplement-for-rapid-and-safe-weight-loss-health-a-plenty-c7b3ef17b3f1

['Health A Plenty']

2021-02-02 06:59:37.548000+00:00

['Keto', 'Weight Loss', 'Diet', 'Ketogenic Diet', 'Ketosis']

“I’ve been in that place”

Baby, I know what it’s like to be in that boy’s head. I’ve been there. Not the guns and stuff. Not killing kids. That’s fucking sick. But I’ve been in that place the kid got to. Tell you? I can’t fucking tell you. It’s too painful to remember. Can tell you what I was thinking. The whole school sitting in the dining hall, the teachers and the priests looking like fucking moppets, preening and smiling. The noise is eating my brain away. An army of rats chewing through my skull. I can’t hear a single thing though. I’m just figuring out where to cut that big beam over the room so it will crack and crash onto the table. Crush them. They’ll stop smiling. They’ll all fucking scream. They’ll all stop smiling. I can’t stand the fucking smiles. That’s the thinking. It hurts. You just want to run away from it. Who knows where the fuck you’ll run to. Whatever happened inside that kid’s brain was him running into a dark place and there was nobody who could pull him out and he didn’t have any clue why he was there. That’s just fucking crazy and it’s out there for every one of us. We just looked fucking crazy in the eyes and it burns up our soul. What? No, I’m not going to do something like that you stupid shit. It just kills me to know that I’ve got some part of that monster in me.

https://medium.com/drmstream/ive-been-in-that-place-7f4d52591090

['Dan Mccarthy']

2016-11-10 02:26:38.861000+00:00

['Point Of View', 'Observing']

Pragmatic fan-club!

One of the most awesome comments that I have seen in the recent times was on Rediff. In response to an article analyzing why India performed so dismally in the T-20 world cup, an avid fan finally burst out — ‘Now, let’s get back to work’! In a Cricket crazy country like ours, it is absolutely safe to say that the average productivity per citizen has come down significantly over the last 2 months. IPL matches started at 3 pm and most of the people in my friends circle (including me) mentally shifted to the cricket pitch. Till the second match ended after midnight, there was no more changing of channels, and half the next day went discussing about the earlier days heroics (or otherwise). I am a die-hard cricket fan too, and I firmly believe that I played a major role in Deccan Chargers lifting the IPL trophy. However, after the IPL ended and things got back to normal, the T-20 world cup began; and when India played Pakistan in the practice match, there was no emotion left to express! Though the stadium was full and the atmosphere on TV was charged, all of us at home slept off half way through, and when Pakistan won, it didn’t really matter! After the tournament began, the only match I really watched was India taking on West Indies (that too with red eyes and continuous worry about going to the office early next morning!). After England ousted India out of the tournament, though there was a bit of sadness, there was also an element of relief. Since I did not actually watch the complete match, I was looking at Rediff the next morning and reading articles of Dhoni apologizing to the Indian fans, and Kirsten blaming the IPL for this sub-standard performance; the comment that actually encapsulated it all was of a regular reader finally exclaiming — Now, let’s back to work! Seriously, let’s get back to work, and thank god that there’s no Cricket to be played in the next few weeks after this one. Meanwhile, I’m sure that our Mitochondria will get recharged and we’ll get back in passion for the next series against West Indies starting this month end. But wait! There’s also the women’s T-20 world cup happening simultaneously in England and India is thru to the semis there. Wonder which channel that is being telecast on???

https://medium.com/cacofonix/pragmatic-fan-club-57f45fb1c666

[]

2017-09-19 10:30:19.075000+00:00

['Cricket', 'India', 'Indian Premier League']

How to Prevent Metal Surfaces From Shocking You

An unassuming doorknob (Unsplash.com) Tired of getting shocked when you try to get into your car or open the front door to your office? Here’s a useful trick that I learned a few years ago that comes in handy especially in the winter months. I’m not the first to discover this; there are many articles online that also talk about it. But since none of my friends or coworkers seemed to know about it, I wanted to write a short article on how it works and the underlying science. It’s a very simple technique and doesn’t require any sort of investment other than a metal object. Basically, all you need to do is take a small metal object, such as a key or coin (I’ll use a key as an example for the rest of the article), and touch it to the metal surface that you think will shock you. Normally, if your body is statically charged and you touch a metal surface with your bare finger, a spark will jump between the tip of your finger and the metal. The same process occurs when you touch a key to the metal surface, but in this case, you won’t feel a shock. This is because the metal key is a very conductive material and helps act as an extension of your body. Electrons are transferred from your body to the key and to the metal surface. The more surface area of your finger that is in direct contact with the metal portion of key, the less likely you will feel the shock, since the energy flowing from your body to the metal (the key in this instance) is distributed evenly across all areas where the metal of the key and the skin of your finger are in direct contact. The reason a spark hurts so much when you touch a metal surface directly with your finger is because all of that concentrated energy from the spark is transmitted directly from a very small area at the tip of your finger. This stimulates the nerve endings at the tip of your finger, leading to the pain of a shock. This problem with surface area is eliminated when you use a key since it becomes an extension of your finger and takes the direct hit from the spark. A spark jumping between a key and metal lock. If I had touched the metal lock directly with my finger instead of the key, I probably would have experienced a painful shock. Here’s a few tips to keep in mind. Make sure your finger is directly touching the metal portion of the key. If you have a car key with a plastic grip, holding only the plastic portion won’t be effective since plastic is a poor conductor of electricity and electrons won’t be able to flow between your finger and the key effectively enough. This could lead to a surprise shock if you touch the metal surface directly with your finger thinking you’ve successfully discharged yourself. Remember, the more area of your finger that is in contact with the metal portion of the key, the less painful the shock will be. Usually you can tell if it was successful if you can hear a spark or feel the hair on your arm jump but don’t feel a shock. If you followed these steps and nothing happens, then that means that you probably wouldn’t have been shocked to begin with, so it should be safe to touch the metal surface directly. Enjoy!

https://medium.com/@kelvinwinter6/how-to-prevent-metal-surfaces-from-shocking-you-da930a143515

['Kelvin Winter']

2020-12-26 17:40:59.756000+00:00

['Life Hacking', 'Winter', 'Physics', 'Electricity', 'Science']

Dirt.

Playing in the dirt is a favorite past time of youth. From playing with toy trucks in the mud, to riding bicycles on dirt tracks, or playing in my grandpa’s garden, I have fond memories of being a child and getting dirty. Watching my own kids play in the dirt brings back a lot of those memories for me. When my wife and I bought our home in the Seattle area 10 years ago and started planting a garden, I began to look at it much differently. Most people don’t really think about it, but dirt in the form of soil is alive. During my time in academia, soil was discussed as the medium that holds nutrients and that plants grow in. Our perception of soil has definitely changed from then. Now, we view it as being full of life. It is said that one teaspoon of soil contains more living organisms than all the people in the world. Without that life, it is just dirt. One could devote a life time to study soil and still not understand every aspect of it due to the sheer volume of information and because discoveries about it are still being to this day. Fortunately though, we don’t need to have a PhD in agronomy to use the information out there. In following the 5 key principles of soil health we can manage the land to be productive and profitable. And through using observation, we can have a good idea of how we are doing at managing the soil. Before I head into the principles of soil health, a quick discussion on soil organic matter (SOM). SOM is all of the organic matter in the soil from plant and animals in various states of decomposition. As I discussed in the last month’s article on water, a 1% increase in SOM allows the soil to hold up to 25,000 gallons more water per acre. It also increases the soil’s fertility by allowing more nutrients to be retained, reduces soil compaction and crusting, and helps to build and stabilize the soil (soil aggregation). Those last 3 things are critically important as they allow water to infiltrate into the soil instead of running off. Once SOM reaches a point where it no longer breaks down and is stable in the soil, it becomes humus. Essentially that organic matter is carbon and is now stored in the ground. That’s carbon sequestration and why healthy soils are usually a dark brown to black in color. According to a UC Davis study, it is the best long term way to store carbon, contrary to the popular belief that planting trees is the best way. When wildfires come, trees burn releasing carbon. The carbon in the soil is untouched, that is until man puts a plow or other tillage equipment in the ground and exposes it to air. And while the study of soil is somewhat mudded (pun intended), the 5 principles of soil health have been shown to provide quantifiable benefits. The first principle of soil health is to keep armor on the soil. That armor is living or dead plant material. Think of it as the skin on your body. It helps to regulate temperature which allows for a more hospitable place for life to exist. In addition, it slows down water as it hits the ground which allows the water to enter the soil and reduce the crusting on the soil surface. The second principle of soil health is to minimize soil disturbance. That doesn’t mean eliminate it because at the core of the soil health principles, it is my belief that we are trying to replicate nature. Nowhere in nature is a place completely static. And while I do see a place for the plow and other tillage equipment, in my opinion it has been one of the most destructive technologies that man has ever invented due to its overuse. When used judiciously, it can have benefits. As I traveled back and forth across the state over the years, I would see large dust clouds coming from field equipment plowing fields. Not only does that pose environmental and health concerns, but that’s the farmers ability to grow a crop floating away. Plant diversity is the third soil health principle. Having a diverse species mix allows for feeding soil life. I would say the majority of the population would agree that a carrot is a healthy food item. But if all you ate was carrots, that wouldn’t be healthy. The same thing goes for the soil. The diversity in plants also attracts a diversity in animal species, both harmful and helpful. Having the diverse plants also allows for making the most of from the available sunlight through photosynthesis. Different shape leaves and plant structures allow for this to happen. The fourth principle is having a live plant root in the soil. Just like how plant diversity feeds the soil different types of food, having a living roots in the soil gives a continuous supply of food for the soil. Last, and my favorite part of 5 soil health principles, is integrating livestock. Even though I received a degree in Horticulture, it wasn’t until I had my first taste with the livestock gateway drug, aka chickens, that I developed an interest in farm animals. Plants and animals evolved together, and it’s the ability of animals to cycle nutrients that makes them so important to the soil. How we manage them also plays a vital role in whether or not the livestock help or hurt soil health. Those of us involved in raising livestock have to understand that we are continuously being scrutinized by government, various activists, and the general public in what we do. The better we manage the land and livestock, the less we open ourselves up from unwarranted criticisms. As an added benefit, the attention we devote to our management leads to increased productivity which pays off in higher profitability. Alex Case Cohen, Natural Resource/Farm Planner with Stevens County Conservation District, sums up the importance of the 5 principles of soil health best by saying “The more we simulate nature, the better our soil will be. If we incorporate perennial and annual plants, minimize disturbance, and re-introduce livestock in a pattern reminiscent of pre-historic grazing, then improved soil health is absolutely attainable”. Taking soil samples and sending them to a lab for analysis is going to be the ideal way to see how we are doing at taking care of our soil. You really should be taking a soil test before you do anything to it. But in lieu of a soil test, there are a few things we can look for. It starts with using a shovel to take a scoop of soil out of the ground in profile. If it looks dark in color and has a consistency like cottage cheese, job well done. That dark color is organic matter in the soil which is helping to form aggregation, or that cottage cheese texture. After that, look and see if you can find white branching filaments like a spider web which is mycorrhizal fungi. Mycorrhizal fungi has a symbiotic relationship with plants to increase water and nutrient absorption by the plants. (As a side note, plants can also communicate with each other via mycorrhizal fungi.) Now break up that soil and look for earthworms. Earthworms are like a keystone species for soil life. There are a few other beneficial insects you might see like springtails, pillbugs, and spiders, but it is what you can’t see unless you have a microscope that is truly amazing. Next, take a big whiff of the soil. Does it smell putrid or have a neutral to sweet almost bread like smell? The putrid smell can be an indicator that the soil is lacking oxygen. With these quick observations, an individual can make a quick assessment how their soil is doing. I do not even attempt to consider myself an expert on soils. My formal education on the topic ended with my Agronomy 101 class. There are many much more qualified people to talk about the subject in further detail but I would like to suggest to those of you who are interested on the topic to look up Ray Archuleta, formerly of the USDA-NRCS if you don’t already know him. He has a multitude of presentations on YouTube that are extremely informative and I highly recommend them. I have spent many a late night watching his presentations, to which my wife can attest to. She probably thought I was watching something else… Following Gregg on Facebook, Instagram, and twitter @olaainafarms or email him at gregg@olaainafarms.com Published in Volume 12 Number 2 of the Silverado Express

https://medium.com/@gregg-deponte/dirt-3913cd60f817

['Gregg Deponte']

2020-02-16 05:14:45.047000+00:00

['Farmers', 'Farm', 'Regenerative Agriculture', 'Soil Health']

Insights are nice.

I remember having an insight about a decade ago when I was taking a shower. Perhaps much of this will sound like none sense to most but I’m using this more so as a journal so I’m not concerned. Regardless, I’ve been pondering for some time the difficulties human beings seem to have collaborating with each other. The entire study of psychology has obviously not helped us work together; we’ve never been more divided and at odds as we are now. In fact the advancement of specialist domains like psychology only seem to make lack of collaborative capacity worse. So it feels rather obvious that the psychologists are likely themselves psychologically disordered; therefore any attempt to help on their part makes whatever’s going on worse. I suppose one of my most significant insights into the activity of man came when I was taking a shower around 10 or 11 years ago; I was reading a shampoo bottle and it just sort of hit me that everything I think and say and how I act, are all based on everything I’ve read, seen, heard, smelt, tasted, etc recorded in someway as memory which I call my knowledge — this might be common knowledge to some, but when it comes out of nowhere as an insight, it really changes how you see everything; it’s more of an understanding that operates by itself and outside the framework of knowledge by which it’s communicated. It was very clear to me that all my thinking and consequently my actions are based on what I know, what I have gathered in life so far. This seemed at the time to make all of my interests irrelevant and meaningless. Because if I was acting on acquired knowledge, I didn’t see how I was different from a computer or a robot. Somehow I suppose I realized that I was very confused. And so was everybody else. Because realizing we’re all mechanized through knowledge it became obvious how man has never been free from such stupid things like war, tyranny, brutality, and general daily conflict we all go through, the nonesensical stuff. I think I read somewhere that we’ve been in some state of war every single day for the past 5,000 years of recorded history. I still can’t believe we’ve had the deadliest human conflict in our history just under 80 years ago! Even with all the technological advancements and medical advancements, the basic quality of the human mind hasn’t changed; we keep doing the same shit over and over again. We’ve been brought up on war so our psychology is based on war, on conflict. This seems to manifest in a hundred different colorful ways and we give different names to them, but basically man seems to always be in some level of unease, anxiety, and at odds with either himself or something else. We call this human nature or God’s will and keep going with it. It was clear to me that man does not and has never fully understood himself. Even all the psychologists — make no mistake I mean all of them, anyone who calls himself a psychologist- lacks sanity for he does not understand himself and therefore cannot help another human being totally. He might be able to recondition a man to be relatively more peaceful, so as to be functional in our culture; however this does not at all solve the problem of human conflict. The seeds and roots of conflict remain while the branches are reorganized. I’ll expand on all this at a later time. Maybe

https://medium.com/@weerahannaddi/insights-are-nice-4a75c6828eb1

['Sammy Weerahannaddi']

2020-12-14 05:02:58.138000+00:00

['Insights', 'Psychology']

Jaime Westenbarger Explains the Steps Being Taken by Remodeling Companies to Provide Safe and Effective Services

You may have the desire to bring your property to the next level through remodeling, which is what a lot of people are doing during the pandemic. It makes sense — more people are spending more time at home, as well as working from their home offices. Not only that but investing in your home now can pay off big down the road when it comes time to sell. However, some people may be hesitating a bit to do the upgrade work because they’re unsure of how contractors are taking steps to deliver their services during COVID-19. But rest assured many companies have adapted to newer practices to reduce contact while still providing quality renovations, says Brentwood Tennessee’s Jaime Westenbarger, director of sales for Bluebird Roofing. Jaime Westenbarger from Brentwood, Tennessee, Explains the Steps Being Taken by Remodeling Companies to Provide Safe and Effective Services Reducing Physical Contact — While Staying in Touch Reputable contractors such as Bluebird Roofing keep their customers in the loop when it comes to progress on their renovations. However, they have found a way to get around some of the steps required for a job by turning to technology, explains Jaime Westenbarger. One of the measures being taken are contactless appointments, which are a modification from the typical handshake meet-and-greet you’d have when first meeting with a contractor. That usually involves knocking on a door or texting to let the customer known the crew has arrived and then talking from a safe distance. If the contractor wants to show a customer specific area of the property that needs to be addressed, some companies are using video conferencing to walk them through it. Meanwhile, other companies have reduced the need for handing over paper contracts to customers, which is not only safer, but also cuts down on paper use, notes Jaime Westenbarger. Paperless contracts are still legally binding (as part of the ESIGN Act) and can be conveniently and securely signed by customers in the comfort of their own homes and then returned electronically. Drone Inspections Rising in Popularity Brentwood, Tennessee’s Jaime Westenbarger on Drone Inspections Meanwhile, contractors are finding other ways to generate estimates that may be for insurance claim purposes. Drones have become a convenient way for companies to survey a property accurately from above, assessing the condition of the roof with on-board cameras without the need to step onto it. This approach is also safer as weakened or faulty roofs can become a hazard for contractors, adds Jaime Westenbarger. This use of technology by skilled operators produces surprisingly detailed images that can be used when assessing the scope of a roof repair or replacement, or even collecting an accurate estimate for an insurer. When the work involved requires an insurance claim, companies like Bluebird Roofing can eliminate the need for direct contact with your insurer, as they will liaison on your behalf to clarify your coverage details, notes Jaime Westenbarger. Making Use of Electronic Invoicing and Payments Many contractors are moving away from handling cash or checks and are instead making it easier for customers to pay through electronic means. That includes sending an invoice by email (or traditional mail) and letting customers log in to secure payment portals and paying with a credit card or even accepting bank e-transfers in some cases. This eliminates the need for customers to carry cash, while also giving them the ability to pay electronically from anywhere rather than dropping a check in the mailbox. Contractors Adapting to New Protocols Bluebird Roofing and many other home renovation contractors are quickly adapting their practices to ensure they can still deliver their services during the pandemic, while increasing safety for both the customer and their own crew, explains Jaime Westenbarger. If you’re putting off renovations that can increase the value and function of your home because you’re not sure if it’s safe, be sure to call your contractor and discuss the additional measures the company has in place such as contactless appointments.

https://medium.com/@jaimewestenbarger/jaime-westenbarger-explains-the-steps-being-taken-by-remodeling-companies-to-provide-safe-and-8dcdc47ae325

['Jaime Westenbarger']

2020-11-27 19:57:39.343000+00:00

['Covid 19 Crisis', 'Covid 19', 'Tennessee', 'Real Estate', 'Drones']

Help us teach people to code

We’re pioneering a new for-profit model to train people to code. To meet demand and reach more people, we’re scaling up. Our goals Transform people who are unemployed / not fulfilling their potential, into coders with good career prospects. Make money by building software for profit using apprentices we’ve trained. Reinvest profit from 2 to reach as many people as we can. How we’re doing it We’ve designed a course to teach people to become fullstack node / react.js developers in ~4 months. We’ve successfully trained 3 people using the course. They are now all working on building software for our clients. Class of ‘17 Reaching more people To reach more people we’re hiring Partners. Partners are responsible for: Managing a team of 3–4 apprentices. Training, code reviews, helping trouble shoot bugs etc. Being ultimately responsible for delivering client projects. Estimating work, tracking progress, talking to clients, understanding the requirements and setting the technical direction. This allows us to scale up and train 3–4 more apprentices for each new Partner. Which means we can help more people learn to code. Partner with us We’re looking for Partners: With 3+ years commercial experience coding. Who are strong coders, who work at a professional level in 2+ languages. They should care about good engineering and their craft, and wants to pass that knowledge on to others. coders, who work at a professional level in 2+ languages. They should care about good engineering and their craft, and wants to pass that knowledge on to others. That have good communication skills and have excellent English. Bonus points for experience with: Managing people. Working with clients. Project management. If you fit this description (or you don’t, but common sense tells you that you’d be a good fit) then let us explain why you should apply. Why you should Partner with us If you check the boxes above, congratulations, you’re probably a skilled developer who’s not short of options. Here’s why we think you should become a Partner: You can make a material difference to the outcomes of your apprentices lives. They’ll rely on you to guide them and kick-start their career. Without you, their path will be different. You can work remotely from anywhere with a decent timezone overlap from the UK (ZDEV is remote). You have have a high level of autonomy on how to run your team / projects. Competitive compensation, we’re open to allocating equity / profit shares. We have a high level of flexibility on what you spend your time on. As long as your core responsibilities are met - you’ll get time and support to learn new things. We’re looking to push into the technologies of the next 10–15 years (e.g Crypto, smart contracts and ML). (e.g. we’re actively learning Ethereum). You can work with like minded people and learn from each other. (Here’s my LinkedIn) We’ll get you whatever equipment / training you need. (Laptops, Desks, Co-working, Conferences.) We’re a young company with a startup like culture and a lot of flexibility. We will use that flexibility to get the right Partners to join, so if you’re unsure about anything - just drop us a line. If you think you’re interested email us at jobs@z-dev.io with:

https://medium.com/zdev-engineering/help-us-teach-people-to-code-7cc75cd5ed44

['Richard Gill']

2017-11-29 12:24:49.910000+00:00

['Hiring', 'Jobs', 'Software Development']

SeaLab Gets Certified

SeaLab logo SeaLab is no stranger to hitting new milestones and achievements. We’ve made it our goal to improve on something every chance we get and we’re proud to say that this has fostered an attitude and culture that’s positively impacted each member of our team as well as our clients. We’re very happy to share that we’ve officially reached certification on an aspect of our business that we’re very proud of. We are now a Clutch Certified Women Business. Clutch badge saying “clutch certified women owned business” Even during the decades that followed the women’s rights movement, the business sector stubbornly remained as an all boys club. Stereotypes and cliches dogged the female workforce, leaving a stigma that took superhuman efforts to erase. While the world still has a long way to go, we acknowledge that we have come a long way as well. This certification is a symbol of what we are as entrepreneurs, and our success is the proof of the positive impact we can and have done as a business. Women-owned companies are decidedly in the minority of any industry. This puts their actions, methods, and results under a microscope. Every project becomes a statement on how effective businesses run by women really are, and we welcome that. Cropped image of the infamous Rosie the Riveter poster saying “We Can Do It!” While this is the first certification that we get from Clutch, it won’t be the last. In fact, this milestone will only become more important with each review and award that SeaLab will be getting from now on. You can test to see if these reviews are telling the truth for yourself. If you’re looking for a dedicated design partner that listens to you and is genuinely interested in your success, then we’re the team for you. Just fill out our contact form and we can set up an appointment where we’ll discuss the nuances of your project and get started as soon as possible. See what else we’re up to! Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Google + | Dribbble | LinkedIn

https://blog.sealab.io/sealab-gets-certified-396e282442af

['Cal']

2021-01-21 22:36:51.554000+00:00

['Product Design', 'UX Design', 'Certification', 'Design Agency', 'Women In Business']

How to Ask A Girl Out Over Text Examples

Knowing how to ask a girl out over text without examples can be a bit more complicated when you literally have zero idea of what to send. But don’t despair, I got you. First you need to do your homework and your timing should be perfect. Not every text that comes to your mind is the right one to send. You have to build some sort of rapport before you scare her.. If you feel there’s a connection and seem to have hit it off via text and now you want to finally meet in person, try this; “Hey! Wanna go to the Farmer’s Market on Saturday?” or “You seem great, I’d love to meet up sometime” You see, you don’t want to put pressure on her because that will scare her off. Cute messages to ask a girl out Ask her about something she enjoys. For instance, mentioning her pets works like a charm. … Mirror her texting style. For instance, if she uses acronyms like “lol” and “wyd”, do the same. … Make her smile. …this one is a gold mine Avoid ending your sentences with a period. If you’re a big game shooter and you don’t want to waste anytime, you may check out textgamedecoded and text right away like a boss. You need to have a plan as follows; pick up lines funny texts to send funny texts to get her attention how to ask a girl out over text message How To Skip Straight To The Date Knowing what to text and when to text may take long serious practice. If you’ve ever found yourself wishing you could skip all that texting and just show up for the date, you’re in luck. Textgamedecoded makes it possible. Click here to find out how to make it happen! Here’s the deal… If you can’t get a girl out face to face with you… you are NEVER going to be able to make a move on her, kiss her, or take her home with you. Plain and simple. I remember I would get into a promising “ text conversation “ with a girl I liked. She was responding to my texts… “lol-ing” at my jokes… Yet I just couldn’t find a way to convert it into a date. I couldn’t get her to meet me and it was so frustrating… I lost A TON of girls because of that, and I bet it’s cost you at least one woman before. So let’s make sure it doesn’t happen again with How to Ask A Girl Out Over Text Examples A Father, Husband, Brother, Uncle and a Full Time Blogger.

https://medium.com/@sean-obuseng/how-to-ask-a-girl-out-over-text-examples-c98652e9387b

[]

2020-12-23 15:01:25.018000+00:00

['Relationships', 'Relacionamentos', 'Dating', 'Boys', 'Men']

Logistic Regression With Gradient Descent in Excel

Logistic Regression With Gradient Descent in Excel While using Excel/Google Sheet for solving an actual problem with machine learning algorithms can be a bad idea, implementing the algorithm from scratch with simple formulas and a simple dataset is very helpful to understand how the algorithm works. In a series of articles, I will present how to implement different algorithms from scratch in Excel. Linear Regression With Gradient Descent in Excel Neural Network With Back Propagation in Excel In this article, I will share how I implemented a simple Logistic Regression with Gradient Descent. You can use this link: Simple logistic regression with gradient descent, to get the Excel/Google Sheet file. Now let’s get our hands dirty! Photo by Karen Maes on Unsplash Using a simple dataset First I use a very simple dataset with one feature, you can see the graph below showing the target variable y and the feature variable x. Creating the model The Logistic Regression uses the following model: We can see the final model in the “res” sheet in the Excel file, with a and b. Now, how a and b were determined? Let see in the next sheet “mlh” for maximum likelihood. The cost function of the model First we can consider the likelihood of the model, and we have to maximize: Then we take the log of the likelihood. To have the loss function, we have to take the opposite of the log likelihood. We also name this loss function logistic loss, cross-entropy or log-loss. You can modify the parameters a and b to see that the likelihood of the model will vary. Gradient descent Now let’s find the optimal parameters a and b. For this, we have to find the derivatives of the loss function with respect to a and b. In the sheet “graddesc”, you will find all the Excel formulas to implement the gradient descent. Enjoy!

https://towardsdatascience.com/logistic-regression-with-gradient-descent-in-excel-52a46c46f704

['Angela Shi']

2020-09-27 15:54:16.084000+00:00

['Excel', 'Logistic Regression', 'Data Science', 'Gradient Descent', 'Machine Learning']

The NarcFree Solution- Helping Others

The NarcFree Solution- Helping Others As I think back to a year and a half ago, I cannot believe that my life is so different than it once was. Living with Narcissistic abuse is not only debilitating, at the time that it happens, but can stay with you forever if you let it. Writing the NarcFree Solution was my way to tell the Universe that I was not going to keep myself down and that I would use this opportunity to do what I can to rid others of this toxic abuse syndrome. This singular goal keeps me motivated to keep going and to finish what I started. Every day, I go to work and help families who are struggling with abuse within their own lives and strive to show them that there is a better way. A better way far from the abuse and the intrusive thoughts that threaten to consume victims’ lives. A life consumed by thoughts of doubt and self- hatred is a life not well lived. As past or soon to be ex-victims, we need to get the word out that there are ways to overcome this vicious cycle and to inspire others to do the same. As the Holiday’s come upon us and so many of us are struggling on our own, I challenge each and every one of you to reach out to someone and lend a helping hand or heart. It may be to someone new in a community that you are a part of or it may be to someone you work with. No matter who, take the initiative to offer them the help and support that you have been given or would have liked when you were still trapped within the abuse. I urge you not to stay quiet; Not to let abusers manipulate and destroy lives, but to create awareness around the globe so that families will have brighter days, strong support systems and hope for the future. I wish to you all a wonderful and glorious NarcFree Holiday and best wishes for you and yours.

https://medium.com/@thenarcfreesolution/the-narcfree-solution-helping-others-70fc5da607c2

['The Narcfree Solution']

2020-12-02 16:50:59.878000+00:00

['Narc', 'Abuser', 'Abuse Culture', 'Books And Authors', 'Narcissism']

Fairytale Prisoner by Choice: The Photographic Eye of Melania Trump

Melania’s photographs of Barron are almost all composed as they are above. He is centered in the middle of a big horizon, the ocean, baseball or golf field. He always faces elsewhere, away from the camera, looking not just forward but out, ahead, to the future. Here there is no passivity. Barron is the actor. He is in motion, walking, swinging, looking. He faces none of the restrictions that Melania places on herself. He stands behind no one, no barrier, no glass. Photographically, she composes a world for him that is much bigger than her own. August 15, 2014 Melania only posted one photograph of her and Barron together. It was also the only occasion when she posted a photograph of his whole face, but she disguised him the same way she disguised herself, in the little boy-version of her big sunglasses — ski goggles. The public reason that Melania gave for staying in New York that she wanted to let Barron finish his school year. She didn’t want to disrupt his life. This is nonsense, an absurdity that she might have considered before supporting her husband’s run for president. Melania wants Barron’s world to be bigger than her own. He occupies a totally different, bigger, vaster, compositional space than she does. She also wants to protect him, I think, more than anything. To Melania, protection means hiding. Melania posted her last photo to Twitter on Thursday, June 11, 2015, five days before her husband announced his candidacy for president. It is an old photograph, of a then six-year-old Barron, taken on the beach. He is looking down at the ground ahead and waving goodbye to a professionally built sandcastle in the background. That day Melania knew, of course, that the campaign was coming. In retrospect her choice of a Throwback Thursday post reads as prophecy: a goodbye to her golden towers, to the home destined to crumble. To this day she’s still up there, in the golden Tower, holding onto it for as long as she can. So, why not move to the White House? She’s hiding. She needs to hide so badly that she doesn’t care about anything else. Not her country, not how bad she looks, not the money it costs us. She has no shame because, for her, hiding is shameless. It is safe. She lives behind glass, in cars, in her house, on private planes and private resorts. She doesn’t even get out of the car to see landmarks or walk in the park. She is never among the public, not for a second. Melania Trump is the woman least fit for public service in the entirety of the United States of America. We should expect nothing from her. She’s living inside a dark fairytale, and in fairytales the women trapped in towers never save anyone but themselves.

https://medium.com/@kate8/fairytale-prisoner-by-choice-the-photographic-eye-of-melania-trump-f1f7b97fff29

['Kate Imbach']

2017-04-16 20:31:14.625000+00:00

['Donald Trump', 'President', 'Melania Trump', '2016 Election']

DistillBERT - BERT, now 50% off

Introduction Recent publications within NLP present models with parameter counts that one after another continues to increase, now reaching parameter counts as high as in the tenths of billions (Google T5 with 11B parameters). While more parameters might be the key to optimal performance does it prevent model training and serving where the computational budget might be limited. The paper summarised in this article, “DistillBERT, a distilled version of BERT: smaller, faster, cheaper and lighter” address’ this issue through a method called Knowledge Distillation. Knowledge distillation Knowledge Distillation, introduced by Bucila et al. (2006) and further improved by Hinton et al. (2015) (see appendix for comments on the contribution of these papers) uses a larger model as a teacher for a smaller one which tries to replicate its outputs and sub-layer activation for a given set of inputs. Previous work has shown that it is beneficial to consider more than just the true targets (the one-hot vectors) when training a student. Using the output distribution from the teacher over all possible targets can provide valuable information for creating a student with generalisability. For example, in predicting the hidden word in the sequence “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful [mask]”, the teacher might assign high probabilities to words like “day” and “life”. Relatively speaking might there also be high probabilities assigned to other words like “world”, “story” or “future”. This nuance is important for the student model to learn in order for it to generalise, rather than only learning the correct target. This paper capture this information through loss function used to train the student, comprised of a linear combination of the following three factors: Distillation loss. The output probabilities of the teacher (t) are combined with the ones from the student (s) as shown in the equation below. To minimise this loss the student network, therefore, want to have higher certainty (probability) for the same outputs the teacher provided large probabilities. The teacher probabilities are calculated through temperature softmax, a modification to softmax introduced by Hinton et al. as a way to get more out of the granularities from the teacher model output distribution. It basically reduces the size of large probabilities while increasing that of the smaller ones, creating a smoother output distribution. Distillation loss Temperature softmax. z is the output logit from the teacher model while T is the temperature. A larger T creates a smoother output distribution. Cosine embedding loss. A distance measure between hidden representations for student and teacher. This essentially enables the student to mimic the teacher in more layers than just the output layer, intuitively enabling the creation of a better model Masked Language Modelling loss. The same loss as used when training BERT to predict the correct token masked from the sequence. Architecture The student network architecture is a Transformer encoder model with half the number of layers compared to BERT-base, while keeping the hidden representation dimension the same. This results in a total parameter count of 66M compared to the teacher model’s 110M. The reason for this choice is that reducing model size through the number of layers achieve the highest reduction in computation complexity. Reducing the hidden state representation (the size of the vectors) would due to linear algebra optimisations used for each vector operation have achieved the same reduction in model size but not in computational complexity. Further, simply changing the number of layers enables the student network to be initialised with parameters from every other layer in the teacher model. Training This student network was trained on the same dataset as the original BERT model following best practices for transformer encoders; large batches (up to 4k samples) only tasked with predicting masked tokens and not the next sentence prediction task. Compared to RoBERTa could this distilled BERT model be trained with only 1.5% of the aforementioned model's computational cost. Results DistillBERT is able to achieve 97% of BERT-base’s score on the GLUE benchmark and 99.3% on the IMDb classification task. This while reducing model size and computational time with around 40%. An ablation study revival the importance of the different loss objectives, showing that both cosine distance between student and teacher hidden representations and distillation loss contribute the most to the overall student performance, increasing the GLUE score by about 4 points. Weight initialisation from the pre-trained model also proves to provide similar gains in performance, increasing the GLUE score by 4.83 when comparing to a distilled model trained without the initialisation. Conclusion Knowledge distillation enables larger models, or ensembles of models, to be condensed into a single, smaller student network. This enables usage of state of the art architectures to be deployed where the computational environment is limited. With recent developments within the field of NLP, e.g. Google’s T5, I do believe that the area of knowledge distillation will continue to evolve over the years to come. Appendix Bucila et al. distill an ensemble of models into a single student model. The authors also bootstrap the training data through processing unlabelled examples with the ensemble, enabling the student to more easily mimic its teachers. Hinton et al. introduce temperature softmax as part of the loss function which creates softer targets for the student to mimic. This high entropy (close to an even distribution) provides much more information than the true targets would, enabling the student to more easily learn to generalise.

https://medium.com/dair-ai/tl-dr-distillbert-8fb0f9e3c03d

['Viktor Karlsson']

2020-07-11 13:16:45.802000+00:00

['Machine Learning', 'NLP', 'Summary', 'Bert']

Hackathons 101 — and why you should consider going to one

I just returned home from my 6th hackathon in less than a year. It was a long, tiring, and amazing 24 hours — and totally worth it! Every time I attend one of these events, it feels like I am getting a month’s worth of learning, all crammed into a single weekend. On top of that I’ve met the most amazing people, built some cool projects (most of my portfolio outside of work), and incorporated a company. Which has been so worth it for a few hours of lost sleep here and there. 😊 I am definitely planning to attend more in the future, and, if you haven’t been to one yet, I hope you might consider it for the future. Types of hackathons There are many different types of hackathons, but they all have several things in common: Time limit — usually between 8 and 48 hours Theme — organizers will ask that you build a certain type of application (like Internet-of-Things) or they’ll tell you to use a certain technology Prizes — generally awarded for the best overall applications and for apps that fit into certain categories, or use a certain technology There is usually plenty of information online about the rules, judging, technologies, etc. It doesn’t take that long to read about the event and avoid surprises when you get there. Quite a few hackathons are for only for college students, and in those cases adults can sometimes attend as mentors, but not participants. Several hackathons I’ve been to even had a Q&A or panel discussion first to talk about what they were looking for in app submissions. Some also have online boards to team up and get to know each other prior to the event. Meeting staff and participants early on helps to ease my social anxiety and give me a confidence boost. FYI: Some of my favorite hackathons are Give Camp, Start-up Weekend, and Civic-minded local hacks. Let me know if there is another one I should attend! Why should you go? I already mentioned some reasons but here is a an overview: Networking — This is a given. I’ve met politicians, business people, companies, developers, designers, and plenty of rockstars (figuratively, of course 😊) at these events. I’m shy, but I force myself to get out and meet at least a few people each time. I’ve never met someone I regret meeting at a hack! Portfolio — I have several solid, well-designed portfolio pieces that came out of hackathons. Some companies have talked to me because they liked what I built at one. Make sure you get on a team where you think you will fit in well and try to work on an idea you are passionate about or at least very interested in. Having a designer on the team is super helpful but I always try to look at some design inspiration before I go to one of these so I can whip up a layout and design doc if necessary. I think it’s good to treat every project as a potential portfolio app. Confidence — I’ve found it to be surprisingly common that new developers think their skills are sub-par and they won’t be able to make meaningful contributions to a team. Plenty of non-technical people are needed at these events and even people who want to code but only know HTML or CSS can help on a team. Teamwork — The importance of learning to work with other developers when you are new cannot be overstated. It’s very, very important. You learn to partition tasks, share a codebase, and get along in a sometimes stressful environment. Sometimes apps crash and things don’t work out. Sometimes you or your teammate will get tired or frustrated or grumpy. Going through this experience together forces you to learn how to work together through the good and the bad as a team. Communication Skills — As a good teammate, you should always be talking to your group. “I just pushed code, can you pull.” “I’m working on this…” “How are you doing with that?” “You seem frustrated, let’s take a walk and get some fresh air.” It forces you be open and explicit about what you are thinking and doing. More importantly, it makes you think about what’s going on around you and how your teammates are doing. Your communication skills will improve! What to expect Expect the unexpected. Things will go wrong with your code. Venues will be loud or really cold. You may need to pivot on your idea after you already started working on it. The best thing you can do is to prepare as much as you can. Most hackathons (if they are 24+ hours) expect some participants to be staying overnight and they will have some couches to crash on. In preparation for staying up very late (or overnight) it’s not a bad idea to bring extra warm clothes, a blanket and pillow (or, better, a sleeping bag), snacks, and energy beverages. Before you leave your house, check and make sure you have extra headphones, chargers, and all the devices you are going to need as well as daily items that you use. Even if I live close, I don’t go home to sleep because I know I will sleep in and end up feeling lazy and losing time. As for the coding part: knowing how to use generators or starter-kits can be a huge advantage going in. This can prevent a lot of headaches and wasted time and let you do more actual coding without beating your head against the wall getting things set up from scratch. The less complicated your code is, the better: time is at a premium during these events and other people of various skill levels will likely be jumping in and coding with you. If you want to do an ambitious mobile app, that’s great — as long as you are considering the time that it takes to set up and get all of the emulators up and running or devices working on whatever wifi they might have at that venue. I’ve done web, mobile, and cloud projects at hackathons and web app are by far the fastest for me to set up and start building, even though I develop with cross-platform mobile and cloud solutions almost every day. With a little planning, I am much more productive and end up having more fun (and getting more sleep!). In short, go to a hackathon! Let me know if you have any questions or if I missed something here. I would love to read about some of your experiences as well! Now I’m going to catch up on some shut eye 😉

https://medium.com/free-code-camp/hack-a-thons-101-why-you-should-consider-going-to-one-8b0c21923a98

['Gwendolyn Faraday']

2017-06-20 03:40:31.804000+00:00

['Hackathons', 'Tech', 'Startup', 'Technology', 'Web Development']

My Sex Bucket List

Another challenge was what to put on my list. After becoming single for the first time since high school, less than three years ago, I launched like a space rocket into my sexual exploration, taking me to 2.0 and beyond at lightning speed. But there’s ALWAYS more to be explored. While I expect this list to change and morph with time, I’m jumping on this recent fad and serving you a handful of my naughtiest fantasies. And after all, Christmas is around the corner, and I’ve been a veeery good girl! 1 ¯ I’ll have both, thank you! (DP) My first threesome was with two men, but there was no double penetration involved. In hindsight, this was for the best as it all went down in a sex-club, and I was in no way prepared or ready for that. I’ve experienced the ‘feeling’ of a DP, with a partner, adding a dildo, so I know that the sensation itself is unparalleled, but I’ve yet to experience this with two of the ‘the real thing’. Hot tip | For those of you who are into that filled feeling, I can highly recommend trying one of those inflatable latex dildos—it’s hard to describe any other way than, Wooaaahh!!! I’d love to combine the two experiences and have an MFM threesome involving DP. A juicy fantasy | Someone I knew used to handpick a secret guy to join him and his girlfriend. She wouldn't know who he was and would wait, blindfolded for the mysterious Mr. X to come and lend a hand…or more accurately, a cock. Mr. X is basically just a human dildo, carefully selected and screened for the job. Risk factor| While this scenario is top spank-bank material, my over-thinking brain often gets caught up in logistics: How do we all move in synch? Where do our bodies go in relation to each other? If I picture specific people, who goes in front and who’s behind? Finding the participants and making sure the dynamic is right also sounds like a major challenge. Lots to consider here, and I foresee a share of awkwardness—but something tells me it will be worth it!

https://medium.com/essensually-ena/my-sex-bucket-list-ba4a89b56578

['Ena Dahl']

2019-11-26 06:32:02.654000+00:00

['BDSM', 'Sex Tips', 'Short Story', 'Sex', 'Sex Bucket List']

Do What Makes You Strong

My aunt passed away in July. She lived in South Africa, so I attended the memorial, and funeral over zoom. It was a little strange, but at the same time, really great because people who would have never been able to attend could still ‘be there’. During the memorial, something very out of the ordinary happened to me. As the service was going along, people were sharing some of the most heartfelt messages, giving beautiful accounts of her life: the passions she had, how she touched people and influenced their lives etc. This brought up a plethora of memories and feelings in me that I felt the urge to share. I hadn’t prepared anything. I wasn’t scheduled to speak on the zoom either. In addition, there were lots of people that I’d never seen before. Naturally, that negative inner voice started to come out. You know the one I mean. The one that tells you not to do things because of possible embarrassment or judgement. “Don’t speak, you haven’t prepared anything, you’ll probably fumble your words. Also, most of the people on this zoom don’t even know who you are.” Then the other voice, that wants the best for you, started to chime in: “But you do have some stuff to get off your chest. If you don’t speak now, you’ll probably regret it for the rest of your life.” “But, you don’t even have anything that great to say. After all the previous heartfelt personal stories people were giving, yours would just sound shit. And again, you haven’t prepared anything.” This internal dialogue went on for about 30 minutes to an hour while the speeches were finishing up. I weighed it up. On one hand, I could say nothing and save myself a potentially awkward, embarrassing moment as I attempted to make a last-minute, off the cuff speech — like the ending scene of some Hollywood film. On the other hand, I could ask to say a few words and make an idiot of myself. Because I hadn’t seen or spoken to the majority of this side of my family, coupled with the fact that I hadn’t prepared anything or done much public speaking, the potential for judgement and embarrassment was rife (In my head, at least). “Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.” The clock is ticking and I’m feeling pretty anxious as we are nearing the end of the speeches. I make a last-minute call to speak. I knew that if I messed up, eventually I would forget about it. So would the family members on the zoom. But, if I didn’t speak, It would continue to play on my mind. That “what if” would never go. When something has been done, whether it goes well or not, you can move on. But, when cards are left on the table, when a stone is left unturned, it can haunt you forever. Even after I’d decided to speak, I could still feel that inner fear pulling me back. My mother had just announced that we were about to move away from the speeches and onto the final part of the memorial. It was at that point I just came out and said: “I know I’m not scheduled to speak, but if I can, I have a few words to say.” It was similar to the type of thing you do when you’re at a restaurant, mulling over various options, but can’t decide what to get. You keep going back and forth, back and forth, until that final moment when the waiter/waitress comes over and asks, “What would you like to order?” Only at that moment, when the pressure is on, do you just come out with it. “I’ll have the ……” Like with most things, when I actually started speaking, the nerves more or less went. When the speech was done I felt so much better. I received some great messages afterwards, from my close family members telling me how lovely the speech was; how the spontaneity actually added to the authenticity and sincerity of my words. For a lot of people, this may not seem like a particularly brave thing to do. I’ve done things that others would consider way more daunting. But for me, it was extremely difficult. In the coming days, something very interesting happened. I started to feel a lot better about myself, in a general sense. I had a bit more self-respect than usual because I’d done something that involved courage. It had opened up a new part of my mind that had previously been locked. In my day to day decision-making processes, I started to consider options that I never would have before. I was able to say no in certain situations, where typically I’d have previously given into peer pressure: In social situations, in work, in my personal relationships. For example, I had a holiday booked with friends, but it wasn’t the best time for me to go with everything going on. Normally, I would be a people pleaser and just go anyway. I wouldn’t want to disappoint people or let them down, and I would value this above doing what was actually best for me. But not this time. Also, I was able to have difficult conversations with people close to me that needed to be had for a while, but had been brushed under the carpet. The more I did these things, the easier it was to do them. That one act of courage had given me a little bit of extra strength and confidence to start making different decisions. Those subsequent decisions then gave me even more confidence to make slightly harder decisions, and so on. It was like a massive snowball effect. On a neurological level, I guess my brain had made a new type of connection when I made the decision to speak. And like opening a new door, where you don’t know what’s going to be behind it, that new neural connection opened up new doors and set a precedent for different ways of thinking As daunting as it was, I’d done something that made me slightly stronger, which has then translated through to other parts of my life. This is where I really started to understand the idea that everything we do is interconnected. I’d heard this phrase many times in different contexts. I had a theoretical understanding of it. But, I never truly understood until I experienced it like this. People like Mike Rashid, in the fitness industry, always talk about training at the gym, not primarily for the physical benefits, but for the mental benefits. Mike often says that killing himself in the gym has helped him in business, with family, and with friends. Ed Mylet shares the same sentiment; In an interview on The Passionate Few, he insists that he couldn’t have built his 450 million dollar empire without his consistent gym routine. David Goggins and Joe Rogan always talk about intentionally putting themselves in uncomfortable situations to build mental strength, which in turn helps them in other aspects of life. The discipline you build when you say no to that extra cookie; the resilience you find when hitting that last rep, although it burns; The courage you build when you step into the unknown in spite of fear; the openness you develop when you dare to genuinely consider another perspective etc; they all translate to other parts of your life: Business, work, personal relationships. They set a precedent for how your brain deals with future situations. Whether directly or indirectly, how you behave in each part of your life affects every other part of your life. Because of this interconnectedness combined with the snowball effect, even actions you think are seemingly small and insignificant can have a wide-scale impact on your life. So, do things that add to your character, you never know where it could lead.

https://byrslf.co/do-what-makes-you-strong-1616b48ed057

['Dan Chigwada']

2021-09-12 14:26:28.388000+00:00

['Personal Development', 'Psychology', 'Beyourself', 'Self Improvement', 'Personal Story']

Top 10 Graduation Speeches of All Time

It was a about year ago that I got a deal for YouTube Red that gave me 6 months of subscription for $1, so I decided to try it out. I had never been a big watcher of YouTube before because I believed it was like watching TV which I always considered a waste of time. BUT, I had recently (at the time) been told that Sheryl Sandberg’s graduation speech was really good and that I should go watch it. It was May/June and all the graduations were taking place and so the first thing I did was look up “best graduation speeches” and my life was changed forever. Having written a graduation speeches for both my elementary school and college ceremonies (which I will share at the end), I had an idea of what made a good speech and what contributes to a horrible speech. There’s something just amazing about graduation speeches because they literally are the world’s best knowledge summed up in like 10–15 minutes. The life experience and wisdom of a single person combined with hours of their own research putting it together is something of a sight to hear. TED talks today are really almost a streamlined fancy version of a graduation speech, given by a leading expert in their field. However, there’s just something magical about a graduation speech because you have a captive (possibly drunk, non-attentive) group of accomplished students who are about to embark on the next chapter of their lives. Graduation (otherwise known as Commencement) speeches are more about imparting life lessons and life journeys of a person rather than informing or demonstrating their latest research. They’re meant to be aspirational while TED talks are more inspirational. They are about someone who has already walked the path providing insight, and possible steps to get there, but most of all, proof that it’s possible (and that everything will be OK!) While the reports are still coming in from this past month’s round of commencements for 2017, there is still a very large database of existing ones to look back on! Though, if you’ve seen Will Ferrell’s USC speech, you won’t be disappointed. Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard speech is pretty good too along with Tim Cook’s for MIT. The irony being that Harvard gave Zuckerberg an honorary degree years after he dropped out. With that said, here are my top 10 graduation speeches of all time: (I tried to make it as gender balanced as possible and as diverse as possible with people from all different backgrounds and given at different schools!) 1. Steve Jobs (Stanford, 2005) Favorite Quote: “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish” This one is an instant classic because Steve Jobs literally just tells it like it is. It’s very straightforward and to the point. There’s a great interview where he says that life changeable and moldable to how you want it to be. His approach to his commencement speech is simple, it’s just 3 stories from his life, “No big deal, just three stories.” Connecting the Dots — “You can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards.” Love and Loss — “Keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.” Death — “For the past 33 years, I have looked in the morning and asked myself, ‘If the today was the last day of my life, would I want to do what I’m about to do today?’” 2. J.K. Rowling (Harvard, 2008) Favorite Quote: “Achievable goals, the 1st step to self-improvement.” J.K. Rowling’s speech appeals to the young graduates by admitting that the weeks and weeks of nausea have helped her to lose weight and that when recalling her own graduation day speaker, she can’t remember a thing that the famous British speaker said, so that gave her the ease knowing that the wisdom she imparted that day would most likely not influence them in any way to become a “gay wizard!” She then goes into the two main points of her talk: The Fringe Benefits of Failure (aka tests of adversity) The Crucial Importance of Imagination She talks about her childhood upbringing and how much heartbreak and heartache she went through in poverty. Failure helped her strip away the inessential and concentrate on the only work that ever mattered to her, which is now what we all know and love as Harry Potter, a now billion-dollar industry that has inspired billions of people around the world. We touch other people’s lives simply by existing. We do not need magic to transform our world, we carry everything we need inside ourselves already, we have the power to imagine better. She actually turned her speech into a book for everyone to read and enjoy. 3. Sheryl Sandberg (UC Berkeley, 2016) Favorite Quote: “When life sucks you under, you can kick against the bottom, find the surface and breathe again.” Lean into the suck. This was the graduation speech that got me into this whole obsession. What really grabbed me was that this was the first time she had spoken since the death of her husband and the raw emotion you can feel from her words is so authentic and awe-inspiring that it just grips you in your seat as you hang on every word describing her road to recovery and resilience. A graduation speech is meant to be a dance between youth and wisdom. She said that this speech would be a little bit different. She was not going to talk about what she learned in life, but what she learned in Death. The death of her husband, Dave and how the grief had changed her in very profound ways. In the face of the void, or any challenge, you can choose joy and meaning. It is the hard days, the days that challenge you to your very core that will determine who you are. Your life is not determined by what you achieve but how you survive. Sometimes Option A will not be available, so you just got to “kick the shit out of Option B”. You just have to remember Martin Seligman’s 3 P’s (or keys) for how to bounce back from setbacks and hardship: Personalization — the belief we are at fault but it’s important to remember “don’t take failures personally” Pervasiveness — the belief that an event will affect all areas of your life Permanence — the belief that the sorrow will last forever If you can overcome the traps of the 3 P’s then your entire paradigm will shift and you’ll be well on your way to healing. Your “psychological immune system” will kick into gear. The seeds of resilience are planted in how we process negative events… Finding gratitude and appreciation is key to resilience. 4. Will Ferrell (Harvard, 2003) Favorite Quote: I graduated from the university of LIFE. I received a degree from the school of hard knocks. This is one of the BEST commencement speeches EVER GIVEN. But unless you have a degree in comedy and have done standup for years and years and years, then this method of graduation speech should probably be left to the professionals. It’s the best example of using story and imagination to set the fun tone for the entire speech. He says, “Today’s speech is going to be a little bit different, a little unorthodox.” This is not the Wooster Mass boat show is it?!… He tells what it’s really like outside the safe and comfy walls of Harvard and that he has no idea what they’ve gone through since he never graduated college, but what he can give are examples of the tough life they’re about to endure over the next few years (albeit hilariously ridiculous examples). At the time, the President was George W. Bush, so he does a famous impersonation of a letter that the president supposedly wrote to the graduates congratulating them on their achievements. It’s funny now seeing it 2 presidents later and seeing how we always make fun of our presidents for any reason possible. His comedic techniques are spot on, and he plants a joke early on and then uses it again in the George W. Bush letter, it’s pure brilliance. Now that he’s given his 2017 speech, I think they might have had to take the Harvard one down or at least change it in some way, so the only good quality one I could find was the above playlist of 3 videos. Compared with his 2017 speech, this one might not have as great a structure in terms of overall writing, but it’s a classic that one should just watch in your lifetime since it’s sets such a precedent of what comedic graduation speeches CAN BE if done right. And then, it seems that his signature way to end his speeches is with a song, so he chooses “Dust in the Wind,” finishes with great custom lyrics and ends to a standing ovation. 5. Natalie Portman (Harvard, 2015) Favorite Quote: Achievement is wonderful when you know why you’re doing it, and when you don’t know, it can be a terrible trap. Guess what? Natalie Portman graduated IN 2003 and you know who gave the Harvard speech in 2003? That’s right. Will Ferrell. It’s CRAZY to watch this speech directly after Will Ferrell’s because you can see how far a person’s life can come since the days of graduation, and it’s really cool to hear her story of her life following those days. She knows she’s not a comedian, but knows she can be poignant, so she embraces that. [Your university] is giving you all diplomas tomorrow. You are here for a reason. She’s graceful, beautiful, and eloquent, and discusses her insecurities at being an actor in a world of academics and how she had to deal with that in her own family life as well as when she first attended Harvard. She goes on to say, “There was a reason I was an actor, I love what I do.” And that she didn’t need any more explanation to her reason. She describes, “I wanted to tell stories, imagine the lives of others and help others do the same.” What’s great about this speech is it’s done by an actor, but a non-comedic one and shows how you don’t need comedy to make a great speech. Her motto for her time at university and through the dark times was, “Done. Not good.” and how restaurants in Japan like Jiro’s sushi restaurant that she want to with her husband only focused on ONE thing, making something “Good and Never Done” and taking pleasure in the beauty and particular. She emphasizes the importance of doing things only that you’re passionate about simply for the experience making them and the opportunity to meet people that could later become your best friends. Dive into your own obliviousness. Embrace your inexperience and your not knowing how to do things because you’ll try more things than you ever thought or imagined. It’s true: “Helping others ends up helping you more than anyone.” 6. Neil Gaiman (University of the Arts, 2012) Favorite Quote (of course!): “Make Good Art” This time, we hear from the perspective from a science fiction writer, Neil Gaiman, who has written episodes for Dr. Who and most recently known for his novel, American Gods. This is a great speech for anyone who is pursuing a Creative Career or a career path in the Arts. Though he goes into how he didn’t really have a career plan or a straight path that he took. He just had a list of things he knew what he wanted to do (i.e. like write a novel, do a comic, maybe an episode of Dr. Who, etc.) I didn’t have a career, I just did the next thing on the list. He has some good rules of thumb for people entering the arts: Embrace the fact that you have no idea what you’re doing (because you don’t know what possible or impossible) [similar to Natalie Portman’s message towards the end of her 2015 talk] Don’t do things just for the money. If you didn’t get the money, then you wouldn’t have anything. But if you do work that you’re proud of and don’t get the money, then at least you’ll have the work. The problems of success can be difficult because you’ll have “imposter syndrome” and someone will discover you’re a fraud. “I hope you’ll make mistakes” — If you make mistakes, it means you’re out there doing something, and making the world more interesting for your having existed. Let go and enjoy the ride. You should enjoy the work that you do and the process. Don’t worry about the next thing you have to do. I really like the analogies he gives where as an artist, you have to be thick-skinned and be accustomed to failure and learn that “not every project will survive”. You have to see the work that you do like putting messages in bottles and throwing them in the ocean and hoping someone will open it and read it and put something in the bottle that will wash its way back to you in the form of appreciation, a commission, money, love or agents asking you to publish. You have to accept that you may have to put hundreds of things for every bottle that finds its way back. But you just have to keep putting bottles in the ocean. He goes on to describe something that helped him. He imagined that where he wanted to be was a distant Mountain and that anything that got him closer to the mountain he did, and things that took him away from walking towards the mountain. He tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure and to stop when it felt like work which meant that life didn’t feel like work. … Write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can. 7. David Foster Wallace (Kenyon College, 2005) Favorite quote (of course!): This is water… this is water. This video is actually only an audio recording of what David Foster Wallace said to the graduating class of a liberal arts college. There have been GREAT visualizations of his speech, condensed and shortened for highest impact. I always play this video at the end of a talk to senior students about to graduate because it’s so poignant and well-stated. There is also a PDF version of his speech if you would like to read along. He talks about how to think and how your paradigms can affect your entire experience of the world. How we’ve all grown up in world where we’re at the center of it and how that’s our naturally default state. It is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head. His main message is that what you choose to pay attention to matters and you’re ability to be aware of that and control what enters your mind is what will define your reality. And if we default to our easy and automatic natural setting of selfishness, then the rest of the world and the people in it will just seem like they’re just in the way. If you really learn how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options… You get to decide how you’re going to see it… The trick is keeping truth upfront in daily consciousness. 8. Jim Carrey (Maharishi University of Management, 2014) Favorite Quote: I have no limits. I cannot be contained because I’m the container. You can’t contain the container, man! Even though Jim Carrey is a comedic actor, and he uses comedy to enhance his speech, this is a different example than what we’ve previously seen in Will Ferrell’s 2003 address because Jim Carrey actually has a lot of poignant moments instead of just entirely comedy. Sometimes that’s the only thing that’s important really, is just letting each other know we’re here, reminding each other that we’re part of a larger self. It’s not just our bodies, which are loaners that have to be returned, but everything outside of ourselves is part of us too. He actually thanks the parents for paying attention to their children because he has a saying that he keeps with him, “Beware the unloved for the will eventually hurt themselves (or me).” There’s a world out there starving for new ideas and new leadership. Fear will be a player in your life but you get to decide on how much. (Another allusion to choice like David Foster Wallace’s 2005 talk). The decisions you make in this moment are either made out of love or fear. And many of us choose the path of fear cleverly disguised as “practicality.” His best story and message really comes from: “Asking the Universe for what you want.” There’s a great clip from the Oprah show (the first bullet point on Evan Carmichael’s Top 10 Rules for Success) that goes into how he wrote a $10 million dollar check to himself and years later it came true. A lesson he learned from his father is, “You can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.” He states that he discovered that the purpose of his life was to “free people from concern”, just like his dad (who used to say that he wasn’t the ham, he was the whole pig. haha!) What’s yours? How will you serve the world? What do they need that your talent can provide? That’s all you have to figure out because the effect that you have on others is the most valuable currency there is. “Everything you gain in life will rot and fall apart, and all that will be left of you is what was in your heart.” There are a TON of golden nuggets in this one, almost every line is one that I would write down. He finishes talking about our egos and how we’ll have a tendency to never be satisfied. “Just relax and dream up a good life.” 9. Valedictorian Carl Aquino (West Hall High School, 2010) Favorite Quote: “[Proposing to the girl of your dreams] is pretty much what applying to college is like… But what you didn’t tell her was… You proposed to a bunch of backup chicks just in case she didn’t marry you.” This is such a unique speech that it made the top 10. There’s also another very highly rated speech by Ryan Burtons of La Plata High School. This is fantastic if you’re just starting out writing your commencement address and want a good starting point for how to structure your speech. He takes people on a journey (and has some great visualizations and soothing music to accompany it!) but it’s really the story he tells that makes the difference. He basically describes the journey they all went through over the past 4 years of high school. It’s just so clever the way he tells the story starting with Freshmen year. Then he changes music through each year and then matches the style of his speech to what the experience was at that time. Then has a GREAT way of describing the application process to college. That’s my favorite part. 10. Conan O’Brien Favorite Quote: Before I begin, behind me sits a hired president of the United States and decorated war hero, while I, a cable television talk show host, have been chosen to stand here and impart wisdom. I pray I’ve never witnessed a more damning example of what is wrong with America today. Conan uses his great TV personality to bring some good jokes and dry wit humor to the stage. He mocks himself and the college he’s speaking at noting all the things he found silly while doing research for his speech. In the middle of the speech, he says he wanted his speech as memorable as Winston Churchill’s speech at Westminster College in 1963, so he instated the Conan Doctrine which has a bunch of great upgrades. Then he decides to give real practical advice rather than cliché advice like “Reach for the Stars” to survive the next few years. Thus, his first piece of wisdom is: “Adult acne lasts longer than you think.” & “You cannot iron your shirt while wearing it.” But the heart of his talk comes almost 15 minutes in when he describes the experiences of his life following the unexpected come-back of Jay Leno and how he recovered after having his dreams crushed. Though you should not fear failure, you should do your very best to avoid it. But because of his loss and not getting what he wanted, he started “trying things” which allowed him to bring his comedy to the public in many silly, different, unconventional ways. He said it the most satisfying and fascinating year of his life. Now he’s never had more conviction about what he’s doing. Your path at 22 will not necessarily be your path at 32 or 42. One’s dream is constantly evolving, rising and falling, changing course… Whatever you think your dream is now, it will probably change, and that’s OK. The point of his talk is summed up: It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique. Work hard, be kind, and amazing things will happen. If you accept and handle your misfortune, you can use your perceived failure for profound reinvention. No specific career goal should define us. Disappointment is inevitable but through those experiences, “you can gain clarity, and with clarity comes conviction and true originality.” Honorable Mention: Admiral William H. McRaven (University of Texas, Austin, 2014) There are some amazing golden nuggets of wisdom that he gives from his Top 10 Lessons he learned from Navy Seal training. They’re incredibly useful and true. Plus any speech given by Oprah, President Obama, Meryl Streep of course are super eloquent and well-written. So you can look them up too after you’ve started with these. Tips for Writing Your Own Graduation Speech People have sung, rapped, done spoken-word poetry, etc. Basically anything under the sun you can think of has probably been done already. So you just have to stay true to yourself. Tip #1: Don’t ever mention another school in your commencement address. You’ll notice in Will Farrell’s 2017 address, he doesn’t even mention that he spoke at Harvard in 2003. He just pretends that this is the only “real” speech he’s given (which is actually semi-true since his Harvard one was more of a comedy sketch). But you can make fun of them, like in Conan’s speech :) Tip #2: Most speeches online are around the 20 minute mark. (Though they can range anywhere from 10–25 minutes). Tip #3: Share personal stories not just simple platitudes. Those are often some of the most memorable. Tip #4: You can thank people at the beginning or middle of the address and include a funny joke about some of the random people who come to graduations. (Ex: W. Ferrell, Ellen DeGenerous, Meryl S., Conan) Tip #5: Give people a mental road map of what topics you’re going to hit in your speech or some idea of the number of lessons you’re going to give. It helps people keep track of things in their head. Tip #6: Maybe take a short speech class or online course for how to structure a speech. Getting the fundamental basics can serve as training wheels. I took a speech class in middle school at the local high school right before I gave my 8th grade speech so I could sound semi-coherent. Tip #7: If you went to that school, talk about the journey (something the students can all relate to). Tip #8: If you did NOT go to that school, then talk about the journey of creating your speech. (You’ll find several examples of people describing how anxious they were or that after they got the call they freaked out, etc.) And if you’re famous, you can talk about your own journey. Tip #9: End with a quote or paraphrase something related to the main message of your talk so it reinforces the one main takeaway you want the students (and world) to remember. Tip #10: Don’t be afraid to say your main message several times over the course of your speech so they understand why you’re telling them certain stories. Jonathan Chew (UCLA School of Engineering, 2009) Finally, here’s the speech that I gave to the UCLA Engineering School in 2009. I wasn’t as polished, eloquent, funny, and unique as some of the ones you’ve seen here today, but I stayed true to myself. I just wanted to inspire everyone to go off and do amazing things. And of course, since I’m a HUGE Star Trek fan, I had to insert a Star Trek quote somewhere.

https://medium.com/the-mission/top-10-graduation-speeches-of-all-time-474c4bc23fa0

['Jonathan G. Chew']

2017-07-11 15:27:06.480000+00:00

['Public Speaking', 'Graduation', 'Future', 'Life Lessons', 'Inspiration']

Going Behind the Blue Wall with Cops

A citizen’s police academy opened my eyes to how tough it is to be a cop. The patrol officer and I were just hitting the street to start night watch when the first radio call came in: A pistol-whipping assault in a Wells Fargo bank. We hung a left toward the location. Seconds later, the incident was upgraded: Possible bank robbery. I bolted straight in my seat. A bank robbery in California’s genteel seaside city of Santa Monica! I had lucked out with my ridealong! The officer hunched over the steering wheel and the Crown Victoria sliced through traffic. My adrenaline zinged as we zoomed. The radio squawked again with further incident details: A mentally ill homeless woman had caused the disturbance outside the bank. Situation handled. All clear. I think even the officer was a little bummed. The ridealong, where I got to go out on patrol with a cop, was part of the Santa Monica Community Police Academy, a 12-week course that gives regular people a chance to peer behind the wall of blue to better understand how police work. Many law enforcement agencies across the country, including the FBI, run these free academies. They’re a great community relations tool for an institution that captures the public’s imagination, yet is often resented. Having covered true crime as a journalist and made the stuff up as a novelist, I was keen to glean real details of police work I could use in my writing, plus I’m just into the topic of crime and criminal justice. I signed up, and I learned a ton. Every week, officers offered presentations on different aspects of policing, including active shooters and police shootings, narcotics and SWAT, DUIs and traffic accident investigation. I thought the latter would be a yawn but it wasn’t at all. Who knew that hi-tech license-plate readers can detect stolen cars as they drive by? We could ask anything about policing that we wanted. Nothing was deemed a dumb question. We went on field trips through the police station. We visited the bulletproof-windowed communications room and saw dispatchers juggling calls coming in on several different computer screens. We toured the forensics lab and saw how painstaking and time-consuming fingerprint matching can be. We watched a suspect being booked in the jail and studied the rubber-lined cells where drunks, addicts, and generally mentally unstable types are put so they don’t harm themselves. We even went for a cool ride in the Santa Monica Harbor Patrol boat. I learned all kinds of things that could be useful as plot devices or simply to add realistic detail in a crime novel. A person in a diabetic shock behaves like a drunk. Fleeing suspects may change their clothing, but rarely their shoes. Shoeprints, however, are hard to definitively match to shoes. Determining the direction of gunshots in a city is tricky because the sound ricochets off buildings. Pepper spray is nicknamed “taco sauce.” Many police dogs are trained in Eastern Europe and respond to commands in languages like Czech. If you’re barricading yourself inside a room with a door that opens outward, tie a belt around the doorknob and hang on. We also got a glimpse into how cops think, which is based on two things: they never know how a situation is going to unfold, and they want to go home to their families at the end of their watch. We got a taste of how that plays out during a traffic stop role-playing exercise. We were the cops, and two plainclothes officers pretended to be the guys we pulled over in an SUV. With me, they were drunk and wouldn’t obey commands. That was pretty frustrating. With others, they stuck cell phone cameras in the “officer’s” face, mouthed off, or worse, pulled out a gun (plastic), threatening to shoot themselves or us, the officers. The point was cops don’t know how even a traffic stop is going to turn out, and they have to make decisions that carry high-stakes consequences and make them in the moment. We also got to experience how they train for that through a video-game like simulator that sets up nerve-wracking scenarios such as a backyard shootout with multiple shooters. This course was one of the best research assignments I’ve given myself. I came away not only equipped as a better writer, but as a better citizen. And in the end, that’s what counts.

https://medium.com/illumination/going-behind-the-blue-wall-with-cops-6c86cb22807f

['Christina Hoag']

2020-03-29 18:05:08.521000+00:00

['Schools', 'Crime Fiction', 'Crime', 'Police', 'Law Enforcement']