fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
#WEDJ2020 (11/31) | Good Soil
By: Ciara Todd
Tags: Wedj2020, Relationship, Uglyhonest, Faith, Love

#WEDJ2020 (11/31) | Good Soil

“Still the other seed fell on good soil. It came up and yielded a crop, a hundred times more than was sown.” — Luke 7:8 (NIV)

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

I thought I dodged you until I found your Twitter. I guess I needed a reminder about my greatest mistake and the most joyless decision ever made.

I called you by so many names as I read your pontifications about love and life. I caught it fairly quick that I was on the other side of your “lessons learned.” Watching you give relationship advice even though you failed to produce such a thing with me. I helped you grow, I guess.

Our relationship couldn’t produce anything of value because the soil was so damn damaged.

We didn’t set a solid foundation. We tried to add love on top of selfishness, lust, desire, trauma bonds and dreams deferred. We tried to make a flower grow from the concrete. Our flower stood no chance. When we had an opportunity to fertilize our friendship, to save the soil, the rock bed of this relationship, we ruined it. Both of us were tired of the weeds of our failure. We wanted so desperately to bloom.

I’m angry that the world never got to see the true beauty of you and I together.

We were primed to change the world. Our seeds were going to change the world.

We missed out on you becoming the father of my children. That divine assignment was just for you.

The Sunday dinners and weekend breakfast. Pancakes would be the move. Our daughter? Wicked smart and kind and full of creative energy. The little girl would be writing soliloquies inside of my womb. Our son? A genius. We’d always catch him disassembling some electronic device only to put it back together. Engineer off rip. Their “Grandpop” would have spoiled them to death.

My Dad deserved some grandchildren before he left earth. He deserved that moment.

That’s what had me thinking about you in the first place. I miss my Dad.

I regret not giving my Dad a wedding to witness and grandchildren to raise. I regret not letting my Dad give me away. I regret not extending my father’s legacy while he could see it happen.

I don’t want my father’s stock to go to waste. We deserve to continue.

His plus mine plus yours? World-changing. Imagine the family tree to grow from that soil.
Home
By: Anto Rin
Tags: Growth, Poem, Dogs, Life, Inspiration

Hurting feet tumble

Down a path hardly beaten,

As lost eyes gently sway

Over trees lining the horizon.

Shadows creep up behind me,

Condescending as if God-sent;

Paranormal, in a sense,

Terrifying in another.

But lead me into peril they will,

And pull me into the abyss,

As I walk under a punishing sun,

Stumbling and falling,

But never retiring.

The wind rustles the trees,

As the Earth under me shifts;

I am an outcast,

A welt on the face of the world.

I need to be home,

More than ever

But in its path lies

What can’t be defined.

But this is my quest

Over the ridges, I flee,

On the dunes, I roll,

Never losing myself, never tiring.

I will reach my home —

Soon, I will.

My home is waiting for me,

Wagging its tail,

Sporting flattened ears.

And when I touch it,

I will have fulfilled

My dire need to do so,

And my peace with God

Made in a tick.

For it gives me hope

To pilfer from the vile,

Inspiration to head back out

On another day,

Into peril.
Taking Shape
By: Jessica Lee Mcmillan
Tags: Poetry, Self, Growing Up, Change, Crows

My last teenage bedroom was a holding pattern

family home foreclosed, in a rental near the border,

boxes still unpacked and promising transformation.

Getting-out-of-Dodge.

Secretly counting the last long drives to school,

almost lulled by the static fields and yellow bus

ambling in front, its electric shape

against cloud held in surreal inertia,

the bus clipped a swooping crow,

flung its winged silhouette to ditch.

My thighs burned running back

to the patch of dirt portending death

where she lie panting, eyes extreme,

and I wrapped her wings steady

in my pretentious rock tee for the ride

on my lap, her egg-tooth alien,

tongue slicing the air,

her blood cough sputtered invisibly

onto my black cotton.

She would not be my fairytale backyard crow

who took a mate and flew away one day,

maybe to the oceanside park

where I took angsty refuge,

where the street guy stacked stones

as talisman… or a welcome…

shifting objects, like boxes in a new room,

like transforming the ocean’s ruins

like a crow shifting shape.

She watched me in slowing gasps,

and shedding her body she was

pronounced dead in the vet’s office.

I saw her in my park farther down

the long, transforming road

where I sat on brine-bleached wall

to feel the noise of greater shapes

next to the stones angled just so

where I knew to find crow magic.
Woods Hole, Massachusetts
By: Glynnis Fawkes
Tags: Cape Cod, Glynnis Fawkes, Hometown, Comics, Massachusetts

Spiralbound

Comics for life, brought to life by Edith Zimmerman.
10.2 Presidential Social Intelligence Battleground Tracker — Post Debate Top Issues and Sentiment
By: Adam Meldrum
Tags: 2020 Presidential Race, Social Listening, Joe Biden, Donald Trump

10.2 Presidential Social Intelligence Battleground Tracker — Post Debate Top Issues and Sentiment

A pulse of how potential voters in battleground states are discussing the Presidential candidates

Please read the background post on this project if it is your first time reading.

Past posts:

— Our initial dataset from the week of 7.3 was detailed here.

— Data from the week of 7.11 was detailed here

— Data from the week of 7.19 was detailed here.

— Aggregate data to date through 8.14 was detailed here

— Language data from the weeks of 8.07 & 8.14 was detailed here

— Aggregate data through 8.25 was detailed here.

— Language data from 8.21–8.28 was detailed here

— Language data from 8.28–9.04 was detailed here

— Aggregate data through 9.5 was detailed here

— Language data from 9.04–9.11 was detailed here

— Aggregate daily support gained/lost data through 9.17 was detailed here

— A first look at Supreme Court Data was detailed here

— A deeper dive into Supreme Court Data was detailed here

— A language comparison between voters in NC and FL was detailed here

— An overview of the pre-debate top issues was detailed here

— Aggregate daily support gained/lost data through 9.30 was detailed here

Battleground States in our Analysis: AZ, CO, FL, IA, ME, MI, MN, NV, NH, NC, PA, TX, WI

Date Source: All data is publicly available and anonymized for our analysis from Twitter, Facebook, Online Blogs, & Message Boards.

Technology Partners: Eyesover & Relative Insight
Five Good, Or At Least Interesting, Music Videos That Came Out This Week
By: Dave Bry
Tags: Andre 3000, Beyonce, Duck Sauce

Entering into the well-known “nesting” stage of pregnancy, Beyonce doesn’t seem to be doing much lately except staying around the house and making terrific, high-end music videos. Three weeks after “Countdown” had us all WHOOHOO-BEYONCE!!!-ing, here she is mowing the lawn behind her trailer home at midnight in a yellow fur coat and bikini bottoms. It’s a shame the video is not the version of this song that features a typically phenomenally guest verse from Andre 3000. But J. Cole is okay, too. And WHOOHOO-BEYONCE!!!

J. Cole is better than okay in this other video he released this week. It’s an old one, made three years ago for this old song that he included on his debut album, Cole World: The Sideline Story, that came out last month. It’s good that he included it, too. Because it’s a very heartfelt and honest portrayal of a couple going through a difficult conversation about an unplanned pregnancy. It really takes off in the second verse, when J. Cole assumes the voice of his girlfriend. Way to go, J. Cole!

Also notable this week, the heartfelt and honest portrayal of penises by DJs A-Trak and Armand Van Helden, who make dance music together as a group called Duck Sauce. This is yuck to me and I don’t like to look at it in the same way I never liked to look at the extra head that grew on Richard E. Grant’s shoulder in How To Get Ahead in Advertising. I don’t like the idea of heads growing out of places on human bodies other than necks. Cancer fears or something. But as disturbing as it is, I have to admit that it’s a pretty creative idea and executed very well.

There’s nothing wrong at all with the Black Keys new video. And a lot right. My favorite part comes at 30-seconds in, when someone peeks out of the office for a moment to see what’s going on. Nothing much, really. Just a guy dancing to a good rock ’n’ roll song.

Lil B’s new video is no frills, too. It starts out with his cat, and ends with the Lil B sitting on a bus for a long time in silence.

And here’s what the odd and charming stream-of-consciousness rapper wrote when he uploaded it:

“I CRIED TO THIS WHILE MAKING THIS AS WELL AS WATCHING THIS..THIS MEANS WAY MORE TO ME THEN PEOPLE NO, ITS OKAY TO CRY REMBER THAT, CRY FOR THE PEOPLE THAT DONT BELIVE YOU WILL MAKE IT WITH WATEVER YOU LOVE IN LIFE! AND CRY FOR YOUR FAMILY AND THE PEOPLE THAT LOVE YOU, THE PEOPLE YOU LOST AND CRY FOR OUR BABIES OF THE FUTER! PLEASE TEACH THEM TO LOVE ALL HUMANS.”
A Merge of Sorts
By: Ian Rosen
Tags: JavaScript, Merge Sort, Data Structures, Algorithms, Web Development

Six weeks ago, I graduated from the most intense school experience of my life — a 15-week software engineering bootcamp at the Flatiron School. During my time there, I faced what seemed to be an insurmountable amount of knowledge… until I graduated only to find that the is still an infinite amount of knowledge to be learned. Much of what I have studied since Flatiron involves data structures and algorithms. Among the algorithms I have studied is a group called sorting algorithms, one of which is called Merge Sort — our topic for today.

When I first saw merge sort visualized on Visualgo I thought I was watching true magic happen right before my eyes. It turns out, as long as you have an understanding of the concept of recursion, merge sort is an almost simple idea to understand.

Merge sort is an incredibly popular sorting algorithm. It uses a method call divide and conquer in order to sort an array of elements. Here, that means that we continually break down our original, larger array into smaller arrays until they are of a size that is more manageable. In this case, that size is 0 or 1.

Pseudocode it!

Let’s take a look at our unsorted input array, [37, 27, 43, 2, 9, 82, 10]. It is important to note that we will be sorting this array using JavaScript and outputting a sorted array in ascending order. I mentioned earlier that merge sort uses the divide and conquer method. We will continually cut the array in half until we have all elements of the array in arrays of their own.

Once we have individual elements in individual arrays, we can begin to merge them into new sorted arrays. This process continues until we have merged all sub-arrays back into our final sorted array.

Now code it!

Great! We have a plan of action… Now, let’s code our solution!

The code below is our main function, mergeSort(). It takes in one unsorted array and does the work of dividing it until we have our smallest sub-arrays.

This code is our merge() function. It takes in two sorted arrays as arguments and merges them into one larger array, returning it back to our overarching function.

Time Complexity

The time complexity for merge sort is O(n log n)! Not so bad, eh?
エミリーちゃんのお話
Tags: Japanese, 日本, 日本語, Stories, Japan

in In Fitness And In Health
Queens of the Streets
Tags: Survivor, The Rebel Poets Society, Sex, Sex Work Is Real Work, Healing

Queens of the Streets

A Poem, In Honor of the World’s Oldest Activists, Guides, and Protectors Being Pushed Off Platforms Due to Censorship, Stigma, and Violence

Photo by Ｌａｒａ Ｓａｎｔｏｓ from Pexels

Author’s Note: Trigger Warning for depictions of sexual exploitation, stigma, and police brutality. Sex trafficking and sex work are not the same but it should be noted that sex workers are often champions of self-love and self-care and deserve their platforms, which serve survivors and beyond.

“If only I had looser morals,” she had told me

pushing back a strand of blonde,

“I’d make a fortune.”

She said this while she encouraged me

to embrace my ghosts of

begging men on my knees for some safety and peace

and begging men on my back for some mercy and freedom.

Looser morals.

Looser morals like tightening the straps of stilettos

trying to feed dependents at home?

with aching bodies the system demands we waste every day

for minimum wage

and sometimes less if we’re recognized as disabled,

but we don’t need to beg for sick leave

if we set our own appointments

and we don’t need to worry about eating

if we get paid well the day of

and some of us do this to control a situation

we had no control of before

to remember

we’re worth more than what was once stolen from us;

our touch is worth what we decide it’s worth.

For some of us, this is more than survival —

for some of us, it’s our only way to survive.

Looser morals, she said,

like the women who judge the womxn who do this

from the comfort of their suburban homes

whose unhappy marriages reflect in how they judge our hard-earned dollars

even though their husbands were selfish and unhappy before they looked us up.

Looser morals, she said,

like the system that protects the client

but arrests the worker

as if the bait isn’t our own abundance, joy, financial security,

as if we’re not the ones with our mouth on the barrel

to do what we do

and to protect each other while we’re treated as if

the cops don’t kill the strongest of us

just because they’re so ashamed of who they’re lusting after.

What can you tell me about looser morals, I had thought to myself,

as you sit from your position of privilege

complaining about how your boyfriend’s upset with you

for cheating as soon as he needed some time to himself?
Technical Analysis : XRP/USD (RIPPLE)
By: Akhil Nayak
Tags: Cryptocurrency Investment, Xrp, Technical Analysis, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin

The pair is likely to extend the current upside move as long as it is above $0.4850.

The Technical indicators such as Bollinger Bands, MACD and RSI are showing strong buy signals for RIPPLE.

Ripple price is holding important support levels against the US Dollar and Bitcoin. XRP/USD is likely to move further higher above the $0.55704 level in the near term and $0.9076 in the long term.
#35: Adult Industry and the Blockchain
By: Kelly Mcquade-W.
Tags: Investment, Finance, Education, Blockchain, Bitcoin

Featuring Leah Callon-Butler, co-founder of Intimate.io.

Listen Now

Show Notes

It’s been said that the blockchain is a solution crying out for a problem. In our last episode we questioned its relevance. Today Intimate.io co-founder Leah Callon-Butler, presents that case that the adult industry, with the ability to be pseudonymous for one, may be one of the most fitting applications yet: paid encounters, that yes, may include sex. We also cover the recent US government crackdown on human trafficking and how it may make people less safe.

Links:

Transcript

Coming Soon.
12 Free Stock Photo Sites for Medium Stories
By: Casey Botticello
Tags: Stock Photos, Stock Photography, Image, Free, Photography

I’ve written before about how to choose the perfect featured image for your Medium publication:

One of my tips was to try to pick images that were both unique and of high quality.

However, as many of my readers have pointed out, while it is great that Unsplash has become such a well integrated source for Medium article images, this has also lead to the problem of sourcing new images.

I’ve compiled a list of free stock photography sites, that are ideal for Medium writers (or anyone searching for royalty-free images):

1. Stock Up

Stock Up indexes 34,178 photos from 31 different free stock photo websites.

2. Pictography

Picography has been providing stunning images to millions of people for the past 3 years. It is now one of the top sources for gorgeous, high-resolution, free photos.

3. Burst

Burst is a free stock photo platform that is powered by Shopify. Our image library includes thousands of high-resolution, royalty-free images that were shot by our global community of photographers.

4. Refe

Refe is a Tumblr account consisting of royalty-free and high quality photos.

5. Picjumbo

Picjumbo is a free stock photo site created in 2013 by designer & photographer Viktor Hanacek. It all started when all of the regular stock photo sites rejected his photos for “lack of quality”.

Two years later, people have downloaded more than two and half million free pictures from Picjumbo! Now it’s one of the best free stock photo sites with thousands of very high-resolution free stock images.

6. Good Stock Photos

Good Stock Photos allows you to search & download free stock photos to use on your website, blog, and social media.

7. Skitterphoto

All photos on Skitterphoto are public domain. This means that all photos are free to use for any purpose. You may download and edit photos and even use them commercially.

8. Life of Pix

Life of Pix contains free high-resolution photos, no copyrights restrictions for personal and commercial use. All images are donated to the public domain.

9. Libreshot

Libreshot is a collection of photos by Martin Vorel. All images are free for commercial use.

10. Barnimages

Barnimages was launched in March 2015 by Igor Trepeshchenok and Roman Drits, two photographers from Latvia. They created Barnimages with the hope of redefining traditional stock imagery.

11. ISO Republic

ISO Republic is an independent website that provides curated collections of stock images and videos that you can use both personally and commercially.

12. FOCA

FOCA provides free CC0 photography for personal and commercial use on websites, projects, themes, apps, and more.

If you are still looking for truly unique images for your Medium article, here is a link to Shutterstock, which is offering a free one month trial, or 10 custom stock images.
Ack! It’s September
Tags: Cats, Humor, Pandemic, Comics

More from rstevens Follow

I make cartoons and t-shirts at www.dieselsweeties.com & @rstevens. Send me coffee beans.
Display: Flex and the Mathematics Behind It
By: Tushar Tuteja
Tags: Flex, CSS, Front End Development, Flexbox, Programming

Part 3. flex-shrink

Let’s do something interesting and make the width value of the parent 100px. That will make the parent’s value 50px less than the total value of its children.

As we can see, all three children shrank in size. They all are now of size 33.33. The default value of flex-shrink is 1. Since there was no space available, they shrank to release 50px in space.

Let’s make the flex-shrink value 1,2, and 3, respectively, for children.

The three shrank, and now are different in size.

As we can see, all three shrank and are of different sizes now. Red has the least value of flex-shrink (shrank the least), and Green has the highest flex-shrink value (shrank the most).

Let’s look at their sizes.

Red: 41.6667 (shrank by 8.3333)

Blue: 33.3333 (shrank by 16.6667)

Green: 25 (shrank by 25)

Parent size: 100px (children have to free up 50px in space)

As we can see, the amount of space that the children freed is in proportion to their flex-shrink value: Red has the least, so it shrank the least, and Green has the highest and shrank the most.

Red : 50 * (1/6) = 8.3333

Blue: 50 * (2/6) = 16.6667

Green: 50 * (3/6) = 25

The formula of size reduction is:

Space to Be Freed * ( flex-shrink value of a child / sum of all the flex-shrink values)

What makes it interesting is if the size of all three children is different. Let’s make them 40, 50, and 60 respectively.

It’s hard to observe in this image, but we can see that the Green child shrank less than 25px, as earlier was the case. Let’s look at their sizes.

Red: 26.6667 (shrank by 13.3333)

Blue: 33.3333 (shrank by 16.6667)

Green: 40 (shrank by 20)

As we can see, all three have the same flex-shrink values, but all shrank by different values. It’s easy to observe that they shrank in proportion to their size. Red shrank the least, as it was the smallest, and Green shrank the most because it was the largest.

Red : 50 * (40/150) = 13.3333

Blue: 50 * (50/150) = 16.6667

Green: 50 * (60/150) = 20

Now let’s change their flex-shrink values to 3,2, and 1, just to make things little more interesting, and converge them to the final formula.

Sizes are 40,50, and 60 and flex-shrink values are 3,2,1 respectively.

Let’s look at their sizes.

Red: 18.5667 (shrank by 21.4333)

Blue: 32.15 (shrank by 17.85)

Green: 49.2833 (shrank by 10.7167)

All three shrank in proportion to their sizes and their flex-shrink values. The formula comes out to be a little different this time. They shrank in proportion to the multiple of the flex-shrink value and its size.

Multiples come out to be 40 * 3 for Red, 50 * 2 for Blue and 60 * 1 for Green.

Red : 50 * (120/280) = 21.43333

Blue: 50 * (100/280) = 17.85

Green: 50 * (60/280) = 10.7167

The formula for flex-shrink is
Santandereanos, conectados con los Juegos Olímpicos
By: Yohanna Rozo
Tags: Investigación, Research, Eivos, Investigación De Mercados, Rio2016

in In Fitness And In Health
Welcome to Cooking With Sarah
By: Aaron Charles
Tags: Couples, Marriage, Welcome, Cooking, Food

The day was September 12, 2015. Otherwise known as the best day of my life. On that day, I began my greatest journey. I made a major committment.

I married Sarah.

Since then, we’ve learned so much. We’ve grown a lot. We’ve been far from perfect. But we’ve been together. And that’s what makes this journey so special.

In March 2016, Sarah and I began another journey within our marriage. We wanted to have a scheduled time each week where we practiced intentionality with each other. Unplugged togetherness. We wanted to have fun with it. And while the time wouldn’t change, we wanted the experience to be different each week.

So we decided to cook together.

Every Sunday, we plan, prepare and eat a meal together. We put our phones away (except for recipes and the occasional photo). We enjoy special moments together.

We both enjoy writing, so we figured we would write down our experiences and share the growth that comes in our marriage because of this. So, each Friday, I will be posting about the previous week’s meal. And Sarah will post our recipes for you to try if you want.

And so, Cooking with Sarah was born.

We’re not saying everyone’s marriage should look like ours. Everyone’s different, and (again) we are not perfect. But we firmly believe that enjoying simple moments together can be powerful for any couple. We’ve learned a lot about that so far. And we can’t wait to see what’s next.

So thanks for stopping by, and we invite you to join us on this journey. It may be simple, but it’s so powerful.
#024 | Why Does It Even Get Dark At Night?
By: Kelvin Zhao
Tags: Astronomy, Time, Love, Night, Stars

Have you ever wondered why it gets dark at night? I know. Stupid question right, there’s no sun, duh. But think about it; there are over 200 billion stars in our own Milky Way alone. The universe probably holds over 100 billion galaxies. With that many stars lighting up the night sky, it should be as bright as daytime. No?

Well, the thing is, light takes time to travel. The further away the stars are, the longer it takes for their light to reach us. The theory is that the universe is actually not that old, or at least it’s not old enough for the light of the further stars to reach us. It is also expanding, but that’s another story.

In fact, the stars that you do see at night right now could be hundreds or thousands of light-years away from us. So what you’re actually seeing right now is how the stars look like years and years ago. They could look totally different now or they could even be gone. You’re literally looking back in time when you’re staring up at the stars above. I don’t know why, but this thought feels rather romantic to me.

Next time when you look up at the stars, know this;

it is written.

Years and years ago.

That you and me, we’re meant to be.
Microsoft Announces New Surface Go 2 and Surface Book 3
Tags: Tech, Computers, Microsoft, Surface, PC

Microsoft Announces New Surface Go 2 and Surface Book 3 ExtremeTech Follow May 6 · 3 min read

by Ryan Whitwam

Microsoft has made two long-awaited updates to its Surface lineup. On the low-end, there’s the new Surface Go 2, which is slightly larger and substantially faster than its predecessor. There’s also a new premium Surface Book 3 with an even higher price tag than the Surface Book 2 and the latest flagship Intel chips.

The Surface Go was Microsoft’s attempt to take a bite out of the iPad’s increasing productivity market share. That device had its fair share of shortcomings, but Microsoft has addressed some pain points with the Surface Go 2. This device is a little thinner than the first-gen device, and the screen is a bit bigger at 10.5 inches. The display resolution is just 1,920 x 1,280 (3:2 ratio), much lower than the Surface Book 3. However, that’s better than most computers in the mid-range. There’s a USB-C port this time, but Microsoft’s Surface Connect port lives on.

Inside, the Surface Go 2 has either an Intel Pentium Gold 4425Y or an 8th gen Intel Core m3. Microsoft says it’s up to 64 percent faster than the old Surface Go with the m3 chip, but you’re still limited to either 4GB or 8GB of RAM. The base model with the Pentium CPU and 4GB of RAM is $399, but that doesn’t include the keyboard cover, which adds another $129 to the price. You can use the Surface Go 2 as a tablet, but it’s not as comfortable or capable as an iPad in that respect.

The Surface Book 3 is at the opposite end of Microsoft’s Surface lineup. This laptop is for power users who will keep it attached to the keyboard most of the time. The screen portion (either 13.5 or 15-inch) detaches for use as a tablet, but there’s a second battery in the keyboard to keep the device running for up to 17.5 hours (for the larger model). Regardless of the size you choose, the display will be much sharper than the one you get on the Surface Go 2. The 13.5-inch is 3,000 x 2,000 and the 15 is 3,240 x 2,160. Those are both 3:2 aspect ratios rather than widescreen 16:9 like most laptops, which is a win in my book.

The hardware options reflect the increased price. Both versions of the Surface Book 3 have 10th Gen Intel Core CPUs — the larger of the two has a Core i7, 16GB of RAM, and GTX 1660 Ti GPU with 6GB of graphics memory. The smaller one has a Core i5 (8GB of RAM) with integrated graphics or a Core i7 (16GB of RAM) with a GTX 1650. There are two USB-A ports, a USB-C with Power Delivery 3.0, and a pair of Surface Connect ports.

This computer starts at a whopping $1,599 for the 13.5-inch. The 15-inch costs at least $2,300. Completely decked out with 32GB of RAM and 2TB of SSD storage, it runs $3,400. The Surface Headphones 2 and Surface Earbuds are also available today for $249 and $199, respectively.

Now read:
Friday 3rd December Live Prayers
By: Virtual Mosque
Tags: Prayers, Live, Mosque

Today we will be broadcasting live via livestream at 12.30pm (GMT) as usual, to watch our live prayers and speech and be a part of the virtual mosque click on the link below.

If you miss the broadcast, then we will be putting the videos up in the next few days for people to watch at their leisure.

Live Prayers
HelloGold & Digix — What’s the difference?
Tags: Gold, Crowdsale, Crowdfunding, Blockchain, Digix

One of the first things that people ask HelloGold when we talk about our ICO is, “How are you different to Digix?”. It’s an obvious comparison to make as, at a glance, HelloGold’s business appears similar to Digix: we are both gold backed businesses based in Singapore which use Ethereum and have run/are running an ICO/Crowdsale.

So let’s do a quick rundown on what HelloGold’s business actually is, and then list down the differences it has between Digix.

(Note: We’re not claiming to be better than Digix. We’re simply stating the differences)

HelloGold has built an app that allows low to medium income people from emerging countries to save in gold from as low as $0.25USD onwards, without unreasonably high mark-up prices. On top of this, it is now working on integrating blockchain tech and Ethereum smart contracts into its app, and saw the opportunity to created a gold-backed token based off it’s live, revenue generating business.

Ultimately, HelloGold would:

Provide underserved people from emerging countries an affordable means of savings in gold Get millions of (non-crypto) people running blockchain tech, eventually providing them soft entry into the crypto space by allowing them to convert their gold into Gold Backed Tokens Create a gold-backed token that is backed by a real-world gold business

Taken directly from dgx.io,

“Digix tokenizes gold on Ethereum. We leverage the Distributed Ledger for its immutability, transparency and auditability by applying it to precious physical assets.

Digix has created a range of technologies including The Proof of Asset Protocol (POA) and Digix Gold Tokens (DGX) on Ethereum”

Digix provides a use case for the tokenisation and documentation of physical assets. This allows for the open and public verification of an asset’s existence without a centralised database. Digix also offers an API allowing other applications to be built on top of their asset tokenisation service.

Apart from that, DigixDAO is planning to be a pioneer as a fully decentralized DAO.

From what we’ve learnt/gathered/researched so far, here’s a list of some of the similarities and differences between HelloGold and Digix:

The opportunity for digitizing gold on the blockchain is large. It’s clear that because both businesses’ core product have separate target audiences, the business and product structure between them vastly differ.

While they do share an overlapping target audience (crypto-users because both businesses are creating gold backed tokens), this article makes it clear that they are simply taking a different route to the same goal — allowing anyone to save and trade in gold.
Design System Practice
Tags: UI, Design Process, Design Systems, Sketch, Uikit

MCS Lite

GitHub is where people build software. More than 21 million people use GitHub to discover, fork, and contribute to over…
AID expansion: now on Coinswitch!
Tags: Nonprofit, Blockchain, Charity, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin

Great news coming! AidCoin is now featured on CoinSwitch — an exchange aggregator backed by Sequoia Capital, which allows to convert, exchange and trade 300+ coins at best rates across all major exchanges, including Bittrex and IDEX where AID is listed, without creating an account on any of them.

We find this fascinating as it makes the journey of our users, who not necessarily deal much with crypto, even more seamless and smooth because the Coinswitch model removes the need for multiple accounts across various exchanges and yet offers great exchange rates.

What’s more, Coinswitch can provide an embeddable solution enabling our users to convert AID directly through our AidCoin website. So we would like to ask our community: would you find that useful? Leave your opinions in comments to this post or in our official Telegram group and help us make the right decision!
Not Told: Not Telling
By: J.D. Harms
Tags: Poetry, Relationships, Frustration, Image, Struggle

Not Told: Not Telling

A Poem

Photo by Faye Cornish on Unsplash

Stops & fully stoppered

recorked, drifting /twig in the great

grey-green expanse

tossed about the slowly sinking charts

of the eternal island you made out of

yourself

Fingers telling the ears

what to miss

Sloped towards grieving figures

the mouth unlimbers, slicks its own lips

to find the proper moment (?)

& the discourse comes running

from the hills

to join us\ Tales never scrolling

through the heads as words drive

deeper, deeper to the crusted

remains

of a trench, & other gaps

that cannot be crossed
OK, I’m Not, But They Will
Tags: Michelle Obama, Politics, Truth, Comics, Democracy

Written by

Almost famous cartoonist who laughs at her own jokes and hopes you will, too.
Lake Goss Sunrise
By: Andy Tillo
Tags: Washington, USA, T13

I hadn’t taken a lot of shots lately, been busy with other things; but the family and I took a long weekend to the Toivola cabin 8/14–15 which was almost precisely HERE. It was a great time, had some good food, good friends, and mediocrely behaved dogs. All in all, a great weekend. The girls learned how to swim with lifejackets on, they also learned how NOT to swim with one off — they sunk like a ton of bricks when they tried to swim without them. Thanks Ayla for teaching them to swim on Wednesdays, they clearly like it a lot!

Anyway, with the photo itself, it was a unique one in that it was a perfectly clear morning, no texture in the sky and very little on the water. I loved the composition of the shot so I wanted to bring it out. A lot of people ask the process, well for this one it was:

1. It was a .jpg file so I pulled it up in Photoshop and sharpened the image.

2. I then went to the “exposure” dropdown and pulled the gamma down so it’d be darker in the bright spots (better contrast).

3. Opened Photomatix and used the darkened image and the original image to put a light HDR feel to it. Fiddle with the settings here, to each their own.

4. Saved that photo and pulled back into Photoshop, dug into my standard background texture file and pulled out 2 I liked. Created separate layers for them, set the opacity down on them, and set the first one (scratches) to a soft ‘overlay’ and about 35% opacity and the 2nd one (brown mesh frame) to ‘screen’ and opacity to 20%.

5. Saved and popped it into Adobe Lightroom and tossed in a ‘general punch’, and ‘basic bam’.

6. Back to Photoshop to clean up the edges and edit out a few watermarks that showed on my poorly cleaned 10–24mm Tamaron lens.

That’s the long and the short of it, but I do like doing these projects that are a bit off the norm of shooting though. It was a good weekend had by all!
Between Muslimat
Tags: Islam, Muslim Women, Hijab, Islamophobia, Women

Ooooh, I like those polka-dots.

As a convert to Islam, I often have experiences that directly defy expectations or assumptions I had about Muslims prior to, well, really knowing any. When this happens, I find myself wishing that non-Muslims could be privy to these little snippets.

Like, just the other day. I was commiserating with a friend about how we might sometimes, just a little bit, hide our outfits from our husbands. Not because we’re dressing scandalously and will elicit some kind of possessive man-rage, but we are dressing so modestly that they will think we look like big weirdos.

Which, by the way, they hate because everyone blames it on them when we dress that way.

All I can say from this side is: give our poor Muslim guys a break, huh? It’s not their fault.
Men Can Be Feminine Too
By: Alexandra Tsuneta
Tags: Patriarchy, Toxic Masculinity, Feminism, Men, Women

Men Can Be Feminine Too

Gender roles and toxic masculinity have no place here

Photo by Liana Mikah on Unsplash

I recently read an article titled, “Why a Man’s Masculinity is Essential to a Woman,” and while I read it I was continuously shocked. It wasn’t written by a man, which is usually who writes these kinds of articles, it was written by a woman. The article, which is a ten-minute read, included lots of reasons why men being masculine is essential to women, many of these reasons being rooted in toxic masculinity, gender roles, and patriarchy. As a queer, pansexual woman, I love all genders, but one thing I don’t like about men is toxic masculinity, and that is what this article was deeply rooted in.

Take for example this sentiment, “He will always treat a woman like a lady. No matter what.” What does this even mean? I, for one, do not want to be treated like a lady, no matter what. I want to be treated like the dynamic human being that I am. The article continues, “He will protect his woman physically and emotionally; and is ready to throw a good punch if necessary, to defend her from physical aggressors.” This, right here, is a huge no-go for me. Sure, I would love my husband to protect me if need be, but I do not want a violent man. As a woman who was raised in an abusive household, this sentiment really freaked me out.

“Simple, and yet, there it is — a man’s masculinity is the one quality essential to us and I’ll tell you why — only a man can bring that pure, masculine dynamic into a situation and above all else, a woman like me is most attracted to man who makes her feel like a woman.”

I am married to a feminine man, he is in touch with his emotions, he’s not physically super strong. He’s tall and lanky, sweet, cute, and super weird. He’s fluid in his sexuality, and in general, he’s a lot less masculine than I am. I don’t believe that “only a man” can bring a “pure, masculine dynamic” into a relationship. Masculinity is not purely a male trait, many women can be masculine. In women, gender, and sexuality studies, we understand that female masculinity is a type of gender performance that challenges traditional masculine and male dominance. Indeed, men can be feminine and women can be masculine.

What turns me on about my husband is that I never feel threatened, he never yells, he is never angry, we don’t ever fight (a serious conversation, sure, but a fight, absolutely not), he’s is open with me, fluid with me, and engages with me in all ways, not simply in masculine ways. He is also just gorgeous, he has a beautiful face, amazing hair, and has soft, feminine features. Everything about him is fluid and not simply masculine or feminine. He is balanced and that is what I love about him.
The Rain Changed Everything
By: Guy New York
Tags: Erotica, Romance, Love, Fiction, Short Story

Photo by Guy New York

Somehow the rain made it love.

We normally grunt and thrust, and I cover her mouth for long moments until she’s gasping for breath. I hold her hands tightly, leave marks across her breasts and thighs, and she does as she’s told without pause. Normally, she comes again and again until I make her stop, and the waiting lasts as long as the motion.

We started with strong hands and tight holds, but the rain beat down on the air conditioner and splashed against the window with a rhythm that slowed us down. It transformed our biting to kissing and our nails to fingers and hands that massaged sore muscles rather than battering them.

“That was nice,” she whispered as we listened to the raindrops. “Strange, but nice.”
The Missing Piece to the Life Puzzle
By: Aline Müller
Tags: Self Improvement, Empowerment, Love, Self Love, Philosophy

“You can only get what you already have”

We all have so much love within. Sure, sometimes we feel disconnected, but make no mistake, it is all in there. The truth is, every thought and feeling exist within each one of us. The question is, where do we put our attention? Because it is our attention, our present awareness that decides what gets heard and reinforced. What we bring to our everyday lives.

It is like we are a radio gadget with all these possible channels, frequencies we can connect to. Let’s try it for a second: focus on someone you love a lot. Picture a few scenes where you felt connected to that person. Stay there. How does it feel in your body as you remember these scenes? Do you smile at yourself? Do you feel lighter instantly? Let that energy expand to you more and more. See? It is already there. We all have it. The more you come back to this feeling, the more you get to live from it.

You can do this with anything. Moments of great joy or thoughts of dissatisfaction, your choice.

Unfortunately, we live in a society that reinforces negative frequencies and we go with it, instead of actively exercising our ability to change stations. We accept suffering, misery, working for something without a purpose, not developing our dreams. We reinforce our worries on and on by keeping our attention on them. That can only happen from a place where we don’t see our worth more. We lack self-love and self-acceptance. Even worse, we accept dissatisfaction.

So off we go looking for dates so we are not lonely, instead of looking for people to expand our existing joy with. We act out of preventing the bad instead of expanding the good. These are such different places to act from.

Sadly many of us don’t think we deserve to live from a place of love and joy. We might say we do, but off our mind goes worrying about things, frustrated, disconnected, living “as it is”.

It is by connecting to the love we all already have within that we connect to love everywhere. If we go around looking for better situations outside without improving our radio station, the job will be infinite.
How to Create and Publish Your Own Ruby Gem From Scratch
By: Shivam Kaushik
Tags: Ruby On Rails Development, Ruby on Rails, Rubygems, Ruby, Rails

Setting Up the Files

This tutorial assumes that you already have bundler installed on your system. If you don’t please install it before continuing.

Navigate to the local directory you want to create the gem in.

Run the following command in your terminal to create all the files necessary to create a gem:

bundle gem random_greeting_generator

I chose random_greeting_generator for the name of my gem but you can (and should) give it any name you like. A good rule of thumb is to make sure that the name is unique, otherwise you’ll have conflicts when publishing the gem.

You can check the name availability by going to RubyGems.org and make sure that no gem with the same name exists:

Searching for “random_greeting_generator” yields no results

Finally, running the bundle command creates the necessary files for us to start building our gem:

Generated files after running “bundle gem random_greeting_generator”

Let’s Start Building!

Let’s navigate to the root of the generated directory and open up the random_greeting_generator.gemspec file.

The gem generator has pre-configured a lot of settings for you but there are some to-dos, as highlighted in the screenshot, that you need to complete for it to compile properly.

These are pretty straight forward:

Summary

Description

Homepage

Now, navigate into the lib/random_greeting_generator directory and create a generator.rb file. This file will hold the logic for our gem:

module RandomGreetingGenerator

class Generator

def self.random_greeting name

greetings = ["Hello","Bonjour","Hola","Guten tag",

"Hej","Salve","Nǐ Hǎo","Xin chào","Hei","Ahoj"

]

# Creates a random greeting string

"#{greetings.sample}, #{name}"

end

end

end

Add this code to lib/random_greeting_generator/generator.rb .

Next, we import this module to the random_greeting_generator.rb file in the lib directory:

require "random_greeting_generator/version"

require "random_greeting_generator/generator"



module RandomGreetingGenerator



end

Now, you need to edit the .gitignore file and add all the files with the .gem extension that should be ignored.

/.bundle/

/.yardoc

/_yardoc/

/coverage/

/doc/

/pkg/

/spec/reports/

/tmp/



# Ignore all files with the .gem extension

*.gem

Update your README.md and add a proper description and usage instructions.

Finally, create a repository on Github and push your local repo remotely.
The Stumble After The Fall
By: Tania Braukamper
Tags: Flash Fiction, Cheating, Microfiction, Fiction, Short Story

Even though it was not in his nature to cheat, or to lie, or even to requisition the attentions of other women just to feed his wilting ego, he found himself naked and curled around someone who was not his own.

He’d tried to resist, but she had some kind of magic powers.

First he was pulled in by the tractor beams of her green eyes, then he was netted helplessly in the tangle of her dark brown hair, like a fly caught in a web. And when her honey voice dripped in his ear with the words, “so, do you have a girlfriend?” he heard himself answering “no” and then wondering why he’d lied.

And when she asked him if he wanted to dance with her, he didn’t need to reply, because his feet had decided. She led him off and they moved together on the dance floor, hips seared together with the heat of the rhythm, and the crowd around them melted away because he was locked again in her tractor beam gaze, and suddenly he thought that maybe it doesn’t count as cheating if you’re under a spell.

And when she said, “let’s get out of here,” he already knew he would go with her, even as he knew he shouldn’t go with her. And she grabbed his hand and led him outside and he was powerless to resist because she’d well and truly La Belle Dame Sans Merci’d him, and he pictured himself stumbling out of her lair tomorrow a pale shadow sucked dry of himself, and he thought that maybe such a punishment would make the impending act really quite justified.

And when he was on her bed kissing her, a fleeting thought knocked through his brain that he’d never felt these sheets before, and that was somehow alarming, but the desire in his body told his brain to hush, and it was a desire so unnaturally strong it could only have been aroused by her sorcery, so whose fault was it, anyway?

And the next morning when he woke up, with light streaking through the blinds and illuminating the white freshness of the room, he at first wondered where he was. And then he remembered flashes of milky curves, and dark hair grabbed in handfuls, and unfamiliar sheets, and searing bursts of pleasure, and he knew.

And he looked over at her as she slept, and she looked strangely ordinary. Just like the room looked ordinary. No crystals or pentagrams or potions, just clothes and shoes and magazines.

And he fumbled for his t-shirt, and thought about his girlfriend, and thought about how to explain where he’d been.

And then he stumbled out of the apartment, away from the sleeping girl — a pale shadow sucked dry of himself.