fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Music Montages Are Food for The Soul
By: Akos Peterbencze
Tags: Culture, Television, Music, TV Series, The Sopranos

In another life, I’d like to be a director or a video editor that can make people experience a range of emotions through music and pictures. Being a writer is something similar because I get to do the same with words if I’m lucky. Sometimes, I can capture and paint a perfect moment by using words, and that’s a magical thing to do. I live for those moments. Most of us do.

However, being able to trigger emotions from others through a combination of pictures, dialogues, and music is something much purer. It’s more difficult, but the impact is bigger and stronger too.

I bumped into this video a few days ago, and I can’t stop watching it. Ever since my adolescent years, The Sopranos grew to become my favorite television show. I re-watch episodes and seasons randomly every year, and it always gives me something different to think about. The last time I saw it, I realized so many traits I share with Tony Soprano that I wasn’t able to put my finger on before. It inspired me to write a long personal essay in which I talked about therapy, feelings, the toxicity of nostalgia, and the inevitable change.

As we go through life, meet different people and lose others we love, we also develop connections to fictional characters that we view from different perspectives. They don’t change, but we do, and that causes an emotional shift we feel towards them. However, one thing never changes: they keep teaching us something new about ourselves, and I think that’s part of the reason why we return to see them time and time again.
PODCAST: Rain Plans, not Pandemic Plans
By: Glenn Bugala
Tags: Design Thinking, Isinsights, Covid 19, Adaptability, Coronavirus

In this episode of the Social Impact Design for Business podcast, Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks of Michigan Ross’ +Impact Studio interviews Tabitha Mason, Managing Partner of Zingerman’s Cornman Farms, an event venue, a culinary destination and a working farm in Dexter, MI. Tabitha is looking for ways to continue their work in light of coronavirus, and consideration for branching out into new areas, using creative thinking.

LISTEN TO PODCAST
Timeless Advice I Wish I’d Followed Earlier in My Career
By: Michael Thompson
Tags: Entrepreneurship, Work, Business, Life Lessons, Self Improvement

1. Learn to smile at trouble

One of my closest childhood friends has built and sold multiple 8-digit businesses. A few years ago when I asked him for his best piece of career advice he gave a hat tip to a woman he worked under when he started his career —

“I need 3 things from you while we‘re going through this troubling time. I need you to be punctual. I need you to be present. And I need you to be positive.”

Getting angry when things go wrong is the easy choice. However, the people who make an impact in the world while gaining the trust of their peers, work hard to focus on the things they can control. And they start by learning how to properly manage their emotions.

Train yourself to become a forward-thinker when life pushes you back. Make sure the people on your team are okay instead of adding to the hysterics. Brainstorm ways to identify the positive aspects of each negative situation in order to take just one step forward.

Then, if you’re still pissed, grab a friend, go outside, and unleash hell for a few minutes before getting back to work.

Sebastian Nadal, father of tennis champion Rafa Nadal got it right — “A tennis match has never been won by complaining.”
Lions and Gazelles
By: Ben Goodwin
Tags: Prose, Love Letters, Short Story, Fiction, New York City

As the frat boys roll into the Lower East Side––their collars popped and their Docksiders worn with salt water from the deck of Daddy’s boat––I stay close to the walls hoping to go unseen.

Their girlfriends are impossibly tall, their legs going all the way up, with boots that cover their knees and skirts that go nowhere. They look foreign to me as if sometime a few thousand years ago we split off in separate directions down the evolutionary road.

They are gazelles and lions while I’m a fisher cat slinking through the shadows.

But back at my apartment, with the music switching been Lana Del Rey and Richard Thompson, there are limbs and whiskey that have come from a million different directions. We’ve come from old families and broken ones. We’ve come from black sands and swamps, and we’ve come from towering buildings with doormen who raised us as much as anyone else. We’ve come from trailers and mansions, our bodies and minds as varied as the changing streets that crawl off into the hidden places we don’t yet know.

Sometimes I wonder if our kissing and undressing is simply another way to cope with the swirling mess outside our windows.

If our naked bodies, slick with sweat and beautifully bruised, let us melt into the night as much as the heels and backwards hats do. We laugh loudly and often, even as thighs part and lips becomes wet with anticipation. We move between staring in awe and drifting off behind closed eyes while the world holds us without thought.

The elegant animals on the streets howl into the evening as we pull sounds from our own lips, drowning out the noise from below.
Por donde pisa Luca no crece el pasto
By: Cátedra Alarcón
Tags: 2016, Luca Prodan, Oscar Jalil

in Both Sides of the Table
Buscando superheroes en Axa para (eco)transformar los seguros
Tags: Sensibilización, Formación, Axa, Cambio Climatico, Medio Ambiente

in Both Sides of the Table
Fashion Can Color Our Future World
By: Desiree Driesenaar
Tags: Climate Change, Colors, Vision, Fashion, Sustainability

Abundant Materials

Our industrial way of producing fashion has put us in patterns of pollution. We have stopped being creative and thinking about ways to do it differently. Materials are a big part of that wrong choice. In a report by the Laudes Foundation in 2020, a breakdown of the 60 million tonnes used in home textiles and fashion is shown.

Fashion materials. Laudes Foundation 2020.

In the report, they focus mainly on circular ways to retrieve back the fibers and the chemicals used in the processes. Well, in my opinion, that’s not ambitious enough. Our oceans are heavily polluted by microplastics. This scientific study from 2019 shows the burden Gaia has to bear because of our clothes washing.

“Results showed that microfibres released during washing range from 124 to 308 mg for kg of washed fabric.” —Nature.com

How many kg do you wash? 5 kg per week? A small calculation: 7.8 billion people x 5 kg x 52 weeks = 2,000 billion kg of washing.

On average, say, 200 mg microfibers per kg = 400 million kg of microfibers every year wash into our oceans.

Hmm… in our future world of care and responsibility, that’s something the fashion industry is responsible for. And should FEEL responsible for. They should invest heavily in innovation programs to solve it all.

The good news is, the road to nature-based solutions is ready for pilgrimage.

Our sustainable future is a local one. We will be producing everything for basic needs locally. No need for shipping long distances. No need for exploiting other cultures. Just creating with what the soil and sea give us in our local environment.

I use the term nature-based solutions often. We are creating solutions that benefit humans (basic needs and vibrant economic activity) and local ecosystems.

So, what would that mean for fashion? The fibers we need for clothes can be found in cotton. But that material needs a lot of water and is hard to produce without chemicals. So what other bio-based material has appropriate fibers?

Well, please meet the local, abundantly available materials. Examples are bamboo, industrial hemp, fungi, stingy nettles, seaweed such as kelp, several kinds of grasses (they grow fast), and whatever the inventors busy to transform the world can come up with.

Okay, the first problem solved.
Mental Illness Issues
By: David Kain
Tags: Drug Addiction, Drinking, Written Tales, Mental Health, Poetry

Old records play, usually

They do not not fuel a thing, but they are company

The boat to Hades

Often such ships travel one-way

But, I plan to return in the morrow
Falling
By: Artist Sarah Long
Tags: Artist, Love Letters, Short Story, Art, Love

You wouldn’t recognize me if you saw me now cause I’m different. And even though you only saw me twice, I know I caught your eye, and I made you shy…

And now…

I’d probably take your breath away, and I just started being the real me so it’s only gonna get scarier, the more you get to know me, ‘cause…

You won’t be able to stop yourself from falling for me.

But at least you’ll be where I’m at, cause I fell for you the second I saw you and, I’ve been waiting for you to catch up.

So I’d love it if you’d stop running and….let’s go fuck.

Audio Art

LET’S BE SOCIAL

Connect with me via my favorite hangouts;

+ @ ArtistSarahLong on Instagram

+ @AlcoholInkArtStories

+ @ ArtistSarahLong on Facebook

+ Artist Sarah Long on YouTube

+ Confessions of an Empath on YouTube

More about me at artistsarahlong.com
How to Create Threads Seamlessly on Twitter
By: Lucy The Eggcademic, She Her
Tags: Marketing, Twitter, Twitter Threads, Social Media, Innovation

How to Create Threads Seamlessly on Twitter

A (non-sponsored) review of the Typefully App

If you’ve been puzzled by Twitter threads for a long time, I’ve just discovered a thread-making app for Twitter that might make it easier for you! It’s relatively new so there are a few things to be desired, but already has some solid functionality that I’m excited to use on a more regular basis!

Get the scoop from the gal who has over 127 threads and at one point programmed her own in-house app (named Lucy’s Microwave) to automate some of the boring parts of creating threads!

screenshot of typefully app by author

Minimalist aesthetic: It’s split into two sides, with a left side that appears as a seamless document and a right side that shows you what the thread looks like in thread view. The familiarity of the document side might work best for writers like you (and I) who get frustrated by the ticking word count timer when creating Twitter threads on the platform itself. Seamless login: One-click via Twitter authentication. Took about 5-seconds. Easy to use: The platform is mostly intuitive, with the user interface clearly showing you where to start writing because of how closely it mirrors standard document/ writing apps. Multimedia is the weak point: It’s not immediately apparent nor apparent after some more extensive search (5-minutes, shh, I’m an impatient consumer) whether this app supports multimedia uploads like gifs, photos, videos. The text-based editor is optimized to serve a subset of Twitter users, but not all. Diverse potential uses: Medium publication daily digests? Lists? Reviews? Rants? The thread format supports a lot of potential options.

The Twitter thread version of this review pictured in the cover photo is available here:
Automating employee engagement & social impact programs for HR teams
By: Linda D. King
Tags: Hr Dashboard, Hr Resources, Employee Engagement, Event Management, UX

Designing the Dashboard — A UX Case Study

Business intelligence is growing and HR is no exception to this growth. Talent is becoming a scarce commodity in today’s workplace especially in the millennial era where millennials are self aware of their value and very comfortable leaving an unappealing job.

As the demand for job satisfaction grows, businesses must seek innovative ways to attract and retain employees. Social impact programs help by providing employee engagement through business immersion, leadership development, and volunteerism.

Companies are challenged when using multiple platforms to plan, track, and obtain feedback for all events and programs. Allowing clients to manage events and programs and have the ability to analyze employee feedback in real-time helps increase overall employee engagement. Enter a new HR platform — EPOCH — connecting employees to community engagement opportunities.

EPOCH is an employee engagement platform for companies to increase social impact and cross-functional connections. EPOCH partners exclusively with top community organizations, personally curates relevant opportunities to employees, and handles logistics end-to-end to put together an event for the workplace.

The Brief and Our Team

The EPOCH dashboard project started with our client, Jade, needing a redesign of EPOCH’s current HR dashboard to make it more user friendly and visually appealing as well as developing the walkthrough process for the user and streamlining the current process to organize, track, and gather feedback for employee events. Our team consisted of 3 UX Designers, which includes myself, and 1 UI Designer, with a project timeline of three weeks.
KnownOrigin.io x Auctionity Creative Challenge
By: Domraider Team
Tags: Nft, Digital Art, Blockchain, Ethereum, Auction

KnownOrigin.io x Auctionity Creative Challenge

Auctionity partners with KnownOrigin and sets up a creative challenge dedicated to digital art as non-fungible tokens.

Auctionity partners with KnownOrigin.io to promote digital art

Hey there! Want to know more about our collaboration with KnownOrigin? You’ll have to head over to our new blog to read the rest of the post!
15 Reasons You’ll Love Programming
By: Michael Macaulay
Tags: Careers, Programming, Web Development, Coding, Software Development

Balance between theory & practice

Knowledge is power… so they say. But is it? You can be extremely knowledgeable about many different subjects and still be a complete failure. Just take a look at most college graduates these days. Knowledge is only useful if you can put it into practice. There needs to be a “rubber meets the road” moment.

We collectively waste thousands of hours memorizing information that has no practical application. As a history buff, I can be honest about the fact that most of what I learned doesn’t actually help me. Some history is great, for sure. I think viewing the world through the eyes of other people at different times makes you more well-rounded. But after a while, there’s a diminishing return on investment. I may as well have spent my time memorizing jeopardy questions.

But that’s why programming is different. Everything is abstract. But at the same time, it is practical. You can use these abstract theories to create a machine learning algorithm that changes the world tomorrow. Or, build a website that millions of people find useful.

Programming is the perfect balance between abstract theory and practical application. There’s never been and never will be anything quite like it.

The true beauty of programming is that you can have a “rubber meets the road” moment at your home computer. Does the website work? Yes? Deploy it so people can use it!

Most careers & activities require a lot more to get started. You have to spend a long time in medical school before they let you perform an operation on someone. There is no “self-taught doctor.” And if your doctor told you he learned everything he knows by Googling stuff, you’d probably leave the hospital.
Cassandra series
By: Edwin Maldonado
Tags: Cql, Cqlsh, Cassandra, NoSQL, Howto

Hey Hackers and Players!

I have decided to start a new ‘series’ of posts about the Apache Cassandra database or Cassandra for short which its community has been growing fast in the last months.

I stumbled upon with Cassandra like about six months ago while I was reading about Big Data and the different tools that you can use, but I did not put my hands on this lady (Cassandra) until four months ago when the Bluekite’s CTO (Kyle) assigned me to a new project … this project was a ‘simple’ but sick fast API for register specific events on the different modules of the rest of the API’s family.

Alright my first thoughts about this new project were … ‘Ok this is going to be a fancy way to present logs’ … and by brain was ready to deal with a relational DBMS like PostgreSQL but meh, I was completely wrong, after several days of research I finally found out how to deal with Cassandra and the different ways available to interact with it.

It took me some time to deal with the no-sql and distributed patterns that Cassandra offers, I almost did not sleep those days and I know that it can be hard to just run for the adventure.

So my plan is to write some posts about getting started with Cassandra and share the different tricks that I have discovered during my adventure.

Until the next episode hackers!

— Mckain.
One Way We’re Staying Sane, While Staying Home Together
By: Katherine Grace
Tags: Self Care, Mental Health, Resilience, Coronavirus, Marriage

My husband has been home for work since the beginning of March (unrelated to the Coronavirus) and he will continue to be home from work until, at the earliest, April 13. I am now working my ‘day’ job from home as well as writing from here — all day, everyday. We’ve come up with one way to help our individual mental and emotional health needs while also nourishing our marriage.

Turns out it is a pretty simple concept:

we sit down and have lunch at the table together.

During lunch we can check-in on each other’s projects, share our Coronavirus concerns and news, and ask each other what we need to focus on for our afternoons. Simple.

Easy?

Only time will tell.

But we’re hoping it helps us in a couple of ways:

A committed time of connection in our otherwise meandering, self-directed days.

Not talking about the Coronavirus and its effects the rest of the day will offer us space to breathe, to rest our nerves, and to focus on the many projects and tasks we are both simultaneously working on.

A chance to have a sit-down meal that is homemade, enjoying each others company and, on days like today, the beautiful clear skies and views across our little valley.

Some accountability to each other for our individual projects — I know I’ve been having an awful time focusing on my current work-in-progress and knowing I will be asked what I got done this morning helps me focus just that little bit more.

Time to step away from our projects and deadlines — to rest our working selves, time to engage in a little mid-day flirting. Who knows, some days we may find ourselves flirting our way into the bedroom and we could both use as much extra oxytocin as possible right now!

I’m hopeful about this new plan for not staying stuck in fear (I was refreshing the various news websites way too much to be healthy last weekend), or stuck in solitary project mode (he can get really hyper-focused and forget to eat on time or to pause and breathe throughout the day).

I’m curious how other couples who are working from home together during this pandemic are dealing with it? Do they have any scheduled moments like our lunch? How are they negotiating these changes in their routines?

I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas — any solutions you’ve found, or problems you’re seeking ways to manuver through during this social distancing, fear-filled pandemic.

Please leave a response below and let’s all support each other!
Risk management and indicators…
By: Bertrand Maltaverne
Tags: Procurement, Risk Management, Kpi

In business, everybody knows the word KPI which stands for Key Performance Indicator. When talking about risk, you can talk about KRI a.k.a. Key Risk Indicator.

KPIs and KRIs are, in some ways, very similar: KPIs measure performance, KRIs measure risk.

But…

KPIs are about performance, that is about the past.

KRIs are about risks; things that may go wrong in the future.

They measure the level of exposure and impact.
G.A. Cohen on Marx on Exploitation
By: Alexander Douglas
Tags: Economics, Marx, Philosophy

The introduction is nice and short; it reads:

This essay shows that the relationship between the labor theory of value and the concept of exploitation is one of mutual irrelevance. The labor theory of value is not a suitable basis for the charge of exploitation laid against capitalism by Marxists, and the real foundation of that charge is something much simpler which, for reasons to be stated, is widely confused with the labor theory of value.

I hope you know what the labour theory of value is. If not, you get this rough definition. The Labour Theory of Value (LTV) is:

the theory that the exchange value of a commodity is determined by the amount of labour that goes into it.

So if a fork exchanges on the market for two spoons, a fork must take twice as much labour to make as the spoon. (I’m thinking about making the little tines; I’m not a silversmith.) I’m going to shorten “exchange value” to “value”. The other sort, use value, I’ll call by its full name. This is what Marx did, and if it was good enough for him…

Marx liked the LTV, though he knew that in more complicated economies the relation between exchange-ratios and values is mitigated by other factors, though this isn’t such a serious problem as some people say. Cohen says that the LTV doesn’t help his theory of exploitation. In fact he thinks it ruins it. Cohen reads the theory of exploitation as holding, roughly, that while labour creates the full value of a commodity, capitalists keep some of that value for themselves, and that’s exploitation.

This is all pretty loose. By “keep some of that value for themselves”, I mean that capitalists make a profit. If the produced commodities sell for $1000, and they pay the workers that made them $900, they thereby exploit the workers to extract a profit of $100.

Anyway, the point is that the LTV is featuring here, in the notion that labour creates the full value of a commodity.
Artists, Why a Healthy Ego is Far Less an Evil Than False Modesty
By: Joel Eisenberg
Tags: Writers On Writing, Writing, Mental Health, Art, Ego

Steve Martin once said, “Be so good at something you can’t be ignored.” I love the quote, and I daily do what I can to meet what I believe is my promise.

Consider this example. You’re on an athletic team. Your coach says, “Be better than the rest of them. Be the best!”

This is said by most any effective coach as a goal for which to strive.

Or, you’re a military vet. Every branch believes themselves to be the strongest of all fighting machines. For all of those brave enough to die for our country in preservation of our freedoms, that sense of self-confidence must be at play or chances are, in the event of combat, they will not be returning home.

Let me ask you this. You are not in the arts, but you have scheduled a job interview. When you sit across from your prospective employer, will you not boast of your skills? Not even a little? Attaining a job through traditional means implies a need on your part to sell someone on your abilities. Are you being honest in that sale, or are you acting?

I’ll say this much. I’ve hired and fired before. If I felt someone was acting, they would not come back unless I saw something in them that they did not see in themselves.

Real talk.
Main Street Hub Mural: Meet Our Graphic Designer, Trent Pettit
By: Main Street Hub
Tags: Graphic Design, Art, Company Culture, Community, Branding

Main Street Hub’s ATX Sales Team just recently moved to a beautiful new downtown office — and with new digs comes exciting new features. One of these features is a two-story mural. Starting at the top with the text “What does local mean to us?,” the mural tells the story of our company, our values and why we have such reverence for local business.

In each of our offices, there is a “local wall,” to remind us why we’re all here — to tell the stories of thousands of local business owners across the country and bring to light everything they do for their communities. This idea was originally cooked up for our HQ by Manager, Community Management Molly Raisch who just celebrated four years with Main Street Hub. In 2014, she collected answers from the team to the question “What does local mean to you?” and spearheaded the project that created a mural to showcase the answers.

“I love that when you walk into our office you’re immediately met with the idea of why we’re here and who we’re working for,” says Molly.

The local mural in our new office is the latest interpretation of her idea our mission.

We talked to Graphic Designer Trent Pettit about his inspiration for the content of the local mural in our ATX Sales Office, and how he turned our values and mission into art.

How long did this mural take you to design?

“It took about five days, give or take some nitpicking before sending it to the printers.”

What was your inspiration for the design of this mural?

“The mural needed to represent Main Street Hub’s values, primarily its commitment to local, and encourage people to take pride in the work that we do as a company. Building out a small town of sorts (inspired in some ways by this children’s carpet) was meant to represent those values in a personable way, which I hope suggested another concept that our company values: authenticity.

“Adding some hints at the company’s history (e.g. Stanford where the Co-CEOs met, the NYC skyline, and the Austin Capitol) seemed like a good way to invite people to identify with the shared work they are doing on behalf of local businesses. I also thought that since the mural was so large, it would just be fun to have a lot of stuff in it, and I thought the patterned look would break up the wall in a satisfying way.”

What challenges did you face while creating the design?

“Scaling. Objects that were about 1/4” on my computer screen scaled to about 6" on the mural wall. I kinda set myself up complexity-wise, and there was a bit of an imaginative gap between what I saw on my screen versus what the final experience would be like after it was scaled. I’m just glad it translated well.”

What’s your favorite section of the mural?

“I like the happy water tower.”
How To Make Your Muscle Building Workouts Short and Effective
By: Nick Wong
Tags: Workout, Health, Fitness, Productivity, Personal Development

Increase Your Workout Intensity

You have to make your workout more intense if you want them to be shorter without sacrificing results. Period.

Here are some ways that you can increase your workout intensity:

Supersets (pairing 2 exercises in each set without rest);

Giant sets (pairing 3 exercises in each set without rest);

Circuit training (doing all exercises in each set and only rest between sets);

Lift heavier weights (ideally failing between 6–12 reps);

Reduce rest time between sets;

Action Time — Implement any of the techniques above to your workouts. There is no one-size-fits-all approach so you have to test each of them to see which works best for you.

Use Your Phone Only For Music or Tracking Progress

People don’t realize how much unnecessary time they are spending on their phones when resting between sets.

Former design architect of Google, Tristan Harris brought up the issue of how modern technology is designed to take up more of the user’s attention. In other words, you are at risk of spending way more time than intended whenever you reach for your phone.

A 30-second rest period can become a 5-minute intensive Instagram scroll, Facebook flood, or YouTuber chase. The extra time spent adds up causing your workout to take longer than it should.

Action time — Limit the usage of your phone if you are working out. If self-control is an issue, leave it at home altogether. Use pen and paper for tracking, mp3 for music if that’s what it takes to save you time.
Heartbroken
By: Patrick M. Ohana
Tags: AI, Haiku, Blue Insights, Poetry, Hearbroken

Heartbroken

She was heartbroken

at his death but remembered

AI and felt well
In times of change, be a change maker
By: Ed Pike
Tags: Entrepreneurship, Leadership Development, Emotional Intelligence, Change, Leadership

Bite sized leadership advice

Times of change are times of opportunity.

When change, or crisis impacts an organisation a new normal is established.

Not all aspects of a new normal are defined, which gives space for opportunities to define what the new normal looks like.

Whilst some paralyse during times of change, see it as a time of opportunity and a chance to make a difference. Create the new normal.

Be proactive and empowered, ask for forgiveness rather than permission.

You might be surprised with what you can achieve and how you can differentiate yourself as a leader and change maker.

In times of change, be a change maker.

This is part of our Leadership Wizdom series, bite sized leadership advice for leaders who wish to improve their leadership, but don’t have much time. For more indepth articles check out The Change Wizard
Drone Planting for Moonhack
By: Code Club Australia
Tags: Moonhack, Teachers, Coding, Schools, Kids

Drone Planting Game

Scratch, it’ll always be our fave! It’s the easiest place to start for newbies of any age, it gives immediate success (no grammatical errors to stop your project from working) and it’s intuitive and accessible (available in a bunch of different languages!)

This Scratch project is one of our favourite too!

This past summer has been one of the most traumatic for our community in Australia; bushfires, hail, floods. Our natural environment has taken a beating!

We created this game to simplify the tech around deforestation into a gamified and kid-friendly solution. And, what’s better — this product is real! US company Droneseed does exactly this! Check out their video below:

Here in Australia, a lot of Australian natives actually regenerate on their own after fire. So, while some of this tech wouldn’t be necessary, it’s a great example of how we could bring tech into the real world and build opportunities beyond just bush regeneration.

What about communities that have been victims of dust-storms that have removed all trace of native grasses? Or if introduced species have destroyed native flora?

Perhaps there are ways to add these extra ideas into your game? The great thing about Scratch (and any coding) is that these lessons are just the building blocks to build something bigger, better and all about you!

Getting Started

This Scratch project is the perfect start for new coders.

It’s not too complicated, and it’s GREAT fun! This game is perfect for beginner and intermediate Scratch users.

The project instructions are available at Moonhack.com/projects

If you’re an offline Scratch user, you can download the Starter Project first, or add your own sprites — just the drone, and then a tree sprite with multiple costumes.

If you’re a teacher, this is a great one to get kids started on coding in your classroom. For more info check out our curriculum blog post.

What’s next?

How could you extend this project? Every project has challenges to help extend students beyond the existing lesson. But there are other ways you could build on this too.

Maybe once the ground is full of seeds you need to fertilise them to make them grow? And then water them?

Register your participation in Moonhack at moonhack.com. Don’t miss out on being counted!
TANSTAAFL
By: Mike Essig
Tags: Society, Illusion, Poetry, Class, Politics

Whatever is given can be taken.

Life is mostly misery soup

doled out every day

concentration camp style.

It could be much worse.

Or so we are told and told.

Those who dispense the gruel

insist we worship, not bite,

the loving hands that starve us.

Do not dare to ask for more.

The masters want the other

ninety-nine percent themselves

and intend to keep it.

They decide your portion.

Your duty is to slurp it

and be glad it is not less.

Or so we are told and told.

The lunch you think is free

only costs your humanity.
Our meeting …
By: Ulrich Djowamon
Tags: Passion, Sex, Poetry, Weddings, Love

credit to macadam13 on Pixabay

We met that day,

exchanged our numbers,

getting to know each other,

hoping to build something.

Then we met.

Despite the distance between us,

we spent time together —

beautiful moments of sharing and emotion.

As we found ourselves face to face,

I was lost the beauty of your eyes,

heart racing,

you before me, admiring.

I hope there will be another,

a story of time spent together,

moments engraving our hearts,

forever, despite the distance between us.

Since that day, I found destiny,

in every moment with you,

the most beautiful meeting of my life.

Together, we will build our paradise.
The Toronto Marlies are helping shape the present and future
By: Luke Casaletto
Tags: Hockey, Sports, Sports Features, NHL

The formula of sustainability in today’s NHL isn’t as strenuous as it’s made out to be. The league’s best teams almost always find ways to plug its holes by filling them with prospects or established players from within the AHL. They’re production is often overlooked mainly due to responsibility and playing time.

When a player is recalled from the AHL, it’s usually to take on a small role — typically in the bottom six. Sometimes, one will take off and stay in the lineup a lot longer than expected. Others are relegated to the press box, looking down on teammates (a stark contrast to playing almost every game in the AHL).

Of the league’s elite, the Tampa Bay Lightning have had ample success in this area. Few could have predicted Jonathan Marchessault’s rise from AHL regular to a first-line talent. But it’s unquestionably impressive how the Lightning have been able to keep its terrific core intact while subsequently surrounding those players with cheap, two-way depth.

Alex Killorn, Ondrej Palat, and Yanni Gourde are the headliners here. The trio were developed at a slow pace, graduated to the NHL, and have since been rewarded for their play with long-term contracts. On a different scale, the Lightning have received contributions from draft selections Mathieu Joseph, Anthony Cirelli, and Adam Erne — three players that have thrived in lesser roles. Together, in a variety of situations, this group has combined to a game score of 3.76; an awfully good mark for bottom-six regulars.

On top of drafting well, the front office has done a hell of a job locking down its core of Steven Stamkos, Nikita Kucherov and Victor Hedman, with breakout star Brayden Point as the next one due for a significant raise. The Toronto Maple Leafs are nearing some tough decision making of its own, with general manager Kyle Dubas confidently pronouncing these words earlier in the season when he was asked if the organization will be able to keep all of William Nylander, Auston Matthews, and Mitch Marner together for the long run.

“We can, and we will,” Dubas now famously uttered.

As of now it’s three down and one to go with Marner as the last member of the big three due for a contract.
A Beast Bit My Face and Changed Me For the Better
By: Olya Aman
Tags: Storytelling, Self-awareness, Self Improvement, Self, Self Love

PERSONAL ESSAY

A Beast Bit My Face and Changed Me For the Better

My face is different. But ‘different’ doesn’t always mean ‘worse’

Photo by author

I was shocked and, due to that, felt no pain at first. People were shouting and gesturing to one another, trying to figure out how to distract the furious beast. Somehow, I do not recollect exactly how it was pulled from me. The man who helped me in an old blue ‘Zhiguli’ and drove to the village dispensary and later to the nearest town hospital was the owner of the dog. In the hospital, I got nine stitches in four places on my face.

The doctor that performed the work of reconstructing my face did not know about cosmetic stitching. He simply decided the way he would do it was going to be sufficient. During the procedure, I concentrated on his deep, fine-tuned voice. To listen to him was like drinking warm ginger tea on a frosty winter day, and very likely it served as the best anesthetic for me. His work was not bad, just not good.

I have the scars, one is very visible, and people often ask about it. I consider it a part of my unique personality. I like my face. I love myself the way God created me and the way life, not always gentle, adjusted the sacred work.

Thoughts about my mother, her loving face darkened by suffering because of the incident, overpowered the fear of thread, needle, and pain. And even during the recovery, when the only recollection of the event made me shake with uncontrollable sobbing — the result of a great fright — I tried to compose myself with enormous energy. One glance at my mother’s eyes with a distinct element of worry pulled me together, and I did my best to laugh.
Shunyata: The Emptiness of Essence
By: Vasuman Ravichandran
Tags: Essentialism, Buddhism, Philosophy, Nihilism, Skepticism

Shunyata: The Emptiness of Essence

Examining a non-nihilistic denial of essentialism

Photo by Jeremy Perkins on Unsplash

For millennia, philosophers have debated whether essences (svabhāva) are real entities. In the West, the essentialist doctrine was famously espoused by Plato’s Theory of Ideas which claimed that real-world objects are imitations of transcendent Forms.

In his book The History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell criticizes this view, claiming that it conflates a linguistic convention with metaphysical ontology.

We apply the same name, on different occasions, to somewhat different occurrences, which we regard as manifestations of a single “thing” or “person”. In fact, however, this is only a verbal convenience. […] The question is purely linguistic: a word may have an essence, but a thing cannot.

The debate in the Indian subcontinent, however, was not focused on the substantiveness of physical things, but the true nature of phenomenal experiences.

It centered around whether the fundamental constituents of experience (dharma) like consciousness (citta), thoughts (cetasika) and physical forms (rūpa); were real entities or just useful — but ultimately fictitious — conceptual constructs.
King
By: Alan Asnen
Tags: Martin Luther King, Resistance Poetry, Poetry, History, Spirituality

The last true image we have*

in our minds of him

frozen; all pictures since

move through video

with wavy lines

and electric clouds of color,

shifting gear; but this stands still

the economy of justice at last

redeemed in memory

and there, fixed, nonviolent

but damaged, like a tear

in the curtain of glory:

three people stand and point

eyes wide and narrow

fingers up

pointing up

up

up

players on a stage

figures in a Florentine frieze

pointing up

there he goes

up

up

pointing

their fingers struggling

that labor has been lost

feeling that rend, frozen

in the curtain of glory.
Fireworks
By: Dan Leicht
Tags: Haiku, Poetry, New Year, Fireworks, Poem

Fiction writer. Coffee enthusiast. Writer of romance, mystery, and humor. Discover more at Patreon.com/danleicht and DanLeicht.com

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Accurate Stockpile Measurement with Drones
Tags: Drones, Surveys, Construction, Mining

Accurate Stockpile Measurement with Drones

A free guide to measuring stockpiles and gathering accurate inventory counts with UAVs.

Whether you work in the construction, mining, or aggregates sectors, stockpile management is a critical requirement on any job site. But measuring stockpiles can be unsafe, time-consuming, and expensive. This puts you in a difficult position. You need accurate data to run your business operations, but you shouldn’t have to send your survey team into the field for hours to clamber across stockpiles on a dangerous job site.

What if you could gather the same survey data in minutes from the safety of the ground, all while achieving higher accuracy and freeing up your survey team to focus on other high-priority projects? Sound too good to be true? Nope. Drones can help.

While you may be familiar with drone photography, drones are also a trusted tool for surveying and measurement. They eliminate many of the challenges companies face with traditional survey solutions. And drones paired with powerful photogrammetry software from DroneDeploy can help lower your data collection costs, increase accuracy, save you time, and keep your team out of harm’s way — all without having to hire an entire survey team or invest in expensive laser or lidar hardware.

“Everyone should be using drones for stockpile analysis. It’s miles ahead of standard surveying.” — Tecia White, President at Whitewater Hydrogeology Ltd. Read the full case study

Over the last 4 years, our team has worked with thousands of customers measuring stockpiles with drones. In that time, we’ve learned the techniques that produce highly-accurate results that our customers expect from DroneDeploy.

In our latest eBook, we take a deep dive into the stockpile measurement workflow using DroneDeploy—covering best practices and answers to the most frequently asked questions from our customers.

Download the new eBook to learn:
Knock Out Big Writing Goals in a Few Minutes Per Day
By: N. K. Carlson
Tags: Writing, Productivity, Time Management, Creativity, Writing Tips

Knock Out Big Writing Goals in a Few Minutes Per Day

Small amounts of writing add up in a big way.

Photo by Samantha Gades on Unsplash

Does it feel like you never have time to write? Same. I recently started a new full time job and it feels like I am suffocating. When I come home, the last thing I want to do is look at a computer screen. I want to read or sleep.

There are some who advocate writing seven days a week, 365 days per year. I don’t agree. Breaks and rest are fine as long as they don’t turn into week long breaks. Try to write five days per week and rest the other two. Even five minutes a day, five days a week will add up over the course of a year.

Let’s look at the math.

In a five minute sprint (with a good outline or a good idea of my direction) I can get up to 300 words. That’s not every sprint, so I’ll discount it all the way down to 150 words. 150 words in five minutes gets you to 750 words per week.

Multiply that times 50 weeks (give yourself a little break here and there) and you get 37,500 words in a whole year. That’s your baseline. That’s your minimum words you should hit for a whole year, if you are serious about writing.

For context, that’s a longer novella or perhaps a book for middle grade readers.

Or that could be fifty-two 720 word articles a year. Minimum.

There is a lot you can do in five minutes. And you have five minutes to spare.

Tips for Getting Your Five Minutes

Set your alarm five minutes earlier. Write for five minutes immediately before bed. Write on your phone in the bathroom. Use your lunch break at work to get five minutes or more in.

Those are just four ways that you can sneak in a five minute writing session into your day. Maybe you have other times or ways you can sneak it into your day. Five minutes is not much, but it’s something we all have. If you committed to five minutes of writing, five days a week, you would be well on your way to meeting your writing goals. All it takes is effort.
How To Create Blog Posts Daily
Tags: Blog, Inspiration, Blogger, Idea, Blogging

Here are some thoughts, ideas, tips, and recommendations into my process that I hope will give you a framework for writing a blog post daily.

Write Blog Posts Daily Tips

Firstly, always have a big list of topic ideas you can pick from each day. Organize and manage your blog writing process. I use a tool called Monday.com to help me plan out my blog posts and track the progress of creating each post from start to finish.

Secondly, If you have multiple categories for your blog, circulate by writing for one category each day to ensure you’re catering for all your reader’s interests. Make sure you’re adding value to each post, it doesn’t matter how big or small.

Moreover, consider adding a ‘thought of the day’ or sharing a short and relevant story that might inspire and motivate your readers in your blog daily posts. This is a great way to keep them coming back for more. Write your post when your mind is fresh, not when your mind is tired or when you lack motivation. I like to write my posts first thing in the mornings.

Finally, write ‘bite-sized’ blog posts that your readers can get through quickly. You don’t always need to write huge pillar articles for your blog. So, there you have it. Just a few quick tips for writing a fresh blog post daily without boring your readers. Hope you enjoyed this short post.

Learn With Time

Never worry about throwing up the occasional “best of” post, once you get enough material. In addition, have a purpose. Without a solid purpose — a reason for blogging — it will be difficult to create content on a regular basis. That’s why purpose is so important. It guides you on your path and makes it that much easier to stick to your goals

Daily Blog Posts Writing Final Words

It’s not easy, but once you develop the habits, they stick with you. I’m writing quite regularly now, but it took me several years to get my groove down to a science. Some days, it’s still thrown off. Busy schedules can get the best of us, no matter what. That said, try to keep some content “in the can,” so that you’re rarely at a loss to keep your audience happy. What do you think? Any other ideas to add?
Talk@NUS Hackers: Building a Distributed Web Crawler
Tags: Software Development, Startup, Programming, DevOps, Tools

I gave a general technical talk on building a distributed web crawler at last Friday’s NUS Hackers meetup. Here are my presentation slides, which I used during the talk.

We are hiring!



If you are interested in joining a fast growing Cloud (80-node EC2 cluster), Mobile (SSH + Screen) and Social (We are all friendly hackers. No ‘ideas’ people.) startup, drop me a mail at varun [at] semantics3.com!
The One Thing That Has More Influence on Your Life Than Luck
By: Marco Tiro
Tags: Success, Life Lessons, Self Improvement, Self, Life

The difference between 40% and 100%

My two best friends and I decided to give James Altucher’s idea of writing down ten ideas a day a shot.

The basic idea is that you can train your idea muscle like any other muscle. To develop it, you have to exercise it every day, no excuse. The goal is not to come up with 3,650 good ideas a year. You might come up with three good ideas a year. According to James, your brain will become an idea machine within 3–6 months. Imagine doing this for a year. You will become the go-to person for problem-solving, and you will start making serious money off of your ideas.

We are ten days right now, so I can’t talk about results now, but I noticed something alarming.

Out of these ten days, I wrote ten ideas everyday. Friend A only submitted ideas on six days and friend B on four days.

I wouldn’t go as far as saying that this is a reflection of the success we have in our lives since I’m not at a ten out of ten there. However, I see a clear correlation. Even though it was my idea, and therefore it’s understandable that I committed myself the most, both friends A and B were eager to try it as well.

Friend A at least participated in more than half of the days. He is on a promising trajectory career-wise and finally started living a healthier lifestyle. So to me, the 60% he participated symbolizes his emphasis on career over health. He believes that he must prioritize some things over others.

I don’t believe in this concept.

No, you can’t do everything with 100% intensity all the time. But you must find a way to balance things out. Otherwise, you will end up like the star with alcohol problems, the wolf of Wall Street, or bodybuilder with a heart attack.

Success is not a sprint nor a marathon. It’s an endless obstacle race with lots of opportunities to sprint and to rest. Only those who take advantage of both opportunities stand a chance of winning.

For friend B the four out of ten reflect his life pretty accurately. He’s not satisfied with where he’s at in life. He likes to fantasize and talk about big plans — but he never follows through.

His 40% participation reflects his life pretty clearly. He just can’t go through with something.

To me, this is the root of all of his problems.

There is a 60% gap between 40% and 100%. This could be the difference between earning 40k or 100k a year. Between being slightly unhappy in your relationship and being madly in love. Or between working in a job you hate or having your dream job.