fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
ZIL Trading Competition, 100,000 ZIL to Give Away!
Tags: Blockchain, Contests, Cryptocurrency Investment, Crypto, Cryptocurrency

At Bitbns, a new listing comes with a sleek trading contest with jaw-dropping rewards.

Recently, we listed ZIL / USDT trade pair. And here’s your new trading contest for the same.

Check out the details below.

Contest Details:

Total Reward: 100,000 ZIL Token ( Roughly $2500 worth at current rate)

Start Date: 16/06/2020, 19:00:00 PM IST Hours

End Date: 19/06/2020, 19:00:00 PM IST Hours

Unlock Volume: 1 ZIL will be unlocked on trading 5$ worth of zil

How it Works:

Unlock Mechanism:

There’s 100000 ZIL waiting to be unlocked. Each time ZIL gets traded(including buys & sells) on Bitbns, ZIL worth double the fees collected from the trade will be unlocked. This would continue till the total unlocked token volume reaches 100,000 ZIL Token.

For example: If you trade for 5 USDT worth of ZIL, which would cost you 0.0125 USDT as fees (5*0.25% = 0.0125 USD), 0.025 USDT worth of ZIL (Which is 1 ZIL currently) will be unlocked.

How much you will Earn:

Let’s say the total trading volume is worth 500000 USDT and suppose then 100,000 ZIL has been unlocked. So your share of ZIL would be:

( Your volume traded during the contest in USDT / Total Volume traded during the contest ) * unlocked tokens

For example, you traded 1000 USDT worth of ZIL during the contest. You would earn:

(1000 / 500000)*100000= 200 ZIL

200 ZIL. = 200*0.025 USD = 5 USD. Fees you paid was 2.5 USD. So double of what you paid for

You pay 0.25 USDT fee for 100 USDT trade. But you get double of what you pay in fees as rewards.
What To Consider Before Writing Your Web Copy
By: Guy Ligertwood
Tags: Ux Writing, Writing, Design, UX, Writing Tips

Everyone wants a conversation. They want inspiration. Inspire people with your website. Don’t just interrupt but interact. (Kevin Roberts)

Introduction: 6 main elements of good web design

There are lots of things to consider before you start creating your website. Here are the main elements that will help you create a useful and accessible website for you users.

1. User and business needs

Start by identifying who your users are. You can then find out what your users and business want to get out of the website.

2. Brand

The visual design and the content communicate the brand to the user of your website. The brand is first defined so the visual design and the content can follow your brand guidelines.

3. Information architecture (IA)

Here you need to set out the hierarchy of information for your website. You need to structure your content so people can navigate in a usable manner. Information architecture connects people to your content.

User + Context + Content = Information Architecture

4. Interaction design

This focuses on the behaviour of your device or product. It sets out where all the elements will be on your website. A wireframe works well to flesh this out.

Interaction design is the creation of a dialogue between a person and a designer artifcact- a product, service, or system.

5. Visual Design

This is a step up from the wireframe. It adds colours, typography, images and style to your website.

Problems with visual design can turn users off so quickly that they never discover all the smart choices you made with navigation or interaction design. (Jess James Garrett)

6. Content

The content is crucial to the usability of your website. Content covers a range of things, but is usually anything that can be consumed and shared. It’s not only the words and includes what you see below.
Be Careful About TimeZone Configuration While Playing With Docker
By: İbrahim Gündüz
Tags: Docker

After spent almost one day, I noticed that docker doesn’t care host machine timezone configuration…

So if you need to do something by current timestamp in your application, you should be careful about timezone configuration of your docker environment because it works independently by the host machine configuration.

Let’s compare date status of host machine and container we’re going to be created:

Call “date” command on the host machine first:

# date

Thu Jul 26 00:10:38 EEST 2018

And.. run a simple docker container in the same machine:

# docker run --rm -it ubuntu:16.04 date

Wed Jul 25 21:11:35 UTC 2018

Ok. Then let’s solve the issue.

Solution 1:

You can mount the “/etc/localtime” and “/etc/timezone” files to container from the host machine

# date

Thu Jul 26 00:30:55 EEST 2018 # docker run --rm -it \

-v /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime \

-v /etc/timezone:/etc/timezone \

ubuntu:16.04 date

Thu Jul 26 00:30:59 EEST 2018

Solution 2:

Add “tzdata” package installation step to your Dockerfile. I’m going to give the example by debian/ubuntu based image:

FROM ubuntu:16.04

RUN apt-get update ;\

apt-get install -y tzdata

build the image

# docker build -f Dockerfile -t myimage:latest .

Pass the “TZ” environment variable to container when you created.
Is Garry Trudeau Right About Charlie Hebdo?
By: The Nib
Tags: Comics, Satire, Charlie Hebdo

Is Garry Trudeau Right About Charlie Hebdo?

Garry Trudeau’s recent Polk award speech on the Charlie Hebdo attacks was both criticized and praised for his views on where to draw “red lines” with satire. Some saw his remarks as victim-blaming while others agreed the Hebdo cartoonists were racist, punching down instead of up.

He appeared on Meet The Press Sunday to discuss it further. His remarks in part:

I was as outraged as the rest of the word at the time. I mourn them deeply. We’re a very small fraternity of political cartoonists around the globe… What I didn’t do is necessarily agree with the decisions they made that brought a world of pain to France. I think that in France the wider Muslim community feels disempowered and disenfranchised in way that I’m sure is also true in this country. And that while I would imagine only a tiny fraction were sympathetic to the acts that were carried out and the killings, I think probably the vast majority shared in the outraged. Certainly that seems to be what people are hearing in the schoolyards in France now, is that they’re finding common cause at least with the issue, if not with the action. I think that’s bad for France, it’s unfortunate, it’s a tragedy that could have been avoided. But every body has to decide where the red lines are for themselves.

Is Trudeau right?

Log in to Medium with Facebook or Twitter and leave a response below.
Our School’s Arbitrary Standards Tell Us Your Child Has ADHD
By: Justin Avery Smith
Tags: Humor, Education, Learning, Satire, Adhd

Our School’s Arbitrary Standards Tell Us Your Child Has ADHD

Education isn’t supposed to help children.

Photo by CDC from Pexels

Dear Mr. & Mrs. Smith,

Upon looking over your son Justin’s performance in our Childhood Review And Performance (CRAP) evaluation, it is clear he has failed (miserably we might add) and does not conform to our style of teaching, leaving us no choice but to assume he has ADHD.

As you know, the CRAP test is set up in such a way that if your child does not successfully catch a ball, recall a beef Wellington recipe word-for-word, or say that their favorite Star Trek character is Spock, it can only mean the presence of a learning disability.

We first became suspicious of Justin’s condition during Study Hall, after seeing that all the other kids were either doodling in their notebooks or playing Roblox on their phones, but that he was reading about the life and fashion of Grace Kelly. The logical conclusion is that he’s interested in the history of pop culture, or that he’s hyperactive. We think the latter is more likely. Academics aside, we’ve noticed various other odd behaviors over the past few months. For example, while other kids were sitting in a circle at recess singing Baby Shark, he was in the corner humming I Got You Under My Skin.

Even his attire has been unusual. While many of his peers sport Fortnite t-shirts, Justin has been seen wearing shirts that sport phrases like “Sic Parvis Magna.” We told him he had to explain himself, and he said it was Latin for “Thus great things from small things come.” Since no ten-year-old could possibly know Latin, we knew the best course of action was to treat Justin like he’s the subject of a scientific experiment.

To evaluate Justin for the CRAP, we separated him from his classmates without warning and he began to cry for some reason. Another unusual behavior, as we only expect kids to cry when we tell them they’ll be having indoor recess.

We left him in the waiting room with some Legos as we prepared the evaluation, and while his ability to recreate an exact model of the submarine from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was impressive, Lego building, Latin, and 20th-century history are not considered a good investment of his time as they are not part of our district’s standardized testing.

Given the results, we suggest a heavy dose of Adderall and repeating the fourth grade until he is properly reconditioned. Only then can he pass the CRAP and be considered normal.

Signed,

Principal Sawyer
Padhe likhe anpadh
By: Shakti Shetty
Tags: Indian Attitude, Shakti Shetty, Lessons In Civics, Navi Mumbai

Don’t you just hate it when you view people on the street litter, spit and abuse public places? Ditto. Guess what? It’s worse when you see them do the same from the confines of their four walls. The thing is we Indians like to keep our home clean and streets untidy. There are so many instances around us where people casually throw rubbish out of their window and don’t even care to check whether it hit somebody walking on the road outside. Indians would do anything to keep their new-found traditions alive.

Case study: Last night, i was returning home tired from Nashik and it was quite late. I was about four buildings away from ours when a banana peel landed right in front of me — about three feet away. The ironical part was somebody from that very building could have unassumingly slipped on the slippery slip in the morning. Anyway, i looked up as anybody who believes in God would do. From the open window and the functioning tubelight, it was patent that the banana skin flew from that house on the second floor. I used to play cricket once so it wasn’t too high for me. I could have easily thrown the peels back into the window — if not on the first attempt, then at least on the fifth. However, i changed my mind at the last moment. Instead, i opened the gate and walked up the stairs despite feeling terribly weary. On ringing the bell of the ‘guilty’ house, a tall man in lungi opened the door. Before he could ask anything i said “This must be yours. You left it downstairs” in Hindi, before handing him the abandoned banana skin. I was prepared for denial but he didn’t say anything. He simply took my offer, looked at his window and pulled a face. I wanted to take out my unrelated frustration by lecturing him: “Padhe likhe log aisa karenge toh anpadhon se kya ummeed karna?” But there was no need for it.
How To Use Small Changes To Your Advantage
By: Dayana Sabatin
Tags: Success, Self Improvement, Personal Development, Self-awareness, Self

Small improvements over time can often add up. A concept that’s used in meteorology called the Butterfly Effect can show us exactly how.

The Butterfly Effect is about how small changes in a complex system will equal results that are essentially impossible to predict. What typically seems like a small and insignificant change in one place could potentially result in large differences somewhere else in the grand scheme of things.

People often try and speed life up and hit large milestones as quickly as possible. In reality, you shouldn’t move faster but instead slow down and ask yourself, “how can I start making small, impactful changes right now, and what are those changes?”

The answer is to develop a series of habits and strategies that put you in the best place possible to succeed. After that, it’s all just a matter of hard work.

What could seem like a small or insignificant event may result in a larger impact on your overall life.

If I offered you 1 million dollars or 1 penny, which one would you choose?

Small changes that you consistently do each day will equal big rewards in the grand scheme of things. For example, take doubling a penny.

If I offered you a million dollars or 1 penny that doubled in value every day for the next 30 days, what would you do?

Part of you is going to go with the million dollars today. Don’t worry; I said the same thing at first. However, when you double a penny every day for the next 30 days, you would end up with 5,368,709.12 million dollars. That’s not too shabby, is it?

That’s the beauty of compound interest.

With that being said, here are a few simple ways to use small changes to your advantage.
Building a Music Game in JavaScript: Part 2
By: Iouri Sorokine
Tags: Front End Development, Programming, JavaScript, Game Development, HTML

Building a Music Game in JavaScript: Part 2

Adding gamification, score, and interaction

Photo by Zorik D on Unsplash

In part 1, I described how to use async functions in JavaScript to play a series of sounds at a specific interval, with all of it being controlled by a pad. After each interval, a loop iterates through the sounds again and plays the ones that are switched on.

Let’s now go through the gaming logic and explore how the score, timer, win and lose mechanics are done.

When the user plays, they hear a beat coming from the computer, and then they have a limited time to recreate it. During this time, they can try different patterns, listen to the example beat again, and try again until they get the exact match or until the time is gone.

The score is calculated according to the percentage of pad keys that are switched on in the right position.

The entire code can be found in my GitHub.

There are quite a lot of functions that call each other, but if we split the problem into smaller chunks, we have:
Synesthesia: A True Love of Wisdom
By: Michael Woronko
Tags: Lifestyle, Science, Life, Life Lessons, Philosophy

Particles and Waves

When James Clerk Maxwell achieved what many have since referred to as the ‘second great unification of physics’, he did so with an expanded perspective that had been unparalleled in his time.

Maxwell’s equations relating to electromagnetic radiation brought together electricity, magnetism and light in a way that created a set of rules which explained far more about our reality than we had ever imagined we could know.

Like Secchi, Maxwell himself stands as another testament to the fact that it is this sort of grandiose unification, not compartmentalization, which helps paint a proper picture of reality and which underscores the willing and able rewards of philosophy.

Humanity has demonstrated its love of consolidation throughout history time and time again (we’re currently on the verge of doing so once more with dark matter). The more our knowledge progresses, the greater the number of seemingly unrelated phenomena we’re able to understand and connect using fewer and fewer laws, tying together a more cohesive narrative that explains our world.

However, for every step forward we take in the consolidation of our understanding, we take two steps back, frustrated because of the procedural specifications that we seem to think we need and not wholly realizing that they are effectively holding us back — maybe not in terms of efficiency, but certainly in terms of understanding.

Interestingly, it appears as though science has stepped in to take the reigns of this necessary unification — a process that perhaps ought to, instead, be spear-headed by philosophy. In the harmonious words of Fritjof Capra:

“It is fascinating to see that twentieth-century science, which originated in the Cartesian split and in the mechanistic world view, and which indeed only became possible because of such a view, now overcomes this fragmentation and leads back to the idea of unity expressed in the early Greek and Eastern philosophies.”

The fact that that any attempt at weaving a cohesive narrative which comfortably embraces our understanding of reality and of our world is being carried out by science alone, and not by philosophy, is a fact that could prove to be the nail in the coffin of modern philosophy.
an ode to everyday basts
By: Katie Simpson
Tags: Poetry, Cats, Gratitude, Beauty, Poetry On Medium

Six Years of poetry-only publishing, PoetsUnlimited was a diverse, engaging and authentic poetry magazine. For most of that time a daily publication, it was always diverse and original, and free-to-read by all.

Follow
A Song to Mercutio
By: Narinman Aresh
Tags: Poetry, Mercutio, Blue Insights, Poem, Shakespeare

He has many characters in his head

When he closes his eyes for the night

They are already dead…

For him, life is just a game

Mercutio his name…

He smokes his uncle’s cigars

Spreading smoke above the stars…

He doesn’t look like the other guys

He has black animal eyes

He has another kind of blood

He is a from nowhere stud…

His lover can only be Mab, the Queen

Only she can kiss his skin…

Only she can take his breath

When a red flower breaks out of his chest…

Queen Mab’s kisses

Queen Mab’s kisses

Queen Mab’s kisses…
Earth Speaks
By: Gill Mcculloch
Tags: Poetry, Remembrance Day, November 11, War, Poppy

POETRY

Earth Speaks

Wise ones listen

Image by Rebekka D from Pixabay

Each year on November 11th,

the Earth reflects,

breathing gently, in sombre silence.

Cold winds carry ghostly murmurs

of the rat-a-tat-tat of war and the soulful cries of broken soldiers.

Lives cut short in cold

fields

skies

oceans

far from warm homes and loved ones.

Poppies stand quietly in woods and meadows,

swaying sadly under silent skies,

delicate symbols of war and peace,

honouring the fallen.

In the sunlit morning, nature’s teardrops glisten

on translucent, blood-red petals.

Dark centres,

bullet hole portals to a million agonizing stories.

Mothers kneeling in doorways hold envelopes to the sky with desperate cries.

Fathers, numb, unable to comfort, endure the quiet agony of unwept tears.

Heartbroken siblings, reach in dreams for the hands of childhood playmates.

Families, frozen in time, lives paralyzed by pain-locked minds,

unable to share, move on, breathe, sleep, love.

Poppies rise each year in quiet, relentless protest

against past and current madness.

A poignant reminder of the horror and chaos of battle.

Trampled reluctantly

by boots from all sides.

Earth’s annual warning

Lest we forget.

Gill McCulloch ©
A Handpicked List Of No-Code Tools To Boost Your Startup
By: Roberto Sannazzaro
Tags: No Code, Entrepreneurship, Programming, Startup

No-code tools are always more common and extremely powerful, you can power up a landing page in a few minutes, connect a spreadsheet as a database, and pull data from it to power your website content.

In this post, I am outsourcing my (growing) list of no-code tools which I particularly enjoy, find cool or simply I want a place to store them for future use/references.

Let’s dig in:

Sheetgo: connect spreadsheets and create automation between Google Sheets, Excel and .csv files.

Source: Sheetgo
JavaScript Algorithm: Wherefore Art Thou
By: Erica N
Tags: Coding, Programming, Web Development, JavaScript, Algorithms

First, we create three variables:

let arr = [];

let hasAllEntries = 0;

const sourceObject = Object.entries(source);

The arr variable is the variable that will hold all of the objects from the collection array that has all the matching name-value pairs as the source .

For the next variable, I had a tricky time trying to find ways to make sure that each object from collection has every matching name-value pair from the source object. The hasAllEntries will keep track of that.

The sourceObject variable uses the Object object to convert the object to an array. This allows for easy iteration.

Object.entries creates an array of arrays. Each sub-array has two items. The first is the property and the second is the value. This variable makes an array out of the source object argument.

Next, we loop through the collection array. Then we add an additional nested for loop to loop through the sourceObject array.

For each object we loop through in the collection array, we also loop through every key-value pair in the sourceObject array.

When looping through sourceObject , since we are dealing with a two-dimensional array, we destructure the array into its key ( sourceKey ) and value ( sourceValue ).

In our conditional, if the object inside the collection array contains a property that matches sourceKey and if that object property has a value that matches sourceValue , we increment hasAllEntries .

If you read earlier, counting the hasAllEntries variable for every name-value pair match we get from each object in collection was the only way to track and see if that object has all the name-value pairs from the source object.

Many other solutions I had only populated the arr array with objects that only had one of the name-value pair matches. The function is supposed to return objects that matched every pair.

To get back to the function, we write a conditional. Depending on the length of sourceObject , if hasAllEntries equals the length of the sourceObject array, that means that particular object from collection has every name-value pair from source . If that is the case, we push that object into the arr array.

Before we go into the next object, we reset hasAllEntries back to 0.

if (hasAllEntries === sourceObject.length) {

arr.push(object);

} hasAllEntries = 0;

After the loops are done, we return the arr array.

return arr;

That concludes our code. It’s not perfect but here is the rest of the function:
ทำ Face recognition ด้วยวิธี N-shot learning บน Pytorch🔥
By: Witchapong Daroontham
Tags: Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Pytorch, Face Recognition, Deep Learning

Reference

Facial similarity with Siamese Network in Pytorch: ทำ face recognition กับ AT&T database of faces โดยใช้ Siamese Network และ Contrastive loss

2. One Shot Learning and Siamese Networks in Keras: ทำ character recognition กับ Omniglot dataset โดยใช้ Siamese Network และ L1 distance + binary cross entropy loss -> triplet data loader modify มาจาก blog นี้

https://sorenbouma.github.io/blog/oneshot

3. Understanding Ranking Loss, Contrastive Loss, Margin Loss, Triplet Loss, Hinge Loss and all those confusing names: คำอธิบายเกี่ยวกับ pairwise และ triplet loss function

https://gombru.github.io/2019/04/03/ranking_loss/
Surfing the Sun
By: Bill Adler
Tags: Surfing, SciFi, Fiction, Science Fiction, Short Story

Surfing the Sun

A day in the life of two surfers in the year 2525

Image public domain, courtesy of comicbookplus.com, modified from original.

“Dude, is that a MaxiX suit?” Joaquin asked.

“Yup.”

“I totally like the way the reds and oranges float on the fabric, blending with the yellow. You look like the sun!” Joaquin raised his palm for a high-five.

“That’s the idea,” Mark said.

“Not me. I want to stand out. For the long range scope pics and all.” Joaquin tugged on his sleeve. “That’s why I chose turquoise. Same as my board. I want to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated. I’ll be a babe magnet.”

“You wish.”

“I do!”

The pilot’s voice interrupted them. “Joaquin Davidos, Mark Xu — you’re up. Confirm status.”

Mark crooked his arm ninety degrees and noted the readout on the arm display: life support, heat shield, EM protection, anti-gravity regulator, radiation guard — all in the green. Power supply, oxygen, and coolant at 100 percent.

He gave a thumbs up.

10, 9, 8, 7, 6,…

At five, Mark pushed the initiate button. A shimmering silvery light encased him. Mark glanced at Joaquin, who had activated his shield, too. The five millimeters of space between his skin and the force field pressurized.

4, 3, 2, 1…

Mark tucked his surfboard with the great wave of Kanagawa painted on top securely under his arm just before he was sucked into the vacuum of space. Mark shot to the solar flare on the left, while Joaquin whipped to the one on the right.

When he reached the flare’s crest, Mark released his board and somersaulted, his feet landing dead center on the deck. He rode the brilliant plasma toward the sun’s surface, gravity accelerating him. A furious fire roiled Mark’s board, threatening to topple him, but that was part of the fun. Mark’s arm monitor reported a milestone, .1 lightspeed.

“Wow wow!”

High-energy electrons sparked blue and green as they bounced off his shield.

He bent at the knees, his leg muscles twitching in a thousand directions for balance. The yellow glow of nuclear fusion filled his horizon. In the distance, black sunspots drifted like whales sunning in the ocean. Mark extended his arms and let loose a string of nonstop yelps of excitement. He flexed his fingertips, his hands making shadow puppets that danced across the planets.

Mark hit the bottom of the flare at .16 lightspeed. He twisted his legs and spun the surfboard one hundred eighty degrees, jumped and rejoined the board, momentum propelling his return trip to the flare’s peak.

He flew off the flare into space. The ship’s gravitational beam pulled him back on board.

The pilot’s voice boomed through the passenger compartment, sounding a note of irritation. “Your surf buddy caught a rogue flare.”

“He what?”

“Yeah. He’s orbiting Mercury, so we gotta make a detour before heading back to Earth.” He snorted. “Joaquin’s fine, which is good because if he got lost or killed, my premiums would skyrocket.”

“I’m glad he’s okay.”

“I’m gonna have to charge you for extra fuel, though.”
Why Don’t You Ever See Swordfish Sashimi or Sushi?
By: Kaz Matsune
Tags: Seafood, Cooking, Japanese Food, Food, Knowledge

Image by the author

In Japan, Swordfish sashimi is available at supermarkets.

I have never had swordfish sashimi in Japan, but there must be some sushi restaurants that serve swordfish in Japan if I have to guess.

We do use swordfish and make nigiri or sashimi, as well as swordfish tartare (fantastic). Swordfish belly is an excellent alternative to toro.

I am unsure why swordfish is not a popular fish for sushi or sashimi, but if I have to guess, the followings are some of the reasons I can think of.

Ammonia smell

I have noticed swordfish meat starts to produce an ammonia smell after two to three days (not when it is caught, but after receiving it from our supplier). Though the fish itself tastes fine, the ammonia smell may not be pleasant to some. Some people may think the fish is old. All this makes swordfish’s shell life shorter, which could be why many chefs choose other fish over swordfish.

It’s a big fish, so it was not a choice for Edo-Mae (Tokyo style) sushi neta (ingredients)

It was only 150 years ago or so when Tuna was introduced as sushi neta in Tokyo. Toro was introduced much later. One of the reasons was that Tuna is a big fish to catch, and they lacked a transportation system to carry it fresh, which made Tuna not an ideal fish to eat raw, so they stuck with smaller locally sourced fish.

The same can be said (I am only assuming) about the swordfish; Why bother going all the way out to the Pacific Ocean, risking one’s life and catch, bring back such fish? My guess is it’s only in the last 60, 70, 80 years or so fresh swordfish becomes available as sushi neta. But by then, enough fish were already used for sushi, and chefs simply did not bother using swordfish.

Kaz Matsune is a founder of Breakthrough Sushi, Two Places Technologies, investor, entrepreneur, and author of four books, including How I Became A Sushi Chef.

If you enjoy this story, here is another story you may like.

Subscribe to my weekly summary newsletter to get a free copy of my latest book, The How of Sushi.
Black Panther: Who “Saves” the World?
By: J. Garcia
Tags: Movies, Marvel, Commentary, Black Panther, Mcu

Black Panther: Who “Saves” the World?

Just One Change, One

Black Panther is an epic. It is creative and inspirational. It is colorful, vibrant. It is a superhero movie that is more than just a superhero movie as you have read and heard.

Yet, when the story reaches its crescendo, it falters in a way I haven’t seen many people dissect.

As Killmonger and Black Panther are at each other’s throats, as Nakia, Shuri, and Okoye are fighting the insurrectionist W’Kabi and his troops, and as Wakanda descends into a miniature civil war; it is the white guy that “saves” the world. That’s right, CIA operative Everett K. Ross is the one that shoots down the ships carrying vibranium to the outside world. Killmonger’s ships would have upended the current world order. Ross’ actions stop Killmonger’s plan.

T’Chala defeats Killmonger and Okoye ends the strive outside, but all of this would have been in vain if Killmonger’s ships full of vibranium would’ve left Wakanda.

This is my biggest dissatisfaction with Black Panther. It doesn’t make sense, really especially, because it should’ve been Shuri’s victory.

The movie does an excellent job of establishing Shuri’s (disclosure: she was my favorite) character. She is intelligent; really, an intellectual goddess. She is quick and nimble. She is a master pilot (she piloted a vehicle virtually earlier in the movie). It is her technology. It is her office. It is her instructions. It should have been her.

This does not detract from the overall movie. It is an amazing project with astounding writers, actors, and producers. Director Ryan Coogler did a phenomenal job, but, then again, he doesn’t need my accolades. The truth is that I wish they would have just given Ross Shuri’s energy-hand-weapons thingies and sent him outside and left Shuri to save the world.
Ingredients
By: Jennifer Cabral
Tags: Breakfast, Recipes, Stories, Flax Meal, Food

“Do you have some of that bread?” I would ask, sometimes even before I said hi, as I walked into my Sister’s. When she hands me some, I keep the pieces of bread in my cupboard secretly wrapped and tucked away like a sacred relic. Yesterday, I looked for some in her freezer, but there was no sight of the tin foiled delicacy that is as precious to me as a Pizarro’s silver bullion. “It’s lightly sweet”, said my husband when I parted hesitantly from a small piece of bread. A rare event since I can’t purchase it at a store and have to wait for left overs of my sister’s baking. You have to understand, this bread is not only delicious, it makes my system “work” if you know what I mean… I’ll spare you any further details.

My sister called from her dining room: “Look, on the table… It’s for you.” A pink bag, ribbons, a card. Wrapping paper crumbled under my fingers as I tried to see what it contained. Ingredients. Spelt. Hard winter berries. Yeast. Flax seed meal. A bread pan. And a recipe. As I stepped into my kitchen this morning, yesterday’s ingredients whispered into my ears: bake. I whisked them together. Learned a new verb: to knead. And waited for 80 minutes.

As my sister’s note said: “Give a woman bread, and she’ll be happy for a day. Give a woman the recipe for the bread, and she’ll be happy for life!”.

Kindergarten Bread (a Waldorf School recipe)

2 tsp yeast

1 tsp salt

2 cups of warm water

¼ cup of honey

2/3 cup of olive oil

¼ cup of flax meal

1 cup (before grinding) of hard winter wheat berries

6 cups of organic Spelt flour

Pre-heat oven to 350. Combine yeast and warm water, salt, honey and olive oil and let it rest for 15 minutes. Add flour until dough is able to be kneaded and no too sticky. (Too much flour will make it tough). Add in ground hard winter wheat berries. And after, flax meal. Bake for 1 hour and 20 minutes.Check bread at 1 hour mark and then bake it for 20 more minutes if needed.
The Bizarre Tale of Two Anagrams
By: Kamna Kabir
Tags: Trivia, Science, Coincidence, History, Astronomy

On 25th July 1610, Galileo discovered that ‘Saturn has two moons’ and that they moved in unison with it. Still and sure of his unsubstantiated theory, Galileo wanted to reach out to Kepler for his opinion while still being secretive from the Church. Therefore, he sent Kepler a letter in a coded description of his latest discovery.

smaismrmilmepoetaleumibunenugttauiras

Which when rearranged forms: ltissimum planetam tergeminum observavi

English translation: I have observed the most distant planet (Saturn) to have a triple form.

Now, it was Kepler’s onus to decrypt. Kepler was a born riddle solver and after much hard work deciphered Galileo’s string of characters as:

Salve umbistineum geminatum Martia proles

Be greeted, double knob, children of Mars

In other words, Kepler deduced from the latter that, ‘Mars has two moons’.

Of course, Galileo’s message had nothing to do with Mars, but this bizarre coincidence resulted in Kepler deducing that Mars has two moons, which in fact is true!
The Long Forgotten One
By: Arvindh Shyam
Tags: Poetry, Memories, Books, Poem, Reading

Photo by Greta Schölderle Møller on Unsplash

Finally they all went to bed

And I had some time for myself

Browsing through the dusty shelf

I pick the oldest of books I see

I opened its cover ever so gently

An old photograph lay there, held by the bind

And I could see from the scrawly signature

That it had belonged to my father's grandfather

I carefully placed the book on the table

Like a historian studying an ancient artifact

Every page I turned gave a gentle crisp sound

Like a secret that pops open after so long in captivity

I turned and read through every single page

The time kept on going, but I did not even care

By the time I reached the last few pages

I could feel him standing right next to me

One hand gently on my shoulder

And the other turning the page for me

The book finally came to an end

And we just sat there until dawn
“My Enemies are my Mentors…”
By: Jon Alphonsus
Tags: Love, Literally Literary, Poetry, Life

My Enemies are my Mentors.

My Nemeses; my Teachers.

It’s those who wish me harm

That push me to do better.

I don’t seek to be stronger

For They only make me wiser.

And though They want to kill me,

I’ll always wish Them Happiness.

My Enemies are my Loved Ones.

My Antitheses; my Family.

My, how They all suffer so,

How hurt They’ve all become.

And even if my love for Them

Brings no fruit to ripen,

I won’t let that love falter

Even when in Nirvana Together.
The Magician
By: Beth Baucom
Tags: UI, Hustle, Design, UX, Teamwork

The Magician Himself

Many people belong to that special class of “hustlers”, the hard working bunch known to put 110% effort into everything. Busy, swamped, underwater; whatever word you’d like to use, we glorify those who dedicate themselves above and beyond to their work. Ironically, many of the busiest of us aren’t the most productive, wasting endless cycles moving in too many directions. Matt Trice (Lead UI/UX Designer) is the converse archetype — he glides effortlessly through a seemingly endless list of tasks, often under appreciated, always with the professional calm reserved to the masters of their craft.

Matt and I chat each morning after our daily standup and discuss the trials ahead. I do my best to offer my support (can’t take the cheer out of the cheerleader!) because I know just how much responsibility he has at Decent Labs, and at home being an excellent father of two. Matt has to be at the top of his game, every day. Despite his impressive portfolio, he is constantly improving his craft, educating himself on the newest trends in design and technology, and ensuring that every Decent Labs company can boast a world-class product. He creates magic every day.
Good analysis of the difficulty of taking current AI as the ultimate manager.
By: Mike Meyer
Tags: Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Basic Income, Culture, Climate Change

Good analysis of the difficulty of taking current AI as the ultimate manager. The biggest current problem is 1) the algorithm being used and 2) inaccuracies in the training data sets. The first problem is an issue of secrecy allowed to protect the algorithm as property. That also often now applies to the data sets also. The second is problem may be caused by unintentional data distortions.

Fortunately growing awareness of these critical points of failure will produce solutions. The very first applies to human managers we now have and that is transparency. I’ll come back to this in a minute. You identified the primary solution and that is machine learning from primary sources. The logical way around this is more, not less. We need open algorithms with censorate (an imperial Chinese technique) machines that monitor constantly against human approved data models.

But even this is not a executive but a high level operations manager as day to day advisor. This is doable, critical and needed now. This is happening now anyway but with no oversight and no transparency. Thousands of people are the objects of administrative actions dictated by AI working from private (secret) data sets using private (secret) algorithms. You’re way too late. . .

We need to get control of this but it is already beyond our ability to understand how the AI based decisions are made. Humans simply can’t replicate the massive data manipulations. We’re going to need to establish complete transparency of algorithms and, at least aggregate data models. And, yes, the machines will need to see everything but effectively they already do.

The trade off is survival. Without a steady takeover by AI we will begin a rapid die off from climate disasters and related human driven chaos. We are already beyond our ability to politically manage current complexity from tech induced social change. In that sense Trump is a nasty precursor (kind of sentinel bleeding in a terminal cancer patient). It’s an ugly analogy but it’s an ugly situation.

So, yes, your critique is accurate. There is no way to have an AI executive at any level yet. But that is what we must prepare for because there is no other option. The decision has already been made and no one is going to stop it. Like everything else at this point we have to figure it out before things get any farther out of control.

The next stage requires heavy human augmentation. Then we can step back in charge. But we probably won’t want to. . .
Managing Cryptoassets with Pamela Morgan
By: Ola Kohut
Tags: Financial Planning, Cryptoasset, Cryptocurrency Investment, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency

Managing and securely storing your cryptoassets — spread across ledgers, wallets, exchanges and various third party services — can be a daunting task. How to pass them on in case of one’s death is even more of an uncharted territory in the nascent cryptocurrency space, and it’s rarely on people’s mind. Lawyer Pamela Morgan has been helping people and organizations build solutions to safely store their cryptoassets and has recently turned her attention to inheritance planning. In this Epicenter episode she presented a simple plan on how to tackle this issue.

Pamela Morgan is an attorney, educator and entrepreneur, passionate about the game changing potential of cryptocurrencies in empowering individuals in their pursuit of financial freedom and independence. Together with Andreas M. Antonopoulos she runs Third Key Solutions, a company that offers consulting and cryptographic key management solutions for companies using digital currencies, helping them to navigate the legal aspects of cryptoasset ownership, and take informed decisions to keep their assets safe and secure.

According to Chainanalysis study about 80% of all Bitcoin transactions are carried out by trusted third parties — exchanges, hosted wallets etc., and users have become comfortable letting those services handle their assets. Nevertheless, Pamela believes that educating individuals as to how to manage their own cryptoassets without relying on any intermediaries is crucial to achieving the promise behind crypto, financial freedom and independence. Even though learning key management can seem tough and onerous, and in addition, we’ve been taught that trusted financial institutions are better at storing our money — according to Pamela, holding on to that mindset is not helpful in ushering the big wave of societal change offered by cryptocurrencies.

Pamela is on a mission to educate people on how to successfully plan the cryptoassets inheritance planning processes. First of all, she recommends preparing a simple inventory and writing a letter to inform the family, loved ones or chosen heirs, listing the cryptocurrency assets being stored and how to access them — without revealing the private keys, mnemonic seeds or any other sensitive information in that letter! She also suggests nominating someone trustworthy and crypto-savvy who can help the rightful heirs access the locked assets.

To find out more, read Pamela’s book on Cryptoassets Inheritance Planning or check out her useful blog posts on this topic. Pamela also organizes workshops for lawyers wanting to learn about the Bitcoin, blockchain and smart contract essentials in order to help them better serve their clients.

Watch the full episode on Epicenter, and don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes, YouTube & SoundCloud. Drop by our Gitter community channel to discuss the show and leave some feedback.
Robot Patrols Are Just The Beginning
By: Sebastian Mueller
Tags: Society, Future, Robots, Ethics, Philosophy

Remember The Future

Robot Patrols Are Just The Beginning

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, public discourse has significantly changed tone and direction. The Overton window has stretched on many issues. Robot law enforcement is one of them. It will be here to stay.

If you want to inform yourself about the robots that will soon be patrolling around the world, look no further than Boston Dynamics’ YouTube channel. Their robots have seen a lot of publicity over the last decade, often paired with commentary linking their act and likeness to a Terminator-like future (FastCompany, New York Post).

Public reception so far did not indicate a great acceptance of the idea of these robots performing important civic duties in everyday life.

All that seems to be changing now, with the public terrified by a global pandemic, human interaction being vilified, and social coherence being of high importance. There are indications that the idea of seeing robots patrol and help to enforce basic regulations is becoming acceptable. Singapore recently made headlines for using Boston Dynamics’ Spot robots in public parks to remind people of social distancing:

And that was only the beginning. We are already seeing a new wave of patrol robots being released into public life:

This raises the obvious question — What is next?

The Overton Window Is Opening

One theory can help us explain what is going on and try to understand where this might lead. It’s called the Overton Window and comes from the realm of political discourse.

The key idea is that at any given point in time, there is a whole scale of stances on a given issue. Those stances can be ordered by how acceptable they are to society — very fringe ideas being “radical,” while the mainstream sits in the middle as “policy” or “popular.”

The Overton Window tells us which ideas are acceptable to society at a given point in time, which can help understand the discourse of the time.

The Overton Window is, of course, not static. New ideas enter the world regularly, and attitudes shift often. Charting political history, as marked by debate and policy, every country has clear changes in their Overton Window over time. Just think of topics such as Universal Basic Income, which has entered as a fringe idea, and is now being trialed in several cities around the world.

Major events have the potential to radically change the shape of the Overton Window for the society living through them. They change how people see reality and what ideas are acceptable. One example would be the expansion of the US government’s powers after 9–11 through the Patriot Act .
Contemplations and Ruminations
By: Susan Brearley
Tags: Self Improvement, Writing, Publication, Stories, Publication Spotlight

Welcome

Contemplations and Ruminations

A New Home for the Homeless Voice

Photo by Luca Basili on Unsplash

I am happy to introduce a new publication designed for the new writer. These are contemplations and journeys in the writing experience distinctly for the writer who is experimenting.

Humans all have stories to tell.

Although first written words were all about tracking economic trade transactions, story telling in the oral tradition quickly thereafter found a home in codified symbols.

Writing as a way of expression is a relatively new phenomenon for humans, in the grand scheme of things. So we are all learning as we go.

As your editor, I will maintain a traditional editor’s role. That is, I will be tough on things like grammar, punctuation and usage.

Examine your pieces before submitting them. Revise them, correct them, love them. If you do not, I will give you tips. Nothing will be published here until the reader can read it without stumbling and falling. Therefore, have patience if your work is not immediately published.

Other than that, all topics and forms are welcome.

If you publish in a language other than English, that’s okay, but include an English translation. Same rules apply for the English translation.

If you would like to write and be published here, make a comment on this article. You will be added as a writer.

Tag your pieces as you wish. Behind the paywall or not — your choice. If you would like your writings to appear behind the tabs on our main page, be sure one of the tags are appropriate for the algorithms to find it — poetry, essay, humor or stories (for fiction). In the Spoken Word category, use the tag Music to be included in the featured page. If you write in a category that does not fall into any of these tabs, let me know either by private message or by comments, and I will consider adding that tab.

Thank you for sharing your contemplations.

Let your adventure begin.

Editor in Chief,

Susan B.

P.S. If you would like to be part of a Facebook group that is supportive of writers on Contemplate, once you have confirmation that you are a writer, look me up on FB and friend me. I’ll add you to the FB group. It’s called Medium Contemplations.
A Boy And His Radio
By: Mark Starlin
Tags: Memories, Culture, Music, Essay, Radio

I grew up in Ypsilanti, Michigan, about 30 miles from Detroit and Ontario, Canada. At that time Canada had a powerful AM station called CKLW. We could pick up it where I lived. They were a “Top 40” station, meaning they played whatever songs were the top 40 songs on the music charts.

This was before radio became as segmented as it is today. There was basically Top 40, Country, Classical, Jazz, and sports on AM radio. FM radio was in its infancy and was beginning to play “album-oriented” rock, “college radio,” and other less-mainstream music. Plus theme-based shows with hosts.

Seeing that my little blue radio was AM only, I listened to Top 40 on CKLW. I can still sing the call sign jingle, C — K — L—W. If you are only familiar with Top 40 Pop music of today your perception of Top 40 radio is miles away from what Top 40 music was in the early 1970s.

At the time Top 40 was a delicious smorgasbord of music. Amazing for the sheer amount of variety. Multiple genres of music appeared one after the other, day after day. You could hear the sappiness of Candy Man by Sammy Davis Jr. followed by Black Dog by Led Zeppelin followed by Burning Love by Elvis followed by Let’s Stay Together by Al Green followed by Superstition by Stevie Wonder. It was great.

I recently found a list of the Top 100 songs on CKLW in 1972.