fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Uncharted Territory
By: Margaret Heffernan
Tags: Efficiency, Prediction, Epidemics, Forecasting, History

Four years ago, I started writing a book about unpredictability. One nerdy detail kicked it off: the very best forecasters did not believe they could predict accurately beyond 400 days. That was the best there was. The rest of us? Maybe 150 days. This, I thought, changes everything. All management (of life and work) sits on the three-legged stool: forecast — plan — execute. But the first leg was broken, the chair now useless. How, I wondered, were we to live and work in a complex environment where so much is ineradicably uncertain?

It’s fair to say that, at the time, just about nobody understood what I was on about, and many thought I was wrong. AI. Big data. Algorithms. They were the answer! They knew everything about us because we are data. The speed with which that foolish faith has dissolved was unpredictable too: dismaying to Sili Valley execs, but heartening to me. AI got much wrong. So did algorithms, making terrible decisions about education, social welfare and hiring. When pressed, economists acknowledged that models would always fail. Historians agreed that history doesn’t repeat itself; some of the best examples were epidemics. Psychological profiles — of individuals or superstars or terrorists — didn’t predict anything either. Even DNA, the so-called “blueprint” of our lives can’t predict which blond children will turn blond. If one identical twin gets MS, so should the other, but in fact the chance is only 30% and no one quite knows why. Every model for predictability fell down.

There was a lot in my book about epidemics — not because I predicted one but because they’re a great illustration of uncertainty in life. They are generally certain (they are always with us) but specifically ambiguous: we don’t know where or when the next will break out, nor can we predict the disease. What epidemics can teach us is what to do, knowing that they will happen. So we can’t plan for them. What we can do is prepare.

Obsessed with planning, we forgot about preparation. Since the banking crisis, we’ve doubled down on efficiency, cutting margins and staff down to the bone. This is what you should do when you know exactly what’s going to happen (it’s great for assembly lines) but it is exactly what you should not do when you’re uncertain. Why? Because you lose all your margin to respond. Example: in the British National Health Service, beds in intensive care are now 100 percent occupied. This is efficient. But it isn’t robust; it means that the service doesn’t have the people or beds with which to respond to a new, unpredicted and unpredictable, virus.

Once you accept that much in life and business is unpredictable, it does change everything. But that doesn’t mean we’re helpless. They are many, many ways to prepare. But none of that can happen until we finally accept that the future is uncharted and planning our way to it won’t work.

UNCHARTED is published in the UK and in the US by Simon & Schuster.
March 2020 Election Violence Risk Briefing
By: Matt Scott Frank
Tags: Elections, Data Science, Politics, Forecasting, Political Violence

Tajikistan and Mali are both at high risk of electoral violence this month, while the surprise discovery of oil shook Guyana’s politics, resulting in violence

Swallows by Edouard Manet

The Electoral Violence Intelligence System (ELVIS) is a machine learning driven forecasting system that estimates the risk of election-related violence for every national election every month. These posts will provide updates on the outputs of our forecasting model, give an in-depth view of what to expect in the coming month and note any technical changes/updates.

Feel free to reach out to either myself (mfrank@oneearthfuture.org) or Clayton Besaw (cbesaw@oneearthfuture.org) for any questions regarding our ELVIS platform or analyses contained in the updates.

March 2020 ELVIS Report

Data and algorithm updates

SPI updated with January 2020 NOAA PREC/L numbers.

Risk forecast for March 2020

Note that Guinea’s election does not have a definitive date set, the final day of the month was listed by default

March is a relatively slow month for national elections. There are three fewer elections this month than in February, two of which have an estimated risk of electoral violence greater than 50%.

Taken together, however, the collective estimated risk is 99.5%

Notably, Tajikistan was the only non-democracy to hold elections this month, and had by far the highest risk of election violence. The election surprised nobody in delivering a victory for the longest-serving leader of a post-Soviet state, while the arrest of journalists and torture of opposition activists qualified the election as violent (more on that below).

Guyana, on the other hand, proved to be quite surprising.

Despite an extremely low estimated risk of election violence, the country saw fighting between opposition and incumbent party officials over disputed election results and subsequent clashes between protesters and police. Although it does not appear there were any fatalities or serious injuries, this was a surprising development in a country that has had peaceful elections since 2001.

Mali and Guinea are the two remaining countries with pending elections. Guinea, however, postponed their combined constitutional referendum and legislative elections, originally slated for March 1, at the last minute and has yet to set a definitive date.

The referendum would extend presidential terms from five to six years, while it is also widely speculated president Alpha Conde would use it to extend his mandate by seeking re-election later this fall (he has already reached his limit of two five-year terms).

For a broader discussion on threats to democracy in West Africa and ECOWAS’ efforts in this area see this piece.
Time Series in Python — Exponential Smoothing and ARIMA processes
By: Benjamin Etienne
Tags: Arima, Data Science, Forecasting, Time Series Analysis, Statistics

TL;DR: In this article you’ll learn the basics steps to performing time-series analysis and concepts like trend, stationarity, moving averages, etc. You’ll also explore exponential smoothing methods, and learn how to fit an ARIMA model on non-stationary data.

Time series are everywhere

Situation 1: You are responsible for a pizza delivery center and you want to know if your sales follow a particular pattern because you feel that every Saturday evening there is a increase in the number of your orders…

Situation 2: Your company is selling a product and you are in charge of predicting, or forecasting, the supplies needed for this product at a particular moment in the future…

Situation 3: You are monitoring a datacenter and you want to detect any anomaly such as an abnormal CPU usage which might cause a downtime on your servers. You follow the curve of the CPU usage and want to know when an anomaly occurs…

In each of these situations, you are dealing with time series. Analyzing series is a fascinating job because despite all mathematical models (including neural networks), we humans still fail to predict the future and have to deal with uncertainty. Let’s have a closer look at what time series are and which methods can be used to analyze them. In this article, we will extensively rely on the statsmodels library written in Python.

A time series is a data sequence ordered (or indexed) by time. It is discrete, and the the interval between each point is constant.

Properties and types of series

Trend : A long-term increase or decrease in the data. This can be seen as a slope (is doesn’t have to be linear) roughly going through the data.

Seasonality : A time series is said to be seasonal when it is affected by seasonal factors (hour of day, week, month, year, etc.). Seasonality can be observed with nice cyclical patterns of fixed frequency.

Cyclicity : A cycle occurs when the data exhibits rises and falls that are not of a fixed frequency. These fluctuations are usually due to economic conditions, and are often related to the “business cycle”. The duration of these fluctuations is usually at least 2 years.

Residuals : Each time series can be decomposed in two parts:

- A forecast, made up of one or several forecasted values

- Residuals. They are the difference between an observation and its predicted value at each time step. Remember that
The Process
By: Ali Habib
Tags: Motivation, Hustle, Business, Process

Something I feel people don’t understand is the actual work required to succeed. I never really understood it; however, recently I've been feeling so overwhelmed with the work I need to get done in order to be successful.

What motivates me is seeing where I want to be in 2 years, and realizing that it’s all in my hands. So whenever I'm feeling drained, I know it's worth it to just push through. It’s currently 6:55 am here in Canada and I feel if I continue to wake up early every day and put in the work, I will achieve what I believe I can. I’ve been trying to get students to spread the word about Solvr, and so many of the students have said this app is a game-changer.

My goal is to be in 250 schools by the beginning of 2021. If Solvr really takes off, it will be really interesting to go back and read these blogs to see how I used to think.

Discipline equals freedom

To anyone out there who’s putting in the work every day in hopes of achieving that dream, they've wanted since childhood. Just know, it’s the process that makes you the success, so enjoy it. I believe in you, and to you I say… Greatness is coming.
A 5-for-1 & the Dance Floor — GoT 11
By: Mike Rusert
Tags: Wisdom, Spirituality, Gospel Of Thomas, Cosmos, Process

breathe in + breathe out











*





logion 11









The sky and all that lies in the

dimensions above it will

cease to exist.



The dead know nothing of life,

and the living will never die.



When you consume that

which is already dead,

you are turning it

back into life.



So, then, when you too re-emerge

into the Light, what will you do?



For on the day when

you were created one,

you also became two,

but when you come to realize

your twoness again,

what will you do?







**

Reflection: Huh???



We’ve got a five-for-one set of sayings here. And while some meaning might be drawn from the metaphors and parardoxes of a saying standing alone, why in the cosmos are all five of these strewn together as one?



Looking back at the 10 logions we’ve explored already, you might recognize a number of themes revisited here. Twoness or twin-ness from Logion 1. Talk of the dimensions above and the seeker turning inward from Logion 3. Consuming and becoming from Logion 7. And maybe this whole thing just leaves you perplexed a la Logion 2.

Lynn Bauman, the translator and commentator whose work we draw heavily upon for these reflections, highlights the insights of another commentator, Richard Valantasis, who offers that we read these sayings from bottom to top as well as top to bottom Give it a try. Sit with it a while.



Bauman, himself, suggests that we read these five sayings in the context of fire — the fire seed sown and blazing in Logion 10. He writes, “When fire interacts with the world there is not only conflagration [i.e., destructive fire], but transformation and change. Fire changes known realities. Its energy provokes new possibilities and contrary ways of perceiving the world.”

Seeing and understanding our spiritual lives (and all other aspects of our lives for that matter) as process — an ongoing undoing and becoming — seems key to all of this Gospel of Thomas stuff. So, what happens as we experience this human life and realize there is so much more going on here? What happens as we begin to wake up — as we are transformed?



What will we do

when we begin to understand

that we are flames of the Divine fire,

breaths of the Creator breathing!



What will emerge as our illusions of separateness are composted?

What fruit will we offer the world?



It is so easy to get caught up in all the dead stuff surrounding us.

Division. Fear and the greed and hate it breeds.



It will all become dust,

and so it is only dust now.

But what is living will never die…



You are not your labels.

Your party or news source.

Your aches and pains.

Your reputation. Your net worth.



You are. I am. We are…



Dancers

One

Beaming

Love



This week, choose to dance.

Dance with others.

Love and truly see all you meet.

And be grateful for this one brief life

and the unending Cosmic Dance

to which our awareness is returning.



Peace and breath, friends

*
Lifecycle of a Process
By: Muskaan Parmar
Tags: Operating Systems, Engineering, Coding, Process

The Process States or the Lifecycle of a Process is demonstrated below :

PRIMARY STATES

New :

In this state the process begins to get created . It is present in the secondary memory. Ready :

Now the processes get transferred to the RAM (Main Memory).Since there is a limitation on the size of RAM , only a few processes can be send from the new state(secondary memory) to the ready queue .

It is the responsibility of the LTS(Long Term Scheduler) to bring the processes from secondary to main memory . Running :

This is where the execution of there processes from the ready queue begin.The processes are scheduled/dispatched by the CPU.

Short Term Scheduler is responsible to give control from the ready to the running state.

The number of processes transferred from the ready queue to the running state depends upon the number of CPU’s. If it is a uniprocessor system , only one process is send from ready to running state. The Processes transferred to the running state are still inside the RAM(Main Memory) but there state , is changed.

Now below mentioned things can happen

The instructions start to execute one by one. If the instructions of a process are completed it reaches to the TERMINATED state . The resources/memory are then deallocated . If a process with higher priority arrives , then the ongoing process is pushed back to the ready queue by the CPU and the higher priority one is send to the running state for its execution . If the CPU is scheduling processes , on the basis of Time Quantum then , after the time quantum expires , the ongoing process is moved again to the ready queue (is it hasn’t yet terminated) and the next process begin its execution .

If no other process begins , without the ongoing one terminated then that is called Non Preemptive .

If some other process starts in between any ongoing process , then multitasking is done and it is called Preemptive .

In all these cases the CPU is the deciding Factor

If any Process requests for Input/Output operations , then it gets transferred to the wait/block state , and after Completion goes to the ready queue. This is also inside RAM , but the state gets changed.

ADDITIONAL STATES
Gov’s need new processes for cyber prosecution and safety funds for targets of cybercrime
By: Mark Christoph Schütte
Tags: Law, Processes, Government, Cyber Crime

Gov’s need new processes for cyber prosecution and safety funds for targets of cybercrime

The government must rethink their strategy on prosecuting cyber criminals. With the current legislative setup it is very hard to properly punish and sue criminals abusing other peoples cyber systems. Solutions are relatively easy, but it doesn’t appear as if governments are working on these issues at this time.

Furthermore, governments and city councils must provide emergency funds for targets of cyber crime. Most individuals won’t have the ressources to rebuy IT Hardware as soon as it is destroyed. Especially in times of lockdown and isolation one is capable to follow how unfair the current legal digital reality is.

Hence, the government might do good to provide an option for citizens to rent or receive hardware from the govermment, should they be able to be categorised into a target segment.

I would be thankful for contributions in these areas:

a) Could european gov’s stomp digital freedom associations to strengthen individuals executive power for digital protection without years of external fights?

b) What is the right approach to support governments in their forensic processes?

c) Who would really deserve to receive governmentally protected or prepared hardware?

d) Is the internet enough of a human right to support the above argument?

e) What are hard and soft borders to categorise targets of cybercrime to be worthy of support?

Endnote: With a total budget of more than 1bn £ a year for IT security, costs of 2.5 million £ for Business IT Hardware seem irrelevant on first budget viewings. ( Budget from Gov UK)
How to conduct efficient product discovery for free when building MVPs
By: Matthieu Boussard
Tags: Process, Product Discovery, Validation, MVP, Startup Building

Define your target group and hypotheses: (½ a day)

The first thing to do is to define the target group you want to investigate. Based on your market research, decide on the one where you think you could add the most value and then commit to it for the current phase. If you have done your quantitative research right, you should be able to identify the most promising target group.

You will gain better insights when focusing on a single target group rather than investigating two target groups at the time without going into detail on either. In our case, we decided to investigate HR managers of young digital startups.

Once you have decided on your target group, it is time to build your hypothesis. What do you want to know? What do you want to test? What are you unsure of? Your hypothesis set should be comprehensive, grouped, and ranked. Your hypotheses should cover all questions and be easy to read for someone outside of your organization that would provide feedback.

As you will want to visually show which hypotheses are the most critical to test, focus on your uncertainty level and the potential impact each hypothesis would have if unvalidated, and use this to calculate your Risk score.

For each hypothesis, express how uncertain you are about it and what the impact would be on a scale from 1 to 5, and multiply the two to get your Risk score. At the end of the exercise, the hypothesis log should look like the following

In our case, we wanted to test the viability of a solution helping recruiters screen candidates more efficiently, which would enable them to focus both on high-added value tasks and on the most promising candidates. You can immediately see that our 4 most pressing hypotheses were the following:

Screening is the part of the recruitment process recruiters are most likely to entrust to a 3rd party

Recruiters have trouble comparing candidates to one another to make screening decisions

Recruiters would be willing to skip the “traditional” application process and rely solely on a questionnaire

Recruiters will trust automated matching / scoring technology

If you have looked closely at the picture, you might be wondering what the test format and the status are all about, and this is what we will look at in the next point.
How to Digitize a Business Process
By: Ryan Eghrari
Tags: Automation, API, Process, How To, Business

Photo by SpaceX on Unsplash

1. Start — Pick a process

Choose a process that is either too complex. One that you have no idea what is going on with (low visibility, no measurements). Or a process that is inconsistent.

2. Gather — Define the process

2a. Define what you need to start

Here you will want to collect all the data required. For example, a sales process would require a lead’s name and phone number. For a bank-loan approval process, the required data might be customer financial information.

2b. Define the steps

Here you want to write out what needs to happen in order to get the desired results. For a bank-loan approval process, the required steps would be:

Ensure the customer’s credit history is satisfactory Ensure the customer’s recent purchases are regular Ensure the customer’s income is above $250,000. Ensure the customer’s requested loan amount is <$20,000 Approve the requested loan amount

2c. Define the results

What do you expect to get out of the process? Again for a sales process, it might be a sale, for a bank-loan approval process, it might be an approved loan amount. Either way, clearly defining the expected results will help you manage your expectations of what the system will and will not do.

3. Digitize

3a. Convert what you need to start the process to an easily accessible digital format

Ensure the data you need for the process is accessible in the virtual world. You want to convert written text to Unicode, sounds to MP3, visuals to JPGs. All the while making sure you have easy and performant access to your data. If required, now is also a good time to get access to any third-party services. Lastly, you should evaluate the quality, performance, and accessibility of your previously digitized data.

3b. Convert the steps of the process from the physical world to the virtual world

Now that you have the materials, you will need to codify the process. The physical world does not map directly to the virtual world. You will need creativity and ingenuity to map physical steps and to virtual ones. Don’t count out humans here either. Many of the most successful business processes combine the strengths of humans with the strengths of computers. If you don’t believe me check out Palantir. Humans are effective when given contextual problems, which computers otherwise struggle with.

4. Integrate — Translate Virtual Results to Physical Ones

You can map your virtual results to the physical world with visuals shown on various devices. Or you can make your results accessible to other machines using various protocols.
The Process
By: Nicholas Dancer
Tags: Art, Process, Leadership, Work, Business

The boys were up at 5:30 to draw, so I consider them artists. They produced works; they drew pictures. Maybe it was just scribbles on the page for now, but they are falling in love the work, with what they are creating — that’s what artist do.

They are not worried or concerned about reaching a goal. The boys have no expectations for a gallery opening, or if their work will ever sell. They are just drawing and coloring because they enjoy it. They enjoy the process of doing it. When that love is nurtured; if they choose to show up, to draw, to learn techniques to get better, and embrace their style; they will find success in what they do right now; enjoying and creating the work, not some outcome determined by the world. They won’t need someone else’s approval.

It’s in the process we find a love for what we do, not in the completion. The work is never actually done. We are always growing, learning, experimenting in the process to fine-tune the results. By the time one ‘work’ is completed, it’s time to try another, a different way, with a different tone, a new outlook, taking the skills you just learned and trying again.

It’s ok to be exactly where you are at, and it’s ok to strive to get better. The Process is about right here and right now. Are we showing up? Are we doing the work? Are we getting better every time? Can we keep our attention on the action of this moment and doing our best job here, rather than mind-traveling to a completion. The work is never done, it’s always right here, it’s still right in front of us.

…

Every year we host a theme in our business. It’s a fun way to bring in a new attitude and thinking process into our company for the year. We celebrate it with handouts, new t-shirts, and signs in our business. It’s also our belief that businesses have the opportunity to impact people beyond just the products or services they sell. This is our way to help live our purpose-

Making Everything We Touch Better; People and Concrete

To see all of your yearly themes visit: https://nickdancerconcrete.com/yearly-themes/
Embracing bike-shedding in product teams and making discussions better
By: Elena Borisova
Tags: Product Design, Product Management, Group Dynamics, Process, Teamwork

Imagine this: you’re presenting a complex, well thought-through design (which was just updated based on feedback during a usability test). Five minutes into the presentation someone noticed that you used an old 4px border-radius on a button, where he thought everyone agreed to use 5px… Half an hour later you’re still trying to steer the conversation back on track.

Sounds familiar? Apparently, this is so not uncommon that there’s a term for it: meet bike-shedding.

The term is coming from an example of (an imaginary) committee who needed to approve plans for a nuclear power plant and spent the majority of time on unimportant but trivial issues like employee bike shed while neglecting the design of the powerplant itself.

I’m hyper-aware of people’s time (including mine) and tend to get stressed when it’s not spent well, so I came up with some survival strategies.

0. Accept it is going to happen. People can’t help but have/share opinions about visual design, it might not be relevant at the moment but might help you to broaden your perspective.

Listening to opinions, though, doesn’t mean giving space for decision making. A trivial UI issue doesn’t need that many people involved, and if it does, a separate meeting should be scheduled. Make sure people understand that.

1. Politely steer the conversation back on track, reminding why you are there and what is the goal of the meeting (get feedback on A? Make a decision about B?). It’s quite a skill to wait out enough time and see if the conversation will get back to the main topic naturally.

2. If steering doesn’t help, call bike-shedding out. This approach won’t work if used too often though as people will get defensive, but if bike-shedding is a recurring part of your product meetings, it might be an indication that something bigger is going on, which brings the next point:

3. Most importantly, treat it as a symptom, especially when reoccurring. It means people don’t know how to make progress on more complex or uncertain topics and want to focus on “tangible” instead (true story: senior team members didn’t have time to discuss product strategy but were happily engaging in a very extensive conversation about drop shadow).

This situation requires way more than advanced facilitation techniques as you and your team will need to answer the question “what do we need to move forward”. Asking the question however already helps since people are shifting from thinking about “what do we do next” (we don’t know) to how do we decide what to do next (do we need more research? more data? stakeholders support?). Find a place and time to start this discussion.
TRY TO GET THE BEST GEAR
By: Kef Williams
Tags: Kefto, Process, Gad, Growth, Designer

I know the tool does not make the designer, and it is really about what you can do and not the gear you use.

But what if you have top-notch skills and also use the best gear for your craft? I feel winning both ways is better.

Imagine thinking creatively and widely without worrying if your laptop can take the kind of work you want to do.

Imagine being able to work uninterrupted because your system has durable power backup.

Just imagine working without adding worrying about the gadget to your creative process.

So, I advise you to invest in quality gear for your work.

Now I know these gears are expensive and hard to get, but see them as a worthy investment and work towards it.

Few tips I can share

Hone your skill: Getting better gear is really about the money so, honing your skills makes you more in demand and able to gather funds for a better gadget. Read more about this point here. Don’t be afraid to ask for money. Read more about this here. Take it bit by bit(save up over time) no go chop the money o

Having good gear saves you stress, but don’t take my word for it. Try it yourself.
Why-driven design
By: Victória Molgado
Tags: Decision Making, Design, Design Process, Process, Ux Desig

Frameworks and tools are like sugar

It’s important to know that when we react using System 01 we believe we are actually thinking. But the truth is that we scanned our memorized heuristics and convinced ourselves that there is a safe path there.

To use this decision without acknowledging the risks is like eating something sweet: the hunger goes away but it will probably return faster than we imagine. Our design problem will appear as solved when in reality we are not thinking about the problem — we are filling steps of a framework for getting to any solution.

Good process serves you so you can serve customers. But if you’re not watchful, the process can become the thing.

Jeff Bezos

This essay aims to remember the value of being critical about our decisions on the design process. It is a provocation about being aware of the “why” when choosing paths to designing a product, and not just fulfilling framework steps.

Creating from the principles, not about the principles

Richard Feynman was a renowned physicist and teacher. Known for his approach and critiques towards Science’s educational process. Feynman had the amazing ability to think from the Physics principles, not about them.

This ability is illustrated by a situation he experienced. When on vacation, he forgot an important book for his studies and, because of that, deducted all the formulas and Physics laws that were necessary at that moment on his own. He understood what constitutes Physics so well that he recreated the principles by deductions. His students, on the other hand, were only able to learn the formulas and apply them — never to explain why things are like they are.

Looking in retrospect, wearing the superpower lens to understand the discipline principles, Feynman would have wrote on a blackboard:

“What I cannot create, I do not understand.”

By sharing this frustration with the formula-based way of thought — that exists from Physics to product development disciplines — it’s necessary to comprehend what it would be to think from the principles when designing.

What is it to think from the principles?

Designing from the principles is the ability to abstract a given scenario to a level that it gains many branches. The design process to solve a problem can be treated as this branched asset: there are many ways to achieve a goal.

If we just tie ourselves to pre-seted steps during the problem-solving moments, we would be just filling a form on “how-do-design”. The ideal scenario is to comprehend the goal of each step of the process. This knowledge may ensure a process that is solving a real problem.

Starting with a question opens more branches than starting from a framework.
Refining Your Story
By: Aereen Lapuz
Tags: Art, Design, Process

Finding a passion for design after studying music for 10 years, I found that they are similar to their core. Just like music, design has the extraordinary potential to leave a lasting impression on the viewer. This potential, along with the multitude of communicative styles each hold, has the ability to create an impact.

From dabbling in art as a hobby to making it into a career path, I translated the skills I acquired from playing music into my work. Both require the same passion and drive in order to excel. They demand rigorous practice and perseverance in order to grow. Whether it is practicing a new technique or looking from a new perspective, my design process mirrors my musical process. I call on what I know from my experiences, as well as skills I obtained over time, to inform my work. I consider the input of others to guide my direction, taking into account even contradictory opinions as a stepping stone towards a better solution. This dedication has become a vital part of my process, just as it was before I became a designer.

Though I moved from the performing arts to the visual arts as my main focus, I recognize the parallels in what I do now. Coming from a discipline that seems completely different at surface level, I did not expect to develop such an interest. Now I am able to connect what I learned from both music and design to produce work that is uniquely mine.
H is for Habits
By: Asad Chishti
Tags: Chatkahaani, Habits, Process, Adjfur, Interview

A yarn, a fern, an arctic tern, all this and more for 02019–02020.

The Globe Theatre in Atlin, British Columbia.

The annual theme for chairsandtables.org (and, adjacently, adjacent.furniture) is Habits/process. We’re just wrapping up volume ek (read: ache)/one/un of our interviews. We interviewed ~11 people.

The people interviewed so far have been: Alexander Dirksen (Dreamer, Bridge Builder), Andrea Rodgers, Joy Wakefield (Lawyer, Advocate), Chelsea Jeffrey (Librarian, Collage-ist), Lisa Rideout (Director, Writer), Cassie Marketos (Woman), Stephanie Dixon (Puppy mama, Accessible sport advocate), Saima Desai (Editor, Organizer), Tim Hwang, and F. Zehra Naqvi (Writer, Confidant).

The latest version of our template of questions as a link but also listed below:

Internal use questions.

Name:

Age:

Roles you identify with:

How many hours do you sleep:

Naps, yay or nay?:

Caffeine, coffee or tea or no-dependency?:

Languages you speak:

Your relationship to food:

Your relationship to exercise:

External use i.e. the FUN stuff.

Who are you, and how do you spend your days? Describe your path.

Your relationship to time, calendars, how do you prioritize tasks?

Start of day what does it look like?

End of the day what does it look like?

Triage, back to that thing about prioritizing, how do you it? Make sense of what needs to happen sooner rather than later.

Good habits that you have and have developed?

Bad habits you have and are trying to break (or not trying to break)?

Goal-setting, how do you do this?

Your rig, tools (hardware, software, ____) essential to your process + habits?

If you were conducting this interview, what would you ask/do differently?

The next volume hopes to focus around librarians, archivists. As we interview them about their habits and process (questions will shift), we will share some findings from this volume of interviews. More soon-ish, emphasis on the ish.
How I started my new role as a Product Design Director fully remotely
By: Audrey Hacq
Tags: Product Design, Process, Careers, Team Building, Remote Working

First weeks: Discover, observe & audit

So here I was, alone in my living room, trying to get familiar with a new job, new company and new colleagues, all of this through the window of my computer…

Me, my living room and my computer… Feel quite alone here :)

I must confess that my first week was quite repetitive:

Call - Call - Read Notion - Call - Call…

It was hard but it was a necessary step to get to know the team and to better understand the organization and the product I was going to work with.

—

UNDERSTAND THE PRODUCT

Thanks to the different online presentations planned during the onboarding period, I was able to get to know better the product I was going to work with.

I already knew that OpenClassrooms was an online School, created by Mathieu Nebra who started this project (first called Le site du zéro) when he was only 13 years old. His idea from the very beginning was to “Make education accessible”.

But the Product was more complicated (or should I say “richer”) than I expected:

- Many targets: Students or apprentices who want to find their first job, employees who want to upskill or reskill, job seekers, mentors who support students, or just people who want to learn for fun.

- Whole admission experience: OpenClassrooms is a school, so it needs to collect diplomas, CV’s and check student motivations.

- Learning experience: All courses and training modules are “homemade”, using a customized pedagogic model.

- BtoB experience: HR from big companies who wants to train their employees can access analytics and reports to monitor the training plans.

I felt like being next to a giant train, going at full speed and in which I had to jump without it stopping or slowing down.

—

UNDERSTAND THE PEOPLE

Before the lockdown, I only met my team members once. So I started with a one hour interview with each of them. At that time, 5 product designers & 2 Ux Writers.

Here are the 5 questions I asked them:

1. How do you define your role today?

2. What do you like about working for OpenClassrooms?

3. What needs to be improved?

4. Is there a specific design skill you would like to learn?

5. What do you expect from me as your new manager?

I was also able to meet virtually other people, some with whom I was going to work on a daily basis but also people from other teams, thanks to Random Coffees. It’s a Slack app that randomly organizes meetings with 2 people from the company. It really helped my integration!
No Woman Should Cry Again, Not The Way I Did — My Life as a Yemeni Woman
By: Oxfam International
Tags: War, Survival, Oxfam, Yemen, International Women Day

A country in war is not a safe place for anyone, especially women — they are the most to suffer and the last to fall.

I still remember the amount of fear, oppression and humiliation that day brought. I cried so hard — I was terrified.

When war first escalated in 2015, I was living happily with my family in Taiz city. It saddens me how the city I loved, the city that holds all my memories since I was a child turned overnight into a ghost town full of death and fear.

Bombs fell everywhere

It all started with a bright blue spark that lit up the sky and invaded our houses and the rooms we hid in silently before we heard the crack. That was the first missile to hit nearby.

After that many bombs fell everywhere, we thought it could be our house any minute. We tried not to panic but panic was all we could feel.

I still remember that blue light like a nightmare I never imagined coming true and that I would have to live through with the ones I love.

The next day I went to a friend’s house to say goodbye. She was travelling abroad. We could hear tanks in the streets nearby, roads were blocked, and we were trapped inside her house, away from our families who kept calling to check if we were okay.

I won’t forget the terror in the children’s eyes, my friends’ brothers and sisters who were with us. I remember vividly the heavy sounds of gun fire and tanks screeching just a few kilometers away.

We were trapped for 3 days, inside the house, there was no one else with us, just women and children hiding across the stairs, away from windows. We managed to survive with the limited food available for us all.

“I cried so hard”

I still remember the amount of fear, oppression and humiliation that day brought. I cried so hard, I cried and cried, all along the way back. I was terrified!

That day was sadly just a warning of what was to come — the feelings of fear, paralysis and vulnerability.

And five years later, that feeling of being trapped is one I and other Yemeni women feel constantly.

What I and others do strive to do though, is to fight that feeling and do all that is in our power to lead, to help others, and to feel hope that this conflict will end, and our lives can return to normal.
Day 11: This Shit Just got Real
By: Bonnie Becraft
Tags: Survival, Virus, Crisis, Worry

Thanks to Macau Photo Agency for this free photo on Unsplash

A close friend teaches young children. An uncle of one of the students just got diagnosed with COVID-19. My friend is immune-compromised due to medication she takes, specifically it affects her lungs and her body’s ability to fight off illness. I’m scared.

One of my friends has a partner who works in health care and was assigned to treat a patient who is the first diagnosed patient in their region. My friend, not the same as the teacher above, is also immune-compromised and wonders if isolation for one or the other of them might be a good idea even though all precautions (known to us right now) were taken. What to do?

The leader of a country in Europe says that we should all be prepared; two-thirds of people might get sick. That sucks! Our leader in the US keeps reassuring us everything will be okay while the news tells me otherwise.

My dad is in a facility and even though it’s in a different state, I couldn’t go visit him if I wanted to. That makes me sad. He’s weak and almost 90 years old. Will he survive this?

Some friends and family have trips planned for later this week that involve air travel. They’re still planning to go. I wish they’d stay home.

My morning walking partner teaches math at a school where students go in and out of detention all the time. Prison populations are vulnerable, the news tells me. What about youth in juvenile detention? Should I be afraid for her?

I have a brother who lives alone in the middle of nowhere. What if he gets sick or hungry? He doesn’t drive and depends on distant neighbors to get to the grocery store. Will he be okay?

What about us? Do I have enough rice and beans, enough dog food?

Yesterday I took my dog to the vet for an allergy shot; his eyes were oozing a bit and he coughed like a sea lion when he played hard. Can pets get the coronavirus? I read about a dog in Hong Kong that got tested and was carrying some of the pathogens of it.

This shit just got real. Let’s be kind to each other.

Has the coronavirus hit you personally yet? Do you think it will? Are you prepared?
A Letter To Many Numbers
By: Mercy Williams
Tags: Love, Survival, Letters, Numbers, Life

A Poem by Mercy Williams

Dear Lover(s),

We wrung gold from the zest of many sun rays.

You’d wanted to bathe me in the shimmery pool, because in your words,

I was immortal;

because to you, I was a miracle.

You were once my light, remember?



I told you the stories of the ones before,

Numbers five, nine, twelve, two---- Remember?

You swore to make a rebel of this unblemished lamb

promised devotion to her unspoken biddings



But baby,

you lied.



Dear Lover(s),

This number and I are building towers from candy floss.

He promises to tie a rope around the moon,

and draw it a little bit closer to my balcony

Says I need the extra light since I’m scared of the dark.

You too were once my hero, remember?



See baby,

I’ve tried.



So tonight, I’m pouring water over the castles I’ve built with all the numbers I’ve counted.

I’m flushing them all, fondant and toppings, away

I’ll keep the memories in a glass bottle.

And watch them disappear from a safe distance.



Tomorrow, a new number will come

He’ll promise to fill my mouth with heaven’s bullrushes and nectar

And trim me into the most beautiful garden the world will ever see.



And baby,

I’ll thrive.



It’s funny that you seem to wonder why,

and I’ll tell you;

they’re called the instincts of a girl

who’s learning to survive
5 Chilling Survival Stories That Will Shock You To The Core
By: Fatim Hemraj
Tags: Survival, True Crime, Justice, History, Equality

5 Chilling Survival Stories That Will Shock You To The Core

From being burned alive to being left for dead in a field for 14 hours, these stories prove that women can overcome anything. Fatim Hemraj Follow Aug 29 · 9 min read

Kristie Reed

Kristie Reed and her mother, Lorraine. Source: The Washington Post

On January 29, 1999, 16-year-old Stacie Reed was home alone in Yorkshire, Virginia, when there was a knock at the front door. It was her friend, 20-year-old Paul Warner Powell, a self-proclaimed white supremacist who was angry with Stacie after learning that her boyfriend was Black.

As Paul attempted to rape Stacie, she screamed and fought back. Suddenly, he took out a knife and stabbed her in the chest, puncturing her heart.

As Stacie bled to death, Paul helped himself to a glass of iced tea and smoked a cigarette in the kitchen while he waited for her 14-year-old sister Kristie to return home from school. When she arrived, Paul dragged her down to the basement where he raped her and slit her throat.

When the girls’ father returned home from work, he first found Stacie’s body upstairs. As he frantically searched the rest of the home for Kristie, he found her lying in a pool of blood in the basement, just in time.

Unable to speak, Kristie mouthed, “Paul Powell” when asked who had done this to her and her sister. He was arrested the very next day.

Remarkably, Kristie survived her injuries and testified against Paul at the trial. He was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death, however, the sentence was thrown out upon appeal when it was found that there was insufficient evidence to prove that he had attempted to rape Stacie.

Wrongly believing he could no longer face the death penalty due to double jeopardy, Paul penned a profanity-laced letter to the prosecution, detailing his attempt to rape Stacie and how he took her last breath. Using the letter, the prosecution tried Paul for the third time. Once again, he was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death. He was executed on March 18, 2010.

In 2001, the girls’ mother, Lorraine Whoberry, created the S.T.A.C.I.E. Foundation — Strive To Achieve Compassion, Intervention, and Education. S.T.A.C.I.E. is an organization that promotes healing and offers hope to survivors of violent crimes.
Redux Anyone?
By: Seoyoung Chloe Kim
Tags: React, Front End Development, Software Development, State Management, Redux

When first you start using React JS, it feels like the greatest thing that has happened to you and it feels as if there is no other tool that can make your frontend development experience easier. And then your project gets bigger and more complex, which makes you want to abandon React because your states are super messy and managing them gives you so much headache. If you had experience like above, you are not alone. And that’s why Redux exists.

If you take a look at the official documentation for Redux at https://redux.js.org/, it says “Redux is a predictable state container for JavaScript apps.” It is a very concise description of what Redux is so let’s dissect it a little bit. Redux is a state management tool. What it does is it ‘contains’ all of the states in one location as a global state and helps you manage changes to those that global state using events called ‘actions’ anywhere you want. The reason why the official documentation emphasizes it being ‘predictable’ so much is because it helps you to build an application that behaves consistently. If you manage your states without the help of any state management tools, you can easily lose track of updates you have made on a state, resulting your app to behave in an unexpected way. Redux can help you with this problem by helping you “understand when, where, why, and how the state in your application is being updated, and how your application logic will behave when those changes occur. ” Other than being predictable and contained(centralized), Redux offers other great benefits, such as being debuggable and flexible. You can also use Redux in React Native, so it is versatile as well.

Even though Redux can bring you the simplicity and tidiness you want in your project, it does not mean you should use it everywhere. First things first, if you are a building an application with React for the first time, I recommend that you do not use Redux. Though it is a convenient tool for state management, you should also be able to use states without it as well. If you are a first timer in React, it would be a good idea to build a simple single-page app with not too many components first so that you can practice and understand how state works before you start using Redux. The power of Redux can truly be felt when you first understand how state works and start building more complex app. Also, even when you are working on a complex app, you should not be using Redux everywhere. Not all states are used in multiple components. If you have any state that will just be used in one component, it is far easier and faster for you to either just declare it the regular way on that component or use Hooks rather than using Redux.