fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Doubt is One of the Most Powerful Forms of Curiosity and Change
By: Chad Prevost
Tags: Two Minute Takeaway, Inspiration, Books, Psychology, Authors

I like the direct way Hecht states each considerable and challenging idea in the above quote. All of this is easier said than done, but it is worth saying, and it is worth striving for — all of it. Don’t worry so much about what’s to come. Meantime, enjoy yourself more. You got this.

Doubt: A History by Jennifer Michael Hecht is a powerful discourse on the concept of doubt. Many faith traditions speak of doubt, many in moderate forms suggesting a healthy faith depends on doubt, yet it is viewed as suspect when you have a “dark night of the soul.”

In the tradition of grand sweeping histories such as From Dawn To Decadence, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and A History of God, Hecht champions doubt and questioning as one of the great and noble, if unheralded, intellectual traditions that distinguish the Western mind, especially from Socrates to Galileo and Darwin, to Wittgenstein and Hawking.

This is an account of the world’s greatest “intellectual virtuosos,” who are also humanity’s greatest doubters and disbelievers, from the ancient Greek philosophers, Jesus, and the Eastern religions, to modern secular equivalents Marx, Freud and Darwin — and their attempts to reconcile the seeming meaninglessness of the universe with the human need for meaning. It looks at doubt both from within and external to belief. It examines the motives and believers and gives each its appropriate doubting due.
How to Establish Trust Using the Paid, Owned, and Earned Framework
By: Joe Wilson
Tags: Paid Owned Earned, Marketing, Trust, Innovation, Customer

Paid Media: We Pay People to Say We’re Innovative

In this model, trust comes at a price.

How much are we willing to pay to say we are the most innovative company selling whatever we sell?

Brands can plaster the message on billboards and digital ads, add it to their radio and Pandora scripts, but it’s all the same.

The same way advertisers told the public that butter was healthy, they also claimed there were no risks associated with smoking cigarettes. Paid media is bullshit unless it has substance.

Heineken understood that drunk driving was an issue they wanted to tackle head-on, so they launched a series of anti-drunk driving campaigns in a creative, and dare I say innovative, way.

They worked with behavioral designers to normalize the idea of being a designated driver at local bars and pubs in the UK. These bars were called nudge bars and were designed to reward and celebrate designated drivers by removing the stigma attached to not drinking in a social setting.

According to Edelman.com, the newly designed nudge bar experiences resulted in an overall reduction in drunk driving behavior upwards of 50%. 80% of people said the program would encourage them to support their friends not to drink alcohol if driving, with 60% of people claiming it made them think about changing their behavior. They also aligned themselves with Formula 1 racing champions to communicate the message of not drinking while driving.

Redesigning the bar experience to keep customers and the community safe is an excellent example of innovation. Instead of concentrating on the message of innovation itself, Heineken doubled down on its mission to reduce drunk driving behavior by changing the customer experience where customers spend their time — at the pub.

Heineken then turned this social experiment into their advertising campaigns by running paid TV and digital video ads about the experiment.

According to Statista:

Heineken beer generated approximately 800 million U.S. dollars in sales in the United States in 2018, making it one of the leading brands on the country’s imported beer brand sales rankings.

Social good and innovation are a winning combination. Trust was established with customers, and all they had to do was tell their story on paid channels.
The 5 Components of $1,000 Articles
By: Jun Wu
Tags: Marketing, Content Marketing, Writing Tips, Viral, Writing

The 5 Components of $1,000 Articles

Insights from analyzing my best-performing and selling articles

Photo by Sara Deis on Unsplash

One thousand dollar articles are the ones that every professional writer aims to sell. This often means that you’re paid $1 or more per word. The norm of this type of pay comes from working with big clients or working with big publications.

When you’re starting as a writer, you’re more likely to sell an article to a big publication for $1,000 than to gain a client that pays $1 per word consistently.

I began my writing career on Medium last year. My first $1,000 article was one that was distributed by Medium in one of their partnered publications.

Then, in the next few months, I sold a few articles for $350 a piece. Slowly, after a few months, I sold articles for $750 a piece.

The slow ramp-up isn’t uncommon. You need inspiration to write $1,000 articles. The quality of these articles is very different. You’re telling stories in these articles. If you put out eBooks of these articles, people will buy them.

After reading many articles in big publications such as the Atlantic, the New York Times, and other publications that will pay $500 to $1,000 for a feature article, I worked out the anatomy of a $1,000 article.

Before I dive into the anatomy in this article, let me assure you that you’ll need the following tools to write this article:
Groups and pinned columns
By: Oleg Seriaga
Tags: Dashboard, Charts, Visualization

We are excited to introduce some new features for the table views.

Groups for visual tables

Sometimes there is a need to group table rows by the desired criterion. For example, it is handy to group completed stories and bugs by project or feature. Our latest release brought the possibility to apply up to three groups to any visual table.

The example below shows the table with two groups configured.

Table Editor:

Report View:

Totals, group color, and other dimension settings can be changed using dimension popup shown by clicking on the group green rectangle in the report editor.

Pinned columns

Your important columns can be pinned in visual tables now. It is useful when the table has a lot of columns and some of them should be always visible.

Please find a way to pin a column on a screen below.

Now your pinned column will be always visible.

Vizydrop is a visualization platform, can be used standalone, in Fibery and as Trello power-up or in Targetprocess. It is available as Jira add-on in Atlassian Marketplace.

Please let us know about any questions or comments.
Dangerously unhealthy reading habits
By: Rowen Ellis
Tags: Mental Health, Books, Eating Disorders, Eating Disorder Recovery, Self Improvement

It will come as no shock to any reader that people’s mental health has suffered during the current pandemic. Eating disorder charity Beat has reported a 73% surge in demand for its various support services during the rise of COVID 19 in the U.K.

This statistic came as no surprise to me as during the early weeks of lockdown and social distancing, my body and losing weight became my quarantine project. I’m not sure as to why my worries over my body had come to a head during this period, but memes mocking weight gain, videos urging us to become ‘quaren-toned,’ and health anxieties certainly didn’t help. This led to me seeking out fictional and personal accounts of women’s struggles with eating disorders and how these women eventually recovered.

Purge: Rehab Diaries begins with a refreshing discussion of the various forms eating disorder books take on, that is, self-help texts and a cross between the traditional memoir and self-help book.

Johns explains that eating disorders are sadly not so simple, and rarely can they be navigated by following a handy step by step guide fuelled by God or the latest treatment program. Johns then emphasises that despite several months in an inpatient unit, she is not cured of her disorder, and self-help guides are rarely correct when they urge readers to be fully recovered once and for all following treatment.

Unfortunately, eating disorders are often life long and require ongoing therapy and support.

I have found Johns words to ring true during my somewhat bizarre stint into solely reading books on eating disorders. Memoir after memoir assured me that it would not be a manual for those seeking out new destructive disordered behaviours, rather it would be the story of the woman’s — because so many are overwhelmingly written by women — descent into her disorder and her eventual recovery. Yet time after time the authors would essentially provide a how-to guide for developing an eating disorder.

While Purge does at times detail the author’s behaviour during this time, it is never cast in a positive light, nor are we as readers supposed to approve. Instead, we see a woman truly battling with an ongoing illness. Unlike other well-meaning but perhaps naive authors, Johns knows full well that she may have readers scouring her memoir for tips and tricks. She is careful with what behaviours she includes and the way she portrays them.

This review shall truly strive to not provide readers with eating disorder habits or suggestions. I will not discuss the behaviours covered in Johns’ memoir, nor shall I list my own. I will note that Johns’ text could prove triggering for those grappling with disordered eating or eating disorders, and the following review could prove to be distressing, too.

To combat this and to prepare potential readers, I have provided a list of resources below for those living in both the U.K. and the U.S.
Givers Need Boundaries Because Takers Don’t Have Any
By: Emma Comeaux
Tags: Self-awareness, Mental Health, Self Love, Life, Self Improvement

Givers Need Boundaries Because Takers Don’t Have Any

Setting limits when people demand too much.

Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash

We’ve all encountered someone who has drained you of something (time, effort, money, etc.) without giving much in return. Often times people who are accustomed to someone dropping everything for them have no limits and will push you until you have nothing left to give.

Whether these ‘takers’ are your family, your partner, or work colleagues it’s time to set some boundaries in your life.

‘Takers’ are more than comfortable filling up your schedule for you without considering how this will affect you and your life.

Considering the circumstances that a global health crisis has brought us to, many of us have more time at home now. If we’re home more often we should be able to get more done. Right?

Often times this persistent pressure to achieve more, do more, and be more can lead to burnout.

If you don’t know what burnout is just know that I truly envy you, but honestly, you’ve probably experienced this at one time or another and just haven’t quite placed your finger on it yet.

So, what is burnout?

According to Psychology Today, burnout is a state of emotional, mental, and often physical exhaustion brought on by prolonged or repeated stress.

Boundaries with partners, bosses, and family help us to avoid burnout by preventing the stress of feeling obligated to overwork ourselves.

Creating Boundaries

To create boundaries, you first have to dissect your emotional and physical needs. This may be difficult if you’ve been putting aside your own well-being for long enough. However, it is a crucial step in setting boundaries that truly help your life.

Never exchange your values and limits to make another person more comfortable. Your needs are just as important as theirs, and you should not constantly put others above your own health.

Be assertive and respectful when setting boundaries. Setting boundaries is not a bad thing. There are many people who might find themselves offended when you attempt to set a boundary, but you have to remember that you aren’t doing anything wrong. Be kind, but don’t get bullied into caving in.

Setting boundaries can be a difficult and even lengthy process, but the first steps are always the hardest ones. The more accustomed you become to setting boundaries that are comfortable for you the easier it will become. Setting boundaries is a practical and uplifting way to bring back your empowerment and positively impact your quality of life.
6 Imposter Syndrome Triggers to Watch Out For
By: Angela Mchunu
Tags: Mental Health, Imposter Syndrome, Software Engineering, Programming, Women In Tech

6 Imposter Syndrome Triggers to Watch Out For

Know the signs so you can rise above them

Photo by airdone on iStock.

Imposter syndrome is described as the psychological pattern in which a person doubts their abilities despite evidence of their competence. It is probably one of the most commonly faced issues by women in tech. The unfortunate thing about imposter syndrome is that it never truly goes away. It does get better with time. You learn to manage it, though, and even use it to fuel the majority of your learning and growth.

Just like a parasite, imposter syndrome uses up all of your resources to feed itself. Whenever it flares up, it uses all your brain’s resources, and instead of focusing on the task at hand, you go into a spiral about all the reasons you can’t do the task. Most of the time, the parasite is dormant, but every now and then, something triggers the activation and ruins everything.

Recognizing what triggers your imposter syndrome can be the first step to fighting it off. They differ from person to person, but here are some of the triggers for my imposter syndrome.
Don’t Wait for Opportunity — Work Hard to Achieve What You Want
By: Emmanuel A. Anderson
Tags: The Masterpiece, Motivation, Success, Psychology, Self Improvement

Hard work is the key

In his book, Outliers: The Story Of Success, Malcolm Gladwell digs deep to determine why some people succeed in this life while others don’t. The primary component that came out was — opportunity.

Opportunity in life is as significant as oxygen when it comes to success. It’s true. But my problem is hard work often underestimated in the success equation.

Some believe that, no matter how hard you work, if an opportunity doesn’t present itself, it would be hard to succeed. That is not always true because many people fail to be successful despite having all the opportunities available to them, while some others succeed without having much luck.

To those who, without opportunities, have become successful, what’s the secret? What things did they do that set them apart from their peers? What’s the success factor that they employed that the others didn’t?

Was there even any factor? And the answer is yes! It’s hard work.
The Mosaic
By: Priyanka Srivastava
Tags: Poetry, Mental Health, Sadness, Anxiety, Writing

The Mosaic

A poem about sadness and anxiety

Photo by Ashkan Forouzani on Unsplash

we all have become a story

and learned to part away with memories

in a quiet way.

each poem is a layer that we shed quietly

we all have become a mirror that knows

how to shatter without making a noise.

each piece which shatters

part of the mosaic.
What Happens If You Realize You’re Writing the Wrong Book?
By: Itxy Lopez
Tags: Writing Tips, Motivation, Self, Advice, Writing

Be brave enough to see your mistakes

Knowing you have to start again can be a little scary.

You just barely got through the fear of starting one book, and now you have to go through it again to start another?

I could’ve chosen to ignore my gut feeling that I was doing something wrong. I could’ve continued forcing myself to write.

I would’ve ruined my love for writing if I did that.

The process would be grueling and miserable, and perhaps I wouldn’t want to try writing a book again for a long time after that.

Admitting you made a mistake takes courage. You can’t place the blame on anyone else because writing a book, whether it’s the right or wrong one, is all on you.

No one likes to confess they screwed up, especially in this era where everyone on social media seems to have perfect lives. They don’t mess up, how could I possibly admit I did?

But we all fuck up. A lot. Every day.

Sometimes we trip over nothing, say the wrong thing, or write the wrong books. Screwing up is a part of life, so own it.
ARK Says Goodbye to Marketing Adviser Jeremy Epstein
By: Matthew Dc
Tags: Arkecosystem, Development, Marketing, Blockchain, Bitcoin

Six months ago, ARK signed Author, Marketing Expert, and CEO of Never Stop Marketing, Jeremy Epstein, to a contract to serve as a Marketing Adviser to our Chief Marketing Officer, Travis Walker. Jeremy’s goal was to help inform our team and develop a marketing strategy that would fill the gaps in awareness we were seeing within the industry.

Having years of experience in marketing and a strong understanding of the blockchain space, Jeremy helped to analyze and understand the areas in which ARK needed to expand our outreach and highlighted a need to improve our collaboration with influencers in the space. Working with the team, Jeremy helped to put together a list of influencers to target for both the interoperability space, as well as blockchain at large.

We have already started to implement some of these strategies and over the course of the next several months, as we launch Core v2 and other major developments for the ARK Ecosystem, the entire community will see a massive increase in outreach, interviews, podcasts, and articles as we push to make ARK a leader in the worlds fastest growing industry.

As our contract comes to a close, we wanted to thank Mr. Epstein for the insight he has brought into our blossoming project and to let him know that we appreciate the time and energy he has put forth towards ARK and the ARK community. We will continue to welcome him around our Slack and ecosystem as an important ARK community member and supportive hodler, forever. As he transitions his focus to his upcoming book release and a renewed passion for his marketing agency and writing projects, everyone in the ARK Crew wishes Mr. Epstein much success in his future endeavors.
The economics of Airbnb
By: Sammy Abdullah
Tags: Airbnb, Founders, Startup, Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

Airbnb just went public in a debut that’s been widely celebrated. We dug into the company’s prospectus and learned some interesting facts about their business and travel trends.

Cash flow is highly seasonal. ABNB makes all it’s money in Q3. As you can see, that’s pretty much the only quarter in which the company is comfortably EBITDA positive in any given year. This is due to the fact that the bulk of ABNB’s customers travel in Q3, hence revenue is earned at that point.

Airbnb generated EBITDA. During 2017 and 2018, the company did generate material positive EBITDA. In 2019, they swung back to a loss due to rising costs across the board, and it looks highly likely they’ll burn again in 2020.

Airbnb generates significant free cash flow. Thanks to unearned fees, which is the payment customers make when they book a reservation, Airbnb does generate free cash flow even in years where they are unprofitable. Cash flow is especially strong in Q1 and Q2 when customers book their stays, and then declines in Q3 when many of the stays actually occur (see seasonality above) and Airbnb has to pay those reservations out to the host. Airbnb keeps 15% of every booking.

Strong founder ownership. The three founders (Brian, Nathan, Joseph) own 14.1% to 15.3% each. This is an extraordinary level of ownership for a 3-founder company going public. This is due to two things: strong free cash flow generation and more importantly the ability for Airbnb to raise capital at consistently high valuations.

Covid hurt a lot. Bookings in Q2 fell to $3.2bln whereas in Q2 2019, bookings were $9.8bln. That’s a 67% decline. The rebound in Q3 of 2020 however was dramatic as demand for travel exploded.

Short trips are in. Thanks in part to covid, people are taking shorter trips. “Short-distance travel within 50 miles of guest origin has been highly resilient, even at the peak of the business interruption in April. Short-distance stays were one of the fastest growing categories prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. This growth was further bolstered by the COVID-19 pandemic, as many guests chose short-distance trips instead of long-distance travel.”

Airbnb’s prospectus provides a very interesting look into travel trends and the economics of running a marketplace.

Visit us at blossomstreetventures.com and email us directly with Series A or B opportunities at sammy@blossomstreetventures.com. Connect on LI as well. We invest $1mm to $1.5mm in growth rounds, inside rounds, small rounds, cap table restructurings, note clean outs, and other ‘special situations’ all over the US & Canada.
What If I’m the Narcissist and Not the Victim?
By: Zita Fontaine
Tags: Mental Health, Communication, Relationships, Psychology, Narcissism

When I realised that I was in a relationship with a narcissist, I started to read a lot about Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I devoured books and articles — to find some meaning in the chaos that I experienced, to find explanations where there were none and to confirm that I am not crazy.

But, just like medical students are suffering from severe hypochondria and diagnosing themselves with all sorts of illnesses that they are learning about, I caught myself finding a lot of narcissistic traits in my otherwise normal personality.

I already knew that something was off in my relationship. I knew that we were both suffering. I knew that I was suffering a lot. But everything I read made me start to doubt myself.

What if I am the narcissistic one, and not him? What if the problem lies with me and it is all on me that we are both in this turmoil?

It was quite disturbing to consider that I may have changed into someone I never wanted to be. I felt I was selfish — because I was told that I was selfish, not caring about his needs. I was told that I was abusive — when I was trying to have two-way communication and I wanted to express my opinions.

I felt that I was a terrible person, who always wants attention, who is clingy and demanding and impossible to satisfy.

And it was true. I wanted the attention that he used to give me but he decided to take away to punish me only to show me some random glimpses of affection as breadcrumbs. I started to become selfish, and I tried to get him to care about me too — instead of always dealing with his problems.

According to studies, it is quite common that victims of narcissistic abuse start to question themselves, whether they are the narcissistic one or is it their partners.

If you have to ask yourself whether you are narcissistic or not, odds say you’re not. Let me explain.
I’m Only Superhuman
By: Audrey Malone
Tags: Storytelling, Self-awareness, Life Lessons, Love, Poetry

All you ever gave me was a 1000 and 1 reasons to leave.

But I never did.

I stayed.

Against all odds or hope for a better day,

I stayed with you.

Because I knew — You needed me.
Bokeh 2.0.1
Tags: Python, Python3, Visualization, Data Science, Bokeh

Today we release Bokeh 2.0.1: a collection of improvements in automation, documentation, and other minor fixes following the recent 2.0 release.

The full list of changes can be seen in the milestone list on GitHub. Some of the highlights include:

Addressing a Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) issue seen in Chrome and Chromium-based browsers #9773

Adding multi-file support for FileInput widgets #9727

widgets Bokeh server can now serve custom extension code #9799

A handful of documentation clarifications, corrections, and expansions

As of 2.0.1, Bokeh’s FileInput widget supports multiple file selections.

If you have questions after upgrading, we encourage you to stop by the Bokeh Discourse! Friendly project maintainers and a community of Bokeh users are there to help you navigate any issues that arise.

If you are using Anaconda, Bokeh can most easily be installed by executing conda install -c bokeh bokeh . Otherwise, use pip install bokeh .

Developers interested in contributing to the library can visit Bokeh’s Zulip chat channels for guidance on best practices and technical considerations.

As always, we appreciate the thoughtful feedback from users and especially the work of our contributor community that make Bokeh better!
Stay In Your Overlaps
By: Scott Belsky
Tags: Management, Design, Investing, Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

Stay In Your Overlaps

Your competitive advantage as a maker and/or an investor is your clarity and discipline around the overlaps of your interests and beliefs.

Aspiring entrepreneurs wonder, “how do you decide which idea is worth committing 5–10 years of your life to build?” Similarly, investors ask, “among all the pitches you get, how do you decide where to invest your energy and money?”

In 2005, I asked myself this question as an entrepreneur when founding Behance and 99U. And starting with my first angel investments in 2010, I have pondered the same question as an investor. By no means is my thesis complete, but at this point it is pretty refined. It can be summed up quickly (and graphically):

My best attempt at my own Maker/Investor Thesis. (made with iPad apps Photoshop Sketch and Paper, working together via Creative Cloud!)

The idea of Behance (to connect and empower the creative world) and the team we assembled were squarely in the overlap of the type of company I aspired to work for and the team I aspired to work with. This was true in 2005 and remains true today. We are focused on empowering careers in the creative industry using technology (among other mediums) to accomplish the mission. As for the team, we deeply value design and hire for raw talent and initiative over experience. No doubt, the experience building Behance helped develop my perspective as an investor.

In 2010, I became an accidental angel investor. I was heads down in the ~5 bootstrapping years of Behance before we raised our own first round of investment. Circumstantially, I had gotten to know other entrepreneurs with similar interests. One, in particular, was Ben Silberman, who invited me to be an early Advisor for what became Pinterest. When Ben raised his seed round, I made my first ever angel investment. I didn’t know any better, so I applied the same thesis behind evaluating Behance as an entrepreneur to evaluating Pinterest as an investor. And I have done so with most of my angel investments since.

As I reflect upon my projects and investments that have either succeeded or failed, I realize the importance of playing within “the overlaps.” When some opportunity lures me beyond the overlaps of my interests and beliefs (as displayed in the graphic above), it feels like gambling with my resources rather than investing and leveraging them.

There’s no playbook for this stuff, and chances are whatever formula works for someone else won’t work for you. The world is not advanced by people replaying another person’s playbook. My advice for building your own playbook: Invest your energy and money in the overlap of what excites you (the opportunity), and who you respect (the team).
An Overview of Python’s Datatable package
By: Parul Pandey
Tags: Python, Data Science, Pandas, Big Data, H2oai

“There were 5 Exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003, but that much information is now created every 2 days”:Eric Schmidt

If you are an R user, chances are that you have already been using the data.table package. Data.table is an extension of the data.frame package in R. It’s also the go-to package for R users when it comes to the fast aggregation of large data (including 100GB in RAM).

The R’s data.table package is a very versatile and a high-performance package due to its ease of use, convenience and programming speed. It is a fairly famous package in the R community with over 400k downloads per month and almost 650 CRAN and Bioconductor packages using it(source).
How to Create a New Year’s Resolution That Sticks
By: Ryan Porter
Tags: Inspiration, Productivity, Motivation, Ideas, Self Improvement

How to Create a New Year’s Resolution That Sticks

Your first mistake is calling it a New Year’s resolution

Photo by Kylo on Unsplash

My New Year’s resolution is to remember everything about 2020 and to never take anything in my life for granted again.

Yep, I said it. I want to remember every detail of this past year. I want to take the lessons I’ve learned over the past nine months and engrave them into my brain.

Many of you probably want to forget 2020. You want to leave this year in the dust behind you. This year has been horrible, and it’s undone the lives of so many families.

What is a New Year’s resolution supposed to look like in 2021 anyway?

Things are shaping out to be a little different this year and I think my interpretation of resolutions will live on: they don’t work, and I’ll explain why.

Making a resolution is like making a promise without any consequences. What’s the worst that’ll happen if you don’t read two books every month in 2021? Probably nothing.

You’ll just feel bad about yourself for a little while but then move on with your life. “There’s always next year,” you’ll say as you mentally close the chapter on the resolution you said you’d fulfill.

I want to say that New Year’s resolutions work. On paper, they should have a higher success rate. They are exciting opportunities to better oneself. Yet, it’s a commonly held notion that New Year’s resolutions fail.

You can still accomplish your goal without putting the “resolution” label on it, and I’ll explain how.
5 Books Bill Gates Thinks You Should Read in 2021
By: Matt Lillywhite
Tags: Education, Books, Reading, Productivity, Self Improvement

5 Books Bill Gates Thinks You Should Read in 2021

A reading list that will inspire you to think differently.

Photo via Flickr

I’ve recently noticed that I have an increasing amount of things in common with Bill Gates. Unfortunately, I’m not talking about having a billion dollars in my checking account. Instead, I’m referring to a genuine love of reading that inspires me to think differently about the world.

How do I continuously find new and exciting books to read? By paying attention to recommendations from passionate readers, such as Bill Gates, and then reading them as soon as I get an opportunity.

So below are several interesting books that Bill Gates has recommended. Each of them changed the way I see the world, and I’m confident they will do the same for you, too.
When Your Past Haunts Your Current Relationships
By: Annie Tanasugarn
Tags: Mental Health, Life Lessons, Love, Psychology, Life

“The patient cannot remember the whole of what is repressed in him, and what he cannot remember may be precisely the essential part of it. He is obliged to repeat the repressed material as a contemporary experience instead of remembering it as something in the past.” ~Sigmund Freud

The old saying, “we are creatures of habit” rings true here, and especially when talking about why we repeat — on autopilot — the things that we instinctively know are shooting us in the foot.

Are we gluttons for punishment?

Well, Behavior Analytically speaking…no.

If we continue doing what inevitably doesn’t have our best interests at heart, then we’re sabotaging ourselves, as in compulsively…and repetitively.

What I am referring to here is called “repetition compulsion” which is a term coined by Sigmund Freud as he watched a young child throw a toy repeatedly and then pick it back up, only to throw it again. In true Freudian analysis, he proposed that the young child was missing his mother who had left the house earlier, and that the kid’s behavior was a combination of ridding himself of his absentee mother (by tossing the toy) and then bringing mom back (grabbing the toy), thus “fixing” the situation.

Freud aside, we are often guilty of a ‘repetition compulsion’ of sorts if we gravitate to the same show to binge over and over. Or, we may head to our favorite getaway and order the same thing from room service each time.

While this is usually seen as being in our Netflix comfort zone, or having an affinity for Cobb salad, there isn’t anything necessarily self-destructive in these “repetitions” — as long as these habits aren’t being used to self-sabotage or to avoid or numb other pain. For example, if you binge Netflix as an escape or to numb for every failed relationship, then you’re avoiding digging deeper in unboxing what may keep you locked intoa habit of chasing a new relationship each time a problem surfaces in an existing one.

However, healthy repetitive behavior isn’t what Freud or other analysts are referring to regarding this phenomenon. More often than not, a repetition compulsion is a series of learned, habitual behaviors and behavior patterns that originate in childhood and negatively influence us throughout our adult lives unless (or until) we choose to conquer them and make healthy changes.

Because of their repetitive nature, most of us probably gravitate towards thinking that compulsive bad habits are part of intimate relationships. And, you would be correct in thinking this. Intimate relationships may be where a repetition compulsion has most of its strength and influence because of vulnerable emotions and emotional intimacy that are usually tied into it.
The Story of our New Medium Publication Writing Heals
By: Michelle Monet
Tags: Mental Health, Healing, Writing Tips, Writing Life, Writing

This past week I had an almost non stop bombardment of family stresses. I won’t go into all of it but my man Bobs’ sister Carol has rapidly progressing M.S. (Muscular Sclerosis). She is going downhill fast. She is my age, 57. It’s very hard to watch.

Bobs mom, who has been her caretaker called yesterday sounding weary and overwhelmed with grief.

“This is the hardest thing ever….to be a parent watching your child die slowly!”

sigh…

“Carol has not stopped eating. She weighs over 300 lbs now. She just doesn’t want to give up her sweets! She said, ‘Mom, I want to go out happy!” She knows she doesn’t have much time left and wants to eat what she wants. She has pretty much given up. Now she wants to enjoy herself and her life!”

I guess I can’t blame her.

She had a half written book she was getting ready to publish. It was a life ‘dream’ of hers. I planned to help her with formatting and editing but now that dream is over. She can no longer write or focus on anything. It’s sad to see the quickness of her deterioration — how fragile and short life really is.

Photo by Clemente Cardenas on Unsplash

I also have two friends (both also my age) who have cancer. It doesn’t look good for them either.

So… all this had me thinking about the urgency of life. Why we must must try to use our time for life enhancing things.

I believe this in my soul!
How emotions work to create preference
By: Helge Tennø
Tags: Perspective, Advertising, Psychology, Marketing

Two main traits of the human brain work together when creating brand preference: Energy conservancy and emotions.

Where as the brains need to create preference stems from it’s need to conserve energy / survival instinct (read more…). Emotions help us create this preference.

The important thing here is that emotions is not the brain being lazy, it’s the brains way of evaluating and labeling a choice (and then being able identify preference.)

How does this work? Let’s again look to Daniel Gilbert:

Gilbert says that great psychologists in the end are measured by how they finish the sentence “men differ from monkeys because they …”. And Gilberts claim is that they synthesize future.

What does this mean? “synthesize future”?

When faced with a decision of a specific proportion we imagine ourselves “using” the product or the product being in “use”. We do this by recalling previous experiences that we find relevant and that helps us understand. Images based on our previous experiences which we collect because we find them relevant to the situation. Our emotions connected to these previous images are then mixed and creates an end-state emotion that we connect to the choice at hand.

Now the brain works in such a way that emotion created from imagining things has the same effect as real situation emotion.

Some quotes to support this:

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Android Image Color Change With ColorMatrix
Tags: Android, Android App Development, Mobile App Development, Programming, Design

Binary the Color

We have the primary colors of red, green, and blue, and the secondary colors of magenta, cyan, and yellow. We could convert all colors to the binary colors, depending on the dominant color of the pixel.

To do that, we need to come up with a formula.

But before that, one important note:

If a calculated color value is greater than 255, it will cap at 255. If a calculated color value is smaller than 0, it will be cap at 0.

The above note is very handy for our case. We want to ensure that all colors are either 255 or 0. We could have a formula like this:

NewColor = 255 * OriginalColor — 128 * 255 [Cap at 0 to 255]

Let’s test the value:

- Assuming original color is 0, the new value is -32640. But since it is cap at minimum 0, it is 0.

- Assuming original color is 255, the new value is 32640. But since it is cap at maximum 255, it is 255.

- Assuming original color is 127, the new value is -255, which is converted to 0

- Assuming original color is 128, the new value is 0

- Assuming original color is 129, the new value is 255

So, we have proven that any original color of 128 or less is converted to 0 and any original color of 129 to 255, will be 255.

With that, we could have our matrix as below:

[ 255, 0, 0, 0, -128*255,

0, 255, 0, 0, -128*255,

0, 0, 255, 0, -128*255,

0, 0, 0, 1, 0 ]

You’ll realize that the decision to convert to either 0 or 255 is based on the coefficient 128-set. If we make that a variable, we could then adjust how much we make it bright/dim for the binary color, as per the demo below.
Considerations When Measuring Chatbot Success
By: Cobus Greyling
Tags: Chatbots, NLP, Artificial Intelligence, Design, Conversational UI

Considerations When Measuring Chatbot Success

And What Principles You Should Implement…

Introduction

Performance measures are important to organizations wanting to track their investment in a conversational interface…

But standards & metrics differ by industry and obviously by companies in each industry. Due to the nascent nature of the technology companies are also eager to learn from one another.

With some overestimate the importance and impact of their chatbot, and other heaving discounting the significant impact their conversational interface is having…

Industry Type Matters

Call Deflection

Obviously chatbots are implemented across a vast array of industries. These industries use different parameters. Parameters which they deem as crucial to the measuring of success in their environment.

Microsoft Power Virtual Agents have Analytics Built In

Banking and financial sectors use chatbots to perform existing tasks faster. And an important driver is lower call volumes and how much savings are incurred from call deflection.

Quality Conversations

The most common and probably important chatbot performance metric is conversation length and structure. In most cases conversation transcripts are reviewed and manually classed in order so points of improvement noted.

Organisations are aiming for shorter conversations and simplified dialog structures. A conversation or specific dialog always have a happy path which developers hope the user will find and stick to.

Digression in a Chatbot Conversation

A rudimentary and simplistic approach would be to have a repair path, or a few. Paths which intends to bring the conversation back to the happy path from points of digression. Hence ‘repairing’ it.

This approach might lead to a situation called fallback proliferation.
ReElivate — Creating Better Social Virtual Experiences
By: Bram Berkowitz
Tags: Marketplaces, Venture Capital, Startup, Coronavirus, Social

ReElivate — Creating Better Social Virtual Experiences

A marketplace connecting experience providers and companies to deliver unique, memorable, and virtual experiences

The Problem

The coronavirus pandemic has made companies pretty reliant on Zoom and virtual communication. While these virtual communication services have been life savers during this crazy time, they have not been able to replace in person social interaction. Virtual happy hours and coffee chats are redundant and people are looking for better ways to socialize virtually.

What The Company Does

ReElivate is a platform that connects companies with experience providers to help them create better virtual experiences. ReElivate is a marketplace to support companies in a coronavirus world, so companies can better engage their customers, teams, and clients. Events are centered around six categories including cooking, tasting, entertainment, crafts, care, and games. The platform also includes a concierge service if companies want higher levels of account management and assistance planning the experiences.

The Market

The company is serving a market that is smaller than traditional event management but focused on B2B. Some competitors include Airbnb and Kapow, but ReElivate believes the customers it is targeting are underserved by both competitors.

Business Model

ReElivate is a traditional marketplace that charges hosts a commission on the experiences that are booked.

Traction

ReElivate was founded in September and is working with more than 50 companies for their pilot, and with more than 20 local companies as hosts of experiences including Improv Asylum. The company has started to book experiences for November and will continue to add hosts and companies throughout the month. The self service marketplace will launch by the end of the year.

Founding Team Background

The founding team has over 30 years of experience in technology startups. Jon Conelias and Jason McCarthy were both executives at The Grommet. Conelias has been a CFO and operator for the past 15 years of marketplace companies focused on both B2B and B2C channels with multiple successful exits. McCarthy has been in marketplace operations for eight years. McCarthy founded The Grommet Wholesale business.

What They Need Help With

The company is looking for any hosts to provide experiences — the more interesting the better. The company is also looking to inform companies of its services to help connect them with the right experiences. Connect with the ReElivate team.

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Startup Metrics
By: Livio Marcheschi
Tags: Metrics, Digital Marketing, Startup, Entrepreneurship, Growth Hacking

Startup Metrics

“In God we trust; all others must bring data”

This post lists my favourite articles on startup metrics.

Learn what to measure from rock stars such as David Skok, Andrew Chen and Dave McClure.

Happy reading!

METRICS OVERVIEW:

Key concepts explained

THE CONVERSION FUNNEL:

Describing users flows as funnels

CUSTOMER ACQUISITION & RETENTION:

Capture and maintain user loyalty

SOME NUMBERS:

Metrics in the real world

Happy reading,

— Livio (@LivMKk)

Thank you for reading & recommending ❤

P.S.: If you care about measuring the right metrics, you should read about Financial Planning for SaaS startups

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Here’s how we upgraded our marketing analytics
By: Istvan Korompai
Tags: Marketing, Tableau, Analytics, Dataviz, Google Cloud Platform

I hate interrupting my analysis workflow by tabbing between different applications and interfaces. It’s irritating, decreases your productivity and just makes things harder to understand. Therefore, I could empathize when one of our marketing people came up to me and expressed their need for an online marketing dashboard. In their vision, this dashboard would unite all our most important online marketing indicators and help them immensely by removing the need to go back and forth between the analytics views of different platforms.

But online marketing data is isolated, lives in silos and the individual platforms don’t make it easy to integrate them with one-another. Luckily, most of them offer API services, so we rolled our sleeves up and built a basic data pipeline, which resides entirely in the cloud and feeds our Tableau dashboard.

The data

As far as social media platforms go, Starschema mostly uses Facebook and, to a much lesser extent, Instagram and Twitter. Our leads are generated through our website, the traffic of which we measure with Google Analytics, which we also use for our standalone, Wordpress-based blogs. It would have been nice to get the traffic data from Medium as well, but this platform doesn’t offer an API for that unfortunately, so it’s not currently in our scope.

The pipeline

If you’re only interested in the visuals and not how the data got there, just skip this section.

We are not a small firm anymore, so whatever we would have created needed to be as enterprise-ready as possible, not least because we wanted to showcase this and use it as a proof of concept for other projects. We also wanted something with low cost and maintenance, since we want to be able to deploy this for smaller firms that might not necessarily have tech personnel on board.

Thus, we opted for the Google Cloud Platform, mostly because their generous free tier ended up completely covering our requirements. The idea is to have scheduled Python scripts download the data through the API-s, flatten it and load it into our Marketing Data Warehouse which we set up in BigQuery for the sake of simplicity. In a more mature environment, we would put a frontend onto App Engine to drive the Scheduler and the Functions, but in our case we skipped this and manage everything through the GCP console.

The very simple pipeline architecture we set up for this project

The dashboard