fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
10.7 Presidential Social Intelligence Battleground Tracker — Language Analysis
By: Adam Meldrum
Tags: Social Listening, Joe Biden, 2020 Presidential Race, Donald Trump

10.7 Presidential Social Intelligence Battleground Tracker — Language Analysis

A pulse of how potential voters in battleground states are discussing the Presidential candidates

Please read the background post on this project if it is your first time reading.

Past posts:

— Our initial dataset from the week of 7.3 was detailed here.

— Data from the week of 7.11 was detailed here

— Data from the week of 7.19 was detailed here.

— Aggregate data to date through 8.14 was detailed here

— Language data from the weeks of 8.07 & 8.14 was detailed here

— Aggregate data through 8.25 was detailed here.

— Language data from 8.21–8.28 was detailed here

— Language data from 8.28–9.04 was detailed here

— Aggregate data through 9.5 was detailed here

— Language data from 9.04–9.11 was detailed here

— Aggregate daily support gained/lost data through 9.17 was detailed here

— A first look at Supreme Court Data was detailed here

— A deeper dive into Supreme Court Data was detailed here

— A language comparison between voters in NC and FL was detailed here

— An overview of the pre-debate top issues was detailed here

— Aggregate daily support gained/lost data through 9.30 was detailed here

— Post debate issues and sentiment were detailed here

— Trump’s COVID diagnosis and recent campaign issues flow was detailed here

Battleground States in our Analysis: AZ, CO, FL, IA, ME, MI, MN, NV, NH, NC, PA, TX, WI

Date Source: All data is publicly available and anonymized for our analysis from Twitter, Facebook, Online Blogs, & Message Boards.

Technology Partners: Eyesover & Relative Insight
Donald Davidson: An Overview of His Action Theory
By: Katharina E.
Tags: Aristotle, Philosophy, Humanity, Ethics, Action

1. Explanation

If the primary reason explains the action, the reason rationalizes the action, according to Davidson.

An action:

has a reason which explains the action.

has a reason which causes the action.

Davidson’s thesis:

1: The primary reason consists of two mental forms: A pro-attitude and a belief.

2: The primary reason is the cause of action.

He gives several examples of what a pro-attitude can be: Desires, impulses, stimuli, moral thoughts, etc. An action is rationalized by a reason when it becomes clear what the motivation of the agent was. In other words, the pro-attitude is something that I would like the world to be. If it isn’t, the world has to change.

And with a belief, he means that a person is sure that a concrete action fulfills the belief. The role of the belief is to connect the pro-attitude with one specific action. You can see the belief as something how I believe the world is. If it is wrong, I have to change my belief.

It may sound very theoretical, so here’s one example Davidson gives:

A person flips the light switch. This is an intentional action because the person has the pro-attitude to light the room. Also, she has the belief, that with flipping the switch, she’ll light the room.

Now, through this action, a thief gets alarmed (the person is unaware of it). But this is not the reason the person has to switch the light on. Therefore, it is just a description of the action, but not the primary reason for it.
The Globe (A földgömb)
By: Joe Váradi
Tags: Humor, Children, Childhood, Translation, Poetry

The Globe

My boy is smacking the globe around.

“The Earth’s spinning!”

“Well done, my Lóci, go for his head!”

I say, grinning.

“Twist that hairless noggin right off,

hit him, go on!

Each turn a day toward the future,

smack him, young one!”

The Earth starts to dance under his hands, in

sixty seconds

a hundred times the fleeting sun sets, and

sunrise beckons,

and I know not what end this game serves

but it feels grand

to watch Lóci, as his merciless,

fateful blows land:

it feels grand, like revenge exacted

for all the pain

and slights I’ve been dealt here on this

hellish terrain.

The Globe turns and lifetimes vanish,

ephemeral,

all those yet alive, we chase wildly the

centennial,

Lóci chases with abandon, and I

do bitterly:

it is I who have been played by this

game, terribly,

the Earth toys with me, and to my wrath

bats not an eye:

remains the old prison in which we

must live and die.

I know you, old prison! A whirling

dervish’s head,

that conjured up life and in the course

slowly went mad,

or that of an ancient wizard

who came unfurled,

his head spun into space and gave

rise to the world.

“Under the axe, to shreds!” the stubborn

thought captivates,

then my crippled pain, soberingly,

evaporates,

and I just stare, stare at the dervish’s

accursed head:

he wishes the devilish curse would

take me instead!…

My boy is smacking the globe around.

The Earth’s spinning.

“Careful, don’t rip that glued-on paper

underpinning!”

I recline on the récamier.

Glad it’s evening!

He and I have both grown bored. I watch

Lóci. Leaving.

There is peace and quiet now, as

my eyelids close

and I lie motionlessly in

dreamy repose,

I see: a head winds down from on high,

floats, starts to drop,

weary head — senses my sympathies,

grinds to a stop.
Become a Writer on Animedia
By: Limarc Ambalina
Tags: About Us, Contributor

Think you got what it takes to write for Animedia? All you have to do is apply to become a writer and send in your first draft.

Send your medium username to limarc.ambalina@jpbound.com Once added to the publication, write and submit your first story for review. If your draft is accepted, it will be immediately published on Animedia. Pop the champagne, you’re officially an Animedia contributor!
The Untold Story of the Invention of the Printing Press
By: Bill Adler
Tags: Short Story, English Language, Fantasy, Fiction, Historical Fiction

The Untold Story of the Invention of the Printing Press

Words weren’t always tame

Image courtesy of The British Library, modified from original.

Gray sky threatened rain, but Johannes Gutenberg was anything but gloomy.

He cupped his hands around his mouth and summoned Frederika Strout, his assistant for the past ten years, with the loudest shout he’d ever uttered. “Frederika. I did it! It works. Come!”

Johannes thought those were inauspicious words to herald the success of such a great invention, but he’d have time to immortalize the moment later.

“The hen’s laying eggs, Johannes. I’ll be there in a minute.” Frederika, a goldsmith by training and a tinkerer by choice, like her boss, also tended the chickens, pigs and sole cow.

“Hurry!”

Before Frederika had a chance to say, “The chicken will be done when the chicken’s done,” Johannes added, “I mean it!”

When Johannes was in a mood, there was no arguing with him. Frederika peeked up at the sky. A storm was brewing in the east and she hoped that she’d be back in time to retrieve the eggs before a fox found them.

Frederika was about to push open the door, but a gust of wind preempted her. The wind shoved her forward, and she barely managed not to crash into Johannes’ interminable project, his printing press.

Johannes’ house was his workshop and vice versa. The printing press occupied almost all of the cramped room. Behind it was a fireplace with a black iron pot, in which Johannes cooked the same lamb and carrot stew for nearly all his meals. To the left was a small, squat table with various tools, and a gold bracelet that he was making for the princess, which was a month overdue. To the right, was another table on which a handwritten book lay open.

Johannes furiously waved a small cloth net over the old book, capturing escaped words. Occasionally, he netted several words at once, but most of the time he could only catch individual ones. He apprehended aventure when it slowly fluttered above, but kynde and hastow escaped and flew through a gap in his wooden house.

Frederika hoisted up her skirt and retrieved the net that was strapped to her calf. She scooped anon and seyde together in one swoop. They struggled to free themselves, but she firmly reinserted them into The Canterbury Tales, squishing the words hard into the parchment, smoothing them down with her fingertips.

Johannes sighed. “Nevermind, Frederika. Nobody needs nets anymore.” Johannes dropped his net on the floor and extended his palm down, signalling Frederika to do the same. She released hers with fnorteth still inside. Fnorteth escaped through the same gap as kynde and hastow.

“Does it work, Johannes?”

“Yes!” He did a jig in place. “The printing press is a success. From this moment forward, words will be imprinted on the page with so much pressure that they can never escape.” He exhaled a long breath. “My printing press exerts a force equivalent to a one-ton boulder.”

Johannes gently squeezed Frederika’s hand. “Books will last forever.”
To Swallow or Not to Swallow
By: Mysterious Witt
Tags: Relationships, Oral Sex, Sex Work, Sexuality, Sex

Nothing makes me feel closer to a man than having the taste of his cum in my mouth.

Let’s face it — at first sight, semen is kind of bizarre. Less milky than glutinous, sperm is like a thin, white, somewhat transparent porridge with a strong smell like school glue.

I can only imagine how strange it must be for young men to discover this substance flies out of their penises upon climax. The only analogy I can think of is what it feels like as a girl to first menstruate. When we discover blood flows out of our vaginas once a month, awe strikes us.

So boys discover they ejaculate too, and then men come to experience their first blowjobs. Once that happens, they begin to think about what else can be done with the sperm that jettisons out of their cocks. If a woman’s mouth is already on a guy’s penis, she might as well take his ejaculate in her mouth. Hell, she might as well swallow it.

Not all male spunk is created equal though. Some cum is sweet while some is bitter. In other words, some men taste amazing while others taste awful.

I’m sure it has something to do with how much you like a guy. When I’m really into a man, his sperm definitely tastes better.

Sometimes I like to gargle my boyfriend’s cum before I swallow him. In fact, one of the great pleasures of sucking a guy’s cock is holding his sperm in your mouth after he ejaculates.

That way I can savor the taste. But even after I swallow him, there’s a marvelous aftertaste.

You’d be amazed how long that flavor stays in your mouth. I’ve slept over at a guy’s house, had sex with him in the morning, and then when I’m driving home, I can still taste him on my tongue. I swear that sometimes I can sense his sperm in my mouth all day long, like his jizz is a rinse that seeps deep into my taste buds and gets stuck there.

Nothing makes me feel closer to a man than having the flavor of his cum in my mouth. But every once in a while, I meet a guy whose spunk tastes disgusting. It’s hard to say exactly what it tastes like, only that it’s bitter like licking an ashtray.

The problem is, when you’re working as an escort, putting up with nasty sperm is just part of the job. I’ve had to literally hold my nose and swallow. Then again, anything’s possible when a guy’s paying you upwards of $500 an hour just to have sex with him.
How to File Your Taxes For Free
By: Fox Van Allen
Tags: Taxes

How to File Your Taxes For Free

These options are 100 percent free. No, seriously

(Image: Shutterstock)

If you’ve ever used Turbotax, Tax Act, or H&R Block, then chances are you know how expensive filing your taxes can be. They lure you in with promises of free tax return filing. But the moment a complication arises — claiming an exemption, for example — the “free” part goes away.

It’s a bait and switch. And that sucks.

Fortunately, there are a lot of great tax filing options that are really free, even if you’re self-employed, have investment income, or rent out your spare bedroom. Here are the most popular, easiest-to-use options that are free.

Like, honest to goodness free.

Credit Karma Tax

Credit Karma, the same site that offers free credit reports and monitoring, has a popular free tax filing tool. It’s legitimately free, no matter how complicated your filing situation is.

It’s really easy to use, too. Credit Karma walks you through your taxes with a simple interview-style process. Just answer a few simple questions — for example, did you get married this year? — and it’ll fill out all the forms you need automatically.

The best feature, though, is its compatibility. If you used H&R Block, TurboTax or Tax Act to file your taxes last year, Credit Karma has an option to import this data. It makes switching a snap.

There’s a pretty big catch to Credit Karma, though: There’s not a lot of support if something goes wrong. If you get audited, you’re on your own. And that’s scary as hell.

Free Tax USA

Before there was Credit Karma, there was Free Tax USA. It’s one of the most popular free e-filing programs out there, available directly from freetaxusa.com.

People love it because it supports common tax situations that some “free” software charges you for, such as claiming income from dividends or Health Savings Account (HSA) contributions. Like Credit Karma, Free Tax USA allows you to import last year’s data from TurboTax and other paid software providers.

One standout feature is the ability to file late tax returns, up to seven years back. It’s fantastic if you’ve missed a year (or seven) and don’t know what to do. Free Tax USA doesn’t judge.

You are warned, however: E-filing your state taxes is not free. There’s a $12.95 upcharge for that. Free Tax USA offers audit support and allows you to amend your return once you’ve filed, but only if you pay $6.95 for a deluxe upgrade.

Or just download what you need from the IRS…

If you don’t want to trust your personal data with a third party, you can always just download the forms you need directly from the Internal Revenue Service website. You just fill in the numbers, and print it out when you’re done.

You’ll need to do the math yourself, and you’ll need to hunt down the state tax forms you need separately. It’s pretty much the old-fashioned way of doing your taxes.

That said, it’s totally free. And if you’re worried about going it alone for the first time, there are IRS agents on call to answer any questions you have about filling it out.

You can find all the fillable forms you’ll need here.
4 Reasons, we’re Bullish on Bitcoin
By: Coin Observatory
Tags: Digital Asset, Trading Tips, Cryptocurrency, Market Analysis, Bitcoin

1. Tom Demark cycles,

Tom Demark’s sequential trading system aims to capture entry positions at key market cycle turns.

We’re currently at the end of a Demark down cycle, with a 9 green candle close on the daily.

2. Tweezer bottoms,

Second series of 2 sets of tweezer bottom daily candle formations.

3. Incoming Short Squeeze,

During the 2018 bear market, we witnessed 2 short squeezes on BTC, and current market sentiment has us geared for the third. This one has us projecting targets around the $9,000 Mark.

4. Inverse SPY Correlation:

Bitcoin and the SPY have been showing an inverse correlation as of May 2018.Which is rather interesting, since BTC is known to be uncorrelated to legacy markets.Yet our chart shows otherwise. More interestingly, the SPY is looking primed for a short sell, and I believe is at the peak of a bull trap.

The above figure demonstrates Bitcoin and SPY correlation. The figure below demonstrates the end of a TD Bull Cycle on the the SPY, a bearish divergence, and hence a great time to short sell the SPY for the incoming SPY correction.
Women’s Oppression Within Religion
By: James G Brennan
Tags: Religion, Oppression, Poetry, Women, Resistance Poetry

A veil, emblems, colours,

For those of second class standing,

Born into a body oppressed by men.

To manipulate, feed their egos

In the name of their God.

For man is more significant than woman,

God is a man ! man is made in the image of God!

Teachings and learnings throughout the ages,

Moulded for the advantage of men.

Women allowed by men to partake

In religious ceremony at times chosen

To suit his ego of self-important demands.

For to be of equal standing would mean

Women would be as important as men?

Men are appointed Spiritual leaders,

No role for a woman!

As instructed by their self appointed

Misogynist God.

To dress women in a way to find

No temptation for another’s wandering eye.

The same wandering eye

They themselves possess.

Their God’s instructions to

Keep women under control, for they are temptation,

This temptation will reveal the weakness of man.

Again, all blame averted for man’s sorry perversion.
Everything about the latest Node.js release | Node.js 15
By: Pranav Bhatia
Tags: JavaScript, NPM, Software Development, Nodejs, Programming

Promise.any() and AggregateError

Promise.any() basically takes a number of promises and it resolves as soon as one of the promises is completed.

It is the exact opposite of promise.all().

In promised.all() we used to pass a number of promises but it only used to resolve when each and every promise that we have passed is resolved. On the other hand, in this case, we wait for any one of them to resolve so it’s the exact opposite of promised.all()

Now you must be thinking about what happens if all of the promises we have passed to promise.any() fail! Well in that case it will return an AggregateError which is a new subclass of error which is also released with v8 8.6.

const promise1 = Promise.reject(0);

const promise2 = new Promise((resolve) => setTimeout(resolve, 100, 'quick'));

const promise3 = new Promise((resolve) => setTimeout(resolve, 500, 'slow')); const promises = [promise1, promise2, promise3]; Promise.any(promises).then((value) => console.log(value)); // expected output: "quick"

In the example over here, we have three promises. The first one is rejected as you can see. The second one resolves in 100 milliseconds and the third one resolves in 500 milliseconds.

Now we group them in an array and we pass and promise.any() and it will resolve as soon as the first promise is resolved and will return us the value of the promise that has resolved the first so when we run it you can see that it prints “quick”.

So basically it didn’t wait for the one with 500 milliseconds delay and it didn’t reject because one of the promises was rejected. It basically returned us the value of the first promise that was completed successfully.
Oneness
By: Ravyne Hawke
Tags: Poetry, Oneness, Spiritual Secrets, Haiku, Spirituality

Lori Carlson writes Poetry, Fiction, Articles, Creative Non-Fiction and Personal Essays. Most of her topics are centered around Relationships, Spirituality, Life Lessons, Mental Health, Nature, Loss, Death, and the LGBTQ+ community. Check out her personal Medium blog — Ravyne’s Nest.
I Want to Become
By: Orlando De Los Santos
Tags: Self Love, Perspective, Poetry, Self Improvement

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

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Effervescence
By: Joanna Vang
Tags: Prose Poetry, Musings, Bazaar Of The Bizarre, Poetry, Life

Effervescence

Prose Poetry

Image by Larisa Koshkina from Pixabay

What to say to someone standing in the door way

who loves his silence better than his smile

who shows excitement in vain bubble making

who lived scared in the dark alleys of bad ideas

whom the lightness toned the sensitivity on his skin

look at him now, would he have to say more

than his written book of omnipresent despair

full of accurate pictures of love and destruction

an imbalanced recipe beaten into the mixture

Sometimes it is the illusion

of continuing something worthwhile

in the delusion of an unpoppable solution

Excuse me sir, is it now the right time to invest?

someone would like to ask



Right now, I keep on bubbling,

said he with such an effervescence

Joanna Vang 2020
The Voice: Spoiler-Free Look at Black Panther
By: Alex Park
Tags: Marvel, Movies, Opinion, Black Panther, Superhero

Black Panther has been in the cinemas for a couple of weeks, and it has topped the charts ever since. The movie is the 18th film of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and has grossed 500 million domestically three weeks after release.

Image Courtesy of variety.com

And while this movie is a superhero film, it has successfully ignited conversations surrounding issues that have been a part of African American culture for centuries. The movie is not afraid to bring up themes of slavery and oppression, which have played a large part in African American history. In fact, it tackles these issues head-on, while managing to do it subtly at the same time.

Furthermore, many believe that the addition of a black superhero into the MCU was a long overdue, and it is easy to see why. The youth idolizes the superheroes in these films, and the fact that African American children had no hero of their own skin colour to look up to was a huge shame.

Without a doubt, Black Panther was a great addition to the MCU and the character of T’Challa will remain valuable for the entire franchise.

Watch Black Panther in the cinema now.
K-12 Full Time Remote Learning — the ugly side
Tags: Politics, Remote, Education Reform, World, Education

K-12 Full Time Remote Learning — the ugly side ASAPneha Follow Nov 2 · 4 min read

Remote learning as the future of education frightens me.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

During World War II, as the men fought abroad, women had no choice but to take over their duties for sustenance. For the first time in history, women were working in defense plants, volunteering for war-related organizations, working as streetcar “conductorette,” along with managing their ritualistic household duties.

“Women in uniform took office and clerical jobs in the armed forces in order to free men to fight. They also drove trucks, repaired airplanes, worked as laboratory technicians, rigged parachutes, served as radio operators, analyzed photographs, flew military aircraft across the country, test-flew newly repaired planes, and even trained anti-aircraft artillery gunners by acting as flying targets. Some women served near the front lines in the Army Nurse Corps, where 16 were killed as a result of direct enemy fire.” — The Atlantic

Undoubtedly, women in America played a crucial role in the war. At the end of the war, when men returned home, many women were coerced to return to their traditional feminine duties. Their service during the war, however, inspired fight for social change and equality. It sparked a revolution that resulted in many women being able to hold leadership positions, among many other positions of power that were traditionally held by men.

Even though progress towards equal pay and equal rights in the workplace for women was a lengthy battle, the events at World War II empowered generations of women to strive for the pursuit of personal and financial freedom.

What Does This Have To Do With Remote Learning?

Similar to WWII, lockdown due to COVID-19 is yet another phenomenon that has challenged society to face and questions the need for various reforms. Some predict that COVID-19 will “change us as a species.”

Do we need to physically go to work for 8 hours everyday for five days a week?

Could our experience with the international lockdowns help the environmental cause and slow climate change?

How sustainable is global trading relationships and how can we avoid shortage of raw materials in future?

…And the one that I am dreading the most: the future of education. Our nation as a whole has seen educational institutions go through a lockdown for the very first time since World War II. This disruption has coerced many educators to rethink how we will educate the future generations. Will we continue to follow the traditional way of educating or will we transition to a wholly remote learning experience for students in most sectors?
Classical Machine Learning — Supervised Learning Edition
By: Bardh Rushiti
Tags: Machine Learning

Machine Learning (ML) initially started in the ’50s and ’60s as pattern recognition. They got better by seeing more data. Most of these algorithms were based on statistics and probabilistic reasoning, by measuring the distance between data points, directions of vectors, intensities of values, etc.

These [old] algorithms are widespread. You can see them everywhere — read this article next, Google reporting your random sign-in — they’re simple to use, easy to understand, and don’t require a large amount of computational power.

Big tech companies do not hesitate to use more complex algorithms (neural-network-based). An additional 2% accuracy means earning an additional 200 million $. The trade-off is easy.

However, for the rest of the world that doesn’t need the extra 2%, we go for the classical method — they’re so easy-to-use, that even a toddler can understand those and that’s why most use it.

They branch out into supervised learning and unsupervised learning.

Supervised Learning

In the case of supervised learning, there’s a teacher who shows the algorithm the correct answer (Dog v Cat, Cancer v No-Cancer). This data is labeled, it’s what I refer to when I say a teacher or supervisor; hence the name supervised learning.

On the other hand, in unsupervised learning, the machine is let on its own to figure out a structure of the data that it is fed. This data is not labeled, nor does it have a teacher, and therefore is called unsupervised learning. I will talk more about this in the next article.

The first case is the more commonly used in the real world. There are two types of such tasks: classification — determining the class of an object, and regression — predicting a continuous value on a numerical axis.

Classification

In this type, the algorithm uses some attributes, called features, to make the classification of the object. For example, it separates fruits based on color, shape, nutritional value; music based on the genre; phones based on type, and so on.

Today they are used for:

Language detection

Spam classification

Sentiment analysis

Anomaly detection

Some widely used algorithms are: k-Nearest Neighbor, Support Vector Machines, Decision Tree, Logistic Regression.
How Marketers Can Leverage Snapchat’s Recent Updates
Tags: Social Media, Digital Marketing, Snapchat, Shazam, Edelman

Snapchat recently announced two significant updates: the addition of group messaging and an integration with Shazam. Throughout the coverage of these updates, I noticed the majority of interest was focused on the group messaging portion. Group messaging will definitely make communication easier on the ephemeral messaging platform and, in my opinion, will lead to group video chatting in the near future. This addition is important for the average user. However, as a media consumption enthusiast, I was really intrigued by how the future of Snapchat will look with a Shazam integration.

In case you have not tried it yet, Shazam’s proprietary listening technology has already been integrated into Snapchat. If your Snapchat camera is on your smartphone screen and music is playing nearby, press your thumb on the screen and a circle will appear. Within seconds it will identify the song via a small pop up that looks very native to Snapchat. When you click the ‘Song Info’ icon, you are taken to a microsite within Snapchat (powered by Shazam) that houses deep links to Apple Music, Spotify and VEVO. It also includes song lyrics and is a really effective way to transport users to a microsite within Snapchat.

As a marketer I could not help but think that in the future brands may begin using Shazam technology within Snapchat as an extension of TV commercials. Everyone has seen the Shazam icon appear during commercials in the past; however, my belief is the Shazam app is used predominantly in music identification instances, it is not an every hour application like Snapchat. In my opinion, this was the problem Shazam faced with past commercials leveraging their technology. Users had to quickly search their phone to find Shazam, it would not already be open. This is where Snapchat comes into play.

Snapchat is a highly visual-first application, and partnering with Shazam will be an excellent bridge to direct users to mobile from TV. Millennials are much more inclined to be on Snapchat while watching TV and now, with a Shazam integration, if a commercial comes on featuring a product they like, users can hold down the camera and be directed to a microsite within Snapchat to learn more. From there, Snapchat can link out to a purchase website and track all that data. Additionally, TV networks can use this technology as a hook for audiences to watch programs in real-time.

We will see how this all plays out but I’m very excited for this partnership and what the future holds for these two companies.

Matthew Stanton works on the Emerging Media & Technology team for Edelman Digital Global. He is based in Los Angeles.
3 Worrying Trends in Social Media — Part 1: Competitions and giveaways
By: Arié Moyal
Tags: Justmigrate

Whilst it’s great that more brands are getting involved online, I worry that their goals are not properly defined. This is underlined by three trends I’m observing in social media right now.

The first one: ‘Like/Follow/RT/Comment to Enter’ contests.

Anyone else feel “dirty” when they enter a contest on twitter, Facebook or a blog that requires you to like, follow, RT or comment?

It’s great that brands have bought into giveaways/competitions as a way to connect with people who have an interest in the product (here’s hoping) OR as a way to increase their numbers (a more likely motivator).

The issue with the latter is that it devalues the very numbers they’re trying to increase. Call it social currency inflation.

If I comment on a brand’s blog or like/follow/RT them it should be because I genuinely am interested in what they have to say. I admit that it’s mostly for selfish reasons but aren’t we all mostly on twitter/Facebook etc for ourselves?

Likes and follows, in particular, are part of my online identity. They tell you what I’m interested in. I can skew that if I have to like/follow a brand just to win a prize I want, especially if the prize is “cool” but not relevant to the brand and the community they’re trying to reach.

I’m not advocating that prizes only be product. In fact it’s preferable that the main prize not be product. A universally needed prize, like a gift card or the hottest new gadget, will attract anyone who wants to win those prizes. In addition to that, the cost of entry is minimal and does nothing to prevent people from using multiple accounts to increase their chances of winning.

RTing to enter is not only useless towards building long-term relationships but usually provides no value to the RTer’s followers. Also, keeping track of RTs can be tricky and, with twitter’s RT function, takes away the opportunity to discover the people in your community who are key connectors.

Asking people to put a simple comment on one of your blog posts to be entered into a draw can be helpful for SEO and the comment might be useful to understanding them but what does it do for you in the long-term?

So we want more followers, more Facebook fans, more pageviews, more activity that looks like engagement but why aren’t we trying to actually make them mean something and get some value out of competitions by rewarding creativity?

Yes, we all like numbers and we want to believe that bigger numbers mean better numbers but the goal with social is not to reach MORE people, it’s to reach more of the RIGHT people.

Let’s stop devaluing the numbers, complicating measurement and let’s do what we came here to do: Connect & communicate.

The next part of this series is coming soon. Subscribe so you don’t miss it!

And as usual, I look forward to your comments.
The Clock Here Is Quiet
By: Vito Pasquale
Tags: Poetry

Found still life on the cement floor of the potting shed.

The light, a reflection from the hedgerow just outside.

All signs of life implied.

All underfoot.

All vanish at the fall of darkness.
Drawing the Vice Presidential Debate
By: Liza Donnelly
Tags: Vp Debate, Kamala Harris, Mike Pence, Politics

Drawing the Vice Presidential Debate

I just couldn’t ignore the fly on Pence’s head

I love political debates. Drawing them is invigorating in the challenge of capturing the physical countenance of each debater — what they’re wearing, how they look, stand, move, express emotions. It’s thrilling when I manage to capture a specific gesture or facial expression, particularly if it’s unique to the debate. I use quotes, so it forces me to really listen to what’s going on and grab verbal moments or sound bites that distill what the debater is saying. I love capturing any newsworthy moments! What’s challenging is all of the above, but also making the drawings look interesting — it’s often just talking heads. My live drawings are not overtly opinionated; I try to reflect what I see and hear — my opinion might be in what I choose to draw. Sometimes, I can’t help myself. Last night’s debate was visually not interesting, the candidates were sitting, so not a lot of movement going on. By the way, it’s hard to draw plexiglass barriers, something I never knew. Their clothes were simple to draw, black, red, brown, two skin tones. The variety of facial expressions from Senator Harris versus the stone face of VP Pence was notable; although at times both broadcasted opinion without saying anything (they both mouthed “not true” a few times).

When I noticed the fly on Pence’s head, I kind of shrieked: I knew this was the moment everyone would be talking about. I had to draw it. It stayed so long in one place on his white hair, I thought it might be stuck in hair spray. The moderator, Susan Page would begin asking a question, and I thought she was going to say, “Mr. Vice President, there’s a fly on your head.” I’ve live-drawn the debates for five years now, for The New Yorker, The New York Times, CBS News, and this was a first. It’s not always clear what it will be — in 2016 when Trump was looming behind Hillary in a town hall debate, I knew that was the moment. We’re still talking about that one.

Below are my drawings from last night’s Vice Presidential debate.
9.19 Presidential Social Intelligence Battleground Tracker — Daily Support Gained/Lost Update
By: Adam Meldrum
Tags: Battleground States, Social Listening, Joe Biden, 2020 Presidential Race, Donald Trump

9.19 Presidential Social Intelligence Battleground Tracker — Daily Support Gained/Lost Update

An aggregate weekly pulse of how potential voters in battleground states are discussing the Presidential candidates

Please check out the background post on this project if it is your first time reading.

— Our initial dataset from the week of 7.3 was detailed here.

— Data from the week of 7.11 was detailed here

— Data from the week of 7.19 was detailed here.

— Aggregate data to date through 8.14 was detailed here

— Language data from the weeks of 8.07 & 8.14 was detailed here

— Aggregate data through 8.25 was detailed here.

— Language data from 8.21–8.28 was detailed here

— Language data from 8.28–9.04 was detailed here

— Aggregate data through 9.5 was detailed here

— Language data from 9.04–9.11 was detailed here

Battleground States in our Analysis: AZ, CO, FL, IA, ME, MI, MN, NV, NH, NC, PA, TX, WI

Date Source: All data is publicly available and anonymized for our analysis from Twitter, Facebook, Online Blogs, & Message Boards.

Technology Partners: Eyesover & Relative Insight
Unhealthy Acts
By: Vince Ferraro
Tags: The Friday Fix, Microfiction, 50 Word Stories, Flash Fiction, War

Unhealthy Acts

a micro-fiction story

Photo by British Library on Unsplash

Joe handed me the cigarette. I coughed as I took a drag.

“What’sa matter?”

“Nothing. I’m not used to it.”

“Not used to it?”

“Yeah. I quit two years ago.” I handed it back to him.

“Good for you.” He stood up in the foxhole and fired across the field.
XinFin to Build a state-of-the-art Blockchain Lab at UC Berkeley
By: Xinfin Team
Tags: Xinfin, Partnerships, Media, Blockchain

By Coinwire | 2 July 2018

Global open-source Hybrid Blockchain platform XinFin has announced plans of building another Network Protocol Engineering and Business Development Lab at UC Berkeley following its recent establishment of a Research and Development Protocol Lab at Temasek Launchpad, Singapore.

In an effort to pool fresh new talents and set a global approach that would catalyze the development of Hybrid Blockchain protocol, XinFin is setting up a lab in the top public university in the U.S., University of California, Berkeley. Globally regarded as one of the top ten universities in the world, UC Berkeley has produced many of the most eminent forefathers, ranging from Nobel prize winners, scientists, researchers, and global movers and shakers.

Aside from UC Berkeley, XinFin also intends to work with other prestigious universities in Northern California, as the platform aspires to build a diverse developer community in the San Francisco Bay Area. As XinFin takes another step closer towards its final objective of becoming the catalyst that would spur the evolution of Hybrid Blockchain infrastructure, the platform also aims to streamline its network, poising it for mainstream enterprise adoption with the introduction of XDC Virtual Machine, an application developed to be far more efficient for enterprises.

As UC Berkeley Blockchain Developer Alan Lai exclaimed:

“This will be a great opportunity for everyone in the bay area for they will get an opportunity to work with the revolutionary technology called XDC protocol.”

Echoing Lai’s remarks, XinFin Senior Blockchain Developer Kartikeya Bhargava also emphasized:

“It is a great coalition, considering the qualitative talent that UC Berkeley and SF bay area bring on the table, which will immensely contribute to the forthcoming technological developments and global adoption of the XDC protocol and blockchain applications.”

In addition, XinFin will also be collaborating with a number of institutions and enterprises within the area to explore Blockchain use cases that may potentially be suitable for various business areas. As the platform works towards its technology’s frictionless adoption, XinFin also aims to raise awareness vis-à-vis global trading and finance DAPPs, including the decentralized P2P marketplace platform underpinned to its Hybrid Blockchain Network, TradeFinex.

With all these new developments, XinFin hopes to see the platform’s global expansion, as it ceaselessly works to further spread its reach beyond the United States.

As XinFin Consultant and Blockchain Advisor David Freuden noted:
Implementing mouse scroll in slick.js
By: Sagar Shrestha
Tags: Slider, JavaScript, Carousel, Slick, Mouse

The last carousel you’ll ever need

Slick, the last carousel you’ll ever need, is a great image carousel for Javascript. Like every other carousel, you have a lot of additional functionality/features for your galleries like:

Fully responsive. Scales with its container.

Separate settings per breakpoint

Uses CSS3 when available. Fully functional when not.

Swipe enabled. Or disabled, if you prefer.

Desktop mouse dragging

Infinite looping.

Fully accessible with arrow key navigation

Add, remove, filter slides

Autoplay, dots, arrows, callbacks, etc…

Here is a simple demo with basic features:

Slick JS default

The above demo looks perfect but it doesn’t support changing the slides using mouse scroll. That means you have to either drag using the mouse or click on the arrow button for the next or previous slide.

But the problem is slick.js does not have the feature to change slides on mouse scroll. Let’s implement it then.

I will be using the wheel event which is fired when a wheel button of a pointing device (usually a mouse) is rotated.

const slider = $(".slider-item");

slider

.slick({

dots: true

}); //Implementing navigation of slides using mouse scroll

slider.on('wheel', (function(e) {

e.preventDefault(); if (e.originalEvent.deltaY < 0) {

$(this).slick('slickNext');

} else {

$(this).slick('slickPrev');

}

}));
- How taking the Udacity DMND course broadened my life perspective.
By: Julia Khouri
Tags: Traveling, Travel, Working Remotely, Digital Nomads, Digital Marketing

Finally, a chance to explain to all my loved ones and curious brains wondering why I applied to the Nomad MBA program ( Check it out: www.nomad.mba ), and how I heard about the Udacity Digital Marketing Nano Degree program, online learning platform(https://www.udacity.com/course/digital-marketing-nanodegree--nd018 ).

Here you go — I’m a 24-year-old Lebanese woman, born and raised in the great Ivory Coast. Studied in Lebanon, Mexico and France. Was just offered a business developer position in Morocco and another amazing opportunity to work for the family business in Ivory Coast, as many of us when done with studies. It’s a perfect situation for people of my age who want to settle. It’s an amazing chance — and for a long time, i thought this was what i wanted to do , right away. But it seems like it’s not my time yet.

Traveller in my soul, curiosity on my mind and a huge space to fill in my heart, I’m looking for more. What do I mean by more? Everything is a vague word, but no doubt the right one. More travels, more places, more languages, more love, more tolerance, more challenges, more creativity, more freedom, more happiness, more freedom…and a bit of an income to afford what I need to experience these things: travel.

So, let me introduce you to the million dollar FCFA question raised by all these thoughts: How can I travel and be financially sustainable doing a job I love?

Option one: either you’re already working in a open-minded company where you’re able to negotiate a remote position. Option two: you get the tangible skills necessary to upgrade your career and become a full-time digital nomad where your profession works with your personal lifestyle goals.

This is where the DMND program comes in handy. A methodical and practical course full of templates and guidelines to help you master digital marketing. Because it’s online, you can even start anywhere you want, in the world. How amazing is that? What is the use of the Internet, if not this? Why would we under-use the most revolutionary invention of the past decades?

I believe in different ways that people can lead their career and grow as humans. Being sedentary is great, I might even get there one day. But being a nomad is just as great and deserves your attention.

We have stopped considering this option, but I truly believe it deserves a thought — what if I fail? Failure only really happens when an individual doesn’t consider all the options around him to make things happen

·Food for thought·

Again, it is definitely not about holidays, which is what we generally assume when we hear the word “nomad”.

I am talking about a Nomad lifestyle. For a long time, homo sapiens had to settle in order to build long lasting business and afford life. It was hard times to be a nomad. Today, the internet put us back on our feet. We can be digital nomads. We can do more.
What is Cloud Mining
By: Tyro Mining
Tags: Bitcoin

content from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_mining for testing only

Cloud Mining

is the process of bitcoin mining utilizing a remote datacenter with shared processing power. This type of cloud mining enables users to mine bitcoins or alternative cryptocurrencies without managing the hardware. The mining rigs are housed and maintained in a facility owned by mining company and the customer simply needs to register and purchase mining contracts or shares. Since Cloud Mining is provided as a service there is generally some cost and this can result in lower returns for the miner.

Type of Hosting

Users of hosted Mining equipment can either lease a physical mining server or a Virtual private server and install mining software on the machine. Instead of leasing a dedicated server, some services offer hashing power hosted in data centers for sale denominated in Gigahash/seconds (GH/s); Users either select a desired amount of hashing power and a period for the contract or in some cases can trade their hashing power.
Nasdaq is open to becoming crypto exchange, CEO Adena Friedman says
Tags: Bitcoin, Nasdaq

Nasdaq CEO announces that once space matures then the company is likely to open platform for trading cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin Ripple etc.This will be a good move in the expansion of the cryptocurrency market.

According to Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman “Certainly Nasdaq would consider becoming a crypto exchange over time,”

Further added, “If we do look at it and say ‘it’s time, people are ready for a more regulated market,’ for something that provides a fair experience for investors.”

Friedman said that the main resistance in a way to open cryptocurrency exchange to the company and other institutional investors is regulations, which need to figure out and she also been bullish on future of cryptocurrencies.

“I believe that digital currencies will continue to persist it’s just a matter of how long it will take for that space to mature,” Friedman said. “Once you look at it and say, ‘do we want to provide a regulated market for this?’ Certainly, Nasdaq would consider it.”

At present Nasdaq is also supporting present cryptocurrency exchanges. On Wednesday CEO of Gemini cryptocurrency exchange Tyler Winklevoss said that Nasdaq has collaboration with Gemini according to the deal Gemini access to Nasdaq’s surveillance technology to help make sure the platform provides a fair and “rules-based marketplace,”

Friedman is very optimistic about the future of cryptocurrencies but shown her concern over ICO. “ICOs need to be regulated,” she said. “The SEC is right that those are securities and need to be regulated as such.”

A crackdown on ICO fraud in 2008 by U.S Securities and Exchange Commission made an alert on the market and Commission is concrete over making securities law from cryptocurrency exchanges to digital asset storage companies called wallets.

SEC chairman Jay Clayton said the watchdog is devoting a “significant portion of resources” to the ICO market.