fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Connected
By: Sylvia Wohlfarth
Tags: Mindfulness, Poetry, Self-awareness, Writing Prompts, Sc Friends

Whispers They Be

A voice comes to your soul saying

Lift your foot. Cross over.

― Rumi

Soft are the calls of my name as I raise my head

To listen and wonder whose voices ever so tender —

Maybe from the dead — are reaching out to me.

Or are they chants from across the seas, ethereal spirits

Whoo- whooshing by, whispering my name

Once or even twice?

I know these are not voices from the dark and deep

Urging me to do devilish things, but signals

Messaging me to pause and feel and remind myself

How caught up I am in this whirlwind of life, a breeze.

Perhaps, though, it’s only me, with my “You’ve done it agains”

My soliloquies of failures filling my endless anthologies

But no, these are whispers from I don’t know where

Who summon my spirit in varying voices

From deep to sweet, reminding me to soften down

And clasp the hands of time for seconds, or longer

And lower the rapidness of my heartbeat

I glance around.

“ Do you mean me?”

But no one I see

And so I slacken my pace

And meditatively choose

My path and cross

A smile peacefully gracing my face

Thank you, Samantha Lazar for your wonderful prompt and inspiring quote-
The Evolution of Exonum
Tags: Blockchain, Java, Rust, Technology, Exonum

In the past three years, our dedicated developer community (now numbering more than 200 on GitHub!) has seen us launch 13 different versions of Exonum — beginning with Exonum core 0.1 and ending with today’s current version, Exonum core 0.13.

Recently, one of our developers asked us why we chose owls for our version names. We knew when we launched Exonum that we would be working hard to frequently issue new updates and create new features to make it an even more robust blockchain platform. We wanted to find a creative way to share our story while differentiating between these different versions.

We decided to use owls in our version names because our logo was initially inspired by the image of owl. We chose owls because they symbolize intelligence and wisdom and, in the ecosystem, they keep the forest clear of pests. We believe that our blockchain platform does something similar. Blockchain makes business operations more streamlined and intelligent, and our proprietary design protects businesses from malicious actors while maintaining secure operations.

This is how our Exonum “parliament of owls” was born! In July 2017, our very first version of Exonum, Exonum core 0.1 “Spectacled owl” was released, designed to help enterprises and governments run their own blockchain-based applications secured by our custom Byzantine Fault Tolerant algorithm and anchoring to the Bitcoin Blockchain.

Since then, we’ve launched:

Exonum core 0.2 “Akun Eagle-owl”

Exonum core 0.3 “Barn Owl”

Exonum core 0.4 “Chestnut Owlet”

Exonum core 0.5 “Dusky Eagle-Owl”

Exonum core 0.6 “Elf Owl”

Exonum core 0.7 “Fulvous Owl”

Exonum core 0.8 “Great Grey Owl”

Exonum core 0.9 “Halmahera Boobook”

Exonum core 0.10 “Indian Scops-Owl”

Exonum core 0.11 “Jungle Boobook”

Exonum core 0.12 “Koepcke’s Screech-Owl”

Exonum core 0.13 “Little Owl”

Coming up soon is Exonum core 1.0 “Mottled Owl” — we’ll have more to share on this soon!

In June 2018, we also made Exonum available to Java developers through Exonum Java Binding. Our team was very familiar with the Java dev communities around the world and wanted to pay homage to their incredible work — so we named each Java binding update after a type of “java,” or coffee! Our first release was Exonum Java 0.1 “Affogato”; in December 2019 we launched Exonum Java 0.9 “Galao coffee.”

We’re looking forward to our upcoming Exonum core and Java releases — if you want to use Exonum Core or Java binding in your operation, you can download them both from GitHub or contact us at contact@exonum.com. Be sure to follow us on Twitter to learn more about the upcoming release of Exonum 1.0!
Maenad
Tags: Poetry, Mythology, Thesceneandheard, History, Poem

With a sudden and insane sermon on “the Apocalypse”

she announces to startled shoppers her lunacy,

inarguable and unabashed,

defying any and all to call the police even as security

and management attempt to escort her doorward

while accosted with expletives of the four-letter variety

and the deranged ravings of a creature

under the influence of madness, illicit drugs, or both,

a being at once pitiable and perilous,

her purchase on reality ungripped

and her mood menacing in the extreme,

an adamant termagant animated

by a litany of grievances actual or perceived,

her shrieks alarming staid bargain hunters

innocently seeking low-sodium wraps among baked goods

and certified organic produce locally harvested.

Predictably, perhaps, when she inquires,

“Do you want to hear all the voices in my head???”,

none delights in her inclination to share.

Doubtless they resent being made unwilling spectators

and as a principle prefer their drama

strictly onstage and onscreen, not arbitrarily unleashed

amid aisles seven through nine until her humorless captors

finally pinion and frogmarch her with celerity

through sliding portals, launching her headlong

onto the pavement where her face is painted

by pigeon droppings only lately discharged,

giving her fresh grudges to nurse and cause

to shriek banshee-like across the half-empty parking lot

at life’s injustices visited on her forbearing self.

Yet her impromptu display has been something

of an unqualified success.

Previously she alone was disturbed, now are we all.

Those once oblivious have been rendered alert,

those insensate sensitive.
Silence
By: Susan Brearley
Tags: Poetry, Writing, Life, Grief, Poetry On Medium

This publication was created as a place for writers to share stories about writing as a healing practice. Writing has proven to help heal the mind/body and spirit. We accept submissions from writers who focus on the importance of writing in their lives.

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Virtual Assistant : Fun Coding
By: Sanchit Sharma
Tags: Virtual Assistant, Artificial Intelligence, Future, Ai Assistant, Technology

Virtual Assistant: Fun Coding

Code for yourself.

Having your own Virtual assistant is really cool thing. But you will find it more interesting if you indulge in the process of making your own Virtual Assistant (or AI Assistant) with help of python libraries.

What’s Virtual Assistant?

It’s an application program that understands natural language voice commands and completes tasks for the user.

Today, we will be making a Virtual Assistant called “Steffi” with help of some great python libraries(Install the packages before starting the project).

This program will do specific tasks once it is activated with voice instructions.

Some tasks done by Steffi

Wishes you after running the program. Asks your name. Search Wikipedia Play music

So on...

Start Coding with Importing the libraries:

import datetime

import speech_recognition as sr

import pyttsx3

import wikipedia

import webbrowser

import os

import shutil

import time

import pyjokes

wikipedia: It is used to fetch a variety of information from the Wikipedia website

It is used to fetch a variety of information from the Wikipedia website speech-recognition : It allows us to convert audio into text.

It allows us to convert audio into text. pyttsx3 : It is a text-to-speech conversion.

: It is a text-to-speech conversion. webbrowser: It provides a high-level interface that allows displaying Web-based documents to users.

It provides a high-level interface that allows displaying Web-based documents to users. OS: The OS module in Python provides functions for interacting with the operating system.

Next part of the program that creates an engine which is used in speak( ) function,

engine = pyttsx3.init('sapi5')

voices = engine.getProperty('voices')

engine.setProperty('voice',voices[1].id)

engine.setProperty('rate', 150)

print(type(engine))

print(engine)

SAPI5: Microsoft Speech API (SAPI5) is the technology for voice recognition and synthesis provided by Microsoft

In the third line, you can change the index to change voice

voice[1].id = For Female voice

voice[0].id = For Male voice
The 1 Minute Guide to Losing Weight in No Time
By: Jeremy Colon
Tags: Weight Loss, Fitness, Fitness Tips, Diet, Simple

As we go through our internal journeys to weight loss galore, it never hurts to try something new. Here is the 1 Minute Guide to losing weight in no time!

Wait It Out

Photo Credit: Pexel

You can always do intermittent fasting, drink coffee, or skip breakfast when you wake up.

2. Fill Up Quick

Photo Credit: Pexel

Out of the three main macronutrients, Fats are more filling. It’s best to start your days with higher fat meals.

3. Picture It

Photo Credit: Pexel

Use your anticipated results as motivation not to overeat or binge eat.

4. Hydrate Hard

Photo Credit: Pexel

Water goes to your stomach too. Fill up on it before you have your meals.

5. Snack Longer

Photo Credit: Pexel

Snack on frozen fruit, pistachios, and foods that take longer to eat.

6. Move More

Photo Credit: Pexel

The more calories your burn, the more calories you can take in with good reason.

Hope this serves you well on your journey to bettering yourself!
How the hell do you get from law to design?
By: Susana Binder
Tags: Ironhack, Design, Life, UX, Life Lessons

How the hell do you get from law to design?

Or: how I ended up in Ironhack.

Illustration: Eiko Ojala

If you’re up for a personal story that spans over 2 decades (yes, I guess I’m not super young anymore 🤫), then keep reading. I’ll sum it up. A lot.

So…remember that moment back in high-school when somehow you’re supposed to magically know what you wanna do with the rest of your life??

To all fairness: there are some people who have a very clear idea very early on in their lives of what it should look like. And others don’t but somehow get lucky or just question things less, I guess?!

Well, I belong to neither nor.

So there I was, 18 years young, doing eeny-meeny-miney-moe to decide my career, my future, basically my life, as it felt at the time:

Architecture? Journalism? Art History? Psychology? I’ll end up on the couch myself! Business Management? Fine Arts? Interior Design? …? …?

Clearly, I had a plan. Not.

In the end, I didn’t dare to do something more creative out of fear of not having enough or good enough ideas anyway…and went with the “safe bet”: I decided to study Law. Something I’d supposedly always find a job with and also something I had always said I’d never study ( I have a few uncles who are lawyers and notaries and it always looked super boring😴).

Halfway through my second year, I realized that studying Law in Germany — ah, yes, starting university was my chance to go back to Germany after having (been re)moved from there at age 14 to Spain (where my mom is from) — was a MAJOR project that would need a lot of work and actually mastering The Law…and I really wasn’t interested in that at all.

On the other hand, though, I didn’t want to throw away those 2 years invested in “building my career”…so I looked for a “good” solution. And came up with continuing to study in Spain (thing #2 I had sworn never to do)! Here, the laws were equally boring but at least I could simply learn the stuff by heart, throw it on paper for the exams, and then forget about it. It also allowed me to work full-time and earn me some money which is always nice…

But by the time I got my law degree, guess what? I still didn’t know what to do with my life. And what do you do when you don’t like a topic…that’s right, you continue at it! Must be my German side, I don’t know. 🤷‍️

So what did I do? I enrolled in a Master’s degree in European Law, yep.

At least I was back in Germany for this 😌. I also met my future husband there and we now have 2 cool kids, so you know…who knows why I studied law, right? But that’s another story.
Hurricane
By: Aspen Blue
Tags: Motherhood, Meltdown, Poetry, Rage

You strike me squarely

Floored by the full force of your ferocity

a category five

ripping landfall through my heart

screaming you’re alive

My mathematical modelling

Yields only empty solution sets

for torrential rage

catastrophic to your motherland

at such a tender age

Only asking sums of 32

Never cubed or fourth roots therein

but apprehensions

strike lightning through your mind

ungrounding reprehension

In the quiet of your storming eyes

We cavitate and gasp for air together

love locked in lungs

as mercury returns

your tempest is undone

© Aspen Blue 2020
A real beauty
By: Antoinette Nevitt
Tags: Humor, Poetry, One Line, Relationships, Narcissism

A real beauty

A one-line poem

Photo by Hans Veth on Unsplash

I thought

I’d never be

with anyone

more beautiful

than you,

until you said

“You’ve got that right!”

Then, we were through.

© Antoinette Nevitt, All rights reserved.

In response to Harper Thorpe’s timely one-line poetry prompt “More” with a twang of inspiration from the late great American poet, Dorothy Parker. Thanks always to Harper Thorpe and Kathy Jacobs and the Chalkboard community.
About Love
By: Priyanka Srivastava
Tags: Childhood, Writing, Nonfiction, Kids, Parenting

About Love

A reflection about kids, colours and other nonsensical things.

Photo by Robert Collins on Unsplash

The words are dancing in my mind like those stars which I can’t hold. I am tired. Not Covid tired. After a long time there were kids at home. My son’s friends had come home to spend the day. The kitchen was messy and there was too much of cooking. Everything looked normal to me and I forgot for some time the numbers and the anxiety. Whatever I wrote yesterday was about childhood and the memories which bloom sometimes.

I can hear them talking as I type this.They are happy in their world of dungeons and fairytales. The artificial colours which they love to borrow and the many ways they know to pause time. Sometimes I wish to be like them careless like those lazy summer days when we would do nothing. Maybe when I write I do the same. I walk away somewhere. We all need anchors. Words do that to me.

I see them lost in the colours of life. Happy in their world.

For now their world is small. I let it be of love.
How To Use TypeScript to Avoid Bugs
By: John Au-Yeung
Tags: Software, Programming, Typescript, JavaScript, Technology

Type Checks

Also, you can put any argument into your JavaScript functions, which brings the same difficulties as the dynamic types as there is no enforcement of what is passed in.

This creates problems as arguments that you’re supposed to pass in but didn’t will be undefined and then you get undefined errors. There is also nothing stopping you from passing in too many arguments.

With both checks, TypeScript makes code easier to understand and follow. You don’t have to worry about breaking things when you change code as the compiler will tell you that you got those basic errors.

In addition, dependency injection is part of TypeScript, which means you don’t have to resolve dependencies yourself. It also makes mocking dependencies easy for testing.

TypeScript provides features in the upcoming versions of JavaScript (which is not finalized yet) that might be handy for some developers.

TypeScript adds types to your objects by defining type files for your objects. It works by setting up a module and then including a module.d.ts file with it.

An example of this is in the TypeScript docs.

// Type definitions for [~THE LIBRARY NAME~] [~OPTIONAL VERSION NUMBER~]

// Project: [~THE PROJECT NAME~]

// Definitions by: [~YOUR NAME~] <[~A URL FOR YOU~]> /*~ This is the module template file. You should rename it to index.d.ts

*~ and place it in a folder with the same name as the module.

*~ For example, if you were writing a file for "super-greeter", this

*~ file should be 'super-greeter/index.d.ts'

*/ /*~ If this module is a UMD module that exposes a global variable 'myLib' when

*~ loaded outside a module loader environment, declare that global here.

*~ Otherwise, delete this declaration.

*/

export as namespace myLib; /*~ If this module has methods, declare them as functions like so.

*/

export function myMethod(a: string): string;

export function myOtherMethod(a: number): number; /*~ You can declare types that are available via importing the module */

export interface someType {

name: string;

length: number;

extras?: string[];

} /*~ You can declare properties of the module using const, let, or var */

export const myField: number; /*~ If there are types, properties, or methods inside dotted names

*~ of the module, declare them inside a 'namespace'.

*/

export namespace subProp {

/*~ For example, given this definition, someone could write:

*~ import { subProp } from 'yourModule';

*~ subProp.foo();

*~ or

*~ import * as yourMod from 'yourModule';

*~ yourMod.subProp.foo();

*/

export function foo(): void;

}
You’re not going to live forever.
By: Phil Wall
Tags: Health, Personal Development, Change, Death, Mindset

The Author — assess the risk, mitigate the risk.

People amaze me. Not all the time, just sometimes.

When it comes to life, it is as if people live their lives assuming they will live forever, and everything will always be ok.

People prove this assumption every day in multiple areas of their lives.

“Why do you eat all that healthy stuff?” “Why don’t you drink?”

I’ve had these conversations with people.

And then they say, “You’re going to die sometime. You should enjoy your life.”

It’s like they sleep in my basement, watch my every move, and make a quick assessment. Yup, he doesn’t enjoy life. I should help him. They don’t understand that I am intentionally mitigating risk, which could be associated with unhealthy living.

I don’t particularly like spinach, or broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, carrots, or kale. If it’s leafy, green, or falls into the vegetable category, there’s a good chance I don’t like it.

I like potatoes cooked in the air fryer; they come out like home fries. I like asparagus wrapped in prosciutto or Brussel sprouts baked in avocado oil.

So if I don’t like vegetables, why do I eat them? To do what I can to stay healthy and mitigate the risk.

A few years back, I was in the break room on an oil rig I was on at the time, and I was reading The 5 Love Languages. The book was a soft purple. (In hindsight, probably not a good book to read in front of the guys.) The boys thoroughly harassed me about reading that book.

Why would I read marriage, relationship-type books like this? To do what I can to be a better husband — to mitigate the risk of getting divorced.

I save and invest money and buy insurance I don’t want — to mitigate the risk of financial strife.

Do you have insurance on your house?

Do you have life insurance, vehicle insurance, or any insurance?

Doing things to be healthy, having a stronger relationship, saving, and investing money is insurance.

You are mitigating the risk.

If the doctor said you’re going to die unless, or the financial guru said you’re heading for bankruptcy unless, or the counselor said you were steam-rolling to divorce unless.

What would you do? Would this be enough for you to make changes?

Why wait for someone else to tell you that you need to mitigate the risks in your life?

I’m going to die sometime, that’s the truth. I don’t know the date; I’d sure like to push 100.

If I die early, I’m sure some will be thinking, “That’s all them leafy greens, purple books, and working out, that’s why he died.”

You’re in charge.

You get to decide the way you think, the choices you make, and ultimately the life you get.

Commit to making some incredible changes.

Go ahead and quit the things that need eliminating.

Start starting.

Commit to following through.

You have one life. You can do this.
Tips dari Google: Cara Pilih Digital Agency IT Consultant yang Tepat
Tags: Mobile App Development, Google, Digital Agency, Business, It Companies

Journal about apps development for business and eCommerce from GITS Indonesia, a Google Certified Agency and Google Cloud Partner. | Website: gits.id

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Economic Popularity Index Versus Bitcoin
By: Mike Co
Tags: World, Culture, Economics, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency

Narrative maps are fascinating attempts to frame the evolution of various theories building the foundation of a political economy. Ben Hunt, for example, formulates narrative maps to categorize and compare economic keywords or phrases across huge troves of mainstream news data (for his blog, Epsilon Theory). Hunt maps key terms such as inflation or austerity, multiplied by more grand narrative categories such as The Golden Age of the Central Banker.

Categorizing and mapping narratives across thousands of news articles using Natural Language Processing is certainly glorious. However, to try to build a narrative map of my own design, I was fixated by a simpler (and perhaps underestimated) tool: Google Trends. While it is difficult to gain insight on sophisticated stories such as Abstraction in Financial Markets using Google Trends alone, it a notable proxy metric for worldwide interest in the exploration of a given topic.

Measuring Google Trends for a wide variety of powerful economic terms may inspire a special kind of speculative insight for the intellectual wanderer. Of course, we are mapping apples to oranges to economic austerity. However, the fates of these various terms and theories are inevitably intertwined. As a proxy for public fixation on a given topic, widespread understanding of each of these economic terms ultimately materializes to affect the others:

Global searches for Capitalism are superseded by Socialism, for example. Which is then intertwined with a worldwide fixation on Liberalism versus Conservativism. Interest in Populism spiked unprecedented highs after Brexit and the Trump election, alongside Modern Monetary Theory. Debt maintains a strong foothold of global interest since 2004, although most of these searches are likely regarding household debt (as opposed to government or any larger theory). However, nearly all of these powerful economic terms combined are at risk of being overshadowed by one term alone: Bitcoin.
How to deal with loneliness when you are an introvert
By: Lifelong Learner
Tags: Loneliness, Mental Health, Friendship, Introvert

How many times have you felt lonely in the past year? Like, you had no one to speak your heart to or all your friendships are superficial?

If you are an introvert, it is likely that you feel this way more often than others. Research suggests that introverts are more likely to struggle with loneliness than non-introverts.

Introverts need solitude and peace to recharge themselves. This makes it harder for them to create and sustain social connections.

If you are an introvert facing loneliness, you can make things better by trusting these principles:

1. Personal Talk is beneficial

If you believe that no one is interested in your personal information, it is not true. It is a crucial gateway to find common ground and build rapport.

You don’t need to share deep family secrets but sharing common personal tidbits is a good way to break the ice.

Harvard Business Review says that business executives who chat about their personal lives in meetings have a 90% success rate in making deals. Moreover, their deals are 18% more beneficial to both parties.

2. Don’t insist on Perfection

Making friends is a slow process of trial and error. Give it time. If you have stringent eligibility criteria to call someone a friend, relax it a little. A new acquaintance will not be your best friend instantly but having someone to talk to will make you feel better.

Conversing with only one or two individuals will alleviate the feelings of loneliness. In the process, you may very well end up bonding with a stranger.

3. Stay in touch with old friends with phone calls rather than texts

Texting does not nearly express as much emotion as phone calls. Ideally, face to face conversation is the best but we live in a busy world. So, try to make time for voice/Skype calls with old friends.

4. Seek fellow enthusiasts by joining clubs or meetups

You don’t need to change yourself or pretend to be someone else to make better friends. Find people with common interests. ‘Putting yourself out there’ may seem overwhelming but if it is within your comfort zone, it is doable.

5. Invite people over for dinner or to watch sports/TV shows

You can take the first step by inviting your potential friends instead of waiting for their invitations. This gives you more control over how many and how long.

Last but not least, social media is a useful tool but do not make it your only way of social connections. Actual conversations are far more stimulating than virtual ones. And sometimes, all you need is just being among people and listening to them.

Invest time in yourself and your mental well-being to avoid loneliness.

What tools and methods do you use to deal with loneliness? Please share in the comments section below.
bathroom scrawls
By: Matt Vercillo
Tags: Sex, Graffiti, Poetry, Fiction, Creative Writing

bathroom scrawls

Under the shadow

of a cartoon penis

A generation’s

genius

Toilet stall

Nostradamus:

predicts the fall,

takes a shit,

has a scrawl,

and if you need

your dick sucked-

has a couple of

numbers to call

I flush

and realize

I have missed

greatness.
How I Stopped Smoking After Averaging 12 Cigarettes Per Day
By: Mike Ortega
Tags: Success, Self Improvement, Smoking, Life Lessons, Addiction

Transformation

If you can do something wrong, it is a high probability that you can do something right.

After my college days, I started looking for work and after 6 months; I got a job. But, It was impossible for me to put out nicotine from my body.

Still, I was smoking like a hell. I was dying, daily. You can’t resist yourself, even if you want to. This stage is called addiction.

I stopped meeting a counsellor. It was not working for me. She gave me a free service because she was my girlfriend. You can’t change yourself when you don’t have inner motivation to change.

My girlfriend helped me to reduce my nicotine consumption. But I was looking for removing it at all from my life.

1. I focused on my routine

If you want to do something in life, change your routine.

I stopped watching web series till night or the hanging complete night. It can make you cool from outside. I preferred to cool from inside.

I started the perfect morning routine with meditation and exercise. When you put value in your life, garbage comes out of you.

Changing my routine helped me to divert my attention. I started focusing on my work. More you work with focus, it is easier for you to reduce addiction.

2. I Replaced my addiction with self-improvement

Self Improvement was the best practice I did in my life during my recovery period. I started looking for an alternative and improving life by changing habits helped me.

You can’t get success in one day, but you can change your direction from day 1.

To reduce my cigarette addiction, I started improving my areas in life. It is like,

Sleeping early, instead of watching Netflix.

Go for a run before sunrise.

Spent time in church.

Trying to become proactive in life.

Focused more on productivity and outcome.

Changing how you spend your day can change your life. I was an addict, but these minor changes helped me more to tackle my addiction.

Recovering from any addiction need a proper plan which can replace and help to forget your addiction. Self-improvement helped me.

3. The last Step

After struggling for 3 years, I stopped smoking. It was like pain, but my new version was hiding behind it.

I took some medication and consultation from doctors. I controlled my urges. I was difficult to imagine life without nicotine, but I worked well on my addiction.

After 1 year of struggle and emotional trauma, finally, I stopped smoking completely. It was a new life for me. My girlfriend helped me on this journey, still, I feel nervous about me.

I think I have updated my software by quitting smoking. I become new mike, without no addiction, no stress, no health issue. The optimistic person who want to live a quality life.
Zoom Out Perspective
By: Jk Mansi
Tags: Humanity, Poetry, Equality, Fighting Inequality, Life Lessons

I see the world not in black and white

but in wrong or right, dark and bright.

My body has learned to freeze or fight

wear boulders on her shoulders to

keep me from flight. Despite the gray

I’ve begun to see, not every thought is

in white and black, abundance or lack.

Beliefs form from experience, not

everyone believes in one lot. What

brought you forth is your own god, or

one whose form is too celestial to spot.

Many gods or one, let’s pick none

say some whose gods live within them

deciding to witness others or kill them.

This is not the American dream

this is not the American way, say

those who have not looked behind

or seen on whose black and brown backs

American dreams were built upon.

It is not black and white, this

holding tight to dreams long past.

There is a world outside this nation

filled with -isms and schisms along

poverty lines, among doltish manqué,

boardrooms and banks where no god

comes to show the way, too ashamed

to show her face, filled with disgrace

of the agony no American dream has seen.

This small planet spins around a vast Sol

smaller still in a galaxy dwarfed by the

brimming of a billion trillion suns,

in every minute burning to extinction.

Tiny humans, seen by not sun nor

moon nor stars, spinning in their webs.

Spiders eating themselves from within.
Weekend!!!
By: Ann Litts
Tags: This Happened To Me, Self-awareness, Life, Weekend, Change

Back when that meant something big

Photo by Levi Guzman on Unsplash

June 2018:

Today was my Friday. I have a lovely three day weekend sprawling out ahead of me. I. Love. That.

The possibilities. The thoughts of things I will do roll through my mind and even just pondering them gives me such pleasure.

There is the bike — of course. Morning rides before the temperatures reach the God Awful Summer Heat Index of Late June In North Carolina. When you can ride and feel the breeze blow and taste freedom. I love my motorcycle. It’s one of the best relationships I’ve ever had. Hands down.

There’s a road trip and a concert on Saturday down towards the shore. If the weather agrees with us, we might swing by the beach and dip our toes in the ocean on the way home. But time spent with friends is always a pleasure to savor. Add in some good music and a chance to dance and I’m in heaven.

There’s yoga and meditation and reading and time without alarms or agendas. FREE TIME. Seventy-two hours of it. In a row. Holy shit!

How fucking great is that?!?!

It completely takes me back to the days when I was a kid and summer vacation was happening. And I had that thing — called free time.

On the longest day of the year, the Summer Solstice, I feel the blessing of summer right down to my soul.

Happy Solstice! Happy Weekend!

Namaste
Premiere: Jake Allen Releases Superb “On The Run”
By: Randall Radic
Tags: Jake Allen, Music Premieres, On The Run, Music, Alt Rock

Jake Allen | Photo: David Birdsong

Premiere: Jake Allen Releases Superb “On The Run”

Bewitching, shimmering alt-rock.

Multi-instrumentalist and fingerstyle guitarist, Jake Allen introduces his new single, “On The Run,” from his forthcoming album, Affirmation Day, slated to release October 16 via Six Degrees Records.

Inspired by his travels through Europe, Russia, China, and Japan, when the journey ended, while in Vilnius, Lithuania, Jake spent a month thinking about all he had seen and learned. Taking up his acoustic guitar, he wrote the album, depicting his experiences.

Jake Allen — ‘Affirmation Day’

Commenting on the album, Jake shares, “‘Affirmation Day’ is a deep dive into the dichotomy of just morals values vs the conditions that both individuals and the human race as a whole tend to manifest. Under that umbrella, the album explores themes of what may lie behind the vale of life, feelings of isolation in a world that is seemingly more connected than ever, and the desire to develop compassion amongst these conditions.”

To provide the album with an expansive dimension, Jake invited world class Memphis violinist Basil Alter to contribute to the songs on the album.

Jake says, “I had met Basil while passing through Memphis. At the time I was seeking a violinist in town to track on an early demo of the song ‘Two Faced.’ I was so blown away by his skills during that session that I promised I would bring him back to play on the final tracks down the road. We kept our little pact and after several long days of tracking, Basil had added some magic on the songs that nobody else could have.”

Jake Allen | Photo: David Birdsong

“On The Run” opens on rippling gleaming guitar colors flowing into a deliciously low-slung alt-rock melody fused with fibers of brawny rock flavors. Snapping percussion and a rounded, rolling bassline provide the alluring rhythm, while Jake’s effortless, deluxe voice infuses the lyrics with simmering thirst.

A soft bridge leads to a sumptuously sparkling guitar solo, dripping with layers of luscious leitmotifs, followed by rising-up to imposing heights as if pressing out a shimmering wall-of-sound, coruscating with shimmering hues.

Jake Allen has it going on! “On The Run” projects a dazzling spider’s web of glossy radiance, affecting listeners with tantalizing wisps of vibrant feelings.

Pre-save Affirmation Day and enter to win a Takamine guitar.

Follow Jake Allen Facebook | Instagram | Spotify
Pandemic and Lockdown
By: Eric Sutherland
Tags: Sales, Pandemic, Lockdown, G Suite, Chromebook

Driving Hewlett Packard Chromebook Sales

Photo by XPS on Unsplash

10 different models sold out within weeks of the pandemic lockdown and pleased to see one model with the Intel Modem card electronics (my most viewed article, 1GBps, 2.4GHz/5GHz Intel PCI card up/down WiFi 130MBps) installed in it.

In August 2014 bought my HP Pavilion 14-c002sa Chromebook. Product Specifications listed:

HP Pavilion 14-c002sa Chromebook Product Specifications | HP® Customer Support

The HDMI port allows connecting it up to the HP 32” monitor and then plug in the Wireless adapter for the HP Keyboard and Mouse pair.

Record Videos with the inbuilt webcam and microphone allows people to communicate in different time zones or shifts and do online meetings using Google Meet with 150 persons/windows capacity (Minimum business subscription).

Using the HDMI cable connects it to the Samsung 65” UHD TV, this gives you the closeup real-life feeling when watching videos and makes reading Kindle eBooks easy.

Workspace Apps

Download DOCs files in different formats:

MS Word (.docx)

Open Document format (.odt)

Rich Text format (.rtf)

PDF format (.pdf)

Plain text (.txt)

Web page (.html, zipped)

EPUB publication (.epub)

DOCS has been developed to produce large business documents and books. Sheets and Slides list common ranges. Forms and Diagrams are useful apps.

Women Home based business setup that levers Workspace Apps

Sites updated and an alternative to SharePoint. Blogspot for Blogs. In edit mode, both allow views in Desktop, Tablet, Smartphone, Full Screen, Rotate Screen, and Reload.
O-tsukare-sama. お疲れ様。
By: Vlad Alex, Merzmensch
Tags: Art, Published Narrative, Japanfernweh, Culture, Essay

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This Pains Me To The Core
By: Sylvia Wohlfarth
Tags: Poetry, Children, BlackLivesMatter, Racism, Resistance Poetry

This Pains Me To The Core

A Child’s Soul Is Neither Black Nor White But Destructible

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice-cream

la — la la la la

I scream, you … hey stop!

You can scream for vanilla ice-cream cos you can

You can scream for vanilla ice-cream cos you’re white

And if you want to, you can scream for chocolate, too

And you — you can scream for chocolate cos it’s all you can have

Cos you can’t scream for vanilla ice-cream cos you’re black

I scream, you scream, but we can’t all scream

for vanilla ice-cream

La la la… la la…

… just trying to understand our world… and the roots of systemic racism… and failing miserably.
¿Por Qué Invertimos en Buguroo?
By: Damien Balsan
Tags: Buguroo, Spain, Venture Capital, Cybersecurity, Fintech

Damien Balsan is a venture capitalist based in Boston after being founding team of 3 successful startups in mobile payments and BD lead atSamsung/PayPal/Nokia/

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Spring Hill Cherry Hill hosting fraud protection lecture on April 29
Tags: Scam Protection, Fraud, Senior Citizens, Lecture, Presentation

The number of scams targeting the elderly population is growing. To address this, Spring Hills Cherry Hill Luxury Assisted Living has invited the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs to present the information they have to stay safe from these scams. The FedUp Program: Senior Fraud and Protection Lecture will be presented on Tuesday, April 29 at 2 p.m. at Spring Hills Cherry Hill. This event is open to the public and is free to attend. Registrations can be made by contacting Stacy Gibson at (856) 874–7700 or SGibson@spring-hills.net. All attendees will receive a free booklet highlighting current scams.

The FedUp program recognizes potential scams and discusses how to avoid becoming a victim. Some of the scams that will be discussed include advance fee fraud, where a senior citizen is informed they’ve won a prize but needs to send in money to play for alleged processing fees or local taxes, bogus charities that ask for donations in cash or via checks made out to “cash”, rebate or reward checks that covertly enroll the person cashing the check into a subscription or contract.

“The need for this program was brought to our attention when one of our residents innocently became a victim of a scam. We recovered a check for $4,000 she was mailing in one of these schemes,” said Mike Lando, executive director at Spring Hills Luxury Assisted Living. “We immediately stopped it from being mailed and notified the family. But when we learned that she had already been scammed approximately $8,000 prior to us getting involved we knew that more needed to be done to protect our residents and their families as well as educate all of us.”

Spring Hills Cherry Hill provides premier assisted living and memory care with the finest amenities in the Delaware Valley. For additional information visit www.springhillscherryhill.com.
[ Paper Summary ] Matrix Factorization Techniques for Recommender Systems
By: Jae Duk Seo
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Mathematics, Netflix, Recommendations

Matrix factorization methods

When a user gives feed back to a certain movie they saw (say they can rate from one to five), this collection of feedback can be represented in a form of a matrix. Where each row represents each users, while each column represents different movies. Obviously the matrix will be sparse since not everyone is going to watch every movies, (we all have different taste when it comes to movies).

One strength of matrix factorization is the fact that it can incorporate implicit feedback, information that are not directly given but can be derived by analyzing user behavior. Using this strength we can estimate if a user is going to like a movie that (he/she) never saw. And if that estimated rating is high, we can recommend that movie to the user.

Image from this website

The above image does an excellent job of summarizing, the core idea behind matrix factorization. Let there be matrix A with dimensionality of (m,n) this matrix can be viewed as a dot product between two matrix with each matrices having dimensions of (m,k) and (k,n).

Just as a side note, the above concept is heavily related to Singular Value Decomposition (SVD). One downside of SVD is the fact that when the original matrix is sparse (incomplete) left and right singular vectors are undefined.

The concept of matrix factorization can be written mathematically to look something like below.

Then we can create an objective function (that we want to minimize) with respect to q and p, which are (m,k) and (k,n) matrices.

The term on the right is the regularization term, this is added since we do not want our decomposed matrix q and p to over-fit to the original matrix. Since our goal is to generalize the previous ratings in a way that predicts future, unknown ratings, we should not over-fit our model.
Forgiveness and Acceptance of Internalized Homophobia
By: Darren Stehle
Tags: LGBTQ, Coming Out, Forgiveness, Gender Identity, Social Justice

Gay men can lead others in a new model of forgiveness through their own healing of gay shame and understanding of homophobia. We can evolve as men who understand and embrace the dichotomy of the masculine and feminine energies.

As gay men we struggled with forgiveness when we first came out.

We had to learn to forgive ourselves for the lies people, society, and institutions told us — that we were abnormal, not good enough, broken, or a sinner in the eyes of god.

As adults we may struggle with accepting gender diversity, if we are unknowingly internalizing our own homophobia. The unanswered question is, “Do you have the self-worth to allow yourself to believe that you are good enough, and equal, after years of believing that you weren’t?”

A lack of self-worth results in many gay men fearing the sissy, or the overly feminine male. They fear this aspect of being overly or overtly feminine, because they don’t completely understand that this expression can be gift. They may take on the self-proclaimed label of “straight-acting” to stand as far away as possible from identifying with anything feminine.

Every single one of us manifest different degrees of the so-called masculine and feminine qualities.

None of those qualities are inherently harmful or scary. None of those qualities take away one’s humanity, value, or worth. It’s people who chose to limit, control, and define others — not qualities.

A few more posts that go deeper into the issues of homophobia and gay shame:
Legend’s Tell of Amazing Things b/c Why Not?
By: Terry Trueman
Tags: Deep Thoughts, Poetry, Humor, Life, Death

Legend’s Tell of Amazing Things b/c Why Not?

What I think about when I’m considering the “here and now,” both as a writer and not as one . . .

Author pretending to be deep in thought, courtesy of author’s priv. pics

A legend tells

of a great mountain-climber

who lost his grip and fell

from two-thousand feet up.

Image courtesy of Hu Chen, Unsplash

Nothing to do about it

as he plummeted towards

the sharp rocks below.

Witnesses said,

he did somersaults

and twists and turns

a gainer and swan dive,

and a jack-knife —

perfect form . . .

Image courtesy of Lane Smith, Unsplash

. . . a 10 out of 10

on all the judges’ cards

right up

until the final second

because . . .

Author drinking coffee and contemplating legends (maybe) from priv. pics

. . . why not?

Wikipedia & Encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Trueman

The poem Why Not? from:

Image courtesy of author and publisher

Most all my books can be found at Amazon and other outlets and some at your local library
The 6 Principles of Effective Data Visualization
By: Benedict Neo
Tags: Programming, Data Visualization, MySQL, Data Science, Data Analysis

The 6 Principles of Effective Data Visualization

Key principles for creating useful and informative graphics

Data visualization is an essential step in the data science process. It’s where you present your findings and communicate the results of your analysis in a graphical format that is both intuitive and easy to understand.

Data visualization takes hard work, and tons of cleaning and analysis go into distilling and manipulating messy data into beautiful graphs and charts. But even with data prepared, one still has to adhere to certain principles or methodologies to produce useful and informative graphics.

That said, in this article, I will be taking inspiration from Edward Tufte’s book Beautiful Evidence, which encapsulates six principles for how to make data graphics that are useful and informative. It’s these principles that separate useful graphics from those that aren’t.

This article is also largely inspired by Roger D. Peng’s book Exploratory Data Analysis in R. It’s available free on Bookdown, and you can read it to learn more about EDA.

Now let’s dive into the principles.
Was hat sich bei Ihnen wirklich verändert?
By: Niels Brabandt
Tags: Change Management, Leadership, Changemaker, Change, Veränderung

Niels Brabandt is in business since 1998. Helping managers to become better leaders by mastering the concept of Sustainable Leadership. Based in Spain & London.

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It’s Either Love or a Broken Heart!
By: Salam Khan
Tags: Poetry, Art, Life, Love, Heartache

Poetry

It’s Either Love or a Broken Heart!

Which creates an objet d’art

It’s either love

or a broken heart

which helps humans create

the beautiful art.

They smile, they cry

they paint, they write

some become Da Vinci

and others Mozart!
How to Travel Without Moving
By: J.R. Flaherty
Tags: World, Travel, Life Lessons, Live, Motivation

How to Travel Without Moving

Because travel is not about the destination, but having new eyes

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Summer 2008. I am in a rented room in a damp share house in Whitechapel, East London.

I sit on my bed that fills the tiny room and sketch out a plan. It went something like this:

First up, I need a job of some sort. Then, once I have a job, I want to travel one weekend a month in Europe. For a country girl at heart, my aim is to feel at home in international cities like Paris, Rome and London. In fact, my real goal is to be mistaken for a local on the street.

What I did not know: a global financial crisis looming on the horizon. With hindsight, I wouldn’t have taken so long looking for work. In the end, the only job I could find was a retail job to pay the rent (and it was a punishing job lifting boxes all day, but that is another story).

I still have the hand-written journal where I scribbled down this grand plan in 2008. What is so amazing to see today? I achieved everything I wanted. Not immediately, but everything I put on paper did happen over the next decade. The key is how I achieved my plans with travel when, at the time, I could not travel.

After 6 months without a job, London dwindled away my cash. No surprise. Was this the end of my dream to go away every weekend by myself?

No way. I came up with a plan. I would travel. But I would start by travelling without moving. After I decided to start anyway, my travel goals seemed to fall into place like magic.