fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Breaking the Habit 2020
By: Anuradha Wickramarachchi
Tags: Poetry On Medium, Life, Family, Poetry, Pandemic

Breaking the Habit 2020

Life of 2020 for an ordinary self-centred man

Photo by Alexis Fauvet on Unsplash

Before 2020

Early to bed, early to rise

Early to work to punch on time

Kids to school, missus cooks all

In this stressful pool, feel like a tool

Fights on roads, days and nights

Honks with others, bonks with words

Late home drowsy, kids be sleepy

Missus be lovely, yet my mood’s gloomy

Weekends hopeful, are so cheerful

I am so grateful, Mondays aren’t wrathful

Routines monotonic

Are gone with sputnik

There comes the pandemic

Break our lives like a ceramic

After 2020

Early to nothing, late to nothing

Not good everything, yet the silver lining

Kids stay home, misses re-born

We all helping, each others wellbeing

No ones honking, roads are soothing

An era that's changing, to a life that is calming

Social distancings, no more holding

For events calling, for friends gathering

Yet homes different, together and coherent

Just zoom meetings, no more timed punching

Be home relaxed, with missus beloved

With kids chillaxed, life’s now relaxed

No more sleepy goodnights

No more missed sunrises

Few more time with sights

Of my family that brights!

I hope everyone’s staying safe and adjusting to the new environment in a positive manner. XOXO
Trump is Already Attacking Biden From the Left.
By: Lauren Elizabeth
Tags: Election 2020, Elections, Politics, Donald Trump, Government

Trump is Already Attacking Biden From the Left.

What this means moving forward.

Photo via Joe Biden on Instagram

It’s no secret that progressives — myself included — have strong feelings about Joe Biden being the democratic party’s nominee. A primary concern with Biden going head to head against Trump in the general had to do with Trump’s (faux) populist appeal, which we saw of course in 2016 that centrist, establishment candidates do not have. This naturally creates space for Trump to attack from the left, and Trump is already doing it again.

The President recently took to Twitter to draw attention to Joe Biden’s role in the 1994 Crime Bill, which he not only voted for but wrote and still supports and vehemently defends to this day.

In his tweets, Trump of course slammed that bill.

I am under absolutely no impression that African Americans will suddenly turn around and vote for Trump because of this. That being said, pointing out skeletons in Biden’s closet is admittedly a very savvy move, and one that leftists have foreseen coming since before Biden even officially entered the race.

Young people in particular — a demographic democrats have come to rely on in order to win — view voting as a chore rather than a civic duty. Who can blame us? Voting requires standing in line oftentimes for hours, and often leaving work or school in order to do so. We want to be excited about the candidate we are voting for, and Trump pointing out a disastrous voting record is an excellent way to minimize that enthusiasm. Less enthusiasm, less turnout. It’s the simplest of concepts, but remains one that establishment candidates and media both deny as a factor. It’s not a candidate’s poor record that keeps us from turning out in their eyes. No, we’re just lazy.

Trump knows exactly what he has to do in order to beat Joe Biden, and he’ll play on establishment narratives and voter disenfranchisement in order to do it. Those who don’t want to see another four years of Trump should probably make sure that Joe Biden is not the nominee. Donald Trump runs as a populist, and whether it’s authentic or not is irrelevant when it comes to his base. The only way to defeat a populist message this day in age is an alternative populist message.

Biden sees himself as the hero in the race, ready to coast to the nomination on Obama’s coattails all while telling everyone to just settle down.

I’d absolutely love to be able to settle down, Joe. But we can’t.

The 2016 election is the ultimate case study proving that this sort of strategy will not cut it in a general election, and staying as far away from voters as possible won’t either. Trump is already implementing the strategies that helped him win in 2016, and we need a candidate who can rise to that challenge in a way that a center right candidate like Joe Biden just can’t.
What is Secure Multi Party Computation?
By: Shaan Ray
Tags: Communication, Privacy, Blockchain Technology, Multi Party Computation, Security

Secure Multi-Party Computation (SMPC) is an important subset of cryptography. It has the potential to enable real data privacy. SMPC seeks to find ways for parties to jointly compute a function using their inputs, while keeping these inputs private.

Shamir’s Secret Sharing Scheme:

To understand SMPC, we must first understand Shamir’s Secret Sharing Scheme. The Scheme’s purpose is to divide and distribute one secret value over several nodes or users, so that no one knows anything about the secret value. To retrieve the secret value, a minimum quorum of users must pool their data together.

Shamir’s Secret Sharing Scheme can also be used to perform computations on a secret shared value. When we group together the results of each user’s computations on their respective pieces of data, we arrive at the outcome of the computation — without knowing the secret inputs.

An Example

To better understand this concept, let’s use a simple example: a secret number that is larger than 1000, a hundred users within a system, and a quorum of 10 users.

Each user is given a unique number between 100 and 199.

Since the minimum quorum requirement is 10 users, any time a group of 10 or more people come together, their combined numbers, x, will reveal the secret ( x > 1,000 ) without revealing any person’s individual number.

Secure Multi-Party Computation on Personal Data

Now, instead of using a number, let’s say the ‘secret’ is a user’s personal data.

SMPC works in much the same way: the personal data is split into several, smaller parts, each of which is masked using cryptographic techniques. Next, each small, encrypted piece of data is sent to a separate, independent server, so that each server only contains a small part of the data.

An individual or organization looking to discover the ‘secret’ (i.e., uncover the personal data) will need to aggregate the encoded data. Additionally, it will be possible to perform computations based on the personal data, by requiring each server to perform computations on its small part of the data, without disclosing the data.

Implications for Privacy

People have recently started demanding that governments and companies safeguard their personal information more proactively, especially financial, health, demographic, or other sensitive information. Large organizations are now looking to maintain their customers’ trust by being responsible guardians of their personal data.

In these circumstances, SMPC’s combination of encryption, distribution, and distributed computation can have a profound impact on data privacy and security.
Course Review: MIT. 6.0001 An Introductory Python & Computer Science course for data scientists
By: Americana Chen
Tags: Beginner, Coding, Course, Computer Science, Data Science

As an ambitious beginner data scientist, it is very common to start your journey in data science by looking up online courses on data analysis. If you search for data science courses on platforms such as Edx, Coursera, they cover a wide variety of skills for every level of expertise, ranging from data wrangling to exploratory data analysis, to model building and machine learning. However, as a beginner who went through that journey myself, I found it very important to build up some fundamental computer science and programming knowledge before diving straight into data analysis, machine learning and more advanced data science fields.

We frequently hear people say that to be a data science you don’t have a be an expert in computer science, understanding advanced programming, cyber security, etc. It is true that you don’t have to be a hardcore programmer to a successful data scientist, but I found that as I make more progress, I start to bump into technical computer science terms and knowledge that I am not familiar with. Some of them are very crucial for machine learning and data science, such as dynamic programming, recursion, constructors. This is when I realized that there is a gap in computer science that I need to fill before I proceed with more advanced topics in data science.

Image Source : Unsplash by Christopher Gower

I do advice all beginners data scientists to be mindful of the importance of fundamental computer science knowledge that could be crucial for your data science journey. This course from MIT open courseware provides a clean and easy introduction for you to start building it up from the bottom ground, it took me 3 days to complete all the lecture videos and carefully go through the lecture codes/ notes provided, as well as coming up with my own notes. It is a short course but it is very content intensive and you could really learn a lot in a short time. At the end of this article I will also provide you with a link to share my handwritten notes ( scanned) , the notes are based on the lecture slides but with key points highlighted and my personal insights annotated.
There is Huge Consumer Demand for More Games Like Among Us
By: Quy Ma
Tags: Among Us, Product Design, Board Games, Innovation, Gaming

There is Huge Consumer Demand for More Games Like Among Us

Games like Among Us and Fall Guys are like social virtual board games. And people are obsessed!

I was watching Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s first stream on Twitch today and thought to myself, “How cool is it that a US politician is using a gaming platform to get out the vote?” She ended up peaking “at 435,000 viewers around the time of her first match,” according to Twitch, becoming one of the platform’s biggest broadcasters.

AOC owes a major part of that success to the game’s immense popularity. Among Us is a game of “teamwork and betrayal” for 4–10 players. Through deceit, setting up others, and trying not to act suspicious, players are put in a situation where they have to root out an imposter. It features players as twinkie-like space aliens that run around trying to complete simple tasks and avoiding being killed.

Among Us + Fall Guys

As of writing this article on October 21, 2020, Among Us is the top broadcasted game on Twitch. It’s Twitch viewership numbers hit “4.1 million hours watched” as of July 2020. It is one of the top-selling games on Steam this year as well. For a game that started as a small indie game in 2018, it’s rise to popularity is quite an impressive feat.

Another game that’s become popular this year is Fall Guys. Fall Guys is a battle royale game that pits players in a free-for-all against each other in a race to the finish. It also features players as twinkie-like characters in customizable outfits. (What’s up with the twinkie-shaped characters in video games?)

Source: Twinkies — Flickr

In my mind, Among Us and Fall Guys reminds me of a virtual version of a good board game or party game. They’re both social games too, perfect to play with friends and family.
Customer Segmentation: Taking a Page out of the Computer Vision Book
By: Zero One Group
Tags: Machine Learning, Data Science, Customer Segmentation, Technology, Algorithms

Why Customer Segmentation?

Customer segmentation refers to the process of dividing the customer base of a company into groups, which share common demographical or behavioural characteristics. Understanding the different types of customers is important for formulating a coherent set of targeted strategies, such as brand positioning, one-to-one marketing and targeted individual recommendations. On some occasions, it has even been used to identify missing segments in the customer portfolio, and launch an aggressive acquisition campaign (Groysberg, 2018).

An example of a persona profile by Salminen et al. (2018)

Customer segmentation can also be used as a foundation for customer persona generation. Defined as “a fictitious person representing an underlying customer or user group”, customer persona crystallises a specific segment into an archetype often with concrete visualisation, background stories and transactions with the retailer. The main benefit of such an approach is to provide a realistic, shared mental model of the different types of customers for key decision makers. However, the generation of personas is not without its criticisms, which are usually about its lack of verifiability and actionability. See Salminen et al. (2018) for a more detailed account.

We are at present witnessing the advent of mass collection of rich datasets such as application engagement statistics and shopping behaviours, coupled with the increasing availability of online analytics data such as social media sources. Automated, data-driven customer segmentation is fast becoming readily available for many retailers and tech platforms enabled by a wealth of rich datasets. It is often the low hanging fruit and the first step towards understanding their customers better.
Arrange Buttons in a Row With ToggleButtons Flutter Widget
By: Jelena Jovanoski
Tags: Android, Programming, Flutter, iOS, Mobile

Goal 1. Create Toggle Buttons

To create a toggle button, it is necessary to call ToggleButtons ’s constructor. The first step in discovering a new widget is its mandatory arguments. There are two required arguments for this widget:

children ( List<Widget> ) — Each widget in children represents a button and in our case, it would be an Icon .

( ) — Each widget in represents a button and in our case, it would be an . isSelected ( List<bool> ) — a List of bool containing the state of each button, whether it's selected (if the value is true ) or not (if the value is false )

Note: The length of children and isSelected must be the same.

Our goal is to have four toggle buttons, which means that we will create a state variable that will store the state of these four buttons, i.e., whether they are selected or not. We set the initial state of all buttons to false.

Note: Initialize this state variable inside the Stateful widget.

List<bool> _buttonsState = List.generate(4, (index) => false);

The next step is to call the constructor and pass the required parameters.

child: ToggleButtons(

children: [

Icon(Icons.wifi),

Icon(Icons.bluetooth),

Icon(Icons.highlight),

Icon(Icons.camera),

],

isSelected: _buttonsState

)

If we run our project, we’ll see the four disabled buttons.
How One Head Start Trailblazer Fought Against Racial Inequality
By: National Head Start Association
Tags: Head Start, Black History Month, Education, Civil Rights

“Head Start came out of the Civil Rights Movement, a lot of folks don’t want to make that connection — but it came straight out of the Civil Rights era,” says Ron Herndon, former National Head Start Association board chairman. For the past four decades, he has served as the executive director of Albina Head Start in Portland, Oregon, a program that sets the standard in the Head Start community as a trailblazer in innovation and school readiness.

Ron has led many initiatives combating racial inequalities and discrimination in Portland. He led the Black United Front, an activist group, in protests at local board education meetings and fought against forced bussing of African American children out of schools in their own communities to schools in white communities.

Ron was also responsible for establishing a partnership with nearby Nike World Headquarters, which resulted in an agreement in which the Nike Factory Store in downtown Portland shares a percentage of sales with local community organizations. This is just one of a handful of his many community success stories.

Growing up in a small town in Kansas, Ron credits the local black community for instilling within him life-long values that he works to pass along to students, staff, and parents. He said that they shared the mindset that “though the system is rigged against you, you are not going to give up. We expect you to succeed, and it will take hard work.”

“Those were the values that I got at a very early age and every institution in the community emphasized those values,” he said.

After finishing college in 1970, he opened an independent school for African American children in Portland, Oregon, with a couple of his friends. In this role, he built relationships and trust within his community, and was encouraged by parents to get involved with Head Start.

“The only reason I ever got hired at Head Start was Head Start parents,” said Ron. “It’s only because of the confidence that Head Start parents had in me — were it not for that, I would not had been at Head Start.”

Under the leadership of Ron Herndon, Albina Head Start continues to raise the bar on innovation in the Head Start community. For example, the program is one of the first nationally-recognized Mandarin dual language programs.

Although he may not see it this way, Ron is a Head Start trailblazer for social justice.

“At no point, at least in my mind, was there the thought that in doing this we were going to make a dent in social justice,” he said. The only thing they were thinking was that “if we do this well, then these young children will have the possibility of living more independent and fulfilling lives.”
Dynamic Angular Templates: How to Build an App With 3 Layout Styles
By: Rakia Ben Sassi
Tags: JavaScript, Programming, Software, Angular, UX

Dive Into Details

All right, time to dive into the good stuff now. Our main presenter in ContactsModule is ContactComponent , which is the place to specify the values for two dynamic templates — “ list ” and “ update ” — using multi-slot content projection.

The dynamic-layout tag wraps the content in the component, and depending on the value of layoutStyle , the DynamicLayoutComponent will manage how and where to render the update template:

contact.component.html

The TypeScript part, contact.component.ts :

contact.component.ts

As you may have noticed, ContactComponent is extending BasePresenter , a parent component that takes care of handling create/open/remove for the appropriate update view and redirects the user to the list or update pages:

base-presenter.component.ts

Similar to BasePresenter , I have used BaseContainer and BaseList parent components and delegated the common functionalities to them, which is helpful to avoid duplicating code:

base-container.component.ts

base-list.component.ts

Now it’s time to reveal how I’ve designed DynamicLayoutComponent . The TypeScript part does not have any logic except some input fields and event emitters to communicate with the hosting component:

dynamic-layout.component.ts

dynamic-layout.component.html is our main game territory. It’s the place where I’ve added the logic to attach the right content to the right template via ng-content select="[list]" and ng-content select="[update]" . I’ve specified also the placeholders to render each template with ng-container *ngTemplateOutlet="update" and ng-container *ngTemplateOutlet="list" :

Last but not least is to show you how the parent StoreService looks. It’s a BehaviorSubject -based service that’s playing the role of a store at the same time. It’s the class that all modules’ store services are inheriting from as well:

base-module-store.service.ts

The whole application is available in Github here. Check the app yourself and click around.
Angular CLI — TechMonks. Angular CLI stands for Angular Command…
By: Anji
Tags: Angular, JavaScript, Angular Cli

Angular CLI stands for Angular Command Line Interface. It is a command-line tool to generate Angular applications. It will create all needed plumbing to get everything up and running in a matter of minutes, generating an application structure that is based on best practices for an Angular project.

Angular CLI helps to create an angular application that can just run without writing any code by including all the dependencies that are required to create and run your Angular application.

Features

create a new Angular application

run a development server with LiveReload support to preview your application during development

add features to your existing Angular application

run your application’s unit tests

run your application’s end-to-end (E2E) tests

build your application for deployment to production.

Angular CLI most used commands

ng new <<your project name>>: Create a new Angular app with the provided name

Create a new Angular app with the provided name ng update : updates your apps & its dependencies

: updates your apps & its dependencies ng generate <<component|directive|pipe|service|guard|interface|enum|module>> <<class name>>: Used to create the Angular components. You can create any of the angular related files

Used to create the Angular components. You can create any of the angular related files ng serve: Run your angular Application

Run your angular Application ng build: Create an application for deployment

Create an application for deployment ng lint: Run codelyzer to analyse code

Run codelyzer to analyse code ng test: Run unit tests with KARMA

Create An Angular App Using Angular CLI

Firstly, we need to install the Angular CLI in your local machine. Please make sure you have installed node in your machine.

npm install -g @angular/cli

Please notice we are using the -g flag to install this globally on our system. Now we should be able to run ng verson to see what version we are running:

Creating a Project

ng new my-angular-app

While creating the Angular CLI prompts you to choose the Angular routing and stylesheet formats you want to add as part of your angular application.

Now we have a full Angular application ready to run. You can see the folder structure and the files that get generated for us.

Run the Angular App

You can execute the below command to run the application.

Once the application build is successful, you would see your angular application open in the browser tab with a default page.
What is GDPR and why is it so important?
By: Phil Chapman
Tags: Privacy, Gdpr, Puredata, Data, Personal Data

The GDPR applies to organisations or bodies that control or process data on people in the EU regardless of where the processing takes place. The GDPR applies only to personal data in the same way that the DPA does. However, the GDPR’s definitions are more detailed and it introduces new categories of data. However, if companies hold personal information about someone in the EU, they can assume that it falls within the GDPR as it applies equally to both automated personal data, and manual filing systems.

Data subjects have more rights under the GDPR and companies need to take particular care not to breach these rights. There are stiffer consequences including fines and compensation should companies do so. The level of the fines is determined in the UK by the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) and can be up to €20million or 4% of group turnover, whichever is the greater. There is also a lower level of fines for less serious breaches of data subject’s rights. The level of these fines will depend on the nature and impact on the data subject. There are therefore significant business risks to consider.

In addition, there are other operational impacts of breaching the rights of data subjects. These include:

• Operational costs to put right the issues caused

• Reputational and brand damage

• Orders to stop processing data

• Criminal convictions

The GDPR includes provisions that promote accountability and governance. These complement the GDPR’s transparency requirements. While the principles of accountability and transparency have previously been implicit requirements of data protection law, the GDPR’s emphasis elevates their significance.

Companies are expected to put into place comprehensive, but proportionate, governance measures. Ultimately, these measures should minimise the risk of breaches and uphold the protection of personal data. In practice, this will mean more policies and procedures for companies, although many companies will already have good governance measures in place, and the process will be to review them and update them as necessary.
Feedback System using Facial Emotion Recognition
By: Madhur Chhajed
Tags: Data Science, Deep Learning, Neural Networks, Python3, Convolutional Network

Part 2: Training CNN model

Faces detection is already done, now we can train our model to detect emotion.

About Data Set : CK plus

CK plus is the dataset with 7 classes of emotions namely anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happy, sadness and surprise. The size of the data is around 3.8MB. The link to the dataset is available at this link at Kaggle.

Training the CNN model:

Here we can train our own CNN network using the data-set mentioned above. We can train our model here and save the model to integrate it later.

To access jupyter notebook which was used to train the model click on this link .

The trained model is also available for directly use through this link (model.h5 file) .
15 powerful quotes from tech & education’s brightest minds
Tags: Pluralsight, Tech Leadership, Salt Lake City, Technology, Education

Last week, more than 2,500 technologists gathered together in Salt Lake City, Utah for our annual user conference, Pluralsight LIVE. There, we were inspired and enlightened by visionary leaders in tech and education. Here’s a small sampling of some of the best things we heard.

“Why does collective impact matter? Because there is no single sector or org alone that can change systemic problems.”

— Leila Toplic, Head of Tech Task Force for No Lost Generation (NLG) initiative

“Education is the only thing that has transformed my inner being. It’s made me beautiful.”

— Ziauddin Yousafzai, UN Special Advisor on Global Education

“We need to educate children and invest in Afghanistan and Pakistan. We need to give quality education, resources and opportunities. We need to make sure the future generation is ready for the change we’re going to see.”

—Malala Yousafzai, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

“Teachers are doing the most important job in the country and the world. If you are a teacher at a school that doesn’t provide computer science, you have the power to change that.”

—Aaron Skonnard, Pluralsight CEO

“Most nonprofits don’t use tech the way tech companies use tech. A tech-enabled nonprofit can have a global impact.”

—Hadi Partovi, Founder of Code.org

“When you first start out, create something to criticize. Share the ugly things.”

—Brendan Dawes, artist and designer

“If tech is going to be embedded in everything, it can’t distract us. It needs to help us attend to everything around us.”

—Jaime Teevan, Technical Advisor to Microsoft’s CEO

“People are the most important part of a digital revolution. Skills are the only thing that can keep you working at pace and driving in your transformation.”

—Karenann Terrell, Chief Digital & Technology Officer at GSK

“Don’t think of technology as abstract. Tech has a purpose. It creates society. How do we want to live moving forward?”

—Dr. Heike Laube, CLO at SAP

“The small details have a big impact.”

— Ben Galbraith, Senior Director of Product at Google

“Technology is a fantastic playground, but you can get lost as a company. Focus on actual problems you can solve. Focus on things that matter for your customers and where you expect to see value.”

—Cyril Perducat, EVP of IoT & Digital Offers at Schneider Electric

“Your future changes every day. You have to be an organization that learns every day.”

—Thomas Kurian, President of Product Development at Oracle

“The most significant obstacle to digital transformation is culture.”

—Cody Sanford, CIO at T-Mobile

“It is not the strongest of species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the most responsive to change.”

— Judy Marshall, Head of Services and Technology Training at Dimension Data

“Sometimes the world as it stands isn’t ready to hold your big idea. But the real crime would be to shoot too low. You have to think SO BIG that it makes your stomach hurt.”

—Caitlin Kalinowski, Interim Head of Hardware at Oculus

Get more inspiring moments from Pluralsight LIVE 2018 here.
VectorZilla Support Team Available 24x7
By: Vector Zilla Pr
Tags: Vectorzilla, Blockchain, ICO, Telegram, Ethereum

Join VZ Official Telegram Group, where we have 24x7 support coverage 🕗 Ask us anything & anytime.

We at VectorZilla value our contributors & investors and will walk the extra mile in ensuring the best support to our valued angel investors.

In order to provide better support, our Team is available 24x7 in VectorZilla Official Telegram Group. We invite you all to join us. Click on the following invite link https://t.me/joinchat/HBL__UqT8HC8X_g5Kssjww

Ask us anything & anytime.

We truly value your trust and patronage with us and look forward to seeing you in our Telegram Group.
NYC Administration of Children’s Services is Domestic ICE
By: J. Khadijah Abdurahman
Tags: Foster Care, Immigration Reform, Detention, Adoption, Surveillance

ACS does not read miranda rights to parents alleged of abuse or neglect, there’s no legal requirement for the agency to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury of our peers. Caseworkers may give you a written “Notice of Existence”-stating you’ve been named in an open investigation of abuse or maltreatment but they are not obligated to share with you the specific allegations made against you or the identity of your accuser.

All children present in the home can be strip searched or what OCFS refers to as “observation of normally clothed areas of a child’s body”. There’s no presumption of innocence in an ACS investigation of child maltreatment. The only two possible outcomes are indicated-evidence was found or unfounded-evidence was not found. An unfounded investigation will be opened and considered as credible evidence anytime another allegation is made.

Investigations drop from the end of June to the middle of September, likely because schools are the largest professional cohort initiating ACS investigations.

State Central Registry (SCR) Intakes refers to the hotline number where reports of suspected maltreatment and abuse are made. The call triggers the ACS workers who are mandated to come to the residence within 48 hours.

ACS Deputy Commissioner Andrew White stated in a July 17 panel Automating Inequality in Child Welfare using Predictive Analytics organized by Child Welfare Organizing Project (CWOP) Director Joyce McMillan, that half of all children under 18 living in Brownsville have been investigated by ACS at some point in their lifetime.

Pause to think about the weight of that statement. If you are a middle class family, you likely have access to early childhood programs fostering healthy attachment through “gentle separation”-gradually increasing the child’s attendance over weeks to adjust from a caregiver to a new classroom. Why are there neighborhoods where strip searching and interrogating children under threat of removal is the norm?
I Just Want to be My Child’s Mother — Not her Teacher, Not her Therapist
By: Laura J. Murphy
Tags: Parenting, Remote Learning, Special Education, Education

This morning my six-year-old daughter cried because she didn’t get a turn to show her reindeer picture to her class on Zoom. At first, I thought she would get over it in a few minutes and so I let her cry.

Ten minutes later she was still crying. Sobbing, snotty tears.

Clenched angry fists.

Inconsolable emotions.

She mumbled through her wet mouth that she raised her hand and nobody let her talk. She just wanted to share her picture but they were all done sharing pictures. Her teacher turned her camera off because she was crying and she was crying because she wanted a turn. She continued sobbing.

Photo Credit: Laura J Murphy, 2020

I wrote a message to her teacher in the chat asking if she could have a turn because she was so upset. That her being upset seems pretty justified to me. She said no because she doesn’t always give them all a turn to share and that at school, she would apologize for not giving her a turn and move on. And I get that. But we are at home and this is hard.

As the class moved on, she couldn’t focus on the video being played about emotional fish. It escalated her feelings and she shouted, “I am the angry fish! I am angry!”

Then, the next thing I knew I was arguing with my crying first grader. Threatening her that we weren’t going to do this anymore — as if not participating in her remote learning were punishment for either of us.

So at that point, I knew that our work was over for the day because there was no coming back from this. I left the Zoom meeting and told her to go and play with her toys.

I sat at my desk and took a sip of my coffee and saw a news alert on my phone that our Governor suggested all schools return to remote instruction. But who does that benefit? It doesn’t benefit a kid like mine whose IEP only translates to a negative denominator in the remote learning environment.

When we go online my child loses her paraprofessional and the chance to work on social skills. She loses her therapy services and much like today, she loses any progress she once made towards emotional regulation when she has a breakdown over something as small as sharing a reindeer picture.

Would she have cried like this if she were at school? Maybe but probably not. She would have her peers modeling appropriate behaviors and her para to get her back on task. She wouldn’t be stuck between trying to emulate the confusing boundaries of school-behaviors and home-behaviors, screens and toys, or battling her need for attention versus her ability to regulate her own emotions.

Today I thought about what I really want and that is to be my child’s mother, just her mother. I don’t want to be her teacher, her paraprofessional, her case manager, her advocate, occupational therapist, speech therapist, and behaviorist. I just want to be her mom.
Market-ing: Make it personal
By: Alok Tyagi
Tags: Agile, Blogging, Community Sourcing, Enterpreneurship, Innovation

We live in a time where communicating to broad audience alone one way has limited reach and stickiness. To make a message sticky and gain viral spread — you want to communicate through your audience. You want to foster a community of influencers who can help spread your message and communicate for you.

Ask someone who is running a business and they will more likely suggest that bigger risk they run is not getting adequate market recognition making sales cycle harder for them. Putting businesses in a position to not able to compete effectively in the market place. Unless you are doing some ground breaking invention — not many will cite they run technology/product risk as the primary reason to go out of business. Market risk usually trump over the product risk. Largely products adopts and evolves to follow customer/technology life cycle. At least until it meets a disruptive trend.

Several well known Marketing gurus have suggested how to effectively target marketing message to create the viral adoption taking “Marketing” from job function perspective to “market-ing ideas that spread” broadly. e.g. Seth Godin…around his thought process “Ideas that spread — wins” or Tribal management. or Forrester on its analysis around how to create Groundswell. Web is littered with such case studies and adoption stories — some more successful than others.

It is one of the reason — more businesses from the get go are increasingly embracing social media and encourage employees to rather share ideas broadly. Folks will invest from the start building community of developers/influencer/promoters needed to give business a market edge. Taking the discussion beyond Marketing department to engage every one involved in the endeavor to help promote your business; ideas; product; etc.

At the end of the day ask yourself — who best positioned to spread what you do best and all the creative ideas about your business than your own employees. So start the journey with your team and go get your ideas out…
Nightfall
By: Beth Bruno
Tags: Inspiration, Life, Poetry, Mindfulness, Hope

Nightfall

A Poem of Hope

Photo by Beth Bruno

The sun god retreats

to his chamber,

draws the brocade curtains —

a tapestry of pinks sewn with

threads of violet,

embroidered with gold.

Hens clucking softly

as they go to their roost,

occasionally flapping and squabbling.

Everyone wants the window seat.

Neighbor playing mariachi music,

the volume low

it dances to my ears

and makes me smile.

Dog barks.

Cicadas chirrup, buzz,drone.

Fireflies begin the nightly ritual.

Courtship —

Blink Blink

Blink, Blink, Blink.

Whippoorwill welcomes the dusk.

Plaintive cry, over and over,

as though looking for something

it never finds.

Now, the brocade is fading,

washed too many times,

a remnant of its former splendor.

First stars twinkle.

Or is it the fireflies?

The air is soft and still,

Mosquitoes dine.

Bats dine on the diners.

The cats gaze out into the night.

“Come in and fill our bowl”

they say with their eyes.

Writing by the solar deck lights,

trying to find reasons to believe

in the goodness of life.

Mission accomplished.

Nightfall.
Is Happiness a Proviso for Existence?
By: Nicole Bedford
Tags: Life Lessons, Happiness, Life, Self, Emotions

Photo by Heather Barnes on Unsplash

Is Happiness a Proviso for Existence?

One of the prime rip-offs of the last few centuries is the pursuit of happiness.

Short, chubby fingers reached toward the frozen treat. Delight danced in her eyes as she grasped the cone.

The first lick was happiness. Ice cream melted, dribbling down her hand under the sweltering sun. She didn’t care.

An uneven bit of cobble impeded her progress. She wobbled, and her scoop of happiness crashed to the stones below her feet.

Her lip trembled, the tears flowed. She looked at her dad with a sadness that prompted a quick “It’s okay honey I’ll buy you another one.”

The world was right again, once she had her replacement scoop of happy.

Is constant happiness the true purpose of life?

No, it’s not.

Happiness and sadness, like all states of being, exist in a constant ebb and flow. Humans are dynamic beings living in perpetual emotional flux.

Your psychological make-up was not designed to be static. And while the pursuit of happiness is admirable, it is folly.

Existence, by design, is excruciating, because with growth comes pain. With metamorphosis comes struggle, ask the caterpillar that fought to emerge a beautiful butterfly.

Without sadness, we would never be able to saver happiness. Without suffering how could we appreciate joy?

You aren’t existing to be happy. You are existing to feel everything about being human. Your range of emotions is integral to your growth as a being.

Relish in the highs but be introspective in the lows.

Like the little girl with her fallen treat, happiness is fleeting. It can be lost just as fast as it came, but it is never too far beyond reach.
Three Churches of Sleepy Hollow & Tarrytown
By: Haytham Ad-Din, The Photographic Muslim
Tags: Christianity, Special Feature, History, Religion, Photography

At the southern end of Upstate New York is the Lower Hudson Valley. It is a region of blended histories for its European settlers and their descendants, beginning with its initial exploration by Englishman Henry Hudson on behalf of the Dutch East India Company in 1609. Even after the English acquisition of New Netherland in 1664 and the formation of the United States in 1776, the regional population long remained predominantly Dutch. In the wider public imagination, the region’s Westchester County is especially notable due to the literary contributions of American writer Washington Irving (1783-1859).

Irving is renowned nationally and internationally for his short stories Rip Van Winkle (1819) and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820), which were featured in the collection The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. The Legend is the longest story of The Sketchbook, fundamentally influenced by the cultural-religious histories of what are today the modern Villages of Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown in Westchester. Although The Legend became synonymous with hauntings and the supernatural, its themes also vitally consider the temporal, primal tensions found between homogeneity and the outsider as well as between tradition and change.

Irving’s life was spent in and out of both New York and the United States, but his initial, formative visit to Tarrytown, to escape a yellow fever outbreak in New York City, was as a teenager in 1798. Tarrytown was already a formal Village at the time, but the northern area where the Pocantico and Hudson Rivers meet was only colloquially known as Slapers Haben (Sleepers Haven), a name first given by Adrien van der Donck (1618–55). “Sleepy Hollow” was only popularized, and further formalized, much later because of The Legend. Three historic churches in Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown exemplify the seminal intertwining and proliferation, via Irving, of local culture into universal literature.
How to launch a new student organization on your campus
By: Rishi Prasad
Tags: Cryptocurrency Investment, Bitcoin, Blockchain, University Of Michigan, Cryptocurrency

Step 1: Brainstorming 💡

Vision: The Why

Why do you want to start this organization?

It’s important to start with the “why”, as this will act as your guiding force as you endeavor on this journey.

For brevity’s sake, I won’t get into details regarding the origins of WCT. If you’re interested in learning more about our genesis, feel free to read Danny’s (Founder/President) post on our story here.

In short, we felt digital assets and distributed ledger technology were forces too large to ignore. We wanted to rethink the ways in which students engaged with new technologies and help bring financial technology and innovation to our campus. WCT was born out of a radical idea that turned into a spectacular reality with the support of many wonderful people.

Mission: The What

What single statement captures the entirety of what you are doing?

Combining the above into a cohesive vision statement, WCT’s mission is:

To spur education and innovation around digital assets and blockchain technology for our fund members, the University of Michigan community, and students around the globe through action-based learning.

Ultimately, our goal is education; thus, our efforts, discussions and initiatives are centered around this purpose.

If the primary motivation for starting your organization is to maximize portfolio return, or to learn the best investing strategies, that is totally fine; just make sure your actions are in line with this goal.

Having a clear vision of what your organization hopes to achieve is paramount in aligning everyone behind a common goal and attracting the right people to the team.

Strategy: The How

These are the explicit steps you will take to accomplish your mission year over year.

Our approach was created on the foundation of action-based learning—the notion that some of the most important lessons are learned by being directly involved and personally invested.

You don’t need to have everything figured out before launch (we certainly didn’t), but having a broad idea of the actions you plan to take will save a lot of time down the road. Regardless, a lot of it will almost certainly be iteration and re-iteration.

More on this below.
About Me
By: Gabor Cselle
Tags: About Me

I’m a Partner at Area 120, Google’s internal startup incubator.

Previously, I was the Co-Founder / CEO of Namo Media which was acquired by Twitter in June 2014. Namo was an adtech startup focused on native mobile ad formats.

I was also the Founder / CEO of reMail, a mobile email startup which was acquired by Google in February 2010. reMail was an iPhone app that would download all your mail to your iPhone and search it super quickly.

I was also a Group Product Manager at Twitter where I worked on trends, the logged-out homepage, and MoPub. As a Product Manager at Google, I worked on Gmail, the Android OS, and Google Now. As Xobni, an email productivity startup, I served as the VP Engineering. Bill Gates called Xobni the “next generation of social networking”.

I have a Master’s degree in Computer Science from ETH Zurich.

How do You Pronounce your Name?

My name is Hungarian. and originally written “Gábor Cselle”.

Gabor == Gaah-bor, Cselle == Chell-ah. (Pronounced like “challenge”, but without the “nge”.)

Where are You From?

I was born in Budapest, Hungary, but grew up mostly in Germany. I spent a year in high school in the US, and did undergrad and grad school at ETH Zurich in Switzerland. I’ve lived in San Francisco since 2007.
About Free Speech
Tags: Freedom Of Speech, Thinking Aloud, Associated Press, Islam, Charlie Hebdo

Ripples Origin : Charlie Hebdo Attacks and a thoughtful reaction in a blog and a comic

When I first heard about the attacks on a satirical newspaper I was stunned. The direct, violent attack on press for something that was printed was both audacious and frightening. My knee jerk reaction was rage over how inhumanly the cartoonists were murdered for a cartoon. I felt sad to live in times when people do not understand how to take satire and look at the points such works highlight. Ideological differences should not be silenced with force or violence, but then I remembered about my childhood.

There was a kid in my school, who was intelligent, and from a well to do family. He was really good with studies. Once in a lecture, he ridiculed a relatively not so bright boy. He went on with his act for a while. Everyone but that unfortunate boy laughed hard. In the lunch time, this offended boy went ahead and beat that boy in the playground. Muddy all over, they were taken to the principal’s office. After hearing out both of them, he punished both but added a passing remark towards the boy, If you can’t take it, don’t dish it.

I know I appear callous when I say this, and I seriously feel bad at the loss of lives, but we need to understand something fundamentally. Freedom of speech does not clear you from others freedom of retaliation. Having said that, one only retaliates in the manner most accustomed to him / her. The manner which assures success is chosen when you are staging protest against someone. Expecting them to come back at you in the means which are comfortable, acceptable by your standards is absolute stupidity. One of the commenters on that articles linked above summed up very nicely.

freedom of speech is not freedom from responsibility for that speech either.

The world does feel bad about the way it ran its course, but it just became clear as daylight that, insensitivity under the guise of satire meets with heavy retaliation. If your cause is just and you believe in your ideals, by all means do what you must, but note that you do not control the nature of the response. Ridiculing a lion and not expecting it to attack you in the way he knows to attack you is not very smart thing to do.

The real unfortunate part is that, civilisation of humans as a whole, we are not ashamed of how drastically different parts of the world still are, and how insensitive we are about everything that is different from our view of the world. Some parts of the world consider satire to be a fair game, while others think eliminating ideological differences is a fair game. This huge difference is our collective shame and we all are responsible for it, with the blame inclining towards who have the calibre but choose not to act in bridging this divide, meaning the developed countries.

…And while Twitter, Facebook and comic vines across the globe are going crazy over the paris attacks, Boko Haram Militants allegedly killed 2000 people. but I guess it was all part of the plan