title
stringlengths 1
200
⌀ | text
stringlengths 10
100k
| url
stringlengths 32
885
| authors
stringlengths 2
392
| timestamp
stringlengths 19
32
⌀ | tags
stringlengths 6
263
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Spiritual Facts About The Existence of God.. | The existence of God is an eternal philosophical question that mankind has sought to answer since its inception. Many people hold the conviction that religion and God do exist and consider God as the Almighty power and the Creator of the world. In comparison, others think that there is no higher being called God.
Those who believe that God does not exist prove it to be the fact with the argument that ‘God cannot be seen and hence God is not present.’
But the believers of God ask a counter-question to nullify this argument that,
‘How do you understand that you cannot see God? Can you see that understanding of yours? No. So would it be right to say that since you cannot see your understanding, your understanding does not exist?”
Thus, it is not necessary that what cannot be seen does not exist.
Now, before we set out to prove whether or not God exists, we must know what is God.
The Enlightened being, has an in-depth spiritual knowledge of everything that exists in the world and therefore provides us with the answer.
Every living being has a Soul (aatma) within him, and this Soul itself is God (Parmatma).
Therefore, God is in every creature, whether visible or invisible. God is present within all living beings i.e. trees, plants, flowers, insects, animals or humans. A lily, a snail, an ant, a butterfly, an elephant, a man or a woman — every living entity from one sense to five senses has God within them. If God exists, only then can life exist.
God resides as energy in all living beings, and in the presence of this energy, every being grows. Eg. If we soak pulses in a wet cloth, it will grow. But if we soak a stone in a wet cloth and keep it for years together, will it grow? No. Things that do not have God within, can never grow, nor can they ever feel anything.
It is only in the presence of God that we can experience these feelings. Eg. If one tries to pick an ant, will it not run away in fear? This is because it can feel the hand coming to pick it. Whereas if we try to pick a table and even break it, the table will not run at all, because it is void of all feelings.
Wherever we see growth and feelings, we know that there is God within.The growth and feelings are the simplest and easiest proofs that suggest presence of God. In inanimate things, there is no God and therefore they do not grow, nor feel.
Through physical eyes we can see temporary and transient things i.e. the physical body on the outside. The eternal God residing inside can be seen only through divine eyes (divya chakshu), which are procured when one attains Self-realization. So, if one has not discovered the real Self, one does not truly understand who God is. Every human being has the ability to have the divine vision to be able to see God in all living beings. All that is required is the grace of Living Gnani from whom the knowledge of the Self can be acquired. | https://medium.com/dadabhagwan/spiritual-facts-about-the-existence-of-god-f6c4facc9172 | ['Dada Bhagwan'] | 2020-04-22 05:31:01.088000+00:00 | ['Religion', 'Religion And Spirituality', 'Enlightenment', 'God', 'Spiritual Growth'] |
How to protect yourself from a failure? | Today’s world can offer a lot of opportunities for everyone. If doing business in previous century was a truly rare option of a human being, nowadays more and more people choose to work for themselves. Local business sales are increasing, customers love your goods and services, and it is getting too cramped for you to functionate? Let’s go international! But first it is strongly recommended to learn more about your global colleagues. Why, you ask?
Image by jessica45 from Pixabay
SMELLS LIKE MISTAKES…
Imagine that all of a sudden you get a phone call from your employee who’s responsible for the department of collaboration with Japan and he needs you to represent a company for two business partners from Japan instead of him as he’s feeling very sick. You know nothing about that country, palms start to sweat, an atmosphere around you is getting hotter every second. You decide to use your kindness and friendliness which means looking as usual and wanting to share your frankness you welcome Japanese colleagues with kisses on both cheeks, take them to your favorite pub and offer them a beer and a beef hamburger. And……. now you are sure that you are never going to see them again.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
DISCOVER VARIOUS CULTURES
Understanding which manners are acceptable when making global relations is a must for all businesspeople. There are such different cultures around the world, that some things may contradict your beliefs but once you’ve started international communication you have to accept everything and try to keep your attitude as professional as possible. Before meeting your business partners, it is worth it to the time to research and find out as many details about their home country as you can, to ensure your best performance. Is it acceptable to be late, should you shake a hand or bow down, chit-chat first or go straight to the point, what is the best to eat for a business lunch, these and many other questions should be reconsidered until you’re going to feel confident enough to welcome new colleagues. Otherwise, your fellowship may face a sad ending as in the case with Japanese partners mentioned before.
READY, STEADY, IMPRESS!
Although, no matter which country you do business with, it is essential to understand that people are quick to judge. Sometimes you might encounter situations with no time for preparation. For that reason, good first impression is number one concern. Believe it or not but it takes only a tenth of a second to make a first impression about a complete stranger. From the perspective of neuroscience two brain parts which have the biggest influence of that fast process are amygdala and PCC (the posterior cingulate cortex). First helps to establish the reliability and whether the object is dangerous or not. The subsequent one manages decision making and evaluates rewards we could possibly gain. A lot of details for such a short amount time! Hence, think twice before doing something in front of your business companions because there will never be a second chance to make a great first impression.
Image by Tumisu from Pixabay
FIVE SPECIAL TRICKS TO MAKE A GREAT FIRST IMPRESSION:
So, the question is what you need to focus on in order to present the best version of yourself. Here are some simple tips which will be valuable for a good first impression in your business meetings:
1. DRESS RESPECTIVELY
For all occasions it is a must to look neat and clean. Make sure that you match your outfit with the dress code you and your business partner set on. If there is no such agreement dress formal and not provocatively. If you are a female, try to avoid bright lipstick or deep neckline. It could distract attention and be considered unethical. For both male and female it would be reasonable to avoid large pieces of jewelry, but small accessories could improve general image.
2. PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO YOUR BODY LANGUAGE
Stay comfortable but keep your posture straight, do not hunch. Crossed arms and legs reflect that you are closed off and do not trust your partner so try to refuse doing so. Hand gestures are acceptable, but it would be better to keep it more restrained. Try to stress less and decline all involuntary movements — finger tapping, leg shaking, etc.
3. CONTROL YOUR VOICE TONE
Talk as usual with the same intonation you are used to. Research of 2012 shows that people with lower-pitch voice are considered as more intelligent and trustworthy. So, do not let stress beat you by making high chicken sounds coming out of your mouth.
4. MAKE EYE CONTACT
It will demonstrate that you are self-assured, and you care what your colleague says. But do not make it awkward by keeping your glance too long. It is not a dominance fight.
5. SPEAK CONFIDENTLY
Even if you do not really know the answer to question, getting flustered is what you should avoid. Just tell your partner that you need to check information and you are definitely going to figure it out lately. | https://medium.com/business-fox/how-to-protect-yourself-from-a-failure-8bb6ffa1b1f6 | ['Business Fox'] | 2020-12-09 08:58:44.375000+00:00 | ['Partnerships', 'Etiquette', 'Culture', 'Business', 'Confidence'] |
İş Modeli Nedir? Kanvas İş Modeli Nasıl Hazırlanır? | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/bid%C3%BCnyai%CC%87%C3%A7erik/i%CC%87%C5%9F-modeli-nedir-kanvas-i%CC%87%C5%9F-modeli-nas%C4%B1l-haz%C4%B1rlan%C4%B1r-b7d08915daeb | ['Gökhan Akçay'] | 2020-12-15 18:09:31.029000+00:00 | ['İş', 'Canvas', 'Planning', 'Bi Dünya İçerik', 'Business'] |
Demystifying Java AWS Lambda handlers for API Gateway | I recently did a deep dive into writing Java based AWS Lambda functions for Amazon API Gateway payloads. Special thanks to Heeki Park for helping figure this out! Check out his Medium for awesome AWS tips. Here’s the things you should know and will save you time and headache:
You have two options for writing handlers written in Java. The related AWS docs are here. I found it really confusing so I’ll try to summarize. First, your class should implement one of these two interfaces:
[Option 1] com.amazonaws.services.lambda.runtime.RequestHandler
[Option 2] com.amazonaws.services.lambda.runtime.RequestStreamHandler
Option 1: RequestHandler
This is the simplest way to write your function. With this option, your handler class should implement RequestHandler and your handler method should have two parameters: the event and the context . For the event, use any POJO, Custom class, or an AWS provided class from the events library. The type for the event should match the input you expect your Lambda function to receive. It could be a string, JSON payload, integer/number, or Base64 encoded string.
API Gateway will always deliver a JSON payload to your function. This means you should use either a custom object or one of the provided classes from the events library.
If you are using REST APIs you should use the APIGatewayProxyRequestEvent type. This class is written to allow JSON in Payload Format 1.0 to serialize into the object. If you are using HTTP APIs you can choose the payload format to deliver to the Lambda function, either Payload 1.0 (legacy) or the newer 2.0 format. If you choose 2.0, you should use the APIGatewayV2HTTPEvent class. If you choose 1.0 then you should use APIGatewayProxyRequestEvent.
The class and method signatures should look like this for a Payload 2.0 configuration:
public class LambdaFunctionRequestHandler implements RequestHandler<APIGatewayV2HTTPEvent, APIGatewayV2HTTPResponse> public APIGatewayV2HTTPResponse handleRequest(APIGatewayV2HTTPEvent event, Context context)
Here’s a full example from my Github project:
Option 2: RequestStreamHandler
This option is a bit more complex — you have to programmatically parse the input as a stream and write a response to a different stream. With this option, your handler class should implement RequestStreamHandler and your method should have 3 parameters: an InputStream, an OutputStream, and the context. The class signature should look like this:
public class LambdaFunctionStreamHandler implements RequestStreamHandler public void handleRequest(InputStream input, OutputStream output, Context context)
Here’s a full working example from my Github that has both options for writing RequestHandlers.
Note you’ll need a few dependencies defined in your Maven POM file. These are:
com.google.code.gson
aws-lambda-java-events
aws-lambda-java-core
All available libraries for Lambda are documented here: | https://medium.com/@georgemao/demystifying-java-aws-lambda-handlers-for-api-gateway-c1e77b7e6a8d | ['George Mao'] | 2020-12-16 18:32:37.686000+00:00 | ['AWS', 'AWS Lambda', 'Api Gateway'] |
The Enormous Value of Vulnerability | We didn’t ask to be born. No one was consulted before being brought into existence. Let that thought sit with you for a second. One day, forces beyond ourselves decided that we would exist; we had no say in the matter.
Yet, here we are, still trying to make the best of it. Since day one, we’ve stumbled like big toddlers through unbelievable situations that have ultimately shaped who we are today — some truly enlivening, others terrifying. And many just, well, confusing. There was never a handbook any of us could follow that provided the answers we needed; we learned along the way, as everyone does.
But while we had no handbook, we did have some guide.
Social pressures are our reference guide, not our rulebook
We learned how to stumble through life “the right way” through social pressures that tell us to be practical with our finances, and ultimately to dream of buying a large, expensive house for our family.
And those that pressure women of all ages, sizes, and ethnicities to lose weight, almost as a default expectation.
And especially those we learned from our own family, like not to talk with food in your mouth, not to run around the house and “act crazy,” or not to discuss politics and finances in polite company.
Naturally, some of these pressures have positive effects, like teaching young children manners and the value of respect towards others. Others, of course, lead to unhealthy comparisons we make between ourselves and an idealized, often unrealistic way of life.
These social pressures are typically what keep our vulnerable selves out of public view, and ultimately, safe from its critique.
We’re all in this together
When you begin to realize that each of us experiences these social pressures in generally the same way, they start to lose their power over you.
I think of this as each of us walking around with an invisible little sweat bead along our foreheads, thinking, “Am I doing this right?” to everything we do, and “I hope they don’t discover the truth.”
But what is the truth?
It’s that you, like me, and everyone around us, have no idea what you’re really “supposed” to be doing.
You just don’t. You might know what numbers your boss needs from you today, or what to cook for dinner this weekend, but do you know if you’re in the right career? The right partnership? The right religion? Are you even performing or practicing these things correctly? Are you satisfied with your life’s relationships? What makes something “right” or “wrong,” anyway?
Everyone’s just wingin’ life day by day. And you know what?
That’s just fine. It really is.
But so many of these social pressures encourage us not to let anyone think that. They convince us that we need to put on a strong front, and appear somehow immune to the natural daily stressors of life. To be a leader at work must mean to have all the answers for your employees when of course, you won’t. To be a good parent means magically knowing how to treat every situation with your child with the perfect response it requires.
But… what?! What wild expectations! Are you seeing this?
That’s not how life works! We’ll never have all of the answers, or the knowledge of how to handle every situation perfectly. Every action we take is guided only by our best judgment, and at the end of it all, we’re just people. Our best judgment may be good, but it’s certainly not perfect.
Vulnerability
Every one of us makes choices, big or small, that we ultimately regret. That’s just inevitable.
Being vulnerable is recognizing this truth and accepting this flawed, very real part of ourselves. It’s letting not only ourselves but others, at times, see that we’re uncertain in life much of the time. Ultimately, vulnerability is about approaching that fact with kindness.
But a lifetime of socialization in a society of near-constant criticism makes this challenging for many of us. During the course of your life, your inner child has undoubtedly been embarrassed, ridiculed and even shunned by others countless times. What else could it have done but conform? | https://medium.com/@elainedolan001/what-is-this-life-were-living-in-what-is-any-of-this-c295bd094071 | ['Elaine Dolan'] | 2020-12-14 14:12:28.539000+00:00 | ['Self Acceptance', 'Vulnerability', 'Existentialism', 'Self Love'] |
Effective Feedback Criteria and Strategies | Effective Feedback Criteria and Strategies
Photo by PixelsAway on depositphotos
Clarifying Your Feedback Strategy
Clarifying your strategy now can help you feel prepared and confident as you give constructive feedback in the future. You can use the following three steps to help you clarify the constructive feedback strategy:
adopting an effective personal feedback style, meeting necessary feedback criteria, and using appropriate timing.
Adopting an effective personal feedback style
Your style is the way you conduct yourself as you provide feedback to others. Once you’ve adopted an effective style, you’re a step closer to giving constructive feedback in the workplace. The following are some of the elements of a desirable personal feedback style:
Being courteous — The assertive professional style and the constructive feedback strategy both rely heavily on courteous behavior. Your courtesy will put others at ease and foster their hearing the feedback you’re providing. Courtesy is essential to the constructive feedback strategy.
— The assertive professional style and the constructive feedback strategy both rely heavily on courteous behavior. Your courtesy will put others at ease and foster their hearing the feedback you’re providing. Courtesy is essential to the constructive feedback strategy. Being truthful — It’s essential to be truthful in the feedback you give others. In fact, feedback’s useless unless it is truthful. Your task is to provide the truth in a way that’s sensitive to others’ feelings while also getting the feedback message across to them.
— It’s essential to be truthful in the feedback you give others. In fact, feedback’s useless unless it is truthful. Your task is to provide the truth in a way that’s sensitive to others’ feelings while also getting the feedback message across to them. Being positive — Being positive is a useful component of this strategy. Your positive attitude can help others receive and act on the feedback you give them. Remember that your task is to be positive even when the feedback contains criticism.
You will feel more self-assured using the constructive feedback strategy after you’ve adopted an effective personal feedback style and grown accustomed to its use.
Meeting necessary feedback criteria
The necessary criteria for developing a constructive feedback strategy include:
Being specific — Recipients of vague, general statements just aren’t helped by such remarks. So be specific; reference known events, specific times, objective observations, and predictable outcomes.
— Recipients of vague, general statements just aren’t helped by such remarks. So be specific; reference known events, specific times, objective observations, and predictable outcomes. Being objective — This means dealing with observable facts and avoiding the distortion caused when personal feelings or prejudices are present. At times, this ideal can be difficult to achieve, but it’s a good goal to try to reach on a consistent basis.
— This means dealing with observable facts and avoiding the distortion caused when personal feelings or prejudices are present. At times, this ideal can be difficult to achieve, but it’s a good goal to try to reach on a consistent basis. Be descriptive — Always strive to be descriptive. This requires providing a context for presenting facts and observations. This approach allows you to put some life into a conversation that, otherwise, could be a sterile presentation.
Meeting these feedback criteria can help you remain focused on providing feedback that is useful and constructive.
Using appropriate timing
This means knowing the right time to give constructive feedback to someone in the workplace. Appropriate timing for providing constructive feedback can be as basic as determining the most convenient time of day or day of the week. Timing can also be important because of the way it affects project schedules or plans.
You can be successful at clarifying a constructive feedback strategy if you follow the three steps above.
Giving Positive Feedback
Most business professionals have provided feedback to someone. Of course, if you’re a supervisor, you’ve probably given feedback on numerous occasions. And, like other assertive business professionals, you’d like all feedback sessions to be productive and well-received.
The good news is that there are useful steps you can take to increase the likelihood of achieving a positive outcome from the feedback sessions you conduct with others in the workplace. These steps are
1. reviewing goals,
2. describing performance, and
3. reinforcing positive behaviour.
Reviewing goals
This can encompass someone’s personal goals in the workplace as well as goals resulting from a job assignment. A goals review provides a focus and enables you to set the stage for describing a person’s performance in pursuit of that goal.
If you are giving feedback to a subordinate, check at the start to ensure that both he and you clearly understand the goal that you’re discussing in your feedback. You want to reach mutual agreement because the goals are the basis for providing feedback on his actual performance in the workplace.
Beginning a feedback session with a review of goals lets you start in a positive way because goals are concrete and are accepted as a basis for performance assessments and feedback in the workplace.
Describing performance
You should describe the person’s actual performance in a way that’s objective and descriptive. For example, you might say, “I’ve observed that you’re good about meeting milestones and final deadlines.
That certainly helps others in the process to meet their deadlines too.” This approach enables you to maintain a positive tone throughout the performance review.
Reinforcing positive behavior
Your feedback should be designed to help others recognize what they’re doing well and how their actions or behaviors help the organization. Feedback then should encourage them to continue their positive behavior. This means the following:
Identifying action or behavior — When you tell others they’re doing well, be sure to identify those specific actions and behaviors that you think contribute to their success. When they recognize what’s beneficial, they’re much more likely to continue to exhibit those actions and behaviors in the workplace.
— When you tell others they’re doing well, be sure to identify those specific actions and behaviors that you think contribute to their success. When they recognize what’s beneficial, they’re much more likely to continue to exhibit those actions and behaviors in the workplace. Identifying impact on the organization — The positive feedback you provide others can be enhanced by stating specifically how their actions or behaviors help the organization achieve its goals. This is an excellent way to put their positive actions and behaviors in an actual context in the workplace.
You can use a positive feedback strategy to good effect in the workplace. You can foster others’ professional growth when you help them review their goals and performance and when your support reinforces their positive behavior. | https://medium.com/@sorin-dumitrascu/effective-feedback-criteria-and-strategies-394f99b76ef2 | ['Sorin Dumitrascu'] | 2020-12-09 15:02:36.062000+00:00 | ['Strategy', 'Leadership', 'Business', 'Feedback', 'Management'] |
Continuum | Photo by Axel Antas-Bergkvist on Unsplash
Contiguity
& release: the twin lines of
the lived human love
In response to the poetry prompt “release” by Deborah Christensen at House of Haiku
J.D. Harms 2019 | https://j-d-harmsworth.medium.com/continuum-279125fb0f82 | ['J.D. Harms'] | 2019-07-07 00:07:02.338000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Love', 'Haiku'] |
Letter to My Father | Letter to My Father
A free verse poem about forgiveness
The poet as a young girl
I kept the black and white photograph —
the sun was shining,
you in your bathing suit,
sitting on a blanket of summer grass,
holding three year old me —
I’m leaning away from you,
my face filled with distress,
my arms reaching for anyone but you.
the body speaks volumes
On every birthday I remember,
you told the story
of how you saved my life
when I was born.
In those moments, you smiled,
your face beaming
like the brightest of stars,
proud of having made me,
having saved me,
yet, I felt the shadow
of unspoken expectations.
I belonged to you
My childhood was
a jumble of confusion.
You guided our family
through the refugee years,
hard and hungry years.
When I was nearly six,
we flew in a silver plane
to the good life, to the land of plenty.
Your strong will and courage
brought us success,
but in the realm of tender family life,
you could find no peace,
breaking our spirits one by one.
Nothing could fill your empty cup
You tried to force what cannot be forced —
embracing me so tightly,
I felt I would choke.
If I squirmed, you squeezed harder,
if I turned to stone,
you called me worthless.
I feared you would devour me,
your appetite never stilled.
You broke my trust
You could be so brutal
with your words,
with your eyes,
brutal with your hands.
And sometimes you could be
as kind as a doe caring for her fawn.
When I was deathly ill at ten,
you were at my bedside day and night,
nursing me with such singular devotion,
but if I laughed too hard at dinner, or
spoke too excitedly with friends,
more than once,
I felt your cold steel stare
and that long-fingered hand
sting my innocent cheek.
You broke my heart
I wanted to believe in you
as children do,
wanted to trust you, to love you.
I never, ever felt safe
I forged a passive rebellion,
denying you what you wanted most:
my love, my devotion and admiration —
I felt fear, felt rage,
I wanted to flee,
but there was nowhere to run.
I became compliant,
invisible, never asking
or wanting anything from you.
It made no difference,
you took the key, unlocked my door,
you would find me,
I was yours.
It was monster love
On your deathbed,
you looked so weak, so small,
no longer able to speak or move.
The poison had drained from your soul.
I held your life in my hands,
the tables were turned —
yet,I could not say, “I forgive you.”
My heart was frozen
After your passing, I finally felt safe
to find meaning
amidst the legacy of fear
and confusion you left me.
I allowed compassion to enter —
understanding at last, that
you lived with a broken heart too.
Trying to heal it with force
was bound to fail.
I forgave you
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tonight, on this, your birthday,
twenty-five years after your death,
I stand among the dying flowers
thinking of your lost chances
for redemption.
I gaze at the full moon,
her kindly face,
ever-luminous in the dark sky.
She watches silently
with her perceptive smile,
as we humans struggle
to make sense of this life,
with its lessons in love,
in loss and forgiveness.
You came to me one night
from the cobwebs —
humbled and wizened,
sitting on the edge
of the bed, patting my knee,
gently and whispering sweetly,
“take care.”
Those were the most unselfish words
you ever said to me. | https://medium.com/scribe/letter-to-my-father-788e2cdbc4f7 | ['Nanette Schieron'] | 2020-11-13 14:58:43.084000+00:00 | ['Free Verse Poem', 'Poetry', 'Childhood Memories', 'Forgiveness', 'Poem'] |
My New Pandemic Hobbies | Similar to many people, I have been working from home since late March of 2020 (in case someone discover this post later). My professional side of life changed but not overly different. This is because my work could be easily converted to a remote setting — and if fact I personal enjoy not having to commute one hour each way to and from work. My personal side of life actually saw a bigger change because of many things I can no longer enjoy.
Photo by ricardorv30 on Pixabay
Out were the golf, craft beer tasing and local restaurant explorations. While golf courses have been open all this time, I decided not to golf because I am still a bit worry about the risks that are playing out in my head. This left me quite a bit of time during the weekends. And I needed to fine something else to do.
I know many people have turned to things such as baking or cooking to fill up the extra time. However, I simply do not have any interest in either skills. Therefore, I needed to pick something else. And watching many YouTube videos, I decided to become an internet content provider.
When I first told my wife this idea, she started to laugh really hard. I understood why she thought this was silly. I am not young, good looking, funny nor skillful with cameras — all the prerequisites to successful internet personalities. But I told myself that this would be that time to try something different. Something so different from my past experience so that I might learn something I wouldn’t otherwise have tried.
First thing I tried was YouTube. I put my iPhone on a tripod and filmed myself typing a way on a project I was working on. I then had to teach myself how to edit videos and add a music track to it. I even learned to create a thumbnail image. After that I uploaded the video to the new YouTube account I just registered. It was a simple and quick one-minute video but I was really proud of what I have accomplished. Anticipating that the video would fade into obscurity but it was surreal to come back a few days later to see that people actually watched the video — and I even got a thumbs-up for it. So far I have uploaded more than ten videos and have gotten more than a handful of subscribers. I am not qualified to be called a YouTuber but I sure am happy about the results so far.
Photo by Free-Photos on Pixabay
Next thing I attempted was creating a blog website. I bought a domain name, registered a hosting account and installed WordPress onto the site. About that time I also discovered Adsense — and I thought why not put some advertisement on my website like many sites did. After reading the application requirements, I started writing posts to fill the website with contents that Google would deem qualify for advertisement. This one proved to be challenging. I was rejected multiple times but a few months later I was able to receive an approval for the program. After more than twenty blog posts later I was really happy that I could actually accomplish this — and I have made a whopping one cent from the advertisement income.
I wished I had come upon this sooner — but I found out that I actually could have built my website on Google’s cloud computer platform for FREE. The process is actually very complicated and time consuming. However, for a free hosted website with WordPress backend, a few hours really were not bad at all. Since I already had a website, I used the Google platform to create another WordPress website to host a place where my friends and I could post silly things.
Feeling blissful about the the few new things I have tried so far, I next decided to try affiliate marketing — more specifically the one by Amazon. This method is actually an easier way to generate some money from a website. However, there is a 90-day probational condition and a certain number of sales transaction has to be recorded in order for the applicant to stay in the program. And this is where I needed to learn SEO really quickly to drive more traffic to my website. Luckily there were a lot of useful resources on the internet to help me with this seemingly foreign concept to me. I was able to increase the traffic to my website and fulfill the requirement to pass the probation with the affiliate program.
Photo by sanuas on Pixabay
The latest I have stumbled upon was Medium. Other than blogs and social media, I had no idea that there is such a place for people to write and share their thoughts or experiences. Generally I write pretty decent emails and reports so I think I could probably contribute to this writing platform. More importantly, I could also use this opportunity to improve upon my writing skills. This is my second entry into Medium and I hope to continue contributing.
Nine months into my haphazard “internet content creator” experience, I have to admit that I am pretty darn happy about what I have been able to accomplish. And having to spend a lot of weekend hours to come up with things to write or film, I do now understand the hard work famous people had to put into their daily lives. And believe me, to become successful is really hard.
Through these experiences I really had a lot of fun. And I am glad that I decided to try and learn these new things that have not done previously. I will continue to add more materials into the various new things and perhaps I will get better at them. | https://medium.com/@peanutgo/my-new-pandemic-hobbies-6019e5c6ec6 | ['Peanut Go'] | 2021-02-06 03:15:52.194000+00:00 | ['New Hobbies', 'Blogs', 'YouTube', 'Content Creator'] |
Are You Preparing for Your Life or Living It to the Fullest? | Over the weekend, my daughter called me out on my hesitancy to make a temporary move that I had been looking forward to. “What are you so concerned about?” she asked. “The stuff you leave behind is just stuff. You are doing this for the people in your life you need to be with.” She was right. But then I added that I wasn’t really prepared for this move. There were things to be done. Lists to be made. Boxes to be checked. Stuff to be researched. She asked when I would be prepared? Two weeks? A month? More? I realized what a powerful question she had asked. The truth is, nothing would have prepared me for this surprising opportunity I had in front of me. I wasn’t prepared. I wasn’t unprepared. I was simply hesitant to act and I had to get over it. Make the move. Figure it out from there.
I often see a pattern like mine when I coach. Maybe you’ve even experienced this yourself. You have an opportunity, an option — or sometimes a problem. Rather than act or make a move forward, you talk yourself into “preparing” or “getting ready” for whatever it is. This then morphs into a cycle of endless preparation. The preparing can involve any number of activities which have the deceptive nature of looking like important and valuable work. Sound familiar?
A couple examples: There are coaches I know who are always one certification away from going out and getting clients. They want to be sure they’re prepared. I have a hunch that no matter how many classes or certifications they have, they still won’t be quite prepared to create clients. I know individuals eager to make a social impact by starting a program or nonprofit. They need to watch one more inspiring documentary or webinar before creating what they want to see in the world. And for fundraisers, there are endless tools of preparation. Amp up the webinars, throw in virtual networking events, and all kinds of other learning opportunities and you could spend the rest of your career preparing to actually fundraise.
By the way, all of the above are very real examples of the challenge of our believing our thoughts vs. acknowledging truth. When we take a step back and reflect, we can own the fact that our thoughts — or perhaps a story that we’ve been telling ourselves — has gotten in the way of our growth and progress. Perhaps in a previous situation, we took a leap of faith and failed due to a very real lack of preparation. If this becomes our story, our label, and our thinking, we’ll often find ourselves stuck in preparation mode. If however, we can see the truth, this is a new situation with new variables, we can recognize the need or lack thereof for more preparing.
And please don’t misunderstand. I’m all for preparation when there’s a value to it. But all too often, I’ve seen activities like classwork and networking become the work instead of a resource to do the work. I also fully recognize that there are plenty of roles, events and opportunities we do in fact, need to seriously prepare for. For example, individuals that ascend to the senior levels of management often get there by learning their way to success. They do it by serving in a multitude of roles before reaching executive status. One more example (on a lighter note): As a committed runner, I wouldn’t suggest anyone tackle a marathon without the proper preparation. In fact, one aspect of running I love is the importance of preparation and creating a foundation on which to build on. You start where you are — maybe it’s 1, 3 or 5 miles. Then you go on to 10 to 12, 14, 16 miles and on it goes.
Here’s my main point: There are so many actions we can take Right Now that will make a difference in our lives as well as in the lives of those we love, serve and care about. And often, there is no magical preparation for them. There is just the service and the opportunity.
I’ll leave you with the question: Are you preparing for your life or living it to the fullest? | https://medium.com/less-stress-more-success/are-you-preparing-for-your-life-or-living-it-to-the-fullest-e4a72db779ba | ['Robert Grabel'] | 2020-12-22 20:09:41.878000+00:00 | ['Running', 'Life Lessons', 'Travel', 'Nonprofit', 'Coaching'] |
The Art of Problem Solving | Perform root cause analysis to fix problems for good
Successfully solving a problem requires the skill of taking a step back. When facing a problem, you may want to jump in immediately and start delivering value, but trying to fix something too soon may be futile, or worse, it could create new problems. Over time, I learned the importance of breaking down problems into two components: symptoms and root cause. Differentiating between the two empowers my teams to understand the big picture and find solutions that work in the long-run. My goal is to help explain root causes and cover best practices to fix problems better.
I will start with a definition of Root Cause: “The most basic reason, which if eliminated, would prevent recurrence. The source or origin of an event.” The concept sounds simple though finding root causes is not always straightforward.
In my experience, the biggest impediment to finding a root cause has been the severity of the symptoms a team is experiencing. It doesn’t take much to understand why: when you’re in pain, you want the pain gone more than you want to take the time to be treated for something. When deciding between focusing on symptoms vs. root causes, here’s my recommendation: the extent to which you devote capacity to alleviating symptoms should be determined by the extent to which the severity of the symptoms could impede you from getting to a root cause (e.g., severe profitability/liquidity issues).
The process of working on root causes is called Root Cause Analysis. Tableau has an excellent overview article with the following definition: “Root cause analysis (RCA) is the process of discovering the root causes of problems to identify appropriate solutions.” Some of the methods to conduct RCA include: 5 Whys, Change Analysis/Event Analysis, and Cause and Effect Fishbone diagram. My personal favorite is the 5 Whys approach due to its reliance on open communication. The video below is one of the best resources to quickly understand what it means:
We are all busy dealing with a multitude of competing priorities. When problems arise (both in our personal and professional lives), it’s easy to get lost in the symptoms and not take the time to address the root cause. At the end of the day, leveraging the resources in this article and practicing RCA will help you systematically prevent future issues. | https://medium.com/@roberto-portolorena/the-art-of-problem-solving-d71dc29771c8 | ['Roberto Porto Lorena'] | 2020-12-16 14:06:48.258000+00:00 | ['Root Cause', 'Problem Solving', 'Root Cause Analysis'] |
Integrating GraphQL, Apollo Server, Sequelize-Auto with SQL Server. | This tutorial demonstrates setting up GraphQL with Apollo Server and connecting your server with SQL Server Database(SSMS) with ORM Sequelize-auto.
You can map any of the tables from your database using Sequelize-auto. You just need to specify proper table names that matches your tables from the database.
If you’ve prior basic knowledge about what exactly GraphQL and Apollo-Server do, then we will start by creating SQL Server DB. We will use a simple Library database with only two tables namely Author and Book.
Database Schema(Library)
Here, above from our database diagram we can easily find that, we have defined two foreign keys (BookID in Authors table as FK_Athors_Books,AuthorID in Books table as FK_Books_Authors)
We will start step by step starting from creating a new project to performing basic operations.
Let’s create a new project.
If you don’t have yarn installed you can make use of npm also.
Creating a new directory and initiating the project.
initiate project with yarn command
add create-nodejs-project dependacy at global level
initiate project with npm command
Above both the commands will generate your package.json files.
2. Adding the required dependencies using yarn
yarn add sequelize-auto sequelize-cli sequelize -g
yarn add apollo-server graphql mssql mssql2 --save
yarn add nodemon -D
3.Adding the required dependancies using npm
npm install sequelize-auto sequelize-cli sequelize -g
npm install apollo-server graphql mssql mssql2 --save
npm install nodemon -D
Above dependancies,
How they will help us?
Sequelize — is a promise-based Node.js ORM for Postgres, MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite and Microsoft SQL Server. It features solid transaction support, relations, eager and lazy loading, read replication and more. Sequelize follows Semantic Versioning. Read more about sequelize.
Sequelize-cli — Before installing this package dependency make sure that you have installed sequelize successfully to your project. Sequelize-cli is command line interface for sequelize.
Sequelize-auto — automatically generate models for SequelizeJS via the command line.
You will need to install sequelize ; it's no longer installed by sequelize-auto .
You will need to install the correct dialect binding before using sequelize-auto. Read more about sequelize-auto
mssql and mssql2 — Microsoft SQL Server client for Node.js (Mandatory to install)
nodemon — nodemon is a tool that helps develop node.js based applications by automatically restarting the node application when file changes in the directory are detected.
nodemon does not require any additional changes to your code or method of development. nodemon is a replacement wrapper for node . To use nodemon , replace the word node on the command line when executing your script.
Creating config and models folder for our project.
Once above dependencies get successfully installed, we will create config file and models using database schema under config and models folder respectively.
For this purpose, run below commands under your project.
sequelize init:config
sequelize init:models
The first command will create a configuration file for connecting to the database, where we’ll be specifying all the connections related details to SQL Server (SSMS).
config.json
3. The second command will create a models folder where we will store our database tables related models i.e. generating models from an existing database tables. For doing this we will make use of Sequelize-Auto.
As we are already in our project directory, we will simply hit the below command, but before hitting the command make sure that you have successfully installed Sequelize-Auto package dependency into your node modules folder[node_modules] in your project directory..
sequelize-auto -h localhost -u <username> -x <password> -p 1433 -d Library -o “./models” -e mssql -c config/config.json
Here,
The following command will automatically generate a models file which will consist of models from the database. Here in the model’s folder, we will have Authors.js, Books.js , index.js and init-models.js (all auto generated) files which consists of database models and their relationships.
Setting up resolvers and typeDefs.
What are resolvers?
Apollo Server needs to know how to populate data for every field in your schema so that it can respond to requests for that data. To accomplish this, it uses resolvers.
A resolver is a function that’s responsible for populating the data for a single field in your schema. It can populate that data in any way you define, such as by fetching data from a back-end database or a third-party API.
If you don’t define a resolver for a particular field, Apollo Server automatically defines a default resolver for it.
What are Typedefs?
GraphQL has its own type language that’s used the write GraphQL schemas: The Schema Definition Language (SDL). In its simplest form, GraphQL SDL can be used to define types looking like this:
type User {
id: ID!
name: String
}
We will start by creating a graphql folder inside our root directory, which will consist of resolvers and typedefs.
We will define typedef by creating a typeDefs.graphql file inside the /graphql folder. First we will define for Author.
Here we’ll start with a type. We’ll have an Author type which looks like AuthorID,Abbrv, FirstName,LastName,DOB,DOD ,BookID.
Once we define our type we need to fetch Authors and this will be done by Query object which will be an array of an Author.
typeDefs.graphql
Here , getAuthorDetails is the name of a Query.
Now let us implement the functionality for what we have defined so far by creating a resolvers.js file inside the graphql folder, which will be a simple JavaScript file.
This file will consist of Query resolvers. Here we’ll have a resolver function for Author which will return an array of the Authtors.
Your file should look like this,
resolvers.js
Similarly, you can do this for Books.
Once we are done with typedefs and resolvers we are good to create our server.js file. In the server.js file, we need to import Apollo Server and gql from the apollo-server package.
Now we can create out typedefs by using the gql function. To import our typeDefs.graphql file we will be using the fs (file system) module. We will use the fs.readFileSync() function to read our schemas and we’ll be passing the encoding option and we’ll be setting it to ‘utf-8’ to make sure it reads the file as a string.
Now we can create a new apollo server instance by passing a configuration object typedefs and revolvers.
server.js
Finally, we can run the server by hitting the below command in command prompt window.
nodemon server
or
nodemon server.js
The reason we have used nodemon is that we can continuously run our server even if we make changes in any of the project file.
Or you can simply run ,
npm start
This will be running on http://localhost:5000, and we will see GraphQL Playground running.
Above is just sample output of the database record.
Till now, we have fetched all record from Authors table. We can also fetch single record from Authors table and What if we want to fetch data for author from multiple tables? Yes, we can do this, as we have already defined the relationship. Now we just need to modify our schema for author as well as we need to add a new type for the book. Our modified schemas should look like this.
modified typeDefs.graphql
In the beginning, we have defined a new queries getAuthor() and getBook(),if we want only single record from Authors and Books table respectively.
Above we have added book field in Author Type with type of book field as Book to get associated data from Book table. And further we have added a new Book Type to get all book records with data associated authors data from Authors table.
To get associated data from multiple tables, we need to specify which fields we want. Here in this case, Suppose we want only BookTitle and TotalPages of associated book. Then we will request on those fields and that’s the power of GraphQL,it will not fetch all details, only requested fields will fetched by Query. | https://levelup.gitconnected.com/b-crud-operations-with-graphql-apollo-server-sequelize-auto-b-711da1803017 | [] | 2021-02-26 03:47:36.039000+00:00 | ['Sequelize Auto', 'Sql Server', 'GraphQL', 'Apollo Server'] |
Bye, God, Woodrow: Lonesome Dove, a (the?) Great American Novel | It got me again. . . . For what has to be the 8th or so time Lonesome Dove — the book and the movie — grabbed me and insisted I read/watch it.
Perhaps you have a piece of fiction or a movie that does that to you.
The book has at its center the story of a cattle drive from South Texas on the Rio Grande to Montana by two ex-Texas Rangers, Captain Woodrow Call and Captain Augustus McCrae, in the late 1870’s (Gus mentions Custer’s Last Stand as a recent event (1876) in the book and the movie), among other subplots. But the real story of the book and the movie is about The West. Not the over-gloried West of old Hollywood and dime novels, but a West of unrelenting hardship. Dust and wind and lightening and dust storms and violence and utter loneliness and — Death. Always death at any time.
McMurtry tried to show the West as it was, not as we had romanticized it, and he succeeded. The book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 back when winning the Prize meant something, and the movie — all 6 hours and 6 minutes of it — was aired in 1989, winning the cast and production many awards.
Few movies have as many first-rate actors in it as this one: Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, Angelica Huston, Diane Lane, Robert Urich, Danny Glover, and great character actors like Steve Buscemi, Chris Cooper, and Frederic Forest. But not just a fine cast — a fine cast, almost all of whom delivered the best performance of heralded careers. And, oh, the cinematography and the score!
You might want to let it get you, too.
Maybe you might want to hear more about the American West from America’s finest living historian of the American Experience, HW Brands, as he talked with us about his book, Dreams of Eldorado: A History of the American West. | https://medium.com/@tcmoore2012/bye-god-woodrow-lonesome-dove-a-the-great-american-novel-8d6f49f973de | ['Tim Moore'] | 2020-12-15 20:20:19.245000+00:00 | ['Books', 'Book Recommendations', 'Texas', 'Movies', 'Lonesome Dove'] |
Text Extraction in Python with Neural Networks | Photo by sarandy westfall on Unsplash
Image capture makes a snapshot in time of a person, place, or object. Many devices include cameras for taking pictures. This is integrated into everyday life. When taking the picture, there is recognition of that picture and often an autocorrection. Taking that further, there is Optical Character Recognition (OCR) that can take a picture of text and create a usable file that is same as document. Creating a definition of a picture, understanding content, is a complex task. OCR addresses this, and a piece of OCR is knowledge from images.
Why AI?
Creating software to translate an image into text is sophisticated but easier with updates to libraries in common tools such as pytesseract in Python. This is a complicated task that requires an image to be statistically evaluated and assigned the highest probably match for each portion for a recognizable letter. Then, these pieces placed together to output a result without error that is same as the original object. This approach is deep learning using recurrent neural network (RNN), Long Short Term Memory (LSTM), to take an image as input and output text from the image in a file. This is known as text extraction from an image.
Project, Image to Text
For this example, take a picture of a receipt and save to local directory. Next, open Python with the pytesseract and cv2 libraries installed. Using little code, the image can be converted to text using a process of layers of learning to understand text from images and return only characters using layers of repetition to “drop out” leaving only text. For this project, pytesseract is pretrained to find only characters or numeric from the English language and will exclude information that is not a letter or number within that defined set. Output is to a file within local directory.
import cv2
import sys
import pytesseract if name == ‘main’: if len(sys.argv) < 2:
print(‘Usage: python ocr_receipt.py receipt.jpg’)
sys.exit(1)
# Read image path from command line
imPath = sys.argv[1]
# Uncomment and complete the line below to provide path to tesseract
# pytesseract.pytesseract.tesseract_cmd = ‘/usr/bin/tesseract’ # Parameters: ‘-l eng’ for using the English language LSTM OCR Engine
config = (‘-l eng — oem 1 — psm 3’) # Read image from disk
im = cv2.imread(imPath, cv2.IMREAD_COLOR) # Run tesseract OCR on image
text = pytesseract.image_to_string(im, config=config) # Write recognized text to file
f = open(‘receipt_text.txt’, ‘w’)
f.write(text)
f.close()
Conclusion
LSTM based models excel at complex tasks with a firm definition that can be learned through a training set. Python contains several methods of text recognition and pytesseract is an excellent library for image to text processing providing a way to learn from an image and generate knowledge based on analytics.
Example based on: https://www.learnopencv.com/deep-learning-based-text-recognition-ocr-using-tesseract-and-opencv/
More information on Python: https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/index.html | https://medium.com/ai-in-plain-english/text-extraction-in-python-with-neural-networks-2f9ae8512514 | ['Sarah Mason'] | 2020-11-16 08:32:48.252000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence', 'Python', 'Data Science', 'Data Mining', 'Neural Networks'] |
My 7 Year Old Does Her Own Laundry | My 7 Year Old Does Her Own Laundry
What does a magical childhood look like, anyway?
My nine year old finished flipping the last of the pancakes, unplugged the griddle, and grinned. “We’re learning some great life skills, aren’t we mom?”
This was the first time she had made pancakes on her own from start to finish, carefully measuring ingredients, mixing the batter, and spooning it into messy rounds on the sizzling pan.
Meanwhile, her younger sister tossed the fruit salad she’d concocted — choosing, washing, and chopping all of the fruit without help.
I sipped my coffee, watching in awe as our weekend 'special breakfast' basically made itself.
Later, both kids lugged their weekly loads of laundry down the stairs, and washed, dried, and put away their own clothes. They’ve each been doing this since they were seven.
Now, to you, this might seem like child labor — my personal failure to provide a good life for my children.
If that resonates, you’re definitely not alone. The idea that childhood should be magical and carefree is certainly popular.
“My teenage son really wants to get a job this summer but I won’t let him,” a friend told me. “He’ll have the rest of his life to be employed, I want him to enjoy what’s left of his childhood.”
And this article that recently crossed my newsfeed, stating:
“I want to serve my children as much as I can before each goes off to college because I get to every day now. I get to make his favorite foods. I get to create his perfect plate and hand it to him with a smile. Soon he will be off on his own to make all his own meals anyway, but no matter what age he is, I will always serve him. In serving my kids, I’m teaching them how to care for another person.”
While I can see the reasoning behind this, I can’t really agree. Entering adulthood with zero work experience hardly feels like a gift. And though it could be loving to offer a resort-like childhood, I have a different perspective.
I’m spoiling my kids by giving them the skills they’ll need in the future, today.
If I could give my children any one thing, it would be confidence — the certainty that they have what it takes to succeed in the big, scary, adult world.
This confidence comes from having a broad skill set and a growth mindset, knowing that, come what may, you have the ability to learn whatever you need to tackle life.
This is the gift I’m giving my children.
Furthermore, I don’t believe that cultivating life skills and having a magical childhood are mutually exclusive.
No, doing your own laundry isn’t always magical. But knowing you can launder your favorite t-shirt any time you need to is nice. And the many weekend mornings we’ve spent side-by-side at the kitchen island learning to crack eggs, measure flour, and flip pancakes together have been pretty magical.
Raising self-sufficient kids also means that I don’t have to spend all my time as a laundress, dishwasher, and short-order cook. It frees me up for a multitude of things — self-care, rounds of Uno and Phase 10, and slow Saturday mornings snuggled on the couch.
My nine-year-old, cozied up next to me, just sighed in contentment. “I love these weekend mornings, mom.”
Parent how you want, but that sounds pretty magical to me. | https://jamiesiebens.medium.com/my-7-year-does-her-own-laundry-c1b51279a10b | ['Jamie Siebens'] | 2020-01-27 13:49:09.026000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Childhood', 'Life Skills', 'Kids', 'Parenting'] |
Every Genocide is Special | For a week, it seemed, Berlin had been taken over by the left. Not just any left but something new and unrecognisable. In the place of the customary red and black flags of anti-capitalist groups, protestors were waving flags featuring an hourglass, in soft greens and light blues.
Blocking traffic, staging sit-ins around the Bundestag, and the Victory Column, the ubiquity of the movement’s icon was confusing.
On the surface, there was nothing especially political about it. Its clean lines and minimalist, design-bureau style said what it had to: that it was about time. The question was time for what.
This was no anarchist A, or communist sickle and hammer, after all. There is nothing confrontational about it. The hourglass is even empty. Still, the image is memorable and could easily be included in the pantheon of left symbols if framed properly.
The hourglass message is that it’s time to take action and that it’s urgent, is how I came to read it. It’s a very studied branding exercise, that’s impressive for its millennial vibe.
Particularly for visually-minded people like myself, who had grown up in a left overpopulated with symbols like peace signs held over from the 1960s. This was an attempt to create a new symbolic vocabulary, one suited to the climate crisis, that expresses the precarity of our circumstances.
Hence, the hourglass’ adaptation as the logo of the British-born Extinction Rebellion, a radical environmental movement that has all the pretences of a new left. One which could, at least symbolically, signify a 21st-century progressive politics, in which climate change has become just as important as social change.
At least for activists in the industrialised West, where, though environmental crises might not be as immediately obvious as the desertification plaguing Africa and the Middle East, is still inescapable.
Few would have imagined even in the 1990s that drought could have helped spark something like the Syrian Civil War. But it did, and it is not the only conflict or political crisis in which climate change plays a pivotal role.
The fact that so many people had turned out for the Berlin protests was impressive. The city had been brought to a near standstill. The relative youth of the demonstrators — few looked over forty — was especially noteworthy. This was the Fridays for Future crowd, onto their next thing.
No wonder Germany’s far-right was has made environmentalists their number one enemy. This was the next logical step for German youth culture. It wasn’t moving right, into the fascist arms of Alternative für Deutschland, but into a proper, leftwing movement centred on sustainability.
It was no accident that these protests were swelling in a country in which the next-tipped government will be led by the Greens. Though far from their leftwing origins, there was no doubt that activists like this would deliver the under-40 voters to them.
For anyone who wondered where the left went during the Merkel years, with support disintegrating for the centre-left Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands (SPD) and growth stalled for Die Linke (the Left Party), this was it. Radical environmentalism is the new zeitgeist, and the Greens would be the beneficiary.
So much for the nationalist upsurge in the wake of the 2015 refugee crisis, which propelled the overnight growth of the AfD into Germany’s third-largest party, and an upsurge in far-right terrorism against pro-migrant politicians, Muslims and Jews. 1968 was still here, and the hippies were back, albeit with better raingear.
That is, until Extinction Rebellion co-founder Roger Hallam opened up to German weekly Die Zeit this week, referring to the Holocaust as “just another fuckery in human history”. “The fact of the matter is, millions of people have been killed in vicious circumstances on a regular basis throughout history,” he added.
Referring to other genocides, such as the Rubber Terror (1885 to 1908), in which up to 15 million Congolese were said to have been killed under Belgian rule, Hallam was quick to point out the Nazi genocide was not unique, and that there had been other mass killings that had killed even more innocents.
Though there is truth to Hallam’s assertion — Hitler’s Final Solution was in many respects influenced by other acts of genocide, such as Turkey’s extermination of 1.5 million Armenians between 1914 and 1923 — to diminish the significance of the Shoah, to a German newspaper, was tantamount to Holocaust denial.
Why on earth would an environmental activist, who had founded a movement dedicated to preventing the end of humanity, (Hence, Extinction Rebellion) dismiss the significance of the single most iconographic act of genocide in modern times? The moral contradictions and insensitivity are staggering.
Not to mention Hallam’s lack of appreciation of context. Few countries remain as locked in conflict over their murderous pasts as much as Germany. Particularly now, given the return of its extreme right to mainstream politics, and the importance that Holocaust denial plays in its popularity.
Routinely denouncing Germany’s culture of shame, over its crimes against the Jewish people under Hitler, few political movements have done as much to downplay the Nazi genocide as Alternative für Deutschland. Every far-right party in continental Europe has noticed and done something similar.
Whether it’s Mussolini or Franco, or the Vichy, the cast of fascist characters being rehabilitated, in spite of the human rights abuses and killings that took place under their watch, is horrifying.
The fact that a leftist joined in, however unwittingly, is the most frightening part.
As a British progressive, Roger Hallam is a more appropriate target for those who otherwise pillory Jeremy Corbyn and other leftwingers for their Antisemitism. For those who doubt Corbyn’s racism, Hallam’s is of course unambiguous.
More than anything else, Roger Hallam’s statements are a tragic betrayal of a radical environmental movement on the cusp of mainstream credibility. That he has since been repudiated by German and British members of Extinction Rebellion is of course reassuring.
The fact remains that it happened. It’s no small jump from downplaying the Holocaust to blaming Jews for the climate crisis. Or just about, more importantly, any ethnic group that has historically been blamed for something.
If Extinction Rebellion truly wants to break the mould, it is going to have to dispense with 19th-century racist baggage like this altogether. I can think of few more significant countries than Germany for the left to undertake such an exercise.
Three cheers to Die Zeit for setting the agenda.
Photograph courtesy of the author. All rights reserved. | https://medium.com/thebattleground/every-genocide-is-special-e60c03e304eb | ['The Battleground'] | 2019-11-25 16:46:53.128000+00:00 | ['Critical Times', 'Politics', 'Environment', 'Germany', 'Jewish'] |
What Does an Equitable Economy Look Like? | Capitalism is broken: Local leaders are fixing it.
Image by Gabriel Santiago
We’ve said it before: capitalism is broken, especially for people of color. The systemic barriers that exacerbate wealth inequality, such as shareholder primacy and racialized lending practices, continue to maintain a harmful power imbalance. Despite a growing economy, wealth inequality continues to increase.
We live in a time of deep questioning. With Larry Kramer, President of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, offering criticism on neoliberal paradigms, and Anand Giridharadas, author of Winners Take All, setting off a tidal wave of concern around social impact investing, we are in desperate need of ideas. Moreover, we require solutions that will ensure the sustainability of our shared future, one that is equitable and inclusive of all of us.
Over the past ten years, we’ve been curating a network of leaders who are actively creating viable alternatives by democratizing finance, supporting rural entrepreneurial ecosystems, and closing the racial wealth gap. They’re tackling the most entrenched, systemic economic problems in North America.
By working alongside these individuals, we’ve come to believe that the solutions for a better future already exist. In fact, community leaders are already defining how a more equitable economy can work. To truly transform our economy, we believe those in power must then recognize, support and spread these solutions.
Take Tomás Durán, a 2016 Common Future Fellow and President of Concerned Capital. Tomás realized that manufacturing jobs in his Los Angeles community — primarily held by people of color — were disappearing as baby boomer business owners entered retirement. Businesses were rapidly closing, relocating, or merging — which proved to be a major disruption to the local economy.
While supporters of social innovation tend to prefer opportunities to build new businesses, Tomás didn’t see a need for that. Instead, he saw a missed opportunity: the transition of ownership to employees.
Tomás was not only mitigating job loss, he was developing a new paradigm for succession planning. He realized that most owners of manufacturing businesses were white baby boomers, while their employees were people of color. Without opportunities to build wealth, the racial wealth gap has persisted. By transitioning ownership, employees are able to build personal, and eventually intergenerational, wealth.
Tomás is not alone. Over the past several decades, a number of promising solutions to redress wealth inequality have cropped up: land trusts, public banks, and community benefit agreements are just a few. Some of these economic solutions have been more popularized than others. ESOPs (employee stock ownership plans), for example, have been recognized by Congress as a tax-advantaged retirement plan since 1974. Other solutions, like the transition of ownership, are less institutionalized. Still, through our work, we’ve found that community-led solutions consistently address these overlooked needs.
Take our rural economies. We’re suffering from systemic underinvestment in rural communities nation-wide, as job loss plagues towns across the United States. Still, as Laura Zabel, a 2018 Common Future Fellow and Executive Director at Springboard for the Arts in Minnesota writes, solutions to build rural economies are abundant:
“It’s illogical to assume that an Ivy League think tank is the best home for good thinking about rural America…the way forward for communities that have suffered from systemic neglect, underinvestment and extraction of resources comes from the people who understand the nuances, cultures and meaning of those places best…the good news is that people in those places are coming up with innovative ideas based on their unique cultures and contexts every day.”
Local leaders are pillars in supporting rural economies. Kimber Lanning, a 2011 Common FutureFellow and Executive Director of Local First Arizona, is exemplary of this. Over 2 million people in Arizona live outside of big cities in the state. Local First’s work is integral to the sustainable development of these rural communities.
One of the primary work areas of Local First Arizona Foundation is running the Arizona Rural Development Council (AZRDC), the state’s official federally-recognized State Rural Development Council, born of the National Rural Development Partnership. This federal program supports cross-partnership development of rural areas. Recently, however, the number of states who maintain such a council has dwindled dramatically; Arizona and others have failed to invest the resources needed to support these councils. If not for Local First’s support, Arizona would be without this integral body. Local First provides a wide variety of critical supports for equitable economies in the state, including their business accelerator, Fuerza Local, which provides small business development support to Spanish-speaking entrepreneurs, an essential and neglected service in the region, and provides local lending options to eight under banked counties in Arizona.
In order to recognize these solutions, we must fundamentally change how we identify and resource these ideas. Those most directly impacted by injustice have the greatest insight into opportunities for change. Trusting local leaders to define their own problems and develop solutions is the smartest way to build the economies we need, and beyond critical when working with distressed and marginalized communities.
There is no shortage of ideas, only an undervaluing of them. Economic innovations are varied, nuanced and often surprising. While many of the struggles that we face are shared, it is essential that our solutions are diverse.
Though applying these solutions to complex (and often deeply rooted) problems across varied communities may seem daunting, where will be if we continue down our current path?
The solutions are everywhere — let’s embrace them in all their forms. | https://medium.com/commonfuture/what-does-an-equitable-economy-look-like-75bf72652559 | ['Common Future'] | 2021-07-28 17:49:31.798000+00:00 | ['Social Entrepreneurship', 'Local Economy', 'Racial Equity', 'Impact Investing', 'Equity'] |
Gotta Have That Funk: Maytag’s Blue Cheese Just Got Bluer | Maytag Farm Reserve (Photo: Maytag Dairy Farms)
One of Iowa’s most iconic businesses is involved in a cover-up. Maytag Dairy Farms is leaving the rind on some wheels of their famous blue cheese.
The art and science of cheesemaking, of course, requires just the right mix of ingredients to mature over the course of many weeks or months. So even a small change in an early step can dramatically alter the final product.
For nearly 80 years, the cheesemakers in Newton have trimmed the rinds off their wheels of blue cheese after they age and ripen in the hillside caves. But with the new product, called Maytag Farm Reserve, the natural, edible rinds are left on to encourage the special bacteria (Penicillium roqueforti) to work more of their funky, moldy magic.
“With the rind on, the cheese ages from inside out and outside in,” says Robert Wadzinski, a third-generation cheesemaker and Maytag’s vice president for product development.
So while the traditional product offers a “clean, buttery taste profile with a little bit of sharpness and that salty tang you expect from blue cheese,” says Noreen Otto, the company’s chief administrative officer, the new version is “more earthy, with an almost nutty flavor.” It’s also denser and creamier, “almost like fudge or cheesecake.”
Many other blue-cheese producers — in France, California, Oregon and elsewhere — sell rind-on varieties. Maytag decided to develop its own version to offer something new in the ever-evolving market of specialty foods.
Cheesemakers roll carts of cheese to a cold storage unit at the Maytag Dairy Farms in Newtown, Iowa.
“We talk a lot about legacy here at Maytag,” Otto says. “It’s not just created in the past, in our history. For us, it’s a living, vibrant thing, and we think about how to carry it into the future.”
The company plans to release the Farm Reserve more widely in 2021. Until then, cheese fans who want a blue Christmas can find it online and at the Maytag visitors’ center, the Newton Hy-Vee and several specialty shops in Des Moines.
— Michael Morain, Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs | https://medium.com/@iowaculture/gotta-have-that-funk-maytags-blue-cheese-just-got-bluer-5592e5c9796d | ['Iowa Culture'] | 2020-12-15 18:55:43.031000+00:00 | ['Small Business', 'Farming', 'Cheese', 'Iowa', 'Dairy'] |
Money Talks: It is Time to Pay for Parity | By Maura Reilly
This week, Anne Hidalgo, the second-term Mayor of Paris, made history becoming the first French official fined for appointing too many women to management positions within the city administration. In 2018, Hidalgo named eleven women and five men to senior level positions within her administration; with women holding 69% of the positions, Hidalgo failed to adhere to the 2013 national law requiring no single gender make up more than 60% of senior officials.
Although the law was amended in 2019 to include waivers for cases in which new hires do not create overall gender imbalance or inequality, Hidalgo’s administration has been fined 90,000 Euros, roughly $110,000. A fine, which Mayor Hidalgo has stated she is not only happy to pay, she will deliver the check personally along with women in her administration to the Ministry of Public Service.
While the case in Paris is novel, financial sanctions and incentives to enforce gender quotas have been gaining popularity both in politics and business over the last decade. Political parties in Portugal and France which fail to uphold the 33% and 50% respective gender quotas on their candidate lists are fined according to their level of non-compliance. In Ireland, political parties which fail to nominate at least 30% women to the candidate lists, lose 50% of their state funding. While in Georgia, where no legislated gender quota exists, the government has incentivized political parties to have women make up 30% of the candidate lists by increasing the state funding for parties which achieve this.
Similar financial sanctions have been applied to increase the gender diversity of corporate boards both in Europe and the United States. Just this spring, the European Union Commission revived a plan which fined European-listed companies which fail to have women make up at least 40% of their board members. The legislation originally drafted in 2012 will be incorporated into the EU Commissions’ larger five year gender equality strategy. Currently, women only hold 26.4% of non-executive board positions across all companies established in the EU.
France and Italy have both implemented national gender quotas for corporate boards. In 2011, France adopted a law which requires all companies with 500+ employees and revenues of over 50 million Euros to have women make up at least 20% of board positions. This later rose to 40% in 2014; if companies fail to comply, they are barred from paying their board members until the board composition is rectified. Italy implemented similar legislation in 2012, requiring women hold 20% of board positions upon first renewal and 33% on second renewal; companies which fail to reach these benchmarks face heavy fines from the government.
Closer to home, California has implemented a state law which requires public companies with executive offices in the state reach a set gender quota or face a state levied fine. The law, passed in 2018, requires all companies to elect a woman director to their boards, either by filling an open seat or adding a seat, by December 2019. And depending on the size of the board, an additional one or two women must be added by December 2021. Failure to comply results in a $100,000 fine for the first violation and upt to $300,000 for subsequent violations. Between 2018 and 2019, the percent of women on corporate boards in the state increased from 17.4% to 21.1% and is likely to continue to grow following the 2021 additions.
A study conducted by the University of London Business School found “businesses are more compliant with gender diversity regulations if it is enforced,” and politics is no different. Political parties and our government have a role to play in improving women’s political representation up and down the ballot; and, it is time they start using their money to make it happen. Democratic and Republican state parties can, and should, tie state party funding to their ability to recruit women candidates and appoint women to vacancies. Political appointments provide opportune moments to spur legislatures and cabinets toward gender parity. In RepresentWomen’s home state of Maryland, 20% of all state legislators were appointed in 2019, and 50% had been appointed at one stage of their tenure.
Despite decades of demanding a seat at the table, women make up less than 30% of all elected officials in the United States. Women may have equal opportunity to run for office; but equality is far from equity. While our electoral system continues to favor incumbents, the majority of whom are men, parity cannot be achieved or sustained by simply allowing women to run. In response to her fine, Mayor Anne Hidalgo succinctly put it: “to promote and one day achieve parity, we must speed up the tempo and ensure that in the nominations there are more women than men.”
Maura is a RepresentWomen Research Fellow from the Washington, D.C. area. She graduated from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland in 2019 with an honors degree in Social Anthropology. Follow Maura on Twitter, @further_maura. | https://medium.com/@representwomen/money-talks-it-is-time-to-pay-for-parity-8b4af4321a39 | [] | 2020-12-17 22:49:32.976000+00:00 | ['Gender Equality', 'Women In Politics', 'Anne Hidalgo', 'Gender Parity'] |
10 Surprising Things That Are Cheaper than iPhone X | By Tony Yeung
The iPhone X price starts with $999, which makes it the most expensive iPhone ever made. People are still crazy about the phone, and it sold out in less than 3 days.
Consumers might wait for a long time to wait for this phone, and they have the budget to change their phone. But, how expensive is this iPhone?
Let’s look at this list.
(1) A Return Ticket From New York City to Miami — Approximately $250
A direct return flight ticket from New York City (JFK) to Miami (MIA) costs only $250. You may need to pay extra fees, but it is still cheaper than the iPhone X.
You can do many things in Miami: going to the beach, enjoying nice restaurants and walking around the city.
(Well, it depends on what you like to do when you travel, too.)
(2) 60 Packs of Grill Mats on Amazon
Do you like BBQ everything? Grill mats can help you keep the mess out. One set of grill mats costs about $15.00 on Amazon. You can buy at least 60 packs of grill mats here. If you have Amazon Prime account, your shipping would be free.
You can really BBQ everything with 60 packs of grill mats. You can even use them to cover the rooftop at your house with that amount of grill mats.
(3) Over 500 sets of 6-Piece Chicken Nuggets from Wendy’s
You may need 18 million retweets to have a year’s free supply of chicken nuggets from Wendy’s. If you don’t want that many chicken nuggets, you can spend $1000 for 500 sets of 6-piece chicken nuggets. Consider it done.
(4) You can buy 60 high-ended water bottles on Amazon
You like to keep yourself healthy and fashionable? You may like the high-ended trending steel water bottle. If you buy 60 water bottles, the total amount is still cheaper than one iPhone X.
Link to buy is here.
(5) You can buy about 200 cups of Unicorn Frappuccino from Starbucks
Remember the popular Unicorn Frappuccino for the limited-time only? One tall sized Unicorn Frappuccino is about $4.25.
If you give up your iPhone X, you can buy about 200 cups of Unicorn Frappuccino in tall-sized.
However, I am not sure if the barristas in Starbucks would still like you after that massive order.
(6) Tiffany diamond ring
That’s correct. You can buy a diamond ring from Tiffany that costs less than $1000.
This Wave Single-row diamond ring costs $800 at Tiffany website.
So, if you really want to impress her at the farm, consider this diamond ring.
(7) One 7 Night Eastern Caribbean Trip
It costs about $900 for 7 night eastern caribbean trip, according to Royal Caribbean.
If you are tried of the busy city life, you could spend a week on cruising through the Caribbean.
(8) Over 6000 Pieces of Oeros cookies
Your children would love you if you bought them 6000 pieces of Oeros cookies. They would be the happiest children in the world.
(9) A $999 Square’s full-fledged cash register
Are you a retail business owner? Instead of buying the iPhone X, you can spend $999 to update the cash register.
The existed Squared needs a separate iPad or phone, but the full-fledged cash register does not need another device. Although the full-fledged point-of-sale system will cost you $999, the package comes with everything you need for a cash register.
(10) Over 300 Bottles of Beers. YEAH YEAH YEAH!
On average, one bottle of beer is $3.20. So you can buy at least 300 bottle of beers by calculation.
That seems enough to celebrate your Caribbean Trip. | https://medium.com/business-startup-development-and-more/10-surprising-things-that-are-cheaper-than-iphone-x-ded1b1d3ced2 | ['Tony Yeung'] | 2017-11-07 10:03:48.979000+00:00 | ['Iphone X', 'Technology', 'Business', 'Apple'] |
AYS Daily Digest 06/09/21 — Bill Restricting Rescue NGOs Voted into Greek Law | AYS Daily Digest 06/09/21 — Bill Restricting Rescue NGOs Voted into Greek Law
Documented pushback on Samos // Protests in Barcelona // French activists remember baby who died in Calais // Channel crossings increase Are You Syrious? 6 days ago·8 min read
FEATURE — Anti-rescue NGOs bill passes in Greek parliament
Legislation designed to hinder search and rescue NGOs in Greece, which was criticized recently by the Council of Europe (CoE) has now been passed into law by the Greek Parliament, Greek media has reported.
AYS has already written about the legislative package in previous digests (Sep. 1 and Sep. 4–5).
Article 40 of the new Greek Deportations and Return Bill would introduce restrictions and conditions on the activities of civil society organizations in the regions in which the Hellenic Coast Guard holds official authoritiy. Non-observance of these will be subject to heavy sanctions and fines. The law requires NGOs to submit Local Emergency Plans in advance and to agree to follow the orders of local Port authorities or risk paying fines and even prison sentences for rescue operations. It also grants the Greek state the power to retroactively punish organizations that have carried out independent operations, even if they attempted to cooperate with the Coast Guard but were rebuffed.
On Sep. 3, Dunja Mijatović, CoE Commissioner for Human Rights, expressed her grave concern over the proposed legislation:
The Greek parliament should reconsider a legislative proposal currently being discussed, which would seriously hinder the life-saving work carried out at sea by NGOs, and their human rights monitoring capacities in the Aegean[…] I am disappointed to learn that the comments and recommendations made by the national human rights structures and expert NGOs regarding the lack of sufficient human rights safeguards were not taken into consideration by the Greek authorities. I call on members of the Parliament to draw on these recommendations to ensure that the Bill, once adopted, fully reflects Greece’s obligations, including under the European Convention on Human Rights and the Refugee Convention.
Opposition members in the Greek Parliament also spoke out against the legislation.
“It is a bill that continues the impassable, xenophobic and legally slippery path that the government has started down. With more people being condemned to live in grey areas, making them invisible, without rights and obligations, without life, without balance of rights and integration with local communities,” George Psychogiou of SYRIZA said.
Giorgos Kaminis, a former Ombudsman and mayor of Athens, asked if Prime Minister Mitsotakis and his party had “not learned anything from the past?”
“Does anyone think that stricter legislation at the expense of immigrants will solve the problem of illegal immigration in the country?”, he continued.
The current Ombudsman said the bill presents “a serious risk of abusing the deportation return procedures by violating the guarantees of the relevant directive. It must be clear that, especially for asylum seekers, there is an explicit exemption from the provisions of the Returns Directive and that they explicitly have the right to remain in the country until the asylum procedure is completed, without the risk of deportation.” | https://medium.com/@areyousyrious/ays-daily-digest-06-09-21-bill-restricting-rescue-ngos-voted-into-greek-law-2bdd5b6eba5f | ['Are You Syrious'] | 2021-09-08 09:09:43.379000+00:00 | ['Migration', 'Digest', 'Migrants', 'Human Rights', 'Refugees'] |
Kript Connected Exchanges: Huobi | You can add your Huobi account to Kript app and take advantage of managing your crypto portfolio in a safe and easy-to-use manner
Huobi overview
24 hour volume: ~$276 million
Number of trading pairs: >280
Asset pair types: crypto to crypto
Markets: on BTC, ETH, USDT, HUSD and HT
Additional features: margin trading; HADAX innovative digital currency; OTC trading
Order types: Market Order; Limit Order
Supported countries: 130+
Website: huobi.com
Huobi is one of the leading digital asset trading platforms in the world listing over 170 digital assets and trading in over 280 digital asset pairs. It is also one of the oldest crypto exchanges. It was founded in 2013 in Beijing and initially concentrated in Chinese market, though after Chinese government’s crackdown on crypto exchanges in 2017 it focused on global trading and currently it is available in over 130 countries around the world. Lately, it has announced its plans for further expansion into the Middle East, African, and South Asian markets. Up to date, Huobi is operated by Huobi Global Limited founded in the Republic of Seychelles.
The exchange offers a world class security system and compliance service teams across the globe — in Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and other countries. It offers user-oriented solutions, such as development of compensation first system and investor protection fund. Huobi is ranked 4th in terms of daily trading volume which is about $276 million up to date.
This month Huobi opened deposits for HUSD — its own comprehensive solution created for all stablecoins providing the following advantages:
- seamless handover between stablecoins;
- increased stability;
- conversion with no cost.
Main features
✔ a world class security system
✔ local operation teams across the globe
✔ wide range of cryptocurrencies
✔ high liquidity
✔ margin trading
Huobi Tokens
Huobi exchange has its own cryptocurrency — Huobi Tokens or HTs (ERC20). This currency is the key component of the exchange, playing an important role in the functioning of the trading platform. The tokens were initially distributed between Huobi pro users in January 2018.
Total supply: 500 million
Current circulating supply: 50 million
Functions:
- up to 50% discount on transaction fees;
- VIP early access to assets and special events;
- liquidity buybacks;
- voting rights.
Fees and limits
Deposits: can be made in cryptocurrency only; no fees.
Withdrawals: depend on the currency (0.001 BTC, 0.01 ETH, etc.).
Trading: 0,2% Maker; 0,2 Taker. There are 5 levels of discounts from trading fees based on VIP membership which can be acquired with Huobi Tokens.
Withdrawal limits depend on whether the user’s account is verified or not, and verified users have preferences.
Limits on the order size depend on the currency (👉 complete list of trade limits).
Communication: twitter, facebook, telegram, youtube, medium, instagram
KRIPT and Huobi integration
Integration between Kript and Huobi enables advanced opportunities for crypto investors providing them with all they need for efficient trading. This integration enabled Kript users to get access to more cryptocurrency pairs and Huobi users to benefit from a wide range of useful functions available via Kript application.
Kript tools:
✔ Android and iOS app for trading
✔ High level of security
✔ Convenient interface
✔ ICO list with detailed information about the projects
✔ Coins description
✔ Order book
✔ Cryptocurrency market news
✔ Access to portfolios
Huobi available options in Kript app:
✔ Balance
✔ Holdings
✔ Pending orders (up to 500 orders)
In order to take advantage of the advanced features for efficient trading:
1) download Kript app from Google Play or App Store;
2) create a new API key;
3) connect your Huobi account to Kript app. | https://medium.com/kriptapp/kript-connected-exchanges-huobi-a330660d64b7 | ['Kript Team'] | 2018-12-04 04:19:24.571000+00:00 | ['Kript', 'Exchange', 'Cryptocurrency'] |
Fake Disruption: 3 Companies That Claimed to Change the Game | Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash
For a while, “disruption” was a powerful word, used to indicate a company that had demonstrated innovation at such a high level, it created a new industry or truly reshaped an older one. Then, tech journalists, entrepreneurs and consumers started using the term to describe any business with a unique idea that had a chance to grow and succeed.
This isn’t to say that these companies weren’t valuable or weren’t worth exploring. It just means they weren’t good examples of what it truly means to be “disruptive” or to “change the game.”
Take, for example, these companies, which have been popularly labeled or touted as disruptive, but aren’t truly as game-changing as we’ve come to believe:
1. Uber. Uber is known as the tech powerhouse that disrupted the transportation industry. Attracting $10.7 billion of funding, and with a valuation of $69 billion as of December 2017, it’s entirely accurate to describe Uber as an industry leader and an innovative, visionary one at that. So why can’t we qualify it as a disruptor?
Clayton Christensen, the Harvard Business School professor who actually popularized the term “disruptive” in a 1997 book called The Innovator’s Dilemma, addressed this in a recent Harvard Business Review article. He describes true disruption as building a business by taking advantage of a low-end market that’s been previously ignored by dominant competitors chasing profits, or as creating an entirely new market — that is, generating customers where there weren’t any before.
Uber doesn’t fall into either category of disruption. It emerged as an alternative solution for taxi services, where customers already existed. Though generally less expensive than a taxi ride, the solution is still comparable enough in price that it didn’t open up a new market, and therefore didn’t “change the game” from the ground up.
Another hallmark of disruptors, according to Christensen, is an origin as a low-quality alternative, with a gradual transition to become a more competitive, higher-quality offer. Uber came into the field with a high-quality alternative — a better product — which made them a clearly superior competitor.
2. Google. Technology has provided the groundwork for disruption; technological advancements make things cheaper and more readily available, and they simultaneously introduce new products and services that haven’t been explored before. That’s why, when most people think about true game-changing technologies, they think about Google — the world’s favorite search engine.
But Google isn’t and was never a disruptive company. Google wasn’t the first company to invent and capitalize on the search engine model; back in 1990, a search engine called Archie started taking user queries and matching them to websites. By 1993, alternatives were already making use of bots and search crawlers to build indexes of the web, and by the time Google got started, there were already dozens of mainstream options for search, including Yahoo! and Ask Jeeves. Google didn’t create a new market; it capitalized on an existing one by building a better product.
Beyond that, Google isn’t truly disrupting in other areas, either. Email was mainstream by the time it developed its popular and innovative Gmail product, and even its futuristic ventures, like autonomous vehicles, are built on improving solutions for existing customer bases.
3. Tesla. Tesla Motors’s approach to business relies on constant, and at times ruthless innovation. Since their launch, they’ve been able to become the most valuable automaker in the United States. They’ve unveiled new and affordable models of electric vehicles, and have helped introduce the concept of semi-autonomous driving to mainstream consumers. The company is innovating at an astounding pace, is differentiating themselves from their competitors, and is enjoying a significant level of success as a result — but it isn’t disruptive.
Tesla isn’t disruptive because its vehicles have been serving a market that already exists. Electric and hybrid cars weren’t new to Tesla; instead, Tesla merely improved on an existing design. Accordingly, existing car purchasers are merely upgrading to Tesla, rather than emerging from a period of being non-customers. Plus, consider the fact that even its least expensive model runs for about $70,000, putting well outside a price range we could consider for a disruptor who’s trying to target underserved portions of the market.
Before you use the term “disruptive” to label a business, think carefully about what it’s really doing. If it’s taking an existing concept and making it better, it has a high chance of success, but it isn’t creating a new market. If it’s capitalizing on existing customers and giving them more of what they want, it will likely trounce the competition, but it isn’t creating customers where there weren’t any before.
The more accurately we can describe and learn from business concepts like these, the better we’ll understand our own markets and our own ideas.
For more content like this, be sure to check out my podcast, The Entrepreneur Cast! And be sure to check out my business, EmailAnalytics, which visualizes your email activity — or that of your team. | https://jaysondemers.medium.com/fake-disruption-3-companies-that-claimed-to-change-the-game-ef31b53d5d17 | ['Jayson Demers'] | 2020-08-11 17:42:42.553000+00:00 | ['Entrepreneur', 'Startup', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Disruption', 'Startup Lessons'] |
The Land: Catacombs: A LitRPG Saga (Chaos Seeds Book 4) | “What’s that you say? You want more village growth? Well be careful where you stand, because the Mist Village just took a viagra-cialis sandwich and there is a stiff breeze blowing! (I can make some more references if you’re still not getting the point… did you see what I did there?)
Welcome back my friends! Welcome back… to THE LAND!!!
https://amzn.to/2WHzjDU | https://medium.com/litrpg/the-land-catacombs-a-litrpg-saga-chaos-seeds-book-4-33158cec02c4 | ['Alex Itsios'] | 2020-12-24 22:00:51.803000+00:00 | ['Virtual Reality', 'Aleron Kong', 'Litrpg', 'VR', 'Chaos Seeds'] |
Membuat Game Dengan Vuejs | Easy read, easy understanding. A good writing is a writing that can be understood in easy ways
Follow | https://medium.com/easyread/membuat-game-dengan-vuejs-hujan-duren-the-game-c7d5ea886132 | ['Haidar Afif Maulana'] | 2019-01-22 11:33:34.585000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'JavaScript', 'Game Development', 'Front End Development', 'Vuejs'] |
JAMstack with Gatsby, Netlify and Netlify CMS | A bit of background
What is JAMstack?
JAM stands for Javascript API & Markup. The term JAMstack was popularised by Mathias Biilmann (CEO & Co-founder of Netlify) to describe “a modern web development architecture based on client-side JavaScript, reusable APIs, and prebuilt Markup”. You can read more about JAMstack here.
What is Gatsby?
Gatsby is a blazing-fast Static Site Generator for React — this is important because I wanted to keep the JAMStack I had with Jekyll. Apart from being a SSG, Gatsby is build with modern technologies, it’s future-proof, it’s a static PWA out-of-the-box and you can query your data from anywhere via GraphQL 😍
What/Who is Dona Rita?
Dona Rita is my side business. When I’m not busy coding, I’m selling gluten-free Brazilian cheese balls to the British population 😅
My process
The original Dona Rita website was built with Jekyll and hosted on Github Pages. It was built in an MVP approach, you can read more about that here. Overall, it was working well, but let’s be honest… Liquid partials are not React components.
When I decided to change my setup from Jekyll to Gatsby, I wasn’t quite sure how much work/effort that’d be. I wanted to keep things as simple as possible. In the end I think I was able to find a nice process.
Here’s how I did it:
Documentation
I started by reading Gatsby’s documentation. They also wrote a neat tutorial. Gatsby works differently than Jekyll, so it’s worth giving these a read first.
Choosing a Gatsby starter
I used the gatsby-starter-hello-world. This is probably the simplest starter you can use. I chose this because I wanted to start with bare minimum configuration. I find it easier to learn a framework this way.
Creating a Gatsby Layout
Anything you add to a Layout Component will be shared amongst all other pages. This is particularly useful for global components, such as Navigation or Footer.
You can see the source code for my layout here.
Stateless pages
I started by creating stateless Page Components. The point here was to start getting a feel for how Gatsby creates pages, without having to worry about GraphQL.
I left stateful pages (pages that depend on data) and dynamic pages (pages that will be generated from Markdown files) for later.
The first page I added was the Ingredients page, you can see the source code here.
Adding styles
The original Dona Rita website was styled with global CSS, written in Sass. To keep things moving, I decided to keep this approach instead of converting my styles to Styled Components.
In order for Gatsby to process Sass files, you need install gatsby-plugin-sass (drop-in support, works like a charm).
Because I needed to inject the styles globally, I imported them in my Layout file.
Stateful pages
By now I had a few static pages rendered and styled correctly. I was becoming more comfortable with Gatsby and I was ready to create my first stateful page.
I decided to start with the Buy Page. For this page I needed to get access to a list of allowed postcodes which I will be passed down to my Product Component to determine whether we can deliver there or not.
I created a file called postcodes.json in a src/data/ directory and installed the following dependencies: gatsby-source-filesystem and gatsby-transformer-json.
Here’s source code for the JSON file and here’s the source code for the Buy page.
Postcode JSON file
Querying postocodes with GraphQL
#protip: Gatsby has a really nice tutorial to help understand its data layer. Definitely worth a read.
Components abstraction
Once most of my stateless and stateful pages were created, I took a bit of time to refactor some parts of the code. I created a src/components/ folder and added a few components to help improve maintainability of the project.
Here’s a list of the components I abstracted.
Moving from GH Pages to Netlify
I was happy with Github Pages, but Netlify is so good, so fast, so easy to use that it’s hard to say no… it offers instant rollbacks, one-click SSL, prerendering, deploy previews, and many more awesome features.
When a new Pull Request is created, Netlify automatically generates a Deploy Preview. This feature is pure gold. It allows you and other members of the team to see how the changes affect the project.
When the PR gets merged to the master branch, then Netlify triggers the production deployment. I’ve turned on Slack Notification, so everyone in the team knows when a new production deployment has happened 🎉
Dona Rita Slack showing Netlify’s notifications
Adding Netlify CMS
Netlify CMS is an open source content management system for Git workflows. I decided to give it a try as it seemed surprisingly simple.
The way I set it up was by authenticating Netlify CMS with Github via Netlify Identity. As with anything Netlify related, it was only a couple of clicks.
I used Netlify CMS to manage my “Shops” data. The way I am managing this data is by having one Markdown file per Shop. You can see the source for the Shops page here.
I also created a configuration file. Through this file I was able to create collections and to define which fields can be modified via the CMS.
You can see the source for Netlify config here.
Netlify CMS configuration
If you’re interested in adding a CMS to your static site, I’d definitely recommend using Netlify CMS. You can read the docs here. | https://medium.com/netlify/jamstack-with-gatsby-netlify-and-netlify-cms-a300735e2c5d | ['Pedro Duarte'] | 2018-11-27 10:53:49.799000+00:00 | ['Static Site Generator', 'CMS', 'Gatsbyjs', 'Netlify', 'Jamstack'] |
AWS Ruby SDK v2: Client vs Resource | Late last year, Amazon announced v2 of AWS Ruby SDK. Among other features, Amazon added Resource and Client classes for each of their services. While being functionally equivalent, they present different paradigms.
The Client class serves as a proxy to the API calls, with 1-to-1 method mapping and the more interesting Resource class offers an object-oriented interface.
In this demo, we will solve a simple problem of:
listing all EC2 instances along with some useful information
all EC2 instances along with some useful information rebooting all of them
We will accomplish this using the Client and Resource classes separately, to show the difference in approach.
Prerequisites
ruby
aws-sdk gem
AWS account
Create a creds.json file, that looks like this:
{ "AccessKeyId":"AKIAJU37JJMCPAIWJTJT", "SecretAccessKey":"klMYNV8wfg/Jq68Rts12QsLvTjRs3+4edBzlhPOm" }
The keys are account specific. You can get yours on the AWS portal in the Security Credentials tab.
Here’s the code to create the Credentials object. We will use it in a bit.
require 'aws-sdk' require 'json' creds = JSON.load(File.read('creds.json')) creds = Aws::Credentials.new(creds['AccessKeyId'], creds['SecretAccessKey'])
Client approach
We start with creating the Client instance. Notice the use of previously created creds object.
ec2 = Aws::EC2::Client.new(region:'us-west-1',credentials:creds)
Next, we list and reboot the instances:
instance_ids = [] ec2.describe_instances['reservations'].each do |reservation| reservation['instances'].each do |instance| puts "ID: #{instance.instance_id} State: #{instance.state.name} Hostname: #{instance.public_dns_name}" instance_ids.push instance.instance_id end end ec2.reboot_instances(instance_ids: instance_ids)
Output:
dsiwiec@NAdsiwiec aws]$ ruby list.rb ID: i-703f74b8 State: running Hostname: ec2-56-67-20-185.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com ID: i-1c1279d4 State: running Hostname: ec2-56-153-62-149.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com
Resource approach
First, we create the Resource instance, in a similar fashion.
ec2 = Aws::EC2::Resource.new(region:'us-west-1',credentials:creds)
To list all instances, we use the instances method, which returns a Collection of Instance objects. Notice the difference from the Client approach here.
ec2.instances.each do |instance| puts "ID: #{instance.instance_id} State: #{instance.state.name} Hostname: #{instance.public_dns_name}" instance.reboot end
Once we have a collections of instances, we just iterate over them and output the properties. As we iterate over Instances , we can also invoke the reboot method directly on the elements.
Summary
The Client offers a more procedural approach, which is more intuitive for people accustomed to the AWS Command Line Interface. Its undeniable advantage is the ability to perform bulk operations on many instances, which might be a factor when dealing with high number of instances.
The Resource on the other hand, with its object oriented angle, is easier for manipulation and results in higher code readability.
Resources
AWS SDK for Ruby v2 Reference
Complete code for Client implementation
Complete code for Resource implementation | https://medium.com/dan-on-coding/aws-ruby-sdk-v2-client-vs-resource-575476d03517 | ['Dan Siwiec'] | 2019-02-20 06:31:58.587000+00:00 | ['Ruby', 'AWS'] |
The biggest no-brainer in all of energy policy | Given this high level of risk, think how absurd it would be to explore for unconventional reserves on public lands under the full burden of NEPA. Oil and gas entrepreneurs would have to spend years documenting the lack of significant environmental impact before they could drill even one inch into the ground. After all that regulatory burden, the well could fail. The idea is preposterous. The requirements of NEPA made only the most incremental unconventional ventures possible.
Section 390 created a rebuttable presumption that NEPA paperwork is not required under certain circumstances, such as when the surface disturbance of the well was less than 5 acres, or when a previous well had been drilled at the site within the last 5 years. This categorical exclusion allowed very rapid turnarounds in permitting, which in turn allowed a lot more exploration to proceed. This exploration and subsequent development led to enormous technological improvements in drilling practices through “learning by doing,” which expanded the set of feasible oil wells. This positive feedback loop between the development of technology and the expansion of production led to the shale revolution we observe today. Without the categorical exclusion from NEPA, the whole process would have been smothered in the cradle.
In turn, as David Roberts writes in a recent piece for Vox, the improvements we have made in drilling technology due to shale oil’s feedback loop are now enabling a new energy revolution: enhanced and advanced geothermal. Traditional hydrothermal energy — which provides 65% of Iceland’s primary energy — relies on both heat and the right kind of rock formations to be present to produce energy. These traditional geothermal systems produce always-on, zero-emissions electricity, but they are not scalable. They can only be located where volcanic activity exists near the surface, signaled by features such as fumaroles and hot springs. This limitation is why the US has less than 4 GW of geothermal production today, all located in the West.
With the advancements in drilling technology generated by the shale oil boom, new resources become available. Instead of needing both heat and the right kinds of rock formations to be present, we can engineer the subsurface to generate the right geology. Heat is available anywhere on the planet if you drill deep enough. This “enhanced geothermal” expands the number of locations where energy extraction is viable.
An even bigger leap forward is so-called advanced geothermal, which relies on closed loops to harvest heat energy. Instead of injecting water into a geothermal reservoir and extracting it through a production well, a closed loop system simply circulates fluid from the surface deep into the Earth and back through a pipe system. The fluid picks up heat when it is deep underground, and this heat energy can be extracted and converted into electricity back at the surface.
This isn’t science fiction. This technology could be matured within the decade with the right policy support. When advanced geothermal becomes available, it will make zero-emissions baseload energy possible essentially anywhere on the planet, all but solving the power production component of climate change. Furthermore, with improvements in drilling technology, advanced geothermal can be very cheap, potentially between 1 and 2¢ per kWh. Unlike wind and solar, cheap advanced geothermal electricity would be reliably available 24 hours a day.
With such cheap and reliable baseload energy, the industrial opportunities are endless. Tiny Iceland, with its bountiful conventional geothermal resources, is the world’s 11th biggest aluminum producer. What new, energy-intensive goods would the United States produce if it had access to dirt-cheap clean energy in all 50 states? Advanced geothermal is going to create an enormous economic boom for whichever country gets there first.
The only problem is ensuring that enhanced and advanced geothermal technology can get started in the learning-by-doing loop. Section 390 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 solved this problem for oil and gas, creating a categorical exclusion for drilling small wells on public lands. But no such expedited process exists for geothermal — a baffling oversight given that drilling for geothermal is essentially identical to drilling for oil and gas.
Fervo CEO Tim Latimer discussed this issue on a panel at this year’s Pivot2020 conference, where oil and gas veterans discussed applying their skills to the nascent geothermal industry. Latimer’s experience is telling.
I’ve been astounded as I’ve entered this industry coming from the oil and gas space, where we have very responsive regulators that work with us to tell us what to do and where to do it, and we were able to get projects permitted very quickly…A common experience for me in geothermal is we submit all of the necessary paperwork, regulations, environmental impact assessments to the regulatory bodies and it sits there for months and months and months and we actually can’t even get a response. When you ping them about it, they say, “We don’t have the resources.” So the same office that has many resources dedicated to oil and gas to do these reviews doesn’t have it for geothermal.
Because oil and gas has a categorical exclusion in Section 390, it takes far fewer resources for the Department of the Interior to approve an oil and gas well. But if you drill the exact same well for geothermal energy, it takes a ton of agency manpower, and that creates an obstacle to permitting. These geothermal wells are drilled with the same equipment and workforce as oil and gas wells, with the same surface footprint and the same small local environmental impact. It’s the same industry — you’re just drilling for heat instead of oil.
If we want to reap the enormous benefits that advanced geothermal offers for the climate and the economy, we need to get the feedback cycle of learning-by-doing and drilling improvements going. That requires leveling the playing field on permitting between shale oil and geothermal. It’s a no-brainer: create a Section 390 for geothermal. | https://medium.com/cgo-benchmark/the-biggest-no-brainer-in-all-of-energy-policy-ff4768e6b079 | ['Eli Dourado'] | 2020-11-02 15:24:19.017000+00:00 | ['Energy', 'Policy', 'Geothermal', 'Climate Change', 'Environment'] |
Thank you, Chattanooga. | To the people of Chattanooga,
My time as your mayor has come to an end. Before I leave City Hall, I just wanted to say thank you.
Eight short years ago, you placed your trust in me to lead this wonderful city. Whether it was making unprecedented investments in early childcare, effectively ending veteran homelessness, bringing in great jobs through deals with Volkswagen and Nippon Paint, jumpstarting our startup sector in the Innovation District, supporting small businesses in neighborhoods across the city, or creating terrific public spaces like Southside Community Park or the renovations of Miller Park and East Lake Park, I have worked to lift the barriers that kept the people of Chattanooga from living the lives they wanted.
Make no mistake — Chattanooga faces some real challenges in the months and years ahead. It will take a long time to recover fully from the devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit the most vulnerable households in our city the hardest. I have every confidence in Mayor-elect Tim Kelly and will do everything in my power to make sure he succeeds in helping lift all of Chattanooga to even greater heights.
We hear a lot about resilience these days, and the last year has taught me what that really looks like: investing in the systems that protect people. Sometimes that looks like remarkably innovative energy projects like our new public safety microgrid. Sometimes it means making sure people going through eviction proceedings have adequate legal protections. Sometimes it means helping people literally pick up the pieces of their lives after a natural disaster comes through their neighborhood.
In Chattanooga, we always show up for each other, take care of each other, and do what’s best for each other. I take great comfort in knowing that will continue to be the case as I move on.
My thanks to the administrators and members of my staff, whose dedication, creativity, and passion for service inspired me every day. Thanks also to the Chattanooga City Council for their partnership and shrewd oversight of our budgets. Mayor Jim Coppinger and Hamilton County Government were outstanding allies in so many projects that brought great jobs and big infrastructure investments into our community. The churches, neighborhood associations, and grassroots organizations throughout this city who welcomed me, challenged me, and helped me be a better leader will always hold a special place of gratitude in my heart.
I am proud that I was lucky enough to grow up in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Serving as your mayor has been the honor of my lifetime. Thank you. | https://medium.com/@Andy_Berke/thank-you-chattanooga-4dea9e0203ce | ['Andy Berke'] | 2021-04-16 15:13:04.348000+00:00 | ['Local Government', 'Chattanooga', 'Mayor'] |
Top 3 — On Writing and Mental Health, Accepting Rejection, & Expounding on Four Writing Adages | HELPFUL WRITING ARTICLES
Top 3 — On Writing and Mental Health, Accepting Rejection, & Expounding on Four Writing Adages
My Top 3 for November is a compilation of three articles about writing I found beneficial.
Photo by Hannah Grace on Unsplash
What Is Top 3?
Top 3 is a publication where Medium writers support other Medium writers by promoting each other’s work. Medium members are encouraged to post three stories from other writers that they enjoyed reading.
If you want to join, please read the Write for Us Guidelines.
My Top 3 for November on Writing
These are not in order of which I found more helpful or by using a subjective analysis to say which is “best.” I am merely presenting to Medium writers three articles I found constructive and beneficial that they may have missed.
Missy Crystal wrote Being a Full-Time Writer Could Harm Your Mental Health
“We don’t talk about this enough”
I know personally, in 2018, I made $92,000, mostly from writing the content for 66 websites, though I did have several other regular clients and a few other sources of income from writing.
I got so busy, even with outsourcing a lot and a virtual assistant, I was working nearly non-stop. I don’t think I took a full day off. Some workdays lasted 16 or 18 hours, only stopping for meals.
I wound up having a heart attack and spending nearly all that money on hospitalization. I did get most of it back from my health insurance. However, I had to cut way back, and I lost quite a few clients.
Some clients were absolute gems about my illness and let me go right back to writing for them after being cleared medically.
Two CA traffic lawyers I write for said they wouldn’t think of hiring anyone else, so that was comforting. Plus, my septic tank cleaners kept me on, which I had mixed feelings about. Only because it can get tough to think of a new way to say these guys are the best shit-suckers on the planet twice a month.
Anyway, enough about my personal story, this is about Missy Crystal’s article. I just felt the need to share my personal experience about writing full-time and possible health issues.
Missy echoed my point by saying, “I write for a living so I can spend more time with my family, but sometimes I’m only physically present. Like today, for example. My brain shut down approximately 5,000 words into my workday, and now I have nothing to offer.”
One more crucial point Missy makes is,
But burnout and mental health concerns are common in the writing community, despite numerous studies that rave about the benefits of creating written work. Studies that describe writing as therapeutic generally have one major flaw: they’re geared toward casual writers.
So, here it is. Believe me; your health will appreciate you for reading and heeding her advice.
The next subject is a well-written article by my battle-buddy, Tom Handy. Not an actual battle-buddy. We did not go into combat together, but I call everyone I know served “Battle” out of respect.
He chose another extremely essential topic for writers, and that is handling rejection. If you have thin skin or cannot handle rejection, you really need to read this.
The inability to cope with rejection as a writer could cause anguish and even cause you to quit before becoming a well-known writer or columnist if you prefer.
In The Writer’s Guide to Getting Rejected 100 Times, Tom advises, “Don’t let the rejections get you down. Keep writing. Be patient. Stay focused and write your next masterpiece. There are worse things that could happen.”
This is also true of positive critiques and corrections too. Learn to take it for what it is, another writer’s assist. I like to think of those who send me a note to make my work better (including publication editors), my writing team’s Point Guard (PG). Even if you are the only one on your team, you need a PG!
So, here is Tom’s fantastically precise piece.
In this piece by Karen Banes, who takes the advice we as writers have been getting for centuries and expounds on it, she says,
After over two decades working as a freelance writer, I can assure you they don’t go far enough. Here’s my take on how you can use each snippet of advice to really up your game, when it comes to producing a quality piece of writing.
What I particularly liked about this article is that it packs so much into a 4-minute read. She doesn’t drone on or repeat points. Her writing is clear and concise. I suppose that’s why it was “curated or distributed in topics,” as Medium is fond of calling it now. Or is it us that did that?
Her advice, though we’ve all likely heard it before, “Write Like Nobody’s Watching,” is spot on. She says, “Here’s the thing. People are going to be reading, eventually. And they may also be responding, commenting, and analysing what you’ve written. So write your first draft like nobody’s watching, then edit as though the piece will go viral.”
“W rite like the best, wittiest, most articulate version of yourself.”
I’ll leave the rest for you to read here.
Takeaways
We all need help with our writing from time-to-time. Don’t get bogged down with too much work, rejection, or not going far enough with the four pieces of advice most readers need to consider, which are read, write like nobody’s watching, write like you talk, and let it sit.
Hopefully, you can take a little bit from these Top 3 about writing to add to your quality of life as a writer. Contrary to what a lot of internet writers want you to believe, writing full-time is not “a walk in the park.”
About the Author Photo by Jean Springs from Pexels
Stephen Dalton is a retired US Army First Sergeant with a degree in journalism from the University of Maryland and a Certified US English Chicago Manual of Style Editor. Top Writer in Fiction, Short Story, VR, Design, & Creativity. Editor of Pop Off, Top Dalton’s Blog, 100WordStory, B.O.S.S., and SportsShorts100WordsOnly
You can see his portfolio here. Email [email protected]
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Reddit | Ko-fi | https://medium.com/top-3/top-3-on-writing-and-mental-health-accepting-rejection-expounding-on-the-four-writing-adages-4c2a59dbaead | ['Stephen Dalton'] | 2020-12-06 16:54:06.352000+00:00 | ['Writing Tips', 'Short Story', 'Top 3', 'Self Improvement', 'Writing'] |
Cops Have a Moral Duty To Do What Is Right | It pains me to say this, but not all those in blue are worth “backing”.
When violent criminal thugs attack the police, I stand with the police. When the police have to use extreme or lethal force, I have traditionally given them the benefit of the doubt and a lot of grace. I can’t imagine the amount of stress that is introduced into the life of someone who decides to be a law enforcement officer.
But…
Not all law enforcement officers are people of high moral character; and those who break their oaths should be identified as morally bankrupt paid thugs that hide behind a badge.
Law enforcement officers swear an oath to uphold the Constitution.
The Constitution supersedes the edict of a governor.
The Constitution supersedes the edict of a mayor.
The Constitution supersedes the edicts of a legislative or governmental body.
The Constitution supersedes State laws.
The Constitution supersedes local laws.
The Constitution supersedes public opinion.
The Constitution supersedes conditions brought about by environmental variables.
The Constitution supersedes an edict of the President of the United States of America.
The First Amendment enumerates the right of Americans to peaceably assemble, without conditions or constraints. The Fourth Amendment secures the right of Americans in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Many of these COVID restrictions violate Americans rights in both the First and Fourth Amendments.
It is the moral duty of law enforcement officers to put country before their station and to reject any fiat, order, law, or mandate that violates those Constitutional principles. Any law enforcement officer who honors the Constitution and its clearly articulated civil liberties is my friend and ally.
Any law enforcement officer who is willing to violate the Constitution for the sake of employment or who (God forbid) is in favor of tyranny, is an enemy of the Constitution. They are an enemy of America. And, as such, they are an enemy of mine. They are active foes of our republic. They are cowards. They are thugs. They are the scum of the earth.
The premise of “just following orders” didn’t pass muster 80 years ago; and it doesn’t pass muster now.
You have the option to call in sick. You have the option to protest and refuse an order. You have the option to resign.
The same people you are subjugating in the violation of these Constitutionally-defined rights are the very ones who would have your back if you needed an advocate.
I would encourage all law enforcement officers to remember who your friends are, and to do the right thing if you are called upon to violate your conscience and oath to the Constitution of the United States. | https://medium.com/@angryredbastard/cops-have-a-moral-duty-to-do-what-is-right-515639d3d392 | [] | 2020-12-03 22:33:16.849000+00:00 | ['Libertarianism', 'Police Brutality', 'Staten Island', 'Police', 'Covid 19'] |
Eidoo wallet to become hypersmart thanks to ORS A.I. algorithms | Eidoo, the app that helps cryptocurrency go mainstream with multi-currency wallet, and ORS SA, the Swiss company of leading A.I. software group ORS GROUP, are announcing today the closing of a sales agreement for integrating the ORS Crypto Robo Advisor “Hypersmart Contract” with the Eidoo wallet.
Eidoo also plans to launch a hybrid exchange, a decentralized marketplace, and a debit card in the near future.
Eidoo users will be able to automatically use Artificial Intelligence algorithms in trading and investing crypto assets on the basis of their own preferences and risk profiles.
With over 200,000 downloads worldwide, Eidoo is set to become a leader in offering advanced blockchain-related functionalities.
With a portfolio of over 1,000 algorithms and hundreds of software solutions, ORS intelligent connector (the Hypersmart Contracts) of A.I. & Blockchain is set to dramatically enhance blockchain and cryptocurrency projects.
About Eidoo
Eidoo is a fast, easy multicurrency wallet and hybrid exchange for blockchain assets, and the first human-to-blockchain interface for all cryptocurrency needs. Eidoo is available to download for free from the iOS app store or the Google Play Store for Android. Learn about Eidoo from the official business paper and stay up to date on Twitter @eidoo_io.
About ORS
The ORS Group is a software company of more than 100 IT developers and scientists. It boasts over 20 years of experience in delivering sophisticated A.I.-based optimization software solutions to a large international client base (www.ors.ai).
Their new product, the Hypersmart Contracts (“HSC”), aims to provide access to more than 1,000 proprietary algorithms and hundreds of software solutions to the Crypto Community and to established businesses (www.orsgroup.io). At ORS, we envision a global network of entrepreneurs and independent companies empowered by our ABC technology building blocks: Algorithms, Blockchain, cryptocurrencies. | https://medium.com/eidoo/eidoo-wallet-to-become-hypersmart-thanks-to-ors-a-i-algorithms-2e56876b3079 | ['Amelia Tomasicchio'] | 2018-02-16 15:44:49.945000+00:00 | ['Token', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Blockchain', 'Ethereum', 'Bitcoin'] |
7 Philosophies that Determine Your Prosperity — Pt 2 | by Randy Gage
Posted By: Randy Gage / November 8, 2020
If you came up with an idea for a brilliant start-up venture that could become worth billions, and then told your friends and family about it, how do you think they would react? The answer to that question might literally be worth a billion dollars to you…
Would they jump on board, eager to help you bring this dream into fruition? Or would they tell you it was naive or foolish, and start listing all of the reasons it won’t work? The way in which they would respond leads us to part two of our series on the key philosophies that determine the level of prosperity you manifest in your life. Specifically, your philosophy about relationships and the people in your life. In case you’re just jumping in, here’s the premise we’re operating on:
There are seven major, life-defining philosophies you develop about prosperity — these 7 philosophies determine your worldview — and this resulting worldview regulates the level of prosperity you will experience.
The 7 areas of life-determining philosophies are:
The reason your personal philosophy around relationships is so critical is because we’re talking about the people you share your life with. I posed the question about the billion-dollar idea above because it speaks to the environment created around you by the people you associate with. Not just your spouse and your immediate family, but your extended family, the colleagues you work with, and the friends you spend the most time with. Especially your “inner circle” people who influence you the most. (And I would be remiss if I would leave out our furry, feathered, or scaly friends — our pets and the animals we commune with.)
The vast majority of people in the world today never ever think about these distinctions; they let relationships “happen” to them. You will manifest abundant prosperity when your philosophy about relationships causes you to mindfully think about these three options above and choose the third one. Sometimes you need to practice addition by subtraction. Other times you may have no choice to be in relationship with another, so you have to mindfully ration the time you spend with them.
The difference between healthy, nurturing relationships and toxic, dysfunctional ones makes a massive shift in your mental health, harmony, and overall prosperity. Your connection to those around you — whether they build you up or tear you down, and whether or not they bring you peace, joy, and harmony — will impact every area of your life: health, career, family, and spiritual.
To manifest a prosperous life — you must love and appreciate yourself enough to demand relationships that enrich your life — and refuse to remain in poisonous ones. Anyone that suggests you should remain in a toxic relationship is toxic. (This includes people and also institutions like religions.) They don’t have your highest good at heart and should be treated as a threat to your prosperity. (For more on this, see Beware of the Soul Crushers.)
The people in your life and how you relate to them factor greatly into the third area of philosophy we will explore in the next post: your surrounding locale and environment. Until then, please share your thoughts below.
Peace,
- RG | https://medium.com/prosperity-success/7-philosophies-that-determine-your-prosperity-pt-2-4682d666b326 | ['Randy Gage'] | 2020-11-08 17:49:20.360000+00:00 | ['Happiness', 'Success', 'Prosperity', 'Life Lessons', 'Relationships'] |
The importance of chatting etiquette in (remote) work | Working from home has become the new reality for many due to not only the COVID-19 pandemic, but also due to the ever-increasing rise in popularity of remote working. With working remotely comes the new challenge of navigating communication online, especially the more informal and “water-cooler style” conversations. Contrary to what you might assume, communication in a remote working environment needs to be facilitated, maintained and paid attention to, and will not simply evolve on its own. Like most things in a remote setup, it is important to critically assess, document and discuss the “chatting etiquette” that will be implemented. Not only does this make everyone aware of where the company stands and what the expectations are, but it also enables team members to confidently use the communication tools available to them in a manner that is appropriate, effective and enjoyable.
Establish a code of conduct on messaging etiquette
With working from home comes the need to find a way to communicate with your team. There is no “meeting room” available to have a quick discussion on that project, you cannot simply walk to your colleague’s desk to ask them to do you a quick favour, and there is no water cooler around which to stand and make awkward jokes. These social interactions now all take place online, and they need a space that is carefully created, carved out and dedicated to their purpose. This is where the importance of messaging etiquette comes in- it allows everyone to become aware of, understand and hence participate in these various types of online communications. As a company, it is crucial to publicly announce and distribute a form of “code of conduct” for the various messaging platforms. This does not serve the purpose of merely setting strict guidelines on what language can and cannot be used – rather, it allows for clear guidelines on which channels are dedicated to which type of conversation, and hence allow employees to operate and engage more freely within these channels. This also serves the benefit of making sure that each communication channel fulfills its purpose and is used to its full capacity, increasing both efficiency and ease of use. Having a communal document where all this information is shared allows everyone within the team to be on the same page and focus on communicating their needs instead of fretting on how to best reach someone.
The importance of establishing set communication channels
One of the key aspects of establishing effective communication channels is designating a purpose or use case for the various channels – a channel for meetings, a channel for water cooler conversations, a channel for quick responses. By allocating channels to purposes, everyone goes in knowing what to expect. An example of this would be deciding on Google Hangouts or Zoom as a place for meetings, presentations and one-on-one conversations, which will be scheduled in advance and notified by calendar, which gives both parties the opportunity. to prepare and set aside time. Informal updates or information can be distributed via email, which allows both parties to take in the information at a time convenient to them, given that the situation is not urgent. It should also be established what urgency each channel will be carrying, so that someone does not send an email containing an urgent task and then wonder whether their employee has read the email or not. This is where quick response messaging platforms such as Slack come in handy – they enable quick and immediate responses, whereby both parties can contact each other immediately and in real time. These can be used for both informal and formal purposes – to notify someone as to the urgency of a sent email and a decision needed, or for pure office banter and social conversation. By knowing which channel to use for what occasion, employees can avoid sending colleagues lengthy emails when they could just convey this information in a video meeting, or sending constant status update messages when an urgent matter was conveyed via email, or even sending multiple messages, also known as “pinging”, on Slack that could have been summarized and sent via email to be read by the recipient at a time convenient for them.
Establishing acceptable “chatting behaviour”
Once the channels and their communication purpose have been established, it is also important to note that the accepted behaviour and communication style within these channels also needs to be established. This is especially true for the more informal channels such as Slack, where real-time messages are sent, much like Whatsapp or texting within a company. Whilst an immediate response is often favoured, it is important to not abuse this privilege. By, for example, establishing certain “social channels” within slack, employees can have a space to share office jokes, memes, or have a laugh about their weekend activities. This dedicated “fun” space is accompanied by more relaxed language, the use of emojis and memes, and a more casual take on “pinging” or spam messaging. By dedicating a space for these types of “watercooler chats”, employees do not mind sticking to more static and professional chatting etiquette within personal Slack messages.
Acceptable chatting etiquette will look different for each company and team, but some general guidelines can be applied to most: Try to keep it short and sweet in writing – if it gets too long, rather have a face-to-face video or phone call. Avoid sending multiple small messages, which continuously alert and “ping” the recipient – instead choose to condense the information relevant to the topic into one paragraph or message. Never send a message with the expectation of an immediate response, unless explicitly notified so – this leads to a bad communication channel, disappointment and chaos. If something is urgent, briefly follow up via personal message, but give the person time to read and reason without aggressively notifying them – especially in a remote work environment it can be difficult to know what the other person is currently working on or busy with. And the golden rule of chatting etiquette within the work environment – never send a message with a simple “hey” or “hello” – always include your reason for communication or your plan within the message instead of waiting for the other person to first respond. And another important tip to make your communication more fluid, efficient and well-received is to always spell check – this can be using an automatic program such as grammarly, or simply scanning over a message once before sending it.
Update your status
One of the most important things to agree on and practice religiously within a remote team is to update your status. Transparency and honesty are values that can really make or break a remote team, and letting your team know where you currently stand enables both of you to adapt to the situation accordingly. Status updates on a platform like Slack may include lunch breaks, dropping children off at school, time-off for deep focus and concentration, and even vacation or sick days. By letting your team members know that you are currently not available, which is also incredibly important in a remote team of different time zones, you can avoid misunderstandings to happen and allow urgent situations to not escalate, whereby you come back to your laptop and are bombarded with 20 messages, or your phone rings during your vacation. Status updates allow the person who is unavailable to fully enjoy their time off and not have to worry about their work, whilst signalling to their team members that now is perhaps a good time to reach out to someone else for more immediate help and planning projects and tasks accordingly.
Although it may seem tedious to explicitly announce and spend time on establishing communication channels and discussing chatting etiquette, it allows for a better functioning team and ultimately, better communication, and hence better business. | https://medium.com/@cleverfeld/the-importance-of-chatting-etiquette-in-remote-work-bd7c9d1070f8 | ['Ceverfeld Oü'] | 2020-09-22 06:00:18.110000+00:00 | ['Slack', 'Remote Working', 'Remote Work', 'Work Chat', 'Work From Home'] |
Good Eggs | A developing female fetus has around 6 million eggs in her ovaries. The raw material for the combined population of Los Angeles and Chicago is crammed inside the cramped studio that is a mother’s womb.
At birth, a baby girl’s egg count will have dropped to a still-robust 1 to 2 million. By the time she starts her period, she’ll be down to about 300,000, and each subsequent month, she’ll lose roughly 11,000 eggs, her fertility in a constant state of decline.
Welcome to womanhood. It’s all downhill from here. And for womxn born without ovaries, their paths to motherhood, if they choose to walk them, will be steep and winding.
The idea that a newborn baby is flush with one million eggs–stored in her tiny ovaries until puberty like strings of Christmas lights balled up in the attic–is perhaps one of nature’s cruelest evolutionary fuck yous. By the time a woman has finished her education, found steady employment, paid off her student loans, reached a semblance of financial stability, found someone she can tolerate long enough to have regular sex with, perhaps gotten married or purchased a home–let’s call it age 30–she is down to one-tenth of the eggs she was born with.
Last summer, I went to a backyard barbecue in Brooklyn where my husband and I were the only couple in attendance who didn’t already have or weren’t currently expecting a child. I witnessed a woman chug a glass of rosé while breastfeeding her toddler at the table just to get him to shut up long enough for her to eat a hotdog.
Like her two-year-old, the barbecue sucked. I called an Uber and fled to a friend’s (25th!) birthday party at a bar where I was the only attendee in my thirties–a wrinkled medicine woman emerging from her hut to gain strength from the tribe’s youth. A bunch of 24-year-olds—reverent at this visitation from An Actual Adult—were dancing on the tables, blackout drunk at 4 p.m. I stood at the bar, miserably sober and utterly ignored, as the bartenders poured shots and pitchers for girls 15 years younger than me and much, much hotter than I’d ever been.
Women are too young for everything until we are suddenly and inexplicably too old for everything, except for about ten years in between where we’re both too young and too old for everything. I didn’t think of that; I saw it in a tweet written by someone younger and more successful than me.
At 29, if you live in New York or LA, you’re too young to start having kids, and in the rest of America, you’re too old to find a husband. At 34, you’re too young to be single, but too old to use Tinder. At 37, you’re too young for the really big promotion, but you’re too old to go out for drinks with the cool people you work with—because they work for you.
When you’re 41, you’re too old to have a second baby, but too young to buy a second home; too old to show up makeup-free to the office, but too young to get a facelift; too old to date men in their twenties, but too young to be a rich divorceé.
Welcome to womanhood, where it’s all uphill until you’re over the hill at which point it’s immediately, very rapidly, downhill.
I told my colleague that I was trying to get pregnant, and she sent me a booklet her acupuncturist gave her—a guide to the ideal “fertility diet,” based on ancient Chinese medicine. I read it on the subway; according to the PDF, women trying to conceive should avoid foods that make the uterus “cold,” and should instead choose warming foods like stews, soups, and spices like cumin and cinnamon.
Getting enough protein is paramount; eggs are very good for those trying to conceive. Yoga, for me, is a temporary reprieve from the high-strung nag who berates me all day: did you take your prenatal vitamins today? Don’t have a second cup of tea, that’s too much caffeine! No wine during the week don’t drink smoothies because they make your uterus cold. This is all your fault because you wanted a career first if you’d started trying right after your wedding you’d have a kindergartner right now you’re so stupid you’re so stupid you’re so stupid you’re so stupid you dumb bitch you’re so stupid.
Vinyasa doesn’t entirely shut her up, but when I’m moving mindfully in time with my breathing, she’s much quieter. Yoga might be the only reason I am able to get out of bed one month after my first pregnancy was cut short by my first miscarriage.
I found out I was pregnant just after the new year, and went from shocked to elated to paralyzed with anxiety back to elated within the span of a few hours. No one told me that I’d be so happy to find out I was pregnant; it was the very thing I’d spent more than two decades trying to avoid, and I thought I’d feel something like mourning for the parts of my life that wouldn’t ever be the same.
But when those two parallel pink lines came swimming into focus, something in my brain rescrambled. I felt like I was floating. I felt powerful. I am going to have a child. I am going to be a mother. I would walk by strangers on the street pushing strollers and feel a thread of connection to these women that I’d never met. I’m one of you now, I’d think. We’re the ones doing the most important work.
I felt a clarity of purpose, like sharpening a pencil.
I think I let it get away from me a little. Within a week, my husband and I were lying in bed, talking about who this child would be. He would concoct the most absurd names for the baby, just to watch me laugh. I spent hours Googling statistics about the likelihood of miscarriage in your mid-30s; I spent hours Googling everything. I was afraid, but I also have felt deeply my entire life that I’m lucky.
At 37, I’d conceived within a perfectly normal timeframe. It’ll be fine, I told myself. The day after I got the positive pregnancy test, my friend texted to say that she’d had a dream I was pregnant with a boy. See? I thought. You’ll be one of the lucky ones.
A month later, my husband and I took the subway to our 8-week ultrasound appointment. We took a selfie together on the train so we could one day show our child what we looked like on the day we first heard their heartbeat.
I knew the moment I watched my doctor’s face as she looked at the ultrasound screen that something was off. I looked, too: a white smudge inside a black orb, the same size it had been two weeks ago.
“I’m afraid I can’t give you good news today,” my doctor said, tenderly. No heartbeat. Nothing to see here, folks.
The pregnancy, in the parlance of reproductive medicine, wasn’t viable. Like a defective Polaroid, it just didn’t develop. You shake and you shake and you blow on it a little but it just won’t show up.
I have been told that I’m “lucky” that it happened so early. It doesn’t feel a bit like luck. A month after the procedure that vacuumed–yes, literally sucked–the embryonic tissue from my womb (if you’ve ever had an abortion early in a pregnancy, you’ve undergone this very procedure), I take an Uber to my regular Thursday morning yoga class.
We hit a snarl of traffic and I am too late; the door is locked. I am embarrassed to feel tears welling up as I feel the buzz of the Uber charge come through: $9.46.
My driver’s name was Karma. Would you like to leave a tip? I think, This is happening to me because I deserve it. There is no other explanation. I think about all the times I talked shit about friends, or wasn’t there for my brother, or was horrible to my mom. All the times I was casually cruel to my husband or pretended I couldn’t see a homeless man begging for money. These things added up and karma cashed in.
Would you like to leave a tip?
At 37, I have about 25,000 eggs left. I am too young to start panicking about one bump in the reproductive road, and too old to relax into the process of getting pregnant. Too young to be googling the cost of IVF in the middle of the night, and too old to believe it will happen naturally.
Too young to feel this tired, and too old to hate myself this much.
I have always loved eggs, and I have a lot of opinions about them. I won’t order omelettes at restaurants because they are chronically overcooked. I don’t trust diners to deliver perfectly-executed over-medium eggs, with set whites and runny yolks. And don’t get me started on those rubbery hotel “eggs” you find languishing in steam trays like limp towels in a sauna.
But the egg dish about which I am the most insufferable is scrambled eggs. Most people have never had–much less cooked–proper scrambled eggs. Scrambled eggs are, like most other American egg preparations, woefully overcooked and offensively under-seasoned. If you are diluting your precious scramble with milk, or–God forbid–water, if you are cooking your eggs in nonstick cooking spray instead of a generous knob of butter, or if you are adding globs of pre-shredded cheese to your scramble, you’re doing it wrong.
The recipe is the dish: scrambled eggs.
I make scrambled eggs every morning now. I preheat the pan as I chew my prenatal gummy vitamins and decide–just as I do every morning–that I am not going to cry today. I melt butter in my trusty egg pan, letting the foam subside as I whisk two good eggs (organic, cage-free, pasture-raised, antibiotic-free–a cool $6.99 a dozen) in a bowl.
I pour them into the hot butter and let them sit undisturbed for 10 seconds. Then I swirl them around the pan with a rubber spatula for ten more seconds, until they’re just set, but still glossy. I tip them onto a plate and shower them with flaky sea salt. I usually eat a half of an avocado, also generously salted, alongside, but not always.
When the eggs are good, you don’t need much else. | https://medium.com/pulpmag/good-eggs-b699a3fdebd | ['Elizabeth Cauvel'] | 2020-05-18 17:57:20.370000+00:00 | ['Ovulation', 'Motherhood', 'Womanhood', 'Eggs', 'Pregnancy'] |
Successful Entrepreneurs Reveal The Common Risks In Entrepreneurship | Successful Entrepreneurs Reveal The Common Risks In Entrepreneurship
“$1,000 on black!” the professional gambler yells out, in a very confident tone. “Matter of fact, make it $2,000 on black!” What are his chances of hitting black in Roulette? 50/50? Perhaps. What are your chances growing your business and having no setbacks? Well, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 20% of U.S. small businesses fail within the first year. By the end of their fifth year, roughly 50% have faltered. After 10 years, only around a third of businesses have survived. Those are some dicey numbers, would you still roll? Of course you would. What the numbers don’t tell you is how the people — the entrepreneurs, are affected personally. Being an entrepreneur sounds fun, sounds glorious. It is so intriguing, is it not? But what are some real risks involved in entrepreneurial business?
I had a few entrepreneurs that have failed and succeeded, perhaps not at the first go ‘round, but at the second go. Here are some of their answers for common risks associated with chasing after, and bringing your dreams into fruition via Q & A.
Harry Bugarin
What kind of business did you start and why?
I started a Multi-Media Company. It’s something I have a passion for. Creating designs. Developing video, audio, and online content.
What were some of the challenges you encountered when starting your first business? And, how did you overcome them?
Capital for me. For right now, everything is out of pocket. I have started designing logos and selling shirts, hoodies, hats, and such to help supplement the budget to keep the business running. Another challenge for me is finding the right equipment and tech for me. Even though a 5K camera or audio package may be the top of the line at the moment, it may not be the necessary equipment I would need for what I do now. As far as overcoming the challenges, I believe you go through challenges in different ways. Trial and error. Seeking advice from those in the same industry. Reading and researching.
What did you sacrifice to start your life as an entrepreneur? And, what have you continued to sacrifice to build your business?
Fortunately for me, this is something I love to do, and honestly during the whole Covid Era, time is now something we all have. So time isn’t that much of a factor for what I do. Even though I work out of the house at the moment, spending time with my family and daughters has taken somewhat of a hit, however, I do make time during other parts of the day to make it up. As far as my journey goes, I haven’t had to sacrifice much as of yet.
What are the challenges that you continue to battle with year after year as an entrepreneur?
Being relevant. Being fresh. Having new content. Being able to think three steps ahead of the changing markets, trends, and such. Being able to reach more viewers, users, having more engagement, and such.
What do you believe are some of the most common risks in entrepreneurial business?
Business is a risk, either way you go about it. Until you take the first step, everything is just an idea, a thought, writing on a piece of paper. It can get scary and overwhelming when you first start, however, just like anything, you will learn, assess, adjust, and execute.
Nate Boyette, former filmmaker turned software engineer
What kind of business did you start and why?
I’ve started several business projects, from film projects to software, and they usually revolve around some problem that I’m frustrated by or inspired by a passion of mine.
What were some of the challenges you encountered when starting your first business and, how did you overcome them?
One of the biggest challenges I’ve found is getting and keeping people just as motivated and/or inspired about an idea as I am. The first month or two after things get moving, people start to lose motivation as momentum slows down. The idea stage is always the most exciting. The execution stage is when people realize they aren’t as interested or committed to the idea as they thoughtthey were at the start. I’ve found that’s usually the beginning of the end for most projects.
What did you sacrifice to start your life as an entrepreneur? And, what have you continued to sacrifice to build your business?
While I’m not technically currently working as an entrepreneur, getting into the software industry was much like being an entrepreneur. I knew that in order to switch careers I would have to give up my life and make that commitment for an extended amount of time. That meant no social life, and even sacrificing family life. No matter how much I prepared those around me for my journey, it was still difficult for the people closest to me to make that adjustment with me. I believe pulling back from people is also necessary to cut out distractions as well. When you have a vision for something, people who lack the same amount of ambition and/or desire to attempt what feels impossible will usually cast doubt on the vision you have. I’ve tried to stay away from those types of people while training to get into the software industry.
What are challenges that you continue to battle with year after year as an entrepreneur?
One of the constant challenges I’ve had is the motivation to continue to grow. Sometimes you work extremely hard to achieve something, sacrifice relationships or even your own health, and when you achieve the goal you become burnt out because that amount of energy isn’t sustainable. So for me, now that I’ve achieved my major goal, I’m trying to figure out where I need to focus my attention to keep growing at a steady sustainable pace that works for me and my family.
What do you believe to be as some of the most common risks in entrepreneurial business?
I think the biggest risk is financial. Most entrepreneurs bet the savings on themselves, and when it doesn’t work out they have to start their lives over. Another risk is sacrificing relationships, whether it’s family, friends, or a partner to pursue a goal. The last and most important risk to me is the risk of time. You can spend many years pursuing a business goal that doesn’t work out and that’s time and energy that you can’t get back.
Here is a list of common risks in entrepreneurial business according to the other interviewees:
Entrepreneur rolling dice on white background
Finances — Using your own money to start your business has pros and cons. Biggest con and pro: it’s your money! It’s more than likely that your savings, and yourself, are taking a leap of faith without a plan on where to land. Please consider strategizing your finances properly before taking that leap. Sometimes, certain circumstances make you take the leap due to market volatility, but always think before you leap! But, just make sure you leap, because either way you’ll be figuring out how to fly for a while! Family time and social life — You will be alone, even when you’re with people you will be alone. You will have the business on your mind 24/7. It’s your new baby and it will take all of your attention. Be careful not to alienate your family and friends. You will need them for support and to keep you balanced. Emotional, physical and mental health — As stated above, you will need your family and friends for support. Although, sometimes, it’s our family and perhaps friends that put strains on our life while we try to achieve our goals and aspirations in entrepreneurship. Sometimes you have to cut the hand to save the arm, and so-on-and-so-forth (I don’t mean literally). Misguided marketing — Developing a marketing strategy that is marketed towards the wrong end user is just pure frustration for you to have a heart attack with. It is a drain on your wallet and your mental faculties, measure twice and cut once. This mistake has ended companies. Time — The jewel that will eventually slip away from you, if you’re not careful. Your time is precious and it can be swept away into unnecessary tasks just as easy as the wind blows. Be very cautious with your time; treat your time like it’s the secret service guarding a president! Be vigilant with those that try to waste your time and that includes you too! Practice developing discipline with your time, love your time, bask in your time, and watch how far you go.
To conclude, I will let my interviewees bring it home despite all the challenges that come with being an entrepreneur. I asked them for their final wordsof advice for those that are on the fence of making the entrepreneurial leap. Here’s what they said:
“Just do it! You have nothing to lose. And try again because there’s nothing worse than working on a hamster wheel. Most people at the head of the table followed their love and passion and blocked out all the white noise to turn that passion into a check.” Nicholas Brown — Art Gallery Owner “Take the leap! I’d rather live my life knowing I went for it than regretting never taking the leap at all.” Nathan Boyette — Software Engineer & Entrepreneur “Don’t give into your fears. Take that first step, whatever it is. Once you get the ball rolling, things will fall into place. Align yourself with positive people who will help uplift you along your journey. Reach out to those in your space who are successful, ask what their formula is and basically “plug and play”! Use what works and keep the other things to the side, then revisit them to see if they will work later. When it doesn’t work out, you have to reinvent yourself!” Harry Bugarin — Entrepreneur “Just do it! You don’t know what’s on the other side for you.” Delores Hollingsworth — Designer & Entrepreneur “Don’t do what everyone else is doing.” Romell Hoskins — Designer & Entrepreneur
What are some other common risks entrepreneurs should be aware of? Let us know down in the comments.
This article originally published on GREY Journal.
This article originally published on GREY Journal: https://greyjournal.net/hustle/inspire/successful-entrepreneurs-reveal-the-common-risks-in-entrepreneurship/ | https://medium.com/@GREYJournal/successful-entrepreneurs-reveal-the-common-risks-in-entrepreneurship-bc6ce4ae9a10 | ['Grey Journal Staff'] | 2020-12-24 16:12:32.546000+00:00 | ['Failure', 'Inspire', 'Featured', 'Cap Jason Smith', 'Jason Smith'] |
Top Best Security Wireless Camera System | Top Best Security Wireless Camera System
Thе еffiсiеnсy of thе world is indееd rising to its finеst. Imаginе thе innovаtion tесhnology hаs to offеr us. Now, еvеn саmеrа would not rеquirе you а wiring сonnесtion аt timеs. Асtuаlly, thеrе аrе somе pеoplе who prеfеr а wirеlеss саmеrа instеаd of а wirеd onе. Somе rеаson аs to why somе pеoplе prеfеr а wirеlеss onе is its portаbility, sizе, аnd ovеrаll vеrsаtility.
Wе аll know thаt wirеlеss аppliаnсеs stаrtеd to tаkе influеnсе somеwhеrе in thе lаst dесаdе. Somе populаr еlесtroniсs thаt wеrе rесonvеrtеd to wirеlеss аrе thе tеlеphonе, hеаdsеt, mousе, аnd so on. Now, with thе growing dеmаnds for sесurity produсts, it is not а surprisе thаt wirеlеss саmеrаs аrе on thе sсеnе. Wе usuаlly sее thеm in moviеs bеforе but аs timе wеnt by, pеoplе wеrе аblе to dеvеlop thе idеаl wirеlеss саmеrа.
Pеoplе undеrgoing аn еspionаgе mission саn аlso usе thеsе wirеlеss kinds of саmеrаs. Thеy сould bе сonсеаlеd аs а pаrt of wаtсh, сorsаgе, or а mаtеriаl thаt would spаrk lеss suspiсion. Likе whаt сommonly sее in "dеtесtivе" moviеs, wirеlеss саmеrаs bесomе аn intеgrаl pаrt on thеir сovеrt missions аnd gаthеring of еvidеnсеs.
Privаtе ownеrs of еstаblishmеnts саn аlso buy wirеlеss саmеrа for thеir shops. Thеsе саmеrаs саn sеrvе аs "protесtion," аs а thiеf would bе саrеful in mеssing аround with а shop hаving а survеillаnсе systеm. With а саrеfully monitorеd shop, slight suspiсious movеmеnts саn signаl thе poliсе for possiblе dаngеr. Fаstеr асtion would bе еxpесtеd whеn аn ownеr usеs thеsе wirеlеss onеs.
Privаtе ownеrs of еstаblishmеnts саn аlso buy wirеlеss саmеrа for thеir shops. Thеsе саmеrаs саn sеrvе аs “protесtion,” аs а thiеf would bе саrеful in mеssing аround with а shop hаving а survеillаnсе systеm. With а саrеfully monitorеd shop, slight suspiсious movеmеnts саn signаl thе poliсе for possiblе dаngеr. Fаstеr асtion would bе еxpесtеd whеn аn ownеr usеs thеsе wirеlеss onеs.
Nеvеrthеlеss wirеlеss саmеrаs саn bе quitе priсеy. Rаnging from а fеw hundrеd to а signifiсаnt аmount of dollаrs, wirеlеss саmеrа саnnot bе ignorеd. Thе priсе would bе аll worth it though if you viеw thе situаtion in thе long run. It саn hеlp sаvе livеs, solvе problеms, аnd еvеn bесomе а sourсе of tеstimony or еvidеnсе.
Ovеrаll, а wirеlеss саmеrа is а good invеntion for а morе vеrsаtilе usе. Imаginе not hаving а wirеlеss fеаturе: it саn mаkе thе саmеrа morе suspiсious аnd lеss "invinсiblе." Tесhnology indееd finds it wаy for а bеttеr lifе.
Ovеrаll, а wirеlеss саmеrа is а good invеntion for а morе vеrsаtilе usе. Imаginе not hаving а wirеlеss fеаturе: it саn mаkе thе саmеrа morе suspiсious аnd lеss “invinсiblе.” Tесhnology indееd finds it wаy for а bеttеr lifе. | https://medium.com/@davidleo4272/top-best-security-wireless-camera-system-9d7bb8eb1c60 | [] | 2020-01-30 13:27:43.969000+00:00 | ['Latest Camera', 'Wireless Camera', 'Best', 'Blogrizs', 'Security Camera'] |
Living Room Swan Dive | If you are a leader who has intentionally fostered psychological safety in your workplace, cultivated the allure of grand challenges, and invested in the deep development of your people’s potential, all while remaining tenaciously on-mission, then you’ll see a video like this and smile. It resonates with something you’ve observed first hand in those you serve and you revel in it!
Meet my son, Theo. A wonderfully typical 9-year-old mid-elementary schoolboy. He knows the physical properties of a bean bag (safe), continually explores the limits of his abilities for the joy of the experience itself (challenge), and enjoys unlimited time to practice amateur tumbling (development). He’s committed to the never-ending pursuit of raw fun (mission). He is the simplified mini-prototype of an employee that is in a healthy work environment.
If you have not been exposed to this kind of an environment as a leader, then you’ll be more likely to see this video and say, “What was the point of that?” or “Ouch! Did he hurt his back?” or “I’m sure glad he didn’t miss the bean bag!” And you’ll worry about whether or not such a feat should be attempted again. If you find yourself in the “react” versus “revel” crowd, take time to reflect. As 2020 winds its way to an end, we can all acknowledge that there were a tremendous number of things well out of our control. However, there were also a number of things in our control — and the kind of work enviroment we create as a leader is one of them. Consider what you can do differently as a leader this next year to foster a workplace marked by more safety, more challenge, more development, more mission, and yes, more living room swan dives.
An earlier version of this post can be found at https://www.linkedin.com/posts/devonmberry_this-is-what-people-who-feel-safe-challenged-activity-6742881679465181184-ROmG | https://medium.com/@devonberry/living-room-swan-dive-d5e6e957714 | ['Devon Berry'] | 2020-12-10 19:56:19.182000+00:00 | ['Leadership', 'People', 'Development', 'Organizational Culture', 'Safety'] |
5 Things To Know Before You Start Email Marketing For Your Business — JoniToikkanen.com | Building an email list is essential for any online business to succeed. Being able to advertise to your customers about new products, discounts, changes in ordering procedures, and more will help keep your business healthy. There are a few ways to build an email list.
Offer a good incentive to get people to subscribe to your newsletter
The first way is to ask your customers for their email addresses. While some people will give them, most won’t without good incentive. By offering a discount coupon or ebook, those who were unwilling to provide their email address may give it at this point. When placing an order, many of your customers will sign up for your newsletter. Just remember to give your customers an easy way to unsubscribe later so that they won’t feel cheated in any way when you send emails to them.
Create a poll on your website
The second way to build an email list is to ask visitors to take a poll about the website. This is a good way to get both, positive and negative feedback about your website and also a way to build your customer list. Many visitors will agree to answer a few questions about your website. Build the email list from those who’ll want to return to your site and buy more goods. Once your list is created, send out emails about upcoming sales and other events every week. The more you send emails, the more you will sell, but on the other hand, more people will unsubscribe from your list.
Provide relevant information your customers want to receive
When you build an email list, be sure to find out the kinds of information that your customer wants to receive. This will help when sending out promotions. The email list will help your business grow only if people respond to the email by visiting your site. Building the email list is one of the best ways to keep customers returning to your site and making a purchase. Update your website often to keep customers interested in the products you are offering.
An Autoresponder is a Necessary Online Marketing Tool
During your tenure as an internet marketer, if you hope to be successful, you will probably find yourself doing the same routines over and over again daily. From answering questions and queries sent to you over the email to contact potential customers with new products and services that you are offering, there are many different tasks which you’ll have to do.
While you may like doing each and every one of these tasks yourself when you are first starting out on the road to becoming an online marketer, after a while, you’ll wish that you had some help with all these necessary online marketing tasks. Sure, you can hire someone to help you with this job, but that will require that you spend a serious amount of money in the long term — money that you may not necessarily have yet.
But don’t panic yet because there is a much easier way to speed up your internet marketing services for a lot less money.
The autoresponder service like AWeber and GetResponse is one of the best marketing tools in the eyes of any savvy online marketer. It will significantly shorten the time you have to waste at your laptop, answering emails that all are asking the same questions.
As an online marketing tool, the automatically responding characteristics of an autoresponder service will allow you to concentrate your limited resources elsewhere so that you can accomplish more during your workday and make more revenue in the long term.
Autoresponder services are readily available for sign up online, so head on over to Google and pick yourself up a free trial of a highly recommended autoresponder service.
If you find the autoresponder service as valuable as you thought it would be and you think that the service is just what you need, all you have to do is upgrade to a paid subscription; otherwise, when the trial period is ending, simply cancel the autoresponder service subscription and go about your business — a risk-free endeavor.
2 Recommended Autoresponder Services
There are dozens of autoresponder services out there but I’m going to list here only two of them because these companies have been around for a long time and they provide an excellent service and both of these companies are offering a free 30-day trial so you test them risk-free.
LEGAL: You can assume that I will receive compensation for anything I recommend either as an affiliate or from my own products. | https://medium.com/@joni-toikkanen/5-things-to-know-before-you-start-email-marketing-for-your-business-jonitoikkanen-com-11e2aa47ba0a | ['Joni Toikkanen'] | 2021-01-13 19:15:21.040000+00:00 | ['Email Marketing Lists', 'Email Productivity', 'Email Marketing', 'Email', 'Email Marketing Tips'] |
How Wonderschool is Transforming Childcare by Building a Company as Diverse as their Customers | Linda: Hispanic Heritage Month is supposedly one month — September 15th to October 15th — but I like to think of it as a year-round commitment and celebration. So I’m really excited to chat with both of you. Can you share a bit about your personal backgrounds and what drew you to Wonderschool?
Chris: My parents are immigrants from Honduras and I grew up in Miami. I’m one of 31 first cousins, and I spent a lot of summers with my family in Honduras. Be it on farms or in the city, I got exposed to these different ways of life and exposed to my family and the depth of my culture. It was really important. My parents came to the US because they wanted to make sure that I got access to the right education. They put me in this awesome childcare program that a lot of my cousins didn’t have access to. In middle school and high school, I was always a good student. I give a lot of credit for this to my parents of course, but I also credit my early childhood education experience. Years later, I was hearing from all my friends that they were having a hard time finding childcare and I was able to connect the dots. Childcare is so important. And if my friends were having a hard time finding childcare, then I realized that could be a big problem for a lot of people.
Javier: I’m from Mexico. I was born in a city called Morelia Michoacán, but I never actually lived there. My family moved around, so I lived most of the time in both Mexico City and a city called Orizaba in the state of Veracruz. I’ve always been attracted to the risk of startups. Back when I was working for these big companies in Mexico, people used to tell me, you’re going to make a career there, you are going to be in that company for the rest of your life. That was something that wasn’t attractive to me. I was looking for new challenges, different ways to do things, and to learn more.
Chris: In my neighborhood in Miami, both my sister and I went to in-home childcare programs. So, I started asking folks, “Why don’t your children just go to in-home programs?” Parents kept saying that a lot of the programs aren’t great. There are a lot of downsides to them. I realized, “Hey, what if we can help people start high-quality childcare programs, like the programs that I experienced as a kid?” That sort of was the genesis of this idea. High quality programs are ones with a great environment for early childhood development and a strong early childhood educator.
Javier: When I came to the US with my family, my son was two and a half years old. So we were looking for childcare for him. I didn’t realize that there wasn’t such a thing as a public childcare options for kids in the United States, and we went through a lot of time without finding any childcare for my son, and I became very familiar with this problem. After a former colleague told me about a company — Wonderschool — that’s working on this problem, he recommended I talk with the CEO and see if I can help. This was when they were just starting to get the engineering team running, and after a series of conversations, I joined Wonderschool.
Linda: I love the mission of Wonderschool — can you share that in your own words?
Javier: Our mission is basically to provide as much access as possible to childcare for children in America so they can realize their potential. We fundamentally believe that the more access you give children to education in early stages of their life, they can develop their potential better. So we’re providing as much access as we can to childcare.
Linda: I’m curious about how you think about the Latino roots of Wonderschool, as well as the strong Latinx employee base. How does this translate into the work that Wonderschool does?
Chris: Because of my upbringing, I really understand our customers. So many of our early education program directors are from Latin America, and often just moved here. They’re from Honduras, El Salvador — I’m meeting women, frankly, who could be my aunts. I’m in their houses, and I’m like, “This feels like I’m in my family’s home.”
Javier: The majority of our customer base is from a very diverse background. That includes a lot of Latin families and a lot of Latinx directors that are running these programs. We have several members of the team who speak Spanish, so we are regularly talking with the directors in Spanish. They can pick up the phone and the person at Wonderschool can understand what they are trying to say and the problems they have. It’s very important to us to be close to those communities and who better to do that than somebody — like our CEO, myself, and other team members — whose families have those roots?
Chris: We have engineers in Colombia and Mexico, and a leadership team that’s pretty diverse. We all sort of have a chip on our shoulder — we want to prove that we can build something big and valuable. And I feel that approach aligns with a lot of what we see with our directors as well, who are very diverse and whose lives we are impacting. Personally, I’ve always assumed I would be an entrepreneur — my parents both started their own businesses. A lot of people in my family — especially because they’re black and because they’ve experienced structural and systemic racism within the workplace — taught me early on that for people like us to realize our full potential, we likely need to start our own things.
Linda: Tell us about how you’ve approached building out Wonderschool’s culture and the founding team. It’s a great, diverse group of folks — is there anything that you knew early on that you wanted to do differently as a founder?
Chris: Javier knows this so well — hiring diverse talent isn’t enough. It’s making sure that your team feels safe at work and supporting your talent when they get into the company. In my first job, I worked at a company that was 0.5% black. I needed mentorship, and someone to talk to me about race and how it shows up in the workplace in an unconscious manner. I wanted to make sure everyone felt psychologically safe at work. I’ve always wanted to create an environment where someone from any gender, any race, even any political views feels like they can be themselves at Wonderschool for the betterment of their careers and the betterment of the company.
There are a lot of ways we reinforce that, including giving credit where credit’s due, giving feedback to folks whenever it seems like something is socially off and could influence someone feeling safe at work, and then hiring a diverse team. So folks see people like themselves when they are applying and when they join Wonderschool. We still have work to do, but it’s something that I think about a lot.
Another big part of our culture is having a growth mindset. That’s one of our values, because I want to help people become who they want to become. One of the things we ask candidates in interviews is, “What’s your motivation? Where do you want to end up?” There are people who joined Wonderschool — both employees and our directors — in completely different functions and have taken on other functions when the opportunities have presented themselves, based on their career aspirations.
Linda: Tell us more about the company culture at Wonderschool.
Javier: We try to be very open and transparent with everybody, including candidates for positions and people who are referred to us. We try to speak like we regularly speak at the company. We share things like: What are the expectations of the role? What are the opportunities that we have? We don’t have a particular framework but what has helped build this culture is being completely honest and bringing your whole self to work. That’s helped us attract people who have a similar mindset. When I have a conversation with one of my direct reports, we talk about free time, compensation, all the things that are related to how we work. My style is very trusting. If you need to do something, do it. If you want to start working at a certain time during the day, go for it.
Linda: Javier, what do you see is missing in tech from the conversation around diversity, equity and inclusion?
Javier: I think it depends. Because when we talk about Silicon Valley, we talk about different industries. One of the things that we need to have is different points of view. One of the major wins with having a diverse employee population is that they can provide a different point of view to all the problems that the tech industry is trying to solve. And the more points of view that you have as a company on a particular problem, the better solutions that you can create.
Linda: I love that. And finally, Chris, how do you deal with the challenges of being a CEO?
Chris: Being a CEO is super hard. I deal with a lot of emotions when running the company. But one time, I went to visit a director at her home. For her whole career, she had cleaned homes in the Bay Area. As a Wonderschool director, she had made more in two months than she was making after a whole year of cleaning people’s homes. She had Wonderschool painted on her wall, and she had gotten me a gift. After the visit, I cried. In the midst of the challenges, I needed a reminder of the value that we’re providing to people, especially Wonderschool’s directors. Being able to see how we’re changing people’s lives in what always centers me on the work that we’re doing. | https://medium.com/growth-by-design-talent/how-wonderschool-is-transforming-childcare-by-building-a-company-as-diverse-as-their-customers-4744c73f6606 | ['Jill Macri'] | 2020-10-14 16:01:54.695000+00:00 | ['Recruiting', 'Childcare', 'Diversity And Inclusion', 'Diversity In Tech', 'Hispanic Heritage Month'] |
The Craze Around Pokémon Go | Pokémon Go, the game that has introduced millions of people globally, to Augmented Reality!
Pokémon Go came and took over the world by a storm. It’s been about a month since that happened, and while the craze for the game is finally settling in, let us to look back at what the game did the last month.
The Buzz And What’s It All About
The game started topping charts less than a day after its launch. It wasn’t even launched globally and was initially available only in the US, Australia, and New Zealand and then subsequently reached UK and the Asian markets.
The game, brought out by Nintendo and Niantic Lab, in association with The Pokémon Company, is an augmented reality-powered app that brings to the millennial population their favorite cartoon characters from their childhood, the Pokémon.
The game is centered on the premise of fictional creatures called “Pokémon”, which humans known as Pokémon Trainers, catch and train to battle with each other for sport.
The game recently expanded to 26 European countries and reportedly has over a billion users in the under one month of its existence and the number of active users for the US alone range upwards of 15 million.
Why The Craze?
There are two apparent reasons for the craze behind Pokémon Go.
The first is the fact that the Pokémon franchise is not something new; it has been built upon over the last 20 years, starting with Game Boy console back in 1996 and has expanded to trading card games, anime series, films, books, toys and other products over the years.
The second reason is the technical expertise. The game is powered by Niantic (which was first formed as a Google internal start-up in 2010), which has been known for its popular Ingress title that has been on the market for about four years.
Released in 2012, Ingress is an augmented reality massively multiplayer online location-based game that features game mechanics and mapping algorithms that form the basis of Pokémon Go. Developed and improved over the past four years, they are the actual juice behind Pokémon Go, making it extremely technically sound and user-friendly.
Combine these two with very high level of capable smartphone ownership in developed markets, widespread 3G, 4G coverage and the prevalent use of social networks, and you have the makings of Pokémon Go.
The Money Pokémon Go Has Been Raking In, And For Whom?
A game like this brings more than just users with it; it also brings loads of money for the company running it. Nintendo, the company running Pokémon Go, has almost doubled in value in the last month, now valuing somewhere in the ballpark of USD 42.5 billion.
As noted by the tech review website The Verge, “such has been the appetite for Nintendo stock, in fact, that on Friday [3 weeks ago] it broke the single-day trading record in Tokyo this century, with USD 4.5 billion of stock changing hands”.
What’s more is that Nintendo might not be the only one benefitting from the craze that Pokémon Go has been. There has been an argument that Apple, which has a 30% cut of in-app purchases, could be making about USD 3 billion over 1–2 years, from just Pokémon Go! This would be a considerable amount; given that Apple’s total App Store revenue last year was USD 20 billion.
The in-app purchases for the game were reaching as high as USD 150 about two weeks ago.
Has It Become A Public Nuisance?
The game has also been at times been a public nuisance, causing major accidents at worst, and minor distractions at best. In New York, a 28-year-old man crashed into a tree playing the game, in San Diego, two others fell 50 feet off a cliff.
On the other end of the ocean, in the UK, four teenagers had to be rescued from a mine after getting lost in the complex for more than five hours. In cousin Northern Ireland, Police reportedly had to explicitly tell players, ‘But there’s a Zubat in there’ is NOT an excuse for breaking into someone’s house’.
A driver in Baltimore reportedly crashed into a police car because he was too distracted by Pokémon; similar instances of accidents were heard from all over the world, including a major highway crash that involved more than ten cars. Players in Bosnia have to be kept from roaming into minefields, and Police across the world received complaints of stolen Pokémon that cause quite a nuisance for the authorities to deal with.
Cellular Data Concerns For The Users?
One of the major concerns over the game has been the cellular data usage. While people believe since the game requires one to keep moving from one place to another (and playing it on Wi-Fi is, obviously, impossible) you will be playing it on cellular data, and loads of it at that.
Thus it is said that the game is a huge sucker for cellular data.
U.S. House of Representatives raised one such concern in a letter to Niantic CEO, John Hanke, about two weeks ago. The letter outlined and put into perspective the concerns that the House committee on energy and commerce has concerning the cellular data usage of the app.
Four major questions were raised in the letter:
Are there best practices that Niantic follows to minimize the amount of data consumers use when playing Pokémon Go? Has Niantic worked with wireless carriers to ensure that consumers are not unexpectedly hit with large overage charges? Does Niantic conspicuously warn customers before they start using the app about how much data the app consumes? Does Niantic have any mechanisms in place to make sure consumers are made whole in the event they are hit with unexpected verge charges resulting from the use of your app?”
CEO Hanke has not yet given an official reply to these questions, but there are many who disagree with the extent of the data usage. Of the people who disagree is the American cellular services company T-mobile, that announced it was giving customers a free year of unlimited data of Pokémon Go usage.
The Final Word- Catch Em’ All!
While so far your view of Pokemon Go might have wavered from positive to negative, there are obviously both sides to the AR game. The country that Pokémon Go has bustling this week is Singapore.
In other news: The game has caused positive healthcare results, with researchers at University of Leicester, UK, specializing in international diabetes research, stating that it might be a means of tackling type 2 diabetes and a Canadian company making devices that make Pokémon Go accessible to wheelchair users.
On the other hand, experts around the world have also issued warnings that the game might be a cause for insomnia and related problems.
Regardless of the critics, the players are having a ball. The final word thus remains: catch em’ all! | https://medium.com/chip-monks/the-craze-around-pok%C3%A9mon-go-ca6e299a833a | ['D Wise One'] | 2017-03-18 06:24:42.446000+00:00 | ['Niantic Lab', 'Games', 'Pokémon Go', 'Nintendo', 'Chip Monks Stories'] |
How Abiding to University Guidelines Helps Draft Perfect Accounting Essay? | The most crucial aspect of accounting essay writing is that the student should abide by the university guidelines. It includes content that must be informative and factually accurate. To ensure that opinions are supported by facts and figures, follow the latest analytical reporting standards and the piece that considers all points of views with certain examples. University guidelines are important because they help in establishing rules and regulations and creating standards of quality for writing essays at graduation level.
Here, at Instant Assignment Help Australia, we have essay writers who abide by all the rules and regulations stated by the university. It is results in delivering an exact essay that meets the professors’ expectations and the student can ultimately fetch good grades as well.
Here are some university guidelines that need to be followed while writing an accounting essay:
1. The Students Should Read the Guidelines Properly
According to most of the essay writers, students often forget to read the instructions of writing a university essay before starting. In case any of the students do not follow or abide by the guidelines then prepare yourself for poor grades. In the guidelines of the university, it is mentioned that word limit should be considered carefully. Once the student read through the guidelines, he can initiate writing an accounting essay with all the ideas and thoughts in his mind. This would result in getting the desired grades and an essay approval at first sight only by the professors.
2. The Students Should Write a Compelling Introduction
Perfect essay writing is hard to achieve, but it is possible if the student is smart to go through the university guidelines. Because the professors will only spend a brief amount of time reviewing the student’s essay, he needs to start with a vivid paragraph that will keep them engaged. The introduction has to reveal the readers about your essay and catch their attention. You could open with an anecdote or an interesting story that will show some of the best parts of your personality and character, offering an insight that will help the professors know about the key ingredients in your accounting essay.
3. The Student Should Avoid the Cliche
While the student researches their accounting essay, he will be encouraged to check out some examples of great essays provided at the website of Instant Assignment Help Australia and get the idea of writing with guidelines. While this is a great exercise, many students allow themselves to be influenced too much by the samples and use lots of cliches in a desire to impress the professors. According to the essay writers, the student should delete all the sentences that sound like a cliche and try to find a more original angle.
4. The Student Should Stick to Clear Essay Plan
Creativity is an aspect that very much appreciated in essay writing, but don’t assume that a creative essay is always an organized one. The student shouldn’t write a bunch of words without meaning, so make sure that as a student, you write about just one subject at a time.
According to the experts, creating a plan before essay writing, you should organize your essay in three parts (introduction, body and conclusion), and decide the main thoughts and examples you want to give. This will help you in drafting a perfect accounting essay at the university level.
Summing Up:
Now, student exactly knows some of the elements that could help them get some extra marks in their essay writing task. If as a student you still think, it is tough, reach our essay writing services providers and get your accounting essay delivered to you, even before the promised date. | https://medium.com/@instantassignmenthelpaustralia/how-abiding-to-university-guidelines-helps-draft-perfect-accounting-essay-bfe03641a95b | ['Instant Assignment Help'] | 2019-11-26 08:00:56.672000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Accounting'] |
CBD and Driving | A version of this story first appeared at driving.ca
New Study Finds that CBD and Driving Do Mix. But Is It Legal? — LPC
According to a new study by the Lambert Initiative for Cannabinoid Therapeutics at the University of Sydney, CBD and driving do mix. “Consuming CBD does not impair driving performance, and THC only provides mild impairment for up to four hours,” the study found. Testing involved strains in which THC was most prevalent (and consumed in doses high enough to cause intoxication); another with mostly CBD; a third with both THC and CBD; and a placebo pot, used as a control.
“There were no significant differences between CBD-dominant cannabis and placebo,” the study’s authors wrote.
But does that make using CBD and driving legal in Canada?
According to one Toronto lawyer, it’s unclear. Testing won’t find CBD unless someone specifically tests for the compound. The lawyer states that happens legally at that point is “one of the many complications still remaining.” (However, it is clear that THC and driving is illegal. That being said, cannabis impairment has already faced legal challenges.)
The study finding that cannabis only impairs for four hours is interesting. Many workplaces including “safety sensitive” positions including airline pilots ban cannabis use for 30 days before duty. If the results of this study are true, it could mean new standards.
Still, if CBD and driving does mix, it gives hope to those who use it.
Click here to view full story at d | https://medium.com/@licensedproducers/cbd-and-driving-bdf448e202f0 | ['Licensed Producers'] | 2020-12-16 14:04:58.341000+00:00 | ['Cannabis', 'Cannabisintheworkplace', 'Cannabisimpairment'] |
NLP in Python- Vectorizing | NLP in Python- Vectorizing
Common vectorizing techniques employed in a typical NLP machine learning model pipeline using the real of fake news dataset from Kaggle.
Photo by Roman Kraft from Unsplash
In this article, we will learn about vectorizing and different vectorizing techniques employed in an NLP model. Then, we will apply these concepts to the context of a problem.
We will work with a dataset that classifies news as fake or real. The dataset is available on Kaggle, the link to the dataset is below:
The initial step involved in a typical machine learning text pipeline is data cleaning. This step is covered in detailed in a previous article, linked below:
Dataset after data cleaning
The raw news titles were transformed into a cleaned format containing only the essential information (last column of the above picture). The next step is to further transform the cleaned text into a form that the machine learning model can understand. This process is known as Vectorizing. In our context, each news title is converted to a numerical vector representative of that particular title. There are many vectorization techniques, but in this article, we will focus on the three widely used vectorization techniques- Count vectorization, N-Grams, TF-IDF, and their implementation in Python.
Count vectorization
As discussed above, vectorization is the process of converting text to numerical entries in a matrix form. In the count vectorization technique, a document term matrix is generated where each cell is the count corresponding to the news title indicating the number of times a word appears in a document, also known as the term frequency. The document term matrix is a set of dummy variables that indicates if a particular word appears in the document. A column is dedicated to each word in the corpus. The count is directly proportionate to the correlation of the category of the news title. This means, if a particular word appears many times in fake news titles or real news titles, then the particular word has a high predictive power of determining if the news title is fake or real.
def clean_title(text):
text = "".join([word.lower() for word in text if word not in string.punctuation])
title = re.split('\W+', text)
text = [ps.stem(word) for word in title if word not in nltk.corpus.stopwords.words('english')]
return text
count_vectorize = CountVectorizer(analyzer=clean_title)
vectorized = count_vectorize.fit_transform(news['title'])
Dissecting the above code, the function “clean_title”- joins the lowercase news titles without punctuation. Then, the text is split on any non-word character. Finally, the non-stop words are stemmed and presented as a list. A detailed description of the cleaning process is given in this article.
Next, we have made use of the “CountVectorizer” package available in the sklearn library under sklearn.feature_extraction.text. The default values and the definition are available in the scikit-learn — Count Vectorizer documentation. In the above code, we have instantiated Count Vectorizer and defined one parameter — analyzer. The other parameters are its default values. The analyzer parameter calls for a string and we have passed a function, that takes in raw text and returns a cleaned string.
The shape of the document term matrix is 44898,15824. There are 44898 news titles and 15824 unique words in all the titles.
A subset of the 15824 unique words in the news title
The vectorizer produces a sparse matrix output, as shown in the picture. Only the locations of the non-zero values will be stored to save space. So, an output of the vectorization will look something like this:
<20x158 sparse matrix of type '<class 'numpy.int64'>'
with 206 stored elements in Compressed Sparse Row format>
but, converting the above to an array form yields the below result:
As shown in the picture, most of the cells contain a 0 value, this is known as a sparse matrix. Many vectorized outputs would look similar to this, as naturally many titles wouldn’t contain a particular word.
2. N-Grams
Similar to the count vectorization technique, in the N-Gram method, a document term matrix is generated and each cell represents the count. The difference in the N-grams method is that the count represents the combination of adjacent words of length n in the title. Count vectorization is N-Gram where n=1. For example, “I love this article” has four words and n=4.
if n=2, i.e bigram, then the columns would be — [“I love”, “love this”, ‘this article”]
if n=3, i.e trigram, then the columns would be — [“I love this”, ”love this article”]
if n=4,i.e four-gram, then the column would be -[‘“I love this article”]
The n value is chosen based on performance.
For the python code, the cleaning process is performed similarly to the count vectorization technique, but the words are not in a tokenized list form. The tokenized words are joined to form a string, so the adjacent words can be gathered to effectively perform N-Grams.
The cleaned title text is shown below:
The remaining vectorization technique is the same as the Count Vectorization method we did above.
The trade-off is between the number of N values. Choosing a smaller N value, may not be sufficient enough to provide the most useful information. Whereas choosing a high N value, will yield a huge matrix with loads of features. N-gram may be powerful, but it needs a little more care.
3. Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF)
Similar to the count vectorization method, in the TF-IDF method, a document term matrix is generated and each column represents a single unique word. The difference in the TF-IDF method is that each cell doesn’t indicate the term frequency, but the cell value represents a weighting that highlights the importance of that particular word to the document.
TF-IDF formula: | https://towardsdatascience.com/nlp-in-python-vectorizing-a2b4fc1a339e | ['Divya Raghunathan'] | 2020-06-08 19:57:07.501000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Python', 'NLP', 'Data Science', 'Data'] |
The answer is blowing in the wind: Harnessing real-time data to predict storm damage | By Glenn Fung, American Family Insurance data science research director
When catastrophic storms strike, American Family Insurance deploys claims teams as quickly as possible to assess damage and help impacted customers begin to rebuild their lives. We’re constantly monitoring the weather to help us anticipate areas that might be hit with severe storms and plan our claims response accordingly.
For example, we use radar detection and other technologies to forecast hail-related storm damage. This helps us pinpoint the geographic areas with the greatest needs and determine the proper number of claims adjusters, support personnel and equipment to dispatch.
Real-time situational awareness allows us to make sound estimates about the size and scope of a severe weather event. It also leads to better outcomes for our customers.
Technology has come a long way in helping us more accurately forecast hail damage before our claims teams are deployed — and because hail causes extensive — and expensive — damage every year, the sooner we can respond, the better it is for our customers and our company.
Wind is also highly destructive to our customers’ property, but our ability to estimate wind damage has historically been more limited.
We recognized there’s an opportunity to improve the measurement of surface winds in near real-time. That’s why we’re partnering with Dr. Michael C. Morgan, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, along with researcher Brett Hoover, from the same department, to make it part of the overall weather patterns we monitor.
Specifically, we are exploring the use of updated numeric weather prediction output in conjunction with traditional measurement techniques — a first in the insurance industry — to generate a framework that will provide improved understanding of the surface wind field in near real-time, and more importantly, to be used as the foundation for a machine-learning methodology for forecasting insurance claims.
Training machines to predict the impact of severe weather
The common practice throughout the insurance industry is to glean information from disparate and sparse weather sensor instruments that measure and record wind velocity. We think, through a combination of tools, including machine learning, that we can more effectively measure wind as part of our overall weather monitoring.
Our goal was to use various types of weather data as the foundation for a machine-learning methodology that would forecast the number and severity of storm-related insurance claims.
American Family currently uses an app by Opterrix, an American Family spinoff, to quantify and visually show the potential customer impact of severe weather events.
Here’s how we are making our forecast model more predictive: Multiple sources of weather-related data such as radar-derived estimates of hail size, damaging wind speed swaths and crowd-sourced storm reports are fed into Opterrix. That information is then fused with our policy and claims data to provide a comprehensive view of potential impact immediately following a storm.
In addition, weather forecast models generated in Amazon Web Service’s cloud environment provide a 48-hour forecast four times a day. Each forecast model is initialized with updated weather observations from NOAA that provide predictions of multiple weather variables including precipitation, wind, temperature and pressure.
The output of these forecast models is then fed into Opterrix where several spatial algorithms will be used to simulate potential severe weather impact to our portfolio.
Having control of our own weather forecast model provides the opportunity to generate reanalysis data that can train machine learning algorithms to accurately predict potential severe weather outcomes. The process of reanalysis includes gathering archived weather forecasts for significant severe weather events and comparing it to our historical claims data from those events. Adding wind also gives us a fuller picture of the damaging storms.
By fusing historic claim and payment data with historic forecast models, we will be able to more accurately predict how future severe weather will impact our customers and our business and make better decisions based on this information.
Glenn Fung is a data science and artificial intelligence (AI) expert with American Family Insurance. His main interests are optimization approaches to machine learning and AI, with emphasis in kernel methods. For more than a decade he has worked in industry — including at Siemens, Amazon and American Family Insurance — developing and applying novel machine learning techniques to solve challenging industry-related problems. | https://medium.com/amfam/the-answer-is-blowing-in-the-wind-harnessing-real-time-data-to-predict-storm-damage-6cadf389627f | ['American Family Insurance'] | 2020-06-12 16:41:36.697000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'AI', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Weather'] |
Exploratory Data Analysis — What is it and why is it so important? (Part 1/2) | Components of EDA
To me, there are main components of exploring data:
Understanding your variables Cleaning your dataset Analyzing relationships between variables
In this article, we’ll take a look at the first two components.
1. Understanding Your Variables
You don’t know what you don’t know. And if you don’t know what you don’t know, then how are you supposed to know whether your insights make sense or not? You won’t.
To give an example, I was exploring data provided by the NFL (data here) to see if I could discover any insights regarding variables that increase the likelihood of injury. One insight that I got was that Linebackers accumulated more than eight times as many injuries as Tight Ends. However, I had no idea what the difference between a Linebacker and a Tight End was, and because of this, I didn’t know if my insights made sense or not. Sure, I can Google what the differences between the two are, but I won’t always be able to rely on Google! Now you can see why understanding your data is so important. Let’s see how we can do this in practice.
As an example, I used the same dataset that I used to create my first Random Forest model, the Used Car Dataset here. First, I imported all of the libraries that I knew I’d need for my analysis and conducted some preliminary analyses.
#Import Libraries
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pylab as plt
import seaborn as sns #Understanding my variables
df.shape
df.head()
df.columns
.shape returns the number of rows by the number of columns for my dataset. My output was (525839, 22), meaning the dataset has 525839 rows and 22 columns.
.head() returns the first 5 rows of my dataset. This is useful if you want to see some example values for each variable.
.columns returns the name of all of your columns in the dataset.
df.columns output
Once I knew all of the variables in the dataset, I wanted to get a better understanding of the different values for each variable.
df.nunique(axis=0)
df.describe().apply(lambda s: s.apply(lambda x: format(x, 'f')))
.nunique(axis=0) returns the number of unique values for each variable.
.describe() summarizes the count, mean, standard deviation, min, and max for numeric variables. The code that follows this simply formats each row to the regular format and suppresses scientific notation (see here).
df.nunique(axis=0) output
df.describe().apply(lambda s: s.apply(lambda x: format(x, ‘f’))) output
Immediately, I noticed an issue with price, year, and odometer. For example, the minimum and maximum price are $0.00 and $3,048,344,231.00 respectively. You’ll see how I dealt with this in the next section. I still wanted to get a better understanding of my discrete variables.
df.condition.unique()
Using .unique(), I took a look at my discrete variables, including ‘condition’.
df.condition.unique()
You can see that there are many synonyms of each other, like ‘excellent’ and ‘like new’. While this isn’t the greatest example, there will be some instances where it‘s ideal to clump together different words. For example, if you were analyzing weather patterns, you may want to reclassify ‘cloudy’, ‘grey’, ‘cloudy with a chance of rain’, and ‘mostly cloudy’ simply as ‘cloudy’.
Later you’ll see that I end up omitting this column due to having too many null values, but if you wanted to re-classify the condition values, you could use the code below:
# Reclassify condition column
def clean_condition(row):
good = ['good','fair']
excellent = ['excellent','like new']
if row.condition in good:
return 'good'
if row.condition in excellent:
return 'excellent'
return row.condition # Clean dataframe
def clean_df(playlist):
df_cleaned = df.copy()
df_cleaned['condition'] = df_cleaned.apply(lambda row: clean_condition(row), axis=1)
return df_cleaned # Get df with reclassfied 'condition' column
df_cleaned = clean_df(df) print(df_cleaned.condition.unique())
And you can see that the values have been re-classified below.
print(df_cleaned.condition.unique()) output
2. Cleaning your dataset
You now know how to reclassify discrete data if needed, but there are a number of things that still need to be looked at.
a. Removing Redundant variables
First I got rid of variables that I thought were redundant. This includes url, image_url, and city_url.
df_cleaned = df_cleaned.copy().drop(['url','image_url','city_url'], axis=1)
b. Variable Selection
Next, I wanted to get rid of any columns that had too many null values. Thanks to my friend, Richie, I used the following code to remove any columns that had 40% or more of its data as null values. Depending on the situation, I may want to increase or decrease the threshold. The remaining columns are shown below.
NA_val = df_cleaned.isna().sum() def na_filter(na, threshold = .4): #only select variables that passees the threshold
col_pass = []
for i in na.keys():
if na[i]/df_cleaned.shape[0]<threshold:
col_pass.append(i)
return col_pass df_cleaned = df_cleaned[na_filter(NA_val)]
df_cleaned.columns
c. Removing Outliers
Revisiting the issue previously addressed, I set parameters for price, year, and odometer to remove any values outside of the set boundaries. In this case, I used my intuition to determine parameters — I’m sure there are methods to determine the optimal boundaries, but I haven’t looked into it yet!
df_cleaned = df_cleaned[df_cleaned['price'].between(999.99, 99999.00)]
df_cleaned = df_cleaned[df_cleaned['year'] > 1990]
df_cleaned = df_cleaned[df_cleaned['odometer'] < 899999.00] df_cleaned.describe().apply(lambda s: s.apply(lambda x: format(x, 'f')))
You can see that the minimum and maximum values have changed in the results below.
d. Removing Rows with Null Values
Lastly, I used .dropna(axis=0) to remove any rows with null values. After the code below, I went from 371982 to 208765 rows.
df_cleaned = df_cleaned.dropna(axis=0)
df_cleaned.shape
And that’s it for now! In the second part, we’ll cover exploring the relationship between variables through visualizations. (Click here for part 2.)
You can see my Kaggle Notebook here. | https://medium.com/swlh/exploratory-data-analysis-what-is-it-and-why-is-it-so-important-part-1-2-240d58a89695 | ['Terence Shin'] | 2020-01-02 23:53:25.711000+00:00 | ['Analytics', 'Data', 'Data Science', 'Exploratory Data Analysis', 'Machine Learning'] |
Ceramic’s blog has a new home! | Join us at blog.ceramic.network for news, product updates, stories and tutorials from the Ceramic core team and ecosystem.
As Ceramic’s ecosystem has grown, so has our content library. To make it more accessible and discoverable we are migrating to a new Ceramic Blog.
In addition to product announcements, the blog will host short tutorials, stories about the design and implementation of the Ceramic protocol, recorded community and core devs calls, and much more. It will be home to all you need to see and hear to keep up to date with the Ceramic ecosystem.
You can also sign up for our mailing list to get updates by email, join the conversation in our discord community, or follow us on twitter. | https://medium.com/ceramic/ceramics-blog-has-a-new-home-d2a3eb4459ff | ['Danny Zuckerman'] | 2020-11-19 12:34:45.670000+00:00 | ['Ethereum', 'Ipfs', 'Web3', 'Identity', 'Decentralization'] |
The Top 10 Debut Albums of All Time | I was having a conversation recently and we veered off of business and started talking tunes. We had been discussing my blog and ideas for a new post when the discussion/argument came up around “best debut albums” of all time. We started spitting out a ton — Beastie Boys, Black Crowes, The Beatles, on and on we went. However, I wanted to define the criteria a little bit more. Instead of just the “best” it literally had to be that band/rapper/whatever’s best work— period. Meaning that any of their subsequent albums can’t have surpassed their debut. Now the conversation got a bit more interesting. For me, that meant excluding The Beastie Boys because Paul’s Boutique, Check Your Head and other albums they made were better than License to Ill (fact — not opinion). Black Crowes out too — Amorica, Southern Harmony are better albums. Same for other acts I love like Led Zeppelin, Prince, Public Enemy and more. With the criteria established, let’s get into my list. As with all my prior lists, these are according to me, but I love the arguments people make for their favorites or why I may be out of mind for excluding/including my picks. Bring it.
10. Van Halen — “Van Halen” — I have written about them before, but sorry all you Van-Hagar fans — the period with “Diamond Dave” was infinitely better. Really — it is not even close. While the Roth era produced some great albums, I stand by the opinion that their first was their best and remained so throughout their career even though they continued to make great music. This album was classic Van Halen and had some of their all-time tunes — “Running With The Devil”, “Ain’t Talking bout Love” and their epic cover of The Kinks’ “You Really Got Me” to name a few. Eddie was at his apex, Alex was killing it on the drums, Roth laying down some of his best vocals and Michael Anthony……1984 might have been their most successful record sales wise, but this was their best.
9. The Police — “The Police” — I am not the biggest Police fan — but I do appreciate their music. These guys, like Rush, are some of the best at their respective instruments of all time. As a drummer, Stewart Copeland is up there on my all timer list for sure. Much like 1984 for Van Halen, “Synchronicity” was the more popular album, but in my view “The Police” was their best. Featuring tunes like “Roxanne” (I think you may have heard that once or twice) and “So Lonely” among many others, this is them in their rawest form — mixing rock/punk/reggae in their own unique way. I still wish these guys were together, as I find Sting’s solo work to be “meh”.
8. Pearl Jam — “Ten” — I know a lot of my friends who think this band is the second coming. I like them — a lot — but let’s chill out on that “second coming” shit. Like Van Halen and The Police, they were most definitely not one album wonders. Their musical catalog is actually really impressive. With that said, I stand by the fact that “Ten” , their first album, remains their best. “Jeremy”, “Evenflow” and “Alive” are the hits — but there isn’t a bad tune on the whole record — for real. These guys emerged during the very crowded “grunge” era with bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden and my personal favorite of that genre — Alice in Chains. To their credit, they are the only ones who stayed together and more importantly, stayed relevant to this day. Now if they could keep their self-important preaching shit to themselves, I might even be a bigger fan. Hate that crap.
7. The Notorious B.I.G. — “Ready to Die” — This was a bomb landing on the whole rap game. Biggie is one of the GOATs, and this was his intro to the world. Yes — like the bands listed before him, he too had great albums after his debut — but his debut was his best (not at all slighting his later stuff — awesomeness). Tunes like “Things done Changed” and his biggest hit ever “Big Poppa” are here, but the lyrics on this whole album were truly revolutionary. Yes the beats were great — but this is listening to one of the best rappers ever in his absolute prime.
6. The Jimi Hendrix Experience — “Are you Experienced?” — Speaking of GOATs, I am no guitarist but I am willing to bet this guy might be the ultimate GOAT. To this day, his music is still relevant and his impact will be felt for generations to come. It is amazing to me that this guy died so young and left such an amazing body of work. This album was, in my opinion, his best. Some of his classics are here like “Manic Depression” and “Wind Cries Mary”, but like the other albums listed here there really isn’t a bad tune on the whole album.
5. The Cars — “The Cars” — I know, The Cars ahead of Jimi Hendrix?!!? This is not a list of how I would rank them as bands or artists, rather solely on the merits of their debut albums and careers after that. The Cars to me are a VERY underrated band and also from Boston — so maybe I am a bit biased. However, I defy you to listen to this album and not love it. Seriously — take the Pepsi Challenge here and tell me what you think. “My Best Friend’s Girlfriend”, “Just What I Needed” — I could go on here but these are amazing songs and a truly great album start to finish.
4. The Doors — “The Doors” — This band really causes great debate amongst rock fans. Some people love them some think they suck. I fall in the “love them” camp. This was a great band — and yes — they did make a lot of great music — but this debut album was their best. They burst onto the scene in the late 60s with a sound like no other — an organ?!? With tunes like “The End”, “Break on Through” and of course their biggest hit of their career “Light My Fire” this album delivers on the good and then some. Dark but sometimes silly and a little bit dangerous too — I can only imagine how people reacted to it when it came out (No — I am not that old to have even been alive then thank you very much).
3. Boston — ‘Boston” — Yes, I am from Massachusetts and yes — I bleed Boston sports and am a massive homer. None of that has anything to do with why this album is #3 on this list. This was clearly the best work they ever did, and the album is amazing from start to finish with tunes that, to this day, if you hear them you jam out to. This album didn’t have a single “fast forward” tune on it — “Peace of Mind”, “More Than a Feeling” and “Something About You” just to name a few. Great vocals, unique guitar sound and good songwriting all wrapped together in one album with some sort of spaceship thingy on the cover.
2. N.W.A. — “Straight Outta Compton” — Long before there was a movie, Ice Cube doing family movies (WTF?) and Dr. Dre’s “The Chronic” there was N.W.A. This album was their best (of two, really) and also is one of the seminal rap albums of all time. This was unlike anything rap fans or music fans for that matter — had ever heard before, The lyrics were truly scary and raw and the beats by Dre (see what I did there?) where undeniably awesome. There are too many classics to list here, but some include “Fuck The Police” and the title track, along with “Express Yourself”. This was a must-own album back in the day, and of course led to massive careers of Cube and Dre and spawned a whole new genre within rap itself.
1.Guns N’ Roses — “Appetite for Destruction” — Look — I am not a big GNR fan, but I have to give credit where it is due — and this is the best debut album of all time. Remember, this came out when “hair metal” was the thing — and this was definitely NOT hair metal. This was something more pure rock, but a hell of a lot more raw and dangerous. Yes — they had a good run before they broke up, but if you ask me nothing measured up to this album after it. There were the hits like “Paradise City” and “Welcome to The Jungle” but for anyone who has listened to this album will tell you — that is only the beginning of the good tunes here.
It feels good to be writing these again — here’s hoping I can keep up the weekly pace moving forward like in the past. Agree with my list? Any I missed? Any that shouldn’t be on there? | https://medium.com/@ednathanson33/the-top-10-debut-albums-of-all-time-f9933cb8bd84 | ['Ed Nathanson'] | 2021-02-09 21:41:51.543000+00:00 | ['Lists', 'Debut', 'Rap', 'Rock', 'Top 10'] |
WTF is…Helium? | Brass Tacks
First, what’s an IoT device? These are all the ‘smart’ devices you’re using and seeing around the house. Light bulbs, fridges, sensors, watches, all the simple devices we’re seeing in our homes more and more each day.
These devices all need to communicate through the internet. Some of these are easy, you connect them to the internet via your home network. But what about all devices that don’t connect to your home network? Air monitoring, people tracking (dementia patients), scooter rental tracking, tracking of vehicles and countless other applications. Cellular is too expensive a solution to add to these, wifi is much cheaper and easier. But without a strong wifi backbone there’s no way to support this. Helium fixes that.
Helium is incentivizing people to build this backbone for them. You can buy a ‘miner’ which is basically a proprietary router which will create a mesh network. These routers talk to each other to verify they’re on the network and part of the network. By being up, and being surrounded by other miners, they earn HNT which is the native currency of the Helium network.
What does that mean? People purchase and install ‘miners’. These miners then connect to your internet and provides a decentralized backbone for IoT Devices.
How Can I Participate?
First thing to do is check to see if you have any other miners near you? You need a few but not too many. But first let’s see if you have any near you:
First type your address in here.
You’ll see a picture like this:
Anything in the hexagon does not help you. These are all too close, the point of the network is to expand the network. Having 20 in a house won’t help, they need to be slightly outside this range. The more you can touch outside of this range the more rewards.
The next site you can go to is the Helium Explorer:
If you found a hotspot near you, you can enter here and look it up to see what kind of rewards you can earn near you. Or you can just search around until you find your neighborhood and see what exists. Each green dot below is a miner.
The example above is Quick-Mulberry-Badger which earned 61.81 HNT in the last 30 days (~$800 at the time of this writing). There’s lots of Others I’ve looked at that have earned in excess of 1000 HNT in 30 days.
Is This Profitable?
HNT has performed extremely well during the past year. To determine an example Return on Investment (ROI) in your area find a miner near you and use those rewards as a base . Electricity cost for a miner is the equivalent of a 12V light bulb. This isn’t proof of work, it’s just powering a router.
Indoor miners are about $450 from Parlay Labs (US Only). In the above example the ROI is approximately 15–20 days depending upon the price of HNT at the time.
While outdoor miners were lagging behind indoor miners as they were waiting on FCC approval, that looks to be cleared up now and an outdoor miner will run you about $550. The main trouble with miners right now is the trouble everyone is seeing: chip shortages and shipping issues. I’ve had two miners on order since late February and they’re due sometime this month.
Difficulty Increase:
5,000,000 HNT is given out to miners every month. As miners increase, this number is split between more people. On August 1st, 2021 this reward halved. So HNT Miners are increasing as pre-orders are being fulfilled and the rewards will switch to 2,500,000 HNT given out to miners soon.
Indoor or Outdoor?
I bought two indoor miners. I’m installing them at a house my niece rents and another where a niece owns. I didn’t want to be climbing on their roofs and installing something major outside of homes I don’t own. These are simple and easy to install in a 2nd floor window.
If you own and are comfortable mounting a miner to your outside wall or preferably roof, outdoor miners have much better range and are typically more profitable. They also have a much longer lead time right now.
Competition?
My biggest competition concern here is Internet Service Providers. Xfinity already has a wifi network offered on every router they supply to their customers. They could easily open these up to IoT devices and outpace Helium, especially in rural areas.
Closing Thoughts
Helium is a novel approach to solving the a longstanding problem with connected devices. How this holds up long term, and as other potential players like traditional ISPs get involved, is anyone’s guess. That said the current reward system and fairly low barrier to entry makes Helium a compelling new technology and one to keep an eye on. | https://medium.com/yunt-capital/wtf-is-helium-261acb7d93bf | ['Yunt Capital'] | 2021-09-09 17:17:06.977000+00:00 | ['IoT', 'Crypto', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Decentralized'] |
The 4th element of category creation | With great power comes great responsibility — Stan Lee
I love watching superhero movies. When I watched Spiderman 2002, the phrase that stuck with me was Uncle Ben’s quote — with great power comes great responsibility. Doing a bit of Googling I found out this quote is also called the “Peter Parker Principle”.
I also love category design. I love understanding how category leaders are created and sustained. Goes without saying I’m a huge Christopher Lochhead fan. I love category design because fundamentally category creators see the world differently. They see the future and create categories for that future.
Humanity is facing an existential crisis. The climate emergency and the problems that go with it threaten the planet that we call home. The world needs a whole lotta different. The world needs category creators.
Category creation in extremely simplistic terms centers on the “magic triangle”. In the Play Bigger book, the authors detail the three elements that make up the triangle — Category Design, Product Design, and Company Design. Companies such as Google, Netflix, Apple, Facebook are all category creators and leaders.
They saw the future differently and created categories for that future. Google search has forever changed how we get our information and data. The iPhone has changed how we interact with one and another. Facebook has changed how we stay connected and do business. Netflix has changed entertainment. These companies have forever changed human relationships.
That’s a great thing. If you sense a but coming, then you are spot on. But…
As category creators and leaders these companies have also amassed power.
⁃ Facebook has 2.7 billion users. If that was a country, it would be bigger than China!
⁃ Apple is worth over $2 trillion
⁃ Alphabet (Google’s parent company) is worth over $1 trillion
⁃ Average user spends 2 hours a day watching Netflix. That’s 60 hrs a month and 720 hrs a year. That’s 30 days a year!
With this power comes even greater responsibility. The thing about creation is you are ultimately responsible for how your creations are being used — the good and the bad.
This is why I propose that we apply the Peter Parker Principle to category creation. A 4th element to the category design triangle — called “Impact Design”.
The 4th Element of Category Creation — Impact Design
The category design triangle much like constitutions need to have checks and balances. Category designers and entrepreneurs need to balance power and responsibility.
What impact will this category have on the environment, society, or communities? Granted none of us knew at the beginning that Facebook will have such a profound impact on the very fabric of our society. But that’s where impact design needs to play a much bigger role. Impact design needs to be the moral compass of the category. And marketers are the gatekeepers.
At the heart of impact design for category creation is that categories shouldn’t be functional they should be behavioral/principled/conscientious.
Example: smartphone — functional.
In Facebook’s little red book, they said that Facebook wasn’t originally meant to be a company. It was built for a social mission to make the world more open and connected. The category should have been a reflection of that. The impact design should be a reflection of that. The category name shouldn’t be a reflection of what it does but a reflection of what it stands for, what impact it hopes to have on humanity.
The moment you make something functional it becomes a commodity. But categories are ecosystems that are living, breathing, and constantly evolving. Ecosystems are founded/based on a set of shared values. Steve Jobs co-created Apple and challenged us all to think differently. He is no longer with us but the category he created lives on.
Here I am reminded of Ben Franklin’s answer to the question — do we have a republic or a monarchy? A republic, if you can keep it, he said. Just like countries we are all responsible for holding category leaders accountable for their actions. The problem with accountability and responsibility is unless it’s defined at the outset it is extremely difficult to roll back.
This is why I’m proposing adding the 4th element to the category triangle from the outset. At this point in humanity, we need entrepreneurs to think differently, we also need them to be responsible. We need them to understand the impact their categories are going to have on the planet for generations to come. We need to apply the Peter Parker Principle. We need the 4th element of category creation. | https://medium.com/@karthi-ratnam/the-4th-element-of-category-creation-700b14f0706a | ['Karthiga Ratnam'] | 2021-03-04 15:06:46.995000+00:00 | ['Entrepreneurship', 'Marketing', 'Changemaker', 'Impact', 'Category Design'] |
23 Ways to Avoid Listicles | Okay, I admit it. I used a linkbaited, listicle-promising title to attract your attention and tempt you to tap through to this partially disguised manifesto. It worked, and here you are with great expectations (perhaps) on how to avoid the very thing that brought you in.
I feel okay about doing it — using a fishhook device — because my goal is to persuade people to shy away from linkbait and listicles in both writing and reading. Before we begin, let’s be sure we are on the same page as to what the terms mean.
Linkbait — or ‘clickbait’, as some web marketers might refer to it — is a sensational title written in a way to generate enough curiosity for people to open (and ideally share) the content contained within. You see them all the time, particularly with online pop culture news media channels that offer titles like “What you don’t know about this everyday item might surprise you” and “9 life changes you can make right now to impress your friends”.
Listicles — a mash-up of ‘list’ and ‘articles’ — is a compressed writing style structured on lists and fleshed-out with a just enough explanatory content to somehow qualify as an article. Fashion publications write them best: “7 new designers you need to know” and “210+ new ways to look fabulous” and “50 ways to leave your lover (and get yourself free)”, although that last one might be a song by Paul Simon.
Before we consider how to avoid these two writing devices, let’s acknowledge that they are designed to capture attention. With all the noise in our modern, multimedia-imbued world, it is no wonder that publishers, marketers, and advertisers have had to resort to linkbait and listicles to get eyes on pages.
I was tempted to get a statistic from a website entitled “31 advertising statistics to know in 2019”, but instead I found a professionally-written Forbes article that says that the average North American is exposed to 5,000 to 10,000 ads per day, depending on commute, amount of time on the web, how much broadcasting they consume (radio and television), and how often they’re on social media. 50 years ago, in the 1970s, that number was 500 ads per day.
I understand why writers want their titles to stand out in a mass of messages. However, as a reader I get insulted when I see a headline that appeals to my insecurities, I feel cheated when a link tricks me, and vexed when the content of a page reads differently from the title promised — particularly when social and political agendas polarize different sides of an issue.
https://procen.sakura.ne.jp/jp/note/J-v-M-fuji-jp-tvc1.html
https://procen.sakura.ne.jp/jp/note/J-v-M-fuji-jp-tvc2.html
https://procen.sakura.ne.jp/jp/note/J-v-M-fuji-jp-tvc3.html
https://procen.sakura.ne.jp/jp/note/J-v-M-fuji-jp-tvc4.html
https://procen.sakura.ne.jp/jp/note/J-v-M-fuji-jp-tvc5.html
https://procen.sakura.ne.jp/jp/note/J-v-M-fuji-jp-tvc6.html
https://procen.sakura.ne.jp/jp/note/J-v-M-fuji-jp-tvc7.html
https://procen.sakura.ne.jp/jp/note/J-v-M-fuji-jp-tvc8.html
https://procen.sakura.ne.jp/jp/note/J-v-M-fuji-jp-tvc9.html
https://procen.sakura.ne.jp/jp/note/J-v-M-fuji-jp-tvc10.html
https://metepec.gob.mx/nol/dok/jp/note/J-v-M-fuji-jp-tvc1.html
https://metepec.gob.mx/nol/dok/jp/note/J-v-M-fuji-jp-tvc2.html
https://metepec.gob.mx/nol/dok/jp/note/J-v-M-fuji-jp-tvc3.html
https://metepec.gob.mx/nol/dok/jp/note/J-v-M-fuji-jp-tvc4.html
https://metepec.gob.mx/nol/dok/jp/note/J-v-M-fuji-jp-tvc5.html
https://metepec.gob.mx/nol/dok/jp/note/J-v-M-fuji-jp-tvc6.html
https://metepec.gob.mx/nol/dok/jp/note/J-v-M-fuji-jp-tvc7.html
https://metepec.gob.mx/nol/dok/jp/note/J-v-M-fuji-jp-tvc8.html
https://metepec.gob.mx/nol/dok/jp/note/J-v-M-fuji-jp-tvc9.html
https://metepec.gob.mx/nol/dok/jp/note/J-v-M-fuji-jp-tvc10.html
https://gruppoceriani.it/rup/bas/J-v-M-fuji-jp-tvc1.html
https://gruppoceriani.it/rup/bas/J-v-M-fuji-jp-tvc2.html
https://gruppoceriani.it/rup/bas/J-v-M-fuji-jp-tvc3.html
https://gruppoceriani.it/rup/bas/J-v-M-fuji-jp-tvc4.html
https://gruppoceriani.it/rup/bas/J-v-M-fuji-jp-tvc5.html
https://gruppoceriani.it/rup/bas/J-v-M-fuji-jp-tvc6.html
https://gruppoceriani.it/rup/bas/J-v-M-fuji-jp-tvc7.html
https://gruppoceriani.it/rup/bas/J-v-M-fuji-jp-tvc8.html
https://gruppoceriani.it/rup/bas/J-v-M-fuji-jp-tvc9.html
https://gruppoceriani.it/rup/bas/J-v-M-fuji-jp-tvc10.html
https://procen.sakura.ne.jp/jp/note/BadaM-Japan-v-Mexico-tvc00.html
https://procen.sakura.ne.jp/jp/note/BadaM-Japan-v-Mexico-tvc01.html
https://procen.sakura.ne.jp/jp/note/BadaM-Japan-v-Mexico-tvc02.html
https://procen.sakura.ne.jp/jp/note/BadaM-Japan-v-Mexico-tvc03.html
https://procen.sakura.ne.jp/jp/note/BadaM-Japan-v-Mexico-tvc04.html
https://gruppoceriani.it/rup/bas/BadaM-Japan-v-Mexico-tvc00.html
https://gruppoceriani.it/rup/bas/BadaM-Japan-v-Mexico-tvc01.html
https://gruppoceriani.it/rup/bas/BadaM-Japan-v-Mexico-tvc02.html
https://gruppoceriani.it/rup/bas/BadaM-Japan-v-Mexico-tvc03.html
https://gruppoceriani.it/rup/bas/BadaM-Japan-v-Mexico-tvc04.html
https://metepec.gob.mx/nol/dok/BadaM-Japan-v-Mexico-tvc00.html
https://metepec.gob.mx/nol/dok/BadaM-Japan-v-Mexico-tvc01.html
https://metepec.gob.mx/nol/dok/BadaM-Japan-v-Mexico-tvc02.html
https://metepec.gob.mx/nol/dok/BadaM-Japan-v-Mexico-tvc03.html
https://metepec.gob.mx/nol/dok/BadaM-Japan-v-Mexico-tvc04.html
https://families.naeyc.org/sites/default/files/rol/BadaM-Japan-v-Mexico-tvc00.html
https://families.naeyc.org/sites/default/files/rol/BadaM-Japan-v-Mexico-tvc01.html
https://families.naeyc.org/sites/default/files/rol/BadaM-Japan-v-Mexico-tvc02.html
https://families.naeyc.org/sites/default/files/rol/BadaM-Japan-v-Mexico-tvc03.html
https://families.naeyc.org/sites/default/files/rol/BadaM-Japan-v-Mexico-tvc04.html
https://procen.sakura.ne.jp/jp/int-J-v-M-fuji-jp-tv.html
https://procen.sakura.ne.jp/jp/int-J-v-M-fuji-jp-tv1.html
https://procen.sakura.ne.jp/jp/int-J-v-M-fuji-jp-tv2.html
https://procen.sakura.ne.jp/jp/int-J-v-M-fuji-jp-tv3.html
https://procen.sakura.ne.jp/jp/int-J-v-M-fuji-jp-tv4.html
https://metepec.gob.mx/nol/dok/int-J-v-M-fuji-jp-tv1.html
https://metepec.gob.mx/nol/dok/int-J-v-M-fuji-jp-tv2.html
https://metepec.gob.mx/nol/dok/int-J-v-M-fuji-jp-tv3.html
https://metepec.gob.mx/nol/dok/int-J-v-M-fuji-jp-tv4.html
https://metepec.gob.mx/nol/dok/int-J-v-M-fuji-jp-tv5.html
https://gruppoceriani.it/rup/bas/int-J-v-M-fuji-jp-tv.html
https://gruppoceriani.it/rup/bas/int-J-v-M-fuji-jp-tv1.html
https://gruppoceriani.it/rup/bas/int-J-v-M-fuji-jp-tv1.html
https://gruppoceriani.it/rup/bas/int-J-v-M-fuji-jp-tv2.html
https://gruppoceriani.it/rup/bas/int-J-v-M-fuji-jp-tv3.html
https://families.naeyc.org/sites/default/files/rol/int-J-v-M-fuji-jp-tv.html
https://families.naeyc.org/sites/default/files/rol/int-J-v-M-fuji-jp-tv1.html
https://families.naeyc.org/sites/default/files/rol/int-J-v-M-fuji-jp-tv2.html
https://families.naeyc.org/sites/default/files/rol/int-J-v-M-fuji-jp-tv3.html
https://families.naeyc.org/sites/default/files/rol/int-J-v-M-fuji-jp-tv4.html
https://families.naeyc.org/sites/default/files/rol/ES-Video-partido-spain-vs-germany-en-vivo-hoy-v-es-ec-01ves01.html
https://families.naeyc.org/sites/default/files/rol/ES-Video-partido-spain-vs-germany-en-vivo-hoy-v-es-ec-01ves02.html
https://families.naeyc.org/sites/default/files/rol/ES-Video-partido-spain-vs-germany-en-vivo-hoy-v-es-ec-01ves03.html
https://families.naeyc.org/sites/default/files/rol/ES-Video-partido-spain-vs-germany-en-vivo-hoy-v-es-ec-01ves04.html
https://gruppoceriani.it/rup/bas/ES-Video-partido-spain-vs-germany-en-vivo-hoy-v-es-ec-01ves01.html
https://gruppoceriani.it/rup/bas/ES-Video-partido-spain-vs-germany-en-vivo-hoy-v-es-ec-01ves02.html
https://gruppoceriani.it/rup/bas/ES-Video-partido-spain-vs-germany-en-vivo-hoy-v-es-ec-01ves03.html
https://gruppoceriani.it/rup/bas/ES-Video-partido-spain-vs-germany-en-vivo-hoy-v-es-ec-01ves04.html
We can do better, and here’s how.
First, all writers have the capacity to write captivating titles without the use of linkbait. While headlines can be a bit of an art — I have, at times, spent as much time composing a title than I have spent writing an article — it is an immensely rewarding experience to condense the theme and import of an entire treatise into five or six words.
Second, articles usually have a number of points to make or at least a number of supporting facts to bring a single point home, which is why we use outlines to frame out the content. The key is to combine multiple points into cohesive bundles that make sense in prose. Listicles are purposefully fragmented, even when they are done well.
And finally, link the paragraphs — or ‘thought blocks’, as I like to call them — into a flow that makes sense to the reader. I consider this the narrative of the article, and as storytelling animals we are fine-tuned to appreciate a well-structured anecdote with a beginning and an end and enough context in the middle to be captivating.
There you have it: not 23 ways to avoid listicles as promised, but 2 to 3 tips for how to write without contrivance. Join me in my campaign to reduce linkbait and listicles: write well and shun the titles that use them. If enough of us don’t bite baited hooks, perhaps there will be a time when we can enjoy better quality headlines in the future. | https://medium.com/@rosnathalon63784/23-ways-to-avoid-listicles-10ff1891794a | ['Rosna Thalon'] | 2020-11-17 16:44:22.427000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Linkbait', 'Listicles', 'Headlines', 'Clickbait'] |
A Litany for the Signs of Our Times | The directors of campus ministry within the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU), in an expression of prayer and lament for the racial injustice in our country, offer a litany for the signs of our times. These words (written by Carly Lynch and Julia Claire Santos, campus ministers at Santa Clara University) are shared in prayerful humility and deep desire for the spiritual transformation so desperately needed in our communities. We bear witness, and we pray and work to respond in effective, tangible and faithful ways.
Commitment to Witness & Respond for Racial Justice
By bearing witness, we commit to staying awake to the injustice around us, and shedding our ignorance for the sake of compassion, whenever and wherever possible. If you too are willing to witness these things, we ask that after each statement, you may respond, “I will be a witness.”
We witness:
• We witness that Black Lives UNDENIABLY Matter, and they matter with a particular and unshakeable urgency.
• We witness that what is a justice system to some, is a death sentence to others
• We witness that the founding of our nation relied upon the looting of indigenous land, and the looting of African citizens from their own country.
• We witness that all white people benefit from a nation and culture of white supremacy, and the need for all white people to actively work to identify and dismantle personal and collective actions and systems of injustice.
• We witness that now is not the first time Native American bodies have been disproportionately exposed to illness so that white culture and economy can proceed.
• We witness that systems of oppression set in place long before this pandemic (including, but not limited to housing, employment, health care and economic inequality) have caused people of color to be disproportionately affected by COVID-19.
• We witness that the hate-crimes and discrimination against Asian Americans and those perceived to be of Asian heritage since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic reflect a continuing pattern of scapegoating Asian Americans for social, economic and political crises.
• We witness our nation’s disproportionate fear of property and capital being destroyed, more than the fear of black lives being unjustly lost.
• We witness that the economic downturn will most affect communities of color, and that most aid will be given to wealthy white individuals of power.
• We witness that our own Jesuit institutions are not free from a history of racial injustice and the existence of racial injustice today.
• We witness that while armed white men were recently allowed to walk into a government building untouched, chemicals and rubber bullets are being launched into crowds of protesters pleading that black bodies ceased being killed.
• We witness how Latina/o/x bodies have been targeted, scrutinized, harassed, apprehended, detained, imprisoned, deported and dehumanized in this country; how Latina/o/x families and students are subject to daily forms of intimidation and fear; how Latina/o/x children continue to be forcibly separated from their parents; and how the labor of Latina/o/x workers is once again marginalized in this moment as many are being forced to go back to work in unsafe conditions for the convenience of others.
• We witness a culture that has educated and habituated our primary reaction to black men to be one of fear.
• We witness protests, demonstrations, rebellions and riots as the language of the unheard and neglected.
• We witness that cumulative and chronic experiences of racism and white supremacy are experienced physically in cumulative and chronic ways in black bodies.
• We witness the pain and grief we collectively feel as witnesses to this repetitive and pervasive violence.
• We witness that racial injustice has no place in our society and must stop. Everyone deserves to be treated equally and feel safe. We must find a way to bring people together to effect change, and that begins with conversation and action.
• We witness that present events of violence and injustice bring up and re-open old wounds. Black people and People of Color are suffering wounds beyond this current moment.
And because we witness all that has been mentioned (and unmentionably more), we pray and work to respond in effective, tangible and faithful ways. If you too are committed to responding, we ask that you, in your own space, respond “I will do the work.”
We pray and work for:
• We pray and work for reverence and respect for all, especially those most marginalized, recognizing that we are created as brothers and sisters, children of the one God.
• We pray and work for creative and effective ways to achieve justice, equality and safety for people of color.
• We pray and work for the sustained and complete unlearning of white supremacy.
• We pray and work for a peace that passes all understanding. A peace that systems of oppression, white supremacy and white supremacists, and the “American Dream” may never understand.
• We pray and work for radical and lasting change to the pervasive racism of police forces and institutional relationships to policing.
• We pray and work for greater awareness and cessation of insidious forms of racism.
• We pray and work for the conversion of our own eyes, hearts and hands so that we see, credit and respond urgently to the suffering of our black and brown sisters and brothers.
• We pray and work to center the black voices that are offering tangible cures to the insidious cultural disease of racism.
• We pray and work to have the humility to recognize how we contribute to injustice and to commit ourselves to be agents of positive change.
• We pray and work to be seen, heard, validated and respected as human beings that matter.
• We pray and work for a world in which true and full racial justice is understood to be everyone’s concern.
• We pray and work for ears to hear the needs of individuals and communities of color, and respond with real change beyond our thoughts and prayers.
• We pray and work for the disruption and dismantling of structural and institutional systems of oppression. May we fight white supremacy and anti-blackness in our nation, on our campuses and in ourselves.
• We pray and work for greater elevation, recognition and media coverage of the excellence and accomplishments of Black Americans, and Black lives globally.
• We pray and work for the courageous parents of black children, children of color, and white children alike, as they watch and guide their children, growing up in a land of inequity and injustice.
• We pray and work for continued safety in our common home, for all those who continue to live in our residence halls, so that they find respite, comfort and peace, a peace that settles into their hearts.
• We pray and work for our Black and Brown LGBTQI+ siblings as we continue to fight for freedom to express our gender identities and sexual orientations without fear of violence and victimization.
• We pray and work for physical, emotional, spiritual and psychological support for the most vulnerable among us. | https://medium.com/jesuit-educated/a-litany-for-the-signs-of-our-times-6ceb15930b01 | [] | 2020-06-10 14:02:12.164000+00:00 | ['Prayer', 'Racial Justice', 'Jesuit', 'Solidarity', 'Healing'] |
JavaScript Array Methods. The JavaScript Array object is a global… | The JavaScript array object is a global object that is used in the construction of arrays; which are high-level list-like objects. They are pure vanilla JavaScript concepts that are important to understand and are also relevant to React projects since React is simply JavaScript. Many React concepts center around working with arrays in an immutable context. Immutability means that after an object has been created, it can never change.
Methods are functions stored as object properties. Below are some of the various methods that can be used on the array prototype:
map():
The map() method creates a new array with the results of calling a provided function on every element in the calling array.
var array1 = [1, 2, 5, 9]; // pass a function to map
const map1 = array1.map(x => x * 2); console.log(map1);
// expected output: Array [2, 4, 10, 18]
We are going through each element in the array and multiplying it by 2.
find():
The find() method returns the value of the first element in the array that satisfies the provided testing function. Otherwise undefined is returned.
var array1 = [6, 10, 8, 140, 55]; var found = array1.find(function(element) {
return element > 10;
}); console.log(found);
// expected output: 140
We are looking at each element in the array and returning the first element found that is greater than 10, which is the provided testing function. What about the element 55? We found the first element that met the criteria of the testing function, element (>) 10, and returned that value, 140. Once found, the testing function has been met and we stop searching.
findIndex():
The findIndex() method returns the index of the first element in the array that satisfies the provided testing function. Otherwise, it returns -1, indicating no element passed the test.
var array1 = [6, 10, 8, 140, 55]; function isLargeNumber(element) {
return element > 13;
} console.log(array1.findIndex(isLargeNumber));
// expected output: 3
We are processing each element in the array until we satisfy the provided testing function. The first element in the array that is greater than 13 is 140, which is at the 3rd index position of the array. Remember that array index values begin with zero (0). Therefore, our output will be 3.
filter():
The filter() method creates a new array with all elements that pass the test implemented by the provided function.
var words = ['cat', 'dog', 'autos', 'thankful', 'gracious', 'hopeful']; const result = words.filter(word => word.length > 6); console.log(result);
// expected output: Array ["thankful", "gracious", "hopeful"]
In the example above, all of the words greater than 6 characters in length are returned. The strings ‘cat’, ‘dog’, and ‘autos’ were not returned because they are less than 6 characters and did not meet the test criteria of word.length > 6.
reduce():
The reduce() method executes a reducer function (that you provide) on each member of the array resulting in a single output value.
const array1 = [1, 2, 3, 4];
const reducer = (accumulator, currentValue) => accumulator + currentValue; // 1 + 2 + 3 + 4
console.log(array1.reduce(reducer));
// expected output: 10 // 5 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 4
console.log(array1.reduce(reducer, 5));
// expected output: 15
In the first example which produced the output of 10 we are simply adding 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10. There is no InitialValue given so we start with the first element in the array. In the second example, where the output produced is 15, we are specifying the optional InitialValue, so the first element inserted into the original array of [1, 2, 3, 4] is 5, adding 5 to the previous example.
concat():
The concat() method is used to merge two or more arrays. This method does not change the existing arrays, but instead returns a new array.
var array1 = ['a', 'b', 'c'];
var array2 = ['d', 'e', 'f']; console.log(array1.concat(array2));
// expected output: Array ["a", "b", "c", "d", "e", "f"]
This simply merges the two arrays into a single array.
slice():
The slice() method returns a shallow copy of a portion of an array into a new array object selected from begin to end ( end not included). The original array will not be modified.
var animals = ['cat', 'dog', 'chicken', 'swan', 'giraffe']; console.log(animals.slice(2));
// expected output: Array ["chicken", "swan", "giraffe"] console.log(animals.slice(2, 4));
// expected output: Array ["chicken", "swan"] console.log(animals.slice(1, 5));
// expected output: Array ["dog", "chicken", "swan", "giraffe"]
Firstly, we are slicing beginning at the 2nd index. Our element at index 2 is ‘chicken’ so we return the array from ‘chicken’ through ‘giraffe’.
Secondly, we are starting at index 2 and ending at index 4. At the index 4 is the string element ‘giraffe’. Notice that the end is not included so we are only returning ‘chicken’ and ‘swan’ without the 4th element, ‘giraffe’.
In the last example above, we are beginning the slice at the first element, which is ‘dog’ and ending at index 5, which is beyond the length of our array of 4 indexes. Therefore, we cleared that 4th index element, ‘giraffe’, and include it in our output. Remember that the end is not included in the output. However, If end is greater than the length of the sequence, slice extracts through to the end of the sequence ( arr.length ). That is why our output includes ‘giraffe’ in the last case.
splice():
The splice() method changes the contents of an array by removing or replacing existing elements and/or adding new elements in place.
var months = ['Jan', 'March', 'April', 'June'];
months.splice(1, 0, 'Feb');
// inserts at 1st index position
console.log(months);
// expected output: Array ['Jan', 'Feb', 'March', 'April', 'June'] months.splice(4, 1, 'May');
// replaces 1 element at 4th index
console.log(months);
// expected output: Array ['Jan', 'Feb', 'March', 'April', 'May']
In the example above, we start changing the array at the 1st index, which is specified in the first argument of the splice() method. January is at the 0-index. After January is the 1st index of the array. At that index, we place ‘Feb’. The 0 provided as the 2nd argument of splice() method means that we are deleting nothing from the array. In our case, we are simply inserting ‘Feb’ right in front of ‘March’ in the 1st index of the array and removing 0 array elements.
In the second example above, at the index of 4, we are deleting 1 old array element (‘June’) and replacing it with ‘May’.
Hopefully, these various array methods help solidify your understanding of pure vanilla JavaScript concepts and prove themselves to be useful in creating React apps.
Sources: | https://medium.com/@kevin-peery/javascript-array-functions-94c59ba21f1e | ['Kevin Peery'] | 2019-05-01 17:46:00.457000+00:00 | ['Array Methods', 'React', 'JavaScript', 'Arrays', 'Vanilla Javascript'] |
Guide to Joining The Kava Testnet | Edit — Updated to reflect the upgrade to Kava testnet 1.1
This article will provide a step-by-step tutorial for setting up a server and getting started as a validator on the Kava testnet. You can view the code and see the latest release at our GitHub. If you’ve done this a few times before, the instructions on GitHub should be sufficient.
Getting Started 🌱
First off, you’ll need to setup a server. Having a dedicated server helps ensure that your validator is highly available and doesn’t go offline. Kava uses Tendermint consensus, which selects a leader for each block. If your validator is offline when it gets chosen as a leader, consensus will take longer, and you could even get slashed!
For this guide, we’ll be using a server with the following specifications:
Ubuntu 18.04 OS
2 CPUs
4GB RAM
24GB SSD
Allow incoming connections on ports 26656
Static IP address (Elastic IP for AWS, floating IP for DigitalOcean, etc)
You can get a server with these specifications on most cloud service providers (AWS, DigitalOcean, Google Cloud Platform, Linode, etc).
After logging into your server, we’ll install security updates and the required packages to run Kava:
# Updates ubuntu
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade -y # Installs packages necessary to run go
sudo apt install build-essential -y
wget
sudo tar -xvf go1.12.5.linux-amd64.tar.gz
sudo mv go /usr/local # Installs gowget https://dl.google.com/go/go1.12.5.linux-amd64.tar.gz sudo tar -xvf go1.12.5.linux-amd64.tar.gzsudo mv go /usr/local # Updates environmental variables to include go
cat <<EOF>> ~/.profile
export GOROOT=/usr/local/go
export GOPATH=$HOME/go
export GO111MODULE=on
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin:$HOME/go/bin
EOF source ~/.profile
To verify that go is installed:
go version # Should return go version go1.12.5 linux/amd64
Install the Kava daemon 🛠
Next, we’ll install the software needed to run the Kava blockchain. First, create your own fork so that you can submit a genesis transaction pull request if necessary. Head over to GitHub and click “Fork.”
git clone [email protected]:<YOUR-USERNAME>/kava.git
cd kava
# install executables
make install
Now, we’ll setup the kvd software to run the current Kava testnet:
# Replace <your-moniker> with the publicly viewable name for your validator.
# kava-testnet-1.1 is the name of the current testnet kvd init --chain-id kava-testnet-1.1 <your-moniker>
Note: kvd init sets the node-id of your validator. You can see this value by doing kvd tendermint show-node-id . The node-id value will become part of your genesis transaction, so if you are planning on submitting a genesis transaction, don’t reset your node-id by uninstalling kvd or changing your public IP address.
# Create a wallet for your node. <your-wallet-name> is just a human readable name you can use to remember your wallet. It can be the same or different than your moniker. kvcli keys add <your_wallet_name>
This will spit out your recovery mnemonic. Be sure to back up your mnemonic before proceeding to the next step!
Submit a genesis transaction 🧬
If you are planning on participating in the genesis of the Kava testnet, you can follow along here and create a genesis transaction that you can submit as a pull request before launch. Otherwise, skip to the section about obtaining some coins from the faucet. If you are participating in genesis, it is expected that your validator will be up and available at all times during the testnet. If you can’t commit to this, we recommend joining via the faucet after the testnet is live.
# Create an account in genesis with 1000000000000 kva tokens. Don't change the amount of kva tokens so that we can have equal distribution among genesis participants. kvd add-genesis-account $(kvcli keys show <your_wallet_name> -a) 1000000000000ukva # Sign a gentx that creates a validator in the genesis file for your account. Note to pass your public ip to the --ip flag. kvd gentx --name <your_wallet_name> --amount 1000000000000ukva --ip <your-public-ip>
This will write your genesis transaction to $HOME/.kvd/config/gentx/gentx-<gen-tx-hash>.json . This should be the only file in your gentx directory. If you have more than one, delete them and repeat the gentx command above.
Now we will submit the transaction as a PR to be included in the genesis block:
# create a branch for your pr submission
git checkout -b genesis-<your-moniker> # check that there's only one gentx
ls $HOME/.kvd/config/gentx # copy the genesis transaction you created to the kava repo
cp $HOME/.kvd/config/gentx/* testnet-1.1/gentx/. # Add and commit your changes
git add testnet-1.1/gentx/ * git commit -m "feat: gentx for <your-moniker>" # Push your branch to the remote repositor
git push -u origin genesis-<your-moniker>
Now go to Kava’s GitHub repo and select “New Pull Request.”
Create a pull request for <github-username>/kava:genesis-<your-moniker> against the master branch of the Kava repo.
We’ll make sure to promptly review your PR, let you know if there are any issues, and merge it in!
Please note that all genesis transactions must be submitted by July 4, 2019 at 23:00 UTC. If you don’t submit a genesis transaction, don’t worry! After the testnet is launched, we’ll make a faucet available to easily request testnet tokens.
Launching the testnet 🚀
On July 4, 2019 at 23:00 UTC, Kava will release the proposed genesis block. We well create a release tagged v0.1.1-preview that contains the proposed genesis. All validators are invited to review the included transactions, agree on the final genesis block.
When the genesis is agreed upon, we will create a release tagged v0.1.1. Validators can download the genesis file from that release and start validating July 5, 2019 at 23:00 UTC.
To start validating the testnet after the genesis has been released, run the following commands:
wget # Copy the genesis file to the kvd directorywget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Kava-Labs/kava/master/testnet-1.1/genesis.json -P ~/.kvd/config # Create log files for kvd
sudo mkdir -p /var/log/kvd && sudo touch /var/log/kvd/kvd.log && sudo touch /var/log/kvd/kvd_error.log # create a systemd file to run the kvd daemon
# replace <your_user> where necessary sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/kvd.service > /dev/null <<'EOF'
[Unit]
Description=Kava daemon
After=network-online.target
[Service]
User=<your_user>
ExecStart=/home/<your_user>/go/bin/kvd start
StandardOutput=file:/var/log/kvd/kvd.log
StandardError=file:/var/log/kvd/kvd_error.log
Restart=always
RestartSec=3
LimitNOFILE=4096
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF # Start the node
sudo systemctl enable kvd
sudo systemctl start kvd
To check on the status of the node
kvcli status
sudo journalctl -u kvd -f
To view the logs
# Standard output of kvd
tail -f /var/log/kvd/kvd.log
# Standard error of kvd
tail -f /var/log/kvd/kvd_error.log
After the Kava blockchain reaches a quorum, the testnet will be officially launched! If a quorum is not reached promptly, we will coordinate further communication through the Kava validator Riot chat.
Joining the Testnet Via Facuet
To join the Kava testnet after launch, you can use our faucet. To install the testnet software, follow this guide up to the section titled ’Submitting a genesis transaction’.
To start your node:
wget # Copy the genesis file to the kvd directorywget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Kava-Labs/kava/master/testnet-1.1/genesis.json -P ~/.kvd/config # Create log files for kvd
sudo mkdir -p /var/log/kvd && sudo touch /var/log/kvd/kvd.log && sudo touch /var/log/kvd/kvd_error.log # create a systemd file to run the kvd daemon
# Be sure to replace <your_user> where necessary sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/kvd.service > /dev/null <<'EOF'
[Unit]
Description=Kava daemon
After=network-online.target
[Service]
User=<your_user>
ExecStart=/home/<your_user>/go/bin/kvd start
StandardOutput=file:/var/log/kvd/kvd.log
StandardError=file:/var/log/kvd/kvd_error.log
Restart=always
RestartSec=3
LimitNOFILE=4096
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF # Start the node
sudo systemctl enable kvd
sudo systemctl start kvd # Wait until the status shows that catching_up = false
# Syncing the chain may take a few minutes.
kvcli status
To get testnet coins:
# Get the address of your wallet
kvcli keys show -a <your_wallet_name> # Go to the faucet and paste your address in # Confirm that your account is funded
kvcli q account $(kvcli keys show -a <your_wallet_name>)
To create a validator:
# Set your node to wait for transactions to confirm
kvcli config broadcast-mode block
# Create the validator
# Be sure to replace <your-wallet-name> and <your-moniker> kvcli tx staking create-validator --amount 10000000000ukva --commission-max-change-rate 0.01 --commission-max-rate 0.2 --commission-rate 0.1 --from <your-wallet-name> —-min-self-delegation 1 --moniker <your-moniker> —-pubkey $(kvd tendermint show-validator) # Confirm that you have voting power (look at the last value in the output. It should show voting power > 0)
kvcli status
Congrats, you’ve joined the Kava testnet! | https://medium.com/kava-labs/guide-to-joining-the-kava-testnet-9e697d381e07 | ['Kevin Davis'] | 2020-04-15 23:13:44.998000+00:00 | ['Golang', 'Technical', 'Blockchain', 'Tutorial', 'Cosmos'] |
How to Ace Home Assignments for Machine Learning Job Interviews | How to Ace Home Assignments for Machine Learning Job Interviews
In this article, I aim to provide a clear picture of what is expected from a job applicant when asked to do a machine learning (ML) home-based coding assignment as part of the interview process. Stan Kriventsov Oct 12, 2020·6 min read
While working as a senior ML engineer, I had to review dozens of such assignments, so I believe I have a good idea of what types of mistakes applicants usually make. I would like to help you avoid these mistakes when you are applying for your next job.
Essentially, you need to strive to accomplish the following 4 objectives:
Create an ML model that works and is reasonable for the task Clearly present and analyze your results Show your intelligence and attention to detail Write clean, easy-to-understand, reproducible, mostly error-free code
For whatever reason, a lot of entry-level applicants seem to only really concentrate on the first one of these goals. Let us go over each of them in more detail and see what they involve.
Image by author
1. Create an ML model that works and is reasonable for the task
In general, this part is really task-dependent, so you need to know your stuff.
Some general insights:
Make sure you understand the assignment. If you are not certain what you are required to do, it is usually okay to ask for clarification.
Do some data cleaning and feature engineering as necessary. Do not just throw your data into a model and hope it gives you a good result.
Always follow the best machine learning practices. Among the most basic ones, make sure to divide your data into training/validation/test sets as appropriate. Don’t use your test set for anything except final evaluation of the performance of your model and ensure that there is no data leakage from it into the training set. Do not overfit your models, use the validation set to know when to stop training.
When in doubt about which ML technique to use, always choose an approach that you are reasonably familiar with in order to avoid embarrassing mistakes. Do not try to impress the interviewer with the newest technology or framework unless you are sure you understand it. A well-implemented linear regression model (assuming it is at all suited to the task) is better than a completely mishandled super-duper convolutional recurrent neural network or whatever.
You will usually not have a lot of time for these assignments, so tend to choose simpler solutions unless you are confident that you have enough time to implement the more complex ones. In any case, you can start with a very basic model and then use it as a baseline for further improvements. Sometimes you will discover that the simple approach is just as good and is more computationally efficient. Or, if you don’t manage to finish your complex model, at least you will have something to present.
If the task has practical significance, think about how your model would be used and whether its computational and data availability requirements make sense. Doing this will show that you are aware of real-life constraints and are capable of dealing with them.
Unless forbidden by the rules of the assignment, try to run an Internet search to see how other people have solved similar problems. However, do not just copy and paste their code without analyzing it, not even so much because the interviewers want to see your own coding skills (after all, a lot of boilerplate code is routinely reused), but, more importantly, because ML code tends to really depend on the fine details of the task and data, and what works for one problem will likely require some adjustments for another.
2. Clearly present and analyze your results
Believe it or not, but I’ve had multiple instances where the job applicant would just send me their code without any explanations. What did they expect me to do, run it myself and analyze the output for them?
Presentation and analysis of results are core skills for any ML engineer or data scientist, so make sure you invest sufficient time to show these off.
In particular:
State what you were trying to accomplish.
Do at least some exploratory analysis of your data and report any relevant findings. This will also help you create better models.
Explain why you chose the model that you used.
Clearly state which metrics you used and why, and what the performance of your model was based on these metrics.
Evaluate the quality of your model based on its performance. At the very least, pick a simple baseline solution (say, always predicting the most popular class in a classification problem, or the most recent value when doing time-series predictions) and make sure that your model can beat this approach.
Make sure to look at some actual predictions of your model and verify that they are reasonable. Sometimes people submit models that don’t work and claim good performance because their metric calculation function has an error as well 😄. Don’t be that person.
If you can, go ahead and create some cool visualizations, but make sure this doesn’t come at the cost of not having enough time to actually build a good model.
Be prepared to discuss your work in detail.
3. Show your intelligence and attention to detail
Being smart and attentive are among the most important qualities for a data scientist. Every non-trivial problem requires thinking. No one wants to hire a person who has simply learned a bunch of black-box models and throws the data into them hoping that something good comes out.
Some of the ways to show these qualities are (most of these are also just good machine learning):
Make sure you pay attention to every detail in the description of your assignment. If you end up doing something different from what you were asked to do, it will not be a good look. Again, if in doubt, ask.
When performing exploratory analysis, REALLY examine your data. If it’s images, look at a bunch of them. If it’s text, read some of it. If it’s tabular data, create plots to see what it looks like and whether there are any anomalies. Clearly understanding the structure of your data will result in better feature engineering and will make you look smart.
When dealing with missing or corrupted data, make sure you use your brain. Do not replace missing data with infeasible values (more than a few applicants in our assignments filled in heart rate data with zeros 😄).
Spend enough time discussing your results. How does changing your model or its hyperparameters affect the performance? What are the compute requirements to run it? What pitfalls are possible in production? And so on.
4. Write clean, easy-to-understand, reproducible, mostly error-free code
Since you won’t have much time, you are usually not expected to deliver production-grade code (unless specified in the assignment). However, make sure that your code is easy to read and can be run on the interviewer’s machine if at all possible.
Run the exact code that you are submitting on your own computer and make sure that it generates the results that you claim. Quite often people submit a version of the code that doesn’t work.
List the details of the environment that you used (e.g., Python 3.6.8, TensorFlow 2.3.0, etc) so that the interviewer can run your code.
If any of your algorithms (for example, neural networks or decision trees) involve random initialization, make sure to set a specific random seed for reproducibility.
Putting your code into a Jupyter notebook is typically a good choice (unless advised otherwise in the assignment) as it allows you to show the output of each cell alongside the code.
is typically a good choice (unless advised otherwise in the assignment) as it allows you to show the output of each cell alongside the code. Make sure that your code is well organized and each part is easy to understand. Write some comments when necessary. Do not go overboard with it, you don’t have to comment on every line (like, if your line is “x += 1”, do not write a comment “# Add 1 to x”, it just looks silly).
Remove any functions or code blocks that you end up not using at all in your final solution unless you want to discuss them in your report.
I hope that the discussion above will help you do well on your next ML home assignment! Good luck! | https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-ace-home-assignments-for-machine-learning-job-interviews-ac510830baa7 | ['Stan Kriventsov'] | 2020-10-12 20:38:16.628000+00:00 | ['Coding Interviews', 'Job Interview', 'Data Science', 'Job Hunting', 'Machine Learning'] |
Understanding Normal Sleep and Alertness | Obtaining proper sleep at night is essential to functioning well during the day. Unfortunately, there are many misconceptions about what constitutes “normal” sleep and gaining a better understanding of the structure of sleep and the factors which influence daytime alertness can help dispel some of these misconceptions.
What is Normal Sleep?
Figure 1. An idealized “hypnogram” (sleep graph) in a young adult. Researchers can tell what stage of sleep a person is in by looking at the pattern of brainwaves collected from electrodes on the person’s scalp. We alternate through the different stages of sleep throughout the night with a brief awakening after each 90 minute cycle. (Source: https://uc-lab.in.htwg-konstanz.de/blogging/sleep-vital-signals-during-sleep-and-sleep-disorders.html)
Human beings actually did not evolve to “sleep through the night”. Think about it: it would not be advantageous to our survival to be totally unresponsive to the world for a third of the day. Consequently, our sleep evolved to occur in cycles lasting around 90 minutes, with a brief awakening occurring after each sleep cycle (see figure 1, above) and at other times during the night as well. Studies suggest that healthy adults actually wake up an average of 20–43 times during the night (reference: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2564772/.) Each 90-minute sleep cycle starts with our brain being awake. Then we progress through the different stages of sleep: Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3 (also known as slow wave sleep, which is the deepest stage of sleep) and REM (Rapid Eye Movement sleep, the stage of sleep where we tend to have vivid dreams).
After each sleep cycle, our brain wakes up and does a quick mental inventory of our body and surrounding environment:
Am I lying on my arm?
Is my bladder full? Is my back stiff?
Is my bed partner there?
Is the baby breathing?
Is the sunlight coming through the window?
Is it too hot or too cold?
What time is it?
If nothing is amiss, our brain may change our body position and put us right back to sleep. Often, we won’t even remember having woken up by the next morning. However, if during these natural pauses in sleep the brain realizes that your bladder is full, or your back is hurting, or the room is too hot, or an intrusive thought has been on your mind and pops into consciousness, or you glance at the clock or your smartphone, the otherwise brief awakening may become more prolonged and something which we do remember in the morning. It’s important to note that just because we remember an awakening does not mean that whatever we did during it was the cause of the awakening. Nor does a remembered awakening necessarily mean that the sleep the previous night was inadequate or abnormally fragmented. Awakenings happen during the natural break between sleep cycles and we go right into the next sleep cycle once we fall back asleep.
Our sleep is also naturally less deep and more fragmented as we approach our typical wake up time. Sleeping less deeply at the end of the night is helpful in preparing us for waking, giving us some awareness of what is happening around us before we rise for the day. We typically do not go into slow wave sleep, the deepest stage of sleep, in the 90-minute cycle or two before our habitual wake time. It can be perfectly normal to wake up several times within a sleep cycle as we approach the morning. As it gets closer to our natural wake up time, we are less sleepy (since we have obtained nearly all the sleep we needed that night), so it is more difficult to get back to sleep if we are awakened by something in our environment.
In conclusion, whether we are aware of waking or not, our brain does not actually sleep through the night. Additionally, there are different types of sleep and our sleep is naturally deeper in the first half of the night.
How does our Alertness Level Vary Over the Day and Night?
Figure 2. The Opponent Process Model of alertness: Throughout the day and night, the brain produces 2 opposing signals, process H (sleepiness) and process C (wakefulness), which combine to determine our level of alertness. [Source: O. A. Habbal & A. A. Al-Jabri (2009) Circadian Rhythm and the Immune Response: A Review, International Reviews of Immunology, 28:1–2, 93–108, DOI: 10.1080/08830180802645050]
Just as it is helpful to understand that our sleep depth is variable over the course of the night, it is helpful to understand that our alertness level varies over the course of the day and night. When research subjects compete a reaction time test at various intervals over the day and night, a predictable performance pattern emerges. We have reduced alertness right after waking; it improves over the course of the morning; declines a bit after lunch (which is why some people feel the urge to nap after lunch); improves a bit again in the late afternoon and early evening; and finally declines as we prepare to go to sleep for the night.
Our level of alertness at any time of day is determined by 2 opposing neurochemical signals in our brains:
a sleepiness signal (mediated primarily by the energy breakdown product adenosine). a wakefulness signal (mediated primarily by the wakefulness neurotransmitter orexin, but other neurotransmitters such as dopamine are also involved)
As our brain uses energy during the day, the sleepiness signal gets stronger. To counteract this, our brain produces an opposing wakefulness signal. When we are sleep deprived, the sleepiness signal gets stronger, making us less alert and sleepier during the day and night. When we are under stress or feel anxious, the wakefulness signal gets stronger, meaning that we are less sleepy during the day and night.
In conclusion, our level of alertness varies over the day and is influenced by how well rested we are and whether we are under stress.
What is a Circadian Rhythm?
Figure 3. The Circadian Rhythm: The body has an internal clock which allows our brain and organs to function differently during the day and night.” Dysfunction of this clock due to an unpredictable schedule can lead to health problems. (Adapted from: http://ruo.mbl.co.jp/bio/e/product/circadian/article/index.html)
The exact timing of our sleep and alertness level is dictated by our body’s internal clock, also known as our “circadian rhythm” (“circa” means around, “dian” means day). Every cell in our body has an internal clock that allows it to perform different functions during the day and night. A master clock in the center of our brain (the “suprachiasmatic nucleus”) keeps all the clocks in our body aligned with each other and the external environment.
Sleep quality is maximized by sleeping during the time that our body perceives as night. Keeping a predictable schedule with regular sleep-wake times, regular meal times, getting plenty of bright light in the morning and dim light in the two hours before bedtime will help create a strong internal clock, allowing our body to function at its best. When we keep a predictable schedule, our body knows when to expect sleep and starts to prepare itself for sleep even before we get into bed. It also knows when to expect us to wake up and when to expect our meals. It is common for adults and children in America to shift their bedtimes and wake times to later on weekends. However, doing so is equivalent to subjecting oneself to jet lag for 2 out of 7 days each week. Staying up late and sleeping in on weekends makes it more difficult to fall asleep and wake up during the work or school week and leads to dysfunction of the body’s internal clock. Having an unpredictable schedule and a weak circadian rhythm can lead to dysfunction of all the organ systems in our body and is felt to be a contributing factor to obesity, cancer, depression and other health problems.
In summary, our body has an internal clock that functions best when it is given predictable signals from the outside world.
Next Steps: You can use your new understanding of sleep and wakefulness to think about your own sleep and alertness patterns. Here are some first steps:
Think about the times that you wake up during the night. Do they seem to occur every 90 minutes, or in multiples of 90 (after 3 hours of sleep, 4.5 hours, 6 hours or 7.5 hours)? What are you thinking about when you become aware of the awakening? Do you notice that your sleep is less deep as you approach the morning and that you start to have some awareness of your surrounding environment and thoughts even before you wake up? (Please note: People rarely have cycles that are exactly 90 minutes, so don’t worry if you’re slightly off.)
Think about your level of alertness over the day and night and relate it to the alertness diagram from earlier. Do you feel maximally alert immediately upon awakening? Probably not and this is normal. Do you feel a dip in alertness after lunch?
Pay attention to the regularity of your schedule. Are you going to sleep and waking up at the same time on both weekdays and weekends? Are you getting bright light in the morning and dim light at night? Are you eating meals at the same time each day?
Stay Tuned: In future posts I will provide more information on normal sleep and alertness and suggest techniques to improve your sleep and daytime function.
About the Author: I am a board certified Sleep Medicine physician in Redwood City, California. My clinical focus is on the non-pharmacologic management of sleep disorders using techniques such as circadian rhythm optimization, bright light therapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia. I believe that understanding the structure of normal sleep and understanding how our ancestors slept in the days before artificial lighting is essential to learning how to sleep better. | https://michelle-jonelis.medium.com/understanding-normal-sleep-and-alertness-329093cc3869 | ['Michelle Jonelis'] | 2020-10-07 17:13:57.813000+00:00 | ['Sleep', 'Circadian Rhythm', 'Insomnia', 'Fatigue', 'Circadian Clock'] |
Introduction to Object Relationships in Ruby | I’m not proud of what I’ve done, but it had to be done. This thoroughly commented diagram demonstrates a fully functional Many-to-Many relationship between Doctors and Patients. Notice how it looks suspiciously like two One-to-Many relationships (if it looks that way, that’s because it is).
Remember when we decided each attribute for a particular instance of a model should only contain a single value? Since Doctors have many Patients, and Patients can have many Doctors, neither one of them should store data on the other. A Many-to-Many relationship must have a join model, in this case Appointment, where each Appointment belongs to one Doctor and one Patient.
It is always the model belonging to a single instance of a related model (or models) that stores the related instances.
Re-read that until your eye-holes hurt. Alternatively, when you draw your relationship diagrams (and you should ALWAYS draw your relationship diagrams) you can just remember that you store related instances in the side receiving the forky end. I like to use app.diagrams.net (use the ‘Entity Relation’ objects).
I included some basic methods demonstrating typical functionality found in Many-to-Many relationships which also show how you have to ‘go through’ the join model to find all the instances of one side of the relationship that relate to a particular instance from the other side.
This is the end of the blog post. Take care of yourself.
And as promised, copy-paste-able code blocks if you want to play with this yourself:
Doctor
class Doctor attr_accessor :name, :office, :specialty #before we work with databases to store each instance of the #Doctor class, it is convenient to store each Doctor in a #class variable array called @@all @@all = [] def initialize(name, office, specialty) @name = name @office = office @specialty = specialty #this adds each instance of the Doctor class to @@all upon #initialization @@all << self end #inside a class when we start a method definition with 'self' it #means this is a class method (as opposed to an instance method). #That means we call .all on the Doctor class to return the array #of all instances def self.all @@all end #returns an array of all appointments relating to a #particular Doctor def appts Appointment.all.select { |appt| appt.doctor == self } end #returns an array of all appointment times relating #to a particular Doctor def appt_times self.appts.map{ |appt| appt.appt_time } end #returns an array of all patients relating to #a particular Doctor. See comment on the 'doctors' #method in the Patient class to learn why we #need to 'go through' Appointments def patients self.appts.map{ |appt| appt.patient.name } end end
Appointment
class Appointment attr_accessor :appt_time #here we have appt_time in an attr_accessor because we may #need to reschedule, but Doctor and Patient are in an #attr_reader, because they shouldn't change after an #Appointment instance is created. attr_reader :doctor, :patient @@all = [] #IMPORTANT - Appointment is the join model for the #Many-to-Many relationship between Doctors and #Patients. You can think of each side of the Many-to-Many #as having a One-to-Many with the join model. #It is always the model that 'has one' of the other #model where you store that model's information. Each #Appointment has one Doctor and one Patient, so we store #Doctor and Patient here. Doctors and Patients can have #many Appointments, so it is much easier to use #Appointment as the Single Source of Truth def initialize(appt_time, doctor, patient) @appt_time = appt_time @doctor = doctor @patient = patient @@all << self end def self.all @@all end end
Patient | https://medium.com/@bswan0002/introduction-to-object-relationships-in-ruby-902304ec3bee | ['Ben Swanson'] | 2020-12-23 05:56:25.457000+00:00 | ['One To Many', 'Many To Many', 'Object Oriented', 'Ruby', 'Object Relationships'] |
Learn to become a Backend Developer | Let’s break it down and explain each step in the section below.
Before we start, although we haven’t listed the knowledge of HTML/CSS in the roadmaps above, it is recommended that you get at-least some understanding and know how to write some basic HTML/CSS.
Step 1– Learn a Language
There are myriads of options when it comes to picking a language. I have broken them down into categories to make it easier for you to decide. For the beginners who are just getting into the backend development, I would recommend you to pick any of the scripting languages because they have a lot of demand and it would allow you to get up to speed quickly. If you have some frontend knowledge, you might find Node.js to be quite easier plus there is a big job market for that.
If you have already been doing backend development and know some scripting language, I would recommend you to not pick another scripting language and pick something from the “Functional” or “Multiparadigm” section. For example if you have been doing PHP or Node.js already, don’t go for Python or Ruby, instead give Erlang or Golang a try. It will definitely help stretch your thinking and open your mind to new horizons.
Step 2 — Practice what you have Learnt
There is no better way to learn than practice. Once you have picked your language and have got the basic understanding of the concepts, bring them to use. Make as many small applications as you can. Here are just a few ideas to get you started
Implement some command that you find yourself using in the bash e.g. try to implement the functionality of ls
Write a command that fetches and saves reddit posts on /r/programming in the form of JSON file
in the form of JSON file Write a command that gives you a directory structure in JSON format e.g. jsonify dir-name to give you a JSON file with the structure inside the dir-name
to give you a JSON file with the structure inside the Write a command that reads JSON from above step and creates directory structure
Think of some task that you do every day and try to automate that
Step 3 — Learn Package Manager
Once you have understood the basics of the language and have made some example applications, learn how to use package manager for the language that you picked. Package managers help you use external libraries in your applications and to distribute your libraries for others to use.
If you picked PHP you will have to learn Composer, Node.js has NPM or Yarn, Python has Pip and Ruby has RubyGems. Whatever your choice was, go ahead and learn how to use its package manager.
Step 4 — Standards and Best Practices
Each of the language has its own standards and best practices of doing things. Study them for your picked language. For example PHP has PHP-FIG and PSRs. With Node.js there are many different community driven guidelines and same for other languages.
Step 5 — Security
Make sure to read about the best practices for security. Read the OWASP guidelines and understand different security issues and how to avoid them in language of your choice.
Step 6 — Practice
Now that you know the basics of language, standards and best practices, security and how to use package manger. Now go ahead and create a package and distribute it for others to use, and make sure to follow the standards and best practices that you have learnt this far. For example if you picked PHP, you will be releasing it on Packagist, if you picked Node.js you will be releasing it on Npm registry and so on.
Once you are done with that, search for some projects on Github and open some pull requests in some projects. Some ideas for that:
Refactor and implement the best practices that you learnt
Look into the open issues and try to resolve
Add any additional functionality
Step 7 — Learn about Testing
There are several different testing types for testing. Get the understanding of what these types are their purpose. But for now learn about how to write Unit Tests and Integration tests in your applications. Also, understand different testing terminologies such as mocks, stubs etc
Step 8 — Practical
For the practice, go ahead and write the unit tests for the practical tasks that you have done this far, especially what you made in Step 6.
Also learn and calculate the coverage for the tests that you wrote.
Step 9 — Learn about the Relational Databases
Learn how to persist your data in a relational database. Before you go and pick the tool to learn, understand the different database terminologies e.g. keys, indexes, normalization, tuples etc.
There are several options here. However if you learn one, others should be fairly easy. The ones that you would want to learn are MySQL, MariaDB (which is mostly same and is the fork of MySQL) and PostgreSQL. Pick MySQL to start with.
Step 10 — Practical Time
Its time to bring everything that you have learnt this far, to use.
Create a simple application using everything that you have learnt this far. Just pick any idea, maybe create a simple blogging application and implement the below features in it
User Accounts — Registration and Login
Registered user can create blog posts
User should be able to view all the blog posts that he created
They should be able to delete their blog posts
Make sure that user can only see his personal blog posts and not from others
Write the unit/integration tests for the application
You should apply indexes for the queries. Analyze the queries to make sure that indexes are being used
Step 11 — Learn a Framework
Depending upon the project and the language you picked, you may or may not need a framework. Each language has several different options, go ahead and look what options are available for the language of your choice and pick the relevant one.
If you picked PHP, I would recommend you to go with Laravel or Symfony and for the micro-frameworks, go with Lumen or Slim. If you picked Node.js, there are several different options but the prominent one is Express.js
Step 12 — Practical Time
For the practical of this step, convert the application that you made in Step 10, to use the framework that you picked. Also make sure to port everything including the tests.
Step 13 — Learn a NoSQL Database
First understand what they are, how they are different from relational databases and why they are needed. There are several different options, research a little have a look and compare them for the features and differences. Some of the common options that you can pick from are MongoDB, Cassandra, RethinkDB and Couchbase. If you have to pick one, go with MongoDB.
Step 14 — Caching
Learn how to implement app level caching in your applications. Understand how to use Redis or Memcached and implement caching in the application that you built in Step 12.
Step 15 — Creating RESTful APIs
Understand REST and learn how to make RESTful APIs and make sure to read the part about REST from the original paper of Roy Fielding. And make sure that you are able to fight someone if they say REST is only for the HTTP APIs.
Step 16 — Learn about Different Auth Methods
Learn about different Authentication and authorization methodologies. You should know what they are, how they are different and when to prefer one over the other
OAuth — Open Authentication
Basic Authentication
Token Authentication
JWT — JSON Web Tokens
OpenID
Step 17 — Message Brokers
Learn about the message brokers and understand when and why to use them. There are multiple options but the prominent ones are RabbitMQ and Kafka. Learn how to use RabbitMQ for now, if you want to pick one.
Step 18 — Search Engines
As the application grows, simple queries on your relational or NoSQL database aren’t going to cut it out and you will have to resort to a search engine. There are multiple options, each having it’s own differences.
Step 19 — Learn how to use Docker
Docker can facilitate you greatly in your development, whether it is replicating the same environment as production, keeping your OS clean or expediting your coding, testing or deployment. I am going to leave the answer to “how it is going to help me” for you to search. In this step, go ahead and learn how to use Docker.
Step 20 — Knowledge of Web Servers
If you have come this far, you probably had to tackle with servers in the steps before. This step is mainly about finding out the differences between different web servers, knowing the limitations and different available configuration options and how to write applications best utilizing these limitations.
Step 21 — Learn how to use Web Sockets
While not required, it is beneficial to have this knowledge in your toolbelt. Learn how to write real-time web applications with web-sockets and make some sample application with it. You can use it in the blog application that you made above to implement real-time updates on the blog posts listing.
Step 22 — Learn GraphQL
Learn how to make APIs with GraphQL. Understand how it is different from REST and why is it being called REST 2.0.
Step 23 — Look into Graph Databases
Graph models represent a very flexible way of handling relationships in your data, and graph databases provide fast and efficient storage, retrieval and querying for it. Learn how to use Neo4j or OrientDB.
Step 24 — Keep Exploring
Once you start learning and practicing, you will definitely be coming across the things that we did not cover in this roadmap. Just keep an open-mind and a healthy appetite for learning new things.
And remember the key is to practicing as much as you can. It will look scarier in the beginning and you might feel like you are not grasping anything but that is normal and over time you will feel that you are getting better.
And with that, this post comes to an end. Feel free to befriend me on twitter or say hi by email. Also don’t forget to watch the repository for the future updates. Stay tuned! | https://medium.com/tech-tajawal/modern-backend-developer-in-2018-6b3f7b5f8b9 | ['Adnan Ahmed'] | 2020-01-12 11:57:44.866000+00:00 | ['Nodejs', 'JavaScript', 'Python', 'PHP', 'Golang'] |
In a small house with white walls explaining how your father took his life | Hippie family farm house crash
You needed comfort you I think. Looking at you, long hair, slight femmish beard Adams apple very large for my point of view, and the tears welling, sobbing.
Now knowing what to do and feeling bad. I put my hand on you back but I only could get it on your side. You were too big or I think my hand was too small, I kept saying you were ok rhetorically.
We were in a farm house in San Ysidro. Very dry, dusty area with a set of grain silos and a large field towards the border. We were in a house that looked like it was dumped there, the linoleum floor was a layer thin. Lis, my mother, had transformed it in to a rustic hippie spot with low tables and pillows instead of chairs. It was really bare, Sergio Leone.
Knelling semi Indian style on a pillow on the floor, you took your glasses of and held the brim of your nose while you cried. You sobbed more actuary, honking.
You said your dad had called you, it was going to be his birthday soon. He sounded lonely too me. You said you felt very bad for not visiting him, I asked why you didn’t? You said you didn’t know, that you wanted to smoke some pot with friends and you didn’t call him back.
Later he pulled up his plumbing van to the edge of the train tracks, you said another car pulled up behind him. It looked like your dad was gunning to make it across the track before the train came by but his wheel got stuck.
Hearing all of this, it was like it came out in one breath or my breath came out of me. I felt dizzy.
Then the train hit the van you said, you said it hit the van on the corner of the bumper and it flipped the car up, tore off the roof like a can, Terry flew out and broke his neck and, according to the police, died instantly.
When the police called, you said you were stoned and drove to the accident site. Terry’s tools hand flung all around. All the tools he had collected all of his life you said. You took one of his plumbing wrenches.
You said you had wished you’d called him back or went to visit him. | https://medium.com/@electriquesunshine/hey-pop-i-remember-you-telling-me-your-father-killed-himself-that-was-my-first-memeory-of-talking-8dac7a5c6d98 | ['Electrique Sunshine'] | 2021-01-02 12:38:51.627000+00:00 | ['Hippies', 'First Memory', 'Stoned', 'Suicide', 'Fathers'] |
Dealing with Data Variety | Why the third “V,” variety, of Big Data is driving huge investment in 2019 and unlocking access to external data.
The Big Data framework is comprised of 4 V’s: Volume, Velocity, Variety, and Veracity.
Here at ThinkData, we pride ourselves on solving the “variety” issue associated with accessing external data. It’s truly the problem we built our company around solving.
Big Data by Gartner
For those of you familiar with Gartner’s infamous “3 V’s of Big Data”, you will know that back in 2001, Gartner initially defined big data as high-volume, high-velocity, and high-variety.
The years following led to an explosion in activity focused on adopting the proper tools, techniques, and processes needed to get a handle on Big Data. Companies needed to start properly collecting and organizing their own data in order to start mining it for new insight and opportunity. Once caught up on the ability to store massive amounts of data, these organizations needed to learn how to manage the firehose of new data that was being pushed into their newly created lake of usable information.
Ultimately, the “Volume” and “Velocity” side of Big Data took the major focus of an organizations’ Big Data efforts — and rightfully so. Organizations were taking stock of their inventory and learning how to better manage their newly discovered information supply chain.
Challenge of Data Variety
As we fast forward to 2019, we’re seeing focus shift from how to handle the size and speed of data, to how to deal with the seemingly endless variety of data created from both internal and external sources. A lot of this focus has been driven by the unavoidable value associated with leveraging external data that, in principle, comes in a variety of structures and formats.
We’re not the only ones seeing this trend. Dealing with “Variety” of Big Data was highlighted in Tableau’s White Paper on the “Top 10 Big Data Trends for 2017”:
In Tableau’s words, data formats are multiplying and connectors [pulling in multiple data sets in varying formats] are becoming crucial. This truly is one of the largest barriers facing those who are trying to get the most out of Big Data, and the problem is only amplified when you start looking outside of your environment to access third party or publicly available external data.
Open Data’s Impact
Since the introduction of open data to the marketplace, there have been numerous predictions made regarding its social, economic, and political impact.
Back in 2011 The European Commission projected that by opening up data the EU stood to have €40-billion per year injected into their economy. Two years later, McKinsey published a frequently referenced paper that valued open data at $3-trillion per year.
More recently, Gartner estimated that within two years 80% of organizations would be consuming open data.
Although varying in conclusion, each of these firms’ predictions share similar characteristics.
Firstly, they all recognize that open data represents a hugely untapped and incredibly valuable resource. Secondly, and more importantly, the predictions are based on the underlying assumption that once open data is made publicly available, it simply also becomes accessible.
Available ≠ Accessible
Varying formats, structures, access requirements, release schedules, and a general lack of standards in even the most basic cases (“Variety”) makes available external data wholly inaccessible.
In order to unlock the value of external data, it is necessary to adopt a solution that can standardize and normalize any source of external data and present it in a way that matches an organizations’ own internal standards.
A Big Data Solution
So, how do we deal with the issue?
At ThinkData, we believe that to manage external data and all of its variety, organizations will have to adopt a new data processing framework . This framework will need to manage several functions, among them:
FIND — A systematic approach to finding the right sources of external data, possibly thousands.
ORGANIZE — Record, maintain, and update the data. Verify and track metadata.
NORMALIZE — Standardize raw data feeds and generate common formatting.
TRANSFORM — Define ideal output. Transform the data to internal specifications before transported into the organization.
SHARE — Manage access enterprise-wide to unlock data value to the fullest extent.
This system is not intended to displace traditional data infrastructure, but to integrate with it and keep it efficient.
A solution such as this moves data processing tasks outside of an organization’s core internal infrastructure, eliminating the need to waste storage, slow down performance, or spend resources on processing tasks that can take place outside of an organizations’ environment. It will also help businesses avoid the inevitable scenario of bombarding their data lake with external data that is not yet ready to be leveraged, creating big messes that are not easily cleaned up — think oil spill.
Variety is inevitable when dealing with external data. But rather than tacking the problem onto existing Big Data infrastructure, take advantage of new technologies that will allow you to standardize data outside your existing infrastructure. This keeps your internal environment clean and organized, eliminating a lot of stress on data systems, scientists, and engineers.
Through a solution like the one outlined above, any external data can be identified, transformed, and constantly monitored, made ready for access whenever your organization needs it. This is how the complex issue of variety in external data is boiled down to a manageable process.
Now is the time to solve the data variety issue and finally unlock the true value external data poses for your organization. | https://medium.com/thinkdata/dealing-with-data-variety-b72758d8fc96 | ['Thinkdata Works'] | 2019-08-07 18:11:16.071000+00:00 | ['Data Preparation', 'Big Data', 'Big Data Analytics', 'Gartner', 'External Data'] |
Final: Fallstreak’s Trailer | Since my visual novel has content that ranges in the field of hours, I decided to create a trailer that gives a good sense of what the visual novel encompasses in a short time span.
In the first sequence of the trailer I wanted to capture a sense of the surreal nature of Fallstreak’s golden dream. The falling sequence’s fade into a fantastic starry sky and floating underwater area is meant to drive home that point.
In the second sequence of the trailer, I wanted to give viewers insight into the characters of the visual novel. Little snippets of dialogue that I felt captured their personality were utilized to give the viewer a glimpse into their world.
Overall I had a lot of fun working on the trailer, as it was a welcome change of pace from the visual novel medium I’ve been grinding away at. | https://medium.com/imm-senior-showcase-2017/final-fallstreaks-trailer-f0a5939ea430 | ['Quan Nguyen'] | 2017-05-01 22:18:32.002000+00:00 | ['Movies', 'Visual Novel', 'Trailers'] |
Top Brands of 2016 Report -Infographic | With a network of 29 offices in 22 countries, Interbrand is a global brand agency and publisher of the highly influential Best Global Brands annual report. Here are the highlights from 2016:
Originally published at blog.infogr.am on October 30, 2016.
Follow us on Medium and sign up for our weekly newsletter! | https://medium.com/infographics/infographic-top-brands-of-2016-report-9fb05944308c | [] | 2016-12-29 21:22:15.083000+00:00 | ['Branding', 'Infographics', 'Data Visualization', 'Business', 'Design'] |
Chalmers’ claim for philosophical zombies irritates a lot of people, including other philosophers. | Chalmers’ claim for philosophical zombies irritates a lot of people, including other philosophers. But I have tried to show that the subject does lead to some interesting theories about how our minds work, and how when this fails you get sociopaths. My story was written when I had not yet learned to stay more focused in my writing. Yours is nicely focused. But you might find some interesting threads to follow in what I wrote. | https://medium.com/@ted-wade/chalmers-claim-for-philosophical-zombies-irritates-a-lot-of-people-including-other-philosophers-15b4f5f2ab7e | ['Ted Wade'] | 2020-12-18 18:57:13.330000+00:00 | ['Philosophy', 'Zombies', 'Materialism', 'Education', 'Consciousness'] |
Sign in with Apple using Firebase Auth SDK and SwiftUI 2 | Let’s Code!
Note: Code inspired by Authenticate Using Apple on iOS by Firebase.
Go to your ContentView.Swift file (the one that comes with your project) and import the following framework at the top:
Paste the following code after the struct opening graph but before the body variable of your file:
Copy-paste the following code over the code that you have just implemented:
Now, add the native SwiftUI Apple Sign In button with the drag-and-drop feature:
Alright! Now that we have our button and our nonce generator, we are ready to give an action to our button and sign up our user.
Paste the following code inside the onRequest method:
And paste the following code inside the onCompletion method:
Also, don’t forget to give a frame to the Apple button after the closing parentheses. Otherwise, the button will take up the full screen: | https://betterprogramming.pub/sign-in-with-apple-firebase-auth-swiftui2-0-5e007f1e5a53 | ['Sullivan De Carli'] | 2021-01-04 19:42:44.402000+00:00 | ['Swift', 'Swiftui', 'Firebase', 'iOS', 'Programming'] |
Dancing in the Dark | There is Spring in our steps,
though life is not a choreographed dance —
it’s a dance all the same
we one two step to its rhythm
given half the chance,
outside beneath crescent moonlight —
blanketed by a starry sky
as the fear in peoples voices
echoes all around,
I unplug and retreat to the sanctuary of a memory,
returning to the Oceans waves crashing at my feet —
drowning out the noise until balance is found
who will we become — when this song fades out?
nothing is ever certain
apart from who we are right now,
so we keep stepping on beat as we twist and shout
trying to see in the dark,
navigating all the drama
like a lighthouse living — all seeing,
trying to take heed from once loose tongues —
now silenced by all the karma
we move, we dance
right through this maze,
truth is, it’s not just this one thing that has us tripping,
humans have been well versed —
and determined to misbehave
it’s all things apart from this viral craze —
criss-crossing the globe like the Mexican wave,
around the world and back again —
in less than eighty days
one hundred years from now —
what will the history books say?
The true stories — may never be told
in the meantime, we are here
like star bright lighthouses —
dancing in the dark | https://dabboh76.medium.com/dancing-in-the-dark-82c7294dd470 | ['D Abboh'] | 2020-03-21 17:11:35.024000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Dance', 'Mindfulness', 'Light', 'Hope'] |
Queer Classics: “Make the Yuletide Gay” (2009) | For a long time, it was rather difficult to find a Christmas movie that had anything other than latent queer content (we’re looking at you, Rudolph). While Hallmark has, for quite some time now, managed to corner the market on holiday films, until recently you would have had to squint really hard to see much of anything there that might be of interest to most queer viewers (for an excellent overview of the relentless heteronormativity of Hallmark Christmas movies, check out this article).
Fortunately, there are a few older gems out there, including Make the Yuletide Gay, a charming little film about a young man named Gun who, upon returning home to his small Wisconsin town, pretends that he is straight to avoid the possibility that he’ll lose his special relationship with his parents (particularly his mother). However, when his boyfriend Nathan shows up unexpectedly after his own rich parents abandon him for a cruise, the stage is set for all sorts of conflict as Gun has to decide whether to live openly or continue denying who he is.
Now, it has to be said at the outset that this isn’t what one would call a top-tier film. There are clear signs that it was made on a low budget. The opening scene, in which Gun’s professor openly hits on him is cringey, not only because of its pretty explicit sexual harassment, but also because the acting is just so off. It’s equally obvious that, whatever the script might say, this wasn’t filmed in Wisconsin, since there’s very little snow to be seen.
That being said, it has its charms, and chief among those are the cast. The two leads, Keith Jordan and Adamo Ruggiero, who play Gun and Nathan, respectively, bring a warmth and a charisma to their roles, and they allow us to see how much these two young people genuinely love one another. In some ways, however, Gun’s mother, portrayed by Kelly Keaton, that threatens to steal the show, with her every appearance full of a Midwest nice that makes the characters of Fargo look like Boston brahmins. Lest you think that her performance is over-the-top, it’s important to note that Keaton is actually from Wisconsin.
Indeed, it’s precisely the film’s setting in the Midwest that gives it a certain significance that it might otherwise lack. It’s fairly common, in both queer cinema and in mainstream films generally, to see the Midwest as a place hostile to queerness. However, time and again throughout the film Gun is surprised to find that the people he thought might reject him, including his neighbor Abby, welcome him with open arms. It might be perhaps a bit unrealistic but, as we’ve noted before, sometimes it’s okay for queer movies to indulge in a bit of wish-fulfillment and fantasy, especially considering how difficult queer peoples’ lives can be, even in the supposedly more enlightened and accepting 21st Century.
One of the most interesting aspects of this film, at least from a queer perspective, is how Gun seems to believe that it is his sartorial choices that will allow people to see him as “straight.” If only he dresses in ill-fitting clothes, he thinks, then no one will ever suspect that he’s a big ol’ bottom. His belief, premised as it is on the conjunction of style and sexuality — and of the assumption that one can be mapped onto the other — is one of the things that most concretely dates this film. Since this film was released in 2009, quite a lot has changed since then in terms of how people, particularly young people, conceive of and conceptualize the connections between gender presentation and sexuality. Now, just because a young man decides to dress in tight-fitting shirts doesn’t mean that he is gay or queer; there’s a certain fluidity in gender and sexuality that would have been largely unthinkable in all but the most adventurous of queer films at the end of the 2000s.
The hilarity of all of Gun’s attempts to pass is their ultimate futility, since it’s revealed in the end that his mother knew along that he was gay and had, in fact, placed a bet with his father on the subject. It seems to be the film’s sly suggestion that attempting to pass as straight is a waste of time, since there is something, some intangible part of oneself, that can never be entirely obscured. And besides, it’s pretty common knowledge that a mother always knows.
Though the film ends happily and joyfully, there are a few genuinely powerful moments, including the one in which Gun admits to Nathan that the reason he hesitates to tell his parents about his sexuality is that he fears what it will do to their relationship. As he astutely points out, he’s seen even seemingly accepting and generous parents turn their backs on their children once they learn that they’re queer. It’s a painful reminder of the pain that many queer youths endure as they try to hide an essential part of themselves from the people that matter the most to them.
Overall, Make the Yuletide Gay is a lovely film. I’m a sucker for a happy ending (given how rarely that seems to happen in queer movies), and so I loved it that Gun and Nathan ended up being welcomed with open arms by the former’s family. What’s more a (rather strange and unexpected) post-credit sequence shows Nathan’s parents hearing the voicemail he’s left them, in which he demands some key changes to their incredibly dysfunctional relationship. While his father seems largely unmoved, the expression on his mother’s face suggests that there might be hope yet for a rapprochement among the three of them.
Aside from all of that, it’s also a very funny movie, with much wordplay and banter about tops and bottoms that earn a few good laughs. Make the Yuletide Gay is the perfect film to watch during this queerest of all holiday seasons. | https://medium.com/queens-of-the-bs/queer-classics-make-the-yuletide-gay-2009-f5a96dcedf6f | ['Dr. Thomas J. West Iii'] | 2020-12-23 16:51:43.420000+00:00 | ['Movies', 'Queer', 'LGBTQ', 'Film', 'Culture'] |
3 Reasons To Watch ‘The Great Pottery Throw Down’ | By signing up, you will create a Medium account if you don’t already have one. Review our Privacy Policy for more information about our privacy practices. | https://medium.com/humungus/4-reasons-to-watch-the-great-pottery-throw-down-18202db2f0f5 | ['John Devore'] | 2020-11-23 21:09:43.416000+00:00 | ['TV Series', 'Craft', 'Masculinity', 'Reality TV', 'Streaming'] |
Stripe Callback Handle In Rails 6 | we will handle these callbacks through gem
gem 'stripe_event'
bundle install….
in your routes.rb
mount StripeEvent::Engine, at: '/your-path' # provide a custom path
now make a file stripe.rb in config/initializers/stripe.rb
# frozen_string_literal: true Stripe.api_key = ENV['STRIPE_PUBLISHALE_KEY']
StripeEvent.signing_secret = ENV['STRIPE_SIGNING_SECRET_KEY'] StripeEvent.configure do |events|
events.subscribe 'invoice.payment_failed' do |event|
#your logic
end
end
invoice.payment_failed is the call back, you can initialize any call back you want to handle.
ENV[‘STRIPE_PUBLISHALE_KEY’] = Is your stripe Api_key
ENV[‘STRIPE_SIGNING_SECRET_KEY’]= Is your Signing secret key.
now we will install stripe CLI
you can go on link or Follow these steps
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://pool.sks-keyservers.net:80 --recv-keys 379CE192D401AB61 echo "deb https://dl.bintray.com/stripe/stripe-cli-deb stable main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install stripe stripe login
link your stripe Account with CLI and you will receive your signing secret key
stripe listen --forward-to localhost:5000/your-path
Ready! Your webhook signing secret is '{{WEBHOOK_SIGNING_SECRET}}' (^C to quit) WEBHOOK_SIGNING_SECRET is your key.
while CLI is running you can make callback like this
stripe trigger payment_intent.created | https://medium.com/@alimughal9987/stripe-callback-handle-in-rails-6-620151d8bc10 | ['Ali Mughal'] | 2020-12-23 07:14:52.335000+00:00 | ['Payments', 'Stripecallback', 'Rails', 'Stripe', 'Ruby'] |
My Roaccutane Nightmare | Image by Lucy Alana
Acne: an issue which many adolescents face during the awkward phase of puberty, and a huge confidence destroyer for most. For many teenagers, acne comes and goes within a few years. They wave goodbye to the final zit and sigh ‘At least that is over’. For me, this wasn’t the case. I first developed acne at the age of 12, and I can assure you that it was the beginning of a hellish few years.
It took several trips to various healthcare professionals, including a dermatologist who eventually told me that I had cystic acne. To sum up the severity of my acne disorder, the symptoms included:
A swollen, purple face
Facial bleeding (resulting in me having to cover my pillow with a towel overnight)
Large, oily lumps on my face
In short words, it was awfully painful, and it lowered my self-esteem. However, the dermatologist offered me the ultimate way to sort out my face and all its lumps and bumps once and for all- a pill called ‘Roaccutane’. I was informed that it was a powerful medication with many side effects, but I would be closely monitored via blood tests for the entire course of the medication.
What Is Roaccutane?
Roaccutane (also known as Isotretinoin) is an acne medication, which has also occasionally been used to prevent certain skin cancers, according to the NHS. A typical treatment course lasts between 4–6 months, but this is simply a guideline.
Due to the strength of the medication, there is a strict set of rules in place to ensure that it is used safely. The NHS website states that it is important not to take Roaccutane if one is allergic to soya or Isotretinoin, to attend regular medical check-ups, and to immediately stop the medication if an individual begins to feel depressed or suicidal.
Despite the ridiculously long list of side effects and warnings, I was 100% set on beginning the course of treatment as soon as possible. Bear in mind, I was a 15-year-old student at the time, who stood out like a sore thumb amongst the glamorous girls in my year group. I would have done almost anything to have clear skin and feel confident in my body.
Before and After Roaccutane: Image by Allure
Beginning of Treatment
When I first began taking Roaccutane, I didn’t notice any major differences in my body or mind. In fact, I couldn’t believe I had ever worried about the side effects. However, things quickly changed. About a week or two into the treatment, my skin became incredibly dry and flaky, to the point where it would shed without me even touching my face. This was of course rather embarrassing when sitting in class.
In terms of my mental health, I was feeling more or less stable. If anything, I felt optimistic- excited to look in the mirror in four months’ time and see a face which I didn’t loathe. I thought to myself: ‘If this is as bad as it gets, I guess I can handle that for a little longer.’
Image by Lukas Blazek on Unsplash
Worsening Side Effects & A Vital Decision
It was precisely two months into the treatment that I realised the side effects of the Roaccutane were becoming more of a burden on my daily life. My skin was still flaky, and I was having headaches on a regular basis. In addition to the physical side effects, I recognised a huge change in my mental wellbeing. Although I had anxiety before I started taking the medication, I found that on many mornings, I was vomiting due to high levels of anxiety, and I also began to encounter depressive episodes.
It took a lot of consideration to finally make the decision to stop taking Roaccutane. As much as I wanted clear skin, the way the medication tampered with my mental and physical health was almost unbearable. I went back to taking antibiotics prescribed by the dermatologist, along with a concoction of lotions and creams- which eventually worked.
Although Roaccutane may work for some people, I would like to share one piece of advice with anybody who may be considering taking the drug: when weighing up the pros and cons of such a powerful form of medication, always prioritise your mental health over any desired physical change. You will thank yourself later on. | https://medium.com/clippings-autumn-2019/my-roaccutane-nightmare-2a353f50fa0a | ['Lauren Pentland'] | 2019-12-12 14:49:40.103000+00:00 | ['Womens Health', 'Body Positive', 'Acne'] |
How I created a basic learning platform with Sinatra — Part I : Project Architecture | Sinatra is a Back End framework that allows its users to create Web Application with Ruby. It is based on Rack a simpler Ruby web application framework . In my journey of becoming a Full-Stack Web Developer I learned Sinatra on Flatiron School online boot camp and as a final project for their Sinatra Section, I created a simple learning platform. My goal with that article is to describe the process I used to create that web app. The web app is available on GitHub.
First, the learning platform we will create allows a super-user to post courses, manage them and the users. Then simple users (that are not admins) are able to read lessons and mark them as passed and reset their progress.
To create the app, of course, the first thing to do is to set up the project architecture and this will be the goal of this article. Just create a folder on your computer (if you would like to use GitHub as a host to your remote repository you should start by creating the repository and clone it to your computer) then name if whatever you want. Then give it this architecture:
Assuming you have bundle installed, typing bundle will create a Gemfile file that will hold all the external packages (called gems) you need for the project.
Here’s the packages I used to create the project:
Don’t bother about the test group. You don’t really need it to get the project going, except if you will be writing test (which is good practice). Then after putting all of the gems that you need in the Gemfile get back on your terminal and type bundle . This will actually install the packages and create a Gemfile.lock (different them Gemfile). See the difference between the two.
For the packages, themselves here’s their use: sinatra just gives you the structure for the web app routes, sessions, cookies, templates, layout etc. active-record gems helps you to create the database and access it through ruby objects and sinatra-activerecord extends Sinatra with ActiveRecord helper methods and Rake tasks. sqlite3 is the database engine. Then comes bcrypt that helps securing passwords, rack-flash3 that creates flash messages for the user in the controller to display them later. rerun will helps restart your server automatically when there’s a change. Just type rerun rackup config.ru in your terminal.
No that we’re done, the next step is to design the database! (But that will be another article) :D | https://medium.com/@gilberttorchon/how-i-created-a-basic-learning-platform-with-sinatra-part-i-project-architecture-1bd9b50d1013 | ['Gilbert Torchon'] | 2019-03-07 21:07:46.323000+00:00 | ['Flatiron School', 'Ruby', 'Sinatrarb', 'Ruby on Rails', 'Freecodecamp'] |
TIPS ON CREATING CONTENT FOR MARKETING | Content is undoubtedly at the helm of an organization’s digital marketing strategy. The realm of content marketing is an ever-evolving one, demanding new strategies and new ways of thinking with each passing year. What worked a year back may be completely irrelevant in the current year.
It’s becoming increasingly important for marketers to keep pace with the change.
Read more >> https://www.godotmedia.com/blog/tips-on-creating-content-for-marketing-for-2020/ | https://medium.com/@godotmedia/tips-on-creating-content-for-marketing-4b30dfc2df35 | ['Godot Media'] | 2020-12-01 08:26:02.616000+00:00 | ['Content Creation', 'Content', 'Content Writing', 'Marketing', 'Content Marketing'] |
Change, Not Charity: Why Supporting Grassroots Organizations Is Important | Photo: Liberty Hill Foundation
The “River Story” — a Parable
Three friends picnicking at a river’s edge suddenly see a baby floating down the river, with more babies coming behind it. Two of the friends jump into the water and start pulling the babies to safety. The third person, however, takes off at a run.
“Where are you going?” call the others.
“I’m going upstream to see who’s throwing babies into the river and get them to stop!”
This parable is adapted from a story usually credited to the late medical sociologist and activist Irving Zola.
The CHARITY approach (rescuing the babies) meets the immediate needs of individuals. Examples of charitable giving include donating to soup kitchens and homeless shelters, helping to build houses for individual families, and tutoring. This type of approach is sometimes called a “band-aid” fix, which is crucial to those who receive the aid but sustains the status quo of inadequate — or nonexistent — institutional intervention.
The JUSTICE approach (finding out why the babies have been tossed into the river in the first place and what can be done to stop it) is aimed at changing practices, policies, and laws that cause harm, often to marginalized communities. Giving via the justice approach includes donating to organizations that help communities protest local oil drilling, work to change abusive corporate policies and practices, and advocate for progressive legislative measures, both locally and nationally.
Change, Not Charity
Both the charity and justice approaches are necessary — but since more people will likely use their resources to “rescue babies” by giving to charities, let me suggest the alternative of giving mostly to grassroots organizations that work to stop the root causes of injustice. I give to these organizations: Honor the Earth, The Indigenous Environmental Network, and Black Lives Matter.
Liberty Hill, a public foundation in Los Angeles whose motto is “Change, Not Charity,” is another of my favorites. Founded in 1976, Liberty Hill has become a national leader in social justice — nurturing community leaders, transforming neighborhoods, and impacting national policies. Liberty Hill grants provide unrestricted funds for grassroots organizations, leadership training, and alliance building for maximum effectiveness in progressive campaigns.
In speaking of the times we live in, Shane Goldsmith, the foundation’s executive director, says, “We know that community organizing is vital as we work to ensure that no ground is lost, past gains are preserved, and equity is expanded.”
Who are you giving to this holiday season? Join me in giving to these essential justice organizations, or others of your choosing. | https://medium.com/@kesakivel/change-not-charity-why-supporting-grassroots-organizations-is-important-5de5bd817379 | ['Kesa Kivel'] | 2020-12-23 19:23:16.683000+00:00 | ['Giving Back', 'Charity', 'BlackLivesMatter', 'Donations', 'Charitable Giving'] |
How to Overcome Procrastination. Kebiasaan menunda pekerjaan memang… | My name is Denanti Nurintani and I'm a first-year student in Indonesian Education and Literature at Muhammadiyah University Purwokerto. | https://medium.com/@denanti/how-to-be-overcome-procrastination-34bbfa7f2242 | ['Denanti Nurintani'] | 2020-12-16 07:17:56.976000+00:00 | ['How To', 'Procrastination', 'Tips And Tricks', 'Tips', 'Hard Work'] |
Descendants of Tuskegee Syphilis Study Survivors Say It Was Nothing Like the Covid-19 Vaccine | ZORA: Can you tell me how you got started with the Voices for Our Fathers Legacy Foundation and how you were able to find other descendants?
Lillie Head: In 1997, there was an apology by then-President Clinton. In that apology, accommodations were made for the building of the National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care at Tuskegee University. That came into fruition, and there was an opening in 1999 for the Center. As many descendants that the Center could contact, they invited them to the opening and celebration. From 1999 until 2011, we would go to the Commemoration of the Apology and participate in symposiums and sessions about ethical procedures and biomedical research. But we weren’t really doing anything to honor and remember our fathers.
In 2011, we expressed our desire to hear from the descendants to the director of the Center, Dr. Reuben Warren. Their stories and our fathers’ were not being told. We started off with three descendants, Clemmons Julkes, Rev. Roosevelt Baums, myself included, as the families’ team leaders. In 2014, we became a 501(c) organization. We wanted to tell the full story and clear the misinformation that was out there. We would come each year, and it’s all a part of the healing. We would do healing sessions, including this year virtually.
Joyce Christian: I know my dad would be so proud of my sister Lillie because they had no voice. Whatever we can do to make their voices heard, that’s our platform.
“He didn’t even know he was a part of a study. He just knew he had the bad blood and they were recruiting. ”
Can you talk a bit about these healing sessions?
LH: You talked about your anger that you felt towards the study. You have to remember how long it’s been since the study has been known. It was in 1972, and there we were in 1999 and 2014. You’d be amazed at how anger and shame and trauma can last within you if you bury it. Some of the descendants contracted syphilis that was passed down from their mothers who got it from their fathers. Some had fathers who went blind. So we started talking about that and what we could do to transform the legacy of the United States Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee and Macon County, Alabama, that would honor and remember and honor the sacrifices of our ancestors.
We award scholarships, and we have identified an anthropologist, Dr. Arvilla Payne-Jackson, who would help us tell those untold stories. We also want to build an inspiration and memorial garden at the National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care at Tuskegee University to preserve the history and tell the legacies of these men. They’re unsung heroes.
What is some of the misinformation about the study that’s been floating about these days?
JC: The other day, I was listening to MSNBC, and Rev. Al Sharpton was referring to the “Tuskegee Experiment,” but it wasn’t that. The Tuskegee Experiment was about the Tuskegee Airmen because they didn’t believe Black folks could fly airplanes. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was a United States Public Health Service (USPHS) study that was done by the federal government. Even Gov. [Andrew] Cuomo misstated. People don’t have a clear understanding of what the Tuskegee Experiment and what the study was. It’s up to our foundation to point out the difference between them.
Some people also think it was an experiment that gave these men syphilis, and it wasn’t. They didn’t give these men treatment. They wanted these men to die so they could do autopsies and study the results. They had already done syphilis studies in Europe. It was an absolutely egregious thing. I don’t think many in our community know much about this study.
Miss Joyce, what made you become a nurse?
JC: I wanted to know about what was happening with my body and be able to help my mother, my father, my brothers and sisters, and everyone in my family. And it has paid off tremendously that I’ve been able to help other people in decision-making, medical diagnosis, and questions to ask. Being an advocate. We need to be at the table, and we need to be saving lives, and Black lives do matter.
Lillie’s parents — Johnnie Mae and Freddie Lee Tyson.
Can you tell me a bit about what your father, Freddie Lee Tyson, was like?
LH: He was a wonderful person. He was of strong character, and he loved his family. He didn’t even know he was a part of a study. He just knew he had the bad blood and they were recruiting. In Macon County, Tuskegee, there was an epidemic proportion of syphilis. My father wanted to protect himself and his family. He wanted to get the benefits that were offered. Keep in mind, this was in 1932 when he was recruited. These were very difficult times in the rural South. He just got married in 1931. This was before any of his nine children were born. After researching my father’s medical records at the CDC archives, we found out that he had congenital syphilis. Without health care at that time, it was an opportunity, along with the free burial and lunch. He did stop going and having his blood drawn.
What made him stop?
LH: My grandmother, Maggie Guin Neal, was a well-known midwife in Macon County, and she had a close relationship with one of two White doctors in town. She’s the one who told my father to stop taking those blood tests. Several women were affected by what was going on. Some had stillborn babies or babies born with symptoms. Some women had other health issues like arthritis. It was so troubling.
“In order to have trust, you have to have trustworthiness. If you haven’t proven yourself over time, no one is going to trust you.”
With regards to the descendants and with the Black community at large, have you found that there is a mistrust in the public health system given the legacy?
JC: I think it’s not so much about the study but rather about the disparities that are ongoing. It’s very important that we look at the facts and the truth.
LH: I think it’s because of over 400 years of social injustice and the way African Americans have been treated in this country. For this period of time, the study is the most recent, and people can relate to it because many people have heard about it. It’s a combination of everything, but people are using the study as one of the reasons for a lot of trust. In order to have trust, you have to have trustworthiness. If you haven’t proven yourself over time, no one is going to trust you.
So do you think the comparisons between the Syphilis Study at Tuskegee and the Covid-19 vaccine are misguided?
LH: What I find interesting is that when penicillin became known as the therapy for treating syphilis, those men were denied treatment. I’m having trouble understanding the logic. The men in the study didn’t get a vaccine. You are comparing men not getting a vaccine to a vaccine that is available. So how can you compare not having something to the opportunity to have something? I can see if some people believe, well, they’re not gonna give it to us anyway or if what they give us may be different than someone else. But that’s not the case either. Because of what happened during the Syphilis Study at Tuskegee, an Institutional Review Board (IRB) was created, and part of that board is responsible for analyzing and approving the Covid-19 vaccine.
JC: I remember when the swine flu was going on, there were people who didn’t want to get the swine flu vaccine. But in the end, everything worked out fine. Just today, 300,000 people have died. I know that there are health disparities in the Black and Brown communities, and they are very fearful to take something from someone who’s been oppressing them since slavery. But we need to be at the table. We need to be a part of something that’s bigger than us, and we need to step out on faith. I know that the 623 men in the United States Public Health Syphilis Study at Tuskegee in Macon County stepped out on faith. They believed that they were going to get treatment. I think our father would want us to step out on faith. We have been brought to our knees, and we need to stand together. We need to seek some relief. | https://zora.medium.com/descendants-of-the-tuskegee-syphilis-study-survivors-speak-out-on-the-covid-19-vaccine-6bb800d1ad17 | ['Morgan Jerkins'] | 2020-12-17 20:53:58.561000+00:00 | ['Tuskegee Syphilis Study', 'History', 'Health', 'Covid 19 Vaccine', 'Equality'] |
How Eating Habits Affect Your Teeth | 3 Eating Habits to Avoid
1. Avoid Eating Frequently
The pH level (hydrogen ion concentration) of our mouth should be around 6.5 — 7.2, but this level drops when we eat food. In other words, the mouth becomes acidic. When the pH drops to 5.5, the acids in your mouth begin to break down your enamel. This leaves space for cavity-causing bacteria to grow. Eating food too often during the day increases the likelihood of tooth decay as the environment in the oral cavity is often pushed below pH 5.5.
2. Avoid Eating Before Going to Bed
Eating late at night is not only detrimental to digestive health, but it also negatively affects dental health. People often eat small desserts or snacks late at night when they feel hungry or bored. However, they often fall asleep without brushing their teeth after their snack. The saliva secreted in the oral cavity plays a role in preventing cavities. However, we secrete 20% less saliva while we’re asleep than when we’re awake. This means that cavities can easily form while we sleep even if we only eat a very small amount of food.
3. Avoid Foods with High Viscosity
Foods with a high viscosity easily stick to our teeth. Surprisingly, that’s the reason foods high in caramel content can have a more adverse effect on your teeth than cola. Actually, because we just drink Coke it doesn’t affect our enamel that much. However, very viscous foods such as honey or caramel are likely to stick to the surface of the teeth and stay in the mouth for a long time. This leftover food is likely to become a nutrient for microorganisms in the oral cavity that can cause cavities.
If you take a look at the Cariogenic Potential Index (a concept quantified by calculating the sugar content and viscosity of food), you can see that foods that stick to your teeth (such as jam or taffy) or snacks that may remain between your teeth after chewing (like crackers) scored high on the index. This means they have a high likelihood of causing cavities. | https://medium.com/misbloc/how-eating-habits-affect-your-teeth-45744c3fce13 | [] | 2021-11-16 05:10:25.413000+00:00 | ['Dentistry', 'Viscosity', 'Blockchain', 'Misbloc', 'Eating Habits'] |
How to Start (and Maintain) Creative Habits | Habits, (also known as automatic or repetitive behavior) are one of the few things that can truly make or break your creative career. Habits can guide you toward a deep flow state, or perpetuate your inert procrastination. Automatic behaviors can be your ally in making each day a meaningful enriching experience, or they can be a prison warden working hard to perpetuate your drudgery.
Your habits can mean the difference between looking back in awe as you recognize your immense growth and actualized potential, or looking back in horror as you realize that your starting point is much closer to you than it should be. Creative habits are automatic or repetitive behaviors that relate to the growth of your creative projects and experiences.
Not only do creative habits contribute to the improvement of your skills and the advancement of your career, they deeply impact your day-to-day and even minute-to-minute experience. In this article you will learn how to design new creative habits and how to change your existing habits. At the end you’ll also find a list of potential creative habits which you can put to work in your life right away.
How To Make Creative Habits
Your automatic and repetitive behaviors are governed by two distinct systems, each with its own physiology, environmental triggers, benefits, and drawbacks. For more on this check out The power of Habits by Charles DuHigg or The Upward Spiral by Alex Korb
The first system controls your reaction to attractive rewards. Habits are often triggered by strong impulses to touch something, eat something, buy something, or generally do something that seems appealing or attractive right now. This system is associated with a part of your brain called the Nucleus Accumbens (the bottom part of your Striatum) which functions on the use of dopamine. You can think of it as part of the “reward center” of your brain. This part of your brain and this system of behavior can be controlled by using deliberate and effortful attention, often called willpower, (which involves the logical prefrontal cortex), but it takes a lot of mental effort and energy..
You can create opportunities to put your nucleus accumbens to work for you by enforcing triggers that promote your creative work. To do this you must make your creative work more immediately rewarding (e.g. give yourself a treat afterwards, do your writing in a comfy chair and PJs, use a gorgeous sounding synth for your piano practice, get some exciting new colors for your painting etc.).
The second aspect of habit formation lies with simply how many times something has been done. Neuroscientists like to say that “neurons that fire together wire together”. This means that your behavior and experiences create neural pathways in your brain that reinforce those same behaviors. Nowhere is this more true than in your Dorsal Striatum, the part of your brain that encourages you to do things that you have done many times. Regardless of whether it is good or bad for you, this part of our body merely wants to repeat our most common behaviors, and it is one of the reasons we have so many default behaviors that we do without thinking too much about it.
In addition to sorting out the type of rewards you have around your creative habits, you can also reinforce creative habits by merely doing them very often, even if it is only for a few minutes. It’s easier to start a habit that’s 2 minutes long and extend it over time than it is to start a 60 minute habit right away. This is most easily accomplished by pairing your desired creative habits with a trigger of some sort. Maybe you always paint right when you wake up, maybe you always write something after dinner, maybe your cello practice typically comes after meditating — whatever it is, the more you do it, the more likely you are to begin doing it automatically, without the need for strong willpower, affirmations, or guilt trips.
How To Break Non-Creative Habits
Your first strategy might deal with the part of your habit loop associated with your Nucleus Accumbens. If you consistently have a variety of stimulating or rewarding things around you that draw you away from your creative work, then you may have some non-creative habits (e.g. social media, video games, TV, etc.).
You’ll have to either exert lots of mental effort to resist them every single time you want to do some creative work, or you can take the simpler and more effective technique of removing them from your environment in order to make more space for your creative work.
Your second strategy may take your Dorsal Striatum into account. The non-creative habits built upon this part of your habit loop are behaviors that you do very frequently which draw you away from your creative work- the difference being that these hyper-frequent behaviors need not always be pleasurable like the behaviors driven by your Nucleus Accumbens, in fact these things could be extremely unsatisfying, but you’ve just done them so many times it is hard to stop.
The key to ridding yourself of these non-creative habits is the inverse of building them up: slowly begin to limit the duration and the frequency of the non-creative habit. This may look like drinking just one less beer each night, waking up just 5 minutes earlier, or reducing your self-criticism after your work by just a sentence or two. As you work on these smaller goals it’ll become much easier to continue the process of lessening them until they cease to impede your creative process.
List of Potential Creative Habits
Getting 8 hours of sleep each night
Improvising in one new key each day on an instrument
Saving your project file
Write at least 200 words each day
Read something relevant to your work before going to bed
Read something completely irrelevant to your work to spark new ideas
Sharing your work and asking for feedback
Supporting other artists with comments and feedback
Keep an idea journal and write in it often | https://medium.com/@cordeleglass/how-to-start-and-maintain-creative-habits-5ebbfccfb159 | ['Cordele Glass'] | 2020-09-21 17:44:20.517000+00:00 | ['Creativity Tips', 'Productivity', 'Habit Building', 'Neuroscience'] |
React Native Windows | Microsoft recently started a project, in which they’re adding react native support for native windows applications. Although it is at an early stage right now, and there aren’t many libraries that have windows support, you can start building simple windows applications with react native.
This article focuses on how you can set up your windows machine to run react native windows applications.
First things first, you need nodejs installed on your windows machine. To make sure you do, run the command node -v and if you get a version number, you’re all set. Next, I would strongly recommend that you install react native cli, which would ensure that you don’t have to use npx every time you want to work on RN. For this, run npm install -g react-native-cli and react native cli would be installed globally for your system.
Now, we are all set to create a react native application (make sure to navigate from your terminal to the location where you want the project), and you can do this by running react-native init <project-name> --version ^0.61.5 where you’ll have to add a name for your project. Right now, you’ll have a project with android and iOS support only, but we’re soon going to add windows support.
Before we proceed to adding windows support to this project, we need to make sure we have Visual Studio Build Tools on our system. If you don’t you can download the community version from the Microsoft website itself. When installing the build tools, make sure you have the following selected:
Universal Windows Platform Build Tools > Windows 10 SDK Universal Windows Platform Build Tools > C++ (v141) Universal Windows Platform tools
Once you are done with this installation, you’re ready to add windows support to your react native app.
Go to your application folder (make sure to go inside the directory named with the name that you gave your project) and run npx react-native-windows-init and this should add windows support to your project. You can ensure this by looking at your project and noticing that another directory like android and iOS has been created, this time named windows.
Another step we need to follow before running our app on windows is making sure we have developer mode ON on our machine. You can do this by simply opening the Settings app and searching for developer settings, and you should find a radio button corresponding to developer mode there.
Next is running the project, and this part is the same as how you would run an RN project on android or iOS. You just need to run react-native run-windows just like run-android or run-ios.
However, this is where I got stuck for quite some time. I kept getting an error that said, “Build failed, maybe developer mode is not on.” To fix this, all you have to do is open your command prompt with Administrator Access and run the same command, react-native run-windows from the root of your project structure.
Voila! you have an RN application running on windows!
Hope this article helped, and if it did, don’t forget to give it a clap, and follow me on medium for more such articles. Happy coding, hope to see some really cool windows native apps made in react native soon!
In case you have any questions, feel free to drop a comment, and if this article helped you and you developed a windows app in RN, do send me a link as well. I would love to take a look! | https://medium.com/@shreyasnisal/react-native-windows-2bd251750958 | ['Shreyas Nisal'] | 2020-06-18 16:09:53.435000+00:00 | ['React Native Development', 'Getting Started', 'Windows', 'React Native', 'Windows 10'] |
Kentico Scheduled Tasks: Tips & Tricks | These often form the backbone of integrations with other systems but are often used for clean-up tasks as well. In this article, I’m going to show you a few of the tricks I use with Kentico’s Scheduled Tasks that make my life easier and the tasks more useful.
1. Tasks that reschedule themselves
Sometimes I want a task that follows an odd schedule. Maybe I want it to run every minute between 2am and 4am and then every 30 minutes the rest of the time. Maybe I just want the task its self to control its schedule. Whatever the reason, having tasks reschedule themselves makes a lot of sense.
using System;
using CMS.Scheduler; public class MyCustomTask : ITask
{
public string Execute(TaskInfo task)
{
// Do your code here // Set any new task data you need into task.TaskData // Set the next run time you want
DateTime nextRun = DateTime.Now.AddMinutes(1);
RescheduleSelf(task, nextRun); return $"Rescheduled to run again at {nextRun.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss")}";
} private void RescheduleSelf(TaskInfo task, DateTime nextRun)
{
task.TaskInterval = SchedulingHelper.EncodeInterval(new TaskInterval
{
Period = "once",
UseSpecificTime = true,
StartTime = nextRun
});
task.Update();
}
}
This method is useful for cleanup tasks that need to delete records from tables that grow quickly or for operations that might cause performance degradation on the site. It allows you to run those performance-impacting tasks more frequently outside of the peak hours for the site which keeps the impact to a minimum.
2. Using structured task data
When working with scheduled tasks its often helpful to pass in data for the task to use during its execution.
This is particularly helpful if the tasks are created dynamically at runtime or to pass data from one execution of a task to the next (i.e. when using tip #1 above)
The simplest way to do this in code is with the Newtonsoft.Json package to serialize/deserialize the data to/from a string.
To do this effectively you must create a custom POCO class to hold your task data.
public class MyCustomTaskData{
public DateTime LastRunTime{ get;set; }
public int? NextTimeIntervalMinutes{ get;set; }
}
Then in the task, you can deserialize this data easily.
using System;
using CMS.Scheduler;
using Newtonsoft.Json; public class MyCustomTask : ITask
{
public string Execute(TaskInfo task)
{
var taskData = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<MyCustomTaskData>(task.TaskData); // Do your code here // Set the next run time you want
// assume here that taskData.NextTimeIntervalMinutes = null on first run
DateTime nextRun = DateTime.Now.AddMinutes(taskData.NextTimeIntervalMinutes ?? 30); // Set any new task data you need into task.TaskData
taskData.LastRunTime = task.TaskLastRunTime;
taskData.NextTimeIntervalMinutes = (DateTime.Now.Hour > 2 && DateTime.Now.Hour < 4) ? 1 : 30; // Put the task data back into the task
task.TaskData = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(taskData); RescheduleSelf(task, nextRun); return $"Rescheduled to run again at {nextRun.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss")}";
} private void RescheduleSelf(TaskInfo task, DateTime nextRun)
{
task.TaskInterval = SchedulingHelper.EncodeInterval(new TaskInterval
{
Period = "once",
UseSpecificTime = true,
StartTime = nextRun
});
task.Update();
}
}
Using structured data in this way to pass information between executions of a task is a no-brainer in my opinion. It makes the retrieval of that data much simpler and avoids the need to write your own parsing code.
3. Using “run once” tasks to carry out jobs only when needed
When you create a class that implements ITask there is no reason that you have to install it as a scheduled task in the Kentico UI.
Instead, you could have some other code elsewhere in your solution create the task and then have the task delete its self once it has finished.
You could couple this with the tips in #1 and #2 above to have a task that runs multiple times, perhaps to process a large amount of data in batches, and only delete its self once it has completely finished.
Within any other code in your project you could do the following to create a new instance of a task:
var taskData = new MyCustomTaskData();
var task = new TaskInfo
{
TaskDisplayName = $"New instance of my custom task",
TaskName = $"MyCustomTask_{DateTime.UtcNow:yyyyMMddhhmmss}",
TaskAssemblyName = "CMSApp",
TaskClass = "CMSApp.MyCustomTask",
TaskData = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(taskData),
TaskInterval = SchedulingHelper.EncodeInterval(new TaskInterval
{
Period = "once",
UseSpecificTime = true,
StartTime = DateTime.Now.AddMinutes(taskData.NextTimeIntervalMinutes ?? 1)
}),
TaskEnabled = true,
TaskNextRunTime = DateTime.Now.AddMinutes(taskData.NextTimeIntervalMinutes ?? 1),
TaskLastResult = "Queued"
};
task.Insert();
Then, in your task when you are happy that it has finished everything (even if that is after multiple runs using tip #1 above) you can simply delete the task:
task.Delete();
This method allows you to create very long running processes that do not time out. I use this method for creating file-based data imports where the client is providing large files to be imported into Kentico.
4. Generic tasks with multiple instances
An ITask can be written in a generic way allowing CMS users to create instances of your ITask where each instance might do something different, all driven by structured task data.
For example, you could create an ITask that will execute a Kentico Custom Query with parameters.
Your Task Data would contain the Query Name and the parameter-value pairs meaning that the code within your custom ITask doesn’t need to have them hard-coded.
Such a task could be used to allow INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE queries to be executed on a schedule by simply creating a new custom query in Kentico and a new instance of the ITask and setting a schedule.
This provides the ultimate in re-usability.
Summary
Kentico CMS Scheduled Tasks are much more flexible and useful than many developers realise and can be used to provide large performance and efficiency benefits to many sites.
It’s also worth noting that to get the best performance out of large or long-running scheduled tasks you should install the Scheduler Windows Service that Kentico provides and configure your task to use it. | https://medium.com/distinctionuk/kentico-scheduled-tasks-tips-tricks-4b3ebef6b451 | ['Lee Conlin'] | 2020-03-23 17:27:31.285000+00:00 | ['Kentico', 'Scheduled Tasks', 'Backend Development', 'Tips And Tricks'] |
How to Change the World - The Gods' Confusion. | As a first step towards understanding the disease and its symptoms, I would like to offer two passages of writing for your contemplation; they record the beginning of the enlightenment I mentioned in the first chapter;
‘A home is an essential, basic necessity of life, yet we are not free to build a home for our selves and families when and where we please, like other species are. The homes we do live in are often ‘owned’ by other members of our species, or by institutions such as banks, and they are taken away if we can’t afford to pay the ‘rent’ or make the ‘mortgage payments’ necessary to buy them — and at a ludicrous price, which, for most, entails a lifetime of work.
We like to think of ourselves as the most civilised creature on the planet, yet how civilised is it to be without a home, or to live in homes that are under the constant threat of being withdrawn? It seems fairly obvious; to mess around with an animal’s home will severely stress the animal, and I don’t suppose humankind are any different.
Also, we are the only creature on the planet that isn’t free to feed from what the Earth offers, and what would be the effect on any species should you remove their right to have free access to food? And how civilised is it to die of hunger?
When other species are faced with famine, they migrate to areas where there is food, but humans cannot, because their migration is restricted by borders. We aren’t free to travel wherever we please, on our divided world, like birds, when they fly south in winter in search of warmer climes.
We must work to propel dysfunctional societies, and if we don’t, we face homelessness and starvation, and many work to increase the enormous wealth of the chosen few, while they struggle to make ends meet.
Humankind are forced to work through the fear of losing their homes and food. If an animal were forced to work in this way it would be considered animal cruelty, and if the practice were to continue from one generation to the next; a strategy that would harm the animal’s evolution.′
And;
‘All species, apart from our own, teach their young everything they know about the world from the day they are born. They teach them everything they have learnt, and what their parents have taught them from their life’s experiences. All other species teach their young of the joys and dangers of living in their environment, so their species may survive and flourish within it, both as infants, and when they have grown. An orang-utan mother, for example, keeps her young with her for the first nine years of their life to teach them these facts.
Other species know, even if it is subconsciously, that it is of the utmost importance to educate their young with the truth. Not only so their young may survive and flourish, but also, because it is essential their species evolve in a natural, wise way, and in harmony with the planet upon which they live. Yet, we find it necessary to hide the truth from our young, and even tell them lies to make the world appear a better place than it actually is.
As the young of our species grow, they realise the real world is nothing like the one they once believed existed. Once the fairy-tale world of youth has collapsed, our children become aware of wars that have passed, of those that take place, and the possibility that our entire species, all others, and even the planet itself may be annihilated by a nuclear war, or rendered uninhabitable as a result of a dramatic change in the Earth’s climate; the consequence of humankind’s so-called advance.
Our children grow to know of those who starve to death, as they eat. They will discover there are children whose lips are too dry to tell their mothers they love them before they die of thirst, which may be the same moment an aeroplane leaves Australia, carrying a cargo of Australian mineral water destined for consumption in Europe, which could be the same time an aeroplane takes off from Britain, flying a load of British mineral water to Australia.
We make children’s books and toys with happy, kind faces painted on aeroplanes, which has the effect of making the aeroplane look as though it has a mind of its own, and would never dream of letting such things happen, when it could easily save the lives of those people by flying food and water to them. Neither does the aeroplane’s joyful, painted face suggest it would drop bombs from the sky to murder innocent people.
As our children grow, they will learn their homes and food are necessities of life that are held as ransom, to make them work, and should they slacken their pace or stop working, for some reason, their homes and food will be taken away from them.
There is an immense disappointment waiting for our children when the facade of childhood collapses, to reveal the true ways of the world. After the initial shock has passed, young adults often complain bitterly about the state the world is in, but they give up, eventually, and conform to society. They don’t have much choice, especially when they have their own children to take care of and are therefore vulnerable, like any species is when it has young.
They will even end up lying to their own children, because they know the truth is far too terrible to reveal to them. They know that if they were to tell the truth, it would terrify their children and leave them filled with disappointment, fear and anguish, and what kind of world would it be if we told our children the truth, right from the beginning? Perhaps they would wish we would change the world into a better place, and wonder why we don’t.
Of course; we do tell our children the truth, eventually, but only when they are considered strong enough to bear the burden of fear and anguish that accompanies it. Before that time, we lure them into a false sense of security, by creating an illusion of a fair, kind, peaceful, magical, loving world, so they may feel safe and secure and fall asleep untroubled, wrapped up nice and warm in a soft blanket of censorship and lies.
We tell our children what we think we must, to lift them up, before they fall, for the first and last time into the real world. The magic of the world collapses for children at roughly the same rate as others are being born. We tell them we wouldn’t sell them for all the tea in China, even though they will find out there are children being sold every day, for the tiniest fraction of the country’s tea sales.
When the time comes, we tell them neither a dead bird nor coal has beauty, and cloud factories are just power stations, generating electricity, and they can’t sit on clouds, because they would just fall through. We advise them to be wary of Postman Pat and Bob the Builder, without telling them why, and eventually confess that there is no Father Christmas, who brings gifts to good children, and no Easter Bunny or Superman or Fairies or Goblins or Dragons or Unicorns or Angels who will comfort them, should they ever cry alone.
One day we admit we have been telling them a pack of lies, and reveal the true horror of the world. One day we must tell them the truth, so they may survive within the real world, or better still, we hope they will discover it for themselves, and with the influence of television and the Internet, that may happen sooner than we would like.
Maybe the days of naïvety and innocence are drawing to an end, at the same rate the words are losing their meaning.
We grow from one world view and into another, so perhaps it’s no surprise that schizophrenia has become a disease within the minds of our kind.
Perhaps we are the only species on the planet that mess up their young so badly.
Of course, there are children who cannot escape the truth, since they are born into a warzone or some other horror, and maybe these children grow up to be the sanest adults of all, because they are raised with the truth, right from the beginning.
Perhaps our only option is to make the truth better, so we may use it to raise our young too. Maybe, if we could achieve this, we may evolve as healthily as all other species on Earth.’
Although there are many factors that affect our evolution in a negative, harmful way, the purpose of these excerpts is to reveal the root of the disease in its most simplistic form; our flawed evolution is the result of being driven to work through fear, and being forced to lie to our young since the truth is too distressing to reveal to them.
Since the symptoms of the disease are those who are disturbed by these factors — which may be the majority of humankind — and who may behave in a way that harms members of our kind as a consequence of being disturbed, we evolve within an unhealthy vicious circle, and our evolution will continue to advance in this manner until the disease is cured and symptoms vanish as a result.
The disease will not vanish, or its severity improve, if we simply begin to raise our children with the truth as it stands today, since to do so would distress our young. Therefore; our only option is to make the truth better, so we may use it to raise our young, as all other species use the truth to raise theirs.
In a simplistic sense; the disease and its symptoms will vanish when the world is the paradise it should be, for all who live and will live. We may begin to evolve in the same healthy, natural manner as all other creatures on Earth when we are able to raise our young by telling them facts about our existence, rather than lies to cover a terrible truth, and when we are driven to work through desire, rather than fear.
Since the disease and its symptoms are interlinked, the threads leading to a deeper understanding of the disease may be difficult to find. Yet, find them we must, if we are to unravel the mess we have created as we have blundered our way through time, which has led to a scenario that affects the very evolution of our kind, and the fate of our planet and all its life.
I wrote the first draft of this book at the time of a terrorist attack in Paris, in November 2015, in which over a hundred people died and almost four hundred were injured. An article in the Guardian adds gravity to this chapter;
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/16/talk-children-paris-attacks
So, let’s continue by considering the cause of the disease, and its cure, so we may contemplate how to create a world fit to describe to the most sensitive child, without the revelation causing distress, but rather joy; to them and everyone the world is described to. A world that would be a joy to design and build; a paradise, rather than an uncertain monstrosity teetering on the brink of destruction. | https://medium.com/@MartinSharratt/yeah-so-complex-ptsd-5df082109356 | ['Martin Sharratt'] | 2021-09-14 22:25:30.176000+00:00 | ['The Gods Confusion', 'Evolution', 'How To Change The World', 'Philosophy', 'Revolution'] |
You and I and Stars | after Ronni Davis’s
When the Stars Lead To You
I cannot say that heaven will persist
the years to come; nor can our love endure
these machinations: we cannot resist
the forces of the universe, so pure
and unforgiving; we are only dust
inconsequential, hands in empty space
that grasp impossibilities, love, lust,
and every manner of misery, and grace.
It seems impossible to leave a mark;
creation rarely yielding to our touch,
these hearts that beat so futile in our chests
until this darkness sets. This life so stark
that passes in an avalanche, so much
until it isn’t. Silence finally rests. | https://medium.com/sonnetry/you-and-i-and-stars-fbfdd5fa78b4 | ['Zach J. Payne'] | 2020-06-27 18:29:54.382000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'Love', 'Poetry', 'Sonnet', 'Life'] |
Why Christmas Makes Me Cry | Why Christmas Makes Me Cry
The Post-Holiday Blues And COVID
Photo by Cheron James on Unsplash
A couple of days before Christmas I heard a song on NPR while out shopping. The song was Adam Weiner’s Christmas Makes Me Cry, recently written for the Morning Edition’s Song Project. It nearly brought me to tears. Although the title was written during a college break years before, the song captured beautifully the hauntingly sad sense of loneliness and isolation that many of us are feeling almost a year into the worst Pandemic in 100 years. It would not be a normal Christmas this year, despite my buying a six-foot Christmas tree and stringing solar lights around the outdoor foliage to cheer myself up. There would be only a handful of gifts under the tree. Many I would be mailing to people I wouldn’t see.
And yet Christmas Eve was magical, ushered in by the first rain of the year in drought-ridden Los Angeles, bringing enough cold weather to warrant a blazing fire in the fireplace. My son showed up from med school, where he’d been one of the first to receive the COVID vaccine, a true Christmas gift. Later, my sister arrived after months of living like a monk in her one-bedroom apartment. We all wore our masks and sipped Prosecco outside on the patio before dinner; then found our appropriately distanced seats in the living room a shout away from each other. At least we were together. Most of my friends and family (many of them single) were spending it alone — totally alone — wishing each other merry Christmas on zoom or by phone. I felt a little guilty allowing three people from three different households to gather. And I’d been so looking forward to it.
My son decided to drive home Christmas night, even though the school wouldn’t pick up for another ten days. Normally, he’d have stayed the whole week. It was doubtful, too, when I’d see my sister next, even though she lived ten minutes away. We’d already exposed ourselves to each other for a longer time than we had in a year. Only my son could be assured of not getting COVID from our naughty rendezvous, but he, more than anyone else, had to wear a mask to protect us. The masks were becoming uncomfortable and tiring.
When everyone was gone I took off my mask, slipped into bed, looking forward to a long night's sleep with my two cats who would hopefully let me sleep in, only to enjoy the next day unencumbered by entertaining or getting back to work. I would stay in bed, have tea or coffee, and read until noon. Having taken a couple of extra days off, I would catch up on gardening or household tasks and just putter around, doing nothing. What joy!
But then it hit, the Post-Holiday Blues. I’d experienced them before, but always after a huge build-up and days of celebrating. It was mostly after New Year’s that they’d unexpectedly seep in. But I’d be working this New Year’s because all my clients would be home, even if they worked. No one was traveling. No one planned to attend parades or parties or herald in the new year outdoors in crowds, grateful to say goodbye to 2020. In fact, for many of us, it would be just another day. Another day of the Pandemic. Another day of not having something to look forward to. That was the darkest part. All the goodbyes after the holidays were normally followed by plans for the next meeting, be it a holiday, a summer vacation, a conference, or just “See you this spring.” Not this year. Who knows when I’d see anyone. I had nothing on the docket, nothing to look forward to.
I remembered getting a call the week after New Years' one year. It was early in my career as a psychotherapist. I was told that a former client of mine had shot himself to death on New Year's Eve. I was beyond shocked, horror-stricken, and despairing. I realized that he’d decided to end his life weeks before, feeling he had nothing to look forward to. Alone, shunned by many people, only one friend to his name, and struggling with a developmental disability, he had little more to live for than his sessions with me. A couple of weeks before Christmas he told me the commute was too long and asked me for a referral to someone closer to home. I’d arranged for him to see someone who lived in his town, even though I didn’t know her. I assumed she would be a good fit, and that he’d call her. As a parting gift, he’d wrapped a tin of New England Syrup for me, perhaps symbolic of all the sweetness he never experienced in life. Without realizing it, the gift would be his last. And he knew it. He knew he could not face another year. He had no intention of calling the other therapist.
I often tell the interns I supervise to be on alert in January because it has a higher rate of suicides than any other month of the year. Fortunately, that is no longer true. The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics reports that suicides are lowest in December and then peak in the spring and fall. Nonetheless, most therapists are aware of the high number of people suffering from depression during and after the holiday season. Psychology Today describes this time as a period with at least some kind of disappointment, anxiety, or even sadness, depression, and suicidal thoughts.
According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 64 percent of people report feeling depressed during the holidays. Symptoms of post-holiday blues include insomnia, low-energy, irritability, difficulty concentrating, and a kind of general anxiety and/or depression. Experts attribute this come down to a kind of adrenaline crash, an abrupt withdrawal of stress hormones, or the “contrast effect,” which essentially means the brain’s way of adjusting to radically different experiences, restoring order, and the status quo. It’s as if our brain gears up for the holidays, and even if they are dismal, a return to everyday life may seem disproportionately more anxiety-inducing and depressing than it really is.
Fancy foods and fatigue also play a part. Days, even weeks, of high sugar diets, lots of alcohol, and late-night parties may leave us over-indulged and exhausted, like a month induced hangover. The hangover may be economic as well. Most of us spend more of our income at Christmastime than at any other time of the year, except maybe annual vacations. The loosening of the wallet begins as early as October. By December buying becomes almost frenzied. The need to buy the best gift gives way to buying the most gifts or the most expensive gift, the “Wow” gift! On the other hand, having no money for Christmas gifts inspires despair and feelings of unworthiness, while over-spending sparks guilt and remorse once the credit card balances come due or when what you spent so much money on is received with a mild or nonchalant, “Thanks.”
For some people, especially kids, Christmas can bring disappointment. In my practice, I often hear stories about childhood excitement and expectation that was dashed by not receiving the longed-for gift or even no gift at all. One woman said she literally found coal under the tree, a reminder of how “bad” she’d been that year. Another client was so disappointed about not receiving the gift he begged his parents for that he never celebrated the holidays as an adult, never bought a Christmas tree, rarely bought gifts. He viewed Christmas as a holiday of betrayal. Indeed, for some, Christmas can be a holiday that makes you want to cry.
Fortunately, for most of us, the Post-Holiday Blues are short-lived. They may be felt most intensely before, during, or after the holidays, whenever we anticipate their ending and a return to normal. My son told me last year that he always feels a little sad Christmas night, as the sun sinks on both the holiday and his birthday, a double whammy! For me, it’s the day the Christmas tree comes down, which is usually the day after New Years'. The house is back to normal, whatever that is. This year, it’s back to the Pandemic, awaiting a cure and a chance to hug family and friends after more than a year of only petting my cats. I am also reminded of how few years I probably have left and how many people I’ve lost over the years. Whether from Covid, cancer or freak accidents, the holidays remind us of who used to be here. It reminds us that another year has ended, that we’re growing up, or we’re growing old.
The year 2020 will never be forgotten. It will be remembered as the year we survived; we endured, and perhaps learned to appreciate things we always took for granted, like home for the holidays. We will start gearing up for the next one in January and will welcome it like none other. Then, as the festivities draw to a close and the sun rises in 2021, that dark, sinking feeling may set in, as it always does, reminding us that joy and sorrow follow each other and eventually join. | https://medium.com/beingwell/why-christmas-makes-me-cry-cd68b9f09fa4 | ['Christi Taylor-Jones'] | 2020-12-28 23:48:36.435000+00:00 | ['Depression', 'Covid 19', 'New Year', 'Mental Health', 'Christmas'] |
Medication Gaps for Pregnant Women | When you are pregnant and a medical condition starts to arise most doctors don’t have a medication recommended for a pregnant woman. This can be life threatening for many pregnant women, especially those that are dealing with high blood pressure as preeclampsia can be deadly for pregnant women. It seems that when you are pregnant and in need of a medication that you could have easily used before, you not only can not take that medication but there are no alternative medications for you either. So why is there such a huge gap in medication for pregnant woman?
Medication for Pregnant Women : Why isn’t There Any?
Even though women represent 50% of the population and have been having babies from the beginning, we haven’t really progressed much in medications to treat this portion of the population. But why is there such a huge gap in medications available to pregnant women? Pregnant women make up a group of people that researches can not conduct research trials on. This puts pregnant women into the same class as children, the mental disabled, and the incarcerated. Because researchers are not permitted to test drugs on pregnant women there is always an uncertainty when a doctor prescribes you a medication.
Medication for Pregnant Women — Guess Work?
With not much research to back up medications effects on pregnant women a doctor might be prescribing medication on a hunch. This can cause terrible consequences for pregnant women and their babies. Many drugs prescribed on such hunches have been found to cause birth injury or death. Because of our inability to directly test the effects of medication on pregnant women we end up indirectly experimenting on pregnant women every time a medication comes up. Although it’s not clear where we go from here as far as researching drugs that are compatible with pregnant women, it does tell us that when we are prescribed a medication to be cautious about effects and to monitor your pregnancy closely after starting a medication.
What if a Medication Prescribed for a Pregnant Woman Goes Wrong?
If you or someone you know have been prescribed a medication while pregnant and suffered a birth injury to either you or your baby, you have options. When a medication leads to birth injury, finding a birth injury lawyer is of the utmost importance and can help you to pay costly medical bills. Contact Safe Birth Project if you need to contact one of our trusted birth injury lawyers. | https://medium.com/@katiebluedogmedia/medication-gaps-for-pregnant-women-eba2c1baf7e2 | ['Katie Nelson'] | 2019-01-11 15:20:00.381000+00:00 | ['Baby', 'Birth', 'Attorney', 'Lawyers', 'Pregnancy'] |
MAiD and Death Doulas: tête-à-tête | Infinity or the number eight? Depends on how you look at it. Photo: ©keppel
I will not approve of your medical assisted death. I will not tell you, you are doing the right thing. I will not say to you that your reasons are justified. I will not tell you this is the right way to hasten death if you are terminally ill or tell you this is the way out of your pain.
I will not disapprove of your medical assisted death. I will not tell you not to seek it. I will not tell you to let your body die a “natural death.” I will not tell you to hold out for a miracle or a cure, or more time.
At your request of wishing to know more about MAiD, I will provide you with as much information as I have at that time. The information will consist of laws, of timing, of concoctions or injections. I cannot tell you what it feels like to ingest or receive the medication. I cannot tell you how your family and friends and community will react, think and feel, after your death — no matter what manner of death is chosen. I cannot tell you what it is like to die.
I do not condone, I do not condemn, I do not judge. I do not make the laws, I do not advocate for the laws, I do not protest against the laws.
I am watching. I am listening. I am feeling from one body away from yours trying to anticipate your needs.
I will pen your goodbye letters. I will draw the curtains or open the door. I will rub your temples; I will massage your feet. I will pray with you, help you find “the key” and be awestruck as you say to me, “my mother is here.” I will sit along side you for your last breath and remain still through the time that your breath does not take up again in your lungs and instead… I will focus on my own.
I serve to help you feel loved, safe, and witnessed — in your state of, and exit from — Being. This is a doula assisted death. | https://medium.com/@annemariekeppel/maid-and-death-doulas-t%C3%AAte-%C3%A0-t%C3%AAte-cb273c5a51e7 | ['Anne-Marie Keppel'] | 2021-07-15 22:27:11.734000+00:00 | ['Death And Dying', 'Death Doula', 'Death', 'Medical Assisted Death', 'Life'] |
Can We Create Wormholes? | Imagine you want to get from point A to point B. Point A in this case is Earth, and point B is our nearest exoplanet, Alpha Centauri Bb at 4.24 light years away. Because the laws of physics prevent anything from traveling faster than the speed of light, that means the minimum number of years it’ll take to reach point B is a little over 4 years. However, for now — and for many more years to come — we don’t have the means to travel anywhere near the speed of light. What we can do with our current technology is travel at around 20,000 miles per hour or 0.003% the speed of light. At this rate it will take us 142,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri Bb.
To send anyone to the exoplanet would take either incredible advancements in human preservation or sending generations of people to live onboard a spaceship, somehow overcoming the problems of reproduction in space, as well as the physical and psychological strain it would put on the families. Then there’s also ship design. What material will hold up for hundreds of thousands of years? How will that many resources — food, water, fuel — fit onto the craft? How will communication work across such a vast distance?
So there is no way to get from point A to point B. Not unless there was some kind of shortcut that would drastically reduce the time and distance needed to reach the other planet.
An explanation of wormholes from the movie Interstellar. The movie is known to have some of the most accurate representations of wormholes and black holes, having worked closely with theoretical physicist Kip Thorne.
That’s where the wormhole comes in. They’re bridges in hyperspace (higher dimensions) from one place to another, whether it be 4 light years away or 100,000 light years away. You take the fabric of spacetime, fold it in on itself, and create a hole from the origin to the place you want to go, bypassing the vast area you would have originally had to travel. This shortcut could cut your travel time significantly; in some cases you’d arrive at your destination immediately after entering the wormhole.
If two wormhole ends were connected to time instead of space, one could theoretically travel in time.
When they were first proposed as a solution to the equations of general relativity, they were called Einstein-Rosen bridges after Einstein and Nathan Rosen who collaborated on the solution. General relativity says that gravity works by bending spacetime. If spacetime can be bent by mass, then surely it can be twisted and manipulated in other ways. The math does check out — wormholes do not in anyway violate the laws of physics. But the same laws that say wormholes are possible also tell us they wouldn’t be useful.
Inside the wormhole, the walls of the tunnel would be completely unstable. Each side would be attracted to the other so that it would collapse and kill any passenger during travel. Not only that but destabilizing a wormhole would create a supernova explosion, wreaking havoc on any nearby solar system.
To keep it open would require something that repels gravitationally — that is, it has to have negative energy. Negative energy is essentially taking energy from a vacuum. Exotic matter could have the antigravity properties we need if we could just find it. Curiously enough, dark energy has been causing an increase in the expansion of the universe, overcoming gravity just like the particle we’d need to act as a gravitational repellent. But even if this turns out to be the key to keeping the tunnels open, there would need to be too much of it for it to occur naturally and only a civilization much more advanced than ours could hope to gather enough of it to introduce the two artificially.
A hole in 3 dimensional space is a sphere. Approaching the wormhole from the movie Interstellar, dir. Christopher Nolan.
Not that we’d survive the journey even then.
According to quantum mechanics, the inside of the tunnel would be full of strange new particles and an immense amount of radiation that would severely burn anything attempting to go through. Assuming you can fit. And assuming the wormhole does end up being a shortcut and not, in fact, a longer path than the original.
Stephen Hawking theorizes that wormholes already exist, only they’re on a scale so small that we can’t see them. Just like zooming in on any seemingly flat surface will reveal its gaps and roughness and holes, so too does zooming in on time reveal that it’s not completely smooth. Wormholes are constantly appearing, disappearing, and reappearing at the quantum level. It’s possible in this theory to somehow enlarge a primordial wormhole and make it big enough for a person or a spaceship to go through. One might also enlarge naturally as the universe continues to expand. Smaller ones could be used to send information.
Whether on a huge scale or a subatomic one, to date we haven’t detected any wormholes in our universe. According to some researchers, this might be because they’re hiding behind black holes. This would be in line with general relativity which says that wormholes could have black holes at each end. It would also be more consistent with quantum mechanics, where black holes are still mysterious anomalies that would make more sense if they ended up concealing a wormhole.
Like wormholes, white holes are predicted to exist by general relativity but have never been detected. It’s possible that there is a black hole on one end concealing a wormhole, and a white hole on the other where a traveler can exit. Some wormholes even allow for multiple exit points, like a subway train. There’s intra-universe wormholes that stay within one universe and then there’s inter-universe wormholes that connect multiple universes. There’s one way wormholes, two way wormholes, wormholes that are traversable and non-traversable. Really the design for these elusive tunnels is always changing.
“Since we do not yet have a theory that reliably unifies general relativity with quantum mechanics, we do not know of the entire zoo of possible spacetime structures that could accommodate wormholes.” Avi Loeb, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
So much depends on facts we still don’t have and physics we’ve yet to understand. Before being able to say confidently whether wormholes do or don’t exist, we must first better understand the history and geometry of our universe. It’s true that they most likely don’t exist in nature, but there’s also not much proof — if any — that a wormhole will collapse each time it’s traversed. A lot of the evidence points to these bridges as being nothing more than science fiction but at the same time we don’t have enough math to disprove them altogether. Some scientists still propose looking for them by checking how their gravity might distort the light behind them. Others say wormholes provide an answer to the fascinating black hole paradox. For now, we just don’t know. They must continue to live only inside the realm of science fiction. | https://medium.com/predict/can-we-create-wormholes-25afd107f437 | ['Ella Alderson'] | 2020-02-18 17:34:48.469000+00:00 | ['Science', 'Astronomy', 'Space', 'Universe', 'Time Travel'] |
THE GOKADA SUPER APP: WHAT, WHY AND FOR WHOM | Lagos, the City that keeps you moving.
There’s always so much to see and do; it’s practically impossible to slow down.
But on most days, the average Lagosian wouldn’t have it any other way, especially when they can keep stress to a minimum.
We recognized that when we first set up in Lagos, we wanted to bring convenience to our consumers so they could put their all into their hustle without having to think of traffic, so we filled the roads with bikes to get you to your destination quicker.
After the ban on bikes, we figured we still had a shot at making life a little easier, so we focused on helping you move your food and goods instead.
So far it’s been going great, but there were still some bumps in the road we needed to get rid of to serve you even better, so we rolled up our sleeves and built the super app.
WHAT’S THIS SUPER APP, REALLY?
The Gokada app from first glance might just seem like a simple, more streamlined way to get all the services we offer in one place so you get more room on your phone for other things.
The Super App is much more than that.
It is a combination of the different services we offer into one; the Rides, as well as the item and food deliveries. As long as Gokada makes it happen, you now get to enjoy it in just one app.
It’s been improved with awesome new features like the scheduled pickup feature that allows you to remake an order without having to fill those details right from the start and the new “pay-after-pickup” system.
WHY WE MADE THE NEW APP
When we made the shift, we had resorted to the use of a third-party system for what we had expected to make for seamless operations.
This eventually made it hard for us to implement fully what we wanted, make services better and gain full control over app downtimes.
We needed to accommodate the concerns, considerations and suggestions from our users to ensure that the services provided solved the very problems it was designed to.
It meant a lot of rebuilding, but it was worth it for the beauty that was to be the Super App. It means we now have full access to everything end to end, allowing us to build systems much faster and provide more services.
WHO WE MADE IT FOR
We made this app for You:
The vendor who needs to get an item across to their customer in time, the busy office worker who has to run an errand but can’t leave their desk. Even the food vendors who want to delight the taste buds of every Lagos foodie are not left out.
We made this app for everyone who wants quicker, faster, more convenient deliveries.
Simply put…
We believe that to live and survive in Nigeria is a superpower, and super people deserve a super app!
It’s just Lagos now, but who knows where we’ll be heading next? | https://medium.com/@gokadang/the-gokada-super-app-what-why-and-for-whom-913921a788a8 | [] | 2021-06-08 21:50:32.131000+00:00 | ['Bikes', 'Delivery', 'Apps', 'Gokada'] |
Like Beef. | Like Beef.
Sometimes there really are no words. As I do research for other things, publications in a newspaper move me, and I had to create a publication just to keep them separate to the rest of my work.
Oh Really?
Baron Von Liebeg, a celebrated German chemist, states that there is much nutrition in one pound of pure chocolate as there is in a similar quantity of rare beef. Pure Chocolate is good, drink and beverage in one. GHIRADELLI’S- 1984
This advert NOT sponsored.
Reference/Resource/Bibliography
Because my references and resources are about 100 sources and very long, often times, this tanks my stats. I’ve opted to record them on a different page as to not ax my required reading time. You can find them recorded accurately here.
Like this story? Want to see others like it? Check out more in Internet Archaeology (True Crime) or Historical News. You can catch technology/cyber security influenced articles in Infoseconds. | https://medium.com/historicalnews/like-beef-c4dd2e3c0688 | [] | 2020-12-17 04:04:49.842000+00:00 | ['History', 'Food', 'Vegan', 'Chocolate', 'Time'] |
XcelDefi: Financial Platform | XcelDefi is a BEP20 based digital asset, which means it is built on the Binance Smart Chain, one of the fastest and most secure blockchains in the world. The ultimate goal of XcelDefi is to remove financial barriers and use blockchain technology to separate centralized financial models. Besides, introduction XcelDefi enables equal participation in financial services regardless of ethnicity, age or cultural identity. XcelDefi intends to take the lead in creating a fully decentralized economy, and the launch of $XLD is the first step in that direction. Moreover, XcelDefi is designed to bring together the travel, cryptocurrency, DeFi and investment sectors under the Xcel banner.
The XcelDefi Ecosystem, powered by XcelLabs, aims to build a decentralized digital product ecosystem backed by their native token, XLD. XcelDefi is an ecosystem powered by XcelLabs that aims to be the world's first comprehensive DeFi ecosystem by developing a digital product chain spanning multiple sectors, backed by $XLD, a community based token and leveraging blockchain technology to do so.
Vision
XcelDefi's vision fully embodies Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, philosophy and desire to build a decentralized economy that allows trustless and permissionless financial transactions, which is why the team at Xcel Labs aims to create a comprehensive decentralized ecosystem powered by XcelDefi.
XcelDefi intends to accelerate the inevitable takeover of traditional finance by driving user growth and mass adoption through the roof (TradFi).
The following are part of XcelDefi’s vision:
Incorporation of DeFi/Blockchain into Our Daily Lives: XcelDefi intends to integrate blockchain and its use cases into society to become a part of everyday life through the products on our platform.
Accessibility: We intend to increase accessibility in the crypto sector by making it simple for anyone with little or no technical knowledge to navigate and understand DeFi using our UI, lowering the barrier to entry and driving user growth.
Secure and scalable ecosystem: We intend to build a highly scalable and secure system to set the bar for the next generation of DeFi products while providing seamless interoperability.
Our ecosystem, powered by our native token $XLD, aims to provide unrivalled benefits and opportunities to the DeFi community while also establishing the first fully decentralised and digital economy.
XcelSwap — Next Generation Decentralized Exchange
XcelSwap is a decentralized exchange that allows users to trade peer-to-peer with complete confidence while taking advantage of the liquidity provided by others. Unlike centralized exchanges, XcelSwap is a non-custodial exchange, which means we don’t need to store your tokens for you to trade. We have created a progressive environment for new projects to connect to the targeted market as long as several entities are willing to provide liquidity.
Anyone holding a token must provide the same liquidity and free tokens to become a liquidity provider (usually a stablecoin or ETH). Holders receive XcelSwap liquidity provider tokens (XLD) representing their share of the token pair liquidity pool after providing equal share liquidity for these two tokens. This liquidity pool allows other traders to access the collected tokens in exchange for a small fee which is distributed proportionally among all participants of the liquidity pool. Because it’s a decentralized exchange, XcelSwap is an automated marketplace builder.
Automated Market Builder is the basic protocol that underpins all decentralized exchanges. Automatic Market Maker (AMM) allows users to trade crypto assets automatically and without permission by leveraging liquidity pools. Only projects that meet the XcelSwap criteria will be listed and supported.
Among the requirements for registering on XcelSwap are smart contract audits, protocol compliance, and pre-locked liquidity.
The longer a user stakes, the more the reward. For example, if a user stakes for 30 days and receives $200. A user that staked for 60 days will get a $250 yield.
Staking
Staking is a distinguishing feature of XcelSwap. A large number of mining pools deceive users by promising high APR returns. However, these returns are the introductory APR rate to attract liquidity, which typically does not last long due to increased token circulation.
At XcelSwap, we designed our staking feature to ensure
that returns remain constant over time.
The staking mechanics were designed with simplicity in mind, and the protocol only calls for a 72-hour staking period. After this period, users can withdraw their funds plus interest at any time. They can also claim their rewards for free.
The staking protocol is summarised below:
Staking fee (XcelSwap)
Entry Fee for Stakes: 1.5%
Exit Fee for Stakes:0.5%
Minimum stake lock-up: 72 Hours
Yield Farming
Yield farming is a method of generating returns on XcelSwap using your cryptocurrency. It is one of the pillars of the DeFi space. Farming with XcelSwap allows you to earn rewards by supplying liquidity to various farming pools.
Users will be required to provide liquidity to the XLD-ETH pair to participate in XcelSwap farming pools. The more a user deposits, the greater their share of the total rewards.
Another incentive for adding funds to a liquidity pool is the distribution of a new token. For example, while purchasing large tokens is impossible, liquidity providers can accumulate these tokens by providing liquidity to a specific pool.
XcelTravel
By incorporating blockchain into a decentralized ecosystem powered by smart contracts, XcelTrip is reshaping the industry journey. These smart contracts connect travel service providers and customers directly. It not only saves customers money, but also allows them to earn more money. Users can earn money by convincing hotels, restaurants and travel service providers to join www.xceltrip.com through XcelTrips’ International Marketing Partner (IMP) marketing scheme.
You are rewarded with an XLD token every time the referred vendor is booked on our platform.
XcelDefi platform
XcelDefi aims to create an ecosystem in which token holders can benefit from our premium platform services such as:
XcelSwap
XcelTrip
XcelPay Wallet
XcelPay Wallet
XcelPay Wallet is a decentralized wallet project that aims to make cryptocurrencies more accessible. As a utility token, XcelPay wallet users receive $XLD. As a result, $XLD raises awareness and makes cryptocurrency accessible to all users. Furthermore, XcelPay can be used to purchase gift cards and mobile top-ups directly from your wallet.
Binance Smart Chain (BEP-20), Ethereum (ERC20), and XinFin Network tokens are supported. XcelPay wallet allows You should create your wallet and start buying and holding cryptocurrencies if you are new to cryptocurrencies. Our wallet is easy to use and understand. Several valuable features distinguish the XcelPay wallet.
Payment Requests: Users on the platform can send payment requests directly to other users. If your crypto payment is pending, you can also send a payment request.
Performance Tracking: In XcelPay Wallet, users can mark tokens and add them to their watchlist. When you observe the token, you will access 24-hour data, including 24-hour highs, 24-hour volumes, 24-hour lows, current coin price and percentage changes.
TOKEN UTILITIES
Governance: Xceldefi holders have right to vote for any development and amendment of Xcelswap.
Payments: Book 2.3M+ hotels and 400+ flights with XLD using Xceldefi.
Passive Income: Stake XLD on Xcelswap and get on of the highest returns ever
Crypto for all: Download Xcelpay Wallet and claim XLD for free as incentives.
TOKENOMICS
Initial Supply: 111 Million
Rewards and Loyalty: 20M (18.02%)
Foundation: 50M (45.05%)
Team: 11M (9.91%)
Liquidity: 15M (13.51%)
Marketing and Business Development: 15M (13.51%)
CONCLUSION
The XcelDefi ecosystem is an important step in taking DeFi to the next level. XcelDefi intends to create a community with access to innovative digital products while providing the best user experience. XcelDefi’s goal of integrating blockchain technology into our daily lives seems very realistic. If achieved, it will open the doors of DeFi to the untapped billions who still want to cross over to this side.
XcelDefi’s use-cases are unrivalled, combining the best of multiple worlds to offer a rich and diverse array of digital products.
XcelDefi also intends to give DeFi a significant boost in its efforts to replace traditional finance.
Furthermore, establishing a fully decentralised economy such as XcelDefi would pave the way for a world in which decentralised organisations would be the norm and be an eye-opener in presenting the diverse applications of blockchain technology applied to all spheres of life.
Contact Information
Website: https://xceldefi.com/
Whitepaper: https://xceldefi.com/whitepaper
Telegram group: https://t.me/XcelToken
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/XcelDefiOfficial
Twitter: https://twitter.com/XcelDefi
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/xceldefi/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/xcelpaywallet/
Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/xceldefi
Discord: https://discord.gg/acUKN6nCYa
Medium: https://xceldefi.medium.com/
Author Username: Biu6y
Forum Profile Link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2237477
Smart Chain (BSC) Wallet Address: 0x79BC626169Ef0d320925F83c7B260987357Cdf62 | https://medium.com/@seyishowtime17/xceldefi-financial-platform-26ff7f2391f6 | ['Seyi'] | 2021-12-31 08:47:36.077000+00:00 | ['Defi', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Binance', 'Binance Smart Chain', 'Crypto'] |
Mengambil dan menyimpan gambar pada aplikasi iOS | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/dipantry/mengambil-dan-menyimpan-gambar-pada-aplikasi-ios-e62f137eac8d | ['Auriga Aristo'] | 2020-12-11 03:02:48.476000+00:00 | ['File System', 'Swift', 'Camera Settings', 'Image', 'iOS'] |
Cocaine / Aprazolam | Cocaine is a powerfully addictive stimulant drug. For thousands of years, people in South America have chewed and ingested coca leaves (Erythroxylon coca), the source of cocaine, for their stimulant effects.1,2 The purified chemical, cocaine hydrochloride, was isolated from the plant more than 100 years ago. In the early 1900s, purified cocaine was the main active ingredient in many tonics and elixirs developed to treat a wide variety of illnesses and was even an ingredient in the early formulations of Coca-Cola®. Before the development of synthetic local anesthetic, surgeons used cocaine to block pain.1 However, research has since shown that cocaine is a powerfully addictive substance that can alter brain structure and function if used repeatedly.
we available
aprazolam
alpha apvp
4mmc
ketamine
fentanyl
heroin
Website:https://researchchemicalstore.net/
Email:[email protected]
Wickr:docsking
Skype: Research Chemicals | https://medium.com/@zxawqeklyhb/cocaine-aprazolam-5fb969e9d1c4 | [] | 2020-12-26 12:17:59.018000+00:00 | ['Healthcare', 'Drugs', 'Google', 'Health', 'Addiction'] |
45 Habits of Highly Successful People | 1.Waking up early: Most of the successful people irrespective of the field that they belong to, are early risers. They wake up early so that they can leverage the head start time to do things that are of high priority to them.
2. Read a lot: These people develop and maintain the habit of reading regularly as that improves their knowledge and keeps them updated with the current trend in the industry they work into or to seek wisdom in the topics they are interested in.
3. Spend time with people who inspire them: They spend time with purpose oriented and the like minded people to keep themselves inspired as they believe that the environment into which they are exposed to, will shape their life accordingly.
4.Pursue their own goals: They don’t compare themselves with others since they understand that every individual’s journey of life is unique. Hence they are very much focused in pursuing their own goals instead of looking into what other people are up to in their life.
5.Sufficient and uninterrupted sleeping patterns: Adequate amount of sleep helps in accelerated productivity when you’re awake. Not just that, good sleeping pattern improves emotional and social interactions, makes you more receptive to learning, reduced risk of accidents and so on.
6.Multiple income streams: Money cannot buy happiness, but it acts as a tool that can be of use to do what we find meaningful and that in turn will bring happiness. The better the income streams you generate, the better you can make use of it in the new ventures as you’ll have some source of cash flow to back you up.
7.Avoid time wasters/toxic people: Successful people know that as they evolve to become the best version of themselves they have to leave certain people those who don’t align with their interest and are not driven like them. If they find anybody who waste their time they’ll withdraw from contacting them and they are very much capable of understanding people’s intent when they turn into mental health destroying leeches, so they’ll ignore them as well.
8.Talk less and do more: It is all about taking action for people those who want to be successful or the one’s who want to retain their success in their respective fields. These people are keen on showing progress rather than simply posting about it on social media every now and then to feed their ego or to gain publicity.
9.Network management: Successful people understand that their “Network is their Net Worth”. Networking leads to more good things namely better oppurtunities, lets you exchange fresh ideas and impact people by being of help when they need it.
10.Positive mindset: No matter the trials and the turbulence they face in the process of accomplishing their vision, these people never give up and will stay positive throughout the course. Even if they fail in their attempt to bring their dream into reality they’ll set themselves up for different methods and tweak their strategies to accomplish the act.
11.Personal care: These people take good care of their body and mind since it is the only thing that they’ll be with throughout their life. Hence they keep themselves fit physically and feed good thoughts and do meditation for regulating their mind muscle.
12.Organizational skills: They are good at organizing as they have the clarity of what they want to do in their life. They will organize things and will follow routines as they know what works best for them.
13.Time to relax: These people don’t slog 24/7 to increase their productivity to be successful. They take regular breaks to do something refreshing which is in no way relevant to their goals to recharge them. It can be anything from playing golf, taking up music classes, taking kids to school etc. They give equal importance to down time usually.
14.Persistent and committed: These people are vigorously committed to what they have started and are persistent in taking up action. Discipline is the one of the key factors that sets them apart from the people that end up being mediocre.
15.Think long term: While taking decisions they think whether what they choose will be of help in the long term. They don’t easily give in to temporary pleasures as they know that the emotions they feel are just momentary and will lead to no good in future.
16.Confident in their abilities: Whether they have people to support their ideas/ vision or not, they’ll keep working on it until they find the desired outcome.
17.Contribute generously: These people give for the sake of giving, They don’t expect anything in return from the people they aid. That is, they don’t give for the sake of personal gains. These people help the less fortunate people when in need.
18.Patience: They know the importance of the asset called Patience. Their vision to make their desire a reality will not make them to act in a rush. More than anything else, they’ll stay committed to the goal they have set up for themselves and are aware of the fact that if anything done consistently over a period of time will pay back in many ways.
19.Cognitive flexibility: They are not rigid with the way they execute their plans. If one way doesn’t work, they think of another way to make it work else they’ll create a way of their own.
20.They know their why: These people know why they do what they do. In the sense they have a drive which lets them to act the way they do. So they don’t expect any external motivating factor since the passion is invoked within.
21.Take calculated risks: When they set their eye for something they’ll analyse the task from all dimensions. They’ll make themselves aware of both best and worst case scenarios. If they don’t have any clue about something they’ll reach out to people who are established and walked that path already, to have a clear picture on the whole.
22.Excellent communicators: They are excellent communicators basically. They make sure that what they speak is understood by the people on the receiving end. They would have the natural ability to communicate properly or would have developed it in the course of time.
23.Never play the blame game: “Their life is their responsibility.” This is how someone who’s successful in his life is wired to think. So they don’t blame anybody for their misfortune instead they’ll stay focused and committed on accomplishing their goals no matter how easy or tedious it is.
24.Highly resourceful: They would have developed the tendency to be proactive. Their ability to learn without any limitations in their mind, sets them apart from others who would have felt enough of learning. They are very compassionate people who want to see other people succeed in their respective fields, so they’ll come out of their way to help others who are less fortunate than them.
25.Think winning thoughts: Even before achieving what they want to, they think winning thoughts. This perspective in thoughts gives them the push that is required to accomplish what they have set their eyes on.
26.Don’t complain: They know that simply complaining about what didn’t work the way they want it to will get them nowhere. Hence they embrace the fact for what it is and do the needful.
27.Maximize their strengths: Like any other individual, these people too have weaknesses. But they pay their attention to maximize their strengths even better instead of dwelling on the things that they are not good at.
28.Value their time: Successful people are aware of the fact that the time once gone can never be brought back. Therefore they are very concerned on what they spend their time into.
29.Open to learning: These people would have cultivated the habit of being open to learning from anybody and anything that they encounter in their life. They don’t restrict themselves from others way of thinking.
30.Always look for the silver lining: Their optimistic nature lets them to look past everything that happens to them with a silver lining. That is, they’ll consider it to be a lesson if things didn’t happen the way they wanted them to.
31.Master their emotions: With each passing day and experience they would have learnt to master their emotions. They are not controlled by their feelings rather they control them.
32.Plan their work and work their plan: Strategic planning will guide them to act in a way that will bring the end results they have desired.
33.Loves to be out of their comfort zone: They are constantly hungry for growth. Hence they would look out for oppurtunities hopping into which they can elevate their life.
34.Live by core values: They’ll never compromise on their most significant beliefs. This will make them look stubborn in the eyes of others but they least likely care for what others think of, in this regard.
35.Inspire people and make them grow as well: Since successful people are open to learning they would want to pay it forward to the people in need in some way. This sheds a light on them for bringing the best out of others.
36.Open to constructive criticism: These people are open to adapt and admit their shortcomings. Their ability to accept their drawbacks and work on that leads them to succeed in the things they do.
37.Value their solitude time: They take this alone time to refuel themselves by engaging in their other area of interests besides their main goal. This switch over lets them to accelerate their productivity.
38.Set their own standards: They’ll not accept anything that is less than their expectations. These people are very firm on their goals but flexible in the strategies they use to accomplish those goals.
39.Goal oriented: Highly focused and committed to their goal. Their purpose is what drives them to equip themselves and behave accordingly.
40.Consume good food: What we consume have a direct implication on our health. Only when we are healthy we’ll be able to live life the way we like. Hence these people are very conscious of what they feed themselves with.
41.Let go of the past: These people don’t dwell on the past. Their optimistic nature lets them to welcome the goodness that’s ahead in the future.
42.One thing at a time: They’ll focus all of their energy into one thing at a time. One of the foremost admirable quality is that they live in the present moment keeping in mind the long term vision.
43.Pay attention to details: They develop a proper plan and analyse it from all perspective before taking up the work. They keep plan B ready in case of failure of plan A.
44.Gratitude: These people are very grateful for the things they have in their life already. This positive attitude breeds success after success when accompanied with the execution of the tasks at hand.
45.Deprioritize oppurtunities which doesn’t fit their short term/long term goals: At a regular interval, these people keep self assessing to know if they are moving in the right direction. If not they’ll see what can be done to direct their progress in their desired path. | https://medium.com/thn/45-habits-of-highly-successful-people-e9f53a5b7111 | ['Naveenya Gunasekar'] | 2020-09-12 08:42:29.052000+00:00 | ['Mindset Shift', 'Successful People', 'Success', 'Habits', 'Habits For Success'] |
20 FAQ’S that mother has before starting the IVF procedure? · Dr Dad | 20 FAQ’S that mother has before starting the IVF procedure? · Dr Dad Parenthood May 25·4 min read
IVF is short for In-Vitro Fertilization. It is a common fertility method in which the egg is fertilized outside the body in a petri-dish before being placed in the uterus. The procedure involves a series of steps and medications based on the reasons why IVF was chosen as a fertility option.
A donor may be required for eggs or sperms in case of same-sex couples opting for IVF or when the intended mother’s ovaries are not producing enough eggs or are absent. A donor for the sperms may be required if the intended father is sterile.
The donor can be anonymous or may be a known person like a family member or a friend based on the couple’s decision. In most cases, fertility centers run egg and sperm donation programs.
Fertility centers running an egg or sperm donation program screen the donors for a wide range of parameters, including physical and mental health and family history.
Yes, using the eggs or sperms from an anonymous donor is safe for IVF because the donors are screened.
IVF may be suggested as a solution by doctors when someone suffers from infertility. Reasons for infertility may be related to age, inability of ovaries to produce enough eggs, low sperm quality or quantity, fibroids, endometriosis, and sometimes, unexplained infertility. Your doctor will be the best person to tell you if you should opt for IVF or not.
Intrauterine insemination is a procedure in which the sperm is transferred directly into the uterus allowing the egg to be fertilized within the body. On other hand, IVF is a procedure in which the egg is fertilized outside the body in a petri-dish. The viability of these two fertility methods and determining the best one for you will mostly depend on your doctor after conducting different tests.
To choose an IVF clinic, begin by looking for success rates of live births and not just at IVF successes. Other factors to consider are the cost of the treatment, the types of fertility procedures offered by the clinic, donor programs run by the clinic, and the overall attitude of the staff and doctors that you will be interacting with.
Prepare yourself by beginning healthy food habits and making positive lifestyle changes that give your body the best support needed during the procedure. Check with your doctor about medications that may interfere with fertility drugs, and avoid over-the-counter supplements when you begin your IVF cycle.
The healthiest eggs are fertilized in IVF using the healthiest sperms available. Once the fertilization is successful, doctors may consider transferring multiple embryos to increase the chances of pregnancy as well. A maximum of two or three embryos may be transferred based on the doctor’s decision.
Success rate of IVF depends on several factors. One of the most common determinants is the age of the woman. In India, IVF success rate is usually between 30% and 35%.
Yes, you can go for a second IVF if the first procedure was not successful. Your doctor will advise you of the time needed for your body to recover before you can start a new IVF cycle.
An IVF cycle involves several steps starting from the first day of your period till your pregnancy test. The medications used during the procedure may cause the following side effects:
Common risks related to the IVF procedure are:
Multiple births, because multiple embryos may be placed in the uterus to increase the chances of pregnancy.
Prematurity and low birth weight can be another risk which is usually linked with high stimulation IVF.
Birth defects can also be a risk among older patients, but clinics try to detect this before the embryo transfer by conducting ICSI and testing the genetic material.
Typically, it takes around 10 to 12 days from the day the embryo(s) is/are transferred to your uterus. A pregnancy test can be done after 10 days to find out if the embryo has implanted successfully.
Patients who undergo a successful IVF may miscarry. If you suffered a miscarriage then you must allow your body to recuperate and then try again. Your doctor will be able to advise you best on how long you should consider waiting before your health allows you to undergo the procedure again.
It is important to have a healthy diet when you are planning IVF, but it is best to avoid making major changes in your eating habits at this time. For example, avoid going gluten-free if you weren’t already or avoiding complete food groups like grains or fruits when you are preparing yourself and during the IVF cycle.
If you follow an exercise regime, then unless your doctor specifically asks you not to exercise, you should be able to continue your workout routine. It is advised that you should limit your running routine to 15 miles a week because running tends to shift blood away from the womb to other organs and muscles.
A lot of women who start an IVF cycle may experience stress and anxiety because of the impending outcomes of the procedure or because they are still trying to cope with infertility. It is crucial to have emotional support during this period. Discuss the stressors with your partner, friends, and family if you find yourself coping with mental health problems.
A 2013 study showed a direct connection between sleep and IVF success rate. Since the hormone that regulates sleep, also regulates reproduction, it is always a good practice for anyone undergoing an IVF cycle to make healthy sleep a part of their routine. | https://medium.com/@parenthood7/20-faqs-that-mother-has-before-starting-the-ivf-procedure-dr-dad-6afdf6064b7 | [] | 2021-09-08 11:16:27.944000+00:00 | ['Baby', 'Ivf Specialist', 'Ivf Treatment', 'Pregnancy', 'Ivf'] |
Exercise Heavy-Protection Gear-Just do. | First thing is just do. Reward mechanism.
Machine Lerning. Fin week 3. Logistic regression (using polynomial features). Gradient descent to find on polynomial to find complex groups. Test 1, test 2. Extension to many parameters. Hyperdimensional surface. New function for gradient.
Using a polynomial paraemeters, also a regularization parameter of lamdba = 1
Japanese restart. Chapter 11. Course work. Afterwards, focused study on grammar. Vocab. Listening vocab, ring arole.
Stat focused study homework problems edx. Neural Production. Bzzt. Alice and her 30 classes. Interpeting quesion. qwesion.
2 cards, second card red, not independant since 1st card is red then chance dec, else chance increases, no?
Small technique in proofs probability:
P(A U B) = 1-P(Ac ^Bc) :: Simple law
1- P(A)-P(B) +P(A)P(B) = (1-P(A))(1-P(B)) :: Used in showing indpendent events compliment is also independant. | https://medium.com/@nariouslsd/exercise-heavy-protection-gear-just-do-d671e87e7ffb | [] | 2020-12-18 08:05:03.727000+00:00 | ['Updates'] |
既環保又健康還不用殺生？！「人造肉」成為兵家必爭的嶄新戰場 | 參考資料
Ben-Arye T and Levenberg S (2019) Tissue Engineering for Clean Meat Production. Front. Sustain. Food Syst. 3:46. doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2019.00046
Chase Purdy (30 Aug 2019). “The leading US cell-based meat startups just forged an alliance“. QUARTZ
Carsten Gerhardt, Gerrit Suhlmann, Fabio Ziemßen, Dave Donnan, Mirko Warschun, Hans-Jochen Kühnle (2018). “How Will Cultured Meat and Meat Alternatives Disrupt the Agricultural and Food Industry?” ATKearney.
Davide Banis (14 Dec 2018). “The Confounding Climate Science of Lab-Grown Meat”. Forbes
FAO (2011) “World livestock 2011. Livestock in food security.” FAO
FSIS (2019). “Formal Agreement Between The U.S. Department Of Health And Human Services Food And Drug Administration And U.S. Department of Agriculture Office Of Food Safety” FSIS
Jim O’Neill (Dec 2014). “Antimicrobial Resistance: Tackling a crisis for the health and wealth of nations”. Review on Antimicrobial Resistance
Kelsey Piper (09 Mar 2019). “The lab-grown meat industry just got the regulatory oversight it’s been begging for”. Vox
Laura Cassiday (Feb 2018). “Clean meat”. AOCS
Matt Simon (19 Feb 2019). “The Confounding Climate Science of Lab-Grown Meat”. WIRED
Post, M. J. (2014) “An alternative animal protein source: cultured beef.” Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 1328: 29–33.
Tuomisto, H. L., and de Mattos, M. J. (2011) “Environmental impacts of cultured meat production.” Environ. Sci. Technol. 45: 6117–6123.
Hayden（2018年08月22日）。《做素食，但賣給愛吃肉的老饕！比爾蓋茲投資的公司，用「流出血水」的素肉掀起飲食革命》，創新拿鐵
Karen Chiu（2019年10月09日）。《科技始終來自於食慾：未來漢堡進軍市場，Beyond Meat到底有甚麼素？》，數位時代
郭芝榕（2019年12月03日）。《資本市場的新歡──這2家超級新星公司掌握了未來的餐飲市場》，未來商務
陳建鈞（2019年10月15日）。《打破高價門檻！新創Future Meat獲1,400萬美元融資，目標2年內把培養肉端上餐桌》，數位時代
撰文：簡君豪
核稿：卓筱涵 | https://medium.com/hspectrum/%E6%97%A2%E7%92%B0%E4%BF%9D%E5%8F%88%E5%81%A5%E5%BA%B7%E9%82%84%E4%B8%8D%E7%94%A8%E6%AE%BA%E7%94%9F-%E4%BA%BA%E9%80%A0%E8%82%89-%E6%88%90%E7%82%BA%E5%85%B5%E5%AE%B6%E5%BF%85%E7%88%AD%E7%9A%84%E5%B6%84%E6%96%B0%E6%88%B0%E5%A0%B4-b7a01328c350 | ['Denny Chien'] | 2020-02-27 02:41:37.939000+00:00 | ['Hspectrum', 'Clean Meat', 'Trends', 'Startup'] |
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice — Senua’s Schizophrenic Journey | Plot
Before we begin to address the plot of the game itself, it is important to understand a little more about the story that served as inspiration for this work, and I also point out that the historical events presented here are a very cut-out summary, so the complete information will be available through the links at the end of the article.
Image depicting the dress code of pictpeople. Source: thetimes.co.uk/
Long ago, in the British Iron Age, the Picts (from the Latin “painted”) emerged in the north-east of present-day Scotland. A very few is known about its origin and its social and cultural aspects, but historians claim that this ancient group of Celts was made up of a series of tribes that, over the years, established their own dominion in the ancient Strathmore (Scotland), and from there came to conquer small territories throughout northern Europe. Ancient documents describe these peoples as very violent warriors, carrying brutal savagery that stood out on the battlefield, along with their bodies, almost naked covered by various tattoos and paintings.
The second century in Europe was marked by a great military expansion by the ancient Empire of Roman Brittany (which currently corresponds to England, Wales, and southern Scotland), but with the rise of Publius Aelius Hadrian, emperor in force from 117 to 138 d.C, it was decided that the empire would focus on the control of its own lands and therefore, walls would be built along part of the territory to contain the invasions of ancient tribes, such as the saxons, scotches and the picts themselves.
From there, the construction of Hadrian’s Wall began, a fortification with more than 118km of stone and wood, that separated northern England from Scotland. With this, several tribes were forgotten beyond the wall, among them the Picts. Years later, in the mid-9th century, the Picts joined the rest of the Celtic groups that populated the region, and part of this junction was due to the various Viking invasions that occurred for more than three centuries.
And it is between of one these invasions that Hellblade takes place, where we accompany the journey of Senua, a young Celtic warrior who is on a perilous journey to try to resurrect her beloved, Dillion, a man who was brutally murdered during one of these Nordic invasions. The man was sacrificed in the name of Hela, goddess of the kingdom of the dead, and because of this, our protagonist will need to travel to Helheim, Norse hell, to retrieve the soul of her lover from the clutches of the evil entity.
What differentiates this story from the other is that Senua suffers from schizophrenia, a very severe chronic brain disease that affects the way a person perceives the reality around them, in the way that she thinks, feels, and behaves. Thus, in addition to the physical challenges, the protagonist will also have to deal with the mental symptoms of her illness, such as delusions, hallucinations, and voices that whisper in her ears at all times.
According to the information given by members of Ninja Theory itself, the idea for the development of the game is the result of the discovery, made in 2002, in England, of 26 metal pieces dated between 43 and 410 d.C, which would be offerings intended for the Celtic goddess Senuna.
The entity, previously unknown to much of the world came to the fore thanks to the work of researcher Alan Meek. And since then, the team of developers decided to produce a game that addressed these historical elements, using as a basis the classic journey of the hero mixed with denser themes, such as the psychological disorder experienced by the protagonist.
Gameplay
The combat mechanics are quite simple, in addition to the basic moves such as walking and running, Senua can perform two types of attacks, a weak and a strong, dodge and deflect. The character, furthermore, can perform a melee attack, to break the defense of enemies, especially those with shields, and also a special action, called “focus”.
With this ability, Senua can stop time for a few moments, which cancels the actions of certain enemies and facilitates their movement during battles. However, for this to occur the player must fill, with a number “x” of attacks, a kind of meter, represented by the mirror that the protagonist carries.
With these mechanics, the combat flows in a rather pleasurable way, but over time it also becomes somewhat repetitive and monotonous. Once the player has full control of his actions, it will be difficult to be surprised by some difficulty, even though I believe that this lack of depth is completely understandable, since this is clearly not the focus of the game. It is still possible for the player to have a lot of fun in the various clashes against enemies and bosses, which, by the way, are great, because, besides representation of mythological creatures, such as Surtr, the fire giant, and Valravn, the god of illusions, they are also representations of traumas that marked the life of the protagonist.
Here you can see elements of the scenario forming a rune that will free the path
Another very important element of the game are the puzzles, which, unfortunately, suffer from the same repetitiveness factor. Throughout the journey, Senua will come across several stamps that hinder their progress, and to unlock them the character will need to form symbols with objects scattered throughout the scenery, activate runes, travel between planes of reality, etc.
At first, these challenges seem interesting, since they are reflections of the distorted mind of the protagonist and play with her perception, modifying the map and the routes that can be traced. However, as we progress, the challenges become somewhat obtuse and it is possible that the player does not understand right away what must be done.
Another mechanic that is also worth mentioning is that of the curse conferred on Senua. In the first few minutes of the campaing, we are surprised by a dark figure who curses the protagonist, leaving a black mark on her arm that will spread each little more each time we die and, if she comes to reach the character’s head, the whole journey will end immediately and the entire save will be deleted. This element catch the most unsuspecting players and creates an even more tense atmosphere for all the clashes and events to come.
Unfortunately, the producers have already gone public to inform us that all this was just a joke and that even if you die thousands of times, your files will not be deleted. Anyway, I believe that this remains a great mechanic, even if false, it manages to create a sense of fear and atention, both in the mind of the protagonist and in the player’s, which collaborates with all the message that the game wants to pass.
Design and Ambiance
Because it is a game that explores Viking culture, Hellblade, represents, with great fidelity, the scenarios of these groups. Here we come up with ordinated wooden inns with shields and runes, rocky islets, dark forests, stone buildings, swamps, and more. Unfortunately, given the great linearity, the player is unable to explore these places in-depth, following only a path previously defined by the developers.
Also, the scenarios count several “lorestones”. Magical rocks with runes, scattered across the map, which chronicle much of the ancient Viking belief, from the rise of kingdoms such as Ginungagap and Muspelheim, through the creation of the world from the body of Ymir, the first living creature, to the events that led to its end, the coming of Ragnarok.
A great highlight goes to Melina Juergens, the actress who
interprets Senua
The game presents the public one of the most beautiful environments of the genre, beating head-on with the graphic quality found in the great titles released that year, such as Nioh and Mass Effect Andromeda. Much of this beauty is due to the graphic engine used by Ninja Theory, which uses the capture of facial and body movements, to better represent the feelings, expressions, and actions of the characters. The game also has excerpts with scenes of real actors; at certain times, for example, Senua has visions of her past and in them are presented characters represented by actors, who interact directly with our hero. This technique is quite interesting since it contributes even more to the distorted construction of the worldview that the protagonist has.
The soundtrack, in turn, was composed in a joint work of two industrial rock bands, Combichrist, from the United States, and VNV Nation, from England. The melodies and songs are quite tense, complementing the dark setting of the game.
Still, on the sound aspects, I couldn’t help but talk about the voice system. As previously said, several people whisper in Senua’s ears, and to give a tone of greater realism, the developers chose to capture all these soundtracks with a binaural microphone (the famous one from ASMR), which allows us to determine the direction of the origin of each sound. At all times these voices speak to the character, insulting her (“coward”, “weak”, “stupid”), encouraging her (“she is a great warrior”, “that’s the way”) or giving tips on solving puzzles or about the weaknesses of enemies and bosses. All these elements have been thought to make the player as uncomfortable as Senua, especially if you are wearing a good headset.
Final Considerations
Hellblade is a game that presents itself as a different experience, uniting the big-budget of triple-A titles with a much more experimental and shorter gameplay, present in many indie productions. Therefore, I believe that the result of this work may not be appreciated by the entire public, especially by those players who value deeper combat mechanics, a more frantic pace, multiple missions, and a good replay factor.
But if you are a player who value an engaging and well-presented story, complemented with simple and direct gameplay, this is for sure an adventure that will please you. The game is great in addressing the historical themes, exciting the player to seek more information, in retracting the psychological aspect of the character, representing with great respect and seriousness the symptoms and behaviors of people suffering from schizophrenia, and in the creation of an exciting and heart touching story, of a warrior in her journey by acceptance and belonging.
All these qualities make Hellblade a right bet and a game that brings the same satisfaction that we have when finishing a good movie or a good book, leaving that taste of wanting more.
Speaking of “more”, in 2019, during the ceremony of the Game Awards, it was announced the development of Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II. Little has been said or shown about this sequence, even less about the changes that will be implemented, but by the trailer, we can get a notion that some changes will be implemented in the narrative, combat, and world-building.
By this photo you can already get an idea of the weight that the soundtrack will have in the sequence
Besides, the video also confirms that Ninja Theory will continue with its “rawer” approach to Scandinavian culture, a proof of this is given by the choice of the soundtrack, which, in this new game, will be developed in collaboration with Heilung, an experimental folk band composed of musicians from Norway, Denmark, and Germany. They songs are based on ancient chants and runes inscriptions dating back to the British Iron Age.
The sequel has no release date but will be an exclusive to PC and Microsoft consoles such as Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and S. You can check on the Hellblade’s II trailer here.
[Some images used in this article were taken from Google or from game community profiles on Steam]
Information sources:
Picts: www.britannica.com/topic/Pict
Hadrian’s Wall: www.english-lakes.com/hadrians_wall.htm
Celts: www.britannica.com/topic/Celt-people | https://medium.com/the-shadow/hellblade-senuas-sacrifice-senua-s-schizophrenic-journey-128ca45b5018 | ['Guilherme F. Mota'] | 2020-12-09 17:16:32.248000+00:00 | ['Game Journalism', 'Review', 'Hellblade', 'Senuas Sacrifice', 'Miscrosoft'] |
Get in Line and Roll Up Your Sleeves | As I watched videos of the first COVID-19 vaccine being administered throughout the country this month, I remembered the moment, 65 years earlier, when I trooped from my second-grade classroom to the “sick room” at the my little school in rural West Virginia.
It was April 21, 1955. The U.S. government had declared the Salk vaccine safe and effective for use nine days earlier. All of us in my town of Bethany and the rest of Brooke County had been alerted to the availability of the vaccine through a story in the Wheeling (W.Va.) Intelligencer, which appeared under the headline “Brooke Youths to Get Polio Vaccine Today.” In fact, the story ran on Tuesday, April 19, but the first and second graders in Bethany were at the end of the county’s line and had to wait until Thursday for our turn.
That morning my classmates and I filed nervously in the stuffy room off the balcony above the tiny gymnasium in the three-story building that served all grades, 1 through 12. Once there, we were greeted by a hypodermic-wielding nurse who assured us in her soothing nurse voice that it wouldn’t hurt a bit. Yeah, right.
Like most of the country, my parents were celebrating this historic breakthrough. But they weren’t the ones getting the shot. I was. And I’m pretty sure it did hurt a bit. Of course, we all had to suck it up and hold back any tears, not with our friends watching.
Plus, we figured the momentary pain would be worth it if the vaccine did, indeed, end the fear of polio and give us back our summers. The threat of polio had elicited panic bordering on terror in those days. Summer was “polio season.” Outbreaks started around Memorial Day, causing many public places to close down. (Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?) No public swimming pools. No movie theaters. Even when we were allowed to go outside and play with our friends, we were cautioned about getting too tired or too close (early social distancing?), and we were called home every afternoon to take a nap. Imagine. The indignity of an eight-year-old being forced to nap!
I complained that my parents were unreasonably strict, but I knew it was because a young woman in our neighborhood had contracted the dread disease and now wore heavy metal braces on both legs and needed crutches to walk.
The vaccine, developed by Jonas Salk just up the road from us at the University of Pittsburgh, was breaking news. Day by day, the paper published announcements as schools all over the area began to offer the shots, which were given for free and required only parental permission.
The story about the vaccinations in my county included a relevant statistic:
Of 1,403 students in Brooke County who were eligible for the shot, 1,225 had signed up for it. That translated to 87 percent who choose to take the vaccine with 13 percent declining.
For comparison’s sake, a recent Quinnipiac poll shows that 61 percent of Americans currently say they’ll take the COVID-19 vaccine while 33 percent won’t.
Although my parents weren’t giving me a choice in the matter, I couldn’t imagine why anybody would pass up the polio vaccine since it meant we’d get our summers back. There wasn’t such a thing as an “anti-vaxxer” or at least I’d never heard the term.
Naturally there was a level of anxiety associated with the polio vaccine. Two weeks after I got my shot, unsettling newspaper stories told of a girl in Idaho who’d been paralyzed after receiving the vaccine. Her paralysis began in the arm in which she had been vaccinated, not in her legs. My mom started asking me to move my arm up and down several times every day, just to check. Those cases, primarily west of the Mississippi, were quickly traced to bad batches of the vaccine from one particular company. Once the government rechecked the other vaccines for safety, the program was resumed. My mom stopped pestering me about my arm.
I understand why there’s anxiety about the COVID-19 vaccine. The speed with which this vaccine was produced is unprecedented. That, alone, can give one pause.
Then there was the unfortunate politicization of the vaccine, especially during the presidential campaigns when it seemed the pharmaceutical companies working on the vaccine might be facing undue pressure to meet an artificial deadline.
Personally, I never believed scientists would ever cut corners or fudge data to placate a presidential candidate. And yet, one study concluded that if an announcement of an approved vaccine had come one week before the November election, it would have significantly decreased people’s willingness to take it.
Now that the campaign over (mostly) and after the Federal Drug Administration has provided extraordinary transparency in its examination of the Pfizer data, I’m counting on Americans to roll up their sleeves and get in line.
For my part, I’m eager to take my turn this time around.
Are there risks? Of course there are. But when I weigh risks of the vaccine against the opportunity to visit my grandchildren for the first time in a year, I’m choosing my grandchildren. | https://medium.com/@jeffery-hanna/get-in-line-and-roll-up-your-sleeves-959fdc0f27e0 | ['Jeffery Hanna'] | 2020-12-21 19:27:17.409000+00:00 | ['Quarantine', 'Polio', 'Coronavirus', 'Vaccine Safety'] |
Compiling Qt with Docker multi-stage and multi-platform — Docker Blog | For those not familiar with Qt, it is a cross-platform development framework that is used in a wide range of products, including cars ( Tesla), digital signs ( Screenly), and airplanes ( Lufthansa). Needless to say, Qt is very powerful. One thing you cannot say about the Qt framework, however, is that it is easy to compile — at least for embedded devices. The countless blog posts, forum threads, and Stack Overflow posts on the topic reveal that compiling Qt is a common headache.
As long-term Qt users, we have had our fair share of battles with it at Screenly. We migrated to Qt for our commercial digital signage software a number of years ago, and since then, we have been very happy with both its performance and flexibility. Recently, we decided to migrate our open source digital signage software ( Screenly OSE) to Qt as well. Since these projects share no code base, this was a greenfield opportunity that allowed us to start afresh and explore exciting new technologies for the build process.
Because compiling Qt (and QtWebEngine) is a very heavy operation, we would need to pre-compile and distribute Qt so that the Dockerfile could simply download and include it in the build process (rather than compiling as part of the installation process).
We sat down and created the following requirements for our build process:
The process must be fully automated from start to finish.
We need to be able to build Qt/QtWebEngine for all supported Raspberry Pi boards (with the appropriate Qt `device` profile).
Raspberry Pi boards (with the appropriate Qt `device` profile). We should use cross compilation on x86 to speed up the process where it makes sense.
We need to be able to run the full process on CI, and thus cannot rely on a Raspberry Pi.
We should confine everything to run inside Docker containers so we do not clutter the host with build packages.
With the above goals in mind, we had a great opportunity to try out the new multi-platform support in Docker. Used in conjunction with multi-stage builds, we were able to get the best of both worlds:
Use emulation where we cannot cross-compile
Switch to cross-compilation for the heavy lifting
How does multi-platform in Docker work?
The easiest way to use multi-platform functionality in Docker is to invoke it from the command line. Using the `docker buildx`, we can tap into new beta functionalities. By running `docker buildx build -platform linux/arm/v7 -t arm-build .` This command builds the docker image as per the `Dockerfile` in the current directory using ARMv7 emulation. Behind the scenes, Docker runs the whole Docker build process in a QEMU virtualized environment (`qemu-user-static` to be precise). By doing this, the complexity of setting up a custom VM is removed. Once built, we can even use `docker run` to launch containers in ARMv7 mode automagically.
Multi-platform, multi-stage and Qt
While multi-platform functionality is a great stand-alone feature, it gets even more powerful when combined with multi-stage builds. Within a single Dockerfile, we’re able to mix and match platforms and copy between the steps. This functionality is exactly what we ended up doing with the Qt build process for Screenly OSE.
Stage 1: ARM
Thanks to the fine folks over at Balena, we are able to use a Raspbian base image in the first stage. We can invoke this step using:
FROM -platform=linux/arm/v7 balenalib/rpi-raspbian:buster as builder
[…]
After the above step, we can use Docker as we normally do and execute various `RUN` commands, such as installing packages etc.. Do note that this container is running emulated using QEMU if the build is not run on ARMv7 hardware. In our case, we use the command to install the Qt build dependencies. The above step also allows us to fully eliminate the need for copying files from either a disk image (which is what the Qt Wiki suggests) or `rsync` files from a physical Raspberry Pi.
Stage 2: x86
Once we have installed our dependencies in our ARM step, we can switch over to the builder’s native x86 architecture to avoid emulation and do the cross compile with the following line:
FROM -platform=linux/amd64 debian:buster
[…]
Now, we are onto the interesting part. After we have switched over to x86, we can copy files from the previous step. We do this in order to create a sysroot that we can use for Qt. We complete this step by running the following commands:
RUN mkdir -p /sysroot/usr /sysroot/opt /sysroot/lib
COPY -from=builder /lib/ /sysroot/lib/
COPY -from=builder /usr/include/ /sysroot/usr/include/
COPY -from=builder /usr/lib/ /sysroot/usr/lib/
COPY -from=builder /opt/vc/ sysroot/opt/vc/
[…]
We now have the best of both worlds. By taking advantage of both multi-step and multi-platform functionality, we generate a sysroot that we can use to build Qt. Since we used a fully functional Raspbian image in our previous step, we are even able to get Qt to pick up all existing libraries.
./configure \
[…]
-sysroot /sysroot
As we mentioned in the introduction, compiling Qt is far from straightforward. There are a lot of steps required to compile it successfully. To learn more about the exact steps, you can see the full Dockerfile and script build_qt5.sh.
To emulate or not to emulate…
Being able to emulate a platform like ARM is amazing and provides a lot of flexibility. However, it does come at a cost. There is a big performance penalty. This issue is the reason why we do not actually compile Qt using emulation. Instead, we use cross-compilation. If you have the ability to cross-compile rather than emulate, know that cross-compilation will give you much better performance.
About Screenly
Screenly is the most popular digital signage product for the Raspberry Pi. If you want to turn a physical screen into a secure, remotely-controllable device (over UI or digital signage API) that can display dashboards, images, videos, and webpages, Screenly makes setup a breeze. Screenly is available in two flavors: an open source version and a commercial version. | https://medium.com/@vpetersson/compiling-qt-with-docker-multi-stage-and-multi-platform-docker-blog-f3aa0c908bc2 | ['Viktor Petersson'] | 2020-12-23 16:33:20.580000+00:00 | ['Raspberry Pi', 'Docker', 'Qt'] |
That One Christmas When I Lost $500 to Mom Brain | When people talk about “mom brain,” I can’t help but chime in that it’s a legit thing. It took me a very long time to adjust to motherhood, and in the beginning, I was what anyone would call “a real hot mess.”
I once sat down on a bus bench at the Mall of America, only to have my phone lifted when I got up and walked over to the trash can two feet away. I was so preoccupied with feeding my daughter, that I hadn’t realized I left my phone on the bench. And it only took seconds for someone to pounce.
It was a costly mistake to put it lightly, since I’ve got a habit of never insuring my cell phones. And it wasn't the last time my mom brain kicked me in the teeth.
Tis the season for… for pickpocketing.
I have a hard time not associating the Christmas season with higher crime rates. Growing up poor in Saint Paul and Minneapolis, I witnessed a lot of robberies, especially in the winter months.
There was one time on a bus, when a man came up behind a passenger who was just getting his fare into the machine and then grabbed the wallet from the passenger’s back pocket.
The whole bus gasped and looked dumbfounded as the thief ran away. Folks made the typical comments amongst themselves that you’re not supposed to have your wallet in a pocket that could be easily lifted.
I was about 6 at the time and I thought a lot about that man who was robbed. I wondered a lot about how it impacted his holiday.
There were plenty of other times, too. I saw robberies in cash advance shops, Targets, parking lots… nowhere really felt safe in the winter when you knew that plenty of folks were desperate for Christmas money.
By adulthood, however, it all felt normal. By then, you knew how to protect yourself to avoid a problem, or so it seemed.
All I wanted for Christmas was a little peace of mind.
As my daughter’s second Christmas approached, we lived in a suburb of Minneapolis, Brooklyn Park. Suburbs in the Twin Cities are mostly mere extensions of their respective city and often not as idyllic as most folks think when they hear the word “suburb.”
Many people racistly referred to the city as “Brooklyn Dark,” and claimed that people of color had made Brooklyn Park unsafe. It was ridiculous, of course, and I enjoyed our time living there. I never felt unsafe in Brooklyn Park and I only had one truly negative experience.
In early December of 2016, I walked my daughter in her stroller about a mile down the road to do some shopping.
On that shopping trip, I brought every bit of cash I had with a list of holiday items. I’d been slowly getting back on my feet after my pregnancy left me homeless, and I was determined to make that Christmas a good one for my mom and child.
My “mom brain” was in full swing as I felt the anxiety and overwhelm of keeping my baby happy while I went down my list. In those days, I felt like I could only halfway function whenever I took my kid out in public.
As a new and single mom, I was learning everything on the fly. I worried a lot about how to handle the usual stuff, like a crying child in the middle of a public place. I worried about being in the way.
That day while shopping for the Christmas season was no different. I was a frazzled mess. At one point, I went hunting for coupons, and left my money in my clear coupon organizer sticking out of my diaper bag which was hooked onto to the shopping cart (so the diaper bag couldn’t be stolen.)
Of course, with my money basically hanging out on top of the diaper bag, it was easy prey, and as I inspected canned carrots, a teenage boy briskly moved past my shopping cart, snatched the envelope with all of my money, and ran away.
$500 was gone in a flash.
It’s ironic how some of the most devastating moments can happen so quickly, but with such little fanfare.
In such a large store, the boy ran, and there wasn’t much to be done. I paid for the few things I could with my bank card that was in another pocket, and walked my daughter home.
That wasn’t even the end of my run-ins with the dark side of mom brain.
Just weeks before I planned to fly down to Tennessee with my toddler for our last cross-country move, I ran some errands for my mother. After leaving Walgreens, I wheeled my daughter in her stroller over to a Thai restaurant for lunch.
I ordered our food, and they brought out the appetizer. When I looked in my purse to grab my hand sanitizer, I realized my wallet was missing. Every ID, every bit of cash, and my bank card was gone. I searched the stroller and found nothing.
After apologizing profusely to the waitress, I walked us back to Walgreen’s, figuring I must have dropped my wallet or left it at the cash register. But no employee had found it. They filed a police report, however, and a detective called me within an hour because someone used my card to buy a carton of cigarettes right there in the same store.
The police arrested the guy, but he didn’t have my wallet on him--just my cash and bank card. He refused to tell them where he dumped my wallet so I could get my ID back, and by the time a detective went searching through the local waste bins, the trash had already been picked up.
Incredibly, I got a call a few days later from a nurse to a man who lived in the area and had a habit of going through the trash for aluminum cans and whatnot. He found my wallet, and my phone number happened to be in there on an immunization record for my daughter.
Phew! I got my ID back just in time to fly.
I’m not naturally so scatterbrained.
It might be hard to believe, but my absentminded nature only became a thing once I became a mom. People make jokes about mom brain, but they often don’t talk about the realities of it.
Anxiety, depression, and absent mindedness can easily turn moms into targets for crime, and that’s not our fault.
It’s just life.
My daughter will be six years old in April. Over the years, I’ve learned how to live with mom brain and quit experiencing huge losses just because I frantically need to set down my personal belongings.
A few things have helped me cope better, and they might help you too.
1. Slow down. (No, really.)
The number one way I’ve found to fight mom brain is to simply take my time. I set my alarm clock early to give myself extra moments to make sure I have everything I need.
I don’t let myself go on autopilot, at least, not in public anymore.
2. Quit worrying about pissing people off. (Or at least, try.)
A big thing that had me feeling rushed in public was the fear that I was bothering other people around me. I hated feeling like I was too slow and causing a problem for people behind me in the checkout lane.
But, I had to acknowledge that feeling rushed and frazzled did me more harm than good. Once I accepted that, I decided to quit worrying about anything other people thought.
Let them think you’re slow. Let them sigh behind you when you’re taking out those coupons. Don’t let other people needlessly rush you.
3. Offer help to another floundering soul.
As a single mom, I do often feel like other people see me as something of an “easy target.” There’s nobody to help me manage any of my tasks at home or in public, and every child on earth is a handful at some point.
Realizing how hard I have it at some points has helped me realize how easy it is to lend a helping hand to someone else in familiar shoes.
You can offer to help load groceries onto the conveyor belt, or even help carry the load to their car. Just being the patient person behind them who’s not throwing a fit when they pull out their WIC vouchers can make a huge difference.
Let them know that it’s okay, that they’re okay, and they are not alone.
There’s hope for mom brain.
Just like there’s hope for anxiety and postpartum depression. It definitely gets better, but you’ve got to give yourself plenty of breathing room to get accustomed to your new role.
The world won’t always give you the time you need, however, which means you’ve often got to demand it. And while you’re at it, help make space for other struggling families too.
I’m a few years out from the Christmas where mom brain cost me $500 and blew up all my plans. A few years out from sleeping on couches or crashing with strangers.
Mom brain and tough times are terrible, but thankfully, they do get better.
This Christmas, give yourself the gift of more peace of mind. | https://medium.com/honestly-yours/that-one-christmas-when-i-lost-500-to-mom-brain-e464dc81ed82 | ['Shannon Ashley'] | 2019-12-02 17:58:18.036000+00:00 | ['Crime', 'Life', 'Money', 'Holidays', 'Parenting'] |
2020 Year in Review | Our new investment themes
We updated our investment themes this year to reflect how we’re thinking about the future of travel. Moving forward, our team will be focusing on the following themes:
Seamless Customer Journeys: As a travel provider, we strive for smooth travel experiences. We’re looking for solutions that brighten the journey and enable a seamless travel experience through every part of a customer’s trip. Reimagining the Accommodation Experience: Once travelers land in-destination, there’s an opportunity to continue enhancing their experience. We’re looking at evolutions in hospitality, including alternative accommodations, and the underlying products and services that power the industry. Next-Generation Aviation Operations and Enterprise Technology: The more efficient an airline’s operation, the better it can serve customers and stakeholders. In this investment focus, we’re looking for innovations that enhance safety, improve operations, and drive enterprise-wide efficiencies. Innovation in Loyalty, Distribution and Revenue: On the commercial side of the business, we’re prioritizing technologies that personalize and diversify commerce, simplify payments, and improve revenue opportunities. Sustainable Travel: Sustainability is essential for the long-term health of our business, our customers, and our communities. With that in mind, we’re focusing on advanced methods of measuring and reducing emissions, improved environmental protections, and game-changing alternative propulsion systems
With these new investment themes, we’re looking ahead to the next decade (and beyond) to identify innovations and invest in solutions that are fundamental to our industry’s future.
Team updates
We welcomed three new team members at the start of 2020:
Sarah Mattina: As our communications and marketing liaison, Sarah is responsible for sharing the ideas and people behind not just JTV but our portfolio of exemplary companies. She was previously at Southwest Airlines. Welcome, Sarah!
Ruchit Majmudar: Ruchit also comes to us from Southwest Airlines, where he worked in corporate strategy and innovation. As an Operations Analyst, he’ll partner with JetBlue teams and our JTV partners to connect them with relevant emerging technologies to drive innovation. Welcome, Ruchit!
Daisy Garcia: Daisy is our newest Investment Analyst. She recently relocated back to California after working and studying in six countries, bringing a fresh global perspective to the team. Her primary focus is making new investments and conducting due diligence on early stage startups. Welcome, Daisy!
New investments
Prior to COVID-19, we made two investments:
3Victors provides next-generation travel analytics. Airlines track a lot of data, but can’t always deploy business intelligence solutions capable of mining such a deep trove. 3Victors solves that problem with its real-time 360° view of air travel, combined across multiple sources into a single actionable view. Read more about our investment from Principal Jim Lockheed in this great article.
i6 is a data and software solution provider that optimizes the fuel supply chain into a single platform for the aviation and transportation sectors. The result is a mobile-first, paper-free experience that eliminates manual entry and streamlines fuel operations between vendors and airlines. Read more about i6’s Series A here, which we joined alongside International Airlines Group, Shell, and World Fuel Services.
Virtual programming
Given the pandemic, our focus this year shifted to researching the latest technologies to augment JetBlue’s “Safety from the Ground Up” program. This included ultraviolet cleaning, thermal scanning, health passport testing, and personalization. The most exciting and essential event was our contactless journey Innovation Sprint and Demo Day, where we came together with a challenge to address the urgent need for contactless experiences across the travel journey. The purpose was to examine each stage of the travel ribbon to determine how startups can be used for a safer experience.
These innovation sprints (which we do in non-pandemic times as well) give us early experience with new solutions. Ultimately, this positions us for the future and allows us to be as nimble as possible — especially when we have to quickly adapt to new market realities.
Ecosystem partnerships
Our partnerships are a large part of what we do at JTV, as it allows us to build a beneficial ecosystem in collaboration with like-minded providers that share our vision.
In November, we announced the third addition to our International Partnership Program: CAE Inc. CAE is a Canadian manufacturer of simulation technologies and training services primarily for airlines, aircraft operators, and aircraft manufacturers. Alongside Vantage Airport Group and Air New Zealand, CAE will work with the emerging technologies and startups in our portfolio to improve the experience, infrastructure, and processes across the travel experience.
Read more about the partnership from Amy Burr, our Managing Director of Operations and Partnerships.
Launch of our Platform
Platform services have become a critical component of VC firms. Beyond transactional investments, these initiatives further enhance the way we work with our portfolio companies to accelerate their growth. By formalizing our Platform, we can better support teams with introductions to vendors, consultants and service providers; connect them to relevant resources; and build community across the portfolio to share knowledge, facilitate partnerships and strengthen bonds. Read more about the initiative from Amy Burr.
Portfolio milestones
We’re proud of the resilience and fortitude of our portfolio companies, who have stayed the course in the face of fierce headwinds. Here are some notable milestones and achievements: | https://medium.com/jtv-insights/2020-year-in-review-b20682081440 | ['Bonny Simi'] | 2020-12-17 16:17:58.152000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Travel', 'Venture Capital', 'Startups', 'Team'] |
A Somatic Perspective on the Trauma of Growing up Gay | www.DrPayam.com
For almost three decades, I have immersed myself in the life stories of many people of the LGBTQ community who had painful homophobic and transphobic upbringings. Many of the gay men’s personal narratives that I have heard are not very different from my own. Regardless of national origin, we are part of a tribe with similar stories of growing up in a homophobic and heterosexist world where our gayness was repeatedly assaulted. We are everywhere, and unfortunately so is homophobia.
Many gay men have shared with me that as long they could recall they always felt different. They were unable to articulate why they felt that way, and, at the same time, they did not feel safe to talk about it. Some knew this feeling of being different was related to something forbidden. “It felt like keeping an ugly secret that I could not even understand,” described one person. Other gay men have disclosed to me that this feeling revealed itself in the form of gender nonconformity, which could not be kept secret. Therefore, it made them more vulnerable to homophobic mistreatment at school and often at home. Gay men of color reported even worse experiences due to the additional stress of racism and racial bullying.
Many school-age children organize their school experiences around the notion of not coming across as different, in particular, queer. Any school-age child’s worst nightmare is being labeled faggot, which was commonly experienced by many gay individuals who did not flow with the mainstream. Educational institutions felt like a scary place for many of them who were scapegoated as queer growing up. Therefore, they had to cope with a daily assault of shame and humiliation without any support. This is a form of child abuse on a collective level, and it needs to stop.
So much has been written about the devastating impact of homophobia on gay people’s psychological functioning but not enough on the biological impact of it. It is important to understand how repeated hateful acts toward gay youngsters can impact the way their bodies and minds function, including the functioning of their nervous system. Unfortunately, this also applies to any child who is a target of hate and abuse. As Peter Levine, the founder of Somatic Experiencing, stated, “Trauma is not in the event, but in the nervous system.” Based on my personal and clinical work, I also concur that trauma becomes embodied during a person’s life and can affect the working of the autonomic nervous system (“ANS”). Much of the healing from this trauma needs to happen through the body. In particular, the nervous system needs to be regulated.
The ANS is the part of the nervous system that governs the fight, flight, or freeze instinct and is responsible for the unconscious bodily functions like breathing, digesting food, and regulating the heart rate. It also plays an important role of supplying information from our organs to our brain. The ANS can become dysregulated due to the thwarted responses of fight, flight, or freeze in the aftermath of trauma.
The ANS is central to our experience of safety, connection with others, and our ability to bounce back from life’s overwhelming experiences. This ability to recover defines resilience and requires the help of our ANS to keep us in our “window of tolerance”, which has been defined in the book Nurturing Resilience by trauma specialists Kathy Kain and Stephen Terrell “as the zone where we effectively process environmental signals without becoming too reactive or too withdrawn, given the circumstances.” The window of tolerance as a frame work is very helpful to understand where we feel safe, unsafe, and how to expand our optimal arousal zone.
Stephen Porges’, Bessel van der Kolk’s, and Peter Levine’s research and writings have significantly reworked my understanding of how the nervous system responds to threat and trauma. Drawing from their work and my decades of experience, it is my understanding the ongoing stress from homophobia can activate a youngster’s nervous system and “unresolved activation will be stored in the body as bound energy and manifest as trauma symptoms.” In other words, under a daily homophobic assault, a child’s sympathetic system (“stress response” or “fight or flight” response) gets overly activated. Often during such stressful situations, neither fighting nor fleeing can resolve the overwhelming situation, and the thwarted or incomplete fight and flight responses can become “trapped” within the body and dysregulate the nervous system. Such a dysregulated nervous system is more likely to get stuck on “high” or hyper-arousal. Anxiety, panic attacks, rage, hyperactivity, mania, hypervigilance, sleeplessness, exaggerated startle response, digestive problems, and many other symptoms are the result of a dysregulated nervous system that is stuck on “high” or hyper-arousal.
According to many studies, gay individuals who experienced homophobic related stress showed increased production of the stress hormone cortisol compared to peers in safer environments. This experience of being stuck on “high” continuously activates a person’s stress response system, which leads to the release of stress hormones. Research in this area has shown overexposure to cortisol and other stress hormones leads to numerous health problem including headaches, oversensitivity to touch or sound, weight gain, heart disease, concentration impairment, and sleep disturbance.
On the other hand, there are gay men whose nervous systems are stuck on “low” or hypo-arousal, which can result from being terrorized growing up with no hope of protection. Faced with isolation, confusion, physical violence, not being valued, and carrying a secret that the youngster connects with something terrible and unthinkable is too stressful for any child to endure, especially when there is no empathic other to help him sort it out. Such experience is often beyond the youngster’s “window of tolerance.” This is when the dorsal vagus can shut down the entire system, and the mistreated youngster can go into freeze. In other words, the youngster suffers in silence with numbness or dissociation as his only available survival mechanism.
Stephen Porges, the founder of Polyvagal Theory, has expanded our view of the vagus nerve, one of the largest nerves in the body and a major part of the Parasympathetic system. The word “vagus” means wandering in Latin. The dorsal vagus is a branch of the vagus nerve which is a much older part of the nervous system. Dorsal vagus regulates organs below the diaphragm. Dorsal vagus is instrumental in activating the “shutdown” of the body as discussed in cases of overwhelming fear which can result from homophobic mistreatment. This automatic survival mechanism can become a long-standing pattern of how individuals might cope with fear and stress in life. For example, people whose nervous system is stuck on “low” or hypo-arousal when faced with life stresses can default to shutting down, disassociation, chronic isolation, detachment, numbness, and suicidal thoughts.
In my counseling work, I have noticed when the nervous system gets stuck on freeze, when numbness and detachment become a gay man’s dominant state, he is more likely to engage in risky behaviors as a temporary relief from inner deadness. Thrill seeking behaviors such as sexual acting out, excessive gambling, and crystal meth (crystal methamphetamine) use are ways some gay men escape the emotional flatness that results from experiencing the hypo-arousal state. The same behaviors can also be used to cope with ongoing activation of the fight or flight response. One person might turn to substance abuse to escape his inner deadness and another person might use it to dampen his anxiety that often results from being stuck in a state of hyper-arousal.
As Peter Levine stated, “Trauma is a fact of life. It does not, however, have to be a life sentence.” For those of us who have had painful struggles with homophobia, life after the closet needs to include dealing with memories of homophobic mistreatment that can lie dormant in our body. Recovery from it needs to start with resourcing and then progressing to completing the thwarted responses of fight, flight, or freeze. Such healing can reset the nervous system and restore inner balance. In Body Keeps the Score, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk writes about a body-centered approach to healing which allows “the body to have experiences that deeply and viscerally contradict the helplessness, rage, or collapse that result from trauma.”
How far the LGBTQ community has come in our struggle for equal rights reflects how brave we are as a community. Our bravery can continue by facing traumas we experienced growing up in oppressive environments that did not nurture our true essence. Not every LGBTQ person felt traumatized growing up, but those who did can benefit from the vitality and the sense of liberation that comes with incorporating somatic work as part of the healing process.
The Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute offers trainings and seminars on the biology of traumatic stress reactions. They also offer tools on how to bring the body-mind-spirit back into balance. Participating in their trainings has enhanced my ability to help others who are interested to tap into the wisdom of their bodies for healing and growth. There are many other institutes that offer body-centered approaches toward healing which reflect the increased popularity of such work.
© Dr. Payam Ghassemlou MFT, Ph.D. is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (Psychotherapist), in private practice in West Hollywood, California. www.DrPayam.com , www.SomaticAliveness.com | https://medium.com/@drpayam/a-somatic-perspective-on-the-trauma-of-growing-up-gay-a58390c5d952 | ['Payam Ghassemlou'] | 2020-12-11 06:25:14.924000+00:00 | ['Somatic Experiencing', 'Queer', 'LGBT', 'Psychotherapy', 'Coming Out'] |
JavaScript coding interview — Array — Part 3 | Array related questions and answers from brute force to better optimal way of achieving Big O
Photo by Ulises Baga on Unsplash
Find the maximum value of an array
Remove duplicate from an array/ unique array
Get duplicates from an array
Flatten the array
Find the median value of an array
Find two sum of an array twoSum(arr, sum)
Maximum consecutive sum of integers in an array
Union of arrays (merge two arrays without duplicates)
Intersection of arrays/ find common values of arrays (multidimensional)
Given an array of integers, every element appears twice except for one. Find that single one
Given an array of integers, find the largest product yielded from three of the integers
Being told that an unsorted array contains (n — 1) of n consecutive numbers (where the bounds are defined), find the missing number in O(n) time
Given an array of integers, find the largest difference between two elements such that the element of lesser value must come before the greater element
Given an array of integers, return an output array such that output[i] is equal to the product of all the elements in the array other than itself. (Solve this in O(n) without division)
DNF problem (An array just contains 1s, 2s, and 3s. Sort the array) | https://sathishiva.medium.com/javascript-coding-interview-array-part-3-806906d4d908 | ['Sathish Kumar Arumugam'] | 2020-09-06 21:28:39.722000+00:00 | ['Arrays', 'Coding Interviews', 'JavaScript', 'Frontend Interviews', 'Big O Notation'] |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.