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Update: 2020–2021 Award Season Screenplay Downloads — 4 New Scripts, 21 Total
By: Scott Myers
Tags: Film, Screenwriting, Screenplay, Movies, Cinema

It’s that time of year again when studios and production companies make available PDFs of movie scripts for award season.

As in years past, I will be tracking the year’s movie scripts as links become available.

Current total of 2020 scripts for download: 21. Newly added scripts (4): Emma, Kajillionaire, The Little Things, Judas and the Black Messiah.

UPDATE: Add one more: On the Rocks.

Antebellum (Lionsgate)

Borat: Subsequent Movie Film (Amazon Studios)

The Climb (Sony Classics)

Da 5 Bloods (via Deadline Hollywood)

Emma (Focus Features)

The Father (Sony Classics)

Herself (Amazon Studios)

I Carry You With Me (Sony Classics)

I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Netflix)

I’m Your Woman (Amazon Studios)

Judah and the Black Messiah (Warner Bros.)

Kajillionaire (Focus Features)

The King Of Staten Island (Universal Pictures)

The Little Things (Warner Bros.)

Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Focus Features)

On the Rocks (A24)

One Night In Miami (Amazon Studios)

The Personal History of David Copperfield (Fox Searchlight)

Saint Frances (Oscilloscope)

Sound of Metal (Amazon Studios)

Tenet (Warner Bros.)

The Trial Of The Chicago 7 (DreamWorks Pictures)

You should download the scripts ASAP because these links have a way of disappearing.

To access 100+ movie scripts made available by studios and production companies since 2009, go here.

Reading movie screenplays is absolutely critical to your development as a screenwriter. Along with watching movies and writing pages, it is a fundamental practice you should put into place. Make it a goal to read at least one movie script per week.

Where can you go to get access to many of the top movie scripts from 2020? Right here!

THESE SCRIPTS ARE FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY!

NOTE: Our annual Go Into The Story Script Read and Analysis series will begin in January 2021. If a 2020 movie script becomes available and you would like to read it and provide a scene-by-scene breakdown, let me know. This is a great tradition and provides a major benefit to the online screenwriting community.

Go Into The Story Script Reading & Analysis Series

Movie Script Scene-By-Scene Breakdowns

Here is the current slate of volunteers:

Antebellum / Rose Banks

I’m Your Woman / Priya Gopal

Sound of Metal / Laura Bolton

Thanks to everyone who participates in this annual project! Please email me your scene-by-scene breakdowns: GITSblog@gmail.com.
Download 2021 Oscar Nominated Screenplays
By: Scott Myers
Tags: Hollywood, Screenwriting, Filmmaking, Screenplay, Movies

All 10 nominated scripts are available as PDFs — for free!

On Monday, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Science announced the nominations for this year’s 93rd Oscars ceremony. Here are the nominees with links to download each script.

Writing (Original Screenplay)

Nominees

Judas and the Black Messiah

Screenplay by Will Berson & Shaka King; Story by Will Berson & Shaka King and Kenny Lucas & Keith Lucas

Minari

Written by Lee Isaac Chung

Promising Young Woman

Written by Emerald Fennell

Sound of Metal

Screenplay by Darius Marder & Abraham Marder; Story by Darius Marder & Derek Cianfrance

The Trial of the Chicago 7

Written by Aaron Sorkin

Writing (Adapted Screenplay)

Nominees

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

Screenplay by Sacha Baron Cohen & Anthony Hines & Dan Swimer & Peter Baynham & Erica Rivinoja & Dan Mazer & Jena Friedman & Lee Kern; Story by Sacha Baron Cohen & Anthony Hines & Dan Swimer & Nina Pedrad

The Father

Screenplay by Christopher Hampton and Florian Zeller

Nomadland

Written for the screen by Chloé Zhao

One Night in Miami…

Screenplay by Kemp Powers

The White Tiger

Written for the screen by Ramin Bahrani

Congratulations, writers, on your nominations!

This is a great opportunity to read some quality scripts, so hit those links before they disappear!

To download 47 movie scripts from 2020, go here.
Hi Upasana!
By: John Levin
Tags: Enlightenment, Consciousness, Cosmology, Spiritual Growth, Holographic Universe

Hi Upasana! TY very much, it makes me smile. Nov. 19 is my Meditation Birthday. How old am I? I’m not sure. I used to tell people I judge it from my last significant past life, and that’s yet another story. And now that I think about it, perhaps I’ll write a piece…

But, to the point of this one, when I started to connect to what I call the “Edge,” about 6 months ago, a lot more things, energetically, started to fall into place. There’s a lot of idiocy you can find about the “Holographic Universe,” & some true things, too, but, in essence, it’s a conjecture by Cosmologists, which springs from an actual fact in Physics about Black Holes. Physicists had an apparent conundrum with Entropy, ie, Information: What happened to all the Information contained in the stuff that fell into a Black Hole? The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics says it can’t just … disappear! And, yet, they thought that’s what was going on. Stephen Hawking showed that the “memory” of what exists in the 3D interior of a Black Hole is stored in the 2D Event Horizon (the ‘point of no return’).

So that’s what the Holographic Universe REALLY means: It’s a conjecture that all the information in the 4D (space-time) world we experience may be contained in a 4–1 “Hologram” in the Boundary, ie, the Edge, of our Universe.

Cool … Now, plug that into so many non-scientifically stated traditional concepts … the Akashic Records or (if the Universe is alive:) “God knows all.” Wow! or, also, how do “past lives” actually work?

And I’ll drop you just one more: In the Special and General Theories of Relativity, there’s something called the Equivalence Principle, that there’s no absolute frame of reference — WHEREVER you are, you appear to be at the Center — conversely (get ready) and this is me talking again, wherever you are, you’re in the Edge. William Blake, a universe in a raindrop. Hold onto your hat!

Isn’t that fun? Thanks, Upasana! Catch you again later! I must have put something in my coffee…

John
Hi Amy! I’m so glad you read this one.
By: John Levin
Tags: Enlightenment, Consciousness, Cosmology, Spiritual Growth, Holographic Universe

Hi Amy! I’m so glad you read this one. Physicists like to say, “You can’t ask what happened BEFORE the Big Bang” becuase time and space only came into existence THEN. As I feel more and more how things work, combined with my scientific bent, I combine meditative Knowing with the actual Physics behind it. If it’s real, it has to be real … otherwise it’s not!

I call the space where Universes come from, the Emptiness. I love Bodhidharma. That’s why. But you can look at so many different names that Enlightened men and women give to the experience, and they’re all trying to describe a place where NOTHING exists (and, yet, it’s full).

Krishnamurti calls it “The Pathless Path.” So many creation myths talk about the Void. Tilopa says “Mahamudra rests on naught.” Osho, when once asked to describe Enlightenment in one sentence, said, “If you win, you lose. If you lose, you lose. Win or lose, you loose.”

I’m laughing with actual tears in my eyes … but, as I mentioned to Upasana, it must be the coffee.

Take care. Thanks for reading!

John
How many of us really feel — feel every single emotion that radiates from our insides?
By: Krystle Jenna Dookoo
Tags: Enlightenment, No Fear, Positivity, Vulnerability, Positive Thinking

How many of us really feel — feel every single emotion that radiates from our insides?

We’ve been conditioned to believe that “to feel” means we are weak.

We’ve been taught that “to feel” means that we are vulnerable.

Since when has vulnerability become a negative thing?

Being vulnerable means that we are in tune with our feelings — that we can step out and give something a go because we are not afraid to feel the emotions that may come along with it.

Yes it is important to protect ourselves, but sometimes we confuse protection with imprisonment. We trap ourselves in our own tower without realizing it because we are too busy trying to not let anything in that may hurt us.

While pain and hurt is something I don’t necessarily look forward to, I have learnt that when you follow your heart and let it be your guide, there is a possibility of being hurt. However there is a possibility of achieving the very dream you’ve lived for — but it comes with a risk.

How many of us are willing to accept the risk that you might get hurt once you decide to go after your heart’s desires?

Each time I’ve experienced hurt — I’ve experienced a re-birth. I’ve learnt something about myself, I’ve grown stronger and I’ve become even more determined to not give up on the feeling that resides within me. In retrospect, though I feared it before, now it makes me realize that if I encounter this risk, well it will only make me better in the long run and will fuel me in some form or fashion to continuously and passionately pursue the burning desires of my heart.

Every step you take in this life is a scary one. Most times, its the fear of rejection and self-doubt that keeps us back. Fear is not real and it is definitely not bigger than us. G

Live your life with abandon. Total abandon to the service to God, service to your fellow human beings and service to yourself. Trust your heart, trust God, trust The Universe and when the fear creeps in, look it in the eye and speak the words of doubt away!

Your dreams are not far-fetched and it will take hard work, perseverance and commitment to see it come to pass, but it all starts with stepping out in faith and responding to your heart with a resounding “I will give it a try!”
The Pity I Gave Life To.
Tags: Enlightenment, Pity, Joy, Self Improvement, Divine

When you have a victim mindset you do not see what you are feeding life into.

Some of us work at jobs where it started out good then hell breaks loose and it seems those who befriended you at the beginning for some reason starts hating on you. It seems certain people start finding ways to show you in a bad light.

Without realizing your own behavior changing you start telling yourself, “Why me?”, “Why does no one treat me good anymore?”

Everyday you try to smile but it just feels like your only smiling not to show what kind of pain your in. Then you stop talking to your co-workers and you find out the only people you talk to are the one’s who are complaining about their job. You feel so sad that you are not appreciated but you forget how you have changed your behavior. You do not see what has change you when you gave life to pity asking yourself, “Why me?”

This kind of story happen to me when I didn’t speak up to deal with my problems. I started giving life to my own pity, “Why me?” Everyday I didn’t see how my own behavior change and the people I choose to talk to there was no solutions but complaints. Then someone held the mirror of truth and I saw how I was the complainer. I was the one who had no solution to my complaints.

What change me from pitying myself?

I saw I was feeding pity instead of problem solving. I was feeling sorry for myself because I wasn’t facing my challenges in life with solutions. So I made a decision. I decide to stop feeding pity and start giving life to appreciation. Appreciate the people in my life that like to see me at my best performance. Appreciate the opportunity to show I have the talent and abilities to get results.

How showing my appreciation & being grateful has change everything. My smiles are no longer covering pain. My smiles are more genuine showing I am truly happy & grateful.

Sometimes in life it is easy to feel sorry for oneself instead of seeing there is a problem to solve and you have the abilities to find that solution.

If this story is relatable to you and you are needing 1-on-1 coaching Let’s Connect @ inspirebyjoy.com
She is a light of my life
By: Jatin Gupta
Tags: Enlightenment, Romance, Life, Love

I want to discuss with you, the reason you called her, specifically her (yes being here not gender neutral) light of my life. What is the darkness that she uplifted? How she lightened your life? What if her light is blinding? Won’t you blind when you come from darkness to the light? Let’s see answers to these questions one by one

Photo by Jackson David on Unsplash

First, Let’s ask what is the darkness you are leaving with. To answer this dark doesn’t means black. It can be defined rather through negative sense i.e. absence of light. One therefore can associate light with anything that is realistic. For e.g. knowledge can be that light, a special song, music, moment, even a value ridden girl. Hence we have to define rather what is this light actually is?

Light is information. In this world since interaction is the major goal of life. Any interaction which derives our belief (be it emotional, rational, value) to other side is the information. That is the main goal of information/ knowledge (as even shannon calculated). Any or everything that flickers the galvanometer of belief is light. Very well, so what darkness is then?

The absence of the changing information is darkness, which means it is a relative terminology!! Say, you are living your life in a certain way with certain set of knowledge and something happens that shifted that balance is taking you out of darkness. The problem being with such darkness is even if you are in light you adapt and grasp accordingly. It changes the norm of the darkness. Now the grasped thing is you darkness.

To the next question, How did she lightened your life. It’s fairly easy as well. She brings the new knowledge or new value system that you ignored or were consistent with it. She is the thing you might not have ascriptive — say beauty, or you desired — such as attitude. One thing for sure is that whatever that is, they all are in the physical world and cannot be “one’s”. You might have heard most of the time that love is blind or justice is blind. Are they really blind? or whatever is that which is blinding in them?

Blinding is the quantity of light which is held in short duration of time. Anything which is revolutionary is happening in small interval of time. The fact of life is we are slowly change, the information which is given in short is enlightening, may be that is why they termed period in France as revolution and enlightenment.

So, if you consider someone or something as light of your life, keep the spark up with new adventures and knowledge.
Dialogues With My Self
By: Anjali A. Sarkar
Tags: Enlightenment, Journal, Yoga, Reflections, Philosophy

Dialogues With My Self

Photo by Form on Unsplash

Careful observations of my mind and actions have led me to believe that I am not one but many in a seemingly unified whole. This has to be true because at any point in time, at least some parts of me are always at war.

For example, yesterday, for the first time, and again this morning in my yoga practice, I was able to graze the wall with my foot in my attempts to get to Pincha Mayurasana. The exhilaration of this event is still ringing in parts of me, while other parts are chiding me for my arrogance, and still other parts are outright jealous or even regretful that this has not happened sooner.

Having realized I am essentially many and not one, the study of my self -of my mind, body and spirit — has become even more complex and contradictory. Where and how do I establish a method in this madness is the central question I’m trying to figure out. Any methodical approach, by definition a scientific pursuit, needs at its foundations, well, a method. The methods I employ are yoga and writing.

My yoga practice demands of me a lot of faith, perhaps because in most aspects, I begin from a level below zero with no glimmer of improvement over phases that feel like eternity. The parts of me that subscribe to faith and tradition have always been in conflict with the parts of me that subscribe to doubt and reason. The only point they seem to agree upon is that any practice worth undertaking should only be undertaken for the highest of goals, for the absolute Truth, for Samadhi. What else is worth waking up for?

Once when I asked John outright at a discussion group, “How do I knowyoga will lead me to Enlightenment?”, he said to me something along the lines, “I hope you find enough reasons in what you get in class to keep up a faithful practice”. When you look at it that way, faith and reason do not seem that contradictory. In fact, they could be claimed to be quite complementary notions. The evidence my reasoning accepts fuels my faith, and my faith in keeping to the practice provides me more evidence.

I keep a keen eye out for nuggets of such evidence — like a toe off the floor in Bakasana, that affirms the faith that I won’t fall on my face, like a sole on the wall in Pincha Mayurasanathat has found enough reason to believe my chest will withstand the expansion, like the face of a long-lost friend glimpsed in dhyanamaterializing at my doorstep — coaxing me to toy with the idea that I might just be in alignment with the Universe after all.
A pandemic diary: Not the A list, the V list
By: David Swan
Tags: Pandemic Diary, Covid Vaccine, Over 65, Phase 1a, Georgia Covid Cases

January 20, 2021

As of yesterday I’m officially in line for the vaccine. I don’t know when they’ll be able to schedule me but at least it’s a start, a first step out of the morass. I’m eligible because I’m over 65, though I don’t feel half as deserving as the others in Phase 1A: health care workers, long-term care facility residents and staff, law enforcement, firefighters, and first responders. We also need to prioritize people like teachers, bus drivers, meat plant workers, grocery clerks, and before tornado season comes along, power-line crews.

I’m not worried about side effects; I’m used to occasional aches from my allergy shots, and a temporary sore arm is a very small price to pay. My nightmare would be getting my first shot and the supply running out before I’m ready for the second round. Even with Moderna vaccine, which doesn’t have to be kept super-cold like Pfizer, too many problems are happening in storage and transport.

As tired as I am of hunkering down, I’m not fool enough to resurrect my old normal as soon as the needle comes out. According to my provider, the vaccine is effective, “as soon as one to two weeks after you receive the second dose,” which means the whole process, from first shot to immunity, could take a month and a half. No sweat: I can hold off on restaurants, haircuts, in-person shopping etc., for a while longer. The things I miss most, like jazz clubs, aren’t back yet, and with cases spiking and new variants loose, it’s not a good time to be out and about in Georgia. Yesterday: 8,201 cases, down slightly over seven days, but 212 deaths — up 208%.

We may not yet see light at the end of the tunnel, but for the first time in a year we have reason to believe it’s coming. Take care and be safe.
SOBERING THOUGHT OF THE DAY
By: Judith Liebaert
Tags: Pandemic Diaries, Thought Of The Day, Price Gouging, Coronavirus, Badass Women

MARCH 25, 2020

I’m a frugal person. Finding a good bargain beats any substance high I’ve ever had — well, except maybe for morphine (it was Rx and necessary). That’s some good shit.

The opposite of a bargain induced high is what I imagine detoxing from addiction must be like. When my mother passed, she left all of her children a small sum in CDs. In honor of her, she who had never had a home where all the furniture was coordinated or purchased as a set, I decided to buy matching end tables for my living room, from a real furniture store.

I don’t recall the exact price tag; I’ve wiped it from my memory. I think it was something like $700 for the pair. They are well built, weigh a ton and, I have to say, beautiful. They’ll last for generations. On the drive home, with one stuffed in the back seat and one in the trunk (I wouldn’t pay for delivery), I started feeling nauseous, my head was pounding, every nerve in my body was on high alert, the slightest touch was excruciating. That’s how much I hate overspending.

When Covid-19 in the U.S. first came on my radar I acted early, purchasing three packs of Clorox wipes, spray cleaner, and Lysol spray. When I now see the price gouging that’s happening on sites like Amazon and Ebay, I’m glad I acted quickly. I’m also hoping my supply lasts for the duration. I’m almost through the first can of Lysol, but we traveled 1500 miles home from Florida and I spent 45 minutes sanitizing every hotel room we stayed in, including spraying the linens on the beds.

This morning, I’m wondering how much I’d pay for a can of Lysol, or a bottle of Clorox (there was a full one in my laundry room when we made it home). Would I absolutely refuse to pay double, triple or, gods forbid, ten times the retail price to ransom any one of these common items? Is that the hill I’m going to die on?

A few days ago, this atrocity came across my Facebook feed: If you’e stocking up on food and survival items, but not guns and ammo, you’re just holding stuff for those willing to shoot you.

Earlier this week I dusted off my Ruger .22 carbine rifle and loaded the clip. I used to enjoy small game hunting now and again, but I haven’t so much as picked it up in the past twenty years.

Last fall I took my grandson to see the latest Terminator movie. It’s our new thing, he’s the only one who wants to see the same movies I do and at 13 he’s not yet embarrassed by going with his grandmother — and he gets into R-rated flicks. He laughed when I told him I wanted to see it because Linda Hamilton, aka Sarah Connor, is two years older than I am and she’s badass.

If there’s any truth to the apocalypse novels I’ve read and the movies I’ve watched, it’s that the ruthless survive.
March
By: Magdalena Salome
Tags: Pandemic Diaries, Modern Art, Art, Diary, Artist

Spring that happens without us

At the beginning of March I was still calm. Admittedly, I avoided public transport as a preventive measure and tried to walk around Warsaw on foot. I also visited my art studio several times to finish the painting River. Storm and create some sketches for the next image in the series.

We also had time to make a short escape to the forest to calm down our heads a bit. It was so deaf, wild and good. I always regain balance in the forest.

Later there was a “shut down”.

I am currently experiencing spring, watching it from outside the window. I see chestnuts trees bloom buds. When I make coffee in the morning, I have sparrow serenades under the window. Every day I am thankful that I am safe. I try to live more mindfully. I celebrate mornings, time before work.

Art in isolation

Right now, I’m afraid to go to the studio. The building in which it is located is relatively large — two floors and attic. This construction it’s unusual — in an eternal process/renovation. The painting space itself is divided by several people. My fear is justified and motivated me to arrange (better than before) creative space at home.

I ordered a wooden art-board, which I always missed, several new colors of watercolor and ink; pastels to which I returned after a few years.

Creativity is for me a language through which I express all my tensions, dilemmas, thoughts and emotions. It is something necessary and obvious. Technologically, I took a step back and began to combine watercolor with a linear drawing again. I loved this technique while still in college.

A new series of works is being created. Utopia

Two steps forward

Unfortunately, at this moment the April exhibition was canceled. Although no — this is a bad word — it has been moved to an unknown date. Everything depends on the further progression of the epidemic.

I look forward to the opportunity to exhibit and talk about live art. I still have so many projects to do this year! I hope that at least some of them will take place. I trust that very much.

At this moment, watching art online. If you have any contemporary artists to recommend, please share the link to their work!
The game that almost died during COVID and how I made it an app
By: Colton Brown
Tags: Pandemic Diaries, Web Development, Design, Game Design, Drawing

Covid Days

In those first blurry weeks of lockdown, giddy confusion eventually gave way to melancholy. To stay connected, a group of friends and I set up weekly zoom meetings. With some people cooking or working, others leaving the screen on mute while they cooked or did chores, it was the beginning of a new era of screen-based socializing. “We should play the game” somebody said. “We can use our webcams to hold up our drawings”. But it didn’t work; we needed some way to pass information to each other in secret, like little stacks of paper.

At the time my job was in hyper-bureaucracy mode; our product team was slowed to a halt by the game of thrones happening in C-Suite. It was one of those situations where the amount of time we spent getting things “right” could have easily just gone into making forward progress.

I thought building a version of the game might be a good creative outlet. Unlike the situation at work, I could build quickly and on my own, and it would be fun to share with my friends and coworkers who were all stuck on screens. Not to mention covid lockdowns had removed most other forms of entertainment (and distraction).

After back-to-back weekends spent coding, I finished a basic version of the game and sent the link to my friends on our next zoom call. I played a round with my coworkers during our Friday standup. Somebody called it Writey Drawey and the name stuck. here’s what it looked like:

It was rough around the edges, but proved good enough to spread organically through friends for the next few months. People started playing weekly with their families, across a handful of languages and countries, and even drafting t-shirt designs with the drawings they loved.

Everybody can draw

When people hear about the game, a common hesitation comes from a discomfort around drawing and art-making. “A drawing game? But I don’t know how to draw.” Yet nobody seemed to have that response when using pieces of scrap paper in a park.

Is there something intimidating about the internet? Are we conditioned to expect that our contribution will be scrutinized, measured, and compared if we post it?

Yet those same people often end up making some of the most interesting drawings filled with originality and character. It’s an example of how imperfection and vulnerability can be the most interesting parts of creative endeavors. Most children love drawing yet at some point grow up to fear it, spending their adult lives avoiding pen and paper. Yet when they do draw, the work is usually awesome and hilarious in its own right.
Design Team Collaborations during the Pandemic
By: Yellowchalk Design Studio
Tags: Designer, Pandemic Diaries, Collaboration, Remote Working

Exploring the social and psychological repercussions of the pandemic.

The economic and social repercussions of the pandemic have left most of us feeling anxious not only about the future but about the present itself. In a time of no clarity, all of us are now taking things one day at a time. The pandemic has also completely changed the way we approach our life and the one aspect which has been impacted almost universally is people’s way of working. There are only a select few people you may (or you may not) know whose working conditions are unchanged. We are all navigating through the space of what might be the new normal — working from home. We thought it would be pertinent to see how an industry like design, which heavily relies on team collaborations to move forward- is impacted.

It’s not easy to replicate the same results you would get from brainstorming sessions, ideating, and trial-and-error creative processes while you attend Zoom meetings and interact with clients and fellow designers over video calls. That’s something all designers would probably nod their heads in agreement on.

One of our designer’s told us how working from home during the pandemic has caused a shift in his work life.

“Working from home in this pandemic is definitely big a shift in the way we all used to work. The biggest challenge is managing your personal time along with work when both of them are intersecting. At the end of the day I often feel like should I feel bad for not working much or not taking care of myself enough?”

Almost everyone is grappling with issues along the same lines. When you are working from home and your room doubles as your workspace, where do you draw the line between your work and personal life? Additionally, because of the economic ramifications of the pandemic, many people are working extra hours without speaking out over fears of unemployment. To some extent, this shift of working from home has actually unveiled how unbalanced many of our work schedules are. How does one collaborate creatively and ensure that their personal life also holds a priority?

The answer to that question lies in an approach which keeps the welfare of the employees at a top priority along with keeping work on track. Planned agendas for meetings, clear communication, set deadlines with achievable timelines, and making video calls the “new normal” are a few things that we all have to embrace with open arms. Since we are losing out on informal time with our fellow colleagues, such as taking a break with them or having lunch together, taking some time off to have a call for informal conversations or maybe just to blow off steam, will also break the monotony of team collaborations only for work.

Whether this threat is short-term or long lasting, companies who can enable a virtual workforce, especially design agencies who thrive on team collaborations to get the work done, will have a significant competitive advantage in the long run.

Read more at: https://yellowchalk.com/blog/
Candid with Tim Ducey of Acey Ducey’s and Tap House — Pandemic Profiles
By: Support Forest Hills Eateries
Tags: Pandemic Diaries, Humanity, Covid 19, Food, New York City

From banker to bar owner, Queens native Tim Ducey entered the restaurant and bar industry through his love for beer. Tim owns popular sports bars Acey Ducey’s (Metropolitan Avenue) and Tap House (Austin Street), where they offer over 20 craft beers (Tap House)on tap and sides like “firecracker shrimp” and “Dewcey Brew-ito” (Acey Ducey’s) to tantalize the taste buds.

Clockwise: Tim Ducey, Acey Ducey’s, Tap House, and signature quesadillas. (Images courtesy of Tim Ducey)

We spoke* to Tim about his pandemic experience, as the bar industry has faced incredible pressure this past the year. Tim recounts the stresses of keeping abreast regulations, finding additional streams of income, and supporting his restaurant teams. The story of Acey Ducey’s and Tap House highlights and calls for empathy and compassion during trying times in the community.

How did you decide to enter the eatery business and why did you choose Forest Hills?

“After I graduated from college, I went into finance, but I made some money on the side bartending at a friend’s bar. This same friend opened Tap House and offered me a minority share. Soon, I was bartending six nights a week and I left my finance job. Four or five years later, he sold Tap House to me.

I grew up in Glendale but I’m actually very close to Metropolitan Avenue, so I’m familiar with people in the neighborhood. There was a place becoming available on Metropolitan and I opened Acey Ducey’s there. I wanted to keep it as a neighborhood bar, while making some changes. My friend, who is a chef, helped me make a really great menu. I was packed every night before the pandemic.”

What challenges have you faced during COVID?

“I’ve lost money every day since March [2020].

I haven’t been able to pay rent. At Tap House, it’s $16,000 a month, so setting dining capacities at even 50%* is like shutting me down because there’s no way to generate that type of income unless I’m allowed to fully operate. I’ve been paying employees out-of-pocket because they’re good people that I don’t want to lose, and they have families and need money, too. I also have a 17-month-old son. It’s been tough.”

Tim Ducey and his family. (Photo courtesy of Tim Ducey)

“Acey Ducey’s hasn’t been allowed to have outdoor dining because there’s a bus lane in front. I called the City to move it, but no one listened. However, when a bank was breaking ground for a drive-through, they got the bus stop moved to directly in front of the restaurant. I contacted the bank to rent their parking lot for outdoor dining, but never heard back. If I could have outdoor dining there, I would be in a better spot financially.”
Graphs and Machine Learning for Cybersecurity
By: Ryota Yamanaka
Tags: Machine Learning, Graph

OPG4Py is the Python client of Graph Server, a component of the Property Graph feature of Oracle Database. OML4Py is the Python interface of OML (Oracle Machine Learning), which is another feature of Oracle Database that enables scalable machine learning. The key advantage of OML is that all the machine learning functionality can be run on data in a database. This provides several advantages, ranging from scalability (databases can store huge volumes of data), over performance improvements (as your data does not need to be constantly fetched from the database and pushed back) to security (your data does not need to leave the protected environment of the database).

Together, OPG4Py and OML4Py complement each other and enable a user to develop fast, scalable, and secure graph machine-learning applications. In this post, we would like to demonstrate this on the example of intrusion detection.

(The original blog post can be found here, which was edited by Rhicheek Patra, Research Manager at Oracle Labs. The content here is updated for TechCasts event on July 8, 2021.)

Intrusion detection

Intrusion detection is a broad term for the monitoring of a wide range of systems and public/private network traffic. For our use case, we define intrusion detection to be the problem of monitoring public network (e.g. the world wide web) traffic and detecting malicious activity. Network traffic, in our case, is so-called packet captures which are logs of IP addresses interacting with other IP addresses. The following table is an example of such a packet capture:

The previous table can be regarded as an edge-list representation of a graph. A resulting graph might look something like this: These packet captures can naturally be expressed as graphs, by treating IP addresses as vertices and an interaction between two IP addresses A and B as an edge between the two vertices A and B.

This figure shows an example of a malicious packet capture.

The victim searches for something over a web search engine. He then clicks on one of the results belonging to the IP address A which, unfortunately, has been compromised. A then redirects the victim over several links to the IP address B, which lets the victim download an exploit. This exploit tries to get administrator privileges on the victim’s host machine and, upon success, reports the successful infiltration to its master C. Then C redirects the victim to the server D which downloads further malicious software (for example, ransomware which will encrypt your computer and demand money for its decryption).

For a more detailed explanation of packet captures and the whole problem of intrusion detection, I would like to point the interested reader to this report on DynaMiner and malware detection.

Solving the problem using OPG4Py and OML4Py

For our example, we have a lot of different packet captures, and our goal is to train a classifier that can distinguish malicious packet captures from benign packet captures.

We will solve the problem in three main stages:
Knowledge Graphs: MIT Homework
By: Pavel Ilin
Tags: Data Structures, Graph, Knowledge, Python, MIT

As you might know right now I’m MIT ReACT learner. This week we began a Computer Science course and the first assignment was to come up with the idea of using graph data structure. I thought I would use a knowledge example of a real world example of graph data structure. Also, I thought I should create one which will represent what we are going to learn through the program and the opportunity to show off during the class is priceless.

Illustration on wikimedia by Florian Thiery

Knowledge Graph

Previously I already wrote about graphs data structure so I am not going to repeat myself and go directly to the specifics of the graph with knowledge we will acquire during the MIT program.

We will create a graph of the subjects from computer and data science we probably will learn through the ReACT program. I will use undetected graphs because we just need to display connections between different subjects, but how they are related to each other will require much more complex work and I have time only till the end of the week.

Implementation

To simplify implementation of the graphs I will use library NetworkX. Let’s install it and build some graphs.

First I will create an array of main subjects within computer science and data science and link them to the computer and data science nodes. Then I will create lists of subdomain nodes and link them to the main subdomain nodes. As you can see our array looks like a linked list, where 1 element of the array points to the rest of the subdomain.

Now the NetworkX library comes into play. We will call nx.Graph() class to initiate graph object. And then we are going to use add_edges() function to create all the nodes from our data.

Now we have a graph which looks more like a tree. Let’s connect some of the subdomains nodes to each other. I’m not trying to create a complete map of the Computer and Data science field so I would just use common scenes and my recent understanding to connect the nodes. For example it’s obvious that linear algebra is related to the machine learning and search algorithms related to the graph data structure.

And to visualize our graph we are going to use matplotlib in addition to the NetworkX library.

And here is our graph:

Full code:

Conclusion

With help of the graph data structure we will not only show off during the class but also map the piece of reality you are working with and establish complex connections between elements in your ontology. I will see you in the class!

Keep learning, keep growing!
探討graph attention機制有效性 — Understanding Attention and Generalization in Graph Neural Networks
By: 許竣翔Jordan Hsu
Tags: Graph, Attention, Deep Learning, Machine Learning, Neural Networks

實驗部份

Datasets說明

1. Color counting task (上圖a）

把原圖各節點著色，計算有幾個綠色節點，因為範例有兩個綠色，所以其Ground truth attention各為1/2 = 0.5，在這個task中，graph structure is unimportant and edges of graphs act like a medium to exchange node features

2. Counting the number of triangles（上圖b）

數出原圖中有幾個三角形，這任務各個node的Ground truth attention可以透過下式來計算，比如範例圖共有2個三角形，由圖可知四個跟三角形有關係的node的Ti分別為1 2 2 1，1+2+2+1 = 6，因此attention為0.2的節點是由1/6四捨五入得來；0.3是由2/6四捨五入得來

3. MNIST-75SP（上圖c）

為了測試GNN在irregular grids上的能力，作者根據前人的論文改良了MNIST dataset，將image在避免遺失essential class-specific information的前提下，以a small set of superpixels（超像素原理可參考下方連結）來建出一個graph代表原本的image，這個graph的node features為average intensity value to all pixels within a superpixel和超像素的重心座標；edges為超像素中心之間的空間距離，Ground truth attention被定義為

作者對每張image取N ≤ 75個superpixels, 因此這dataset被稱為MNIST-75SP

4. Molecule and social datasets - more practical cases

在practical cases中，作者用了graph classification任務的benchmark datasets，如蛋白質結構dataset: PROTEINS and D&D；以及scientific collaboration dataset: COLLAB，實驗中，作者想探討attention-based model在inductive任務的能力，因此根據節點數量分割graph dataset，例如PROTEINS中，we train on graphs with N ≤ 25 nodes and test on graphs with 6 ≤ N ≤ 620 nodes

下圖為前三個任務的train&test data examples

Generalization to larger and noisy graphs

attention的一個能力是generalize to unseen, potentially more complex and/or noisy, inputs，藉由減少關注這些爛nodes來更好的訓練，因此這篇paper在test case上把原本的data做些變換，例如上圖color任務的TEST-LARGE增加不是答案的節點（非綠色）或TEST-LARGEC增加不同unseen顏色的nodes，這些以下統稱為雜訊，作者想藉由with and without attention的GNN來探討the limits of GNNs with attention，和attention在哪些任務會work，哪些任務反而有害（focus不重要的nodes or drop重要的nodes）

Loss function and training

COLORS and TRIANGLES任務中要minimize the regression loss (MSE)，其他任務則minimize cross entropy (CE)，後項的KL散度要衡量的分佈是ground truth attention和predicted attention

參數意義可參考paper section 3.3

Weakly-supervised attention supervision

現實情況中，預先知道ground truth attention幾乎是不可能的，因此本文提出了一種弱監督的訓練方法來估算attention，藉此optimize上面的total loss

首先我們想train一個model A，但我們沒有ground truth attention，所以我們可以先train一個和model A長的一樣的model B，只是model B沒有attention/pooling機制，只有最後的global pooling (e.g. readout）來做分類機率輸出，因此model B只有optimize MSE or CE的loss，訓練好之後，我們可以用以下式子來藉由model B估算attention：

y是原圖分類的prediction；yi是原圖去除node i的分類prediction

概念就是我藉由觀察有node i跟沒有node i，機率分佈的結果會差多少，如果沒什麼差，代表有沒有這node根本不重要，其attention自然就低，因此藉由上式&model B，可以得到估算的attention給model A訓練用

個人認為這方法只能知道node對整體graph的影響，不能知道是好的影響還是壞的影響，相信這也是之後可以改進的部分
Graph Data Structure
By: Amritpal Singh
Tags: Google, JavaScript, Data Structures, Graph, Algorithms

This is an example of how Google gives you directions,

Directed Graph → A graph with only directed edges (Like a 1-way street).

Above an example of a Directed Graph, you can think of this as an Instagram follow request. If you accept the request they see your stuff, however, you must also request them if you would like to see their profile.

Storing Graphs

Adjacency Matrices

An adjacency matrix is a square (NxN) boolean matrix (where N is the number of nodes). In this, we are storing information in rows and columns. We can represent the relationship between the nodes using a matrix.

Above on the right, Matrix representing the relationships for the left Graph. If you wanted to see the relationship between Node A and F, you can simply look at column F and row A. You should see Y, which means Yes. This works both ways you can first go to row F and then column A, you will get the same results.

Every time you add a new node, you will have to add an entirely new row and new column.

Adjacency List

This is the most common way to represent a graph. We can use a hash table to store a key-value pair data structure.

Using a hash table we can see A is connected with (A, B, and A, F). We can do the same for node B (B, A, and B, C).

Implementing Graph Using Adjacency List

class Graph{

constructor(){

this.adjacencyList = {};

}

addVertex(vertex){

if(!this.adjacencyList[vertex]) this.adjacencyList[vertex] = [];

} addEdge(vertex1,vertex2){

this.adjacencyList[vertex1].push(vertex2);

this.adjacencyList[vertex2].push(vertex1);

}

removeEdge(vertex1,vertex2){

this.adjacencyList[vertex1] = this.adjacencyList[vertex1].filter(

v => v !== vertex2

);

this.adjacencyList[vertex2] = this.adjacencyList[vertex2].filter(

v => v !== vertex1

);

}

removeVertex(vertex){

while(this.adjacencyList[vertex].length){

const adjacentVertex = this.adjacencyList[vertex].pop();

this.removeEdge(vertex, adjacentVertex);

}

delete this.adjacencyList[vertex]

}

}

In comparison, Adjacency List takes less space and is first when iterating, however, it can be slower when looking up specific edges. Adjacency Matrix is completely opposite, it takes more space and is slower when iterating over edges, however, its faster when looking up specific edges.

There you have it. I hope you found this blog helpful. If you’re having any difficulty or need more explanation, I’m more than happy to help you. Please connect with me on LinkedIn or my email is singhamritpal49@gmail.com. Also, check out my last blog on Deploying your React App To Heroku.

Happy Coding :)
Implementing a Graph bipartite checker in Python
By: Iran Macedo
Tags: Graph, Algorithms, Code Challenge, Bipartite Graph, Python

The problem

2014 Grad Test — Practice round.

Bad Horse Problem

As the leader of the Evil League of Evil, Bad Horse has a lot of problems to deal with. Most recently, there have been far too many arguments and far too much backstabbing in the League, so much so that Bad Horse has decided to split the league into two departments in order to separate troublesome members. Being the Thoroughbred of Sin, Bad Horse isn’t about to spend his valuable time figuring out how to split the League members by himself. That what he’s got you — his loyal henchman — for.

Solution

After reading the description some ideas came to my mind before initiate to code a possible solution.

First, I will have to store pair’s names and somehow represent the relation between then. Also, I have to be able to check the possibility to separate the pairs into 2 groups — No pair should be in the same group. With a bit more searches I’ve found out that this is classic problem of graph bipartite.

I’ve realized it’s a important step before start coding in super matrix hacker style. Analyse it, get into problem’s head.

Bipartite Graph

A bipartite graph is a graph which all its nodes can be separated in two groups so that each element of one group is only related to elements of the other group. It’s also knows as bicolored graph (each group would represent a color, so every element in the graph is only related to another color element). They are very used in Petri Networks (Concurrency Systems resources simulation) and others real world situations [4].
Label Propagation Demystified
By: Vijini Mallawaarachchi
Tags: Graph, Mathematics, Data Science, Machine Learning, Computer Science

For LPA to work in this case, we have to make an assumption; an edge connecting two nodes carry a notion of similarity. i.e. if two people are connected together, that means that it is highly likely that these two people share the same interests. We can make this assumption as people tend to connect with other people having similar interests.

Walking Randomly in the Graph

Consider the sample graph given in Figure 1, where we have 2 label classes (red and green) and 4 nodes coloured (2 for each class). We want to predict the label of node 4.

Fig 1. Sample graph 1

We can walk randomly in the graph, starting from node 4 until we meet any labelled node. When we hit a labelled node, we stop the walk. Hence, these labelled nodes are known as absorbing states. Let’s consider all the possible walks from node 4. Out of all the possible walk, the following walks will end in a green node.

4 → 9 → 15 → 16 4 → 9 → 13 → 14 4 → 9 → 13 → 15 → 16 4 → 9 → 15 → 13 → 14

The following walks will end in a red node.

4 → 7 → 8 4 → 7 → 6 → 5 → 1 4 → 5 → 1 4 → 5 → 6 → 7 → 8 4 → 2 → 1

Based on all the possible random walks starting from node 4, we can see that the majority of the walks end in a red node. So, we can colour node 4 in red. This is the basic intuition behind LPA.

Mathematical Formulation

Let Xₗ be the set of labelled nodes and Yₗ be the one-hot labels of the labelled data (If you don’t know about one-hot encoding, you can refer this link). Assume that there are {1,…,C} class labels. Xᵤ are unlabelled vertices. We do not know Yᵤ and hence Yᵤ will contain zeros.

We can express the random walks as given below.