fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
[Portfolio Update]
By: Ken, Cypher Core
Tags: Irisnet, Portfolio Updates, Celo, Regen Network, Cypher Core

ICO Analytics Ranks Regen Network ‘Top Ten’

ICO analytics has recently ranked Regen Network within the top ten most anticipated PoS projects of 2020. they’ve based this on the number of independent staking providers ready to support the launch of staking within each project. As we continue to get closer to Regen Network’s launch we hope to see even more recognition for the team as this project not only is working on some really cool stuff but also contributes significantly to the Cosmos ecosystem in many ways.

IRISnet Kicks Off the Summer Right

With the season's change, one thing continues to remain constant over the last two years and that’s a ton of updates coming from the IRISnet team every week. If you’d like to get the full rundown on each of these highlights check out their biweekly update series!

IRISnet Dev Team won Most Innovative/Deceptive State Machine Award in Phase 3

IRIS Foundation secondly implemented the community-centric delegation campaign & the second one-year token burn plan

IRISnet and Kava plan to integrate to enable greater DeFi Services for Interchain ecosystem

IRITA, the first enterprise consortium chain product in cosmos, is going to be used by BSN to support interchain interoperability

Community member Daniela Pavin interviewed IRISnet Dev regarding GoZ

IRIS Foundation secondly implemented the community-centric delegation campaign & the second one-year token burn plan

Technical Updates

Developed Rainbow v2.10, upgraded ‘Manage Wallet’, ‘Select Wallet’ functions

Released IRISplorer-GoZ v0.1.2.1

Added visualizer Map of zones in the navigation bar for IRISplorer-GoZ

Celo Announces Ambassador Program

Whoever writes for the Celo Foundation’s Medium page definitely knows how to write a call for action, especially when it comes to announcing an ambassador program. With that being said if you’re a passionate community leader who’d like to encourage the Celo narrative within your community I’d highly suggest you look into their program. Not only would this be a great opportunity to introduce your community to a growing project but it also helps put them at the forefront of an international movement that’s aimed at building financial inclusion across the globe.

STO Platform Talium Launches on Wanchain

Oracle innovation partner, Talium announced they’ll be launching their platform on Wanchain earlier this month. This initiative helps expand on Wanchain’s plans to increase resources to its private blockchains suite, also known as “Lanchains”. Check out Wanchain’s official announcement to learn more about what an STO is and why this is relevant to the Wanchain ecosystem.

Get in Touch

E-mail

Website

Twitter

Telegram

Instagram
Kapor Capital Partner Ulili Onovakpuri shares her Distance Traveled Story
By: Candase Chambers
Tags: Distance Traveled, Tech, Venture Capital, Kapor Capital, Healthcare Technology

Uriridiakoghene “Ulili” has a beautiful name, derived from Urhobo language in Nigeria meaning glory be to God. The strength of her name transcends into her presence and even into her passion for her work, something she’s gained through personal life experiences.

“ I think there were a couple of things in my life that I saw as obstacles but really were impactful and helped shape my identity.”

As a young child, Ulili was diagnosed with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis. She became very familiar with the insides of hospitals and emergency rooms, witnessing healthcare inequities first hand. Now as one of very few Black female Partners in venture capital, Ulili leads the Kapor Capital healthcare portfolio, just one of the many ways she works to have a positive social impact, something that’s also apart of the Kapor Capital thesis.

Through her investments, Ulili aims to help families and individuals avoid healthcare disparities and financial burdens due to healthcare treatment that she experienced herself growing up.

“You shouldn’t have to make the decision between am I’m going to let my light bill go off because I have to buy medicine. Here at Kapor Capital, I’m working on products that hopefully will help people not have to make those decisions.”

From the Hunter’s Point neighborhood of San Francisco to the University of California, Berkeley as a Level Playing Field Institute IDEAL scholar, to the Duke Fuqua School of Business, and now Kapor Capital, Ulili says that her distance traveled story is one of knowledge. Watch the video above to learn more about Ulili and to hear her distance traveled story.
A Fleeting Image
By: Avi Fleischer
Tags: Poetry, Emotions, Colors, Life, Meaning Of Life

Painting By: Judith Fleischer

A poem about the fleeting nature of life. (Authored in February of 2018)

So fleeting is this thing called life, we journey toward its end,

experiencing pieces of a puzzle we don’t truly comprehend.

The hues of our emotion paint a picture of our past,

as we hurtle toward a destiny that is not meant to last.

Youth a canvas all in white, not knowing what awaits,

feel caresses of a brush that which we know as fate.

Love so very true in reds, that beat within our heart,

shadows black take form as hate, which tears the soul apart.

Greens of joy and happiness, lush grass beyond compare,

sadness, shrouded depths of blue, the waters of despair.

Yellow screams of agony and pain which we endure.

Guilt and shame are shades of grey, a torrential downpour.

Earthy brown desires are that for which we lust,

the loss of which comes with age, like chrome begins to rust.

The image changing constantly as time plods slowly on,

taking shape in many forms, as the twilight replaces dawn.

We look into a mirror for the answers which we seek,

but we find no consolation as our eyes grow dim and weak.

The final touches on a painting created with much love,

as we realize that the destination is the gallery above…
Indicted Heart
By: J.D. Harms
Tags: Poetry, Relationships, Image, Love

Indicted Heart

A Poem

Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash

Say you’ll move a bit closer, say…anything, speak from altered coloured eyes the switching the stopping of any movement at all

sentenced to, apparently, watching you, creating all the narratives that won’t come out, that won’t be on stage here, trying to get something out of the audience…or giving out

that I was eminently foolish, flawed lover, that the changes don’t sweep through the dust quite fast enough, or they do but they left something behind, something to make a trail a reading

an indicted heart, threatening its own Rubicon, passing through the dyes of revenge and chaos, mixed in the snapping off of pieces that aren’t supposed to belong to this story

while engaging with the world took another breath, another step towards a spirit of reflection, but moaning deep harsh mine fallacious without a grip…the words become flowers made flesh.
When will my Siglo tokens be distributed?
Tags: Blockchain

Since we announced Siglo at the beginning of the year, we’ve been working non-stop to launch the network. Like most innovation, this is an iterative process. The Siglo wallet beta out and people sending Siglos … But you’re wondering: When will I get my Siglo token? If that’s you, then this post is for you.

Siglo Wallet is live with thousands of beta testers, mostly in Mexico and Colombia. Beta is an important word: the wallet is running on the Ropsten testnet. Some beta users have been issued Pre-Tokens, and they will be convertible 1-for-1 for Siglo tokens after the TGE.

If you are a non US resident and have Android phone, you can download it here. We’ll be adding new functionality in the coming weeks for Android, and an iOS app is in private beta. If you want to join the iOS beta, email dev@siglo.com.

We are getting closer to the public release of our protocol. This year has been a hell of a ride so far, but fighting for digital and financial inclusion isn’t a piece of cake. While we don’t have an exact date for the token generation event (TGE), we want to be transparent and share with you our schedule. Thanks for all your support and patience.

…So when will I get my Siglo tokens?
What’s New in SF Symbols 2
Tags: Mobile, Xcode, Swift, Sf Symbols, Programming

What’s New in SF Symbols 2

It’s not as big as Big Sur, but it’s still really big

Photo by Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash

Before SF Symbols, making icons for iOS apps used to present a major hassle for both the designer and the developer. A workflow would often look along the lines of this:

Plan the icon. Design it and make sure it aligns with your app’s message. Or go online and find an icon instead… … which would probably mean purchasing a license. After all the work, you can finally embed it into your app — only to find the font weight is off and you need to tweak it.

Google’s Material Design icons have been around since 2014, and websites like Font Awesome were launched even earlier. So when would Apple jump into the icon battle?

In 2019, Apple debuted their own set of icons, called SF Symbols. It was a huge gift for developers and designers alike, as in a truly Apple way, they were easier to use than any other icon pack.

Now, in 2020, Apple has decided it was time for a refresh. At WWDC20, they released the second generation of SF Symbols: SF Symbols 2. Here’s what’s new.
Advisor Brian Dixon Visits Foresting Seoul Office
By: Williams Nana Kyei
Tags: Cryptocurrency Investment, Blockchain Development, Advisor, Blockchain Technology, Partnerships

Brian Dixon pose inside Foresting’s Office

Brian Dixon, one of Foresting pioneer Advisors paid a courtesy visit to the company’s Seoul office Thursday, December 20.

Members of the strategy and planning team met him on arrival. Brian had the opportunity to also interact with some staff members, while he toured the Foresting office.

Prior to that, he was given a short briefing on Foresting’s roadmap and further discussed issues relating to investment, marketing, listing, and the Foresting App.

Equally elated to welcome Brian into the office, Foresting Founder, David Kim shared moments with Brian and later had photo-ops together.

Brian had traveled to Seoul to attend some business conferences, given lectures and signed partnership MOUs with some Korean-based blockchain organizations.

Team Foresting was excited to see welcome him and wish him a Merry Christmas and success in the New Year.

ABOUT BRIAN DIXON

Brian is the COO of Capital Innovators, an organization that provides venture investment and management to more than 100 companies in the technology, consumer products, and energy-tech verticals. He also manages digital assets, blockchain firms and advises for global blockchain projects including Foresting. An early investor and adopter of cryptocurrency, Brian has written books on Bitcoin and human consciousness.

See some of the photos below.
Pawns of Infinity
By: Mythili Iyer
Tags: Poetry, Infinity, Illumination, Newtons Cradle, Life

Poem on a GIF

Pawns of Infinity

A poem imagining life as a Newton’s cradle

This poem was inspired by this GIF | By DemonDeLuxe on Wikimedia Commons | CC BY-SA 3.0

Descending into the abyss

of fate and destiny,

we seldom realize

that we are just pawns

of infinity.

Waves in the universe,

rippling like sound,

unnoticeable,

until they hit us

and chase us like hounds.

Till we come to the conclusion:

meaningless was life.

Yet, we move on

despite the agony and strife.

Descending into the abyss

of fate and destiny,

we seldom realize

that we are just pawns

of infinity….
I Need Constant Affirmation. My sense of self-worth lies only in my…
By: Ask Olive
Tags: Life Lessons, Ask Olive, Advice, Comics, Self Worth

Dear Olive,

In recent weeks, I’ve come to a sad realization about my life. I’ve spent years of it chasing praise for everything I do. When I don’t get it, I tend to act out in negative fashion, thinking “someone’s going to notice my actions,” but all it does is piss everyone off and further compound the situation that I’m in. My sense of self-worth has become dependent solely on the accomplishments I’ve done, in order to prove to people that I’m doing something with my life.

The chase of praise goes back to one particular moment in my life. In the third grade, I was the member of my class picked to participate in the big spelling bee. I was so confident that I would do well, and I had everyone rooting for me. When the day of the competition came, I blew the chance I had and was eliminated on the first word, “chimney.” All the cheering-up from my classmates afterward couldn’t console me as I felt that I let them and my teacher down by my poor showing.

From that moment, I’ve spent every day since trying to earn good grades and generally trying to be a good person, in the hopes that I would be rewarded for my efforts. But all the praise, achievement, and recognition only increased the pressure to succeed and the expectations that I would live up to the hype. The chase for the near mythic perfection made for a difficult existence. This quest for perfection has even spread to my job, where I rack up the donations but I’ll be lucky if I get more than a “thanks” for my efforts. The one tangible accomplishment of my four years to date, I couldn’t toot my horn over it.

I spent my entire lifetime with the chip on my shoulder from being born premature and then diagnosed with cerebral palsy. Not much was expected of me considering the circumstances, but I’ve done my best to try and make a life for myself. It seems like I’m waiting for the day where someone tells me that the things that I’m doing are good enough. I hope I can escape this cycle of constantly needing praise to feel better about myself, I’m not sure how to do it, though.

Sincerely,

A Design for Life
MOU between APIS and KVI
By: Sophie Ha
Tags: Finance, Blockchain, Notice, Eng, Cryptocurrency

Hello. This is APIS Team.

APIS and KVI Chain(KVI) have signed an MOU.

About KVI Chain(KVI)

KVI is a project that has signed an official contract with Telkomsel, Indonesia’s state-run telecommunications company, and is a project to build a community and content platform named HAI.

KVI Coin is KVI Chain’s own token, which is used for payment in KVI-based applications, and is given to general users as activity and advertisement viewing rewards, and advertisers use it to pay advertising budgets.

Official website : https://www.kvichain.io/

Through MOU

Through this agreement, KVI Token, which supports the various content providers and payment services, and APIS PAY, which provides financial services for simple remittance/payment solutions, intends to proceed with technical cooperation and resource sharing. In addition, through this, we agreed to form a positive relationship with each other and to proceed with cooperation to utilize the expanded blockchain technology

Thank you.

APIS Team.

APIS Official Website｜ APIS PLATFORM(apis.mn)

Twitter ｜Telegram(ENG) ｜Telegram(KOR) ｜Telegram(JPN)
Babies Have a Lot to Teach
By: Harsh Kundulli
Tags: Haiku, Problem Solving, Love, Baby, Simplicity

I publish a haiku every day. See my other haiku here. Stay in touch here.
PeerAtlas — making a better World
By: Fernando Rega
Tags: Blockchain

I just came across this new project that starts their ICO on the 1st of May 2018. They will create a kind of a decentralized wikipedia for medical contents. In times that medicine struggles with new paradigms, I believe this will be a massive input for sharing this crucial info.

I’m supportive in all these ideas that pretend to change the actual reality for a better, and I cross my fingers about this project becoming a success.

You can learn more and become part of the project here:

Follow them on telegram: https://t.me/peeratlas

Go Peer Atlas, we count on you!
Inside the Minds of Tech Recruitment
By: Aphinya Dechalert
Tags: Ideas, Technology, Work, Programming, Freelancing

Inside the Minds of Tech Recruitment

And the things they see when on a hiring drive

Photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels

Getting a job is one of the hardest things when becoming a developer. Sometimes, you get hit with a Catch 22 of not having enough of the right experience but not being able to get the experience without having the experience.

While there is consistent demand in the industry, résumés seem to go into a deep dark hole known as the submission inbox.

I know because I’ve been on both sides of this mysterious inbox — both as a developer asking for the job and the person making the hiring decision.

These two experiences were during two very distinctive periods in my career. Here is some insider knowledge of what happens inside the hive mind of tech recruitment.
STK Progress Update: April 12th, 2019
By: Stk Token
Tags: Fintech, Tech Startups, Blockchain, Partnerships, Columbia University

This past week Miro was invited to present STACK at Columbia University to students and other tech start-ups! STK will also be teaching Blockchain at George Brown College in Toronto.

We are excited to share our learnings and experiences to help the next generation of tech start-up entrepreneurs and blockchain developers!

Miro at Columbia University presenting STACK.

April Offers: April’s offers and promotions have launched to help STACK members pack up + go on an adventure! Members can save money and plan their trips with Contiki, Bentley, Lyft, Esso and Shoppers Drug Mart offers while Purdy’s, Dessy and AUXE provides discounts for seasonal moments in the month. More details in the STACK app!

IN-HXOUSE Conversations Panel: STK attended IN-HXOUSE Conversations powered by Microsoft with panelists Bella Hadid, La La Anthony, Jennifer Rubio and Morgan DeBaun, moderated by Olivia Perez. The panel discussed what it means to be an entrepreneur in 2019, providing their unique perspectives based on personal & professional experience from different industries.

STK attended IN-HXOUSE Conversations powered by Microsoft with panelists Bella Hadid, La La Anthony, Jennifer Rubio and Morgan DeBaun, moderated by Olivia Perez. The panel discussed what it means to be an entrepreneur in 2019, providing their unique perspectives based on personal & professional experience from different industries. STK teaches Blockchain at George Brown: Our lead developer Thomas is teaching full stack development for the Blockchain Development Program at George Brown College.

That’s it for now, we’ll see you in two weeks with more to report. As always, join the conversation anytime on Telegram, Twitter, Discord and Reddit. If you’re interested in partnering with STACK or STK, get in touch with us. To download the app, visit the STACK website.
Seasons
By: Moyosore Sheriff Quadri
Tags: Poetry, Poem, Poems On Medium, Feelings, Seasons

Seasons

A poem

Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash

No happiness without sadness

Else, how would one differentiate the two

Happiness is appreciated when we’re sad

Sadness is understood when we’re happy

Like the seasons, they come

Like the seasons, they pass
“Know Me”
Tags: Poem, Relationships, LGBTQ, Men, Social Media

You don’t know me

But I know you’re reading this

You’ll tell yourself this isn’t about you

You don’t know me

Analyzing my rhymes

Deep diving in between my lines

Creating scenarios

That don’t exist

Running to point out my mistakes

Snatch up pieces of my past

You can stop your pathetic act

This isn’t your playground

You never got crowned

Hell, you don’t even come around

My stomping grounds

Your mouth is huge

Until some real shit pops up

Lusting after brown skin

But won’t even type Black Lives Matter

From the safety behind your screen

Did you think no one would notice?

Your true colors when you showed them

Throwing stones

As if you were created perfect

If so, why didn’t she think you were worth it?

You keep calling for her attention

And she acts like she never heard it

Must’ve hit a nerve

Must’ve burned when you got curved

You know you can’t handle her sexy curves

Her unconditional love

You’re not worthy of her trust

I’d say just give up

But you’re so selfish

You’d rather cause pain

Then let people be happy

The loneliness

The hurt

Must be hugging your bones

You just can’t let go

Even though you know

This is a losing battle

You don’t know me

But you swear I ain’t good enough

That I can’t give her what she needs

How can you be so sure

When you don’t know

Shit about me?

cc: NaNa'sworld // The Mack Family
Messages from/for the future (Berlin, Berlin part 3)
By: Jorge Mourinha
Tags: Film Festivals, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Film, Berlinale

And yet — and this is where I’m getting at — there was indeed a sense of premonition at times. Like in the premiere of the late Jóhann Jóhannsson’s starkly beautiful yet dauntingly austere Last and First Men, a strange monolith somewhere between abstract sci-fi, video installation and poignant elegy, previously presented as a live concert at the Manchester International Festival in the summer of 2017 shortly before the composer’s untimely death in February 2018. That performance already had a lot of the raw materials in place for the film, inspired by British writer Olaf Stapledon’s 1930s cult classic about the end of mankind, millions of centuries in the future.

Somberly ravishing, Last and First Men sets starkly photographed tours of brutalist, desolate war memorials in the former Yugoslav republics to Tilda Swinton’s delicately precise narration and Jóhansson’s gravely operatic music to create a strangely poignant time-travel scenario. The time shifts of its tale are not dissimilar to those of Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival (whose soundtrack was composed by Jóhanssón), only in a more cerebral, less human aspect, harking back to 1970s dystopian sci-fi like THX-1138. It’s as if Brave New World’s automated civilization makes contact with the modern world, warning about what lays ahead and sending back a map of the pitfalls to avoid — and premiering after Jóhanssón’s death, it makes the film even more poignant, this message from the future being as well a message from beyond the grave.

It’s a beautiful, admirable object, but does it belong in a cinema screen, or does it transcend formats so much it probably should become a multimedia event in itself? No matter: Last and First Men is being released on Blu-ray by Jóhansson’s label Deutsche Grammophon.
A Poem By Stephen Burt
By: The Awl
Tags: Poetry, Poems, The Poetry Section

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

A Crime at Pattaya

The following year, in a highly publicized case, four transvestites (one a transsexual)

robbed a Hong Kong businessman and others by first inducing their victims to suck

on their nipples, which had been coated with a tranquilizer.

— Holly Brubach, Girlfriends: Men, Women, and Drag

I would do it again. I felt

paradoxically adult —

each chevron on each wave on that warm ocean

pointing backwards and up the pale twist

in the shadow below concrete stairs. I was led by my wrist.

There was a great oval mirror,

the hush of a closing door,

two earrings unhooked and a square plastic bottle of lotion.

There was a bare smooth shoulder, and suppler hands

than mine on the buttons around my collar and neck,

my clavicle, my sternum, and points just south.

There was an oversized rocking chair, and a rock

that shone like a wet star-opal around her throat,

her fuchsia lips, her softer mouth,

and commands that could never have felt like commands.

She was a moonless night at the prow of a boat,

and I was a pilot, a ghost in the womb: I obeyed.

I woke up to mopeds, car horns, and particulate haze.

I had wet myself. I had slept for two days.

The consul had come and gone, leaving ill-fitting shoes,

but I walked away shaking and barefoot. I would have paid,

and happily, twice as much as I lost, to lose

my reason again so utterly: how could I choose

to leave this beach forever, this tideless fold

with its plain rice and its thin shade,

where for the first time I lost it all, got rolled,

erased, knocked out, taken for granted, and was not afraid?

Stephen Burt is Professor of English at Harvard. Belmont, his latest book of poems, will appear from Graywolf in 2013: he’s also the author, most recently, of The Art of the Sonnet, with David Mikics (Harvard UP, 2010), and Why I Am Not a Toddler and Other Poems by Cooper Bennett Burt (Rain Taxi Editions, 2011).

After months of costly and dangerous exploration — the expedition lost ten men in the first three weeks alone — we have finally located the hidden trove of poetry of which the legends speak! Enter if you dare! You may contact the editor at poems@theawl.com.
Hey Big Spenders!
By: Peter C. Cook
Tags: Hillary Clinton, Education Reform, Politics, Unions, Education

Hey Big Spenders!

A look at AFT & NEA Spending During The 2016 Election Cycle

After spending eight long years at odds with the Obama Administration, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and National Education Association (NEA) viewed the 2016 elections as an opportunity to reassert themselves within the Democratic Party and to regain a measure of influence over federal education policy. As a result, the two unions spent massive amounts to get Democrats elected to office, threw their weight behind Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president, and closely coordinated their efforts with national Democratic Party officials.

It goes without saying that things did not work out as planned. While the two teachers unions spent tens of millions of dollars during the 2016 election cycle to get Clinton and other Democrats elected, in the end, they failed to deliver where it counts: the voting booth. As Greg Toppo at USA Today reported shortly after the elections, internal union figures revealed that one out of every three NEA members and one out of every five AFT members voted for Donald Trump…
Plato: “Be Kind, for Everyone You Meet is Fighting a Great Battle.”
By: Pito Salas
Tags: Plato, Life, Kindness

That’s a great quote. And no, it’s not AT ALL autobiographical. It’s just something that I’ve thought about for a long time and I loved seeing the nicely put pithy quote. I googled it and this was the first hit I got.
Three Data and Software students receive Aspen Institute, Siemens Foundation scholarship
By: Andy Orr
Tags: Community College, Student Success, Diversity In Tech, Applied Baccalaureate

Three Data and Software students at Green River College — Heather Monatt, Sarah Mehri, and Lennox Anderson — are recipients of a generous Excellence and Equity Community College STEM scholarship made possible by the Aspen Institute and the Siemens Foundation.

Monatt and Mehri are currently enrolled in Green River’s Bachelor of Applied Science (BAS) in Software Development. Anderson is currently enrolled in Green River’s Associate of Applied Science (AAS) in Data Analytics and Software Development.

For the full story on how Information Technology programs at Green River are helping diverse students prepare for high-demand STEM occupations, please see the official release at:

https://www.greenriver.edu/gator-news/articles/grc-wins-national-award-for-outstanding-stem-education
How to minimize losses with early exit — S&P 500 Day Trading
By: Ming Jong Tey
Tags: Investing, Day Trading, Stock Market, Money, Finance

Find out how to spot the failure in the price structure and minimize losses with early exit instead of taking full losses with the triggered stop loss.

Check out the video for a complete walk through of the daily market analysis of S&P 500 futures (ES) for 9 Dec 2020 trading session. In this video, you will find out the market recap during the last session and a trade review in the three-minutes timeframe (including entry, exit and the rationale behind). Going forward, I will cover the bias, the key levels to pay attention to, my trading plan for the session later.

Timestamps

1:33 Market recap

4:19 Trade review

9:10 First red flag, Effort vs results showing presence of supply

10:10 localised breakdown

13:40 Current stock market outlook

Watch my daily market analysis video in the last session if you haven’t in order to better relate to the market recap and the trade review.

Bias — neutral (Day trading); bullish (long term)

Key levels — Resistance: 3750; Support: 3697–3705, 3670

Potential setup — Look for potential reversal at the key levels.

Photo by Author — Ming Jong Tey

Photo by Author — Ming Jong Tey

Click below to subscribe my weekly stock trading / investing ideas in email for free:

https://hot.wishpondpages.com/ideas/ (Yes, it is free)

Further Reading

Disclaimer: The information in this presentation is solely for educational purpose and should not be taken as investment advice.
Regrets at 50, I’ve had a few
By: Phil Johnson
Tags: Humor, Comics, Aging, Life, Cartoon

Regrets at 50, I’ve had a few

Here are a small fraction of the regrets I have from my first half-century of living.

I recently turned 50, which is as good a time as any to look back on one’s life. When I do, in addition to appreciating all the good stuff that’s happened to me (mostly by luck), I realize there have also been lots of, um, poor choices on my part. Below is a small sampling of the many things I regret having done over the years, in no particular order.

I plan on updating this every 50 years, so check back!
Quick and Easy API with Python’s Flask
By: Thiago Carvalho
Tags: Json, API, Pyhton, Flask, Programming

Flask

Flask is a Python web framework with lots of capabilities. We’ll only explore a few of those in this article—only the most essential to get us quickly hosting our JSON.

This should only take 10 minutes and less than 15 lines of code. So, without further ado, let’s install the libraries we’ll need.

pip install flask

pip install flask_restful

pip install pandas

Flask_restful will make our lives even with ready to go methods for building restful APIs, and Pandas will be mostly used for testing and reading the JSON files.

We’ll also make use of requests and json but those should come by default with Python.

Now we need a JSON file to use in this example. I’ll use https://calendarific.com/ to get the holidays for Canada in 2020. I’ll save that data and serve it in our Flask API.

Requests and JSON

If you want to use Calendarific, you’ll need to register and replace where it says ‘YOUR_KEY’ with the key they assigned you. You’re welcome to try the next steps with other APIs; there’s this great list of public APIs at GitHub you could try, or skip this part and go directly to the Flask API.

import requests

import json response = requests.get("https://calendarific.com/api/v2/holidays?&api_key=YOUR_KEY&country=CA&year=2020") with open('myfile.json', 'w') as json_file:

json.dump(response.json(), json_file)

Nice! That should get you a JSON file in your working directory.

Now let’s try to open and see what’s in this file with Pandas. Note the structure of Calendarific response:

Meta → Code

Response → Holidays →Name, Description, Country, Date…

I don’t want the full JSON; I want the Holidays part of it. So, I’ll select [‘response’][‘holidays’] .

response = requests.get("https://calendarific.com/api/v2/holidays?&api_key=YOUR_KEY&country=CA&year=2020") with open('myfile.json', 'w') as json_file:

json.dump(response.json()['response']['holidays'], json_file)

Pandas can help us check the JSON file in a friendlier format.

# pip install pandas import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_json('myfile.json')

print(df)

That’s it; we have our JSON file in our working directory. Now we can build our API to serve it!
Stress Test
By: Joseph W
Tags: Poetry, Haiku, Anxiety, Life Lessons, Humor

Photo by Matthias Reumann on Unsplash

Stress Test

A haiku+tanka about becoming pancake-flat.

I hope this pressure

turns me into a diamond

and doesn’t flatten me

If I must be flat,

I choose to be a pancake!

To pass stress taste tests

with cinnamon and sugar,

despite my faulty air-brakes.
Buddhism, Reflection and Truth
By: Jessica Lee Mcmillan
Tags: Philosophy, Spirituality, Buddhism, Life, Truth

The Source of Light

While we may have a doctrinal concept of the moon and spiritual truth being “out there,” the concept of the Buddha-nature, or luminous nature of mind, allows us to see that the light need not be an external entity or an illusion, but rather, a revealing of something inside.

In his discussion on truth and science, The Dalai Lama describes his astonishment when he realized as a young child that the moon does not emanate light. As an adult, he seeks answers from the greatest scientific minds and connects the aims of science to Buddhism in shedding illusory and archaic notions of the universe in a mutual aim to seek the truth.

The painting of the monkey reaching for the moon in the water illustrates the mechanisms of seeking the truth or “things as they really are”. I would argue that in the analogy, it does not matter whether the reflection in the water is an illusion if we contemplate the reflection and moon as both referents of our true, inner light— the limitlessness self that is ultimately connected to the source (the Universe).
SQL, What Is It?
By: Jason Joseph
Tags: Sql, Code, Data Science

SQL (Structured Query Language) is the native language for interacting with databases & is designed for exactly this purpose. It is a language of databases. A database models real-life entities like professors & universities by storing them in tables. Each table contains data from a single entity type. This reduces redundancy by storing entities only once. For example, there only needs to be one row of data containing a certain company’s details. Lastly, a database can be used to model the relationship between entities.

Querying Databases

While SQL can be used to create & modify databases, this tutorial’s focus will be on querying databases. A query is a request for data from a database table (or combination of tables). Querying is an essential skill for a data scientist since the data you need for your analyses will often live in databases.

In SQL, we can select data from a table using a SELECT statement. For example, the following query selects the name column from the people table:

In this query, SELECT & FROM are called keywords. In SQL, keywords are not case-sensitive, which means you can write the same query as:

That said, it’s good practice to make SQL keywords uppercase to distinguish them from other parts of your query, like column & table names. It’s also good practice to include a semicolon at the end of your query. This tells SQL where the end of the query is.

SQL Order of Execution

Note: Your query will always need a SELECT & a FROM statement (to identify which columns you want returned from which table) -the others are optional.

Example of SELECT

In the following example, we will SELECT the title column from the films table.

When we run the above code, it produces the following result:

RELATED LINKS:
I USED TO BE NOMINALIST
By: Stephen C. Rose
Tags: Philosophy, Hoping For Better Times, Depth Of Dividedness, Still In Force, Crumbling

Past Silence

I used to be nominalist

And proudly kicked the table

Satisfied I knew the truth

Diffident, unbending

+

A Spirit thick and worrying

Awash in pride and gambling

Never noticing what is

The road that I was wending

+

Now I am awash in bliss

Wrists resting on my table

Finally at one with I

And lost in Love Unending
Someone on Medium Made Me Cry
By: John Ross
Tags: Short Story, This Happened To Me, Inspiration, Words, Emotions

Have you ever cried over a comment on Medium?

And by cry, I mean tears of joy.

Well, maybe not joy. But they’re definitely not tears of sadness.

The world can be a lonely place.

And now, with COVID, it’s become a little lonelier.

In the Book of Proverbs (16:24), it states Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones. In verses 25:25, it shares, Like cold water to a weary soul is good news from a distant land.

Oftentimes, I think writers are lonely.

We have a lot of words, a lot of emotions inside of us. And thank God, we have the ability to express it on paper (or on a screen).

And not only do our words hold power, but Proverbs 18:21 also puts it this way, Life and death are in the power of the tongue.

Yes, I’m sure we all get the occasional comment that makes us cringe and gives us a little anxiety. Because words hold power.

But oftentimes, when someone drops a word of encouragement, it truly is like cold water to a weary soul.

It’s been a challenging season for many of us, for a multitude of reasons.

And sometimes, you pour your heart and your words into a poem, into a short story, into an article, and someone says just the right words, at just the right time, and at that moment… you cry.

You’re not sad. You’re not necessarily happy. It’s just that you’ve been heard, you’ve been understood, and you’re not alone.
An American Slave Rebellion
By: Nancy Peckenham
Tags: Slavery, History, American History

Nearby the memorial, the ghosts of former slaves inhabit the rooms built from rough wooden planks where slaves lived under the watchful eye of the overseer. Giant metal bowls sit abandoned at their doorways, empty now of the hot, wet sugar that built an empire.

Photo by Nancy Peckenham

In a church moved to the site, statues of young children stand still near the altar. They represent the youngest slaves at the time just before emancipation, children who 60 years later would tell the story of slavery. Their words, taken down by writers for the federal government, described the world of cruelty and family upheaval endured by slaves who were bought and sold at will.

Photo by Nancy Peckenham

Inside the plantation houses, the owners’ lives were made easier by the labor of domestic, so-called house slaves, who cooked, cleaned and did the laundry. Some even suckled the infants of the slave-owner’s family. Others were seized to satisfy the owner’s uncontrolled sexual desires. Field hands planted sugar cane, then cut and processed the stalks to extract the sweet liquid that was turned into granulated sugar and molasses to be sold throughout the world.

When plantation owners could no longer count on the free labor of slaves after emancipation, they turned to other sources. Former slaves could be held to the land by an onerous system of shareholding that benefited the landowner. Other slaves could be locked up in jail for the slimmest of reasons and convict labor could be contracted for a pittance.

Several prisoners lived inside each of the cells that were maintained at the plantation. Photo by Nancy Peckenham

A visit to Whitney Plantation is an opportunity to try to understand the complexity of our nation, the roots of suffering, the inequalities, and to feel for even a moment, the weight of injustice.
The hidden bull: Is it possible to yield results in the Crypto-Winter?
By: Indx Capital
Tags: Blockchain, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, Crypto, Finance

‘An investment in knowledge pays the best interest’; to quote a cliché. Benjamin Franklin may have foreseen the current Crypto atmosphere and wanted to shed a slice of wisdom for the downtrodden enthusiasts. Or maybe there is just a timeless truth to his sentiment.

Newcomers and experienced traders who followed hype-fuelled speculation led to what we now call the Crypto-Winter; a bear market invigorated by rumours and fears. So, is it possible to profit in a bear market? Do we sell-up and move on or do we cast out a patient line and wait for a nibble? The insightful investor would answer “Neither. research, research and more…” you get it (yawn).

Research would eventually lead you to the complex world of Crypto hedge funds. With a panoramic view of the crypto-economy, these paragons of profit use every tool available to generate a return on investment. But they charge a management fee for their expertise, normally 2–3%, and a performance commission between 20–30%. To profit from a depressed market, some hedge funds will consider shorting the market on the expectation of a slump and leverage their bets with a multiplier. It is high-risk, high-return and best left to experienced traders with the funds to cushion any losses. In any case, most hedge funds are only interested in your investment if you have a significant sum that can be locked-in for the short term.

As an alternative, INDX is leading the way for universal passive income through Masternodes, removing the financial and analytical risks one would be subject to via the crypto hedge fund route. Token holders receive their pro-rata share of the Masternode rewards and a portion is also re-invested into the portfolio to strengthen the ability to grow the portfolio and the future rewards for the token holder. The notion of predictable, regular earnings is now a reality.

As the first signs of green shoots give optimism that the Crypto-Winter is beginning to thaw, Masternodes look set to become the infrastrure to power the next generation of crypto networks. The race is on as to who will invest and reap the benefits.

For more information on INDX, check out our website and register for future updates here.
Grails Productivity Tip: Depend on Your Plugin
Tags: Plugin, Programming, Grails, Tip, Spring

Image via Wikipedia

Grails has amazing plugin infrastructure. In short it enables almost everything the core application can do and has really good list of plugins: http://grails.org/Plugins

Here what I want to say is something a little bit different:

Do all your business in your application plugin

Reminder: Plugins are enabled in Grails

You can reuse all implementation in your plugins:

Model Object

Services

Controllers

Gsp pages

Plugins can define their plugin dependency, just like maven dependency.

Goal: Extreme Modularity

Model all your business in a single plugin.

You can consider grails an application container in this case which manages transactions and persistence, and ui and enable each plugin with all customization. What you need to do is using config. groovy and ConfigurationHolder for configuration issues.

What grails will do is just starting up plugins and and the applications one by one and expose all services, domain class and controllers which will work fine.

It will increase your modularity and ease your integration issues. You can also run your plugins while your are developing them. This is the most amazing part of all the scenario. You do not need to enter pack-install cycle to test anything.

Tough Part: IDE

If you have already established something like this before with Java you would have setup your IDE for this kind of integration. But for grails there is not support as far as far as I know :( So be ready run some console commands:

cd mycore

grails package-plugin

cd ../myapp

grails install-plugin ../mycore/grails-mycore-plugin-0.1.zip

Reference Guide:

http://www.grails.org/The+Plug-in+Developers+Guide
What if They Had Known What You and I Know now?
Tags: Spirituality, Poetry On Medium, Questioning, Christmas, Tanka

Similar stories that celebrate the season.

May there be peace, love, thankfulness, and hope in your silent celebrations.

Happy Hanukkah, my Jewish friends;

Super Solstice, my Pagan friends;

Hurray, friends, HumanLight Humanists;

Joyous Kwanzaa, my African Diaspora friends;

Merry Christmas, my fellow Christians.

I wish you Miracles. And Confetti.

“God bless us every one!

said Tiny Tim, the last of all.”

~ Charles Dickens
Patience
By: Moyosore Sheriff Quadri
Tags: One Line, Poetry, One Line Poetry Prompt

Photo by Altınay Dinç on Unsplash

We see you at night

But you’ve been there all along

So patient;

You teach us that when the time is right

We shall all be on song
Финальная таблица лидеров конкурса TPS от QuarkChain
Tags: Russian, Blockchain, Quarkchain, Blockchain Technology

QuarkChain provides a secure, decentralized and scalable blockchain solution to deliver 100,000+ on-chain TPS

Follow
Teamwork and Collaboration
By: Alok Tyagi
Tags: Blogging, Personal, Globalization, Organization Development

Earlier today, I stumbled on this video clip of John Chambers speaking to Harvard Business on few of the things changing on the organization front. It is vital in the current day and age where increasingly changing landscape and global competition that continue to shape things faster than ever before. The need to scale our organization has never been higher.

Anyway few things that we should care about on organization front:

1. Value of councils and pulling together cross functional work groups to help scale the organization. We initiated Management Excellence earlier. I am now looking forward to the Quality and Architecture council initiative to help us bring excellence in Quality and Technology execution.

2. From Command and Control to Leadership by influence. Value of Collaborative leadership (read: be prepared to give more than you get) has never been higher in our business valuing our people. Just remember life is not zero sum game.

3. Importance of Social Media. I am proud of our team who regularly blogs on our product Community Sites and participate in various forums/discussions. We are connecting with our stakeholders in more ways than ever before.

Our landscape is changing. We are no perfect by any means. However, we are prepared to learn and change and that is what counts. I am mighty proud of our organization and it is a privilege to lead such talented team.

Check out this video on YouTube:

[youtube = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WX7BNnYTf8]
Soften The Blow
By: Rebeca Ansar
Tags: Poetry, Equality, Emotions, Women, Feminism

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Team Zero Weekly Newsletter
By: Zero Currency
Tags: Technology, Internet, Computer Science, Blockchain, Bitcoin

Ingar & Rick will be releasing a marketing competition this week, running for a month or so. There are GIFs, articles, videos, and all sorts to get involved in. We will be needing the help of the community in selecting the entries that bring us some more exposure.

Lolliedieb has appeared from seemingly nowhere this week with another version of the miner that has been producing some really great results. Currently this is an Nvidia version, with the prospect of an AMD miner in the wings as well.

Currently the miner is being tested in the background and the reports are a great deal of hashrate more, but is still early stages yet, so we will keep you in the loop as this product is finalised and comes closer to release.

We look forward to continuing to build the relationship with Lolliedieb, and thank him for his great work to date.

Last week we released the finer details of the finite supply, block halvings, and also developer fund. To recap, here are the details below again in case you missed them:
To see or not to see?
Tags: Ethereum, Cryptocurrency, Elepig, Elepig Exchange, Bitcoin

in In Fitness And In Health