fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Launching a blog post series to showcase our design team talent
By: Michelle Chiu
Tags: Technology, User Experience, Tech, Design, Writing

Diving into a company’s blog is one of the best ways I learn about an organization. It offers a glimpse into who I could be potentially working with, the projects I could take ownership of, and what the culture is like. In a sense, my first impression can be formed prior to meeting anyone from the teams.

With these thoughts in mind, I conceived the idea of creating a blog post series to highlight our designers at MongoDB. I was certain it’d be a great avenue to educate candidates on who we are, what we do, and what we find important. I envisioned it as a helpful resource for both future intern cohort applicants and design role candidates as our team continues to scale.

The main goals of the initiative were to allow readers to:

Learn more about our core values on the MongoDB design team Understand the responsibilities that a design role at MongoDB entails Educate themselves on the variety of projects MongoDB designers are involved in Grab insights on what MongoDB designers have learned from prior experiences that’ve helped us in our current roles Get a better sense of personalities at MongoDB by learning what the team finds time for outside of the day-to-day job

Ultimately, we wanted readers to fully envision what it would be like to work as a designer at MongoDB. I pitched the idea to my manager and, once it was signed off, I reached out to our team for participants in the series.

On Slack, I sent out a blurb in our #design channel to recruit those wanted to be featured. To enforce fairness and diversity in participants, I had a “sign-up document” that permitted one person from each product team to be included.
From Insight to Action to Stranger Things — Acrotrend Solutions
By: Acrotrend Consultancy
Tags: Data Science, Business Intelligence, Netflix, Marketing, Customer Analytics

In our previous episode of Stranger Things, we looked at how insight drives Netflix’s success. If you missed that post, you can read it here.

As we move through the DATA > INSIGHT > ACTION loop, this blog post deep-dives further into the ACTION aspect of Netflix’s data.

When we arrive at the Insights stage, 50% of the work has been done: Netflix has made an agreement with Stranger Things’ producers, defined the Stranger Things promotion roadmap and has the KPI framework setup. Now it’s time to create and execute the plan.

Netflix already knows who, when, where, what and how to target their subscribers even before spending money on the project. Of course, in reality, it’s a bit more complex than that, but crucially, Netflix is clear on the cost and timelines required to achieve the expected return on their investment.

In theory, there are 3 types of audiences here:

- FANS: Current subscribers who have been identified as perfect candidates to watch Stranger Things. For them, the cost of marketing activities per user will be relatively low as Netflix already knows that they have a high interest in this genre. According to Symphony AdvancedMedia, Stranger Things Season 1 averaged 8.2m viewers among adults aged 18–49 over the first 17 days. We can assume that most of these viewers belong to this audience set.

- CLIENTS: Current subscribers who don’t particularly show interest in Science Fiction-Horror programmes like Stranger Things. Here the marketing effort is higher than for fans, because Netflix has to convince them to watch, whereas the previous segment is already hooked. Using matchmaking and personalising the customer experience, Netflix can drive additional conversions, which also mean higher customer satisfaction and higher retention rates.

- PROSPECTS: Science Fiction-Horror fans who aren’t subscribers of Netflix. Converting this audience type will require a significant investment into marketing activities through social media, newspaper articles, physical and digital advertisement. The conversion will be lower, but every new subscription also means a bigger user base and therefore more revenue.

Conclusion

And there we have it. We hope our Stranger Things mini-series has been an enlightening read and has demonstrated how Netflix makes successful, critical decisions based on data.

Clearly, data cannot make every decision by itself; there are some situations where intuition must be used. This is why we prefer to talk about decision-making ‘tools’ rather than as technology that replaces humans — because it doesn’t, and it shouldn’t.

Using data to make decisions about your organisation’s next investment or to help you build a strategy is not restricted only to movie industry. This process can be mirrored across any type of business that wants to minimise risk and make more profit.

If our series has whet your appetite for more, and you want to become a data-driven organisation, find out more about how Acrotrend can support you on this journey.
Boundaries Are Not Walls
By: Tara Rose
Tags: Mental Health, Psychology, Mental Health Awareness, Self Improvement

Boundaries Are Not Walls

Bringing us together and to better mental well-being

The term ‘boundary’ can sometimes be misleading. We aren’t talking about building walls. We are building a fence — remember, ‘good fences make good neighbors’. Boundaries are necessary to establish better relationships with ourselves and others. Not only are boundaries crucial in establishing your own identity, but also necessary for your mental health and well-being. They can be physical or emotional, loose or rigid. They are what you feel is necessary.

Setting boundaries is hard. I wish it were easy, but I won’t lie to you. It’s hard to say the word ‘no’ especially when you want to help someone out, look good for your boss. We get it, no one wants to let anyone else down. When did saying ‘no’ cast you in a negative light? We continue to work hours upon hours, sending emails and slack messages late into the night to show that we are working in hard, especially in a remote setting. When did exhaustion become a status symbol? You feel the pressure day in and day out. That’s right, you might be heading toward ‘burnout’ — mental exhaustion — because you cannot say ‘no.’ It’s a recipe for disaster.

Photo by Tony Tran on Unsplash

I’ve recently reestablished my own boundaries; especially as they pertain to work during the year of COVID-19. Is there a better year other than 2020 to work on the promotion of self-care or working to help others amongst a tsunami of negativity? Working from home during a pandemic has created varying blurred lines. When does the work day begin? When does it end? One forgets that the drive to and from work may be utilized to decompress, shrug off any negative feelings that might persist after a hard day. Getting up and walking down the hall to the bathroom to get a few extra steps or even taking a moment to walk to the other end of the office to chat with a coworker — those helped!

I certainly utilized my commute to decompress on the ride home, however, I don’t miss it. It allows me to get almost an hour and a half back with work when I am not in the car. Go figure. However, this is dangerous. I found myself working earlier and earlier, but also later and later. I took control. I decided that 5pm was the cutoff…no matter what time I started. This single step — this one boundary that I have established for myself — has single-handedly turned some of my stress and mental exhaustion upside down. It wasn’t easy, there was the anxiety over unanswered emails or unread slack messages; but this is something for me! This is something I needed to do to be okay so that I can be better for everyone else and be there for those in need of support.

We must first understand our own limits. Some of us have deep reservoirs of resiliency, or maybe just a shallow puddle drying up in the midday summer heat. One of the first steps in establishing boundaries for yourself is to understand and identify your specific pain points. Then, outline specifically what that boundary is to whomever needs to hear it.
Don’t Try to be Anyone’s Rock if You’re a Pile of Rubble
By: Kristi Keller
Tags: Mindfulness, Mental Health, Self Love, 2020, Wellness

Christmas is one big bundle of obligation at the best of times. Add 2020 into the mix and we have one magnificent ball of clusterfuckery.

We’re all trying to figure out how to make this holiday season as normal as possible when we know that normal doesn’t exist right now. Let’s not pretend that millions of people haven’t lost jobs, livelihoods, and loved ones this year.

Instead, let’s call it like we see it and admit that nobody’s Christmas will be as merry as it usually is. No one is coming home for the holidays and if they are, they’re probably breaking a law or two in doing so.

The majority of us are struggling in one way or another this year and some of us will be lucky to accomplish getting out of bed for the holidays.

I don’t want to get out of bed on Christmas morning, and I certainly don’t want to pretend to be festive when the most important human in my life became an angel this year.

Yet, there are other important people still with me and the weight of my loss rests on their shoulders too. But I don’t feel like trying to add joy and merriment to anyone’s Christmas. I don’t feel it’s my job to show up, never mind lift up anyone during the holidays.

The fact that this holiday season is upon me only three months after the worst event of my life, and on the tail end of a whole pandemic, is an inconvenience that I resent right now. It weighs heavily on me that I am someone else’s child because it feels as though I’m expected to grace my mother with my presence.

I’m not in a position to be anyone’s rock right now.

I suspect many of us feel the same way. Millions of people worldwide have succumbed to 2020, whether due to Coronavirus or other tragic spinoffs of this shit show.

Some of us aren’t ready to fake it just yet.

I have invested a grand total of ZERO into Christmas shopping and I don’t intend to. There’s only one gift in the whole world that I want and I can’t get it — so I’m opting out of Christmas this year.

Believe me when I say I’m just showing up for the food.

If I had my way I’d choose to spend Christmas day alone, playing in a snow drift with my dog. We got a fantastically large dump of snow this week and it is my sole desire to play in it like a child.

Nobody needs permission to not show up for Christmas this year. If you don’t feel like giving into the obligation, then don’t. I wrote this more for the people who have expectations of others showing up for them.

Some of us don’t have the heart to show up right now so if we don’t, allow us some grace and realize that we’re allowing ourselves to feel what we need to feel. We didn’t all come through this year unscathed and some of us will never, ever know normal again.

Remind yourself that if you came through 2020 with a heartbeat and a pulse you’ll be okay, one step at a time.
How NOT to Be Super Indecisive About Everything You Do
By: Phoenix Huber
Tags: Mental Health, Technology, Productivity, Life Lessons, Self Improvement

How NOT to Be Super Indecisive About Everything You Do

7 things I learned from taking forever to get a new iPhone

Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash

You’re probably here because you struggle to be decisive. Because you agonize over basic choices you must make to move your life forward. You worry, you waste weeks, and you feel embarrassed for taking so long.

If so, welcome to Indecisive Anonymous; let’s rock this journey together! If not, I hope you’re entertained by my story anyway.

Don’t feel bad if you’re indecisive as all heck. I’ve taken 3 whole months to replace my iPhone after I broke it. I did buy a cheap refurbished one in the meantime, but it had a fatal flaw (turning on and off every several minutes). After finally making a proper purchase after 3 months, I still woke up the next morning feeling like I’d made the wrong choice.

I worried, I wasted weeks of my life, and I’ve sure felt embarrassed about it. But I also learned 7 things. These lessons will make me a stronger decision-maker, starting… tomorrow? No, wait, I think it’s today. Yes, starting today!
Dave Chappelle’s “Unforgiven” Is A Masterpiece Of Persuasive Writing
By: Steve Qj
Tags: Comedy, Television, Dave Chappelle, Storytelling, Writing

I can just take it

Like all good stories, Unforgiven plays out over three acts, the first of which is set back when Dave was fourteen years old. Even though he was just getting started in comedy, he was, it will surprise nobody to learn, a natural. From the first moment he got up on stage, Dave displayed a level of poise and confidence far beyond his years. And as the older comedians watched him perform, perhaps they forget that he was still a child.

When one of his fellow comics asked if he could “borrow” a joke for an audition at a different club, Dave innocently said, ”Sure.” He was still too trusting to know any better. Not yet wise enough to feel that twinge of warning that you’re no doubt feeling in your gut.

A few weeks later, when the same guy uses his joke in a live performance, Dave pulls him aside after the set.

“Hey man,” Dave said, “I don’t mind you borrowing the joke, but you have to give it back!”

The man apologised and offered to buy the joke for a measly $50. Dave, a new comedian trying to build up a body of work, said no. It didn’t go down well.

The older man looms over the young boy, making sure he gets a sense of how much bigger and stronger he is, then he leans in close and says, “Really? I can just take it.”

And he does.

Dave tells us that even now, thirty-two years later, he still thinks about that man on a daily basis. It was the first time in his life that somebody had taken something that he believed was his, but it wouldn’t be the last.

The first act establishes Dave as the underdog. A child, being taken advantage of by a world he’s still too naive to understand and too young to truly belong in. It’s impossible not to feel the injustice of what happened to him. But as we do, Dave ups the stakes.
I think I’ve got a clue for the secret success of Fatim Hemraj on News Break
By: Dr Mehmet Yildiz
Tags: Marketing, Technology, Self Improvement, Freelancing, Writing

I think I’ve got a clue for the secret success of Fatim Hemraj on News Break

Some writers may have hidden power for influencing their readers. Let me elaborate on this remark.

For the goal is to highlight high achievers in our community.

Because writers need inspiration.

Fatim Hemraj has joined ILLUMINATION-Curated as soon as we established the publication. Since then, she has been submitting remarkable stories delighting our readers.

True Crime Readers like her topic so much that some even requested more stories from Fatim in our readers feedback letters.

Why am I highlighting Fatim’s writing for ILLUMINATION-Curated?

Since last few days, I started discovering many writers contributing to our publications on News Break.

When reviewing featured stories on News Break, I came across Fatim’s profile. It is a pleasant surprise. I want to share my findings to inspire our writers.

Here is the profile which speaks itself.

What is impressive about this profile is with only ten posts Fatim received 520K views, which means that each story averaged 52K views. This is a remarkable achievement for a writer.

Besides, in such a short time, Fatim gained 2073 followers.

I have seen many writers on News Break recently, but this profile is the most outstanding one. It aligns with her success on ILLUMINATION-Curated.

In my view secret of Fatim’s success is her ability to engage the readers. Her readers admire her pen and her diligence on true crime topic.

Working with top writers like Fatim is a pleasure on ILLUMINATION-Curated. She is a source of inspiration for our readers and the readers of News Break.

Here is a quick taste to give you about Fatim’s two stories on News Break.

If you haven’t applied to News Break Creator program yet, you may use my disclosed affiliate link to start your application.

If you have questions about the program, you can approach me on our Slack workspace.

Thank you for reading my perspectives.

I hope you find this story inspiring.

How to connect with me

I established three significant publications supporting 7,000+ writers and serving 70,000+ readers on Medium. Join my publications requesting access here. You are welcome to subscribe to my 100K+ mailing list, to collaborate, enhance your network, receive technology and leadership newsletters reflecting my industry experience.

I am on ILLUMINATION Slack Workspace.

Connect with me on News Break.

Connect with me on Vocal Media.

I use Linktree to share my social platforms.
4 Top AI/ML Github Repositories in November 2020
By: Mohammad Ahmad
Tags: Machine Learning, Data Science, Github, Python, Artificial Intelligence

4 Top AI/ML Github Repositories in November 2020

Some of these will blow your mind

Photo by Andy Kelly on Unsplash

Data Scientists and Machine Learning researchers will both keep a nose around for what’s going on in the community.

There are various ways to do this: by checking out what’s going on in Kaggle or Product Hunt. Maybe having a look through stack overflow trends, or even looking at GitHub trends.

I’m a curious individual, so I wanted to see what had been trending this month: all of which I found to be pretty damn interesting.

Here goes it:
Year in Review: here’s the 21 articles and podcasts I produced about changing journalistic practice in 2020
By: Damian Radcliffe
Tags: Storytelling, Careers, Journalists, Journalism, Reporting

This is the second article in a short-series bringing together all of my work from the past year.

Although there’s some cross-over between many of these categories, this installment looks specifically at my writing dedicated to journalistic practice.

Audio and Podcasting

Local Journalism

Published at the end of 2019, “Shifting Practices for a Stronger Tomorrow: Local Journalism in the Pacific Northwest,” stemmed from a roundtable held earlier in the year in Portland (OR). During summer 2020 I split the report up, publishing each chapter individually on Medium.

*Also available in Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Chinese and Russian, and republished by the Associação Brasileira dos Jornalistas (Brazilian Association of Journalists).

Remote Working

Reporting

Social Media

University of Oregon, School of Journalism, alumni
Submission Guidelines for PsychoLogically
By: Jyoti Meena
Tags: Style Guides, Submission Guidelines, Psychology, Publication, Writing

How to format the article

To format it properly so that the chances of curation is the maximum, please follow the Medium guidelines. You can always follow the below-mentioned article for more clear instructions.

You can also check for this article for tips and tricks for writing on Medium.

In short, submit unpublished drafts. Self-published articles are also allowed. Make sure that the image is credited and there is zero plagiarism. Use subheaders and headers to divide the texts into readable chunks. The story with the reading time of 4 to 7 minutes tends to do the best. However, shorter work is also accepted.
How to Work for Long Term Goals If You Hate Delaying Gratification
By: Younes Henni
Tags: Education, Productivity, Motivation, Life, Self Improvement

Why Delayed Gratification Is Not a Suitable Strategy

For millennia, humans lived from moment to moment. We had to continually think about how to get food, avoid predators, and find shelter. While our world is very different from our ancestors’, experts showed that our brains didn’t change much compared to early humans. We still love and seek immediately rewarding actions. Eating sweets, gossiping, and hearing stories, are all integral parts of who we are.

By delaying instant gratification, you wage a losing battle between your homo-sapiens instincts and your modern aspirations. Yet today, you do most of what you do not to get immediate gratification, but rather to achieve something or be someone later on. Building a successful startup, investing money, or training to be fit, have no seemingly instant rewards.

This contrast between modern success habits and deeply-rooted tendencies begs the question: “is it possible to make long term oriented work immediately satisfying?” James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, answers this question best. He says:

“What is immediately rewarded is often repeated.”

What he means is this: if a habit gives you a dopamine hit, you’re more likely to do it again and again. Otherwise, you’ll have no reasons to keep doing what you’re doing.

While gratification from indulging in sweets or checking social media is not beneficial, a feeling of joy right after important work can be crucial in keeping you excited. At the same time, the long term rewards pile up in the background.

Instead of delaying gratification, a better strategy is to add a bit of fun and excitement to your work while slowly moving forward. This way, you won’t need to delay anything. Your brain will process hard work as if it’s eating ice cream. Here are three tactics to make difficult and critical tasks more fun to do.
Entrepreneur
By: Joseph Emmi
Tags: Work, Hard Work, Side Project, Startup, Entrepreneurship

What is an entrepreneur? Who’s an entrepreneur? How to define it?

These are questions I’ve been asking myself more and more, for a couple of months now, while been involved on projects and with people that will fit into that category.

So, I’m planning to keep asking those questions (and few more) not only to myself, but to others, aiming to put them together and share the answers and insights.

The format is not well defined yet, but I’ll be working on series of stories, documenting my process and journey as an “Entrepreneur”. The fears, the lessons, the myths, the assumptions and failures.

The goal? To bridge the gap between reality and fiction, between beginners and top players; going through what actually happens in that middle ground that almost no one talks about, that occurs between ideas, execution and growth, and how long does actually take to make thing happen.
Have you tried Pylance for VS Code? If not, here’s why you should.
By: Sj Porter
Tags: Python, Development, Python Programming, Vscode Extension, Vscode

PYTHON DEVELOPMENT | VISUAL STUDIO CODE

Have you tried Pylance for VS Code? If not, here’s why you should.

The latest language server for Python (from Microsoft) is a massive productivity enhancer.

If you work with Python and Visual Studio Code, go ahead and do yourself a favor: download the Pylance extension (preview) and try it out for yourself.

What is Pylance?

Pylance is an extension for Visual Studio Code. More specifically, Pylance is a Python language server — this means it offers enhancements to IntelliSense, syntax highlighting, package import resolution, and a myriad of other features for an improved development experience in the Python language.

You can find the full list of features here. To keep things simple, I’m going to focus on the three most useful features based on my experience with the extension thus far.

Automatic imports (a.k.a. less headache)

In Python, understanding how to correctly import dependencies from both internal and external modules is a challenge for newbies and professionals alike.

The Pylance extension offers a feature which automatically adds imports to the top of your Python files when you reference a dependency in your environment. It will also show a lightbulb icon with suggestions to add or remove imports depending on the scenario.

It’s worth mentioning that you need to have the modules you’re referencing installed in your Python environment for this to work.
I Cheated On My Husband A Week Before We Got Married
By: Divina Grey
Tags: Mental Health, Relationships, Love, Sexuality, Writing

At first, his polyamorous “confession” seemed heartfelt and a we’ve-been-together-for-a-long-time-people-change-YOLO sort of thing. I, of course, had empathy for how “transparent” he was with me. But there was something about his presentation that didn’t feel good in my heart of hearts.

Maybe it was the back and forth between his proclamation of polyamory and monogamy. I believed, after his seemingly heartfelt testimony, that he was polyamorous. Whereas the next day, he would convince me, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he was monogamous, always has been, always will be, and loved me and the family-life more than life itself.

Maybe his controlling behavior getting more nefarious as the days passed was what sounded off the alarms in my gut. Or how any hint of my autonomy sent him into a jealous rage. His tantrums went as far as to confront an unsuspecting long-time friend of ours to confirm that we were sleeping together (while he was at work and I was home with our two kids all. day. long.) That was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard. But to him, it made sense that I was capable of such wicked deceit because I messed around with the stripper fifteen-year prior.

What do I really think was going on? Projection. My ex-husband’s guilty conscience was knawing a cheating-sized hole right through him.

I wish I would have been completely honest with him the morning after my Bachelorette party. If what he says is genuine (and not manipulation at its absolute best), I could have avoided divorce altogether. He said he would have never married me in the first place had I been honest and given him a choice.
On Remembering How to do Human
By: A Singular Story
Tags: Self, Mental Health, Relationships, Life Lessons, Psychology

Can you ever forget how to be a human in the world? When major depressive disorder imprisoned me in my head and threw away the key for five years, I lost myself almost entirely.

Such was the disconnect between my previous life and what I had become that I looked in the mirror one morning and had no idea who was staring back at me. After being mostly housebound for many years, I couldn’t even remember how to put makeup on with confidence and put my best face forward.

Somehow, the little gestures that make up daily human interactions were more difficult to relearn than my job.

Even though I lost my writing voice for five years, I’m a journalist by profession and writing has always been vocation. I did struggle a lot at first but it was nothing in comparison to how much I’m struggling with the rest of normal life as I try and put back together all the pieces of my identity.

Despite depression, I’m still a communicator at heart, endlessly curious about our shared humanness. On the professional front at least, I’m operational, motivated, and able to think strategically. And I haven’t lost the innate ability to build a rapport with random strangers from all walks of life in no time and under most circumstances.

On the personal front however, I’m a two-legged tornado made of chaos, confusion, and endless epiphanies.
Why Having Secure Attachment Doesn’t Make You Invincible
By: Kathrine Meraki
Tags: Self-awareness, Self Love, Relationships, Love, Psychology

You Might Feel The Urge To Run In The Beginning

Have you recently worked on shifting your attachment style? Maybe you’ve opened up the door to attachment and are learning about it now.

Well, you might find dating securely attached people different.

Dating them might feel boring.

Don’t run yet!

Your addiction hasn’t been fed. It’s because secure people don’t give you the emotionally rollercoaster fix you’re used to.

This doesn’t mean you’re a horrible monster who wants to suffer, not at all.

But when we’re insecurely attached, our brains and bodies are wired to anticipate emotional highs and lows.

There’s no need to tip-toe around a secure partner, or even hide your feelings from them. Heck, you can trust each other and not feel jealous.

Sounds like a scam, right?

Kristen Hick rightly said:

“Instead of feeling comfortable and even attracted to secure partnerships, you might feel bored and uninterested in partners who don’t keep you on your toes with emotional ups and downs.”

Predictability and having someone share their wants and needs with you can feel overwhelming when you’re not used to it.

I felt this way when I met my partner. She was loving, kind, dependable and supportive.

It can send your brain into shock mode when you’ve never experienced this kindness from someone before.

You haven’t had your insecure attachment fix

You might be caught off guard and have emotional reactions you didn’t expect.

I cried on the second, third and fourth date (maybe the fifth too) at the start of my relationship with my partner. We laugh about it now, but I felt terrible at the time.

Acknowledge your brain is weaning off it’s addiction to insecure drama. You might want to run away when these feelings jump out at you unexpectedly.

What To Do

Understand it could be your insecure attachment getting activated — If you feel bored of like there’s no connection, why not give it a shot? You’ll see if insecure attachment is clouding your vision, or if you don’t connect.

Mindfulness practice — Practising breathing techniques when you’re feeling wobbly can help you feel grounded again. My therapist taught me the STOP Technique:
How to Get the Most Dominant Color of an Image
By: George Pipis
Tags: Machine Learning, Python, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Programming

How to Get the Name of the Most Dominant Colors

The logic is to iterate over all image pixels and to get their labels. Then, based on the frequency, we will get the n most frequent color names.

Image by Fantasy Milos.

This is the function that converts an RGB pixel to a color name:

Now let’s write a function that takes as an input the image and returns the top n colors as well as their corresponding weights/proportions in the image:

As we can see, the three most dominant colors are “steelblue” (10.74%), “lightseagreen” (10.3%), and “cornflowerblue”(8.98%)!
Creating Passive Income with Zazzle
By: Casey Botticello
Tags: Technology, Social Media, Productivity, Zazzle, Entrepreneurship

What is Passive Income?

Passive income is generally defined as a stream of income earned with little or no ongoing effort needed from the individual receiving the passive income in order to grow the stream of income. Passive income is income that is not proportional to the time you physically put into acquiring it. Active income (typically one’s regular job or additional part time jobs) is a direct exchange of your time and skills for money.

Examples of passive income include real estate rental income, stock dividends, fixed income/bonds, book royalties, peer-to-peer lending, and stock photography royalties.

The intriguing thing about passive income is that it can generated literally while you are sleeping, freeing up additional time for hobbies or allowing you to increase your earnings by performing some other form of work while still generating previously established streams of passive income.

An example of this would be a person working a 9–5 office job where they are paid a fixed salary. This same person also receives regular passive income from an eBook that he wrote on gardening over two years ago. The office job requires direct effort to produce the agreed upon amount of income. The eBook is different. Regardless of what is going on in the office employee’s life, the book is listed for sale in its digital form on Amazon and the author does not have to perform any work (beyond the initial creation of the content) to maintain this stream of income.

Can you Generate Passive Income From Zazzle?

The short answer is yes — you can definitely generate passive income using Zazzle. However, like many sources of passive income, the potential earnings vary widely.

Personal Zazzle Earnings

I have used Zazzle sporadically over the last few years. I’ve listed a few designs that did not take me a lot of time to create and were mostly for fun. Based on my monthly earnings, shown below, I can confirm it is not that hard to make $15–$25 in true passive income (After uploading the digital design, I did not do any promotion or additional work — the listings have been up for 2 years without edits).
My thoughts on S.A. Chakraborty’s “The Empire of Gold”
By: Thomas Jenkins
Tags: Science Fiction, Review, Books, Fantasy, Writing

The book I want to spend this post briefly reviewing, The Empire of Gold, is an excellent end to what was already a great Daevabad Trilogy. This trilogy is set in a fantasy version of the Middle East, a backdrop to conflict between a large cast of humanoid magical creatures. All three books flip between the protagonists of three different characters, all vying for the control of Daevabad, the city at the core of their world.

These three characters — Nahri, Alizayd, and Dara — all have compelling motivations and personalities. They’re in near-constant conflict throughout all three novels, but each one has his/her own strengths and weaknesses. Plenty of fantasy books have great characters, but I think what makes this series stand out is that all three of these are so interesting for the entire course of three pretty long books. They don’t just have their moments — they’re consistently great.

I also really enjoyed Chrakraborty’s prose. There’s a pretty fair amount of exposition and info-dumps throughout all three novels, but it’s all delivered pretty painlessly. From dialog to descriptions, there were very few moments that felt awkward or forced. The dialog is also quick and snappy, helping to give each character depth.

Finally, the plot is compelling and brings up some interesting and complex themes. There’s a subplot of racism that is a through-line throughout the entire trilogy, for example. But even on its own, the main story thread is fascinating. With some late-story revelations, Chakraborty concludes her story brilliantly. And at the surface, the political intrigue, war, inter-family rivalries, and scheming all make each chapter fascinating.

If there are is any criticism to be made, it’s that some of the rules of the world feel a little contrived to fit the plot beats. I don’t want to get too far into spoilers, but there are a few moments near the end of The Empire of Gold where other characters that we’ve barely heard from previously step into the story. Their actions — while deeply interesting — came across as something of a deus ex machina. In all fairness, Chakraborty’s characters seem to feel the same way, but I think this is worth pointing out.

There’s much more that could be said about Chakraborty’s trilogy. I’ve seen a decent amount of buzz for it online, but in my opinion these books should be making greater waves. This is a bold, confident story with compelling characters and a satisfying conclusion. As far as books of 2020, The Empire of Gold is one of the best I’ve read.
How To Keep Your Fitness Routine Intact When Old Habits Come A’Knockin’
By: Am Costanzo
Tags: Self, Motivation, Wellness, Fitness, Life

Two essential tools.

At any point in life, when you’re trying to change for the better, i.e. workout more, eat better, take better care of your health, learn something new, to stick with it long enough so that it makes a difference in your life, there need to be two things in your arsenal: Time and Practice. This is true for anything in life.

Time to allow new habits to form—time to screw up, redirect, learn, and make sticky because the more time you give something, its chances of sticking improve exponentially.

There are going to be mistakes and setbacks and life’s little bitchslaps that knock us off our feet, and the critic inside our head doesn’t like too much error, nor does it appreciate results that take too long to produce. This means you have to act deliberately.

To do that, you must be certain of your desired outcome. There’s no dilly-dallying. The vision is essential. This critic is holding you to a higher standard and if it feels the trajectory is going in completely the wrong direction, it will convince you to jump ship.

Being crystal clear on your outcome is what will keep the critic engaged, and that will give you the freedom of more time to pursue your goal. The critic won’t be tapping its foot, pointing at its watch nudging you to move on to the next thing.

Often we embark on the journey with no plan, no backpack filled with snacks, or water and we’re wearing the completely wrong shoes. We’re fed up, frustrated, angry, upset, depressed, feeling lousy about ourselves, and desperate for change — none of which equips us for what’s ahead.

You don’t plan your honeymoon on a whim. You take the time to plan the most luxurious vacation ever because you know this fact: this has to be the best trip of my life. You search out the best restaurants, hotels, spas, and excursions. And your inner critic is all for it, giving you the freedom to do your research because it knows what you're after. A sexy honeymoon.

Fitness, for whatever reason, is made up mostly of the Land of the Lost people, everyone stumbling around confused as to how this new world works, grabbing at the first opportunity that promises an easy way out — lose 20lbs in 5 days? Sign me up!

It all sounds good, but before we get underway, we’re already looking for the quickest way out because we don’t know what we’re really after, and we don’t know how to stick with something we don’t know. Capisce?
10 Best Big Data and Hadoop Tutorials, Books, and Courses to learn in 2021
Tags: Big Data, Books, Hadoop, Tutorial, Data Science

10 Best Big Data and Hadoop Tutorials, Books, and Courses to learn in 2021 javinpaul Follow Sep 15 · 7 min read

image_credit — Udemy

Hello guys, if you are looking to learn Big Data and Hadoop, and looking for some excellent books, courses, and tutorials to start with, then you have come to the right place.

In the past have shared some free Big Data and Hadoop Courses and the best Big Data Courses and In this article, I am going to share some of the best resources to learn Big Data and Hadoop, including tutorials, books, and online courses.

You can use these resources to learn both Big Data in general and Hadoop in particular at a time and place convenient to you.

Best Big Data and Hadoop Books, Courses, and Tutorials

So, what are we waiting for, let’s dive into the best books, courses, and tutorials to learn Big Data and Hadoop in-depth? Here is the list of the best online resources to learn Big Data:

1. The Ultimate Hands-On Hadoop (udemy.com)

An excellent course to learn Hadoop online. It’s very comprehensive and covers Hadoop, MapReduce, HDFS, Spark, Pig, Hive, HBase, MongoDB, Cassandra, Flume — the list goes on! Over 25 technologies.

This is one of the best Big Data and Hadoop course on Udemy, created by Frank Kane, this course is really the ultimate tutorial for learning Hadoop in depth.

If you can pick just one course from this list, choose this one. It’s not free but the worth of its price and you can get in just $10 on Udemy sales which happens every now and then.

Here is the link to join this course — The Ultimate Hands-On Hadoop
Keep Your Medium Stories Alive
By: Kelly Eden
Tags: Self, Medium, Writing Tips, Productivity, Writing

Do your old Medium articles slip off the paywall and into the realm of the unread?

No one wants dead articles — which is why people used to give them a new heading and image, and republish them (a no-no according to Medium guidelines). But there is an easy way to keep them breathing!

You may have noticed writers popping links into their articles, like this:

I hear you — it can be an irritation having links within a story — but it is an alternative way to revive your old articles and give your readers something to click on if they love what you have to say and want more of it. Place a couple at the end if you don’t like the idea interrupting your story’s flow.

I wouldn’t place more than three (unless you’re doing particular collection for an article — like my Ready to Publish? 14 Articles to help you through the process). One to two relevant article links are usually enough to give readers something interesting.
Anger: Self-Discovery Card
By: Jordin James
Tags: Self, Mental Health, Spirituality, Psychology, Self Improvement

Anger highlights boundaries and betrayal, and it points you back to your own worth.

Anger is most powerful not when it is used to throw tantrums or burn others down, but when it is used to protect your worth and evolve your opinion of yourself.

The heat of your anger doesn’t have to burn others. Instead, channel it to set fierce boundaries around what you will and will not tolerate and implement effective action.

Let your anger fuel you to live in integrity with yourself and others. Let your anger remind you that you are not here to play small and let others shame you for being you, but to be yourself, fully alive.

Let your anger highlight the ways you have been under-living your life, and let it fuel you to live your life as fully as possible.
Identifying Outliers — Part One
By: Ke Gui
Tags: Python, Artificial Intelligence, Data Cleaning, Data Science, Stock Market

Pandas has quite a few handy methods to clean up messy data, like dropna,drop_duplicates, etc.. However, finding and removing outliers is one of those functions that we would like to have and still not exist yet. Here I would like to share with you how to do it step by step in details:

The key to defining an outlier lays at the boundary we employed. Here I will give 3 different ways to define the boundary, namely, the Average mean, the Moving Average mean and the Exponential Weighted Moving Average mean.

1. Data preparation

Here I used Apple’s 10-year stock history price and returns from Yahoo Finance as an example, of course, you can use any data.

import pandas as pd

import yfinance as yf import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

plt.style.use('seaborn')

plt.rcParams['figure.dpi'] = 300 df = yf.download('AAPL',

start = '2000-01-01',

end= '2010-12-31')

As we only care about the returns, a new DataFrame (d1) is created to hold the adjusted price and returns.

d1 = pd.DataFrame(df['Adj Close'])

d1.rename(columns={'Adj Close':'adj_close'}, inplace=True)

d1['simple_rtn']=d1.adj_close.pct_change()

d1.head()

2. Using mean and standard deviation as the boundary.

Calculate the mean and std of the simple_rtn:

d1_mean = d1['simple_rtn'].agg(['mean', 'std'])

If we use mean and one std as the boundary, the results will look like these:

fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(10,6))

d1['simple_rtn'].plot(label='simple_rtn', legend=True, ax = ax)

plt.axhline(y=d1_mean.loc['mean'], c='r', label='mean')

plt.axhline(y=d1_mean.loc['std'], c='c', linestyle='-.',label='std')

plt.axhline(y=-d1_mean.loc['std'], c='c', linestyle='-.',label='std')

plt.legend(loc='lower right')

What happens if I use 3 times std instead?

Looks good! Now is the time to look for those outliers:

mu = d1_mean.loc['mean']

sigma = d1_mean.loc['std'] def get_outliers(df, mu=mu, sigma=sigma, n_sigmas=3):

'''

df: the DataFrame

mu: mean

sigmas: std

n_sigmas: number of std as boundary

'''

x = df['simple_rtn']

mu = mu

sigma = sigma



if (x > mu+n_sigmas*sigma) | (x<mu-n_sigmas*sigma):

return 1

else:

return 0

After applied the rule get_outliers to the stock price return, a new column is created:
Announcing a new Video Series: “An Introduction to Digital Analytics”
By: Bill Su
Tags: Marketing, Small Business, Digital Marketing, Google Analytics, Startup

Announcing a new Video Series: “An Introduction to Digital Analytics”

A journey about making digital analytics videos extremely useful

Last week, we gave a presentation titled an “Introduction to Digital Analytics (And More)” to fellows at the Venture for America training camp.

As we were preparing for the presentation, the idea came to me to make the presentation so well-designed and user friendly that the fellows could take the slides I used and present them to their future bosses, surely impressing the heck out of them.

I communicated this idea to the fellows after the presentation and they were all are super thrilled about it.

For this reason, we have decided to revisit the presentations we have given to the fellows in order to refine and redesign the elements. We’ll also film videos that serve as sample presentations for those slides.

In addition to making slides designed well enough to be presented to their bosses (and yours), we are also going to attach worksheets, custom Google Analytics Dashboards, and other useful tools in order to make sure that you can use what we have presented in the day-to-day operations of your business.

In order to get this done (and because we’re spending most of our time on development at the moment) we have decided to break up the presentation into 15–20 manageable pieces. We’ll perfect and release one piece a week.

Hence, we are happy to announce our “Introduction to Digital Analytics” video series.

Since this series covers pretty much the same content as our Google Analytics video series it will replace it.

This series is going to be divided into four primary modules:

Why is Digital Analytics Important — this section is geared towards convincing you and your boss that digital analytics is crucial for your business, B2C or B2B. An Introduction to the Customer Journey — this section offers you background on theories of the“customer journey”, and gives you an overview of popular analytics tools on the market . Introduction to Google Analytics — this section gives you an overview of how to setup Google Analytics, along with basic fundamentals of the tool such as metrics vs dimensions. Common Google Analytics Use Cases — this section shows you 5–6 common, and extremely useful Google Analytics analyses you can carry out to accomplish different goals.

You can follow this video series in three ways:

Subscribe to our medium publication analytics for humans Subscribe to our youtube channel Subscribe to our newsletter using the box below.

The first part of this video series (due next week) is going to discuss why digital analytics is important for your business.

Until then, I would like to say that I am extremely excited to create this series and hope it can provide you with some real value!
That Urge to Write- Hypergraphia
By: Priyanka Srivastava
Tags: Prose, Writers On Writing, Nonfiction, This Happened To Me, Writing

That Urge to Write- Hypergraphia

That Weekend Page

Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash

He can see that the home is upside down, they both are working in the balcony garden, rearranging pots and potting new plants. I am not there with them I am sitting in my favourite place and writing this poem. Now that we have a balcony garden it’s a distraction for them just like poems are for me. When I am sad and tired with life I sit back and write and they dig and uproot, plant and water the plants. I see them trying to find solace in that earthy fragrance, for me after so many years it’s still poems.

I think with time we all find that outlet for peace some do it with writing others with whatever makes them feel happy. In my family I have that strong urge to write anytime. When I am not writing I carry those words with me like those dense clouds which can rain down anytime. My loved ones know this, so they don’t stop me from wandering to those faraway lands whenever they see me sitting quietly in a corner and tapping away those stories nestled in my mind.

Maybe they know they I am trying to be free from that mesh which has choked my brain nerves. Being a writer sometimes it’s suffocating to hold those words and when I fail to carry the weight of my thoughts. I crumble.

That’s when poems happen on the page. The dust no one sees. I know how it feels to be empty again and wait for those dreams to talk to me. It’s not easy to stay with me, I am never the same.

Sometimes there are dense clouds which I need to clear to see the clear sky other time there are raindrops which I need to hear. I change with the colours in the sky, my thoughts vary because of the light and when I write, I let it go. I don’t pause, I pick those tiny pebbles choked somewhere and let them drift.

When I write I know I am trying to cross the bridge.