fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Workshopping the Worldview
By: Resonance Network
Tags: Another World, Worldbuilding, Transformation, Worldview

What does it mean to workshop the worldview?

Our worldview shapes how we believe our families, communities, and society should be organized. This includes how people believe and act, what is ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ who ‘belongs’ and ‘doesn’t belong,’ what is ‘important,’ what has ‘value,’ and on and on. Worldview is formed through the interplay of our values, identity, culture, faith, history, and life experiences. It not only shows up in families and communities, but also in our laws, institutions, and cultural norms.

And as the worldview we have learned and lived in fails to provide the care, community, and connection we all need to thrive, we “workshop” to create a new one.

A new worldview invites us to be in right relationship with one another, with ourselves, our bodies, families, friends–-committed to transformation and in practice every day. We believe that if we practice the transformation we seek in ourselves, we can bring it about in our communities. Transformation is a commitment that we all have to make in order to get there.

Workshopping the Worldview invites us — as worldbuilders — to commit to a bold leap. A leap that is as bold as our hope and vision for what is possible.

We practice what it could look like to be in shared commitment to a bold vision of a world in which violence is not normalized. Where all community members have what they need to thrive, and where no one thrives at the expense of anyone else. And we believe that by practicing these ways of being together, we can create systems that are the antithesis to the violent systems we live in–-and take our transformation to scale.

We all know the world will not look the same on the other side of this pandemic, the uprisings in the name of racial justice, and the environmental collapse we’re beginning to witness–-and it’s up to us to shape the world that will emerge. We workshop the worldview to commit to taking that leap together, trusting that in the sharing of our stories, there is connectedness, convergence, and commitment to who we want to be, together, in beloved community.
Potty training, the child will need to build a bridge to get to the other side of potty training. — You can help your child.
By: Jiska Hachmer
Tags: Psychology, Diaper Free, Child Development, Bridge, Potty Training

Rewards systems, can make it fun, but it can also be like positive punishment and associations creating problems.

Stickers, every time one went to the potty or toilet, is a thing from trends with nannies we had in the EU, also it is a reward system. It is a bit to force the child. We still need a child that is ready to be potty trained. It is not natural, but about awareness and adding positive rewards, during training. It is not hanging the child on time above a toilet and naturally behaves a certain way, over time the child is doing all the things themselves, as they never did anything else than go on time to “the toilet”.

These writers, Zeavon and Silverbrush (2020), do not mention the stickers, in that book, but the bridge they talk about, could be also used to the use of rewards, like stickers. A child not relating stickers to the potty training, will not understand the process, so, awareness is more important than having a system of rewards.

You could add them there, but you do not need them, and you might not always want it, as it is a motivator, but you need to be aware of the other influences that could be associated with the motivators, as explained in the skinner experiment.
Is Pewdiepie 2000x better than the average YouTube gamer?
Tags: Social Media, Creators, Content Creation, Digital Platforms, YouTube

Is Pewdiepie 2000x better than the average YouTube gamer?

CreatorSpot challenges the way attention is divided among creators.

All Pewdiepie’s videos get 6.000.000 views in average.

Swedish YouTube phenomenon and gamer, Pewdiepie, is one of the biggest YouTubers in the world. In average, his videos has 2.000 times more views than the average YouTube gamer’s videos.

Does that mean that Pewdiepie is also 2000 times better? 🤨

The algorithm thinks so. In fact, the YouTube algorithm favors all the biggest creators to make sure they always stay on top in your searches and recommendations. No doubt Pewdiepie is good, but there are many other creators out there who produce just as good content without getting nearly the same amount of exposure.

You can be an amazing creator even if nobody sees your content. 🔥

There is something off in the way the attention is divided. People get stuck in the same filter bubbles 🔮, getting the same recommendations over and over again.

This is a huge issue when we have an established culture around creation like never before. Every 1/3 American kid wants to be a digital creator today. But how do you make a splash in the ever expanding ocean of creators, without being a marketing expert or professional growth hacker? 🤔

At CreatorSpot we strive to empower underrated creators. To challenge the established algorithms by enabling a strong creator community to curate the best and most inspiring upcoming creators out there. Every day we feature new, underrated creators on our digital platform. Creators, that we believe deserve more attention.

CreatorSpot features fresh, underrated creators every day.

On creatorspot.co you can:

👀 Explore underrated creators across all platforms.

🔥 Submit yourself as a creator and get discovered.

💎 Add creators you admire and earn karma!

👍 Upvote the best and give them the attention they deserve.

📫 Get a weekly digest of the most upvoted creators!

We hope that you will join our journey and help us empower all the underrated creators out there! 🚀
A New Year’s Eve
By: Mark Starlin
Tags: Introvert, Romance, Pentina, Microfiction, New Year

An introverted non-drinker, Dan didn’t attend many company New Year’s Eve parties. But this year, he got peer-pressured into it.

Dan saw an attractive woman who appeared sober.

“Hi, I’m Dan. Have we met?”

“I don’t think so. I rarely attend company parties.”

“Me either.”

“Hi, I’m Eve.”
Practical Tips for Remote Retrospectives
By: Andrew Littlejohns
Tags: Retrospectives, Facilitation, Remote Team

Like many in our global Scrum Master community, in the early part of 2020 I had to quickly work out how I could effectively facilitate my now fully remote Scrum Team. Here’s what I’ve learned….

Photo by Jake Kokot on Unsplash

Make it engaging

You get a certain level of interaction and engagement in face-to-face sessions “out of the box”. We don’t quite have that same luxury in remote sessions. Consequently, as facilitators, we need to be deliberate in our actions and go out of our way to invite participation and engage with our teams. If not, it becomes very easy for people to zone out and start doing other things like sending email, instant messages and the like. There is nothing worse than getting an email from one of your participants when you are facilitating a remote session — believe me, I’ve been that guy…

In order to make it easy for participants to interact, the choice of collaboration tool is crucial. If you have access to a tool such as Miro or Mural, then you are in a good spot. Both tools give a facilitator a great deal of flexibility in terms of how they run a session. They are also really easy to use as a participant too giving everyone instant feedback.

If you don’t have access to either of the tools mentioned above, don’t despair — there are plenty of other tools out there. So far this year, I’ve used Reetro (free online Retro board), Powerpoint online and the whiteboard app within Microsoft Teams. With a bit of preparation and creativity you can run an effective retrospective with these tools (Good news for those of you operating in more “corporate” environments).

I’ve also had a lot of success with Mentimeter over the past few months as well. I’ve used it primarily for check-in/ice breakers for my sessions, but my team have responded really well to it and we’ve had a lot of fun. There’s just something about the fact that people can use their smart phones that encourages them to participate with the activities. I wouldn’t be without it now.
Motherhood— My Gift of a Lifetime
By: Allison Ditmer
Tags: Family, Motherhood, Prompt, Pregnancy, Parenting

My husband and I were in our early 30’s when we felt we were ready for babies. Of course, we had no idea what that would entail. We were sure that we wanted children. We had multiple years to grow as a couple, learn how to pick our battles, and enjoy all-inclusive vacations that serve you the cute cocktails right on the beach.

Now that we were ready, out went the birth control. Because this quickly became my focus, all I could concentrate on every month were my cycles and trying to get pregnant. The added personal pressure and heightened awareness did nothing to help the process but naturally, as a planner, I couldn’t help myself.

Oh how that quickly became my first lesson in motherhood and I didn’t even know it at the time. The lesson of making plans and the plan not quite panning out at all on the time table you wish it to.

Over that same year, I saw my sister-in-law get pregnant. I continued to count the days in my cycle getting my hopes up with no positive pregnancy test. There were tears, there were prayers, and I felt all-consumed with the desire to say I was expecting.

Not until I started being open with friends and family that my husband and I had been trying for months, only then the self-imposed shame started melting away. In fact, it’s from being vulnerable and sharing what I felt was a weakness that gave me new insight. Better connections bloomed with those closest to me struggling in silence as well. It also widened my perspective to other ideas in tracking my fertility that I know aided in that long-desired double pink line I had been waiting for.
How to recover 50 GB or even more by deleting Sketch caches files
By: Philippe Hong
Tags: Mac, Sketch, Caches, Design

I use Sketch everyday now, I never suspected Sketch to be the main issue of the limited free space in my hard drive. I blamed it on Photoshop but it wasn’t the main problem. But after reading the article

by @thomasdegry, I knew that it was Sketch. Here’s how I fixed the problem.

First, figure out how much space you’re loosing

Simply open the Terminal and paste this line of code:

sudo du -sh /.DocumentRevisions-V100

Thanks @nicolasfallourd for those screenshots (y)

Here we got 64Go hiding in the .DocumentRevisions-V100's folder.

@thomasdegry give us the solution to prevent Sketch from saving useless copy again, but we still have to figure it out how to delete all this wasted space.

Find the hidden folder

For that, you need to make the system files appear.

I. Open Terminal which is found in Finder > Applications > Utilities

II. In Terminal, paste the following line:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

III. Press return

IV. Hold the ‘Option/alt’ key, then right click on the Finder icon in the dock and click on Relaunch.

Now you’ll see the folder we talked about before.

To enter in that folder, you’ll need the permission. For that, click right on this (.DocumentRevisions-V100) and click on “Get Info”. You will see a bunch of infos, but what we are interested in is the “Sharing & Permissions” section at the bottom. Click on the key lock and enter your password. Then change the allowance of Everyone to “Write and Read”. Don’t forget to put back all the settings after we finish.

Now you have access to this folder, try to find the folder named “.cs” and repeat the same operation for this folder. You’ll now see ChunkStorage, we’re almost done don’t worry. Repeat the same operation for this folder.
A caring organisation
By: Richard D. Bartlett
Tags: Management, Teal Organizations, Collaboration, Organizational Culture, Leadership

How an uncaring workplace feels

Let me describe a situation, and you tell me if you recognise it.

You’re at the pub, you’ve just met up with a friend after work. You’ve just hugged and shed jackets and scarves, ordered a drink. What’s the first thing you talk about?

So often in my experience, the first topic of conversation is about a workplace grievance. The first couple of wines are accompanied by tales of frustration, annoyance, insensitivity, even sometimes stories of abuse: I’m furious because my idiot bosses just imposed this ridiculous process that makes my job ten times harder for no reason… I’m anxious because there’s rumours that we might get restructured out of a job… I’m feeling hurt because my colleague totally trampled on me in this meeting…

I don’t know about you, but for me, these conversations are so common they are almost invisible. It’s like a cultural norm, a ritual we have to go through before we get to the interesting conversations about weird dreams and new lovers and weird dreamy new lovers.

I think those conversations happen at the pub because there is no place for them to happen at work. They are maybe not articulate enough to form an agenda point in a meeting, not serious enough to become a formal complaint. So you either bottle them up, and they become a little turd you carry around in your tummy, or you inflict them on your friends at the pub.
2 Mental Shifts to Stop Feeling Like You’re Not Good Enough
By: Arlene Ambrose
Tags: Shame, Mindfulness, Self, Mental Health, Women

2. Stop the spread of shame by having grace, empathy, and self-compassion. You must choose to believe more of the good stories about yourself over the negative ones.

I don’t know about you but when I mess up, my default is to beat myself up. I say you should have known better, how could you let this happen? and the negative self-talk continues. I wouldn’t say these things to my friends, so why do I say it to myself?

It’s hard to have self-compassion when you’re a perfectionist, when you see mistakes as a weakness or when you hold yourself to a high bar.

Ask yourself whose hero are you trying to be? And why? Most of the time the things we’re doing, the life we’re living have nothing to do with us.

No wonder you’re hard on yourself and unhappy. This isn’t even your life.

Cultivate self-compassion by having grace, by saying more kind words about yourself. Below are some of my favourites, when I’m present enough to remember (eek face), if not you can always remind yourself after the moment.

I’m still learning

I’m in recovery.

This is something I still need to work on, good to know.

This is still a trigger for me so I need extra support.

When thinking you’ve done something “stupid” you don’t even want to hear about compassion. It’s challenging to talk yourself out of negativity, but no one else can do it for you. Each new experience helps you learn triggers and is a reminder that healing work is continual.

We can summarize grace by a quote from Brené Brown, a researcher in shame, vulnerability, courage, and empathy, that says,

Grace means that all of your mistakes now serve a purpose instead of serving shame.

Takeaway

We struggle with never feeling good enough when people tell us through their words, actions, or lack thereof that we aren’t enough for them- just the way we are.

These feelings of inadequacy are rooted in shame. If we don’t reject shame it will destroy our core being, robbing the world of our talents, values, and unique personality.

We can take our power back by rejecting shame through…

-relentlessly choosing ourselves,

-having grace, empathy, and self-compassion by believing more of the good stories about ourselves. We also do this through the words we tell ourselves like, I’m still learning.

Lastly, I want us to remember that shame is all around us, it can be overwhelming, daunting, and discouraging, but the most powerful thing we can do is to decide, decide that we are moving forward no matter how slow or how long we take, continue to reject shame.

Find more of me here.

~Arlene~
Hate the Rain? The Cold? Dread Winter? It Might be Time to Think Like Dane
By: Leslie Wibberley
Tags: Life Lessons, Psychology, Family, Culture, Home

It’s the sensation you get when you’re cuddled up on a sofa or in cozy nook while sheets of rain pound down or a winter storm covers the world in white.

Photo by David Lezcano on Unsplash

It’s that feeling you get when you’re surrounded by friends, sharing a glass of wine and a meal, or gathered around a table playing a board game while a roaring fire spreads warmth through the room. It’s cuddling with your pup by the fire.

It’s beautiful lamps set on dim, and candle light filling a space with a golden glow. (The Danish people burn more candle wax than any other country.) It’s sweatpants, cozy sweaters, and warm fluffy socks. Reading a book snuggled in a window seat or curled up in bed beneath a down comforter.

In his book, The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living, Meik Wiking, CEO of the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen, says “Hygge is about being with the people we love. A feeling of home. A feeling that we are safe.”

Despite living in a country known for its long winter nights, the Danish are considered some of the happiest people in the world. A fact many attribute to the concept of Hygge, which has been a key part of Danish culture since the early 1800's.

Apparently, the Danes have embraced this concept so completely, they’ve become a little obsessed with adding hygge to other words to describe the way they make you feel.

Hygge can be added to any word, but here are just a few examples

a hyggekrog : a nook where you can get cozy

: a nook where you can get cozy hyggeslik: hygge candy

hygge candy hyggesludder: hygge chat, having a cozy conversation with a friend

hygge chat, having a cozy conversation with a friend hyggebukser: cozy pants, you know, those ones that should never be worn outside the home

cozy pants, you know, those ones that should never be worn outside the home hyggelit: a cozy atmosphere created by lighting candles

While winter seems the perfect time to be cozy and for all things hygge, Danes practice this concept year round. Picnics, roasting marshmallows around a fire, bonfires on the beach, backyard and deck gatherings with friends.

Which brings me back to my deck, and the beginning of this article. According to my dear friend, I have a knack for creating warm, cozy environments. Ones that welcome friends and surround them with a sense that all is right in the world, whether that be winter or summer, spring or fall.

I couldn’t be more flattered by her comment.

Perhaps the Danish blood runs stronger through this body of mine than I realized. It seems I’ve been getting my Hygge on all along, without even realizing it.

Now excuse me, it’s November, and it’s raining, and it’s one degree outside. I have some candles to light and some blankets to snuggle under.

Here’s Everything You Need to Know About Hygge (Like How in the World You Say It!

Pronounced “hoo-ga,” the Danish concept if hygge cannot be defined with one single word but rather encompasses a…
Aditya Vinod Buchinger
By: Aditya Vinod Buchinger
Tags: Writer

Aditya Vinod Buchinger

Key interest areas: Data, Environment, Building

London, United Kingdom

What do you do?

I am an architect, and engineering project manager, focused on bringing in sustainable building principles in AEC sector. Currently, I am developing a large-scale sustainable algae farm in a remote desert. I write about architecture(25%), sustainability(25%), ethics(10%), analytics(20%), and business (20%) built from my experiences in London.

How are you creating an impact in your niche?

I am working towards changing some of the AEC industry practices in material selection and design. I believe designers have real power in hand and must actively design out polluting materials from their projects. This is a challenge as there are very few alternative for some very polluting materials. To overcome this barrier, I am looking at other ways to reduce emissions in the overall project’s lifecycle such as Carbon Offsets.

Where can one find you work?
AoG ProTips: Handing Offline Devices
By: Dave Smith
Tags: Actions On Google

Missed our weekly video? Don’t worry, watch this week’s #AoGProTips 🎥

Many factors can affect device connectivity in the home, and it’s important to keep users aware when their devices are unreachable or offline. A critical element of your smart home Action is properly maintaining and reporting the reachability of each device to Google Assistant.

The smart home API supports multiple ways to indicate that a device is unreachable, so let’s explore when it’s appropriate to use each one.

Offline status

Each response that your smart home Action provides to a QUERY and EXECUTE intent should include a status code. For most intents, the status value will be SUCCESS . When Google Assistant attempts to QUERY an unreachable device, you should return the device status as OFFLINE . This indicates that there is no additional state available from the device at this time.

{

"requestId": "ff36a3cc-ec34-11e6-b1a0-64510650abcf",

"payload": {

"devices": {

"123": {

"status": "OFFLINE"

}

}

}

}

Offline error

Each EXECUTE intent represents a command to change the state of the device. If that command fails to execute for any reason, it is appropriate to report that condition with an error response. When an EXECUTE intent fails because the device was unreachable, return an ERROR status with the error code set to deviceOffline .

{

"requestId": "ff36a3cc-ec34-11e6-b1a0-64510650abcf",

"payload": {

"commands": [

{

"ids": [

"123"

],

"status": "ERROR",

"errorCode": "deviceOffline"

}

]

}

}

Note that if your integration handles commands asynchronously or any other conditions require you to return a PENDING status in the EXECUTE response, you can update the status of an unreachable device using the offline state flag.

Offline status flag

Finally, we have the online state flag. Use this flag to publish any changes in device connectivity through the Report State API. This ensures that Home Graph remains up to date and reduces the chance that the Assistant sends QUERY or EXECUTE intents to an unreachable device.

{

"requestId": "ff36a3cc-ec34-11e6-b1a0-64510650abcf",

"agentUserId": "1234",

"payload": {

"devices": {

"states": {

"123": {

"online": false

}

}

}

}

}

For more helpful tips on getting the most out of your actions, be sure to check out the rest of the AoG ProTips series — and share your tips with us on Twitter using the hashtag #AoGProTips.
Red Cross Continues To Discriminate
By: Edward Anderson
Tags: Politics, Opinion, Culture, Health, LGBTQ

Red Cross Continues To Discriminate

Gay men’s blood still isn’t welcomed by the humanitarian organization.

Image from NYSenate.gov

For years Red Cross had a nasty policy that gay men were not able to donate blood. The policy stated that if they wanted to, the man would have to abstain from sex for a year. Even if they are in a monogamous relationship, a potential donor would need to not have sex with his partner. Conversely, a heterosexual man can just give blood without worry about the last time he had intercourse with a female.

The reasoning seems to be that they don’t want to possibly infect a recipient with a disease. This is not only discriminatory but a fallacy. Even by using numbers that suggest 90% of the population is straight, that would mean most of the sexually transmitted diseases come from heterosexual men and women. So why isn’t the year ban in place for everyone?

Because of an archaic belief that gay men are more sexually active than the rest of the population. Historically religious types have used the stories of a few queer men to paint the entire community as sexually indiscriminate. They also take the hetero married couples and hold them up as an example of how everyone in that group acts.

Despite the fact that adultery ends more straight marriages than almost any other issue. Many children are conceived between two people who are not in a relationship and only spent one night together. Those facts are swept under the rug and forgotten because it doesn’t suit the needs or beliefs of the people in charge.
How to transform your attitude into your greatest virtue
By: Alan Sepulveda
Tags: Self Improvement, Motivation, Psychology, Self-awareness, Personal Development

How to transform your attitude into your greatest virtue

Your attitude reveals your mental outlook

Are virtues conscious actions? Or pre-established inclinations of attitudes? Let's micro analyze what's in question. Understanding this can very well be a determining factor for wide-ranging positive outlooks and outcomes.

We know constant, repeated actions are the building blocks for habits. This means we never fully own a good habit or hence a virtue. Rather, it solely becomes normality or expectation. Practicing and conditioning ourselves with the right attitude, in time can become a staple mental virtue we and others can come to rely on. A virtue is a constructive, beneficial characteristic in all shapes or forms. Virtue is also correlated to a sense of essence, integrity, and even valor. Hence why a virtue can be acquired but must be stable, even become natural to the individual. Now, let's break down why and how an authentically integrated positive attitude can fortify you physiologically, mentally, and emotionally.

Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character. -Albert Einstein
JET8 Weekly Update — September 27, 2018
Tags: Weekly Updates, Entrepreneurship, Social Impact, News Articles, Decentralized Apps

Gastromotiva announces DEN Summit partnership

Another renowned non-profit signs up for JET8’s decentralised engagement technology, and partners up with the JET8 Foundation for the inaugural DEN Summit happening in Singapore on October 18th.

Supporting disadvantaged sectors of society through their programmes, Gastromotiva is dedicated to creating opportunities for positive change through vocational culinary training and food education.

David Hertz, founder of Gastromotiva

Founder of Gastromotiva and the Social Gastronomy Movement, David Hertz will share how he’s using ‘Food for Change’ in a keynote address at the Summit entitled A Global Social Gastronomic Movement Fostered by Local Communities.

With their new JET8-built community app - due to launch at the Summit this October - Gastromotiva will be able to connect global resources and support, to transform more lives than ever.

If you’re interested in how decentralised networks are creating positive change in the world, limited registration for the event is still open: https://den.foundation/den
How to test your Redux API calls with Jest
By: João Ramalho Costa
Tags: JavaScript, Jest, Axios, React, Unit Testing

In this tutorial, we will talk about how to test how API calls in our application with Jest and using Axios as an HTTP client.

Redux allows you to handle and manage complex data across multiple routes, dispatching actions of various types, but sometimes dealing with asynchronous data could be tricky as the response varies on time.

In the examples below you will see tips and a tutorial on how to deal with asynchronous calls using the following tools:

Jest: the main testing framework for React (or others) applications;

Axios: for HTTP client communications;

Moxios: to mock our Axios API calls.

In the next example, I will provide a simple example off a get request using Axios:

The first step to start our unit testing of the get users will be our mocks with Moxios. This file must have the fixture extension (eg: getUsers.fixtures.js). The main goal of mocking the requests is obviously to test both possible scenarios: success and failure. Don’t forget to define the method and status!

Now we are ready to start writing our test scenarios and we will see if the success and failure scenarios are passing or not. The objective will be to test three things: the correct response data, the success get, and a failure. Let’s set up the initial configurations for our tests.

In our test configurations, we started to define the Axios config to undefined because we will use Axios with default configurations. The most important part comes in lines 5 and 9. To start running your Moxios instance, you will need to install in every test and uninstall it at the end so your test will be able to reach your fixtures file with mockStubs. Another important thing is to spy the method type that users will be called.

In the example above, you can check that the three possible scenarios are covered: response data, success, and failure. Don´t forget to define your test as asynchronous and to make the assertions after calling the mocked fixture. What are assertions?
Introducing COSS DEX
Tags: Ethereum, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Decentralization, Blockchain

Our platforms and bringing value to COSS community

After several discussions with selected members of the COSS community over time, we understood that ‘trading’ styles and needs of our clients vary from each other.

We have broadly categorised our current and potential user base to identify their trading preferences. The idea is to have something for everyone, so we can not only achieve the original vision of COSS to be a Crypto One Stop Solution but go beyond to offer a complete suite of trading options.

- The COSS CEX platform on coss.io allows you to trade a range of crypto assets through spot contracts and with leverage; the platform also has an increasingly popular instant-swap engine to exchange assets with physical delivery in your account wallet at market price.

- The COSS MetaTrader 5 platform allows you to trade crypto, CFDs, forex, stock indices and commodities such as gold, silver and oil. Trading on the COSS MT5 terminal is available across web, Windows, iOS and Android applications.

Traders have access to advanced order types, instant order execution with minimum re-quotes, integrated deep liquidity, tight spreads, ultra-low latency, and therefore the ability to deploy advanced trading algorithms across all markets.

Other features include copy (or social) trading with expert traders, advanced tools for market analysis, trading signals, demo accounts to test trading strategies, and trading compatible across multiple devices.

- COSS DEX brings a trading experience that is extremely familiar to most traders, where you are also able to adapt trading bots designed for the old platform and connect to the platform via API. All this while ensuring trust, security and maintaining rightful ownership of your assets on the platform with you.

All platforms boast of in-built deep liquidity that allows users to execute trades, large and small, easily.
Credible Credentials: What we talk about, when we talk about certifications
By: Angela Obias-Tuban
Tags: UX, Product Management, Career Paths, Careers, Design Innovation

Credible Credentials: What we talk about, when we talk about certifications

Have you ever been asked for a certification for what you do?

Why I’m writing about this

I’m lucky I was only ever asked once. (Although I was once questioned for teaching without a Masters degree).

And, thank goodness that, by the time I was asked — I had already done 3 different forms of research work, led a team, created complex websites and digital strategy… Basically, I had the gall (and the confidence) not to care.

I’m also lucky that the field where I initially worked really doesn’t have a certification for you to practice it — no one certifies Qualitative Researchers. All you have to show for yourself is analytical skill and portfolio.

Does having a Michelin star make him a better cook than he was before? Or does it just reward 8 years of his consistent work and good food?

But, then, I started working in fields where some of the people were certified, and many were not: Digital Marketing, User Experience Design and “Innovation”.

It’s gotten to a point where I’m asked to teach others what I do. Which — apparently — brings up the request for certification over and over again.

This stirs up quite a lot of thought and emotion for me, though. I only feel confidently certified for market research, also self-awareness and facilitation (yes, “self-awareness” is a capability for qualitative analysis; and I have a certificate from multi-week workshops on it). On the other hand, everything I learned about creating digital products I learned from coworkers, mentors, self-studying on the Internet and on the job. In other words, I learned them informally.

[I’ve also worked with certified people. Unfortunately, out of every, say, 6 people I meet who are certified, I only see that 3 of them are significantly more competent than those who aren’t.]

“First you have to be a cook. Then be a chef. And then, possibly, a restaurateur. Tonight’s episode really showcased that being a good chef sometimes doesn’t translate, at least automatically to the business world.”

What if I needed to certify people, though?

Let’s go back to the beginning.
Visualização de Dados: Panorama mundial da COVID-19
By: Luiza Pellin Biasoto
Tags: Data Visualization, Data Science, Vozes, Covid 19, Dataviz

Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Cases Data

Novel Corona Virus (COVID-19) epidemiological data since 22 January 2020. The data is compiled by the Johns Hopkins…
The Life That I Have
By: Transform The Pain
Tags: Poetry, Life, This Happened To Me, Death, Love

By Leo Marks

Violette Szabo

English cryptographer Leo Marks wrote these beautiful verses in 1943, just after the death of his girlfriend, Ruth, in a plane crash in Canada. Because it was so obscure, the poem was later used to encrypt messages between Allied spies in France, including Violette Szabo, the heroic British agent who was later captured and killed by the Nazis.

The life that I have

Is all that I have

And the life that I have

Is yours.

The love that I have

Of the life that I have

Is yours and yours and yours.

A sleep I shall have

A rest I shall have

Yet death will be but a pause.

For the peace of my years

In the long green grass

Will be yours and yours and yours.
Service Error Handling With Redux-Saga
By: Kaan Küçük
Tags: Redux Saga, Services, Error Handling, Redux, React

We have been talking about Service Error Handling with Redux-Saga which is a cool way yet not only for error handling but the application itself with side effects.

Redux-Saga is a library that makes it very easy to control the application and easily adapts to the application architecture.

If you don’t know what Redux-Saga yet! Keep reading… Redux-saga is a redux middleware and allows you to take actions by listening to redux actions. We can run, stop and cancel it by an action dispatch.

Yes by only dispatching an action will make you control your application outside of your components! And you will have the chance to manipulate/transform your data in SAGAS!! Very concise.
2020’s Top Ten Stories: 5 things to know about the Poseidon
By: Ministry Of Defence
Tags: UK, Russia, Aviation, Tech, Military

2020’s Top Ten Stories: 5 things to know about the Poseidon

In at number 7 is 5 things you need to know about the RAF’s new P-8A Poseidon aircraft. As we countdown to 2021, we are taking a look at some of our most-read stories from the last year.

Each day in the run-up to New Year’s Day we will be reposting our most-read stories from 2020.

So far we’ve had;

10–2020’s Top Ten Stories: Inside Strategic Command

9 — 2020’s Top Ten Stories: Airborne soldiers make history

8–2020’s Top Ten Stories: What kit does an Apache Pilot carry?

5 things to know about the Poseidon

The RAF’s new P-8A Poseidon is designed for anti-submarine warfare. Did you know it was borne from a Boeing 737? Find out why it’s so unique.

1. In August, the Poseidon intercepted its first Russian warship.

The UK’s purchase of the Poseidon is in response to threats, such as Russian submarines in the Atlantic returning to Cold War levels. China is also expanding into the Arctic.

The Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Mike Wigston, says:

“Russian submarines have nowhere to hide.”

Read more here.

2. It can carry almost the weight of a blue whale.

To put its size into real terms, the Poseidon’s maximum take-off weight is as much as 14 elephants, or 4/5ths of a blue whale.

At 189,000 pounds, it is an incredibly strong aircraft.

3. As well as surveillance technology, it can fire torpedoes and harpoons.

Here is a graphic of what the plane can do, including search and rescue, anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare:
I stand by Apple…but I won’t stand for this
Tags: Android, Google, Apple

I stand by Apple…but I won’t stand for this

Apple has long been an industry leader in technology. With WWDC 2019 they proved that they are still software heavyweights. They also proved they still don’t get it.

Apple had a lot of incredible software and hardware announcements but when it came to this piece of computer hardware it stole the show. With a loud gasp Apple announced quickly that it is selling you a monitor stand for $1000! That’s right when you buy a $5000 monitor you still have to pay $1000 for a monitor stand 👏

I am a huge fan of Apple but this is pure insanity and foolishness. Apple was the first company to sell a smartphone for $1000. Now they have become the first company to sell a monitor stand for $1000. This is the most ridiculous nonsense I have ever heard from a company. Apple has proven today that their bottom line outweighs their technical aspirations.

Tim Cook should be ashamed of himself for this and will lose many customers with this foolish and irrational move. I will never buy this. The monitor is overpriced and the stand is a joke. Apple has lost their damn minds.

But sometimes when you sleep up in the iClouds it’s easy to forget what the ground looks like. Apple has traded their customer loyalty for shareholder royalty.

I still have hope that someone with some cents (pun intended) will come in and run the company. Tim has cooked Apple’s prices to the point of no return for many Apple customers. I have the current iPhone and feel pretty silly seeing someone with a $400 Google Pixel 3a that can take higher quality pictures than my $1200 iPhone but that’s a story for a different day.

Thanks Apple for royally screwing your customers again. It’s time to change the logo to one with several bites out of it to reflect what you’ve done to the wallets and hearts of your loyal customer base. Now I’m just waiting for Google to come out with a commercial that says, “Hi I’m a $300 Chromebook and I’m a $5000 iMac” and the rest will be history.
Three Ways to Avoid Burnout
By: Saliba Faddoul
Tags: Life Lessons, Stress, Productivity, Wellbeing, Wellness

Three Ways to Avoid Burnout

3 Simple Tips and Hacks to Help you to Avoid Burnout

Burnout is something we all face, but it isn’t something we all have to face in life. Like any other issue in life a little bit of educaiton can go a long way. Mastering many different tips, tricks, and life hacks can help you avoid the sensation of being burnt-out. That being said, here are three more tips on how you can start to work towards destroying the feeling of being burnt out.

Don’t say yes. It doesn’t matter if you’re a stay at hone mom/dad or the CEO of a major company you have to stop saying yes to everything. No I can’t bake the bake sale cookies and drive carpool every week, no, the meeting with the board every twenty minutes is just not going to happen. Burnout happens all the time because we continue to fill are already filled plates, you need to learn to say “NO.” At first people will be shocked, but after a while they know that you aren’t doing 1,999 tasks a day for them. This doesn’t mean help nobody, but don’t say YES to everybody. This is MY TIME. You know why you’re burned out, it’s because you think that you need to do everything for everyone and then do things for yourself. CEO, parent, friend, or all three you need to block time for yourself. For example from 1–2 is lunch, maybe you want this to be your watch TV, not talk to anyone time. Maybe you want to block out less than an hour to get things done for yourself. You can take 15 minutes to read, listen to something, or take a bath. No matter what it is start setting time for yourself before you set time for everyone else. Just like an important meeting never miss your time. Unreasonable Standards. You don’t have to be Captain America or Super Mom. Yes it is nice, but at the end of the day it is unsustainable. You can’t do everything, can’t be perfect at everything, and don’t need to accomplished huge feats everyday. Understand this or you’ll never avoid burnout, and you’ll always feel down. I’m not saying don’t try to do things or be great, but don’t try to do the impossible and hold yourself to standards you wouldn’t hold other people to.

Overall avoiding burnout is not hard if you have the right mindset. These three mind tricks will help you to avoid burnout and live a much better life. Burnout does not have to be a constant in your life, I can honestly say I never feel burned out, and I do a lot of things.
Create your Slack bot with Conversation API & Node-RED
By: Yacine Rezgui
Tags: Slack, Tutorial, Bots, Conversational UI

At IBM Watson, we’re always happy to continuously improve ourselves and bring new features to our users. As such, we released recently our Conversation API out of experimental use. If you’re not aware of it, Conversation allows you to identify intents and entities from a text.

You can integrate it in many use cases but the most used one is obviously messaging bot and it’s everywhere:

So why has this usage became so trendy? Many hypotheses are possible:

Users spend most of their time only on few applications (chat-based, games)

They don’t want to install an app just to get their ticket or contact support

It’s more natural for them to write to companies in the same way they write to their friends in their favorite applications

I recommend that you read this article where Gaurav Sharma compiled a lot of information about bot usage:

After all this interesting data, what about creating your own bot for Slack using Conversation API and Node-RED?

If you don’t have a Node-RED app deployed, read my previous tutorial:

First, let’s be sure you have the Watson Conversation node (not the experimental one) in your Node-RED app:

In case, you don’t have them, restart your application in Bluemix or locally, it will fetch the updates of Watson nodes.

There are different integrations with the Slack API, from the simplest one to the most customised. Today we will focus on the “slash command” one. It allows you to have a dedicated command that will trigger a webhook to our Node-RED app. In practice, users would write something like in this image where /watson is the command name and the rest of the message is the payload sent to your webhook.

We’re going now to create our slack command, so click on the image to create one:

Click here to create your own slack command

Don’t worry, it will be available to your team by default. You can open it for other teams by following Slack documentation. Choose your command name and add it to your team:

You’ll get an example of a payload sent to your server. Remember to verify the token bundled in the payload is the same as was written on that page to be sure Slack sent you the message and not someone else. You can regenerate it on Slack website if your token is compromised.

Put the URL to your Bluemix Node-RED app URL with /watson-slack in the end. Don’t forget to set the URL on https and save the settings.

Now time to grab our Conversation credentials. If you don’t already have an instance of Watson Conversation API, click on this image:

Once the instance has been created, you should have a “launch tool” button on the manage page where you have been redirected. Log in with your Bluemix credentials and create your workspace (you can name it as you want). A workspace will group all intents, entities, and dialog flows related to each other.

For this tutorial, we will focus on intents, which represents possible actions asked by the user. Let’s create two intents named departure_time and arrival_time, which represent actions of asking departure and arrival times of a flight:
Back Again
Tags: Creativity, Fiction, Microfiction, Family, Writing

Back Again

50 word micro-fiction prompt — “She broke down and let me in”

Photo by Jan Tinneberg on Unsplash

I walked to the opened door with blood on my knuckles, bald patches where hair was ripped out, and a limp I feared I would not correct.

She stood covering her face while tears stained her shirt.

I was barely able to croak the one word I missed saying.

“Mom.”
Up at Two
By: Kurt Nelson
Tags: Night, Nature, Art, Poem, School

The sun is rising, I, going to bed. The birds are waking, I, going to sleep.

In the middle of the night, The air is quiet. Everything is asleep With absolute silence.

The world goes to bed, I wake.

Going against nature is tough, Making my night very rough. Everywhere is dark Except my head.

The sun is rising, I, going to bed. The birds are waking, I, going to sleep. Something is wrong in my head.
2020: Welcome to the Hotels California, Pennsylvania, Texas, New York, Illinois, and New Jersey!
Tags: Long Term Care, Community Living, Covid 19 Crisis, Pandemic Legacy, Nursing Home Abuse

The staggering reality of long term care residents checking out but never leaving

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

The Eagles have written and performed timeless classics since the early 1970s as the quintessential American rock band. Beyond the veneer of catchy tunes, many are deep and prophetic in their tone and lyrics. King of Hollywood on The Long Run album from 1979 captures the rise and fall of Harvey Weinstein but was not written with him in mind. And Hotel California from the 1977 album of the same name has emerged as the theme song for the 2020 pandemic.

Long-term care facilities quickly became the hotbed for the spread of COVID-19. And, despite early warnings about the ease of transmission and the high mortality rates, there was little effort to kill the coronavirus “beast.” The federal government made no attempts to “stab it with their steely knives” and residents remained quarantined in facilities while the beast raged like a microscopic Jason Voorhees.

As of the end of November 2020, over 100,000 residents and staff at long-term care facilities have died from COVID-19 and account for 40% of the total deaths in the nation. Six states have reported over 4,000 deaths in — Pennsylvania, Texas, New York, California, Illinois, and New Jersey.

What if some of these residents wanted to leave and live on their own? Impossible!?

What if state government, community organizations, and corporate America partnered to support this effort? Inconceivable!?

What if a ragtag team led by an overweight, middle age, troubadour could take on this task? Insurmountable!?

What if that team wins millions of grant dollars to lead hundreds of residents on the path of independence? Incredible!?

As I pondered on this epic scenario and what might have been, I returned to my reality — seeking work, writing, singing, practicing the Saxmonica and didgeridoo. And I think about those frontline workers who sacrifice every day to fulfill the herculean tasks of saving lives. Hopefully, I will be returning to the ranks soon.

In the meantime, it’s just another Tequila Sunrise…
オープンデータとシビック・アプリ（シビック・テック）に関する論考
By: Toshikazu Seto
Tags: Civic Tech, Geography, Open Data

Beyond Transparency

" Beyond Transparency combines the inspirational glow and political grit of Profiles in Courag e with the clarity of an…