fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
3 Simple ways to time Python code. Benchmark your Python code and figure…
By: Stefan Delic
Tags: Python, Coding, Startup, Software Engineering, Programming

Use cProfile with snakeviz

Here is a great combo for a more detailed analysis. I recommend using this for complex code, as it’s great for finding potential performance bottlenecks.

cProfile is a built-in C extension that gives you a set of statistics that describe how often and for how long various parts of the program are executed. This set of statistics is called a profile.

snakeviz is a third-party Python library used to visualize these statistics in the browser and interpret them in a more user-friendly fashion.

If you want precise timing of specific pieces of code, I would still recommend timeit, but for finding potential bottlenecks, this is the best option in my opinion.

According to the docs:

“The profiler modules are designed to provide an execution profile for a given program, not for benchmarking purposes (for that, there is timeit for reasonably accurate results). This particularly applies to benchmarking Python code against C code: the profilers introduce overhead for Python code, but not for C-level functions, and so the C code would seem faster than any Python one.”

Note: You need to install snakeviz first!

Run this script. cProfile will dump results to a file named results.prof :

Use snakeviz to view the results in the browser by running this command:

snakeviz results.prof

Function call stack (starting from top)

Statistics (see https://jiffyclub.github.io/snakeviz/#interpreting-results for more info)

Just from the first image, we can easily see that the bottleneck() function takes the longest to execute, so it could indicate a potential performance bottleneck. And you can also see the underlying sleep() function that causes it to run for so long.

We also get some additional statistics like the number of calls for each function in the call stack, which might be useful in detecting redundant calls that can also impact performance.

Find out more about how to interpret results on GitHub.
A Huge List of Free Photos and Illustrations for Developers in 2021
By: Jana Bergant
Tags: Programming, Design, Writing, Startup, UX

A Huge List of Free Photos and Illustrations for Developers in 2021

Get free photos and free illustrations for your development projects, Medium articles, and more

Image source: Adobe Stock

You’re a developer with great ideas that you know how to turn into a reality, but you lack design skills.

A good illustration or a representative image can illustrate the entire purpose of the product or service without a lengthy description no one wants to read.

Thank god things have changed in the last decade or two. You don’t need to study design; you don’t need to hire a designer. You can find great free illustrations and photos on the internet.

Here’s a list of my resources: free photos and free illustrations. The first few will be my favorite ones. I listed the following without any order.
Why Did I Quit Vue for React?
By: Alexandre Lion
Tags: React, Typescript, Front End Development, Vuejs, Programming

But, I Gave React a Try (Again)

I didn’t tell you that before learning Vue that I tried React, but it was too brutal at first glance. My knowledge about how state management works and knowing more about ES6 language specifications has changed.

I saw plenty of articles even people around me are talking about React, so I give it a try. And it worked. Enough to adopt the framework in my projects.

Here is my point of view of the React's best benefits.

1. ES6 and TypeScript friendly

Developers master classes, interfaces, and enumerations. This was why I was able to understand how React components work and integrate into an application.

You can use ES6 syntax as well with Vue, but React is more well-designed than Vue. Look at how you have to do to register components in React:

For VueJS, you pass an object to the Vue Component function:

Therefore, modern React (in 2020) doesn’t involve class anymore, but instead functional component (and hooks).

VueJs now offers TypeScript support. This support is not well polished like React using CRA (Create React App) with TS support in a single command.

For Vue, we still need some third-party packages with custom decorators and features to create a true, complete TypeScript application, and the official documentation does not include all the information you need to get started.

2. JSX

JSX is not evil.

There are two schools: the pro-JSX, and the anti-JSX. I don’t like to take part in that conflict. JSX can be good or bad; it depends on how you want to work with your template.

From my point of view, it is more logical for a developer to write JSX like:

than the more HTML-ish way of Vue:

It’s a matter of preference; I find JSX more powerful and flexible.

3. Getting hook by hooks

I started learning and developing with the React component. The problem is that to create a single component as a React component class, it takes a lot of effort.

Functional components let you use local states with hooks. It removes a lot of boilerplate and useless constructors.

React Hooks simplify the use of state and other React parts like useEffect instead of componentDidMount and componentDidUpdate .

Some developers like the OOP approach by staying with classes, others the functional approach. You can use both in a project! 🤙

4. Community

Behind great projects are great humans.

By experience, there is much more documentation, third-party tools, and modules for React than Vue.

I sometimes struggled by looking for Nuxt issues and found lots of Next (React) topics.

By looking at Github repos, the numbers speak for themselves.

Or with their respective frameworks:

Community leverage the reliability of your code by solving bug fixes quicker. Finding people with the same problem as you makes your resolution fast.
32 Headline Tips Every Good Writer Needs to Know
By: Cynthia Marinakos
Tags: Productivity, Creativity, Writing, Business, Headline Hacks

17. Brainstorm at Least 5 Headlines

It can be tempting to come up with one you think is incredible. But please, please never stop there. For any post, it’s ideal to write more than one headline. I like to write at least five — you’ll be surprised at how many creative, powerful headlines you’ll come up with when you get into the groove.

Say you were writing about why social media is ruining your life, and that getting off it has been a great decision. Let’s use headline templates to brainstorm:

Headline template: How To <Do Something> In <Short Time>

Headline idea: How To Become Awfully Productive In 20 Minutes (Get Off Social)

Headline template: It’s Time To <Do something people are usually reluctant to do>

Headline idea: It’s Time To Delete My Facebook Account

Headline template: <Number> Steps to Changing <Something significant> (It All Boils Down To This)

Headline idea: 7 Steps To Changing Your Addiction To Facebook Notifications (It All Boils Down To This)

Treat headlines like your first draft. Write uninhibited, never judging anything that flows from your fingers. Then, when you get stuck, write a few more. Use proven formulas. Play with power words. Think about what your reader wants, needs, feels, and believes.
Chore-Focused Wellness Practices Arrived Just in Time
By: Anna Maltby
Tags: Wellness, Health, Life, Housekeeping, Mental Health

Chore-Focused Wellness Practices Arrived Just in Time

We’ve been through a real ~journey~ with housekeeping and mental health this year

Photo: MediaNews Group/Boulder Daily Camera/Getty Images

Back on (checks notes) March 9, Elemental ran an excellent piece by writer and wellness-world expert Rina Raphael about how cooking, cleaning, sewing, and other old-school chores were being elevated as new forms of wellness: opportunities to take care of oneself and one’s space and practice mindfulness. As the pandemic progressed and eventually exploded throughout the country, many quarantiners found themselves even more drawn to these comfortingly repetitive actions—remember the flour shortage?—which, per research cited in Raphael’s story, “increase a person’s belief that they can manage a situation that is otherwise out of their hands.”

Now, if you’re anything like me, the charm of housekeeping has ebbed and flowed depending on your level of frustration and despair about the state of the world — and I would love to never have to repair my own dishwasher ever again. Still, I hope the tidying up, baking, and general holiday-magic-making of the season (if that’s your thing) have provided some much-needed small joy and satisfaction during a difficult time. If nothing else, you know it’s going to feel damn good to vacuum up all those pine needles once you’ve said farewell to your tree.

Revisit Raphael’s story about the therapeutic benefits of housework here:
AI for Software Engineering — Industry Landscape (18/Oct/2017)
By: Valentin Grigoryevsky
Tags: Software Development, Artificial Intelligence, Software Engineering, AI, Landscape

“Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Software Engineering (SE)” is a new emerging Industry. It is dedicated to making Software Development better, cheaper and faster.

The Solutions (Companies/Products/Platforms/Researches) presented in the Landscape are divided into Categories by two Criteria: (1) Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) Phase and (2) Solution Readiness for the Market. Solutions inside a Category are ordered alphabetically. Read more about these Categories in the Initial Version of the Landscape.

Below the Landscape Picture, you can find a list of Solutions with References to their Web Pages.

If you have any Comments and/or Suggestions for the Solutions, Categories or their Mapping, please feel free to share them.
Simon Sinek Says We Got Global Warming Wrong
By: Michael Touchton
Tags: Marketing, Environment, Climate Action, Psychology, Climate Change

Global warming has a marketing problem.

We’ve learned the hard way that, unfortunately, people aren’t going to just jump on the environmental bandwagon because scientists said they needed to. That’s just not human nature. People need to be convinced, inspired, sold and left to feel like they’ve decided to act out of their own free will and self-interest.

The majority of consumers care about how they’ll directly benefit from something. And social issues are no different. We’re just not that selfless — not on a global scale.

We’ve done a poor job at marketing the climate crisis to selfish human beings. We’ve confused people with poor messaging and we’ve assumed that people’s better nature would lead them to act selflessly. Wrong.

Sinek proposes two fundamental changes to our climate crisis messaging strategy:

From global warming to climate cancer

In 1975, US Scientist, Wallace Broecker, used the term “global warming” in a scientific paper, and the rest is history. The term became part of our global lexicon, and the results were… confusing.

If it’s colder this winter than it was last winter, or if it’s unseasonably cold today, how can global warming be real?! “I’m telling you… those scientists are a bunch of liberal quacks.”

People aren’t just ignorant. We’re bad at messaging.

The problem was never just warming — it was about a disruption in the normal, habitable range of our planet’s climate. Or, as Sinek says, the problem isn’t global warming, it’s climate cancer.

We need to communicate exactly what the problem is in a way that people will immediately understand and emotionally feel. People get cancer. They understand the concept. They feel the need to act. And they understand what almost always happens to a cancer patient when they fail to act: they die.

There is a cancer in our climate. And if we don’t act, there will be death.

But whose death?

2. From save the planet to save your family

That’s Sinek’s second point. We’ve ignorantly believed that we could get humanity to act by telling them we need to save the earth, the animals, and some low-lying cities. But, by and large, people haven’t acted.

We humans generally act in our own self-interest. Especially if it will cost us something. And healing climate cancer will cost us a lot.

Instead of telling people that we need to save someone or something else, we need to warn people that they and their families are in danger. They need to know and feel the fear that failing to act will have on their own lives and those whom they love.

It’s really not about the planet. It’s about us. As Sinek says, “The planet will survive no matter what. Life will continue with us or without us. What we have to do is save our species.”
Best Machine Learning Books — Free and Paid — Editorial Recommendations
By: Towards Ai Team
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Innovation, Future, Education, Science

Best Machine Learning (ML) Books — Free and Paid — Editorial Recommendations

For the past year, we have looked at over 8,371 machine learning (ML) books [1], and we have picked what we consider to be the best paid and free books on ML in terms of technicality, ability to explain complex subjects, depth, and verified reviews.

Nowadays, we know that machine learning and its applications have become inevitable [5] for most (if not all) businesses. Hence, there is a surge of proficient machine learning engineers.

We know that machine learning can be intimidating if you are just starting your career in this domain. Therefore, if you plan to move into the scientific field of machine learning, you may find yourself overwhelmed with the wide variety of books related to machine-learning available online.

In this article, we will list some of the best books on machine learning. These books are frequently used in university courses and recommended by professors and industry experts.

Disclosure: Our editorial team at Towards AI writes authentic and trustworthy reviews and may receive a small compensation on products we select to support Towards AI’s efforts. For this article, as an Amazon Associate, Towards AI may receive a small commission from qualifying purchases made from it (at no extra cost to the buyer). For feedback, questions, or concerns, please email us pub@towardsai.net.
You’re Not Lazy — Self-Isolation is Utterly Exhausting
By: Gillian Sisley
Tags: Society, Mental Health, Remote Working, Psychology, Work

After voluntarily entering self-isolation three days ago, I’ve come to a startling discovery.

Working from home, barely seeing people, meetings over Skype and phone, very little human contact… I have been voluntarily self-isolating for the better part of three years of my life.

I’m an introvert who runs her own businesses from home, and I really thrive on working alone and not having a lot of human interaction throughout my workday.

And up until now, I’ve been exceptionally content with that arrangement, each day for the last several years.

Since the coronavirus outbreak, and Canada going into voluntary self-isolation as a country, the only real change is that my husband is now also working from home. He’s in his basement office, I’m on the top floor in my everyday office. We occasionally cross paths in the kitchen during a workday.

What I’m trying to say is that outwardly and logistically my life has not changed AT ALL since the coronavirus outbreak. Everything for me should be business as usual.

And yet, everything has changed.

I’m an anxious mess. I’m exhausted all the time, focusing on work is harder than ever before, and I feel more drained than I have in years.

That is why I am here to tell you, friends and readers who are now working from home and beating yourselves up for feeling exhausted or unproductive all the time, no, you’re not lazy.

What you’re feeling is entirely normal, and completely reasonable.

And here’s why:
Facebook Is Circling the Wagons, Not the Drain
By: Melinda Crow
Tags: Facebook, Social Media, Marketing, Ideas, Society

Facebook Is Circling the Wagons, Not the Drain

Is it possible that the platform of the future might actually be *gasp* useful?

Photo by Randy Fath on Unsplash

Jared A. Brock’s popular story extolling Facebook’s demise presents a believable, well-documented case for the social media giant’s terminal condition. He almost had me convinced.

He’s right about those under the age of 18. They aren’t scrolling or even trolling. Half of the millennials bailed on Facebook for social purposes years ago. Gen X and the Boomers are still there. But as Jared surmised, 2021 will see millions exit the newsfeeds, where people spent 2020 in fierce word battles with strangers over their far left or right views.

What he’s missing is that it may only be the newsfeed these people are shunning. They may stay for the groups and possibly for business pages, their own as well as those of local businesses.

Facebook is banking on the group dynamic carrying them forward. Think back over the past year’s commercials. They entertained viewers with kazoo groups, ex-pats in Korea, and rock buggy enthusiasts reminding us there’s a community or three for almost everyone. Hootsuite estimated that there were over 10 million groups in 2019, a number that is certain to have expanded with the pandemic.

The financial sustainability of this approach remains to be seen, however, since group owners rarely spend to promote their groups and their discussions remain free of sponsored content. The first whiff of in-group advertising could send members scattering into the ether.

Jared may also be overlooking a key demographic: rural Americans of all ages. Let’s break down the types of groups and pages that have the potential to keep Facebook relevant in the coming decade, including the one group category with the potential to generate almost painless revenue.
3 Steps to Run Better and More Effective Meetings
By: Younes Henni
Tags: Entrepreneurship, Business, Startup, Teamwork, Productivity

Meetings take a big chunk of our time. Yet, unlike with personal productivity, little is done to optimise them fully. Why? For two reasons:

We often are not in control of setting the meetings.

Even if we are in control, no one taught us how to run valuable and energising meetings.

According to Forbes, about 55 million meetings happen each day in the United States alone. And due to poor planning and poor execution, most of our get together feel like a waste of time: pointless distractions from the real work.

With so much of our time sucked into daily meetings, not taking care of optimising them lead to the biggest productivity loss in our organisation.

That’s what Mamie Kanfer Stewart, author of Momentum: Creating Effective, Engaging and Enjoyable Meetings, seeks to address in her book. According to her, great meetings have three stages that are well defined: before, during, and after the meeting.

If you are a manager, an executive, or a worker who seeks to promote a better meetings culture, this three-stage process can help you fix poor meeting habits and get the most out of your teamwork.
An Experiment in Creating a Writing Income Stream on Amazon
By: Shaunta Grimes
Tags: Amazon, Medium, Blogging, Productivity, Writing

I had an epiphany recently.

My daughter told me that she’d read that short-reads do well on Amazon. Especially in Kindle Unlimited. And that made sense to me. Amazon is basically a giant search engine.

In fact, I realized, writing for Kindle Unlimited is very similar to writing on Medium.

Only there’s the whole search engine thing. People search for what they want to read on Amazon, where on Medium we basically read what we’re served up.

The pay system is similar: a subscription-based model where writers are paid for page reads. Only, we can also sell our work directly, earning a royalty.

Of course there are limitations. Amazon isn’t a blog. Medium is. But it’s possible to build a body of work there that helps with audience building and creates an income stream.

And that writers have a little more control over than they do writing on Medium.

I’m still a fan of Medium.

I think it works well as a blog, so far. It’s volatile, though. Changeable in a way that’s disconcerting to me. Without much transparency, all of a sudden things are different and that affects my income in a way that is very frustrating.

So, I have a theory that I’m excited to test.

I think that expanded blog posts — 5000 words or less — posted on Amazon as ebooks could become a decent income stream.

I’m going to experiment with that over the next year. Here are the parameters of my experiment so far:

My goal is to publish at least one non-fiction short to Amazon every week.

My books will be 5000 words or fewer. (Book isn’t really the right word.)

I think that posts that are deep dives that answer a specific question will do best, so I’ll focus on that.

I’m going to start with blog posts I’ve already written and work on expanding and deepening them.

I plan to use SEO and try to write titles and use keywords that people will search for on Amazon and on Google.

I’m going to focus on writing about writing and productivity at first, but I’m excited to expand beyond that eventually.

I’m committing to trying this for a year.

My first goal is to earn $100 per month within 90 days.

I’m starting a focus group in a couple of weeks of Ninja Writers who interested in trying this experiment as well. If you want to be notified when that starts and how to join, click here.

One thing we’ll be doing, very soon, is experimenting with challenges. I’ve been developing a system for planning, writing, editing, and publishing these shorts that can be repeated over and over.

I’ll update you on how it’s going. The best way to keep in touch about it is to join my email list by clicking the link above.
Welcome to my story.
By: Naomi Hanson
Tags: Fiction, Artificial Intelligence, Science Fiction, Storytelling, Books

Welcome to my story.

Excitement, science fiction, cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria!

First of all, I really am glad that you have taken the time to come visit my blog. I am certainly new to this medium, and writing in general. Which is why the Word Crimes picture is up there from the song by the same title. You can find it here.

Now, why do I have the picture there, well it is because I will for the most part be writing this story rough draft style. There maybe grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors. Though I will try my hardest to avoid those when possible.

Let’s get to why you should follow my blog. I love writing fictional stories, but have never done so in a public place. As such, I wanted to give it a try, and here we are. This story I am about to write for you is called Alice. It will follow a female robot as she becomes the first self aware machine in human history by a fluke of nature. Like in Jurassic Park, life finds a way.

You and I are going to follow Alice through her “life” as she discovers what it means. There will be adventure, there will be some adult content, there will be fun. Also I would love to hear your feedback as we go. We can sort of make this interactive! I am not afraid of criticism, however please keep it constructive. There is no need for trolls here.

I want to aim for 3 pages a week, though we will see how long I can keep that up for.

I love you beautiful creatures.

~Naomi
Do You Really Have Insomnia?
By: Chandrayan Gupta
Tags: Psychology, Life, Mental Health, Health, This Happened To Me

Effects of Insomnia

Just as I’m sure everyone experiences at least once in their life low mood that surpasses the intensity of regular sadness, I’m sure everyone experiences symptoms of insomnia at least once in their life. While any form of insomnia is dangerous, acute insomnia often resolves itself over time, once the underlying cause is addressed.

Chronic insomnia, however, is far more dangerous, even lethal. According to an article by Healthline, an analysis of sixteen studies with over a million participants and over 112,566 deaths revealed sleeping less than seven to eight hours per night increased risk of death by twelve percent.

A more recent study on the effects of persistent insomnia and mortality over 38 years revealed those with persistent insomnia had a 97 percent increased risk of death.

Mayo Clinic says in addition to having a poorer quality of life, those who suffer from insomnia also have the following complications:

Lower performance on the job or at school;

Slowed reaction time while driving and a higher risk of accidents;

Mental health disorders, such as depression, an anxiety disorder or substance abuse; and,

Increased risk and severity of long-term diseases or conditions, such as high blood pressure and heart disease.

From personal experience, I can tell you chronic lack of sleep affects one’s mental health in terrible ways. You always feel fatigued, have trouble concentrating on anything, lose the joy in everyday activities you previously found enjoyable, develop a persistent headache, experience frequent disorientation, absentmindedness and memory loss, perpetually remain in an irritable mood, and experience exacerbated symptoms of depression and anxiety.

The three needs humans have are widely accepted as water, food, and sex. But I believe sleep is another fundamental need. After all, a lack of sleep has been linked to all kinds of problems, such as liver failure, hallucinations and psychosis, and in some rare cases, even death.

In fact, there exists an incredibly rare sleep disorder known as Fatal Familial Insomnia (FFI). It is a genetic disease that begins with mild symptoms of insomnia and gradually progresses toward chronic insomnia, hallucinations, dementia, and ultimately, death.

Bottom line — if you think you suffer from insomnia, no matter how mild, consult a doctor.
Should YouTube Have a Dislike Button?
By: Katy Velvet
Tags: Business, Entrepreneurship, Mental Health, Social Media, Psychology

Should YouTube Have a Dislike Button?

My thoughts.

YouTube is one of those platforms I don’t spend much time on. For starters, I am not a big fan of their interface. Plus, I find the vibe a bit on the old school side of things.

However, I was on it recently because I happened to do a video collaboration with a friend that was uploaded onto the website.

Then I saw the ‘thumbs down’ button.

Mind you, I have not received any dislikes yet on the content we posted however I did have a few thoughts on it.

Is having a ‘dislike’ button really necessary?

While I am all for constructive criticism, I find that having a ‘thumbs down’ button promotes online negativity. And it could be a gateway to trolling others on the internet too.

We’ve all heard the line on Medium, “If you don’t like something someone posted, unfollow them or just simply move on.”

And I think that motto should apply for other platforms as well.

It’s okay to dislike something. It’s okay to hate something. But I don’t agree with having a button that expresses that on someone else’s work. It reminds me of those websites back in the day like “Hot or Not” or “Rate My Body”. It simply just feels tacky and outdated.

And here’s the thing: not everything on YouTube has to be good. However, it is supposed to be a platform where people can express themselves in a comfortable setting.

Imagine if Medium had a “boo” button. Don’t you think that would demotivate a lot of writers on here? Don’t you think that it may push someone who’s already dealing with mental health issues over the edge?

As a mental health advocate, I think that it is crucial that social media platforms pay attention to what they are allowing their users to do. With the rising number of suicides related to social media, it is so important to not provoke those who may be using the website as an outlet. Or sometimes even — a cry for help.

Some people may say, “Well, if you don’t like the platform just don’t use it.” But it’s not that simple.

Some people prefer to use the website simply because it is easily accessible. It’s a well-known platform that has an established following and it can be a good way to express your creativity.

But in my mind, as an indie creator, I don’t find it empowering when others are able to ‘thumbs down’ your content.

Honesty is great. Feedback is even better.

But we don’t need to display the number of people who disliked our work.

Creators are some of the most sensitive folks out there and one of the things that keep us going is knowing how much support we have.

Throwing a ‘dislike’ button on your multi-billionaire platform spreads negativity on the internet and it even prevents some of the best people from creating more.

Let’s bring people up and not down, shall we?
When not to call a Blue a Blue — functional colour names for Design Systems
By: Goncalo Andrade
Tags: Product Management, Design Patterns, Design, Productivity, Design Process

Photo by Balázs Kétyi on Unsplash

As a contractor, I frequently work with different companies and teams which included some good designers. However, regardless of where each design team might be in terms of skill level, as soon as you start handling multiple designs, organising all the elements between them starts to get tricky.

This is where most people start thinking about organising a design system to follow, a part of which is the colour pallet. This is used to help ensure visual and semantic consistency throughout the project and facilitate both design and development (thank goodness for variables).

Most of the times I’ve seen this style guide take a shape like the one on the side here.

This might seem like the logical way of organising your pallets, but, as I’m about to argue, it comes with its own set of problems.

Why is this a problem?

“But Goncalo, surely it’s alright to name a blue colour ‘Blue’? What else would I call it?”

That is a fair point, so let’s see where that leads by doing a hypothetical project, as a thought experiment.

We start doing exploratory designs and quickly create styles for the brand colours which happen to be blue and purple. We even label them as brand colours, so it doesn’t get messy down the line.

Now we can start working on the actual design. In the process, we end up adding a few more colours, for things like buttons, alerts, infoboxes, and all those fairly standard design elements.

So far so good, but let’s keep going. In the real world, a designer’s work is subjected to frequent changes. This uncertainty comes as part of the job, after all. So let’s say the brand team decide the blue needs to be lighter. This is a problem for us because a lighter blue might get confused with the information colour. We can change it to a ‘Success Green’, but then we need to change the button colour as well.

Before we know it, we ended up with our library very untidy, and with its colours mislabelled.

“Granted, but you could always just relabel the colours”

Sure, and it would be easy to do with a handful of them, but doing it with a library of dozens or even over 100 colours isn’t so easy. Besides, if handoff has already happened, which in the agile era is more likely than not, the developers will also need to go and change their code to match.

So this problem extends beyond design and is a hassle for our coding friends too.

How can we do it differently?

There are a few libraries I’ve found at the time of writing which did it differently, and they tend to be development frameworks, not design. Let’s have a look at a couple of examples:
Long or Short: Which Headlines Are Better?
By: Cynthia Marinakos
Tags: Productivity, Creativity, Writing, Business, Headline Hacks

Long or Short: Which Headlines Are Better?

The research is divided, but you don’t have to choose

Illustration by Cynthia Marinakos.

I spent over an hour today browsing reputable sites for the answer to the question: Are long or short headlines better? In between running to the couch to comfort my seven-year-old who was freaked out by the thunderstorm bellowing through our home, here’s what I discovered:

Some tell us the ideal blog post headline length is 60 characters. Others recommend 90–99 character headlines because they increase click-through rates by 0.43%.

Then it also depends on what platform you’re writing on. For instance, 40 to 49 characters are ideal for LinkedIn headlines as these were found to receive the highest number of post views overall.

In The Anatomy of a Perfect Blog Post, Hubspot informs us that headlines between eight and 12 words are shared most often on Twitter. And headlines between 12 and 14 words are liked most often on Facebook.

Backlinko analyzed 912 million blog posts and tells us that “very long” headlines outperform short headlines — 14 to 17 words are the way to go, generating 76.7% more social shares than short headlines.

Buffer tells us that according to science, the ideal length of a headline is six words since we absorb only the first three words and the last three words of a headline.

Then there’s Google search to consider:

How many characters will appear in search results before the headline gets cut off?

A Google forum product expert tells us it’s not about the number of characters — it’s a certain width in pixels that limits what is shown of a title. This width roughly translates into something between 60 and 70 characters.

And then I was thrilled to find this, which none of the others mentioned at all: a cross-sectional study of 22 scientific journals discovered that longer titles seem to be associated with higher citation rates.

The authors conclude that editors who insist on short and concise titles need to update the guidelines for authors so there’s more flexibility in title length.

So are long or short headlines better?

It makes sense that the more descriptive a title, the more a reader will know what to expect.

But there’s such conflict between research, I’m not convinced that headline length is really that important.
Stop Waiting for Permission to Be Great
By: Maddie Mcguire
Tags: Creativity, Personal Development, Motivation, Self Improvement, Productivity

It’s scary to make a declaration to yourself about the deepest desires of your heart.

It’s even scarier to unabashedly and publicly pursue the deepest desires of your heart.

What if you fail?

What if you’ll never be “good enough”?

What if you disappoint your parents?

What if your friends judge you?

What if everyone thinks you’re crazy?

What if this… what if that….

Maybe your ego kicks in…. “Who do you think you are? Pursuing this gregarious goal? One only the greatest of artists or entrepreneurs should pursue? Are you really willing to call yourself “great…”? What makes you so sure of your greatness?”

To pursue what you deem your purpose to be… means you have to be brave enough to put in the effort, even though there’s no proof. The only proof is your heart guiding you there.

A sad tendency among the “brave enough to pursue our passions…” is to work our asses off…. And then we wait.

We wait for someone else’s words to validate how great we are. For someone to acknowledge the greatness of our creations.

For permission to call ourselves great.

For permission to continue pursuing our passions.

We can end up spending our entire lives waiting for permission to believe that we are great.

In the words of the wonderful watercolorist Angela Fehr, “But what if you’re good enough now… what if the only person you really need permission from is yourself?”
10 UI & UX Lessons from Designing My Own Product
By: Danny Sapio
Tags: Design, Startup, Entrepreneurship, UI, UX

Designers often think that all their ideas must be original, or they’re a fraud. Imagine that you’re looking at another product. You find a color palette that you like, an interaction that feels just right, or a pixel perfect layout for a landing page. You might be tempted to think, “Well, too bad because someone’s already beaten me to it.”

That mindset is incredibly flawed and limiting to creativity, though.

Occasionally, when I was stuck on a missing piece of the design, I would browse the internet for inspiration. I observed how other companies had designed their onboarding flow or how they managed user profiles. I never copied the entire experience, but every so often I would find myself appreciating little details that I would then include in my designs.

My favorite example is the rotating exit effect that we use in our modals. I found a feature like this on a random website and thought it looked unique, so we decided to add it to Confetti. I also did this for our landing page’s button hover effect and the typeface that we used for the site.

The truth is, everything is a remix. That doesn’t mean you should be blindly copying other people’s work, but don’t be afraid to find bits and pieces that you appreciate and work them into your own projects: a cocktail, if you will.

7. Wear your hats well
The Placebo Effect is Stronger than We Thought
By: Jason Henry
Tags: Research, Self, Health, Science, Psychology

Photo by Hal Gatewood on Unsplash

You probably know what a placebo is. It’s a substance or procedure that should have no physiological effect when administered. It is inert, a sugar pill.

You probably also know what the placebo effect is. It is when a therapeutic benefit is obtained, despite the sugar pill having no composition to effect physiological change.

But you might not be aware of the fact that someone could be told that they are taking a placebo and still derive benefits.

Open-label placebos have been effective in reducing the painful symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome when compared to a control group that received nothing at all. It is a great breakthrough as the painful symptoms of some ailments and the harmful side-effects of certain drugs can be eliminated.

And while it isn’t some great panacea for every ailment known to man, it is another highlight of the mind triumphing over matter for the alleviation of symptoms of illness.

But there’s even more to the strange wonder of the placebo effect.

After open-label placebo experiments took place and the effects were noted, researchers began to question if a detailed explanation of what a placebo was versus a brief explanation of what a placebo was would affect the alleviation of symptoms.

It’s strange enough that something that has no inherent ability to change one’s physiological state is able to do so. It’s even stranger when the person knows that what they’re taking is inert. One would think that any effect that would be caused by belief (or ignorance) would be cancelled by education, but it isn’t.

Researchers recently studied the effect of open-label placebos on participants who had a detailed education on what a placebo is versus participants who received a short explanation.

The results showed that both groups experienced a reduction of pain compared to the control group who received no treatment. The amount of education on placebos had no effect on the amount of pain the participants experienced.

While more research should be done, the placebo effect continues to astound.

It seems that despite knowing that one is taking a placebo, the psychological effect of knowing what a placebo can do is enough to alleviate pain, no matter how much or how little one knows.

Placebos may not be making physiological changes, but its role in unearthing psychological change is something researchers will be paying attention to in the years to come as it dares us to question what else our minds can do for our health and our overall lives.
Writing is Fun, but Editing is Work
By: Zach J. Payne
Tags: Storytelling, Creativity, Editing, Art, Writing

Editing is a different beast.

If writing and plotting are like playing a song, editing is like tuning a guitar. (Okay, except that you edit after you write, not before. Don’t dig too much into this metaphor.) Except that guitar has 80,000 strings that all need to be perfectly pitched.

That’s gonna take a while. Even with a good guide, editing is a bitch.

As I’ve said before, I’ve been using Self Editing for Fiction Writers. It is a deceptively slim volume, but it’s packed full of great information and exercises. The little cartoons are funny, too.

The book, along with Shaunta’s guidance, gave me a solid place to get started.

I already have a pretty good grasp on the first chapter’s material, which is all about exposition versus narrative. Basically, asking whether we’re told about how your story plays out, or if we’re watching it play out in a scene. Good modern novels need a balance of exposition and narrative.

So Shaunta guided me into the first step of working on dialogue tags. Basically, I’m searching out every instance of the word “said”, and deciding whether or not it can be replaced with a dialogue tag.

This was a good idea. I have bad habit of doing something like this:

“Job,” Char said. A small smile crested on her lips. “I haven’t heard that verse in years.”

It’s not bad writing (if I dare say so myself), but it can be tightened up. One of Strunk and White’s cardinal laws, after all, is OMIT NEEDLESS WORDS.

So, are any of these words needless? We’ve got dialogue, a dialogue tag, an action beat, and more dialogue. Can we combine any of these?

Yes. Almost any time you have a tag and a beat together, you can get rid of the tag and work the speaker’s name into the beat. We’ll know who’s talking, and cut down on a few words in the process.

Here’s how I revised that.

“Job.” A small smile crossed Char’s lips. “I haven’t heard that verse in years.”

A little bit more economical. The prose is a little tighter. To go back to the guitar metaphor, the string is a little tighter, a little closer to the perfect pitch. None of the meaning changes. We still know who’s speaking. Win, win, win.
Loneliness is a Human Paradox
By: A Singular Story
Tags: Self, Mental Health, Relationships, Psychology, Society

Human animals are gregarious by nature.

However, individualism has corrupted our ability to look out for one another. We do not care about others therefore no one cares about us and we become lonely.

Although we’re aware that our behavior is against nature, we can’t help but recoil at the mere mention of loneliness, something that is far too close for comfort for an increasing number of us.

Although loneliness is a universal predicament, it remains smothered in shame and only talked about in hushed tones if at all.

To admit you are lonely is embarrassing as it implies you are bad company.

And yet, even the most approachable of people can go through it for various reasons. Sometimes, being lonely is the result of a drastic change of environment, a relationship, or illness.

In my case, it’s all three. I immigrated to the US in 2013 and married someone who prefers his own company and whose social circle is actually a dot: me. When depression felled me, I became loneliness not just squared, but cubed.

Not that I even lack people skills. A friend once said I’d socialize with a lawnmower and my work has always required going toward others, be it as a journalist or as a tour director. And it’s not that I don’t enjoy my own company either, but from one day to the next it became all I had.

This is how I became a so-called “loner”, quite by accident.
15 Surprising Upwork Hacks That Will Seriously Transform Your Freelancing Game
By: Sadia M.
Tags: Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Careers, Creativity, Freelancing

Upwork gets a bad rap from so-called six-figure freelancer-turned-coaches who’ve made it their mission to advocate against content mills.

But actually, the platform is a goldmine for freelancers, especially those at the beginning of their careers.

Here’s why:

It helps you (literally) start from your scratch — no portfolio, no website, no prior experience needed.

It helps you build a portfolio.

It helps you figure out your niche.

It helps you learn how to deal with clients.

It helps you gain confidence so you can go after big shots later in your career.

That said, a lot of freelancers fail and give up because they don’t know the right strategies. See, Upwork is a content mill after all. And content mills are saturated with freelancers. It’s like a tank full of fishes competing for space and food.

You have to make yourself stand-out. The good news is it’s not that hard to stand-out. You only need a few skills and tactics and in this article, I’ll teach you what they are from my own journey of going from newbie to top-rated.
11 Book Recommendations from Mark Cuban to Stay at the Top of the Game
By: Esat Artug
Tags: Books, Self Improvement, Business, Entrepreneurship, Startup

11 Book Recommendations from Mark Cuban to Stay at the Top of the Game

The books that shaped billionaire’s mind

Image by Wikimedia Commons

In case you’re looking for books that will help you succeed in business and better understand the world, look no further than the reading list of billionaire Mark Cuban.

Mark Cuban, a billionaire technology entrepreneur and investor is a strong reader.

Cuban has attributed the first million dollars he made to reading, and he’s said that learning new skills is one of the most important qualities all billionaires share.

“Life-long learning is probably the greatest skill,” Cuban says on Arianna Huffington’s The Thrive Global Podcast. He even calls it one of the top three skills billionaires share.

If we can imitate his habits and follow his advice, perhaps some of his success will rub off on us. And maybe if we read like him, too.

Here are 11 of his top picks for reading material for aspiring as well as current entrepreneurs that Mark Cuban shared on different channels — interviews, podcasts, his social media accounts.
The Coronavirus Funeral.
By: Lisa Martens
Tags: Humanity, New York, Grief, Society, Coronavirus

The Coronavirus Funeral.

Remembering a Day of Mourning.

Photo by Fernando Meloni on Unsplash

We cannot hug one another. We wear masks. It is a beautiful day and the cemetery is full…the parking lot reminds me of how the mall parking lots used to look.

We are not the only service. I see hearse after hearse. Each one containing a loved one.

People on the news talk about allowing the old and sick to die so that the economy can restart. But everyone dies…whether you’re old or sick or not. So what is the idea situation? Let all of us die, and let the economy run on perfect robots, who do not die, do not complain, do not fear?

There is the issue of a Zoom call for those who want to attend but cannot, because we’re only allowed 10 people. Who is good enough to be on this call? Who has the right to protest its existence? What would the deceased want? How can we hypothesize that, since the situation is unprecedented? Given the situation, isn’t it important to help the living grieve, even if it’s through a phone?

Philosophical questions with no one right answer.

It’s hard.

But the day, at least the day is beautiful.

The prayers are automatic, taught to me in childhood by the same person who is in the coffin.