fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
3 Easy Ways to Make Working From Home Even More Awesome
By: Cassy Kissack
Tags: Work, Remote Working, Business, Working From Home, Productivity

It’s already pretty great, but here are a few simple ways to improve it even more!

1. Find a fun way to incorporate short bursts of physical activity

I recently decided to pick up a mini-trampoline (Thanks Amazon Warehouse deals) and throw it in my living room, directly outside of the tiny bedroom I use as my office and an occasional guest room. It’s honestly probably the best $30 I’ve spent this year. No matter what kind work you do from home, sometimes you just need to look away from your screen for 5 minutes to clear your head. Spending those 5 minutes doing something active really forces you to turn your brain off and take a rest. I challenge you to not enjoy bouncing around like a child to some high energy music for 3–5 minutes. If you want a free option, just take a dance break!

2. Have quick snacks ready to go

I’m a foodie. I bake bread from scratch on the regular. I’ve co-hosted holiday dinners that involve starting prep work days in advance. Working 20 feet away from my kitchen can be a challenge when I need to get things done, but I also need to eat lunch. The best way to handle this is to treat my office like it does not exist in my house, but a magical external space free from distractions. Lately, my snack of choice has been mint chocolate chip protein shakes, because they’re super filling and take almost no time to put together. I’m also a big fan of making a giant batch of roasted chickpeas so I can grab a little bowl and graze on them while I work. Maybe for you, this means investing in a milk frother so you can have lattes without that trip to the coffee shop. Whatever it is, have it ready to go so you don’t end up starring into your fridge and procrastinating.

3. Find the right background sound for you

Some people will tell you Netflix is the enemy of productivity. That can be an absolutely accurate statement if it means you’re on your couch or stuck in your bed binging. We’ve all been there. That being said, I actually find re-marathoning certain things on my iPad while I work on my laptop to put me in the zone just as well as music (Harry Potter marathon…yes please!). Some people need complete silence to hit their peak productivity and that’s cool too. The key here is to experiment and figure out exactly what works for YOU as an individual. That might even be different on different days.

Let me know in the comments what you incorporate into your remote work routine to keep yourself on task while still enjoying your day in the comments!
Refactoring Existing Redux w/ Redux Toolkit & Hooks
By: Brian Lego
Tags: JavaScript, React, React Redux, Redux Toolkit, Redux

Above you can also see we are exporting ‘increaseCount’ as an action of storeSlice. This is the dispatch method that we will ultimately call within our App component. This now leaves one last export that we’re missing which deals with subscribing to state. Now that we are refactoring away from the ‘connect’ method and not mapping our state/dispatch to props, we will be using the hook ‘useSelector’. We therefore need to export our piece of state (itemCount) right before we export our storeSlice.reducer. Our final storeSlice should ultimately look like this:

Final storeSlice.js

State.store.itemCount points to our slice that we named ‘store’ and then within our initialState the itemCount which we set to zero. selectItemCount is of course a conventional naming of the export and you could name it whatever you like. Now finally on to our last refactor which will happen within our App component!

First thing we can do is go ahead and delete all our mapState and mapDispatch code. ‘Un-connect’ our App component and change all our imports so that we now import the two hooks we will need (useSelector & useDispatch) from react-redux. Then we will also import our specific piece of state and our action from our storeSlice (selectItemCount & increaseCount).

The final step is to then utilize them within the component. We declare a variable using ‘useSelector’ which will subscribe our component to that piece of the redux store. We also then declare our dispatch by calling the hook within the component. We then only need to call the dispatch method ‘increaseCount’ onClick of our App button!

Refactor of App.js

And there you have it! We’ve essentially refactored all our original functionality from Redux’s ‘connect’ methodology to our new Redux Toolkit. This is of course only scratching the surface of what the Redux Toolkit can do. The functionality of being able to manipulate state easily within our newly created slice using Immer allows for direct manipulation of state which is a huge change from how Redux worked previously. In addition Thunk is also included in the Redux Toolkit which allows for asynchronous calls usually to an API. In an upcoming blog post I will expand on this example and add some more complex state manipulation and even some dummy examples of dispatch calls using JavaScripts ‘fetch’.

Of course if you’re looking to take a deeper dive into the functionality of Redux Toolkit and what’s happening ‘under the hood’, the docs provided on their official site are an incredible resource.
Why You Should Eat Your Carbs Last
By: Andrew Merle
Tags: Food, Life Hacking, Health, Lifehacks, Lifestyle

Photo by Spencer Davis on Unsplash

You might be surprised to know that the order in which you consume foods can have an impact on your health and body weight goals.

Specifically, it is recommended to prioritize protein first, followed by fibrous vegetables, and save your carbs for last.

This method of eating has been proven to reduce post-meal hunger, which means you are less likely to snack shortly after your meal. Saving your carbs for last has been shown to help maintain satiety more effectively than eating carbs first or eating all meal components together.

The reason this works is because protein is the most satiating macronutrient, so you start to fill up your stomach by eating protein first. Vegetables come next because they are high in fiber — absorbing water and expanding in your stomach — further helping to achieve a sense of fullness. Carbs come at the end to take whatever remains of your hunger.

Of course certain types of carbs are healthier than others, but eating in this manner ensures you will sufficiently nourish your body without binging on refined carbs or sugary sweets.

So if you are eating a balanced meal of fish, broccoli, and rice, it would make sense to eat the meal in exactly that order. Same thing if your meal consists of chicken, Brussels sprouts, and potatoes. This approach also allows for occasionally finishing your meal with some dessert.

Whatever you do, don’t fill up on bread at the beginning of your meal. If you want to indulge in some bread, save it for last!
ML07: What is “Robust” ?
By: Morton Kuo
Tags: Machine Learning, Statistics, Robust, AI, Robustness

(1) Definition of “Robust”

Let’s take a close look at the definitions of “robust / robustness” from a variety of sources:

1. Robust statistics are statistics with good performance for data drawn from a wide range of probability distributions, especially for distributions that are not normal. [2] 2. A robust concept will operate without failure and produce positive results under a variety of conditions. For statistics, a test is robust if it still provides insight into a problem despite having its assumptions altered or violated. In economics, robustness is attributed to financial markets that continue to perform despite alterations in market conditions. In general, a system is robust if it can handle variability and remain effective. [3] 3. Robust statistics, therefore, are any statistics that yield good performance when data is drawn from a wide range of probability distributions that are largely unaffected by outliers or small departures from model assumptions in a given dataset. In other words, a robust statistic is resistant to errors in the results. [4]

Then, we turn to a classic statistics book Problem Solving: A Statistician’s Guide published in 1988:

4. A statistical procedure which is not much affected by minor departures is said to be robust and is fortunate that many procedures have this property. For example the t-test is robust to departure from normality. [5]

(2) Dealing with Errors and Outliers

Now that we went through all kinds of definitions with few variations, let’s see why we need robust statistics / robust model.

While handling with outliers, we have a couple of approaches at hand:

1. Treating outliers as errors, then removing them

A straightforward method often be adopt without full consideration. Here, we may remove the outliers, leaving the data points with missing values.

2. Using domain knowledge and finding outliers possible

It may be sensible to treat an outlier as a missing observation, but this may be improper if the distribution is heavy-tailed. Extreme observations which may, or may not, be errors are more difficult to handle. The tests deciding which outliers are ‘significant’, but they are less important than advice from people ‘in the field’ as to which suspect values are obviously silly or impossible and should be viewed with caution. [5]

3. Using robust methods
Mayor’s Column: Summer Twilight Series returns for 15th year
By: Grace Maiorano
Tags: Concerts, New Jersey, Music, Summer

Mayor’s Column: Summer Twilight Series returns for 15th year

Mayor Mignogna discusses the upcoming series, which kicks off June 21.

Warm weather offers the opportunity to relax and enjoy the outdoors.

The Voorhees Township Committee is pleased to welcome the summer of 2018 and our 15th annual Summer Twilight Series to be held on the Great Lawn at Connolly Park. We are excited to present another fun-filled summer of free entertainment.

The first show is Thursday, June 21, and will feature The 52nd Street Band, a six-piece ensemble recreating the performances of arguably the greatest rock and roll keyboard player ever, the Piano Man, Billy Joel. The 52nd Street Band has become the ultimate tribute to the music of Billy Joel.

The second show is July 19 and will feature “Good Vibrations: A Celebration of the Beach Boys.” “Good Vibrations” blends the vocal layering and studio precision that is a signature of the Beach Boys with the energy of a live stage production. Elaborate lighting effects and costumes aptly frame the seasoned musicians who step into these very large shoes to render an authentic Beach Boys’ experience.

On Thursday, Aug. 16, we welcome Asbury Fever Band recreating the popular Jersey shore sound of the 70s and 80s. The band includes a three-piece horn section and covers such artists as Bruce Springsteen, Southside Johnny and The Asbury Jukes, Bon Jovi, Little Steven and more. Asbury Fever Band captures the intensity of these legendary Jersey artists.

We will conclude the Summer Twilight Series with the township’s Annual Movie night in the Park on Saturday, Sept. 15, with the Disney animated feature “Coco” shown on the big screen.

The township’s Summer Twilight Series provides fun for all ages. The shows are free and start at 7:30 p.m. on the Great Lawn at Connolly Park. A beer garden and food trucks will open at 6:30 p.m. There is also plenty of free parking.

The Summer Twilight Series is made possible due to the generosity of our sponsors, including Republic Bank, Hardenbergh Insurance, Iron Hill Brewery, Virtua Health, TD Bank, DiMeglio Construction, South Jersey Radiology, Kennedy Health, Oink and Moo BBQ and The Voorhees Sun. Please thank these sponsors by supporting their businesses.

Come out with your chairs and blankets or just sit on the Great Lawn and enjoy these great free shows that all start at 7:30 pm.

For more information, visit www.voorheesnj.com or call the Show Hot Line at (856) 882-SHOW.
Code Smell 13 — Empty Constructors
By: Maximiliano Contieri
Tags: Programming, Software Engineering, Software Development, Code Smells, Clean Code

Incomplete objects cause lots of issues.

Photo by Brett Jordan in Pexels

Problems

Mutability

Incomplete objects

Concurrency inconsistencies between creation and essence setting.

Setters

Solutions

Pass the object’s essence on creation

Examples

Some persistence frameworks in static typed languages require an empty constructor.

Exceptions

Stateless objects. Always better solution than static class methods.

Sample Code

Wrong

Right

Detection

Any linter can warn this (possible) situation.

Tags

Essence

Incomplete

Mutable

Conclusion

Always create complete objects. Make their essence immutable to endure through time. Every object needs its essence to be a valid one since inception.
Constructivist Machine Learning
By: Marco Brambilla
Tags: Artifical Intelligence, Modeling, AI, Constructivism, Machine Learning

Constructivist Machine Learning

A vision towards bringing machine learning closer to humans

Photo by The Roaming Platypus on Unsplash

Is there a way to re-interpret machine learning in a constructivist way? And more importantly, why should we do it?

The answers to both questions are quite straightforward. Yes, we can do it, and the motivation for that may address one of the crucial flaws of modern machine learning, i.e., bringing it closer to human interpretation of reality.

The key component of cognitive functionality is a model.

Humans are able to build very complex models, thanks to the way our mind works. Functionalistic psychology have shown that mental models are able to continuously build hypothetical constructs to predict the environment, and continuously modify them.

We can rely on the General Model Theory of Stachoviak (1973) to try to understand what reality and cognition are.

Learning constitutes from constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing models. Constructivism theory states that there is no human-independent reality and knowledge is acquired individually. If you think at machine learning from this perspective, it basically falls outside any human oriented interpretation of reality.

However, you could map:

Construction (create, imagine) as unsupervised learning

(create, imagine) as unsupervised learning Reconstruction (reproduce, imitate) as supervised learning

(reproduce, imitate) as supervised learning Deconstruction (reflect, doubt) instead is not clearly mapped. It partially maps to online learning, but not entirely. This is also because you need to look into models, abstract, compare, differentiate them, and select/discard the invalid ones.

It is actually possible to implement in practice some constructivist approach in machine learning algorithms. For instance, here is a simple scheme where you look into two classification models. We look over time (T), subject (Sigma) and purpose (Z) of models. The table below the two models shows the different cases (when one of the three aspect is different) and what it implies in terms of costructivist process.
solid ground
By: Rebeca Ansar
Tags: Poetry, Poet, Poem, Creativity, Creative Writing

there is peace in this dialogue

no more making homes on fault lines

where the inevitable fissures

split our paths

no more a perennial visitor

I have found better words

there is solid ground here

where I dance without the fear

of this world opening its mouth

to swallow me whole.
How to Find Happiness in the Darkest of Times
By: Christopher Kokoski
Tags: Self Improvement, Life Lessons, Health, Happiness, Life

How to Find Happiness in the Darkest of Times

Three genuine ways that saved my life

Photo by Chris Curry on Unsplash

Darkness can sweep over you in an instant. You feel a tightness in your chest and you can’t breathe.

Everywhere you look, all you see is colorless gray, as if the darkness itself has shaded everything in depressing neutral.

I’ve been swallowed by the darkness. Perhaps so have you.

The pain is almost unbearable. It’s raw and shapeless, like a ghost who knows all of your unforgivable secrets.

But there is a way to find light in the darkness. A way to find hope in a hopeless situation. Plenty of research and this article from Harvard Health Publishing show that it is possible.

In this article, I want to share with you three genuine ways to find happiness in the darkest of times. Three ways that saved my life. I hope you will find them as useful and powerful as they have been for me.
Twitter Erişimi Engellendi
By: Mustafa Gerdan
Tags: Facebook, DNS, Gezi

Get this newsletter By signing up, you will create a Medium account if you don’t already have one. Review our Privacy Policy for more information about our privacy practices.

Check your inbox

Medium sent you an email at to complete your subscription.
Auto-Documenting a Python Project Using Sphinx
By: Julie Elise
Tags: Documentation, Coding, Python, Sphinx, Programming

3. Update the conf.py File

The conf.py file inside the source folder describes the Sphinx configuration, which controls how Sphinx builds the documentation. If you wish to override the theme, version, or module directory, you’ll need to override these changes here. Below are some recommended overrides:

Update the theme

The default theme for sphinx is alabaster. There are many existing themes to choose from, and it’s even possible to create your own. A recommended theme is sphinx_rtd_theme , which is a nice-looking, modern, mobile-friendly theme.

To use sphinx_rtd_theme , you’ll need to install the sphinx-rtd-theme Python package by running pip install sphinx-rtd-theme in the terminal or by downloading the theme here.

Update the html_theme variable inside the conf.py file to point to the desired theme name:

Update the version

During each release, you’ll want to update the documentation version to point to the project release version, either manually or using an automated process.

Specify the location of the Python modules

Update the system path to point to the project’s modules directory so that sphinx can find the source files. Lines 13–15 will append the module directory to the system path, and are commented out by default. Uncomment these lines and update the line that reads sys.path.insert(0, os.path.abspath(‘.’)) to append the directory that contains the Python modules.

Add extension support for autodoc

The extensions variable is assigned to a list of extensions needed to build the documentation. For instance, if you’re planning to include documentation from your doc using the autodoc directives, you’ll need to activate it by adding sphinx.ext.autodoc to the extension list.

Add extension support for NumPy and Google Doc style docstrings
Google Will Start Flagging Non-Secure Websites
By: Paul Dughi
Tags: Browsers, Internet, Chrome, Google, Digital

Starting in September, websites that aren’t secure will start being flagged in Google’s Chrome browser. If your website starts with HTTP that means visitors will see something like this when they go to your site:

SOURCE: Google

If you haven’t switched to a secure site (HTTPS), it’s time. Chrome is the dominant way people access the internet via browser, with a better than 57% share of the market.

“Users should expect that the web is safe by default, and they’ll be warned when there’s an issue,” Emily Schechter, Product Manager, Chrome Security said via blog post.
Delighted by a Magician’s Mistake
By: Aikya Param
Tags: Poetry, Humor, Creativity, Life, Inspiration

Delighted by a Magician’s Mistake

2020 Yule frogs’ visit brings laughter and cheer

© December 22, 2020, Aikya Param. Original in colored pencil, pen and marker.

Hooray! It’s time for Yule Frogs

(Created by a magician’s mistake

In the magic word for yule logs).

Our favorite amphibians make us laugh

As they smooch beneath the mistletoe

And crack Santa’s cookies all in half,

Stuffing one half in their hats to go.

They visit the Browns and go for a walk

With Mr. Brown again this year

All the way to his bank job, people gawk.

They hide in Billy’s lunchbox and scare

The school cafeteria’s new cashier.

Children at school can’t help but talk

When Yule frogs jump and teachers balk.

But Billy puts them in his lunchbox fast

When he sees the principal walking past.

Grandma wonders how they got in

With everything closed as storms appear.

They caused so much fun and joy again,

She hopes they come again next year.
PCA Explained with Dynamic Plotly Visualizations
By: Soner Yıldırım
Tags: Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Programming, Data Visualization

PCA Explained with Dynamic Plotly Visualizations

A practical guide on PCA and Plotly.

PCA (Principal component analysis) is an unsupervised learning algorithm that finds the relations among features within a dataset. It is also widely used as a preprocessing step for supervised learning algorithms.

The aim of using PCA is to reduce the number of features by finding principal components that explain the variance within the dataset as much as possible. The principal components are linear combinations of the features of original dataset.

The advantage of PCA is that a significant amount of variance of the original dataset is retained using much smaller number of features than the original dataset. Principal components are ordered according to the amount of variance they represent.

In this post, we will first implement a PCA algorithm and then create dynamic visualizations with Plotly to explain the idea behind the PCA more clearly.

This post is more of a practical one. If you want to go deeper on how PCA actually works, here is more detailed post on the theoretical side.

Plotly Python (plotly.py) is an open-source plotting library built on plotly javascript (plotly.js) and it offers a high-level API (plotly express) and a low level API (graph objects) to create dynamic and interactive visualizations. With plotly express, we can create a nice plot with very few lines of code. On the other hand, we need to write more code with graph objects but have more control on what we create.

Let’s start with importing the related libraries:

import numpy as np

import pandas as pd

from sklearn.decomposition import PCA

from sklearn.datasets import load_breast_cancer

I will use the breast cancer dataset which contains 30 features and a target variable indicating whether the cell is malignant or benign. To simplify the visualizations, I will randomly select 5 features.
Working with PyTorch Tensors
By: Bala Priya C
Tags: Mathematics, Python, Pytorch, Programming, Deep Learning

Working with PyTorch Tensors

Some useful tensor manipulation operations

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

As we know, PyTorch is a popular, open source ML framework and an optimized tensor library developed by researchers at Facebook AI, used widely in deep learning and AI Research. ✨ The torch package contains data structures for multi-dimensional tensors (N-dimensional arrays) and mathematical operations over these are defined. In this blog post, we seek to cover some of the useful functions that the torch package provides for tensor manipulation, by looking at working examples for each and an example when the function doesn’t work as expected.

OUTLINE TORCH.CAT - Concatenates the given sequence of tensors along the given dimension

TORCH.UNBIND - Removes a tensor dimension

TORCH.MOVEDIM - Moves the dimension(s) of input at the position(s) in source to the position(s) in destination

TORCH.SQUEZE - Returns a tensor with all the dimensions of input of size 1 removed

TORCH.UNSQUEEZE - Returns a new tensor with a dimension of size one inserted at the specified position.

TORCH.CAT

torch.cat(tensors, dim=0, *, out=None)

This function concatenates the given sequence of tensors along the given dimension. All tensors must either have the same shape (except in the concatenating dimension) or be empty.

The argument tensors denotes the sequence of tensors to be concatenated

dim is an optional argument that specifies the dimension along which we want tensors to be concatenated ( default dim=0 )

out is an optional keyword argument

Let’s walk through a few examples;🙂

In this example, as we had specified dim=0 , the input tensors have been concatenated along dimension 0, as seen in the output cell below. The input tensors each had shape (2,3) , and as the tensors were concatenated along dimension 0, the output tensor is of shape (4,3)

Well, this time, let’s choose to concatenate along the first dimension ( dim=1 )

The ip_tensor_1 was of shape (2,3) and the ip_tensor_2 was of shape (2,4). As we chose to concatenate along the first dimension, the output tensor returned is of shape (2,6)

Now, let’s see what happens when we try to concatenate the above two input tensors along. dim=0

We see that an error is thrown when we try to concatenate along dim=0. This is because the size of the tensors should agree in all dimensions other than the one that we’re concatenating along.

Here, ip_tensor_1 has size 3 along dim=1 whereas ip_tensor_2 has size 4 along dim=1 which is why we run into an error.
Excited to Announce the Serverless Transformation Newsletter
By: Ben Ellerby
Tags: Cloud Native, Newsletter, Serverless, Cloud, AWS

We’re launching this newsletter to share the best articles and content about Serverless as part of our wider effort to develop and share best practices in the Serverless development community.

In each issue we will select a small sample of the best content as we know there is only so much time you can spend reading content.

The first issue is now live, give it a read and subscribe here: https://getrevue.co/profile/serverless-transformation/issues/serverless-transformation-issue-1-5-articles-197629
When Silent Films Make a Come Back: How to Optimize Content for a Muted Newsfeed
By: Nicole Landesman
Tags: Facebook, Content Marketing, Video, Social Media

Recent stats about newsfeed video has caused some jarring conversations to happen within the advertising industry — roughly 75% of viewers aren’t watching past the first three seconds, and about 85% are watching without sound. So how do you use this data to inform the future of newsfeed video?

Here at BBDO, we are invested in identifying the various creative elements that get more people to engage longer with our content.

To do that, we started with the key consumption considerations that make viewing in the newsfeed different to that of other mediums:

Newsfeed video autoplays — what is your “hook” to grab attention? Newsfeed video is primarily viewed with the sound off — how does no sound impact message comprehension? Newsfeed video is primarily viewed vertically — how can you optimize for this space? Newsfeed video is consumed quickly—how can you better retain viewer attention in such a cluttered environment?

Below you will find key creative elements that ladder back to these considerations. It is critical to start folding these elements into newsfeed video in order to create impact, aid with message comprehension, and ultimately increase view through rates.

Autoplay

Use a Compelling Opening Frame — Prioritize the most eye-catching frame upfront.

Don’t Bury the Leading Content — Don’t wait until the end for reveals.

Leverage Brand Iconography — Include distinctive branding elements.

No Sound

Use Title Cards — Contextualize the story upfront.

Integrate Supers — Use copy as part of the narrative.

Show Product/Branding in Situ — Show the product/brand in use.

Consider Carousel — Utilize multiple frames and associated copy to tell a VO heavy story.

Vertical Viewing

Crop for Mobile — Cut the video to 1:1 to maximize mobile real estate.

Focus In on Key Characters — Give the narrative a clear focus.

Use Oversized Text — Utilize big supers to maximize impact.

Newsfeed Environment

Provide a Reason to Watch — Outline the key benefit for watching.

Simplify Key Messages —Tell the absolute simplest version of the story.

Shorten the Duration — Tell the absolute shortest version of the story.

Quick Cuts —Increase the pace of the story where possible.

Start with a Question — Create personal relevancy with the viewer.
Joker
By: Joseph Emmi
Tags: Humanity, Emotions, Compassion, Society, Movies

Joker

Intense raw emotions

I just saw Joker. If I had to define the movie with only one word, the word would be intense. That’s how it made me feel. That’s what I found it deeply portrays. Intense raw emotions from start to finish.

There are so many layers to the movie and so many angles to which it can be (and probably should be) discussed, however, I think the most evident, and even relatable up to a certain extent, is the feelings of dismay and despair that Joaquin Phoenix masterfully depicts through his role.

Solitude, sadness, disappointment, anger, frustration.

If we focus on the fundamentals, we all probably have felt that way at some point during our lives because of different circumstances. It is even probably turning into a common theme and the movie its a metaphor to that.

Joker’s greatest achieving is to make us forget about the comic book villain and make us focus on the human behind the makeup; the naked face full of suffering and pain. A broken man, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

Stories like this, stories that make you think and feel this way, immediately make wonder how it might be for people in those same circumstances. There are people out there that live like that, going through something similar, not knowing how to get out of it, how to deal with it, what to do. Feeling left behind and on their own.

The story of Joker is one of sorrow and sadness. Sadness that we feel for the character despite its flaws, wrong-doings and even the fear that he imparts on us; because we also know how deeply broken he is.

It is a story about compassion and the character’s clamour for it.
Growing Food is Our Greatest Protest
By: Violet Bee
Tags: Capitalism, Agriculture, Environment, Gardening, Climate Change

Our entire civilization is built on the absurd notion that a person should only be able to eat if they can afford to buy food. In a couple hundred-thousand years all we’ve managed to do is regress. We’ve allowed capitalism to deprive us of the most basic human right. Of course capitalism is also killing us in a thousand other ways, but for now, we’ll focus on just one.

In the hierarchy, air and water do come before food, so yes, it’s not the most basic need, but despite the pollution, air is still free and water scarcity is its own topic as well. Water may have been commodified too, but still comes at a relatively low cost in the industrialized world. Your water bill is unlikely anything near your food budget.

Food is an entirely different story. It took years of work, but the puppeteers have succeeded in convincing most of us that our food should be cheap, plentiful to the point of making us wasteful, and most importantly, available with no direct input. Earning a wage and purchasing our food, that’s the good life. It’s so easy. No back-breaking labor, no dirt, bugs or weeds. Just clean, beautiful produce on the shelves, perfectly aligned boxes and cans.

Will Work for Food

“Putting food under lock and key was one of the great innovations of your culture. No other culture in history has ever put food under lock and key — and putting it there is the cornerstone of your economy. Because if the food wasn’t under lock and key, who would work?” — Daniel Quinn

You may not consider yourself a wage slave, but that makes it no less true. What is a wage slave? A person whose livelihood depends entirely on a wage or salary. Yeah, that’s you, and me, unless one of us is an heiress. It’s no less true for those of us who earn a living wage. Don’t let anyone convince you that you’re “better off”. Of course, we all have our own types of privilege and we range in our poverty level, among many other things. But at the heart of the matter, if you are not independently wealthy, then you are in the boat with the rest of us. That’s important. Those who keep us in our place rely on dividing and conquering. There is power in the great majority of the world declaring ourselves one people, regardless of any other divisions.

Overlords

You might have seen this image before as it’s been shared a lot since 2013. Most of the organic and vegan food companies I’ve supported for many years have also fallen under the control of our industrial food overlords. That wage slave business might sound a bit extreme, but let’s remember we live in a world where 10 companies control most of the food we have available. They decide who grows the ingredients, whether they’re provided with a proper wage (they’re not), whether they work in safe conditions (no again) and most of the resulting products are left with questionable nutritional value, and that’s only the products that are intended to have some nutrition. Most of this is just garbage.
How does Redux work?. That’s right! Storage should be the…
By: Michael Tong
Tags: React, Redux Thunk, Programming, JavaScript, Redux

Photo by Clark Street Mercantile on Unsplash

That’s right! Storage should be the first word that should come into your mind.

Before all of you bombard me as to how redux relates to a store let me give you some context.

Photo by Halacious on Unsplash

Every time you go on a website, you are probably accustomed to seeing some sort of data displaying on the screen and if the data is not ready, then a loading indicator is going to show up.

Well…what controls a lot of this behavior? That’s right! It’s redux. When the application calls an API to get some data for the browser, it notifies the redux that it is loading some sort of data. Afterward, the component that is connected to redux gets notified of a change in the global store, prompting it that the page is loading.

Once the page is done loading, you will probably modify the redux again, turning the loading variable back to false, indicating the data is successfully loaded onto the page.

That’s a lot to absorb, isn’t it? Let’s summarize all the stuff I said in one simple sentence:

Redux is an open-source library that provides a way to manage application state in a predictable manner.

In addition, you can use middleware, such as redux thunk and saga, as different tools to establish the communication between the application and the state.

For the sake of this article, let’s stick to redux thunk.

In redux thunk allow us to use functions as a way to dispatch data between application and state. Let’s take the following as an example:

On the example above, we have an action that creates an async dispatch which talks to the store. “LOADING_DATA_NOW” work as a command that only the reducer (where the global store is actually modified) understands.

Here is an example of how reducer would handle the command:

What happens here is when we made a function call to dispatch action “LOADING_DATA_NOW”, the reducer picks it up and modifies “isLoading” to true, while preserving the rest of the state.

Alright, now what happens next?

let’s say if you have a component that is hooked up to the redux store:

Any component that is connected to the redux will automatically pick any changes that have occurred. In this context, if isLoading is modified, this component will pick up right away and print out “currently loading”.

If all of this seems really confusing then we can really summarize it this way:

actions -> middleware(translates actions into something reducer can understand) -> reducer(modifies the state depending on action) -> state -> component(connected to the state) -> actions(and so on…)

That’s it! You now understand how redux && redux thunk works on a basic level.
Premiere: Izza Releases Alluring “Made Up My Mind”
By: Randall Radic
Tags: Made Up My Mind, Music, Izza, Alt Pop, Premiere

Izza | Photo: Sam Rockman

Alt-pop singer-songwriter Izza introduces the second single, “Made Up My Mind,” from her debut EP.

According to Izza, “The song that was inspired by a past relationship turned into so much more for me, as it also reflects my experience in the music industry. ‘Made Up My Mind’ is about learning that you don’t have to cave into the outside pressures of pretending everything is fine and trying to please others. It will never make you happy. Instead listen to your gut instinct — it will help you make the right decisions!”

Beginning early on, Izza found herself spellbound by music. Growing up immersed in a panoply of musical influences, ranging from Bill Withers to Amy Winehouse to Disclosure, she later crafted her own sound, a delicious fusion of alt-pop tinted by silky R&B savors.

Izza | Photo: Sam Rockman

“Made Up My Mind” opens on a light, platinum-colored guitar, low and passionate. When Izza’s deluxe, redolent voice enters, the tune assumes appraising textures as she narrates the complexities of outside pressures and traveling her own path.

“But I made up my mind / It’s gonna be alright / We been here for too long / And if we put the brakes on … I remember our song / But now it sounds wrong / And I guess that it won’t come back.”

At once airy and fierce, her voice takes on more and more insistence, highlighted by her luscious rise to a crystalline, pristine falsetto. Trembling layers of color waver in the background, infusing the harmonics with low-slung, shimmering surfaces accented by glossy nuances.

Rife with haunting, drifting tonalities, the melody exerts a magnetic pull, underscoring the icing on the sonic cake — Izza’s exquisitely luminous voice under gorgeous lilting control.

Izza has it going on! On “Made Up My Mind,” she dazzles not only with her opulent vocals, but with her gift for chromatic elaboration.

Follow Izza Website | Facebook | Instagram | Spotify
Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in B Minor
By: Alan Asnen
Tags: Sarcasm, Poetry, Winter, Music, Neurosis

Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in B Minor

Hummed by Glenn Gould Driving His Cadillac on a Summer Evening

photo by author

Nothing but wire and wood keeps you alive

for want of faith interspersed by doubt

under surveillance.

Young pianists under mauve stripes

her red smile

Lord Alfred’s smile

unrestrained, he sees a nose a shadow

the apes of Labrador, he thinks

a room full of engorged pianists

Gould flying Bach through the kitchen

laughing

no artist if he likes you

“Drink more milk!” he shouts at fishermen

remembering the hickory junco

crying foul in the snow
America Is Sick: Where Have All the Humans Gone?
By: Russ W
Tags: Humanity, America, Politics, Society, Anger

Sometimes it’s hard not to lose hope. When I look out at the world, I just see so much hate. Perfect strangers shower each other with rage and aggression every day. The anger has been simmering just below the surface for years, a lifetime in some cases, and current events and systemic dysfunction have offered the perfect opportunity for eruptions onto others.

The other day I was walking down Lexington Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. I saw two men swinging at each other and shouting. I almost didn’t believe it, as it was around 9 am on a Thursday. My biased assumption was that the construction worker started it, but I was dead wrong. It was the man in a suit, walking with his wife and pushing his baby in a stroller, who had attacked the construction worker for not wearing a mask.

It was a surreal moment. I felt as if I was walking in a waking dream. The behavior was simply so out of place and unexpected that I could not make sense of it. I will never know the details, but I saw pure rage and self-righteous anger on display. I believe that anger is simmering within us all, and I fear where the unbridled anger could take us as a nation.

We’re already in dire straits. Over 120,000 people have died from COVID-19 (a potential undercount), nurses and doctors have committed suicide after wading through a rising tide of death, millions have lost jobs, many businesses have shuttered their doors for good, substance abuse has shot up, citizens have been killed by arbiters of the law, cities have been looted and burned, millions have protested inequality and police brutality.

Any one of these events alone could stir up the anger, fear, and insecurity of Americans. Posturing politicians and “expert” talking heads have seized upon our collective unrest to grandstand, self-stroke egos, and blather on about what is best for us all. It’s all hot air. There are no simple solutions to benefit all people equally.

Nothing is good for everyone, and politicians are often the last people to know what’s best for anyone. Their primary skill is to turn us against each other for their own benefit — the accumulation of power, the extension of their term, and the enrichment of their cronies.
All about maven property reference
By: Anish Antony
Tags: Maven, Programming, Java, Web Development, Coding

In Maven, it exposes some built-in property related to settings, underlayer Java, operating system…etc. Also, it can define custom properties on the pom. Over this article, let's discuss the built-in properties of maven and the importance of custom property definition.

Photo by Tierra Mallorca on Unsplash

In maven pom.xml , a property is accessed by using ${property_name} . You can define your custom properties in Maven. Also, the maven supports a large scale of built-in properties. Here over this article, we will discuss all these kind of properties supported by maven.

What are the types of properties in Maven?

Maven supports a great set of property references. In pom.xml it can get the os configured properties, Java properties. You can also define your own properties on the parent pom and can refer those properties from the child. Let's discuss each of them here

Environment properties

These are the properties defined in the os level environment variables. Such as path variable value, java_home configured on os level…etc. For accessing the Environmental properties, add the prefix env before the variable like follows.

${env.PATH}

${env.MAVEN_HOME}

${env.JAVA_HOME}

${env.MY_ENV_VARIABLE}

Project Properties

By default, the maven provides the feature to get the project related properties Such as groupId, artifactId, version the project. For accessing these properties, you need to add the prefix project before the variable.

Say example.

${project.artifactId}

${project.groupId}

${project.version}

Settings Properties

The settings.xml is the core file of maven. It generally appears on the conf folder of maven_home. All core maven configurations placed inside of the settings.xml file. Also on settings.xml file, it is able to define properties under the profiles, those properties can access from any project running under that maven

In the above settings.xml the active profile is dev . The value of maven.commons.version under the active profile is 3.11. So it chooses the commons-lang 3.11 version on the build path.

Java System Properties

In maven, it is able to access the VM arguments on pom via the same syntax ${variable_name} . For example, consider the below pom.xml file.

It can pass the value for the variable commons.system.version via command line argument while building. Like follows.

mvn clean install "-Dcommons.system.version=3.10"

Custom Properties

It can define the properties on pom.xml between <properties></properties> tags. It is generally used to define the dependencies common version on pom.xml file.
Automating Data Science with dabl
By: Sujan Shirol
Tags: Data Analysis, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Automation, Data Science

Data cleaning

We all know that the very first step is data cleaning. dabl tries to detect the types of data in the dataset and apply appropriate conversions. The aim of dabl is to get the data cleaned enough for data visualization and models. We can also perform custom cleaning if required.

dabl.clean (X, type_hints=None, return_types=False, target_col=None, verbose=0) X: DataFrame type_hinta: if the detection of semantic types (continuous, categorical, ordinal, text, etc) fails return_type: Whether to return the inferred types target_colstring: Target columns are never dropped

data_clean = dabl.clean(df, type_hints={"capital-gain": "continuous"})

data_clean

Describing dataset

Traditionally we apply .info() on the dataset to get initial insights, additionally we can use dabl.data_types() which predicts the data type of each column.

dabl.detect_types (X, type_hints=None, max_int_cardinality='auto', dirty_float_threshold=0.9, near_constant_threshold=0.95, target_col=None, verbose=0)

Look at the documentation for more details.

dabl.detect_types(df)

Exploratory Data analysis

dabl.plot() will give you a quick insight into the data. However, dabl does not guarantee to provide all the interesting aspects of the data. It throws very high-level insights such as important features, their interactions, and difficulty level of the problem. One has to again perform traditional custom plotting for specific analysis.

dabl.plot (X, y=None, target_col=None, type_hints=None, scatter_alpha='auto', scatter_size='auto', verbose=10, plot_pairwise=True, **kwargs)

dabl.plot(df, target_col="income")

Amazing isn’t it, we get quite a good piece of insight with just half a line of code.

Model building

SimpleClassifier tries to find the best fitting model. It applies several baselines on subsampled data. As dabl is inspired by scikit-learn it allows us to specify data to be fit in scikit-learn-style. There are two ways of doing it.

model = dabl.SimpleClassifier(random_state=0)

X = data_clean.drop("income", axis=1)

y = data_clean.income

model.fit(X, y)

or

model = dabl.SimpleClassifier(random_state=0).fit(data_clean, target_col="income")

output:

As we can see, it applied several models with different parameter tuning to find the best fitting model and accuracy score. The SimpleClassifier also performs preprocessing such as missing value imputation and one-hot encoding. We can inspect the model using dabl.explain()
(Dis)Connected
By: Michael Whalen
Tags: Relationships, Society, Digital Life, Culture, Language

Waiting for his order to arrive, Julian texted his fam, “Do u think she’s dtf Coop?”

“Idk. Hoping. She’s hot af,” came the reply.

Thierry jumped in, “Facts.”

“Total snacc. If u pull her bruh, Im unfriending u no cap,” Julian threatened.

“Same,” agreed Thierry.

Cooper, smirking, clicked in “Dead.”

Blaine stopped scrolling Insta and added, “What’s the tea on Jake?”

“Over. Hundo P.”

Suddenly, an audible voice jerked all four heads from their screens, “Who has the tacos?”

Julian raised his fingers slightly. Three burgers and the tacos landed.

Faces downward, phones momentarily aside, the friends ate in comfortable silence.