fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
If You Want to Change How People See You, Change How You See Yourself
By: Samantha Blake
Tags: Confidence, Women, Feminism, Self, Self Improvement

How many people — especially women — go through life worrying how people see us, thinking we might never be enough? We’ll never be that successful, that smart, that funny, that likeable, that loved. It might be possible to achieve some level of success or love, but nobody can have it all, right?

Unfortunately, that’s always a trick question. Because really, it’s not about “having it all”. It’s about having what’s actually important to you, and how you choose to go through life.

I know first hand how it feels to be a let-down, and to feel like people are judging you for not being the person they expect you to be. But I also know first hand how to change that.

Because about five years ago, I had an epiphany.

After so many years of feeling inadequate, I realized it was exhausting to hold myself to such high standards and yet never feel like I met them.

And in that moment, I asked myself who I was trying to please by being perfect all the time.

As it turned out, it was a struggle to come up with an answer, because I began to realize that all the people who came to mind didn’t have nearly as strict expectations as I had for myself. I’d taken the subtle (or not-so-subtle) judgements I felt from my family and society, and turned them around to judge myself even more.

In that moment, I was my own worst enemy. And maybe I’d been standing in my own way all along.

But in the words of Oprah Winfrey,

“You are not your circumstances. You are what’s possible for you.”

You are what’s possible for you.

Life happens, things change, you may not think of yourself as strong or smart or capable — but the fact is it’s never too late to turn that around.
4 Developer Job Interview Questions You Need To Be Prepared For
By: Dev Rayray
Tags: Software Development, Programming, Interview, Job Interview, 100daysofcode

What is your elevator pitch?

Photo by Headway on Unsplash

This is the one and most important question that can be asked! The people who interview you want to get to know you.

No! They want to listen to your hour-long life story. They want to know who you are, what you like about your work, and where you’re interested in.

So you have to think about your pitch!

My pitch would be something like this:

I’m Ray, 31 years old. I live in the south of the Netherlands with my family. I love to write JavaScript with HTML and CSS to create user-friendly web-apps that users love to work with. In my spare time, I like to experiment with new techniques, libraries, and frameworks to use in my work or write about on my blog.

So in a few sentences, I’ve told a lot about myself, my age, where I live, and what I love to do the most in my work and spare time.

I’ve used this so many times that I can tell you this in a natural way. Telling this naturally is very important because nobody who has someone for a job interview wants to hear a scripted version 😉. No, they want to hear your story!

If you don’t have an introduction or pitch ready, you can use mine, but better is to take inspiration off it to make it your own!
A Dark Place
By: Tarwin Stroh-Spijer
Tags: Poetry, Painting

There exists place in all of us

So close we touch it now

A darkened grove of saplings

We’ve watched our lives grow tall

Though sun has never touched it

It's darkness doesn't fright

The trees surround a clearing

Grounding lest we fall

When we sit and listen

To the song of creaking wood

We see the stars still pierce the sky

Their distant fires call

For this space is not a dungeon

But a place to rest our soul

From the starkness of the daylight

And the lives in which we're small
Team Q&A — Killian Alexandre, Customer Support Manager
Tags: Interview, Driveinsider, Customer Service

Each week we interview a member of the DRIVE team to learn more about them, what they like and what makes them tick.

This week is our brilliant Customer Support Manager, Killian!

What’s your name?

Killian Alexandre

What’s your role at DRIVE?

Customer Support Manager

What did you do before you joined DRIVE?

I was working in CS management for an outsourcing company catering mostly to tech startups.

What’s your secret talent that no one knows about?

It’s not really a skill but I’m crazy about shark diving and have done it a few times!

What’s the coolest thing you’re working on right now?

We’re building a solid competitive analysis for one of our new products (watch this space).

Who inspires you?

Peter Diamandis and Brenne Brown are two very inspiring people for me!

How do you like to receive feedback?

Over a call — I believe it makes feedback more human and provides a better context on what’s being brought up.

Where’s your favorite place in the world?

The Galapagos Islands.

If you could be any animal, which would you be?

A sea turtle.

What’s the last book you read?

Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari.

What are you passionate about?

I’m passionate about learning, travelling, taking care of my pets (proud dad of 4 cats & 1 dog), understanding the true meaning of time (from a physics and societal perspective) and philosophising over the meaning of life and human existence.

Which four individuals, living or dead, would you like to eat dinner with the most?

Freud, Nietzsche, Darwin and John Lennon.

What is your favorite family tradition?

At the end of every year, we’ll write down 12 things we were grateful for in the year that passed.

What’s your favorite saying/quote?

“From error to error, one discovers the entire truth.”

That’s all, thanks for your time!
Cryptocurrency and Should You Invest?
By: Cloud Life
Tags: Cryptocurrency Investment, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain

Crypto or no Crypto?

The best thing to do is have a strategy. You really don’t want to miss out on cryptocurrency and block-chain technology. It’s not really about investing in coins. It’s more so do you believe that cryptocurrency and block-chain are the future.

I believe it’s the future! So for the next 3 years I will invest heavily into cryptocurrency and the technology behind it and also learn, learn, learn more about it. I will then wait to see how things are shaping out after 3 years. If cryptocurrency is not moving the way I truly believe it will move (to the moon), then I will move on to more traditional assets and investments but at least I am still in the cryptocurrency game.

TO THE MOON!

So my advice is at least get in the game with a couple hundred bucks or grand. I am starting with 3k and won’t miss it a lick. I mean the risk is worth it to me. I really am big on cryptocurrency and the technology behind it. It’s like falling in love with the invent of computers back in 1960 or something. So don’t be scared to invest.

Put some money in, leave it and just see what happens because the upside is to promising. Don’t be that person that knew about cryptocurrency but never invested in it, please don’t! Life will be Hell and simply miserable. I’d rather throw a couple hundred dollars away now into cryptocurrency and it not work out as suppose to knowing a $300 investment today could have netted me $1 million R.O.I (return on investment)in the near future. As for me, I’m all the way in!
Dig Down Deep to Find the Encouragement to Befriend Failure
By: Paul Myers Mba
Tags: Life Lessons, Reading, Books, Personal Development, Self

Dig Down Deep to Find the Encouragement to Befriend Failure

Get outside your limited thinking.

Photo by Jerry Zhang on Unsplash

One of my earliest memories is from my first year at school. I recall turning back to see my mother standing on our doorstep, watching over me each morning as I walked to school. The truth is my mother's maternal drive irked me at times.

Why?

Because I wanted to find my own way in the world. On my terms. I wanted to stroll blindly into the unknown — stumble, fall, fail, and get up again. My courageous spirit demanded it.

This tug of war with my mothers’ innate parental motive caused conflict at times. I just wanted her to let go.

Not being allowed to screw-up was frustrating.

Despite my mother’s efforts, I screwed up, sometimes spectacularly. But I learned, picked myself up, and moved forward that little bit wiser.

Human Defects

The biggest human flaw is our inability to learn from past mistakes, beyond our early childhood. The root cause of this sabotage is grounded in society, parenthood, and leadership, or rather, poor leadership.

“It’s one of the single greatest obstacles to human progress.” — Matthew Syed

Matthew Syed wrote Black Box Thinking with this very human defect in mind. A book that explores human behavior with respect to success and failure. Our desire, willingness, drive, and commitment to devour valuable lessons from past failures is “a treasure-chest we rarely exploit.”

As a society, in most western cultures, we have “deeply contradictory attitudes” towards failure. Andrew Karlin wrote that “in Japan, the fear of failure and resulting social alienation pose a huge psychological barrier for would-be entrepreneurs.”

Social norms and false beliefs result in excuses for our failings. Or worse, arrest true progress altogether. According to Syed, we’re all too “quick to blame others who mess up”, a symptom of failure aversion.

This article discusses two valuable life lessons I learned from Matthew Syed’s book, Black Box Thinking.
The Two Obvious Challenges Of Digital Transformation That Everyone Ignores
By: Bertrand Maltaverne
Tags: Digital Transformation, Procurement, Supply Chain, Change Management

As Heraclitus once said, “the only thing that is constant is change.” Another thing that is equally true today is that digital is playing a central role in pushing organizations and individuals towards change.

Digital transforms everything, from B2B to B2C and beyond: what we consume and buy, how we consume and buy, and how we work. We are just starting to see some of these changes but what we are witnessing today is just the tip of the iceberg. There is much more to come. Within the next few years, a digital revolution is set to take place, and the Procurement world can expect substantial changes as a result.

This is why Procurement needs to embrace “digital” and succeed in that transformation more than any other function. However, the function has been lagging behind and the current situation is far from ideal.

The adoption of any change is not something that should be taken for granted. John Kotter, in his international bestseller, Leading Change published in 1996, reports that 70 per cent of change initiatives in organizations and businesses fail. More recent sources reveal a similar situation. Despite years of experience in the project management field, projects continue to face the same issues and obstacles year after year:

History shows that Procurement is also not immune to recurring challenges, especially when it comes to the Procurement technology that has been around for years. However, adoption (by teams, by stakeholders, by suppliers) is not a reality for most organizations. Analysts and research firms have all reached the same conclusion. For example, many reports show that the adoption of eSourcing by “best-in-class” companies has stagnated at 60–70 per cent since 2007.

So, considering its past record of poorly managing digital initiatives and the growing need to respond to ever more frequent and profound changes (both representing threats and opportunities), Procurement must urgently learn from the past and find new ways to transform and move forward. Although one article cannot cover every aspect of such a vast issue even taking the time to consider the few simple and pragmatic points presented here can already difference between success and failure.
Guinness Ad Tells People To Put Phones Down And Enjoy Their Drink
By: Sarkis Ardjian
Tags: Creative Advertising, Advertising Campaign, Advertising, Advertising Agency, Marketing

Guinness Ad Tells People To Put Phones Down And Enjoy Their Drink

Guinness Advertisement Analysis

The Guinness ad aims to convince drinkers to go out and enjoy face to face interactions while drinking at the bar instead of staring at your phone’s. The image of the advert shows a pile of smartphones stacked like bricks on top of a bar counter. Besides, the advertisement mentions additional benefits in the form of a discount and a free diagnosis. Therefore, the Guinness advertisement cleverly discourages people from using their phones in a bar or restaurant.

Guinness Ad by Guinness

Strategy

The item used in the Guinness advertisement is a vital aspect of the ability to persuade the Guinness drinkers. Thus, the ad uses the image of different sizes and shapes of phones that recreate the silhouette of the Guinness glass. These phones have been stacked on top of one another, with the black bodies of the phones perfectly mimicking the dark coloring of Guinness and two silvery phones to form the head on top.

The ad is quite brilliant, since it makes its focus entirely on smartphones and beer, and illustrates its point by showing a pile of phones that have been set aside. In social settings, it’s so easy for a phone to become a crutch, but Guinness is taking a stand against people texting while you could be chatting up someone face-to-face.

Targeted audience

The Guinness ad is structured to capture the attention of the target group. The advertisement targets mainly drinkers since they go to a restaurant or bar with their relatives or friends. Guinness ad is telling brand loyalists to put the phone down and enjoy good friends and good times. Besides, the phrase ‘a small creature for your smartphone stack like a glass silhouette’ indicates that this advertisement specifically targets Guinness drinkers. This may be due to its shape and appropriate image for drinkers who go to bars and stare at their phone screen rather than enjoying their drink and a good time with their friends.

Conclusion

Whether you go to a restaurant or bar, you probably notice lots of people are eating or drinking with their smartphones out on the table in plain view. Also, checking cell phones in public has become like yawning, this means, if one person in your group uses his/her cell phones, you may feel more comfortable doing it yourself. So, Guinness is campaigning against the usage of smartphones in a bar. Summarily, the figurative presentation of Guinness ad is telling people to put their smartphones down and enjoy drinking reasonably. The choice of creative images and pictures may get attention because it’s not the same angle as other brands that are pushing tech interactions. It is using the color of cellphones to make a glass of iconic Guinness. Plus, it focuses on the consumer, and not solely the brand. They’re convincing people to disconnect and have a good time with their friends when drinking in a bar or a restaurant as well as purchasing Guinness as their choice of beer.
Ambush
By: Steve Morocco
Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Microfiction, Fiction, Short Story

Arabella the Witch

Ditchingham, 1646

You hear them up ahead.

They are quieter than the wind in the grass, their dark clothes and hooded faces invisible in the gathering shadows, but their hungry anticipation shouts out their presence.

You would love to stop and play, but you have an appointment.

They spring out of the ditch as you pass, shouting now, hot thoughts of rape and murder filling their minds. And then muffled confusion as their bodies stiffen, becoming wood, legs growing into roots, arms turning into branches. In a few moments, there are only trees at the side of the road, trees as gnarled and twisted as the minds trapped inside them.

The villagers will wonder at this new copse of witchwood sprung up overnight. All but the deafest will hear the thieves’ voices in the rustling of the leaves; doubtless they will dub this spot haunted, a place to be shunned.

And that will be no bad thing for them. There are limits to any kind of magic, and every month of months, for one night, these trees will be men again. Woe betide any who falls into their clutches then.

You hurry on, not looking back.
Goals for all means information for all
By: Camellia Williams
Tags: Sdgs, Knowledge, Software Development, Sustainable Development

The fellowship of sustainable development

As the world negotiated the SDGs, it was always acknowledged that everyone would have to work together if the global community wanted to turn its lofty ambitions into action. The achievement of each individual SDG is inextricably linked to the success of other goals: gender equality and quality education reduces poverty; producing more food requires secure water supplies; and protecting life on land and in water supports sustainable consumption.

Effective communication is essential for building the bridges between different groups and IISD has been at the forefront of this effort for decades. When IISD decided to bring together everything they had published in a suite of Policy & Practice knowledge bases over an eight year period into a new, single portal, we were honoured to take up the challenge. Working together, IISD built the back end as we designed and developed the front end.

We knew we needed to build something that piques curiosity at every turn and helps people to find the links between each of the SDGs. It had to be a space for people to find new information that inspires new actions, a place that hastens rather than hinders collaboration.
4 Ways to Know if You’re on the Right Life-Path
By: Alexandra Rizzi
Tags: Life Lessons, Careers, Purpose, Soul, Mind

How to listen to your inner guidance

Photo by Caleb Jones on Unsplash

Cathy Heller, author, and creator of the podcast “Don’t Keep Your Day Job,” begins each episode by saying, “the opposite of depression is not happiness. The opposite of depression is purpose.”

Ah yes, purpose. The ever-elusive sense of purpose.

I went to the podcast website and took the free “passion finder quiz.”

Apparently, I am an investigator.

While this information is nothing new to me, I have often found with typing quizzes that they try their best to put my skills and talents into a particular box.

The truth is that finding your life path, and thus, your purpose, is a journey that only you can embark upon, and only you can know which turns to take.

It likely will not fit any type of mold or linear form, and that doesn’t mean you can’t find it.

Here are some hard lessons and helpful tips I’ve learned along the way.
What if artificial intelligence could edit your writing?
By: Chris Craft
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Productivity, Creativity, Writing, Technology

What if artificial intelligence could edit your writing?

Learn how Grammarly Premium can improve your writing.

Image by author

Hello!

Sorry, it’s been a while. We’ve been busy launching a new marketing agency/media company.

What if artificial intelligence could proofread and edit your email, resume, book chapter, or article? That would be pretty crazy right?

Well, it’s possible and I think you’ve heard of the tool that can do it.

Today, I’m sharing an article that breaks down the benefits of Grammarly Premium, shows you how to use it, and gives you tips for Grammarly Free if you’re not ready to upgrade. Full disclosure: this newsletter contains affiliate links.​

Grammarly is a digital editing tool that uses AI to highlight spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors in a text document. But it’s honestly more than that. It’s the ultimate productivity tool for writers.

Grammarly helps you create more effective and error-free writing wherever you write. If you are a current Grammarly user, you know that you can use it to write and edit just about anything, including the following:

Blog posts, articles, and stories

Books

Client proposals

Business emails

Social media captions

Considering all the time Grammarly helps you save, upgrading to Grammarly Premium might serve as a valuable investment in your writing career. This could be true for even the most seasoned writer. Grammarly is a gnarly life hack. Trust me!

Read the article here.

Much love and until next time…

- Chris

P.S. — This newsletter was proofread by Grammarly Premium.
A Pledge for America
By: Sheldon Clay
Tags: Democrats, Culture, Politics, Election 2020, America

Photo by Luke Stackpoole on Unsplash

I have a theory that political parties would be more effective in our fragmented media environment if they operated more like consumer brands. Like the big national brands I work with in my ad agency job.

The Lincoln Project is using some of this discipline, but mostly in a negative way. There are larger, better ways to connect with the mass public. So I wrote a script for the Democrats.

We.

The Democratic Party.

Stand for America’s promise.

We will not betray the trust of our children.

Our grandchildren.

Our families struggling to get ahead.

Our communities who fear getting left behind.

We will not betray the American dream.

We will not betray the words written in the Constitution.

Or engraved in the Statue of Liberty.

We will not betray the trust of a world in sore need of American leadership.

We will not betray the planet that gives us life.

We will not betray truth. Science. Healing. Freedom. Justice. Equality. Unity.

We will not betray the ideals that make our country strong.

It’s time to restore what’s been broken.

Make America as good as her word again.

Make America work again.

This is no longer about resistance.

We’re ready to move this country forward.

We can beat those who’ve made an art of political dishonesty.

We can once again believe our nation’s best days are in front of us.

Vote for America’s promise.

True.

Blue.

I honestly wish these words would work equally well for the Republican Party. It was my political home at one time. But I’m not so sure there’s much G.O.P. left anymore.

Some people in the Democratic Party were interested in making a film of this at one point. But it didn’t take long hanging around Party HQ to learn that the efforts are almost solely focused around candidates rather than reinforcing what the party itself means in the hearts and minds of Americans. So my theory remains untested. I thought this would be a good time to get the words themselves out into the world. They may be of use to those trying to make their vote count, and to convince others to do the same.
Seven Deadly Wastes: Bugs
By: Jez Halford
Tags: Lean Startup, Agile, Productivity, Software Development

The Seven Wastes are an idea from lean manufacturing, and I’m exploring how they relate to software development. Last time was over production, and this week I’m looking at the last one: defects.

It’s no great revelation to say that bugs slow us down, but they might slow us down more than you realise.

Say we catch a major defect during the final testing of a new feature, just before it’s due to be released. We all pat each other on the back — thank goodness we caught that! Good job everybody!

But now we have to rework the feature to remove the bug. Effectively, we’re back at the start. We need to go back and modify our code, test our feature (more effectively this time), run through any acceptance tests and whatever else we might do. If we’re unlucky we’ve also pushed our schedule back a bit too.

The point here is that as soon as a defect leaves a developer’s laptop and finds its way into our usual code pipeline, it is slowing us down. And the later in that pipeline we find it, the more delay it has the potential to cause.

This is the reason we have things like test driven development — to ensure we catch the bug before pushing code. Then we might have a CI server that runs a more thorough test suit — another layer of safety net to catch the more tricky problems. Then we might have a more involved QA process, or some other phases or processes that try to reduce defects.

What these things don’t address, though, is the worst kind of bug. The kind that the programmer doesn’t realise is a bug. The kind that arises from a difference of understanding. I interpret a requirement one way, someone else interprets it another. Now we have, in one persons opinion at least, a defect.

These bugs have the biggest potential to slow us down, because they can make it all the way through even the most thorough testing.

Avoiding this kind of defect should be the whole team’s priority. And the best way to avoid them is to talk! Build shared understanding, try pair programming, use techniques like BDD and OOPSI to get everyone on the same page.

Layers of testing can go a long way, but talking it through as a team is often the most effective way of building in quality.
Bitcoin’s True Supply, Are You Betting on The Right Alt-Coins?
By: Thomas L. Mclaughlin
Tags: Crypto, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Altcoins

What is causing the soar in the price of Bitcoin?

There will only ever be 21 million Bitcoin. Period. End of Story. However if you dig a little bit deeper you will realize that the number of Bitcoin that are being traded on exchanges (changing hands) is significantly smaller.

Estimates suggest that approximately 2.5 million Bitcoin have been lost forever. Not stolen or in hiding but the private keys lost. (Source: Fortune Magazine)

Additionally there are 1 million or so Bitcoin that are held in Satoshi’s original wallet, which have remained untouched for nearly a decade. It’s safe to say those coins will not be hitting exchanges any time soon, probably ever.

Another key facet to this discussion is the fact that many of the early Bitcoin investors simply bought and hold Bitcoin. For the most part, they have neither sold nor plan to sell a large portion of their BTC anytime in the near future.

So what does this all mean for the price of BTC?

Well my humble opinion is that when you factor in the number of Bitcoin that have been lost and the fact that most people are stashing their Bitcoin, you end up with a significantly smaller number of Bitcoin that become available on the open market.

Since demand for the asset has reached parabolic levels and there is a significantly strangled supply on the open market, you end up with an exponential price increase.
Tweedledum and Tweedledee
By: Violet Detorres
Tags: Resistance, Kim Jong Un, Poetry, Trump, War

One could be “ bigly”, one could be “ Kimchi”

Money and power is their preference

Can’t you see?
This Year
By: Tosin Sanusi
Tags: Blue Insights, New Year, Poetry, 2021, 2020

Happy New Year! As we finally say goodbye to 2020, we may be tempted to block it out of our memories completely. That way, trauma may be forgotten but so might the amazing lessons this year has offered us. Being unable to occupy public space in the same way as before, many of us were forced to focus on the inner self — all that we were able to avoid at one time.

For many of us, 2020 provided an opportunity to reflect on important areas of life. Relationships were an especially weighty matter. Some have seen the dissolution of their closest bonds while other unions were strengthened by the year's trials. Many found themselves entirely alone through it all. I believe each situation (whether painful or joyful) is a stepping stone towards our highest selves depending of course, on how we face the challenges.

I send my love to everyone reading! I hope that you’ve found a way to be positive about the steaming dumpster year we are leaving behind. I'm sure we can all agree that it sucked but focussing on the suckiness will make it grow. I wish everyone a happy, prosperous, and healthy 2021. You all deserve the very best.
Bring Your Titles to Life in iOS
By: Hayder Al-Husseini
Tags: Programming, iOS App Development, iOS, UI, Swift

Using the label should be as easy as possible, hence we will create 2 initializers that allows us to plugin the values and off it goes.

Now that we have all we need, let’s layout our view.

setupBackgroundVideoIfNeeded() will create our video player that will play in a loop in the background. updateVideoMask() will create the text mask and update its dimensions when the view changes any of its dimensions.

setupBackgroundVideoIfNeeded()

The definition of the this method looks like this:

We only want to initialize the player layer once, therefore we will check if the property playerLayer has been set up or not. AVPlayerLayer presents the video but it needs an AVPlayer to present. We setup an AVPlayer instance with the URL provided when initializing the view. We also add an observer to the player, that will inform us when playback has ended so that we can loop the video by rewinding and playing again.

Once our player is setup, we can create an AVPlayerLayer , add it to our view's layer hierarchy and start playback.

updateVideoMask()

The definition of this method looks like this:

We create an attributed text from the text property provided at initilization, if the view was initilized with attributedText we will modifiy it's font size to take into consideration the OS's Dynamic Text settings, making our label respect Accessiblity's Larger Text settings values. We also set the accessibilityFrame to match our text’s bounding box, the accessibilityFrame should be in screen coordinates, we transform our text box, from the bitmap's space, to view space then to screen space.

The attributed text is used to draw a string in a graphics context using CoreText. An image is created from the graphics context and returned to the calling function.

Accessibility

Our label supports Dynamic Text and has set it’s accessibilityFrame , we will need to provide more information to properly support VoiceOver. Add the following method to the view:

This will set our text as the accessiblity label and tell VoiceOver that to treat us as static text. Call it in the updateVideoMask() method.

How to use VideoLabel

You can import the project using Swift Pacakage manager, or you can drag the VideoLabel.swift file into your Xcode project. Then use one of the initializer described above.

Finally, you can use multiple labels in your view with different videos, you are not limited to one video at a time.

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial and thank you for reading.
Imprinting With Joy
By: White Feather
Tags: Spirituality, Joy, Self, Mindfulness, Life

Every day there are several windows of opportunity for joy to be experienced. How many of these opportunities do we even notice? These windows can be very short and fleeting, and they can be easily overlooked. They are like tiny mushrooms on the floor of the forest. One can look at the forest without seeing the mushrooms. As one begins walking, though, one’s attention is drawn to the floor of the forest. Soon one cannot help but notice them, and before long it seems they are everywhere.

When we experience a moment of pure joy, we are imprinting the universe with that joy. Moments of pure joy are reference points we can access from any point in time. Once an imprint has been made that joy will forever be accessible through that imprint as well as any other information encoded during the time of the imprint.

Try imprinting the universe with a moment of pure intense joy. Six months later try to remember that moment. It will be easy. Nothing imprints better than love and joy.

The more one experiences pure love and joy (the highest vibratory frequencies we can experience), the more one imprints, and the more one imprints, the easier it becomes to plug into that joy. Those windows of opportunity become something we look for and expect. They become more obvious; in fact they seem to multiply. Eventually, we will slip into a state of constant joy. But we are not ready for that yet. We could not take that much joy because we are not used to it. We must acclimatize ourselves to it, building up our capabilities to experience it. That is why every opportunity to embrace joy should be taken. The more we experience it and imprint it, the closer we get to being able to handle a state of constant joy.
Sleeping Child
By: Anangsha Alammyan
Tags: Ideas, Creativity, Writing, Fiction, Short Story

Sleeping Child

Microfiction in 55 words

Photo by Civalias Kune on Unsplash

“I love looking at her when she’s asleep,” he said.

“I know. I wish we could have another one,” his wife replied, adjusting the purple bow on the sleeping girl’s hair.

“I want another one too. But this garage is barely enough for one woman and this one gets wild when she tries to escape.”
Absurd Claims
By: Costas Efstathiou
Tags: Science, John Oliver

Often, morning talk shows and evening news shows report on ground-breaking scientific findings. On his show, Last Week Tonight, John Oliver discusses how these reports make outrageously bold claims like “a glass of wine is as beneficial as an hour at the gym.” These results, however, are usually very skewed in their reporting. They may be published in non-scholarly scientific journals that are not credible sources. In addition, scientists may feel pressured to release sweeping conclusions because of funding and tenure reasons. To release their insufficient data, scientist will alter the length of their study or make the sample size very small, then even perform p-hacking. P-hacking is the act of collecting multiple variables and messing around with data to come up with some ridiculous conclusion. An example of this would be like FiveThirtyEight finding a link between cabbage and having an innie belly button. Whenever I turn on the news, I always see some new striking evidence about coffee. Whether it causes cancer or does not or causes you to age more, such findings usually require years of research and retesting. This introduces another problem in today’s scientific experimentation, the lack of replicating experiments. This is where science thrives because more than one person is researching the same study. Replicating experiments, however, are rarely funded and scientist do not find them appealing because there is no glory in fact-checking what has already been done. If I was ever researching information within the science field, I would make sure the information is from a scholarly source that is credible and reviews relevant scientific experimentation.
A Chilling Reunion
By: J.A. Taylor
Tags: Justice, Relationships, Science Fiction, Fiction, Short Story

A Chilling Reunion

She came to fix what was broken

Image public domain from DigitalComicMuseum

“Right out of a cryo-capsule,” the Overseer said, gnawing his tofu burger. “A lovely damsel in distress.”

Adam’s ears perked up. “What’s that?” he asked, taking a seat with the crew and popping a tot-crisp in his mouth.

“You haven’t heard?” a crewmate asked.

“Don’t tell me we picked up someone from that god-forsaken rock?”

The crewmen all snickered. “You gotta get out of engineering more,” one of them said.

Adam raised an eyebrow. “Spit it out, Wexman.”

“Looked like she was dolled up for a date. Red dress. Perfect hair. Lipstick.”

“There’s humanoids down there?” Adam asked.

Wexman nearly choked on his laugh. “Not ‘down there…’” He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “And not out there,” he waved toward the window. “In cold storage.” Wexman pointed toward the lift. “Hidden in plain sight this whole time.”

“She dressed up for cryo?” Adam whistled. “Must be desperate for some fellas to lift her skirt.” He chewed his food and waited for a laugh, but it didn’t come. He pushed his thin wit one step further. “How long you think it’ll take her to go through the crew?” An eery silence crept throughout the mess hall. As Adam looked up, all eyes were glued on him. “What?”

The crewmen’s heads stiffened, but their eyes flickered toward the Overseer who drew a paper from his pocket. “Found a note on her pod,” the large man said. “Care to see?” He slid the piece of paper across the table. Adam opened it.

AF, if you are reading this, you’ve found me. AF, your life will be in danger. That’s why I hid myself. We both know it didn’t end well. Wake me up. Let’s restore what was lost, fix what is broken. — Eva

Adam froze.

Eva? Only she calls me ‘AF’. Here? Impossible. She refused to come. He bit his lip. Maybe she forgave me? Said she loved me…

“Wake up, man!” Wexman shouted.

Adam regathered his thoughts. “Who is AF?” he asked, pretending to chew. He tucked his chin to his chest.

A contemptuous smile widened the Overseer’s face. “That answer’s right under your nose.”

Adam lifted his head. All eyes fixed on his nametag, which read: A. Flannagan.

Adam bolted from his seat, but the crewmen rose and secured his arms.

“Wanna see her?” the Overseer asked. At his whistle, Eva strolled in. Adam’s jaw dropped. “And Flannagan — no worries about getting your story straight. She offered to marry whoever brought you to justice.”

The Overseer bit a hole out of a small round pickle, then slid it over his finger. “Think this will work for my wedding ring?”

“Yes, darling,” Eva cut in. “And least I know you like the dress.”

Hands on her hips, she twisted her svelte figure toward Adam and rested her fingers on her cheeks in mock worry. “AF, your life is in danger! But don’t worry — the Overseer will fix what is broken.”
The Blindfolded Archer
By: Ruchi Thalwal
Tags: Life Lessons, Life, Education, Fiction, Short Story

Once a Zen master gathered his disciples in the yard. He asked one of the disciples to blindfold him. The disciple did what the master had asked him.

It was time for archery. It thrilled every disciple to see that the master would teach them something unusual that day.

Photo by Alireza Sahebi on Unsplash

The master aimed and shot the arrow as everyone looked in wonder.

But to everyone’s utter disappointment, the arrow missed the target.

The master uncovered his eyes and turned to face his disciples without even once looking at the target and asked, “So what do you think?”

They were embarrassed. No one knew how to tell the master that he had missed the target.

One of them gathered some courage and said with hesitation, “Master, you missed the target.”

The Zen master replied, “Oh yes, I know that. Why is that shocking and embarrassing for you?”

The disciples looked at each and said, “We thought you were trying to teach us to hit the target without looking.”

Photo by Immo Wegmann on Unsplash

The Zen master laughed and said, “No, my dear students! I intended to teach you how stupid it is to aim for something without focus.

If you don’t have a focus in your life, then leave alone an arrow; you can’t do anything right.

If you want to become successful, then you have to have all the focus on the target.”

The smile on the long faces of the disciples returned as they understood this crucial lesson.
Rhythm
By: Georgia Melodie Hole
Tags: Creative Writing, Mental Health, Self, Poetry, Poem

My chest breaks rhythm.

Where once steady,

is now staccato.

Where once was hope,

is now moving, growing,

taking me to a place,

known and unknown.

I wait,

cling hard with a grip to my self,

to lessen the blow of what may greet me;

after constraint, loss, loneliness and futile hope,

cutting to darkness, silence,

a quiet that beckons, and horrifies.

But peace is not quiet and quiet is not peace.

Life cannot be only these,

when there is land cacophonous and verdant;

forests and valleys steeped in song.

I yearn to sing my own;

to feel in my chest,

its steady rhythm.
Guarda gone wild: 15 mobile wallets made open-source
By: Guarda Wallet
Tags: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Altcoins, Wallet, Open Source

15 open source mobile wallets from Guarda!

Hello, blockchain adherents!

The article we’ve written about open sourcing was not a web small talk. Practice what you preach! Here we go, 15 open source mobile wallets at your disposal:

BTC (Bitcoin)

ETH (Ethereum)

BCH (Bitcoin Cash)

LTC (Litecoin)

IOTA (Iota)

ETC (Ethereum Classic)

ZEC (Zcash)

BTG (Bitcoin Gold)

QTUM (Qtum)

BTS (BitShares)

DGB (DigiByte)

KMD (Komodo)

CLO (Callisto)

DCT (Decent)

SBTC (Super Bitcoin)

You can download all of them from Guarda’s GitHub.

Our developers have had a fun time creating these wallets. Guarda users (and maybe you among them?) worked with the wallets during the last year. Now it’s time to push them out of the nest, creating space for new, bigger projects.

Play around, enjoy and share your impressions. We’re always open for your feedback and discussions.

Guarda official website
Play Etheremon with Dapper and enjoy free gas!
Tags: Games, Ethereum, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Art

At Etheremon, we believe that improving user experience is the way to increase the adoption of blockchain technology and products. Besides upgrading our game features, we actively look for good partners to tackle existing UX problems for blockchain games together. Our newest partnership very well demonstrates that.

We are excited to partner with Dapper, a smart contract wallet that eliminates some UX barriers and lets you have more enjoyable time playing Etheremon.

We recommend using Dapper to play Etheremon, for it is user-friendly and packed with many useful features.

Still wonder before getting started? Here comes more info you want to know about Dapper.

Dapper is a smart contract wallet created by the team behind CryptoKitties. When you play with Dapper, you enjoy:

⛽ Free Gas: Your gas fees in Etheremon are covered if you use Dapper 🔐 Account Recovery: If you lose your device or password, Dapper help you regain access 💳 Credit Card Support: Buy cryptocurrency with your credit card 🤗 Exclusive Perks: Dapper users get exclusive drops and rewards in their favorite dapps

Dapper is the first step towards making accessing the blockchain as safe and predictable as surfing the internet. With Dapper exiting its private beta today, it’s a great time to invite your friends to come and play with the future of fun.

Install Dapper and play now here: etheremon.com/#getting-started

Cheers,

Etheremon Team

— — —

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HelloGold Foundation Update #24– 24th June 2019
By: Quentin Bignon
Tags: Fintech, Ethereum, Blcokchain, Cryptocurrency, Gold

Technical

Major Partnership & Integration — to be announced soon!

A major partnership with HelloGold is set to be announced in the coming weeks Although we can’t reveal anything just yet, it’s safe to say the partnership has been keeping our tech team very busy these past few months. They have been relentlessly preparing for a significant integration between the HelloGold app and the partner’s platform.

You can be sure to find out about the first phase of this partnership in the coming weeks, so stay peeled.

Ongoing app feature upgrade

The tech team is also busy implementing some changes in the app to smoothen customer experience: the fingerprint/facial recognition sign-in feature is finally on its way (yay!). This has been one of the top requests by HelloGold customers for a while now, so it should come as great news to many existing users.

In addition, Smartsaver is also being worked on: better reporting, clearer processes to exit the SmartSaver plan, etc. Changes will be reflected in the upcoming coming release Keep an eye out on the App update log to spot them!

HelloGold iOS app in Thailand

The iOS version of the HelloGold app is on its way. The app development is in its final stages, with only a few features left to be integrated. The Quality Assurance team is currently testing the app extensively before they give the green light for its release. The app should be available on the App store for iOS devices in Thailand by the end of July.
🎉 Bienvenue au Québec — Shakepay launches in Quebec 🎉
By: Jean Amiouny
Tags: Fintech, Crypto, Bitcoin, Canada, Cryptocurrency

It’s official, Shakepay is now live in Quebec!

All residents of La Belle Province can now sign up to Shakepay and start buying and selling bitcoin! This makes Shakepay available to all Canadians, coast to coast (to coast.)

Links for download

Google Play Store

Apple App Store

https://shakepay.co

About Shakepay

Shakepay is making it super easy for Canadians to buy bitcoin and send/request money from their friends. We’re a tight-knit team of fierce warriors taking on the old, decaying banking infrastructure head-on. We’re hiring in Montreal and Toronto, join us!
“We can breathe better, plan better and improve our lives”
By: Wfp Asia
Tags: Humanitarian, Afghanistan, Climate Change, Reforestation

“We can breath better, plan better and improve our lives. These projects have also saved our livestock. We now have wood to keep our houses warm, we have beams and other materials for building houses, we can sell some wood to make money and our animals have fodder,” Mr. Jan added.

Jawid, a village leader in Ishkashim district was among more than 100 other women and men from his village who worked and established their community forests. His community planted over half a million trees and they are already taller than he is.

“Our area used to be just a desert, even cows would not come here to find grass, the wild grass would get dried quickly. Now you see several types of trees are growing, birds come here and make nests. It’s green now and this gives life not only to the people but also to the animals and different types of birds that you could not see before”.

While communities are establishing their own forests, WFP supports the women and men working in these projects with food assistance. Each family receives monthly food assistance from WFP for a period of up to six months. The food basket is combined of fortified wheat flour, vegetable oil, pulses, iodized salt and special nutritious food for children under five-years of age.

Women play crucial role in these projects, they not only contribute to the community owned forestation projects but also establish their own forests and fruit orchards. In addition to more than 2,000 fruit orchards established by women all over Wakhan, several of them also owned poplars gardens containing tens of thousands of poplars sapling already growing enough, greatly contributing to the “Green Badakhshan” initiative as well as can be a great source of income for the women as each poplar can be sold out at US$50 to US$60 in three-year time.

Noor Begim is one of the female gardeners selected for the programme. She is married and has an 18 months old son. She received 400 saplings that have already grown taller than herself. “I will sell most of them, but I will keep a few for myself so I can build a nice house for my son,” she says.
Plain Jane
By: Adeola Adeko
Tags: Micropoetry, Life, Poetry, Poems On Medium, Haiku

Haiku is a form of poetry usually inspired by nature, which embraces simplicity. We invite all poetry lovers to have a go at composing Haiku. Be warned. You could become addicted.

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