fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
The future of in-person retail: Walmart and Target vs. Amazon
By: Pavan Pandurangi
Tags: Technology, Challenge, Data Visualization, Retail, Data Science

Before diving deeper into this matter, I wanted to just make a pretty important note:the fact that we are only looking at two extremely large in-person retailers may make the trends misleading. This is because bigger companies tend to perform well even in times of hardship. On the other hand, smaller retailers may struggle generating revenue during times of economic downfall and rising competition.

In-person retail

Let’s first look at in-person retail stores like Target and Walmart. We know that these are both multi-billion dollar companies, but does this mean that they are both still growing? Or are they falling? Let’s analyze their revenues to find out!

Walmart

As can be seen, Walmart’s annual revenue has increased over 50 billion since 2012. This shows that the company has indeed shown growth over the last seven years. So does that mean retail stores aren’t really declining?

Target

Unlike Walmart, Target has had its hiccups in the same seven year time period. Although we do see a spike near the end, it is actually not as drastic as it looks. Over the course of the last seven years, Target’s annual revenue has been relatively constant (between 70 billion and 80 billion dollars each year).

Online retail

The primary example of an online retail store that we all know is Amazon. So let’s quickly see how Amazon’s profits compare to those of Walmart.

This growth is staggering. From nearly 50 billion dollars in revenue in 2012, Amazon’s revenue has shot up to nearly 300 billion dollars in 2019. This growth is nearly five times greater than that of Walmart. However, there is still something that we need to look at. Even though this growth is tremendous, they are still yet to exceed Walmart in their annual revenue.

When you look at it like this, Amazon seems like it has a long way to go to catch up to Walmart. But analyzing the rate at which Amazon’s revenue has grown year after year, we know that this might happen sooner than we expect.
2match — a free translation management tool
By: Marcin Michałek
Tags: Localization, Software Development, Translation, Spreadsheets, Mobile

Intro

For medium and small-sized apps there is usually no budget to invest in a professional tool for managing translations. Sending files with strings to translators and putting them back in the app or using a spreadsheet to manually copy&paste translations is highly inappropriate due to a great amount of boring work and possible errors. That is why at Miquido R&D we coded a small tool for managing translations using an online spreadsheet, which allows multiple people to input translations which then with a little bit of configuration are downloaded and placed in the correct resource directories of your app.

Features

Our main goal was to provide a way to manage translations for both Android and iOS in a single document. Additionally, this document should be easily shared with translators and the whole process of downloading translations should be fully automated. The resources should also be available during compile time. There were some tools already available, but none of them fulfilled all of our main requirements for both platforms. After some time spent on coding we developed a solution which really simplifies the process of translating an application:

it can generate a spreadsheet from existing app string resources,

it can generate string resources from an online spreadsheet and put them in a correct localised directory of your app,

it supports character escaping and in general character replacing (for example we introduced “[_]” sequence which is mapped to “hard space”); it’s also easy to add your own replacements in application code— just add them to existing map object,

in addition to iOS and Android, we added a Web platform which outputs resources as JSON.

From a programmer’s perspective, it is also quite easy to add more platforms (formats). You just have to implement a parser and writer interfaces and plug them into the main program flow.

A much more detailed description of features, configuration along with User Guide is present in the repository in README file.

Sample translations spreadsheet

Demo

Demo

As you can see, in the video the usage is pretty straightforward. You just need to use a one-line command to update your strings from an online spreadsheet and have them placed in the correct resources directory.

Download from GitHub

You can get the whole project from Miquido GitHub. Please feel free to file issues or fork it and adjust it to your needs.

Summary

It was really nice to work on this short R&D project. We are already using 2match for two small production applications and we believe it’s a good fit if you don’t have a budget to invest in a paid translation management tool.
Nest, Half-Empty?
By: Jenny Jedeikin
Tags: College, Jenny Jedeikin, Family, Parenting, Comics

Jenny Jedeikin’s work has appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, Rolling Stone, The Advocate, The UK's Oh Comely; read more at jennyjedeikin.com.

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Gunpowder, Treason and Plot
By: Anna Da Silva
Tags: Politics, Poetry, History, Covid 19, Writing

Remember remember the fifth of November,

gunpowder, treason and plot.

Four hundred years spooled

since brave daring fools

risked all

for explosive

rebellion.

Remember remember this fifth of November,

No gunpowder nor bonfires hot.

All England lays muzzled

by virus which puzzles

our floundering politicians.

Night skies stretch dark,

untroubled and stark,

no festivities, fireworks,

or floating sparks

allowed in 2020.

Remember remember this fifth of November,

litigation, lies and plot.

Eyes of subdued planet

all fixed o’er the Atlantic,

as peace and civility,

climate and decency,

hang in the balance.
Learning D3 — Reading a Local File
Tags: Data Visualization, Visualization, D3js

Problem: If your D3 script has a data file loaded in (e.g. d3.csv) when you open the HTML, it will fail to read the data because most browsers don’t allow XMLHttpRequest or fetch requests to local files.

D3 error message — fail to read data

Solution 1: Set up a local server

There are a couple of options to set up a local server, but I used the HTTP-server in the command line below(Github page).

#run as an administrator to get around permission limitation

sudo -i #install http-server globally

npm install -g http-server #go to the directory of your D3 files

cd /Users/ChiHuang/Documents/d3 #activate the http-server

http-server &

You should see the link to the local servers now.

URL of the local server

Go to either URL in the browser, then you can open files in the directory.

Files in D3 directory

Solution 2: Use IDE’s extensions

If you use an IDE like Visual Studio Code (Free), you should be able to find extensions that allow you to debug/run on your local server and even see the changes live in a browser (Live Server).
What is God?
By: Siva Raj
Tags: Spirituality, Poetry, Philosophy, Haiku, Religion

Photo by Davide Cantelli on Unsplash

God is the symbol

of a vast, immense, teeming

undefinable.

Like picking a piece

of plankton to represent

the entire ocean.

Like using ‘i’ to

represent the vast expanse

of the internet.

Like using twenty

six letters to represent

the English language.

We fight over which

symbol to use, losing sight

of its real purpose.

To trigger in us

the desire to search for the

undefinable.

Undercurrent of

consciousness that exists to

define everything.

All pervasive yet

barely detectable I

sometimes feel its flow.

An ocean of joy

I can tap into when I

lose sense of myself.
Overwrought
By: Elizabeth Helmich
Tags: Mindfulness, Crisis, Panic, Lit Up, Poetry

Simple wren

churrs from the treetops

of our world’s

impending

doom. I refuse to listen.

Fate’s hand is best-played

not by me,

not by you. There’s an

energy

that exists

outside the body’s prana.

Unseen director

behind scenes;

coaxing, cajoling,

berating,

milking those

weak performances into

fruition. Time waits

for an ear

prepared to listen.

Samskaras

migrate home.

Necks become free to extend —

choose which way they crane.

Divided

soldiers lay down arms.

Tensions that

separate

begin to flake off and warm

beneath the same sun.
Caving In
By: J.D. Harms
Tags: Image, Poetry, Musing, Collapse

Caving In

A Poem

Photo by Julian Schultz on Unsplash

Caught in great and greater cycles of longing, the concentric cigarette, spilled blues and frankincense, cozied up to the firepit, huddled on the cold side of the rocks, then folding at the seams, getting ready to stand up again, whip through the last of the fury, the last day’s medication spilling through frozen fingers, delaying movement due to the next flight being on time, remarkable closures, the shutting down of epic society, the running of engines that function for change, not more of the fucking status quo, the march of silent drums, the bang of the door, and in all this, the individual meltdown collapses on the way to the caves .
Lunacy
By: White Feather
Tags: Self Improvement, Astronomy, Astrology, Moon, Self-awareness

Last night I watched the sunset and soon thereafter I watched the almost-full moon-rise. That glorious moon was overhead all night long. Early this morning I stood staring at the full moon set over the western horizon. Not very long after that I watched the sun rise. It has been over head all day and now it is about to dip behind the western horizon with yet another curtain call.

The full moon rise comes soon after that.

With my fervent awareness of the celestial objects that bear down upon us from above, the last couple of days have been profound. How often are we aware of the transits of the two most prominent and most intense of objects above our noggins? How often do we look up? How often to we look? How often do we feel it?

During the time of the full moon we are bathed in light throughout the day and night. During the day we receive direct light/energy. At night we are bathed in reflected light/energy. It’s the best time to re-charge our inner solar and lunar batteries. It’s also a great time to step through portals and stuff like that.

Sometimes I fantasize about having a home with a glass roof so that there would be nothing but glass separating me from from the ongoing celestial light show.

But is the glass really necessary? How open to those energies do we want to be? Has that connection slowly disintegrated over our life? How disconnected are we?

Did you know that you can stand on the ground watching the full moon rise and, in the state of receivership, we can access the memories of every single full moon that we stood on the ground watching it in both this life and, perhaps, other lives? Every time we stare at the full moon we have the opportunity to forever emblazon memories and feeling-tone vibrations upon the lunar skein of time and space.

That’s what the moon whispered to me some years ago, anyway.

It’s the same with the sun; the optimum time for making recordings that can be injected into the light and be seared onto eternity; sunrise and sunset. Sure, everything is recorded but it is the hits that stand out in the memory banks. They are the tabs in the filing cabinet. They are the vibrations that unlock the ginormous bank vault. They are the switches that turn on the memories of both past and future.

Is it really lunacy to schedule our lives around the sun and the moon? Are we who do that really lunatics? Are we freaks?

My oh my, what have we done to ourselves by putting roofs over our head?
How B2B Lead Generation Is Same as Using Tinder
By: Anuj Narang
Tags: Marketing, Lead Generation, Entrepreneurship, Business Development, Dating

The other day, my 16-year old neighbor asked me what I do for a living.

Having failed the previous few times in explaining the B2B Lead Generation process to adolescents, I thought of trying a new and unique way which he could relate to:

“Think of my job as using Tinder for 9 hours at office. The only difference is that I am looking for potential clients instead of potential dates.”

Although I was bombarded with a ton of questions after making this statement, I think it did the trick, for I could see on his face that he understood what I said.

It was at that moment when it hit me, how strikingly similar B2B lead generation process is with using Tinder for online dating.
Silent as Death
By: Scorpio Poetry
Tags: Short Story, Short Fiction, Fiction, Death, Fiction Writing

Photo Source: Pexels

Silent as Death

A short story

He stared past her with a blank expression, his head leaning to one side.

“I don’t understand you,” Emilia said quietly, “why won’t you speak to me anymore? I really think we need to figure this out.”

The silence awoke her anxiety.

She knelt in front of him and touched his face. “Please talk to me? I want to work this out,” she said as she wiped the crust from around his mouth.

He didn’t move or speak.

Perhaps Lucas just needs to be alone again. After all, men don’t know how to process their emotions as quickly as women, she thought.

It seemed he’d been needing a lot of alone time for the last couple of days. He never wanted to talk anymore, he just sat there staring at the wall. She missed the way things used to be.

Emilia picked herself up from the floor. “We will talk about this later then, okay?”

Nothing but silence.

Breathing in deeply, Emilia wrinkled her nose at the smell. “You need some fresh air. This room smells awful,” she said, opening the window. “I guess I’ll be back later.” She gave him one last glance before closing the door.
Korea-related updates: a bunch of video reviews
By: Ubcoin. Cryptocurrency Reimagined
Tags: Ubcoin Media, Bitcoin, Korea, Ubcoin

Ubcoin Market is global peer-to-peer Ebay-like marketplace for exchanging real goods (laptops, art objects, etc) to cryptocurrency and back. The easiest way to buy or sell something you own without fiat money involved. UBC is token used on marketplace as a means of payment .

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Week 58: Brokenness
By: Aaron Charles
Tags: Short Story, Food, Marriage, Cooking, Broken

So…I haven’t talked about our food adventure yet, huh? I promise it all ties together. This week, we decided to make cauliflower grilled cheese. Interesting, I know.

We worked together to mix the cauliflower in with some eggs and other ingredients. Then came the tough part — frying the “bread.”

We quickly realized that we should have drained the liquid from our cauliflower mixture. The pieces wouldn’t stick together. Soon, we had a bit of mess on our hands. Sarah went to flip one and…

…splat. They broke.

At first, we felt like we had failed. But as I look back on it, it really wasn’t as big of a deal as we thought in the moment. It didn’t ruin the meal, and we still had fun cooking together. Sure it was a little messy. But life gets messy sometimes. We can’t act like we’re always going to keep everything perfect, clean and tidy.

My grilled cheese fell apart. But it still tasted good. And I shared it with my favorite person on the planet.

That’s not so bad.
Mad Maps – visualizing geographical data for maximum impact
By: Jp Hwang
Tags: Getting Started, Data Visualization, Data Science, Programming, Python

Mad Maps – visualizing geographical data for maximum impact

How to effectively communicate data on maps for clear, insightful insights with Python (code and data included)

The U.S. presidential election is upon us again. You have no doubt had maps flood your Twitter timeline and news feeds already, and the next few weeks after Nov. 3rd will see an escalation of that.

We take maps for granted these days, and it’s not difficulty to see why. Smartphones have commoditised technology to accurately locate us and provide live directions to the 5 nearest Japanese restaurants with at least a 4.0 rating. Maps have never been more integrated in our lives, even though just a decade ago people still used street directories. (Shudders)

But it would be doing the field of cartography a huge disservice to say that Google Maps is the final evolution of maps. It’s far from the truth, and while useful, that’s only a small part of what maps can do.

Maps are feats of human ingenuity that can help to derive unique insights and effectively convey them, whether they be demographic, economic, health, or indeed political.

Imagine being an early cartographer, and accurately tracing the surface contours of our world from the ground level. Imagine being among the first people from your nation to explore certain regions of the world, and capturing on a page their form, inhabitants, flora and fauna such that the next people to arrive can navigate the world that little bit more safely and quickly. Imagine how it might feel to create something that will help inform and guide everybody from fishermen to generals.

Cartography in other words creates visual aids to help users navigate through the treacherous seas of data, as in — the precursor to the broader field of data visualisation. The knowledge that one of the first known examples of data visualisation was an augmented map (of cholera outbreaks) has a certain quality of full circle to it as well, especially given the current pandemic and the proliferation of dashboards.

John Snow’s map of Cholera Outbreaks (Wikipedia)

With this relative simple map, John Snow was able to visualise the disease incidence data and illustrate that a central location of the outbreaks (and the water pump located there) was likely to be the cause of cholera cases.

Fast forward to today, there exist amazing data visualisation tools (like Plotly, DataWrapper or Tableau) that are able to plot maps that are not only packed with information, but also visually striking.

As an example, take a look at this image of crops farmed in the United States:
Every Child Is A Miracle
By: Iva Hotko
Tags: Miracles, Poetry, Poem, Love, Children

Poetry

Every Child Is A Miracle

Light in the world

Image by Iva Hotko

Every child is a miracle of love,

and hope for all the world.

Children are the light in darkest of times

and warmth in coldest of nights.

They are the melody of joy

and sight for sore eyes.

Every child is a miracle

that the world has yet to know.

~ Iva
Using Inheritance in PostgreSQL
By: Tanveer Prottoy
Tags: Database, Programming, Postgresql

Photo by Philippe Jausions on Unsplash

PostgreSQL has table inheritance feature. This concept is from object-oriented databases. In PostgresSQL a table can inherit from one or more other tables. Child table inherits column(s) along with all check constraints and not null constraints from one or more parent tables. Some constraints (unique, primary key, and foreign key) are not inherited from parent table to child table (Official docs).

Let’s see some SQLs.

CREATE TABLE entities ( created_at TIMESTAMPTZ NOT NULL DEFAULT NOW() );

“entities” will be used as a parent table. It has a created_at column which stores the current date time from the NOW() function. Tables inheriting “entities” table will get the column along with the constraints.

CREATE TABLE packages ( id INT GENERATED BY DEFAULT AS IDENTITY PRIMARY KEY, package_name VARCHAR(30), code INT ) INHERITS (entities);

Here is the result.

Image provided by the publisher

“packages” table inheriting from “entities” has the created_at column. This way DDL can be reduced and better organised.

Here’s another example with a table inheriting multiple tables.

CREATE TABLE people ( user_name VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL );

“people” table has user_name column.

CREATE TABLE users ( id INT GENERATED BY DEFAULT AS IDENTITY PRIMARY KEY, fullname VARCHAR(30) ) INHERITS (entities, people);

And below is the result.

Image provided by the publisher

“users” table inheriting from “entities” and “people” has the created_at and user_name columns from its respective parent tables.

Thank you for reading. Hope this will be helpful to you. Please give some claps if you liked the post.
Abortionist: “We Made a lot of Money in Abortions”
By: Sarah Terzo
Tags: Abortion, Profit, Pro Life, Pro Choice, Abortion Clinic

Pro-choice psychologist Magda Denes wrote a book on abortion, for which she observed abortions and interviewed clinic workers and abortion doctors. Her book, In Necessity and Sorrow: Life and Death in an Abortion Hospital, was published decades ago, but much of what it has to say is still relevant today.

There is a lot of valuable information in Denes’ book, including interviews with clinic workers and abortionists.

One abortionist who she interviewed was the Chief of Gynecological and Obstetrical Services at the clinic. He said:

I practice medicine not to make a living and yet I like to make money at it. We made a lot of money in abortions. I don’t really know why I did it. I sort of fell into it. I was the director of the service here, so when the abortion program came in I looked at it is sort of a challenge. We did set up a very good program. But then I could see from the point of view of management that they were less interested in the best program than in the best paying program. For the first two or three months I didn’t do any of the abortions… Then I suddenly realized I had all the headaches because whenever they ran into trouble I got involved. I took over gradually and worked two days a week and I found that I worked very hard, but it made an awful lot of money.

Abortion doctors still make a lot of money today, as more recent interviews show.

The abortionist quoted in the above passage doesn’t seem to have set out to become an abortion provider. However, he found the work to be extremely lucrative.

Although he insists that he does not practice medicine to make money, he admits that he likes the money that he makes. Also, he makes this “awful lot of money” by working only two days a week.

There is another disturbing admission in this quote. The abortionist says that management was not interested in the best program — i.e. the program offering the best health care for women — but in the best paying program.

Apparently, the administration of the clinic put financial gain ahead of women’s health. Why else would he distinguish between the “best-paying program” and what he characterizes as the “best program?”
2화 민서와의 만남 : 서울 제안가, 당신의 일상을 들려줘!
By: 성예슬 쩨리
Tags: 일상, 서울제안가, 참여, 민주주의서울

in In Fitness And In Health
Be Water
By: Barbara Ford
Tags: Poetry, Water, Activism, Resistance, Resistance Poetry

Salmon River (photo credit: Barbara Ford)

Be Water

That is the plan in the Hong Kong resistance

Flow through streets, leaderless

emergent, responsive to the moment

impenetrable to infiltrators

Be Water

The stuff left in plastic jugs in borderlands

for comfort and salvation of those seeking refuge

Be the sweat of those who leave the jugs

Be the moisture forming at the point of contact with the handcuffs

Be Water

Be the dew formed at sunrise on the spider web

A shining mandala of beauty and survival

Be the steam

rising at the edge of the lava bed

the insistent creation of new land

in this time of decline

Be Water

be herbal tea for healing

the sick and the hopeless

be the blood of the one offering

the cup in an outstretched hand

Be the one in the bed, loved.

Be the IV fluid

restoring balance in the emergency

until things change back

until the Body remembers

Be Water

Be the unapologetic tear

of grief

or gratitude

Be the storm

Be fury and change and unpredictable

uncovering of the predicament we are in

Be the tide, breathing in and out

reminding us of the daily fullness and slack of life,

the rhythms of the universe in our bodies

Be the river, undammed,

welcoming the salmon

Be the rain

Be the silence before the rain

the rivulets after, seeking the parched

Be Water

Be the blessing of baptism

no matter your faith

the drops of water landing with love

on the newly born

be the amniotic fluid

holding safe, with or without hope,

the future

because it’s there anyway

in the fragile sac of becoming.
The Power of Second Chances
By: Glenna Gill
Tags: Life Lessons, Relationships, Self, Love, Friendship

The Power of Second Chances

Finding the courage to try again.

Photo by Giang Vu on Unsplash

During my separation from my first husband, I awoke one morning to find him sitting on the edge of our bed, which was my bed now since he’d moved out weeks ago. He told me his affair was over, and he wanted to come home to me and the kids.

I remember breathing a huge sigh of relief and gratefully hugging him. Our time apart had been torture for me, not knowing how to function alone with two small boys and no man in my life for the first time. It never occurred to me to say no to him. He was the “man of the house.” Of course, he should be home where he belonged.

Our reunion lasted less than two weeks. It became clear after he unpacked his suitcases that he had no desire to be with me. He was simply doing what he thought was the right thing. I’m sure he thought that real, honest men didn’t abandon their families and run off with their receptionists. He wanted to make everybody else happy, but he was clearly miserable.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked me one night, throwing up his arms in frustration. I still felt stung over the affair and let him know it.

“I want you to leave for a week,” I told him. “Find a hotel to stay in so you can figure out what you really want.” I wished I was half as brave as I sounded.

He never made the hotel reservation. He moved into the receptionist’s apartment the same night and never looked back. I’d given him a second chance to repair our marriage and felt like a stupid fool. His love for me had already died long ago. Playing the martyr did not suit him, anyway. Sure, I could have kept my mouth shut and went along with a fake marriage for our kids’ sake, but I wanted real love and not just a performance he felt obligated to give. My heart has always been weak that way.
Salmon Felix on the over-designed beautiful news page
By: David Connell
Tags: Links, Medium, Online Journalism, Quartz, Salmon Felix

Today, when you read a story at the New Republic, or Medium, or any of a thousand other sites, it looks great; every story looks great. Even something as simple as a competition announcement comes with a full-page header and whiz-bang scrollkit graphics. The result is a cognitive disconnect: why is the website design telling me that this short blog post is incredibly important, when in reality it’s just a blockquote and a single line of snark? All too often, when I visit a site like Slate or Quartz, I feel let down when I read something short and snappy — something which I might well have enjoyed, if it just took up a small amount of space in an old-fashioned reverse-chronological blog. The design raises my expectations, even as the writers are still expected to throw out a large number of quick takes on various subjects.
Bad drafts, dumb trades, and a revolving roster of regret.
By: Mike Harms
Tags: NFL, Football, Fantasy Football News, Fantasy Football

My first-ever draft pick was Elway. Friends warned me against taking a QB in round one, but I ignored them.

Things didn’t work out between Elway and me. In the ensuing years, there would be more bad decisions. Lots of them.

24 Years of Sucking @ Fantasy Football shows you how to fail at fantasy. So you can succeed, by doing the opposite of everything that’s in this free e-book.

I’m in! Reserve my free copy.

Enter your email address to reserve your free e-book, 24 Years of Sucking @ Fantasy Football. We’ll email you a copy when the book releases this Spring, in plenty of time for your draft. You’ll also receive an email newsletter of fantasy ramblings.

I’m marginally interested. Tell me more.

Expert advice won’t give your team an edge in fantasy football anymore. Today, anybody with a pulse can download a draft guide or pull up a cheat sheet on an app.

Back in the early 1990’s, 12 friends formed a league and got together to draft. They brought hand-scribbled notes and a few copies of Fantasy Index magazine. There was no online draft, no real-time data, no smartphone apps.

Over the ensuing two-dozen seasons, the Internet fueled a fantasy explosion. Participation leapt from 3 to 57 million fantasy players. Connected devices, automated scoring and ubiquitous stats brought fantasy into the mainstream.

As the 12 friends scattered across the country, they moved their league online and kept playing together. For the UndaDawgz, one thing remained constant for nearly a quarter century: losing.

Discover what makes a team lose, so yours won’t.

Enter your email address to reserve this free e-book and the fantasy ramblings newsletter. It might be the least important thing you do all day.
It’s Time to Stop White-Casting Period Pieces
By: Nicola Schulze
Tags: Movies, Jane Austen, Mr Malcolms List, Culture, Race

I’ll never forget when my mom showed me my first period piece. I was 10 years old and the film was The BBC’s Pride and Prejudice miniseries (the best version of the Jane Austen classic, no other arguments will be considered) starring Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth Bennet and Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy. From the moment my mom popped in the worn VHS tape, I was hooked. But it wasn’t just the romance, it was the characters Austen had created, specifically Elizabeth Bennett. She was smart, witty, loved reading, and the only female character not interested in getting married. As a 10-year-old, I quickly labeled her as my 18th-century heroine of choice. I mean boys? Gross. What were they even good for?

After watching Pride and Prejudice, I quickly moved on to Austen’s other creations in both film and book form. Persuasion, Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, all were tales of female heroines falling in love, exchanging only the wittiest of remarks in flawless British accents. I held these movies (and mostly the BBC itself) as the gold standard for romance, one that I continued to hold up and revisit time and time again.

But there’s something I haven’t mentioned yet, something I ignored the majority of my life — these women, these strong 18th century ladies are something I will never be. White. Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow, both Jennifer Ehle and Keira Knightley all (lovely) white ladies. When I was younger, I accepted this telling myself “oh, of course, they’re all white it’s wealthy 18th-century England, that’s all they have.” Yes, spiritually I had identified with Elizabeth Bennet. But when I closed my eyes, whether I was 10 or 21, the media had taught me to see one thing, a woman I could never be.

Then I saw Mr. Malcolm’s List, a short film directed by Emma Holly Jones for Refinery29’s Shatterbox. Shatterbox is an anthology of women-directed short films with the goal to get more women behind the camera. This 8-minute film starring Gemma Chan from Crazy Rich Asians and Freida Pinto from Slumdog Millionaire casts people of color in a traditional period piece a la Jane Austen.

The story surrounds Mr. Malcolm, an elusive bachelor, played by Sope Dirisu. Following him is a long list of desperate debutantes and their matchmaking mothers. What these women don’t know is he has a particular list of qualifications for his future bride. One woman, Julia played by Gemma Chan, is determined to capture his heart but perhaps she needs a little help.
13 Things To Do this Weekend
By: Alisa Hauser
Tags: Music

WICKER PARK — Happy Friday.

Block Club Chicago is preparing for launch… Thank you for backing us on the now-ended Kickstarter or through the ‘donate anytime’ Paypal and helping to spread the word!

I debated whether or not to do a ‘Things to Do’ today (see launch ^^), but some of you say you use this list to plan your weekend. Thanks for the feedback. This list is for you:

Hellion Cold Brew. [Facebook]

Drink Up. Celebrate 420 day Friday with Metric Coffee’s new Cannabis Cold Brew, Hellion ($13) at Caffe Streets. Hours are 7 a.m. — 7 p.m., 1750 W. Division St.

Eat Pizza. The much anticipated Bonci pizza opens at 11 a.m. Saturday, 1566 N. Damen Ave. in the former DOX Quality Greek. Here are a few photos snapped earlier today.

Lots of different pizza varieties at Bonci. (Alisa Hauser)

Hang Out in Wayne’s Basement. A “Wayne’s World”-themed bar modeled like the 90s suburban basement from the cult classic movie takes over Bucktown Pub on Friday. From 5 p.m. — 2 a.m. daily through April 29, 1658 W. Cortland St.

Lori Felker and Dan Fiorio at Permanent Records, now Joyide Records. [File photo/Alisa Hauser]

Grow Your Vinyl Collection. Saturday is Record Store Day! An impressive concentration of local record shops include Reckless (score a CHOCOLATE RECORD there on Saturday; read more), Dusty Groove, Shuga, Joyride, Purple Llama and the newish Wild Prairie, where kstarke used to be. Various stores will be offering in-store performances, swag and more.

Celebrate Seek’s 8th Anniversary. Enjoy 15–30% discounts on vintage clothing and housewares plus peruse a basement bazaar with handmade soaps, jewelry and pottery (the bazaar will be open all weekend after the party). From 7 p.m. Friday- midnight. At 1433 W. Chicago Ave.

Free Dog Portraits. From 1–5 p.m. Saturday at Timbuk2, 1623 N. Damen Ave.

Bar Crawl via The 606. Meet People Chicago’s crawl stops at four bars along the Bloomingdale Trail. Tickets are $15; schedule will be emailed to participants on the day of the event. From 4–9 p.m. Saturday.

Ukrainian Village Neighborhood Clean Up. Join neighbors for Earth Day beautification. Garbage bags and gloves will be provided. Starts at 10 a.m. Saturday, J&M Tap, 957 N. Leavitt St.

Saturday Night Earth Day Party & Great Lakes Fundraiser at Karen Marie Salon. From 6–10 p.m. Saturday, 1859 N. Milwaukee Ave.

Score Plus Size Fashions. Luvsick Plus and Last Craft pop by Tarnish. Find leather jackets up to size 5XL along with vintage clothing, pop culture pins, candles and more. From 5–10 p.m. Saturday, 2024 W. Chicago Ave.

Destroy Old Papers, Donate Old Bikes. Responsibly dispose of papers, electronics, old or not-in-use bicycles and unused prescription medicines at the 2nd Ward Earth Day paper shredding event sponsored by Alderman Brian Hopkins. From 9 a.m. — noon Saturday, 1254 N. State Parkway.

Try Bucktown’s Newest Doughnuts. Mindy’s Hot Chocolate now offers doughnuts…. and they’re square shaped. Learn more on Fox 32 Chicago.

Earth Day Clean Up. From 10–11 a.m Sunday, meet at 1640 N. Maplewood.
The art of Exploratory data analysis (EDA)
By: Nisha Chauhan
Tags: Pandas Dataframe, Data Science, Data Analysis, Statistics, Exploratory Data Analysis

Exploring is adventurous! Image-source

What is Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA)?

As the name suggest, it is a technique to analyse the data by exploring it. EDA is one of the key as well as indispensable step in data analysis. This can be understood as a general checkup of patient (data) by the doctors (data enthusiast), before doing any surgery (analysis, modeling, prediction, classification, etc.).

What are the goals of EDA?

EDA is done for two major underlying reasons, firstly to understand the data and secondly to identify faults or peculiar events (data points) in the dataset. Let’s try to understand what is meant by understanding and peculiar data points in detail.

— To understand the data characteristics → Understanding the data means answering following preliminary questions that generally pops up in the mind of data person on first encounter with a particular dataset:

Where is this data coming from? (What population group or subject)

What is the high level contained information? (e.g cost data, revenue, budget, employee salaries, customer data, usage data and so on.)

What are the variables available?

What does their value mean? (e.g average time per page would mean that out of all the time spent by user on the website in one session, how much time was spent on a every particular page)

What population segment data belong to? (e.g The data of cancer patient would meant that out of all patients the collected data is of cancer patients only.

What is the Sample distribution?

What is the strength and direction of the relationships among input variable and outcome variable?

What is the Central tendency of the data?

What is the spread of the data?

— To identify discrepancies in the data → Discrepancies in data means

Presence of incorrect values

Missing values

Outliers (probable outliers or possible outliers)

Assumption violations

Based on the findings during EDA, a preliminary selection of the data can be done or the further course of actions can be decided to treat discrepancies.

Part I — Categorical variables EDA

How EDA is carried out?

As we have seen what and why of EDA, it time to answer how EDA is done? In this post we are going to focus on EDA techniques for categorical variables which includes ordinal, dichotomous and nominal variables. You can find details of types of variable here.

EDA can be graphical or quantitative depending on what are we trying to find. Following previous analogy of patient, reports like x-ray, MRI, scans, can be seen as graphical method which provides overall picture of data and involves qualitative analysis. Whereas blood reports, dimensions of tumour can be understood as quantitative method which are objective.

In general data is constitute of several columns and rows. Now one can choose to explore one variable at a time (uni+variate=univariate), two variables at a time (bi+variate=bivariate), or multiple variables at same time (multi+variate= multivariate).
What Is Intimacy?
Tags: Self Improvement, Intimacy, Relationships, Self, Love

Photo via Pixabay

“The story of human intimacy is one of constantly allowing ourselves to see those we love the most deeply in a new, more fractured light. Look hard. Risk that.” Tiny Beautiful Things — Cheryl Strayed

This is one of the first quotes I wrote in the small notebook where I like to keep inspiration and wisdom. My understanding of intimacy evolves as I grow older, and I see my approach to achieving intimacy change as well.

To be truly intimate with somebody is to see them for who they really are, as imperfect as they may be. Not only do you see that, but you also find comfort in it. You can break open this person, dissect them, and feel something powerful because of what you find — not in spite of it.

We should always strive to look at those we love in a new light. We should allow different reflections to appear, even for a brief moment. This helps us keep our sights set on those we love. When we see and accept different likenesses, we have found something really special.

You always risk something when you open up to somebody. Vulnerability never came easy to me. I hate opening myself, removing my shield of comfort. Of course, it is a fantastic thing to be challenged.

You should be uncomfortable sometimes.

On the other hand, trying to find intimacy can be absolutely grueling. It’s demanding, and then it can be easily taken away from you. You can be told none of it was even real.

We are hurt the most by the people we trust. Sometimes it isn’t even that person’s fault. This just happens by virtue of being a person who opens up to others. The hope is that we do not let loss prevent us from trying to find that something special again in the future.

Failing to be vulnerable with the people who love us can hurt too. I’ve seen how detrimental it can be to a relationship not to be able to be intimate with somebody on that level.

What does intimacy mean to you?
How to break into VC: we’re hiring in Europe
By: Omers Ventures
Tags: Venture Capital, Europe

Written by Jambu Palaniappan, Managing Partner, OMERS Ventures

There has been a lot of talk over the last several months about how difficult it is to break into venture capital — that the nature of the industry is opaque, and hiring is cloaked in secrecy. We agree that doesn’t lend itself well to new voices breaking through. The purpose of this post is fairly straightforward: to let you know that OMERS Ventures is hiring in Europe.

We have two open junior investment roles — one associate and one analyst — and we are kicking off a search process now.

OMERS is a Canadian pension plan that invests on behalf of 500,000 public sector members from the Canadian province of Ontario. We take our stewardship of their retirement plan seriously, and can feel the impact of our work every day. OMERS began investing directly in venture-backed startups a decade ago, including investing in companies like Shopify. We invest in series A and B companies across Europe and are particularly focused on revolutionary software platforms.

Our investment team is also a bit different: we are a mix of ex-founders and operators and believe that helps us put ourselves in the shoes of the entrepreneurs and companies we meet. Harry, Tara, Henry and I took different paths to venture — founding companies and scaling others — and we want the team we are building to reflect the diversity of the world around us and the businesses we hope to invest in.

So, what are we looking for? Simply put, we care more about what you can bring to the table than what you have done in your past. To succeed in these roles, you will need to be a self-starter with grit and the ability to persevere, to have both strong analytical skills and the ability to build networks from a standing start. And above all else, a demonstrable passion for helping founders build era-defining companies. You can be a founder, operator, consultant, lawyer, or none of the above. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never worked at a VC firm.

This is not an internship or a short-term program we’ve thought up to signal a commitment to diversity. These are significant roles within our small European team and we want standout candidates. We believe that our business will be made stronger if these candidates come from diverse backgrounds, and we are relying on the community to help us get word out to the people who you think need to know about this!

More info about the role and the link to apply are here. Please reach out directly at jpalaniappan@omersventures.com if you have any questions.
MATIC/INR & Matic Mondays on WazirX
By: Wazirx Bitcoin Exchange
Tags: Cryptocurrency Investment, Cryptocurrency, Crypto, Blockchain, Matic

Namaste Tribe! Yesterday, we ran a poll on Twitter about which INR pair you want to see next on WazirX! Turns out MATIC is a huge favourite. So, MATIC/INR is going live on WazirX today at 5 PM IST!

We’re giving ₹4,00,000 worth MATIC on Matic Mondays! Share this

We’d also like to congratulate our friends at Matic Network for achieving two big milestones in their journey — Matic Mainnet is going live in the end of May after which MATIC will be listed on Binance America ⚡️

WazirX will enable MATIC deposits & withdrawals before Matic Mainnet goes live 😎

What is ‘Matic Mondays’?

For the next 2 Monday’s, we’ll run day-long MATIC/INR trading contest. It’s on:

Monday, 18th May: 9 AM — 9 PM IST

Monday, 25th May: 9 AM — 9 PM IST

You can participate and win on both days!

How can I participate?

Winners will be decided on the basis of the volume and number of MATIC traded in our INR market. Here’s how to qualify:

For volume of trades: Minimum trade volume of ₹5,000 worth of MATIC each day

For number of trades: Minimum 50 trades each day

Lucky trader of the day will win 25806.4 MATIC worth ₹40,000!

What’s the bounty?

For volume of trades on each Monday:

For the highest volume of trades: 19354.83 MATIC (worth ₹30,000)

For the 2nd highest volume of trades: 14193.54 MATIC (worth ₹22,000)

For the 3rd highest volume of trades: 9677.41 MATIC (worth ₹15,000)

For the 4th highest volume of trades: 6451.61 MATIC (worth ₹10,000)

For the 5th highest volume of trades: 4516.12 MATIC (worth ₹7,000)

For each of the next top 10 highest volume of trades: 1032.25 MATIC (worth ₹1,600)

For each of the next top 10 highest volume of trades: 645.16 MATIC (worth ₹1000)

Total bounty for volume of trades is ₹2,20,000 worth MATIC

For the number of trades on each Monday:

For the highest number of trades: 7741.93 MATIC (worth ₹12,000)

For the 2nd highest number of trades: 5806.45 MATIC (worth ₹9,000)

For the 3rd highest number of trades: 3870.96 MATIC (worth ₹6,000)

For the 4th highest number of trades: 1935.48 MATIC (worth ₹3,000)

For the 5th highest number of trades: 1290.32 MATIC (worth ₹2,000)

For each of the next top 10 highest number of trades: 645.16 MATIC (worth ₹1,000)

For each of the next top 10 highest number of trades: 516.12 MATIC (worth ₹800)

Total bounty for number of trades is ₹1,00,000 worth MATIC

Note: Each day, you can qualify for only one category of bounty (volume or number) whichever has a higher value. For example, if you’re the 2nd highest trader in terms of number, and 2nd highest in terms of volume, then you’ll get bounty for the “volume”. Also, self-trading is not allowed.

Don’t forget to take advantage of the contest leaderboard, trade smartly and win!

Happy Trading!
Migrating from Vuetify to Quasar
By: Stanislav Valasek
Tags: JavaScript, Vuetify, Vuejs, Go, Quasarframework

Back to the story

So when the decision was made I looked around to find the tech stack to help me to reach the goal effectively. I also considered Ruby on Rails but the tables were too dynamic.

I was already familiar with Go so ultimately the back-end was created in Go. Next I was looking for a framework which would help me to deliver a nice looking UI. I picked VueJS due to its fast learning curve and excellent documentation. At that time I picked Vuetify because a larger community led me to believe it would be better, as I was not experienced in Javascript and was expecting to have to do a lot of research online.

Why I switched to Quasar?

Once the application was mature and served us well, I played with an idea to improve the UI. I consider Ant design to be more advanced when compared to Google’s Material Design, but I did not find a suitable VueJS framework at that time. As I had been following the Quasar community for a while already, I decided to give it a go.