fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Submit Your Story to Golden in Three Easy Steps
Tags: Parenting, Family, Aging

Photo by Tiago Muraro on Unsplash

1. Take a look at our guidelines

What to avoid

Already-published stories: we prefer original work, but if you want to submit something that’s already been published, feel free to!

Clickbait headlines: e.g., “These 3 things will change your life”.

Heavy self-promotion: talking about your business or accomplishments is OK but don’t let it be in an unsavory way

Topics we’re interested in

Maturing + Technology : One of the most consequential changes in our society is the emergence of new technologies that have forever altered how we interact with each other and do things in our daily lives. We want to hear your thoughts on this as a blossoming senior and how this has impacted you.

: One of the most consequential changes in our society is the emergence of new technologies that have forever altered how we interact with each other and do things in our daily lives. We want to hear your thoughts on this as a blossoming senior and how this has impacted you. Maturing + Politics: Politics has become front and center within all our lives in the last couple of years. We want to know your take on these recent developments.

Politics has become front and center within all our lives in the last couple of years. We want to know your take on these recent developments. Maturing + Media: Our media landscape has changed dramatically, and with greater accessibility, it becomes difficult to access the facts. We want to hear your thoughts on this.

Our media landscape has changed dramatically, and with greater accessibility, it becomes difficult to access the facts. We want to hear your thoughts on this. Maturing + Care: Perceptions about elderly care often obscure the thoughts and feelings of the individual who is receiving care. We want to know what the process has been like for you personally, whether by yourself or with support from friends and family.

Perceptions about elderly care often obscure the thoughts and feelings of the individual who is receiving care. We want to know what the process has been like for you personally, whether by yourself or with support from friends and family. Maturing + Whatever you think is interesting! We love a great story.

2. How We Compensate Writers:

Once a week, we send out a long-form story to all of our subscribers (our feature story). We pay $30–$100 for this story. Otherwise, each story published in this publication will be given maximized reach so that you can earn through the partner program!

3. Submit your Stories to the Email Below:

You can submit your stories to this email: golden@modernparent.io

Thank you, and we’re looking forward to your submissions!
Safety Climate: A Brief Overview
By: Julia Brown
Tags: Organizational Culture, Leadership, Safety

Businesses and schools have started re-opening with new policies and procedures to maintain a safe space. These policies such as social distancing, wearing masks, and frequent handwashing require behavior modification of individuals and are all considered safety behaviors. Research shows that safety climate is a strong predictor of safety behaviors. Safety climate has been studied by Industrial-Organizational psychologists for many years. These studies have mostly focused on industries like chemical plants, healthcare, and construction. However, due to COVID-19, all jobs (and schools) that involve people in close proximities have to deal with new risks and hazards.

Safety climate is defined as “individual perceptions of policies, procedures, and practices relating to safety in the workplace” (Neal & Griffith, 2006). It is typically discussed in terms of ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ safety climate and is measured through surveying employees. Safety climate can be distinguished from safety culture by the idea that climate is perceived by workers at a specific moment in time. Organizations should strive for safety cultures, but the more immediate focus tends to be on safety climate, as cultures take time to build.

While a large number of dimensions of safety climate have been studied, a meta-analysis by Clarke (2010) identified the dominant themes as the following: work task or environment (e.g., level of risk); management attitudes and actions (e.g., management commitment to safety); safety management system (e.g., training); and, individual responsibility and involvement. Well-established organizations in common industries (e.g., chemical plants, healthcare, construction) that have to maintain safe environments have structures and resources to devote. They do this because safety is related to their bottom line. They are also subject to federal regulations and audits by OSHA. Today, many industries (e.g. retail, education) are being forced to quickly adapt to keep their employees safe and without much guidance at a federal level.

So, what can we, as leaders, do? Many studies have identified management commitment to safety as fundamental to establishing a positive safety climate. The degree to which managers are viewed as committed to safety as an organizational priority will have a significant influence on employees’ perceptions of the importance of safety. When safety is sacrificed for other organizational goals and outcomes, then the climate suffers.

If you haven’t been working in an industry with occupational risks, you probably haven’t considered your own organization's safety climate before. Therefore, the first step is to assess your own climate. After you assess your climate, then you can make necessary adjustments to ensure you are establishing the conditions needed to promote safety behavior. Here is a set of questions that can serve as a quick and easy tool to survey your group, offered by the CDC.

Add up your score. The range of possible scores is 6–24.

If your score is:
¿Qué son las Criptomonedas?
By: Molly Malone
Tags: Dinero, Criptomonedas, Espanol, Español, Bitcoin

Splitting time between my original home in rural Minnesota & my second home, Guatemala | Director of Education with CoinYou.co, a Crypto Learning Community

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Compose and Pipe in JavaScript
By: Gianmarco Ebeling
Tags: Functional Programming, Compose, JavaScript, Pipe

Compose

In algebra, function composition allows you to apply one function to the output of another function.

Photo by the author.

In this example, the function g is applied to the result of applying the function f to x . As we can see, function composition works from right to left.

The same result can be achieved in JavaScript with compose :

Photo by the author.

OK… really confusing. Let’s see an example.

Let’s suppose we want to get the name of a user and uppercase it. First of all, we have to write a function that extracts the name of the user:

const user = {name: 'Gianmarco', password: 1234}

const getUserName = (user) => user.name

getUserName(user)

// 'Gianmarco'

And then a function that uppercases strings:

const upperCase = (string) => string.toUpperCase()

upperCase('Gianmarco')

// 'GIANMARCO'

Now we can compose the two functions to have just one function that executes both actions: Get the name and uppercase it.

We can use the implementation of compose() that we saw before:

The problem with this implementation of compose() is that it takes as parameters just two functions (in our example, upperCase() and getUserName() ).

Let’s suppose we want to add another function that returns the first four characters of a string:

const firstFour = (string) => string.substring(0,4)

firstFour(‘GIANMARCO’);

// 'GIAN'

How can we compose more than two functions at a time?

We can use Compose and the reduceRight() method:

const compose = (...functions) => x => functions.reduceRight((acc, fn) => fn(acc), x);

In this implementation, compose() takes rest parameters (any number of parameters — in this example, any number of functions) and returns a function that takes the initial value x . It then uses the reduceRight() method to iterate from right to left over each function fn in functions and apply it, in turn, to the accumulated value acc .

In simpler words, compose() applies right to left any number of functions to the output of the previous function.

With this new implementation of compose() , we can now create a function that gets the name of the user, uppercases it, and returns just its first four characters:

Cool, right?
HWFO Newsletter for November 2nd, 2020
By: Bj Campbell
Tags: Guns

As promised in prior newsletters, I haven’t had much time to write anything in the past month because I’ve been settling my family in a new home with a pool, a barn, a chicken coop, and neighbors who have horses. That’s been nice, and fun, and has kept be busy pounding through a professional backlog.

But, there’s this election thing.

And, well, I had to write something. Sticking tightly within the gun policy wheelhouse, I worked with the rest of the Open Source Defense folks to put this out, which is very very long, but worth reading, and worth sharing, particularly to (A) any new gun owners you know, to get them up to speed, and (B) anyone who tells you that Biden doesn’t want to take your guns away.

https://opensourcedefense.org/blog/letter-to-2020s-new-gun-owners

The Open Source Defense weekly mailing list is also fun to get into, if you haven’t yet. This week’s mailer is here, with a link to follow it at the bottom:

https://opensourcedefense.substack.com/p/osd-89-letter-to-2020s-new-gun-owners

You can also join other HWFO readers on our Slack Channel if you like, to watch the world burn tomorrow and in the ensuing weeks:

https://t.co/L2KJX02v6r?amp=1

Have fun sitting on your pallets of beans, bandages, and bullets tomorrow watching TV. I’m going to take the night off and play Fortnite I think.
Committing Fouls
By: Donn K. Harris
Tags: Illumination

Photo by Sushil Nash on Unsplash

Rage and Joy

This lesson goes beyond a basketball court. Things matter; people get heated; the obvious skills only get you the obvious. Rage and joy are not mutually exclusive. The intangibles are often the difference between survival and excellence, and a little crude can go a long way. Sometimes I look around my workplace and get a vague premonition that something vital is missing. Often it’s the Kelso factor — I didn’t think about him when selecting my team, and now we’re lacking fire, and the loose balls are escaping us. No fouls, though, no profanity, everyone’s too polite for that. People get along fine, no enemies on this team. And we’re at about 60% of our potential. We’re just not playing hard enough, and it’s too late to yell ‘Fuck off’ and have it make a difference. I couldn’t do it like Kelso anyway, and they’d see right through me.

The intangibles are often the difference between survival and excellence, and a little crude can go a long way.

But I have made a few enemies through the years. Not purposely, but as a byproduct of being decisive and committed to a belief or a course of action. When you stand for something, somebody’s not going to like it. Once in a discussion I stated emphatically that I would never hit a child. I didn’t need to stifle an impulse, or take anger management classes, or count to ten. I just didn’t have that as part of my repertoire, ever. There were some authority figures in that room, many of whom confessed to having spanked or used physical discipline on their children. My insistence made a few uncomfortable. One in particular, a woman in her early 40s, seemed particularly unhappy with me. Some months later, in an interview for a promotion, a 360 degree performance review contained the comment, ‘Is a know-it-all, too righteous and judgmental,’ followed by the initials, TD. The woman in the room the day of the discussion was Terry Dunn.

‘How do you respond to that?” I was asked. I told the panel that I expressed myself forcefully on a certain occasion and that I had a few core values that if asked about, I would come out with a strong viewpoint, not judgmental but perhaps fierce in the presentation. ‘What was the issue you think gave rise to this impression?’ another panel member queried.

I took my time, moderated my tone, tried to be accommodating and authentic simultaneously.

‘I believe it was about disciplining children,’ I responded. That shut the door; the faces closed off; no one wanted to mess with that one. I wasn’t making any friends here either.
BitClave Community Update —July 2, 2018
Tags: Blockchain, Developers, London, Updates, Technology

We launched the BitClave Developer Program last week at the Blockchain Summit in London. The program will allow developers to turn ideas into reality by using our platform — BASE (BitClave Active Search Ecosystem). Our COO Vadim Gore made the announcement in his speech titled, ‘The Value of Personal Data’.

Vadim’s presentation was viewed by 150 attendees at the event and over 500 viewers on Twitter. We have received a lot of enquiries and the applications have already started coming in.

Last week Our Head of Blockchain, Mark Shwartzman also released the demo video for the program and shared first glimpses of the BASE platform and how it can be used both by the ‘User’ as well as the ‘Business’. Developers who want to join the program can take advantage of this demo and come up with different ideas for their projects.

To know more about BASE and the Developer Program, we suggest visiting the following website.

developer.bitclave.com

Do let us know if you have any doubts on the program or the contest. We’d be happy to help you on the same.

We’re also soon publishing an FAQ list for the program as well as the contest on Medium. Stay tuned!

We leave you this week with a few pictures from the Blockchain Summit London. Our COO Vadim Gore, Head of Growth Pratik Gandhi and Events Manager Stanislav Liutenko were all in action.

Want to learn more? Don’t miss our special news updates. Sign up for BitClave here.

Join our Telegram Channel: https://t.me/BitClaveCommunity

Github: https://github.com/bitclave/

Official Twitter: https://twitter.com/bitclave

Official Facebook: https://fb.me/bitclave
You can’t improve it if you don’t measure it.
By: Tds Editors
Tags: Unsupervised Learning, Computer Science, Getting Started, The Daily Pick

Photo by Valentin Salja on Unsplash

Have you ever wondered if there is a more systematic way of tuning your model, than blindly guessing the hyperparameters or using a grid search?

By Sebastian Poliak in Computer Science — 4 min read
The Rise of the Greypreneur
By: Brian Wallace
Tags: Baby Boomers, Greypreneur, Sharing Economy, Careers, Gig Economy

The Rise of the Greypreneur

Over 50 and Winning the Gig Economy

Today, 60% of workers aged 45+ have experienced prejudice and unfairness in the workplace based on their age, sometimes even going far enough to reach termination and replacement. Yet, by the time we reach 2024, around 25% of the US workforce will be aged 55 and over — here’s how older professionals are succeeding.

Of all the self-employed individuals in the US, 49% are Baby Boomers. But the freedom and independence of self-employment and entrepreneurship didn’t happen overnight; it’s the sum of experience. “Many baby boomers are not interested in retirement. They’re always interested in building something,” says Sylvia DeWitt, administrator of the Iowa Entrepreneurs Coalition. For older corporate professionals faced with the risks of being replaced with younger (and often cheaper) workers, simply waiting around is not an option. The growing popularity of “grey-prenuers,” or older folks pursuing their own businesses, have distinct advantages, from communication skills, sales and industry know how, even reliable credit for obtaining loans.

Staying ahead of the curve doesn’t necessarily mean learning a whole new skillset — quite the contrary, in fact. For older workers with industry seniority, these years of experience go a long way and though short-sighted employers would rather ignore the benefits of this experience, it’s possible to make it work on your own terms instead.
Announcement #33 — BNS listing on XT.COM!
Tags: Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Crypto, Bns Update, Altcoins

Hey folks,

A major part of the plan we have for the BNS ecosystem is global expansion and we think it’s pretty apparent by the steps we’ve been taking so far.

Your announcement number 33 is BNS listing on XT.COM.

USDT pair for BNS are coming up on XT.COM — one of the important crypto exchanges in the world. Here’s the schedule:

BNS/USDT

Deposit have already opened.

Trading opens at: 2020–09–19, 16:16 UTC (+ 8:00)

Here’s a bit about XT.COM:

Founded in July 2018 and headquartered in Hong Kong, XT is a global digital currency trading service provider. XT exchange adopts micro service architecture to develop matching engine and operation maintenance to support secure and fast OTC transactions. As the first trading platform to launch interest-free leverage, the number of daily active users has reached tens of thousands. The transaction fee of XT is the lowest and it supports Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean and other multi-language languages, serving more than 1 million global users in nearly 100 countries and regions.

Founded by well-known capital fund FIBTC LTD, XT now has operation centers in Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Spain and other countries and regions. With the technical support of ZB, XT provides users with the safest, most efficient and most professional digital asset investment services. More information about XT can be found at https://www.xt.com.

Here’s their announcement link.

Till Then

Onwards and upwards

Team Bitbns
Creative Outlet | The Sweater Curse
By: Bss Press
Tags: Sweater Curse, Short Story, Sweater, Knitting

by Rita Chen

Hi everybody,

I’m going to provide you with the most useless tidbit of information you’ll ever need. I am completely serious — you will not be able to apply this information to your everyday life at all — unless, of course, you’re part of the 0.083% of the Richmond Hill population that enjoys knitting — if that’s the case, this information will be completely useful to you. Here goes. Are you ready? From one amateur knitter to another:

If you have a significant other, never knit them a sweater or similar woolen clothing item, unless you want to break up with them.

I’m sure there are many questions running through your head after hearing this, including “what?”, “how?”, and “why am I reading this article?”. I assure you, I will provide a holistic answer to those first two. Believe it or not, the Sweater Curse is actually rooted in rational logic. The idea is that once someone has devoted themselves to knitting a sweater, one of three things will happen:

Your sweater may appear as a gift too intimate for the relationship, causing your significant other to consider their reciprocation of your feelings. The gift may seem too binding/serious for the level of investment they’re interested in.

Your significant other may not want to actually wear anything hand-knit. Perhaps they are uncomfortable with the connotations of wearing something you made, i.e. putting your relationship on display.

You may take the sweater-making too seriously, and overestimate how much they’ll appreciate your effort. Knitting is a slow process, and you may feel that the gratitude you receive in return is disproportionate to the amount of care you put into actually knitting.

All of these scenarios could lead to possible break-ups. It could also be that over the arduous process of knitting, your relationship fizzles out, so it is also commonly observed that the relationship ends before the product is even complete. In the extremely niche community of people who write about knitting, this phenomenon is actually commonly discussed. Some wait until marriage to knit their significant others personal items to avoid the Curse, and some even refrain from knitting altogether, afraid that their significant others would feel as if they were “coming on too strong”.

A question you have never asked before, and will likely never ask again, is “how do I avoid the Sweater Curse?” But as your guide and mentor who can’t even purl right, it is my civic duty to give you comprehensive advice. So… tell them about the sweater. Don’t make it a surprise, lest they think you’re cheating on them in the time you’re stalking away to knit in a closet somewhere. Don’t knit it without consulting them about the aesthetic appeal. Maybe you’re colorblind and don’t know it. And, for the love of God, learn how to knit properly first, so you don’t make a fool of yourself when you show your S/O a large knot of wool and ask them to put it on.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Profit from selling the rally in the downtrend — S&P 500 Day Trading
By: Ming Jong Tey
Tags: Stock Market, Day Trading, Money, Investing, Finance

Find out how to profit by selling the rally in the downtrend and a few of the key things to watch our for especially when day trading S&P 500 futures.

Check out the video for a complete walk through of the daily market analysis of S&P 500 futures (ES) for 11 Dec 2020 trading session. In this video, you will find out the market recap during the last session and a trade review in the three-minutes timeframe (including entry, exit and the rationale behind). Going forward, I will cover the bias, the key levels to pay attention to, my trading plan for the session later.

Timestamps

1:48 Market recap

4:20 Trade review

6:30 Sign of weakness in S&P 500

7:05 Test of the support-turned-resistance

14:20 Current stock market outlook

Watch my daily market analysis video in the last session if you haven’t in order to better relate to the market recap and the trade review.

Bias — neutral (Day trading); bullish (long term)

Key levels — Resistance: 3750; Support: 3697–3705, 3670

Potential setup — Look for potential reversal at the key levels.

Photo by Author — Ming Jong Tey

Photo by Author — Ming Jong Tey

Click below to subscribe my weekly stock trading / investing ideas in email for free:

https://hot.wishpondpages.com/ideas/ (Yes, it is free)

Further Reading

Disclaimer: The information in this presentation is solely for educational purpose and should not be taken as investment advice.
Introducing Decenturion: A Blockchain that will govern the democracy
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Crypto, Bitcoin, Altcoins

Blockchain technology has been decentralizing many systems since it’s inception. Be it the financial system, or the Internet of Things, healthcare etc. This time it’s the citizenship that has been modified by the blockchain technology. A group of ‘doers’ is attempting one of the most ambitious projects in the blockchain space to date.

Decenturion is aiming to provide world’s first decentralized state in which economy, communications & governance are built on the blockchain technology. Decenturio’s value system puts its the residents at the center of the system. The residents are the power of the state and determine the key principles of the domestic policies of the state.

Decenturion is determined to build a qualitative economy rather than a quantitative one. Characteristics like Income per capita, level of education, level of information technology- & blockchain competencies, & weight of the benefit brought in by a citizen.

How Decenturion works?

Decenturion will distribute 30,000,000 decenturion tokens (DCNT) that will be distributed among blockchain celebrities, developers, scientists, & first citizens. Each citizen will get an online & offline passport, personal profile page, decenturion wallet with DCNT token each.

Furthermore, each token that the applicants will be getting will have the hosts power, money, & glory assets. Citizens can participate in legal, economic or any kind of development depending on the money, power & glory assets they have.

The 30,000,000 tokens will be distributed from startups tokens soon after you as a citizen become a part of the economy. 300+ startups will become the organization and are expected to get millions of users by the end of 2018.

As a citizen, you are likely to earn $15,000 annually from the token mined of every decenturion organization. 100+ applicants are likely to become the deciding authorities, advisers of the decenturion organizations. Additionally, as decenturion citizens, you will be owning the assets of this blockchain based state. Depending on the DCNT tokens you possess, you will be able to make money, create laws & use resources of the decenturion society. With the Decenturion passport, you will be able to attend offline events & embassies across the globe. Furthermore, you can order a physical passport, which is issued by all international standards. This physical passport will be eligible for official use globally.

“The citizens…are behind the Decenturion state. This is the main concept, as we are the ones who govern the society. Do you know who Satoshi is? I don’t. Maybe, it’s not just one person but a couple of them. Same thing with [Decenturion].” Olha Havrylyuk, a Decenturion spokesperson said.

If nothing else, the creation of this decentralized state marks the beginning of a neutral & unpredictable experiment in politics of human existence. Like, imagine, Governance via technology, in this case, the blockchain technology.
Resque Mailer
By: Nick Plante
Tags: Ruby on Rails, Email, Open Source, Software Development

We’ve been making heavy use of Chris Wanstrath’s Resque library in my latest project. Resque is a Redis-based background job system that Chris built for GitHub. It’s easy to use, especially if you’re already leveraging Redis in other parts of your infrastructure, and also has a nice Sinatra front-end for monitoring job status.

Anyway, Resque jobs are just Ruby classes that respond to the special perform method. They’re placed on a queue — you can place different jobs on different queues — and later, a worker polls the queue, pops the jobs off and performs the task.

We have a number of different asynchronous jobs happening in Mogo, many of which are domain-specific. But one thing we’re doing that’s very common is using the background system to process mail delivery asynchronously. Because synchronous mail delivery is for jerks.

Outgoing mail in a Rails app is generally handled by ActionMailer, which expects you to implement message delivery types as class methods on an ActionMailer “model” (a butchering of the term). So a typical mailer might look like this:

class Notifications < ActionMailer::Base



def signup(user_id, sent_at = Time.now)

@user = User.find(user_id)



subject 'Welcome to Mogo'

recipients @user.email

from 'Mogoterra <noreply@mogoterra.com>'

sent_on sent_at

end



end

Then, to send a signup message, you use the following method call from somewhere else in your codebase:

Notifications.deliver_signup(@user.id)

So this all works good but it’s synchronous. You’d like to be able to background these tasks and use Resque. But you don’t really want to mess around with the mailer implementation. Right? Me too.

So ResqueMailer does just that.

Following in the footsteps of DelayedJobMailer, ResqueMailer allows you to shift processing of your existing mailers to an async Resque worker without doing pretty much anything. Just install the gem in your Rails project (via Gemcutter) and then mix the Resque::Mailer module into your mailer.

class Notifications < ActionMailer::Base

include Resque::Mailer



# ...

end

You’ll need to restart your Resque workers and make sure at least one of them is working on the special mailer queue (or * for all queues). Now when you call MyMailer.deliver_signup , the task will be placed on the mailer queue and processed by the first qualifying worker.

It’s always nice when a tiny amount of code makes a task transparent. Check out the project page on GitHub for more information.
The 10 Powerful Rules for an Incredible Relationship
By: Godofredo Rojas
Tags: Self Improvement, Relationships, Love, Advice, Dating

If someone asked me, is it difficult to find a perfect partner? I’d respond Hell, yes, it’s extremely hard.

And if you find a partner that you feel comfortable with, the most difficult part is to keep the same feeling every hour, every day, and every year in life.

Most people used to tell me, Hey Chamarro, in 7 years you will see, everything is boring, you don't have the same feeling anymore. Hence, I was picture myself sleeping with a totally strange in 7 years and wonder: is it supposed to be like that?

Sure, everyone has problems, and sometimes your relationship for periods is not the same as was initially. There are 2 choices here:

Start to be proactive, and move your ass to figurate out what's going on?

Or live a miserable life with a totally strange close to you.

There are ways to avoid these situations. Firstly is a must to stop running on autopilot and focus on your relationship. And take responsibility to work on it.

There are some rules to check every day to perceive if your relationship is stable or needs more work.

Let’s dive into it.
Live. Laugh. Love.
By: S. Edwin Rufener
Tags: Poetry, Happiness, Thanksgiving, Earth, Peace

I am privileged to be a member of a men’s vocal ensemble. This season, a segment of our repertoire spoke of humanity’s connection to the earth, with themes of nature, healing, peace, and the value of hard work. Our director likes the songs to be introduced, as most of them have a great story and communicate a meaningful message.

I was invited to introduce this block of songs. Not being sure of what I wanted to say (which is unusual for me), I began reading some poets who make frequent use of these themes. Still, I couldn’t find anything that fit in the way I thought it should.

I live on 63 acres, which includes woods, a multiple acre pond, and a substantial garden, all surrounded by organic farmland; I decided to take a walk to my favorite hill that overlooks all these scenes and sit for a while. The poem that I am sharing with you now is the result of my thoughts, observations, and reflections. Enjoy, and Happy Thanksgiving.

Fall, In Love

Peace all around.

Her cool laughter echoes across the tranquil lake, receiving a gentle, rippling reply.

Whisper still.

Towering majestic colors chatter in response to her soft, delicate voice, and relinquish their grasp under the influence of her persuasive song.

Whisper still.

Memories of recent days flood my senses;

The muffled tapping of my hoe as it prepares the earth for new life;

The warm, smiling sun upon my back;

The fresh scent following an afternoon shower;

The hint of green poking its infant head from the dark, loamy soil;

The sweet juice of the first ripe strawberry;

Whisper still.

How often she has beckoned to me, and instead I have chosen the sights and sounds of a world to which she does not belong, cannot understand, and where her melodies cannot be heard.

The noise, the clamor, the seemingly endless melancholy cycles amidst meaningless rush and roar seek to tear me from her grasp.

Whisper still.

The days of my life flurry away as the hurried leaves upon her breath.

Yet, she nurtures, loves, waits, still.

All for which I labor, strive, and toil will not purchase another second of what I miss; that which I dismiss.

“Be still,” I hear her say. “Listen. Love. Laugh. Live.”

She continues forever, and someday, I shall join her in an everlasting embrace.

Peace all around.
Collection of JavaScript Range Sliders
Tags: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Web Development

Collection of free vanilla JavaScript range slider code examples from codepen.io. 10 JavaScript range sliders on https://freefrontend.com. Thanks!
The Cost of Operating a Hot Dog Cart
By: Mike Dang
Tags: Business Expenses, Hot Dog Carts, Small Businesses

Call it the half-million-dollar hot dog cart. Mohammad Mastafa of Astoria, Queens, has to sell almost that much in drinks and snacks annually to break even on the pushcart he owns at Fifth Avenue and East 62nd Street near the Central Park Zoo. He pays the city’s parks department $289,500 a year just for the right to operate his single cart there.

You may not think that it could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to operate a hot dog cart, but there you have it.

Photo: Tony Fischer
How a Seventyish Woman Collects Joyful Moments During This Holiday
By: Jean Anne Feldeisen
Tags: Seniors, Aging Well, Life Lessons, Christmas, Holidays 2020

How a Seventyish Woman Collects Joyful Moments During This Holiday

I was skeptical but not to worry…

Photo courtesy of the author

After seventy years, I have learned some important things about myself and my expectations. For one thing, expectations are imaginary. We can use them in ways that help or hurt us.

This morning, for example, my husband went into the shower whistling and came out sullen. Turns our he’s been thinking about a non-masking co-worker whom he might encounter on Tuesday. Getting all upset and planning to quit if the guy doesn’t quarantine, etc. Now, this imaginary story is going on on Saturday morning and ruining his mood as well as the atmosphere in the home. Why purposely plan on something bad happening four days from now and get all worked up about it??? Honestly. Of course, I do sometimes too, and probably you do, too. But it sucks. The joy out of us.

You can also use these imaginary stories to help yourself and that was my plan for this post. To help myself be more joy-filled by planning for it.

Writing for an audience always helps me be my best self. I may need to talk about my flaws in the story, but I am reminded to be reasonable and present all the sides of an issue even if I’m feeling stuck in the negative at the time. So, my dear readers, writing these stories helps me not only to write better, but to do better.

I am planning this post several days before submitting it with the intention of looking for these moments of Joy, collecting them here and giving them to you as a gift for the holidays.

My twelve joys of Christmas 2020
聊面試
Tags: Interview, Work

in In Fitness And In Health
How to Budget Your Way to Freedom From Debt
By: Matt Reicher
Tags: Budget, Money, Money Management, Finance, Budgeting

The first step

One way to better understand where your money is going is to create a personal budget. Although this is a great starting point for those of us caught under a mountain of debt, only 41 percent of Americans report keeping track of their finances. The truth is that you can’t fix something if you don’t know why it’s broken. But, once you understand what’s going on, any changes must be made intelligently and with forethought. Don’t overreact. Wholesale changes are not a recipe for sustainable success.

Aim for lasting improvements over time instead of trying to fix everything in one felled-swoop. You cannot shave your cost-of-living expenses down to the most bare-bones and assume your problems will immediately end. To do this the right way, you will have to assess your situation — without pulling punches — and make necessary but calculated changes. The best way to do that is to create a budget and stick to it like there is no tomorrow.

Put a stranglehold on your financial situation with the help of whatever medium makes you most comfortable. If you aren’t technologically savvy, write it all down. If you aren’t averse to using online programs, consider one of the many free and reputable, smart-phone friendly options on the Internet. With each item, no matter how small or embarrassing, add it to the ledger. They all helped get you into money trouble, and understanding that will help to fix things.
The Locked Love and Lost Mother
By: Prashant Pillai
Tags: Short Story, Mothers And Daughters, Fiction, Motherhood

Short Story- Fiction

She kept knocking on the doors in search of her mother.”Mother, it’s me, your daughter..I know you would be here” She kept running from door to door, only to find strangers, someone like her mother, who patted her head, held her hands and consoled her.

Some women hugged her, some gave her food, some water, some even made her hair, some gave her new clothes, some asked about her favourite things, the others about her childhood.

Inconsolable, she wept even more as she walked out of these strangers’ house, she was reminded of her mother when those strangers treated her with love and care. Walking across a narrow lane between houses she thought “Even my mother would have given me all I asked for and all that I didn’t, she had to just look me in the eye and she would know what I wanted. Oh! I miss her so much, why did she leave me?” By this time the word had spread about this girl in search of her mother.

Touched by the story, women stepped out from their homes and stood out, some sat on the entrance of their homes, the others walked in the veranda putting their little ones to sleep.

As she cautiously walked across pausing for a while in front of each house, she was greeted with a warm smile by the women who were heartened and anxious to see the girl.

The tired girl reached the last block of unscanned homes, she looked through her watery eyes one by one, paused and stared at all the women who were at their doorstep.

She rubbed her eyes and gave them a look again, but in despair. She reached the last home in the block only to find it closed and dark from inside. By now the tired girl didn’t bother to knock and thought to herself, “My mother can’t be in there, if she was in, she would have opened that door and ran out and hugged me and kissed me on my head”.

The tired girl walked back the deserted lanes and never looked back. She recalled all those lovely moments she had with all those women who were strangers to her but gave her so much love that now overshadowed the search for her mother, atleast for now.

And as she walked away, the home that she gave a miss lit up from inside, and if she were there she could hear a lady cry. It was her mother crying just like her in despair. She wiped off her tears and thought “I would have hugged and kissed my loving daughter only if she had knocked on my door”.

And the little girl walked thinking “Now with so much love around me, do I really need a mother”

Hi, I’m a music director/composer/producer from India and work for films, television series, television commercials / advertisements, jingles, video games, musicals and concerts. Here through my series of This Life Happens, i intend to share the simplest of stories that I get inspired from, hoping it’ll inspire yours too.

I also do love to share my expertise in creativity and music through my blog — prashantpillai.com/blog. Drop in to say Hello! there.
How Can You Find Paid Surveys Worth Your Time to Take?
Tags: Surveys, Paidsurveys, Feedback, Cashback

How Can You Find Paid Surveys Worth Your Time to Take?

Completing surveys is a popular — yet time-intensive — way to make some cash online. LimitlessReward by BitClave is the best way to maximize the return on your effort.

Making Money Online Through Surveys

If you’re not aware of the practice of taking online consumer surveys for compensation, it’s time to get familiar with this simple, popular way of making money online. Essentially, surveys exist to connect companies to consumers and, additionally, people who could potentially be interested in their product. Companies get feedback about how their services or products are received, and to understand the marketplace. Because that information is valuable, manufacturers and service providers want to compensate their reviewers whose survey responses they will relay on in the future for strategic decision making.

What are the Hurdles of Normal Survey Sites?

There’s still an important question to answer about paid surveys for consumer feedback. Most participants find their surveys on specific aggregator websites, which are convenient spots for companies to place their surveys. However, you might find surveys with no or very little compensation value for you, the participant. These middle man sites all have different methods of rewarding survey participants, which can slow down your money-making capability. Often, there’s a minimum — reached at about 10 surveys — before you can get your cash rewards. Plus, each aggregator site sign up shares your email and personal information with that site, and those details might not be as protected as you hope.

BitClave’s Portal Brings the Best Surveys and Compensates Twice

If you’re an avid survey taker, or interested in making some money in your spare time online, there are two reasons to make BitClave’s portal your first stop. Instead of aggregating many surveys with varied compensation levels, BitClave does the work for you, finding the highest value surveys for you to take. Plus, we compensate you just for selecting and completing those paid surveys through our portal.

Try out LimitlessReward portal that gives you greater compensation for your consumer feedback effort.
送給同性婚禮：10首華語情歌
Tags: 婚禮音樂, Marriage Equality, 同性婚姻, 中文, LGBT

7. At17 / The Best Is Yet To Come（In Memory of 盧凱彤）

To hug someone

To kiss someone

The best is yet to come
Watch and Cheer During Hearthstone Global Games to Support Teams and Unlock Loot!
By: Emily Halpin
Tags: Hearthstone, Twitch, Gaming, Esport

Hearthstone Global Games (HGG) is heating up and the top 16 countries and regions in the world have been decided. On the road to the playoffs at BlizzCon®, join the community in celebrating the journey with HGG Cheer — a new program that lets you Cheer with Bits for your favorite teams on Twitch using custom Cheermotes — all while unlocking sweet loot along the way.

Every Cheer from Sept. 17 through Nov. 4 on /playhearthstone brings you and the entire community closer to unlocking Cheering goals, which include in-game items like card packs and a card back, and exclusive Twitch emotes. Even better: a portion of the revenue from Bits you Cheer goes directly to the team you’re supporting.

Right below the video player on /playhearthstone, you can track team-specific and global community Cheering progress; check out your individual goals, and see leaderboards that highlight each team’s biggest superfan. HGG teams will not only feel the love from your Cheers, they’ll get to see themselves represented on Twitch and within Hearthstone on unlockable team-branded items!

How it works:

Be sure to link your Blizzard account to your Twitch account so you can claim loot when items become available.

Cheer for your favorite teams on /playhearthstone (or any of the international channels) during HGG events by clicking on the Bits gem at the bottom of chat, selecting the team’s logo, adding the number of Bits and a custom message to cheer them on.

Once Cheering goals are reached, items will be automatically deposited in your Hearthstone account as long as you have your account linked with your Twitch account.

Support your team in the Hearthstone Global Games beginning on September 17 and follow them as they chase the trophy at BlizzCon. For more details on the HGG Schedule, click here. Follow the Hearthstone channel to be notified when events go live.

FAQ

Q. How much revenue does a team receive when Bits are Cheered for them?

A. For each Bit Cheered for a team, that team and Blizzard (as the tournament organizer) receive the same amount of revenue share.

Q. How do I Cheer for a team?

A. Click on the Bits gem at the bottom of the chat window, select the team’s logo, add the number of Bits you want to use and a custom message to cheer them on.

Q. Can I use the regular Cheer command (e.g. cheer100) during HGG?

A. No, regular Cheers won’t work on the PlayHearthstone channel during HGG. You can Cheer for any or all of the teams competing in HGG using the team-themed Cheermotes.

Q. I forgot to link my Battle.net account before Cheering…Can I still get the items?

A. Yes! First, go ahead and link your Blizzard account to your Twitch account. Then, return to the PlayHearthstone channel. You’ll see that a “Redeem All” button has appeared. Hit that button to claim your items! Going forward, the items will be deposited directly into your account.

Q. Where can I watch HGG in my native language?

A. You can view HGG in English, Russian, French, Korean, Japanese, Mandarin, and Thai.
Honored Workers and Unusual Perspectives : Notes on Gustave Caillebotte
By: Kerry Dooley Young
Tags: France, Art, Museums, History, Paris

Once known for overcrowded and densely packed medieval streets, Paris underwent “a gut renovation at the hands of Georges-Eugène Haussmann to become the City of Light,” wrote Eric Allen in Architectural Digest. (There’s a link at the end of this essay to a bibliography with details on this AD article and other sources used in research for this essay.)

Georges-Eugène Haussmann. Wikipedia copy of image in public domain.

Haussmann kicked off changes in the Parisian cityscape that continued beyond his tenure (1853–1870) as a top French bureaucrat under Emperor Napoleon III. These include the construction of wide boulevards and parks and squares. Haussmannian-style apartment buildings are decorated with wrought-iron balconies and 45-degree-pitched roofs.

Caillebotte shows us the elegant side of life in Paris, like this gent in the top hat surveying the scene on Boulevard Haussmann.

Caillebotte, “L’homme au balcon, boulevard Haussmann (Man on balcony),” 1880. Private collection. Wikimedia copy of image in public domain.

And then below we have Caillebotte’s most famous work, “Paris Street, Rainy Day.” Stretching to almost seven feet by 10 feet, this painting is a star even in the rich collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Caillebotte, Paris Street, Rainy Day, 1877. The Art Institute of Chicago. Image is in public domain.

The Art Institute’s website explains how Caillebotte grew up near the neighborhood shown in this painting, when it was “a relatively unsettled hill with narrow, crooked streets.”

As part of Haussmann’s plan, buildings were demolished and new wider streets were laid out. Caillebotte’s father was a wealthy man. He’d started with a textile fortune and expanded into real estate during the massive overhaul of Paris. So Caillebotte was spared the financial struggles of many of his fellow painters.

Caillebotte, Self-Portrait, C. 1892. Musée d’Orsay. Wikimedia copy of image in public domain.

But Caillebotte wasn’t concerned only with posh people who had leisure to stroll the new boulevards of Paris in fancy dress. He also painted some of the people who worked behind the scenes to make elegant lifestyles possible for others.

In this Caillebotte reminds me of Edgar Degas (1834–1917) with his paintings of the off-stage lives of dancers and Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) with his scenes of farm workers in the fields.
Hi-coo
By: Zaira Abbas
Tags: Poetry, Inspiration, Life, Relationships, Love

There are people who seem deep, but their insides are hollow

They want you to have principles they themselves don’t follow

Interesting are their ways that I find hard to swallow.