fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Bragging about plastic bottles for “all natural” beverages. Really?
By: Kirk Weinert
Tags: Zero Waste, Drinks, Advertising, Environment, Plastic Pollution

Which of these three phrases does not belong with the others on the label of a Snapple “Takes 2 to Mango Tea” my daughter recently bought?

“All Natural”

“Made from the BEST stuff on EARTH!”

“Plastic Bottle!”

By the way, I didn’t add the exclamation mark to the last phrase. For some inscrutable reason, the company that has long marketed itself as ecologically conscious has decided to brag about switching from glass to plastic containers.

Perhaps anticipating that plastic bottles showing up in the intestines of dead whales isn’t a good look, Snapple assures the world that their containers are “made from a non-BPA (bisphenol A) material and are 100 percent recyclable, just like our glass ones.”

May I please take this opportunity to nominate the word “recyclable” for the 2019 Most Misleading Word In The English Language award. Saying a plastic bottle is “recyclable” is not that different from declaring I’m “eligible” to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The recycling rate for glass containers is bad enough in the United States: 33 percent overall, though much higher in states with bottle bills. (For comparison, it’s around 90 percent in Switzerland, Germany, and some other European countries.)

But the plastic bottle rate is even lower … and it’s getting worse. According to the Association of Plastic Recyclers and the American Chemistry Council, their recycling rate was 29.3 percent in 2017, down from 29.8 percent the year before. And that’s before Malaysia became the latest developing country to turn back shipments of plastic waste, saying last week, in the words of its environment minister, it would “not be a dumping ground to the world.”

The real reason for Snapple’s shift is hidden in plain sight on their “Real Facts” web page: Plastic bottles are “easier for distributors and retailers to handle.”

I get it. Plastic bottles bounce instead of crack when dropped from a forklift, and that’s good for Snapple’s bottom line. It even allows the company to charge less — not that I’ve noticed a price change since the plastic bottles were introduced last year.

But there are certain short-term financial costs that we all need to bear for our own long-term good. And that goes double for a company that has staked its reputation on being “natural.”

So, Environmental Action’s Thneed Trophy for June 2019 is dubiously awarded to the Snapple Beverage Corp. for its very-unnatural plastic bottles . . .and, perhaps more disappointing, for bragging about them. Exclamation points matter.

* * * * *

The Thneed Trophy is awarded monthly by Environmental Action to a product that exemplifies the spirit of The Lorax’s “thneed”. It’s the thing that everyone wants but nobody needs, for which all of the Truffula Trees were cut down. In other words, bad for the environment, with little or no redeeming social value.

This message is not associated with or endorsed by the creators or the publishers of “The Lorax.”
Blessings
By: Ivette Cruz
Tags: Poetry, Self-awareness, Spirituality, Life Lessons, Spiritual Secrets

Blessings

Blessings are everywhere,

It is up to us

To recognize them.
Why Apple didn’t acquire Tesla
By: J.P. Scott
Tags: Cars, Gadgets, Tesla, Technology, Apple

Photo by Andy Wang on Unsplash

Rumors surrounding a potential Apple Car began circulating online in 2014, and last week they began to stir back up. According to Reuters, an electric Apple Car could enter production as soon as 2024, with significant battery tech advancements. The article caught the attention of Tesla CEO Elon Musk — who shared an interesting story via tweet.

The ‘darkest days’ referred to 2017 when Tesla was struggling with producing the Model 3 sedan. So, just three years after Apple begins exploring electric vehicles, the industry’s leading company reaches out to discuss an acquisition.

So why did Tim Cook refuse the meeting?

An acquisition of Tesla would effectively catapult Apple into the market overnight, skipping years of Research and Development (R&D). The deal sounds great on paper, which is why Tim Cook’s decision is so interesting. Maybe he didn’t want Apple to seem monopolistic, running the risk of a tech break up similar to what Microsoft suffered in the 90s.

Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash

Or maybe… Apple doesn’t need Tesla

Apple’s R&D budget was reported at 18.75 billion for 2020’s fiscal year. Compare that to Tesla’s 2019 R&D budget of 1.34 billion, and things start to get interesting. A large chunk of Apple’s R&D budget does go toward its current product lineup. Still, even a smaller fraction of the whopping 18.75 billion could put them on the fast track for an Apple Car.

Years of technological advancement can happen in months if you have enough money and a skilled workforce.

Apple has the money, but what about the workforce? A car presents engineering complications that don’t exist on a phone. Apple has been poaching Tesla employees since as early as 2015, reportedly offering signing bonuses up to $250,000 and a 60% salary increase. So, they can afford to buy their workforce.

OK, so Apple can afford to build a compelling vehicle from the ground up. But the deal with Tesla still would have made financial sense — setting them even further ahead. So, again, why would Tim Cook refuse a meeting?

The Apple Philosophy

When Apple announced that they would be transitioning their Mac lineup to their in-house ARM processors, many people were skeptical. To their surprise (or dismay), Apple delivered a top product at its price point. What Apple achieved with their M1 processors is due to its complete control over the hardware and software. A synergy that is — and will continue to be, unrivaled by other manufactures.

Apple has their own Maps software, and they’ve been acquiring AI startups like Drive.ai, a company that specializes in autonomous driving. The implementation of AI systems with the company’s own Maps software on vehicle hardware they control could revolutionize autonomous driving in a way that other manufacturers can not.

So, why did Tim Cook refuse the meeting? It’s all about control and making a cohesive product. It’s what Apple does, and it’s what they’re going to do with the Apple Car.
Use Entities For Watson Assistant Node Conditions
By: Leo Mazzoli
Tags: Watson Assistant, Tutorial, NLP, Artificial Intelligence, Chatbots

When evaluating “non-intent” user responses in Watson Assistant (WA), try to use entities instead of evaluating the contents of “input.text”. Entities are both reusable and not case sensitive, meaning you will get cleaner code.

Using “input.text” in WA is a great way to capture and save the input into a context variable for later use or for determining the length of what was said, but for dialog node conditions, it can directly short-cut some of WA’s capabilities and can become a maintenance nightmare.

For example, let’s say the user is asked “Would you like to receive your statement by mail or fax?”. If you use “input.text” to test the user response for the value of “mail” you will miss common variations.

The condition (input.text == “Mail”) ||(input.text == “mail”) doesn’t capture all case variations

The condition (Input.text.toLowerCase() = “mail”) is better for case sensitivity, but would not handle the situation where the utterance is something like “send it by mail”

In speech applications, mis-transcriptions (homonyms) are possible. Neither of the cases above would work if the utterance came to WA as “male”

Avoid these issues by setting up entities to capture key items in the utterance and configuring the node conditions to look for those entities.

Create Entity

WA Entities — My entities

Configure Dialog

WA Dialog

Using @deliveryPreference:mail for the condition…

Tests for the occurrence of “mail” in the utterance

Captures all synonyms of “mail” configured for the entity (ie “male”)

Is case insensitive

Ignores any additional words in the utterance

There are many uses for “input.text” and powerful string methods available that can be used to evaluate the object. However, when configuring node conditions, it’s good practice to try to use entities to simplify and organize your WA design.

We have built a workspace analyzer that detects “input.text” conditions at https://github.com/cognitive-catalyst/WA-Testing-Tool/. Download the tool and navigate to the ‘validate_workspace’ section. This will help you quickly discover these conditions and others that you may wish to improve.

Find more Watson Assistant Best Practices at https://medium.com/ibm-watson/best-practices-for-building-and-maintaining-a-chatbot-a8b78f0b1b72. For help implementing these practices, reach out to IBM Data and AI Expert Labs and Learning.
Easy Text Annotation in a Jupyter Notebook
By: Siphu Langeni
Tags: Sentiment Analysis, Jupyter Notebook, Annotation Tools, NLP, Data Science

Easy Text Annotation in a Jupyter Notebook

How to use tortus annotation tool

Image by author

At the heart of any sentiment analysis project is a good set of labeled data. Pre-labeled datasets can be found on various sites all over the internet. But…

What if you have come up with a custom dataset that has no labels ?

? What if you have to provide those labels before proceeding with your project?

What if you are not willing to pay to outsource the task of labeling?

I was recently faced with this very issue while retrieving text data from the Twitter Streaming API for a sentiment analysis project. I quickly discovered annotating the data myself would be a painful task without a good tool. This was the inspiration behind building tortus, a tool that makes it easy to label your text data within a Jupyter Notebook!
6 Tips For Junior Devs, After 10,000h Of Engineering Software
By: Aleksander, Vyrwu
Tags: Advice, Programming, Software Development, Engineering, Junior

Since the beginning of my career as a Software Dev in early 2018, I constantly sought growth and challenge in my day-to-day.

I have attended a multitude of tech conferences, networked with dozens of world-class engineers, and consumed hundreds of hours of tech-related content in my spare time.

On top of that, I have graduated with a Software Engineering degree and wrote a couple of successful Medium articles. I’ve built many side projects, contributed to open source libs, and even tried building a bunch of tech startups.

Nothing of that would have taught me anything about how to be a developer, had I not learned it the hard way on the job, working with a living software and real people.

By now, I’ve worked in multiple companies (been fired from one too), working different parts of the technology stack. I’ve done QA automation, Back-end, Front-end, Ops, DevOps, and now ended up as a Junior Site Reliability Engineer.

Some say that my experience is way above the Junior position.

Yet, I still proudly hold on to this title, believing that a title is worth as much as one’s professional maturity.
Thank You for Resisting the Cheeto-in-Chief
By: David Axe
Tags: National Parks, Defiant Science, Environment

Thank You for Resisting the Cheeto-in-Chief

How Americans cheered one rogue government tweeter

by DAVID AXE

In the days following Donald Trump’s Jan. 20, 2017 inauguration as the 45th president of the United States, his administration moved quickly to remove all mentions of climate change from U.S. government websites and social media.

Everyday Americans were … not fans, if notes of encouragement that citizens sent to one rogue climate-change tweeter are any indication. “Thank you to the bad-ass,” one American wrote to the tweeter. “You fine people may be our nation’s last line of defense,” another commented.

Trump’s government-wide act of science-denial included a gag order targeting the Environmental Protection Agency. The White House barred the EPA and its employees from speaking to the press or posting on social media.

Famously, a former seasonal employee at Badlands National Park in South Dakota fought back. Taking advantage of their access to the park’s official Twitter account, on Jan. 24, 2017 the former employee tweeted several statements about climate change.

“Today, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is higher than at any time in the last 650,000 years,” one tweet read.

The National Park Service quickly deleted the tweets — illegally, as official tweets are public records that the federal government is required to archive and make available to the public.

DEFIANT requested, under the Freedom of Information Act, copies of records regarding the tweet controversy. The trove of documents, which the park service made public on April 13, 2017, includes copies of emails that members of the public sent to the park service.

They’re pure gold. To quote a couple —

“If I could visit the Badlands right now, I would do it just to shake the hand of whoever updates your Twitter account. Roll on, NPS employees who believe in climate change.”

“Thank you to the bad-ass — I mean, Badlands social-media rep — who stood up to the Cheeto-in-chief regarding climate change. Every act of resistance is so important right now.”

And most powerfully —

Who would’ve thought it? National Park employees waging a digital guerilla war against an OCD moron who still insists climate change doesn’t exist. You fine people may be our nation’s last line of defense against destruction of not only our own national treasures but the natural world as a whole. Please rest assured the nation appreciates your courageous determination to protect our natural wonders. Don’t be cowered. Don’t be bullied. Don’t be silenced. The dark cloud that hangs over America at the moment will pass and a new day will most certainly dawn. Until then, stay strong and resolute. And thanks to all of you for your peerless service.

Stay defiant.

Follow DEFIANT on Facebook and Twitter.
Bangun Aplikasi iOS Pertamamu menggunakan Xcode Storyboard. (Aplikasi COVID-19)
By: Muhammad Rahman
Tags: Mobile App Development, iOS App Development, Storyboard, iOS, Xcode

Journal about apps development for business and eCommerce from GITS Indonesia, a Google Certified Agency and Google Cloud Partner. | Website: gits.id

Follow
The Quality of Information You Consume Can Determine the Quality of Your Life
By: Tom Stevenson
Tags: Life, Self Improvement, Education, Learning, Productivity

The Quality of Information You Consume Can Determine the Quality of Your Life

6 websites that can make you a smarter person.

The internet is teeming with websites. The majority of them are not worth your time. Think of websites like Buzzfeed, Bored Panda or any other site that is chock full of clickbait and low-quality posts.

Despite this, there are corners of the internet where you can find high-quality websites full of meaningful and insightful posts. The quality of the information you consume determines the quality of your life. If you only frequented sites that are full of conspiracy theories, you’d view the world very differently from someone who didn’t.

The information age has made knowledge more accessible than ever, but it also means we have to sift through the rubbish before we find something valuable.

Learning is a lifelong pursuit and one that doesn’t finish when you leave school or university. With information available at our fingertips, you’re doing yourself a disservice if you’re not seeking to learn more. Lifelong learning is the best way to improve your career chances and life.

The internet is arguably the best place to learn due to the resources it contains. Twenty years ago, if we wanted to learn about a specific topic, we had to turn to an encyclopedia or buy a book on the topic.

Now, we can hop on our phones and learn about the intricacies of the biases which populate the human mind or chaos theory in a matter of seconds. When doing so, there are a few places you should turn to first before you go down the rabbit hole of a google search.

These websites are among the best on the internet for providing insightful posts on a wide range of topics. By frequenting these sites not only will you learn a lot about many different things, but you’ll also become smarter too as you fill in the gaps in your knowledge and seek to plug the new gaps that arise.
Why “Data Looks Better Naked”
By: Naja Bomani
Tags: Simplicity, Minimalism, Design, Data Visualization, Data

Let’s explore from a historical standpoint. This will allow us to better understand how what was once seen as “well designed” now looks “overly detailed”, and how the teachings of ‘why data looks better naked’ came about.

The knowledge behind why data looks better naked comes from the teachings of Edward Tufte, an artist and statistician. As a statistics professor at Yale University, Edward has written, designed and published four books dedicated to the knowledge of data visualization. In 1983, Tufte published his first book called, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information where it focused on the theories and practices behind designing data graphics (statistical graphs, charts and tables). It was in this book that Edward introduced the concept of “data-ink”. Data-ink is “the non-erasable core of the graphic, the non-redundant ink arranged in response to variation in the numbers represented”. He goes on to explain that we should “remove all non-data-ink and redundant data-ink, within reason.” In doing so, this will create a more cohesive graphical design when it comes to data visualization.

The below GIFs, created by designer Joey Cherdarchuk, illustrates the step by step process taken into “stripping away the excess” in order to make a graph visually “naked”.

Column Chart

Table Chart

Let’s follow the teachings of Edward Tufte with the support of Joey Cherdarchuk’s visuals when it comes to data representation. Though we are accustomed to the old style way of formulating data, let’s push forward in the direction of minimalism. To ensure that your data comes off as clear as possible, let’s strip down the data (rather than dress it up). This will make the data more “effective, attractive and impactive” when the method of “less is more” is put to use.
Watson Text to Speech Releases 5 New Neural Voices!
By: Vijay Ilankamban
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Speech Recognition, Machine Learning, Announcements, Watson Text To Speech

We are pleased to announce that IBM Watson Text to Speech, a cloud service that enables users to converts text into natural-sounding audio, has introduced five new neural voices (four US English voices and a German voice). These new voices are now generally available in our public cloud offering.

Take A Listen!

Click on the names to listen to the new voice samples:

US English — Emily

“If you know your party’s extension number, you can enter it at any time. For Sales and Customer Service, press 1.”

US English — Kevin

“For all other inquiries, please stay on the line, and a representative will be happy to assist you.”

US English — Henry

“Our business hours are Monday through Friday from 8 am to 7 pm except on major holidays. Please leave a message with your name, contact information, and the nature of your call and someone from the appropriate department will contact you on the next business day.”

US English — Olivia

“All of our agents are currently busy. Please hold, and we will answer your call as soon as possible.”

German— Erika

“Alle unsere Mitarbeiter sind derzeit im Gespräch. Bitte bleiben Sie dran, wir werden Ihren Anruf so schnell wie möglich weiterleiten.”

Learn More

Interested in discovering our TTS capabilities, languages and voice technologies? Click here to learn more.

Try out our TTS languages and voice technologies for yourself with this demo. Or read the science behind the technology of our new neural voices in our whitepaper: “High quality, lightweight and adaptable TTS using LPCNet”.
The festival of families
By: Rj Verity
Tags: Rj Verity, Writing, Writing Tips, Writer, Words On Writing

This week in East Asia — when the moon is its roundest and brightest on the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar — we celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival. Traditionally, the festival gives thanks for the harvest, but it is also a time to appreciate harmonious unions and families coming together.

A timely coincidence, because my in-laws are visiting from the UK. We’ve been experiencing Hong Kong tourist hotspots including the bright lights of Victoria Harbour, the Big Buddha that commands a view over Lantau Island, and a boat ride to the remote island of Po Toi.

During every adventure we have witnessed other families — smiling, arguing, laughing, but nonetheless spending time together. This same week, I attended the funeral of a talented friend who left us too soon. Her estranged family arrived from opposite sides of the world to mourn her loss, each in their own way but united in grief.

The tensions between the family members stretch vertically and horizontally through the ages

Families. They unite us and they tear us apart. My first novel is one of a trilogy covering four generations of familial shenanigans. The tensions between the family members stretch vertically and horizontally through the ages, like a delicate web that masks its strength. Families make for complicated dynamics, and I am grateful to Beth Miller — author of When We Were Sisters — for her thoughts on how to deal with families when writing fiction:

“The key thing I do when writing is to focus on the dynamics between each of the various members. If you have four people in a family, you have at least eleven possible configurations of relationship, all with their different complexities, secrets and tensions. How does what A say or do impact on B? How do things change if C comes on the scene? The writer here is like a family therapist. Both writer and therapist have to tease out the dynamics, work out how each pairing, each triad, each quartet, changes depending on who’s there, what new stuff they’re bringing, their shared and separate histories.”

Gotham Writers provides helpful guidance on determining which family member should be the main protagonist and how to write different POVs to tell the broader family story. At the same time, it warns of the risk of more than one character taking centre stage and diluting the focus and cohesiveness.

Over the centuries, brightly lit lanterns have become symbolic of the Mid Autumn Festival. Just like family members, lanterns come in all shapes, sizes and colours. As my family sat on the rooftop, and marvelled at the glorious full moon and the array of colourful lanterns bobbing in unison in the warm sea breeze, we chatted about everything and nothing, and were grateful for our differences and for our unity.

Originally published at www.rjverity.com on October 6, 2017.
Why Dropping Out of School Will Make Your Life Better
By: Alyssa Di Grazia
Tags: Life Lessons, Self Improvement, Writing, Life, Change

I always hated school, just like a lot of you I suppose.

So I quit two years ago, and I’m now attending a professional course. Something very far from the traditional school system.

But why?

Why is that a good idea that you should consider?

Well… there are a couple of reasons. Some of them are more related to the system itself, and some about your mental health and time.

Let’s admit that school is useless, come on.
assimilated agony
By: Tre L. Loadholt
Tags: Micropoetry, Love, Writing, Compassion, A Cornered Gurl

assimilated agony

how often have we

turned a blind eye

while others

begged

for us

to see?
Boost your marketing strategy with RFM
By: Kerim Birgun
Tags: Python, Data Science, Segmentation, Analytics, Marketing Strategies

Okay, now that we combined these features into one dataframe, let’s visualize it! (code link)

This is nothing but a huge mess of customer pile which begs the question:

How are we going to segment them?

Most data scientists try to answer this question by implementing K-Means clustering, which is basically a machine learning algorithm used for seperating data into clusters based on data points’ distance to each other: (https://stanford.edu/~cpiech/cs221/handouts/kmeans.html)

However, I am an advocate of a manual approach, since ML algorithms do not consider any industry-specific dynamics. Accordingly, I will follow two essential steps to ace this challenge:

1- Quantile Transformation and Ranking

In simple terms, a quantile is where a sample is divided into equal-sized subgroups. Quartiles are also quantiles; they divide the distribution into four equal parts. In this case, I seperated RFM values into 4 quartiles and simply labeled them based on their values. (very bad-bad-good-very good). This is what the dataframe transformed into:

2- Segmentation by RFM rankings

This is the part, where the business understanding comes into play. I wrote a python function with a bunch of ‘if-else statements’ to define segments based on their RFM rankings. For instance, I extracted a customer segment with ‘very good’ levels of F-M, yet ‘very bad’ level of R. This means that the customer was once very active and valuable but it’s been a long time since the latest transaction. Hence, the company needs to win this group back urgently! The below-stated function is my personal approach and one can finetune these classes based on different market dynamics.

And here we go! We successfully created our customer segments to efficiently design upcoming marketing strategies! An elegant treemap comes in handy in terms of reflecting the big picture: (code link)

Customer Treemap by Segments

Below, is an analysis of the recently created customer segments through R-F-M. Notice how each group has its own behavioral pattern and differentiates meaningfully.
4 Useful JavaScript Books for Aspiring Developers
By: Mehdi Aoussiad
Tags: JavaScript, Web Development, Coding, Books, Programming

4 Useful JavaScript Books for Aspiring Developers

Amazing books for JavaScript knowledge.

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

Introduction

Not all of us prefer learning online or with video tutorials, there are people that prefer books. Reading these books can benefit both your physical and mental health, and those benefits can last a lifetime. Coding books are very useful if you love reading them because they give you all the details and knowledge you need. Reading books is one of the best ways to learn JavaScript.

In this article, we will give you a list of some useful JavaScript books for developers. Let’s get right into it.

1. JavaScript and jQuery

This book was written for anyone who wants to make his websites a little more interesting, engaging, interactive, or usable. It was written by Jon Duckett in order to help beginners understand the basics of JavaScript and jQuery very well. All you need is just a basic understanding of HTML and CSS.

I recommend starting with this book if you are a beginner, but don’t rely too heavily on jQuery as it’s a bit outdated and most employers find this to be a deterrent.

You can check the book here if you are interested.

2. You Don’t Know JS

This is an awesome book series by Kyle Simpson exploring the parts of JavaScript that we all think we understand but don’t really know. All these books are free, which is incredible.

Here is the Github repository for the series if you are interested.

3. JavaScript Design Patterns

Design patterns are reusable solutions to commonly occurring problems in software design. They are both exciting and fascinating topics to explore in any programming language.

This book (“Learning JavaScript Design Patterns”) was written by Addy Osmani. By reading it, you will explore applying both classical and modern design patterns to the JavaScript programming language.

You can check the book here if you are interested.

4. JavaScript Allongé

JavaScript Allongé is a book about programming with functions. It’s written in JavaScript of course.

This book starts at the beginning, with values and expressions, and builds from there to discuss types, identity, functions, closures, scopes, collections, iterators, and many more subjects up to working with classes and instances. It also teaches you how to handle complex code, and how to simplify code without dumbing it down.

You can check it out here if you are interested.

Conclusion

As you can see, all these books are full of knowledge and value. They helped a lot of developers to improve their JavaScript skills. You can choose any one that fits you and start gaining useful JavaScript knowledge.

Thank you for reading this article, I hope you found it useful.

More Reading
Start a React Project Truly from Scratch Using Webpack and Babel
By: Aawaj Joshi
Tags: React, ES6, Webpack, Jsx, Babel

What is Webpack and why is it used?

Webpack is a module bundler; as the name implies, it bundles every module that a project needs into one or more bundles that can be referenced in the primary html file.

For example, when building a JavaScript application that has JavaScript code separated into multiple files, each file must be loaded into the primary html file using the <script> tag.

<body>

...

<script src="libs/react.min.js"></script>

<script src='src/header.js'></script>

<script src='src/dashboard.js'></script>

<script src='src/api.js'></script>

<script src='src/something.js'></script>

</body>

By implementing the use of Webpack, these separate JavaScript files can be intelligently bundled into one file that can then be loaded into the primary html file.

<body>

...

<script src='dist/bundle.js'></script>

</body>

In this instance, using Webpack not only dramatically reduces the number of imports but also eliminates any issues that may arise if the scripts are not loaded in order. Besides module bundling, Webpack also offers Loaders and Plugins which can be used to transform files before, during, or after the bundling process. Loaders and Plugins are explored in further detail later on in this article.
Please, Can Science and Faith Live in Unison?
By: Brenda Mahler
Tags: Faith and Life, Poetry, Faith, Science Fiction, Coronavirus

Please, Can Science and Faith Live in Unison?

Gaining Power by Uniting the World

Photo by David Vázquez on Unsplash

I called to ask

How are you?

Instead your words

Accused

No, not me

Directly

My beliefs

My lifestyle

Everything that makes me

Me

Maybe

Maybe

I am wrong

You are right

COVID is a hoax

Then why did I watch

Dad die from outside

The hospital window?

Why does my granddaughter

Wear a tiny Paw Patrol mask

And ask,

Mommy do I still have germs?

Would a hoax

Require refrigerated

Boxes to house the

Bodies of dead?

I shared a friend’s tears

As she told me the names

Of two loved ones

Who died this week

You complain,

Your grandchild can’t

Attend his school

I cry because my daughter

Who teaches must attend

With substitutes in many classes

You believe Satan

Owns the virus

Or hoax as you call it

His goal is to isolate

Separate mankind

I refuse to grant him

That much power

God provides opportunities

To choose wisely

Human’s with faith

Grab onto the lifelines

Believing that God is good

Reach out and accept his gifts

Masks, hand sanitizer, vaccines

Science and faith can

Survive in unison

Unless you believe

The world is flat
‘The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living’
By: Tania Miller
Tags: Writing, Self Improvement, Writing Tips, Philosophy, Personal Development

“The unexamined life is not worth living” Socrates said as he declared the essence of a good life. “The only good is knowledge”. With knowledge, a person could shape their own destiny and find true happiness.

During a time when the world was looking to the cosmos for understanding, Socrates looked inward to the human mind for the questions and answers to life. The way to wisdom was to be found through human dialogue.

Something in Socrates’s words and search for knowledge resonated with me as I thought about writing and the struggles we all face as writers.

I realized that the process itself is the true gift. Writing is the process of examining life.

Some days our words come out beautifully, other days not so much. But one thing remains no matter what happens — we are personally changed because we are actively learning, actively striving, and our minds are engaged and lit up as we struggle with our ideas and words through the writing process.

As writers, we’re exploring ideas that we’re passionate about, and experiences that will make an impact on other people and bring some sort of value into the world.

Sometimes the writing process seems overwhelming and frustrating. Self-motivation and confidence, even sense of purpose, go up and down in alternating waves of frustration and euphoria. Sometimes it’s just so difficult to get started. But when this happens, we should remind ourselves of the gift that writing gives us.
How to Set the Mood for Maximum Productivity
By: Veronika Jel
Tags: Advice, Work From Home, Life Hacking, Self Improvement, Productivity

How to Set the Mood for Maximum Productivity

Get more done in less time by implementing these little rituals

Many of us struggle with being consistently productive. We plan so much for the day and then we end up procrastinating instead. And often, even when we do start working, it’s doesn’t go the way we expected. We just can’t seem to get in the zone.

I used to struggle with this a lot. I would sit down, open a document and start working on the task at hand. Yet my mind would wander and wouldn't stay focused on the work I was supposed to be doing. Often I would give up, saying: “I’m just not in the mood. It’s not a productive day and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

But then I learned that this wasn’t true. There is always something you can do. All I needed to regain my focus was a consistent setting that I associated with work.
A Warm Fuzzy Hug
By: Lucy The Eggcademic, She Her
Tags: Poetry Prompt, Mental Health, Self Care, Poetry

#DecemberSelfCare

A Warm Fuzzy Hug

Adorable fuzzy PJs, this poem’s for you

Photo by Anastasia Zhenina on Unsplash

as the temperature dips

into the icy stages

the phase where the air

feels spicy against your skin

i celebrate the winter

indoors

by breaking out

the festive fuzzy PJs

the ones that make you feel

like you’re a walking live teddy bear

the PJs that envelope you

like a bear hug.
Ten Deep Learning Concepts You Should Know for Data Science Interviews
By: Terence Shin
Tags: Deep Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Science, Work

Deep learning and neural networks can get really complicated. When it comes to data science interviews, however, there are only so many concepts that interviewers test. After going through hundreds and hundreds of data science interview questions, I compiled 10 deep learning concepts that came up the most often.

In this article, I’m going to go over these 10 concepts, what they’re all about, and why they’re so important.

With that said, here we go!
Getting Started with Python
By: Rafay Syed
Tags: Programming, Computer Science, Python

Python is an amazing language that is used in a wide variety of applications. Did you know that Python is used in applications involving automation, data science and web apps? For example, Facebook uses Python to process images. Before we get started, let us first break down the concepts that we need to learn in order to become a Python ninja.

Python Syntax Data Structures Algorithms

The first thing we must be acquainted with is the syntax of the Python programming language. We must also learn the proper data structures that we want to use when we are solving a particular problem. Lastly, we must know which algorithm we would want to use to reach the solution of the problem.

Now you must be thinking, this is fine and all, but what do I need to install on my machine in order to run Python? If you are already using a Mac or Linux operating system, then Python is already pre-installed. If you are using a Windows 10 machine, Microsoft released an update that also pre-installs Python. However, if you do not have Python installed on your OS or are unsure if you have Python installed, here is a breakdown between a Mac OS and Windows OS for checking:
3 Ways To Know If You’re On Track To Success
By: Sandra Michelle
Tags: Productivity, Inspiration, Self, Self Improvement, Life Lessons

SELF

When you look back, what propelled you there will be obvious…

Photo by Razvan Chisu on Unsplash

Many of us live life day to day without recognizing how each day is bringing us closer to that which we want to achieve. I have been using triggering and reflective questions at the end of each day for years now. I found the need for such a checklist even before it was cool. Before influencers began raving about bullet journals and before ‘The Secret’ came out encouraging positive affirmation trends.

I’ve always chased the high of inspiration and believe there isn’t a greater feeling. Many people lose faith after not seeing results soon enough and feel the need for their efforts and patience to be proven by visible achievements.

Putting my progress into perspective by categorizing it has been a helpful way for me to tell whether each day is leading me to my desired success. It ensures I feel positive about the small tasks and insignificant little things that I do daily. I believe that the constant use of these questions is what has led me to be the ever-confident and clear-visioned individual that I am today.

The answers more often than not take me to a content and humble place of appreciation of my constant efforts. At times I apply them in reverse as I know the looming checklist that is ahead. It, therefore, encourages me to provide a reason for at least one of the categories to be ticked off that day.

Of course, success doesn't come overnight. So, why do so many of us feel demotivated and fail to recognize just how much we help our future selves with our daily progress? It isn’t due to one big action or sacrifice but due to thousands of decisions and efforts made every day that then coincide with luck and timing.

It’s an initial decision to change our mindset, ultimately leading to a change in attitude until it has seeped into our bones as a habit of nature. The little things eventually make up the big picture and this takes time. Hopefully, these three questions can calm your spirit and ensure that you see each day as a small success towards a greater goal.

Life is a juggling act. Cavemen never had this many errands to run! There’s no question about it — humans are overworking themselves to death. So let’s not forget to consider just how well we are doing. We are thrust into a world where our human traits long to be happy each day. Meanwhile, we are expected to make money just to survive, and the way in which we do isn’t usually fulfilling. According to research, an astronomical 85% of people are unhappy with their jobs.

Simply being human also means nurturing yourself as well as the relationships and friendships in your life. To fulfill all of these each day is nearly impossible. This can feel entirely overwhelming when we are chasing a dream or working towards success and being content really does come when we find that perfect balance.
Coin-o-graphy
By: Akm Nivrito
Tags: Money, Stories, Saving, Memories, Storytelling

For a child growing up in a middle class family of Bangladesh, one of the first financial lesson he or she learns is how to save. We were taught how much important saving is, and how one should save. Considering the age, our parents often thought it was not the proper time to introduce saving in banking organizations. Instead we are taught to save inside ‘banks’ made of clay. It is an enclosed clay pot, with only a thin slit as opening — the slit was big enough so that we could shove coins into it. The only way to regain the coins is to break them. We used to drop coins whenever we could. Then when it was full, we used to break them. In my lifetime I have filled and broken around 6 of them. The latest demolition was performed today, 30th September 2017. The latest coins have a tendency to get rusty and we needed to clean them up. So we broke the bank.

This is how the clay banks look like. Image is collected from Google Image Search.

It felt like I opened up a Pandora’s box. Each coin was carrying a bit and piece of my past, since childhood. Each coin can curve a story around it. And that was the exact moment when I thought of writing this piece. It is a collection of stories around these coins, and they way we used to save them. Stories from my parents, and their parents. Stories from my own life.
Text Generation With Python And GPT-2
By: James Briggs
Tags: Machine Learning, Data Science, Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Programming

Results

We can get some great results with very little code. Here are a few examples that should give you a better understanding of the impact of each argument in the .generate method.

outputs = model.generate(

inputs, max_length=200, do_sample=True

)

tokenizer.decode(outputs[0], skip_special_tokens=True) [Out]: "He began his premiership by forming a five-man war cabinet which included Chamerlain as Lord President of the Council, Labour leader Clement Attlee as Lord Privy Seal (later as Deputy Prime Minister), Halifax as Foreign Secretary and Labour's Arthur Greenwood as a minister without portfolio. In practice, these cabinet officers were part of the National Security Council, then headed by Lord Chamberlain's secretary Arthur Hargreaves. A number of them became key cabinet secretaries, including Lord Hargreaves in 1948, Lord Butler as Justice Minister in 1949 and Lord Codds as justice minister until his death in 1975. After being replaced by Lord Hargreaves in 1955, there was speculation that the next general election would see Chamberlain and Howe try and avoid a hard line policy..."

We can add more randomness with temperature — the default value is 1 , a high value like 5 will produce a pretty nonsensical output:

outputs = model.generate(

inputs, max_length=200, do_sample=True, temperature=5

)

tokenizer.decode(outputs[0], skip_special_tokens=True) [Out]: "He began his premiership by forming a five-man war cabinet which included Chamerlain as Lord President of the Council, Labour leader Clement Attlee as Lord Privy Seal (later as Deputy Prime Minister), Halifax as Foreign Secretary and Labour's Arthur Greenwood as a minister without portfolio. In practice, his foreign secretaries generally assumed other duties during cabinet so his job fell less and smaller - sometimes twice his overall stature so long a day seemed manageable after he became Chief Arctic Advisor: Mr Wilson led one reshover where we've also done another three, despite taking responsibility over appointments including Prime (for both) his time here since 1901)[31],[38-4]. (These last had fewer staff as many than he is responsible..."

Turning the temperature down below 1 will produce more linear but less creative outputs.

We can also add the top_k parameter — which limits the sample tokens to a given number of the most probable tokens. This results in text that tends to stick to the same topic (or set of words) for a longer period of time.
NaNoWriMo Week 1: Engaging My Inner Trickster
By: Julie Russell
Tags: NaNoWriMo, Writing

Morning raven.

Day 2 of NaNoWriMo began when my alarm sang a merry tune at 5:30am. I hit snooze. Inside my imagination, my characters glared at me, rolled over and went back to bed.

When I rose, two snooze cycles later and sat in front of my open laptop, I expected my characters to flow through a scene just following a major confrontation. I wanted my main character to spill a tiny bit of her secrets but not all of them.

Nothing happened.

Fear raged while my creativity still slept. This is stupid. Pointless. You should have stayed in bed. Your characters are boring and pointless and you’re not going to have any pages for your writing group to critique in three weeks. Why do you even bother, you should quit your writing group. They’re all better writers than you anyway.

Then, for no reason except maybe my Creativity woke up, I remembered The Trickster¹. Instead of forcing my characters to do things on the page, I wrote all those fears, sucking them out of my brain and putting them right in the middle of the page where my characters were supposed to be talking.

After three paragraphs of dumping random thoughts and fears, my characters jumped in. They interrupted my boring monologue and took over. They skipped that conversation I was trying to force them to have and talked about something else. When it was time to get ready for work I had 1500 words.

And in case you were wondering, I do include my rambling thoughts as part of my word count. Because that’s what a Trickster would do. Because they are part of my novel writing process, especially in November.

What do you do, when fear whispers its vile poison into your ear? How do you engage with your Trickster during NaNoWriMo?

Respond, please, and let me know. My inner Trickster loves new tricks.
Understanding Big O Space Complexity
By: Colton Kaiser
Tags: Software Engineering, Coding, Software Development, Big O Notation, Programming

Most Common Types of Big O

O(n)

If n = some integer, the number of operations within the algorithm (the way of solving a given problem) increases roughly in proportion with n. This type of algorithm is not ideal! An example of an algorithm with an O(n) could be a function which takes an integer, ’n’, as an argument, and uses a ‘for’ loop to calculate the sum of all numbers up to and including ’n’. In this case, the number of operations increases in proportion to n because the larger n is, the more summations will need to be done within the ‘for’ loop to solve the problem.

O(1)

In the case of an algorithm with an O(1), the number of operations required to complete the problem stays consistent no matter the value of ’n’. This is the most preferable type of Big O and results in the best performance. Example: a function which takes an integer, ’n’, and simply performs some operations on n without any sort of ‘for’ loop, searching, etc. The reason this is O(1) is because no matter the size of n, the number operations within the function will stay exactly the same.

O(n ²)

In this case, the amount of operations within the function will increase exponentially with ’n’. An example of this could be a function involving a nested loop which calls n as well. This results in an exponential increase in the amount of operations required to complete the problem. O(n ²) is the slowest and least preferable type of algorithm!

O(log n)

An algorithm with an O(log n) begins with an increase in proportion with ’n’, but eventually levels off. This is a high performing algorithm and is the next best thing to O(1)! An example of this could involve a search algorithm where the answer space keeps getting split, over and over again until the answer is found.

Below is a helpful graph of common types of Big O Notation in relation to time complexity: