fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Announcement #22: Massive BNS trading contest
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Win, Bitbns, Kucoin, Trading Contest

Dear Users,

Hope you loved the ad you saw in Economic times yesterday. We saw great reception across the board for the ad and even the strongest critics of Bitbns loved it. We would keep working towards spreading the word around bitcoin and BNS over the coming days.

We have been saying it from the very beginning that BNS would bring along some amazing opportunities. And one critical element has been building liquidity. To augment that, we are presenting — “BNS Trading Competition on KuCoin”. All traders and KCS holders are eligible to participate on 26th August 2020, 18:00:00 (UTC+8) and the campaign ends on 2nd September 2020, 18:00:00.

If you missed the recent BNS Spotlight sale early this month, we are back with another lot of 375,000 BNS.

Participation Rules & Rewards

A total reward of 375,000 BNS has been divided into 3 parts:

200,000 BNS for top 20 traders (trading volume-wise)

2. 100,000 BNS collective reward: Exclusively for KCS Holders:

The first 200 KCS holders who satisfy the below mentioned criteria win 500 BNS each:

BNS volume of 10,000 BNS or more during the campaign.

Have BNS/USDT and BNS/BTC trade pairs to their favourite list

Average KCS holdings equal to or more than 5,000 KCS for 7 days before 00:00, 26 August 2020 (UTC+8). See rules for KCS holding calculation here.

3. 75,000 BNS — Participation Award for a Minimum Entry Threshold

75,000 BNS token will be distributed among all traders meeting the following criteria:

Have a BNS trading volume of 10,000 BNS or more during the campaign.

Have BNS/USDT and BNS/BTC trade pairs to their favourite list

Have their KYC approved and passed.

Well that’s all there is to know about the campaign. Ready for the reWARds?

Till Then

Onwards and upwards

Warm Regards

Team Bitbns
The kids are alright. Grandpa’s the problem.
By: Jeff Jarvis
Tags: Facebook, Fake New, Journalism, Research

NYU and Princeton professors just released an important study that took a set of fake news domains identified by BuzzFeed’s Craig Silverman and others and asked who shares them on Facebook. They found that:

Sharing so-called fake news appears to be rare. “The vast majority of Facebook users in our data” —more than 90 %— “did not share any articles from fake news domains in 2016 at all.”

Most of the sharing is done by old people, not young people. People over 65 shared fake news at a rate seven times higher than young people 18–29. This factor held across controls for education, party affiliation and ideology, sex, race, or income.

It is also true that conservatives — and, interestingly, those calling themselves independent — shared most of the fake news (18.1% of Republicans vs. 3.5% of Democrats), though the researchers caution that the sample of fake news was predominantly pro-Trump.

Interestingly, people who share more on Facebook are less likely to share fake news than others, “consistent with the hypothesis that people who share many links are more familiar with what they are seeing and are able to distinguish fake news from real news.”

Compare this with accepted wisdom: That fake news is everywhere and that everyone on Facebook is sharing it. That Facebook users can’t tell fake from true. That young people are sharing this stuff and don’t understand how media work and thus are in need of news literacy training. Not so much.

Instead, we need other interventions: start by worrying about Grandpa. But I will argue this is not about dealing with Grandpa’s inability to discern facts. Fact-checking won’t enlighten Gramps. Instead, we have to examine Grandpa’s misplaced sense of anger, victimhood, paranoia, and general grumpiness. Grandpa grew up in a great time in this country and saw tremendous progress. So what’s making Grandpa into such an angry, loud-mouthed jerk?

Well, there’s another external factor that this study could not deal with. The factor I want to examine is how many fake-news sharers — how many Grandpa’s — are influenced by media, namely Fox News and talk radio.

I’d love to see more research such as this. I want to see Facebook and the platforms cooperate and hand over more data.

The researchers — Princeton’s Andrew Guess and NYU’s Jonathan Nagler and Joshua Tucker — point out that they lack data on what these older users are seeing in their feeds. To get perhaps some insight on that, go to Facebook’s new, open political ad archive, search on any contentious topic — say, “wall” — and you will see how money vs. money is battling for the minds of America. Look at Trump’s latest ads and I found in many of them that they were directed mostly at people over the age of 65.

Research such as this is critical to inform our discussion and fend off stupid interventions and decisions fueled by bad presumption and moral panic. More, please.

* Thanks to Josh Tucker for alerting me to this research — and for the joke in the headline.
Korean Exchanges Reviewed & Bancor Hacked | News Update 11/07/18
By: Joseph Harris
Tags: Events, News, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Investing

Disclaimer:

Any statements I make in these videos are just my opinion, and should not be taken as investment advice.

Please do your own research in addition to watching these videos, ensure you are fully confident in any investment decisions you make, and never invest money you cannot afford to lose.
The Ultimate Guide to Writing for Major Publications Like Forbes and Inc Magazine
By: Nicolas Cole
Tags: Publishing, Marketing, Public Relations, Forbes, Writing

The Ultimate Guide to Writing for Major Publications Like Forbes and Inc Magazine

First of all, do you even need to be in them?

I’ve been published in almost every major publication on the internet.

TIME. Forbes. Fortune. Business Insider. CNBC. The Chicago Tribune. Slate. The list goes on.

I’ve also had over 50 articles “go viral,” meaning they accumulated at least 100,000 views each. I’ve even had articles, like this one republished by Business Insider, accumulate over 5,000,000 views.

So whenever aspiring writers, all the way up to founders of companies, ask me how they can get published by major publications, the first thing I do is ask them this question:

“Why do you want to write for a major publication?”

The reason I ask this question is because I’ve learned a lot about the publishing landscape over the past decade — particularly the past five years of my writing career.

I’ve written over 4,000 articles (under my own name) on the internet. I’ve also ghostwritten close to 1,000 articles for founders, C-level executives, investors, etc. I’ve now gone on to build a writing and thought leadership agency called Digital Press that does this at scale. My company is now one of the largest producers of high-performing thought leadership written content online.

Through all of these experiences, I’ve learned that most people (especially leaders in their industry) want to write and get published in major publications but aren’t really sure why. If I ask them what their end goal is, they usually just say, “Because it’ll give me credibility,” or something along the lines of, “Because major publications get millions of views.”

Look, I remember wanting to write for a major publication too. Right after I graduated from college with a degree in creative writing and no real writing portfolio, I thought the next milestone for me was to have a column. And I wrote relentlessly until, one day, I was given my own column by Inc. Magazine. But that experience also taught me a lot about how the landscape “truly” operates — which is what I’d like to share with you here today.

So, if you want to know how to write for online publications like Inc., Forbes, or Minutes, there are six things you need to know first:
Food makers in Portugal decide to go Kosher — Here’s why
Tags: Kosher, Jef, Spain, Portugal, Ethics

Serra da Estrela, Portugal’s tallest mountain range, has emerged as a real powerhouse for kosher food, as reported by The Times of Israel.

It is an unexpected development for a region with about 50 Jews. However, while Jews there are not so many, 20% of Iberians of the area are thought to possess Jewish ancestry.

The kosher food production is in fact a way for them to get closer to Judaism and also a successful business choice.

In 2017, one of Serra da Estrela’s oldest producers of olive oil, Casa Agrícola Francisco Esteves, located in the town of Manteigas launched a kosher label just in time for the Jewish festivity of Hannukkah. In 2010, the town of Belmonte started hosting an annual kosher market in the days before of the Jewish new year’s festivity, Rosh Hashanah. In a nearby town, the Braz Queijos cheese factory got a kosher certificate for most of its products in 2009. In 2004, a winery in the area became Portugal’s first kosher-certified wine in centuries.

The kosher trend shows Portugal’s growing awareness of its rich Jewish history. About hundreds of thousands of Jews lived in Portugal before 1536, when Portugal’s church joined the Spanish campaign of expulsion and Inquisition.

On the other hand, the food producers’ choice of turning kosher is also motivated by a desire to revive the Portuguese and Spanish economies where the unemployment rate is really high.

On a national level, both Portugal and Spain have undertaken moves to atone for the Inquisition. In 2015, both countries permitted some 5,000 descendants of Sephardic Jews to obtain Spanish or Portuguese nationalities.
ASSU Executive Debate Wrap-up
Tags: Poetry, Startup

by Kyle Huwa

The ASSU Executive Debate occurred this evening, featuring the three remaining slates: Macgregor-Dennis/Druthi, Zimbroff/Wagstaff, and Koning/Ameli, the joke Chappie slate. Just a few notable points:

– much of the debate was a back-and-forth between Stewart Macgregor-Dennis and Robbie Zimbroff concerning what the ASSU could be doing and what they’ve already done. Stewart argued that much of the Zimbroff/Wagstaff campaign platform has already been implemented or undertaken, specifically the textbook exchange. Robbie rebutted this fact by reading a statement about the textbook exchange being delayed, but Stewart argued that the system is basically created and just needs to be reimplemented.

– Robbie and William downplayed the need for ASSU experience, as neither of them have any. Stewart and Druthi argued that experience would be a positive for their slate.

– Stewart noted, in response to a question about student body perception of the ASSU, that the Cruz/Macgregor-Dennis team has taken “a more eclectic, more balanced approach” as the year has progressed.

– Each slate had to give an example “of positive student leadership within student government that you’ve seen in your time at Stanford.” The people each slate named are listed below:

Macgregor-Dennis/Druthi — Michael Cruz Koning/Ameli — Stewart Macgregor-Dennis

Zimbroff/Wagstaff — Johhny Dorsey and Fagan Harris (past ASSU Executive slate)
The Love and Hate Relationship We have with Programming
By: Ann Adaya
Tags: JavaScript, Software Development, Work, Software Engineering, Programming

Is it passion?

I’ve been working so hard more than I should, I’ve been spending so much time at work more than I have to, I always end up studying during weekends and holidays instead of some entertainment, gatherings, or any other social activities.

That sometimes even during vacation, I just couldn’t leave my laptop behind.

I’ve heard people saying follow your passion all the time, I’m pretty sure programming isn’t one of mine.

When I started, I hated programming, I cursed it multiple times because it’s just so hard.

It’s so exhausting, very time consuming, and I’ve always felt like my head is about to blow up, you see I’m just an average student like most people, I did well in college and I was also part of the soccer varsity team so I really have to work harder than everyone else — no above-average grade and no skills — no full scholarship.

I wasn’t a top student, I do average in math, but I think the best trait I have learned was that — if you want something you go get it, period.

For every game, no matter how big or small your opponent is, the team who wants it more always win, it’s some of the lessons I have brought with me all along, and its probably one of the things that kept me up all night and get me out of bed early the next day — let me tell you again, programming wasn’t my passion, I never have thought about it to be my job.

That’s the thing, you will never really know what you truly want if you won’t try and if you won't give yourself enough time to figure things out — so give it a try, give it a chance and who knows it could be something life-changing.

I found my first developer job in 6 months, I’ve heard a lot of other aspiring developers telling me that it was because you got lucky and not everyone could experience that — all I can hear are just excuses.

It wasn’t about me being lucky, actually, it doesn’t just come along and whisper ‘you can find it here’ — luck is something you have to work for, something you have to chase, it is not something you can just stumble upon — it is something you create.
Life Is Full of Excuses Not To Live
By: Rosie L
Tags: Self Improvement, Life Lessons, Depression, Books, Mental Health

Life Is Full of Excuses Not To Live

Stop feeding your demons

‘The trick is not how much pain you feel — but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain. Life is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses, excuses, excuses.’ — How To Save Your Own Life, Erica Jong

As a teenager, I always figured I would grow up to self-destruct.

It seemed like the logical progression.

I was fascinated by notions of addiction, annihilation, intoxication, obliteration, by dark smoky bars and running through city streets at night, bodies hurtling into pockets of empty air, cars skidding down long roads, red lips and smudged black eyes, by noise and movement, by fury and fear.

I wanted to find something that would eat me up. Something that would consume me and ultimately destroy me.

It is the natural step when you are old enough to hate yourself but not old enough to have the means to tear yourself to shreds.

You dream of it. You dream of how you’re going to destroy the self you haven’t even formed yet. The idea of growing into something good seems too overwhelming, too exhausting. You’d much rather opt out altogether. Life seems like a terribly long time to try hard for.

But not really. What I truly wanted was something to write about, something other than the torturous drip-drip of words onto my notebook pages without anything much to back them up. The same few crushes, same few annoying teachers, same few streets. The same aching dissatisfaction.

Self-destruction appeared to be a good option. Plenty of material there.

Judging from, well, the entirety of literary history, there seemed to be no limit to how much you would write about red wine and waking up in strange places and peeling back the layers of self until you lost your links to anything and floating unmoored through the world without the conventional rules to tether you and finding alternate places where the usual logic crumbles.

Why bother trying when self-destruction is much more alluring?
Restoring an MSSQL DB Running Docker Using Linux… on a Mac
Tags: Restore, Docker, Ms Sql Server, Linux, Backup

First off, I wish I could throw more technology at that title.

Let me start with the set up. I will say I am no DBA, I am simply an architect/developer that often has to solve problems quickly and move on.

I was recently tasked with extracting data from an MS SQL Database; I was given a database backup and a short timeline. The first thing I needed to do was set up MS SQL Server and recover the database from the backup file to begin working.

I wanted to do this quick, and easy, and I needed to do this without provisioning a server, or installing SQL Sever, etc. After all I have a Mac and It is not like I can easily install SQL Server.

My first course of action was to leverage Docker; luckily Microsoft supports an official container that includes SQL Server on Linux for Docker Engine; which includes everything we need to restore a database from a backup.

See https://hub.docker.com/_/microsoft-mssql-server for full details.

What I wanted to do here, was walk through the few easy steps on how I restored a database from a backup into a linux docker container running MSSQL. The reality is, I was shocked at how easy it was to do.

Prerequisites:

First off, We need Docker installed. If you do not — please install docker. There are numerous getting started tutorials, but its always best to go to the source: https://docs.docker.com/get-docker/

We also need a database back up to work with. For the sake of our example we can use AdventureWorks2017.bak. This is Microsoft’s ‘legendary’ AdventureWorks database. Let’s download that to use as our recovery database.

Now we are ready to begin!

Steps for our Container:

As I mentioned before the first thing we need to do is grab the Microsoft SSQL for Linux container.

Open a terminal window and run:

docker pull mcr.microsoft.com/mssql/server

Lets try to run it:

This should have started running the docker container. We have a couple of things here:

ACCEPT_EULA — confirms that we accept the End-User Licensing Agreement. (PSA: one should always read Licensing Agreements before opting in)

name is what I called my running container — in my case I called it linux_mssql — I could have used any name or not included the name flag at all.

SA_PASSWORD — is the DB system administrator (SA) password used to connect to the SQL Server once the container is running. Keep in mind this does come with some password requirements/restrictions. Make sure you use a strong password.

MSSQL_PID — Is the MSSQL version that I want the container to run. I am using Express in my example, whoever, the default is Developer.

Lets run the following to verify that we are running as expected:

docker container ls

if everything is up as expected you should see the following:
The Toilet Paper Tube Diaries — April 25, 2020
Tags: Comedy, 2020, Art, Humor, Diary

The Toilet Paper Tube Diaries — April 25, 2020 anniewood Follow Dec 29 · 2 min read

Entry #8

Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash

I kept a diary during the very start of quarantine in L.A.

I wrote on the cardboard tube of our precious toilet paper rolls because having newly discovered the deep appreciation we all have for TP, I decided not to waste any part of it.

#RespectTheWholeRoll 🧻

Source: the author

Find the previous entries below. 🧻

1.

March 23, 2020

2.

March 24, 2020

3.

March 26, 2020

4.

March 31, 2020

5.

April 4, 2020

6.

April 7, 2020

7.

April 14, 2020

💌 Sign up for Annie’s monthly newsletter, What I Liked, Wrote & Drew
Moonlight — Review
By: Will Daniel
Tags: Film, Movies

Based on Tarrell McCraney’s largely autobiographical play ‘In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue,’ ‘Moonlight’ tells us a coming of age story at three different points of time in a young man’s life. Kind of like ‘Boyhood,’ except these assholes cheated and used different actors. Can you say “lazy?”

The subject coming of age here is Chiron, a gay black youth, who is portrayed in three excellent performances by Alex R. Hibbert, Ashton Sanders and Trevante Rhodes. We watch as Chiron grows up in a bad Miami neighborhood getting picked on by his drug-addicted mother (Naomi Harris) and classmates alike, finds first love, and eventually becomes a drug-dealer. I will add that this was also the profession of the his childhood father figure, Juan(Mahershala Ali), and that both are essentially dignified men of principle.

Finding him hiding from bullies in an empty building, Juan takes Chiron under his wing, and the scenes with the two of them were among the film’s highlights for me. Particularly a scene in which this young kid casually asks if his older friend sells drugs, and then openly makes the connection that his mother does drugs is simply devastating.

If you’re looking for some fancy story with twists galore or big CG explosions I guess I could tell you that ‘The Girl on the Train,’ ‘Arrival’ and ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’ are all in theaters right now, and all three are not bad either. ‘Moonlight,’ though, is one of those slice-of-life dramas, the main selling points of which are watching a character grow and that everything feels real. It’s also one of the best I’ve seen recently, and writer/director Barry Jenkins is clearly someone to keep an eye on.
Help the Aged?
By: Reuben Salsa
Tags: Salsa, Satire, Ideas, Humor, New Zealand

Help the Aged?

It’s time to adopt an age restriction

Photo by Tiago Muraro on Unsplash

All it took was a single moment. There she lay, sprawled on the floor, waving helplessly like an automated seal pup seeking reassurance.

Within days we launched our campaign in Papakura, South Auckland. It’s set to be the biggest disruptor of New Zealand Politics since the Suffragettes won the vote.

One week later, the Youth 4 Youth was polling at an unprecedented approval rating of over 82%. Change was in the air and we were excited in bringing this revolutionary idea to the shores of New Zealand.

Veal was our starting point for marketing. Culling young calves isn’t a pleasant image as they get torn from suckling the teat of their mama cows. Who wants to think about that?

Similarly, we knew that calling for the aged, decrepit, tax sucking, dementia ridden old to voluntary euthanize would never sway the public. We needed to celebrate the process.

“Youth 4 Youth — Celebrate Life” is the slogan.

South Auckland embraced the ideals of youth-centric policies. We were proud to be running a platform that promoted the young over the old. That ageism can be an derogatory term left stranded in the past. That youth would earn their place on boards as pale old white men became the first to be culled.

Culled. Such an emotional term. We prefer ‘Taking a Leap for the Community’ or ‘TLC’. Killing with kindness. Safe-guarding the future.

The millions saved on not caring or operating on our senior citizens could go towards building shiny new obelisks in honor of their sacrifice.
A Glance that Changes the Game
By: Eilidh Horder
Tags: Short Story, Short Fiction, Cheating, Creative Writing, Love

A Glance that Changes the Game

Where’s your poker face when you need one?

Hand in hand, we step in time. Still a good walk to arrive home, yet I’m there already. With you. Safe in our team of two.

I played hard to get. Even cheated. You turned a blind — tearful — eye. I enjoyed the power, holding the cards, when I had nothing to lose. Now the game has changed. I’ve finally fallen, yet feel like a winner. Your love: my golden prize.

A woman approaches, walks by. You exchange a glance. Conspiratorial. Coy.

Flirtatiously obscene.

Everything changes.

Bluff as you try, you never win at poker. The game is up, dominoes toppled. Your cards displayed upon your face.

I learn my lesson, the hardest one. Treat love like a game, prepare to lose. Tables turn.

If you break the rules, your heart could be next.
Pulled Into Form
By: J.D. Harms
Tags: Musings, Poetry, Understanding, Image

Pulled Into Form

A Poem

Photo by Daniel Olah on Unsplash

“a mystic impulse: I know what I do not know.” — Barthes

Descending images pluck

a worry fully formed

the excruciating colours of injury

grabbed by the inconsiderate hand

I want some magic

I want to feel height

I want to breathe in the sidewalk

& rain

without having to move

for a long time

pulled & turning making an immortality

Forgetting the frozen wastes

of useless memories

bodily I threw myself into this ocean

I sat on the plains

& watched all distance fail

then come alive
Bolsa de estudos para estudantes afetados pela COVID-19 no Codecademy
By: Lisandra Cruz
Tags: Learn Programming, Programming, Codecademy

in In Fitness And In Health
It’s not “just hair”!
By: Rose K. Charlotin
Tags: Self Love, Beauty, Black Women, Self Acceptance, Natural Hair

Photo by Gabriel Silvério on Unsplash

It might be surprising to you that some women of African descent grow up without even knowing what their hair truly looks like. It happens because they grew up in a world where they have been told that their hair type doesn’t fit the standard of the society, and that they have to modify it to somehow be “presentable”. I have heard the words “You have to suffer to be beautiful!” quite often in my community because that’s what we have been taught.

I remember when other people used to detangle my hair, I used to be very frustrated sometimes because it was hurting me, and because I was losing a good amount of hair. Women are sometimes forced to use chemical products on their hair such as perm because they don’t know how to take care of their natural hair. How many times have you heard “Your hair is so messy! Why didn’t you comb it?” while rocking your afro? My question for these people would be why they don’t ask that question to a Caucasian woman wearing her hair messy? The sad thing that I have realized is that people within our communities are quite often the ones who do that the most. Some people have experienced self-esteem issues, anger management problem, and suicidal thoughts or attempts for having been bullied because of their hair type. Therefore, how can you think that it is “just hair” for us?

Since I was little, I have been obsessed with having long and straight hair because that was the standard of beautiful hair. I didn’t like my own hair because instead of going down, my hair always wanted to go up when left in its free state. I also didn’t like my hair because it was hurting me when other people were trying to comb it. Our communities have lost the knowledge about how to take care of our natural hair. How did that happen?

Well, when society told our ancestors that their hair didn’t fit the standard, they decided to chemically change it and do the same to their children. Therefore, it wasn’t necessary to pass on the knowledge about natural hair anymore. After three generations, these knowledge completely disappear within the family! About four years ago, I started to watch YouTube videos about natural hair care because it’s something that has always mattered to me. I have learned not only to take care of my hair, but also to love it and be comfortable with it. I even taught my mother about the techniques and knowledge that I have acquired.

Today, I feel confident with my hair and love it because it doesn’t fit the standard; it goes way beyond that. My hair can take any form, shape, and it defies the law of gravity. How can something like that not be special? To my African brothers and sisters out there, wear your afro, your braids, your dreadlocks, your curls, your kinks, and your coils with pride! It’s not “just hair”! It’s also a matter of self-image and identity.
Ethernaut Lvl 7 Force Walkthrough — How to selfdestruct and create an Ether blackhole
By: Nicole Zhu
Tags: Ethereum, Bitcoin, Blockchain, Tutorial, Dapps

What is selfdestruct

selfdestruct is big red button that lets you abandon your smart contract and move all remaining Ethers to another address

selfdestruct(address) is a low-level opcode call, an alias for the former, not-so-greatly-named, suicide() function. Unlike other transactions, selfdestruct() consumes negative gas — so think of it as a garbage collection incentive to clean up void contracts.

When to selfdestruct

Contract owners typically include a selfdestruct option to be called in the following scenarios:

To deprecate buggy contracts: When there is a bug or undesired aspect of a smart contract, the creators can then destroy the contract and forward remaining Ethers to a backup address.

When there is a bug or undesired aspect of a smart contract, the creators can then destroy the contract and forward remaining Ethers to a backup address. To clean up used contracts that become obsolete. This is seen as a best practice to free up storage on Ethereum blockchain.

A example of how selfdestruct is often implemented:

function close() public onlyOwner {

//recommended: emit an event as well

selfdestruct(owner);

}
Portents on the Prowl
By: Benjamin Weinberg
Tags: Poetry

Island Dawn, Lanzarote, 2017 — photograph by Ben Weinberg

Thunder rumbles

rain drums

lightening tears the fabric of this early hour

dawn is rent and tattered

early morning loud with mutters and dark grumblings

streetlights glaze the roads

sullen shadows stay

scant welcome for the day

only later, will daylight creep

and dare the ‘tween time to be on her way

For now, the ancient gods are loose among us

all our doings suddenly small

our spaces, confined and cramped

while they, range freely

making the world strange

by their arrival
ราคาตลาดคริปโตเด้งกลับ! หลังจาก ก.ล.ต. สหรัฐฯ ยกเลิกพิจาราณา Ethereum เป็นหลักทรัพย์
Tags: News, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Thailand, Articles

Bitkub.com is a new generation digital asset and cryptocurrency exchange platform that offers advanced cryptocurrency exchange services

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African Andromeda
By: D Abboh
Tags: Poetry, Black History, African Woman, Andromeda, Stars

Authors note: This poem is an exploration of the racial ambiguity surrounding the legend of Princess Andromeda in Greek mythology. You can read more here.

Disclaimer: ‘the tracery of stars’ is a quote from the book The Souls of Black folk by W. E. B. Dubois
On Not Being Curated, Twice
By: Robert Bush
Tags: Short Story, Satire, Microfiction, Humor, Writing

On Not Being Curated, Twice

100 word story

Photo by Ji Seongkwang on Unsplash

‘It was bad enough not getting curated before.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well all that work I did, all those hours.’

‘Did you work hard?’

‘Did I? Every page was tear-stained with the pain of my expression, I delved deep into my heart for some of those stories.’

‘Really.’

‘Yes, I worked hard for years but never got curated, never once did one of my efforts get selected.’

‘And what’s the problem now?’

‘Well, you know the people who have stolen lots of writer’s work; they’ve even taken some complete publications?’

‘Yes.’

‘They didn’t pick my stuff either.’
Losing My Mind
By: Emma Rose
Tags: Poetry, Life, Poem, Poet, Decluttering

Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash

Losing My Mind

A poem

Here we go again.

I look around and everything

Seems a mess.

I get down to cleaning,

But nothing seems right.

Why can’t this place be less messy?

Losing my mind,

I start throwing stuff away.

Anything that’s broken,

must go.

Anything that hasn’t been used,

Is out to the trash.

Anything else that doesn't have a purpose,

Out it must go.

Ah!

Now that’s much better.

No more clutter,

No more mess.

Now I must rest.
What do they know that I don’t?
By: Lei Jin
Tags: Education

My daughter #1 is in high school now, a freshman. Initially she wanted a college admission counselor because many of her friends are getting one. She doesn’t want to miss out. FOMO, right? I promised that I would look into it. So I googled, I called, I skyped, I forwarded information to her. But she would not commit to any exploratory contact with any of the counselors. I asked her why, she said she browsed those information I forwarded, and “what do they know that I don’t”?

I remember being like that at her age: adults were just stupid, going on and on about things I already knew. In my sophomore year in college, Tiananmen square student revolution happened. My parents were so worried, my Dad, who never wrote to me before, wrote letter after letter to persuade me to sit this one out. Of course not! Luckily my friends and I dodged the worst part, we survived with the only damage being permanent skepticism and cynicism about any revolution.

Now that I’m in their spot, it’s so easy to understand where they came from. There are many things in life that couldn’t be taught by others but one’s own experience. So really, what could we teach our kids that they don’t already know but choose to ignore any way? Is it really for their benefit to shield them from real experience? We have created a bubble suffocating enough that I routinely feel sorry for my kids. There are so many risks and awards that we didn’t even allow them to experience. At least, baby, I’ll let you succeed or fail this one on your own, that’s the least I can do for the love of my life …
What is Patent Thinking?
By: Illai Gescheit
Tags: Product Design, Patent Thinking, Product Management, Patents, Design Thinking

Patent Thinking is a new design methodology which combines Patent Design and Design Thinking. Using this new ideation methodology teams, startups, academia and enterprises can develop new ideas, products and processes by prototyping a lean patent application. The applied method could take the form of an individual work or a group activity.

Patent thinking includes principles from technology, product management, product design, business and intellectual property.

Patents are considered to be one of the most classic and well known forms of clearly depicting and protecting an innovative product/service or invention by a sole inventor or a group of inventors. Patents have clear rules and structure. They have high value due to the large effort, thought and resources inventors put in to get their patents approved. In addition, they are vetted by multiple professionals for example: patent engineers, specialists, patent attorneys and the different patent offices in the countries they are submitted in. Therefore, usually you will hear of a company buying a patent portfolio for a large sum of money.

The general idea of the global and local patent systems is to allow inventors to secure the sole rights for their inventions in return to making their knowledge available to the public. After some time within the law those the knowledge is a public asset and other could use it to build great innovations on top of it. A great patent is one which a person skilled in the art, hence an engineer, scientist and an artist, can use it to build the product.

Years in the industry building products and leading innovation and ideation in different verticals made me realize that this classic structure of designing and drafting a patent is not only about protecting your idea or product as people might think, but it is more about the thinking process behind it. The structure which includes different sections such as background, detailed description of the invention, patent figures and legal claims lead the inventors through an iterative process of making their invention clear and identifying gaps and problems they address and innovate to create a better product. During drafting a patent application you understand your problem statement, goals and how you wished your final product would look like.

In future posts I will dive into the process of patent thinking, the structure of a patent and how to use it to build more creative ideas, how to prioritise your solutions using the methodology and also give a glance on leading and participating in a patent thinking workshop.

Feel free to ask me anything in the comments, and look forward to helping more inventors innovate using Patent Thinking.

Learn more about Patent Thinking: http://illaigescheit.com/patentthinking.html

Feel free to connect with me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/illaigescheit

Questions? Comments?
Chasm
By: Francis Pedraza
Tags: Taoism, Poetry, Philosophy, Business, Leadership

Poem: 35

Saturday, 05 August 2016

As a leader,

I am confronted by a chasm

What a challenge to transfer

My immense knowledge

And communicate it

I am ready to teach.

Who is ready to learn?

But what an arrogant fool am I

To think I have to teach

Anything

That I need to do

Anything

I am ready to learn

Who is ready to teach?

Teach me, I know nothing

All this is just therapy for the complicated mind.

To know what the simple intuit

Insanity,

chains of mind.

Words are redundant.

Explaining what already is.

I don’t need to enlighten others.

Unless they ask.

I don’t need to teach.

Unless they ask.

Complicated minds need complicated answers.

But simple minds don’t.

Let them be.
Were You Called Down to Earth?
By: Bingz Huang
Tags: Creativity, Poetry, Inspiration, Energy, Spiritual Secrets

Were You Called Down to Earth?

A poem and intuitive dance

Photo by ActionVance on Unsplash

Do you remember

you weren’t always here on earth?

We were tethered so tightly to Source

bundled in bliss

But we chose to heed this call

to realize our union through separation

as we stumbled down to earth

Remember

life wasn’t always this dense

this confusing

this chaotic

this polarized

Remember where you came from

so you can help from a better space

with more kindness

compassion

and gentleness

Remember

this

gentleness.
11 Major Meta-Knowledge Concepts You Need to Accelerate Your Code Creation Process
By: Aphinya Dechalert
Tags: Technology, Software Development, Education, Ideas, Programming

11 Major Meta-Knowledge Concepts You Need to Accelerate Your Code Creation Process

All the side things you need that no one really talks about

image by Aphinya Dechalert — it’s all meta

There are a lot of guides out there in the wild, most of the time, telling you what languages to learn and the hottest thing to know so that you’ll be an industry unicorn.

While they may be useful, they only guide you on the surface value. They give you a surface trajectory and if you want depth, you’re going to need to go swimming.

So, that’s what I’ve decided to do today — to help you gain the depth of knowledge needed to become a truly effective developer, but on the “meta” knowledge of programming that no one really talks about unless you’ve really put yourself into the deep end.

They are the things that computer science graduates are taught, things that those on the self-taught track often miss out on. They are foundational towards how you view and write your code.

Here is a checklist-styled guide for you to traverse and pick up in those little pockets of random curiosity.
Jesus Drives a Tesla
By: Jeff Herring
Tags: Content Strategy, Content Marketing, Motivation, Storytelling, Inspiration

Storytelling Time with Jeff

Jesus Drives a Tesla

I swear I’m not making any of this up…

Pixabay with Permission

I had occasion to grab an Uber yesterday morning

My driver’s name was pronounced “Hey — Zeus”

So when the confirmation popped on my phone it said:

“Jesus is on the way!”

Ummm…. is that for all of us or just me?

I shared this story on my Facebook Profile and I thought it might be fun to feature some of the many comments:

PS: I can confirm Jesus drives a Tesla…
Kantu Review
Tags: Technology, Rpa Tools, Robotics Automation, Automation, Business

Screenshot of Kantu Chrome Extension

What is Kantu?

Ui.Vision’s Kantu

Kantu is an open source automation tool created by Ui.Vision which combines Visual Web Automation and Selenium IDE++. It allows anyone to start writing automated visual tests with Kantu.

Main Features

Read images and words

Click, move, drag & drop and type.

Browser commands to verify and validate the layout of websites and elements

Resize browser’s window to emulate various resolutions. This is particularly useful to test layouts on different browser resolutions.

Interface

The record function is useful to perform basic functions such as clicking and typing something.

Users can choose between the table view or source view depending on their preferences.

Table View VS Source View (JSON)

Storage Modes

Storage Modes in Kantu

Inside the web browser using HTML5 local storage

Directly on the hard drive (Need to download FileAccess XModule)

If you need to collaborate as a team, it would be good to set up XModule to use the hard drive storage option. By doing so, team members can easily share macros, images and CSV files with each other by pointing the Kantu home folder to a shared location (E.g. Dropbox, Google Drive or Github)

Examples of shared locations

Top 3 Favorites from Kantu Browser Extension

Kantu provides over 20 Demo Macros for their users to try out. I have selected 3 of the demo macros that might be helpful to new users.

DemoCsvSave → Extract data from a table and download the data DemoAutoFill → Fill in data accordingly DemoTakeScreenshots → Capture screenshots using Kantu commands

Conclusion

Overall, it took me a shorter time than expected to pick up Kantu as the creators have prepared a series of demo macros for new users. By going through the demo macros, I could recycle the commands to automate my own process. Furthermore, Kantu is simple to set up. Users can start browser automation by clicking on the Kantu extension icon on their browser. Therefore, the Kantu browser extension would be a good starting point for users who have not used any RPA tools.

With that being said, the browser extension might not be sufficient for enterprise users since it only performs basic functions on web browsers. Hence, enterprise users can consider using Kantu’s Desktop Automation tool to automate more complex workflows.
“The Caucasian Panthers: Meet the Rednecks Armed, Ready and ’Bout That Anti-Racist Life”
By: Jess Brooks
Tags: Activism, Redneck, Anti Racism, Racism

“It turns out that Henson is a redneck. It also turns out that Henson is a UC Berkeley-educated economist and scholar with a Ph.D. in environmental science, policy and management and heads the Cooperative New School for Urban Studies and Environmental Justice. Henson doesn’t consider the term “redneck” a pejorative, and defines a redneck simply as “a white working-class Southerner.” He has been working for years to separate redneck culture from its neo-Confederate, racist past and redefine it according to its working-class roots.

“The only culture that white people and upper-middle-class white people have is whiteness,”Henson explains. “To fit in that class, you must strip yourself of everything else. What I would like to do is show white working-class whites that the neo-Confederate bullshit is a broken ideology. … A lot of the activism in anti-racism is all about white people giving up their privilege in regards to white supremacy. I believe that will never work with working-class whites. You have to find a way to show working folks that anti-racism is within the self-interests of working-class white people. And you have to do that with a culture.””
Face the Oasis
By: Scott Leonardi
Tags: Love Letters, Poetry On Medium, Creative Writing, Poetry, Love

Image from Wallpaperflare.com

A desert of singular decision

and broken record mantra

Survive

Dunes of chance and mirage

stretch beyond understanding

Ever-watching Eye of Fire

Feet of flames, a screeching choir

Onward only

against shredding winds,

searing grains of doubt and mania

Flesh-peelers storm the region

Skin-rippers swarm in legion

We’ll be down to bare bones

in no time at all

“This way to see

the Skeleton who stands

stiff in the sand”

8th wonder

and myth among the others

Shake the thought

One toasted toe in front of the other

But these little piggies

are looking more like pulled pork

Until

A single flitter

God’s Grand Glitter

There’s either magic on the mountain

or a pixie in my eye

Either way, I stumble scorching

watching at it flies

These boiling brains

now

simmer at the glimmer

of that distant heavenly body

playing shy horizon spy

and watching a fool on fire

face the oasis

with a newfound fortitude

and the inklings of a union

with the divine
I Shall Be Released Redux
By: Speaking Fiction To Power
Tags: Poetry, Joe Biden, News, Donald Trump, Election 2020

I Shall Be Released Redux

(Once Again, With Apologies To Bob Dylan)

Photo by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash

They say you’d never be replaced

Our devotion to him is clear

But I can’t wait to forget your face

When you’re gone I’ll raise a beer

I see Biden’s light come shinin’

From the west down to the east

Any day now, any day now

We shall be released

They say we needed your protection

They say you would never fall

But you’ll be seein’ your reflection

When you stare at your prison wall

I see Biden’s light come shinin’

From the west down to the east

Any day now, any day now

We shall be released

Yonder down here in this lonely crowd

You’re the man who swears you’re not to blame

All day long we hear you shout’n loud

Cryin’ out that you been framed

I see Biden’s light come shinin’

From the west down to the east

Any day now, any day now

We shall be released

Any day now, any day now

We shall be released
Entity vs. Behavioral thinking in software design (Pythonic vs. other philosophies)
By: Naren Yellavula
Tags: Software Development, Programming, Python, Coding, Design

Hallo, Guten tag. I am Naren, a software engineer who worked on multiple technology stacks like Python, Node JS(extensively) and Spring Boot (for few features). If an engineer is asked to build a software project from scratch, or improvise the existing project, how he/she designs the plan, i.e. whether she thinks of entities or behavior? Technically both approaches can solve the given problem. How to pick one, let us see! We at our office have many design debates every day, and this article is a side effect of one of our recent meetings. In this article, I discuss the separation of concerns and all possible ways to do that. We finally see what the benefits/drawbacks of using modules vs. classes are.

Python encourages modules for namespacing:

Modules + Functions ≥ Classes

moreover, Java encourages interfaces for code level agreements and classes for namespacing

Classes + Interfaces > Modules + Functions

In this article, I am targeting Python developers, who are developing software and want to explore various design concepts.

You can find the code samples here:

Problem Statement

Let us say we have a software project which deals with many subsystems (technical requirements) like:

AWS S3 DB Artifact (Item) — Some data structure Cache AWS Lamda

We have to implement the project in Python. If our project needs to use all of these to achieve some useful purpose, there are two ways of modeling the code.

Entity-based

Behavior-based

Thinking entities is thinking a system as an entity in software and treating it as a single point of contact for performing operations related to that entity.

Behavioral thinking is first trying to figure out all possible actions of software and grouping them under the type of behavior.

Design 1: Behavior-based (Pythonic but primitive)

After inspecting the above requirements, let us have a few files called get, put, and, delete which has the business logic for our projects. Since Python holds namespacing in modules, we can create modules for all of these functions.

pythonicBehavioral/

get.py

put.py

delete.py

main.py

tests.py

__init__.py

We defined functions in modules(namespaces) according to the behavior (outward/inward/some other). Now we can use them in our main program by importing them.

Here, we imported functions from the modules and used them to build our logic in the main program. This design is pretty good in terms of unit testing because everything is a function. To write tests, we can import all functions into our tests.py and write a TestCase and mocks. A simple and straight forward unit testing(skipping tests file in the above code samples for brevity).

Note: You can run the project with