fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
‘Get Paid To Watch TV!’ & 4 Other Reasons To Back TV-TWO
Tags: ICO, Tvtwo, TV, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain

There are stacks of ICO opportunities out there, all vying to be the Next Big Cash Cow. But we take the view that unless the product or solution has the potential to change things in the real world, it’s not worth the crypto it’s coded on.

That’s why we’ve made sure that everything about TV-TWO addresses an ongoing challenge: innovation in the TV industry and the relationship between viewers, advertisers, and creators. Here are 5 reasons to take a closer look at what we’re doing.

Already Up & Running

Yup, we have a working product! It’s not widely available just yet, but it’s on TestNet and is fully operational on Connected TVs. Want to see it in action? Check out our video.

Content Curated By Machine Learning

TV-TWO gives users a tailored TV experience. While watching broadcast TV, simply press a button to launch the app, and our smart curation algorithm presents you with a personalised video feed: content that it knows you’ll enjoy; based on an analysis of your viewing habits.

Get Paid To Watch TV

This isn’t some ruse: it’s the real deal. TV-TWO lets you earn cryptocurrency while watching your favourite shows! It’s issued in the form of our own utility token — the TTV (Token For Television), which can be easily traded for Ethereum (ETH) after our ICO. And guess who’s paying you? Advertisers: for watching their ads.

Stick It To The Middleman

Unlike TV networks who have a monopoly on advertising prices, offer little compensation to content creators, and charge fees to viewers, TV-TWO gives everyone a fair deal. How? Because the barriers are non-existent. There’s no-one in between taking a cut and dictating the terms. Advertisers pay for highly targeted (anonymised) audience data; viewers get compensated for being shown relevant commercial content; and content creators are rewarded on the merit of their productions.

Progressive Technology

We’re disrupting outdated industry practices in every possible way; which is why we’ve built TV-TWO using blockchain technology. More specifically, it’s being built on the Ethereum blockchain, which offers smart contract functionality.

So there you have it! Still need some convincing? Download our whitepaper.
Spend Monday…
Tags: Work, Crypto, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Mondays

Don’t just start your week off the right way, but Spend it too! With over 40 million merchants around the globe, know that Spend will always be there no matter what this week throws at you! Visit the App Store or Google Play today and start Spending!
The Worst Day In Your Life
Tags: Life Lessons, Inspiration, People, Motivation, Life

In an interview, Bill Gates was asked a question. “WHAT’S THE WORST DAY IN YOUR LIFE?”

He didn’t say, “the day someone threw cake on his face, or when he had to pay 1.3 billion dollars in fines.”

He said “the day my mother died.”

Read Full Story here
An Introduction to Swift
Tags: Programming, Coding, iOS, Technology, Swift

Collections

Two of the primary collection types in Swift are Arrays and Dictionaries.

Array

Arrays store data of the same type in an ordered list.

The following code creates an empty Array which stores Strings.

var listOfStrings = [String]()

If we want to let Swift infer the type of our Array, we can create it and populate it with some entries as follows:

var someStrings = ["Wallace", "Gromit", "Cheddar"]

The items inside of an Array are accessed via indexes. The index represents its position in the array. We always start the count from 0.

var someStrings = ["Wallace", "Gromit", "Cheddar"]

print(someStrings[1])

The above code outputs "Gromit" .

Dictionary

Dictionaries store unordered key-value pairs, where all keys are of the same type and all values are of the same type.

We can create an empty dictionary which maps from String keys to Int values as follows:

var romanToDecimal = [String: Int]()

And now to create some mappings we can do the following:

romanToDecimal["X"] = 10

romanToDecimal["V"] = 5

A Note on Performance

Dictionaries provide instant look-up time. If we want to check if a key is present in a dictionary, all we do is check if there is a mapping for the key to a value. In big O notation, a notation used to describe the worst-case runtime of a piece of code, we would write this as O(1).

If we want to check if a value is present in an array, we need to cycle through the array and examine each element individually. In big O, it is written as O(n). This is to say that our runtime is bounded by the number of elements (n) in the array.

Mutability

Assigning a collection to a variable means that the collection can be changed later on.

var someList = [1,2,3]

someList = [1]

If instead, the collection is assigned to a constant, the collection and its contents cannot be changed.
Killing Nobles in the Square: the Távora Affair
By: Ana Esteves
Tags: Portuguese, Culture, Death, Death And Dying, History

Killing Nobles in the Square: the Távora Affair

The extermination of one of the most prominent Portuguese noble families of the 18th century

The attempted regicide of King Joseph I of Portugal, in 1758. Francisco Vieira de Matos

1759–1760. Source: Museu de Lisboa (Public Domain)

The Távora Affair, known in Portuguese as the Processo dos Távoras is one of the most shocking episodes in the Portuguese history of recent centuries. This 18th-century extermination of one of the most prominent families in the Portuguese Kingdom was a shocking, horrid event, even in today’s point of view.

It all started after the assassination attempt of King José I in 1758…

The Beginning

After the devastating earthquake and seaquake of 1755, in Lisbon, the Portuguese king, D. José I, settled his court in an elaborate complex of tents located in the Ajuda region of the capital — don’t be fooled it could be easily compared to a sort of Versailles. He lived in constant fear of another natural disaster and of another building falling on him, believing that his life was constantly threatened.

Rei D. José I de Portugal. Miguel António do Amaral 1773. Source: Hermitage Museum

At this time, the king’s court was lead by his prime minister Sebastião José de Carvalho e Mello, the future Marquess de Pombal (in Portuguese, Marquês de Pombal). Mello was vehemently against the old noble houses of Portugal and their backwards ideas on development. Once he reached the high-regarded position of Prime Minister, he decided to get his revenge on both the old nobility and the Jesuits, who had been against his struggle to amass power and influence.

Marquês de Pombal. Autor: Louis-Michel Van Loo. 1766. Câmara Municipal de Oeiras.

The “Conspiracy”

On the night of the 3rd of September 1758, three men attempted to ambush the king’s carriage. Although he escaped mostly unscathed — with only a slash to his arm — this event only increased the king’s fear for his own life, which had been a constant worry of his ever since the earthquake, three years prior.

In the following days, before the news of the attempt had been divulged, the prime minister took charge of the situation and captured and tortured two men that had been — allegedly — involved. They confessed their guilt and pointed to the Távora family as being responsible for the plot. According to them, they wished to put José Mascarenhas, Duke de Aveiro, on the throne. This seemed especially plausible because the king’s nighttime ride followed an encounter with his lover, D. Teresa de Távora e Lorena — who was the Marquess de Távora’s sister. They were the only ones with the means to know where the king would be that night since he was travelling disguised and in an unidentified carriage.
8 Reasons You Lack Motivation — and How to Fix it
By: Liz Huber
Tags: Work, Entrepreneurship, Personal Growth, Self Improvement, Motivation

Motivation is like a campfire. You need 3 components to reap its full rewards: the matches that get the fire started, the wood that keeps the fire going and the heat to roast your marshmallows.

If you have been struggling with motivation lately, you have to take a comprehensive look at your campfire. There could be a problem with your matches, your wood or the campfire environment. Or even worse: you might have been throwing water on your campfire the entire time!

Use this checklist to identify what is killing your campfire and understand how to fix it.

1. You lack a strong reason WHY.

The Symptoms:

You might not be admitting it to yourself, but you are actually not really interested in doing this thing. Whether it is a goal you set for yourself like running a marathon or completing a project at work, you kind of CBA (can’t be asked). Deep down, you either just don’t see the point or the reward is just not attractive enough for you.

The Cure:

There is two options in dealing with this brutal motivation killer:
Exercising With Covid-19 Could Worsen Its Long-Term Effects, Study Says
By: Ashley Mateo
Tags: Health, Coronavirus, Fitness, Covid 19, Exercise

Exercising With Covid-19 Could Worsen Its Long-Term Effects, Study Says

The stress of working out adds to the stress the virus puts on your heart

Exercisers often push through pain when it comes to minor injuries or colds, but working out with even mild Covid-19 is looking to be a bad move.

According to a study published in JAMA Cardiology, Covid-19 patients are at risk for heart problems. When researchers performed cardiac MRI testing on 100 adults two to three months after Covid-19 recovery, 78 had structural changes to their hearts, and 60 had myocarditis — inflammation of the heart muscle that can lead to abnormal heartbeat, heart failure, and sudden death.

Those are serious issues, yet no participant had “serious” Covid-19 cases. Half experienced mild to moderate symptoms, 18% were asymptomatic, and none experienced heart-related symptoms.

What does this have to do with exercise? “Stressing the heart can worsen heart inflammation — and such stress occurs with exercise,” says Richard Wright, MD, a cardiologist at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California (unaffiliated with the study). “Covid-19 victims should be rigorously tested to ensure their heart is normal prior to resuming exercise.”

Study author Valentina Puntmann, MD, PhD, recommends Covid-19 patients undergo a cardiac MRI to investigate potential cardiac inflammation. “Until we know more, our advice to our nonprofessional athletes is to take it easy for a minimum of six months,” she says.

Easy doesn’t mean nothing; exercise is still an excellent way to stay healthy. In fact, regular exercise may reduce the risk of acute respiratory distress syndrome, a major cause of death in Covid-19 patients, per research in Redox Biology. Talk to your doctor before restarting workouts, and maybe opt for lower-intensity exercise like gentle cycling, yoga, or just walking.
Hard Fork Completed
By: Beam Privacy
Tags: Privacy, Hard Fork, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency

As announced earlier, Beam has successfully completed the second Hard Fork.

At block height 777,777 the mining algorithm was changed from BeamHashII to BeamHashIII

Team Beam were all online at the time of the fork, constantly monitoring the health of the network and prepared for any contingency.

While the Fork was VERY smooth it was a moment of suspense when block 777,776 was mined and we were all waiting to see the post-fork block 777,777 appear. When it happened, it was a moment of joy and pride for the team.

Before

Anticipating block 777,777

After

You could definitely see a lot more smiles on our faces.

Congrats to 2miners who found block 777,776, the last BH2 block and to Leafpool for having mined the first block with the new PoW.

The first BeamHashIII block on our freely available open source pool software also happened at block 777,801 — build your own pool with this free code.

Aftermath

After the Hard Fork occurred, we witnessed an expected drop in difficulty and the two main reasons being that; not all the miners had performed a timely upgrade, and that the upgraded miners participating in the new PoW were mining at lower speeds per GPU on the network — as is the design of BeamHashIII.

However, only 24 hours after the fork, the hash rate of the network reached and eventually stabilised from its pre-fork value (taking into consideration that the the previous algorithm was more established with miner development and offered higher GPU mining hashrates).

Why did we do the Fork

When Beam launched on Jan 3, 2019, we announced that we will perform two hard forks. The rationale was to signal to ASIC developers that there is no point to start developing ASICs until the second hard fork is out.

We timed the first fork roughly 6 months from launch, and the second one in mid 2020. The 10-month timeframe is chosen because that’s how long it usually takes to develop a new ASIC chip.

What else is in this Hard Fork

In addition to the algorithm change, we implemented several important features that are consensus-breaking and can only be done as part of a Hard Fork:

Activate support for Confidential Assets

Activate support for Lelantus Mimblewimble

Activate support for One Sided Payments

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank our wonderful community, the miners, the pools and the exchanges who worked diligently to perform the necessary software upgrades and help us pass the Hard Fork with flying colors.

We also want to extend special thanks to our PoW Advisor Wilke Trei (aka Lolliedieb) who developed BeamHashI, BeamHashII and BeamHashIII.

Go Beam!
Why the Year 2020 is not the worst?
By: Ons Bouneb
Tags: Life Lessons, Lifestyle, New Year, Self Improvement, Life

Why the Year 2020 is not the worst?

It’s tough, but you survived!

Photo by AJ Garcia on Unsplash

It’s that time of the year, individuals are ready to review their year.

This year was different and surviving it, itself is a win.

Did you ever imagine this year to be as dramatic as this! People around you are getting depressed. However, you can’t help because you are already anxious?

I think about this every time; I did not picture my twenties to be in a lockdown, far from half of the people I love. I did not imagine that I would lose friends because we don’t meet anymore.

However, life has its own rules!

How to describe this year?

It would be selfish to announce that it’s the worst year of our lives. It was a year of self-reflection, self-doubt sometimes. Still a year of rediscovering ourselves on many levels.

Prioritizing our goals, seeing the world from another perspective. Daring to be more accurate and pointed.

This year was difficult on many levels, people lost their beloved ones, got sick, or lost hope. So if you are lucky enough to complete his year with minimal damages, please be grateful.

No one is here to judge. You did your best, well we all did.

Why we are frustrated?

I always see some posts that say:

If you did not get out of this period with a new skill or an extra source of income, you lost a golden opportunity!

Thank you for increasing our self-confidence! We really need it!

Ignore them! They don’t know your battle!

What’s the best conclusion for this year?

So perhaps this year was a chance to quit your career, or maybe getting a new one? Maybe you just discovered that this is the right path to follow. Yet it’s totally normal that you did not figure out anything! Because guess what? No one will blame me, and if they do, cut them.

Your success this year is that you are here, in December, fighting every day! Fighting your thoughts, dealing with your anxiety, depression, or whatever you want to call it.

If you did something also, don’t underestimate it.

In the end, this is a little reminder that these are achievements too:

Keeping a smile is an achievement

Waking up every day and live the day

Taking care of your family

Working? Wow, you are a hero!

Searching for one? Keep the race!

Are you a mum, a father? You are marvelous.

…

Be proud of your tiny achievement this year! Cheers to a better 2021!

Peace!
A Strange But True Tale of Cruise, Carrey, and a Broke Aspiring Writer
By: Joel Eisenberg
Tags: Film, Horror, Vampires, Authors, Movies

A Strange But True Tale of Cruise, Carrey, and a Broke Aspiring Writer

So I attended the “Interview with the Vampire” 1994 world premiere and ran into a pair of Hollywood bosses in the men’s room …

What was a broke, aspiring writer to do? Here I was during my second stint in Southern California from my native Brooklyn, having sworn to myself this time I would stay and apply myself to meeting my literary destiny regardless of the fight it would take to get there.

One evening, par for the course, I stopped by the late, lamented Golden Apple Comics to pick up my weekly supply of comic books. I had nothing else going on in my life. No girlfriend, barely any money, and whatever short funds I did have went to my flights of fancy first and food second.

Clearly, I was quite the catch over 25 years ago.

As I was exiting the store, I stopped by the advertisement rack near the door. This was where independent bands tossed in postcards advertising their next appearance, indie filmmakers shared information on their projects’ latest screenings, and studios placed advance screening invites.

Golden Apple was the place to be back then. One such invite immediately caught my eye: 25 free tickets, to the general public, were being given away for the upcoming Warner Brothers’ release of “Interview with the Vampire.”

I called the number on the bottom of the postcard as soon as I arrived home.

I got in.

I would be one of the 25.

Holy shit.
Adieu~
By: Anthony Cloe Huie
Tags: Regret, Goodbye, Love, Memories, Poetry

I have feathered away my precious time

never having once given you your fair share

of mine

I have squandered love on barren soil

while all along your fertile land laid

fallow

I have forgiven the most unforgiving

yet in you, I’ve made no home for grace

no space for understanding, not even

accepting the simplicity of “I’m sorry”

Now as time painfully bleeds

towards my final hour

The clock fighting with each dying tick of

its blood clotted hand

Its face no longer showing its past hours

no longer showing a future

I beg of you

stay with this soul awhile

I can see my life slowly becoming wasted

water on my barren past

Yes I fully understand the futility of

my desperation

Still I’d rather the futility of hopelessness

for a chance to have just one more second

with you

Just time enough for one final kiss

adieu

@Anthony2019mdh30Vibes
Zen 225
By: Susan Brearley
Tags: Inspiration, Travel, Ideas, Photography, Poetry

Susan Brearley is a brilliant strategist and entrepreneur, a published book author, writer, seasoned editor, essayist, occasional comedy writer, and an accidental poet. She’s the happy owner of between 1 and 20 top writer badges on Medium, on any given day.

She is Chef, Elder and Program Director at Elf Works Lane Retreat Center, where she coaches and mentors people, helping them identify and create the life they were born to live, on the planet we all want to live on.

She is currently based in the mid-Hudson Valley, New York.
Hear Thom Yorke and DOOM’s New Collaboration
By: Edith Zimmerman
Tags: Music, Mf Doom, Lex Records

The Radiohead frontman and masked rapper (a.k.a. Daniel Dumile) were rumored to be working together (apparently — I won’t pretend to have my ear on that pulse), and that appears to be the case. Here’s their first offering (after Yorke’s 2009 remix of DOOM’s “Gazillion Ear”), “Retarded Fren,” which, per Lex Records, “features vocals by DOOM and production by Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood” and is “the first part of Lex Records 10th anniversary compilation Complex: new tracks by artists and bands on, or associated with the label, released every Monday for 10 weeks starting November 7th with pre-order for the compilation’s vinyl release in January.” (This track is called a preview, although it seems nearly full-length.) Thom ’n’ DOOMy.
10 Life Lessons I’m Still Learning from My Mom
By: Amy Squires
Tags: Life Lessons, Family, Passion, Advice, Moms

She was one of the first nurse practitioners in Illinois, going back to school when we were still in grammar school — setting that first lesson that her worth was not tied just to child rearing.

Studying for the first time in decades, she worked hard to get that degree, spending nights and weekends at the kitchen table, instilling in her young girls that perseverance and showing up were key — second lesson.

Caring for people, helping them heal, it fed a whole other side of her. She loved us, we knew that, but nursing was her passion, and she went all in — third lesson.

She worked for years with the poorest of the poor. She treated them as she treated us: with attention, concern and commitment — fourth lesson.

She loved to read and helped form a book club that outlived her. Book club became a monthly swap of stories, wine, books and deep friendship — fifth lesson.

When retirement came she took her stethoscope and went overseas — traveling to China, Hungary and India, volunteering with young nurses to share what she knew and to experience another country and another culture — that travel fed her passion to learn and to share with others — sixth lesson.

She loved to swim — in a pool, an ocean, the lake or a river. Show her a body of water and she’d dip in. She joined the YMCA and discovered water aerobics and a new, fun way to move your body at any age — seventh lesson.

Closer to home she volunteered across the street from our home at the children’s hospital, holding sick babies when their parents couldn’t. She knew the value of giving back, it gave her purpose and filled her soul — eighth lesson.

When she got sick she never complained, not once. Yes, she had down days, cancer robbed her of so many of her joys, but she knew complaining wouldn’t help — ninth lesson.

She outlined her own service, down to serving gin & tonics and stuffed mushrooms. She knew we were strong, but she knew grief, and she knew we’d struggle. She was organized and deliberate and caring until the very end — tenth lesson.

I think about my mom every day, but when that first snowfall comes — I head outside, dip in, and always count my blessings for the lessons she’s still teaching me.
Life & Equality
By: Josh, Υя_Ωιѕємαη
Tags: Life Lessons, Politics, Poetry, Poem, Life

It’s for all our red floors and our sandstorms, to all who know the taste of Tar or the taste of Kabuli palaw, to the South American gauchos as to the ancestors of the Middle East.

To our beloved Congolese music, as in the atmospheres of Kinshasa, our futures are emerging, the world is ours, to our happiness and our joy.

I didn’t choose this life; I didn’t decide to be here, they dumped me Like a bird who can’t go home anymore. Somehow, I am the accused one, whose story is a fight like Kunta’s.

I’m the greyed out guy that grew near you, guilty or stillborn; I am a state enemy, I am the accused one who gets up and confronts his brothers and sisters’ oppressors.

God will judge us all; we don’t choose our families. I didn’t choose to be here; I did not choose this life. They dumped me like a bird who can’t go home anymore.

Act one, I know where I come from, Act two, I know who my haters, Act three, I know my rights, and freedom is talking about actions without getting pissed off.

On one side, the merguez, on the other side, the chipolata sausage. If all men are born equal, why must we make others go through desolation and blame it on their skin colour and origins?

How can we run for our lives without a destination whilst others come and take what’s ours? The world is supposed to be home for all; here we are running and breaking chains like prisoners. I want to be free but also feel at home.

I didn’t choose to be here; I did not choose this life. They dumped me like a bird who can’t go home anymore.
The last something that meant anything.
By: Em Lingenfelser
Tags: Music, Poetry On Medium, Relationships, Nostalgia, Poetry

I reread your letters.

The ones you wrote from that 8 by 10 prison cell.

And I picked apart every single lie that covered the yellow pages

Which used to give me faith in something bigger than just you and me.

I softly touched each and every word

Thinking maybe my worship would resurrect the existence

Of love that had died long ago.

But it didn’t.

I arose from the bed which had become my tomb

For three solid days.

On my way to the back porch, I grabbed my cigarettes

And that yellow lighter you always tried to steal.

As I opened the sliding glass door, a gust of wind hit my face

And took my breathe away like your blue eyes used to do.

I lit the cancer stick and took a long drag

Letting the toxins wash away any sense of helplessness.

I clenched your first letter in my cold hand

And wondered what you were doing at this exact same moment.

Another drag, more strength.

I lit the letter dated August 6th, 2009.

And watched as the words you had written,

The lies you had told,

Were consumed by an orange flame.

A fury equal to the rage that I felt within.

Another drag, more strength.

I lit the letter dated January 8th, 2010.

The epitome of your deception:

I’m never going to hurt you again.

I fell to the ground screaming LIAR, LIAR

And watched as the words you had written,

The lies you had told,

Were consumed by an orange flame.

A sight similar to the one you will see in hell.

I smoked an entire pack of cigarettes

Before the twenty-seven letters became a pile of ashes

Slowly blowing away in the wind.

And I was reborn.
Etheremonロードマップの更新（2019年第1四半期）
Tags: Japanese, Etheremon, Ethereum, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain

A blockchain game about collecting, training, evolving and trading Monsters, built with blockchain and VR technology. Think Pokemon on blockchain.

Follow
Bothell, WA Snow Feb 2019
By: Andy Tillo
Tags: Panorama, Bothell, Snow

in Both Sides of the Table
Medium All-Stars — Zulie Rane. Interview with writer Zulie Rane
By: Medium Formatting
Tags: Interview, Writing, Médium, Writing Tips, Blogging Tips

Can you tell us a little more about you?

Zulie Rane:

I’m a tech employee by day and writer by night/weekend/evenings/lunch breaks. I’m passionate about my cats, writing stories, and helping other people find their footing on Medium.

How did you first discover Medium?

I was a reader on Medium long before I wrote. I have an Instagram account for my cats and wanted to bolster it with a blog telling cat stories. I found Medium as an alternative to WordPress because you don’t have to set anything up, you can just get started writing. That and the reader-friendly design I’d experienced really sold me.

When did you start writing on Medium?

Sept 12th maybe? 2018

Is writing on Medium your full time job, a side hustle, or something you do just for fun (or some combination of the above)?

Definitely a side hustle! While I’m fortunate enough to make enough money through Medium for it to be my full-time job if I chose, I really, really love keeping it as something I do for fun rather than my source of income and livelihood.

What do you do when you are not writing on Medium?

Read as many fantasy novels as I can get my hands on, trying to bake various fancy breads, spending quality time with my cats and playing video games with my boyfriend.

Why do you write on Medium, in particular?

I am so happy that they have stuck with ad-free. On Medium, writers are just writing. They don’t need to promote themselves, they don’t need to market, they don’t need to format, they don’t need to submit. You can get away with just focusing on the writing.

What are your favorite topics to write about on Medium?

I like to write about my relationship with myself — how I’ve changed, what I’ve learned — as well as investigating trends on Twitter.

What are your top three article recommendations for readers who want to read some of your writing?

— Most popular to date with 100k views

— Best writing advice I think I’ve ever written

— Featured by Medium
The House of Cortisol
By: Anna L. Shtorm
Tags: Health, Self Improvement, Poetry, Art, Poem

Life asks for a bit of devotion

Life is the major cause of mortality rate.

It hands out a sinister potion

And tells you to drink up and wait.
We Are Living In The Age of Information Overload
By: Tom Stevenson
Tags: Productivity, News, Self Improvement, Society, Media

We Are Living In The Age of Information Overload

How to stay afloat in an endless sea of information

Photo by Philip Strong on Unsplash

Information has never been easier to access than it is today. All we have to do is go on our phones, type a question into google and we are presented with millions and millions of results.

A wealth of information is at our fingertips and although it may seem like a good thing, that is not necessarily the case.

Throughout human history the amount of information available was scarce. Go back one thousand years and we were not aware of the existence of America and Oceania.

It may not sound like much, but considering the sheer amount of information we have available about our planet today, it is a big change.

Every two days we create as much information from the dawn of civilization up until 2003. That is an incredible amount of data!

Our brains have not evolved to process such large amounts of information. Nowadays, we can find out what happened on the other side of the globe with a few searches on the internet, whereas a millennia ago, we were unaware of the existence of much of the wider world!

This is a problem in more ways than one. In today’s interconnected world it is arguable that you need to be informed about events that take place on the other side of the globe, but do we?

Do we really need to know about the domestic affairs of a country if we live on the other side of the planet? It’s hard to argue that we do.

The other problem is what we do with all this information. There is no point in consuming information for the sake of it. I don’t need to know the weather forecast in Beijing if I live in England.

Our access to information is not going to change, so it stands to reason that we must change our attitude towards information instead.

In a world that is becoming noisier and noisier and by the day, we must be careful about which pieces of information we choose to consume
Introducing the New Years 2021 Fold Spinwheel!
By: Josh Rosenblatt
Tags: Rewards, Fold, Spinwheel, Bitcoin, New Years

Happy New Year everyone! Fold wants to kick-off 2021 with the best rewards around — 21x your largest purchase in the last 30 days!

This Wheel’s Theme: Let’s kick it off with a countdown of 3%, 2%, 1%! Celebrate our version of a “Times Square Ball Drop” — a prize which rewards you with 21x your largest settled purchase in the last 30 days (h/t to Mat in our Discord “Spinwheel Ideas” channel for the idea and the name).

The Wheel:

This wheel lasts from Tuesday, December 29, 2020 through Wednesday, January 13, 2021.

Rewarding Bigger Purchases: Some of the most consistent feedback we have received so far is that you want guaranteed wins for bigger purchases. We think the “Times Square Ball Drop” prize is a fun way to make that happen.

What Do You think? We have had a ton of great suggestions for the wheel. We will continue to implement those wheel wedges in the coming weeks.

How’d we do this week? Have any ideas for future wheels? Let us know below in the survey below.

Updates: Want to get updates when a new purchase wheel is available? Follow along here on Medium, on Twitter, or in our Discord community (wheel updates post in ✨spinwheel-updates).

Standard disclaimer: This is just a summary. The purchase wheel is currently only available to Fold Card Holders. The wheel is available for spinning after each purchase made with the Fold card (currently excluding ACH), subject to certain exclusions. For full terms and conditions, see Terms of Spinwheel Sweepstakes — Intro Tier and Terms of Spinwheel Sweepstakes — Premium Tier. You can read about each of our spinwheel prizes from the current and prior wheels.
Filthy Riches — Lavish Wealth. We consume without end all while…
By: Jeremiah Luke Barnett
Tags: Life Lessons, Humility, Satisfaction, Wealth, Life

Proxies

What do you want? What is satisfying to you? Have you ever stopped to think through these two questions?

What did you discover?

If you have not decided for yourself, you are, by default, relying on the world to serve as your proxy for determining what you want.

What is enough for you?

Let the world chase the extended carrot.

Limited Ambition vs Personal Ambition

Deciding what is enough for you is not mutually exclusive to pursuing grand ambitions in life.

Feeling wealthy when able to afford three meals and a good place to sleep does not necessarily preclude the simultaneous pursuit of larger things.

Deciding for yourself what those ambitions are, independent of the world’s dictate, transforms your “ambition” from merely a reflection of whatever the world presses on you into something emanating from within you.

Deciding that three meals and a place to sleep constitute wealth is not about settling. It is about gratitude.

Being grateful for the seemingly paltry things does not preclude grand ambitions.
The Mercle published a feature article on the Ubcoin Market project!
By: Ubcoin. Cryptocurrency Reimagined
Tags: Blockchain, Ubcoin Media, Bitcoin, Ubcoin

The Merkle brings the latest Crypto, Finance, Infosec, and Tech news. In a story about Ubcoin Market they focus on the team that is developing the project.

The team behind Ubank and Ubcoin Market consists of 50+ highly skilled tech professionals, world-class top managers, and experienced marketing officers.

The advisory board is an impressive collection of global business professionals, thought leaders of their fields, and long-term partners of the Ubank team.

Read the full feature story here: https://themerkle.com/ubank-launches-blockchain-based-platform-to-enable-mass-consumer-investment-in-cryptocurrency/

Ubcoin Market ICO Pre-Sale will end on March, 31. Hurry up and buy tokens with a stunning -57% discount on https://ubcoin.io !
Supporting Black Lives Matter and standing up for justice
Tags: Dropbox, Diversity

Dropbox condemns the systemic racism and police brutality against Black Americans, and mourns the tragic murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and countless others. Our CEO Drew Houston has donated $500,000 to the Black Lives Matter Foundation to support its direct work to eliminate violence and systematic racism against Black people and he’s matching every donation made by a Dropboxer in June to the Black Lives Matter Foundation, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the National Urban League. This effort is in addition to the company matching program, so that our Dropboxers’ contributions will have triple the impact. We stand in solidarity with our Black Dropboxers, the Black community, and all those working for justice against racism and the violence it incites. This is not a moment, this is a movement. A racially just society is the only society where the world can truly work better. Read more about our next steps here.
Blocked
By: Steve B Howard
Tags: Struggle, Resistance Poetry, Writing, Poetry, Poem

Blocked

a poem

Photo by Aiden Marples on Unsplash

The glaring white page by

itself will never lift you out

of the dust bin of obscurity.

Write! Write something you

idiot! Write!
Why I Refuse to Shave My Legs
By: Yael Wolfe
Tags: Self Love, Women, Self, Feminism, Beauty

Why I Refuse to Shave My Legs

Even though I really want to. (Sometimes.)

Image by candelaria bulacio on Scopio (You try finding a photo of a woman with unshaven legs!)

It was 1989, the year of the Epilady. I was 13, a precocious little teenager, and I’d been harassing my mother all year to buy me one of these expensive beauty products for Christmas.

“I don’t want to waste my money,” she argued. “I know you won’t use it. It’ll hurt like hell.”

I laughed. My mother was so uncool. “It doesn’t hurt,” I insisted. “Haven’t you seen the commercial?” Avoid the pain of waxing, they said. The Epilady whisks hair from below the surface of the skin, leaving your legs smoother, longer. (I can still hear that confident, feminine voice all these years later.)

My mom was a softie when it came to gifts, though. If I wanted something badly enough, she’d get it for me, within reason. So that Christmas, I unwrapped my Epilady and felt like a grown-up woman for the first time.

I waited until the next day to try it, resting one foot on the edge of the bathtub, the way women always did in the commercials. Like an elegant swan…about to rip out her leg hairs by the roots.

I smiled, turning on the device. I could imagine my hairless legs, no longer marred by stubble. This was going to change my life and I’d finally feel beautiful and feminine.

I touched it to my legs and immediately felt as if someone was stabbing me with a dozen tiny needles. I pulled it back, staring at it in horror thinking it must be malfunctioning. Nothing appeared to be amiss so I tried again, and again was struck by the intense pain.

Dammit. I realized my mother was right and the commercial was a lie. This was not “whisking hair away.” This was “pulling it out by its roots.” And it hurt like hell.

I crept into my mother’s bathroom while she was brushing her teeth, wearing a chagrined expression on my face. “Does this have a return policy?” I asked, holding up the Epilady.

She took the toothbrush out of her mouth and glared at me.
The Elusive Evergreen Business Idea
By: Jeff Yablon
Tags: Mental Health, Evergreen, Content Marketing, Business Ideas

In business, you need to always be looking for new ways to get your messages out. One of the ways we do that here is by re-posting old stories to our Facebook and Twitter feeds. The process is automated, random, and sometimes turns up some old work that I’m not all that proud of.

Sometimes, flat-out decompression is the best thing you can do for yourself

Other times, it pulls up real gems from our past pontifications. Recently, this article on Mental Health Days showed up. I’m a big fan of the mental health day, and have told clients so for many years; sometimes, flat-out decompression is the best thing you can do for yourself — and your business.

Dig into that piece and you’ll see a discussion of evergreen business ideas (specifically evergreen content marketing). Content Marketing is a big deal, despite how hard it is for anyone other than huge media companies.

This piece is not about content marketing. Except where it is.

The “where it is” part has to do with content marketing’s inherent evergreen nature. Write an article, produce a video, present an on-line course, or what have you; it can last forever. Seven years later, the phone still rings here when people are looking get out of Hubspot. Even more amazing, do a search for “US Patent 7669123” (or just “Patent 7669123” or even “7669123“), and right after The US Patents Office and Google’s listings you find us. Click this image of a Google search I did this morning to see that:

Evergreen Business Ideas

So where do you find evergreen business ideas and how do you implement them?

You shouldn’t assume that evergreen business ideas will last forever

Content Marketing or otherwise, the point of this story is that evergreen thing. You shouldn’t assume that evergreen business ideas will last forever, of course, any more than evergreen trees might. But creating business processes that will last for a long time is the holy grail of business change.

Here’s a great example. Microsoft has been selling Windows for over twenty-five years, and still do, but the way they sell it has changed. Yes, you can buy Windows at retail, but it’s far more likely you’ll get it as part of a new computer. And neither of those channels are new. But if you’re using Windows 10 you’ll never need to buy upgrades. Microsoft can’t have been happy to lose that revenue channel, but they gained other evergreen revenue when they killed it. For example, Windows 10 has a “Windows Store” that you can’t really remove from your computer. There are lots of chances to buy things there, and Microsoft is not at all shy about pointing them out.

Recurring contact is a beautiful thing. Recurring revenue is even better

The store is an example of evergreen business ideas. The things sold there are sometimes evergreen business ideas. In business, recurring contact is a beautiful thing. Recurring revenue is even better.

Here’s ours, at least on the contact side: we’re chock full of evergreen business ideas. Drop us a line and let’s talk.
【共鳴讀書 no.161】~教育必須支持天賦、激發天命
By: Jinna Sun
Tags: Book Review, Education, Elements

in Both Sides of the Table
The Future of Design Education Pt. 175
By: Tyler Hartrich
Tags: Design, UX Design, Future, Education, UX

The Future of Design Education Pt. 175

On Recoiling our Designer Minds

Repositioning our mindset

As new designers move further into the practice of design, it is often necessary to reset our perspective and orientation. The more we are comfortable as designers, the more distant we become to the possible implications of our actions. Practicing a beginners mind is integral to remaining clear of our biases and point of view. The more self aware we are of this behavior, the more intentional we can be as to resolving it.

Reassessing our designer positioning

The more skilled and experienced we become as designers, the more time we must take to reflect our our potential impact. Reassessing our designer position asks us to be reflective of our work and the very basis of our designer livelihood.

It should remain true that we are constantly seeking answers, sourcing problems and diligently coming together to build solutions. After all, the profession of design has unending potential for solving humanities biggest challenges, and so it is entirely within reason to continually ask ourselves to what extent we are fulfilling this request.

Call to action

Take a moment to reflect on your current work and team engagements. Are you positioned to do your best work? Does your workflow allow you to be your best designer self? To what end have you stepped outside your comfort zone?

It may be time to step back, reflect and recoil our designer minds towards a more informed version of self!

Go forthward and thrive!

Timeboxed for 15 mins [ ]
How to Form a Deeper Connection With Your Spirit Guides
By: Jade Scarfone
Tags: Spirituality, Psychic, Spiritual Growth, Self, Spirit Guides

I used to Be so Embarrassed

I was embarrassed about sharing my spiritual side. I denied it because I thought spirituality had to be tied to religion and I didn’t want to be associated with any organized religion ever again. And then it was because I thought the ‘woo woo’ had no place in my business.

Will people think I’m weird? Will it stop them from wanting to work with me?

I denied this part of myself for so long because I was trying to make sure people would like me. But then I started coming across more and more spiritual entrepreneurs.

They would talk about all the things I was interested in. And I was so magnetized to them. And that was a giant permission slip for me to embrace this side of me. I love it all. It’s been part of me since I was a child. My mum was into it all. As a kid, I remember playing around with her rune stones and tarot cards. And she was always burning incense and buying us crystals.

As I got older, I grew out of it. Even mum stopped being so involved in it, so I thought it was just a phase and I forgot about it.
Afternoon Idyll
By: Glen Hendrix
Tags: Culture, Nature, Humor, Poetry, Haiku

Sign up for American Haiku Steamship To Writing History

By American Haiku

Writing takes practice. American Haiku is a great way to put your words from your fingers to your piece of paper. Don't quit, you can do it. Take a look
Why we need a new approach to leadership in times of change
By: Finn Jackson
Tags: Conscious Leadership, Self Leadership, Leadership, Change Management, Antifragility

We are living through a time of unprecedented global change. Like it or not, huge changes are taking place in politics, the economy, technology, society, and the environment:

Covid-19, Brexit, America First, Belt and Road, Gilets Jaunes, austerity, the rise of the political right and left, fake news (lies disguised as truth), migration, terrorism… smartphones, drones, artificial intelligence, driverless vehicles, electric vehicles, the Internet of things, Airbnb, Uber, Tesla, Amazon, low economic growth, stock market volatility, storms, floods, droughts, fires, earthquakes, new diseases (of plants, animals, and humans), climate change, Extinction Rebellion, and the ongoing degradation of the planetary life support system we call ‘the environment’…

These are just some of the changes that are happening in this time of Churning. Ten years ago almost all them were barely on our radars. Now they are the new normal. Although there will be many items on this list that you do not care about, there is probably at least one item that is affecting you significantly.

We can’t predict exactly what is going to happen, where, or when. But we can be certain that the world is becoming more complex and unpredictable — not less. Over the next 12 months the amount of change is set to increase, not decrease.

This puts pressure on us all. And the people around us all have their pressures too: customers, suppliers, colleagues, friends, and family. And when two pressured people meet it is no surprise if stressed communications lead to poor decisions and make a bad situation worse. In this way the Churning feeds on itself and grows.

This Churning won’t last forever — it is a transitional phase to something better, as you will understand by the time you have finished this book.

But to reach that point successfully, and to deal with the changes we will experience along the way, we need new frameworks and new tools for leading ourselves and others through change.

This is Inner Leadership. This is learning to use change to become stronger.

Is the rate of change in your life today higher, lower, or the same as it was five years ago? Over the next 12 months, do you expect that rate of change to decrease or increase? Would it be useful to start learning now, ways lead yourself and others better through this time of increased change?
Understanding Deep Self-attention Mechanism in Convolution Neural Networks
By: Shuchen Du
Tags: Deep Learning, Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Semantic Segmentation, Attention Mechanism

Limitations of standard encoder-decoder architecture

Fig. 1: a standard encoder-decoder architecture

Encoder-decoder architecture (Fig. 1) is standard method in many computer vision tasks, especially pixel-level prediction tasks such as semantic segmentation, depth prediction and some GAN-related image generators. In an encoder-decoder network, an input image is convoluted, relued and pooled to a latent vector and then recovered to an output image with the same size as the input. The architecture is symmetric and comprised with well-designed convolution blocks. Due to its simplicity and accuracy, the architecture is widely used.

Fig. 2: calculation of convolution

However, if we look deep into the calculation of convolution (Fig. 2), the limitations of encoder-decoder architecture surface. For example, in a 3x3 convolution, the convolution filter has 9 pixels and the value of a destination pixel is calculated with only referring to itself and the surrounding 8 pixels. This means that only local information can be leveraged to calculate a destination pixel, which may bring some bias, as global information is not seen. There are also some naive ways to mitigate the problem: using larger convolution filters or deeper networks with more convolution layers. However, the computational overhead gets heavier and the results are not improved remarkably.