fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
The Best Way to Succeed as a Writer Is to Demand Less of Yourself
By: Paul Kix
Tags: Self Improvement, Writing, Psychology, Creative Process, Creativity

The Best Way to Succeed as a Writer Is to Demand Less of Yourself Paul Kix Follow Nov 11 · 3 min read

The power that comes from meeting ridiculously modest goals

Photo by Jan Kahánek on Unsplash

I finished the first draft of a screenplay last week. It’s the fourth one I’ve written in three years, and I’ve written all of them in the hours when I’ve not been writing a book, or writing here, or on my blog, or for other websites or magazines.

I’m not super-human. I don’t even consider myself prodigious. My trick, if I have one, is to set ridiculously modest goals for my output and then meet them every day.

Before I wrote my last book I thought about how I would pace myself. I had a full-time job and a large family and a taste for good Scotch. I didn’t want to give up my life for the book. So I studied other writers, when they wrote but also how much each day. I liked Graham Greene’s model for output: 500 words a day, five or six days a week. (Greene lightly fictionalized his approach in The End of the Affair, the audio version of which Colin Firth narrates. It’s amazing.)

Five hundred words a day is between an hour and a half to three hours of work for me. That’s manageable. With the last book I could wake early and get 500 words down before I made breakfast for the kids or took meetings at the day job.

That was the point. You should never strain when you’re writing a book or a long magazine piece or essay. Straining leads to exhaustion and exhaustion to frustration and frustration to poorly told stories or, worse, abandoned writing projects.

You will never publish what you don’t finish.

When I started writing screenplays and TV pilots, in the gaps in my calendar when I wasn’t writing a book, I set the same low standard: Two pages a day. I can sometimes finish that in a half hour. Sometimes it takes two and a half hours because I’m imagining the progression of subsequent scenes. In either case it’s manageable, and because of that I return to the work the next day, which is how I’ve written four scripts in three years.

Hit me up if you want to know more about how to manage multiple writing projects at the same time. I’ve developed a system for that too, one I began to lay out here and might cover in more depth elsewhere.

Next week, I’ll start to revise my new script. I’m envisioning it as a feature film and, as you’ll see below, this one is too long. I’ll be cutting whole scenes and re-writing others and every day doing the minimum amount of work to feel like I’m making real progress.

New to my writing? I’m a best-selling author who’s written for The New Yorker, GQ, ESPN, and New York, among other titles. My first book, The Saboteur, was optioned by DreamWorks to be turned into a film. I’m now at work on a second book for Celadon about a pivotal 10-week period in the Civil Rights Movement that still defines our lives.
I’m Not Really Keen On Getting A COVID-19 Vaccine. Here’s Why.
By: Dr Joel Yong
Tags: Covid 19, Healthcare, Health, Science, Coronavirus

What a vaccine does contain

According to the World Health Organization,

Vaccines contain weakened or inactive parts of a particular organism (antigen) that triggers an immune response within the body. Newer vaccines contain the blueprint for producing antigens rather than the antigen itself. Regardless of whether the vaccine is made up of the antigen itself or the blueprint so that the body will produce the antigen, this weakened version will not cause the disease in the person receiving the vaccine, but it will prompt their immune system to respond much as it would have on its first reaction to the actual pathogen. Some vaccines require multiple doses, given weeks or months apart. This is sometimes needed to allow for the production of long-lived antibodies and development of memory cells. In this way, the body is trained to fight the specific disease-causing organism, building up memory of the pathogen so as to rapidly fight it if and when exposed in the future.

For the COVID-19 coronavirus particles, the vaccine contains inactivated fragments of their messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) identifier strands:

The vaccines contain synthetic mRNA, which is genetic information used to make the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. The spike protein is the part of the virus that attaches to human cells. The spike protein alone cannot cause COVID-19. Once the spike protein is created it causes the immune system to make antibodies against the virus. These antibodies can the provide protection if a person comes into contact with the virus. The mRNA vaccines are noninfectious and do not enter the human cell nucleus so it cannot be inserted into human DNA. Additionally, mRNA is rapidly broken down, and this theoretically reduces chances for long term side effects.

The assumption behind this entire sequence of events is that the immune system can create antibodies that can hopefully detect the actual mRNA of the virus that creates the spike protein, such that the immune system is able to respond adequately and tag the virus for destruction.

The problem with this assumption is that it assumes that our immune system is capable of destroying all this RNA rapidly.

Because let’s face the elephant in the room: all these studies about the vaccines only focus about the immune system generating the necessary antibodies to tag the virus, and we then assume that the destruction is rapid.
The Girl Who Saved Me From Panic Disorder
By: Jacob Lopez
Tags: Life Lessons, Mental Health, Health, Psychology, Mindfulness

A photo I took of Louise in the hills of San Luis Obispo

The Girl Who Saved Me From Panic Disorder

And the tools I used to heal.

It began at my bank. The teller noticed something was wrong.

“Sir? Sir, are you okay?”

In retrospect, he probably thought I was choking. Choking or having a meltdown.

It was a meltdown. I told the teller I was fine, finished my transaction, then power-walked into the parking lot and gasped in the fresh air. Once calm, I looked up at the few lonely clouds in the San Luis Obispo sky. I knew exactly what had happened. “My first panic attack,” I told myself.

I returned to my San Luis Obispo on-campus apartment thinking it was a one-off thing. But the next day, it happened again in my English class. As the class discussed works in colonial American literature, I kept my head on my desk and felt like death. After the attack, I told my professor I was unwell.

“Yeah, I can tell. Go on home and get some rest.”

The walk back to my apartment was full of terrors. Trees swaying in the wind made me shutter. Approaching friends made me hide in my hands.

When I reached my apartment, I told my roommates something was happening. I told them not to enter my room.

I sat in the dark with a gripping stomach ache and a new understanding of “the dark night of the soul.” I gagged on rice crackers and the thought that my panic was unwarranted. It seemed like a random intruder from some undiscoverable source.

In the following days, my school attendance was scarce. I didn’t socialize. I couldn’t tell anyone about my panic. Who could I tell? I could hardly admit to myself that I was drowning in my own mind, sinking in a seemingly inescapable sinkhole of suffering… It felt something like rock bottom.

Enter Louise.

“Photographing Louise charmed me. Her eyes revealed her deep experience and her smile was something like a sanctuary I could comfortably rest in.”

She traveled from England to San Luis Obispo to study psychology. We met around the time my panic began. She was trying to get away from frat parties and weekends of heavy drinking. I was trying to get away from my panic. We began taking long walks together through the hills of San Luis Obispo. I’d often bring my camera along.

Photographing Louise charmed me. Her eyes revealed her deep experience and her smile was something like a sanctuary I could comfortably rest in.

I was only ever able to tell Louise about my panic because of her soft soul and obvious expertise in all things psychology …and because our friendship turned romantic.
How to manage states with State Design Pattern in C#?
By: Daniel Rusnok
Tags: Coding, Csharp, Software Development, Development, Design Patterns

State design challenges

The pattern was developed to overcome two primary design challenges:

How can an object change its behavior when its internal state changes? How can state-specific behaviors be defined in a way that states can be added without altering the behaviors of existing states?

Boolean Flag Pattern can answer to the first challenge. The object will know when to change its behavior because we detect internal changes with boolean flags. You can use boolean flags and decision-making statements to take control of object states.

The second can be answered with the Boolean Flag Pattern too. In this case, state-specific behaviors are code segments of the decision-making statement body. You will not alter this code segment. You will add a new branch of if or switch statement.

But this solution brings more complex code. More states mean boolean flags. More boolean flags indicate more decision-making statements, which means more debug time while fixing the bug, which means headache, which means you will need a booster which leads to alcoholism.

Created by Katemangostar

State Design Pattern

State Pattern is part of behavior patterns designed to avoid overusing of decision-making statements by applying bright use of object-oriented languages.

The pattern consists of three components:

Context Abstract State Concrete State

In the diagram above, you can see a representation of Context(DogContext), Abstract State(IDogState), and Concrete States(SleepState and BarkState).

The Context contains a method TransitionToState , and this is the only allowed way to change the transition of the Dog object. The method invokes the EnterState method of its parameter, the object of an Abstract State(IDogState). Also, it introduces a value of parameter into Context’s property CurrentState .

Method EnterState of Concrete States will do state-specific behavior.

Methods Bark and Sleep are triggers to change state from one to another if it is allowed. For example, if the dog can change state from bark into sleep but not the other way around, implementation will look like this.

Pros and Cons

Code following State Design Pattern is:

More modular. Easier to maintain. Less challenging to debug. More extensible.

As a disadvantage can be mention:
Create image classification for recognizing persons, animals, others. Using TensorFlow
By: Alex G.
Tags: Keras, Matplotlib, Computer Vision, Python, TensorFlow

So, Let’s start :)

At first, we need a dataset with the next classes:

- Person

- Animals

- Other

Let me describe what each class I mean:

In a first-class “person”, we should have any images of peoples but WITHOUT ANIMALS.

In the next class “animals”, we should have images with animals WITHOUT HUMAN.

In this class, including images with the next classes:

dog (different breeds), squirrel (different breeds), horse, chicken, cats, raccoon, deer.

In this class, including images with the next classes: dog (different breeds), squirrel (different breeds), horse, chicken, cats, raccoon, deer. In the last class “other”, we should have any images WITHOUT HUMAN AND ANIMAL.

I created a dataset with 113k. images with 3 classes which I described above.

This dataset was created from a lot of datasets Kaggle platform:

Person:

Animals:

Other:

I already created a notebook that already does this. But, if you want run this notebook in colab you need to create datasets manually.

You can just open a notebook in Colab and watch how model training :)

I created a model that has a result for NEW data: 0.008% for loss and 100.00% accuracy. I guess it’s a perfect result.

confusion matrix (Photo,GIF by Author) https://github.com/oleksandr-g-rock/How_to_create-image-classification-for-recognizing-persons-animals-others/blob/main/0_w1p1XToA7zVEMsAk.png

So link for the notebook here.

Also, I saved the best model file (with format h5) with the best result here.

Result:

- I created a model that has a result for NEW data: 0.008% for loss and 100.00% accuracy. I guess it’s a perfect result.

- link for the notebook here.

- Code for this article available here.

- I saved the best model file (with format h5) with the best result here.
Dear Grocery Girl
By: Rae Lately
Tags: Covid 19, Opinion, Society, Coronavirus, Health

Dear Grocery Girl

I see you caring (only) about yourself

Photo by sydney Rae on Unsplash

Dear Grocery Girl,

Just to be clear, I am stalking you. I’ve had my eye on you since you grabbed the last mini-cart in the parking lot.

Your mask dangles over your ear like some forgotten bra on the clothesline, left out in the rain. You have lipstick on. Lipstick! Who has worn lipstick since February? That shade of pink gives you away and I watch, pushing my cart two cart-lengths behind, as you stop before the sliding doors to hang the other mask strap over your ear.

You make it through the gatekeeper, you know the lady at the door who has the worst shift: checking for masks on entry.

Then you do the unspeakable. Like some entitled seventh-grader sticking her gum under a desk, you shove that mask in your Kate Spade.

First of all, you clearly are not there to shop for your family. Your lipstick and speed-shopping show me you are on a mission, and no one is going to get in your way.

Second of all, I see you not once, but two times, scratching your nose.

What is so hard to understand about the importance of wearing a mask in public?

I follow you at least twelve feet behind, making sure not to touch the same items as you. I am not shopping for chardonnay anyway. You don’t even notice the elderly couple pass you on the other side of the aisle. They pass slowly, and the woman looks back at you and shakes her head.

I try to imagine confronting you, but instead, I take out my phone, in one passive-aggressive minute, you have become a permanent meme for the narcissism, ignorance, and carelessness that plagues our country.

You probably won’t care because girl, you are Instagram ready.

Next time, I’m going to make a scene.

Wear your mask!

Sincerely,

Concerned Mom
A Cheat Sheet for Choosing the Right Data Visualizations
By: Therese Moriarty
Tags: Eyeful How To, Business Intelligence, Dashboard, Data Visualization, Data Analysis

Today, organizations of all industries and sizes use data to tap into the wellness of their business. Anyone who can easily see trends and spot problems can make smarter decisions. Therefore, you have to visualize your data if you want to be competitive.

Data visualizations are images that show measurement and activity. They’re key components of business presentations and they’re the building blocks of dashboards. But despite their ubiquity, not everyone knows how to select and format them properly. And if you can’t visualize your data well, your colleagues can’t uncover any insights that lead to growth.

Every successful data visualization begins with a clear understanding of what you want to analyze. Once you realize the true purpose of these data visualizations — and avoid some common pitfalls with using them — you can effectively illustrate any type of information you want.

1: SINGLE VALUE
Inspiration Is Never In Short Supply
By: Tom Stevenson
Tags: Self Improvement, Productivity, Writing, Inspiration, Creativity

Inspiration Is Never In Short Supply

There’s always something to write about

There was a point a few months ago when I thought I would have nothing left to write about. I had a few more ideas lined up, but beyond that, I was struggling to come up with any more.

I remember thinking to myself, “What am I going to do in a few weeks when I’ve run out of ideas?”

My mind was drawing blanks and no matter where I went, or where I looked, I struggled to come up with any new ideas for my blog posts.

It was a few weeks after this, that the ideas started to flow again.

I’m not sure what started it. Maybe, it was the trips that I went on. Taking myself out of my usual settings may have helped my creative juices to flow.

I don’t know.

What I do know is that I started to see inspiration all around me.

Seemingly trivial events became ideas that I could write about. My mind had opened up and I was more receptive to interpreting what I was seeing and writing about it.

It’s easy to think you have nothing left to write. It’s a common concern for writers.

But the truth is, inspiration is everywhere. We just need to look for it.
A Look Into The Cell Graveyard
By: Dr Joel Yong
Tags: Healthcare, Health, Science, Biology, Coronavirus

A Look Into The Cell Graveyard

Or what happens to cells when they die.

Photo by Terry Vlisidis on Unsplash

The cells in our body all experience a finite lifespan. Even as they’re continuously dividing and multiplying, there will come a point in time where they are unable to carry out that function anymore.

And we see that occurring as we age.

We can’t do things at age 50 that we could do at age 20.

Inevitably, as we grow older, the efficiency of the cellular reproduction decreases, and we experience this gradual loss of function in our lives.

Molecular biology usually focuses on the reproduction process…

But what happens to the cells that are supposed to die?
The Genius Formula of BTS- The K-Pop Phenomenon That Took The World By Storm
Tags: Fashion, Business, Marketing, Creativity, Music

Disclaimer: The content you’ll read below is based on extensive research on my part and my personal experiences with the band over the years. I am by no means a BTS expert, so do let me know if there is any errata in my claims. Thank you!

Just under a month ago, the South Korean boy band BTS attained the №1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 with their single ‘Dynamite’- an astronomical feat no other South Korean act has ever come close to achieving before.

Their energetic, disco-funk themed music video for the single has also cemented a new record high for the most number of views on Youtube in 24 hours- 101.1 million views. It’s at a whopping 371 million views right now, and it’ll only keep climbing higher.

They’ve also amassed the biggest weekly digital sales sum since Prince and the Revolution’s 1984 classic “Purple Rain” 3 years ago.

Since the release of Dynamite, they’ve also performed at the VMAs & America’s Got Talent- two of the most desirable and sought-after platforms for any artist to promote their material. And there’s definitely more prestigious stages to come.

BTS performing Dynamite at the VMAs

And BTS is definitely no stranger on the Billboard. Prior to the release of Dynamite, they already boast four №1 albums on the Billboard 200 chart in under two years, making them the first group to achieve such a feat since the Beatles. They also hold the record for the most weeks at №1 on the Social 50 chart (195 and counting).

And this is just in America. Domestically, their recent album Map Of The Soul: 7, holds the title of the best selling album in the country, with more than 4 million copies sold to date. This is just one of the countless other stupendous records set so far.

But things weren’t always so rosy for the world’s biggest boy band. In fact, BTS had to endure numerous hardships before they even had a sniff of success.
My Exact $2,000 a Month Online Side-Hustle Daily Routine
By: Jon Brosio
Tags: Motivation, Entrepreneurship, Success, Digital Marketing, Writing

Becoming a full-time, work-for-yourself writer and online entrepreneur is a dream that thousands — if not millions — of individuals aspire to achieve.

Like many things worthwhile, in order to become one, it takes time and a lot of hard work.

For a lot of people (myself included), it all starts when you are currently grinding away at a full-time job.

What's more, is this full-time job is something you're trying to get out of.

Enter — the Art of The Side Hustle.

Side hustles have been talked about a lot in the last 5 or so years. What is a side hustle? According to Oberlo a side hustle is,

"a way to make money outside of your 9 to 5 job. It allows you to make more money that’ll give you the freedom to pursue your passions, buy things you need or want, and lower any financial worries. Truth is, most 9 to 5 jobs don’t pay the bills. Especially if you’re just starting out in your career."

I'd personally take that last paragraph a bit further with, "The truth is, most 9 to 5 jobs don't pay the bills. They further don't bring the type of meaning and fulfillment one expected when starting out."

That's why a side hustle can be so beautiful and rewarding. If done correctly, an individual can work towards and fulfilling and meaningful goal while simultaneously supplementing his or her income — sometimes in the range of thousands per month.

Now a side hustle that either builds to full-time income or helps supplement income for discretionary purchases can take many forms. For me, it took the form of writing online articles and using those articles to drive traffic so I could market and sell my digital products.

In this article, we'll go over the exact routine I used to build up to my $2,000 a month online side hustle. I made that money through the publication of online content as well as the sale of digital downloads and online courses.

We'll go over how to generate writing prompts within your niche, how to publish articles that make money, and how to drive those money-making articles to the sale of your digital products.

Let's get into it.
Amazon EC2 — A Step By Step Tutorial
By: Furqan Butt
Tags: Cloud Computing, Ec2, Iaas, Big Data, AWS

Launching an EC2 instance

Signing up For AWS

To launch an EC2 instance first you’ll need to set up an AWS account. Amazon provides new users with 1 year of free tire access which comes with free access to various AWS services within certain limits. To get more information about AWS free tier and creating an AWS account visit this link.

Launching EC2 instance from the Management Console

Although there are various options provided by AWS to launch an EC2 instance (management console, CLI, APIs, and SDKs), AWS Management Console provides an interactive and neatly built user interface from which we can access and manage all the available services of AWS. To launch an EC2 instance, log in to your account that will take you to the management console. Your management console looks like this:

AWS Management Console

You can search for the EC2 service in the search bar or you can select your service from the Services option in the navbar at the top. The EC2 service will be under the compute category. Upon selecting the EC2 service you’ll be on the following screen.
Profession
By: Carlos Lewis
Tags: Books, Work, Creativity, Brandon Sanderson, Writing

As we get older, our professions become more involved and demanding. This is not necessarily a bad thing.

For those of us who aspire to be creatives, having a job that puts demands on some other part of the mind can be liberating.

Novelists who have made a career as copywriters may find it hard to come home to work on their own writing after a day of writing for someone else. This is understandable. After all, the same part of the brain is being utilized.

But if you can manage to have a job that does not require that part of your creative brain, you can have the best of both worlds.

Fantasy author Brandon Sanderson worked nights as a hotel clerk so he could have more time to write. That’s admirable. The graveyard shift is bad enough, but doing it for a purpose takes the sting out a bit. Either way, his gamble paid off.

We all have to have priorities.

If you can manage to leverage your profession for artistic expression, you are lucky indeed.
How to Create Captivating Animations in Python
By: Vivek Coder
Tags: Python, Matplotlib, Animation, Productivity, Data Visualization

How to Create Captivating Animations in Python

Learn to generate animations using Matplotlib with examples

Animations are quite a captivating way to illustrate a process.

This post aims to emphasize on Matplotlib animations.

Matplotlib is a complete framework for the creation of fixed, animated and engaging representation in Python. This also conveniently combines with libraries such as Pandas and Seaborn to produce more advanced animations.

Animations

The simplest way to describe a real-time visual is using one of the following Animation classes.

Animation A base class for Animations.

A base class for Animations. FuncAnimationCreates a graphic by repeatedly calling a function func.

a graphic by repeatedly calling a function func. ArtistAnimation Animation using a fixed set of Artist objects.

However, out of those, FuncAnimation is more useful.

To save an animation to disk use Animation.save or Animation.to_html5_video

Now, we start with our first animation in the Jupyter Notebooks.

Using Celluloid Module

Celluloid module makes simple animation process by adapting your existing visualization code to create an animation.

It creates a matplotlib Figure and create a Camera from it:

from celluloid import Camera

fig = plt.figure()

camera = Camera(fig)

Reusing the figure and after each frame is built, take a snapshot with the camera.

plt.plot(...)

plt.fancy_stuff()

camera.snap()

After all, frames have been captured and create the animation.

animation = camera.animate()

Installation

pip install celluloid

A few examples of the Celluloid module are given below:

Minimal

Subplots

Images

Domain colouring example

Legends

Limitations of Celluloid:
Permissionless Professors #4: Brian Balfour
By: Gary Bailey - Monetization Manifesto
Tags: Growth, Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Startup, Monetization

We believe monetization is a hidden secret. Secrets hiding in plain sight. From the psychology of anchoring, the mathematics of power-law pricing tables, the application of demand elasticity, and the market positioning of your price — your path to better monetization awaits.

Follow
The New UK Coronavirus Variant Is Troubling, But No Reason To Panic.
By: Rachid Meharich
Tags: Science, Covid 19, Health, Coronavirus

The New UK Coronavirus Variant Is Troubling, But No Reason To Panic.

There’s no evidence it provokes more severe disease or impacts on vaccines.

Photo by CDC on Unsplash

Since early December, a new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has been identified in the United Kingdom (UK). Baptized B.1.1.7, this new strain appeared after diverse mutations of the virus.

What do we know about the new variant of the coronavirus?

1. The new variant seems more contagious

In the evolution of a virus, mutations are frequent events. Concerned the SARS-CoV-2, numerous mutations were observed those last months, but still had no significant effect on the transmission of the virus, its contagiousness, or its severity. Differently, B.1.1.7 seems more contagious and seems to explain the acceleration of contaminations observed in December in England.

According to Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London, this variant has an cumulated transmission rate of 50 to 70% compared to other strains present in the UK.

2. B.1.1.7 variant doesn’t appear to cause more severe forms

The new variant does not seem to lead to more severe manifestations of covid. Studies are awaited to confirm this theory, especially with what happens in South Africa, where a variant close to the B.1.1.7 was observed. This African variant spread fast, and preliminary studies have shown that people infected express higher viral load. And it’s known that a higher viral load is usually associated with the severity of symptoms.

3. Children would be more sensitive to it

The increased transmissibility could be due to the way the virus infects children. According to Wendy Barclay, a UK government adviser and virologist at Imperial College London, the new strain could make children “as sensitive as adults” to covid. Analysis has started to confirm this hypothesis.

4. Vaccines would remain effective against this variant

For now, scientists doubt that the mutation has an impact on vaccines. The effectiveness of the two vaccines Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, already authorized in several countries of the world, is based on creating immunity against the coronavirus by preparing our immune system to recognize a viral protein: the protein S (spike protein). Prof Uğur Şahin, CEO of BioNTech, says about this new variant: “Scientifically, the likelihood is high that this is the case because even though this variant has multiple mutations, only 1% of the relevant protein has changed. That means 99% are still the same, and we know that the immune response that our vaccine uses is attacking this protein from multiple sides. So the likelihood is high that the vaccine will still work. But we will get the results in two weeks, and then we can be sure”.
A stunning Japanese philosophy that will make you a better marketer, entrepreneur and human.
By: Cole Schafer
Tags: Creativity, Business, Entrepreneurship, Life, Writing

Did someone just flush the toilet?

There was nothing perfect about my grandmother, her life nor the restaurant she had created. But, it was in this imperfection where the beauty could be found.

While she was one of the most gifted cooks I’ve ever met, she didn’t measure a damn thing, she didn’t own a recipe book, she had no “process”. She just did the best she could with what she had.

She grew up extraordinarily poor and never had the luxury that the pompous celebrity-chefs have of “cooking with the finest ingredients”. And, because of this, she was forced to make due. And, when you’re forced to make due, you’re forced to accept that there is no such thing as perfect.

This was the beauty in my grandmother — she was this beautiful curation of imperfections.

As I’ve gone about building Honey Copy, my creative writing shop that works with brands on writing pretty words that sell whatever it is they’re selling, I’ve embraced some of this philosophy.

I’ve come to find that no brand nor business is perfect and that so much of being a successful marketer is about understanding this and marketing the beauty in a brand’s imperfections. For some companies, that has meant admitting they’re not the best.

By doing this, by embracing wabi-sabi, marketers and entrepreneurs can build more unique, authentic brands.

At Panda Express, customers are going to get the exact same “perfect” watered down experience whether they’re dining at a chain in New York City or one in the middle of Idaho.

But, what made folks choose my grandmother’s restaurant over Panda express was that it felt so damn human.

Customers were elbow to elbow with other customers. Bangs and clacks could be heard from the back of the restaurant as cooks were busy at work. The restaurant was so small that if someone flushed a toilet, you could hear it. At times the service was a bit slow, it could by no means be described as zippy.

But, despite all of this, folks showed up, time and time again, because they were getting a perfectly imperfect experience they could find nowhere else. Not to mention, a damn good meal, too.
How to Make Google Love You (Even if You Don’t Love Google)
By: Matthew Royse
Tags: Writing, Google, Business, Marketing, Search Engines

How to Make Google Love You (Even if You Don’t Love Google)

Online experiences begin with search engines and Google is #1

Photo by Kai Wenzel on Unsplash

In today’s digitalized world, search engines are one of the most powerful marketing tools. Search has become an essential part of our daily lives. The search engine that most people use is Google.

Almost 30% of global web traffic was generated via online search usage and 76% of all global searches take place on Google.

Online experiences usually begin with a search engine. So, it’s important that Google loves you to drive traffic to your website. Research shows search engines drive 300% more traffic to websites than social media.

Let’s discuss how you can get more traffic from Google even if you think they are greedy, sneaky, and dominate the market too much.

Google learns every time a user searches and they want to give each searcher answers to their questions as soon as possible. It’s called searcher task accomplishment. So, it’s important to help Google help you.

Here are five things you should do to make sure Google loves you.
Reading Fiction Will Make You a More Empathetic Person Who Makes Better Decisions
By: Tom Belskie
Tags: Books, Reading, Self Improvement, Creativity, Productivity

Reading Fiction Will Make You a More Empathetic Person Who Makes Better Decisions

So why is it missing from so many self-help recipes?

Photo by Joel Muniz on Unsplash

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.

— Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

Have you ever noticed that fiction books are hardly ever mentioned when people give out book recommendations? How many times have you seen ‘read fiction’ on a list of ways to change your life, 10x your results, and crush the competition?

Whether its the famous reading lists of icons like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet or the glut of listicle masterpieces from popular productivity bloggers, fiction books rarely seem to make it into the better-version-of-yourself-toolkit.

The tacit implication seems to be that fiction rarely rises to the level of usefulness offered by its non-fiction counterparts. When it comes to leveling up, it seems like fiction just doesn’t quite make the grade.

The Self-Help industry has an empathy problem.

So too does productivity culture.

Reading fiction might be a crucial part of the antidote.

An article in The Harvard Business Review cites several studies that found reading fiction can help people develop important skills like “empathy, theory of mind, and critical thinking,” that are often associated with a high EQ or emotional intelligence:

“Research, however, suggests that reading fiction may provide far more important benefits than nonfiction. For example, reading fiction predicts increased social acuity and a sharper ability to comprehend other people’s motivations.”

We spend so much time reading about how to stand out, how to be rare and valuable, how to level up, about extraordinary people and their accomplishments, and not enough time inhabiting the headspace of other, often more ordinary people we are apt to encounter in works of fiction.

Consequently, these are the types of people we are also more apt to encounter in our own daily realities.

Maybe reading strictly for knowledge isn’t the only reason to pick up a book. In fact, it might not even be the best reason.
The new landing page is to have no landing page at all
By: Titus Decali
Tags: Marketing, Design, Web Development, Startup, Growth Hacking

The new landing page is to have no landing page at all

Quicker to value means quicker to pay.

by Mike Petrucci on Unsplash

I want you to take a hard look at your product and ask yourself if you really need that landing page, all that text, or even that intro video.

What if you got rid of it all and just shoved them right into the product?

I hear you. You have reasons for not letting people access your product right away. They might even be good reasons. While I think you should reconsider those reasons, here are a few ways you can get customers experiencing your product within the first five seconds of hitting your existing landing page.

Add a button to let them play with it

Baremetrics gives you a LIVE DEMO button right at the top

LIVE DEMO button right at the top of the landing page

Live, interactive demo of the product, no login required

Like Baremetrics, Kampsite has a big See Example button right at the top of their homepage which lets you dive into the product and experience it after just one click.

See Example button right at top

Live product just a click away

Proof gives you a popup on the bottom-left corner which is exactly what you’ll get on your own site if you use their product. Not all products can do this, but for marketing popups, livechat, and similar site extensions, this is a great way to get your value across quickly.
Our FAQs
By: Tds Editors
Tags: Writers’ Guide, Tds Team, Writers Guide

Writers

What happens when I submit my article to TDS?

Thank you so much for taking the time to submit your article to our team! We will review it as soon as we can.

If we believe that your article is excellent and ready to go, this is how you will be able to add your post to our publication. If “Towards Data Science” shows up after you click on “Add to publication” in the dropdown menu at the top of the page, that means we have added you as an author and are waiting for you to submit your article. Once you have submitted your article, it will be reviewed by an editor before a final decision is made.

If we think that your article is interesting but needs to be improved, someone from our team will provide you with feedback directly on your submitted Medium article.

Please note that we only respond to articles that were properly submitted using either our form or via an email that exactly follows the instructions listed here. We don’t respond to pitches or questions already answered in our FAQs or on our Contribute page. We also ignore articles that don’t comply with our rules.

If you haven’t heard from us within the next five working days, please carefully check the article you submitted to our team. See if you can now submit it directly to TDS and look for any private notes from us that you may have missed. You should also make sure to check your spam folder.

If you just can’t reach us, the best thing for you to do is submit your article to another publication. Although we’d love to, we can’t provide customized feedback to everyone because we simply receive too many submissions. You can learn more about our decision here and submit another post in a month.
Как рассказать историю при помощи интерактивной карты
By: We Shall Burn Bright
Tags: Storytelling, Visualization, Journalism

В KnightLab полагают, что современная журналистика оказалась под контролем «технократов», которые ничего не смыслят в профессии:

What problem are we solving?

We care deeply about journalism. […] But in 2013, journalism is still struggling with its digitally-focused future. Technologists are winning at media technology innovation, but they do not understand “journalism”. Worse, many journalists barely understand how the Internet works, let alone how to get the most out of storytelling on the web.
4 Unusual Ways to Relax in 2021 and Beyond
By: Anita Durairaj
Tags: Self Improvement, Psychology, Self, Motivation, Health

Watching ASMR Videos

About a year ago, I randomly opened up my YouTube app to watch a music video. The first thing that popped up on my YouTube homepage was a video with the title “99.9% of you will sleep to this ASMR video”. The promise of sleep seemed too good to be true. I didn’t even know what ASMR was. However, once I watched that video, I was hooked. Also, as promised by the video, I fell asleep after a few minutes. It was almost like being hypnotized.

ASMR is Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. It can best be described as a “tingly feeling” that one experiences in response to certain sounds and triggers. The triggers and sounds can include whispering, the sounds from turning the pages of a book, the rustle of newspapers and my favorite sound which is the tapping of nails on a solid surface.

There is a lot of controversy about the benefits of ASMR. Some people even go as far as calling it witchcraft and nonsensical. My personal experience is that depending on the type of sounds and the video, it can be very relaxing. I will admit that I have watched ASMR videos just for the purpose of wanting to fall asleep.

How to watch ASMR videos safely

There are so many different types of ASMR videos and not all of it may seem wholesome. Some videos are of a sexual nature. It is up to you to choose the right ASMR video. Personally, I like the ones that focus on harmless stuff like turning the pages of a book, rummaging through a purse, or fingernail tapping sounds made on different objects. Basically ASMR helps me to relax and sleep.

It is important to note that not everyone experiences ASMR. Some people are not geared to being sensitive to these sounds and triggers. Also, not much research has been done on ASMR. There is no concrete proof or evidence that it has actual benefits even though the majority of people have found it to be very relaxing.
I Got Rejected by Apple Music… So I Redesigned It
By: Jason Yuan
Tags: Apple, Music, UX Design, Tech, Design

I’d like to preface this case study by stating that my intentions behind redesigning Apple Music were in no way driven by indignation or spite.

Earlier this year I applied and interviewed for a graphic design internship at Apple Music (an opportunity of a lifetime), and was turned down with a very kind letter stating that although they liked my work, they wanted to see more growth and training.

At first, I was frustrated — Northwestern University doesn’t offer any sort of undergraduate graphic design program, so whatever growth they were looking for would have to be self taught…

…but as soon as I came to this realization, I became inspired to embark on what became a a three-month long journey to the holy grail — the iOS app that Apple Music deserves.

For me, this was an opportunity to really dig my teeth into UX research and design, an excuse to spend way too much time on Sketch and Principle, a reason to bore everyone around me with my notebook of crudely drawn wireframes 😂…

What you’ll find below is a case study offering potential solutions to address some of Apple Music’s problems, as well as ideas for future development. My process was guided by qualitative user research, Apple’s official Design Principles, and my own designer intuition.

Introduction

As a designer with a background in music composition and performance, I have always been passionate about experiences that marry music and technology. Through design, I hope to one day make the experience of music more accessible and enjoyable.

However, Apple Music has always frustrated me. What was meant to be the service to convert everyone in the world to streaming is going through puberty — a phrase which here means steadily maturing yet unattractive compared to the adults in the game (aka Spotify).

To better understand Apple Music, I took a trip down memory lane and revisited its inception. Plagued with a notoriously confusing interface and a half-baked visual identity, Apple Music’s first identity was the culprit of many headaches.
I’m Reverting to My 9-Year-Old Self To Be More Productive
By: Lindsay Brown
Tags: Childhood, Work, Writing, Creativity, Productivity

I’m Reverting to My 9-Year-Old Self To Be More Productive

The perks of not caring what others think

Photo by Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash

I’ve been feeling pretty down lately. I’m not sure if it’s the quarantine blues setting in or if I’m just stressed out with life in general. We are trying to play some major catch-up financially after being laid off for 7 months, so I suspect that has something to do with my current emotional state.

The thing is, I don’t want to feel this way.

Sometimes when I’m feeling down, I like to bask in my depression. It just feels so good to swim around in sadness for a while. You know, turn on some Alanis Morissette and watch yourself cry in the mirror for a good hour or so.

However, that’s not where I’m at. Right now, I want to be productive. I have this angsty feeling that I need to produce and create as much as I possibly can in the coming days, weeks, months. However, that becomes tough when you’re not feeling up to anything mentally.

It’s as if my will for productivity is at war with my emotional, mental well being, and it’s not going well at all.

The other day I was waiting in my car to pick my daughter up from school. A kid about 9 years old walked by, and he sparked the inspiration I so badly needed at that moment.

This kid — this awesomely unaffected little boy — was having a full out conversation with himself as he walked home from school. He was laughing and muttering, using oversized hand gestures and simply having a grand ole chat all by his lonesome.

Being today’s day and age, I checked to see if he had earbuds in or a Bluetooth headset — maybe he was talking on the phone? Nope, this conversation was just him, and I loved seeing it.
7 Journalism Lessons That I Learned From The Information’s News School
By: James Le
Tags: Creativity, Writing, Journalism, Podcast, News

Over July, I participated in The Information’s News Summer School, which explored some of the biggest opportunities in journalism at this moment. If you are not familiar with The Information, it is a very high-quality digital publication with deeply reported articles about the industry that you probably won’t find elsewhere.

As someone who has been practicing data science journalism over the past two years, I was highly interested in obtaining best practices from different types of journalism to improve my writing and explore the boundaries of other mediums. Below are my notes from the seven lectures that I attended in the program:

1 — On Reporting In Public

Ben Smith, New York Times media columnist and former Buzzfeed editor-in-chief, shared his experience of public reporting in the digital age. Here are my key takeaways:

Figure out what questions are not being answered, and then answer them.

Build expertise in a narrow lane via newsletters and podcasts.

Think about the “permanence” of your stories. What piece of information would be relevant weeks or months from the time of publishing?

Email stories to your sources for fact-check. Always treat your sources with a lot of respect while getting information.

Technology can bring tremendous opportunities to journalism in the future. Leverage the tools out there to make your job more effective.

2 — On Digital Design and Creativity

Stephanie Mehta and Mike Schnaidt from Fast Company gave a talk on digital design, creativity, and the future of magazines. Sticking with the motto of “Keep It Simple, Stupid,” they shared the seven ways to simplify visual storytelling: