fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
How to Change the Voice Inside Your Head
By: May Pang
Tags: Mental Health, Life Lessons, Personal Development, Self, Life

How to Change the Voice Inside Your Head

Go from being your own worst enemy to your own best friend

Photo by Tengyart on Unsplash

Play along on a thought experiment with me.

Imagine one of those days where everything just seems to be going your way.

You woke up feeling amazing, the air smelled like spring, you had the perfect cup of coffee, and you spent the day laughing with your best friends. You’re not really sure what was so awesome about that day, only that you felt great.

As you sit reflecting on this perfect day, out of nowhere, a tiny voice inside your head says,

“I’m anxious.”

What do you do?

Do you try to silence it?

“Pfftt, what are you talking about? We just had a perfect day!”

Then proceed to ignore it?

Or do you give in to it?

“Oh my God, I don’t have a job, I really couldn’t afford that last cocktail.”

And allow it to spiral out of control?

I had grown up my entire life thinking there were only two ways to deal with the voice inside my head — to ignore it or to listen to it.

Now, I know there is a third.

But before we can change anything, we must first be able to recognize it. So, here are what the three voices look like.
#songhecrucche: 9ª puntata
By: Tommaso Lana
Tags: Kreismusik, Käptn Peng, Die Tentakel Von Delphi, Mucke, Germania

in Both Sides of the Table
Do Not Read
By: Martin Rushton
Tags: Overcoming Obstacles, Writing, Dyslexia, Poetry, Poetry On Medium

Do Not Read

A poem about me before I found poetry

Photo by Kinga Cichewicz on Unsplash

I thought I'd write a poem,

About how I used to be.

Before I started reading,

And writing poetry.

At school, I was a rebel,

And didn't do very well.

Studying English language,

And literature was hell.

After school, it was a godsend,

I didn't have to read.

Video games and television,

Would be all I really need.

It wasn't because I'm lazy,

But I struggled in that area.

Words on paper got mixed up,

I suffered from dyslexia.

In a house with over 200 books,

Five of which are mine.

I still can't bare to pick them up,

Even though I have the time.

In lockdown I found poetry,

Reading was now fun.

And now it doesn't feel like,

Against my head, there is a gun.

So now I've taken up a pen,

And scribbled down some verse.

The rhymes just seem to flow right out,

Dyslexia may reverse.

So to everyone that reads this,

And gives me 50 claps.

Encourages me to write some more,

And a chapbook could be, perhaps.
5 Signs You’re Getting Christmas Carol’d
By: Frankie G.
Tags: Humor, Satire, Parody, Christmas, Holidays

It’s the holiday season, which means that as much as 9.2% of the population will wind up being taught a supernatural lesson about charity & generosity. But, unless your name is Ebeneezer Scrooge, it’s not always obvious when it’s happening to you! So, we compiled this handy list of five ways to know if you’re getting Carol’d this Christmas:

You are a wealthy, lonely miser. This is a pretty reliable indicator that you might be getting Carol’d. 99% of all wealthy misers need to learn that money isn’t everything, and because they’re so rich & special, God is willing to send ghosts to teach them lessons, instead of just ruining their lives like with poorer sinners. Lucky you! You are confronted by the ghost of your dead business partner warning you of three other ghosts to follow. Yikes. This is never a good sign. If your ex-partner shows up moaning, in chains, full of ill portent, there’s a strong chance that, uh, yeah, you’re probably getting Carol’d. You meet the Ghost of Christmas Past, Present, & Future. If you meet supernatural beings during the holidays, you’re definitely at the center of a Christmas-themed morality play. However, unless you meet all three Ghosts of Christmas specifically, you’re not getting Carol’d. If you meet, say, an angel, then you’re actually getting Wonderful Life’d. Unless that angel tells you you’re pregnant, in which case, you’re getting Bible’d. You ask a boy what day it is; it is Christmas Day, & you buy a goose. This one speaks for itself — though some purists insist that it’s only a Carol if you buy a turkey. We say, whatever poultry you buy, if you have a street urchin do it after asking what day it is? Yeah. You’re gettin’ Carol’d. God blesses us, every one. This is the topper to any Carol’ing. If you weren’t sure even after the being a miser, meeting the ghosts, & buying a goose, then God blessing us, every one, is the final confirmation that you have indeed been Carol’d.

That’s it! If you don’t meet those five criteria, rest easy, because you’re not living through a Christmas Carol. Phew! Have you ever been Carol’d? Did it work, or do you still suck? Let us know in the comments below! And Merry Christmas to all!
MOAC Blockchain Application Incubator established!
Tags: Moac Announcements

Dear Fans, as of 29th of May, MOAC Chain incubator is officially established in Beijing. Moac incubator is founded by the Moac foundation, Venture Capital association of Beijing and Zhongfu Venture Capital. The goal of this incubator is to push for more Dapp development on the Moac Chain, create a more diversified developer community in the Moac ecosystem. As well as connecting commercial users to implement Moac technology. More updates will be followed as development goes on.

For more info, check out:

http://www.vcab.org

http://www.zfinvest.com

MOAC. IO

News:http://liancaijing.com/alerts/101263.html/comment-page-3

Where to Find Us

Website: https://moac.io/

GitHub: https://github.com/MOACChain/moac-core

Twitter: https://twitter.com/moac_io

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/MOAC/

Medium: https://medium.com/moac

Telegram(International): https://t.me/moacblockchain

Telegram(Developers): https://t.co/8m3m9RD5ix

Telegram(China): https://t.co/73rU9sHWLH
How Do You Thrive in a Culture of Female Foeticide?
By: Saheb Architecture
Tags: Culture, Sexism, Feminism, Equality, Women

By Ritu Saheb, Architect, AIA

You don’t!!!

That’s right, which is why I left India at the age of 25. I was a licensed architect, but there was no hope for me if I was to set up my own business in Mumbai. Without a father, a brother, a husband, or other male figurehead to lend credibility to my business. That too in Mumbai, the most progressive city in India. I certainly didn’t want to play second fiddle to anyone. So I left.

The author in front of a house she literally helped construct in Mumbai, she worked there as a stone mason while studying architecture

Natural male to female birth ratios in the world are 100:106. In some regions in India they are as low as 100:80. The national average is around 100:93. This is a result of 3,000 year old culture that values males over females.

But not so in America.

However, women are still decrying work place sexual harassment, lack of equal opportunities, unequal pay for equal work, solo home responsibilities and more. How is it that I still find America to be a land of opportunities? Did I miss something?

Is it because I come from a land of very low expectations. As to what was expected of me as a woman, or what I would contribute to the society as a woman. All that society wanted of me was a progeny.

Even though as a child I was taught, I could do anything, I was still expected to tow the line. Isn’t there a contradiction there? Those around me would have liked me to think in a traditional manner, like my fathers and forefathers before me. In short, I had to live up to their antiquated idea of an ideal Indian woman.

They wanted me to marry a nice Indian man, have nice Indian children, and hold a nice Indian job (the job was completely optional). They would like me to pray to Shiva or Ganesh or any other Hindu deity, speak Hindi, not eat the forbidden beef, respect elders, help the poor and praise Mother-India. Just like they did.

The author witnessing her design come to life at Union Temple, Brooklyn

Well I didn’t do any of those things. At least not in the traditional Indian sense. Because secular and multi-cultural American society let me help others by helping myself first. It let me improve society by improving myself first.

The only question now remains, how far will this country let me progress as a female architect. Will I become Zaha Hadid, Jeanne Gang or like New York’s very own Anabelle Seldorf. All women who are changing society through urban design.

My hunch is yes. I am waiting for the next chapter of my life to unfold. Inequality be damned when you are motivated as heck!
Document Reading with Visual Aids
By: Karthik Badam
Tags: Journalism, Data Visualization, Document, Automated Charts, Research

The PDF format is universal for recording information into an electronic document that can be easily shared over email or the cloud. PDF viewers (e.g., Adobe reader) can be used on any device to read PDF documents. However, these viewers work independently of the content of the document. Even if the document has related content across sections and pages, the document viewer steamrolls the document into a flat sequence — showing one page after another — that is not ideal for many documents. For instance, let’s consider academic papers that report experimental results across many pages, or consider a report released by a public agency like UNICEF or WHO to share results from their activities in different countries. Such documents are typically rich with data tables and pictures, often organized far away from the referring text. In a way, these documents are media collections — text, images, tables, videos, data, and formulas — by themselves. Reading such documents on current document viewers is hard, especially on mobile devices with small screens. Figure 1 shows an example of a data-rich document.

Figure 1: An example data-rich document from UNICEF about child mortality.

In our recent paper published at the IEEE Conference on Information Visualization (published in the IEEE TVCG journal), we automatically adapt document content by linking text and tables using visual aids based on the user’s focus in the document. By doing so, we introduce the concept of “Elastic Documents” that treats documents as a collection of multimedia content that is filtered, rearranged, and presented based on the readers’ goals as well as the capacity of the display itself.

Reading data-rich documents ain’t easy!

Data-rich documents contain data in different forms — text, tables, and pictures. When reading the text, it becomes the reader’s job to understand the corresponding data from the other content types. This can be hard if the reader has to flip back-and-forth across pages, which is common, or even take multiple passes through the document. For instance, in the above UNICEF mortality report, the text describes patterns in mortality rates over time for countries in developing and developed worlds that need to be fully grasped by relating the text to structured data tables in the appendices.

In our Elastic Documents approach, as the reader starts going through the document sentence by sentence, relevant visualizations are generated in the margins by extracting keywords from the text and matching them to the table content to find relevant data. Figure 2 shows the interface for the Elastic Documents approach with the visual aids presented in the right margin.
First Principles, Clarice. Simplicity.
By: Ismayil Shahaliyev
Tags: Simplicity, Google, Software Engineering, Site Reliability, Software Development

Boring Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Bad

J. D. Zeik and David Mamet’s Ronin (1998), one of the greatest spy movies of all time, lacks unnecessary details: each word and action in the movie leads to somewhere. Certainly, Mamet is a son of Hollywood and he is incapable of understanding Nouvelle Vaguers. He calls Godard boring, which probably is true, but he can’t notice that boring doesn’t necessarily mean bad.

It turns out, most of the things that are true for movies are false for software development, but probably except for one: boringness — not only could be but actually IS a positive attribute of software.

Surprises are not good; you don’t want to be spontaneous in your coding, you need predictability, lack of excitement. By not following the virtue of boredom, you start adding unnecessary complexities into the system, which reduces its reliability.
Use the Kübler-Ross Model to Become a Good Programmer
By: Mythili The Dreamer
Tags: Work, Software Engineering, Psychology, Programming, Productivity

Use the Kübler-Ross Model to Become a Good Programmer

Acting as if it were impossible to fail is the formula that transforms us into unstoppable programmers

Photo by Ian Stauffer on Unsplash

There are many definitions, characteristics, and qualities of a good programmer, and a lot of talented programmers and writers have already explained the same thing — succinctly — in various mediums. So there’s no point in me adding my two cents to the plethora of information available all around.

But what I’d like to say here is a simple one-liner given by a mentor a few years back, when I stormed into the software industry.

“Good programmers are smart, not clever.”

A smart programmer combines natural intelligence with an ability to judge the consequences of their actions in the future. They know exactly what code they’re writing, why they’re writing it, and how the code will impact the world in the long run. They believes in fixing the disease permanently rather than applying duct tape to hide the rot.

A clever programmer, on the other hand, knows all the dirty tricks in the world to make code work. But over time, the bandages and duct tape (read: the quick fixes) become humongous and unmaintainable, and then one fine day, the code simply crashes along with the reputation of all the programmers who had worked on it.

And good, smart programmers follow the complete cycle of the Kübler-Ross model to conquer problems, find solutions, learn from them, unlearn certain things, and relearn again. And this cycle goes on and on until they become better and better in their work.

Let me explain.

The Kübler-Ross model was proposed by Swiss-American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book called “Death and Dying.” It outlines the stages of emotions experienced by a person in relation to grief. This concept has since been extended and applied to any situation related to change and betterment.

And in software development, a modified version of the model is as follows.

Image Credits: Kubler-Ross-Change-Curve-adapted-from-Optima-Training-UK-Limited-Research Gate

Kübler-Ross said the stages can last for different periods of time and will replace each other or exist side by side at times.

In fact, she called them defense mechanisms or coping mechanisms that we need to move forward and become better in our jobs. And the mark of a good programmer isn’t to get stuck in any stage but to persist on until the Integration stage of knowledge acquisition and problem-solving is reached.

Let’s look at how good programmers react in each of the stages.
How To Break Up With A Gay
By: Choire Sicha
Tags: Breakups, Handy Guides, Now You Know

A local gay writes to say: “I need to read a blog post that teaches one how to break up with someone.” Ask and you shall receive. On Fridays, at least.

The majority of gay-on-gay breakups are done through either sudden shunning or slow fade. Gays are equally good at both. That is the Level Three breakup, and it’s really common, and I mean that in both senses. It’s easy, frequent and kind of terrible! Everyone hates to get faded on but everyone loves to always be fading.

The Level Two breakup is a sort of horrible, confusing, awkward conversation (often over phone or IM!) about how “things in your life are happening and you need to focus on them.” It’s half-assed, even when it’s true.

But Level One breakups are where it’s at.

Level One breakups are when you’ve “gone clear” on relationships (just kidding, I’m not a Scientologist, swear) and you know how to conduct yourself authoritatively and adultly. These are breakups where the relationship just isn’t right for you. (You ask yourself: “Am I enjoying this? Is this what I want?” If the answer is no, then you break up. Simple.) This isn’t for breakups where the other person is an asshole or a drug addict. (Those are easy: “Your drug use/assholism/whatever makes me unwilling to date you.”)

It’s a skill that comes and goes too! Sometimes you can sack up and perform a good breakup. Sometimes you can’t.

Basically, you can cheat on any one of these things but not more than one of these things:

A Level One breakup is:

• A serious conversation…

• …in person…

• …that includes the phrase “I don’t want to date you any more” or “I don’t want to have a relationship with you any more.” That’s a complete sentence. It may be surrounded by waffling, baffling or self-undermining sentences, but it must stand on its own and in the end it…

• … leaves the dumped gay feeling like he has been treated with respect.

To be fair, I have committed exactly one Level One breakup in my life (mmm, maybe two of them) and I have had more than my share of breakups. It’s not easy, and it’s really easy to just shine people on. And also? Just because you’ve committed a Level One breakup doesn’t mean that everyone’s going to feel good, even in years to come! But at least you’ll sleep better at night.
Circle Acquires Popular Cryptocurrency Exchange
Tags: Acquisition, Cryptocurrency, Payments, Bitcoin, Investing

Peer-to-peer money sending service, Circle, has acquired the popular cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex.

With this acquisition, Circle hopes to increase the customer support capacity for Poloniex and enable Fiat support on the exchange.

Goldman Sachs, a leading investment bank, is a lead investor in Circle’s Series C round. This goes to show how serious traditional financial institutions are starting to view cryptocurrencies.

Circle has raised nearly $136m in venture capital to date.
Scorekeeping
By: Lucia Marini
Tags: Fiction, Flash Fiction

In the beginning, as he remembers it, he didn’t keep score, and although she did keep score, even in the beginning, he didn’t count this against her, since he wasn’t keeping score. But over time it became more difficult not to keep score, or perhaps the score itself became easier to keep. He found himself keeping score automatically, almost without being aware of it, the same way he sometimes counted steps without consciously intending to, or calculated the proper gratuity in his head on the occasions when she paid for dinner — the rare occasions, as he realized once he began keeping score.

Although the scorekeeping became incrementally easier over time — indeed, became like second nature to him — it was never truly easy to keep score, for the simple reason that there were two scorekeepers, not one. Had there been only one scorekeeper, the score would have been whatever that person said it was. But since there were two scorekeepers, the score was compounded. Behind their respective scores lurked the true score, which though unknowable could be vaguely visualized as a pair of fractions jostling against one another, at times multiplying into a sort of super-fraction, a cipher signifying nothing but its own imbalance.

One morning he awoke to the sound of her voice. She was standing a few feet away from him talking to her gardener on speakerphone. Her gardener was saying it was time to winterize her lawn. It was early (earlier for him than for her), and he wished she would go into the bathroom or down the hall to have this conversation. At the same time, he knew that this wasn’t a big deal — nothing worth keeping score of, at least.

Later, much later, during a retrospective period when everything could be understood and nothing changed, he would arrive at several new understandings. He would see that he had in fact been keeping score all along; that in attributing the scorekeeping instinct to her he had notched the first notch in his own tally, proactively and not reactively; that he had been entirely in the wrong; that he was trash and deserved to die alone.

In the early days, though, he fancied himself wholly indifferent to the petty scales of give and take. He gave, but not as much as he should have. He took, but not as much as he should have. And though there were certain things he knew he mustn’t say, certain combinations of words which he knew were fated to spark an argument (or possibly several), these were the very things he inevitably wound up saying. Then the scorecards came out, with the little golf pencils. The leaden tallies crossed and recrossed like swords, while the fractions achieved an unprecedented absurdity, mountains of wrongdoing afloat over petulant zeroes. Mea culpa, he’d say in the end, maybe crying. But the damage was already done.
The Web Of Life
By: Jl Matthews
Tags: Short Story, Fiction, Microfiction, Creativity, Outdoors

Photo by Declan Lopez on Unsplash

The Web Of Life

A 50-word story

Night falls. My work begins.

I will pick my spot well.

Somewhere teeming. Somewhere secure.

The light fixture will suffice.

I lay down a silk thread.

Then another. And another.

My work is meticulous.

I build to feed.

I build to survive.

But in the end, I build to destroy.
5 Programming Languages for Traders and Strategy Makers
By: Andrew Kamal
Tags: Trading, Finance, Programming, Data, Algorithms

When asked about strategy making, one of the questions I get are what types of programming languages you should learn? In terms of programming languages that you can experiment around with, and perhaps build something lucrative, I compiled a small list. The first tool is for charting. The next three tools are platform based, but have really important logic. The last tool is one of the most complex.

PineScript: Pinescript is the scripting tool for TradingView charts that allow you to build custom indicators for strategies or charting patterns. thinkScript: thinkScript® is the programming language that allows you to build extensions for analysis, different case studies and strategies on TD Ameritrade’s thinkorswim platform. NinjaScript: NinjaScript allows you to build custom indicators and strategies on NinjaTrader. MQ5 Language: The Meta Quotes 5 Language is the programming language after MQL4 that allows you to code custom MetaTrader scripts for strategies and bots. Wolfram Language: Wolfram’s language allows you to build statistical computational simulations and can help with financial modeling and utilizing symbolic computation to your advantage.

Disclaimer: Please keep in mind QuantPortal doesn’t claim to have contributed to any of the software defined above. We are also not soliciting financial advice. Everything you decide to do and build is at your own risk. You must also adhere to proper regulations in your country and rules and restrictions that broker accounts have put in place. As of the making of this article, QuantPortal has no claims of being a broker or authorized broker-dealer. This article is on an opinion based basis and simply should be taken as such.
We the Trainers
By: Dylan Higgins
Tags: Family, Children, Spiritual Formation, Christianity, Faith

Train up a child in the way he should go;

even when he is old he will not depart from it. — Proverbs 22:6 …but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. — Matthew 18:6

I’ve been thinking a lot about a recent evening spent with my son, Ethan. He’s 13 and he has been a Christian now for a while. In the words of the folk-band, The Innocence Mission, “Where does the time go?” My wife and I sat by the fire with Ethan, after the girls had gone to bed. In the low light, we reclined enjoying one another’s company. Our conversation naturally wandered toward our Maker. We discussed God’s sovereignty and our part in His unfolding story. We talked about the problem of pain and evil and many things that this subject entails for our faith-walk. Ethan’s comments were carefully considered and mature. In some ways, I felt like I was talking to a peer, rather than a 13-year-old boy. I wondered how this had happened? It feels like just yesterday he was a small boy wearing that red cape his mother made for him, running around shouting, “Duh, duh, duh! I’m Superman!” But now we can sit together and discuss theology? How? The answer is simple. Ethan’s elders, be it his parents, grandparents or church family, have poured into his life a steady stream of Truth. You might have heard the old saying, “It takes a village to raise a child,” or something of that nature. I think this is true. Whether we have our own children or not, we are influencing the younger generations for better or for worse. Today I ask myself, “What in my life would lead a child away from God and what would lead him or her toward God?” The things that would lead them away must go. They must be pruned (John 15:2) from my life. I pray that you would join me in this endeavor, dear reader.
How Undercharging Your Work Is Keeping You Stuck
By: The Luna
Tags: Freelancing, Writing, Personal Growth, Creativity, Freelance Writing

Some Common Reasons Why We Undercharge Our Work

I don’t have anything special to offer.

My skills are average.

Others are so much better than me.

I don’t deserve to get paid that much.

I still have a lot to work on.

Other variations of I am not good enough.

I was just like you. I thought there was nothing special about me. I was an ordinary poet, a part-time blogger, yeah, sometimes my work moved people, but that’s just normal. However, I was the only one who saw me like that.

With every new project I took up, I found clients who were willing to pay me twice what I was getting earlier. Even though it sounds like a dream come true, it actually left me baffled. What was wrong with people? Why were they so willing to throw all their money at an average writer like me?

After many high paying projects and several weeks of contemplation, I finally realized what was happening. There was nothing wrong with them. The only problem was my self-deprecating mindset. Turns out, I was severely undervaluing and undercharging my work. Just like you.

Let’s keep the concept of self-worth aside for a moment. Let’s see this from a whole new perspective.

(Since I haven’t worked in other freelancing fields like graphic designing or web development, I have no idea about what you all currently charge. So, feel free to substitute your skills and respective rates here.)

Say, you wanna make $10K a month and you charge 0.02 cents a word. To reach your goal, you’ll need to write a whopping 500,000 words. Assuming an average blog post is anywhere around 1K-2K words, you have to write 250–500 blog posts in a month — 16 blog posts in a day!

So, unless you plan on working all day, all night with no food, sleep or bathroom breaks, this is highly unrealistic.

Even if you miraculously manage that workload, you’re going to be overworked, suffer a severe burnout, and hate every single minute of it. Imagine what it’s like to hate every minute of what you love doing the most!

One major benefit of increasing your rates is the availability of time. The higher you’re charging, the fewer projects you’ll have to work on. Which obviously means more time to focus on you, your family, friends, hobbies, and an occasional nap.
The Trouble with Teamwork
By: Nina Jervis
Tags: Teamwork, Management, Team Building

While there is definitely “no ‘I’ in team”, there are three hard-working ‘I’s in individual, without which the word wouldn’t make any sense. There’s even a ‘u’ as well.

Meanwhile, let’s not forget that an anagram of ‘team’ is ‘tame’, while you get ‘valid’ from ‘individual’.

Yes I know; this rubbishy wordplay is all pretty pointless, unless you happen to be playing Scrabble. But then, so are those toe-curlingly awful ‘corporate management’ sayings, which aren’t useful in any popular board games.

People, often those dressed like David Brent, will quote “there’s no ‘I’ in team” as though it’s a Very Good Thing, just because it sounds like a managementy sort of thing to say. In fact, ignoring individuality in teams can herald the death of any useful work they might produce.

I’ve seen this happen time after time in many of the companies I’ve worked for — and it’s not just because I’m an introvert who vastly prefers working on my own. In my experience, the problem with a group of people working together is that it’s often the one with the loudest voice and the greatest influence who force their working preferences on everybody else.

Case in point: a friend of mine was recently invited (read: told) to go on a ‘team-building retreat’ with his colleagues in deepest, darkest Scotland. An itinerary of bonding activities had been planned; hiking, zip lining, white water rafting and the like.

While my friend liked his colleagues, he didn’t much fancy hiking through the drizzly Scottish hillsides with them. He politely declined the invitation, only to be taken aside by the team leader and told his attendance was mandatory.

Together with the dreaded open plan office, it’s rigid behaviour like this that makes me wonder if collaboration is everything it’s often cracked up to be.

Wouldn’t the very best, most productive team environment allow each individual member to flourish, rather than forcing everybody to comply with a uniform set of working practices, environments and communication?

If people feel unhappy or that they’re not being listened to, it’s doubtful they will do their best work. I certainly didn’t. Instead I would switch off almost completely; sitting back from discussions and blandly completing any work assigned to me without any additional thought or insight. I didn’t see the point in putting myself out any more than I needed to, so I didn’t.

I doubt very much that I’m the only person who has ever thought or reacted like this when working with an inflexible team. While I’m not trying to pretend that my missing contributions were life-changing, who knows how many great ideas have suffocated and died in the dusty annals of all those mind-numbing team meetings?

Happily for everybody concerned, I don’t work in teams any more. But if you’re in charge of one, you could do a lot worse than letting each member decide for themselves how they like to work, and then trusting that greatness will follow.

(If it doesn’t…well, you just can’t get the staff these days, can you?)
3 Simple Ways to Upgrade your Avocado Toast
By: Victoria Fox
Tags: Recipe, Cooking, Vegan, Lifestyle, Food

No more basic avocado toast! One secret ingredient* and a few creative toppings and voilà, you have a delicious quick meal or snack. These recipes are vegan and can easily be made gluten-free by using gluten-free bread.
Learning Outside of the Classroom
By: Karina Bosca
Tags: Jobs, Business, Soft Skills, Education, Leadership

Technology is advancing at an incredible rate. Consequently, our hard (technical) skills are becoming replaceable.

This has the effect of growing the value of individuals with great soft skills, something employers and educational institutions have been paying more attention to.

Soft skills are the interpersonal qualities and personal attributes that we all possess. They determine our strength as leaders, facilitators, mediators, and negotiators. They teach us to communicate with other people, work in teams, have a positive attitude, and more. These are traits that enhance our interactions as well as job performance.

One study found that 75% of long-term job success depends on people skills, while only 25% is dependent on technical knowledge. It is also easier for employers to teach hard skills to people after they hire them than it is to teach soft skills.

The benefit for the employer is the acquisition of talent that is not easily imitable or replaceable.

The challenge for employers is that soft skills are not easily quantifiable and are rarely taught in the classroom. Although many schools are slowly updating their curriculum to integrate the teaching of soft skills, the best way for students to acquire them is through experiential learning.

This is where student groups come in.

Student groups give students the opportunity to apply the concepts learned in class in real business settings. Being on a student group is the equivalent of running a small to medium size business. Students learn to become leaders by being put in a context where they manage a budget, organize the logistics of different events, work with deadlines, work in teams, communicate with sponsors and donors, oversee their peers and supervise various projects.

This provides young leaders with the chance to test and learn from their successes as well as from their failures. Through this opportunity, students acquire soft skills that are incredibly valuable for employers and that set them apart from other candidates.

In today’s competitive world, soft skills are critical in the workplace and should be viewed as an investment. Student groups are a great resource for employers that are looking for candidates who possess those skills as their experience enables them to be the drivers of change in organizations and society.

If you’re unsure about how to connect with student groups and where to find opportunities to connect with student leaders, send us a message here and we’ll schedule a meeting!
New 7 Sins
Tags: Humor, Life Lessons, Technology, Social Media, Digital Marketing

A traveler of both time and space...to be where I want to be…find me another space in another time.

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Science Says You’re Smarter Than You Think
By: Leah Njoki
Tags: Life Lessons, Advice, Self, Life, Growth

Science Says You’re Smarter Than You Think

Reminders worth hearing over and over.

Photo by Timothy Dykes on Unsplash

If there’s a way that this year has changed us, it’s that it has made us uncertain. Unsure of what lies in the future, what we’re capable of, and our ability to move our lives forward.



As has been the case this year, with your plans thwarted, it’s easy to lose faith in yourself and your wisdom to make sound decisions. It’s easy to think you can’t get your life back on track.

Fortunately, that’s not the case. You’re smart and capable of overcoming whatever life throws at you. Here are 15 reasons why science says you’re smarter than you think.
How to Teach Your Way to Clarity
By: Tim Maudlin
Tags: Life Lessons, Mindset, Self Improvement, Creativity, Clarity

More often than not, life’s paths are not a straight shot to your final destination. No, they are just the opposite, winding, foggy, and filled with uncertainty.

What’s around the next bend? What’s that fuzzy image ahead?

You don’t know.

How do you navigate these paths? Do you run with eyes closed hoping to make it where you want to go? No!

Without a clear picture, what’s your next move? Do you stop and give up? Absolutely not!

In this ACRONYM story, we’ll consider the first of the three T’s that lead to CLARITY. Teach Your Way to Clarity

Photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash, Graphic by Tim Maudlin

Teach Your Way to Clarity

If you’ve ever taught a class, a workshop, or a webinar, you know the amount of preparation that goes into teaching. But have you considered the benefits of teaching that you receive?

The teacher is the one who gets the most out of the lessons, and the true teacher is the learner. ~Elbert Hubbard

While it was my intention for my students to learn something useful, I can say without hesitation I’ve been the one who has gotten the most out my teaching efforts. Consequently, I’ve become a life-long learner.

When I was a boy, I respected my Dad’s knowledge of the Bible. And I noticed he was always teaching classes at church.

So, when I was given the opportunity to teach, I jumped on it. I knew that it would force me to dig into the scriptures. Because in order to teach, I knew I would need to understand the material I was teaching.

I’ve applied that approach to other subjects I wanted to understand better. It has served me well and it’s something you can do too.

Daily Doable: If given the opportunity to teach, jump at it. It will put you on the fast track to clarity.

#DoWhatYouCanNow

Coming Next: There Is No Try, There Is Only Do

If you enjoyed this story, I would like to invite you to read more stories in my CLARITY series below.

Will you React or Respond? See what we can learn from clouds in this thought-provoking story from one of my CAPITAL Acquaintances, Marlane Ainsworth. What’s a CAPITAL Acquaintance? Find out here.

Discover more great stories from these writers.

Henery X (long), Amy Marley, Dipti Pande, Candy L Hill, Michele Thill, Dr Mehmet Yildiz, Rasheed Hooda, JeffHerring.com, Peg Duchesne, MaryJo Wagner, PhD, Vickie Trancho, Trapper Sherwood, Nomanono Isaacs, Timothy Key, Larry Nowicki, Linda Halladay, Kelda Ytterdal, Phil Truman, Casi Mclean

Thank you for joining me today. Please allow me to introduce myself below.

This story was originally published on my website at DoWhatYouCanNow.com
Identifying Restaurant Hotspots with a Gaussian Mixture Model
By: Conor O'Sullivan
Tags: Towards Data Science, Machine Learning, Gaussian Mixture Model, Python, Data Science

Identifying Restaurant Hotspots with a Gaussian Mixture Model

Using a GMM to identify intuitive restaurant clusters in Toronto, Canada (with Python code)

Clustering algorithms, such as GMMs, are a useful tool to help identify patterns in your data. They allow us to identify subgroups within the dataset that can improve your understanding or enhance predictive models. In this article, with some help from a GMM, we will attempt to identify restaurant clusters in Toronto using location data. The goal is to find clusters that make sense geographically but also have different characteristics in terms of other features like restaurant ratings. Key pieces of code will be discussed and you can find the full project on GitHub.

What is a GMM

As mentioned, a GMM is a clustering algorithm. This means that it can be used to group elements in your dataset based on their features. For example, suppose we have a dataset of customer income and age. A clustering algorithm may identify 4 groups: old high earners, old low earners, young high earners and young low earners. These 4 groups could potentially have very different characteristics/behaviours. We won’t go into the details of how GMM would create these clusters as there are loads of good sources out there [1][2]. What is important is why we will use a GMM and not another clustering algorithm such as K-means.

For our problem, the most important advantage of GMM is that it is more flexible in terms of cluster variance and covariance. Firstly, more variance flexibility means that GMMs can better identify clusters with unequal variances. In other words, it will give better results when we can have both clusters that are dense and clusters that are spread out. We can see this in Figure 1 below where we have applied both K-means and a GMM to some test data. Here the colour of each point is determined by the cluster assigned by the relevant algorithm. It seems as though, in this case, the GMM clusters are more appropriate.
Microsoft Excel — Share Your Automation Tricks by Creating An Add-In
By: Don Tomoff
Tags: How To, Automation, Productivity, Crushing It, Excel

The Step-By-Step Process to Create Your Add-In

Note: If you want to create this yourself, you can follow along and download the macro code you need from the Medium post above.

Set Up The Excel File

Open a blank Excel workbook and access the Visual Basic Editor.

Open a Blank Workbook and Access the VBA Editor

VBA Editor — Empty at this Point

Within the VBA Editor, create a “Module”. This is where you will paste the macro code.

Select the VBAProject for the current file and Create a new Module

Copy and paste the individual snippets of VBA code (6 total items).

VBA Code pasted into the VBA Editor Module we just created

Documentation Note: For reference purposes, I always create a list of the macros included in the file. It helps when you open the file in the future and want to make changes! (Trust me — do this!)

List of Macro snippets included in the Add-In file Being Created

Save the Excel File

Now the file is read to be saved into the Add-In format.

FIRST, save the file as a “macro-enabled” (.xlsm) format BEFORE you save the Add-In. This is essential if you want to make changes in the future!

Next, save the Excel file in the Add-In format (.xlam).

Since you are saving this in the Add-In file format, Excel will, by default, prompt you to save it in the Add-In folder. However, you can save it where ever you want (for this example, I saved it to my Desktop)

Save the Add-In File

Install The Add-In

Locate the Add-In from within Excel. Select the “File” menu item.

Locate Add-In so it can be Activated in Excel

Click “Options”

Click “Add-Ins” tab and click “Go…”

Click “Browse” to locate Add-In file

Navigate to Folder and Select the Add-In file

It will now appear in your available Add-Ins list. Click the Check Box to activate it.
【生活黑客週報】每週雷蒙精選好內容與值得關注的應用工具
By: 侯智薰 Raymond Ch Hou
Tags: 生活黑客, Lifehacks, 電子報, 雷蒙三十, Subscription

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Ocular Dream
Tags: Freeform, Poetry, Music, Photography, Audible Sundays

Audible Sundays is a freeform series inspired by one new music release a week. Each entry is written in synchronicity to the mood of the song and the photograph. Follow the playlist on Spotify:
The many things AI needs…
By: Keno Leon
Tags: Neuroscience, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Technology, Neural Networks

Perception

Let’s take vision, which is probably the most researched domain in both computational neuroscience and AIs… A camera required for emulating human vision ( at least in resolution) is more or less common these days, what’s not common is the sophisticated processing your eyes and 1/3rd of your brain does, in comparison computer vision uses shallow task specific algorithms which for the most part are useless if you change the task.

A circle detecting script is useless for depth perception unless you code it to also detect depth, and now this new script is useless for text recognition, and on and on, we haven't written down the one program that does it all.

Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) can process a lot of information and in many cases perceive something as belonging to certain class ( usually a single class or family ) but this takes training that in turn takes time. In contrast we get our training through a mix of biological evolutionary systems and our daily life and experiences, ( more on this later ) and we can also modify what we see based on higher ( top down ) cognitive processes like conscious or subconscious attention.

A common example of top down subconscious perception: You just bought a new car and chose RED as the paint color, for the next few days you can't help but notice how many RED CARS are on the road, they have always been there, it's just that with your recent purchase the color RED + CAR has gained importance in your mind and that is what your senses are now tuned for.

The point here is that we perceive the world in a different way, at least where it regards to vision, it’s an active top down/bottom up affair we haven’t quite been able to emulate.

The other senses are a mixed bag; touch, smell, taste and the less popular senses like the sense of balance are mostly absent or fully solved, hearing is somewhere in the middle and can be recorded at higher resolutions than we can and in some cases ( like cochlear implants ) the neural code can even be emulated yet when we go up the task ladder of things we do with our hearing AIs fall short.

Think about a crowded room, you can easily pick out the voice of your friend on the other side of the room and make sense of voices you have never heard, even when spoken with heavy accents, you can also perceive the emotional content in voices to derive further meaning.
Don’t Save Your Fun for the End of the Day
By: Kathleen Smith
Tags: Work, Motivation, Burnout, Self Improvement, Self

Don’t Save Your Fun for the End of the Day

Joy is more than a reward for productivity

Photo: fizkes/Getty Images

We may be used to motivating ourselves with the promise of a reward — grind all day and relax at night, or break for a treat only after finishing a project — but in talking with my therapy clients over the past several months, I’ve found that we simply can’t strong-arm ourselves into productivity when we feel anxious and isolated. The promise of happiness isn’t enough when we need it right this minute.

We shouldn’t wait to reward ourselves with conversations with friends, a walk outside, or a mystery novel. Instead, we should pepper our days with them. We need to build them into our daily schedules and protect them like the life-sustaining measures that they are.

When we incorporate activities into our day that foster curiosity, like exploring a new park, playing a board game, or sitting around the fire pit with a friend, then we direct our mind away from its anxious flailing. And when we can steer away from anxiety, one added benefit is that we give ourselves a chance to do better work.

To help you decide which rewards to add to your day, here are some questions you can ask:

What low-cost or no-cost things make me feel happy?

What am I naturally curious about right now?

What things do I never regret doing?

How can I start or end my day on a high note?

If you’ve been having a hard time lately, consider whether you’ve been withholding joy because you’ve decided you don’t deserve it — because you feel lazy, or unproductive, or less than enough. It’s time to stop thinking of the things that make us happy as expendable extras. They’re the life raft that will carry us through the next few months.