fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Interrupt your kids while they are watching a TV show? That’s dangerous parenting.
By: Kesh Anand
Tags: Society, Life, Kids, Parenting, Children

Interrupt your kids while they are watching a TV show? That’s dangerous parenting.

Kids’ shows end with a moral lesson. Turning off the telly midway teaches them about the moral failure — but not its consequences

Credit: Image by Vidmir Raic from Pixabay

We’ve all done it. Plonked the kids in front of the TV for a few minutes to temporarily lobotomise them so we can focus on getting through a quick (or not so quick) task such as doing the dishes, or getting dressed.

Then once complete, we just as abruptly storm into the room and turn it off mid-episode.

Apart from being unimaginably rude and disrespectful (can you imagine doing this to an adult), it can also inadvertently set your child down the path of villainy.

You see — kids’ shows often follow a certain structure. First, they set up a situation where the protagonist faces a key test of character which they first fail; then after finding their actions leave them feeling hollow or empty, they eventually rise to meet the moral challenge. Following this, a reflection occurs and a “moral of the story” is relayed to both the protagonist and of course the viewer.

Just today I’ve seen this pattern play out three times in three different shows.

An example

The latest instance was in a cartoon (I think it was called Baby Muppets), whereby one of the characters, Gonzo, became obsessed with racing. He then organised a race with all his friends and basically cheated to win.

At the eleventh hour, he realised the hollow nature of his victory and went back to help all his friends/competitors whom he waylaid earlier on.

The lesson here was that whilst it was important to try and win, one should not lose sight of the big picture and make sure they play fairly, and that his friendships were more important than winning.

The moral of this post

Now — had we interrupted our children’s viewing of this show partway through — they would’ve been left with a view that winning at any cost was the thing to do.

Without the appropriate moral closing at the end of the episode — the exact opposite message to the one that was intended by the producer would have been implanted into the viewer’s minds.

Even Heros need a moral compass || Photo by Raj Eiamworakul on Unsplash

Kids’ shows are designed to be consumed as entire units — and are usually relatively short to boot.

Dropping in and out of them midway through can imbibe your children with anti-social behaviours.

So next time you’re about to turn off the TV when the kids are glued to it — check to make sure that you are doing it at an appropriate point in the storyline; if not — just give it a couple more minutes.
Recognizing Handwritten Digits in Python Using Scikit-Learn
By: Yash Kumar Jha
Tags: Machine Learning Python, Machine Learning, Machine Learning Tools, Python, Scikit Learn

Now we are using Logistic Regression to train our model. So first we have to import the model.

Let’s make an instance of the model.

Making an instance of the model

Now let’s train the model on the data and store the information learned from the data.

Now let’s try to predict the labels of new data using the information we have gained from training the model.

It’s time to measure the performance of the model, there are various ways to measure the performance of the model but I am using the simple one and using accuracy as our metric. Now, let’s try to understand what is accuracy :-

Accuracy is defined as :

(fraction of correct predictions): correct predictions / total number of data points.

In my case the accuracy is around 96.44%.

Let’s find out the confusion matrix as well. Confusion matrix is a table that is used to describe the performance of the model, on a set of test data for which the true values are known. I am showing the confusion matrix using two methods or we can say using two python packages (Seaborn and Matplotlib).

Before forming a confusion matrix let’s import the necessary packages in python using the following :-

Let’s try to form the confusion matrix using seaborn.
01.05.20 All The News, Fit To Viz
By: Adam Meldrum
Tags: Iran, Data Visualization, News, Google Trends, Network Graph

Network visualization of keywords from news of the day (headlines and teasers).

Data Sources: RSS Feeds from Politico, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The New York Times, Financial Times & The Washington Post

Viz Source: https://infranodus.com/

Simple Analysis: the graph contains a few main topical groupings of note — 1.) Iran > Military > Commander, 2.) Killing > Iran > Kill, 3.) Iraqi > End > Vote, 4.) Country > Japan > Action

These groupings mainly touch on the Trump admins killing of Iran’s General Suleimani and Nissan CEO Ghosn’s escape from Japan detention.
A House is not a Home
By: Danna Reich Colman
Tags: Emotional Abuse, Nonfiction, Home, Abandoned House

610 North Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills, California

A House is not a Home

Erased are the fingerprints marking my father’s closed door

Erased are the footprints stepping spiritlessly down the hall

Erased are the mirrors reflecting my damaged soul

Vacant before it crumbled
Step 6: Allow The Deepest Presence To Take Control
By: Benjamin Foley
Tags: Christianity, Spirituality, Spiritual Growth, Contemplation, Religion

Step 6: Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

Which comes first, grace or responsibility?

This is one of the hardest paradoxes to grasp on the spiritual journey because the answer is both. Our dualistic mind hates this answer. We want to know whether it is up to us OR if it is up to a higher power. We cannot stand to accept that maybe it is through the humility of responsibility that God acts on our behalf.

A thousand half loves

must be forsaken to take

one whole heart home. -Rumi

No action or deed will grant you the love of the Divine and the healing you desire, but it is rare for these things to happen to someone who has not done their own shadow work. But the key is to realize that it was not you who caused the transformation through good deeds, which so much of religion like to believe, but rather in your humility of unknowing that God was able to swoop in and captivate your life.

For me, this step was hard to understand. Although I’ve never been an addict in the normal sense of the word, I’m definitely addicted to my all or nothing thinking. A dualistic mind that can make the Mystery of the Divine impossible to accept.

However, in order to move past this barrier, it was not up to me. I had to be willing to surrender and allow a power greater than myself to do the work.

It seems as this was the central teaching in most wisdom traditions. They spoke of a God who heals all “transgressions” and “evils,” not because YOU will it but because it is who you are inherently. At your essence, you are divinely good.

Believe that and allow…

Allow something much bigger than you to take you down the River of Life to a deeper meaning and complete healing.

Let’s Fall Inward, Shall We

Do you define yourself as someone who is spiritual but not religious?

If so, you are not alone.

Sign up for my daily email on contemplative spirituality and join over thousands of seekers who are Falling Inward to [re]discover the power of within.

Click the image below to sign up.

It’s Free and Free(ing)!
I Lent Some Money to a Friend and I Lost Both — the Money and the Friend
By: S M Mamunur Rahman
Tags: Self Improvement, Money, Life Lessons, Friendship, The Masterpiece

The Next Month and a Few Months After That

Again in the next month, I was not getting any response from my friend. So, in the second week of that month, I sent him a message like the following —

Hey, man!

Can you pay me back the money you’ve borrowed? I really needed that now.

Though I saw him being active on Facebook the whole time, he replied a few days later. He was uploading photos, posting new status, but somehow, he had no time to answer my text.

Anyway, after a few days, he said —

Mamun, I am sorry, but things are not going well here. I am trying my best.

I have taken a new job here. I am sure that I can send you the money when I get my salary next month.

It is to mention that after lending him the money, we talked very little about other things. When I knocked, he showed that he was busy with other things. I felt like the money created an invisible wall between him and me.

Anyway, in the following month, when I got no response from him, I decided to wait and see how many days it take him to respond.

To my surprise, a few months went by, and I heard nothing from him at all. I saw from his FB feed that he was having fun with friends, traveling to new places, eating in different restaurants, and all. But somehow, he was reluctant to give my money back.

A few more months passed, and I kept waiting. At one point, I started to feel that I made a mistake by lending the money.
It’s a David Ogilvy Thang…😎
By: Fitness With Animal
Tags: Marketing, Copywriting, Sales, Advertising, David Ogilvy

CopyWriting is about getting people to Take Action…period!

Initially this is done by getting the reader to be “Emotionally Involved” and/or “Emotionally Engaged” enough…

…to take whatever Action the CopyWriter wants them to take.

Unfortunately, the one thing I see missing in a lot of Copy…is the “Informative” aspect of the writing.

As CopyWriters, we first need to Trigger Emotion.

(with words ✍🏻)

Then we need to “Inform” the reader of exactly WHAT our product/service does…

…and exactly HOW it will Solve their Problem/Pain.😊

Duh right!

But I’m constantly surprised at how many advertisements miss BOTH of these points…

— > First you must Move the Prospect Emotionally — > Then you must Persuade him Intellectually

Those last two lines were paraphrased from “Great Leads” btw.😉

There ya have it folks!

What about David Ogilvy???

I’m glad you asked!

Because this is exactly what good ole David O. had to say about this subject…

“The more informed your Advertising, the more Persuasive it will be.”😎

So next time you’re trying to get your Prospect to Take Action, don’t forget to…

“Inform Your Prospect”

After you capture their Attention…via an Emotional Response.😊
The Audacity of the ‘Genderqueer’ Voice
Tags: Identity, Gender, Transgender, LGBTQ, Bullying

I pretended to laugh too. Maybe I could fool my heart. If I was laughing, it couldn’t hurt. Could it? I mean, how can you take people seriously who have never met you and whinge and call you a “wanker” for a non-offensive piece about a personal epiphany? Which they only came across because it was specifically selected and thrust upon them for the distinct purpose of ridiculing it?

Another woman was more concerning. She took the time to tell me my writing was “regressive, navel-gazing bullshit” — she was a professor and legal academic. That hurt a little bit more than the Facebook jerks.

Looking closer at her profile, which has unsurprisingly now been removed by Medium, she clearly stated she was a radical feminist. She had left explosions of hate on a number of trans-related stories on Medium, a lot of it incoherent and full of expletives. ‘Real women don’t have dicks!’ was the gist of it.

Perhaps she was drunk? Hacked? I couldn’t imagine a professor doing such a thing. I made excuses for her. I found out later she’d been banned from Twitter for the same reason.

I looked at the social media profiles of some of these others: most stated they were radical feminists, all of them had strings of anti-trans posts, where they shared videos or writing by trans or non-binary people, or news articles about trans issues, and ridiculed them.

The relief I felt from noticing I was not the only victim on Medium, that it wasn’t that something was wrong with me and my writing, soon made way for the terrifying realisation that there are people out there systematically targeting non-cis voices and attacking their experiences.

I felt ashamed of the initial relief I had felt, of not being the only one. It was true these women weren’t attacking me, but it was much worse. They were attacking all voices emerging from beyond the gender binary. They were attacking something much larger, which my stories represented.

Something they despise:

That we have the audacity to speak at all.

That nerve of ours to feel differently and then speak about it must be controlled. Our voices must be answered with abuse.

Don’t let us rise.

By joining together online and using ridicule they assert their territory (in my case, female-ness), they feel stronger through the support of their peers via the shared mockery of those who impinge on their territory (or reject it, in my case, which is equally as heinous), and through all of that they feel a little bit safer and in control, behind their provincial little wall of hate.
The Latest Coronavirus Drugs and Vaccines
By: Indi Samarajiva
Tags: Technology, Coronaviruses, Medicine, Health, Science

Treatment is anything that will save lives and reduce the burden on the health system. The main research seems to be along two lines, testing old drugs and finding some way to transfer antibodies from mice or other recovered people.

Old Drugs

Every drug company is shaking out their medicine cabinet for something that might work. The pro is that these drugs won’t kill us, but the con is that they may not kill coronavirus.

Of these, remdesivir from Gilead (USA) is the furthest ahead, in Stage 3 trials. Remdesivir is the equivalent of a copier jam. It theoretically makes it difficult/impossible for the virus to copy itself. Sounds promising, except it didn’t work very well on Ebola. They’re testing it on COVID-19 now.

Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer are digging up whatever they have, as is French company Sanofi and Chinese company Ascletis. Interestingly, Pfizer has offered its manufacturing muscle to any breakthrough, to get it out there.

Note that I haven’t included the much-hyped chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine simply because STAT didn’t. They did mention in a separate article that the WHO was testing this drug, which is already approved for human use in certain countries.

Antibodies

With time, our bodies can naturally fight the coronavirus by producing antibodies. That’s how people recover. There are a lot of drugs trying to speed up that process, in different ways.

Mice: Regeneron uses proprietary mice to generate antibodies. Their drugs doubled survival rates for Ebola, so this is promising. Go mice.

Blood: Eli Lilly and Takeda are working with the blood of coronavirus survivors to try and extract the antibodies from them. Vir Biotechnology is using the blood of SARS survivors.

Vampire-tech, Godspeed.

These treatments, however, are only for people who have already gotten the disease, and if you’re very far along they’re likely not helpful at all. Ultimately, the only way we kill this thing is the same way we eliminated Measles, Mumps, Rubella, etc. With a vaccine.

Coronavirus Vaccines
The Handy List of Human Words
By: Deanna Horton
Tags: Content Strategy, Documentation, Ux Writing, UX, Plain Language

A plain language word list for UX writing and help content to make your writing sound more human. Illustration by Anne Smith

At SurveyMonkey, we write words that are simple, direct, and human. These basic content principles align with most style guides for writing on the Internet, and at this point they’re deeply ingrained in the brains of everyone on our content strategy team.

But when you’re in the weeds — trying to explain a complicated feature in a help article or writing copy for a modal that needs to meet specific legal requirements — it’s easy to let some robotic words slip into your writing.

I kept seeing the same complex words show up again and again in UI designs and help articles. Eventually, it became second nature to quickly spot them and replace them with plain language. Writing in plain language makes your content easier to read, easier to understand, and more accessible. It’s the right thing to do for your customers and your business.

To help my team spot robotic words in their own writing, I created The Handy List of Human Words.
Poetic Quaternion Sets
By: Bradley J Nordell
Tags: Poetry On Medium, Poetry, Rebel, Science, Mathematics

Poetic Quaternion Sets

A poem about the mathematically minded poets

Photo by Joshua Sortino on Unsplash

There are those minds

that bisect the plane of

real and imaginary.

Within the depths

they become non-differentiable

to the point of erratic.

Cerebral infinities

stretch across dreams

past to present

once more upon a Mobius strip

they follow the loops of history.

Are they an isomorphic set

of elements transcribed

from one metric to another?

A one-to-one correspondence

mapping sorrow and madness

in a non-integer dimension.

Cast from the fires of turmoil

What more hath changed

in the limits of their analytical functions?

A heart’s integral

that area of information

upon a pulsating metric

A hyperbole hyperbolic in its ascent

Wondering if they calculate dreams

do they converge to meaning?

Are they real numbers

belonging to some set?

Primeval union of integer evenings

with imaginary determinants.

Lie algebraic truths never to compliment

only beguile covariant loops

as they return to the antecedent.

Real, Complex or Irrational

the cardinality of a moral compass

spins upon a kiss.

As logic is lost

In a world amiss

those who art stalwart

axiomatic in their synapses,

cyclical love now unfolded begets.
SCI Daily: Weekend momentum.
By: Francisco Araneta
Tags: Philippines, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Fintech, Blockchain

September 3, 2018

Image from Coindesk

Bitcoin (BTC) rose over the weekend, breaching a strong resistance at $7,200, as bulls are mounting a steadier rally upwards. The broader cryptocurrency market also moved up, pushing market cap to $237 billion.

Support levels are at $7,200 and $6,800 while resistance levels are at $7,600 and $7,800.

BTC/PHP: 401,970 / 355,850

USD/PHP: 53.53

BTC Market Cap: $125B

Crypto Market Cap: $237B

Image from https://coin360.io/

News:

Reuters has issued a report following a four-month long investigation, stating that they were unable to find any users, investors, or resources to back up the Petro, Venezuela’s oil-backed cryptocurrency. It has been revealed by government officials that the coin is still in development, and that nobody has been able to make use of it. This is in contrast to President Maduro’s statement that the Petro has already brought in $3.3 billion, and is already used to pay for imports.

Cboe Global Markets, the Chicago-based exchange behind the first market for bitcoin futures, is set to launch Ether futures by the end of 2018. Pending the approval of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Cboe will most likely base the Ether futures on the market of popular crypto exchange Gemini, as is with the case with the Bitcoin futures.

Japan’s National Police Agency (NPA), is increasing its investment for monitoring cryptocurrency transactions. According to a report last Thursday, the organization is allocating 35 million yen ($315k) in 2019 for the development of a new software that will help identify individuals conducting illegal crypto transactions. This move comes in response to the increase in the number of illegal cases involving cryptocurrency transactions in Japan.

SCI | buybitcoin.ph | Bitbit | Keza | Rebit.ph
Increase Your Chances of Getting Into Publications, With The Brave Writer Editor-In-Chief, Maria Angel-Ferrero
By: Itxy Lopez
Tags: Advice, Success, Writing, Women, Writing Tips

Maria Angel is a professor in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at The University of Montpellier in France. She is from Colombia and speaks over 4 languages. She writes more than she speaks and uses words as a means of personal growth. As any professor, she loves to share her knowledge and experience with the world. She is a mom of 2 lovely kids and a proud feminist. She runs two Medium publications, one on education: The Faculty Pub, and one on writing and writers: The Brave Writer. When she’s not writing, teaching or reviewing submissions, she is playing with her children, singing under the shower, reading or running.

The following is an interview with Maria Angel Ferrero.
Create With Your Libido—Fuck With Your Creativity
By: Ena Dahl
Tags: Sexuality, Spirituality, Psychology, Esoteric, Libido

I discovered Jung’s theories around the same time that I gained a deeper understanding of the chakra system. While chakras might sound cryptic, they make a lot of sense if we think of them as nodes in the body, working to transmit our vital energy.

There are seven such nodes, from the one at the base of our spine, called the root chakra. Going up, we reach the sacral chakra, connected to our sexual organs, our solar plexus, the heart, the throat, and the third eye (between the eyebrows). The seventh chakra is called the crown and is found at the very top of the head.

I will go further into the chakra system in future writings, but generally speaking, I started to understand that once one of these centers were blocked or impaired, the overall flow would be weakened.

I began viewing my libido as a stream of water and came up with a visual to describe it:

Libido is a naturally flowing cycle of water.

Imagine a garden hose, plugged into the wall. On the other end of the hose is a water spreader, spraying the water into a natural pool. This pool nourishes the land surrounding it and draws nutrients from it, and pumps it back into the hose.

This is your libido; your life force.

While the setup may vary slightly from person to person; some may be naturally equipped with water spreaders with multiple outlets, while others have less—meaning that some are naturally predisposed to directing their energies in more directions and some are more prone to focus—our libido ultimately looks like streams of water that spreads in at least a few different directions.

The lack of vital energy doesn’t come from a lack of water but from the lack of a healthy current.

When all functions as it should, the water flows unobstructed and purposefully; the stream feeds the pool and its surroundings which again feeds back into the source.

The amount of water remains the same; this is what I mean when I say that we all have access to the source. The lack of vital energy doesn’t come from a lack of water but from the lack of a healthy current. A feeble flow can be caused by many different things:
with you
By: Pasta
Tags: Poetry, Relationships, Love

if only it were that easy to get out of your head

I’ve spent so many nights alone on my bike

and now I get to spend some

with you

I’ve stared at the ocean for so many hours

and now I can stare at it

with you

I’ve washed each armpit around 10,000 times,

but never quite as good

as you

no number of people was ever enough

and now it’s enough just being

with you
How to Boost SaaS Sales With Review Sites
By: Jelilah Anofiu
Tags: Saas Marketing, Content Marketing, Customer Acquisition, Lead Generation, SaaS

How to Ask

There are three main ways you can ask customers for reviews, customer support, direct email, and in-app notification.

1. Customer Support

Your customer support team can send a message to customers immediately after solving support cases. This is a great time to request a review because, at this point, they are happy you helped them. Use this sample template:

Hi <<First Name>>,

Thank you for using <<Company Name>> to <<describe use case>>. I’m glad that I was able to help with <<describe problem solved>>.

Reviews help our business build an online presence and help others learn about us. Could you please take a few minutes to share your experience with other people? We value your opinion and will be glad if you took a few minutes to leave us a review.

Kindly click this link <<URL to review service>> to leave us a review.

Thank you so much for using <<Company Name>> and taking some time out of your day.

2. Direct Email

Send direct emails to customers asking them for a review. You need to make sure this email is personalized and only sent to selected customers. By sending this email to satisfied customers, you are ensuring that you only get positive reviews.

I use this template for my clients

Email Subject: <<Company Name>> needs your help

Hi <<First Name>>,

Thank you for <<describe client relationship — loyal, new, etc.>>. It has been a pleasure helping you <<describe use case>>

Reviews help our business build an online presence and help others learn about us. Could you please take a few minutes to share your experience with other people? We value your opinion and will be glad if you took a few minutes to leave us a review.

Kindly click this link <<URL to review service>> to leave us a review.

Thank you so much for taking some time out of your day and for using <<Company Name>>.

3. In-app notification

To increase your chances of getting reviews, you can send an in-app notification to customers. However, you need to make sure that this notification does not disrupt customers’ activities in order not to annoy them.

It should come up in a place that is easily noticeable but not disruptive.
Pumpkin Hunting 2009 And The Girls Playing in The Leaves
By: Andy Tillo
Tags: Pumpkin, Washington, USA, T13

The girls had their costumes on and we had a need for some leaf raking anyway, good photo ops. I don’t think I had a shot with the dogs in it yet. Welcome to the shots doggies.

The other ones were when Tanner and Lydia came over for the festive occasion and we spun out to the pumpkin patch to pick our own for the Toivola Pumpkin carving party. I carved a fairly shotty Patrick, Spongebob’s best buddy…
Five Bullet Friday: Week 50
By: Ben O'Hanlon
Tags: Newsletter, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Fintech, Blockchain

Five Bullet Friday: Week 50

If this is the first time you’re reading our newsletter you can subscribe here and guarantee you don’t miss out on important news.

#AMA today on the major update to Komodo’s codebase, the Sapling Update and the new parameters.

Ask your questions now and we’ll answer at 2 pm New York EDT, 7 pm London GMT, 8 pm Paris CEST, 10 pm Moscow MSK.

Sapling Update

Increase in Komodo’s blocksize

Blockchain Starter Kit

MoMoM multi-chain scaling and cross chain dapp logic

7 New Assetchain Parameters

Click here to ask a question in the AMA.

Ledger to suspend Komodo (KMD) services in anticipation of the update.

Following the hard fork Ledger will update the Komodo apps for the Ledger Nano S and Ledger Blue devices. These will enable users to manage KMD with applications that support both the hard fork upgrades and hardware wallets. To read Ledger’s announcement click here or if you’d like to ask a question in Komodo’s Discord click here.

dPoW explained by the author of Komodo’s whitepaper

An interview with the author of Komodo’s whitepaper discussing delayed Proof of Work (dPoW), scaling and security, in response to a Medium post by @JEhrenhofer that was shared on Twitter. Listen here.

7 new assetchain parameters coming tomorrow.

Komodo’s assetchains have always had a number of customizable parameters. These new parameters will be added to the Komodo code base, along with the Sapling upgrade and increased block sizes.

Please update your Agama to latest version 0.3.1d from our website.

If you have been using version 0.3.0, it is recommended to update to this version which comes with some bug fixes and latest Komodo binary. Download Agama version 0.3.1d from here — https://komodoplatform.com/komodo-wallets/. There are Installer version as default now and portable versions at alternative download page.

Keep using this version as this is sapling ready. Please don’t use any version older than 0.3.0 as those are not sapling ready and send any tx using those version will not confirm on mainnet from 15th December.

If you have funds on any z address, please wait for further announcement after 20th December. You need to migrate your private funds to a sapling address. We will announce guides to do so and the required zmigrate dAPP.

dAPP. Please save and keep your wallet.dat and private keys safely backed up to ensure your funds are safe before you update. With the hardfork there is not going to be any chainsplit, only one mainchain. If you keep using this version you will be on the main chain and your funds are safe as long as you are in control of your private key or wallet.dat file.

Thank you for being a part of our community. Want to get these Five Bullet Fridays in your inbox? Subscribe here.
How To Explain Keto to Family and Friends
By: Reinoud Schuijers
Tags: Diet, Food, Lifestyle, Health, Keto

When you eat a regular western diet, a big part of your energy comes from carbohydrates — carbs for short. Carbs are not bad. In fact, they are a very efficient source of energy for humans and many other creatures and if it wasn’t for them, there would be no humans.

The most well-known carbohydrate is sugar. As we all know, sugar “kind of equals energy”. In fact, when you eat carbohydrate-rich foods such as pasta, bread or pizza, your body transforms those carbs into glucose — a form of sugar.

Every time you eat something that contains carbohydrates, your body transforms them into glucose. This glucose gets picked up by your blood within minutes. So, a few minutes after eating a doughnut, some of those carbohydrates will already be in your bloodstream in the form of glucose.

This is great because your body can use glucose for energy. But too much glucose in your blood will literally kill you — also within minutes.

That is why your body has a safety mechanism. This safety mechanism is called insulin. Whenever you eat carbs, your liver releases insulin into your bloodstream, to prevent glucose levels from becoming too high resulting in a tragic funeral (maybe with red velvet).

Insulin is best described as a messenger. It sends a message to organs and muscles: “store glucose, otherwise human dies.”

The more carbohydrates you eat in one go, the more insulin is needed to not die. So one M&M only increases your insulin levels a tiny bit, whilst that red velvet at your funeral is quite the nuke to your blood glucose and insulin levels.

After the glucose levels in your blood return to baseline, insulin starts to fall and everything goes back to normal. To summarize, every time you eat carbs, your blood glucose spikes, followed by an insulin spike, which then slowly wears off after the glucose has been stored and you haven’t died.
Introduction to Elasticsearch Using Node.js—Part 1
By: Pankaj Panigrahi
Tags: Nodejs, Elasticsearch, JavaScript, Autocomplete, Search

What the Heck Is Elasticsearch?

Elasticsearch is an open-source, broadly distributable, and quite scalable search engine. Queries are significantly faster in Elasticsearch, which helps us search text across a huge volume of data. A key reason to use Elasticsearch is that it abstracts all the complexity of searching and indexing mechanisms from the developer while giving the developer enough tools to customize anything if needed.

Conventional SQL database management systems aren’t really designed for full-text searches. Therefore, one of the primary reasons people use Elasticsearch is to search text in a few milliseconds.

But that’s not all you can do with Elasticsearch. Following are some of the common things people use Elasticsearch for:

1. Auto completion and instant search

2. Fuzzy searching

3. Analytics and visualization using Kibana

4. Aggregating distributed log data

5. Application performance management (APM)

In this course, we will not go in depth into Elasticsearch, as we will focus more on the integration part. But we will cover some basics of Elasticsearch so that we understand how to use it.

This will also mean that the article will be long and filled with boring text.

I can’t really help it :(. That is why I decided to divide the article into two parts. One with only theory and the other one with fireworks :)

But I promise that you will have a clear idea about ElasticSearch once you go through this article.

I recommend going through the tutorials Elastisearch Reference and Elastisearch Answers to have a complete understanding of ES (Elasticsearch. Henceforth, I will refer Elasticsearch as ES.).

First, let’s see how ES stores data and what the key components are:
Last Breath
Tags: Creativity, Poetry On Medium, Poetry, Writer, Poet

A Poem dedicated to the life of a dear friend

Image by Huramechi

I learnt nothing from life so I learn from my death

Imbued with new sight as I draw my last breath

And only awake at the end it seems fitting

That life, as they say, is a waste on the living

‘I wish I could show you the truth that I know’

The Archangel says to the newly formed ghost

But you are Earthbound and of Heaven am I

And your illusions of substance and form are alive

You’re free of your life, your death and your birth

But you peak through the veil and still cling to the earth

But this world is not the first world that you’ve known

Like the realms you once travelled just eons ago

You traversed the Cosmos and swung from the stars

You played chess with Saturn and wrestled with Mars

You skated the Nebula, nimble and light

You taught Annunaki, well, the ones who were bright

You played frequencies that no human can sense

And rippled through waves ultraviolet and dense

Smashed through the stars, a celestial bull

Pushed back at the great gravitational pull

Yet you traded this heaven for a small human shell

Surrendered your bliss for a lifetime of hell

And all for an earth mate down there on the surface

And with your last breath, you say, ‘it was all worth it’.
Winter Cocktails: Jamaican Eggnog
By: Sebastian Stone
Tags: Drinking, Cocktails, Holidays, Recipe, Christmas

Winter Cocktails: Jamaican Eggnog

A recipe for the best homemade holiday eggnog, Jamaican style.

Merry Christmas! The holidays are upon us, and that calls for seasonal cocktails. A few weeks ago we detailed the best recipe for an espresso martini, but now that Christmas is here, we need something that tastes like it. There are few drinks that bring Christmas to your tastebuds quite like eggnog. But what’s better than plain eggnog? Jamaican Eggnog.

You might ask — what makes the eggnog Jamaican? Myers’s Rum, which is made from pure Jamaican molasses, gives the drink its cultural and flavor profile uniqueness. Not only does it provide the holiday kick you need for dealing with certain family members, it blends perfectly with eggnog’s components. Matured for up to four years in white oak barrels, this dark rum adds power and intense flavor. With the right ratio, it will help cut through the eggnog’s heavier ingredients, especially if you use cream. Our recipe below excludes cream and gets straight to the point. Enjoy and Merry Christmas!

Recipe

Ingredients:

1 cup sugar

12 eggs (for a fluffier eggnog, separate the whites from the yolk, but we like using the entire egg to balance out the rum — see below 🙂 )

5 cups skim milk (alternatively, substitute 1 cup heavy cream)

10 shots Myers’s dark rum

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg (add more as desired — it provides great balance to Myers’s rum)

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Directions
Fairy lights.
By: Neha Garg
Tags: Memoir, Diwali, Personal Histories, India

Fairy Lights.

The most beautiful time of the year is here again. The time which reminds me of the time gone by.

Diwali has been the most festive time at the Garg household, always. And now that the clan has moved on to the individual nuclear setups and each nucleus has its own little stream of week-long festivities, the onset of Diwali always takes me back to the time when the entire family stayed together, ate together and celebrated together.

Fresh flowers would adorn the house, and each member of the family was supposed to dress up in the traditional fineries. The sweet smell of rosewater, cardamom and cinnamon would waft through the kitchens, and the traditional feast of no less than eighteen dishes was prepared on the big night. Evenings were characterized by designing rangolis in every courtyard and corridor of the sprawling mansion. The two-hour long pooja session would be orchestrated by the family pundit, where the cousins retreated in the background playing pranks on each other. Pointing and laughing games would ensue when the mantras and shlokas had someone’s name embedded in them. The girls and women of the family would receive cash and gifts and status of goddesses, even if just for a day; and the little boys would stand in a corner, sulking.

Festivities would continue till late, with everyone assembling on the terrace, lighting up the night sky with an array of fireworks. And standing in a corner, far away from the maddening crowd jostling for their turn to light another sparkler, my heart would swell up with the sight of my own little piece of the glimmering sky, brought alive in my balcony by the little fairy lights.

Times have changed, people have moved on, and that balcony doesn’t exist anymore. But the swinging pretty lights are still the same — the only continuing part of the tradition. Every year, they recreate that magical time when life was a fairy tale, bringing me my own little piece of the glimmering sky all over again.
How often should we be having sex in a relationship?
By: Rachael Walker
Tags: Sex, Relationships, Life, Self, Dating

Photo by Jan Zhukov on Unsplash

I confided in a girlfriend of mine recently about the fact that I am having very little if any sex at all at the moment. I am currently in a long term relationship and a dry spell. I’ve put on those relationship lbs so I feel uncomfortable in my clothes never mind out of them and when I fall into bed at night I’m so tired from #hustling that all I wanna do is fall into a light coma until the sun rises. But to my surprise, my friend confessed she’s currently experiencing the same thing.

It’s no shocker that we were a little reluctant to divulge this information. There is an expectation placed on women that our girl chats surrounding the topic of sex should include our favourite vibrator and cosmo’s position of the month. Men don’t have it any easier, for them there seems to be a common belief that their libido equals their masculinity. We put pressure on ourselves as a society with the belief that there is a certain amount of sex we should be having.

But the reality is my friend and I are both in very happy relationships and both having very little sex. So how much is enough sex in a healthy relationship? And why does not having sex feel too taboo to talk about?
How to Deal With Modal Views in SwiftUI
By: Kristaps Grinbergs
Tags: Ios Development, Swift, Programming, Mobile, Swiftui

Close Modal View Programmatically

Our app users can simply slide the modal view down, and it will hide with a nice animation. Set the state to false to hide this from the view responsible for showing the modal view.

Now how do we do it from the modal view itself? We have these two options at our disposal:

Using the @Environment property presentationMode .

property . Passing the state to the modal view as a binding.

Using Environment

The property wrapper @Environment allows us to read and change the values of the view environment state. To hide the modal view, we need to change the presentationMode property. At first, we need to define our view. To do this, we add it to the modal view properties. To dismiss the modal view, we need to alter the presentation mode wrapped value:

This method is quite cumbersome, and dealing with environmental properties can cause accidental issues that are difficult to track down and debug.

Using a binding

Using a binding between the view that is presenting the modal view and the modal view itself is another method to hide it from the code.

First, we need to add a new property to the modal view structure using the @Binding property wrapper. This describes that this value comes from somewhere else outside the view scope.

Now when we are initializing the ModalView , we need to pass the isPresented :

.sheet(isPresented: $showInfoModalView) {

InfoView(isPresented: $showInfoModalView)

}

Using this approach, we are sure that this variable only belongs to these two views. It is more straightforward to test and debug.
Should You Take The Lead In a New Relationship?
By: Dayana Sabatin
Tags: Life Lessons, Relationships, Life, Relationship Advice, Love

I made a friend who introduced me to someone who changed my world.

Matthew Hussey.

If you don’t know who Matthew Hussey is and you struggle with love, you’re in for a treat.

Hussey is a speaker, New York Times Bestselling author, columnist for Cosmopolitan Magazine, and dating expert.

Matthew Hussey made me realize that I was avoiding communicating my standards and what I wanted from him out of fear of what he would tell me. (i.e., no time for a relationship because of work reasons)

I was passive about his behavior when he would bail on me to hang out with his friends, and I told myself it was acceptable because we weren’t actually dating — we were just two people who had been talking every single day and spending a lot of intimate time together for the last few months.

People do that, right?

My thought process was that I wanted to show him that he could have both. He could have his business and have it be a success, and he could also be in a relationship. By being passive and never telling him how the situation made me feel, I thought he would think I’m a low-maintenance kind of gal.

Meaning, he could be in a relationship with me because I didn’t require that much time.

I let him treat me casually because the little attention that he did give me was enough at the moment.

He would show up to the coffee shops I was working at, he’d take me to late-night dinners, he would ask to get a last-minute work out session in, and I would always say yes despite having been at the gym already.

He would look at me like I was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen, and it turned me blind to how I truly felt.

In a video from a few years back, Matthew Hussey talks about how when we care for people; we allow them to act in whatever way they deem fit — despite it affecting us negatively. We love them, we care for them, and we justify their behavior with excuses.

I would tell myself, “he’s busy; that’s why he hasn’t bothered to respond or check up all day.”

Yet Instagram showed me that he was actually out at dinner with his friends.

I used every excuse in the book to justify his lack of interest.

If our self worth is so low that we don’t think we are worth more than what they’re giving us, we will always find a way to stay.

If we value ourselves, we would have a conversation with that person.

Without communicating how we feel — they will never feel any incentive to change, so their bad behavior will continue.

I decided it was time to end the cycle that had me crying to my roommates and staring at my phone till the battery drained itself.

I took the lead and told him whatever we had was over.
How to Host the Holidays at an Airbnb Home
By: Betsy Goldberg
Tags: Food, Travel, Winter Issue, Recipe, Home

Brown Sugar Cardamom Pear Cake with Sage Whipped Cream

Ingredients

1¾ cups all-purpose flour

¾ tsp. kosher salt

1 tsp. ground cardamom

1 tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. baking soda

1½ sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature

½ cup white sugar

½ cup packed light brown sugar

2 large eggs, at room temperature

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 lemon, zested

½ cup sour cream, at room temperature

¼ cup whole milk

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350°. In a large bowl, combine the flour, salt, cardamom, baking soda, and baking powder. In the bowl of a stand mixer, add the butter, and mix on high until whipped, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the ­sugars and whip until light and creamy, about 5 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, scraping down the bowl as you go. Add in the vanilla and lemon zest. Add in the sour cream and milk and mix until just combined. Add the dry ingredients in two parts and stir until just combined. Pour the batter into the cake pan starting from the edges and moving toward the middle, so as not to push the caramel base out to the sides. Spread the batter as evenly as you can and place in the oven. Let bake until lightly golden, 30 to 35 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool for 10 to 15 minutes. Once cooled, remove the cake from the pan by flipping it over so that all the caramel comes out and becomes the top of the cake. Slide onto a cooling rack. Serve topped with Caramel Pear Top and Sage Whipped Cream (below).

Walnut and maple grid pattern cutting board, $48; aheirloom.com. Slo cake server, $32; canvashomestore.com. Simple wood double-stack chopping block, $48; hawkinsnewyork.com.

Caramel Pear Top

Ingredients

1 stick unsalted butter

1 cup light brown sugar

Pinch of kosher salt

2 Bosc pears, halved, cored, and sliced

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350°. Prepare a 9-inch round cake pan with parchment paper in the base and oil the sides. Melt the butter in a small pan on medium-high heat. Add the brown sugar and salt and stir for 5 minutes, until the mixture darkens a bit and begins to bubble. Pour into pan. Let cool, then arrange the pears in a pattern on top of the cake.

Sage Whipped Cream

Ingredients

1½ cups whipping cream

15 sage leaves

1 tbsp. confectioners’ sugar

Directions

Put the cream and sage in a pot and bring to a simmer. Turn the heat down and let simmer for 10 minutes on very low heat. Turn heat off and let cool. Strain the cream through a strainer, squeezing the cream out of the sage well. Place in a container and chill in the fridge for at least an hour. Whip the cream using a beater. After 1 to 2 minutes, add in the sugar and keep whisking for about 5 to 8 minutes, until stiff peaks form. Make sure to not overwhip. Serve with the cake.

Location: Coxsackie, NY

Superhost + Home: Susanne Frenk with Jean Louis Frenk
About Me
By: Tanner Cole
Tags: About

I’m Tanner Cole, a journalist and essayist currently living in upstate New York. I have a bachelor degree in journalism and political science from Western Kentucky University. I do literary writing, investigative journalism and magazine-style reporting. I have a lot of experience managing websites and social media platforms for journalistic publications. And I’m real into fighting the power, man.

There are a few reasons you may have wound up here. Maybe I applied for a job somewhere that you work. (Ahem.) Maybe you liked something I wrote and wanted to check me out. (You sweetheart, you.) Maybe you want to work on a project together. Or maybe you’re just creeping.

At any rate, you can email me at tannerleecole@gmail.com. Check out my resume here.

Much love,

Tanner Cole