fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
On Compassion for the President
By: David Valdes
Tags: Covid 19, Trump, Coronavirus

I don’t wish harm and suffering on people. I really don’t. It’s just not who I am. And that hasn’t changed with the news that the President and First Lady have tested positive for COVID-19.

Even so, I understand why so many people are reacting with a chicken-comes-home-to-roost glee about the President’s diagnosis. Just as I understand why that upsets other people.

Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP

Both are gut reactions. But I do see a difference.

For those saying “I hope he suffers,” no matter how loudly, it’s rhetorical — they can’t actually affect the outcome. It’s a kind of cathartic response to the years of abusive language and taunting of others the President has used in his appearances, language normalized and excused by supporters who always say he’s just letting off steam, or that it’s a joke, or locker room talk, or just him being a straight shooter.

Lack of kindness in this moment is also a response to the fatigue of spending months and months showing compassion to others by following social distancing guidelines and wearing masks, and giving up family time and vacations and in-person school, while being continually mocked as “sheep,” openly derided by the President, and watching so many people put others in danger (as the President did) by cheerfully ignoring the simplest precautions.

The difference is that the people saying they hope the President suffers have no power to actually harm him, whereas he’s had power to harm others and has used it.

I wrestle with my feelings about my friends who are saying this shouldn’t be political now — only after the virus has become real for the Trump family. It has been made political for months as so many people died; attempts to take it seriously have been endlessly mocked as a left-wing psychosis.

In that time, I’ve tried to tell to everyone I can about the actual healthy people I know (including teens) who ended up gravely ill from this virus and whose bodies have still not fully recovered, and still had people I love reply to my face with partisan lines like “you’re just living in fear” or, worse, “it’s a big country — we can’t save everyone.”

That casual lack of empathy rings in my ears as people belatedly ask others to look in their hearts for compassion.

I do agree (and live by) the idea that people should be more compassionate, but I can’t help notice how few of the same people upset right now have ever used their social media to denounce the President for the things he has said and done.

My mind keeps returning to this one thought:
Westward, Unguided
By: Little Fiction
Tags: Essay, Travel, Nonfiction

In Menton, the Italian and I stand on the pebbles watching the waves come in. They spray our crossed arms. I loved swimming when I was a child; I did backflips off the diving board. I had been trained in the water by my uncle, the rakish husband of my mother’s younger sister. I delighted in the pain of his callused palms digging into my ribs as he held me afloat. I desired that wet touch, our closeness, his dank breath and patinated teeth. But I have not liked water ever since a taut, freckled boy tried to drown me in a backyard pool when we were nine. I will be generous: he did not know what he was doing. I pounded his shins until I came up wheezing, utterly invisible to the blonde mothers at the birthday party.

The Italian loves water. “I grew up by the sea,” he told me the first time we met. He is a Cancer. They are not appealing, men who cry. My rueful swimmer brother, for instance, born July 17. Yet I always turn up here, with another tearful Cancer, in this prepositional configuration: under, on, in front, beside, plunged into. The phantom feeling of a rake hauling through my untillable territories. Plowing. The permissive exchange. So we plow in a circular track, returning endlessly to a singular, sour plot.

Adele was the Italian’s first love, the one he speaks of incessantly. She was a Chinese-Canadian from Vancouver studying in Florence when they met. She was twenty years old then; I am twenty years old now. For two years after she went home, their love spanned the Sargasso. Then she left him for a French Canadian with blue eyes. The Italian told me this during our first two walks together along the River Mugnone, filling in detail during our subsequent liaisons. Adele became my spectral Oriental sister, a looming refraction that would never see me in turn.

Each time I told myself: leave, the next time he mentions her. I don’t know what attaches me to people. These days I chalk it up to chemistry, as reason eludes me. Leave, the next time he points out her favorite café, museum, piazza. Leave, the next time he compares her Florentine experience to mine, that she was harassed too, grabbed, assaulted. Leave, the next time he explains to me how thoroughly she broke him. Leave, if that car passes the lamppost before the woman across the street receives her change. At a certain point, agency is necessarily relinquished, along with good sense.
Dveir
By: Darryl Willis
Tags: Poetry, Poetry On Medium, Poets Unlimited, Ukraine

Six Years of poetry-only publishing, PoetsUnlimited was a diverse, engaging and authentic poetry magazine. For most of that time a daily publication, it was always diverse and original, and free-to-read by all.

Follow
The Art to Start: Settings Game
By: Vlad Alex, Merzmensch
Tags: Art, Artificial Intelligence, Thearttostart, Merznlp

The Art to Start: Settings Game

Designing Prompts for GPT-3 (Series)

When I issue a threat, it’s serious. I did it. In our last part, we’ve experimented with 0-texts, which can be generated by GPT-3 without any human prompt. One of the random texts was a megalomaniacal monologue of a moviegoer. The text was created by Temperature = 0, i.e., redundant, repetitive, and opposite to chaotic-creative. I warned you to make it even crazier by changing settings.

And here we are.

In this chapter, I want to explore the power of various parameters influencing the text’s quality and character.

First, here is the text in its full beauty (we’ve analyzed it already).
Support Driven Development
By: Martin H. Normark
Tags: Support, Design, Product Development

“I’ve learned more about our product and our customers in the last two days, than I did the entire last year” — me, back in 2009 after doing customer support for two days.

I keep reading in blog posts that very few companies actually know their customers extremely well.

The only reason I did customer support for two days, was because our dedicated support person called in sick and there was no one else to do it. I wasn’t the founder or anything, just a frontend developer.

It very quickly occurred to me that the feeling of our product actually working was an illusion we were stuck in on the inside. We knew our way around the product so we did things just right and just as expected every single time.

We had testers, but they make sure the implementation works, they don’t question if the implementation aligns with the goals of our customers.

It was clear to me that many of the challenges our customers faced would be relatively simple to solve, we just didn’t know about them. At least the engineering team didn’t know about them.

We were shielded.

I remember my early days at the startup as very chaotic. We once had an ongoing issue that restarted the web app at random times, several times a day. Our support guy phones us up and yelled “it just happened again”, and smack down the phone to hang up.

It was unfiltered. We knew something was wrong, and we were working our ass off to find and resolve the issue.

I was regularly called upon by our lead designer to have a look at what I made and was told “I don’t get it. I don’t understand. Where do I begin?”. He wasn’t rude, but he was clear. It was uncomfortable, but it made me feel alive. I was learning.

What had caused this unfiltered feedback to suddenly disappear? I know it wasn’t our customers. Of course they still complained, but something must have changed within the company that caused this feedback to drop dead.

After a (of that time) rather large funding round, the new investors required to hiring of a so called “professional CEO”, one with previous #bigco experience.

That quickly lead to new hiring to the senior management team which aligned with how big companies were structured. We wanted to act big, even on the inside.

It caused the company to be very divided. 25 people, and 5 departments the engineering team being the largest.

At big companies, they do a lot to protect their employees and make a safe and secure environment for them to work. That’s fine if you’re a big company.

But for a pre-profit small company with a product that wasn’t really working as expected, let alone aligned with customer’s need? Toxic!

Instead of giving me and the other engineers unfiltered feedback, the support people solved the customers’ problem by doing it for them. “Send me the files, and I’ll upload them and publish the campaign”.

We thought the product was working, but it was our support staff who was working for our customers.

So much for a safe and secure environment — it was nice to work there, but it sure didn’t result in a great product.
Medium Messiah
By: Heath ዟ
Tags: Life Lessons, Poetry, Writer, Self Delusion, Narcissism

You suck them dry, Medium messiah,

you believe you’re a teacher, a leader,

you hold yourself above ‘the unworthy’

anointing your brow with false humility

showing your narcissistic knowing smile

the festering notion of your own rotten core

self-loathing, self-absorbed,

self-promoting whore,

you’re a pitiful bore.

Self-awareness unaware

or just unwilling to ever bear,

the knowing that your hunger is internal

always clawing for a hold on the external,

user, liar, two-faced, mirror-truth denier,

incestuous pyramid-scheme provider

you’re no community leader,

just an attention needer,

another look at me bleeder.

Afraid to turn eyeward inward

because the truth lies there,

the self you’re too arrogant to face

too bloated with ego to embrace,

distracting yourself with misdirected attempts

to satiate the gnawing knowledge

that you are far from special,

that you’re painfully dull,

that you’re only interested in yourself,

and promoting your sad

self-abused writing.

You, your own favorite author,

you — user, you — false guide,

sucking off others for pointless accolade,

just another way of trying to prove yourself

to yourself, fill the stinking void,

send your cult-like followers out to wander,

to spread your word, preach your greatness,

but no matter what games you play,

how you destroy what you can’t have,

no matter the empty accolades

you collect from the weak and stupid,

you’ll always just be

the shit on a real writer’s shoe.
MAID Relisted on ChainRift
By: David Irvine
Tags: Bitcoin

As you may have heard, Poloniex has decided to delist MaidSafeCoin (MAID), perhaps because of its new relationship with Justin Sun. Obviously we are disappointed by this turn of events. The Poloniex exchange is about to lose one of the oldest and strongest communities in the crypto world. However, we are making the most of this situation by broadening the base of exchanges listing MAID, which will give more choice to the market, particularly in the US.

After the news came out, ChainRift reached out to us saying that they are fans of the project and would be happy to support our community.

ChainRift is an exchange that really takes care of their users and you can see that from their Trust Pilot score which is the best in the industry.

We are happy to announce that MAID was relisted on ChainRift today. Trading for MAID/BTC trading pairs is open now!

As you may remember, MAID used to be listed on ChainRift but there was no volume at the time due to many factors. The story is very different now. We need solid exchanges and ChainRift looks to be just that.

We’ll be providing some early liquidity to ChainRift and we’re delighted to offer another trading option for those in the community who have been keen to find an alternative place to trade their MAID.

The ChainRift team will be answering questions in this forum topic and also on Reddit and we’d encourage you all to ask them any questions that you might have.

P.S. Don’t forget to share your ChainRift referral link, it lets you cash in on their fees sharing program that is one of the most generous out there.
How to trade DomRaider Token on EtherDelta
By: Domraider Team
Tags: Domraider Token, Drt, Etherdelta, Blockchain, Domraider

Dear DRT community,

We have received some inquiries from Telegram Group, Twitter or Facebook on how to trade DomRaider Tokens through EtherDelta.

As we have just proceeded to the distribution of the tokens today, it may not be listed right now on EtherDelta, but thanks to the following detailed tutorial, you will be able to purchase / sell DRT.

If you are a novice with EthderDelta or MyEtherWallet, then you should read our article “how to see DomRaider Tokens in your wallet”.

EtherDelta is one of the very first available exchange where you can trade DRT. In parallel, we are still talking to other exchanges but it just takes a little more time 😉

We’ll give you more details in the coming days to tell you what’s next with trading exchange platforms.
One Dimensional Search Method: Newton’s Method Part 1
By: Marcello Ricottone
Tags: All, Optimization

We have one more one dimensional search method to go over, and this one is important. I am sure you are familiar with Isaac Newton Well this method is named after him. Newton’s method like both GSS and FS Newton’s method helps us find the minimum of our function, but Newton’s method varies greatly from these two.

The first and most important thing when thinking about using Newton’s method is to ensure that the function is twice differentiable. Newton’s method uses a truncated taylor series to estimate where the minimum lies. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s start from the beginning.

Newton’s method uses a single point to begin, unlike the GSS and FS. This point is used as a basis for our Taylor expansion. We need to take a brief detour to go over why we want to construct a Taylor Expansion. Just a quick reminder, a Taylor series (or expansion) is an approximation of a function as a sum of terms that are determined by the functions derivatives at a single point. This is described by the equation below (from wikipedia):

As you can see, each term of the expansion has a derivative of the function evaluated at the same point. For our method, we are only going to concern ourselves with the first three terms. This is why we need our function to be twice differentiable. This allows us to create a taylor expansion based off our initial guess (and our following guesses). But why would we want to do this? What is the benefit? Making a Taylor expansion allows us to create a quadratic function through our initial point which has the same first and second derivatives as our function. Our quadratic function (k(x)) is listed below:

We then try to minimize our new function. Using the first order necessary condition for a minimizer (the first derivative must equal zero at the minimizer), we take the derivative of the above equation and set it equal to zero. This produces the following:

In order to find the minimum we need to solve for x. We do this in hopes that the x we solve for is closer to the minimum of our true function. This is shown below:

This looks awfully like our iterative steps from GSS and FS. Replace x0 with xi and x with xi+1 and we have a search method. Like GSS and FS, we then repeat our method in hopes of getting closer to our minimum. As we get closer to our minimum the first derivative of our function moves toward 0 which makes xi ≈ xi+1. This is when we know our method has found a minimum (hopefully). Like GSS, we use a tolerance termination condition rather than certain number of iterations like FS.

Hopefully you followed me on this brief overview of our third ODSM. Next post we use a real example.

-Marcello
The People vs. Personal Gain
By: Joshua Potash
Tags: Politics, Money, Corruption, Finance, Stock Market

Former Georgia Rep. Tom Price, who later went on to become the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the Trump Administration, offers an excellent example of why Senators Merkley and Brown want to prevent members of Congress from investing while in office. In January 2017, on the eve of Price’s HHS confirmation hearings, the Senate Finance Committee released a memo describing a range of questionable activities, with the most notable line relating to investments made by Rep. Price in Innate Immunotherapeutics, an Australian pharmaceutical company. Not only had Rep. Price under-reported his holdings in the company by up to $200,000, he had also invested based on the advice of another congressman, Rep. Chris Collins of New York. During the hearings, Rep. Doug Lamborn of Colorado also decided to buy shares in Innate Immunotherapeutics, and three more members of Congress soon followed suit. Collins, who initially recommended the investment, was later charged with insider trading for using his knowledge that the Australian company’s key drug had failed an FDA test to tell members of his family to sell their stock before it plummeted.

So, despite the fact that members of Congress are barred from insider trading, they still find ways to engage in unethical investment practices. Some, like Rep. Collins, have had charges brought against them. Others, like Rep. Price, have gone on to become cabinet secretaries of important government agencies (before resigning when the private charter of military planes for personal usage was revealed). These stories are just some of the many that were reported in recent years, and they make one rationale for the Ban Conflicted Trading Act quite clear: Banning insider trading activity by members of Congress is not sufficient to prevent scandal and unethical behavior. But, another reason for the bill is a broader belief that representatives and senators should be wholly focused on serving their constituents without becoming distracted by the ability to line their pockets.
Slovenian Prime Minister Dr. Miro Cerar tries out Elipay
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Bitcoin, Token

Friday, 25 May 2018, was an important day for Eligma and BTC City. As one of the biggest shopping centres in this part of Europe, BTC City was visited by the Slovenian Prime Minister. The purpose of his visit was to open the Beyond 4.0 international conference, dedicated to digital society and blockchain, as well as to get acquainted with BTC City’s strategy to become Bitcoin City — a business and shopping ecosystem based on the latest technological solutions including blockchain, AI and cryptocurrencies, where Eligma plays an important part.

Prime Minister Dr. Cerar was met by Joze Mermal, President of the BTC Management Board, and Dejan Roljic, Eligma CEO. They headed for a morning coffee meeting, where Dr. Cerar was in for a special treat — a cup of ‘crypto coffee’ bought for him by Slovenian State Secretary Tadej Slapnik through the Elipay cryptocurrency transaction system.

After the presentation of the Elipay system to the Slovenian President Borut Pahor and the Slovakian President Andrej Kiska in April, this meeting again testifies to the growing interest in the latest technologies and to the pioneering efforts of Eligma and Bitcoin City in the business domain.

Photos by Siniša Kanižaj.

Join our community:

Web page|Facebook|Telegram|LinkedIn|Twitter
Lazy Days & a Recipe for Lemony Green Pasta
By: Stephanie Arsenault
Tags: Lemon, Garlic, From The Kitchen, Pasta, Herbs

As we get closer to summer and the sun makes itself present in my life a little bit more each day, I get lazier and lazier. Well, sort of.

I become a lazy cook. I don’t want to spend hours preparing dinner when I could be out riding my bike. I don’t want to stand over a hot stove when I could be picking the grass with my toes. I absolutely don’t want to be taking the time to braise anything when I could instead be sitting on a patio at my favourite brewery sipping a pint.

Instead, I favour quick and simple meals, cook them outside {hello, barbecue season!}, and always have enough for leftovers the next day.

This Lemony Green Pasta dish is made in just a few minutes {use leftover pasta for an extra quick meal!} and goes perfectly along your favourite grilled meat. If you’re looking for a vegetarian option, double the edamame for more protein, and serve it as a main!

I apologize for the briefness of today’s story… it’s time for that bike ride.

Lemony Green Pasta

Serves 4 as a side

Ingredients:

Juice and zest of ½ lemon

3 teaspoons olive oil, separated

2 cloves garlic, smashed and minced

2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh dill

2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley

1 cup edamame beans (beans only, pods discarded)

2 cups snap peas, tough ends trimmed

2 cups baby spinach, roughly chopped

3 cups short pasta, such as rotini, cooked to al dente according to package instructions

2 tablespoons freshly grated parmesan, plus more for serving

Sea salt and fresh ground pepper

Instructions:

1. Combine lemon juice and zest, 2 teaspoons olive oil, garlic, and herbs together in a small bowl; whisk well and set aside.

2. Heat 1 teaspoon olive oil in a large frying pan or wok over medium heat. Add the edamame beans and snap peas and cook until the peas are tender-crisp; stir in the spinach and cook until wilted. Add the cooked pasta and the lemon mixture from step one, and cook for another two minutes, stirring often. Mix in the parmesan and salt and pepper, to taste. Serve warm with extra parmesan, if desired.
Get Off the Passion Bandwagon
By: Tarun Kohli
Tags: Startup Lessons, Entrepreneurship, Work, Career Advice, Passion

Photo by Karly Santiago on Unsplash

“Your time on earth is limited. Follow your passion and that’s the only way to put a dent in this universe”.

Great career advice, isn’t it?

This is a common platitude which you would have heard from motivational speakers and fallen in awe of their purposeful outlook towards life. I am sure it has caused many people to join the “I QUIT because I have a dream” bandwagon.

If a purposeful life is a reward one only gets by following one’s passion then who wouldn’t want to follow it. Hey, sign me up too. Because let’s face it, we are engineered to believe that there is a job or something out there which is going to make us happy forever. A powerful and seductive thought.

I wish life worked like that. I wish careers worked like that. I so wish there was a job somewhere that completes us. And, once we stumble upon that magical job — our days become enviable. Full of hope and happiness.

Sadly, it doesn’t work like that.

No job on this planet dishes out happiness in equal proportions every day, no matter how much passion you have for it. There would be days when you will be highly motivated and energetic — like someone had given you wings to fly. And then there would be days where you will sulk yourself to death.

But, the passion mindset makes us a believer in the binary logic-

Passion = Success and Happiness

Lack of Passion = Worthless life

I’m not even sure if passion leads to success or success leads to passion. I know there are a few people in music, sports, and science who tasted success because of their passion. A lucky minority, who always knew what they wanted to do.

But, most of us, develop a passion by accident — there, I said it.

Even most of the successful professionals that I know about or even famous entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs started loving what they do once they heard their inner voice screaming that they could be good at it. You see, they weren’t born with a tattoo on their head claiming a particular job was meant for them.

And, it’s the story of all of our lives as well — we develop a passion for a job when it starts challenging us. To grow. To become better. And in that growth and zeal to become better, we find our successes, happiness, and passion, eventually.

I hope you don’t misconstrue that I’m against being passionate. In fact, I believe passion is the fuel to light up your fire. But, don’t waste your time trying to find only that.

Instead, create a discipline in your schedule and have relentless focus in whatever you do. Our life would be purposeful if we follow the Kaizen approach and try to get better every day in our craft. Albert Einstein said that compounding is “the greatest mathematical discovery of all time.” So each day, just focus on getting better. Even if it’s merely 1% increment.

Passion alone is overrated. Don’t fall for it. If you do, I pray to God that you nurture it with a great deal of discipline. That’s the key to everlasting happiness. And, that’s the only key to greatness.
Bubble Trouble
By: Emma Briggs
Tags: Peace Of Mind, Life, Justice, Poem, Resistance Poetry

Photo by Timur Romanov on Unsplash

Routine days start and end.

Am I really this content?

It’s all sweet in my little life,

working, writing, being a wife,

but too much sugar makes me ill.

Uneasy twinges grow until

broken nails tear my skin

to let the crazy world come in.

A little chaos keeps me awake,

some conflict for the story’s sake.

I need to pierce the peaceful bubble

to claim my piece of global trouble.

When it’s all going to shit out there

the serenity in here isn’t fair.

I wish I could ignore the strife

and build a wall around my life,

but I suppose it will never work.

I’m still a part of the wider world.

Even with closed eyes I see

I need something bigger than me.
What’s the difference between never and void in TypeScript?
By: Edvinas Daugirdas
Tags: JavaScript, Typescript

Photo by Rowan Heuvel on Unsplash

If you’re still somewhat new to TypeScript or just haven’t had the time to fully analyze it’s basic types you may have noticed that some of them may look a bit more daunting then others. Sure, it’s quite easy to understand what a number or a string is, but never and void ? Not so much.

The two types might look similar at first glance, but they are separate for a reason. To completely understand their differences let’s dive into them one by one and explore what their purpose is in TypeScript.

void

You’ve probably seen this type around and it’s usually used as a return type of functions which do not have a return value.

In JavaScript a function that doesn’t return anything explicitly returns undefined by default. These functions are inferred by TypeScript to have return type of void .

You can think of void as a little opposite of any : the absence of having any type at all. Declaring variables as void is not very useful though because you can only assign undefined or null if --strictNullChecks is not specified.

never

never type is a bit more difficult to fully understand in my opinion, but the basic idea is quite simple. The type represents types of values that never occur. For example it can be used with functions that never return or with functions that that always throw an exception.

never is also inferred by TypeScript when narrowed by type guards that can never be true.

Another great common use case is to use never with conditional types to exclude undesired types.

One edge case that you should be aware of though is that TypeScript infers function declarations and function expressions with arrow functions differently. If you’re interested why there’s a great resource on StackOverflow.

Conclusion

With solid grasp of what never and void types are we can conclude that the types are quite different. void is used whenever a function does not return anything explicitly (usually that means it returns undefined implicitly) and never whenever a function never returns at all.

Hope you’ve learnt something new, thanks for reading! :)
Haz que tus empleados sean felices
By: Gabriela Nova
Tags: Eivos, Español, Empresa, Estilo De Vida, Felicidad

in In Fitness And In Health
Protective Coating
By: Jonathan Greene
Tags: Safety, Poetry, Life, Self, Protection

Protective Coating

A Poem

Photo by Nikolaos Choustoulakis on Unsplash

It’s a wonder I am able to walk around every day

when I carry this protective coating with me

thereby keeping anyone intent on piercing this heart

at a broom’s length so as not to disturb my solitude

It’s self-made, as there was no kit to buy to get this

It took years and years of layering and wrapping

to get this resistant to what the outside world brings

It’s like I’m wrapped in a blanket, inside a hundred blankets

It’s warm in here, cocoon-like and embryonic

because some days it feels like I was never even born

because if I was, I should actually feel something

other than the heft from all of my protective coating
What is OpenCV and why is it so popular?
By: Ankit Gupta
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Opencv, Intel

OpenCV is a library of Programming functions which are used in real-time Computer Vision. It is developed by Intel Corporation, Willow Garage, Itseez .

“OpenCV is cross-Platform and Free for use under the license which makes it easy for businesses to utilize and modify the code and supports the Deep Learning Frameworks TensorFlow, Torch/PyTorch and Caffe.”

OpenCV is written in C++ . supports Windows, Linux, Android and Mac OS.

Which Language it supports :

1. C++

2. Android SDK

3. Java

4. Python

5. MATLAB/OCTAVE

6. C (Not recommended)

Which OS(Desktop and Mobile) it supports :

Linux Windows Android Mac-OS FreeBSD, NetBSD OpenBSD.

The library has more than 2500 optimized algorithms, which includes a comprehensive set of both classic and state-of-the-art computer vision and machine learning algorithms.

OpenCV has more than 47,000 people of user community and estimated number of downloads exceeding 18 million or 180 lakh which makes its more important in world community.
Beyond Arrogance and Self-Doubt
By: Wabi Sabi
Tags: Buddhism, Self Improvement, Psychology, Ego, Personality

Sometimes we stop ourselves being of emotional or spiritual service to someone because we don’t want to be presumptuous. We can’t stand that we know more about something than they do, have established some better habits, have more robust mental health. We’re so careful to avoid the trap of arrogance that we deliberately incapacitate ourselves with self-doubt. We end up with a headache, and our friend goes unhelped. Nobody wins.

Self-doubt isn’t the opposite of arrogance. It’s its tennis partner.

Pride and self-loathing are mutually dependent, yin and yang. Their mission in life is to rally back and forth all day, knowing full well that they’re evenly matched and neither of them will ever win the tournament. One thought attacks us, so we escape the pain by puffing ourselves up. Another thought flatters us, so to avoid the Great Sin of Arrogance we prick our own balloon and put ourselves down.

Humility doesn’t have time for the eternal arrogance/self-doubt rally. You aren’t threatened when you’re worse than someone in some way: great, you can learn from them. You aren’t threatened when you’re better than someone in some way: great, you can teach them.

Humility takes a good look at what it has to work with, then it gets to work.

Photo by Hennie Stander on Unsplash

ARCHAEOLOGISTS AND GARDENERS

When an archaeologist finds a precious artifact, she doesn’t go around bragging to people that she made it herself. She immediately begins studying the artifact and learning from it.

The gardener’s not ashamed of the bag of manure in his garden. He wears gloves so he can handle it safely, then he gets to work spreading it around so beautiful things can grow from it.

What if we treated our good and bad attributes like stuff we use rather than stuff we are?
.NET Core 3.1 updates in Cloud Shell and App Engine flexible environment
By: Mete Atamel
Tags: Google Cloud Platform, Dotnet Core, Software Development, Cloud Computing

.NET Core 3.1 was released on December 3rd, 2019 and is a LTS release, supported for three years.

In Google Cloud, you could already deploy .NET Core 3.1 containers in Cloud Run (see cloud-run-dotnetcore-31) and also in App Engine flexible environment with a custom runtime.

We recently extended .NET Core 3.1 support in a couple of ways:

Cloud Shell now supports .NET Core 3.1. App Engine flexible environment runtime now supports .NET Core 3.1.

.NET Core 3.1 in Cloud Shell

Inside Cloud Shell, you can see the latest 3.1.301 version:

Create an ASP.NET Core MVC app:

$ dotnet new mvc -o HelloWorldAspNetCore Running 'dotnet restore' on HelloWorldAspNetCore/HelloWorldAspNetCore.csproj... Determining projects to restore... Restored /home/atameldev/HelloWorldAspNetCore/HelloWorldAspNetCore.csproj (in 221 ms). Restore succeeded.

Run it inside Cloud Shell:

$ dotnet run --urls=http://localhost:8080 info: Microsoft.Hosting.Lifetime[ 0 ] Now listening on: http://localhost:8080

.NET Core 3.1 in App Engine flexible environment

You can now deploy .NET Core 3.1 apps to App Engine flexible environment without having to create a custom runtime.

First, publish a release version:

$ dotnet publish -c Release HelloWorldAspNetCore -> /home/atameldev/HelloWorldAspNetCore/bin/Release/netcoreapp3.1/HelloWorldAspNetCore.dll HelloWorldAspNetCore -> /home/atameldev/HelloWorldAspNetCore/bin/Release/netcoreapp3.1/HelloWorldAspNetCore.Views.dll HelloWorldAspNetCore -> /home/atameldev/HelloWorldAspNetCore/bin/Release/netcoreapp3.1/publish/

Create an app.yaml file with the following contents inside the publish folder:

cat>bin/Release/netcoreapp3.1/publish/app.yaml<<EOF

env:flex

runtime:aspnetcore

EOF

Deploy to App Engine:

gcloud app deploy bin/Release/netcoreapp3.1/publish/app.yaml

You can then browse to the app with gcloud app browse and see the default page:

Codelab and GitHub Repo

If you want to try this out yourself, we also updated Deploy an ASP.NET Core app to App Engine codelab with the latest info:

I also create a GitHub repo, appengine-flex-dotnetcore with code and instructions on the same.

If you have questions/comments, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter (@meteatamel).
A Handy Guide for Understanding Common Online Metrics
By: Todd Brison
Tags: Social Media, Self, Work, Art, Culture

Internet lingo can be tricky. Here’s what you need to remember:

A “fan” is a person.

A “follower” is a person.

A “like” is a person.

A “page view” is a person.

A “share” is a person.

A “sale” is a person.

The modern creative thinks a lot about playing by the rules of robots. Forget that. Let someone else decide how many meaningless internet points it should have.

Make stuff for humans.
Zello Tops App Store Ranking Ahead of Hurricane Irma
Tags: Technology, Mobile App Development, Mobile Apps, Travel, Apps

As Hurricane Irma has hit hard Florida shores, forcing 6.3 million citizens to evacuate the states, Zello app is one hope that is helping Floridians remain connected to the outside world. Being a walkie talkie app, Zello is helping people remain connected to each other and the outside world as well.

Zello app is one among the categories of walkie talkie applications that has got huge responses lately ahead of the Hurricane Irma. Originally launched in Russia in 2007, as LoudTalks, the app has 100 million users across the globe. The app got popularity after volunteers started using it to offer a helping hand to the Hurricane affected people.

How Zello is Helping People During Hurricane Irma

Since Zello is helping people share their connection in emergency, the applications have received six million registration ahead of the Hurricane Irma. Zello app comes under the category of free applications available in the app store and due to Hurricane Irma effect, the app now tops the charts as being the most downloaded app.

In order to extend the helping hand to more and more people, the Zello team is working hard to offer services in the emergency situation. Users’ interest in Zello has mandated the company to add additional servers to keep the app updated at the time of emergency. There is no doubt about the fact that an app like Zello works exceptionally well at the time of emergency. Being a walkie talkie app, it becomes quite easy for users to establish the connection.

Founder’s View on Zello App

Expressing his views on the application, the CEO Alex Gavrilov has made it clear that the app is not a Hurricane rescue tool but only useful for the people who need services in emergency. It is extremely useful for people and reliable as well when used. The way Zello has helped people to connect and extend the scope of services in a Hurricane hit state has proved the worth of the application.

This Article is Originally Published here.
Childlike
By: Aarish Shah
Tags: Poetry, Life, Inspiration, Photo, Writing

Photo Credit — Me! London

Growing up

My head full of swagger

Now blowing up

That life had me stagger-ing

From the nonsense I was spewing

Arrogance my undoing

And now I'm left here ruing

The days I've wasted

Days I've been wasted

Now the knowledge that I've tasted

Is burning up my soul

Like a taper touched to coal

And from those embers I'm reborn

Become an idea reformed

And yes I've been shorn

Of my selfish immaturity

But despite the masks that I've worn

I'm still blessed with that childlike curiosity.
A Bona Fide Pop Star
By: West Magazine
Tags: Concert Review, Concerts, Music

A Bona Fide Pop Star

Dua Lipa gave a hell of a performance at the Palladium

Stories and photos by Jazmine Avila Contributor

Dua Lipa sings her heart out at the Palladium

Dua Lipa sold out the Hollywood Palladium on Feb. 8 and put on an incredible show.

The doors opened at 7 p.m. and it was an agonizing hour before her opening act went on. When the clock struck 8 p.m., Tommy Genesis came on with an interesting set. Her music was very eccentric, but in a good way. She reminded me a lot of Billie Eilish and K. Flay. Genesis worked the stage well and although her set was short, got the crowd pumped for Lipa.

Lipa’s set was hands down one of the best I’ve ever experienced. From the stage effects to her song choices, dance moves and interaction with the crowd, it was simply amazing.

The effects that Lipa used for her set really matched the mood for the songs. The most iconic visual effect was played right before “IDGAF.” The screen went black and then it read “Warning, you are about to experience some explicit behavior…” The rest of the statement was basically a f*** you to all the f***boys and the crowd was into it.

Lipa’s song choices were excellent, mostly coming from herher self-titled debut album, including everything from her first single “New Love” to her most popular song “New Rules.” She even performed her collaboration with Martin Garrix called “Scared to be Lonely.”

It’s the effort that she puts into her dancing that sets her apart from other performers

She did a good job pacing the whole concert. She performed a couple of upbeat songs, then toned it down to perform mellow songs like “No Goodbyes.” No matter the tempo of the song, fast or slow, the crowd was always moving and enjoying themselves. The performance that stood out the most was “New Rules” because the whole crowd went wild. She also managed to get everyone to crouch and then start jumping when one of the last chorus’ hit.

Another thing that must be mentioned is Dua Lipa’s astounding vocals. Not once did I think that her studio version songs sounded better.

Dua Lipa performing “No Goodbyes”

It’s the effort that she puts into her dancing that sets her apart from other performers. She gave the crowd high energy and enthusiasm which is rare for artists to give both.

Her dance moves and vocals were good, but it was her interaction with the crowd that made me love her more. She moved all across the stage and never made any side feel excluded from the Dua Lipa experience.

After her set ended, I quickly made my way to the exit. While everyone was exiting, “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” by Whitney Houston started playing. Everyone began to sing along as they were walking toward the exit. That moment was so surreal because it felt like we were all a part of something bigger yet so singular.

Having seen Dua Lipa perform live confirmed that she is a true pop star — one that is going to sell out stadiums in a couple years’ time because she is the whole package. I only see Dua Lipa performing at bigger venues and I’m excited to see what her future albums and tours will bring.
You can Now Publish with us!
By: Aditya Vinod Buchinger
Tags: Write With Us, Architecture, Writers On Medium, Sustainability, Environment

Hello and Welcome!

Photo by Jon Flobrant on Unsplash

I am Aditya, the Editor of Architectonics. I created this publication to encourage open discussions on sustainability in built environment space. The publication is now open allowing you to publish your articles with us. If you have an idea, a thought or view that you would like to share on the following topics, please feel free to get in touch with us.
Seerah of Prophet Muhammed (104 classes)
By: Muslim Open Online College
Tags: Islam

Seerah of Prophet Muhammed (104 classes)

DR. YASIR QADHI gives a detailed analysis of the life of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him)

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi gives a detailed analysis of the life of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) from the original sources. Study the Biography of the single greatest human being that ever walked the surface of this earth, whom Allah sent as a Mercy to Mankind.

Prescribed Reading: The Sealed Nectar: Biography of the Prophet — Sheikh Safi-ur-Rahman al-Mubarkpuri
About Me — Zach Klebaner
By: Zach Klebaner
Tags: Introduction, Life, Self, About Me, Writing

About Me — Zach Klebaner

Writer. Poet. Comedian. Filmmaker.

Picture Provided By Rebecca Klebaner

Bio

Welcome to my profile! My name is Zach Klebaner, and I am a 23-year old writer, poet, and comedian born in Long Beach, New York, and raised in Arnold, Maryland.

In 2015, I returned to my Long Island roots to watch movies and get stoned which four years later culminated with a degree in Film Studies and Production from Hofstra University.

Me, wondering how I pulled it off

Shortly after completing both my degree and my short film The Crusaders, I had my first poem “Sestina: Bruh!” published after it placed third in a contest held by Winning Writers. Since graduating, I’ve worked as a freelance filmmaker, a summer camp counselor, and a teaching artist at an after-school program.

I am currently gliding through the insanity that has been 2020 in Tamarac, Florida. With my abundance of free time, I run, read, write, and binge-watch television. My wide range of interests includes sociology, philosophy, culture, creativity, history, and mental health.

An exuberant extrovert, I am passionate about self-development and connecting with others. If something I’ve written strikes your mind, don’t hesitate to let me know by reaching out. My inbox is always open. :)

-Zach

Picture Provided By Author

Contact Me

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/zach.klebaner/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZKlebaner

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zach.klebaner/

Quora: https://www.quora.com/profile/Zach-Klebaner

Email: zach.klebaner@gmail.com
R2 on the Road
By: Nuro Team
Tags: Autonomy, Self Driving Cars, Autonomous Vehicles

Earlier this year, our self-driving delivery robot R2 became the first autonomous vehicle to receive an approved exemption from the US Department of Transportation. R2 then became the second autonomous vehicle to receive a driverless testing permit in California. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we set up contactless delivery services with R2 at temporary care facilities in California to carry food, water, and medical supplies to patients and doctors with the goal of decreasing points of contagion.

Today, we’re excited to announce another first for Nuro. For the past few months, R2 has been testing on city streets fully autonomously in three different states. No drivers. No occupants. No chase cars.

Here’s a short video of R2 on the road in Mountain View, CA, Houston, TX, and Phoenix, AZ.

We built R2 to autonomously deliver a wide range of goods — prepared food, groceries, medicine, and retail products — so that consumers and communities could have more time, more access, safer roads, and reduced emissions.

Nuro and R2 won’t do this alone. Retail partners, government policy makers, law enforcement, and community groups will be essential to developing public trust in an entirely new way of delivering local goods. And it will take a lot of new workers. A recent study by transportation specialists at Steer found that, from 2025 to 2035, 3.4 million jobs will be created in this new industry.

We recently celebrated the four-year mark since a small passionate team gathered around a shared mission: to accelerate the benefits of robotics for everyday life. We are incredibly proud of what our expanded team has accomplished as we’ve grown, and especially as we’ve experienced this most challenging year. Today’s progress marks an exciting step forward on our path to fostering safe and sustainable communities, and giving people more time to spend on the things — and people — they care about the most.
Getting over my water buffalo anxieties
By: Rj Verity
Tags: Words On Writing, Writer, Rj Verity, Writing, Writing Tips

This last week has not been as productive as I wanted it to be. And I only have myself to blame for the many distractions and self-interruptions. While I have been working on my novel every day (research, characters, settings), I feel frustrated that I haven’t written a single scene yet. It feels like the days are running away with me.

But what was really the main issue?

I finally worked out that I hadn’t found my work-writing groove. I had read about how some writers work best first thing in the morning … and some last thing at night. I don’t think I am a night writer, and I like my mornings to start with a dog walk followed by a good one hour sorting all of life’s other matters (emails, projects, meetings etc). Thanks to Kim Bullock and her words on Motivation: Make Writing Dessert Again — we appear to share common writing practices. Kim’s article helped me realise that it is okay to write when it feels right for me.

Should I just try and write a scene anyway? Or should I keep working on the planning and preparation?

My right brain kept saying Just write!, and my left brain Hang-on, not so fast! I was feeling anxious about how the story was going to come together, especially as this is my first book. The uncertainty of the journey ahead was sending me into a spin. I was reminded of Poppy, our labradinger. When out on our morning dog walk, Poppy doesn’t relax and enjoy the walk because she is always anxious to know what (or who) is around the next corner — just in case it’s some enormous, scary water buffalo.

I need to just enjoy working in the moment

I needed to stop worrying about what writing phase is around the corner, and just enjoy working in the moment. The moment was (and still is) preparation. While I had the skeleton of a story outline in place, I really hadn’t put any meat on the bone, nor considered the natural flow of the overall timeline. I had studied plot points, pitch points and of course scenes, but the rhythm wasn’t coming naturally to me. Not yet anyway.

The many helpful resources available online were helping to allay my own water buffalo anxieties. Big thanks to KM Weiland for her numerous articles on novel outline and story structure. I went back to my beat sheet, opened up Scrivener, and managed to plot the forty scenes across the three acts of my novel on a cork board.

The flow of the novel just feels so much better now. The left and right brains are learning to respect each other more: no longer competing but working as a team. There is structure in the creativity and creativity in the structure. My characters are coming to life and are more interesting because of the structure.

There may be an enormous scary water buffalo around the next writing corner. But rather than feel anxious about it, I am enjoying the here and now. And I feel better prepared to just to move on past with less anxiety and a little more confidence.

Originally published at www.rjverity.com on July 16, 2017.