fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
NYC Planning Labs + Data Engineering are hiring! [FILLED 4/4/2019]
By: Jonathan Pichot
Tags: Jobs, Civic Tech, Software Development, Data Engineering, Interaction Design

We’re growing

NYC Planning’s digital teams provide data and digital tools to planners and the public. We build and maintain foundational datasets used to understand the state of the city’s built environment. The software we design makes this data accessible and understandable, bringing insight into a growing city. Now we’re growing too.

The challenges are numerous, and fascinating

We’ll gather, clean, and regularly update hundreds of datasets collected from a variety of agencies on topics from transportation, parks, pollution, and schools. We’ll build data and application infrastructures that are maintainable and adaptable. We’ll sit with city planners, analysts, and technical experts, understanding their work and translating their needs into wireframes.

We have a lot to do, and we need you

Join us.
Sad Songs, Friendly Coffee Tables and Questionable Relationships
By: Roz Warren
Tags: Funny, Humor, Writing, Top 3, Roundup

Sad Songs, Friendly Coffee Tables and Questionable Relationships

The Three Funniest Humor Pieces On Medium This Week

Photo by Artur Wayne on Unsplash

Here are my picks for the 3 funniest posts on Medium this week.

First up, this coffee-table-centric post by Erica N, which wins the prize for both the week’s weirdest post and the week’s best title:

Humorist Jim Nolan’s riffs on sad pop songs cracked me up:

Finally, Funny Relationship Guru Kyrie Gray definitively answers the one dating question most women want to know — are you in a relationship or just a guest on his podcast?

If you’ve read (or written) something funny this week? Please share the link in the Comments section. We need all the laughs we can get.

Roz Warren is the author of two collections of library and book-related humor, Our Bodies, Our Shelves: A Collection of Library Humor, and Just Another Day At Your Local Public Library, both of which would make great gifts for your favorite librarian or other bookish friend.)
Software Released Early and Often Is Better
Tags: Startups, Learning To Code, Programming, Software Engineering, Software Development

How to Mitigate Risks of Regular Release

With that said, there are also some risks and hurdles to tackle. Below are a few.

Automate the release process as much as possible

First of all, if the release process is tedious and requires long, complex operations, performing it regularly would be a demoralizing activity for the developer.

So one would need to cut down the manual process and automate it as much as possible. At most, it should be just two developers pairing work that involves no more than 30 minutes — if not having the entire release fully automated.

Local feature toggle for incomplete feature

It is understood that some feature development work will not likely be completed in a week’s time. So in practice, all such development should be turned off by default using a feature toggle before the code is merged into the master branch.

Once the feature is fully tested on the master branch and works well, then the toggle could be turned on by default or removed entirely.

Remote-toggle the feature

For a super-complex feature, we have less confidence that it will work well if shipped. Even though we know we can ship fixes the following week, sometimes that will be too late for critical issues. The faster way is to have a remote way to turn the feature off immediately.

For such a feature, the local feature toggle should be controlled by a remote toggle.

Phase-roll-out the release

As we know that software is not fully tested until it is released, a risk mitigation approach is to phase-release the software slowly, starting from a very small percentage (depending on how big your user base is).

After each phase release, continue to monitor the stability of the software released by checking the crash and bug response from the software. If any issue is detected, the rollout will be halted immediately. We could release a new version with the fix or wait for the next week for a new release, depending on the criticality of the issue and the percentage that has been rolled out.

Release early in the week

Since we’re monitoring the phase release, it is better to release early in the week. This is to ensure that the developers are still available for the next few days while the phase release continues. In the event of any issue, we have people to monitor and address the issue as soon as possible.
Margin vs Padding
Tags: Learning To Code, Web Development, HTML, Web Design, CSS

Margin is an element’s personal space — how much distance the element wants to keep with other elements around it.

Padding is how much an element is away from itself — how much distance an element wants to keep with the elements inside it.

They both are used to create gaps around elements, but they differ in their method of creating that gap. Margin accommodates the gap by pushing adjacent elements away from it, while Padding accommodates the gap by either growing its own size or by shrinking the size of content inside it.

By default, padding will increase the size of the element to accommodate the gap. But if you set “box-sizing: border-box” on the element, then it will shrink the size of the content inside the element to accommodate the gap.

Use padding when:

You don’t want your content to touch the edges of the container. Example: you have a bunch of <p> elements inside a div and you don’t want the text inside <p> elements to touch the div’s border:

You want the background of the element to be displayed in the produced gap.Example: you have a green and an orange div adjacent to each other, and you want both divs to touch each other, but don’t want their texts to touch each other:

You want to increase the size of the element. Example: if you want to increase the size of a button:

Use margin when:

You want to have some space around an element, or you don’t want the element to touch other elements around it:

You want to center an element. If you give “margin: auto” to an element with fixed width, it will center that element horizontally (and vertically too if using flexbox, check this tutorial if you are new to Flexbox):

Hope this helps.

If you have any doubt let’s discuss it in comments, or feel free to drop me an email at kunal@supersarkar.com.

Subscribe at supersarkar.com for new tutorials every week.

Keep Rocking \m/
How to Convert ODS to JPG in Node.JS
Tags: Ods, Nodejs, Convert, Keynote, Jpg

File conversion is a huge bummer, isn’t it? Each format has so many specific nuances and trying to code around these can quickly eat up an afternoon. There is a much easier method to accomplish this that will not waste any of your time at all. I’m going to demonstrate for you how to use an API to solve this problem once and for all.

Let’s begin with installation.

"dependencies": {

"cloudmersive-convert-api-client": "^2.4.8"

}

Next comes our API function call:

var CloudmersiveConvertApiClient = require('cloudmersive-convert-api-client'); var defaultClient = CloudmersiveConvertApiClient.ApiClient.instance; // Configure API key authorization: Apikey var Apikey = defaultClient.authentications['Apikey']; Apikey.apiKey = 'YOUR API KEY'; // Uncomment the following line to set a prefix for the API key, e.g. "Token" (defaults to null) //Apikey.apiKeyPrefix = 'Token'; var apiInstance = new CloudmersiveConvertApiClient.ConvertDocumentApi(); var inputFile = "/path/to/file"; // File | Input file to perform the operation on. var opts = { 'quality': 56 // Number | Optional; Set the JPEG quality level; lowest quality is 1 (highest compression), highest quality (lowest compression) is 100; recommended value is 75. Default value is 75. }; var callback = function(error, data, response) { if (error) { console.error(error); } else { console.log('API called successfully. Returned data: ' + data); } }; apiInstance.convertDocumentOdsToJpg(inputFile, opts, callback);

The API is going to do all the hard work for us, returning our converted array of JPGs as raw byte arrays for maximum convenience. Easy.
Failure Is Not The Biggest Risk To Your Success
By: Rebeca Ansar
Tags: Success, Personal Development, Blog, Education, Self

Mistakes are necessary for growth.

If your life is anything like mine, you regularly encounter problems that you don’t know how to solve.

How do I choose the best title for my article? How do I solve this data problem?

In my case, even when I do try to get to an answer, I often fall short the first few times. I get it wrong. I have to go back to the drawing board. The drawing board and I are close friends at this point.

That’s the thing about challenging yourself to grow. There’s a lot of messing up involved. It can be disheartening, especially in a culture that is exceedingly results-oriented.

Do you ever feel like you don’t have time to fail?

I do.

I have to fight this feeling all the time. It makes me anxious because it leads me to believe that I also don’t have time to learn. After all, making mistakes is how we go about identifying our own knowledge gaps.

There is so much benefit in releasing yourself from a specific outcome and just trying your best.

Fail forward.

These days, I’m constantly “failing”. My perspective on failure, though, has shifted.

Just because I’m not seamlessly successful doesn’t mean that I’m a categorical failure.

Failing to do things right doesn’t make you a failure. “Failure” is such a heavy word. It’s overwhelming- a boulder barreling toward you, ready to stamp you with an unwanted fate. It doesn’t help you, so maybe it’s best left at the wayside.

In fact, I think the popular saying “fail your way forward” is actually spot on. We try something, we mess it up or we don’t get the results we were hoping for, we learn from the experience and try again.

This is how improvement happens.

Perfectionism is the real dream-killer.

Coming from an academic background where I was only allowed to get straight A’s, I tolerated the crushing force of perfectionism until I couldn’t anymore.

Then, I just ran away from academics altogether.

Years later, when I decided to re-enter that world, I made a deal with myself that I would be okay with trying my best given the time I have.

Now, in the context of my academic life, I’m learning to be a B student.

The way I see it, I’d rather be a B student and finish my coursework than an aspiring A student who dropped out because she couldn’t handle not being perfect. To some, this may sound like common sense. To perfectionists, anything short of, well, perfection can feel like an attack on our sense of self-worth.

But that’s not healthy. Self-worth should be a lot more stable than that.

There is so much benefit in releasing yourself from a specific outcome and just trying your best. Then, take a break, relax, recharge. Once you’re ready, try again.

Perfectionism is not worth its cost, and failing isn’t the end of the story.
Testnet Pilot is Under Maintenance
By: Elad Kofman
Tags: Blockchain, Ethereum, ICO, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency

Testnet Pilot is Under Maintenance

The POC is going to work faster, back online next week

**UPDATE**

Happy 2018 to everyone!

Looking forward to an amazing year, and thanks to the last 2 weeks of tailwind from our core community, we took the time to update our Proof Of Concept (POC) Pilot that was presented on our website, prior to the crowdfunding campaign— actually since the site was first launched!

It’s time to freshen it up a bit.

Parallel to the POC update on the Ethereum testnet, the full product Pilot development is underway and we will share more relevant info about the progress as soon as we can.

Thank you for your understanding and support.

Have a Great Year!

It was a Happy New Year for $STU$

The Power of the bitJob Community

Last week, we got a sheer example of what bitJob can become.

We all want to see our $STU$ Mooning, and it starts with you, with your family, with your friends, with your business / workplace.

It is as simple as it can get.

We as a community have the power to build a better place for our children. And it starts today!

We encourage you to share your leads regarding relevant businesses (Global SMEs / SMBs is awesome) from all around the world, who would love to join our pilot!

Contact us Today! Info@bitJob.io

bitJob Ambassador Program

Are you motivated, love crypto, and excited about the potential of the bitJob Project?

Help us and Spread the bitJob Gospel!

We are currently in the process of developing a reward program for our most enthusiastic ‘STU-dents!’. Get rewarded with cool bitJob merchandise and prizes for spreading the word about our project; you can even earn the STU token for your efforts! Please stand by while we finalize the details of our program, we will release more details then.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — —
The Most Effective Way to Design New Year’s Resolutions, According to Experts
By: Stephanie Thurrott
Tags: Self Improvement, Inspiration, Life, Life Lessons, Psychology

The Most Effective Way to Design New Year’s Resolutions, According to Experts

Give one of these key goals your laser focus

Image by Melk Hagelslag from Pixabay

I get so ambitious at this time of year. A fresh new calendar! A clean slate! This is the year I’m going to organize my personal finances, take care of all those niggling tasks I’ve been putting off, and grow my business. And that’s not all! I’ll eat more vegetables! I’ll sleep better! I’ll practice gratitude!

That’s the wrong way to go about making changes, says Kara Loewentheil, master certified coach, and host of the mental health podcast, UnF*ck Your Brain. “When you focus on changing too many things about yourself, you’ll get overwhelmed deciding which one matters the most, is most important, or should get your focus at any given time,” she says.

For every resolution, you need to have a plan. You’re going to be changing something about yourself, so you’ll need to take different actions than you used to. “If you try to do too many at once, you are setting yourself up for decision fatigue,” Loewentheil says. With decision fatigue, you have so many decisions to make that you struggle to make good ones.

“If you resolve to walk every day, change your eating habits, meditate, journal for an hour, and go to bed at 10 p.m., you will have to make so many new decisions that you’ll likely experience decision fatigue before you even leave the house in the morning,” she says.

And decision fatigue can lead you to throw up your hands and make poor decisions later in the day that conflict with your goals. This includes tasks like ordering takeout, pouring yourself another glass of wine, or skipping your run.
Ask Panayote 3 — Greek Orthodox Orthodoxy
By: Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Tags: Ask Panayote, Panayote Dimitras, Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Greece, Greek Culture

By Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Panayote Dimitras is the Co-Founder and Spokesperson of the Humanist Union of Greece, and a Board Member of the European Humanist Federation.

Here we talk about Greek Orthodoxy, Greek ethno-national identity, and the Greek Orthodox Church.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Now, many believe in a singular, interventionist being in the Eastern Orthodox tradition of Greek Orthodox Christianity. What defines this God in Greek culture? Also, how does this God — or belief in this assertion of this God, and this Greek Orthodox Religion, influence Greek culture?

Panayote Dimitras: Religiously, the unique God is defined in Greece as in most other monotheistic religions. But in Greek culture Orthodoxy is defined as a quintessential element of the ethno-national identity, Hellenism.

There are people who may not believe in, or may have doubts about, God but still consider Orthodoxy as a quintessential element of the ethno-national identity.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Panayote.

Photo by henry perks on Unsplash
StopPropagation vs. StopImmediatePropagation in JavaScript
Tags: Coding, Nodejs, Programming, JavaScript, Software Development

What Is element.addEventListener?

I’m pretty sure you know what this is and how this works if you are a JavaScript developer, but let’s make sure that every one of us knows the same thing.

When JavaScript adds an event, it works as below under the hood.

It sets a new event to the event handle list only if the type, the callback, the option that contains it should be capturing (or something like that) is identical. Otherwise, it ignores the adding request from the context.

What if you add several different events in a row?

The above code is registering the three different event types to the window object, but the internal event listener is keeping the event as follows.

[event_listener_list]

index type callback ...

0 click (anonymous)

1 keydown (anonymous)

2 dbclick (anonymous)

When you double-click the window, it runs the callback for the double-click without giving you any error. What the event listener list has inside looks a little messed up, but it’s okay: It finds the right one for you by looking it up from the first index.

Then how about this?

window.addEventListener('click', () => log(1));

window.addEventListener('click', () => log(2));

window.addEventListener('click', () => log(3));

What do you think it would show you? Correct, it shows you 1, 2, and 3. They look the same, but each callback is an anonymous function so JavaScript thinks they are different.

However, this code does not print logs three times because the callback is not anonymous. It has the memory address, thus JavaScript thinks they all are the same request, so it only accepts the first one and ignores the others.
Joey Krug Co-founder of Augur Explains the Value of Origin
By: Coleman Maher
Tags: Prediction Markets, Venture Capital, Videos, Sharing Economy, Cryptocurrency

Origin is backed by some of the most incredible people in the entire crypto space. Joey Krug co-founded Augur, the first Ethereum ICO, and is the co-investment officer at Pantera Capital, one of the earliest crypto funds. We are proud to have Joey as an advisor and Pantera as our lead investor. Check out our interview of Joey below, part of Origin’s video testimonial series.

Joey talks about the problems with existing so-called peer-to-peer marketplaces and how Origin, powered by blockchain technology, can offer an alternative vision for the world where users are not unnecessarily taken advantage of. He also discusses why Pantera Capital decided to back Origin after their first meeting with the Origin team.

Learn more about Origin:
What have you done for the Philippines today?
By: Janie Octia
Tags: Elections, Politics, Philippines

As a Filipino living in Singapore for over two years now, one of the things I do to stay in touch my roots, is to stay updated with the news in the country. It’s not so difficult these days, especially since most of my friends use social networks to share how their days went, which is probably true for a lot of Filipinos.

This past month is particularly interesting because those who want to run for government positions in 2016 need to declare their candidacies by October 2015.

As for aspiring presidents, I have friends who are supportive of different candidates such as…

Mar Roxas, the Aquino administration’s bet. He was initially the Liberal Party’s candidate in the 2010 elections, until then Senator Noynoy Aquino decided to heed the people’s call (following the death of former President Corazon Aquino) and run for the presidency instead. Roxas run for the vice presidency instead but lost to…

Vice President Jejomar Binay, another presidential candidate for 2016. Former Makati City (Metro Manila’s central business hub) mayor for almost decades. He and his family have been in the news lately for cases of graft and plunder filed against them.

Of course, there’s Rodrigo Duterte, a Davao City mayor for numerous terms. Human Rights Watch has accused him of supporting extra judicial killings of more than a thousand suspected criminals since the 1990s. A number of people who have expressed their support for Duterte on Facebook, believe that we need someone like him to discipline the country’s lawbreakers.

An early frontrunner, Senator Grace Poe, daughter of the late Ferdinand Poe Jr. (King of Philippine Movies and lost the presidential elections to Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 1998), was disqualified by the Commission on Elections earlier today for not fulfilling the residency period required for presidential aspirants.

And there’s Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago, who ran for the presidency in 1992 and lost. Her track record as a public servant is impressive but she may have been seen as being on the wrong side of history in the 2001 impeachment trial against then President Joseph Estrada. She voted not to open the “second envelope” which ignited and led to the second EDSA People Power Revolution in the Philippines.

(There are more candidates, but I think the ones I mentioned are those who have a possible chance of winning).
“Yup, I was the Christian kid. I, myself, was never religious, but that didn’t matter because of my parents. That said, I think ‘Hallelujah parties’ are lit.”
By: Level Editors
Tags: Spirituality, Identity, Religion, Halloween

“Yup, I was the Christian kid. I, myself, was never religious, but that didn’t matter because of my parents. That said, I think ‘Hallelujah parties’ are lit.” LEVEL Editors · Oct 28, 2020

Halloween may be a night for tricks, treats, and ghouls for most kids, but it meant an entirely different kind of celebration for those growing up in the Black church. In his essay for Momentum’s Halloween While Black series, Isaiah McCall writes about going to “Hallelujah parties” and dressing up as Moses while his friends donned Marvel superhero getups.

Read McCall’s essay in its entirety below.
The Meh Gatsby
By: David Angell
Tags: Great Gatsby, Humor, Comics, Cartoon, Literature

“You can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!”
Moon Over a Pandemic
By: Sydney Duke Richey
Tags: Unfolding, Pandemic, Poetry, Pomprompt, Moon

sister moon

we search for you

in the night sky

you look down on us

even as clouds

scatter across your face

you shine, a reflection

of your brother, sun

and it heartens us

consumed and devoured

by this pandemic

we seek your solace

prisoners of a virus

we lift our gaze

your radiance falls

around us

all of humanity watches

as you circle the earth

through your phases

you remain steadfast

sister moon

as you hang in the sky

suspended

by invisible threads

you are faithful

and unwavering
by John Carroll University Entrepreneurship Program
By: John Carroll University Entrepreneurship Program
Tags: Women, Leadership, Education, Pineapple, College

How are you adding value to the JCU community?

Area Coordinator for Dolan and Pacelli Halls

How many years have you been at JCU?

1

What is special about JCU?

John Carroll University is special because I am surrounded by people that truly care about each other. Everyone wants to see each other succeed and always lend a helping hand.

What was your happiest moment at JCU?

My happiest moment was getting to watch the Resident Assistants in Dolan and Pacelli bond as a staff.

If you had a magic wand, how would you improve the JCU experience?

I would love to see more diversity through out the faculty, staff and student population.

Fun fact about you:

I am obsessed with pineapples and love the color yellow!
FREE Event Alert 7/20! The One-Hour Website for Nonprofits: Boostrap Your Next Online Initiative
By: Digital Culture Nyc
Tags: New York Film Festival, WordPress, 501 Tech Nyc, Nonprofits

FREE event alert: on Wednesday July 20th, from 6PM to 8PM I’ll be presenting The One-Hour Website: Bootstrap Your Next Online Initiative with WordPress for 501 Tech NYC, a terrific professional group of people involved in technology and nonprofits.

[caption id=”attachment_1846" align=”aligncenter” width=”529" caption=”When bootstrapping a nonprofit online initiative, use every resource you can. “]

[/caption]

I’ve already written a bit about working in a nonprofit that was strapped for resources and technology. Everyone understood that the web was becoming increasingly important, but the funding for technology was a political football that kept getting tossed around while the staff struggled to maintain an overly taxed, hand-coded website.

When you’re in such a situation, you quickly learn that you have two options: do nothing, or do-it-yourself.

I chose the second route, and created a number of very successful and high-trafficked websites for the New Directors/New Films Festival, the New York Film Festival, as well as a fund-raising initiative for the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

What’s more, once I understood how to bootstrap a website with WordPress, I felt empowered to create more initiatives that better served user needs and desires. Every project I made became more sophisticated and more customized.

When I first started creating websites for these initiatives, I’m the first to admit: I didn’t know too much about code or design. I just knew there was a need for (in my case) a website with more visual opportunities, more social connectivity, more flexibility. I was determined to deliver that, even if “it’s not my job,” “I’ve never done this before,” or “I’m not sure what I’m doing.”

I know that there are a lot of people out there in nonprofits who are just like me — they have a tremendous amount of initiative they’d like to apply to online projects, they just don’t know where to start.

So I hope you’ll join me on the 20th — I promise a practical hour that will get you charged up to start creating your own online initiatives with WordPress.

Here’s the description:
Help REAL With Upcoming Series and Articles
By: Amy Sterling Casil
Tags: Writing, Politics, Income Inequality, Medium Writing, About

Now that Medium has shown confidence in us, we are planning some new article series on issues where I or new writers have expertise and ability to report.

I will be doing a series of articles on income inequality and the deterioration in work and employment conditions.

A reader has suggested articles about actual experiences of World War II (i.e. “The Greatest Generation”) which formed ideas of American heroism and goodness that last until the present day. Now, these ideas rooted in mythic “goodness” support what I call the permawar and give permission for the taking of countless lives worldwide. I’ll be asking writers with experience in oral history and interviewing for help with this project.

And one of our new writers is undertaking a series on the history of NATO funding.

For income inequality, work and employment conditions aka “Working Your A** Off Just to Eat”: If you have a story to tell about your own employment experience or deterioration in employment practices at your past or present employer, or you’d like to help with writing or interviewing for the other projects, email me at asterling@chameleonpublishers.com.
How to get GitLab to do periodic jobs for you in under a minute
By: Moe Ibrahim
Tags: Tech, Programming, Technology, Bitcoin, Gitlab

What would technology be without a computer doing periodic work?

Whether it’s your phone constantly checking your inbox for you, or getting timely alerts for weather or flight delays.

What about a bitcoin vs Canadian dollar price service, in just 56 seconds? No IFTTT, no Zapier, but no programming languages either — and no frameworks, no server or docker configuration, no Raspberry Pi, no AWS and no tests!

To make the example as universal as possible, we will only use 2 command lines:

one to GET the bitcoin price from an API

and another to POST it to another service.

Of course you can make this more useful by posting the price to Twitter, Twilio, Telegram, Slack and so on. But here we will simply post it to putsreq.com so we can inspect the POST request.

Then we will use GitLab-CI to schedule it to run everyday.

Level : All levels Requirements : Any web browser

Let’s get you started :

Create a free account at gitlab.com (20 seconds)

2. Create a new Project : Click on the New Project button to create a new repo, and in the name field type periodic-job or any other name. (9 seconds)

Then save it by clicking on Create Project (1 second).

3. Create a .gitlab-ci.yml file in this new project: Click on New File, copy and paste the following snippet into the .gitlab-ci.yml file, then click save (5 seconds)

These are basically two simple commands. Here we can go further and add

if [ $btc -ge 15000 -a $btc -lt 7000 ]; then

conditions, or even run a full bash script file, but let’s keep it simple.

Click on the Commit changes button, and this will trigger it to build and run.

4. Schedule it to run everyday: click on the CI/CD icon to expand the menu, and select Schedules to set up a name and a timer for your periodic job to trigger. (11 seconds)

click on New schedule button

Type in a name for the new schedule daily-bitcoin-price-job, select to run it daily then click Save

Your scheduled job has been saved

5. Congrats! You’re done. Go to to this link in putsreq.com to see it in action. (10 seconds)

This job will run everyday as long as your free 2000/month build minutes do not run out.

We haven’t even scratched the surface of what we can do with GitLab-CI — just think of all the possibilities of using it to create webhooks or connecting it to IFTTT and Zapier, which in turn would connect it to hundreds of services.

In the next article we will go through what we have just done, and how we can take it up a notch and create a webhook and use it to post to social media.

You can find the sample code here, and you can read the build logs here.
How Does Hume Argue that there Is No Such Thing as Cause and Effect?
By: Charles Gray
Tags: Induction, Critical Thinking, David Hume, Argumentation, Philosophy

Photo by Darius Bashar on Unsplash

Hume doesn’t claim that there is no necessary connection between cause and effect; he claims that we do not and cannot know what it is because we can only know empirically ascertainable facts and a small number of relations of ideas known a priori.

Hume argues that the“power” effecting any cause-and-effect relation is permanently concealed from human observation, so it cannot be known empirically.

Neither can the “power” of cause-and-effect be a relation of ideas because, if it were, then the negation of any proposition asserting it would produce a contradiction.

An example of a proposition asserting a cause-and-effect relation might be “Exposure to sunlight causes skin cancer.” The negation of that proposition may be true or false, but it is not a contradiction: “Exposure to sunlight does not cause skin cancer.”

Photo by David von Diemar on Unsplash

So, according to Hume, if the cause-and-effect relation is neither a matter of empirical fact, nor a relation of ideas, then it is not an object of human cognition.

In a position that looks oddly similar to Kant’s, Hume claims that we supply the “power” of the cause-and-effect relation ourselves and call it “custom” or “habit.”

In making such a claim, Hume acknowledges the existence of “power,” but dogmatically asserts that it lies forever beyond human understanding.
Plan Accordingly: What You Need to Know About Cord Blood
By: Paper Pinecone
Tags: Health, Daycare, Childcare

In order to collect your child’s cord blood, your doctor needs to know this is what you plan on doing. You’ll also need to sign a consent form, save enough money for initial collection of the blood and order a collection kit. To ensure you are able to successfully save your baby’s cord blood, here is what you need to know:

What is Cord Blood?

Cord blood is the leftover blood in a newborn’s umbilical cord and placenta. Rather than letting the blood go to waste, you can store it in a cord blood bank. People store cord blood because it contains hematopoietic stem cells that can treat many types of diseases. Storing a baby’s cord blood is a painless and safe procedure as it involves collecting the blood after the cord has been cut. If you want to store your baby’s cord blood, then you need to let your doctor know as soon as possible. Your cord blood collection kit can take several weeks to arrive. To make sure you have the kit before you give birth, you should get the kit as soon as you know you want to save the blood. You never know for sure when the baby will be born.

Uses

The benefits of cord blood include saving lives and treating diseases that are challenging to treat. You can use cord blood to help treat blood or immune system diseases that children may develop. It can help with autism, cerebral palsy, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, leukemia, cancer, heart birth defects and many other health issues. Cord blood is full of stem cells that can turn into a wide variety of helpful blood cells. Treatments are becoming more successful as researchers learn more about using cord blood and refine their methods.

Cost and Storage

Cord blood is frozen for storage where it’s believed to be good indefinitely. There are two types of cord blood banking: public and private. Public cord blood banking allows the blood to be used by anyone who’s in need or for medical research. It’s free to donate cord blood into a public cord blood banking; however, you won’t have any rights to it. Choose a private cord blood bank if you want to save the blood for your child or a family member who may need it in the future. Plan well in advance for storing your child’s cord blood. You will need to wait several weeks to receive the collection kit, find a hospital that carries out collection, notify the doctor and cover the financial costs of private cord blood banking.

You want what’s best for your child, starting even before Day 1. Find the best daycares and preschools in your area here!
Open Collective Update—July 2019
By: Alanna Irving
Tags: Open Source

Open Collective Update—July 2019

Preview of Collective page redesign, join an open source support group, OSC opening up, Witchcraft interview, and more.

Collective Page Redesign

We are making massive improvements to the design of Collective pages. We’d love your feedback before we roll it out.

To preview, append V2 to the end of any Collective URL.

Examples:

Share your feedback!

Maintaining the Maintainers: join an open source peer support group

In our recent survey of core contributors, more than half said they would like to participate in maintainer peer support opportunities. So, we’re kicking it off! Interested? Find out more and sign up.

The Open Source Collective’s widening umbrella

To support open source beyond just code, OSC is now fiscally hosting even more projects who are building the ecosystem worldwide, like meetups, advocacy initiatives, and conferences. Learn more.

Featured Collective: Witchcraft

Interview with Brooklyn Zelenka, blockchain engineer, functional programming & math wizard, community builder, and founder.

💡 Pro Tips!

Link Github and your Collective: using the Sponsor button on your repo, configured in the FUNDING.yml file in your .github folder. Zapier integration: Make new expenses and updates in your Collective trigger actions in 1000s of apps.

Introducing Open Collective Design

Did you know the designers behind Open Collective are actually a Collective, based in Guadalajara, Mexico? Now they are opening up to working with all Collectives. If you need a logo, brand help, or a website, get in touch with them!

News & Inspiration

📝 Latest update from the Open Source Collective board, who shares meeting minutes transparently.

🤔 Open Collective is clarifying its strategy as a platform and a company. Weigh in here if you’d like to add any thoughts.

🕹️ Welcome to new a Collective, Rust Analyzer — an experimental compiler frontend for the Rust programming language.

⏭️ Thought provoking article from Steve Klabnik: What comes after “open source”.

⚡Late last year, Google announced Chrome’s Web Framework & Tools Performance Fund. We’re thrilled to say the funds are being distributed on Open Collective, starting with a $10k contribution to Bundlesize.

Tweets that make us proud

Monthly Leaderboard

Top Sponsors

Consider this when deciding where to work!

TIBCO $12,000

Marfeel $10,316

Chrome $10,000

Trivago! $10,000

Facebook $5,860

Airbnb $5,376

Clay $3,100

ZEIT $3,000

Mendix $3,000

Top Collectives

by new backers

Webpack +49

Core-js +47

Babel +39

Top New Collectives

by donations

Electron Summit NYC $5,200

QueerJS €1,970

Make a Mark Baltimore $1,615
Trump Threatens the Welfare of Hungry Americans
By: Congressional Black Caucus
Tags: Trump Administration, Politics, Poverty, Congress, Trump

Trump Threatens the Welfare of Hungry Americans

Congressional Black Caucus Statement on Trump Administration Rule to Cut SNAP Benefits

After the Trump Administration issued a final rule that threatens the welfare of hungry Americans in need of SNAP benefits, formerly known as food stamps, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) released the following statement:

The decision by the Trump Administration to hurt poor and working-class Americans by requiring Able-Bodied Adults Without Dependents (ABAWDs) to submit to more onerous restrictions to qualify for food stamps is disgraceful. Over 36 million Americans rely on SNAP for nutrition assistance. This final rule weakens SNAP, the nation’s most effective anti-hunger program. Enough is enough.

Unfortunately, the Trump Administration fails to understand that people want a hand up, not a handout. There is no dignity in taking food away from the poorest and most vulnerable of our citizens. It is immoral, insensitive, and cold-hearted.
SITA Alums Win Fulbrights
By: South India Term Abroad
Tags: India, Fellowship, South Africa, Spoken Word, Education

What inspired you to apply for a Fulbright ETA fellowship to South Africa?

E: My experiences as an Associate Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow introduced me to South Africa. The fellowship is for undergraduates underrepresented in higher education interested in entering academia. In the summer of 2015 I worked and lived with students from the University of the Witwatersrand. The most impactful part of my summer was a class called “The Politics of Transforming the Academy” in which we discussed how race and class shape unfair access to education. This discussion got me interested in the South African educational system. It helped me see parallels between my perception of a post-Apartheid society in South Africa, and my Witwatersrand friends’ idea of a post-racial America.

In addition to all this, I should note that I’m a spoken word artist. The scene in South Africa for spoken word poetry is dope! I see poetry acting as a cultural bridge, with traditions on both sides of the Atlantic such as Saul Williams (American) and Mzawkhe Mbuli (South African). There are a lot of similarities in how their spoken word community and how the US spoken word community addresses issues of civil rights and social marginality. I can see myself becoming a better artist by contributing to and learning their scene.

How did your SITA experience help shape your personal statement/proposal?

E: As a part of my SITA independent study I taught spoken word workshops at two universities. Through this experience, I saw how poetry acts as resistance. It empowered others and created cross-cultural solidarity. Though the workshop participants didn’t talk about race explicitly, they did address gendered oppression, class distinctions, and other forms of marginality. By hearing the art of young writers, I learned more about the social systems in India in a way that would have been lost in academic writing. And in the long run, it helped create a sense of community. Spoken word will do that to you!

Without that experience, it would have been kinda difficult to bring my community engagement project together for the application.

Esther Nunoo, a spoken word artist and SITA student during the spring ’16 semester, shared some of the work she produced while in Madurai. The first piece, “Pesu, Akka [Speak, Sister],” was inspired by a spoken word workshop that Esther conducted at Lady Doak College in Madurai. The second piece, “Office Hour Reflections,” includes more general musings from Esther’s SITA semester.

What excites you most about your upcoming Fulbright ETA Fellowship experience?

E: I can’t chooseeeeee. Obviously, I’m excited about engaging with the spoken word community in South Africa. And then there’s the food, and the chance travel around one of the most beautiful countries in the world.
What Caloric Overload Does to the Immune System
By: Shin Jie Yong
Tags: Life, Advice, Technology, Health, Food

What Caloric Overload Does to the Immune System

“The Western diet appears to be mistakenly recognized by the immune system as a threat to the organism,” the professor says.

Image by bzanders1 from Pixabay

Everyone knows that a diet rich in calories, refined carbs and sugars, and fats/oils isn’t optimal for health. “The consumption of Western-type calorically rich diets combined with chronic overnutrition and a sedentary lifestyle in Western societies evokes a state of chronic metabolic inflammation, termed metaflammation,” explains Professor Eicke Latz, a director of Institute of Innate Immunity at the University of Bonn in as a senior co-author in Immunity Cell Press, 2019.

Contents:

1. Inflammation: The Good

2. Inflammation: The Bad

3. Why is Caloric Overload Inflammatory?

4. Western Diet Reprogram the Immune System

5. The Irony Between Metaflammation and Pathogen Defence

6. To Close

Inflammation: The Good

Immune cells release inflammatory chemicals called cytokines. Cytokines are normally adaptive in nature. Adaptive means that it restores homeostasis (or balance) by clearing out a threat, which can be anything the immune system recognizes as foreign or in need of repair.

“Intact inflammatory pathways are critical for the health of tissues and proper homeostasis.”

Inflammation also harms nearby healthy cells in the process. The good news is that this can later be repaired by the immune system once the threat is cleared. Pro-inflammatory cytokines are then cleared and synthesis of anti-inflammatory cytokines is initiated — resolving the inflammation.

As Gökhan Hotamışlıgil, professor of metabolism at Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, explains in Nature Reviews, “Intact inflammatory pathways are critical for the health of tissues and proper homeostasis, including the health of adipose tissue expansion in response to caloric excess.”

A skin wound repairs itself after swelling and redness first — that’s an example of how immune cells prioritize eliminating the threat before cell repair. Acute/temporary inflammation from consuming excess calories or a Western meal periodically is, thus, reversible once the ‘threat’ is cleared and anti-inflammatory cytokines kick in.
Lessons From A Kid About Bodily Integrity
By: Toni Tails
Tags: Feminism, Mental Health, Life, Parenting, Family

Bodily integrity is the inviolability of the physical body and emphasizes the importance of personal autonomy, self-ownership, and self-determination of human beings over their own bodies. — Wikipedia

My 14-year-old niece, Jazmin, sits across from me, scribbling in her favorite notepad. Usually, Jazmin’s scribbles magically morph into intricate fairies, butterflies, and Celtic symbols. This time, however, it’s her thoughts that form before my eyes in swift strokes of her well-chewed number two.

Jazmin is a warrior survivor who pulled herself out of the grip of her abuser, survived attempted suicide, and still had room in her emotional reserves to pen a heated letter. I don’t know what she is writing, but I can see that it is addressed to, All the Women of the World.

Jazmin finishes her last line, rips the page unceremoniously from her notebook, and puts the letter in my hand.

“Will you share this for me?”

I take a look at the letter. Jazmin has crossed out, erased, and rewritten her thoughts with gusto.

“Mind if I read it first? I may need time to decipher all this chicken scratch.”

Jazmin laughs and hops up from her seat.

“It’s not my fault you’re a slow reader. Take all the time you need, Pokey.”

I’m offended, but it’s too late. Jazmin is leaping down the hallway, singing a rock song. I yell over the head-banging cacophony.

“Where are you going?”

Jazmin stops singing for a moment.

“I’m changing my shirt!”

Dear Women of the World,

Today my mom didn’t want me to wear a tank top inside my own home. She was worried because I have breasts now. She thought the boys in my family might make jokes about them if they saw me wearing it.

Breasts and nipples shouldn’t be taboo just because men sexualize them. Think about it. They exist in case human babies need food. They aren’t there for men’s pleasure.

Society has told us to hide our breasts for so long that we believe it. What does a bra do for us other than cause pain, annoyance, and help put our breasts on display?

Those are mixed messages!

Women are told we are worth less than men. We are told by society that we are here to make men happy. Women are just as smart and capable as men. We shouldn’t sit here and take this. We don’t deserve this kind of world.

I want my children and grandchildren to live in a world where women aren’t objects. They are people.

We’ve come a long way, but we still have a long way to go. Please don’t let men rule your world, Women!

Do what you want!

Wear what you want!

Tell men that your body belongs to you, and let them know we won’t take this anymore.

I am putting on my favorite tank top. The boys in my family are going to be the ones to adjust their behavior, not me.

Love,

Jazmin

Cat Videos and Jammies

I set the letter aside as my niece prances in wearing a cute unicorn sleep tank. She hops on the couch with the boys. They start arguing immediately over which funny cat video to watch until finally agreeing to take turns.

I think the future is in good hands.
Extensions in Swift
Tags: Extension, iOS, Where, Swift

Extensions in Swift can:

Add computed instance properties and computed type properties 연산프로퍼티만 가능(cannot be stored property because stored property requires memory but extension can’t manage those things.) or functions.

연산프로퍼티만 가능(cannot be stored property because stored property requires memory but extension can’t manage those things.) or functions. Define instance methods and type methods

Provide new initializers

Define subscripts

Define and use new nested types

Make an existing type conform to a protocol

extension SomeType { //

}

Example of extending protocol:

extension SomeType: SomeProtocol { //

}

Existing types, new functionality

💡Extensions are popular because you can visually separate the code into logical grouping. It’s important to organize your code.

class DetailViewController: UIViewController { //

} extension DetailViewController: UICollectionViewDataSource { // } extension DetailViewController: UICollectionViewDelegateFlowLayout {

// }

Extension in real coding!

For example, in the code below, I want to access baseURL in every file. then you can use extensions to make your code convenient!

For example, imagine that I have to access baseURL everywhere but isn’t it very inconvenient to declare let baseUrl = “https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w185/" in every file? and access it?

let url = URL(string: "\(baseUrl)\(posterPath)")

so if i refactoring the code above using extension,

extension URL { init?(image path: String) { let baseUrl = "https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w300/" self.init(string: "\(baseUrl)\(path)") } }

because of the extensions URL above, I don’t need to write \(baseURL) every time when I want to access it.

let url = URL(string: posterPath)

“Where” in Extension

you can give conditions to the code using where. For example,

var array = [ "Iris", "Maroo", "Lena", "James", "Harvey" ] extension Array where Element == String { func alphabetize() -> [String] { return self.sorted(by: { return $0 < $1 }) } } let sorted1 = array.alphabetize() print(sorted1) var array2 = [1,2,3,4]

[x]let sorted2 = array2.alphabetize() // <-- cannot call the alphabetize() function because it's not a string array.

above code simply try to sort names in array and to make the code more readable, i use extension to create function which is alphabetize(), accepts only String array.