fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Cultivating Design Culture and Community at IBM Studios Astor
By: Jenny Price
Tags: Ibm Design, Culture, New York, Career Journey, Community

Building a better design community.

The Digital Growth & Commerce (DGC) Design Culture & Community task force formed in January 2020 as a result of key pain-points, opportunities, and needs identified from Q3 ’19–Q1 ’20 to build a better design culture and community at IBM Studios Astor.

Needs and opportunities the task force addresses:

Educational and Skill-building: Developing ways to grow design skills, learn about other disciplines, and discover new ways of working

Developing ways to grow design skills, learn about other disciplines, and discover new ways of working Business Strategy: Elevating the value and the practice of design, educating and collaborating with key stakeholders with a focus on the people, process, and practice

Elevating the value and the practice of design, educating and collaborating with key stakeholders with a focus on the people, process, and practice Career and Personal Growth: Supporting career developmental practices at the individual, squad, and cross-team level

Supporting career developmental practices at the individual, squad, and cross-team level Fun and Community-building: Building a better studio culture, exploring relevant topics with guest speakers, off-site studio visits, meet-ups, and activities

Our mission is to elevate the culture of design and professional practice, inclusive of all IBM Design disciplines and designers, growing and supporting an engaged, inspired, world-class community of IBMers.

Meet the growing collective of DGC Design and IBM Studios Astor task force members making this happen.

Astor Hearts Design: a rebirth moment

In February 2020 over 50 IBM designers across multiple teams and areas of the business came together to kickoff a two-day Astor Hearts Design collaborative training session. This marked the first event that officially brought designers and design team members together, in response to the DGC Design Culture & Community task force findings.

For this inaugural program series, we hosted an IBM Design Language workshop with Mike Abbink, Distinguished Designer and Executive Creative Director, IBM Brand Experience & Design and creator of IBM’s open source font, Plex.

During this experience, design team members were given a behind-the-scenes look at the IBM Design System, its history, how it connects to the larger IBM ecosystem, provided training on practical squad usages and applications as well as critique sessions for work-in-progress.

For being the first time all design team members at Astor Place gathered in one place, the response and participation was tremendous. We thank Mike Abbink, the workshop presenters, and participants as well as the Digital Growth & Commerce team and executive leadership for supporting this initiative.

It’s all part of a larger effort to create opportunities by designers for designers to build a robust design culture and community at IBM Studios Astor and beyond.

Several workshop participants shared the following feedback from the experience:
USING ROCKETBOOK BEACONS IN THE CLASSROOM
By: Maggie Robbins
Tags: Education, Notetaking, Teachers, Education Technology, Edtech

With Rocketbook Beacons, our goal is to turn classroom whiteboards into more dynamic and effective teaching tools.effective teaching tools.

Whiteboards in the classroom are extremely simple and effective tools for teaching — you already know that! But what happens to the rich content on the whiteboards after class ends? For the most part, lessons are erased and forgotten.

That’s where Rocketbook Beacons come in! These reusable, restickable adhesives attach to any whiteboard and transform it into a “smartboard” when used with the Rocketbook app. Below, are three reasons why Beacons can effective in every Educator’s classroom.

#1: BEACONS DIGITALLY CAPTURE, SAVE, AND SHARE YOUR WHITEBOARD SESSIONS

Using the Rocketbook app to scan a whiteboard with Beacons allows you to quickly capture and send an intelligently cropped and enhanced image to a cloud destination, such as a shared Google Drive folder. Educators can share this folder with their students, other teachers, and parents, so that everyone can easily access the contents covered in class. There’s no need to do the “share button shuffle” or share a camera photo with all this noise in the background. Just scan the board, pick a destination, and send.

#2: BEACONS HELP GIVE QUICK, REAL TIME FEEDBACK IN CLASS

When we visited classrooms and talked to teachers, they mentioned the importance of providing students real time feedback. Addressing a mistake or a misunderstanding was done best immediately. One of the coolest features introduced in the app related to Rocketbook Beacons is Snapcast Mode. In that mode, Educators have the ability to take a Beacon scan and quickly share it via a link. Imagine having students working on an in-class team assignment and then having the ability to immediately showcase their work to everyone else on a projector or TV by simply scanning a board.

#3: BEACONS ARE AFFORDABLE AND EASY TO USE

We’ve seen those really cool smartboards like the Microsoft Surface Hub and the Google Jamboard. While they have a lot of exciting technology and features, they’re super expensive — the Surface Hub starts at $8,999 and the Jamboard costs $4,999 (plus a $600 annual fee). In addition, they require a lot of training and beg the question — is this fancy technology really necessary?

At the end of the day, educational products should be simple tools that help teachers teach and students learn better. Rocketbook Beacons are simple to use and affordable at only $15 a set.
The Ignite INDEX
By: Damon Barnard
Tags: Ethereum, Cryptocurrency, Crypto, Blockchain, Index Fund

Having launched the first publicly available version of the Ignite RATINGS platform at the end of Q3 2018, Ignite’s users (“the HIVE”) busied themselves with rating and reviewing digital assets and, in the process, generating the world’s first conflict-free, crowd-sourced ratings scores for those assets. The HIVE is rewarded for its efforts by sharing any gains made by the Ignite INDEX when taking positions in only the most highly-rated assets — linking ratings to real-world asset performance.

The initial purpose of this article was to provide a quick reference guide as to the current state-of-play and composition of the Ignite INDEX. However, since the launch of our integrated Index page, this information is now contained on the Ignite RATINGS platform itself. Come and register as a user, or have a look round using our guest account login.

If you like the idea of potentially monetising your ICO/STO/crypto research, and want to join an awesome online community of like-minded individuals, come and join the HIVE!
Journey of Apache Kafka & Zookeeper Administrator(Part 11 )
By: Davinder Pal
Tags: Ansible, Cloud, Kafka, AWS, Terraform

June, 2020 (Terraform Magic on AWS Cloud )

courtesy: Datadog

If you are following my articles then you will understand that so far I haven’t talked about Running Kafka on Cloud. There are ups and downs in it.

Let’s take a example of #AWS cloud.

AWS offers MSK which is Managed Service for Kafka. It have solved hell lot of things of Kafka and Cluster Setup can be done in Minutes instead of hours manually. With MSK we lose control as well so it’s trade-off which you need to decide whether you should learn everything or just rely on AWS Support.

I will recommend that you should have manual development cluster in AWS without MSK so you can understand different aspects of cluster tasks. Today I explain how we can setup Kafka cluster with #Terraform + #Ansible so we have full control over all things.

Note:
Definition of porn
By: D. Yvette Wohn
Tags: Indonesia, Porn, Journalism

Just when I was beginning to think Korea is going overboard for taking drastic measures to curb malicious acts on the Internet, my friend informed me of a bill that the conservative party in Indonesia is trying to pass. According to the new law, pornography would be “an act that incites sexual desire.”

Definition of emotion is such a hard thing, as told in Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Sexy.” What is sexual attraction anyway? Except for some rare cases, I have usually been sexually attracted to people who were not physically attractive. There must be something that automatically sets off the hormones in a human being before the brain has time to analyze emotions.

While this Jakarta Post article expresses concern about possible flaccid tourism, I would be more concerned about this on a personal basis. How would they determine which acts incite sexual desire? I get excited seeing a man wrapped up in thought, reading a book whilst drinking coffee, or blowing out smoke from pursed lips. I guess it wouldn’t be too bad to incriminate the latter.

Read this funny blog post on how some people are more vulnerable than others.
Is It Safe to Delete Kubernetes Pods Under Load?
By: Harry Martland
Tags: Programming, Load Balancing, Kubernetes, Microservices, DevOps

Pod Lifecycle

First, let's understand what actually happens when a pod is deleted.

Kubernetes sends two signals to the process in a container when it is deleted. The initial one is SIGTERM , followed by SIGKILL . SIGTERM is kind of like asking the process nicely to shut down, and SIGKILL immediately stops the process. We can listen for SIGTERM and tidy up any resources we are using, such as databases and other connections. Applications should not instantly shut down when they receive SIGTERM . Rather, they should stop accepting new requests and wait for existing requests to finish. If there are any background tasks running, the process should also wait for them to finish before exiting.

So far we have only mentioned SIGTERM . If the application takes too long to exit after receiving this signal, K8s then sends a SIGKILL signal. In a perfect setup, this will not be sent to an application as it will have gracefully exited. If this does happen, chances are, requests will have been interrupted and customers will be unhappy. You can configure how long K8s waits before sending SIGKILL with the terminationGracePeriodSeconds setting for the container.

If the application is part of a K8s service or has ingress enabled, when the pod is deleted, it’s first taken out of traffic. This allows for the application to process the SIGTERM signal and not receive new requests in the process. By doing this, K8s allows us to present a seamless experience to our customers while still allowing the underlying infrastructure to change.

It is not only deleting pods which causes pods to be removed. When releasing new versions of your application or scaling down, pods will go through this lifecycle. It is important to configure your service correctly. Otherwise, customers may have requests fail. For a more in-depth look into the pod lifecycle, check out the documentation on the pod lifecycle.
TP Wallet Supports Dapps in Developing a Universal SDK
Tags: Moac Announcements, Bitcoin, Moac, Blockchain, Dapps

The TP Wallet has released support for Dapps on MOAC and other platforms to develop a universal SDK. According to official data, TokenPocket JS SDK has provided a series API aimed at helping developers build distributed app systems based on EOS, ETH, MOAC and other platforms.

TockenPocket has already been integrated into Delphy, Wikidog, Grand Token Master, Building of Faith, EOS Button Airdop, Pangu Coin and more Dapps, in addition to a number of games and app-related Dapps.

Secure: Backup your wallet by private key and mnemonic phrase; preventing a loss of asset.

Convenient: Manage various assets like ETH、ERC20、SWTC、MOAC in one wallet.

Trend: Market tendency around the world; Decentralized exchanges inside the wallet(coming soon).

Discovery: Lots of information, investment opportunities found easily.

You could download the TockenPocket wallet. Official download link: https://www.mytokenpocket.vip

Where to Find Us

Website: https://moac.io/

GitHub: https://github.com/MOACChain/moac-core

Twitter: https://twitter.com/moac_io

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/MOAC/

Medium: https://medium.com/moac

Steemit: https://steemit.com/@moac-official

Telegram(International): https://t.me/moacblockchain

Telegram(Developers): https://t.co/8m3m9RD5ix

Telegram(China): https://t.co/73rU9sHWLH

YouTube (Event Channel):https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBU405W7vfOPBicLwW9-QOA

Youtube (Technical Channel) :

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_U54wsGNrm_Yivj5bH9i7Q?view_as=subscriber

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/moacchain/
Who I Was
By: Thalia Dunn
Tags: Poetry On Medium, Spirituality, Self-awareness, Tanka, Spiritual Weekly Prompt

My ‘yesterday’s me’

sheds old skin and leaves behind

what no longer helps

as I evolve, becoming

truer to my core essence.

Photo by Pablo Heimplatz on Unsplash

‘Becoming’ scared me;

I clung to old behaviors

like a frayed blanket

that no longer kept me warm.

So I toss aside for new.

Photo by Sheri Hooley on Unsplash

Evolving…growing into…BECOMING.
How to Boost Concentration
By: Stef Hill
Tags: Startup, Productivity, Success, Business, Time Management

Tried, tested, and quite simple things, that work well.

Concentration wearing out is often compared to exhaustion, much like needing to go to sleep or not being able to run anymore.

This doesn’t explain how I managed to watch the entire 11 hour Gungrave box set in one go, twice in one week. Whoops.

The first technique is as simple as it is effective.

Play some music but make sure it has no lyrics.

Lyrics catch your attention for a whole host of reasons and draw you out of your work. The lyrics may fire you up while they are in sync with your thoughts but as soon as that synchronicity runs out the lyrics tug your mind in different directions, naturally enough, and you lose focus.

Set a timer.

All our lives we’re taught to respect time. Things last for certain lengths of time, we have to arrive at and leave places at certain times. Even the least punctual person has a built in awareness of time progressing.

All of us also know that our actions outside of certain time frames don’t count.

When taking an exam you have a set amount of time to work on the questions and that’s it.

When your train arrives at the platform, you have to be there and get on it or you’ll have to wait for the next one.

You're not making plans for your 200th birthday.

Whether you like it or not your whole life has been spent in training to respect time, so use this to your advantage when you need to.

Set a timer for how long you want to work on something and what you want to acheive in that time. You will become much more productive!

Make time visible.

A way to boost your awareness of time is to actually be able to see it passing. These days most people use their phone to periodically check the time. You will be much more productive if you can actually see time passing since this triggers a sense of urgency. If you look up at a clock on the wall or one on your desk it keeps bringing you back to your goal, which is to achieve something in a set time frame.

The less aware you are of time the more likely you are to waste it.
Being and Indifference
By: L. Jay Mozdy
Tags: Short Story, Flash Fiction, Indifference, Hope, Being

Photo by Steve Halama on Unsplash

by L. Jay Mozdy

Stuck in warm, soft tar, a penny glinted under the cart pushed across a parking lot. I wanted to dig it out; not for its value, but for what it was and where it was, to save a penny too shiny to be old. Someone would have questioned the action.

Just before closing, lights begin to go out in sections of the store. Cashiers look at me, watch me, as I walk from one lit section to the other. There is nothing I can buy there that would stop the next day from creeping into now. I’m not allowed to look at the pretty girl at the register.

Her hands are small and without nail polish, or rings, but she has a thin band on a wristwatch. I give her a dollar with my eyes down and take a receipt from between her thumb and forefinger. She smells faintly of gardenias, and never says a word.

Thinking of having to be at work early in the morning, walking under dark, moonless silence, the inescapable pattern straightens my thought of what has to be done for the next eight hours, then eight more after. With so many ways to go, there seems to be only one way to get there.

I can smell the sea in the rain, hear her laughter as we run, taste her salt kissing. Wanting spreads smoothly on her thighs; shuddering speech we have no words for. Time ticks once and the morning makes its way from my eyes, moves my feet to the floor, then again to age me through the day.

The thought kept thinking that after the tock we’ll be there.

Maybe we’ll walk by today. I keep that in mind as all the eyes look away. Smiles turn with the faces in a moment, never being there too long. One face, another, passing with regularity, none more open or playful than the other. Hopeless really, most of us, never too close - never, always standard, no worse. Alone with indifference and thinking it better than knowing worse.

One draft of gardenia so faint as to be a memory, yields an eye for a mysterious moment.

— — -// — — -

One bright spot in dredful gloom. — L.J.M.
Share The Sky II
By: Ann Litts
Tags: Writing Prompts, Spirituality, Love, Hope, Peace

Photo by Alex Suter on Unsplash

My friend Victoria wrote a beautiful piece and challenged us to come up with ways to help her grow a vision of peace in Our World.

I spend as much time as I can in Nature. Sitting alongside The Ocean is my very favorite place to be. Although walking amidst the trees is a very close second. I can feel the vibrations of The Earth and hear The Universe whisper larger truths.

Humanity has been given countless opportunities to get its head out of its ass. Messiahs and prophets — medicine men and holy women — saints and saviors. Yet — here we are. A stubborn, hateful lot determined to maim and destroy each other. Completely oblivious to The Beauty and Love which surrounds us.

We insist on labeling and seeing each other’s differences. We chose hate over love, easy over right, and money over kindness. Every. Fucking. Time.

Thousands of years of Human history — countless civilizations — all come to the same end. One of these times — there will not be a reboot. The Universe will simply say, “Enough”.

Then — and only then — will The Earth know Great Peace. Victoria’s hawks will be able to fly without concern. There will be no chemicals, no poachers, no endangered species lists — because the plague of Humanity upon The Earth will have run its course.

If we are extremely fortunate — we might be able to return — with wings of our own. As hawks. To peacefully soar on the updrafts and swirl and dance on with the clouds.

The Universe has Her plans. In the end — Gaia will survive. As She always has. Without Humanity.

But for today, for as long as I am here — I will remember Life is an echo. I desire Peace — so I become Peace. I desire Love — so I become Love. I desire Joy — so I become Joy.

Now is all we have. Live. Now.
Improving Your Transportation Analytics with Excel Add-On
By: Opex Analytics
Tags: Transportation, Data Science, Trucking, Supply Chain, Excel

Improving Your Transportation Analytics with Excel Add-On

by Michael Watson

Transportation is an area ripe for analytics:

It is a big expense

It is made up of many different shipments

You have difference choices to make

And, many companies do their transportation analytics in Excel. This is not a bad thing. They load up thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of shipment records to analyze. This usually works up to a point. But, at some point, having the following capabilities inside your Excel spreadsheet would allow you to do much more:

Quickly determine the distance between points (as in, determine 1 million distances within a few seconds rather than waiting overnight)

Rate small parcel shipments with different weights and different origins and destinations

Rate LTL shipments with different weights and different origins and destinations

Manage your truck load carrier’s rate tables so you can easily look them up and apply them to different lanes

We have partnered with a software company that provides these capabilities with an Excel add-on. This add-on gives you simple formulas you can embed in your spreadsheet to create a powerful transportation analysis.

___________________________________________________________________

If you liked this blog post, check out more of our work, follow us on social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook), or join us for our free monthly Academy webinars.
Algo Trading and Signals — Part 6
By: Jamie Keng
Tags: Trading Ideas, Trading, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Algorithmic Trading

In this article, I want to share another very effective trading-signal combination. Its entry conditions are comprised of trend-following signals and an attack signal, which is derived from the same source as the exit signal.

Looking at backtesting results, one can easily observe that losing trading mostly occurred when the Bitcoin market direction was unclear. However, the magnitude of the losses was well confined. With good enough invested capital in this trading-signal combination, it can potentially double the portfolio value over time steadily.

In the result section, there are 2 scenarios, in which different assumptions for the initial portfolio cash value, and size. As usual, in order to exclude the impact of a seemly outlier, among each scenario, the timeframe is dissected into 2 periods, one dating from 2017 to 2020, the other dating from 2018 to 2020.
Episode 1: There's a light that never goes out
By: Conto Em Foto
Tags: Fiction, Storytelling, Story

It was very late at night and there was not a living soul outside. That street was too strange and so far no one knew why the big house on the corner lived empty, though always with the lights on.

Every night was the same. And that car was already stopped by there were more than six months. It was too long. And no one came to remove, even the police making frequent rounds there.

Some claim to have seen the vehicle wandering the neighborhood, without a driver, slowly, wrapped in smoke. Something very likely, I would say, given the mysteries involving one home.

Was heard always a very strange noise coming up from it whenever the fog was in charge of the neighborhood. And last night, the fog was there again.

The next door neighbor, who lived in the lower house, no longer stand it any longer the situation. Not because of the fog and the car seemed to already be part of the sidewalk. Simply because those sounds were very strange.

It was almost surreal. Even elusive. Sounds arose when the fog came. It was then that he decided to run away. He lived alone, but strangely was careful to shutdown all the lights.

He went screaming down the street, desperate, going straight for the lighted house and the car seemed to have life without any idea where he was going. Without a paddle.

And since then, no one ever heard of Andy Taylor again.

R.C.

This story was inspired by the picture that illustrates this post. This photo was found on instagram profile @cirkeline. Follow it! There are great pictures there :)

Did you read this miro tale and like it? So click on the “Recommend” button below to make this story gain more strength and get more people. And, who knows, one day it will become a movie. Tks!

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What Happened To The Disney Children?
By: Kathryn Morris
Tags: Childhood, Disney, Poetry, Trauma, Mental Health

I know I am no longer a child

because even though I still love Disney movies,

I’m now old enough to know

what the children grew up to be.

Peter Pan.

Of course, the boy never wanted to grow up

when his examples of men were brutish and evil

pirates with swords that wanted him dead.

He never had guidance and never felt love.

He never had parents who met his needs.

And so he wonders alone in Neverland, the boy that never grew,

and I wonder if the captain still wants him dead

for I’m sure the boy died a long time ago.

Alice.

She lived her childhood with her head in the clouds

and her sister grabbing her ankles

demanding she come back down.

She had a nightmare most enlightening

about a queen that wanted to chop her head off

belittled and scorned her about everything,

from roses to a game of croquet.

It’s no wonder Alice dissociates so much

that she remembers very little of her life.

Stuck in a dream world, unable to escape,

she roams around endlessly, still convinced

Wonderland is real

and reality is the nightmare.

Pinnochio.

Impressionable and easily influenced.

He blames himself for the events of Pleasure Island.

Full of regrets, he still continues to wander away

from his conscience.

Jiminy Cricket is frail, buried in a lifetime of bad decisions.

The boy still feels like a wooden puppet.

And still sees flashes of Stromboli’s face

through the bars of the birdcage.

Locked in castles, led astray

down twisted paths into deep dark woods,

told lies, and trapped in cages —

I know what happened to them all.

I know because you never heal

from the scars you’re given as children.

But the Disney movies never show that part;

it sticks to the same formula —

they all lived happily ever after.

It’s safe and innocent, and that’s why

the Disney generation envelopes themselves

in a tale as old as time,

a dreamy white lie:

that children who defeat monsters

live happily ever after.
How to use FastAPI with MongoDB
By: Fernando Souza
Tags: Mongodb, Python3, Fastapi, Software Engineering, Programming

Creating the models

Now is time to connect with the database. For this, we use the PyMongo package and just create a MongoClient object:

from pymongo import MongoClient client = MongoClient()

db = client[database_name]

Note: if your database has a different URI and an authentication, you have to configure it in this step.

FastAPI uses the Pydantic library to check the data and process it. It is a fast and yet easy to use package. You can use it on other projects if you need some data validation and schema.

To create a model in Pydantic library, you have to declare a class that inherits from the BaseModel class. All the fields you want to validate and make part of the model must be declared as attributes.

from pydantic import BaseModel

from bson import ObjectId class User(BaseModel):

_id: ObjectId

name: str

email: str

username: str

One of the cool features of Pydantic is that it uses the python typing syntax to check the field type. You can use Optional , Union , and other features of it.

ObjectId

But Pydantic does not have support for the ObjectId class. Every document stored on the database has a field _id , which by default is of type ObjectId .

We have two options here: we can make the _id as another type which is supported by the library; or we can make a custom validator class.

To use with an already created database, we’re going to choose the second option. Basically, we need to implement two methods, get_validators and validate , so Pydantic knows how to deal with it.

The method validate is used to check if the data received is actually valid for this class. So we check it against the ObjectId.is_valid method. In this way, we can accept also a string that is a valid ObjectId. This is useful so we can parse a JSON object received from a HTTP request, for example.

Note: the modify_schema method is to avoid an error when accessing the documentation.

So now we update our model to use this custom object and accept ObjectId types:

We declared here the class User , which inherits from pydantic.BaseModel . This object has four attributes: name , username , and email of string type. And the id field of our new custom type.

MongoDB expects a field with the name _id , but Pydantic does not accept any field that starts with _ . Then we create an alias so Pydantic can understand our document.
All In on the Illusion of Control
By: David Breeden
Tags: Goals Objectives, Control, Humanism, Illusion, Unitarian Universalism

Photo by Katya Austin on Unsplash

In the late 1970s a research team set up a very simple experiment. The researchers wired a bulb up to a switch that turned the bulb on and off at random intervals. Next, they installed a button. The switch and the button were not in any way connected.

Then, the team asked subjects to push the button. Pushing the button and the light going on or off had no relationship whatsoever. The two were not connected. Yet, when asked, the test subjects reported their ability to make the switch work, even though it clearly often did not turn the light on. Sometimes the two correlated, and this happenstance was enough to convince the subjects they had at least some control.

Fact is, we want — we need — to feel in control, and we will create an illusion of control even when we have no control at all.

One school of thought argues that our over-optimistic view of our own abilities springs from evolution — self-confidence is a survival skill: when we feel in control, we take more opportunities and more risks.

Often arguments from natural selection can be a bit glib, but this one rings true for me because it rhymes with ancient wisdom. Ecclesiastes, for example:

the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to those of understanding, nor yet favor to those of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. (9:11 KJV)

These words speak both to those who are swift, strong, experienced, and skillful, as a warning that winning is never a slam dunk. And these words also speak to the slow, the weak, the inept, and the un-skillful that sometimes a bit a chutzpah pulls off the unexpected victory over circumstance.

As the writer of Ecclesiastes phrased it, “time and chance happeneth to them all.”

I suspect nowadays the writer of Ecclesiastes would add, “So, go for it!”

We human beings are inclined to see patterns; we are inclined toward feeling in control; and — gosh knows — now, as always, it takes chutzpah to face the future.

SOURCE

Daniel Yon, “It’s Not Necessarily Deluded to Feel In Control When You’re Not,” Aeon Magazine

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How I Encourage People to Reach Their Goal
By: David B. Clear
Tags: Satire, Motivation, Humor, Success, Comics

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Dummy events
By: Ricardo Tavares
Tags: Soccer, Soccer Analytics, Sports Analytics

With no football to entertain us, football analytics nerds got busier than ever in this quarantine period: Metrica Sports released high quality full match tracking data, David Sumpter and his Friends of Tracking have been releasing incredible work every week, and Seattle Sounders organized an online conference with some of the biggest names in the analytics world (and also the COVID “death charts guy”).

But even with increasing availability of tracking data, the most valuable work in football analytics is still — and will continue in the foreseeable future —being done with events.

Therefore, one of the most important outputs of tracking data analysis is to improve the definition and richness of events.

Indeed, codifying and recording events is hard work, and sometime not even that objective.

Take this example: Alaba’s pre-assist for Bayern Munich’s first goal against Eintracht Frankfurt. This was the event:

Seems readable: Alaba saw Muller’s movement and made a pass to the back of the defender.

However, that is not what happened.

You can see that the pass was made to Perisic, who threw off the defender with a dummy.

Analyzing this event with tracking data allows us to get the full picture. First, considering location and velocity of each player, there was no space behind the defender:

That is until the ball gets near Perisic, who is marked by the defender and lets the ball go to Muller faking a reception:

So, how would you codify this play? Let us know in the poll.
[BLOG] Idea to realization
Tags: Journey, Temco, Blog, Bitcoin, Blockchain

Through the meetups and events in 2018, TEMCO gained tremendous support around the world. Disregarding possible obstacles and difficulties on the way, the team took on trips to meet with companies and professionals in the blockchain space to accomplish a greater goal and communicate with the supporters.

In the middle of blockchain revolution, TEMCO attended many meetings and events that allowed exposure to the public. Making a mark in the blockchain space was difficult, however, the persistence in the development of the innovative technology led the road to recognition. Strenuously working to define the position in the blockchain space, TEMCO was able to conceptualize resolution for various industries.

Contribution to the industries that need a solution for their existing systems is at the peak with blockchain technology. According to CNBC, 84% of the companies are dabbling into blockchain, based on a new survey from 2018. The significance of this number is that the blockchain will become more commercialized and the use of it will be more crucial for the logistics and supply chain participants.

During the Consensus 2018 in New York City, TEMCO met with RSK (Rootstock) to further develop the technical infrastructure. In Singapore, the team attended another Consensus event hosted by CoinDesk, as well as Huobi Carnival and Chainers 2018. Continuing the exposure, the team attended World Blockchain Summit in Dubai, Beyond Blocks in Bangkok and more as a sponsored partner, being recognized in southern Asia as well. In following, TEMCO’s first meetup was held in South Korea, which had more than 200 attendees to hear about TEMCO’s idea to revolutionize the supply chain and logistics industry. The team attended more events such as BlockBattle Conference at dragon city in Korea for the domestic supporters and Labitconf in Chile to expose TEMCO in Latin America.

Through the meetings and events, TEMCO became more and more noticeable in the blockchain space. In late September last year, TEMCO was contacted by CoinDesk to inform the world about how TEMCO was the first blockchain project in Korea to be invested by the largest investment institution in the country, KIP (Korea Investment Partners). The journey continued by recruiting globally renowned Foundation X and Nexus One, as advisors/investors, who are widely known in the blockchain space.

TEMCO, made partnerships with various companies for uses cases, such as Nenia (organic food manufacturer), Home Platform (home décor through homeprise), Art Together (art sharing/crowdfunding) and 6gram (Fresh meat distributor), and many more. TEMCO also started a global alliance, GSLA (Global Supply Chain and Logistics Alliance) with Logistics X, to break down the barrier of localization in the logistics and supply chain industry.

TEMCO will continue the journey by developing a great solution for everyone.

Thank you for your support.
Water Table Turned
By: Will Schmit
Tags: Future, Poetry, Water, Climate Change, Resistance Poetry

photo by Steve Halama at Unsplash

Leave the deep well enough bone

dry. Roll up the windows

in flames. The night dust

is the new noon normal.

The ruined, so far ahead

of the game, laugh.

I’ll wear the air

purifying mask, switch

to piano. If there is

a miracle coming,

I want my name

in the papers.

The cloud herders

direct traffic

to the clogged streets.

We spin the truth,

insert rotisserie spindles

in coffins.

The less than human,

lost human

speech patterns,

take the breath away.

Hope adapts,

moves like a lung.
August/September News for Global Educators and Organizations
By: Lucy Gray
Tags: Education, Global Goals, Teachers, Sdgs, Sustainable Development

August/September News for Global Educators and Organizations

Sign Up for Global Collaboration Week

It’s back to school time in our corner of the world and we’ve curated resources and opportunities for you to connect to the world as a professional!

Global Collaboration Week and Beyond

Register today! Global Collaboration Week is scheduled to coincide with United Nations High Level Week in September. Our event is not directly affiliated, but is designed to support the overall intent of the United Nations convening. Global Collaboration Week offers educators and organizations an opportunity to connect to the world through globally connected teaching and learning activities designed and hosted by GEC members and partners. All events and activities are free!

United National High Level Week is when the Member States of the United Nations convene in New York City. It consists of a general debate, high-level meetings and five summits on climate action, universal health coverage, sustainable development goals, financing for development, and small islands developing states. Of particular interest to our community are these events:

Additional SDG Related Resources

Other Opportunities

Here are additional items of interest that we’ve noticed this month!

Don’t forget to register for Global Collaboration Week here. Make sure to also follow us on Twitter and the hashtag #globaled19 for the latest GEC news!

Thanks for reading!
Florida Man Killed To Get Rid of The Devil
By: Edward Anderson
Tags: True Crime, Mental Illness, Murder, Stalking, Religion

Florida Man Killed To Get Rid of The Devil

He thought the devil possessed his ex, so he murdered her.

Image via Facebook

Who doesn’t have an ex they refer to as psycho? Most of the time, the insult is because of something simple. Most of the time there is a request that is unusual. When the request is rejected, the requestor becomes angry. Rarely it is something that actually something that a professional would deem the actual actions as those of a psychopath.

The case of David Murdock is one of the extreme cases. 60-year-old Murdock killed his ex-girlfriend for religious reasons. He told the police that he was battling Lucifer and trying to banish him.

Only in Florida could a story like this happen.

The Relationship

Lisa Bunce had ended her relationship with Murdock back in 2017. She had told friends on multiple occasions Murdock had made serious threats towards her. As the relationship came to an end, she moved to Ohio. This should have been the end of it for her. It wasn’t.

In January of 2019, she visited Florida to see friends. Murdock learned she was in town and began to text and call her at a rate that could only be considered worrisome. Bunce ignored the messages and eventually blocked his number. It was not enough.

The Murder

The buildup to the murder was every bit the true crime formula. Murdock found out where Bunce had been staying and made his way over there. Sandra Andrews answered the door to her house and found her friend’s ex standing there. After she tried to get him to leave, she was shot in the face. After the police came and asked who had pulled the trigger, she reportedly answered “David.”

Bunce did not fare as well. She was shot in the head and then stuffed into a closet. Police found her shortly after but there was no way to help keep her alive. The question became why would Murdock do this?

The Motivation

In normal cases, jealousy or anger would be a go-to motivation. Even a monetary reward, such as life insurance, can be a big factor in the decision to commit murder. Very rarely is a religious reason given. And when it is, it’s usually because the religion condemns divorce.

Murdock told the police he killed Bunce and shot Andrews because “he had to get rid of the devil.” It’s not clear if he’s truly insane or playing it up for prosecutors, jurors, and the Judge. There is also some confusion as to whether or not he believed Bunce was the devil or if she was possessed by the devil.

The Confession and Charges

Another unusual aspect of this case is that Murdock called into 911 and confessed to his crime. Another Florida man also confessed to shooting his partner but tried to claim self-defense. Maybe that’s what the devil defense is about?

Murdock faces a lot of charges including; first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, armed burglary with assault/battery and shooting into a building. He is being held in the county jail without bond.
JSON schema validation in Postman using external JSON files
Tags: Testing, Json, Json Schema, Postman, API

Postman is an excellent tool for testing APIs. The response for an API call can be validated against a JSON schema to ensure that the values are valid in terms of type and format. In this article, we will explore how external JSON files can be loaded into Postman to avoid duplication of schema, in turn, making the tests more maintainable.

Postman does not (as of v7.3.4) support the ability to reference external libraries and files. Which means that we will have to get the schema loaded in the environment variable to parse and use it.

Primer on JSON schema & Tiny Validator library

Before we begin, it would be wise to have some understanding of JSON schema and Tiny validator library which is used for the schema validation. For the purpose of demonstration, we have four entities Campaign, Media, Sponsor, and MediaType. Campaign requires an object of Media and optionally a Sponsor. Sponsor requires an object of Media.

The following are the schemas for the above-listed entities.
john krasinski and alec baldwin rivalry ads for new era
By: David Connell
Tags: John Krasinski, Boston Red Sox, Alec Baldwin, Baseball, Major League Baseball

AdWeek has a great piece on the New Era rivalry commercials starring John Krasinski and Alec Baldwin. The spots help bring back some cool to baseball and help bring non-fans into the game. Interesting tidbits include the fact that Krasinski and some writers for the Office rewrote most of the scripts to amp up the humor. Also, Alec Baldwin does most of his acting for this series and 30 Rock off of a teleprompter, which he uses to help get his timing right.

The spots have only aired a few times on television, but have found a huge audience online. In fact, my wife — not exactly a baseball fan, but a huge Krasinski and Baldwin fan — told me about them.

My favorite spot, “912,” is posted below, and you can see all of them over at AdWeek.
Miss Oink Face - Neighbourhood Celebrity
Tags: Creativity, Anecdotes, Animals, Lifestyle, Love

Animal Anecdote

Miss Oink Face - Neighbourhood Celebrity

A Hampshire pig living her best life

Photo credit by author — Miss Oink Face taking part in the favourite morning activity — basking

This beautiful lady is Miss Oink Face; I first came across her month ago on my bicycle ride to work.

I was so taken by Miss Oink Face that I almost cycled straight into the car in front of me. (who had slowed right down, I assume also to look at Miss Oink Face) Since this first day, I have started to see Miss Oink Face rather a lot on my rides to and from work and she always makes me happy.

I have never seen a pig with such unusual markings, but after some research, I think I can identify Miss Oink Face as a type of ‘Hampshire’ a very long way from home here in Saigon.

At first, I was fearful that Miss Oink Face could be there for reasons that might be rather upsetting. However, on further investigation, I am happy to confirm that Miss Oink Face was rescued by a Vietnamese family who also fell in love with her rare beauty.

She now lives a very happy life with this family alongside some dog, cat and chicken buddies.
Why Not Move Some Protein From Dinner To Breakfast? Science Explains.
By: Jj Lim, Bsc, Hons
Tags: Food, Lifestyle, Health, Science, Nutrition

Can our body use all absorbed protein?

Protein is digested into amino acids and it is used for muscle synthesis. Our muscle is constantly undergoing degradation and repair even though we are not working out at the gym. Certainly, the process is sped up if you hit the gym.

There is a limit whereby our muscle can only use the a certain amount of amino acids at a certain time point if we consume fast (whey) protein.

The optimum consumption of fast protein for maximum muscle synthesis is about 20g protein per meal for young endurance-trained adults. Notably, there is a minimal threshold of protein requirement to trigger muscle synthesis. As such, consuming protein lower than the threshold simply has no significant effect on muscle synthesis. Since seniors have a higher threshold, muscle synthesis becomes less efficient. Research suggests that seniors require 30g protein per meal to achieve similar maximum muscle synthesis as young endurance-trained adults [8].

On the other hand, our body can probably use a decent amount of absorbed protein for muscle synthesis if we ingest protein in a mixed meal.

When digested protein is slowly channelled into your body from the intestine, it probably won’t exceed the maximum limit for muscle synthesis at any time points. Considering that 30g of whey protein requires 3 hours to be completely absorbed and hit the muscle synthesis limit, 30g of protein from a mixed meal may require about 5 to 6 hours to be completely absorbed, hence giving the muscle to have its sweet time for muscle synthesis. Nevertheless, slowly absorbed protein is not favourable for competitive muscle building as the overall efficiency in muscle protein accrual is higher with fast protein.

What happens to the rest of the protein if the intake exceeds the optimum threshold? There is a famous saying called “use it, or lose it”. This is also applicable for protein. If the absorbed protein cannot be used for muscle synthesis or replenishing the free-floating amino acids pool in our body, the excess will be degraded. It is this degradation that provides us with calories, ironically this degradation also increases our calorie expenditure as the degradation process itself consumes calories, as well as associated with the feelings of satiety [8].
Showcasing the Symmetry of Nature with Nathaniel Cutshall
By: Jessi Gowan
Tags: Landscape, Behind The Scenes, Cameras, Nature, Photography

Exploring of the world’s most picturesque landscapes never gets old for adventure photographer Nathaniel Cutshall. Born and raised in Washington state, this 20-year-old nature enthusiast grew up backpacking, camping, and exploring the endless beauty found in his home state. And when he purchased his first DSLR in 2016, he started capturing the spectacular scenery he’s been lucky enough to visit.

In the summer of 2018, Nathaniel ventured into the heart of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area, which spans Washington’s Cascade Mountains.

“I enjoy backpacking into different locations to photograph the surrounding landscapes,” he says. “This backpacking trip had been on my bucket list for years, and the timing and conditions finally aligned.”

To make the most of his time in the mountains, Nathaniel began researching the area and pre-composing as many shots as he could before he even left his house. But no matter how much preparation goes into a shoot, there’s always an unexpected surprise, which Nathaniel learned first-hand, when he stumbled across a particularly perfect scene.

“I discovered this location minutes before the first light of sunrise hit the surrounding peaks, not allowing me to experiment with as many angles, compositions, and focal lengths as I am used to,” he admits. “After a few rushed photographs experimenting with different compositions, I decided on this final composition and waited for the morning light to come.”

Camera & Settings

Using the leading lines of the mountains and the symmetry of the reflection, Nathaniel composed his shot around the small tree in the center of the image. He captured the photo with a Canon 5D Mark III and a Canon 17–40mm f/4 lens set to a focal length of 40mm, with a shutter speed of 1/100, aperture at f/4, and ISO of 320.
Salt and Salt
By: Shringi Kumari
Tags: Poetry, Self, Feminism, Diversity, Inclusion

Disrupt — discover new voices and new aspects of known voices. Pour in your raw emotions of feeling like an outsider to flourish in hope to work towards a more diverse/inclusive world.

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