fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Localize your React Application
By: Reza Mauliadi
Tags: Internationalization, Programming, React, JavaScript, I18n

Internationalization (i18n) could be one of the features that you need nowadays. Thanks to i18next , the task of localizing your application can be done easily. In this article, I will show you how to localize your React application using i18next and react-i18next .

What will be covered in this article?

Init and use the translation function. Handle language selection from user. Manage translation files. Store the language key in Cookie.

I will focus on how the internationalization is implemented in a React application. For this tutorial, I use a new React application created using Create React App and Ant Design for components. You can create your React application in a way you prefer.

What do we want to achieve?
Thanks To COVID — My Social Life Has Never Been Better
By: Tansy Bradshaw
Tags: Accessibility, Social, Covid 19, Isolation

During the pandemic, many people have had to stay at home. At the time of publication, the state of Victoria in Australia has been declared a state of disaster. Metro Melbourne is just beginning its Stage 4 Lockdown along with curfew of 8pm to 5am. The rest of Victoria is back at Stage 3. While most people are lamenting of all their missed events, and not seeing friends — for me COVID has had the opposite effect.

Pre-COVID my biggest event on my calendar was the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, where I would spend at least a week seeing shows and catching up with my best friends who live interstate or in Melbourne (I live in the country).

I would run myself ragged catching up with people who I would only see once a year. Because of my disability, fatigue is a very real thing. Although I spend a week in the city, it takes about a month for me to recover. Keep in mind this isn’t taking into account that I have to travel 4 hours each way when I take a trip to the city.

Well, since the pandemic the entire world of events has opened up as access just requires a computer and internet connection. My body is not a factor I have to consider and because of this, I have attended more events then I have ever before. A few highlights have been the Hay Digital Festival, San Diego ComicCon and next week is the Melbourne Writers Festival.

However; it isn’t just events that have opened up to me. Because of Zoom, I am ‘seeing’ my friends a lot more — when in the past it was once a year and then it would be a very long messenger conversation. I feel like an idiot that I didn’t insist on it sooner with my friends. Although, because they are feeling what I consider normal, helps them realise what is just a side-effect of having a disability.

This is all wonderful; however, it can also be criticised. I have lost account of the times I have emailed someone about whether the course could be made online and the answer is usually that it is too hard.

It was such a surprise** when events suddenly became accessible because everyone couldn’t move from home. It is great that they found ways to get around physical access; however, I have been jumping up and down about this for years.

I hope things don’t go back to normal. By that I mean, I hope that when festivals and events open back up that they don’t stop the online component. Of course I don’t expect it to be free, but the money I do spend is worth it because I am getting access to the material despite the fact that I can’t physically get to the space.

There is benefits for them to continue the online component too. Because I don’t have to spend money on transport, food and accommodation — the more money I have to spend on events I would like to see.

I feel like COVID has opened up a whole world to me and it is the best thing.

The future is accessible.

** Note my sarcasm
3 Cryptocurrencies To Watch: RVN, ZEN & OLT
By: Jason Cameron
Tags: Ico To Watch, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, ICO

All cryptocurrencies mentioned in my posts go through my initial analysis process which you can find in my free guide: ‘7 Step Analysis To Quickly Spot High-Quality ICOs & Cryptocurrencies’. Get My Free Guide Here.

The purpose of this blog post is not to provide a review of the projects — there are enough of those out online, this post is just to share my thoughts and opinion after taking a look and researching the projects.

I’m also not a techie, so this won’t be my angle, if you’re looking for a technical explanation of the project, again there’s loads of those out there online too, so you will be better off looking elsewhere. As an investor, this is where I will be coming from in this post, keeping the content simple and concise on what I like, or don’t like about the projects mentioned.

In no particular order. Let’s get to it — here are 3 to watch.

#1 Ravencoin

This has been confirmed as the ‘secret project’ of Patrick Bryne CEO of Overstock.com who is also behind Tzero. The tech team is strong and seems competent. I like the approach of this crypto as there was no ICO as they want the project to kind of earn it’s value. The blockchain is already live and has around 20k+ miners already at the time of writing this having only launched in January 2018. Currently at a relatively low marketcap in comparison to the potential of this project, at the time of writing, this project could be BIG. Certainly one to watch. Hardcap At Writing: $32mln.

#2 Oneledger

I like the problem this project plans to solve and the team pulled together to solve it. Anything that simplifies blockchain adoption is always attractive to me. Plus, the advisors give me confidence that they will have the connections they need to get fast adoption and usage. The cap for this kind of project is very attractive in compared to projects in a similar space. For me this is one to watch. ICO Date TBC.

#3 ZenCash

I’m overall bullish on privacy coins. With this being a privacy coin and platform with a partnership with IHOK (creators of Cardano and Ethereum Classic) and Charles Hoskins has openly tweeted that ZenCash is one his favourite projects…that’s almost all I need to know. Given that it’s a quality project that’s live with such strong connections, for me this is one to watch. Hardcap At Writing: $135mln.

Website: http://www.cryptocurrencyorchard.com

Free Guide: http://www.cryptocurrencyorchard.com/guide

Telegram: http://t.me/cc_orchard
Organic Manuka Honey
Tags: Recipes

Mānuka honey - Wikipedia

Mānuka honey is a monofloral honey produced in Australia and New Zealand from the nectar of the mānuka tree. The honey…
The Top 5 COIVD-19 Inspired Costumes You’ll See This Halloween Night
By: Mr. Francis
Tags: Humor, Pandemic, Covid 19, Kids, Halloween

That special time of year is here.

The leaves are changing colours. The air has a crisp bite to it.

And right on schedule, the grocery stores are busy peddling their boxes of addictive and unhealthy crap to all the impressionable kiddies.

That means Halloween, in some form or another, is still going to arrive at the end of October.

Unfortunately, for most kids, the world is still in the grips of a pandemic. So it’s anyone’s guess what shelling out will look like.

But, given this night is already mask-friendly, I’ve no doubt there’s still going to be pockets of Halloweener’s out there foraging for their sugar fix regardless of what the rest of the planet says.

Don’t kid yourself, though.

This year it will be different.

There won’t be any Marvel Super-Heroes knocking at your door. Nor will you see any Disney inspired costumes skipping down the streets. Even Harry Potter and the gang are taking some time off.

This year, when you hear that muffled, “Trick or Treat!” chances are the costumes are going to be COVID inspired.

So don’t be afraid!

And don’t think you’re hallucinating.

It’s just a Pandemic Inspired Halloween!
DedSec Cover Art is the Best Part of Ubisoft’s Latest Sale
By: Antony Terence
Tags: Videogames, Features, Digital Life, Marketing, Gaming

DedSec Cover Art is the Best Part of Ubisoft’s Latest Sale

Watch Dogs: Legion’s monocle-toting pig head takes over

With a week to go for the release of Watch Dogs: Legion, Ubisoft is going all out on a marketing spree for the third entry in the hacker-driven franchise. In true DedSec (a hacker group from the game) spirit, several of the French publisher’s titles in the Microsoft Store have undergone a price cut. But that isn’t the only thing that has changed. These games have also had their cover art modified by the same band of nefarious masterminds.

Gentlemen like Vaas Montenegro and Joseph Seed have lent their pedestals to the pig mask that greets one across numerous Watch Dogs: Legion promotions. It’s a rather humorous take on enduring Ubisoft franchises that have previously featured dead-serious characters brandishing their arsenal amidst friends and foes. The sale is by no means a competitor to Steam’s inevitable Halloween sale but that isn’t Ubisoft’s angle. At a time when digital game sales have overtaken physical disc-based games, it’s astonishing that no other publisher has turned game art into virtual billboards for their upcoming games.

Feast your eyes on some of the freshly altered cover art from a whole bunch of Ubisoft’s latest games. Some also feature the occasional drone or smartphone, key components of Watch Dogs: Legion’s take on futuristic London.
Our story
By: Paulina Prachnio
Tags: Community, Data Science, Machine Learning, Startup

The story of Neptune starts in 2016 when we won Kaggle’s Right Whale Recognition competition as a part of the deepsense.ai team.

Back then we were struggling to track and share our work results, constantly getting annoyed by doing repetitive tasks. Everyone had their methods of working and storing results that weren’t making the reproducing result any easier.

We were asking folks from various data science teams how they are approaching this challenge and realized, that no one has a good solution.

Knowing that data scientists across the globe are losing their work results every day motivated us to create a solution that’s available for everyone.

We spun-off in 2018 to focus on creating a tool that manages the experimentation process while remaining lightweight and easy to use by any data science team.

Since then our mission is to make data scientists’ work more efficient providing them an easy way to track their work and collaborate. Our ambitious goal is to build a data science collaboration standard.

Try yourself and let us know what you think.
What is NPS? And why you should know how it works
By: Flavio Lamenza
Tags: Analytics, Net Promoter Score, UX Research, UX Design, Marketing

NPS, therefore ranges from -100 to +100.

It looks complicated, but it is very easy and it will be explained below.

The calculations:

In the example below, there are 10 votes from 0 to 6:

In the case above, the NPS is -100. Got that? And you've just realised that you can remove the % symbols in the first step of the calculations that you will find the same -100. Or multiply by 100 and you remove the percentage 😎

Let's move on to the other example:

Example of 10 votes from 7 to 8.

In the example above the user is considered a Passive. Even though there are 10 votes from 7 to 8, that score is not part of the calculations as you can see, meaning the NPS = 0.

Below you will see an extreme example and take conclusions for yourself…

Example of a Million votes from 7 to 8.

Since 7 and 8 are never part of the NPS calculations, even if there are a Million votes, it will not count and the NPS remains 0.

Below you will see what makes a NPS positive.

How to make calculations in NPS

100% of votes from 9 to 10 creates a NPS of +100 ✨ ⚡️

Above you saw very simple examples to give you some clarity around how NPS is calculated. In the next example you will find a real world scenario:

In the example above, the NPS is +20

Out of 1070 votes this business got a score of +20 (rounding it up).

NPS just ignored 340 votes (the passives), but this will be discussed below for you to think about…
“Brain, wider than the sky” — Neuron Sculpture
By: Guilherme Martins
Tags: Neuroscience, Technology, Art

We had been quite busy in the last months, due to the deployment of 13 interactive installations for the Brain exhibition in Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon, and also the construction of a massive neuron sculpture. This project occupied all of our team members, and we had to change the configuration of all the rooms in our headquarters to be able to develop, test and assemble everything.

This video shows only a tiny part of the efforts that were made to materialize “The Neuron”.

video author: João Ribeiro

Eric da Costa, the mastermind behind this “the Neuron”, did a lot of research around many types of neurons, their behaviour and characteristics. This sculpture should have controllable inside-light, we also wanted it to be reactive to visitors. For the lights, there were different demands, through the different parts of the neuron.

I will try to describe the neuron anatomy. Bear in mind that I am not a neuroscientist, so if any information does not match scientific facts, sorry about that.

Let’s start with the dendrites, they are the branches that connect to other neurons.

These branches “charge” the neuron nucleus, we call it “the core”. It gathers energy until a certain point, when this point is reached it triggers a spike that fires up the axon.

This spike goes through the axon until the terminals.

These terminals connect to the next neuron.

Eric designed the whole piece in 3D, planned how each section should be sculpted, assembled, illuminated, transported and deployed.

Eric also sculpted the whole piece, while João Ribeiro and José Pedro aka ‘Coias’, did a masterwork with fibreglass, assembly, transportation and deployment.
Tonight
Tags: Poetry, Storytelling, Love, Music, Lyrics

Lyrics

If god don’t like me strike me where I stand

Cuz the money in your wallet don’t make the man

Cuz the pain that you swallow’s never part the plan

Middle finger to tomorrow cuz here I am

Here I remain hoping that the truth doesn’t hurt

For the moment just ease the pain

Embrace the rain knowing that no matter how hard we try

We all miss the train

Maybe that’s the way life’s supposed to be

Living to impress but deaths standing close to me

Fell short of the man that I hoped to be

Tugging on the past cuz I’m tryna catch the ghost of me

Too far to see too high to crash

Searching for a purpose in an empty glass

Searching for a virgin not a piece of ass

Sipping on the bourbon from the devil’s Flask



Im telling you baby that i’m caught in the middle

Between the life that you gave me and the life behind the pistol

Don’t you worry bout tomorrow cuz tonight is a party

And we’d rather fall in love with ourselves then somebody



Perception, perfection, anything that you want just mention

Anything for a false impression like

Hey I’m looking for a woman to invest in

Call me crazy might be faded often baby want it take it

Falling lately no one makes it

Swear you made me get you naked

Make a statement let’s crack the pavement

What’s a plan to a man who told fate we’re changing

From the gutter to greatness never stay complacent

Let’s own the night let’s take what’s taken

I’m contemplating sick of waiting

Sick of sleeping while the dream’s awake

And I swear I’m leaving if nothing’s changing

Embrace the weekend if tonight’s amazing

Baby, baby, baby, baby, help me lose control

Baby, baby, baby, baby, don’t spend the night alone

Im telling you baby that i’m caught in the middle

Between the life that you gave me and the life behind the pistol

Don’t you worry bout tomorrow cuz tonight is a party

And we’d rather fall in love with ourselves then somebody
Your Children Are Not Your Children
By: Christine Carrillo
Tags: Parenting Advice, Parenting, Motherhood, Advice, Life Lessons

Your Children Are Not Your Children

In a quarter-century of working with children, I have been humbled many times. I have also learned much more from the children than they have from me. After thousands of hours of research, study, and hands on experience with children, I have 10 basics that I come back to as the core principles for being a better parent.

“ Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.”

Khalil Gibran
Pregnant Pause
Tags: Sex, Poetry, Literatura, Life, Love

Pregnant Pause

That hesitation right before.

My photo, Broghese Museum, Rome

Hand prints left

for a solid moment

rubbing the warmed skin

a sweet, radish red

like a branding

on my ass

marking me

as your own

in this moment

my breath sucks in

waiting for you

to deliver more.
Signing GMail Messages with the Estonian eID PKI Card (Part 2)
By: David Vassallo
Tags: Security, Python, JavaScript, Development, Open Source

In a previous blog post we explored how to sign messages using the Estonian eID card. In this video, we demonstrate how a receiver who got a signed email message would be able to verify that the email really did come from the advertised sender.

I have uploaded the revised code to github, please feel free to have a browse — but the plugin is linuxonly, and not ready for production (mainly due to lack of error handling, not cleaning up the tmp folder after operations, and hardcoding the eID PIN)

Part 1 of the series can be … Read more at David’s Blog
6 Fitness Tips to Staying Fit While You Travel the World
By: Jeremy Colon
Tags: Fitness, Fitness Tips, Travel, Metabolism, Health

Photo Credit: Jeremy Colon

Because you can’t let anything come in between you and your passion for travel. With each journey you undertake, you are exposed to varying climatic conditions, food habits and way of living. It is thus essential to ensure that you keep yourself healthy and fit while traveling. After all, who would want to ruin all the fun and mirth by falling sick?

Here are six tips on how to keep yourself healthy while traveling:

1. An Exercise Routine Can Work Wonders

How can your visit to a place be complete without tasting its delicious cuisine? No, I am are not asking you to sacrifice that. Just make sure you prepare a schedule to hit the gym regularly. If not, at least go jogging around the neighborhood you’re staying in.

2. Keep Yourself Hydrated

This is the key to good health in any given situation. And this holds especially true if you are visiting a tropical country or a desert since there are greater chances of falling sick at such destinations. So, always carry a water bottle in your backpack and drink up!

3. Walking is Necessary

This is by far the best way to explore if you are really keen on learning first-hand about the destination. Walk through lanes and by-lanes, interact with the local people and make sure you do not miss out on any attraction. Also, skip the elevator, take the stairs instead.

4. Avoid Skipping Meals

Skipping meals, with the hope of having a compensatory heavy meal later, is always a bad idea. When you skip meals, it reduces the rate of metabolism, which in turn makes you feel exhausted and unwell. Eat clean, eat healthily. Do not go wandering empty stomach; try to eat something or the other at an interval of two hours.

5. Carry Vitamins

While you immerse yourself in a hectic travel schedule, you may sometimes miss out on a healthy, balanced meal. Vitamin supplements can be your true friend in these situations.

6. Take Care of Your Skin

Change in weather patterns and food habits can lead to a lot of skin problems. Taking care of your skin is equally important while traveling. Make sure you never step out in the sun without applying sunscreen. Also, wear your sunglasses. Moisturize your skin when stationed in a relatively dry destination. Carry a mosquito repellent and apply when in need of it.

If reading this offered you any value, please recommend it and share it with others!

Also please connect with me on my website, Facebook page, and Instagram!
6 Easy to Follow Tips to Help You Improve Your Blog Writing
By: Gregory D. Welch
Tags: Writing, Creativity, Productivity, Blogging, Writing Tips

Intros/Conclusions

Is there power in your hook? Are you saying something that evokes curiosity and makes your reader want to know more? Are you saying it up front? Are you being direct or using mystery to your advantage?

Whatever your tactic, balance is the way you leverage it.

When it comes to introductions, you want to get in, say something that entices, then get the heck on with the show. You want just enough, but not too much. Like spicing up a meal, know what works together, what doesn’t, and always start with pinches and build up. With introductions you want something short, quick paced. You want something that can get right to it.

Here’s a quick tip for both introductions and conclusions: Always satisfy your readers, but leave them hungry too.

Everything should build to something important for your reader. Introductions warm them up, but moves them to the next thing. That thing moves them to the next. But each part of what you’re writing should be building on the previous in such a way that it is adding more and more value — more takeaway — for your reader.

Then, when you come to the conclusion, do just that, give them something solid to takeaway from what you just wrote for them.

Remind them of what you covered, but briefly. Better still, use your conclusion like a magnifying glass on a bright sunlit day.

Focus everything to one powerful point of light. Make it crystal clear, show them what you just showed them. Leave your reader with something to help them win, whether that’s the day, their next task, or just a damn good feeling.

It’s always about your reader, and what you leave them with. Forget everything else if you want to, but never forget this.
The Price of the Ticket
Tags: Sky Collection, Poetry On Medium, James Baldwin, Diaspora, Homage

The Price of the Ticket

~After James Baldwin

Courtesy of bookmarks.reviews

When we traveled in metaphors, through

The clouds of our storms, like

The rightful citizens of New Orleans

Displaced by Katrina, the price

Of the ticket was not our dignity

But the song of our captivity, forced

Into the manifest destiny

Of the diaspora

In search of our new identity, mysteriously

Shipwrecked in this brave new world forever

By way of the Middle Passage. & just as winter

Turns to spring, we will always sing, as long as

We have lungs to vent our children of reason.

2014/2020 MDSHall
UX/UI Case Study: KFC Australia
By: Chris Rusnak
Tags: Case Study, Design, UX, Ogilvy, Kfc

UX Enhancements

A majority of the effort we put into the flows was to reduce the number of clicks required to perform a certain task. This required some re-working of a few critical flows, such as setting a store, which we have opted to do automatically based on a customer’s location.

This has the added benefit of allowing a customer to see live prices for products that are available to them (as prices and products can vary from store to store)

Some of the micro-interactions we added to the site

We also added subtle animation to the site in order to provide affordances or give feedback to customers, for example, when an item is added to the cart, the cart icon will do a little shake to draw attention — customers will know where the cart icon is. When a customer clicks the “Add” to cart button, the button changes state to give feedback that the product has been added.

Another nice change we implemented was using the mobile designs for product pages on desktop. They appear as a slide-over, rather than opening and refreshing a new page.
You Can’t Stay Here
By: Ann Litts
Tags: Life Lessons, Self-awareness, Life, Change, Nursing

Photo by Elliott Stallion on Unsplash

I recently read a story about the work it takes to be successful at your craft. Well, at anything really. The author was brilliant in the way he leads us through the steps which should be obvious but so many times aren’t.

And then — I applied his wisdom to My Life.

I’m a nurse. I’ve been a nurse for over twenty-five years now and when I precept a new nurse, it’s only then I realize how far I’ve come, how much knowledge of my ‘craft’ I’ve gained in those years of hands-on, in the moment experiences. Priceless gifts of Time, hard work and effort have gone into the making of Ann The Nurse.

And make no mistake, I’m a good nurse. I chose my career pragmatically way back when, but it suited me and I thrived. I grew to love nursing as the gift it truly was to My Life. Not all nurses are meant to be nurses, but I was.

Age, time, personal experiences, and Life, in general, softens you. Eventually even the most career-driven of us turn inward and look to our own needs. And that’s what is happening now. I’m finding myself starting over. Dabbling in places and doing things which feel as right and lovely as nursing did in the beginning. But I’m every bit a novice writing here and in my yoga classes as I was sitting in that first clinical rotation.

There is so much to learn and so many new skills to hone. I don’t even know what I don’t know yet. Just like a graduate nurse still wet behind the ears.

But Life is an adventure. And the only sure thing about Life is change. One day I’ll hang up my scrubs for keeps, content to retire them and walk away from a profession which cared for me as much as I cared for my patients.

It’s up to me to ponder my next steps, listen to what calls to me, put in the work, the experiences, become the expert again at another something I can love. While starting over again might be difficult, growth is imperative. Life will ensure we take the steps along the path and stretch ourselves. Stagnation is not an option. Change is inevitable — it’s the one constant. So we begin again, over and over.

As the song goes — ‘Every new beginning is some other beginning’s end’.

Namaste.
Taking a look at SeatGeek’s influencer strategy
Tags: Content Marketing, Influencer Campaigns, Influencer Marketing Tips, Marketing, Influencer Marketing

By: Ben Tschida

From festival passes to sporting event tickets, SeatGeek provides entertainment fans with access to every event under the sun. SeatGeek has been on quite the advertising blitz the last few years, leveraging both podcasts and influencers to drive users to their app.

One key element that makes SeatGeek’s influencer strategy so successful is the freedom they give creators to authentically get their message across to audiences. SeatGeek allows influencers to create content as they normally would which adds value to the brand.

Take a look at their collaboration with Sierra Fertado. The post clearly highlights SeatGeek while making sure the content fits into her actual life. Sierra incorporates her personal relationship with Alex Terranova and his fanhood of the NY Mets within the context of using SeatGeek to find tickets for a game.

88•Sierra Furtado influencer post for SeatGeek

SeatGeek also does a great job of interacting with their creators. Here they sponsored the Barstool Sports Rundown featuring El Pres and his underlings Big Cat & KFC. The trio wore SeatGeek stickers to promote the brand (along with an organic conversation prior to the start of the show). Then, they interacted with the content after it was shared on social media. In order for brands to reap the most value out of their influencer relationships, its vital to interact with creator content over social media.

At the end of the day, SeatGeek understands the importance of raising awareness and getting their brand in front of new customers, but then makes sure to partner with influencers who are a good fit for the brand. Per Julius data, El Pres’ audience has high affinities towards sports (inferring that they also interested in attending sporting events). Not only does SeatGeek deserve credit for entrusting such a big brained individual with their marketing dollars, they also were able to hit their key demographic by working with Portnoy.
Cumulations Adopts Swift for iOS App Development
By: Shaistha Farheen
Tags: Mobile App Development, Company, iOS App Development, Business, iOS

Developing iOS apps is so different from developing Android apps. Cumulations has always been popular for the delivery of consistent and smooth running iOS applications. Apple’s benchmarks are tougher to live up to and apps that can excel these would be the ones that can perform well in the long run.

The secret behind the great iOS apps developed by the company is the dedicated team that strives to incorporate the latest tools and technology in creating the best user-centric apps. And one other benefit with Cumulations is the use of Swift for the development of iOS apps.

Benefits of using Swift for iOS app development:

Be it for OSX or for iOS apps, Objective C is one of the main choices for app development. But then once Apple introduced Swift compensating all the limitations of Objective C it was an instant hit among the developers. Though Objective C is great for iOS apps, Swift has been found to add some more benefits and extra features. These benefits include enhanced safety and memory management. Apps developed with Swift would also be future-ready as this is a platform that is quickly gaining momentum.

1. Lower dependencies

2. Easier syntax

3. Lower chances of app crashes

4. Incorporates app security

5. Better Chance to Be Featured in the App Store

6. MVP development

7. Enterprise Apps

8. Apps with cross-device support

for more information visit @ http://www.cumulations.com/blogs/81/cumulations-adopts-swift-for-ios-app-development
6 Quick Fixes to Have the Body of Your Dreams in Seconds
By: Jeremy Colon
Tags: Wellness, Fitness, Fitness Tips, Metabolism, Mindset

Photo Credit: Pixabay

Correct me if I’m wrong, but here’s a rough recap of every millennial’s everyday routine: you wake up just in the nick of time for school or work, throw that “I’ll run for 10 minutes this morning!” promise out the window, get busy throughout the day, binge-eat, go home, catch up on your favorite series, sleep, and then repeat. It seems like there’s no time to spare for that thing called fitness because how can you even start when life basically takes over?

Do you want some solid answers?

Ready to take that first step to your dream body? Read on and let’s go!

1. Go for a Workout that You Enjoy.

It’s all about choosing a routine that you can have fun with while sweating it out. Some people hate running long-distance so the best alternative would be to do sprints. You might just enjoy that more! This is so easy because you can just go outside, run with your friends, and make it fun. So, whether it’s dancing or cycling, boxing, basketball, or whatever you look forward to doing again and again, go for it!

2. Make Time for Simple Workouts Wherever You May Be

Get creative! When you’re at home, do yoga. When you’re out traveling, go run on the beach. It doesn’t matter how long you do it, if you keep yourself moving, you’ll be on the right track. Even a 15-minute walk every day can go a long way to achieve your fitness goals.

3. Hydrate!

My number one tip is to drink lots of water! Drink whenever you can. Begin your day with a glass or two to start up your metabolism. Take a sip when you feel hot or when you’re thirsty throughout the day, and end with a big gulp before going to bed.

4. Keep a Positive Mindset

I’ve come to understand that being physically healthy keeps me mentally healthy, confident, and energetic. Always keep in mind these effects, and be in tune with how you feel when you work out. It’s a snowball effect. Stop thinking it’s not fun. You can train and discipline your mind.

5. Do It Now

It’s easy to let laziness take over, and the inevitable, “I’ll just start tomorrow,” will become a daily, repetitive excuse you’ll keep on telling yourself. But the thing is, you will never start until you start. If you want to start, start today! There’s no time to waste!

6. Be Consistent

Consistency is key. Do it every day and make it a priority. After all, your health is your wealth, so start enriching it and never stop.

If reading this offered you value, please recommend it and share it with others! Also please connect with me on my website, Facebook page, and Instagram!

On November 5, I will be running a marathon and fundraising for Team For Kids at the TCS NYC Marathon. If you would like to learn more and donate to my campaign click here.
Hallmark Is Committed To Diversity In Its Casting
By: Bev Potter
Tags: Holidays, Humor, Equality, Television, Satire

[CASTING CALL]

We here at The Hallmark Channel are dedicated to increasing diversity across our brand. If you’re a brunette white woman, we want you to audition for our upcoming projects, I’m Getting Married Just Because I’m Supposed To and He’s Not Rich But At Least He’s Not Paying Child Support to Anybody Else Yet.

Of course, we’re still going to have an insatiable need for champagne blondes, so keep those headshots coming. Redheads and tall gangly women need not apply.

If you’re a POC, of Mediterranean descent, LGBTQ, or have skin that is anything other than the color of a cooked rice noodle, you’ll be glad to hear we’ve expanded our quota for the following: best friend, sidekick, very special guest, assistant, wise parental figure, wacky neighbor, bemused co-worker, and happy couple that stands in the background gazing worshipfully at the white folks.

To demonstrate our commitment to equality and to prove that we really mean it this time, we’ll be ramping up our production of movies with black leading characters from two to three out of the 40+ we make every year.

If you are a straight cis white man, we don’t care what you look like as long as you’ve been described by a female relative at least once in your life as “a real catch.”

If you are a dog, please remember that Golden Retrievers are the most popular breed in America. They are the Candace Cameron Bure of dogs. But to demonstrate that we are accepting of all different body types and hairstyles, we will also consider poodles if somebody in the movie is secretly a prince/billionaire/heir to a family fortune.

If you are music, please, country or adult contemporary only. We’re firm on this. Cardi B submitted a soundtrack on spec and our music supervisor started hyperventilating.
All The News Fit To Viz
By: Adam Meldrum
Tags: Network Graph, Coronavirus, Headlines

Latent Topical Brokers:

(“nodes that have an unusually high rate of influence (betweenness centrality) to their frequency — meaning they may appear not as often as the most influential nodes but they are important narrative shifting points.”)

— “chat”

— “bungle”

— “steady”

— “ease”

— “global”
One Reason NOT to Go to Church
By: Jesse Walters
Tags: Religious Freedom, Happiness, Christianity, Religion, Church

I know, I know, shouldn’t I be encouraging people to go to church, not send them away? To be clear, I can give you a million reasons to go to church. My intentions of this post is to to stress to people that there are wrong reasons to go to church too.

If you yearn for God’s love and to have a genuine, Christian community to be there for you through all aspects of life, by all means go. But there is one reason why I went to church when I was younger and it was the WRONG one.

On page 14 of my book I talk about one of the first times of going to church. I was a little nervous and unsure of what I was walking in to, but the reason I went was to make my girlfriend happy and that’s what kept me going back for months…. I was trying to make SOMEONE ELSE happy. Not me, not God.

DO NOT go to church to make someone happy.

There are soooooo may other reasons to go and can bring a it can bring a tremendous amount of joy to one’s life. Going for that reason takes away from the true value of it, and could ultimately lead you into an un-biblical church like I experienced.

As a Christian we are to love one another. To love is to be patient, kind, never giving up, the list keeps going. So it’s fair to say that to love someone is to bring HAPPINESS to another’s life, and we should strive to do that. But, the whole point of going to church is to not make someone happy, it’s to make YOU happy.

If we are to try to make anyone happy and seek their approval it’s God. I have some good news though… He’s already happy with you! He already approves of you! You’re extremely valuable to Him and he has proved it by sending His son to die for YOU.
January, in brief
By: Andre F. Miller
Tags: Monthly

Best Reads of the Month:

The road to the Green New Deal lies through the Department of the Interior

The Nation

Koch-backed group waged relentless, well-funded campaign to rescind Bears Ears National Monument

Salt Lake Tribune

Under Trump administration, environmental agencies run by extractive industry veterans

New York Times

Former clients of Interior Secretary Bernhardt ramp up lobbying under Trump administration

Mother Jones

Top Interior lawyer falsely testified to Congress about contact and meetings with Koch network

HuffPost

Interior is speeding harm to lands before election day

Outside Magazine

From the Center for Western Priorities:

Cutting the Public Out of Public Lands

An analysis of millions of public comments submitted in response to 10 major Interior Department rule changes shows the extent to which the public has opposed policies proposed by the Trump administration. Although more than 95 percent of public comments opposed each of the proposed rule changes, Interior ultimately moved forward with 8 of the 10 proposals.

Tracking the Interior Department’s remaining policy changes impacting lands, water, and wildlife

An analysis by the Center for Western Priorities identifies 74 policies the Interior Department is seeking to implement, further weakening protections for wildlife and expanding fossil fuel development on public lands.

Westwise Blog:

Coal’s demise highlights the necessity of Interior Department action to reduce carbon emissions

Whether it is in the sun or the snow, climate change is impacting your recreation on public lands

Go West, Young Podcast:

Garrett Garner-Wells of Conservation Colorado joins us with a look at why Colorado has become “an island of sanity” on climate policy.
About Me — Synthia Satkuna. MA Candidate in Counselling Psychology…
By: Synthia Satkuna
Tags: Writers On Medium, About Me, Autobiography, Synthia Satkuna, Introduction

About Me — Synthia Satkuna

Canadian Researcher & Writer | MA Candidate in Counselling Psychology | Aspiring Therapist | Crisis Responder

Photo of the writer Synthia when she graduated from her H. BSc. in Biopsychology at a Canadian university.

Hello Medium writers,

My name is Synthia Satkuna and I’m a female in her mid-twenties who is born and raised in Canada. My cultural ancestry is Sri Lankan. Currently, I’m doing my second rodeo of graduate school in Counselling Psychology. I have plans to potentially become a therapist in the future.

For a bit of context, I did my Bachelor’s degree in Biopsychology and did my first master’s degree in Developmental Psychology. While studying, I worked and volunteered across a variety of interdisciplinary research projects and initiatives, while scoring the odd campus job as a poll clerk, exam invigilator, and many more.

After graduating from my first two degrees, I spent some time working in the corporate landscape, mostly as a human resources professional for some pretty big companies. It was a great experience, all things considered.

As a Medium writer, writing has been both a therapeutic device and a professional endeavour. The more I write, the more satisfied and empowered I am, especially when meeting other writers with similar professional goals and interests. Plus, my imagination is pretty wild sometimes.

Recently, I’ve become a writer on News Break as well. You can check out my portfolio and you can definitely apply if you’re interested.

Photo by Ahmed Zayan on Unsplash — I’m sending you positive vibes. You got this!

My Publication — Preoccupy Negative Thoughts

I currently edit and manage my own niche pub called Preoccupy Negative Thoughts. The content is primarily research-oriented, with an emphasis on psychological research and other allied fields like mental health, neuroscience, and human resources.

I’m quite proud that my small following is made up of curated researchers, scholars, and even physicians.

As of October 2020 and beyond, multiple articles that I’ve self-published onto my own pub have been curated. There’s hope for us regular writers.

As of December 2020 and beyond, a couple of other writers have produced curated content on my pub as well.

Graphic of Preoccupy Negative Thoughts created by the author

My Most Viral (but not Curated) Stories

Surprisingly, I’ve had a few stories go semi-viral, which were NOT curated. My writing style has shifted since then.

My Most Viral and Curated Stories

Recently, I’ve had several curated stories. These reflect my current writing style better.

Contact Me

If you’d like to contact me, you can email me at preoccupynegativethoughts@writeme.com or even send me a little private note on this article page.

Thanks for reading and have fun, fellow readers!
Avoiding the Null Pointer Exception With Optional in Java
By: Brilian Firdaus
Tags: Mobile, Java, Android, Programming, Software Development

Processing an Optional

There are many ways to process and transform an Optional . In this section, we will learn the common methods that are used.

As I wrote at the beginning of the article, an empty Optional won’t be processed in the flow. We can see that from the examples in this section.

map

map is the most used method when processing an Optional object. It accepts Function<? super T, ? extends U> as its parameter and returns an Optional<U> . This means you can use a Function with any type of parameter and the return value will be wrapped to Optional in the map method.

If you try to return a null value in Function<? super T, ? extends U> , the map method will return an empty Optional .

An empty optional won’t be processed by map . We can confirm this with the following test:

flatMap

This is similar to map , but flatMap won’t wrap the return value of the Function to Optional . The flatMap method accepts Function<? super T, ? extends Optional<? extends U>> as its parameter. This means that you’ll need to define a Function that accepts any type and returns an Optional .

You will usually use the flatMap method when your code calls another method that returns an Optional object.

filter

In the previous example of flatMap , we used a declarative style to differentiate the return value of the getString method. But we can actually use a functional style for that with the filter method.

ifPresent
One-step Install+Save for Python Dependencies
By: Ashwin Balamohan
Tags: Python, Programming, Django, Python3, Flask

TL;DR:

Open up your .zshrc or .bashrc file and paste the following into the bottom:

Now you can do: pip-save django psycopg2-binary and get an updated requirements.txt with a locked in version, and move on with what you actually set out to do.

Motivation

After almost a decade as Node.js developer, I’m back in Python land.

One immediate pet peeve when spinning up new services was how much more typing and copy/pasting I was doing to install dependencies.

Installing a JS dependency (e.g. express and mongoose):

npm install --save express mongoose End of list. Move on with life.

npm will:

install the dependencies

add them to package.json (in alphabetical order!)

lock in the correct version number

Equivalent flow in Python (e.g. django and psycopg2):

pip install django psycopg2-binary pip freeze Either manually copy and paste the specific version numbers into requirements.txt (or do a cat requirements.txt | grep -i django >> requirements.txt ) If I care about de-duping (e.g. I accidentally added flask twice) or sorting alphabetically (e.g. to avoid adding flask twice), I’m back to my code editor (or something like sort -u requirements.txt -o requirements.txt )

This wore away at my patience very quickly.

Some Quick Googling…

revealed a bunch of third-party tooling that could help. Pipenv came up most frequently.

I had some trouble with pipenv last year (probably my fault), and couldn’t be bothered to try again.

My Solution

I wanted to do using the standard tooling (i.e. venv and pip) and move on to my “real” work of building the service I set out to build, so I threw together the following shell function to restore a bit of sanity to the experience:

Reload your shell by typing source ~/.zshrc (or source ~/.bashrc )

Usage:

pip-save psycopg2-binary django You’re done

My requirements.txt file is now:

Django==3.0.8

psycopg2-binary==2.8.5

Assumptions:

you’re running this command within the same directory as requirements.txt .

. you want to lock the exact version into requirements.txt (e.g. Django is locked in at 3.0.8, above)

Comments, Criticism, Questions?

Would you use this? Is there a better way? Please comment and let me know.
A Beginner’s Guide to Shopping Online with Crypto
By: Molly Malone
Tags: English, Crypto, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, Litecoin

How I Easily and Quickly Bought a Vape Pen with Litecoin

This was only my second purchase ever with cryptocurrency! I like to learn as I go. I remember best when I put words into practice. I made one mistake along the way with this transaction which wasn’t critical (or expensive) and all I did was follow the indicated steps and my shoppers intuition. I can guarantee I won’t make that mistake again. Later I will tell you the mistake I made so that you can learn not to make the same one.

As usual, choosing the item that made sense for me was the most difficult and time consuming part. Checkout was a quick couple of steps, like checking out with a credit card.

I added the Vape Pen I wanted to the cart and below shipping address was payment method where I chose the button “Bitcoin, Litecoin”:
The Truth
Tags: Poetry, Writing, Truth, Resistance Poetry, Resistance

They killed you.

That was the rumor,

Death by a thousand cuts.

Greed, ego, ignorance, power,

Loyalty, security, propriety, theology,

And kindness,

They killed you with kindness.

But I know better.

You are not dead.

But you are buried,

Under an avalanche of excuses,

Behind a wall of silence,

Within the bowels of bureaucracy,

Between the lines of poetry,

In the hearts of men.
> Run away with me now
By: Words Seeking Glory
Tags: Girls, Poetry, Goodbye, Love, Punk Rock

Here I am 5 foot away,

She’s got a blink-182's shirt,

I tremble with a mental bouquet,

Should I remain distant, unhurt?

I fear the unnoticed shade,

But also do I fear her goodbyes.

Tomorrow an alike cascade

Will bleed out of my eyes.

___________I____________

______fear____fear_______

Goodbyes_______Goodbyes

______fear____fear_______

___________I____________

But for now, she catches my eye,

And swings her hand to my inner cry,

My heart prompts on herself somehow

> Run away with me now

PunkRockPrincess> Will I?