fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Spaghettified Star?
By: Serge Hulne
Tags: Philosophy Of Science, Physics, Black Holes, Astronomy

What did we really “see”?

By ESO, ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser — https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1644a/, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54114453

What was observed in reality?

https://www.space.com/black-hole-star-death-spaghettification

Astronomers see a star ‘spaghettified’ by a black hole | EarthSky.org

https://www.20minutes.fr/sciences/2883439-20201012-espace-spaghettification-etoile-trou-noir-suivie-temps-reel

The video illustrating this article is in fact a simulation (“ an artist’s impression”).

Apart from the sun, and the closest stars ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stars_with_resolved_images ) stars -even when watched via the largest telescopes- are only points seen seen through these optical telescopes, so one could not have filmed this kind of video in reality with a telescope.

The detected signals, suggesting that this event took place, are actually radio signals, so our understanding of this phenomenon is at least as much of a deduction (if not more) as it is an observation.

This is the curse hanging over contemporary science. We are investigating phenomena which are of such extreme size (elementary particles, cosmetic phenomena) that detectors used in these experiments only provide us with indirect indications as to the real nature of these phenomena; one can therefore only form a “mental image” of the underlying physical reality. Moreover this can only be done with the help of an armada of theoretical tools, a lot of theoretical physics and advanced math that few people on Earth can grasp.

This indirect apprehension of the intimate nature of matter, of the universe, of the phenomena of physics leads skeptics (motivated initially by a legitimate doubt) to doubt even the fact that Earth is round (owing to a lack of understanding of how we came to grasps this thousands of years ago).

Are these skeptics wrong? Not 100%. One shouldn't take too literally clichés peddled by popular science: An electron is not merely a small spherical ball of electricity, neither is a photon merely a wave. Similarly, dark matter, as well as dark energy are only conjectures at the time of this writing. Another competing theory, which appears just as legitimate today, is that the expression of gravity given by Einstein’s equations of general relativity is a good approximation -granted- but perhaps it ought to include some corrective terms (in a framework -still to be devised- which would “generalize” general relativity… one step further). This would provide an explanation for gravitational anomalies observed by astronomers, without having to speculate about such outlandish concepts as dark matter or dark energy.

Conclusion

Did we observe a black hole swallow a star?

Yes all available clues point to in this direction.

Is there a actual video of it, did we actually “see” it?

Not so much. Nope!

Q: Has a black hole ever been seen in reality:
Designing Products for Brand Marketers
By: Travis Pinnick
Tags: Marketing, UX Research, Bitly, Digital Marketing, UX

At Bitly, we have a range of users with varying needs. The majority of our links are shortened by free and anonymous users, but the heaviest users of our paid features largely consist of brand marketers. Brand marketers have specific needs, and designing features that meet their needs requires a consideration for the basic principles of usability, feature utility, and business strategy.

The evolution of our Bitly Enterprise feature,the Campaigns, feature is a great example of how these three principles factored into our product’s design. The inception for the Campaigns feature originally came from customer feedback our success team was receiving for the need to assess cross-channel performance. Brand marketers typically need to reach their audience across a broad spectrum of social channels, and Bitly links are a standard vehicle for driving audience engagement back to their content.

The primary use case for our first version of Campaigns was simple — we wanted to give users the ability to share links to the same content across multiple standardized channels (Twitter, Facebook, Email, etc), and then compare the performance of those channels against each other while also assessing the performance of the campaign in aggregate. The assumption was that these users would create one or two links per channel, and that these links would all direct users to a singular piece of content.

But a few months after customers started actively using the feature, something unexpected developed. We noticed that a few customers were using the feature in ways we had not anticipated — creating several links (10, or 20, or 50) per channel. In some cases campaigns consisted of a single channel with huge numbers of links to different types of content, the relationship of which was unclear — an application of the feature which negates its intended benefit of cross-channel comparison.

We first dismissed this as an anomaly, but after some deeper research we realized many Campaign users were using the feature in a completely different way than we originally intended. While there were several customers using the feature for its intended use, more than a third of active Campaigns users were using it for the latter reason.

A few customer feedback conversations revealed the reason — customers wanted to aggregate performance analytics for reasons that had nothing to do with our traditional notion of “campaigns”. These links had some relationship to the customer that had nothing to do with the channels via which they were shared, and the “channel” was being used merely as a container for this aggregation in the absence of the ability to accomplish this elsewhere in the product.

This realization led us to reimagine the feature as one which could accommodate traditional campaigns as well as other use cases for aggregate link performance. Rebranding the feature as Oneview, we are continuing to explore what this feature can be and the customer needs it can help address.
My Favorite Hair Color is Silver
By: Brian O'Connell
Tags: Sex, Erotica, Love, Relationships, Sexuality

My Favorite Hair Color is Silver

Then I know a woman is at the peak of her beauty

Susan McGraw (photo courtesy of Heffner Management)

Granted, I had an unusual relationship with my mother which may have formed my attitudes towards women throughout my life. That relationship undoubtedly would provoke moral outrage among the most judgmental of people but the one thing I admire most about that woman is her utter disregard for the opinion of others. It’s an admirable trait to live life as you see fit, not for the approval of others. Women are under far more pressure to adhere to societal norms than men. The male rebel has always been celebrated in films whereas women who veer from the normal are depicted as immoral.

That independence and the ability to say fuck you to others seems to come at a certain age with women, and that’s when they become attractive. That’s also when they start thinking for themselves when it comes to men and realize that perhaps someone younger might be more fun to fuck than someone who has to take a blue pill to get it up.

I really like beautiful women. What I’ve found out is some women actually only really become stunningly attractive when they reach a certain age. Because it was imprinted on me at an early age that older women were more sexually alluring than young girls, I’ve found myself drawn to women who are often decades older than myself.

I prefer women who have silver hair, slim bodies and great legs. A woman of 50 has far more beautiful legs than a woman of 20. They are more defined, and the women themselves are more aware of their attractiveness and can use their sexual allure with confidence. Women over 50 should not be shy about wearing skirts above the knee and showing their stocking tops. It drives men like me crazy.

Laugh lines are a sign of character and they speak of a life lived. I’m not interested in a shallow relationship with a vapid woman. I want to be in love with someone I respect and find physically attractive.

I am not like most men who like to seduce younger women and think about trading in one ageing trophy wife for a younger model. I’ve never had sex with a woman younger than myself and have no desire to do so.

I am not looking for a mother figure. I can handle myself perfectly well in any situation. But I like a woman to have the same attitude towards life that I do. I want to be with someone who is not afraid to tell the rest of the world to fuck off. And who is perfectly happy to have a younger lover and not think it is anything but normal.

There are adjustments any man has to make when having sex with an older woman, particularly if they are going through menopause or are post-menopausal, but that’s not big a deal. The sex can be as wild and erotic as it can be with anyone else but it’s better with age. A woman who is confident in herself knows what she wants sexually and is not afraid to demand it. I love giving pleasure to a woman and I can only do that well if she guides me and tells me how to do it.
Face Detection: With 6 simple steps in Python
By: Pradeep Pradyumna
Tags: Opencv Python, Python Programming, Matplotlib, Haar Cascades, Facedetection

Face Detection: With 6 simple steps in Python

This article aims to show how we can use an OpenCV library to detect faces in a given image with minimal steps

I’m using a Google Colab Notebook to write my Python program. But, you can use any editor of your choice, like VS Code, PyCharm, etc.

All I’m doing here is that I’m passing an image to the OpenCV library and using it against a trained model to detect faces.

Here are the steps :

Step 1

Open a new Google Colab Notebook, and import two essential libraries matplotlib.pyplot and cv2

We’re using matplotlib to access a given image’s properties and cv2 to access a trained model and use the given image against it to detect faces

If you’re using any other editor you can use pip to install the packages

Step 2

Upload an image that has a face. I preferred to use a group picture, but you can use any picture of your choice. You can find the picture I used here. And upload it in the notebook.

This is the image (from a hit sitcom called Friends) which I’m using in the program

You can upload the image by clicking this icon

Now, that you have uploaded the picture, try to read it into a variable called img in the program.

You can copy the path by right-clicking on the file

Use the path to load the image into the variable using imread()

Step 3

Now, its time to load a model. For this, you need to download one of the XML files from haar cascades called haarcascade_frontalface_alt.xml. You will have to copy the XML content by switching it into Raw mode like this or you can even find it here.

Haar cascades have so many models to detect various parts of a human body like to detect eyes, frontal face, lower body, upper body, full body and so on. But we are just focusing on faces for now.

Now, load the model in a variable called model by copying the file’s path in cv2.CascadeClassifier()

Step 4

Now using one of the functionalities of OpenCV detectMultiScale(), detect all the faces in a given image and store it in a variable called faces

Step 5

Once we have faces, we can iterate them one by one and mark them drawing white rectangles individually

This loop might look tricky, but all it is doing is

Get coordinates (x, y)and size (w, h) to draw a rectangle Set a color using RGB format for the rectangle. I’ve used white (255, 255, 255) here. Set thickness to the rectangle’s border. I’ve used 5 here.

All this work is done by using cv2.rectangle()

Final step

Display the image with rectangle marks around detected faces using imshow()

Here is how the image with markings looks like after running the final code

This is how the overall code looks like

You can find the code in my Colab Notebook here or even in this Github repository.
Software Testing: টেস্টিং ক্যারিয়ার গড়তে যা জানা জরুরী— চলমান পর্ব-২
By: Rafayet Hossain
Tags: Careers, Software Testing, Career Advice, Software Development

Excelling Essential Skill Sets for future you. We are not going tell you what should be done rather how it is done.

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Management and Organization at Medium
By: Andy Doyle
Tags: Media, Holacracy, Company, Company Culture, Management

Holacracy is designed to move companies away from rigid corporate structures and toward decentralized management and dynamic composition. Teams are largely self-organized, and individuals operate with a fair amount of autonomy. Ideally, this puts the work at the forefront and lets the company’s organizational chart form to support it, rather than the other way around. As Holacracy’s co-founder Tom Thomison puts it, “Nothing gets in the way of the work.”

There is much we admire about the philosophy. Holacracy emphasizes that authority does not need to be centralized and puts trust and responsibility in the hands of individuals at all levels. The ethos of Medium is that great ideas and fresh perspectives can come from anywhere. It made sense to embrace an internal system that seeks the same fluidity.

Holacracy also reflects a modern view of work. Classic org charts are often linear and inflexible; in reality, people have the talent to play multiple roles in a company. Holacracy allows for that, regardless of manager or department. And while a managerial structure is in place — every initiative has a leader — it is designed to be lightweight, cooperative, and transitory. Groups come together around a shared purpose, then disband when the work is done.

At the same time, the system presents its challenges. Our experience was that it was difficult to coordinate efforts at scale. In the purest expression of Holacracy, every team has a goal and works autonomously to deliver the best path to serve that goal. But for larger initiatives, which require coordination across functions, it can be time-consuming and divisive to gain alignment.

Holacracy also requires a deep commitment to record-keeping and governance. Every job to be done requires a role, and every role requires a set of responsibilities. While this provides helpful transparency, it takes time and discussion. More importantly, we found that the act of codifying responsibilities in explicit detail hindered a proactive attitude and sense of communal ownership.

We’ve also been challenged by Holacracy’s public perception. The general purpose business press hasn’t shown much nuance in reporting on it. While there are a few deeper examinations out there, many of the headlines read like this:

Holacracy has become fraught with misconceptions that make it hard to separate the actual system from the imagined one. In recruiting, this became a problem — particularly among more experienced candidates, who worried that they were being hired as “bosses” in a boss-less company.

Those misconceptions do not define Medium. We are lucky to employ a group of passionate and self-motivated individuals, who make meaningful contributions to strategy, workflow, and culture, regardless of seniority. And we have bosses — people who have the experience of scaling companies, leading through hard challenges, and developing teams. These people build consensus when it’s possible, and make difficult decisions when it’s not.

We want to build a place where both can thrive.
Tenet Was Supposed to Save Cinemas
By: Felix Quiñonez Jr.
Tags: Film, Entertainment, Movies, Cinema, Pop Culture

However, cracks in this plan began to pop up pretty early. The movie was initially set to debut on July 17, but it was delayed three times. At one point, it seemed like Tenet would never get released, and the movie gained almost mythical status. To say that it had very high expectations would be the understatement of the century.

On September 3, 2020, Tenet finally arrived in North American theaters, and it did…fine. The film opened in 2,810 theaters or almost 1,000 theaters less than Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan’s previous release. Furthermore, the theaters it played in weren’t even allowed to sell all the tickets. Because of this, it would be incredibly unreasonable to judge its box office performance like a regular blockbuster film released before the worldwide pandemic hit. However, I think it’s safe to say that people expected more.

Initial reports indicated that Tenet grossed about $20 million over its opening weekend. That’s by no means a record-setting number, but given the conditions, it seemed respectable enough. After all, 2020 has been an unprecedented year, and frankly, there was no frame of reference to gauge Tenet’s box-office performance.

However, as more details emerged about the movie’s grosses, a less rosy picture emerged. It turned out that Warner Brothers chose to include preview grosses in its initial report. Tenet actually grossed about $9.5 million over its opening weekend. To put its performance in perspective, The New Mutants made a little over $7 million in its first three days. No one expected The New Mutants to revive cinemas; in fact, that movie was delayed four times, and it finally hit theaters more than two years after its original release date.

The fact that it even made it to the theaters was a minor miracle. The release had all the signs of a studio unceremoniously dumping a movie they didn’t care about to theaters. And yet it made almost as much as Tenet, the movie that was supposed to revive movie going.
RNN(Recurrent Neural Network, 순환신경망)을 이해해보자
Tags: AI, Machine Learning, Rnn, 101

Understanding LSTM Networks

Posted on August 27, 2015 Humans don't start their thinking from scratch every second. As you read this essay, you…
Fibery.io chronicles #12. Controlled Panic in July
By: Michael Dubakov
Tags: SaaS, Product Management, Productivity, Fibery, Startup

TLDR: Table View is done, Notifications are in progress, Automation Rules are postponed. Everybody is 🦄. Serious shit! Summertime 🌤

Flashback:

As usual, main numbers ( → sign shows changes between June and July):

Product: Fibery — SaaS B2B (SMB) work management platform

Stage: Private Beta

Launch: Q4 2019 (public)

Development: 29 months

Leads/month: 65 → 110

Total Accounts: 390 → 460

Active Accounts: 16 → 21

Team size: 10

Burn rate: ~$40K/month

MRR: $0

Overview

Fibery performance and stability became unbearable in June and we dedicated some time to these problems. Overall Fibery works much better now, only Entity View is slow as hell. Ilya Tsuryev promised to load everything faster, Victor Zhuk swore his beard to make Fibery stable and fit. We’ll see…

We nailed some crazy and fun ideas about product positioning and public release, but so far we are not ready to share them. Maybe next month. Or not. We’ll see…

Michael: For the third pivot we can take panic.so, it’s free. Ihar: For the fourth we’ll have pzdc.io for sure

The problem is that we have hundreds of cool ideas and have to choose carefully what to focus on. For example, it is relatively easy to create content publishing app for Fibery to generate Blogs, User Guides, etc. Should we do that now? Probably not. Another example is CRM. It feels like startups needs basic CRM and Fibery might be a good fit, but we lack some important features like Email Integration. Should we do that now? Probably yes.

Currently we have 3 main hypothesis to validate before public release:

Fibery for Startups 🔥

Fibery for Consultants and Coaches 🦔

Fibery as an Airtable replacement 🍋

All these areas are connected, but we have to choose one to focus product development, marketing effort and overall strategy. This is something we should do in August/September, no later.

Anton Iokov is thinking. Maybe.

Customer Discovery calls were restarted and we had 10 calls in July. BTW, here is a very good book about calls. It is quite interesting, but problem validation is already there I think. Execution is the hardest part in Fibery. Or not. We’ll see!

Our market is fucking hot:

Notion — 🦄, Airtable — 🦄, Monday — 🦄, Coda —?

Features

DONE: Table View

Table View is completed, at least its first iteration. In July we’ve added some capabilities:
Episode 8: A shared truth
By: Martin Breitsprecher
Tags: Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain Technology, Consensus, Bitcoin

Episode 8: A shared truth

Finding consensus

In our crowded Blockchain Bar, not everyone can hear and record all orders. Very often, there are different versions of the order records.

Oscar insists: “My list is 100% correct.”

Bob replies: “Everybody knows you’re bad at arithmetics! We should take MY list.”

Alice calms everybody down: “No problem! From the next round on, we will just use the list of the person who finishes the fingerprint calculation first. If the transactions and fingerprint on that list are correct, we all make a copy, accept it as the correct version and discard our own version of the last page.”

In the Bitcoin system, all computers compete in building the very next block of transactions. The winner in doing many complex computations correctly has the right to create the new block. All other computers in the network will accept it as the correct version of the truth. This is called ‘consensus mechanism’.

What could be the motivation for taking part in such a complex system? Find out in the next episode…

Or maybe you first want to read more about consensus mechanisms on TheBlockchainBar.com.
Gutenberg Diagram — Why you should know it and use it
By: Mário R. Andrade
Tags: Usability, User Experience, Design, Web Design

The Gutenberg Rule is used to show a user behavior known as reading gravity, the western habit of reading left-to-right, top-to-bottom.

It is represented by dividing the visible content area in 4 quadrants:

A Primary optical area; Strong fallow area; Weak fallow area; Terminal area;

Primary Optical Area

The higher left portion of the page is the user primary focus, it’s where the eyes will automatically focus regardless if the user is searching for something, wanting to read or just doing a quick scan on the page.

Strong Fallow Area

The second stage of the reading habit is moving to the higher right portion of the page, you can think of it as a follow up from the left portion but less important. It’s not a good idea to break the reader’s experience created from the starting point. Meaning that if you have a call to action the user will stop at this point and act.

Weak Fallow Area

The lower left portion is the blind portion of the Gutenberg Diagram, although readable the user will not give much importance to content in this area of the page.

Terminal Area

When the user reaches the lower right portion of the page there is a break in the reading or “page scan” process and the user will need to take an action. This is the perfect spot to insert call-to-action such as buttons, links, forms, video, etc.

By understanding the reading patterns of the users who visit your website you are able to place the most important content in the areas where they will be most effective.

If you research papers on user reading behavior you’ll find an interesting case study lead by Jacob Nielsen called F-Shaped Pattern.

Jacob Nielsen F-Shaped Reading Pattern

This study states the lower right area of a page as the least important area.

Although I wouldn't say Jacob Nielsen statement is incorrect, but it shows a user behavior that can be applied when the user has no genuine interest on the page content thus shifting from the reality where a user is genuinely reading and understanding the page content.

The Gutenberg Diagram is applied to users with a genuine interest on the page content.

Let’s say the user is searching for information about the Gutenberg Diagram and finds this article.

The typical pattern will be the user looking at the diagram image and after reading the lines above it, starting an inverted Gutenberg Diagram. If a user is looking for products on E-bay the primary pattern, on the product listing pages, will be a typical Gutenberg Diagram.

But if the user is trying to gather information and a search engine shows multiple articles, the user will apply the F-shaped pattern when visiting those pages trying to find quick and concrete references to it’s search.

Complementary readings:
I’m Like The Ocean
By: Flose Lapierre
Tags: Poetry Writing, Poetry, Poetry On Medium, Reflections, Self

Photo of Flose LaPierre, John D. MacArthur Beach State Park

The ocean is new with every moment. Like that, I am new. With 2021 ahead, I honor myself for:

Embracing my desires

Letting go of old ideas of God/Spirit/Universe

Accepting my body for her functionality

Eating more colors

Creating like a child

Stripping down ‘cuz I feel like it

Getting outdoors every day

Learning to grow food

Establishing Write to Heal

Seeing the best of me through Jesse’s eyes

Allowing marriage to evolve me

Feeling all the feels

Exercising the power of good

Setting boundaries

Accepting others’ boundaries even when I don’t understand them

Following my alignment

Gossiping less

and acknowledging that I am made for good

What do you honor yourself for?
#40: Basics of Buying Crypto
By: Kelly Mcquade-W.
Tags: Finance, Blockchain, Education, Bitcoin, Investment

Featuring Jason Flack from Arbitraj.io.

Listen Now

Show Notes

Guest Jason Flack from Arbitraj.io shares tools for committed cryptocurrency traders, if you are an expert skip to (11:00) but before we get into arbitrage we tell you how we use exchanges to buy and sell crypto. Beginners welcome!

Links:

Transcript

Coming Soon.
Using a Story Map to share code
By: Owen Evans
Tags: Esri, Story Maps, Teaching, Developer

Story maps are great for teaching and instruction.

Recently, I became aware of an excellent story created by Rudy Prosser, an Esri Instructor. Rudy’s Map Series story presents a code challenge for the ArcGIS API for JavaScript using code samples from the popular code playground CodePen. Using a Story Map to deliver this challenge enabled Rudy provide context for his readers and lets them to interact with the code right inside the story.

I thought this was a great use of Story Maps, so I asked Rudy if I could share his idea. Below you’ll find links to 1) a story map with step-by-step instructions on how to share code samples in a story map and 2) Rudy’s Map Series story that presents the code challenge.

Finally, if you’re looking to learn some new skills, check out this collection of instructional stories that has many wonderful examples of explaining a process through a Story Map.

Banner photo by Caspar Rubin on Unsplash
Ljubljana Mission #6 — Treat yourself, Čin Čin
By: Tom Norman
Tags: Microworkapp, Cryptocurrency, Poetry, Ethereum, Ljubljana

Every week we’ll be adding a different Ljubljana Mission task to explore some cool (and potentially undiscovered) spots in the capital. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to pay these places a visit, help us to understand how your experience was AND earn yourself some Ether in the process.

In the space that was formally Zoo club you’ll now find a very attractive new bar Čin Čin. With high ceilings, a very cool raised lounge area and a big drinks selection, we want to hear about your experience there.



Brave Microworker, your mission this week if you choose to accept it is to stop by and tell us how it is.



Oh, and if you’re lucky enough to stop by on Monday evening you get to experience Jazz night — the hugely popular live jazz event to brighten up your week.

We want to discover how your experience was! Download the Microwork appto complete this mission and earn your self some Ether!

Mission available between 23rd — 29th April.

Čin Čin opening times:

Monday & Tuesday: 07:00–01:00

Wednesday — Friday: 07:00–03:00

Saturday: 09:00–03:00

Sunday: Closed

Got a hidden spot in Ljubljana you think we should feature? Email us at hello@microwork.io to make the suggestion.
Arse Poetica: The Bachelor
By: Trevor Jones
Tags: Poetry, Comedy, History, Creative Writing, Life

“Rudy, go to your room!”

I slam my door and look outside the window at our tree –

Chiseled brown turd

Stretching its arms toward the toilet bowl sky.

Frickin’ mom will never understand me.
Bitcoin 2018: Prepare for Major Value Crashes
By: Otmane Riad
Tags: Blockchain, 2018, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Mining

in Both Sides of the Table
Three Different Things: May 3, 2019
By: Sean O'Brien
Tags: AI, Cx, Customer Journey, Customer Experience, Algorithms

Three Different Things: May 3, 2019

Create a Great Team Culture, The Customer Journey May Not Include You, Using AI for CX, BONUS: 7 (or 9) Critical Algorithms

Consumer Funnels… smh

Bonus: 7 Critical Algorithms at Work in the Modern World

A good article — but add Facebook’s news feed algo and Gradient Boosting.
Wait, do you really want to become a design manager?
By: Fabricio Teixeira
Tags: Design, Product Design, Visual Design, UX, Startup

As part of the free mentorship sessions I have been running for the past couple of years, there’s one question that frequently comes up:

“What do I have to do to become a design manager?”

The question often comes from designers who have been at a Senior level for some time, and are now looking to be promoted to a Lead/Manager role within their companies. They have been actively seeking that promotion, taking action, changing their behavior, taking on more responsibilities — but for some reason, their managers don’t seem to think they are ready to step up into that new position.

Instead of prematurely jumping into giving my mentees tactical advice on how to get that so-deserved promotion, I throw back another question at them that can often feel unsettling:

“Why?”

(Long pause, and then the emphasis)

“Why do you want to become a manager?”

The immediate response is:

“Because it’s about time! I’ve been a Senior for 4 years.”

Well, that’s not a proper why.

That’s why you think your company should promote you.

“I’m asking why you want to become a manager. What is the reason, deep inside of you, that makes you want that? What do you think you will like so much about being a manager?”
I’m a Public Health Scholar. Here’s What the Pandemic Has Been Like for Me.
By: E. Rosalie
Tags: Health, Life Lessons, Science, Covid 19, Politics

I’m a Public Health Scholar. Here’s What the Pandemic Has Been Like for Me.

In journal format, day 344 of the scientist’s log details what has been hardest over the course of the pandemic.

Watercolor painting by E Rosalie

Day 344 of the scientist’s log:

Among the things that have been hardest in the pandemic, it’s been seeing leadership I once respected, who I thought shared my belief in truth, integrity, and personal responsibility, lay waste to any notion of honesty or character.

Then, everyday people I believed also shared those values, shred any notion of speaking hard truths. Handed the plausible deniability, they embraced it.

I struggle to understand it still.

Knowing what elected officials knew in real-time, they misled Americans who trusted them. My experience was not rare. We watched them inexplicably turn the public against the very people who didn’t need their votes, who wanted to help, and who they trusted before COVID.

We misunderstood the game. We thought it was about truth and supporting that which we claimed. It wasn’t. It was never about the truth. We brought evidence to a battle of smoke and mirrors.

We failed to recognize the lengths to which elected leadership would go, even at the expense of human life. Scientists must declare their funding and conflicts of interest because we know corruption breeds in the dark. Not to do so will end your career.

Among political elites, nondisclosure is standard practice. We were fools for believing that the potential for hundreds of thousands of deaths would lead them to lay down self-interest. Though we know how tribalism works and how computational propaganda has been weaponized against Americans, there was still this naïve hope that the people I knew were different — people in my orbit would know me and know that I call it like it is.

They won’t be fooled, I thought. I never accounted for the motivation that many would have to not see reality. A person can be relied upon to not see that which would necessitate admitting one has been fooled.

Intellectual humility — changing my conclusion to account for new evidence and awareness I may be wrong — isn’t prized in the US. Instead, we prize confidence, even if it isn’t supported by anything other than pride.

Against all reason, the nation rejected rational thinking to avoid facing unpleasant ideas and to favor those who would tell them beautiful lies.

This has been the ultimate in psyops, and I was ill-prepared for it.
When my mother won Bingo, everyone won, even the birds.
By: Toni Crowe
Tags: Mothers, This Happened To Me, Short Story, Love, Parenting

When my mother won Bingo, everyone won, even the birds. Mom would sing out as she came in the door, “I got em child, I got em.” Her children loved to hear those words. When my Ma won a big pot, everyone won. As a separated mother with six kids (my dad was alive, but his support was sporadic), she struggled with the basics. But… when my mom won, the lights, gas, and water were going to be on. There was money for ice cream from the ice cream truck; even the birds she loved to feed behind the local Moo and Oink supermarket got cheap birdseed instead of stale bread. If she won big, Ma would buy an entire pack of cigarettes for the homeless addict that hung around the alleys. Mom taught me that kindness had nothing to do with money. Kindness comes alongside decency.
An Honest List Of Things I Want For My Birthday
By: Runjhun Noopur
Tags: Humor, Satire, Wishlist, Birthday, Self

Author’s Note : This is the twenty sixth installment in my 100 days, 100 blogs challenge. In case you missed it, the previous installment is a story about A Catastrophe on Wheels.

A laptop with a backlit keypad that is not a Mac and doesn’t cost me a kidney.

Meaning of life.

A pirate ship.

An agent who gets back to me when she says she will get back to me.

A trip down Alice’s Wonderland.

The magic tunnel out of the slush pile. (For the uninitiated, slush pile is the technical term for the bunch of manuscripts that a publishing house is not looking at, and probably never will)

Validation.

An Invisibility Cloak.

A self driving car that doesn’t expect me to know what to do under absolutely any circumstances.

A zero cost, safe passage to a country where Medium lets me actually become a part of its member program instead of taunting me with an invite that I can apparently have but can’t use.

An answer to the question ‘when are you getting married?’ that doesn’t involve someone getting punched in the face.

A week long, all paid stay at Hansel and Gretel’s Gingerbread House. (I don’t mind the child hogging witch so long as she doesn’t insist on dinner time chit chat)

Magic Medium Virality Potion/Wand/Thingmajig/Whatever the hell Medium superstars are smoking.

Food.

More food.

Even more food.

The secret trick to never gaining weight while leading the lifestyle of a pig (aka plenty of food with zero exercise)

A troll free, hate free internet. (Yeah, right.)

A cellphone that doesn’t break, or give up on me even after tumbling down multiple tarmac paths and/or falling off a couple of floors. (There is a reason why iPhone X is not on this list, and shall never be. Hello Nokia, old pal!)

More Validation.

A buffalo.

A Trump free social media feed (I know there are filters for that thing, but you know what I mean)

Money (Duh!)

A book deal. (Or 3)

World peace. (Yeah, not really. But gotta say this stuff, for feelgood and whatnot)

Like it? Please don’t forget to clap! Remember, you can do it more than once. So, don’t be shy and please do applaud a little. You will totally make this writer’s day! :)

Also, you can subscribe to my newsletter below. I will send you free stuff (sometimes)and occasional updates about my upcoming projects/ebooks/latest pieces. On the subject of ebooks, the much loved A Sufi Celebration of Life is now available as a swanky ebook. Grab a Kindle version here! Oh…and you can follow me on Twitter!
不知道自己在金門買屋好嗎？那些房屋稅，你都瞭解嗎？
By: Tony Zeng
Tags: 房屋, 投資, 買房, 理財, 金門

in Both Sides of the Table
How Britpop Was the Most Brilliant Marketing Strategy in Music History
By: Sude Hammal
Tags: Culture, Media, Marketing, Art, Music

The Battle of Britpop

A similar rival between Beatles and Rolling Stones was seen with the two most popular Britpop bands Blur and Oasis in 1995, but potentially a more contentious one.

Suddenly all Britain was talking about was this chart battle between the two Britpop bands. All over media; in news channels, tabloids, front pages of newspapers, magazines, record stores… All you could see was Blur and Oasis.

Jonathan Ross: “You couldn’t turn on a news program without it being featured. My missus’ dad lives in Norway, and the Oslo Times had it on the front cover that week… If it was front-page news in Norway, it was probably front page all around the world. Even America took notice. It was a focal point for a generation.”

It was gradually transformed into a rival similar to football matches, that you had to pick one side. In the end, only one band would win the battle, according to how many copies they have sold with their singles released on the same day, which is still considered as potentially the biggest showdowns in chart history.

Source: NME. A record store featuring Blur and Oasis’ singles.

People love to pick sides as they do with football teams, so this was a brilliant marketing strategy to sell the music to not only their music’s fans but also people who are not familiar with their music but just want to be a part of the rivalry and the fun of it. To potentially be on the side of the winner, to gloat about their music taste if their pick wins, or judge the decision and justify their opinion if it loses. The idea of a musical battle was a brilliant marketing strategy for attracting new potential customers.

Overall, the battle of Britpop was a huge commercial success and upped the single/album sales dramatically in Britain, but also reached a considerable global success. Britpop was living its heyday.

Mike Smith (Blur publisher): “When I got into the business in the ’80s, people claimed you would never have a band like The Beatles again because everything was so fractured, and you couldn’t capture popular culture. In the ’90s you had two bands that did capture it. I don’t think we will have that again, but I hope to God that we can still have glamorous, rebellious bands that do it themselves.”

Even though the battle of Britpop made the genre more popular and increased the sales, it wasn’t only Blur and Oasis that made Britpop this successful. In the rather short life of Britpop, its golden years reported as 1993–1997; British bands felt higher pressure to be better at their work as Britpop was becoming more and more popular and mainstream, outside Britain too.

Following this marketing success, a bunch of new Britpop bands emerged, or bands transformed their style to fit the day's trend. Britpop was bringing revenue to the press, record labels, and Britain, and it even gave birth to new cultural phenomena, that would bring even more attention and revenue to Britain.
赤い小人の話
Tags: 日本語, Stories, 日本

in Both Sides of the Table
A Room with a View
By: Nadia Camandona
Tags: Artist, Art, Pandemic, Nostalgia, Pandemic Diaries

Nostalgia. Watercolour on scketchbook. AlieNadia. Photo by ©Nadia Camandona

A Room with a View

Nostalgia

This is the view that I could admire exactly one year ago from the bow window in Edinburgh where I and my family were spending our Easter holidays. Although it is no longer my genre of painting, I didn’t want to waste the opportunity to indicate by signs the emotion of being in a city that I love so much. However, the artwork remained unfinished in the drawer: I didn’t paint the sky. It seemed that was more important to bring it into my heart than put it on paper.

Looking at the sky of London today I became overwhelmed with nostalgia for the sky of Edinburgh and for all the skies that I will see or see again, who knows when. Dust off this abandoned watercolour adding the sky was a gesture of respect for all those who can see the sky in these days only from the window, but also a yearning for hope for all the skies that awaiting us.

Clicca qui per la versione in Italiano.
Seven Deadly Wastes: Motion
By: Jez Halford
Tags: Productivity, Agile, Lean Startup, Software Development

The Seven Wastes are an idea from lean manufacturing, and I’m exploring how they relate to software development. Last week was inventory, and this week is motion.

Motion is the movement of people or things around work. This is why car factories use moving production lines — it’s much easier for the person who bolts on the wheels to stay still, and have the cars come along on a conveyor.

Reducing motion waste is all about reducing unnecessary movement. Of course, software isn’t a physical thing that we can gather around and look at. Or can we? If your team finds an unexpected situation (perhaps a production bug, or a realisation that your project is going in the wrong direction) then you probably gather everyone together into a meeting to look at the problem.

People gathering around a problem? That’s motion.

Of course, unexpected things happen, and we need to be able to deal with them. But we can take steps to reduce the impact they have.

One way you might already do this is with a daily standup meeting. This is a regular session every day during which we try to head off problems before they hurt us. If we didn’t have the daily standup, we might end up having two or three ad-hoc meetings throughout the day instead. The standup has therefore helped us to reduce motion.

Sprints are another means of reducing motion waste. We schedule a regular time to plan a small chunk of work in detail, and we hope that reduces the potential for chaos down the line.

Another option to explore is policy. Policies are simple sets of rules that tell us how to deal with certain situations. You probably have plenty of polices in your team already. Policies are things like “when we find a bug it gets prioritised by a product owner before developers look at it”.

Policies like that help teams to work autonomously, because they don’t have to ask someone what to do in a given situation. They reduce motion because they stop us from having to run around looking for solutions.

Motion waste is often hiding in plain sight. But finding it, and fixing it, can be an incredibly effective way to speed up your team.
BNT: Το πρώτο Έξυπνο Token γεννιέται
Tags: Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Ethereum, Bancor, Bitcoin

in Both Sides of the Table
The Loathe of Alice
By: J.L. Littlejohn
Tags: Resistance Poetry, Poetry, Trump, Covid 19, Election 2020

Free Verse

Alice found herself

staring back

vacuous

–jaundice cat

in her looking-glass.

The malice

of Alice …as such

she couldn’t even

find it

in herself

to care much

about anyone else

even an ill Alice.

Transfixed…

she winced

to her own

loathing grin,

hissed:

I really

don’t care,

do

U?
Lever up your EOS with Equilbrium & Newdex
Tags: English, Eos, Income, Blockchain, Equilibrium

We at Equilibrium are pleased to introduce a new product to you. It’s called pyramiding. Sound familiar? It should! First, let’s take a step back and look at this proven strategy to see how we’ve innovated and improved it.

In classical market trading, pyramiding is a technique that has some very attractive aspects. The idea is simple: You make your trade — and if your predictions are correct, the trend continues in your direction and you earn profit, — then you reinvest that to continue to trade again and again on the same position, while continually readjusting your stop-loss in the direction of the trend. In this way, you minimize your risk, while progressively making more profit organically — by reinvesting what you earned previously.

In cooperation with our partner Newdex, we have developed a product to offer you the advantages of the pyramiding principle, while at the same time making it much more comfortable.

In classical trading, you watch the market and adjust your stop-loss and generally speaking it’s a slow method of increasing one’s position size. In pyramiding on Equilibrium, the process is fast and convenient, and liquidations take the place of stop-losses. Using Equilibrium, you can increase your asset exposure on one and the same trade by borrowing. However, as with any trading mechanism, you do have to continue to watch your positions to maintain sufficient collateralization and avoid loss.

The more collateralization you offer, the more you reduce your risk, while you add leverage. If you reduce your collateralization, you can grow leverage faster, but you also increase your risk. This inverse relationship allows you to control your accounts similarly to market conditions but in a more convenient way.

Users also have the option to work backwards with the same logic to deleverage their position and get rid of debt. In the absence of EOSDT, a flash loan can be used for this, which is done with a single blockchain transaction. You progressively pay back a portion of debt, take out collateral, sell it, and repeat the process.

Lever up your EOS with Equilibrium’s Pyramiding!
The Best Way To Check For Undefined In JavaScript
Tags: JavaScript, Programming, Web Development, Typescript, Tips And Tricks

variable === undefined

The first solution, which is also the more used, compare directly the variable value with the built-in global identifier undefined which is worthing the value undefined .

The problem is that it is possible to re-declare the undefined variable in a lower scope and make the comparison to be untrue.

This code display “false” when it is expected to display “true”

In real life, this issue will probably never occur.

Know that JavaScript and TypeScript disallow the change of the undefined variable on the global scope.

in JavaScript
Nirvana is Getting a Brand New Look
By: Team Nirvana
Tags: News, Nirvana App Updates

We’ll be introducing the all-new Nirvana in just a few days. It’s taken a lot of hard work and took a lot longer than expected, but we think it was worth the wait, and we’re sure you’re going to love it.

We didn’t change how Nirvana works… why mess with a good thing? Instead we found ways to make it faster and more visually appealing (and consistent!) across devices — iOS and Android, phones and tablets, and of course our original trail-blazing web app for desktop browsers.

What? Change?! Don’t panic! All of your data and how you’ve organized it will remain completely intact — it’ll just be a lot prettier and more pleasurable to work with. Having lived with the new Nirvana as my trusted system for several weeks, I would never want to go back. Here’s a sneak peek at what’s coming.

Our New Look

Everything is cleaner, brighter, and easier to read. We’ve removed some of the old themes that were holding us back, and made everything “retina-ready” — if you’ve got a high-res display, everything is as sharp as a tack.

New Mobile Apps

We brought all mobile development in-house so that we’d have complete control over our beloved handsets.

New Tablet Apps

Finally! Nirvana runs native on iPad and Android tablets.

We’re eager to get all of this awesomeness into your hands, and we’re now in that agonizing holding pattern where we wait for Apple to approve and release our apps to the AppStore. Once we’ve gotten the green light, we’ll release everything in one fell swoop — new apps for web, iPhone, iPad, Android phone and tablets, a new support system and our new website.

EDIT Oct 22: Great news! We just got approval from Apple, so we are gunning for the new site and apps to be up at some point over the weekend (Oct 24–25) when site traffic is at its minimum. Yes!