fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
We Need More Compassion When We Witness Adult Meltdowns
By: Barry Davret
Tags: Self Improvement, Life Lessons, Relationships, Work, Mental Health

What Is a Meltdown?

A coworker, friend, or spouse snaps from a trivial offense. The tantrum escalates to the point of hysterics. The response seems wildly disproportionate to the transgression. We call it a meltdown.

What should you do in that situation? Comfort and console? Pretend not to notice? Shoot a video to win social media points?

I witnessed a disturbing scene, not violent like the guy who destroyed his computer, but inappropriate in other ways.

A normally quiet and composed woman let out an uncharacteristic grunt. She followed with a rowdy complaint about the settings on her chair — the seat and armrests were adjusted lower than her preferred settings.

She had worked from home the previous day, and someone had used her desk. Desk-sharing was a regular occurrence. There weren’t enough seats to accommodate everyone.

What set her off was that someone had neglected to return the seat settings to its previous positions.

It was a minor inconvenience at best, but she launched into a mini tirade.

“This is absolutely disgusting,” she said. “My seat height is way off. The armrests are too low. Who does that?”

I would think most people adjust the chair to their liking, especially if they’re going to use it for eight hours. That logic escaped her. The tantrum concluded with this puzzling statement.

“I’m terrified that my children will soon have to work in a world like this.”

Was her outrage justified? Was the fear of her children’s future warranted? Why would an otherwise composed person blow up at such a trivial affront?
LOL: Issue #24
By: Arihant Verma
Tags: Poetry, Books, Literature, Stories, Lolissue

Mediocre Man by Ayaan Sawant

2. How to discover great books to read? by Harsh Snehanshu

3. To You by Hana Vaid

Who is Hana Vaid? Her Poetry Book Meraki, is out, check it out.

4. On the Epilogue of The Handmaid’s Tale by Anna Sheffer

5. The Ideal Y by Aditya Mankad

Feature: If you missed it,Spoken Word poets Kc Vlaine and Anirudh Eka earlier this week:-
10 Things You Didn’t Know About Pandas
By: Rebecca Vickery
Tags: Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Education, Data Science, Programming

10 Things You Didn’t Know About Pandas

Until now…

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Pandas is the definitive library for performing data analysis with Python. It was originally developed by a company called AQR Capital Management but was open-sourced for general use in 2009.

It rapidly became the go-to tool for data analysis for Python users and now has a huge array of features for data extraction, manipulation, visualisation and analysis.

Pandas has many useful methods and functions here are ten things you might not know about the library.
Jupyter + Pycharm + Virtual Environments
By: Adam Cohn
Tags: Pycharm, Jupyter, Python, Virtual Environment

👨🏻‍💻Hacking together a quick shell script to get them to work together

I love Pycharm for many reasons — interactive debugging, linting, autocompletions, integrated Git tools and super-easy environment management are some of them.

One of the things I don’t love about (the free Community Edition of) Pycharm is that it doesn’t come with support for Jupyter Notebooks, which is an indispensable tool for any Data Science project.

So what’s a Data Scientist to do when they want to use Notebooks to do EDA on a dataset but also have access to Pycharm’s full-featured development environment? You write a shell script that lets you launch a Jupyter Lab session from within your Pycharm project terminal window!

Here it is

To do a quick demo, I’m going to create a new project with a new virtual environment, and we’ll do a quick demo starting from a screen that looks something like this
Blue’s a Miracle
By: Virginia Roces
Tags: Free Verse, Poetry, Self-awareness, Sadness, Emotions

Image by Free Nature Stock from StockSnap

Bereft,

But I claim what I own.

I raise my hand to

The work of gold:

A pittance of

Vast blue,

A reminder that I’ve won.

A sky-fallen diamond

In a picture frame…

An everlasting victory.

I, wide-eyed and

Erubescent

Against its shimmer.

I embrace the blue—

Its color risen

At cockcrow,

And down with

Twilight.

The color greets me;

And I greet the remnants

of the day.

It lingers, and it shines;

And it is a dream;

And it is my dream.

—And no word can

Take from me the

Precious embellishment

That belongs in the

Expression of my face,

The photographs I take,

The spartan life I choose to lead.

Blue’s a miracle

Misbegotten only by

The greatest of us.

In sorrow, we cry tears

That meld with the ocean

And submerge with

the rest of the world.
How to Calculate Central Tendency and Asymmetry measures in Statistics and Python
By: Arpita Ghosh
Tags: Statistics, Central Tendency, Python, Data Science, Machine Learning

How to Calculate Central Tendency and Asymmetry measures in Statistics and Python Arpita Ghosh Follow Dec 21 · 3 min read

Image by Author

In this blog, I am going to talk about Central Tendency, asymmetry and variability with hands on using Python. If you miss my previous blog about Descriptive Statistics with Python, please go to the below link.https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/descriptive-statistics-with-python-part-1-9f34e48abc05

What is Central Tendency? : In statistics, a central tendency is a central or typical value for a probability distribution.

Purpose of Central Tendency: It is a single value which is the representative of an entire distributed data. There are three main measures in central tendency, mean, median and mode.

Now we are going to in detail to know about these measures.

Mean: Mean is mostly used for measuring central tendency. It is a simple average of whole data set. Formula of calculating mean of a data set is

(𝑥1 + 𝑥2 + 𝑥3 + ⋯ + 𝑥𝑁−1 + 𝑥𝑁 ) /N

Where 𝑥1, 𝑥2 , 𝑥3 , ⋯ ,𝑥𝑁−1 , 𝑥𝑁 => r Data values , N = Total number of sample data.

Image by Author

For population data, it is denoted as μ and for sample data x bar (symbol shown in above image)

Note: Mean is easily affected by outliers.

Mean Example: Find out Mean explanation with some example.

Median: The median is the midpoint of the ordered dataset. . It is not affected by outliers. In an ordered dataset, the median is the number at position (n+1)/2. Here n is number of observations. If this position is not a whole number, then the median is the simple average of the two numbers at positions closest to the calculated value.

Median Example: If we consider the above data set, let’s find out median.

Mode: In a data set, the mode is the value which occurs most often. A dataset can have 0 modes, 1 mode or multiple modes. Normally, the mode is calculated by finding the value with the highest frequency.

Mode Example:

Python Coding for Central Tendency Measures

Now it is time for measuring asymmetry for a data set. For this context, we need to understand skewness of a data set.

Skewness: Skewness is a measure of asymmetry. It indicates the observations in a dataset are concentrated on which side.

Image by Author

The above graph has right (positive)skewness. It means that the outliers are to the right (long tail to the right). Left (negative) skewness means that the outliers are to the left.

Normally, using different software, skewness is calculated. Formula of skewness is

Image by Author

Python Coding for Skewness

Conclusion: In my next blog we will learn about variability with python coding.
Getting Started With Jupyter Notebooks
By: Jacob Latonis
Tags: Python, Programming, Technology, Information Technology, How To

Jupyter Notebooks Logo

Throughout some of my classes and work environments, I have found Jupyter notebooks to be particularly helpful in laying out my code and ideas in Python. I figured writing an article on how to get setup might bring new techniques and ideas into the world for someone, so here it is! Jupyter notebooks are easy and fun to use, and they look pretty nice as well. Setup is easy and quick, but honing your setup to have specific qualities makes up most of the time after the initial installation.

Jupyter Notebook and its flexible interface extends the notebook beyond code to visualization, multimedia, collaboration, and more. In addition to running your code, it stores code and output, together with markdown notes, in an editable document called a notebook. When you save it, this is sent from your browser to the notebook server, which saves it on disk as a JSON file with a .ipynb extension.

This article will be broken down into just a few short sections.

Installation

Setup

Use

Let’s just jump right in!

Installation

First thing is first, we need to download and install Jupyter to run our notebooks for our personal use.

To begin, you more than likely have pip installed, and that is what we will use to install Jupyter.

First, let’s upgrade pip to get the latest dependencies/plugins.

pip3 install --upgrade pip

Upgrading pip

Next, we will install Jupyter in a similar way.

pip3 install jupyter

Jupyter pip install

Setup

Once finished with the pip install, we can start the Jupyter server for our use.

jupyter notebook

command prompt for Jupyter

As shown above, Jupyter is ran locally on your host. We can then navigate to any of the URLs shown when you start the server.

Jupyter login verification

By default, my server started with the token code enabled so I had to copy my code from my command prompt where my server was started to access. Once entered and you click login, you are presented with a page like this:

Jupyter dashboard

Use

Now that we have it setup and installed, let’s use it! There’s numerous use cases for a tool like Jupyter Notebooks.

You can use it normally like you would any python script for a conventional python use.

You can also use pip to install things mid notebook as well if something you need is not installed.

pip install mid-notebook

You can even do fun stuff like plotting that is similar to MatLab or R, if that’s your thing.

These are just a few uses for your notebooks. You can also use them to take notes in class, save examples from tutorials, and much more. I use them day to day in my job too! I may update this page continually as I find more novel uses for the notebooks.

Thanks for reading!
Frigid Winter Air
By: Randy Shingler
Tags: Poetry, Winter, Change, Self-awareness, Spirituality

Briskly striding in midwinter’s cold

Observations of what it has wrought

Dead leaves scattered on the ground

Light snow remnants along the path

Icy splotches lining creekside banks.

Invigorated walking in morning frigid air

Spiritual presence felt within nature’s wake

Few other people venturing in morning cold

Alone in nature’s scenery with my thoughts

Sacred pleasures always warmly embraced.

Rushing creek water after snow and rain

Overflowing its native rocky shoals

Hearing it playing melodious sounds

Nature’s language spoken in this moment

As it crests close to old bridge’s height.

Fascinations in watching nature’s changes

In current season of frigid winter air

Knowing changes will continue evolving

Into spring season of nature’s new growths.
Feature Selection — Using Genetic Algorithm
By: Samiran Bera
Tags: Python, Logistic Regression, Genetic Algorithm, Feature Selection, Machine Learning

Let’s combine the power of Prescriptive and Predictive Analytics

Source: analyticsvidhya.com

All Machine Learning models use a large volume of data to train to predict the patterns in the future. It implies that the machine learning models are susceptible to the quality of data. Even with minute errors, the models may train to yield infeasible or inferior results. Thus, the quality of data used for training is the utmost concern of an organization.

In this direction, feature selection plays a crucial role. Different techniques are present such as forwards selection, backward elimination, stepwise selection, etc. to select a feature set. However, most of these approaches are performed manually and are computationally expensive and time-consuming. Therefore, in this article, the Genetic Algorithm is used to obtain an optimal feature within a reasonable amount of time.

The structure of this article is as follows.
Why You Should Binge-Watch Your Favorite Movies This Christmas
By: Felix Gussone
Tags: Film, Holidays, Life, Mental Health

If there’s one thing we’ve learned in 2020, it’s that human beings can forge connections on screens to temporarily replace real face-to-face human interaction. And I’m not just talking about daily Zoom calls with your colleagues. Spending time with fictional characters on television or in movies can mimic the benefits of seeing real-world friends or loved ones, reports science writer Markham Heid in Elemental — especially, if you’re rewatching your favorite shows or movies.

Medium’s Sam Zabell also explains why binge-watching her favorite Christmas movies brings comfort: human brains are conditioned to feel good when we watch our favorite, cheesy, sometimes trashy Christmas movies:

“A neutral stimulus (in this case, a holiday movie) is paired with an unconditioned stimulus (all of the good memories you associate with Christmas) and creates an emotional response (warm fuzzy feelings).”

When Sam published her piece in December of 2019, she didn’t know what 2020 would bring. But recognizing that you can comfort yourself by watching your favorite movies or shows this holiday season might be more important than ever. Happy Holidays!
Python’s Sorted and Sort. A short and sweet study
By: Annika Noren
Tags: Python, Data Science

Let’s take a look at how this works on real data. Here is the head of my coffee data frame:

First two partial rows of my coffee reviews data frame

From the data frame, I created a simple list of the ‘Coffee Country’ (the column ‘Coffee Country’ can not be seen in the data frame above, but it’s there to the far right) :

coffee_country_list = list(df[‘Coffee Country’])

The coffee_country_list looks partially like this (remember, it’s 2195 entries long!):

A partial list of ‘Coffee Country’ from the data frame

and in my Jupyter notebook I tried out sort and sorted:

sorted(coffee_country_list) coffee_country_list.sort()

The result is the same:

A partial list of results from using list.sort() and sorted()

However, even though the result is the same, there is actually a difference between the two sorts.

Upon applying the sorted() function on the coffee_country_list the list is unchanged. The function does not modify the list that is passed in and if I call coffee_country_list again the original is unchanged:

coffee_country_list unchanged with sorted()

The coffee_country_list that had .sort() applied, on the other hand, is changed permanently. The sort method changes the original list to create a new one:
These Are Not Love Poems
By: Jason Mcbride
Tags: Fiction, Love, Writing, Haiku, Poetry

Poet’s Note

Did you know we are in the middle of a poetry renaissance? Instagram and Twitter are filled with poets if you know where to look. Bookstores are displaying poetry collections in the front near the register instead of in the far back corner.

Our society is starting to remember that we first told stories worth remembering in poetry.

Love poems seem to always be the bulk of the verse humans produce. Just listen to any pop song, chances are it’s about love, or using sex as a substitute for love. The subversive side of me couldn’t resist writing some small stories about what happens when there is no love, or when love has gone. I call these haiku “not love poems.” Of course, almost all of my work could be called “not love poems.”

The truth is these ten haiku really are love poems. Love exists in the gaps between each of us. Too often we fail to close the gaps, and we let love flitter away.
Building a Pure CSS Animated Gradient Colour Button Is Easier Than You Think
By: Albert Walicki
Tags: Programming, CSS, HTML, UX, Design

Final Boss — Animated Gradient Button

In CSS, we can’t transition gradients. It would be awesome to see smooth animation with CSS like this:

But it won’t work. It immediately changes to the other one without transition. There are a few hacks to do it, but my favourite is to animate background-position .

Firstly, we need to add two properties to our button:

background-size : 200% auto

: 200% auto background-position : left center

Then on hover:

background-position : right center

In this case, I added a gradient starting with a white colour. It enhances the impression of an animated border.

HTML:

<a href="/" title="Hello button" class="btn">Hello</a>

CSS:

Standard and hover

And that’s it!

You can play with the final button on CodePen.
Stop Comparing Your Career Journey to Others
By: Jon Hawkins
Tags: Work, Advice, Careers, Life, Psychology

Peaking at Different Ages

Just as some of the greats achieved early on, others were late bloomers who gained notability later in life. Bryan Cranston was 44 when he starred in the career-defining Malcolm in the Middle. J.K. Rowling was 32 when, after multiple rejections, Harry Potter was finally published.

Some people spend years working to achieve what they do. Others get lucky and have access to the recourses and opportunities that help them shoot to success much quicker.

Regardless of how hard you work, there will always be factors outside your control that affect the result of your efforts. Maybe you’re close, but don’t quite have the natural abilities to be good enough. Or perhaps the right opportunity that will define your big break hasn’t come up yet.

There are very few things that we are naturally good enough to succeed at. We have to spend years practicing to get to where we want to be. And some people progress and learn at tasks faster than others. That might be why they achieve the desired results faster.

Just because someone achieved things quicker than you doesn’t mean you’re not on attract to reach your goals. It just means it’s not your time yet. Even when we are good enough, it takes just as long for that effort and ability to actually be recognized.

Maybe you need a bit more practice. Or maybe you are good enough, and just some luck in finding that big break. In either sense, you aren’t past your best, but you do need to work a little harder to prove yourself.

In the words of Julissa Loaiza (as quoted by Jay Shetty):

“… You’re not falling behind, It’s just not your time.”

Different Peaks

Success is a weird concept. It’s so subjective and can be found in almost anything. Because of that, you get to define what success means in your life. Maybe getting out of bed is a big deal. Or handing in that school assignment. Or singing in a stadium full of millions of people. We all have different circumstances and day-to-day challenges, and these set the parameters for what we consider a success.

No matter how big by comparison, other people's achievements cannot invalid yours. For they have different circumstances — for some affording food could be just as big a challenge as it was for Zuckerberg to design Facebook.

You could be aiming towards a completely different conception of success to others. In a similar vein, you could be moving towards the same conception, but be at an earlier stage of your journey.

Running an online publication with over 200,000 monthly readers is a success I often downplay. It’s not a revolutionary Social Media platform or a world-known pop song, but it is something I am immensely proud of.

Some people will be envious of my achievements, in the same way I am of my more successful peers. I’m not oblivious to that fact. But if you’re feeling envious of others' achievements, take a minute to acknowledge the heights you’ve already achieved. Achievements you once desired, which are admired by those on the same path who haven’t yet reached that checkpoint.
For Lucy, who loves my content
By: Alexandra Samuel
Tags: Email, Humor, Marketing Automation, Marketing, Email Marketing

Here’s an excerpt from the profoundly insightful blog post Lucy wanted me to link to.

A heartfelt email in response to your highly personalized robo-spam.

SUBJECT: Love your content! (and a proposal) Hi , I just wanted to follow up and see what you thought of linking to our site on your blog. Just double checking you received our previous email. Hi there, I was just browsing your website and as I was reading your site, I noticed you mentioned tech (http://www.alexandrasamuel.com/tag/changeevery), and so I thought you might also be interested in linking to a resource we put together on the ways technology is improving your health. Here is a link for your review: [link]

<snip> If you were willing to add our link to that page, I would be more than happy to share it to our tens of thousands of social followers to help you gain some more visibility in exchange. Lucy P.S. I understand some people don’t like to be reached out to, if so, just let me know :)

Lucy,

Thank you so much for taking the time to follow up on your recent unsolicited email. So often I find that an email that refers to my writing as “content” is a dead giveaway that I’m just dealing with some random robot at a random content farm.

But your automated follow-up email let me know that I’m dealing with someone who is prepared to go the extra mile by automating a follow-up message. And your astute observation that I have written a blog post about tech — well, that’s the kind of careful review of my website that makes me feel like I’ve really connected with someone special.

Since you went to such effort I feel like the least I can do is tell you why I’m declining to link to the “content” you sent me, and which you so helpfully described for me as “link”. I couldn’t help noticing that “link” took me to a pretty spammy-looking URL before it redirects to a webpage of actual content™; gosh, that sure did leave me mighty curious about what you would direct my readers to after I linked to you: Porn? Offshore sports betting? Alt-right news sites?

And then there was the content itself: gosh, it was a joy to behold. Your ambition in sourcing an article making the extraordinary assertion that technology can be useful for some things: well, it’s not every day I come across such insight. I was particularly impressed with the way your piece touched on so many almost-points without ever actually saying something. Not everyone can pull that off.

So I guess you are right, Lucy: I guess you have to count me as one of those people who don’t like to be reached out to. Or maybe I am one of those people who only like to be reached out to by actual humans rather than content-farming robo-spammers.

Alexandra
Korean startups are jumping on the bandwagon
Tags: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Overnodes, Startup, Cryptocurrency

You know it’s serious when the camera crew is here

Many startups and already existing corporations are finding ways to tap into blockchain technology. More and more companies are showing interest as the word is going around that South Korea regulators are considering reversal of ICO ban.

On March 22nd, Gyoung-Pil Nam, the governor of Gyeonggi province, has hosted a meeting bringing blockchain experts, pioneers, and evangelists together.

CUBE INT, MYcreditChain, UUNIO, Medibloc, and Overnodes

A lot of successful people have come to share their ideas on what they’re trying to accomplish. Medibloc has successfully concluded its ICO, having sold $30 M worth of their tokens. It is a decentralized healthcare information ecosystem that is built on blockchain.

UUNIO was working on an interesting project as well. They’re building a platform that supports community with reward system based on blockchain technology. Although it sounded similar to what Steemit is doing, UNNIO’s approach was little different from that of Steemit. “The STEEMIT community turned into a place where only the fittest survived and profit was determined by Steem Power rather than the quality of contents,” said the CEO of UUNIO.

Personally, I’m not a Steemian and not aware of its problem but considering the recent Facebook’s data privacy scandal, the blockchain version of social networking services definitely seems to be necessary.

Korea is known to be the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency market in terms of trading. There were only few who tried to incorporate blockchain technology into their business, mainly because of the regulations. However, more and more people are now showing interest and some are even quitting their jobs to jump on the bandwagon. There’s also an increasing number of Blockchain accelerators and Crypto VCs. Future seems bright despite all the FUD.
How to Make a Festive Vegan Meringue Wreath
By: Laura Vincent
Tags: Vegan, Recipe, Christmas, Dessert, Food

Okay, let’s talk strategy — this meringue wreath is much, much easier than it looks, but it requires some organisation and careful attention to the instructions — I definitely recommend reading through the whole recipe first before starting it. The ideal process is as follows: On the morning of the day before you intend to eat the meringue wreath, chill the aquafaba and coconut cream. Later that evening, make the meringue, and while it cooks, make and chill the topping. I also recommend using this time to extract the pomegranate seeds, which you can store in a sealed container in the fridge till required. The cooled meringue can be simply kept in the oven until needed, but if you’re understandably going to be using it for other things, it can be carefully transferred to a sealed container and kept in the fridge. The next day, just before serving, transfer the meringue wreath to a plate, and cover with the prepared toppings.

I love a little Christmas Eve late-night baking, but you could make this two days ahead — keeping the cooked meringue and the topping in sealed containers in the fridge. Either way, it still needs to be decorated right before serving. With everything prepared, this should a swift and serene undertaking. Feel free to change the decorations to suit your needs, but the sour crunch of pomegranates and gentle zing of the raspberries is perfect against the creamy sweetness below, and the pistachios look gorgeous against all that red. Strawberries, cherries, or redcurrants would all be equally visually effective. If you can’t find pomegranates, just use more berries —and I am yet to find pre-packaged pomegranate seeds which taste any good but if you can find some, feel free to use those instead of fresh. If you can only get hold of frozen fruit, allow it to thaw first in a sieve over a bowl, otherwise their liquid will dissolve the meringue.

The important thing to know is, you can definitely achieve this, and however it turns out, it will be delicious. I made my meringue wreath on the most humid day of the year, with the air as thick as a kale smoothie, and it still turned out perfectly. The wreath broke a little at the seams as I transferred it to the plate, and yours might too, but you cannot tell once it’s pushed back together and covered in the toppings. And I accidentally crushed one of the meringues as I spread over the coconut cream, but again — it does not matter, and everyone will love it.

Vegan Meringue Wreath

Serves 10 (or one ;))

3/4 cup aquafaba from a 15oz can low-sodium chickpeas, chilled

1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

1 cup sugar

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

To decorate:

1 x 15oz can full-fat coconut cream, chilled for at least four hours (check the ingredients — there should be at least 70% coconut extract. Thickeners are fine.)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

pinch salt

1 pomegranate

1 cup fresh raspberries

1/4 cup shelled pistachios, roughly chopped

4 x mint sprigs, or as many as you prefer
How to Clean your Mind from Negative Thoughts and Embrace your Positive Thinking
By: Desiree Peralta
Tags: Mental Health, Personal Development, Self Improvement, Advice, Inspiration

Our mind doesn’t stop. Human beings think at the rate of 350 to 700 words per minute, but when we speak or listen we do so only at 150. What does that mean? That the largest number of words are the ones we say to ourselves.

We have thousands of thoughts a day. Sometimes we are aware of them, sometimes they are like background noise. Sometimes we think about things that happened, sometimes about things that are happening to us now, sometimes about things that are yet to come.

What happens in our mind has a lot of weight in our state of mind. That is why it is so important to clear our minds of negative thoughts. Thoughts and emotions are closely related.

Emotion is not a thought, but through our thinking, we can manage it and moderate its intensity, as well as choose the state of mind in which we will find ourselves later.

If we are always thinking, it is logical that during the day we feel many emotions. The problem comes when we are overwhelmed by a torrent of bad thoughts.

Only by being aware of our negative thoughts can we take steps to deactivate them. Here are the most common negative thoughts and an antidote to neutralize them.
Look forward to this.
By: Arindam Basu
Tags: Hardbound, Storytelling

Look forward to this. Looks to me this is the next gen of social media – a frictionless sharing of momentariness, that is at once not contrived or carefully curated yet well considered. This is where the “phone” as my natural extension of the hand, mouth, mind, ear, eye will play its role in creating stories. Stories that are spontaneous, true, transparent, momentary yet a memory.

Looks like Hardbound has figured _that_ space well. Can’t wait to see.
Twelve Terrific Stories From Writers Worth Your Time
By: Tracy Luk
Tags: Inspiration, Writing, Aoe Prompt, Reading, Engaged Writers

I got to know Aimée from devouring her posts and realizing they resonate. Deeply. Editor of Age of Empathy, I love her intuitive approach to writing. A piece she has shared with us is one of her many strong suits — fiction.

Melissa brings positivity and cheer through her pieces and that’s what makes you gravitate toward her. She shares other writers’ works in her Engaged Writers series, and I would love to pay it forward.

I admire his drive and discipline when it comes to writing. What’s charming about him is that he’s hilarious but is oblivious to it. He writes many inspirational posts, but here he has shared one humor piece you need to read for a good laugh.

Ryan is a sweetheart. And a machine. I think he is one of the youngest writers on Medium but the most prolific. I don’t know how he does it, but he consistently writes quality content daily on every topic under the sun. One area he does well with is true crime.

I linger on the words she writes because they’re beautiful. If you are easily moved to tears, get tissues ready for this story about losing her brother. Real, raw, and honest. This is the kind of stuff I love to read.

I had the pleasure of working with Roz once. She is self-proclaimed “worth every penny,” and I can attest to that. A writing coach with many years under her belt, I have learned and continue to learn much from her. She makes Medium fun, as you can tell from her voice. She also loves the word “wombat.”

Susan is the type of person who wants everyone to grow and succeed. Strong, supportive, and caring; she helped me early on with words of encouragement. I know she can help you, too, with her wisdom!

From fiction to poetry, a writer of her caliber can light your screen on fire. I love her work and recently purchased her book Quintessence, waiting for it to brighten my mailbox. This piece about coming out will tug on your heartstrings.
I Have Been a Digital Nomad for Over Ten Years — Here’s How to Adapt to Remote’s Work “New Normal”
By: Javier Ortega-Araiza
Tags: Consciousness, Remote Work, Entrepreneurship, Self Improvement, Digital Nomads

I Have Been a Digital Nomad for Over Ten Years — Here’s How to Adapt to Remote’s Work “New Normal”

The new way of working presents us with numerous magnificent opportunities to live more consciously

A regular “work-from-anywhere” office setting at my current location. (Photo: Javier Ortega-Araiza)

Back in March, as panic wreaked havoc and we all struggled to understand what the new normal might mean, and where it might go, and how our lifestyles would be affected — in some cases, temporarily; in others, forever — we all came to grips with the acceptance that this was a new world — that how we used to live, and conduct business, had come to a radical turning point — and that the best we could do was to either adapt or perish.

For some of us, the main changes came from our businesses being in industries that were directly hit or brought to a halt — hence now we needed to scramble to find alternate ways to make ends meet.

For others, who were able to keep their steady jobs, the disruption came from now having to work from home — performing the same activities, but in a different setting.

Besides, we had to consider the impact of these disruptions depending on our living situation — if we were with families, partners, or living by ourselves. Each particular case required a different adaptation strategy.

There are plenty of articles that talk about whether this shift is good or bad, and that dissect all the pros — positive environmental impact, the ability to spend more quality time with loved ones, people relocating from crowded cities— and the cons — the loss of some sort of serendipity, the irreparable damage to the office worker-dependent economy — and how it might affect creative hubs such as Silicon Valley. All of them are available a Google — or a Medium — search away.

This piece is more about how we can adapt, regardless of our situation, and about how we can have a more effective transition to a way of working that, in my opinion, is here to stay.
Comparing Ourselves to Others
By: Roberto Johnson
Tags: Sports, Personal Growth, Baseball, Writing, Self Improvement

Abbie Parr (2019) | Getty Images

Late Thursday, reports came out that the Los Angeles Dodgers acquired all-star outfielder Mookie Betts from the Boston Red Sox as a part of a three-team trade that also involved the Minnesota Twins. Up until last night, the two teams rumored to be in heavy pursuit of Betts were the Dodgers and the San Diego Padres.

When the deal was announced, my social media feeds were flooded by disappointed Padres fans, bummed out at the tease of getting a premium player of Betts’ caliber and even more angry at the fact that he landed with the bitter rival Dodgers, who have been utterly dominant over the last decade while my Friars have scuffled near the bottom of the division each year. In many respects, my feelings align with those of all the pissed off fans who thought San Diego would come out of this deal on top.

“Of course we didn’t get Mookie Betts — we’re the Padres! But why the Dodgers?! Come on!”

In this circumstance, it’s easy to be upset about the trade, especially considering how close the beginning of the season is. From a fan perspective, that is okay. As fans, we opt for the dramatic and tend to wear our feelings on our sleeve. We are not the ones putting on a uniform and competing every night. From the perspective of the team, giving up on the year because of a trade that didn’t go your way would be pretty concerning.

This particular situation for the Padres brings to mind a simple life reminder: we have nothing to gain by comparing ourselves to others.

Image from @MiserableSDFan on Twitter

In 2019, the Padres finished with a record of 72–90, exactly 36 games behind the Dodgers, who finished a whopping 106–56. In 2018, they finished 25 1/2 games behind them. In 2017, 33 games.

The gap between the two teams is much greater than the sum of what one player, even Mookie Betts, could provide. Would Betts have made the Padres significantly better in 2020? Absolutely. Seeing him, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado at the top of the batting order would have been beyond exciting. Would adding Betts have helped the Padres win the division and dethrone the rival Dodgers? Highly unlikely.

Comparing ourselves to our peers is a taxing, tiresome and demoralizing way of thinking. Spending too much time dwelling on what we can’t do because of what we don’t have, as opposed to thinking of what we can do with what we do have, doesn’t help us get any closer to achieving our goals and improving our lives.

For Padres fans, the sting of losing out on Mookie Betts to the Dodgers will probably linger for a while. We will gripe and complain throughout spring training, and depending on how April and May go, maybe even through the first chunk of the season. For the actual players on the team, worrying about Betts and the Dodgers will bring no benefit to their performance on the field. All they can worry about is their season and how they can best prepare to win games for themselves.
Byte Limes #1: Custom Iterables in JavaScript, Truly Reactive Forms, Auto Prefix Jira Issues to Git commit…
By: Nivrith Gomatam
Tags: Software Engineering, Programming, Software Development, Web Development, JavaScript

Byte Limes #1: Custom Iterables in JavaScript, Truly Reactive Forms, Auto Prefix Jira Issues to Git commit… Nivrith Gomatam Follow Nov 21 · 2 min read

Hi friend, hope you’re well!

Here are some articles that I think would be worth your time:

Photo by Reid Zura on Unsplash

Wouldn’t it be great if we could use the for…of loop to iterate over our own data structures? In this article, we will learn how to do this…

Read more
Reflections
By: Heather Ann
Tags: Short Story, Fiction, Poetry On Medium, Writing, Poetry

I’m doing my weekly roundup again! All my posts for the previous week together for anyone who’s interested.

Here’s last week’s featuring poetry, and a short story.

I appreciate all the kind feedback on these posts and I hope that if it’s your first time reading them that you’ll enjoy them too.
7 Tips to Go From Beginner to Advanced in Vue.js
By: Aris Pattakos
Tags: Programming, Software Development, JavaScript, Vue, Vuejs

1. Fully Understand Reactivity

How reactivity works

Reactivity is a simple concept in front-end development libraries and frameworks. Understanding how it works at a deep level, though, can be hard. But it is well worth your time.

Here’s a small example:

<h1>{{ name }}</h1>

When the value of name changes, the UI will be updated accordingly. This is a very basic way to explain reactivity, but there are many more advanced examples to help you understand how it works.

Where reactivity goes wrong

Things can go wrong if you’re accessing a property within an object, as explained in this example:

In the example above, we define myObject as an empty object in the data method. Later, we give myObject.message a value.

This results in {{ myObject.message }} never displaying anything even though it receives a value at some point. Why is that?

That is basically because Vue does not know of the existence of the myObject.message property and therefore cannot react to changes in its value.

How do I fix this?

There are a couple of ways to make sure that Vue reacts to changes in the myObject.message property. The most simple is to initialize it with an empty or null value:

myObject: {

message: ''

}

If myObject.message exists in the data method, then Vue will listen and react to changes in its value and update the UI accordingly.

Another way to make sure the UI is updated is to update the full myObject object this way:

this.myObject = {message: 'Hello'}

Since Vue listens and reacts to changes in myObject , it will pick up this change and update the UI accordingly.

In short, Vue doesn’t listen to property changes in an object unless it knows these properties. Properties need to be defined in the data method or you need to update the whole object instead of the properties to make sure Vue tracks changes.

Learn more about reactivity by reading the “Reactivity in depth” section of the official documentation.

By understanding reactivity well, you can:
An MVC Approach to Flutter
By: Greg Perry
Tags: Programming, Flutter, Android App Development, Mobile App Development, iOS App Development

An in-depth look at an MVC Project Template Sample App

This is a follow-up to the free article, Your Next Flutter Project, where I introduced a ‘Project Template’ you can use for your next Flutter project. It contains the foundation, the files, and the directories, that make up a Flutter app based on the MVC design pattern represented by the library package, mvc_application. You’re to take it and fill it up with your code for your next Flutter app. I hope to someday make such a template a ‘New Project’ option in IntelliJ and Android Studio, but that’s another story.

In this article, I wish to further demonstrate the suggested implementation using the Contacts sample app currently incorporated in one of the project templates. Download this zip file and start it up. You’ll be greeted with the Contacts app. It’s suggested you use your IDE’s debugger and ‘walk through the code’ to get a better understanding of how the MVC framework works and, what’s more, how the Flutter framework itself works.

I Like Screenshots. Click For Gists.

As always, I prefer using screenshots over gists to show concepts rather than just show code in my articles. I find them easier to work with, and easier to read. However, you can click/tap on them to see the code in a gist or in Github. Ironically, it’s better to read this article about mobile development on your computer than on your phone. Besides, we program on our computers; not on our phones. For now.

No Moving Pictures, No Social Media

There will be gif files in this article demonstrating aspects of the topic at hand. However, it’s said viewing such gif files is not possible when reading this article on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, etc. They may come out as static pictures or simply blank placeholder boxes. Please, be aware of this and maybe read this article on medium.com

Let’s begin.

Let’s Add Contacts

When you begin using this sample app, you’ll no doubt start entering Contacts. Let’s look ‘under the hood’ to see what happens when, after you’ve typed up a particular Contact, you then press the Save button. Now in the MVC design pattern, the View aspect here, in this case, is the build() function found in the _AddContactState object listed below on the left-hand side.

At a glance, you can see the ‘Save’ event is handled, and rightly so, by a Controller object called, con. The Navigator is then called to pop back to the previous screen. On the right-hand side is a screenshot of that onPressed() function. We see the function performs some validation routines before calling its own ‘add’ routine. After that, it calls its refresh() function. A lot is going on here. Further note, the name of the function mimics the API used by Flutter itself. In other words, the function is named after the named parameter, onPressed. We’ll talk more about that soon.
Hacking Productivity — We tried a company-wide “Secure Cockpit”
By: Ivana Markovic
Tags: Productivity, Technology And Design, Focus, Open Office

I’m passionate about talent management and culture. My objective is to make Osedea the best workplace for our team.

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When Content Dies, All We’ll Have is Our Personal Narratives
By: Jonathan Greene
Tags: Culture, Writing, Content Marketing, Blogging, Social Media

When Content Dies, All We’ll Have is Our Personal Narratives

On the Hellscape of Duplicitous Storylines

Photo by Edu Lauton on Unsplash

You hear it all the time, content is king. But is it? Or is that just another pile of vomitous clickbait being sprayed all over an audience of Gallagher fans who are excited, but also mildly perturbed that they sat in the front row? Are we all sitting in the front row of this content stream just sipping it like Country Time Lemonade on a warm summer day?

Content is perceived to be everlasting, but the truth is — it’s not. Content is finite. Stories are everlasting. And when content dies, all we’ll have is our personal narratives. The real question is, as a writer, will you have any yarn to spin when content passes away? Or will your mind have deadened to the point of abject failure by the insane need to be seen and heard by using headline analyzers to determine how strong your words are?

Almost everything we read that isn’t a personal narrative, current affairs op-ed, or fiction, we’ve read before. Almost every story on Medium that is formatted listimatically has been written before. Over and over into the void of our hopeful eyes, hoping to get that one lifehack that takes us from zero to hero, without doing any actual work.

Does it ever bother you? This hellscape of duplicitous storylines. The neverending feed of all things you have read before, but with a new twist. And that twist being a reference from another author. Our words are eating each other and spitting them back out into a properly formatted listicle or long-form think piece on someone else’s long-form think piece. We are literary cannibals.
Lambda, Map, and Filter in Python
By: Rupesh Mishra
Tags: Functional Programming, Python, Python Programming, Python3

Lambda

A lambda operator or lambda function is used for creating small, one-time, anonymous function objects in Python.

Basic Syntax

lambda arguments : expression

A lambda operator can have any number of arguments but can have only one expression. It cannot contain any statements and returns a function object which can be assigned to any variable.

Example

Let’s look at a function in Python:

The above function’s name is add , it expects two arguments x and y and returns their sum.

Let’s see how we can convert the above function into a lambda function:

In lambda x, y: x + y; x and y are arguments to the function and x + y is the expression that gets executed and its values are returned as output.

lambda x, y: x + y returns a function object which can be assigned to any variable, in this case, the function object is assigned to the add variable.

If we check the type of add , it is a function .
Why Being a Public School Teacher is the Greatest Job
By: Daniella Mini
Tags: Disability, Teaching, Remote Work, Coronavirus, Education

Why Being a Public School Teacher is the Greatest Job

Especially during this time of COVID-19 and remote work

Photo by Ben Mullins on Unsplash

I’ve always loved my job. Of course, many are the days that I’d prefer to stay home, go have lunch with friends and skip work. But, overall, I find teaching rewarding, challenging and fun.

I’m an early childhood special education teacher at a public school in Connecticut. I teach a preschool class that includes students with moderate to significant disabilities along with non-disabled students. I’ve been doing this for the past 15 years.

These past three weeks, I’ve felt more grateful than ever to have a job, this job specifically.

Here are three reasons why:

Job security

Thousands of people have lost their jobs or income due to the pandemic. Hundreds more will follow. Many more still feel enormously anxious because they can’t be sure they’ll still have a job when this is over -even if, ultimately, they don’t end up unemployed.

I have a secure job. Unless I fail miserably at it, I won’t be laid off. There aren’t that many qualified and credentialed folks looking for jobs as early childhood special ed teachers. I know. My school district hired one last summer and I participated in the interviews.

My paycheck is a certainty, if there ever was one. I can count on a specific amount being deposited twice monthly. Of utmost importance, I’m able to pay for good health insurance for my family through my job.

The best friendships

During normal times, we’re a good group.

During this crazy time, we’ve become “the best team,” as my colleague Violet says. The support, kindness and friendships are invaluable.

The students and families

Leaving the most rewarding part for last: the humans I serve. They take up a space of my heart every year and stay there forever.

In real life, the kids provide instant gratification multiple times a day: when a child learns, smiles, says something funny, calls you “mom”, takes your hand, opens her eyes in wild amazement, pees in the potty for the first time ever — just to name a few examples.

Even remotely, the rewards of the job are apparent every day: a parent’s email telling you her child cried when the video chat ended (because he was so excited to see you); a video showing Johnny standing in front of a screen following your rendition of Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes; or, my favorite, a video of a child reading a self-made story with his own drawings of birds (the theme we’ve been focusing on).