fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
7 Enjoyable Apps You Should Keep Using in 2021
By: Ibrahim K
Tags: Advice, Technology, Social Media, Creativity, Apps

So here I’m going to share with you the 7 smart phone apps that I recommend using in 2021:

Socializing

These two apps deliver a creative idea of connecting with other people worldwide in an organized way.

1. Slowly

Have you had a pen-pal before the telephones and the Internet came to life? Or if you watched green book you’ll get the idea when Tony tip took tips from Don to write a heart-touching message to his wife.

This app delivers a similar idea. Where you set up your profile avatar with a simple description, the main interests you like and languages you know. Then it will suggest some pen pals to contact according to your interests.

Alternatively, you can browse pen pals manually From the region you want. The app supports voice messages and sending up to 5 photos per message. But remember, The farther the country the more the message will take to be delivered. So make sure to write a good message with all thoughts that you want to share.

Slowly, Photo by Author

This app helped me to improve my writing. It also taught me that creating a valuable friendship takes time. I made a wonderful friendship and learned about new cultures from the United States. Turkey, Russia, Norway, Greece and other countries in Latin America and the Middle East.
The State of 2 Minute Madness #26
By: Toni Koraza
Tags: Writing, Apple, Progress, Programming, Startup

How to create less friction for the reader

Internet publications have more than one mission.

First, we’re steadily raising the bar with each new story. Pamela Hazelton does a beautiful job of calling out irregularities, plagiarism, and overall questionable writing. Every writer has an extended opportunity to learn and develop their skills.

Second, we’re trying to decrease friction for the reader.

Your message, experience, and story matter more than the medium of delivery. Internet places come and go, but stories and lessons stay. We’d love to get your story across and beyond.

How exactly can we bring your ideas closer to the reader?
Hexagons and Geospatial Encoding
By: Mark Cleverley
Tags: AI, Neuroscience, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Environment

If you’re like me, you’ve always had a strange feeling that bees (much like dolphins) know more than they’re letting on.

They know architecture, and communicate navigational information through dance. Their elaborate caste-based hierarchy and collective survival impetus is striking. There is something mathematical about them, and that is deeply unsettling.

I’ve recently been looking into encoding data to binary representations for use in neuromorphic AI systems. I’ve always been fascinated with mathematical and artistic representations of space, distance and volume.

Searching for the intersection of these ideas has led me to the same destination as bees: the hexagon.

Let me make this quite clear: we are only starting to learn the extent to which honey-gathering insects know more than us. Bees build their hives with tessellating hexagons. What do they know?

A Hex Upon Us All

Evolution drives efficiency like a function approaching a limit. Consider bees building a honeycomb: they use wax (derived from honey) to build a structure to store honey. What’s efficient in this scenario?

Maximizing honey storage capacity Minimizing wax use Ensuring stability

If you had to stack equally sized square boxes to take up the least amount of space, you’d line them up nicely to minimize wasted space in between — this is tessellation. But it wouldn’t work with octagonal boxes.

Only three shapes can tessellate without space in between: equilateral triangles, squares and hexagons. Why have bees chosen the latter?

I’m far from the first to eye our small yellow-striped neighbors with suspicion. 2,000 years ago, the great Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro proposed a “Honeycomb Conjecture”.

He reasoned that hexagonal hives are more compact, generally speaking, than other assortments, and had overall smaller perimeters. Thomas Hales formally proved this in 1999.

Bees that made inefficiently shaped hives stored less honey, which also had to be used to make more wax (for the same relative size). Colonies with the most efficient architecture outcompeted their rivals across the globe.

The image above demonstrates a this as an intuitive hypothesis: incremental improvements over time lead from circular comb-arrangement to hexagons. This ensures structural stability by connecting neighboring cells in a unified arrangement.

Krulwich at NPR also provides an interesting analysis of labor efficiency: with tessellating cell shapes, many workers can assemble and connect cells concurrently without need for organizational bottlenecks wasting valuable time.

Welcome to the Grid

This efficiency has created a world where entire ecosystems hinge upon their pollination. We are reliant on these insects for our very sustenance. I don’t trust these buzzing busybodies, and after you hear about grid cells, neither will you.

Back in 2010 some scientists hooked up an electrode to a single neuron in a rat’s entorhinal cortex, and let it run around a small enclosure:
Eagerness
By: Sean Zhai
Tags: Happiness, Haiku, Blue Insights, Art, Youth

Sign up for Everyone deserves to be heard...

By Blue Insights

Creating emotions — Spark plugs to ignite your virtual humanity! Take a look
UX upgrades for the airline industry
By: Dean Gonsalves
Tags: Design Thinking, Ux Strategy, UX Design, Digital Transformation, Airlines

This essay is about design suggestions that would help create a deeper, more intimate “airport experience”. These insights are personal, derived from hours of waiting at airports and watching. And over time the process has become almost meditative, resulting in a few distilled concepts around design and technology. I hope this would urge airlines to embrace emotionally designed journeys, wherein technology becomes a pillar of dependability rather than just another tick-mark to a digital transformation mandate.

It’s only through consistency and reliability, born out of unflinching focus that a business can truly succeed. And not through the contemporaneous handstands of forced digital disruption.

The 7 Stages of flying.

There are subtle rhythms behind every process. They are like musical compositions, miss a beat and the tune goes for a toss. To better understand these rhythms we need to break a process down into precise stages, with each stage possessing a clear demarcation of purpose.

Currently, a typical airline journey is broken down into four stages — Booking, Departure, Flying and Arrival. While this may hold good from a macro perspective, there are micro-rhythms that are missed. How do users plan their journeys? There is definitely more to planning than just a pretty booking interface. What are the strains from pre-trip anxiety? And arrival at a port of call is not necessarily the end of a journey.

In order to accommodate these micro-rhythms of the new age traveller, I expanded these four stages into seven steps. The new flow adds three essential stages — Planning, Pre-trip, and Post-Arrival. These seven steps form the base-framework of the new UX flow. (Image 01)
“Thank You for Your Patience”
By: Terry Trueman
Tags: Truth, Honesty, Poetry, Sheehan, Pain

“Thank You for Your Patience”

No.

Not only are you not welcome

But just plain,

NO.

*************************************

Wikipedia & Encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Trueman

Thanks ILLUMINATION-Curated for letting me pitch, via this short-form poem, my longest and best work!

Sheehan. An Epic Poem of Love and Loss | by Terry Trueman ILLUMINATION | Medium
Dance
By: Katie Michaelson
Tags: Prayer, Dance, Poetry, Self

Dance

A poem

Photo by George Bohunicky on Unsplash

Whirling around

the room's asway

the heat of fever

blinds the day.

Lights illumine

restless energies

tormented spirits

burning effigies.

My head is rocking

to the rhythmic beat

I keep in step

with forgotten feet.

Boundless reaching

shoulders pressing air

my body’s offered

in this eternal prayer.
Does Trump Embody who Americans are?
By: A Singular Story
Tags: Culture, World, Ethics, Social Media, Politics

Does Trump Embody who Americans are?

On parsing the root causes of self-inflicted political distress

Political graphic by Marvin Moose on flickr

Could Trump be the most honest representation of America to date?

Offensive though he comes across to many, the CEO of America Inc. is hardly a shocking sight in a country where profiteering is its own form of culture and greed is a virtue.

In the US, everything is commodified and has a price tag; many are the people who can’t stop bragging about how much they make and have, as if their humanness accrued with every extra dollar.

It’s no wonder the initial mannered outrage that used to greet every new air bubble Trump released on twitter was eventually replaced with detachment and resignation. For the longest time, no one batted an eyelid anymore and normalization set in.

However, some folks are belatedly starting to take notice and they feel triggered by their notifications because Trump is being a racist and harassing congresswomen on social media. And yet, America’s commander-in-chief is simply being himself, same as he’s always been.

We can’t even say we weren’t warned.

A preview for his presidency, his was the most daring campaign the world had ever seen. And so singular it was met with ridicule and collective disbelief as the US media failed to take Trump seriously and identify him as a threat.

And yet, the finished product does exactly what it said on the tin, much to the detriment of an unraveling democracy.

He told us who he was from the get go; we chose not to believe him.
Particl Ledger Video Tutorial (Setup + Cold Staking)
Tags: Privacy, IoT, Marketplaces, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin

As many of you already know, Particl is now available for hardware storage on Ledger Nano S devices. Moreover, it is also possible to activate cold staking on your Ledger device, meaning your cold staking setup can now be upgraded with all the perks a hardware device offers such as having your funds protected even when transacting from an infected or compromised computer.

We published around two months or so ago a tutorial on how to enable cold staking on your Ledger Nano S device, but we’ve received a lot of request from the community to publish a video tutorial.

In this video tutorial, Christina, Particl’s Social Media Coordinator, and Paul, Particl’s Communications Director, team up to show you how to set up your Ledger Nano S device with Particl and to activate cold staking on the device. Although not an overly complicated process, this video tutorial will walk you through every step of the process and will address any potential issue you might encounter along the way.

So now’s the time to go ahead and enjoy all the benefits from the world’s most secure Proof-of-Stake protocol! You can never be too careful.
EOS — Dan Larimer — TBC
By: Mars Robertson
Tags: ICO, Blockchain, Crowdfunding, Steemit, Bitcoin

In the past 24 hours Bitshares price has exploded, alongside with EOS announcement.

There are many voices in the discussion: https://steemit.com/trending/eos

And their smart contract ICO sale: https://github.com/eosio/eos-token-sale

I will be buying in the middle of the period between the initial ICO launch and when the platform actually launches. What I am trying to do is wait for the hype to die down and listen for the crickets to then buy my EOS for what should be cheaper than the initial week. My purchases will be spread out over several days during this lull period.
The Spiritual Side of Physics
By: Ilexa Yardley
Tags: Deep Learning, Physics, Philosophy, Reality, Spirituality

Abstractions in general…

Photo by Autumn Studio on Unsplash

The study of a physical system begins and ends with the following abstraction:

Abstractions

This represents the conservation of a circle because you cannot have an abstraction without a physical ‘reality,’ and, always, then, vice versa.

Meaning, any X and-or Y articulate a physical, and thus, an abstract circle.

Where the word circle is an ‘other’ word for any other word (abstraction) or number (symbol) that humans use to ‘represent’ reality.

Representation (Abstract Reality)

Reality

This is because you cannot have a representation without a physical reality (and always vice versa). That is, a representation is, necessarily physical.

Thus all of physics is abstract, where the abstraction is defined and controlled by the mathematical representation called ‘pi.’

Pi

Where ‘pi’ then is a ‘spiritual’ abstraction (where the word spiritual represents the abstract side of any representation (physical reality)).

Pi

Where the word ‘pi’ is an alternate (mathematical) word for ‘God.’ Also, known as an infinite background state, without which there would be no ‘reality.’ Physical. And-or abstract.

This takes a little time to understand.

Explaining why a lot of people do yoga. Listen to music. Walk in the woods. Make love. Dance. Etc.

Conservation of the circle is the core, and, thus, the only, dynamic in Nature.
Aesthetics Comes in All Forms
By: Kelaiah Amador
Tags: Pride Month, Transgender, LGBT, Poetry, Poem

The beauty struck me,

Long blonde locks

Deep-sea coloured eyes,

The soothing voice of them

Them who was a he by birth

Gifted with these angelic and divine features;

You express yourself with cheerfulness in your eyes.

It seems as though God blessed me with your existence

with your sweet, kind heart.

I’m fortunate enough to know you

as what I got was not just the idea of beauty

but beauty also comes with kindness, with love

with all the goodness you carry within you.

Attraction defies genders.

as the French would say

le coup de foudre.
I Pace Therefore I Am (Anxious)
By: The Good Men Project
Tags: Mental Illness, Mental Health, Anxiety, Masculinity, Life

Chronic anxiety is no joke. I sometimes wonder if patriarchal, conventional American masculinity demands anxiety — about status, about being enough, about proving yourself to others. But for those of us men who struggle with mental illness, our masculinity becomes especially “less than” if we show vulnerability, fear, or any emotions that we’re taught to not show.

My attitude toward that kind of denial of feelings is f — that toxic bullshit. I have a right to be anxious, and if you don’t like it, well, that’s nice.

I understand that the conventional mores of our society might demand that we me,n stuff our feelings, but to avoid my anxiety exploding, I need to be vulnerable — at least with those close to me — when I struggle. I also need to maintain healthy boundaries, but I deserve to be heard whether or not I am understood.

I recently went to a relative’s wedding, and my anxiety was showing up all over the place. My Autism complicates and multiplies my social anxiety, so, as part of what’s called stimming, I manage my anxiety by pacing.

I’ve been doing it for many years now. I paced before my 9th grade English class, and it made others nervous.

At one of my recent jobs, in retail, I’ve done a lot of pacing across the store, partly because I’m looking for customers, but largely because that’s how I manage downtime.

Americana singer-songwriter Jason Isbell’s song, “Anxiety,” came out in 2017, and it resonated with me like nothing else did that year. “A crowded room is a burning battlefield,” Isbell wrote and sang with more courage than most anything I’ve heard from a man in music in some time.

James Taylor’s classic 1970 song, “Fire and Rain,” was born out of his experiences in a mental institution, and when I try to sing along with that song, as some friends found out last year, I get choked up. It hurts.

What I know today, however, is that my anxiety does not make me less anything that matters to me: not less masculine, not less intelligent, and definitely not less worthy. It might make situations uncomfortable — for me and for others — but my anxiety is part of who I am.

I pace; therefore, I am (anxious).

—

This story was previously published on The Good Men Project.
About Me
By: Lexi Thompson
Tags: Public Relations

Hello & welcome to my site!

I am a senior at Central Michigan University majoring in Integrative Public Relations and minoring in journalism. I am a four-year member and senior captain on the CMU Dance Team. Also, I’m the Editor-In-Chief of Grand Central Magazine and the Director of Digital Communications for PR Central. When I have free time (which is rare), I like to watch Netflix, sleep, read books, and play with my kitten.
Lenora Park Offers Start Smart Programs
By: Gwinnett Magazine
Tags: Education, Parenting, Lifestyle

Gwinnett County Parks and Recreation (GCPR) in partnership with the National Alliance for Youth Sports offers the Start Smart Sports Program at Lenora Park for kids ages three to five. The program offered at Lenora includes the multi-sport teaching throwing, catching, batting and kicking and kicking. Lenora Park will offer the multi-sport program and a basketball program for Start Smart for children three — 7 this summer.

The multi-sport will be from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. from June 24 — July 29. There will also be a basketball specific program offered from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. from June 29 — Aug 3. The cost is $61 per child for each program and registration can be done online by visiting www.gwinnettparks.com or by calling 770–978–5271. Additional locations will be added in 2016.

The Start Smart Programs use innovative step-by-step approach that builds confidence and self-esteem in a fun and safe sports environment. Start Smart was developed by top motor skill development specialists in the field of youth sports. Parent-child groups perform motor skill tasks that gradually build confidence in children while they are having fun at the same time.

All Start Smart programs use age appropriate equipment and developmentally appropriate exercises. The skills learned in this program are not specific to any one sport and will benefit the participants in a variety of sports. Lenora Park is located at 4515 Lenora Church Road in Snellville. For more information on the Start Smart Program, visit https://www.nays.org/programs/start-smart.

In the photo: Start Smart Program at Lenora Park, front row: Gregory Chatman, Christopher Rivera, Allyson Hawker with instructor, A. Winters. Back row: Andrew Hawker, Darius Brown, Ethan Lewis, Mareece Abney, Kaleb Kirkland, Marvin Kai Abney.
The Case For Using R Markdown
By: Rebeca Ansar
Tags: Tech, Programming, Coding, R, Statistics

Dynamic Documents Facilitate Making Changes

R Markdown is a very useful file format because it allows you to make dynamic documents. A dynamic document’s power is that it can be continually edited and updated relatively easily.

This becomes quite useful for use with code implemented in R. You’re able to rather quickly jump into your R file. There, you can edit code, knit the document, and produce the latest R markdown file, which showcases all of the changes.

R Markdown Makes Your Document Reader-Friendly

When you’re working with R, it often makes sense to include your code in the document along with text. R markdown allows you to easily present both code and non-code in a reader-friendly format.

Here’s a simple example showing some standard calculation in R along with the formatted text:
Tokenbox at SPIEF 2018
By: Alexandra Petrova
Tags: ICO, Tbxnews, Cryptocurrency, Events, Bitcoin

This week thousands of economists and business leaders along with government officials and international business community members will gather in St. Petersburg, Russian cultural capital and a home for the unique event, annual International Economic Forum.

Apart from the discussion of the digital economy development in many areas, including education and, for example, a digitalization of energy, one of the panel discussions will focus on a recent history of blockchain and its impact on government and business. The technology of blockchain is finally recognised as a sensation in Russia and the world. According to the SPIEF programme, it can potentially radically change business processes and public administration. “How can we best differentiate where application of blockchain technology is simply paying deference to a fad, and where it is a vital necessity? What measures can the state use to streamline the use of the technology? Where and how are successful projects being implemented in business and public administration, and how can they be scaled?” — these topics and even more will be discussed during the panel hosted by Max Hauser, partner and managing director for The Boston Consulting Group. The panel lists such names as Olga Skorobogatova, first deputy governor at Bank of Russia; Robert Contri, financial services industry leader, Deloitte Global and member of the board of directors at Deloitte US; Vladimir Demin, chairman of the board at Blockchain Competence Center and adviser to the Chairman of the Board for Bank for Development and Foreign Economic Affairs (Vnesheconombank); Vladislav Martynov, member of the Supervisory Board at Ethereum Foundation; Shannon Poulin, vice president, director for Implementing New Technologies in Global Markets for Intel Corporation and Yury Pripachkin, president of Russian Association of Cryptocurrency and Blockchain (RACIB).

Tokenbox co-founders and managing partners Vladimir Smerkis and Viktor Shpakovsky are going to St. Petersburg as well! Feel free to catch up with opinion leaders and active market players to discuss the challenges and solutions of the emerging markets and digital economy, building of which was announced by President Vladimir Putin at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum last year.

See you there!

Visit Tokenbox website: https://tokenbox.io

Tokenbox YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6042bTB5UCk5atwqXGf80g

Telegram: https://t.me/Tokenbox

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Tokenbox/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/tokenbox

TBX on EXCHANGES: YObit: https://yobit.net/en/trade/TBX/USD

Bancor:https://www.bancor.network/communities/5a2ff27c4f1311000100b9e8/currency IDEX: https://idex.market/eth/tbx

Questions? Send e-mail to: support@tokenbox.io
Blue-Green Deployment with Azure
By: Publicis Sapient
Tags: Engineering, Deployment, Technology, Azure, Software Development

Today, one of the biggest challenges for software development teams is to deliver the code at high frequency without any downtime on production. As a result of their agile ways of working, product teams deploy releases to production more often. Month- or year-long release cycles are becoming rare these days. The business benefits of shorter deployment cycles are clear: time-to-market is reduced, customers get product value early, customer feedback also flows back into the product team faster, and eventually, the overall team morale goes up.

In this podcast, we talk about one of the most popular deployment patterns — Blue-Green deployment. We touch upon our experiences of implementing Blue-Green on the Azure platform, its benefits, and how we achieved zero downtime deployments using some of the Azure platform capabilities.

Speakers:

Anutosh Yadav, Vice President, Technology

Nitin Jain, Senior Specialist Platform, Engineering
Moana Family Discussion Guide
By: Brian E. Denton
Tags: Film, Moana, Disney, Movies, Disney Animation

Film Review

To save her dying island the venturesome daughter of a village chief, Moana Waialiki, must brave the vast ocean and convince the fabled demigod Maui to return the heart stone he once stole from the island goddess Te Fiti. Along the way the quarrelsome duo battles a gaggle of Kakamora (fearsome pygmy coconut pirates), a wicked crab monster, and the terrifying fire demon Te Ka.

Moana offers plenty of quality family entertainment. Between the wonderful animation, catchy music, and exciting adventure plot it’s sure to keep your and your child’s attention. The music in particular is pretty great. Seriously: Hollywood is on fire with the animated children’s musical fare in 2016. Just like Trolls earlier in the year, the musical pieces of Moana emerge organically from the story and characters. They never seemed forced or slapdash. I suppose it doesn’t hurt that all original songs are co-written by Lin-Manuel Miranda. In addition, the dynamics between the brash Maui and the inexperienced, hesitant heroism of Moana provoke some genuine moments of hilarity.

Disney gets it done again.
I am Not an Artist
By: Sam Kimberle
Tags: Artist, Social Pressure, Poetry, Identity, Art

I am not an Artist

It’s not what I was supposed to be.

Laying on the floor with colored pencils and markers

Puffy paint and a wild imagination.

I am not an Artist

When I am praised for my work,

And people wonder how someone so small

Can create something so moving.

I am not an Artist

When I color without any lines,

To disturb my creative process

And choose my own path instead.

I am not an Artist

Because I am not good enough.

I’m not trained or schooled

Unrecognized in the community.

I am not an Artist

Because I gave it all up

Not discouraged,

Just not up to snuff.

I am not an Artist

Because I have other talents

Valued more in our society

Lucrative and practical, steady and safe.

I am not an Artist

Teaching people to dream

Inspiring others to create,

Creating things that others desire.

I wasn’t an Artist

Because I didn’t claim it as my own.
Trend, Seasonality, Moving Average, Auto Regressive Model : My Journey to Time Series Data with Interactive Code
By: Jae Duk Seo
Tags: Data Analysis, Artificial Intelligence, Timeseries, Predictions, Data Science

Definition

Image from this website

There are multiple of different sources defining the term ‘Time Series’ , so here I’ll try to give a general definition that is easy for my self to understand.

Image from this website

A time series is a series of data points indexed (or listed or graphed) in time order.

As seen above, wiki gives very straight forward definition, any data in a sequential time order. Now lets take a look at the definition from investopedia.

Image from this website

A time series is a sequence of numerical data points in successive order.

As seen above, we can get a general idea of what a time series data can be. It can be any data recored over time in sequential order. From the start we can think of stock prices, however videos, languages, songs, and MRI Scans can be thought of Time Series data as well.
076 | Pow機制是將電力永久保存在互聯網
Tags: 礦機, Mining Machine, 雜談, Pow

in Both Sides of the Table
Data Provenance and Lineage
By: Audrius Kucinskas
Tags: Data Engineering, Data Science, Data

Data Provenance and Lineage in Modern Sciences

It is quite technically feasible to use lineage and provenance concepts in Software Engineering. Using these well-known concepts can help track “the history of data” and ultimately have an audit trail.

System performing complex data transformations

We use the Provenance term to describe a high-level overview of complex data transformations, explaining why and how something came out of the system.

Provenance of the system

Lineage, on the other hand, is a more granular description of every step in detail. Every single time data is transformed — changed — it would be tracked with clear output, input, and delta.

Lineage of the system

There are quite a few well-known systems that do this. Using data lineage should help with any data auditing questions, quality assurance, and general know-how what data is the most valuable in an organization. All of this more often falls behind the “Data Governance” term.

As for full-blown solutions for data lineage & governance most notable ones are MANTA, IBM’s DataOps, and Octopai.
Time for Acknowledgements
By: Gioacchino Difazio
Tags: Humor, Criticism, Books, Writing

I don’t remember exactly when I started. Before, like many, I used to look at the covers, at most reading the summary and check out the table of contents. From a certain point on, I found myself more and more often in a bookstore leafing through the books in search of my beloved section.

The acknowledgments section is a secondary element characterizing non-fiction books (although some fiction books feature one), articles published by scientific journals, and other academic works. But it’s in books intended for the general public that, in my opinion, this section reaches its highest artistic level.

Some books proudly display acknowledgments right at the beginning, before any other content. Others host them at the end. Sometimes this section conveys the enthusiasm of a writer who is struggling to take leave of his work, and the reader feels it. Other times is boring like the always-the-same-Christmas-card sent year after year by the old aunt from Kamchatka.

Sometimes it seems that the author would never have made it without the help or patience of his wife or husband, without the expertise of the editor on duty, without the friend who spurred him on every time he wanted to give up, without his cat curled up on the desk, and so on and so forth. And you want to tell him: but who made you do it!

Other times the author’s scientific pride prevails, and acknowledgments are reduced to a minimum or cut out altogether.

When I read an acknowledgments section, I get a sense of peeking through the keyhole into the author’s personality. I believe that, given the marginal importance of this piece of text, the author lowers his defenses and lets out parts of himself that he would otherwise have kept under control. In short, it’s the litmus test of his sincerity.

This is why it’s so important to me.

Acknowledgments are, in effect, a peritextual element. Their presence adds something to a text. They are saying something about the book and the author.

We owe the word peritext to Gerard Genette. He first studied the elements that surround the main body of the text, contributing to the relationship between the reader and the text itself. (I talk of this also here).

An Acknowledgments Anthology

Let’s see some of my favorites acknowledgments, taken at random from my bookcase.

Seth Godin, in his book Linchpin, starts his acknowledgments section with a mere list of names, but then adds little phrases that make this page as smart and brilliant as only he can be:

Courtney is listed twice because she was indispensable.

I bought this book for this phrase!
8 Signs You May Have Hit An Emotional Wall
By: Kirstie Taylor
Tags: Inspiration, Life Lessons, Mental Health, Psychology, Life

8 Signs You May Have Hit An Emotional Wall

And how to take care of yourself so you can feel better.

Photo by Valeria Ushakova from Pexels

2020 will go down in the books as the most emotionally draining year of our generation. Between an ever-looming pandemic, hundreds of thousands of people losing their lives, racial injustice being brought to greater light (and yet wholly ignored at the same time), and a chaotic election year, we’re all exhausted. And that’s taking a toll on our mental health.

While the cause of this current exhaustion is clear, there will be plenty of times when you’ll hit an emotional wall in your life that won’t be so obvious. You won’t feel like yourself, and the smallest tasks will feel difficult.

Certain kinds of people tend to hit emotional walls, including:

High-achievers/perfectionists.

Lonely people.

People who give and give to others but never themselves.

People in high-stress work environments.

Highly emotional people in general.

If you’re amongst these people or have a sneaky suspicion you’re emotionally drained, it’ll help you to become aware of the signs that you’ve hit a wall. Emotional exhaustion isn’t something to take lightly; no one can run on empty for long.

Not taking care of yourself during draining times could lead to life-long unhappiness, mental health issues, and physical health problems. All of which I’m sure you’d like to avoid. So what are the signs you’ve hit an emotional wall? Well, they’re the following:
Creating online connections with your offline shoppers
By: Adadapted
Tags: Consumer Goods, Native Advertising, Mobile Advertising, Digital Marketing, Ecommerce

Are you creating lasting relationships with your consumers?

Amazon can reach customers with laser-like precision. Can you?

Imagine you have a new product hitting shelves in two months. Although a departure from your existing portfolio, a year of market research says current customers will love it. And, oh man, do you ever need them to: In this new world of super-tight budgets where every line item is scrutinized, you don’t have the luxury of mass marketing. Instead, your best opportunity is to target your digital spend to reach and activate current customers.

Ready. Set. Go.

If you’re an ecomm giant like Amazon, this is a relatively easy exercise. With over 300 million active user accounts and detailed history of every online purchase, Amazon simply flips a switch and serves ads, across the entire Internet, to recent customers. But, if like most CPGs 95% of your customers are buying your products off the shelf, the task is far more daunting.

History of Intermediation Makes Activation Difficult

Retailer intermediation has always meant a disconnect between brands and their customers: If you don’t own the point of sale, it’s impossible to know who is actually interacting with and buying your product.

CPGs can turn to these retailers for help. Brands can leverage advertising on retailer platforms, or work with their media teams to target ads. However, as each retailer owns the keys to their specific kingdom, they don’t necessarily have to offer the most effective, or efficient solution… and they don’t.

And the coming of age of Amazon as a grocery giant won’t alleviate the problem, but instead will create another walled garden CPGs have to toss their media dollars over.

New Opportunity for a 1-to-1 Customer Relationship

But there are now other sources of data that are changing the game for CPGs…

The adoption of smartphones (80% of Americans now own one) and the proliferation of grocery-related tools and content has created a new opportunity for CPGs. 60% of Americans with smartphones (so over 100MM Americans) say they make their shopping list on a phone. Consumers are also also using apps to manage loyalty cards, favorite recipes, compare prices across retailers, even order their groceries.

These digital platforms provide valuable answers for brands, including: Who is adding my products to their list? What type of shopper are they? What’s the best way to reach them? What else are they interested in?

This data, especially when coupled with 3rd party attribution and foot traffic measurement, puts CPGs back in the driver’s seat, and ready to activate customers for everything from new product launches to regional pushes.

For more information on how you can activate your customers, check out AdAdapted.
24'lük Yolcu
Tags: Yolcu, Türkçe, Şair, Şiir, Edebiyat

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Coronavirus and The (Possible) Expansion of Vote-By-Mail
By: Paul Rader
Tags: Elections, Coronavirus, Political Science, Vote By Mail, Voting

VBM and Voter Integrity: Do We Often See Suppression or Fraud?

Integrity of elections has always been a hot topic, but it has only gotten more so in recent years. Typically, the debate centers on voter suppression versus voter fraud. It’s a very partisan issue, with Democrats often seeing voter suppression as rampant while Republicans often see voter fraud as pervasive.

Is either right — or even both? That depends on who you ask. Certainly, examples of both exist if you look for it, but whether they are widespread is almost always seen through a partisan lens.

In any case, suppression and fraud aren’t new phenomena either. Voter suppression existed for a long time in the South during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Despite the 13th Amendment granting racial minorities the right to vote, Southern governments found “creative” ways to circumvent the law while technically still adhering to it. These came in the form of Jim Crow laws, which prevented racial minorities from voting while not actually taking away suffrage. Poll taxes, for example, were often too expensive for them to pay, stopping them from casting a ballot (this practice would be officially abolished with the 24th Amendment).

In the case of voter fraud, Chicago’s history of corruption has long been the butt of election integrity jokes, such as with the phrase “vote early and vote often.” The heyday of party machines overlapped a lot of the time of Jim Crow laws, and they ruled the election infrastructure of some of the biggest cities in America. The most notorious of these was Tammany Hall under William “Boss” Tweed. The majority party in these cases would control virtually the entire election process such as by printing out their own ballots, although sometimes there were multiple intraparty factions squabbling for power. While this was (at least sometimes) technically not against cities’ laws, we can look back at how ripe fraud could be in these situations.

Coming back to the present day, voter suppression and voter fraud still have plenty of relevance. Restrictions on ex-felons’ right to vote is often criticized as suppressive. The most prominent case right now is the current felon voting rights’ trial for Florida, specifically centering around whether felons have to pay restitution to regain the right to vote. North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District’s 2018 election is a recent case of voter fraud, where a campaign operative tampered with absentee ballots.

The expansion of VBM certainly has potential to see some voter suppression or fraud, but whether it will and how much is up for debate.
6 Ways to Do Automated UI Testing in Parallel With Selenium
By: Shirley Ong
Tags: Software Engineering, Distributed Systems, Programming, Technology, Software Testing

Local Parallel Testing

Before we jump into the server-side arrangement, let’s consider the client-side, because parallel testing still won’t happen until your test framework can kick off the tests in parallel.

There are two ways to do this:

The first way is via forking. Instead of spawning multiple threads, new processes are created if the test classes exist. In the world of Java, the straightforward ways to do this are with Maven via the failsafe plugin, and with Gradle via the maxParallelForks option. Let’s say your test framework is using Gradle with maxParallelForks = 2, and you have at least two test runner classes. When you kick off the job in Jenkins to run the tests in Chrome, two Chrome browsers will launch and run the tests simultaneously. The second way is to split the tests into batches so you can have each batch targeting a different browser on the same or different displays. One way of splitting the tests is by doing it manually by hands, creating Maven profiles targeting each batch, and finally configuring the Jenkins pipeline to launch simultaneously in multiple jobs and combine the test results at the end.

You could use one of the two methods discussed, or you could use both of them together. So if you have two batch jobs in addition to the fork count of two, the total number of browsers running simultaneously will be four.

You don’t need the Selenium Server package to run tests on browsers locally. However, you need Appium Server to run tests on Android and iOS, both locally and remotely.

Prior to Appium 1.7, the only way to launch multiple virtual and real mobile targets on the same host is by installing multiple Appium Servers, starting them up on different ports, and pairing one target to one Appium Server port. Check out the first diagram in this article, where Node B has three Appium Servers configured on ports 4723, 4724, and 4725 for one simulator and two emulators.

With Appium 1.7 and above, one Appium Server can launch multiple targets by connecting multiple Android devices to one Appium Server on different systemPorts, then specify this capability in your client code to connect to the intended target. For iOS devices, the driver capability is called wdaLocalPort. Note that you are only able to launch more than one iOS simulators on the same host from Xcode 9 onwards.

This is the simplest form of parallel testing as it can all happen in one single host. But we are looking for more hosts and more variety of OS/browser combinations to run simultaneously. Furthermore, you cannot be sure that a single host can reliably run multiple targets at the same time. In fact, changing the focus on multiple targets may actually slow things down.
How Predictive Modeling Is Changing the Way We Tackle Covid-19
By: The Space Bar
Tags: Predictive Modeling, Tech, Machine Learning, Covid 19, Data Science

Written by Sydney Ballard (Duke University ‘23)

Image courtesy of http://gappyfacets.com/

“The Golden Rule of Predictive Modeling: When based on the same evidence, the predictions of SPRs (Statistical Prediction Rules) are at least as reliable, and are typically more reliable, than the predictions of human experts.” — Michael Bishop, Nobel Prize winner and co-author of 50 Years of Successful Predictive Modeling Should Be Enough: Lessons for Philosophy of Science

The world is currently in upheaval due to unfortunate events largely caused by a virus some of us have (hopefully) heard of called COVID-19. In just six months or so, SARS-CoV-2 (more commonly referred to as “coronavirus,” which is actually the umbrella term for the type of virus) has resulted in the death of over one million people worldwide (the death rate being roughly 3%). While there is now debate over the misclassification of coronavirus cases, it is undeniable that the virus has resulted in devastation and countless unprecedented changes to our daily lives (hence being declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by the World Health Organization on January 30th of this year).

Image courtesy of CDC/Alissa Eckert

Considering the enormous toll this virus has had on our world — economically, socially, politically, etc. — people across the globe have banded together in efforts to repair and mitigate damage. There has been a lot of coverage on vaccine development as well as hospital and care provider efforts, but an important topic not many are discussing is the valuable role that predictive modeling has played (and will continue to play) in our ongoing fight against COVID-19.
Using Sinon calledWith to assert that a function was called correctly
By: Nikhil Vijayan
Tags: JavaScript, Programming, Tdd, Web Development, Coding

loosely linked picture to spies, or something

This is a unit test example to confirm that a particular function is called with the right parameters.

The code

In the code above, we have two functions calculateTotal and updateTotal . To test that they work correctly for a given input, we’re going to test that the databaseUpdater function is called with the correct parameters.

Using proxyquire and sinon spies

Proxyquire is a package that lets you stub modules that you require into your code.

Here’s a quick example of how you can use proxyquire

Breaking it down

const databaseUpdaterSpy = sinon.spy();

const stub = {

'../model/databaseUpdater': databaseUpdaterSpy,

};

Here, I’m using chai as the assertion library, sinon to create spies and proxyquire to stub the external databaseUpdater module.

Now, when my code calls databaseUpdater , it is calling my sinon spy. This means I can assert that my spy function gets called with the correct parameters like so:

databaseUpdaterSpy.getCall(0).calledWith()

The getCall(0) function gives me the first time my spy was called (because my spy could be called multiple times). I can then access the parameters it was called with (with the calledWith function).

Finally, we pass in the object that we want to assert our spy function was called with. Since, in this case, our spy will be given an object, and since objects in JavaScript are stored by reference, two objects that have the same keys and values will not be equal. To help with this, sinon gives us sinon.match() which lets us compare two objects.

Putting it all together

expect(databaseUpdaterSpy.getCall(0).calledWith(sinon.match({ body: 10 }))).to.be.true;

^ Here, we’re expecting that the databaseUpdater spy, the first time it was called, was called with ab object that looks exactly like { body: 10 } .

Hope that was useful. If you spot any mistakes, please comment.
She Never Tells Me
By: Jas Martinez
Tags: Pom, Poetry, Pets, Love, Dogs

A poem

Poet’s bedroom window

A window by my bed

Shade brought down covers the night

Bed of her own, seldom she’s in

Early riser, up on my bed at first light

Delivers a lick, sometimes two

Looks at my window, shade still covering the light

She turns to me, then back to the window

She talks without words

But I understand what she says

Shade brought up, uncovers the day

Out the window she looks

Best from my bed, better than the floor

Coffee in the kitchen, follow she must

Patiently she sits, my hand in a jar

Peanut butter or pumpkin?

Though I ask she never tells me

Gently she takes, back on my bed she lies

Peace served with coffee

Silence breaks, chaos ensues

Window to window, room to room

Chasing who knows what

What moved across her vision is gone

Molly what was it? What did you see?

Was it a squirrel, a turkey, a deer?

Though I ask she never tells me

Back on my bed she lies

Waits in silence, patience never dies

Patience rewarded, chaos ensues again and again

As the risen sun travels south

Eye lids close, ears become eyes

Silence breaks

Molly, what do you hear that opens your eyes?

Though I ask she never tells me

Still on my bed she lies, chaos soon to begin
Going Down the Restaurant Memory Lane of My Childhood
By: Danna Reich Colman
Tags: Food, Beverly Hills, Recipe

Ever since I can remember, I’ve had a sophisticated food palette. My parents introduced me to fine dining mostly because on the weekends the housekeeper was off, and they wanted to go out, not once but twice. Saturday was for more formal dining, and Sunday was always casual.

Of course in the fifties and sixties we were not offered the complex varieties of the cuisines of today, but we still enjoyed our food adventures just as much. The most popular restaurants in my city were on La Cienega Boulevard, well known as Restaurant Row. Our two favorites were Lawry’s the Prime Rib and Steers for Steaks. Lawry’s has always been acknowledged for their savory prime rib and signature salad, tossed at the table in an ice cold spinning bowl. Steers offered a succulent culotte steak and fresh garlic bread with copious amounts of butter that I can still taste today. Restaurant Row inspired Pacific Southwest Airlines to offer a weekend excursion built around it

When we didn’t feel like driving, we could take just a short two-block walk from our home and arrive at several of our favorite weekend dining spots. Cafe Swiss on Rodeo Drive is where I tasted my first cuisses de grenouille (frog legs) with butter, lemon and parsley and fell in love with escargot, vichyssoise and crepe suzette.

Ah Fongs on Beverly Drive was our favorite for Chinese food. Their Beef Soo Chow and Rumaki were out of this world, and in the late sixties it was here where I tried Chinese Chicken Salad for the first time. It was the only Chinese Restaurant around, and it was very popular for Sinatra and the rest of the Hollywood elite.

A favorite of mine was an Italian restaurant a few blocks west called Peppino’s. I loved the red leather booths dressed in white formal tablecloths and the tuxedo-clad waiters with their Italian accents, but what always drew me back was the big cart pulled up to the table by a special chef who would toss the Caesar Salad into a giant wooden bowl — one-minute eggs, olive oil, lemon juice, fresh parmesan cheese, garlic, lemon juice and anchovies.

Fine restaurants fifty years ago offered an experience that is rarely available in even the better of the fashionable restaurants of today. Among the things I miss the most are a quiet ambiance, professional waiters and waitresses whose goal in life was pleasing their customers, fine linen and tableware, and the absence of cell phones.