fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
November 1: Reflections from ‘Along the Path to Enlightenment’
By: Along The Path To Enlightenment
Tags: Consciousness, Spirituality, David R Hawkins, Enlightenment, Levels Of Consciousness

With Additional Context:

Q: There is some variation in the depictions of the Ultimate Reality (God) among the world’s religions and between them and the great mystics, enlightened teachers, and avatars. How can these variations be reconciled?

A: If properly recontextualized, any differences resolve through understanding the levels of consciousness. If we look to the avatars, great teachers, and enlightened sages throughout history, their descriptions of the Ultimate Reality (God) are the same. There is an absolute concordance that Divinity is infinitely compassionate, loving, peaceful, silent, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and benign. It is obvious to all that the essence of God shines forth as Creation and is the Infinite Totality and Source of all existence. Divinity is without parts or division.

Any depictions of God that depart from these universal truths stem from lower understandings that are products of lower levels of consciousness. The most frequent is the anthropomorphic error in which aspects of the human ego are projected onto God. These distorted views can be easily calibrated and tracked to their historic origins. Because God is the ultimate context of nonlinear Reality, that reality precludes divisions or positionalities. Within nonduality, positionality is not possible; thus, dualistic perceptions stemming from positionalities are the source of the misunderstandings about God for which, unfortunately, mankind has paid a great price.

From the above, it can be seen quite clearly that God does not ‘act’ or have ‘purposes’ and is free of positionalities and programs. Action is a linear concept that requires a subject, an object, and a verb, plus a motive, a means, and an end. If God is beyond action, then there is no basis for the fear of God who is Essence and not form.

It is to be remembered that the evolution of the consciousness of mankind has been progressive. Many early religious doctrines lacked accuracy,much as navigation did before the advent of the sextant or compass. The real error was in not realizing the limitations of the ego. Because much of ecclesiastical doctrine resulted from positionalities, it lacked inherent authority and substituted authoritarianism. That which is arguable is fictitious because within the realm of Truth, no argument is possible.

Q: Is all religious argument therefore based on misinterpretations and lack of awareness of the limits of the intellect?

A: That is so. The dedicated student of today, however, has immediate access to higher levels of truth and, by kinesiologic test verification, can reach their own conclusion. All that is truly of God brings peace, harmony, and love, and is devoid of all forms of negativity. A spiritually aware person realizes that they can only carry the message, for it is the inner truth that is the teacher.

From: “I: Reality and Subjectivity” (2003), Chapter 17, The Inner Path, pp. 295–296
Navigation and Routing in Flutter App
By: Priyanka Tyagi
Tags: Mobile App Development, Software Development, Android, Flutter, Web Development

Static Navigation

The static navigation is implemented by assigning a Map of routes (pages/screens) to MaterialApp's routes property. The route name is pushed using Navigator.pushNamed(...) . This is known as Named Routing because each page is given a unique name, which is pushed on Naviagtor widget.

The MaterialApp and WidgetApp provides the routes property. This property allows to specify routes in Map<String, WidgetBuilder> . This option is great when there is no logic around the routes. For example, authentication or verification before you show the page. Only the data available global to app can be passed on to the second page.

Entry point:

In this application, there are two ways to assign the initial page, PageListing() . One way is to assign PageListing() widget to home property. Another ways is to assign a Map containing < / , PageListing() > entry to routes property. The / represents the home page mapping.

//Using Static Navigation

void main() => runApp(

MaterialApp(

debugShowCheckedModeBanner: false,

//home: PageListing(),

//Part#2. Named route using Map

routes: <String, WidgetBuilder>{

'/': (BuildContext context) => PageListing(),

'/details': (BuildContext context) => PageDetails(

item: seasideList[0],

),

},

),

);

Navigation Implementation:

All routes/pages have entries in routes table above. The Map entry '< /details , PageDetails() >' is added to navigate to the PageDetails page. The /details is the alias/name to the PageDetails page. This name is pushed on the Naviagtor widget using Naviagtor.pushNamed .

Navigator.pushNamed(context, '/details')

Sending Data:

The data can be passed to the PageDetails at the top-level only where the routes are assigned to routes property. In this case, only globally available data can be passed. In this implementation, only first item seasideList[0] detail page will open for any selection on the homepage.

routes: <String, WidgetBuilder>{

'/': (BuildContext context) => PageListing(),

'/details': (BuildContext context) => PageDetails(

item: seasideList[0],

),

},

Receiving Data:

The Navigator.push returns a Future that completes after calling Navigator.pop on the PageDetails Screen. This is similar to what we discussed earlier.

_navigateToPageDetails(…):

This is similar to what we discussed earlier except Navigator.pushNamed is used for pushing the routes on the stack.
Diversity and inclusion: more than a priority, a “hyper-focus”
By: Ana Collantes
Tags: Diversity And Inclusion, Diversity, Diversity In Tech

I like common things that are done uncommonly well.

Follow
Escape
By: Jessica Lovejoy
Tags: Poetry On Medium, Depression, Poetry, Fiction, Mental Health

Escape

A poem.

Photo by Vek Labs on Unsplash

you walk into the dark

it’s been so long

you almost forgot

how bizarre it can be

to feel comfortable in discomfort

a gentle voice tells you

where to go to escape

the pit you’ve fallen into

the voice intensifies

inside your mind,

“just follow the light

and walk to your right”

but you sit down instead.

© Jessica Lovejoy 2019. All Rights Reserved.
Truth
By: Ulf Wolf
Tags: Buddhism, Is Ness, Meditation, Zazen, Truth

Raised by trolls in northern Sweden, now settled on the California coast a stone’s throw south of the Oregon border. Here I meditate and write. Wolfstuff.com.

Follow
React Native Fitbit: The Integration Process
By: Sudhir Kumar
Tags: JavaScript, Programming, React Native

Step 2: Environment Setup

As you already know, we need to provide the basic environment for both Android and iOS platforms so that the same code runs in both platforms. Every time you install a new link, it is best to go through the basic setup procedure to avoid any errors. Trust me, React Native can be nasty when it comes to error handling.

iOS

Go to the terminal and write the following commands:

cd fitbitAuthentication

cd ios

open .

Open ios/your_project_name.xcodeproj file to do the following configuration in your XCode.

2. In the XCode window. click on your project name in the sidebar and go to the Build Settings tab in the main window. Once there, use the search option and find search.

XCode window in your Mac screen

3. Once you type search, it will show you a screen like this. In the header search path section, click once and add the path as follows:

$(SRCROOT)/../node_modules/react-native/Libraries

Header Search Path

Once you have added the path, double-click on the whole link and choose the recursive option from the drop-down.

4. At the top bar, look for the Info tab and click on URL Types, as shown in the image below. Add the credential required for your application. Remember to not enter the same as mine, and also note it down for future reference during integration.

5. In your project, open the iOS folder and find AppDelegate.m file and make some additions in the existing code:

Congrats! You are done with initial setup for the iOS platform.

Android

In Android, you have to set your Android APP URL scheme.
設計師必看：簡單四步驟，讓你提升創造力
By: Aapd, As A Product Designer
Tags: Creativity, Designer, Ideas, Perspective, Design

We share digital product design experiences & help designers find their purpose and passion. Follow our Medium Publication ↑ and Facebook http://fb.me/aapd.tw

Follow
The End and a New Beginning. Today, 30 November 2020 as I write this…
By: T. Mark Mangum
Tags: NaNoWriMo, Nonprofit, Fiction, Adventure, Writing Tips

Today, 30 November 2020 as I write this ends the NaNoWriMo 2020 writing challenge.

The last nine days started out rough for me. I am a Retired Army veteran and the 20 years I spent in the army were hard on the body. My tweaked back by the end of the day on Sunday the 22nd put me out of commission and it took till late Monday to get back to the point of standing. I was recovered but suffered until Wednesday.

Then Thanksgiving. I love Thanksgiving and being thankful. I am sure you know that this year's Thanksgiving was odd, and a little off. Friday rolled in, and I was back to it.

I made it past 50,000 words, but if you have read all four previous installments I have written this year, you will know that this year I chose to rewrite and edit a novel I have been working on so it was a victorious cheat for me.

However, I was also using this November as a means to develop a regular writing time and habit. So as the title implies, the end of NaNoWriMo, but the beginning of daily regular 3-hour writing sessions.

My friend and I are committed to continuing this effort towards our goal of becoming published.

If you would like to be a part of our morning group we use FB Messenger to communicate in the AM. We start between 3 am and 4 am each day and would welcome any who wish to join us. Just respond to this story and we will add you to our Facebook Messenger group. We are in the Mountain time zone so you can figure out if it actually works for you.

I am very thankful to the NaNoWriMo folks who inspire and lead. Now let's continue and finish!

Thanks for reading.

T. Mark Mangum.

Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash

Copyright: T. Mark Mangum, 2020. All rights reserved. No part of my story may be copied, reprinted, or published without my written consent.

T. Mark Mangum, is the product of the 60s and 70s, his imagination, wonder, thoughts, and ponderings, emboldened by Star Trek, Star Wars, Conan the Barbarian, and The Hobbit. He loves a good story and hopes you will love reading his stories. Veteran, Father, TTRPG, and Board Game Junkie. He spent 20 years in the United States Army, another 10 working for the government, before realizing he should write.
Does Writing A Funny Book About A Pandemic Make You A Dick?
By: Mr. Francis
Tags: Life Lessons, Covid 19, Humor, Writing, Pandemic

I’m writing a little humourous book about a certain global health issue currently going on.

It’s the one that’s bullied its way into the entire planet's collective consciousness.

I think you know the disease I’m talking about — COVID-19.

If I may share something with you as someone who fancies himself as a comedic writer, it’s a bloody tightrope keeping the writing of this bit of nonsense on track.

I’m not trying to, nor do I want to, take any political side with this silly book that I’m getting close to finishing.

The debate on how to handle the Coronavirus response is not something that interests me as a writer.

My job, not that anyone asked me to apply for it, is to bring a chuckle and take the piss out of the power of the pandemic, if only for 30 minutes, give or take, depending on how long you look at the incredible illustrations I had the intelligence to select.

But, every so often, I think to myself, “Uh, Francis, you know this virus has killed a lot of people, is destroying lives and isn’t something to laugh at.”

Yup, I know that.

I hear it every day.

And I read about it no matter where I put my eyeballs.

I’ve far too many friends and family who, I’m sure, just like you, are dealing with the all too real effects of COVID-19 in a variety of ways, if not directly.

BUT.
Picasso to be Tokenized on the Maecenas Platform
Tags: Investment, Art, Cryptocurrency, Maecenas, Blockchain

Blockchain-based art investment platform Maecenas has teamed up with crypto exchange Ethershift.co and computer security expert John McAfee to conduct the first “perpetual” digitalization and tokenization of a Picasso work of fine art.

The project is codenamed “Project Phoenix”.

We are tokenizing a masterpiece, and making the painting perpetually inaccessible. Any eventual release date of the physical painting can only be decided via a voting process by token holders, after the minimum amount of time has passed well into the future.

The auctioning process will be executed using Maecenas technology. The newly created digital asset, the first of its kind, will be represented as a single ERC721 token for the digitalized artwork. A fixed number of ERC20 tokens will separately represent shared ownership in the physical asset.

Unlike previous asset tokenizations performed by Maecenas, Project Phoenix will be a fully decentralized exercise, and the resulting unique tokens will be created on the public Ethereum blockchain.

The auction will take place around the year-end Holiday season.

Specific details and information will be announced in December. Find updates and information about Project Phoenix on the Maecenas website at https://www.maecenas.co.

If you’re interested in participating in the auction, or have any other questions or inquiries email contact@maecenas.co.

About EtherShift

Ethershift.co is an ERC20 crypto currency exchange that provides the near instant conversion of 70+ crypto assets. Ethershift has no accounts and lets customers trade without collecting any personal information.

Website: https://ethershift.co/

About John McAfee

John McAfee is a computer researcher and businessman who founded McAfee Associates in 1987 (bought by Intel in 2011). John is running for President of the United States in 2020 with a pro crypto currency platform.

About Maecenas

Maecenas is a decentralised art gallery auction market, aimed to democratise access to fine art. It is a blockchain-driven platform where fractionalized pieces of fine art are bought and sold. Maecenas uses blockchain technology to create tamper-proof digital certificates linked to pieces of art.

After launching its beta platform in June, Maecenas has successfully tokenised a $5.6m painting by Andy Warhol, which was acquired by a number of different investors who participated in the first-ever decentralised Dutch auction for an art run on the Ethereum network.

Website: https://www.maecenas.co
NaNoWriMo Day 6: 339 of 50,000
By: Jenna L Pratt
Tags: NaNoWriMo, Mystery, Fiction, Seattle, Writing

Prologue

All those hours spent pouring over his battered journal led Theo down this path. It led him to the obsession, the allure, the desire to figure this man out. This man with the knife that convinced everyone he was just that: a man with a knife. The one who dug his silver blade into the cracks in the sidewalk and pulled out the weeds. Theo never meant for his obsession to go this far; so far that he was holding tightly to his journal. The rubber band was the only material holding it together.

He wished for a different life and maybe there were moments where his life was different. Maybe there were moments where he wasn’t up worrying about the man with the knife. Not even after the first girl went missing and months later the case remained unsolved. No it may just be possible that Theo was able to have a few moments where sipping his coffee and playing with his dog kept his obsession at bay. But it was only that, keeping the obsession at bay. The obsession always came back for Theo it crept up on him like the sun crawling up into the sky everyday. Expecting it all along, but surprised by it nonetheless.

This was it for Theo. This was where the rubber meets the road so to speak. He had been dreaming of this moment, marinating on it, for over a year and now here it was right in front of him. The van door was open and Theo squeezed the journal once more to his chest before stepping closer.

“Excuse me,” Theo choked out the words, swallowed and continued, “excuse me sir.”

The man turned looking alert and more human than ever before. As the light hit the metal of his knife Theo couldn’t help but think about the humanity of this man before him. For so long this man had been an idealized version in Theo’s mind. Now, he was looking back at Theo the knife rising ever so slowly.
Ben Wheatley Returns With The Blackly Comic HAPPY NEW YEAR, COLIN BURSTEAD
By: One Room With A View
Tags: Movies, Film Reviews, New Year, Ben Wheatley, Shakespeare

Loosely adapted from Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, Happy New Year, Colin Burstead trades Roman politicking and murder for a disastrous family party where everyone is yelling and no one is listening. It might lower the stakes somewhat from the original, but this by no means decreases the dread and discomfort — this is a Ben Wheatley film after all.

Colin (Neil Maskell), a financially successful husband and father, has rented out a lordly manor to host his dysfunctional family for a New Year’s party that serves to both bring the Bursteads together and less-than-subtly remind everyone that Colin is the head of the household.

What he hasn’t prepared for is his sister Gini (Hayley Squires) inviting his estranged, and equally wealthy, brother David (Sam Riley), who is looking to reconnect with his family and establish himself as its new king.

Colin Burstead is spectacularly well-written, Wheatley’s dense, rapid-fire dialogue packed with laughs and crafting a believable family dynamic. This is recognisably how families talk to one another, albeit laced with more venom than you’d want in reality, but it’s never mundane or boring.

A stellar ensemble cast — also including Charles Dance, Doon Mackichan, and many more — are more than a match for the material and share a horrible chemistry that suggests years of hurt and resentment. Generally sticking to a fly on the wall style, Wheatley also allows himself some flourishes befitting his source material. Renaissance music cues and regal camerawork break up the kitchen sink realism, and Riley in particular cuts a princely figure as he strides about the manor.

A couple of subplots get left by the wayside as Colin Burstead barrels towards its conclusion, but this is a small price to pay for a surprisingly emotional finale that places Wheatley’s film square in the Shakespearean context of overthrown rulers and prodigal children.

RATING: 4/5

Happy New Year, Colin Burstead will be shown on BBC 2 at 10.30pm on 30th December 2018, and thereafter will be available on BBC iPlayer

By Jack Blackwell
Lessons of grief
By: Winnie Lim
Tags: Life Lessons, People, Love, Grief, Singapore

Lessons of grief

In memory of Lai Hock

How often do we notice the beauty of the sunrise and sunset? But if one day the sun ceases to exist, we would all experience profound grief and regret.

My friend Lai Hock was like the sun. His being and presence was so large, he seemed he would always be around. He was always a text message away, and he often told me he would always make time for me. At his memorial service yesterday, several people delivered eulogies, sharing how they had regular coffee and tea sessions with Lai Hock, and these sessions would often run for 2–3 hours.

I wondered how he made time for so many people.

I was caught in a moment of shock and denial when I saw the news of his passing last week. It only lasted a moment, before I went into the shower and sobbed like a child. I couldn’t help but observe in the background: why was I so sad? We weren’t particularly close, so I thought, I didn’t spend that much time with him.

I learned that grief doesn’t need to have reasons. It doesn’t allow rationalising or intellectualisation. I am reminded of one of my favourite quotes:

“Love, then, is less a utility and more a preemptive form of grief. Allowing something to matter is simply another way of saying you’re going to care when it’s gone.” — Helena Fitzgerald

I wasn’t conscious of it, but grief brought it into light: I loved Lai Hock, even if the time we spent together was so very little. I was telling a friend that there is universality in the beauty of certain objects, like the beauty of a sunrise, and ever so rarely, the beauty of a human being. I loved Lai Hock because he was a great, beautiful human being, he was someone who was genuine in every inch of his presence (I can’t help but add: which is very rare in this society), and he must be one of the least judgmental person I know, or at least he worked to transcend his judgments to allow the space for compassionate responses.

Some of us mourn the loss of forests, coral reefs, whales because we instinctively understand what the loss means. I now understand we can mourn the loss of a beautiful human being the same way when we lose a magnificent part of nature.
Week 6 — Audio Emotion Recognition System (Part IV)
By: Ece Omurtay
Tags: Emotion Recognition, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Audio

Then, we tried another classifier to improve our accuracy. We took the mean of mfcc and “chroma_stft”, “chroma_cqt”, “chroma_cens”, “rms”, “spectral_contrast”, “spectral_bandwidth”, “tonnetz”, “zcr” features and applied Decision Tree algorithm. Accuracy is 0,35.

Then, we used XGBoost as classifier. Result of this algorithm is 0,40.
COVID-19 Data Analysis Using Data Science in Python
By: Ashita Saxena
Tags: Pandas, Analytics, Data Science, Internity Foundation, Python

STEP-3: Drop the unnecessary columns that are not required:

From the above record we will we analyzing data on the basis of 3 fields, i.e, Date, Name of States/ UT, and Total Confirmed Cases. So, drop the other columns.

d.drop(['Latitude','Longitude','Death','Total Confirmed cases (Indian National)','Total Confirmed cases ( Foreign National )','Cured/Discharged/Migrated'],axis = 1,inplace =True) d.head()

Output

STEP-4: Create a dictionary for storing Dates and Name of States/UT:

This is done in order to obtain the total confirmed cases state-wise on each and every date.

Now, let’s dive into code:

After performing the above code, the output will be as follows:

STEP-5: Finding the new cases arising everyday state-wise:

This can be done by creating a list containing the dates and total confirmed cases:

With the help of the above code, we can get the new cases as follows:

STEP-6: Constructing a Graph:

For each date, you should have the number of cases on that date stored in vector N.

After that for each date calculate the moving average from A0=0.

Final Output:

Graph showing Moving Average with date for different values of Beta

Conclusion:

In this way we can analyse the dataset using Python and can estimate other the factors as well.

I hope that now it would be easy for you to create , analyse, and monitor the consequences and effects of COVID-19.
深夜食堂：用90+天燉一碗誠心誠意的暖心高湯 🍲
By: Kuanjen, Kevin
Tags: Positive Thinking, UX Design, Taiwan, Mentorship, Design

We are four passionate UXers from Taiwan, working across Asia and the U.S. We share our insights and work experiences to the community. UX四神湯是四位臺灣清華畢業的UX海外工作者所建立的內容平台，每週定期發布文章。內容涵蓋中美的工作環境與生活體驗、互聯網巨頭與新創公司的工作內容、設計趨勢、UX實務技能分享等

Follow
The Office-Centered Economy Is Dead. Now What?
By: Jay Michaelson
Tags: Money, Economy, Investing, Business, Coronavirus

The Office-Centered Economy Is Dead. Now What?

How to capitalize on this multi-trillion dollar shift in the global economy

Photo by Nastuh Abootalebi via Unsplash

“The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.”— Chinese proverb

A seismic shift has taken place in the world of business and finance.

No, I’m not talking about Bitcoin, nor am I referring to the ongoing ups and downs of a stock market still caught in the throes of a global public health crisis.

What I’m talking about is the long-predicted, but much-delayed demise of the last of those great bastions of Industrial Age thinking: the office construct.

It’s ironic that it took the deadliest pandemic in a century to finally demonstrate the fallacy of the idea that work can only happen in a purpose-built, dedicated building. Companies, individuals and the scribbling class have been trying to push the outdated idea of the office over the cliff and onto the trash-heap of history for 25 years now, but it hasn’t happened. Until now.

And by the way, there can be no doubt, at this point that, thanks to the pandemic, the office is dead. According to one Gallup poll, even back in April, over 57% of respondents said they would prefer to never go back to the traditional office environment, and that was five months ago! In the time since then, remote work has become the norm for whole industries and sectors of the economy. What was once an oddity is now simply the way we do work. It’s not an exaggeration to say that what we are looking at is a paradigm shift unlike anything we’ve seen since the launch of the World Wide Web.

Just think about how much of the economy is built around, in support of, and responsive to, the idea of the vast majority of the workforce departing their homes and working in office buildings for a minimum of 40 hours per week. The travel industry, automotive industry, food services, banking, shopping, recreation, telecommunications, and entertainment are just a few of the sectors that have already lost trillions of dollars of business, and will continue to hemorrhage cash if the world doesn’t “go back to work.”

The same thing applies in government, education and infrastructure as well. Our whole system of living is designed around a 9–5 job in a place other than our homes.

What makes it so much more interesting to think about the future in a world with no (or at least, drastically fewer) offices is that, at least thus far, very few people have even noticed the shift happening. The fact is that we’ve all been so focused on surviving, both physically and financially, that we haven’t noticed the tectonic shift that has come about in the last six months. You can bet that once more people begin to realize what has actually happened, and realize exactly how ubiquitous the impacts are, we will see a wave of innovation and success that makes the Dot Com era look like a dot.
Improve and Optimize Performance of React Apps With Reactime V7.0
By: Becca Viner, Caitlin Chan, Mai Nguyen, Tania Lind
Tags: Nodejs, JavaScript, Programming, Reactjs, React

What is Reactime?

When it comes to React applications, one of the most challenging aspects of optimizing your application is state management debugging. Nowadays there are so many ways to handle the state of your application — Hooks, Context API, Redux, etc. — but not too many tools that are fully compatible with it all.

Reactime helps centralize the complex state debugging process. Reactime was nominated for the Productivity Booster award at the 2020 React Open Source Awards

Prior to Reactime v.7.0, Reactime was known simply as a time-travel debugging tool for React applications. With the new latest version, we have expanded its functionality and increased its accuracy. Now, Reactime 7.0 is a performance tool for React applications, including frameworks like Gatsby and Next. Not only does it help manage and understand the state of your application, but you can now also visualize the rendering frequency of your components. Additionally, Reactime now only runs in development mode, which allows you to enhance its speed without slowing down your applications.

Let’s elaborate on what we improved and added with this new release of Reactime.
Develop a Wheel of Fortune Game | Tutorial for Beginners
By: Egretia Io
Tags: HTML, Gaming, Crypto, Blockchain, Developer

This is a fun and simple tutorial for game developers since we are going to build a wheel of fortune game. Let’s get started!

Demonstration

Development Procedures

1. Create a Luck class for the main logic

Luck class is inherited from container egret.DisplayObjectContainer

2. Data initialization

3. Create a red button to spin (creatbtn)

Center the button: change the default anchor point of the button in the upper left corner to the center of the button this.btn.anchorOffsetX = this.btn.width / 2; this.btn.anchorOffsetY = this.btn.height / 2; Then make the button position in the center of the entire stage. However, the width and height of the stage cannot be obtained by directly using this.stage.stageWidth since there is nothing on the stage when the button is created. As such, students can create a date class to store global data. In this tutorial, two static attributes STAGEWIDTH and STAGEHEIGHT are directly added to main.ts. The specific methods are as follows:

4. Arrange all the prizes in a circle

You will get the prompt when using comments with /***/. When there are many parameters, you can use @param in the comment line to declare the function of each parameter.

5. Respond to click events

Remove the monitoring of the current click in the ‘click’ event to prevent multiple clicks on button.

In the timer, you can directly use timer.delay to change the delay of the timer in milliseconds.

Stay tuned for updates from the Egretia official channels below so that you can be involved in all the exciting things to come!

Egretia Telegram: https://t.me/Egretia

Egretia Twitter: https://twitter.com/Egretia_io

Egretia Website: https://egretia.io/
Athlete Leadership: A Defining Value
By: Special Olympics
Tags: Sportsmanship, Unity, Inclusion, Leadership, Leadership Development

Today, the Special Olympics International Board of Directors met at P&G headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio. Chairman Tim Shriver opened the meeting with a review of Special Olympics’ movement values: Sportsmanship with Joy, Bravery, Athlete Leadership, Unity and Perseverance. After sharing inspiring stories he asked each board member write a few thoughts about the value that means the most to them.

Special Olympics Florida athlete and International Board Director Eddie Barbanell shared the following:

“The value of athlete leadership means a lot to me because it creates unity and bring more people with intellectual disabilities together to play unified and live unified. It brings more qualified coaches and volunteers to train; it allows athletes and their non-disabled peers to play together on and off the playing field to promote acceptance and inclusion around the world. Everyone should be accepted for who they are, not what they are.”

Each of Special Olympics’ core values describes an aspect of our identity as a global movement of nearly 4 million athletes, and hundreds of thousands more volunteers, coaches, families, and fans. So whatever role you play in the movement, tell us, what Special Olympics value means the most to you?
I Had A Threesome And It Was Awkward AF
By: Danika Bloom
Tags: Sex, Sexuality, Satire, Self, Religion

I Had A Threesome And It Was Awkward AF

Which made me not want to have sex for a decade

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I didn’t experience my first threesome until I was a couple of years into my marriage with James. The first time it happened, I was pregnant. I don’t remember how many months.

He, the third party, was an older man. Someone my parents had introduced me to as a child. I trusted him. Loved him, even. And I knew he loved me, in his own weird way.

I don’t actually remember inviting him to join James and I. Not explicitly, at least. But there he was, in the bedroom, while James and I made love. I felt uncomfortable being watched. I could not orgasm with an audience. (Truth be told, I’d never experienced an orgasm during intercourse, but having a third person watching took away that potential entirely.)

And for the most part, he just watched. He liked vanilla sex. Man on top. Woman submissive. That wasn’t inconvenient for James and me since it was our only position. Yup, after fours years together, it was all vanilla, all the time.

Our third party was passive but in an active way. He liked it when I talked to him, called him Father. Not Daddy. Not by his name. Just Father. It seems his turn-on was watching and making sure I was acknowledging that I knew he was watching while I was being penetrated in a boring, Christian way.

Father seemed to have some psychic power since it was common to hear a knock at the door as James and I started to make moves to have sex. I couldn’t not invite him into the bedroom since he’d made the effort to visit. I wasn’t raised to turn him away or make him leave.

But one day I had the courage to ask him why, when he didn’t seem to enjoy sex and actually seemed kind of judgemental about it, he wanted to be part of my boring sex life with my husband.

“It’s just what I do,” he said.

As much as I loved this old man, I prayed for the day he’d die.

And that day did finally come but not before his interference in my marriage sent my husband to another woman’s bed. I don’t blame my ex-husband at all. I blame that old family friend who felt the need to be a passive-active part of my marriage.
Traveling Writer
By: Rebeca Ansar
Tags: Poetry, Travel, Poem, Haiku, Writing

something about this

temporary desk and chair

anchors self to now.
The Philosophy Of Giving
By: Lanu Pitan
Tags: Life Lessons, Spirituality, Poetry Sunday, Giving, Spiritual Secrets

‘No one has ever become poor by giving’, says Anne Frank

Photo by Viacheslav Bublyk on Unsplash

Sunday Poetry

Giving creates a way for abundance

The Universe creates attendance

Your giving lifts others up

That's the overflow of your cup

Giving, therefore, is a privilege

Do not commit a sacrilege

By not raising others up

And forfeit your blessings

Therefore give cheerfully

To those God sends your way

A kind gesture to reach the wound

Of that broken heart.

Created from the quote: ‘’Not for ourselves alone, we are born’’

by Marcus Tullius Cicero
Dog Stories
By: Shringi Kumari
Tags: Short Story, Storytelling, Fiction, Friendship, City Living

Dog Stories

Fiction

William Woodward Orleans Alley New Orleans. Public Domain

For the last time, “Sara, do not follow me”. Sara knows no other way to move. She follows, I smile. “Why don’t you go see some friends”. Sara looks at the road and rushes ahead. Now, I am the one following. I have to get to my dentistry classes. I am not the one learning the art of the teeth. I am the one who decorates places like hospitals and clinics and gives them this particular not-homely, could-be comfortable look. Sara comes with me and stands outside while I make arrangements before students arrive.

Meanwhile, for that half an hour, Sara lives a life, planted in the middle of the streets. She notes ongoings behind every window. Barks at irregularities. She watches the barber across the street clean and throw cut hair on the road. She glares at him as he spits loudly right outside his shop. She looks at the two men who live right above the shop spread clothes neatly on a string. She barks again when they forget the clothes peg on a towel. She then looks at the road, and the vegetable market about to establish itself at the end of it. This is when she wonders if I would like to buy some and barks with compassion. I rush to her and ask what is it. She continues to shuffle and bark. I bark back. We fail to understand each other. She gets mad, I get annoyed. But she was only being considerate, she thinks. I need to finish my job, I think. We look at each other with disappointment. Some of us barking still, in pure justification. She sits on the ground and I walk inside.

We are both a bit sad. When I am done I cuddle her and we walk to the vegetable market. She seems to want to go home. Me too. I let her walk back — slower than her, I walk right behind.
Working with APIs
Tags: Ruby, APIs, Cli

I created a CLI project using Breaking Bad’s API and would like to go over the things I learnt while making this project. (Note: Breaking Bad is one of my favorite tv shows ever, I was super pumped when I found it’s API)

Let’s talk about working with APIs using Ruby as the programming language.

Before I start, let me briefly describe what is an API? Application Programming Interface (API) is a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other. So for example, whenever we use an app like Twitter, check the weather app, or facebook we are using an API.

To parse information from an API we are going to first require gems. What are gems? A ruby gem is a package of code configured so that it complies with the Ruby style of software distribution. Just like Python has libraries, Ruby has gems.

To use these gems in our program we need to create an environment.rb file in the project directory you are working in. But before I start, let me give a brief overview of the file structure that your projects should contain. (This is mostly conventional and doesn’t really affect your code all that much)

>Project_directory

>bin

-run

>lib

-file.rb

-api.rb

-cli.rb

-environment.rb

-Gemfile

-Gemfile.lock

README.md

To download gems you need to go into the Gemfile and add the gems you wish to use for the project you are working on.

source “https://rubygems.org"

gem ‘rspec’

gem ‘pry’

gem “json”

gem “nokogiri”

gem “open-uri”

gem “bundler”

gem ‘rest-client’

Note: After typing in this, make sure to type in ‘bundle install’ in your CLI which will automatically create the Gemfile.lock file in your project directory which basically means you have successfully downloaded the gems into your program.

To use the gems listed above you need to type in require ‘gem’ in your environment.rb file. This same file is going to be used to connect all the other .rb files in your project using require relative ‘./lib/example’. This file is a part of the ‘lib’ folder in your project.

Here is an example of how your environment.rb file may look like:

require ‘pry’

require ‘bundler’

require ‘json’

require ‘rest-client’ Bundler.require require_relative “./project_directory/file”

require_relative “./project_directory/cli”

require_relative “./project_directory/api”

You can use gems such as net/http or rest-client to use the data from the API in your program and json to parse this data.

Nokogiri is a gem used when you are scraping data using HTML tags.

I will be using rest-client here.

We are going to be doing this part of the project in class Api which is going to be in api.rb.

Let’s define a method called base url and save our API url in this;



"https://

end def self.base_url"https:// www.example.com/api end

We use the keyword “self” here since we are making a class method. The easiest trick to know what self is referring to is to remember that self in an instance method is the instance and self in the class method is the class itself.

Let’s define another class method where we retrieve the url above and then use JSON on it to get only the data (minus all the HTML tags)
GET SET AND CODE:. In this blog, we are going to look at…
By: Manav Sinha
Tags: Pattern, Competitive Programming, Algorithms, Codechef, Problem Solving

SOLVING PATTE1

In this blog, we are going to look at the Problem ‘PRINT PATTERN’ From the contest ‘GET SET and CODE’ organized by THE CODING CULTURE.

Problem:

Rashmi loves the festival of Diwali as she gets to spend time with family and enjoy the festival. Before she can fully enjoy the festival she needs to complete the homework assigned by her teacher. Since Rashmi is smart, she has solved all the problems but is struck at one tricky pattern question. Your task is to help Rashmi solve the problem so that she can enjoy the festival with her family. The Problem she is struck on is defined like this: Given an integer N you need to generate the pattern according to the following example:

Example:

Input:

3

Output:

1 4 10

2 5 11

4 10 22

3 6 12

Constraints:

1<=T<=10⁵

1<=N<=30

INPUT FORMAT:

The first line of the input contains a single integer T denoting the number of test cases. The description of T test cases follows.

The next line of each contains T space-separated integers N.

Sample Test Case:

Input:

2

3 5

Output:

1 4 10

2 5 11

4 10 22

3 6 12

1 4 10 22 46

2 5 11 23 47

4 10 22 46 94

3 6 12 24 48

Analysis:

Approach:

If we observe the pattern carefully, we notice that each column has 4 elements also, there is a relation between elements of each column. We can define this relation as follows:

In each column, we have 4 values.Consider them a,b,c,d.

Now b = a+1 ,

c = 2*b,

d = c-a;

Initially for the first column value of a=1.For subsequent columns c of the previous column becomes a.

You need to follow this approach until the numbers of columns in the matrix are equal to the input number n for a particular test case.

Note:

You need to use long long int data type because the value for n ranges between 1 to 30. Therefore, when dealing with a greater number of columns the value of the 3rd element can be of order 10⁹.

Time Complexity: O(n)

Since we need to make 3 computations for each no column total no of computation will be equal to 3*n. So Time Complexity in Big-Oh will be O(n).

Space Complexity: O(n)

Matrix use will be of order like Mat[4][n]. So space complexity can be written as directly proportional to n. So Space Complexity in Big-Oh will be O(n).

Solution:

Solution for a problem with the given approach in c++:
A Breakdown of My Earnings From the Past 14 Months
By: Itxy Lopez
Tags: Creativity, Money, Advice, Success, Writing

A Breakdown of My Earnings From the Past 14 Months

No, I don’t make $1,000 every month yet. But here’s why I will

Photo by Houcine Ncib on Unsplash

Let me tell you the truth now. My earnings? They’re… alright. For someone who’s been writing on Medium for 14 months, they’re not that impressive.

You know what’s more impressive? The bit about how I’ve been writing on Medium for 14 months.

I should’ve quit by now. That’s what the numbers tell me: “14 months, over 400 articles written, and you’re still not making much?” Last year, at this point, I assumed I’d be at least $500 a month.

But I’m still here, and even though I sometimes really, really want to quit, I know I won’t. I can’t. The idea of quitting is as ludicrous as deciding you want to get off the Ferris wheel when you’re all the way at the top.

So, while I’m going to breakdown my earnings for you, right from the beginning, I also hope I can offer you a little hope by writing about more than just numbers.
The Lonely Snowman’s Story
By: Somsubhra Banerjee
Tags: Poetry, Scrittura, Snow, Thoughts, Loneliness

FREE VERSE

The Lonely Snowman’s Story

All he wants is to have a friend

Photo by Philipp Deus on Unsplash

Alone, alone I trot, aimlessly in the vast expanse,

the vast expanse of the snowy landscape, wishing,

wishing for someone, a friend, a companion, to look into,

to smile and talk, share a few philosophies, and ponder,

so here I am, building a fellow snowman, bit by bit,

and soon there it is, all ready to be my mate,

I hope.

We walk, we smile, we skate through the lush whiteness,

as if nature has layered the greens with a quilt of snow,

we ponder, and I feel less lonely, wishing, wanting,

things, to sail on and on, like this, forever,

but who knew?

Who knew that the sun had to rise, one fine day, and,

it’s piercing rays, hot enough to melt us, melt us quicker,

quicker than I knew, than I expected, and I ran,

ran into that cool shed, to protect us, from disintegration,

but, alas, my friend, he was just short, short of reaching,

that shed, and then?

My friend melted, and turned into liquid, as the sun rays calmed down,

his anger subsiding, eventually, covered by layers of fluffy clouds,

and soon it was cold again, as I, half-melted, stared into the liquid,

that my friend had turned into, my face, reflecting in it, sad, dejected,

alone.

As snowstorms caressed my skin, as my eyes felt heavy with grief,

I saw the liquid, freezing back into ice, covered eventually by snow,

heaps of snow and I smile, amazed at nature’s magical spectacle,

as I walk, walk to the nearest heap, and start to build my friend again,

the process of regeneration from disintegration.
Increase Your Developer Confidence With a Great Django Test Suite
By: Victoria Drake
Tags: Python3, Tdd, Data Science, Programming, Python

Increase Your Developer Confidence With a Great Django Test Suite

How to write tests for your Django applications that boost your team and are actually useful

Cartoon by the author. It’s just soda in the test tube, but I’m not taking chances with that beaker.

If you regard writing tests as a lame checkbox task, nothing could be farther from the truth. Done correctly, tests are one of your application’s most valuable assets.

The Django framework, in particular, offers your team the opportunity to create an efficient testing practice based on the Python standard library unittest . Proper tests in Django are fast to write, faster to run, and can offer you a seamless continuous integration solution for taking the pulse of your developing application.

With comprehensive tests, developers have higher confidence when pushing changes. I’ve seen firsthand in my own teams that good tests can boost development velocity as a direct result of a better developer experience.

In this article, I’ll share my own experiences in building useful tests for Django applications, from the basics to the best possible execution. If you’re using Django or building with it in your organization, you might like to read my Django series on Victoria.dev.
Floating Mind
By: Joanna Vang
Tags: Skeleton, Poetry, Chalkboard Espresso, Dreams, Chalkboard

Floating Mind

Skeleton dreams, they lie like don’t even exist when I need you the most
One World: Together At Home
By: Jennifer Hammersmark
Tags: Fundraising, Review, Covid 19, Awareness, One World Together

The event, organized by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the nonprofit group Global Citizen, was the biggest celebrity effort so far to mark the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 150,000 people worldwide. CBC News

Although there has already been some press on how lousy the event was, claiming “it made us feel even worse about our already miserable circumstances”, I liked it. I had some tears flowing periodically through the two hour event as various artists tugged at my heart strings.

One of those moments for me was when Stevie Wonder did a tribute to Bill Withers (who recently passed on March 30th) singing the infamous “Lean On Me”. I am also a sucker for “Stand By Me”, the song I chose for our wedding right after we said our vows, which was performed by John Legend and Sam Smith. What an incredible duet it was!

Louis Armstrong’s classic “What A Wonderful World” was beautifully performed by couple Camila Cabello and Shawn Mendes. I would be hard pressed to say which of their voices were more lovely.

I really enjoyed the magic of modern technology as well. The Rolling Stones did a great job of coordinating “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” from four separate locations. Keith Urban looped himself on three different guitars while performing Steve Winwood’s hit “Higher Love”. I thought it was very clever.

In anticipation of writing this review, I was going to mention all of the performers that volunteered their time. That is, until my list became four pages long! Way too many to mention them all, sadly, as I really could go on and on.

Another great feature was how the entire event was interspersed with kind and meaningful words from so many celebrities and important figures of our time: Oprah, former U.S. first ladies Laura Bush and Michelle Obama, Ellen DeGeneres, and Melinda & Bill Gates, to name a few.

Finally, and possibly most importantly, the event was nicely rounded out with many examples of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. They were wonderful reminders of how far the human spirit can reach during a time of need.

If you didn’t get a chance yourself to enjoy the event, set some time aside for it. You can view it on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter or Amazon Prime — plus many other platforms.

Thank you Lady Gaga for curating the event, and thank you World Health Organization and Global Citizen, and everyone who contributed and made this possible.