fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Disney is the Best Thing to Happen to “Star Wars” Since “The Empire Strikes Back”
By: Joel Eisenberg
Tags: Movies, Science Fiction, Film, Entertainment, Star Wars

The bottom line is this: Thanks to fans-turned-creatives such as Dave Filoni, in large part responsible for the long-term success of “The Clone Wars,” “Rebels,” and “The Mandalorian,” and also executives such as the unfairly oft-excoriated Kathleen Kennedy — head of Lucasfilm — we are presently in the midst of a “Star Wars” renaissance.

Fans are receiving what they’ve asked for, and though surely many will still complain Disney either has killed the brand outright or has substantially overexposed it since their 2012 purchase, money talks.

“The Mandalorian” has become the figurehead of Disney+, and even considering the disappointing performance of “Solo” the “Star Wars” features under the Disney banner have earned collectively billions of dollars on their worldwide releases alone, not counting merchandise or television licenses.

Again, money talks. Complaints are plentiful and mistakes will be made, but Lucas’ product — the prequel trilogy particularly and, for some, “Return of the Jedi” — was not universally acclaimed either.

As to the mistakes? I’d be remiss if I did not mention it so I sincerely hope they will not be again of this nature: Disney bowing to racist social media comments and largely excluding Kelly Marie Tran, and to a lesser degree John Boyega, from “The Rise of Skywalker” was risible. Fan response to Jar Jar Binks, conversely, who was accused of being a black stereotype was of George Lucas’ own making. The role was substantially cut down in Episodes II and III. But Lucas was also accused of employing the Jewish stereotype of Watto in “The Phantom Menace,” and Asian stereotypes in the Galactic Trade Federation heads, also largely cut from subsequent films. He suffered blowback from his initial choices, which was not surprising.

On the racial front, Disney needs to be smarter than both they and Lucas have been moving forward. They took a leap and made the effort to be as diverse as we are; they need to stand by that effort to the brand’s creative benefit without pigeonholing.

Further, the tone of this article will be reconsidered if Disney continues to stall on due payments of Alan Dean Foster, author of “Splinter of the Mind’s Eye.” What had transpired in that regard is unconscionable.

This piece, though, is about Disney’s new presentations, and to that end I want to remain focused. The studio behind-the-scenes nonetheless needs to clean up some serious mess and work on their integrity, none of which I or anyone should take lightly.
The Airplane
By: Amara Writes
Tags: Poem, Migration, Poetry, Family, Travel

It’s carrying many people away

Towards work or towards family

But those who migrate on my mind they weigh

The airplane carried my brother away

An inescapable reality

That made tears on my mother’s hard cheeks stray
Designing Migracciones. First Part: the Concept.
Tags: Serious Game, Video Game Develpoment, Migration, Indie Dev, Video Game

This text, like the ones that will follow, will be part of a series on the design of the serious game Migracciones, a video game developed for the Universidad Autónoma Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and that will be about the transit migration over Mexico to the USA.

That said, the following texts will deal more personally with my design process and not so much about migration. The topics that will be covered will include time management, the conceptualization of the video game, or the aesthetics developed, to mention a few.

Towards the conceptualization of the video game: from the physical game to the digital game

It is important to mention that Migracciones is part of a game already made, which was played with real people in a large space occupied by people. The game consisted of a large map on the ground and, using dice, the players advanced each of the squares until they reached the northern border.

For this digital game, the development of this mechanic was taken as a nucleus, but, in addition, an initial component was thought: the narrative. This aspect of the narrative is an element that has been developed from the first sketch and has led to its own development from the realization of a script and a subsequent storyboard.

The reason why a narrative was chosen in addition to the mechanics of advancing through boxes was to have an emotional impact on the player, as seen in the video game Tentación en el Desierto. However, it was thought that that narrative would be told by means of static drawings with a script, as it is developed in the video game Beyond your Window. Also, based on this last video game, it was thought that each of the routes that will be taken it would have a different color as a base; that is to say, that in the west route the characters and scenarios would be green, and on the other side, in the east route, they would be yellow.

First Sketchnote about Migracciones

The important thing to mention in the first phase of conceptualization is how you want to tell the story, either by aesthetics, narrative, or game mechanics, as in the game Dark Ecology. From having knowledge of how to tell the idea, the development of the video game has to turn under the same concepts, until arriving at the digital prototype where the idea, the mechanics, the aesthetics, and narrative do not change but only improve.
Factories Are STILL Better Than Classes In JavaScript
By: Chris I.
Tags: JavaScript, Web Development, Coding, Software Development, Frontend

Public properties on class instances present a security concern (and how to avoid it)

Codepen 1.

I originally proposed that JS class instances were vulnerable to properties being changed from the outside, and considered this a disadvantage.

For example, given a class, Car , we create an instance with new , and call the drive method.

class Car {

constructor(maxSpeed){

this.maxSpeed = maxSpeed;

}

drive(){

console.log(`driving ${this.maxSpeed} mph!`)

}

honk(){

console.log(`honk!!!`)

}

} const car1 = new Car(120)

car1.drive()

#=> "driving 120 mph!"

It’s “driving 120 mph!” . So far so good.

Public properties and functions can be changed after initialization

Not only can object properties be changed, those changes also affect the output of methods.

car1.maxSpeed = 300

car1.drive()

#=> "driving 300 mph!"

Even whole methods can be overwritten.

car1.drive = function(){console.log('parked')}

car1.drive()

#=> "parked"

Editing properties and methods from the outside seems like undesirable behaviour in most cases.

To be fair, this is how JavaScript was intended to behave. But that said, intended behaviour doesn’t always equal “great” or ideal behaviour.

There are strategies to prevent changing properties

Codepen 2.

One suggestion was to prevent changing values by using a “getter” function.

class Car {

constructor(maxSpeed){

this.defMaxSpeed = maxSpeed;

}

get maxSpeed(){

return this.defMaxSpeed

}



drive(){

console.log(`driving ${this.maxSpeed} mph!`)

}

honk(){

console.log(`honk!!!`)

}

}

Notice we’ve added get maxSpeed() . The object will now be initialized with a this.defMaxSpeed property rather than a this.maxSpeed property.

This prevents an altered maxSpeed from affecting the drive() method.

const car1 = new Car(120)

car1.drive()

#=> "driving 120 mph!" car1.maxSpeed = 300

car1.drive()

#=> "driving 120 mph!"

That said, we can hack around this by updating defMaxSpeed from the outside.

car1.defMaxSpeed = 300

car1.drive()

#=> "driving 300 mph!"

I suppose we could come up with a complicated property name that isn’t guessable, but that would also make coding less fun.
Explain Images Lazy Loading with IntersectionObserver and React Hooks in Short
By: Sean Hs
Tags: Lazy Loading, Software Development, Webdev, Frontend, React

What is Lazy Loading?

The browser downloads all media resources when initializing a website. Lazy loading is a technique to defer the loading of non-critical resources on the page. There are two kinds of Lazy loading:

The Benefits for Image Lazy Loading

The website with Image lazy loading loads off-screen images after all critical resources have finished loading to lower Time to Interactive (TTI). The user can avoid wasting money on large data and processing time for decoding the downloaded contents.

The TTI score is a comparison of your page’s TTI and the TTI for real websites, based on data from the HTTP Archive. Developers can measure TTI from Lighthouse

Three ways to implement Image Lazy Loading
Choosing a frontend framework. And which one should you choose?
Tags: Angular, Web Developement, Vue, Frontend, React

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

And which one should you choose?

Creating web sites are not for the faint of heart. The level of complexity that you’ll encounter for what seems simple on the outside can be quite staggering.

Consider one of the simpler cases, a blog. It has a a front page with a list of blog articles. This page needs a consistent design, and a way to fetch blog articles from some data source. That is, unless you want to change your HTML every time you want to add or delete something like we did in the early 90s, to which I bid you good luck.

Then you need an article page, which also involves another network call. And it should inherit the design from the frontpage so that it stays consistent. If you have comments on your page, you need to fetch those as well from somewhere. And you need to setup a way to add new comments, and this input field needs to protected against spammers and hackers.

The list goes on. You can do all of this manually, but it’s tedious work. A framework helps you with a lot of issues described above, with issues related to security, and makes it easy to inherit design and data fetching patterns. In short, they let you focus on actually creating your web site.

The frameworks

The most popular frameworks right now are:

The runner ups are:

The runner ups to the runner ups are:

And finally, the ones you’ve probably never heard of:

Which framework to choose

The top contenders offers a great developer experience, with extensive community support, so those should be your first choice. However, it’s a good idea — and fun — to try the lesser the known frameworks.

The list above is sorted by popularity. Another way to look at them is comparing how they expect you to code your apps.

For instance, React takes a semi-functional, declarative approach employing a hybrid JavaScript and HTML syntax. It makes no assumptions on how you compose your code, but it’s heavily skewed towards plain functions and hooks.

Vue takes a completely opposite approach, electing to blend HTML with templates, and enforces the use of Vue methods to compose your components, using directives and mixins. It also encourages a reactive approach with regards to data management.

In simpler terms, React is JavaScript first, Vue is HTML first. You can’t really go wrong with either of them.

In the runner up list, Angular stands out. It’s usually the choice for enterprise development, which should tell you that it’s unnecessarily complicated and probably the wrong choice for anyone else. Svelte and Stencial are both very interesting projects, which I encourage you to check out. The latter lets you create web components that can be used by the other frameworks.

I encourage you assess the other frameworks mentioned on the list. While they may not have the steller developer experience that you’ll get out of the box with Vue and React, they are all worth checking out, and might even be more appropriate than the top two for certain types of projects.
The Google Homepage UI Story. Google’s Homepage has evolved a lot in…
Tags: User Experience, UX Design, Frontend, User Interface, Google

The Google Homepage UI Story

Google’s Homepage has evolved a lot in the last 22 years. Let’s have a look at how its Interface has changed.

All images have been taken from waybackmachine.com.

1998

From Waybackmachine.com (1998)

The Homepage in 1998 looks very crisp and neat. There are boxes and sections, typically created using the bare minimum HTML code. The buttons are normal buttons you any frontend newbie can create today. Notice the Stanford search and the monthly updates subscription button.

There’s the exclamation after Google(Yahoo had one as well). Overall, it is not as comfortable to be used as compared to today's’ version. A lot of links made it confusing.
What is a non-relational database for beginners?
By: Radoslaw Fabisiak
Tags: Programming, Database, Coding, NoSQL, Mongodb

Now you already know the relational database, but there is also the other type, the non-relational database, also called NoSQL databases.

A non-relational database is a database that doesn’t follow the tabular schema with rows and columns.

There are four categories of grouping data in non-relational databases:

key-value stores — data is collected as a key-value pair. It allows the horizontal scaling, which is impossible with different databases. The most popular use cases for this kind of non-relational database are gaming or IoT.

— data is collected as a key-value pair. It allows the horizontal scaling, which is impossible with different databases. The most popular use cases for this kind of non-relational database are gaming or IoT. graph stores — those types of databases are used to build applications that work with the highly connected datasets. The most popular use cases of this type of database are social networking apps, recommendation apps, and fraud detection.

— those types of databases are used to build applications that work with the highly connected datasets. The most popular use cases of this type of database are social networking apps, recommendation apps, and fraud detection. column stores — in those NoSQL databases, data is collected similar to a relational database, by columns and rows, but the difference is that in non-relational databases the names and formats of the columns can be changes from row to row in the same table.

— in those NoSQL databases, data is collected similar to a relational database, by columns and rows, but the difference is that in non-relational databases the names and formats of the columns can be changes from row to row in the same table. document stores — those are the databases where the data is stored in the file in a JSON format. The best cases to use document non-relational databases are projects with big data and real-time applications.

The most popular NoSQL databases are MongoDB, DynamoDB, ElasticSearch, Cassandra.

The biggest benefits of using the non-relational database are simplicity of the design, developers don’t have to care about the proper relations between the data in the tables and speed, because operations in NoSQL databases are much faster.

Thank you for reading,

Anna from Duomly
Effective Design Patterns for a Kafka Cluster
By: Manoj Kukreja
Tags: Kafka, Data, IoT, Data Science, Machine Learning

Effective Design Patterns for a Kafka Cluster

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

At the lowest denomination level may be created with a single broker instance. Using a Kafka Producer Data Stream can be sent in form of messages to the Kafka Broker. These messages stay on the Kafka Broker for a configurable period of time until a Kafka Consumer can retrieve and process them.

Image by Author

Looks like a pretty simple design…but has a few drawbacks

What if the Kafka Broker is not able to keep up with the high traffic demands?

Image by Author

The solution is simple, break your Kafka Topic into multiple Partitions, configure multiple Brokers and save each partition on a separate Broker. Therefore instead of one broker taking the entire load you now have many of them sharing the load. The question is how many partitions are optimal? For a successful Leader election by Zookeeper you need to go with a ODD value i.e. 3,5,7.

Image by Author

Above design surely does take care of the the high traffic demands…but is it the best design for High Availability.

What if the Kafka Broker suffers a failure, it’s hardware after all…therefore one day it will

Image by Author

What are the implications? Do I hear DATA LOSS.

So how can you protect a Partition against failures? Create a Kafka High Availability Custer. This can be done by Replicating every Partition to other Brokers. This way you are able to maintain copies of partitions thus elimination the Single Point of Failure (SPOF).

Image by Author

I hope this article was helpful. The topic of Apache Kafka is covered in greater detail as part of the Big Data Hadoop, Spark & Kafka course offered by Datafence Cloud Academy.
Bear
By: Laura Sheridan
Tags: Kafka, Poem, Dreams, Animals, Poetry

Bear

Photo by Daniel Eledut on Unsplash

The last half-hour of darkness and I rolled

onto my side and sensed

you were in the same

position. I put out

my arm, rested my…paw

on your shoulder, bear paw, bear claw

the fur did not bother me, though

it was hot — I can always

shave it off, I thought; my toenails

scratched the underside

of the duvet, my ear

was creased against the pillow, the pink

morning light pearled

the end of my nose — quite pretty –

you don’t get to see that

when your face is flat; the roundness

of my rump and the sturdy feel

of my legs pleased me, though

when I yawned, my breath

came through like goats and aniseed

and sour milk; how do you brush

canines like these — how

do you even hold a toothbrush?

You moved a little

in your sleep and my claw

made a red stripe on your arm.

You didn’t wake up.
How to easily Query Live Streams of data with Kafka and Flink SQL
By: Romain Rigaux
Tags: Kafka, Stream, Flink, Sql, Ksqldb

Real time data querying is becoming a modern standard. Who wants to wait until the next day or week when needing to take decision now?

Apache Flink SQL is an engine now offering SQL on bounded/unbounded streams of data. The streams can come from various sources and here we picked the popular Apache Kafka, which also has the separate ksqlDB.

This tutorial is based on the great Flink SQL demo Building an End-to-End Streaming Application but focuses on the end user querying experience.

Components

To keep things simple, all the pieces have been put together in a “one-click” Docker Compose project which contains:

We also bumped the Flink version from 1.11.0 to 1.11.1 as the SQL Gateway requires it. As Flink can query various sources (Kafka, MySql, Elastic Search), some additional connector dependencies have also been pre-installed in the images.
Streaming Kafka Messages to Google Cloud Pub/Sub with StreamSets
By: Rishi Jain
Tags: Kafka, Streaming, Streamsets, Google Pubsub, Google Cloud Platform

Whether your Kafka is provisioned in the Cloud or on-premise, you might want to push to a subset of Pub/Sub topics. Why? For the flexibility of having Pub/Sub as your GCP event notifier or to use topics to trigger Cloud Functions. Or maybe your organization has the plan to migrate from apache Kafka to managed google cloud pub/sub.

So how do you exchange messages between Kafka and Pub/Sub? Are you exploring the option for Kafka connector?

This is where the StreamSets Data Collector comes in handy. In this post, you will learn the basic steps to start working with DataCollector to connect with your Kafka instance to Cloud pub/sub and exchange event messages between the two services.

What is StreamSets Data collector?

StreamSets Data Collector is an easy-to-use modern execution engine for fast data ingestion and light transformations that can be used by anyone. you can design pipelines for streaming, batch and change data capture (CDC) in minutes. Please Download and read through get started with the Quick Start Guide.

In this lab, you learn how to:

Initiate Apache Kafka instance locally

Configure a StreamsSets DataCollectot to integrate with Pub/Sub & kafka

Setup topics and subscriptions for message communication

Perform basic testing of both Kafka and Cloud Pub/Sub services

I have spun up Apache Kafka on my local MacBook and created a topic test.

Step 1: Download the latest Kafka release and extract it:

*** START KAFKA ENV *** $ tar -xzf kafka_2.13-2.6.0.tgz

$ cd kafka_2.13-2.6.0

$ bin/zookeeper-server-start.sh config/zookeeper.properties

$ bin/kafka-server-start.sh config/server.properties *** CREATE TOPIC **** $bin/kafka-topics.sh --create --topic test --bootstrap-server localhost:9092

Created topic test. ****Publish some message to kafka ********** $bin/kafka-console-producer.sh --topic test --bootstrap-server localhost:9092

This is my first event

This is my second event

Step 2: Access the GCP and create your topic

Go to the Pub/Sub topics page in the Cloud Console. Go to the Pub/Sub topics page Click Create a topic.

provide a unique topic name, for example, rishi and save.

Step 3: Now we have both endpoints up and running let’s create a streamsets pipeline.

Checkout the Kafka origin config, you can tweak this configuration as per your environment.

You can get this example pipeline from here:

Note: you need to provide your GCP credentials under pub/sub stage.

Once you run this pipeline it will consume two messages from Apache Kafka and push it to Google cloud pub/sub.

To verify: Go to GCP console of Pub/Sub and click on view message

Conclusion: In this example, we have sent a stream of information between the two services. However, you can stream message to google pub/sub from a wide range of other services as well.
Zero to Hero — Master Kafka Tutorial 2 (Kafka CLI Cheat Sheet)
By: Y Tech
Tags: Kafka, Software Development, Software Engineering, Computer Science, Software Architecture

Below is a summery of the most frequently used Kafka CLI commands that will be used.
Kafka example in Go
By: Donald Le
Tags: Kafka, Go, Programming, Engineering, Software

Client in Go

require github.com/segmentio/kafka-go v0.4.5

Producer

Consumer

Running consumer will show this

one!

two!

three!

one!e!

two!e!

three!

Four!!

Five!!

Six!!!

Thanks for reading my post.

~~PEACE~~

References
Zero to Hero — Master Kafka Tutorial 1 (Basic Theory)
By: Y Tech
Tags: Software Development, Microservices, Software Architecture, Kafka

This is the first tutorial of this series, which covers the basic concepts of Kafka

Basic Concept — Data Topics

Topic: A particular stream of data, identified by the topic name. Partition: Topic splits into partitions; Each partition is a queue of messages. Offset: The incremental id assigned to the message in the partition.

Note

Offset guarantees the order of messages in the partition. Offset (the incremental Id) is only meaningful within the partition (i.e. message with id 2 in partition 1 is not guaranteed to be older than message with id 0 in partition 2). Message is kept in the partition for a limited time (default 1 week). Message in the partition is immutable.

Kafka Cluster

Cluster: A cluster contains multiple brokers. Broker: One broker is one server, with a specific ID; The topic partitions are distributed across all the brokers in the cluster. Replication: The replication of data for the topic, so that the partitions in the topic will be replicated for safety purpose.

Note

At any time, only one broker hosts the leader of a given partition (accepts reads and writes), the other brokers host the followers (only sync the data). If the broker hosts the leader is down, a new leader will be selected from the followers.

Producer & Consumer

Producer

Write data to topic Acknowledge mode: acks=0 no data acknowledgment; acks=1 data acknowledgment from leader; acks=all data acknowledgement from leader and all replicas. Message Key: Determines how the data is sent to the partitions; key=null data is sent round robin; key=some_field , messages with the same value for the field will be sent to the same partition.

Consumer

Read data from topic Read data from multiple partitions in parallel, and read data in order within each partition. Consumer Group: One consumer belongs to one consumer group; One consumer group can have multiple consumers; One consumer group reads all the partitions of a topic (e.g. If we have 2 consumer groups, each message will be consumed twice, once in consumer group 1, once in consumer group 2); Each consumer within the same consumer group reads from exclusive partitions. Consumer Offset: Kafka stores the offsets each consumer group has been reading ( __consumer_offsets ) on the topic; So that when consumer dies, it will be able to read back from where they left off after it recovers. Consumer Offset Committing: At most once — offset is committed as soon as the message is received, could result in message lost if the processing goes wrong; At least once — offset is committed only after the message is processed, can result in one message processed multiple time, need to make sure the process is idempotent; Exactly once — can only be achieved between Kafka to Kafka workflows. Consumer Connection: consumer connects to one broker only in the cluster, and it will know all the other brokers, topics and partitions base on the metadata.

Zookeeper
10s to easily install confluent-kafka[avro] in Windows
By: Chris Sun
Tags: Kafka, Windows 10, Happy, Python, Confluent Kafka

10s to easily install confluent-kafka[avro] in Windows

Photo by bruce mars on Unsplash

If you are using Python for Kafka development, you have to use confluent-kafka, which can be easily installed in ubuntu, but no easy in Windows. You may have searched for hours and install giant Visual Studio IDE and have no clue which component you should install.

Here is the solution for that.

Go to https://mirrors.aliyun.com/pypi/simple/confluent-kafka/ to find the latest wheel file for your requirement. The one I choose is confluent_kafka-1.5.0-cp37-cp37m-win_amd64.whl.

Here are the steps to solve your problem.

Create a virtual env with corresponding python version as well as requests package, such as

conda create -n kafka-py37 python=3.7 requests

2. Install the wheel file

conda activate kafka-py37

pip install confluent_kafka-1.5.0-cp37-cp37m-win_amd64.whl

3. If you need avro, pip install it. This is equivalent to confluent_kafka[avro]

pip install avro

That is all, you can setup the interpreter in your IDE now.
Let Me Hear you Scream(ing Architecture)
By: Daniel Rusnok
Tags: Programming, Software Development, Design Patterns, Clean Code, Software Architecture

Screaming Architecture

The author of the term Screaming Architecture is Robert C. Martin. He is presenting it in the blog post from 2011. Uncle Bob pointed out that every architectural blueprint is telling you the building’s intent.

From family residence to the library, the reader of such a blueprint can quickly recognize the building’s purpose. Blueprints screams building’s use-cases and software architecture should work the same way. You can read how to centralize your software architecture around application use-cases in my older post.

What is Software’s Blueprint

A blueprint is a reproduction of a technical drawing or engineering drawing using a contact print process on light-sensitive sheets — wikipedia

The technical drawing of software is mostly done at the beginning of every project. But such drawings are more abstractions than a precise, detailed description of an application.

Every time you want to find out the application functionality’s precise details, you are going through the source code and read it from it. It follows that the software’s blueprint is its codebase.

Software architecture can scream its intent as soon as its codebase structure is organized around the use-cases.
3 Domain-Centric Architectures Every Software Architect Should Know
By: Daniel Rusnok
Tags: Programming, Domain Driven Design, Software Development, Clean Code, Software Architecture

SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE & REFACTORING

3 Domain-Centric Architectures Every Software Architect Should Know

The first concern of the architect is to make sure that the house is usable; it is not to ensure that the house is made of brick. — Uncle Bob Daniel Rusnok Follow Oct 24, 2020 · 7 min read

Domain

The expression domain is occurring in software bibles for a very long time now and is heavily discussed in the book Domain-Driven Design by Eric Evans. The domain is the real-world context which you are attempting to solve by writing a piece of software. Simply said, the domain is the thing why software exists and is about.

Evans divides the domain into three subdomains.

Core Domain

The core domain represents a competitive advantage and the software’s reason for being. It is a hearth of the software with the most fundamental business rules, use cases, and domain models. It usually is the smallest part of the codebase. In other words, it is the most critical 20% part of the software.

Supporting Domain

Supporting domains are supporting subsystems of software. The core can still exist without them but does not makes it alone to its users. There can be multiple supporting domains in one system. For example, the supporting domain is for the core domain, the same thing as invoicing for Amazon.

Generic Domain

A generic domain is the least custom part and the least important part of the software. It is not specific to your domain, and it is widespread in other systems. I am currently working on an employee’s timesheets information system, and the generic domain for this software is an external time tracker for each of the employees.
On Friendship
By: Kyle Reynolds
Tags: Relationships, Friends, Friendship, People, Life

On Friendship

I have come to value Friendship in my life more than I ever imagined I would. Most of my life I was pretty much a loner. Eventually I decided I wanted to try to reach out and try to make some friends .

I've made friends of all sorts. Some people I've become very close with others are just acquaintances and everything in between.

What I've learned is that we often view our friends through a very specific lens. We want people to be the people we want them to be. To meet the definition of Friendship we have in our minds.

We struggle to accept people for who they are. We judge them when they don't live up tobour expectations.

The very fact that we place expectations on people might be part of the problem.

It's easy to be angry and resentful when a friend falls short of who we think they should be.

For myself I try to view friendships differently.

We are all vastly different people with different personalities and values and perspectives on life. Everyone will view each relationship we have with another person differently. I will see my relationship with you differently than you will see your relationship with me. We will feel a different level of obligation to one another. If I hold you to my standards we will inevitably fail as friends.

I really try to accept people for who they are and not place expectations on them. If a person brings joy and happiness into your life accept them and love them for what they bring to your life.

We are all imperfect humans and we will all fail and let eachother down. If we bitterly hold that against eachother we will have nothing.

Friends are those humans that show up in your life and make a positive impact in any way that they do.

Sometimes people will not be there when you need them but then others will step up. Do not write off the friends who weren't there. You don't know their story.

Accept and love your friends for the times they are their but do not punish them for the times they are not around.

Every person fits into our lives differently and behaves differently.

If we were all around all the time and all behaved the same we wouldn't have or need a variety of friends.

Friends are important parts of our lives, bit do not put them up on a pedestal where they can only fall and shatter that friendship.

Accept your friends for the imperfect humans they are. Allow them to bring joy into your life according to what they are capable of.
Look On The Inside
By: Floyd Mori
Tags: Friends, Learn, Winter, Poetry, People

Know the full story

Photo by Nanda Dian Pratama on Unsplash

The sun shines brightly today,

and it seems warm outside.

But winter has come,

and the weather is cold.

We cannot always tell the true story

by looking at something on the outside.

It is necessary to get out or in

and experience the situation

to see what the real story is.

That is how it is with people.

We need to know them to see

what they are really like.

We should not rush to judgment

before we know their story

and try to know them.

They may become friends.
If you are trying to achieve your true potential, you might want to read this…
Tags: Success, Self Improvement, Life Lessons, Friends, Life

If you are trying to achieve your true potential, you might want to read this… Mo Follow Dec 10, 2020 · 2 min read

Photo from Unsplash

Some of the people closest to you might not want you to succeed.

This is why you mustn’t tell people too much information on what you are trying to accomplish, or what your goals and aspirations are, because they might use that against you, and might use that to try to demoralize you.

“You should’ve just stayed at your old job.”

“You won’t make it. There’s no point in trying.”

“Stop being optimistic. You need to get real.”

These are things that some people might say to make you question what you are doing. After a while of hearing these things, you start to believe them as true.

You might ask yourself why they are saying these things, and maybe you think they are just looking out for you, just making sure that you are not going to be hurt in the long run.

They are not.

They are making sure that you don’t get the rewards of the hard work that you are doing. They are making sure that you stop before you even get started. They are making sure that they set you up for failure.

They are making sure that you don’t accomplish your goals because they didn’t have the courage to try to reach theirs.

This is a hard pill to swallow for some, but it is true.

Some people just don’t want to see you fulfill their potential, because if they couldn’t do it, they don’t want to believe that someone they know could.

If you feel like you have someone like this in your life, do whatever it takes to get them out of it.

It will make it easier for you to achieve success, and when you do, the people around will be happy and proud of you because you did.

Hopefully, you will take this advice on board, so that you can surround yourself with people who want the best for you, and are happy for you when you achieve your goals.
Blogmas: Family Christmas traditions, Part 1
By: Deanna Martinez
Tags: Friends, Holidays, Tradition, Christmas, Family

Would you like to start new family traditions this Christmas? Blogmas is here to help! Here are 5 new ideas…

1. Elf on the shelf

Even if the kids do not believe, it’s still a fun time!

2. Baking cookies

Spend the day baking.

3. Share with your neighbors

Take some cookies to the neighbors!

4. Take a drive

Hop in the car one evening and go looking at Christmas lights in the neighborhood.

5. Go shopping

Go out together in search of a new Christmas tree ornament. Maybe get one with the year printed on it so every year you decorate the tree you can remember each one and where you bought it.

What is Blogmas?

Blogmas: Christmas gift wrap alternatives, Part 1

Blogmas: Christmas gift wrap alternatives, Part 2
How to Tell Who Your Real Friends Are
By: Bradley S.
Tags: Relationships, Covid 19, Friends, Social Media, Friendship

Friendship

How to Tell Who Your Real Friends Are

Photo by Matheus Ferrero on Unsplash

How does one distinguish between genuine friends and casual relationships in this era? 10 years ago, you could host a party or life event and dictate who a friend was based on who decided to show up. You might even create a list of people you’d feel comfortable contacting in case you had to move or had an emergency.

Nowadays with COVID and the continued burgeoning of virtual relationships, it’s become a little harder to discern who is really your true friends are. A lot of people my age don't even feel like they have any good friends. An alarming statistics from August 2019, revealed that 27% of millennials felt they didn't have any “close” friends (NY Post, 2019). Even if that’s the case, it’s important to realize it now so you can start building deeper friendships and perhaps nurturing fewer surface encounters.

There’s a surefire way to do that nowadays and it involves significantly altering the way you interact with social media.

Either delete or unfollow most people on your social media. If you decide not to delete social entirely because you use it for business purposes or have groups or pages that you rely on, it’s ok, just simply stop posting and unfollow most people you friend on the social media platforms you use. Don't worry, you can always follow them back when you end this experiment!

Here’s the trick though. People will notice. There are some transactional friends who “like” your stuff and you “‘like” theirs. They probably won't reach out though. The people who genuinely care and are most likely friends will reach out though. They will want to know what's going on with you and what you’re up to. They might miss your posts or communicate with you. A simple but pretty dependable guard rail: If you are texting or messaging each other in 2020, you’re friends!

Friends will contact you. Either through Messenger, text, or DMs.

It works. If you are willing to lay low for just a little while, you can effectively summon the intrigue of those who actually care. It may sound childish but it’s worth it. It’s even more childish to stay concerned with the little dopamine hit you get from “likes” from people you barely know and fear what may come of losing that. Those who are stuck in that rut really need to try this, but it can impactful for just about anyone these days.

Honestly, what do you have to lose? It’s 2020! As if this year wasn't enough of a test on relationships, perform this simple experiment, and know who to devote your time to when all this blows over!
Conversation Between She and He
By: Anchal Sharma
Tags: Friends, Beautiful, Couples, Cute, Conversations

He knows How He Can Make Her Smile

They met. Looked at each other and starts walking. (Today she took some extra time while she was getting ready).

She- Hey! How’s am I looking today?

He- Same as you look always.

She nodded down and starts walking.

He- Hey! You always look beautiful.

She blushed and smiled and starts walking again.
Like for many, the Age of Trump has put real strain on my family and friend relationships.
By: Matthew Spira
Tags: Relationships, Politics, Friends, Trump, Family

Like for many, the Age of Trump has put real strain on my family and friend relationships. Pre-Trump, I took pride in my Facebook representing the eclectic mix of people from all the different way-stops of my life, of which there are many. For years I consciously followed a “no politics” policy for FB, so political differences rarely came up as an issue. (I’d bite my tongue at some of their posts, but I didn’t engage.) Once it became obvious that Trump was the worst President in American history, I just couldn’t ethically keep quiet any longer and felt I had to do my part to try to stop him from being re-elected. I still wanted to not let political differences come in the way of friendships, but as things heated up over the last year, I did end up having to part ways with some. Which I do mourn.

Credit: Tanner Ross, unsplash.com
You Humiliated Me
By: Jawad Masood
Tags: Humiliation, Sad, Friends, Alone, Blue Insights

What happens, when someone humiliates you, and yet you do not make him realize you can also humiliate him, but you respect his self-esteem while he does not…

When you have a sea of words but you do not show even a drop of it. When someone shows your bad image to others, shows how poor you are, but you do not show your strength, your wellness just because you know you are more than him and you do not want him to feel bad or feel shamed in front of others but he tries to show your poorness to others which is in fact not real.

You know all about him, his poorness his weakness, his image but you still stay silent and the other person believes him and makes a wrong image of yours, which in fact is like a fake image.

Although you feel very bad but the positive side is that it shows that you are a man of courage, patience, and self-esteem. It shows you will definitely achieve something big in your life because you do not try to show off in front of others even when someone humiliates you in front of others.

Your silence will surely achieve something bigger in your life. One day a storm of your silence and achievement will show the world how you lived full of life and how your past spent proudly.
The Glittery Path of Friendship
By: Amy Culberg
Tags: Self Improvement, Friends, Self-awareness, Self Love, Friendship

The Glittery Path of Friendship

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

There is a time in everyone’s life that they become who they are.

If I were in charge of the universe, I would take out my laser pointer and tell anyone who wanted to know, at which moment they became who they are. Part of the human experience is wanting to understand our story. We sift through our own narratives, trying to make sense of our purpose.

When did I know I was going to become a lawyer? Or a writer? Or a doctor? Or a mother?

Who influenced me the most? My 4th-grade teacher? My father?

What event impacted my life and sent it on this trajectory?

Life is a series of moments. Maybe more accurately, a highway paved upon those moments.

We think we know when we became who we are. There’s a story about us that we tell.

We are quick to point out, when asked, which moment defines us.

We tell it so often, it almost seems true.

We could be right. We could be wrong.

Often, the story is about someone who died. Sometimes it is about trauma. Sometimes it is a person who came into our path. Sometimes a trip we took. We have a compulsion to understand how we became who we are.

I don’t know if it matters.

I think the becoming of who we are is ongoing.

I think that who we became is marching order to keep going.

Today, I started reading a new memoir that a friend is writing. After I finished reading it, I watched a video of another friend singing opera. Both broke me open. Each of these friends, opening themselves up in their chosen medium, was saturated in the gratitude of their gifts. I could see life’s glitter wafting off of them, invoking the storm of being alive.

Lucky me, I thought, knowing these people.

Each comes from different parts of my life. One is my oldest friend. The other is a friend I made after my son was born. Three decades between them.

If I were to look down at my life, at this moment, and see these two people on my highway (only two of the wonders of my life, there are so many more), I would see a glittery path and exhale.

Now and then, I stop and look around, to orient myself to where I am on the road of my life. I think, what do I know so far? Has anything changed since the last time I got out of my metaphorical car on my metaphorical road? Where am I now? I ponder. Where should I stop next?

I always come to the same conclusion. The roads traveled are the people I have met along the way, and brought with me. My life is what they bring to my life and hopefully what I bring into theirs.
Economy: France on the road to economic recovery in 2021
Tags: Coronavirus, Recovery, Education, France, Economics

Photo by Anthony DELANOIX on Unsplash

1. France on the road to economic recovery in 2021

According to a study by the FOEC (French Observatory of Economic Conditions), GDP growth will be at 7.1% next year after a decline of 9.5% this year. The study estimates that the State has assumed 85% of the cost of the health crisis.

2. Despite the pandemic, France confirms its economic attractiveness.

Investors are attracted by robust telecommunication infrastructures, the cost of electricity and employee productivity. Strengthening the digitization of the economy is a driving force behind attractiveness: France is devoting seven billion euros to digital technology and start-ups. Another indicator that explains the ranking of France is the access to capital for companies of all sizes, particularly through credit.

3. Weaknesses in education risk plaguing the French economy in the long term.

In a landmark report, France Strategy, a think thank associated with the French government warns that the deficiencies of the French education system will weigh on the productivity of the country and obstruct its economic future. In the absence of a significant development in training, the country could be doomed to low-income growth …

The non-cognitive skills of schoolchildren in France are well below those observed in other OECD countries. French schoolchildren are less persevering, less open to problem-solving, have a poorer perception of their mathematics results, and are more anxious. They have a low sense of belonging to the group and are less open to collaborative problem-solving.
#Podcast Le Breakdown: France, Macron and the American Media
By: Yasser Louati
Tags: Podcast, France, Emmanuel Macron, Laïcité, Islamophobia

SUBSCRIBE AND LISTEN TO LE BREAKDOWN on:

iTunes, Spotify, Deezer, Google podcast, Stitcher, Radio Public, Breaker, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Podbean and all major podcasting platforms.

Lindsey Tramuta is an american journalist who has been living in Paris since 2006. She is a culture & travel journalist, author, podcaster, and editorial consultant.

Lindsey also wrote The New Paris: the People, Places & Ideas Fueling a Movement (Abrams, 2017) which made it to the Amzon bestseller list and The New Parisiennes: the Women & Ideas Shaping Paris.

Listen to Le Breakdown on AnchorFM, Applepodcasts, Google podcasts, Spotify and most streaming platforms

In this episode, we discussed the ongoing turmoil in France as Emmanuel Macron’s administration is going from one crisis to another.

The latest episode of his calling the Financial Times to have them take down an article critical of his policies and his public outrage at the New York Times or refusal to give an interview to the Washington Post have indeed shocked many obeservers of French society including Linndsey Trramuta.The massive rallies of the pas two years from the yellow vest movement to the black lives matter marches in June and the recent ones against the global security bill have only confirmed the drift towards more authoritarianism and disdain for accountability.

The contrast between the runnning candidate of 2017 who posed as fresh promise of change has become so striking that Emmanuel Macron lately even declared that he may even consider not running for reelection.The conversation covererd issues of race in France, social upheavals and how the interarction between politics and journalism in France is strikinlgy different from what can be observed in the US or the UK.

https://anchor.fm/yasser-louati1/episodes/France--Macron-and-the-American-Media--Guest-Lindsey-Tramuta--Paris-based-american-journalist-enfhma
L’HUMANITE EN PERIL, VIRONS DE BORD, TOUTE!
By: Benoit Ferres
Tags: Ecologie, Environment, Livre, France, Effondrement

Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more

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Pourquoi avoir créé “la Petite Librairie de Collapsologie”
By: Benoit Ferres
Tags: Ecologie, Environment, Livre, France, Effondrement

Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more

Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore
The Bells of Aix-en-Provence
By: Hank Edson
Tags: Revelation, France, Angels, Poetry, Spirituality

For more of my poetry, try these:

My poetry collection, A Brave New Worldview, is available at Amazon.com.