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9 Ways to Increase Your Spiritual Awareness
By: Avis J. Williams
Tags: Personal Growth, Self, Spirituality, Life Lessons, Self Improvement

Photo by Jared Rice on Unsplash

“Nothing glows brighter than the heart awakened to the light of love that lives within it.” — Guy Finley

Spiritual awareness is all about connecting with our inner self, divine consciousness and the world around us. Which will enable us to feel at peace and to harness our full potential, to be of service to the world, being spiritually aware creates a harmonious balance in body, soul and mind and can help you to develop healthy connections in relationships with family, community and ourselves.

The 9 tips to Increase Your Spiritual Awareness

Spending some quiet time to meditate and pray is a good way to start the process of being spiritually connected.

For my meditation tips, read the story below:

2. Be in the vibration of Love. Spend time with loved ones, and do activities that you are passionate about and that brings you highest joy. Being joyful raises your vibration and connect you further with the divine and your inner self.

5 other ways to raise your vibration, read the story below:

3. Trust your intuition. No one knows you better than yourself, learn to believe in yourself and listen to yourself. When you start to trust your intuition it will help guide you in your decisions in life regarding career, money and relationships.

The benefits and how to develop your intuition, read the story below:

4. Start writing down your thoughts, feelings and experiences. It will help you become more self-aware of your negative thought patterns, feelings and your behaviours. Knowing this will help you to make changes that you need to make.

4 ways to become self-aware, read the story below:

5. Spending time in nature can help reconnect you with the earth and keep you grounded. Walking in nature is a great way to recharge and reflect which is beneficial to both body and mind.

6. Set aside time to learn new things. In growing and stimulating the mind. Take a few classes at a local college, read spiritual and inspirational material.

7. Have a good exercise regime and a healthy diet. If the body and mind are at its best, other aspects of life become easier to connect to.

8. Take the time to help others in a voluntary capacity helps to feed the inner soul. while the outward benefits are the ability to be more compassionate towards others.

9. Spending time interacting with like-minded people. This will help build relationships that can give positive mental and physical reinforcements.
Common mistakes in technical on-site interviews
By: Injurious Answer
Tags: Technology, Jobs, Onsite Interview, Interview, Technical Interview

Technical interviews are conducted by employers who are hiring computer science, engineering, IT or other technical professionals. A technical interview allows interviewers to assess candidates technical skills, problem-solving skills and critical thinking skills. There are some common mistakes which make easier for an employer to reject a candidate. I’m sure you don’t want to end up doing these at least not after reading this article.

No preparation

This is a fatal mistake and the majority of candidates who failed interviews fall into this category. Some people are too confident as they passed phone screens without any difficulty but most of them fail at an on-site interview.

Asking for time to think

The following conversation has happened countless times

Interviewer: “Here’s the question .. and I’d like you to write a function to ..” Candidate: "Sounds good! please give me 5 minutes." Silence for few minutes.. Candidate: “OK, let me write down the solution for you.” Interviewer: “Err.. maybe you can describe your solution a little bit first.”

I think you’re getting the point here. It’s highly recommended to talk while thinking instead of coming up with a complete solution after the silence.

Crappy code

Most tech companies won’t hire people without checking their code, so it’s for sure that you’re gonna be asked to write code in an on-site interview. However, a lot of people don’t prepare well for this.

No enthusiasm

Another key factor that is evaluated in a technical on-site interview is culture fit. Culture fit can’t be emphasized enough. It evaluates whether you’re a good fit for the company, whether you are likely to be able to work in a team.

Bad communication

Many candidates don’t pay enough attention to this point. They may be quite passive in the discussion, failed to articulate their solutions clearly and ignored basic etiquettes like eye contact. Part of the reason is that they were too nervous in an on-site interview and forgot almost everything.

There are hardly any shortcuts to pass an on-site interview. The golden rule is to spend enough effort and time on preparation. With practice, you will master the skills to crack any on-site interviews with flying colours and you’ll enjoy the whole process.
Performance gains by altering your routine
By: Shane Dowling
Tags: Habits, Mindfulness, Meditation

In the mornings I had a very structured routine. The first thing I would

do is meditate as for me, all other habits flow from this. Then after my

meditation I would either go for a run or do some dumbbell based

strength exercises. The reasoning being that as exercising was also a

quiet periods, I could try extending the mindfulness and clarity gained

from meditation into my exercises and have a better chance of remaining mindful throughout the day.

Typically, this routine has worked out exactly the same every time.

Meaning that I would always feel somewhat tired while meditating and a niggling doubt would re-occur that I was too tired to perform my

meditations effectively. You get a lot of space to dwell on these doubts

while meditating.

As a response, for a few days I started to exercise before meditation

and I must admit the effect were dramatic. Meditation after running is

akin to trying to focus after taking a pile of happy pills. The

meditation feels better, it seems easier and I’m very positive

throughout the whole experience. I also discovered that meditation

following exercise is a great way to generate ideas. Especially with

writing, I permanently feel like I’m going to run out of ideas but when

you fill yourself with positive energy and then try to sit and think,

the ideas just seemed to flow. It could be simply a mixture of

endorphines being positivity and physical tiredness taking away fears of

having bad idea, whatever it is it seems to be the ideal mental state

for idea generating.

Now, this all sounds very positive but I must admit this alteration of

my routine will only be used sparingly. Firstly, I got distracted quite

a lot with ideas during the meditation, forcing me to write them down

and effectively breaking my focus. Some my my hand would be completely covered in pen marks after a meditation. That’s great, every so often but it got frustrating pretty quickly having to break focus over and over. Secondly, it’s wonderful to watch your breath while you’re full of positive “I love life” energy but that’s not exactly reflective of my

mood throughout the day and when your hope is to extend mindfulness to the rest of your day you want to develop an expectation that you’re only mindful when your very positive.

Now, I do fully intend to use this ordering when I’m running low on

ideas but I shall limit it only to then. I’m glad I made the discovery

and intend to continually try new alterations and note the consequences.

So if you’ve got some daily rituals or routines, mix them up and see if

you can gain some unexpected performance gains.
Introducing Our Newest Advisory Team Member — Rene van Pelt
By: Supplybloc Technology
Tags: Netherlands, Advisor, Announcements, Crypto, Bitcoin

SupplyBloc is excited to announce the recent addition of Rene van Pelt to their Advisory team. As a veteran in the blockchain and cryptocurrency communities, Rene will undoubtedly be providing invaluable guidance for our project. Rene is a Dutch entrepreneur who can effectively negotiate the realms between marketing, technology, and finance. SupplyBloc is eager to learn and grow with Rene onboard.

“SupplyBloc is eager and excited to have Rene onboard due to his extensive and versatile knowledge of blockchain from both a technical and business/marketing perspective. We feel that Rene, as a professional analyst, marketer, and purveyor of cryptocurrency, will be able to quickly point out our strengths and weaknesses. His criticism and affirmations will inevitably help SupplyBloc grow into a stronger, more agile, and lasting entity within the exciting and rapidly developing space of blockchain tech.” — Robert McNulty (Co-founder and CEO of SupplyBloc)

A bit about Rene…

Rene has been active in tech, marketing, and business development roles throughout the blockchain industry since early 2011. He got his start as a professional software developer at a Payment Service Provider (PSP) by the name of Qantani, the first licensed PSP that processed Bitcoin payments. Later, Rene co-founded Panache, a software development company in The Netherlands, specializing in blockchain tech and cryptocurrency. By 2016, Rene transitioned into business development as a co-owner of a marketing software backend services for enterprise called Burnie.

Since then, Rene has continued to leverage his technical know-how and early blockchain development knowledge to create uniquely suited tech-marketing positions within the crypto-community. In April 2017, Rene became the Token Sale Marketing Officer of FintechFans, an ongoing ICO project. This was the first real integration of marketing and blockchain that perfectly coalesced to meet Rene’s skillset.

A few months after the initial launch of FintechFans, Rene co-founded The Tokener, an ICO and Token sale directory. The Tokener offers reports, analysis, news, and marketing tips for both potential investors and businesses hoping to launch an ICO/STO.

“I decided that a permanent role on SupplyBloc’s advisory board was a no-brainer after a series of close discussions about the different movements in the crypto market and the best way for SupplyBloc to position themselves in this rapidly changing world. The team and I clicked from the start and I truly believe that there’s a lot of potential in this project. I’m looking forward to spreading the word and helping as much as possible.” — Rene van Pelt

Learn more about this project at supplybloc.io
Learning to Say Goodbye
By: Ellen Lindner
Tags: Ellen Lindner, Relationships, Abuse, Comics, Dating

The events of this week made me want to revisit this story from my archives, about an incident in my own high school years… This story is why I personally believe Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. Because the kind of betrayal she describes is all too common.
Online Learning of Word Embeddings
By: Desh Raj
Tags: Machine Learning, Word Vectors, Deep Learning, Online Learning, Representation Learning

Batch SGNS algorithm

Skip-gram objective. Image taken from The Morning Paper.

SGNS is a window-based method with the following training objective: Given the target word, predict all the context words in the window.

Suppose we have a context window where w is the target word and c is one of the context words. Then, skip-gram’s objective is to compute P(c|w), which is given as

Basically, it is just a softmax probability distribution over all the word-context pairs in the corpus, directed by the cosine similarity. However, the denominator term here is very expensive to compute since there may be a very large number of possible context words. To solve this problem, negative sampling is used.

Goldberg and Levy have explained the derivation for the objective function in SGNS very clearly in their note. I will try to provide a little intuition here.

For the word w, we are trying to predict the context word c. Since we are using softmax, this is essentially like a multi-class classification problem, where we are trying to classify the next word into one of N classes (where N is the number of words in the dictionary). Since N may be quite large, this is a very difficult problem.

What SGNS does is that it converts this multi-classification problem into binary classification. The new objective is to predict, for any given word-context pair (w,c), whether the pair is in the window or not. For this, we try to increase the probability of a “positive” pair (w,c), while at the same time reducing the probability of k randomly chosen “negative samples” (w,s) where s is a word not found in w’s context. This leads to the following objective function which we try to maximize in SGNS:

In other words, we push the target vector in the direction of the positive context vector, and pull it away from k randomly chosen (w.r.t. the unigram probability distribution) negative vectors. Here “negative” means that these vectors are not actually present in the target’s context.

What do we need to make SGNS online?

As is evident from the above discussion, since SGNS is a window-based approach, the training itself is very much in an online paradigm. However, the constraints are in creating a vocabulary and a unigram distribution for negative sampling, which makes SGNS a two-pass method. Further, if additional data is seen later, the distribution and vocabulary would change, and the model would have to be retrained.

Essentially, we need online alternatives for 2 aspects of the algorithms:

Dynamic vocabulary building Adaptive unigram distribution

With this background, I will now discuss the two proposed methods for online SGNS.
How to Speak Data in Plain English
By: Jordan Bean
Tags: Communication, Data, Data Science, Towards Data Science, Ds In The Real World

Be Simple

You should always be asking yourself “What is the easiest way to explain this finding?”. Provide your findings to someone that has no context about the problem and see if they can understand what you’re saying. Write what you want to say, then write it again with only 50% of the words. Empathize with your audience by considering whether you could understand what you’re writing or saying if you had no knowledge of analytics.

Let’s take the following the statement in the complaint to the SEC…

“During the 87 month span analyzed, Madoff was down only 3 months versus GATEX being down 26 months. GATEX earned an annualized return of 10.27% during the period studied vs. 15.62% for Bernie Madoff…”

…and suggest an alternate way that might be easier to follow:

Over the 7 years studied, $100,000 invested with Madoff would have grown to $286,000 but only $203,000 for its competitor. Further, Madoff’s performance suggests that he was 90% more effective at avoiding negative returns than comparable funds.

Image by Author

We could also consider including a simple chart like the above to emphasize the point.

What did we change to simplify the interpretation of the data? First, months was changed to years since its more common for someone to think of that amount of time in years. Then, instead of an annual return, we put it on dollar values, which people can more easily compare and appreciate the magnitude as it compounds over time. Then, we presented the data on negative returns in a format that I believe better emphasizes the difference in performance and should make someone question how the difference could be 90%.

We should remove numbers where possible and add interpretation. The author mentions 3 negative months vs. 26 and 10.2% annual returns vs. 15.6% but what he’s really saying is that Madoff’s performance is uncharacteristically better than his competitor. For a non-technical audience, just give that answer and have the supporting data ready if necessary rather than giving the numbers and assuming they’ll come to the same answer.

Takeaway: Avoid jargon, be empathetic, and where possible show — rather than tell — your data. Give an answer; don’t give data and assume the person will arrive at the same answer.
How to Space Elements in Bootstrap 4 Without Custom Classes
By: Ilona Dee
Tags: Bootstrap, CSS, Web Development, Tech, Programming

How to Space Elements in Bootstrap 4 Without Custom Classes

Front-end shortcuts

I’m happily coming back with my front-end shorts series.

Unfortunately, I don’t have enough time to write long articles, but I would be happy to share some front-end tips and tricks that I have already applied to some of my projects.

Most front-end and full-stack developers hate writing CSS. There are lots of reasons for that:

They still cannot get CSS to do what they want, precisely and without frustration.

It may be bulky. Often even the simplest styles require too many properties.

Some CSS rules are not straightforward (e.g., pseudo-elements need a content property to appear).

There is no go-to, standard methodology for class naming conventions, when to use IDs and classes, nesting depths, etc. Not every codebase uses BEM, SMACSS, styled-components, etc.

CSS is changing and growing, with different properties becoming popular, and others becoming defunct.

No two browsers agree on how to render the same CSS. Though some get close to agreement, it’s still a must to write CSS with at least four different browsers in mind (not to mention responsive CSS).

And more, and more…

Despite all of that, I like playing with CSS, I really do — if I manage the code, not the CSS manages me.

In the last few days, I have marked up a landing page with Bootstrap 4, and on the go, have switched to the Bootstrap spacing utils approach, which allows you to

Have fewer CSS classes

Align elements relative to each other according to the grid

Use integrated or custom grid breakpoints

Control horizontal and vertical space in Bootstrap layouts

Keep code clean and not overcomplicated

Keep UI consistently-looking

Have the ability to change the spacing in the whole app by touching just a single file

Bootstrap 4 has built-in utility-responsive classes for margins and padding that you may use easily in various elements to manage the spacing.

Here are good examples, which helped me to optimize my work with Bootstrap 4 and customize the grid. The best way to work with and worth attention:

Here is my example of how this can be used in your markup:

The idea of using these small, pre-built classes allows you to have fewer custom classes and more consistent layouts throughout the application.

Additionally, you are not limited to the standard six spacing levels. In essence, you can always introduce more if you have a custom spacer override in your _variables.scss file. For example:

In conclusion, knowing your framework is essential, and getting the most out of it (in a proper way) can give you an advantage in the form of cleaner code and cleaner design.

Thank you for reading!

Code your best,

Ilona
A Good First Step From Betsy DeVos
Tags: Department Of Education, Betsy Devos, Sexual Assault

By The Editorial Board

Seven months ago, the Stanford Review wrote an open letter to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.

We wrote that policies inherited from the Obama-era Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Education were failing to serve students, and asked her to reject them. During the past six years, Title IX guidelines have deprived victims and the accused of due process, while failing to produce satisfactory outcomes. With a 2011 Dear Colleague letter, the OCR initiated a misguided regulatory regime that has hurt both victims and the accused.

By instituting a “preponderance of evidence” standard, the lowest in the American justice system, these new guidelines cast doubt on the legitimacy of the process. Though sexual assault could leave permanent physical or mental scars on its victims and result in expulsion for the accused, the standards for determining guilt were inexcusably low. And under the new rules, due process took a beating. Fearing loss of federal funding if they failed to comply with the memo, colleges erred on the side of the victim, sometimes refusing to share the complaint, evidence, or witnesses with the accused. In response, students took to court to protest their treatment.

Today, the Office of Civil Rights is still investigating 304 schools for sexual violence issues. Because the average sexual assault case takes 703 days to resolve at the Department of Education, though, many of these cases won’t see a resolution until the parties involved graduate.

It’s clear then: in the six years since the OCR memo, Title IX investigations have often secured neither justice for the victims or civil liberties for the accused. The system must change.

Today, Secretary DeVos announced that the administration would reject the memo and seek new approaches to adjudicating sexual assault. The Review congratulates the Department of Education for recognizing that the current rules have failed.

Contrary to some critics’ allegations, DeVos’ announcement does not equate to a repeal of Title IX or a free pass to campus rapists. Instead, it is an opportunity to reform some of the less effective and legally dubious parts of the system. The Stanford community should continue to remain active in ensuring that the government’s new sexual assault policies secure justice for sexual assault perpetrators and survivors. Stanford, because of its name and influence, can affect policy. The Review thus calls upon students and administrators to use the upcoming notice-and-comment process to advocate for effective and equitable reforms.

Now is the time to create fair and trusted rules that restore due process to the accused and justice to victims.
A Few Changes…
By: Zay Pareltheon
Tags: Publication Change, Poiesis News, News

One step at a time… October 15, 2020

Photo by Lindsay Henwood on Unsplash

We are making some changes to Scrittura.

It’s time as we develop and refine the publication’s direction for the future.

Scrittura is largely, but not entirely, a publication dedicated to poetry and poets. The number of submissions as grown dramatically, and we are so pleased to welcome and recognize new writers. Keep up the interesting, provocative and excellent work.

We will be combining the two categories of “Fiction” and “Non-Fiction.”

They are being combined into one category called “Prose.” They are both written in prose after all.

Writers are encouraged to submit works to this new category. Please add the tag “prose” as the first tag you use during a submission.

Then, feel free to identify your work as either non-fiction or fiction internal to the document. I have this feeling that most Scrittura readers can tell the difference, but little hints can help.

Thanks for reading. writing, and dreaming.

Zay Pareltheon
Investors Should Pay Attention to these Four Traits of a Successful ICO
Tags: Investing, Spokkz, ICO, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency

Investors Should Pay Attention to these Four Traits of a Successful ICO Spokkz Follow Aug 28, 2018 · 3 min read

It is no secret that most ICO’s investments will end in money wasted. The President of XAPO recently said that, “90%+ of CoinMarketCap list will disappear eventually — might as well happen now.” The reason for this is simple; start-ups burn money and fail. This isn’t news, and it is time for ICO investors to wake up and take notice.

There is a lot of great talent in the blockchain space. Here at Spuul, we know what it takes to create a winning platform. We have been delivering content to our subscribers for years, and now we want to take Over-The-Top (OTT) media delivery to the next level. Our SPOKKZ token is a winner, and these four reasons will help you to spot other great ideas in the ICO market.

1. A Great Platform

Is the company you are investing in an idea more than a business?

Great ideas usually make money, and our successful OTT platform is evidence of a well thought out idea that delivers results. Many of the new projects that are seeking funds via an ICO simply aren’t mature, and may not create the returns that new investors are looking for.

2. Clients That Are Ready to Use the Token

There are a lot of dreamers out there. Thinking about a new platform is a lot harder than making it commercially viable. When you invest in an ICO, make sure there are real people who will use the token you are buying. At Spuul, we have spent years cultivating a waiting market for our new SPOKKZ token, and we are delivering incredible technology to both our investors and clients.

3. Amazing Talent

Spuul will bring all of its skill to the SPOKKZ platform, and recently entered into a partnership with Ontology. Quality blockchain developers are in high demand, and the fact that Ontology decided to back SPOKKZ should demonstrate the desirability of what we are bringing to the market. If you want to invest in an ICO and make money, make sure the company you are backing will have industry-leading talent on its team.

4. New Ideas that Will Change Commerce

Any successful business has to do one thing: make money!

Cryptos have been a great place to be a speculator, but this isn’t a long-term business model. SPOKKZ isn’t going to be valuable just because it is a token, it will rise up because it is a great new idea that plugs into an existing business. Building on success is a lot easier than trying to start from scratch, and if you want to see real returns on your ICO investments, make sure you back companies that can actually offer you a real business plan that will get results.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-falls-through-6-000-support-as-xapo-president-warns-of-altcoin-extinction-event
A Brief Poem.
By: Heath W. Black
Tags: Humor, Poetry, Religion

PM at Facebook/Messenger. “When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.” Abraham Joshua Heschel

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A comprehensive response to J.K. Rowling
By: Cassie Brighter
Tags: Diversity, Feminism, LGBTQ, Transgender, Transgender Rights

Covering Maya Forstater, Rowling’s fiction, TERFs, ROGD, desistance, incarcerated trans women, “are trans women women?” — and a whole bunch of other biased and inaccurate points in JK Rowling’s recent statement. Please use this as a resource, share it with any friends who might have been exposed to her ignorance.

The Blindness of Parents Hurts Queer Kids

Far too often, when a young person comes out, they get rebuffed, challenged and refuted. Oftentimes, the environment around the child is so glaringly transphobic (or queerphobic generally, and transphobic by extension) that the child knows better than to raise a hand.

And also, the parents are so obsessively cis-hetero-normative that they wouldn’t for a second entertain that their child might be queer or trans. And thus, plain-as-day gender-non-conforming behavior, clothing choices, social circles, and even direct communication all get dismissed.

“That’s nothing,” — say the parents. “Johnny is just being silly, that’s all.”
Alaska Bound
By: Erika Burkhalter
Tags: Outdoors, Alaska, Short Story, Travel, Photography

Alaska Bound

A life-time dream

As I write these words, my husband and I are sitting in front of a little lake in Anchorage, Alaska, eating breakfast and watching float planes take off and land. We’re heading out to Talkeetna in a bit for a couple of days of hiking and then we’ll be in the Denali Backcountry Lodge (the very furthest-out place you can stay in the park) for 5 nights. After that we drive to Alyeska and then we have several days on Fox Island, just off of the Kenai peninsula.

Alaska has been a dream of mine since I was a kid. My parents always wanted to take us up on a ferry from Canada, but it never did happen, and I’ve been visualizing the expansive skies, towering mountains and fields of glaciers ever since.

I didn’t let myself get too excited about the trip because there were a few roadblocks we had to get past in order to enter Alaska. A negative COVID test (taken within 72 hours of your flight) is required. And in Southern California, tests right now are few and far between and there is no guarantee that you’ll get your results back that fast. We’ve already had COVID, and we just tested positive for antibodies again last week, so we knew we should test negative on a COVID test, but there is always the chance of getting a false positive or of the results not coming back in time.

But the universe aligned for us. And here we are, sipping our tea and finishing up a breakfast of fresh salmon lox and bagels. I’m not sure how much internet coverage we’ll have in the coming days, but I’ll try to put up some posts with photos as we go, so that you can travel along with us.

So, we’re off to drive through a boreal forest and visit an old mining town on our way to Talkeetna today. I love these driving trips because it’s so fun to have just a tenuous plan which can be scrapped in a second if something else really interesting presents itself.

About this time last year, we were in Norway. My anticipation is that parts of Alaska are going to look similar to the Nordic countries. We’ll be seeing some fjords a little later in the trip. And the weather feels about the same. Last year, we were lucky enough to have blue skies all the way up the coast of Norway until we got to the top of the world, way up above the Arctic Circle. And the weather is boding well for this trip too. We’ll see…. I suppose I’d really like to see some good Alaska rain too though.

At any rate, we have an adventure ahead of us. And I invite you to follow along.
You Are Loved — Universal Love. Spiritual Saturday — Darshak Rana
By: Shirley Willett
Tags: Spirituality, Love, Sharing, Light, Universe

Spiritual Saturday — Darshak Rana

From Hallmark.com

Two people cannot stand — at an open door –

And see the same thing — inside the room.

If you are willing — to create an image –

Inside your soul from another’s

Creative explanation of what they see –

Then, ultimately — when you share –

That perception — of another’s perception –

With them and others;

This is expanding UNIVERSAL LOVE.

*******************************

Quotes from other Medium writers:

Lanu Pitan: “Contentment is worth more than riches — A life to give and receive love”.

Darshak Rana: “When you do something selfless,- Then the love remains endless!”

Sinem Günel: “True love is one of the strongest emotions we can feel. And we all deserve it.” Buddha quotes: “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” “Judge nothing, you will be happy. Forgive everything, you will be happier. Love everything, you will be happiest.”

Claire Elaine: “We ask that you pause often our beloved Light bearers, pause to feel that your Light be clear and unsullied, for we wish you whole and hale, fine and defined.”

I send my love to all of you and with an outbreath to the whole Universe. We need all the love possible, especially during these troubling times.
7 Facts You Should Know about Foresting PTONs
By: Williams Nana Kyei
Tags: Token Sale, Social Media, ICO, Blockchain, Blog

Foresting’s main ICO will be launched on September 17. Therefore, we present you with some facts about the PTON Tokens and how you can participate.
Who You Are Isn’t Found, It’s Carved Out
By: Nabil Alouani
Tags: Self Improve, Self, Personal Growth, Who Am I, Identity

I began my identity-sculpture journey shortly after I turned twenty-five. One Saturday, while I was sipping my ‘morning’ coffee after 3 p.m, my friend sent me a text to ask “How was last night’s party? “ I replied, “Different day, same sh*t.” Then, he added a simple question that led me to spend the rest of the weekend ruminating: “So why do you keep going back?”

Deep down I knew: it wasn’t just parties. I was hanging out with people with whom I felt no connection, watching videos that meant nothing to me, and attending events that didn’t interest me — I was on autopilot piling up activities without questioning them. Too much dust had piled up on my identity and rendered it a shapeless rock — it was time to grab the hammer.

Look Before You Hit

In sculpture; the first step isn’t to remove unwanted material to create the form. The first step is to get a grip of the raw stone. In carving our identities, we’re both the marble and the sculptors, and the process of hammering out who we’re not starts with observing oneself. In other words, the first step is to turn on self-awareness.

Self-awareness is a torch that, among other things, allows you to shed light on the excess marble to remove from your self-image. Simply put, being self-aware boils down to asking yourself questions about your behavior and observing your answers. The first stone I examined through my self-awareness lenses was my behavior of partygoer.

It took me three weeks of analysis to realize that I was rushing into random parties because I was confused. I craved human connections and expected that barging into parties would fill that void. In reality, with every attempt, I felt lonelier. I knew that my party acquaintances were shallow, ephemeral, and could never replace genuine friendships. It took me an extra couple of days to assemble enough courage to ditch partying with strangers.

However small and slow my sculpting was, I managed to remove excess from my personality-raw-marble. Sure, I remained a blurry silhouette but I was one step closer to the statue that represents who I am.

The same pattern expands to cover other activities and other areas of life. Each time, your self-awareness allows you to identify the parts that need to be hammered: the extra whos, wheres, whens, and whats that are heavily coating your identity — one slow strike at a time.
Why religions are not affected by feminism (yet)?
By: Sofia M
Tags: World, Religion, Spirituality, Feminism, Patriarchy

Why feminism is not entering the spiritual domain? Or better say why feminism has not yet managed to seriously challenge religions?

I’ve heard about attempts of women to change the religious institutions from within. And yet, patriarchal religions that are still dominating the spiritual realms in the world can hardly be challenged from within, since they are the roots of the whole patriarchal system the feminists and everyone else uncomfortable with it try to liberate themselves from.

Therefore changing from within is not only going to be a huge waste of energy, but also apparently the patriarchal system will manage to swiftly manipulate with this “reformist” tool within it.

Going back to the question as to why feminism hasn’t yet revolutionized the spiritual domain, one thought that comes to my mind is that religions are the last remaining vestiges where patriarchy is hiding itself for preventing its final disappearance. And to do so, it uses all tools available. In this condition it may not be concerned over people (among them feminists, obviously) living a spiritual life so as not to challenge its patriarchal roots.

One such tool has been the distortion of the boundaries between religions and the spiritual. Declaring religions as spiritual, religions and their institutions in reality act mostly as political tools. While the spiritual is aimed at guiding individuals for a more harmonious living, yet when the politically motivated religions place themselves in the spiritual domain, people searching for the spiritual, find themselves in the realms of this political tool aimed at manipulating them.

And this path is one that most often takes people in two directions - either fanaticism or disappointment. Either way is having a high cost on individuals, as well as on societies, leaving so many questions unsolved — abuses, violence, environmental harm, wars and crimes.

And so most of the human rights movements, including of course feminism, have concentrated their attention to fighting against these unsolved questions, rather than finding the root causes. And so main streams of feminism have concentrated on winning rights in almost every aspect of life, except that of spiritual. Even though in the 70s the movement of feminist spirituality gained some attention, it has not ever since seriously challenged the patriarchal religious institutions.

And yet, fem-spirituality, some aspects of which I have discussed in previous posts, and the central ideology of which is hugely contributing to the creation of a balanced harmonious society with respect to women, nature and more horizontal relations in the society, has the potential to show us the way to solve many of the problems we have sadly ended up with as a result of patriarchal ideologies ruling and ruining the world.

Therefore, my thinking is that as long as the winning back of the spiritual is not taken as serious a matter as gaining the rights declared by the UN, the opportunity is missed to face the roots of patriarchy in the attempt to once and for all uproot.
วิธีใช้ Autoprefixer เขียน CSS โดยไม่ต้องใส่ Vendor Prefixes
By: Suranart Niamcome
Tags: Coding, CSS, JavaScript, Highlight, Autoprefixer

SiamHTML

The collection of articles for front-end developers
Hindi Poetry- वादा रहा
Tags: Hindi, Promises, Poetry, Illumination

Published in Anthology

वादा रहा

आज दिल की बात सुनने को दिल किया,

पर सुनके न भूल जानेका वादा रहा।

आज फिरसे उसका ज़िक्र करने को दिल किया,

पर उस ज़िक्र का ज़िक्र किसीसे न करने का ऐडा रहा।

आज खुदकी खामोसी तोड़नेको दिल किया,

पर ख़ामोशी का शोर अनसुना करनेका वादा रहा।

आज उसे भुला के रोनेको दिल किया,

पर आंसू की आंच काम होगी वादा रहा।

आज हिकायतो का सिलसिला ख़त्म करनेको दिल किया,

पर शिकायतों से सिकयत न होगी वादा रह।

Translation

I Promise!

Today I felt like listening to my heart’s voice, but after listening to the voice, I promise I will not forget.

Today, I wanted to mention someone. But I will not mention that to anyone that, that someone was mentioned, I promise.

Today I wanted to break my silence. But, I will not listen to the chaos of that silence, I promise.

today, I wanted to forget someone and cry it out. But, I will not let the flares of that fire settle, I promise.

Today I wanted to finish all the complains. But, I will not complain about that complains ever, I promise.
Leadership Library
By: Eric Sutherland
Tags: Change, Management, Leadership, Dow 30, Performance

Recommended reading

This book covers leadership, management, performance, and change:

Becoming a Master Manager: A Competency Framework, 3rd Edition by Quinn, Faerman, Thompson, McGrath. Published by Wiley. See: The Director Role, 1 of 9 articles

2. Understanding Organizations and the Age of Unreason by Charles Handy

3. Managing the Future by Peter F. Drucker. Harvard Business Review Press, 2020 — BUSINESS & ECONOMICS — 384 pages. Published by Google Books.

4. Post-Capitalist Society — Peter F. Drucker. New York: HarperCollins.

5. A course normally taken by Bosses of FTSE 100 and Dow 30 Companies

6. Defence diversity and inclusion strategy 2018 to 2030: A force for inclusion (UK MoD)
Glorious screen printed goodness from Red Fox Press
Tags: Los Angeles, Artist Book, Riso, Screenprinting

A while back I managed to snag a copy of Franticham’s Los Angeles Palmtrees from Red Fox Press. I’m a huge fan and this beautifully screen printed artist book is a real gem. From the transparent, perspex, back screened front cover to that incredible inky smell, it’s a winner. It’s about 35cm x 26cm and each page is printed on both sides on heavy, raw edged art paper which makes it a truly physical object. It’s a riot of colours and signage tied into the theme of LA palm trees and it’s just gorgeous.

The camera definitely struggles with the colour but here’s a few spreads.
Breathing in the Brisk Brussels Air
By: Fsi Student Programs
Tags: Tecfsi, Brussels, Travel, Internships, Fsi Students

About the author: Sarah Saboorian ’21 is an FSI The Europe Center Intern at Bruegel in Brussels, Belgium.

The day I arrived in Brussels it was 111º fahrenheit (or 44º Celsius as many workplace debates surrounding the superiority of the metric system have conditioned me to say). However, the sweltering heat in the city did not put a damper on my excitement to start working at Bruegel, an economic policy think-tank focusing on recommendations to the European Union. I spent the weekend before my first day meandering the streets, visiting the famous Grand Palace where I stuffed myself with waffles and fries, and even hitting two local farmers markets that occur on Sundays only, where I stocked up on produce for the week.

On my walk to Grand Palace the weekend I arrived. Brussels’ weather is quite temperamental.

I was lucky enough to fall into my workplace routine quite quickly. Upon my arrival I was assigned to do research on the EU-China trade relationship, looking into everything from the Belt and Road Initiative to data flows to obstacles to an investment agreement. I learned so much so quickly, and the project was made even more relevant to me as during the course of my research the U.S. announced 10% tariffs on $300 billion of Chinese imports, the S&P declined as a result, and the yuan also weakened. To be able to see the applications of what I was learning firsthand and to tangibly feel my heightened understanding of the news surrounding the trade war was extremely rewarding.

Kyra, another Stanford intern, and I at our office in Brussels.

The pace of life here is notably different from the United States (even my home state of California) which has been an adjustment I more than welcomed. At Bruegel, this manifests itself in extended lunch time discussions with co-workers from around the world, including two other Stanford interns, to frequent trips to the office kitchen for biscuits. My walks to and from work have also become a relaxing constant in life here, made even more pleasant by the fact that the sun does not set until 9:30 (read 21:30). Given the central location of Brussels within Europe, I have also been lucky enough to travel during the weekends, having stopped in Berlin and Brugge and Dinant (two small Belgian towns) thus far, with more travel planned for the future!
To Friend or Not to Friend….
By: Islamic History Notes
Tags: Companions, Community, Islam, Bad Influence, Life

Thanks to Facebook…friendships, relationships and acquaintanceships have whole new meanings. It is easy to stay in touch, find out the latest updates and of course get in on some juicy gossip.

A few days ago I came across an old friend’s profile whom I had not spoken to in years. Based on her pictures she seemed to have drifted from deen, the most obvious thing being the way she dressed.

I’m sure we all know of someone who has been through these difficult times, or perhaps have been through it themselves.

I later came to find out that her distance from deen started a while back, she started to take part in activities that she stood firmly against. Due to her involvement in such things, her friends started to distant themselves.These friends were trying to be stronger in deen and didn’t want the negative influence.They would get into frequent arguments and eventually just didn’t want to associate with her.

The ‘lost friend’ would initially keep making an effort of staying in touch and hanging out, eventually she stopped making the effort. Her friends now want to reach out to her but she is unresponsive and not reachable.

What is the correct solution?

I would like to think that a person should stick around in hopes of bringing that friend back to deen. Implementing and practicing good actions could certainly be a source of positive influence in that lost friend’s life. It is possible that the friend may have a ‘cause’ to all those changes, and she may need a good friend by her side to help her get through it.

However, on the contrary it could also be difficult to see your friend engage in activities that are harmful to their deen. A lot of times people don’t know how to handle such situations and may come off as too strong or rough. Though their roughness comes out of love, but to the ‘lost friend’ it comes off as an attack, thus the need to defend themselves. Hence, a never ending argument that becomes a lost cause.

Again, my question is then how do you handle such situations? Do you ignore their ‘changes’ and continue your friendship as if you don’t know anything else about them? Is ignorance really a bliss? Is it our responsibility to help them?

Something to contemplate about…
Las noticias más impactantes de 2016
By: Gabriela Nova
Tags: Español, Medios, Noticias, Eivos, 2016

in In Fitness And In Health
Tethered
By: Edie Tuck
Tags: Bound, Love, Soulmates, Soul, Universe

Time is relative. We all live in this multi-dimensional universe filled with invisible walls. We are bound by tethers, holding souls together; strings that transcend time and space. They can cross barriers, keeping souls together in life, in death, in separate lifetimes, in different timelines. It sounds hokey, you might say. May think I’ve gone over the edge. But I believe this with every cell of my being.

I believe we are linked; rather, our souls are linked, to other souls, and not even death can sever those bonds. I believe once two souls imprint onto one another, eternity is their destiny.

Writing these words, my heart is so full that I feel it might burst at the seams. My eyes are, as well. Filled with unshed tears; tears of happiness. Of pure, unadulterated love. No, not the love you feel for a romantic partner …in comparison, that type of love fades drastically. This is different; it’s better. It’s stronger. Indestructible.

You see, when you think of the term ‘soul mates’, you almost always turn to romance. And that’s not the case at all. At least I don’t believe it is. A soulmate doesn’t have to be someone you want to marry…a soulmate is like…like another part of your own soul, tethered by that invisible string. Sometimes it takes lifetimes to follow that string; it’s a pretty vast universe after all. But sometimes, if you’re lucky (no, more like blessed!), the string pulls you together.

I’m writing this in a moment of overwhelming emotion because I cannot contain it within the restraints of my heart. I feel beyond blessed – I feel love beyond love…beyond the traditional definition of love…the word itself feels sadly inadequate to describe this emotion within me.

Though a small part of me fears that this might be perceived as obsession, I cannot dwell on such an unsubstantiated fear. For as someone recently said to me, this is a year of clear vision, and I can see clearly now.

I love, so incredibly deeply and completely. Not in a romantic sense, no. In a way that I have found the missing part of my soul. That the universe has been leading me to for my whole life, waiting for the moment I needed it the most. And now, feeling that I just can’t remember what life was like before, and couldn’t – refuse to – imagine what it would be like without.

Today, I feel like the universe has blessed me beyond belief, and I am so incredibly grateful. I wish this feeling of completeness upon every soul. If you have found it, you’ll know what I speak of. If you haven’t, I pray that you will.
Light the Lamp of Love
By: Darshak Rana
Tags: Diwali, Love, Life, Relationships, Poetry

The fading light of the lamp

Is not enough to dispel the darkness of the room

Yet it makes a difference.

And aids to see the truth

If we spark even the smallest lamp of love

In our hearts

We would see the truth.

That love still resides in everyone’s hearts.
numbers
By: Isaiah Mccall
Tags: Education, Poetry, Mathematics, Blue Insights, Poem

zero, one, two, three

four, five, six, seven, eight, nine

ten, eleven, twelve