fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Air Force Drone Crews Got So Demoralized That They Booed Their Commander
By: War Is Boring
Tags: Drones, Wib Air

Air Force Drone Crews Got So Demoralized That They Booed Their Commander

The U.S. military learned the hard way to take care of its robot controllers

by DAVID AXE

For the first decade after its invention, the General Atomics Predator drone was a special weapon. The CIA and the U.S. Air Force possessed just a handful of the 27-foot-long unmanned aerial vehicles, which can fly for 12 hours or more, scanning with cameras—and even firing at targets with lightweight Hellfire missiles.

By 2011, the drone fleet had expanded more than tenfold—and so had the community of pilots, sensor operators, analysts and maintainers that fix and fly the robots and disseminate the resulting video imagery.

The drone air force grew fast—but not fast enough. As demand outstripped supply, the Air Force yanked pilots from the cockpits of their supersonic F-15 and F-16 fighter jets and forced them to sit in trailers in Nevada, from where they steered flimsy robots via satellite.

These involuntary robot operators didn’t get many days off. And they had little chance of ever returning to their beloved fighters. Drone crews became so unhappy that, in one chilling moment in late 2005 or early 2006, a group of Predator operators actually booed their commander.

“They were just so bitter and so angry,” the commander said, according to a redacted U.S. Air Force official history that War Is Boring obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request.

The Iraq and Afghanistan wars fueled the seemingly limitless need for what had been a niche robotic system. The twin U.S.-led invasions sparked violent and popular insurgencies. American troops struggled to separate enemy fighters from innocent civilians in Iraq’s teeming cities and Afghanistan’s lush farming valleys.

Not to mention, the CIA and military also deployed the propeller-driven UAVs over Somalia, Yemen, The Philippines and other conflict zones. The military needed drones. Lots of drones.

Demand for Predators skyrocketed starting around 2004. Soon the Pentagon ordered the Air Force to keep 65 Predators or larger Reapers on station at any given time.

The flying branch refers to each on-station drone as a “Combat Air Patrol,” or CAP. Normally, a CAP includes four drones. One is in the air over the target area. Another is en route to replace it when its fuel runs out. The other two machines are in maintenance.

To meet the 65-CAP requirement, the Air Force began acquiring hundreds of drones, which can cost between $5 million and $17 million per copy. “We’re going to tell General Atomics to build every Predator they can possibly build,” Air Force Gen. John Jumper, then the flying branch’s top officer, said in 2007.
Buck Breaking: The Use of Sexual Violence Against Enslaved Men as Punishment for Wrongdoing
By: Justannet
Tags: Racism, Sexuality, History, BlackLivesMatter, Equality

Buck Breaking: The Use of Sexual Violence Against Enslaved Men as Punishment for Wrongdoing

Trigger Warning: buck breaking may have been the worst form of punishment

Drawing of enslaved men being flogged in front of their children (Source: Wikipedia)

We’ve all watched movies, seen pictures, and heard stories of how terribly slaves were treated. But, the story of how sexual violence was weaponized and used by slaveowners against slaves is often forgotten. Yet, slaves — including men — were often sexually violated to keep them in line or as punishment against those that dared to rebel.

What is buck breaking?

Mainly utilized by slave owners in the Caribbean, buck breaking was used against male slaves who were seen as defiant. The process involved the slaveowner forcing the enslaved man to lower his pants and bend over a tree stump to ensure that his buttocks were propped up into the air. The enslaved man would then be flogged severely. This would weaken him so that he would not be able to resist the rape that followed. The white slaveowner would then proceed to rape the slave several times.

This form of punishment was worsened by the fact that it would be done in full view of all the other enslaved people, including the slaves’ family and friends. In an addition to being sexually violated the slave would also be publicly humiliated. This public punishment would instill fear in other slaves and thus prevent any further rebellion.

Enslaved men who were victims of this vile punishment often ran away from the plantations or killed themselves as they were unable to deal with the humiliation that they had suffered. It was often too difficult for them to integrate back into a society that had watched them being emasculated in front of their wife, children, and friends.

Buck breaking as a form of punishment grew amongst slave owners in the Caribbean. White men were able to travel from plantation to plantation raping male slaves. The punishment became so widely implemented that sex farms developed from the practice. These sex farms allowed multiple slaveowners to gang-rape male slaves as punishment for any supposed wrongdoing that they committed.

The massive popularity of the practice suggests that buck breaking may have been utilized as an outlet for homosexual slaveowners to act out their sexual desires on men, without attracting the stigma associated with being gay. Homosexuality during this era would have been shunned but shockingly raping male slaves as a form of punishment was acceptable.
The Light You Are
By: Ani Vidrine
Tags: Mindfulness, Metaphysics, Light, Spirituality, Poetry

The Light You Are

Poems From The Porch

photo by Raul Macarie on Unsplash.com

It is a peaceful morning on the porch;

blue jays hoping in the pines

the predictable rooster crowing his greeting,

a matronly avian perched on a post,

neat webs of lace hovering above the grass

and laden with dew.

An ethereal effect is veiling the trees,

cast by the mist slowly vanishing.

It is delightful to watch as the sun makes his presence known

in intangible rays of light.

There is no physicality to radiance,

but it can be embodied as

the illuminating Presence of Love.
A supplication.
By: Micahela Mobley
Tags: Pain, Revolution, Poetry, BlackLivesMatter, A Cornered Gurl

A supplication.

I pray that my words do not fall on deaf ears.

A protester raises a clenched fist in front of a burning building in Minneapolis. (AFP Photo)

Oh Lord, hear my prayer.

We are dying in the streets

And it seems as if no one cares.

By bullet, poverty, and virus.

There is no justice in this air.

Oh Lord, hear my plea.

All I want for my people is life.

To breathe without fear.

To love, to laugh, to thrive.

To simply be free.

Oh Lord, hear my cry.

The world around us is bleak.

It is getting harder to fight this darkness.

If joy comes in the morning,

Then we are still waiting for the sun to rise.
Pharma: Are You Ready To Optimize Your Marketing Strategy?
Tags: Pharmaceutical, Digital Marketing

Pharma: Are You Ready To Optimize Your Marketing Strategy?

Guide to Build a Digital Marketing Campaign

Traditionally, the pharmaceutical industry has been slow to adopt digital marketing techniques, especially beyond the website. Yet today, more pharma businesses are starting to use digital marketing tools, such as social media sites or e-commerce sites, to engage with customers and allow them to buy products online.

Digital marketing is certainly a more cost-effective way of communicating with customers, than traditional marketing.

Digital channels offer a more individualised and personalised type of engagement, ensuring that the correct stakeholders are receiving the correct information at the correct time.

Many pharma marketing managers agree that digital strategy will play a critical role in the marketing plans of the future, but many companies still lack the capabilities to fully integrate digital marketing into the wider business strategy.

The real problem is a shortage of digital marketers within the pharmaceutical sector. In particular, there is a lack of people with the necessary skills to drive digital change and leverage the opportunities that digital resources can offer to pharma businesses.

The competition to find the right people or partner who understand the industry and regulations and restrictions placed upon it, while at the same time have an intimate understanding of the new digital marketplace, has become relevant in the pharmaceutical sector.

The Digital Pharma Marketing: Overview and the Need To Build Integrated Digital Services Whitepaper explores digital marketing landscape and shares Guide to Starting a Pharma Digital Marketing Campaign

Get exclusive access to Whitepaper (it’s free). Sign up here!
My Body, My Problems
By: Ottilie Max
Tags: Pain, Women, Ottilie Max, Poetry, Self Care

My Body, My Problems

poem

Photo by Houcine Ncib on Unsplash

Um, okay

I guess

that works

I’ll just

pretend

Like that pain

that pain

right

now

It’s fine

everything

is

fine
What’s the Time?
By: Claire Elaine
Tags: Time, Life, Spirituality, Awareness, Personal Growth

Image by MasterTux from Pixabay

My friends often say that our concept of time is very different to theirs. I personally find this idea hard to grasp, but occasionally enough hints are thrown my way for me to believe I almost touch the edges of understanding.

The channellings themselves seem to bounce around within time, some stubbornly refuse to stay in their chronological order. Hopefully it is obvious that a few hold wisdom that cannot be bound by time, but there are some that I assumed carried a type of use by date. I might have been wrong.

The two linked below have been replaying through my mind of late and as I have been told that not many new channellings will come through for a while, as most relevant teachings for this “time” have already been written, I thought it best to catch the hint.

So, as always please read freely and thanks for coming by.

Claire
American Democracy Works Better Than We Thought
By: Jennifer Geer
Tags: USA, America, Politics, News, Election 2020

Not really a concession

It’s not a concession, but it is a sign of moving forward, and it’s the best we can expect to get. Most of the country, and the world, breathed a sigh of relief that the democratic process works the way it’s supposed to, despite one man’s frantic attempts to end it.

Because it’s 2020, and nothing is easy, Trump has walked back his statement since then. He’s been frantically tweeting about election fraud ever since. Bizarrely, much of it seems to revolve around Randy Quaid.

But, as it turns out, we don’t need the current president to concede an election for the process to move forward. It’s traditional, and it would have been nice. It helps the losing party’s followers to accept the loss. It shows a sign of American strength to other countries.

It could have saved us from a lot of hand-wringing, worries, and speculation. It might possibly have helped heal a divided nation. But you can’t expect much from 2020, and you have to take the victories where you find them.

We have indeed learned not to expect the conventional from Trump. But it no longer means much. With the GSA ascertaining the president-elect and vice president-elect, the transition of power has officially begun. And no matter who you voted for, or which political party you follow, that is a good thing.

It’s critical to national security for one thing. The Bush administration’s delay in getting his national security team up and running after the election of 2000 was a contributing factor in the attacks of 9/11. Also, we’re in a critical time for the plan to begin distributing Covid-19 vaccines, and a lengthy delay in transitioning could have meant Americans would have had a longer wait for vaccinations.

Trump, however, isn’t giving up. At least on Twitter. But he can rage on Fox News, engage in late-night Twitter storms, and play golf straight through until Inauguration Day. Nothing will stop Biden from becoming president on January 20th.

American democracy worked just the way it always has. Americans voted. The votes were counted. A winner was selected.
Love, Under The Moonlight
By: Fọlábòmí Àmọ Ó
Tags: Romance, Night, Relationships, Poetry, Love

I remember the night.

That night,

Beneath the stars;

Under the moonlight.

The night was cool.

The breeze was gentle.

You took off your glasses,

Calling to me;

Beckoning.

We made a fire.

You held on to me,

All night.

And we made memories,

That will last,

A lifetime.
Hayek Lab Introduction Video
By: Phil Champagne
Tags: Bitcoin, Hayek Lab Videos, Tezos, Hayek Lab Announcements, Blockchain

To launch our presence on Youtube we have released a channel trailer for Hayek Lab. For a quick overview of our services, mission and team, we invite you to take a minute and a half to watch this short clip. If you are already a delegator with us, the video can be used for introducing Hayek Lab to your friends or investing partners. We have big plans in mind for our Youtube channel. To advance the awareness of Tezos in the cryptocurrency world as well as the more traditional investment world, we are currently developing a variety of video segments. Explainer videos, interviews, and commentary clips (called Sofa Chat with Phil) are just a few examples of what we are working on to keep you learning and entertained talking about Tezos. Yes we are a baking service but spreading the word about Tezos is as important if not more for the survival of Tezos and our community. Like and Share. And don’t forget to Subscribe to stay updated on our most recent content. Enjoy the show!

Hayek Lab Communications Team

https://HayekLab.com
Getting Your Product Reimbursed by Payers
By: Charles Lacalle
Tags: Healthcare, Digital Health

Getting Your Product Reimbursed by Payers

A Guide for Health Tech Startups

“I’ll just get a CPT code.” Good luck with that! What does it really take for a payer to reimburse providers for your product? What is the reimbursement decision process that payers use to decide whether to cover a new technology? Coverage, coding, and payment are the three pillars of a reimbursement strategy, and this webinar covers each of these topics so founders can develop a strategic plan early in the product development process to ensure a positive coverage and reimbursement outcome. Hospitals and physicians may love your startup, but public and private payers reimburse, so they set the rules. Startup founders can learn…

How to create a reimbursement strategy

How to use clinical trials to support coverage decisions

How the CMS coverage process differs from the way private payers reimburse

Panelists:

Meghan Fotopoulos | Accenture | Managing Director | @accenture

Sidonia Swarm | Real Dietician | Founder | @sidoniarose

Daniel Brown | IBX | Director, Provider Reimbursement | @IBX
What Lies Outside of your Comfort Zone is Growth.
By: Camp Ihc
Tags: Climate Change, Summer Camp, LGBTQ, Black Lives Mater, Covid 19

As an organization and as full-time people, we each have collective and individualistic values and beliefs that make us who we are, and this year certainly challenged our values and beliefs more than any other year. While we cried, we watched, when we were angry, we listened, when we were scared, we learned and when we were collected, we acted.

Camp IHC met as a team to speak about all that is going on in this crazy but beautiful world and collectively made a decision to use this time to move Camp IHC forward into a better tomorrow. We wanted to find exciting ways to innovate, grow and unite for the greater good.

This year took us out of our comfort zone but we have a saying…

“If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you. And if you’re not changing, you’re not growing.”

What lies beyond our comfort zone, is growth. We wanted to grow.

We assembled teams to take a deeper dive into the practices of IHC. The focus of these teams was to look at what we are doing as a camp and find ways to strengthen our place as a camp that was committed to action, not just words.

In the summer, following the Black Out Tuesday IG campaign, Camp IHC pledged to Take Action: We Watched, Listened, Sought to Understand, Relate and Act. We have since kick started our own Diversity & Inclusion Team to help fulfill our promise of being active agents and racial and social change.

The goal of this team is to improve diversity and inclusion in our community. The Diversity & Inclusion team has chosen to actively address issues relating to Racism, Mental & Physical Health, Cultural backgrounds, LGBTQ+ issues & Bullying.

In January 2021 our new Going Green Team are going to take our efforts to the next level, actively look at new ways that Camp IHC can become greener, cleaner and more efficient.
MicrobeTrace is Moving!
By: Tony Boyles
Tags: Heroku, Cdc

Our new home, live now!

Exciting news in MicrobeTrace World! MicrobeTrace is (finally!) moving from its original home on Heroku to a CDC-hosted server. The new canonical MicrobeTrace URL is:

https://microbetrace.cdc.gov/

Update your bookmarks accordingly! We’re working on getting a redirect set up from Heroku (we’ve already got it running from the unofficial domain, microbetrace.com).

Why?

This is a huge step up for us in terms of URL trustworthiness. It’s a pain in the neck to get a site up and running under the .gov TLD, so if you see a .gov address, you can trust its security a lot more than you should from a free host (like herokuapp.com).

What about Dev?

If you’re a cutting-edge user, we’re keeping the dev branch running on https://devmicrobetrace.herokuapp.com/ for the time being. We’ll publish another update like this one if we get a dev branch CI pipeline set up on the CDC side, but we’re not planning to at the moment.
Smart Speakers Driving Consumer Tech Market
By: Ivan Lapickii
Tags: Technology, Voice Assistant, Smart Speaker, Data Visualization, Infographics

Smart speakers are the fastest-growing consumer technology today, outstripping augmented reality, virtual reality, and even wearables, according to Canalys, a global technology market analyst firm based in Singapore. Worldwide shipments of smart speakers grew to 78 million units in 2018, up 125 percent from 35 million in 2017.

In the third quarter of 2018, 42 percent of smart speakers were shipped to the United States, making the it the single most important market for smart speakers.

Google and Amazon lead the market and accounted for 62 percent of the global shipments in the third quarter of 2018. New vendors, such as Alibaba and Xiaomi, are, however, increasing competition in this historically narrow competitive landscape.

Future market growth for smart speaker technology, particularly in the largest existing markets, will likely involve moving speakers beyond the realm of hardware sales and into further monetizing the speakers that already exist in users’ homes. One solution may just lie in the explosive growth of e-commerce.
Great-Aunt Agatha
By: Elise Edmonds
Tags: Microfiction, Flash Fiction, Short Story, Fiction, Family

Mum called Great-Aunt Agatha eccentric. Ten-year-old me, on receiving one odd sock and an expired voucher for my birthday, just thought she was mean. Or crazy. Or both.

A month later, at Christmas, Great-Aunt did not disappoint. She got me a stick. Polished and varnished--but nevertheless, a stick.

Later that evening, I took my Christmas haul upstairs. I hung up the new t-shirts and decided which X-box game I'd play with my best mate tomorrow.

I pushed the stick back in its packet, and it caught on something. Shoving my hand in, I pulled out a note I'd missed before.

I could barely read the spidery handwriting and sounded the words out loud.

"Use at your own risk. Scorchortus Tranqiotis."

The stick hopped in my hand. I jumped, pulse quickening. A wonderful thought popped into my head.

I waved the stick at my dirty laundry and repeated the words.

"Scorchortus Tranqiotis."

I stifled a yelp as grubby clothes leapt off the floor and into the linen basket. School papers tidied themselves and books flew back on the shelf. My empty tumblers jumped into a neat heap on a tray by the door.

Mouth open, I gaped at the stick. Great-Aunt Agatha might be crazy, but this time I’d be sending a thank you note.
How to Pass Closures Between Sibling Views (and UIViewRepresentables) in SwiftUI
By: Alex Bartiş
Tags: Programming, Combine, iOS, Swiftui, Swift

How to Pass Closures Between Sibling Views (and UIViewRepresentables) in SwiftUI

Sharing state between components

Photo by Jose Murillo on Unsplash.

Let’s take the following scenario: You have a ParentView with two child views, ChildView1 and ChildView2 . On ChildView1 , you have a button that should trigger an action in ChildView2 .

Now on that button tap, we want to change the text on that text field to something more appropriate. Let’s start by defining a typealias for our closure. If you don’t know what a closure is, it’s basically a method. You can read more about closures in the documentation.

Let’s add the following typealias above our ParentView declaration:

typealias OnClickHandler = (() -> Void)

So it becomes:

typealias OnClickHandler = (() -> Void)



struct ParentView: View {

...

}

And initialise it as an @State property in our ParentView :

struct ParentView: View {



@State var onClick: OnClickHandler = { }

... }

The idea here is that this onClick defined in the ParentView is our single source of truth. We don’t want another closure initialized somewhere along the call stack. We want this one passed to both our ChildViews.

In ChildView2 , where our button is, we add it as an @Binding , as it’s already initialized in our ParentView and ChildView2 at this point only manipulates it. Then we add it as the action to our button:

You’ll notice that we deleted the old closure in which we would print our message and just passed ours as a parameter. This is not mandatory, but it’s shorter and cleaner.

At this point, your ParentView is notifying you that you’re missing your onClick parameter when you’re initializing ChildView2 , so let’s just add that:

You’ll notice we passed $onClick to ChildView2 , as we defined our property as an @Binding , so we use $ to pass the binding and not a value.

We’re now going to do the same thing to our ChildView1 — add a binding property — but this time we’re also going to write the function that gets called when the button is tapped, and we’re going to assign that function to our passed closure:

The magic here is calling onAppear on the Text element. This means that when that field appears (think of viewDidAppear in UIKit), we are going to run the following code block. In that code block, we assign a function to our onClick closure that modifies the value of our string.

If you want to be fancy or your method is larger, you can even extract the whole code block into a different method and assign that to onClick :

Now, through the magic of SwiftUI and Combine, you managed to link two views that have no knowledge of each other. Congratulations!
How secure is YOUR website?
By: Pennink Productions
Tags: Firewall, Website, Security, Attack, Password

Last night I observed how my e-mail inbox filled up with over 70 messages generated by the firewall component installed on a client’s content management system (CMS). Each one informed me that a single IP address was attempting to log into the administrator panel in the back end and that the username/password combination had been incorrectly entered. For an occasional e-mail to arrive would usually signify an unsuccessful client login and these can normally be safely ignored, but for well over 70 e-mails to arrive in the space of one minute, there had to be a more orchestrated attempt at a brute force attack in progress.

Fortunately, we had taken the precaution of protecting the CMS with a firewall component, which did its job admirably in preventing any hacker attack, saving hours of potential downtime as the client and we went through the process of restoring from a backup. Unscheduled downtime due to attacks can mean hundreds, if not thousands, in lost revenue and sales due to e-commerce systems being affected and this is one of several reasons why it pays not to skimp on website security. Even the most meagre of websites that might be a matter of a simple WordPress blog can be hardened to attack by installing a decent third-party security component. Needless to say, this is a perfect opportunity to re-evaluate your security policy and ensure that you have adequate protection in place and a backup system as well.

Prevention is clearly better than cure and there are numerous ways to stop an attack from happening in the first place. Securing your own website software is foremost; if you are using a CMS, ensure it is running the current release version and that any add-ins are compatible, trusted and up-to-date. It is possible nowadays to take steps to prevent attack from blocks of IP addresses to effectively deny access to the website to certain countries. If you are not particularly concerned about your website being viewable by people in countries from which the vast majority of hacker attacks emanate, it may be well worth investing time in building a blacklist of countries you’d like to block and effect that at the lowest possible level.

Password security is another obvious vulnerability and it always makes good sense to use a strong password. Dealing with IT and Internet security can often represent another chore to be brushed aside by many people struggling with the demands of running a small or medium enterprise, but you can think of it as a sort of insurance against being caught unaware and placed in the awkward position of having to rebuild from scratch. If you find yourself questioning your IT and Internet security, that’s a good thing. If you find yourself questioning how to deal with it because you don’t know or have the time, then contact us for assistance. It may be the best decision you make this year.
by Martino Pietropoli
By: Martino Pietropoli
Tags: Sketch, Sunday, Drawing, Illustration

Sunday

#idrawyou

This is the first of hopefully many more drawings inspired by you, readers (or viewers? Followers? How should I call you? Friends).

Ernio is an old friend here on Medium and I’ve always admired his eclecticism as a writer, poet, illustrator and creator. Should I call him simply “artist”. Maybe I should.
Anything But Silence
By: Mike Kaminsky
Tags: Fiction Friday, Depression, Short Story, Fiction, Men

Simon’s bender began on a Thursday. It was a sweaty night in early summer. He and his friends were crammed into one of those shitty dance bars you only put up with in your early twenties. The plan was not to go super hard: they all had work the next day.

Step. Step again. Step another time. Each time in a different direction. Start moving your arms. Don’t look bored. Try and smile. Don’t stand in place. Simon repeated this to himself, over and over, desperately hoping that tonight was the night that he would figure out dancing. As he swayed in a circle, his despair grew as he watched his friends’ footwork and internalized how much better they were at dancing than him.

His speech and entire attitude was drowned in layers of irony, jokes, and references. References were his biggest crutch, because they allowed him to steer away from his own personality, relying on someone else’s jokes or opinions instead.

There’s no irony on the dance floor. Maybe that’s why Simon had such a difficult time there. His speech and entire attitude was drowned in layers of irony, jokes, and references. References were his biggest crutch, because they allowed him to steer away from his own personality, relying on someone else’s jokes or opinions instead. There is no such luxury while dancing. One can’t be kidding about a dance move. You either do it or you don’t.

Simon also feared eye contact. He’d slowly learned the varying degrees of when it was acceptable to avoid it. Meeting a girlfriend’s parents? Bad time. Long car trip? Good time. Simon felt that the absolute worst time to avoid eye contact is when dancing with someone.

With this fear in mind, Simon peered around the club, careful to avoid other eyeballs. He didn’t want to give anyone the wrong idea. Sweat collected under his arms as he wondered how many people had noticed his dance moves, or lack thereof. Checking his phone, Simon learned it was only 68 degrees outside. He still felt hot, and the only way Simon knew to relieve the searing heat of onlookers was a drink.

Excusing himself from the group, he trekked through the crowd toward the bar. He didn’t mean to drink it as quickly as he did. Within minutes, he was able to move his body into something resembling dancing. He smiled a few times. The anxiety began to leave his chest. He breathed a sigh of relief; it had been five days since his last drink. He excused himself again, claiming a quick bathroom trip. He didn’t want his less alcohol-dependent friends to know how quickly he was ordering a second drink.

Halfway to the bathroom, Simon abruptly cut toward the bar. After what felt like a lifetime holding up two fingers, Simon muttered, “Two Bacardi shots please.” He hated this part: desperately hoping the bartender assumed one shot was for a friend. The shots arrived and promptly slid down Simon’s throat. The bartender noticed.
Twitter stepping up efforts to block crypto scams, highlighting key issues
By: Will O Leary
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Exchange, Blockchain, Twitter

Speaking of Twitter, news that the company is stepping up efforts to block crypto scammers is theoretically a good thing. Twitter, along with a couple of other social media, has become a watering hole for the latest and greatest that crypto has to offer. It’s also become the best place to con people out of their digital coins.

Facebook announced that it would ban all cryptocurrency ads earlier this year, which Fortune points out, has not completely worked. Twitter’s move isn’t quite as far-reaching, as it seems to explicitly focus on bad actors — pump-and-dump schemes, impostor accounts claiming that they will send you free coins, and the like. Making life tougher on people who smear the good name of crypto deserves praise.

It’s never that simple, though, especially in crypto. Decentralization purists will be quick to point out that this puts Twitter, a centralized entity, in the throne of what happens to one of the most powerful discussion forums in the entire space. Of course, Twitter is the reason that forum exists in the first place, but in the pursuit of the free and frictionless exchange of information, Twitter is paradoxically an enabler of the cause and a censorship agent. Bitcoin and blockchain are compelling technologies in part because they’re censorship resistant.

If you think that I’m overstating the risk that comes from Twitter itself, you may be surprised to learn that Twitter blocked Kraken Exchange’s verified user support account yesterday — an account that was actively trying to help identify and warn against scammers! The account was thankfully restored, but the risk remains the same and the anti-censorship philosophers of crypto took note of Twitter’s centralized power.

Don’t be surprised if we see a decentralized social media platform like Twitter make waves at some point in the future.

Read the entire story here, courtesy of Fortune.
The #1 Gift of Feeling Others’ Emotions
By: Bingz Huang
Tags: Energy, Human Design, Inspiration, Self, Advice

Your emotional openness is a gift

Many of my clients get upset when they found out that they can’t just “close” their open energy centers.

Your open centers stay open throughout the rest of your life.

When we resist our openness and behave as if we don’t feel these energies from the people around us, these energies will stay stuck in our open centers, becoming “pseudo-defined’ centers. We define ourselves in ways that are different from our original selves.

Isn’t it even more painful to lose touch of who you truly are?

If you keep pushing away emotions you are already sensing from others, these emotions will continue to influence your life, distracting you from your fullest potential to live a healthy, joyful, and abundant life.
The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany
By: Kamna Kirti
Tags: History, World War II, Culture, Painting, Art

The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany

How artists suffered the wrath of Hitler’s insane ideology

Entartete Kunst — The German word for degenerate art. This was the cover of the Degenerate Art exhibition

Source-Wikipedia

From the time Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany in 1933, he commanded his officials to confiscate paintings, sculptures, and museum artifacts that depicted modern art styles like Dada, Expressionism, Surrealism, etc. Hitler not only hated modern art because it defied “Aryan culture” but considered it to be perpetuated by the Jews.

The attack was not only confined to modern art but it expanded to book burnings, personal property, and objects that did not fit into the ideals of Nazi Germany. Any art that Hitler deemed morally wrong or inappropriate was confiscated.

The hatred and extreme constraints to artistic freedom lead to the scrutiny of many artists, public humiliation, arrest, and many went into exile to other European countries.
Unconditional Love Doesn’t Need to Say “I Love You”
By: Lavender Nguyen
Tags: Storyofmylife, Life, Parents, Short Story, Love

Traditionally, we don’t say “I love you”

“I love you” might be one of the most powerful combinations of three words in the English language. But that’s not always true in Asian cultures.

I was born in a traditional Vietnamese family. Growing up, I never heard anybody in my house saying, “I love you” to each other.

My parents always asked my sisters and me to respect elders and study hard to get a good education and a good job.

We simply don’t show love by kissing or hugging each other. We never say, “I love you” (“con yeu bo me” in my language) or “thank you.”

Even now, my parents still change the TV channel if romantic scenes appear. They’re not familiar with it.

But, not saying “I love you” doesn’t mean my parents don’t love me. In a Vietnamese family, everyone is loved even though nobody says it out loud.

We have a different way to show love

For my parents, actions speak louder than words.

They sacrificed their lives for us. In more than 30 years, they never took a leave day.

They worked throughout the nights so we can have food, clothes, and education. They strived by all means to give us a better life.

“Con an com chua?” (Have you eaten?)

“Con lam co vat va khong?” (Does work make you tired?)

“Co ap luc nhieu khong con?” (Do you have a lot of pressure?)

This is how my parents, who will never say, “I love you,” tell me how they love me.

I was born and grew up with these voices and tones, these emotions, and these intimacies, which can never be expressed in words. Whenever I recall them in my head, I almost cry because I feel how much my parents love me. That feeling is always present, no matter how far away we are.

My parents are there for me, even when the whole world is against me.

They’re my strength, my inspiration, my motivation, my model of love.

Unconditional love means no expectation

My parents don’t expect me to say “I love you” because their love for me is unconditional.

For them, love is the act of giving, not a feeling. They give everything to me without expectations. They don’t sacrifice their lives for me for the sake of hearing, “I love you.”

If a parent’s love for their child and vice versa depends on how many times those three words are said, does that mean love comes with a ‘condition’?

What happens if one day, your parents can no longer speak? Do they stop loving you?

Never!
Tatatu-tally unbelievable.
By: The Crypto Telegraph
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Finance, Blockchain, ICO

no experience? $575m in a private round?? Pass me the Bacardi!!!

A quiet frankly ridiculous story, fit for a king (or a crown prince at least) has appeared on the CT radar — a blockchain project with little to no experience of the crypto space within its team has managed to raise a whooping $575,000,000 in its private round. Just let that sink in — 0.2% of the entire crypto-market capitalisation, in the private sale.

‘I ta-ta-tu-se you!!’ — Prince Felix may (or may not) have said

Investors are rumoured to include the Prince Felix of Luxembourg and Lady Monika Bacardi, who has invested to the tune of $100 million. That’s a whole lotta rum.

So, why the interest in this project, especially in such a bearish crypto-market?

Tatatu is essentially a YouTube/Netflix hybrid were content producers get a share of ad revenues from their content, as do viewers, in the form of TTU tokens. Nothing too ground breaking there. Or in Tatatu’s words:

“It’s the first video-on-demand and social platform to reward you for watching moves, music videos, sports, gaming and celebrity content.

TaTaTu is fair and transparent and also rewards you for sharing and posting.

People are rewarded for watching and posting content.”

The website claims that the world’s 30 biggest social media stars will use their platform — although there is no implication as to who these are or whether they will give up insta in favour of a concept that sounds like Warner Bros’ Sylvester the Cat sneezing.

With the 3rd biggest private raise in the crypto space, the CT wonders as to where the true attraction to the project lies — clearly promoted as the Facebook for the blockchain generation, and with the business model turned on its head when compared with YouTube — Tatatu could be considered a jack of all trades and a master of none.

Only time will tata-tell, we suppose.
Крупнейшие ICO: кто и сколько привлек
By: Tmt Blockchain Fund
Tags: Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, ICO

From success in VC to success in Crypto!

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Like Shadows
By: Paul Mulliner
Tags: Life, Mindfulness, Meditation, Poetry, Self

Moments pass

as shadows of windblown leaves

slide across a sunlit wall,

and echoes of the shriek

of nearby birds

are lost in the wind,

while now

emerges continuously

before vanishing into memory,

and every moment

is woven into

who we become.

And like a leaf might forget

it’s growing on a tree,

or a wave forget it’s part of the ocean,

we can lose touch

with the silent voice

of our heart,

but there’s always the choice

to focus inward,

and know again we’re woven

into all life,

and find the inspiration

to change

what needs to be changed,

as dark moments blow away

like clouds across the windy sky,

bringing us

moments of beauty

in the endless transience of life,

like sunlight dancing

on the surface of an ocean.

Something inexpressible

in the Universe

is living through us,

expressing itself as all life

and all experience of life,

like an unheard music

it’s arranging the orchestration

of stars, electrons

and the beat of our heart,

it’s the one conscious space

holding the Universe together,

and it’s inspiring change in all of us,

helping us see how to return

to living in sync

with the heart of the Universe.
Vitalik Buterin Tells Students That Blockchain Is Too Focused on Crypto Values
Tags: Bitcoin, Vitalik Buterin, Blockchain, Ethereum, Crypto

Vitalik Buterin sees limited use from current blockchain technology, citing part of the problem from false values attributed to tokens.

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin spoke on a panel regarding the future of blockchain at an event hosted by Blockchain at Berkeley. The student-run organization witnessed an open discussion between Buterin and “Crypto Congressman” Jason Hsu. Among a number of topics surrounding the emerging market was the uncertain outlook for blockchain moving forward.

The amount of sustainable usage of blockchain is very low. / Vitalik Buterin

There is a persisting misconception regarding the scope of blockchain application in business and financial environments. Opportunity stems from DApps hosted on networks like the Ethereum platform which allow for revolutionary uses of data tracking and international monetary transactions. The potential for this technology is the base for many calling it the next Internet, but social opinion has been misguided. Large news outlets have led to public eyes tying the success of token values (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple) to the success of the underlying technologies. Buterin spoke to the dangers of this mindset as value is often misattributed.

There are a lot of people giving value to cryptocurrencies, yet the amount of useful stuff happening is still much lower than the $200 billion market cap makes it seem. / Buterin

Buterin discussed a number of grand ideas that would help push blockchain towards the potential arbitrarily described in the crypto market. An idea like a state-sponsored cryptocurrency would be met with opposing voices, while something like day-to-day transactions via Bitcoin is not as far away as some may think.

An oversaturation of the crypto and blockchain markets makes it difficult to filter out the schillers from the contributors. Listening to actual innovators like Buterin is valuable in developing an educated view of the market. However, regulatory and administrative obstacles will slow universal progress.

Disclaimer: information contained herein is provided without considering your personal circumstances, therefore should not be construed as financial advice, investment recommendation or an offer of, or solicitation for, any transactions in cryptocurrencies.
Having Lost Something Important: Womanpause
By: Rhyena Halpern
Tags: Menstruation, Womens Health, Sexuality, Menopause, The Male Gaze

Photo by Elle Hughes

I am post-menopausal for about a decade and find societal attitudes about women’s sexuality in this stage of life fascinating. Menopause is a new frontier. We don’t know nearly as much about it as pregnancy or diabetes or heart disease or even dying. Is it because its women’s health and thus a lower priority? Sure, that is part of the reason. But we also don’t know a lot about menopause because we have never lived long enough to adequately understand it. We used to die a lot younger, often before we went into menopause. In “Flash Count Diary: Menopause and the Vindication of Natural Life” author Darcy Steinke calls it “an enigma,” and a rarity in the animal world. Few species have long post-reproductive lives. Most female primates in the wild die before they stop cycling.”

Menopause is best seen as a modern, human developmental phase, much like the onset of our menses in adolescence. It was not too long ago that women who were getting older- and perhaps more assertive or more melancholy- were written off as dingbats or hysterical or worse. How many were locked up? Now we know the change is a lot more complex, with many implications for wellness, aging and a woman’s personal reckoning with herself and her life.

Are we getting darn tired of the male medical gaze into our postmenopausal vaginas yet? Do we want our vaginas described as shriveled, dry and not necessarily receptive to {their} male organs? The male perspective makes us dismissed, invisible, and desexualized. In fact, when I searched for synonyms for the word ‘menopause’ in the online Power Thesaurus, the equivalent words appear to be the epitome of the male gaze:

Unproductive, Unfruitful, Sucked dry,

Unplowed, Dried up, Wasted,

Drained, Exhausted, Desolate,

Fruitless, Fallow, Dry

Jejune (meaning dull, flat, boring, banal, tedious, uninteresting, insipid, vapid)

Look around, fellows! Do women over 50- running companies and making art and leading movements and keeping it all going- deserve such descriptors? Does Nancy Pelosi or Meryl Streep or the late Toni Morrison seem fallow to you? What about the sexy Helen Mirren? We are also knocking it out (despite my dislike of sports metaphors) in the bedroom. The reported rise in STD’s in people over 60 attests to that.

How shall we seize and recreate the definition of menopause? What does the post-menopausal vagina feel like from the female gaze? Perhaps a bit smaller due to the converging forces of gravity and childbearing. Perhaps the vaginal tissue is a bit thinner with less estrogen circling about; often resolved with lubricants and specialized organic creams. What word honors the decades of fertility and menstruation that gives way to a new period characterized by confidence, calm, reflection, not putting up with anyone’s shit, and hopefully pearls of earned wisdom? Menopause- or perhaps womanpause- gives us the space to pause, take a breath, and proceed with absolute, quiet clarity.
The sun and her rays
By: Florence Wanjiku
Tags: Poetry On Medium, Encouragement, Difficult Times, Poetry, Poetry Writing

There will be days

when the sun wakes up

and forgets to wear a smile

or glowing serum

There will be days

when the sun crawls out

on the wrong side of the bed

There will be days

The world won’t feel her rays

and clouds will be like obstacles

There will be days when

she has to work from home

and won’t have to worry about

being radiant

She will shine just enough

to bring light into our days

to fight through the clouds

to let the world know

It has to keep moving!
Vim Tutorial: Tips to Write Code Faster
By: Jacob Comer
Tags: Code, Vim, Efficiency, Programming, Software Development

With how much code you produce in a day, mastering your text editor is an investment that will pay dividends for the rest of your engineering career.

While programming happens in your head, it often takes a mountain of experimental code (littered with dead ends) before you finally land on the concise, 37-line pull request you originally intended to create.

That’s a lot of typing, and an opportunity to reclaim time on the calendar.

This tutorial is for engineers who have dabbled with vim here and there, but wouldn’t call themselves an expert yet. You’ve learned how to actually close the application, but everything else still feels a little intimidating.

This post highlights simple techniques you can use while modifying just about any code snippet, and skips over advanced functionality that doesn’t see much use throughout the average coding session.

Situational commands have their place, but they shouldn’t take priority over mastering the fundamentals during your first few months with vim.

Your biggest productivity leaps will come from analyzing basic habits with a critical eye, and finding opportunities to shave 3 seconds off of the small movement patterns you find yourself repeating 600 times every month.

Even if it only takes a second to move your hands off the home row to navigate using the arrow keys, that’s ~60 minutes lost to opportunity cost by the end of the quarter. They feel quick and harmless in the moment, but those micro-inefficiencies stack up quickly over the course of a career.

Navigate and Manipulate Lines Efficiently

Normal mode is where you want to spend most of your time within vim.

Insert mode is great when you actually want to type something, but try to err on the side of hitting CTRL+[ / CTRL+C to return to normal mode after (or the ESC key, if moving your pinky down to CTRL feels uncomfortable).

When using normal mode, vim remaps your entire keyboard to place as many programmer-centric features around the home row as possible, and the majority of vim’s advanced text manipulation and navigation lives here.

Check out these useful commands to work with lines more efficiently…

Capitalization matters! For the A command, you’re essentially typing Shift + a

These shortcuts will shave 30 seconds off most code snippets, and I’d recommend doing whatever it takes to commit each one to muscle memory.

Also, while navigating character-by-character, try to get into the habit of using h (left), j (down), k (up), and l (right) instead of the arrow keys.

While awkward at first, most of vim’s advanced text manipulation lives around the home row keys, and you’ll miss out on a lot of the fluidity this editor can offer if you’re always moving your hands around.
UX Research เขาทำอะไรกันบ้างนะ​
By: Hru Vetsutee
Tags: Product Design

product management learner, working with organizations to change the way they think and work

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