fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
On Expertise
By: Street Consulting
Tags: Expertise, Virtual Education, Remote Learning, Anti Racism

In an age of instant gratification, it is important to remember that expertise is not something that comes instantly. Expertise is developed gradually, inexorably, only when you spend intentional time, every day, developing your skills and knowledge. This precept holds true whether we are talking about content knowledge, pedagogical skills, or craftsmanship. We are witnessing people thrust into a virtual teaching environment and being expected to be expert at it right away. We are also seeing many people taking up the conversation on race-equity and anti-racist education. In both of these instances, developing that expertise will take time. But time alone is not enough. To become expert in these areas requires placing yourself in a humble state of mind and working intentionally to grow your knowledge and skill. We’ve all seen the research that says it takes 10,000 of intentional practice to become an expert. The questions for you are what are you becoming an expert in? And how much time are you putting in?

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.

­ — Will Durant
This Is How Wizards Poop, According To J.K. Rowling
By: Klaudia Amenábar
Tags: Harry Potter, Life, Entertainment, Fantasy, Books

This Is How Wizards Poop, According To J.K. Rowling

No need for toilets when you can make your turds disapparate.

‘Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets’

Ah, Pottermore. J. K. Rowling’s controversial platform fleshes out the Wizarding World, but makes waves with every update. The culturally insensitive story of the founding of the American wizarding school Ilvermorny caused an uproar among fans in 2016. With the planned expansion of the “Fantastic Beasts” franchise, disenchanted fans have become wary of extended Potter media. We all want more of the things we love, but at some point it becomes TMI.

And this time, Rowling sped right past TMI and came to a screeching halt at Gross AF. About a year ago, she published on Pottermore one of her much-contested (but canon) explanatory essays. The subject of this essay was the Chamber of Secrets. During Harry’s time at Hogwarts, the entrance to the Chamber was inside a bathroom. In the essay, Rowling reveals that the entrance existed before the bathroom. When Hogwarts added modern plumbing, the entrance to the Chamber got hidden underneath. In a parenthetical aside no one asked for, Rowling explains:

“…(this was a rare instance of wizards copying Muggles, because hitherto they simply relieved themselves wherever they stood, and vanished the evidence)…”

Yes, you’re reading that right. Ancient wizards apparently didn’t need outhouses or chamber pots, because they just magicked their poop and pee away.

‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’

But if the essay was published last year, why the recent uproar in Potterdom? It all started, as many internet hubbubs do, with a Tumblr misunderstanding.

Popular fact blog did-you-kno made this post:

The post stirred fans who hadn’t read Rowling’s full essay into a frenzy of questioning. Did this apply to the characters they knew and loved? How did Muggleborns learn how to do this? Were the bathrooms in Hogwarts just there for Muggleborns who used to regular plumbing?

It also sparked some hilarious responses:

Tumblr
“You are rich if money you refuse tastes better than money you accept.”
By: K M Brown
Tags: Money, Economics, Esg Investing, Finance, Investing

“You are rich if money you refuse tastes better than money you accept.” If I’d plucked this from Nassim Taleb’s The Bed of Procrustes last year I would have thought about the FIRE movement. It’s full of people who have tasted, or hope to taste, the sweet freedom that comes from kissing the corporate world goodbye.

Now, I relate these words to my switch to ESG funds as an investor. Tobacco companies may be profitable but being the incremental owner of one leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Refusing to accept the money that comes from Big Tobacco’s stock dividends tastes better. In that way, I’m rich.
Simple Synchronicities
By: Amy Marley
Tags: Poetry, Synchronicity, Anxiety, Self-awareness, Energy

I no longer consider coincidences to be coincidences — the accumulation of connections too abundant to brush off as mere coincidence.

Conditions are being met. Energy is aligning. To what exactly — I only have a very vague idea. I am trying my best to stay open and amused.

I love puzzles — and connecting pieces of thought. Life is starting to feel like one giant dot-to-dot choose your own adventure game.

Dots that represent the synchronicity. When things feel right — and what I need shows up, at the exact time I need it.

The only rule I have come across is when I don’t go with my flow or break a cosmic command I am clueless about. The results — if I am paying attention enough, it will be a simple nudge. If I’m not — the consequences intensify.

The lesson is gold either way.

No right. No wrong. Just is.

My choices. My Path. My consequences. For everything — including how I handle circumstances out of my control.

Diana C has thrown glittery dots of connection upon my path with her weekly prompts of late. Each week seems to gift me a point of reflection.

This week — the icing on the cake. Synchronicities —

The prompt suggested giving a recent example.

The last year has gifted me many incidences of synchronicities I could share.

People and opportunities have turned up to help me on my way.

At the exact time, I needed them.

An abundance of seeds of “art” blowing in the breeze I have been lucky to catch. Grateful for all of them. Seemingly simple, but oh so very powerful.

Each building the buds of trust in the process.

The example I am sharing though is about a close mate. I’ll call her K. Connecting dots with awareness for one of the first times.
Judo Class
By: Tom Daly
Tags: Exercise, Judo, Childhood, Tom Daly, Comics

Tom Daly makes comics about what is on his mind; getting thrown out of a store when he was a little kid, creepy neighbors, or hugging his kids. TomDalyArt.com

Follow
On A Park Bench
Tags: Poetry On Medium, Poetry, Poetry Writing, Poem, Poems On Medium

On A Park Bench

When I began to write

Photo:Cesare Ferrari for iStock

I sat down,

In an exalted state,

looking at a catholic cat,

to write a puritan poem.

then,

my funny feat chuckled,

when it toiled the earth,

deep into the guts of soil.

weather guy,

on the old radio announced —

“Warm westerlies and

cold easterlies met

to form a front.”

The pale glow of the moon,

was shivering and,

the oblivious shadows,

were playing to flickering light.

Bees bumbling, mumbling

and stumbling,

to chase the lonely lust of flowers.

the hungry night was catching on,

and the insects were hissing,

and jabbing the leaves.

dogs cussing the grass,

in a bass voice.

Dew was evaporating,

along with the meteor emotions,

trees weaving ghost stories,

worms altering the geochemical cycles,

thoughts rolling after un-finished suicide,

and the nuclear day,

cold, with fresh ashes, silt,

came to end.

My soul darted,

to mourn the melodies,

and question the,

untimely ill-lucks,

in a nap.
Prepare for the ultimate crisis
By: Lara Hayes
Tags: Politics, Crisis, Sustainability, Climate Change, Environment

What is global climate change

Global climate change refers to the average long-term variations in climate conditions over the entire Earth. These include warming temperatures, shifts in precipitation, rising sea levels, shrinking mountain glaciers, ice melting at a faster rate than usual, extinction of species, and the list goes on and on.

Earth’s climate is constantly changing, and it was changing before humans even came into the picture. But the average temperature has consistently been increasing — and at a much faster pace — over the past 120 years.

Image by University of California Berkeley

A peek into the near future

Some parts of the world are already experiencing the effects of a climate crisis and the Cape Town water crisis in South Africa is the most popular one. Dam water levels had been decreasing since 2015 in South Africa, and in 2017, there was a period of critical water shortage in the Western Cape region. Water levels were between 15 and 30 per cent of total dam capacity, and in late 2017, there were mentions of plans for “Day Zero”, referencing the day when the water level of the major dams supplying the City fell below 13.5%. Day Zero would indicate the start of severe water restrictions: local water supplies would mostly be switched off and citizens would have to queue for their daily ration of water. The City of Cape Town implemented significant water restrictions to control water usage and succeeded in decreasing its daily water usage by more than half in March 2018.

But water shortage is not the only problem that we will face in the near future — or that we are already facing for that matter. Change in ecosystems and desertification, acidification of the oceans, extreme weather phenomena such as violent hurricanes or severe floods, extinction of species, massive migrations and rising sea levels that will wipe out entire cities should be our main concern.

The existence of climate refugees, still to be recognized by the United Nations, is a reality; it is estimated their number could reach one billion by 2050

Climate change is also partially responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic and other outbreaks such as Ebola or MERS. The demand for more natural resources has forced humans to invade many natural habitats and expose themselves to several unknown pathogens. At the same time, the increase of mass production of food has created large-scale farms, where extensive numbers of livestock and poultry are crammed into mega barns, which makes the spread and mutation of these viruses more likely.
When bad metrics are good metrics: Things we learned from redesigning our landing page, part one.
By: Mikael Fløysand
Tags: Metrics, Analytics, Product Management, Landing Pages, UX Design

When bad metrics are good metrics: Things we learned from redesigning our landing page, part one.

We made a new landing page, but was it better or worse?

The appear.in landing page has remained more or less unchanged for the last 2 years. But as 2016 came to a close, it was time to do something about that. New year, new opportunities and all that.

Our landing page for the last 2 years, in all it’s glory.

I’m a designer so this decision obviously made me happy 🎉. (Spoiler: We love to design landing pages.) So at this point I was all caught up in thinking about stuff like:

Should we do parallax scrolling? On what elements?

What’s the best way to prevent the user from scrolling naturally?

Do we need an arrow pointing down to encourage people to scroll past the fold to navigate between the elements?

Is the fold even a thing anymore?

Do we need to pay someone to shoot a video that’ll loop in the background of the header section? How much? Will our developers loose it if it’s above 1 megabyte?

Just kidding, I wasn’t thinking about any of these things.

The landing page is our first impression on new users who want to try our product, and improving that onboarding was our main goal, with the added bonus of updating our brand visually and message wise in the process.

So, aside from the old landing page being, well, old, what is there to fix and why? As read on countless blogs a good design process starts with a problem, because if you don’t have one well what are you gonna solve?

Users: Everybody has a reason

First of all, we need to assume that anyone that finds themselves on https://appear.in have a specific reason for being there. Their browser didn’t magically type that url on its own.

Users/cat owners come to our site to do something. If they manage to, they leave satisfied.

Something made them visit appear.in, so we can assume they have a specific user task to perform. I could write paragraph after paragraph about this, but I won’t , let’s just agree that users come from somewhere, for a reason, and leave your site either:



A: Happy 😀, after managing to do what they came for without friction.

or

B: Angry 😠, because they didn’t manage to do what they came for, or managed but only after a long struggle trying to understand how this product works.

In our case, it’s natural to assume that users want to test or have a video conversation without the hassle of, well, using tools that aren’t ours. We’re awesome, after all, and think we‘ve got the simplest video conversation solution available. Before arriving at our landing page, they’ve learned about appear.in somehow, and now they’re at our doorstep ringing the doorbell and want to get into the action.

We’re not fixing something that’s not broken, so what’s broken?

Besides the design and copy being dated when it came to explaining how the product works, the main UX issues were all related to the room generator at the top:
Burlington Township Board of Education talks school security
By: Jack Tomczuk
Tags: Security, Education, Schools

Burlington Township Board of Education talks school security

District will be adding two officers next school year, plans to apply for county money

The Burlington Township Board of Education discussed school security during a 20-minute meeting June 27.

Superintendent Mary Ann Bell said she has received confirmation the district will be adding two new school resource officers, taking the total number of armed police officers in the school system from two to four.

Bell said the additional officers will reduce response time as there will be one for each of the district’s schools.

“That is absolutely phenomenal,” she said. “Obviously, we hope it’s never tested, and we don’t have to get to that point, but that certainly will be a huge deterrent.”

Bell said the officers will be in place by the end of the 2018–2019 school year.

Funding for the increased police presence was included in the budget the board of education approved in April. The township and the district will split the cost.

Bell said June 27 she has heard some names mentioned by officials regarding the new SROs, but she is not sure whether the placements have been finalized.

“It doesn’t matter because anyone we get from the Burlington Township Police Department would do an excellent job as SRO,” Bell said.

She said she plans to meet with the current officers stationed in the schools to map out a plan for when the two new SROs come on board.

“We all need to sit down and come up with some procedures and some standardization,” Bell said.

Bell also said the school district is planning to apply for grant money recently made available by the county to improve security at local high schools.

Last month, Burlington County officials launched the $20 million grant program aimed at enhancing the physical security of high school buildings.

On June 27, the board of education voted to submit documents to the county’s designated architectural firm, USA Architects, which will perform a security evaluation of Burlington Township High School. It’s the first step toward getting a cut of the grant funding.

“We will definitely submit everything,” Bell told board members.

In addition, Bell told board members she and Nicholas Bice, the district’s business administrator, have also recently attended training sessions on school safety.

“We knew a lot going in,” Bell said. “However, it was reinforced.”

Most of the topics covered can’t be disclosed to the public, Bell said. She added she, along with Bice, will be meeting with the senior SRO to discuss some of the initiatives they would like to see going forward.
魅惑のラジオ的世界
By: Hige Fredie ひげフレディー
Tags: Audio, Goods, Radio, Zazzle, Tape

GOODS for FUN

You can get these items at Zazzle
Runner’s Life Newsletter
By: Jeff Barton
Tags: Running, Fitness, Newsletter, Health, Sports

Runner’s Life Newsletter

Highlights and stories from November 29-December 5, 2020

Photo by Andrew Tanglao on Unsplash

Welcome to the Runner’s Life newsletter!

If you have missed previous newsletters, you can find the archive here.

As we inch closer to the end of 2020, I’m sure many of us are ready for this year to be over. While we still have a lot of unknowns ahead of us, one thing is certain: this year will go down as one of the worst and strangest a lot of us have experienced.

None of us know what the future holds, and one of the best things we can do for ourselves and for each other is to practice being in the moment, and most importantly, being kind. We never know what someone else is going through, and a kind word or gesture can go a long way.

The running community is one of the most supportive and friendly groups I’ve been involved with, and if we can share a bit of that with others, we can impact those around us.

No matter what your politics, religion, or any other belief system is, what it comes down to is that we are still all human. We can disagree about anything and everything, but hate doesn’t have to win.

Please remember that as you go about your day.
If You Want to Change Your Life This Year, You Need to Find Your Reason to Do It
By: J.J. Pryor
Tags: Self Improvement, Life Lessons, Life, Change, Self

Nadja Hermann was overweight her entire life.

She grew up in a family of people diagnosed as morbidly obese. She wasn’t happy with this fate of hers and constantly tried every diet she could find for years and years on end.

You know the routine.

Every new diet ended up failing and leading to her gaining even more weight in the afterglow. The so-called ‘yoyo diet’ effect.

Eventually, she gave up and accepted she’d be overweight her entire life. She became a psychotherapist, got married, and moved on — while trying not to think of this painful aspect of her life.

When she was 30, she weighed in at 331 lbs at 5′9".

One day she slipped and hurt her knee while trying to do housework. A little while later, she did the same thing and injured another part of her leg. After a year of painful limping and restricted mobility, she broke down in utter defeat. And shame.

She knew she wouldn’t be able to walk at some point if her weight continued going up and up. And for a woman in her early 30’s, that can be a painful realization to swallow.

This breakdown was her moment of reflection and realization.

She examined all of her past experience with these many diets and wanted to figure out why they didn’t work. She went after this with the same zeal as she did to attain a doctorate in science several years prior.

“Tearing down the fallacies I had believed for my whole life was a long and sometimes painful process.”

At the end of this journey, she found her why.

She simply restricted her calories and moved more. That’s it. Around 15 months later she weighed 139 lbs, the same weight when she was 12.

Fast forward 10 years later and she has kept the weight off. She also published a best selling book breaking down her findings of the fallacy of what she calls ‘fat logic’.

Her reason was health-related. She chose not to be a lame duck and wanted to live her life to the fullest.
Still Expanding
Tags: Poetry On Medium, Poetry, Life, Poem, Love

Still Expanding

A poem

Photo by Amanda Phung on Unsplash

I remember the way your smile

Echoed in every room you touched;

Your presence sparkled off

The water you passed by —

Leaving me with a glimmer in my eye.

You filled me with hope

As you shared words of love,

Never forgetting to look my way;

The hole of you that remains

Stretches far and wide —

Bigger than your body,

But smaller than your spirit.
The Crypto Lisa
By: The Crypto Lisa
Tags: Ethereum, Art, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Blockchain

What am I?

Check out www.thecryptolisa.com for more details and sign up for our airdrop to receive an exclusive non-fungible token.
Continuing Our Growth: Welcome 8ninths to Valence
Tags: Chatbots, Digital Transformation, VR, AR, Blockchain

Adam Sheppard, Jim Darrin, and William Lai

We are very excited today to share the news that Valence has acquired 8ninths, a leading augmented and virtual reality studio based in Seattle with an office in the wonderful South Lake Union neighborhood. For the last four years, 8ninths has been focused on helping businesses around the world harness the power of augmented and virtual reality. Moving forward they will form a cornerstone of the Valence digital transformation business, alongside other digital transformation technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, robotics, voice, and more.

8ninths was founded by Adam Sheppard and William Lai, both long time Microsoft veterans. About four years ago they decided to jump into the nascent AR/VR market and start to explore new and emerging platforms like Microsoft HoloLens, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and more. We first started partnering with 8ninths about a year ago and got to know Adam, William and the rest of their team and business. Since then our relationship has grown stronger and we found a shared passion for a growing dynamic around “Digital Transformation” in our collective customers. Specifically, 8ninths continued to see that AR/VR solutions would also contain elements of IoT technologies (sensor data), artificial intelligence (automatic image recognition), or voice and chat technologies (speaking to your headset).

All these technologies have entire ecosystems to explore — and require a new set of expertise. This is also exactly what Valence is focused on — bringing these technologies together for customers and creating value for anyone thinking about digital transformation — whether in the C-suite, marketing team, IT departments, lines-of-business, or, frankly, anyone that needs to understand the new and growing landscape of modern technologies. After a few conversations, we decided we would be better together: bring 8ninths expertise in AR/VR to Valence and bring Valence expertise in other technologies to 8ninths. And together we plan to continue to innovate and drive forward our businesses together. We couldn’t be more excited for what the future holds!

For more information, check out our website and contact us, or if you want to learn more about our technologies, visit our innovation playground (ionico.io) and see what we have done in Blockchain and Distributed Ledgers or Voice and Chat. And stay tuned for more to come!
Leadership Through Service
Tags: Employment, Ohio, Military, Veterans

Service — It is a word we, as a society, too often take for granted. Yet I am reminded daily how profound and important service truly is when I have the privilege of seeing active duty and military veterans hard at work.

We have many military veterans working in varying capacities throughout DRC and numerous fellow employees continue to answer the call to serve our great country. Their leadership and dedicated commitment to service brings added strength to our agency. The training and specialized skills they received through their military experience is recognized as a valued asset to DRC.

I am incredibly honored to work alongside these heroes, and I am proud of the work our agency is doing to support them and their loved ones. As director, I am committed to ensuring the department continues to support our valued active duty and military veterans in many different ways, including through employment opportunities.

We owe a debt of gratitude to our service members and can demonstrate our appreciation through recognizing their value to our country, the great State of Ohio, and DRC.

Thank you for your service,

gary
Metaps Plus and OST Announce Partnership to Tokenize $140M+ Mobile Coupons Market
By: Jason Goldberg
Tags: Technology, Ethereum, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Blockchain

Metaps Plus and OST Announce Partnership to Tokenize $140M+ Mobile Coupons Market

Metaps Plus operates a Marketing platform for mobile apps, servicing 300,000 daily active users and achieving 100 million app downloads per year. It also operates Korea’s largest mobile coupon platform and partners with 34,000 merchants, processing USD $140 million of coupon transactions in 2017.

Today I am thrilled to welcome Metaps Plus as our latest OST Partner Company.

Metaps Plus, a leading mobile marketing platform developer and a subsidiary of the Tokyo-listed Metaps Group (TSE:6172), has entered into a strategic partnership with OST to develop Blockchain-powered mobile coupons and payments, leveraging OST technology and the OpenST and OpenST Mosaic Protocols.

Ben and I first met Metaps in Seoul, South Korea, last month at our OST Presentation at HASHED. Metaps was seeking a partner to help them develop a branded blockchain economy that could scale to their massive consumer transaction volume. After attending our presentation of the OpenST Protocol, OpenST Mosaic protocol scaling solution, and OST KIT developer tools, Metaps went deep on understanding OST technology for blockchain-enabling mainstream apps. Over the past couple of weeks we cemented the partnership and began defining an exciting project plan.

Earlier this week Jisoon Lim, CSO of Metaps Plus sat down with Chris Dark, OST Chief Commercial Officer, and Jose Mota host of OST LIVE to discuss the partnership:

Metaps Plus, founded in 2009, is Korea’s largest mobile Fintech company. It also operates Korea’s biggest mobile coupon platform with 34,000 partnering merchants. In 2017 Metaps Plus processed $140M worth of coupon transactions.

Our collaboration with Metaps Plus will first focus on tokenizing mobile coupons. While mobile apps made coupons more convenient and user-friendly compared to its paper equivalent, end-consumers are still facing many traditional limitations like expiration dates, minimum purchase thresholds or restricting exchange at selected stores and locations.

Blockchain tokens solve many of these issues as they are tradable and have an inherent market value, bringing more flexibility to the end-user. To reflect the large variety of coupons that Metaps Plus currently processes, our partnership will tap into key areas of Blockchain development like Non-Fungible-Tokens to represent unique digital assets.
😸 What NFTs mean for ETH
By: Spencer Noon
Tags: Ethereum, Cryptocurrency, Crypto, Bitcoin, Blockchain

😸 What NFTs mean for ETH

An under-appreciated part of its fundamental narrative

Ryan Sean Adams, Founder of Mythos Capital, posted a short but thought-provoking tweet storm this morning about non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and Ethereum that is worth reading:

I’ve been thinking more about the NFT opportunity lately and I don’t think it’s getting enough attention, maybe because it’s still pretty nebulous as a concept. But I happen to agree with Ryan that (1) NFTs could become a trillion dollar asset class, (2) Ethereum is best-positioned to win this category, and (3) NFT scaling is much closer than we think. I also like NFTs because they don’t carry much regulatory risk.

Above all else, NFT platforms need to optimize for immutability and censorship resistance. If they don’t, the digital analog of something like this isn’t possible —

Therefore Ethereum, which makes a number of tradeoffs in favor of security, makes a lot of sense as the platform best positioned to secure valuable NFTs when you think about it.

Finally, it’s also worth considering what underpinning a huge NFT economy could mean for ETH’s perception to investors as a store of value. I happen to think it will have a profound impact, which ties in nicely to our thesis at DTC that Store of Value will be a fragmented category with multiple long-term winners.

Crypto Kitties are just the first application!

Want this in your inbox every day? Here you go. Feedback is always welcome too — hit me up on Twitter!
Imagining a local version of ‘Reply 1988’
By: Thei Ordiales
Tags: Entertainment, Korean Dramas, Remakes, Nostalgic

I recently finished Reply 1988 after years of downplaying it despite my shy-admiration for Park Bo Gum. The 2-hour-per-episode of Reply 1988 initially turned me off. It’s like watching 20 old-school movies with a ‘sitcom’ format. Nope. But I finally dove in. And look where you found me.

Reply 1988 follows the lives of five families living on the same street in a neighborhood called Ssangmundong in Seoul, Korea. A nostalgic look back at the year 1988. (source: google)

Reply 1988’s position as one of the highest-rated Korean Dramas speaks for itself so there’s no need for a long-overdue review. But this series left me with an afterthought.

Anything nostalgic sells. That’s the winning formula of Reply 1988. And I think this is something that local storytellers and producers can use.

WATCH: Reply 1988 Trailer (A 2015 South Korean TV Series) | Where to watch: VIU or Netflix

Filipinos — the majority, plus bandwagoners — hate remakes. It’s like murdering a masterpiece, we presume. Many are against it. Some producers dismiss the idea; doing so is a subtle admission of creative fatigue. Acquiring content rights is also a burden for them; it can be tedious. There’s a lack of trust because there are more boo-boos than woohoo’s whenever we remake foreign stories.

I can only remember two successful local remakes: GMA-7’s version of Mexican telenovela Marimar and ABSCBN’s remake of an early KDRAMA favorite 49 Days (locally titled “Pure Love”). Both remakes propelled Marian Rivera’s and Alex Gonzaga’s careers.
Eddard Ned Stark- “The Man of Honor”
By: Umang Agarwal
Tags: Game of Thrones, Entrepreneurship

The Man of Honor

Ned Stark-The lord of Winterfell, is well known for being a loyal & an honorable soldier. And this is very important that you have respect, you have reputation in your field of work, to gain faith of investors & companies investing in you(in case you are an entrepreneur). This quality of an entrepreneur is called “Market Reputation”.

There are two type of reputation of a business. First- of the company and second- of the person(the leader). And if you carry the second one in your bag, then that’s gonna drive you to the crown of a successful entrepreneur. And here Ned Stark is able to bag with the second one.

He didn’t only had respect and reputation on a royal level but also among his people. The people he ruled over, and that’s what a real king needs, to rule. He cares about his men & maintains good relation even with his servants.And this quality lets an entrepreneur make his employees open to him & maintaining a healthier environment to work, finally landing up with increasing up company’s efficiency.

But Stark had a weaker side too ,i.e., being too much merciful. And in business field, people would take charge of this weakness. It can be misused to a large extent. So there must be a limit, a filter must be there for helping the one who actually needs your service.

Despite this Ned Stark had a good mind & maturity for having wider prospective of looking into matter & business. This trait is well illustrated in the incident “when Stark argues King Robert for not killing the last targaryen girl. Whose ancestors had executed his father, brother & sister, yet he refuses to blame kids for their parents crime”. So in case of dealing any business, he wouldn’t refuse any deal blindly or take any stupid actions, just to take revenge of some past incident. He would handle the business calculatively not emotionally. And so Ned Stark is also known for always doing what is right regardless of his personal feelings.

But here also Ned makes up a big blunder. That is he answered the king straight forward for what he was thinking(of not supporting the death sentence to the targaryen kid) which is not the way an entrepreneur deals.There must be a proper filter between your thoughts and your words. And due to this he was on the verge of losing his post ,i.e, being the “Hand of the King”. So, you may although not support a decision but should not always oppose the matter straight forwardly, there must some trajectory way also to deal those cases.

So concludingly, although Ned Stark had some flaws but at the end of day he stands with the flag of honor. And that’s all entrepreneurship is about. It’s not just about earning money but also earning respect & reputation in the society we live in.
#Garyveechallenge
Tags: Bigda, Gary Vaynerchuk, Blog, Trends, Garyveechallenge

Chances are, if you haven’t lived under a rock during the past 10 years, you already know about Gary Vaynerchuk. He’s a successful entrepreneur and a real rockstar on social networks.

He has a very simple method: posting massively on any platform you can. And the recipe seems to work so well for him, that he constantly tries to push his followers to do so. But guess what? Almost no one follows this suggestion. Why does it happen? In Gary Vee’s opionion, it’s because we’re scared of other people’s judgement.

That’s why he launched the garyveechallenge a couple of months ago: he wanted to persuade people to actually make it through and eventually post more.

The challenge produced so many conversations that we somehow felt obliged to analyze them, in order to understand… who, in the end, made it through!
The World Needs You
By: Stephenie Zamora
Tags: Self Improvement, Life Lessons, Self Love, Happiness, Purpose

I spent the first third of my life bending and folding and making myself small for the sake of someone else’s comfort. Compromising who I was and what I wanted in the name of love, safety, and security. Tucking parts of myself away, dimming my light, and quieting my voice so as not to be ‘too much’. Giving away my power in ways that damn near killed me. Being everything to everyone but myself.

I’ve spent so much of the past two years untangling myself from the relationships, patterns, and ways of being that kept me small. Disengaging from the kinds of conversations that created limitation and stagnation. Stepping out of the spaces that left no room for who I am and who I’m becoming.

And yet, despite all the untangling and unraveling, I continue to uncover ways I keep myself small. Ways I hide out and avoid truly showing up and doing my work in the world. Beliefs that invite fear and exhaustion, that keep me from taking the steps I already know I need to take.

Stepping into who we’re here to be and the work we’re here to is a process. It’s a never ending unfolding that requires an immense amount of trust and faith in yourself, as well as a tremendous level of devotion to see it through no matter how terrifying it feels.

I’ve been sitting quietly for the last several months while a deep knowing brews inside me. A knowing that it’s time. To show up fully. To use my voice and take up more space. To be seen in ways I’ve never allowed for in the past. To devote myself as fully as possible to who I’m becoming and what I’m creating… in a way I never have before. In a way that’s all things necessary for moving to the next level.

I’m deep into this journey and far down my own path… and I still hide out and play small.

It’s par for the course my friends, because growth requires a constant, continuous willingness to call yourself out. To admit where you’re hiding and playing small. To shine light on the places you’re allowing fear and doubt or a desire to stay in what’s known, familiar, and safe to take the wheel.

I’m ready to show up more fully.

Despite the terror and discomfort.

Are you?

The world needs you.
When Will I Feel Like an Adult?
By: Christopher Pierznik
Tags: Honesty, Life, Adulthood, Children, Maturity

When Will I Feel Like an Adult?

Doing all of the things grownups do does not necessarily make one feel like a grownup

I am about to turn 38 years-old.

I have been married for over seven years.

I have a daughter that will be turning six this summer.

I believe it’s important to have a family dinner (almost) every night.

I am an uncle and a godfather several times over.

I have a master’s degree.

I have a career that is now more than a decade-and-a-half old.

I often think about retirement.

I live on a budget.

I clean the kitchen and pack lunches.

I cook.

I have a mortgage and two car payments.

I worry about property taxes and interest rates.

I (try to) fix things around the house.

I have random aches and my joints sometimes pop.

I go grocery shopping and curse myself if I forget the coupons or reusable bags.

I am stunned that aspects of my hometown have dared to change in the past 15 years.

I have banal conversations about traffic and weather.

I live within a few miles of close friends and still don’t see them often.

I still think of the ’90s as only a few years ago.

I hate most music released in the past ten years.

I go to bed on weekends at the same time that I used to leave the house to go out.

I feel relieved when plans get canceled.

I complain that it feels like every weekend is a kid’s party or other obligation.

I cherish my alone time.

I do all of the things that adults do.

So when will I feel like an adult?
20 remarkable photos from February! Meet the Daily Level-up Challenge winners.
Tags: Photographer, Challenge, Photography, Photos, Articles

We would like to present all the stunning photos that won our Daily Level-up Challenge in February! Meet the great artists who have received the title of Photographer of the Day!

Selected photos and their authors receive additional exposure on our Instagram profile. Additionally, from March, every Photographer of the Day will receive a Shuttout.com Prime Membership for a week, so they can upload even 5 photos to one photo contest!

Want to join? Read about the Daily Level-Up Challenge here >>

Now meet the “Photographer of the Day” title nominees!
BoolGAN: DCGAN For Car Image Generation
By: Ratnam Parikh
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Data Science

Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have recently come to the forefront of computer vision research for their ability to learn complex distributions of data. They were first proposed by Ian Goodfellow et al. [2] in 2014 as a framework in which two models (a generator and a discriminator) are simultaneously trained. The generator tries to capture the data distribution and generate fake images matching the distribution as closely as possible, while the discriminator attempts to differentiate between real and fake images.
The List
By: Lorna Ye
Tags: Short Story, Relationships, Fiction, Love, Flash Fiction

A Flash Fiction

AImage from Pixabay

The rain was pouring. Huge raindrops pelted the window panes mercilessly in the midst of rumbling thunders, close and distant. The 8 o’clock morning sky looked like a moonless night sky.

She shifted her eyes from the gushing rain outside to the list on a spiral notebook resting on her kitchen table. Under the dim glowing light of the pendant lamp, each word in her neat handwriting sent a twinge of unease through her.

She ran her fingers along the edge of the page and read the list one more time:

— talk to Brian’s school counselor about his course change (hope still possible);

— talk to Holly (why she missed so many school deadlines recently?)

— take mom to knee surgery

— find someone to fix the garage door

— contact insurance about roof change

….

The list of concerns, as she named it, continued, but she already felt exhausted. She could, probably should, also put her back pain on this list, but she chose not to. If Tylenol and ice packs worked, that was not a concern. Yet.

With a startling buzzing beep, a message flashed on her smartphone. An emergency alert — a flood warning until noon. At the same time, a deafening thunder cracked in the sky. The torrential rain blasted against the earth and blinded the view of nearby houses and trees.

She thought of her husband who left for work ten minutes ago. The image of his blue sedan trudging through a sweeping waterfall ran through her head and made her flinch. She should have not let him leave. Actually, she tried, but he insisted because he had a morning meeting with a client.

Another booming thunder after a glaring lightening jabbed through her heart, which was already about to pound out. She found herself biting her knuckles, a habit formed during her teen years when she was very nervous.

As she tried to look away from the window, she laid her eyes on the list again. Picking up her stylus pen, she added one more thing to it — “wish Tom arrive at work safely. “

She couldn’t call him or text him; she didn’t want to distract him. She just needed to wait.

She stared out the window, hoping each minute flow away as fast as the pummeling water in the shower. The grumbling sounds and the rain-soaked darkness daunted her, but she chose to face them, knowing her Tom was battling forward in the same ordeal.

A crisp beep signaled an incoming text message. It was from Tom. “Arrived. No worries. Love you!”

She wiped the moisture away from the corners of her eyes, breaking into a relieved smile.

She could cross out one item from her list now.

© 2019, Lorna Ye. All Rights Reserved
Trick or Treat
Tags: Family, Humor, Cartoon, Comics, Halloween

Written by

Almost famous cartoonist who laughs at her own jokes and hopes you will, too.
MinexPay Report | Week 3: Acceleration engaged!
By: Minexcoin
Tags: Technology, Blockchain, Finance, Bitcoin, Credit Cards

Discount program: cashback

Earlier in the second report, we told you about an early bird discount. As promised, we will proceed and disclose the full details regarding the bonuses we have prepared for you!

For a limited period of time, our early customers will enjoy a cashback on the card’s purchase of up to 20%, payable in MNX upon card activation. Indeed, once your card is activated, your account will be credited of that amount! For example, if you paid 100 MNX for an Infinite card, you will get 20 bonus MNX added to your account.

Superior Bonus than Minexbank returns

We would like to emphasize the fact that this cashback offers a superior return than keeping your coins in the MinexBank. This means that instead of leaving your MNX in the bank, you’d better pay early for your card and get that 20% bonus!

Are you ready to order your card AND make a superior return than Minexbank can offer at the same time? Follow this link and finalize your order: MinexPay Login and be sure to finish this step in order to proceed with KYC verification (which will take place in the second part of July).
Sikoba November 2019 — Update. This month we have been working on…
By: Nimisha Sikoba
Tags: Itugen, Sikoba, Blockchain, Isekai, Financial Inclusion

isekai 1.0 launch

This month, we have announced the release of isekai 1.0.

isekai is the only tool to support 3 ZKP libraries and 5 proof systems: libsnark (Groth16 and BCTV14a), dalek (Bulletproofs) and libiop (Aurora and Ligero).

isekai is the first tool allowing programmers to take existing C or C++ code and generally require only slight modifications to make it compatible with isekai — we did it for sha256 as described in this post. This is because isekai supports more features of regular programming languages than any other project we know of, without using a domain specific language.

The isekai project can be found at https://github.com/sikoba/isekai

The development of isekai is being supported by the Fantom Foundation.
Why Writers Should be Paying More Attention to Substack
By: Thom Gallet
Tags: Technology, Freelancing, Startup, Substack, Writing

Since I started writing online, I have surrounded myself with the voices of industry experts. From them, I’ve learned that online writing is a constantly changing game, and it’s paramount to stay on top of emerging trends if you want to see success in this field.

So whether it’s advice in Nicolas Cole’s latest book or from Casey Newton’s Twitter feed, there is a common message I keep hearing, again and again.

Writers should pay serious attention to the new platform, Substack.

This is probably a good time to mention I’m not being paid by Substack to write this post. These opinions I’m about to share are solely based on my experience.

So what is Substack? How does it work? And more importantly, why should you waste your time with another platform when there are so many out there begging for your attention?

Well, sit back and get comfy, because in this article, I’m going to answer these questions; hopefully giving you a well-rounded impression of this exciting new platform and why it might be the perfect addition to your writing toolbox.
How to scan the latest pairs added to Uniswap ?
Tags: Google Analytics, Data Visualization, Dex, Uniswap, Erc20

Some of the CryptoTools data analytics users have been interested in finding a way to get the latest tokens trading on Uniswap, most probably as a trading analytics tool.

As a result, I’ve created a Google Sheet templates that helps you filter new tradable coins.

The sheet returns all new tradable pairs on Uniswap, giving constraints on the Number of Days the pair has been active, the Volume ($), the Liquidity ($), and the number of Transactions.

In order to get Uniswap’s analytics I used The Graph which is an indexing protocol for querying networks like Ethereum and IPFS. Anyone can use, build and publish open APIs, called subgraphs, making data easily accessible.

UNISWAP FUNCTION IN GOOGLE SHEETS:

Returns new tradable pairs on Uniswap, giving constraints on the Number of Days the coin is active, the Volume ($), the Liquidity ($), and the number of Transactions .

In Google Sheets =UNISWAP(7, 20'000, 30'000, 1'000)

For example, if I want to get the new Uniswap pairs where:

the pool was launched in the last 7 Days

the daily Volume is greater than $20'000

the Liquidity is above $30'000

and there has been more than1'000 Transactions since the launch

The formula becomes:

=UNISWAP(7,20000,30000,1000)



@param {days} the number of Days since the pair is active

@param {volume} the minimum Volume ($)

@param {liquidity} the minimum Liquidity ($)

@param {tx_count} the number of Transactions existant since creation





* @return a table (see GIF above)with all new tradable pairs on Uniswap and their number of Days since Active, the Volume ($), the Liquidity ($), the number of Transactions, exactly like the Token Scan view below:

More indicators for scanning ?

There are plenty more functionalities that can be added through the TheGraph API. Don’t hesitate to have a look at all available end points like:

totalSupply

untrackedVolumeUSD

liquidityProviderCount

If you are interested in getting some help in integrating more personalized indicators, DM me.

Conclusion

An easy accessible way to get the latest pairs on Uniswap using Google Sheets which can be used for data analytics, and as a trading tools for screening of new market participants.
[好書選讀]Site Reliability Engineering — Tracking Outages
By: Sean Hs
Tags: Google, Outage, Web Development, Reliability, DevOps

How to use the two-way binding in Knout.js and ReactJS?

Components built by different frameworks must have the same action in one website. What we have to realize is how to…
the Voice of an Owl
By: Mai はな
Tags: Words, Poetry, Saturday Poetry Prompt,  friendship &/or words, Friendship

I heard the voice of an owl

which reminds me of you

who copied the words of an owl.

The pleasant time always passes fast, but

No matter where you are,

No matter where I am,

We won’t forget about that night,

when the silver owl looked down us.