fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
What happens after the FMT ICO?
By: Free Market Token
Tags: ICO, Nem, Free Market Token, Blockchain, Ecryptostore

An ICO Recap

During our crowdsale we had a number of developments that add huge value to the FMT ecosystem, let’s take a look back:

We were featured as an ICO to watch in Q3 2018 by Stockhead

The first land sale with Bitcoin and Ethereum on Ecryptostore was settled and picked up by multiple publications including one of Australia’s leading real estate journals.

We signed a partnership with Ainlsie Bullion for merchants and buyers on Ecryptostore able to diversify into gold and silver bullion.

We partnered with Millionaire Mentor Jason Stone (who has a social media audience of more than 3 million), for a year long strategic branding and social media arrangement to support Ecryptostore growth.

We announced a FMT at the native token for an Augmented Reality game that being piloted by one of the largest University unions and will result in 15,000 FMT wallet downloads and token use, as just a start!

We were featured in articles along with some big hitters in the Australian blockchain space like, PowerLedger, CanYa and Horizon State. And with multiple crypto influencers including Nuggets News with a 50,000 strong audience, and massive support from Crypto Australia with a 52,000 strong audience.

We’ve spoken and exhibited at events in China, Sydney, Brisbane and the Gold Coast.

And in the final week of ICO - a massive announcement of our revenue generating bond token that will be airdropped to ICO contributors.

Thank you to the Free Market Token and Ecryptostore core team, our Advisors and others who worked tirelessly with us over the past months. And finally to our FMT supporters and ICO contributors, the Free Market Token ecosystem is just getting started and the vision is very very big. We will make you proud.
Intro to Pandas(Kaggle Session #2)
By: Han Li
Tags: Pandas, Ucsd, Kaggle, Data Science

Hello everybody! DS3 at UCSD starts holding Kaggle Sessions! Feel free to join us! It would be nice to have you there!

In this Kaggle Session, we covered the usage of pandas, a nice python package for data analysis. Especially during Kaggle competition, Pandas would be your best friend to clean raw data and do data exploration analysis.

For those who came to our Kaggle Session, check out our solutions right below! For those who haven’t come, don’t worry! We are holding Kaggle Session weekly throughout this quarter! Check out our schedule and topics for this Winter Quarter!

Now it is our solution notebook for this Kaggle Session!

And our Kaggle Session slides!

Interested in more? Follow our Data Science Student Society Page!

Thank you for reading.
The Night the Sun Rose
By: John Gorman
Tags: Life Lessons, Addiction, Depression, Travel, Mental Health

The first of the 8-hour, 25-minute days was July 16, 2017. I’d written, to no one in particular, blackout-drunk in a Phoenix hotel room:

I’ve spent the past 90 days tearing myself apart, trying to find the innermost essence of my being, wondering who I really am, and where I have left to go. I’ve been pushing myself, simultaneously, to the farthest reaches of what I am capable of, living with an acute reckless abandon for good taste and good sense. This sub-chapter, and frankly the much longer one it bookends, is closed.

I’ve returned from this journey physically paralyzed, mentally and emotionally exhausted. I can go no further, and fall no deeper. Not in this form. When you take away the travel, the running, the partying, the singing, the sarcasm, the writing, the friends, the lovers, the jobs, the jokes and the madness, what is left is nothing. Yes, I’ve had “it all.” And enjoyed it less than I ever have. Here’s what I’ve learned:

What I realized, I think, more than anything, is I am incapable of being alone, and thus, incapable of getting as close to other people as I want to. I keep trying to get closer to people than I’ve earned, I keep meeting people to distract me from working on myself, and if I am not with someone physically, I have my head buried in my phone. I do those things to distract me from loneliness. When I’m just sitting, when I’m just existing, I feel completely empty. Like I’m missing something big. And so I alter the state I’m in, or bring people into that state.Always more people. Always new people. The texts. The travel. The social media. The stories. It’s all the same drug, designed to ease the existential ache of never feeling fully present, never having the full capacity to truly appreciate and understand others.

The innermost me is not much different than you, and it is certainly not exceptional. I breathe. I eat. I occasionally make things. I think we share that in common. Beyond that is anyone’s guess. I think about myself too much. I always say I will change, or am changing, but people do not change — they merely drift.

My depression and anxiety had plummeted into a darkness that could no longer be masked, contained or controlled. The call was coming from inside the house. The train had jumped the tracks.

I returned home from Phoenix briefly entertained by an amusing row-mate on a Southwest flight, but gloom had engulfed me by this point. I had spent most of the time before the flight sitting in a 100-degree bar without power, talking to strangers and drinking free warm beer until I couldn’t remember my face. That was the day the sun set early.
How to install iOS 13 on your iPhone
By: Sam Orgill
Tags: Development, iOS, Software Development, Apple, iPhone

iOS 13 was released to developers yesterday. It comes with exciting new features such as dark mode, enhanced augmented reality and on-device machine learning.

Requirements

You need to own a Mac (sorry Window’s users), be registered with Apple as a developer and own an adapter that connects your iPhone to your Mac.

Register as a developer

To update your iPhone to iOS 13 you’ll need to be a registered developer. Head over to https://developer.apple.com, sign in with your Apple ID and register for as a developer. The current cost of this is $99 / £79.

Update your MacBook to Catalina (macOS 10.15)

If you already have a developer profile on your Mac then click the Apple symbol > About This Mac > Check for updates and it should be there waiting for you. Click update.

If you don’t currently have a developer profile on your Mac then head over to https://developer.apple.com/download/ and click “Install Profile”. This will download a .dmg file. Once this had downloaded, double click it and follow the installation instructions.

developer.apple.com

Once your profile is installed click the Apple symbol > About This Mac > Software Update and update your Mac to macOS 10.15.

Download iOS 13

Head over to https://developer.apple.com/download/ and download the iOS 13 beta. An .ipsw file will download to your downloads folder.

Connect your iPhone to your Mac

Once you are on macOS Catalina and you have downloaded then iOS 13 beta then its time to connect your iPhone to your Mac.

Confusingly the downloads page says that installation of iOS 13 to your iPhone is via iTunes. In Catalina, iTunes doesn't exist anymore, it as been replaced by a Music app. Anyway, to update your iPhone you now need to open a Finder window where your iPhone will appear on the left.

Click on your iPhone. You will see information about iPhone. Hold down ⌥ (option) and click on “Check for Update”.

This will open up a finder. Now locate your .ipsw file in your downloads folder, select it and click “open”.

Sit back and relax

Your iPhone will prompt you for your PIN number which once entered will begin the installation of the beautiful iOS 13.

Enjoy.

Head over to https://developer.apple.com/ios/ and find out all about iOS 13. If you’re a developer, install install Xcode 11 and start playing with the new features.
The Lawyer Who Tried To Never Sleep — Needs A Legal Answering Service
By: Frank Cordeira Jr.
Tags: Criminal Defense Attorney, Attorney, Lawyers, Legal, Personal Injury Attorney

Once upon a time, there was a lawyer who tried to never sleep. His name was Tom Lawyer. Tom was the best lawyer in town, and everyone in any sort of trouble knew that they should call him for help, lest they suffer the consequences of hiring another attorney. Because of this, Tom’s phone rang incessantly.

At 9 a.m. his phone would ring for a bankruptcy consultation.

At noon, it was a divorce consultation.

At 1 p.m., while he was trying to eat lunch, someone else called because they needed a lawyer for their car accident.

While he was in court, he could hear his phone buzzing!

After he got out of court, Tom’s phone rang again from someone who needed their will drafted.

While he was eating dinner, someone called him because she had received a letter of foreclosure.

Before bed, Tom’s phone rang while he was brushing his teeth — someone had just been arrested for DUI.

Tom’s phone never stopped ringing, and he was happy to help the people in his town, and of course, happy to make money! But there was one thing wrong with Tom’s practice — Tom Lawyer, Attorney At Law, tried to never sleep. He lay awake all night answering phone call after phone call, helping people with their legal matters, performing legal intakes, scheduling appointments, and in summary, performing all of the duties of a legal receptionist.

Tom Lawyer soon grew tired, weary, and his skills faded. He couldn’t argue vehemently for his clients in court. He couldn’t comfort his clients going through a difficult divorce. He couldn’t even bring himself to draft a will! Tom Lawyer was absolutely exhausted, and his phone just kept ringing.

Tom Lawyer finally gave up. He knew it was time to sleep. Tom shut off his phone, turned out the lights, and threw himself into his bed, where he finally gave himself to the long awaited slumber.

When he awoke, it became clear to him that he needed a legal answering service! A powerful call center, fueled by legal intake receptionists, that could field the calls the way he wanted, cater to his clients by making them feel important, and never send a new client to voicemail so that he could continue to make money!

Tom Lawyer, Attorney at Law, called Answering Legal.

Tom Lawyer never missed a new client, kept his existing customers happy, performed his duties as a lawyer better than ever, and slept through the night every night.

The End.

Happy Hunting!

Try Answering Legal’s Legal Answering Service For Free!

10 Day Risk Free Trial

P: 631–686–9700

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Nick Werker

Nick is the Head Content Strategist, Social Media Manager, PPC Campaign Manager, and the Executive Head Writer at Ring Savvy/Answering Legal, Inc. Nick’s talent for story-telling enables him to write and recognize the type of content users want to read.
A Step-by-Step Guide to Gui Programming : Any Kid Can Code
By: Laxman Singh
Tags: Gaming, Kids And Tech, Kids, Python, Python For Beginners

What is GUI?

GUI means Graphical user interface. Any software which has visual components where actual user can interact with that software comes under GUI. e.g, User type with keyboard, press mouse button, etc.

In games, we have an interface, where we can use different inputs to play it. That is GUI which is allowing to interact in the game.
A Monero Multisig User’s Guide
By: Jacob Lyles
Tags: Multisig, Cryptosecurity, Cryptocurrency, Monero, DevOps

A complete guide to using M/N multisig wallets in Monero doesn’t yet exist since it’s very new. This guide aims to gather into one place all the information needed to use M/N multisig.

Multisig wallets are very important for people and organizations that need to store cryptocurrencies securely. They provide security against theft of private keys and redundancy in case of loss. Multisig wallets are an industry standard security practice used by most exchanges, web wallets, crypto funds, foundations, and other custodians of significant amounts of cryptocurrency.

We’ve moved our blog! To keep reading this article, visit the link below:

https://blog.keys.casa/a-monero-multisig-users-guide/
An Eclipse of Melancholy
By: Saloni Joshi
Tags: Creativity, Poetry, Free Verse, Musings, Writing

An Eclipse of Melancholy

A Free verse on a melancholic mind.

Photo by Jongsun Lee on Unsplash

It’s one of those days when

Melancholy came on a visit

and cast her shadow;

an eclipse,

of a pensive mood

with scattered rays of brood,

in Twilight’s skies of solitude;

and a rendezvous with nostalgia

even though infinitesimal;

leaving behind

a pang of loneliness,

grayish clouds of mixed emotions

and a glint of a penumbra,

of somber musings,

and pondering;

a reflection of

a melancholic mind,

now in words.
I Threw a Wish in the Well Don’t Ask Me I’ll Never Tell I Threw a Wish
By: Edith Zimmerman
Tags: Sitting In A Tin Can, Call Me Maybe, Music

It’s not new, but it’s maybe the opposite of the new Bowie: “Call Me Maybe Acapella 147 Times Exponentially Layered.” The song costs a dollar and would be right at home on a makeout mixtape, or in a gift basket to space.

[via]
GGC’s Record of Teaching Excellence
By: Gwinnett Magazine
Tags: Lifestyle, Ggc, Education, Summer 2016

In addition to Dr. Mei “Miranda” Zhang, the following four Georgia Gwinnett College faculty members have won the Regents Teaching Excellence Award, a remarkable record for the young college.

“All of GGC’s award winners exemplify the college’s mission and vision, and its commitment to providing accessible, affordable and attentive educational experience,” said Dr. Stas Preczewski, GGC president. “We are very proud of all of them, and particularly the fact that their own students nominated them.”

2015 Dr. Dovile Budryte Professor of Political Science

2014 Dr. Richard Pennington Associate Professor of Chemistry

2012 Dr. Jessica Damián Associate Professor of English

2010 Dr. Candace Timpte Professor

of Biology
How to Choose a Cryptocurrency to Invest In
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Crypto, Bitcoin, Investing, Blockchain

Ever since Bitcoin blew up, every tech savvy startup attempted to release their own coin. A lot of them made some serious mistakes. People who didn’t really understand cryptocurrency bought into coins that didn’t have any actual value or application — they just bought them because they were cryptocurrency and it seemed cool at the time.

What people failed to think about is the utility of each coin. Cryptocurrency can be used as money. When you’re buying a coin, you aren’t investing the same way you would in the stock market. You’re exchanging currency for a different, untraceable type of currency. These currencies work for different things, and how useable they are affects whether or not they’re worth your real cash.

What Can the Cryptocurrency Be Used For?

Investing in a new type of coin won’t do you much good if no retailers accept that coin. Dogecoin, for instance, is only worth a fraction of a penny. There are well over 100 billion Dogecoin in existence. Since barely any retailers that accept cryptocurrency accept Dogecoin, that makes the coin virtually useless. This contributes to its low value.

Then, there are coins like Ethereum, Litecoin, and Monero. These coins have higher values because they’re easier to use. Coins that have limited reception by retailers sit somewhere in the middle. Tether, for example, calls itself a stablecoin. One coin is one dollar, and they hold their market that way. They’re trying to make the exchange from real money to cryptocurrency easy and exact, but because most people are attempting to profit from cryptocurrency, they’re having a hard time catching on.

The coin you buy should be useable. Before you purchase any coin, be sure that enough retailers recognize it as a payment method. If no one is willing to accept it, the coin won’t grow much in value.

When is the Right Time to Buy a New Cryptocurrency?

Let everyone else make their mistakes first. Watch new coins closely. It’s best to buy them after their value has seen substantial growth. Hold onto them for as long as you’re comfortable with. If the growth seems to stop or fall out, sell your coins. If the growth continues steadily and the little dips aren’t heart-wrenching, buy more.
A shared vocabulary for developing AI
By: Adam Green
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Ai Guild, Data Science

Active Learning (see Supervised Learning)

- a machine learning system that chooses examples to be labeled

“AI is the science of making machines capable of performing tasks that would require intelligence if done by humans” Marvin Minsky “AI is the science and engineering of making machines do tasks they have never seen and have not been prepared for beforehand” Hernandez-Orallo

Artificial Intelligence (see Intelligence)

- intelligence demonstrated by machines, in contrast to the natural intelligence displayed by humans

- examples: an elevator, AlphaGo, language translation

Big Data

- what data science was called in the 2000's

- handling data that is too large for Excel

Business Case (see Use Case)

- financially sustainable application of technology

- balance of value versus cost

- making hitting nails valuable enough to justify buying a hammer

- making a hammer cheap enough to justify hitting nails

Data

- tabular — rows & columns, 2 dimensional (rows & columns)

- images — spatial structure (height, width, channels)

- text — grammatical & syntactic structure

- time-series — temporal structure

Data Science

- using data to make predictions that drive business decisions

Deep Learning

- using multi-layered neural networks for prediction or generation

Generalization

- the ability to handle situations (or tasks) that differ from previously encountered situations

- acceptable performance of a prediction on a holdout test set

“Intelligence measures an agent’s ability to achieve goals in a wide range of environments.” Shane Legg & Marcus Hutter “The intelligence of a system is a measure of its skill-acquisition efficiency over a scope of tasks, with respect to priors, experience, and generalization difficulty.” François Chollet “In order to be a perfect and beautiful computing machine, it is not requisite to know what arithmetic is.” Alan Turing

Intelligence (see Artificial Intelligence)

- learning

- problem-solving

- prediction, generation & explainability

Machine Learning (see Supervised, Unsupervised & Reinforcement Learning)

- programming without being explicitly programmed

- trial and error learning

- pattern recognition

- dimensionality reduction

- the part of A.I. that is working

Reinforcement Learning

- a type of machine learning

- learning to maximize expected reward

- learning to take actions

- learning to make decisions

Semi-Supervised Learning (see Supervised Learning)

- a mix between supervised and unsupervised machine learning

- learning from a small amount of labeled data with a large amount of unlabeled data

Supervised Learning

- a type of machine learning

- learning from an observed pattern

- prediction

Unsupervised Learning

- a type of machine learning

- learning from an observed pattern

- generation

Use Case (see Business Case)

- application of technology

- using a hammer to hit a nail

— — — — — —

Thanks for reading — you can apply to join the AI Guild here.
My Boyfriend Dreams of Food: The Second Taco
By: The Hairpin
Tags: Donuts, Alice Rutherford, Food

by Alice Rutherford

Alice Rutherford is an illustrator and designer living, working, and bicycling in Los Angeles. She recently got a twitter (@TheRealAlicke) and isn’t sure how she feels about it yet.
Gary Burns
By: Terence C. Gannon
Tags: Education, Storytelling, Interview, Filmmaking, Podcast

Gary Burns

Storyteller | Filmmaker | Educator

Gary Burns has been making feature films since 1997 and has been called “Canada’s king of surreal comedy”. While apt, it does not adequately capture the range of this unique filmmaker. In this extensive interview we talk about Gary’s films in the context of his strong opinions about urban planning, the built environment and modern society. The magical element of his work is that he rivets our attention on important social issues while entertaining us with compelling, quirky characters and story. He educates and enlightens us in a way where we effortlessly embrace the lesson.

Highlights of Gary’s career are Kitchen Party in 1997 followed quickly by Suburbanators, and then Waydowntown in 2000. He continued with Cool Money in 2005, the award-winning Radiant City in 2006 and The Future is Now! in 2011 (both with Jim Brown) amongst other projects. Most recently Gary collaborated with his wife Donna Brunsdale on Flexie! All the Same and All Different a biographical film about artist Levine Flexhaug. He is currently working on a new, feature-length drama, Man Running, set in the intriguing world of mountain ultra marathons.

Gary has demonstrated a strong commitment to renewal of the art through the education of the next generation of filmmakers. Most recently, he was the Filmmaker-in-Residence at the University of Calgary for U of C film students. He sits on the Board of Calgary Cinematheque and provides committed, ongoing, tireless support for filmmaking in Calgary, Alberta and Canada.

While he had opportunities to ‘go Hollywood’ early in his career, Burns remained in Calgary so he could continue to make his films the way he wanted to make them, talking about subjects about which he cared. We sat down with Gary at his home in a leafy downtown Calgary neighborhood in early summer. Prime street maintenance season, as it turns out, some of which part of the background soundtrack. Join us on this episode of The WorkNotWork Show for a remarkable ride through Gary Burns life as storyteller, filmmaker and educator.
Is Your Company Thinking of Firing You and Replacing You With Forced Monkey Labor?
By: Simon Black
Tags: Satire, Entrepreneurship, Work, Humor, Tech

Is Your Company Thinking of Firing You and Replacing You With Forced Monkey Labor?

Here are five signs you are about to replaced by trained simians.

Photo by Tj Kolesnik on Unsplash

Several coconut firms were recently removed from Costco after allegations arose that their coconuts were harvested by trained monkeys in Thailand. Although training these monkeys was apparently very expensive and time-consuming — four months according to this article — they end up being much cheaper than human labor. One monkey can pick up to 400 coconuts per shift. Plus, the Thai tourism board brags that tourists love to pay ten dollars a ticket at the “Monkey Center” to watch the primates being trained. It’s a win-win for the company, see.

Can you imagine someone actually paying ten bucks to watch you be trained at your crummy job?

“Open Windows. OK. Open Excel. Call up the company spreadsheet. Start entering data.”

Oh my goodness what a boring show that would be!

But imagine if a trained monkey was doing that job. I mean, it would probably take a whole month just to get him to open Windows. First, he would pee on the computer. Then he would try humping it. Finally, he might get it turned on — by accident. But that’s a month worth of tickets at ten bucks a shot! Then in the second month, he manages to open Excel by mistake. Yay! They reward him with a banana!

But seriously, what’s wrong with replacing you with a trained monkey? If they can actually train a monkey to write blogs, I would pay ten bucks to watch that.

“Blog Number One.

“Written by me, a trained monkey.

“Why are human beings so boring to watch and why are we monkeys so much more interesting?

“Is it because we sometimes throw our own feces around in our cages?

“Or is it because we like to point our ass in your general direction?

“Why are you obsessed with us, human beings? And why are you so bored with yourselves?

“I don’t know the answer, but blog writers don’t have to have all the answers. They just have to ask interesting questions.

“I hope you liked my blog.

“Please clap if you did and follow me. I get paid in bananas by Medium.”

Not bad, eh?
Stories and Secrets of the World’s Oldest Subways
Tags: Cities, Travel, Transportation, History, Culture

Stories and Secrets of the World’s Oldest Subways

“If those rails could talk”

Photo by arash payam on Unsplash

Subways fascinate me, not the sandwich kind — even though it came up a lot when I was searching online about subways in various cities, but I meant the metro kind. Subways are fascinating, especially the old ones that have been running for more than a hundred years.

Just imagine how much life has happened there: the ambition when going to a job interview, the smiling to yourself when coming back from a sweet date, the unexpectedness of running into a long-lost friend, the attentiveness of reading on the commute to a morning class, and even the surprises of babies being born in the subway… There is something nostalgic about just imagining how much these subways have been a witness and a host of our life stories, year after year.

On the other hand, how much do we know about their stories, the stories of old subways?

The London Underground is the world’s oldest subway

The construction of the world’s first subway happened in London in 1860 to ease the increasing traffic on the grounds. Three years later, on January 10, 1863, the 6km long subway was opened to the public and carried almost ten million passengers in its first year.

The first subway in 1863. Source

Steam locomotives powered the first subway and thus caused a lot of air and smoke in the tunnels, which made the ride not very pleasant or healthy. Eventually, in 1890, the electrification of subways was introduced, and this technology of electric traction was spread to other cities around the world (Horne, 2003).

Ghost stations and Winston Churchill’s barn of London Underground

Today, there are 270 stations in the subway system of London. Because of the low passenger rate, the proximity of stations, and re-routing, over 40 out of those 270 stations are no longer in use and hence are called ghost stations (Transport for London. Gov.UK, 2020).

One of the ghost stations, Down Street Station, was opened in 1907 but suffered low usage that led to its closure in 1932. However, in 1939 it was selected and turned into offices and rooms to shield government operations in case of bombing. Winston Churchill and his War Cabinet used it as a bunker during the Second World War, and Churchill used to call it “the barn” (Connor, 2006).
Racial Bias Is a Reality for Black American Shoppers
By: Tracey Ford
Tags: Shopping, Black Friday, Holidays, Racism

Racial Bias Is a Reality for Black American Shoppers

Professor Cassi Pittman Claytor’s ongoing study hopes to ensure shoppers can have a less biased experience

This year’s holiday shopping season will surely be different due to Covid-19 and the impact it’s had on a slew of people, both financially — many Americans are still struggling and out of work — and for others in their willingness (or unwillingness) to head out to stores when we’re all supposed to be avoiding crowds. For some, this new normal will potentially ease the stress and anxiety of shopping while Black. Professors Cassi Pittman Claytor and David Crockett, in collaboration with popular beauty retailer Sephora, are working on a study around racial bias and the role racism plays in each phase of the consumer experience.

“For example, the market might privilege white male consumers, and their experience is more pleasant or more favorable, more satisfactory, if they are perceived as the ideal or most favored,” Pittman Claytor said in a recent interview with Business Insider. “Race can positively impact consumers, and it may negatively impact others.”

Pittman Claytor acknowledges that the goal of the study is not to end racial bias but to ensure retailers are armed with strategies to make sure they can provide a better shopping experience for all — specifically Black shoppers who report receiving inferior service, not being greeted when entering a store and being followed and presumed a thief.
VideoCoin Network Launches GoogleAds to Drive Mass Adoption
Tags: Videocoin, Blockchain, Marketing

Real-world companies need real-world customers that leverage, utilize, and most importantly, pay for their services. With the launch of the VideoCoin Network, we’ve proven ourselves as a superior, more affordable real-world alternative to large centralized video platforms for streaming and encoding.

In an effort to drive mass adoption, we’ve undertaken multiple advertising campaigns to get the broader business ecosystem engaged and running on the VideoCoin Network as soon as possible. Part of that mass adoption effort is to drive new business with prospective new video applications.

In researching key players in our sector, we discovered that 98% are not using the industry standard Google Ads platform. As a result, we’re seizing this opportunity to get ahead of the competition and boost lead generation through targeted Google Ads. The objective of these campaigns is to acquire prospective VideoCoin Network developers that have begun deploying applications and are interested in better streaming or encoding solutions through the VideoCoin Network.

Advertising on Google Ads is one of the many ways VideoCoin Network is growing its sales funnel to get deeper penetration on a global scale and build our brand and client list. We will continue to update you on our marketing initiatives to drive business and growth as we progress.

More news to come soon!
This Is Our Country, Too
By: Justin Patton
Tags: BlackLivesMatter, Poetry, Culture, America, Race

African Americans have been in this country since the Declaration Of Independence was formed.

We were here when the Constitution was constructed even if we were never apart of it.

America was built from black labor. The free labor from blacks not only built wealth for White Americans, but the profitable slave trade contributed to the wealth of many European nations.

Black people fought wars for this country even when we were getting treated better overseas than in the very country in which we were fighting for.

Throughout history since we arrived in this land we’ve fought for the right to exist.

We’ve fought for laws to be changed, and to be apart of the law making process.

We’ve raised and educated our children, and also buried our grandparents in this land.

As African Americans our ancestral lineage along with our connection to our homeland has been lost.

For most of Black Americans, America is all that we know.

Black people have contributed enough to this country to stake our claim in this land.

Regardless of what anyone thinks, this is our country, too!
Stu Griffith Takes a Dare
Tags: Dancing, Fiction, 100wordstory, Flash Fiction, Centina

They dared him to do it. No one thought he would.

When Stu Griffith broke away from the line of boys velcroed to the gym wall, the collective gasp was louder than the music.

The girls, knitted together in small groups, waited to see where he would land. If she would say yes.

Sandra seemed somewhat embarrassed as they walked to the dance floor, but when Journey started, she turned confidently to Stu.

He looked sick.

“You’ve come this far. Put your arm around my waist. And close your eyes.”

It was humiliating for the girl to lead. And helpful.
The Best You is a Rested You
By: Thomas E. Mcdaniels
Tags: Christianity, Recharge, Rest, Faith, Religion

Some call it margin

Margin. What is it?

Margin is the space between the load we carry and our limits.

We have lost the art of rest

Rest means to take ease, to refresh, to end intensity, to stop or restrain, to quit, to cease, to refrain.

Employers demand, and so does life. We overschedule, overpromise, and underdeliver. We run at overcapacity.

Trucks have a capacity. Bridges have a capacity, and so do we. Tonnage rates our trucks. If we overload the truck; It is more difficult to drive, damages the parts, makes it harder to stop, and it hurts the roads.

Our body is no different.

Everybody has a limit

We must know the limit. God rates us at 6/7th. God designed us for rest and work. Within seven workdays, one day should be designated to rest.

This maximizes our capacity. A day of rest accomplishes more than we can imagine.

Did you ever think how productive the other six days could be if we took one day to rest?
Punjab & Mumbai look past controversies, Delhi look to crack Russell puzzle.
Tags: Fantasy Sports, Data Visualization, Ipl, Fantasy Cricket, Cricket

I love Saturdays, double the cricket means double the fun. The first game takes us to Chandigarh where both the home team and the visitors from Mumbai will be looking to put the focus squarely back on their on-field performances. A short hop away in Delhi the ‘Capitals’ squad will face unbeaten Kolkata and their man in form — Andre Russell. Let’s take a closer look.

Under the Fantasy Lens: The Smart Picks — Game Theory Players

Player points v Pick Frequency for MUM Players v BLR (28 March)

It is odd but it would appear the users did not put as much faith in Mr. Sharma as his performance would later merit. The result of his show at Chinnaswamy would be that I expect him to zoom up the selection charts for tonight’s game. The old warhorse Yuvraj Singh on his old home ground might be an overlooked player to keep an eye on.

Player points v Pick Frequency for KOL Players v PJB (27 March)

With the bat & the bowl Andre Russell is a match-winner and it beggars belief that he was not selected for more fantasy squads vs Punjab after his excellent performance in the first match for Kolkata. If you haven’t put him in your squad for today , do it right away!

Conclusion

Punjab have lost 4 out of their last 5 matches against Mumbai and I think it will be 5 out of 6 after tonight. In the second match I think Kolkata have the edge because of their more balanced line up but if Delhi manage to crack the Russell conundrum and bat creatively it could be their night.

Pick your own squad in seconds and get winning. Check out Dotball — the best fantasy cricket platform. https://dotball.com
An Open Letter to My Ex
By: Iva Ursano
Tags: Self Love, Relationships, Inspiration, Love, Personal

An Open Letter to My Ex

Raw real and honest ❤

Your love was like looking in a mirror: My soul reflected back to me. Only, I didn’t realize it. That is why it hurt so badly when you didn’t look back. I never chased myself, so why would you? Loving you was work.

When you disregarded my feelings it was just me overlooking myself. I always put others first so why wouldn’t you. You loved me like I loved myself: Not at all.

When you looked at me, I was seeing myself reflected in your eyes. I made it okay for you to devalue and belittle me. I wasn’t worth it in my own eyes, so why would you think differently?

I didn’t respect me. Why would you?

I was living in a false mindset that if I led with sexuality everything else would fall into place. No wonder love was so gut wrenching.

Now I am raw and real. Loving myself.

Take it or leave it because I’ve got me and I am loving me.

I don’t need you to validate me. I don’t need you to complete me. I don’t need you to be the glue that holds me together.

I’ve got me.

If you want to disrespect me, ignore me, devalue me, then brace yourself. I’m not taking that crap anymore. I don’t do it to myself anymore so you surely won’t be allowed.

I am my own true love. I am everything I need all bundled into one awesome package.

It all makes sense now that I’ve been awakened. I will be the one to heal myself. You can do whatever you like but it won’t be by my side.

I yearned to have you back in my life. Sobbed my eyes out hoping you would think of me and miss me. Ask me back. I begged you to talk to me so we could work it out.

Thank God you didn’t call me or text me. Thank God you told me to “move on.”

At first I moved on in the way I always told my girlfriends to: “The best way to get over someone is to get under someone.” I spread my legs and gave myself away to even more men who saw me for the reflection I was projecting: worthless, something to be used.

I drank myself into a stupor. Stopped eating and cried endlessly, longing for your validation.

I even thought about running my car off the side of the mountain. What was the point in living? I couldn’t see beyond the fog of my despair.

Then a sliver of light shined through my darkest of days. It pierced into my heart and soul and slowly started a fire.

Now an untamable flame burns deep inside.

It cannot be smoldered. I see me.

I see me in all my nakedness. I see me in my raw power. I love every scar on my flesh. I love every stretch mark on my thighs. I love every freckle on my body. I love me.

I won’t be tossed aside as a forgotten lover. I won’t tolerate disrespect. I won’t be ignored. I won’t react with hatred or even cause a scene. But when I disappear from your life, you will know why. If you don’t love me the way I love me, I don’t have time for you.

I love me today, tomorrow and always. I am awesomely me. I am loving me.

This blog was written by guest blogger Rachel Johnson ❤
✨ BIG NEWS ✨
By: Sharik Khan
Tags: Ethereum, ICO, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Blockchain

Spunky (Co-founder, BitGosu- CoinRunners)

Spunky Hwang from Bitgosu, the biggest Cryptocurrency influencer in South Korea joins us as an advisor to PEP Network. We heartily welcome him to our PEP Network Family

Click here to know more about Spunky: https://coinrunners.vip/meet-the-team
The Love Burial Ritual
Tags: Goodbye, Breakups, Relationships, Burial, Love

The Love Burial Ritual

Bidding the last goodbye

In Picture: Author, Captured By: Author

I’ll agree I did not do my best getting over my breakup. I let the nostalgia grow inside me like cancer for a whole two years. I eagerly waited for the day when cancer would bring death — a full stop.

I recently learned about my ex’s marriage. I knew the time had come. The illness had finally brought death. There would be no answer to calls, cries, and shrieks: the dead will not return. They are gone.

The cancer was terminal. Despite the hopes I had of recovery, in my heart, I knew it will bring death, and very soon too.

I hoped for…

I hoped for a miracle: maybe the doctor could fix cancer, the one who was suffering would heal and get back to good health. But I knew the cancer was fatal, that there was no cure, just a hopeless hope.

So I was glad when death finally came. It was easier to die than to live in extreme pain and a constant struggle for each breath, and each day, waiting for death.

It is not over yet…

Till I bury the dead, it is not over. I hope for a miracle: maybe the dead will arise from the pyre, but I know it is not possible. My heart is looking for reasons to not bury the dead, to spend one more minute with the dead, even when I know the dead are gone, they are not here anymore. They have gone away, to another world, the world I have no knowledge about, because I am still alive, and I haven’t been to that world.

But it is time to say final goodbye…

I know the only way to say goodbye is to bury the dead. The goodbye that I need to move on with my life. So I cook their favorite food, play their favorite music, and try to sob less because it has to be a happy goodbye. And with this, I perform the burial and let go of the dead.
Who Should You Prove Yourself To?
By: Mj Blehart
Tags: Self Improvement, Personal Development, Life, Mindfulness, Depression

It’s all-too-easy to get caught up in living up to the expectations of others, real and imagined. You want to be a good friend, lover, parent, sibling, child, human being, etc. Then, looking at the actions of others and seeing both good and bad, you hold yourself up to them, and question, “What’s my value in this world?”

I know where you are coming from. I have spent a lot of my life trying to live up to the expectations, both real and imagined, that I have encountered. This is an ongoing process, with both good days and bad days. I get concerned about the impression I make, how what I do impacts others, and whether I am worthy or deserving of living the best that I can.

The truth is that we are all worthy and deserving of living as best we can. Nobody is here just to merely survive — you and I are meant to thrive. Living in a fear-based society chock-full of mixed messages, this can feel like an impossible task.

Who should you prove yourself to?

How do you see your own worth? How do you feel deserving of being content, even happy in this life? Let me ask you this — who do you have to prove yourself to?

There are three very distinct judges our society looks to for determining worth and value in humanity. They can conflict, cause strife, dissent, and even have led to numerous wars.

These three judges, in no particular order, are:

You yourself

Other people, from friends and lovers to total strangers of varying degrees of importance

God, the Universe, or whatever conscious higher power a person may believe in

This can be really daunting, because the judgments of others and a higher power you may or may not believe in are completely, totally, and utterly out of your control. Because they are outside of you, there is no way to know just how they think or feel about you, if at all.

Since you can’t know what it’s going to take to prove yourself to these outside forces, why allow their judgment of you to dictate your feeling of worth and overall value? Look how unhappy people are because they are struggling every day to live up to the unknown metrics established by other people or unseen entitie(s) for being worthy and deserving of anything at all.

Outside validation is fleeting, frequently conflicted, and is different from each and every outside person or being. What’s more, while you might prove yourself worthy to one of them, that proof may not apply to another.

This is why the person that you need to prove yourself to is you yourself.
[ML UTD 16] Machine Learning Up-To-Date — Life With Data
By: Anthony Agnone
Tags: Software Development, Artificial Intelligence, Programming, Data Science, Machine Learning

GPT-3, announced by OpenAI in May 2020, is the largest neural network ever trained, by over an order of magnitude. Trained on Internet text data, it is the successor to GPT-2, which had surprised everyone by its natural language understanding & generation ability. To the surprise of most (including myself), this vast increase in size did not run into diminishing or negative returns, as many expected, but the benefits of scale continued to happen as forecasted by OpenAI. These benefits were not merely learning more facts & text than GPT-2, but qualitatively distinct & even more surprising in showing meta-learning: while GPT-2 learned how to do common natural language tasks like text summarization, GPT-3 instead learned how to follow directions and learn new tasks from a few examples. (As a result, GPT-3 outputs & interaction are more fascinating & human-like than GPT-2.)

While the immediate applications of GPT-3, like my poetry or humor writings, are nice, the short-term implications of GPT-3 are much more important.

… more
What Rhymes With…?
By: Rynn The Tired
Tags: Fiction, Poetry, Flash Fiction, Fantasy, Adventuring

What Rhymes With…?

A trap no poet could resist

Image public domain, courtesy of The British Library, modified from original.

“Finally here…” Lugoth breathed, gazing around in admiration at the luxurious chamber before him. It was an impressive sight. The pillars and ceiling were covered in exquisite carvings, inlaid with gemstones. The walls were draped with huge tapestries, generously embroidered with gold and silver.

Only a few adventurers had ever made it to the top floor of the Tower of Enigma. Compared to the rest of the Ancient Towers that were scattered across the continent, it wasn’t especially dangerous — the monsters were weak, and there were only a few deadly traps. The trouble was the riddles. The place was full of riddles, written in verse, that had to be solved in order to progress up the tower. They changed every time someone came through, so it was useless to try and compile a list of the solutions. And many of them were difficult enough to make the average adventurer throw their hands up in despair.

But Lugoth wasn’t the average adventurer. He had become a tower climber in order to earn a living, but at heart, he was a poet. A wordsmith. An artist. Teasing apart the tower’s verses had been child’s play for someone with his intellect and understanding of language. And now he’d made it to the top! Let’s see those illiterate dunces back at the Guild try to make fun of him for writing poetry once they learned he’d cleared a tower single-handedly!

He eagerly read the tower’s final verse, which was engraved on the far wall of the chamber.

Along a steep and winding path

Beset by beasts' and guardians' wrath

Through night and day, fatigue and pain

Past cunning trap and verse arcane

Oh hero bold, you’ve journeyed long

Shown wisdom deep and courage strong

Each riddle solved and monster slain

To glory seek and treasure gain

So now to choose your heart’s desire

And end your quest with…

The rest of the line was missing.

“Victory’s fire!” Lugoth gave a nod of satisfaction. That was an excellent rhyme. He was proud of himself.

But when ten-foot flames started spewing from the floor, it occurred to him that perhaps he should have thought about his choice of words a little longer….
Curriculum App Release Notes #006
By: Louise Swift
Tags: App Development, Software Development, Coding, UX, Learning

October 2018’s updates to Curriculum, an app for creating a study plan & tracking your progress.

Dashboard Mobile UX Improvements

Last month, the Dashboard and Study Plan were released and they looked like this:

Early release version of the Dashboard and Study Plan on https://curriculum-app.io

But the library used for drag-&-drop functionality was so old it didn’t handle modern mobile device touch events correctly.

After switching to the pretty excellent draggable library, created by developers at Shopify, we’ve now got a mobile-friendly Study Plan:

Improved mobile usability for the dashboard and Study Plan on https://curriculum-app.io

Much better.

Up Next: First Social Features

You can already view another user’s profile on Curriculum, to see the topics and learning resources they’ve added to their ‘track’.

But I’ve been musing on a better goal: To enable a sense of being among other, like-minded humans when you visit Curriculum.

I don’t think anyone who’s trying to focus on study wants to be inundated with alerts or notifications about other peoples’ activity.

But I do think it can be helpful to know others around you are also focusing. Like that feeling when you walk into a full but quiet library.

So I’m going to experiment with a ‘full but quiet’ activity feed. Nothing distracting or in-your-face. No push notifications while you’re trying to read! Just a simple feed that you can glance at to see what others are up to, if you like.
Aÿ Cactus, 10k followers Instagram en 18 mois
Tags: Instagram Marketing, Instagram, Startup, Instagram Stories, Startup Marketing

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