fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Twelve Trees
By: M. H. Rubin
Tags: Photography, Nature, Trees, Beauty, Black And White

Muir Woods (Rubin, 2015)

Twelve Trees

They’re harder to shoot than I realized.

When I was 15 years old, a tornado ripped through my hometown of Gainesville, Florida. It just missed our house but still dropped some 100 foot pine trees on us. The largest tree ripped apart the house at a point right where I had been standing a moment earlier. As soon as I got my bearings I picked up my camera and walked into our yard, still in the rain, and began to take photos. As well as galvanizing my new photographic interests, it kicked off a love/hate relationship with living in the woods.

Like cracks, it’s hard to articulate just what makes a great tree. I like the fractal shapes; their parallels to other organic structures at different scales; their role as a transmission agent for moving elements between the air and Earth. But mostly I am enthused by their varied beautiful shapes and relationship to light.

Jerry’s yard, Gainesville (Rubin, 2018)

Garden of Eden, Santa Cruz (Rubin, 2020)

San Francisco (Rubin, 2020)

Gainesville (Rubin, 2016)

Central Valley (Rubin, 2015)

Driftwood (Rubin, 2019)

Farm net, Central Valley (Rubin, 2015)

Tree climbing, Turin (Rubin, 2015)

Healdsburg (Rubin, 2015)

National Street (Rubin, 2014)
To Stop Being Afraid of Change, Try Avoiding It
By: Auriane Alix
Tags: Life Lessons, Self, Self Improvement, Routine, Life

To Stop Being Afraid of Change, Try Avoiding It

Let it rest for a few weeks… It’s ready!

We’re all afraid of change at some point. Change is scary. Change takes us out of our comfort zone that we’ve had such a hard time building.

Over the past few months, without even realizing it, I have slowly but steadily removed from my life everything that made me uncomfortable. For instance, the kind of work I don’t like, harmful people, but also the habit of going out of my comfort zone, inviting people over or going into the unknown. While some of these can be good for me, such as removing harmful people from my life, others were a tool for self-discovery and new opportunities.

We can say what we want, we LOVE routine. It’s peaceful. Just follow the path, and nothing disturbs you.

Routine can be a great way to get out of your comfort zone. It provides enough comforting elements to allow you to put new ones in place in your day. That way, you’re half in the same old, half in the new. But that’s not the point.

If you’re afraid of change, start avoiding it. Avoid anything that makes you uncomfortable. This is allowed now. Stay in your routine, and enjoy its comfort. Implement this for a few weeks. And see what happens.

I did. And here’s what happened to me.
This Is Your Ten
By: Cat Hollyer
Tags: Poetry On Medium, Daughters, Growing Up, Poetry, Parenting

This Is Your Ten

A Poem

Photo by Cat Hollyer

This is your ten:

limbs like weeds,

all nerve-endings,

eyes that calibrate

which shades of peach

and purple-grey

are contained in

a Kansas sunset,

a heart that feels

every tremor

in mood or word,

love whistling out

like a favorite tune

in a cathedral.

Someday you’ll be

loosed on an

unsuspecting world

ill-prepared for

your heart and art,

while I remain

nose firmly pressed

into your hair.
Week 4: My Keto Story
By: Mary Lucus-Flannery
Tags: Health, Keto, Ketosis, Ketogenic, Weight Loss

Travel week. Because I am traveling, I cannot weigh myself with my normal scale. Therefore, no weigh in.

I have been HUNGRY! The increased hunger started the day before I left home, so it is not just because I am”on the road”. I am however eating at different times and not all the “safe” foods I normally eat. I realize that I may be more hungry due to my hormonal cycle. I have read that many women get more hungry at specific stages of their cycle, so that might be part of the picture.

I have been reading up on “carb refeeds” in which ketogenic dieters will drop their fat intake and add healthy carbs for an evening periodically. This seems to be especially beneficial to women who have metabolic and or thyroid issues going on. I’ll post about the science of refeeds once I’ve read and explored a few more sources.

I’ll admit, I am a little worried that I might plateau or slow my progress because of the hunger/change in satiety. BUT since I can’t weigh in, I have no choice but to carry on. Which is probably good.

I’ll be travelling until next Sunday, when I will weigh in, take updated photos and let you know what five weeks of keto looks like.
Las consecuencias del avance de la robótica
By: Gabriela Nova
Tags: Robots, Marketing Digital, Robotics, Español, Tecnología

in Both Sides of the Table
How safe are Swift structs?
By: Caio Zullo
Tags: Mastery, Software Development, iOS App Development, iOS, Swift

Watch on YouTube

Do you think Swift structs are safe? This video may change your mind.

“Structs should be the default choice” and “Only use classes when necessary” is common advice but might be misleading. We’d like to show you a different way of looking at the “Structs vs. Classes” debate.

Subscribe now to our Youtube channel and catch free new episodes every week.
Voter Coercion in Context
By: Jeffrey Stern
Tags: Politics, Govtech, Blockchain, Civictech, Democracy

Coercion in Context

The risk of voter coercion (voter interference, bribery, vote selling) exists when a voter can demonstrate how they have voted in a given election. It’s a difficult risk to mitigate because robust election systems have to reconcile privacy and security requirements that both guarantee the correctness of election results and the inability of voters to prove how they have voted. All voting media are susceptible to voter coercion. Mobile voting is no different in this regard.

However, before delving deeper into a discussion on the implications of secure mobile voting on voter coercion, it’s important to understand the societal measures that lead to voter interference. Ignoring these contextual dimensions allows for baseless arguments that blockchain mobile voting affords more opportunities for voter interference than traditional medium like paper voting, polling place voting, and postal voting.

This is because digitally enabled voting has historically been treated with adversarial and unsympathetic skepticism and consequently held to a higher theoretical standard than other media of voting:

‘people expect much more from electronic voting schemes than from paper based systems …’ (1). ‘Internet based voting does not introduce these problems [vote buying and coercion], but it does have the potential to exacerbate them by extending the reach and data collection abilities of an attacker’ (2). ‘voter coercion and vote buying … are highly scalable in an electronic environment’ (3,4,5,6).

However, empirically, it’s been shown that “available opportunities for voter interference vary primarily not with technological safeguards, but with cultural, political, and economic conditions that govern interactions between people within a particular society” meaning it’s less a factor of the how citizens vote and more a factor of encompassing mores of a given society. (7). The very same is true for the relationship between the secret ballot and voter interference; to say that this one instrument is responsible for the elimination of voter coercion at scale is to ignore a variety of encompassing procedural and societal factors that also reduced the opportunity for such interference.

A country’s strength and independence of electoral administration, general level of corruption, egalitarian versus hierarchical society, and state of civil society are all more indicative of the extent of voter interference than the medium through which electors vote. (8). When every medium of voting is stripped of this social context, the media are similarly prone to voter interference and the opportunities for coercion and bribery are similarly severe. Voter interference in the context of digital / remote / blockchain / mobile / e-voting is nuanced and a real concern, but should be practically considered to address the successful ways that coercion can be resisted.
El Roadshow continua (parte 2)
By: Inbest Network
Tags: Roadtrip, ICO, Bitcoin, Criptomonedas, Cryptocurrency

in Both Sides of the Table
I’m Just an Old Woman in the Forest Seeking a Good Person
By: Kyrie Gray
Tags: Books, Humor, Fairy Tale, Fiction, Satire

Image licensed from Depositphotos

I’m Just an Old Woman in the Forest Seeking a Good Person

I’m definitely not an enchantress

Hello dear, I’m sorry to bother you with my haggard appearance.

Lovely day to be wandering about the woods. Perhaps you are here to seek comfort after a cruel step-mother related beating? Or maybe your real mother is still alive and your goodie bag there contains splendid victuals within. Enough perhaps to share with an old woman in need?

I like a good brisk walk too, allow me to accompany you. Oh, we are going fast, aren’t we?

Of course, I’m a normal old woman! I’m just out here in these dark woods by my lonesome, hoping I’ll come upon a soul that needs testing.

Did I say testing? I meant a listening ear. My ears are quite good despite my obvious old mortal age. My ears are so good I can hear the sobbing that comes from the woodcutter’s house. Such a lovely home. Shame that his first wife died. At least she left behind a beautiful daughter to help care for him.

Not that she needed to, now that he’s remarried a woman with a pretty girl of her own. Though I’ve heard things with these non-magic ears. But they can’t be true! I couldn’t imagine anyone being so cruel that they’d torture a stepsister just for being beautiful.

Now, I wonder, looking at you, which of the girls you are? Rumor has it that the fairies in these woods aren’t too kind to those who aren’t good. How would I know who’s good? Well, in my experience good people won’t let an old woman go thirsty.

I’ve already told you I’m a regular old woman! See, I’m even coughing. That’s something mortals do. They’ll even cough up blood if they don’t share their daily bread. Or so I’ve been told.

People tend to have loose tongues when a poor old woman is nearby. Although their organs are looser still for failing to notice her…

Wait for me dear, I didn’t mean to scare you off. We certainly wouldn’t want that. Not until I ask you a teensy-weensy little favor. I’m parched and would love nothing more than a sip from your small water flask. What do you say?
Rediscovering skateboarding, and a part of my self
By: Mike Platania
Tags: Personal Development, Outdoors, Skateboarding, Nonfiction, Self-awareness

Treasure Island skatepark; Richmond, VA

There might not be a single piece of media that’s had more of an impact on me than Chris Cole’s part in Zero’s 2005 video, New Blood.

When it came out, I was 14 and skateboarding was how I got around, how I made friends, and what I wanted to spend every waking moment doing. For a while, I aspired to get sponsored and go pro. I didn’t come particularly close, nor did I even know what all pro skateboarding entailed but damnit, I wanted it.

Chasing that dream, if nothing else, proved a good excuse to hurl myself down the biggest stair sets I could find on a skateboard. There are worse ways to be a teenager.

When word got out that my friend Phillip got a copy of New Blood, we all descended onto his family’s living room, threw the DVD into his PS2 and sat back.

Chris Cole’s part in New Blood is a tour de force, a coming out party for the greatest street skateboarder ever . He also was, and still is, undeniably cool.

By the time the credits on New Blood rolled it was near midnight and we were all so fired up and dying to skate that we opened Phillip’s garage and hit a flat-bar in his driveway. With only some scant light from the garage, we could barely see our boards beneath our feet.

After seeing New Blood, I felt validated. My teenage angst manifested itself as wanting to be different from everyone around me that looked like me — straight, white guys in the suburbs. Skateboarding was a great start, but even parts of it had started to go mainstream. I wanted to stand out the way Chris Cole did: by being indomitably talented on a skateboard and effusing individualism.

Perhaps ironically, I strove to emulate him. Everything in my wardrobe had to be either black or some neon color. I bought every striped t-shirt or hoodie I could afford with my allowance. Chris Cole rolled on pink wheels, so I got some pink wheels.

Cole later said in interviews that he recalls wearing girl jeans for most of the filming of New Blood, something I and so many other former Myspace emo kids resorted to because guys’ skinny jeans had yet to hit the market. I kept wearing my skinny jeans to school, even in the face of bullying, because I thought they were cool, and so did Chris Cole, Garrett Hill and Corey Duffel.

Vintage Dominion Skateboards shirt, complete with Cole’s faded autograph.

When drugs and alcohol caught the eyes of those around me, I leaned into the straight-edge movement. My friends dove headfirst into classic rock; I found punk. When others started getting into punk, I grew obsessed with ska. I felt like I needed to show the world that even in the counterculture of skateboarding, I was still Not Quite Like The Others.
Naked Athena
By: Jennifer Cowie King
Tags: Portland, Protest, BlackLivesMatter, Poetry, Free Verse

Naked Athena

A poem about a Portland heroine

Photo credit: Dave Killen/The Oregonian

she walks forward naked, uninhibited, glorious,

an apparition clothed in black mask and skullcap

parting the crowd across a downtown Portland street

through rage and screams of night worn protest

emerging out of air choked with teargas and darkness

she stands before them naked, vulnerable, unafraid

her gaze unwavering, an unremitting avowal of freedom

facing a lineup of gas masks and weaponized agents in fatigues

a fellow protester bolts forward offering her protection by his shield,

she sidesteps, standing tall, an earth mother facing injustice

under cover of smoke, she dances barefoot on asphalt, graceful

and fluid, an exotic arabesque of witchy defiance

facing the impotent force in opposition she sits down, her legs spread open, powerful, daring, limbs artfully arranged in audacious defiance

they fire projectile pepper balls at her, popping around her feet

she remains undeterred, channeling a modern-day Lady Godiva

one woman, naked and free, lithe and passionate in her silent protest

has bested the worst of our American disintegration

the retreat of toxic, armed violators of freedom walk away powerless,

naked Athena rises like a phoenix and disappears into the crowd
Airbnb pledges to combat discrimination.
By: Logan Koepke
Tags: Racism, Airbnb, Marketplace

Airbnb plans to pursue new technological solutions to guard against future discrimination on the platform, said CEO Brian Chesky at a recent conference. The move comes after a series of incidents and revelations regarding apparent discrimination on the platform: a Harvard Business School study suggested that racial discrimination may be pervasive on Airbnb, the #AirbnbWhileBlack campaign surfaced personal experiences of discrimination, and the company was even sued in federal court for alleged violations of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

According to Chesky:

In the next months, we will be revisiting the design of our site from end to end to see how we can create a more inclusive platform. We’re open to ideas. It’s a really, really hard problem and we need help solving it. We want to move this forward. I myself have engaged with people who have been victims of discrimination on the platform. We take this seriously.

While we will have to wait and see what changes and potential technological solutions Airbnb rolls out to its platform, as USA Today reports, “Airbnb said a new program is in the works to recruit more underrepresented minorities in computer science and data science. It also tapped civil rights advocate Laura Murphy, the former head of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington D.C. Legislative Office, to help lead a ‘comprehensive’ review of how hosts who rent their homes on Airbnb pick guests.”

As Kristen V. Brown and Kashmir Hill write in Fusion, “[o]ne of the questions raised here is the extent to which Airbnb can eliminate racism on its platform. It can certainly take actions that make it harder for racism to surface.” True, there is no single fix. Nevertheless, Airbnb should still be praised for taking discrimination on its platform seriously and working to combat it.
Mesbah Sabur, the founder of Circularise, is recognized as GreenBiz “30 under 30” leader
Tags: Startup Life, Awards, Startup Lessons, Startup, Founders

June 22, 2020 — GreenBiz Group today named the founder of Circularise Mesbah Sabur as one of the 2020 “30 Under 30” based on a global search for emerging leaders across sectors who are shaping the next generation of sustainable business.

Circularise, founded by Mesbah Sabur and Jordi de Vos, helps plastic manufacturers, brands and OEMs to trace raw materials from source, into parts and ultimately to end products, and share data about them while retaining privacy over sensitive information.

The honorees were nominated by GreenBiz readers around the world and selected by the GreenBiz editorial team from among hundreds of submissions.

“We received a record number of nominations for our fifth class of honorees, which helped the GreenBiz editorial team select our most diverse list yet,” said GreenBiz Group Editorial Director Heather Clancy. “I’m awed and humbled by what these young professionals have already accomplished in their careers and excited about what I’m sure they will contribute in the months and years ahead, especially as the world grapples with solving the interconnected challenges of the climate crisis and economic inequity. Help us lead the way.”

“For the last four years, Circularise has been a journey with many ups and downs. Now we are gaining momentum not only among corporates but also other organisations that care about sustainability. Being recognised by Greenbiz and to make it into their 30 under 30 list is very exciting” says Mesbah Sabur.

Members of this year’s cohort work within companies — large, small and in-between — that are making strides in their corporate sustainability efforts, including Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Goldman Sachs, Amazon, Allbirds, Clara Foods and Circularise. Others are making their voices heard in the sustainability world from other perches, including government, social enterprises and advocacy groups including the City of Charlotte, WeBloom and the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance.

The 30 individuals being honored come from eight countries — from the United States to Taiwan to the Netherlands. They work for multinational corporations, innovative startups, social enterprises, nonprofit organizations and government agencies.

View the full “2020 GreenBiz 30 under 30” list here: https://www.greenbiz.com/article/2020-greenbiz-30-under-30
Darkman Haiku
By: John Devore
Tags: Film, Horror, 90s, Poetry, Superheroes

Photo: Universal Pictures

Darkman Haiku

A salute to Sam Raimi’s 1990 cult classic, written in the style of the traditional Japanese poetry form

My name is Darkman

I’m scarred inside and out!

Yeah, I’m depressed

I’m like Batman

Shadowy vigilante

Why are you laughing?

I don’t have any lips

Once, I looked like Liam Neeson

A fire ate my face

I fight crime at night

They call me “superhero”

No, really they do

I’m a scientist

Who can make synthetic skin

(An audible sigh)

I have super strength

I don’t feel physical pain

Emotional? Yes

I wear fedoras

Bandages cover a skull face

Grandmas point and scream

I love musicals:

Phantom of the Opera…

Actually, just that

My secret HQ:

A rat-infested warehouse,

real fixer-upper

I get really mad

Then I fight evil gangsters

And I feel better

Hello Punisher?

Nobody returns my calls

Rorschach are you there?
no. 3
By: Emily Drevets
Tags: Poetry, Psychology, Short Story

Camilla Engman, The Exquisite Book

Look at the picture. Write for 10 minutes. Post a response or keep it for yourself. Here’s what I wrote. Steal it if you want. More info on this project here.

It’s So Sad, Isn’t It

It’s so sad, isn’t it? When someone falls down. When they fall to the ground.

When they cannot get up. When they struggle and gasp. When they flail about and lash.

It’s sad to watch. It’s so sad to see.

Oh, makes my heart go sad, inside.

Like a frown that my veins are making, going all the way down.

Down, to my toes.

That’s where the frown goes.

It makes me sad, just to consider, just to think.

Falling down — what a bad thing.

Best to stay up, up on my feet!

Here I am, tall and strong. Nothing. Nothing can change me.

From the corner of my eye, I might see someone falling by.

Best to ignore.

Best to move on.

Best to —

Can’t be caught up with all that business.

You are who you surround yourself with.

So it’s not you anymore, looking out at others.

It’s you, looking out at you. Different bodies but they all have your face.

They are becoming you and you are becoming them.

I must move on past, to the successful place.

They said it was close to here, next to a fountain in the sun.

Next to the fountain in the sun — throw a coin in. Why not.

See it falling into the water.

Drip drop glitter, the sound of future money.

Ka-ting, ka-ting, ka-ting.

Well I might as well, step on in.

No use waiting for an invitation.

Sun will set soon.

Will have to get home, prepare a dinner, sit and eat it, wash the dishes, then go to bed.

Here we go, that’s one foot in.

There we go, now there’s the other.

And time to sit down, time to lay down.

Head underwater.

Eyes open.

The sound of future money.

Ka-ting, ka-ting, ka-ting.
Instagram Filter｜製作外框線. 在Instagram濾鏡中不時會看到十分文青或帥氣的外框線，看似複雜，其實使用S…
Tags: Instagram, 濾鏡, Ig濾鏡, Spark Ar, Instagram Filter

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Closure Only Comes Once
By: Rob Janicke
Tags: Death, The Bad Influence, 50 Words, Self, Closure

50 WORDS

Closure Only Comes Once

Thrifty Words Theme Challenge #18: Closure

Photo by Sigmund on Unsplash

If your cup has a drop of water left, or your bones the smallest amount of energy to move…

There is no closure.

If your eyes recognize the tiniest vision, or your brain recalls the faintest memory…

There is no closure.

If it’s closure you seek, satisfaction in death only.
How to use Kaggle API to download datasets in R
By: Luis Durazo
Tags: Kaggle Api, Rstudio, Data Science, Rlang, Kaggle

Kaggle has its own officially supported Python library to consume its API, this small tutorial is focused on doing a small portion of what that API can do in a very quick, very easy example for those who wish to automate dataset downloading in their own projects, specially those datasets that come bundled in a zip file, for datasets that have direct download please refer to the unofficial R API package.

TL;DR — Here's the code:

install.packages(c("devtools"))

devtools::install_github("ldurazo/kaggler") library(readr)

library(kaggler) kgl_auth(creds_file = 'kaggle.json')

response <- kgl_datasets_download_all(owner_dataset = "andrewmvd/violence-against-women-and-girls")

download.file(response[["url"]], "data/temp.zip", mode="wb")

unzip_result <- unzip("data/temp.zip", exdir = "data/", overwrite = TRUE)

violence_data <- read_csv("data/makeovermonday-2020w10/violence_data.csv")

Step by step guide:

Install devtools from CRAN:

install.packages(c("devtools"))

Then, with devtools install my fork of the unofficial R API library

devtools::install_github("ldurazo/kaggler")

The main difference between the original repository and my fork, is that I added a function that doesn't require you to specify the filename, so that if multiple files exist in the Kaggle resource you're trying to access, you get them all in a single zip file.

NOTE: I do not guarantee, and likely will not, maintain this fork in the future and as of today, I've requested to merge my fork into the main project, please see if this is supported in the original repository.

Next, we load the libraries and authenticate ourselves in the kaggle API

library(readr)

library(kaggler) kgl_auth(creds_file = 'kaggle.json')

The kaggle.json files can be generated following this instructions in the official kaggle docs. (tl;dr go to account > create API token) it consists on a very simple json file with the username and your API key. the Kaggler library will take care of the rest in terms of authentication.

Next, to retrieve all files within a single resource, use my kaggler's fork function:

response <- kgl_datasets_download_all(owner_dataset = "andrewmvd/violence-against-women-and-girls")

Which will return a response object that contains a URL to Google Cloud Storage that contains the zipfile, the following lines ensure the retrieval, and extraction of it

download.file(response[["url"]], "data/temp.zip", mode="wb") unzip_result <- unzip("data/temp.zip", exdir = "data/", overwrite = TRUE) violence_data <- read_csv("data/violence_data.csv")

You can also use a templink() based temp file if you prefer, I simply like quick access to the contents of the downloaded .zip, as they often contain data descriptors and other utility documents for the dataset you're downloading.

Thank you for reading.
ICO Alert Crypto Minute August 23, 2018
By: Zach Quezada
Tags: China, Fintech, Crypto Minute, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain

Crypto Community Watch launched, China Seeks to Block Access to Foreign Exchanges, Post-ICO Projects Burning Tokens; Investors pleased.

Consortium Launches Self-Policing Program

In an effort to increase self-policing within the cryptocurrency industry, Ecoinmerce, a DAO e-commerce platform, has partnered with ICO Alert, GZH, Step VC and NewEconomies. The consortium will create an anonymous tip line and reward whistleblowers with BTC. The Crypto Community Watch program is currently live and was first reported on by Bitcoinmagazine.com.

“The crypto scene revolves around collaboration, open source, transparency, etc. and this is an extension of that. We all complain about ‘FUD’ and warn each other about the dangers in the space (ex. don’t hold your funds on exchanges for a long time), but very little is actually being done about the dangers of scams, hacks, etc.” — Ecoinmerce COO Rex Chen

China Seeks to Block Access to Foreign Exchanges

Regulators in China are moving to block access to more than 100 overseas cryptocurrency exchanges. The regulation will essentially cutoff trading services to domestic Chinese investors. According to Coindesk, the China National Fintech Risk Rectification Office will look to block internet access to more than 120 trading platforms that contain overseas IP addresses.

Post-ICO Projects Burning Tokens; Investors pleased

Post-ICO crypto projects are burning (see:removing) tokens from their total token supply to fuel investor interest and increase token price. According to an article by Coindesk, the Switzerland-based company Eidoo announced recently that it will be burning 1 percent of the total supply of EDO, the platforms native token.

“It’s turning out to be an unexpected benefit of the initial coin offering (ICO) model, whereby startups and projects fuel and fund their projects with a scarce digital asset they create. In short, these projects can use the token to price their services, and then strategically alter the economics of the money supply to which they have a direct relationship.” — Coindesk

Have a major development in mind or an opinion on a story listed above? Please

submit your comments below to get the conversation started.

Follow ICO Alert on, Telegram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
[DE] Zusammenfassung vom 29. März — Wie speichert TenX Hunderte von Millionen Dollar in Kryptowährungen sicher?
Tags: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tenx, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain

in Both Sides of the Table
Glimpse at Dawn
Tags: Music, Freeform, Audible Sundays, Photography, Poetry

Audible Sundays is a freeform series inspired by one new music release a week. Each entry is written in synchronicity to the mood of the song and the photograph. Follow the playlist on Spotify:
Unclasped
By: Bridget Webber
Tags: Life Lessons, Happiness, Poetry, Fiction, Short Story

Each mellow leaf a memory to wash with life’s tide, to stream on unknown shores where the flow drifts.

And yet, we hold the crumpled skeletons as they turn to dust. Preferring to revive them than dance in new confetti and nurture new dreams.

If we let go, unclasped, fallen daydreams might splash into the lake, and fill us to the brim.
Tell Me a Story
By: Tommy Paley
Tags: Poetry, Love, Prose, Literally Literary

www.pixabay.com

“Tell me a story” she asked her dad as he stared despondently out the living room window.

How she wished things could go back to how they once were.

She would climb onto his lap, neck tickled by his beard and feel protected and warm and loved and as if there would never be a reason to worry or be scared ever again.

Everything had changed.

The walls of her castle had crumbled.

The accident.

“Are you okay?” she uttered the words all the while knowing that silence would follow.

How she longed for a story, any story, as only he could tell.

His tales were expertly and intricately woven around the truth, meant to make her laugh and think and to send her off to dreamland with another day drawn to a sweet end.

Coffee-scented kisses goodnight.

Bear hugs that would make a bear proud.

All but gone.

“Dad?” But he was somewhere far away, as if all alone on a snowy beach in the winter.

She needed him so badly, but he wasn’t there.

Random memories flooded her brain and she remembered the loving murmurs heard through the walls each evening before her mom, his wife, their everything had been taken so abruptly from them.

The paper they were drawn upon had been irreconcilably ripped.

Nothing would ever be the same.

She wept.
Seja Bem Vindo
By: Marcos Mota
Tags: Dados, Data Science, Negócios, Data Driven Decisions

in Both Sides of the Table
May the next Etsy learn its lessons
Tags: Bollocks, Destiny, Venture Capital, Startup, Etsy

Can I interest you in a necklace with a lesson for eternity?

Venture capital taught Etsy that making money wasn’t a skill it needed to learn early on. Go on, it said, spend the millions. And when you’ve spent those, come back and get some more. So Etsy did. They came back for a B round, then a C round, then D, E, and F rounds. Just shy of $100 million in total.

That experience deluded Etsy into thinking that they, uniquely, could ferry the scorpion across the river without getting stung. That a cool hundred million wouldn’t ever need to be paid back or corrupt its noble mission.

But the party only lasts until the music stops. And after Etsy’s VCs foisted the “growth stock” onto the public markets, those markets eventually grew tired of waiting for said growth and profits. So they demanded change, and change they got by booting the old CEO and installing a new growth-at-all-costs replacement.

When Etsy looks back at the arc of its story, it’s easy to flatter themselves into thinking that everything was hunky-dory until The Evil Capitalists came for their pound of flesh. But give me a break. This story is as old as time, and the outcome perfectly predictable.

Etsy corrupted itself when it sold its destiny in endless rounds of venture capital funding. This wasn’t inevitable, it was a choice. One made by founders and executives who found it easier to ask investors for money than to develop the habits and skills to ask customers.

“If you really want to build a company that works for people and the planet, capitalism isn’t the solution”, muses one of the former Etsy employees in a NYT piece. Bollocks. Feel-good nonsense bollocks.

Etsy wasted the chance to provide a human alternative to Ebay and Amazon all by itself. Now it’s largely the same kind of strip mall hawking the same mass-produced goods. There was a laudable mission at its core, but one that was quickly spoiled by a gluttony for growth and negligent naiveté about scorpions.

In the burnt ashes of what Etsy has become, I hope a new attempt will grow. One that learns its lessons and guards its own destiny with as much zeal as the high-minded ideals.
‪Why do VCs all give me contradictory advice?
By: Alan Jones
Tags: Venture Capital, Startup, Founder Advice

Founders wishing that VCs wouldn’t contradict each other’s advice should understand that being a VC is all about being contrarian.

The job and incentives are designed and attract and reward people who question everything, especially majority opinion.‬

Nobody fulfilled and happy in investment management, banking, law, business or tech would ever dream of going into venture capital.

You sacrifice relative certainty for risk, effective tenure for a role where you’re only as good as your last fund’s returns. The odds are you fail and won’t get a second chance. Nor will you ever be able to go back.

Venture capital is the home of the gamblers, misfits and troublemakers in investment, just as much as tech startups is the home of the gamblers, misfits and troublemakers from other industries.

And I say that with love, to some of the finest gamblers, misfits and troublemakers I know.

You know who you are (and I know you’re already assembling your dissenting opinions 😂).
Night Sky for Night Owls
By: U.S. Fish, Wildlife Service
Tags: Travel, Environment, Photography, Astronomy, Public Lands

Dear night owls:

This one is for you.

Winter nights can be long, dark … and perfect for photography. Join us for some starry sky views, a virtual thermos of hot chocolate, and tips from two nocturnal shutter bugs.

Astrophotography 101

“For most of us, the world at night is a foreign place,” writes photographer Peter Pearsall. “When we venture from the lights and clamor of our cities and immerse ourselves in the nocturnal landscape, we are transported into the unexpected.”

Take a night sky tour with Peter, and plan your next star-filled adventure:

The Milky Way arcs over a night sky watcher. Canon 6D, 12mm f/2.8 @ f/2.8, ISO 2000, 25 seconds. Photo by Peter Pearsall/USFWS.

You can walk the very same path or view the same vista in daylight and in darkness, and the two can seem nothing alike: a night-and-day difference.

Outdoors under the night sky, your senses become attuned to the intimacy of darkness — you are acutely aware of what is near, while everything distant falls to the periphery. It’s only after you linger for a while — letting your eyes adjust to the darkness, slowing your pace to quiet your breathing — that those dim peripheries resolve.

You might hear owls hooting, coyotes yipping, rodents scampering across the ground you stand on. You may clue in to the rustling of leaves and branches in a slight breeze which escaped your notice until that moment. Then you glance upward. Stars, untold millions of them — along with planets, comets, meteors and other celestial bodies — all aglow above you, shining with a light already eons in the making before it reaches your eyes.
CoinCorner announces UK banking services with Faster Payments
Tags: United Kingdom, Company, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, Banking

Danny Scott — CEO at CoinCorner

[Press release] — Friday 5 April 2019

Bitcoin looks to be moving from a bear to bull market following price increases of around 25% over the last 7 days. This comes after the price ended on a higher value than it started for a consecutive month in March, the first time this has happened in 9 months. One of the UK’s leading cryptocurrency exchanges, CoinCorner, is reporting this as a shift in attitude within the industry as general sentiment about Bitcoin is appearing more positive.

Danny Scott, CoinCorner CEO and Co-Founder said: “After a period of price stability, we have noticed that attitudes toward Bitcoin and cryptocurrency as a whole are beginning to shift. Once again, we’re starting to see both individuals and businesses expressing an interest in Bitcoin.

With this in mind, we are delighted to announce that we have recently been granted a UK bank account which is a key signal that the ice is beginning to melt and better times are ahead for Bitcoin. This is a significant development in the cryptocurrency space, as for a number of years we have been working with a European banking partner after experiencing great difficulty in securing UK banking — an issue common to exchanges in the Bitcoin industry.”

Available immediately, CoinCorner customers now benefit from making quick, electronic payments through the UK Faster Payments Service and can transfer funds directly from a UK bank account to CoinCorner in under two hours — Monday to Friday 9am to 5.30pm (excluding public and bank holidays). Fees for the service will be 1 GBP for both deposits and withdrawals. There is no maximum deposit limit.

Danny Scott added: “Being able to offer UK banking facilities in the form of Faster Payments to our customers is a great addition to our services as it will speed up the time it takes to buy and sell Bitcoin.

Having been approved UK banking also opens the way for our new, exciting payment gateway, due to be launched later this month. A big development, this product will allow UK merchants to accept bitcoin as a payment method and will help to develop the Bitcoin ecosystem in the UK.”
eu estou em um relacionamento sério com meus cabelos longos
By: Vinícius Asevedo
Tags: Literatura, Poesia, Poesia Brasileira, Poema, Poesia Cotidiana

in Both Sides of the Table
The Case for the Rapid (but Imperfect) Test
By: Dana G Smith
Tags: Testing, Coronavirus, Health, Pandemic, Covid 19

Image: Yuri Samoilov via flickr/CC BY 2.0

Imagine if every morning before you showered you spit into a test tube, and by the time you got out, you knew if you had Covid-19. That result would dictate whether you went to work or saw friends or if you stayed home and isolated.

This technology exists, and some experts say it could be a pandemic game-changer, but critics of the idea, including the FDA, say the tests aren’t reliable enough.

The tests detect antigens, proteins on the surface of the virus that trigger an immune response. The antigen tests are faster to use and cheaper to produce than PCR tests, which look for the virus’s RNA. They could even function like at-home pregnancy tests — antigens in the saliva react with molecules in a strip of paper, changing its color to indicate a positive test. However, the FDA requires tests to detect at least 80% of positive cases, and these rapid tests are closer to 50%.

That sounds problematic. But Michael Mina, MD, PhD, a Harvard epidemiologist and immunologist, says the difference in test accuracy is at either the very beginning or end of the disease when only a small amount of the virus is present and people aren’t really infectious. The tests are much more precise when people have millions of viral copies in their nose and throat, which is also when they’re most infectious, even without symptoms.

Mina says a less precise test that immediately detects the most infectious cases is an improvement. Currently, about nine in 10 people with the virus go undiagnosed because of testing shortages. “High frequency testing using a less sensitive test goes much further than low frequency testing using the best test in the world,” said Mina in an interview with This Week in Virology.
You Don’t Need a Dependency Injection Container
By: Vadim Samokhin
Tags: Programming, Software Development, Oop, Dependency Injection, Software Architecture

DI containers, when used wrong, i.e., in most cases, are not just code polluters, but the absolute evil.

It’s a static dependency

DI containers are very often called from all over the place. DI container in this case is just a service locator, which is a singleton. Singleton with huge amount of methods. Besides that it introduces hidden dependencies. That’s how it might look like:

class PaymentProcessor

{

public function purchase()

{

return DIPaymentModuleFactory::me()->purchase();

}

}

To remedy this mistake, the only way is to use it only on the highest level of an application, preferably in index file where an application starts. And if you’d use it that way — do you really still need it? You don’t anyway. It’s Catch-22 already, and there are two more points ahead.

It breaks one of the most solid OOP metaphors

DI container breaks the metaphor of a Lego brick that David West talks about in his book Object Thinking. I want my classes to be instantiated in a single place, and this place should be an entry point of any request or message. Their collaboration should be achieved only with composition. And composability is the goal that any aspiring object-thinker is striving for.

It breaks cohesion

Moreover, it breaks fundamental OOP principles — data encapsulation and exposing behavior instead. Why the way an object should be instantiated is hidden to the program code? Why is it put in some configuration file? Really, think about it — it’s nonsense! This point is even broader. Why do we ever need a config file? Why is some piece of data torn apart of its behavior? This is exactly what Martin Fowler talked about 14 years ago, right? And everyone seems to agree with that. But why do we keep following this concept? Configuration files are just reflective of a procedural mindset!

Life without DI-container

It’s a pure Dependency Injection. So that’s how my entry point usually looks like:

try {

echo

(new PurchaseOrder(

new LocalOrderStorage(

new NullOrderStorage()

),

new OrderId($inputParams['order_id'])

))

->newInvoice(

new InvoiceNumber(

new Vendor(

new LocalVendorStorage(),

new VendorId($inputParams['vendor_id'])

),

new VendorInvoiceNumber($inputParams['vendor_invoice_number']),

new DateTime($inputParams['date_time'])

),

new VendorInvoiceNumber($inputParams['vendor_invoice_number']),

new DateTime($inputParams['date_time']),

new InvoiceAmount(

new Amount($inputParams['amount']),

new Currency($inputParams['currency'])

)

)

->json()

;

} catch (Exxeption $exxeption) {

return

(new ErrorResult())

->json($exxeption->getCode(), $exxeption->getMessage())

;

}

It’s wonderful. Join me.
Object Detection Memo from RCNN to the Latest (2020 July)
By: Neil Wu
Tags: Deep Learning, Computer Vision, Object Detection, Machine Learning, Cnn

Model Zoo

2014

R-CNN (Ross Gishick et al.)

SPPNet (Kaiming He et al.)

2015

Fast R-CNN (Ross Gishick et al.)

Faster R-CNN (Ren et al.)

2016

YOLO (Redmon et al.)

SSD (Liu et al.)

YOLOv2 (Redmon et al.)

2017

Feature Pyramid Network (Tsung-Yi Lin et al.)

RetinaNet (Tsung-Yi Lin et al.)

2018

YOLOv3 (Redmon et al.)

2019

Object as Points (Xingyi Zhou et al.) <Coming soon>

CornerNet (Hei Law et al.)<Coming soon>

CenterNet (Kaiwen Duan et al.)<Coming soon>

FCOS (Zhi Tian et al.)

2020

DETR(Nicolas Carion et al.) <Coming soon>

YOLOv4 (Alexey Bochkovskiy et al.) <Coming soon>

EfficientDet (Mingxing Tan et al.)<Coming soon>

YOLOv5 (Glenn Jocher) <Coming soon>
Analog Dog
By: Jack Burt
Tags: Civil Rights, Society, Poetry, Democracy, Satire

Photo by Author

Justified tracers go

Byzantine ways like gasoline

As I go drooping up the line

And ask my new age boss

Lion posed in the info-sky

For new materials to entwine,

Something to ride back down

At speed of dream time

Yet not all that fast — cause see

Culture’s still changing gears,

Some sort of hybrid creed

Like anti-venom for our fears

Let’ suppose then

We’d meet on Wednesday

And do trust falls intuitively

Before one asked

Over and over

As the aluminum moon

Cycles at ethical stall

Only to prove to you

That a street dog too

Will find decimal gall
Looking at Precinct-Level Election Data
By: Mit Election Lab
Tags: Medsl Guest, Elections, Data, Politics

Those of you who follow election data updates closely might have noticed that on Tuesday, we released another major update to the MIT Election Lab’s precinct-level 2016 returns.

This brings us closer to publishing complete election results, up and down the ballot, from every precinct in the country in 2016. Tuesday’s release extended coverage by 11 states, to 36 states and the District of Columbia. Geographic coverage will be complete with returns from 14 more states.

You can find the latest release of precinct-level data on the MEDSL Dataverse, organized into presidential, U.S. Senate, U.S. House, state, and local datasets. (If you work in R, our elections package provides these datasets in an easily accessible format too.)

The availability of returns at the precinct or even county level has been poor historically. To overcome challenges in data collection, the Lab is relying on the work of our undergraduate contributors; our colleagues at the University of Florida’s United States Election Project; and another open data effort, the Open Elections project, whose volunteers have been able to parse some particularly difficult returns. We’re hopeful that what we’ve learned and built working with the data from 2016 will help us move quickly through the 2018 returns after this year’s midterm elections.

After our initial data collection, our focus turns to normalization and validation. We resolve internal inconsistencies so that, for example, the names of candidates and parties appear throughout the data in the same way. Doing so makes analysis more predictable and less error-prone. During validation, we test that the data meet our expectations: aggregated precinct votes should match those from state-level returns, for instance, and known jurisdictions, candidates, parties, etc., should appear in the data where anticipated. We haven’t defined a formal specification for the datasets, but our pre-release checks enforce a growing number of constraints. If you ever discover an issue when using our data, please send us an email !

It’s important to us to lower the barriers to using these datasets in analysis. So we’ve added candidate identifiers to make merging the precinct returns with third-party data easier: FEC IDs for federal candidates, and (from the @unitedstates project,) GovTrack, ICPSR, MapLight, Open Secrets, WikiData, and Google Knowledge Graph IDs for federal incumbents and winners.

We’ve also added county-level geographic variables to the data via the 2016 Election Administration and Voting Survey (EAVS) and the Census Bureau’s 2017 gazetteer files. (Where local governments administer elections, these variables describe the county that contains the jurisdiction, but Census place identifiers are a possible extension.)