fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
#ClimateWednesday Launch Tweet-Chat Series On #ClimateFinanceNG
By: Iccdi Africa
Tags: Climate Wednesday, Climate Finance, Wash, Climate Change, Renewable Energy

Climate finance is critical to addressing climate change because large-scale investments are required to significantly reduce emissions, notably in sectors that emit large quantities of greenhouse gases. Climate finance is equally important for adaptation, for which significant financial resources will be similarly required to allow societies and economies to adapt to the adverse effects and reduce the impacts of climate change.

It is important for all governments and stakeholders to understand and assess the financial needs of developing countries, as well as to understand how these financial resources can be mobilized. Provision of resources should also aim to achieve a balance between adaptation and mitigation.

Overall, efforts under the Paris Agreement are guided by its aim of making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development. Assessing progress in provision and mobilization of support is also part of the global stocktake under the Agreement. The Paris Agreement also places emphasis on the transparency and enhanced predictability of financial support.

#ClimateFinance

International Climate Change Development Initiative will be having a tweet chat series on #ClimateFinanceNG — this will help stakeholders to understand more about

1. Attracting Funding For Climate Adaptation and Mitigation 2. Bridging the Investment Gap for Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) 3. Examining Nigeria Readiness for Sustainable Transition 4. Assessing Nigeria’s Potential for Bankable Renewable Energy Transactions 5. Mainstreaming Transition to Solar Power and Zero Carbon Emissions

#ClimateWednesday tweet chat series on #ClimateFinanceNG will be starting this Wednesday. Stay connected.
Change Your Facebook Profile to Support Black America
By: Lincoln W Daniel
Tags: BlackLivesMatter, Facebook, Politics And Protest, Racism

Change Your Facebook Profile to Support Black America

Black Lives Matter. Be an Ally. Click here to create your picture.

This week we watched two black men be murdered by police, but no prayers came. There will be 305 more in the next 365 days. Time to demand change.

It is clear who matters to the leadership at Facebook. It is clear who matters to the Justice Department of the United States. It is clear who matters to the law enforcers that our tax dollars go to. Those people do not include those who look like me.

Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are. — Benjamin Franklin

During the ISIS attacks on Paris, Facebook was quick to create a feature for users to change their profile pictures in or to done the flag of France. Not too long after that, the world was made aware of thousands of people killed by terrorists in northwest Africa, but the crickets were louder. Facebook made it clear who mattered to them.

Since Facebook doesn’t care enough about Black America to pray for us in our time of darkness, we must pray for ourselves; we must support ourselves; we must stand as one against the injustices that plague our communities.

Change your Facebook profile picture to show your support for Black Lives in America. Black Lives Matter. Be an Ally.

I’m not Dr. Martin Luther King. I don’t have the platform to rally millions behind me. However, I am a writer. My passion is in developing software to enable people. Since I am just one person, I took the time tonight to create a quick webapp to enable anybody who cares about the freedom of people of color (POC) to make it clear to their community that they support justice for all people by changing their Facebook profile picture.

You don’t have to be black to be outraged.

Remember that you don’t have to be black to have empathy for your fellow citizens. If you don’t know how to show you support the POC communities, feel free to change your profile picture in solidarity with us.

Change your Facebook profile picture to show your support for Black Lives in America. Black Lives Matter. Be an Ally. Click here to create your picture.

It takes 20 seconds.
How Men Can Support Women’s Rights by Being There for the Little Things
By: Samantha Blake
Tags: Education, Family, Society, Feminism, Relationships

Often the biggest impact starts on a small scale. Sometimes that means one person raising their voice, sometimes it’s one person saying no, and sometimes it’s someone making an effort to change the game.

Whether it’s coming from a mother or father or both, gender equality can start early — by teaching girls from a young age that they are strong, smart, and enough. That girls are just as capable as boys, and just as much is expected of them. And that their voice and opinions are just as important.

The truth is, you don’t have to be loud to make a difference.

And women’s rights isn’t just a women’s issue — men can have a part to play too. It could be small steps like a father teaching his daughter to be assertive and stand up for herself, or teaching her skills that typically only boys were expected to have in the past.

It can mean encouraging more girls to get outside, work on cars, study science, math, and tech. Or it can mean allowing boys to talk about emotion and show that they care, rather than continuing the unfortunate idea that “real men don’t cry”.

And ultimately, it’s teaching both boys and girls about respect.
The 3 Virtues of Good Programmers
By: Robert Quinlivan
Tags: Career, Programming, Software Development, Startup

Virtue #1: Laziness

It’s telling that computer science is the only field where “lazy” is a technical term.

Programmers have a lot of work to get done. Logically, the best way to address a large set of work tasks is to get rid of any of them that you don’t really need to do.

Next, try to get rid of any repetitive tasks. If there’s one thing we hate, it’s routine. We don’t want to repeat the same keystrokes if it’s possible to write a script to do it for us.

Why? Because we’re lazy — and that’s a good thing. Laziness is a result of our desire for efficiency.

In some cases, this can be a bit of a cultural miscommunication. Sometimes programmers are judged for how much code we produce. For managers from non-technical backgrounds, a programmer who works really hard to produce an enormous amount of code might be seen as the hardest worker in the office.

But a clever programmer knows that producing a lot of code might just mean you’re being inefficient. It’s much better to come up with a clever, low-effort solution, rather than reinventing the wheel or over-engineering something. Why spend hours writing code you don’t need?
The next era of Bug Bounty at Pinterest
By: Pinterest Engineering
Tags: Engineering, Security, Spam, Bug Bounty

Devin Lundberg | Pinterest Tech Lead, Product Security

When a security researcher discovers a bug in a piece of software, the responsible thing to do is inform the company so they can fix it. And so platforms like Pinterest need to provide clear and actionable programs, typically with rewards or recognition, for those with valid reports. For us, that’s come in the form of responsible disclosure policies, which we’ve evolved over the years.

We work with Bugcrowd to manage the program and integrate with their existing community of researchers, across a variety of Pinterest properties including pinterest.com subdomains (such as help.pinterest.com), mobile apps, browser extensions and open source projects. Since 2015 we’ve given monetary rewards (or “bounties”) to researchers and have continually raised those rewards. We leverage Bugcrowd’s vulnerability rating taxonomy to fairly assign rewards based on severity, which allows for a reasonable expectation of reward from researchers and helps to focus attention on the most impactful types of bugs.

The program has been a big success. Hundreds of researchers have participated in the program. We’ve rewarded more than $35,000 to more than 150 valid non-duplicate submissions, and the highest single reward was $2,500.

Today we’re once again announcing increased rewards for all tiers of bugs to show our continued commitment to responsible disclosure and researchers.

If you’re a security researcher or developer interested in participating in our program, read the brief and terms on Bugcrowd, and join us.
Create a Text-to-GIF Animation
By: Kostia Palchyk
Tags: Animation, JavaScript, Programming, React, Web Development

2. JSON to Images

I started with defining a simple JSON to test if I can render images based on this structure.

The JSON should describe:

sprites — image URLs for our actors and decorations

— image URLs for our actors and decorations scenes — should contain and position actors and decorations

— should contain and position actors and decorations frames — should contain actions, like "Ann moves left"

({

sprites: { name: 'http://sprite.url' },

scenes:

// scene descriptions

{ scene_ONE:

{ entries:

/* entries with their sprites and position */

{ Ann: { sprite: 'woman'

, position: { /* ... */ }

}

}

},

},

frames:

[ { scene_name: 'scene_ONE'

, actions: [

{ target: 'Ann'

, action: 'move'

, value: {x, y}

}

]

}

, // ...other frames

]

})

For the actors, I’ve defined three preset sprites — tree , woman , and man — and added relevant images to the project.

Now for each frame, we’ll perform all the actions (move and talk).

// for each frame

const computedFrames = frames.map(frame => {

// clone entries

const entries = _.merge({}, frame.scene.entries);

// perform actions on the target entry

frame.actions.forEach(action => {

const entry = entries[action.target]; if (action.type == 'talk') {

entry.says = action.value;

} if (action.type == 'move') {

entry.position = action.value;

}

}); return { entries };

});

For drawing entry sprites, we’ll surely use Canvas:

// draw the entries

const images = computedFrames.map(frame => {

const canvas = document.create('canvas');

const ctx = canvas.getContext('2d');

frame.entries.forEach(entry => {

ctx.drawImage(entry.sprite); // for sprites

ctx.fillText(entry.says); // for speech

});

// return rendered frame URL

return URL.createObjectURL(canvas.toBlob());

})

Canvas can export its contents as a data URL or a blob. We’ll need this to generate .gif later.

In reality, the code is a bit more asynchronous: toBlob is async, and all the images should be downloaded before ctx.drawImage . I used a Promise chain to handle this.

At this point, I have proved that the images can be rendered as intended:

The first rendering! Hurray!

So we can move on…
Data Talks
By: Aoun Lutfi
Tags: Data Science, Data, Insights, Artificial Intelligence

I remember around 3 or 4 years ago, there was a saying that I used to hear a lot: “Money Talks”. Now I can see that this no longer holds; the better way to phrase it would be: “Data Talks”. We are now in the Cognitive Era, all the buzzwords in the media are around data: Cognitive, AI, Machine Learning, Big Data, Data Analytics, etc… The big tech players are now shifting their focus as well. Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft, and now even Alibaba and Oracle are joining the race.

Last week, Gitex tech week conclude in Dubai, and some of the major highlights were around data, from visualizing data to predicting city-wide events, to bring the cloud to the masses; everything was around data.

Smart Dubai Office constructed a giant visualization of all the data flowing in Dubai (called Future Live) with the aim of using this data to prepare for Expo 2020. There was an entire hall in Gitex dedicated just for cloud featuring the typical Cloud Giants plus many newer entries. IBM showed a citywide solution called MetroPulse which helps understand city dynamics and how different events and data in the city correlate and affect each other.
Nothing’s More Important Than Showing Up
By: Ross Mccammon
Tags: Creativity, Self, Practice

Photo: vgajic/Getty Images

Bestselling author Seth Godin has been writing frequently about creativity on Medium the past few weeks. This week he wrote about the importance of simply showing up. For Godin, creativity isn’t as much inspiration as it is application: arriving on time and doing the work. In a word: practice.

“When we commit to a practice, we don’t have to wonder if we’re in the mood, if it’s the right moment, if we have a headache or momentum or the muse by our side. We already made those decisions.”

It was key to his own success, he says: “Twenty years ago, I decided to blog every day. There will be a blog from me tomorrow. Not because it’s the best one I’ve ever written, or perfect, or even because I’m in the right mood. It will be there because it’s tomorrow.”

I’ve thought a lot about this post as we head into this pandemic winter. How do we face it? How do we continue to do great work? I think Godin has the answer: methodically, regularly. You can find control amid chaos but only if you apply a schedule that gives you space to create. Now, more than ever, structure is a shelter from the storm.
World in Crisis, Pandora Still Rocks
By: R. E. Warner
Tags: AI, Metric, Pandora, Brit Pop, Internet Radio

With all the bad news lately, I decided it was time to put together an upbeat punk-pop-rock station on [Pandora](http://www.pandora.com) so at least *something* sounded kind of happy, if not peppy-mad. The thing is, I could think of a few bands I wanted to seed this one with, among them, [The Ting Tings](http://www.myspace.com/thetingtings) and [Metric](http://www.myspace.com/metricband)---both good at being mad with an upbeat sound; rebels all. But there was this other band… swedish, I think. I hadn’t listened to them in years and just couldn’t think of the name, even though I knew it was really simple. Well, three songs into listening to my new station who comes up but [the Sounds](http://www.myspace.com/thesounds)! Wow. The very band I couldn’t recall. Pandora borders on psychic when it does stuff like this. By far the best music web site out there, folks. [Tune into my new station](http://www.pandora.com/stations/7f87a543b69d4af4ba73d19387cd3c75c874869f84047ca8) and check it out for yourself!
Gray Wanderers
By: Zach J. Payne
Tags: Grief, Winter, Depression, Creativity, Poetry

In stories, stars will light the path

to victory, grief’s aftermath

if only you would crane your head

and let your stubborn self be led

where Heaven wills — follow that trail

and you are destined ne’er to fail

nor fall: your spirit guarded still

should all of Hell besiege your will.

So says the myth — but where is fact?

for those who linger, still intact

but bleeding out, adrift in gray,

no stellar beacons point their way.

Are they to drift forever on

until all hope of light is gone?
On Names
By: Dan Pupius
Tags: Medium, Inside Medium, Engineering, Company Culture, Company

On Names

Names are important; they are more than just words, they shape and color the things they name.

— From the Journal of Xavier Desmond by George RR Martin

SWAT is our on-call and release team. It stands for Site Wellness, Availability, and Triage. While the three tenets are important, and the name is catchy and memorable, it is time to rebrand.

Even though the militarization of the police isn’t new, in the last 6 months we’ve seen a marked increase in disturbing events and actions by the police. And while Swatting also isn’t new, it is being used by hate groups to try and silence victims of abuse and harassment within our community (including members of our own team).

As Nathan so eloquently pointed out on Slack:

The problem with drawing a parallel to a militarized police force is that we’re the people who are unaffected by it (like white and affluent). The tech industry already has a rep for being out of touch.

Using notes add proposals for a new name. I’ll add them to the post at the bottom and we can vote on them via highlights.

Requirements:

Short

Memorable

Easy to type

Easy to say

Unambiguous at Medium

Does not have to be an acronym

Sounds ok saying: “I’m on my _____ rotation next week”, “Have ____ investigate”.

Some concepts for inspiration:
How to Load Third-Party Scripts Dynamically In React
By: Muhammad Anser
Tags: JavaScript, Front End Development, React, Reactjs, Programming

What Do We Do Then?

One of the many solutions can be to create a function that we can call on the pages where we need the third-party library and to dynamically create and inject the <script></script> tag into the <body></body> of the application.

Suppose we want to integrate the Google Maps API through a script and show the map on one of our pages. Let’s look at an example:

const loadGMaps = (callback) => { const existingScript = document.getElementById(' googleMaps ');

const script = document.createElement('script');

script.src = ' if (!existingScript) {const script = document.createElement('script');script.src = ' https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js '; script.id = ' googleMaps ';

document.body.appendChild(script); script.onload = () => {

if (callback) callback();

};

} if (existingScript && callback) callback();

}; export default loadGMaps;

Let’s try to understand what our function is doing. We begin by trying to detect whether or not we’ve already loaded Google Maps by looking for a <script></script> tag with its id set to googleMaps . If we do, we stop — as there’s no need to load the library twice.

If we don’t find an existingScript ; we create the script dynamically. We start by creating an empty <script></script> tag in the memory as script and then assign the necessary attributes to its src and the id to identify the script later. Finally, we append the script to our <body></body> tag to actually load this.
Five Amazing Tips in this Article Will Change you forever
By: Talha Khan
Tags: Life Lessons, Humor, Health, Life, Sarcasm

1- Read more articles on Medium.com about writing more articles on medium .com so you can write more articles on Medium.com so your readers can read more articles and write more articles for their readers. Medium.com is not a pyramid scheme getting everybody to write on this platform at all.

2-I have read as many books as there are stars in a brightly lit street on a new years eve. Out of those books a very popular and common book I have found some tips and tricks that you will find these anecdotes available anywhere else on the internet, but I will attach a very relevant picture of hot guy/girl posing in a way that distorts your perception of reality or I will just post a picture of a photoshoot my friend did with his very expensive iphone.

A very relevant picture for this article that must motivate you.

3-Wake up at a time of the day when even a rooster is surprised to see you outside. In that half dead state you better run boy/girl. Even if it is for ten minutes you better move that b***. Make sure to jot down everytrhing you have experienced and write an article on medium.com about you waking up early for a week out of total thirty years of your life. That way even if you never wake up on time again you will have immense gratification from other readers who will clap for you fifty times each and for a second you will know that life exactly as you want it to be.

4-Drink Water every waking second of your day if you want your skin to look like a light bulb. You will never need artificial lighting in your house since you will be glowing all day everyday. Going to the washroom every thirty minutes just to relieve yourself is absolutely normal and very responsible. Other benefits include more energy and focus. Your bench Press max will definitelyimprove from 10 lb bar to atleast 11 lb because you have been drinking all the water that was ever available to you. Other than that the greatest benefit of drinking as much water as possible is you are a gag away from puking all over the floor, which is a very useful tip if you are a pelican and feed your babies through regurgitation. Then repeat the same regurgitation on medium.com when you write about your experience so everybody who is trying to fix thigs for themselves can be blessed with the same super powers.

You guessed it, this animated guy sure had his fill of water

5- Final advice is read, every waking second when you are not writing on medium.com or drinking water or talking about it, you should be reading about it. I am absolutely not aware of the fact that the first tip was about reading and I am not reiterating the fact on purpose.
From Novice to Expert: How to Write a Configuration file in Python
By: Xiaoxu Gao
Tags: Python, Software Development, Programming, Data Science, Coding

Which format of the configuration file should I use?

In fact, there are no constraints on the format of the configuration file as long as the code could read and parse them. But, there are some good practices.

The most common and standardized formats are YAML, JSON, TOML and INI. A good configuration file should meet at least these 3 criteria:

Easy to read and edit: It should be text-based and structured in such a way that is easy to understand. Even non-developers should be able to read. Allow comments: Configuration file is not something that will be only read by developers. It is extremely important in production when non-developers try to understand the process and modify the software behavior. Writing comments is a way to quickly explain certain things, thus making the config file more expressive. Easy to deploy: Configuration file should be accepted by all the operating systems and environments. It should also be easily shipped to the server via a CDaaS pipeline.

Maybe you still don’t know which one is better. But if you think about it in the context of Python, then the answer would be YAML or INI. YAML and INI are well accepted by most of the Python programs and packages. INI is probably the most straightforward solution with only 1 level of the hierarchy. However, there is no data type in INI, everything is encoded as a string.

The same configuration in YAML looks like this. As you can see, YAML supports nested structures quite well (like JSON). Besides, YAML natively encodes some data types such as string, integer, double, boolean, list, dictionary, etc.

JSON is very similar to YAML and is extremely popular as well, however, it’s not possible to add comments in JSON. I use JSON a lot for internal config inside the program, but not when I want to share the config with other people.

TOML, on the other hand, is similar to INI, but supports more data types and has defined syntax for nested structures. It’s used a lot by Python package managements like pip or poetry. But if the config file has too many nested structures, YAML is a better choice. The following file looks like INI, but every string value has quotes.

So far, I’ve explained WHY and WHAT. In the next sections, I will show you the HOW.
Ordinary People Worship Billionaires for One Simple, Flawed Reason
By: Jessica Wildfire
Tags: Politics, Society, Equality, Culture, Money

Being a Billionaire Sounds Amazing.

Imagine if you woke up tomorrow with billions of dollars suddenly at your fingertips. If you hated your job, you could finally quit. You could tell your boss exactly what you thought about them.

You wouldn’t have to worry about the future anymore, at least not half as much as you do right now. You’d never worry about bills again — or health insurance. You’d never worry about paying your rent on time, or shoplifting just to feed your family.

You could stop feeling so desperate all the time.

You could finally relax.

Stress would fall off you like dust. Nobody could tell you what to do anymore. You’d have enough money for your children, and their children. You could buy a bigger house, and pay someone to clean it. You could drive exactly the kind of car you wanted. You could make the guy or girl of your dreams fall in love with you, at least for a little while.

This is how most people think about wealth. It doesn’t matter if most of it isn’t true. Only some of it has to be.
Explaining the revenue hockey stick in funding presentations
By: Jan Schultink
Tags: Presentation, PowerPoint, Presentation Design, Design, Data Visualization

One of the last pages in every venture capitalist funding presentation is the “hockey stick” of revenues and profits shooting through the roof. VCs expect a bit of optimism from a startup, but at the same time want to do a reality check on these numbers.

I often use a company snapshot, a tree of the key factors that add up/multiply to the projected revenue figure. Make sure the factors are real things you can touch: people, visits, etc.

CORRECTION: Also make sure the tree adds up and calculates through, something that cannot be said about the example below.
9 Hard Lessons I Struggled to Learn During My 18 Years as a Software Developer
By: Fernando Doglio
Tags: Programming, Software Development, Technology, Lessons Learned, Startup

1. Leave the Ego at the Door

Developers have huge egos. That’s a fact.

Why, though? I would argue that anyone who takes our profession seriously would consider themselves to be somewhat of an artist. Yes, we might not be singing in front of millions of people or painting the Mona Lisa, but we’re sometimes writing code that solves very complex problems in such an elegant and efficient way that we can’t help but be proud of our work.

I would argue that a developer is just as much of an artist as a mathematician is through the way they solve their problems.

Because of this, we tend to crawl around our code — just like a mama bear looking after her offspring. We made it, we love it, and we can’t stand when people start arguing about how wrong it may or may not be.

Then again, this is not helping anyone. We love our work, but we need to understand that we’re solving problems. By discussing our ideas and our solutions with others, better alternatives might arise. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, cooperation is normally what yields the best solutions.

I’ve seen all kinds of egos in my time, and I’ve never seen a case where that ego worked in the developer’s favor.

So my advice here? Leave the ego at the door the minute you start working as a dev. Just swallow it and hear what others have to say about your work. Accept that better ideas might come from outside your head and that they will only help you improve your skills. You can only win if you listen to feedback.
BigTips: Random Numbers and Random Dates
By: Brian Suk
Tags: Google Cloud Platform, Analytics, Big Data, Bigquery, Data

When working with and implementing BigQuery, there’s a number of small problems to which I couldn’t find documentation to, or a working example of a solution. This occasionally happens with any database. While these won’t probably be groundbreaking problems to solve, hopefully it’ll make someone’s day a little easier. Sometimes, it’s the little things.

BigTips: Generating random numbers in a range, and random dates.

This one will be pretty quick, and I’m filing under, “Why Isn’t This Simple Thing a Thing?”

Random Numbers In A Range

This whole thing really started when I needed to generate some test data, and noticed that BigQuery’s RAND() function doesn’t have upper and lower bounds. It’s not a complex thing, but one of those minor things that’s just easier to copy and paste from somewhere, so here it is so you can just copy and paste it.

Random Dates in a Range

This then led to my next minor headache when trying to generate test dates for something. Pretty simple thing, again. If you want to reuse the random number in a range generator, it’s super simple and you can just call that after converting everything to POSIX time.

In that example, we cast the result of the rand_date() function to a DATE type for illustrative purposes. The function will return a TIMESTAMP that’s random, but then the count for each distinct value is usually 1 or 2, which isn’t too interesting to look at.

If you don’t need random numbers and only need random dates, and don’t feel like spending time to redo the function, here you go.

There you have it, a quick tip that hopefully helps make someone’s BigQuery day a little bit easier! Also be sure to check out more BigQuery stuff in the Google Cloud Medium Channel! Happy Querying!
Conservatism Doesn’t Belong in the 21st Century
By: Nicolas Carteron
Tags: Politics, Society, Philosophy, Existentialism, Conservatism

At its core, conservatism is a dogma of immobility and regression. It is turned towards the past and deterministic in nature.

We need to preserve our traditions. We need to revert to an ancient golden age. We need to be great again. Our actions do not define our selves. Our actions are defined by who we are. It is an essentialist philosophy.

Conservatism was born in the wake of the French Revolution as an aristocratic reactionary movement opposed to the democratic ambitions of the people, that frightening plebe that had cut short a thousand-year-old dynasty and its last monarch.

The concept of aristocracy is rooted in the idea that people aren’t born equal and, consequently, conservatism believes that the

persons’ identities cannot be matters of choice, but are conferred on them by their unchosen histories, so that what is most essential about them is…what is most accidental. The conservative vision is that people will come to value the privileges of choice…when they see how much in their lives must always remain unchosen. — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

The epistemological consequences of this view that essence precedes existence is that:

[O]ne cannot know the general principles whose implementation would benefit the operation of society [because] circumstances give every political principle its colour.— Ibid.

This idea is flawlessly expressed in this quote by Margaret Thatcher:

there’s no such thing [as society]! There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. … There is no such thing as society. There is living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate.

More fundamentally,

Conservatives regard the radical’s rationalism as “metaphysical” in ignoring particular social, economic and historical conditions: I cannot [praise or blame] human actions…on a simple view of the object, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction (Burke). — Ibid.

Conservatism is based on the notion that the circumstances of the actor must be taken into account to judge their actions. We cannot assess the quality of the latter unless we know who the former is.

Conservatism also rejects the validity of general, abstract political concepts because they obviously fail to account for each individual’s circumstances. Something that purports to be “for the good of all” can only be “against the will of each” and is therefore bad.

As Thatcher said, There is no such thing as society, only individuals trying to improve their lots despite others, not together.
From ‘Fat Amy’ to ‘Fit Amy’
By: Estrella Ramirez
Tags: Weight Loss, Body Image, Society, Women, Lifestyle

From ‘Fat Amy’ to ‘Fit Amy’

Once again, society is focusing on all the wrong things about Rebel Wilson’s weight-loss journey

Photo Credit to Daily Mail UK

Growing up in a family that lived on Roger and Hammerstein, I was super excited about a series of more current musical films I could share with my daughters. In the Pitch Perfect movies, actress Rebel Wilson plays a witty, sarcastic, don’t-give-a-f**k, loveable character — Fat Amy.

My family owns all three of the Pitch Perfect movies and jam out to their soundtracks on a regular basis. Whenever we watch the films, my daughters like to pretend to be the characters, and every time we end up in the same argument.

‘I want to be Beca, you be Fat Amy.’

‘No, I don’t want to be Fat Amy, I want to be Beca.’ ‘Ladies, it doesn’t matter who is who, just enjoy the movie. I’ll be Amy, and you both can be Beca… but what is wrong with being Amy?’ ‘Nothing. She’s so funny, but Beca is prettier because she looks more normal, not like Fat Amy.”

I didn’t have to ask what looked ‘prettier’ or ‘more normal’ about Beca. We already know that society glorifies straight sized women, so why was it necessary to slap the fat label before Amy in the first place?

When it comes to Rebel’s decision to make healthier choices and honor her body with movement, why is the main take away that she lost weight? Shouldn’t the focus be on living a healthier lifestyle? Most importantly, how can we rewrite the narrative by celebrating the commitment to making healthy choices, instead of the mere side effect that is losing weight.
Why Enigma’s “Sadeness” Could Never Exist Today
By: The Hairpin
Tags: Erin Sullivan, Enigma, Music

by Erin Sullivan

Part Gregorian chant, part Native American soundscape, part Pure Moods, this song was a disaster in theory and execution. Still, it topped the charts in December of 1991 and I’m pretty sure I loved it. I was shocked to find out the actual date, though, because if you’ll recall that song continued its run for the better part of that decade. I guess because it was timeless. Literally without a time or genre.

It’s true that children determine what gets played on the radio, but is this what we really wanted? Who was this song for? It was technically a Christian song, the opening line in Latin translating to “in the name of Christ, Amen,” so I guess it was for youth groups, but who else? Well, it was for losers. For kids in t-shirts that highlighted the plight of sea turtles and their near extinction. That kid was all of us. That kid was me.

We lacked the self awareness to know how hard we were being played. But kids are cool now. Attribute it to the Internet, technology, a constant threat of danger, whatever — Enigma would be ripped to shreds today, kids texting their YouTube comments faster than you could Skip-It. “This soung sounds lykr my butt.” I don’t know, I did Skip-It. Oh sure, all of these kids will be terrible in 10 years, a lifetime of confidence and immediacy under their belts, but damn if they wouldn’t .gif some monks into submission.

Ten Decembers after Enigma’s chart topper, Ashanti’s “Always On Time” was radio’s most popular jam. Can’t be mad at us there. And while we’re five months away from that next decade marker, if my local radio station is any indicator, Jason Derulo will not only have become reigning December prince, he will have become President of the United States of America. Primaries will be canceled, Obama will immediately step down. (As a side note, Jason Derulo, if you’re reading this, I get a text about once a week from a friend claiming to have seen you around the Atlanta area, so if I could get a confirm or deny on a recent P.F. Chang dinner and front desk Embassy Suites check-in.) (Oh shit Jason while I still have you, I wanted to talk to you about your recent sampling of Robin S.’s “Show Me Love.”)

And so it goes. Ashanti, Jason Derulo. Never again will Enigma or Baz Luhrmann’s “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)” happen. This is not a slam on the current state of pop culture, it’s a simple acknowledgement that an era is lost forever, one without the readiness of the internet to tell you just how lame a song is and why.

I once asked Yahoo! Answers this question: “Does anyone here like radio? Just in general, radio: good or bad?” Overwhelmingly people loved radio. In this case, this progression, it’s neither good nor bad. Just different. And cooler.

Erin Sullivan lives in Portland, Oregon.
Dear Beautiful Sky
By: Fọlábòmí Àmọ Ó
Tags: Literary Impulse, Nature, Weather, Sky, Poetry

Dear beautiful sky,

Fading out,

In its twilight;

Hanging on,

To the last rays,

Of sunshine.

Dear beautiful sky;

Enshrouding the sun,

As it recedes,

Into the clouds.

Going dark,

As the light,

Drains out of your eyes.

Dear beautiful sky;

You are a sight.

To admire,

Day and night.

A colourful display,

Of stars and fire.

Dear beautiful sky,

I look up to you;

Tonight.

As elegant;

As the first day,

Of my life.

For even if,

The light goes out,

On the horizon;

I shall still see,

The radiance,

In your eyes.
Visualize Data of Thermostat Rebates
By: Jorge Castañón
Tags: Exploratory Data Analysis, Watson Studio, IBM, Data Science, Data Visualization

Data Distributions

Let’s start with data distributions, which will give us an overview of all the possible values, as well as how often they occur. In visual terms, that means drawing a histogram of the thermostat rebates. For simplicity, we can use a uniform sample of 1k rows taken from a larger data set.

The Data Refinery tool in Watson Studio lets you draw histograms of your columns easily, as well as many other charts that may involve more than one column at a time (scatter plots, time series, to mention a couple).

Distribution of Thermostat Rebates

Note that just over half of the thermostat rebates come in between $100 and $120. I noticed that only a handful of zip codes have rebates over $140 or under $60, which piqued my interest. I decided to plot the regions receiving the lowest and the highest rebates on a single map. Thankfully, the data already included longitude and latitude information, so once I assigned a color spectrum from lowest (blue) to highest (red), I could lay the data onto a map of the States:

I noticed that North California’s rebates were lower than most of the other regions in the US. I also noticed that most of the largest rebates were in Texas. Honestly, I’m still not sure why that is. If you have guesses, certainly let me know.

The Data Refinery tool in Watson Studio have maps that you can use to lay down longitude/latitude data, and it let you configure the color spectrum easily with any of the columns of your data set.

Correlations with Demographic Features

To take a deeper look at the thermostat rebate distributions, I did a join by zip code to bring in additional demographic features like median and mean household income, as well as population size. None of these zip code demographic characteristics appeared to correlate in a linear way with the thermostat rebates. The only strong correlation is between mean and median household income, which is not surprising.

Correlation Plots Created with Data Refinery.

More Charts to Explore

Besides histograms and maps, the Data Refinery tool in Watson Studio offers a wide selection of visualizations, including t-SNE for visualizing high dimensional data:

Chart Options in Data Refinery (part of Watson Studio)

Step by step instructions on this github repo.
Money vs. Moral Outrage — That’s the Real Dilemma.
By: Bob Morris
Tags: Facebook, Privacy, Social Media, Data Science, Social Media Marketing

The reality is quite simple. Your behavior is your personal currency — that is, unless you’re willing to pay.

Our own mental models of experience and perception of value exchange are complex. The Social Dilemma served as an example of the “voice” of the concerned as it relates to privacy and manipulation of perspectives, including the reinforcement of biases. For those of us with decades of experience in the industry, we’ve known, and in many instances used the algorithms and data for the benefit of our clients, while recognizing the issues with data privacy.

Here’s the reality. Nothing is free. We’re the product. Our stories, the narrative of our lives, is effectively the monetization engine for platforms such as @Google, @Facebook, @Instagram, @Snap, @TikTok, @Pinterest, etc. It’s this “free” service that requires our content in order to align our behaviors, our desires and our own “idiosyncracies” to the advertising model that underpins the revenue model of these companies. The chorus of concerns over privacy and manipulation by “Big Tech” are, in essence, a hollow argument when we take into consideration the perspectives of the users of the platforms. The reality is straight forward, yet the clarion call to action versus the willingness to change behavior are juxtaposed.

In ’19 Facebook’s avg. gross revenue per profile per month was $2.39 USD. Think about that for a moment. This is the advertising revenue generated per profile in return for collecting personal data and reselling it to companies in order to target specific behaviors or predicted needs based on look-alike modeling. For context, my drink of preference, a @Starbucks Venti Vanilla Chai Tea Latte is $5.67. The argument of “moral outrage” as it relates to our concerns over privacy rights rings hollow when survey after survey demonstrate an overwhelming bias toward not paying for services such as Facebook, Google, etc. On average, < 25% of individuals would be willing to pay for Facebook or other platforms that use behavioral targeting. The counter argument entails approx. 75%+ of individuals being unwilling to pay for these services. On an annual basis at $2.45 per month, the total cost would be < $30 or the equivalent of 5 Starbucks Chai Tea Lattes per year.

Context matters. For those that are concerned over privacy and platform bias, the reality is you’re either willing to offset the cost of access with your personal funds or you’re willing to use your personal data as the equivalent of your currency.

Share your thoughts and perspectives.

You can reach me on Twitter — @digitalquotient or on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobmorris/
How Time-Wasting is Holding You Back
By: Sylvia Emokpae
Tags: Efficiency, Self Improvement, Success, Society, Time Management

During the pandemic lockdown, there was a queue system put in place at the supermarket near us to avoid over-crowding and stockpiling. But I had been trying to do all my shopping online mostly to avoid the hassle and to stay as safe as possible.

There was one time, however, we just couldn’t avoid it. It was essential. My husband came with me to help carry everything. It was hot and muggy. When he saw the length of the queue as we drove into the car park he sighed and immediately asked if we could just go home. He did not want to be waiting in line for goodness knows how long in the terrible humid heat.

I dragged him to the queue anyway. I reassured him it would be a short wait, that it was deceivingly long because of the distance everyone had to keep in between each other.

After a few minutes went by and we didn’t move forward at all, he asked again if we could leave or he would call a taxi home and let me do the shopping alone.

I argued that we were there already and to just wait it out, through gritted teeth.

He was clearly irritated so I said, “whatever”, to call a taxi. He told me he was literally losing money because he would normally be paid an X amount hourly, and instead, his time was being used to wait in line. I was becoming increasingly angry too, thinking to myself, “just wait! You decided to come here!”

I felt humiliated too because I was sure the people queueing behind us could hear our disagreement. It was just unpleasant when it needn’t be.

Thirty awkward and silent minutes later we were in the supermarket and the rest of the trip was fine. All was forgotten and as well as all the shopping we needed my son gained a ball-pit for his bedroom. Happiness was restored all-round.

Waiting is a Societally Accepted Life Injustice

Now, the way my husband handled things is questionable, but I appreciate that he was trying to save time. He meant that he was literally losing money and while he could have been more tactful about it since it wasn’t my fault, he was thinking objectively — as he does when he’s faced with problems.

The queue was long, the heat was heavy, and the time spent waiting in line could have arguably been more costly in time and money than what we gained by doing the shop then, vs going back another time when the queue was shorter.

His annoyance was a reaction to the violation of being made to wait by the outside world, and then, by his wife who insisted on accepting this violation.

What do I always talk about though? Silver linings.

Tim Denning inspired the idea for this article in his story, Do These Things That Require Zero Talent to Improve Every Area of Your Life. He brought up the subject of saving time and how important it is to manage it well.

Waiting for anything is one of the most annoying things in the world. To me, to my husband, to everyone.

But very few people think they can do anything to change their behaviour or actions to repel from it or avoid it altogether.

5 Unnecessary but Normal Time-Wasting Occurrences:
This fascinating photo shows photos of missing children in the first column.
By: Toni Tails
Tags: Creativity, Art, Family, Technology, Parenting

This fascinating photo shows photos of missing children in the first column. The second column shows a computer composite of what the children might look like as time progressed. The final photo shows what the children looked like when they were finally found.
Why B2B CRM is Entrepreneur’s Choice?
By: Phillips Campbell
Tags: CRM, Tech, Salesforce, Business, Entrepreneurship

Supporting the processes and execution of Customer Relationship Management, B2B CRM solutions are now days basking a prestigious treatment in businesses industry. Their ever increasing scope and advanced customizable features have earned these softwares a valuable space in entrepreneur’s budgets. According to a research, more than 91% of companies (with less than 10n employees) use CRM solution. This depicts the gratification level of users in the industry.

Other than having innumerable fascinating feature and being a most followed trend, there are many other factors which drive entrepreneur’s attention to B2B CRM solution and make B2B CRM, a priority pick for them such as:

Provides Cloud Storage: Cloud Storage offered by B2B CRM solution is not less than a consecration for businesses. Through cloud storage, all important data is arranged and hived at one centralized platform, where it is made accessible for all related personnel. The availability of data at one central point saves time which is usually wasted in searching information.

Streamlines Business Processes: With the effective use of CRM, business processes get streamlined and automated. This particular feature of B2B CRM wins many benefits for the business in multiple aspects i.e. makes the operational system transparent, multifold profit and cuts down the operational cost. Referring to a recent Forrester Research: “Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads at 33% lower cost.”

Forecasts Customer Behavior: Another important functionality that contributes to the value of B2B CRM is forecasting of customer behavior on the basis of multiple attributes which can be buying behavior, purchasing history, spent money etc. Through forecasted results, reports are generated in CRM software that help management in making strong business decisions.

Paves Way to SUCCESS: Paving way to success is the ultimate goal and main identity of every CRM solution. With the positive outcomes drawn from above mentioned functionalities, B2B CRM paves a smooth and short way for entrepreneurs to get to the peaks of success.

All these amazing features collectively make B2B CRM, a prior choice for Entrepreneurs. With the effective use of this overly smart business software, one can bring magical results to its business.

Looking to adopt a CRM, You can check out this Infographic of 13 popular CRM Systems

How do you use your CRM? Is your CRM capable of performing any additional functions, let me know in the comments section below.

Get your FREE Consultation session with our experts on the perfect CRM for your business