fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Analyzing the Meteorological data
By: Swetha Sreenivasan
Tags: Python Pandas, Data Visualization, Data Science, Visualization, Python Matplotlib

The dataset has the data for past 10years from 2006–04–01 00:00:00.000 +0200 to 2016–09–09 23:00:00.000 +0200. It corresponds to Finland, a country in Northern Europe. If you want to try using the dataset go to the below drive link and download: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ScF_1a-bkHi1qe8Rn78uxK6_5QwUD9B .

We need to find the average temperature for the month starting from April 2006 to 2016 and average humidity for the same period.

STEPS INVOLVED:

STEP 1: Import the dataset

STEP 2: Print the Data

STEP 3: Check the type of the data

STEP 4: Cleaning the data

STEP 5: Check Whether the dataset has any invalid data

STEP 6: Finally Visualize the Data

Let’s start the above mentioned steps

IMPORT THE DATA

You can download the dataset from the given link https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ScF_1a-bkHi1qe8Rn78uxK6_5QwUD9B .

Before importing the data first import the libraries and then import the data. Here we use pandas library for creating the ‘DATAFRAME’

PRINT THE DATA:

To print the data you can use . head() method , this method print 5 random data from the dataset by default if you want to print the first five data you have mention .head(5) or else how many data you want to print. Likewise you can use .tail() to print the data from last.

PRINT THE DATA TYPES AND OTHER DATASET RELATED THINGS:

Column method is used to find the name of the columns in the dataset.

Shape method helps us to find how many rows and columns are availabe in the dataset.

dtype method is used to find the data type.

CLEANING THE DATA:

use drop() method to remove the unwanted columns

CHECK THE DATASET HAS THE PROPER FORMAT OR NOT:

Here I thought the format of the date is not proper so we need to create a date and time object by using the to_datetime() function. Then set the name of the index using set index .

Now since we have been given hourly data, we need to resample it monthly.

VISUALIZING THE DATA

Here I’m going to visualize the data from January to December(2006–2016).

JANUARY

FEBRUARY

MARCH

APRIL

MAY

JUNE

JULY

AUGUST

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

NOVEMBER

DECEMBER

INSIGHTS FROM THE ABOVE VISUALIZATION:

From September to March Large difference in Apparent Temperature but no changes in Humidity and in April to August minor changes in temperature but here also no difference in humidity. exactly, November, December, January high changes than other months.

CONCLUSION

In this blog we learned to analyze and visualize using the meteorological dataset in Matplotlib . I hope it will be useful for you . If you find any Mistakes please let me know . We discuss about the seaborn and other visualization process in another blog, Thank you. Have a Nice day.
Tree of our Heart
By: Paul Mulliner
Tags: Mindfulness, Spirituality, Poetry, Philosophy, Yoga

The silent voice of our heart,

the conscious ocean

inside all life

and all experience of life,

the invisible and inexpressible

bringing everything visible

and all expression

into the world,

is a conscious intelligence

throughout the Universe.

Our experience of life

passes continuously through

this fluid, universal consciousness,

like swirling eddies

passing endlessly through

the mirror calm surface of water.

It’s expressing itself as electrons,

living body-cells and photosynthesis,

continuously transforming itself

into every leaf, every flower

and every human being,

changing itself in realtime

into clusters of wave-patterns

we observe as a human hand.

Dissolving all conceptual boundaries

and thoughts of separation,

as we inwardly focus our attention

and realize its presence,

we know the conscious silence,

the song of the inexpressible.
Love Is Caring
By: Bassey Elimian
Tags: Personal Growth, Poetry, Relationships, Life, Love

2020 is a hard year for many of us.

Share your time, talent, and a smile.

Accept yourself and others.

Admire yourself and nature

Listen to understand

Write a note to yourself and others.

2020 is a hard year for many of us.

Pay attention — be an otherish giver this holiday.

“Hard times require furious dancing. Each of us is proof .”— Alice Walker.

Keep hope alive. You can grow in this difficult time.
Live Updates on NEX, Highly Anticipated ICO — Decentralized Exchange on NEO Platform
By: Vamshi Vangapally
Tags: Exchange, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Neo, Blockchain

Update 22 Feb’18

Update 19 Feb’18

Next Sunday, 25th February, we will release our Token sale information at http://www.neonexchange.org and https://medium.com/neon-exchange with all the details we have up to date. Read it carefully and get ready!

Update 8 Feb’18

Red Pulse will be one of the first applications to, alongside NEX, bridge the traditional economy users with advanced Blockchain technology allowing professionals on the Red Pulse platform to easily onboard and offboard the RPX token with Fiat in a seamless experience.

Update 2 Feb’18

Just to reinforce: NEX has only 3 official sources of information: https://twitter.com/neonexchange https://medium.com/neon-exchange https://neonexchange.org

This article is just a list of their updates and not an official source of information.

Update 22 Jan’18

Interview of Ethan Fast by CryptoLark

Ethan Fast the co-founder of NEX and City of Zion and the creator od the NEON wallet and discuss the NEX token sale and the importance of DEXs. NEX is a high powered decentralized exchange which is shaping up to be a formidable player in the space

NEX or NeonExchage are doing an ICO soon and details of their token sale are being teased starting today.

Following is the initial sneak peek they’ve given us today i.e. 13th January at 2:00PM EST via twitter.

Most common practices of good ICOs is

Asking users to signup for whitelist Submit KYC/AML documents Process the documents and IDs to verify all compliance checklist Approve the whitelist and set a cap on maximum contribution to avoid whales accumulating.

So we hope the NeonExchange also does the same. I’ll be posting live updates via this article as well as on twitter. So do follow me on medium & twitter for quick updates.
My Sleep
By: Jean Carfantan
Tags: Newsletter, Dreams, Sleep, Sacred Feminine, Prompt

Our nights: prompt

My Sleep

I’ve been sleeping about ten hours for last months each night

Photo by Jonathan Falcon on Unsplash

Do you experience the same phenomenon? May be we are prepared each night to adapt to another energy quality. One colleague told me the same. We are mutating from inside to be prepared to something that is going to happen.

Darker are our days and brighter our nights.

On news we see darker and repetitive facts, around us, we feel more aggressiveness and see more desperate people and mental illnesses while inside we feel hope, we are fed every night and our daily spiritual practices help us to keep afloat.

Do we control our daily nightmare because we dream so much even though we don’t remember every dream?
i wish i was free
By: Teyuna T. Darris
Tags: Poetry, Literature, Poem, Poet, Poems On Medium

Poet Notes

Poetry, and other content created and curated by teyuna t.
Why Should You Become a Data Scientist?
By: Shantesh Mani
Tags: Decision Making, Career Paths, Become Data Scientist, Data Scientist, Data Scientist Skills

Data is playing a critical role in the way our world operates, and industries, in general, are no different. The more we rely on data, the greater the profit, customer satisfaction, accurate results and better overall value of your company. With that said, it is safe to put forward the fact that the role of a data scientist is not only demanding, but valuable to every organization that understands the value of data. Data science is a highly beneficial field of study, and data scientists are high in demand in every industry.

What should I look forward to in a career as a Data Scientist?

Before you get into this field, it is essential to know what skills you would need as a prerequisite. Irrespective of the coding language or tools that you use, it is vital that your first step is being thorough with statistics, mathematics, and data structures to work on later in your career. You need to understand statistics and decision trees, algorithms in detail to know what you’re doing. Mathematics and data structures go hand in hand when you’re trying to manipulate or perform data operations. It also helps you with data engineering, analytics, and data visualization.

Data Science helps in providing actionable insights from the data that your company wants you to use.

Career Aspects of a Data Scientist:

Data science is a vast field incorporating data analytics, scraping, visualization, statistics, among others. So, the first step is to be aware of what you can/want to do in the field of data science. Usually, you become a smart data scientist after years of study or career experience in the above fields to be able to apply what you know exactly where it is needed. You need to be able to provide actionable insights from the data that your company or case study wants you to use. Moreover, a data scientist is an all-rounder rather than a specialist in a single field or skill. The reward you get for putting in years of studies or experience is the most chased after job with immense monetary benefits and no shortage of job options!
Climbers are Pooping All Over Mt. Everest and Making It Gross
By: Jill Ettinger
Tags: Nepal, Mountain Climbing, Everest, Climate Change, Environment

Why is there so much poop on Mt. Everest?

As far as exploring goes, Mt. Everest isn’t a treasure trove of earthly discoveries. Alluring and majestic as it certainly is, there’s little in the way of new species to discover (since hardly anything can live at that altitude), nor is it overflowing with artifacts to connect us to our human history. Well, unless you call the heaping piles of human shit “artifacts.”

That’s right, climbers who risk (and often lose) their lives to tackle the world’s tallest peak, are leaving trails of human waste all over this sacred mountain.

“The head of Nepal’s mountaineering association has warned that human waste left when climbers use holes in the snow as lavatories is contaminating the world’s highest peak,” reports the Independent. Approximately 700 climbers spend almost two months every year on Everest’s slopes acclimating and climbing, and leaving “large amounts” of feces and urine “buried in the snow.”

While some climbers do carry disposable travel toilet bags (and proper waste management is conducted at the lowest base camp), many climbers don’t. They simply dig holes in the snow and go.

“It is a health hazard and the issue needs to be addressed,” Dawa Steven Sherpa, who has been leading Everest clean-up expeditions since 2008, said to the Independent.

But there is no concrete plan in place for how to manage the mountain waste, probably because there can’t really be one — aside from keeping people off the mountain and admiring its beauty rather than trying to conquer it. The official Nepalese response has been it will “strictly monitor” the situation, and it does have a rule in place requiring climbers to bring back 18 pounds of trash to base camp after a climb. But that’s a mere dent in the damage being caused by all the poop, particularly since most climbers take a very similar route to the top, which means the human waste is being cluttered in small areas of the mountain.

When Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first climbed Everest in 1953, it was a watershed moment for the human spirit, nearly as exciting as the moon landing that would happen more than a decade later. Humans had triumphed over nature, defeated the odds and lived to tell about it. But since then, some 4,000 people have attempted to climb Mt. Everest, many of them dying tragically for what can only be described as a selfish drive to conquer the most alluring mountain in the world.

While the expeditions are a boon to the Nepalese economy, the piles of poop could actually be quite damaging, particularly as climate change is also having an impact on the region. Warming temperatures could mean more avalanches, which actually shut down last year’s expeditions. And if we keep sending people up the mountain to poop, those avalanches could also be biohazards for the region — a tragedy Hilary and Norgay would certainly not want to be their legacy.

Find Jill on Twitter and Instagram

This article originally appears on EcoSalon
Peanut Butter Bites: A Nutritious Snack
By: Mitra Hooshmand
Tags: Healthy Recipes

To enable employers and employees to think differently about mental and physical wellbeing — at work and beyond.

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Sierra Hull LIVE! at Toms River’s Grunin Center
By: Spotlight Central
Tags: Jazz, New Jersey, Music, Bluegrass, Country

By Spotlight Central. Photos by Love Imagery

The stage is set for musical excitement this Saturday, February 2, 2018 evening at Toms River, NJ’s Grunin Center for the Arts for a concert featuring Grammy-nominated mandolinist Sierra Hull.

Hull, 26, was born in Byrdstown, Kentucky where she attended Pickett County High School before accepting a full scholarship to Boston’s Berklee College of Music.

Sierra began playing the mandolin at the age of eight and self-released her first album, Angel Mountain, when she was only ten. As a youngster, her parents took her around to numerous bluegrass festivals where she eventually came to the attention of representatives for Rounder Records, which still serves as her record label. For Rounder, at 15, she recorded Secrets and at 20, Daybreak.

Hull’s latest Rounder recording is Weighted Mind, produced by the acclaimed banjo player Béla Fleck. The album also features talented acoustic bassist Ethan Jodziewicz, with vocal contributions by Hull’s longtime mentor, Alison Krauss. The album earned Hull a 2017 Grammy Award nomination for Best Folk Album.

With a “Sierra Hull” backdrop portraying birds in flight and a road meandering through a field, Hull takes the Grunin Center stage along with accompanist Ethan Jodziewicz. The duo opens with a number which suggests Hull’s studies at Berklee — a school known for jazz education — a brilliant rendition of jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter’s haunting composition, “Aung San Suu Kyi,” arranged for mandolin and bass.
Why SEO services are important for your Magento eCommerce website
By: Sajiv Kumar
Tags: Magento Seo Company, Synapseinteractive, Magento Seo Services, Magento Seo Experts

Do you want to see your Magento eCommerce website at the top of the Google search results? Do you want to increase online visibility and double your sales? Magento SEO services offered by a top digital marketing company like SynapseInteractive is the best solution to achieve your online business goals. There is a fierce competition in the eCommerce world and to surpass rivals & earn better ROI, your Magento online store should appear at the top of the search engine results. Our Magento SEO experts adopt a comprehensive strategy to improve your online store traffic, rankings, and online visibility. Contact us to get a cost-effective optimization plan.

Follow us on Pinterest: SynapseInteractive Magento SEO Services

Learn more: Magento SEO Services PPT or Magento SEO Services Video
Once Upon a Fairytale
By: Deanne Cirez
Tags: Lovestory, Romance, Relationships, Fiction, Dating

The Butterflies Start

Pulling up to La Mar Cebicheria Peruana¹ I felt a rush of excitement mixed with curiosity of the unknown.

The electrified buzz in the air as people were coming and going. Some holding hands. Some laughing so hard you have no choice but feel their happiness and a few stealing a few precious kisses like there is no one else in the world.

This was out of my ballpark so after giving myself the ‘you got this girl’ talk I pulled up my big girl panties and took that big step inside. It was pleasure I felt when I saw Eric. I didn’t know what to expect when Francine set me up with her cousin. Eric, who was in town for a job interview.

He was a tall man. His golden blond hair was long with the bro ‘fro happening. His sparkling blue eyes were twinkling with the light shining in them. He was wearing a well fitted suit with no tie. The top buttons of his shirt were open inviting to touch. “Mommy likes what she sees…Yummy!!!”

“Hi, I’m Eric” he said as he greeted me and gave me a peck on the cheek.

Was this a prank? I looked around but saw no one I knew or noticed any suspicious activity showing I was being filmed. There must be something going on. Girls like me don’t be seen with men like this.

“I’m Elizabeth but my friends call me Liz” I replied back inhaling his scent.

I don’t recognize the aroma but its screaming sex in my nostrils. I’m turning into a babbling idiot.

“Get yourself together Liz” I muttered to myself so low that no one can hear except me.

The interior of the restaurant was dark with candles glowing on the tables giving just enough light to provide a seductive and calm atmosphere in the room. Our table was in the corner with the perfect view of the San Francisco Bay.

The waiter came to get our drink orders and tell us about the specials of the day. Eric ordered a bottle of 2006 Malbec Blend, Cheval Des Andes, without asking my opinion. I’m not much of a wine drinker but I nodded my head like I knew what he was talking about.

I ordered Salmon La Mer. Grilled wild salmon, shrimp, seasonal vegetables, mushrooms and aji panca. Eric ordered Picante de conchas², or Conchitas Picantes. Grilled diver scallops in aji Amarillo sauce served over black lentil tacu-tacu³ and chalaca⁴, collard greens. With a menu like this I was looking forward to dessert.
How to create custom migrations in Django
By: Nensi Trambadiya
Tags: Migration, Database, Python, Web Development, Django

Recently, I stuck in a problem related to a database schema. What is the problem? Let’s understand the problem first.

There was a table that contains bank account details of a user plus user personal details. After this developed by someone else, I have to add multiple bank accounts for a user.

Let’s see the table.

The users table with bank account details.

Previous users table with a bank account details

There were two solutions comes into my mind at that time.

Create another table bank_accounts which contains bank accounts if the user adds more than 1 bank accounts. In this case, 1 bank account is in the users table and other accounts in the table. This approach does not contain any data migration. Create a separate table for all bank accounts of the user. In this case, we have to move bank account details to a new table from the table. This approach contains data migration.

I chose the 2nd solution due to the below points.

A bank account is a different entity that must be managed in a separate table.

2. CRUD operations for a bank account are easy because we have to perform these operations in the bank_accounts table only. In the 1st approach, we have to check in both users and bank_accounts table.

The users and bank_accounts tables in the #2 approach.

Updated user table

New bank_accounts table
Why So Many Product Ideas Fail?
By: Harsh Vardhan
Tags: Technology, Startup, Product Management, İnnovation, Leadership

Now let’s analyze the top five product failure reasons in little more detail to understand them better.

Reason # 1: Not Viable — Organizations don’t want

50% (half of all) of new ideas are rejected internally within the organization as they are not viable. Meaning — organizations don’t want them. There are several underlying reasons here. Few important ones are — idea isn’t aligned with the overall organizational strategy/direction; idea isn’t profitable for the business; lack of executive/leadership alignment on the value of the idea.

Reason # 2: Not Feasible — Organizations can’t build at all

20% (one-fifth of all) of new ideas are rejected internally as organizations are unable to build them. Users may like those ideas but organizations either may not have the resources or the time to build them. At the time when an idea originates, the business value isn’t greatly known. This sometimes end up in our decision to deploy resources on other ideas that later prove to be of less business value.

Reason # 3: Not Valuable — Users don’t want

12% (little more than one-tenth of all) of new ideas/products fail pre-launch or post-launch as users don’t see any value in them. This is common in organizations where product team is either spending too little time with the users (external) or too much time with the internal people within the organization. Key to success here is to spend as much time as possible with the users who will be using the product after launch. The practice of building the product and features driven solely by discovery conversation with the users is called “outside-in product development” and is a proven methodology for success.

Reason # 4: Not Usable — Users can’t use

8% (little less than one-tenth of all) of new products fail after launch as users find them complex to use. This is the area where product designers are valuable as they work with the users and design the product in such a way that it is easy to use. A good interaction and workflow design are the key here. Bigger isn’t always better. Meaning — don’t load the product with a ton of features. Adding a new feature by disrupting the workflow of the previous feature may do more harm than good.

Reason # 5: Not Timely — Organizations can’t build on time

5% of new products fail post-launch as they are launched late and unable to attract buyers. This happens when we take too long to productize and launch the idea. Time to market should be quick — good enough, soon enough. If we are not quick enough, our competitors may launch a similar or a better product sooner than us unless we are aiming for a disruptive innovation in an already saturated market (e.g. Uber).
Love’s Way
By: Wild Flower
Tags: Poetry, Life, Memories, Poem, Love

Oh broken hearts how they mend

the flutter of diamond dreams

in glittered galaxies

a sky full of everything

y o u.

An internal souvenir

of conquered landscapes

swaddled safely

in lifetimes of shared

sweeping views.

Ever d i s t a n t

but always

just a photograph away.

Bare hands once mingled,

locked fingers into

serenaded promises

of yesterday.

This is love’s way,

a momentary and

reminiscent kiss,

an alluring whisper

that tingles memories

across your skin.

Your gourmet moments

that live forever

fading only

in the distance,

to be savored

on your

rainy days.
Webinar: The Journey towards Modern Data-Driven Education | Digital Leaders
By: Digital Leaders
Tags: Data, Innovation, Education, Services, Digital Transformation

This webinar explores how the emergence of advanced data services and technologies is helping those within the education sector take control of their data assets and realise their digital transformation ambitions.

One of the largest further and higher education colleges in the UK, Belfast Metropolitan College, embarked on an ambitious journey with Neueda to become a modern data-driven leader in education.

In 2014, its centralised management reporting team struggled to meet increasing demands for timely, comprehensive and trusted data intelligence on its performance. Working in an agile, collaborative way with Belfast Met, Neueda created a modern data platform on top of their legacy systems to enable true self-service for all staff and interrogation of their full data estate. Today, real-time data capture, interrogation and reporting enables key strategic decisions to be made with confidence.

Tune in below to hear from those that took this journey — Ralph Graham, Neueda Data Delivery Manager and Lisa McCartney, Centre Manager Strategic Planning at Belfast Metropolitan College.

Originally published at https://digileaders.com.
Little Birds
By: Elizabeth Helmich
Tags: Personal Growth, Poetry, Dreams, Fantasy, Perspective

The littlest birds

Form beneath hands,

Folds upon folds of intention

Collect and build each other

As the cat on the stair swish-

Swishes her tail through feathered fantasies

Living just outside the sill.

The turning continues,

A wing takes shape,

A wee beak pokes its way

Out of a finely fingered nest

As the dog’s eyes glaze over

And little paws kick-box the air

Chasing dream cars down the street.

A hole is poked,

And a red string hangs another

Little bird’s destiny

Inside, where it’s safe

From most predators and harm,

But without the risk of failure

She never learns to fly.

Until nightfall,

When all those who dictate

What makes sense

In the world

Have dropped off, leaving

Only the cat burglar,

The detective dog,

And a little paper bird

Designed to outsmart them all.
Who Was I?
By: Ioana Andrei
Tags: Short Story, Fiction, Memories, Self, Brain

I remember fluttering my eyelids open. Then shut. Open, then shut.

His voice, calling out my name.

I remember the terror of thinking I was going to die, but not knowing what of.

I remember not remembering what had happened.

I wasn’t too sure who I was.

Before the fall.
The Appeal of Dark Comedy
By: Synthia Satkuna, Ma Candidate
Tags: Comedy, Psychology, Self, Mental Health, Dark Comedy

Whether you can admit it or not, there are many people out there who laugh during the not-so-funny scenes of a film, like the death of a specific character, who seemingly falls under the strangest of circumstances.

With dark comedy, alternatively known as black or gallows humour, sinister and distressing tropes are addressed on humourous terms and often pinpoint and highlight the paradoxes that often exist in our society.

In real life, such scenarios don’t always make sense, but other times they do. Often, the delivery of such jokes is curiously or deliciously timed, where elaborate and sometimes higher-level references are made.

Photo by Agê Barros on Unsplash — Timing is always crucial with dark comedy.

Perhaps you might find yourself rooting for the bad guy. Perhaps the bad guy is much more interesting than the protagonist. Perhaps most of us would have been the bad guy if we were presented with a similar series of terrible circumstances.

That doesn’t make you a terrible person; not by any means. It could perhaps be a reflection of the film itself, where the motives of the bad guy are fully fleshed out and are hyper-realistic, while the steadfast morality of the protagonist isn’t properly addressed.
And Then There Were None
By: Joe Váradi
Tags: Satire, Poetry, Corruption, Donald Trump, Resistance Poetry

by Joe Varadi

Ten little Trumpians, and one caught lyin'

Papadopoulos pled guilty

and then there were nine.

Flynn dined with Putin, disclosed it quite late

Foreign agent, lost his street cred,

and then there were eight.

Ivanka and Kushner, a match made in heaven

But in D.C. he done gone rogue,

and then there were seven.

One laundered fancy rugs to cover up his tricks

Them prints wer' left were Manafort’s

and then there were six.

Jeff Sessions the AG, hummin' ‘Stayin' Alive'

But that Bee Gees tune ain’t no Hail Mary,

and then there were five.

Took long enough ‘til Seb Gorka was shown the door

One bearded bigot is one too many,

and then there were four.

Li’l Donny Junior thought he’d have a look ‘n see

At the dirt Nataliya was servin' up,

and then there were three.

You need a loyal bulldog, to guard this motley zoo

‘til Mueller got Cohen to flip,

and there were two.

Decorated ex-Marine, staff sarge Kelly had a good run,

Alas, power corrupts the best of us,

and then there was one.

One little Trumpian, his friends all up ‘n gun'

His Twitter account cockblocked for good,
CryptoBonds… A Game Changer
By: Luong Hoang Anh
Tags: Cryptobonds, Blockchain, Bitcoin, Twogap

Cryotobonds are coming, are you ready for them? The current market cap is $267 billion. The Global Security Market Cap is estimated by $65 trillion in stocks plus $100 trillion in bonds. Of the $100 trillion currently in bonds, only about $700 billion of that is traded on a daily basis. To compare, there is only about $200 billion traded daily in stocks.

Russia’s Sberbank CIB is the first to get commercial bonds with the blockchain technology simultaneously while the country is trying to regulate cryptocurrency. These bonds are around $20 million, have a 6 month maturity, and a 6.8% annual coupon. Mayor Ben Bartlett of Berkeley plans to use micro bonds from blockchain technology to benefit the city for things like affordable housing for seniors and improved city transportation. He is also trying to get the prices of these bonds lower so that more people can afford them.

Crypto investors need to protect their investments with CryptoBonds. TwoGap (https://twogap.com/) is a platform based off of the Ethereum blockchain technology. The token is the ERC20 and will reduce gas prices and prevent market inflation. CryptoBonds can have fixed interest or the interest can be bidded on. In Ox Protocol, anyone can build a relayer and a fee is collected each time it helps with a trade. Relayers also help broadcast orders.

Our financial system is changing as we know it whether you’re ready or not. Cryptocurrency is here to stay as are the bonds that come along with it. Be informed and protect your investments with TwoGap’s CryptoBonds and put your mind at ease. You won’t be sorry you did!
Some Dogs Kill Chickens and That’s Okay
By: Megan Morrone
Tags: Cats, Pets, Dogs, Story Spotlight, Writing Tips

Story Spotlight

Some Dogs Kill Chickens and That’s Okay

Or why your idiosyncrasies make me feel better about mine

When I moved to Petaluma, California (former egg capital of the world), I thought I would get chickens. Instead, I got three children. And then I got a dog. Our neighbor had chickens. But they didn’t have a chicken coop or a fence. And one morning as my family was sitting down to breakfast we saw our dog, Gilbert, run past the glass doors, a cloud of white feathers in his wake. Our neighbor had one less chicken.

People are weird when they hear that our dog killed the neighbor’s chicken. But they shouldn’t be. “They are predators, after all,” Anna Venishnick Shomsky writes of dogs in her piece, “Sometimes I Like to Pretend I’m a Farmer When Really I’ve Just Collected Too Many Animals.”

What I love about Venishnick Shomsky’s story (aside from the amazing, shareable headline) is how it is both absurd and relatable. I first read this story back in August and when I was recently asked about spotlighting a story from Medium, I still remembered this line:

When we first got the dog, the cat gave me a look so scornful that she erased my personality.

And also this one:

Around nine months, my baby started saying ‘hi,’ but she said it exclusively to the cat.

Maybe you’ll read this story if you love chickens or if you love dogs who kill chickens or cats who drool on you when you try to sleep. Maybe you’ll read this if you believe in your heart that animals are better than people in all the important ways and we are lucky that they let us live with them. There are so many gems in this eight-minute read, that it’s easy to find something to relate to, even if you don’t live anywhere near the former egg capital of the world.

Too many of us are afraid to be specific in our writing, especially when referring to our own idiosyncrasies. But as a reader, that’s precisely what makes me keep reading, highlighting, and clapping like a maniac.
Brand Meets Consumer
By: Ds Media
Tags: Branding, Marketing, Storytelling, Brand Strategy, Writing

Written by Jason Rose, July 8th, 2016

This is part three of an ongoing blog series I’m dedicating to the Shapes of Stories, as theorized by sci-fi author Kurt Vonnegut. If you need to catch up, Shapes of Stories is the introductory post, followed by A Man, Woman (or Brand) in a Hole in which I discuss the “man in a hole” story shape and how it can be applied across varying mediums.

This post will discuss another of Vonnegut’s story shapes that he calls “Boy Meets Girl.” The story doesn’t have to be about a sweet young man meeting the girl or boy of his dreams but it’s an easy way to remember the shape.

The story starts with a perfectly average moment, neither bad or good, when suddenly everything is changed for the better (boy meets girl). Just when the apex of happiness is reached, everything changes for the worst (boy loses girl). But fear not, fortunes quickly reverse and all is good in the world (boy gets girl back, for good).

Visually it looks like this, remembering that the X axis is time chronologically from beginning to end and the Y axis is relative happiness from happiness upward to sadness downward.

This shape has been used in almost every rom-com, but it’s about more than our need to find a star-crossed lover — it’s about the ups, the downs, and the inherent fragility of human life. When things are blah and ordinary, we hope something great comes along. When something great comes along, we are terrified of losing it. And once we lose whatever “it” may be, we want it back.

A great example of this story trajectory can be found in the celebrity and political gossip rags that line cashier counters. How a culture tells stories about its most known individuals says much about what that culture values in a story.

This probably sounds familiar:

Person A is just an average joe or jane.

Person A accomplishes something incredible.

Person A loses it all due to some fatal human flaw.

Person A finds redemption and comes back better than ever.

As a society, we love to build our popular figures up, only to tear them down, before ultimately allowing them to win their way back into our good graces. It’s a vastly different story than the rom-com, but the same shape.

So what does this have to do with you as a marketer, creative, or doer of any sort of business?

As always, start by recognizing this shape in the wild. I guarantee you will find it used in news stories, podcasts, documentaries, books, TED talks, and throughout any media intended to educate, persuade, or entertain.

Next, try to use it yourself. People remember stories, not stats. If we want to be better communicators, we must shape our messages along the story arcs people love to consume.

You can fault Hollywood for being formulaic, but “boy meets girl” will be used in countless nausea inducing rom-coms next year for a very good reason, it still sells — use it to your advantage.

We would love to help you tell your brand story!
Crypto Market Intel: Exchanges receive 3.5 billion XRP
By: Faisal Khan
Tags: Economics, Finance, Bitcoin, Investing, Business

RIPPLE (XRP)

Crypto Market Intel: Exchanges receive 3.5 billion XRP

Almost 10% of the free float supply of XRP headed to exchanges to take advantage of a massive 114% price increase

One thing is for sure — there’s never a dull moment in Cryptoverse. At the same time, the volatility that digital assets exhibit is not for the faint of heart either. The volatility that I am talking about was completely on showcase today. The most striking pullback was seen in the premier digital asset of Bitcoin, which had been on a relentless bull run for the past many weeks.

Acting much like a mainstream financial asset, BTC reversed hard from the all-time high — technically getting rejected at the long-term resistance charted back in 2017. So far, it has moved down from $19,500 to $16,200 (or an almost 17%) correction. Similar moves were seen in almost all Alt. coins. Ethereum dropped almost 23% whereas Ripple’s token XRP, saw an even bigger drop of almost 42%.

Although most of the coins have bounced from their earlier lows, significant corrections seem to be taking shape. The confirmation will come in the days ahead. Knowing how financial markets behave, this shouldn’t be a surprise for traders and investors. Coming back to XRP, it has been a trade to watch in the last week or so — with the third-largest crypto gaining 114% over the week.

According to Chainalysis Market Intel, The 114% price increase was accompanied by huge XRP inflows to exchanges. Exchanges have received 3.5 billion XRP since Saturday 15 November. This is 10% of the free float supply — not locked up in escrow. Tuesday alone saw 1.14 billion XRP rushed into exchanges (left chart above), a larger one day inflow to exchanges than during the mid-March price fall across cryptocurrencies.

This selling pressure meant that on Tuesday the price closed 20% lower than the intra-day high and it fell further on Wednesday before rebounding a little Thursday. Talking about XRP moving to exchanges, just six exchanges received 80% of the 3.5 billion XRP received by exchanges since last Saturday. The right chart above shows the amount of XRP received by each of these six exchanges, shown by their rank in terms of the amount they received.

Analyzing the breakup of the XRP that flowed into exchanges — 57% came directly from services such as exchanges, while 43% came from self-hosted wallets. While a large amount of XRP has flowed between a small number of exchanges and a few large self-hosted wallets, Only a limited amount of XRP to exchanges appears to have come directly from the parent company Ripple.

Whatever the case may be, the massive inflow indicated that traders were looking to book come hefty profits after the vertical ascent that we have seen in XRP recently. Today certainly felt like a day in the late 2017 bull run, when we saw large prices increased outside of Bitcoin & Ethereum. Will history repeat itself? We will find out soon…

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Are You Really Where You Want To Be In Your Life?
By: Kirsty Armstrong
Tags: Self Improvement, Life Hacking, Advice, Mental Health, Mindset

Well, 2020 is almost done and dusted. The end of the year is always a time for reflection. And this year will be a reflection quite unlike any other year.

Here’s a question to reflect on: Are you happy with your life right now?

Your answer may surprise you. There may be parts of your life that you are nailing, but other parts that are not going so well.

Reflecting on our personal stuff allows us to assess where we have been in our journey, where we currently are, and where we want to be. But also, what changes we want to make.

Find direction

I have reflected on this year and how out of control it felt. To regain some of this control, my overall goal in 2021 is to be more purposeful in my choices.

I want to make decisions that have a clear direction. I want to be active in gaining momentum towards my end goal — this may seem logical, but actually doing it is not always the case.

Sometimes, I have started off with a specific goal. Still, somehow I end up fluffing around and making watered-down decisions. At the end of the day, my goals then look a little like what I wanted, but not quite.

I like to ask myself questions and try to answer them honestly.
How Social Media Has Influenced the Spread of Fake News
By: Desiree Peralta
Tags: Social Media, Life, News, Philosophy, Media

Direct consequences of fakes news

Fake news can affect many ways, starting from loss of credibility of news pages. People that read false information over and over again on a page do not feel it is providing good information, therefore little by little, it will stop being a page of frequent consultation.

Fakes news has even affected our health. With the Coronavirus, many people in a state of stress tend to overinform themselves about this pandemic, and the false news has caused many people to make mistakes from the way we protect ourselves, to self-medicating, causing major health problems.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Many products ran out because of viral messages when the pandemic began, and not because people really needed it. In the Dominican Republic, Many people risk their lives going out for a viral message that the government was going to give food aid or money.

Problems caused by fake news can even go for the defamation of an innocent person. When we worry about a cause and feel identified with a social problem, we tend to judge and point to innocent people because we feel the need to find a guilty. But this can cause us to point out people who are not involved in this problem, and even cause damage.

Can we stop this?

Unfortunately, there are too many people these days who don’t know how to use social media in a responsible way, so it is very difficult to fight against false information. As long as the controversy and the desire to be the one carrying the first news are ahead of people’s safety, it will be impossible to deal directly with this problem.

But there are certain measures that we as responsible people could adopt to prevent this type of information from spreading, for example, investigating the source of the information we are reading is reliable, verify the sources and links where the page took the information, and don’t share information that we don't think is 100% real.

Big companies that work with information like social networks have also tried to stop the spread of fake news, for example, Twitter said in May that will label and warning Covid-19 fake news, in order to prevent that fake information spread in this social media.

What other ideas can you think that we can use to stop this problem?
‘For Neurodegeneration, a Different Way to Slice the Pie’
By: Penn Engineering
Tags: Research, Neuroscience, Science, Engineering, Alzheimers

Danielle Bassett

Danielle Bassett, J. Peter Skirkanich Professor in the departments of Bioengineering and Electrical and Systems Engineering, has been called the “doyenne of network neuroscience.” The burgeoning field applies insights from the field of network science, which studies how the structure of networks relate to their performance, to the billions of neuronal connections that make up the brain.

Much of Basset’s research draws on mathematical and engineering principles to better understand how mental traits arise, but also applies them more broadly to other challenges in neuroscience.

In her latest paper, “Defining and predicting transdiagnostic categories of neurodegenerative disease,” published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering, Bassett collaborated with the Perelman School of Medicine’s Virginia Man-Yee Lee and John Trojanowski to provide a new perspective on the misfolded proteins associated with those diseases.

The researchers used machine learning techniques to create a new classification system for neurodegenerative diseases, one which may redraw the boundaries between them and help explain clinical differences in patients who received the same diagnoses.

BioWorld’s Anette Breindl spoke with Bassett about the team’s findings.

Now, investigators have developed a new approach to classifying neurodegenerative disorders that used the overall patterns of protein aggregation, rather than specific proteins, to define six clusters of patients that crossed traditional diagnostic categories. “We find that perhaps the way that clinicians have been diagnosing these disorders… is not necessarily the way these disorders work,” Danielle Bassett told BioWorld. “The way we’ve been trying to carve nature at joints is not the way that nature has joints. The joints are elsewhere.”

Continue reading Breindl’s article, “For neurodegeneration, a different way to slice the pie,” at BioWorld.
A part of East Germany which still exists on paper
By: Karthick Nambi
Tags: USA, World, History, Politi, Cuba

The love of Communism was high in the air during the cold war era from the end of World War Two to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Heightened tension involved espionage, Proxy war, the Space Race, and even took the world to the point of total nuclear war. This impressive list also includes a country cede one of its islands to another country just for Communism.

Cold War:

After the Second World War, Germany split among the allies as East Germany and West Germany. West Germany was under the influence of capitalist countries like Britain, the USA, and France. East Germany got wholly engulfed by Soviet Communism. East Germany got treatment like a new communist country. Communist countries all over the world started to support East Germany. One such county was Cuba.

Giving an Island as a gift:

Cuba was in the center stage during the entire cold war. Close to the United States of America, Cuba was a threat to US national security. East Germany and Cuba had good economic ties. In July 1972, Fidel Castro, the leader of Cuba, visited East Germany. Castro declared in state television that he would cede one island in the Caribbean sea. He named it after a famous communist leader of East Germany ,“Isla Ernesto Thälmann.”

On a funny note, East Germany gave a teddy bear to Castro for this offer. Cuba even erected a statue of Isla Ernesto Thälmann on the island and expected some East german tourists to show up during German winter. East Germany’s economy didn’t perform well, and the planned tourist never visited the island. The island became uninhabited for decades.

Unification of Germany:

When the unification of East Germany and West Germany happened, there was no mention of the Isla Ernesto Thälmann island. Cuba referred to the transfer announcement as merely symbolic and not an official ceding of the island to East Germany. During a storm, the statue of Isla Ernesto Thälmann was toppled and never got restored.

Conclusion:

At the height of the Cold War, the world witnessed many exciting events. One of them is a country ceding its island to another country voluntarily.
Emerging trends in User Experience Design
By: Abhishek Gupta
Tags: Psychology, Conversations, UX Design

1. Leveraging knowledge about the human brain and the human condition

2. Two-way conversation format for a more human experience

3. Engagement loops (habits + a meaningful journey)

1. Leveraging knowledge about the human brain and the human condition

To design delightful product experiences that make life easy, most product designers actively research how relevant people think and behave via exploratory research and usability studies.

But more and more, we are learning the basics of how information is perceived, retained and used by our brain. We are learning about our own cognitive biases as designers and those of our users. We are learning about people’s core needs, how they make choices, how behaviors emerge, why they sometimes don’t act.

2. Two-way conversation format for a more human experience

We intrinsically value the human aspects of our lives. Leveraging this principle, designers are creating more relatable and empathetic products, in contexts where it makes sense. They are learning from guiding principles used by great personal trainers and life coaches.

They are writing out scripts for the conversation a product will have if it were a person before they design screens. Employing this tactic will enrich the interactions a user will have with future products.

The goal of designing is one of the following:

persuade to act educate impart happiness simplify a task take less time to do a task

In the first 4 situations, a product’s impact can be improved, by having a more human conversation that resonates with the user.

Hana Schank’s thoughts in this article are quite noteworthy on this topic-

UX Design as a Two-Way Conversation

3. Engagement loops (habits + a meaningful journey)

Users engage with most products in ways that evolve over time. What motivates them to come back every day might be different from what keeps them coming back for weeks and months. Designers today are becoming more aware of