fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Behold the Winners of the 280-Character Story Contest
By: Electric Literature
Tags: Contests, Writing, Microfiction, Fiction, Twitter

Tamar Nachmany, “Mount Sinai”

All the electronics above my hospital bed are gossiping about when, exactly, I’m going to die. It sounds like a concert I heard in Berlin many years ago. We were told to close our eyes and listen. Static. Beeping. Rain. My monitor is the principal violin. I am not dying alone.

Stephen Aubrey is a writer and theater-maker living in Brooklyn. His writing has appeared in Publishing Genius, Commonweal, The Brooklyn Review, Pomp & Circumstance, and Electric Literature.

M. Lopes da Silva is an author and fine artist living in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Blumhouse, The California Literary Review, and Queen Mob’s Teahouse, and anthologies by Mad Scientist Journal, Gehenna & Hinnom Press, and Fantasia Divinity Publishing. She recently illustrated the Centipede Press collector’s edition of Jonathan Carroll’s The Land of Laughs.

Josh Lefkowitz won the Avery Hopwood Award for Poetry at the University of Michigan. His poems and essays have been published at The Awl, The Millions, The Rumpus, and many other places including publications in Canada, Ireland, and England. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

James Lough’s upcoming book, Short Circuits: Aphorisms, Fragments, and Literary Anomalies will be published by Schaffner Press in April. His oral history, This Ain’t No Holiday Inn: Down and Out in New York’s Chelsea Hotel 1980–1995 (Schaffner Press 2013) was optioned by Lionsgate Entertainment for TV production. He is a professor of nonfiction writing in the Savannah College of Art and Design’s writing department, which he formerly directed.

Tamar Nachmany is the director of 1010 Residency, a former writer-in-residence at the New Mexico School of Poetics, and a former Johns Hopkins University Woodrow Wilson Research Fellow. Her work has been shown at the Bell House (Baltimore), the Cullom Gallery (Seattle), the Jewish Museum of Baltimore, and other venues. She is currently writing her first novel.

Sara Lautman is a cartoonist, illustrator, and editor in Baltimore. Her drawings have been published by The New Yorker, Playboy, Mad, Jezebel, The Paris Review, The Pitchfork Review and The Awl. She is the Comics Editor for Electric Literature’s Okey-Panky, and in 2016, Recommended Reading published her illustrated “cut-up” collaboration with Shelia Heti, “The Humble Simple Thing.”

Illustrations © 2017 by Sara Lautman.
Geeks on a Train
By: Nick Plante
Tags: China, Startup

Geeks on a Train starts today!

This afternoon I’m leaving Dalian, Liaoning, China for a 10-day journey across China’s tech ecosystem with a bunch of awesome startup founders. By train. Because planes and buses are so last year.

With stops scheduled in both Beijing and Shanghai and a number of events on the schedule including tech meetups, company visits, mentor meetings, and a 10x10 mini conference in each city, it’s bound to be a fun — and delightfully chaotic — experience. I’ve really been looking forward to it.

Geeks on a Train (affectionately referred to as “GOAT”) is part of the Dalian-based Chinaccelerator program, which is a Chinese startup accelerator run by program director Cyril Ebersweiler and the good folks at SOS Ventures. I was fortunate enough to meet them through TechStars in 2010 and am really honored that they invited me over to work with some of the young teams that were accepted into the program this year. How could I say no?

Chinaccelerator itself is much like TechStars, but with a brilliant international twist. The startups here aren’t just from China, they’re from all over the world, with founders from Malaysia, Canada, Italy, the Phillipines, India, and England, as well as China and the United States. It’s really fascinating to experience both the similarities and differences of startup life on the other side of the world, but a couple philosophies remain as constants: heartfelt motivation and JFDI are key.

In the two weeks I’ve been here thus far, I’ve seen the founders produce some truly great work and make impressive progress. It’s good stuff. There’s nothing more inspiring than being trapped in a room full of crazy entrepreneurs with wildly different backgrounds who are trying to change the world.

But I can only imagine what it’s going to be like trapped on an overnight train with them :).
What Fills My Cup Up
By: Elies Hadi
Tags: Self-awareness, Spiritual Secrets, Advice, Life Lessons, Lessons Learned

What Fills My Cup Up

A reflection from a Divine Feminine

Photo by Zac Harris on Unsplash

I was recently told to take a break and do what fills my cup up. I said “YES” without hesitant only to walk out of the conversation feeling blank.

I was taken aback because I thought I was filling my cup up! Isn’t that what I’ve been doing? Doing what I love, loving what I do?

I’m super good at this self-love sh*t, so what’s missing?

So, I went to my favorite tool of all-time: Journalling! I prompted myself with questions after questions, digging deeper until it finally led to the clarity that brought me to this post.

What stood out for me is these 3 words “shake it up.”

Yes, I love what I do. I love my business. I love my clients. I love Muay Thai. I love meditation. I love journaling. I love the beach, and the list goes one.

Great news? I’ve been doing all those I love consistently, and kudos, girl! While the ritual is essential to keep the fundamental strength, as a Divine Feminine Goddess, we appreciate playfulness, spontaneity, and creativity.

The same way we put in the effort to keep the sparks alive in our romantic relationship, we are to do the same with our relationship with our soul.

After all, I’m my my own most intimate lover, am I not?

Striking the balance of ritual and spontaneity is the simple yet often neglected answer to the question of “How to fill my cup up?”

The real question is, “Are we sincerely willing to fill our cup up?”
Sharded: A New Technique To Double The Size Of PyTorch Models
By: William Falcon
Tags: Deep Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Editors Pick, Data Science, Machine Learning

Sharded: A New Technique To Double The Size Of PyTorch Models

Sharded is a new technique that helps you save over 60% memory and train models twice as large.

Giving it scale (Photo by Peter Gonzalez on Unsplash)

Deep learning models have been shown to improve with more data and more parameters. Even with the latest GPT-3 model from Open AI which uses 175B parameters, we have yet to see models plateau as the number of parameters grow.

For some domains like NLP, the workhorse model has been the Transformer which requires massive amounts of GPU memory. For realistic models, they just don’t fit in memory. The latest technique called Sharded was introduced by Microsoft’s Zero paper in which they develop a technique to bring us closer to 1 trillion parameters.

In this article, I will give the intuition behind sharded, and show you how to leverage this with PyTorch today to train models with twice the memory in just a few minutes.

This capability in PyTorch is now available thanks to a collaboration between Facebook AI Research’s FairScale team and the PyTorch Lightning team.

By the way, I write about the latest in deep learning, explain intuition behind methods and tricks to optimize PyTorch. If you enjoy this type of articles, follow me on twitter for more content like this!
Review: Residual Attention Network — Attention-Aware Features (Image Classification)
By: Sik-Ho Tsang
Tags: Image Classification, Deep Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Machine Learning

Review: Residual Attention Network — Attention-Aware Features (Image Classification)

In this story, Residual Attention Network, by SenseTime, Tsinghua University, Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), and Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, is reviewed. Multiple attention module is stacked to generate attention-aware features. Attention residual learning is used for very deep network. Finally, this is a 2017 CVPR paper with over 200 citations. (Sik-Ho Tsang @ Medium)
Introduction to Big Data & Hadoop
By: Venkatesh Pensalwar
Tags: Technology, Arth, Big Data, Hadoop

In order to understand whats is Big data and Hadoop, you need to understand what is data.

What is data?

In general, data is any set of characters that is gathered and translated for some purpose, usually analysis.

What is Big Data?

Big Data is also data but with a huge size. Big Data is a term used to describe a collection of data that is huge in volume and growing with time. In short such data is so large that none of the traditional data management techniques are able to store it and process it efficiently.

Big Data Examples

Big data is getting bigger every minute in almost every sector. The volume of data processing we are talking about is mind-boggling. Here is some information to give you an idea.:

The weather channels receive 18,055,555 forecast requests every minute.

Netflix users stream 97,222 hours of video every minute.

Twitter users post 473,400 tweets every minute.

Facebook generates 4 new petabytes of data per day.

A single Jet engine can generate 10+terabytes of data in 30 minutes of flight time. With many thousand flights per day, the generation of data reaches up to many Petabytes.

you can check the states from here: https://www.internetlivestats.com/

Types Of Big Data

BigData’ could be found in three forms:

Structured Unstructured Semi-structured

Structured

Any data that can be stored, accessed, and processed in the form of fixed-format is termed as a ‘structured’ data. Over the period of time, talent in computer science has achieved greater success in developing techniques for working with such kind of data (where the format is well known in advance) and also deriving value out of it.

Unstructured

Any data with the unknown form of the structure is classified as unstructured data. In addition to the size being huge, unstructured data poses multiple challenges in terms of its processing for deriving value out of it. A typical example of unstructured data is data containing a combination of simple text files, images, videos, etc.

Semi-structured

Semi-structured data can contain both forms of data that is structured and unstructured

Characteristics of Big Data
How to Make Disney’s Vegan Dole Whip at Home
By: Kayla Voigt
Tags: Dupes, Food, Food Hacks, Vegan, Disney

How to Make Disney’s Vegan Dole Whip at Home

Disney released the cult-favorite recipe so you can transport yourself to the parks anytime

I grew up in a house that had rules — and they were reasonable ones. No sugary cereal, no staying up past 10:00 PM, no computer time until after homework was done.

But on vacation, there were no rules.

I remember standing outside the gates for the Tomorrowland Speedway in Magic Kingdom, watching kids crammed into brightly-colored cars bump along the track. The Florida sun made the day muggy already as I bit into the Mickey-shaped bar, chocolate and ice cream dripping down my hand faster than I could slurp it.

It was 9:30 AM.

That was only the first ice cream stop. As we worked our way around Magic Kingdom, we finished up the afternoon in Adventureland. Still singing “Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me!” we waited in line at the colorful stand at Aloha Aisle for another round.

What emerged from the dispensers wasn’t ice cream, but a deliciously creamy pineapple treat. Disney has been serving Dole Whip at Walt Disney World since 1986, but on the day I discovered it, it was like what Aladdin sings to Jasmine on a magic carpet ride: a whole new world.

Dole Whip is a cult-favorite snack at Disney, and I’m not exaggerating when I say it’s the best snack the parks have to offer. You can only find it in a few places at the parks — so I always make time to wait in line for a chance to cool down.

I’m holding out that I’ll still be able to return to Disney later this year, but until it reopens, I’m whipping up my own Dole Whip at home, thanks to Disney releasing the recipe on the My Disney Experience app.
We Are Paying $5 A Month
By: Agnes Louis
Tags: Gratitude, Writing, Médium, Life, Writer

I stared at the numbers in disbelief. I refreshed the page repeatedly, hoping it was just some glitch, that the earning was just not calculated yet.

With a heavy heart, I had to accepted what was to be my new reality.

The rule changed and I suffered some losses as a result. Other than adding to complaints already mounting in the platform, there really wasn’t much I could do about my disappointment.

I started with earning $28.30 on October 2018, slowly building up to finally reached my all-time best of $410.64 on September 2019 (took me almost a year) only to have it dropped to $142.22 on November 2019. All with one change of MPP rule. The earning has never really climbed up ever since.

As with many of the writers here who have been thriving on poems and short stories, I was extremely disappointed.

But I knew I had to deal with it and move on.

I probably earn a bit more than others these days, a little under a hundred, a little more than a hundred some months. But I haven’t earned as much as I used to ever since the rule changed.

I still write poems and short stories. I write long stories/articles too but I refuse to lengthen and puff up my work only for the sake of reading time and earnings.

I say what I want to say, what I need to say and what I think needed to be said. I am here to express myself, to talk to you, to the world.

Everything else is a bonus.

Here to have a meaningful conversation with you. Photo by Etienne Boulanger on Unsplash

I was very upset in the beginning. How could they? Don’t they know how hard I work to build my readership and learn my craft? How can they value short narratives less than the long ones?

I talked to my husband, my brother and my best friend about what happened, about my disappointment. They listened and nodded in sympathy. They knew how hard I work on my Medium.

I was angry at one point.

What the hell? A voice yelled in my head.

Oh, the unfairness of it all.

That must be how Icarus felt as he plunged into the Aegean sea.

I was mad. I was very very mad.

Until I sat down with the numbers.

And then I was ashamed for being angry.
What You Don’t Know About Your Competitors
By: Julie Naidu
Tags: Strategy, Marketing, Advertising, Research

What You Don’t Know About Your Competitors

How purchase data gives a broader view of your competition

When you’re sizing up your brand’s competition, where do you typically look?Sometimes, we look at the category through the lens of product features. For example, ice cream competitors can be divided into the different formats (tubs, bars, cones, etc.). Still, in this case, you could also look at the competition in terms of the audience segment (health conscious, millennial, moms, etc.).

However, identifying your competitors through product features or audience segmentation can prevent you from seeing how broadly your brand competes.

The reality is that consumers do not exclusively buy a product format (i.e. ice cream bars) or a product designed for their audience segment (i.e. organic). Instead, per a previous blog post “5 Lies We’ve Been Fed About Brand Loyalty,” most consumers are occasional buyers who will buy ice cream bars on one occasion and opt for the organic offering on another. To understand the true buying behavior of a product, Byron Sharp recommends using “duplication of purchase” analysis to see the overlap of buyers in a category. Below is an example of duplication of purchase analysis for the ice cream category:

The Duplication of Purchase Law indicates that the degree of buyer overlap in a category aligns with a brand’s penetration in the market. In other words, a brand shares a greater percentage of buyers with the biggest brands in the category and a smaller percentage of buyers with the smallest brands in the category. In the example above, you can see that all of the brands in the analysis share the most buyers with with the largest brand, Carte D’Or (second column) and the least number of buyers with the smallest brand, Mars (seventh column).

Key Takeaway: Sharpe’s research tells us that a brand’s competition is not based on how it is positioned in the market, but by the other brands purchased in the category.

Moving forward we should supplement our competitive audits with purchase data to understand the structure of the market and guide the category definition so we can keep our brand distinct.
Welcome To The Wilderness
By: Jordin James
Tags: Blue Insights, Spirituality, Self, Psychology, Poetry

It’s okay to pause here

Here in between the promise and the things you know

It’s not that you want to go back to how things were

It’s just that familiar things are hard to discard

It’s just that the future seems so hard

And unknown

And scary

Welcome to the wilderness

It’s okay to pause here

And let the spirits of the Wild come and dance around you

Let them welcome you to your initiation into the Wild inside of you

While you wail for all you’ve given up to get here

Welcome to the wilderness

As the Wild rips off your clothes and dons you with dirt

You sob for how terribly uncharted this territory is

Surely you did not have to take the red pill

Surely you could have found a way to stay comfortable

Surely you could have made yourself smaller for them

You could have betrayed yourself just a little more

You could have fallen asleep

“Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!”

Chants the Wild

Spinning you around until you can no longer keep a finger

In the dam inside your belly

Out comes terror

Greif

And rage

Wailing and screaming

Wailing and screaming

And you realize the wails of the Wild dance in time with your own

Their screams echo yours

Their cry is your cry

It has always been

“Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!”

Chant the trees

Chant the wolves

As you weep and gnash your teeth

The release of your tears

Your voice finally being used

And the vines of terror creeping up your veins

Are an invitation to realize your soul does not want comfort

Your soul wants this

This moment

Experiencing everything you experience

The places they used to fit you

Cannot hold this

They cannot hold your full experience

They cannot hold your grief

Your rage

Your terror

Your joy

Only the Wild has space for you

To be who you are

It’s okay to pause here

Here in between the promise and the things you know

It’s okay to take your finger out of the dam

And let your wild out

After all, you are in the wilderness now

What else is there to do

Other than be yourself?

The moment you took the red pill

The moment you woke up

Is the moment you gifted yourself with the space

To be yourself

To feel what you feel

To use your voice

Yes, it is terrifying

But it is you

And it is beautiful

And for the first time in a long time

You are living

Welcome to the wilderness, darling.

Welcome to you.
What Exactly Is Creativity?
By: Joshua Idegbere
Tags: Writers On Writing, Inspiration, Artist, Creativity, Art

Creativity is giving yourself the freedom to share your truth. Not standing in your own way, not judging yourself on the idea still in your mind but allowing them flow through your fingers without judgement. That is what creativity is.

Creativity is freely sharing your truth with the world and yourself without judgement.

If you share your truth without freedom, that’s not creativity. Creativity is about making something that’s never existed without fear or judgement.

That’s creativity.
Keep Writing
By: Nicole Ivy
Tags: Writing, Life, 100 Naked Words, Challenge, Determination

Your Path by Nicole Ivy

I know it’s only the first week for me on 100 Naked Words but sometimes I feel like giving up. The truth is, it’s hard to create something that I’m okay with posting everyday. And I don’t want to force it. I know that the situation I’m in right now won’t make it easy to keep up.

I’m a volunteer at a sustainable eco-village community in Florida. This means I don’t have the easiest access to wifi. And as an introvert, it takes a lot of energy to go to a new place and meet so many new faces and personalities. I’ve also had to change everything about my routine. And I’m living in a tent. Having to create something I feel proud enough to share on Medium is challenging. I’m tired!

But…

I am so grateful that I keep choosing things for myself that are interesting, meaningful and fun. I didn’t used to live my life that way. I’m making more of my choices based on what I love and value rather than on fear. I’m going to be learning skills and more about permaculture. I’m living in paradise! It’s never perfect but I’m just so grateful that I’m living in choice rather than habit and the beaten path.

The past 5 years have shown me that I can do anything. So I will rise to the challenge, 100 Naked Words! Let’s do this!
Meanwhile in America
By: Hank Edson
Tags: Inspiration, Humor, Writing, Poetry, Writing Tips

Alarming news! In from the New Yorker,

That the health of poor Poesy has gotten worse!

There are many theories and we have from her doctor

That what’s bad for her heart is free verse.

“She was desperate,” said her husband, Time,

“She had strayed so far that she could not tell

If music was carried away in the crime,

Elsewhere bound, exerting good, hot hell.”

Grandson Rap broke in: “What the hammer is happenin?

Man, don’t jive, Nana, she live, and rhyme thrive

Like bongos clappin’, hands a slappin’, an’ fires crackin’

At Pop with an edge she give, actin’ youn’, tryin’ to live ~”

Then in with a hush ~ the Government Minister

To read the last rights: “Whatever must be, must be…

Please trust in your will’s administrator…

Who we will appoint, whose views are not so lusty.”

That’s the story; what can we say? Not much.

Our only choice is to become the predator,

Not exactly to devour, but only to touch

Your human fragility; no matter the editor.
Building the Tree of Knowledge — Exploring the Use Case for Educational Chatbots
Tags: Edtech, Artificial Intelligence, Chatbots, Technology, Education

Building the Tree of Knowledge — Exploring the Use Case for Educational Chatbots aXcelerate Follow Apr 11, 2018 · 3 min read

With an increasing number of tech giants getting into the business of the smart home assistant, modern life is edging closer and closer to a sci-fi movie’s depiction of future home life.

“Hey Siri, add bananas to my shopping list.”

“Alexa, buy more deodorant.”

“Ok Google, set my alarm for 7 AM.”

Beneath the dazzling home control functionalities and fancy voice interactions lies the essence of a chatbot program, which maps human utterances to intents, and from intents reaches programs to carry out the intended tasks:

Utterance → intent → task procedures → output

This is the exact model of Amazon’s Alexa, and its outputs carry out hundreds of services: ticket booking, food ordering, hotel room reservation, and more.

Smart Assistants in Education

While the use case for an education industry chatbot may be slightly different, its primary purpose is to retrieve the knowledge required by the student — be it disambiguation of concepts, clarification of contexts, or fetching resources. Like home assistants, it too is only bound by one intent: information retrieval.

The assistant may solely depend on a single or a combination of several NLP (natural language processing) algorithms to handle the query, but without the proper structuring of data, NLP algorithms alone will only generate a fixed percentage of wrong outputs.

Sensible curation of data is essential for effective information retrieval. Data is organised as an index list for a search engine, but for a domain-specific knowledge base, information is adapted into a tree structure. There is a reason we use the phrase knowledge tree — the tree branches out as knowledge goes from general to specific, from low-resolution to high-definition.

The Tree of Knowledge

Knowledge points are put together as tree nodes, and the identification of the most relevant topic is simply a traversal of the tree, each step being guided by a particular filter function.

‍The transformation of Wikipedia’s knowledge base for “Anthropology” into a tree structure. Answering a query takes log(n) time in complexity.

Organising the data in a way that’s optimal for the intended task is essential to information retrieval. A tree structure will enable a fast and accurate query, which makes it an ideal way to structure a chatbot’s knowledge base.
Objectivity is Dying. This is What Comes Next.
By: Phil Rosen
Tags: Election 2020, Politics, Journalism, News, Government

For better or worse, partisan journalism is here to stay.

Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash

The arbiters of information, perpetual seekers of a scoop, the sometimes-affirming, sometimes-spurious mouthpieces of the body politic — call them media, call them press, these are the hats of a journalist.

These roles of the press remain today, and have remained as such since the inception of the profession. The speed, pressures and influence of reporting, however, have evolved with dramatic effect.

Pamphlets and periodicals marked humanity’s initial foray into the world of news; penny papers followed shortly thereafter.

The Boston News-Letter of 1704 was America’s first regular newspaper. At the time, the news of the day could more aptly be described as the news of last week, sometimes last month. Information moved like a cloud in a windless sky.

Local news took the slow lane (the fastest lane available at the time) and intercontinental news traveled as if by sloth. The advent of the telegraph in the mid-19th century extended the reach of news.

Innovations abound, the swiftness with which information spread skyrocketed.

An evolution was under way: hearsay from a tête-à-tête at the local watering hole became ink on a newspaper, which ultimately beget the enterprise that is the news media industry.

The onset of printed news as a new medium was not without a ripple effect (McLuhan’s dictum comes to mind). What started as a new form of information dissemination became not only a lens with which to view the world, it became the lens.

Independent thought became greatly crowdsourced. To ensure you were keeping abreast, top reporters and journalists could — via newspaper column or periodical — sit in with your morning coffee or afternoon biscuit.

The news (i.e. the press, the media, journalists) became the mouthpiece of the nation, the means with which places and events interacted and danced within the minds of the public.
I Write Erotica… And It’s So Boring
By: Diane Lee
Tags: Publishing, Nonfiction, Sex, Self, Erotica

The stories I write are erotic shorts, around 5,000–8,000 words in length, retailing for the tried and tested price point of $2.99. I create “chapters” of around 500–800 words that move the story along. Each chapter has a “cliff hanger” that usually ends with the sex almost happening, but not quite. The stories have one main character — the cool, older chick — and one or two minor players. Emphasis on the players.

My readers (such as they are) say the stories are fabulous. They say the stories are witty, well-written and (as much as possible) have a satisfying character arc. My writing process is that I outline the story, write it with placeholders where the sex should go, then go back and add in the sexy times once the story is complete. And it’s this going back to fill in the sex gaps that is boring to me. Coming (pun intended) up with various descriptions and synonyms for my characters getting hot and heavy in its various forms and shapes and permutations, is creatively taxing. Tab A. Slot B. Slot B.Tab A.

I wish I found it exciting. I wish I didn’t find it formulaic. I wish I didn’t have to grapple with the myriad of ways to describe a tongue going into places it probably wasn’t designed for. Or the waves of pleasure washing over one as one is about to ride the cusp of eternal bliss via aforementioned tongue. Or getting graphic with words or language I never use ordinarily like See You Next Tuesday.

I always thought I was comfortable with sex. Yes, I’m vanilla. I’ve never had a threesome or been interested in one. Hell, I don’t even like sharing my food. I don’t do anything that involves an implement (organic or inorganic) near the vicinity of my butt. I don’t dress up, mainly because I can’t be bothered. But within the bounds of vanilla, is definitely some strawberry: I like the lights on. Afternoons and mornings are lovely times of day for getting jiggy with it. Up against the furniture is fine. Anything involving water, I’m there. Ditto cream and chocolate sauce.

So maybe it’s not so much that I find writing erotica boring (which I do) but more that I’d rather write about sex in the context of human relationships and emotional connections. An exploration of feelings and attachment and physicality.

Because that, in all its messy beauty, is never boring.
Puffin 全雲端上網隔離：應用篇
By: Cloudmosa
Tags: Cloud Computing, Cybersecurity, Remote, Web Development, Cloud

CloudMosa’s mission is to empower the world’s phones through cloud computing and make them universally powerful and useful.

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Circularity in General
By: Ilexa Yardley
Tags: Relationships, Quantum Computing, Deep Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Reality

Circularity in General

The (Real) Theory of Everything

Photo by Shapelined on Unsplash

What is the circular theory?

Nature is balanced (and explained) by the circle between any X and Y…

Why is this relevant?

Two is the most basic number (not one) thus 50–50 explains everything (complementarity is the basis for identity) …

How does it affect me? My life?

Observation is 50% flawed. The opposite of everything is always hidden in the background (any movement makes the opposing movement real) …

Meaning?

You have to use circular logic to get to the truth…

Circular Logic?

Hidden behind any ‘one’ is some ‘other’ ‘one’… thus, the circle is conserved (circularity is the core dynamic in nature).

So, why is this important?

It explains (actually, it predicts) behavior in all systems…

Conservation of the Circle is the core dynamic in Nature.
Love is Patient, Love is Kind, Love is Scary
By: Tiffany Hsu
Tags: Relationships, Love, Marriage, Trust, Dating

Your endorphins are high, serotonin is running rampant, and oxytocin is overtaking your actions. You’re giving your vulnerabilities and opening up your heart to someone who was once a stranger.

You are in love.

Love is one of the best feelings you can ever experience. It’s a feeling or an experience that we continuously sought after. For no rhyme or reason, we crave it.

Love is innate, and we need it.

When you’re in love, it feels like nothing can bring you down. You have a person who will always hold you up and be your foundation. Everything will be alright.

Until your endorphins level out, your serotonin is coming to a peaceful walk, and your oxytocin is enabling you to take control. You’re more vulnerable than you once were to someone who was once a stranger.

Are you still in love?

Love is now one of the scariest feelings you can ever experience. You start to feel comfortable. Nothing is new. You still crave it, but you start doubting.
Sketch or Figma which is better for UX Designers?
By: Sathish Kumar
Tags: UX Design, Design, UI Design, Design Tools, UX

Becoming a UX UI Designer is not that tough, but choosing which tool to use for designing is quite difficult. There are a lot of softwares which does pretty much the same thing like Adobe XD, Figma & Sketch which is turning your ideas into low to high fidelity prototypes.

Which one should you start with?

If you are a beginner in design and don’t know which one to pick and start learning, in my opinion I would recommend either Figma or Sketch. But let’s see what things you might need to know while using these two when you are working in a small scale design agency or if you are in a large company.

Figma or Sketch, which is better?

Before jumping into which software is better, you need to understand what you can do with both these tools and in what ways it will help you wether you are working in a small design agency or a large company, wether if it is a small project are a large scale project. Lets see the pros & cons of both these from my experience using these in my design journey.

Figma

User friendly & easy to learn

Easy to animate your prototypes

Provides easy realtime collaboration with team mates

Works best for small to big scale projects

Free to use

Paid features are available which is not needed if you are working on a small level projects

Sketch

Little bit of learning curve needed to get used to the tool

It is a paid tool with 30 days free trial which is a downside

Better to work with complicated components and style guides

Not best suited for animating prototypes

Previewing designs & prototypes is not that better when compared to figma

In my experience I would definitely say that Figma is much better than Sketch to use as a design tool. But if you land in a company which doesn’t uses the tool that you like to use, you just have to keep that aside and learn what is needed. But all these design tools wether if its Figma or Sketch or Xd is incomplete when its needs a design handoff and you need to know a little bit of other helpful tools which I will talk about in my upcoming posts.
Friends On Medium
By: Floyd Mori
Tags: Medium, Friends, Gratitude, Writing, Reading

Friends On Medium

Thanks for your help and example

Photo by Simon Hattinga Verschure on Unsplash

Although I have not personally met anyone on Medium, there are some people on the platform that I can consider as friends. They have responded to me, and I have responded to them. They have been kind and encouraging. They have made me feel good, and they make this experience worthwhile.

The editors who have published my stories have been nice. Sometimes they clap after they have published a story. Sometimes they make a nice comment. Sometimes they offer advice. Those are encouraging and helpful.

There was one very negative person whose writing I read a few times. It seemed that she had some of the same views as I do, but then I found that she puts a derogatory spin on things. I have decided not to read any more of her work. She is the only one I have found like that.

Thanks to all the writers on Medium who spend hours writing and sharing ideas and experiences. Thanks to the editors who publish the many articles and stories. Thanks to Medium for providing this platform. It is interesting and informative. Hopefully, it will be around for a long, long time.

Thanks for the friends I have “met” on Medium. Your friendship and kindness have enriched my life and many lives. Even though it is unlikely that anyone will meet other writers on Medium in person, it is nice to virtually meet new people who share your views — or not.

There is so much good material to read on Medium from the thousands of writers who participate. It’s too bad we don’t have enough time to read more of your work.

Good luck and success to everyone who writes and reads on Medium.
Of writers and their writings
By: Somsubhra Banerjee
Tags: Fiction, Literary Impulse, Writing, Poetry, Letters From Li

LI Weekly Editorial

Of writers and their writings

Literary Impulse mini-edition is live!

Artwork by Bettina Baldassari

As writers and poets, we scribble on, weaving a multitude of stories, every day, or once in a few days. Some of what we compose, we find it closer to our heart, than the others, and alternatively our readers, sometimes, appreciate those “less close to our heart” pieces much, much more, which makes me think about the rainbow of perspectives, that each of us has, and tells a lot about how and why someone connects to a particular piece more than the others.

While I delved quite deep into these, a weird thought entered me, I wondered, If, just like we remember the best pieces we have written, do those pieces remember us too? As a result of the ink and the paper dancing together in sync, the poems that we compose, do they remember those fingers that crafted them, molding them, giving them an identity for a wider audience or for the writer’s own self? Do they feel as ecstatic as the writer, once the piece, written from the heart, is completed? And do they get affected by the criticisms too, just like the writer does, sometimes?

Although a bit weird, I would still love to listen to all of your takes on this little thought.
How to Setup a New Project with Python Env
By: Rute Figueiredo
Tags: Python Programming, Python3, Python, Virtual Environment, Basic Python

I’m writing this content to help you understand the best way to setup a new project with Python and using virtual environments properly.

An illustrative image for how Virtual Environments works

The fact is when I learned about Virtual Environments I didn’t realize how they could be used in a way that would help to scale and maintain my projects. If they used right it is a true powerful tool and it could help you to understand some concepts to isolate tools used in projects and never more feel lost with the packages you are using for a specific project. Why is that?

When you create a virtual environment and activate it, when you install packages that have the tools you need for that project you are installing only inside that environment and by doing that you are isolating the project and if you need to run that project on another machine you can trace all packages you need for that project and install in an automated way.

But enough talk, let’s setup a new project:

First create a project directory/folder on you machine. I’m going to guide you through Linux commands (I’m using two commands with &&, that is used to run a command after another successfully, the first command creates a directory on my current directory and the other changes current directory to that one created):

mkdir myproject && cd myproject

2. Create the virtual environment inside your project directory, with some obvious name (in this case I’m calling “env”):

python3 -m venv env

3. Put the directory of your virtual environment to “.gitignore” file. This would be useful to when you add your project to git, the packages wouldn’t be added to the repository, maintaining your repository clean of junk.

echo 'env' > .gitignore

4. Activate the environment (and every time you will work on that project you have to do this step to work inside your environment):

source env/bin/activate

5. Now when you install a package it will installed in your environment:

pip install django

6. Freeze the requirements. Every time you install or remove packages from that environment you should record that to a file that stores all packages necessary to that project (this is the file you should add to your git repository for that project):

pip freeze > requirements.txt

7. If you need to install the requirements for that project you would use that file created before:

python -m pip install -r requirements.txt

I’m new to blog posting so if you have some tips or contributions for me to grow in this business I appreciate. My mission with this is to help everyone with possible struggles we all have in the beginning with software development and some other IT stuff. So if you have anything that you wanted me to write about it I’m open too. Thank you for reading this and I hope that it helped you.
Meaning
By: Thomas Gaudex
Tags: Poetry, Life, Mental Health, Poem, Nature

Meaning

A Poem

Photo by Luisa Denu on Unsplash

leave me on the sand

in the rotation

of raging waves

and bluish caresses

this is where I try

to understand

the meaning of everything
6 Technologies That Will Make You a Wanted Front-end Developer in 2021
By: Piero Borrelli
Tags: Technology, Software Engineering, Work, Programming, Web Development

6 Technologies That Will Make You a Wanted Front-end Developer in 2021

How to choose your next move in your career, and turn it for the better

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

Do you want to change your developer’s career for the better in 2021?

Maybe you want to move to a better-paying position. Or maybe you want to switch to a company working with the latest technologies.

I believe that improving your position as a developer is always possible. You just need to gain the right knowledge. The one that companies are looking for, the one that is the most paid and that fills out the Glassdoor jobs announcements.

“When I began my developer’s career, I was working with a lot of legacy projects involving Java. As time passed, however, my interest in JavaScript technologies grew, so I learned Node. I knew that this technology was growing at the time. So it was super easy for me to change my employer, upgrading my salary and starting to work with a more modern tech stack. Now, there was still a part of my job rotating around old AngularJS code. Yet, I knew that if I wanted to grow again and improve my position again, I had to switch to a newer technology. So I learned the basics of React. Those basics allowed me to fulfil a position in the company I’m working for right now, where I’ve increasingly gained knowledge about this framework, which is highly marketable and has opened to me the doors for a lot more occasions.”

So you see, being a developer is also made of considerations like the one I just showed you. How can you be more marketable? What should you know to land a better position?

To answer these questions for you, I’ve created the list you will find below of technologies I’m convinced you should learn in 2021.
Curate With Me :)
By: Arihant Verma
Tags: Storytelling, Chrome Extension, Lol, Lollistoflit, Chrome

If you want to help me curate this weekly, please send an email to arihantverma1994[at]gmail[dot]com with the subject:

Interested in curation of LOL

and I’d be happy to add you as the editor of this medium pub after a brief chat 😃
RightMesh Bi-Weekly Update: January 13, 2018
By: Amber Mclennan
Tags: Blockchain, Startup, Mesh Networking, Mesh, Rmweeklyupdate

TL:DR

Second Global Ambassador, Hiten Shah, announced;

RightMesh welcomes our two newest software engineers;

RightMesh Co-op, Keefer Rourke, awarded Ian Pavlinic Memorial Award for Innovation.

Press

RightMesh Welcomes Second Ambassador, Hiten Shah (India)

We are very excited to officially welcome Hiten Shah as our second RightMesh Ambassador!

Hiten first discovered the RightMesh project in early 2018, when he came across our home page and the line, ‘Connecting the next billion without infrastructure’, caught his attention.

Although he wasn’t familiar with mobile mesh networking at the time, Hiten started reading everything he could and asking a ton of questions to the RightMesh team in our online community.

His thought provoking questions and passion for the project was infectious, so a few months later, our team invited Hiten to be our Online Community Manager. After nearly 11 months of working with our team, Hiten is ready to take on a larger role within the company by representing RightMesh in his local community.

Hiten’s understanding of RightMesh, having come from within our community, and his desire to bring connectivity to the 65% of India’s population without internet, make him an excellent addition to our growing global team.

2018 Co-op of the Year Awarded to Keefer Rourke

We’re excited to announce that Keefer Rourke, RightMesh Software Developer and student in the School of Computer Science, has been named the University of Guelph’s Co-op Student of the Year 2018 — Ian Pavlinic Memorial Award for Innovation.

The Ian Pavlinic Memorial award recognizes the outstanding contributions of a student in the areas of academic achievement, workplace performance, innovation, contributions, involvement within the community, and impact during the work term. Keefer went above and beyond in all categories.

Developer Team Growth

The RightMesh team is excited to welcome our two newest software engineers, Dean Neumann as our VP of Engineering and Ming Hu as our Senior Software Engineer, to our growing developer team.

Collectively, they bring over 43 years experience in software development and a plethora of knowledge to share throughout the organization.

RightMesh Has Moved to Rocket.Chat

Don’t forget that we have transitioned our main channel of communications from Telegram to Rocket.Chat.

With Rocket.Chat, community members can participate in conversations that specifically interest you and avoid the ones that don’t. We can take deeper dives into specific subject matters and spark more productive conversations by segmenting topics into clearly defined channels including:

#tech

#bizdev

#rmesh

#use-cases

#announcements

#careers

#press

#chinese-channel

#russian-channel

#support

#rocketchat-feedback

Stay in touch:
How I Made My First £1,000 As A Freelance Writer
By: Tonte Bo Douglas
Tags: Freelance, Freelancing, Freelance Writer, Writing, Writer

Pitch Yourself Relentlessly

I looked for publications that posted written content in my niche and interests, made a list of them, and pitched. Relentlessly.

At the start when you don’t have a big name as a writer it’s highly unlikely that people will contact you directly to start writing for them, hence, you will need to reach out to them.

You will need to introduce yourself to them — whether that’s by finding the contact email on their website or by finding the editor on Linkedin, Twitter, or elsewhere on social media. However you can, you need to open the lines of communication with them.

Let them know who you are, what your main areas of writing are, and what you have to offer for them as a freelance writer. Send links to your portfolio so they can see it. It’s important that you have an idea of exactly what you can offer the publication/brand and why your portfolio is even relevant to them because they need to know why they should give you an opportunity over someone else.

They may have a brief of the types of pitches that they take. Or they have a specific type of content they produce. Your job is to tailor your pitch to what you think they are looking for in new writers for their platform.

The harsh reality is that you may not get any replies to your pitches. You may simply get a reply saying they aren’t taking pitches or new work right now. That is the name of the game. Keep going. Keep sending your pitches out.

I was lucky in that in my first month of seriously pitching myself as a writer, I pitched myself to a connection of a known publication, with who I had a rapport due to my support of her brand for some years. I made it clear what I wished to offer the blog publication and I showcased my passion for delivering quality work to them.

I was given the opportunity to deliver a trial piece of work for the publication and see where it went from there.