fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Dealing with Negative Emotions
By: Esther Teo
Tags: Depression, Emotions, Emotional Intelligence, Emotional Wellbeing, Negativity

1. Be aware. Acknowledge. Stay present.

Know when you’re plagued by negative thoughts you can’t get away from, acknowledge it. When you’re feeling a certain way, hold on to it for a moment, but don’t obsess or be critical over it.

Best way to do so is by meditating.

Meditation doesn’t have to be the way you imagine it as– sitting cross-legged on a futon, keeping silent and thought-free. Yes, the point of meditation might be to get there (thought-free that is, not the former points) – if that’s your goal – but it is the process of learning to let thoughts flow that is important.

Stay in the present and not go to the past or future in your mind.

2. Analyse. Live outside your mind.

The scary (and messy) part. Analysing feelings is tough because we overthink things. Our brain is powerful and we have overlapping storylines and scenarios playing in our head all at the same time. So the best way to deal is to live outside your mind.

“Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.” ― Sigmund Freud

Express. Analyse verbally, or in written words. And then when you’ve done all that, distract yourself. Write, talk, draw, sing, read, exercise. Come back to it and see if you still feel the same way. Then you can think about how you should handle the situation, if you can. If you can’t, move to step 3.

3. Zoom out. See a different perspective.

The world is big, there is much to be explored. You are one in a million — and that goes two ways, you are the only you here on Earth (because I can’t guarantee that a parallel universe doesn’t exist), but you are also a part of the crowd.

If you need assurance, you can tell yourself that you are unique and there is no one else like you. If you feel like you’re not good enough for this world, you can tell yourself that you’re part of the world population, no one will notice if you’re actually good enough or not. Who cares?

(Obviously, don’t use it as an excuse.)

Life is not a math question (physicist might disagree but I’m the one writing this), and you don’t have to have an answer to everything.

Some issues have easier solutions than others, some require more courage and time, and some involves the cooperation of others. It’s a progress, you don’t have to rush yourself.
How Devdatta Akhawe helps protect your data
Tags: Leadership, Work, Work Better, Security, Dropbox

Building a great user experience requires great minds. We’ve spoken to eight Dropboxers who are working to make the world work better. By sharing what these leaders are up to in their daily routines, we hope to highlight the values that grow our culture.

As a Director of Security Engineering at Dropbox, Devdatta Akhawe is responsible for protecting the security of users with the help of an amazing, passionate team of Dropboxers. He understands that work for work’s sake can stunt progress. So, how does he stay focused? Devdatta shares how he maintains his creative energy:

“I cut out busy work and keep my energy going by batching it up. Having to do busy work in the middle of your day ends up taking away from your focused time. You have to regulate it. You say ‘this is the time when I’ll check my email,’ or ‘this is the time when I’ll take care of all these check-ups.’”

Reducing busy work allows Devdatta to focus on what’s important — the security of Dropbox users. By thinking about ways to protect user data, he has his eye on how to build a stronger, safer Dropbox for the user base.

“Security is a specific, intrinsic passion. When you are successful, no one notices, but your failures end up in the news. What I love most about being in security are the parts that you can’t see — the propensity for hard work, the passion for users’ trust and privacy, and the teamwork making sure our systems are worthy of our users’ trust. As we get the foundations right, security discussions jump off to a number of important facets of building a trustworthy product. These range from the usability of the security features, to the privacy impacts of the platform, to communicating well with our users so they can make informed decisions.”

Devdatta understands that the end goal is allowing the user’s creativity to be unleashed — and the tools he uses are just a means to that end.

“If the tools are too complicated for the user to configure, then that’s the tool’s fault. I believe the world can work better if the tools get out of the way and just work, and we’re able to focus entirely on our creative energy.”

We’re looking to make the world work better, but we need your help. To find out more, check out our job opportunities. And check back here later for additional stories from Dropbox Leadership.
Hi, I’m Ena Dahl
By: Ena Dahl
Tags: Writers Life, Newsletter, Updates, Bio, Introduction

Beyond writing…

I’m studying to receive my Reiki attunements in a few weeks and plan to integrate this and a few other healing modalities into my practice with sexual energy healing. I’ll share more as I gain extensive practice, but if you live in Berlin and would like to receive a discounted trial session, you may email me (address in bio). Remote sessions will be available in next year.

I’m creating visual stories with artists and photographers. I love using myself and my body, in collaboration with other creatives, to tell stories that words alone can’t. Besides an exciting ongoing collaboration with photographer Negrorojoluz, I have three other upcoming shoots scheduled and working out how to combine these with text to publish something tangible.

I’m falling deeply in love with Shibari (Japanese Rope Bondage) and just started rope-bottoming for an experienced rigger who took me for a spin (literally) in his ropes last weekend. I’m pursuing this further and have scheduled to set up a suspension beam in my living room. More to come…

Ropes by Unkown_Rigger | Photo by Negrorojoluz

Privately…

My five-year-old daughter and I are doing our thing, as usual. Nowadays, making Christmas gifts and cards to send our family that we won’t be able to spend the holidays with and pondering how to make the best out of all of it. Zoom Christmas dinner will be the way to go this year! Does Santa have Zoom too?

As I just ended a beautiful, year and a half long relationship with one of the best men I’ve known (…) I’m grieving that, finding my footing, and learning how to be alone—for the first time ever, really. It’s never been something I’ve been good at, and I have a ton of work to do here—which I’m sure you’ll hear about in writing soon.

I’m almost done decluttering four years of built-up bureaucratic paper chaos! Long story short; the last few years of being a solo parent while recovering after emotional abuse led me to drown in a sea of paperwork and unpaid bills. My anxiety grew in proportion with the amassing pile, and there have been days when I’ve felt so hopeless about it all that I could barely move. Over the last two months, I’ve been receiving help from a coach to dig through the giant box and I can finally say that we’re just about to cross the finish line. Champagne-toasts coming up!
from F# to Scala : traits
By: Yan Cui
Tags: Fsharptoscala, Fsharp, Functional Programming, Programming, Scala

Continuing on from where we left off with type inference last time around, let’s look at a language feature in Scala that doesn’t exist in F# — traits.

Scala has both abstract classes and traits (think of them as interfaces, but we’ll get into the differences shortly) to support OOP. Abstract classes are exactly what you’d expect and the preferred option where Java-interop is concerned. Traits, however, are much more flexible and powerful, but with great power comes great responsibility.

Basics

Like abstract classes, they can contain both fields and behaviour, and both abstract definitions and concrete implementations.

Any class that extends from this trait will inherit all the concrete implementations and need to implement the abstract members.

Of course, the concrete class can also override the default implementation that came with the trait.

You can extend multiple traits.

wait, hold on a sec, what’s this object thingymajig?

Sorry for springing that on you! A Scala object is basically a singleton and is Scala’s equivalent to a F# module. In fact, when you define an object in the Scala REPL it actually says “defined module“!

The notable difference with a F# module is that a Scala object can extend abstract classes and/or traits (but itself cannot be extended by another class/object). We’ll spend more time drilling into object later in the series but I just wanted to throw it in here for now as it’s such a heavily used feature.

The key thing to take away from the snippet above is that you can extend a class or object with multiple traits.

Traits vs Abstract Classes

There are 2 differences between traits and abstract classes:

traits cannot have contractor parameters but abstract classes can you can extend multiple traits but can only extend one abstract class

With regards to point 2, you can actually mix both traits and abstract classes together!

Dealing with Collisions

Since you can extend more than one thing at a time (be it multiple traits, or 1 abstract class + 1 or more traits), one must wonder what happens when some of the members collide.

You might have noticed from our last snippet that both Being and Human defines a name field, but everything still works as expected and you can indeed use the theburningmonk object as a Human or Being.

Ok. What if I extend from 2 traits with clashing members and one of them provides a concrete implementation? My expectation would be for the concrete implementation to fill in for the abstract member with the same name.

and indeed it does.

What if I’m mixing traits with an abstract class?

No problem, still works.
Mission: Impossible 2 Unleashes a Heavenly Host of Spin Kicks and Farts.
By: Sean Boulger
Tags: Movie Reviews, Film Criticism, Film, Movies, Mission Impossible

Mission: Impossible 2 Unleashes a Heavenly Host of Spin Kicks and Farts.

John Woo serves up an energy drink in movie form.

Hey everyone, it’s franchise time! The newest iteration of the neverending Mission: Impossible series is upon us, because it looks like someone forgot to get their ritual sacrifice right yet again this year. We’re going to keep getting these movies until the Elder Gods are appeased, it looks like, so we might as well have fun with ’em.

“The one with the Limp Bizkit song” applies perfectly to this movie, in every possible way the phrase might be interpreted.

This movie wants so bad to know if you remember the first one, but before you’ve even finished answering it’s like, “GOOD, BECAUSE FUCK THAT MOVIE,” and you’ve suddenly been overpowered by chugging guitar riffs and Tom Cruise’s hair, which received second billing in this film.

Welcome to Mission: Impossible 2.

Look, the first Mission: Impossible was, for the most part, an underhanded and heady espionage thriller, and everyone knows how fucking boring that shit is. Critically acclaimed? More like shittily framed, am I right? (Seriously, who even is Brian De Palma and why can’t he frame a shot right? Why aren’t there more birds? Why isn’t there more choppy, post-production slow motion?) Mission: Impossible 2 is the cure for the exercise in restraint and nuance that is predecessor didn’t even really bother being, undoing just about everything that made the first film in this franchise interesting by cranking it all way up to 15.

Almost literally every single thing about Mission: Impossible is amplified in John Woo’s bugfuck crazy 2000 sequel, and holy shit, what an egregious pile of hot garbage the result turns out to be. This movie’s plot makes even less sense than the first one, which was intentionally twisty and misleading (but still managed to be pretty coherent and relatively easy to put together, if you were paying attention). I wasn’t kidding when I said that literally everything about this movie got cranked up to full capacity. This happened whether it made sense to do so or not. Convoluted spy plot in the first film? Fuck you, straight-up incoherent corporate pharmaceutical intrigue in the second one. Thinly-sketched turncoat villain in the first film? Fuck you! A cartoonishly evil and sadistic bad guy in this one, who is literally still working for the good guys when he’s introduced at the start of the film, and whose motives for turning bad are very literally never mentioned, even in passing. A simpering, incapable sole female character who only exists to be batted around between the desires of two men in the first film? Yeah, fuck you, lots more of that shit in this one.
Student Evaluations Of Teaching Are Unreliable And Strongly Biased Against Women
By: Marie Eberle
Tags: Women, Education, University, Teaching, Feminism

Hands up if you have ever been asked to fill in a SET form at college — or if you’ve used another students-rating-teachers tool to find out whose courses to apply for next semester. I’ve certainly done so myself! After all, student evaluations of teaching (SET) are a key tool used by many universities to inform which teachers and professors are hired, bumped up the career ladder, or fired. On a superficial level, it is an intuitive idea: who should be better suited to evaluate how good a teacher is performing at their job than their students?

But recent research shows these indices might actually be less useful at highlighting good teachers and more accurate at displaying student’s inherent biases. As a string of recent studies shows:

SET results measure students’ gender bias and grade expectations over how effectively they are being taught.

Or in other words, researchers have found that there is a strong association between the gender of the teacher and their SET results. Women are systematically rated much lower than their male counterparts.

For instance, in a 2014 experiment that looked at students taking four online sections of the same course, taught by a man and a woman, the teachers secretly switched identities with each other. This meant students ended up taking a section taught by a man, a section taught by a woman, and two sections by who they thought were the same teachers, but who had actually switched identity with each other.

The results of this experiment showcase how the perceived gender affects SET while controlling for actual differences between the teachers — none of them changed teaching style or quality, they just made the students believe they were the other teacher, respectively.

Students of this course rated the female teacher consistently much lower than her male counterpart.

This was true despite the fact that 50% of ‘her’ coursework was actually given by the male teacher, who was rated much higher, even though 50% of his part of the course was also not taught by him, but by the woman.

Even measures usually thought of as objective were affected by this bias. For example, exam results were given out at exactly the same time in all four sections, but the teacher perceived as female was rated 20% slower at returning graded assignments. ‘Her’ professional conduct, fairness, helpfulness, and a number of other measures were also rated 10% worse, in line with ‘her’ overall score.
Clarity for Teachers: Day 33
By: Dougald Hine
Tags: Gratitude, Clarity, Stephen Jenkinson, Advice

‘All the clarity you have comes from the example of others. Everyone deserves gratitude.’

It seems like one of the gentle ones, doesn’t it? Sitting with this advice a while, though, I find that it gets uneasy.

Maybe I can say in good conscience that everyone I’ve dealt with in my life so far deserves gratitude. I can draw lessons from that headteacher who preached a whole assembly on my sinfulness when I was ten years old. ‘Most of us are more sinned against than sinning,’ my mum will say. On balance, though, I’d guess that I’ve caused as much pain through acts of carelessness as others have caused me. The thing is, I’ve known people whose lives so far look very different, who have been on the receiving end of acts of cruelty that it’s hard to even think about. It’s a harder ask for some than others, this claim that everyone deserves gratitude.

‘It’s very strange where you come from,’ says Martín Prechtel. ‘It seems to me that where you come from, everybody wakes up every day expecting to live.’

I came across these remarks in Stephen Jenkinson’s book Die Wise, where he muses on what Prechtel is getting at. How else might one wake up? It could sound as though those who don’t wake up with this expectation ‘have been robbed of it by the fatalism of their religion or the squalor of their daily life or the resignation to a basic misery of their high infant mortality rate, or the like.’ But this would be a misunderstanding, Jenkinson suggests, and one that cuts to the strangeness of our ways of living: the alternative is not that you wake up expecting to die, it is that you might wake up with a sense of your life as a gift, ‘something mysteriously good’; not an entitlement or a reward for living right, but a source of wonder and an occasion for gratitude.

So maybe there’s a turn here — a clue that, far from gratitude coming easier to those whose lives have been easiest, the need for gratitude becomes acute when the experience of life strips us of any illusion of entitlement?

‘Expecting to live is the training wheels on the spaceship of our entitlement,’ writes Jenkinson. Expectations become demands, rights, grounds for indignation. I suspect there’s a connection between this kind of entitlement and the idea that my achievements are those of a self-sufficient individual, rather than arising from a web of relationships.

There can be a relief in surrendering the burden of entitlement, in acknowledging that any clarity I have comes from the example of others, rather being my own self-contained achievement, and in meeting the world with gratitude rather than expectation.

Västerås, 20 April, 2020
How personalized design is different from traditional design
By: Hyoyon Paik
Tags: Personalization, Visual Design, UX, Design Process, Data Visualization

What is personalization?

According to Blom (2000), personalization is defined as

“a process that changes the functionality, interface, information content, or distinctiveness of a system to increase its personal relevance to an individual. ”

This definition is from HCI background. So if we translate it to product design, it means:

“a process that defines or changes the appearance or functionality of a product to increase its personal relevance to an individual.” - From Mugge, Schoormans, & Schifferstein (2009,p.468)

Personalization was highlighted as production paradigms changed: Mass production, Mass customization, and Personalization. To understand personalization, comparing it with ‘mass customization’ is the easiest way.

Goals of the manufacturing paradigms from Hu(2013)

Key differences between mass production, mass customization and personalized production from Hu(2013)

Mass Customization is a production paradigm that emerged in the late 1980s, which aims to produce goods and services to satisfy the customers’ individual requirements with mass production efficiency (Pine Ⅱ, 1994). In mass customization, mass production efficiency was achieved by product family architectures and a modular system. While mass customization discusses how to provide various products based on reasonable production costs, personalization focuses on personal relevance to consumers that services and products should have (Mugge, Schoormans, & Schifferstein, 2009). In this regard, personalization is a concept that further developed to customer-orientation perspective than mass customization. Customers perform a more active role in personalization to provide the most customer-relevant product. They are not just choosing given module parts, but involved in the design process as co-creators.

Here I briefly explained. But if you want to read more about the production paradigm evolution, I recommend the article of Hu(2013) — It’s open access!

Why personalization is important: the era of creative consumers

Personalization is not about a result but a process and experience.

Various studies emphasized personalization as a process which diverse interactions with customers and emotions occur (Blom & Monk, 2003; Mugge, Schoormans, & Schifferstein, 2009; Tseng, Jiao,& Wang, 2010). Tseng, Jiao, & Wang (2010) explains :
My Heart Belongs to Bad Boys
By: Ms. Part Time Wino
Tags: Humor, Relationships, Romance, Dating, Satire

Hey! Are you a Bad Boy? Because if so, I want to date you.

I don’t care if you’ve dropped out of high school, can’t hold down a job, or even have your driver’s license. As long as you 1) play in a band and 2) have more than three tattoos, then baby — I’m already yours.

(Also, major bonus points if you are the brooding lead singer.)

I don’t know why, but I can’t help myself around Bad Boys like yourself. Like a hormone-driven moth to a flame, I seek out men who are filled with passion and angst and all that other emotional drama I lack in my boring, middle-class upbringing.

And did I mention that my parents might hate you? Because they absolutely will. They’ll stare at the leather jacket you carelessly throw on their couch like the dead body of a homeless man you just dragged in and left for them to clean up.

“But we raised such a polite young woman. How could this happen?” they’ll bawl as they watch us pull out of their driveway.

(In my car, obviously, because you don’t have your license).

Even if you make me cry, contemplate my self-worth, and get overly jealous over small things like looking at the waitress for one second too long, being with you is oh so exciting.

For example, I love how you come with an unlimited supply of baggage. I know how rough it was for you growing up in the city (something my suburban pea-size brain simply can’t comprehend). Your dad was an alcoholic, and your mom had too many single guy friends floating around the house. Baby, you’ve been hurt badly.

And that’s why I let you treat me like shit.

You’re not an asshole. You’re just misunderstood. And that makes you weary of being in a relationship.

“I’m just not worthy of love,” you snarl while secretly texting that hot girl you met at the bar who you disguised in your phone as Dave Motorcycle Repair Man.

Believe me, no one understands the pain you’re going through like I do. When you fail to text me back or show up for our “hanging out sesh” four times in a row, I know it’s because you are in pain.

I know that casual sex with strangers heals you. And you deserve all the self-care in the world.

My friends tell me you’re just making up excuses to not commit to a relationship. But what do they know. I mean, they haven’t even heard that beautiful song you wrote for me.

Beautiful blond woman With hair that glistens in the morning sun You smile that dances with the stars at night My beautiful blond woman

I cried the first time I heard you sing it at the dive bar across the street. Even though I’m a brunette, I know those gut-wrenching lyrics came from your Bad Boy heart.

You are my forbidden fruit. Hard and poisonous on the outside, soft and fleshy on the inside. And one day, I can’t wait to fix you.

I mean, love you.
Using BlueWallet on Coincards.com with the Lightning Network
By: Mike Olthoff
Tags: Lightning Network, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin

* Coincards is not partnered or affiliated with BlueWallet and makes no gaurantees on its software. This tutorial is strictly for information purposes.*

Our node is operational and has plenty of liquidity for both inbound and outbound transactions making it one of the best nodes to connect to when getting started!

Use BlueWallet for quick and easy Lightning Network integration!

Using Coincards.com with the BlueWallet lightning wallet is super easy. We’ve written this quick how-to guide to get you started!

We’re going to start off by assuming you have BlueWallet installed on your mobile device and you have successfully funded it. From there, start off by visiting Coincards.com and selecting the country you want to shop from.

Next, Browse our vast selection of products and add products you want to your cart. Once your cart has everything you need, head on over to our checkout page!

Coincards.com checkout and payments are powered by our own BTCPay Server instance.

After hitting the Proceed to BTCPay button, you will be redirected to our payment screen which defaults to on-chain BTC. For this tutorial, we want to use an off-chain lightning transaction.

Select the “Bitcoin” option and a dropdown will appear. Select “Bitcoin (Lightning)” from the menu. You will now have a BOLT11 invoice.

Click the “Copy” tab on the invoice and select the “BOLT11 Invoice” text to copy to your device.

Open your BlueWallet app up. If you copied the address from your invoice in the previous step, BlueWallet will automatically ask you if you’d to pay the invoice on your clipboard.

Click OK to paste the Coincards BOLT11 invoice!

BlueWallet will also confirm the amount and let you know exactly what Invoice ID you are paying. If you don’t see “Paid to Coincards.com” check the invoice again.

Click the “Pay” button to pay your lightning invoice!

Switch back to your Coincards.com screen and you will now see your invoice has been paid and accounted for.

Success! Your order is now completed and your order should be instantly processed with an email in your inbox!

Looking for more information on Installation, Setup and Funding?

Check out the following links:
First Snowfall
By: Whitney Rose
Tags: Poetry, Winter, Haiku, Snow, Nature

Flicker and Flight is a Poetry Publication that has married the art of Photography. This publication focuses on supporting Nature, Love/Unity, Spirituality, and Growth, through the beauty of Word-Play and Images.

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Celebrating Latinx Heritage Month with our theme: Salud y Unidad | Saúde e Unidade | Health & Unity
Tags: Diversity In Tech, Heritage, Diversity, Dropbox, Latinx

Celebrating Latinx Heritage Month with our theme: Salud y Unidad | Saúde e Unidade | Health & Unity Dropbox Follow Sep 9 · 3 min read

If 2020 has taught us anything, it is the importance of community amidst the ever-changing landscape of our surroundings, understanding our needs around mental and physical health, and forging bonds as strongly as a virtual setting will permit. It has given us some hope that this, too, shall pass. Taking care of one another’s health and showing up in solidarity for the kinship we all share encompasses our theme for this year’s Latinx Heritage Month: Salud y Unidad | Saúde e Unidade | Health & Unity.

Our goal for this year’s Latinx Heritage Month is to highlight the vibrant and expansive culture of Latinx people. We want to understand how we, as a community, can dissolve the notion of a monolithic group, and learn how to help each other maintain our mental and physical health — together. We must understand the intersectional existence between race, language, culture, and gender, and in order to better take care of each other, we must have a reckoning and awakening in the recognition of that concept.

To help us bring this theme to life, we asked our LatinX community what “Salud y Unidad! | Saúde e Unidade!” means to them.

“For me, ‘salud’ means wellness and good health. ‘Unidad,’ to me, is solidarity.” — Carolina Vasquez Berens

“For me, ‘Salud’ means a general state of wellness, hence we use the word as a reference for health, or as something we wish to other people during a toast or even when they sneeze.” — Ruben Rincon

Reuben and his family

“’Salud’ to me means being in balance, both mentally and physically.” — Abraham Velazquez, LatinX co-lead

Hanging out with a Llama

“For ‘salud’ this year, I think a lot about how our lives have changed with the pandemic: wearing a mask, washing your hands, and staying 6 feet apart.” — Leti Valencia

“With everything happening in 2020, when I hear ‘Salud y Unidad,’ I immediately think of taking care of each other physically & mentally. Together, we can get through this.”— Nicole Galaviz
Being a Decent Human has Nothing to do With Gender
By: A Singular Story
Tags: Equality, Humanity, Women, Self, Culture

Blaming the patriarchy or feminism for societal ills has had its day.

Granted, America doesn’t do nuance. Look at our politics, the choice is between red or blue, there’s no official purple or green for example. Everything is polarized: You’re either for something or against it, there’s no room for the middle ground. Or indeed alternatives. While they do exist, they’re always portrayed as fringe and thus seldom credible or indeed viable.

For everything that’s going wrong, there always needs to be a scapegoat.

Rather than look at our individualistic, capitalistic culture, we’re quick to point the finger.

Someone has to take the blame but it never occurs to us we might be responsible for whatever ails us or might have engineered a context that’s become harmful to us.

When meeting your own needs means disregarding everybody else’s, sooner or later society will pay the price even though you are part of it, too.

If you need an example, look not further than the anti-vaccination movement. To protect their kids based on some bullshit they read on the internet, some parents have no qualms about putting everyone else at risk. Ignorance becomes a public health hazard, as is the case in my home state, Washington, where there currently is a measles outbreak.

In 2019.

According to some fellow feminists, women are at the forefront of the anti-vaccination movement because of doctors and society at large not taking us seriously. And with this kind of spurious argument, who would?

I call myself a feminist because I believe in equal opportunities for all humans, whatever gender they identify with. I do not call myself a feminist so I have a ready-made scapegoat on hand.

Sure, it’s an incontrovertible fact that the patriarchy has been holding women back but clinging to susceptibility for dear life isn’t helping us move forward, is it?
6 Habits I Learned From Programming
By: Nuha Khaled
Tags: Programming, Coding, Habits, Humor, Software Development

2. Thinking About the Worst Case, in an Optimistic Way

I build my plans based on the worst-case scenario, but I don’t mean to be pessimistic. No, usually I’m doing that while wishing for the best — it’s just that I believe planning on the worst case is the smart way to go. I need to handle all the “ifs!” I then realize it is just part of how we code; we try to make sure of all the worst cases so we can easily handle them.
The Problem with Poop
By: Mary Devries
Tags: Humor, Citizenship, Dogs, UK, Life

The are many wonderful country lanes in and near West Wiggledybottom. The coastal walks in particular are breathtakingly beautiful. Still one can be hiking along far from civilization and regularly come upon the most curious of sights, a neatly tied baggie of doggy doo doo hanging from a hedge or tossed by the side of the path.

This puzzled me for the longest time. In my experience as a dog owner, scooping up the poop and feeling that warm squishiness through the plastic as you turned the bag inside out is the most unpleasant part of cleaning up after your dog.

Why on earth would you go to all the trouble of poop scooping only to leave the plastic-wrapped deposit on the side of the path spoiling nature?

After all, if a dog poops in the grass and you leave it there it will decompose in relatively short order. But if you tie it up inside plastic and drape it on a tree branch it is a stain and blot on nature forever.

Maybe the dog owner was planning to hike a long way and got tired of the swinging bag of poop at their side.

I’ll just place it neatly on the hedge here, he says to himself. I can collect it when I come back this way and then bring it back to the trailhead for disposal.

This is a possible explanation however based on the age and number of poop-filled bags lying about, most owners saying this to themselves are either lying to make themselves feel better, very forgetful, or both.

After the Village Facebook group kerfuffle, however, I have a new theory. When a dog poops in the wilderness, the nasty sort of owner, looks around to see if anyone is watching. If there are witnesses, the owner piously acts responsibly and bags the poop.

She then carries it until out of sight of prying eyes. She sets it carefully on a bush to avoid breaking the bag open. “Remind me Lucy,” she says loudly to the dog just in case there is someone nearby who she missed in her quick glance around. “I need to pick up this poop on our way back so I can dispose of it properly.”

Both she and Lucy know full well that she has no real intention of ever touching that poop baggie again. She does not realize the value of community spirit. She just does not want doggie doo doo jammed in her mail slot by an angry mob.
Get ready for Laracon 2017
By: Eric L. Barnes
Tags: Laravel, Laracon, PHP

Other events that this Laracon will feature include:

Laracon Science Fair

Have a cool side project you want to show to the community? Show it off and get feedback at the Laracon science fair. It’s like an unconference for showing off your work.

Laracon After Parties

Listen to some tunes while you meet and mingle with the Laravel community at our on-site after parties. Drinks are on us!

Speakers

If you have an idea for a topic you’d like to speak about submissions are open and Taylor Otwell, Adam Wathan, Jeffrey Way, Evan You, and Matt Stauffer are already confirmed speakers.
Room 37 At The Motel
By: K. Love
Tags: Romance, Love, Short Story, Sexuality, Sex

It was a drive-by motel

The rooms were small

The fan was turning on the ceiling

Little creaks on the wall

Smelly, humid

Small TV on the wall

What was it showing?

Porn? Can’t quite remember

I guess it must’ve been porn

We were too drunk to care

It was summer, hot

Florida was our destination

Sunglasses on, tank tops

Hats on, sandals and flip-flops

We were listening to The Beatles

Singing along loud as we drove

After a few hours

We pulled over at a restaurant

Grabbed some southern fried chicken

Got back into the car, drove off and stopped by a gas station

Refilled the tank and kept on driving

This time she pulled out the little bag

Of marijuana that was in her clutch

Rolled up a big fat joint

Lit it up and was smoking

I took a few puffs

7 pm

The day was slowly wrapping up

It was getting dark

Found a little motel by the way

Quickly I drove to it

Pulled over

Checked in and

Our room number was 37

I’m now standing, drinking vodka

Straight from the bottle

That I had picked up from

The motel's liquor bar

She was already so high

Kneeling beneath me

Unzipped my pants

And was busy sucking my giant cock

Trying to get it firm

But damn, it wasn’t responding

Was it because of the long drive?

Or the painkillers I had taken last night?

I wondered

I drank more liquor

Now she got fully naked

Lit up another joint and took a puff

Then passed it on to me

Got back on her knees for round 2

I was smoking and drinking

While she was busy giving me a blow job

Her hands were caressing my balls

When all of a sudden

My huge cock got fired up

Thick, fat and strong it was

She loved it

A big smile was on her face

She pushed me over

I fell on the bed

Then she climbed over me

And was riding me like a fucking horse

Yeah, a real cowgirl she was

I’m feeling really good

Flung the bottle and the joint I was holding

Somewhere in the room

Kissing, fucking

Moaning and sweating

My hands on her boobs

My cock deep inside her

She’s riding deeper and deeper

Then…ppfffsshhhhhh!!!!

I bust a load of cum

Deep inside her pussy

Heavy breaths, we’d finally freed ourselves up

From the trap of that burning passion
What To Do In The Lull Between Christmas & New Year
Tags: Festive Season, Boredom, Christmas, Things To Do, New Year Resolution

By Alice Tate

What with the month-long build-up, it’s only natural to experience a Christmas comedown once you’ve polished off the festive leftovers in a sarnie on Boxing Day morning. What now, eh? You refuse to change out of your PJs because that means Christmas is actually over, so you settle for watching Vicar of Dibley reruns until New Year’s Eve.

If you’re lucky, you’ll have friends to see and maybe a few more presents to open after the big day to help eke out those Christmas feels but, by the time Twixmas is in full swing, we’re all in major Quality Street comas and there’s not a lot going on. Don’t get us wrong, we’re not complaining about being off work — hell no — but that waiting-for-something-to-happen sensation can be hard to shrug.

So instead of moping and letting the blissful office-free days morph into a Dawn French marathon (as dreamy as that sounds), here’s how to make the most of the lull. Ride that festive wave, people.

Re-organise your wardrobe and take stuff to the charity shop

A necessary evil and a good deed rolled into one: what better time than when you’re living in your PJs to sort out your wardrobe once and for all? That top with tags you’ve never worn? Get it on eBay. And all those trousers, skirts and dresses that just don’t reflect your 2017 self? To charity they go. Do consider colour-coding, and practicalities like a shirt section and a fun top section. With every job that must be done…

Glow

Unlike when you get back from holiday feeling pretty damn goddess-like, the after-effects of the Christmas break tend to be more wined-out. You may be half-brie, half-yule log but a little pampering goes a long way, so get on it. Groom, tan, exfoliate, mani.

Go big on your thank you cards

Christmas cards always end up being a rush job, squeezed in between fraught gift-buying and Christmas party hangovers. But thank you cards? You’ve got time to pore over these bad boys, so show your thanks with heartfelt handwritten messages.

Kickstart your New Year’s resolutions early

Technically, New Year’s resolutions don’t kick in ’til January 1st but hey, why not get a couple of practice runs in beforehand? Tie those trainers and start running away from those mince pies. By the time New Year’s Day hits, you’ll be halfway to making it a habit.

Make goals (realistic ones)

#goals baby! Because if the new year is good for anything, it’s setting out new ambitions. But instead of resolutions that you know you’ve got 99% chance of breaking, let 2021 be the year of realistic, achievable goals. Think of three, write them down, make plans, act on them.
Morpheus Labs Explained Part 4
By: Morpheus Labs Team
Tags: Crypto, Business Strategy, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin

Morpheus Labs Explained Part 4

Market Size / Business Model

In the last “Morpheus Labs Explained” articles, we took a look at:

This week, we are focusing on the market size and the business model used by Morpheus Labs to capture this market.

Market Size

The market size for blockchain technologies is expected to grow significantly within the next years. By 2030 the blockchain market is estimated to be worth north of USD 3 trillion.

Business Model

Morpheus Labs BPaaS is founded as an enterprise-grade B2B platform as a service, enabling businesses to rapidly prototype their ideas and validate potential markets in a cost- and time-efficient manner. The platform also supports a B2C model for freelancers to develop their applications or provide professional services. Alternatively, individual developers can use it as a learning or prototyping platform. Apart from providing a lab-like environment, the platform also provides blockchain application development and hosting services, and a marketplace for contributing and selling blockchain applications.

Subscription

Ideas take time to evolve and software applications need a lab-like environment for continuous improvement and upgrading. To ensure long-term business sustainability and cost-effectiveness, our business model is based on a combination of fixed, recurring fees and one-time initial fees under three tiers (for enterprise). Each tier consists of different levels of support and service:

Individual (free for limited functions, or payment applies for full functions)

Starter

Optimum

Enterprise

Application Fees

Our marketplace of curated blockchain DaPPs enables developers or DaPP owners to earn fees. Morpheus Labs collects a commission from these fees — a practice akin to Apple’s App Store.

Cross Selling

We partner with global brands in the tech ecosystem to grow our revenue with existing customers and attract new ones. The cloud marketplaces and start-up accelerators are also exciting entities within our ecosystem with potential to contribute a significant revenue growth to our business.

Distributorship and Reseller

We have received enquiries for distributorship and reseller licensing from global and regional system integrators, telco and content providers.

In future articles of the Explained series we will discuss various other topics such as:

Platform Architecture

Token Use Cases

and many more…

👏 If you enjoyed reading this piece leave us a clap (you can also leave multiple claps of course) or comment below. We are curious to hear your thoughts!

Stay informed

Further Readings
9.20 Presidential Social Intelligence Battleground Tracker — Supreme Court Mention Volume & Sentiment
By: Adam Meldrum
Tags: Donald Trump, 2020 Presidential Race, Social Listening, Supreme Court, Joe Biden

9.20 Presidential Social Intelligence Battleground Tracker — Supreme Court Mention Volume & Sentiment

An aggregate weekly pulse of how potential voters in battleground states are discussing the Presidential candidates

Photo by Sebastian Pichler on Unsplash

Please check out the background post on this project if it is your first time reading.

— Our initial dataset from the week of 7.3 was detailed here.

— Data from the week of 7.11 was detailed here

— Data from the week of 7.19 was detailed here.

— Aggregate data to date through 8.14 was detailed here

— Language data from the weeks of 8.07 & 8.14 was detailed here

— Aggregate data through 8.25 was detailed here.

— Language data from 8.21–8.28 was detailed here

— Language data from 8.28–9.04 was detailed here

— Aggregate data through 9.5 was detailed here

— Language data from 9.04–9.11 was detailed here

— Aggregate daily support gained/lost data through 9.17 was detailed here

Battleground States in our Analysis: AZ, CO, FL, IA, ME, MI, MN, NV, NH, NC, PA, TX, WI

Date Source: All data is publicly available and anonymized for our analysis from Twitter, Facebook, Online Blogs, & Message Boards.

Technology Partners: Eyesover & Relative Insight
December 11, 2017
Tags: Crowdini, Questions, Games, Steemit, Blockchain

I MIGHT HAVE MADE A BIG MISTAKE

Today’s question (BONUS BTW) is the result of me not thinking ahead. Let me explain.

Look at the chart above. To start last week SBD, the currency the prize pool is in, was about $2 per SBD. Which means the prize pool started last week at about $160, more than double any prize pool before.

As you can see Thursday and Friday the price of SBD went up to as high as $14.83 per SBD. Making the prize pool worth about $1,186.40.

SBD price has fluctuated wildly all week. It is currently about $11.75, making the current prize pool about $940. You can check the live price any time at https://www.worldcoinindex.com/coin/steemdollars.

Here’s the dilemma. I said the prize would be paid out in SBD. I am going to honor that. I am also going to honor the 80 SBD minimum guarantee.

Yesterday I converted some SBD to STEEM. I got almost 7 STEEM for every SBD I converted.

I am hedging a bit because my original plan was to be aggressive with the upvote bots which I spoke about on Friday. Because of this huge spike in SBD/USD price I am going to reduce that significantly and just continually monitor the price.

My new plan is two fold.

1. If the SBD/USD price continues to rise or stay this high, I will be using the upvote bots sparingly. Unless I can get close to 5 to 1 payout they are not worth it right now IMHO. My calculations show the post payout will get back close to 80 SBD by Saturday and so I shouldn’t have to supplement the

2. If the SBD/USD price falls in comparison to the STEEM/USD price, which is currently about $1.70 (Right now the ratio is about 7 STEEM = 1 SBD), I will convert some STEEM back to SBD to cover the prize payout. I will do this if the ratio gets down to 4 to 1 or less.

Historically STEEM has been worth more US dollars than SBD. I think with all the Bitcoin hysteria the last few weeks that hysteria trickled down to the other currencies.

Of course if the price of SBD come back down to its historical levels of around $1 then I will reassess.

I wanted you to be aware of this price fluctuation because it affects the prize pool. I’m sure, like me, most of you are new to Steemit so what better way to introduce you to the currency.

Let’s ask a question about it! A BONUS question!

As always I will keep you updated.

All the best,

Jason
Right Place
By: Fọlábòmí Àmọ Ó
Tags: Poetry, Romance, Love, A Cornered Gurl, Genius

Your love is meant to be;

In my heart.

Like the scribbles,

of a genius:

Littering the canvas;

Of a whiteboard.
Website Update
By: Faceter Fog
Tags: Crypto, ICO, Blockchain, Ethereum Blockchain, Bitcoin

We have updated our website. It looks a little bit different now. I hope you like new futuristic background image there. You can see amount of money Faceter raised in dollars — we track current exchange rate of ETH and show equivalent. But we changed not just look, we also made personal page of contributor more simple and userfriendly.

Enjoy! And, please, share your opinion with us.

We want to know what you think.
We Never Could Get the Hang of Thursdays
By: National Center For Transgender Equality
Tags: Equality, LGBT Rights, Politics, LGBTQ, Transgender

Extremist nominees sail through Senate committee vote

As some NCTE staff rallied outside the Department of Health and Human Services, others attended this morning’s Senate Judiciary Committee meeting, where committee members were due to vote on a whopping 25 nominees for federal judgeships and positions in the Department of Justice.

If that seems like a lot, that’s because it is. Voting on this many nominees at once is unusual. Instead of taking a reasoned approach towards these votes, Senate leadership is instead rushing these nominees through the procedures in place to ensure that only qualified candidates are confirmed to these positions.

And they have reason to do so. Many of these nominees have demonstrated extreme, anti-LGBTQ views and clearly do not have the objectivity necessary to sit on a court.

The nominees NCTE opposed today included:

Kyle Duncan and Matthew Kacsmaryk, who believe being trans is a delusion. A few weeks ago, over 300 parents of transgender kids sent a letter to Senators asking them not to confirm these nominees.

Mark Norris , who backed the infamous “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which banned mentioning LGBTQ people in schools, while he was a Tennessee state senate leader. He was also a proponent of the state’s anti-transgender bathroom ban.

, who backed the infamous “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which banned mentioning LGBTQ people in schools, while he was a Tennessee state senate leader. He was also a proponent of the state’s anti-transgender bathroom ban. Eric Dreiband , who defended the state of North Carolina when it faced lawsuits for the blatantly discriminatory law HB 2. Ironically, he is up for the position of Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the Department of Justice.

, who defended the state of North Carolina when it faced lawsuits for the blatantly discriminatory law HB 2. Ironically, he is up for the position of Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the Department of Justice. Thomas Farr, who engaged in the intimidation of black voters while he worked for Jesse Helms in the 1980s and then misled the committee about his involvement in voter intimidation during his hearing.

All of these nominees passed through the committee along party lines with 11–10 votes. They will now be voted on by the full Senate. There is still time to call your Senators and tell them not to confirm any of these biased, unqualified nominees. Call the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224–3121 now.
MakerDao และ DAI โปรเจคที่มาพร้อมกับแนวคิดการสร้างเหรียญคงมูลค่าที่ง่ายเพียงปลายนิ้ว
Tags: Makerdao, Dai, Bitkub, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin

Bitkub.com is a new generation digital asset and cryptocurrency exchange platform that offers advanced cryptocurrency exchange services

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