fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Is A Happy Ending Something You Can Believe In?
By: Brianna Bennett
Tags: Ideas, Happiness, Life, Determination, Spirituality

On the back cover of Nevernight by Jay Kristoff, there is the following author bio:

“Jay Kristoff is the award-winning author of The Lotus War series and The Illuminae Files. He spent most of his formative years locked in his bedroom with piles of books or gathered around dimly-lit tables rolling polyhedral dice. Being the holder of an arts degree, he has no education to speak of. He is 6'7 and has approximately 13,520 days to live. He abides in Melbourne with his secret agent kung-fu assassin wife and the world’s laziest Jack Russell. He does not believe in happy endings.”

For those who are familiar with Kristoff’s work, there are often scenes of tragedy that are intended to either enrage or evoke tears from a reader, especially because Kristoff is so adept at creating likeable characters that inevitably die at the end.

It has become his trademark and something he is quite proud of when asked.

All of that said, I have to wonder: is it possible to “believe” in happy endings?
4 Ways of the Wordsmith: How to Be Happy and Successful Now
By: Lon Shapiro
Tags: Technology, Humor, Writing, Social Media, Médium

Since we will never know the inner workings of the curation system, it leaves only one choice — figure out how to write better.

For the last two weeks, I’ve made a sincere effort to read articles on how to become a better writer.

While most of the posts were filled with generalities, hollow inspirational talk, a few quotes from famous writers — and the ever present whisper to subscribe here, or enroll in this class here, or join an online seminar here — I did find something of substance.

Here’s a real-world experiment which is so cool I’m going to interrupt my smart phone-friendly writing style. This is the first week of that series, written by an established professional writer who opens a secret account and starts out like as an unknown, new writer on Medium:

As I followed the weekly progress, I was shocked by the matter-of-fact tone of the list of things she did, that included the bullet point, “I wrote seven posts (four of them were curated).”

In the third week, she wrote, “I wrote seven posts. (Six of them were curated!).”

At least she seemed excited about this impossibly high percentage rate of curated articles.

I had to make a comment with some skepticism. She was gracious enough to respond, so we had a brief conversation where she told me that her normal curation rate is 70–80%.

OMG, Jesus walked on water, and he only got curated 41.6% of the time! FYI, it was Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul (with Ringo supplying an awesome syncopated back beat).

Here’s why I found her one of the few voices in the Medium’s online coaching world that I don’t dismiss as being just another shyster content marketer:

She takes the perspective of diving into process to break down why things work, instead of simply quoting someone famous and then babbling on in generalities. I just clicked randomly on one day in her 30-day writing challenge and found this explanation of reading like a writer to figure out why things work. It’s something I’ve done for years, but I haven’t seen any other writing expert talk about this perspective. Do a search for “reading intensely” and you’ll see. Just don’t go down to the bottom of the search page. She has creates her own publications and doesn’t try to glom onto those Medium publications to build her readership. Because of that, she doesn’t have one of those “best story picked by our editors.” She’s getting her stories curated the old fashioned way: “she earns it.” She doesn’t give away all the secret sauce for free, but she provides a closer look at the real process of becoming successful on Medium than anyone else I’ve found. Check out her experiment: “I blogged every day for a month. Here’s what happened.” It contained some real gems, including a link to the #1 Free Headline Analyzer. This is absolutely crazy. It’s not a perfect tool, but it is thought provoking and proved to be a lot of fun.

Since she is not getting her stories accepted by Medium publications each week, she has to be doing something right.
What If You're Not Real?
By: Jocelyn Soriano
Tags: Love, Death, Poem, Poetry, Grief

Sometimes I try to remember

The last time I saw you.

I try to picture your face,

I try to recall the sound of your voice,

I try to imagine the warmth

Of your touch.

It's been so very long

Since that time,

And I have lived

In emptiness and cold

Since then.

Many times,

I can't shrug off

The fear

That you have just been an illusion

I made up,

Because I felt

So alone.

What if you're not real?

What if I have only imagined you?

Had I been loved

As I thought I was?

Was there another person

Who saw me

And found me

Worth

All the sacrifices

You've ever done?

I think I'm going crazy

I've been crazy

Since the day you were gone.

Is this what grief does?

Is this what denial

Is all about?

Painful as it may be,

The worst thing

Is not that I have lost you.

The worst thing would be

If I had not

Met you

At all.
5 minutes of Web Scraping using Python and Beautiful Soup
By: Vishal Sharma
Tags: Pandas, Data Science, Web Scraping, Python, Football

5 minutes of Web Scraping using Python and Beautiful Soup

Scraping La Liga Stats using Python and Beautiful Soup

A photo by Emile Perron — Unsplash

Extracting data from the website aka web scraping can save plenty of time and effort. Thanks to Beautiful Soup, the road of web scraping has become even smoother. In this article, we will scrape La Liga 2019–20 stats from a website using Python.

Importing Libraries

import pandas as pd

import requests as rq

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

First things first, all the useful libraries must be imported. I have imported pandas to store the stats in a data frame. The Requests library is imported to send a request to the HTTP server while Beautiful Soup is brought in for web elements retrieval.

Communicating with webpage

get_url = rq.get("https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/soccer/la-liga/player-stats")



get_text = get_url.text



soup = BeautifulSoup(get_text, "html.parser")

We have to get the target URL and then parse it using the Beautiful Soup library. Once the soup object is created, you are good to go.

Extracting web elements

rank = [i.text for i in soup.findAll('td', {

"class" : "hide1 rankvalue"

})]



player_name = [i.text

for i in soup.findAll('td', {

"class" : "playername"

})

]



team_name = [i.text

for i in soup.findAll('td', {

"class" : "teamname"

})

]



team_la = [i.text

for i in soup.findAll('td', {

"class" : "teamtla"

})

]



games_played = [int(i.findAll('td')[4].text) for i in soup.findAll('tr', {

"class" : "rowlink"

})]



goals_scored = [int(i.findAll('td')[7].text) for i in soup.findAll('tr', {

"class" : "rowlink"

})]



assists = [int(i.findAll('td')[8].text) for i in soup.findAll('tr', {

"class" : "rowlink"

})]

Using Beautiful Soup methods, you can access the web elements and its items. I have majorly used the “findAll” method giving “class” as a parameter to get the list of all items present.

Storing in a DataFrame

laliga_stats = pd.DataFrame({



"Rank" : rank,



"Player Name" : player_name,



"Team Name" : team_name,



"Team" : team_la,



"Games Played" : games_played,



"Goals" : goals_scored,



"Assists" : assists

})

laliga_stats.set_index('Rank',inplace=True)

Finally, store the data into the data frame using the Pandas library. And, you are good to go for your analysis.

You can get the Top 10 goalscorers of 2019–20 La Liga season by just writing a line of code:

laliga_stats[0 :10]

Top 10 goalscorers La Liga 2019–20 season

All it takes is Python and Beautiful Soup’s wonder to scrape a website. So, open up Beautiful Soup’s documentation on a new tab and start scraping.

For feedback and discussion, hit me at Linkedin!
Dumpster Mattress
By: Franco Amati
Tags: Death, Life, Scuzzbucket, Poetry, Prose

Photo by Marian Kroell on Unsplash

The things this dumpster mattress has seen, heard, experienced.

She’s got some stories, man. There was that marathon night of nine times. She lost a little bounce after that.

She’s been moved all over the place. From apartment to apartment. Squeezed through doorways, dragged across pavement, laid up sideways for hours in that sketchy truck you borrowed from your cousin.

This dumpster mattress has been through it all. The blood, the piss, the vomit. The sweat and the spit. The cum and the shit.

She’s nestled little cats and dogs and kept the saddest of people cozy on the coldest of days.

And now, here she is, naked and dirty, springs bustin’ out, flopped over a crusty-ass garbage heap, waiting to be picked up by god knows whom, headed to god knows where.

Do you know where these mattresses go to die? This thing that held you up, supported you, gave you peace and rest without asking for anything in return.

How will she be treated in her final hours. How will she be honored for the beat-down life that she’s lived?

Dumpster mattress, you should be given a memorial service — a goddamn funeral. Buried and burned to ash and kept in a pretty urn on a dresser next to the young, cushy, memory foam bitch that replaced you. This way your ghost can hover over her and laugh as she gets trampled to pieces just like you did.

Ah, what a joyous life we lead.
From Cryptocurrency Platform to your Bank Account
Tags: Videos, Cryptocurrency

To achieve beyond brevity in all we deliver. Delivering compact information in a concise and understandable form by eliminating all useless information.

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We’re sailing!
By: Range Labs
Tags: Sailing, Startup, we’re hiring, Team Building

Range turned 1-year old. Here’s why we took a day to celebrate.

Celebrating as a team is incredibly important. But as a young company, it’s hard to know when you should take a moment to honor hard work. Progress comes unexpectedly in fits and starts. And nearly every big accomplishment is tempered by an ever growing list of more stuff that needs to get done.

It’s tempting to get pulled into the grind, and never celebrate at all. But that’s a recipe for burn out.

So we decided to take Range’s 1-year birthday as a milestone to celebrate with our team and signifiant others. Remembering back a year ago, all we had was a dream and a pitch deck. Today we’ve built a happy high-functioning team and a product that is already helping other teams work better together.

We know there’s a long journey ahead. In the meantime, here’s some memories from our much shorter journey under the Golden Gate Bridge and back.
by Martino Pietropoli
By: Martino Pietropoli
Tags: Inktober, Humor, Moon, Saturday

First thing in the morning: a glass of water and a cartoon by The Fluxus.

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Would a Death Penalty for Poachers Stop Poachers Killing Elephants?
By: Paul Abela
Tags: Wildlife, Morality, Problem Solving, Poaching, Environment

Would a Death Penalty for Poachers Stop Poachers Killing Elephants?

We need a solution before elephants become extinct

Every day, poachers kill 100 African elephants for their ivory, meat and body parts. If this killing spree continues the African elephant will be extinct in the wild by 2030.

Never again would magnificent elephants like Satao walk the African Savannah. Satao was a ‘tusker’, a rare elephant with tusks estimated to weigh 100 pounds (45 kg) each and stretching 2m to the ground. Satao’s magnificence made him vulnerable. While the majority would look upon him in wonderment, others saw a valuable prize. Due to the value of his tusks, Satao was murdered by poachers.

The killing of elephants represents human greed. For some, elephant tusks are more valuable than the living elephant. But we can’t live on Earth by ourselves. We depend on biodiversity for our own survival. Saving elephants in the wild will represent a turning point in how we view animal species and our role in preserving and sustaining nature, not destroying it.

The current punishment for poaching elephants is a life sentence or a fine of $200,000. Last year, it was reported Najib Balala, Kenya’s tourism and wildlife minister was planning to fast track a law that would make poaching a crime punishable by death. It turned out this story wasn’t true and there are no plans to introduce a death penalty.

But, with elephant numbers plummeting, it’s worth asking the question. If Kenya introduced a death penalty for poaching, would it stop the murder of elephants?
Why I’m Okay Knowing My Friends Don’t Read My Articles
By: Lindsey, Lazarte
Tags: Self, Writing Life, Life, Advice, Writing

I used to pass along nearly every rough draft of my articles to my family and friends so that they can read it all before I published or submitted them.

I figured if they liked it, then other people would like it to too, right?

And I figured that they would give me their honest opinion because they wouldn’t be afraid to hurt my feelings since they’re close to me.

But, whenever I passed it onto them, then I’d have to wait for them to actually read it and give me their feedback which sometimes took a little longer than anticipated.

After all, they have lives too.
the air around me still feels like a cage
Tags: Pain, Destruction, Poetry, Love

It’s been three years, and I can’t fall asleep without a little help.

You sang ballads like lullabies and I never forgot how your hands were always so careful. You were rain and the sound of the door closing. You were broken bones and broken promises and broken mind and you never let me hold it all in my palms. You were the poetry you never wrote, I never read, we never shared. You were the hurricanes you kept inside you, with your fingertips ever so slightly electrifying. You were the colourless skies, drowning in greyscale seas. We were capsizing boats and free-falling bodies, so nonchalant of our bruises. We were the Memphis blues, in song and in gazes; we were music in silent places.

You pulled me out of fake eternities and we ran spirals into sorrow and the walls were echoes of every word we never meant. Clawing at innocence, haunting peripheral vision, running away. You snuffed your thirst for arson on my skin. I don’t know what I bled for — your impromptu whims or everything that you killed in me. But you were searching touch in dim lights and grim sights. You were strength in arms and fear in eyes.

You were cowardice and ambiguity and callous and doom and conceit and hope and accusations and pretense and delusion and insecurity and denial and gone and you were gone you were gone and every ceiling screams lies at me and you were gone you were always fucking gone.

You crumbled at my feet. You were all the lives kept out of my reach.

I was lost and found, you were infinite.
Eurovision Voting Patterns: Visualize 40 Years of Data
By: Alice Corona
Tags: Eurovision Song Contest, Data, Data Journalism

Every year, critics flood over the voting at the Eurovision Song Contest. In fact, it often seems more than a music contest. According to many, it’s rather a political display of national alliances. The current voting system was set up in 1975. There’s a jury formed by members from each participating country. And the judges rank and assign points to the other participants.

In a 2006 paper, Derek Gatherer crunched the numbers behind the 2001–2005 editions. Indeed, his data analysis revealed the presence of regional bloc voting patterns. But then other issues arised. What are Eurovision alliances made out of? Is it geographical proximity? Political influences? Immigration patterns? Or other cultural motivations? I decided to have a look at all the data since 1975, scrupulously collected in this amazing website.

Here are some first insights:
What Are The Various Stages In IoT Prototyping?
By: Amit Ashwini
Tags: Internet of Things, IoT, Product Development, Software Development, Prototyping

The different stages of IoT prototyping:

If you’re ready to work on the IoT prototyping path, here are some tips to help you through the different stages:

1. Begin with the toughest problem. It’s vital to hone in on your product’s riskiest assumptions when prototyping your IoT product. For instance, if your biggest worry is how you’ll get mobile devices to speak with your product, that’s the task your first prototype should be focusing on. This will force you to make major product decisions upfront rather than months into the development cycle. At this point, you’ve probably spent tens of thousands developing a faulty product.

2. It’s time to start building once you’ve decided which problems your prototype will address. That means deciding on which technologies you’ll use to build the product, and this is a big decision. Do keep in mind that this will require some experimentation. You’ll likely research, develop, and end up throw away code during the process. It will seem like hitting your head against a wall, but channel that inner Tesla. And remind yourself that not failing, you’re discovering what technologies won’t work for your product. But go through it all, try and use basic components for your prototype. You can always upgrade later.

3. Once you’ve figured out what problems you want to solve and which technologies you’ll use to solve them, it’s time to start building. This will prove to be the most exciting stage of the entire prototyping process. Start building early, and power through the hiccups. Use this prototyping stage to architect a way to bring your costs down in the long-term.

4. Now that you have your IoT prototype up and running, get ready to iron out the remaining issues. The bugs could be software-related, as in unstable code or broken features, or they could be hardware-related, be it a flickering screen or a weak connection point. This stage of prototyping, which is typically seen as the last 20 percent, often ends up housing 80 percent of the struggle in product development.

It’s always exciting watching a product come together. But as the deadlines loom and unforeseen fiascos crop up, you are bound to feel frustrated. Some features take longer than expected to develop, user interfaces require tweaking, and the hardware needs polishing. If you’ve reached the troubleshooting stage and are frustrated, don’t settle. You’ve made it this far and your working prototype is right around the corner.

Conclusion:

IoT growth today is driven by the declining price of public APIs, sensors, and the evident advantages of using connected solutions for business purposes. Even so, the process of building IoT hardware and software is riddled with certain challenges like project delays, technology limitations, and cost overruns. But you see, it’s all worth it in the end. After all, the product you’re building is at the cutting edge of technology, one major brands like SAP and Microsoft are working on themselves. Get prototyping now to join the race.
Blogger Hacked to Death
By: News Feather
Tags: Murder, Islam, News

Behind the Headlines

Current affairs that goes beyond the mainstream
The Bazaar of Regrets
By: Maitreya Thakur
Tags: Fiction, Thoughts, Fiction Writing, Play

The Bazaar of Regrets

A scene

Photo by Ben Mater on Unsplash

The curtain rises and two people are seen outside a pub on a balmy summer evening; the dying rays of the setting sun rests over their shoulders.

“There are two types of people in the world. Those who live with regrets, and those who live without regrets.”

“Ok…so which one are you?”

“Which one do you think?”

“I don’t have a clue. How would I know? “

“Have a guess. Go on.”

“You’re someone with regrets?! I imagine that’s most people?”

“With regrets? Are you serious?”

“Yeah…why? You almost…almost look insulted.”

“Is that the impression I give you? That I live with tonnes of regrets?”

“Well I don’t know about tonnes of regrets, but you must…you must have some regrets?”

“I have no regrets. None whatsoever. I don’t believe in it.”

“Well…you don’t have to believe in having regrets. It’s not a question of belief. You either have regrets or you don’t.”

“And I don’t. It’s a complete waste of time thinking about what could have been.”

“It is. I’m not denying it but…but it’s not really within our control, is it? It’s not something we consciously choose to either have or avoid. Don’t you think?”

“It’s a matter of attitude. Have your regrets ever brought you anything but misery?”

“That’s not the point -”

“Why not?”

“I will tell you why -”

“I’m keen to hear this.”

“I will tell you why. It’s not what they bring you. It’s what they…it’s what they say about you. If you don’t have any regrets, then have you really been torn about anything, ever?”

“Yes. But I leave that in the past. That period of being torn about something is over, so why think over it again and again?”

“Because your life could have gone down a different route, perhaps a better route. And it’s quite natural to think about what could have been.”

“What could have been, could have been. I want nothing to do with what could have been today. It is what it is.”

“Fair enough. But anyway, one last point from me — you’re young, you’ll come to have regrets one day. This world is a bazaar of regrets.”

“Well, well, well…I know I certainly will regret it if we don’t have another drink tonight.”

“Hah — that’s true. I’ll get it.”

Curtain
The Moonlighting Assassin
By: Josh Petersen
Tags: Storytelling, Short Fiction, Short Story, Microfiction, Fiction

The Moonlighting Assassin

Micro-fiction

Hidden by the darkness of night she fired off a single bullet.

Instantly the crooked politician fell to the floor.

Quickly, she packed up her equipment and left.
Facebook and Joe Biden: it’s complicated…
By: Enrique Dans
Tags: Trump, Donald Trump, Facebook, Joe Biden, Fake News

IMAGE: Joe Biden campaign

When Joe Biden moves into the White House next January, important changes could soon follow at Facebook, a social network that over the past few years has become the echo chamber of Republican radicals, repeatedly used for disinformation campaigns; Facebook, in addition to doing nothing to try to prevent this, has actively ignored its own rules on this misuse, especially during the run-up to the elections.

During the campaign, Facebook was used to spread disinformation and fake news even more actively than in 2016. Joe Biden’s office created its own campaign, including a Twitter hashtag, to call on the company to change its policies, highlighting Facebook’s willingness to play a key role in treating Donald Trump much more favorably than Joe Biden during this crucial period: right up to the final, strategic week of the campaign, Joe Biden’s office noted how thousands of its ads were systematically blocked and removed, and that Mark Zuckerberg’s brainchild was charging a significantly higher price for its campaigns than it was for Donald Trump’s.

Throughout the campaign, Joe Biden’s office repeatedly exposed this to Facebook, whilst the company was, in the meantime, just discreetly labeling some news stories as potentially fake.

Now, it turns out that Facebook has aroused the ire of ultraconservatives: last-minute measures to avoid spreading potentially dangerous information that could incite violence have angered Trump’s followers, many of whom have abandoned the platform and instead taken their “Stop the steal” campaign to Parler, a small network similar to Twitter that boasts of its neutrality, and that since election day has been downloaded more than a million times, sending it to the top of the app stores hit parade.

The big tech companies, and Silicon Valley in general, saw a Biden victory as the best outcome (any candidate other than Trump was good). But for Facebook, the soon-to-be occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, who has seen his campaign battered and has experienced the damage that misinformation can do it may not be the best news. He’s unlikely to take a visibly aggressive approach — nothing like Trump’s crude tweets and tantrums — but instead opt for actions aimed, for example, at modifying or removing such an essential part of the internet as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which enshrines the immunity of online platforms from liability for material posted by their users.

Yesterday, a Facebook campaign manager said on Twitter that the company has been a problem throughout the campaign, that it was still a problem, and that it is “shredding the fabric of our democracy.”

It will be interesting to see how the post-Trump future shapes up for Facebook.
Morning Rituals: Are They Really Worth it?
By: Geraint Clarke
Tags: Wellness, Mindfulness, Leadership, Philosophy, Psychology

Morning Rituals: Are They Really Worth it?

Unlocking productivity through mimicking others

Photo by Emma Simpson on Unsplash

Morning rituals are seen as transformative and we can’t help but want to copy what high-performing individuals do. Fasting, oil pulling, yoga before breakfast… Everyone’s morning seems to be unique — like their own little secret.

Maybe if we replicate the steps of people we admire, we can replicate their success? Wrong.

Productivity, I’ve learned, is a choice. An internal desire to want to do something, so you do.

Waking up at 5 am isn’t going to get you the tens of millions of dollars that Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson has, but it may give you more time to be productive.

The choice of how you spend that extra time is yours. Some people squander it, some people don’t.

These rituals by themselves hold no power, but instead, serve as anchors towards a much higher goal. It insists on harsher prioritisation of tasks because your ritual demands you’re in a certain place at a certain time.

This means morning rituals themselves don’t hold any productive energy, but the opportunity they create is for less procrastination.
ARK Recently Attended ToFinance Student Conference in Romania
By: Rok Černec
Tags: Open Source, Students, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Conference

ARK Co-Founder Stefan Neagu, recently attended and was a panelist at ToFinance student conference in Romania held on March 5th 2018. It was organized by ASER, a Romanian student organizational group.

The ToFinance student project was intended to introduce students to the financial and banking industry. While also facilitating new learning opportunities and supporting professional development in the financial sector through stages specifically designed for students.
Try Golang! GoでJavaライクにStringを扱おうとしたら、、
Tags: Golang, Pointer, Veltra, Json, 日本語

Engineer who likes travel, simple code, and something new

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ActiveBas — Reducing The Carbon Footprint Of Buildings
By: Jeff Piltch
Tags: Startup, Real Estate, Energy, Green Energy, Energy Efficiency

ActiveBas — Reducing The Carbon Footprint Of Buildings

Dedicated to increasing energy efficiency while helping buildings save millions on energy expenses annually.

The Problem

By 2030, there will be a greater shift in energy code enforcement, like Local Law 97 in NYC, which forces owners to reduce energy consumption to confront the threat of climate change. Many landlords are not prepared for this, and there will be financial penalties for those that don’t meet the standards. Current solutions to manage this are often not cost effective and require significant knowledge to implement.

What The Company Does

ActiveBAS works with landlords to deliver a data-driven energy model that will improve building system control around energy management and source, while also recommending the best equipment. The recommendations will be based on a particular building’s situation, and will facilitate energy project analysis, automate the reduction of operating costs, and ultimately help reduce carbon emission footprints.

Business Model

ActiveBAS charges per square foot for it’s product, while taking part in shared energy savings and selling energy projects.

Traction

ActiveBas has a mature product, case study, and one paying customer, according to the team as of late October 2020.

Founding Team Background

Co-founder and CEO Roi Yosef is a three-time entrepreneur. Having experienced the pain and frustrations that many business owners encounter in managing their energy infrastructure and equipment needs, Roi’s light bulb idea to create a cloud-based, real-time, 24–7 energy optimization ecosystem laid the foundation for ActiveBAS’s vision to redefine energy optimization for a new generation. Fellow Co-Founder and VP of Sales, Jon Zelinsky, is a proven leader with more than a decade of experience building and leading successful sales organizations of all sizes — from early-stage startups to global, growth-stage businesses. Amir Kaufman is the chief product officer and Eduard Rudick is the VP of engineering.

What They Need Help With

The team is open to meeting potential customers, investors and advisors. Connect with the ActiveBAS team.

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How to build a news bot on Twitter with Node.js and PostgreSQL
By: Sean Hs
Tags: Nodejs, Project Management, Twitter, Software Development, Bots

Introduction

We are going to create a bot which can collect the tweets from specific accounts and retweet them on the Twitter-feed. It will follow new followers and retweet tweets on the Twitter-feed.

We’ll have the following topics in this article.
The Naked Truth
By: Kittie Phoenix
Tags: Future, Poetry, The Emperors New Clothes, Nudity

The Naked Truth

AKA The Emperor Doesn’t Care, But Should We?

Author’s Note: I sometimes have lines that stick with me long after I’ve read them. They swirl in my mind until some pattern is achieved, and something tumbles out. This piece is written in response to the last line of “The Emperor Doesn’t Care That He’s Naked,” by Holly Wood, PhD.

Crown, from Public Domain Images

The emperor may not care that he’s naked.

His people may be too embarrassed to admit that he’s naked.

But the children all know the truth.

Truth must always be free to fly away.

For the sake of our future children we must abandon our pretensions about whether or not the emperor should care that he’s naked and focus on the fact that he is naked.

It is what it is and we must face what is.
What’s New on Dcrypt
By: Patrick Depippo
Tags: Trading, Bitcoin, Finance, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency

What’s New on Dcrypt

BitMEX, looks, research and more

Over the past few months, we’ve been working on a ton of new features to make Dcrypt even better. Here are the latest additions to the platform:

BitMEX Trading

As the markets went down, BitMEX volume went up. We received tons of requests to add the ability to short and trade with leverage. Now you can link your BitMEX account with API Keys and instantly start trading.

UI Overhaul

We’ve made some big changes to the overall look and feel of the platform. Not only does this give the platform a more professional look, but we’ve added additional visuals and a refreshed color palette, so information is easier to digest.

More Research Tools

To help you better understand the crypto markets, we’ve added more news topics, and refined the accuracy of our entity recognition. Hundreds of headlines are ingested each day and tagged for relevant topics and assets.

If you haven’t already, you can sign up for a free 30 day trial here: https://dcrypt.io/register. We hope you enjoy these updates — look out for more features in the coming months!
Why Women Fake Orgasms
By: Kaye Smith Phd
Tags: Women, Gender Equality, Sex, Desire, Feminism

Many years ago, my BFF at the time and I had a frank (and odd) conversation in a smoke-filled bar with a guy we had just met. Somehow, we got on the subject of faked orgasms, and he casually admitted that HE had faked it before (yep, dudes do it too !).

I said I hadn’t (which was true). When I made that statement, the guy told me with a lift of his eyebrow and a snarky smile on his face that he obviously “ was a much nicer person than me!”

I was surprised by his comment but figured that said more about him than me. Meanwhile, my BFF, whose lips were loosened by rum and coke, boasted she could fake an orgasm that would put Meg Ryan’s to shame.

I was familiar with her story. She had been married, divorced and had gone through childbirth before she ever had an orgasm. And she had faked every single one of them with her controlling and abusive husband.
ICO Review — 5 reasons why 4th PILLAR should be the future of HR industry
Tags: Human Resources, Dlt, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Ico Review

3. An experienced team

The team consists of thirty people: twenty core team members (including five founders) and a dozen Advisors. 4th PILLAR does not consider itself as a startup because of the experience of its team members. The founders have extensive knowledge of this global industry.

Aleš Žižmund (CEO) has an MBA and more than 20 years of experience in business and IT development. He has worked in large companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Cisco and Oracle and has solid experience as a director, executive director or CEO.

Tali Rezun (Founder), has been an entrepreneur for 22 years and was for 7 years the CEO of Naton HR. He has just completed a Ph.D. in business specializing in online branding, SEO and social media marketing.

Dusan Lazar (Co-Founder and COO), has more than 25 years of experience in various fields and different positions as CEO, CFO or COO. A seasoned entrepreneur, he has created, directed and advised numerous startups. He is the founder of Naton HR and WS, one of the largest HR agencies in Europe.

Roman Dobrina (Co-Founder and CFO) has many years of experience as a manager or CFO with six years experience as a CFO at Naton HR.

Jaka Gornik (Co-Founder and CMO), has more than 25 years of experience. He first started his professional life in marketing before becoming an out-of-the-box solution manager for many international companies. He decided to bring his marketing skills to the blockchain business development department.

The rest of the team is made up of programming specialists, some of them in Blockchain and smarts contracts, technical experts, designers, …

Advisors, the profiles are very varied which constitutes a solid team. There are Blockchain specialists, entrepreneurs, marketers and investment funders.

Note that to ensure the legal basis of the projects, 4th PILLAR has partnered with Jadek & Pensa, a law firm specialized in DLT technology.
Stop Grasping for a Diagnosis.
By: David Liira
Tags: Wellness, Health, Lifestyle, Education, Running

As the technology for imaging has improved over the years, our ability to see the internal parts of our bodies in great detail has improved. In the management of most low back pain, the detail with which we can see the structures of the spine has turned out to be a curse. The reason for this is because there is not a strong cause and effect relationship between what is seen on imaging and the patient’s symptoms.

Now the unfortunate thing with most people in the medical profession nowadays, is that they do not read this type of research. Because of this, imaging is ordered way too early and way too often with the belief that we will be able to find the exact cause of a person’s symptoms.

Treatments, whether it be medication, injections, or surgery are then recommended to “correct” something that is likely not the cause of the problem. The other negative to this type of approach to “diagnosing” the cause of low back pain, is that now you have a label.

The reality is, bulging discs are the equivalent to wrinkles on the face. As we age, our body changes naturally.

Researchers are now saying that these things we see in the spine as we get older are basically “grey hairs on the inside.” We would not expect that we would have head pain because our hair is turning grey (or in my case falling out), so we should not expect that just because a spine shows some age-related changes that we should have pain!

Once the patient gets a hold of an image or diagnosis, the damage has been done. This shiny new label can lead to a spiral of fear, shame, avoidance behavior, and ultimately the dependence on pharmaceuticals or invasive interventions.
i am tired
By: Francis Pedraza
Tags: Psychology, Creativity, Poetry, Writing, Expression

i am tired right now as i write this

but i want to write at least once a day

don’t edit, don’t filter, don’t delete and don’t slow down

but when you are tired, your brain slows down

and it kind of hurts to think

but mostly it hurts to think of how badly you write

when your brain slows down

you look like a clown

and the audience frowns

so even now, after all of this work to be brave

after making my writing lowercase and throwing out all grammar rules

after coming to terms with being disliked and being imperfect

something sneaky inside of myself still wants to be stylish

still wants to publish only when i am at my best

and only say the best, and make the best arguments

quality must be sacrificed at the alter to quantity

if i truly believed that all words are good words

then i would stop this sacrilige

and just make noise

then look!

look at the noise i have made

and be amazed at the meanings contained

in the morning when a fresh and active mind

considers well the ravings of a midnight lunatic
Relatable
By: Mick Champayne
Tags: Life, Intersectionality, Growing Up

👯

I finally am beginning to understand the importance in finding content that’s relatable or a mirror of your own experience. Lately I’ve been seeking out stories of similar experiences to my own to help me navigate emotions and feelings I’m having. Which I’m a little embarrassed to admit, but it’s a first in my life for me. Looking back growing up, I often found solace in stories that let me escape or daydream, or just live another life, and I never really questioned why I did that. Nowadays I find myself googling or looking up podcasts about the subjects I’m struggling with, dying to hear how others have navigated these problems.

It’s also helping me connect the dots of how important it is for all walks of life to be reflected back to us, and not just the white, male, heteronormative perspective that dominates 95% of our culture. We saw “Wonder Woman” last weekend, and I caught myself tearing up thinking about how amazing it is that there will be a strong superhero (who happens to be female) for a new generation to look up to. I also sat in a Brave Space discussion at work featuring an Asian transwoman telling her story, and she really drove it home about how when she was younger, the only role model she had was Jackie Chan 😳 (or Lucy Liu—you can tell who resonated more with). It all still feels like babysteps, and we still have work 👏 to 👏 do 👏 in regards to intersectionality, but it gives me a little hope.
CodeFest 2018
By: Adci Solutions
Tags: Conference, Web Development, Drupal

Our guys visited one of the biggest IT conferences in the Russian Federation — Codefest. It is held every year and always pleases with a big number of captivating and inspirational sessions and a warm-hearted atmosphere.This time wasn’t the exception.

There were 6 sections which touched upon different topics such as QA, Back end, Front end, Mobile, and Management.

At Codefest there were more than 2 000 people. It is hard to imagine the place where so many developers and designers could gather together, here in Russia. Our team members were there at the 6th time: met new people, got new knowledge and positive emotions.

Codefest amazes with the quality and a number of reports every year. This time you could listen to the speakers from Google, Twitter, Booking.com, Samsung, and many different Russian companies which you may have heard about — 2GIS, Vkontakte, Beeline, etc. It was really an outstanding opportunity to be on their sessions.

Our guys stayed under a great impression of the lectures’ level. Thanks to all Russian IT-community.

There was a lot of fabulous information but several sessions made the guys’ brains reel.

For example, they learned about Web view and its opportunities, the speaker from Samsung told about Intersection Observer (we all will definitely hear about this tool in the future), also, there was the discussion about React.js and Vue.js pros and cons.

“A visit to Codefest always charges me with motivation to my work for the next months. The atmosphere of the event, people and sessions give this effect. So, knowledge is not only one reason why we go there”, — said Denis, team lead at ADCI Solutions.

But guys brought from Codefest not only knowledge. Free sticker packs, free T-shirts, free pens and other free stuff were there for all participants. Who would refuse the sweet gifts for memory? Nobody, of course.

At the end of the 2nd conference day, there was the blithesome party where you could speak with other developers, discuss sessions, have fun and dance!
String Rotation
Tags: Algorithms, Coding, Programming, Ruby, Coding Interviews

Problem

Assume you have a method isSubstring to check if one word is a substring of another. Given two strings s1 and s2, check if s2 is a rotation of s1 with only one call to isSubstring .

Questions

What constitutes a rotation?

Solutions

Create a temp string as a concatenation of string 1 and string 2. If str2 is a substring of the temp string, then str2 is a rotation of str1.

Temp = str1 + str2.

If str2.isSubstring(temp) return true and end.

isSubstring needs to constantly rotate characters from beginning to end at least the length of str1 times.

Code
Dreaming Wall
By: Heath ዟ
Tags: Trauma, PTSD, Poetry, Dreams, Heartbreak

Dreaming Wall

III. Marah

The Dreaming Wall,

malignant maze of memory,

malicious mirror

made sharp by missing pieces,

and marred by long moments

of miserable immuration.

My mutilated melody,

immersed in myopic innocence —

mostly stripped, now,

of love’s lying mistakes, made impure,

is motile and meandering

on minced feet and mingled smears

of carmine and crimson.

_

See Also: Dreaming Wall I “Sarsenet” and Dreaming Wall II “Pridian”
Christianity and Me
By: Edward Anderson
Tags: It Happened To Me, LGBTQ, Discrimination, Religion, Christianity

Christianity and Me

Religion doesn’t seem to want me.

Photo from Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Unsplash

When I was growing up, my father was (and still is) an atheist. My mother was raised in a Baptist church but she didn’t seem to believe much. Religion was not a big part of my childhood. At least it wasn’t at first.

Then my mother discovered she wouldn’t have to parent on Sunday mornings if she sent my sisters and me to Sunday school. The church sent a van to pick up those kids who wouldn’t be able to get to church otherwise. My introduction to God was amazing.

It seemed hard to believe such a benevolent God existed. According to the teachings of my Sunday School teacher, God loved everyone no matter what. Even the sinners could be forgiven if they just prayed. Slowly, I settled into religion and enjoyed it a lot.

Then something started happening. As I started listening to more sermons, the less love I felt. The pastor would talk of God hating homosexuals, but somehow he was fine with those committing adultery and murder. Go figure. The more I heard, the less I believed.
Having a growth mindset as a Designer
By: Kasinatha Rao
Tags: Growth, Workplace, UX, Design, Productivity

Its been about a year since I started working at Atlassian. And, it took me almost a decade to meet a design manager I’d finally call, my most favorite!

Ash Sterzenbach (who now no longer works at our organization) is some one who is super passionate about her practice, genuinely cares about the team, is kick-ass at her craft, used to be a brilliant IC (Individual Contributor) during her early days and most importantly, knows her sh*t! Her rock-solid people processes and frameworks have ensured predictability, kept a check on surprises, and empowered individuals within the team to grow as per their aspirations and motivations whilst achieving the company’s objectives and outcomes.

One of the most important things I’ve learnt from Ash and my workplace over the past year is the need for designers to have a ‘growth mindset’. Especially for a field such as ours that demands exceptional analytical, creative and tactical skills, shouldn’t every day be about growth and constant learning?

Why should Promotions, Performance bonuses and Year-end appraisals be the only factors that define whether or not a person is growing professionally?

Here are some of those practices I believe have helped me become a better designer whilst tracking my strengths and weaknesses, and constantly keeping a check on that imposter syndrome.

1. Having regular 1:1s with your Design manager

Mutual respect and trust is what makes any relationship work. And, 1:1s are a good starting point for Reports and Managers to get to know each other better. Ideally, this is something a good leader earns from their subordinates over the course of time. But, lets face it..

Not every manager is a good leader.

Nevertheless, setting up a 30minute weekly sync (or fortnightly) is crucial. The goal here shouldn’t just be about project updates and clients, but instead, it needs to be a slot that is devoted towards talking about ‘You’. Yes, you read that right! Eventually, you would realize that your conversations are becoming a lot more honest where you can openly share your vulnerabilities, blockers that are preventing you, personal issues that you are battling with as you continue to deliver your projects and so on. Let your manager know how important these sessions are to you and make the maximum out of the opportunity.
Flutter TextTheme with less Boilerplate code
By: Michel Feinstein
Tags: Flutter, Coding, Programming, Apps, Software Development

A simple library for getting the Theme’s TextTheme with less boilerplate code.

Photo by Roman Synkevych on Unsplash

I don’t know about you but I got tired of the traditional:

Theme.of(context).textTheme

So I built a very simple extension to simplify it to:

context.textTheme

An example usage would be:

Enjoy and grab it here if you want:
One-Third of GoFundMe Donations Go Toward US Medical Bills
By: Llowell Williams
Tags: Healthcare, Health, Politics, Income Inequality, Crowdfunding

It’s no secret that, even with the Affordable Care Act, many still find themselves coming up short for medical treatment. Sadly, an enormous number of people have increasingly turned to online crowdfunding campaigns to bridge this gap.

Originally intended to offer a novel new way to fund independent projects — such as films or music — GoFundMe has become a major platform for desperate Americans, since opening in 2010. According to CEO Rob Solomon, one-third of all donations made through GoFundMe end up going toward funding a variety of health-related expenses.

“We weren’t ever set up to be a health care company and we still are not,” Solomon explained to CBS Moneywatch. Though not GoFundMe’s original intent, this shift has been undeniable. An average of 250,000 different funding campaigns are created every year, collectively bringing in $650 million annually.

The number of Americans with health care coverage has been plummeting recently. According to a recent Gallup poll, uninsured numbers are at a four-year high, growing by 7 million people since 2016.

Why is this? Despite Republican efforts, the Affordable Care Act and its Medicaid expansions have largely endured. However, that hasn’t prevented a variety of state-level measures from hamstringing enrollment efforts, such as shortened open enrollment periods and reduced public awareness campaigns about enrollment. A number of private insurers have also bowed out of Medicaid participation, unwilling to provide reasonably priced coverage.

While many of these campaigns seek to aid Americans without health care coverage, some are supporting people whose insurance has been unable to cover their needs. Often, an insured individual is simply unable to cover their deductible — the amount of money that must be paid out-of-pocket before insurance covers the rest.

Given that 40 percent of Americans today are a single paycheck away from poverty, the ability to pay an often steep deductible on short notice is out of reach for millions. As such, is it truly any wonder many thousands of desperate Americans are turning to online crowdfunding to beg for help with paying their medical bills?

Originally published at Care2.com on Feb. 4, 2019.