fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Arc du Pilaf — Foreskin Satellite — Bag Lord
By: Van Sanders
Tags: Strange, Nonsense, Humor, Pilaf, Whatever

One tuft — a pulmonary puff serving only a cervical surface. Stamped on glass after shed scent is densified into bricks is a sea foam clautch.

Melissa phones her Chad Grandpa on a beige Tuesday. Her finger coils the chord before she bends her knuckle to feel it constrict her flow to Purple tip.

Chad Grandpa picks up his end and announces his presence. Melissa releases her coil into a cup and coaxes the bread into her mouth. Actually, Chad Grandpa seals his crepe with the wax she paid him over coffee this morning.

Caustic Waft splits the Burl ahead of Saving Sister’s “Jonesian” appeal — as if pealing a live fish before your neutered nephew wasn’t a subtle unwinding of his blanket-bro ego show…

As Chad Grandpa’s chode swelled beyond recognition he had to escape to his tent with his coats. Lurching on the floor, he finally forgave himself for tracing over his daughter’s cranberry depiction when he phased trigeminal over Crumpet-Dimple Daniel.

Transaction in the Bay — Arc du Pilaf.

Sac a dupe belote the sand glandpa begining of film partridge forsaker. Vascular Pimp’s tweed can code supplanted the marginal memory of a foreskin satellite.
GraphQL & A New Coding Job
By: Jana Bergant
Tags: GraphQL, Review, Udemy, Web Development, Coding

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

Hi,

Do you want to master GraphQL? Or get your next best coding job?

I’ve watched two courses that can help you.

This time you can watch Andrew Mead’s Modern GraphQL Bootcamp course. I bought it two years ago and watched it recently.

Here is the review:

VIDEO / ARTICLE

In case you’ve missed it, here is the Andrei Neagoie: Master the Coding Interview course Review.

In the review, I answer if this course will help you get your next job:

VIDEO / ARTICLE

Enjoy your day :)

Jana
Instagram Filter｜解決濾鏡檔案過大. 使用Spark AR…
Tags: Instagram Filter, Instagram, 濾鏡製作教學, Ig濾鏡, Spark Ar

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How The Experimenter’s Mindset Can Free You From Fear
By: Barry Davret
Tags: Self Improvement, Life Lessons, Mindfulness, Psychology, Productivity

How The Experimenter’s Mindset Can Free You From Fear

The magic of cultivating curiosity without attachment

Photo by KAL VISUALS on Unsplash

Fear. It’s that other four-letter “F” word. In prehistoric times it prompted us to run from saber tooth tigers. In the modern world, it springs up at inopportune moments.

You feel it every time you pin your hopes, self-worth, and self-esteem on a specific outcome. It’s that sensation of dread the moment before you put yourself in a position where someone might reject, criticize, or dismiss you.

It happens when we submit our work for critique, ask someone out, or request a pay raise. There’s a chance they’ll reject us, and that triggers fear.

So, instead of striking up that conversation, asking for that raise, or sending our work, we hesitate. We engage in self-talk and formulate a justifiable reason for inaction.

“Who am I kidding. I don’t deserve a raise.”

“This isn’t my best work. No sense sending in a certain rejection.”

These convenient excuses are manifestations of fear. It feels like an irrational fear, but it’s not. We derive so much of our self-worth and esteem from outcomes; it’s no wonder we clam up at pivotal moments in our lives.

Overcoming irrational fear is not about summoning hidden courage like it was stashed away in a remote corner of your brain.

Nor can you rely on hacks or tricks. You need a change of perspective — the experimenter’s mindset.
About Me — Kelli Lynn Grey. My words educate, entertain, reveal and…
By: Kelli Lynn Grey
Tags: Georgia, Introduction, Self, About Me, Writing

About Me — Kelli Lynn Grey

My words educate, entertain, reveal and connect.

The author on her porch in Atlanta, GA, USA. Photo courtesy of the author.

My writing career started with me swirling my finger around in the sand somewhere along the shoreline of Panama City Beach, Florida. I was probably 4-years-old.

I remember feeling overcome by the sand’s vastness, while simultaneously being comforted by it. Grounding and centering, the act of running my finger through the tiny grains brought even more peace.

Within my small hand, I had the power to shape my own bit of sand, to literally hold a piece of the vastness and make from it something distinctly my own. What started as a spiral pattern soon became my name.

My mother had been showing me the printed letters hoping I’d catch on soon. It took the visceral connection of sand against my skin to make the connection, but, once I’d written my name that first time, I never stopped.
Golden
By: D Abboh
Tags: Poetry, Life, Self, Summer, New Beginnings

the morning welcomes me

breathes sunlight through my hair

like the breeze rustling the leaves of a mango tree

blue, cloudless skies ricocheting island vibes — soul nourishing

roots, heavenly etched with ancestral dreams

whisper louder and louder instilling peace in me

like the Ocean waves that kiss the shore — soaking my brown skinned feet, this is my centre, where the world and I meet

equilibrium, casting out a history of heartless inequity

grace my palms with a love only my eyes can see

I storm with all emotions, reflection on the water — I give her everything

soul pieces drip from my skin — I breathe and repeat

the morning welcomes me

colours me golden — paints me curious, in red — Black and green
Universal Data Tool Weekly Update 2
By: Wafaa Arbash
Tags: Machine Learning, Labeling Annotating, Data Science, Machine Learning Ai, Data Tools

If you haven’t heard of the Universal Data Tool, it’s an open-source web or desktop program to collaborate, build and edit text, image, video, and audio datasets with labels and annotations. You can get started with the Universal Data Tool

This is our second community update! We’re hoping by releasing these we can better engage the community and encourage new contributors. Let’s get started…

You can watch the video update here

(https://youtu.be/3bq9N08oc-U)

New Feature: Collapsible Sidebar

All Image Segmentation views now have a collapsible sidebar with expendable options. Now you can use the entire screen for segmentation if needed by just clicking on the arrow on the right side of the screen. It should help to clear the UI and be beneficial when used on smaller screens.

New Feature: Convert Image Samples into any number of segments

Now there is no limit to convert image samples into segments as opposed to earlier 5x5 limits. Also, there is an improvement to how we zoom in on segments when you have a sample split up in segments. It will now automatically zoom in on the segment that’s allowed to be annotated in every sample.

That’s it for our second community update, be sure to follow us on Twitter, or join our Slack to hear more!
Twitch Prime Members, Level Up Your Arsenal with the Warframe Gear Bundle!
By: Joveth Gonzalez
Tags: Twitch, Warframe, Twitch Prime

Starting today through September 14th, Twitch Prime members can get a Gear Bundle for Warframe that includes 50 Platinum (non-tradeable) to use towards new equipment, a 7-Day Affinity Booster to double the rate in which players upgrade their equipment, and a 7-Day Resource Booster to double the amount of Resources players get from pickups.

To take advantage of this offer on PC, PS4, or Xbox One, link your Warframe and Twitch accounts. If you’re not a Twitch Prime member, you can sign up for a free trial here.

What is Twitch Prime?

Twitch Prime is a premium experience on Twitch that is included with Amazon Prime. Benefits include monthly in-game loot, a channel subscription every 30 days AND all the benefits of being a Prime member.

Check out the full list of Amazon Prime benefits in: US, UK, Canada, Germany, France, Austria, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Mexico, Australia, Japan, and Singapore. You can try it for free for 30 days right here, and when you do, you get all the Twitch Prime benefits instantly just by linking your Twitch account to your Amazon account.
Bitcoin Full Validation Sync Performance
By: Jameson Lopp
Tags: Testing, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Performance, Sync

Bitcoin Full Validation Sync Performance

Testing full sync of five Bitcoin node implementations.

As I’ve noted many times in the past, running a fully validating node gives you the strongest security model and privacy model that is available to Bitcoin users. But are all node implementations equal when it comes to performance? I had my doubts, so I ran a series of tests.

We’ve moved our blog! To continue reading this article, visit the link below:

https://blog.keys.casa/bitcoin-full-validation-sync-performance/
Meaning In The Tension
By: Lance Baker
Tags: Personal Growth, Communication, Compassion, Inspiration, Nonduality

A Shift In Energy

Another wonderful thing happens when we embrace tension — we become more available to embrace one another. For most people, behind their firmly held belief is a desire to be affirmed and valued as an individual. If we are too preoccupied with resolving the tension everywhere we go, we’ll end up bulldozing other people with our own opinions and advice. This just causes people people to become defensive or ashamed —this is not how we go deeper. When we embrace the tension, our energy is free to give more lovingly to the person behind the opinions rather than defending our own ego.

If our energy isn’t being spent defending our own ego and the rightness of our opinions, then all sorts of possibilities open up. That energy can be spent cultivating something deeper and more enriching for everyone involved.

Nuance is almost a dirty word in today’s culture. You don’t need to explain anything about what you think or feel, you only need to state if you are for or against something. You only need to state your label, nothing else. People only value your story if it fits their pre-established opinions on something, otherwise you are canceled, unfriended, or shouted down.

This is not how a culture of radical acceptance, compassion, and unity emerges. We have to learn to embrace the tension, move beyond categorical statements, and tell more meaningful stories.

That it how we gain the paradoxical strength of an arch. Otherwise, everything merely collapses.
Four Takeaways from October’s Volatile Market
By: Ibillionaire Capital
Tags: David Tepper, Market Insights, Euro, News, George Soros

October was a tough month on Wall Street, and major fluctuations put investors on edge.

The month also had billionaires out in full force, with Warren Buffett, Leon Cooperman, David Einhorn, Carl Icahn and others making the media rounds. Here are four takeaways from what they had to say in the midst of one of the most turbulent months of the year:

1. When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.

“The more [the market] goes down, the more I like to buy,” Warren Buffett quipped on a CNBC appearance at the start of the month.

David Einhorn took advantage of volatility-driven opportunities in October as well, telling CNBC that his fund has been able to buy into “a bunch of things we are pretty excited about.”

2. Volatility makes gains tough — but not impossible.

The HFRX Global Hedge Fund Index indicates that hedge funds fell -1.7% in October and are down -0.5% year-to-date. But not everyone’s in the red.

David Einhorn’s strategy apparently paid off last month, as Greenlight Capital posted a 2.2% gain for October. The fund is now up +4.9% for the year. And while Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square took a hit early in the month, it has still climbed more than +25% YTD.

3. One hit doesn’t mean you’re down for the count.

October headlines had Warren Buffett and Carl Icahn losing millions — even billions — of dollars as the stock prices of companies like IBM, Coca-Cola and Netflix plunged on earnings disappointments. And while the drops weren’t ideal for the billionaires, they weren’t the end of the world, either.

KO is one of Buffett’s longest (and favorite) positions, and Netflix has already made Icahn millions. Moreover, earnings season has turned out quite well for a number of top billionaire stocks — including Buffett pick MasterCard and Icahn investment Apple.

4. With Europe in turmoil, the U.S. may be the place to be.

European’s political and economic landscape is becoming increasingly problematic, and billionaires are chiming in. Mid-month, George Soros penned Wake Up, Europe, declaring that the continent is “facing a challenge from Russia to its very existence.” And at the Robin Hood Investors Conference in New York, David Tepper revealed that he has taken a short position against the euro.

While some are still confident about opportunities on the other side of the pond (Einhorn has recently expressed optimism regarding his investments in Greek banks), many are staying local — including Dan Loeb. “Going forward, we expect that the US will remain the best place to invest,” the billionaire wrote in his most recent letter to investors for Q3.
Energi — Light Paper. We are proud to announce the release of…
By: Rici Ingenito
Tags: Announcements, Cryptocurrency, Crypto, Bitcoin, Blockchain

We are proud to announce the release of our Light Paper. This document outlines our vision and strategy in an easy to understand format.

Check it out here or read down below: https://www.energi.world/lightpaper/
Incident Management Process
By: Hendrik Prinsloo
Tags: Software Development, Incident Management, Disaster Response, Incident Response, Incident Reporting

Incident Management Process Flow

Ongoing Communication

There should be a constant stream of communication to the relevant parties (end users, business owners, other technical teams, etc). Each phase in the incident management process marks progress and should be communicated effectively to instil confidence and reduce panic.

Identify — Classify and prioritise

The relevant internal members (technical and non-technical) are responsible to classify and prioritise the incident.

Assign — Create the issue

An issue should be created to track the incident and assign the member/s responsible to investigate and resolve it.

Investigate — Identify the problem/s

Dive into the environment and find the problem. This diagnostic phase will help to classify the severity of the problem and lead to the solution. Communication is essential at this point, the end users and business owners should be notified that the problem has been identified. Be careful in providing an estimated turnaround time at this point, because sometimes the solution might have unexpected consequences.

Resolve — Solve the problem/s

Solve the problem and complete the necessary tests to ensure that the environment is back in a stable state. If the solution did not restore the environment back to a stable state the end users and business owners should still be notified about this fact and assured that the investigation phase will commence again. Avoid communicating failed solutions.

Final communication to the relevant stakeholders should only be considered if the team is confident that all possible problems have been identified and resolved and that the application has been successfully restored to a stable state.

Report — Draft an incident report

Document the findings in an incident report to ensure that all the details about the incident is captured. In some cases it might be required to do a thorough impact analysis, especially when there is a risk of data-loss.
First Responder: “I Cannot Sit There and Watch My Community Perish”
By: International Med. Corps
Tags: From The Field, Somalia, Refugees

Despite the threat of famine and disease looming over his country, Abdi has not lost hope. He passionately believes that the work he and the International Medical Corps team are doing each day around Somalia is alleviating suffering and saving lives.

“My happiest moment…in responding to the drought in Somalia was when International Medical Corps established a new health center to provide healthcare to the people in the displacement camps,” he says. “People living in the camps are exposed to contaminated water and food, which easily spreads acute watery diarrhea and cholera.”

The clinics in the displacement camps provide primary healthcare, as well as treatment for malnutrition to families who were forced to abandon their homes and search of humanitarian assistance. Many walk for days, with no food or water, to reach the camps.

For Abdi, this is exactly where International Medical Corps and First Responders like him should be.

“I cannot just sit there and watch my community perish,” he says. “I have to wake up every day and go out to help my people.”

*Name changed to protect identity.

Learn more about International Medical Corps

Follow International Medical Corps on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

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If you think it’s important for people to know about this issue, click 👏 button below or share the article on Facebook and Twitter so your friends can benefit from it too.

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Design systems, growing your design team, providing better design feedback, and more UX this week
By: Fabricio Teixeira
Tags: Product Design, Hot This Week, UX, User Experience, Design

A year ago…

Sometime in the fall of last year I began to draw my calendar.

My weeks were packed with a series of interlocking jobs and I couldn’t keep them straight. Tiny calendars on my computer weren’t cutting it. I needed something tangible — I needed a calendar-as-artifact.

The drawn calendar is not for minutiae, but for overview, for the ability to both understand the rhythm of coming weeks at a glance, and for the pleasure of ticking off time.

Read full story →
Five Stories to Refresh Your Digital Health Knowledge Before the Global Digital Health Forum 2016
By: Knowledge For Health
Tags: Knowledge Management, Gdhf2016, Digital Health, Health Technology, Global Health

The annual Global Digital Health Forum is just around the corner. Now is the time to brush up on some of the trends in digital health thought leadership and programming.

Here are five stories written by staff from the Knowledge for Health (K4Health) Project that will keep you informed on conversations happening at the Forum this year:

Earlier this year, K4Health’s Digital Health Team shared why they view knowledge management as an essential tool for fostering country ownership of digital health.

2. K4Health IT Director Guy Chalk (guychalk) demystifies open-source software and discusses why it’s important for international development.

3. Lisa Mwaikambo, K4Health’s Director of Knowledge Management Integration, shares lessons she learned implementing a closed user group platform for health providers in Tanzania to share technical health content.

4. Program Specialist Amy Lee explores a common assumption that women have less access and are less likely to use internet technology and finds out it isn’t always true.

5. Sarah V. Harlan, K4Health’s Learning Director, reminds us to focus should on the people our policies and programs affect first, regardless of how incredible or simple a technology solution might seem.
Artis Turba Referral Rewards and Address Book Management
By: Artis Turba
Tags: Exchange, Cryptocurrency, Referral Marketing, Blockchain, Artis Turba

Dashboard With Referral Section Included at www.artisturba.com

We are excited to announce that the referral rewards system is now live at Artis Turba. A summary of your Referral Activity is provided in your account dashboard, and you will find a “My Referrals” Page under the “My Account” drop down menu.

Our community can now earn even more by referring friends, family and associates to Artis Turba. Both the referrer and the referred are eligible for rewards and the rewards structure* is as follows;

Referrer gets 100 ARTIS and the Referred gets 100 ARTIS

Criteria for eligibility will be Referred Tier 2 KYC Accounts, meaning that referred persons will need to submit at least an ID document.

Eligibility criteria is introduced to root out potential abuse of the referral system. We sincerely enjoy giving kick-backs to our community, but we also enjoy protecting the overall ARTIS community and ecosystem.

*The reward values and eligibility criteria are subject to change dependent on market conditions of ARTIS, and behavior regarding the referral reward system.
haiku unplugged
By: Nicholas Petrone
Tags: Mindfulness, Other Doors, Poetry, Nature, Haiku

From haiku to hefty memoirs - poems, stories and essays that break through the bullshit. Looking for pieces that go far beyond cliché to uncover a new realm of possibilities. Other Doors features writing that leaves the reader with genuine congenital reactions.

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Dear Social Media Influencers
By: Justine Row
Tags: Influencer Marketing, Marketing, Social Media, Photography, Influencers

Dear Social Media Influencers

The things we wish we could say to social media influencers

We all know these people, the people that you can’t help but be totally jealous of while scrolling through instagram. The people that seem to have it all figured out.

Meanwhile, in reality you are working a normal job expecting that very normal pay check.

We hate you

It’s true, our jealousy has made us blind to your success, we just don’t care anymore. But — we also love you, because without you we wouldn’t have anything to look at on instagram.

Daniel Salcius/Unsplash

In all honesty we need you, because you are our escape. We can look at another persons life and fantasize about it. We get restaurant referrals and outfit ideas, we get inspired to buy a pet, be more environmentally friendly or travel.

We want things we don’t actually need all because it looks good on you.

We know exactly what you’re doing

This is to all the girls making it very awkward to walk by you while you pose for an hour, forcing your poor friend take a million and one photos of you.

We know what you’re doing, and we know that your reality is not that. We know that you can’t wait to get home and put on sweatpants like everyone else. We know that you will change your outfit three times during the day just to appear as though your daily routine is just as glamorous as the next.

Laura Chouette/Unsplash

But we’re jealous, we wish we could dress up nice everyday and have someone take photos of us — and then…call it a day. We wish we could be idolized by a couple thousand and two people, no big deal. We wish we could be paid for doing something so simple.

We wish we were you

We hate you because we want to be you, we love your content but get jealous at the same time. We need you to bring joy to our lives and we need to fantasize about something.

We don’t know how you do it and we wish we could let loose enough to try it.
White Woman Walking
By: Shannon Mary Sims
Tags: BlackLivesMatter, This Happened To Me, Racism, White Privilege, Equality

White Woman Walking

People fear me

Photo by Julian Hochgesang on Unsplash

This summer, dealing with Covid, my husband and I have been spending more time at home, but I’ve tried to take a long walk every day. Walking isn’t a big activity in our small town, 28 miles from Pittsburgh, and anyone walking around town regularly gets noticed. We live in a historically Black neighborhood with a big AME church and families who have lived here for generations.

A couple of weeks ago, I was walking down a neighborhood street and restarting my cell phone, when a young Black man tensely asked me, “what are you doing?” I looked up at him and said, “oh, I just restarted my phone,” and he said, “oh, okay,” and waved me on. He was concerned, of course, that I was calling the police. About what, I don’t know, it doesn’t matter. He saw me, a white woman, walking in his neighborhood with a phone, and he knows women who look like me can be dangerous dialers, who treat the police as their personal bully force to pick on anyone doing anything they don’t like.

The thing is, people notice me, as a white woman walking around. Living here and being classified as dangerous based on my race and gender has given me a tiny glimpse into how it can feel to be Black in America. More importantly, I’ve learned there are different ways to walk. I can walk like a polite guest down someone else’s street, or I can stride down the street like I own it. As an American, I’ve been taught to take ownership, but the reality is, I don’t own the street, and it’s understandable when people take offense if I act like I do. On the other hand, when I walked by a house with a frantically barking dog recently, the owner said, “quiet now, she’s not after you.” If people can sense I’m just minding my business, they’re completely fine with me. I’ve come to realize that at times in the past, my ego was showing, and it wasn’t pretty.

When people see me, they quickly classify me as a white woman and then ask themselves, is she dangerous? Should I be afraid of her? Or is she just fine, just a neighbor out walking?

We convey our insides without even trying.

A little humility is appreciated.

That’s what I’ve learned this summer, walking.
The Truth About Periods and How They Affect a Stripper’s Job
By: Erin Taylor
Tags: Sexuality, Society, Feminism, Health, Equality

The Truth About Periods and How They Affect a Stripper’s Job

Because most strippers still go to work when we get our periods.

Photo by Gabrielle Rocha Rios on Unsplash

A person’s menstrual cycle can’t affect their job performance, I always thought. Even if their job is stripping down to a lace thong, spinning upside down on a 10-foot chrome pole, and putting their body in the hands of multiple horny strangers, right?

Okay, so maybe my job makes “going to work on my period” a bit unique.

Full disclosure, I’ve never worked at a fully nude gentlemen’s club, so my experience only speaks to being a topless dancer while on my period. I never had to remove my panties for a lap dance. I also have a very light period and my cycles usually last 4–5 days max; every period is different.

I have friends who worked at nude clubs and they worked even when they were actively bleeding and cramping. They’d use either a tampon and cut the string for visibility, or they’d wear a menstrual cup because the show must go on. They liked to joke that the money was always more effective than an Advil for relieving their menstrual cramps; their undying optimism made me laugh.

A stripper doesn’t skip work because of their period, unless their period is severe, which is true for many individuals with underlying conditions like fibroids, PCOS or Endometriosis. Periods interfere with a person’s daily life with excruciating nausea, fatigue, dizziness, and unbearable pain. And if that’s the case for a stripper, then yes, we skip work to take care of ourselves.

Our periods are just another part of our lives that we must integrate into our schedule; we’re not special. All people who menstruate continue their jobs and responsibilities despite the bleeding, cramping, and pain.

Besides, most strippers won’t skip a day of work unless we’re so exhausted, lazy, or unavailable that the sound of adding $2,000 to our wallets in four hours can’t get us to the strip club.

But if we have our periods?

No, we work through that shit.

As for any grown person who is grossed out about talks of menstrual blood, tampons, or ovulation, just know that if you’ve ever gotten a lap dance from a stripper, it may have been while they were on their period. And you probably loved it. So there’s that.
When are Contextual Embeddings Worth Using?
By: Viktor Karlsson
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Research, Data Science, NLP

When are Contextual Embeddings Worth Using?

Contextual embeddings from BERT are expensive, and might not bring value in all situations. Let’s figure out when that’s the case!

Working with state-of-the-art models like BERT, or any of its descendants, is not for the resource-limited nor the budget restrained researcher or practitioner. Only pre-training BERT-base, a model that almost could be considered small with today's standards, took more than 4 days on 16 TPU chips which would cost multiple thousands of dollars. This does not even take further fine-tuning or eventual serving of the model into account, both of which only add to the total cost.

Instead of trying to figure out ways of creating smaller Transformer models, which I’ve explored in previous articles, it would be valuable to take a step back and ask: when are contextual embeddings from Transformer based models actually worth using? In what cases would it be possible to reach similar performance with less computationally expensive, non-contextual embeddings like GloVe or maybe even random embeddings? Are there characteristics of the datasets that could indicate when this would be the case?

These are some of the questions that Arora et al. answer in Contextual Embeddings: When Are They Worth It?. This article will provide an overview of their study and highlight their main findings.

Study

The study is divided into two, first examining the effect of training data volume and then the linguistic characteristics of these datasets.

Training data volume

The authors find that training data volume plays a key role in determining the relative performance of GloVe and random embeddings when compared to BERT. The non-contextual embeddings quickly improved with more training data and were often able to perform within 5–10% of BERT when all available data were used.
Kill Stress in Five Minutes or Less
By: Texas Mccombs
Tags: Relaxation, Stress Management, Management And Leadership, Meditation

We all know work-related stress can do a number on our physical and emotional health. But when you’re facing an overflowing inbox, a calendar full of meetings, and impending work deadlines, taking time to relax at the office doesn’t always seem like an option.

Luckily, even if you’ve got just a few minutes, these research-based tips from McCombs School of Business faculty can help you get calm, centered, and back to work.

Do a reality check. Convinced your co-workers are conspiring to make you look bad? When we feel a lack of control — like, say, from a surprise last-minute assignment — we might see trends or cause-and-effect patterns around us that don’t really exist. So before you hit “send” on an angry email or confront a co-worker, consider whether it’s the stress talking on your behalf.

Get back in the moment. Meditation isn’t just for the yoga studio. Rather than dreading upcoming deadlines or stewing about that rude driver on your morning commute, pause and redirect your attention to the present moment. “You force your mind to focus on a particular object or a particular activity,” says Associate Professor of Marketing Raj Raghunathan. Science is proving that meditation works: A recent study reported in the Wall Street Journal found that by meditating each day for eight weeks, family members caring for relatives with dementia had better brain functioning and were less depressed than a group of non-meditators who instead listened to music.

If you’re new to the practice, exercise your meditation muscles by counting to 20 in your head or simply paying attention to your breathing. When you’re feeling stressed, focusing on something you do have control over, however small, can calm runaway thoughts. That may be part of the reason why concentrating on your breathing, even for five minutes, is effective.

Confide carefully. Need a gripe session? Instead of complaining to your cubicle-mates, take problems to your boss, who, after all, can actually do something about them. Research by Ethan Burris, an associate professor of management, reveals that when you complain to peers, your work performance actually worsens. If you still feel like you need to voice your troubles to your office mates, you’ll do the least damage by at least choosing the right co-workers. Seek social support from — rather than just complaining to — peers who are warm and competent to give advice.

Still convinced your time would be better spent powering on rather than pausing to lower your stress? Know this: If you address your stress, the quality of your work may improve. You’ll do better on that important pitch or presentation if you’re in a good mood and not a stress monster, Raghunathan says.

So when the boss asks why you are sitting peacefully at your desk with your eyes closed you can reply truthfully that you’re just being results-oriented.
Double Suicide or Devious Murder?
By: Richard J. Goodrich
Tags: True Crime, Crime, History, Murder

On the eve of both the new year and their wedding, Charles drove over from Keyser to spend the afternoon with his fiancee. Mysteriously, he hadn’t told his family or friends that he planned to marry Grace the next day.

Charles arrived after lunch on December 31. When he knocked on the door, he was admitted into the Elosser’s home. His future-in-laws, sensitive to a young couple’s desire for privacy, cleared the parlor, shutting the door and leaving them alone. Thirty minutes later, Grace’s mother poked her head through the doorway to tell her daughter that the seamstress needed to discuss last minute alterations to the wedding dress. While Grace met with the gown-maker, Mrs Elosser and Charles chatted companionably in the parlor.

A few minutes later, Grace returned. Mrs. Elosser clambered to her feet. She shook her finger playfully at the lovebirds as Grace snuggled back under Charles’ arm. There will be time enough for that later, warned Mrs. Elosser. We have a wedding to prepare.

She left, pulling the door closed behind her.

An hour passed. Grace had not appeared. Mrs. Elosser shook her head, got to her feet, and walked toward the parlor. They still had last minute details to discuss. No more delays.

Yet, the older woman couldn’t help smile as she tapped lightly on the door. The two had seemed so happy earlier. A joyful couple warmed a house.

She pushed the door open. “Grace, dear, I want to ask you something,” she said.

There was no response. Mrs. Elosser stepped across the lintel. “And then I stopped,” she told reporters later. “There was a silence in the room, a queer silence. Looking toward the sofa, I saw the odd, strange attitudes of my daughter and her betrothed. It looked as though they had fallen asleep, but in a most grotesque position.”

The two held hands. Grace’s head lolled backward, as if thrown back to scream. Twigg’s head rested on her shoulder.

“I rushed up to her, calling her name,” continued Mrs. Elosser. She shook her daughter and cried, “Grace, Grace, speak to me.”

Grace did not speak.

“Then I looked into her eyes, and there I had an answer; it was death.”

Twigg was in the same state. “I looked into his face,” continued Mrs. Elosser, “and saw on his face the same terrible expression. I do not know how long I stood there gazing at them. It all seems a horrible, hideous nightmare.”

Mrs. Elosser broke from her trance, ran out of the house, and began to scream. Her cries summoned her other daughter, who fetched the local physician, Dr. Ford. Ford confirmed Mrs. Elosser’s instinctive diagnosis: the two were dead.

But how?
Zen and The Art of Effective Delegation
By: Vishal Kataria
Tags: Advice, Culture, Leadership, Workplace, Leadership Development

How to Make More Time?

All leaders encounter the above problems. They’re also aware of the consequences, which they hope to address when they have more time.

But urgent fires erupt over and over again with surprising speed. How will they find time to do what’s important?

The answer lies in a term that has turned into a platitude: delegation.

Delegation is a no-brainer. To focus on larger things, you must hand over less important tasks to your people. In fact, a key trait of astute leaders is their ability to prepare someone to take over tasks in their kitty once they figure out how they’re done.

This concept is easy to talk about but almost impossible to practice. Leaders end up addressing mistakes and escalations and increasing their workload. Eventually, they take back the reins to do things faster. As a result, things stay exactly the same. Everyone resigns themselves to a workplace that feels like a nightmarish version of Groundhog’s Day.

Is there an effective framework that makes leaders better at delegation? Can they say, “I am not going to do this”, “I’m going to say no”, or “I’m going to have someone else do this?” More importantly, can they succeed at delegating effectively?

The answer to all the above questions is an emphatic “Yes!”. Here’s a three-step framework to achieve it.
Why Are Autoimmune Diseases on the Rise?
By: Tessa Love
Tags: Public Health, Life, Body, Medicine, Autoimmune Disease

Why Are Autoimmune Diseases on the Rise?

Changing environments, extraordinary stress, and the autoimmunity epidemic

Stacy Verdick Case was ill with a host of disparate symptoms. She suffered from joint pain, heart palpitations, and severe fatigue. Doctors tried to address her symptoms, prescribing her the anti-anxiety drug Xanax, attending to her acid reflux, or telling her to exercise. But no one could figure out the root of her underlying health problems.

“Every time they’d look for the cause, there was no cause,” Case says. “Being treated has been a nightmare.”

It took nearly three years and dozens of doctors before Case got a diagnosis: Hashimoto’s disease, an autoimmune disorder that causes inflammation of the thyroid and a number of associated problems, like fatigue and weight fluctuation.

While Case’s disease is rare, autoimmune diseases are not — and neither is the difficulty of her journey to reach a diagnosis. It can take a person an average of five years and five doctors to get diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder, according to the American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association (AARDA) — despite the fact that some 50 million Americans suffer from one. Autoimmunity is now one of the most common disease categories, ahead of cancer and heart disease. And while rates of the latter are falling, autoimmune diseases are being diagnosed with such frequency that some medical experts are calling it an epidemic.

“There’s still a lot of mystery associated with autoimmune disease,” says Kathleen Gilbert, an immunologist and retired professor at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

Autoimmune diseases occur when the immune system turns on itself and attacks the body’s own cells and tissues. Beyond that, however, there’s little consensus on why this happens, what can be done to stop it, or even what diseases can be classified as autoimmune.

Researchers largely assume that the cause of the rise can be pinpointed to changes in our environment, which in turn are causing changes in our bodies. Over the past 100 years, humanity has drastically altered the way we lived for the majority of existence. And while advancements in technology and living conditions lead us to believe we should be healthier than ever — after all, the majority of Western civilization now has access to better medicine, clean water, and abundant food — doctors are beginning to understand some of the unintended consequences of these changes. With better medicine, for instance, comes the overuse of antibiotics and the rise of superbugs; with industrialized farming comes the rise of chemicals and processed foods — all of which could have something to do with the onset of autoimmunity.

As such, autoimmune diseases could be the product of our own success as an industrialized species. This vexes researchers, because autoimmunity is not only one of the most prevalent disease categories but also fiendishly complex, a tangle of factors that scientists have yet to fully understand.
Letting Her Go
By: Alex Kilcannon
Tags: Poetry, Self, Motherhood, Parenting, Women

She makes friends in the park,

her hello smile an opening play.

Confident she climbs

poles in safe, primary colours.

Daring, she hauls higher

never considering the fragility

of her flesh, her bone.

She swings from bar to bar.

Fingers fail to catch and grip.

Feet slip, hands snatch sky.

The thud of her on black squares

smacks air from lungs

leaving me gasping.

Face caves, mouth yawns.

Air rushes back, powering

her scream, my cry.

Her body’s betrayal is mine.
COVID-19: The Cockblock of Closure
By: James Knight
Tags: Thrifty Words Challenge, Writing Prompts, Closure, Covid 19, The Bad Influence

50 WORDS

COVID-19: The Cockblock of Closure

Thrifty Words Theme Challenge #18: Closure

Image by Klaus Hausmann from Pixabay

Humans crave closure. Graduation ceremonies, retirements, and weddings are shared closure events in our lives. Funerals are the ultimate forms of closure. COVID-19 has blocked us from these forms of closure.

And how many long-distance relationships have ended during the COVID-19 quarantine without an opportunity for a final closure fuck?
Lessons of a Failed Startup
By: Sarah Saccomanno
Tags: Lessons Learned, Startup, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Business

Lesson 4: Keep track of your personally invested money and protect yourself first

Photo by Jp Valery on Unsplash

Tallying the money you’ve invested into the business down to the penny is essential. I made the mistake of losing track of what I invested during business time, down to the very last penny, which made margin calculations dangerously difficult. Having a coffee meeting? Record how much you spent on coffee and travel costs.

It’s easy to say “Ohh well I would have bought coffee anyways today so it’s all good” No, it is not all good.

You must be able to make a big thick line in the sand between a business expense and a personal one.

Track everything. Yes, everything.

Protect yourself and your credit at all costs

I can’t stress enough how important this step is. Often times, people do not realize that when you create a business as a Sole Proprietorship, you and your personal credit are taking on the financial risk of the business. Sure, the money may be all yours to collect, but the second things go wrong the banks will come after you, your credit and your personal assets.

Fortunately I was able to cut the cord on my business as soon as it started to lose money, but many people hold on hope thinking that things will improve (and sometimes they do) and often fall into something called the Sunk Cost Fallacy.

“Decisions are tainted by the emotional investments you accumulate, and the more you invest in something the harder it becomes to abandon it.” (source)

The Sunk Cost Fallacy takes any and all victims who have placed emotional and financial investments in a project they are passionate about. I know someone who had to almost declare corporate (and personal due to lack of income) bankruptcy before they pulled the plug on their business because they simply could not give up on what they invested time, money and love into.

Do not fall into this trap. Protect yourself at all costs.

Speak to your accountant or financial advisor about different business options such as Limited Liability Corporations (LLC), Corporations or anything that allows the business to be its own entity. Even if you continue along the path of Sole Proprietorship, it is very important that you have the conversation about this to determine which path is right for you. The best way to do this is to speak to a professional. Do not make this decision alone.
COVID Can Kiss My Black Ass
By: Brenda Mahler
Tags: Faces Of Covid, Poetry, Covid 19, Reflections, Coronavirus

COVID Can Kiss My Black Ass

A poem that places a Face on Coronavirus #5

DC and family working from home. Image from author’s library.

DC is my son-in-law; he has a unique outlook on the world that I appreciate. H volunteered to participate in a project to put a face on COVID. These are his thoughts formed into a poem.

Click here to read the poem in its entirety.
Not a Poem
By: Mary Poindexter Mclaughlin
Tags: Breakups, Poetry, Relationships, Humor, Love

Not a Poem

a poem

Image by Kranich17 from Pixabay

This is not a poem

There’s no ballad burbling here.

No rhyming scheme

No thoughtful theme

No alliteration, dear.

This is not a poem

Not a trochee near the place.

No euphony

No imagery

Floating vowels in bouillabaisse.

This is not a poem

Lest you think so otherwise.

It’s just some words

In packs and herds

Paragraphs in woolly guise.

Never did I love you

I don’t miss you in the least.

Your life and mine

Not intertwined

So ecstatic I’m released.

This is not a poem

Or apology or ode.

Deeds done and said

Are good and dead

No grim eulogy is owed.

This is not a poem

And these words do not express

Unspoken parts

Of broken hearts

Split apart by thoughtlessness.

This was not a poem

There was no emotion here

No testament

Of sentiment…

Eye shall shed no single tear.
جناحيّ فراشة — أمينة الصبيحي
By: Project Silphium
Tags: Poetry, Libya, Worldpoetryday, Mena

Project Silphium is a platform that allows Libyan women to connect and network in a safe interactive online space.

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VIDEO: How EDACY is building fullstack innovators in Africa
Tags: Technology, Innovation, Recruiting, Africa, Engineering

EDACY is an apprenticeship training system for matching job skills in Africa.We believe in a world-class learning community where experts from different backgrounds come together and share knowledge to grow the new generation of innovators. www.edacy.com

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Memories Spent and Memories Lost
By: Artemis Shishir
Tags: Fiction, Memories, Loss, LGBTQ, Grief

If I stand in the balcony of our old house, I can still see the empty swing swinging slightly in the breeze. If I close my eyes, I can see a grandfather sitting in the swing, his grandchild squeezed behind him, pretending to be the master of the boat guiding it through tumultuous waters.

Oh, how much I wish the child knew their way now!

Evening falls, the blowing of a conch shell is heard. Warm air with a hint of burning incense stick wafts up to my nose. It’s the time I await eagerly, to talk to the grandmother next door while she washes the clothes.

But she doesn’t come. Not anymore.

Now she’s in her room, locked in a place unreachable to man, staring at the buzzing tv with a faraway look, waiting for the day to join her already dead son.

The sky darkens, and I think I can see the familiar white hair blowing in the wind, the all-too-known toothless smile.

Until I blink.

And she’s gone.

The road buzzes with people, children crowd to the phuchka vendor. The radio in the laundry shop across the street cackles and plays an old Bollywood song. Sound of chow mein sizzling on the pan.

Everything is the same. And everything isn’t.

The damp smell of the earth warns of impending rain.

People hurry for shelter. But I welcome it. I wonder if it smelled the same back in Bangladesh, back when Dadai used to go to school on rainy days in a boat. Did he ever look up at the rain falling down from the sky and think of the people in his life? Look back at moments spent?

I accompany Dadai on his evening walk when he comes to visit us. He points out to me the houses of people he knew. People who were his people from home. I look at the dark shacks, the people living there mostly gone. I see his eyes dreaming of days past, of memories spent and memories lost.

I stop in front of a pond. The black water stands still, like time. Two coconut trees stand at the edge of the water, their leaves brushing each other as they lean down to the surface — two friends watching the play of time.

The wind is quiet, unlike my mind which is rushing, roaring like moving waters today. It is taking me to places, memories I wanted to forget. Pain — the pain of losing people stings at the back of my mind like saltwater on a wound.

A lump forms in my throat. My chest burns with the memory of my loved ones, of people met and people lost. I wonder if the river feels the same?

Meeting friends, changing forms, only to leave them and move along —

I close my eyes. The cloud rumbles overhead. The river in me longs to take its form and flow, flow like unrestrained waters from the hills like it’s meant to be —

It’s drizzling now, the cold raindrops kissing my face like the warmth of my long-gone friends.

I walk up to the last step of the ghat and kneel to the water level. Carefully taking out a paper boat from my pocket, I caress it, remembering the times I used to sail paper boats in the rain, before floating it in the water.

The tiny boat flutters and shakes, the wind taking it away from me.