fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Missing: My Body
By: Rafaela Mempin
Tags: Emotions, A Cornered Gurl, Hope, Poetry, Woman

Have you ever awaken not feeling your being?

Cold in bareness one morning

I found my body missing

Out there, my body wanders

a passive walking corpse

controlled by the strings of the social motion

The cold breeze sways me

in a vague routine of loneliness

reflection safeguards

my barren soul from expressive scars

So if it is not too much to ask

If you see her, please tell me

5'3, dark hair, soulless in her 20s

I am waiting on the street

breathing heavy cry

sobbing out of the public eye

repeatedly reciting that line

“Everything will be alright.”
Building Learning Communities (part 1)
By: Manoj Khanna
Tags: It Organization, Agile, Agile Project Management, Project Management, Leadership

For past couple of months I’ve been working on my latest book on Agile Learning and Knowledge Sharing — and have found a very close association of coaching with building a learning community within an organization. As someone said — “It is hapless without the hopeless, and the worthy for the just cause”, needless to say it is important to look beyond the obvious and dig deep into the realms rather just the facts in order to attain the knowledge required by each individual or a group as a whole.

I’m deeply inspired by the book “The Fifth Discipline” by Peter Senge. Though the book has a total different meaning, cause and inspiration, but it fairly well talks about the elements for building learning communities and where they stems from. As the culture within the organizations develops overtime, and the breed of experience cogs starts to accumulate and a plethora of structure of work is built around the masses — it becomes known where all the knowledge is getting piled up and built.

Knowledge creation is a key element for building the learning community, and Peter and his group talks about following key critical elements within knowledge creation:

Research

This is the area where a disciplined approach to discovery is required, and a development of understanding with a commitment in order to share what’s being learned.Practice

Everyone works towards producing some practical results, and more so the application of energy, tools and efforts applies to all individual who consistently perform the work diligently and get better at it over time.

Capacity Building

This is a bridge between research and practice. These are those who help others build skills and capabilities through the use of new methods and tools — in a common lingo development of best practices and processes proven over time through the use of research, discovery and practice.Next, I’ll talk about how to take these three elements within Agile concept and apply.

© Manoj Khanna 2003–2012.
Airbnb IPO: The most anticipated IPO in 2020
Tags: IPO, Travel, Online, Airbnb, Covid 19

“When the market is ready, we will be ready,”- CEO, Brian Chesky

Even though 2020 has been impeccably bad timing for IPOs the Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said to be still considering an IPO in 2020. While after the stock market rebounded back many companies are now rushing to go public including Robinhood, Door Dash and Airbnb. Airbnb said the IPO decision came after the company booked more than 1 million nights in a single day for the first time since the start of the pandemic.

Airbnb stands for Air Bed and Breakfast; it is an online marketplace for short-term rentals and experiences. The company was founded in 2008 by Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nate Blecharczyk. They are now in over 81,000 cities with 6 million properties listed on their home-sharing website.

“We had to put it on the shelf a little bit because we had a bit of fire-fighting to do. We’ve now kind of dusted that off. And we’re back to working and being prepared.” Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said. “We also don’t want to go public if the world’s not ready for us, if people are really nervous about travel if they aren’t really clear about Airbnb, then the market’s not ready” he added.

Airbnb’s business has been hit hard by coronavirus, the company abruptly halted online advertising to cut costs. Airbnb has lost around 16% of its pre-coronavirus value of $US31 billion. The San Francisco-based company recently laid off 1900 of its 7500 employees. While Airbnb has shown some small signs of a rebound since then, reporting in June that bookings had surged as some travel resumed. “Our business has not recovered, but we are seeing encouraging signs,” the company said.

When can we expect the Airbnb IPO?

The company had previously scheduled its IPO to March but set aside those plans after the company raised an additional $2 billion in funding during the pandemic and started cutting costs across its operations. According to Reuters, Airbnb, valued by investors at $31 billion before the pandemic, has received offers to go public through a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC.

“We’re not ruling it out this year, but we’re definitely not committing to a timeline right now,” Chesky said. “We’re still a little early in this crisis for me to feel clear enough about how this is going to play out.”

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Day2-3 Point
Tags: HTML, CSS, Notes, Day 3, Day 2

in On The Couch
Cryptocurrency News Update — 11/01/19
By: Joseph Harris
Tags: News, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency News, Investing, Cryptocurrency

Disclaimer:

Any statements I make in these videos are just my opinion, and should not be taken as investment advice.

Please do your own research in addition to watching these videos, ensure you are fully confident in any investment decisions you make, and never invest money you cannot afford to lose.
AWS Cloud Practitioner completed — what’s next?
By: Stelios Moschos
Tags: DevOps, Software Development, Coding, Cloud Computing, AWS

My cloud journey started in September 2016 when I joined a media company as a backend developer. This is where I was introduced for the first time to the cloud and more specifically to AWS. I became quickly interested in the magic of how the infrastructure was created, configured and maintained. It was not anymore a matter of paying attention to the server room, the possible power flunctuations and the need for upgrading the memory and CPU — manually, by having to go to the server rack and making the required hardware change.

Photo by Science in HD on Unsplash

Three years down the line, provided that my knowledge and experience with the AWS services was at competent level, I decided to get certified. This way I wanted to be able to prove my skills to prospective employers and set the foundations of becoming a DevOps engineer with an extensive grasp of the subject. Thus, the first thing to do was to register to acloud.guru, where I started studying for the first exam of AWS — the AWS Cloud Practitiner.

The AWS Cloud Practitioner is the first level of AWS certificates

The AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner examination is intended for individuals who have the knowledge and skills necessary to effectively demonstrate an overall understanding of the AWS Cloud, independent of specific technical roles addressed by other AWS Certifications. The exam can be taken at a testing center or from the comfort and convenience of a home or office location as an online proctored exam. — https://aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-cloud-practitioner/

The study process became difficult during a period of job searching, as it created pressure. The result was “parking” the exam preparation until concluding the job hunt.

In November 2019, I joined Reply as a Senior Consultant. Whilst settling in the new job was the main focus, I managed to find some time and restarted the preparation.

In December 2019, I booked my AWS Cloud Practitioner exam for January 10. During the booking, I felt very excited and booked additionally the AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam for two weeks after the first — you can call it an “impulse buy”, or an excitement buy :)

In January 2020, a week before the exam, I wanted to postpone my examination and therefore I moved it to January 13. The main reason was the bad results in the prep tests and also the services released by AWS at AWS re:Invent conference earlier in November. I had a feeling I will be asked for these new services and I was right from what I saw later.

Next? I sat the exam in Crawley, UK and …

Photo by krakenimages on Unsplash

I PASSED IT! — you can see the excitement in my LinkedIn post.
2 Secrets to Making Affirmations Work in Your Favor
By: Anshu Singh
Tags: Fulfillment, Happiness, Self, Life, Love

2 Secrets to Making Affirmations Work in Your Favor

They will be working anyways, so better use them to your advantage.

Photo by Taisiia Stupak on Unsplash

“I am not smart enough to get this job” “I don't think he would understand my views” “I think my ideas are always dumb” “I could never be confident like you” “Whatever I eat, goes into my hips” “I don't deserve her” “I could never earn so much”

Did any of these statements make you go like “yeah, that's me”?Then congratulations you have already used affirmations in your life. Chances are you hadn't realized while doing it, but you must have experienced their effects in your reality.

So what are affirmations?

Affirmations are just simple words. Simple, plain words that add great meaning to our lives. Words which are repeated so often that we start to believe it. Everything in us believes it. Our conscious as well as the subconscious mind. And it gets imprinted onto our thinking patterns and behavior and finally in our physical reality.

A study shows that repeating anything, again and again, leave imprints on our behavioral processes. Yet you make such negative statements throughout the day, about your own health, or mentality, or behavior. And you have been using them in your conversations as facts. For years.

So understand that affirmations have been working for you forever, and will continue doing so, regardless of your beliefs.

If it's something natural and you can't actually do anything to stop it, maybe you should try working with it to actually help you in your life. To handle situations better. To let good things flow into your lives. To live the life you have always wanted.
That Martini Guy Joins the Howdoo Team
By: Jason Sibley
Tags: Blockchain

Jordan the owner of the That Martini Guy YouTube channel is a well known, well connected and prominent figure in the cryptocurrency space. He has worked with projects such as Harmony, aXpire and Ampleforth to increase their exposure to the mass market. He is currently active as a cryptocurrency influencer and has great experience in the cryptocurrency space with regards to tokenomics and growing blockchain startups into having functional revenue models in addition to growing exposure for blockchain startups.

That Martini Guy is coming onboard at Howdoo as Head of partnerships, in his role he will be tasked with connecting Howdoo with new projects to find synergies in addition to connecting Howdoo with various exchange platforms and helping widen the Howdoo ecosystem. Jordan is passionate about blockchain infrastructures and has experience and understanding of the most effective ways to go from point A to point B.

Jordan has been working closely with the team for the past few months, and we’re excited to make him an official member of the team.

MORE ABOUT HOWDOO

Howdoo is a blockchain-powered social media platform that puts you in control. It’s a single application that combines all the best features of existing social media apps, but with a radical new approach to content creation & monetization.

* Users own their own data and decide what and how to share.

* Users can receive attention based income for allowing passive advertising.

* Feature rich platform for users and content creators, with PiP video streaming and more.

* Content creators have access to unique and fair monetization models, including tipping with the uDoo which the content creator retains 100%.

* Built with blockchain for speed and security.

Howdoo is currently live on web, and in the iOS and Android app Stores. Join us now iOS — https://ter.li/n2u3e5 or on Android — https://ter.li/5w7mdg

You can buy uDoo’s on Cointiger, Idex , Exmarkets or on HaloDex.

* Follow us on twitter —

https://twitter.com/howdooHQ

* Join us on Reddit —

https://www.reddit.com/r/Howdoo/
Price Alerts 🔔, Max Button — Product Update #13
By: Jean Amiouny
Tags: Crypto, Product Updates, Fintech, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency

You spoke, we listened. Today we’re introducing Price Alerts, a highly requested feature by the community!

Price Alerts 🔔

Price Alerts track the mid-rate (midway between the buy and sell rates) of both Bitcoin and Ethereum prices on Shakepay. You can add an alert to notify you once either currency is below or above a certain price. This is a great use-case when deciding to buy or sell.

It’s dead simple to use. Just tap on Price Alerts, Add new price alert, select a currency and a price, and you’re set!

Important: make sure your notifications are enabled for Shakepay.

iOS: Settings → Shakepay → Notification → Turn Allow Notifications on

Settings → Shakepay → Notification → Turn Allow Notifications on Android: Settings → Apps & Notifications → Shakepay → Turn App Notifications on

Max Button

For the longest time, we did not offer a MAX button allowing you to send or buy/sell with your total wallet balance. Well, now we do!

Make sure to upgrade to the latest on the app stores and you’ll be blessed with these wonderful new updates!

Links for download (v1.2.533)

Google Play Store

Apple App Store

https://shakepay.co
- Momentum
By: Jada Gomez
Tags: Justice, Politics, Race, Police, Society

More from Momentum Follow

Momentum is a blog that captures and reflects the moment we find ourselves in, one where rampant anti-Black racism is leading to violence, trauma, protest, reflection, sorrow, and more. Momentum doesn’t look away when the news cycle shifts.
Journalists from Baltics: Russia isn't our obsession, we define our own journalism
By: Check Your Facts
Tags: Journalism, Media, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia

Journalists from Baltics: Russia isn't our obsession, we define our own journalism

Three journalists from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania explain the current media situation in their countries.

The Baltic States by Wikipedia

Listen to the conversation

On this week's and this year's last podcast episode we spoke to three journalists from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania about what is happening with media and journalism in their countries.

Liepa Zelniene is a political journalist for 15min in Lithuania. In 2016 she has started a fact checking unit inside her newsroom.

Marian Männi is a journalist, media analyst and data fan. She has worked for the biggest Estonian media and is the co-founder of a fixing agency called fixers.press.

Filips Lastovskis is a political journalist for Delfi in Latvia. He is interested in Education and European Union politics.
Win Up To $300 in ZEN: Horizen + Acre Giveaway!
By: Acre Admin
Tags: Contests, Cryptocurrency

Horizen and Acre have partnered to make ZEN easily available! To celebrate, we are providing 3 lucky winners with $100 of ZEN. Please complete the steps below to enter the competition! Good Luck.
Typewriter app ate my first 500 words
By: Julie Russell
Tags: Writing, NaNoWriMo

Note to self:

When using a new program, such as Typewriter, which is so minimal it barely has a menu, use caution. The first time you open this app when a list of “Key Mappings” is presented, you might want to copy that shortcut list somewhere safe, because three days before ‘wrimo starts officially, when you decide it’s not exactly cheating to begin your 50k word count, you are so excited that you don’t want to write more scenes by hand into your notebook, and you actually got your behind out of bed partially because a coughing fit overtook you, and you had to get water, and then you were up anyway so you may as well feed the cat, feed the dog, start the water boiling for coffee, and your girls, your characters are starting to talk to you, so hey! Let’s try out that program.

So you eke out 500 words, plus or minus, most of a chapter, which may not end up being the first chapter, because another ‘wrimo suggested that you don’t have to write your chapters in the order they may be in your (hypothetical) novel, and you suffer through the typos, and the really bad writing, because this is a program, like your trusty typewriter, where your typos and mishaps are immortalized on the page, and you go to exit, and get a prompt that says:

Use caution before exiting!

And you think, surely I’ll get to save first if I exit, because you can’t remember how you’re supposed to save in this app, and you don’t think to try your good, reliable friend Command+S (Apple+S), so you say No, at first, then think, well, let’s gamble, it’s only 500 words, and I wasn’t particularly attached to them.

So you go to exit Typewriter again, and you say Yes to exiting, and Poof! Those 500 words (give or take a dozen), that you thought you weren’t attached to, you thought you didn’t care much about because they were messy and imperfect and riddled with typos in this $%^%& app, are gone.

You sit and stare at your desktop picture of the Golden Gate Bridge, taken from the top of the bridge, not finding it ironic that the perspective is 100 feet in the air, wondering where your words went. And you chuckle. You’re slightly amused because you made your character chuckle, at something that was ironic more than funny as well. But those words are gone now, along with your character’s chuckle.

You are glad you are finding this out now, on October 29th, not on November 1st, when those words matter a lot more. So you install Typewriter on another Mac, because you can’t get back that shortcut menu no matter what you do, and it’s not on the page where you downloaded the app, and you see it, again, finally. And you chuckle again, because Apple+S could have saved those measly, poignant, probably cliche riddled 500 words.

magical key mappings

And you are never, ever going to forget this, especially not for the next 32 days.

Next: What is a NaNoWriMo, and is it contagious? (T minus 2)
Week 8: Higher Fidelity Prototypes & Sprint 1
By: Elise Colbert
Tags: Testing, Agile, Product Design, Design Thinking, Scrum

Synthesizing last week’s interviews.

After synthesizing the feedback we got during user testing last week, we were ready to get started on the first sprint. We had our first sprint planning meeting on Monday, where we began figuring out how to break our product into epics and user stories.

The planning session was important because we determined what exactly are the core mechanisms of our product. In other words, in the simplest and most basic form of our product, what features are paramount? This would be the starting point for our development and would guide us on what issues to tackle first.

We decided that there were two core features that we should consider first: writing a journal entry and viewing analysis from past entries. Of course, these features can be broken up into many more parts. For example, just the journal entry can be split into: create a new journal entry, write an entry, save an entry, submit an entry’s data, make the entry disappear. After we had determined success criteria for each of our user stories, which are descriptions of capabilities that users should have for a particular feature of a product, we voted on how much effort would be necessary to complete each story on a scale of 1, 2, 3, 5, 8.

Well into Sprint 1.

We kicked off the sprint on Tuesday morning and have been moving at full speed since. Sherry and I spent some time drawing out a site map of the product and how the user will interact with it. Specifically, we investigated what different screens will be necessary for the user to successfully complete the flow of the product.

This was extremely helpful in addressing what the function of each screen really is. Sherry brought this analysis into her designs and has been working on creating some higher fidelity prototypes in Sketch. Now that the general features aren’t changing as much, the design is focusing more on the product brand and UX.

Early version of a site map for the Journal feature.

As we reach the end of the week, I’ve started reaching out to a bunch of users to start planning our next round of interviews next week. It will definitely be a busy week of interviews, planning, designing, and developing for us.
As promised, Maejor Ali debuted “Lolly”, the first single off of his forthcoming album, this…
Tags: Justin Bieber, Maejor, Press Release, Maejor Ali, Music

Maejor - Lolly Feat. Juicy J & Justin Bieber | Stream [New Song]

Bei Maejor has changed his name to Maejor Ali, and along with the change he brings new music. Listen to Lolly , the…
uDay 542 — Sunrise — Haibun Journey Beauty Each Day
By: Ada'S Poetry Alcove
Tags: Haiku, Poetry, Haibun

uDay 542 — Sunrise — Haibun Journey Beauty Each Day

Today’s beauty was golden sunlight coming in my window this morning. As much as I hate to say farewell to summer, the sunrises start to get more beautiful in autumn, peaking in beauty in February. This morning’s sun was a brilliant glowing orange orb. It was quiet a contrast to the thick fog covering the ground. It was a glorious start for the last day of the season. My cardinal flowers also made a spectacular showing today.

farewell to summer

a lone frog serenades

all night long
People Perform According to How They Are Paid
By: Grant H
Tags: SaaS, Leadership, Sales

Everyone Has a Number .

Recently I had a conversation with the CEO of a large media/advertising company. We talked about using compensation plans as a way to build confidence and trust between the company and employee. Brief synopsis below (cliff notes version):

People are motivated by different things.

As leaders within a company — we need to realize this to get the best out of each person.

What are the shared and mutual goals between the rep/company? As the rep does well — the company should as well. But what does this mean?

Let’s be proactive and find out what makes an employee tick. Are they trying to just pay the rent? Or do they have their eye on a new Model S?

Structure a shared plan around these common goals. Numbers should be based on employee financial goals and company goals. Provide a plan for each person (HR may complain and have to get creative) but look towards something custom for each employee. This can be really rewarding. (Scott Leese talks about this in his book — Addicted to the Process)

Also at this particular CEO’s company -everyone has a number by their name. He remarked that this is an easy answer to the recurring question of “How am I measured?”

Whether you are in marketing, success, support — he believes all employees should have some skin in the game and reward for doing so. Numbers should be based on both employee’s financial goals and the company’s goals. Provide a plan for each person (HR may complain and you may have to get creative). Custom for each employee can be really rewarding.

(Plus — Jeremey Donovan says that experienced salespeople negotiate their quota — so you likely are already customizing plans anyway).

If there are issues with performance — look at the compensation model and see if they are incentivized properly?

As you look to structure or tweak your compensation models — don’t be shy to customize models, quotas and plans for each person. Because people perform to how they get paid.
Lagrangian relaxation can solve your optimization problem much, much faster
By: Constance Deperrois, Grisoni
Tags: Optimization, Lagrange Multiplier, Mathematical Modeling, Algorithms, Data Science

Today’s advanced analytics techniques are providing businesses with new insights and opportunities that can improve decision making through optimization. We were recently presented with one such opportunity when a food retailer asked us to develop machine learning and optimization solutions to help the company establish prices that would optimize profit and reduce waste. After initial experiments and tests in real stores, we decided to scale the solution to large markets, which offered greater rewards, but presented new challenges. The main challenge was that on this larger scale the models to solve were significantly larger, which caused our Gurobi-powered optimizer to struggle. This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as “the optimization curse.” The optimization curse refers to the fact that as optimization problems become larger, they get exponentially harder to solve, and is described very well here.

In this article, we will explain how a well-known optimization technique, Lagrangian relaxation, helped our team reduce optimization time by a factor of more than 10 while improving the quality of the outcomes. This technique was very helpful to us, and we believe it can help others who also work on optimization topics. In particular, it can be applied to multiple use cases for which one needs to solve large MIP with coupling constraints, such as in scheduling or stock allocation problems.

Before we jump into content, though, we would like to thank Professor Pascal Van Hentenryck for helping us understand Lagrangian relaxation, as well as for everything he taught us about optimization.
Couple of Creatives — Manifesto
By: Alyssa Leverenz
Tags: Marketing, Creativity, Manifesto

We are creative marketing experts, Alyssa Aldrich and Andy Leverenz. After pursuing entrepreneurship managing our own freelance businesses for several years, we decided our two minds work better together and joined forces to establish a full-service digital marketing agency.

Spending our days fulfilling our dreams is as fun as it sounds and we’re grateful for every project we get. We realize that we are responsible for our reputation, the level of success we achieve, the brands we create and the contributions we make. They’re a reflection of our key values, which we express in our manifesto.

1. Attentiveness

We listen deeply and are aware of our surroundings.

2. Empathy

We strive to understand our surroundings.

3. Innovation

We do not conform to tradition. We are creators of the future.

4. Community Engagement

We will not hold back from promoting peace and a harmonious collective.

5. Minimalism

We have no use for the unnecessary. Meaningfulness only.

6. Curiosity

We seek out and welcome new ways of viewing the world.

7. Ambition

We keep our eyes on the prize (focus on the goal), allowing the minutia to fall into place.

8. Enthusiasm

We are partners in design — friends, colleagues and lovers — enjoying life.

9. Balance

We take a holistic approach in all that we do.

10. Service

We are here to do our best, to inform, to inspire and to help.

Thank you for reading. Please follow my blog! To learn more about what I do, check out my agency, Couple of Creatives.
‘’TUNEIN’’ with the APP.
By: Anne Sofie Nordby
Tags: Music

The overview

When I was going to find an idea for this APP task, I would like to make an App that I would like to enjoy in my everyday life. I quickly realized that I spend several hours daily searching for new music. I use myself different App’s like ITunes, Spotify and Shazame for both listening and searching for music. However, I think there’s an App missing where you can find upcoming artists who are on the music market. There are some artists you just never will find or listen to because you do not know where to search as a user.

The Context and Challenge

The idea was that it should be an App, where new artists themselves would post their music via the App. So it was actually supposed to be a '' musician '' sign up and a '' user '' sign up. My content is based on if you were a user and would like to search for new music and artists. So you register as a user and then you can begin to customize your taste according to what genre you like. In that way, the user will be included from the beginning.

The Process and Insight

I would like to give the app a design that would immediately radiate it as a music App. That's why I was inspired by the upcoming Coachella Festival, which has banners and advertisements everywhere on the internet. So the font is in the same style as the Coachella logo, but my colors are more muted and taken from my background image via color picker, so there was a balance in the expression.

The Solution

I have created an app that you can download as a user, who will guide you through the various steps, which will eventually give you a universe of music artists in different genres. It will also recommend artists of other genres if you are ready to explore some other genres.

I’ve tried to create a theme that goes on in all the pages of the app — so you can see the visual identity.

The Results

TUNEIN solves the issue, that it is difficult to find new upcoming music, and at the same time it was difficult as a new artist to come out with the music to a relevant audience.
El diseño instruccional en un mundo de datos interconectados
By: William Alexis Diaz Bastidas
Tags: Elearning, Python, Diseño Instruccional, E Learning Solutions, Python Programming

in On The Couch
SES öldü! Yaşasın SENSE!
By: Umur Ozan
Tags: Turkce, Pazarlama, Digiheadsblog, Advertising

in On The Couch
Technicolor Dreams
By: Erika Burkhalter
Tags: Relationships, Poetry, Photography, Dreams, Menopause

Technicolor Dreams

Hot flash sleep adventures

Why does it seem

that my very best dreams

float in between five and eight in the morning?

I find myself wandering

through technicolor tunnels

and unending rooms

where adventure looms

as I drift between

high backed stuffed chairs,

searching — who’s there? —

in that armoire big enough

to hide a lion, a witch

or a wardrobe in.

And then I am writing

on an antique desk

with a view of a balcony

where a flame-haired lady

on a magical air-bike

is bringing me kittens

and dresses

to wear to a cocktail party.

From midnight till four

the sweat pours from my skin.

I can’t even begin to sleep.

Then, just when I’m tucked

under my husband’s arm,

my hips snuggled up against his,

and I’m finally cool,

fate cruelty takes him away from me —

an early bird, is he —

but then I sleep

and those magical worlds

begin to unfurl into wild technicolor dreams.
A black woman’s body
By: Florence Wanjiku
Tags: A Cornered Gurl, Body Image, Poetry, Black Women, Poetry On Medium

A black woman’s body

is vogue

They manufacture parts

of a black woman’s body.

Place her under knife and chain

and watch how naturally anesthetic she is.

A dose of her melanin eludes pain, suffering,

and loss

The attraction to her otherness

has always been so intoxicating

Her soil forms the earth

making mountains, deserts

and streams places in which her

body has traveled

or being left to dry when she can’t

ward off bees for wanting to colonize

and steal her nectar.

Her body will put women under knife and pain

just to look like her

Her lips didn’t always seem so appealing

but of late they make billionaires out of lip kits

Her skin didn’t always seem so appealing

but of late makes economies

out of spray tans and tanning salons.

Her body has been hated, paraded, used and abused

It was once used to justify why black women

don’t make Vogue

but now, they are Instyle,

they are the Covergirl.

Now, they manufacture parts of a black woman’s

body and place them as crowns on others.
There Is the Perfect Font for ThinkPad Fans
Tags: Fonts, Typography, Design, Writing, Thinkpad

People have a special love for ThinkPads. They’re dedicated working tools to get things done. The design seems simple, functional and understated in a very elegant way. This no-nonsense approach has garnered the ThinkPad line of laptops many fans across the globe. On top of that, they’re sturdy, reliable and the wide (but somewhat confusing) lineup has something for everyone.

IBM made a great font

As everyone will know, the ThinkPad line of laptops is the brainchild of IBM (introduced 1992) and was only sold to Lenovo in 2005. Even with a new owner, the “spirit” of ThinkPads of yore ist still very much alive in newer models, like the T14s with Ryzen PRO processor, even though the line has of course experienced changes over the years. Not all of them to universal fanfare (battery bridge system anyone?).

Still, the thing that no one can quite put their finger on, that draws people to ThinkPads is a very “IBM-thing”. And so, while looking around for nice monospaced fonts (since I really like them) I was pleasantly surprised to learn that IBM released an awesome font family that perfectly caters to each and every of my (and probably most other’s) needs.

IBM Plex

This is a multipurpose font just to get things done. A bit like the idea behind ThinkPads, at least to me. IBM heavily uses the font themselves now too. The font is geared towards versatility and readability. Very utiliarian in nature, with hints of humanism. As IBM puts it on their dedicated info page for IBM Plex, it’s the perfect merger between machine and human. Really, you should check out their page to learn, how much love, care and thought went into creating this awesome typeface. There are plenty of minute details to discover in all the different styles, if you’re into that kind of thing.

so much thought went into creating this wonderful font

If you just want a font family that serves every purpose you can throw at it, from creating short copy or long copy text, programming and coding, creating great UX on your webpage or in apps, to drafting your novel (that IBM Plex Mono is perfect for that), you might have found it with IBM Plex. You get full 48 styles in total.

And the best of it?

It’s free!

You can get it here in OpenType and TrueType font format. Don’t hesitate. Get it, try it, love it. Chances are, if you are in love with ThinkPads, you might really enjoy this brilliant font. If you’re “just” looking for a perfect replacement for the already long-in-the-tooth trio of Times New Roman, Courier New and Arial, you’ve found it! IBM Plex especially shines when using it for large blots of text, like when you’re drafting or writing long copy.

I love it. Thank you IBM.
023 | 5分間で、誰でも仮想通貨を発行することができる
Tags: 日本語, Erc20, Ethereum, Blockchain

in In Fitness And In Health
Many Rivers to Long Grasses
Tags: Haiku, History, Analysis

Many Rivers to Long Grasses

A glance at few moments expressed in the past, matched by sounds from this era

‘When a country is defeated, there remain only mountains and rivers, and on a ruined castle in spring only grasses thrive. I sat down on my hat and wept bitterly till I almost forgot time.’

And thus finished Basho in an early chapter of his seminal Narrow Road in the Deep North, a theme revisited mystically, though with utmost clarity by Chèvrefeuille in his:

ancient warriors ghosts

mists over the foreign highlands —

waiting for the full moon

Such works need a grandiose overture to lift the words to personal meaning. Jimmy Cliff is one of the rare who can.

For the duration of this month I am following the unfolding Narrow Road, chapter by chapter, on Chèvrefeuille’s CDHK website, haiku by haiku.

Today, we see Basho Crossing the River Natori, giving Jimmy Cliff’s haunting melody more even more reference. And it is as if Basho has reached through the centuries to Cliff’s Many Rivers to Cross, for his lyrics echo Basho’s same tragic contemplation.

Indeed, ‘summer grasses’ is perhaps my all-time favourite Basho haiku, and easily the one which tugged me into this gentle art with ever deeper layers and colours. Basho’s haiku remains as potent a reminder of the futility of war, and of zealousness generally, though I do not like to read too much in a haiku, and even less to explain one, thus impeding on another reader’s own pleasure and interpretation.

To attempt to emulate the same emotions within the same theme as the two haiku above is not easy, and one can but attempt, using sincerity as a guide:

hidden by distance

yet not far from my mind

grassland whispers

In this next haiku I try to bring the warriors in:

warriors’ horses

echo in thunder

across the meadows

As I started this post with a reggae great — Jimmy Cliff and Many Rivers to Cross, I will finish it by a superb a relevant reggae anthem, Aux Armes Et Ceatera by Serge Gainsbourg /dit/: ‘Gainsbarre’ (in French slang, with various undertones to the meaning).

It is difficult to explain exactly what a scandal it was when this song came out, as I mentioned anthem, and in fact it is a reggae version of the French national anthem, politicised, covering the fallen warriors of the past, with the butterfly voices of the backup singers provided by none other than Rita Marley and friends. Rita Marley; wife of Bob Marley.
Tobesoft, NBREDS and Foresting Signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to Develop UI / UX and Digital Financial Services Based on Blockchain
Tags: Fintech, Blockchain Technology, Blockchain Startup, Digital Service, Company

Tobesoft, NBREDS and Foresting Signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to Develop UI / UX and Digital Financial Services Based on Blockchain Foresting Follow Jun 27, 2018 · 2 min read

- UI · UX company Tobesoft and fintech specialist Nbreds develop SNS platform based on blockchain

- Development of blockchain financial service - Foresting Bank through a comprehensive cooperation

Tobesoft (CEO Lee Moon-young and Cho Sang-won), Nbreds (CEO Jeong Dae-geun) and Foresting (CEO Daniel Eom) build the comprehensive cooperation on the development of blockchain-based SNS platform UI · UX and blockchain financial services Foresting Bank (MOU) on the 18th of June.

Tobesoft is the leading software company in Korea with the largest market share in the domestic UI and UX technologies, and is preparing to enter the global market through UI and UX technology.

“Tobesoft is pursuing a new business centered on the blockchain, fintech, and internet of everything(IoT) as the future growth engine.” Through this agreement, the Foresting partner will enter the blockchain-based SNS business as he mentioned, “We will expand our platform business based on the new blockchain.”

Nbreds CEO Jeong Dae-geun said, “Nbreds is a platform-specific fintech company with a variety of pre-paid and low-end payment solutions selected by domestic mobile operators, online content and global smartphone makers. Security technology to provide differentiated services. “

Through this agreement, CEO Jeong Dae-geun said, “To develop blockchain-based digital bank service Foresting Bank with Foresting partners, we combined expertise in the process of certification. I plan to support the development by utilizing it.“

“Through the agreement, we will accelerate the development of the Foresting Bank along with the development of UI / UX and other enterprise software, blockchain-based platform and Nbreds’ fintech technology.”

Foresting will utilize the blockchain technology in the future via:

▷Blockchain-based rewarding SNS ‘Foresting Platform’

▷Digital bank service for participants in ‘Foresting Bank’

▷Supporting the Foresting community, we plan to gradually expand the service area with the `Foresting Lab` to realize the change.

In the future, Tobesoft CEO Joe Sangwon will be the adviser for the Foresting platform and UI / UX development, and Mr. Jeong will be the advisor for the development of digital bank service of Foresting Bank.
2017 京阪奈追楓行
By: Yu-Hsin Hung
Tags: Travel, Kyoto, Osaka, Photography, Japan

in On The Couch
My Husband Crushes on Those Closest To Me
By: Alex Andra
Tags: Relationships, Infidelity, Friendship, Love, Marriage

Firstly, there is my best friend Carol. We’ve been friends since we met on the first day of grammar school when we were 11 years old. At school, she was a bit of an ugly duckling, she had very short curly ginger hair but she turned into a swan in her mid-teens when she grew her hair longer.

Suddenly, the guys' jaws would drop at her pure Irish beauty. So when I took my new boyfriend Dan back to Northern Ireland to meet my family, it was a given that I’d be taking him to meet my best friend Carol. We met up in the famous Crown Bar in Belfast. Dan and Carol got on really well, like really well and he made it known to me he thought she was hot.

Then there is my cousin Helen who I’m very close to, we’re more like sisters, and also look very alike, we look so alike that when we were children, people thought we were twins, (our mothers are actually identical twins). Dan and Helen have so much in common, their love of travel, boozy nights out, competitive running, and of course their love of taking the piss out of me.

Along came Tanya who I met at work when I relocated to move in with Dan. Tanya the stunning Turkish delight who oozed both physical beauty and inner beauty. Such a lovely sweet young woman who had guys falling over themselves to date her. I guess it was inevitable that Dan would crush on her too, it would probably be odd if he didn’t, even I thought she was hot.

Another best friend who I’ve known almost as long as I’ve known Dan and who lives around the corner from us, Elizabeth. Although they have little in common, she’s really beautiful and he often reminds me of that!

For crying out loud, there’s even my mother. Now, he isn’t physically attracted to my mother at least so I probably shouldn’t even include her in this BUT they are like the same person, they get on SO WELL with each other and share so many personality traits.

They also share a great passion for football, about the only thing my husband actually is passionate about. Dan is basically a younger, male version of my mother.

It then makes me even wonder how I ended up with Dan as my mother and I can often have some friction between us due to our personality differences although that’s probably a story for another time.
Review — Final Fantasy VII Remake (PS4)
Tags: PS4, Ff7remake, Game Review, Final Fantasy, Ff7

GAMEPLAY

The classic ATB gauge gets a huge revamp to make battles more intense, yet with calculated strategies that you can plan to take down even the deadliest foes.

The whole game is action oriented, and it does it well with ATB by slowing down to 1/100 second when you decide to make a command move. Switching between characters with the directional buttons is also breeze as well. In fact, I find myself admiring that slow-mo action when I make a command. You will get a good warm up in the beginning of the game and as you progressed deeper into the game, it rewards you with different weapons that has skill abilities you need to max.

Once you are done maxing a skill, the skill is added permanently and you move on to the next weapon. You will have a ‘skill tree’ where you will allocate points to enhance your character. The good thing is you can reset and reallocate those points at a NPC. Some of the skills can be chained into a combo from basic attacks — e.g. Tifa’s basic attacks can link into a uppercut and follow into a Divekick-esque combo.

Pairing this with materia (colorful balls of energy that you can slot into weapons and armor) and experimenting different combinations, it gives a certain replay ability to try the harder arena quests and going for the fastest completion time.

Summons in the game are mostly acquired by completing arena battles against the summon itself . Unfortunately, not all summons are acquired from completing quests in the game — For example: Carbuncle is a pre-order exclusive for digital purchase or 1st Class Collectors Edition; which is a bummer.

Progression is relatively easy across the whole game, and completing the whole game allows you to replay the whole game with Chapter Select on a new difficulty ‘Hard Mode’; this unlocks new arena-like battles that offers better rewards for your characters.
How to Read Paintings: A Sunday Afternoon On La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat
By: Christopher P Jones
Tags: Culture, Art, History, Painting, Art History

Georges Seurat’s painting of a Sunday afternoon in Paris appears, at first glance, to celebrate the carefree hours of a series of well-to-do families.

The colours are glowing, almost luminous, as if the sun that shines down on this strip of land has somehow woven into the fabric of the canvas and has been captured there, forever shining.

Seurat achieved this effect by making his painting with tiny dots of pure colour. He was a student of colour theory and studied the works of Michel Eugène Chevreul and other colour theorists active at the time. Instead of mixing paints on his palette, Seurat applied them to the canvas directly with the intention that the colours would mix on the eye of the viewer.

Detail of ‘A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte’ (1884–1886) by Georges Seurat. Oil on canvas. Art Institute of Chicago. Image source Wikimedia Commons

It is this effect which gives the painting that shimmering, slightly unstable quality. Every form is made up of thousands of dots and dashes. Seurat worked on the painting over several years in the second half of the 1880s, building up the painting in careful layers to establish this tremulous effect.

The scene takes place on a mile-long island on the River Seine in Paris known as La Grande Jatte.

Doused in sunshine, yet taking shade beneath trees and umbrellas, the visitors to the island rest and stroll with an unhurried air. It was a favourite pleasure-spot of the Parisian bourgeois, a place to retreat from the bustle of the working week and the pollution of the city. (The island remains popular with modern-day Parisians, along with actors and celebrities who have taken up residence there).

Seurat was not the only artist to visit the island and make paintings there. Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley and Vincent van Gogh all produced artworks with views of the La Grande Jatte. The setting agreed with one of the core ideas of Impressionism: to paint contemporary life in a real-world setting. Along with the practice of using loose, spontaneous brush marks to capture the fleeting effects of light, Impressionist painters chose to paint public places — bars, theatres, circuses, restaurants, parks — as a means of arriving at the most direct and vivid description of their city and its environs.

Georges Seurat shared many of the same interests as his contemporary artists. Yet, whilst other Impressionists and Post-Impressionists worked with an unplanned spirit, Seurat took a more meticulous approach, both in the planning of his compositions and the application of his paint.

One of the most notable aspects of Seurat’s enormous painting — it is more than three metres wide — is the way he has separated out all of the different figures into isolated groupings. It is easier to see this if you stand back from the painting: see how the green of the grass weaves like a sea across the span of the canvas, casting all the individuals (or small groups) into distinct islands.
Who We Are
By: Beon Tech Studio
Tags: About, Outsourcing Company, Who Am I, Outsourcing, About Me

Who We Are

Getting the best results by hiring the most qualified Latin American talent.

In software development, you get the best results when you use the highest quality resources. Every feature we deploy comes from the minds of the passionate professionals who form our team. The more qualified the team members, the higher the value we’ll produce, and the happier you will be.

Our recruiting process is consistently evolving to enable us to find the best talent available. Our HR team interviews hundreds of candidates per week to find outstanding profiles. Each applicant goes through a rigorous set of interviews and tests, and only 3% of them get hired.
I Heart You Mega
By: Christopher Mackinnon
Tags: Fiction, Relationships, Short Story, Life, Love

I Heart You Mega

50-word micro fiction

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

The heart emoji on Madison’s iPhone was doing overtime lately.

“I heart you means I love you,” she explained.

“How much do you heart me?” Jacob texted.

“I heart you mega! How much do you heart me?”

“I heart you mini.”

Sad face emoji.

“Just kidding — I heart you mega!”
İçinde 3 Kere İnce, 5 Kere İnci, 7 Kere Ayna, 9 Defa da Kara Geçen İnceleme
By: Mansur Yüksel
Tags: Edebiyat, Kitap, Kitap İncelemesi, Türkçe, Hayat

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