fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Meeting an ‘Old friend’ called Pain
By: Tiago Miranda
Tags: Pain, Philosophy Of Mind, Vision, Experience, Ego

Meeting an ‘Old friend’ called Pain

Sometimes you just have to surrender

Photo by Ilya Plakhuta on Unsplash

The road to the art studio was easier than I thought. Hopping on my pushbike and just riding down to Adelaide city from the foothills seems to be an enjoyable mission.

Today is a different day. No work, just tattooing. I mean receiving one. It feels exciting, with a slightly chill in my stomach.

Even after a few other tattoos inked on my body, I still sweat of thinking about the pain. Some people faint, others cry and some others give up halfway through. I normally face it and struggle to deal with during the process. It seems to work out in the end though.

It is a weird one, but I am convinced to take a shot. As tough as it can be, there is nothing you can do unless you let the pain becomes your friend. That friend that invites you for dinner without giving the address, you know?

The friend that needs a quick nap at your place before he/she can get back to work the next morning, but still kicks you out of the room and has shower before you.

Pain is like a selfish friend that in the end of the day still wants the larger size of the pie.

Knowing that a sharp thin needle, sometimes several ones, spear(s) through your body dragged by a remote gun whilst ink is placed under your skin… it sounds more like a rite of passage into a tribe. Which most possibly it was in the past.

At least this time though, the artist’s hands are controlled and soothing. It flows like honey that even with pain you can notice that the lines are perfectly done.

He is a great artist, with a solid career and unique style. His drawing shines like the sun rise. It looks like that each line was perfectly carved by magical hands, letting alone each gouge from the needle represents steps into a new realm.

As much as pain felt secondary, this is another collection to my personal history book. I could not feel any better, especially with the end results.

My life is not more important than someone else’s one living under drastic conditions. The privilege of having a piece of art sculped on my body is a complete honour from his behalf. And obviously carrying this art for the rest of my life is something beyond imagination.

Another phase of this journey ticked off, whereas body and nature are one, and once it has to succumb, it will probably become compost. Letting art takes over equals visual appreciation which is not just another simple body culture to be ignored.
Open Sourcing the Civis API Client for Python
By: Civis Analytics
Tags: Open Source, Product, Data Science, Data Science Engineering

Open Sourcing the Civis API Client for Python

by Keith Ingersoll

We’ve written before about the Civis API and how we’re using it to do some serious data science. With the Civis API, we no longer have to worry about whether we have enough RAM on our laptop to build that intensive model, or whether there’s another job running on our shared server hogging all the processors. It has become an integral component of our operation — so much so that we developed a client library to make it even easier to use. And we’re happy to make this library open-source, so everyone can harness the power of the Civis API in their own custom workflows.

The Civis API Client for Python has a few key features which make working with the Civis API more productive and fun:

1) It’s easy to install: just run pip install civis .

2) The client includes a set of high level functions for common workflows. You can move data to and from the cloud with a single line of code.

import civis

import pandas as pd # Load data into a Pandas DataFrame

df = civis.io.read_civis(table="table", database="database", use_pandas=True) # Upload a Pandas Dataframe to the Cloud Asynchronously

civis.io.dataframe_to_civis(df=df, table="new_table", database="database")

3) You can write custom workflows in native Python syntax. The Python client takes care of making the correct HTTP calls and passing parameters. With the special parameter iterator=True , it even stitches together paginated API calls. For example, you can measure just how big your data is:

import civis client = civis.APIClient()

database_id = client.get_database_id("my_database")

data_mb = 0

tables = client.tables.list(database_id=database_id, iterator=True)

for table in tables:

data_mb += table["size_mb"] or 0

print("Big Data! {} MB".format(data_mb))

4) There’s Python-specific documentation. You can head to ReadTheDocs to see some more examples and read our detailed documentation.

There you have it — the Civis API Client for Python is open for business. Log into Civis Platform, generate an API key (if you haven’t already), and get started! Oh, and don’t forget to check out our other open source projects.
#BigParentingIdea — It Is Not For Us To Decide
By: Lukasz Laniecki
Tags: Parenting, Passion, Happiness, Life, Children

I don’t know anybody that made a living in the arts.

All right.

Do you know anybody who starved to death being an artist?

Have you heard of anybody from your country (not in Africa) who starved to death? Anybody?

It’s hard to starve to death. Especially if you have a true passion in you that is your fuel.

If it has to be starving, we should let it be starving. It’s not for us to decide.
Fueled
By: Elizabeth Helmich
Tags: Introspection, Positive Thinking, Chance Encounters, Poetry, Photography

We give in. Become

the soft crumble of prediction

that quits rushing to count stones

piled continuously to fill craters

of excuses.

Fire catches a toehold

of shadowy selves between circles

we dance, billowing so lightly

we don’t pause to gaze

at those holding the tinder.

In the ring of a pit we didn’t choose,

knowing it’ll only take one twig

offers no consolation

for what’s already ash.
Your John Wayne Fantasy Does Not Make Me Safer.
By: Lisa Martens
Tags: Satire, Guns, Politics, Gun Violence, Gun Control

Your John Wayne Fantasy Does Not Make Me Safer.

Responding to “Good Guy with a Gun.”

Is this what is in your imagination? Photo by Mahir Uysal on Unsplash

How can I tell between someone who will shoot me and someone who hopes someone will shoot me so they can rescue me?

And do I really want to be around either of those people?

Wouldn’t the “hero” thing to do be to rush them or help people get out, instead of firing more guns and risking the lives of even more people?

Wouldn’t the “hero” response not involve a gun at all?

Is it possible that the collective feeling of security and safety within a society is more important than you getting to pretend you’re in the Wild West?

How can you guarantee you would shoot the right person in that situation?

What if another good guy thinks you’re a bad guy, and you both start a shooting that otherwise would have never happened? And who is the good guy in that situation?

So how does this prevent people from experiencing emotional and psychological trauma that they will need help with for the rest of their lives?

How does this help with the anxiety average people feel when going to the supermarket?

Do you truly believe young children will feel safer and be able to live up their potential if all of their teachers have a gun? Or will they live in constant terror?

You know you’re not John Wick, right?

You do realize that in an actual life-and-death situation, you may freeze, right? Like, you may not act the way you do in your fantasies.

And how do you plan to account for the emotional trauma you inflict just by being somewhere in public with a gun?

Do you feel big and tough scaring people at Taco Cabana?

If so, don’t you think you should re-evaluate why you need that validation in your day-to-day life, and maybe do some soul-searching?

How does this stop the underlying philosophy of hate driving these shootings? Because for every one shooter, you know there are maybe, who knows…100, 200, 1000 people who support what they did, but are quiet about it?

How does your having a gun really uncover the scope of the problem?

Can you accept that your fantasy makes you feel better, but not me?

Can you accept that your fantasy is just as emotionally-driven as my fear?

Can you accept that your fantasy may make you feel better, but it doesn’t really make anybody safer?
she’s free
By: Muthia Huda
Tags: Self Love, Breakups, Poetry, A Cornered Gurl, Freedom

Photo by Kourosh Qaffari from Pexels

he no longer is

the love story she likes to tell,

the prince she dreams to get,

he no longer is

the name she speaks at night,

the face she finds so bright,

he no longer is

the peace she longs in dark,

the star she sees at sky,

he no longer is

the end she hopes to have.

she has been freed,

this, the end she’s dreamed.
Introducing XCredits
By: Woodford Xcredits
Tags: Sharding, Xcredits, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin

Today, we’re very proud to present XCredits, an innovative cryptocurrency solution.

XCredits is a scalable cryptocurrency platform with the capacity to conduct potentially limitless transactions per second. We believe with a new methodology to sharding, XCredits will address many of the scalability and privacy concerns of Bitcoin and Ethereum. XCredits uses a sharding solution that creates economic incentives to ensure large capacity and security.

XCredits is an open platform for developers to iterate on. The platform will be built for the browser-first and will be open to developers from day one, allowing customisation for those who need it. Immediately, XCredits will be able to be mined from the browser. We believe that with this new approach, XCredits can break down the traditional barriers to cryptocurrency and revolutionise the finance world.

XCredits has a number of exciting upcoming announcements and releases, including:

On the 19th of June we will be releasing the white paper for XCredits Style Private Off-Chain Transactions (XSPOCT,) which allows users to send Bitcoin privately and securely on the blockchain.

The 27th of June will be the release of SendZero, a high-speed, decentralised file transfer app which allows users to transfer files directly between browsers, efficiently, privately and securely.

Finally we will release the white papers for the core platform of XCredits.

The founder and lead developer of XCredits, Dr. James Jansson earned his doctorate in the mathematical modelling of HIV. He is also the CEO and co-founder of Tapview, a platform for monetizing media with micropayments.

To keep track of our developments sign up for our mailing list here.

For more information please visit our website, XCredits.com, or contact us at teamx@xcredits.com
dry Monku — Twin Souls
By: Dry Monkey Philosophy
Tags: Poetry, Haiku, Spirituality, Love, Life

This is a collection of haiku-ish poetry as told by a Dry Monkey. They are loosely structured 5–7–5 — 3 lined stanzas. Each telling a story of its own, while collectively narrating a progressively realized ideal — Hope you enjoy!
Voice + GUI = The marriage that works!
By: Kumar Rangarajan
Tags: UX

“Voice is the next big thing!” scream the headlines all over town. If you have followed CES for the past few years, you could not have missed hearing this “prediction”.

“Voice UI” is the future is the claim!

But, we think that a Voice-only UI is actually a step backward.

Our oldest interface

Voice, certainly, is the most natural of input interfaces. Most of us have been using it since we were born (some more than others :-)). Either to communicate our wants or to communicate our displeasure. Sometimes in intelligible ways. Sometimes in unintelligible ways. We learnt to use our mouth lot earlier than we learnt to use our fingers. It’s only natural that we use this God-given ability, to interact with computers which are starting to mimic us more and more.

But the abilities of computers do not always match the abilities of humans.

Computers have a much richer output interface as compared to us — the screen. But humans are limited to using voice both as input and output interfaces. Restricting computers to our limitations of voice-only input/output interfaces is going to artificially stifle their abilities and their usefulness.

“What vegetarian pizzas do you have?”

“You can choose between Veggie Delight, Simply Veggie, Veggie Extravaganza”

Imagine asking your “voice assistant” the above question, and the assistant responding with the above choices. Humans have a very limited capability to process such list style information and would most likely end up choosing the third choice (because they don’t remember what the other two were!).

Now imagine instead asking a pizza app the same question (“What vegetarian pizza choices do you have?”) and the app immediately responding with a screen like this -

The experience would be far more natural.

Or performing a bank transaction by saying “show me the last 6 months statement” to a banking app, and the app instead of speaking back, visually showing you the statement. Exactly as it would have, if you clicked on the GUI to show statements and selected a starting date of 6 months ago

We just reduced a thousand clicks on the screen to a single voice input. But we did not convert the thousands of pieces of information on the screen into a single voice output!

Voice is great as a natural input interface. It's easy, it's intuitive and very fast.

GUIs are great as a rich, comprehensive and high-bandwidth output interface.

Marrying them together to build the apps of the future or converting the apps of today into this paradigm, would open up your app to audiences that expect convenience, speed and are growing up with the notion that voice interfaces will be present everywhere.

If the idea of building voice + GUI apps sounds interesting to you, please sign up below.
Status Update: HapRamp’s Production server is up, thanks to Hasura
By: Avi Aryan
Tags: Press Release, Blockchain, Technology, Steemit, Hasura

The Stack

In case you are wondering about HapRamp’s stack, here’s a pictorial representation that best describes it —

A very simple image that shows how data flows in HapRamp

We are using Hasura solely for hosting backend as of now. Our backend is a Flask / Postgres application. We love using Hasura’s k8s based approach which makes deploying our app so easy and so performant.

The Future

Subscribe to HapRamp if you have not done so already. We would be rolling out the first public alpha very soon. You definitely don’t want to miss on getting early on this platform.
Cumbia electoral: la nueva forma de hacer campaña
By: Cátedra Alarcón
Tags: Elecciones 2015, Balotage, 2015, Cumbia

in In Fitness And In Health
Cool dog! I wonder what kind it is?
By: Lincoln Alexander
Tags: Udacity, Data Science

Variety of Great Danes

Have you ever been out for a walk and come across a dog and wondered what kind it was? I know I have. Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a quick way to identify the dog breed? Dogs come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes from Chihuahuas to Great Danes. Within just those two breeds there are a variety of colors and other distinguishing features that make it a challenge to figure out what breed they are. As the Variety of Great Danes image shows, within just Great Danes, there is a wide range of colors. Some have cropped ears, others do not. Thinking about all this variability, some questions come to mind. Can machine learning be used to identify dogs and determine its breed? Can machine learning be used to identify humans in images and determine what dog breed they look like? Can a machine do this with a high level of accuracy?

Project overview

The goal of this capstone project for the Udacity Data Scientist nano degree is to classify images of dogs according to dog breeds.

Develop an algorithm that could be used by a web or mobile app

Classify images of dogs according to dog breed

Classify images of humans according to dog breed

Return an error if no dogs or humans were detected

Strategy

To accomplish these goals, I used a combination of pre-trained machine learning classification models and the keras neural network library to build convolutional neural network model. I will first build a CNN from scratch and experiment with layers of various types and numbers and parameters. I will use transfer learning to combine pre-trained image classifiers with my CNN to see what impact they have. I will test each model accuracy with a set of test images. The project is contained in a Jupyter Notebook using Python.

Metrics

Because the breed model is multi-class single label classification, it makes the most sense to use keras categorical cross-entropy for the loss function. As the model is fitted, the loss and accuracy is calculated for each epoch and the parameters which showed the least loss and highest accuracy are saved using ModelCheckpoint. The formula used to check the accuracy of the models is:
PSA: Do NOT Harass Veterans Today
Tags: Veterans, Military

It’s Veteran’s Day — Today, no matter who you are or where you come from, it’s not okay to fart in a veteran’s mailbox.

It’s not okay to put a veteran in a headlock and give them a wet willy.

It’s not okay to tickle a veteran who has repeatedly told you they don’t like to be tickled.

It’s not okay to bet a veteran $20 that he won’t go to Starbucks in a dress, and then after he does it, insist that you said “twenty doll-hairs.”

It’s not okay to hide behind a veteran’s compost bin, and when he comes out to throw biodegradable waste in the heap, jump out and scare him. Veterans are often old, and should be praised for their use of alternative waste disposal techniques.

It’s not okay to heckle a veteran on a power-walk by yelling “shouldn’t you be running?” Power-walking is a fun and healthy form of exercise that our brave men and women are free to enjoy.

It’s not okay to tell a veteran that the Iwo Jima memorial looks “gay.”

It’s not okay to ask a veteran how many people he killed. They didn’t go to war to kill people, they went to war because Nixon really hated Communists.

It’s not okay to give a veteran a cup of soup when he asked for a bowl of soup, just because you are running low on soup.

It’s not okay to chase away dirty pigeons while a veteran is feeding them.
Improved Asterisk Motions
By: Alex R. Young
Tags: Motions, Plugins, Scripts

vim-asterisk (GitHub: haya14busa/vim-asterisk, License: MIT) by haya14busa aims to improve the * motion. The * motion itself searches forward for the word nearest the cursor, so it's quite useful once you get used to it.

However, vim-asterisk allows you to search within visual selections and it uses smartcase by default which seems more natural to me.

haya14busa notes that the visual search feature is based on vim-visualstar.
Which Framework to Choose: Comparing Django and Ruby on Rails
By: Django Stars
Tags: Web Development, Ruby on Rails, Django, Web Framework, Programming

There are more than 90 web-development frameworks out there. No wonder it’s hard to choose the one that’ll suit your project best. Still, there are at least two major frameworks that are widely used by the tech giants of nowadays, and for good reason. Ever heard of Django or Ruby on Rails? If both web frameworks are quite good, how do you compare Django and Ruby on Rails to choose which one to use for web development?

Instagram, YouTube, Spotify, Dropbox, and other online- and app-based services that we use daily are powered by Django, a Python-programming-language framework. On the other hand, Airbnb, Bloomberg, Shopify, and other leading companies use Ruby on Rails, a Ruby programming language framework. Both languages were created to serve the web and make web applications (including mobile web apps) possible.

In this article, we’ll compare these two popular frameworks. While both are fast and easy to use, Django and Ruby on Rails each have reasons for and against them as the development framework for your future project.

As software-development professionals, we’ve found materials comparing Django vs. Ruby on Rails performance and speed too oversimplified, since speed and performance often depend on the complexity of each individual project as well as the proficiency of the development team with the respective technology.

What we mean to say is that even if Python/Ruby/etc. are interpreted languages and are slower in certain workloads for tasks which are relevant for a web framework, this may not matter. So we decided to take a closer look at their pros and cons, as well as use cases to help you decide which one is the best fit for your needs.
Huge Fibonacci Number modulo m
Tags: Algorithms, Programming, Competitive Programming, Cpp, Code

Problem Introduction

The Fibonacci numbers are defined as follows: F(0) = 0, F(1) = 1, and

F(i) = F(i−1) + F(i−2) for i ≥ 2.

Problem Description

Task: Given two integers n and m, output F(n) mod m (that is, the remainder of F(n) when divided by m).

Input Format: The input consists of two integers n and m given on the same line (separated by a space).

Constraints: 1 ≤ n ≤ 10^18 , 2 ≤ m ≤ 10^5 .

Output Format: Output F(n) mod m

Time Limits: C: 1 sec, C++: 1 sec, Java: 1.5 sec, Python: 5 sec. C#: 1.5 sec, Haskell: 2 sec, JavaScript: 3 sec, Ruby: 3 sec, Scala: 3 sec.

Memory Limit: 512 Mb

Sample

Input:

281621358815590 30524

Output:

11963

What To Do

In this problem, the given number n may be really huge. Hence an algorithm looping for n iterations will not fit into one second for sure. Therefore we need to avoid such a loop.

To get an idea how to solve this problem without going through all F(i) for i from 0 to n, let’s see what happens when m is small — say, m = 2 or m = 3.

Take a detailed look at this table. Do you see? Both these sequences are periodic! For m = 2, the period is 011 and has length 3, while for m = 3 the period is 01120221 and has length 8. Therefore, to compute, say,

F(2015) mod 3 we just need to find the remainder of 2015 when divided by 8. Since 2015 = 251·8+7, we conclude that F(2015) mod 3 = F 7 mod 3 = 1.

This is true in general: for any integer m ≥ 2, the sequence F(n) mod m is periodic. The period always starts with 01 and is known as Pisano period.
Viral New York
By: Robert A Stribley
Tags: Disease, New York City, News, Photojournalism, Photography

Customers line up outside the Bicycle Habitat bike shop in Park Slope. New Yorkers have flocked to area bike shops to get their bicycles fixed, so they can help local businesses with some work before they close and so they can ride their bicycles, considered safer and healthier now than using public transportation. Cycling allows riders to keep their distance from sidewalk pedestrians.
Your Instagram Post is Not Enough to Fight Racism
By: Laura Kreuz
Tags: Culture, Inequality, Self, Social Media, Racism

Your Instagram Post is Not Enough to Fight Racism

What you can do to actually change the system

Photo by Life Matters from Pexels

I have to confess that I spent many years completely ignorant to the issue of racism. As a privileged white girl, I always knew about it, but I had never bothered to study the matter in depth, such as its roots and consequences that affect us until this day. And I believe this applies to most privileged white people as well.

In the past two months, racism awareness grew in a substantial pace. With the rise of the issue, more and more people are realizing how much this inequality is still a current problem that affects thousands of people. People are getting more empathic to other’s pain and demanding change.

In fact, the movement in social media is not new at all. In 2016, the #BlackLivesMatter was already used for discussions about racism, and it had reached its peak with 500.000 mentions daily. This year, from May 26 to June 7, the hashtag was used over 47.8 million times only on Twitter.

The Blackout Tuesday, which happened on June 2, also played a significant role in this awareness. People from all over the world posted

But the effects of this initiative may not have been all positive. Activist Kenidra Woods argued on Twitter: “We use hashtag to keep ppl updated. PLS stop using the hashtag for black images!!”. Meaning that in a time when people needed information the most, feeds were overloaded with pictures of black squares, instead of valid information of the cause.

However, the path to change is much more complex than a single post on social media using the hashtag #blacklivesmatter. Change will only be achieved with a complex set of actions that need to be reinforced on a frequent basis and practiced by a lot of people.

Here are few things you can do to contribute to the anti-racism cause.
Inspiration: The best publication team on Medium
By: Kathy Jacobs
Tags: Poetry, Celebration, Chalkboard, Inspiration

A group of wonders working together to encourage collaboration — that’s this crew. The leaders and editors of Chalkboard. The group that keeps me on my toes. We may live in different ends of the earth, but through Chalkboard and Slack, we keep going — we keep writing — we keep encouraging collaboration. Without this crew, my days would be duller. My life would have less color. My poetry would be less.

Tamyka — Our fearless leader, a consummate cat herder. Knows the best of the rest of Medium and share it. Always making time to help. Coaching. Editing. Critiquing, Inspiring. Laughing. Traveling. I don’t know where she finds the time to do it all, but I am very glad she does!

Dewi — Running poetry projects is this wonder’s superpower. Writing away, sharing poetry forms. Coming up with new ideas. Offering support. Helping out. One of those talents that seems to sneak under the radar. Never will understand why more people don’t follow her!

Indira — She came to us to run a fiction project. She stayed to run poetry projects. Always there to send a virtual hug. Offering chocolate when you are down, help when needed and critiques at the drop of a hat.

Michael — Joined us recently. Eager to help. Eager to get people involved. Eager to share a tip or a newfound author. Loves poetry in form almost as much as Tam.

Don’t think that I have forgotten the inactive crew. They know who they are. They know we will welcome them back whenever they have a new project to share. Or when they just want to come chat.

All different. All friends. All family of choice. My inspiration.
Referral Rewards | Important Update
By: Artis Turba
Tags: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Referral, Artis Turba, Ether

Referral Link sign ups require the referred (person using your sign up link) to complete an order on the exchange before the referral reward will be given. Note that fair usage policy applies, for example if your referred deposits 0.1 DGB in order to score rewards, then this is flagged as abusive.

*0.01% of the trade value is awarded in ARTIS for each trade conducted by your referral. Remember that all ARTIS HOLDers continuously share in trading fees and is paid out daily through AARP.

*Due to the nature of referral rewards, many people in the world try and exploit such systems by creating multiple accounts and then start referring themselves in order to gain rewards. In lieu of our terms and conditions, multiple accounts is a Prohibited Activity, and we are screening for this through behavior analysis, deposit analysis, i.p sessions etc. We will not honor self referred multi accounts with referral rewards.
Beta release next week. Start of beta streams. #Weekly update 6
By: Live Stars
Tags: Cryptocurrency Investment, Crypto, Cryptocurrency

Dear community,

May is an important month in Live Stars development, as a lot of events are taking place.

First of all, we have requested Coinmarketcap listing, have been added to blockfolio app and others.

We have updated our roadmap, also registered on Coinmarketcal and added most important events that are taking place soon.

Company on Cyprus is going to be registered next week — planned on May 11th. Lawyers are also working on Terms and Conditions for the platform, model contract and other documentation considering USC 2557.

First Public beta is currently trasferred to a new server, and we will need some more time to conduct the tests.

Good news is that Live Stars will be starting first beta test streams already next week, as soon as documentation considering USC 2557 is developed. We are planning to launch beta version with girls on 15th of May.

We’d like to remind that beta version is still in development and will be updated up to the final release, but currently is has all the necessary functionality. Our additional task is marketing. As we are the first fully tokenized webcam platform, we would like more people to know about Live Stars project. Spread the word among the cryptoenthusiast community and stay tuned!
You can now trade DRT with BTC!
By: Domraider Team
Tags: Hitbtc, Btc, Domraider, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin

If you are not familiar with HitBTC or buying DRT yet, have a look at our step-by-step tutorial and we will explain everything:

Remember that you can still trade DRT with ETH and USDT, but also with any token available on the Bancor Network.

So now, how about taking advantage of this new DRT/BTC pair and get trading ?
Alone
By: Jonathan Wayne
Tags: Poetry

Alone he stands,

solitary confinement amid a busy multitude.

two walls made of apathy

two walls void of empathy.

arms extending but they reach none

he speaks but his voice is just one.

drowning in dissimulation, dreaming to escape this dread.

he closes his eyes and asks if it’s only a dream

he awakens hoping others could see.

a morsel of honesty would satiate

a breath of integrity would resuscitate.

the dearth of truth deludes and disconnects his world.
The Night Before My First Strip Club Audition
By: Erin Taylor
Tags: Sexuality, Confidence, Feminism, Self, Sex Work

The Night Before My First Strip Club Audition

Thoughts of an almost stripper.

Photo by Renata Schaitza on Unsplash

The night before my first strip club audition, I was as nervous as I could be. The following day, I would have to walk into a strip club that I’d only ever driven past and tell them I was there to audition as a dancer. I’d have to meet with the club manager and walk into the locker room while the rest of the girls who already worked there watched me undress out of the corner of their eyes.

I’d have to make my way down the long gothic staircase in seven-inch heels that I’d only been breaking in for a few days, and dance on stage for a full three minutes in front of strangers and the other dancers. Then, I’d have to take my bra off for the second song, place the bra on the staircase, and dance topless for another full three minutes.

It could go really well — I could be a natural seductive dancer. Or it could go so very wrong.

I’m going to be okay, I said to myself as I sat in my bed, unable to get some sleep. But damn it, I was desperate to abandon my traditional life and travel the world as a stripper. I wanted to meet new people just as sexually liberated as I was. I wanted to make love in new cities and never worry about having enough money or requesting time off from work. I wanted to pay off my loans quickly without asking for help from anyone. Stripping was my ticket to this type of never-ending freedom.

The nerves I felt about auditioning to be a stripper made everything about this process so very real.

I wanted this audition (and this job) to work out even more than I thought I did. Of course, I had a back up plan if I wasn’t hired at this specific strip club where one of my best friends worked. My Plan B was auditioning at another club down the street. And another.

And if I didn’t get hired at any of them, I would take it as a mighty sign from the universe to rejoin corporate America. I was an MBA graduate and had a job offer that I turned down, one that they’d offered me a higher salary if I reconsidered.

They had no idea that I was planning to become an exotic dancer and leave a sex-negative society behind. But, I would need to be hired as a stripper first.
“Still Cold Calling Strangers?” Memes
By: Jena Apgar
Tags: Cold Calling, Cold Calling Tips, Beekonnected, Lead Generation, Memes

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Calvinist Theological Concepts in Order of How Much They Sound Like Horrifying Sex Acts
By: The Awl
Tags: Religion, Michael Brendan Dougherty, Calvinism

by Michael Brendan Dougherty

10) Federal Vision

9) Presuppositional Apology

8) Unconditional Election

7) Infralapsarian reprobation

6) Monergism

5) Post-Redemptionist Amyraldism

4) Penal Substitution

3) Total Depravity

2) Canons of Dort

1) Double Imputation

Michael Brendan Dougherty is interested in a particular redemption, if you want to help him out.
Barefoot, Wild and Free
By: Edie Tuck
Tags: Barefoot, Lifestyle, Shoes, Health Benefits, Alternative Facts

“I love how wild and free you are.”

I chuckled when my co-worker said that to me as I walked around the office in my bare feet. From April to September — longer if I can swing it — I’m barefoot at least 90% of the time. (I’m barefoot at the office as I’m writing this… don’t tell my boss!) I’ve been like that for as long as I can remember. I should have been born a hippy! Or maybe a Gypsy —you know, the fairytale kind? They’re pretty cool too.

Well, it turns out that something I’ve just been doing for pleasure my whole life actually has some recognized and proven benefits. Who knew!?

Naked feet are good for your health

Research has found that walking barefoot has many tacit benefits. It’s not a topic that’s on top of many people’s lists — not something we really think about. We get up, put on our shoes and go about our day.

Dr Jonathan Kaplan, a foot and ankle specialist and orthopaedic surgeon at the Hoag Orthopaedic Institute, explains: “ The most straightforward benefit to barefoot walking is that in theory, walking barefoot more closely restores our ‘natural’ walking pattern, also known as our gait.”

Walking barefoot gives you better balance, control, and awareness, and can strengthen your calf muscles. This, in turn, can help alleviate pain in your knees and hips, and also strengthen your core and back muscles. That being said, if you’ve been a shoe-walker your whole life and you want to make the switch, take it slow. Baby steps. You need to give your feet the chance to learn how to do their job properly without their security blanket.

Your toes will also thank you for the relief; most shoes are made to ‘fit’ everyone, but if you look at the shape of your foot versus the shape of most shoes, you’ll quickly notice that it’s not really the case. It’s no wonder there’s an entire industry built on insoles and medically prescribed orthotics for every type of foot. Shoes aren’t natural. Well, they’re not!

We squeeze our tired feet into these torture chambers for the sake of aesthetics. Okay, maybe I’m being a little bit over-dramatic… but not really. What was originally intended as something to protect the foot, has quickly turned into a vanity accessory, and we walk around with pinched toes and blistered heels, all in the name of fashion.

( Photo by Kris Atomic on Unsplash)

Granted, some of them are very comfortable. But their benefits are controversial in the foot world. (Is there a foot world?) While they allow you to walk for miles or exercise for hours while avoiding blisters and foot fatigue, it’s said that they also defeat the purpose by promoting muscle weakness. They cause our feet to become dependent on them for support, and in turn, can cause injury.

I’m no expert and no doctor. I just know what I like and what I don’t. It’s just nice to learn that I’ve been unknowingly backed up by doctors and scientists all this time.
Some Don’t “Grow Out of it” and There is Help for Those Who Need it
By: Danica Morris Papali
Tags: Children, Toddlers, Speech, Preschool, Baby

So, what should you do if a child is struggling or if something seems off?

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Parents watch development and sometimes wonder, “Is this normal?” If you ask this question, I implore you to look outside of the social media pages and advice from family and friends and begin to document specifics of development. If you have any concerns or questions about early child development, rather than asking online or asking a friend, discuss your concerns first with the pediatrician.

Be sure to attend all those annoying and time consuming well visits. The pediatrician should be requesting well visits and providing forms with tasks to complete and document with your child before the well visits. You may be wondering what I should be documenting for the pediatrician?

Some helpful things to discuss with your healthcare provider:

Sleep schedule

Eating schedules or difficulty

Anything of concern

Fine/Gross motor development

Behaviors

Difficulties

Anything that seems unusual

You don’t track any of these things, you say? Why would you track anything relating to your child? After all, you aren’t one of those “anxious and a worried helicopter parents,” right? Everything will always work out in the end, in every single case. Wrong! They don’t always “grow out of it!”

It is fine to move through and “not worry,” as long as your child doesn’t actually need extra support. Please understand that by refusing to be aware of certain benchmarks: you could be missing issues that need to be addressed, or at the very least, discussed.

You have to put in the effort to notice what is going on in your child’s development. After contacting the pediatrician, if you believe something is off, insist on a referral to an OT for an evaluation, plus a referral to the public school early intervention program. Documenting and visiting the pediatrician may seem like overkill, but why not let a professional decide if it is overkill?

An outside opinion can help you move forward. If you believe that something is going on and aren’t being taken seriously, seek a second or third professional opinion.

Extensive documentation is key, be sure to provide as much information, records, and documentation as to aid professionals who can then support your child and family. There are thousands of dollars in therapies and services available to children, given by donors who want to help.

Seeking help should never be stigmatized.

What is the worst thing that could happen if you start the process of documenting and discussing your child with professionals? Documenting does take work, and those appointments do take time and money. As parents, we are spending time, money, and effort on our children anyway, so we might as well have the very best information and support available. We, as a community, can only benefit by understanding that:

We don't know everything, and sometimes we need support from a professional. Seeking the best resources for our children should never be stigmatized!
Portis joins FIO as an Affiliate Member
Tags: Blockchain, Wallet, Interoperability, Ethereum, Bitcoin

Interoperability is a pain point whose priority continues to increase as more and more projects and protocols launch in the blockchain space. Every new technology requires a certain level of agnostic compatibility with existing services if its aim is to be truly scalable. Imagine the internet with 50 different protocols. What a hot mess!

While we are making great strides, crypto holders still have to deal with the separation that exists between different protocols and their corresponding wallets.

If you’ve experienced the one-button simplicity of traditional payment platforms like Venmo, you know how complicated crypto transactions appear in comparison.

Despite the friction inherent in their usability, people have created over 36 million wallets during the last decade. That means cryptocurrency wallets are the most used blockchain applications in the world. Such a core component of this industry should be as easy to use as possible. It is important for us to acknowledge that this is a problem and to work together to solve it.

As you know, Portis makes signing into and using DApps a smooth, simple experience for everyone. In the same vein, FIO is revolutionizing inter-wallet operability with the FIO Protocol. It is therefore with great pleasure that we officially announce our Affiliate Membership with FIO, in support of the FIO Protocol.

“It’s going to do for blockchain what HTTP did for the internet”, according to David Gold, founder and CEO of Dapix, who is behind the FIO protocol

The FIO protocol (pronounced fee-oh) will enable a number of common features. Users will be able to choose their own unique wallet identifier, similar to a username or email address. They will also be able to request payments from other users by name, and publicly comment about their participation in past transactions. This is not a trivial undertaking. At present, most naming systems are specific to a particular application or blockchain. You can learn more about these exciting features here.

“It’s exciting to have a project like Portis that shares our vision of making blockchain easy to use become a member of the Foundation for Interwallet Operability to help the FIO Protocol become an industry standard for blockchain usability”, added Gold.

There are already 21 companies intending to support the FIO protocol. This includes leaders in the space like Shapeshift, BRD, MyCrypto, and now: Portis. The FIO protocol is a necessity for the continued adoption of decentralized finance and e-commerce.

The FIO platform is going live on mainnet at the end of this year, so stay tuned, as we will also integrate it into Portis later on. Currently, FIO is inviting various wallets to join and support the FIO Protocol by applying for membership. Users will be able to reserve their wallet names before the FIO protocol goes live. Don’t miss out on your chance to choose yours!

The Portis Team

Have any questions? Join the conversation on our Telegram and Twitter. Ready to #BUIDL? Head on to our docs.
Sunset
Tags: Poetry, Portraits, Sky Collection, Sunset, Indian Summer

Sunset

A portrait of an indian summer sunset

Photo by David Mullins on Unsplash

His eyes

Were watching

Nature strip

Down her

Neon vernacular

To blue skies

Dressed in

An orange peel skirt

With lips

That taste

Of cinnamon

Raindrops.

2020 MDSHall
Ballerina’s Forever Love
By: Lisa Tomey
Tags: Dancing, Microfiction, Romance, The Friday Fix, Short Story

50 Words Microfiction

Ballerina’s Forever Love

Dancing to the end of time

Photo by David Hofmann on Unsplash

Tugging at the ties on her slippers, stressing the points of support, her gaze drifted to his black tie dangling from the hook. Jumping from her perch, she danced past the tie, leapt to the air, and fell just in time for him to catch her last breath into forever.
Getting Better Performance From Docker On Mac OS
By: İbrahim Gündüz
Tags: Performance, Mac, Docker

I had used Docker For Mac too for a limited time. However, I had lots of filesystems accessing related performance issues and then decided to return back to my initial setup based on docker-machine.

Let’s simulate the issue before setting up the environment if you’re still a Docker for Mac user.

Simulate The Issue:

Create a large file to be copied to a container in order to see how slow it is.

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=large_file.dat bs=1g count=1

Check the file size:

$ du -sh large_file.dat 1.0G large_file.dat

Create a new container from any Linux image:

$ docker run — name demo -d alpine:latest /sbin/init

Copy the file to the container filesystem from the host machine disk. I preferred to put time command before docker cp in order to see the time spending.

$ time docker cp large_file.dat demo:/. docker cp large_file.dat demo:/. 4.40s user 5.81s system 18% cpu 55.276 total

Solution

Basically, you can install a virtual machine and expose docker engine service to outside. Docker CLI can execute all the commands anywhere you want. In my case, I built the whole setup by hand regarding VM, docker, and filesystem. However, I think using docker-machine is more than enough and easy to explain for me also :)

Please don’t forget to uninstall `Docker for Mac` from your Mac device if you already installed before. You can check the following Stack Overflow post regarding uninstallation process:

Requirements

* Virtualbox (https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads)

* Docker Client (https://docs.docker.com/install/linux/docker-ce/binaries/#install-client-binaries-on-macos)

* Docker Machine (https://docs.docker.com/machine/install-machine/)

Let’s get started!

Create a new machine for docker with docker-machine

$ docker-machine create --driver virtualbox default

Evaluate the environment variables produced by docker-machine with the following command, in order to tell the current Docker host to docker client.

$ docker-machine env default export DOCKER_TLS_VERIFY=”1"

export DOCKER_HOST=”tcp://192.168.99.100:2376"

export DOCKER_CERT_PATH=”/Users/ibrahimgunduz/.docker/machine/machines/default”

export DOCKER_MACHINE_NAME=”default”

# Run this command to configure your shell:

# eval $(docker-machine env default)

You can simply call `eval` with the command above.

$ eval(docker-machine env default)

That’s it.

You can add those environment variables into your bash profile (.bashrc) to be able to use that machine after each restart.

Let’s apply the first test again.
Loyalty versus Obsequiousness Through the Lens of Donald Trump
By: Aaron Ross Powell
Tags: Donald Trump, Politics, Culture, Philosophy, Morality

Loyalty versus Obsequiousness Through the Lens of Donald Trump

A loyal person is never an obsequious person.

Donald Trump demands loyalty from those around him. It’s why he fired James Comey, why he’s mad at Jeff Sessions, and why he pulled John Brennan’s security clearance. He makes everyone passing through his orbit sign non-disclosure agreements, a kind of explicit loyalty oath by way of legal documents.

Yet, for someone so concerned with loyalty, Donald Trump doesn’t know quite what loyalty is. I don’t just mean in the sense that he believes loyalty to be unilateral. For Trump, you are loyal to him. But he is never loyal to you. It’s not clear he even understands what bilateral loyalty would entail.

No, the real problem with Trump’s notion of loyalty is that he’s confused the term with obsequiousness. The former is a virtue, the latter a vice. Loyalty is earned, and continues through a relationship of respect. I am loyal to you because you deserve my loyalty through your continuing demonstration of the characteristics that earned it in the first place.

Obsequiousness, on the other hand, is evidence of a failure of character on the part of the obsequious. Where loyalty comes from a recognition of the worthy traits of another, obsequiousness comes from an internalized sense of servility. Loyalty is about me recognizing your lofty traits. Obsequiousness is instead about me not having strong and worthy traits of my own.

That Trump in fact demands the latter is a telling condemnation of both his personal character and his abilities as a leader. It is a sign of the deep insecurity that is perhaps the president’s single most defining trait. A loyal friend remains loyal in part by holding you to the standards that earned you his loyalty in the first place. Loyalty elevates both sides in the relationship. But Trump sees no need to be elevated, because he desperately wants to see himself as the best there’s ever been, while at the same time harboring constant and crippling doubts about the truth of that belief.

That’s why he instead demands obsequiousness. He needs his underlings to praise him, to always remain supine. Deviation must be punished, harshly and thoroughly and without remission until the offender resumes his groveling posture and empty flattery. To allow anything else would be to admit that loyalty is contingent on quality, and that Trump is maybe not as quality as his fragile ego has convinced himself he is.

Donald Trump is a failure of a man. He has worldly success, yes, but as a person, as a moral being, as a figure to be admired, he falls breathtakingly short. His confusion of loyalty for obsequiousness is but one piece of evidence that deep down, wherever a tiny remnant of his humanity might be found, he recognizes that truth.
Trapeze artists like “net work” events
By: Andy Anderson
Tags: Humor, Cartoon, Comics, Networking Event, Funny

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