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Women in the Ancient World

1. Women in Ancient Persia Received Equal Pay In ancient Persia, women were highly respected and equal to males. They could own land, run businesses, and travel on their own. The Persian paradigm of freedom of religion and expression established by Cyrus, founder of the Achaemenid Persian Empire (c. 550–330 BCE), was responsible for maintaining every class woman's dignity and autonomy. The Parthian Empire claimed the same paradigm ((227 BCE — 224 CE), as well as the Sasanian Empire(224–651 CE). “Persian women would continue to enjoy this high status in ancient Persian culture until the invading Arab Muslims in 651 CE and the fall of the Sassanian Empire. Afterwards, women were treated as second-class citizens, inherently sinful, and requiring male guidance and control.” — Joshua J. Mark When the Sassanian Empire fell in 651 CE, Persian women did not accept this attack on their rights and joined their men in resisting the occupying forces' oppression. The best-known figure along these lines is Banu, wife of Babak Khorramdin (d. 838 CE). She led a resistance cell with him until they were betrayed, captured, and executed under the Abbasid Caliphate. The stories of the great women of the past continue to be told on different festive occasions, in their honor and to encourage the same level of respect for women in the present as the Persian empires accorded them in the past. 2. Women in Ancient Rome Were Considered to Have a Weak Judgment Roman women were tied with their perceived role in society, meaning the duty of nurturing a family and looking after the home, a consequence of which was an early marriage, sometimes even before puberty to ensure the woman had no sexual history which might embarrass the future husband. In public life, Roman women had a minimal role. They could not attend, speak in, or vote, and they could not hold any position of political responsibility. However, exceptionally, some women with powerful partners might influence public affairs through their husbands. “Some Roman women did rise above the limited role of family and household guardian that society prescribed and reached positions of real influence. Hortensia is one of the earliest. In 42 BCE, she gave a famous speech in Rome’s Forum in defiance of the triumvirate’s proposal to tax the wealth of Rome’s richest women to fund the war against Caesar’s assassins.” — Mark Cartwright In summary, Roman social norms and law were heavily weighted in favour of males. But there are also countless texts, inscriptions, and even idealised portrait sculpture which point to the Roman male’s appreciation, admiration, and even awe of women and their role in everyday life. In general, Roman males had an ambivalent attitude regarding their women that is best summarised by Metellus Numidicus: “Nature has made it so that we can not live with them particularly comfortably, but we can’t live without them at all.” — Metellus Numidicus 3. Women in Ancient Egypt Exercised Considerable Power and Independence In ancient Egypt, the gods were both female and male, and each had their own equally important areas of expertise. Women could travel, hold what job they liked — within limits — and marry who they wanted and divorce those who no longer suited them. In the Middle Kingdom of Egypt (2040–1782 BCE) and New Kingdom of Egypt (1570–1069 BCE), the most important position a woman could hold was God’s Wife of Amun. God’s Wife was an honorary title given to a woman who would assist the high priest in ceremonies and tend to the god’s statue. The God’s Wife of Amun was equal in power to a king and effectively ruled Upper Egypt in the Third Intermediate Period (1069–525 BCE). However, there were a few female rulers in ancient Egypt, many queens had a decisive influence. Unfortunately, their activities and duties remain undocumented or untranslated, but there is no doubt that these women exerted considerable influence over their husbands, the court, and the country. With the rise of Christianity, women’s status began to decline in Egypt in the 4th century CE, and women were of less value and less to be trusted than men. Later on, the Arab invasion of the 7th century CE brought Islam to Egypt and ended the kind of equality women had known in the country for almost 3,000 years (Joshua J. Mark). 4. Women in Ancient Greece Had Limited Roles in Society In Ancient Greece, women could not own land, vote, or inherit. Women had limited roles in society, but they looked after the home and nurtured the family. There were some professional women that worked in shops and as prostitutes and courtesans that are less well-documented. The social rules applied to them are even vaguer than for the citizen families’ female members. Female babies were at a higher risk of being abandoned at birth by their parents than male offspring. Girls and boys were educated similarly, but for girls, there was a greater emphasis on gymnastics, dancing, and musical accomplishment. The ultimate goal of a girl’s education was not to stimulate intellectual development but to prepare her for her role in rearing a family. 5. In Ancient China, It Was Better to Be Born a Male In Ancient China discrimination would start from the moment a female child was born. A male child would grow up to perform rituals, perpetuate the family name, and contribute financially to the family. In contrary, a woman could not earn money, and she was raised to leave the family and join her husband’s. Therefore, families would abandon a female child after birth. “Those girls who survived were named Pearl, Thrift, or the names of flowers and birds hoping that the girl would live up to that name and receive attractive offers of marriage.” — Ancient.eu by Mark Cartwright Ban Zhao (41 — c. 115 CE) was one of the most famous female scholars. She wrote commentaries on Confucian classics. Her most famous Nuje or “Instructions for Women” expanded on the four virtues expected of women: speech, virtue, behaviour, and work. However, Zhao believed that women should remain subservient to their husbands. She expressed the benefits of women educating themselves to help their husbands' work better.

https://historyofyesterday.com/women-in-the-ancient-world-d43b318064e8

['Sahar J']

2020-12-20 12:02:30.753000+00:00

['Gender Equality', 'Women', 'Women In History', 'History', 'Equality']

What Environmentalists Don’t Understand About Climate Apathy

In recent years, climate change has been getting a lot more attention from politicians, the media and the public as a whole. Polls have found increasing numbers of voters agreeing that climate change is urgent, there have been hundreds of “climate strikes” across the globe demanding action to combat environmental pollution, and many proposals have been introduced in Congress to address it, including the Green New Deal. In that, however, there are also bad signs for the environment. Companies are still contributing to climate change through things like new shell cracker plants, many people still don’t consider climate change to be a priority, and one of the US’s major political parties doesn’t even accept that climate change is real. The response of environmentalists to these people has been suboptimal. They’ve accused companies of deliberately covering up climate change so they could pocket more money at the expense of the planet, and they’ve called people who don’t work to stop climate change ignorant or in denial. For people who are incredibly alarmed about climate change, this feels justified. The evidence is so clear to them, and in their minds, anyone who isn’t working just as hard as them to stop climate change must be malicious or completely oblivious. However, this thinking is highly flawed. Environmentalists thinking this way about companies and climate skeptics is the same thing as companies and skeptics thinking that environmentalists want to destroy the economy and stifle innovation, as many of the policies they advocate for would have those side effects. From both sides, this is the result of misunderstanding. Environmentalists don’t want to crash the economy, they simply want to improve the environment and address the problem of climate change. In the same token, non-environmentalists don’t want to cook the planet and aren’t ignorant, they just have bigger priorities than the environment. To illustrate this, in the book Break Through, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger discussed the creation of the environmental movement in the 1960’s. According to environmentalists, the environmental movement was born because there were many environmental disasters and discoveries that opened people’s eyes to the reality of how we were harming the planet. As a result, they began pushing for action to protect the environment, and from that came laws like the Clean Air Act. Nordhaus and Shellenberger, however, argue that the conventional narrative around the foundation of environmentalism is wrong. People didn’t suddenly begin caring about the environment in the 1960’s because they had a collective epiphany, they began caring about the environment because their social and economic statuses improved. They had a term to describe this, postmaterialism, which is when people have satisfied their material needs and can then move on to other issues that don’t concern their survival specifically. Before the 1960’s, most people just had to worry about themselves. They had to worry about securing their own rights, getting a good job to put a roof over their head and food on the table, and in that, they didn’t have time to care about how the rivers were being poisoned or how the air was unhealthy. They just had to survive. However, that began to improve. Eventually, the majority of Americans got to the point where their quality of life was ensured, and they could worry about post-material needs, such as how the environment was being harmed. And thus came environmentalism, and action by the US government to clean up the environment. Just like air and water pollution in the 20th century, history is repeating itself with climate change. People aren’t ignoring the problem because they don’t care or want to harm the planet, they’re ignoring it because they have bigger issues to worry about. Climate change is a vague threat, at least to Americans. Sure, we’re hearing about melting sea ice, hotter global temperatures, more intense storms, and thousands of animal species going extinct, but all of those problems feel abstract and separate from us. We can’t actually see climate change happening to us, it isn’t an immediate threat, and therefore, it can be ignored for now. While climate change will certainly be bad for us in 30 or 40 years, it isn’t causing direct harm right now. But you know what is? The flawed criminal justice system, soaring healthcare costs, racial and gender discrimination, income inequality, unaffordable college prices that lead to student debt, and our overwhelmed immigration system, just to name a few. We recognize that climate change is a problem, but is just isn’t the ultimate problem. Right now, those other issues are more concerning to us, more immediately relevant to our lives. Average people won’t care if we instate carbon pricing or switch to clean energy if they go broke paying for their child’s surgery or can’t find a job solely because of the color of their skin. Therefore, the only way we can spur action on climate change is if we make it the biggest concern, which already seems to be happening. Environmentalism is quickly rising to prominence on the international stage, and while previously climate change was near the bottom of voter priority lists, it has quickly risen and is near the top, especially for Democrats. Continued work by environmentalists is helping to raise awareness and make it so people recognize the problem and are able to see that even if we aren’t immediately being affected, it’s still something we need to address. There have been some modest actions by certain countries and some US states, and rates of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have been significantly decreased from where they could be. However, we also have to consider the possibility that climate change may have to get worse before enough people choose to act on it in a substantial way. There are still millions of people who, because they can’t see climate change happening to them, deny it is happening at all, and millions more who don’t see it as a large enough problem to do something about it. Because we have a flawed government and a divisive political climate, it’s far more likely we’ll have to wait until we can see visible signs of climate change that we’ll be able to do something about it, because then it will become the biggest issue for Americans. Unfortunately, that means signing up for catastrophic consequences from climate change first. Researchers have projected that, even if we stopped emitting CO2 today, there will still be many negative effects due to our emissions. This is because greenhouse gasses don’t go away immediately, and the gasses already out there have begun feedback loops that will perpetuate the release of more greenhouse gasses and more climate change for decades to come. With every bit of visible climate effects we see, there’s a lot of climate change we’re signing up for in the future with our emissions. This means that even when we get to the point where things are bad enough to act and we put a cap on carbon emissions, things will continue to get worse for a long time afterward.

https://medium.com/the-national-discussion/what-environmentalists-dont-understand-about-climate-apathy-56e854b5cc85

['Jonah Woolley']

2019-10-20 18:01:02.025000+00:00

['Politics', 'Climate Change', 'Environmentalism', 'Environment']

President Trump Is Promising His Magic-Bullet Healthcare Plan Again, But We’ve Heard This Song Before

In an interview with ABC News, President Trump declared his intention to repeal our health care law and replace it with a yet-to-be-released healthcare plan. We’ve heard this before. Dating back to the 2016 election, President Trump has consistently promised that his magic healthcare plan is right around the corner, but he always fails to deliver. We know that right now, the Trump administration is fighting in the courts to end the health law, including getting rid of protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions. That’s right — the Trump administration is trying to end the health law with no plan to replace it. This could have dire results for the American people: 130 million Americans would lose pre-existing condition protections The uninsured rate would increase by 65 percent 17 million people would lose Medicaid expansion 12 million seniors would have to pay more for prescription drugs 2.3 million adult children would no longer be able to stay on their parents’ insurance Insurance companies would be able to charge women 50% more than men President Trump and Republicans across the country must stop working to undermine Americans’ access to high-quality, affordable health care.

https://medium.com/@SenateDems/president-trump-is-promising-his-magic-bullet-healthcare-plan-again-but-weve-heard-this-song-963080bf5295

['Senate Democrats']

2019-06-17 22:54:27.725000+00:00

['Healthcare', 'Trump', 'Senate', 'Insurance', 'Health']

Life Insurance Risk Prediction using Machine Learning Algorithms- Part I: Data Pre-Processing and Dimensionality Reduction

Life Insurance Risk Prediction using Machine Learning Algorithms- Part I: Data Pre-Processing and Dimensionality Reduction In this two-part series, we will describe our experience of working on the Prudential Life Insurance Dataset to predict the risk of life insurance applications using supervised learning algorithms. We worked on this dataset as a part of our final group project in a graduate course on Statistical Learning that we took at the University of Waterloo in which we reproduced the results of a paper¹ and improved upon the work of the authors. The link to the project GitHub repository is here and you can find the link to our YouTube video here Business Context Companies that underwrite life insurance policies have to evaluate applications carefully. The payouts from life insurance claims are very high relative to the insurance premiums that companies collect from an individual customer. For example, a person who purchases a $ 500 a year, $1 million sum-assured 40-year term plan would be paying $ 20,000 over 40 years but in case if a claim arises, the insurance company would have to pay $ 1 million to the dependents of this individual. So the company has to be selective about people whom it chooses to insure to keep its business financially viable. Traditionally, companies have used actuarial tables that involve applying detailed rule-based procedures to qualify a life insurance application. Some of these rules are formulae based and others are rules of thumb. These rules do incorporate the wealth of experience that actuaries have gained over time in evaluating applications and are therefore generally accurate. The flip side however is that they involve a lot of manual tasks like information gathering and subjective evaluations about various aspects of an application. It is not uncommon for life insurance applications to take over a month from the date of application to be issued. Researchers have applied machine learning techniques to perform predictive analytics and automate the life insurance application evaluation process. The fundamental idea here is that rating a life insurance application is a supervised learning problem. Here, an application is treated as a data point, the data columns provided by an applicant are the features of this data point and the risk rating of the applicant is the output that we are trying to predict. So the business context of this data science problem is that we seek to significantly reduce the processing time involved in the issuance of a life insurance application and save costs for the company through greater automation while making sure that the accuracy of risk assessment is not compromised. Description of the Dataset The Prudential Life Insurance Dataset consists of information from 59,381 life insurance applications and the risk rating that these applications have been assigned by the company. Each application consists of 126 features that are either continuous, discrete, or categorical. The table below shows the names of the features and gives a brief description of what they represent: Brief Description of the Features of the Dataset¹ The features that are categorical, continuous, and discrete have been mentioned in the dataset link here. We use the word features and variables interchangeably in this context. The features can be broadly classified into the following categories: Medical Information- This includes medical history, height, age, weight, BMI, and presence of any medical conditions Family History- While it is not mentioned what this term means but it can include variables that indicate marital status, number of children, etc Insurance History- Again, this is not stated explicitly what this set of features implies but it could mean whether the person was insured previously, whether one has missed paying premiums in the past, the insurance coverage level, etc Personal Information: This category could include employment status, type of occupation, salary scale, seniority, and also information such as safety level of the PIN code of residence, ownership of a car, driver rating among other such information that can be relevant for making life insurance-related decisions. Product Information: This is product-specific information. So this can mean things like the sum assured amount, length of the plan, whether the payment is lumpsum or staggered amongst others. It might not be immediately obvious how product features could influence the risk rating of an applicant. Perhaps applicants who opt for a short-term plan of say 10 years (which is considered short in the life insurance context) could be considered high risk by the company and classified as such. There are 60 categorical, 48 dummy, 13 continuous, and 5 discrete features, making up a total of 126 variables. The response or the output variable is the risk rating and it has 8 levels — 1 to 8 where 1 is the lowest and 8 is the highest risk rating. Dealing with Missing Values There were 9 features that had more than 30% of data missing. These features are shown in the table below: Features that have a high percentage of missing values (Image by authors) We deleted these features from the dataset. There were 4 features that had anywhere between 0.03% to 18.28% missing values. These are shown in the table below. Features that have a relativeyl low percentage of missing values (Image by authors) Not all missing values are created alike. There can be many reasons why data might be missing and based on why the data might be missing, missing data can be classified into three categories: Missing Completely at Random (MCAR): When data is missing completely at random, it is equally likely for each data point to be missing from the dataset. Let’s say that we are taking the measurements of ambient air temperature every 15 minutes between 8 AM and 12 Noon. So, if everything went on well, we would have 17 measurements taken at 8, 8:15,8:30….. and so on up to 11:45 and 12. Now, let’s suppose there is a power shut down for an hour between 8:55 and 9:35, and as a result, we don’t have the measurements for 9,9:15, and 9:30. The power could have gone at any time and therefore, it is equally likely for any of the 17 data points to be missing. There is no specific reason to assume that the measurements of these time points are more likely to be missing than other time points. Therefore, such missing values are said to be missing completely at random. Missing at Random (MAR): Let’s say that there is electrical maintenance work going on in the area where the measurements are being taken. The technicians perform the repair work generally between 8 AM and 10 AM and the repair work is going to take a week’s time. It is expected that there will be a power outage for about 30 minutes during this two-hour period every day. In this situation, we will find that there are two categories of measurements — those taken in the 8–10 AM time interval and those taken in the 10 AM –12 Noon time interval. There will be more data that will be missing in the former class than in the latter class. However, within that class, it is equally likely for any data point to be missing. In other words, while we are going to see fewer measurements between 8–10 AM than 10 AM-12 Noon, within 8–10 AM time interval, 8:15, 8:45, 9:15, and 9:45 are going to be equally likely to be missing as the half an hour time interval of the power outage is random within the 8–10 AM time interval. Such missing values are said to be missing completely at random. Missing Not at Random (MNAR): Let’s say that there is no power outage in the area and the measurements are being taken over a period of 5 years. The working life of the equipment is 5 years. As the equipment ages, it starts to miss recording values more often, especially after 3 years. Let’s say that the researcher is not aware of this issue with the equipment. He will observe that more values are missing after 3 years than before. At the same time, let’s say that the environment is getting warmer with time. So, there will be hotter weather for a period of 3 years and beyond. Now, the researcher will not know whether the equipment has missed recording these values because the temperature was higher or whether the values went missing because of the aging of the equipment. Such missing values are hard to handle and are known as missing not at random. To check whether the data is MCAR, there is a test known as the Little’s Test and can be implemented in R. Here’s the code for performing the test: Code for performing Little’s MCAR Test in R (Image by authors) We got a p-value less than 0.05 implying that the data is not MCAR. The alternative mechanisms could then be either MAR or MNAR. The plot of the top three variables with missing values is shown below:

https://towardsdatascience.com/life-insurance-risk-prediction-using-machine-learning-algorithms-part-i-data-pre-processing-and-6ca17509c1ef

['Bharat Sethuraman Sharman']

2021-01-11 12:52:22.629000+00:00

['Insurance', 'Classification', 'Predictive Analytics', 'Machine Learning']

The Future: Seeing The Value in Digital Production Based Economies

By Joshua James, a Thought Leader & Writer at Ponderjaunt Image by World Bank Group There exists an ecosystem of technological development geared towards translating human-centric value between the physical and the digital realms. Virtual Reality, Blockchain, and Social Media have created the foundations of a relatively new school of thought being explored in many modernized markets around the world. Some people are referring to this new paradigm as the ‘Metaverse’, others have white labeled the proposed system as a ‘Magicverse’eg: Magic Leap, but the general concept remains the same: How can we track valuable human engagement in digital systems? I have simplified some of my thoughts regarding the collective direction of this development into three statements to guide the design of these systems which I will qualify below: 1. The value of human interaction in a digital space is scalar First, the idea that the value of human interaction in digital spaces is based on the magnitude of engagement and not the social direction that interaction takes is fundamentally important to understand. Simplified, this concept pertains to the idea that whether or not the content generated, or ideas shared, are inherently ‘good’, the potential value of that data is abstracted from that ethical bias, and the momentum of that engagement is held to a free market where all other goods and services are also abstracted from that bias. There are some limitations to this idea when utilitarian principals are ignored and content creation or dissemination imposes harm onto another being; the value in this sense can only be a net negative for the creator which should not be introduced into the market. 2. Human interaction with synthetic data ensures that value is produced Second, ‘Human interaction with synthetic data ensures that value is produced’ is an attempt to express the notion that humans and non-human entities coexist in the same digital space and will continue to do so. In this cohabitation, humans must be able to interact with any kind of data regardless if created by another human, or a bot. However, the idea that AI, Avatars, NPCs, and robots are all synthetic entities that exist specifically to emulate real human interactionsis growing so quickly that many thought leaders forget that this environment actually limits the potential value of real human actors in the same space. Others are calling for clear and concise sperations of powers between human and artificial intelligence. Elon Musk is one of the more prominent figures warning about the dangers of AI, but he is not alone. While some people ponder the future of cohabitation with synthetic intelligence, others see a future where Humans are not needed/wanted by an AI who deems our actions to be threatening. This future becomes possible if actual human interactions are held to the same value-scale as bot created content. What humans can do well, and what non-human entities can also perform well in the same space, must reach an equilibrium or risk abstracting the lesser valued population from decision making within any proposed new systems as has been evident in similar technological upheavals in the past. 3. Mechanics of human interactions must be frictionless Thirdly, ‘the mechanics of human interactions must be frictionless’ is not a new idea. In fact, one entity in the space has used this mantra before to describe an ‘internet of value’, that is possible when money and data move at the same speed. In our current digital environment, this is not the case. The friction between data and value acts as a massive limiter to the potential of these digital spaces, why? Because digital spaces move so quickly that traditional financial processes sometimes fail to capture the viral nature of valuable content created on the Web. These ideas have created an age of informationpertaining to the value of data created by humans and shared in a digital space. The general spirit of innovation within these specific technology stacks have all found additional value in adhering to the above guidelines. I believe that in the future if new systems are developed with these foundations in mind, adoption and valuations can increase exponentially. Social media, an industry that has dealt with the hurdles of balancing bot-built contentwith the economic value of human-created content, has learned that interconnecting ideas doesn’t necessarily create positive energy in the world, especially if those ideas are based in negativity. Social media has been a great example of what happens when human data is used to devalue humans; and when a centralized entity can dictate the value of the data generated this way to third parties while abstracting the value to the human creators. The economic allure of blockchain and the decentralized data systems of a highly computerized world is undeniable, but we must ensure that human value is maintained in that system. The abstraction of human value in blockchain is the double-spend dilemma, where output can be manipulated by controlling the validation of the input. Virtual reality is a mechanism that I believe will allow for a new technology layer to propagate the transfer of digital value through engagement. The different types of VR technologyall take human input, digitalize those actions, and create near-realistic sensory output to trick the brain into accepting that sensory information is real. As more data is created by the interconnected networks that we interact with, the more valuable those interactions — and the networks they are based on become. This is where the Internet of Things comes into play. As more and more data is created by the interconnected networks built through the hardware we interact with when experiencing augmented reality, the more valuable those interactions — and the networks they are based on, become. Consider for a moment the possibility that in a digital space, where assets can be attached to virtual identities, and the goods and services transacted with those assets can increase the engagement within the system itself. When this happens, the economic incentive to create value while inside those systems will be all but assured. When humans choose to create value in digital spaces, rather than physical spaces, there must exist the same services they have come to expect in the traditional economy. Exchanging assets, performing value-based services, seeking respite in the form of entertainment, ensuring value is maintained over time, and voting based on your involvement within a system are the foundations of any modern capitalist economy. Each of these, and hopefully new foundations of a digital society, must be created within virtual spaces efficiently. The one condition of this directive is that these services MUST be less friction based than their traditional counterparts. If complex, high friction solutions are introduced to the market first, adoption rates decline which lowers the potential for humans to produce true value before being replaced by more effective technology solutions. Once humans are abstracted from the digital content creation sphere, engaging online becomes increasingly hard. My focus in this space will be ensuring that pathways are identified to protect the human condition in translating value into digital spaces. In future writings, I will explore specific mechanics that can be combined to build the future I am proposing.

https://medium.com/cryptoweek/the-future-seeing-the-value-in-digital-production-based-economies-9fe9c73a8eea

[]

2019-03-04 21:20:24.402000+00:00

['Finance', 'Technology', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain', 'Bitcoin']

An AI tried to beat the stock market index. It failed.

An AI tried to beat the stock market index. It failed. The Nordics’ first AI-powered fund versus a basic index fund. Every investor dreams of beating the index. Experts handpick stocks to add to their portfolio and create expensive hedge funds that attempt to beat the market. However, the truth is that only a fraction of investors manages to beat the index over an extended period of time. In 2008, Warren Buffet confronted the hedge fund industry. Buffet argued that an index fund could outperform a handpicked portfolio over a period of ten years. Sure enough, Buffet proved to be right. A simple index fund defeated all of the experts’ handpicked funds. Tony Robbins has written a 660-page book called Money: Master The Game, in which Robbins explained the ins and outs of financial investments while interviewing some of the greatest minds in economics. In it, Robbins mentions that “[t]here are 7,707 different mutual funds in the United States […]. But the statistic is worth repeating: 96% will fail to match or beat the market over any extended period.” (Tony Robbins, Money: Master The Game, 2016, p. 96, ISBN: 978–1–4711–4861–3). That’s right: 96% of mutual funds in the US fail to beat the index over an extended period. Humans clearly struggle with beating the index. So what about artificial intelligence (AI)? A Finnish asset management company called FIM launched the Nordics’ first AI-powered fund in November of 2017. It’s called FIM Artificiell Intelligens A. The fund uses artificial intelligence to select investments based on the object’s economic data. Though the fund is Nordic, more than half of the companies that the AI-powered fund invests in are seated in the United States of America. The five biggest investments in the fund’s portfolio are ChemoCentryx Inc, West Pharmaceutical Services Inc, Energix-Renewable Energies Ltd, IDEXX Laboratories Inc, and GN Store Nord. So, let’s see how well the AI has performed. The fund itself has actually been around since 2001 (previously named FIM Nordic Placeringsfond), though it was renamed and started using AI in 2019–11–20. Thus, let us compare the fund’s performance since its first day of using AI up until the last closing day at the time of writing, which was 2020–06–19. Screenshot from avanza.se. Blue line: FIM Artificiell Intelligens A. Yellow line: DJ World Index. Green line: Avanza Global. The image depicts the progress of these three options starting from 2019–11–20 until 2020–06–19. The screenshot was captured on 2020–06–21. Since the fund is Nordic, I am comparing it on a Nordic website. The blue line represents the main character: FIM Artificiell Intelligens A. If you would have invested in 2019–11–20, you would have lost 8.91% by 2020–06–19. Between February and March of 2020, the market crashed due to the Coronavirus. Did it beat the index? The yellow line indicates the Dow Jones World Index. Look how closely the two intertwine up until the market crash in February. After that, the DJ World Index has recovered faster than the fund. What about the green line? The green line represents Avanza Global, a Swedish index fund that contains over 1,500 assets. It closely follows the Amundi Index MSCI World. The reason why I am comparing the fund with Avanza Global is to compare it to a local index fund that is available on the same trading platform. If you would have invested in 2019–11–20, you would have lost 4.85% by 2020–06–19. For this period of time, the index fund clearly outperformed the AI-powered fund. The former dropped by only 4.85%, while the latter by 8.91%. And here’s the kicker: this is before accounting for fees. Excluding costs for purchasing and selling, the fees for FIM Artificiell Intelligens A comes down to 1.64%. For the index fund Avanza Global? 0.10%. A premium price for an inferior product, one could argue. One could also argue that the AI didn’t know how to react during a pandemic. After all, since the inception of the stock market, we have never experienced a pandemic on this scale, so how could the AI have known how to handle it? But if the AI is unable to handle volatile, unexpected markets, then what’s the point? Even before the pandemic, the AI’s performance was closely following the index, albeit at a higher price. If the AI is unable to outperform the index during neither ordinary nor extraordinary circumstances, then why bother having it? Perhaps I am harsh. AI-powered funds are a recent invention. Over time, the algorithms will be fine-tuned. It’s very plausible that we will one day have fully autonomous investment funds that outperform all human funds. But that is certainly not the case today. It appears as though neither humans nor machines can consistently beat the index. At the end of the day, the experts are right: invest in index funds.

https://medium.com/swlh/can-an-ai-powered-fund-beat-the-index-during-a-pandemic-d5cb7d0bc886

['Jacob Bergdahl']

2020-07-15 10:55:34.042000+00:00

['Artificial Intelligence', 'Money', 'Economics', 'Machine Learning', 'Finance']

Trump in Trouble

Image by Jackie Ramirez from Pixabay This time next week, it might not all be over, but the ingredients will have been assembled, mixed and the cake installed in the oven. Almost all of the votes will be in and most of them counted. Already, over 69 million votes have been cast; more than half the number cast altogether in 2016. No two-horse race is over until it’s over, but the omens are looking good for Joe Biden. Paddy Power has Mr. Biden at 5/2 on, his odds hardening from 7/4 on a week ago. President Trump is at 15/8 versus 11/8 a week ago. FiveThirtyEight (https://fivethirtyeight.com/)(“538”), managed by Nate Silver, is a widely respected website which subjects political prospects and events to statistical analysis. The site bases its presidential election forecast mainly on aggregation of national and individual state opinion poll data with polls being weighted by their quality. Mr. Silver made his name when he predicted accurately the outcome in every individual state of the 2012 Presidential election. He didn’t do so well in 2016. On election day, 538 projected Hillary Clinton’s prospects of victory at 71.4% Today, 538 rates Mr. Biden’s chances of victory at 88%. That forecast has inched up steadily from 67% at the beginning of September. This reflects the steady expansion in Mr. Biden’s lead in opinion polls which has averaged around 8–10% nationally through October with the margin a bit tighter in so-called swing states. There are good reasons for supposing that this year will not be like 2016. First, Mrs. Clinton’s lead over Mr. Trump in the 538 forecast for 2016 was much more volatile. At the end of July, she was less than 1% in front. Her lead climbed steeply through the first half of August hitting a high point of 89%, slipping back to 55% towards the end of September before rising again to another peak, 88% on 17 October when it began to subside again through to the election on 8 November. Her lead in national opinion polls between mid-October and the election was generally in low to mid single digits. Second, all the chips fell Mr. Trump’s way in 2016. Mrs. Clinton got almost three million more votes nationwide, a margin of more than 2%; in line with national polls. But she lost narrowly in a cluster of mid-Western states she was expected to win. If an aggregate of less than 50,000 voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin had gone to Mrs. Clinton instead of Mr. Trump, she would have won. Because these states were presumed to be safely in the Democrats’ camp, public polling of them was comparatively light and of limited quality with a margin of error of around 5%. 538 projected a Democrat margin of victory of 3–5% across these states. Trump won all three by less than 1 %. This time, the polling in these states is more frequent and more careful. But only time will tell if fighting the last war better is the right way to fight today’s one. For now though, the indications are that President Trump will not win any state he did not win in 2016 and will lose enough of the ones he won then to lose the election. Scepticism towards polls as a guide to the outcome is heavily influenced by 2016. Because they allegedly got things “totally wrong” then, polls should be disregarded as an amusing diversion rather than regarded as a reliable indicator. But polls operate within a margin of error, normally around 3%. The national result was well within the margin. The outcome in those key states was 2–3% outside it. So, though polls were certainly not 100% accurate, they were far from totally wrong either. The polls’ underestimate of Mr. Trump’s performance in 2016 has given rise to the legend of “shy Trumpers”, voters committed to the President but reluctant to reveal this to pollsters or anxious to mislead them. Well, by now, we have all seen a lot of Trump voters on our television screens and very few of them look like shrinking violets. But, if they did feel under pressure to stay silent in 2016, vindicated by the result then, they are under no such pressure now and pollsters are smarter in digging out voters’ true preferences, if not perfect. We should remember too that 2016 was an outlier in the degree to which the polls got the winner wrong. The last genuine shock result in a presidential election was in 1948 because, since then, results have been broadly in line with polls’ projections. That suggests that polls this time should be more respected (cautiously) than suspected. The argument about whether Mr. Trump deserves to win is already well tilled ground. More interesting is why he seems likely to lose, because incumbent Presidents are re-elected more often than they are defeated. During the past 100 years, only 3 sitting Presidents have sought and failed to win re-election having completed a full first term: Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter and George HW Bush. By contrast, 7 incumbents have won a second term: Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama. Roosevelt won 4 elections, so is an exceptional case. Of the other 6, only one, Ronald Reagan, was succeeded by the candidate of his own party. That is relevant to the assessment of 2016. Hillary Clinton was seeking a third successive Democrat term. The main reason why Mr. Trump seems to be in trouble is that he has never reached out beyond his committed base, voters likely to stick with him through thick and thin, reckoned to be between 35–40% of the electorate;. On the night of his election in 2016, borrowing from Abraham Lincoln, Mr. Trump said: “Now is the time for America to bind the wounds of division… I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all Americans and this is so important to me.” As a statement of fact rather than criticism, never in his term did he make any serious, sustained effort to give effect to that professed desire. Instead, Mr. Trump has focused solely on reinforcing the affiliation of those already loyal to him rather than attempting to expand their numbers. Indeed, he built an exclusionary wall around his base with an “If you are not with me, you are against me” message to Americans generally. That might make sense if his base alone guaranteed a majority in enough states to deliver an electoral college majority again in 2020. Warning lights throughout his term suggested that this was not going to be easy. Within a month of taking office, the President’s disapproval rating rose above 50% where it has stubbornly remained except for a few days in April this year during the early stages of the pandemic. The nationwide mid-term elections for the House of Representatives in 2018 saw a 5% swing to the Democrats on a much higher poll than in 2014. A second reason why Mr. Trump is in difficulty is that he is just not very good at the job. That conclusion would have been hard to draw definitively from his first three years of office from which his supporters could point to as many achievements in the sense of delivery on his agenda as his detractors could point to shortcomings even on delivering that agenda. “Patchy, but not awful” would be a fair non-partisan summary. But, for those three years, Mr. Trump was the equivalent of Napoleon’s lucky general. He was presented with no serious crisis where he had no option but to deal with it and for which there was no pre-existing playbook. The arrival of COVID-19 changed all that. Rather than confronting it with even moderate deliberation and competence, Mr. Trump’s “policy” has been largely one of hoping that it would just go away and leave him alone. Mr. Trump could claim fairly that very few Western governments have been stunningly successful in grappling with COVID-19 but at least they tried and, in doing so, gave the impression of concern for the safety of their citizens. Mr. Trump never hit that bar — and it’s no surprise. His business record has always been patchy too; a yo-yo of ups and downs, trophies and bankruptcies, his wealth almost certainly less than he claims. The third reason why Mr. Trump is in trouble is that 2020 is not a rerun of 2016. Joe Biden is not Hillary Clinton. The 2016 election was as much about which of two highly unpopular candidates was less disliked by voters as which of them was more favoured. Today, the President’s net unfavourability rating is around 12%. Mr. Biden’s is less than 2%. Mr. Biden may not be widely loved, but he is not widely hated either. He leaves “room” for the admittedly small cluster of independent and uncommitted voters to opt for him in a way that the President does not. The light imprint of Mr. Biden’s personality has facilitated the presentation of this election as a referendum on the incumbent. The President’s own manifest corruption has hobbled his attempts to affix that label to Mr. Biden. If Joe really is sleepy, it is unlikely that he is crooked. Mr. Trump no longer has novelty value. The media gave him plenty of free, open air time in 2016 precisely for that reason. Now, they are more challenging. For voters, he is no longer a clean sheet, but has a 4-year record that may be good in parts, but is also smudgy. It is harder for him to project himself as the anti-establishment, anti-elite, swamp draining, non-politician jousting with the antithesis of all that. While Mr. Trump’s blowhard “in your face” personality may encourage core supporters to go to the wall for him, some support went his way in 2016 despite misgivings about that personality. His lies and bloviating were overlooked as electioneering tactics to be put aside and a more conventional game face of solemnity and seriousness donned once he made it to the White House. It never happened. Indeed, one of the most remarkable things about Donald Trump is just how unadaptive he has been. Faced with a choice at any point between adjusting his sails and tightening them more firmly in place, he doubles down rather than reaches out. For example, following the killing of George Floyd, it must surely have been possible to craft a stance that would have been simultaneously respectful of the police but also of the need for reform, rather than bunkering down to a strict “either or” position. Tactically, in the campaign itself, he has made choices that cut off his nose rather than embellish his face: his aggression during the first debate, his refusal to participate in what was to be the second scheduled debate, his unilateral drawing down the shutters on negotiations with Congress over a second stimulus package. Only in the actual second debate did he rein himself in. I suspect that this syndrome reflects the bubble of wealth and privilege within which Mr. Trump grew up and has lived his adult life. He has never had to adapt much to those around him in his personal life or to a changing America beyond his threshold. The great America which Mr. Trump would like to see — again — is the late 1950s, presided over by the genial Republican, Dwight Eisenhower, when the country was broadly at peace and the steady, effortless advance of prosperity and progress engendered widespread contentment. The United States was, “top nation” worldwide, its hegemony driven by a military and industrial infrastructure far ahead of anything elsewhere. It is the America of Mad Men where men were hunters and decision-makers, women were home-makers and demure — who stood by their man even if he didn’t always stand by them. The country was predominantly ethnically European. White fellows ran things and black folks were waiters and elevator operators. Cops were maybe “rough and ready” but fundamentally “straight”. That picture postcard Pleasantville continues to recede in the rear view mirror. We should know this week whether there are still enough Americans in the right places who think America is or should be as the President might see it to keep him in office. There is a lot of post-hoc rationalisation about 2016. Mr. Trump eked out a narrow victory against conventional expectation and apparent odds. You pay your money and you take your choice about how much of that was down to dumb luck or sheer brilliance. Lightning doesn’t often strike twice so, if the President wins on Tuesday, I will reluctantly concede that it was all brilliance, even if it that brilliance is revealed only in arrival at the desired destination rather than being apparent through the journey. Otherwise, I will be pleased and relieved that he has lost and that his perceived brilliance was more imaginary than real. But here’s a thought. Even if President Trump loses this election, by the time the 2024 election rolls around, he will be only five months older than Joe Biden is today. Given his insatiable ego and vice-like grip over the party now, can anyone be sure that he will not seek the Republican nomination in 2024 with a good shot at winning it and the election to follow?

https://medium.com/thehighhorse/trump-in-trouble-73a8ff74dffe

["Daire O'Criodain"]

2020-10-28 10:54:06.173000+00:00

['Hillary Clinton', 'Donald Trump', 'Joe Biden', 'Nate Silver']

If systemic racism exists, we have a lot of work to do.

If systemic racism exists, we have a lot of work to do. If it doesn’t, then all these protests are wrong when they claim it does. If it exists, and it does, then we have to put forth actual effort to identify policies that need to be changed. The Biden Administration needs to put forth actual effort. Newly elected state officials need to put forth actual effort as do mayors and city councils. Systemic racism is not just a thing of the past. It’s happening right now. And we can’t just pretend those negative effects away, no matter how politically or ideologically convenient that might be.

https://medium.com/@jeffswift/if-systemic-racism-exists-we-have-a-lot-of-work-to-do-bc3eeba36b96

['Jeff Swift']

2020-12-17 17:42:21.158000+00:00

['Race', 'Politics', 'Housing', 'Health', 'Racism']

Creating dataset— Scraping Marathon Images Using Selenium and BeautifulSoup

Where to get the dataset Okay, I read the intro blog. It sounds great! But, how do you get started? You need data, right? Right. To be able to even try any one of the methods to recognize the bibs, that were described in the intro blog, we need data — marathon images, and many of them. One obvious way was to go to a running event myself and photograph a few (at least 1000, I planned) images using my DSLR and phone camera. But, none of the Sundays I could get myself to get up at 4 am, ride my bike for an hour in the cold Bangalore morning and reach a running event to cover it. On one of the days that I did, it was to run myself. The other way, I figured, was to get the images from the race organizers. I contacted the team of Kaveri Trail Marathon (KTM), a beautiful run I had participated at recently. KTM team was happy to help and shared with me the contact details of MyRace, their tech partner for the race. I tried to contact MyRace and to get to talk to the concerned person to discuss this project and ask for help, many times, but in vain. That’s when I thought of trying to scrape the images from their website. Jugaad! It did take a while to figure out the right hacks to do so, but I got it working eventually. Exploring the website to scrape Nice, but how do you figure out how to scrape MyRace website for the images? I mean, a website is a big jungle of HTML/CSS/JS. How do you navigate through it, identify the relevant parts and extract the images? With patience and persistence, my friend! To get started, there are a few prerequisites: Understanding of basics of HTML and how a website is structured Experience with BeautifulSoup, the python library for web scraping. Know-how of Selenium drivers and its Python API A bit of smartness will help as well ;-)

https://medium.com/@kapilvarshney/gathering-data-scraping-marathon-images-using-selenium-and-beautifulsoup-fe52d9cc9023

['Kapil Varshney']

2019-02-25 13:10:15.500000+00:00

['Selenium', 'Beautifulsoup', 'Programming', 'Web Scraping', 'Computer Vision']

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https://medium.com/@glassforest1/home-decor-products-buy-home-decor-items-online-buy-home-decor-items-online-a50eae64252

['Glass Forest']

2019-09-14 11:06:46.256000+00:00

['Interior Design']

Driving a Tesla for 6 Years

I am one of the early Tesla owners. I bought my Model S in September 2014. Nowadays, it is happy to electric cars started becoming mainstream and you would see more and more Teslas on road. I thought I would share my experience of a little more than 6 years of ownership and hopefully you can find some useful information here. Decision to Buy It was definitely a more risky decision to buy a Tesla 6 years ago as there were so many uncertainties about electric cars. How long does it take to charge? What if you run out of battery? How will it manage the Canadian winter? How much the battery will degrade after 5 years? Lots and lots of questions … The decision turned out to be relatively easy for me. First, I went to Tesla Service Center at Lawrence East at Toronto to look at the car. Model S looks great. Elegant exterior and spacious interior. You may expect more sophisticated interior details at its price level but that was not something I cared too much about. Then I went for a test drive. I would say the moment I stepped on the acceleration I fell in love with the car. The acceleration was instant. It felt like the car is like part of your body. Go or stop, there is no delay. The car is heavy but most of its mass is the battery at the bottom center, making the car very steady and handling curvy roads a pleasure. Model S was expensive. I had Model S 85 with the tech package. After the government rebate ($8,500), it was around $100K after tax. I had to make a business case for owning it for 8 years to myself and my wife :-). My BMW 328xi lease was ending and that's why I was shopping for the next car. 328xi costs about $50K with everything included. For a 4 year lease, its residue value is $20K. Therefore my TCO is $30K. For 8 years, that's two leases and TCO will be $60K. It's a pleasure to drive 328xi but it also consumes quite some gas. I drive about 20,000km per year. Let's still estimate an average $200 monthly gas savings compared to Tesla. That's about $20K for 8 years. That means owning a Model S for 8 years is only $20K more than leasing 328xi for 8 years. And I believed my Model S would be able to sell for more than $20K after 8 years. That means the owing Model S is the same as leasing 328xi! Same cost, between Model S and 328xi. Which one would you choose? :-) The Pride of Ownership From day one I had my Tesla, the car gets a lot of attention from my friends and even strangers. Many friends would want a ride. Lots of questions about electric and unique features Tesla had. And unexpectedly, you would have pedestrians waving at you and your peer Tesla drivers would blink their lights to salute each other. When you get to your car at the Walmart parking lot, people will ask you a whole bunch of questions about the car. Range Anxiety I believe everyone will have some range anxiety if you own an electric car the first time. The car tells you it has enough battery to drive another 100km. Can you trust it? I know I can get to a charging station 50km away but what if the station doesn’t work? As a matter of fact, in the first couple of years owning Tesla, I never drained the battery below 50km otherwise I probably would start panicking. This really depends on the individual. I met many Tesla drivers whose risk tolerance was so much higher. They would drive to the supercharging stations with a few kilometer range left. Moreover, I stored a 100ft extension cable in my trunk. In case the car’s battery is too low and I couldn’t find a charging station, my emergency plan was to find a house or gas station and ask for help. I would plug in the extension cable and charge my car. It will take a day to get some substantial range (110v plug will charge the car at the 6km/hour speed) but at least the car will not die. I never had to use the extension cable and I removed it from my trunk after a couple of years. Finally, I took my family to also drive from Toronto to Orlando during the first march break after I had the car. In 2015 Spring, superchargers are still sparse. The shortest route to Orlando would be to go south to the US via Niagara Falls but there were no superchargers in that area. I had to drive east to Kingston supercharger as our first stop, and then to the next stop at Utica (Watertown supercharger was not built yet.) Most superchargers are located at shopping malls or close to restaurants. We would take our time to enjoy some nice food or do some outlet shopping so half an hour or so charging time didn’t feel like a long waiting time. The beginning part of our trip gave us quite a bit range anxiety. From Kingston, Ontario to Utica, New York, the distance is 227km/141miles. We took plenty of time at Kingston to charge the car up to a more than sufficient range as we stopped for lunch. However, soon after we left Kingston, the car started alerting us that we wouldn’t be able to make to Utica and we should find a place to charge. My wife started searching the PlugShare for places in the US. This turned out to be a false alarm. Tesla’s range alerts are pretty conservative and more importantly, the range projection is impacted by temperature significantly. After we crossed Canada/US border and started driving south, the temperature got higher and higher and the car range projection increases. Eventually the alerts were gone and we arrive at Utica with some comfortable range left. In summary, range anxiety is really a matter of confidence level on the car’s range projection. Once you build your trust in your car, you can plan your trips with confidence, and range anxiety can be easily managed. Gas Becomes Irrelevant in Your Life Before I bought my Tesla, I would check the gas price every day when driving by gas stations. That habit will fade away gradually. After a couple of years of Telsa ownership, I would found I had no ideas about the recent gas prices when friends were talking about it. Even worse, once in a year or so, I might have to drive my wife’s car and refill gas for her. I would found I was clumsy at the pump, fumbling with the gas nozzle due to lack of practice! Anyway, I don’t think I miss those visits to the gas station. Charging Unlike driving a gas car, you will need to develop a charging habit that fits your life. For example, if you have a long commute to work, you will probably have to charge your car every evening. My commute was pretty short, so I only charge my Tesla every 3 or 4 days. For your charging convenience, you will need to install a 220v plug that recharges the car with a 37km range every hour charging. If you only have a 110v plug, then you can recharge with only 6km range every hour charging. In situations of drained batteries, you wouldn’t be able to recharge your car to a meaningful range with a full night of charging. Maintenance All cars will have problems and my model S is no exception. In my 6 years, I had quite a list of issues: real wheel axle clicking noise (twice) (solution: take apart the axle and lubricate, seal, and reassemble) dashboard died (solution: replaced the dashboard) a worn internal wire which caused false alerts (solution: replaced the broken wire) motor humming noise (solution: replaced the motor) battery coolant low (replaced the Battery Thermo Management Systems) The first 4 issues happened with the first 4 years so they were covered by Tesla warranty and I didn’t have to pay anything. The last issue happened in the 5th year so I had to pay about $800 dollars. Other than this, I purchased a 4-year service plan from Tesla for $2000. The plan gives my model S an annual check-up. Although this service plan did give me peace of mind and I am sure the service center did tune-ups that kept the car in its best shape, I think it is debatable if it is necessary. All the issues I had with my car were found outside of the check-ups and I just need to drive my car to the service center for repair. After my 4 years of service plan, I didn’t have any issues except the battery coolant low issue. Tires One surprise to me was how fast the model S would wear the tires out. In 6 years and 3 months, the car has gone through 5 sets of tires (2 sets of winter tires and 3 sets of all summer tires). Tesla knows this and it is expected. This is mainly due to two factors: car weight and acceleration speed. When I wrapped around tight corners, the car can turn effortless and pick up speed so fast. While I was enjoying the satisfaction, I probably didn’t pay attention to how much tires those tight turns and fast accelerations would consume :-) Conclusion Many friends would ask me what I would buy as my next car. My answer is my Model S is still running strong and the battery capacity has only degraded 8% (current range at 396km vs original range 430km) so I don’t need to change my car yet. However, if I would change my car anyway, I would stick to Tesla and get a Model Y. I told my friends I don’t miss going back to gas cars. And after you get used to the Tesla acceleration, it is really not fun to drive a gas car anymore.

https://medium.com/@zhoushun1/driving-a-tesla-for-6-years-d56ebe1f3845

['Sean Zhou']

2020-12-26 20:35:38.801000+00:00

['Electric Vehicles', 'Range Anxiety', 'Electric Car', 'Tesla']

English 101 Students Help Their Professor Reconsider His Will To Live

I started the fall semester this year by asking my 101 students a fun question: “If you could live to any age, what age would you choose, and why?” It was an ice-breaker, far better than the usual awful name-games, a gift to them. I imagined them thinking, Wow. What an agreeable time we had answering that imaginative question. Our professor is the greatest ever. Why do other professors even get up in the morning? Let’s listen in on that first class: “All right, guys, if you could live to any age, what age would you choose, and why?” “Are we invincible?” they ask. “What do you mean?” “Like, can nothing stop us from living to the age we pick? If we got stabbed or got bitten by a poisonous spider, we’d be fine?” “No, you’d die,” I say. “It’s just like now: if no disaster happens, you live.” “What if we got a disease?” I ponder, then decide: “No diseases.” “But you said we can die.” “You can, just not from disease. So, what age would you live to? And why?” “What if someone gave us a disease,” they ask, “like on purpose? Say they inject us with something. Can we die of a disease then?” “No. You die of old age.” “No such thing,” they say. “You’re sugarcoating it. Are we talking pneumonia, a stroke?” A student’s hand shoots up, “Or diabetes!” “Guys, it’s just a peaceful death. You slip away in your sleep and that’s that.” A student says, “So, if we pick three hundred, we’ll be super old for like two hundred and sixty years?” “No, it’s proportional,” I say, “like your life now.” They consider. And while they’re considering, I consider the number they just offered: three hundred. And what they said next: we’ll be super old for like two hundred and sixty years? 300 minus 260 = 40. “Hold on,” I say, “you think being old starts at forty?” The students look confused. “Uh, yeah,” they say. “Forty is not old.” And in my mind, I say, I am thirty-seven. A student raises his hand. “Twenty-five.” “Twenty-five…what?” I ask. “Twenty-five years old,” he says. “That’s my number.” “Are you kidding me?” “Nope.” “Why twenty-five? You can live to any age.” He says, “After twenty-five, it’s all downhill.” “I’m thirty-seven,” I say. I expect him to look at this youthful specimen of a man who clearly has so much good life left to live, but the student doesn’t budge. In fact, looking at me only seems to confirm his choice. Judging by the sour expression on his face, if he was me, he would definitely want to be dead twelve years ago. “Anyone else?” I ask. “What age would you live to? Try thinking outside the box. Sky’s the limit.” “It’s a trick,” a student says. “Think about it. It’s a trick question.” “It’s not a trick,” I say. “Just answer.” “I did,” says the student who wants death at twenty-five. “How is it a trick?” I ask. “If it’s proportional,” the student says, “and you pick a thousand years, that means you’ll be a baby for like two hundred years, and horribly old for five hundred years.” “Listen,” I say, “shut up. How about this; the baby years and the deep-old-age years are the same length as they are for us right now. Okay? It’s just the middle part we’re talking about. Better?” “You can’t change the question,” they say. “What are you talking about. I can change it…why can’t I change it?” “Because it’s not realistic if you keep changing it.” “What about any of this is realistic?! Just pick a number.” “Nineteen,” a student says. “You’re eighteen right now,” I say. “Correct,” she says. “So, you want to die next year?” “I feel like I’m peaking this year.” I bitterly pinch the bridge of my nose. “You guys are the worst.” Another hand goes up. “Can I be eighty?” “That’s how long people live now.” “I know. That’s what I’m hoping for. I just want a full, long life.” The rest of the class agrees. “People,” I say, “I’m giving you a magic question. Magic. The answer can be anything you want. A thousand years. Ten thousand years. Just pick a number. What if the question was about money? Cash. What would you say then? How much money do you want? Tell me.” “I’d give it to charity,” one student says. “Stop. You would not give it to charity. Screw charity. Be honest. How much?” The students look shocked and happy at the same time. They hold up their phones. “Would you say that again?” they ask. “What?” “The screw charity thing.” “Scr…wait. Why?” “I don’t know.” “Are you trying to get me fired?” “What?” The phones are still up, recording. “I’m not saying it. Listen, if I asked you how much money you wanted, you’d say billions, trillions. Think of age the same way.” “You can’t spend age,” they say. “Yes, you can. You spend it doing wonderful things. Reading books. Traveling. Meeting incredible people.” “A hundred?” one student says. “Now we’re talking,” I say. “A hundred years old. Keep going.” “No, I meant a hundred dollars. That’s all I’d need.” “A hundred? What about when it’s gone, what then? You’ll remember you could have had any amount, and you’ll hate yourself.” “No. I’d put it to good use. A hundred makes two hundred. Two hundred makes four. Wait, what about taxes?” “What do you mean?” “Taxes on the money. If we say a billion, the government gets half that.” The students agree. “More than half,” they say. A raised hand. “My dad says you might as well not even win the lottery, because the government takes so much. It’s like them winning the lottery.” The class nods. They speak as one: “Amen.” “I’d pick zero,” a student says. “I don’t want handouts. You’ve got to make it on your own. Otherwise, what’s the point?” But another student turns to this one and says, “But pretend. Just for fun. Like if you could have any amount of money.” “A billion,” he says. “Fifty billion.” “That’s what I’ve been saying!” I yell. “It’s pretend. Just for fun. You can pick any number.” “Ooooh.” They’ve had an epiphany. “Good,” I say. “So, what age would you live to?” “Five hundred?” a student says. “Great, keep going.” I don’t dare ask why five hundred. They’re finally on track. I’ve got to keep this going. “Who else?” “Seven hundred.” “Excellent, more.” “A thousand.” “Exactly,” I say. “Twenty-five,” he says again. “Anyone else…wait.” I can’t help myself. “Why twenty-five?” “I’d get bored. Life is boring.” “So instead of doing something to be not bored, you’d just die?” “Yeah.” “You are going to be twenty-five someday. You’ll have a family, probably. Kids. What then?” “Play with my kids. Live life. The American dream. What else?” “And not die?” “Of course not. I’m not leaving them. I would never do that.” The students celebrate his nobility. “So, in your real life, you’ll live it and enjoy it, but in your dream, magic-question life, you’d die? What about your kids then?” “It’ll make them stronger.” “No, it won’t! They need you. Don’t you think they want to spend time with their father?” “No guarantees in life,” he says. “I’m giving you a guarantee in life! You can live to any age. That’s the guarantee.” “But you said we can die.” “Yeah, if it’s a tragedy. Like a bus hits you.” “So, there’s no point,” he says. “If I pick ten thousand, a bus hits me when I’m twenty-five. Why pick anything? Why even live?” The class agrees. “Guys, you could step outside and get hit by a bus today.” “I’d sue,” a student declares. “I’m pre-law.” “You can’t sue,” I say, “you’re dead.” “My cousin did it,” a student says. “Did what?” “Got hit by a bus.” Everyone turns to listen. “Really?” “Yeah, she sued Greyhound. A quarter of a million dollars. Can you imagine?” The students are smiling. Imagining. “Man,” they say, “what would you do with that kind of money?” “Pay off college debt,” someone says. Their eyes light up. “Yeah!” “Wait,” I say, “so if I gave you a quarter of a million dollars, that’s what you’d do with it? Pay off debt? What about something fun?” “I’d give it to charity,” a student says. The phones go up. “I’m not saying it.” “Not saying what?” A quiet student raises her hand. “What about you?” she asks. “What age would you pick?” Then she qualifies the question: “It can be any age. You don’t die of diseases, only disaster. And it’s not exactly proportional, but — ” “I know how the question works,” I say. “It’s my question.” “So,” she says, “what age would you choose?” I smile. I love answering this question. It occurs to me that I only ever ask it so eventually I’ll get to answer it. “Not a thousand,” I say. “Not twenty-five. Not ten thousand. I’d choose to live forever.” A student asks, “Won’t we have destroyed the planet by then?” “We’ll have moved on,” I say. “To the moon. Or Mars. Wherever we go, I want to live and live.” “Why would you ever want to live that long?” they ask. “Think about it,” I say. “If you set out to read every book ever written, you’d never reach the end. People are always writing new books, and books can be read over and over. Or say you want to know every place. It takes a hundred years to know even a small town, and still, you don’t really know it. It’s always changing: people coming and going, dying and being born, constantly transforming the old place, turning it into someplace new. You’d never run out of new experiences, even in a small town. You’d be endlessly learning, endlessly growing wiser as you take in more and more of this magnificent existence.” Unfortunately, they’ve heard none of this. I made the mistake of saying it fifteen to twenty minutes before the end of class, a time when students begin violently repacking their backpacks. I want to stop them, tell them we have plenty of time left, but they’re professionals. They cover one another in military fashion, the left side of the room laying down a suppressing fire of sound to distract me from the students on the right who are slowly standing. When I go to tell the right side to sit, the lefties are rising. When I go to tell them to sit, the righties are gone. When I, enraged, try to tell the lefties, “Stay right where you are,” they send up a representative who offers me a mind-bendingly complex explanation as to why his laptop will not allow him to print homework assignments on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, talking on and on until all the lefties have escaped, and then he says, “Wait, never mind. I think I just answered my own question. Bye.” And the room, like my heart, is empty. I trudge back to my office and sit there thinking about my answer to the magic question, the long, long life I always choose. I think about teaching and how I feel at the start of every fall semester: hopeful. Excited. Overflowing with joy as I imagine interacting with minds lit up by the thrilling fire of youth, minds eager to rush for the goal of becoming more than they were, more than they ever dreamed they could be, and by some impossible luck, I get to help them! Suddenly, Facebook sends a notification. I discover a meme created by my students. It’s viral. I see an image of me at the blackboard. Above my head floats a cartoon bubble filled with the following words: “Screw charity.” I consider my age-question and decide to answer it again, but this time I select a new number: Me: “If you could live to any age, what age would you choose, and why?” Me: “Yesterday.” Me: “You want to live until yesterday?” Me: “Yup.” Me: “Why? Never mind. I know why.”

https://medium.com/down-in-the-dingle/english-101-students-help-their-professor-reconsider-his-will-to-live-e874c962fe27

['Daniel Williams']

2019-11-21 06:41:11.157000+00:00

['Teaching', 'Humor', 'Students', 'College', 'Comedy']

The Books We Read in High School

The Books We Read in High School And the books we should be reading instead Photo by Jeffrey Hamilton on Unsplash I never read The Catcher in the Rye when I was supposed to. The progressive high school I went to didn’t assign it. We read Brave New World while the rest of the country’s tenth graders read To Kill a Mockingbird. My Honors English class unpacked Les Miserables (yes, really — all seven-hundred pages of it) when every other fifteen-year-old was getting through The Scarlet Letter. And before I got to the progressive school, I survived ninth grade on an Army base where we read Catch-22. Surprise, surprise. So I didn’t get to Of Mice and Men when other students did. I’d read Lord of the Flies in middle school, and when my teacher realized most of us had, we didn’t bother with the debate over nature versus nurture. We simply moved on to Othello quicker than we were supposed to. And when I did finally read The Catcher in the Rye outside of a class’s curriculum? I gotta say I was underwhelmed. This may be an unpopular opinion amongst my community of fellow bookworms, but I cannot flipping stand The Catcher in the Rye. I appreciate that it captured New York City in the fifties so well. I appreciate that it is a difficult undertaking to poignantly encapsulate a teenage experience in a single work of fiction. But good gracious, Salinger, who hurt you? Oh, wait. It was a revolving door of women you thought you had feelings for. Got it. I didn’t read it for a class, and I’m glad. I know a handful of students I would have gleefully dug into during classroom discussions about this book, and such spitfire conversations were (thankfully) avoided. Yet every chat I’ve had about the book since has begun with another person telling me, “Oh, yeah, I had to read that for school.” I’m glad we were assigned to read The Color of Water instead. It’s time for high schools everywhere to move on from the so-called “classics”. For goodness’ sake, find something that’s been published within the last fifty years. Center your syllabus around books that have characters who know what an iPhone is. No wonder today’s teenagers carve out space on the internet where they can cultivate stories of their own. No wonder so many of them find Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales tiresome. I can’t say I blame them.

https://marypepperobrien.medium.com/the-books-we-read-in-high-school-a9aaaa7b83e

['Mary', 'Pepper']

2019-09-23 17:43:26.953000+00:00

['Reading', 'Books', 'Literature', 'Writing', 'Education']

Talking Heads

These days I’ve been many a time questioning internally how have we got here? As a human race. Like how? There’s been so much evolution in terms of technology from the early 1900s till date. We’ve had cars, planes, trains, colour TV, computers, the internet, iPods, iPads, Facebook, Instagram and so many more advances in technological developments. The world has really become a much more smaller place than even 3–4 years before (cliche I know, but it’s true) … but has it really? Because all I feel is that this technological advancement, in my humble opinion, has just come hand in hand with incrementally stunted regressions in what has made our human race a sort of parody of what the quintessential homely family of the 40s. Or in many cases – I feel like our values have just been eroded for the superficial. And the sad part is this is where we’ve been affected the most – Communication. let’s see.. why don’t I substitute a heart to heart, authentic conversation to talk with a friend, lover or resolve any issues with… …texting, ignoring, ghosting, passive aggressiveness instead? Seems like the healthy option right? Qualities such as being authentic, transparent, genuine are close to being tabooed in many of us millennial folk, I’ve noticed. It’s funny because a lot of people supposedly want to be real; want honesty to be given to THEM! But they don’t want to return the favour. Hypocrisy seems to be the flavour of the world these days; both men and women alike. There’s a reason why I think the baby boomers, generation x and y kinda look at us millennials with a bit of contempt.. and quite frankly I find that I agree with them mostly. I’m sure you can find some degree of hypocrisy in just about every possible issue that is trending in the world today. Just about anything, I guarantee it. And if you choose to deny it, well I would say you have to read up a bit more, develop some critical thinking and not be so naive. Maybe I’m a little bitter because I’ve been burned many a time. Maybe I really try with my interactions with people. Maybe I’m sensitive. Maybe my expectations are too high. While I do believe there’s some truth in the above, to my own personal fallacies, at the same time – I feel that the world at large has devolved into a big bad mass of poor values, inauthenticity, deceit, intolerance, judgement, passive aggressiveness and gross superficiality. Its about time we as a race decided to grow a pair and voice out our opinions. Call a spade a spade. Reject that person and be unapologetic. Be true to yourself. Speak the truth. Challenge the norm. Live fearlessly. Think for yourself. We need to do the above more than ever. Especially when you have tyrants running large countries, and in many cases people pandering to the absurdities of extreme liberalism and political correctness – just so that they don’t cause conflict. This charade can only go on for so long before it implodes in our faces. What’s the point of having all these technological breakthroughs if we function as emotionally stunted adults, who are so worried about how our behaviours will be perceived? I’m not saying streak publicly or engage in abusive and hurtful behaviour, but come on – let’s just say what we have on our minds more. And not care in general about perception. The walls that we have built will eventually break down. Our hearts will beat and love harder. Our thoughts will be more clear and focused. We won’t be enslaved by this current “imperfect yet perfectly displayed” social status mongering pop culture that the world is exuding. Let’s life our lives like strong lions who roam free and can take punishment from all creatures. We have our own inner lions that we need to let loose – by communicating authentically. For if we don’t, we’re just getting one more step closer to the doomsday clock that is ticking towards complete spiritual Armageddon…

https://medium.com/@AboutA/talking-heads-67d141eec5c6

[]

2019-01-21 00:14:07.168000+00:00

['Authenticity', 'Life Lessons', 'Conversations']

Try these 10 high paying online jobs for stay-at-home moms

Try these 10 high paying online jobs for stay-at-home moms With the increasing trend of remote jobs and especially in the current situation where Covid-19 invades the world, working directions have been shifted to home-based jobs. In that situation, the ones who are willing to continue their work have started doing it virtually. Women who wish to excel in their careers are looking for competitive online jobs to don’t need to compromise over their careers or responsibilities, especially mothers, who are willing to play their parenting roles and want to earn for their family. They are searching for ways to make money online. So we have come up with 10 high-paying online jobs for stay-at-home moms with a brief description of them. Translate Documents or recordings In social media, many projects need translating services so that the audience throughout the world could interpret their projects. You can see new channels, movies, seasons, plays, etc. They all have translated their language into English. Similarly, many documents need to be translated into the English language. So if you have a command of English, you can offer your services as a translator. You can translate recordings, documents, recordings, etc. these are some legit work from home jobs for moms that is relatively easy to do. Many online tools can help you to translate different languages. 2. Become a Transcriptionist Out of these 10 high-paying online jobs for stay-at-home moms, transcribing jobs are the easiest one. For that, you need to have good English command and excellent listening skills. Companies are hiring now to convert some audios to a document. You can work for legal or medical transcription jobs if you have a related educational background. You will be listening to audiotapes and converting them to a document by speedily and accurately typing it. This job demands concentration, so you can listen and type it carefully. You can earn handsome pay at the end of your job. 3. Blogging Blogging is accommodating for working from home for moms as you don’t need any had working routine. You can start your blogging website and work on it to add content that can attract visitors to read it. Find a suitable niche for yourself. Initially, it will take a minimum tenure of 3 months to build some audience. Later, you can earn through ads and paid blogs, or you can also start affiliate selling of products. You can offer your services on popular online platforms as a blog writer and can earn through it. 4. Data Entry Specialist Plenty of jobs are available for data entry specialists. Also, it is one of the legit work-from-home jobs for moms. Here you are given some data that you need to enter into excel sheets. Many companies look for data entry clerks who can enter their company’s data into their systems. You can serve them as a virtual assistant for data entry and can earn through it. 5. Proofreading and Editing If you have a solid knowledge of English grammar and language, you can try as a proofreader and editor. It is flexible working from home for moms as there is no time or skill specification. Your client will provide you some documents, and then you need to check if that piece of writing have any mistake so you can edit it. Many tools can help you in editing. 6. Social Media Marketing If you know the skills to handle social media apps like a professional, you should offer your services as social media marketer. As a professionalist, your duties will include making posts according to the relevant social media platform, posting, engagement, customer handling, and running ads to target their specific audience. It is legit work from home jobs for moms with flexible working hours, and for that, you will be paid a considerable amount. 7. Graphic designing If you are creative enough to add appealing factors to images, you can earn through graphic designing. It is an in-demand skill as almost every social media marketer, website, or platform needs a graphic designer to make logos posts, images, newsletters, etc., for their company. Also, it pays you a valuable amount in return. So graphic designing offers paid and legit work-from-home jobs for moms. 8. Join Affiliate networks Out of these 10 high-paying online jobs for stay-at-home moms, affiliate selling is something that can pay you even in the future. Many online marketplaces allow others to sell their products for them. Just as a sales agent who sells a brand’s products by directly convincing the customers to buy it. Here you will be doing it virtually. If you have a site with a considerable audience who reads or visits you often, you can add appealing content related to that product. After joining any affiliate website, you will be getting a link. That link is attached to your blog. If your audience by that product from your link, you will receive a decided commission on their paid amount. 9. Voice over Artist Many videos, seasons, plays, movies, or dramas are dubbed in some local languages. It is done so that the anticipated video or film can be seen and understood by the natives who know that language. So if you have command over your language, a clear voice, or translate given videos with desired vocal expressions. Then it would help if you tried your luck as a voice-over artist. It is an ideal working from home for moms that can help their finances. 10. Stock image Photographer Stock image photography has come up as legit work from home jobs for moms. If you possess a passion for photography, you can try clicking it for others or selling them online. Many websites serve as a platform where photographers sell high-quality images and buyers contact them directly. You can also try freelancing platforms as a photographer. Here you will be given the themes, and you need to click accordingly.

https://medium.com/@beckyawofisayo/try-these-10-high-paying-online-jobs-for-stay-at-home-moms-7791ab5922aa

['Becky Awofisayo']

2021-05-05 08:03:35.107000+00:00

['Side Hustle Ideas', 'Online Jobs', 'Side Hustle', 'Work From Home Jobs', 'Stay At Home Mom']

ITSM Analytics

Information Technology has become the backbone of almost every business in the last few decades, driving productivity and efficiency in every business function. Today, IT organizations have more data than ever before. Whether its service ticket management, asset tracking, budgeting, staffing, or infrastructure and platform monitoring — that data has the power to speed up and simplify your job. The 4 core IT processes ITSM (or IT Service Management) refers to all the activities involved in designing, creating, delivering, supporting and managing the lifecycle of IT services. What are IT services? Think of any piece of information technology at your workplace — from business critical services like ERP systems to less critical stuff like your laptop, the apps installed on it. They’re all services provided by internal or external IT service providers who are responsible for the end-to end service lifecycle from design through deployment to continuous improvement and termination. Why you need ITSM? · Improve (internal) customer experience · Better control and governance · Better Business — IT alignment · Reduce costs and risk · Increased efficiency · Transparent Service Levels · Standardization There are many tools that provide service desk and/or monitoring functionalities, but ITSM tools generally lack the sophisticated analytics and dashboarding capabilities we data heads are used to. Luckily we can always use our favourite analytic tools to tackle these kind of challenges. Why you need ITSM Analytics? In a complex, heterogeneous environment of tools, infrastructure and organizations, there is no single window to access and analyze IT Service Management data. This lack of visibility is a barrier of sufficient governance, driving inefficiencies and increasing the cost of delivering services. Platforms like Tableau or Power BI allow companies to bridge the gap between information silos and to analyze all IT service related data in one single place. This integrated approach enables you to create detailed domain specific dashboards for the various roles including subject matter experts, service managers and executives to provide insights into the performance, costs, health and availability of IT services. These dashboards need to be easily customizable and be able to provide drill-down and drill-across functionality. This will allow businesses to understand how well IT services are meeting business objectives and agreed service levels. Our two example ITSM dashboards help application owners and service managers track the performance and availability of all applications, number of incidents and requests as well as trends in resolution time. Let me know if you have feedback, suggestions or questions.

https://medium.com/starschema-blog/itsm-analytics-7b14a585f0f1

['Ivett Kovács']

2019-04-11 09:25:00.485000+00:00

['Tableau', 'Data Visualization', 'Management', 'Itsm', 'Dataviz']

How I Lost A Mother and Gained A Brother

Sometimes life throws you for a loop. The miracle of the century happened to me in the summer of 2015, only to be followed months later by the worst day of my life. My brother had been separated from us for over a decade. As a five year old, he was put into foster care and then adopted to a family that didn’t allow outside contact. We had no clue where he was, or how he was doing. Some context: My parents divorced when I was young and I grew up primarily with my dad. My mom went on to have another son when I was 8 years old. He was my half-brother and his name was Jordan- which I liked because my favorite basketball player at the time was Michael Jordan (This was 1996 and the Chicago Bulls were red hot!). I met Jordan’s father once, he seemed like a kind guy. But he didn’t want the responsibilities of fatherhood, so he ran off months before Jordan was born. This forced my mom into life as a single mother. She did the best she could, but that’s a really hard gig. She loved well, cared deeply. My mom dealt with bipolar disorder among other things, and this created an ongoing inconsistency in our relationship. There have definitely been long gaps that I didn’t hear from her, while other times I had to place boundaries on the number of phone calls because she wanted so much connection. During the season she was raising Jordan, we both lived in the Houston area, so we were fairly close. I would often visit and stay with them at their apartment. Usually every other weekend. I was there for Jordan’s birthday parties. I sat with him and watched Dragon Tales. I was there on the frightful day when he poked his eye with a butter knife. (Why was he even playing with a butter knife?) I was his big brother, and he my little brother. I then remember getting a phone call that my mom was in the hospital and my brother was being taken away. I don’t recall being too emotional to the news, but everything about the moment is seared in my memory: where I was, time of day, what I was doing. I must’ve felt it. I was 13, he was only 5, and I would never see him again. So I thought… Fast forward 12 years, and I’m living as a pastor in Raleigh, North Carolina. I’m learning about the importance of prayer and how God hears our prayers to accomplish the impossible. I started to pray for Jordan, adding him to my family prayer list. One particular day, I am praying for him and utter these words: “Lord, save my brother and connect him back to our family.” Honestly, I was just throwing a Hail Mary to heaven and not really expecting much in return. It’s hard to tell which prayers are faith-filled and which ones are routine. But this one felt like it was God-inspired, God-initiated and God-empowered. The next day in rural Pennsylvania, my 18-year-old brother decided to search for my mom on Facebook. It’s something he had done plenty of times, desperately looking for family. It’s a miracle in itself that he remembered her name from such a young age. Nobody told it to him, he just remembered. He searched “Jennifer Ruffin” and there she was. Waiting as a search result, a simple profile picture that held the promise of long awaited connection. He reaches out. That evening, my mom and brother had an emotional, tear-filled phone call that lasted over three hours. Can you imagine having a conversation with your son after losing him a decade earlier? Her deepest desire was being realized. Can you imagine having a conversation with your mom having only faint memories of her in the past? To have never experienced family, but then hear the voice of a loving mother on the other line? His deepest desire was being realized. It was a miracle. The next morning, I wake up to this Facebook message… “Hey, it’s your brother Jordan.” Mind blown! I never knew if this day would actually come. I immediately call my mom and celebrate. “For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.” Luke 15:24 We were overjoyed that we had reconnected with Jordan. It truly was a dream come true. However it was difficult to hear that his adoption situation had been rocky. His parents were emotionally distant and borderline abusive. He had been kicked out of his house and was living in a friends spare bedroom, having no contact with his adopted parents for the past 8 months. We make plans for him to visit me in Raleigh. He comes down for a July 4th weekend and we have a blast together, it was surreal hanging out with a brother. The next month, we take a trip to Arizona to visit my mom. I knew this would be intense. Mother and son reunited after 12 years. I arrive a few hours before Jordan. My mom and I anxiously wait at the airport. And then we get the text that he’s landed. We go to closest point we can get before security. Jordan turns the corner, and the moment my mom lays eyes on him, she lets out a scream of joy and runs and gives him an embrace that lasted minutes. Jordan spends the next week with my mom in Arizona. They ask questions, share stories, and form a new bond of relationship. One week to catch up on so much lost time. The euphoric sense that this was a miracle moment was still in the air. Reconnection. Family bonding. Establishment. A true dream come true. And then… One month later, I receive a phone call from my mom’s sister in Arizona. “Travis… your mom…. Passed away last night” Heart pounding. “What? How?” “We’re not sure exactly. Her heart stopped as she was sleeping last night. She didn’t wake up. I’m so sorry Travis.” I calmly thank her for calling and hang up the phone. I drop to my knees and burst into tears, heaving for what felt like a half hour. I don’t know if I’ve ever cried so hard. After a few minutes, I come to the realization that it’s my job to share the news with Jordan. What would I say? How would he take it? I knew that I had to be strong. I had to be clear. I had to be loving. “Jordan, I need to share something with you. But first, I want you to know that I love you and I’m with you and everything is going to be okay…” Everything would be okay. After the initial shock wore off, I felt a strange sense of peace regarding my mom’s passing. I’ve learned in my journey that God is the author of life, and I can find rest in His sovereignty even when I don’t understand. And I didn’t understand. How did she die? Why now? We fly back to Arizona for the funeral. At the airport, we walk past the spot where the beautiful reunion had happened just a month prior. We tearfully connect with family members and work on funeral arrangements. It was also during this time that I learned more of the specifics of my mom’s passing and her overall health condition. Without going into detail, I will just say that her years of health trouble finally caught up to her. The funeral was beautiful. Thankful to those who sent flowers and made the event possible. I performed the service, including a eulogy celebrating my mom’s life and describing the wonderful qualities of her life. “My mom, Jennifer Ruffin, was a woman of deep love and compassion. She cared deeply for every person in this room. I hope for this time to be a celebration of her life and legacy. Though we are saddened by the circumstance, funerals are a great time to celebrate the good of a person’s life. I know that I speak for everyone here when I say that I’m thankful for the time that I got to spend with my mother. And I look forward to re-uniting with her on the other side.” Funerals are hard, but important. The closing of the casket and the burial provide a sense of closure that you can only experience in the moment. The finality of death becomes a reality that you face head on. They asked me what to put on my mom’s tombstone. Without second thought, I knew exactly what was the one thing she wanted to be remembered for… And so we found ourselves as two newly discovered brothers. Missing our mother. The joy of connection blended with the despair of loss. Our lives turned upside down, in more ways than one. We move forward. Jordan comes to Raleigh and we lived together for 8 months, before making his way back to Houston. Our relationship hasn’t always been easy, but I’m thankful. In him, there’s glimpses of Mom that I wouldn’t otherwise see. In pain, I’ve chosen to be thankful. Thankful for the time that I had with my mom. Thankful for the days ahead with my brother. I know that’s what she would’ve wanted.

https://medium.com/@travisnicholson/how-i-lost-a-mother-and-gained-a-brother-3fcd37b97bf0

['Travis Nicholson']

2019-09-05 22:15:25.669000+00:00

['Grief', 'Funerals', 'Grief And Loss', 'Hope', 'Family']

The Johnsons: a Swedish family in Denver

Cigar store at the corner of Arapahoe and Fifteenth Street in the 1890’s (Photo: Colorado Encyclopedia) Sven and Albertina’s tombstone at the Fairmount Cemetery, in Denver, CO (Photo: Find a Grave). The Johnson Family Sven and Albertina had seven children: C-1. Anna Seraphine Johnson C-2. Luther Timothy Johnson C-3. Josephine Albertina Johnson C-4. Edward Swen Johnson C-5. Arthur Samuel Johnson C-6. Agnes Sophie Johnson C-7. Albert Lawrence Johnson C-1. Anna Seraphine Johnson Born on July 10th, 1879, in Chicago, Illinois, and deceased on December 13th, 1944, in Glendale, California. Annie worked as milliner in Denver, in 1900. She married Albert Peterson on September 23rd, 1905, in Chicago, despite living in Denver at the time. After the weeding, Anna moved back to Denver, before going to California in 1941. They did not have children. From right to left: Luther, Francis, Glen, and Elizabeth Johnson. C-2. Luther Timothy Johnson Born on August 4th, 1881, in Chicago, Illinois, and deceased on June 4th, 1952, in San Mateo County, California. Luther married Elizabeth Peyton on September 23rd, 1902, in Golden, Colorado. He worked as a machinist, first in a railroad company in Denver, then in a dynamite plant owned by DuPont in Louviers, Colorado. Luther and Elizabeth lived in Louviers until mid 1940s, before moving to California. They had two children: GC-2.1. Francis Edward Johnson, born on August 12th, 1903, in Pueblo, Colorado, and deceased on March 15, 1970, in Los Angeles, California. Francis married Giorgiana Elma Chesnut on October 10th, 1925, in Golden, Colorado. Francis and Georgia had two children: GGC-2.1.1. Richard Glenn Johnson, born on August 30th, 1932, in Los Angeles, and deceased on November 18th, 2000, in Santa Paula, California. Richard married Marilyn J. Murphy on June 15th, 1963, in Los Angeles. GGC-2.1.2. Francis Edward Johnson, born on January 11th, 1938, in Los Angeles. GC-2.2. Glenn Luther Johnson, born on January 6th, 1912, in Denver, and deceased on October 11th, 1960, in Coma, San Mateo, California. Glenn married Melva Ann Mary Albin on June 25th, 1937, in San Mateo County. Glenn and Melva had at least one child: GGC-2.2.1. Douglas R. Johnson, born on March 2nd, 1940, in San Francisco, California. C-3. Josephine Albertina Johnson born on January 29th, 1884, in Chicago, Illinois, and deceased on October 17th, 1967, in Glendale, California. Josephine used to be a School Teacher before marrying Gilbert Carl Larson on November 19th, 1913, in Denver, Colorado. After marriage, they moved to Sheridan, Phelps County, Nebraska, and, in the late 1930s, to Glendale, California. Josephine and Gilbert did not have children. Edward Johnson and Louise Hensgen. C-4. Edward Swen Johnson born on March 5th, 1886, in Denver, Colorado, and deceased on March 20th, 1951, in Pasadena, California. Edward married to a French woman, Louise Marie Hensgen, on March 11th, 1905, in Denver. Louise was the daughter of Jean Nicolas Hensgen and Marie Catherine Mourer. After the wedding, Edward and Louise lived in at least two addresses: 2881 South Acoma Street and 372 South Gilpin Street. In 1910, Edward worked as a Salesman for a cigar company. However, during the 1920s, Edward and Louise got divorced. Louise remarried in 1930 in Denver, while Edward moved to Los Angeles. There, he married Gladys L. McKelvy on August 18th, 1938. He lived in Pasadena until his death. Edward had four children with Louise: GC-4.1. Renee Marion Johnson, born on February 11th, 1910, in Denver, and deceased on December 5th, 1994, in Novato, California. Renee married George Collins Kinnear on February 25th, 1935, in Denver. Before marriage, Renee worked as Recording Clerk at a telephone company. Renee and George had two children: GCC-4.1.1. George Edward Kinnear, born on April 10th, 1936, in Denver, and deceased on December 4th, 2008, in Los Angeles. George married Paula J. Plamondon on May 27th, 1961, in Los Angeles. George and Paula divorced in 1969. George married for a second time on July 4th, 2000, with Peri A. Williams. GCC-4.1.2. Barbara A. Kinnear, born in 1939, in Denver. Barbara married Donald Locke on May 31st, 1962, in San Mateo, California. She divorced Donald in September 1967, in Marin, California. GC-4.2. Rodger Edward Johnson, born in 1914, and deceased in 1922, in Denver, Colorado. GC-4.3. Lorraine Johnson, born on July 21st, 1916, in Denver, and deceased in 1917, in Englewood, Colorado. GC-4.4. Grace Elaine Johnson, born on July 21st, 1916, in Denver, and deceased on February 13th, 2008, in Palo Alto, California. Grace married Donovan Leo Donald on February 14th, 1939, in Denver. After their marriage, they lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and El Paso, Texas, before settling in Palo Alto, California, by the late 1940s. Elaine and Don had eight children: GGC-4.4.1. John Rodger Donald, born in September 1940, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. As a Jesuit Priest, Father John “Jack” Donald served and lived in Honduras. GGC-4.4.2. Robert Leo Donald, born on November 21st, 1941, in El Paso, Texas, and deceased on October 19th, 2004, in Palo Alto, California. Bob married Cherie R. Franchi on August 17th, 1963, in Santa Clara, California. They had five children: GGGC-4.4.2.1. David A. Donald, born in San Mateo County, California. David married Janet. GGGC-4.4.2.2. John R. Donald, born in Santa Clara County, California. John married to Elaine. GGGC-4.4.2.3. Robert A. Donald, born in San Mateo County, California. Robert married to Laura. GGGC-4.4.2.4. James M. Donald, born in San Mateo County, California. GGC-4.4.3. Cheryl Elaine Donald, born on July 27th, 1943, in El Paso, Texas, and deceased on October 9th, 2001, in Sacramento, California. Cheryl married: (I) George William Beaubien around 1962 in Santa Clara, California, (II) Richard Joseph Daumen on July 26th, 1969, in Reno, Nevada, and (III) Francis David Franchell. Cheryl had two children: GGGC-4.4.3.1. Teresa Anne Beaubien, born in Palo Alto, California, married to Giorgio Notari. GGGC-4.4.3.2. Joseph Daumen GGC-4.4.4. James Edward Donald, born on September 8th, 1945, in El Paso, Texas, and deceased on February 24th, 2003, in Davis, California. Jim married Esther Grace Javier in 1990, in Sacramento, California. GGC-4.4.5. Kathryn Louise Donald, born on March 31st, 1949, in Palo Alto, California. Kathy married Jack L. Portlock on June 8th, 1985, in Santa Clara, California. GGC-4.4.6. Thomas Michael Donald, born on September 22nd, 1951, in Palo Alto, California. Tom married Laura E. Blair on June 21st, 1975, in Santa Clara, California. Thomas and Laura had one child: GGGC-4.4.6.1. Peter B. Donald, born in Santa Clara County, California. GGC-4.4.7. Steven Patrick Donald, born on March 3rd, in San Francisco, California. GGC-4.4.8. Michael Anthony Donald, born on October 23rd, 1963, in San Mateo, California. C-5. Arthur Samuel Johnson Born on January 6th, 1889, and deceased on August 1973, in Denver, Colorado. Arthur worked as a salesman, including working in a cigar store with his brother Edward in 1910. Arthur married Dorothy Fagerberg on April 1st, 1911, in Denver. They spent the rest of their lives in Denver, and left no descendancy. C6. Agnes Sophie Johnson Born on January 15th, 1892, in Denver, Colorado, and deceased on January 15th, 1991, in Glendale, California. Agnes worked as a bookkeeper in a cigar store before marrying George C. Metzger on August 30th, 1925, in Colorado Springs. However, George passed away three years later. After his death, Agnes moved back home with her mother, Albertina. Few years later, on August 14th, 1937, Agnes married John Wolf in Denver. Just like most of her brothers and nephews, Agnes and John moved to California during the 1940s. They did not have children. C7. Albert Lawrence Johnson Born on October 14th, 1894, in Denver, Colorado, and deceased on November 18th, 1959, in Arvada, Colorado. Albert made a career as Mail Carrier for the Denver Post Office. He married: (I) Ethel S. Adolphson on July 19th, 1927, in Denver, and (II) Pearl Eloise Taylor on February 18th, 1939, in Denver. Albert did not have children.

https://medium.com/@erickfalcao/the-johnsons-a-swedish-family-in-denver-bcc149981366

['Erick Falcão']

2020-12-23 15:25:38.682000+00:00

['Genealogy', 'Denver', 'Immigration', 'Sweden']

How to be a good manager to freelancer writers

You may not know it but before my days at Skyscanner (where I do work with freelance writers on a regular basis) I spent almost 10 years in a print media newsroom, first in one of the biggest newspapers in Spain then in a regional one with a small team but a vast team of local correspondents. And 4 more working for a Catalan TV as a reporter (thank goodness that was before Youtube became so popular so there are no embarrassing videos of me out there — not that I know of). There I learnt from some wonderful journalists and editors what it takes to be a good manager and editor when you work with writers. By no means this is an absolute truth, just a few thoughts based on personal experience, but I hope you will find this useful and interesting. Do your research During my career I’ve met countless of people complaining about not being able to find “good freelancers” and while I won’t deny the fact that there are some average writers out there, there are also really good ones there. If you’re on the lookout for a good team of writers, look well and you’ll find them. In my case, since I mostly work with people who write about travel, I’ve always found the blogging and travel writing media a really good source of great professionals. I am sure you do know some media and main blogs in your field of work. Approach some of their writers, ask around, ask for recommendations. In fact, some of my writers came to me recommended by other freelancers I knew, and I’ve never looked back. I’m not saying it will be easy but doing your research and outreach will pay off. Training and onboarding Great, you’ve found people you want to work for you. Chances are these freelancers may not be familiar with your company’s way of handling content. Be it the CMS you’re using, the way to upload images on pages or how communications are conducted (emails, JIRA, trello, Wrike, whatever other platform is out there), there will be a learning curve. Doesn’t need to be steep but I’ve found that having “how to” guides, brand, style, editorial & tone of voice guidelines helps. Make sure your freelancers have these available and ready. And be there to answer questions, because at the beginning there will be some. And no, telling people to go to Google to find how things work is not the answer. You may think it is saving you time but in the long run you want to build a trusted relationship with your freelancers and keep them for the long run. Treat them like you’d like to be treated. One thing we did at Skyscanner back in 2015 was bring to our Edinburgh office most of our freelance editors and writers for 2 days of training and workshops ahead of some really big changes. That helped a lot to get everyone on board. Añadir texto alternativo Be there This goes without saying. In a workplace environment you’re supposed to be there for your colleagues and employees. Well, when your employees work remotely, and you don’t see them face to face every day this also applies. Be there for them because they need you. Trust me, freelance writers tend to be pretty independent individuals and are usually not the needy kind (nothing wrong with that, by the way). But they will have questions about the job you’ve commissioned or the way to implement it. Being there to help them out and lend them a hand is key. Even when I worked for a newspaper my editors and managers were always ready to help and had answers for my questions. This is how you build a relationship and how you make them feel valued and cared for. Yes, you’re not their mother and they are adults but it’s nice to be human and relatable and we’ve all needed answers. Again, ignoring them or telling them to ask Google their questions or figure things out for themselves is a fabulous recipe for your freelancers not being invested in the project they are working on. Respect This is another big one. Just because you’re an editor or a content manager doesn’t mean you are in absolute possession of the absolute truth (I know I am not). People are entitled to have different opinions and while freelancers may need to follow our tone of voice and style, they will be happier to comply if you respect them and explain the whys. Same goes for writing. I once had an editor while working in Barcelona who hated one particular word: “unique”. She would go to great lengths to substitute that word by “singular”. Every single time. The whole newsroom knew about this. And while in Spanish those two words can be interchangeable, there was nothing wrong about using “unique” instead of “singular” or using them both in an article. This resulted in great frustration for her and in some sort of a joke for all the writers in house. Honestly, respect that they may use some words which are synonyms to your favourite ones. Respect the fact that they may choose to go for expressions that you would not have used. But as long as they keep to the tone of voice, there is nothing out of line and do their job, it’s good to let them see you value their skills. Añadir texto alternativo Trust We’ve all dealt in work and life with people that have deceived us. It happens to each and every one of us. But try to trust people, just try. If you’re going to micromanage them and not trust anything they do, what’s the point in hiring someone to help you out then? Particularly at the beginning of any professional relationship it may take a bit to get to know someone and to learn how they prefer to work. If you’ve hired them it’s for a reason. Trust them. They may make a mistake. But instead of losing trust on them right then and there, give them a second chance (unless the mistake was super major, that is) and use that as an opportunity to show them how you prefer things done. If after that they keep making the same mistake, feel free to let them go… But give people a chance first. The importance of a good brief First and foremost, brief your freelancers well if you want them to deliver what you’re expecting. We can talk another day about the power of a good brief or how to create one but let me tell you that investing some time on crafting a good brief will save you from a big headache. Yes, it takes time but consider it an investment. When I used to be a reporter and newspaper journalist my editor would always make it clear what was expected of me to deliver once I was back in the newsroom, what needed to go on the news or be printed on the newspaper. Clear things like: We need this piece of content to inspire our travellers to want to go on a foodie adventure in Singapore. The article needs to include lots of examples of different dishes and flavours Add some personal touches and experience. Use sensorial language, make them almost smell and taste it How much space/time you have. And a structure. Any decent writer will know the basic structure of an article: an introduction that catches attention, development, end paragraph wrapping things up. Simple as it is, if you have a clear structure that want followed, tell them. It is way easier fixing typos and changing basic bits of content than having to redo an article structure from scratch. With the clear importance of optimising anything for SEO, a good brief is the best tool so that your freelancers know what you want. Let them know if you have a clear URL in mind and which keywords to use. Tell them when and where to use them. But also let them weave them within the text so that the narration flows and this doesn’t feel like some sort of collection of keywords stuffed together. Most likely Google won’t like that and nor will your readers. Añadir texto alternativo Collaboration & Team spirit Despite your team of freelancers working remotely, when everybody feels part of the team, valued, respected and loved they will work better. Send emails to the whole team every now and then celebrating milestones or articles that are doing well, praising them for their skills or their collaboration. Involve them in the conversation and, if you can, try to make some time for them in person. One of my favourite things when visiting Madrid or Barcelona (where most of my writers were based at some point) I always made a point to set aside a few hours for some food and casual drinks with them. This brought us all closer and really helped creating a lovely team spirit. Feedback Giving and receiving feedback is a tough one. To be honest, when you start working with a new team or new people things won’t be smooth from the beginning. You may have to give a lot of feedback… and your freelancers will need to be able to take it, implement it and learn from it. If there’s something I’ve learnt in my career is that feedback is best when given with sincerity and honesty and when it comes from a good place, with plenty of hints on how to improve and an offer to help along the way. And of course, good feedback should be shared too. I still remember fondly the time the head of photography at La Vanguardia (a newspaper founded in Barcelona in 1881) told me I had very good eye for images. Or the time the editor at a newspaper I worked at said he was amazed by how I could write fast and with good quality under very tight deadlines. Stuff like that is what keeps you going when you’re having a bit of an imposter syndrome. Plus, if you only tell freelancers what they do wrong and you don’t give them any praise chances are all the feedback they will hear from you regards not being good enough or needing improvement. So yeah, balance it out and be nice. Patience Managing freelancers will involve a lot of time and effort, but it’s also deeply rewarding if you like dealing with human being as much as I do. If you have the patience to help them through their struggles, help them grow and improve, listen to their questions and are there for them when they need you… then you’ll get yourself some wonderfully enriching friendships and professional relationships that will last you a lifetime. And when you’re running out of patience, take a break, make yourself a nice cup of tea and find a way to get back to that person from a better place. Añadir texto alternativo I am sure I must have missed a lot… But wanted to share some snippets of what I’ve learned after more than 20 years as a journalist and around a decade managing freelancers and writers. So far, it’s the best job in the world and I don’t think my days in the office would be half as fun and interesting if I didn’t get to share them with such an amazing team (remote or not). What’s your take on this? Please feel free to share your tips to being a good manager and I’ll make sure to add them. Note: A big thank you to all those who taught me all I know. You know who you are and I will be forever grateful. Not only you were amazing professionals, you were incredible people.

https://medium.com/@Madaboutravel/how-to-be-a-good-manager-to-freelancer-writers-21fdb6a07d3a

[]

2020-02-21 14:39:30.447000+00:00

['Content Management', 'Content', 'Freelancers', 'Content Creation', 'Freelance Writing']

Telling Your Story With Data

Telling Your Story With Data Normalization: What is it and why does it matter? Data is one of the most powerful tools we have for making decisions, but as Uncle Ben once said to Spiderman, “With great power comes great responsibility.” The problem with data is that the way it’s displayed can sometimes be misleading and confusing. When used correctly, normalization can make data easier to understand. So, what exactly is normalization? Simply said: Normalization makes your data comparable. Let’s look at an example. Below is a map showing ‘Total Households Below Poverty Level’ at the state level (use the tools on the map to zoom in and explore). As you can see, Texas has significantly more households below poverty level (1.4 million) than Mississippi (230,000), but Texas also has significantly more households. Since Texas has a population of 26 million, and Mississippi has a population of 3 million, it is nearly impossible to meaningfully compare the two states based on raw household data. If we take that same dataset, ‘Total Households Below Poverty Line’ and normalize (divide) by ‘Total Households’, we create ‘Percentage of Households Below Poverty Level’. Take a look at the map below. The selected states now show percentages of households below poverty level. We can see that Mississippi, at 21%, has a higher percentage of households below poverty than Texas, at 16%. The big takeaway: It’s important to interpret data in the universe in which it exists. Normalization makes your data comparable across different geographies and makes it easier to spot trends. Remember: Don’t let the process or the complicated nature of data analysis intimidate you. With powerfully simple analysis tools, anyone can make sense of and understand data. Like this article? Subscribe to our newsletter to read more like it here. About mySidewalk: mySidewalk is a data analysis tool for people who want to understand places. With the ability to access more than 800 sets of pre-loaded data, perform one-click analysis, and instantly share insight, it’s easy for anyone to make better decisions using data. To learn more about the type of work we are doing, visit our website.

https://medium.com/community-pulse/telling-your-story-the-importance-of-data-normalization-1b6f15f103fb

[]

2016-12-29 20:12:31.904000+00:00

['Urban Planning', 'GIS', 'Big Data Analytics', 'Big Data', 'Data Analysis']

Psalms of Ninasar, the Watcher

Psalms of Ninasar, the Watcher I am immortal. I am an orphan, an unknown father’s son whose mother, since labor, lay long interred. I have known neither. I believe when we are born, our bodies first inhale to trap our divine souls in a mortal coil. Every breath from birth to death is a struggle to keep our divinity captive until that last exhale when the divine prospers and escapes its prison of flesh. I am immortal. My soul’s prison is eternity. My solitude is my dungeon, and my failings my scourge. In quiet hours, I speak in whispers of names and faces I have long forgotten. They are there just beyond grasping, like the tail end of a wood splinter, they are buried deep in my flesh. I fear to touch them that, like the splinter, they break, shedding the part touched and delving deeper where only pain and blood can find them again. I am immortal. My daughters and my sons refuse my forgetting them, for they have had children, and those children have had their own, and so on, and so on. Like the splinter — now a part of myself and left to fester for eternity in a forgotten wound — they rise to the surface, and I know them. Children are a lesson for those who have nothing left to learn. I am better having known them. The world is greater for their passing through it. The pleasure and pain of their coming and the pleasure and pain of their going is my sole rapture, for the joy of a splinter removed is far greater than the apathy of never having one at all.

https://medium.com/@whiskeredwriter/psalms-of-ninasar-the-watcher-ef14d0a185e3

['Jr Verwey']

2020-12-22 18:57:39.528000+00:00

['Flash Fiction', 'Fiction', 'Storytelling', 'Fiction Writing', 'Poetry']

What We Hide Behind These Masks

We have entered a new phase — The Era of Face Masks. It’s new; these physical masks we wear. From right below the eyes, down past the chin, these masks cover over half our face. They shield the expressions that would typically build intimacy and trust between us as humans in society. They stifle our breathing and muffle our conversations with the store clerk. It’s a phenomenon none of us would’ve predicted a year ago. But, we’ve adapted. We’ve adapted to our glasses fogging up, fidgeting with ribbons and elastics, new body language cues like extra pointing and eyebrow movements. We’ve adapted, and we wear them, because we believe they serve a purpose. Protection. These physical masks we wear are new to us, however, we’ve been wearing masks for much longer. As we enter and pass through the next phases of Covid life, face masks will stay part of our lives for a while. Then, in time, we will wear them less and less frequently, until perhaps one day, we will put them away in a drawer, safe and saved, and no longer necessary for our everyday life. We will be free from that itchy corner where the blue thread is poking out. We will see our neighbors at the grocery store and feel the warmth of their smiles. We will embrace the intimacy of expression as a wall has now dissolved between us. While our face-mask-wearing-days served to protect us during a time, we will feel the freedom and closeness return as we rid ourselves of these masks. It’s worth asking, what other masks have we been wearing, and when will we take them off? We show a piece of ourselves to others, and other parts, we hide. We hide behind our devices, our earphones, our busyness, our distractions. We hide from others and sometimes, we hide from ourselves, dodging the questions we’re not ready to answer. Our coworkers may never know we play the banjo or speak elvish, and our friends may never know our nerdy insights saved the company hundreds of dollars. We may never face our demons and reveal a new layer of ourselves to…ourselves. Maybe we’ve never known a life without our masks, or maybe, we can’t remember. We feel safe with them on. We’re not ready for the unknown exposure. Like our Covid face masks, the masks we wear serve some sort of purpose in our lives — a protection, a guard up against our fears and insecurities. Fears of being known as we are, completely, and whole. To expose ourselves fully is un-fkn-comfortable! It will be, until we learn to trust. All the hiding comes at a cost. When do the masks we wear do us more harm than good? “Masks make shallow what God has intended to be deep. Everything in our lives get cheated when we choose to hide behind our masks.” — Indianapolis Pastor, Hope Church* When a mask is worn, we can see each other’s eyes, and we can get a glimpse of expression from the movement of the face. Our new body language cues come into play here, but, our full selves are not revealed. We cannot see each other’s true expressions. We cannot experience those moments when you smile at each other and receive the natural high of human connection. That sunshine feeling. The connection that establishes basic human trust and sincerity. It might not seem like we’re missing out on much, but we, as social creatures, need to connect. We need to belong. We want to be known, even when it scares us. What would it feel like to show our whole selves? Like taking your bra off after a long day, ladies. The uncomfortable one. Fellas, like taking off your pants when you get home. Ah yeah. That feeling. Relief. Just think. What if we stopped choosing our personalities based on who was on the guest list? What if we expressed our feelings and opinions without fear of being judged — by ourselves or others? What if we reached out when we needed help, and took the guessing out of relationships by having the hard conversations? How could our lives be different, if we left our masks behind? At first, it will be uncertain. Stepping into a new world, wondering if we still need the protection our masks have always provided. Hoping that it is safe. For a time, it might feel awkward. As uncomfortable as the masks were to put on, we learned to adapt. To take them off, we will adapt again. We may trip over our words and feel our insecurities come to the surface. In time, we’ll realize we’re not alone in our feelings, experiences, quirks or fears. Our relationships with each other transform. We understand each other just a little more clearly, and we know ourselves, just a little more deeply. We’ll find a coworker who also likes dodgeball or is strangely good at 80’s trivia. Our friend’s friend we never talked to before, also is afraid of eye drops. Our neighbor has also been unemployed for 6 months. Sigh of relief. As the masks come off, our shoulders relax and the extra weight they carry melts away. The worry line between our eyebrows softens just a bit. Our mind gets quieter. We feel that which, as humans, we crave the most — connection. It’d be nice if there was an easy step by step process, but most of this comes with practice. We get to flex our trust muscles as we try, and try again, hoping it gets easier in time. The parts of ourselves that we choose to hide are just as much a part of us as the parts we choose to show. When we get through these days of fear, uncertainty and pain and finally put our face masks away in the drawer, will we put away the other masks we’ve been wearing for so much longer, and experience the freedom and fullness of our liberation? “We weren’t born with masks. We put them on, so we can take them off.”* *Quotes from Susan Sparks / Posted Oct 2015 / The Masks That We Wear: “Imposter Syndrome” and why we sometimes feel like a fake / https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/laugh-your-way-well-being/201510/the-masks-we-wear

https://medium.com/@darcystewart02/what-we-hide-behind-these-masks-95847d30800d

['Darcy Stewart']

2020-07-01 03:43:32.672000+00:00

['Masks']

When Your Distinct Advantage is a Crash Landing on the Hudson.

When Your Distinct Advantage is a Crash Landing on the Hudson. The Miracle on the Hudson I saw Dave speak many years ago at an EO event. There, he was sharing his story of The Miracle on the Hudson, an event I actually saw live from my New York office. I love that he shared a bit more about that extraordinary event during our interview! For starters, Dave noted that he wasn’t supposed to be on that plane. Usually, his flights were at the very end of the day. It just so happened, however, that Dave’s work finished early that day, and he had felt super lucky to get moved to an earlier flight. As luck would have it, his new flight just so happens to have had to make an emergency landing in the Hudson. When the captian instructed passengers to “brace for landing”, it was clear that this was going to be a flight like no other. After saying his final prayers, Dave started putting his game plan together. He knew that if he survived the crash, he wouldn’t be in the clear yet. There would still be the matter of getting to land, which was clearly going to involve dealing with the icy water of the Hudson. Although his personal mantra had been “Aisle up, out. Aisle up, out.”, when it came time to move, Dave found himself off course. Instead of focusing on his own escape, he could hear his mother in his head, reminding him that doing the right thing was the most important thing. If you’d like to hear more about this amazing story, you can listen in to the full interview here. Lessons Learned The day after the emergency landing, Dave stopped in at his office to let everyone know he was alright. One of the first questions asked was if he was still heading to Michigan for their planned work trip. Even though the VP let him know he didn’t have to go, he did. But the exchange got him thinking. Ultimately, he realized that he had a greater mission in life than just selling software. Using what he called the Zig Ziglar approach, Dave gave his first 50–75 talks for free. He continued working in software sales as he grew his expertise and ability. Eventually, he was able to transition into his own business, which he continues to run today. In this time, it became more and more clear to him that revenue only considerations are no way to live your life. Even though he was the top producing sales person in his company and was incredibly successful, he knew he couldn’t stay. This was partially because of leadership changes that created limitations he hadn’t felt before. (Listen in to hear what his new manager said when he handed him his $63,000 bonus check.) This exchange got me thinking about the fundamental deal-based exchanges that occur between employers and employees. Years ago those relationships weren’t necessarily thought of as deals. In today’s world, however, increased employee mobility and options have shifted the balance. Now, these relationships are the result of deal-making and negotiations more than ever before. People choose not to stay in situations that don’t work for their lives, needs, desires, or personalities.

https://medium.com/@corey-kupfer/when-your-distinct-advantage-is-a-crash-landing-on-the-hudson-fed255e7cbde

['Corey Kupfer']

2020-12-11 23:42:27.946000+00:00

['Business Intelligence', 'Inspiration', 'Distinct Advantage', 'Motivational Speaker', 'Business Strategy']

Spares and Accessories — D & H (Partnership) Ltd

D & H (Partnership) Ltd can provide spares and accessories — including medical lights for all applications, from large surgical lights for general surgery in an operating theatre to smaller examination lights for emergency rooms and clinical environments. We are specialist company that primarily supplies, installs and maintains surgical lighting including theatre operating luminaires and examination luminaires. Our services also cover associated equipment including emergency standby battery units, theatre control panels, replacement bulbs, as well as medical and surgical suction equipment. We also offer a complete operating light refurbishment service which can be particularly helpful in the current financial climate where both the NHS and private healthcare sector have restrained budgets. Please browse our product pages to find the surgical light for your particular needs. Each page has a full product brochure available to download. Should you require any further information please do not hesitate to contact a member of our team. Please note that we currently only supply to the UK.

https://medium.com/@peterbastian0208/spares-and-accessories-d-h-partnership-ltd-bd443bc9796a

['D H Partnership']

2020-06-15 12:55:29.010000+00:00

['Health', 'Healthcare', 'Spare', 'Medical', 'Accessories']

Is Democracy Dead?

What is democracy? For so many of us, democracy is like God; we accept that it exists, even though we don’t fully understand how it works or what it is, or why we even accept its existence. We place our faith in it, as good citizens, and trust that democracy will bring us prosperity and control over our own little lives. If we believe hard enough, even we can change the course of nations. When not, we at least trust that democracy has our best interests at heart. Like religion, democracy began with the best of intentions. It offered a way of life, a good and honest way to lead the people after centuries of kings and queens and off-with-her-heads. It seemed so simple; one person, one vote, and all are equal in the eyes of the ballot box. Yet we are not all equal. In some democracies — the UK and US, for example — how equal your vote depends on a whole host of factors you can’t really control. Where you live, who else lives nearby, your ability to travel to vote, your citizenship, country of birth, your relationship with the law, your age, your race, all influence how much or how little your one vote counts. Democracy is like God; we accept that it exists, even though we don’t fully understand how it works or what it is. In 2015, a few months before the now-notorious Brexit vote, the UK held an election. Nearly four million voters, 12% of all votes cast, won just one seat in Parliament. To put those nearly-four-million votes in perspective, it took less than two million votes for the Conservatives to win the election. For the Conservatives, two million votes more than the Labour Party translated to more than a hundred seats. It took only 36.8% of the vote for the Conservatives to take power. It is not only supporters of the far-right UK Independence Party who find themselves underrepresented playing by the rules of British democracy. The Green Party, although it failed to win as many individual votes as UKIP, also earned a disproportionately low number of seats compared to how many people it represents. There are, of course, also positives to this system; it protects the rights of countries occupied by the English when Britain was created. Indigenous Scottish, Northern Irish, and Welsh parties win local seats far more easily than parties that cater to a geographically scattered, though large, support base. When this system starts to silence the voices of millions, however, it becomes problematic.

https://medium.com/an-injustice/is-democracy-dead-7d43a7a6c391

['Abbey Heffer']

2020-12-25 15:15:31.803000+00:00

['Politics', 'Politics And Protest', 'Trump', 'Brexit', 'Democracy']

Why acts of anarchy shouldn’t be surprising

Its true that “Tough times bring out the best and the worst in us”, with the world facing constant threat and crisis since the onset of 2020, things haven’t particularly been warm and cozy. But with outbreak of COVID-n19 across the globe, though there have been mostly great moments of heroics and chivalry but on the far side there has been distrupting behavior with multiple incidents of looting, hoarding and many accounts of unruly & selfish behavior that has went largely unreported. This uncivilized behavior mostly comes as shock to us when actually it shouldn’t because, humans for the larger part of the time since they have become bi-pedal have largely lived in small groups where survival was at stake and hostility against other groups was not only fair it was very much required. It was around 3100 BC that earliest human civilizations came into picture and it meant humans would have to leave their ways of wild and shift from rules of nature to laws of society but, unlearning millions of years of training will prove to be very difficult. Understanding this switch in primitive to civilized behavior is better aided with good ‘ol Maslow’s triangle. The basic concept of the triangle is that without full-filling the requirements of lower level you cant progress to higher levels and if you do so then a downfall is pretty certain. Now societies here keeps the natural selection at bay almost elevating everyone to third strata now some societies even lay ground work for third strata so navigating that also becomes kind of easy, so now to keep the system at this stage, society introduces its rules & law that everyone adheres to in exchange of reaching third strata. Now this where the things get tricky, society is an artificial construct that requires constant maintenance and there are a lot many parts of it like Law, governance, supply chain and all of them are interdependent and work together to keep society intact. Now in times of distress like COVID when a lot these institutions get affected, the society’s trap-net starts dwindling, things revert to same old 5 tier triangle and for some less evolved and less patient ones, the rules of society bite the curb as soon as it happens and the primitive behavior kicks in, hence we see looting, hoarding & vandalism spiking. Now why is it problematic ? Let’s take the tale of two cats, both of them have an equal share of food given out to them daily, both remain satisfied from that & there is no feud. But one day suddenly an unknown entity whose threat level cant be assessed by the cats, appears and lays claim to food of one. Now what would probably happen is that cats will feel that their assured food supply is threatened and both will try to make their case for the remaining one, might even end up fighting over it, while the unknown entity won’t do anything and things will run their course, and just like that entity has simply sat while the cats have taken out each other with their nuclear arsenals (these cats were actually human representation, how else do you think cats have nuclear warheads), now if the cats would have banded together and fought the entity instead, their chances of wining over might not have been fair but maybe they could have achieved a better result. This uncertain entity can be a reflection of our times in fighting this global pandemic and fighting among ourselves on an individual as well at state and national level helps no one, instead working together might lead us somewhere. This primitive behavior has been long programmed into us and instead of getting shocked and dumbstruck every time it happens, we should simply accept that evolution has not happened to everyone.

https://medium.com/@aman-gupta-17174/why-acts-of-anarchy-shouldnt-be-surprising-dd89678b0d49

[]

2020-05-26 11:34:07.247000+00:00

['Coronavirus', 'Human Psychology', 'Human Behavior', 'Society', 'Covid 19']

‘Hell Bent, Heaven Sent’ A Novel

‘Hell Bent, Heaven Sent’ A Novel Image provided by Maria Rattray One thing Allie appreciated about her partner was that he was almost always fair and calm, but when the situation demanded it, he was a master craftsman at pulling appropriate personas from his psyche, in order to deal with the situation. She knew she needed to make amends, and quickly! “Brad I am so sorry! Please forgive me. I was seriously out of line,” she said woodenly, too scared to meet his eyes. “Indeed you were, but they were your thoughts, so you must have felt them at the time. That’s the thing about anger. Truth comes out!” “You have no idea how sorry I am. I don’t know what came over me. I apologize sincerely,” she said, twisting her rings nervously, a habit she had when she was tense. “It’s just that…well I’m absolutely miserable these days. You’ve no idea. I feel as if I’m on a perpetual roundabout, one I just can’t escape from. I’m forever being painted into a corner by one client or another, negotiating, bargaining, telling white lies here, back-peddling there. It’s exhausting…not to mention soul-destroying.” “I hear you,” he replied stonily, “but do you think I don’t have to do much of that? Where deadlines are concerned, we all make excuses. It’s how we survive!” “It’s not quite the same Brad. You’re left much to your own devices most of the time, creating, imagining, and drawing. That sounds like fun to me.” “Fun? Huh!” “AND you work reasonable hours. When did I last sit down with you and watch the news for instance?” “I wouldn’t call that fun nowadays. And you’re hardly right about the imagining and drawing. Architecture is intensive work and you know it. Yes it’s creative, but it also demands precision. I can’t afford to make mistakes. Like you, I have to meet client needs, and like you, I have to meet deadlines.” “Well be that as it may, at least you get to be home at a reasonable hour. The reality is this. Whether you like it or not, I can’t go on working these bloody long hours, always having to appear bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when I’m dealing with an ever-increasing supply of bargain-hunters who place ridiculous offers with me, ones I am mandated to take to the client. “Worse still, the rip-off investment merchants who couldn’t give a toss about other people being down on their luck, are driving me to distraction. They should be clapped in jail. They’re totally unscrupulous. And here am I, piggy-in-the-middle trying to conduct a fair sale, knowing that the price they offer is ridiculously below value. All I’m doing is lining the pockets of the wealthy. I’m over the whole sordid business.” Brad, now calmer, sat down beside her, taking her hand in his. Ever mindful of the perilous path he was now walking, he allowed himself the luxury of a few deep breaths before he continued. “OK. That’s as may be Allie, but the question remains. What’s your alternative plan? I’m presuming you have one.” “Have a baby?” Brad looked at her intently as she fiddled agitatedly with her newly-manicured nails, lips drawn tightly, eyes determinedly veiled. This was a new challenge that he was quite ill-prepared for. He knew there was not even a chance that she wanted to have a baby, certainly not at this stage. Allie’s plans for the immediate future were almost always egocentric, about how she might personally benefit from them. An inveterate page turner, she had barely time to live in the present, always too busy planning for what hopefully would be the next exciting chapter of her life. So a baby? Taking yet another deep breath he continued. “It’s an option. It’s always been an option if that’s truly what you want. All we have to do is sell this house, AND your car, and move into a neat little box out in the suburbs, like where we came from actually, far removed from ease of commuting, and even further away from your favorite trendy restaurants, shops, and friends. “Not that that will matter. There won’t be any spare money for dining out or socializing, but, if that’s what your heart desires, let’s go for it. I can live simply. The million dollar question is, can you?” It was a risk and he knew it. Eyes intently on her, he chose to say no more. This was a game, Allie’s game, one that he was determined she wouldn’t easily win. She felt his eyes on her and wished there and then that she had worked more diligently on improving her arguments. Somehow Brad always appeared to be right when they confronted each other. Ongoing silence, calm, and tight reasoning were his secret weapons, ones that he used expertly, when necessary. Right now these same attributes were infuriating her beyond measure! “Why do you always have to be so bloody logical?” “It’s just the kind of guy I am!” he laughed, trying to break the ice a little. “Seriously though, it’s reality. You quit your job and the plans, our plans, will fall like a pack of cards. In some ways I wouldn’t mind it to tell you the truth, but, the reality is that you would. Correct?” She looked at him, crestfallen, resigned to the naked truth that, as always, he was right. Having a baby right now was not even remotely in her plans. She’d consider having one of those in the distant future when the powers that be had fashioned a designer variety that rarely cried, one that would allow her to sleep late in the mornings, and behave perfectly whenever she had her friends over for a cappuccino. “Okay, as always, you’re right. I know I’m being melodramatic. I do want to stick to our five-year plan, but it’s so hard. I don’t have a life!” “If it feels so bad, why don’t you do as I suggested…have some time off, go away for a few days and recuperate?” “That’s not going to help. All I’d think about would be the financial noose that hangs around our necks. I’m not sure buying this house was worth the agony. We don’t even get to enjoy it.” Again Brad looked at her, that even, quizzical kind of look that assured her that once again she was being a stranger to the truth. “That’s not entirely true Allie. Yours is one of the few jobs where you can flex off in the afternoons if and when you need to. And because you’re such an outstanding salesperson, nobody checks up on your whereabouts. You work long hours, you deliver, and so they trust you. It’s a win-win situation for both parties. “It’s that same trust that allows you to go to the gym almost every day, even do a bit of shopping, have your nails done, AND visit the hairdresser when you need to…and, you’ve often had the odd coffee with friends, right here in this house…in working hours I may add. It’s not really the twelve-hour day you talk about. The hours are just…well different. You have a work freedom that others would kill for.” “But…” “Sorry! I hadn’t finished — and please don’t go for my jugular when I say this. Dinners and drinks with regular clients and colleagues are also factored into those long days. I know it’s not all beer and skittles, but it’s a social job that I know you enjoy and excel at.’ “But…” “No, hear me out. As for not getting to appreciate the house, that’s not quite correct either. We spend as many hours here in our home, as most couples do in theirs, and given that we have a house cleaner and somebody to mow the lawns and weed, I’d say we’re ahead of the pack in terms of time.” “But I’m OVER it Brad! I need a job that uses my creative talents.” “Selling houses is creative!” “Oh puleeze!! In what way is it creative? Go on Mr. Know-It-All, you tell me HOW.” Brad was reluctant to say too much. Past experience had taught him to say little when Allie was in one of her moods. But right now it didn’t matter much, as any response eluded him! “I’m all ears Brad.” Brad’s mind worked overtime in an effort to justify his statement. Whether he was right or wrong wouldn’t matter a fig. Allie’s mind was deliberately myopic when she chose it to be. But he knew a justification was expected. Another few deep breaths and he blurted out. “Well, you get to do make-over jobs on people’s houses, rearrange furniture, declutter, add accessories, hire some furniture if necessary, get rid of all the bad taste…and buy and arrange flowers. That’s pretty creative.” “Creative? Huh? Is that what you call it? Well, do I have news for you! Just for the record let me tell you, that much of that is damned hard, physical work. I’m finding muscles I never knew I had.” “So, now you can cut out going to the gym.” “That’s so amusing Brad. Building muscle can be seriously unattractive in women.” “Ok, I get you, but that apart, you ARE a miracle worker. You turn the ugliest homes into miniature palaces and everybody loves you for it. They rave about your talents. I’ve heard them. “And something else to think about is that you’re also keeping that group of small-business tradesmen that you hire, in work. It’s your word, your recommendations that get them so many ongoing contracts. And they work hard for you at reduced rates. A bird in the hand is how they look at it…assured work and no advertising fees. They know they’re onto a good thing.” Allie, chin now resting on her left clenched fist, stared angrily at the floor, her right hand drumming annoyingly on the base of her wine glass. She was biding for time, struggling to keep her side of the argument robust. So Brad courageously went on. “Moreover, potential buyers get sucked into the cheap transformations, imagining themselves living there. Not for a second do they factor in the idea of their less-than-ideal furniture fitting into that same space. That’s the very reason you manage to sell the homes to them where other agents would fail. You have talent Allie.” “That may be the case, but there’s a presumption that I, Allie Cashmere, am a magician. They think I can click my fingers and their houses will sell, just like that! Poof! It’s pure, unadulterated magic! As if! Have you any idea how I feel when I walk into their homes initially? Can you even imagine? I have to wonder how they manage to live in them! Furniture placed in front of pictures that they couldn’t be bothered taking down, patterned cushions, patterned rugs and patterned curtains, rooms painted in pinks and blues, colors their children chose twenty years back…all screaming to be put out of their misery. “I sit them down, explain very carefully about all that has to happen to make a good sale, and give them a few days, or however long they need, to get it all together. Do they do any of it? NO! It’s almost as if we didn’t even have the conversation. And then they effectively bow out of the equation, leaving me a minimalist budget to work on, and I’m left hiring the trades people, shifting and repositioning furniture around their houses, getting rid of garbage and adding my own brand of charm. I’ve even added ‘superior bed-making’ to my résumé.” “But…” “I haven’t finished Brad! Yes, I get the squeals of delight and thanks when they see the finished product. ‘Oh you’re so clever…such good taste…wish we could do that…how can we ever thank you enough?’, but apart from the subsequent offer of a glass of cheap wine after the sale, that’s as much thanks as I get. I’m presumed on!” “Well, you do get a substantial commission. That’s not to be sneezed at.” “That’s peanuts compared to my efforts!” “Oh my goodness, peanuts must have got very expensive since I last bought them!” “Funny!” “Besides, it all adds up. And let’s face it, what you do pays off. You then sell the houses for much more money.” “Just stop right there Brad. We’re not talking about really high-end market here, well not always,” she added, remembering the local bank-manager’s house that had looked much more like a war zone than the executive mansion it once had been. When she’d got rid of the hideous furniture, the drab curtains and the flocked wallpaper, she realized that the bones of the house were a work of art, the building speaking for itself. That was indeed a serendipitous find! “Do you realize that at the end of the market we’re talking about, it makes very little difference to my commission whether I sell for more or less? I’ve explained that to you a hundred times. Your problem is you never listen.” “But you sell houses faster than any other agent in the neighborhood, so effectively you ARE making more money. They’re jealous of you. That’s got to be a plus.” “And that’s precisely why I am so goddamned tired. NOW do you get it? I never get to have a mental flex-off.” ”Maybe we could have that holiday. Then when…” “Would you just stop right there! I’ve told you. A holiday’s not going to cut it! I’m serious. I NEED A DIFFERENT JOB. I just can’t do this. I WON’T do it.” “OK, so you’ve made your point. What do you have in mind? I’m presuming you DO have something in mind…other than reproduction that is?” There was a brief, uncomfortable hiatus in their dialogue whilst Allie, eyes once more cast to the floor, frantically searched for the right words. Brad waited patiently, newly-filled wine glasses in each hand, wondering whether sculling the two would make him more relaxed about what was to come. But experience had taught him otherwise. Eventually she looked at him through her thick bang of dark hair, that sultry look that always set him on guard. “I had a dream last night.” Chapter one:

https://medium.com/illumination/hell-bent-heaven-sent-a-novel-5fb50626fdad

['Maria Rattray']

2020-12-23 02:03:02.857000+00:00

['Husband Wife Problem', 'Fiction', 'Conflict Resolution', 'Career Change', 'Anger Management']

How to Use a Decision Tree Analysis in Project Management

Photo by Yeshi Kangrang Are you looking for an effective way to organize important project decisions while looking at the bigger picture? If so, we recommend that you be using decision tree analysis for your project management jobs. Using a decision tree for your project manager will help you to see every possible outcome of the project while helping you to make the best decision for you, the project, and your business. To learn more about decision trees keep reading our guide below. What’s a Decision Tree? A decision tree, also known as a decision tree analysis, is a diagram that will help to identify outcomes due to a collection of related choices. In the realm of project management using a decision tree analysis will help to have project leaders compare the different courses of action and evaluate the risks involved with each decision. When using the decision tree you can also weigh out the probabilities of success and the potential benefits associated with each decision. When it comes to decision tree project management it’s important to note that there are four main elements to a tree. Decision nodes A decision node can be represented on a tree as a symbol or shape. This will indicate that a choice must be made. Branches Thse lines are what connect the nodes together and help the project manager to see possible routes. Each branch on your diagram will represent a choice or decision and should be clearly labeled to keep the tree organized. Chance nodes These nodes are usually represented by a symbol on decision trees that doesn’t resemble the symbol used for decision nodes. Chance nodes will represent the end of the decision tree diagram and help to illustrate your final outcome. Final outcome Your decision tree analysis will begin with a simple decision node. From here branches will reach out and represent various choices and help to result in potential outcomes. After you have played out the entire scenario, an end node will be used to represent the final outcome. What Are the Benefits of Using Decision Tree Analysis? When you’re heading a project, every decision you make will present new opportunities and threats for your business and team. Using the decision tree analysis will help you to better prepare for each outcome and help you to make the best and most informed decisions for your projects. You will also have more clarity because decision trees are very easy to understand. When you create a decision tree it will also help to show each outcome and how they logically flow together. Using a decision tree will also make your project more efficient. Since they layout information in a straightforward way, these trees can be analyzed fast and used to make important decisions. They will even help you to become more adaptable. Decision trees can be easily adapted to include new ideas and opportunities. Lastly, decision trees are very compatible. When you use a decision tree with other project management methods, it can allow you to complete a project while managing others. How Do You Use a Decision Tree? Now that you’re aware of what a decision tree is and how it will benefit your projects let’s talk about how to use one. Keep reading below to see the steps on how to use your own decision tree. 1. Look at Each of Your Options The first step to using your decision tree is to look at each of your options. Every project you’re on will have multiple routes to complete it, so these should all be mapped out. You will want to identify each of these routes and add them to your decision tree. From here you can review each path and make wise decisions about each one. After analyzing the pros and cons of each path you’ll be able to decide which path is the best for you and your project. 2. Predict Potential Outcomes Now that you’ve listed each option for your projects it’s time to really look at the potential outcomes of each option. This isn’t a foolproof step, but you’ll need to make your best predictions, even if they aren’t accurate. After identifying your options you can add the outcomes to your decision tree to help make it more clear. After thinking about all the outcomes of your decisions it’s time to analyze. 4. Analyze Each Result At this point in the process, your decision tree should be fully completed. It should have multiple branches coming out of potential outcomes. Now you’ll need to analyze each result you’ve listed on your tree. You’ll also need to assess which option will be the best fit for you and your company. When working with money amounts we recommend using the expected value (EV) formula. This value is found by multiplying the potential outcome by the likelihood that it will actually occur. For example, if the project will earn the business $1,000 but there’s a 50 percent chance of success you’ll get an answer of 500, which is your score. Don’t forget that you’ll also need to run the EV score for your failed outcomes. This will help you to compare them side by side to see what the best option is. 5. Optimize Accordingly The last step to your decision tree is to optimize your actions accordingly. After reviewing every option you should have a good idea of which option is the best and will provide the greatest chance of success. Using the tree will help you to confidently make decisions when it comes to your project. What Materials Do You Need for Your Decision Tree? Making a decision tree is a thorough process, and it will require some materials. First, you’ll need some pen and paper to map out and create your tree. This makes decision trees cost-effective and practical. You could even use a whiteboard hanging in the office or laying around your house. Using a whiteboard to create your tree will make it easier to fix any mistakes since it’s so forgiving. You could even use a wall and some sticky notes to create your tree. This may be messy for some but for others, it’s a great way to make a tree and to swap options out. Software can even be used to make a great decision tree. There are different software options on the market that can be used to create a tree that’s organized and effective. This is a great option for those that want their trees to stay nice and tidy and they want them to be easily shared. Now It’s Time to Make Your Tree We have given you an in-depth guide on what a decision tree is, what elements are included, and how to go through the process of making it. So, now it’s your turn to make a decision tree for your project. If you’re having trouble starting your tree, try the 4 step system below. Step 1: Identify The first step to creating your decision tree is to identify. You should be identifying each of your options before making an informed decision. This is what your tree will help with. List all of your decisions on your project path. Step 2: Forecast The second step to creating your tree is to forecast. You’ll need to forecast, or predict, every potential outcome for each option you identified in step 1. The best way to forecast is to ask yourself what you really see happening if you pursue this decision. Make sure to list out the good outcomes as well as the bad. After this step, you will have a diagram that’s a complete decision tree. Step 3: Analyze After the time-consuming process of forecasting your outcomes, it’s time to analyze. When completing step 2 you’ll have a completed decision tree which is needed for the analyzing step. If your diagram doesn’t resemble much of a tree we challenge you to brainstorm more options and add them to the diagram. Now it’s time to analyze every course of action you’ve listed on your tree. You will want to list the positive and negative outcomes that will happen if you take this route. Step 4: Optimize After looking at every possible forecast and listing the outcomes it’s time to optimize your decision tree. You will want to make sure you’re optimizing your actions for success. Look at the end of your tree and pick the outcome that will benefit you, the project, and the company. Now you know which direction you should take the project in. Now You Know How to Use a Decision Tree We have provided you with an in-depth guide on decision tree analysis. You now know what decision trees are, their benefits, the elements behind them, and how to create your own. For more project management tips and information be sure to check out the rest of our website here. Originally published at actitime.com

https://medium.com/@actitime/how-to-use-a-decision-tree-analysis-in-project-management-b4f5da852ca1

[]

2020-12-15 15:39:07.559000+00:00

['Decision Tree', 'Project Management', 'Project Manager', 'Decision Making', 'Projects']

Dr Clarence Moore Discusses the Importance of Stem Cell Therapy, Heart Health in Beta Thalassemia

How has the emergence of stem cell therapy changed the lives of people with beta thalassemia? Stem cell therapy is offering a cure. So, with us really looking at stem cell therapy, with the more and more work [being done], we’ll be able to see that these individuals will no longer have to experience this lifelong disease, and they could potentially be cured. What is the importance of heart health for patients, especially those with beta thalassemia major? Heart health is very important. When you look at one of the largest comorbidities that is associated with [beta thalassemia], it is heart health. You can see some cardiomyopathy develop. So, maintaining heart health is very important in decreasing the morbidity and mortality associated with the disease state. https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/ari/video-t-v-f1-p01.html https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/ari/video-t-v-f1-p02.html https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/ari/video-t-v-f1-p03.html https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/ari/video-t-v-f1-p04.html https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/ari/video-t-v-f1-p05.html https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/ari/video-t-v-f1-p06.html https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/ari/video-t-v-f1-p07.html https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/ari/video-s-v-f1.html https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/ari/video-s-v-f2.html https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/ari/video-s-v-f3.html https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/ari/video-s-v-f4.html https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/ari/video-s-v-f5.html https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/ari/video-s-v-f6.html https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/ari/video-s-v-f7.html https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/ari/video-t-v-g1.html https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/ari/video-t-v-g2.html https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/ari/video-t-v-g3.html https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/ari/video-t-v-g4.html https://shelbycounty.iowa.gov/ari/video-t-v-g5.html http://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vms/video-t-v-f1-p01.html http://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vms/video-t-v-f1-p02.html http://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vms/video-t-v-f1-p03.html http://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vms/video-t-v-f1-p04.html http://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vms/video-t-v-f1-p05.html http://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vms/video-t-v-f1-p06.html http://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vms/video-t-v-f1-p07.html http://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vms/video-s-v-f1.html http://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vms/video-s-v-f2.html http://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vms/video-s-v-f3.html http://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vms/video-s-v-f4.html http://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vms/video-s-v-f5.html http://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vms/video-s-v-f6.html http://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vms/video-s-v-f7.html http://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vms/video-t-v-g1.html http://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vms/video-t-v-g2.html http://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vms/video-t-v-g3.html http://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vms/video-t-v-g4.html http://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vms/video-t-v-g5.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-mi-v-ca-liv-diretta-it301.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-mi-v-ca-liv-diretta-it302.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-mi-v-ca-liv-diretta-it303.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-mi-v-ca-liv-diretta-it304.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-mi-v-ca-liv-diretta-it305.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-ata-v-fio-diretta-tv-ita1.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-ata-v-fio-diretta-tv-ita2.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-ata-v-fio-diretta-tv-ita3.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-ata-v-fio-diretta-tv-ita4.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-ata-v-fio-diretta-tv-ita5.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-rma-v-bol-diretta-tv1.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-rma-v-bol-diretta-tv2.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-rma-v-bol-diretta-tv3.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-rma-v-bol-diretta-tv4.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-rma-v-bol-diretta-tv5.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-na-v-sa-diretta-tv-grtis1.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-na-v-sa-diretta-tv-grtis2.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-na-v-sa-diretta-tv-grtis3.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-na-v-sa-diretta-tv-grtis4.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-na-v-sa-diretta-tv-grtis5.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/Ni-v-Re-Fr01.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/Ni-v-Re-Fr02.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/Ni-v-Re-Fr03.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/Ni-v-Re-Fr04.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/Ni-v-Re-Fr05.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-Antwer-v-Brugg-be01.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-Antwer-v-Brugg-be02.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-Antwer-v-Brugg-be03.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-Antwer-v-Brugg-be04.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/video-Antwer-v-Brugg-be05.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/Scottish-Open-2020-liv-tv01.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/Scottish-Open-2020-liv-tv02.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/Scottish-Open-2020-liv-tv03.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/Scottish-Open-2020-liv-tv04.html https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/uvm/Scottish-Open-2020-liv-tv05.html What is the importance conducting blood tests to determine beta thalassemia types in young children? I think that it’s very important. Knowing upfront what disease or what type of beta thalassemia that these individuals may have is going to be vital for us to manage it. And if we’re able to potentially manage that at the earlier stage, we could potentially have better outcomes in the future. A recent study from Japan describes a previously unknown mechanism for pain control involving a newly identified group of cells in the spinal cord, offering a potential target for enhancing the therapeutic effect of drugs for pain. While neurons may be the most well-known cells of the central nervous system, an assortment of non-neuronal cells first discovered in the mid-nineteenth century also play a wide variety of important roles. These glial cells are are critical elements for regulating neuronal development and function in the central nervous system. Among the different types of glial cells, astrocytes are the most abundant in the central nervous system, but, unlike neurons in different brain regions, researchers still have yet to develop a detailed understanding of groupings of astrocytes with distinct properties. In the animal study, researchers led by Makoto Tsuda, professor at Kyushu University’s Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, said they discovered a population of spinal cord astrocytes with a role in producing pain hypersensitivity. Found in the outer 2 layers of gray matter near the back of the spinal cord, known as the superficial laminae of the spinal dorsal horn, the astrocytes are in a region known to carry general sensory information such as pressure, pain, and heat from around the body to the brain. Using mice, the researchers showed that stimulating noradrenergic (NAergic) neurons (so-called for their use of noradrenaline as a neurotransmitter) that carry signals from the locus coeruleus (LC) in the brain down to the spinal dorsal horn activates the astrocytes and that the astrocyte activation results in pain hypersensitivity. These observations counter the view hat descending LC-NAergic neurons suppress pain transmission in the spinal dorsal horn. “The discovery of this new population of astrocytes reveals a new role of descending LC-NAergic neurons in facilitating spinal pain transmission,” said Tsuda in a statement. Considering these findings, suppressing signaling of these astrocytes by noradrenaline may enhance the effect of drugs for chronic pain. To initially test this, the researchers genetically engineered mice in which response of astrocytes to noradrenaline was selectively inhibited and gave them duloxetine, an analgesic drug thought to increase levels of noradrenaline in the spinal cord by preventing uptake by descending LC-NAergic neurons. Indeed, the modified mice exhibited an enhanced easing of chronic pain by duloxetine, further supporting the researchers’ proposed role of the astrocytes. “Although we still need more studies with different drugs, this astrocyte population appears to be a very promising target for enhancing the therapeutic potential of drugs for chronic pain,” said Tsuda.

https://medium.com/@bergen-67276/dr-clarence-moore-discusses-the-importance-of-stem-cell-therapy-heart-health-in-beta-thalassemia-c122b5db192a

[]

2020-12-13 11:59:03.870000+00:00

['Beta', 'Heart', 'Health', 'Therapy', 'STEM']

‘Tis the season for healing

Transformational wellbeing for the new normal. What a year. The uncertainty brought about by the pandemic, social movements and strong emotions between information filter bubbles has certainly motivated me to prioritize wellbeing, not just for myself but for my friends and family. I knew I needed a mental detox when life started to feel too hard, like there was no time to rest. It got harder to focus, harder to sleep well, harder to smile. The constant multi-tasking left me feeling tired and unproductive and finally manifested as stiff joints, muscle aches and excessive body weight. I researched solutions from Deepak Chopra to Thrive Global and delved into becoming a health coach or herbalist. What I summarized from these practitioners is that total wellbeing is about getting creative, making space for self care, evoking curiosity, inspiring people with hope, love and sharing positive energy. The research I focused on was on our innate ability to heal ourself. Our ability to awaken our inner biochemical hero and fuel our communal energetic fields. From this research, the 3R framework emerged — rituals to Reframe, Recharge and Reflect. Envision to reframe My personalized ritual to reframe is to set intention in the morning, reframing my day with deep listening and a vision exercise to align my daily goals with my core values. A morning meditation book by my bedside helped jumpstart the habit. 1. Vision exercise What do you truly desire? What impact will you make today? To be happy by making others feel good, by inspiring hope and creativity. To taste and experience life, joy and pain, to the fullest and without regret. To create a deep trusting network that energizes mindsets. To create nourishing and healing experiences. The purpose and meaning we bring to the table, of how we show up in life to our family and co-workers are almost always based on experiences we either want to have ourselves and to share with others. We are a communal species. We build value from collaboration. We co-create shared experiences. Your core values define the reason for jumping out of bed in the morning and focus on your practice, your work and wellbeing of yourself and those around you.

https://medium.com/wellbeing-for-innovators/tis-the-season-for-healing-6ed25e67336e

[]

2020-12-16 16:46:48.852000+00:00

['Wellbeing', 'Healing', 'Stress', 'Wellness', 'Transformation']

The Mystery Man

So yesterday we looked at Isaiah 7 and it forces us to also look at Isaiah 9 to get a better understanding of the child being prophesied about. We saw yesterday that the child could be the Messiah, but that he could also be a future king in the line of David that would be a godly king. But, before we jump to Isaiah 9, we need to go back to Isaiah 7 for a moment. Many scholars take the view that when Isaiah gave this prophecy and Isaiah 9, he had an immediate fulfillment idea in King Hezekiah, meaning Isaiah believed that Hezekiah was the child of the prophecy. However, if you don’t know the story of King Hezekiah, he was alive when Isaiah gave this first prophecy, but he becomes king after King Ahaz and Hezekiah is a great king, one that few could compare to. However, Hezekiah fails to live up to the expectations of the prophecy and Isaiah. 2 Chronicles 32 says that Hezekiah was a proud king and failed to truly give God all of the glory and because of this, wrath came upon him and Jerusalem. Therefore, scholars have stated that because of this failure, Isaiah realized that the prophecy could not be about Hezekiah and could only be about a future king to come, potentially the future Messiah. So, in Isaiah 9, we get more information about this prophesied child and it’s worth looking at. Specifically, Isaiah 9:6–7 says, “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.” The first part probably sounds really familiar if you have ever been in church for a Christmas service. The second part might sound familiar, but not as much. But after reading this passage, it seems a little out there to think that Isaiah might assume this is referring to an earthly king, even one so great as Hezekiah. Some scholars have tried to say that this is referring to the coronation ceremony of Hezekiah and the names are a sign that he is chosen by God and to be God’s vessel for justice and peace. Some have said that these names parallel the way Egyptians viewed their Pharaohs and is showing how the Egyptian pharaohs were nothing compared to God’s chosen king. All of these views fall short. There is too much speculation in these views and not enough evidence. What is clear from the text tho is that this prophecy is all about a future birth. So if we take what we know from Isaiah 7, that it could have been referring to the future Messiah or a coming earthly king, to knowing that Hezekiah was not the fulfillment Isaiah might have thought he would be, we are now faced with looking to a future birth of a messianic king. Now Isaiah did not know this would be Jesus, the name Jesus was not even remotely in his mind at this time. But, we can see a few things from this passage that point to a king above any other king. For starters, we see that “the government will be upon his shoulders”. There are a few scholars that actually say that this declaration about the child is a direct slap to the previous kings because they don’t even come close to comparing to the coming child. This child is so special and above all other kings that government as a whole, all authority possible, is going to be on his shoulders. He will be the ruler of rulers! Second, we have 4 different names listed for this coming child. Specifically those names are, “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Wonderful Counselor tells us that he will be supernatural peace and comfort to those in need. Mighty God tells us that this is truly God in the flesh that will come to earth (part of the name Immanuel is the Hebrew word “El”, which is the name for God, hence the meaning of the name being “God with us”). Everlasting Father tells us that he will be like a father to all who trust him, he will care deeply for those in need and this is and will always be his character and who he is. Prince of Peace tells us that he will not only bring and end to all war and strife, but will bring peace that will live in the heart of his children, because he is their father. This can be none other than the coming Messiah, Yahweh, God, Jesus himself made flesh. His reign will have no end, David’s throne is now his, and from his throne he will bring justice and righteousness for all time. And he comes in the form of a child, born with livestock and in a feed trough, no glorious announcement, only the gifts and welcomes from shepherds and wise men. From the humblest of beginnings, to death on a cross, to resurrection, to reigning forever in Heaven. That is Jesus and that is the true reason for why we celebrate this Christmas season. What is so unique about this prophecy is how counter it was to what the Jews hoped for. You see, the Jews were tired of war and oppression and getting beat up on. You name the country that warred against the Jews and they just wanted it to be over. Their hope for the Messiah was this figure would come in and throw off all oppression, bringing the Jews and Israel to dominance over all. He would be a mighty and strong leader, a war-like general who would fight and win! He would be the king that no one else could equal, ruling with political savvy and power. This king would look like, sound like, and exude kingship. And yet what they got was the exact opposite. Jesus wasn’t born at all like a king. Jesus didn’t look like a king, he looked like a well-traveled wandered used to life on the road without a home. He never fought as a warrior. He never actually was established as a king or ruler of any nation. He wasn’t political, he didn’t care about power, he didn’t care about gaining the approval of the rich and powerful to heighten his own status. And yet the power that was in Jesus was something no one had EVER seen. He healed those lame from birth. He healed the blind. He resurrected the dead. He spoke with such grace and love that people were captivated by his words and turned from their sinful ways. He loved the kids and the needy. He served; he wasn’t served. He gave his life for those who hated him and in the ultimate show of power, he rose back to life for those very people. This is the Messiah they never wanted, but this is the Messiah they absolutely needed. This Messiah, Jesus, set the framework for what a true follower of him looks like and it was good. So this Christmas season, focus on that. Focus on the very things that the people did not want in their Messiah and how perfect it was that they did not get what they wanted. Focus on the person of Jesus, focus on exactly who he is, and be thankful for that because he loves you as an Everlasting Father, a Wonderful Counselor, a Mighty God, and a Prince of Peace. Passage to read: Isaiah 9:1–7 Prayer to pray: God I am thankful for you. I am thankful for your love and for the example that you set for me on what it means to truly follow you and love people. Thank you for living a fully human life so that I can trust that you understand what it’s like to be human. God help to always seek comfort in you as my father and counselor. In this season, I want to celebrate you and what you did for me and for the world. Thank you Jesus, in your name I pray, amen.

https://medium.com/@mwking116/the-mystery-man-c3c7e7deab7f

['Matt King']

2020-12-22 22:31:58.966000+00:00

['Bible', 'Bible Study', 'Devotional', 'Student Ministry']

Best Mobile App Development Company in Scotland

Are you searching for the top mobile app development Company in Scotland? Do you require a robust mobile app built for your business? Being the best Mobile App Development Company in Scotland, we know what it takes to convert your vision into reality. HireFullStackDeveloperIndia have gained experience creating innovative mobile applications and user interfaces for a wide range of clients across numerous industries. Our mobile app development services include consulting, development, UI UX, and quality & security testing services across mobile platforms & OS like iOS and Android. Our team will support you in developing an app concept, expanding its business possibility, and converting it into a mobile app. Our aim is to transform your business idea into a grand reality. Have a project in mind? Schedule a free consultation today. CONTACT US

https://medium.com/@sylvesterbush23/best-mobile-app-development-company-in-scotland-2478c97dd6b6

['Sylvester Bush']

2020-12-16 08:56:10.121000+00:00

['Mobile', 'Mobileapp', 'App', 'App Development']

Create a Complete WordPress website with elementor pro builder

Hello Do you want to make a fully automated shopify dropshipping online store and start making money from it? I can provide you a modern,minimalist,eye catching and user friendly and high converting shopify online store. To create a professional shopify dropshipping store we need research and hardwork. First you can start with what you have Or you can choose the local market. You need to understand the consumer trend.B2B wholesale market is also best for starting dropshipping. Lastly, analyze your competitors and audience. Your package includes: > Trendy and smart products for your website > premium email for smart communication > Premium and perfect theme for your website > high demanding product research > suppliers from USA {If u need} > Custom Branding > niche research > SEO optimized > Premium Minimalistic Logo > page speed optimize > Currency converter > Facebook Pixels > Contact Us form > Shipping polices > Setup Payment Getaway > Newsletter Popup > E-Commerce Products upload > apps set up Why choose me: > 3 years of experience > better communication and understand The project > your satisfaction is my goal NB: Please discuss the project before placing an order. Hire me now: fiverr.com/mhmynul

https://medium.com/@wordpressmynul/create-a-complete-wordpress-website-with-elementor-pro-builder-ab52bb44c469

['Mh Mynul']

2020-12-22 15:53:45.769000+00:00

['Wordpress Development', 'Elementor Pro', 'WordPress', 'Wordpress Plugins']

Submission guidelines

Our words take flight — Wikimedia Commons Welcome to Indelible Ink. Our pages are open to Creative Nonfiction that resonates, that speaks to us, that energizes, invigorates, entertains and/or informs. Writing that will last. That means we’re not looking for meandering navel gazing or off-the-top-of-your-head speed writing. (Unless they’re brilliantly written or you’re Nora Ephron come back from the grave. Then they’re okay.) We’re not looking for stories that read like a lecture or straight reporting — stories that look like they should be in the company newsletter or in a text book. No how-tos. No lists. We want stories that read like the best fiction, that reach out and grab from the very first sentence. (You’ll see that most of our stories start out in first-person with any lessons either non-existent or unobtrusive, and left for later.) If you write timidly, in the passive voice, this isn’t the place for you. The key word here is “creative”. Not all nonfiction is creative, but when it is, it soars, it speaks to us, it draws us in and makes us laugh or cry or think. It resonates. It stays with us. It’s Indelible. While we love thoughtful stories about writers and writing, we’re not interested in inside stories about writing for Medium. There are other places to discuss curation or payments or policies. You should know that the owner of this publication is an unabashed FDR/Josiah Bartlet liberal and feminist, a Midwesterner with a strong BS meter, a big fan of humor and satire. (But if satire is your thing, remember what Molly Ivins said: “Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel — it’s vulgar.”) These are trying times. There will be pieces on politics and advocacy here but that’s not the focus. The focus, as in any magazine, is on good writing. On resonating. On bravely going wherever we want to go. On making Indelible Ink a place where people want to be. Please abide by Medium’s rules when you’re considering submissions. It’s okay to submit an already published story, as long as it doesn’t appear in another publication, but remember that if you submit an already published Medium story and not a new draft it will publish with the original date and won’t be seen on the front page. We’ll take stories that have been published outside of Medium, as long as they’re submitted as an original draft. You can add a cross-post link at the end of your piece if you want. ***Your submission should follow Medium’s (and the curators’) preferred order for style: Title, sub-title, photo, text. If we accept your story and it requires some editing beyond simple typos, we’ll ask you to do it before we publish. If the story you submit is wonderful but full of typos and errors, we’ll have to turn it down (gently) but we’ll ask you to re-submit when it’s fixed. A thought about length: The most successful essays on Medium run well under 1000 words. If you’re tempted to write long when your story doesn’t demand it, just don’t. If a sentence or even a paragraph doesn’t move the story, take it out. At the same time, if your story is complex and requires some length, go for it. But don’t ramble. Keep it tight. Make us want to read on. Please note: This is a Medium publication so any payment for stories will come through them as part of their Paid Partner Program. I wish I could pay you! I really do! My goal is to make this a prestige publication with only the best writers, and, as we build a strong community here, people will notice and our writers will advance. So that’s about it. If you would like to write for Indelible Ink, please send your submissions to ramonasvoices@gmail.com. Send a completed draft ready for publication and a couple of links to pieces you’ve written in the CNF vein. You’ll need to include a link to your Medium profile so I can find you. I’ll send you a note as soon as I can. (Note: Writers are never added to our publication without a request from the writer or an invitation from me. That would not be cool.)

https://medium.com/indelible-ink/submission-guidelines-6a378e4feef7

['Ramona Grigg']

2020-12-12 16:36:15.223000+00:00

['Submission Guidelines']

If you want to learn Data Science, start with one of these programming classes

A year ago, I was a numbers geek with no coding background. After trying an online programming course, I was so inspired that I enrolled in one of the best computer science programs in Canada. Two weeks later, I realized that I could learn everything I needed through edX, Coursera, and Udacity instead. So I dropped out. The decision was not difficult. I could learn the content I wanted to faster, more efficiently, and for a fraction of the cost. I already had a university degree and, perhaps more importantly, I already had the university experience. Paying $30K+ to go back to school seemed irresponsible. I started creating my own data science master’s degree using online courses shortly afterwards, after realizing it was a better fit for me than computer science. I scoured the introduction to programming landscape. I’ve already taken several courses and audited portions of many others. I know the options, and what skills are needed if you’re targeting a data analyst or data scientist role. For this guide, I spent 20+ hours trying to find every single online introduction to programming course offered as of August 2016, extracting key bits of information from their syllabi and reviews, and compiling their ratings. For this task, I turned to none other than the open source Class Central community and its database of thousands of course ratings and reviews. Class Central’s homepage. Since 2011, Class Central founder Dhawal Shah has kept a closer eye on online courses than arguably anyone else in the world. Dhawal personally helped me assemble this list of resources. How we picked courses to consider Each course had to fit four criteria: It introduces programming and, optionally, computer science . See “A note on Programming vs. Computer Science” below. . See “A note on Programming vs. Computer Science” below. The language of instruction is Python or R. These are by far the two most popular programming languages used in data science. These are by far the two most popular programming languages used in data science. It must be an interactive online course, so no books or text-based tutorials. Regarding the latter, Codecademy’s video-less and text editor-based courses would qualify, but strict text tutorials like the ones from R tutorial would not. Though books are viable ways to learn programming, Python, and R, this guide focuses on courses. Regarding the latter, Codecademy’s video-less and text editor-based courses would qualify, but strict text tutorials like the ones from R tutorial would not. Though books are viable ways to learn programming, Python, and R, this guide focuses on courses. It must be a decent length: at least ten hours in total for estimated completion. Python and R are the two most popular programming languages used in data science. How we evaluated courses We believe we covered every notable course that exists and which fits the above criteria. Since there are seemingly hundreds of courses on Udemy in Python and R, we chose to consider the most reviewed and highest rated ones only. There is a chance we missed something, however. Please let us know if you think that is the case. We compiled average rating and number of reviews from Class Central and other review sites. We calculated a weighted average rating for each course. If a series had multiple courses (like Rice University’s Part 1 and Part 2), we calculated the weighted average rating across all courses. We also read text reviews and used this feedback to supplement the numerical ratings. We made subjective syllabus judgment calls based on three factors: Coverage of the fundamentals of programming. Coverage of more advanced, but useful, topics in programming. (E.g. several courses choose to not cover object-oriented programming. We believe this is a key topic, though not a deal-breaker, hence these courses only being docked marks and not excluded from consideration.) How much of the syllabus is relevant to data science? A note on Programming vs. Computer Science Programming is not computer science and vice versa. There is a difference of which beginners may not be acutely aware. Borrowing this answer from Programmers Stack Exchange: Computer science is the study of what computers [can] do; programming is the practice of making computers do things. The course we are looking for introduces programming and optionally touches on relevant aspects of computer science that would benefit a new programmer in terms of awareness. Many of the courses considered, you’ll notice, do indeed have a computer science portion. None of the courses, however, are strictly computer science courses, which is why something like Harvard’s CS50x on edX is excluded. Our pick for the best programming course for data scientists is… University of Toronto’s “Learn to Program” series on Coursera. LTP1: The Fundamentals and LTP2: Crafting Quality Code have a near-perfect weighted average rating of 4.71 out of 5 stars over 284 reviews. They also have a great mix of content difficulty and scope for the beginner data scientist. This free, Python-based introduction to programming sets itself apart from the other 20+ courses we considered. Part 2 of the University of Toronto’s “Learn to Program” series. Jennifer Campbell and Paul Gries, two associate professors in the University of Toronto’s department of computer science (which is regarded as one of the best in the world) teach the series. The self-paced, self-contained Coursera courses match the material in their book, “Practical Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science Using Python 3.” LTP1 covers 40–50% of the book and LTP2 covers another 40%. The 10–20% not covered is not particularly useful for data science, which helped their case for being our pick. Your “Learn to Program” instructors: Jennifer Campbell and Paul Gries. The professors kindly and promptly sent me detailed course syllabi upon request, which were difficult to find online prior to the course’s official restart in September 2016. Learn to Program: The Fundamentals (LTP1) Timeline: 7 weeks Estimated time commitment: 6–8 hours per week This course provides an introduction to computer programming intended for people with no programming experience. It covers the basics of programming in Python including elementary data types (numeric types, strings, lists, dictionaries, and files), control flow, functions, objects, methods, fields, and mutability. Modules Installing Python, IDLE, mathematical expressions, variables, assignment statement, calling and defining functions, syntax, and semantic errors. Strings, input/output, function reuse, function design recipe, and docstrings. Booleans, import, namespaces, and if statements. For loops and fancy string manipulation. While loops, lists, and mutability. For loops over indices, parallel lists and strings, and files. Tuples and dictionaries. Learn to Program: Crafting Quality Code (LTP2) Timeline: 5 weeks Estimated time commitment: 6–8 hours per week You know the basics of programming in Python: elementary data types (numeric types, strings, lists, dictionaries, and files), control flow, functions, objects, methods, fields, and mutability. You need to be good at these in order to succeed in this course. LTP: Crafting Quality Code covers the next steps: designing larger programs, testing your code so that you know it works, reading code in order to understand how efficient it is, and creating your own types. Modules Designing algorithms: how do you decide what to do in a function body? How do you figure out what functions to write in the first place? Automated testing: doctest and unittest. Analyzing code for speed — details of searching and sorting. Creating new types: classes in Python. Functions as arguments, default parameter values, and exceptions. Associate professor Gries also provided the following commentary on the course structure: “Each module has between about 45 minutes to a bit more than an hour of video. There are in-video quiz questions, which will bring the total time spent studying the videos to perhaps 2 hours.” These videos are generally shorter than ten minutes each. He continued: “In addition, we have one exercise (a dozen or two or so multiple choice and short-answer questions) per module, which should take an hour or two. There are three programming assignments in LTP1, each of which might take four to eight hours of work. There are two programming assignments in LTP2 of similar size.” He emphasized that the estimate of 6–8 hours per week is a rough guess: “Estimating time spent is incredibly student-dependent, so please take my estimates in that context. For example, someone who knows a bit of programming, perhaps in another programming language, might take half the time of someone completely new to programming. Sometimes someone will get stuck on a concept for a couple of hours, while they might breeze through on other concepts … That’s one of the reasons the self-paced format is so appealing to us.” In total, the University of Toronto’s Learn to Program series runs an estimated 12 weeks at 6–8 hours per week, which is about standard for most online courses created by universities. If you prefer to binge-study your MOOCs, that’s 72–96 hours, which could feasibly be completed in two to three weeks, especially if you have a bit of programming experience. Another great Python option If you already have some familiarity with programming, and don’t mind a syllabus that has a notable skew towards games and interactive applications, I would also recommend Rice University’s An Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python (Part 1 and Part 2) on Coursera. With 6,000+ reviews and the highest weighted average rating of 4.93/5 stars, this popular course is noted for its engaging videos, challenging quizzes, and enjoyable mini projects. It’s slightly more difficult, and focuses less on the fundamentals and more on topics that aren’t applicable in data science than our #1 pick. These courses are also part of the 7 course Principles in Computing Specialization on Coursera. CodeSkulptor: Browser-based Python programming environment used for Rice University’s MOOCs. The materials are self-paced and free, and a paid certificate is available. The course must be purchased for $79 (USD) for access to graded materials. Rice University’s Coursera page. The condensed course description and full syllabus are as follows: “This two-part course is designed to help students with very little or no computing background learn the basics of building simple interactive applications … To make learning Python easy, we have developed a new browser-based programming environment that makes developing interactive applications in Python simple. These applications will involve windows whose contents are graphical and respond to buttons, the keyboard, and the mouse. Recommended background: A knowledge of high school mathematics is required. While the class is designed for students with no prior programming experience, some beginning programmers have viewed the class as being fast-paced. For students interested in some light preparation prior to the start of class, we recommend a self-paced Python learning site such as codecademy.com.” Part 1 Timeline: 5 weeks Estimated time commitment: 7–10 hours per week Week 0 — statements, expressions, variables Understand the structure of this class, and explore Python as a calculator. Week 1 — functions, logic, conditionals Learn the basic constructs of Python programming, and create a program that plays a variant of Rock-Paper-Scissors. Week 2 — event-driven programming, local/global variables Learn the basics of event-driven programming, understand the difference between local and global variables, and create an interactive program that plays a simple guessing game. Week 3 — canvas, drawing, timers Create a canvas in Python, learn how to draw on the canvas, and create a digital stopwatch. Week 4 — lists, keyboard input, the basics of modeling motion Learn the basics of lists in Python, model moving objects in Python, and recreate the classic arcade game “Pong.” Part 2 Week 5 — mouse input, list methods, dictionaries Read mouse input, learn about list methods and dictionaries, and draw images. Week 6 — classes and object-oriented programming Learn the basics of object-oriented programming in Python using classes, and work with tiled images. Week 7 — basic game physics, sprites Understand the math of acceleration and friction, work with sprites, and add sound to your game. Week 8 — sets and animation Learn about sets in Python, compute collisions between sprites, and animate sprites. If you are set on R If you are set on an introduction to programming course in R, we recommend DataCamp’s series of R courses: Introduction to R, Intermediate R, Intermediate R — Practice, and Writing Functions in R. Though the latter three come at a price point of $25/month, DataCamp is best in category for covering the programming fundamentals and R-specific topics, which is reflected in its average rating of 4.29/5 stars. The first three courses in DataCamp’s series of R courses. We believe the best approach to learning programming for data science using online courses is to do it first through Python. Why? There is a lack of MOOC options that teach core programming principles and use R as the language of instruction. We found six such R courses that fit our testing criteria, compared to twenty-two Python-based courses. Most of the R courses didn’t receive great ratings and failed to meet most of our subjective testing criteria. The series breakdown is as follows: Estimated time commitment: 4 hours Chapters: Intro to basics Vectors Matrices Factors Data frames Lists Estimated time commitment: 6 hours Chapters: Conditionals and control flow Loops Functions The apply family Utilities Estimated time commitment: 4 hours This follow-up course on intermediate R does not cover new programming concepts. Instead, you will strengthen your knowledge of the topics in intermediate R with a bunch of new and fun exercises. Estimated time commitment: 4 hours Chapters: A quick refresher When and how you should write a function Functional programming Advanced inputs and output Robust functions Another option for R would be to take a Python-based introduction to programming course to cover the fundamentals of programming, and then pick up R syntax with an R basics course. This is what I did, but I did it with Udacity’s Data Analysis with R. It worked well for me. You can also pick up R with our top recommendation for a statistics class, which teaches the basics of R through coding up stats problems. The Competition Our #1 and #2 picks had a 4.71 and 4.93 star weighted average rating over 284 and 6,069 reviews, respectively. Let’s look at the other alternatives. Python courses (descending weighted average ratings) R courses (descending weighted average ratings) R Programming A-Z™: R For Data Science With Real Exercises! (Udemy): costs money. It doesn’t offer as much bang for your buck as our #1 R offering. Ratings are similar, considering sample size. It has a 4.7-star weighted average rating over 785 reviews. Introduction to R for Data Science (Microsoft/edX): not as much depth as DataCamp’s offering. It has a 4.48-star weighted average rating over 500 reviews. R Programming (Johns Hopkins University/Coursera): doesn’t sufficiently cover the basics of programming. Reviewers note that it is difficult, and not in a good way. It has a 4.04-star weighted average rating over 900+ reviews, despite a 2.5-star rating over 212 reviews on Class Central. TryR (CodeSchool): it’s not long enough to fit testing criteria, and doesn’t sufficiently cover programming fundamentals. It has a 4-star weighted average rating over 260 reviews. Programming with R for Data Science (Microsoft/edX): more of an introduction to the R language rather than programming. The course site states, “If you have some programming experience, and would like to learn more about R, then you’re at the right place.” It has a 3-star weighted average rating over 12 reviews. Wrapping it Up This is the first of a six-piece series that covers the best MOOCs for launching yourself into the data science field. It will cover several other data science core competencies: statistics, the data science process, data visualization, and machine learning. The final piece will be a summary of those courses, and the best MOOCs for other key topics such as data wrangling, databases, and even software engineering. If you’re looking for a complete list of Data Science MOOCs, you can find them on Class Central’s Data Science and Big Data subject page. If you enjoyed reading this, check out some of Class Central’s other pieces: If you have suggestions for courses I missed, let me know in the responses! If you found this helpful, click the 💚 so more people will see it here on Medium. This is a condensed version of the original article published on Class Central, where course descriptions, syllabi, and multiple reviews are included.

https://medium.com/free-code-camp/if-you-want-to-learn-data-science-start-with-one-of-these-programming-classes-fb694ffe780c

['David Venturi']

2017-05-30 19:16:50.383000+00:00

['Data Science', 'Technology', 'Education', 'Programming', 'Learning To Code']

Fixing stuff around yourself — Everyday Leadership

I was going through the project work handed to us by Amal Academy sitting in our living room. It asked us to examine our immediate surroundings and find areas that we can improve or fix right away. I looked around and this blank wall in our living room stood out to me. We have been meaning to decorate it but it kept getting postponed somehow. So, I decided to decorate it for the project. My little sister loves to paint, so I decided to decorate it with her paintings. And Ta da — Doing this activity was really enjoyable. It made me feel the gist of leadership by responsibility. If it was not assigned to us, I probably wouldn’t have taken the initiative. The process allowed me to be creative and it was fun working on it with my siblings. The room looks complete now. This activity made me realize that all you have to do is take a step. Take responsibility for any change that you want to see. This is the essence of being a leader and making a difference.

https://medium.com/@farwaahmad/fixing-stuff-around-yourself-everyday-leadership-fec41ea6c468

['Farwa Ahmad']

2020-12-30 04:45:17.075000+00:00

['Amal Academy']

The use-cases solved by Amazon SQS & it’s case study

Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) is a fully managed message queuing service that enables you to decouple and scale microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications. SQS eliminates the complexity and overhead associated with managing and operating message oriented middleware, and empowers developers to focus on differentiating work. Using SQS, you can send, store, and receive messages between software components at any volume, without losing messages or requiring other services to be available. SQS offers two types of message queues. Standard queues offer maximum throughput, best-effort ordering, and at-least-once delivery. SQS FIFO queues are designed to guarantee that messages are processed exactly once, in the exact order that they are sent. Use-case that helped out NASA by using Amazon Services The NASA Image and Video Library provides easy access to more than 140,000 still images, audio recordings, and videos—documenting NASA’s more than half a century of achievements in exploring the vast unknown. The architecture includes Amazon SQS to decouple incoming jobs from pipeline processes and Amazon Simple Notification Service to trigger the processing pipeline when new content is updated. Key features include: • A user interface that automatically scales for PCs, tablets, and mobile phones across virtually every browser and operating system. • A search interface that lets people easily find what they’re looking for, including the ability to choose from gallery view or list view and to narrow-down search results by media type and/or by year. • The ability to easily download any media found on the site—or share it on Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, or Google+. • Access to the metadata associated with each asset, such as file size, file format, which center created the asset, and when it was created. When available, users can also view EXIF/camera data for still images such as exposure, shutter speed, and lens used. • An application programming interface (API) for automated uploads of new content—including integration with NASA’s existing authentication mechanism. Architecture that has been made The NASA Image and Video Library is a cloud-native solution, with the front-end web app separated from the backend API. It runs as immutable infrastructure in a fully automated environment, with all infrastructure defined in code to support continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD). In building the solution, ManTech International took advantage of the following AWS services: • Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), which provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud. This enables NASA to scale up under load and scale down during periods of inactivity to save money, and pay for only what it uses. • Elastic Load Balancing (ELB), which is used to distribute incoming traffic across multiple Amazon EC2 instances, as required to achieve redundancy and fault-tolerance. • Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), which supports object storage for incoming (uploaded) media, metadata, and published assets. • Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), which is used to decouple incoming jobs from pipeline processes. • Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), which is used for automatic synchronization and failover. • Amazon DynamoDB, a fast and flexible NoSQL database service, which is used to track incoming jobs, published assets, and users. • Amazon Elastic Transcoder, which is used to transcode audio and video to various resolutions. • Amazon CloudSearch, which is used to support searching by free text or fields. • Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS), which is used to trigger the processing pipeline when new content is uploaded. • AWS CloudFormation, which enables automated creation, updating, and destruction of AWS resources. ManTech International also used the Troposphere library, which enables the creation of objects via AWS CloudFormation using Python instead of hand-coded JSON—each object representing one AWS resource such as an instance, an Elastic IP (EIP) address, or a security group. • Amazon CloudWatch, which provides a monitoring service for AWS cloud resources and the applications running on AWS. How NASA got benefitted? Through its use of AWS, with support from ManTech International, NASA is making its vast wealth of pictures, videos, and audio files—previously in some 60 “collections” across NASA’s 10 centers—easily discoverable in one centralized location, delivering these benefits: • Easy Access to the Wonders of Space. The Image and Video Library automatically optimizes the user experience for each user’s particular device. It is also fully compliant with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, which requires federal agencies to make their technology solutions accessible to people with disabilities. Captions can be turned on or off for videos played on the site, and text-based caption files can be downloaded for any video. • Built-in Scalability. All components of the NASA Image and Video Library are built to scale on demand, as needed to handle usage spikes. “On-demand scalability will be invaluable for events such as the solar eclipse that’s happening later this summer—both as we upload new media and as the public comes to view that content,” says Bryan Walls, Imagery Experts Deputy Program Manager at NASA. • Good Use of Taxpayer Dollars. By building its Image and Video Library in the cloud, NASA avoided the costs associated with deploying and maintaining server and storage hardware in-house. Instead, the agency can simply pay for the AWS resources it uses at any given time. While NASA’s new Image and Video Library delivers a wealth of new convenience and capabilities. NASA now have an agile, scalable foundation on which to do all kinds of amazing things. “Much like with the exploration of space, we’re just starting to imagine all that we can do with it.” Hope you all will like the article. For any queries or any kind of help ping me 🙏

https://medium.com/@sarthakagarwal-9711/the-use-cases-solved-by-amazon-sqs-its-case-study-6322d048a062

['Sarthak Agarwal']

2021-03-01 12:05:00.255000+00:00

['Arthbylw', 'NASA', 'AWS', 'Aws Ec2', 'Linux']

You’re Black and Burning Out. What Do You Do?

Credit — American Psychological Association What happens when fighting racism means trying to overthrow and reform supremacist ideologies, institutions, and power structures? Burnout. The energy and vigor fueled largely by frustration and the desire for change is strong, but in constant danger of fizzling out as activists young and old drain themselves on all fronts. It takes great resilience to face a powerful foe such as racism. Emotions are heightened. Daily healthy habits are put on the back burner. Exhaustion steps in because the line between processing current and past events while working towards new and future events is thin. This is all while guilt yells at you, “If you stop, your work is done and this will end.” Something inside makes you feel that if you stop and take a break, you can’t trust your community or your allies to keep going. Part of that could be true, but it’s not a reason to ignore your burnout and not face it head on. Bruce Poinsette touches on this in an article about why burnout happens when going against racism in particular: Pushing back against racism in real time is exhausting, lonely work. In addition to fighting against individuals and institutions with far more funding and political connections, people on the frontlines also have to navigate the emotional minefields of apathy, allies working through their own anti-racism journeys and the health effects of being overworked. Understandably, many people quit abruptly because the work feels increasingly hopeless. This is a journey with a set destination and a lot of road in between the starting point and the end goal. It’s hard to see that when you want reform right now and rightfully so. History is cyclical. Once the fanfare dies down and empty statements stop making their way into the public eye, the worry is that things will return to normal. I wouldn’t count that out just yet. A quick scroll down your timeline will show that people on both sides are wearing out. Some are tired of hearing about it. Some are tired of talking about it. Either way, the show must go on. It needs to and you know that. Black history is being made right before our eyes. There is momentum behind real change and the stepping stones of equality are being laid out. It feels like so many of us have been protesting, petitioning, calling on officials, donating money, and donating time and effort behind sharing information to others for months. It’s only been a few weeks though. There is a toll being taken on the black psyche and our “I’m tired” isn’t from a long day at work. It’s from long days of yelling into the void and hoping that the powers that be not only listen, but respond in a way that disrupts the status quo completely and creates a new normal. Burnout has crept in and it’s what our opposition is banking on. They need us to wear ourselves out so that we don’t have any fight left, so that we’re not still applying pressure, and so they can continue to benefit off of our backs and a severely broken system. Remember this: Blacks fought over 20 years for basic freedoms. It took protests, deaths, court cases, and brutality for systemic structures to crawl slowly, but surely to change. This process shows no mercy to casualty and takes time. Now the fight has morphed into something as equally as important. The riots of Los Angeles in 1992 sparked a decades long war for other freedoms. We want an end to racial injustice, systemically racist infrastructures, to stop seeing black people killed at the hands of entities like police and vigilantes. We just want to feel valued and be treated equally and not just by law, but by deed. A noble cause to rally behind indeed. In the midst of this, we can’t forget what it takes to make this happen. It means a lot of work and something that’s often left out of the equation: rest. Racism has been documented to have dangerous effects on the mental health of many blacks and burnout only accelerates that. Part of this is because there’s a general lack of trust within the healthcare system. Black voices feel absent in this field, they don’t get as much recognition, and black feelings are often lumped into other broader issues that minimize the black experience. And this is without mentioning how black people have been underserved by the healthcare industry. Another reason is because many of us don’t think we’re allowed to be or deserve to be tired. We see our ancestors and experience a sort of a survivor’s guilt. We ask ourselves if we even have the right to be tired. Right now, you’re trying to prove your humanity while also balancing your other responsibilities and it’s weighing on you. So What Do You Do? Take a break from social media and news. Unless you have pertinent information that needs to be shared, you can miss a day or 2. What you’re leaving behind will still be there when you return. Over-saturation can become overwhelming and it’s easy to feel like you’re not doing enough to change what’s happening around you. Get a black therapist. There are a rising number of black healthcare and mental healthcare professionals who can understand what you’re feeling and can point you to resources that won’t underserve you. Rebecca Ruiz of Mashable made a great list you can find here. Get active, find a healthy form of escapism, and unplug from anything that adds stressors to your life. This is where culpability comes in. In your mind, you’re thinking, “How dare I think that taking a day off is okay after all my people have been through?” There’s an answer to that. You’re a black person trying to navigate through an impossible time. You feel everything that’s happening around from a perspective of the past, present, and future and it’s heavy. On top of that, you have bills, your career, and other people to worry about, but you need some time to find joy in troubling times. Take it. For the sake of you. How can you keep going if you’re not here? The author Mokokoma Mokhonoana says, “It is rest, not a vacation, that is a biological need.” That couldn’t be more true. Resting because of burnout isn’t a vacation. Resting because of burnout is a necessity. Don’t let it be the reason you stop fighting the good fight.

https://joshuadairen.medium.com/get-your-rest-black-people-burnout-will-halt-the-revolution-1ee276932700

['Joshua Dairen']

2020-06-26 02:19:33.666000+00:00

['Culture', 'Justice', 'Race', 'Society', 'Equality']

Van Gogh’s “Ugliest” Masterpiece

Vincent van Gogh painted The Night Café just after he finished painting the Café Terrace at Night in 1888 at Arles, France. Both were painted around the same time and location(Arles) but there was a striking contrast in them. The Café Terrace at Night is a dreamy pictorial representation of an exterior of one of the most romantic cafes in Europe where friends come together to laugh and enjoy. The exuberant french nightlife is portrayed. While The Night Café shows a jarring image of an interior of a cafe. The ambience of a lower-class bar room after midnight is depicted where people can lose their temperament after heavy drinking and are liable to commit crimes. Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo in one of the letters, “The Night Café is one of the ugliest paintings I have done.” Why did Van Gogh use such harsh colors of red and green to paint The Night Café and how the “ugliest” painting became a masterpiece?

https://medium.com/the-collector/van-goghs-ugliest-masterpiece-cac4d6677ad1

['Kamna Kabir']

2020-12-27 04:31:26.858000+00:00

['Painting', 'Artist', 'History', 'Art', 'Culture']

Our first 6 months with Figma

Our first 6 months with Figma From a multinational to a startup. Is Figma a good fit for your team? mendesaltaren Follow Jan 21, 2019 · 7 min read This article was originally published in Spanish by Patricia Pérez. You can find it here. We have been working with Figma for more than six months now and this tool has crept into different projects of the studio, among one of them being the largest e-commerce in Spain. Today the aspects of Figma that give us the most value are: Teamwork The versatility of the styles The possibility of having libraries Teamwork In our opinion, if we are talking about a design team working on the same product, Figma is the tool to use. Several people can be working simultaneously on the same file and visualize the changes that are made in real time. Within the first few days working with Figma in a large team, we realized there was a big problem of working collaboratively: organization. We had to remove the fear of what happens if everything one has been working on is deleted or modified by someone by mistake. Faced with these problems and concerns, we proposed a mechanism to work on different pages and a process to work on version control. How do we solve the organizational problem? To work on Figma, we structured the file into 3 types of pages: Master Page, where all the content that is or will be uploaded to production is stored. ✅ Master Revision Pages, which contain finished versions but are being validated with the product manager, product owner, the development team, or being reviewed with the design team. 👀 [User flow or workflow name or functionality] — [Name of person in charge] Pages in Progress, pages that a person is working on. We have as many pages in progress as User flow/ workflow or functionalities are being worked on and each of these pages will belong to only one person. ⚙️ [User flow/ workflow name or functionality] — [Name of person in charge] Waiting Pages, pages belonging to workflows that have stopped for some reason. These are not finished, but there is no one working on them either. ✋🏼 [User flow’s or functionality’s name] — [Name of person in charge] Having the pages differentiated in this way allows us to know the status and whether the work is finished or not. In addition, having the pages differentiated by people avoids having a thousand cursors flying over the work you are doing 😉. How do we ensure that no work is lost? To avoid the risk of a heart attack if any work has been lost we integrate version control. This functionality allows us to always go back and rework our designs. Figma saves our work and performs this control automatically every few seconds. But the problem with this automatic saving is that it will catch each member of the team at a different point in their work. That’s why manual version control is important. We create a commit for every use. This way we can have clear checkpoints every time a functionality is validated or there is a big change, allowing us to go back at any time.

https://medium.com/mendesaltaren/our-first-6-months-with-figma-aef60cae5d89

[]

2019-05-25 08:17:58.156000+00:00

['Process', 'Figma', 'UI', 'Design', 'Methodology']

I’m 22.

Sometimes you just get lucky I had two job offers for this entire gap year — Jubilee Media and Datadog. I found out about Jubilee in January, and Datadog in February, after I had decided on the gap year. Two of some of the coolest companies to work for, in my opinion. Kind of insane. I was this close to not being employed for the entire year. — We spent maybe 5 hours on the YC application. Barely even thought we would get in. I kid you not, 2 hours prior to us hearing that we got an interview, we discussed whether or not we realistically would launch by New Years. My first reaction to the interview invite: I wonder when they’ll let me know that the acceptance was a mistake. Now we’ve poured in something like a combined 100+ hours between the four of us & launched this past week, on top of having full time jobs. All just to set up and prepare for an interview we didn’t think we had a chance of getting. Fingers crossed. Hopefully, we get lucky. Pain + reflection = progress Life has fucking sucked, a lot. Life has also been fucking amazing, a lot. I’m realizing more and more that any form of pain should really be capitalized on, learned from, and taken action on. Immediately. It can be a blessing for life and things in life to suck. I realize I come from an incredibly privileged place and haven’t suffered an ounce compared to some people, but this is just a particular lesson I’ve learned in my life. — Tangentially, I’m trying to learn how to celebrate my wins with others. I’m not sure why, but some achievements I just never share, and am uncomfortable receiving praise for. Maybe it’s because I think I just got lucky. No one knows what they’re doing Not you. Not me. Not even fucking Elon Musk. Maybe Elon Musk knows what he’s doing. But being at two companies that are wildly successful in their own ways, you realize that everyone is trying to figure it out, even those who are experts. To me, that’s an incredibly empowering idea, because that means if even the experts don’t know, it’s ok for you to not know, too. And if they can figure it out, then hey! Maybe you can figure it out! Get in the arena It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. - Theodore Thanks Annie Wu for the great quote inspiration. I believe that each one of us has some amount of opportunity in our lives, whether we were given it or we created it ourselves. Until any of us takes the plunge and jumps into the weeds, opportunity is simply potential. Fuck potential. I want to do everything in my power to realize my own potential, and just get into the damn arena already. Easier said than done lmao. — Me and the 7 billion other humans are afraid of a lot of things. Even if we hop into the arena, we still might be afraid to let others know. It’s scary to tell someone that you spent 10 months working on something, because then they might take a crap on your idea. It’s scary to tell someone you started working out, because then they expect you to start losing weight. It’s scary. This year, part of getting into the arena also meant being ok with showing other people what I was doing, even if that meant exposing my own vulnerabilities.

https://medium.com/@bigdchang/im-22-dcb096642c28

['David A. Chang']

2019-11-04 04:58:31.972000+00:00

['Reflections', 'Year In Review', '22']

Submit photos to #govbins

Four steps to help catalogue a nation’s bins #govbins is a project to photograph wheelie bins in every UK local council. It started sort of by accident when I noticed that bin designs varied in different areas. It’s a bit niche; each photo is like a postcard to myself. But it’s been nice and surprising when it’s got some attention (and some excellent puns) from places like The Guardian, The Atlantic and Creative Review. This quest has ‘bin’ going for over three years. I have taken all the photos myself — travelling to 196 local councils across the country in the process. But now, for a few reasons, I have decided to open up #govbins and encourage others to help catalogue them all. This feels like a good time to do this — we’re in lockdown. Travel is restricted. Plus it will save carbon from me not bumbling around the county and taking all the photos myself. It’s hard to give up some control of #govbins, as it's been my baby over the last few years (as my long-suffering family, friends and colleagues will testify to). Yet I am really excited to get more people involved and see all the weird and wonderful bin designs where you live. So, if you’d like to submit to #govbins, here’s how. Step 1: check what #govbins are missing 🗺️ Check whether your bin has already been catalogued. You can use this map to find out. Hopefully, it’s still missing! Find your local council if you’re not sure which one is yours. Step 2: take consistent photos 📷 It’s important that #govbins photos are taken consistently. Consistent photos make it easier to see the difference between the councils’ designs, as this short video shows: To demonstrate what makes a good, consistent photo, here’s an example. This is a bin from the fictional borough Walford, sent to me in June 2018 by the Eastenders production team (thanks pals!) Make sure your photo is flat Get nice and straight to the bin. I always try to line up my camera parallel to the bin, with the top of the bin above the logo. Taking a flat image is helped by crouching down if you can, as I have on the side on this motorway. Take your photo with plenty of space around Have enough space around the bin for the image to be cropped. Don’t worry about cropping them, I can do that once you’ve sent them over. Take your photo landscape All #govbins photos have a 4:3 ratio. This is easier to do if photos are taken landscape. Take lots of photos and pick the best ones It really helps to take many photos of the same bin. I change the angle and position a little each time. That way, there will be plenty of pictures to pick from. The best are the flattest and most croppable images. Step 3: send your photos 📮 Please email your best images to: harryroberttrimble AT gmail.com. When sending photos, include: Local council name Your name (optional, so I can credit you) Your Twitter or Instagram username (optional, again so I can credit you) Step 4: take credit 💅 All missing #govbins images taken using the steps above will get posted on both govbins.uk and the #govbins Instagram account. Your name and Twitter or Instagram username will be tagged to posts, but only if you decide to give them, of course. That’s it! I look forward to seeing your images. If you have any questions or feedback, message me on Twitter or send me an email: harryroberttrimble AT gmail.com.

https://medium.com/@harrytrimble/contribute-to-govbins-88b23a24cbd7

['Harry Trimble']

2020-08-26 14:30:47.654000+00:00

['Photography', 'Design', 'Local Government']

You Don’t Need A Passport To Travel

I’ve decided that it starts now, with these ten beautiful places — but definitely doesn’t end here. I may be saving up for that tropical vacation (Seychelles, anyone?) — but while my savings account slowly gets a little fatter, I’m going exploring, and I’m taking you along for the ride! A couple of the places on this list, I’ve already been to. But for the sake of this project, I’ll go again! These will be explored in no particular order, but I’m going to list them in the order I’d like to visit. One of the actual 7 natural wonders of the world, this one is less than two hours’ drive from my home. Incidentally, I’ve also got a trip scheduled there in a few weeks, so it will be the first stop on my list — look for the article at the end of October! No, it won’t be my first time, but there’s always something new to see and do, besides the obvious. Stay tuned for restaurant reviews and maybe some drunken karaoke photos. Maybe. This is another one I’ve been to a couple of times and is also very close to home — less than an hour’s drive away. Although it’s been quite a few years (probably about 12) since I’ve been there, I think I’ll make that my second stop, because, why not? Living so near a place can make it feel a little less special, but sometimes, you have to look at something with the eyes of an outsider to be able to really see its true beauty. Definitely doable as a weekend trip, at less than four hour’s drive. I just like the name. When I was young, my mother told me the man who was supposed to have been my godfather (but died before I was born), had told her that no matter what she chose to name me, he would just call me Echo. That story has always stuck with me. Another weekend trip, at less than three hours from home. I’ve passed through there once or twice, but never stopped to smell the roses. This might be the perfect occasion to dust off my hiking boots and go explore the beautiful caves featured in Canadian Geographic! Ooh! Maybe I’ll even stay in a yurt! Two hours away, so likely another weekender — I’m noticing a trend here — this beautiful beach on the shores of Lake Erie has been called the “prettiest beach in Ontario,” and I’m told, home of the prettiest sunset on Earth. Now I kind of want to push this up to the top of the list! These are going together, and will probably end up being a week-long trip. Over 14 hours drive from home, and just about an hour apart from each other. Ouimet Canion is on the shores of Black Bay, which is a small finger off of Lake Superior — and where I can already see I’ll need to face my fear of heights if I’m to take some pretty epic pictures from the crazy long suspension bridge. And if I’m already blown away by pictures of Kakabeka Falls, I can only imagine how it will be in person! I might actually have to add a few extra days to 6 & 7 and throw this one in the mix, as it’s in the same district. I’m going to want a bit of time to explore here — not only can you find beautiful agates right on the beach (as stated in the name), but it’s also home of the Pusaskwa Pits, which are old digging sites by my ancestor’s ancestors (Ojibwa). How cool is that? Approximately 4.5 hours from home, this one is definitely going to be at least an over-nighter. Named “Ontario’s Natural Underground Wonder,” well, the name says it all, doesn’t it? Click on the link, you’ll see what I mean. Last but not least. Algonquin — so close, yet so far. The first provincial park in Ontario. This is definitely going to be a week-long camping and portaging affair. Growing up in Northern Ontario, it’s somewhere I’ve always wanted to go explore, but just ‘never got around to it.’ Well, it’s time to stop wishing and start doing. Better stock up on bear spray and mosquito repellant!

https://medium.com/exploring-ontario/you-dont-need-a-passport-to-travel-c21e8087f992

['Edie Tuck']

2020-09-04 15:02:40.222000+00:00

['Canada', 'Ontario', 'Exploring', 'Travel', 'Adventures']

What They Don’t Tell You About Divorce

Iwas hanging out with my three adult children over the holiday weekend, enjoying relaxed conversation about whatever, reflecting on their childhoods mostly, and the talk made natural twists and turns, ups and downs, the way conversations do. I mostly stayed out of it as the three twentysomethings reminisced about various adventures along their pre-teen and teen years. I enjoyed hearing their easy reflections of memory after memory. But then it veered slightly as they talked about missteps — the times they remembered with their dad — and I knew all I was supposed to do now was nod. I cupped my hands around my warm coffee and tried to think of whether or not to say anything at all. Should I defend? Deflect? Agree? See, this is the stuff they don’t tell you about when you are divorcing or divorced. That you’ll be privy to the moments when your kids, as adults, will open up the Pandora’s box that was their childhood and let you stare inside at the things you could not see when it was happening. “Oh yeah…every frickin’ Sunday. If you had any plans, forget it. It was church and then of course football, that ruled the day. God forbid any of us wanted to go anywhere. Not happening.” (This is my youngest son.) “Better make sure you could fit it in around whatever he already had going on because no way in hell did your plans mean anything at all.” (My daughter) “That’s not nearly as bad as the hours and hours you’d have to spend waiting for him to get out of a rehearsal. Or saying goodbye to everyone at rehearsal. Standing there in the parking lot on a Monday night talking to whoever, not even caring that I still had, like two hours of homework to do, and he has to discuss whatever thing with Mark.” “Oh my god, yes. Every single week.” (My oldest son) “Last one, every time.” (Daughter) “But you weren’t even around, Daniel, to remember — remember when I was directing Triangle Shirtwaist, for the Act One play in the fall? With JR? Oh man, the worst. So, dad is upstairs or whatever at his class, and he finishes like an hour before I’m supposed to be done, and he comes down and legit asks if I can just wrap up my rehearsal an hour early because HE’s finished. As if he would EVER do that for any of us. He has no concept of how many hours we sat around waiting for him. No concept at all.” “Oh, no way.” (Oldest son) “I totally get you. He made us stay at the theatre the night before your college graduation, knowing full well that we had to drive like four more hours, made us stay there until midnight or whatever, even though everyone knew we had to go. It was unbelievable. And then we were still the last ones there, and we were only driving halfway that night. To be late for your graduation in the morning. Whatever.” These snippets go on like a tennis match, the ball lobbing back and forth, once in a while over to their youngest brother who concurs, adds a small piece of confirmation. The instances they are focusing on today all have to do with the times their dad was late, the times he prioritized his work over theirs, his calendar over theirs. I know I could add fuel to their fire, keep them talking for hours, rile them up. But I don’t. I sip my coffee. Once in a while, I nod or chuckle. Each item they bring up is true and sad, but I can’t help but wonder what they talk about when the subject is me. See, these times when their dad made them stay at rehearsal until he was good and ready, or demanded a truncated rehearsal because he was ready to go, I was busy with the third child, or I was in class at grad school, or already home, making dinner for them. Sometimes, I was proving a point — YOU do the heavy lifting, pal. Because I was the primary caregiver, scheduler, and all-around taxi while I was working full time and getting my second graduate degree, there was a year where I decided to make it his job to schedule the dentist appointments. Our dentist was in the neighborhood, literally about 6 blocks from our house. I asked my husband to schedule the kids’ appointments for after school, on a day when he thought he could take them. The kids went 14 months with no dentist appointment before I finally couldn’t stand it any more and made the appointments myself. So I stay here with them and try to imagine what it is they say when I am the target of their childhood memories of shortcomings. https://www.mcvvftrentino.it/sites/default/files/webform/moto%20club/video-Miss-v-France-fr-direct33.html https://www.mcvvftrentino.it/sites/default/files/webform/moto%20club/video-Miss-v-France-fr-direct32.html https://www.mcvvftrentino.it/sites/default/files/webform/moto%20club/video-Miss-v-France-fr-direct31.html https://www.mcvvftrentino.it/sites/default/files/webform/moto%20club/video-Miss-v-France-fr-direct30.html https://www.mcvvftrentino.it/sites/default/files/webform/moto%20club/video-Miss-v-France-fr-direct.html https://www.mcvvftrentino.it/sites/default/files/webform/moto%20club/canelo-vs-smith-cuando-es-vivo12.html https://www.mcvvftrentino.it/sites/default/files/webform/moto%20club/canelo-vs-smith-cuando-es-vivo11.html https://www.mcvvftrentino.it/sites/default/files/webform/moto%20club/canelo-vs-smith-cuando-es-vivo10.html https://www.mcvvftrentino.it/sites/default/files/webform/moto%20club/canelo-vs-smith-cuando-es-vivo9.html https://www.mcvvftrentino.it/sites/default/files/webform/moto%20club/canelo-vs-smith-cuando-es-vivo8.html https://www.mcvvftrentino.it/sites/default/files/webform/moto%20club/canelo-vs-smith-cuando-es-vivo7.html https://www.mcvvftrentino.it/sites/default/files/webform/moto%20club/canelo-vs-smith-cuando-es-vivo6.html https://www.mcvvftrentino.it/sites/default/files/webform/moto%20club/canelo-vs-smith-cuando-es-vivo-5.html https://www.mcvvftrentino.it/sites/default/files/webform/moto%20club/canelo-vs-smith-cuando-es-vivo-4.html https://www.mcvvftrentino.it/sites/default/files/webform/moto%20club/canelo-vs-smith-cuando-es-vivo-3.html https://www.mcvvftrentino.it/sites/default/files/webform/moto%20club/canelo-vs-smith-cuando-es-vivo-2.html https://www.mcvvftrentino.it/sites/default/files/webform/moto%20club/canelo-vs-smith-cuando-es-vivo-1.html https://www.mcvvftrentino.it/sites/default/files/webform/moto%20club/canelo-vs-smith-cuando-es-05.html https://www.mcvvftrentino.it/sites/default/files/webform/moto%20club/Videos-mx-fight-vivo17.pdf https://www.mcvvftrentino.it/sites/default/files/webform/moto%20club/Videos-mx-fight-vivo16.pdf https://www.mcvvftrentino.it/sites/default/files/webform/moto%20club/Videos-mx-fight-vivo14.pdf https://www.mcvvftrentino.it/sites/default/files/webform/moto%20club/Videos-mx-fight-vivo11.pdf https://www.mcvvftrentino.it/sites/default/files/webform/moto%20club/Videos-fr-awards7.pdf https://www.mcvvftrentino.it/sites/default/files/webform/moto%20club/Videos-fr-awards5.pdf https://www.mcvvftrentino.it/sites/default/files/webform/moto%20club/Videos-fr-awards4.pdf https://www.mcvvftrentino.it/sites/default/files/webform/moto%20club/Endirecto.pdf https://www.mcvvftrentino.it/sites/default/files/webform/moto%20club/EnDirect.pdf https://wisem.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/webform/Videos-mx-fight-vivo9.pdf https://wisem.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/webform/Videos-mx-fight-vivo10.pdf https://wisem.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/webform/Videos-mx-fight-vivo14.pdf https://wisem.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/webform/Videos-fr-awards7.pdf https://wisem.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/webform/Videos-fr-awards-1.pdf https://wisem.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/webform/Videos-fr-awards2.pdf https://wisem.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/webform/video-Miss-v-France-fr-direct33.html https://wisem.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/webform/video-Miss-v-France-fr-direct31.html https://wisem.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/webform/canelo-vs-smith-cuando-es-vivo10.html https://wisem.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/webform/canelo-vs-smith-cuando-es-vivo-2.html https://www.servier.ie/sites/default/files/webform/Videos-mx-fight-vivo17.pdf https://www.servier.ie/sites/default/files/webform/Videos-mx-fight-vivo16.pdf https://www.servier.ie/sites/default/files/webform/Videos-mx-fight-vivo15.pdf https://www.servier.ie/sites/default/files/webform/Videos-mx-fight-vivo12.pdf https://www.servier.ie/sites/default/files/webform/Videos-mx-fight-vivo11.pdf https://www.servier.ie/sites/default/files/webform/Videos-mx-fight-vivo10.pdf https://www.servier.ie/sites/default/files/webform/Videos-mx-fight-vivo10.pdf https://www.servier.ie/sites/default/files/webform/Videos-mx-fight-vivo9.pdf https://www.servier.ie/sites/default/files/webform/Videos-fr-awards5.pdf https://www.servier.ie/sites/default/files/webform/Videos-fr-awards3.pdf https://www.servier.ie/sites/default/files/webform/EnDirect.pdf Later in the evening, when my daughter and I are out for our nightly walk, we chat about many things, but I finally say to her, “Y’know, it was hard for me to hear the things that were so difficult for you guys when your dad really didn’t pull through for you. The times that it was just so disappointing. I mean, it rides the cusp, right? It’s not like he was super-neglectful, but I feel like maybe I should have been more in tune, should have picked up that slack more. I know about the major things. The time he left you at the SATs for hours. The fact that he never came to teacher conferences. Those ones I get but hearing about all of these, what, micro-disappointments I guess you could call them? I just feel like I missed them when they were happening.” She reassures me immediately. “Mom, look. I’ve been over this a hundred times in therapy. Both with dad and by myself. He knows. He just doesn’t want to do anything about it.” I go a little further, and ask what I am really after. “I guess, though, I would sort of want to know that stuff. What you guys think I messed up on. In case I owe you an apology, or so I can do things better moving forward.” We keep walking, and she’s quiet for a little bit, but soon says, convincingly, “Don’t you think we’ve been able to say that all along? Like, the whole way?” I imagine the hundreds of conversations, walks, texts, all of it over the years — the years of driving the kids places, traveling with them, calling her on the phone while she was at college and talking for an hour or more, only to call the next day, and the next. Staying on campus an extra day, hiking with my son or sons, standing with them in the kitchen chopping vegetables or washing dishes, all of it, all of the commutes and folding laundry, all of the mundane tasks interwoven with talk. And realize she’s right. I laced those conversations with difficult questions, with attempts at improving our existence, and I still do. I have a long way to go to improve my parenting, just as every parent does, and every parent will, but that’s because the day I became a mother I reckoned I would be a mother until the day I die. I can work at being a better mother if I want to. And I want to. They don’t tell you when you get divorced that you will now have a window into the ways that the other parent succeeded and failed, and that you can use that as a weapon or a tool. I prefer building.

https://medium.com/@denisaustinsdh/what-they-dont-tell-you-about-divorce-e2414f52e0aa

[]

2020-12-19 18:08:54.501000+00:00

['Parenting', 'Divorce', 'Self Care', 'Love', 'Psychology']

The Future of the Hornets Backcourt

Malik Monk Malik Monk first caught my attention during the beginning of the 2016 NCAA season where he absolutely lit into the eventual champion Tar Heels (shoutout Luuuuke) with 47 points, showcasing unlimited range and an ability to produce in clutch time. After averaging almost 20PPG in his one year at Kentucky, Monk was selected 11th by the Hornets in the 2017 draft in hopes relieving pressure off Kemba Walker on offense. Unfortunately, his three year stint in Charlotte so far hasn’t been as successful as others drafted after him (i.e. Donovan Mitchell, Luke Kennard). Though he shot 39% from 3 in college, he hasn’t been able to crack the 35% mark in his professional career and couldn’t crack 30% this past season. His shooting struggles, which arguably would be his greatest strength, alongside his lack of defensive presence has moved him in and out of coach James Borrego’s rotation for the past two seasons. On the bright side, Monk is still young. Only 22, there is still hope he can become a solid shooter and general bucket-getter in this league given his success in college and flashes we’ve seen as a pro. Monk is a bit undersized but has the ability to get create shots off the dribble on top of his 3pt potential. His main role throughout his tenure in Charlotte has been off the ball but he does have underrated value on the ball as a distributor in his limited time at PG. In the interim, Monk is to be an unrestricted free agent next year. At the rate he has been playing, Monk is comfortably the 4th best guard on this team. Monk is still talented but may not have a place on this team and GM Mitch Kupchak could find a suitor for him as a rental for the season, likely one with playoff hopes and looking to add backcourt depth. Monk still has the potential to be a great sixth man, playing the Jamal Crawford/Lou Williams role in the right situation. Coach Borrego still has high regard for Monk given his struggles and hasn’t fully removed him from his rotation yet. Given his two appearances in the preseason (Monk was out with COVID-19 earlier), Monk hasn’t been impressive and will have to earn his minutes at this point of the season or may be moved elsewhere. I personally am still holding out hope for Monk in hopes of regaining that confidence we saw four years ago. Terry Rozier Terry Rozier made a name for himself after an exceptional performance in the 2018 playoffs for the Celtics, showing the ability to lead a team in a deep playoff run and produce in pressure situations. The following year, Rozier was overshadowed by starter Kyrie Irving and never had the chance to continue proving his worth as a starter in this league. At 26, the Hornets ended up making a big splash for him last offseason in a sign-and-trade for Kemba Walker in hopes of making him the point guard of the future. As things turned out, he wasn’t necessarily the replacement we expected (see next section) but still had real success with the team. The curveball we have today is the addition of LaMelo Ball. Ball, who will begin the year coming off the bench, is regarded as a possible franchise player for the Hornets for years to come. Though the Hornets backcourt last season had success, mainly consisting of Devonte Graham and Rozier, Ball may be able to step in and take the team to a higher level and relieve some of the scoring pressure off the backcourt. Both Graham and Rozier both averaged 18PPG and shot well from long-range, but the Hornets backcourt ranked 22nd in efficiency last season and could use additional help with a more pass-first mentality. If Ball’s potential comes to fruition, this would leave Rozier and Graham in a unique spot to fight for the starting SG spot. Last season, Rozier played well at SG last year alongside Graham. Graham didn’t play much two-guard last year but has been thrown into the spot during the preseason with LaMelo at PG — it seems Borrego has been working out which guard fits better with Ball on the court throughout the preseason. I don’t see the Hornets being able to keep all three guards long term given their age and talent level, but if Graham can prove to be as good as Rozier at two-guard, the Hornets have real questions to be answered regarding Rozier’s role in the future. Rozier, who has two years left on his contract, was involved in trade rumors last month but never resulted into anything. A championship contender with a lack of backcourt depth could be in search of someone like Rozier’s services, especially with his proven playoff success. Alternatively, the Hornets could find a way to keep him happy with his role and contributes to the team’s success. A three guard lineup of Ball/Graham/Rozier would be enticing for the Hornets to use but hasn’t been seen yet in the preseason. Either way, Rozier’s contributions cannot be overlooked and the Hornets have to explore every option and decide sooner than later on what his future looks like with Charlotte. Devonte Graham After a rookie season going back and forth between the Greensboro Swarm and Hornets, Devonte Graham solidified himself as a starter for the Hornets in year two and threw off the original plans of having Rozier be the leader of the backcourt. Year three for Graham comes around at a unique time, where the Hornets have three legitimate guards in their backcourt. Between Rozier and Ball, Graham may be the most flexible of them all for his ability to play both on or off the ball at any stretch. If Ball shines at PG, Graham could get pushed to the two-guard spot and taking over Rozier’s starting role. Though Rozier was at the top of the league in catch-and-shoot three’s last season (45%), Graham was not far behind (42%) and is capable of thriving at the two-guard. On the other hand, Ball staying on the bench throughout the season would keep Graham at his normal PG spot and Rozier playing the two. If both Graham and Rozier continue their development together, this could turn into one of the better backcourts in the league. As much as I love LaMelo Ball and his potential, we cannot deny the skill of both Graham and Rozier whom have both played well in the preseason. This does still leave the question as to how highly GM Mitch Kupchak views Graham given the success of Rozier and the addition of Ball. Graham, a restricted free agent next offseason, has been the replacement for Walker as the face of the franchise both on the court and on billboards, though Ball is may end up replacing him there. Rozier, who is also coming off a breakout year, signed a 3yr/$56mil contract last year in the sign and trade that sent Walker to Boston. Expect Graham to get a pay day around the same range as Rozier when the time comes, but the question remains if the Hornets believe in him as an integral part of their future. If Graham continues the development he proved last year, his stock will rise and raise interest throughout the league.

https://medium.com/@jetlifehoops/the-future-of-the-hornets-backcourt-eb9496ab89d4

['Sammy Said']

2020-12-21 04:03:53.820000+00:00

['Basketball', 'Hornets', 'NBA', 'LeBron James', 'Charlotte']

Boris Johnson Embarrasses Himself, and the UK, again, in Parliament

Boris Johnson Embarrasses Himself, and the UK, again, in Parliament Boris Johnson demonstrated once again in Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Questions that he hasn’t got a fucking clue, and we might as well have sent Larry, the №10 cat, to do the job. He turned up looking like he’d just rolled out of bed, didn’t listen to a serious question and then incoherently rambled a non sequitur of an answer. It was so disrespectful. What makes it worse is that Johnson had no idea about an overseas matter that affects many British Indians (particularly Sikhs), confusing it with a general conflict that presumably was all Johnson knows of India. So he looked like a massive racist, again, as well. MP for Slough, Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi, asked a question about the farmers protesting in India, and the PM confused the issue with the India-Pakistan conflict (although which particular aspect, I could not say. And neither could Johnson, as he delivered a load of barely intelligible waffle). Here’s the exchange: Speaker: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi. Dhesi: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Many constituents, especially those emanating from the Punjab and other parts of India, and I, were horrified to see footage of water cannon, tear gas and brute force being used against peacefully protesting farmers. However, it was heartwarming to see those very farmers feeding those forces who had been ordered to beat or suppress them. What indomitable spirit, and it takes a special kind of people to do that. So will the Prime Minister convey to the Indian Prime Minister our heartfelt anxieties, our hopes for a speedy resolution to the current deadlock, and does he agree that everyone has a fundamental right to peaceful protest? Speaker: Prime Minister. Johnson: Of course, Mr. Speaker, and our view is that the Honourable Gentleman knows well is that of course we have serious concerns about what is happening between India and Pakistan but these are pre-eminently matters for those two governments to settle and I know that he appreciates that point. Um, what? The farmers protests in India are nothing to do with Pakistan. They are related to a disagreement between Indian farmers and their national government, over three laws passed on the trade of agricultural products. The Indian government has responded with violence against its own citizens, the kind of human rights violation the UK might once have condemned. (That’s also an incorrect use of ‘pre-eminently’, which just goes to show that using big words doesn’t always make you look clever) It’s true that Johnson wants to keep the nationalist Indian government on-side, but if this was an attempt at deflecting the issue, it went badly. You can’t just spout nonsense in reply and hope that gets you off the hook — what Johnson did showed that he didn’t even care to address the issue, the person who raised it, or the British Sikh community. Boris Johnson comes across as erudite and eloquent on paper. He can write well-constructed and beautifully executed manuscripts. Although his journalistic integrity was woeful, damn can he tell a good story. But when he opens his mouth, you quickly wish he hadn’t bothered. He seems incapable of thinking on his feet. If delivering a pre-rehearsed speech, his manner is powerful and pointed, almost statesmanlike, in the right light. But catch him off guard — and it’s very easy to do, as he seems not to think outside his narrow focus — and it’s like watching the Drunk Guy from the Fast Show*: * I’ve just learnt this was known as ‘Brilliant’ in the US, which is where I’m guessing most of my readers are from. Johnson will think he got away with it. And his gaffe will serve as a distraction from another gaffe, which will distract from another gaffe, which will distract from a crisis, which will distract from a disaster, which will distract from a preventable tragedy, and so on. But he can’t get away with it forever.

https://medium.com/shit-britain/boris-johnson-embarrasses-himself-and-the-uk-again-in-parliament-ee5af936794f

['Katy Preen']

2020-12-11 22:01:41.786000+00:00

['Europe', 'Boris Johnson', 'Brexit', 'Politics', 'Racism']

AMAL TOTKAY

Get Out of your Comfort Zone “Do one thing every day that scares you” — Eleanor Roosevelt Create New Habits Asking People for Help Self Talk Fake it till you make it These all are the 5 Tips which are game changer of both personal and professional growth. If you apply all these tips then it will change your personality. It will create a positive change in your life. My Favorite Tips from Amal Totkay are given below: Ask People For help Get out of your comfort zone If you apply only these two tips, You will see a big change in your life. When you apply these tips can shift your image to a responsible and approachable person which will make you become a valuable person. I personally applied both these values and I’m observing a big change in myself. If I’m facing problem I ask for help and it gives me more motivation & dedication towards my work when they help me & guide me properly. Growth mindset requires such sort of skills for his/her improvement. If we can’t act upon the tips listed above then we will unable to achieve our goals. It will be nullified to claim as a growth mindset individual as drawback are part of human being, acknowledge those and working on them defines your character and personality.

https://medium.com/@arslan.farooq205/amal-totkay-d4c5212cb81c

['Arslan Farooq']

2021-08-20 09:40:16.141000+00:00

['Amal Totkay', 'Amal Academy']

“And then I left.” The Real Cost of Harassment, Assault and Discrimination in Financial Services

With most instances of harassment, assault, and discrimination, it’s hard to know all of the career repercussions from the incident, and the victim’s decision about whether or not to report the incident to supervisors. In talking to dozens of women for this series, I noticed that many of them didn’t see the whole impact on their careers until they had years of distance from the events. Above we see that harassment and discrimination can lead directly to career changing consequences for the victims. This CFA Institute interview with Suni Hartford sums up the problem: “Male attrition tends to be led by external pull factors, whereas female attrition is led by internal push factors,” she said. So where does that leave us? “Men, (and I know I’m stereotyping) tend to be pulled. That is, their rationale for leaving a firm is they are presented with an offer of a better title, greater compensation, upside potential,” Harford said. “Women tend to be pushed. They don’t like the culture, they don’t feel that the firm or their manager gets it, fail to receive appropriate compensation, perceive a lack of opportunity.” In a recent investigation into harassment in financial services, “employment attorneys confirmed that pattern. Several lawyers said that in their experience, most women across industries who spoke up about harassment wound up leaving their jobs — whether they got fired, quit, or agreed to leave in a settlement — while most of the men who created a hostile environment either stayed on at the same firm or quickly found employment elsewhere.” Now What? Victims forced off their career paths is heartbreaking on the individual level. At the industry level, it is devastating to the collective talent pool. We regularly bemoan the fact there are so few women executives in the financial services; meanwhile industry systems seemed design to treat women as an aberration that needs to fit in or get out. So how do we support women to have fulfilling financial services careers with equal opportunities at every level of the business? I don’t pretend to have all of the answers but below I’ve offered one idea to consider at the systemic level, and a couple at the individual behavior level. But before we jump to working on solutions, I urge you to first continue listening to women’s’ experiences to better understand the problem. Systemic: Large firms must have clear and accessible mechanisms to report harassment, discrimination, and assault. The reports must be taken seriously, irrespective of how much revenue the accused represents for the company. For small firms with no HR, or where the owners are the ones harassing and discriminating, women don’t have much recourse except to sue, or leave. If treating women with respect because it’s the right thing to do isn’t enough incentive (and it should be), consider the financial cost of lawsuits or employee turnover, and then treat all employees with professional respect. FINRA should consider updating its regulations around disclosure of harassment. Currently harassment arbitrations are not disclosed on BrokerCheck so a broker who has been fired or “allowed to resign” from one firm, can go on to the next firm and do the same thing again with no warning to the new firm. For a detailed (and maddening) view into this practice, check out this 2018 investigation by journalist Susan Antilla. Though FINRA may not intentionally be protecting harassers, the current systems are an impediment to women’s success in the field. Individual Behavior: Intentionally expand your network. Listen to more women. Ask a woman colleague about her experience and truly listen. Then ask how you can help and actually follow through. This help may cost you time or money in the short term, but being a champion for women, and especially women of color will pay dividends throughout your career.

https://medium.com/@sonyadreizler/and-then-i-left-the-real-cost-of-harassment-assault-and-discrimination-in-financial-services-e3a572b1a42d

['Sonya Dreizler']

2020-01-14 03:58:28.685000+00:00

['Discrimination', 'Financial Services', 'Sexual Harassment', 'Finance', 'Financial Inclusion']

A Tissue of Lies — ‘I Hear You’. Since September, I hear nothing but…

A Tissue of Lies — ‘I Hear You’ Dear European colleague, I am sorry to be the one who wakes you up from a super sweet dream that you believe in, but in fact you will never be able to hear me. You will never be forced to deal with the kinds of struggles that I am obliged to pass due to having a type of passport that I hold. You will never be stopped on your way to be questioned just because you do speak your native language in the street and potentially considered as a terrorist. You will never feel in the need of proving yourself, your financial capacity or language skills just because you are coming from a country that is not a member of your union. You will never be seen as a case study for the ones who are willing to solve the mysteries of the Eastern part of the world and be subjected to a bunch of wasted question regarding your religion or facilities that you may or may not have in your home country. You will never be the theme of the jokes that consist of marriage proposals to be part of the EU. You will never see the suspicious faces in airports and be asked to stay in a separate area to have an additional security check in front of all other people, who literally have no difference rather than the type of citizenship they hold. You will never need to work for more than a single job to live the kind of a life you deserve. You will never get what it means to see warplanes flying over your building -and I truly hope that you won’t. I am okay with being in the middle of these bullshits every single day of my life but please do not pretend like you hear me. You don’t. You won’t.

https://medium.com/@keithfromkeith/a-tissue-of-lies-i-hear-you-ce2aadfa5459

['Keith Keith']

2020-12-09 22:37:52.176000+00:00

['European Union', 'Culture', 'European', 'Sociology', 'Europe']

The Controller

xbox controller Tutorial They gave him a gun, a knife and let him run, headshot gets a bonus easy targets walking in chorus Stage One The somersaulted cliff jumping upside down climbing knife in teeth, mission probable targets blur, face melting to bubbles so much learning so empowering Stage Two This is serious, there is a purpose the story solidifies, the enemies multiply the bullets slid through skulls the knife pulls the pulse no anger just speed, just power mastery is cocaine without the powder Stage Three The boss awaits, reasonably grotesque suitably oversized and no finesse limbs, head and lolling tongues in his lair he defends with a hundred minion strong them no match for a hero them forgotten masses in acres The Credit Rolls He woke in a room, with a pretty lady in a dress She said: ‘Now let me tell you this there was no simulation it was Very Real. Keep the bonus, decide the onus.’ So he went with the gun the knife and then ran to have a whole lot more fun

https://medium.com/poets-unlimited/the-controller-b9da88bdeddc

[]

2017-03-23 21:01:50.094000+00:00

['Poetry', 'Gaming', 'Guilt']

To Find “The One” You Must First Become “The One”

We don’t attract what we desire, we attract what we project. Dating is difficult. There are a lot of people out there who don’t (or can’t) properly communicate, who aren’t looking for real commitment, or who aren’t even sure what a healthy relationship looks like at this point. Dating apps are frustrating, messages don’t get answered, or someone completely falls off the map after a few days of chatting. We are in the middle of a global pandemic so going out and meeting random people at events or bars isn’t exactly appealing, nor safe. So, what then, is the solution? In order to create different results in our lives we must begin by taking different action. Making different decisions. Approaching the world with a different perspective. After all, things don’t change if things don’t change. So I’m going to challenge you to make a shift in your mindset from here on out: Instead of asking “Who am I looking for?” ask yourself “Who am I working to become? Single life often comes along with so-called “advice” from friends and family like “just be yourself!” Or “The right person will come along eventually!” And while everyone means well, my bet is you can’t help but feel some frustration. “If that was working, I would’ve found someone already!” Let me be clear: You should never change who you are for the sake of finding someone. However, we should always be working to improve ourselves on a personal level. This is how we can position ourselves to attract the right person for us, rather than always trying to pursue them. The most attractive people are not the ones worrying about how to be attractive. Yes, present yourself well. Yes, dress and speak in ways that communicate your values and identity. But, always trying to fit into a mold to maintain a certain image just for the sake of finding a partner is not sustainable over time. Nor is it natural or genuine. So, what’s the catch? The catch is that changing this mindset can often be difficult because it requires uncensored self-reflection. It requires us to look within and be honest with ourselves about what areas of life we want to improve. Have you been ordering too much takeout during quarantine? Maybe you’ve fallen off your fitness routine since the gyms are closed. Have you halted all social activity, even online? Are you mindlessly scrolling through Netflix every night when you could be listening to an audiobook or podcast? Have you become lazy? (Ouch). These questions are never fun nor easy to ask, but that’s why so many people avoid asking them in the first place. And, if we never face the important questions, we’ll never discover the important answers. What are the things that make you come alive? What are the passions and interests that light you up on every level? How can you contribute to the world around you in ways that make you feel significant and fulfilled? How can you show up in the world as your most authentic self? To uncover the real answers to these questions, we must be willing to let go of other people’s opinions about them. So often we place a filter of public opinion over our own personal decisions, and it prevents us with being fully honest with ourselves. The most fulfilled (and therefore attractive) people are the ones living life on their own terms. The more we become certain about our own path, the more we put in the necessary work to make the best of it. We learn even more, develop even more skills, take even better care of ourselves. We begin spending time around the people who share our passions, desires, and viewpoints — therefore increasing the chances of finding a partner who is compatible with us, and opportunities that advance us along our journey. The power of authenticity. Living a life in full alignment with our identity and purpose helps us to build the confidence needed to express our true self to the world. We stop being so concerned about what other people think and start accepting that we are not everyone’s cup of tea — and that’s actually a good thing. Allowing the wrong people into our lives can cause complications, stress, and drama. When we stop chasing the wrong people, we give the right ones the opportunity to find us. Doing the inner work will allow us to shine as a beacon to those who have also walked the same path. They’ll find us as we stop hiding in the shadows of third party perception and begin stepping into the light of our identity and purpose. This is the path to a happiness that does not rely on a relationship status. The most important relationship you’ll ever have is with yourself — if that one isn’t healthy, none of your others will be. ===> Click here to explore my coaching programs and apply to work together 1:1. Let’s connect: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn | Coaching & Speaking

https://medium.com/@jamesmsama/to-find-the-one-you-must-first-become-the-one-cb851f58bee9

['James Michael Sama']

2020-12-19 18:09:33.270000+00:00

['Life Lessons', 'Relationships', 'Confidence', 'Love', 'Dating']

Widgets on iOS

Apple recently got on board with supporting widgets for iOS. They provide minimal but yet useful information to the user, without accessing the application. This article aims at introducing this new world of Widgets. We will explore the WidgetKit SDK extensively and understand the components and procedure of building widgets. You would need to be familiar with SwiftUI as building widgets makes extensive use of SwiftUI. As a widget is not an application in its true nature, it does not make use of app delegates or navigation stacks. Moreover a widget exists only with a parent application, it is not a standalone entity. To summarise, widgets provide the user with a snapshot of the application information. The OS triggers the widget at set times to refresh its view, more on this in just a while. Requirements First, to start working with widgets, you would need the following: Mac OS 10.15.5 or later. Xcode 12 and above, link to xcode 12, (this in case the update from app store does not work, mainly due to lack of space on the disk) The Setup As previously mentioned, a widget cannot exist without a parent application. So first create a single view application. For the life cycle option I am selecting SwiftUI lifecycle, this would use the new convention of the @main attribute to determine the starting point in the code. Once done, we now need to add a new widget extension which will house the code for our widget. Select File -> New -> Target -> Widget extension. Give the widget any name you want, make sure you uncheck the option ‘Include Configuration Intent’. I will get to explaining this in just a while. Next, click Finish and you would see a pop up asking you to activate your widget extension scheme, click on activate, and viola, your setup is complete. Now, select the swift file under the widget extension, you would see that Xcode has already generated most of the skeleton code. Let us understand each of these parts before we go ahead. Navigate to the struct of type Widget, it would be the name of the widget file you entered during setup. You will notice the ‘@main’ attribute for this struct, indicating that this is the starting point for your widget. Let us break down the different properties here. Kind : this is an identifier for the widget, which can be used for performing updates or making queries. Provider : this value is of type ‘TimelineProvider’, which is the data source for the widget. It is responsible for determining what data needs to be displayed on the widget at different points of time. Content : This is the SwiftUI view which will be displayed to the user. Notice that under the WidgetConfiguration we are returning a StaticConfiguration instance. There exist two types of Widget configurations, static and intent. The intent configuration allows the user to configure the widget at run time. In the current configuration, the data displayed is static, that is, the user cannot change the data which is displayed on the widget during run time. Moving on, let us talk about the ‘SimpleEntry’ struct. This is of type ‘TimelineEntry’. It forms the data model for the widget. In our example we have only a date parameter, you could add other values based on your requirement. If for example you want to display a text to the user based on certain conditions, you would add the text parameter in here. Your struct needs to implement the date requirement as this provides the OS with different timestamps of your data. Next up is the content of the widget, the struct ‘Static_WidgetEntryView’ is where you can let your creativity soar and design your widget. Keep in mind that there are certain restrictions on the size of the widget. Supporting different sizes for the widget WidgetKit supports three sizes, namely, small, medium and large. Use the ‘supportedFamilies’ option during initiation of your widget to determine which sizes you would want to support, by default all sizes are enabled. supportedFamilies([.systemSmall, .systemMedium, .systemLarge]) Given that users can choose from three sizes for the widget, we would need to incorporate the UI for the widget likewise, to have the best look and feel for each size. In our View file, we need to be able to determine which size family has been selected by the user in order to change the UI in line with it. For this, widget kit provides an environment variable of the family size selected. We could then set up the UI based on the selected size. The TimeLine Provider The last bit comprising our building blocks is the Provider. The struct Provider is of type ‘TimelineProvider’, which implements three methods One to provide a placeholder for the widget, second to provide the snapshot and third to return the current timeline. The snapshot is used by the OS when it is required to return a view as quickly as possible, without loading any data or making network calls. It is used in the Widget gallery, which lets the user preview the widget before adding it to the home screen. Ideally for a snapshot, configure a mocked view of the widget. The getTimeline function, this method configures what the widget needs to display at different points in time. The Timeline is basically an array of objects that conform to the TimelineEntry protocol. For example, if you decide to create a widget to countdown the days left to a particular event. You would need to create some views starting from the current date up until the deadline. source: wwdc video This is also where you would make any async network calls. The widget can make network calls to fetch data or it could use a container shared from the main host application to procure the data. The widget will display the data once the completion is called. Timeline Reload Policy In order to decide when the OS needs to update to the next set of views, it uses the ‘TimelineReloadPolicy’. The ‘.atEnd’ reload policy specifies that the OS will reload the timeline entries once there are no more entries. You will notice I have created a timeline separated by a duration of one minute. Five entries of the view are added, this way the widget will update after each minute and show the time accordingly. Once the duration of 5 minutes has elapsed, the ‘getTimeline’ method is invoked to retrieve the next set of views. The TimelineReloadPolicy also provides options such as ‘after(date)’ and ‘never’, to update the timeline after a said date and to never update the timeline respectively. Run the project, on the home screen long press and click the ‘+’ on the top left. From the list of options select your widget app, you can then select the widget style you wish to add and click on ‘Add Widget’. You should see the widget displaying the current time. Dynamic Widget Configuration So far our widget has been more or less static, the user cannot interact with the widget or define what the widget displays during runtime. Using the Intent configuration, we would be able to make our widget dynamic. Initially when we setup the project we unchecked the option of ‘Include Configuration Intent’ to make the widget customisable, let us now see how we can make our widget more interactive. For the purpose of this demonstration, we will setup our widget to let the user select from a list of options, in this case a list of cities. Setup for a custom intent 1) We need to create a custom intent definition, we will make use of ‘SiriKit Intent Definition’ for this. Click on the File menu option, select the New File option and proceed to select ‘SiriKit Intent Definition’, give it a name, I am naming it ‘CityNamesIntent’.

https://medium.com/swlh/widgets-on-ios-e0156a2e7239

['Rakshith N']

2020-12-04 07:29:34.866000+00:00

['Ios Widgets', 'Swiftui', 'Swift', 'Ios 14']

Hindi Handwriting Recognition

Importance of a Handwriting Recognition System: Handwriting recognition in images is a research area that attempts to develop a computer system to transform the text present in the paper format to electronic format. The high variance in handwriting styles across people and poor handwritten text quality compared to printed text poses significant hurdles in converting it to machine-readable text. In offline handwriting recognition, the text is analyzed after being written. Deep learning and Machine Learning has been widely used to recognize handwriting. In this blog, I would be covering the analysis of different Machine Learning and Deep Learning Technique to select the best technique on Devanagari(Hindi) Handwritten Character Dataset. Details of the Dataset: The dataset has been taken from Kaggle. It has images of different characters used in the Devanagiri script. The dataset was created by the extraction and manual annotation of thousands of characters from handwritten documents. The dataset has a uniform size. Sample Image from the Dataset for Hindi Character’ka’ Methodology Followed for Hindi Handwriting Recognition: 1. Uniform input dataset a. Pre-processed data is used b. And we have one image per char 2. Problem analysis a. Char belongs to hindi language b. Output labels are fixed as hindi char c. Its a classification problem 3. Multiple Outputs(46 in our case) a. Possible classifier algorithms need to be tested 4. Machine Learing Algorithms applied and tested on the basis of Accuracy a. Python library used is sklearn b. Analysis of different ML Techniques. 5. Deep Learning Techniques used and analysed on the basis of accuracy 6. Best Technique is Obtained based on the results. a. Different Architectures were tried 7. Testing on specific new sample 8. Conclusion Since Handwriting Recognition is a Classification problem, the following Machine Learning techniques have been tried, and you can read the description of those ML Techniques in the passage below: Description of the ML Techniques Used in the Project: The following ML classification Techniques have been used: 1.Random Forest: The random forest is a classification algorithm consisting of many decision trees. It uses bagging and feature randomness when building each tree to create an uncorrelated forest of trees whose committee's prediction is more accurate than any individual tree. 2.Decision Tree: The decision tree builds classification or regression models in the form of a tree structure. It breaks down a dataset into smaller and smaller subsets while at the same time an associated decision tree is incrementally developed. 3. ExtraTreeClassifier: is an ensemble learning method fundamentally based on decision trees. ExtraTreesClassifier, like RandomForest, randomizes certain decisions and subsets of data to minimize over-learning from the data and overfitting 4.Linear discriminant analysis, normal discriminant analysis, or discriminant function analysis is a generalization of Fisher’s linear discriminant, a method used in statistics and other fields, to find a linear combination of features that characterizes or separates two or more classes of objects or events. Discriminant analysis is used when groups are known a prior (unlike in cluster analysis).In simple terms, discriminant function analysis is the classification of distributing things into groups, classes, or categories of the same type. 5.Nearest Centroid Classifier: Nearest centroid classifier or nearest prototype classifier is a classification model that assigns to observations the label of the class of training samples whose mean (centroid) is closest to the observation. 6.kNN: In k-NN classification, the output is a class membership. An object is classified by a plurality vote of its neighbors, with the object being assigned to the class most common among its k nearest neighbors (k is a positive integer, typically small). If k = 1, then the object is assigned to that single nearest neighbor's class. k-NN is a type of instance-based learning, or lazy learning, where the function is only approximated locally, and all computation is deferred until function evaluation. 7. Gaussian Naive Bayes: is an algorithm having a Probabilistic Approach. It involves prior and posterior probability calculation of the classes in the dataset and the test data given a class, respectively. 8.Multinomial Naïve Bayes: The multinomial Naive Bayes classifier is suitable for classification with discrete features (e.g., word counts for text classification). The multinomial distribution normally requires integer feature counts. An Insight to the Data Used for Training the Models: We are trainining our Models with 300 sample images for each character of Hindi Language.A sample Training Image looks like this: Sample Training Image Analysis of Different ML Techniques: The Accuracy obtained on the validation set is as follows: Validation Set Accuracy of the ML Techniques Described above Bar Graph displaying the Validation Accuracy of ML Techniques Used Details of the Deep Learning Models implemented for the classification task: A fully connected Deep Neural Network can be used. The architecture of the Neural Network Model used is as follows: Summary of the Model Accuracy Obtained with the help of Fully Connected Neural Network is 81.8%. Plot showing Accuracy and Loss of Neural Network Further, increasing the size of the Dataset improves Accuracy significantly. For the same neural Network Architecture, accuracy becomes 90.87% on the validation set after increasing the size of the Dataset by 5 times. Accuracy of Neural Network with Increased Dataset Size We can use a MultiLayer Perceptron (MLP) classifier as well with the help of sklearn python library but it provides significantly low accuracy than the neural network shown above. The architecture of the MLP classifier is as follows: The architecture of MLP Classifier The accuracy obtained with the MLP classifier is: 57.82%

https://medium.com/@gunjan20145/hindi-handwriting-recognition-b5a690b2a20b

['Gunjan Agrawal']

2020-12-20 11:39:56.096000+00:00

['Deep Learning', 'Handwriting Recognition', 'Image Processing', 'Machine Learning']

How to Create a Certificate Signing Request on a Linux Server?

How to Create a Certificate Signing Request on a Linux Server? Thesecmasterblog Jul 23·6 min read We all know how important is a digital certificate in the digital world. No buddy can imagine a secure world without the digital certificates. A digital certificates can be tagged to a user, computer, application, server, service, and can also be tagged to RF access cards. Most of you have seen SSL/TLS certificates while using the web. It’s one of the most common digital certificate used securing the communication between your web browser and a web server (website). Wait, digital certificates are not just used in securing the communication over the network, it also used in proving the identity of the associated entity. Digital certificates are not eternal, they expire after a fixed amount of time. It is required to renew the certificate to enjoy the service. The certificate renewal process begins with the generation of a certificate signing request and request a new certificate by submitting the Certificate Signing Request (CSR) to a Certificate Authority (CA). We have shown how to create a custom CSR on a Windows server in a separate post. In this post we are covering how to create a certificate signing request on a Linux server. OpenSSL has made the process very simple. We just need OpenSSL on our Linux machine to create a certificate signing request on a Linux server. We have used Ubuntu Desktop v 20.4 LTA for the demonstration purpose. However, the procedure remain same for all other versions of Linux and Windows. Yes, you can follow this process to create a CSR on Windows OS as well if you have OpenSSL running on your Windows machine. What is OpenSSL? “OpenSSL is a robust, commercial-grade, and full-featured toolkit for the Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocols. It is also a general-purpose cryptography library. For more information about the team and community around the project, or to start making your own contributions, start with the community page. To get the latest news, download the source, and so on, please see the sidebar or the buttons at the top of every page. OpenSSL is licensed under an Apache-style license, which basically means that you are free to get and use it for commercial and non-commercial purposes subject to some simple license conditions.” We can utilize OpenSSL for various productive things. We can create cryptographic keys (private and public key pair), we can use it as a full stack Certificate Authority CA to issue the requested certificates. Moreover, we can use this utility to generate self-signed and code signed certificates too. What is a Certificate Signing Request? Certificate Signing Request is a piece of information encoded in base64 format. It has most of the details required to generate a X.509 digital certificate. Most likely, a certificate seeker who wants to request a new digital certificate or wants to renew the expired certificate for an application, server, or service would need to create a CSR on the server by supplying the information required to create a certificate. Then the CSR should be submitted to the Certificate Authority to sign a new certificate for the application, server, or service. Prerequisites to create a Certificate Signing Request on a Linux Server: There are no or minima prerequisites are required. All you need to have OpenSSL installed on the server which comes in default installation in most of the Linux distributions. The procedure we are showing up here will create a custom CSR that can be used to generate any type of digital certificate. Let’s see the procedure to create a Certificate Signing Certificate on a Linux server. How to create a Certificate Signing Request on a Linux Server using OpenSSL? Verify the installation of OpenSSL on your Linux server: In fact, OpenSSL is included in default package list in most of the Linux distributions. You can verify the installation of OpenSSL with the command. $ openssl version -a Install OpenSSL on Linux server: It is simple to install OpenSSL on any platform. Here are the commnands to install OpenSSL on three popular Linux Distributations. We are not going to install as in our demo we have OpenSSL readely running on our Ubuntu machine. $ sudo apt install openssl [On Debian/Ubuntu] $ sudo yum install openssl [On CentOS/RHEL] $ sudo dnf install openssl [On Fedora] Create a Certificate Signing Request using OpenSSL: Private key is one of the must have entity to create a CSR. Creation of private key is included as a sub process in the same command. Just use this command to create a CSR for example.com domain. $ openssl req -new -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout example.com.key -out example.com.csr Let’s break down the command to understand. openssl req: It denotes a new openssl request. -new: New request -newkey rsa:2048: It creates a 2048-bit RSA key -nodes: It dosen’t encrypt the key which is not recommended. We are showing this just for demo. -keyout: It takes the private key as an argument and send that key to the CSR file example.com.csr -out: This writes the CSR to a file. example.com.csr in our demo. Input the required details: Enter all the details which it asks during the CSR creation process. Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]:IN State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]:Karnataka Locality Name (eg, city) []:Bengaluru Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]:TheSecMaster Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:IT Security Common Name (e.g. server FQDN or YOUR name) []:example.com Email Address []:user@example.com Please enter the following ‘extra’ attributes to be sent with your certificate request A challenge password []:12345 An optional company name []:TheSecurityMaster End of CSR creation process: The command creats two files. (1) .key and (2) .cer. You have an idea what they might be. You can submit the CSR file or content to the Certificate Authority with desigred certificate template, CA will issue the certificate and handover to you for deployment. Verify the CSR: It is always good to verify the ceated CSR before submitting to the CA. You can create a fresh CSR if in case of any wrong information. This would give a chance to fix the error which may come during the deployment. Use this command to verify the CSR. $ openssl req -text -in example.com.csr -noout -verify New CSR created using the exsisted rivate Key: Private key is highly confedential entity. It should be kept in a secured place. If someone get access to the private key and its passphrase, he can create another CSR request using the same private key and sign his machine to add that to the trusted PKI network. Command to create a new CSR using the existed private key. $ openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout example.com.key -out mycsr.csr Vew the content of private key: Use this command to view the content of the private key. $ cat example.com.key That’s all. How simple it is, isn’t it? This is how you can create a certificate signing request on a Linux server. Please bear in mind that the procedure shown here will remain same as long as you are using OpenSSL to create a certificate signing request on any platform. You can submit the CSRs to your Certificate Authority with a desigred certificate template and ask the CA team to issue the certificate. Thanks for reading this article. Pleas read more such trutorials on thesecmaster.com.

https://medium.com/@thesecmasterblog/how-to-create-a-certificate-signing-request-on-a-linux-server-58174ac0d79f

[]

2021-07-24 05:21:52.464000+00:00

['Application Security', 'Cryptography', 'Cloud', 'Infosec', 'Linux']

Sol Indiges

In response to Kathy Jacobs’s prompt: Advent, I have written a poem heavily inspired by Roman mythology, describing the advent of Sol ( roman personification of the Sun), domineering the presence of Nox ( roman personification of the night). If you enjoyed my poem about the crack of dawn, feel free to check out Kathy Jacobs’s beautifully written one too! Stay safe. Stay healthy.

https://medium.com/chalkboard/sol-indiges-caf4e9eed527

['Daniel A. Teo']

2020-12-11 16:33:17.174000+00:00

['One Line', 'Poetry', 'Advent', 'Poem', 'Poetry On Medium']

The Man Who Fell in Love With a Corpse

The Man Who Fell in Love With a Corpse The tale of a mad radiologist Photo of Carl Tanzler by Stetson Kennedy, 1940 (Wikimedia Commons — image resized by author) Carl Tanzler was born in 1877 in Dresden, Germany. During his childhood, he claimed to have seen visions. Specifically, he was visited by an old ancestor — Countess Anna Constantia von Cosel (1680–1765) — who showed him the face of his future true love: a beautiful, dark-haired woman. Tanzler left Germany in 1926. After initially travelling to Cuba, he settled in the United States. Here he worked as a radiologist in the city of Zephyrhills, Florida. On April 22nd, 1930, he met a twenty-two-year-old patient called Elena Milagro Hoyos. Immediately, he recognised her as the beautiful, dark-haired woman from his childhood. The mad doctor Elena was suffering from tuberculosis, which was a life-threatening disease at the time. Tanzler rapidly became obsessed with his new patient and did all he could to save her. He attempted to treat Elena with both a variety of medicines and X-ray equipment. Photo of Elena Milagro Hoyos, unknown artist, c. 1930 (Wikimedia Commons) Elena was also treated to many gifts. Tanzler bought her jewellery, clothing, and told his patient that he loved her. But despite his best efforts, Elena died on October 25th, 1931. Devastated by the loss, Tanzler offered to pay for the funeral. But this wasn’t an ordinary funeral. He paid for a mausoleum to be built in Key West Cemetery and then preserved the body using formaldehyde. Tanzler continued to visit the mausoleum long after the funeral and spoke with Elena’s corpse. Even while he was away, he would leave a phone in the mausoleum so he could continue talking to her. Elena comes home In April 1933, Tanzler took his obsession to the next level. In the dead of night, he sneaked into the cemetery, removed Elena’s body from the mausoleum, and transported it back home in a wagon. Despite the use of formaldehyde, Elena had started to deteriorate. As such, Tanzler tampered with the body still further. As well as tying her bones together with piano wire, he replaced her rotted eyes with glass ones and created new skin and a death mask using wax, silk, and plaster of paris. The mad radiologist also made a wig before dressing the corpse in a bridal gown. Most disturbingly of all, he inserted a tube between her thighs to serve as a vagina for when he wanted to make love to her. Photograph of Carl Tanzler, unknown artist, 1940 (Wikimedia Commons) A final dance Seven years later, Tanzler’s crime was finally discovered by Florinda Hoyos (Elena’s sister). Having heard rumours that the radiologist was sleeping with her sister’s corpse, she went to Tanzler’s house to investigate. Where such rumours came from is unclear, but Florinda soon realised the truth when she saw Tanzler dancing with the corpse through a window. Horrorstuck, Florinda contacted the police at once. Tanzler was arrested, but luckily for him, the statute of limitations had expired on his crime of grave robbing. He was set free with no punishment. Elena was then reburied at an unmarked grave. Rather than staying near Elena’s family, Tanzler moved to central Florida and made money selling postcards of his beloved one. When he eventually died in 1952, he was found clutching a large doll wearing the same death mask he had made for Elena’s corpse all those years ago. Sources: Undying Love: The True Story of a Passion that Defied Death (2001) by Ben Harrison Ghosts of Key West (1998) by David L. Sloan

https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/the-man-who-fell-in-love-with-a-corpse-b357a281099b

['Jacob Wilkins']

2020-11-12 16:07:26.071000+00:00

['Crime', 'History', 'True Crime', 'Relationships']

🍊 The Juice: A Data-Driven Economy

Zumo Labs presents The Juice, a weekly newsletter focused on computer vision problems and sometimes just regular problems. Get it while it’s fresh. Week of December 14–18, 2020 ___________________ As this incredibly unusual year draws to a close, one thing that remains the same is our human penchant for prediction. What’s coming in 2021 and beyond? We have our own take on that: Hugo takes you through the computer vision trends and breakthroughs of the 2010s, and then looks into the crystal ball to see what we can expect as we enter the 2020s. (Hint: It involves data.) Read the full piece on our blog. What tech trends do you think will define the year 2021? Tweet us @ZumoLabs. ___________________ #TisTheSeasonForRegulation It’s been a busy week for regulators in the US and across the pond. The FTC ordered nine tech giants (Amazon, Discord, Reddit, Facebook, Snap, Twitter, WhatsApp, YouTube, and TikTok’s parent company ByteDance) to turn over the deets on what they are doing with consumer data. They want to understand not only how these companies “collect, use, track, estimate, or derive” personal data, but also how they apply algorithms and analytics to this data. Meanwhile in Europe, the European Commission has put forth The Digital Services Act, in what may well be the most comprehensive attempt at tech regulation so far. FTC Issues Orders, via FTC, & The Digital Services Act, via the EU Commission. #IoT Computer visions algorithms have a reputation for being power hungry. But earlier this month a team from MIT demonstrated it is possible to pare down those algorithms and make them far more energy efficient. Here’s their paper on “the efficient neural architecture (TinyNAS) and the lightweight inference engine (TinyEngine)” they designed. This means in the near future it may be possible to run one of these optimized models on a battery, going months between recharges — opening up exciting new possibilities for the technology. Neat! AI Algorithms Are Slimming Down to Fit in Your Fridge, via Wired. #AboutFace Earlier this month, Massachusetts legislators voted to pass a sweeping police reform bill that included a ban on the use of facial recognition by law enforcement. However, the bill didn’t pass by a veto-proof majority — and vetoing it is exactly what Governor Charlie Baker intends to do unless his concerns are addressed. One of his sticking points? He believes that facial recognition technology has demonstrable value to police, which puts him at odds with the ACLU of Massachusetts who consider it a grave risk to anonymity and privacy. Massachusetts governor won’t sign police reform bill with facial recognition ban, via TechCrunch. #BigDog Boston Dynamics, the company that produces the robot most likely to hunt you down on foot one day, has been sold again — this time to Hyundai Motor Group. Hyundai acquired an 80% stake in the company, which got its start at MIT before spinning off, from Softbank which will retain the other 20%. We’re personally hoping Hyundai uses the tech to advance production of their incredible walking car concept. Boston Dynamics sells to Hyundai Motor Group in $1.1 billion deal, via Ars Technica. #Inventorama Turns out that global patent filings for “fourth industrial revolution” technologies, including smart connected objects, Internet of Things, Big Data, 5G, and AI, grew at an average annual rate of almost 20% in the last five years according to a recent report from the European Patent Office (EPO). That’s nearly five times faster than the average of all technology fields. António Campinos, EPO President, said, “What we are seeing is not just an acceleration of the development of information and communications technology — it is a major shift towards a fully data-driven economy.” Innovation in smart connected objects accelerating fast worldwide, via EPO. #Fulllove<AI>chemist Japan’s birthrate has plummeted precipitously over the past 20 years, and that’s the sort of thing that can cause issues for a nation with an aging population. In order to turn things around, the country is doubling down on their long history of matchmaking, planning to spend ¥2 billion ($19 million) over the next fiscal year to help its prefectures implement AI matchmaking systems. Here’s hoping the robots can help romance bloom. We have a match! Japan taps AI to boost birth rate slump, via JapanTimes. ___________________ 📄 Paper of the Week A Comprehensive Study of Deep Video Action Recognition A great summary paper from the folks at AWS. Video recognition has made great strides in the last decade, but there are still many challenges that need to be addressed such as modeling long range temporal information in videos and high computation costs. If you are a visual learner be sure to check out Figures 2, 3, and 6. ___________________ If this quenched your thirst, sign up here to receive The Juice weekly.

https://medium.com/zumo-labs/the-juice-a-data-driven-economy-22a2ccdd84f5

['Michael Stewart']

2020-12-17 20:40:22.882000+00:00

['The Juice', 'Robotics', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Synthetic Data', 'Computer Vision']

Want to list your property online? Be a smart cookie about it

Want to list your property online? Be a smart cookie about it Finding a good tenant is like dating — you have to sift through a bunch of candidates to find one compatible with you. In the past landlords could only rely on agents to help them advertise their property, but in this day and age, owners can take it into their own hands with the magic of the internet. Nowadays online dating has become very common, so why not try your luck and list your property online too? Advertise your property The more applications you receive, the higher chance you’ll be able to find a good tenant. Other than promoting offline, posting your property online would also be a wise choice. You can post your listing for free on Spacious.hk or Geoexpat forum — both sites are designed to help out privately owned properties. To attract more potential tenants, try uploading high-res photos and include a friendly introduction! Buy yourself another sim card When your upload your property online, we highly advise you to buy a temporary SIM card and include that number in the listing. If you include your usual phone number, you may receive spam calls from a bunch of real estate agents. To avoid this situation, you can buy a temporary SIM card at 7–11 and use it exclusively for listing property online. Check the terms and conditions The terms and conditions vary between online posting channels. On Spacious, we provide free listings for property owners and the listing will be available online for four weeks. However, other websites may have different posting policies. When in doubt, contact the websites directly and ask for help! Answer enquiries as soon as possible Time is money, and for those who have been in Hong Kong long enough, you know how impatient people are in the big city. If you don’t reply an enquiry in time, potential tenants and buyers may change their minds and move on to another property. If you want to close the deal, don’t forget to reply as soon as possible!

https://medium.com/@spacious_hk/want-to-list-your-property-online-be-a-smart-cookie-about-it-cd2eb76059df

['Spacious Hk']

2015-10-14 05:56:04.481000+00:00

['Real Estate', 'Real Estate Investments', 'Hong Kong']

Scaling New Heights: The Rebrand Story of SaaSBOOMi

In the summer of 2015, a group of SaaS founders came together to network, share, and learn from each other. Today, the group has grown into a massive community of SaaS founders, leading India’s SaaS ecosystem and being closer than ever to realizing their ambition of evolving India into a SaaS nation. Through our evolution as a SaaS community, we have constantly kept improving and adding new verticals/products in our quest. We have introduced engaging podcasts and blogs in the learning hub. Insightful events like SaaSBOOMi Growth and SaaSBOOMi Build, each targeted to help founders and SaaS leaders at specific stages of their SaaS journeys, and our monthly meetups under SaaSBOOMi Playbook, have all added to our portfolio of activities. We have grown together as a brand and hence figured that it’s time our branding reflected that. Adding more to our excitement, we onboarded an agency, Studio 318, which was tasked with rebranding the SaaSBOOMi community to reflect the global ambitions of the brand and to build a unified, cohesive, and consistent platform towards bringing the community and its various activities, events and initiatives under one roof. The Essence of SaaSBOOMi To understand the values that drive the spirit of SaaSBOOMi and the different ways the community symbolizes this concept, Studio 318 facilitated workshops, exercises, and numerous sessions with Avinash Raghava, Suresh Sambandam and myself until we were confident that we had absorbed the essence of what we were trying to recreate. The three main values of SaaSBOOMi that came out of these sessions were: Pay it forward — The philosophy at the core of the community Friendliness — The spirit of helping each other grow Uniqueness — The attitude of being a decentralized community in the ecosystem The Personification of SaaSBOOMi Today’s brands are more than just static entities. They have a voice, a heart, and are more personally connected and communicative with their audience as an actual person would. So we set out to figure out who SaaSBOOMi is as a person and what the brand voice should be. Informal Friendly Positive What is “Pay It Forward” Like many things in life, paying it forward is easy to say but is pretty hard to be put into practice, and the SaaSBOOMi community does it effortlessly. But how does it do it? What is it about SaaSBOOMi that brings forth this noble ideology in all its members? After carefully studying all its activities, we identified what makes SaaSBOOMi special. Reliability SaaSBOOMi can be represented as a family or friend, someone you can rely on any time you need. Whether to share knowledge or help in finding resources, the community is always willing to “Pay-it-forward”. Support SaaSBOOMi can be represented as the support system for your business, held together by fellow founders and practitioners. Knowledge you need SaaSBOOMi can be represented as a learning ground among equals who are willing to share their knowledge towards achieving a common goal. Giving back to the community SaaSBOOMi is all about giving back more than we take. It can be represented as someone who helps nurture the SaaS community together with your fellow founders, share your knowledge, experiences, ideas, and learn together.

https://medium.com/saasboomi/scaling-new-heights-the-rebrand-story-of-saasboomi-3764e914ce83

['Tarun Davuluri']

2020-08-16 10:54:13.276000+00:00

['India', 'Branding', 'Entrepreneur', 'SaaS', 'Software']

The mystery of blood and pain by which Nature transforms one into two.

Dr. Pol pulls a stubborn calf https://www.vnews.com/Column-The-mystery-by-which-one-becomes-two-24769345 Paul Keane The Valley News I’ve been apprenticing at cow births, via the television series “The Incredible Dr. Pol.” This 75-year-old totally bald Michigan veterinarian, Jan Pol, who still retains his Dutch accent, is in the 13th season of his award winning show on National Geographic TV’s “Wild” channel. I got hooked on his bloody birthing episodes after trying to binge-watch all 63-HBO episodes of “The Sopranos” from beginning to end . I got sick of underworld blood and gore after only 28 episodes. Tony Soprano’s gunshot murder of Big Pussy Bonpensiero gave me a nightmare when they threw his body in the ocean in a body bag loaded with cinder blocks. I woke thinking I was drowning. So I switched to barnyard blood and gore. I am now in my 32nd day of abstinence from violent deaths in “The Sopranos” by participating in a program of violent births in “Dr. Pol.” And if you don’t think a cow birth or horse birth is violent, just watch Dr. Pol or one of his two assistants, Dr. Emily or Dr. Brenda, try to dislodge a calf or colt who emerges headfirst instead of head and feet first. Chains get wrapped around the stuck feet of the smothering calf who hasn’t taken a breath yet and it is forcibly pulled from its mother by those chains, landing with a thud, placenta and all, on the ground. If filled with fluids, the un-breathing infant is picked up by the back legs by the doctor and owner and swayed back and forth like a child’s swing, to get fluid out of its lungs and oxygen in. The Dr. Pol show opens with a view of his humble veterinary clinic in Michigan and its sign: “Large and Small Animals”. The truth is Dr. Pol will try to fix any ailing animal, from hedgehog, parakeet, salamander, goat, horse or cow and of course dogs and cats, kittens and pups, to what seems to be his specialty, pregnant cows. I have watched more cow births in 32 days than I have previously in my entire life, which was zero. Dr. Pol is almost joyful about pregnancy with farmers who want to be assured their cow’s fetus is still living . He puts his 2-foot plastic glove on up to the shoulder, and sticks his hand right in: “Pregnant ! Six months”, he declares. On the way out of the barn he takes the glove off and says with his Dutch accent, to the farmer who is hoping for a healthy outcome, “Calf shook my hand. Said ‘How are ya?’ ” Dr. Pol is philosophical about death. I have seen him put a cow down after it delivers a dead calf and is so injured by the delivery it too cannot be saved . The farmers Dr. Pol deals with are philosophical too. One farmer looked to be in his eighties and had just lost a calf and its mother. “Things happen on a farm. You just have to accept it and move on, ” he said. Things happen. That’s a euphemism for death. I guess that’s the difference between violence in the “The Sopranos” and in “The Incredible Dr. Pol”: One is about people who force things to happen violently, and the other is about Nature which tries to make things happen biologically, and sometimes fails in a violent way. I come away from Dr. Pol in awe at the mystery of blood and pain by which Nature makes one into two. Perhaps after I fill myself with enough barnyard birthings, I may be able to finish “The Sopranos” series, but not all at once. That was my mistake. I didn’t realize “The Sopranos” is addictive. My own veterinarian in the Upper Valley is also a small and large animal caregiver, Dr. Christine Pinello in Norwich, Vermont. She has treated everything from an alligator to my own parade of successive dogs: 2 Dalmatians, a mongrel, a basset hound and now a yellow Lab. My cat was a six week-old kitten she rescued motherless from under a porch ten years ago. She also makes regular farm calls every week for cows and horses and assorted farm animals. She doesn’t have a TV so she didn’t know the Dr. Pol show. I asked her, “How do you deal with the blood and gore and sadness ?” She knows I am a retired English teacher and here’s how she answered, using my teacher-name : “You know, Mr. Keane, someone analyzed Shakespeare’s plays and discovered there is sadness in 47 percent of them and joy in and 53 percent of them. We view life as working toward the 53 percent.” That’s a philosophy worthy of a National Geo TV show, don’t you think?

https://medium.com/@good-plump-echidna-50/the-mystery-of-blood-and-pain-by-which-one-becomes-two-ba352eeec11c

['Paul Keane']

2020-12-04 17:27:04.725000+00:00

['Veterinarian', 'Cows', 'Motherhood', 'Baby', 'Birth']

Why You Should Consider Doing A Sober October

Photo by Taylor Simpson on Unsplash 2020 has been a ROUGH year. I don’t even have to explain. It’s literally felt like a lifetime these past 10 months. And I don’t know about you but I’ve been feeling a little too comfortable having a glass (or two, or three….) of wine every night. I went from having a drink on the weekend to drinking just about every night. Honestly, it’s more of a habit now than anything else. So when I saw one of my friends post on Instagram that she was going to do a Sober October I knew it was something I should do. What is a Sober October? It’s pretty straight forward: No drinking during the month of October. Unbeknownst to be was that Sober October started with Joe Rogan. Now I’m sure there were people doing it before him but it was popularized it in 2017 when Joe, Tom Segura, and Ari Shaffir help their buddy Bert Kreischer lay off the sauce and lose some weight. What A Month Off Of Drinking Can Do For You First off- No hangovers! That’s a big win in my book. How many days have you wasted by feeling like crap from too many drinks the night before? Your sleep will improve -Let’s be honest, while a drink may help you go to sleep (pass out?) how restful is that sleep? When I drink I find myself tossing and turning, and not being well rested the next day. You will be better hydrated -No surprise that booze dehydrates you.When you drink alcohol, you lose around four times as much liquid as what you actually drank. Salt and potassium levels also reduce, which can impact nerve and proper muscle function while also causing headaches, fatigue and nausea. source You can lose some weight -All alcohol is is empty calories. Plus, think about all those tipsy snacks you eat. There’s around 130 calories in a glass of wine. Times that by 2–3 glasses, 5–6 nights a week that’s around 1300 to 2340 calories a week you will save. Save some money -Even the cheapest drinks add up over the course of a month. Maybe instead of shelling out cash for booze find a charity and give what you spend to them. Better looking skin- When you are hydrated and you are getting some quality shut eye your skin will reap the benefits. It can even help with dandruff and eczema. Your liver will thank you -You will improve your liver function by cutting out alcohol. I live in Brooklyn so the bars aren’t open so there’s no temptation to go out. But what else can you do instead of drinking at night to wind down? I’m going to be winding down with a book at night. Drinking and reading aren’t a great pair so I’m looking forward to giving my full attention to a good book. Looking for other ways to wind down? Try a bath, try out Duolingo and learn that second language, knit, take a long after dinner walk, start a home project, exercise, or even experiment with some mocktails. I’m upping ante by adding a 30 day fitness challenge. I’m combining my Sober October with Ally Love’s Boss October fitness challenge on Peloton. Instead of looking at Sober October as a month where I’m giving up something I am looking at it as a way to get stronger. I’m using the month as a chance to reset, recharge and get ready to finish up the rest of the year.

https://medium.com/in-fitness-and-in-health/why-you-should-consider-doing-a-sober-october-9dea3051f451

['Lisa Lindey']

2020-10-01 14:03:54.816000+00:00

['Weight Loss', 'Sober October', 'Sober', 'Health', 'Nutrition']

Day 23 | Advent of Cyber 2

Day 23 | Advent of Cyber 2 As the day draws near the Grinch is desperate. He used his secret weapon and launched a ransomware attack crippling the endpoints. Understand what is VSS and how it is used to recover files on the endpoint. tocto Follow Dec 23, 2020 · 3 min read Hi! In this room the files of the elves have been encrypted and we have to recover their previous versions! Decrypt the fake ‘bitcoin address’ within the ransom note. What is the plain text value? We see that the string in the notepad ends with “==”, this means that it is encoded with base64, if we do not know, the web page used yesterday also tells us! bm9tb3JlYmVzdGZlc3RpdmFsY29tcGFueQ==:nomorebestfestivalcompany At times ransomware changes the file extensions of the encrypted files. What is the file extension for each of the encrypted files? if we move a bit through the file system we get to the documents and we see that the elves’ files have been encrypted! What is the name of the suspicious scheduled task? Get into the task manager and look for something different from the rest, maybe the objective task is launched when we log into the system: At log on ELFSTATION\Administrator Inspect the properties of the scheduled task. What is the location of the executable that is run at login? if we double click on the task found, its propertires are opened There is another scheduled task that is related to VSS. What is the ShadowCopyVolume ID? the task we are looking for contains the string “VSS”! Assign the hidden partition a letter. What is the name of the hidden folder? Assign it a letter and open it in the File Explorer Right-click and inspect the properties for the hidden folder. Use the ‘Previous Versions’ tab to restore the encrypted file that is within this hidden folder to the previous version. What is the password within the file? If we restore the file that appears, inside we find a text file with a password!

https://medium.com/advent-of-cyber-2-write-up-try-hack-me/day-23-advent-of-cyber-2-cc3620c77323

[]

2020-12-23 18:29:43.200000+00:00

['Hackathons', 'Cybersecurity', 'Tryhackme', 'Hacking', 'Ctf Writeup']

A Physical Space to Play

With some pockets of time to breathe and take my own time for my own little side projects, I decided to check out the only 4 remaining iconic mosaic-tiled dragon playgrounds left in Singapore, designed by Penang-born watercolourist, Khor Ean Ghee. I think the most interesting part of having him design the 30 playgrounds that he did back in the mid-70s, was that he had no prior experience in playground design at all, and they were all conceived out of just his pure imagination. I doubt there are any 80s and 90s children who would forget playtime in the sand-filled playgrounds of Singapore. A period when safety and cleanliness was disregarded when it came to after-school playtime. The sucker for nostalgia in me just had to hunt down the 4 dragon playgrounds (I can’t wait for the Dove one in Dakota Crescent to be reopened again, and am mighty glad the decision to conserve it was made.) in one morning. The stars aligned with the beautiful weather and lovely morning sunlight that illuminated the playgrounds, albeit that forlorn air of missing children seemed to dull the atmosphere and made the already cold and hard materials of the playground, seem even colder too. First stop was the tiny dragon playground nestled in a corner of Block 53 Pipit Road. I can’t believe I have been missing this little baby, a stone’s throw from where I have been going to almost every Saturday this year. The recent colourful repainting work of the blocks of flats around Circuit Road made for nice backdrop to the playground as well. Little dragon at 53 Pipit Road, built probably in 1985 What used to be a sand pit for the playground is now soft rubber padding instead, for safety Delighted at the first find, I was a little too paiseh to try out the slide, so I just sat by the edge of the playground for a while to soak it in. Next, I took a bus to the only dragon playground in Singapore that is still a sandpit playground, the big dragon at 28 Lorong 6 Toa Payoh. This one was truly breathtaking, and the whiff of nostalgia that overcame me from seeing the sand, was unparalleled. Big dragon with sand pit retained, at Toa Payoh Lorong 6, built 1979 (same age as my brother!) It looked rather lonely though, a tad far away from the nearest block I was just glad to see a father bringing his toddler to walk through the dragon’s spine when I was there. I sat at the edge of this playground for a bit as well, and felt all warm and happy inside when I could get to dust the sand off my butt again like I did as a kid, when I eventually got up and departed the playground. Next up, I went to another little dragon playground about 2 bus stops away, at Blk 240 Toa Payoh Lorong 1. Just like the Pipit Road one, this little gem was also tucked away in a little unknown corner and it had a rustic feel to it, with many old trees around, quite unlike the previous one that seemed so alone and exposed in the middle of nowhere. Little dragon at 240 Toa Payoh Lorong 1 This time, the little dragon was a little more inviting because it was so hidden away, so I decided to give the slide a ride. Not the best idea though, because the old surface was rough and not so slideable anymore and I almost got a butt burn trying. Oh well, never try, never know, right? :) Last stop was the other big dragon at 570 Ang Mo Kio Ave 3, close to my parents’ place. I was so glad to see children sitting and chatting in a circle beneath the head of the dragon! Big dragon at 570 Ang Mo Kio Ave 3, super love the cute row of clothes draped over the corridor of the HDB block in the background Yay there were children at this playground, finally :) I caught up with an old friend who works at HDB, a couple of days ago, and I was so inspired and heartened to hear that he has been championing and heading many playground projects in Singapore. I think we both agreed that a physical space to play and make friends, and move every muscle of our body, and to scream and shout, to fall and get hurt, is still so quintessential to growing up. I remember falling and being grazed by the sand granules at the playground and refusing to wash the wounds thoroughly enough when I got home, that is, until my dad would mix Dettol with hot water, and rub the mixture into my wounds with cotton wool, with so much force, in order to get the little sand granules and dirt trapped in the wound, out. I would scream and cry so much, while my big brother remained stoic in the face of the same treatment. While these iconic playgrounds in Singapore get preserved in the face of constant development, I still do hope that the playground culture doesn’t die for children in Singapore, ever. That precious shared physical space for shared imagination and co-created impromptu wonder, that first place where we learn to make friends and foes alike, as well as to physically get hurt and not freak out over.

https://medium.com/@kathyxtt/a-physical-space-to-play-f27a0136af52

['Kathy Xu']

2020-12-22 08:40:53.538000+00:00

['Playground', 'Physical Play', 'Dragon Playground', 'Nostalgia', 'Play']

We are raising children, not flowers : The secret statement successful parents understand

We are raising children, not flowers : The secret statement successful parents understand Naas Educators Apr 7·5 min read "My next-door neighbours taught me a great lesson one day as I watched the father teach his seven-year-old son how to push the mower. As he was teaching the kid how to turn the mower, his wife called him to ask a question. As the father turned to answer his wife, the kid pushed the mower over a bed of flowers and destroyed the beautiful garden his father had been nurturing for a long time." This story was told by Laura Markham, author of Peaceful Parent. What would you say to your child if he does this to you? Your reaction in a situation like this would determine if you know that one big secret every successful parent knows. When the child destroyed the flower his father had spent a lot of time cultivating to become the envy of the neighborhood, the father reacted like most parents would: he lost control over himself and raised his voice higher in rage, then that moment, his wife gave that one big secret out, she said, " please remember we are raising children, not flowers". That is the secret! Successful parents in this father's shoes understand that they are raising children, not flowers. Now how does this make them successful? This simple statement demonstrates one thing: the man and his wife were conscious parents. They parented consciously, and in everything they were doing, their biggest concern was: "what do the kids learn from this? How do we make them better from this incident?" Most parents in the father's shoes would think about how the kid has destroyed their efforts, disfigured the garden, and humiliated them. Conscious parents would think about one thing: "what can we teach this child from this incident?" A random parent would vent his displeasure, shout at the kid, and probably even hit the kid while repeating, "you have destroyed the flowers, you are too stubborn. you are too forward. are you happy now?" Of course, he is not! Because he did not mean to destroy the flowers, he simply meant to use the mower on the lawn. When you react this way, the child focuses on your words and actions and finds it hard to pick his mistakes. In most cases, one of two things happen: either the child learns that "oh, I got shouted at because I tried something new out" and the child becomes scared to try new things out on their own and become dull children who only wait to be instructed before doing anything or he does not even think about what he did at all, and rather he focuses on the hurt you have caused him. Either way, the kid would be scared of trying something new out with you next time. Slowly, you are creating a very nice foundation for destroying the connection and longing to be with you. Now, a conscious parent would look at the situation and try to figure out what exactly the child did wrong and calmly address the issue. In the case of a child like the one in the story, a conscious parent would identify the lessons to teach the child and the right thing he did. A conscious parent might say, in a very calm way that does not shift the child's focus from his action to his parent's anger: "Do you like that you have disfigured the flowers? You disfigured them because you did not adjust the mower the right way before using it on the flowers. And you should have waited for me to teach you that before trying it out. So now, I will not allow you to use the mower for three days so that you can remember to ask to be taught before using it the next time. So watch me now..." While watching, the parent might add: "When I was young, my father bought me an MP3 player but I destroyed it after three days." The kid would ask why, and the parent would go on to talk about how he used the mp3 player without waiting for instructions. And maybe at night, the mother could go into the child's room and tell him: "your dad spent a lot on that flower, you should apologize to him. And what exactly do you think you did wrong?" Now let us compare! For both parents A and B in our examples, the flowers will not grow back. For the first parent, the child would go inside and maybe sleep unhappy. He would start to develop hatred for going out with his father, and he will learn nothing new. In the second case, the child will learn from his parent's calmness even when he is hurt, he will learn the right way to adjust the mower for the flowers, he will develop a close relationship with his father and look forward to learning more from him, he will be able to reflect over his mistakes and he will not be scared to be responsible or try challenges, he would only learn to wait for instructions. The only difference between these two parents is that one secret: "We are raising children, not flowers" That is, the most important thing to us in this situation is: "What can the child learn?" This idea comes under the principle of conscious parenting, and conscious parenting is the one thing that separates successful parents from unsuccessful ones. How do we apply this beautiful principle to all other aspects of our children's lives? And applying this principle is certainly going to be challenging, how can we convince ourselves that the stress is worth it? Don’t miss updates from Naas Educators. Follow all of our campaigns on https://linktr.ee/naaseducators to stay updated when we have something new for you! (This particle is a part of Naas Educators family engagement campaign aimed at increasing awareness towards the need for more and healthier engagements within families. Anticipate the release of our full family engagement brochure soon)

https://medium.com/@naaseducators/we-are-raising-children-not-flowers-the-secret-statement-behind-successful-parenting-729f1b27140f

['Naas Educators']

2021-04-07 17:39:16.284000+00:00

['Parenting Advice', 'Islamic Parenting', 'Parenting']

Ep. 2 Part 2: Milk w/o the Moo

Ok, so BAUG the 🐮 is back from last time. Still alive, because we used cell culture and didn’t have to kill her for 🥩. Now, she’s being held hostage by these farmers holding her hostage in these horrible tie-stall barns! Her and her family are now being chained down, and are held in rows. tie-stall farms Unfortunately, this is a reality for millions of 🐄s. They’re not allowed to do their cow things because of their milk. Now woah, woah, woah. I’m not saying that we should milk cows. From an evolutionary perspective, the point of bovines is to just reproduce and live. As such, you might think that milking cows is a good thing. And it is. Dairy is great. It’s not about us milking cows. It’s about how we’re milking cows. The dairy market is valued at around $330 Billion, and every decade, dairy products, grow by 18% in their carbon footprint, while average cow herds scale up by 11% in the same timeframe. Annually, the milk yield increases by 15%, with total dairy greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reaching a project 38% increase. Then, if we look at milk, its one of the most inefficient technologies in the world. It’s only 3% efficient. However, its the fact that we’re not tangibly impacted by the fact that for 100 kg of food we give the cow, we get 3 kg back. So, it just happens that BAUG the cow can produce milk, but they’re not optimized to do so for commercialization. With this, we get a ton of GHGs.The world dairy sector releases an estimated ± 26% of total anthropogenic (GHG) greenhouse gases. Without proper sustainable development innovations, this number is expected to rise to 33% in the coming years. The dairy production pipeline, showing the GHG contributions of carbon dioxide (CO_2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) by dairy. A spike in the 21st century indicates a projected growth of dairy emissions. In fact, if we look at the emission intensities of dairy vs other products, you can actually see that dairy generates a 35X larger proportion of greenhouse gas! The cheese ratio to GHG is 5.9 kg of CO2-Eq/kg, whereas peanut butter 0.17 kg of CO2-Eq/kg, meaning associated GHGs of dairy products are about 35 times greater than non dairy products. That’s crazy! Just look at how we milk BAUG! cows milked Cows are kept restrained from pastures using the zero-grazing method, effectively introducing them to an array of welfare issues. Cows become lame from laminitis, where their hooves swell, can suffer mastitis, an udder infection that causes 16.5% of all cow deaths, and become infertile, which happens to over 13% of cows in the US, stopping them from completing their evolutionary function of reproduction. With zero-grazing (a.k.a. cow abuse 😒), a majority of cows are kept in tie-stall barns. The flooring damages their hooves and can cause extreme bone and muscle pains, increasing the rate of lameness, and they also have a high risk of infection. This is an unfortunate reality for over 40% of cows. Fortunately, this is banned in the UN, but we also inject cows with a whole bunch of stuff. Growth hormone treatments are currently being used on livestock, which can heavily increase the associated risks of dairy product consumption, and can stimulate unnatural responses in the human body. For example, the recombinant bovine growth hormone or somatotropin (rBGH/rBST) is a growth hormone derived from the somatotrophin hormone found in the pituitary gland, which is a factor to promote grown and cell replication. The rBST is engineered through editing the somatotrophin gene to create a hormone that promotes growth. rBST has been under further scrutiny, which has revealed concentrations of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), a substance which, when in high enough concentrations, can inadvertently promote the development of tumors in the body. The overconsumption of milk specifically from bovines who were growth hormone treated can lead to higher levels of prostate, breast, and colorectal cancers. So our current milk treatments are detrimental to the cow, and potentially us. The cows are experiencing a genocide. On a better note, we have a really simple solution. With this: Yep, that’s yeast. Yeast. Remember bread 🍞? Well, guess what causes it to rise. Fermentation and yeast, which we’ll get to in a second. Anyway, yeast is a type of fungus. Yes, yes… some people consider this mycoprotein (fungus based protein), but its really just acellular agriculture. HAHAHA 😈! Did that confuse you? We’re talking about cellular agriculture and I’m over here saying “acellular”. Well, acellular agriculture is a subtype of cellular agriculture. The reason its called acellular is because we’re not producing cells as the final product. With things like meat and fish, we’re using cells to make cell products — like muscle tissue (myocytes/muscle cells). However, with things like dairy and leather, we’re using cells to make things like proteins (not cells), fabrics, and other products. And this technology is already being implemented. Just ask Perfect Day, a super cool (and aesthetic) company leveraging acell ag technology to produce a variety of dairy products, from cheeses to butters to creams. So let’s go over how this is do- But first, we’re going to have to talk about fermentation and respiration. The -ation Cell Processes So, there are two process (technically three) that we’ll go over: fermentation and respiration. These two are quite related actually, and inform the sustenance of the cell. Respiration is a process that’s essential to life, and is a relatively intricate (but can be explained simply). Same thing for cellular fermentation, which serves to power acellular agriculture. So, lets hurry up and explain this so we can get to the fun stuff! The Process of Cellular Respiration There are two types of respiration: aerobic and anaerobic. By their names, you can tell that one requires air (well, not air, but rather diatomic oxygen [O2]), and thus is called aerobic, while the other doesn’t require oxygen, so is called anaerobic. We’ll go over aerobic respiration first. The process of cellular aerobic respiration is shown below: As you can see, aerobic respiration starts with a process called glycolysis. Glycolysis is a anabolic process that breaks down the hexose (containing 6 carbons) glucose. First, glucose is turned into glucose-6-phosphate, which is sped up by the hexokinase enzyme. Glycolysis — this won’t be very fun… Maybe I should’ve explained this last time. Well, prepare for long names, but its not that confusing. Just long. 🧠 Let’s goooooooo! 👇🏾 Then, the energy currency of the cell, the ATP (adenosine triphosphate — don’t bother remembering that if you don’t plan on taking biology), is used for phosphorylation of glucose. Basically, in the name, you can tell that ATP is made from an adenosine molecule and three phosphates. What phosphorylation is is slapping a phosphate onto the glucose ring. From there, we lose one ATP. Then we rearrange our G6P into F6P (fructose-6-phosphate) the reason this works is because F6P is an isomer of G6P, meaning it has the same molecular constituents (so the same formula), except with different arrangements. Because of this, if we rearrange the G6P, we can end up with a different sugar, fructose + 6P. Oh, and all of this is sped up by another enzyme called phosphoglucose isomerase (PI). Then, with the help of the enzyme phosphofructokinase, we get fructose 1,6 bisphosphate from the original F6P. And another ATP slaps on a phosphate group for phosphorylation. Then, there’s an enzyme adolase that helps to speed up the process that splits the bisphosphate into these really long-named molecules (whoever, named these…) called dehydroxyacetone phosphate (DHAP), and glyceraldahyde 3-phosphate (G3P or GAP). Don’t even bother remembering names (unless you’re taking a bio course, or its your profession 🙃). This is called cleaving by the way, which just means the cutting of a compound or bio-thing. And then TIM over here 👉🏾 👦🏾 (real name: triosphosphate isomerase enzyme…) helps to turn G3P into DHAP and vice versa. Yes, these two are also isomers. Then we get Glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) to slap on a Pi, or an inorganic phosphate, so we get 1,3-bisphosphoglycerate from G3P. Basically, a hydrogen is removed (dehydrogenation/ase), so we also end up with one of the H molecules, and important compound called NADH (ill explain why a little later. Hang tight!). Then there’s Mrs. Phosphoglycerate Kinase. She loves slapping things with phosphates too!She transfers a phosphate group from 1,3-bisphosphoglycerate to ADP to form ATP and 3-phosphoglycerate. BTW, ADP is adenosine disphosphate. It’s ATP missing 1 P. If it misses another, its adenosine monophosphate. Loses another? Its just adenosine. Through phosphoglycerate mutase, the P from 3-phosphoglycerate is snatched, and 3 becomes 2. Therefore, 2-phosphoglycerate is formed. Man, I’m thirsty…let me get some water🚰. I found out that I was probably thirsty (ok this isn’t how it works but it’s a joke so calm down) because Mr. Enolase stole a whole water molecule 2-phosphoglycerate to make phosphoenolpyruvic acid (PEP) 🙄. How rude of enolase. Because of him, I don’t want to talk about glycolysis anymore. Good thing we’re at the end. The last step is getting the pyruvate, two 3-carbon molecules by equally splitting one glucose (which recall, has 6 carbons). This is done thanks to pyruvate kinase 🤩, which snatches a P from PEP and gives it to the ADP, creating ATP and Pyruvate/pyruvic acid! And BOOM! The whole process gives us 2 pyruvate and 4 ATP, but 2 were used, so we get a net total of 2 ATP. Anyway, I really want to highlight these processes in depth, so that you really understand why fermentation is so cool. Let’s get to respiration, so then we can do fermentation, then the FuN sTuFf! Respiration Aerobic 👇🏾 So we already know that we start with glycolysis in the cytosol, the liquid part of the cytoplasm. We then do pyruvate oxidation in the mitochondrial matrix, which is the inner part of the inner membrane of the mitochondria: So, there are basically three steps of pyruvate oxidation. First, a carboxyl group (functional group with formula -COOH) is removed from the pyruvate. Then, a molecule of carbon dioxide (CO2) just floats away, and pyruvate is now a two carbon molecule called acetyl (group). Then, we push some oxygen on that acetyl, oxidizing it, duh. Oh, and some electrons are left behind, which are swept away by the housekeeper NAD+, which then becomes NADH after interacting with the electrons. Finally, the acetyl is smacked into coenzyme A. The acetyl and coenzyme are fated lovers and forms Acetyl CoA (Read: acetyl, coenzyme A). The marriage officiant in all of this is the enzyme complex pyruvate dehydrogenase complex. Got to love some good old bio-Romeo and Juliet. Except w/o all the suicide, poison, Capulet, Montague, etc., etc. Instead we have enzymes, NADH, and coenzymes. So, through the oxidation process, we end up with 2 NADHs and Acetyl CoA. Next up: The Kreb’s Cycle From there, we move on to the Kreb’s Cycle. This is also known as the citric acid cycle or the tricarboxylic acid cycle. If I were you, I’d stick with “Kreb’s”. It consists of a series of steps that can be easily described through bullets! Acetyl CoA (2 C) smacks carbons with (4 C) oxaloacetate and creates citrate (not to be confused with citrus/citric acid. That’s what’s being created). You know, the stuff in your orange and/or pomegranate juice. We get isocitrate by moving around the molecular configuration of citrate (its an isomer of citrate). The isocitrate is converted to α-ketoglutarate! Thanks isocitrate dehydrogenase! α-ketoglutarate is oxidized. Now, it has 4 carbons, and of course it runs to coenzyme A. From there, we get the acetyl CoA ripoff: succinyl CoA (very important though lol). We also get some NADH and CO2! Succinyl CoA is whipped into shape to create succinate, which also has 4 carbons. A molecule called guanosine triphosphate (GTP) is also produced as a byproduct. Then from succinate, we get fumerate, its (still) 4 carbon isomer. We also get another derivative molecule from that called FADH2. Fumerate → malate (ANOTHER 4 CARBON isomer?!?!?!?!) Malate → oxaloacetate + more NADH … — that was my reaction when I first learned ALL of the steps in the Kreb’s Cycle. Not very exciting, huh? Well, at least we get 2 CO2, 3 NADH, 1 FADH2, 3 H+, and 1 GTP from it. That’s something Bio, Honors Bio, and AP Bio tend not to tell you… its not all about the FAD-NAD-CO2, is it? btw bio classes are great… no shade. The last stage? Oxidative Phosphorylation This is basically oxygen-based-slap-a-phosphate-group-on, and happens inside of the mitochondria’s inner membrane. The first step to doing this is a redox reaction. This is reduction-oxidation for short. Basically, its just a bunch of electron transfers. There are specific membrane proteins in the mitochondria moving the electron around. The protein losing the electron is considered oxidized, while the protein receiving the electron is reduced. Through these processes, the electron transport chain (ETC) functions. That, combined with chemiosmosis (chemical based osmotic diffusion… get to it in a sec 👍🏾) makes up oxidative phosphorylation. And yes, I intentionally dropped some buzzwords hoping that you would be interested in what they mean and how they work. In the ETC, those molecules I mentioned before, NADH and FADH2, are important because they are electron donors. They deliver their electrons and become reduced, meaning that they turn back into NAD and FAD respectively. The delivered electrons release energy as they move energy levels, and this energy can be used to push out some protons (H+/hydrogen ions), which shoves them out of the matrix and into something called the intermembrane space (recall: its the in between area). The pump creates a gradient, which is basically a gradual change in energy. The gradient is called electrochemical for obvious reasons (just look at it; involves electrons and chemical properties…). The chemiosmosis part allows for these proton movements across a hydrophobic wall anyway: I’m thirsty again (again, a joke, not actually how it works) and want some 💧. Fortunately, we’re at the point where oxygen, which exists diatomically in nature (x2 bonded together) as O2, but its split in halves, both of which bond with H+ to create some H2O 💦. The proton motive force means that hydrogen protons are moving down the gradient, and they pass through the final enzyme, ATP synthase, and through the last electron acceptor, oxygen, the energy is used to create ATP!! And there you have it. Aerobic cellular respiration. Now let’s talk about what you do without oxygen, and what you remove. Anaerobic Respiration The process of anaerobic respiration isn’t very difficult to explain, considering its basically a truncated version of aerobic respiration! It’s typically completed by bacteria and archea. So, glycolysis doesn’t require oxygen, so that can happen, and the Kreb’s cycle kind of doesn’t require oxygen per se either, but without oxygen, it stops, because NAD and FAD run out. So I guess it does require oxygen, but scientist like to make things confusing sometimes so they say that it doesn’t 🤦🏾‍♂️. Though oxygen sits at the end of the electron transport chain as the final electron acceptor to allow for oxidative phosphorylation, organisms like sulfur reducing bacteria don’t have to use oxygen as their final electron acceptor for the ETC. SO42− (sulfate), for example, can be a substitute, along with nitrogen, sulfur, and others. When a different electron acceptor is used, there is a different molecule released. With oxygen, we got CO2, but with sulfate, we get H2S, or hydrogen sulfide. However, there is another important anerobic pathway that dies directly into how we synthesize dairy without the cow: Fermentation There are two main types of fermentation: lactic acid and alocholic/ethanol. Fermentation begins with glycolysis, except when we make pyruvate this time, there’s no ETC, or Kreb’s Cycle, or oxidation, or any of that jazz. Instead it goes through a different pathway system which ultimately creates NAD+ from the NADH in glycolysis, and this regeneration allows for glycolysis to reocurr. So, let’s start with lactic acid fermentation. Ever had that burning sensation in your muscles while doing any exercise, like running? Well, thanks to lactic acid fermentation, you get this sensation because lactic acid builds up in your muscles. As you breathe heavier, you intake less oxygen, meaning that your body has to rely on fermentation to continue glycolysis! Side note: don’t confuse this for tiredness or muscle soreness. Lactic acid buildup that effects you typically occurs at the point at which you are exercising really hard and then your myocytes don’t get enough oxygen. So, this is what lactic acid fermentation (LAF) looks like: Basically, glycolysis occurs as it normally would, where 2 NAD+ are put in to give 2 NADH and also 2 pyruvates from the broken down glucose. However, instead of moving the the ETC like we saw before, the pyruvates are instead converted to 2 lactic acid molecules, which are then ionized to form lactate! In the meantime, 2 NADH is oxidized into 2 NAD+, which allows for glycolysis to occur again. Now, what about alcholic fermentation 🍾🍷(***the other*** AF). It looks like this: Same as lactic acid, except were producing the ethyl alchol instead! So we go through glycolysis, then we use the 2 pyruvate to create 2 acetaldehyde (a type of compound), which releases carbon dioxides. Then, the 2 acetaldehydes are converted through NADH to two ethanol alcoholic compounds, which then oxidizes the NADH and turns it to NAD+, which is used to power glycolysis again. Now, let’s apply this to dairy. The yeast undergoes the alcohol fermentation process to actually create the two proteins that basically define milk. Let’s take a look. Making Milk w/o BAUG the Cow BAUG is 2320 lbs. We don’t need her for milk anymore. We’ll continue to milk her to keep her healthy, but in terms of the dairy business, we don’t need to drain her dry. But, we do need her proteins and genes, which is nothing compared to over-milking her for a year to only get 3% of the resources we put in as milk/dairy… So milk. It’s not very complex: And that’s it. The main proteins inside of milk are called casein and whey. There’s about an 80–20 percent ratio of them inside of milk. Casein and whey are considered very high quality proteins, as they’re composed of extremely essential amino acids in high quantities. Then there’s lactate or lactic acid (same thing), one of the primary nutrients inside of milk. And then your classic H2O. So if milk has such simple products, we should be able to recreate it in a lab, right? Right. And that’s where cellular agriculture comes in. Cultured Milk Let’s talk about how cultured milk is made. Instead of taking BAUG and separating her and her child, and then hooking her up to a bunch of machines that will milk her, we can just be smart about it and make what we need from milk’s base components. Basically, without this technique, BAUG would have her children taken away, be milked for a year, only convert 3% of fed nutrients to milk for a year, become pregnant, and then have her baby calf snatched again… and then the cycle repeats 😢. In short, this is what we’re doing. This is what we should be doing. However, cellular agriculture can once again change everything: much less environmental impact, and more cow welfare. The process works like this: This all starts with GM (genetically modified) yeast. Making GM Yeast So what we do is give the yeast the proper genes so that it can begin producing caesin and whey just like the cow. These proteins inform milks taste, color, and properties the most, so they have to be present when reproducing milk synthetically. Basically, after identifying the gene in the cow that makes the proteins, we (harmlessly) get it and introduce it to the yeast’s DNA. Then we get the plasmids (recall: circular bundles of DNA) to continuously replicate. This process is sometimes called cloning. It functions essentially like this: plasmid cloning Because the plasmid never stops replicating, it is the site of the insertion of, for example, the kappa-casein gene, which is one of the most vital genes for protein production in milk-yielding bovines. By the way, the plasmid is called recombinant after it’s gene edited. The plasmids are essentially new gene DNA factories. Basically, we cleave the gene that we want to replace, and then we insert the new one! Then the plasmid is put back in the yeast so that the plasmids can tell the chromosomes what’s going on, so that the chromosomes (which are the main sites of DNA) assume that gene as well. This is called transformation. Then when the yeast splits, it produces casein and whey! The process is shown below: Ok, so we now have some great lab grown yeast. Perfect! However, if everybody drinks about 199 lbs. of milk every year, then we’re going to need wayyy more proteins. This is were the process of fermentation comes in. Remember bioreactors? Well, they’re still useful. But remember, there’s still a lot of scaling that needs to be done with them. Anyway, the protein-producing yeast is put into these tanks where they continue to duplidivide (duplicate + divide). This allows for the mass production of casein and whey. The bioreactors provide a large and stable surface environment for fermentation to occur, so that the yeast is grown to produce casein and whey. For this reason, bioreactors are sometimes considered fermentation vessels, as they serve a similar purpose to a beer growing keg. Within the vessels, the yeast is provided with everything it needs to keep producing casein and whey, and the plasmids are informing everything on the cellular level of the genetic information change. From there, purification occurs, where casein and whey are efficiently pulled away from the yeast so that the two proteins can go on to become anything milk-based:

https://medium.com/@okezuebell/ep-2-part-2-milk-w-o-the-moo-3b7a34e27acc

['Okezue Bell']

2020-12-21 23:27:24.655000+00:00

['Climate Change', 'Global Warming', 'Cows', 'Dairy', 'Cellular Agriculture']

1 Big Mistake You Should Stop Making Now, How to Turn Anxiety into Excitement, & How to Avoid the Onset of Anxiety & Panic Attacks

1 Big Mistake You Should Stop Making Now, How to Turn Anxiety into Excitement, & How to Avoid the Onset of Anxiety & Panic Attacks SPOLIER ALERT: you will experience increased confidence, self-worth, ease of prioritizing your time, & an expanded capacity to love yourself & others if you follow the steps outlined in this article Elise Pearce Dec 27, 2020·8 min read Elise Pearce - Occupational Therapist, Yoga Teacher, & Mindset Coach I was just waking up after not quite four hours of sleep. Big day today! I needed to hurry as I was heading to represent a state organization at a national conference. I has just finished getting dressed up, doing hair and make-up, and was heading to the kitchen. My body began feeling odd.. quite uncomfortable really. What’s going on? I wondered, why am I feeling so weak? Motivational thoughts rushed into my mind: You’re just tired, but you’ve got coffee! Just push through it. People are counting on you! I reached for my lunch bag while reminding myself how important it was to pack this meal — not worth being limited to only the unhealthy options that will be available there. My heart started to beat faster and faster until it felt like it was pounding obnoxiously in my chest. What’s going on? I don’t like it. I opened the fridge and noticed it was getting harder to breathe. What is going on with me? That inner-voice, quite faint but still present, reminded me, Focus! Pack this lunch. You’re on a tight schedule! But I couldn’t. I couldn’t think. My breathing was getting shallower and I was having to breathe more rapidly to get enough air. That weakness then set in more persistently all over my body. I felt completely drained. Everything started to feel a bit fuzzy. Am I having a heart attack? I struggled to go as quickly as I could through the heart attack signs and symptoms, but even that seemed to take forever. No, I don’t think it’s a heart attack. Is this.. anxiety? There I was. Standing in the kitchen. My lunch bag in hand and just staring into the fridge. I would get waves of hurry, pack your lunch!, but I just couldn’t. I couldn’t focus. I didn’t know what to do to next in order to get lunch packed. It’s like I was stuck in time. This led right to my first experience of a full-blown panic attack. Unfortunately, It wasn’t my last one either. I was determined to manage my anxiety and STOP experiencing panic attacks I am an occupational therapist with a passion for mental health, and by that point in my life — I’d worked with hundreds of clients and helped them with anxiety! Never, though, had I experienced it myself. I intellectually knew that I was in control of my own thoughts. I had learned so much about the brain. I’d helped so many people recover from brain injuries as well as de-escalate their own anxiety and panic attacks. Why, then, can’t I stop my own anxiety and panic attacks from reoccurring? My husband is a professional musician. He’s a singer and guitarist and has appeared on stages on national television performing to millions of people on multiple occasions now. He rarely gets nervous, but I knew he’d gotten nervous before these big televised shows. So finally I asked him how did he manage to calm his nerves: “Just turn the nervousness into excitement,” he would say. “How?” I asked. “You just have to get your mind right. It’s not easy, but you can do it.” This answer of his would leave me hopeful (that if he could do it, I could do it!), yet also super frustrated — because I still didn’t know HOW to do it. Had only I taken my husband’s advice literally at that point in my life, it would have saved me a lot of time and energy. I Figured It Out, & I’m Sharing What I Learned I did it, y’all! It took me years to figure out how to manage my anxiety, but I am now able to successfully de-escalated those sensations and avoid panic attacks — without medication! I don’t want anyone to feel like there is no way out. I want to help others get to this point in there journey in as little time as possible.

https://medium.com/@elisepearce/how-to-stop-a-panic-attack-turn-anxiety-into-excitement-28ec950536f6

['Elise Pearce']

2020-12-27 05:14:51.068000+00:00

['Self Love', 'Confidence', 'Anxiety Relief', 'Panic Attack', 'Anxiety']

Whole-wheat Banana Walnut Bread 🍞

Whole-wheat Banana Walnut Bread 🍞 Totally Vegetarian (easily can be converted to Vegan – see notes) Yummilicious & Simple Whole-Wheat Banana Walnut Bread Ingredients Whole wheat self raising flour – 1 1/4 cup Powdered sugar – 3/4 cup Walnuts – 1/3 cup crushed Milk (Regular/ Almond milk) – 1/3 cup Banana (ripe) – 1.5 Almond butter – 2 tsp (Secret ingredient 😍) Water – 1/3 cup Oil / clarified butter – 3 tsp Plain Yogurt – 2 tsp Procedure Blend Banana, milk, almond butter well Powder sugar if you are using sugar crystals In a large bowl pour the self rising whole wheat flour Sift the flour if you are using baking powder separately and not using the self raising flour Mix all dry ingredients together Fold in the fruit/ almond butter mixture into flour Add oil / clarified butter and yogurt Give it a nice mix and add in the crushed walnuts Preheat your oven to 180 deg C for 7–10 mins In a greased baking tray add a layer of baking sheet, few drops of oil on it and spread nicely Fold in the mixture into the baking tray Place the tray in the oven and bake for 25–30 mins until the Bread is fully baked Enjoy your delicious banana walnut bread with a hot mug of coffee/ tea or just relish its Goodness!!! Notes

https://medium.com/@alwayshealthyrecipes/whole-wheat-banana-walnut-bread-aa2e728832f3

['Healthy Recipes']

2020-02-21 21:24:46.481000+00:00

['Eggless Cake', 'Baking', 'Banana Bread Recipe']

Is it possible to watch videos in my iPhone on TV — Cast all videos in iPhone to TV via Fire TV stick?(CnX player )

Is it possible to watch videos in my iPhone on TV — Cast all videos in iPhone to TV via Fire TV stick?(CnX player ) Cnxplayerapp Jun 21, 2019·2 min read Yes ! CnX Player is the ONLY video player that comes with an exciting feature with which you can easily enjoy your favorite videos in your iPhone/iPad on a bigger screen like a TV by using Amazon Fire TV casting with remote control access. Make sure you have subscribed for the Video casting feature from Navigation menu → Upgrade feature. Please note, the subscription fund supports the cost of our amazing development team and keeps us motivated. We thank you for your support. Follow the below steps to make video work on big screen using Amazon Fire TV device : Make sure you have switch on the Amazon Fire TV device and made it connect to your TV. You will notice Amazon Fire TV icon on top right side of player screen. Tap on that icon and select the device on to which you want to cast video. As soon as application gets connected to Amazon Fire TV device, splash screen will appear on application and the video will get cast on to your TV. You can control the playback from the application and can also do same from Amazon Fire TV device remote. If you have any queries please write to us at support@cnxplayer.com . You will hear back within 24 hours

https://medium.com/@cnxplayerapp/is-it-possible-to-watch-videos-in-my-iphone-on-tv-cast-all-videos-in-iphone-to-tv-via-fire-tv-1a64f0200368

[]

2019-06-24 05:35:48.640000+00:00

['Chromecast', 'VLC', 'Cast', 'Fire Tv Stick', 'Casting']

What About Mom?

Photo by sydney Rae on Unsplash An inner drive has pushed me to write a memoir. My father was often the focus of my early life. He was loud, mean, and controlling. Most of my previous attempts with writing focused on him as the prevailing force in my life. Something was missing from my story and that was my mother. I’m 72, the same age that my mother died, I know so little about her. She was shy and quiet and didn’t talk about herself much. She told me much more about my dad’s life growing up than she did about herself. She shared that she was raised in a Mennonite Community until she was a teen and her father moved his family to Iowa when he became a minister in a Christian Church. Being the daughter of a minister was more restrictive than living in the Mennonite community. She went away to one semester of bible college and left because she was homesick. Her dad moved to different churches to build up the memberships. She told me once she didn’t trust a man with a beard. She said that being shunned was a method of ostracizing someone in the Mennonite tradition and was hurtful. That’s it, most of what I knew about her growing up. She married my dad when she was 25 and was considered an old maid. Tragedy struck one day when their sons about 3 & 5 were playing in the garage and the 5 year old drank ant poison and died. I was conceived within the year to bring my mother out of her depression. It didn’t work and my memories of mom were never ones of her being joyful. She became anxious and over-protective to me as I grew up. Growing up in grief and anxiety marked my life. Feels like the first 18 years of my life was dark and negative. The next 54 years were devoted to recovering. The year after my mom died I wrote my aunt and asked for memories of her as a child. Her reply was handwritten with the first line reading: “I didn’t know if I should send this or leave it to be sent after my death. I’m sending it now. “ She went on to tell me that my mom was a “wild teenager” who had a baby girl out of wedlock and gave her up for adoption. That was why her family left the Mennonite community and why her father had to transfer to different churches. At first I was shocked to think my frighten, shy, and moral mother had that in her history. Then I felt a deep sadness that she held such a secret for so long. If she had shared that with me when I was an adult, I would have comforted her. To understand the pain she felt when her son died, after giving up her daughter so many years before, I’m overwhelmed with grief for her. She must of felt that God was punishing her for having a baby before marriage. That explains so much about her. Now I have more questions than ever, both mother’s sister and brother died within the next few years of her death. I wonder about that remark my mom once made about not trusting men with beards. In Mennonite traditions a man grows a beard after he marries. Was it a man she knew? Is that why she left bible college after only one semester? Was it someone in the family she stayed with while there? Did she willingly have sex? or was she manipulated or forced? The comment about shunning, was she and her family shunned? I wonder did dad ever know? We know so little about the important people in our lives, I have some questions about my father too. Those answer are lost in time and were buried with him and his family. Some of the puzzle pieces of my life are missing. Aren’t they for everyone?

https://medium.com/women-writing-memoir/what-about-mom-f026270d7e5

['Ronda Tamerlane']

2019-01-08 22:43:33.247000+00:00

['Memoir', 'Aging', 'Family', 'Mental Health', 'Grief']

The Value of Executive Search

“Technology is a useful servant but a dangerous master” Christian Lange The rise of LinkedIn and impersonal bulk recruitment job sites coupled with inhouse talent acquisition teams are attempting to replace executive search companies. But do they really compete when it comes to finding a specialist with the necessary leadership qualities? Inhouse talent teams are salary driven with no independent relationships or protection of confidentiality. The inhouse teams are not trusted advisers to C Level Executives. The high performer or sought-after candidate is the hunted, the hunted is often not exploring new opportunities. They are building their careers and meticulously mapping their growth. “The hunted” will collaborate with other professionals in his or her trusted network. This is where your professional Executive Search firm will add value by reaching out to a network of trust and bring across the leadership that can positively impact revenue and increase shareholder value. The relevance of a company’s blueprint or DNA in Executive Search It is important to understand a company’s DNA, this methodology entails thorough knowledge of the environment and job specification with a consultative approach and realistic understanding of the market and skills set required within the salary parameters. An assessment of the client’s expectations may need to be aligned with a development plan relative to costs and KPI’s and communicated effectively. It’s important to ascertain the validity of an application in relation to client expectations and what development plans are in process to enable new and existing talent. This process is consultative in nature and no amount of technology can replace the human interaction with a client and potential leader. Value of Alexander Hughes Alexander Hughes is a prestigious establishment with over 60 years’ experience with a global footprint. Our uniqueness is that we are privately owned, and every Managing Partner has a vested interest whilst bringing a unique skill to the group offering. Laying the foundations and building on our first-hand operational experience, Alexander Hughes consultants consider the increasingly integrated and multicultural nature of various industries where globalization and new technologies are blurring the traditional lines between businesses. Our Global Key Account Management System relies on regular exchanges of technical and market information and on our worldwide knowledge sharing platform. This methodical approach guarantees a homogeneous level of quality of the service delivered worldwide. Alexander Hughes consultants apply their expertise across geographic, industry, product, and service boundaries capitalizing on our significant track record to address clients’ needs for finding, attracting and hiring Executives, Senior Managers and Experts in the Industry sector and provide the right management and the right competencies in vital key areas. A quote from Michael Jordan resonates well with me “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships” At Alexander Hughes, we collaborate. How to identify a Leader A true leader will embrace transformation and lead his team in unity. We at Alexander Hughes have experts in determining the right fit through a detailed process. We skilfully ascertain the soft skills required at C level followed up with assiduous references. Our team of qualified professionals are respected within their various industries. Our additional human capital offering used in succession planning and development is a blueprint assessment solution designed “in House” to fit your target culture and leadership model. Our Client Executives are industry experts and through collaboration & knowledge transfer they provide C suite executives with a cutting edge. What value does an exclusive trusted database provide a corporate? The best analogy is that every house has a foundation. If your foundation is not solid the house will crumble. I have spent many years attending international shows, events that are industry specific. At these shows or events, we network with specialised leaders across the world and update ourselves on the markets and methodologies needed for cutting edge technology. This interaction has led us to build and foster relationships and an in-depth database of skilled leadership that are confidential. Through regular interaction with key players, we have built up trust and partnerships at a global level giving Alexander Hughes important insight into market information. An assignment is not just a matching of skill but criteria around client mapping and a personification of what is needed to increase shareholder value directly or indirectly. Executive search is about reaching out to your network and identifying the performers who will talk to you because you are the trusted partner they can identify with. Executive search is about building credibility, professionalism and respect with your candidates. A journey we enter into with our clients. This is our value add as trusted advisor in executive search. Reach out to me below and let Alexander Hughes find the right leader for you. At Alexander Hughes UK we have the skills and knowledge to recruit your next C Level. Follow the link below to setup a virtual meeting with Joanne Macris the Managing Partner at Alexander Hughes UK. https://bit.ly/3afaoOe

https://medium.com/@joanne-macris/the-value-of-executive-search-4051c656d4e

['Joanne Macris']

2020-12-08 09:38:07.619000+00:00

['Recruiting', 'Values', 'C Level Executive', 'Jobs', 'Executive Search']

Tecumseh and the Prophet: The Shawnee Brothers Who Defied a Nation (Peter Cozzens)

I have always been aware of the great Shawnee Indian war chief Tecumseh. I grew up within walking distance of the site of his confederacy’s defeat, by William Henry Harrison at the Battle of Tippecanoe, and often visited the battlefield as a child. Tecumseh himself wasn’t at the battle; he was far away, trying to raise Indian allies. The battle was instead lost by his inconstant brother, Tenskwatawa, known as the Prophet, with whom Tecumseh had a fraught, but close, relationship. In this book, Peter Cozzens expertly and evocatively traces the lives of these once-famous brothers, the last of the eastern woodlands Indians of North America to mount an effective challenge to the expanding United States. Cozzens, though the author of many books, is best known for an outstanding 2016 work on the Indian Wars in the West, The Earth is Weeping. That book, focused on the nineteenth century, did not cover the defeats of the eastern Indians. Here Cozzens turns to the earlier period, roughly 1750 to 1820, in which the Indians of the Ohio Valley lost their lands. Before 1750 the Europeans had already broken the power of the Six Nations (of whom the Iroquois are the best known), thereby consolidating control over the Eastern Seaboard. British, and soon enough American, settlers kept pushing west, despite promises made to the Indians, and the resulting conflicts are the topic of this book. Tecumseh was born in 1768 into a division of the larger Shawnee tribe. The Shawnee were an Algonquin tribe — Indian ethnography is complex, but the two major groupings of North American eastern woodlands Indians were the Algonquin and the Iroquois, who, broadly speaking, were ancient enemies. The Shawnee were then resident in southern Ohio (where my grandparents lived, and I often visited Shawnee State Park with them, giving me more childhood doses of Tecumseh). They had not been in Ohio for long; Shawnees were peripatetic, in their culture and as the result of decades of attacks from the Iroquoian tribes. The French and Indian War, that is, the Seven Years War, had ended in 1763, with the British defeating the French and taking Canada. The Shawnee did not participate in that conflict, in which the Six Nations did actively participate. This was the first major involvement of the Indians in the wars of the Europeans. The core Indian interest was to maintain their own lands, something that, in retrospect, was always doomed to fail. After that big war, small Indian wars continued off and on, notably Pontiac’s War, which ended in 1766. All the Indian wars followed the same basic pattern. The government, whether the Crown or later the United States, would promise or agree to a boundary line, beyond which white settlement would not be allowed and the Indians could lead their traditional lives. White men would ignore this — some combination of, as Cozzens says, “hardscrabble farmers in search of better land, fugitives from justice, and the congenitally restless of slack moral fiber.” The Indians would become fed up and slaughter dozens or hundreds of white men, women, and children, often in the most gruesome ways. (Daniel Boone’s sixteen-year-old son was captured and tortured to death, for example.) The white man would react by organizing punitive military expeditions to kill Indians, in usually, but not always, somewhat less gruesome ways, and drive the Indians off the land. If there is a crucial fact about the Indian Wars, and in general the relationship between Indians and Europeans, it is that the North American Indian population was shockingly low, and always had been. When Tecumseh was born, a mere fifteen hundred Shawnees claimed most of what is now the southern half of Ohio. True, disease had earlier decimated many of the tribes (although the idea that the Europeans deliberately gave them smallpox is probably a myth — no matter, they got that, and other diseases, anyway; Tecumseh himself survived smallpox), and we don’t know how many Indians there were before the Europeans arrived. But likely not that many more than later — the eastern Indians were primarily hunter-gatherers, and the land simply didn’t support huge numbers, as can be seen by frequent references to game totally disappearing, and starvation looming, when any sizeable group of Indians gathered for even a few weeks. This problem was exacerbated by white overhunting in the borderlands, and by the fur and skin trade — as Cozzens notes, Indians began to kill just to have something to trade for alcohol, of which more later. Even at the height of their power, in the mid-seventeenth century, the Iroquoian Confederacy, aggressively expansionist and ruling over a vast area of what is today northeast and upper-midwest America, totaled no more than 50,000 people. Cozzens estimates that the total Indian population of the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley in 1768 was approximately 60,000 — at the same time the thirteen British colonies had two million inhabitants. Moreover, the Indians, resource poor, deliberately kept their birth rate low (though they did not practice infanticide). Thus, they could never have hoped to compete with the white man in numbers. Even with their small numbers, the Indians mostly competently played a losing hand. Their only real possible move was to involve themselves in the wars among the French, British, and Americans — the Long Knives, as the Algonquins called the last — and hope to side with the winning team, with the expectation they would then be left in peace. Thus, despite no real interest in the white man’s wars, they were inevitably forced by circumstance to join. That, man-for-man, Indians were far better warriors than the whites, and they were quick to adopt European technology, could not compensate for their small numbers and democratic method of fighting, “every man his own chief.” Indians often won battles when allied with regular European troops, or alone when fighting poorly trained troops, but usually lost against any sizeable European force that maintained order. Tecumseh’s father died in 1774, when Tecumseh was five, at the Battle of Point Pleasant, in what is now West Virginia. This was one of numerous skirmishes in Dunmore’s War, a brief but brutal war caused, predictably, by Virginians pushing west. The British then formally set the Ohio River as the boundary of the Indian lands. This boundary was a key fact of Tecumseh’s childhood, and its inevitable breaching by the white man the ground of his life’s work. His early years were spent near today’s Chillicothe; Cozzens does an excellent job of sketching the culture of the Shawnee, which we will discuss later. The years of Tecumseh’s youth and early adulthood involved the further splintering of the Shawnee, some of whom moved west, and the grinding advance of the white man, sometimes in arms, but more often with a toxic joint offering of alcohol to dull the Indians and money to bribe tribal chiefs to sell land for a tiny fraction of its true worth. In 1782 the uneasy peace ended. In the Gnadenhutten Massacre, Pennsylvania militia, responding to Indian raids, killed nearly a hundred Delawares, men, women, and children (who were completely uninvolved in the raids, and in fact were farming Christians). The Shawnees and other Algonquins went on the warpath, killing hundreds of white settlers, and fighting pitched battles. At the Battle of Blue Licks, in what is today Kentucky (and is considered one of the last battles of the Revolutionary War), they (along with their allies and some British rangers), killed sixty-seven Kentucky militia. (Among those were another son of Daniel Boone; no wonder Boone wasn’t a big fan of the Indians. But then, who even knows today who Daniel Boone was?) George Rogers Clark, a regular army officer in charge of the Kentucky militia, responded with organized expeditions that pushed the Shawnee out of southern Ohio, which was promptly overrun with American settlers. Tecumseh moved north too, although as a young, unattached warrior he ranged widely, and he participated in various skirmishes and fights, as well as piracy against Ohio River settler flatboats. But fewer than a thousand Shawnee remained east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio. The rest moved to Missouri, or to Creek country in the south, or to join the Chickamaugas who lived on the Tennessee River, near today’s Chattanooga. For a while, Tecumseh, and his brothers, visited Louisiana, then Tennessee. He eventually returned to the Ohio Valley, however, and took part in the crushing 1791 defeat of Arthur St. Clair’s chaotic expedition against the Ohio Indians, which, in the usual pattern, was followed a few years later, in 1794, by “Mad Anthony” Wayne’s destruction of a large group of Indians at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, where Tecumseh also fought. Tecumseh gradually raised his profile and attracted followers, mostly aggressive young men and those who wanted to maintain the traditional Indian life, as many of the tribes became less warlike and dependent on annuities and other handouts. He and his extended family moved to today’s eastern Indiana, maintaining reasonably good relations with the local whites (helped by that Tecumseh spoke some English). Some years passed, and the Indians south of the Great Lakes continued their slow decline. Harsh winters, vanishing game, American pressure, and alcoholism told on them. Then Tenskwatawa, Tecumseh’s younger brother, regarded as a useless, drunk buffoon (he had shot his own eye out as a child), suddenly claimed to have received a series of visions giving him divine revelation. He informed their small Shawnee village that the Great Spirit had told him that to gain heaven Indians must give up alcohol, and all the white man’s ways, and from this base he developed a new syncretic religious doctrine, with bits and pieces of earlier Indian mysticisms, Christianity, and Shawnee culture. Tenskwatawa’s religion was only the latest in a series of Indian religious revivals. A Delaware, Neolin, had preached a similar set of doctrines in the 1760s, which was adopted in part by the Ottawa war chief Pontiac to fuel his eponymous war. In the Prophet’s doctrine, there were two opponents: Americans and witches. As far as Americans, however, Tenskwatawa’s doctrine wasn’t militaristic, but particularistic. Despite American fears, he did not, at first, preach going on the warpath. As far as witches, Cozzens frequently mentions the woodland Indian obsession with witches. Very often supposed witches, usually elderly chiefs whom younger men wanted to move out or unmarried women with enemies, were tortured and killed; the Prophet eagerly participated in these killings as a judge. You won’t read that in the sanitized Indian hagiographies they teach schoolchildren as history nowadays. Almost all the Shawnee immediately converted. Other surrounding Indians were a harder sell, though some took to the new religion, especially Wyandots and Miamis, and many expressed interest, travelling to hear the Prophet speak. Thus, Tenskwatawa quickly became regionally famous, but at this time, around 1806, Tecumseh continued to be obscure — if mentioned at all, mentioned as “the Prophet’s brother.” Nonetheless, those who noticed him observed his charisma, presence, and leadership ability, and his rise to prominence can be dated to this time — perhaps prefigured by the name his parents gave him, which meant “shooting star” or “blazing comet.” Tensions between the young United States and Great Britain were rising again, primarily the result of the Napoleonic Wars and their impact on American trade. The Indians held frequent conferences with various representatives of the United States, in a complicated dance asking for money and goods, but also reassurances about their land. Meanwhile chiseling agents of the government, including William Henry Harrison, sometime military leader and now governor of the Indiana Territory, steadily ate away at Indian land title by bribing chiefs to sell land at pennies on the dollar. The United States was well aware, though, that if war came with Britain, the Indians might ally with Britain and attempt to retake their lands. And so it happened. Tecumseh, in the years leading up to open war between Britain and the United States, acted as a Shawnee ambassador, both spreading the message of his brother and trying to create a new political alliance among different contiguous tribes. Indian alliances were notoriously short-term and opportunistic, making this an uphill climb, and in general both of Tecumseh’s messages were received coolly. Moreover, the Americans were aware of these efforts and opposed them, manipulating those Tecumseh sought to persuade with cash and alcohol. The ins and outs of the period 1806 to 1812 are complex, but covered in detail by Cozzens, including a famous and acrimonious council between Harrison and Tecumseh in 1810 at Harrison’s estate in Vincennes. In 1811 Tecumseh finally achieved greater success recruiting Indian allies, helped by the belief among some Indians that war with the Americans was inevitable, and also by the Great Comet of 1811, visible for five months and sold by Tecumseh as an omen of their coming victory under his leadership. Tecumseh even made a long southern journey, trying and failing to convince the Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Cherokee, in today’s Mississippi and Alabama, to join his confederacy. Cozzens casts Tecumseh as a firm believer in his brother’s faith, a matter of historical dispute, but this was primarily a political recruiting effort — the Prophet’s message never resonated much beyond the Prophet himself. Yet we should remember that this effort was nearly unprecedented; Tecumseh was a visionary, the rare man who can see and act beyond the constraints of his upbringing and culture, seeing what has to be done and doing it. Meanwhile, the Indians Tecumseh had already recruited, Shawnees and parts of allied tribes, were grouped around Tenskwatawa in Prophetstown, near today’s Lafayette, Indiana. The others were Wyandots, Kickapoos, Potawatomis, and Miamis, but no tribe joined the Prophet and Tecumseh wholesale; it was usually belligerent young men who flocked to them. Harrison, in a military role though he was still governor, marched up the Wabash from Vincennes in southern Indiana, fearing that Tecumseh would bring more warriors from the south and start a war, which Harrison figured to nip in the bud. The Prophet did not want to fight Harrison, but the warriors around him were young and impatient, and he had sold them on the belief that his magic would guarantee victory. Harrison, camped near Prophetstown, made impossible demands that the Indians disperse and leave Indiana. So the Prophet’s forces, while Tecumseh was hundreds of miles away, in the early morning of November 7, 1811, attacked Harrison — and were defeated, although not as badly as Harrison, eager to burnish his political image, would have it. This is the battlefield I wandered in my youth. Tecumseh returned and rejoined his brother and what remained of the Indiana Shawnees; what they said to each other is not recorded. The winter of 1812 featured widespread, but sporadic, Indian violence across the Indiana Territory, also ranging up through today’s Chicago and into Wisconsin, as well as Michigan. The Shawnee brothers threw their lot completely in with the British, who held forts in and around Detroit, and who were now formally at war with the Americans. The latter sent strong forces northwards to subdue British Canada; the British promised the Indians they would never retreat. But after American naval forces succeeded in dominating the Great Lakes and thus cut British supply lines to western Canada, the British felt they had to abandon Detroit and retreat east, which the Indians saw as a betrayal, with many promptly abandoning the fight. Tecumseh traveled east with the British, bitterly demanding the British stand and fight — and when they did, Tecumseh died, shot through the heart at the Battle of the Thames, in today’s Ontario, October 5, 1813. Tecumseh’s alliance, the last attempt by the woodlands Indians to act collectively, died with him. The remaining Algonquins moved to Canada, where their descendants still reside. The Prophet lived on in obscurity and poverty for another twenty years; by the time he died, he was nothing but a curiosity. Tecumseh was posthumously admired for his virtues by the young United States; his death is shown in many artworks, not least in the Rotunda of the Capitol. They don’t say much about him in schools today, preferring to focus on helpless victims and supposed emancipations, rather than heroic deeds and lives. A great many fascinating details about Indian culture are brought out by this book, making it more interesting than a mere work of dry history. (Cozzens never uses or even adverts to the stupid term “Native American,” though it appears on the dustjacket.) No surprise, the Shawnee were fiercely racist — they thought they were superior to the whites, because they were first born of creation, and for that matter, they were superior to other Indians, though both Indians and whites had a pecking order. The Long Knives, according to Tenskwatawa, were not human at all, merely demons who crossed the Stinking Lake as scum on the waves. This racism is not a knock against the Shawnee; some degree of racial empathy among similar people is inevitable — the challenge is managing it to make it not excessively pernicious (something at which the America of today is failing, as the deliberate whipping up of racial hatred in 2020 shows). Yet at the same time, the Shawnee, like all the woodlands Indians, adopted whites, and mixed-race individuals, métis, were often prominent in Indian leadership, helped by having a foot in each camp. In fact, several of the closest companions of Tecumseh’s youth were kidnapped white boys, most of whom ultimately returned to the whites, but some of whom died with him. As Sebastian Junger says in Tribe, this disinclination of forcibly adopted whites to return to civilization, and the not infrequent leaving of civilization by adult whites to join the Indians, says something about European civilization, not complimentary. Cozzens also touches on harsher topics. He says rape was forbidden by traditional Shawnee beliefs, and the Shawnee were very disciplined in all sexual matters. But later he refers to Ojibwa allies raping Shawnee women (and the Shawnee then getting payback by shooting their “allies” in the back in a subsequent battle), so it must have occurred sometimes among the woodlands Indians. In his earlier book, Cozzens notes that rape was common among the Western Indians, so any differences among Indian tribes were cultural (and the occasionally heard claim that rape is a purely European phenomenon just propaganda). Torture and cannibalism of captives by Indians were routine, as well — a captive never knew whether he or she would be adopted or tortured to death, though adoption was more common unless the Indians were seeking revenge for some recent affront or defeat. The most interesting topic, perhaps, is alcohol and the Indians. Alcohol, even more than disease, destroyed both Indian populations and their will to resist the Europeans. Governments constantly issued dictates forbidding trading alcohol to Indians, but to no effect, since it was far easier to get the Indians drunk and steal their goods, or trade for them at rock-bottom prices to Indians desperate to get alcohol, than to trade honestly, and the government, British or American, was always unwilling or unable to enforce this and other dictates with respect to the Indians. The catastrophic effects of alcohol on the Indians tend to be deemphasized today because their extreme affinity for it is felt to reflect poorly on the Indians. Many or most Indians became raging alcoholics when given alcohol (not Tecumseh, though he did drink upon occasion), and those who did not were happy to get roaring drunk whenever they could. It was common for Indians to literally drink themselves to death, and they frequently did extremely harmful things under the influence of alcohol, such as slaughtering their own livestock, or murdering each other over trivial matters. Australian Aborigines have a similar reaction to alcohol, so I imagine it is related to some genetic quirk in populations never exposed before to alcohol. But of course we are not allowed to talk about genetic differences today. A quick glance around the internet shows a wild desperation to reject the historical truth about the Indian lust for alcohol, including Google curating its results to avoid any support for it — though they don’t deny other genetic traits tied to alcohol, such as the “Asian flush.” And Wikipedia, showing why it is a highly dubious historical aid to memory, unhelpfully lies to us in racist fashion, blaming the white man: “Native Americans typically experience higher rates of alcohol use compared to other ethnicities as a result of acculturative stress directly and indirectly associated with historical trauma.” Nope. Indians just loved (and love) to get drunk, never mind the damage they knew would result. However, let’s not end on a sour note. Yes, Tecumseh lost. He was foredoomed to lose. But his actions, his blazing course across the sky of the Ohio Valley, speak to us still today. One should be careful not to believe the myth of the noble savage, but also careful not to fall into the opposite error, that peoples more primitive than us cannot provide exemplars to us. Tecumseh, man of grandeur mixed with tragedy, was a Man of Destiny. He tried to preserve his culture — and he did not back down, he did not count the cost, but did the very best he could with what he had. It was not enough, but that says nothing bad about his character, and tells us nothing about what success other men, yet to appear, who embody his virtues but apply them to new challenges in a new time, will have. Tecumseh proves that such men arise across cultures. Whether they arise in desiccated cultures such as ours, I am not so sure. The Shawnee, as all the woodland Indians, chose their leaders, most of all their war leaders, by leadership ability and success, so the best men came to the fore. We’ve abandoned that, so how can a Man of Destiny gain traction in America today? The hyper-feminized reaction to the Wuhan Plague suggests that, perhaps, like good seed cast on hard ground, our own Man of Destiny may not find a receptive audience. Yet almost certainly, if the truth were allowed to be ferreted out, more people voted for Donald Trump than for Joe Biden, which suggests the ground only appears hard, because we are fed propaganda that it is hard, to demoralize those who are based in reality. Similarly, most likely the cowardly reaction to the Plague we see all around us appears as the norm because of the societal pressure put on everyone to outwardly comply, combined with massive censorship of those who are willing to state the truth. No, I think the Man of Destiny will be welcomed when he comes — not by all, but by enough. Nonetheless, the Man of Destiny will not arise until the day is far gone, when the feet of clay that support our society crumble. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. I think, reading this book, that after all, we are just waiting for a new, and not that very different, Tecumseh.

https://medium.com/@charles_91491/tecumseh-and-the-prophet-the-shawnee-brothers-who-defied-a-nation-peter-cozzens-11806b4fcccc

['Charles Haywood', 'The Worthy House']

2020-12-11 14:56:15.188000+00:00

['American History', 'Books', 'Book Review', 'War']

OpenCV CUDA for Video Preprocessing

OpenCV CUDA for Video Preprocessing cv.cuda OpenCV’s CUDA python module is a lot of fun, but it’s a work in progress. For starters, we have to load in the video on CPU before passing it (frame-by-frame) to GPU. cv.cuda.imread() has not been built yet. Step 1 — .upload() cv.VideoCapture() can be used to load and iterate through video frames on CPU. Let’s read the corn.mp4 file with it; After .read() ing the 1st image, we’re ready to make a GPU matrix (picture frame) so that image can be .upload() ed to our GPU. Great! But what about the 2nd image? Well, you probably noticed .read() output 2 variables, ret and frame ; ret is a boolean value that’s True if frame is a valid frame and False if it’s not. So we can simply introduce a while loop and, by grabbing the next frame at the bottom, it’ll break when the video’s completed (i.e. ret!=True ). Setp 2 — Have Fun Once frames start hitting GPU memory, the fun begins. We’ve already seen cv.cuda.resize() , so let’s toss in cv.cuda.cvtColor() and apply some filters to the resized frames. You’ll also note scale , this is for quickly adjusting the scale of the resize. Step 3 — .download() To see the images, we need to bring each back from GPU memory ( cv2.cuda_GpuMat ) to CPU memory ( numpy.ndarray ). We can put this in right before loading the next frame; And here’s how they came out; cv.cuda + cv Not all OpenCV methods have been translated to CUDA python bindings. If, for example, you want to do .Canny() edge detection, you’ll either need to .download() (move that image from GPU to CPU) or run cv.Canny() before .upload() ing the video to GPU. The .download() route made more sense to me; To compare with the canny results, let’s run in a threshold on the grayscale as well. .threshold() is CUDA capable. So if we only wanted to output the GPU threshold ( thresh ) and CPU Canny edge ( canny ), the script could look something like; By scaling down the output image size (from scale=0.5 to scale=0.25 ), however, my Jetson Nano was able to display all 5 edits ( gray , luv , thresh , hsv , canny ) and the resized original ( resized ) side-by-side in real time. So I did that; Note: displaying single channel images ( gray , thresh , canny ) next to triple channel images ( resize , luv , hsv ) can be achieved with cv.cvtColor(img, cv.COLOR_GRAY2BGR) Fin Thanks for reading. Please feel free to respond with any questions. You can help build OpenCV CUDA in opencv/opencv_contrib or in opencv/opencv. Continued Reading GPU Module Introduction — General Information The OpenCV GPU module is a set of classes and functions to utilize GPU computational capabilities. It is implemented using NVIDIA CUDA Runtime API and supports only NVIDIA GPUs. The OpenCV GPU module includes utility functions, low-level vision primitives, and high-level algorithms. The utility functions and low-level primitives provide a powerful infrastructure for developing fast vision algorithms taking advantage of GPU whereas the high-level functionality includes some state-of-the-art algorithms (such as stereo correspondence, face and people detectors, and others) ready to be used by the application developers. (cont…) References “CUDA.” OpenCV, OpenCV Team, 2020, opencv.org/platforms/cuda. Pulli, Kari; Baksheev, Anatoly; Kornyakov, Kirill; Eruhimov, Victor. “Realtime Computer Vision with OpenCV.” Realtime Computer Vision with OpenCV — ACM Queue, Association for Computing Machinery, 22 Apr. 2012, queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2206309.

https://medium.com/dropout-analytics/opencv-cuda-for-videos-f3dcf346e398

['Winston Robson']

2020-11-02 06:56:08.886000+00:00

['Jetson Nano', 'Data Science', 'Cuda', 'Computer Vision', 'Opencv']

Draw insights from fiction books with Text Mining

Getting Started What you’ll need: book in PDF or TXT format Programming language and IDE: R and the IDE of your choice Packages we’re gonna use: tm, stopwords, tidytext, tidyverse, wordcloud2, ggplot2, and others. The book I have chosen to analyze this time is Carrie, by Stephen King. While it’s actually not my favorite book, it was written by my favorite author of all time, Mr. Stephen King. The story of the young girl Carrie is known by many people, perhaps more than any other of his books — and that’s saying something, coming from someone who wrote It, The Shining, The Dark Tower, Under the Dome, and many other masterpieces. Carrie, by Stephen King In addition to that, it has the added benefit of being very short, especially for King’s standards, with less than 200 pages and around 60K words. Loading the book and preparing the data Basically, 80% of the time you spend doing Text Mining and NLP will be actually dedicated to obtaining, transforming, and preparing the data so it can be used with the methods you’re gonna use — and that’s basically the way doesn’t matter the method and function you choose. First, we use readLines to import our book in TXT format and load it into a vector of 4500+ strings of characters, each string containing a paragraph. carrie <- readLines("carrie.txt",skipNul = T,encoding = "UTF-8") If your book is in PDF file format — way more common than TXT— you can use package pdftools, which would help you load the text fairly easily into your R environment. The command is pretty simple and it would look like this: carrie <- pdf_text("carrie.pdf") Next, we create an object called corpus — a collection of text documents. Some additional steps take as input that corpus we just created and that are necessary to transform and prepare the data. They are explained in more detail in the source code for this article, which you can find on my Github page. Some of those include: filtering out the cover, dedicatory, preface, footnotes, etc. if your file has those sections. removing undesired characters /, “, ”, — and others. transforming the text to lowercase. removing numbers, punctuation, etc. For those transformations and others, I’ve used the package tm, which provides methods for data import, corpus handling, preprocessing, metadata management, and creation of term-document matrices. Another step you can’t miss while preparing your book for analysis is removing any stopwords. Stopwords are mainly articles, pronouns, and prepositions such as “the”, “my”, “he”, “she”, “for”, etc. that usually don’t add any value themselves to the text, they’re there to connect other types of words. We use a well-established database of stopwords for the English language obtained from package stopwords, which has 5 different sources of stopwords for more than 40 languages. stopwords::stopwords("en", source = "stopwords-iso") Some of the words considered “stopwords” for the English language When crossing the dataframe of 1298 stopwords with our corpus of 4500+ paragraphs, we end up with only words important for a thorough but meaningful analysis of the book. Last but not least, we perform a procedure called tokenization, which breaks the text into words so then we can analyze them individually. There are other types of tokenization: by sentence, by paragraph, and others, check more about it here. carrie %>% unnest_tokens(input = text, output = word) text tokenized by word Now we got something that looks promising to really begin our analysis. Part 2: The fun stuff The most basic step when analyzing a book, in my opinion, is looking into the most frequent words contained in the text. Let’s plot the top 10. A few observations: Carrie : it’s common and obvious that the main character’s name is the most mentioned word of the book. If you feel that word doesn’t add any value to your analysis, it’s possible (and easy) to remove it so it doesn’t appear in your plots. : it’s common and obvious that the main character’s name is the most mentioned word of the book. If you feel that word doesn’t add any value to your analysis, it’s possible (and easy) to remove it so it doesn’t appear in your plots. Momma : pretty indicative of how messed up the relationship between Carrie and her mom was and how violent were their interactions. : pretty indicative of how messed up the relationship between Carrie and her mom was and how violent were their interactions. White : “of course, it’s their last name” you might say since the last name of the two main characters is bound to appear a lot. But one of the most memorable and impressive things about this book is the contrast between white (purity) and red (love, anger, danger) and I have no question at all that the surname and the number of times the word appear are no coincidence at all. : “of course, it’s their last name” you might say since the last name of the two main characters is bound to appear a lot. But one of the most memorable and impressive things about this book is the contrast between white (purity) and red (love, anger, danger) and I have no question at all that the surname and the number of times the word appear are no coincidence at all. Blood: I personally thought this word was going to be mentioned a bit more, but it makes sense since there are only two main events in which blood is involved (the very beginning and the very ending of the book). But don’t get me wrong, this is a bloody/gory story. Analyzing only single words makes it easy to overlook important relations, so another way of aiding your analysis is breaking the text down into pairs of words, what we’ll call bigrams. In doing that it’s possible to see better how words are related and identify common pairs, amongst other things. Looking past the obvious “Carrie White” and “Margaret White” combinations, the third bigram shows a very interesting phenomenon common in books written by Stephen King: Creepy writing style (but that’s one of the reasons we love him) If you ever read a book by Stephen King, especially the ones belonging to the horror genre, you probably remember a part like this where he pauses the story for a bit to give us an often creepy look into what the character’s thinking or feeling. Stephen King at his best! Word Cloud Another way of visualizing text is a Word Cloud. Although there are several authors now advocating against it — and for good reasons, it is consensus that a Word Cloud is still very useful. I usually like to construct a Word Cloud when working with text since 1.it is easy 😅 and 2. it shows unmistakenly the most frequent and important words in the text. Using package wordcloud2 and our dataframe of frequent words, we plot 200 words of those. The intensity of the red color and the size of the font are greater for more frequent words. wordcloud::wordcloud2(data = words[1:200,], size = 1.6, shape = "oval", rotateRatio = 0.5, color= rev(cartography::carto.pal("red.pal",n1=20)) ) Word Cloud of the most frequent words of the book Correlation between words Now we want to determine the most relevant correlations between our 10 most frequent words and any other words of the book. For that, we take a few steps. First, we find associations of words with correlation greater than 0.15 for our 10 words. Then we select the top 5 most correlated words to our 10. wordassociation=findAssocs(x=dtm,terms= head(words$word,10),corlimit = 0.15) association = as.data.frame(unlist(wordassociation)) %>% tibble::rownames_to_column(var = "word") %>% rename(corr = `unlist(wordassociation)`) %>% tidyr::separate(col=word,sep="([.])",into=c("word1","word2")) %>% mutate(word1 = factor(word1,levels=head(words$word,10)),wordno = as.numeric(word1)) %>% group_by(word1) %>% slice(seq_len(5)) %>% arrange(word1, desc(corr)) %>% mutate(row = row_number()) %>% ungroup() ggplot(association, aes(corr, reorder(word2,corr),fill=word1)) + geom_col(show.legend = FALSE) + facet_wrap(~word1,scales="free_y")+ theme(panel.grid.major.x = element_blank(),plot.title = element_text(hjust = 0.5)) + ggtitle("Relationship of top words") + xlab("Correlation") + ylab("Words")+ scale_fill_manual(values = cores) Words more correlated with our top 10 most frequent words For instance, the word “blood”, relates more strongly with “expiate”, “pig”, “pour”, “coppery” and “awful”. All of those make sense based on the story of the book and the properties of the blood itself, so we’re doing well. 😀 Network of bigrams Another intuitive and eye-popping way of visualizing bigrams is a network plot, which you can make with ggraph package. bigram_graph <- carrie_bigrams %>% filter(n > 5) %>% graph_from_data_frame() ggraph(bigram_graph,layout = "fr") + geom_edge_link(color="red") + geom_node_point(color="red") + geom_node_text(aes(label = name), vjust = 1, hjust = 1) Network graph of the relationships between pairs of words This method takes as input our dataframe of tokenized bigrams (pairs) and links those pairs of words that have a high correlation. For instance, “carrie” is directly linked with screamed, white, looked, and “tommy ross”, all of those words that appear many times in the book next to it. Other relationships are pretty apparent and make a lot of sense, such as “police x station”, “root x beer”, “dance x floor”, since those are pairs that appear several times together in the text. Final remarks That concludes our first part of the analysis with methods and comments on how to prepare your data, visualize the text in a more general way, and look for relationships within the data. There are certainly many other ways of analyzing and visualizing text but those were some of the most interesting I wanted to try for this book. Stay tuned for the next articles and analysis of more books. People don’t get better, they just get smarter. When you get smarter you don’t stop pulling the wings off flies, you just think of better reasons for doing it. Stephen King. Shoutout to the great people that wrote these articles. I definitely couldn’t have done it without those amazing pieces of information.

https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/drawing-insights-from-any-book-with-text-mining-in-r-part-1-ffc9788d4cf2

['Rafael Belokurows']

2020-12-28 16:40:20.429000+00:00

['R Programming', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'R', 'Data Science', 'Books']

Liulishuo’s AI App Is Teaching English to 70 Million People

“Liulishuo is the AI English teacher on your phone. You don’t need to know how it works, yet it helps you learn English more efficiently than a human teacher,” says Yi Wang, Founder and CEO of Liulishuo — a Beijing-based “AI + language” company whose name translates as “speak fluently.” Liulishuo hosts the world’s largest speech bank of Chinese speakers speaking English. After obtaining a PhD in computer science from Princeton, Wang worked as a product manager at Google in California. He returned to China in the early 2010s and found many of his friends asking similar questions: “How do I learn English?”; “Why is it that I pay so much money for lessons and fail to keep up?”; “Should I watch more American TV shows to learn to speak naturally?” Wang wondered whether people might be able to learn English by speaking with their phones. At the time, AI and online education were much less developed. In 2012 Wang launched Liulishuo with Hui Lin, a Google coworker specializing in voice recognition and machine learning. Launched six months ago, the company’s flagship app is now teaching English with personalized and adaptive methods based on deep learning to some 70 million registered users in 175 countries. It was selected as an Apple Store “Best App of the Year,” and Apple VP Philip Schiller and his team visited the company’s offices. Liulishuo is the only Chinese Education company to make the CB Insights AI 100 list. Synced recently spoke with Liulishuo Yi Wang about his company and AI language learning. A Liulishuo poster in the Beijing subway reads, “I’m my AI teacher’s one and only favorite student, and I’m addicted to learning English.” How does Liulishuo apply AI to its teaching products? Liulishuo has the world’s largest database of Chinese people speaking English. Based on the database we created a Chinese-speaking-English recognition engine with the highest accuracy and an evaluation engine which provides users with ratings and feedback. Initially, we used speech recognition to evaluate the user’s verbal skills. Now our engine can perform a full range of verbal language assessments, and we have a separate engine that can correct writing. We have a special function tackling the IELTS exams, which tests users on their pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and fluency. The scoring algorithms have passed the Turing Test. The variation in score between our AI and a human examiner is lower than between two human examiners. We offer users individualized suggestions to improve their English using their scores in the four areas. We launched the world’s first AI English teacher platform in July 2016. Ten million users have already completed our ranking exam, with completion time ranging from 5 minutes to 20 minutes depending on proficiency. After completing the exam, the system selects a starting level for each user. Users improve their English through the immersive learning of scenes from images and animations, without any subtitles or translations. They must attempt to understand the scenario, which is followed by suggested practices, which is then followed by more progressive scenarios. This back and forth is highly effective in improving the user’s English language skills. We have the data to prove our effectiveness. ETS TOEFL testing has proven our AI teacher can improve learning efficiency by three times. For example, if it used to require 100 hours of learning to reach a certain level in the CEFR standard, we would only need about 36. Regardless of product and service, we’re the only English learning organization that publishes efficiencies of this caliber, and that really excites me. Where did you get your first set of voice recognition data? Before launching the product, we asked some American English speakers to record audio for us to cold start the engine. We also collected limited data from Chinese speakers audio recordings via crowdsourcing. But since the launch of our product, our users have provided us with massive amounts of incoming data in different skill levels and accents. This data was recorded by users reading what’s displayed on their screen, and so it is also labeled. We effectively received all this data for free from users practicing their English. Where does the evaluation engine get its standard voice data? In order to train our model, we invited experts to label our data for us, for example for IELTS we asked IELTS examiners to label our data. Where did Liulishuo get content like animations, short videos, and scenarios? We have two types of content. The free content is English conversations written by professional writers, on top of User-Generated Content (UGC) and Professionally Generated Content (PGC). We also have the most active English learning community in China, and many of our short videos are contributed by these learners. The paid content is created by our own team. We hired Philip Lance Knowles, who has previously proposed Recursive Hierarchical Recognition Theory and other breakthroughs in language learning theory based on cognitive science, as our expert consultant and created our content based on Lance’s theory. Of course, our customized learning material is different from writing a textbook, where all students learn in the same sequence. Did you ever think of using AI to create content? This is the general direction, and we are doing some early stage testing. Many companies are working on translation headphones, such as those presented at the Google I/O event. As AI translation advances, will we still need to learn English in the future? These headphones can benefit let’s say seniors traveling in another country. But I think they won’t be able to replace the language learning market. Firstly, the Ministry of Education will not remove English from the curriculum just because we have translation machines. Secondly, learning a new language isn’t just about translation, translation is just application. Learning a new language is about learning to communicate with others, and there are cultural contexts one must also learn to understand in order to learn real communication. In the process of learning a new language, there’s a sense of accomplishment, in which the user builds confidence and challenges themselves. Thus we see the social function of language learning, as many people learn to make new friends. There are people who make friends and even find their partner on our platform. In this sense, you can’t equal language learning with translation. We want the learning process to be customized and highly effective. To achieve these two goals, we believe that data-driven AI is the key. We’ve only taken the first step in exploring AI teachers. They aren’t intelligent enough just yet, and the learning experience has many areas that can still be optimized. We are working hard at solving these problems. People have limited understanding of how our conscience and brain actually work. We are working with many experts in neuroscience and education, such as the Dean of Education Faculty at Stanford University and a Professor of Neurology at Yale University, in hopes of bringing in new research results. Our platform is also useful for their research because we have large amounts of user data that helps them create new learning models. We have set up an education and AI lab in the Bay Area, hoping to attract top experts in AI, education, and cognitive science, in order to help us create the most intelligent, most efficient AI English teacher in the world. What were some turning points for Liulishuo? The explosive growth of the mobile internet since 2012 has turned mobile device usage into the new way of life. I saw this as an immense opportunity, but I realized that if I only developed small apps focusing on weather, calendar, camera etc, it would be a challenge to make them profitable. Therefore we thought about combining the mobile internet with traditional industries. The markets must be large, with good user paying habits, and room for improving efficiency. We researched applications in finance, health, and education, finally deciding to go with education. We set forth to create an easy-to-use product. The first week Liulishuo was available, it was recommended by the Apple Store in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan, and quickly became one of their “Best Apps of the Year.” Apple’s Senior VP of Worldwide Marketing soon toured our company. This shows that our product-centered strategy is being rewarded. The second turning point was the transformation of Liulishuo from a tools App into a community App. Building a community increased user stickiness and activity and created a broad learning environment. The third point was in 2014, when we made a strategic decision to create an educational research team, to involve education professionals from a content perspective. Before this, we were purely an internet company. We decided to put a heavy focus on the essence of education and personalization of content. If we had not made that shift, we would just be a marginalized tech company. Were there any detours? In 2014 we worked with a foreign company and tested two learning techniques which used word games to practice speaking. But they weren’t very successful. From a gameplay perspective, they weren’t as fun as normal games; while from a learning perspective, they weren’t very effective. During the second half of 2014 we wanted to create a textbook product. Our first instinct was to license the best textbooks from top publishers such as Pearson, Cambridge, or Oxford. After we got to know them a bit better, we realized that these textbooks were written and designed for traditional, offline classroom scenarios and were not effective for users lounging on their couch learning with a smartphone. Therefore, we started to work on our own educational research team and spent two years developing the AI teacher. This was a strategic change, and looking back it was the right thing to do. What trends do you see in English language learning? We are seeing three historical opportunities. Firstly, learning is now digitized. In the past we did our homework on paper, whereas today 100% of user learning, actions, and interactions are digitized. This is a huge leap forward and the only way to make it possible to use AI. If you’re not digitized and have no structured data, it will be impossible to talk of AI, right? Secondly, I think we’re experiencing a historic leap from teacher-centric to student-centric learning. There were many more students than teachers in the industrial era, but many students are now practicing one-on-one with a language tutor. However, this is a transition phase because the so-called “one-on-one” is still not necessarily centered around the student, as teachers may not understand the needs of the student and create suitable teaching plans. Liulishuo’s AI teacher is not human, it is a system that relies on user interactions to make decisions. Through deep learning and other AI technologies, it selects only relevant content from a huge library and recommends it based on the student’s level. I think the pace of review and practice frequency based on an individual student’s needs, strengths and weaknesses is the ultimate student-centric learning experience. Third, from a business perspective, we believe that we must develop a results-oriented business model to replace a process-oriented one. In a language training institution for example, if you learn for 100 hours and yet still see no improvement, the institution won’t be responsible as it has delivered its service by selling you the teacher’s time. Hence, these traditional training institutions are just wholesalers of teachers’ time. We think this situation will eventually change, and educators will get paid according to the results achieved by each student. Our paid product works exactly this way, it does not charge based on instructional hours, but instead, provides users with a buffet. For just CN¥99 a month, users can spend as much time as they like there. A diligent student can learn at a much faster pace, absorbing all that they can. Our paid users on average spend five hours or more learning on our App each week. Who spends five hours a week learning a new skill anymore as an adult? This shows our product is really effective. What is Liulishuo’s short-term and long-term plan? I hope that in the next two to three years Liulishuo can assemble a leading team of researchers and product designers with full-stack development capabilities, dedicated to applying AI to education. As for long-term plans, I hope that in the next decade, we can become a global leader in education. * * * Localization: Xiang Chen| Editor: Meghan Han, Michael Sarazen * * * Subscribe here to get insightful tech news, reviews and analysis!

https://medium.com/syncedreview/liulishuos-ai-app-is-teaching-english-to-70-million-people-31d4fb38a799

[]

2018-04-26 15:57:20.024000+00:00

['Startups', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Technology', 'Education', 'Voice Recognition']

Everything You Need to Know about 3D Wall Tiles for Your Home Improvement

Everything You Need to Know about 3D Wall Tiles for Your Home Improvement Jack Du Jul 15·5 min read Do you want a fresh and innovative design for your interior? A design that is completely customizable and can prove to be one-of-a-kind? That too simply and easily? If so, no need to look any further! With 3D tiles at hand, you can personalize any room with breathtaking and eye-catching 3D designs! The modern design calls for organic and creativity, which 3D tiles provide! Each type of tile provides a different texture and has an overall unique impact on the entire interior. Yes, that is right! 3D tiles come in all sorts of shapes and forms. Hence, let your imagination loose when it comes to using them! Ranging from ripple-like ridges to protruding bricks to rustic wooden rows, it is no surprise that 3D tiles can change up the entire impression of a room! 3D tiles come in all sorts of materials, including the following: Ceramic Porcelain Wood Metal No matter the material, the varying designs are available for all sorts. Some are unique, like abstract bubbled glass tiles. Best Places to Use 3D Wall Tiles 3D tiles can be used at any location! Be it an office or a shop, they can create spellbinding interiors with the available variety! Places including the following can all be fitted with these gorgeous pieces of art! Hotels Hospitals Galleries Cinemas Auditoriums Offices Restaurants And so many more! Additionally, you can decorate any room in your entire house with them! Yes, you read that right! Any room can be enhanced with this multipurpose yet affordable wall decor. Bedroom The bedroom is your haven where you can be you. In simple terms, you can say that it is a place where you are shielded from the stress of work and school. It surely deserves unique interior decor. It is your room; you are the boss here. Choose the design that you like best. You can use 3D tiles to tie in the look of the entire furniture in the room. Contrasting colors can also be used to highlight certain parts of the room. Kitchen Your kitchen is one of the most regularly used rooms of your house, and a well-designed interior is sure to boost its appeal. You can use adhesive tiles or 3D wallpaper tiles to decorate the kitchen walls. Additionally, DIY-ing the walls with innovative and fresh backsplash stick-on tiles is also a creative option. The entire design becomes unique, and this method is an effective way to showcase your talent! Bathroom Did you know that some wall tiles tend to mesh well with other types of tiles to create a more detailed and profound effect? For example, you can use bathroom wall stickers and bathroom wall decal for a stylish finish. Another recommendation would be to search for bathroom wall decor ideas. List them down, and then proceed to combine the ones you like best to personalize your bathroom decor for walls! Living Room The living room is where you spend time with your family. It is also where you sit with the guests. Thus, it is a given that it must be outfitted nicely to provide a good impression. You can make an indoor gallery by housing a gorgeous series of 3D artwork for walls. Or perhaps you’d go for a more cottage-like rustic appearance with 3D brick wall sticker tiles. Benefits of 3D Wall Tiles The benefits of 3D tiles prove to be the deciding factor of their immense popularity. You will be surprised to know how many benefits they offer! Some of them are listed below: Aesthetically Pleasing You cannot deny the hypnotic allure of 3D tiles! Designed with vibrant colors and gorgeous sheens, 3D tiles are impossible to ignore! Moreover, a truly creative mind can also use them cleverly to build beautiful murals! Tiles with Geometric shapes are beautiful with their simplistic design. And the best part about 3D tiles, in general, is that the colors and designs are long-lasting and can even last you an entire decade! High Durability Did you know that 3D tiles are manufactured from the very foundation to be very durable? Yes, that is correct! With proper regular maintenance, these tiles will provide the same look for years to come! Plus, the colors, prints, and shapes of these tiles are also very durable. Hence, you are saved from the cost of refurbishing them. Environment Friendly One of the critical aspects of 3D tiles is that they are entirely environment-friendly. No toxic or harmful chemicals are used in their manufacturing process. Their installation process is also clean and organic. So, these tiles are sure to prove very popular for environmental activists as well! Simple Maintenance Despite their complicated aesthetics, taking care of 3D tiles is easy! They are water-resistant. Hence a good scrubbing can do them no harm! You can wipe them with a cloth dipped in soapy water. A little elbow grease can remove any persistent stains as well. You see, they function similar to traditional walls, just with an added touch of glamour! Conclusion There you have it! An A-to-Z guide on 3D wall tiles! The variety of choices available guarantees that you will find a perfect fit! Will you choose to add 3D tile-adorned accent walls in each room? Or will you go for the easy-to-install adhesive wall decor for your kitchen walls? Or maybe you’d want to dabble in peel and stick wall tiles? No matter what you want for your interior, you are guaranteed to find it at Commony! A chic stick tiles guide is also available on this blog. You can also check out this article on how you can add impact with 3D tiles.And you can get more information from Wiki Home Improvement. No matter what you choose for your interior, the 3-dimensional tiles will add a flair of wicked drama, hands down!

https://medium.com/@jackdu2021/everything-you-need-to-know-about-3d-wall-tiles-for-your-home-improvement-194492bd3577

['Jack Du']

2021-07-15 05:03:45.869000+00:00

['Home Decor', 'Home Improvement', 'Wall Decor']

Is BERT the answer to everything?

Is BERT the answer to everything? Photo by Clarissa Watson on Unsplash Introduction With the onset of the Transformer, there has been a rapid rise in language models. In 2018, BERT came and broke all records. However, shortly after BERT, a long list of its cousins were born, like RoBERTa, ALBERT, StructBERT, DistilBERT, to name a few. BERT is essentially trained to optimise two tasks; Masked Language Model (MLM) and Next Sentence Prediction (NSP). Since there are a lot of excellent blogs available on BERT, this post’s focus would be to understand why BERT might not work in some cases and what are the alternatives available. Pre-Training Tasks Before moving on to the limitations, let us briefly discuss how MLM and NSP work. Masked Language Model (MLM) MLM was originally introduced as a “Cloze task” by Taylor. In BERT, it is used as an extension to a unidirectional language model. In a standard unidirectional language model, context is taken from one side only. However, the context from the opposite direction might be equally important. For example, when trying to predict the word capital in the sentence: “Paris is the capital of France”; words to the left and right of capital are both necessary to make the correct prediction. Since context from both directions cannot be fed into a traditional language model, it is implemented as a Masked Language model in BERT. In MLM, some of the words or tokens are masked and the task is to predict those tokens. You can think of it as a fill-in-the-blank task. Next Sentence Prediction (NSP) Given two sentences s1 and s2, NSP is the task to predict whether s1 is followed by s2 in the same document. For example, s1=”I am thirsty” s2=”Pour me a drink” Label = IsNextSentence s1=”I am thirsty” s2=”This house needs cleaning” Label = Not IsNextSentence For NSP, the inputs are combined as given below: [CLS] I am thirsty [SEP] Pour me a drink [SEP] [SEP] is the special token which separates the 2 sentences. Combining with MLM, the same input will now have masked tokens, as below: [CLS] I am thirsty [SEP] Pour me a [MASK] [SEP] Analysing MLM MLM has proven to be a very useful task for pre-trained language models because of its bidirectional nature. However, the main issue with it is the mismatch between pre-training and fine-tuning phases. This is because the MASK token does not appear during fine tuning. To deal with this, BERT used the [MASK] token 80% of the time, a random token 10% of the time, and the original token for the remaining 10% of the time to perform masking. However, even with this approach, some claim that the mismatch issue still remains unsolved to a large extent. This gave birth to a new pre-training task called Permuted Language Model (PLM). In short, PLM applies random permutation on input sequences and a permutation is randomly sampled from all possible permutations. Some of the tokens are masked which would finally be predicted by this task. Note that this does not affect the original order of tokens. Instead, it just defines the order of token predictions. Another major improvement over MLM is dynamic masking. In BERT, all mask tokens are created before training (in the preprocessing step), once and for all. Whereas, in the famous RoBERTa, tokens are masked dynamically. This means that after each epoch, the input sequence will have different tokens masked. RoBERTa has shown quite noticeable improvements over BERT on various downstream tasks. There are multiple researches proposing enhanced versions of MLM. Some of them are: UniLM: Unified Language model extends mask prediction to unidirectional, bidirectional and sequence-to-sequence predictions. extends mask prediction to unidirectional, bidirectional and sequence-to-sequence predictions. TLM: The translation language model takes parallel bilingual data and randomly masks tokens in both source and target languages. takes parallel bilingual data and randomly masks tokens in both source and target languages. Whole word masking: Originally, BERT uses wordpiece tokenizer and masking is done on the pieces/token level. More recent researches have shown improvement when masking the whole word instead of the broken piece. What’s wrong with NSP? Many researchers have claimed that NSP is not a necessary task and removing/altering it is a better option. Why is that so? As mentioned by the authors of ALBERT, NSP conflates topic prediction and coherence prediction. They say that NSP actually learns whether the two sentences belong to the same topic, which is much easier than learning whether the sentences are grammatically coherent or not. Even while training BERT from scratch on custom data, we notice the NSP accuracy spiking up pretty quickly. However, using the same model on a sentence pair fine tuning task gives a bad performance. What are the alternatives? A lot of BERT’s cousins follow a pattern: Remove NSP, use MLM (with or w/o modifications) and add a new task for replacing NSP (or something that works for sentence/segment pair tasks. Some of my personal favourite alternatives are: Sentence Order Prediction (SOP) SOP uses two consecutive segments from the same document as a positive example and the same sequences with their order reversed as a negative example. Following ALBERT’s improvements over BERT on various downstream tasks, StructBERT also took SOP as a pre-training task. Sequence to Sequence MLM As used in MASS, Seq2Seq MLM uses an encoder decoder style training. The encoder is fed a masked sequence, and the decoder sequentially produces the masked tokens in auto-regression fashion. ELECTRA — Replaced Token Detection (RTD) Electra is a very interesting model which uses a generator to replace some tokens of a sequence. The job of the discriminator is to identify whether the token is an actual or a replaced one. You would be amazed at the number of options available for language models. This paper does a perfect summarisation of many state of the art language models from all aspects: pre-training tasks, architecture types, model extensions etc. I would suggest to definitely give this a read. Conclusion BERT and other pre-trained NLP models have undoubtedly made their mark. More importantly, it has served as a building block for several other research work. However, with so many models available, it becomes impossible to try out all of them for a given task. I hope this post will make you more aware of why BERT might not work on your custom data and what alternatives are already available and are handy. Personally, my vote would go to RoBERTa and ALBERT as the go-to models for most of the NLP fine tuning tasks. What’s your take on the plethora of NLP models available out there? Cheers, Eram

https://towardsdatascience.com/is-bert-the-answer-to-everything-1a1dbb52e275

['Eram Munawwar']

2020-12-15 12:55:34.119000+00:00

['Deep Learning', 'Editors Pick', 'Language', 'NLP', 'Bert']

Love, Amy

The day I died in our 4th floor apartment, winter snaked through dark halls as you pounded on the doors of nameless neighbors — screaming, desperate for someone, anyone — to breathe me back to life. Did you know I was disappearing (Where are the sirens?) into thin air, as they say, ironically? I put my hand on your shoulder once that morning, in the hallway. Remember? You turned around thinking (Help me) help had arrived, pleading to a ghost. The day I died I felt your breath crawling toward my lungs — I know (I’m so sorry) you tried, my friend. After a million cold stones have been turned over searching for ways you could have saved me, after all these years the memory still sits on your shelf, a delicate relic. Set it down now. The night before the day I died I didn’t know how to tell you (We were so young, weren’t we?) that the weight of my skin had become too heavy to pull over my bones, that I was ready to peel off the layers one last time, to wake and finally be light.

https://medium.com/lit-up/love-amy-3b5fc90f182

['Jen Smat']

2019-07-01 02:22:38.007000+00:00

['Love', 'Death And Dying', 'Death', 'Poetry On Medium', 'Poetry']

Thanks for saying this!

Thanks for saying this! As a Latino teacher, I feel like I’ve experienced both sides to this story. In my teaching role, I absolutely hate standardized tests because I get a frequent peek into how poorly they serve all students. As a parent to a toddler, I know that my son (who is very bright and capable) has fewer resources than others. The reality of some families getting ahead during this pandemic is very real. I just appreciate your writing this! I think we all need the reminder to slow things down rather than speed them up.

https://medium.com/@nickmarmolejo/thanks-for-saying-this-8e647d2f1763

['Rice']

2020-12-22 19:20:15.911000+00:00

['Equity', 'Advice', 'Parenting', 'Teaching', 'Social Justice']

I Am Watching Your Life Unravel On Facebook

I Am Watching Your Life Unravel On Facebook I have just changed my status to let you know that I am writing this article (this is my first article! Hello!) because I have not changed my status since last night when I was sad and I wrote something vague and what I considered to be extremely revealing, which, in actuality, was not extremely revealing, and was, in fact, vague. This is the danger of the permanent instant. It used to be that when you were at home doing work, eating a White Chocolate Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup and being bludgeoned by the inevitable sense of ennui that occurs when watching television alone, you brushed your teeth and went to bed, you big baby, because tomorrow is another day. And you know what? You probably got a decent night’s sleep and you woke up feeling pretty good about yourself. However, we live in the age of sonar. Send a vaguely melancholic shot out into the world next to your first and last name — there is no doubt it is you — and hope that someone else will receive said call and return serve, preferably immediately upon reception in order to provide some sort of end-of-day validation. Now there is a footprint of your feelings and your reaction to those feelings; quite often we wake up the following day and see what we wrote while emotionally occupied (yes this can mean drunk) and are sometimes reminded of our feelings at that moment — some days we laugh it off, other days we revisit the body that we have created for ourselves a few hours (and a hot shower) earlier. It’s like the social experiment game we used to play in high school with our friends: 1. Make a show of being left alone. 2. People ask if you are alright. 3. Tell them you want to be left alone. 4. Be bitter that they have left you alone. Replace the 40oz of Mountain Dew with 12 oz of vodka and add a technology more dangerous than AOL Instant Messenger or a Geocities website and kerplunk: all the dolphins in the immediate sea (and the ocean where you went to college, and the ocean where your friends of the family reside — it is a strange ocean, lots of coral) are aware of your emotional plight, or at the very least, what sad bastard album you were listening to “6 hours ago”, and they will do the math to figure out that six hours ago was 4:30 in the morning your time, and they have already eaten breakfast and perhaps been on an early morning jog. Social networking is different than regular networking because regular networking institutes some sort of guidebook defining how to successfully network. Assuming that you are in the networking world of business or nets or working. You must keep things ‘professional’ — the pieces being networked are the only pieces available. (Think USB cable, or you know, ports, which were very important back in the 1990s Internet.) If I want to be published in your literary magazine, I will not tell you about my dead mother (she is not dead) and my flailing relationship with my soon-to-be sometimes lover. But with recent articles vouching for the fact that your online superpresence is the real you, it somehow makes the new version of networking octopusian (octopilian?) — all sorts of squiggly lines popping forth from your body and your psyche and your penis like one of those universal charger things that you find in a SkyMall catalogue. We must not lie about what we like lest we are quizzed about Fellini or someone gets the impression that the band we say we love ironically is not a band we love at all. Do you not know about my photos? Are you not familiar with the bands that I say I love? Do you want to see if I like Fellini? Do you not have a facebook account? Do you want to know me better? I will set up your facebook account for you! It is easy. This is how you add photos. Oh, you commented on your own wall! I know, it’s difficult! I know that you are not good at the Internet! This is how I post on your wall. This is how I send you a message! This is how I post a photo of us from a few months ago and this is how I tag it to demonstrate that there was a time that we took photographs together! Isn’t this helping you a great deal? I feel like we’ve really connected over the past couple of months. You will buy me a soda and I will buy you a soda and I will write about how good a day I had and you will comment and I will comment back. You will have a photograph that looks beautiful. You will experiment with black and white. You are easier to get in touch with. You are now single. You are now a body of water, a painting that you may or may not have drawn. You are a celebrity that someone told you, once, you looked like. You are ignoring the celebrity that you actually look like because they have a wonky face. You are drunk. You are hungover. You don’t know where your dog is. I am sorry that your life is ending, because, well, it is ending, but yes, I do care to comment on your bad day — sorry to hear you’re having a bad day hun :(–although I am already fully aware that work is terrible and you are not sleeping with the person that you think you should be sleeping with because the person you think that you should be sleeping with is not facebook active and that makes it more difficult to sleep with that person. You should set up their facebook account for them! It is easy. This is how you add photos. This is how you send a message. And when it ends, it will be you who denies me. One of the most spectacular things about the Internet at its inception was that everything was anonymous: we created avatars and screen names that represented who we were or who we desired to be (AwesomeGuy69420 was probably not awesome, good at mutual oral sex, a marijuana kingpin, or even a guy). We were warned constantly about having our identities stolen and people finding out too much information about us — god forbid a last name or a hometown appeared on the Internet lest the hordes find you. There was, of course, something exciting about this: making up a fake name in a chatroom and telling people that you live in California (always California! Where did the Californians say they were from?) and possessing information that someone wanted or desired. I was from California. I had a different birthday. I played an instrument. Now, of course, we know everything there is to know about everyone: who their friends are, what they are doing at any given moment — there are even iPhone applications that will post to facebook or twitter the exact GPS location at that particular moment. And the most frightening thing? No one cares. You have found an okay slice of pizza in the town that you now live. No one will steal this. I hear you are ordering a pizza. I am going to steal your identity using key notes I have acquired from your online presence, and commandeering the mental states that I have observed in your updates. I do not need to know what your password is because your password is not my name. The person delivering the pizza will not know the difference.

https://medium.com/flip-collective/i-am-watching-your-life-unravel-on-facebook-eb5741ac54ad

['Brian Oliu']

2016-12-08 18:44:27.009000+00:00

['Short Story', 'Social Media']

The future of recruiting is marketing and 5 top tools for lead generation.

A lot of companies have been saying for a few years that the future of recruiting is marketing. Recruitment website visitors now account for 20–30% of traffic. What this means for employers is that, unless your website is optimised for mobile, up to one-third of visitors will be receiving a poor experience. This could be even higher for companies that are embracing social media and especially Facebook since about half of Facebook users are on mobile. Social media recruiting is by far one of the biggest trends in the recruitment industry this year. Recruiters are using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn to leverage brand awareness, as well as engage and interact with candidates and clients. In today’s busy digital marketplace, job ads are popping up everywhere online and across social media. In a matter of minutes, candidates can find hundreds of jobs in their field that might interest them. With such a small window of opportunity to get the attention of the best talent, it is vital that you get your recruitment marketing right. To stay ahead, it is more important than ever for recruiters to start thinking outside the box when creating and delivering a recruitment marketing strategy. A critical component of good recruitment marketing is to adopt a multichannel approach. This involves automating methods of delivering job ads to various channels (e.g. via email, on Facebook, on job boards) and then creating a schedule to post an ad to them all at the same time. This helps you reach the widest possible audience and allows you to create and develop templates that work for you. It also gives you the ability to connect with potential candidates outside traditional channels and outside of traditional office hours. So your job ads continue to work even after you’ve gone home for the evening. With the right solution, you can take your recruitment marketing to the next level, drive more of the right candidates to your job applications, foster connections to passive candidates who might be a fit for future roles, and hire top talent faster. As anyone who has queued overnight in the cold for the latest smartphone will tell you, keeping up with technology isn’t easy. But with many HR departments taking more responsibility for resourcing, it is essential to get to grips with the myriad recruiting channels, tools and technologies that have emerged in recent years. An overwhelming majority of today’s candidates are passive candidates, who aren’t looking for a job. As a result, HR teams are struggling to capture their attention. According to a recent Glassdoor research, 76% of hiring managers admit attracting top talent is their greatest challenge. A recruiter with a high-quality talent pool is unstoppable! Imagine that for any new role; you had a collection of top-quality candidates waiting to be chosen. A talent pool should be made up of a diverse range of candidates which could include referrals and people who have applied but missed out on original positions. Creating a talent pool won’t happen overnight; it will take time and be a constant project. So, my advice to you is to start pooling your talent, right now! And that’s just a start. You can really dive deep by adding stronger social publishing and analytics tools and using Google Analytics for campaign tracking per social source. Even further, recruitment marketing platforms track social analytics on a larger scale, in conjunction with all of your other talent acquisition efforts. This can be mirrored for your lead generation efforts as well. Knowing which actions are worth repeating. This is where tracking the effectiveness of your lead generation attempts becomes such an important part of the process. You should always have a strong sense of which pieces of content are attracting the most people to the top of your applicant funnel, and how each of your targeted demographics are responding to your messaging. Track the number of impressions for each ad or post, the click rate (or the click-through rate if appropriate), and the conversion rate for every other step in the process. As you nurture those leads, you should be utilising the same approach — closely tracking what works and what doesn’t, and doing more of the former and less of the latter. Don’t get caught in the never-ending cycle of staying in a safe place and avoiding change, which of course was bred in us by millions of years of navigating the wilderness and surviving predators. The next important step involves recruitment marketing automation. Collect all information about your target group. Create an inventory for the actions they take, the behaviour they display on your website, the content they find interesting, etc. Then use this knowledge to offer them appropriate content at the right moment. Qualify (score) all actions. Depending on their behaviour, you can very precisely divide the content you offer into what is of interest to them at that moment in time While traditional recruitment practices remain effective, they can be pretty slow and can lead to lost opportunities. In this modern-day when everything can be done online, there are always new techniques worthy of consideration. Here are five useful online tools you can use to help boost your online recruitment lead generation: Meet Alfred — LinkedIn Automation, it runs in the background viewing profiles, making connections and sending messages. They are always updating the system with new features. Worth the money. Lempod — Always wondered how people go so much engagement on average posts. This is the answer. Join relevant pods to automatically get likes but from relevant people in your industry. $5 to join 1 pod which could have 60 people in it etc. Hubspot — What they offer for free is amazing. CRM, Email notifications, website forms, automation and a fantastic LinkedIn tool. You can connect your Outlook or Gmail and set up email automation for free. SourceHub — It’s free and so easy to use — a brilliant boolean tool which can be used with LinkedIn, Twitter and Github — you can be very selective with your search and find your target markets. Feedly — I use this on a day to day basis. I have all my content sources organised in categories and can share across my social platforms and blog instantly. If you struggle to find content to share — then this is the tool for you. Not every recruitment or talent acquisition organisation has the budget to recruit a marketing manager, and while it may be in the long-term plan, there is a way to get started today. I specialise in Recruitment Marketing — from building websites to coming up with lead generation strategies, digital marketing and SEO. Get in touch today to discuss this more detail or visit my website https://duncanjcarter.co.uk

https://blog.duncanjcarter.co.uk/the-future-of-recruiting-is-marketing-and-5-top-tools-for-lead-generation-e1371140361b

['Duncan Carter']

2020-11-26 14:21:22.252000+00:00

['Marketing', 'Recruitment', 'Website Design', 'Lead Generation', 'Recruitment Marketing']

About Written Tales

pixabay.com Who is behind Written Tales? I would like to introduce myself. My name is Kevin, a writer just like you trying to build a reader base. Why? I was tired of how the publishing business works. How some charge writers a fee to submit their work. Others make the writer wait for months without hearing a word. How the entire process can be discouraging for new authors. Then, a cord struck within. I had a desire to create a publishing platform. A program to help writers grow their talent and promote the work they write. And from this “Written Tales” was born. The Goal The goal of Written Tales is to give new and seasoned writers a platform where they have an uncensored voice. A stage where their work can reach maximum exposure through multiple social platforms. Without creative arts, innovation will die. Society will tumble into the abyss of ignorance. And critical thinking will become a lost art. Writers need an uncensored platform for their voices, and a community to help them grow. Due to this need, I decided to fund the project because I believe in the cause. Uncensored? We are not reckless in what we publish, but we are open-minded. We believe in free speech and will protect it even if we do not agree with the author’s position. Some creative works may offend, others will bring happiness. And this is the beauty of a platform that does not restrict a person’s view. Again, we will not publish reckless writing. But, writing that leads to lively debate, we will. Final Comments We are here to help bring literature back to the forefront of society through short stories, flash fiction, and poetry. If you would like to be a part of this cause, please join as an author, or support us by signing up for the Written Tales newsletter.

https://medium.com/written-tales/about-written-tales-d64a809d2cee

['Written Tales']

2020-11-20 11:26:29.287000+00:00

['Poetry', 'Publishing', 'Fiction', 'Writing', 'Written Tales']

“People Get Ready!” Spotlight on Vanilla Fudge’s Mark Stein

Spotlight Central: We’re told that while playing with that group, you and Tommy Bolin jumped onstage and started jamming with Carlos Santana in front of 7000 people! Mark Stein: That was a great gig! The Tommy Bolin Band was opening for Santana in Albuquerque, and there were a lot of folks there. We jumped up on stage and I got up on the keyboards and Tommy, of course, got on the guitar and we just started jamming and having a ball up there. It was an incredible night and just a great experience; I can remember hanging out with Carlos afterwards just talking about music and talking about all the bands of the day — it was a very, very cool trip, for sure. Spotlight Central: You also played for a crowd of 50,000 people at Mile High Stadium opening for Peter Frampton where you got an extended standing ovation after your name was announced following your solo. How gratifying was that? Mark Stein: That’s when Peter Frampton had his huge Frampton Comes Alive record; I think it was in 1976. We had the gig opening for Frampton in Denver, and it was an incredible day. I think there were 50,000 people there. I had a big following from Vanilla Fudge from the late-‘60s, and I used to do this really cool solo with the band and I do remember after the solo was over, Tommy announced my name. It was a pretty inspiring ovation, so that was a cool moment, for sure. Spotlight Central: The fans not only appreciated what you were doing there in the moment, but were also honoring you for your work with Vanilla Fudge. Mark Stein: Well, Vanilla Fudge was really strong in that market because we had toured with Led Zeppelin in Denver and had played a lot of big shows there. Spotlight Central: And after that, you worked with Alice Cooper, with his Welcome to My Nightmare tour of Australia and New Zealand. What was that like? Mark Stein: That was pretty crazy! It was a really elaborate show — probably at the time, the most visual rock and roll show on the planet. It was a long, long journey to the Southern Hemisphere. And I do remember it was a really good band, and playing huge venues in Perth, Adelaide, Sydney, and Melbourne, Austrailia, and over in Auckland, New Zealand, too. At the time, it was the biggest-grossing tour of all time in the Southern Hemisphere — and I remember that when I first got down to Australia, even though Vanilla Fudge had never toured there, I found out that our records were huge sellers in that part of the world and I remember being greeted with a lot of positive vibes, for sure. Spotlight Central: In the ’70s and ’80s you toured or recorded with a who’s who of artists including Dave Mason, Rod Stewart, and Michael Jackson. We’ve heard that — and we don’t know if it’s true — but there’s a story out there which suggests that at a Frank Zappa concert an anonymous fan once yelled out, “You guys stink — bring on the Fudge.” But you were friends with Zappa, weren’t you? Mark Stein: Oh, man, I heard that story. And you know where that was? I read that was at Westbury Music Fair, but that was probably from a show back in 1967. Frank was brilliant, man, and he was a great guy. Frank and the Mothers of Invention did a lot of shows with Vanilla Fudge on the East Coast back in those days. So, yeah, we did become friends. He really liked the Fudge, and I liked him a lot, and we used to talk a lot. One night, he saved my ass, ok? We were partying for a couple of nights — I don’t think I slept for a couple of nights — and my voice was completely hoarse. I was freaking out and I remember I was in the dressing room talking to Frank and I said, “Man, I don’t know how I’m gonna get through the show tonight.” They were doing the sound check and he just said, “Look, man. I’ll take care of this. Don’t worry.” He sat me down and he calmed me down. He gave me some tea and honey, and he said, “Now drink this and take it easy. Have a positive attitude and just believe you’re gonna get through the night tonight.” He really befriended me that day, and that night, and I did get through the show. Even though I had a pretty hoarse voice, that was really cool what he did, and over the next year we’d run into each other often. We played lots of shows together and had a nice friendly relationship. He was really a cool guy, and he left us way too young. Spotlight Central: And so ahead of his time, too. In the early 1980s, Vanilla Fudge did a benefit concert in New York City. When Atlantic Records heard you guys perform there, they wanted the group to get back together. You did, and you recorded your 1983 reunion album, Mystery, and you also did a tour in 1987 which produced a live album. Was your approach to music in the 1980s different or similar to the approach Vanilla Fudge took in the 1960s? Mark Stein: What happened was: when we reformed to do this Mystery album, we wanted to change with the times. It was the ’80s when we started doing that record, and this was the time of The Police, and Toto, and a lot of really great pop songs and pop arrangements, and that’s kind of where we were going with that. After the record came out, a lot of the diehard fans weren’t happy with it because it didn’t really have the Vanilla Fudge sound of the ’60s. It was an ’80s sound, which is what we wanted. Spencer Proffer was producing us — he was in the middle of producing a band called Quiet Riot at the time, but they hadn’t made it yet. The Mystery album was supposed to be the big comeback album of the year. Unfortunately, we were in the middle of some difficult legal problems at the time, and it really got in the way of the momentum of the music. It’s a real shame, too, because I thought that was a really good record. And, actually, I think it was Billboard that spotlighted the title track, “Mystery,” and touted that it could be a Top 20 single. But because of all of the problems, Atlantic dropped the ball on it, and that was the end of it. But there were songs like “Golden Age Dreams,” and “Mystery,” and a song called “Under Suspicion.” If anybody Googles the Mystery album and checks out those tracks, I think they’ll find them to be pretty cool. Spotlight Central: And speaking of a cool track, in 2001, you recorded a cool version of “America the Beautiful.” What inspired you to do that? Mark Stein: We had been watching the towers come down, and a couple of days after 9/11, my wife, Patty, and I were checking out the news and we saw these amazing dogs — these search and rescue dogs — that were climbing over all the rubble and getting burned. Some of them were even dying from the heat and the exhaustion — they’d have them combing the site and they’d be giving them oxygen, and intravenous, and all kinds of stuff — and I was saying, “This is amazing.” I’d always been patriotic but, after that, I was feeling super patriotic, and I wanted to do a version of “America the Beautiful.” I put together a bunch of really cool musicians and went into my friend’s studio and we recorded it. I put it up on my website and all the donations coming from my website for “America the Beautiful” went to the organization that services the search and rescue dogs, and we raised a bunch of money. Actually, Whitey Ford — who at the time was a really good friend of mine — and his wife, Joan, gave a nice donation to the organization. So that’s what inspired “America the Beautiful.” Spotlight Central: In 2003, you recorded a solo album, White Magik, which features “America the Beautiful” and a few other cover arrangements, in addition to seven original songs. As a songwriter, when you create songs, do you find yourself mainly composing at the keyboard, or can ideas pop into your head at any time? Mark Stein: Usually, it works for me when I’m sitting at the organ or the piano and I’ll come up with a groove, or a lick, and I’ll say, “Wow, that really sounds cool!” — or maybe I’ll start singing a hook out of the blue, and then I’ll start writing a story and lyrics around the hook. For different songwriters, it can come in different ways, but for me, it usually starts with the keyboard — and, sometimes, it’s just simultaneous when the ideas come out. Spotlight Central: And speaking of keyboards, not long ago, you worked as a featured artist with drummer Carl Palmer as a vocalist, keyboardist, and organist, playing on his 2018 Live: Carl Palmer’s ELP Legacy album. How did that come about? Mark Stein: Carl Palmer put his ELP Legacy tour together to honor Emerson, Lake and Palmer, and he was looking for a singer who could also play keyboards. He saw me on TV with Vanilla Fudge on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, and he called his manager and said, “Can you contact Mark Stein to see if he’d be interested in doing a couple of shows with me?” I called Carl in England and we hit it off really well. We went out and we did a handful of shows and that was a great experience, actually, playing Keith Emerson and singing Greg Lake at the same time. In fact that was one of the most challenging things I think I’ve ever done. Spotlight Central: Absolutely! Mark Stein: But I did it in my own style, you know? I could never play like Keith Emerson, but I can play like Mark. And the people dug it, and Carl dug it — he had a great band — and it came off really well. Spotlight Central: More than a half-century following its creation, you, Carmine Appice, and Vince Martell, along with bassist Pete Bremy, are still performing as Vanilla Fudge. We’ve seen you in concert on several occasions where you play hard rock versions of songs like The Monkees’ “I’m a Believer” and The Doors’ “Break on Through to the Other Side,” but one of our all-time favorite Vanilla Fudge cover songs is “People Get Ready.” Can you tell us more about that particular arrangement and if you enjoy performing it as much as we do listening to it? Mark Stein: “People Get Ready” was originally done by The Impressions with Curtis Mayfield. And The Fudge — the original guys, when we were kids — we sang really well together. We were like a street corner group — a doo-wop group — the blend was so good. We used to do songs like that in the car; we used to sing on the way to shows. Then we got to rehearsal and we came up with this arrangement of “People Get Ready” probably around 1966 and, I guess, still to this day, it’s one of the fan favorites. And I actually dedicated that song to Martin Luther King after he was assassinated back in 1968. I remember dedicating it to him at the New Orleans sports arena, and they started throwing molotov cocktails out of the stands. Our manager was really angry with me. He said, “Don’t you know where we are? We’re in the Deep South!” But I was young and I was an activist, and I had that kind of attitude and I really didn’t care — plus I was getting patted on the back by my peers in my age group — but the business people were freaking out. But, hey, that’s the way it was, man. A lot of racial divide was going on back then — it was a big crisis — and, yeah, it was crazy times.

https://medium.com/spotlight-central/people-get-ready-spotlight-on-vanilla-fudges-mark-stein-f7294cd400bc

['Spotlight Central']

2021-02-20 14:51:17.378000+00:00

['New Jersey', 'Rock And Roll', '60s Rock', 'Music', 'Rock']

Gamifying the Math Classroom

By facing the catastrophic events successfully, the teams can also earn items. I plan to have some rare items such as ‘Life saver’ which will allow the guild the team belongs to be saved in case they are unsuccessful in diverting a catastrophe, or regular items like ‘100 Food’ that would help in building homes. Badges: Badges are used in gamification to represent non-linear accomplishments. These could be for a scoring streak — diverting three catastrophes in a row, or displaying certain traits. For example, if a team had exhausted all 3 attempts for a set, but they persist and still decide to submit the correct answer knowing they won’t get any points, they can get a ‘Motivation’ badge. These are some badges I found on Badgewallet.com and which are a great inspiration to me. Ladebalken means micro-projects, which is kind of what the catastrophic events and SMILE cards are. Badges by themselves do not have any value. However, to make the game interesting and help with the jeopardy effect, I have associated some point value to each badge which will be revealed at the end of the term. Thus, there are always benefits to collecting badges. Gold: Gold is one of the resources that a team can win in certain categories, as shown above. At any point of the game, a guild can exchange gold for points to move up the leaderboard. The Leaderboard: The leaderboard in the classroom would display the top 3 teams in two areas: Strand-wise: Strands are the broad areas in which math skills are divided. In the Alberta math curriculum, these are Numbers, Patterns and Relations, Shape and Space and Probability and Statistics. The teams that have solved the most questions for a content area, for example, Numbers, would be displayed on the leaderboard. Specialization-wise: These are the teams that have showcased their ability in applying Math concepts to multiple areas such as landscaping, agriculture and food. A guild leaderboard. The current winning guild forms the government. They get to decide something such as the next set of SMILE cards to other teams. When a ship runs out of water, they must do an extra activities to fix that, e.g. build a well. Apart from the above, there would also be a board that display the number of cards completed by each team, and guild. My role: Teams will collect the SMILE cards in their area of interest from me. Once they complete a level for it, i.e., they have solved the cards and I am satisfied that they have met with the learning goal, they can move on to the next level. If a class is 80 minutes then at least 15 minutes of the class would be dedicated to team work, whether they can complete the SMILE cards together or keep working on the concepts that were covered in class that day. When creating the cards, I would be noting down for myself the learning objectives that each covers and would let them know, for example, “you can now apply your number sense skills to Level 2 of Agriculture”. Students are welcome to work collaboratively outside of the class as well and access the computer or their devices to look up possible solutions. In reviewing their solutions, I am looking for the methodology that they applied as well as whether they got to the right answer. For example, there might be a team who solved a question in a way that I had not thought of before. For such a team, there would be a badge called ‘Fresh Eyes’ because they have shown me a new way to approach the problem. I would give feedback for each question and I plan to have one-on-one conferences with the teams when I am returning the set they submitted. The SMILE cards do not have a time limit. It is in the hands of the students to do as many as they can during the course of the school year, based on the strategy that their guild has decided upon. The catastrophic events, however, work differently. They would be set up by me, once for each unit in the curriculum, and would need to be solved by the students in that week. I imagine them to be more elaborate, needing time for them to come up with a hypothesis, collect data and present their answers to the class in a creative manner. For example, towards the end of the year, an artifact could be to build a map of the planet that we have explored. For teams that would have completed most of the SMILE cards, they would have a more comprehensive picture of the world they now inhabit. Rebalancing: This is the hardest one to implement and think through. Here are two ideas that might work, with varying levels of complexity for implementation. If you know other ways to keep all students motivated to play the game, please let me know in the comments! Option 1: Reshuffling per month Every month, to ensure that the teams are well balanced and everyone is contributing to solving the puzzles and making the planet a place to live on, the teams would be reshuffled. Similar to how people can move between guilds, the reshuffling would provide this opportunity. Using the Kagan technique, the teams (and with them, the guilds) would be put on quadrants by points earned so far: High, Med-High, Med-Low, and Low. High students should be grouped with Med-Low as often as possible. Same with Med-High and Low. The idea is that High students will be overly frustrated with someone so much lower and the Low will feel the same about the High. This would prevent one student doing all the work. Let us consider two teams belonging to different guilds. Let’s say Suzie and Sam have 410 points while Tammy and Rod have 1000. When reshuffling the teams, I will consider both Suzie and Sam have individually 410 points and Tammy and Rod have 1000 each. To equalize the teams, I would put Suzie and Rod in one team, now with 1410 points and Tammy and Sam in the second team, also with 1410 points. Thus, after the reshuffling, the teams will be back to the same points again and can start afresh. Disadvantages of this technique: This takes away the team-work element that I want to emphasize in the game and leaves almost every outcome to be decided at the end of the term where the students are in their final teams and guilds. Option 2: Clawback mechanisms As we wrap up the first unit in the class and more SMILE cards become open to the students to try out because they now have the skills to try them, competition would become more apparent. Clawback mechanism are when certain mechanics in the game are adapted according to where the teams are – for example, if a team that was at 10th position is the first one to complete the 2nd level of a set of SMILE cards, they could get bonus points to bring them back into the game or better items. Also, the exchange rate of gold can be higher for leading teams than for teams who are further down on the leaderboard. I could also introduce a tax system where each week, a guild would have to pay certain points as taxes based on the number of points that they have. Similar to real life, there would be tax brackets that they would want to be under to not be taxed highly. Disadvantage of this technique: I do not want students to stop themselves from trying out higher levels of SMILE cards or strategize in such a manner that they hand in everything at the end of the game, getting taxed the least over the term. Though I do not foresee this happening at the moment because the next level of SMILE cards will not be given to them unless the previous level has been solved. Thus, while they may be able to delay getting some points, they would have to hand over the cards to move forward in the game. The Winner: Both points and gold are associated with the individual as well as the guild. If teams are reshuffled, as explained above under Option 1, it would be based on points, not on gold. Thus, the final teams at the end of the term and the gold that each member has can affect the final outcome of the game. The guild with the maximum points at the end will gain control of the planet. It would be a celebration of efforts by everyone. Support from Educational Theories and Best Practices In the article above, I explored the five educational theories that we have to think about as educators when we think of gamifying learning for our students. These are scaffolding, self-determination theory, motivation, distributed learning and retrieval practice and episodic memory. Let’s now take a look at how each of these are incorporated in my classroom. Scaffolding Scaffolding involves giving students hints, clues and feedback throughout the learning process. In the game environment, this is incorporated through group work and different levels of difficulty for the SMILE sets. There are multiple chances to get points for solving a set correctly. Since I am actively involved in the process of reviewing student progress, I will provide appropriate scaffolds. Self-determination Theory Self-determination theory says that people are motivated when they have autonomy, i.e, they feel in control fo the situation, they feel competent to complete the task at hand and are able to showcase their learning to others. The choice of SMILE cards in specialization and level give teams autonomy in exploring their interests within the game. The different levels of SMILE cards increase their competency and confidence as they can progress to the next level only after solving the prior level. Though the leaderboard only shows three teams, there would also be a board for badges for the teams. Thus, teams would be able to share their progress with the rest of the class at all time. Motivation Motivation can be intrinsic or extrinsic. However, both types exist together in any educational setting. The badges and points serve as extrinsic motivators because they can visible to all teams. Students might work harder to be on the leaderboard or have the most number of badges. On the other hand, having the ability to choose and then ask for the next level of SMILE cards is intrinsic motivation because it gives the teams a sense of accomplishment when they hand in their work and receive a brand new set which they are now capable of solving. Distributed Learning and Spaced Practice and Retrieval The students will learn the concepts little-by-little everyday. At the end of each day, they will have some time to work on their chosen SMILE set. Since the different levels cover increasing number of concepts, they would be able to refer back to what we covered in the class many chapters ago at times. The catastrophic events will likely use multiple concepts and this will allow for spaced practice as well. Episodic Memory Episodic memories contain information about life experiences, usually associated with a particular time or place and are typically tied to emotions. The setting of the game and the transformation of the classroom into a planet (you can bet there will be much decoration) will help students relate their adventures in exploration to concepts and remember them better. I particularly hope that the catastrophic events lead to episodic memory.

https://medium.com/a-teachers-hat/gamifying-the-math-classroom-ea2d3788aa00

['Kriti Khare']

2018-09-08 23:24:51.484000+00:00

['Gamification', 'Education', 'Teaching And Learning', 'Mathematics', 'Mathematics Education']

Can You Ever Un-Want Something? (Why Desire Is Permanent)

If you are, or have ever been in this predicament, it may seem like the most obvious solution is to un-want the things you feel you can’t have. But the attempt to do this often leads down a path of denial that thwarts any unseen opportunities for said desire to manifest, even partially. In other words, unless we have outgrown a specific desire through a personal evolution and moved onto even greater desires, we cannot simply expunge a desire from our minds because our inability to achieve it is causing pain. A Specific Desire Is A Permanent Manifestation Of A Much More General One It may be helpful to first understand the roots of the thing that we wanted to have or have happen, the more general and underlying desire that caused us to focus on a specific thing or experience that we felt would bring it to us. Relationships, for example, are often a manifestation of our desire to be adored and accepted. At times when relationships feel more distant to us, therefore, it is helpful to take a more introspective approach to the conflict and evaluate the types of acceptance and adoration we may be denying ourselves more generally. Desire for success in a particular job or on a particular project may be a projection of our desire to feel significant. During the process of working towards succes in that particular field, it may be helpful to find where significance is accessible in the present moment and hoan in on it. Practicing being successful on a smaller scale makes the grand vision feel less out of reach and more in alignment with your current trajectory. What To Do When You’re Convinced You Can’t Have What You Desire The first thing to understand is that it is not helpful to “give up” on any particular thing that seems unlikely at the moment. Of course, anything is possible, but that’s not the reason why. It is simply a waste of time to have a funeral for the thing that . We have to make peace with what the current reality while understanding that reality is infinitely greater than the current moments. It is essentially impossible to set goals without becoming attached to the results. It is our attachment to specific results, however, that causes great pain when they are not as we envisioned. What we can do here is understand how smaller and attainable goals over an extended period of time help us to develop a better sense of how the overall outcome will unfold. Setting smaller goals sharpens our sense of achievement to a point where we can really gauge what it takes to make bigger things happen. The Purpose Of Desire Of course, it seems like the purpose of a desire is to serve as an instrument of torture when we cannot attain it. And perhaps this is a fair assessment for one who has tried to let go of many unfulfilled dreams. But the purpose of desire is not to cause agony, it is to be a sort of lighthouse for us trying to navigate the murky waters of everyday. Boredom, adversity, confusion, addiction, depression could all easily become such focal points if we did not have a great desire to gaze at while we move forward. No matter how far away you feel from the things you desire, there is always room to appreciate their existence, for that in and of itself puts you closer to attaining them.

https://medium.com/heart-of-the-issue/can-you-ever-un-want-something-why-desire-is-permanent-678ea39430db

['Kelly Fleming']

2021-06-08 23:25:33.932000+00:00

['Self Improvement', 'Mental Health Awareness', 'Desire', 'Self Love', 'Self-awareness']

Non-primitive non-linear data structures: Trees

Speaking of Christmas trees, let’s shake one-two before the carols — like our fathers and their fathers before them. Literally. Now, when it comes to data storage, using linear structures, be it linked lists and arrays or even stacks and queues, we have accountability over time complexity as the size of our data increases. That is, the larger the data being stored, the more time it takes to extract this data or manipulate it. ‘ Ohh well great! You’ve shown me how to store data only to give me the cons afterward?! What on earth!’ Hold on for one moment, will you! That’s why this piece is here. The non-primitive non-linear data structures. As with family lines, from grandpa to great grandpa and yourself, so is the same applied to data structures. A little theory before we get into the why. We’ll start off with the parent; the root. It’s from here that everything emanates. Just like a Linux directory structure. The / directory. Our tree root has two ‘children’, A and B , defined by engineers as nodes . From here, we see B with its own pair of children, 'C' and 'D' of whom C proceeds to get a single child node 'E'. We might as well call C a parent at this point. The little lines marking the links between parent and child would be named edges . Following a specific path to the final child, for instance, following through to E would name this bottom descendant a leaf node or external node. It's the last child in this specific path with no children. The same applies to A and D. Depth of nodes The number of edges from the root to the node. In our case, E would have a depth of 3. Height of a node How far is the smallest child from it in this specific path? B, for instance, will have a height of 2. Given there are two edges before we get to the furthest descendant in its path. Depending on how many children it has, how far is the furthest child of a node? How many nodes does this child have? Height of Tree The height of a tree’s root node. Degree of Node The number of children of a node. Above, C has a degree of one while B has that of two. A practical train of thought. We have data to be queried from an API REST endpoint. Our system has users, profiles, and articles. Thinking logically, a user profile is a child node of the user’s endpoint. We will have to get a user to log in, get the token, and query the profile based on the token. Something like this: So in your thought process, seeing as it is, software development is more of thinking than writing code, it would make sense to create a user model before a profile . Our User model is the parent, the root. Compare this to having a linear data structure. We could go on to break trees into more individual types: a) General Tree b) Binary Tree c) Binary Search Tree d) AVL Tree Binary Tree A tree, as displayed above, in which case parents have at max, two children. Due to this, the children are referred to as the left and right child. Think of how we might have this in decision trees, where we perform an action based on a condition. To elaborate further, we have the below groups. Full Binary tree Every node of the tree has two or zero children. Perfect Binary Tree The tree internal nodes have two children. All leaves also have the same depth. A perfect uniform. Balanced Tree If the height of the left and right sub-tree at any node differs at most by 1, then the tree is called a balanced tree. So in the case of the perfect binary, if either of the last child nodes had one more child, one and only one, it would become a balanced tree. It’s a strange way of calling something balanced, I know! General Tree Consider a binary tree. Any type of binary tree, but without limitations to what number of children a node can have. Do you want 4? Do you want 17? Go ahead and fill your database or whatever it is your structuring. Binary Search Tree A different way of looking at Binary search trees if you may. Here, the left nodes are always smaller than their parents in terms of the value they possess. The right nodes, however, are a little cocky, always having more value than their parents or being equal. ‘ Well, that’s not right. I’ve never seen this man in my life!’ Used maps/dictionaries before? Yeap. binary search trees you deserter! Searching for a specific item in an array of 100 or 200 might not be a problem. Increase this to 10 000 or 1 000 000 items, however, no one wants to be the user. AVL Tree Named after Adelson, Velsky, and Landis, this is a self-balancing binary tree in which each node has extra information — the balance factor- whose value is either -1, 0, or 1. You remember heights, right? Well, the balance factor comes in as below: BalanceFactor = height_of_left_subtree — height_of_right_subtree Whenever a tree is out of balance, AVL trees work around this by rotating nodes. Whether moving the right node to the left or the right, or left-right rotation or perhaps right-left rotation. What this means is that at one point, the right node which seemed heavy/ larger to the left will become the parent and hence the parent becomes the left child while the left child becomes the new right child and so on. think of it in terms of the hour clock. It will rotate itself in either direction until the tree is balanced. More detail on this can be elaborated on in a later conversation. Keep an eye up! Conclusion We’ve taken a bucket load of information. Trees and searching, children, and siblings. What is all this knowledge without implementation? Fire up that laptop one last time this year and think of how you could have consumed that endpoint differently. Take a sabbatical, if you may, and have the rest you need, then come back and break the time complexity barrier. Write more efficient code, more productive code, and let’s make the user experience smoother. Here, TheGreenCodes

https://medium.com/@marvinkweyu/non-primitive-non-linear-data-structures-trees-b7a19693cb3f

['Marvin Kweyu']

2020-12-16 18:42:38.401000+00:00

['Software Architecture', 'Datastrucutre', 'Software Engineering', 'Software Development', 'Algorithms']

An Ode To Skyrim: Cloud District

Oh, do you come here often? of course you don’t I don't know why I bothered stopping I am a very important person, you know, I own the farm chillfurrow? the jarl asks for my advice of course who to keep alive, and who we want dead oh I’ll just leave you be, this has gone over your head.

https://medium.com/@danos/an-ode-to-skyrim-cloud-district-ae248a9f8064

['Dan Martin']

2020-12-20 21:39:29.585000+00:00

['Skyrim', 'Humour', 'Poetry', 'Elder Scrolls', 'Videogames']

Leadership Agility Online-Seminar with Michael Hamman

COVID-19 has generated a global disruption of a magnitude few of us now living have ever experienced, reminding us that we truly do live in world of volatility, unpredictability, complexity, and ambiguity — we live, that is, in a VUCA world. We believe, that everyone should be able to show Agility in her Leadership. So we invited Michael Hamman, US-author and Leadership Coach for a Online-Seminar. In this free four-part series about Leadership Agility / Agile Leadership, we will dive into these three territories of our leadership and establish for ourselves a baseline understanding of what it means to lead — within ourselves, our families, our communities, and our workplaces — in a VUCA world. The sessions are interactive and highly conversational. Expect to be inspired, challenged, and equipped with practical wisdom to take home to work with you. Michael created a short introduction video for us. See live what he has to tell us about this topic. Have fun. More Information and tickets. Please consider a buying a donation ticket. All donations will go to Plan International, whose “strategy is to work with vulnerable children and especially girls so that they can learn, lead, decide and thrive. “(https://plan-international.org/organisation/strategy )

https://medium.com/holisticon-consultants/leadership-agility-online-seminar-with-michael-hamman-7a3ec2301a21

['Catherine Colombo']

2020-06-30 14:19:47.930000+00:00

['Agile Development', 'Free', 'Leadership', 'Vuca World', 'Online Seminar']

How To Use A Business Model Canvas To Create Your Own Assets

2. Entrepreneurial Business Proposal (Option B) In this project, you will imagine yourself as an entrepreneur establishing a business after graduation. You will prepare a focused and creative entrepreneurial business proposal for your enterprise. Think of this as an ‘elevator pitch’ where you present your business idea to potential funders. As you come up with your business proposal, try to identify real problems in society, create innovative solutions, and commercialize those solutions to a target market. You can create a one-person digital business for example. Or you can learn to sell on Amazon or Etsy. You can establish your freelance company and use online platforms to share your online work. You can start a café, a restaurant, a consulting/training company, a technology company, a social media company, and whatnot. The sky is the limit. Try to demonstrate creativity, insight, reflection, and depth. Innovation, integration, and synthesis are critical. Use your best creative skills and talents. What are you really curious and passionate about? Your business proposal should have the following sections (each of these should be very focused/brief): 1. Executive summary: Summarize your business idea as an elevator pitch. Where is your unique value proposition? 2. Business description: What is your core or your “secret sauce” which is not easily duplicated? How do you define your sustainable competitive advantage? How does this business idea relate to your passion and goals? 3. Your product /service: How do you design and build your product or service? How do you develop the idea, technology and passion necessary to get started? Think about your impact and contribution you want to make if this business is successful. 4. Market analysis: What about the competition in the market? How do you differentiate your business in this market? 5. Marketing plan: Who are your customers? (A profile of your targeted customer) How do your customers access/reach your product or service? What is the process for acquiring a targeted customer? 6. Financial/operational plan: What metrics need to be put into place to determine if your product/service is successful (or not) early in the process? How do you make money? How do you scale to widen and diversify the revenue stream? 7. Creative advertisement/poster: Create an A4 poster for your business; which will be your advertisement. Please note that the points above are intended to help you structure and write your business idea, but you do not have to strictly follow this structure or answer all the questions from 1 to 7. It is your business idea, you are the owner and the entrepreneur and it is up to you how to narrate or present it. The applicable word limit for the written part (main body) of this assignment is 1500 words. Please feel free to use concept maps, figures, tables, and visuals as these do not count towards the word count. Appendices (i.e. seminar and lecture evidence materials) are not counted. Indicative Notes: 1) At the heart of this assignment is independent thinking and creativity. We want you to take ownership of your ideas and express them passionately and eloquently. The structure is less important. How you visualize and represent your ideas in an engaging and interesting way is more important. Think of it as an exercise in imagination. We encourage you to play, create stories, dream of possibilities, and incorporate your own strengths and passions. 2) There is no one best way to write up this assignment. There is no one right answer. You will need to find and develop your own ‘right’ answer. It is your playground and you are encouraged to play/experiment with crazy, risky, creative, imaginative business ideas. You will need to find your own voice and incorporate that voice into your pitch. 3) This project does not require you to write an advanced business plan with all its functional, operational, and financial details. In this sense, do not think of this assignment as a traditional business plan. It is more like an elevator pitch for your business idea. As we live in a world of information overload, people do not want to read very long business plans or business reports. Try to make it compelling, visual, and creative. Make it interesting to capture attention. 4) Try to illustrate the basics of how you would pitch and initiate your business idea. We do not want you to delve into all the details of your market analysis report or your marketing communications strategies or your projected financial statements for the next five years. Please remember that this module focuses on the big picture, rather than the managerial functions. We want you to conceptualize, design, and integrate your business ideas into an exciting business proposal. 5) Demonstrating evidence of your module learning and engagement with module materials is a critical aspect of this assignment. Therefore, the appendices are very important. You will need to incorporate and apply the toolkits/models/skills we have discussed and learned during the lectures and seminars. Please incorporate these in the form of tables, figures, and visuals. Feel free to apply multiple perspectives, frameworks or toolkits that are relevant (such as business model canvas, design thinking tools, benchmarking, six hats thinking).

https://medium.com/an-idea/how-to-use-a-business-model-canvas-to-create-your-own-assets-ebebc254b2d7

['Fahri Karakas']

2020-11-27 03:56:29.965000+00:00

['Personal Development', 'Art', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Business', 'Self Improvement']

How Python Decorators Work: 7 Things You Must Know — Codefather

Decorators are something you will encounter in your development journey. Let’s find out how Python decorators work and how you can use them. What is a Python decorator? A Python decorator is a feature (or design pattern) that allows to enhance the logic of functions, methods or classes without changing the original code. To represent a decorator in Python you can use the @ symbol followed by the name of the decorator. In this tutorial we will go through 7 things you must know about Python decorators. We will start with a simple example and then we will keep building on it to make the learning process a lot easier. Enjoy it! 1. Get Started with a First Decorator Example To understand how Python decorators work we will start with a simple function called print_message(): def print_message(): print("Original message") A decorator takes a function as input, adds some functionality to it and then it returns the function. What does it mean? In other words a decorator provides additional functionality to existing code (e.g. a function) without changing the original code. But, how does it do it without changing the original code? Here’s how… We will create another function called print_additional_message(). This function takes as an argument another function called func. Inside this function we will define another function called wrapper() that does the following: Print another message. Call the function func() that as mentioned before is passed as an argument. Finally the last line of the print_additional_message function returns the wrapper function… …here is the code: def print_additional_message(func): def wrapper(): print("Decorator message") func() return wrapper We call it wrapper function because this function is a wrapper around the original function. In other words it can perform operations before and after calling the original function. To decorate a function you can use the @ symbol followed by the name of the decorator function above the definition of the function to be decorated. Here is how we can apply the print_additional_message decorator to the print_message() function: @print_additional_message def print_message(): print("Original message") Below you can see the full code: def print_additional_message(func): def decorator(): print("Decorator message") func() return decorator @print_additional_message def print_message(): print("Original message") print_message() And the output when we execute our program is… Decorator message Original message So, as you can see the first message comes from the decorator and the second message from the print_message() function. Now, let’s move to something more complex… 2. How to Use a Python Decorator With a Function That Takes Arguments Let’s dig deeper in the concept of decorators… In this example we will look at how to use Python decorators to increase the security of your code. Firstly, I will define a list of numbers and a function called update_list() that updates the elements of my list by appending an additional element. def update_list(original_list, new_element): original_list.append(new_element) return original_list numbers = [1, 2, 3] print(update_list(numbers,5)) Before continuing verify that this code works as expected. The output should be: [1, 2, 3, 5] Now, let’s say this function is part of a bigger system and I want to make sure only logged in users can update this list. How can I do it with decorators? Define a dictionary called user. The attribute logged_in tells us if the user is logged into our system or not. user = {'name': 'codefather', 'logged_in': False} Then we can write the verify_user() function that will be used for our decorator. This function takes as argument another function that we will call func. Also inside this function we will define another function called wrapper. Do you remember? This is a similar approach to the one we have used in the previous example: def verify_user(func): def wrapper(original_list, new_element): .... .... Notice how the wrapper function takes as arguments the same arguments of our original function update_list(). Inside the wrapper function we verify if the user is logged in or not: If the user is not logged in we print an error message and we return from the function. Otherwise we return the original function And finally inside the verify_user() function we return the wrapper function object. def verify_user(func): def wrapper(original_list, new_element): if not user['logged_in']: print("User {} is not logged in!".format(user['name'])) return return func(original_list, new_element) return wrapper The wrapper function is nested inside the decorator function. This is one of the features of Python that allows to nest functions inside other functions. To apply the decorator to our update_list() function we use the @ sign followed by the name of the decorator just above the method definition. The full code at this point is: def verify_user(func): def wrapper(original_list, new_element): if not user['logged_in']: print("User {} is not logged in!".format(user['name'])) return return func(original_list, new_element) return wrapper @verify_user def update_list(original_list, new_element): original_list.append(new_element) return original_list numbers = [1, 2, 3] user = {'name': 'codefather', 'logged_in': False} print(update_list(numbers,5)) Let’s find out if this decorator works! The logged_in attribute for the user is False and the output we get when we run the program is: User codefather is not logged in! None Good, the decorator prevents the user from updating the list. If we set logged_in to True: user = {'name': 'codefather', 'logged_in': True} Our program allows the user to modify the list. 3. Adding a New Argument to a Decorated Function Let’s improve the code of our decorator to give more details to our users. If the user is not logged in we print an ERROR message, if the user is logged in we print and INFO message. This can be very useful considering that often applications print hundreds of thousands of messages… …so the more the details, the better. The verify_user() function becomes: def verify_user(func): def wrapper(original_list, new_element): if not user['logged_in']: print("ERROR: User {} is not logged in!".format(user['name'])) return else: print("INFO: User {} is logged in".format(user['name'])) return func(original_list, new_element) return wrapper And now let’s see what happens if we add a new argument to the function update_list(). The function will also add this new argument to our list. First of all, we will test our function after commenting the decorator. In this way we can confirm the function works fine: #@verify_user def update_list(original_list, new_element, additional_element): original_list.append(new_element) original_list.append(additional_element) return original_list numbers = [1, 2, 3] print(update_list(numbers,5, 7)) Action: make sure the output matches the following: [1, 2, 3, 5, 7] This code works fine without decorator but when we enable the decorator and rerun the code, we get an error: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/opt/python/codefather/decorators_tutorial.py", line 49, in print(update_list(numbers,5, 7)) TypeError: wrapper() takes 2 positional arguments but 3 were given This error is caused by the fact that in the definition of the wrapper function we haven’t included the new argument. So, we will add the new argument to the definition of the wrapper function and also to the return statement in the else branch of the wrapper function. Here’s how the verify_user() decorator becomes (no other changes to our code): def verify_user(func): def wrapper(original_list, new_element, additional_element): if not user['logged_in']: print("ERROR: User {} is not logged in!".format(user['name'])) return else: print("INFO: User {} is logged in".format(user['name'])) return func(original_list, new_element, additional_element) return wrapper Action: Verify that the decorated method works fine for both values of the logged_in attribute, True and False. 4. Python Decorator Using args And kwargs Even if the code in the previous section works, this is not an ideal way of handling arguments. Imagine if we had to add multiple arguments to the update_list() function. Every time we have to do that we also need to update the wrapper function in two places. Can we handle this in a better way? Instead of passing exact names for the arguments of the wrapper function, we can pass two arguments that are used in Python to provide an arbitrary number of positional arguments or keyword arguments: args and kwargs. Args is used in Python to pass an arbitrary number of positional arguments to a function (written as *args). Kwargs allows to pass an arbitrary number of keyword arguments to a function (written as *kwargs). We will use *args and **kwargs in two places: In the definition of the wrapper function. When we return the function we are decorating inside the wrapper function. Our decorator becomes… def verify_user(func): def wrapper(*args, **kwargs): if not user['logged_in']: print("ERROR: User {} is not logged in!".format(user['name'])) return else: print("INFO: User {} is logged in".format(user['name'])) return func(*args, **kwargs) return wrapper Notice the two places in which *args and **kwargs are used. To make sure it’s clear how args and kwargs work, we will print the positional arguments (*args) and keyword arguments (**kwargs) at the beginning of the wrapper function. def verify_user(func): def wrapper(*args, **kwargs): print("Positional arguments:", args) print("Keyword arguments:", kwargs) if not user['logged_in']: print("ERROR: User {} is not logged in!".format(user['name'])) return else: print("INFO: User {} is logged in".format(user['name'])) return func(*args, **kwargs) return wrapper When we execute the code in the same way we have done before… print(update_list(numbers,5, 7)) We only see positional arguments in the output because we are not passing any keyword arguments (make sure logged_in is True: Positional arguments: ([1, 2, 3], 5, 7) Keyword arguments: {} Let’s update the call to the update_list() function to pass keyword arguments instead: print(update_list(original_list=numbers, new_element=5, additional_element=7)) The output changes: Positional arguments: () Keyword arguments: {'original_list': [1, 2, 3], 'new_element': 5, 'additional_element': 7} This time there are no positional arguments and we can see the keywords arguments passed to the function. 5. How to Define a Python Decorator With Arguments Now I want to show you how you can pass an argument to a decorator. But, why would you do that? Let’s say your application has multiple modules and you want to know which module is logging a specific message. We can do that by passing an application_module to the decorator and then use that value when we print an ERROR or INFO message. In this way when we look at our logs we know immediately which application module has logged a specific message. Here is how we want to use our decorator: @verify_user('SecurityModule') To pass an argument to our decorator we need to add another level of nesting to the code of our decorator. We basically add another level of function that returns our decorator. Don’t forget the additional return statement at the end of the verify_user() decorator function. Here is the new implementation of the decorator: def verify_user(application_module): def decorator(func): def wrapper(*args, **kwargs): print("Positional arguments:", args) print("Keyword arguments:", kwargs) if not user['logged_in']: print(application_module, "ERROR: User {} is not logged in!".format(user['name'])) return else: print(application_module, "INFO: User {} is logged in".format(user['name'])) return func(*args, **kwargs) return wrapper return decorator At this point we can also pass the application_module to the two print statements inside the if else statement of the wrapper function. This is the output we get when we execute our code and logged_in is True: SecurityModule INFO: User codefather is logged in [1, 2, 3, 5, 7] And here is the full code: def verify_user(application_module): def decorator(func): def wrapper(*args, **kwargs): print("Positional arguments:", args) print("Keyword arguments:", kwargs) if not user['logged_in']: print(application_module, "ERROR: User {} is not logged in!".format(user['name'])) return else: print(application_module, "INFO: User {} is logged in".format(user['name'])) return func(*args, **kwargs) return wrapper return decorator @verify_user('SecurityModule') def update_list(original_list, new_element, additional_element): original_list.append(new_element) original_list.append(additional_element) return original_list numbers = [1, 2, 3] user = {'name': 'codefather', 'logged_in': False} print(update_list(original_list=numbers, new_element=5, additional_element=7)) Action: test this code also when logged_in is False. 6. Improve Your Python Decorator With The Functools Wraps Function Before completing this tutorial I want to show you a common problem that occurs with decorators. It’s something that can make troubleshooting your programs harder for you and for those who use the Python modules you write. Let’s start from the code at the end of the last section… We will add a docstring to the update_list() function and to the wrapper() function. And we will also add two print statements to print the name and the docstring for the function passed to the wrapper function. def verify_user(application_module): def decorator(func): def wrapper(*args, **kwargs): """Wrapper function for verify_user decorator""" print("The name of the function called is", func.__name__) print("The docstring of the function called is", func.__doc__) ... ... return wrapper return decorator @verify_user('SecurityModule') def update_list(original_list, new_element, additional_element): """Add two elements to a list""" original_list.append(new_element) original_list.append(additional_element) return original_list When you run the code you will see the following messages: The name of the function called is update_list The docstring of the function called is Add two elements to a list So, the name and docstring of the update_list() function are visible inside the wrapper function. Now, let’s print function name and docstring for update_list() after its definition: @verify_user('SecurityModule') def update_list(original_list, new_element, additional_element): """Add two elements to a list""" original_list.append(new_element) original_list.append(additional_element) return original_list print("The name of the function called is", update_list.__name__) print("The docstring of the function called is", update_list.__doc__) Something weird happens, look at the output… The name of the function called is wrapper The docstring of the function called is Wrapper function for verify_user decorator The wrapper function in our decorator hides the metadata of the decorated function. To solve this problem we can use the wraps function of the functools module. Functools.wraps is a function decorator that preserves the metadata of a decorated function. Let’s see how it works… from functools import wraps def verify_user(application_module): def decorator(func): @wraps(func) def wrapper(*args, **kwargs): ... ... return wrapper return decorator There are only two changes to our code: Import wraps from the functools module. Decorate the wrapper function with @wraps(func). This time when you run the program you get the right info back: The name of the function called is update_list The docstring of the function called is Add two elements to a list Makes sense? 7. How to Deepen Your Decorators Knowledge One of the best ways to deepen your Python knowledge and in this case your decorators knowledge is by looking at code used in Python frameworks. The example below comes from the Django framework. I have removed the implementation of the _wrapped_view() function so you can focus on the structure of the decorator. def make_middleware_decorator(middleware_class): def _make_decorator(*m_args, **m_kwargs): def _decorator(view_func): middleware = middleware_class(view_func, *m_args, **m_kwargs) @wraps(view_func) def _wrapped_view(request, *args, **kwargs): ... ... return _wrapped_view return _decorator return _make_decorator Can you see some of concepts we have covered in this tutorial? In this code we can see the following: Multiple levels of nested functions that as explained before are at the core of the decorators. that as explained before are at the core of the decorators. A wrapper function called _wrapped_view. called _wrapped_view. The wrapper function takes as arguments *args and **kwargs . . @wraps(view_func) decorates the wrapper function. decorates the wrapper function. Return statements at each nesting level. Do you see how much easier is to understand this code now? Conclusion To recap, in this tutorial we have seen how to: Define a simple function decorator to add extra functionality before and after the function that gets decorated. Apply a decorator to a function that takes one or more arguments. Add a new argument to an existing decorated function. Use *args and **kwargs to define a flexible decorator function that doesn’t need changing even if the number of arguments passed to the decorated function changes. Pass an argument to a decorator. Decorate the wrapper function with functools.wraps() to preserve the metadata of the original decorated function. Deepen your decorators knowledge by looking at decorators in other projects (e.g. the Django framework). I understand that the syntax of decorators can be quite tricky to remember, especially if you are just getting started with them. I suggest to go through this code again and try writing this code by yourself from scratch. This will help in the future when you will have to write a decorator or even if you will have to understand a decorator written by someone else. Congratulations for getting to the end of this tutorial and let me know in the comments if there is anything else you would like to learn about decorators. Get full source code for this tutorial

https://medium.com/@codefather-tech/how-python-decorators-work-7-things-you-must-know-codefather-daf1a452341d

['Claudio Sabato']

2020-12-20 16:12:04.701000+00:00

['Python Decorators', 'Python Programming']

The Easy Way to Upgrade Smart Contracts

Please take a look at my newest article about upgradability: https://medium.com/@k06a/the-safest-and-probably-the-best-way-to-upgrade-smart-contracts-ea6e619d5dfd Recently, we at BitClave discussed smart contract upgrading problems and we are going to propose a new way to deliver upgrades. As all Ethereum developers know, once deployed to pseudo-random address, smart contract can’t be replaced with newer version. Usually token upgrades are accompanied by migrating all holder’s balances from one version to another. This is quite difficult in case of hundreds of thousands of holders — the amount of transactions (even batched) for migration purposes can take a few days to be mined and take hundreds of thousands of dollars Ethereum fees. There are several interesting articles proposing upgradable smart contract patterns (usually with external storage): But we are trying to propose a solution to already existing (deployed) smart contracts with millions of records. We just imagined a way to upgrade smart contracts without all records migration. And we think it is possible. Look at simplest token smart contract: contract MyToken is ERC20Basic, Pausable { mapping(address => uint256) balances; function MyToken() { balances[msg.sender] = 1000000; } function balanceOf(address _acc) public view returns(uint256) { return balances[_acc]; } function transfer(address _to, uint256 _amount) public { require(balances[msg.sender] >= _amount); balances[msg.sender] -= _amount; balances[_to] += _amount; } } The first and the only requirement is to pause/stop old smart contract to prevent it state changing forever: contract MyToken2 is ERC20Basic, Pausable { MyToken prevVersion; function MyToken2(MyToken _prevVersion) public { require(_prevVersion.paused()); prevVersion = _prevVersion; } } The main idea is to perform migration lazily for every account on any transaction from it: mapping(address => bool) migratedBalances; function transfer(address _to, uint256 amount) public { if (!migratedBalances[msg.sender]) { balances[msg.sender] += prevToken.balanceOf(msg.sender); migratedBalances[msg.sender] = true; } // Usual ERC20.transfer implementation } All constant / view methods should delegate its calls to previous version of the contract in cases where an account is not yet migrated: function balanceOf(address account) public view returns(uint256) { if (!migratedBalances[account]) { return prevVersion.balanceOf(account) + balances[account]; } return balances[account]; } Since the old smart contract is paused and the new contract is deployed, all holders are immediately ported and migration will be performed lazily in the first transaction of every holder. We have developed base classes to perform lazy migration of BasicToken , StandardToken and BurnableToken based on ERC20 implementation of OpenZeppelin solidity library: https://github.com/bitclave/TokenWrapper You can discuss the idea here: https://github.com/OpenZeppelin/zeppelin-solidity/issues/795 One more thing 👍 One of the most frustrating aspects of ERC20 tokens, that there are no legal reason to send tokens directly to smart contracts with transfer method (wallet developers, if you read this, please warn users about transfering tokens to any smart contracts with transfer method). Within smart contract, it will be impossible to identify who sent this tokens to it. For this purpose ERC827 was proposed to combine in single transaction calls of approve method on the holder’s side and transferFrom method on the smart contract side. But as you may suspect some people have already sent some tokens to smart contracts with transfer and sometimes it is the token smart contract itself: There is a way to handle especially this mistake: sending tokens to the token smart contract itself: https://github.com/OpenZeppelin/zeppelin-solidity/issues/748 This method will give your smart contract to reclaim any ERC20 tokens, mistakenly sent to it: function recoverLost(ERC20 token, address loser) public onlyOwner { token.transfer(loser, token.balanceOf(this)); } We dropped an e-mail to the listed projects, which tokens are pausable/stoppable: OMG, EOS, TRX. Hope they will like the idea to allow recovering some lost tokens in future. As you may see on links, people are still continue sending their tokens to smart contracts.

https://medium.com/bitclave/the-easy-way-to-upgrade-smart-contracts-ba30ba012784

['Anton Bukov']

2019-04-12 09:11:46.997000+00:00

['Smart Contracts', 'Decentralization', 'Blockchain', 'Ethereum', 'Dapps']

Blue light isn’t main source of eye fatigue

Blue light has become a bad rap and is to blame for sleep deprivation and damage to the eyes. Personal electronics emit blue light more than any other color. Blue light has a shorter wavelength, which means it is high energy and can damage the eye’s delicate tissues. It travels through the eye to the retina, a collection of neurons that convert light into synapses, which are the basis of vision. Laboratory studies have revealed that exposure to high-intensity blue light can damage cells in the rat’s retina. But epidemiological studies of real people tell a different story. As an assistant professor of optics at Ohio State University, I teach optical research, including working with the retina. I also see patients in college teaching clinics. Often, my patients want to know how to keep their eyes healthy even when they are staring at a computer screen all day. They often hear about “blue-blocked” lenses that are advertised on the Internet. But to protect your vision and keep your eyes healthy, blue light is not your biggest concern. Built-in protection One way to visualize blue light and damage the retina is to consider the sun. Sunlight is mostly blue light. On a sunny day, it is 100,000 times brighter than your computer screen. However, several human studies have shown that exposure to sunlight and age-related eye degeneration is a disease of the retina that causes central vision loss. Staying outside on a sunny afternoon won’t damage the human retina, and so does your dark-skinned tablet. A theoretical study has recently reached that conclusion. Why, then, is the disconnect between the effects of blue light on rats and human eyes? The human eyes are different than the rats. We have protective elements such as eye pigment and natural blue-blocking capability of the stellar lens. These structures absorb blue light before reaching the retina. That means you have to throw away sunglasses. They are more beneficial than protecting your eyes from the blue light of the sun. For example, wearing sunglasses slows down cataracts. READ MORE Related posts

https://medium.com/@wellbeingstyle.com/blue-light-has-become-a-bad-rap-and-is-to-blame-for-sleep-deprivation-and-damage-to-the-eyes-aaec69e56f36

[]

2019-10-13 04:44:42.189000+00:00

['Computers', 'Health', 'Blue Light']

If Your Company Goes Bankrupt, Don’t Blame Covid-19.

If Your Company Goes Bankrupt, Don’t Blame Covid-19. It might be that you were stupid and made poor decisions. Or not. Warning, rant coming. But I’m going somewhere thoughtful with it. Well, sort of. I think. “Due to Covid-19…” Bloody HELL. If I hear this inane, mindless, foolish, ENDLESS opening salvo when I am placed on hold one more time I committing hari kiri. As if we didn’t know, first (although the Administration et.al. sure doesn’t, may they cough their way to hell). And then, what’s really ripe, is that now every single reason for poor service, poor training, bad business practices on the face of the planet seems to get blamed on Covid. Nope, dope. In so many cases, Covid stripped the varnish off your fake wood footlocker and now we can see it’s particle board. On top of that it’s rotting. From the stumbling, bumbling, ridiculously awkward processes now imposed on folks by a local medical facility (which do little to nothing to impose social distancing) to the worst hold times on the planet, we customers are seeing how mediocre service really is. Probably always was. Because folks who didn’t know their shit to begin with can’t lean their chairs back to get Bob, who does know his shit and who used to sit next to you, to do your work-and his own- all day. No Bob? Now we know you’re an idiot. On the other hand your star performers, those you didn’t dump unceremoniously because look, Covid, are completely overwhelmed because so many of them are doing the work of four people because, well you laid off so many, and because, well, Covid. In response to a piece I just did today, Jim Roye penned a story that is so very indicative of this I got his permission to share it in full. I have done some very minor editing but nothing that changes the story: ... I just went through something similar yesterday. The back tire on my grandson’s bike went flat. Needs a new tube. Shouldn’t be a big deal to fix. The largest bike shop in the greater Boston area just happens to have a location two towns over It’s less than five miles away from home. So I check their website. They say I can buy online and pick up curbside. PERFECT! But they don’t list any tubes on their website. The site does say “We carry thousands of items that aren’t on the site in our stores! Call us if you don’t see what you need!” So I call. I get a lovely five-minute rundown about their response to COVID and how easy it is to shop on their website for any of the thousands of items they carry. Then the system finally switches over and connects me to the local store. And I get another message saying that while the store is open, they’re so busy they can’t answer phones at this time. It ends with a “You can always shop online using our website…” line as I hang up. OK then. Strike two! I’m going that way later in the afternoon anyway. I’ll swing by and get the dang tube. So sure enough, two pm yesterday I pull up in their parking lot. I get out of my truck, mask up and head for the door. On the door there is a sign saying that they aren’t open to the pubic due to COVID and if I need anything I should feel free to order via their website…. I ended up going to a nearby Tractor Supply store, picked up a tube patch kit and came home and ordered a tube from Amazon. I guess the local bike shop doesn’t want my business. They won’t be getting it in the future. (author bolded) Folks, if you’re this thoughtless about your customers, then you don’t need to be running a business. You need to find a mail room job. Photo by Bernard Hermant on Unsplash If I asked for a story like this from all my readers, my computer would crash. We are in a watershed moment to find out just how many folks are running outfits that shouldn’t be in business. People are at the helm when they suffered too many concussions without a helmet. Here is a piece from Forbes which points out who benefited from Covid: Those are obvious. However you didn’t have to be in the beer biz to avoid going bust. You simply needed to consider what people needed, how to make it easy for them to get it and pay for safely and conveniently. Above all, and nobody has done this yet, kindly consider the fact that this entire nation is sick and tired of being on hold for an hour or more to speak to an incompetent, bored, pissed-off rep whose kids are screaming, whose dog is barking, and she doesn’t possess the sense Sam Hill gave a newt to help you solve your problem. “Your call is important to us.” Here is our collective response: Screw your long hold times and your poorly-trained, overworked, exhausted, bubble-gum-chewing reps. Hire more of those 30+ million folks who need work. TRAIN them. PAY them a decent wage. CUT the hold times. Because we’re going to remember who failed, and when we are back out in force at some point, we will speak with our feet and much-reduced wallets. Finally, have the simple common decency to put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Like Jim’s story, above. How? By simply asking yourself, if I were a customer of my own company, what is my experience? This is the single best possible time to play Undercover Boss with your company. Good people learned critically-important, life and company-saving lessons by being on that show. They found out who they had hired (thank you) and who was buying from them (thank you). You do not get that kind of information avoiding the awful truth. Covid is a right sheep dip in the awful truth for a whole lotta folks. Photo by Judith Prins on Unsplash So to that, folks, whether you own a bike shop or the brew pub or Boeing, find out what being a customer is like right now. AND find out what being a beleaguered customer service rep is too. I’m not without mercy, but I am without patience. For corporations which do not invest in helping those people establish some kind of reasonable schedule, professional equipment, decent work hours and enough reps so that they can breathe between diaper changes are, kindly, cretins. I could say Amazon but I won’t. Just saying. Cretin. (kindly he did figure out how to get folks what they wanted, so long as you don’t count his front line employees, but that’s another article). Cretin. Did I just say that? Try calling in. Try reaching someone. Try giving that person, after your arm has gone to sleep, a typical issue. See what happens. If you’re horrified, honey, get off your ass and fix it. Just saying. Because quarantine is a fine time to figure out where the cracks are in your corporate foundation, big or small, macro or micro. You cannot ask for better feedback. Jim’s story is classic. Just, classic. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t had this kind of thing happen. Wanna talk about the new normal? This is part of what it looks like. When you stop monetizing people and start humanizing their experience as both employee and customer, you might learn something, as did the better of the Undercover Bosses. They got heroes’ treatment. Why are we handing out hero buttons for doing what we should be doing in the first place? But that’s just me. For my part I am watching those stories about who protected jobs (VF Corporation, for example, with 50k employees worldwide, did not lay off anyone. Kindly. Can you say leadership?) Who continues to push the D&I goals at at time when Covid becomes an excuse to say it’s not the time. (VF is doing that, too.) Yeah it is. I am watching those stories about which companies, large and small, redirected their product lines to help save lives. Compassion, anyone? Yes, of course they’re making money. You have to in order to stay in business, but when you take into account the massive costs to retool in midair, that argument doesn’t hold much water for me. But that’s just my take. I am watching those corporations who go public with foolish BLM support statements to get the PR but don’t have the backbone to put that PR into action. There are so many ways to get this done I don’t have room to list it all. Transition is by definition the single best time, a time of utter chaos, to take a long hard look at what is not working and Bloody. Well. Start to fix it. Want some ideas? Please see this: So I watch this, and I look for those folks committed to good work, taking care of their employees, focusing on fixing what’s broken both in their companies and in society, and doing their level best to listen to and respond to their customers. They have earned my business. The rest, Jim and I, and I suspect a great many others, are taking a walk to fix our bikes elsewhere. Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash Gain Access to Expert View — Subscribe to DDI Intel

https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/if-your-company-goes-bankrupt-dont-blame-covid-19-35e735af2c74

['Julia E Hubbel']

2020-09-07 17:43:42.001000+00:00

['Covid 19', 'Customer Service', 'Business', 'Transitions', 'Quarantine']

Books

This poem is a part of the ‘Multiplier of Five’ Poetry Series, where I am writing 5 (five) poetries in 5 (five) days, each in precisely 25 (twenty-five) words. Every day, I am taking a resolution (for the day or to continue onwards) & expressing the motive into a poem. On the next day, I’m sharing the highlight of the previous day’s resolution effort at the end of the note. Today is day #2, poetry #2; the theme for today’s resolution is ‘bringing back the habit of reading books every day,’ titled the poem as ‘Books.’ I used to read books every day, and due to stress and other related reasons, I couldn’t have that peace properly during the last year. I’ve missed a part of me that helps me to keep calm and quiet inside my mind. Finding some dedicated time to read books every day is my resolution I’m taking today to continue for the upcoming time. Yesterday’s highlight: Stepping outside and embedding myself with heart-connected resolutions was the path I started from yesterday. I had some wonderful time spent outdoors enjoying the colors of nature in the afternoon, had a home food fiesta, enjoyed conversational television shows and comedy with my partner, and had some good laugh out loud moments. When I finally rested my head at my pillow around 3.00 am, I had a good sleep for the night (vivid dreams are yet to come). Life is precious; we only have moments that we can’t even grab or hold, but only can cherish. And, I want to cherish memories with great reminiscences. Don’t you? The following is the first part of this poetry series:

https://medium.com/age-of-empathy/books-bf20b77d90f1

['Suntonu Bhadra']

2020-10-25 23:32:41.291000+00:00

['Books', 'Poetry', 'This Happened To Me', 'Poem', 'Resolutions']

Everyday items that will help in a snowstorm

If ATMs and credit card readers shut down during a winter storm, you’ll be glad to have cash at the ready. Keep cash just in case. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images “In a major emergency, oftentimes ATMs won’t be working and stores won’t accept credit cards, so it’s good to have extra cash on hand,” Michael de Vulpillieres, communications officer for the American Red Cross, told Insider. Fire extinguishers are important year-round, but especially during the winter. According to the Red Cross, home fires spike during the coldest months of the year due to various heating methods. “At the Red Cross, we see some major fires during extreme weather events like blizzards,” de Vulpillieres said. “You want to be careful when you’re heating your home, because there are certain fire risks.” He recommends exercising caution while using candles, fireplaces, and space heaters, which are often the cause of fires. Space heaters in particular should be placed on a flat, hard surface at least 3 feet from anything flammable. And never use your oven to heat your home. Read more: 10 dangerous mistakes to avoid during a fire Newspapers and maps can be used as insulation if you’re stuck in your car. Newspapers can help you keep warm. Photo: Billion Photos/Shutterstock Crumple the papers and stuff them under clothes to keep warm, de Vulpillieres said. Multiple different household items can be used to increase traction if your car gets stuck in the snow. Sand can help the tires move on slippery ice and snow. Salt can also help and will prevent the resulting slush from freezing again. Cat litter does wonders for tire traction, as well. If you happen to have some in your car, it’s worth using to get unstuck. Cat litter. iStock Floor mats in cars can also be used to increase traction. The mats can be placed under the tires to keep them from slipping. If you have none of these items in your car, find a nearby pine tree and sprinkle the needles in the snow. Pine trees. Photo: Creative Touch Imaging Ltd./NurPhoto via Getty Images In a pinch, pine needles and sticks can increase traction. Rocks can also be useful to get a car out of a snowbank. Adding weight to a car by pushing down on the hood or placing rocks on top of it can help increase traction when attempting to drive out of snow. Pulling a car out of a ditch is the most effective way to move it, de Vulpillieres said. “In snow, it’s better to pull than to push,” he said. Cooking spray has multiple uses during snowy weather. Cooking spray. Photo: Arina P Habich/Shutterstock Cooking spray can be used to keep car doors from freezing shut by spraying the corners. Spraying your snow shovel can also keep snow from sticking to it. Credit cards can be used to scrape ice and snow off a windshield. If you don’t have a snow brush or an ice scraper in your car, the edges of a credit card can get the job done. Insider Inc. receives a commission when you buy through our links. For more great stories, visit Insider’s homepage.

https://medium.com/insider/10-unexpected-items-that-can-help-you-during-a-blizzard-af7e453e802a

[]

2021-02-02 03:16:40.650000+00:00

['Red Cross', 'Blizzard', 'Snowstorm', 'Weather', 'Safety']

Design Uber’s Backend: A Systems Design Walkthrough

Uber Backend: System Design Below, we discuss the system design for this product. If you’re familiar with the SDI question, Designing Yelp, this may look familiar. We will modify that solution for the above use-cases. For Uber, our QuadTree must be adapted for frequent updates. If we use a dynamic grid solution from our Yelp problem, a few issues arise: We need to update data structures to reflect that active drivers are reporting their locations every three seconds. To update a driver to a new location, we must find the right grid based on the driver’s previous location. If the new position does not belong to the current grid, we remove the driver from the current grid and reinsert them to the right grid. Then, if the new grid reaches a maximum limit, we have to repartition it. We need a quick mechanism to propagate the current location of all the nearby drivers to customers in the area. Our system needs to notify both the driver and passenger on the location of the car throughout the duration of the ride. For these cases, a QuadTree is not ideal, as a quick update in the tree cannot be guaranteed at the speeds that Uber requires. If we don’t update our QuadTree according to every driver update, it will use old data that does not reflect the current location. We could keep the most recent driver position in a hash table and update our QuadTree less frequently. We want to guarantee that a driver’s current location is reflected in the QuadTree within 15 seconds. We maintain a hash table that will store the current driver location. We can call it DriverLocationHT . DriverLocationHT We need to store DriveID in the hash table, which reflects a driver’s current and previous location. This means that we will need 35 bytes to store each record: DriverID (3 bytes — 1 million drivers) Old latitude (8 bytes) Old longitude (8 bytes) New latitude (8 bytes) New longitude (8 bytes) Total = 35 bytes As we discussed previously, we assume one million drivers, which will require the following memory: 1 million * 35 bytes => 35 MB Now let’s discuss bandwidth. If we get the DriverID and location, it will require (3+16=>19bytes). This information is received every three seconds from 500,000 daily active drivers, so we receive 9.5MB every three seconds. To help with scalability, performance, and fault tolerance, we could distribute DriverLocationHT on multiple servers based on the DriverID to randomize distribution. We will refer to the machines holding this info the Driver Location server. These servers will also do the following:

https://betterprogramming.pub/design-ubers-backend-a-systems-design-walkthrough-c88f8959de97

['The Educative Team']

2020-12-23 16:19:16.787000+00:00

['Programming', 'System Design', 'Coding Interviews', 'Uber', 'Software Development']

Limestone-Like Natural Pools And A Spectacular Cascade

There are some tourist attractions throughout the world that everyone has to observe once in their lifetime. I considered writing a travelogue regarding Luang Prabang’s attraction and to include the Kuang Si Waterfall but quickly realized this spectacular cascade earned its own spot in the World Traveler’s Blog. The Kuang Si Waterfall (also spelled Kuang Xi) in Luang Prabang (Northern Laos) is one of the places where the hype certainly justifies the voyage and effort. Katharina (Kat) and I haven’t seen anything like this in Laos …wait..even South East Asia in more than four months! “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” — Mark Twain Once we entered the area we already felt the magic surrounding this place.

https://medium.com/world-travelers-blog/limestone-like-natural-pools-and-a-spectacular-cascade-204e2c2d6149

['Marcus Franke']

2020-12-29 20:43:18.378000+00:00

['Travel', 'Adventure', 'Nature', 'Forest', 'Laos']

4 Steps to Help You Process Complex Emotions

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash From studying trauma responses and cognitive behavioral therapy to going through somatic therapy myself, here are four steps to help process your emotions, based on all that I’ve learned. 1. Settling In The first step to process our emotions requires us to surrender, and it is the hardest of the four. Accessing the present moment means that we give up our right to experience reality on our terms, and learn to open ourselves to the vibrancy of our emotion, regardless of how it makes us feel. There are several different methods to settle in. The first is the highly effective method of utilizing our breath to settle into our bodies and minds. Take a few deep breaths, feel the energy of your body, see where there is tension, and begin to release it. We hold angst in our stomach, shoulders, neck, and many other places. Allow your breath to show you where you need to release, then do so upon the exhale. This is the physical act of surrender. From the physical act of surrender, we can then begin to surrender our minds. Here we become aware of our thoughts, and the sensations they cause. We relinquish the conscious desire for complete control. Surrendering to the mind grants us a deeper awareness of our thoughts, and is another layer to “settling in”. 2. Engagement Engagement is the process where we deeply access what we feel. After we have settled into our bodies and our environment, we can move into exploring our current emotional dynamic. This can be accomplished through several different methods. Meditation. Taking slow, deep breaths is the doorway to meditation. The first step of “Settling In” can naturally lead us to this method of engagement. Meditation allows us to tune in with the workings of our body, and to move through the emotional narratives of each part of our body. Because emotions — like anxiety — are stored in parts of the body, such as the chest or stomach, there will be an accompanying tightness that wants to be released in those places. Where do your emotions sit for you? Taking slow, deep breaths is the doorway to meditation. The first step of “Settling In” can naturally lead us to this method of engagement. Meditation allows us to tune in with the workings of our body, and to move through the emotional narratives of each part of our body. Because emotions — like anxiety — are stored in parts of the body, such as the chest or stomach, there will be an accompanying tightness that wants to be released in those places. Where do your emotions sit for you? Artwork. Whether it’s a few scribbles on a piece of paper or a full Mona Lisa, creating art allows us to engage with ourselves in a more grounded way than thinking does. We must give ourselves full permission to paint, draw, scribble, or craft whatever we are feeling and manifest it into visual expression. There is no room for judgment here because judgment prevents you from painting or drawing what you need to. Let your hand go where it must, and create the art with a curiosity about where your feelings are leading you. Paint as if you were the witness to your emotions. Whether it’s a few scribbles on a piece of paper or a full Mona Lisa, creating art allows us to engage with ourselves in a more grounded way than thinking does. We must give ourselves full permission to paint, draw, scribble, or craft whatever we are feeling and manifest it into visual expression. There is no room for judgment here because judgment prevents you from painting or drawing what you need to. Let your hand go where it must, and create the art with a curiosity about where your feelings are leading you. Paint as if you were the witness to your emotions. Journaling & Writing. Words are sometimes the only medium we can use to access our emotions. Whether through free association, a recap of the day, a short story or poem, or a rant expressing all the frustration you are dealing with, journaling allows us to pinpoint the foggy landscape of our emotional depths, and can lead us through the swamp one step at a time. Words are sometimes the only medium we can use to access our emotions. Whether through free association, a recap of the day, a short story or poem, or a rant expressing all the frustration you are dealing with, journaling allows us to pinpoint the foggy landscape of our emotional depths, and can lead us through the swamp one step at a time. Listening To Music. Finding a song, lyrical or non-lyrical, that matches our mood can be — pun intended — instrumental in guiding us through our mood. Music can bring awareness to our moods that can be challenging to access otherwise. But be careful, some of us will select songs merely to feel a certain way — sad, glad, angry — instead of engaging with the actual emotion we feel in the moment. Let the music say what you are having trouble saying, let it be the lantern that explores the inner world of your moods and emotions. Finding a song, lyrical or non-lyrical, that matches our mood can be — pun intended — instrumental in guiding us through our mood. Music can bring awareness to our moods that can be challenging to access otherwise. But be careful, some of us will select songs merely to feel a certain way — sad, glad, angry — instead of engaging with the actual emotion we feel in the moment. Let the music say what you are having trouble saying, let it be the lantern that explores the inner world of your moods and emotions. Physical Expression. Dancing, especially to music, exercising such as yoga or walking (or smacking a punching bag really hard), playing a sports game, and doing all things physical, give us the opportunity not only for the physiological release of our complex emotions, but it allows us to express ourselves — artistically — through movement. This process of Engagement doesn’t have to take long, but it does have to be true. We have to get to the point where we can allow our emotions to work through us. Some days one method may be our preferred doorway to our emotions. Other days, another method will be needed. We won’t always be able to make a piece of artwork or feel like working out. But we need something, even if it’s just a few breaths of meditation, to give our body the space to move through its own physiological state. “Engagement” can be hard because it is often messy. Writing through our emotions will very rarely end up in a neatly organized five-paragraph essay. The sculpture or painting we make might not have perfect proportions to be commercially ready to sell this holiday season. We may not look or feel like the zen master when we meditate. Instead, we may feel turbulent inside, unsure if we are doing it the right way. We may feel self-conscious while dancing, even if we are alone. But ask yourself: How would I move if I had all the confidence in the world? Move like that. We may be afraid to release our anger on the punching bag or in the sports arena. But also ask yourself: If not here, then where? The goal of Engagement is to allow the emotion to say what it wants to, uninhibited by the mind, by all the things you need to do, and by all the worries shouting at you from your brain. Engagement simply asks you to be and move with the rhythm of whatever you’re feeling, from peace and joy to anger, rage, and frustration. No emotion is off-limits. Remember, if you’re feeling it, it’s already there in the first place. Give yourself permission to feel what is there. 3. Staying With The Emotion What do we do with the actual emotion? We want to get in and out of our emotions as fast as possible so that we can reclaim a sense of (false) control with our minds. The skill we need to learn is staying with the emotion. This is an extension of surrender. Emotions want to be processed. When we engage with them through a journal or a piece of artwork, they are taking us on a journey, and we are telling a story through them. We need to allow this story to be told in its entirety until the emotion fades into something else, or dissipates entirely. Emotions are also communicating important information to us, and engaging with them gives us access to their knowledge. Sometimes they reveal wounds that haven’t been healed, limiting mindsets that are cutting short our chances of fulfillment, and damaging beliefs that do more harm than good. Our body holds great wisdom. We will often resist whatever emotion is within us. When we are blocking our bodies from feeling what they are feeling, we need to give ourselves permission to move through the actual emotion. We can say out loud or in our mind: It’s okay for me to feel this way. “Staying With The Emotion” is akin to listening to someone until they are done talking. When they are done, you may want to ask further questions. Why do you think that happened? Is there anything else you want to say? That’s interesting, do you think my estranged relationship with my father caused that? Is this pointing to a habit of dependency where I have to feel less insecure about my performance? Ask and be curious. There may be an answer waiting for you. 4. Making It A Habit After going through this process of letting the emotion move through you and cleanse you, you will likely feel really good. You will feel balanced between mind and body, more in control of your mood, and more excited to live your day. A strong tendency once we are in this space is to want to hold on to it. This is perfectly understandable. We are not used to feeling free within our bodies. When we finally do feel free, we want to squeeze every last ounce of that freedom to hold onto it forever. This leads us back to the initial phase of being locked up by bodies, where we declare war on our body instead of offering surrender. Just as we must surrender doing emotional turbulence, we must also surrender during emotional peace. We must surrender to the fact that the ebb and flow of life will take us back to negative emotions at some point. But we can also realize that the negative emotion doesn’t want to stay there for months on end. It wants to be processed and have the freedom to move through us, tell its story, and dissipate into peaceful energy. Before long, this process can become a habit, and we can experience great faith even during times of great anxiety. Because we will know how to let the emotion work through us, and we will know that emotions do not stay around forever. And we will know that this is a blessing.

https://medium.com/change-your-mind/4-steps-to-help-you-process-complex-emotions-b5bf4e55444f

['The Wishful Thinker']

2020-12-31 12:14:54.678000+00:00

['Therapy', 'Psychology', 'Emotions', 'Self-awareness', 'Mental Health']

Embroidered Bodies

Photo by Catherine Heath on Unsplash Embroidered Bodies your lips on mine, a honeypot — love dripping down from the corners of my mouth I lick it up shamelessly, its viscosity iridescent on my tongue pressed to your palm just before it cups my cheek we dance in the curtains watery sunlight embroidering our bodies to wine-drunk shadows — fading fast, our heads cut-off thrown back laughing you beam at me, purple-stained teeth the sun setting in your eyes — and I beg, don’t blink.

https://medium.com/a-cornered-gurl/embroidered-bodies-76cf156f6af9

['Alexa Thorn']

2020-10-26 10:18:12.967000+00:00

['Heartwork', 'Relationships', 'Love', 'A Cornered Gurl', 'Poetry']

Is Newfund useful?

Operating Partners Newfund now counts four full time operating partners dedicated to our startups. Zoé Mohl, Patrick Malka, Fred Krebs, and Henri Deshays Fréderic Krebs: Former CEO of Allocine, spends his time on marketing and communication of our portfolio startups. Concrete example: knows how to find the right partner/agency; gives his own input from the most trivial questions like an adwords campaign to the more complex issues that keep founders up at night like pricing and product positioning. Henri Deshays: Our US Partner but also our US expert. Said startup wants to move to the US: Henri will assess the likelihood of moving and accompany the startup through the different hoops of a transatlantic expansion. Henri will also help the company draft an equity story to increase chances of a successful follow-on fundraising round in the US. Patrick Malka: Co-founder of Newfund and ex-auditor (EY), CFO & CEO of listed companies. Helps startups structure their growth, get the figures to pilot the company and build the management team. Zoe Mohl: With a background in investment banking at JP Morgan San Francisco and strategy consulting working on due diligences in New York, Zoe is our strategy expert. She works around the clock to assist founders with any kind of transaction.. Each has their own area of expertise and is always available to help. But how do they remain up to date on the portfolio companies so as to avoid wasting entrepreneurs’ precious time?

https://medium.com/entrepreneurial-resolutions/is-newfund-useful-87fe93be3864

['Augustin Sayer']

2020-05-14 07:15:42.967000+00:00

['Statistics', 'Slack', 'Venture Capital', 'Entrepreneurs', 'Reporting']

The Dad Hammer Times

The Dad Hammer Times Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! This week’s Dad Hammer Times will be the last one of 2020. Over the next couple of weeks, we will take some time to recharge, think of new strategies for next year, and update our submission guidelines. We will still be available to post your wonderful work of course and add new writers as they look forward to joining us. However, for this newsletter, we want to give a quick update on the state of The Dad Hammer Pub, share this year’s top stories, and share a glimpse into what we are thinking for the future. State of The Dad Hammer Pub This year has been a good one, we have added many more writers, seen some amazing stories, and grown our following at a purely organic rate. All that to be said here is where we stand on a few things: Medium Followers: 325 Facebook Page Likes: 45 Twitter Followers: 42 I share this information with you because it is important to know that while we work hard to share your work when you publish it, we cannot always get the reach we want without our writers and readers being sure to connect on Facebook and Twitter. Please take a moment to “like” the Facebook Page, and Follow us on Twitter! 2020’s Top Stories These are some of our top stories from this year. If you missed any of them, be sure to jump in, read, clap and leave a comment! Again, if one of two of these stands out, show your appreciation for our writers, jump in, read, and share some encouragement with them! Where do we go from here? As we look to the future here at The Dad Hammer Pub, we wonder, where do we go from here? There will be changes for next year for sure. We will update just about the look of everything from the pub main page to the newsletters. We will also be updating our submission guidelines. Before we lose you, our plan is to make it easier to publish with us. While a lot of major publications are tightening down how they do things, The Dad Hammer pub wants to foster a culture of conversations and sharing viewpoints. Also, we want to partner with Dad bloggers, YouTubers, and Podcasters. So, if you have any of these specific channels and want to share more of your work on Medium, email me (jrh.medium@gmail.com) and we can discuss a partnership. Nevertheless, our goal is to build up fathers so we can build up our children. So, as you think about what you are going to write about or read next year, be ready because we are going to focus on making space to continually build up our children so they can see amazing things as they grow up. Thank You! Thank you again for writing and reading here at The Dad Hammer Pub. This space was born out of the need for a publication to make space for fathers to learn and grow and share their experiences. We can’t do that with you. We hope your family has a wonderful Christmas, Holiday, and New Year! Thank you again!

https://medium.com/thedadvault/the-dad-hammer-times-c778b49ca2d8

['Jack Heimbigner']

2020-12-21 13:59:39.358000+00:00

['Reading', 'Parenting', 'Family', 'Fatherhood', 'Newsletter']