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“Edward Scissorhands”: A Classic for All Seasons | About “Edward”
On one level, “Edward Scissorhands” is a fable about a boy, with scissors for hands, who cannot touch.
As to the plot, it’s basically a new take on “Frankenstein,” with several twists.
The film opens with a framing device: A kindly old woman (Winona Ryder) tells a bedtime story to her young granddaughter about the origin of snow. Years before, there lived a boy named “Edward” and an old inventor (Vincent Price, in one of his last roles) who was not yet finished with his creation. They lived in a dank mansion atop a mountain, and in place of Edward’s hands, which were not yet ready, the inventor had temporarily attached scissors in their place.
The inventor dies, however, just as he presents Edward with his new appendages and the promise of imminent completion.
Edward now exists in the mansion alone, until Peg Boggs (Dianne Weist), a hard-up Avon lady, unexpectedly visits looking to sell products. She invites Edward to stay with her, which stuns not only her husband (Alan Arkin) but her nosy neighbors.
In short order Edward becomes a neighborhood sensation, cutting hair, grooming pets and trimming bushes. Edward, though, is a timid stranger in this new culture, frightened by his own shadow. He falls in love with Peg’s daughter, Kim (Ryder, soon to be revealed as the grandmother from the open), who is dating the neighborhood bully, Jim (Anthony Michael Hall).
When Kim begins to respond to Edward’s affection, a jealous Jim frames Edward for robbery, turning the town against the interloper and leading to tragedy …
Filmmaking Specs
The plight of the outsider, as cinematically defined by pioneering artists such as Chaplin and Keaton, is very nearly equaled in Depp’s remarkable performance ... as directed by Tim Burton and written by Caroline Thompson, based on a story by them both. The acting is impeccable, as is the direction, and Danny Elfman’s score …
Breathtaking.
Special note must go to the visionary Burton, whose eccentric filmography proves he was one of the very few auteurs who could carry off such a gothic and pastel feat.
The “Batman” director’s filmmaking partnership with the future Captain Jack Sparrow, of which to my mind “Ed Wood” is the other standout, is notable for its many portrayals of societal misfits. | https://medium.com/media-cake/edward-scissorhands-a-classic-for-all-seasons-373029b888ee | ['Joel Eisenberg'] | 2020-01-18 12:50:42.004000+00:00 | ['Fantasy', 'Johnny Depp', 'Movies', 'Writing', 'Tim Burton'] |
How to Support a Partner with Mental Health Disorders | We are a mirror for our partners. Both our best and our worst are reflected within one another.
My partner and I met when we were about ten years old. Throughout our childhood, we trusted each other with the issues that we were facing at home. Despite sharing our secrets and traumas with each other, however, we hardly ever mentioned the true mental health problems that we were experiencing. By the time we started dating, he had already experienced severe swings of social and general anxiety, mild and chronic depression, and panic disorder with agoraphobia. For me personally, I’d gone through my own cycles of generalized anxiety, mild depression, chronic insomnia, multiple eating disorders, and panic disorder.
Unfortunately, neither one of us had been liberated yet from our dwells when our relationship started. We knew that we had our problems but didn’t see it as a concern to worry about. Our insecurities, fears, and worries got in the way at times but we understood each other in a way that most people wouldn’t have. Our mental health disorders, though fairly similar in name, were experienced very differently. It was this subjective difference that led to a rollercoaster of push and pulls for us.
Being the most psychologically minded in the relationship, I began to understand that our mental states were potential triggers for each other. How we reacted or responded could be a negative reinforcer to each other’s mental state of mind. My negative thoughts and emotions sooner or later could be reflected in his negative thoughts and emotions. In a relationship, you feed each other's state of well-being. Your stressors, issues, and conflicts easily become their stressors, issues, and conflicts, or vice versa. This also means however, that we can be each other’s safe space if we know how to make the right moves. We have the power to be each other’s most trusted confidants. To be each other’s positive reinforcer and give each other the gift of true understanding, love, and safety. We are a mirror for our partners. Both our best and our worst can be reflected within one another. With great psychological and mental awareness, the mirror can become less of an unconscious fog and more of a true clear reflection of ourselves.
Walk in Their Shoes
Photo by Emma Frances Logan on Unsplash
My partner and I both have similar mental disorders but we both subjectively experience them differently. It was with this token of knowledge that helped me realize that in order to best support and be there for my partner, I would need to understand him at a deeper level. To see that each time he had a negative emotional reaction, each time he wanted to rush to his “safe space,” each time he didn’t want to talk to me, each time he was in a low or irrational mood, it was not something for me to take personally but instead hold compassion for. Often at times we judge our partners when they’re at their worst without realizing where they’re coming from mentally, psychologically or emotionally. Without understanding that they might be stuck in a negative thought loop or that they’re facing an internal pressure that not even they fully understand.
I used my own experiences with my mental health as my base to be able to see things from his shoes. I would meditate on the multiple possible factors that he was experiencing and tried to piece it together to feel things from his shoes. I’d try to imagine every detail, every feeling, every emotion that could be tied to the narrative that he’s potentially living. Whenever he was really going through something, I’d start with having empathy for him to really feel what he was feeling. Once I tapped into the emotion, I would distance myself from it and find a way to convert into compassion. This may sound like a lot of work, but having a set of compassionate lenses toward my partner allowed me to be less reactive and provide him with a safe space where he could be himself.
Patience
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
For all of you dating someone with a mental health disorder, you must already know that patience is a key factor in making things work. In stressful times there is an abundance of lows. Of emotional reactivity. Of negative emotions. A flow of fears and worries that seem to have no beginning nor end. Their anxiety, depression, panic, disorder eating habits, obsessions or addictions may be in full-swing. But patience is the tranquil breath in a turbulent thunderstorm. It’s what grounds you to see the reality of things.
A key thing to remember to really cash into patience is having positive unconditional regard. It is having the supportive attitude that an individual is trying their hardest to be the best version of themselves given their internal and external resources. It allows you to step in without having a judgemental stance and instead see that they are only humans going through a hurricane of things that only they can fully feel.
Deeply Listen
Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash
When our partners are going through their moments, it’s normal for us to want to help them. To “listen” to them but also simultaneously try to interpret everything they share with us. To search for patterns or common themes to bring it all together to see “the bigger picture.” To think of advice or possible solutions for them. The only issue is that sometimes our partners may not want our help. Or our “bigger picture” of their narrative. Or our advice. Or our opinion. Sometimes they just want to be sincerely heard. To have someone give them their full attention. To listen to their words without being interrupted. To be given the space to express themselves vulnerably and authentically. In other words, they may want someone to be fully present with them. To allow them to feel like they matter. To receive validation of their emotions and experiences simply through our attention.
Space & Time
Photo by Taylor Nicole on Unsplash
During my partner’s worst he likes to be alone. To have the space to just process things, to filter out his thoughts, to really get a sense of what’s going on in his mind and body. It took me a while, but I eventually began to see that this was a healthy boundary for him to have. Because when there’s so much going on internally that we don’t have control of, having our space to just tune in and self-care is an important practice.
It may allow your partner to feel less reactive to things. To have less information floating around in the crevices of their mind. To build on their internal resources. To understand themselves better and have a better sense of their needs. Not only will it allow them to feel refreshed, they’ll respect you even more for giving them this time. In the long run it’ll benefit the both of you.
Unconditional Love & Support
Photo by Pandav Tank on Unsplash
One time I asked my partner what was the best thing I could do for him at the moment after him almost having a panic attack. “Just be there,” he said. My anxious mind wanted to take action, to take things into my own hands to help him feel better. But I knew that it was best to listen to his needs, so I just sat there with him instead. I learned that in having our presence, in being there at their worst, our partners can feel a comfortable support that isn’t forced or overwhelming.
That moment taught me something else though. There’s a common misconception that unconditional love and support looks like buying them their favorite meal, watching their favorite movie with them, or checking in with them frequently. But unconditional love and support will look differently each day. And it’s that flexibility that really makes a difference. One day they might want to stay home and do nothing, perhaps another they want to go to a park to feel better. Some days they might want to talk about their issues, others they might want to be left alone to think and process. Whatever it may be, as long as it isn’t harmful or damaging to either of you, support it. Let them know that you’ll be there for them unconditionally. Like this they’ll feel like they have the freedom to really dig deep into their inner chaos but always have a safe base to come back to, which would be you.
Research
Photo by Dan Dimmock on Unsplash
Researching your partner’s mental disorders is important regardless of your own mental condition. You’ll be able to have a more clinical and diagnostic familiarity with what they’re experiencing. You’ll also be able to better distinguish between habits and behaviors that are part of their personality or due to a change in their mental and emotional state. It may even allow you to be more understanding and compassionate with the struggles they’re facing.
Some websites even have further information and resources that partners and family members can access on how to support their loved ones with a mental health condition. Sometimes you might even find holistic approaches that can be practiced at home, such as herbal supplements, foods, or exercises that can help boost their mental state as well. Not only does it better inform you of what they're going through, it's also a sincere sign that you care for their well-being. | https://medium.com/wholistique/how-to-support-a-partner-with-mental-health-disorders-410859a0f97c | ['Rose Mejia'] | 2020-12-06 09:14:16.143000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'Mental Illness', 'Relationships Love Dating', 'Mental Health'] |
“Quarantine Dreams and Jacob’s Ladder”: from the studio of Amie Oliver. | “Quarantine Dreams and Jacob’s Ladder”: from the studio of Amie Oliver.
Painting her way through a pandemic.
April 14, 2020
I am more grateful than ever to have the time and space in which to escape the current situation. The Art Lab in Richmond, Virginia, is the best medicine for me. Everything is as I leave it there. A continuum exists in that space where I can psychically pick up where I left off easily. The only things that change are the quality of light and the impact of the weather. Bertha, our terrier, goes with me so she can run the grounds and bark to her content. She is excellent company.
That said, the art I feel best represents the impact of our isolation nation is this series of small works on paper — all created at home when I can’t sleep. Insomnia is usually something I experience when traveling — now it’s a sign of the times. It’s an excellent excuse to paint into the early-morning hours and to wake up late and hope the ink or watercolor has dried. I usually work on two to four surfaces at once, as the waiting game (evaporation) is part of the process.
The theme in this body of work is one I’ve referenced since working on “The Moving Cultures Project” in Tibet during 2009. Ladders surfaced in the work I made there… a reference to the Tibetans’ desire to escape oppression and/or attain enlightenment. Since then the ladders have become a running motif for me at times, particularly personal and relevant when I lost my parents in 2011.
As my sleep patterns are so out of whack right now, I dream about these images and have realized my ladders walk the line between a DNA sequence and Jacob’s Ladder. Perhaps we all do, whether or not we see ladders.
This series will continue to evolve. What began as part of my “Dharma Diaries” in 2009 currently reflects the anxiety of an unknown unlike any other in our lifetime. I’m okay with the unknown part. Nature and science rock. It’s the Idiocracy that scares me.
At home I will continue to paint and draw on archival rag paper. Most of these are between ten and eighteen inches in size. I use ink, watercolor, gouache, oil pastel, wax and whatever else fits the bill. Larger work appears on my website and at Reynolds Gallery in Richmond, Virginia.
I’m also participating in “The Arc of the Viral Universe,” a journaling group that can be found on FB and IG (#arcoftheviraluniverse).
— Amie Oliver
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You can find more of Amie’s work featured in our interview with her here, and in conversation with Patricia Smith’s “Holy War” (where you will see some early ladder work). Be sure to visit her website: http://www.amieoliver.info.
************************** | https://medium.com/broad-street-blog-pandemic-2020/quarantine-dreams-and-jacobs-ladder-from-the-studio-of-amie-oliver-5b376caed2f7 | ['Broad Street Magazine'] | 2020-04-19 12:51:14.417000+00:00 | ['Quarantine', 'Artist', 'Memoir', 'Art', 'Creativity'] |
Developing an NLP based PR platform for the Canadian Elections | Developing an NLP based PR platform for the Canadian Elections
An article about our project for developing an interactive platform for Public Relations management
Abhishek Sunnak, Sri Gayatri Rachakonda, Oluwaseyi Talabi
Motivation
Elections are a vital part of democracy allowing people to vote for the candidate they think can best lead the country. A candidate’s campaign aims to demonstrate to the public why they think they are the best choice. However, in this age of constant media coverage and digital communications, the candidate is scrutinized at every step. A single misquote or negative news about a candidate can be the difference between him winning or losing the election. It becomes crucial to have a public relations manager who can guide and direct the candidate’s campaign by prioritizing specific campaign activities. One critical aspect of the PR manager’s work is to understand the public perception of their candidate and improve public sentiment about the candidate. This can be done by looking at the polling trends, trending tweets and the media coverage for the candidate.
However, a lot of time and resources must be spent to manually go through every news article and social media post. This can lead to errors in missing some important news or being too late in reacting to it which could prove critical in the campaign. In this project, we aim to automate this process to make it less error-prone and time intensive by performing sentiment analysis on tweets and news. We also built a model for detecting hyper-partisan news articles to classify an article is left-leaning, right-leaning or unbiased. This is extremely important in today’s world with the increasing divide between people who are left leaning or right leaning. We aim to analyze the sentiment of news articles along with looking at the hyperpartisan nature of articles to provide the PR manager a holistic view of the media coverage and the public’s reaction.
Related Work
There has been work done earlier on individual aspects of sentiment analysis or bias analysis. However, there has not been much work in using state of the art machine learning models towards analyzing public sentiment for an election campaign. There are a few projects which attempt to analyze the sentiment of tweets for elections in the past few years. However, they generally focus on tweets and use pre-trained sentiment models such as VADER or the NLTK sentiment analyzer which are not very accurate. There is also some prior work where the sentiment of financial news was analyzed to predict stock trends. A few papers also attempt to predict stock prices using the sentiment of tweets. The SemEval 2019 task attempts to identify hyperpartisan news based across different publishers. To our understanding, there is currently no platform which provides analyzes both news articles and tweets using deep learning models to provide a complete view of public sentiment. While we’ve taken the example of a PR for a campaign election, our project can be applied to build a public relations platform for any company or individual.
Problem Statement
This project aims to collect all the relevant news articles and social media posts about the 2019 Canadian election and analyze them using NLP techniques such as sentiment analysis and bias analysis. We will build an interactive platform for a PR manager to understand the pulse of the public. Through this product, we aim to answer the following 3 questions:
How does the popularity of a candidate vary across different regions in Canada?
How does the public sentiment about a candidate change over time?
How does the bias of news articles vary across different publishers?
One of the main difficulties in building this product was to predict the sentiment of news articles as they do not have a consistent sentiment across the article. They only have a very subtle undertone which needs to be analyzed to predict if the article is either positive or negative. News articles pose another challenge in that they are lengthy and refer to multiple entities in the same article. It becomes critical to identify the main subject of the news articles. Another important aspect of the project is to make sure that the data is relevant to the Canadian elections as using common words like democratic and conservative also result in tweets and news about other countries. It becomes critical to have a rigorous cleaning process to identify and remove them.
This process involves a lot of different moving parts from collecting news from multiple websites to using various NLP techniques to extract relevant information. We needed to ensure that all the parts worked well together as they are highly dependent on each other. Even if one part of the chain does not work correctly it can lead to the failure of the entire process.
Tools Used
Our application uses the following libraries from the data science ecosystem:
Pandas: Managing Data
Bing News API, News API, Twitter API: Collecting News and Tweets
SpaCy and NLTK: Cleaning data and preprocessing
FastText: Sentiment Analysis
React.js, D3, and ChartJS: Building the Dashboard
Data Science Pipeline
The platform consists of the following fundamental building blocks of a data science pipeline:
Data Collection
The platform consists of the following 3 types of data :
Tweets : Data was collected from Twitter using the Twitter API from a combination of keywords and popular hashtags about the Canadian Elections.
: Data was collected from Twitter using the Twitter API from a combination of keywords and popular hashtags about the Canadian Elections. News: News was collected from multiple websites using the Bing News API and the News API. The full news text was then scraped using the Newspaper3k library.
News was collected from multiple websites using the Bing News API and the News API. The full news text was then scraped using the Newspaper3k library. Polling Data: Aggregated polling data was collected from the CBC website, which contains national and regional polling data as well as the approval and disapproval ratings for the leaders of major national parties.
Data Cleaning
The data from tweets and news involved large blocks of text which required cleaning and pre-processing before they could be used for analysis or scored using the deep learning models. The major components used for data cleaning are given below:
Removal of Irrelevant News : The collected news consisted of several irrelevant news articles relating to topics such as US politics, Venezuelan elections, Brexit, etc. These articles were removed by searching for specific keywords.
: The collected news consisted of several irrelevant news articles relating to topics such as US politics, Venezuelan elections, Brexit, etc. These articles were removed by searching for specific keywords. Text Normalization: The collected news and tweets had a lot of spelling mistakes and contractions. The data was normalized to make it consistent across different articles/tweets to improve the accuracy of the models.
The collected news and tweets had a lot of spelling mistakes and contractions. The data was normalized to make it consistent across different articles/tweets to improve the accuracy of the models. Cleaning Tweets: The tweets were processed to remove URLs, hashtags, and punctuations. Emojis were replaced with the text they represent instead of just being removed as they contain important information about sentiment.
Data Pre-Processing
Even after cleaning the news, we found that the models were not able to correctly estimate the sentiment and bias of the articles due to the length of the news and presence of several irrelevant sentences which were confusing the models. Hence, we had to process the data to extract relevant information using the following steps:
Relevant Sentence Extraction : The relevant sentences of news articles were extracted for the sentiment models as we were more interested in the parts of the article which talk about specific candidates rather than the tone of the full article. This also helped us improve the accuracy of our models as we removed any irrelevant text and reduced the length of text for analysis.
: The relevant sentences of news articles were extracted for the sentiment models as we were more interested in the parts of the article which talk about specific candidates rather than the tone of the full article. This also helped us improve the accuracy of our models as we removed any irrelevant text and reduced the length of text for analysis. News Summarization : The top news articles and their summaries were displayed on the platform to show how each candidate was perceived by the media. We used spacy to process the news articles and get the summarized text.
: The top news articles and their summaries were displayed on the platform to show how each candidate was perceived by the media. We used spacy to process the news articles and get the summarized text. Tagging Data to Candidates: The tweets and news referenced multiple candidates or topics which made it hard to associate them to a specific candidate. We developed an algorithm to find out the main subject of the article/tweet to tag it to a specific candidate.
Model Development and Scoring
After processing the data, we developed models for extracting the sentiment from tweets and news. We also developed a model to understand the bias of different news articles, i.e to check if they were left-leaning, right-leaning or balanced. We used FastText for developing our models. The process for developing each model is explained in depth in the next section.
Data Visualization and Analysis
The React framework was used to develop the web front-end for our platform. The processed data is read using JSON files to create interactive charts and maps for analysis. The charts were developed using a combination of D3 and ChartJS. The charts are automatically updated whenever new data is collected and processed.
Model Training
We performed our entire analysis on Jupyter Notebooks using Python as it has a lot of libraries for handling textual data. Post the processing of data, we attempted to use pre-trained models such as VADER and the NLTK Sentiment Analyzer to get the sentiment of news articles and tweets. However, we found that they were not giving satisfactory results. Then we developed deep learning based models using FastText for our analysis.
FastText is a library developed by Facebook for sentence classification and learning word representations. It is written in C++ and supports multiprocessing, which allowed us to quickly develop the models without the need for GPUs. FastText uses a skip-gram model with negative sampling which further increases training speed. It finds word representations of the n-gram input features and then averages into hidden text representations. The representations are then fed through a linear classifier and a SoftMax output is used to classify the data
Sentiment Analysis
Our first challenge was to collect labeled training data for our models. We collected data from the following sources for training our sentiment model for tweets:
GOP Debate : The dataset contains thousands of tweets about the GOP debate in 2015 and can be used for both sentiment analysis and data categorization. Contributors were asked if a tweet was relevant, which candidate was mentioned, what subject was mentioned, and then what the sentiment was for a given tweet.
: The dataset contains thousands of tweets about the GOP debate in 2015 and can be used for both sentiment analysis and data categorization. Contributors were asked if a tweet was relevant, which candidate was mentioned, what subject was mentioned, and then what the sentiment was for a given tweet. SemEval 2017 Data : SemEval is an annual international workshop for evaluations of computational semantic analysis systems. The dataset contains tweets labeled on a 3 point scale as well as tweets about specific topics in multiple languages. We only used the English tweets for our training data.
: SemEval is an annual international workshop for evaluations of computational semantic analysis systems. The dataset contains tweets labeled on a 3 point scale as well as tweets about specific topics in multiple languages. We only used the English tweets for our training data. BetSentiment Tweets: BetSentiment is a website which provides analysis of fan sentiment on international football. They collect thousands of tweets every day to extract the sentiment associated with different football teams and players. The dataset contains over 5 million labeled tweets about players and teams.
Distribution of Sentiment in Training Data
The data from all three sources were combined to create the training dataset. However, the data is not equally divided into different labels, it contains around 74% of data labeled as neutral. This can lead to the model being overwhelmed by the majority class and ignore the minority class. If the model always predicts the tweet to be neutral, it will guarantee 74% accuracy. This can be avoided by using a technique known as up-sampling. To perform up-sampling, we repeatedly sample tweets from the minority classes until the distribution of tweets is equal. This would reduce the bias towards neutral tweets and improve model accuracy.
An ensemble of FastText models was then trained instead of a single model as it gave higher accuracy. Two of the models were trained on the up-sampled dataset using different hyper-parameters and the 3rd model was trained on the data without upsampling.
We could not find news articles labeled with their sentiment, so we could not train a model. Instead, we used a pre-trained model for analyzing the sentiment of Amazon reviews developed by FastText. The model gives the sentiment of the news on a 5 point scale. The tags were later aggregated to a 3 point scale by combining all articles with sentiment labels of 2,3 and 4 as neutral.
News Bias Analysis
In recent times, we have seen a significant rise in the publication of Hyperpartisan or biased news articles. It is not limited to any single party or country, rather it is a global epidemic. This has led to an increasing divide between people with liberal and conservative values. Hence we wanted to analyze the bias in news articles from different publications.
The SemEval 2019 task aims to develop models for detecting the bias in news articles. There are 2 types of data given for the task, one dataset is tagged based on the bias of the publication and the other dataset is tagged using crowdsourcing. We used the first dataset as there are only 600 articles present in the second dataset. The data was cleaned and pre-processed using similar steps to the ones used for the sentiment models. The bias is given on a 5 point scale with each article tagged as either left, left center, no bias, right center or right. The model was trained using FastText on 80% of the data with 20% of the dataset used for validation. The results from this model were combined with the results of the sentiment model in the dashboard to provide a combined analysis of the news.
Distribution of New by Bias
Evaluation
We evaluated the performance of our sentiment and bias models to show the accuracy of our analysis by calculating the F1 Score and Accuracy of our models.
Sentiment Models
We evaluated the performance of the sentiment model for tweets on the BetSentiment dataset which contained tweets aboutfootball players. We saw that our ensemble model consistently outperformed the individual models. Our results are given below:
Evaluation Metrics for the Sentiment Model for Tweets
We used a pre-trained model by FastText for getting the sentiment of the news articles. The model is trained on the Amazon reviews dataset and has an accuracy of 60.3% on a 5 point scale.
News Bias Model
We used the SemEval dataset tagged by publishers for developing the bias model. The dataset had 600K news articles and was divided into a training (480K) and validation dataset (120K) in a ratio of 80:20. The model predicted the bias on a 5 point scale and was trained using FastText. It had a training accuracy of 89.2% and a validation accuracy of 86.2%.
We saw that the predictions from our models on the tweets and news about the Canadian elections were also collaborated by the polling data as well as the analysis of the top trending hashtags on Twitter. This makes us fairly confident about our results and analysis.
Data Product
The aim of our project is to provide to the campaign manager a visual and interactive analysis platform to be able to track the public perception of the candidate and the opposition and enable data-driven decision making for the campaign. Our dashboard is divided into 3 main components for analysis:
Poll data
Analysis of Poll Data
This page contains the analysis of the polling data to provide to the PR team how the approval ratings of the candidate vary. We show the overall ratings, along with a map to display which party is leading in each election campaign. The PR team can also see how the approval ratings and polling trends vary over a year. The dashboard is interactive and the PR team can view in-depth trends for each candidate and province.
Analysis of Poll Data when a candidate is clicked
On the dashboard, we can see no candidate has an approval rating above 31%, by which we can conclude that the public does not seem satisfied with any of the 3 candidates. The approval ratings over 1-year show that while Liberals had very high approval ratings until Oct 2018, there has been a significant decline over the past 6 months. The conservatives, on the other hand, have maintained a consistent rating over the last year.
Tweets
A view of the Tweets page
This page conveys information about the public sentiment of the candidates on Twitter and the most commonly associated words and hashtags with respect to the election. The map shows which candidate is talked about most across each province and the candidate with the highest average sentiment candidate across each province. The dashboard is interactive, and the data changes when a candidate or province is clicked.
We noticed that Trudeau is the most talked about candidate across most provinces, however, most of the tweets about him have either a negative or neutral sentiment. This can also be observed by looking at the trending hashtags and keywords, with most of them talking about the SNC-Lavalin scandal.
News
The results of sentiment and bias analysis on news articles relating to the Canadian elections are displayed on this tab of the dashboard. The dashboard shows an overall sentiment across news articles and the distribution of bias. The number of articles by top publications and the sentiment of the articles is shown which can be interactively changed depending on the hyper-partisan view clicked. In addition, this tab also contains information about the top news articles along with their summary, allowing the PR team to view the trending news.
We noticed that most news articles are hyper-partisan, with only 7% of them having no bias. The publications generally have a mix of both left leaning and right leaning articles, however, we saw that publications such as CBC News and The Star have more left-leaning articles, while the Vancouver Sun has more right leaning articles. We also observed that most of the news articles we collected were either negative or neutral. This further reinforced our analysis that none of the candidates are liked across the board.
Lessons Learnt
Through our work in this project, we understood the different aspects of developing an NLP based data product. We had to perform several iterations of text processing, data cleaning, sentiment analysis, and visualization. We had to study the inner workings and applications of state of the art NLP libraries such as FastText and Spacy. We learned a great deal about end-to-end product development towards a specific end goal.
During the development of our sentiment models, we realized that we could not ally them directly on news articles, hence we had to develop algorithms to extract relevant information from news articles before applying sentiment analysis. We also saw that emoticons, which are generally discarded during text processing are a very important feature for sentiment analysis and helped a lot in improving the accuracy of our models.
While building the interactive front-end application, we brainstormed about how to communicate our analysis to the end user in a concise and effective manner. By building this product, we believe that we made significant strides towards improving our thought process as data scientists.
While we learned a lot of things while building of the application, we had a few other ideas which we could not implement due to time constraints. A few of the ideas given below can be used to further improve this application:
Continuous Data Input : There are several paid APIs available which can be used to continuously download tweets and news articles. This can be used to gather data from a wider array of sources improving the analysis.
: There are several paid APIs available which can be used to continuously download tweets and news articles. This can be used to gather data from a wider array of sources improving the analysis. Including other Data Sources : We could only gather data from Twitter, however, data from other sources such as Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit can be included in the analysis. We can also include other information, such as demographics and past voting behavior to augment our analysis. This would help in covering a wider portion of the voters and give more insights into their voting behavior.
: We could only gather data from Twitter, however, data from other sources such as Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit can be included in the analysis. We can also include other information, such as demographics and past voting behavior to augment our analysis. This would help in covering a wider portion of the voters and give more insights into their voting behavior. Training Different Deep Learning Models: There are several other techniques which can be used to develop the sentiment and bias models, such as ULMFit and Transformers. From experience, using different types of techniques while building an ensemble model can help in improving accuracy as the models work together to overcome an individual model’s weakness.
Summary
In this project, we developed an NLP-based application which analyzed the sentiment and bias of news articles and tweets related to the Canadian 2019 elections to understand the public opinion of the candidate. We also analyzed the approval ratings of the top 3 candidates across different provinces. We used the latest NLP techniques to train deep-learning models for sentiment and bias analysis to classify news and tweets about the election. Using these results, an interactive dashboard was developed to provide a PR manager a visual platform to gain insights about the public’s perception and the media coverage of a candidate. This project can be further extended to any public relations team for their candidates.
References | https://medium.com/sfu-cspmp/developing-a-nlp-based-pr-platform-for-the-canadian-elections-d63ebed6b2f3 | ['Abhishek Sunnak'] | 2019-04-15 03:26:04.217000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'NLP', 'Elections', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Deep Learning'] |
When a Relationship Changes and You Realise What You Are Feeling is Grief | The last few days I have felt a very deep and profound sadness which I now recognize as grief.
In actual fact, I have been in a state of turmoil for 3 months or so, caused by some issues with my teenage daughter. Her story to tell, not mine, but needless to say it involves the very stressful stretching of what could be considered as usual teenage rebellion.
After a very intense period of about 6 weeks (the worst time of my life, hands down), life has kind of gone back to normal. But not really at the same time.
Her behavior has left scars on all the family and some of her friends. Relationships have been altered, maybe irreparably. Or at least for a very long time. But I can’t bottle it or press it down any longer.
I have tried to be supportive of her during this time. Empathetic. Even though my heart was breaking and the extent of her lies to other people about her family was breathtaking. The deceit. The dishonesty. The sheer stress involved.
Who was this person?
Why would she do these things to herself and to us?
While I battled through the most intense stage of our nightmare, I held it together most of the time. Being strong for everyone else. Trying to stay calm. Trying to rationalize her behavior.
Taking refuge in long walks. Reading fiction. Daily yoga. Trying so hard not to disappear into a bottle of wine — unfortunately something I have done before.
Where was my emotion?
But occasionally I thought to myself: “Why aren’t I crying? Shouldn’t I be a mess?”
Were my anti-depressants numbing me? Was I kidding myself that things weren’t as serious as they really were? Was I taking some sort of false pride in holding it together for everyone else?
I did cry — once. After she sent me a long, rambling, and hurtful email about all my failings, not only as a mother but also simply as a person.
This from a girl who I thought was loving and kind. Who was always joyful and respectful to family members. Who had lots of friends. Who took pride in her school (where she has been since she was 4 years old) and her achievements. Who always seemed happy to have family dinners, to hang out with her Mum, and go on family holidays.
I understand that girls need to make an emotional and mental break from their mothers at some stage. To define their own identity and become their own woman. I did it to my Mum — I don’t think I spoke to her other than grunts for the whole year that I was 14. But we had got passed that age (she turned 18 last week) and so I thought I was one of the lucky ones that hadn’t suffered the nightmare that some of my friends have had with rude, dismissive and disrespectful daughters.
But now it was my turn and boy oh boy, had she saved it all up for one spectacular shit show.
Back to the email — it was amazingly awful. A punch to the heart which caused physical pain. I deleted the email, but not before I had printed it to tuck away in case I ever felt I needed to prove to myself that it had actually existed.
The trouble with crying sometimes? You can’t stop
Once those floodgates opened, I was on the floor sobbing as if my heart would break. Who was I kidding, it did break.
Irretrievably? No, of course not. She is my daughter after all. But definitely in a way that made me realize I couldn’t go to that place of misery. If I didn’t stop myself from crying — from feeling the piercing pain her words caused — then I didn’t know where I might end up, and I was too afraid to find out.
So I sucked it up. I rationalized her actions in sending her cruel, cruel words. She was hurt, she was lashing out, she is having mental health issues. A lot of her comments were projections of many of her behaviors.
Be strong. carry on.
Things have calmed down now, although they are still far from good. She is seeing a psychologist (good) but still lies and disregards our rules (not good).
We are avoiding confrontations because she has only about 6 weeks now until she sits her final school exams, for uni entrance. She is 18 and her school days will be behind her. She has had an early offer to the degree course she is interested in. All she needs is a “pass” in her core subjects.
Our goal is to get her to that point so that if she decides to maintain her behaviors then we can tell her she can no longer live at home. No more putting up with the “I’m 18 now so I can do what I want” that we have had to put up with just a week into her official adulthood.
And as much as I loathe to say those words (because I know she will use them as a weapon to bestow upon herself the ultimate martyrdom) I realise now that if things don’t change I will need to make that call because I can no longer live like this.
Because what I am feeling is such a profound sense of grief for the girl and the relationship I once had.
Who was I kidding? I am not just “sad” or “confused” or “worried”. I am grieving. I have a wailing ball of misery in my heart and I just want to curl up in a fetal position and sleep for days until I can wake up and discover it was all a bad dream.
Acknowledging the grief
Accepting that it is “grief” I feel and not just sadness or worry has been a revelation and also kind of freeing. It is ok to feel this way. It is normal in fact. It is ok to have days when I look at my beautiful girl, or photos from past happy times and lament mistakes we obviously made, or warning signs we failed to see.
I still want to shake her and scream “Who are you? Why are you doing this?” but I don’t think I should and in fact, I won’t because it may push her further away. So we tippy-toe around her,
So, what next? Self-care I suppose. Trying to stay healthy and accept what has happened, while also seeking out every opportunity to try and help and support her — in her positive behaviors at least.
I have two older boys who have also been scarred and need my love and support, and someone to help them deal with their anger.
We will get through this. We can and we must. For her, and for us.
But we need to heal the grief first. | https://medium.com/live-your-life-on-purpose/when-a-relationship-changes-and-you-realise-what-you-are-feeling-is-grief-7714b1d44d2f | ['Lizzee Bee'] | 2020-10-12 23:03:00.526000+00:00 | ['Self-awareness', 'Relationships', 'Love', 'Grief', 'Life'] |
How to Build Advanced SQL | How to Build Advanced SQL
Building more maintainable, readable and optimized data workflows
Photo by Alexandru Acea on Unsplash
SQL remains the language for data. Developed back in the 1970s, it’s one of the few technologies that has remained constant. Regardless of what drag and drop tools come around or what new query paradigms try to overtake it.
SQL remains the most widely used technologies to interact with data. With the advent of databases that utilize NOSQL or (Not Only SQL), layers like Presto and Hive have been developed on top, to provide a friendly SQL interact.
Not only that, but the use of SQL has far expanded beyond data engineers and analysts. Product managers, analytical partners, and software engineers at large tech companies all use SQL to access data and answer questions quickly.
The point is, SQL is worth knowing. But once you know the basics, how do you progress? What takes a SQL user from novice to advanced?
Over the past few years, we’ve spent a lot of time writing SQL for data pipelines, dashboards, data products, and other odds and ends.
We don’t think advanced SQL is about syntax. There aren’t too many fancy clauses after you learn about analytic clauses. Sure, you can loop in SQL and even edit files. However, they’re all actions that can occur in code.
So what separates basic SQL users from advanced SQL users? We believe it’s more about thinking big picture. Advanced SQL developers think long-term vs short-term. They develop SQL that is maintainable, easy to read, and that requires more time and consideration.
In this article, we’ll focus on many of the design decisions that we believe separate novice SQL developers from senior and advanced SQL developers. You’ll notice that this goes beyond SQL. A lot of it will go into more conceptual problems, where there aren’t definite answers to the best solutions.
The format of the tips will be problem or behavior, followed by solution or improved methods. In fact, some of the solutions could be considered design preferences. Some of you might even disagree with the tips we give here. Please leave comments if so — we would love to discuss them further.
With that, let’s get into learning! | https://medium.com/better-programming/how-to-build-advanced-sql-798d615ba323 | [] | 2020-07-10 02:44:21.602000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Data Science', 'Sql', 'Technology', 'Big Data'] |
Overcoming Material Design. | Overcoming Material Design.
Why I’ve developed a negative relationship with the design language, and why you soon will too — that is if it hasn’t happened to you yet.
Okay, I’m going to start this off with one statement; Material Design is great. It has helped unify user interfaces across platforms, and it provides designers with awesome resources (the icons especially 🙏🏽). And while some of you may use Material Design as your UI-North-Star (why are you doing that to yourself), I am not that big of a fan.
Let me give you some background on the short-lived friendship between Material Design and I: It all started in the FABulous Summer of 2014, I was about to enter the 6th grade and my passion in graphic design kick-started. There to help me learn about it, was Google — wo just unveiled their brand new design language, which within the next few months was going to become so overused that you could rename it to any song played on a pop-music radio station. Better yet was the fact that my father and I had just created our startup, which I was the designer for (By the way, you should totally check out the company). Of course, since I was beginning, I used dribbble to guide me through the many upcoming trends of design, including the embarrassing throwback to long-shadows 😷, and one of the up and coming trends was Material Design. I was intrigued; as far as I was concerned, Material Design was the easiest way to design interfaces. I mean everything was figured out for you; the color palettes were from a selection of colors, the interface-structures were given, the components all have instruction, they even tell you what the shadows should look like. It was like one of those fill in the blank stories, where you replace certain blank spaces with words — but in this case, you’re replacing given fields with ones pertaining to your application. Of course, being a sixth grader I couldn’t resist filling all those blanks, and with that, I was hooked.
I’ve always seen Material Design as if Google took the style from Google Now illustrations and just ran with it.
Material Design has designers in a chokehold
How many of you followed a design template or language blindly?
Let’s be honest here, by a show of hands, how many of you have tried Material Design or any other super-specific design language and just stuck with it. ✋ Don’t be ashamed, it’s become normal at this point.
Let’s try another show of hands question; How many of you have seen an app which followed the Material Spec so much that if it had a “G” in the logo it could pass as a Google app. ✋✋✋✋✋ Okay, so all the hands went up.
I was guilty of the horrible crime that is conforming to every single standard the folks at Google Design showed us. And by the end of my designing process, my app looked like if Google made an app and just turned the primary color to teal. And that’s my fault. I’m not blaming Google, I’m not even blaming the spec, I’m blaming myself and others who are like that. The kind of people who blindly follow any design language because they think they have to. I was there, and I see many others (not naming names) who do the same thing. And while it is important to have standards for design quality, and even for usability, the problems begin when there is so much to follow, that personalizing a design language gets you an award from Google.
Fixing the issues; Material edition
There a screen, here a screen, everywhere the same screen.
Now what? After a few hundred words of ranting and explaining why I don’t think it works, where do we go?
I understand that I’m not solving any issues by ranting about things I do not like, so the question is; how do we solve them? We need to make sure that we learn how to infuse our brand into everything we do. Whether it’s adding your own style of illustration, or replacing Material Icons with those of your brand. And another big component is messaging; whether it is through colors, navigation, or just messages.
I like to look to these two apps for inspiration on what to do when it comes to following design languages:
A perfect example of this is Dropbox. I’ve always admired Dropbox in their design inside and out of Material Design. Through clean minimalism and delightful illustrations, Dropbox has mastered the art of making the most of Material Design. Here’s what we can learn from their app.
Despite following the spec, Dropbox was able to customize Material Design to showcase their brand values, which is very important for anyone’s app. By using special elements like illustrations, you are able to maintain your personality even if you decide to use UX-cues from a design language.
Keep your styles consistent Use the same personality throughout platforms Have fun with it, and remember that deviation from the spec is not a bad thing.
Airbnb is pretty amazing when it comes to their use of Material Design, mostly because they deviate the most from it.
Material design who?
Airbnb has, in my opinion, nailed the art of showcasing brand within design languages. Through the use of custom icons, fresh imagery, custom elements, and some pretty awesome typography, Airbnb was able to get a really nice aesthetic in their apps. Somehow, they do all of this while remaining on spec. So let’s see what we can learn from them:
Airbnb uses a lot of aspects from other platforms, especially web, and this creates an uber-cohesive experience which can be enjoyed by users. So here’s what they did right!
Typography is important, make sure to make it different. Icons don’t have to be from the icon pack! Use colors! Lots and lots of colors!
Final thoughts after an article full of rambling
First of all, congratulations on making it this far. This is my first design article and the fact that you dragged yourself to the end shows me immense support. Also, I’m not writing this as a way to shoot down a group of designers, but to offer insight on mistakes I made when I started. I truly believe that design languages like Material provide new designers a great way to learn more about the realm of design, and they also offer opportunities to experiment for the more experienced.
I would love to hear your thoughts (the negatives as well) and I also wouldn’t mind a recommend 😉.
Thank you for reading, and keep up to date with my work on dribbble! | https://uxdesign.cc/ive-grown-to-hate-material-design-5a6d9fc9bc00 | ['Nikhil Vootkur'] | 2017-03-02 17:12:29.580000+00:00 | ['UI', 'Design', 'Graphic Design', 'UX', 'Material Design'] |
Get Answers from Structural Equation Modeling | Things You Should Know Before Using Structural Equation Modeling.
Structural equation modeling (SEM) is a series of statistical methods that allow complex relationships between one or more independent variables and one or more dependent variables. Though there are many ways to describe SEM, it is most commonly thought of as a hybrid between some form of analysis of variance (ANOVA)/regression and some form of factor analysis. In general, it can be remarked that SEM allows one to perform some type of multilevel regression/ANOVA on factors. You should therefore be quite familiar with univariate and multivariate regression/ANOVA as well as the basics of factor analysis to implement SEM for your data.
Read More | https://medium.com/data-analytics-and-ai/get-answers-from-structural-equation-modeling-aed6d2e21228 | ['Ella William'] | 2019-06-20 10:50:39.621000+00:00 | ['Predictive Analytics', 'Data Science', 'Big Data', 'Predictive Modeling'] |
Applying Comms Planning to Healthcare | Applying Comms Planning to Healthcare
10 Lessons Learned From My Time in Pharma Advertising
I’ve heard it said that pharma advertising, strategically speaking, lags behind the trends and best practices of consumer advertising. To counter that, the teams that we work with touch both pharma and consumer accounts.
After all, your Pfizer customer might also simultaneously be your M&M customer. The general comms planning principles don’t change. And including comms planning is a must for guiding multi-channel marketing and creative effectiveness.
Here are some ways that I’ve found success applying comms planning to healthcare.
Build distinct brand elements, and use the same for HCPs and patients.
Distinct assets build brands. This is especially important for the time-strapped, information-burdened consumers of the pharmaceutical world. Once in the doctor’s office, they may just know they want to have a conversation about “the little blue pill” or “the giant with the flu.” There, it’s important for both doctors and patients to have the same reference point and that’s where distinct assets come in.
Create emotional work that connects with people on a human level.
Given the restrictions that healthcare must work within, it often feels that creativity can be constricted. But we believe that, at the end of the day, emotional, creative work is what drives successful advertising. You can read more here and here.
BBDO’s Tamiflu Work
Longform video is our huge new opportunity.
The next “shiny new thing” is actually a very simple storytelling technique- long form video (read more here.) Videos longer than 60 seconds are seen as “content” and can have incredible effects on awareness, message recall, and shares. Not only that, channels like YouTube and Facebook have custom video modules that relieve videos themselves from having to include ISIs.
BBDO’s Longform Video for Pfizer
Re-think broad media and traditional channels.
We understand that many pharma clients, the audience is quite small. But as we see consumer advertising shift their media back towards the merits of broad-reaching TV, we expect that our pharma clients will soon do the same.
Create custom creative for each channel.
Consumers watch video, for example, differently when they’re watching TV vs. YouTube vs. Facebook. Not only does one size not fit all in those channels, research from the Advertising Research Foundation has shown that campaigns that use custom ads see a 31% increase in positive consumer sentiment AND a 57% increase in ROI.
Make display better with simpler banners.
Working with the IAB, BBDO’s Jordan Weil developed a simpler approach to better, more distinct banners. We call it the “Banner B.E.A.T.” And when it comes to mobile banners, we make those even simpler. Scrolling ISI is certainly an exception to the rules outlined there, but the general principles apply to the real estate we can control.
Change the way you do creative testing.
Studies have shown that “Intermediate effects of advertising such as brand awareness, image, and other measures of consumer brand health, do not correlate reliably with business performance.” Thus, we recommend that if a client is performing creative testing, they account for both “System 1” and “System 2" thinking offered by an increasing number of vendors, including Millward Brown, Nielsen, BrainJuicer, and Hall & Partners.
Developing frameworks collaboratively and include both paid and owned.
Get all the teams from all the agencies together to share their experiences. Align on your overall communications goal (which can apply to multiple targets), strategy and creative. Then move in to the real barriers that are preventing you from achieving your communication goal and how you will overcome them with communication, paid media, and owned assets. Set one person in charge (the comms planner) to lead the discussion and consolidate the thinking.
Example Messaging Framework that We Use for Pharma
Identify the whole patient journey, but narrow in on what you can really affect with communications and media.
Brands do not need to communicate along every step of the way, especially when budgets are limited. Use your communications goal and consumer barriers as a guide for where your energy will be best spent, and where your brand can have the biggest change.
Keep it human-friendly.
In your internal documents and external communications, reduce jargon and write so that the average person can completely comprehend your intention. This is especially important when we’re writing for cross-agency collaboration. More human means less confusion. And because people respond to images of people (ex: this study about mobile phone visuals and faces), we want to keep our communications people-friendly too. | https://medium.com/comms-planning/applying-comms-planning-to-healthcare-199c4082793e | ['Larissa Hayden'] | 2017-02-06 19:39:32.458000+00:00 | ['Advertising', 'Marketing', 'Pharmaceutical', 'Healthcare', 'Healthcare Innovations'] |
Basic Tips for Re-engaging Your Twitter Followers | Basic Tips for Re-engaging Your Twitter Followers
Still not sure how to use Twitter? Here are a few ideas to build an audience or re-engage your followers
Twitter has become a social media standard for being discovered online. Using all its features can help deepen relationships.
Despite the years since Twitter launched, there remains a considerable number of small business people that do not understand the purpose of Twitter.
Yet as of 2020 half of the world population uses social media for news, sharing thoughts, and announcing events, let alone Twitter. Your next campaign can go from mundane to terrific by reexamining your usage against new features and standard rules. The usage is likely in need of an update, especially since tweet character limits were increased to 280 characters back in 2017. That change heralded the end of Twitter’s iconic 140 character limit. It also heralded several unique twists on features that can expand and guide your discussion to the audience you need.
Twitter is the best way to share a message through multiple audiences via hashtag. This tweet was created just as the major character change launched.
If you are among those still looking to understand how to best use Twitter, here is a brief overview. These are not comprehensive, but a few starter tips for being creative on your stream and engaging to draw genuine followers that align to your organization's purpose. | https://medium.com/better-marketing/basic-tips-for-re-engaging-your-twitter-followers-5142ba54d01f | ['Pierre Debois'] | 2020-11-02 15:23:26.493000+00:00 | ['Social Media', 'Marketing', 'Twitter', 'Business'] |
Why we need to stop shaming remote workers and people with disabilities for taking time off | The last time I was a guest on a podcast, I was a first for that show in two different ways:
I was the first remote worker (guest)
And the first formally diagnosed Dyspraxic to come on the show and talk about their Dyspraxia.
The host also happened to have a disability themselves, something that doesn’t happen often when I make guest appearances on podcasts. That alone was freeing. I didn’t have to mask my neurodiversity to keep up with someone else’s idea of “normal”.
So I was as transparent as I possibly could be, even when discussing heavy topics, like stigma and bullying, for example.
Although what I remember the most about that conversation is the first ten minutes.
The host said:
“How are you?”
Then I surprised even myself with my response:
“I’m good thanks. Just woke up from a nap, so I feel great! “
He laughed, I laughed, and we had a very relatable conversation about our preferences around napping. Turns out he’s not a fan of napping during the day, but I love it. Discussing when I nap, why I nap, and how I nap was the perfect segway into me explaining how my brain works.
Because the first thing we talked about was how rest benefits me from a productivity and creativity perspective.
At the time, unapologetically admitting I take nap breaks felt important
I’m a millennial, and to me, one of the most damaging features of my generation is our relationship with technology.
Everything from weddings, engagements, and pregnancies, to other important milestones, are seen through Instagram and Facebook filters. You hardly ever see the difficult parts of all these things. When people are vulnerable, it’s often a troubling cry for help.
Because of this, I know so many women my age who feel like they need to apologize when they can’t work harder, or need to take some time off.
How this relates to the need to nap
Keeping in touch with people without having to worry about long-distance fees or other barriers is wonderful. But seeing that your peers are one step ahead of you at a significant milestone of “adulting” can do terrible things to your mental health.
Meanwhile, the cost of living, housing, and other expenses is going up, and the average wage doesn’t properly reflect those costs. No matter how hard we work, we often can’t access many of the things that our parents did at our age.
To make things even worse, the media paints my generation as an easy target. It doesn’t matter if we have zero jobs or ten jobs. Not being able to afford or access certain things leads to unproven claims that we’re all lazy, entitled, or irresponsible with money.
Proving other people wrong can make working even harder extremely tempting. Then you work so hard that the gut feelings that protect you from being taken advantage of are less reliable. Not having a 9-to-5 schedule taught me that the only thing that actually matters is the results of what you do.
If I have to nap for an hour to do a good job at a freelance project that is due in a few days, I’ll do it. No one is counting how many hours I worked because that’s not what they’re paying for.
Although I totally realize that not everyone has that privilege. However, from a broad workforce perspective, we put too much emphasis on how many hours someone worked. Then too little meaning is placed on what happened during those hours, and time is wasted on office politics.
When I was writing an article on workforce accessibility for people with disabilities, I learned that disability unemployment rates are way too high
But honestly, I’m not surprised. All types of breaks are often a source of shame and judgement, and environment-based accommodations aren’t always taken seriously.
Not to mention, getting a job in the first place relies on tactics that can be really tough for people with non-neurotypical brains or chronic illnesses.
For example, neurodiverse folks are less likely to pick up on the verbal and non-verbal cues you have to pick up on to thrive in a job interview or networking event. Then, there is the interview process, where you have to “prove” that you’re a worthwhile candidate with your words. The pressure to prove your worth without preparation can be a source of stress and anxiety; because you have to be the cleverest and loudest voice, rather than the most dedicated worker.
From a chronic illness point of view, 8 hours of work, and multiple hours of schmoozing can be hard. Because that’s a long time to have to worry about everything from how you look to what you say while also managing your chronic condition.
But don’t get me wrong. People with disabilities can and often are an amazing contribution to the workforce. When they’re not, it is often, but not always, the fault of people who have the power to change how people work.
That, however, is easier said than done. The people who will probably disagree with me in the comments section will disagree because the system has worked for them.
So for the sake of the naysayers let me put things into perspective. Right now, so many different people are looking in the mirror and asking themselves:
Why do the characters of the books I read, and the movies I watch, along with the people I work with all look like me?
And for those who don’t feel represented enough the question is something much heavier and more complicated than that:
Why don’t they look like me?
Meanwhile, COVID is forcing our lives on Zoom, and people who would have never thought they would be isolated are isolated from their communities. Most importantly though, it is changing how we socialize, how we build and maintain relationships, and how we work.
The COVID era, so far, is proof of something I assumed all along:
We don’t have to use centuries-old work and social practices to connect and work with each other. Nothing excites me more than the idea that we could use the tools at our disposal to provide accessible options for those who have felt left out all along.
I want to believe that this will lead to the changes I was hoping for all along, but I’m also a realist who maintains my sanity with a pinch of optimism. How we work is causing huge levels of inequality and inaccessibility for so many people. It took a nasty virus for this unresolved issue to rise to the surface, and that’s progress. But we also need to find a resolution to these issues. | https://rosierichings.medium.com/why-we-need-to-stop-shaming-remote-workers-and-people-with-disabilities-for-taking-time-off-80ea5c07f1e1 | ['Rosemary Richings'] | 2020-12-29 22:21:36.377000+00:00 | ['Remote Working', 'Disability', 'Millennials', 'Mental Health'] |
How DevOps is used in Real Time Scenarios? | DevOps Real-Time Scenarios — Edureka
Many of you might be aware of all the theories related to DevOps. But do you know how to implement DevOps principles in real life? In this article, I will discuss the DevOps Real Time scenarios that will help you get a brief understanding of how things work in real-time.
The pointers that I will be covering in this DevOps Real-Time Scenarios article are:
What is DevOps?
Problems solved by DevOps
CI(Continuous Integration) Scenarios
CT(Continuous Testing) Scenarios
CD(Continuous Delivery) Scenarios
DevOps Data Scenarios
So let us begin with our first topic.
What is DevOps?
DevOps is a software development approach that involves Continuous Development, Continuous Testing, Continuous Integration, Continuous Deployment, and Continuous Monitoring of the software throughout its development life cycle. These activities are possible only in DevOps, not Agile or waterfall. This is why Facebook and other top companies have chosen DevOps as the way forward for their business goals. DevOps is mainly preferred for developing high-quality software in shorter development cycles which results in greater customer satisfaction.
In the next section of this DevOps Real-Time Scenarios article, we will take a look on the various problems solved by DevOps.
Problems solved by DevOps
1. Deliver value to Customers
DevOps minimizes the time it takes to deliver value to customers. The cycle time from the developer’s completion of a story/task until production reduces significantly, allowing the value to be realized as quickly as possible.
it takes to deliver value to customers. The cycle time from the developer’s completion of a story/task until production reduces significantly, allowing the value to be realized as quickly as possible. The most important value realized through DevOps is that it allows IT organizations to focus on their “core” business activities. By removing constraints within the value stream and automating deployment pipelines, teams can focus on the activities. This helps in creating customer value rather than just moving bits and bytes. These activities increase the sustainable competitive advantage of a company and create better business outcomes.
2. Reduced cycle time
Internally DevOps is the only way to achieve the agility to deliver secure code with insights. It is important to have gates and a well-crafted DevOps process. When you are delivering a new version, it can run side-by-side with the current version. You can also compare metrics to accomplish what you wanted to with application and performance metrics.
DevOps drive development teams towards continuous improvement and faster release cycles. If done well, this iterative process allows more focus over time, on the things that really matter. Such as things that create great experiences for users — and less time on managing tools, processes, and tech.
3. Time to market
The most important problem being solved is the reduction of the complexity of the process. This contributes significantly towards our business success by shortening our time to market, giving us quick feedback on features, and making us more responsive to our customers’ needs.
4. Problem Resolution
The greatest value of successful DevOps implementation is higher confidence in delivery, visibility, and traceability to what’s going on, so you can solve problems quicker.
Another important advantage of DevOps is not wasting any time. Aligning an organization’s people and resources enables rapid deployments and updates. This allows DevOps programs to fix problems before they turn into disasters. DevOps creates a culture of transparency that promotes focus and collaboration among development, operations, and security teams.
CI (Continuous Integration) in DevOps Real Time Scenarios
1. Individuals May See Continuous Integration Counterproductive
Members of a development team have different roles, responsibilities, and priorities. It is possible that the Product manager’s first priority might be launching new features, project managers have to make sure that their team meets the deadline. Programmers might think that if they stop to fix a minor bug every time it occurs will slow them down. They might feel keeping the build clean is an extra burden on them and they won’t be the benefitted for their extra efforts. This can potentially jeopardize the adaptation process.
To overcome this:
Firstly, make sure your whole team is on board before you adopt continuous integration.
CTOs and team leaders must help the team members understand the costs and benefits of continuous integration.
Highlight what and when coders will be benefitted by dedicating themselves to a different working method that requires a bit more openness and flexibility.
2. Integrating CI Into Your Existing Development Flow
Adopting CI inevitably comes with the need for essentially changing some parts of your development workflow. It is possible that your developers might not fix the workflow if it isn’t broken. This is possible mainly if your team has a bigger routine in executing their current workflow.
If you wish to change the workflow then you must do it with great precautions. Otherwise, it could compromise the productivity of the development team and also the quality of the product. Without sufficient support from the leadership, the development team might be a bit reluctant to undertake a task with such risks involved.
To overcome this:
You must make sure that you give enough time for your team to develop their new workflow. This is done in order to select a flexible continuous integration solution that can support their new workflow.
Also, ensure them that company has their backs even if things might not go very smoothly at the beginning.
3. Relapsing to the Former Testing Habits
The immediate effect of adopting continuous integration is that your team will test more often. So more tests will need more test cases and writing test cases can be time-consuming. Hence, developers often need to divide their time between fixing bugs and writing test cases.
Temporarily, developers might be able to save time by manually testing, but it might hurt more in the long run. The more they procrastinate writing test cases, the more difficult it will become to catch up on the progress of the development. In the worst-case scenario, your team might end up going back to their old testing process.
To overcome this:
You must emphasize that writing test cases from the beginning could save a lot of time for your team and can ensure high test coverage of your product.
Also, embed the idea in your company culture that test cases are as valuable assets as the codebase itself.
4. Developers Ignoring Error Messages
It is a common problem that when bigger teams work together the amount of CI notifications becomes overwhelming and developers start ignoring and muting them. Therefore, it is possible that they might miss the updates that are relevant to them.
It can lead to a stage where coders develop a relative immunity to broken builds and error messages. The longer they ignore relevant notifications, the longer they develop without feedback in the wrong direction. This could potentially cause huge rollbacks, wastage of money, resources, and time.
To overcome this:
You should only send critical updates.
Only send the notification to respective developers who are in charge of fixing it.
CT (Continuous Testing) in DevOps Real Time Scenarios
1. Getting Requirements Specification right
If you get your requirements right then almost half of the battle is won. So if you have a precise and accurate understanding of requirements, you can design test plans better and cover requirements well.
Yet, many teams spend a lot of time and effort simply clarifying the requirements. This is a very common pitfall and to avoid this, teams can adopt Model-based testing and Behavior-Driven Development techniques. This helps to design test scenarios accurately and adequately.
These practices will definitely help address and resolve the gaps more quickly. Also, it enables them to generate more test cases automatically right from the early stages of a sprint.
2. Pipeline Orchestration
The advantages of continuous testing and continuous delivery are closely tied to pipeline orchestration. This directly means understanding how it works, why it works, how to analyze the results, and how and when to scale. Everything depends on the pipeline and hence you need to integrate the pipeline with the automation suite.
But the reason teams fumble is that, no single solution provides the complete toolchain that is required to build a CD pipeline.
Teams have to typically search for the pieces of the puzzle that are correct for them. There are no perfect tools, typically only best-of-breed tools, that provide integrations along with multiple other tools. And of course, an API that permits easy integrations as well.
In short, it is impossible to implement continuous testing without the speed and reliability of a standardized and automated pipeline.
3. Scaling up and managing complexity
Another important scenario is that continuous testing becomes more complex as it moves towards the production environment. The tests grow in number as well as complexity with the maturing code and the environment becoming more complex.
You must update tests each time you update different phases and automated scripts. As a result, the overall time it takes to run the tests also tends to increase towards the release.
The solution for this lies in improved test orchestration that provides the right amount of test coverage in shorter sprint cycles and enables teams to deliver confidently. Ideally, the entire process must be automated with CT carried out at various stages. This is done by using policy gates and manual intervention, up until the code is pushed to production.
4. Creating feedback loops
Without frequent feedback loops at every stage of the development cycle, continuous testing is not possible. This is partly the reason why CT is difficult to implement. You don’t just need automated tests, but you also need visibility of the test results and execution.
Traditional feedback loops like logging tools, code profilers, and performance monitoring tools are not effective anymore. Neither they work together nor provide the depth of insight required to fix issues. Real-time dashboards that generate reports automatically and actionable feedback across the entire SDLC helps release software faster into production with lesser defects. Real-time access to dashboards and access for all team members helps the continuous feedback mechanism.
5. Lack of Environments
Continuous Testing simply means testing more often and this requires hitting multiple environments more frequently. This presents a bottleneck if the said environments are not available at the time they are required. Some environments are available through APIs and some through various interfaces. Some of these environments can be built using modern architecture while others with monolithic legacy client/server or mainframe systems.
But the question here is how do you coordinate testing through the various environment owners? It is also possible that they may not always keep the environments up and running. The answer to all this is Virtualization. By virtualizing the environment, you can test the code without worrying too much about areas that are unchanging. Making the environments accessible and available on-demand through virtualization surely helps remove a significant bottleneck from your pipeline.
CD(Continuous Delivery) in DevOps Real Time Scenarios
1. Deployments taking too long
Distributed applications normally require more than ‘copying and pasting’ files to a server. The complexity tends to increase if you have a farm of servers. Uncertainty about what to deploy, where, and how, is a pretty normal thing. The result? Long waiting times to get our artifacts into the next environment of the route to delaying everything, testing, time to live, etc.
What does DevOps bring to the table? Development and IT operations teams define a deployment process in a blameless collaboration session. First, they verify what works and then take it to the next level with automation to facilitate continuous delivery. This drastically cuts timing for deployment; it also paves the way for more frequent deployments.
2. Missing artifacts, scripts, and other dependencies
We frequently encounter failures post the deployment of a new version of a working piece of software. This is often caused by missing libraries or database scripts not being updated. This is usually caused by a lack of clarity about which dependencies to deploy and their location. Fostering collaboration between development and operations can help resolve these sorts of problems in the majority of cases.
When it comes to automation, you can define dependencies which helps a lot in speeding up deployments. Configuration management tools like Puppet or Chef contribute with an extra level of definition of dependencies. We can define not only dependencies within our application but also at the infrastructure and server configuration level. For example, we can create a virtual machine for a test, and install/configure tomcat before our artifacts are published.
3. Ineffective production monitoring
Sometimes you configure monitoring tools in a way that produces a lot of irrelevant data from production, however, other times they don’t produce enough or nothing at all. There is no definition of what you need to look after and what the metrics are.
You must agree on what to monitor and which information to produce, and then put controls in place. Application Performance management tools are a great help if your organization can afford it to take a look at AppDynamics, New Relic, and AWS X-Ray.
DevOps Data Scenarios
DevOps is all about eliminating the risks associated with new software development: Data analysis identifies those risks. To continuously measure and improve upon the DevOps process, analytics should span across the entire pipeline. This provides invaluable insights to management at all stages of the software development lifecycle.
1. Less time to analyze data
With all the data that is generated at any given time, organizations need to accept that they can’t analyze it all. There’s simply not enough time in the day — and unfortunately, robots aren’t quite sophisticated enough to do it all for us quite yet.
For that reason, it’s important to determine which data sets are most significant. In most cases, this is going to be different for every organization. So before diving in, determine key business objectives and goals. Typically, these goals revolve around customer needs — primarily the most valuable features that are most important to end-users. For a retailer, for example, analyzing how traffic is interacting with the checkout page on the site and testing how it works in the back-end is at the top of the list.
Some quick tips to identify which data is most important to analyze:
Make a chart: Determine the impact outages will have on your business, asking questions such as, “If X breaks, what effect will it have on other features?”
Look at historical data: Identify where issues have arisen in the past and continue to analyze data from tests and build to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
2. Difficult communication
Today, most organizations still operate with different teams and personas identifying their own goals and utilizing their own tools and technologies. Each team acts independently, disconnected from the pipeline and meeting with other teams only during the integration phase.
When it comes to looking at the bigger picture and identifying what is and isn’t working, the organization struggles to come to one solution. This is because mostly because everyone is failing to share the overall data, making analysis impossible.
To overcome this issue, overhaul the flow of communication to ensure everyone is collaborating throughout the SDLC, not just during the integration process.
First, make sure there’s strong synchronization on DevOps metrics from the get-go. Each team’s progress should be displayed in one single dashboard, utilizing the same Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to give management visibility into the entire process. This is done so that they can collect all the necessary data to analyze what went wrong (or what succeeded).
Beyond the initial metrics conversation, there should be constant communication via team meetings or digital channels like Slack.
3. Lack of manpower
When short-staffed, we need smarter tools that utilize deep learning to slot in the data we’re collecting and reach decisions quickly. After all, nobody has time to look at every single test execution (and for some big organizations, there can be about 75,000 in a given day). The trick is to eliminate the noise and find the right things to focus on.
This is where artificial intelligence and machine learning can help. Many tools on the market today utilize AI and ML to do things like:
Develop scripts and tests to move and validate different pieces of data
Report on quality based on previously learned behaviors
Work in response to real-time changes.
So with this, we have come to the end of this article on DevOps Real-Time Scenarios.
If you wish to check out more articles on the market’s most trending technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Python, Ethical Hacking, then you can refer to Edureka’s official site.
Do look out for other articles in this series which will explain the various other aspects of DevOps. | https://medium.com/edureka/devops-real-time-scenarios-c277991745c1 | ['Vardhan Ns'] | 2020-09-09 12:13:03.663000+00:00 | ['Devops Examples', 'Continuous Integration', 'Software Engineering', 'DevOps', 'Continuous Delivery'] |
New Report: Challenges and Opportunities for Hispanic Media in the Digital Age | By Jessica Retis
Today we’re releasing Hispanic Media Today: Serving Bilingual and Bicultural Audiences in the Digital Age, a new report that explores the origins of Hispanic* media in the United States, its growth in recent decades, the complex nature of Latino media and its diverse audiences. The report is an exploration into the challenges and opportunities to sustain Hispanic media in the future.
As with other media sectors, Hispanic media is facing significant financial hurdles due to the virtual disappearance of traditional advertising. Following rapid growth in the 1990s and 2000s, Hispanic daily newspapers have seen more than a 10 percent decline in circulation over the past five years, consistent with other media sectors. On top of financial shortfalls, traditional Hispanic media has also grappled with adapting to the digital transformation and meeting the demands of an increasingly digital audience.
A survey by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists have found that 42 percent of Latinx journalists reported downsizing or cutbacks in staff hours at work, and more than 75 percent say they have been asked to do more with less resources. And 40 percent are concerned about job security.
In addition to financial challenges, Latino media also must take into account the complex diversity of the Hispanic population, which means that local audiences can differ from the shared history and culture of the Spanish-speaking outlet which serves that region. In spite of these struggles, Hispanic media has weathered the downturn better than many mainstream media because of its deep connection to community. And in the past decade, amidst a digital divide across language, age, and immigrant status, a number of bilingual and English-language digital media for younger Latinx audiences have emerged.
Spanish-language media in the U.S. has varied greatly in its more than 200 years of existence, and has served many roles. Publications have ranged from politically conservative to liberal, with varied readerships composed of exile, immigrant, or native Latinx communities. While disseminating local, regional, national and international news according to audience interests and needs, Hispanic media has also highlighted cultural and patriotic activities and served as a forum for public expression.
Hispanic media has also shaped and promoted social and political activism advocating for civil rights and defending Latinx communities against abuse from authorities. For example, Spanish-language radio programs in the early 1920s provided not only entertainment but also information and political advocacy. Spanish-language T.V. programming has also grown over the last 50 years, and provides information on issues of interest to Latinx communities, such as immigration, politics, health, education, and culture, as well as imported Latin American entertainment.
The story of Hispanic media in America is not a simple linear story and there are enormous opportunities to invest in this space and elevate the work of these journalists.
Philanthropic funders and investors should continue to provide critical operating resources to Spanish-language media and invest in helping them develop and design new revenue models. In addition to solidifying revenue, several recommendations to help grow Latino media became apparent during our research. For example, funders should also engage in initiatives to help the next generation of bilingual and bicultural journalism students when they enter the job market, as they make grants to keep Hispanic media afloat. An infusion of youth and fresh ideas into Hispanic media companies would help organizations become more sustainable.
Diversity of newsroom stories, staff, opinion, revenue and ownership is a crucial part of making sure the news reflects the communities it serves. We must do our part to uplift and better serve Hispanic media, to ensure that Americans have access to accurate, diverse sources of information that foster the full participation of every individual in our democracy.
It is our hope that the recommendations outlined in this report further support Hispanic media today, so that diverse, bicultural, bilingual stories can be told tomorrow.
*Hispanic and Latino are used interchangeably in this post, as both pan-ethnic labels tend to be used throughout the United States.
Jessica Retis is an Associate Professor of Journalism at California State University Northridge, a current Democracy Fund grantee, and co-editor of the recently released book, The Handbook of Diasporas, Media, and Culture. To learn more about Jessica’s work, visit http://csun.academia.edu/JessicaRetis or follow @jretis. | https://medium.com/the-engaged-journalism-lab/new-report-challenges-and-opportunities-for-hispanic-media-in-the-digital-age-42c5cc8d2fa | ['Lea Trusty'] | 2019-05-13 14:50:36.492000+00:00 | ['Media', 'Hispanic Media', 'Journalism'] |
How to Start a Law Firm Newsletter | Because so much of the legal industry operates on referrals, the size of your network is often strongly correlated with the size of your business. As any good online marketer knows, starting a monthly newsletter is an excellent way to build your network, promote your services, and grow your brand. In this post, we provide step-by-step instructions for how to start a law firm newsletter, including what email marketing software you should use, how to build an email list, and what kind of content you should write about.
Why to Start a Law Firm Newsletter
Before we get into the details of how to start a law firm newsletter, let’s first establish why you would want to. There are several good reasons.
Most importantly, email marketing is a proven method for promoting products and services online. It just works, no matter what industry you’re in.
Also, email is still one of the best communication channels to reach your customers. Social media is too noisy and crowded to get your word across. Snail mail is too slow and expensive. Phone calls or text messages are too invasive. But email is the right mix of all of them — personal and private, but not overly annoying or intrusive.
Consistently sending out newsletters is one of the most effective ways of communicating a message to your target audience, which is the first step to building your law firm brand. The more frequently people hear your name and interact with you, the more likely they will be to remember you when they are ready to hire a lawyer or refer one to a friend.
What Email Marketing Software to Use
You will need to set up a few things before you can start your law firm newsletter — most notably your email list. This step will require the help of email marketing software.
Many beginners make the mistake of thinking they can just BCC a few hundred contacts on an email newsletter sent through their normal email account. This is a surefire way to get your domain blacklisted for sending spam, hence why email marketing software exists in the first place.
There are many options to choose from for email marketing software, but we typically recommend MailChimp. Not only is it free up to 2000 email contacts, it is also easy to use, and they offer nicely designed email templates which are great for beginners. It isn’t the #1 email marketing software in the world for no reason. (Not to mention that we have also integrated MailChimp with the Lexicata CRM…)
Other options would be Constant Contact, Aweber, Autopilot, MadMimi, etc. Each one has something unique to offer, so do your research upfront to determine which one will meet your specific goals the best. If your goal is simply to send a newsletter each month, MailChimp is a great way to go.
How to Build Your Law Firm Email List
The core asset of any email marketing strategy is the email list itself. The more subscribers you have, the more people you can reach. And the more people you reach, the larger your potential network for new clients and referrals will be.
But you shouldn’t just throw everybody onto one all-encompassing email list. This is a common mistake made by email marketing novices.
It is much more effective if you target your email newsletters based on people’s specific interests, or their relationship to you. The more your message resonates with the reader, the more engaged they will become with your firm, and the less likely they will be to unsubscribe.
For example, if you are a transactional attorney and you provide estate planning, business, and real estate services, you would be wise to split your email list based on those three segments of your practice so that you aren’t sending out irrelevant estate planning content to your business or real estate contacts, and vice versa.
Once you have created your lists in your email marketing software, there are a couple ways to start adding people to the lists. Here are the two main ways:
Adding People to Your List Manually
All email marketing software should offer the ability to upload contacts in bulk from a spreadsheet. Also, you can subscribe people one-by-one each time you meet someone new.
Keep in mind that there are a few things to be aware of when manually adding people to your email list. If you are adding them yourself, you are expected to have their permission first. So be careful about who you are adding to avoid spam complaints.
Also, because it can become cumbersome to keep your email lists up to date when you do it manually, you may want to consider using automation to do it for you.
For example, Lexicata’s MailChimp integration enables you to tag and categorize your contacts and send them to a corresponding email list automatically when they are entered in your CRM database. This eliminates the annoyance of double data entry. You could also use a tool like Zapier to streamline this process.
Getting Email Subscribers from Your Website
True marketers build their email lists organically from blogs and websites. This requires a lot of work, but it is also highly effective as a marketing strategy because you don’t have to do anything to manage your lists, and your network will begin growing on its own.
There are two basic steps required to start getting email subscribers from your blog or website:
Embed signup forms to capture people’s contact information (name and email) Produce a steady stream of helpful content to generate web traffic and subscribers
MailChimp and most other email marketing software will give you the option to embed a signup form on your website. You can just copy/paste the embed code into various pages of your website or blog, and this will enable people to easily opt-in to your mailing list.
If you use WordPress, there is also a free MailChimp plugin you can install.
Embedding the form is the easy part, but getting people to actually subscribe will take a bit more work. The best strategy to get email subscribers is to start a law blog, and publish content frequently.
If you come across as helpful and demonstrate that you are an authority on a certain topic, people will be inclined to subscribe to receive future updates from you. For example, you can subscribe to the Lexicata MailChimp list from the bottom of this page (hint hint) and we will send you an awesome article about how to run a successful law practice every week.
You can also offer downloads in exchange for email addresses. This can be an excellent strategy for law firms due to the inherent value in your knowledge. Offering free downloadable templates or how-to guides in exchange for an email address is a great way to encourage people to opt-in to your mailing list.
How to Create Your First Newsletter
Now that you’ve got your email marketing software set up, created your email lists, and started adding subscribers, the hardest part is over. All you have to do now is start sending out newsletters!
Here’s how to create and send out your first newsletter:
Customize Your Template
If you use MailChimp or something similar, creating a template is incredibly easy. They handle all the hard aspects of design, layout, and spacing by providing pre-configured templates to choose from. This gives you the ability to create a professional looking email newsletter without having to be a designer.
The email templates are also easy to customize. You can add your logo, change color schemes, and add text boxes, videos, images, buttons, and other types of content. It’s a good idea to include your logo and some images to make your newsletters more interesting, and get impressions of your brand.
Write Your Content
With your basic template set up, the next step is to input the actual content. This should include some text (but not too much), as well as images, links to your website, your social media accounts, and more.
The best kind of content to put into your newsletter is something that will be useful for your readers. For example, we send out an update once per week about our latest blog post. You might do the same (it’s a great way to incentivize yourself to produce content for your blog). Or you might send updates about legal issues in the news, new laws that would affect your readers, etc.
Preview and Test
It’s always a good idea to preview your newsletter and do a test run on yourself to make sure you didn’t make any mistakes. MailChimp has a built in feature to preview what your newsletter will look like on different types of devices, which is handy. You can also just send a “test” to your own email address and open it up.
Send It Out
Finally, when your template and content has been finalized, and you double checked to make sure you didn’t make any mistakes, you are ready to send out the newsletter to your email list!
But don’t plan to stop there. A newsletter is only effective if you send out updates consistently. You should get in the habit of sending them quarterly or monthly, and continue to provide fresh, interesting content for your readers. Consistency is the key to establishing brand recognition for your law firm, which is ultimately what you’re going for by starting a newsletter for your firm. | https://medium.com/law-firm-marketing/how-to-start-a-law-firm-newsletter-3d099db636ae | ['Aaron George'] | 2016-12-05 20:56:08.311000+00:00 | ['Email', 'Law Firm Marketing', 'Networking', 'Marketing', 'Online Marketing'] |
Experts offer five principles to guide Congressional response to COVID-19 | March 12, 2020
Dear [Members]:
As you work to respond to the coronavirus threat on Capitol Hill, we urge you to consider the following:
Prioritize the health and safety of the public, staff, press, and lawmakers: We recognize that there are contradictory pressures to project calm while also modeling appropriate responses, such as the “social distancing” recommended by the Centers for Disease Control. In this vein, we encourage Congress to adopt a “putting on your own mask before assisting others” approach, to take rational steps to limit exposure on the Capitol Campus and within district offices. By temporarily postponing school tours, industry fly-ins, and in-person advocacy meetings, Congress will wisely decrease the risk of contagion to the public and staff.
Take steps to ensure the continued operation of the legislative branch, with modified emergency procedures: While we understand the need for Congress to limit exposure and chances for community spread of the coronavirus on Capitol Hill, we strongly urge Congress to remain capable of conducting business. The first branch of government must continue to legislate, appropriate, and conduct oversight even as the coronavirus makes in-person convening inadvisable; therefore we recommend allowing for the use of commercial technologies to conduct proceedings remotely during the emergency.
Adopt a “digital first” approach and use modern technology to maintain continuity of operations and transparency during emergency response: As both chambers admirably begin to implement steps toward telework for select staff, we encourage Congress to immediately begin working on ways that oversight and legislative work could be conducted online through existing commercial software and teleconference tools. While some functions that remain paper-based may need to continue to be conducted in person by minimal staff, the House and Senate should explore and adopt temporary rule changes that would allow lawmakers’ debate and votes in committee and on the Floor to occur remotely, while still being viewable to members, staff, the press, and public. These changes should be adopted with a “digital first” approach, ensuring that “if it can be done remotely, it should be done remotely” during the emergency response.
Continue to conduct business openly, allow access to the public and media, and provide trusted sources of factual information for constituents: As Congress considers increasingly virtual activity during the emergency period, it should maintain the ability for the public and the media to view proceedings. In addition, even as Capitol access is limited for visitors, members of the Capitol Hill press corps should continue to enjoy unfettered access.
Time-limit emergency provisions: To avoid unintended consequences of emergency-based changes in practice and procedure, they should be enacted as temporary changes, limited in time (we suggest one month) that expire if not renewed. This will allow Congress flexibility during a critical time, but also allows deliberation and debate on changes that could fundamentally alter how Congress conducts its business.
We appreciate the considerable efforts underway to respond to this unprecedented situation and stand ready to assist in any way. If you have any questions about our recommendations, please contact Marci Harris, POPVOX CEO, at [email protected], or Daniel Schuman, Demand Progress policy director, at [email protected].
Sincerely,
Kel McClanahan, Executive Director, National Security Counselors
Soren Dayton, Policy Advocate, Direct Democracy
Kevin M. Esterling, Professor of Public Policy and Political Science, University of California, Riverside
Bob Gourley, Co-Founder and CTO, OODA, LLC and Former CTO, Defense Intelligence Agency
Marci Harris, CEO and Co-Founder, POPVOX
lorelei kelly, Fellow and Director of Congressional Modernization, Beeck Center, Georgetown University
Deborah Kobza, CGEIT, JIEM, President, International Association of Certified ISAOs (IACI)
David M.J. Lazer, Professor of Political Science and Computer Science, Northeastern University
Patrice McDermott, Director, Government Information Watch
Michael A. Neblo, Professor of Political Science, Ohio State University
Daniel Schuman, Policy Director, Demand Progress Education Fund
Joshua Sewell, Senior Policy Analyst, Taxpayers for Common Sense
Joshua Tauberer, President, Civic Impulse, LLC | https://medium.com/g21c/experts-offer-five-principles-to-guide-congressional-response-to-covid-19-7e15ad1281a4 | ['Marci Harris'] | 2020-03-12 15:46:56.342000+00:00 | ['Congress', 'G21c Articles', 'Coronavirus', 'Covid 19'] |
GraphQL — The Stack #1. This blog is a part of a series on… | This blog is a part of a series on GraphQL where we will dive deep into GraphQL and its ecosystem one piece at a time
Part 1: Diving Deep
Part 2: The Usecase & Architecture
Part 3: The Stack #1
Part 4: The Stack #2
Part 5: The Stack #3
Part 6: The Workflow
Now that we have discussed about GraphQL, and also about some of the architectural considerations when starting off, let’s look at the next important step in the puzzle — choosing the right tech stack for your usecase and building the development workflow which suits you best in this blog.
Technology changes and evolves constantly as we have already seen it happening all these days. So, rather than worrying too much about the technology you choose, it is better to choose a tool, library or platform which allows for incremental changes without lockin. Using the list in the previous blog post might actually help in your decision making process.
But, today I am going to assume a tech stack (the GraphQL Tech Stack that I work with everyday to build Timecampus) and walk you through. The reason I say “GraphQL” Tech Stack is because, this is just a part of the complete stack I use and there is more to it which we will discuss sometime down the line in a different blog.
NOTE: While these work great for me, this is an area of continuous exploration for me and I don’t mind replacing X with Y as long as the effort is really worth it from a future perspective (we will explore more on what they are and why we use these as we go along). With that, let’s start.
VSCode
There is no doubt that VSCode has become the defacto editor which developers user these days. And it definitely deserves the recognition and credit it gets. VSCode comes with amazing extensions and tooling for GraphQL and its ecosystem built by the community and if you work with GraphQL and Typescript, I would say it is pretty much a standard editor which you would definitely want to use.
For instance, just do a search for “GraphQL” in the marketplace, and this is what you get:
and the ecosystem is growing even more everyday and this makes VSCode indispensable for our stack.
GraphQL Config
GraphQL Config acts as a single configuration point for all that we do with GraphQL. This is important because when working on projects, it is important to have little to no repetition (DRY principle) and having a separate config file for every tool will start getting overwhelming and messy over time since we will have multiple places to maintain.
We can specify all that we want regarding GraphQL in a single .graphqlrc file as mentioned in the docs starting from the location to the schema, the GraphQL documents (queries and mutations), and also the configuration for extensions which we use with it.
Not just this, a single .graphqlrc file can be used to specify all the configuration you need for multiple projects that you use in your workspace.
For eg. it can integrate with our VSCode GraphQL extension to provide autocompletion, intellisense and so on, provide all the config needed to do code generation with GraphQL codegen, linting with GraphQL ESLint and can also pave way to all the other tools we may integrate in the future.
A .graphqlrc.yml file may look something like this:
GraphQL Config Snippet as used by Timecampus
VSCode GraphQL
The next thing which comes to mind is a VSCode extension which can provide the support for all the things you need to do with GraphQL. Originally developed by the amazing people at Prisma this extension was later donated to the GraphQL Foundation and the reason this extension is really promising is because, it provides everything you need to work with GraphQL including syntax highlighting, autocompletion, validation, SDL navigation, execute, operations, support for tagged template literals and all of this with support for GraphQL Config and it works great.
NOTE: If you are using the Apollo Stack (like Federation), I would recommend you to go with Apollo VSCode instead since it provides support for things like apollo.config.js (which integrates with the schema registry), federation directives and so on.
GraphQL ESLint
The next thing which is important when you work with GraphQL as a team is following a set of standards so that everyone is on the same page. This is where using a linter like GraphQL ESLint would really help. The beauty is that it integrates seamlessly with GraphQL Config, supports ESLint natively and also provides some inbuilt rules which is a great start to work with like consistent case, making naming of operations mandatory, forcing a deprecation reason and so on which can be of great use as you scale up with GraphQL.
A sample .eslintrc file to be used for GraphQL ESLint would look something like this:
GraphQL ESLint snippet as used by Timecampus
GraphQL Inspector
How do you make collaborating with GraphQL very easy? And how do you do this in such a way that you have all the information you need to take a specific action? What if there are breaking changes to your schema? Errors and issues may creep in anywhere and at anytime.
This is where GraphQL inspector comes in. It provides a platform with various functionalities like schema validation, coverage, finding similar operations, inspecting the difference between different versions of the schema, mock your schema with test data and also a Github application to do all this for you when you raise a pull request.
For eg. this is how finding the coverage of your operations against the schema looks like:
GraphQL Coverage as used by Timecampus
And if you want to find similar fields/types within your schema, this is how it will look like:
GraphQL Similarity as used by Timecampus
Typescript
When I initially started off with Typescript few years ago, I was not sure of the advantages it would provide me over time for the effort I am putting in to make the code I write completely typed. To be honest, it takes a lot of effort and sometimes can be painful. But, this perception changed over time especially when I started working with GraphQL and Typescript.
The reason GraphQL works great with Typescript is mainly because of a lot of similarities between them with both being strongly typed, providing a clear path to documentation, offering great validations and also a great ecosystem built both on top of Typescript and GraphQL.
This will become more evident as we go through this blog. But, writing the types manually for each and every field in the schema or for every operation and keeping them updated can be a huge task. This is where a lot of amazing tools come in like GraphQL Codegen, Typed Document Node, Typegraphql and so on.
And on top of this, the beauty is that, with GraphQL and Typescript, we can actually make the end-end stack fully typed (which is what we do at Timecampus). And after seeing all this happening, even `graphql-js` is on its path to migration with Typescript.
Graphql Helix
There are a lot of GraphQL servers out there. And we even spoke about some of those in our first blog post. While it is not necessary to pick an out of the box GraphQL server since you can build your own using graphql-js , it may not be a smart choice since you might not want to reinvent the wheel.
This is where I use GraphQL Helix which provides me a GraphQL server and also the option to selectively replace any module that I need to work for your usecase. This is very evident from the examples folder of the repository demonstrating various usecases like subscriptions, csp, graphql-modules, persisted-queries and so on and also with various frameworks like express, fastify, koa.
And since there are no outside dependencies except for graphql-js there is also no bloat to the same unlike other graphql servers. If you want to see how other GraphQL servers perform, you might want to have a look at this.
GraphQL Codegen
We did discuss how Typescript and GraphQL works seamlessly well with each other. But what if we can generate all that we can from our SDL which provides majority of the information that one needs including name of the schema, fields, types, and so on.
And this is where GraphQL Codegen plays a major role. You can generate all the types, interfaces and so on and it also comes with a lot of plugins and presets to help you work with not just Typescript, but also other languages and tooling. All we have to do is import the type we need and just use it making it really simple. And every time we change the schema, we can just regenerate the types. Also, it integrates seamlessly with GraphQL Config making it really easy to maintain.
For eg. this is how the generated types look like:
There are more tools, libraries and platforms we have to talk about as part of our GraphQL Stack and we will be continuing our discussion in the next blog post. Hope this was insightful.
Looking for help or engineering consultancy? Feel free to reach out to me at vignesh[at]timecampus[dot]com and we can take it from there.
And if this helped, do share this across with your friends, do hang around and follow us for more like this every week. See you all soon. | https://medium.com/timecampus/graphql-the-stack-1-99a8e4f820c2 | ['T.V. Vignesh'] | 2020-12-11 03:22:08.583000+00:00 | ['Computer Science', 'Programming', 'Software Development', 'Engineering', 'GraphQL'] |
11 Tips For Staying Sane During Self-Isolation | I love solitude. I’m the guy who decided to spend New Year’s Eve alone, in a hut, in the middle of nowhere, for fun. Vipassana was too social for my liking. I regularly self-isolate, happily, by choice. But it’s not always been that way. I know what it’s like to choose self-isolation due to depression and social anxiety, and I’m aware there’s a big difference between what I call skilled and unskilled solitude.
Right now, all across the world, people are confined to their homes, self-isolated due to the coronavirus pandemic. At a time where most of us feel free to make our own choices, being constricted to solitude, against our choice, can feel extremely challenging. In this article, I’ll guide you through the shift in mindset to stay sane during self-isolation.
Before I begin, I want to be clear that I’m aware all of our circumstances are unique. There are parents who are juggling working from home with teaching kids full time. Vulnerable people who are stuck in close quarters with abusive or difficult relationships. I don’t have any experience of this, but I do understand mental health, and my hope is that there’s enough here for anyone to distill a few pointers for their unique situation.
1. Manage Your Expectations
The first step in staying sane and looking after your mental health during self-isolation is letting go of expectations. Because this is a universal experience, a narrative is quickly building around self-isolation, what it means to do it right, how to thrive, how to use this time for growth, etc. I’m fully on-board to make the current lockdown an opportunity for self-development. However, this can quickly become a hindrance. Why?
There are lots of potential traps with self-development. Perfectionism is one of them. If we enter this time all guns blazing, determined to uncover our deepest selves, live our best lives, and come out the other side completely transformed… we’ll soon burn out. Self-development is a lifelong commitment. It’s not just for Christmas. Or… global pandemic lockdown situations.
What I’m trying to say here is that it’s crucial to meet yourself where you’re at. If you’re already in full swing, go deeper. Use the tools you already have. Step up your meditation or journalling or yoga practice. But if this is new to you, be gentle, and start from where you’re at. Look at this as an opportunity to create new lifestyle changes that will far surpass quarantine.
2. Set Realistic Goals For Self-Isolation
I highly recommend goal setting during self-isolation. It’ll provide a sense of direction, purpose, and give you something to focus on. Be realistic though. Remember, we’re in the middle of a fucking pandemic. How crazy is that?! Talking from experience, if we aim too high we’ll only create more emotional discomfort. So, again, meet yourself where you’re at.
Extra pointer for those experiencing mental health problems, such as depression and anxiety — this point especially applies to you. Please be easy on yourself. Oh, that reminds me.
3. Remember Your Problems Don’t Disappear Because of a Pandemic
I’ve got 99 problems and a global pandemic is probably near the top of the list. But I still have 98 other problems in my life that don’t just go away. It’s important to acknowledge that as the external, objective world begins to suffer, our very personal, very subjective problems are still very relevant. This means if you’ve been struggling with relationship issues or financial concerns or body image issues, it’s still relevant.
With the heightened anxiety of self-isolation they could even be more present. Find balance between your life and everything going on in the word. The coronavirus has caused a unique world event which has directly impacted pretty much everyone; world events and the personal collide. At the same time, your life and your unique challenges still deserve your attention.
4. Be Conscious Of Comparison
Social media and modern technology is stepping up at this time, allowing people to connect in cyberspace, meditate, mess about, eat together, sing together, you name it. However, having such an open view of how others are handling the situation can be detrimental to our own wellbeing. I’ve noted a few ways comparison manifests at this time, including:
Comparing our lives to how others spend their time during self-isolation. For example, people talking about how this time is leading to all sorts of insights and growth. It can and it does, but don’t beat yourself up if you spend most of the day in your pants, browsing Twitter, binge-eating Ben and Jerry’s and occasionally staring into the abyss.
Comparing our situation to those worse off. Great, this is an indication of empathy and compassion and the future of humanity relies on people like you. Just make sure this doesn’t become a way of minimising your experience and numbing the individual pain you feel. In my experience, this is actually one of the most common symptoms of depression. It’s all relative.
Comparing our lives now to our lives before. Shit got real, everything changed. Things we’ve taken for granted have disappeared seemingly overnight and the football’s been cancelled. When we look at what we’ve lost, it’s important to grieve. Feel it all. Allow space for the sense of loss. This is temporary but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. Watch out for an ego-trap here, though. It’s easy to become stuck in anger, self-pity or indignation rather than genuinely feel pain.
5. Set Boundaries With People You Live With
Setting boundaries doesn’t mean creating borders with chalk on the kitchen floor. It just means expressing healthy emotional, energetic or physical boundaries in your household. A difficult conversation now will save a lot of hassle later. Now is such a good opportunity to create open dialogue with people you live with.
Communicating boundaries can be done with compassion and understanding. If it’s possible, get together with those you live with and check-in with what people’s needs are. Of course there will be compromise, but find ways for each individual to have space to nurture themselves. For example, designating a space for uninterrupted “me-time”.
6. Feel Shit
Let’s face it, right now the whole world is suffering. With that comes sadness. Right now, there’s a whole lot of uncertainty. With that comes anxiety. As we self-isolate, it’s crucial to confront the shadow elements of ourselves with compassion. The universe has led us to a place where we can’t distract or run away from these processes.
Emotions are there to be felt, nothing more. Turn towards sadness, turn towards anxiety. Feel it. Just really feel it without adding a storyline (why do I feel this way, these emotions are horrible I’d rather watch Netflix…) and just feel it. Then express what happens, with tears or weird noises or whatever (but be careful when in public).
Ultimately, taking a mindful, non-judgemental view, emotions are energy. The more we can tune in to their texture and sensation without labelling, the more we begin to appreciate their presence rather than fear them and wish for them to go away. By allowing the natural rise and fall of emotions, like clouds in the sky, we keep their organic cycles ticking over, avoid then becoming trapped, and lighten ourselves in the process.
7. Talk About Shit
Photo by Hannah Wei on Unsplash
I’m one of those people. You know the ones who, when asking you how you’re doing, genuinely wants to know how you’re doing. It’s a blessing and a curse because sometimes people don’t want to talk about how they’re doing and, well, I’ve had to balance my incessant need to know how people are doing with not always asking how people are doing. Sometimes people don’t return my texts and I wonder if this is why. Maybe I’ll never know…
Anyway, point being, now is a really, really important time to actually talk about how you’re doing, openly. I get that emotions aren’t easy to articulate and that this practice may feel foreign. It does take time to learn ways to express how we feel. Me and my depression homies talk differently for most when it comes to this, because we’ve learnt how to for survival. When not talking becomes life threatening, we’re encouraged to be open.
Because of the current situation it’s crucial to regularly check-in, either in-person or over the phone, with friends and family and articulate as well as you can what you feel. Word of caution, linked to boundaries: emotionally dump with careful discernment. What I mean by this is to allow yourself to be vulnerable and share how you are, but be conscious of unloading your emotions freely onto others.
Communication is key. Reach out to loved ones regularly, check-in, make the most of the way we can remain connected during self-isolation through modern technology.
8. Respect Your Body
What with this current outbreak, most of us are now extra vigilant when it comes to our health. So what better time to start to develop a healthy relationship with the intelligent, organic infrastructure of aliveness we call the body? Treat your body well. It’s fighting the good fight for you right now. It’s with you your entire life and it looks after you. Your heart beats for you. Your stomach digests your food and nourishes you. Your lungs allow you to breathe.
A deep spiritual lesson of this time is highlighting what we’ve taken for granted
So many of us take the body for granted. This is sad. A deep spiritual lesson of this time is highlighting what we’ve taken for granted. Have you ever been more aware of your own immune system and how it protects you from outside threats? Me neither. The body works tirelessly in the background, keeping you alive. It’s not a lump of flesh but a living organism with its own intelligence. Get to know it. Talk to it (not joking). Learn how to treat your body well.
That involves fuelling it with nourishing food, drinking plenty of water, reducing stress through meditation, yoga, or general movement, getting as much sleep as possible, reducing alcohol and junk food consumption. List goes on.
9. Respect Yourself
If I had to choose the biggest factor between skilled and unskilled solitude, it’d be self-compassion. Learning to enjoy your own company is probably the most beneficial thing you can do in life. Like your body, you will always be with yourself, too. As you confront emotions, change your relationship with your body and go easy on yourself, now’s a great time to learn about yourself.
Again, talk to yourself (you don’t need to be crazy to write here but it helps). Journal. As the Buddhists remind us, there’s no fixed self anyway. So rather than seeing “me” as one entity, engage with different parts of you. The inner-child. The inner-critic. The inner-joker. Explore the wonderful world of you and, best you can, embrace the parts you don’t like, starting with acceptance.
10. Create Familiarity Through Routine
Setting a routine right during self-isolation, along with realistic goals, is highly beneficial. I might be on the extreme side of routine and structure but there’s a reason for that. Structure provided the foundation for my recovery from depression, anxiety, psychosis. By setting routines in my day I created more stability for my inner-world. The benefits are huge. Set a routine for your day as if you were in an office and stick to it best you can. Value the time slots you create.
You might not be used to creating structure out of thin air, but as someone who’s worked from home for a number of years, this is an invaluable skill. My Google calendar looks like an advanced game of Candy Crush. It means setting aside time and sticking to it. Not militantly, of course; allow room for spontaneity and flexibility. But having some outline to your days and weeks will provide a sense of stability during an unfamiliar time.
11. Take Each Day As It Comes
Ultimately, we don’t know how long self-isolation will last. As we face this crisis, we don’t have much choice other than to be as present as we can be to each moment and each day. This means, everytime our minds project ahead to the future and spin stories of catastrophe, we genty bring our attention back to where we are, right now, over and over, again and again.
Take each day and take each moment. Notice those moments of calm when they’re present. Notice ease or joy or laughter. It’s okay to feel light at this time, it’s okay to oscillate between light and dark. Ultimately all we can ever do is be present. What better time to start practicing that than now? | https://rickyderisz.medium.com/11-tips-for-staying-sane-during-self-isolation-6639500c4c17 | ['Ricky Derisz'] | 2020-03-31 09:44:02.031000+00:00 | ['Meditation', 'Mindfulness', 'Self', 'Mental Health'] |
Slaveowner Madame LaLaurie Tortured and Killed her Slaves for Fun | Slaveowner Madame LaLaurie Tortured and Killed her Slaves for Fun
The story behind one of America’s most cruel slaveowner
Painting of Madame LaLaurie (Source: Paranormal society)
Madame LaLaurie whipped her slaves, gauged their eyes out, and poked holes in their skulls, leaving maggots to infest the openings. This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the sickening acts of torture this eighteenth-century slave owner committed against her slaves. Why she was so cruel remains a mystery to many. Perhaps the most tragic aspect of Madame LaLaurie’s life is that she never faced justice for her heinous acts.
Who was Madame LaLaurie
Madame LaLaurie was born Marie Delphine Macarty in New Orleans, Spanish Louisiana, on 19 March 1787. She was born into a very affluent family that owned numerous slaves. Although there is nothing particularly interesting about her childhood, at the age of four, the Haitian Revolution erupted in 1791. During this revolution, her uncle was murdered by his slaves.
The revolution did cause slave owners to be a lot harsher on their slaves in the hopes of preventing further uprisings. We can speculate that witnessing the Haitian Revolution and the murder of her uncle by slaves may have ignited the evil in her. She may have treated her slaves so appallingly as a way to avenge her uncle. But, either way, it is very difficult to comprehend the reasons behind her cruelty. None of the slaves she murdered and tortured had been personally responsible for her uncle’s death thus did not deserve to suffer at her hands.
Madame LaLaurie was married three times to affluent men and had five children. Her first two husbands died. Her third husband was a young doctor named Leonard LaLaurie whose last name she took hence being infamously known as Madame LaLaurie. They lived together with their slaves at 1140 Royal Street in the French Quarter, in a three-story mansion Madame LaLaurie had purchased.
The LaLaurie’s were an affluent family who constantly threw lavish parties. They were well-respected members of society. Madame LaLaurie was somewhat of a socialite and many women wanted to be her. She was beautiful and courteous. No one knew what happened behind the closed doors of her home.
Her wicked ways seem to have started while married to her third husband. There is no evidence that Madam LaLaurie tortured or murdered any of her slaves before becoming Mrs. LaLaurie. It is also unclear as to whether her husband was also actively involved in the torture and murder of the slaves. However, one thing is for sure the mansion at 1140 Royal Street was hell for the slaves that called it home.
Rumored mistreatment of slaves
1140 Royal Street in the French Quarter still exists today (Source: Atlas Obscura)
Rumors about Madame LaLaurie’s wicked ways began to spread when people started noticing that many of her slaves would mysteriously disappear. Although slaves were often treated as lesser humans during that time, there were still laws that prohibited the unusually cruel treatment of slaves. Without concrete proof of any malpractice, people could do nothing about their suspicions.
Things soon changed when a neighbor heard some screaming coming from 1140 Royal Street. It was one of Madame LaLaurie’s youngest slaves, eight-year-old Lia running away from her to avoid being whopped. In her attempt to avoid the cruel punishment the little girl had fallen to her death from the mansion’s rooftop. The girl was subsequently buried on the mansion grounds.
The incident involving Lia ultimately led to authorities impounding all of Madame LaLaurie’s slaves. They were auctioned off to the public. However, being the cunning woman she is, Madame LaLaurie got a relative to purchase the slaves at the auction and later return them to her.
The torture and murder of slaves
The extend of Madame LaLaurie’s ill-treatment of slaves was unknown until 10 April 1834. On this day, a fire broke out at the LaLaurie residence. The fire had started in the kitchen. When the police and fire marshals arrived at the scene they found the house cook, an elderly woman, chained to the stove. Upon questioning her they discovered that she had started the fire in an attempt to commit suicide. Why had the old lady decided to take her life this way?
Well, upon further interrogations the woman explained that Madame LaLaurie had threatened to take her to the top room. According, to the cook, no one who went to the top room ever came back. The lady had thought it best to take her own life than suffer at the hands of Madame LaLaurie.
This revelation led to the top room being broken into to investigate the claims made by the cook. And for sure, the top room was hell on Earth for the slaves that found themselves there. People found the dead bodies of several slaves in the top room, but that was not the worst of it.
In the top room, slaves were tortured. The slaves found alive were deathly thin, a sign that they had not been given food in ages. A woman was found wrapped with her intestines, another was found with their mouth sewn shut with feces in it. The slaves had metal bars with spikes around their necks to prevent them from moving their heads while others were put into small cages and their bones broken to fit in.
People were beyond shocked. The discovery of Madame LaLurie’s wicked ways made it to a local newspaper which reported that witnesses had seen,
seven slaves, more or less horribly mutilated… suspended by the neck, with their limbs apparently stretched and torn from one extremity to the other.
The pleasant, beautiful, and seemingly kind woman was a sadistic murderer. People had never witnessed slaves being treated so horribly. This says a lot given that during this time it was okay to treat your slaves badly. However, Madame LaLaurie had crossed the line and the whole community agreed on this.
The LaLaurie’s flee from justice
The extremely cruel treatment of slaves in the LaLaurie house was illegal and therefore warranted criminal sanctions. More importantly, the New Orleans community was extremely outraged by the cruel nature of the LaLaurie’s. This led to many wanting to serve justice themselves. Mobs destroyed the mansion and all its property at 1140 Royal Street. In doing so they also uncovered numerous graves on the property. The graves belonged to the slaves that had been murdered by Madame LaLaurie.
However, before the mob could get to Madame LaLaurie and her family, they fled the area and were never seen in New Orleans again. Less is known about Madame LaLaurie after the fire. However, it is believed that she fled to Paris where she died in 1849. | https://medium.com/history-of-yesterday/slaveowner-madame-lalaurie-tortured-and-killed-her-slaves-for-fun-231571ba1f7f | ['Justannet'] | 2020-10-08 05:02:44.179000+00:00 | ['History', 'BlackLivesMatter', 'Psychology', 'Racism', 'True Crime'] |
Which “Miracle on 34th Street” Made You Believe Again? | Believing — accepting something as true — is under constant attack.
At least six different versions of “Miracle on 34th Street” (two in film, two made for TV as well as Broadway and radio versions) show how hard it is to believe in love, relationships — or anything bigger than yourself.
When the original film debuted in 1947, Americans agreed on much, including God, family, and country. Now? Not so much. Polls show 90 percent of Americans celebrate Christmas, but fewer agree on the meaning behind it.
The original 1947 film, featuring Maureen O’Hara, John Payne, and young Natalie Wood, tried to blend romance, comedy, tenderness, and a bit of excitement.
The studio originally didn’t stress the Christmas theme (the film was released in June, and Santa was diminished, wearing civilian garb in the above poster).
The original is considered the classic, one of the best films of all time, and more beloved. Dr. Thomas Graves tells us to look at the image of the little girl with Santa, and we can see what all children see: “She wants to believe….but struggles the way we do.”
“But rather than react to her hesitation, he shines even more,’’ Graves said. “If we can imitate this kind of love…Patient, kind, and not self-serving, we will help many people have a very Merry Christmas.’’
The 1994 remake starring Richard Attenborough, Elizabeth Perkins, and Dylan McDermott, and a young Mara Wilson, is considered “more serious,’’ exploring deeper questions about belief and believing in love, relationships, and faith.
TV Guide called the 1994 remake “curiously depressing,” while Michael Medved, the culture critic, called the same film “the new holiday classic America has been waiting for.”
The impact of divorce and all broken relationships is more obvious:
Dorey Walker (played by Perkins) was married in college to an alcoholic who “took off,” right after their daughter Susan was born, never to be heard from again. The divorced Dorey is filled with “bitter thoughts… dragging” her child with her.
Dorey focuses on knowing “the truth and always being truthful with others and, more importantly, with yourself. Believing in myths and fantasies just makes you unhappy.’’
She teaches her daughter not to believe in anything or anyone, including Santa Claus, but her daughter, Susan, pushes back when she encounters Kris Kringle.
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” ― Philip K. Dick.
Dorey tells young Susan, “Now, I’ve told you the truth, but if I’m wrong, I will be glad to admit it. I’ll tell you what. You ask Mr. Kringle for something that you would never ask me for, and if on Christmas morning, you don’t get it, you will know once and for all the truth about Santa Claus.’’
Non-believers “doomed for a life dominated by doubt’’
Kris Kringle, aka Santa, tells Dorey: “I’m a symbol. I’m a symbol of the human ability to suppress the selfish and hateful tendencies that rule the major part of our lives. If you can’t believe, if you can’t accept anything on faith, then you’re doomed for a life dominated by doubt.’’
He then takes the unbelief as a challenge, adding, “I think you’ll make an excellent test case for me, you, and your daughter. If I could make you believe, then there’d be some hope for me. If I can’t… Well, I’m finished.”
Kris Kringle then makes Susan, Dorey's Christmas wishes, and Dorey’s boyfriend Bryan a top priority, going further than his character went in the 1947 version.
“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.” ― J. M. Barrie, “Peter Pan.”
Dorey’s lack of belief in Santa, aka Father Christmas, extends to all father figures, including potential mates. When her boyfriend Bryan proposes, she rejects him with a cold denunciation of marriage and all relationships.
“Have I ever given you any sign that I wanted to marry you?’’ she declares. “Then, tell me, whatever possessed you to make a presumption?
Like most people in secular America, we tend to believe what we want to believe “and disregard the rest.”
“I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck.” — Neil Gaiman, American Gods.
Bryan tells Dorey, “You know, I’ve done everything I could to try to make you happy. I love your daughter like she’s my own. I loved you, getting nothing in return, never asking for anything in return. I put my faith in you.’’
Dorey shoots the wounded man harder in the heart, telling him in disgust, “Well, if that’s true, then you’re a fool.’’
“To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.” ― Mahatma Gandhi.
The Post Office and dollar bill show America believes more
Bryan (called Fred in the original) is the lawyer who makes the legal case for Santa. In the 1947 film, Fred uses the U.S. Post Office, delivering mail to Kris to make the case that the federal government recognizes him as real. In the 1994 version, Bryan hands the judge a dollar bill, circling “In God We Trust.’’
If the federal government sanctions believing in God, a higher power above government, the judge concludes, who was the court to doubt another traditional belief?
“All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson.
The arc of the entire remake uses the story of Santa aka St. Nicholas, as a metaphor for God, showing the skeptics as negative, angry, and down. At the same time, true believers are shown as more loving, hopeful, and joyful.
Faith, believing in something bigger than yourself, is shown to be the true spirit of Christmas. Believing in love, relationships, and giving to others are the fruits of that belief.
We ultimately see believer Bryan make his most convincing case for love after midnight Mass in a Catholic Church, leading to every dream coming together.
“If you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything.”― Gordon A. Eadie. | https://medium.com/the-partnered-pen/which-miracle-on-34th-street-made-you-believe-again-2ae7e71defc0 | ['Joseph Serwach'] | 2020-12-14 15:06:24.168000+00:00 | ['Film', 'Faith', 'Culture', 'Relationships', 'Psychology'] |
How to Train Your Mind Finish Task In Less Time | No task should take > 30 minutes.
“Really?”
Yes, hold up a bit.
I felt the same way about this one the first day I read about it. Now I’m quite at home with the technique and the psychology behind it.
In the book, The Magic Of Thinking Big, David, Schwartz reiterated intentionally walking faster towards creating an internal sense of urgency. As the person with a sense of urgency gets things done — and gets them in time.
And it works.
Allowing no task to take more than 30 minutes stands on the same principle. The aim is to help you think and act like someone who gets things done in less time.
Yes, It is daunting at first, but as you challenge yourself daily, it becomes easy.
The day I heard Tim Denning said, it takes about 1 hour 30 minutes to write a complete story I decided to never write a draft for more than 3 sessions of 30 mins. If I don’t finish after 3 sessions, I will head on to the final thoughts and get it ready for the editing phase. And then submit to a publication. It was almost impossible at first, now it is not as difficult.
But what about bigger tasks? Be resolute; assign the same 30 mins. No task excluded. Especially with tasks that are under your control, none should take over 30 mins.
Even with bigger tasks, determine to get them done within 30 mins. Most times, you won’t be able to complete them. Assign another 30 minutes after about a 5 to 10 minutes break.
But never allow a task to take longer than 3 sessions of 30 minutes at a stretch.
If after 3 sessions the task remains, take a break or work on something else. And then return to it 12 hours later, or preferably the next day.
If you are the CEO of your company, for instance, you can apply the same rule. A meeting should not exceed 30 mins. In fact, most heavyweights entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Steve Jobs don’t subscribe to having long meetings.
Implementing this rule primes your brain to come up with solutions earlier and save time for other important things in your life. I call it disciplining your mind to get things done in time. And it works. Try it. That’s how to become the person who gets things done in time, it is all about disciplining your mind. | https://medium.com/afwp/how-to-train-your-mind-finish-task-in-less-time-60b4c0f9ee8f | ['Joshua Idegbere'] | 2020-12-22 18:27:49.028000+00:00 | ['Work', 'Life Lessons', 'Procrastination', 'Self Improvement', 'Productivity'] |
If You Want To Find Love, You Have To Heal Yourself First | How Was Your Childhood?
Real love is not something you need to earn, nor is it something you have to fight for. It‘s something you deserve just because you exist.
The problem is, many of us didn’t receive love in the very first stages of our life — and those stages teach us what we know about love and relationships.
Not receiving the love we needed makes us develop coping mechanisms to avoid pain and loneliness. It leads us to push people away, to sabotage ourselves and to do everything we can to never be vulnerable again.
“As part of developing our wounded self, we unconsciously decided that who we really are — our magnificent soul essence — was not good enough. We reasoned that if we were good enough, we would be loved. As little children, we could not understand that not being unconditionally loved had nothing to do with us. That it was because our parents, coming from their own ego-wounded self, simply didn’t know how.” Margaret Paul, in Do You Believe You Deserve Love?
This means that, if you truly want to understand and break down your beliefs about love, you need to go within and look at your childhood.
Were your parents present?
As a child, did you feel loved by them — unconditionally loved?
Did you live in a stable, caring, supportive environment?
Or did you feel like you had to prove yourself in order to receive love? (Like getting good grades, being the golden child)
Did your parents accept you for who you are, or were they constantly trying to change you?
Take the time to get in touch with how you feel about yourself and about your parents. Be honest about your hidden feelings, memories, wounds and thoughts. Don’t be afraid — I know it hurts, but this is how you heal.
To make it easier for you, I’ll give you my story. I was adopted when I was a baby. My parents were always honest about it and they never hid anything from me, so I never thought of my adoption as something that influenced me.
However, the impact was there, and it was huge.
Unconsciously, I have always carried this deep fear of abandonment and rejection — because I was abandoned in the very moment I was born.
I absorbed the message that I was not good enough — if I was, why would my biological parents reject me?
Besides, my father’s authoritarian parenting style only reinforced this idea. I had to follow his rules and meet his high standards, without ever having the space to express myself. He was never satisfied with anything I did.
Living with the constant burden of pleasing him made me build one more belief: that my feelings and opinions don’t matter. If they did matter, why wasn’t I allowed to express them? Why did I have to follow every rule without saying a word? | https://medium.com/be-unique/if-you-want-to-find-love-you-have-to-heal-yourself-first-2482ec67457d | ['Patrícia S. Williams'] | 2020-10-19 13:40:55.391000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'Love', 'Advice', 'Parenting', 'Psychology'] |
How to Evaluate the Performance of Your Machine Learning Model | How to Evaluate the Performance of Your Machine Learning Model
A detailed discussion about which performance metrics to use in various situations in evaluating machine learning models
Table of contents:
Why evaluation is necessary?
Confusion Matrix
Accuracy
Precision & Recall
ROC-AUC
Log Loss
Coefficient of Determination (R-Squared)
Summary
Why evaluation is necessary?
Let me start with a very simple example.
Robin and Sam both started preparing for an entrance exam for engineering college. They both shared a room and put equal amount of hard work while solving numerical problems. They both studied almost the same hours for the entire year and appeared in the final exam. Surprisingly, Robin cleared but Sam did not. When asked, we got to know that their was one difference in their strategy of preparation, “test series”. Robin had joined a test series and he used to test his knowledge and understanding by giving those exams and then further evaluating where is he lagging. But Sam was confident and he just kept training himself.
In the same fashion as discussed above, a machine learning model can be trained extensively with many parameters and new techniques but as long as you are skipping it’s evaluation, you cannot trust it.
How to read Confusion Matrix?
A confusion matrix is a correlation between the predictions of a model and the actual class labels of the data points.
Confusion Matrix for a Binary Classification
Let’s say you are building a model which detects whether a person has diabetes or not. After train-test split you got a test set of length 100 out of which 70 data points are labeled positive (1) and 30 data points are labelled negative (0). Now let me draw the matrix for your test prediction:
Out of 70 actual positive data points, your model predicted 64 points as positive and 6 as negative. Out of 30 actual negative points, it predicted 3 as positive and 27 as negative.
Note: In the notations True Positive, True Negative, False Positive & False Negative, notice that the second term (Positive or Negative) is denoting your prediction and 1st term denotes whether your predicted right or wrong.
Based on the above matrix we can define some very important ratios:
TPR (True Positive Rate) =( True Positive / Actual Positive )
TNR (True Negative Rate) =( True Negative/ Actual Negative)
FPR (False Positive Rate) =( False Positive / Actual Negative )
FNR (False Negative Rate) =( False Negative / Actual Positive )
For our case of diabetes detection model we can calculate these ratios:
TPR = 91.4%
TNR = 90%
FPR = 10%
FNR = 8.6%
If you want your model to be smart then your model has to predict correctly. Which means your True Positives and True Negatives should be as high as possible and at the same time you need to minimize your mistakes for which your False Positives and False Negatives should be as low as possible. Also in terms of ratios, your TPR & TNR should be very high whereas FPR & FNR should be very low,
A smart model: TPR ↑ , TNR ↑, FPR ↓, FNR ↓
A dumb model: Any other combination of TPR, TNR, FPR, FNR
One may argue that it is not possible to take care of all four ratios equally because at the end of the day no model is perfect. Then what should we do?
Yes, it is true. So that is why we build a model keeping the domain in our mind. There are certain domain which demands us to keep a specific ratio as the main priority even at the cost of other ratios being poor. For e.g.In Cancer diagnosis, we cannot miss any positive patient at any cost. So we are suppose to keep TPR at the maximum and FNR close to 0. Even if we predict any healthy patient as diagnosed it is still okay as he can go for further check ups.
Accuracy
Accuracy is what it’s literal meaning says, a measure of how accurate your model is.
Accuracy = Correct Predictions / Total Predictions
By using confusion matrix, Accuracy = (TP + TN)/(TP+TN+FP+FN)
Accuracy is one of the simplest performance metric we can use. But let me warn you, accuracy can sometimes lead you to false illusions about your model and hence you should first know your data set and algorithm used then only decide whether to use accuracy or not.
Before going to the failure cases of accuracy, let me introduce you with two types of data sets:
Balanced: A data set which contains almost equal entries for all labels/classes. E.g out of 1000 data points 600 are positive and 400 are negative. Imbalanced: A data set which contains biased distribution of entries towards a particular label/class. E.g. out of 1000 entries 990 are positive class, 10 are negative class.
Very Important: Never use accuracy as a measure when dealing with imbalanced test set.
Why?
Suppose you have an imbalanced test set of 1000 entries with 990 (+ve) and 10 (-ve). And somehow you ended up creating a poor model which always predict “+ve” due to the imbalanced train set. Now when you predict your test set labels, it will always predict “+ve”. So out of 1000 test set points, you get 1000 “+ve” predictions. Then your accuracy would come,
990/1000 = 99%
Whoaa! Amazing! you are happy to see such an awesome accuracy score.
But, you should know that your model is really poor which always predicts “+ve” label.
Very Important: Also, we cannot compare two models which returns probability scores and have same accuracy.
There are certain models which give probability of each data points for belonging to a particular class like that in Logistic Regression. Let us take this case:
Table 1
As you can see, If P(Y=1) > 0.5 it predicts class 1. When we calculate accuracy for both M1 and M2, it comes the same but it is quite evident that M1 is a much better model than M2 by taking a look the probability scores.
This issue is beautifully dealt by Log Loss which I will explain later in the blog.
Precision & Recall
Precision : It is the ratio of True Positives (TP) and the total positive predictions. Basically it tells us that how many times your positive prediction was actually positive.
Recall : It is nothing but TPR (True Positive Rate explained above).It tells us about out of all positive points how many were predicted positive.
F- Measure: Harmonic mean of precision and recall.
To understand this let’s see this example: When you ask a query in google, it returns 40 pages but only 30 were relevant. But your friend who is an employee at Google told you that there were 100 total relevant pages for that query. So it’s precision is 30/40 = 3/4 = 75% while it’s recall is 30/100 = 30%. So, in this case, precision is “how useful the search results are”, and recall is “how complete the results are”.
ROC & AUC
Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve (ROC):
It is a plot between TPR (True Positive Rate) and FPR (False Positive Rate) calculated by taking multiple threshold values from the reverse sorted list of probability scores given by a model.
A typical ROC curve
Now, how do we plot ROC?
To answer this, let me take you back to table 1 above. Just consider M1 model. You see, for all x values we have a probability score. In that table we have assigned the data point which have a score more than 0.5 as class 1. Now sort all the values in descending order of probability scores and one by one take threshold values equal to all the probability scores. Then we will have threshold values = [0.96,0.94,0.92,0.14,0.11,0.08]. Corresponding to each threshold value predict the classes and calculate TPR and FPR. You will get 6 pairs of TPR & FPR. Just plot them, you will get ROC curve.
Note: Since maximum TPR and FPR value is 1, the area under curve (AUC) of ROC lies betweem 0 and 1.
Area under the blue dashed line is 0.5. AUC = 0 means very poor model, AUC = 1 means perfect model. As long as your model’s AUC score is more than 0.5. your model is making sense because even a random model can score 0.5 AUC.
Very Important: You can get very high AUC even in a case of dumb model generated from imbalanced data set. So always be careful while dealing with imbalanced data set.
Note: AUC had nothing to do with the numerical values probability scores as long as order is maintained. AUC for all the models will be same as long as all the models give same order of data points after sorting based on probability scores.
Log-Loss
This performance metric checks the deviation of probability scores of the data points from the cut off score and assigns penalty proportional to the deviation.
For each data point in a binary classification, we calculate it’s log loss using the formula below,
Log Loss formula for a Binary Classification
here p = probability of the data point to belong to class 1, and y is the class label (0 or 1).
Suppose if p_1 for some x_1 is 0.95 and p_2 for some x_2 is 0.55 and cut off probability for qualifying for class 1 is 0.5. Then both qualifies for class 1 but log loss of p_2 will be much more than log loss of p_1.
As you can see from the curve, the range of log loss is [0, infinity).
For each data point in a multi class classification, we calculate it’s log loss using the formula below,
Log Loss formula for multi class classification
y(o,c)=1 if x(o,c) belongs to class 1. Rest of the concept is same.
Coefficient of Determination
It is denoted by R².While predicting target values of test set we encounter a few errors (e_i) which is difference between predicted value and actual value.
Let’s say we have a test set with n entries. As we know all the data points will have a target value say [y1,y2,y3…….yn]. Let us take the predicted values of the test data be [f1,f2,f3,……fn].
Calculate the Residual Sum of Squares ,which is the sum of all the errors (e_i) squared , by using this formula where fi is the predicted target value by a model for i’th data point.
Total Sum of Squares
Take the mean of all the actual target values:
Then calculate Total Sum of Squares which is proportional to the variance of the test set target values:
If you observe both the formulas of sum of squares you can see that the only difference is the 2nd term i.e. y_bar and fi. Total sum of squares somewhat gives us an intuition that it is same as residual sum of squares only but with predicted values as [ȳ, ȳ, ȳ,…….ȳ ,n times]. Yes, your intuition is right. Let’s say there is a very simple mean model which gives prediction the average of target values every time irrespective of input data.
Now we formulate R² as:
As you can see now, R² is a metric to compare your model with a very simple mean model which return average of target values every time irrespective of input data. The comparison has 4 cases:
case 1: SS_R = 0
(R² = 1) Perfect model with no errors at all.
case 2: SS_R > SS_T
(R² < 0) Model is even worse than the simple mean model.
case 3: SS_R = SS_T
(R² = 0) Model is same as the simple mean model.
case 4:SS_R < SS_T
(0<R² <1) Model is okay.
Summary
So, in nutshell you should know your data set and problem very well and then you can always create a confusion matrix and check for it’s accuracy, precision, recall and plot the ROC curve and find out AUC as per your needs. But if your data set is imbalanced never use accuracy as a measure. If you want to evaluate your model even more deeply so that your probability scores are also given weight then go for Log Loss.
Remember, always evaluate your training!
References | https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-evaluate-the-performance-of-your-machine-learning-model-40769784d654 | ['Saurabh Raj'] | 2020-08-08 19:58:38.010000+00:00 | ['Analytics', 'Deep Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Data Science', 'Machine Learning'] |
How to start the day off right without waking up at 5 AM | How to start the day off right without waking up at 5 AM
The power of being offline
Photo by Jake Givens on Unsplash
By now, you’ve heard the benefits of waking up at 5 AM a million different times but just can’t seem to drag yourself out of bed that early.
What if you could get similar benefits by doing something else?
You can wake up at your normal time: just be offline for the first hour of the day.
The paradox of convenience
You know, on some fundamental level, that you shouldn’t reach for your phone first thing in the morning.
But there’s some science behind that: experts say that you shouldn’t touch your phone for the first hour of the day. Doing so means your time and attention get hijacked, you have increased stress and anxiety.
Most importantly, doing so can mess with your productivity for the entire rest of the day.
But 48% of people use a cell phone as an alarm, which means it’s likely the first thing they see in the morning. And even if they don’t, cell phones can vibrate or ring, bringing the temptation to check it.
You might be thinking, well why don’t those people just buy an alarm clock. But how many people would willingly pay for a highly niche piece of technology that is going to limit a dopamine fix?
If it were that easy, wouldn’t more people buy outlet timers, so that their TV and internet automatically shut off when it’s time for bed?
But people still stay up way too late watching shows, just as people still reach for their phones.
So how can you spark change, without a drastic shift?
The power of being offline
David Levy, in his book “Mindful Technology”, talks about a measured approach to be attentive, aware, and relaxed while being online. Rather than cutting yourself off entirely, he posits that by being aware of your technology use, and occasionally unplugging from it, you can learn how to moderate and fix issues you currently have with technology.
And that’s something you can implement by being offline for the first hour of the day. What do I mean by being offline? It’s exactly how it sounds.
Go into airplane mode. Turn off wifi. Have an outlet timer. Whatever it takes, don’t be online when you first wake up.
And this can extend beyond your phone: your tablet, your computer, your TV. Remain offline for the first hour of the day, and you can benefit.
The benefits of being bored
Levy says that “the three main benefits people describe have to do with increased productivity and focus, better use of their time, and greater relaxation (reduction in stress).”
One of the reasons why this occurs is, surprisingly, because of boredom. The simple fact of the matter is that many of us don’t have enough time to be bored.
If you’re among the majority of Americans that wake up by 6:30 or 7 AM, you might be hurried to avoid a long morning commute.
In your commute, you might have stop and go traffic, meaning you can’t fully zone out.
Once you get to work, you often come in around the same time as others, which means that you have to communicate with them and get roped into work mode without a break.
Then the only time you might have a chance to not react to stimuli might be after work and dinner, around 6–7 PM when you’re winding down from a long day.
Waking up at 5 AM is supposed to give you a long uninterrupted period to do whatever you need before work. Whether it’s doing extra work or just simply having a moment of introspection.
Photo by M_K Photography on Unsplash
But that’s not the only way: the other option is to simply fill your morning with nothing.
During that morning routine, you might be filling it with different technological devices. You wake up to an alarm, then check your phone messages. You listen to podcasts on your commute. You watch TV while eating breakfast.
But what happens if you don’t do that? Well, I imagine you might get bored, especially if you’re used to all these distractions. But then you’d probably do something with that time. And that process will likely mitigate stress and mental health burdens that you might face for the rest of the day.
Removing the noise
Think back to mornings where you were alerted by your phone or e-mail. How many times, when you went to check, did it turn out to be an advertisement or other junk?
There’s an inherent Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) associated with not paying attention to an alert. There have been countless movies, songs, or other media about missed calls, texts, or voicemails leading to a broken relationship, missed jobs, or tragedies.
But when the world thinks you’re asleep, most people won’t try to contact you. Most businesses don’t even open before 8 AM, and if there’s an emergency, people will call you, usually more than once.
So don’t let your fear of missing out disrupt you from starting the day off right, and being your most productive self. | https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-start-the-day-off-right-without-waking-up-at-5-am-2ac4aefb2ab7 | ['Kai Wong'] | 2019-12-12 19:39:25.006000+00:00 | ['Morning Routines', 'Sleep', 'Online', 'Technology', 'Productivity'] |
5 Steps to Become a Data Scientist | Data Scientist image. Source: www.quora.com
Data Science is such a broad field that includes several subdivisions like data preparation and exploration; data representation and transformation; data visualization and presentation; predictive analytics; machine learning, etc. For beginners, learning the fundamentals of data science can be a very daunting task especially if you don’t have proper guidance as to the necessary training required, or what courses to take, and in what order. Before discussing the steps necessary to become a data scientist, let’s discuss the skills that every data scientist should have in his skills set toolbox.
Essential Skills That Every Data Scientist Should Have in His Skills Set Toolbox
The top 5 technology skills mentioned in most data science job listings (The Most in Demand Skills for Data Scientists — Towards Data Science) are:
Python R SQL Hadoop Spark
Becoming a data scientist also requires general skills in the following:
Mathematical Analysis and Linear Algebra Machine Learning Statistics and Probability Computer Science Communication Data Wrangling/Preparation, Data Presentation/Visualization
I started learning data science about a year ago. It was quite challenging from the beginning, but let me share with you the approach that worked for me. I will discuss five important steps that helped me all throughout my journey as a data scientist.
Steps for Becoming a Data Scientist
Step 1: Do not be in a rush
If you have not read this article: “Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years” by Peter Norvig (Director of Machine Learning at Google), I encourage you to do so. Here is a link to the article: http://norvig.com/21-days.html
The point here is that you don’t need ten years to learn the basics of data science, but learning data science in a rush is certainly not helpful. It takes time, effort, energy, patience and commitment to become a data scientist.
Step 2: Take Courses from DataCamp, Coursera, EdX, or other Platforms
DataCamp (https://www.datacamp.com/courses) is certainly a good website where you can learn lots of different skills from basic programming concepts to advance skills such as data science and machine learning. However, I think DataCamp uses an approach that is in a rush, and therefore too superficial. DataCamp courses are crash courses, with little or no level of depth. Most of the assessment questions are quite easy and non-challenging. If you are interested in the academic approach of learning data science, I would recommend the following courses that will give you a very solid foundation in data science (the academic approach requires an enormous amount of time commitment and dedication, but it is worthwhile):
(i) Professional Certificate in Data Science (HarvardX, through edX):https://www.edx.org/professional...
Includes the following courses, all taught using R (you can audit courses for free or purchase a verified certificate):
Data Science: R Basics; Data Science: Visualization; Data Science: Probability; Data Science: Inference and Modeling; Data Science: Productivity Tools; Data Science: Wrangling; Data Science: Linear Regression; Data Science: Machine Learning; Data Science: Capstone
(ii) Analytics: Essential Tools and Methods (Georgia TechX, through edX): https://www.edx.org/micromasters...
Includes the following courses, all taught using R, Python, and SQL (you can audit for free or purchase a verified certificate):
Introduction to Analytics Modeling; Introduction to Computing for Data Analysis; Data Analytics for Business.
(iii) Applied Data Science with Python Specialization (the University of Michigan, through Coursera): https://www.coursera.org/special...
Includes the following courses, all taught using python (you can audit most courses for free, some require the purchase of a verified certificate):
Introduction to Data Science in Python; Applied Plotting, Charting & Data Representation in Python; Applied Machine Learning in Python; Applied Text Mining in Python; Applied Social Network Analysis in Python.
Step 3: Learning from a Textbook
Learning from a textbook provides a more refined and in-depth knowledge beyond what you get from online courses. This book provides a great introduction to data science and machine learning, with code included: “Python Machine Learning”, by Sebastian Raschka. The author explains fundamental concepts in machine learning in a way that is very easy to follow. Also, the code is included, so you can actually use the code provided to practice and build your own models. I have personally found this book to be very useful in my journey as a data scientist. I would recommend this book to any data science aspirant. All that you need is basic linear algebra and programming skills to be able to understand the book. There are also lots of other excellent data science textbooks out there such as “Python for Data Analysis” by Wes McKinney, “Applied Predictive Modeling” by Kuhn & Johnson, “Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques” by Ian H. Witten, Eibe Frank & Mark A. Hall, and so on.
Step 4: Network with other Data Science Aspirants
From my personal experience, I have learnt a lot from weekly group conversations on various topics in data science and machine learning by teaming up with other data science aspirants. Network with other data science aspirants, share your code on GitHub, showcase your skills on LinkedIn, this will really help you to learn a lot of new concepts and tools within a short period of time. You also get exposed to new ways of doing things, as well as to new algorithms and technologies.
Step 5: Apply Knowledge to Real Data Science Problems
Keep in mind that online courses alone will not make you a data scientist. After establishing a strong foundation in data science, you may seek an internship or participate in Kaggle competitions where you get to work on real data science projects.
The 3 essential components of an analytics model.
Remember that you may be very good at handling data as well as building good machine learning algorithms, but as a data scientist, the real world application is all that matters. Every predictive model must produce meaningful and interpretable results of real-life situations. A predictive model must be validated against reality in order to be considered meaningful and useful. Human input and experience are therefore always necessary and beneficial for making sense out of results produced by algorithms.
In summary, we have discussed the five important steps to becoming a data scientist. The journey to becoming a data scientist might be different for different individuals based on their backgrounds, but the steps mentioned above is the approach that worked for me.
Thanks for reading! | https://medium.com/towards-artificial-intelligence/five-steps-to-becoming-a-data-scientist-239bbc60a6e3 | ['Benjamin Obi Tayo Ph.D.'] | 2020-06-11 17:21:11.092000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence', 'Data Science', 'Featured', 'Education', 'Machine Learning'] |
5 Reasons Why You Should Avoid This Killer Story | You don’t listen well, do you?
Well, as long as you’re here, listen up.
There are Five outstanding reasons to avoid taking the bait.
And one even better reason to set one.
Ready? Here we go.
#5 It’s obviously a clickbait.
You knew that, but you clicked anyway. Curiosity got the better of you, and that’s the point. You were even warned that it’s a clickbait.
#4 There is nothing of value here.
Or at least nothing new. I am just going to tell you that the interwebs are full of clickbait stories that sucker you into reading.
#3 What is the point?
If you’re asking me that, then you’re asking the wrong person. I told you not to read it. Maybe you should learn a little bit about being discerning when you’re curious.
#2 There is very little value if any.
Okay, you learned that you need to be discerning when you’re curious. As a friend of mine is fond of saying, even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes.
#1 I told you so.
The number one reason you shouldn’t have clicked on this story is that you knew there are many reasons you shouldn’t, but you didn’t listen. And now you’re shaking your head and cursing me for tricking you into clicking. But I warned you.
Here is the takeaway.
The takeaway depends on whether you’re a reader or a writer.
If you’re a reader, stay away from stories that use clickbait headlines. At the least, be discerning about how you spend your time online.
If you’re a writer, it is evident that you should put in time and effort into crafting your headlines. If they are not enticing or inviting, no one will click on your story, and all the hard work you put into creating the masterpiece of an article will be for naught.
The main inspiration for this came from Caroline de Braganza’s excellent story in the Rogues’ Gallery.
However, I would be remiss if I didn’t recognize Linda Caroll, who is a master of delivering exceptional value using listicles, and Sinem Günel, whose success has inspired me to revisit my why for writing on this platform.
Also, writers like Sherry McGuinn, P.G. Barnett, Timothy Key, and Helen Cassidy Page, have taught me that you don’t have to be a stand-up comic to create and add humor to your work.
Holly Jahangiri, Sharon Hurley Hall, Paul Myers MBA, Joe Luca, Tim Maudlin, Ming Qian, Bob Jasper, Dr. Mehmet Yildiz, Michele Thill, Trista Ainsworth, Amy Marley, Aurora Eliam, CMP, Gurpreet Dhariwal, Dipti Pande, Henery X (long), Manasi Diwakar, and Desiree Driesenaar, are among many who keep me on my toes to do my best. I don’t always succeed, but I am a work in progress.
As always, thank you for reading and responding.
Here are a couple of related stories:
Graphic created by Rasheed Hooda using Canva
Rasheed Hooda is a published author, and a regular contributor and editor for ILLUMINATION, a writers’ community on Medium, where writers support each other.
He is a self-proclaimed weirdo who lives a Freedom Lifestyle and writes about related topics — Travel (a top writer), Personal Growth, Freedom, and entrepreneurship. (Get the Newsletter)
More about me:
An interview by Dr. M Yildiz for ILLUMINATION
Testimonial by other writers. | https://medium.com/narrative/5-reasons-why-you-should-avoid-this-killer-story-a0f10cb8e724 | ['Rasheed Hooda'] | 2020-08-08 23:41:26.283000+00:00 | ['Advice', 'Inspiration', 'Humor', 'Writing', 'Self Improvement'] |
Egypt Internet State: ‘Not Free’, Slow, for ‘the Few’ | Read it in Arabic
By the end of last month, Egyptian social media folks were shaken by the news of banning more than 20 news websites, including prominent sites like Huffington Post, Mada Masr, Daily News Egypt and, of course, Al Jazeera.
Some critics went as far as expressing their fears of heading towards North Korea’s fate. So, we thought of exploring where the internet in Egypt stands from that of the rest of the world, and, from there, we’ve got a story to tell.
You know, it’s not out of nothing!
We know that this is not the first news website ban in Egypt. In December 2015, Egypt blocked the Qatari news website Al Araby Al-Jadeed and its English equivalent The New Arab. And, guess what, Egypt took that step following Saudi Arabia and UAE footsteps banning the same two sites.
That ban incident was the first politically motivated one on internet since 2011. For that, Egypt rank in Freedom on the Net report, that is published annually by Freedom House, has been getting worse since then.
The Organization has not published its 2017 report yet, but 2016 edition included Egypt with 63 total score (with 100 being the worst), putting the country’s internet under the status of ‘Not Free’ for the second year in a row.
Other main reasons for the score are reported restrictions on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calling services in October 2015, anti-terrorism law and that-time proposed cybercrime bill that ‘contain disproportionate penalties for nonviolent online speech,’ in addition to prosecutions and detentions for online activities.
In general, the report measures freedom on internet according to three main categories: obstacles to access, limits on content and violations of user rights. See the full methodology here.
So, what we would expect for 2017 report is nothing but a longer list of reasons for more bad points and further decline for freedom on internet.
Even without restrictions, it’s slow like a hell!
Of course you know how slow it is, but do you know that average connection speed in Egypt during the first quarter of 2017 was the 35th slowest connection all over the globe? Well, at least we were slightly better than East Timor, an Asian country that you most probably have never heard of. We were still better than Syria by the way, but not Iraq. Sorry.
To put numbers in context, with 1.93 Mbps average connection speed, connection speed of South Korean guys, whose country tops the list, is 14 times faster than us. 14 times! We’re even behind the world median connection speed with 3.43 Mbps.
However, average connection speed in Egypt is on the rise, slowly but somehow steadily, in exception of that accidental spike that we see for the second quarter of 2016.
Pain in the ass, right? Just for ‘the few’
Only 38% of Egyptians had access to internet in 2015. The rest are completely out of the cyber world. Here, we’re 10% behind the world average internet users percentage of population. | https://medium.com/info-times/egypt-internet-state-not-free-slow-for-the-few-1e68e2e86766 | ['Islam Salahuddin'] | 2017-06-29 15:38:08.478000+00:00 | ['Journalism', 'Data Journalism', 'Internet', 'Freedom', 'Infotimes Stories'] |
Getting the Story Right: Multiple Takes, Multiple Perspectives | The meeting began, first with an ice breaker, where we recorded mini snipets of stories or insights on what Design Thinking meant to us.
We watched one of the short video clips I had produced during the IDEOu Storytelling for influencers class as a inspiration for the stories we would then share.
We then proceeded to the ice breaker — which will later be used for our youtube playlist as additional stories. Nolwen Mahe shared some insights on how DT transforms a team.
James Zdralek shared beautiful stories that made us rethink about what it means to really do Design Thinking as a process.
After this, we explored what had already been done by various sub-groups in our Design Thinking Montreal executive committees, and launched into sharing “the brand”. What we stood for.
The very first version of our presentation on the topic had been a very corporate powerpoint, sharing the vision for our community.
From that vision, which was my initial take on our project, we collaboratively came up with this one, with Monia Poncik.
But it turns out the workshop uncovered a whole dimension I had completely missed. It was a dimension each of my stories in video format seemed to carry — stories designed for participants and leaders — , but that none of my powerpoint slides — which were targeted to the executive committee and partners — spoke about.
And that was a much more personal story than design thinking, leadership and storytelling frameworks; it was about powerful, emotional things like excitement, impact, change, surprise, energy, curiosity, altruism, problems, powerlessness, being overwhelmed, and even having hopeful doubts — or as one expert put it “already being a half-believer”.
Somehow, it was something that had completely escaped the corporate slides.
As the evening came to a close, we knew this would only be the beginning of deeper reflections. Little bits of intuition that we would now have to follow up on and measure up to reality, as we went into the world to collect real data. For only with real, empathic understanding of the people and organizations we were designing for would we be able to craft both a program and a recruitment campaign that would be a true fit.
We would like to thank :
Toni Chowdhury, for the amazing set of pictures taken and shared with us that evening. Learn more about Toni’s captivating photography with Shutter-Tripper here.
And the Westmount Public Library, for lending us such an inspiring space for our workshop. Learn more about the library’s great cultural programs here. | https://medium.com/complementary-skills-for-design-researchers/getting-the-story-right-multiple-takes-multiple-perspectives-3c155e21bafb | ['Corina Paraschiv'] | 2016-10-04 00:10:17.370000+00:00 | ['Branding', 'Community Development', 'Storytelling', 'Design Thinking', 'Brainstorming'] |
How Writers Can Stop Being Consumed by the Fear of Not Being Good Enough | Although I have always considered myself a writer, I have also spent many years not writing. In fact, for most of high school, college, and my 20s, I didn’t write at all. Not one story, not one poem. During that period, I was mostly entangled in living the life of a depressed alcoholic, while trying to keep my shit somewhat together in the meantime. So, you could say I didn’t have time to write, but the truth was that I was really in no place to write.
I didn’t start writing seriously — and by seriously I mean that I committed to sitting down and doing it at least once a week — until 2006, one year after I got sober. Two things happened when I committed to the practice of writing. Number one, I found that it was hard. It challenged me on nearly every level and forced me to look honestly at my addictions, my demons, my self-loathing, and my depression. Number two, it felt better than anything I had ever done before. It felt like a huge relief to open doors within myself that had been closed for years and let all those long-buried thoughts and feelings pour out of me onto the page.
I spent 2006 until 2008 writing a huge sprawling mess of a memoir about my drinking days. I wasn’t thinking about revisions. I wasn’t thinking about publishing. I wasn’t even thinking about showing it to anyone, ever. It was just for me. My manuscript was this totally private place that I went to record the things I had seen and felt and lived through. It was a special, intimate refuge where I could be completely myself, drop out of daily life for a little while, and slow down enough to sift through my feelings and make sense of my past.
Then, I finished it. And then, I started another manuscript. Then I started a writing group. I got more and more dedicated to writing until I decided I wanted to try writing fiction, and I loved it. Then I started a blog and then I started coaching other writers. Things just sort of snowballed until I was at this point where I was waking up every day with multiple writing tasks already on my plate. This was a very good thing. I loved writing and I had always wanted to be a writer, so I was extremely grateful that I was living a life that included writing in so many different ways.
But something else happened, something not so good.
The more experienced I got with writing, especially after I published and started having to approach it from the business and publication side of things, the more I realized I was losing touch with that quiet, special, safe sanctuary that writing had always been for me. Much of the time, when I wrote anything now, I knew I was writing for an audience and so I always had the reader’s potential reaction in my mind. Sometimes the reader was an agent, or the judges of a writing contest, and sometimes they were the consumers on Amazon, browsing around looking for their next great story. But almost always, there was this someone who I was already picturing reading my stuff, and on some level, I was already worried about pleasing them.
I was already afraid that I wasn’t good enough.
When I stopped and searched around inside myself about how this made me feel as a writer, I saw that I had gone from feeling nourished and inspired about the practice of writing to worried and doubtful about my abilities as a writer. And as long as the focus stayed on this self-doubt about my abilities, my experience of writing was way less fun than it had been before.
I think this is an easy trap for any of us writers to fall into. We start out doing it because we love it, and because we need to do it. It’s essential for the health of our mind and heart and soul. Writing is the way we make sense of the world, and the way we make sense of ourselves. But somewhere along the way we get caught up in looking around at what everyone else is doing and if we should be doing it that way and if other people like our writing and if we’ll ever get their approval, or more sales, or some sort of award, or on the bestseller list, or whatever it is that our mind has grasped onto as our version of “winning the game.”
We get caught up, and then finally consumed, by the fear of not being good enough.
But the thing is, no matter what “winning the game” means to us, it is, at the core, all the same thing. It is an illusion. There is no winning the game. There are only events that happen, and then they pass. We get the approval, for a little while. We get the agent or the spike in sales or the award — or we get the rejection, the disappointment, or the lack of interest — and then it’s over, and we’re left again where we were before, alone with ourselves and our writing.
It can feel very disappointing and disheartening, if we have lost touch with the real reasons behind our commitment to the practice of writing.
No matter how lost we get in the comparison and achievement game that is so prevalent in our society, the truth is that writing is a sacred act that is a gift to each of us from the Universe. It is a safe place we can always go to soothe our troubled hearts and minds. It is a source of energy that feeds our imagination and creative spirit. And it doesn’t matter what anyone else is doing or how they’re doing it. The practice of writing fits each of us, uniquely, like a glove, no matter who we are or what our experiences in life have been. And when we are able to pause from the frantic busyness of our lives and really see that, the fear of not being good enough gently falls away. It becomes obvious that there is no “good enough.” There is only whatever you are right now, in this moment, and whatever that is, it’s okay.
This is the important truth we must always come back to as writers. Writing is a practice that is a gift given to us. It is a refuge and a place of nourishment. It is a home where we are always welcome, and where it is always acceptable to be totally ourselves, no matter what that looks like to the rest of the world.
There is no “good enough.” There is only you, right now, and whatever that is, it’s enough.
Lauren Sapala is the author of Firefly Magic: Heart Powered Marketing for Highly Sensitive Writers, a guide to help any HSP, INFJ, INFP, or introvert writer move past resistance to selling and marketing their work. She is also the author of The INFJ Writer, a writing guide made specifically for sensitive intuitive writers. | https://losapala.medium.com/how-writers-can-stop-being-consumed-by-the-fear-of-not-being-good-enough-4f8d06c91945 | ['Lauren Sapala'] | 2019-09-06 15:50:14.784000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Writers On Writing', 'Inner Critic', 'Writers Life', 'Perfectionism'] |
6 Video Game Stories as Good as any Movie | 5) Alien: Isolation
No movie is as frightening as playing Alien: Isolation with headphones on. You play as the daughter of superfemme Ellen Ripley, gone to the faraway Sevastapol space station to retrieve the flight recorder from the famed Nostromo. An interstellar mishap sends Ripley and her tiny crew onto the trading post’s loading dock without any way to get back or contact their escape ship.
Then it gets worse.
If you’ve seen the movie, you know what else was on the Nostromo, and you can bet something like it found its way onto the Sevastapol spaceport. Too bad it already decimated the crew and made the automated maintenance bots turn on everyone.
Isolation is not fun. At all. You have no way to hurt the alien that’s hunting you, and it never, never stops. You can’t run. You can’t even hide for very long. All you can do it try to keep track of the creature, and keep moving.
You have a motion tracker to help, but if you’re looking at it, distant objects get blurry, so you have to focus. The best way to monitor the monster is by listening to it. That’s where the headphones come in handy. If you have your back to a wall and you hear it 2 feet behind you, breathe easy. At least you know where it is. | https://medium.com/read-stache/6-video-game-stories-as-good-as-any-movie-62e8823987 | ['James Battaglia'] | 2015-08-10 13:18:26.661000+00:00 | ['Storytelling', 'Videogames', 'Gaming'] |
This is what the European Journalism Centre will focus on in 2017 | 2016 was a year of impressive numbers for the European Journalism Centre.
Over €1,500,000 awarded in grants to innovative reporting. Over 5000 journalists trained. Close to 50 events and seminars organised, benefitting thousands of journalists globally. Millions visited our resource sites (like datadrivenjournalism.net), downloaded our Handbooks, and participated in online video courses via our Learno platform. 2500+ journalists and teachers engaged in our media literacy and development programmes in some of the world’s most challenging media environments.
If the first weeks of 2017 are anything to go by, there’s no time for a breather. We are ready to go again.
Connecting journalists with new ideas
The European Journalism Centre believes in a future for media that is ethical, sustainable and innovative. We are a non-profit that exists to connect journalists and the media industry to the new ideas that will take us there.
Whether we’re funding original storytelling, boosting basic literacy skills, teaching advanced data skills, organising press trips to Chad, or hosting events exploring the worlds of VR and AI, we’re busy every day connecting journalists with new ideas.
Our thematic focuses
These are topics that the European Journalism Centre wants to drive because they are important to journalism and the European Journalism Centre’s future. They give us a framework for making decisions and taking projects on, and they broadcast our mission into the world.
Restoring trust in the media. The media has a lower approval rating than anytime in history, and faces threats from populist and authoritarian governments worldwide. EJC will increase trust in the media through all our core activities (and particularly through our membership of the First Draft Coalition). European collaboration. European media needs to develop collaborations to create new business models and forms of diverse, impactful and sustainable storytelling. Through our European grants, events and training, the EJC is uniquely placed to continue to help European newsrooms and journalists invent, test, measure and analyse this new journalism. Philanthropy. Philanthropy for media is increasing as a vital source of income for news organisations. Yet Europe does not have the same openness to this type of funding as in the US. The EJC will map, understand and open up a new landscape for philanthropic funding for media organisations through our Gates Philanthropy grants, events and publications. Data. Society is set to hit a new wave of ethical, technical and business questions as datasets increase, advertising models shift, and technology companies exert more influence. For 25 years, the EJC has offered an independent, non-profit guiding voice in how new technologies are impacting the media industry through events, training and resources. Today, the EJC runs the world’s leading data journalism platform and initiatives, with over 100k active members. AI and Algorithms. AI and algorithms will impact journalism on three key levels: workflow automation (speeding up journalists), distribution (think CUI & chatbots), and their continued deployment by social networks who have access to growing datasets. EJC will increase media literacy and criticality through training, events and open dialogue with technology companies.
Our project areas
All these values and interests flow down into our four key project areas. We are structuring our workflows, metrics, financial reporting and strategic thinking with these pillars in mind.
Grants involves things like our Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation innovative reporting awards. Events plays host to our News Impact Summits, supported by Google News Lab. Training & Trips covers everything from European Commission seminars, to digital learning platforms. Media Development is the home of our varied work in Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Bolivia and beyond, mostly in partnership with Free Press Unlimited.
A strategy to get started
For maximum impact, and to help us focus our efforts in the right places, we’ve devised a simple vision for 2017.
Focus on core projects. Greater efficiency in delivering our existing grants, events, training and media development programmes. Increase focus by only taking on high-relevance projects. Experiment with new revenue. Develop new revenue streams through the evolution of successful initiatives like the News Impact Summits, Data Driven Journalism and Learno. Test new ideas! Improve communications. Better internal communication through Basecamp and overhauled processes. Refresh EJC identity, website and materials to better reflect what we do. Invest in staff. Staff training, equipment, office improvements and clearer career planning help.
Here’s where you come in…
Our plans for 2017 arrived through an exhaustive 12 week process of talking to our team, funders, board, users, community and the news industry at large. But that doesn’t mean we’re across every challenge that European and global news organisations are facing today.
Our strength is in our network, twenty-five years in the making. In the coming months you will see us announce new initiatives and projects for that network.
Hopefully they’ll meet your needs whether you are a freelancer, local newsroom, national broadcaster, or global news outlet. If they don’t, tell us. Tell us where you need support, expertise and direction. Tell us and if we can’t help directly, we’ll connect you to our community of hundreds of thousands of media professionals. Let’s get started. | https://medium.com/we-are-the-european-journalism-centre/this-is-what-the-european-journalism-centre-will-focus-on-in-2017-991619906bc1 | ['Adam Thomas'] | 2018-07-23 09:40:45.716000+00:00 | ['Data Journalism', 'Fake News', 'Journalism', 'Philanthropy', 'Updates'] |
The Quest for an Ultimate Theory of Gravity | Without gravity the night sky would look very empty. Stars, galaxies, moons, and planets — none of these could exist without gravity holding them together. Neither, for that matter, could the Sun or Earth. It is gravity that pulled together diffuse atoms and built the universe that we see around us today.
The glory of the night sky, all thanks to gravity. Credit to ESO.
Gravity has also been at the heart of our own efforts to understand the nature of reality, from Newton’s formulation of the universal law of gravity to Einstein’s theory of relativity. Today gravity lies at the centre of new problems in science, and holds the key to uncovering what may be the ultimate theory of physics.
For something that has had such a profound effect on humanity, gravity is surprisingly weak. Of the four fundamental forces known to physics, gravity is by far the weakest. This weakness can easily be demonstrated — the magnetic force of a small fridge magnet can easily lift a pin into the air, thus defeating the gravitational force of an entire planet.
The weakness of the gravitational force means it can be almost completely ignored at the level of atoms and molecules. It is only when we look at very big objects — planets, stars and galaxies, that gravity starts to matter. While the other fundamental forces fade away over short distances, the force of gravity can be felt from one side of the galaxy to the other.
Humans have known about gravity, or at least the effects of gravity, since the most ancient times. The basic fact that things fall down when dropped is known to everyone, and would have been obvious even in the Stone Age. Ancient civilizations in Greece and India developed a basic understanding of the nature of gravity, and knew that falling objects accelerate, but were unable to apply these ideas to the wider universe.
It was not until the Renaissance, and the days of Galileo, Kepler and Newton, that a truly scientific analysis of gravity was made. Experiments by Galileo demonstrated the counter-intuitive fact that all objects, regardless of how heavy they are, accelerate at the same rate when falling. And Kepler, working with observations of the planets, developed laws describing the motion of the planets around the Sun.
In 1687 Isaac Newton published a book, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, summarising his three laws of motion, and the universal law of gravitation. For the first time gravity was expressed mathematically, and with this Newton was able to show that Kepler’s laws arose from a simple equation describing the force of gravity. Gravity was revealed as the force that shaped the universe, governed the motion of the stars and planets, and gave us seasons, tides and falling apples.
Over the next two centuries scientists built on Newton’s laws to develop what is now known as Classical Physics. These scientists had tremendous success in describing and predicting the natural world. Astronomers, noticing discrepancies in the orbit of Uranus, were able to use classical physics to predict the position of an eighth planet further out in the Solar System, predictions that led to the discovery of Neptune in 1846.
Neptune’s existence was first predicted by deviations in the orbit of Uranus. Credit to NASA.
Despite these successes, cracks were forming in our understanding of gravity. The orbit of Mercury also did not follow predictions, and astronomers searched fruitlessly for another planet to explain this strange behaviour. And although scientists could explain the effects of gravity, nobody could understand quite how stars and planets millions or billions of miles away could exert a force on the Earth.
Answering these questions required a revolution in physics, and the early twentieth century brought one. In just a handful of years Classical Physics was swept aside by two new theories — Quantum Physics and Relativity. While quantum theory was mostly associated with very small things, and could therefore largely ignore gravity, relativity became intimately linked with gravity.
Einstein’s famous special theory of relativity concerns the speed of light, and the behaviour of objects moving close to the speed of light. As first formulated by Einstein this had little to do with gravity. However, in the years following the publication of the special theory of relativity, Einstein developed a more general theory. This theory, appropriately known as the General Theory of Relativity, described the behaviour of gravity more accurately than Newton’s theory, and not only solved the problems with the motion of Mercury, but predicted a whole host of exotic objects — black holes, wormholes and even the possibility of time travel.
The first image of a black hole, demonstrating the accuracy of Einstein’s theory. Credit to EHT.
The general theory of relativity is an extraordinarily beautiful theory. In classical physics the ideas of matter, motion, space and time are all thought of separately. Space acts as a stage, upon which matter can act. Time is simply a clock, ticking away, allowing matter to move through the stage. But in relativity these ideas are united. Space and time combine into a single entity, spacetime. The presence of matter distorts spacetime, and as matter moves through both space and time, those distortions in turn affect the motion of both matter and light.
The predictions of general relativity were first confirmed by Arthur Eddington in 1919. Physicists studying the complex equations soon found solutions pointing to the existence of black holes — objects so massive that they distort space in such an extreme way that light itself cannot escape. Treated at first as just a mathematical curiosity, the idea of black holes gradually gained acceptance over the following decades. Other solutions to Einstein’s theories have also been proposed, suggesting that bizarre objects such as wormholes, linking distant regions of space through higher dimensional space, or even closed loops of time, are possible.
Despite the revolution in physics, problems with gravity still persisted. Our understanding of the size of the universe changed radically in the early twentieth century when other galaxies were identified for the first time. But observations of these galaxies revealed that they did not spin at the speed predicted by our theories of gravity. Physicists have tried to solve this problem by invoking “Dark Matter”, theorised to be some kind of almost invisible particle that adds additional mass to galaxies. Dark matter cannot be seen by our telescopes, and despite many years of searching we still don’t know what dark matter is. This has led some scientists to try looking for other solutions, including making modifications to the laws of gravity.
Dozens of galaxies seen in the Abell 3827 cluster. Their motion can only be explained by invoking a mysterious and so far invisible type of particle known as Dark Matter. Credit to ESO.
During the 20th Century, three of the four fundamental forces of nature were described in the language of quantum physics. In this theory each fundamental force has an associated particle — for electromagnetism this is the photon, for the two nuclear forces (known as the Strong and Weak Nuclear Forces) three particles are associated — gluons, and the W and Z bosons.
It seems reasonable to expect the fourth fundamental force, gravity, would have a quantum particle as well. This particle, known as the graviton, is actually quite well defined theoretically, but if it does exist it is extremely hard to detect. It is hard, even in theory, to design a detector that could find the graviton. Indeed, scientists believe that it is impossible to build such a detector on the Earth. Problems also arise when trying to fit the graviton in with the mathematics of the rest of quantum physics.
Building a quantum theory of gravity remains one of the key challenges of physics. The hunt for quantum gravity has led to a number of theories — string theory, M theory, quantum loop gravity, twister theory, M8 theory… Theoretical physicists have thrown out dozens of suggestions on how to incorporate gravity into the quantum world, but so far it has been impossible to determine which, if any, is correct.
The weakness of the gravitational force is the main issue. The force is so weak that its effects cannot normally be seen at the quantum scale. Only in some of the most extreme places in the universe — in the big bang or at the heart of a black hole — can quantum gravity be observed. Black holes, by their very nature, cannot be directly observed, and neither can we peer back to the very earliest moments of the universe when quantum gravity may have been present.
All this means that for now the final theory of gravity remains out of our reach. Physicists will no doubt continue to build theoretical models of quantum gravity, but until we find a way to experimentally test those theories it is unlikely we make any real progress. And without a theory of quantum gravity, some of the most bizarre and mysterious structures in the universe will remain unknowable to us. | https://medium.com/discourse/the-quest-for-an-ultimate-theory-of-gravity-faf6d6a04596 | ['Alastair Isaacs'] | 2020-10-14 20:06:11.260000+00:00 | ['Astronomy', 'Physics', 'Space', 'History Of Technology', 'Science'] |
Convert Your Jupyter-notebook to Github pages with Github-action | Convert Your Jupyter-notebook to Github pages with Github-action Vivek2509 Follow Oct 24 · 3 min read
Photo by Richy Great on Unsplash
As a data scientist and machine learning engineering, the Jupyter notebook is handy tools you can use.
How cool if you convert that notebook into a blog within less than 5 min?
And now this is possible with Github action and Fastpages templates.
Photo by fastai/fastpages on Github
You can find a live demo here. | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/convert-your-jupyter-notebook-to-github-pages-with-github-action-fa2ce9b4182a | [] | 2020-10-29 12:44:48.058000+00:00 | ['Jupyter Notebook', 'Github Actions', 'Markdown', 'Data Science', 'Github Pages'] |
Why 46 B.C. Is the Longest Recorded Year in History — And the Vaguest! | Why 46 B.C. Is the Longest Recorded Year in History — And the Vaguest!
“The last year of confusion” that led to the calendar we use to this date.
Photo by Waldemar Brandt on Unsplash
If by longest “year” we consider the yearly calendar of the time, the longest one would be the last year of the Roman Republic’s calendar. Julius Caesar, priest and brilliant politician of Rome, extended the year 46 B.C. to 445 days. But why?
The brief answer
Different societies have chosen one of three types of calendars throughout history:
Lunar which is is based on the orbit of the moon, Solar, this is based on the orbit of our planet around the sun, Or a combination of the two.
However, 2000 years ago these calendars used to require intercalation of extra days into the year in order to maintain the calendar up to date with the solar year.
These intercalations were added in by people in power. This made them subject to abuse.
The Julian calendar which was used in the Roman world and most parts of Europe needed many days of intercalations to reform its ancient calendar. That’s why the year 46 B.C. is the longest recorded year in history:
“The Julian calendar was created in 46 B.C. out of a chaotic calendar. Over the two centuries leading up to 46 B.C., the calendar had come seriously out of alignment, and was roughly 80 days out.” “Times of crisis, wars, and political squabbling had meant that people had either forgotten to add, or intentionally left out, the intercalary month and religious holidays. The intercalary month was a month inserted between February and March every few years, to bring the 355 day calendar in line with the cycle of seasons.” — The history of Caesar’s calendar
The origin of the problem explained:
Lunar calendars are based on the movement and phases of the Moon around the Earth, with a new Moon occurring every 29.5 days. The lunar calendar is 354 days.
In comparison, solar calendars mark time through the movement of the Earth around the Sun and the seasons, that is 365 days. That’s why the difference in 11 days in the lunar year is compensated with an extra month that is inserted into the calendar every three years. This helps to realign the lunar calendar with the solar scheme.
2000 years ago, the calendar was not a universal measure of time, but it was more like a schedule to inform people about religious festivals.
“The ordinary year in the previous Roman calendar consisted of 10 months. In addition, a 27- or 28-day intercalary month, the Mensis Intercalaris, was sometimes inserted between February and March.” “This intercalary month was formed by inserting 22 or 23 days after the first 23 days of February; the last five days of February, which counted down toward the start of March, became the last five days of Intercalaris. The net effect was to add 22 or 23 days to the year, forming an intercalary year of 377 or 378 days.” — Wikipedia
The Roman calendar was a combination of lunar and ancient calendars, and that was a mess. The priests of Rome were manipulating the calendar to adjust the dates matching with the occurring natural seasons.
The “fix” was done by adding days to February every second year. But, the “fix” was not always consistent and that did not really adjust the calendar. That’s why the Roman Calendar was always falling significantly behind, and harvest festivals were not falling at harvest time.
Caesar, the man who wished to control the stars | https://medium.com/history-of-yesterday/why-46-b-c-is-the-longest-recorded-year-in-history-and-the-vaguest-ba039d69e002 | ['Hossein Raspberry'] | 2020-12-28 09:04:05.759000+00:00 | ['History', 'Life', 'Politics', 'Science', 'Culture'] |
175. Why Legitimacy And Trust Are Huge Problems For The Experience Industry (And How To Fix It) | “Ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to this Board of Directors meeting at MegaCorp LLC. As you know, the current crisis has left us in a bad position. Luckily, we still have plenty of space to manuever and resources to make change happen. We are, after all, a huge company! But, truth be told, we need new ideas and new perspectives. It’s adapt or die time, and I for one, intend to adapt! So… who should we bring in to help?”
“Yes, Linda?”
“Well, we’ve worked with the consultants at Booze Allen Hamilton in the past, and that’s been good. How about we bring them in?”
“Good suggestion, Linda. Noted. Sam, you also had a hand up?”
“There’s a Stanford University Professor I know. She teaches Innovation Strategy. How about I call her in and we set up a workshop?”
“Great. You get on that, Sam. Fatima, how about you? Any ideas?”
“Hmm… ok, now that think of it, there’s a new company consisting of former Wall Street big shots, who now offer advice on Mergers and Acquisitions. They’re expensive, but they sound good. Should I reach out to them?”
“Definitely! We need all the help we can get. Remember the Einstein quote about always doing the same thing and expecting different results? We need to think outside the box here!”
…
“Peter, you’ve been quiet. Damn it, man, now isn’t the time for silence! We need ideas, and you know a million people. What’s on your mind?”
“With respect, I do have some ideas, but they are a tad unusual…”
“That’s exactly what we need! Spill the beans!”
“Ok, so I’ve got this friend that runs something called The Experience Design Bureau. They’re a bit wild, but have a crazy track record. They helped Coca Cola rethink their customer experience strategy, were the creative minds behind the new Ford multi-family car that everyone is talking about and helped MOMA in New York boost their revenue by 300% by letting guests co-design the exhibitions. How about I give them a call?”
“… Experience Design bureau? What the hell is that?”
“Well, it’s a bit new, but as I understand it, they think of the experience rather than the product. Not sure I get it myself, but they’ve done some really impressive stuff.”
“Who’s behind it? I read something about Universal Studios branching out in new areas. Is it part of that?”
“No, it’s just them. They’re a six-man operation, from what my friend tells me, and then they pull in freelancers when needed. Kind of like a film studio, but they design experiences instead of movies, or something like that.”
“Ok, so it’s just six guys in some garage somewhere selling pipe dreams?”
“Well, no… I mean… I don’t think so. They’ve worked with Coca Cola and Ford and MOMA, after all…”
“Forget it. We need serious suggestions. You got anything else, Peter?”
“How about Escape Your Own Reality? They started in 2015 with a single escape room in Atlanta and now they’re running almost 400 escape rooms in the Middle East. They helped British Airways find new ways to make money on their brand and I read that their deal with Hyatt brings in more than 600 million dollars a year for the hotel chain. I know someone, who went to school with their founder.”
“Escape rooms? Peter, this isn’t a time for jokes. Anything else?”
“If you don’t like either of those, how about Unlimited Imagination LLC? They took an old theme park in Germany and did a complete makeover on the concept. Apparently, they didn’t build anything, but just changed it from a place with rollercoasters to a zombie horror thing. The number of visitors more than 10x’ed over the course of two years! I met their COO at a conference in Paris in the spring, and I seem to remember that they also did corporate collaborations.”
“Ok, I’ve heard enough. Linda, call the consultants. Sam, you get hold of that Professor! Fatima, I want a meeting with those ex-Wall Street types asap. And Peter, I suggest you go home and take a long hard think about why you’re on this board. We brought you on because we wanted someone different. Not because we wanted a hopeless dreamer. Consider this a warning!”
Does this sound hauntingly familiar?
It’s been more than twenty years ago since Jim Gilmore and Joe Pine took the corporate world by storm with their writings (and talks) about “The Experience Economy”. Since then, experience evangelists have spread the gospel from Australia to Alaska — we should no longer think only of commodities, products or services, but instead of experiences.
If you don’t already have it, this book is a must for your collection!
But while the theory is sound and the numbers are clear, even the most successful experience innovators have a hard time getting the word out. In the recently published “The Innovation Cycle”, Pine himself shares this story:
Years ago, I gave a boardroom talk in Milan, Italy, to a dozen or so executives from different companies. One was the VP of a global coffee manufacturer, and made a statement that amazed me: “There has been no innovation in the coffee industry in fifteen years.” I respond: “Have you never hard of Starbucks?”
And this isn’t just a small time local experience designer from Greece — this is Joe Pine, one of the godfathers of the Experience Economy. This guy is one of the few people, who actually DOES get listened to.
We have a legitimacy problem in the experience design space
The horrible truth is that there’s a huge disconnect at play here.
As the world becomes more and more complex and change happens faster and faster, it’s increasingly necessary for companies both big and small to be constantly re-imagining themselves. But when the giants look for “the next big thing”, they have a tendency to overlook experience design.
And why? Is it because there aren’t examples of how to use experience design to create amazing things? No, certainly not. While the cases above were fictional, there are plenty of impressive real world numbers out there.
About five years ago, the Danish interactive theatre designer Peter Holst-Beck partnered up with Kronborg Castle in Denmark (the castle of Hamlet) and started doing interactive productions of Hamlet there. Though the price for admittance rose by nearly 50%, visitor numbers soared, and within a three year period, Kronborg saw an increase in guests from ~100.000 to ~350.000. That’s insane. And on the money side, the numbers are even better. Kronborg, which is part of the National Museum of Denmark, is now cash flow positive and helps fund the other museums — and the Museum Director, Rane Willerslev, has called it “the Museum’s golden egg”.
And don’t even get me started on Meow Wolf. (Seriously, if you’ve never heard of them, google “Meow Wolf”. You won’t be sorry!)
But even so, it’s hard for people like Peter Holst-Beck to get in front of boardrooms and executives. Of course! Who’d ever think of bringing in an experience designer, when you can hire McKinsey?
Full disclosure: I work as a coach at McKinsey, so I’m happy whenever anyone brings them in!
Now, personally, I’m quite happy about that, since I sometimes get pulled in because of my Experience Design skills, but just because I’m lucky to have landed in the middle of consulting royalty doesn’t mean that everything is as it should be. Like Pine and Peter Holst-Beck, I’m one of the exceptions.
But I shouldn’t be.
And that’s an ugly truth we have to face (and change):
Experience Design has a legitimacy problem.
We don’t have enough prestigious names in our corner
Harvard Business School. Stanford. State Departments. Oxford. Maersk. Morgan Stanley. CBS News. Ford. British Airways. These are just a few names on the list, and it goes on and on and on. There are many ways to gain respect in the corporate world, and these are just a couple of names that are nice to have on your resume.
“Top Ten Most Famous Logos” | From the Designbro blog
There are also awards and conferences and magazines and courses and certifications and and and. The different paths to respect and success in the world of big corporate (and big government) are many and varied.
And the world of experience design?
Well, on one hand we have giants like Disney and Universal Studios. It’s also easy to argue that Facebook contains its fair share of experience designers and that McDonalds is in the experience design business.
We do have Disney in our corner. And that is definitely something!
But outsiders don’t see it that way — and neither do the giants themselves, necessarily. Yes, Disney has its Disney Institute that helps organisations with “learning a bit about the Disney magic”, but it’s not like Kodak brought on ex-Disney thinkers when their photography empire started crumbling.
And that’s the big names. Try knocking on the door of a 1,000 person company that’s looking for fresh ideas and saying “Hi there — I’m a highly trained and award winning experience designer. Maybe I can help solve your problems!”. Try it. You might succeed, but I can guarantee you that it’s easier to get into that room if you flash your ex-Deloitte past at them.
Because we’re hard to understand, we need strong institutions to back us, and as of right now, we simply don’t have those institutions.
We need to pioneer, partner and piggyback
Luckily, this is something we can change. It’s not going to be easy and it’s going to be a long hard struggle, but we CAN actually make it better.
I see three clear paths forward:
Pioneering. We have to create our own institutions and grow their reputations. We must band together to strengthen each other by being many instead of few. We need to support the existing networks in our space and signal boost them. In short, working together amongst ourselves to present a stronger front towards the rest of the world.
We have to create our own institutions and grow their reputations. We must band together to strengthen each other by being many instead of few. We need to support the existing networks in our space and signal boost them. In short, working together amongst ourselves to present a stronger front towards the rest of the world. Partnering. We need to find allies who can help us while we help them. We have to connect with existing institutions, resources and brands and co-create with them. We must accept trade-offs and compromises, so we can move forward, because if we don’t expand our bubble we’re tiny. That means learning how to speak the lingo of others to be understood, and accepting that they don’t know ours.
We need to find allies who can help us while we help them. We have to connect with existing institutions, resources and brands and co-create with them. We must accept trade-offs and compromises, so we can move forward, because if we don’t expand our bubble we’re tiny. That means learning how to speak the lingo of others to be understood, and accepting that they don’t know ours. Piggybacking. We also have the advantage that since we don’t have a strong identity of our own (yet), we can ride on waves others have created. We need to use phrases such as “… like X, but Y” instead of trying to re-invent the wheel. We have to accept that it’s easier to get in the door if a bit of nuance is lost. And we must latch onto trends and find a niché in them. Once you’re at the table, it matters less how you got there.
What an award show looked like in 1929 — not too shabby!
What does this mean on a practical, hands-on level?
It means creating and supporting organisations not because of what they can do now, but for what they may become in the future. The first Oscars back in 1929 didn’t matter much to the world, but now, they are hugely important on a global level. Let’s start things like the WXO on that path.
It means getting over ourselves and realising that we are stronger together, even when our allies look different than we’d like. Partnering with a utility company might not feel as sexy as partnering with Disney, but if you want to change the world, you need to look for impact rather than glamour.
It means swallowing our pride and saying yes instead of no, when prestigious institutions do something similar to what we do. Explaining Star Wars as “a bit like Star Trek” may be blasphemous to some, but it makes it easier to connect with someone who is very new to space adventures.
Zig Ziglar is right
Finally, I know that it’s a bit crass talking about this like it’s only a matter of selling, because it’s so much more than that — but there is something to be said about this quote from the American sales legend Zig Ziglar:
“Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.”
The rest of the world will gladly take care of the first four.
But if we don’t work on improving the fifth one, who will? | https://clausraasted.medium.com/why-legitimacy-and-trust-are-huge-problems-for-the-experience-industry-and-how-to-fix-it-f7b5c64fb5ef | ['Claus Raasted'] | 2020-12-20 21:03:43.898000+00:00 | ['Creativity', 'Ideas', 'Business', 'Culture', 'Experience Design'] |
How to create a background video in React Native | Demo: Peleton Home Screen
In this post, we are going to create a backgroundVideo in React Native. If you have just started with React Native check out my article What you need to know to start building mobile apps with React Native.
Background video can add a nice effect to the UI of an app. They may be helpful also if you want to display, for example, ads or send a message to the user, like we’ll do here.
You will need some basic requirements. To get started, you must have the react-native environment setup. That means you have:
react-native-cli installed
Android SDK; if you have a mac you won’t need that, just Xcode
Getting started
First things first, let’s bootstrap a new React Native app. In my case I’m using react-native-cli. So in your terminal run:
react-native init myapp
This should install all the dependencies and packages to run your React Native app.
Next step is to run and install the app on the simulator.
For iOS:
react-native run-ios
This should open up the iOS simulator.
On Android:
react-native run-android
You may have some trouble with Android. I recommend that you use Genymotion and the Android emulator or check out this friendly guide to set up the environment.
First what we are going to do is clone the Peleton app’s home screen. We are using react-native-video for video streaming, and styled-component for styling. So you have to install them:
Yarn:
yarn add react-native-video styled-components
NPM
npm -i react-native-video styled-components --save
Then you need to link react-native-video because it contains native code — and for styled-components we don’t need that. So simply run:
react-native link
You don’t have to worry about the other things, just focus on the Video Component. First, import Video from react-native-video and start using it!
import import Video from "react-native-video";
<Video source={require("./../assets/video1.mp4")} style={styles.backgroundVideo} muted={true} repeat={true} resizeMode={"cover"} rate={1.0} ignoreSilentSwitch={"obey"} />
Let’s break it down:
source: the path to the source video. You can use the URL instead:
source={{uri:"https://youronlineVideo.mp4"}}
style: the costume style we want to give to the video, and the key to making the background video
the costume style we want to give to the video, and the key to making the background video resizeMode: in our case it is cover ; you can try also contain or stretch but this won’t give us what we want
And other props are optional.
Let’s move to the important part: placing the video in the background position. Let’s define the styles.
// We use StyleSheet from react-native so don't forget to import it //import {StyleSheet} from "react-native";
const { height } = Dimensions.get("window"); const styles = StyleSheet.create({ backgroundVideo: { height: height, position: "absolute", top: 0, left: 0, alignItems: "stretch", bottom: 0, right: 0 } });
What did we do here?
We gave the video a position :absolute and we give it the window height of the device. We used the Dimensions from React Native to ensure that the video is taking up the whole hight — top:0, left:0,bottom:0,right:0 — so that the video takes up all the space!
The entire code:
Also, you can make this component reusable by doing the following:
<View>
<Video source={require("./../assets/video1.mp4")} style={styles.backgroundVideo} muted={true} repeat={true} resizeMode={"cover"} rate={1.0} ignoreSilentSwitch={"obey"} /> {this.props.children}
</View>
And you can use it with other components:
That’s pretty much it. Thank you for reading!
Photo by David Boca on Unsplash
Learn more about React Native:
Other posts:
You can find me on Twitter 🐦
Subscribe to my Mailing list to stay tuned for upcoming articles! | https://medium.com/free-code-camp/how-to-create-a-background-video-in-react-native-cb53304ee4f6 | ['Saidhayani'] | 2019-04-17 05:57:16.339000+00:00 | ['React Native', 'Programming', 'iOS', 'Mobile App Development', 'Technology'] |
Love is Simple, it Encompasses Everything That Exists When the Heart is Open | Love. Love. Love.
It’s the thing that we most desire. We want it. We want to feel loved. We want the people we love to love us back. Because we expect love to be reciprocal.
But is demonstration and reciprocity the recipe for love?
I have been thinking about love a lot lately. I recently talked about it with my sister-friends. The conversation expanded my definition of love. But the more I sit with it the more I realize that love is not as complicated as it seems.
Love is simple… it’s everything that exists when the heart is open.
When the heart is open there is tenderness, kindness, compassion, tolerance, and acceptance. And when the heart is closed, there isn’t. My new found definition of love has prompted me to look at my relationships. To see when I am loving and when I’m not.
Love is not a blanket. You may be loving in one area and unloving in another.
And if I’m honest, there are some areas that I am anything but loving. I sometimes forget that people are human like me. There have been times when I have been generous with my heart and found myself disappointed.
I do not collect people.
When I allow someone into my world, I try not to take their presence for granted. I share my whole self, flaws and all.
I am saddened when friendships end. My heart aches when romance is interrupted. And it makes me physically ill when there is betrayal in my family.
Before now, those things would cause me to rescind my love. Although traces of love would remain in my words, my heart would slam shut, and cast out whoever caused me pain.
But that is not love… and closing my heart does not hurt anyone but me.
It is possible to keep my heart open while walking away. I can accept reality with an open heart, and move on. I can speak the truth, feel anger, and let it be… with my heart open wide.
The closing of the heart is instinctive. Us humans, we shy away from pain and discomfort. And heartbreak hurts like hell, so we close down.
But in shutting down we often take our love back. We act as if it was never as intense. We rewrite history to tone down the enormity of our love. Because if we remember the bigness, we fear that our pain will be too BIG to bear.
When we close our heart, we diminish our capacity to receive love from the people who are still here.
So rather than shutting down, I am choosing discernment. I will keep my heart open, but I will be selective about who I let in. I will be present in my body so that I can feel the truth. I will not shrink or hide from love. I will not try to protect my heart. But I will be more present.
And if I should find myself loving someone who is just passing through, I will allow it.
I will love them the best that I can, for however long it lasts. Then I will set them free. Because open hearts do not bind…. and love is intended to liberate. | https://medium.com/relationship-ing/love-is-simple-it-encompasses-everything-that-exists-when-the-heart-is-open-baa394173c98 | ['Stacey Herrera'] | 2019-08-15 14:12:36.809000+00:00 | ['Self-awareness', 'Relationships', 'Love', 'Intimacy', 'Life'] |
Why Chrissy Teigen’s Choice of Headline Was Perfect | Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
Why Chrissy Teigen’s Choice of Headline Was Perfect
“Hi” is such a simple, powerful word.
After losing a baby to a risk pregnancy, Chrissy Teigen published a story on Medium talking about the experience and expressing her feelings. The story is well-written and deeply moving, and it quickly shot up to the #1 place of Medium’s most popular stories, where it stayed put for close to a week.
One particular detail of Teigen’s story grabbed a lot of writers’ attention: its headline, Hi.
One word, two letters. Hi.
Despite everything Teigen went through, and the obvious merits of her writing, some writers were still upset that someone could choose such a simple headline and still come away with millions of views because she’s famous. But Teigen’s story isn’t powerful only because she’s famous, but because of the context in which it was released, and her choice of title only contributes to its power.
You can huff and puf and rage about how someone with 30+ million Instagram followers doesn’t have to put a lot of thought into a headline, and yes, this headline only works because it’s attached to a name we all recognize, but that doesn’t mean the choice was bad.
Hi isn’t a weak headline, it’s personal, touching and humble. It was her first personal statement after what happened to her and her family, the first time she was coming out of silence to dare say a few words about her pain.
What else was Teigen supposed to title such a story?
I’ve Lost My Baby and It Was the Most Painful Day of My Life
How My Husband and I Are Grieving the Loss of Our Baby
I Lost a Baby, and I’m Heartbroken
While these might get clicks if they were published by someone other than a celebrity, they don’t fit Chrissy Teigen’s story at all. Can you imagine if any of those had been her headline? It would sound a lot more like a celebrity trying to gain further attention by exploiting a personal tragedy than a grieving mother and public figure trying to express her pain and reconnect with her fans after spending some time away from the spotlight.
After news broke that Teigen had lost her baby boy, social media was inundated with messages of support for her and her family. When, after seeing all commotion on social media and sharing my own condolences tweet, I saw the Hi headline next to her name on Medium, I thought, “she’s talking to me. She is messaging me.”
And she was.
As you read her story, you find out she’s messaging everyone who took a minute or two of their day to share a condolences message to her on social media. Her story is more than a statement, is a message back to everyone who’s messaged her and she can’t personally respond.
Hi is as personal as she can make it. After all, “hi” is how you answer a text from a friend who’s been inquiring about your well-being. “Hi” is the first word you use to break your silence, to say you’re ready to come out into the world without making too much of a fuss about it.
Hi is quiet and subtle — but powerful.
And yes, if anyone other than a celebrity wrote Hi on Medium, the story would definitely flop, but that’s beside the point.
The point is that the Hi headline was perfect for Chrissy Teigen’s story, it made sense in a context, and it carried her message with dignity, humility and grace. | https://medium.com/a-life-of-words/why-chrissy-teigens-choice-of-headline-was-perfect-f68e02b24719 | ['Renata Gomes'] | 2020-11-06 17:47:25.266000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Celebrity', 'Life Lessons', 'Writing'] |
Lucky Per is the New Greatest Story Ever Told | Lucky Per is the New Greatest Story Ever Told
The novel is a soul-searcher’s guide to the Joyful Galaxy of One.
1890 photo of Danish author Henrik Pontoppidan, Wikimedia Commons
One is tempted to label Henrik Pontoppidan’s Lucky Per as a novel akin to Homer’s Odyssey, a modern-day hero’s journey. Certainly there is that parallel arc in the obstacle-strewn journeys of Per, the Danish protagonist, and Odysseus. However, it is the eventual homecoming that separates the two — and in my mind elevates Lucky Per above the Greek icon.
The end of this Danish masterpiece might be a Rorschach separating pessimists from optimists—count me among the latter. About two-thirds through, I almost dreaded getting to the end, but then was pleasantly surprised (not all readers will be) and impressed beyond measure. Endings often make or break a book or movie.
Without spoiling, I’ll say that what I loved about the way the novel resolves Per’s life is that it validated my personal worldview. Imagine that!—in a novel written about 120 years ago in Scandinavia. In my esteem the resolution is enlightened, prophetic, and ahead of its time.
Lucky Per was my new best friend for a week as I curled up everywhere, from my bed to buses to public benches, with that hefty hardcover book (1 1/2 lbs, more than 600 pages, including the introduction and translator’s note).
Where had Per been all my life? Untranslated into English was where, until 2019. Naomi Lebowitz, a professor at Washington University, has done a brilliant translation of the work. Lucky Per was first published in 1904 and in 1917 Pontoppidan was awarded the Nobel Prize. Everyman’s Library has made available to us English speakers a true masterpiece, a bildungsroman, a novel that deals with the character’s formative years, mid- and late-life, and spiritual education.
Lucky Per is that and so much more, as the author delves deeply into not only religious thought of the times, but also the enduring, even ancient, spiritual and philosophical tropes, as well as the attitudes toward technological advances of the time. Fairytales, mythology, and nature are important threads in the novel. (Pontoppidan was born just as Hans Christian Anderson came out with New Fairy Tales and Stories). This may sound like the makings for a muddy stew of a read but it all works, along with all the contradictions and paradoxes in the character, Per (the nickname for Peter Andreas).
The throughline that drives the long novel is Per’s quest for greatness, a singular goal that waxes and wanes but never truly vanishes. The idea of what defines greatness matures with Per. We are with him from his early youth as the incorrigible middle child of eleven children (six girls and five boys — boy, could I relate, as number five of ten kids). Per’s father, a minister in the country village of Jutland, is a dour, humorless, God-fearing man in the worst sort of way — ruthlessly soul murdering.
By page twenty-one Per (who is always Peter Andreas to his big family, only becoming Per out in the secular world) has his first soul-saving epiphany during one of his many punished rebellions:
“He had never known so strongly as in that moment that he did not belong to his house, to that half-dark, stuffy room where his father and siblings now sat and sang hymns and muttered apprehensive prayers in the middle of a magical winter’s night — in a sort of underworld blindness to the light and full of dread of life and its glory. He felt himself a thousand miles from that scene, under a wholly different heaven, at one with the sun and stars and the sailing clouds.”
Soon to follow this awakening is Per’s first idea of how to achieve greatness—to the benefit of his fellow Danes. Thanks to the perceptiveness of one elder, a math teacher, he decides to become an engineer (as was the author before becoming a journalist):
“He wanted to be an engineer. That profession seemed to him to command the most possibility for the real fulfillment of his dream of a proud and free-roaming life, rich in adventure and exciting incidents. Also, the choice of a practical profession would give him the means to break away cleanly from his family and the glorified centuries-old traditions . . . [his father] would often disparage the general joyous anticipation of a great technological future.”
Per’s life spans eight books (or chapters), the first titled “His Youth.” Thus begins Per’s sentimental education. Young and impetuous, Per is the Holden Caulfield archetype, green, naïve, the big city his oyster: “Freedom’s hour finally sounded for Peter Andreas . . . he was 16 when his father consented to send him to Copenhagen to study at the Polytechnic Institute . . . His departure from home had cost him no tears.” Like Holden in Catcher in the Rye, Per is fraught with angst, alienation. Through Per’s point of view we observe the superficiality of society. Just as Catcher in the Rye “deals with complex issues of innocence, identity, belonging, loss, connection, and sex” (Wikipedia), so does Lucky Per in this first book.
Per soon morphs into another immortal soul searcher, Flaubert’s Frédéric Moreau, and is prone to romantic flights of fancy. We see Per hopscotching through puppy love with free-loving Lizbeth, whom he insensitively drops for the virginal Francisca. Soon enough, like his doppelganger Moreau, he licks his chops for a more mature love with the proverbial older married woman, the Baroness. (For Moreaux, it is Madame Arnoux). That doesn’t last long either.
Pontoppidan’s scope in his novel is broader than that of Flaubert who claimed that he wanted “to write the moral history of the men of my generation — or, more accurately, the history of their feelings.” Still, Lucky Per, like L’Education Sentimental can be at turns “ironic and pessimistic,” but with a heavier, more detailed lampooning of (Danish) society.
Per resembles another famous French realist character, Eugène de Rastignac, the protagonist in Honoré de Balzac’s Père Goriot. Both Per and Eugène are of poor extraction, aspiring naively to fit in high society, ambitious to achieve their lofty goals, dismissing advice of others, and eager to lean on their own wits and charm, often through relationships with women. However, Pontoppidan early on in Per’s soulful journey, has begun to touch on the turn-of-the-century concerns in industry, technology, population, poverty, nature. This painting of the very same concerns of our day is what separates Poppontidan from Flaubert (and Balzac, Zola, and other naturalists who preceded him). And which makes him so relevant today.
In Book (or chapter) 2, Per starts hanging out in bohemian cafés and pubs with “foaming tankards” galore. “It was here, through these old people who emptied the cup of joy to the dregs, that Peter Andreas had found his first sanctuary — a provisional refuge on the way to that country of happiness his dreams had promised him.” Per takes in the rants and intoxicated pontificating as he and the reader get an earful of the artsy pedantry.
In a dark, poorly furnished room, Per keeps working on his innovative idea to connect Denmark through its waterways by an expansive network of canals. In one of the pubs, Per’s proposed engineering project comes to the notice of one Ivan Salomon, the son of Copenhagen’s affluent Jewish family. Ivan takes genuine interest in Per and doggedly desires to be his benefactor. Ivan is a sort of philanthropic investment capitalist who wants “to discover a genius someday and champion him.” Ivan praises Per, telling him“he was marked out to be an Aladdin, a charmed boy on whose Caesar brow God’s finger had written, ‘I come, I see, I conquer!’”
Even as Per, we are told, is humiliated to get “this prophecy from the mouth of a foolish little Jew,” he accepts the invitation to the social gatherings at Ivan’s wealthy family homes — in the city and the country.
There in those lavish settings intricately detailed by Pontoppidan, we see Per’s character slowly ripen. A hormonal Per is instantly attracted to one of Ivan’s sisters, Nanny, who is the more sensual and flirtatious. But then, the older sister, Jakobe, who is reserved, less endowed with conventional beauty, attracts Per for her more grounded wisdom, intellect, and inner attributes. If at first Per latches on to Jakobe for selfish material reasons, as their relationship grows, Per develops a deeper, more authentic self. We observe Per alternately fall from grace (cheat on his lover, lie by omission or commission), feel remorse, probe his own moral or immoral behavior, and return to steadfast earnest belief in his own raison d’être. Per emanates a sort of pride that equally keeps self-respect intact and at times trips him up.
So committed to his engineering invention, Per is willing to endure long stretches of solitude to fine tune it. Aside from Ivan’s unconditional belief in him Per suffers constant rebuffs, even insults, from stodgy social institutions. He is viewed as too young to be so brilliant. Going in and out of depression over such rejections, Per keeps his nose to the grindstone. The invention is his Sisyphean rock throughout the novel. Perhaps love is too. He often comes so close to the summit in both camps, only to have the rock fall back. At times it appears that Per is the one shooting himself in the foot. Other times, it seems society’s cards are stacked against him, in a way those of us who identify with soul searchers, who are willing to think outside the box, can relate to.
Disillusionment is inevitable. Before entering the Polytechnic Institute, Per “had imagined it as a kind of temple, a solemn intellectual workshop where the future happiness and well-being of free men were forged by the thunder and lightning of the mind. He found instead, a hateful, ugly building . . . many dark, melancholy rooms permeated with the smell of tobacco . . . He had expected his future teachers to be devoted preachers of natural science’s sacred gospel; he met instead old, dry schoolmasters in the lecture halls, . . . .. One of them a perfect mummy . . . a pedant. . .”
Per’s and Jakobe’s relationship once it gets some traction (by a fleeting, impulsive Prince Charming kiss on a staircase) drives this novel upward to its true maginificence. Their romance in all its vicissitudes is the real heart and soul and spirit of the book. There is always a tentativeness about their love. They take turns being the one to hold back. Jakobe’s first impression of Per is that he is a dolt, a fop, maybe if she spoke Yiddish, a nebbish. Per’s initial negative Jewish sentiment seems to dissipate as he becomes guardedly comfortable in the sumptuous Salomon homes. And while he does accept financial support from them, it is always with a bit of resentment. His pride assures himself he will repay it once his invention gets backing.
Notwithstanding Per’s flaws and Jakobe’s fragile introverted life, they do genuinely fall in love and progress through its stages. It takes some doing on both parts and it develops over time, not in the Hollywood fast-track manner. Literary loves always put me in mind of Stendhal’s seven stages of love. One can mark stages for Per and Jakobe but they seem to divert from the Stenhalian model, given that their love grows from initial antipathy. (Consider the purity of the lotus that springs from muddy waters.)
One wonderful, significant high point occurs when Per is working abroad in Austria and Jakobe surprises him with a visit. It is at a time when Per has had another of his awakenings, this one in nature: “Now his vision was not captured by the mere lines and colors of maps, but by the vastness, spirit, the mystical powers of nature to which he was made susceptible by his anxiety . . . the immense power of forms and the deep stillness of eternity that called out strange and new feelings and moods in him.” So when Jakobe joins him in the Alps their bonding is full of openness and joy, their defenses dropped, perhaps the most intimate they will ever be.
Something huge happens to Jakobe during this visit. It seems sad that Per may never know about it. Whether or not that is for the best, both characters move on to higher selves and there is a cherished resolution to their relationship, one that’s atypical for novels of this time. Think of the many Madame Bovary types who had to suffer and die in the end for their sins of impurity. Or, consider Thomas Hardy (1840 to 1928) whose novels I’ve loved. However, much as he was critical of Victorian society, he never bestowed upon his hero or heroine the sort of transcendence that Per and Jakobe will reach.
During Per’s travels for work the engaged lovers write to each other. This often serves as a modus operandi for Pontoppidan’s Socratic discourse on religion. During a visit in Rome, Per, the minister’s son, reads the ancients and has this aha moment as he writes Jakobe, “Never have I felt so strongly as now what a crime against humanity Christianity has been. Never have I understood with such shame how far we still have to rise . . .”
There in Rome Per finds “a clearer and clearer understanding that Christianity was a lot older than Christ, in whom it only found its culmination, at least for the time being. And he couldn’t take comfort in the thought that it would have been but a passing phenomenon if the powers and princes of the state had not seen some advantage in helping it onto the spirit’s throne. It seemed to have taken root in a primal human need and to suck sustenance from an instinct that lay outside nature. . .”
While Per is absorbing this knowledge about the human condition, Jakobe has an experience that shapes her later devotion. She witnesses the degradation and indigence of a mass of emigrés waiting to be shipped to America. They are Jews escaping the pogroms of Russia and Eastern Europe, stranded in a hellish limbo (an outdoor detention center). Another time, she writes Per after a train conductor loudly mocks her “beak,” that she, despite her family’s high-society position, “was reminded that I belong to that same damned and persecuted race.”
Given the times, it seems inevitable that, even after they are engaged to be married, Per would cruelly conclude in a letter to Jakobe that “there was now an irremediable problem in their relationship: they were not rooted in the same spiritual soil.” He only draws this conclusion offhandedly during a visit to his countryside of origin, near Jutland.
This development is the fulfillment of a prophecy early in the novel by one of the numerous characters who appear and disappear. This man, just before committing suicide, tells Per presciently that one always returns to one’s roots “even if we sometimes hate it.” He informs Per that there is “an uncomfortable magical power . . . in all that is homely and habitual . . . We live in a sepulchral chapel of family remembrances and, finally, have no feelings other than piety.” In other words, against our best aspirations and intentions, we will, zombie-like, all return to our origins. Per dismisses him.
Yet it appears that this prediction is coming true. During a visit to the very home territory that disgusted young Per, he falls for a Christian family’s daughter, perceiving her as a better (as in more familiar) marriage mate than Jakobe.
Jakobe is heartbroken and so am I. But this is not the end! The ultimate, the coup de grace of awakenings is yet to come, only after Per marries the home girl, has three children with her, and still finds himself suffering angst and ennui.
What Per does about this continued confusion will sound selfish or selfless, depending on the reader. I go with the latter. In the village there is one Pastor Fjaltring considered eccentric and crazy by most. He might be playing the role of the Fool or Trickster. Per will be chastised for even talking to him but he does so one day and this passing patter might have influenced his final stage in life. In a long diatribe, the Pastor tells Per: “. . . happiness in the worldly sense has made mankind sterile. The soul’s native element is grief. Happiness is an animal vestige in us.”
Per retreats from (abandons?) his young family to a monkish lifestyle in some undisclosed country area, where he lives alone, reads, finds humble work, contentment, even rapture just in day to day life. He will pass his received wisdom on to a neighbor school master who later serves as the voice for Per’s grand finale. In this fully enlightened Per, I recognized Pontoppidan’s fundamental contention that the human desire for freedom and intimacy, is always within one’s grasp because it can only come from within, from one’s Self. Pontoppidan has taken his character through all the external quests, all the passages we all share in, for work, for love, for happiness. Yet in the end, all institutions from religious and academic, to marriage/children are often (do the numbers) stumbling blocks to the very thing we want and think they can offer.
The author takes us inside Per’s mind working on this conundrum: “There was a stray Buddhist saying that has burned into his brain and shone like phosphor every time his soul grew dark: ‘He who loves nothing here on earth and hates nothing, desires nothing — only he is without fear and fetters.’ . . . From all corners of the earth, the same answer! In all ages, the same demand: self-denial, obliteration of the self. Happiness lies in renunciation.”
Once Per finds the golden goose, the secret sauce, the happiness that was always available to him, he becomes a model for his neighbor, the young school master. Through his posthumous journal writings Per relates these pearls: “There is only one thing that can conquer suffering: the Passion.*” And: “Every man’s soul is an independent universe, his death the extinction of the universe in miniature.”
I wonder if Pontoppidan read the ancient Buddhists. One, Pai-Chang, asserted, “It is better to settle the inner truth first, and then afterward gain virtue and knowledge.” Per, like most of us, has done the reverse, but only then, as Pai-Chang taught, he could “turn earth into gold,” figuratively of course.
Disheartened when Pontoppidan would have Per forsake Jakobe for home girl (passing up a diamond for cut glass?), I pushed through the final chapters of the book. I found deep satisfaction in what both Per and Jakobe become. They remain friends as they age, writing each other. Jakobe uses her family riches to start a school for the wretched displaced children she had seen deprived of home and safety. Per bequeaths his money to her school. The saga of Per Sidenius and Jakobe Salomon comes full circle. Quite beautiful. | https://medium.com/nomudnolotus-writer/lucky-per-is-the-new-greatest-story-ever-told-3985e4c4369c | ['Camille Cusumano'] | 2020-06-07 17:28:36.839000+00:00 | ['Fiction', 'Literature', 'Danish', 'Writing', 'Bildungsroman'] |
2020 Isn’t The First Year I’ve Lost | Spring is here in spite of the virus. My bird feeders are active with goldfinches, cardinals, mourning doves, and blackbirds. The hyacinths and tulips in my small garden are in full bloom. The tiny magnolia tree that Ana gave me for Mother’s Day four or five years ago is already losing its flowers. Outside, the world looks normal. But in here, where my dishes are clean and my laundry folded, life is still on pause.
“I will lose another year,” I think to myself as I pour a cup of coffee on yet another Sunday devoid of plans or purpose. But this thought feels meaningless, unhelpful. The years are not a given. I, of all people, should realize this. This year will not look like I thought it would, but my expectations are subjective. I know, from experience, that there are only three things that matter right now: patience, gratitude, and kindness.
Be patient. That’s the advice I would give anyone who is sick of all this waiting and worry, to those protestors parading in the streets and the politicians eager to start up the economy again. We cannot change the fact of this virus. We can only do our best to stay safe, keep our loved ones safe, and wait for people who are smarter than us to find a treatment or a cure. We must accept that there’s no way to know what the landscape of our lives will look like when the waiting’s done.
Be grateful. If you are able, then use this time to reflect on the blessings in your life, while also expressing gratitude for those people — the nurses, doctors, postal workers, supermarket employees, and the essential workers who are making it possible for the rest of us to ride this thing out in comparative safety. Be grateful for the people you love and for those that love you.
Be kind — to yourself and to each other. There was already an incredible divide in America before the virus. This divide is our current normal. But we are now in a life or death situation that puts every single one of us in peril, regardless of what we do or do not believe in. What if we help each other because that’s the only way to make it back to some kind of normalcy? What if we don’t revert back to the status quo of hatred and derision after this is over?
The expected, anticipated future we all assumed was a given is up in the air. Waiting for what comes next is incredibly hard. It requires a certain level of sacrifice and resiliency that we’re not used to giving. It requires faith that we can figure out a path forward once we’re past the worst of the disease.
There is no way around this. We can only go through it, then learn to accept the new shape of our world once this is over. A year’s really not that much time to lose when you consider the alternative. | https://jacquelinedooley.medium.com/2020-isnt-the-first-year-i-ve-lost-ee8d8a8a5b84 | ['Jacqueline Dooley'] | 2020-04-19 20:29:57.377000+00:00 | ['Parenting', 'Life', 'Family', 'Lessons Learned', 'Coronavirus'] |
The Social Pageantry of High School Reunions | There’s surprisingly little academic research to be found on the social function of the high school reunion. Commentary available in the public domain is decidedly skeptical of the tradition, which is often seen as obsolete in the social media age. After all, if we wanted a temporary insight into our former classmates’ lives, to check in on their supposed progress as they navigate adulthood, a visit to their social pages would usually suffice. Social media offer a one-sided view, the curated one that emphasizes breezy success and often conceals life’s inevitable failures and disappointments.
High school reunions are messier. They possess untapped potential to dislodge carefully arranged public personas with waves of nostalgia, to lay bare old desires with resurgences of adolescent romantic regret and see shiny, post-high school reputations tainted by the sheer temptation to let it all go with a collection of near-strangers who resemble people you once knew for a while.
Return to the Alma Mater
Etymologically, alumnus/alumna means ‘foster son/daughter’. Alma mater means ‘nurturing mother’. The institution, (school, college) is the symbolic parent who instills in its progeny a social script, a set of role expectations to guide them through society after graduation. At reunions, the ersatz children are expected to return briefly to their institutional parents’ arms to demonstrate how well they’ve been living up to their alma mater’s teachings. A reunion is a sort of pilgrimage to a site of seminal importance, one that is associated with fond memories for some lucky alumni, or years of misery for others.
Like any inevitable quasi-obligatory gathering after a period of absence, the high school reunion is a different experience depending on who you are — or were — as a high schooler. It has the makings of a darkly funny ensemble comedy akin to Death at a Funeral: a gathering of oddball characters at the funeral of your high school years. Your adolescence in memorium. It’s no surprise that the class reunion has served as the main dramatic setting in a number of popular movies over the years.
The Linoleum-Floor Time Warp
Walking through your old school corridors, breathing in the familiar smell of that same linoleum floor polish and glimpsing your reflection in the dusty trophy cabinets, you find yourself in a time warp, all at once disorientating, familiar, comforting, and traumatic. For a moment, you’re fifteen again. Only, you’re not. You’re older. The rules and hierarchies that once prevailed over your teenaged existence no longer apply to you. The new generation will roam these halls come Monday morning, but you — you’ve been released from it all.
Inside the gymnasium, decorated with a ‘Class Of’ banner and clusters of festive balloons, a temporary bar set up on one side, is a sea of familiar faces, each changed by whatever time has done to them. You stand among the very same people who gave you your first lessons in social hierarchy, who, for a time, determined your sense of self-worth and position in the social pecking order.
One thing is certain: attending your high school reunion is guaranteed to deliver a few surprises. In conventional American terms observe which former classmates are most embroiled in the rat race — and those who’ve rejected it entirely. The reality of the people you find there won’t match your expectations. You’ll realize who you remarkably underestimated — the uber-successful person, who, in a recent interview with Forbes/Time/Vanity Fair, mentions, somewhat nonchalantly, how they were told they were a failure in high school, denigrated for whatever trait has made them astoundingly successful in the first place. You’ll also recognize— to your private embarrassment — those who you grossly overestimated. People whose opinions you placed on lofty pedestals, who you exceedingly allowed to determine your worth, who, as you look at them now over the rim of your punch glass, you probably wouldn’t look twice at in a different setting.
Deck The Halls With Social Comparison
As your retrace your steps in the halls of your youth, you’re reminded of the social hierarchies that have long since shifted or disappeared entirely. Undoubtedly, many will experience the high school reunion as something of a leaderboard, where each player is silently judged on yardsticks of physical appearance, social mobility, wealth, influence or family life, perceived cultural and social values of the dominant culture preserved by the American Ivy Leagues, but not the exclusive domain of hard-nosed American ambition. The desire for power, position and status also exists in non-US cultures, like China and Japan.
Social comparison theory is at the heart of the high school reunion. More than fifty years ago, social psychologist Leon Festinger recognized individuals’ innate need to establish accurate self-evaluations of their abilities. We do this by comparing themselves to others. We’re also more likely to compare ourselves to people we perceive as similar to us.
The fallacy of the high school reunion is that, in the proverbial race for success, every runner has left the gate at exactly the same time. Under the illusion of a level playing field, everyone went to the same high school, grew up in the neighborhood and had access to the same extracurriculars and college application counselling. We know that’s not true — Malcolm Gladwell makes it quite clear in Outliers that a large part of achieving conventional success depends on factors outside of our control. It’s unsurprising then, that a high school reunion can turn out to be a minefield of status anxiety: each person with whom you make small talk could make you painfully aware of your shortcomings over the last ten years and drive you right back to the mini-bar.
The kind of social comparison that happens at high school reunions relies on a cosmetic sense of similarity. Since you’re part of a cohort that attended the same school in the same time at a specific time in history, you’re more likely to compare yourself to former classmates. Showing up is a gamble. There’s always a risk that you’ll come out feeling worse about your achievements to date. On the flipside, you might discover you’re doing pretty well for yourself compared to your erstwhile film club fellows or former bandmates, and leave feeling rather smug. Finding out a former peer has encountered a few calamities along the way may even evoke that delicious sensation of schadenfreude — or the delight in the misfortune of others.
For those who peaked in high school, reliving the glory days might seem appealing. A return to old stomping grounds and the formative kingdoms (hallways, cafeterias, locker rooms, gymnasia) they once ruled. But, as the legend goes, many who enjoyed their prime in the rarefied environment of high school, once out in the big world, don’t quite ever reach that same pinnacle of power, influence and popularity again. ‘Peakers’ may feel equally inadequate against their classmates whose post-high school lives saw them blossom. For some, the rest of life will never quite live up to their high school glory days.
Why Even Go?
‘What’s the point of going if we’re not going to impress people?’ Romy laments to Michelle when contemplating going to their high school reunion in the eponymous 1997 film.
Why exactly a motley group of similarly-aged adults convenes in their old school gymnasium every five or ten years is debatable. Most obviously, it’s plain old curiosity that drives someone’s intention to show up at their high school reunion. The social comparator in all of us wants to see how everyone’s doing, whether they’re living up to their promised potential or failing spectacularly. Or, like most of us, just being pretty average.
High school, part social laboratory, part a food chain, was traumatic enough for most people not to warrant a rehashing every decade. Reunions artificially revive social connections that you lost for a good reason. In many respects, adolescence is a time of quiet and patent traumas alike; high school, the stage upon which they all unfolded. The tumult of these years — the risk-taking, rebellion, rejection, humiliation, exhilaration, awakening sexuality — are colored with catastrophe and triumph. As monumental as many of these formative experiences were, we’d all rather forget a few.
The Late, Late Capitalism Show
In 2020, in the midst of post-recession economics, pandemic fallout and partisan politics, millennials are already more than ten years out of high school. Can we realistically expect to have achieved what our parents did within the same timeframe? How many will be homeowners? Free of student debt? Have children? Financial security?
We are forced to reshape and redefine measures of success. Social comparison between people will never go away, but the metrics by which we evaluate ourselves and others have changed.
A ten-year high school reunion today (if anybody bothers to attend) might reveal new categories for comparison: for example, how much someone’s work aligns with their passion, the number of hours worked for a living wage (hint: the fewer the better), the quality of friendships and family relationships, body positivity, woke-ness, digital nomad status, number of places travelled to, social media following, influencer status, philanthropical pursuits.
Perhaps, after enduring months of isolation, boredom and shrunken social circles, that unanswered invitation to an upcoming high school reunion suddenly looks far more appealing. Perhaps a big ‘ol (masked) reunion is just the social pageantry we need to feel human again. Only, it‘d be rebranded ‘a comeback party’ after a universally bad year from which nobody escaped unscathed. Now how’s that for a social leveler? | https://medium.com/the-post-grad-survival-guide/the-social-pageantry-of-high-school-reunions-b73444f4fa8 | ['Aimee Dyamond'] | 2020-12-05 07:45:14.082000+00:00 | ['Culture', 'Social Psychology', 'Self', 'Psychology', 'High School'] |
How (fill in the blank) was an exploration of UX design | How (fill in the blank) was an exploration of UX design
Everyone has practical job experience that informs their role as a designer, and it often comes from past non-design roles. This is my story.
Photo by Kaique Rocha from Pexels
As designers, we all have past experiences to draw from that inform our work now. Design is problem solving. Design is making intentional decisions. And the experiences that first taught us how to understand problems and make decisions still inform our processes. Think back to your first job. What aspects of it did you gravitate toward? What parts of the job really showcased your skills?
My first job was at a used music store. I was on the sales floor, and was terrible at it. I tried to spend most of my time taking photos of music gear for the website while avoiding customers. That summer, I did sell three trombones though. Why? Because I played the trombone. I knew the instrument, could talk about it, and could reassure parents that the money they were paying for their child to start an instrument was worth it. That summer I learned that it takes research to be convincing, and that personal experience, or being able to tell a story out of someone else’s personal experience, is hugely important.
UX design is such a varied field, that regardless of your background or experiences, you’re bringing something valuable to the table.
Designing a Brick and Mortar.
Reaching into the more recent past for inspiration, I realized my venture of starting a small business rewarded me with invaluable experience in UX design. Like design, small businesses seek to solve problems for its customers. By providing services and goods, business provides a community access to those commodities that they find helpful. Its assumptions are quickly validated: are enough customers buying the product? Is the business solving the right problem? If a business isn’t aligned with its customers, it either adapts or fails.
Starting in 2017, I came alongside a non-profit in my neighborhood to design, launch, and manage a small business. I had been living in the neighborhood for almost three years and was beginning to put down roots: getting a sense of the history, people, and businesses that made up those blocks that I considered home. The non-profit had already begun the research process by talking with the community, discovering which physical and social needs weren’t being met, and then developing a plan for their business: a café laundromat. The business would meet a physical need by being a laundromat accessible to this community without a car or bus ride, and it would meet a social need by providing a space for people to stop by during their comings and goings.
My research included doing my laundry at local laundromats and chatting with fellow customers: What about the experience was good? What was joyful? What wasn’t working? I also came from the world of coffee shops, where every day I would talk with regulars, understand their motivations for making the shop a part of their weekly habits. What value did they find in visiting the café?
From there, I began to define my requirements and ran into my first problem. The non-profit, my key stakeholder, wanted a café laundromat that served all members of the community. Because they required diversity, I didn’t have a key persona to work from, but several personas who had differing needs. How could one establishment be designed to allow connection across racial, generational, and socio-economic barriers?
Designing for diversity is complex. It takes understanding the needs of many customers, and finding ways to meet each of those needs through one simple design. While I definitely didn’t get it right on the first try, throughout the design process I followed the mantra “Design for ages 2 and 102.” By designing for the extremes, I hoped to catch everyone in between. It meant that our menu was simple and accessible, that we greeted everyone who walked in the door, that our sugar and cream containers were clearly marked, and that the seats were comfortable for all body types. It was important that everyone felt safe, and that they felt comfortable leaving their clothes in the dryer as they wandered around the building.
Ideate and Build
Now that I understood the why and the who, I began to really dig into the how. The non-profit hosted vision nights where the community gathered to imagine what could be possible in the space. I served cold brew and iced tea at events to gauge whether my recipes needed tweaking, and discovered how much cream and sugar we would go through. I met with interior designers and community leaders to start envisioning how the space would work together toward the enjoyment of our customers. I also scouted coffee roasters and drank a lot of coffee. I made sure that at the core, our visions were aligned and that the coffee was meant to be accessible to a wider audience even as it supported the farmers who grew the crop.
Another customer frustration that came out of research was a lack of options to buy fresh food in our community. To meet this need, I partnered with vendors who were making strides in the local food scene, who focused first on their customers and the planet before profits. I knew that as a business I had the power to make decisions on behalf of the customer that would empower the local community, and choosing my vendors based on my personal convictions did just that. Not only did the café get set up with some of the best snacks and lunch options that existed in the city, these choices also meant that the food was made by local hands using quality ingredients, and that it decreased waste by using recyclable and compostable packaging.
Before opening our doors, many tiny details came together to bring the space to life and make it work for our customers. I made sure that electrical outlets were plentiful and well placed. I created playlists that were filled with great jams that appealed to multiple generations. I hired baristas who were warm and welcoming, who could establish that feeling of family within the space, and then trained them to make tasty drinks. Soon enough, we were ready for testing.
Testing
On the day we opened our doors for the first time, the espresso grinder broke. It was consistent throughout weeks of training, and then stopped grinding within our first half hour. I’ve come to expect moments like this: in business you have to plan for the worst and keep calm when the worst happens. I made a call to our roaster to gain some insight, and chatted with customers as if I were stalling for the main act. After opening it up and doing a thorough cleaning it started grinding faithfully again, and I became more confident in my ability to solve problems, ask for help from others, and keep others calm in stressful unplanned situations.
For the first time this was the full café laundromat experience. We had had a few pop-ups prior, but this was the first time we invited paying customers into the space and were able to see their reactions as they wandered around, threw clothes in the wash, and sipped coffee. Call it usability testing, or call it the first day in business. As customers pushed tables a few inches over I saw that that placement was indeed more comfortable. As I heard kids complain about their hot chocolate not being sweet enough, I learned how to have our baristas better set expectations and make sure the sugar was always full. There was plenty of affirmation too: especially when customers looked around the space in awe of the tall windows and little touches of decoration.
Through testing, our systems got better. We measured better metrics in a more accurate way, and we learned to understand our customer’s expectations. We got better at team communication. The process of being in the space and experiencing customer interactions each day helps refine our services and make them better for the customer and, in turn, the business. Each day I could see the value the business brought to the customer and doubled down on our strengths while tweaking our weaknesses.
• • •
Using a human-centered approach to designing a business helps to ensure the business meets customer needs in the most efficient way possible, which in turn gives the business a big boost in its march toward profitability. By caring about the needs of the customer, it reflects the ideals of the community and can, together with other small businesses, make a community more resilient.
This story, of how starting a small business was an exploration of UX design, is only my story. How have the experiences of your life enriched your understanding of design? | https://medium.com/design-bootcamp/how-fill-in-the-blank-was-an-exploration-of-ux-design-8ca323327728 | ['Jesse Bandfield'] | 2020-12-04 01:51:02.885000+00:00 | ['Careers', 'UX Design', 'Experience', 'Small Business', 'Storytelling'] |
The Difference Between Theory and Theorem and What It Tells Us About Data ‘Science’ | The Difference Between Theory and Theorem and What It Tells Us About Data ‘Science’
It Provides Yet Another Argument Against Data ‘Science’ as Science and Against Its’ Practitioners as Scientists
You might be asking yourself how I could possibly turn an article like this (the above linked) into yet another argument against data ‘science’ as science. It hinges on a critical, and sometimes underappreciated, difference between a theorem and a theory. In science, and as actual scientists, we hypothesize and if we are lucky generate enough data in support or against our hypotheses to develop theories which will allow us to explain that data. A theory is essentially just that, a set of ideas used to explain why something is (believed to be) true (if these ideas lack data to back support them they are only hypotheses). In contrast a theorem is a result that can be proven to be true from a set of axioms. The term is used most often in mathematics where the axioms are those of mathematical logic and the systems in question. A different and I think better way to put this is to say that a theory is an explanation that is (at least in principle) verifiable, while a theorem is an explanation that is/must be demonstrable. In this case verifiable means that one can show that there is evidence for it (empirical) while demonstrable means that you can do it again to show people the evidence, and that they can do it too (deductive).
Mathematics and mathematical logic make use of theorems, and are deductive, and they are not science. They are powerful tools of science to be sure, but they are not science. Yet for some reason a different (primarily deductive) tool of science and business and many other professions, data analytics, is said to be a science when the field itself uses primarily/exclusively mathematical and statistical tools to analyze existing data sets for various reasons. The data ‘scientist’ has no hand in creating the conditions that generate the data to be analyzed (i.e. designing or setting up the experiment), and in fact has no formal or informal training in the tools needed to so [e.g. design of experiments (DOE), basics of notebooking/recording/publishing, etc.]. The data ‘scientist’ does not hypothesize about a problem, design an experiment (either practical or theoretical), execute that experiment, analyze the results, and then draw conclusions based on those results to hypothesize further. At most they do two of those things and usually only one or none. From what I can tell most are not even aware of what each of those steps I just described are or how to apply them in any case. They are just not needed to do data ‘science’ as it is practiced today.
You may say that what I am describing only applies to research science and that not all science is research. Yes, you may say that, but all scientists, be they researchers or otherwise, are trained in the mechanics of doing research, the logistics of research, or its cadence. They all know how to do research even if they do not do it everyday. Moreover, many of the principles of research science apply to the work they do actually do. Data science does not train its practitioners in these principles because they are not needed. When one is doing math one does not need to know where the numbers come from only that they exist and the rules for working with them. Similarly when one is doing data ‘science’ the origin/source of the data doesn’t really matter and almost never does the data ‘scientist’ have any hand in (how/why/what/when/where) said data is collected. They do not ‘design the experiment’ and do not have the tools or training to do so. They do not worry about recording their methods and results in ways that other experts in the field can replicate because their methods are already fully described and deductive, and by definition must be replicatable (demonstrable as I discussed above).
As I always try to emphasize whenever I discuss this topic, to say data science is not science is no value judgement as to its relative worth or merit. It is not to suggest that it is inferior or superior to actual science, only to show that it is different, it is not science. Clearly it is an extremely valuable and powerful tool. It’s practitioners are some of the brightest and sharpest and most clever people on the planet. That their work is highly valued is evidenced by the sky high salaries they are paid (especially when compared to actual scientists). To me as an actual working scientist it is puzzling to understand why data analytics professionals want so badly to be scientists. They have the high salaries and perks and flashy silicon valley jobs, all we have is lab coats, low pay, and some of the most low key, low visibility jobs you will find in any profession. | https://everydayjunglist.medium.com/the-difference-between-theory-and-theorem-and-what-it-tells-us-about-data-science-9edd02f43724 | ['Daniel Demarco'] | 2018-11-01 02:27:31.363000+00:00 | ['Philosophy Of Science', 'Philosophy', 'Data Science', 'Technology', 'Science'] |
How to build advanced marketing reports in Google Data Studio | How to build advanced marketing reports in Google Data Studio
No matter if it’s a small startup or a large international company, an analytical dashboard is necessary so that you understand how successful your marketing efforts are. Let’s find out how to build an excellent dashboard.
Why do you need automated reporting in modern companies?
In a world that survives the pandemic’s consequences, the game rules have changed for advertising. For obvious reasons, people began to use online shopping and solve household problems online more often than before. All this led to an increase in online advertising. According to Gartner, CMOs spend nearly one-quarter (22%) of the marketing budget on digital advertising.
Marketing directors can no longer afford to spend the budget to pay specialists to manually collect the necessary reports. In addition, reports are needed to quickly respond to changes, and when manually building reports, the speed is rather low. However, the need for such reports has increased many times.
So, the main reasons why automated reports in modern companies are needed:
avoid data errors due to the human factor;
spare the staff from routine work;
reallocate ad budget faster.
The simplest example of time-saving with Data Studio — use the template of a ready dashboard from the Data Studio Report Gallery. All-in-all, the right analytics service that suits your business will help you achieve high results, improve resource use, and increase overall company productivity.
Advanced marketing reports in Google Data Studio
How can you use automated reporting to quickly make crucial decisions based on big data?
The use of martech tools to automate the collection and merging of information about marketing work has long been not just a whim, but a necessity. If you operate on large volumes of data, your advertising campaigns require quick and reasonable solutions; then, you cannot work without auto-updating dashboards.
By tracking marketing activity, you can assess factors such as:
how well your website works (selling and attracting new customers);
measure the effectiveness of digital advertising channels;
find out the growth and risk zones (how to reallocate the budget more profitably).
Of course, you cannot wait for effective control of the situation until the reports are prepared manually! Reports are needed now, and they must be updated in real-time, and provide data in a convenient and understandable way (graphs and charts). Only then will you evaluate situations with one eye and make decisions based on the collected and analyzed data.
If you want to get complete, high-quality data at minimal cost, we recommend using the OWOX BI service. It collects data from Google Analytics, advertising services, website, offline store, call-tracking, and CRM systems and sends it directly to Google BigQuery. This service is independent of Google Analytics and avoids its restrictions, allowing you to build reports without sampling and based on any parameters.
Given the mass online transition situation, most CMOs (79%) suggest that their existing customers will help companies stay afloat. However, companies should concentrate on the most profitable customers and customer retention to succeed even with such a conservative survival strategy. For martech tools, it means that businesses won’t cut budgets for such things as customer data platforms, mobile marketing platforms, and digital commerce.
The marketer’s checklist of preparation for advanced reporting
For reports to serve you with faith, truth, and correct data, you need to make sure that they are prepared properly. First, before you create reports, you must approve business-critical metrics. Secondly, before using data visualization services, you need to configure services that collect, combine, and structure your data.
Step 1.To provide reports, you need to complete some preparation:
collect and merge all necessary data (from the website, CRM system, advertising services, and so on). For small companies, it’s enough to use the free features of Google Analytics to collect the needed data. While medium and large businesses that actively use Google Marketing Platform products can get more opportunities using tools such as Google Analytics 360 or OWOX BI.
(from the website, CRM system, advertising services, and so on). For small companies, it’s enough to use the free features of Google Analytics to collect the needed data. While medium and large businesses that actively use Google Marketing Platform products can get more opportunities using tools such as Google Analytics 360 or OWOX BI. identify metrics that are important to your business. In order not to lose the metrics important to your business, you must first understand who your customers are, what their interests are, and what channels lead customers to you. If you want to find more about the standard dimensions and metrics of Google Analytics, check the Help Center.
that are important to your business. In order not to lose the metrics important to your business, you must first understand who your customers are, what their interests are, and what channels lead customers to you. If you want to find more about the standard dimensions and metrics of Google Analytics, check the Help Center. be confident in the reliance and quality of your data. Imagine that your campaign settings use one currency and your Google Analytics settings use another currency. As a result, you’ll receive an incorrect ROAS and make the wrong decision. That’s why it’s so important to check your data beforehand.
Step 2. Select the appropriate tool. To do this, firstly, you need to answer such questions:
What are the size and needs of your business? For most companies, the data visualization capabilities of Google Data Studio is enough.
How often do you need reports? Once a month, daily, or in real-time?
Features of dashboards in Google Data Studio
Google Data Studio is a popular free service for marketers. Its features include both basic level (a general report based on data from Google Analytics) and advanced one (merge data from the internal CRM system, import cost data from advertising services, and get detailed reporting).
Among the benefits of using Data Studio, there are:
Different data sources
The service offers built-in capabilities of more than 800 ready-made datasets and more than 270 connectors (Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, HubSpot, Instagram, LinkedIn, Outbrain, Pinterest, etc). It’s worth noting that the number of connectors is continually increasing, so if you don’t find the one you need, try your luck and check the service in a few months.
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Number of pages
Instead of overloading one single page with all possible information, in Google Data Studio you can use the function of multiple pages. It allows you to avoid unnecessary complexity and information overload.
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Filters
Data Studio allows you to apply two types of filters (include and exclude ones). Include filters show the data that match the stated conditions and exclude ones vice versa show only the data that doesn’t match the conditions. You can filter charts, filter controls, groups, pages, and reports.
Note! When applying filters, you don’t change your data. It’s the way of displaying data in the report that is to change.
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Page- and report-leveled elements
Typically, when you add an item to your report, it appears only on the page you added it to. However, if you need the same component (table, chart, text areas, etc.) on different pages/reports, such as headers and footers, or perhaps an important KPI metrics, then the Data Studio service allows you to manage components and make them page- and report-level.
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Calculating fields
With calculated fields, you can create new metrics and dimensions to work with your data. You can find out more about the functionality by watching the Youtube video.
For example, let’s say you want to multiply a unit price field (Price) by a quantity sold field (Qty Sold) to get Total:
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If you aren’t sure which functions you can apply in calculated field formulas, use the list of functions from the help section.
The advantages of using the Data Studio service also include lots of ready-to-use dashboards, free templates, simple sharing options, and many more functions. Use Welcome to Data Studio help to learn about all Data Studio features.
Of course, not all prebuilt dashboards suit you perfectly. However, you can use the template and modify it for your own needs. In addition, even just watching ready-made reports can inspire you to create your own perfect dashboard. Let’s have a look at some examples of useful dashboards for marketing.
Google Merchandise Store Ecommerce Report
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KPI Snapshot
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Transaction overview page in the Performance dashboard
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Basic instructions of creation of any advanced dashboard
Step 1. Prepare your data sources. Here you can use Google or partner connectors. Note that if you want to connect more than 2 data sources, it’s better to collect and merge the data in advance in GBQ.
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Step 2. Think over those people who will use this dashboard — do not include tons of additional data.
Here’s an example of an efficient e-commerce Data Studio dashboard:
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For writers and content managers the content marketing dashboards can be very useful:
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Step 3. Use one general page for an overview. All other pages should contain specified information. For example, one page for organic search, attribution, landing pages, and website behavior, etc.
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Step 4. Make your dashboard dynamic with comparing options. In working with the report, the main thing is to immediately understand what has happened well, what is bad, and how the metrics look compared to last week, month or quarter.
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Step 5. Make your design clean. Use those types of visualizations for each widget that will display a particular fact or event at once, avoid making your reports messy and overloaded with data. For example, you can use a map for purchases or a bar chart for channel groupings.
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More details on dashboard creation
We’ve already sorted out the main points of creating dashboards in Google Data Studio, and now let’s analyze some moments in more detail.
If you want to create your dashboard from a blank sheet and not just use templates, use the Blank Report button.
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Before creating your dashboard, you’ve already decided what data and from what sources you will analyze. At this point, you need to connect the selected services.
To connect the very first source (usually it's Google Analytics), you don't need to search for any buttons. A selection of available connectors appears in the window after clicking the Blank Report button.
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And to add the second (third or more) data sources to the dashboard, use the Add databutton in the interface's main menu.
Note! We strongly recommend that you collect all data for marketing analysis in 1-2 datasets in GBQ and then connect them to Google Data Studio. You'll avoid problems with the service and will be able to build different reports. Don't forget that Data Studio is a data visualization service, not a data merging service.
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If you want to check the number of connected sources or delete a data source, use the Resource/Manage added data sources menu.
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Now you can start creating charts and tables that are available to you using the Add a chartbutton in the main menu. Please note that third-party visualizations are also available to you. This function is in the beta test but can offer fascinating forms of data visualization.
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For the convenience of perception, marketers usually put essential to track metrics in the dashboard's top. It can be revenue, the number of new users, the number of transactions, etc. To add this option, use Scorecard and select the required metric from the right menu.
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Tables with heatmap showing statistics on products, their categories, income, and conversions remain among the most popular for the eCommerce sector. Different colors help to pay attention to successful or critical figures immediately. Using the menu on the right, you can easily add or remove the dimensions and metrics you need in the report.
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For fast and understandable data visualization, pie charts are also often used. For example, we've created two pie charts that show the most preferred user platforms and customers' geography, in which cities the largest number of buyers live. This information may be handy in adjusting your ad campaign Geo settings.
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As you can see from these examples, it's not difficult to customize the dashboard for different purposes and metrics important to your business. Select the form of data visualization you like, connect your data sources, and specify the metrics you want to track.
And most importantly, don't forget to check the quality of the data used for your dashboards.
Get quality data from your website, advertising services, and mobile applications with OWOX BI. OWOX BI compares data in BigQuery with data in Google Analytics daily and reports on any significant discrepancies to make sure you don’t lose important data that third-party trackers can’t provide.
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Examples of specialized dashboards with tasks they help to solve
SEO Report Template
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Organic Traffic Template
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Wrapping up
Let’s summarize how to build an excellent dashboard. First off, it’s necessary to determine which main needs should be met with a dashboard’s help. For example, a dashboard with a general marketing overview contains information that your team needs every day.
No matter if it’s a small startup or a large international company with hundreds of offline stores, an analytical dashboard is necessary so that you understand how successful your marketing efforts are. Never forget about the dashboard with data on business and marketing’s primary goals. | https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-build-advanced-marketing-reports-in-google-data-studio-fd862c688f7d | ['Maryna Sharapa'] | 2020-12-15 20:02:22.868000+00:00 | ['Owox Bi', 'Marketing', 'Google Data Studio', 'Reports And Dashboards'] |
Sam Altman on Loving Community, Hating Coworking, and the Hunt for Talent (Ep. 61 — Live) | Sam Altman on Loving Community, Hating Coworking, and the Hunt for Talent (Ep. 61 — Live)
Founders aren’t superheroes, says Sam Altman.They may play extreme sports, respond to emails within seconds, and start billion-dollar companies, but they are rarely the product of extraordinary circumstance. In fact, they tend to be solidly upper-middle class, reasonably smart, and with loving parents.
So would Sam fund Peter Parker? What about Bruce Wayne?
Tyler and Sam discuss these burning questions and more, including what’s wrong with San Francisco, Napoleon’s underrated skill, nuclear energy, the greatest invention of the Industrial Revolution, his rant against coworking spaces, UBI and AGI, risk and regret, optimism and beauty, and why venture capitalists don’t have superpowers either.
Listen to the full conversation
Read the full transcript
TYLER COWEN: Sam needs no introduction. If we read the tech press and listen to other people’s podcasts —
SAM ALTMAN: Oh no.
COWEN: —what’s the single most likely misconception about venture capital they’re going to have?
ALTMAN: That venture capitalists are, on the whole, smart visionaries who know exactly what’s going to happen in the world.
I think the way you become really great at venture capital is to accept that the only way to figure out the future of the world is to identify incredibly talented, smart, creative, original thinkers and back those people. You have to trust that that will work out over time. You can’t just be the smartest person all the time.
COWEN: If I’m trying to place your view in contrast with others — your view on how to spot and identify and mobilize talent compared to Marc Andreessen — is there any difference? How would I place you two?
ALTMAN: I do have strong views about where the world is going to go and what’s important to support. I think it is important to have strong views about the world, and it’s a shame that most people don’t.
I have — at least at the stage of venture capital we operate at — I have become so convinced that the only thing I have to do, that my firm has to do, is find the smartest, most talented people in the world, discover those people, and enable them. Make bets on them as people and trust that they will figure out, over time, they will drift towards the right ideas and the right kind of businesses.
On spotting talent
COWEN: If you’re trying to spot that talent, you must have methods you use or ways of thinking about talent that’s different from the other venture capitalists. Otherwise you would be interchangeable with them. How would you place yourself relative to them? What do you put more stress on?
ALTMAN: I think our greatest differentiator is not how we identify talent, although I will answer that question, but the fact that we treat our own business — we run Y Combinator in the way that we tell our startups to run as a successful startup, which almost no venture capital firm does.
Almost every venture capital firm gives advice they never follow themselves. They don’t build differentiated products. They are not network-affected businesses. They don’t try to build a brand and a community. And they don’t try to make something that gets better the bigger it gets and have the scale effects that anyone would tell you they want in a business.
Almost every venture capital firm gives advice they never follow themselves. They don’t build differentiated products. They are not network-affected businesses. They don’t try to build a brand and a community. And they don’t try to make something that gets better the bigger it gets and have the scale effects that anyone would tell you they want in a business.
We at Y Combinator always say we want to get a lot bigger because this is a network effect, this is a network that matters. Most venture capital firms will say out of one side of their mouth, “Oh no, smaller is better,” because they don’t want to work more. Then they’ll tell all their businesses, “The network effect is the only thing that matters.”
Many people are as smart as we are, think about the world in similar ways. But I think we have internalized that we run our firm the same way we tell our startups to operate, and we view the most important thing that we do is to build a network and a network effect. I will answer —
COWEN: What’s the most binding constraint on your ability to scale, if that’s the difference? Greater interest in scaling your own activity?
ALTMAN: I think we have scaled to an incredible degree already, and we will, over time, figure out how to get another 10x and then another 10x after that. Someday we will fund all the companies in the world, all the good ones at least. But it’s unclear where the scaling limits are.
I come from a software background, and one of the things that I learned is, you can always scale systems more than you think, and you can never predict ahead of time where the choke points are going to be. You profile the code and figure out where you need to optimize, and you optimize that. That’s the continual evolution of Y Combinator.
COWEN: This is from Wikipedia, and I quote: “In functional programming, the Y combinator can be used to formally define recursive functions in a programming language that does not support recursion.” Why did you name the company Y Combinator?
ALTMAN: I didn’t name it that. My predecessor, Paul Graham, named it that, but I think it’s a very brilliant name because really what that is is a function that starts other functions. We are a company that starts other companies. The thing that is the coolest about Y Combinator and that is different about us spiritually than most venture firms — or at least some venture firms — is we like to start companies that, if we didn’t fund them, wouldn’t happen.
Most venture capital firms — and me, in my own personal investing when I’m not doing Y Combinator — are looking for . . . you want to be a really great stock picker. You want to find a company that will be successful, whether or not you do anything, and get them to take your money. The thing that I think is so much fun about Y Combinator is, we make companies happen that otherwise wouldn’t. That’s the name.
COWEN: Let me play venture capital skeptic, and you can talk me back into optimism.
ALTMAN: I might not.
COWEN: Let’s say I say, tech has had a stream of big hits: personal computer, internet, cell phone, mobile. You’ve had a lot of rapidly scalable innovations become possible in a short period of time. We’re now in a slight lull. We’re not sure what the next big thing is or when it will come. Without that next big thing, won’t the current equilibrium require a higher rate of picking the right talent than venture capitalists are, in fact, able to do?
ALTMAN: I will talk you out of that one, happily. The most expensive investing mistake in the world to make is to be a pessimist, and it’s a common one. I think that’s actually the most common mistake to make in life. It is true that we are in a lull right now, but it is absolutely, categorically false that — unless the world gets destroyed in a very short term — that we will not have a bigger technological wave then we’ve ever had before.
COWEN: Why can’t I be an optimist but not an optimist about VC? I think new ideas will come through established companies. They’ll be funded by private equity. They’ll happen in China. But the exact formula where you can afford to make so many mistakes because the hits are so big — to what extent does VC rely on that kind of rapid scalability that may not come back?
ALTMAN: It does rely on that, and that’s why the industry came about, really, truly, at a time when software happened. Software is very unlike any other good because the marginal cost is zero and networks are so powerful.
It’s always tempting to say that the big companies in any industry — you’re never going to compete with them. They will be the big ones forever. It is also possible that the next set of companies, the next set of $100 billion startups are all going to be synthetic bio companies, or nuclear fusion companies, or whatever.
But the big companies in any moment always look like behemoths that you will never be able to compete with, and 10 years later, it always looks so obvious about how they got beaten — or 20 years later or whatever it is.
It does even feel to me, myself, this current generation of tech hyper caps, I’m almost willing to say this time it’s different, but I know in my heart that there will be technological change that will happen at a rate that the companies can’t do or require a level of risk they can’t take. It has been a bad bet to bet against new companies for centuries, and I think that will keep happening.
COWEN: Your conceptual model of venture capital — what do you take to be its origins? Is it the early voyages of discovery, finding the New World? Is it whaling ships? Is it Silicon Valley in the last 50 years? Is it Hollywood movies? Where does it start for you?
ALTMAN: When I studied the Industrial Revolution as a kid, it was all about technology and that you had this great idea, you invent this great thing, and now you can make this new thing. The way I would have explained the Industrial Revolution as a kid was there was this handful of inventions, and they were really important, and the world changed in a short period of time.
When I went back and studied it again as an adult, with the benefit of hindsight in my career, it was very clear to me that the most important invention of the entire Industrial Revolution was the joint stock corporation.
You had governments say, “You know what? We have a second-order mini sovereignty, and although the world has historically been limited to family businesses and small groups of businesses and small groups of trust, now we’re going to allow big groups of people to coordinate. We’re going to figure out how to align their incentives for capital providers and risk takers and labor and everything else. We’re going to let these big groups of people work towards a common goal and a common vision with all the elements you need to make that work, and we, the government, are going to enforce that and protect that and let that happen.”
That, I think, was the fundamental root.
COWEN: You once said, “Growth masks all problems.” Are there exceptions to that?
ALTMAN: Cancer?
[laughter]
ALTMAN: I mean, clearly, yes. I don’t mean that so flippantly. There is —
COWEN: There’s an article in the Jerusalem Post today: someone credible claiming that cancer has been cured. I don’t know if you saw that.
ALTMAN: I didn’t see that, but I do — having talked to many biologists working in the field, I will say there is a surprising amount of optimism that we are within a decade or two of that being true.
It’s not an area where I feel anywhere near expert enough to comment on the validity of that statement, and I think it’s always dangerous to just trust what other smart people say, especially when they have an incentive to hawk their own book, but it does seem like a lot of people believe that.
Growth is bad in plenty of times, but it does mask a lot of problems. A statement that I wouldn’t make is that growth is always an inherent good, although I do think — I think you’ve said something like this, too — that sustainable economic growth is almost always a moral good.
Something that I think a lot of the current problems in the country can be traced to is the decline in that. And part of what motivates me to work on Y Combinator and OpenAI is getting back to that, getting back to sustainable economic growth, getting back to a world where most people’s lives get better every year and that we feel the shared spirit of success is really important.
And growth feels good. It does mask a lot of problems, but there definitely are individual instances where you’d be better off with slower growth for whatever reason.
COWEN: Why is being quick and decisive such an important personality trait in a founder?
ALTMAN: That is a great question. I have thought a lot about this because the correlation is clear, that one of the most fun things about YC is that, I think, we have more data points on what successful founders and bad founders look like than any other organization has had in the history of the world. We have that all in our heads, and that’s great. So I can say, with a high degree of confidence, that this correlation is true.
Being a fast mover and being decisive — it is very hard to be successful and not have those traits as a founder. Why that is, I’m not perfectly clear on, but I think it is something . . . about the only advantage that startups have or the biggest advantage that startups have over large companies is agility, speed, willing to make nonconsensus, concentrated bets, incredible focus. That’s really how you get to beat a big company.
COWEN: How quickly should someone answer your email to count as quick and decisive?
ALTMAN: You know, years ago I wrote a little program to look at this, like how quickly our best founders — the founders that run billion-plus companies — answer my emails versus our bad founders. I don’t remember the exact data, but it was mind-blowingly different. It was a difference of minutes versus days on average response times.
On being a founder and CEO
COWEN: I come from northern Virginia, the Washington, DC, area. We have very few geniuses. The few that we have tend to be crazy and sometimes destructive. We have what I would call —
ALTMAN: They’re very stable, though.
COWEN: —a lot of upper-middle-class intellectual talent. People who are pretty smart and good at something. When it comes to spotting good upper-middle-class intellectual talent, do you think you have the same competitive edge as with spotting geniuses who will make rapidly scalable tech companies?
ALTMAN: I think that’s how I’d characterize myself: upper middle class, pretty smart, not a super genius by any means. It turns out I’ve met many people smarter than me, but I would say I’ve only ever met a handful of people that are obviously more curious than me.
I don’t think raw IQ is my biggest strength — pretty good, to be clear, but the chances of me winning a Nobel Prize in physics are low. I think physics is a bad field at this point, unfortunately. What we spot — you do have to be pretty smart to be a successful founder, but that is not where I look for people to be true outliers.
COWEN: Given that self-description — assuming that I accept it, and I’m not sure I do — do you think you’re as good at spotting upper-middle-class intellectual talent as superstar founders? Let’s say we put you in charge —
ALTMAN: There’s a statement here that’s just bad about the world, but I think if you look at most successful founders, they are pretty smart, upper-middle-class people. They are very rarely the children of super successful people. They are very rarely born in real poverty. They are very rarely the absolute smartest people who otherwise would win a Fields Medal. They are never dumb, but upper-middle-class, pretty smart people that have grit and drive and creativity and vision and edge and a different way of thinking about the world. That is what I think I’m good at spotting, and that is what I think are good founders. There’s a whole bunch of reasons why that’s a sad statement about the world, but there it is.
If you look at most successful founders, they are pretty smart, upper-middle-class people. They are very rarely the children of super successful people. They are very rarely born in real poverty. They are very rarely the absolute smartest people who otherwise would win a Fields Medal. They are never dumb, but upper-middle-class, pretty smart people that have grit and drive and creativity and vision and edge and a different way of thinking about the world. That is what I think I’m good at spotting, and that is what I think are good founders.
COWEN: So someone else has to find the geniuses.
ALTMAN: Again, I don’t want to go for false modesty here. I think I’m a smart person. The founders we fund are smart people. I would have maybe said 10 years ago that raw IQ is the thing that matters most for founders. I’ve updated my view on that.
COWEN: How useful is personality psychology, in the classic five-factor sense, for judging potential founders?
ALTMAN: I’ve heard the five factors. I could pick them out of a list, but I can’t sit here and name them.
Paul Graham, who started my company, used to talk about people being relentlessly resourceful. It became this mantra of ours, and it’s one of the most important traits in a founder. I think a vision that someone feels compelled to make happen in the world is probably the most important of a super successful founder. Then this idea of relentless resourcefulness: “That thing is so important to me that I’m going to figure out how to get it done, whatever it takes. Whatever I need to learn. Whoever I need to convince.” That’s really important.
You need to be a great communicator, which I think is a very underappreciated skill, because you have to convince so many people to join you on this quest. Your job as a founder ends up as sort of a chief evangelist for the company, and most people aren’t good at that. It’s not something that we teach in school. We don’t teach vision either. Actually, none of these skills we teach, but those are the kind of things we look for.
COWEN: Do you think of yourself — in terms of personality — as more of a CEO type or more of a founder type?
ALTMAN: I’ve done both. I think of myself more as a founder type. The way that I would say it is, most people who run organizations at a certain scale are either good managers or good leaders. I would put myself squarely in the good-leader, weaker-manager category. That, I think, correlates more often with founders.
COWEN: People who perform extreme physical events — climbing or physical strength or running or marathons — as personality types, how do they differ from founders, if at all?
ALTMAN: Not so much. That’s something that I’ve learned to look for.
COWEN: What do you think is the difference? Because they’re not founders, and the founders are not out —
ALTMAN: A surprising number of YC’s best founders are also into some sort of extreme physical something.
COWEN: Why do you see that correlation? What do you think?
ALTMAN: Something about focus and determination and drive to win and perform at your highest level. I think one thing that is a really important thing to strive for is being internally driven, being driven to compete with yourself, not with other people. If you compete with other people, you end up in this mimetic trap, and you sort of play this tournament, and if you win, you lose.
I think one thing that is a really important thing to strive for is being internally driven, being driven to compete with yourself, not with other people. If you compete with other people, you end up in this mimetic trap, and you sort of play this tournament, and if you win, you lose.
But if you’re competing with yourself, and all you’re trying to do is — for the own self-satisfaction and for also the impact you have on the world and the duty you feel to do that — be the best possible version you can, there is no limit to how far that can drive someone to perform.
And I think that is something you see — even though it looks like athletes are competing with each other — when you talk to a really great, absolute top-of-the-field athlete, it’s their own time they’re going against.
On funding people, fictional and real
COWEN: I’d like to try a little exercise. I’ll throw out a few names from popular culture and you imagine —
ALTMAN: I am unlikely to know these, but we can try it.
COWEN: —imagine they show up at Y Combinator. How would you assess them? Spider-Man, Peter Parker?
ALTMAN: I watched one Spider-Man movie, but all I can think of is him going like that [web slinging] through the buildings.
COWEN: So you wouldn’t be that impressed?
ALTMAN: I might be. I’d have to . . . Let’s keep going to someone else I might know more about.
[laughter]
COWEN: Luke Skywalker?
ALTMAN: Oh, Luke Skywalker I’d be impressed by.
COWEN: Why? Isn’t he indecisive?
[laughter]
COWEN: He focuses on the short term, he doesn’t have the big-picture vision?
ALTMAN: No, he turns away without . . . when he leaves Yoda and says, “I’m going to go do this thing,” which his guru is telling him, “You need more training.” And he goes off and does the right thing on instinct and then comes back. And Yoda says, “No further training, you’ve got it.” That’s the sign of a great founder. You go off before the world thinks you’re ready, and you do it anyway.
COWEN: Let’s say Hyman Rickover shows up at Y Combinator. What do you think?
ALTMAN: I think building the Nuclear Navy is among the most impressive operational engineering accomplishments of human history, so we would definitely fund him.
COWEN: Good. James Bond?
ALTMAN: Paul Graham used to say that the prototype for a good founder was James Bond. There’s lots of reasons the analogy doesn’t work, but this idea that a lot of things go wrong, you are unflappable, you never lose your cool, you know how to react. Bad things are happening to you left and right, and you are a survivor, and you always figure it out with whatever resource is in front of you. That part is the spirit of a great founder.
COWEN: What about Q? The guy in the lab who shows James Bond the gadgets. His explanations are so to the point. Would that impress you?
ALTMAN: Yes, with a good cofounder.
[laughter]
COWEN: Austin Powers?
ALTMAN: I don’t think so.
[laughter]
COWEN: Harry Potter?
ALTMAN: Hmm, that was not one I was expecting. Yes. We would fund Harry Potter.
COWEN: Let’s try a single teen mother, Aretha Franklin?
ALTMAN: Yes, on the spirit of this idea that grit and determination is the most important quality in a founder. I think being a single teen mother and coming through to the other side of that successfully is probably one of the hardest things that anyone can do in the world.
COWEN: Say filters we have set up to identify her as a single teen mother before she’s successful — what is it we should be looking for in Aretha Franklin?
ALTMAN: This gets to the question . . . the most common question I get about Y Combinator is how can you make a decision in a 10-minute interview about who to fund? Where we might miss her is the upper filters of our application process.
We have far more qualified people that want to do YC each year than we can fund, but by the time we get someone in the room, by the time we can sit across the table and spend 10 minutes with somebody, as far as I know, we have never made a big mistake at that stage of the process. We’ve looked at tens of thousands — well, in person we’ve maybe looked at 10,000 companies.
These personality traits of determination and communication and the ability to articulate a vision for the world and explain how you’re going to get that done — I used to think that that was so hard to assess in 10 minutes, it was maybe impossible to try, and YC interviews used to be like an hour. I now think that most of the time, we could get it right in five minutes.
When you have enough data points, when you meet enough people and get to watch what they go on to do — because the one thing that’s hard in a 10-minute interview and the most important thing about evaluating someone is their rate of improvement. It’s a little bit hard when you only get a single sample. But when you do this enough times, and you get to learn what to look for, it is incredible how good you can get at that.
We will make some mistakes, but on the whole, I think one way that I’d like to see Y Combinator scale is . . . right now, we have maybe, let’s say 25,000 companies per year apply. We only get to meet, say, 2,000 in person. I’m sure we’re making a lot of mistakes there. One thing I’d love to do is to figure out how to meet all 25,000 in person for 10 minutes. I believe our error rate would go down, incredibly low.
COWEN: Young Napoleon shows up. What do you think after 5 minutes?
ALTMAN: How young? Like 18-year-old Napoleon or 5-year-old?
COWEN: Before he’s famous, 21-year-old Napoleon.
ALTMAN: From everything I’ve read that would be a definite yes. In fact, the best book I read last year is called The Mind of Napoleon, which is a book of quotes about his views on everything. Just that thick on Napoleon quotes. Obviously deeply flawed human, but man, impressive.
COWEN: What kinds of insights did he have?
ALTMAN: The thing that stuck with me the most — and this is a trait we see among many of our good founders — was not his operational excellence. It was not his vision. It was not any of the things that he is well known for, that are all necessary if you want to do what he did in such a short period of time. But it was his incredible understanding of human psychology. That is something we see among our best founders.
There was one quote there, and it felt quite applicable to the US in 2019. The French motto is something like “Freedom, brotherhood, and liberty.” He said he had thought about that for a while. “Liberty, equality, and brotherhood.” He realized that the French people actually didn’t care at all — although they said it, and that was what it was — they didn’t care at all about liberty, and they cared even less about brotherhood.
It was really just about equality, but it was tied up with this weird French ideal of status and differentiation as well. So he talked about how you build a system — given that people say this one thing but feel this other — how you build a system where you can control the people. I was like, “Wow. I’m glad he does not run the United States because that is a dude who understands something deep that I did not and clearly was able to use it for power.”
COWEN: What’s the most interesting or surprising thing you’ve learned or changed your mind about in the last three months?
ALTMAN: A lot of things, but one I had been thinking a lot about in the last three weeks is how, watching the US political system react from this cultural war on the right, and sort of this anti-otherness from a culture perspective, to this economic to this economic war on the left.
I’ve studied this so many times in history, and I didn’t think it was actually going to happen. I think when you get those two forces together, fighting each other, it’s so bad. And I’ve updated myself to thinking, now, that things can actually get much worse in the US much more quickly than I thought.
COWEN: What does that process look like if it continues for 5, 10 years?
ALTMAN: Pick your example. We can talk about some of the pre–World War II stuff, but I don’t think it ends well.
COWEN: Before we move on to OpenAI, I think you should fund Peter Parker.
ALTMAN: Tell me about him. Maybe we should. I don’t know enough to say.
COWEN: Of course, he’s Spider-Man, but the impressive thing is, he has these little devices on his wrists that shoot out web, and those are not Spider-Man powers at all. That’s a technological device that he implemented. The first time he actually tried it, he couldn’t have really known for sure that it worked. So I would give a big thumbs up to Peter Parker.
ALTMAN: Look, that’s a good sign.
COWEN: And he has superpowers on top of that.
[laughter]
ALTMAN: In some sense, the superhero I would most want to fund would be Batman because he doesn’t have superpowers, and he’s just a resourceful, driven dude to do the right thing. I like that better than people who just got lucky with superpowers, but if Peter Parker fits in that category, okay, we’ll fund him.
COWEN: His superpower comes from a kind of nuclear fusion, right? Even better.
ALTMAN: Is that true?
COWEN: Radioactive spider venom.
ALTMAN: Okay, deal.
[laughter]
COWEN: Yeah, deal. Okay, make him a partner.
On AI
Okay, OpenAI — you have both a funding and a leadership role in OpenAI. Given the odd sort of event it’s directed at preventing, how do you measure whether your money and time there are well spent?
ALTMAN: First of all, we’re not directed at preventing an event. We’re directed at making a good event happen more than we are at preventing a negative event. It is where I spend most of my time now.
I think building true, superhuman artificial intelligence and figuring out how we, as a collective humanity, decide what the world is going to look like on the other side of that and making sure that it is safe, that we retain autonomy and a governance system we like, and that the benefits of that are equitably distributed in the world is the most important thing to work on.
I think that there are parts of it that are scary. There are parts of it that are potential downsides. But the upside of this is unbelievable. We talked about sustainable economic growth is a moral good. I believe at this point, real economic sustainable growth comes from technology, and this technology is going to generate more of it than the sum total that has ever been generated by technology in human history. I think that’s going to be really great.
COWEN: Will cyborgs outcompete AI? If the flesh and blood is the hard part, why not tack on devices to people? Common in movies but also in the real world. I’m wearing eyeglasses. There are hearing aids. You can imagine much more. Isn’t that an easier way to get the work done?
ALTMAN: You know, when AI started beating humans in chess, there was a short period of time where the very best thing of all was a human and an AI playing chess together. The AI would say, “Here’s six moves.” The human would pick the best one of those, and that was better. That could beat an unassisted . . . that merged version — it’s not really a merge — that teamed-up version could beat an unassisted AI.
I don’t know exactly how long that stayed true for, and people loved that fact, but it didn’t stay true for long. The humans started making the AI worse than the AI was playing alone as it got smarter. I think we will learn that we’re just not that smart. The size of a human brain has all of these biological limitations, but you can make a really big computer with very fast interconnects between the chips.
I suspect we will find that many versions of that merge you talk about are still not better. There may be other things that some people may choose to do. Like maybe you upload your entire brain, and then you can add a bunch of stuff to it in the computer. But I think going in the other direction, biology will be more of a limitation. That’s what we have to make a decision about — the kind of future we want.
COWEN: Let’s say we institute a universal basic income. Since it seems from the data that citizens often hate the idea of immigrants just getting money for free and forever, isn’t there a risk that a UBI would lead to a choking off of immigration in this and other countries, and that we would not, on net, end up helping humanity?
ALTMAN: The argument against a universal basic income that I am most sympathetic to is that it is a good reason to lower immigration, and I think increasing immigration — particularly high-skill immigration — into the US is one of the most important policy things we can do. I agree that is a negative, but I think the positives of UBI are so high that I would take the trade, although I’d work as hard as I can, at a minimum, to increase the level of high-skill immigration.
If you believe talent is equally distributed around the world, which I certainly do, 5 percent of the founders we want are in the US. Speaking in our own self-interest as the US here — not as what’s best for the globe for a minute — I’d like all the other 95 percent here.
COWEN: Potential founders in other countries — I agree that talent is equally distributed around the world, but cultural background is not.
ALTMAN: For sure.
COWEN: If people from other places, including from within this country, don’t from early ages get the conceptual frameworks and positive reaffirmations from their parents, what is it the less developed parts of the world need to actually be contributing the proportionate share of founders, given that they do have the talent?
ALTMAN: Nothing at all. They already are. If you look at the successful tech companies in the United States, the percentage of them founded by a first- or second-generation immigrant —
COWEN: But they have very common backgrounds, even though they’re from different places. They’re from parents who treated them a certain way when they were young —
ALTMAN: Oh, I thought the question was specifically about immigrants.
COWEN: Someone like Vitalik, who was not born in this country — he nonetheless has the perfect background for being a founder, and most people in the world do not.
ALTMAN: The most important thing you can get to be a founder is to pick your parents well. That’s a really sad statement about the world. If I weren’t working in OpenAI, that is a problem I would like to work on. I suspect the answer is education, but that’s only part of it.
I do think the two great gifts I got in my life were the love of my parents and a great education. I’d like to figure out how a lot more people get that. That’s actually one benefit of a UBI. I think it would be transformative to the amount of human potential unlocked in the world, and just from a social-justice perspective, it’s so obviously the right thing to do.
COWEN: You grew up in St. Louis, right?
ALTMAN: Yes.
COWEN: I asked Larry Summers this exact same question: If you had, say, $200 million to distribute, you could do with it whatever you wanted to help St. Louis — just St. Louis, not the world — what would you do to help St. Louis?
ALTMAN: This is very specific to St. Louis, but I think it may be true of other cities in the Midwest that were once growing and prosperous and now are less so. I’m such a believer that momentum is, at all levels of organization — an individual’s life, a company, a city, a country — is so important, even though cities seem eternal and indestructible in a way that not many things — maybe religions also are.
St. Louis has lost momentum, and there has been the talent drain that you would expect from that. So I would spend all of the money trying to get a few really interesting, high-growth startups that I was confident in to go move to the city of St. Louis and build enough of an ecosystem around them to make them successful and let that regenerate the talent pool in much of the city.
COWEN: What exactly is the check written for? There’s a bonus for companies?
ALTMAN: The thing that people normally do, which is predictably awful, is cities will open these coworking spaces and say, “Hey, startups, we’ve got this really cool coworking space. There’s free espresso and colorful couches. Come.” You get the people you deserve when you do that. I’m very anti-coworking spaces, but I’ll save that rant for another time.
No, literally what I would do is make a venture capital fund, get really good GPs to do the advice, and fund the companies to come be in St. Louis.
COWEN: You would give them special treatment? Or you would make them jump through all the same hoops as in any other context?
ALTMAN: I’d give them a higher valuation or something, but no, I would like to make them be really great companies. I would just invest in them on the condition they move to St. Louis. We talked earlier about the importance of a network effect. Rather than do this for one or two companies at a time, I would do it for enough at once, get them all in one part of the city to form something like what Y Combinator has done here.
COWEN: Why is nuclear energy so unpopular in many parts of the world?
ALTMAN: I think it is because most people are very bad at intuiting risk. They will happily breathe in coal smoke all day and then someday die of cancer and not connect that together. But if there’s a nuclear meltdown and three people die, they will march against nuclear energy forever.
Nuclear energy is, by far, the safest form of energy humanity has ever created, much safer than solar panels because people don’t die when they fall off the roof when they’re installing them, for example.
But the way the world was introduced to nuclear power is an image that no one will ever forget, of a mushroom cloud over Japan. It feels to some people . . . I’ve thought a lot about why the world turned against science, and one answer of many that I am willing to believe is that image, and that we learned that maybe some technology is too powerful for people to have. People are more convinced by imagery than facts. That’s the other side of nuclear energy.
COWEN: Nuclear fusion has had a number of false starts, as you know. If it really starts to work — and I believe you’re optimistic about that — what will it look like? And how will we know? How will we distinguish it from the previous false starts?
ALTMAN: Well, we’ll just get out more electrons than we put in. I believe we will get net-gain nuclear fusion working in the next decade.
COWEN: Is this hot or cold?
ALTMAN: Hot. It may not turn out to be economical. We’re still at the point where there’s errors in the exponents, and that’s always hard. It may turn out, to just debug the engineering takes so long, it doesn’t matter. It could be the kind of thing where we get fusion working in 2022, and the first commercial system isn’t deployed until 2032 or longer. These are going to be complicated — not complicated like a fission reactor, but still complicated systems.
But I believe we will get net gain to work, and I believe there is a good chance that the engineering won’t be as hard as we think, and that the regulatory framework would be much easier than we think, and the economics will be great. At any given moment in history, there is one cheapest source of energy, and whatever that is, in a small number of decades, it usually takes over a significant part of the generating capacity of the world.
COWEN: Will China do it first?
ALTMAN: Whoever does it first I’ll be happy with. They don’t tell me as much about the Chinese projects, so I don’t know, but I’d be delighted if they did.
COWEN: If we, in some basic fundamental way, hacked biology through tech, how am I, as a customer or patient, most likely to notice this first? What’s the New York Times headline going to say? What will my doctor give me?
ALTMAN: Well, I think we’ve hacked biology already to an incredible degree.
COWEN: Life expectancy is just rising at a constant rate, right? It’s even gone down for a few years in the US. That’s not totally encouraging. It’s not the fault of tech, but tech —
ALTMAN: Healthcare has been a catastrophic mess.
I meant our ability to make GMOs and . . . We can do a lot with synthetic biology today. One thing, I was meeting with a company today that is looking at — and NYC had put out a request for more of this — about how you genetically modify bacteria in the ocean to pull carbon out of the atmosphere and stop climate change.
That wouldn’t have been something that anyone would have seriously talked about 10 years ago. The fact that we can even have that conversation now, I think is awesome. We may decide not to do it for good reasons, but . . .
We talked about growing up in St. Louis. One thing that my dad was really into when I was a kid was the Human Genome Project. Wash U, which we lived near, was one of the centers. They sequenced a human for a billion dollars. It was this huge deal. I was a kid; it wasn’t that long ago. You can sequence a human now for a hundred bucks.
You can take a sample of your blood, and you can sequence every piece of DNA and RNA in there. Any bacteria or virus in your body, we have a perfect diagnostics for. If you have an infectious disease, I guess unless it’s a prion, we can just sequence everything. We have a perfect diagnostic. That’s amazing.
COWEN: Why has the tech world found education so hard to crack?
ALTMAN: Why can the tech world not convince parents to love and prioritize their children?
COWEN: Say a little more.
ALTMAN: There’s a lot of things technology can’t do. There are a lot of things that require human connection. There are a lot of things that require people. Technology can do some things, but I don’t think the biggest problem with our educational system is a technology one.
COWEN: It’s the human one?
ALTMAN: For sure.
COWEN: What is the biggest —
ALTMAN: By the way, one thing that I’m excited about is, if AI really does disemploy 80 percent of the world, maybe we get a great teacher —
COWEN: Tutor.
ALTMAN: Yeah, for every child in the world. Not just a teacher, but someone to just care about and love and make that kid the best they can be.
COWEN: What is the biggest problem in the US financial system that you think can be fixed or ameliorated by a tech company or tech revolution?
ALTMAN: Well, we all come at this with our own bias, but in terms of where I’m choosing to spend my own time, a lot more economic growth by funding a lot more great startups, building AGI and figuring out how to distribute that fairly among citizens of the world, and nuclear fusion. I would take any of those.
COWEN: But the financial system — banking, payments.
ALTMAN: Oh, that, literally that. I thought you meant the economic system.
It’s amazing to me, just studying history, how much the cost of energy correlates with the quality of life.
COWEN: Yes.
ALTMAN: For the economic system, that would be a huge one. For the banking system, I don’t know. It’s not Bitcoin, I’ll say that. I don’t feel uniquely or particularly well qualified to answer this, but I suspect it is doing something along the lines of providing fair financial infrastructure for poor people.
COWEN: So cheaper loans, more responsible lending practices.
ALTMAN: Something like that is what I would guess, but I haven’t studied this.
COWEN: What’s the best-case scenario for crypto? I’m not suggesting you’re predicting it, but how might it go best?
ALTMAN: I’m excited about universal basic income. I don’t think countries are going to implement that anytime soon.
I can imagine a crypto system where you see something that is more powerful than any government on Earth, where you actually figure out a way to give every person on Earth a coin, and then you make this gigantic network that everyone believes in, and you can do redistribution outside the control of any government. We talked a bunch of times tonight about network effects. That would be the most powerful network effect the world has ever seen economically, and I think that would be cool.
COWEN: If much of economic and social activity ever moves into virtual reality, will we use crypto and virtual reality or just trade dollars?
ALTMAN: I’m only laughing because whenever people put two buzzwords together, I’ve learned from YC interviews to really get skeptical.
COWEN: Good ideas should have one big thing that really works, right?
ALTMAN: One big thing, one big thing.
COWEN: Yes.
ALTMAN: I don’t know. I think we could still use dollars.
COWEN: What are we going to do with all the empty big-box stores?
ALTMAN: I’ve been thinking about that. It’s an interesting question. I don’t have an answer.
COWEN: Community centers? All these tutors who are put out of work by AI — they meet up with children there?
ALTMAN: I would take really cheap housing. If we could fill them all up with really cheap housing, I’d be pretty happy.
I think one of the things that’s gone badly wrong in the United States is, we have now pursued for a long time a policy where we want housing to be an investment, not a consumption asset, and thus grow faster than the rate of inflation. After you let those curves compound out for many decades, you get the predictable disaster we’re in now, where you basically steal the future from young people.
If you could pick one national policy that would help, I think, with redistributing economic opportunity, the cost of housing near high-quality jobs — that would be a great thing to do.
If you could pick one national policy that would help, I think, with redistributing economic opportunity, the cost of housing near high-quality jobs — that would be a great thing to do.
COWEN: How optimistic are you about the prospects in the Bay Area of having greater freedom to build in a way that would, say, lower prices by 20 percent, compared to baseline?
ALTMAN: Well, I will caveat this by saying if you believe what I believe about the timeline to AGI and the effect it will have on the world, it is hard to spend a lot of mental cycles thinking about anything else. So I have not thought deeply about what it would take to solve, really, any other problem in the last few years. But I don’t feel optimistic, given prior performance, that the Bay Area is really going to do the right thing on housing policy.
COWEN: On the country as a whole, do you think the Bay Area is especially unlikely? Will Atlanta become a new land of NIMBY and, in turn, Houston, Dallas, someday Chattanooga? Or how do you see this evolving?
ALTMAN: At some point — actually, I think it may be close — the network effects that have made the Bay Area so powerful for technology startups — the costs will overcome that. That will be a real opportunity for other cities.
COWEN: Other than the Bay Area of course, Israel, which is connected to VC networks here, but what’s the undervalued geographic center for VC in the next generation that people should be talking about more?
ALTMAN: My current belief about that is that it’s not — now that the world has kind of woken up to this — it’s not going to be one center. It’s going to be more diffuse everywhere.
COWEN: But here, there’s so much clustering, and the land prices reflect it. You want to be near other people. You’re on boards of companies, you want the company to be with you. Venture capitalists often induce the company to move next to them.
ALTMAN: For sure.
COWEN: What will change that?
ALTMAN: What I meant more is, instead of one new center or two new centers, there will be 30, and there will be clusters in different places that don’t quite get to the density of the Bay Area but get beyond critical mass. I think we’ll just see that diffused throughout the world.
COWEN: Let’s say you visit a city abroad. You’ve either never been, or you haven’t been much. You have two, three days to look around — is this a promising center for a venture capital? What is it you look for?
ALTMAN: I have a funny metric on that. It probably doesn’t work for most people, but it is the number of times I get stopped on the street for a selfie.
[laughter]
COWEN: It’s a good metric, and it correlates positively.
ALTMAN: At least with startup energy in that city, yeah.
COWEN: Yeah.
Charter cities — is that a potential venture capital idea or is that just something different?
ALTMAN: Yeah, yeah, that’s cool. There is this desperate need for a better, more affordable way to live in better-functioning cities. Cities are so important in the current world to economic opportunity, and they denied so many people now that people are really willing to try something new. I think there’s enough customer demand there that there will be economic support for it.
COWEN: As our final segment, let me ask you a few questions about what I call the Sam Altman production function. Are you game?
ALTMAN: Sure.
COWEN: What did you learn from Loopt?
ALTMAN: You cannot create a market that does not want organically to exist.
COWEN: What did you do wrong as a 19-year-old?
ALTMAN: Whoo! We only have a few more minutes.
[laughter]
I didn’t spend enough time thinking about what to work on. I just let myself get pulled along. I was probably pretty obnoxious and a little bit of a jerk. I think I corrected for that quickly, but I wish I had done it faster.
COWEN: In the world of tech startups, venture capital, what is weight lifting correlated with?
ALTMAN: Weight lifting?
COWEN: Weight lifting. Taleb tells us, in New York City, weight lifting is correlated with supporting Trump, but I doubt if that’s true in —
ALTMAN: It’s not true here.
COWEN: Yes.
ALTMAN: I think it’s correlated with successful founders. It’s fun to have numbers that go up and to the right. The most fun thing for me about weight lifting is . . . I’m basically financially illiterate. I can’t build an Excel model for anything. I can’t read a balance sheet. But my Excel model for weight lifting is beautiful because they’re numbers that go up and to the right, and it’s really fun to play around with that.
COWEN: What makes you a good poker player?
ALTMAN: I played a lot of poker in college, and I think I learned more about life and business from that than I learned in college. I would not say I’m a great poker player, but I’m pretty good. The thing that makes me, I think, good about that is getting good at quickly evaluating risk.
COWEN: I’m from the Northeast. When I watch racing cars, I see a bunch of little things on TV go around and around the track, and I’m totally bored. What am I missing?
ALTMAN: It’s not that fun to watch, but it’s very fun to drive.
COWEN: Fun to drive.
ALTMAN: There are very few activities that are high enough adrenaline to totally stop thinking about work, and racing cars is certainly one of them. But watching it is not that fun.
COWEN: Is regret rational?
ALTMAN: Yes, I think it is rational, both to live your life aiming to never regret anything . . . If I ever am making a decision, and I feel like I’m going to regret not doing something, or I have regretted not doing something, I try to go do that thing right then.
But on the other hand, if you can’t change it, if it’s done, it is maybe not that productive to regret. But it is a deeply human thing and, I think, sometimes helpful.
COWEN: What is a source of beauty or potential beauty in your life that you would like to have more of or plan on having more of soon?
ALTMAN: For the first time since I was a kid, I have really been able, in the last few years, to take more time to (A) just do nothing with people that I love, and (B) marvel at everything in life and figure out how to look at things for the first time again. That has been a source of great beauty.
COWEN: What’s the binding constraint for those of us who want to do more of that? Is it that we need to devote more time or somehow open our minds? What’s the path to get there? Is it a free lunch?
ALTMAN: For me, it was finding someone to really explain that to me, and getting to a point in my life where I was ready to do it.
COWEN: So, like, beauty mentors.
ALTMAN: Sort of.
COWEN: One of your greatest achievements, you said, was reinventing Y Combinator after you took it over. When the point comes, how will you do this again, once it’s needed?
ALTMAN: How does the next person reinvent my company, or how do I re-reinvent it?
COWEN: Whoever it will be.
ALTMAN: The key to doing that for any organization — I think it is actually harder to reinvent an organization than it is to do it the first time. The hardest thing in business is an organization that produces repeated innovation and success because loss aversion is so high. Resistance to change is so high when you have something that’s working. Putting the risk to make it work better is not a bet that ever feels comfortable.
I think internalizing, truly, deeply internalizing that most things in life are not as risky as they seem, most things in life are two-way doors — you can come back — and that even if people that you work with or in the press or whatever call you idiots and say, “Oh!” — that doesn’t mean you have to listen to them.
COWEN: Can you ever appease your critics? When people call you idiots?
ALTMAN: I try not to think about them.
COWEN: Try not to think about them. Last question —
ALTMAN: Well, that’s actually not true. I try to listen to every piece of criticism, assuming that it is true and assuming that I’m in the wrong. But once I have reflected on it and decided that I’m right and this person is just engaging in bad faith, then I try to put it out of my mind entirely. I put no effort into trying to appease them.
COWEN: Last question: Let’s say a very smart and credible 19-year-old comes up to you and says, “I would like to be the Sam Altman of the next generation. Not an exact copy of what you’ve done but the 2.0 version.” What advice would you give to that 19-year-old?
ALTMAN: I don’t know what the Sam Altman of my generation is going to look like yet. I hope I’m not done here.
COWEN: Other than move to St. Louis.
ALTMAN: I think the mimetic stuff is always super dangerous, but I don’t think you should ever try to be somebody else, or I don’t think you should ever even try to take too much inspiration from someone else’s life path.
I still hope that the most important work I have to do, by far, is in front of me. I hope that’s the case until the day I stop working. That’s what I would encourage people to do is, don’t shoot for something that somebody else has already done. Shoot for something that no one has done yet.
COWEN: Sam Altman, thank you very much.
ALTMAN: Thank you.
Q&A
COWEN: We now have some time for questions at the two mics. Please keep in mind, these are not speeches from you. We are here to hear Sam. A speech or a long-winded statement, I will simply cut off. We will start with the microphone over here. Please, first question.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: In terms of narratives in the country, I think we’re seeing a lot of fear and a lot of people going to simpler narratives because it makes them feel more safe. I think you talked, maybe last year or the year before, at a Disrupt, and you talked about a startup that was looking to take over the role of a church in the community.
I was going to ask you if you had thought more about that kind of interaction between simpler narratives, and maybe what they were trying to do, and maybe where that might go in the future.
ALTMAN: I think the thing that has gone wrong in the tech industry, and maybe the country as a whole, is we — this area of the world — has failed to present a vision of the future where everyone gets to win and that everyone is excited about.
We’re unlikely to get good at that fast enough, so I’m actually excited for the tech industry to figure out how to collaborate with Hollywood or other industries that are good at narrative and paint a vision of the future that is optimistic because pessimism is always easier than optimism. Demagogues always have an easier time winning elections with pessimism than optimism.
I think people can kind of sense, whether they like it or not, tech is going to have a lot of influence over their lives, and it’s up to us to paint that positive narrative. In fact, a lot of what I hope OpenAI does in the next couple of years is figure out how to tell the positive AI story, not the negative one.
COWEN: Next question.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I heard you speak a little bit about physicists tonight. I myself am a physics PhD student.
ALTMAN: I’m an aspiring physicist, to be clear.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: All right, that makes two of us. When I get back to Berkeley tomorrow and I tell everybody that you might not think physics is the place to be, what should I tell all the physicists to do? They’re smart people, they’re hardworking, but maybe they’re doing the wrong thing.
ALTMAN: I actually think there is plenty of fertile ground in the field of physics. Most people aren’t working on it. Everyone wants to solve the grand unified theory, somehow or other. That is every physicist that I’ve ever met’s dream. Maybe that’s the wrong problem to be going after.
Maybe more physicists should be working on a better plasma physics model so we can get nuclear fusion sooner. Or maybe more physicists should come work at OpenAI because physicists are usually the smartest people. Many people in the field have gotten trapped in various dead ends, and one problem with being really smart is that really smart people tend to be super mimetic, so most physicists I’ve met have the same aspiration, work on the same problem.
Maybe it’s just too hard, and there are all these other problems. My advice to all the physicists at Berkeley would be, spend less time thinking about the problem you’re working on today that you’re not making progress on and more time thinking about what problem no other physicist is working on that would be really important to the world and that maybe you can solve.
COWEN: A question from the iPad: Please give us your anti-coworking spaces rant.
[laughter]
ALTMAN: Ohh. All right, I will. I used to say there are 3,000 YC clones in the world. I have since learned that there’s 8,000 in China alone. So let’s say the whole number in the world is 16,000.
Every time someone decides they’re going to build the next Y Combinator, the idea is always the following: “It’s going to be just like Y Combinator, except we’re going to provide free coworking space.” I always want to say to people, “Did you ever think that maybe we thought about that, and it’s a feature, not a bug, that we don’t have it?”
I think the single thing that has differentiated YC more than any other decision we’ve made is that we do not have a coworking space. We bring the companies together once a week, but that’s it. It’s enough for a community, but it is enough to build your own identity.
Coworking spaces have two big classes of problems. Number one, they are a band-pass filter. Good ideas — actually, no, great ideas are fragile. Great ideas are easy to kill. An idea in its larval stage — all the best ideas when I first heard them sound bad. And all of us, myself included, are much more affected by what other people think of us and our ideas than we like to admit.
If you are just four people in your own door, and you have an idea that sounds bad but is great, you can keep that self-delusion going. If you’re in a coworking space, people laugh at you, and no one wants to be the kid picked last at recess. So you change your idea to something that sounds plausible but is never going to matter. It’s true that coworking spaces do kill off the very worst ideas, but a band-pass filter for startups is a terrible thing because they kill off the best ideas, too.
The other thing is the average level of ambition and willingness to work hard at a coworking space is incredibly low. There’s this reversion to the mean that is not what you want in your life.
COWEN: Next question.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I know you played “will you fund or not,” but you didn’t play “overrated or underrated.” Can we do that?
COWEN: Toss one out.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I’m really bad at this.
[laughter]
COWEN: Antarctica, overrated or underrated?
ALTMAN: Underrated. I went there for Christmas. It was awesome.
COWEN: What was great about it?
ALTMAN: It felt like being on another planet. I think as you get older, it gets harder and harder to truly have new perspective on things. Let me tell you, having no internet, no other humans around, slash plants or animals, being extremely cold, and having nothing to look at but white and rock. Man, was that a mental reset. That was really cool.
COWEN: Another question from this side.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: As AI gets better — you were talking about in chess, I think. You said biology becomes a liability as AI gets better at thinking than we are. So what becomes the most important work of humans?
ALTMAN: Love, creativity, how we treat each other. We’re going to find out. I don’t know.
I was talking to someone recently about all the different ways this can go. There are versions — a lot of people, a lot of techno-utopianists love them — where we all just merge with AI, and there’s no opt-out. Either you merge with AI or you become irrelevant. That sounds cool, probably, to a lot of people in this room and terrifying to 99 percent of people on Earth.
We talked about the need for positive stories. I don’t think that’s the story that most people want to hear. I don’t think that’s exciting. I don’t think that’s a future that most people are excited about.
But the thing that is really interesting about this is, sure, we’re going to build this thing that’s smarter than humans in every way, but we get to make a lot of decisions about how to build it. You only get to make them once, when the von Neumann probes launch from Earth, and eventually you never get to communicate again because of the speed of light. You better have gotten it right, but we do get to make them.
I don’t know what the answer is. I do know I should not get to make it by myself. But maybe we as humans, as a whole, decide the deal we want with AI, like humans get Earth and a 100-light-year radius, and AI gets the rest of the universe, but we get to live our lives as we want, and maybe that’s OK. The option space is big, but we won’t be smarter.
COWEN: An iPad question: You mentioned some of the qualities of good and bad founders. Of the qualities of bad founders, which do you think are the most curable?
ALTMAN: Arrogance. You want to be confident but not arrogant. They look, superficially, to an outside observer very similar. If a founder is intellectually honest and wants to be better — to my surprise, this is something I’ve changed my mind on — arrogance can often be cured if someone is otherwise well motivated.
COWEN: What cures arrogance, other than you?
ALTMAN: Getting beaten up by the market sometimes does it, but just teaching people that you can operate this way if you want, and you will be unhappy, and people won’t want to help you.
Or you can make a slight tweak to the way you interact with people, and the way you treat people, and the way you treat your team, and the way you listen to feedback, and get this very different result. My experience is, if someone is genuinely intellectually curious, you only need to show them that one time.
COWEN: Question over here.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: How will YC do better to support the 90 or 95 or 99 percent of talented people that is maybe missing or isn’t supported at the moment?
ALTMAN: I think the most important thing we can do is grow, but that will take some time. It’s always easy to look back at decisions and be like, “I knew that thing was going to work and be really important.” It’s almost always bullshit when people say that.
But the thing that I did personally that surprised me the most for that was in 2014, I think. I taught this class at Stanford, but also, which I, without their permission — they were very against it — put online, called How to Start a Startup. I still get dozens of emails per week from people around the world who watched these videos and wrote and said, “Hey, I never knew about this. I never knew this was an option, and this changed my life. Thank you.” What did you say?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Alan Kay.
ALTMAN: He did the second version of the class, yes. We did it again in 2017, and he talked.
That taught me — I’ve done a bunch of things since — that even if we can’t fund every startup, we can put the information out there for every startup. We have tried to open-source everything we know about startups and at least make that part widely available.
We tried to create more communities outside of just the founders we fund. We’re going to try to launch another one tomorrow. We have things like Hacker News. We try to make a bunch of groups online. But we will continue to put as much knowledge out there and create as many communities as we can.
COWEN: From Horshida on iPad: What are some systematic problems in Silicon Valley that prevent certain particular problems from even being noticed? That’s a bit of my paraphrase.
ALTMAN: I think one thing is people don’t get out of Silicon Valley enough. I don’t do this as much anymore as I used to, but I used to make it a point — I would try to travel 12, 16 weeks a year, and I would try to meet people in other contexts or just observe the world way outside the US. That gave me a broadness of perspective that was super valuable, and it’s something most people don’t do.
COWEN: Question over here.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Regarding the experiment on UBI in Finland, could you comment on the results of that?
ALTMAN: Didn’t they pull that experiment? The Finnish — I thought they stopped that experiment? So I don’t know how to comment on the results, but I would have loved it if there were results to discuss.
COWEN: From the iPad: If pessimism is indeed the biggest handicap, what do you do to actively cultivate optimism?
ALTMAN: One of the most important questions that I would like an answer to is, is optimism versus pessimism nature or nurture? If it is nature, can we fix that with CRISPR?
[laughter]
ALTMAN: Because it is such a bad thing to have. I hope it’s a personality trait. I hope it’s something that can be improved with deliberate practice. I believe in my heart that it is, but I try so hard to avoid pessimistic people in my life that I don’t feel like I have enough of a dataset to answer that with any confidence.
COWEN: What’s the optimal percentage of pessimistic people in your social circle?
ALTMAN: You do want some, and I have plenty.
[laughter]
ALTMAN: But it’s like 1 in 10, 1 in 50. Something like that.
COWEN: Next question.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I believe you said that the best way to create wealth is to start a startup. On the other hand, you are the successor to running Y Combinator. You were almost an apprentice-seeming figure before you took over, which seems almost like the least founderly thing to do. What should we learn from this? Should we start a startup unless we have the option to run Y Combinator? Or what?
ALTMAN: Look, if you have the option to run Y Combinator, I think that’s a pretty good thing to do.
[laughter]
ALTMAN: The way that Y Combinator generates wealth is still by startups getting started. As the fundamental mechanism, sure, I don’t start them, but I do think I build something that helps them do better. And what I meant more by that statement, you don’t have to start it yourself. You can join as an early employee; you can be an investor. A more precise version of that would be, “The best way to generate wealth is to own a significant piece of the startup.”
There are many ways to do that. You can choose to be an investor; you can choose to be an early employee. You don’t have to be a founder. In fact, that’s one thing I think Silicon Valley gets wrong, is either you’re a founder or you suck. That is clearly not the case. But I do think startups are the best way to generate huge amounts of wealth quickly.
COWEN: Next question.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: There’s a famous book which came out in the year 2000 called Bowling Alone, which documents the decline of social capital in America. Do you think that decline has continued through to the present day? And if so, what solutions do you think there are to solve it, technological or otherwise?
ALTMAN: I’m not familiar with the book. Could you explain social capital in this context?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Social capital refers to a broad set of factors — including shared norms, values, cultural understandings — that serve as a lubricant in a society or group to be able to function more effectively.
ALTMAN: Got it. Great question. There’s all this data that the things that make people happy are, most of all, this sense of community and belonging and frequent community celebrations and things like that. That has declined for sure, badly. I feel like, even in my own life, I’ve watched that decline in the last 30 years. Even moving from . . . San Francisco is an awful city for a sense of community.
COWEN: Why is that?
ALTMAN: I could answer that, but it will take — do you want a full answer on that? It’s a long one.
COWEN: Sure, yeah.
ALTMAN: I think in cities that become dominated by a single industry and cities that have a reward, cities that reward generation of wealth and financial success over a sense of shared humanity and community, have a very hard time preserving that fabric of social capital, community — whatever you want to call it.
Where I grew up, no one would ever walk by a person collapsed on the side of the street on their way to work and not do something about it. I hope I never get used to the fact that that happens in San Francisco. I do blame the tech industry for a lot of things that have gone wrong with the city, but not all of them.
But we have, over time, had this unbelievable wealth generation in this small geographic space, in this small period of time, and I think not been particularly thoughtful about the effects of that on the community as a whole. Because those problems are so hard and so hard to think about, most people just choose not to, and they just accept this.
I think we also have fairly incompetent city government and city management. We have people that are unwilling to stand up to, certainly, the greatest housing crisis I hope I ever see, and a drug one as well. But we have a city government that has been unwilling, for the entire time I’ve lived here, to make hard decisions that are unpopular with vocal minorities of the voting base. So we have unaffordable housing, we have a homelessness epidemic, we have streets that are — again, there’s many things that I love about the city, but the fact that, if I take my trash out late at night when it’s dark and don’t put on shoes, I have to look for hypodermic needles outside my house — it’s like, really? That’s what we want to do here?
You need strong, powerful community leaders in a way that the city hasn’t had, and you need people who are willing to embrace change. You can’t keep the city the way it was. That’s not going to happen. That ship has sailed.
Right now, you have people who, in their unwillingness to make any changes, are just letting everything be awful. The only thing that I think will work is say, “Okay, the game has changed. The city has to change in big ways.” You need a leader empowered to do that.
It’s going to make some people unhappy, but the complete lack of humanity and civic connection we have — yeah, I’ll never get used to people not saying hi to each other on the streets. I’ll never get used to ignoring people, not even stopping to call an ambulance for people. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to.
COWEN: Last question is from me. The American Midwest — underrated or overrated?
ALTMAN: Underrated.
COWEN: Why?
ALTMAN: You know, as a kid, it was an idyllic place to grow up. As a teenager, I did get kind of bored. And as an adult, I feel such a strong pull back. People are nice to each other.
There are seasons. One thing that I think is surprisingly awful about San Francisco and the social fabric of this city is, it’s never warm at night, or it only is four nights a year. It sounds like this very minor thing, but what it means is, you have no sense of life on the streets, and you have no people sitting outside for dinner, happy and talking to each other as they pass.
When you go outside in San Francisco in the evenings, you’re guarded against the world because you are cold all the time. There’s not this life on the streets of the city. I think it has this huge effect on the social fabric.
COWEN: Sam Altman, thank you very much.
ALTMAN: Thank you. | https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/tyler-cowen-sam-altman-ai-tech-business-58f530417522 | ['Mercatus Center'] | 2019-07-08 17:38:28.188000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Ycombinator', 'Silicon Valley', 'Podcast', 'Tech'] |
What’s Going On With These New Co-Publishing and Administration Deals? ( Music Op-Ed) | What’s Going On With These New Co-Publishing and Administration Deals? ( Music Op-Ed)
With streaming and technology changing the music business inside and out, songwriters and producers are becoming more of a commodity to distribution, publishing, and administration companies but what value is being exchanged?
Photo by dhe haivan on Unsplash
In a co-publishing deal, a songwriter and/or producer is usually assigning 50% of their publishing share over to this other entity in exchange (usually) for money. In an administration deal, a company will administer your compositions by licensing, registering, collecting royalties on behalf of your work while ensuring you get paid. The key difference is an administration deal you are retaining 100% ownership interest in your work and the goal is to collect all of your royalties on the composition side while in a co-publishing deal this company will obtain an ownership interest in your work while actively providing resources and value to your career as a songwriter and producer in addition to the administration duties.
The biggest question you should be asking yourself if you are being presented one of these deals is, “Is this company actually able to provide the services it is claiming it can provide?”
I don't present this question with any sort of malice to anyone involved in the publishing or administration space but collecting and administering rights globally for a songwriter or producer is not a small task. Furthermore, if you are offering co-publishing services you really have to be in a position to put songwriters and producers in rooms for placements and skill development and being realistic, most companies offering these services are not in a position to do so.
For these reasons alone, it is important to understand the ramifications and rights being tied up in these deals. A lot of these companies pray on songwriters and producers alike early in their careers because of the residual nature of publishing income. Most songwriters and producers although they might have some placements do not have the immediate capital to provide for an up to par lifestyle which might include family they have to support. Thus, administration company, publishing company and/or a production company faking as one of the two will offer you $10,000 and lock you up for exclusive administration or co-publishing rights.
Now, you are stuck with a company that can’t provide the support or promotional tools you need to succeed all because a paycheck was dangled at a vulnerable time. Imagine a scenario in which you have leveraged your online and offline connections to land placements without the help of your co-publishing company yet they are still entitled to half of your publisher’s share regardless of the work they put in. It is a situation that happens all the time to unassuming composers who have a need for immediate capital and have a little buzz without a knowledgeable management or legal team.
These are the types of deals that you will regret when you really start making a mark in the music industry. There are plenty of reputable companies such as TuneCore Publishing and Songtrust, who can do the administration job for you without tying up your rights for a long time. Songtrust is the biggest publishing administration company, working with over 100,000 composers and you’ll pay a one-time $100 fee per registration with the service. Songtrust then takes 15% of the royalties off the top of all the royalties they collect. TuneCore Publishing is very similar and takes 15% of the publishing royalties. Both collect international mechanical royalties as well. Considering these two are thought to be leaders in the administration space be wary of giving up more than 15% of your publisher’s share income in the form of an administrative fee for a term of more than 1–3 years. Note, this number might be a bit higher if you received an advance against future royalty earnings.
The perks of using these platforms are simple, you are getting trusted and credible music publishing administration that has the technical capabilities to collect all of your publishing nationally and across the globe. Some of the smaller administration arms might have great intentions but they might not have the same collection relationships that the bigger players have thus you could be giving away exclusive administration rights without getting all of your royalties in return. Another thing to remember is administration agreements do not provide for any creative services and focus solely on administrative duties such as properly registering your songs with collection societies around the world to collect all of your publishing royalties.
On the co-publishing side, it is crucial to remember the purpose of the deal. Because the publishing companies are making a bigger investment into you, they have a much larger incentive to successfully help you monetize your compositions. Accordingly, not only do they provide the necessary administrative tools, a publishing company should be soliciting synchronization opportunities in television, film, and advertising, as well as getting your composition out to labels and artists to be recorded and released by major artists at major record labels (seeking major label placements). A good publishing company should also be getting you into the studio with other producers, songwriters, and talented artists. Additionally, a co-pub deal should come with an advance which should be anywhere from $25,000 to near a million dollars depending on where you are in your career and what you are giving up.
With that being said, it is important to note that you really can’t have an administration deal and a co-publishing deal at the same so signing a long-term administration deal can hinder your ability to secure a lucrative co-publishing deal.
This article was not written to scare you into not signing a co-publishing deal or administration deal but emphasize the importance of understanding both. In fact, it is hard to collect all of your royalties without working with a music publishing administration company. There are a lot of companies entering into these spaces without the real capabilities of fulfilling their obligations and they prey on the prospects of composers early in there career. I have been one to say that legal budgets should be small early in your career but do not sign an administration or co-publishing deal without consulting with a music attorney. This agreement is too important to skim over and sign. Rule of thumb, if you are assigning rights to your music to someone, you should be consulting a music attorney.
These deals present the paradox scenario musicians face in the music business. They are forced to make important, short term decisions that have tremendously impactful longterm consequences.
Karl Fowlkes, Esq.
Entertainment Attorney
The Fowlkes Firm
www.elawandbusiness.com
Email: [email protected] | https://medium.com/the-courtroom/whats-going-on-with-these-new-co-publishing-and-administration-deals-music-op-ed-e8626d99e824 | ['Karl Fowlkes'] | 2019-06-19 03:26:51.043000+00:00 | ['Entertainment', 'Business', 'Music', 'Songwriting', 'Culture'] |
Microsoft 365-apps for Mac gain native M1-support | Microsoft 365-apps for Mac gain native M1-support
While many of you already enjoy your M1-based new Macs powered by Apple Silicon SoCs, my BTO-MacBook Air still needs to make its way to me. For everyone who is luckier than I was so far and is using the well-known Microsoft 365-apps, native M1-support is now for real as Microsoft has just released the specific app-updates.
Office on a MacBook Pro — Photo Credits: Microsoft
The core-Office-apps like Excel, Word, PowerPoint and OneNote are now cloaked under the “Universal”-label, combining the Intel- and Apple Silicon-based version in one binary so that the “new” Macs now have no need for using Rosetta 2 to emulate Intel-based versions anymore.
The “new” PowerPoint— Photo Credits: Microsoft
Additionally, the updated Outlook for Mac-app has been released as well and while earlier versions lacked the support for iCloud-accounts this feature has now been baked into the final version and will be rolled out through the new Outlook over the coming weeks.
While the “usual suspects” of Microsoft-apps are up-to-date now, the Teams-app, based on the Electron Framework, still needs its overhaul for the M1. While this is still work in progress, Microsoft is still redesigning some of its Office-apps for the Mac-platform with an updated Office Start-experience, a change that is told to reach the users with some new updates starting next month.
Outlook for Mac embracing iCloud-Accounts— Photo Credits: Microsoft
For all of you who are still waiting for an updated and M1-optimized version of VisualStudio Code, don’t forget to head over to https://code.visualstudio.com/insiders/ as this version is currently available as well on a daily-release-basis.
The updates for the “classic” Office-programs have already been rolled out and should have hit your Mac by either Microsoft’s AutoUpdate Daemon or the App Store, according on the way you have installed them. | https://medium.com/macoclock/microsoft-365-apps-for-mac-gains-native-m1-support-b2dcfbc2c14c | ['Oliver Pifferi'] | 2020-12-17 11:01:37.815000+00:00 | ['Mac', 'Microsoft', 'Office', 'Apple', 'M1'] |
Expectations: The Robber of Joy | Photo by Yasin Yusuf on Unsplash
Expectations: The Robber of Joy
When others tell us who we should be
I just finished watching this is PARIS, a documentary of Paris Hilton.
To be honest, I saw it on my YouTube feed a while back, but never decided to click into it because I wasn’t really fond of her.
Growing up in the same period as her, I saw plenty of stories about her and her actions. She struck me as someone shallow, stuck up, fed with a silver spoon, selfish, and unambitious.
Why would I want to watch a documentary about someone who I really didn’t respect her way of life and choices?
This time, though, I thought I would be open-minded and see what she had to say, and I am so glad I did. Not only was it well-produced, but the story was compelling and struck a nerve in me.
She talked about playing a persona, putting up a façade, and erecting a lot of shields.
This is all due to her parents sending her away to “emotional growth school” when she was in her teens. It was both about the time in the school and the way she was sent.
At her most vulnerable when she was sleeping, Paris was woken up by two strange men essentially kidnapping her. She was screaming for help at the top of her lungs while not knowing what was happening, and seeing her parents standing by and not doing anything.
I can only imagine the terror and betrayal she must have felt when that happened.
All because she was “out of control” and her parents wanted her to act a certain way. To be prim and proper. To espouse the values she and her sister learned in etiquette classes.
Not that expectations are bad; after all, there has to be a standard level of humanity.
But what Paris was doing was normal teenage rebellious behavior. She came of age in New York, a place where all forms of self-expression and creativity was explored. And it was there, in the clubs, that she found her livelihood. She wasn’t thinking about her family image; she was simply free, in her own skin, bringing out who she was as an artist, and not who others expected her to be. | https://medium.com/curious/expectations-the-robber-of-joy-102ccd0733bf | [] | 2020-10-06 01:41:45.983000+00:00 | ['Expectations', 'Mental Health', 'Trauma', 'Self', 'Healing'] |
Designing effective onboarding for apps | What?
Do you still remember your first day of college, where during induction you’re introduced to your faculties, your classroom layout, where the cafeteria is, etc.?
That same process of introducing someone to an unfamiliar environment for the first time is onboarding.
By Minh Pham
In more technical words, Onboarding is the process of introducing a product, service or feature to its first-time users to increase familiarity and understanding without confusing them.
Why?
Now you’d ask, why is onboarding important in apps?
In today’s day and age, where users have access to millions of apps in their devices, onboarding makes a lot of difference in their activation as engaged users.
Value Proposition
A well-designed onboarding explains the value proposition of the app to the users.
Handholding
In some cases, it can also let the users know how to achieve a specific task in the app.
Simplify
In some cases, it can also be used to simplify the user journey, leading the user to the core functionality of the app.
So depending on the use case, onboarding can be very helpful to engage the users in the long term.
How?
Now let’s talk about the “how” of onboarding.
Depending on the stage, you want to implement the onboarding in the user journey; there are three types of onboarding models; keeping the core app flow as a yardstick, i.e. Pre, Post and During.
Depending on the use case, their effectiveness might vary.
Pre
This type of onboarding activates right after the user opens the app before reaching to the core app flow.
This model works very well for showcasing the value proposition of the app or how a specific in-app feature works.
Most commonly, users see a couple of screens explaining which is presented as a carousel that can be swiped through.
By Nitin Bhatnagar
The ease of implementation makes it the most commonly used onboarding model, which you would have seen in a lot of apps. But the same can’t be said for their effectiveness as they are mostly perishable and once the user navigates away from these screens, there are on their own.
Post
This type of onboarding activates post the user has reached the core app flow.
This model works very well for highlighting specific options in the app with a given context; i.e. activating such overlays on particular user actions guiding them through what to do next.
This model is also relatively easy to implement. But due consideration is needed to map out their activation contextually, and a better way of implementation would be highlighting only one option at a time.
During
This type of onboarding uses progressive disclosure to introduce must required features of the app and handhold the user through the core app flow. Here user learns via doing.
This model works very well with a sophisticated core app flow, which needs a lot of user input.
This model is quite challenging to implement as it needs a separate user journey altogether, and it acts like a mini-app within the app. But when designed and appropriately executed, it’s the most rewarding. | https://medium.com/cricplay/designing-effective-onboarding-for-apps-474f27e064a4 | ['Rohit K Jangir'] | 2020-02-20 11:43:36.150000+00:00 | ['Cricplay', 'UI', 'Design', 'Onboarding', 'UX'] |
My NaNoWriMo Experience: A Flashback on Flashbacks | In October 2014 I was browsing through San Francisco’s Dog Eared Books and stumbled upon No Plot? No Problem! by NaNoWriMo founder Chris Baty. One month later I was bent over my computer, writing out a 50,000-word novel about a wounded Veteran on a healing trek through a fantastical landscape.
Image Source: Unsplash
Sounds magical? It wasn’t. As Chris and other luminaries promised, the “magic” came in the revision. One of the first pieces of feedback I got in my writer’s group was how difficult it was to navigate through all the flashbacks my main character experienced. I’d started writing one series of events and then flipped back to battle scenes, to his life before enlisting, to his relationship with other characters in the book. Readers were “pulled out” of the story.
Dead set on meeting the 50,000-word goal, I’d motored forward during NaNoWriMo and developed my character, his history, and the plot by putting one word after another. And that’s fine. Remember, writing warriors, to attain 50,000 words you can write all the backstory you want, however you want. Flip the reader forward and backward, it doesn’t matter, because there’s always revision.
Remember, writing warriors, to attain 50,000 words you can write all the backstory you want, however you want, because there’s always revision.
During revision, I got to make careful decisions around exposition. For example: Would this tank-fight scene be best presented in a prologue? Could this love story be a dialogue between two people reminiscing about the time they met at the neighborhood pool?
I also decided that flashbacks were great for a quick comparison of present and past. When the Veteran heard a car backfire, he didn’t have to remember the entire account of how he saved his buddy’s life during the war. It was better if the car backfiring reminded him of it briefly and then he snapped back to the present — a world where loud noises meant he was in a crowded parking lot, not in battle. The flashback showed a man who felt lost in a world where the signals he sensed no longer corresponded to the environment around him. It was not the place to tell the entire backstory.
If you are interested in a complete and public example of this idea, check out a short story I published about early motherhood. In the piece, a new mom meets her (intentionally) childless friend for lunch. I used the opportunity to compare their lives with flashbacks throughout. Here is a brief excerpt from the main character’s point-of-view after hearing about her friend’s nearly spontaneous trip to Fiji:
“I thought back to the last trip that I’d taken, which was the walk through our San Francisco neighborhood to reach the restaurant forty-five minutes earlier. I’d started planning the day before — packing the diaper bag, preparing my water bottle, even pinning the straps of the stroller seat back so I could just put Henry straight in as soon as he’d fallen asleep.”
To summarize:
· Do what you need to do to reach 50,000 words
· When you revise, take the time to consider how to present backstory
· Flashbacks are useful for brief comparison of events and circumstances | https://medium.com/nanowrimo/my-2014-nanowrimo-experience-a-flashback-on-flashbacks-576f2ec7fc57 | ['Ateret Haselkorn'] | 2020-11-13 19:37:12.490000+00:00 | ['NaNoWriMo', 'Writing', 'Writing Tips'] |
Life After Relapse | Life After Relapse
No one told me I would have to leave people behind.
I remember being told “when you move forward in your recovery you will leave people behind” and I am truly starting to understand what that means.
Certain relationships I have are built on me having low self-esteem and not questioning how one-sided the relationship is. Now I am more confident and want equal roles it is quite painful. Painful because I am seeing clearly what is going on and painful because looking back I can see how this has been a very unhealthy pattern all my life.
I had a breakdown when I was seventeen. I developed agoraphobia due to intense anxiety. I also struggled with my body image and would starve myself. My logic was that if I made myself smaller and took up less space in the world it would decrease the chances of anyone hurting me again.
I am twenty-eight and although I have relapsed a few times since my breakdown, I have been growing in confidence. In the last two years, I have started to blossom into the person I was always meant to be.
I honestly thought people would be happy for me. I have always been told I need to be more confident and learn to love myself. However, the same people who told me these things are the very people who seem to resent my growing confidence.
Nearly all of my friendships were initiated during times when I liked myself the least. Usually, it was with people who needed looking after somehow. I am the friend who builds people up and nurtures them, whilst pushing my needs to one side. I can see why people liked this. It must be nice being the priority all of the time.
But I have found my voice, and after years of searching for it, I am not going to be silenced.
I want equal relationships. I no longer feel inferior to other people and overly grateful when they are kind to me.
Every relationship should be equal and respectful. If someone thinks that’s an unfair demand, then they really aren’t ready to commit to friendship and need to work on themselves. I know this, but it stills hurts.
There is an inner conflict when leaving people behind. Am I a bad person? Is getting better worth it if I will be alone? What I have learned is true friends will travel your journey with you and keep up with your pace because they want to be there. Those you leave behind did not want to be there anyway and that is their loss.
There is no greater joy than seeing someone overcome challenges and blossom into who they were always meant to be. If that is a resentful experience for some people, then they are the ones who need to question themselves and what they stand for. Not you. | https://medium.com/brave-inspired/life-after-relapse-cbeddfd5b7a9 | ['Laura Fox'] | 2019-11-10 14:55:28.491000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'True Courage', 'This Happened To Me', 'Mental Health', 'Self'] |
Hello Ognitio! | Infrastructure is everything. Ideas don’t matter anymore; your capacity to outperform your competitors do. Today Big Data challenges require businesses to take appropriate measures on the health of their IT department.
It used to be that if you’re a large company enterprise, innovation will just come to you. But those days are long gone. Businesses currently have a hard time scaling up and maintaining a culture of innovation. Indeed, it appears as if these companies spend most of their time just trying to keep up with the trends and learn from the very few fast tech companies.
The rise of data science and related areas makes things worse as they require faster and iterative development processes. If no solid foundation and trust are in place, businesses can turn into a nightmare where nothing ever gets done.
Most of us at Ognitio have had the opportunity to work on a multitude of challenging data problems in large scale environments. We started our project with a clear objective in mind: build infrastructures for engineers and analysts to boost their productivity in data science; and enhance the quality of their work experience. The mission is simple, but exciting and vast in possibilities: Unlocking the value of your cloud infrastructure.
Today, we are proudly working on Circus, a secure and intelligent cloud orchestration platform for your data center. With Circus we’re able to provide speed, scale and intelligence. An all-in-one to make people better at their most important work. The infrastructure we want is transparent and trustworthy. It allows you to focus on optimizing your applications and it maintains productivity in the long run.
Today, we’re pleased to announce Circus to everyone. Sign up here for the beta!
Introducing Circus
Circus is a cloud orchestration platform that simplifies and speeds up business application scheduling on clusters of physical or virtual machines. It enables you to manage your data center as if it’s a single computer and considerably improve your resource utilization.
As we solve and host hundreds of data problems at Ognitio, we wanted to provide our developers with better control and trust over the way they organize and manage their cluster of hosts.
Circus is a platform built on top of Apache Mesos that provides three main benefits to his users:
It abstracts pool of compute resources allowing you to focus on optimizing your applications without worrying about the infrastructure. It enables everything you need to build, run and scale thousands of applications and services in your infrastructure. It promotes a collaborative and transparent environment for your team members.
A key component of Circus is the namespaces. It enables cluster operators to easily partition their resources. This mechanism helps administrators to have full control and visibility over the needs of multiple user communities.
With namespaces, users are now able to work in isolation from other communities.
A lot of effort have also been invested into helping Circus users organize and monitor their hosts at any scale.
Today, Circus schedules, starts, restarts and monitors a full range of applications that run at Ognitio.
Hosting and managing your business apps with our platform frees your IT department to do more in large distributed environments.
Building products that matter is what drives us. We’re working hard to give the users of Circus a refreshing experience. Your feedback is important to us! You can help us in 3 simple steps:
Sign up here for the beta! Keep up with us on Twitter or Facebook. Send us an email at [email protected] to tell us what you think!
Looking forward to doing this together!
Lucien. | https://medium.com/ognitio-eng/hello-ognitio-d0a47e015fff | ['Lucien R. Zagabe'] | 2016-05-05 11:32:16.439000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Cloud Computing', 'Enterprise Software'] |
PyTorch Lightning 0.7.1 Release and Venture Funding | Venture Funding
You may have noticed that Lightning is no longer in the “WilliamFalcon” Github repo. The scale at which Lightning is now being adopted and used across academia and industry means I can no longer treat this as a “side” project (which it hasn’t really been).
After releasing Lightning in March of 2019 and making it public in July, it quickly became obvious that a single person couldn’t support the appetite for new features from the hyper-engaged Lightning community. As a first step, I formed a group of core contributors who are now leading a lot of initiatives across the framework. This core group was quickly augmented by an extended community of over 113 contributors (of mostly PhDs), and it began to feel like my vision for Lightning to become a foundational part of everyone’s deep learning research code was becoming a reality!
Along with this burgeoning community has come rapidly growing interest from users in corporate and big academic lab settings, making it clear that we need to build a team working on new features and functionality full-time. As such, I’ve secured funding from fantastic venture capitalists to hire a full-time team to help take Lightning to the next level!
I’m excited about this funding because it allows Lightning to stay open-source while building an amazing full-time team to move even faster through new feature requests. The goal is to make Lightning the best research framework for academic labs, corporate labs and production teams around the world.
I’ll announce more details around the funding over the next few months, but in the meantime, I’m hiring for full-time research engineers.
If you want to join the team, feel free to reach out to me at [email protected].
If you’re just a generally awesome engineer or research scientist with deep learning experience, also reach out! We are always interested in learning more about what you are up to! | https://medium.com/pytorch/pytorch-lightning-0-7-1-release-and-venture-funding-dd12b2e75fb3 | ['William Falcon'] | 2020-03-26 20:20:16.814000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence', 'Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Deep Learning', 'Announcements'] |
Are You Shrinking into Places You’ve Outgrown? | Are You Shrinking into Places You’ve Outgrown?
You may not even know you’re doing it
Photo by Alexandru Zdrobău on Unsplash
My title is pretty basic, but did you feel that tug on your heart when you thought it might apply to you?
I felt it before I fully understood the question.
What exactly does that mean — shrinking into places you’ve outgrown?
When I first heard that statement, my heart skipped a beat. Something about those simple words resonated deeply and my cheeks flushed in anticipation of understanding why.
I spend a lot of time in my head, so when my body reacts physically to words, music or concepts, I snap to attention. That’s how I’m certain it’s meant for me, and that meaningful sentence quite literally stopped me in my tracks.
I’ve been living by this advice for years now, and although it rocked my world initially, it’s the best self-help tidbit I’ve ever received.
When I mentioned it casually in another article on Medium — I realized I wasn’t alone. This feedback from Sandra Gancz made my year!
Screenshot courtesy of the Author
That rush I felt, knowing I helped someone, thrilled me and then inspired this article. Thanks again, Sandra!
We live in a fast-paced world, yet we become stagnant in the midst of our routines and crazy schedules. Rarely do we take notice of the things sucking the joy from our lives.
We quit checking-in with ourselves. We set goals only to leave them on notepads neglected, or worse, forgotten.
We continue friendships and stay in romantic relationships that are slowly choking the life out of us.
And we remain in jobs that are unfulfilling and cause intense stress.
If you find yourself restless, bored, frustrated, angry, or uninspired, there's a reason. It doesn’t mean you’re ungrateful and can’t be satisfied.
It means you’re shrinking into places you’ve outgrown.
It’s that same feeling you had when you were ready to move out of your parent's home. You’re uneasy, tired of the rules, and you want to experience life on your own terms.
Yes, some of us are resistant to change, and we find comfort in our “sameness,” but there’s danger lurking in complacency.
A good analogy is a snake shedding its skin; as they mature and grow, they shed their outer lining. The frequency depends on their growth rate and need to heal injuries or slough off parasites. When the molting process is complete, they leave the old casing behind and move on.
It wouldn’t make sense for the snake to shed those layers year after year, only to crawl back in and try to make the best of that worn-out casing.
That would be shrinking into a place it’s outgrown.
So why do we do it?
Photo by Tachina Lee on Unsplash
We can love someone or something dearly, but as we experience personal growth, people and things should naturally play less of a role in our daily lives.
Just as our parents took a backseat when we moved out, and for the same reason, you traded your Big Wheel in for a Schwinn.
It’s a natural progression.
Yet, we struggle to hang on to the familiar.
We stay in bad marriages, and we tolerate horrible behavior
We hang on to friends we know are toxic or bring out the worst in us
We stay in jobs we hate, surviving day to day on autopilot
We travel to the same destinations every year because it’s easier
I’ve done all of the above; how about you?
Eventually, I stopped dancing because my partner detested it. I stopped voicing my opinion to avoid endless arguments, and I stayed friends with people that hurt me or didn’t have my best interest at heart because they needed something from me.
I saw challenges as problems instead of opportunities, and I missed many an adventure, fearing more failure.
As a natural people-pleaser, I’d been living without considering my authentic self. I was unsure of what I wanted out of life or where I was headed. I couldn’t see the future, and my joy had been stolen.
I’d lost touch, or maybe never knew who I was at my core, so I was easily swayed.
It doesn’t happen overnight, you just wake up one day, and you’re there. You feel stifled and misunderstood but also terrified to churn things up.
Photo by Kleiton Silva on Unsplash
That’s where I was in my life when that statement hit me over the head. I hadn’t seen it coming, but I was shrinking into places and hanging on to people I’d long since outgrown.
My brain was on autopilot, but my gut knew the truth.
My flushed cheeks, the catch in my throat, and that missed heartbeat were all signs that this was something I needed to work on.
Too many times throughout my life, I’ve crawled back into myself rather than spreading my wings. I tried to make a go of things that were no longer serving me because that’s what was expected.
Growing and coming into your own late in life can be uncomfortable.
Hell, it flat out hurts sometimes. But over the last five or six years, I’ve walked away from anything or anyone that didn’t merge with my greater good.
Now there's room in my life for the right people, exciting new adventures and a million opportunities I won’t hesitate to take.
Enlightened, I’ve stopped shrinking into places I’ve outgrown. It’s helped me discover my creative side, my true self, and happiness I’ve never experienced.
How about you?
Are you merely surviving or living your life on purpose?
If you enjoyed that, here’s another one you’ll love…
I’m Liz, the self-empowered, red wine & coffee lovin’, personal growth fanatic behind this article. I’ve stopped shrinking into places I’ve outgrown, and I’m a fan of straight talk and practical solutions. That’s why I’m here to Empower, Educate and Entertain. | https://medium.com/live-your-life-on-purpose/are-you-shrinking-into-places-youve-outgrown-bac0909ce691 | ['Liz Porter'] | 2020-12-12 13:44:11.566000+00:00 | ['Self-awareness', 'Life Lessons', 'Happiness', 'Self Improvement', 'Life'] |
The Importance of a Place to Linger | Exploring places we naturally gather and why they’re essential for wellbeing
“…At night the dew settled the dust and the old man liked to sit late because he was deaf and now at night it was quiet and he felt the difference… He disliked bars and bodegas. A clean, well-lighted cafe was a very different thing. — “A clean, well-lighted place” by Ernest Hemingway
Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, 1942. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.
The Riddle of the Ideal Place
This past weekend, two guests joined our family for dinner and one of them kicked off the conversation by sharing her professional ambition: “I’m a strategic designer and I want to make places that are wonderful for people to live in.” Her comment launched us into a discussion of design principles, places that were designed well, and those that were spectacular failures. One story in particular caught my attention for the profound point it made about both design and human nature:
It was the story of a man who went to Latin America with the aim of doing charity. While there, he watched poor local women walk miles each day to fetch fresh water. Feeling inspired to help, he financed the construction of a well near where the women lived and returned home feeling good about his contribution. A year later, he returned and asked the women how their lives were. “Terrible,” one said. “Now our husbands force us to stay at home and we don’t have a chance to go out together.” Taken aback, the man listened to the women further and learned what they considered their needs to be: a place to be together, a source of financial freedom, and protection of that freedom. In the end, he bought them sewing machines, a shop where they could work making clothing, and a bank to hold their collective earnings. And that made the women happy.
What I love about the story is how well it shows the complexity of human behavior. We go places for multiple reasons: explicit, functional ones and implicit, sometimes unconscious ones. On the surface, what appeared to be the problem of women walking long distances for water was actually an improvised solution. A solution allowing them to be with their friends, to get away from controlling husbands, and maybe just to enjoy a walk in open space. Implicit reasons like these are almost always overlooked in urban planning and are the reason “modern utopias” like Brazilia, Brazil so often fail.
Reflecting on this story, I realized that most of the places I spend my time are chosen for similarly implicit (you could say irrational) reasons. And sadly many have been decimated by Covid-19. The ones I miss most are what Ernest Hemingway described beautifully as “clean, well-lighted places.” They are places that- through the magic of social architecture- facilitate comfort and connection. They are places where you go to meet others, to escape from home or work, or simply because you have nowhere else to be. I think of them as places I like to linger. And I believe they serve an incredibly valuable social purpose.
Case Study: Caffe Trieste
One of the best natural gathering spots I can think of is Caffè Trieste in San Francisco’s North Beach. The day my brother brought me there marked the first time I felt at home in my new city. Walking towards the entrance, I noticed a group of elderly men laughing and holding court outside, like a traditional Italian piazza. As we stepped inside, I saw all types of people and slices of life side-by-side: scruffy writers, friends leaning across tables and laughing, and a trumpet player sitting in a corner booth practicing over the din of conversation. “I thought you’d like this place” my brother smiled.
I did like it. I liked it so much that I came in both the mornings and evenings to write cover letters and browse job postings. I stayed until there was dim orange lighting and old Italian songs playing on the juke box. Though I went there to work, I was pulled there more by the sense of possibility and community. In a one week period, I met: a poet who looked like Marlon Brando and told me his life story; a Hungarian photographer who was equally fascinating and sketchy; an Italian family who asked for the WiFi password and then told me all about their trip. When I finally did find a job and a new apartment, I was disappointed that I could no longer be a Caffè Trieste regular.
Months after I first walked in, I tried to understand what made Caffè Trieste such a unique, community hub and picked out three elements: Acceptable ambiguity, social architecture, and tradition.
By acceptable ambiguity, I mean that I could go to Caffè Trieste every day to work with the unspoken understanding that many other things could happen. I might be surprised by live music, a thoughtful conversation with a neighbor, or local gossip. The open atmosphere there was supported by the design of the place. There were a handful of outlets, but not enough to make it a tech hotspot; the tables were far enough apart to allow breathing room but close enough for eavesdropping; The open door and soft orange lighting made it inviting in both the early morning and late evening.
And finally, as powerful as the design itself is the feeling of history and tradition that fills the spot. Caffè Trieste was founded by an Italian immigrant and his family over 50 years ago and became mythologized as a hotspot for Beat poets and Francis Ford Coppola, who wrote “The Godfather” there. Yet it still has an intimate feeling to it, like walking into a welcoming and chaotic home. On one of my first visits, a barista sat down to chat with me and offered me housing recommendations. When I thanked him, he answered, “Someone in this café did the same for me. I’m just paying it forward. Glad to help.” It was just one example of many small kindnesses I found there.
Street view of Caffè Trieste, North Beach, San Francisco
The Importance of a Clean, Well-lighted Place
In the wake of Covid-19, I’ve come to appreciate more than ever places like Caffè Trieste and the role they’ve played in my life.
I remember living in New York City right after college and bouncing between crowded cafés after work, not wanting to go home to my tiny, barren room. I remember my last relationship before I moved West, when my boyfriend and I met in Manhattan as a midway point between our homes in Brooklyn and Connecticut. We sought out cafes, restaurants, and hookah bars where we could have some semblance of peace and privacy. At the end of the night once we paid the bill, we were on our feet again. In each place we stopped, we paid not only for coffee or service but for space to connect and breathe freely.
Even in the last month, I’ve found myself going out for coffee multiple times per day. Not because I can’t get enough espresso but because I want to roll the social dice. I hope to chat with someone about a good book, laugh with a barista, find an unexpected friend. And I believe most people look for the same, even if they tell themselves they are just going for coffee.
Though I understand the weight of public health and safety concerns, I feel we often don’t do justice to the places that will be lost and the cost to collective mental health. As the story of the women carrying water illustrated so well, humans rarely just go places to buy objects or perform a task. They go to fill unconscious, unspoken needs at the same time. Whether it’s a safe place to meet friends, to avoid a controlling spouse, or to hope that something better comes along, that’s what we are losing. The type of place you find yourself unexpectedly at home with others, the type of place where you can linger until something good happens. | https://medium.com/swlh/the-importance-of-a-place-to-linger-adfd1e4f38fc | ['Katie Critelli'] | 2020-09-29 12:53:47.945000+00:00 | ['Design', 'Self', 'Design Thinking', 'San Francisco', 'Urban Planning'] |
Shit Jobs: McDonald’s | Shit Jobs: McDonald’s
The value of work is less than zero.
I was sixteen and my mom made me get a job. Again. Learn the value of work. She was right, it’s a lesson I retain decades later: the value of work is less than fucking zero, a negative eating away at your soul and your life. So, thanks.
I applied at the McDonald’s in Kingston, Mass. You had to buy your own McDonald’s shirt and special synthetic pocketless pants so you couldn’t walk out with a ninety nine cent hamburger warmed to ass temperature. They took the money out of your first couple checks. The checks came three weeks late; they’d docked sixty eight bucks for the uniforms they’d sold you, and taxes were taken out, something like a third of your check. At that point you’d been working dozens of hours in the sweltering hissing clamoring kitchen, alarms constantly blaring, six hundred degree grills an inch away from the meat of your hands, swabbing the greasy tiles over and over with a filthy mop every time there was a two second lull in orders, getting yelled at– you got your check and it was fucking nothing. You had known what taxes were in an abstract sense, the ten per cent federal tax bracket, but what you didn’t know was state tax, city tax, FICA, SDI… weird acronyms… your check came an ungodly amount of time later and there was nothing left. The value of work. Cleaning the toilet, a filthy log of shit breaching in piss yellow water with toilet paper snaked over the bowl and onto the floor about one out of every four times you went in there– the value of work.
Girls were up front and boys were in the back. In theory it was an equal opportunity workplace free of gender discrimination but not a single girl worked the spattering grill or dollied sixty pound cases of frozen beef patties down to the dark freezer or hauled trash bags the size of refrigerators full of imperfect meat out to the dumpster. Not a single guy ran the cash register or talked to customers. People want to see a smiling girl with perky tits. I don’t blame them. The girls worked up front and didn’t flirt with us or really talk to us at all. They were the house slaves. They had to take the heat when we fucked something up; they were the ones getting scolded that “I told you no onions.” They must have seen us as fuckups and miscreants.
My job was the Quarter Pounder With Cheese and McLean grill. It is an excellent station, if you ever work at a McDonald’s. The volume is significantly lower than hamburger/ cheeseburger/ Big Mac and you’re not dealing with a big deep pit of face-melting frying oil. Plus, the Quarter Pounder was my preferred sandwich as a civilian. When people ordered what I made, I mentally congratulated them for making the correct choice. The hamburger is a trifle, not really food at all; you polish it off in two bites and feel like you’ve eaten greasy air. The Quarter Pounder is a real sandwich. A connoisseur’s sandwich.
You take the patties from the freezer to the left of your grill and drop them on the griddle surface frozen. They hiss and steam. There’s a clamshell lid with another heated surface that you lower on top of them, and the meat is done in ninety seconds. The clamshell grill is a proprietary McDonald’s technology that a training video has explained to you preserves maximum freshness and sanitation in the meat. A light flashes and a distinctive bell sounds and you lift the clamshell lid and spatula the burgers onto the buns you’ve prepared. You have caramelized the buns in a toasting unit which has its own distinctive lights and a buzzer that you will hear in your dreams. A training video has explained that you caramelize the buns to prevent them from absorbing the condiments and becoming soggy. I liked that they didn’t condescend to you– they kept the word “caramelize” instead of some proprietary corporate buzzword that was less hard to say. Caramelize. Ketchup, mustard out of big metal cups with handles where you pull a trigger and it dispenses the perfect amount; pickles laid with care not to overlap, onions. You drape two slices of cheese offset at a forty five degree angle so there is cheese in every bite. The videos are good at explaining why you do things. They didn’t need to; they could have just told me put the cheese at a forty five degree angle because I fucking said so, but they took the time and I appreciated it. Wrap the sandwich in the snug origami-like proprietary McDonald’s fashion. Quarters up.
You get a rhythm. Lunch rush comes and you are anticipating the buzzes and beeps and chimes and lights; you are ahead of the game and the heat lamp rack is not wanting for fresh Quarter Pounders for even one second. No shrill “WHERE ARE MY QUARTERS??!?” from the cashier girl and no quick huddles from the manager on how you have to up your game. I can’t have guys keeping us behind on this team, OK? “Grill orders,” which is the bespoke no onions type of stuff– most grill crew hated those. I loved them. You knew you were preparing a sandwich for one particular person just the way they liked it. A machine spat out instructions on receipt tape in purple ink and you had to run over and grab them and hustle to make the sandwich. When you fucked one up the manager would walk back with the tape and point out to you what it said and ask you: how did this happen? You forget that it’s McDonald’s; it’s literally the least prestigious job in the world, people laugh at you for having it, and your net income is two dollars and fifty cents an hour. You are terrified and you feel bad about yourself. The value of work.
You get a rhythm, and it gets fucked up by having to restock the patties, go to the back and get more buns, empty and sanitize the ketchup dispensers. If things slow down at all the manager will constantly bark at you for a sweep and mop. Wrestle with the filthy greasy mop in the sink and maybe cut your hands on some industrial tomato slicing device soaking there. Not one second is wasted; you are a perfect machine working constantly. McDonald’s is the best managed company in the world, right down to the slightly subnormal woman with a weird limp who smokes unfiltered Pall Malls who’s in charge of your shift– she has been indoctrinated perfectly in how to make your day tight as a drum. You aren’t grilling, you take out the trash, you sweep and mop. Drill sergeants aren’t this good. Her name was Wendy but she insisted on being called “Romayne.”
We would fuck with her. She hated being called “Wendy” so when she turned her back we would start singing “Wendy” over and over. Me and Glenn, a kid from Marshfield who ran McNuggets and french fries. Glenn was funny and smart. I was funny and smart too, and it was the first of many shit jobs where I’d find another funny and smart person and we’d kind of marvel at “what the fuck are you doing here.”
I’d be bummed out when I showed up for a shift and Glenn wasn’t there. We had an imaginary ranking system for all the cooks– you start out as a Grill Knave, moved up to Grill Apprentice, Grill Soldier, Grill Master, Grill Wizard, Grill Lord. The highest level was Grill God. Only one man had ever achieved it and he’d ascended into the Golden Arches and become a hamburger himself. You now know him as Mayor McCheese. We had long running stories about defending our McDonald’s from the conspiracies of the Burger King, Big Dave Thomas, and Colonel Sanders.
We’d get a really good riff going and then “Romayne” would come yell at us for a sweep and mop. Not one second wasted. They will get as much out of you as possible for as little as possible, and rightly view human interaction between employees as wasteful. This is good management. Some companies call this “time theft,” talking to the people you work with. They own time. They own your life, and you are stealing it. The value of work.
I took a week off because I was in the school play. When I came back they had completely gutted the store and reorganized all the machines. A new process had been instated by corporate for each food item, to insure that every McDonald’s meal was even hotter and fresher than before. They had installed something called a “Q’ing oven.” The “Q” stood for “quality.” If a customer asked what it was, you were to say “it’s just something we do to make your food taste better.”
The Q’ing oven was a microwave. But you were NEVER to refer to it as a microwave. In fact, they said, from now on, you are NEVER to use the word “microwave” while inside the store. Whether you are at the register, at the grill, or in the break room. Whether your shift has begun or not. If you are heard using the word “microwave,” you will be fired immediately and escorted from the building.
It was the “big” manager who gave this talk, Mark. The one who went to Hamburger University. The degree was framed in his office where there was a mop bucket and an ancient Tandy PC he would use to enter our hours to the second. That’s how you knew it was some serious shit– him talking to us was like a presidential address. And the word was so doubleplus ungood that Mark seemed scared of saying “microwave” even in the sentence “you must never say the word ‘microwave.’”
Mark wasn’t a bad guy, although I never forgave him for the time I fried my hand on the clamshell grill and got a blister from my pinky to my elbow, and he just scotch taped a bandage on it and made me work the rest of my shift. But he was human. He was just beaten down from fear of losing his job at McDonald’s, fear of bringing nothing home to his family. He just got so indoctrinated with corporate bullshit that he had to spend his days making a room full of teenagers terrified of saying “microwave.” The value of fucking work.
I left, but not before earning a ten cent raise as a “senior grill crew” member and a special pin for how long I’d worked there and how little I’d fucked up. Every job I’ve ever had since has been exactly the same. Someone clogged the toilet and some asshole is yelling at you to fix it, and you’ll get fired for saying what shit really is.
Epilogue:
I checked them out on Yelp. See how the alma mater’s doing. They have one star. “Order had errors. Fries were not warm. Sauce pumps were all empty. My meal came with a drink and I had to remind them. Counter was dirty. My filet only had half a piece of cheese and no extra tarter sauce like I asked.”
Fuckin Grill Knaves. | https://medium.com/vandal-press/shit-jobs-mcdonalds-b9738bdd8329 | ['Delicious Tacos'] | 2018-02-05 19:29:40.343000+00:00 | ['Work', 'Food', 'Social Justice', 'Culture', 'Entrepreneurship'] |
Scott Hutchison represents the men we all love and for whom we must do better | CW: mentions of mental health, suicide, depression
It’s Mental Health Awareness Week but for many of us our awareness has been there for a while, lived in every day experiences, banging down our door and cemented by the loss of Scott Hutchison from Frightened Rabbit last week. It’s difficult to speak about what happened to Scott without falling into cliches, but he was an inspiration to so many of us. His music touched our hearts and soothed our souls for several years and will do so for many more going into the future.
His death has left a gaping hole in so many of our lives. Personally, I have cried many, many tears and have experienced an acute, overwhelming grief unlike any I’ve known before. I am struggling to accept a world without him in it and, as I have done so with the loss of friends and family in the past, cannot accept the permanence of what has happened. There’s always an inkling of hope he might come back but the sting of reality won’t let us forget the truth.
What is it that makes this one hurt so much? We’ve lost famous faces before and as the numbers tally up it seems to have become a horrific part of everyday life. Who will be next, we wonder, numb in a world where sad news has become the norm. To me, the answer’s obvious.
Scott Hutchison represents all the men we know and love. The tragic truth is he is not the only man to have taken his own life recently. In the music industry alone we have seen the lost of several young men including Avicii and Chester Bennington of Linkin Park over the past few years. Suicide is still the biggest killer of men under 45 and it is no secret that men suffer crushing pressure to live up to the stereotypes society has laid out for them. The ways in which this manifests itself differ greatly but there seem to be two main choices for men: a silent depression or a loud and dangerous anger. Too many times have I seen the men I care about fall into these categories.
Perhaps the most noticeable reaction to poor mental health is the outward projection of it onto others. Late last year, Ross Kemp Behind Bars — Inside Barlinnie gave a clear indication of how young men from the west of Scotland feel they need to live their lives: defensive, angry and violent. It’s all they’ve ever known; learned behaviour that they are very likely to pass on to their children. It’s nothing new and we continue to see it manifesting in domestic violence and sexual assault. The majority of victims of domestic homicides recorded between April 2013 and March 2016 were females (70%) and women continue to be more likely to be murdered by their partner than by anyone else.
At the other end of the spectrum, many men withdraw themselves from their loved ones, ashamed of not being able to live up to the expectation to be strong, self-reliant and in control. The amount of young people who go missing is still staggering, with up to 80% of them experiencing mental health problems. Consider not all those people might not want to speak out about their issues and the figure, in reality, could be even larger.
It’s easy to see men struggling in every day life; all you need to do is pay attention. When a tragedy happens, women tend to rally together, nursing each other’s wounds with bottles of wine and group conversations, days out and a box of tissues. If the same happens to men, they hold it in, uncomfortable and afraid of appearing weak or having failed. Men briefly check up on each other, then stick the football on, never to speak about the issue again. At least, that’s what they’re expected to do. | https://kathrynblack07.medium.com/scott-hutchison-represents-the-men-we-all-love-and-for-whom-we-must-do-better-5f9ff763cf59 | ['Kathryn Black'] | 2018-05-15 15:04:19.450000+00:00 | ['Suicide', 'Mental Health', 'Scott Hutchison', 'Frightened Rabbit', 'Mental Health Awareness'] |
The Leftover Heart | The Leftover Heart
A reflection about surviving the pandemic
illustration by author
we will heal from this sadness
but that leftover heart
that won’t be complete again.
This year has been about different kind of sadness, those cracks which we have learnt to carry will be there, we will heal with time but those memories we will keep shuffling again and again. Our words will help us but our heart will be forever scarred. | https://medium.com/paper-poetry/the-leftover-heart-e22b240048f8 | ['Priyanka Srivastava'] | 2020-11-27 12:31:45.132000+00:00 | ['Illustration', 'Paper Poetry', 'Writing', 'Poetry', 'Pandemic'] |
The Four Paths To Happiness I Wish I Had Known In My 20's | The Four Paths To Happiness I Wish I Had Known In My 20's
Yes, a happy state is always possible, and doable
Photo by Artem Beliaikin on Unsplash
We’re often dead wrong about what makes us happy, and that’s a good thing. Part of the joy you experience in life comes from the surprise discoveries of what makes you bask in contentment.
There is no single path to happiness. It’s a state of mind you can reach through a multitude of routes.
It took me decades to learn and perfect these four paths. Each one will enable you to live a more contented life.
1) There’s value in missing out
For most of my late teenage and adult life, I suffered from extreme FOMO (fear of missing out). I was under the delusion that if I missed a social gathering, I would lose friendship currency — my perceived status among a group of friends.
I don’t recommend you transform yourself into a hermit, but there’s value in taking a break from the fun stuff.
Saying “no” to an occassional social engagement won’t sour your relationships
When you find yourself attending social events out of obligation rather than desire, consider taking a step back. A dose of meaningful solitude, doing something you love, creates deep feelings of peace and happiness.
Quality solitude does not mean binge-watching the latest drama craze. Instead, do something that disconnects you from the outside world and allows your thoughts to roam free. Use the time to plan, dream, and explore.
Scheduling this time into your day has a profound effect on your mood. You not only experience the contentment of your sacred time, but you also experience the excitement of looking forward to this time. The anticipation is almost as powerful as the experience.
2) The counterintuitive truth about material possessions
Conventional wisdom tells us that acquiring material possessions won’t make us happy. There’s an unfortunate ancillary truth to this axiom. Nobody believes the obsession of material possessions is futile until they experience the effect themselves.
It’s not something you can understand intellectually. You must churn your way through a cycle like a drug addict who can no longer achieve a high. If you’re lucky, the truth registers long before you hit rock bottom.
Sound depressing? Here’s another truth to cheer you up. There’s something else that always brings you joy. Unlike the acquisition of material possessions, you never build up a tolerance.
Pursuit of passion
The pursuit of a meaningful goal or objective never loses its shine. The goal or objective must exceed the mere desire for financial gain. It must be something you desire for a higher purpose.
I know. It’s cheap, generic advice that sounds great, but lacks practical utility unless you know how to discover that passion.
3) The truth about passions — it’s not about finding your “why”
All this talk about finding your why perplexes me. Aristotle found the answer over 2,300 years ago. Our why — the reason why we do the things we do — is what he called eudaimonia, loosely translated to flourishing happiness.
If you don’t believe it, ask yourself why you pursue relationships, passions, or goals. Pick one. It doesn’t matter. You’ll arrive at the same answer.
Let’s pick relationships. Why do you pursue relationships?
Your answer: To share your life with others.
Now I ask you, why do you want to share your life with others.
Your answer: It gives your life meaning.
Next, why do you want meaning in your life?
If you take this process to its logical end, you will answer, because it makes me happy. That’s your ultimate why for everything.
Now we’re left with the obvious question.
What makes you happy?
I had no idea what made me happy in my twenties or thirties. I sought cosmetic goals like money and job titles. I learned early on that the pleasure of those pursuits faded like the flavor of fruit-striped gum.
The epiphany came from the study of 18th-century Prussian philosopher, Immanuel Kant. His relevant concept is the categorical imperative.
Act only according to that maxim whereby you can… will that it should become a universal law.
Here is the adaptation of the phrase to the pursuit of happiness.
Do something that brings you such fulfillment and contentment that you crave the ability to lavish that feeling on every person on earth.
Think of it as a natural euphoria but without the negative side-effects. You may not find it right away, but that’s okay. Once you know what to look for, you’re more likely to find it. And if it takes a while, here’s a mindset approach that’s sure to keep you feeling euphoric through highs and lows.
4) The happiness guarantee
There’s a lot of good advice about creating a happy state: giving, volunteering, striving for goals. These worthy pursuits create transient states of happiness, but sustained delight requires a change of perspective.
I’ve found there’s only one reliable formula for sustaining a happiness mindset. It works when you’re at your peak state, your lowest state, and everywhere in between.
We experience contentment when we feel the future holds more promise, possibility and potential than the present.
The converse is also true. I’ve never felt content when my future seemed bleaker than the present.
Consider your current state and your prospects for the future. Are you at a low point, but see a brighter future ahead? Are you at a peak and feel like you’re due for a setback?
Consider these comparisons.
A perennial high volume salesperson who now has a dry pipeline
A salesperson, living on rice and beans, who just made his first three sales and scored six additional referrals.
Which one is feeling better about the future?
We can apply this logic to relationships, lifestyle, and financial standing.
In all cases, it’s not the present condition that determines your state of mind; it’s your current state relative to your perceived future state. For the salesperson who just made a breakthrough, the world is full of possibilities. For the accomplished salesperson with a dry pipeline, the future seems bleak.
It’s more than just a positive outlook
You can tell yourself you have a bright future, but that’s not enough. You’ll never convince your brain. You need to take steps to convince yourself.
Affirmations don’t work, at least not for very long. You need to go further than that. You need to take action: not big and scary actions, easy micro-actions.
A salesperson could generate new leads and practice their craft one hour per day
A writer could write and submit stories
A person with dim social prospects could join a club and fill their calendar with outings
Take baby steps to ensure a brighter future, and you give your mind a reality to latch onto.
In many cases, those small steps lead to real gains in the quality of your life. | https://barry-davret.medium.com/the-four-paths-to-happiness-i-wish-i-knew-in-my-20s-419c3fdc23cb | ['Barry Davret'] | 2019-07-30 16:06:51.671000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'Life Lessons', 'Mental Health', 'Self Improvement', 'Mindfulness'] |
Why the ‘Everyone Is a Designer’ Debate Is Beside the Point | Why the ‘Everyone Is a Designer’ Debate Is Beside the Point
The ongoing battle for design ownership often ignores the real consequences of making design decisions
Photo: Jud Mackrill/Unsplash
There are a few ongoing debates in the world of digital design. Things like Should designers code?”, “What’s the value of design?”, “UX versus UI,” and, perhaps most fundamentally, “Is everyone a designer?” To get a taste for the flavor of that last one, you can step into this Twitter thread from a little while back (TLDR: It didn’t go super well for anyone):
To be clear at the outset, I don’t care if everyone is a designer. However, I’ve been considering this debate for a while and I think there is something interesting here that’s worth further inspection: Why is design a lightning rod for this kind of debate? This doesn’t happen with other disciplines (at least not to the extent it does with design). Few people are walking around asserting that everyone is an engineer, or a marketer, or an accountant, or a product manager. I think the reason sits deep within our societal value system.
Design, as a term, is amorphous. Technically you can design anything from an argument to an economic system and everything in between, and you can do it with any process you see fit. We apply the idea of design to so many things that, professionally, it’s basically a meaningless term without the addition of some modifier: experience design, industrial design, interior design, architectural design, graphic design, fashion design, systems design, and so on. Each is its own discipline with its own practices, terms, processes, and outputs. However, even with its myriad applications and definitions, the term “design” does carry a set of foundational, cultural associations: agency and creativity. The combination of these associations makes it ripe for debates of ownership.
Agency
To possess agency means to have the ability to affect outcomes. Without agency we’re just carried by the currents, waiting to see where we end up. Agency is control, and deep down we all want to feel like we have control. Over time our cultural conversation has romanticized design, unlike any other discipline, as the epicenter of agency, a crossroads where creativity and planning translate into action.
At its core, design is the act of applying structure to a set of materials or elements in order to achieve a specific outcome. This is a fundamental human need. It’s not in our nature to leave things unstructured. Even the concept of “unstructured play” simply means providing space for a child to design (structure) their own play experience — the unstructured part of it is just us (adults) telling ourselves to let go of our own desire to design and let the kids have a turn. We hand agency to the child so they can practice wielding it.
There are few, if any, activities that carry the same deep tie to the concept of agency that design does. This is partially why no one cares to assert things like we’re all marketers or we’re all engineers. They don’t carry the same sense of agency. Sure, engineers have the ability to make something tangible, but someone had to design that thing first. You can “design” the code that goes into what you are building, but you do not have the agency to determine what is being built (unless you are also designing it).
If we really break it down, nearly every job in existence is either a job where you are designing, or a job where you are completing a set of tasks in service to something that was designed, or a job where your tasks are made possible by some aspect of design, or some mix of the three. Either way, the act of “designing” is what dictates the outcomes.
Creativity
The other key aspect of our cultural definition of design is creativity. Being creative is a deep value of modern society. We lionize the creatives, in the arts as well as in business. And creativity has become synonymous with innovation. There is a reason that for most people, Steve Wozniak is a bit player in the story of Steve Jobs.
The idea of what it means for an individual to be creative is something that has shifted over time. In her TED Talk, Elizabeth Gilbert discusses the changing association of creative “genius.” The historical concept, from ancient Greece and Rome, was that a person could have a genius, meaning that they were a conduit for some external creative force. The creative output was not their own; they were merely a vessel selected to make a creative work tangible. Today, we talk about people being a genius, meaning they are no longer a conduit for a creative force, but instead they are the creative force and the output of their creativity is theirs.
This seemingly minor semantic shift is actually seismic in that it makes creativity something that can be possessed and, as such, coveted. We now aspire to creativity in the same way we aspire to wealth. We teach it and nurture it (to varying degrees) in schools. And in professional settings, having the ability to be “creative” in your daily work is often viewed as a light against the darkness of mundane drudgery. As we see it today, everyone possesses some level of creativity, and fulfillment is found in expressing it. When we can’t get that satisfaction from our jobs we find hobbies and other activities to fulfill our creative needs.
So, our cultural concept of design makes tangible two highly desirable aspects of human existence: agency and creativity. Combine this with the amorphous nature of the term “design” and suddenly “designer” becomes a box that anyone can step into and many people desire to step into. This sets up an ongoing battle over the ownership of design. We just can’t help ourselves. | https://modus.medium.com/why-the-everyone-is-a-designer-debate-is-beside-the-point-6b176863b065 | ['Jesse Weaver'] | 2020-11-24 22:07:46.729000+00:00 | ['Design', 'UX Design', 'Ideas', 'Tech', 'UX'] |
Using Poetry to Fight for Social Justice | Building a Career around Beautiful Words and Transformative Thought
Audre Lorde was a queer woman of color. She grew up in America with immigrant parents. Through these circumstances, Audre learned early on in life what it was like to be an outsider. She experienced triple oppression, being a woman, a lesbian, and black. Through all of this struggle, Audre was still able to achieve more than most. She dedicated her life, career, and creative talents to confronting injustices of homophobia, racism, sexism, and classism in the United States and abroad.
While she achieved much, Audre’s life was never a straight path. After studying for a year at the National University of Mexico, Lorde returned to New York City and graduated from Hunter College in 1959. After undergraduate graduation, Lorde took a job as a librarian and began her graduate program at Columbia University. In 1961, Lorde graduated from Columbia with a master’s degree in library science. Obtaining this degree led her into teaching in the late 1960s. She was not only a college lecturer, but took the time to put on workshops addressing the civil rights issues of the time.
A photo of Audre Lorde. — Image courtesy of WikiMedia Commons
Audre worked as a college professor in the United States from the late 1960s until the early 1980s. While she was working as a professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, she fought to create a black studies department at the school. This was just one of many social justice issues that Lorde fought for during her career. After fighting for social justice and equality in the United States for most of her life, Audre found herself in Europe in 1984.
At the age of 50, Audre Lorde started a visiting professorship in West Berlin at the Free University of Berlin. Here she came together with a group of black women activists and helped to give rise to the black movement in Germany. Lorde’s work, words, and mentorship helped to increase the awareness of intersectionality across racial and ethnic lines in Germany. After making a mark in Germany, Lorde spent the remainder of her life traveling back and forth between the continental U.S. and the Virgin Islands. Regardless of where Lorde resided, she never let up on confronting issues regarding civil rights, homophobia, feminism, or racism. She was an outspoken leader and relentless champion of equality during her short 58 years on this Earth. | https://medium.com/chaos-and-art/using-poetry-to-fight-for-social-justice-d6ffda2e13ae | ['Danielle Gibson'] | 2020-10-20 21:21:14.442000+00:00 | ['Poem', 'Writing', 'History', 'Poet', 'Poetry'] |
The Trouble with “Cutting Back” on Drinking | Photo by Kelsey Chance on Unsplash
When I first realized that I had a drinking problem, my solution was to try to cut back. I knew that I was drinking way too much and I even recognized that I had an addiction. Even so, the idea of going completely sober sounded like an extreme overreaction to the problem.
I figured that instead of cutting alcohol out of my life completely, I could learn to drink in healthy moderation. On its surface, the idea doesn’t sound so absurd. We all know plenty of people who manage to have a drink every once in a while without letting it take over their lives. It was natural to think that the same thing could work for me.
My first attempt at moderation was just a vague resolution to “drink less.” It didn’t take long for me to see that this wouldn’t work. Despite my decision not to drink as much, I kept on drinking just as much as always.
At that point, I decided I needed to create rules to keep me in line. I thought that if I came up with clear limits of when and how much I could drink, I’d be able to solve my drinking problem. I don’t remember the exact rules I came up with, but they were things along these lines:
“Only on weekends.”
“ Never drink alone.”
“Just beer and wine — no hard liquor.”
“Only after five o’clock.”
“No more than two drinks per night.”
I’m sure these types of rules sound familiar to many of you reading this who are in recovery. I’ve talked to other alcoholics about it, and it seems like attempting “moderation through rules” is a nearly inevitable phase that addicts go through before finally deciding to get sober.
Unfortunately, for those of us who are addicted to alcohol, these types of rules just don’t end up working. Even with the best intentions, we soon see ourselves backsliding. We might adhere to the rules for a few days or even weeks. Then, often without even noticing, we begin to slowly ramp up our alcohol intake. Eventually, we’re right back where we started and left wondering what went wrong.
The Problem With “Moderation”
When I tried to become a “moderate” drinker by adhering to a complex web of rules, I was committing a classic logical fallacy: mixing up cause and effect. I looked to people who had no problem with alcohol and saw that they drank a moderate amount. From that, I concluded that if I could drink as little as they did, I wouldn’t have a problem with alcohol either.
I actually had it backward: these people weren’t non-alcoholics because they drank in moderation; it’s actually that they drank in moderation because they weren’t addicts in the first place. They weren’t drinking so little because they were following a complex set of rules, they just genuinely didn’t want to drink any more than that. I had trouble recognizing this at the time because I was so hooked on alcohol that the idea of not wanting to drink to excess was totally foreign to me.
When I tried to cut back on drinking, I was drinking less each day, but alcohol was still consuming just as large a part of my life. I was thinking about alcohol constantly as I obsessed over the rules I had created for myself.
I tried cutting back several times, and each attempt followed a similar pattern. For the first few days, I’d follow the rules exactly, limiting myself to a couple beers a night. Then, I’d start bargaining with myself, drinking more but telling myself that I’d cut down even more on other days to make up for it. Soon enough, the rules would disappear completely. Then I’d go back to my regular drinking habits for a few months before starting the entire process over.
I never made any real progress with the “cutting back” strategy because it was flawed from the inception. With the way my mind obsesses over alcohol, it just wouldn’t have been possible for me to ever drink in moderation for a sustained period of time. The only realistic long-term options for me were continuing to drink heavily or going totally sober.
I’ve met so many others who have gone through the same pattern of attempting and failing at moderation before they finally got sober. In hindsight, it feels so ridiculous, but I think it may have been a phase I needed to go through. I’m not sure if I ever would have really understood how impossible moderation is for me if I hadn’t attempted it so many times.
Now I’ve been completely sober for almost two years. Although it was incredibly rough at the beginning, it has gotten gradually easier. I still think and write about alcohol, but I definitely don’t obsess over it in the same way I used to. I certainly don’t ever want to drink again, even in “moderation.” | https://medium.com/exploring-sobriety/the-trouble-with-cutting-back-on-drinking-1cc37cf8cd0c | ['Benya Clark'] | 2018-11-23 13:01:02.686000+00:00 | ['Recovery', 'Addiction', 'Life Lessons', 'Self', 'Mental Health'] |
WhatsApp-Engineering Inside-2 | In “WhatsApp-Engineering Inside-1” we talked about the system and network architecture of WhatsApp, in this article we are going to deep dive into the messaging server and other components.
One thing which needs to be known is that the connection is always initiated by the client because the server does not know the address of the client but the client knows the address of the server.
How Sent, Delivered and Seen Works?
WhatsApp message status symbols
Sent: When we send a message and that message is received by Whatsapp server.
Delivered: When the message is delivered to the receiver from the Whatsapp server.
Seen: When the message is seen/opened by the receiver.
To Incorporate all these status changes, every message has a unique ID to identify each message and acknowledgement from the various events (sent / delivered /seen).
What happens inside the Whatsapp server when a client connects to the server?
When a client connects to the WhatsApp server, a process (or thread) is created with respect to that client. This process is responsible for handling all the operations related to that client.
With every process, a queue(Highlighted with light green colour) is associated which act as a buffer for that process. After process creation, a table is created in the database to maintain the record of PID(Process ID) and the associated Client.
How Last Seen Work?
Implementation of this feature is very simple and straightforward, It is just about maintaining a record with Client ID and Timestamp.
A table containing client id and their last seen status
When we open Whatsapp in our smartphone, our application sends a pulse to server every 5 seconds, and with every pulse last seen time is updated in the table. As the client disconnects the last seen time exists in the record that is updated by the last pulse sent before closing the app.
How the media sharing works?
For sharing, we don’t use the connection which is used for sending text messages because it is a very lightweight connection and it cannot handle this much load.
Instead, WhatsApp uses a different server(like HTTP) to share media.
System design with HTTP Server
When we share a media, it gets uploaded to an HTTP Server over a different connection, after successful upload, the HTTP server returns a hash or unique ID associated to that media and that hash value is sent to the WhatsApp server. At the receiver end, the same thing works in a reverse way, the receiver receives the hash value then it downloads the media from HTTP server associated to that hash value.
The Telephony services also work in the same way just like media services, for this, we also use a different server and use a different kind of connection like socket etc. for real-time communication.
This is all about the overview of a real-time messaging system.
Let's Talk about the actually Technology used by Whatsapp :)
-> Programming Language: Erlang
Erlang is a super fast programming language which supports features like Hot Reload/Update on Fly etc. It also has a concept of the lightweight thread which makes it capable of handling millions of connections at a time. This is the reason Erlang is an ideal choice for WhatsApp.
In Actual, Whatsapp handles 10 million connection on a single server, which seems to be impossible but the WhatsApp team able to achieve this. And it is only possible if you know all the things about the system like Server kernel, networking library, infrastructure configuration etc.
-> Operating System on Servers: FreeBSD is the OS used by all the messaging servers of WhatsApp. As it is open source OS and the developer knows all the in and out. so that they can get maximum performance out of it.
-> Database: AMNESIA is the database which is used for storing data, it is also a key-value pair based DB which couples really good with Erlang.
-> Web Server: The Web Server used in all the messaging server is YAWS — Yet Another Web Server.
So, This is all about the engineering behind a real-time messaging platform like WhatsApp.
I hope you enjoyed it, feel free to Share and Clap, In future, I will be writing this kind of articles only at Coding Gurukul
Happy Exploring! | https://medium.com/codingurukul/whatsapp-engineering-inside-2-bdd1ec354748 | ['Suraj Kumar'] | 2019-09-27 17:23:09.254000+00:00 | ['WhatsApp', 'Software Engineering', 'Software Architecture', 'System Architecture', 'Application Architecture'] |
Hiring a Personal Assistant? Look for these 4 traits. | Assistants are important members of any team. They are generalists that can support a wide range of projects and bring a much needed structure to the individuals and organizations who hire them.
The below 4 qualities are the ones always top of my list when evaluating a new assistant partner for our team.
1. Empathy
I put this at the top of the list because empathy is one of those traits that isn’t quickly or easily taught, yet is critical in this line of work.
It plays a role in simple things such as softening the language in an email when something that’s being dictated comes off as too harsh, or a reminder of a promise that needs to be kept. Having an assistant on your team that is able to see things from multiple perspectives can make the difference in salvaging a client relationship or getting that business deal. This takes a deep understanding not just of the boss’ needs but also the needs of others in the ecosystem.
2. Resourcefulness
Assistants must posses this quality to the extreme. Their job isn’t just mastering one industry, it’s providing support across various disciplines quickly and seamlessly. They have to know a lot, but more importantly they need to have the tools and network to figure out what they don’t know, and produce accurate results.
3. Resilience
Being someone’s right hand means learning how they work, how they best intake information, and their preferred communication style. Resilience comes up in a few forms:
The above entails receiving a lot of feedback on how NOT to do certain things. Being able to hear the feedback and not take it personally is huge.
On the other hand, entrepreneurs and business owners bring an assistant in when things get really busy … full calendars, high-traffic inboxes, and overloaded voicemails. Lots of moving pieces can create intense working environments. Assistants who succeed are ones that are able to take whatever is coming in stride and bounce back quickly from any downfalls.
4. Sense of humor
Lastly, if your assistant will be a person you interact with a lot in a given day — they should be someone whose company you enjoy!
Learn more: ChatterBoss is a customer-centric iOS messaging app that pairs best of class virtual assistants to busy entrepreneurs and business owners. | https://valerietrapunsky.medium.com/hiring-a-personal-assistant-look-for-these-4-traits-bddf318a26f1 | ['Valerie Trapunsky'] | 2018-06-19 02:11:24.954000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Virtual Assistant', 'Outsourcing', 'Personal Assistant', 'Hiring'] |
Water and Artificial Intelligence | Water and Artificial Intelligence
Reflections on Technology and Nature in Crisis
Looking out on a very still lake in Switzerland made me think about writing on a specific topic. On average, the body of an adult human being is 60% water, most of which is contained in the cells, which need water to live. As such in a manner of speaking we are made of water.
In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.
Leonardo da Vinci, XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations, 1174.
In the same section Leonardo claims: necessity is the mistress and guide of nature. This analogy refers to the moment like water flowing; as if the water was a series of events and life was fluid not fixed.
We need water to survive, and it even has religious importance to many, it is such an ordinary yet significant part of our lives.
Water Wars
You may have heard whispers or discussions of water wars. Water will be a key cause for future conflict, there is no doubt. There may very well be irregularities in supply and demand, fresh water shortage and groundwater shrinkage. This information seems to flow continuously, like the water rushing past your hand. Less than one percent of earth surface water is suitable for human consumption, it becomes crucial that we save water so that our future generations survive. 70% of the world’s population suffer at least one month of water scarcity a year.
Source: Mesfin M. Mekonnen, Arjen Y. Hoekstra, Sustainability, 2016 posted in National Geographic 2018
The Water Crisis So Far
So how can Artificial Intelligence Contribute?
As mentioned in my previous articles: (1) AI should be used to reduce inequalities; (2) we have to be aware of the energy consumption when AI is used; (3) the risk to the crisis due to escalating digital insecurities.
Proceeding from that I do still believe that working within the filed of artificial intelligence can provide some benefits to contributing to solving some of the problems flowing towards us as a consequence of increased population, congregation and our changing climate.
Measuring and controlling to predict (smart water management). Artificial Neural Networks and Support Vector Machine (SVM) are being popularly used as they are less cost-effective when compared to big data mechanisms.
Analytics India has made a list of cases related to this that I will do my best to sum up:
Greece , used the precipitation, temperature and groundwater level data as the vector for neural networks for prediction.
, used the precipitation, temperature and groundwater level data as the vector for neural networks for prediction. US , Illinois has used the feedforward training algorithm for the prediction of pesticide quotation in groundwater. Texas. An observation was to forecast the groundwater level. The Sevier River Basin Utah, has developed an SVM model to forecast the streamflow of 6 months ahead using local climatological data with different time variations and previous stream volume flow.
, Illinois has used the feedforward training algorithm for the prediction of pesticide quotation in groundwater. Texas. An observation was to forecast the groundwater level. The Sevier River Basin Utah, has developed an SVM model to forecast the streamflow of 6 months ahead using local climatological data with different time variations and previous stream volume flow. Northern France , applied the ANN model to estimate the depth of the contaminated territory in the soil to estimate groundwater contamination.
, applied the ANN model to estimate the depth of the contaminated territory in the soil to estimate groundwater contamination. Turkey , in the Harran Plain researchers used temperature, electrical conductivity, and Ph levels of groundwater as vectors for ANN.
, in the Harran Plain researchers used temperature, electrical conductivity, and Ph levels of groundwater as vectors for ANN. Iran ANN multilayer perceptron (MLP) to model the rainfall-runoff process using rainfall durations, average intensities and season index of over 100 occurrences as vectors for the model.
ANN multilayer perceptron (MLP) to model the rainfall-runoff process using rainfall durations, average intensities and season index of over 100 occurrences as vectors for the model. Singapore has developed ANN for prediction of coastal water quality using the location of stations, previous salinity, temperature, dissolved oxygen levels and chlorophyll-a levels in the nearby stations as vectors.
has developed ANN for prediction of coastal water quality using the location of stations, previous salinity, temperature, dissolved oxygen levels and chlorophyll-a levels in the nearby stations as vectors. China used an SVM model for groundwater quality assessment at the Naingziguan fountain by using groundwater quality classification indicators as vectors, which resulted in high prediction accuracy.
used an SVM model for groundwater quality assessment at the Naingziguan fountain by using groundwater quality classification indicators as vectors, which resulted in high prediction accuracy. Korea used SVMs and ANNs to forecast groundwater level in wells near coastal regions. They used previous data of groundwater level, tide level and precipitation as vectors.
Let’s extend da Vinci’s analogy: Unless you have a very big hand, you can’t touch all the water passing a given point in a river. With big data however, we can touch more, yet not all. We must be wary of making predictions in fast changing world, yet we must as well attempt our best to use technological know-how responsibly with both social and environmental concerns in mind.
This is day 19 of #500daysofAI, I hope you enjoyed it.
– | https://alexmoltzau.medium.com/water-and-artificial-intelligence-a7cf2ac23c17 | ['Alex Moltzau 莫战'] | 2019-06-21 10:16:24.887000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence'] |
Creating and training a U-Net model with PyTorch for 2D & 3D semantic segmentation: Model building [2/4] | In the previous chapter we built a dataloader that picks up our images and performs some transformations and augmentations so that they can be fed in batches to a neural network like the U-Net. In this part, we focus on building a U-Net from scratch with the PyTorch library. You should be familiar with building a neural network with PyTorch and you should generally know the U-Net. The goal is to implement the U-Net in such a way, that important model configurations such as the activation function or the depth can be passed as arguments when creating the model.
About the U-Net
The U-Net is a convolutional neural network architecture that is designed for fast and precise segmentation of images. It has performed extremely well in several challenges and to this day, it is one of the most popular end-to-end architectures in the field of semantic segmentation.
We can split the network into two parts: The encoder path (backbone) and the decoder path. The encoder captures features at different scales of the images by using a traditional stack of convolutional and max pooling layers. Concretely speaking, a block in the encoder consists of the repeated use of two convolutional layers (k=3, s=1), each followed by a non-linearity layer, and a max-pooling layer (k=2, s=2). For every convolution block and its associated max pooling operation, the number of feature maps is doubled to ensure that the network can learn the complex structures effectively.
The decoder path is a symmetric expanding counterpart that uses transposed convolutions. This type of convolutional layer is an up-sampling method with trainable parameters and performs the reverse of (down)pooling layers such as the max pool. Similar to the encoder, each convolution block is followed by such an up-convolutional layer. The number of feature maps is halved in every block. Because recreating a segmentation mask from a small feature map is a rather difficult task for the network, the output after every up-convolutional layer is appended by the feature maps of the corresponding encoder block. The feature maps of the encoder layer are cropped if the dimensions exceed the one of the corresponding decoder layers.
In the end, the output passes another convolution layer (k=1, s=1) with the number of feature maps being equal to the number of defined labels. The result is a u-shaped convolutional network that offers an elegant solution for good localization and use of context. Let’s take a look at the code.
The code
This code is based on https://github.com/ELEKTRONN/elektronn3/blob/master/elektronn3/models/unet.py (c) 2017 Martin Drawitsch, released under MIT License, which implements a configurable (2D/3D) U-Net with user-defined network depth and a few other improvements of the original architecture. They themselves actually used the 2D code from Jackson Huang https://github.com/jaxony/unet-pytorch.
Here is a simplified version of the code — saved in a file unet.py :
I will not go into detail here, but rather just mention important design choices. It can be useful to view the architecture in repeating blocks in the encoder but also in the decoder path. As you can see in unet.py the DownBlock and the UpBlock help to build the architecture. Both use smaller helper functions that return the correct layer, depending on what arguments are passed , e.g. if a 2D ( dim=2 ) or 3D ( dim=3 ) network is wanted. The number of blocks is defined by the depth of the network.
A DownBlock generally has the following scheme:
A UpBlock has the following layers:
For our Unet class we just need to combine these blocks and make sure that the correct layers from the encoder are concatenated to the decoder (skip pathways). These layers have to be cropped if their sizes do not match with the corresponding layers from the decoder. In such cases, the autocrop function is used. At the end we just need to think about the parameter initialization. By default, the weights are initialized with torch.nn.init.xavier_uniform_ and the biases are initialized with zeros using torch.nn.init.zeros_ .
Creating a U-Net model
Let’s create such a model and use it to make a prediction on some random input:
from unet import UNet model = UNet(in_channels=1,
out_channels=2,
n_blocks=4,
start_filters=32,
activation='relu',
normalization='batch',
conv_mode='same',
dim=2)
x = torch.randn(size=(1, 1, 512, 512), dtype=torch.float32)
with torch.no_grad():
out = model(x)
print(f'Out: {out.shape}')
This will give us:
Out: torch.Size([1, 2, 512, 512])
To check weather our model is correct, we can get the model’s summary with:
from torchsummary import summary
summary(model, (1, 512, 512))
which prints out a summary like this:
A small note on the input sizes and padding: To ensure correct semantic concatenations, it is advised to use input sizes that return even spatial dimensions in every block but the last in the encoder. For example: An input size of 120² gives intermediate output shapes of [60², 30², 15²] in the encoder path for a U-Net with depth=4 . A U-Net with depth=5 with the same input size is not recommended, as a maxpooling operation on odd spatial dimensions (e.g. on a 15² input) should be avoided. Please also note that in the original publication, valid instead of same padding was used.
Now that we have built our model, it is time to create a training loop. | https://johschmidt42.medium.com/creating-and-training-a-u-net-model-with-pytorch-for-2d-3d-semantic-segmentation-model-building-6ab09d6a0862 | ['Johannes Schmidt'] | 2020-12-03 08:55:48.131000+00:00 | ['Unet', 'Python', 'Pytorch', 'Deep Learning', 'Semantic Segmentation'] |
Futures and Nested Futures in Vert.x | Interning on Xandr’s Data Delivery team as a full stack developer this summer has exposed me to a myriad of new technical skills and tools. For the frontend component of my project I learned to build UI’s using React, and for the backend I learned how to manage applications using Kubernetes and expose my validation services via a custom API. The backend portion of my project largely involved using a toolkit called Vert.x to control the overall flow of the application and to enable powerful functionalities to each individual class within the application. Vert.x is an open source project that is designed for asynchronous programming to increase efficiency and enable running multiple tasks simultaneously. I am going to assume that you already know how verticles function in Vert.x, but go here to learn more about the main concepts of Vert.x.
In this blog, I will discuss:
1. Futures and their role in asynchronous programming
2. How to deal with nested futures and Vert.x’s CompositeFuture class
A common setup with verticles involves one verticle running as an API service (more about Vert.x web servers and clients) that asks another verticle to run database queries and return the results back to the API service and back to the client who sent the API request. But how does all of this occur simultaneously with the rest of the application? How do we ensure we don’t wait for a large database query to run? The amount of data we have access to is perpetually increasing, so queries can become quite large, especially at a big tech company like Xandr.
Futures
The answer is futures: futures enable asynchronous programming and allow for lengthy functions and services to run while concurrently running other processes. Futures are like mailboxes: when you wake up in the morning, you’re not sure if there is mail in the box yet, you just know that the box is at the end of the driveway and that it will receive mail at some arbitrary point today (when the delivery person comes). Likewise, a future is a wrapper that may or may not contain a value at a given point in time, but eventually it will contain a value — either a result or an error.
The main idea is that you have a pointer to the box that will eventually contain the result so that your program knows where to look when the task is completed. At that point, the future’s predefined handler will be run, which is set using the onComplete function:
Future.onComplete() example
Note: ar.result() is only populated if the future succeeds, and ar.cause() is only populated if the future fails.
Sequential Futures
Adding another future call outside of a given future will run both futures separately and simultaneously; however, Vert.x also supports sequential future calls. For example, if you need to wait for one future to complete before deciding whether or not to run a second future, you can use the .compose() method. In this example, we want to validate that a table exists, and if it does, then validate the columns; otherwise, do not try to validate the columns because the table does not exist and return an error.
Future.compose() example
Note: if the first future fails, the whole future sequence fails, and the handler is skipped. Compose is very useful for daisy chaining two or three dependent futures together, but what if there are more futures that need to be handled as a group?
Concurrent Futures
Vert.x has a subclass of Future called CompositeFuture, which wraps a collection of Futures and handles the results of all of the Futures together upon completion. Both CompositeFuture.all() and CompositeFuture.join() return a single future that succeeds when all futures succeed and fails when one future fails, but CompositeFuture.all() fails immediately when one wrapped future fails, while CompositeFuture.join() will continue to run the rest of the futures even if one fails.
CompositeFutures are intuitive and useful in handling a group of futures, although it’s not always easy to get each wrapped future’s individual results if they do not all succeed. CompositeFuture.list() returns a list of results only if each future succeeds, otherwise it returns null. This makes it difficult if you want to display all of the errors that occur in each future to the user. This example shows that it is fairly simple if you have access to the original list, but if not, you would have to iterate through the futures using an index with resultAt(index) and causeAt(index), and then check which one is null, which can get messy.
CompositeFuture.join() example
Summary
Vert.x futures are powerful components of asynchronous programming because they allow for predefined handlers to process the results upon completion and can be grouped together sequentially or concurrently with .compose() or CompositeFuture respectively to handle multiple related futures. Using futures with the Vert.x framework specifically gives our teams at Xandr access to a myriad of tools with detailed documentation to maximize functionality and increase the power of our applications. I barely scratched the surface of the different tools that Vert.x offers, so if you want to learn more about it, I highly recommend learning about the main concepts of Vert.x and reading through the examples on the Vert.x website. Thank you for taking the time read my post, I hope you consider integrating Vert.x in your current and future projects!
Resources
- Composing Futures
- Asynchronous Programming with Vert.x
- CompositeFuture Class
- Concurrency
- Vert.x Web
- Vertx HTTP Servers and Clients
- CompositeFuture Examples | https://medium.com/xandr-tech/futures-and-nested-futures-in-vert-x-ee6a7360f1a0 | ['Ben Goldberg'] | 2020-09-17 23:09:44.988000+00:00 | ['Java', 'Asynchronous Programming', 'Computer Science', 'Vertx', 'Concurrency'] |
How to build a UX portfolio if I have never worked in UX? | A lot of user experience professionals who are active in our industry today have faced the question above when starting their career.
Let’s be honest: it’s a bit unfair.
“Portfolio” is a mandatory field in almost every job application form, regardless of the level you’re applying to.
But wait. I’m only able to be hired as a UX Designer when I have a certain number of projects on my portfolio. But if I have never worked in UX, how am I supposed to build a portfolio with interesting and relevant UX case studies?
You might be thinking: “well, with my school work”.
The reality is: not everyone goes through four or five years of design school before trying to find a job. As much as education systems sound great in theory, the reality is way less linear than that. People come to UX from many different places. They are developers, engineers, project managers, game designers, writers, art directors, strategists — and after some research (and a lot of thinking) they come to the conclusion UX is where they want to focus their careers moving forward.
To add to that: not everyone has access to higher education, and not every country has the same education system as the US. In Brazil, for example, bachelors and masters focused on interaction design or HCI were almost nonexistent a few years ago.
But yeah, not impossible.
Let’s break down a few possible paths to get you unstuck from this beautiful, painful paradox. | https://uxdesign.cc/how-to-build-a-ux-portfolio-if-i-have-never-worked-in-ux-80ebab8f3407 | ['Fabricio Teixeira'] | 2018-12-31 16:11:19.454000+00:00 | ['Careers', 'Design', 'User Experience', 'Portfolio', 'UX'] |
DevOps in Various Domains — How DevOps solves the problem? | DevOps in Various Domains — Edureka
DevOps has become the latest buzzword in the tech industry as of now. DevOps is the culture of collaboration between teams, as well as a set of DevOps tools and methods of continuous elimination of waste from business processes, leading to ever-improving delivery of value to end-users. The term DevOps in various domains means it is no more limited to the tech industry.
However, DevOps and its practices are now being used beyond the tech sector. In this blog, we will shed some light on the various domains that have started implementing DevOps. The topics that we are going to cover here are as follows -
What is DevOps? DevOps in various Domains
Government
Banking
Insurance
Retail
Travel
So let us begin with our first topic
What is DevOps?
DevOps is a software development approach that involves Continuous Development, Continuous Testing, Continuous Integration, Continuous Deployment and Continuous Monitoring of the software throughout its development life cycle. These activities are possible only in DevOps, not Agile or waterfall, and this is why Facebook and other top companies have chosen DevOps as the way forward for their business goals. DevOps is the preferred approach to develop high-quality software in shorter development cycles which results in greater customer satisfaction.
DevOps in Government
Profile
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation’s civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research.
Challenge
NASA needed to move nearly 65 applications from a traditional hardware-based data center to a cloud-based environment for better agility and cost savings. The rapid timeline resulted in many applications being migrated ‘as-is’ to a cloud environment. This created an environment spanning multiple virtual private clouds (VPCs) and AWS accounts that could not be easily managed. Even simple things, like ensuring every system administrator had access to every server, or simple patching, were extremely burdensome.
Solution
This problem was solved by leveraging Ansible Tower to manage and schedule the cloud environment.
Result
As a result of implementing the Ansible Tower, NASA is better equipped to manage its AWS environment. Tower allowed NASA to provide better operations and security to its clients. It has also increased efficiency as a team. If you have a look at the numbers then:
The time for updating nasa.gov was brought down from over 1 hour to under 5 minutes
Process of patching came down from a few days to 45 minutes
Achieving near real-time RAM and disk monitoring (accomplished without agents)
Provisioning OS Accounts across the entire environment in under 10 minutes
Baselining standard AMIs was brought down from 1 hour of manual configuration to becoming an invisible and seamless background process
Application stack set up from 1–2 hours to under 10 minutes per stack
DevOps in Banking
Profile
The Royal Bank of Scotland commonly abbreviated as RBS, is one of the retail banking subsidiaries of The Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc, together with NatWest and Ulster Bank. The Royal Bank of Scotland has around 700 branches, mainly in Scotland, though there are branches in many larger towns and cities throughout England and Wales.
Challenge
The Royal Bank of Scotland was struggling to consolidate and re-architect its strategic payment transaction hub, which involved dozens of integration touchpoints. RBS had recently acquired another financial institution, so it needed to integrate that company’s systems. However, the RBS was already in the process of migrating its own systems to a new strategic transaction hub and delivering 43 functional enhancements with the new platform. The cost and complexity of maintaining four separate messaging hubs, in effect, quadrupled.
Solution
Finally, a solution was developed to help the bank tackle its integration challenges. It was necessary to assist the bank in identifying all the points across the software delivery life cycle at which it could use automated testing, agile development, and service virtualization to accelerate development, identify defects earlier and speed releases to production.
The solution included an integration and service virtualization tool. These software products helped create an end-to-end virtual environment for testing rather than having to create real test environments, which are expensive to build and difficult to maintain.
Using the solution, RBS was able to automate integration testing across more than 80 interfaces and sub-systems involved in executing its trading transactions. This enabled continuous testing and supported the team’s agile development process.
Result
In three years, the RBS realized substantial benefits from the integration and service virtualization solution. These benefits are as follows :
Reduced system integration testing time from three weeks to half a day
Reduced the number of production incidents from undetected defects by 99.6 percent
Increased the project delivery capacity by 100 percent, growing from 40 to 80 projects completed annually
Saved an estimated US$6 million in hardware, software and resource costs
Accelerated the time from project inception to delivery by 44 percent, enabling the bank to bring products and services to customers faster and seize new market opportunities
DevOps in Insurance
Profile
NJM Insurance Group, headquartered in the West Trenton section of Ewing Township, Mercer County, New Jersey, United States, offers personal auto, commercial auto, workers’ compensation, homeowners, and umbrella insurance. The company was formed in 1913 by a group of factory owners seeking workers’ compensation coverage. NJM has grown to provide insurance to more than 850,000 policyholders living in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Challenge
As New Jersey Manufacturers Insurance Group (NJM) upgraded core technology platforms, they wanted to accelerate software delivery in order to align delivery practices with business demands for upgraded solutions. With their volume and cadence of work increasing day-by-day, they quickly reached their limits as they tried to scale their entirely manual software deployment processes.
Maintaining and demonstrating compliance without introducing more painful manual processes was also a topmost concern for this large insurance company. NJM needed a more reliable way to streamline software deployments and at the same time ensure compliance controls were maintained. Their ultimate goal was to automate the release of high-quality software and at the same time reducing complexities and minimizing overhead.
Solution
NJM successfully implemented deployment automation which accelerated and standardized software delivery processes while helping them more easily demonstrate compliance. This initiative significantly reduced operational overhead and streamlined deployment processes so NJM could scale.
Result
Reduced deployment times dramatically Non-production deployment — from days to minutes Production deployments — 30%-50% faster
1,000 to 1,500+ deployments per month through automation. A few years ago, the company manually handled its releases
The company started doing Continuous, scheduled, and self-service deployments. Eliminated reliance on specially-skilled technicians to deploy software. QA, developers, and trainees are now handling deployments
No-hassle compliance Highly visible, a zero-touch process that is fully traceable and auditable
DevOps in Retail
Profile
This specialty retailer is a well-known household name whose stock is traded on the NYSE. With about 100 stores across the US and a strong eCommerce presence, this retailer is known for its inspiring merchandise and is also consistently ranked as one of the best places to work.
Challenge
As the retail landscape is changing rapidly, this organization was looking to enable its in-house development team to stay nimble and one step ahead of the competition. Tasked with servicing the organization’s eCommerce site and in-store systems, the company decided to create an IT modernization plan that was broken into discrete projects. The first such project was to grow developer and IT automation, increasing their productivity and the ability to quickly iterate on innovation.
Solution
Docker container microservices
DevOps based cloud computing
Fully automated CI/CD coupled with an immutable infrastructure
Result
As a development shop that wears multiple hats, this retailer’s development team was keen to standardize on a single platform. Its environment had grown complex and difficult to manage; yet, with new Docker container-based microservices working in conjunction with tools like Ansible, Docker Swarm and Hashicorp Consul and Vault, the organization has gained a higher level of automation. This automation has, in turn, allowed developers to get to work faster, iterate with agility, and create a more strategic impact on the organization.
DevOps in Travel
Profile
Amadeus is one of the largest travel operators worldwide. Their systems interact with 90%of all travel-related transactions, serving more than 700airline companies and around 600,000hotels, processing more than 55,000 operations per second at peak loads — and the numbers are constantly growing.
Problem
The company used a private cloud with virtual machines served by Vagrant and vSphere. However, the number of computing resources spend on maintaining the hypervisor layer of the infrastructure was too high, and the speed of processing was not optimal, while even several seconds of delay can result in huge losses for a travel operator.
Solution
The company chose Docker instead of Vagrant and decided to move to an on-prem cloud running OpenShift,Docker, and Kubernetes. By using a proprietary DevOps management system they were able to efficiently utilize their whole IT infrastructure, taking the resources previously used by hypervisors. This accounted for nearly 20% of their computing power.
Result
The company got several million worths of computing resources by simply utilizing their IT infrastructure efficiently. In addition, Docker containers running in Kubernetes clusters allow processing the workloads in real-time, as there is no delay due to the absence of the hypervisor layer.
As this list shows, industries can benefit from using DevOps even if they are not tech-centric. One of the main goals of DevOps is to stop departments from working in compartmentalized ways. Instead, it encourages them to communicate with each other. That aim helps to achieve goals faster with less friction.
If you wish to check out more articles on the market’s most trending technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Python, Ethical Hacking, then you can refer to Edureka’s official site.
Do look out for other articles in this series which will explain the various other aspects of DevOps. | https://medium.com/edureka/devops-in-various-domains-8ffc9b10d05f | ['Arvind Phulare'] | 2020-09-09 12:11:26.732000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Software Engineering', 'Devops In Various Domains', 'DevOps', 'Devopsdays'] |
Spicing up your Java — Introduction to Project Lombok | Spicing up your Java — Introduction to Project Lombok
Project Lombok is a java library that automatically plugs into your editor and the build tools to assist with some of the boilerplate code, thus spicing up your Java
Overview
Java is no doubt one of the most dominating programming languages of all time. However, it is often criticized for its verbose nature. For example, in the classic JavaBeans style, we manually need to add /generate no-arg/all-args constructors and getter, setters, toString for our properties. Though most modern IDEs provide an automated way to generate these boilerplate codes from the properties, it is still a manual activity.
In this article, we will shed some light on project Lombok. It is a Java library that automatically plugs into the editor and to the build tools to generate these boilerplate codes for us with the help of annotations.
Setting Up
Download
Browse to https://projectlombok.org/download and download the Lombok jar.
Configure Lombok in Eclipse and Spring Tool Suite
Once downloaded, double click on lombok.jar. This will open up the following window:-
Lombok configuration for IDE
Initially, it will try to scan the IDEs and automatically list down the IDEs as shown below:-
Lombok configuration (Image Courtesy: https://projectlombok.org/setup/eclipse)
In case if does not list down, click Specify location option and select your IDE and click Install/Update:-
IDE Path selected
Post-installation, we should be viewing the following screen:-
Lombok installed successfully
Configure Lombok in Intellij IDEA
Lombok uses the Java annotation processing tool (APT) to process the annotations. However, in IDEA annotation processing is not enabled by default and requires to be configured.
Create a new maven project in IDEA and do the following:-
Browse to Settings > Build, Execution, Deployment > Compiler > Annotation Processors and select your project Do the following:-
a. Check Enable annotation processing box
b. Select Obtain processors from project classpath
3. Click Plugins and select Marketplace and search lombok
Click Lombok. And then click Install and then click Restart IDE. This will install the Lombok plugin in IDEA.
Maven project set up
Now that we have installed Lombok, we need to add lombok.jar in our classpath. We will use Lombok maven dependency in our maven project. In case you want to continue with a traditional Java project, add lombok.jar in the classpath. In this article, we will use Maven.
Create a new maven project and add the following dependency:-
<dependency>
<groupId>org.projectlombok</groupId>
<artifactId>lombok</artifactId>
<version>1.18.10</version>
<scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>
Deep Dive into Lombok
@Getter and @Setter
Lombok generated getter and setters if there are @Getter and @Setter annotations in the class definition.
In the following example, we have created two properties and added @Getter and @Setter annotations in the class.
Person.java
In the main class, we can access the get* and set* methods.
GetterSetterMain.java
@ToString
It generates a toString method comprises of all non-static fields. By default, it prints class name along with each field in order separated by commas. To be more specific about the fields in toString method, we can use @Include and @Exclude annotations. We can also use callSuper attribute to specify to include superclass toString.
And the main class:-
Following is the output:-
Let us now extends to the superclass and see the usage of callSuper attribute:
Super class Box.java
We have updated ColoredBox.java to add callSuper attribute:-
ColoredBox.java
ToStringMain.java
package io.codefountain.project.lombok.tostring;
public class ToStringMain {
public static void main(String[] args) {
ColoredBox box = new ColoredBox();
box.setHeight(1.5);
box.setWidth(2.5);
box.setColor("Green");
System.out.println(box.toString());
}
}
Below is the output:-
Usage with @ToString.Exclude
package io.codefountain.project.lombok.tostring;
import lombok.Getter;
import lombok.Setter;
import lombok.ToString;
@ToString
@Getter
@Setter
public abstract class Box {
@ToString.Exclude
private double height;
private double width;
}
Following is the output:-
@EqualsAndHashCode
We can generate equals and hashcode automatically using @EqualsAndHashCode annotation. By default, all non-static and non-transient fields are used in equals and hashcode generation.
SongsAlbum.java
package io.codefountain.project.lombok.equalsandhashcode;
import lombok.EqualsAndHashCode;
import lombok.Getter;
import lombok.Setter;
@EqualsAndHashCode
@Getter
@Setter
public class SongsAlbum {
private static int staticField;
private String albumName;
private int yearOfRelease;
private String[] singer;
private int noOfSongs;
private transient String publisher;
}
SongsAlbumMain.java
package io.codefountain.project.lombok.equalsandhashcode;
public class SongsAlbumMain {
public static void main(String[] args) {
SongsAlbum album1 = new SongsAlbum();
album1.setAlbumName("album1");
album1.setNoOfSongs(10);
album1.setPublisher("publisher1");
album1.setSinger(new String[]{"artist1", "artist2"});
album1.setYearOfRelease(1990);
SongsAlbum album2 = new SongsAlbum();
album2.setAlbumName("album2");
album2.setNoOfSongs(20);
album2.setPublisher("publisher2");
album2.setSinger(new String[]{"artist2", "artist3"});
album2.setYearOfRelease(2001);
SongsAlbum album3 = new SongsAlbum();
album3.setAlbumName("album1");
album3.setNoOfSongs(10);
album3.setPublisher("publisher1");
album3.setSinger(new String[]{"artist1", "artist2"});
album3.setYearOfRelease(1990);
System.out.println("Album1 equal Album 2: "+album1.equals(album2));
System.out.println("Album1 equal Album 3: "+album1.equals(album3));
System.out.println("HashCode Album1: "+album1.hashCode());
System.out.println("HashCode Album2: "+album2.hashCode());
System.out.println("HashCode Album3: "+album3.hashCode());
}
}
Below is the output:-
EqualsAndHashCode output
@NoArgsConstructor, @AllArgsConstructor, and @RequiredArgsConstructor
We can ask Lombok to generate one or more constructors for us. Lombok can generate no-args constructor, all args constructor, and a required args constructor through @NoArgsConstructor, @AllArgsConstructor, and @RequiredArgsConstructor respectively.
In the following Feature class, we have added @NoArgsConstructor and @AllArgsConstructor. We have also added a @ToString annotation to generate toString.
Feature.java
package io.codefountain.project.lombok.constructor;
import lombok.AllArgsConstructor;
import lombok.NoArgsConstructor;
import lombok.ToString;
import java.util.Date;
@NoArgsConstructor
@AllArgsConstructor
@ToString
public class Feature {
private String featureId;
private String featureDescription;
private Date featureImplementationDate;
}
Following is the FeatureMain class to demonstrate the constructor usage:-
FeatureMain.java
package io.codefountain.project.lombok.constructor;
import java.util.Date;
public class FeatureMain {
public static void main(String[] args) {
Feature feature1 = new Feature();
System.out.println("Feature 1:"+feature1.toString());
Feature feature2 = new Feature("F001", "Adding a new theme", new Date());
System.out.println("Feature 2:"+feature2.toString());
}
}
Following is the output of the above class:-
@RequiredArgsConstructor is used to generate a constructor with final fields as well as @NonNull fields.
In the following Recipe class, recipeId and ingredients are mandatory fields. Hence, in the @RequiredArgsConstructor will ensure that a constructor with the recipeId and ingredients is created.
Recipe.java
package io.codefountain.project.lombok.constructor;
import lombok.NonNull;
import lombok.RequiredArgsConstructor;
import lombok.ToString;
@RequiredArgsConstructor
@ToString
public class Recipe {
private final String recipeId;
@NonNull
private String[] ingredients;
private String recipeType;
}
RecipeMain.java
package io.codefountain.project.lombok.constructor;
public class RecipeMain {
public static void main(String[] args) {
Recipe recipe = new Recipe("R001", new String[]{"Vegetable Oil", "Spinach"});
System.out.println(recipe);
}
}
Following is the output:-
@Data
We have seen the usage of @Getter, @Setter, @ToString, @EqualsAndHashCode, and @RequiredArgsConstructor. Most of the times all of these are required in a JavaBean class. Lombok provides a convenient annotation @Data that bundles all of these features together in a single annotation. Thus help us to keep our class definition clean to a certain extent.
All together now: A shortcut for @ToString , @EqualsAndHashCode , @Getter on all fields, @Setter on all non-final fields, and @RequiredArgsConstructor !
User.java
package io.codefountain.project.lombok.data;
import lombok.Data;
import java.util.Date;
@Data
public class User {
private final String userId;
private final char[] password;
private Date lastLogin;
}
UserMain.java
package io.codefountain.project.lombok.data;
import java.util.Date;
public class UserMain {
public static void main(String[] args) {
User john = new User("john", "password".toCharArray());
john.setLastLogin(new Date());
System.out.println(john.toString());
System.out.println(john.getUserId());
}
}
Let us see what .class file is generated for User.java:-
User.class
@Builder
Builder is one of the most popular design patterns and it is often used to construct objects with few mandatory and multiple (optional) fields.
Let us first write a class named Person with few mandatory and some optional fields.
Person.java
package io.codefountain.project.lombok.builder;
import lombok.Builder;
import lombok.NonNull;
import lombok.ToString;
@Builder
@ToString
public class Person {
@NonNull
private String ssnNo;
@NonNull
private String firstName;
@NonNull
private String lastName;
private String[] hobbies;
private String contactNo;
private String emailId;
private String profession;
}
PersonMain.java
In this class, we are using the PersonBuilder static class to build the Person object:-
package io.codefountain.project.lombok.builder;
public class PersonMain {
public static void main(String[] args) {
Person person = Person.builder().ssnNo("S123").firstName("John").lastName("Doe").build();
System.out.println(person);
}
}
@SneakyThrows
@SneakyThrows can be used to sneakily throw checked exceptions without actually declaring this in the method's throws clause. This annotation is applicable to method or constructor.
SneakyThrowsExample.java
In this example, we are throwing a checked exception but we are not declaring in method signature with throws clause.
package io.codefountain.project.lombok.sneakythrows;
import lombok.SneakyThrows;
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileReader;
import java.io.IOException;
public class SneakyThrowsExample {
@SneakyThrows(IOException.class)
public String read(){
try{
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader((new File("abc.txt"))));
return new String("Mock Data");
}
catch (IOException io){
throw io;
}
}
}
After compilation, this becomes as below:-
SneakyThrowsExample.class
//
// Source code recreated from a .class file by IntelliJ IDEA
// (powered by Fernflower decompiler)
//
package io.codefountain.project.lombok.sneakythrows;
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileReader;
import java.io.IOException;
public class SneakyThrowsExample {
public SneakyThrowsExample() {
}
public String read() {
try {
try {
new BufferedReader(new FileReader(new File("abc.txt")));
return new String("Mock Data");
} catch (IOException var2) {
throw var2;
}
} catch (IOException var3) {
throw var3;
}
}
}
Note that an additional try-catch block is added to handle the exception.
@Synchronized
@Synchonized is a variant of Java’s synchronized keyword. However, it has some differences. synchronized locks with this lock. Whereas, @Synchonized locks static methods with $LOCK and instance method with $lock objects. With @Synchonized, we can specify a different field name to lock-on.
package io.codefountain.project.lombok.synchronizeddemo;
import lombok.Synchronized;
public class SynchronizedDemo {
private Object myOwnLock = new Object();
@Synchronized
public static void staticMethod(){
System.out.println("This is a static method");
}
@Synchronized
public void instanceMethod(){
System.out.println("This is a instance method");
}
@Synchronized("myOwnLock")
public void methodLockedWithCustomLock(){
System.out.println("This method is locked with custom lock");
}
}
After compilation, this class is changed to as below:-
//
// Source code recreated from a .class file by IntelliJ IDEA
// (powered by Fernflower decompiler)
//
package io.codefountain.project.lombok.synchronizeddemo;
public class SynchronizedDemo {
private static final Object $LOCK = new Object[0];
private final Object $lock = new Object[0];
private Object myOwnLock = new Object();
public SynchronizedDemo() {
}
public static void staticMethod() {
synchronized($LOCK) {
System.out.println("This is a static method");
}
}
public void instanceMethod() {
synchronized(this.$lock) {
System.out.println("This is a instance method");
}
}
public void methodLockedWithCustomLock() {
synchronized(this.myOwnLock) {
System.out.println("This method is locked with custom lock");
}
}
}
@Getter(lazy=true)
With the above annotation, we can instruct Lombok to calculate the value of a getter method once and then cache it for subsequent usage. Consider the following example:-
LazyGetter.java
package io.codefountain.project.lombok.accessors;
import lombok.Getter;
public class LazyGetter {
@Getter(lazy = true)
private final double[] cachedData = loadData();
public double[] loadData(){
double[] dataSet = new double[100000000];
for(int i=1; i<dataSet.length; i++){
dataSet[i] += Math.random();
}
return dataSet;
}
}
After compilation, this class is changed to the following:-
LazyGetter.class
//
// Source code recreated from a .class file by IntelliJ IDEA
// (powered by Fernflower decompiler)
//
package io.codefountain.project.lombok.accessors;
import java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicReference;
public class LazyGetter {
private final AtomicReference<Object> cachedData = new AtomicReference();
public LazyGetter() {
}
public double[] loadData() {
double[] dataSet = new double[100000000];
for(int i = 1; i < dataSet.length; ++i) {
dataSet[i] += Math.random();
}
return dataSet;
}
public double[] getCachedData() {
Object value = this.cachedData.get();
if (value == null) {
synchronized(this.cachedData) {
value = this.cachedData.get();
if (value == null) {
double[] actualValue = this.loadData();
value = actualValue == null ? this.cachedData : actualValue;
this.cachedData.set(value);
}
}
}
return (double[])((double[])(value == this.cachedData ? null : value));
}
}
@Log
This annotation provides logging support. Annotating a class with @Log creates a log field. There are many variations of this annotation to provide support for most of the popular logging frameworks. Note that if the class already has a log field, then Lombok will not generate a log for you and instead write a warning message.
Loggers.java
package io.codefountain.project.lombok.loggers;
import lombok.extern.java.Log;
import lombok.extern.log4j.Log4j;
import lombok.extern.slf4j.Slf4j;
@Log
public class Loggers {
public void logIt(){
log.info("Custom log");
}
}
Note that log is provided by Lombok as we have added @Log annotation in Loggers class definition.
There are few of the variants of @Log annotation:-
@CommonsLog, @Flogger, @JBossLog, @Log4j, @Log4j2, @Slf4j, @XSlf4j
Example of @Slf4j logger:-
package io.codefountain.project.lombok.loggers;
import lombok.extern.slf4j.Slf4j;
@Slf4j
public class Slf4jLogger {
public void logIt(){
log.error("Error occurred.");
}
}
Note that we need to add the corresponding log types maven dependency for Lombok to initialize the log variable.
Should I Use Lombok?
We have seen the usage of various offerings of Lombok. However, there are differences of opinions on whether to use Lombok. Following articles are some references with different views:-
Conclusion
Lombok is one of the handy Java libraries which help developers to focus on actual business code instead of writing boilerplate codes. In this article, I have covered the most common Lombok features useful for application developers on a daily basis. Lombok also provides features that are not covered in this article and can be found here.
All source code can be found on Github. | https://medium.com/thecodefountain/spicing-up-your-java-introduction-to-project-lombok-8fb4328b3996 | ['Somnath Musib'] | 2019-10-22 23:13:42.843000+00:00 | ['Java'] |
Dear Julie: Submitting | Dear Julie: Submitting
How do I know when my work is as good as it can be?
Photo by Mark Fletcher-Brown on Unsplash
Dear Julie, I have completed four books. I know the earlier ones were good ideas but badly executed. Now I am going back to the fourth one in order to practise my editing skills. My question is: How will I know when it really is as good as I can get it? I know I have been guilty of doing what all writers do—sending something out too early and wasting everyone’s time! I have culled adverbs, removed adjectives, done all the things most often suggested in the editing process. I have read it aloud, passed it on to beta readers and taken advice. In the end I know I have to send it out into the world, but should I get it looked at by a professional editor or expert first? The trouble is I have now read it so many times that I can’t actually ‘see’ it any more. Kind regards Moira
Dear Moira,
First — congratulations on finishing four novels!
Generally my experience is that when you’ve done all you think you can, it’s time for another set of eyes. A good sign is when you are utterly, totally sick of the sight of the book and can’t wait to get it out of your house. Or maybe you still like the book, but you just feel that you’ve tried everything and you truly think you’ve done the best you can, right now.
(That right now is the key. One of the problems with writing is that a book is never truly perfect. It can always, always be made better. Whenever I pick up one of my published books I see things that I wish I’d changed or done differently. So your question is one that never goes away.)
The problem in your case is: who should be that other set of eyes? Should you hire an editor or a consultant, or should you start submitting to agents? It sounds like you’ve shown your work to beta readers, which is great — but beta readers generally react as readers, not editors. They often comment on their reaction to a story, not the construction of the story, or its potential, or its market appeal. This is all stuff it can be difficult for an author to see by herself.
You say you’ve ‘culled adverbs and removed adjectives’ — which is important — but in my experience, adverbs and adjectives are the least of the stumbling blocks to publication. A good editor will pick up problems with characterisation, structure, plotting, conflict, voice, tone…the big things, and the things that are hardest to get right.
Ultimately, what you do next depends on your level of confidence and your own budget. A reputable literary consultancy or editor can almost certainly improve your work and possibly introduce you to suitable agents or publishers…but they are quite expensive. Many writers feel that the cost is well worth the investment, but many writers don’t have that money in the first place.
If you’re in the UK and your book is women’s fiction or involves romance, you could join the Romantic Novelists’ Association New Writers’ Scheme (NWS), and submit your manuscript for a critique by a published author, for a fraction of the cost of a consultancy. The NWS only opens in January, and there are bursaries available. (This is what I did, by the way.) You could also try a local writers’ group, or a workshop or a course, taught by someone whose work you respect.
You could find a group of writers, or a single writer, whose opinion you trust. It’s important only to show your work to people whom you trust. You want them to be honest with you, and yet encouraging. Ideally they will help you improve your novel, rather than try to re-write it for you to their liking. Finding a critique partner can be quite difficult, but when you’ve got a good one, they’re worth their weight in gold.
On the other hand, if you are confident, you can submit right away to agents or editors. You’re unlikely to get detailed feedback, as they are extremely busy and rarely have time to comment on their submissions unless they take an author on. And you have to be prepared for rejection: most authors, however successful, have to experience it at some point. But you will need to take the plunge sooner or later, so if you’re confident, why not try it?
Of course, another way is just to put this manuscript aside and write another book. It’s amazing what you can learn from distance and from working on something else. But it sounds like you’re eager to do something with this manuscript.
The real answer to your question is that it’s up to you. You need to make the judgment about whether your work is ready to submit, or whether you need more help.
I won’t lie to you: sending your work out there into the world is very scary. But it’s a leap all authors have to take at some point — and some of us (including me) have to do it many, many times before we get it right. Only you can decide when the time is right — but make sure it’s not just fear that’s holding you back.
Good luck, and keep writing.
Love,
Julie x | https://medium.com/novel-gazing/dear-julie-submitting-853242377382 | ['Julie Cohen'] | 2020-04-21 17:33:37.427000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Editing', 'Writing Advice', 'Writing Tips', 'Editing Tips'] |
10 tips to turn your startup board into a secret weapon | Over the last last 9 years I’ve been involved in 20 different boards, mostly start-up boards. Sometimes my role was lead investor, others non-lead investor, chairman, or independent director and in 1 case (at La Nevera Roja) as founder & CEO. It’s been ~100 board meetings (BoD), that imply ~300 hours in meetings and a few thousand hours in board-related work, which is quite a lot of time. This is one of the reasons why I’ve been thinking a lot about how the perfect startup board and board member should look like.
At Samaipata we truly believe a well functioning board can be a very powerful weapon — even a competitive advantage — for a startup when i) the members are adequate for the startup at a given stage and ii) the board is well managed. Unfortunately it can also be the opposite
Generally speaking, the actual decisions a board makes should only be either administrative or highly strategic, such as M&A, financing, etc. However, besides the pure formal decision making process, a board can be extremely helpful to give founders/management business strategic input, help you attracting talent, giving fundraising advice, help out with connections, etc. Ultimately, for the vast majority of the decisions (others than those legal/administrative/highly strategic ones), after board gives input, founders/management should decide autonomously what’s better for the company.
However, sometimes it is in those very strategic decisions, where massive amounts of value can be created or destroyed. Thus, you’d better make sure that, when that moment comes, your “extended team” AKA “the board” is fully aligned with you.
In this context, I’ve tried to come up with a list of learnings and best practices that could potentially help you as a fellow entrepreneur to get the most out of your board.
Disclaimer: the following recommendations are meant for founders at pre-seed or seed stage that want to gradually improve board management skills and board performance from random informal friends and family catch-ups over a few beers to a professional/institutional board of directors right after raising a big Series A from tier-1 investors. The sooner you start thinking of BoD management as a value adding work-stream that can be a competitive advantage and can be continuously improved, the better. Obviously no one should expect you to have all these recommendations implemented at pre-seed or even seed stage (so don’t freak out ;))
1. Communication is the most powerful way to drive alignment
As per the title of this article, a well functioning board could be a very powerful weapon for your business. For that to happen, there’s a crucial pre-requirement which is alignment. By alignment I mean having a group of people thinking as a team and working in the same direction. Communication is the best way to achieve it.
While co-founders are working 24/7 together, they know every single detail of their businesses, they speak all the time and have many informal ways to communicate with each other; board members have way less access to business information and to informal communication channels with founders. Thus, the possibilities of misalignment between founders and board members are way bigger.
That’s why I strongly suggest to continually look for ways to improve communication such as:
i) fostering personal relationships among board members to increase trust and communication e.g. through spending “social time” together (lunch, dinner, etc.)
ii) holding one on one’s prior to the-board meetings and post-board meetings to align positions and avoid misunderstandings and gather feedback,
iii) frequent informal communication through slack, Whatsapp, calls etc.
iv) frequent and well structured reporting (mentioned below)
v) etc.
The goal is to keep always communication channels open and create a sense of trust
In an ideal world, not only the board but also top management and the rest of the team should be completely aligned at any point in time through OKRs or any other tool so everyone understands how everything done on a daily basis is connected to a long term inspirational vision. That kind of alignment drives productivity and ownership/motivation at every level.
2.When picking board members think like a coach: pick the best players for the game you’re playing (at each stage a new game begins)
I think the best way to approach board composition is with a coach mentality. As said before, your board should give you valuable input as well as be involved in key discussions and decisions, so you better pick the right members. Bear in mind that most of the times when picking your investor you are also picking a future member of the board, that’s why making your own investor due diligence is so important. That involves interviews, frontdoor and backdoor references, etc.
Below you will find a quick framework to help you decide which board members you should pick for your startup.
4 main variables are relevant here:
i) Attitude: Represented in the X axis.
On the right end of the spectrum you have this super nice, optimistic cheerleader that will always tell you how great you are, and that everything will be alright. On the left end you have this pessimistic, negative guy who always sees the glass half empty, thinks everything is always wrong and/or is always demanding more no matter what. This kind of board member is never bullish about anything. In the middle of this spectrum sits an individual able to highlight things that go wrong and praise you publicly when something goes right.
ii) Expertise and/or network: Represented in the Y axis.
For a board member to be able to add real value to your board she needs to have one of these experiences or -ideally- a combination of all of them: a) successful entrepreneurial experience, b) relevant start-up board experience c) start-up related high value network or d) real deep domain expertise about something relevant to your business.
iii) Skin in the game: Represented by the size of the balls.
In order to really add value, the board member will need to be able to allocate a relevant amount of time to your company. That means allocating a few hours to prepare each board (reading materials etc.), have calls between boards (sometimes late at night or during weekends) and attend board meetings in person (dial in not ideal, so far). Obviously, the more senior and highly skilled the person, the more complicated to allocate time. There’s also a trade off, but you’d better take that into consideration. There are ways to ensure there’s real skin in the game: money invested in the company, stake held, personal commitment, etc
iv) Personal fit:
This one is obvious and quite binary. You either have it or not. You either want to have lunch/grab a beer together, or not. That’s why it is not represented in the framework. You just don’t invite someone to your board if you don’t feel there’s personal fit.
As you’re probably going to have a few board members, make sure the composition is balanced. Maybe you can have 2 board members that combined work very well because they complement each other even if separately can be problematic or too weak
I hope you like my drawing skills. I cannot prevent myself from drawing this kind of freaky matrix
3. Keep a cadence, schedule board meetings 1 year in advance and stick to it
Typically board members have very busy agendas (e.g. other boards, trips, etc.). The most efficient way I’ve found to do it is scheduling boards 1 year in advance and try to stick to it. For instance every 3rd Wednesday every other month.
Try to synchronise your accounting/reporting cadence with the board’s cadence. For instance, if it takes you 2,5 weeks to close monthly accounting/reporting, schedule always boards for the 3rd week of the month so you review numbers that are 3 weeks old instead of 6–7 weeks if you schedule board on the 2nd week of the month (this happens sometimes and I find it completely suboptimal as in the startup world 7 weeks is forever)
In order to do this in an efficient manner, you can use doodle or a similar tool. Trying to close dates individually with each member will be be just a nightmare most of the times.
4. Take materials’ preparation seriously and send them together with the agenda 48–72h in advance.
Without the proper preparation from founders and board members, boards end up being a complete waste of time: board members asking stupid questions, founders frustrated, no decisions made, etc.
To avoid that, sending the board agenda and materials 48–72h in advance is ideal so that every director can allocate time to read them. You should actually expect that from all of them so that you don’t need to walk through every single detail during the meeting.
Protip: when the board is very complex in terms of topics to discuss or people involved (typically post-Series B stage), some experienced founders send a pre-read document, (longer than the board deck itself) 3–4 days in advance and kindly ask every member to read it. That allows to go for a shorter deck during the meeting and be more agile.
Obviously the more mature the company the more complex the materials. At the beginning, a well thought 5–10 slide deck (or amazon-style 6 page memos) + updated reporting should be more than enough. At the beginning you will probably need to do everything by yourself and I’m sure you won’t have much time to write long and beautiful ppts. Don’t worry, nobody should expect that from you.
When I was a founder CEO preparing board materials, I liked to see board preparation as a great opportunity to take a big step back and allocate some time to think of the vision, big picture, etc. For founders I believe it’s worth allocating 1 day every 2 months to big picture/strategic thinking and analysis.
In order to extract as much value from meetings as possible, having a smart and well structured agenda is very useful. There are many ways to do it, below a quite common structure that works well:
i) Business update: CEO insights - Highlights and lowlights/ challenges
This part typically involves a general update on the business and/or the vision. It is very important in this part to be quantitative and focused on the “so whats” that come from the data/facts instead of being descriptive and/or qualitative.
In this part, big events or changes in numbers should be described in an analytical way: for instance instead of saying “sales dropped a bit last month“ you can say “website conversion rate went down from 5% to 4.1% due to page load time caused by a technical issue related to AWS servers, that fact caused a sales drop of ~20% last month, we have fixed it already and now we’re seeing week on week growth again and expecting to close this month +10% above pre-issue levels”.
ii) Deep dives and strategic discussions
This is the part where you can gather more input from the board. Ideally you’ve sent some materials so members can read them in advance and be prepared. You present a topic that you’re worried about, you have doubts, you want a sparring or simply just want to trigger group thinking.
iii) Board members only time
As explained below, you can invite some team members to the previous sections of the board but there should be a time were only board members are present and can discuss freely.
iv) Legal decisions/ voting
As stated before, most of the decisions of the board will be either administrative or super strategic (M&A, financing, etc.). In any case you need to allocate enough time and make sure the decisions are discussed and taken. This part, typically is also board members only time.
v) Non-exec only board time
It is healthy for the company and for the board that Non-execs have time during/after the board meeting to discuss among themselves both about the company and the board quality. This applies mostly to boards where more than 2–3 Non- execs are present and not to boards at the very beginning of a company’s lifetime.
vi) Post-board social time (lunch/dinner)
Again this is something more necessary as the company grows in complexity and the number of people involve also grows. But bear in mind board members are humans and social interactions will improve communication and will make it much easier to discuss and agree on difficult topics when the moment comes, and in startup land tough times always come (in some companies more frequently than others)
Finally, make sure you allocate time proportionally to the importance of the topics you want to cover. I’ve seen many boards in which the most important topics are left for the end and we have ended up rushing when the key decisions have to be made
5. Push for in-person attendance, specially if you expect something from the board
It is very hard to have a productive Board when some of the members are over the phone and some in the room. There are exceptions though and technology is improving fast, so maybe one day this won’t be the case anymore. Nevertheless, in general terms, it’s hard to expect the same from someone next to you than from someone over the phone.
Unfortunately I haven’t come up with any tips to solve his problem other than encouraging members to do so and making sure people is going to be really involved/committed before allowing them joining the board. (Any ideas welcome).
6. Limit the number of members: the Sunday 11pm rule
When I try to explain this to entrepreneurs I use “the Sunday 11pm rule”: imagine you have a BIG crisis on a Sunday night and that you need to take a highly strategic/legal, very tough and non-obvious decision and for whatever reason you want to take it very fast (I hope it never happens, but let’s imagine it for one minute). Now imagine you just need to convince your co-founder/s (easy right?). What if you need to convince your co-founder/s and 1 investor?. Now imagine convincing your co-founder and 2 investors. Now 3… Well, I guess you get the point. The level of complexity you will need to manage does not grow proportionally to the number of board members, but -believe me- exponentially! (I’d say it grows to the tenth power). Another simple example is trying to agree on something during a board meeting with a lot of people around the table vs a limited number of people… So you’d better limit that number if you want to stay agile.
As a startup you need to move super fast and be agile at all levels, I’ve seen founders really struggling at the beginning of their business due to the complexity at board level. That’s what we call governance, and btw a complex governance structure is a clear deal-breaker for many VC’s when investing.
Needless to say that having more people around you can and will probably help you gather more input and make better decisions, but you also need to limit complexity. That potential value does come at a cost.
As a rule of thumb, I typically say 4–5 members is the ideal maximum board size prior to Series A — B. Obviously, the more experienced the founder the more complexity he will be able to manage.
Find the mistake on the graph and ask for the prize ;)
Note that apart from non-executive board members, involving the management team in board meetings can be a very effective way of motivating them and will also help you to better feed your board with relevant information, thus maximising the input you can gather from them. However, as said before, make sure you leave some “only board members time” in every board and also limit the number of people in the room when certain discussions come up.
7. Reporting cadence and transparency
I like to think of reporting as a language to express your business through numbers. You read numbers to understand how the business is performing and also send numbers to the board for them to understand the business by themselves. (It’s true that some complex businesses are harder to explain through numbers, but -in most of the cases- numbers can explain the vast majority)
For this reason, I think it is extremely important to set up a comprehensive/exhaustive monthly reporting dashboard that goes from very high level metrics to financial and cash-flow figures early on (obviously the complexity will depend on the company and the stage). As this is the way you read the business, you should use those same numbers to allow investors to read the business using the same language. By doing so you improve communication, directors understand your business better, and ultimately they can be of greater help and value.
Worst case scenario is when founders see reporting as an administrative burden and end up reporting to investors late and using a different dashboard/ set of KPIs than the one they use internally. In this case it’s like founders were reading one book, and board members a different one, and late. Imagine what could happen when an strategic decision needs to be discussed and made on this scenario…
8. Do wrap up: legal minutes and operational minutes
On the one hand there are standard “legal minutes”, a short standard legal document where the legal decisions made by the board are included. Not much to add here as it is a legal requirement and many board meetings don’t involve legal decisions.
Only tip here is always having a general counsel (a lawyer) that you trust close to you to ask any legal question that you may have and/or overseeing legal matters. At the beginning that person will just give you some tips and review some docs while after series B (this will also depend on the legal jurisdiction your company is) you will probably want her to attend as observer so you make sure every legal/ administrative decision is done according to law.
Parallel to the legal minutes, I like the companies that send a very pragmatic and short document (mainly bullets) where main non-legal topics discussed/ decided, next steps, etc. are included. You can think of it as “operational minutes” of the board. Again I see it as a very useful tool to align members and make sure everyone is aware of main takeaways. And again, the complexity of all this should be proportional to the stage you’re in.
9. Board meetings are not fundraising meetings, board decks are not fundraising decks
Unfortunately, I’ve seen this many times and I’m fairly against it. The board should be a place to give input to the founders/ management, help them and take legal decisions, but not a fundraising presentation. By transforming boards into pitching sessions, the nature of the meetings is corrupted and the culture of the company is also damaged, driven by a purely commercial/ political approach to everything and preventing self criticism, transparency and healthy discussions.
It is true though, that board composition will very much affect the tone and dynamics of the board and the amount of value added. Since many times board members will be VC’s and some can be more risk averse/ finance driven than others, founders will be tempted to make everything seem ideal and rosy (sales approach), specially if those very people attending the meeting are the decision makers for the next round.
Just bear in mind there is a trade off, the less transparent the board the less useful, as board members should be there to help.
10. Be a brain-picker and help-picker: gather as much input and help as you can
In an ideal world, you’d be able to have committed and experienced profiles at your board. If that is the case you should use each meeting to pick their brains and gather as much input as you can both regarding the business and board dynamics. Same thing with matters that board members could help you with, ask for help naturally.
Finally, it’s also very important to keep in mind that board members are there to help, especially those that show commitment, remember you’re in the same boat. Any comment made challenging the business typically won’t be meant to criticise you or your work, so it’s important to not take it personally, I know it’s hard when you’ve been working so many hours on it, but just listen to it add it to the shaker and then make your own cocktail.
I hope you find this post useful, please let me know any suggestions or comments you may have, at Samaipata we also try our best to learn and improve everyday as board members from both other board members and reading.
If you are founder building the next great marketplace or DNVB, you can send us your deck here | https://medium.com/samaipata-ventures/10-tips-to-turn-your-startup-board-into-a-secret-weapon-cf34000c2e54 | ['José Del Barrio Puerta'] | 2019-03-11 08:22:13.498000+00:00 | ['Startup Boards', 'VC', 'Startup', 'Venture Capitalist', 'Venture Capital'] |
4 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Blogging | 4 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Blogging
I would’ve found success much faster if I had known these 4 things
Photo by Icons8 Team on Unsplash
Blogging can potentially make you more money than an average day job. If you don’t believe me, go ahead and make a Google search right now. Better still, go to YouTube, and you’ll even find a bunch of bloggers giving a tour of the new mansion they just bought.
I’d like to believe their intention is to inspire people to take blogging seriously and give it a shot as a full-time career. Unfortunately, though, such stunts fail to offer an authentic picture of life as a blogger. Because it only tells you what the destination looks like, and not the things they should know about the journey itself.
So, let’s get one thing out in the open first. Blogging is not a “get rich quick scheme”. In fact, there’s a reasonable probability that you won’t make any serious money out of it in the first year.
I’m not trying to scare you off. It’s just a small effort of letting you know what to expect. I don’t want any of you taking the leap of faith for the money only. It’s a serious profession that demands years of hard work and commitment.
Nonetheless, there are things that you should know, to at least speed up the process a little.
It took me five years to start making a decent full-time income from my blog. Today, when I look back on my journey as a blogger, I see a bunch of things that wasted a lot of my time. Things that if I had known earlier, could have contracted the time it took for me to find success in blogging.
So, today I’ll talk about the top four things I wish I knew when I started blogging. I want you to know them upfront in hopes that these will help streamline your experience as an aspiring blogger. | https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/4-things-i-wish-i-knew-when-i-started-blogging-39cf31127163 | ['Wajeeh Khan'] | 2020-10-19 18:01:12.170000+00:00 | ['Work', 'Freelancing', 'Writing', 'Blogging', 'Education'] |
Startup Q&A: BetterYou | We’ve all been there.
Scroll, scroll, scroll. Stop. Scroll, stroll. Stop. Scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll…
Three hours later and you’re blurry-eyed and guilty. What was supposed to be a productive afternoon somehow turned into a time-warp of surfing the web, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, and unnecessarily checking email eight dozen times.
Enter, BetterYou.
BetterYou is a digital coach that helps people make better health and wellness decisions by logging how you actually spend your time and comparing it to your goals. It leverages the background data from our phones to log progress without intensive manual entry, and their AI-based coach uses this insight to nudge employees and students toward the outcomes they want to see.
Sean Higgens, BetterYou’s CEO, recently shared more about BetterYou with Startup Grind, digging into what sets BetterYou apart from the competition and the unique approach they take to growing a team.
— In a single sentence, what does BetterYou do?
BetterYou is a digital coach that helps you make better decisions every day.
— How did BetterYou come to be? What was the problem you found and the ‘aha’ moment?
Sitting on the couch scrolling through email, I realized two things. First, that I had no reason to even be on email right now, and second, that I don’t know why I selected the app in the first place. My head knew I shouldn’t be here, but my hands were moving on their own.
How much of our time is intentional? How much of it is us going down the rabbit hole without realizing it?
In 2007, 32% of free time in the US was on devices. Today that number is over 90%. But as our time on device has gone up and up, our satisfaction with that time has gone down.
Today our time on device is optimized, not for what we want, but for what we’ll watch, time on page. We’re creating a world where your time on device isn’t optimized by apps or advertisers, it’s optimized for the things you care the most about.
— What sets BetterYou apart in the market?
BetterYou doesn’t require manual entry. We leverage the power of the phone to give you credit for how you spent your day. Your phone can give you credit for calling Mom this week, or going to a park near your house. We leverage this data exhaust to automatically log progress toward your goals.
This enables us to provide redirection in real time. Say it’s 6pm and I’m going for another Yotube video. The BetterYou AI knows my habits that get in my way for achieving goals. So if I’m going for that next video and I haven;t chatted with Mom yet, I’m likely to get a real time notification, “Hey Sean, you said chatting with Mom this week was important, got a minute?” This real time redirection helps people make time in their day for the things that matter most.
— Have you pursued funding and if so, what steps did you take?
We raised 1.8M in seed funding by building a great team of Ph.Ds and product people, making a stellar product and getting early customer traction.
— What KPIs have been most important for you to track?
We measure our demos generated per month (top of funnel), our monthly deals closed (bottom of funnel), and our annual customer churn (customer success).
— How did the core team meet?
I’ve known Edwin for over 10 years and he has always been building things. BetterYou was the perfect chance for us to team up.
Tommy, I met at a conference. I saw his background sheet: Ph.D in applied mathematics, research around behavioral change. When I got to talking with him he was fluent in Node.js from some RPOG games he had created. We were building our backend in Node.js. I knew, then and there, that this was someone to build around. He moved to MN to help us create the AI and leads our data team today.
— How do you build and develop talent?
We source candidates from beyond the job board. We look at Blogs, Social engagement, community events, Twitter, Instagram to find people that demonstrate the skills we need to be successful. When you open up the job search to people doing amazing things and don’t bucket into years of experience, you can find great talent fast. Our last hire (Business Development) we found through her blog.
She had great writing skills and it prompted us to reach out to see if she had thought about BD work. One week into the new role and she had already booked a customer demo.
— What’s been the biggest success for the team?
This summer based on user feedback we had a massive product overhaul. It was the culmination of 6 months worth of work for the product and development teams. We launched this new version and saw instant positive feedback. Our metrics moved in the right direction.
We celebrated with a social distance team outing at a nearby park.
— What milestone are you most proud of so far?
Bringing our product to life and getting it in the hands over over 35 companies in the last year.
— What’s something that’s always on your mind?
Where are mobile applications in 2 years? In 5 years?
— Have you been or are you part of a corporate startup program or accelerator? If so, which ones and what have been the benefits?
Yes, Realco. Realco is a great way to connect with mentors, companies, and grow your business. It is an 18 month virtual program that provides you with resources to grow for the long term. I would highly recommend to anyone looking to build a venture backed business.
— What advice would you give to other founders?
“If you want to change a decision, you don’t try to convince someone, you change the options they get to pick from.”
This is why mobile apps are so good at taking our time, and it’s the very principle that we use to help you reclaim your time. | https://medium.com/startup-grind/startup-q-a-betteryou-b7ec90d8357 | ['The Startup Grind Team'] | 2020-10-26 20:04:06.718000+00:00 | ['Startup Lessons', 'Startup Spotlight', 'Startup', 'Founders', 'Startup Life'] |
International examples offer US a blueprint for aquaculture regulation in 2020 | International examples offer US a blueprint for aquaculture regulation in 2020
by Hallie Templeton, senior oceans campaigner
For many years, powerful corporations, assisted by the very U.S. agencies tasked with protecting and managing our ocean resources, have collectively been pushing for development of industrialized fish farms off the coasts of our shoreline communities. Our fisheries managers and other elected officials have done little to mitigate the looming environmental threats of such expansion. In many cases, they have overlooked those threats in an effort to increase opportunities for industrial aquaculture in U.S. waters.
Industrial fish farms, which hold many thousands of fish in giant net pens in the ocean, pump heavily processed feed, antibiotics and other chemicals into our waters. These water-borne factory farms unfairly compete with wild-caught fish at market and harm the ecosystem by allowing pesticides and high concentrations of untreated fish waste to flow from the net pens into our oceans. This is all in addition to the very real threat of industrially-farmed fish escaping these pens and outcompeting wild, native fish for food and mates, as we saw just a few years ago off the coast of Washington state.
Despite these serious risks, the Environmental Protection Agency, Army Corps of Engineers, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and National Marine Fisheries Service are allowing and even supporting development by corporations that push for bills and policies to fast-track these dangerous projects without proper environmental review or public input. Proposed bills like the 2018 Advancing the Quality and Understanding of American Aquaculture (AQUAA) Act would reduce transparency in the permitting process and ignore environmental impacts of new projects. Meanwhile, the federal agencies specifically tasked with protecting our oceans have churned out federal funding assistance to this industry and the Environmental Protection Agency is in the process of granting a Hawaii-based corporation approval to build a massive fish farm off the coast of Sarasota, Fla., all without meaningful public outreach or critical environmental review procedures.
However, momentum is building to stop EPA’s plan. A recent public hearing on the facility garnered a standing-room-only crowd of concerned citizens, decrying environmental risks like increased pollution and feeding the worsening red tide in the region. And in response to EPA’s plan, Florida localities have sensed looming danger from the industry: the cities of Sarasota Sanibel, and Holmes Beach all swiftly moved to formally opposed plans to permit the facility off Florida’s coast. | https://foe-us.medium.com/international-examples-offer-us-a-blueprint-for-aquaculture-regulation-in-2020-ff5b2b983e88 | ['Friends Of The Earth'] | 2020-02-10 17:18:16.558000+00:00 | ['Oceans', 'Fishing', 'Conservation', 'Environment'] |
Ruby On Rails Dying: Is It A Myth Or Reality? | WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF RUBY ON RAILS?
Ruby On Rails Dying: Is It A Myth Or Reality?
Read this article to find out that weather Ruby on Rails going anywhere soon or not!
It has been some time since rumors have been circling about this topic. Yes, there has been a little decrease in the popularity of Ruby on Rails. But, Is Ruby on Rails really dying?
Let’s reveal whether it is a myth or reality;
Ruby on Rails is a server-side web app framework released in 2005 with MIT license. This framework has been optimized for sustainable productivity and programming happiness.
Now, when there are many server-side frameworks available in the market, you need to decide that you should choose Ruby on Rails development company for your project over other frameworks.
Various tools and technologies are available for building applications nowadays. But, there was a time when Ruby on Rails had a top place like other technologies such as JavaScript, Python, PHP, Java, and others did not have a chance to stand by Ruby on Rails.
Is Ruby on Rails dying? — A Myth
There are myths surrounding Ruby on Rails death, which are quite strange; still, there are few reasons people may believe them true.
1. Decrease in Popularity
It is not a secret for anyone that popularity has an effect on how people form opinions. If we look at the data from Google trends, there is a slight decrease in Ruby on Rails started in 2017 and continued to do so.
In the initial years, the popularity was high, then it got stable for years. After that, it started declining a bit, which leads people to think Ruby on Rails as dead.
But can we say that popularity is a correct & only measurement of existence?
2. New Frameworks
Hundreds of other programming frameworks, languages, and updates have emerged since the Ruby on Rails launched. We all know that as the competition rises, people are more likely to talk about the latest technologies.
But, does that make Ruby on Rails dead?
Ruby on Rails — The Legend
If we look at the statistics, there are currently 3,96,257 websites built with Ruby on Rails.
Based on the data from Indeed, we can say that Ruby on Rails was a top priority even for programmers back then. And it was tough for other languages to beat Rails.
Even though the popularity of Ruby on Rails is decreasing, it has made it to the list of most popular programming languages as per the Stackoverflow survey.
According to the RedMonk Programming Language survey 2019, Ruby got the 8th place in most popular programming languages.
All these data prove that Ruby on Rails is not dying at all.
Why is Ruby on Rails alive? — The Reality
1. Practicality:
Ruby on Rails has always been functional, convenient, and most essentially — practical. There are many helpful libraries, also known as gems, and other tools for developers, which makes development faster and easier in RoR. And you can find a Gem to perform any function you need in Ruby on Rails that too without coding. This is an appealing reason for you to choose Ruby on Rails development company for the faster development of your projects.
2. Community:
The beautiful thing about Ruby on Rails is its continuous evolution. A large number of developers are choosing RoR as their programming language. Programmers use question and answer platforms such as Dev & Stackoverflow to discuss issues and problems regularly and to share new tricks and articles as well.
3. Used by large Companies
There is no explanation needed for this. Large companies prefer Ruby on Rails because of its readable syntax and, of course, convenience.
It will quickly grow on you once you start using Ruby on Rails. Most of the large companies prefer Ruby on Rails as it was their chosen framework when they started operation being small-sized companies having no brand name. It is believed that it did not let them fail then, and it won’t ever.
Take a look at benefits of Ruby on Rails that keeps it evergreen;
Open-source Framework
Ruby on Rails is an open-source web development tool. Therefore anyone can download it and use it without paying for any licenses.
Faster web development
What does faster web development mean in RoR? So, it allows the faster time of transition between the development and the reiterating the design of the functions. Thus, RoR based web pages will be ready easily.
When you build web apps with Python or PHP, it takes around 12 hours whereas, you can do the same thing with RoR in just 6 hours. Isn’t it amazing?
Easy Learning Curve
Ruby is regarded as an easy programming language, and this goes the same for the Ruby on Rails framework too. And thus, it is easy to learn Ruby on Rails in comparison with other programming languages.
Moreover, you can find a number of tutorials on many websites like YouTube and others from which you can learn Ruby on Rails easily.
Final Verdict
In essence, Ruby on Rails is a well-established framework. And it does not plan to disappear without a tough fight. It is clear that it’s a myth that Ruby on Rails is dying. They are just rumors about the amplification of Ruby on Rails’ move from peak popularity to a more sustainable and stable programming language. So, RoR is not going anywhere! | https://medium.com/devtechtoday/ruby-on-rails-dying-is-it-a-myth-or-reality-dca2e45359a2 | ['Bharti Purohit'] | 2020-05-14 11:49:56.177000+00:00 | ['Ror Development Company', 'Ruby on Rails', 'Ruby On Rails Development', 'Development', 'Hire Ruby On Rails'] |
3 Reasons My Start-Up Failed and I Deserved It | 3 Reasons My Start-Up Failed and I Deserved It AzerKaanDasdemir Follow May 26 · 7 min read
I was not broke, I did not have more money issues than the average folk. I just wanted my own thing. It was my expression somehow. I was reading a lot of MBA books, Harry Beckwith, Paco Underhill, HBR you name it. I did not read these for the sake of reading them. I was intrigued by the whole premise. My academic career was also failing so I mustered up enough willpower and started working on my business plan.
I intended to; find niche products, import them in micro scale, and sell them for a profit. The gist was, I was going to allow people to order stuff that was not on my website at all. I categorized items into 3 groups. Ones I had in stock, ones I could get my hands on in 20 days if ordered, customized orders which are only processed after a customer pays a percentage of the cost.
I hired an accountant, a co-working office, and opened a business bank account. I handled the website, got all necessary permits, purchased an e-signature, managed to get my electronic POS system set-up in whooping 3 days; I was even offering installations.
The problem with establishing your own company is this: There is not a guide around and no one warns you of anything. You are completely free falling. Bank asks if you want to offer installations but they do not mention you need to have an e-signature ready. The accountant tells you that you need printed invoices but he does not know the full scope of your operation and does not advise you on which one to get depending on the business model; there are just too many details that need to be handled by you and you alone. For instance, you are required to be registered to certain institutions to gain commercial import rights and they need their stamps on your invoices and these may differ depending on the products you are planning to import.
Strike 1 : I Did not Compartmentalize
I was jack of all trades and master of none, which works for entrepreneurship but you will soon realize you do not excel on all fronts. I was not a photographer, I wasn’t a lawyer and I was not the most literate when it comes to customs regulations. I was a good designer, I had an eye for aesthetic and employed the power of minimalism. I designed my logo, business card and website on my own; being a people person I managed to get people to work for me and get my approvals to get going, I hit the jackpot with my packaging and all.
The problem was more fundamental, I was alone. This diminished my ability to make decisions, decreased my productivity, and no need to mention it stressed me out. You can be a rockstar on many aspects of a business but you are not on a payroll, you are on your own. You need to expect the unexpected, you need to rely on the fact that every week you will have an event that is going to try to bring your business to a screeching stop. This introduces anxiety into the mix. You feel drained doing all the mundane stuff. Stress, anxiety, and knowing that there is no safety net manifests itself as decision fatigue coupled with loss of willpower.
Solution: You need to act as if you are playing different characters on a show. I suggest that you even go ahead and create different computer accounts, different emails and even reserve different desks for every department in your company. It may not be effective but it will save you the trouble of being mentally torn into pieces. You then assume the role of the creative, web-designer, accountant, legal department, and so on. These roles are then can be easily filled by people you hire if things go well which is a plus.
Strike 2: Sunk Cost Fallacy
All the articles and books had taught me to avoid Sunk Cost Fallacy. In the end it did help me survive but I want to be straight, they do not tell you that this requires applying in all stages of your business. My goods were being held at the customs because apparently it is against regulations to have multiple items of different natures in the same package. It can be done but it costs you a lot. You need an official lab to approve of any device that is going to have electricity going through it and when you do the math unless you are going to be ordering the same stuff in thousands it was not going to worth it and I had just 5 items of same nature in there.
Flashback to a few days before: When the customs officer first called me he did not mention the regulation and said all I need to was pay the fee via an agency and they will sort things out for me.
So I was already invested in this. I wanted my merchandise.
For that 5 items which only worth about 10% of the whole shipment I needed lab work done which would cost me 25% of the shipment and I had already paid fees, hired agencies, and even sold some of the products. It was a dead-end and I ignored the sunk cost fallacy. I went all in, lab denied the products. I ended up with no goods, no profit, and lost capital.
Solution: Plan ahead. Have a worst-case scenario and the best-case scenario. Define “LOSS” before you act. Think of it as an algorithm, put up some thresholds. This will also save you the trouble of making a decision, you will be able to automate the process.
Strike 3: Deviated From My Plan
You are devising a meticulous business plan, you make room for error, make calculations and think of almost every aspect of the execution beforehand and yet when things get going these plans usually just collect dust somewhere. Do not let it happen to you. If you are not checking your route every day, either your route is false or you are too caught up with and need to slow down.
Solution: Planning is everything. Do not take flight blind.
Failure
I had taken hits on every front. I was at war on multiple theaters. My accounts were depleted, I was not willing to fund from my personal account. My willpower, enthusiasm and overall mental status was a wreck. I was decision fatigued. You can only make so many decisions each day. It is called the decision fatigue and it is a real thing I tell you. At that point I remember having an epiphany as to why successful people wore the same outfit every day. Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg you name it, these people just don’t want to “decide” what they want to wear every day.
The last and biggest hit was realizing I was wasting my time. When you are running a business you often forget that you are employing yourself as well. You need to account for the salary you could be paid if you were employed. It is called self-employment for a reason. I sucked it up and shut my business down. 15 days later my market is collapsed due to a political crisis. I was not dropshipping but my means were similar. Currency fluctuations killed almost every small player I knew, customs regulations, and fees skyrocketed. It was not feasible for anyone anymore.
I wasn’t clairvoyant but I felt that gods of entrepreneurship had a sadistic sense of humor.
My company logo - designed by me.
Success
I was beating myself for wasting a big chunk of my time and capital on such an endeavor. I was frustrated and donated every business book in my library. My academic career was now a ruin and I had responsibilities coming in my way. | https://medium.com/swlh/3-reasons-my-start-up-failed-and-i-deserved-it-72d994c453fd | [] | 2020-05-26 12:58:45.544000+00:00 | ['Startup Lessons', 'Business Development', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Failure'] |
The Value of a Velvet Rope: Effects of Hype and Exclusivity on Launch Strategies | Welcome to TestFlight
The playbook starts with TestFlight, an app that allows startups to soft-launch their own products before publicly hitting the App Store. Until recently, TestFlight was mainly employed as a place for a company’s inner circle to test an app, give feedback, and share bugs. Due to its “invite-only” nature, however, TestFlight has recently become a popular mechanism to stoke curiosity and build hype.
This wouldn’t be a piece on TestFlight launch strategies if we didn’t start with Clubhouse, an audio-social app capturing the zeitgeist of the current Silicon Valley tech bubble. Founded by Paul Davidson and Rohan Seth, Clubhouse is still in beta with less than 5,000 users. It’s worth around $100M in valuation. Where can you find Clubhouse on the Internet? Well, nowhere, really: there’s no landing page besides a link to the waitlist, and it’s not on the app store. Instead, users receive invitations to try the TestFlight beta privately on a case-by-case basis after joining an increasingly long waitlist. (Side note: For more information about Clubhouse, check out this comprehensive guide.)
Clubhouse didn’t employ this hush-hush launch strategy by accident. In fact, the founders launched another audio app, Talk Show, before Clubhouse (and there were plenty of other audio-social apps out there, too: Anchor, Bumpers, and TTYL, to name a few). The Clubhouse founders knew how to make this launch strategy successful, and they planned ahead. For years, they built up leverage by creating relationships with some of the most influential VCs and founders around the world. They also capitalized on word-of-mouth: buzz and momentum for Clubhouse came entirely from early fans and users. There wasn’t a paid ad in sight, and you didn’t see any Quibi-like user acquisition strategies floating around the tech Twitterverse (but more on Quibi later). Perhaps most surprisingly, Clubhouse didn’t even have a launch on Product Hunt. This secrecy was part of their success.
There are myriad products that experience explosive launch day growth, yet quickly cool off and become an afterthought as time goes on. Clubhouse stands out from this group, steadfastly remaining top-of-mind among the tech community since their private launch in mid-April. The genius of Clubhouse’s launch strategy lies in its social status machine: like the most successful cult brands, Clubhouse has set itself radically apart from the rest by consistently maintaining that it is only for the select few.
The Waitlist
Clubhouse garnered a massive waitlist of potential users hoping to pass through the velvet ropes of its Testflight doors. Their waitlist was a trickle-down invite model, becoming the modern-day version of a bouncer asking, “Which two friends do you want to bring in?” However, Clubhouse is only one example out of the many companies who have employed waitlists to build a similar sense of hype and exclusivity.
In early February, Basecamp co-founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson promised to bring a much-needed renovation to email as we know it with the launch of HEY, a simplified, potent email service that forces you to start from scratch. Within 24 hours of Fried’s Twitter announcement, HEY had already garnered around 13,000 people on its invite waitlist. Now, about six months later, the list is hovering over 100,000 signups.
HEY is a premium product, with no free tier besides a 14-day free trial. Instead, HEY users pay $99/year (with no option to pay monthly) for 100 GB of storage. For a two-character address (think [email protected]), the price jumps to $999/year. For a waitlist that long, it must be worth it, right? That’s not for us to decide — but we do know that the waitlist was effective in getting people excited.
These waitlist case studies all tend to start the same way, with a Request early access or Grab an invite! call to action. They tend to end the same way, too: a Typeform asking for your name and email, and then… deafening silence. As customer acquisition costs rise, startups employ waitlists as a way to onboard small numbers of high-intention users, as opposed to large vanity numbers of low-intention users. This was clear in HEY, as well as in products like Superhuman and Pitch — when Superhuman launched, for example, the only way to get past the waitlist was to get an invite from someone already onboarded to the product.
It’s important for startups to employ some kind of filtering method to bucket potential users into low, medium, and high-intention users. These surveys and filters typically assess potential users’:
Role and seniority within an organization
within an organization Level of social status (by requesting social links, like a Twitter URL)
(by requesting social links, like a Twitter URL) Current workflows and operating systems
and operating systems Eagerness to use the product and familiarity with the pain point
Another case study of brands using waitlists to test consumer demand is the 2018 launch of Robinhood’s high-yield checking account. Robinhood set out to test both growth and consumer demand in one shot by developing a “social waitlist:” users were encouraged to share their unique signup link to move themselves further up the list. The result was a wave of word-of-mouth virality, with 90,000+ people joining the waitlist shortly after it went live. Spoiler alert: after the viral initial launch, it never got off the ground.
In short? Waitlists are a popular launch strategy, but they aren’t one-size-fits-all. Enterprise startups typically leverage waitlists while they stack their user base with impressive logos, thus increasing landing page signup conversion rate when they launch publicly. Consumer startups use waitlists to create network effects and ensure the product is sticky before opening up for business. As a general rule of thumb, waitlists should be used until startups see product market fit markers (more on that here), and retired as the startup scales.
The Blue Check Phenomenon (Influencer)
We get an especially fresh take on exciting product launches from MSCHF, a Brooklyn-based ideas factory known for “capturing meme lightning in a bottle.”
“We build what we want. We don’t care,” says MSCHF head of commerce Daniel Greenberg. “If we can make people a fan of the brand and not the product, we can do whatever the f — k we want.” MSCHF sets aside no budget for advertisements and marketing, and conducts no user testing of its products. Instead, they partner with “blue check” influencers like Future, NBA athletes, and MrBeast (YouTuber with over 37 million subscribers) to add virality to their tongue-in-cheek products. MSCHF’s Drop 25, a $1,000 multi-brand collab shirt, sold out in less than an hour.
The same “blue check phenomenon” is seen with gaming and lifestyle brand 100 Thieves, which boasts Drake and Scooter Braun as two of its high-profile co-owners, and Cash App, Red Bull, Totinos, and Rocket Mortgage as commercial sponsors.
This trend is common in consumer & software products, too: companies like Clubhouse and Atoms have also employed influencer marketing as part of a larger launch strategy. When Clubhouse launched, they made sure to get positive press from a number of Twitter “blue check” influencers, like Oprah, Ashton Kutcher, Chris Rock, and Mark Cuban. And when Atoms was just getting started, they capitalized on positive public feedback from notable Twitter personalities, like Alexis Ohanian, Anthony Pompliano, and Ashley Mayer.
Building In Public
One of the most well-known leaders of the “building in public” phenomenon is Austen Allred, Founder & CEO of Lambda School. Allred largely built his company on Twitter, and those who followed him got to see him build Lambda in real time. Each tweet strategically related to Allred’s bold vision of reforming the higher education landscape; Allred encouraged his followers to engage and publicly brainstorm with him. Allred didn’t celebrate Lambda’s wins alone — he and his followers were all part of the same team. Like the underdog on a baseball team, Allred was the face of Lambda School and the underdog of the tech community. Each time he got on base, the crowd went wild.
More recently, the tech Twitter community watched a similar journey with Domm, Founder & CEO of Fast. He met his cofounder Allison Barr Allen through a cold DM, hired “probably half [his] team through Twitter,” and even made connections with VCs and angels through Twitter, leading Fast to a $20M Series A round in March. As Domm explained during an interview with The Takeoff, Twitter “can be amazing at driving community support and building teams, a community of investors, or a community of users and early adopters.”
What does this “building in public” phenomenon actually look like in action? For both Allred and Domm, it looked like vulnerability and authenticity. Their playbook for building in public looked something like this:
Share real quotes & screenshots of feedback from users
of feedback from users Propose interesting product ideas and ask the community for feedback
and ask the community for feedback Articulate roadblocks the company is facing and how to overcome them
the company is facing and how to overcome them Give insight into largely unknown aspects of the company/product
of the company/product Share “sneak peeks” and vague product updates for things to come
for things to come Post screenshots of internal Slack messages showcasing company culture
of internal Slack messages showcasing company culture Tell emotional stories about your company to pull at followers’ heartstrings
about your company to pull at followers’ heartstrings Quote Tweet someone describing a problem and respond “We are fixing this at …”
Moneybags
Next in the playbook is Moneybags: paid marketing… and lots of it. Especially in recent months, we’ve watched from afar as some consumer products employed aggressive launch strategies but ultimately resulted in major flops… or nothing at all.
For example, short-form TV app Quibi predicted 7.2 million subscribers by year-end. They launched on April 6th — now, they’re on pace for just 2 million, as millions deleted the service after their three-month free trial was over.
Or think of Elliot, which invested huge sums of money into its marketing strategy, but ultimately had nothing to show for it.
According to their pitch, Elliot was “going to be the anti-Shopify — an international e-commerce platform that focused on smaller businesses in an increasingly globalized world.” Elliot branded itself as hip and transparent, securing ad placements in newsletters like Lean Luxe and gaining traction on Twitter through inspirational (and easily shareable) threads.
Now-deleted screenshot (credit here) from Elliot CEO Sergio Villaseñor.
Elliot rode the direct-to-consumer wave of marketing first, product second, spending $800,000 on marketing, according to a court document from last January. Investor checks rolled in, and excitement began to build for their planned launch on June 18. When the day finally came, however, things began to unravel: the launch was abruptly pushed back to December 25th, and a few days later, the CEO announced that he was stepping down. Within 24 hours, Elliot was shut down completely in a “triage scenario” — with many employees learning of the demise through social media before any internal channels. Their fall from greatness was just as public as their rise up in the first place.
Wild Card
Lastly, of course, a piece centered around launch strategies and virality would no longer be complete without a reference to itiswhatitis (@itiseyemoutheye on Twitter), a mysterious meme that flooded the tech Twitter timeline in late June, leveraging the relentless hype of exclusive consumer apps. It reached top Product of the Day on Product Hunt, and its website accumulated over 20,000 email signups. Perhaps most importantly, itiswhatitis raised over $200,000 in donations to racial justice charities from people who “hoped to get special treatment within [the] fabled waitlist.” As written in this Product Hunt Daily Digest, itiswhatitis wasn’t a startup, or even a product. It was a statement, highlighting the influence of secrecy and exclusivity on the entire Silicon Valley tech community — and it will forever be an important case study of consumer virality in its rawest form. | https://gabygoldberg.medium.com/the-value-of-a-velvet-rope-effects-of-hype-and-exclusivity-on-launch-strategies-8e8061cf517e | [] | 2020-08-07 02:56:40.088000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Consumer', 'Venture Capital', 'Launch Strategy', 'Tech'] |
My Balls & Chain | Madonna’s astrologer predicted precisely when I’d meet my husband. Cheryl, a comedian and astrologer, was part of a gal-pal threesome; Madonna and Sandra Bernhard were the other two. When I met Cheryl in 1989, Madonna’s and Sandra’s careers were peaking. Cheryl still had to make a living as an astrologer and decorative painter. The small company we worked for had big clients in the Hamptons. It was there, after days painting faux techniques on every wall, baseboard, and door of a new vulgar McMansion built on a former potato field, that Cheryl read my chart:
“You’re a consummate artist…blah blah. You should also write…blah blah blah.”
I was single, in fact, freshly heartbroken, and wanted some good news on the love-life front.
“You will meet Mr. Right at the very end of 1993!” Cheryl said definitively.
“Fantastic! Wait, it’s 1990. What do you mean I have to wait three more years?”
I whined.
“Sorry,” She said. “You’ll have a few false starts. But Mr. Right doesn’t come along until the very end of 1993. It’s as clear as day.” | https://medium.com/literally-literary/my-balls-chain-e19d1ea6ab63 | ['Bradley Wester'] | 2020-11-24 15:06:55.053000+00:00 | ['Nonfiction', 'Contemporary Art', 'LGBTQ', 'Relationships', 'Sexuality'] |
AI Product Management P1: How do you know if your organization is ready to support AI? | Learn how to set yourself up for success in the long term by enabling cross-functional teams and executives on AI.
This article is part of a series that breaks down AI product management into 5 distinct phases. The introduction to these series starts here.
Introduction
This article will dive into the most important phase of all: Should you even use AI? Where should you apply AI and why? During this time, it’s critical to determine if the cross-functional teams around you are ready for AI. You’ll be best served to enable them before you even begin so you are set up for success later.
Consideration 1/2:
Should I even use AI?
Short answer:
Not necessarily.
Long answer:
It can be easy to jump straight into the most complicated AI implementation, but you should take a step back. Look at the problem you want to solve, break it apart, and then deliberate if AI is best suited for the job. You may find that traditional programming could solve your problem.
When is AI better than traditional programming? AI tends to out-shine traditional programming in two main areas. One, when you are dealing with unstructured data (i.e. not in a database). And two, when you are dealing with fluctuating data inputs.
“Unstructured data” is data that isn’t organized in a database like photos, images, video, and sound. AI allows you to tap into this data by ‘structuring’ it into a usable format for a machine to understand.
Additionally, AI can help deal with fluctuating data points better than traditional programming. Traditional programming techniques used to organize unstructured data require developing a long list of rules that need manual hand-tuning. AI techniques are better suited here to simplify code and increase performance.
On the flip side, sometimes programming techniques can be more efficient than AI. For example, if you want to find the word “dog” in text, you could use a keyword search for that. But if you want to determine sentiment from text, then you are pushing into AI territory. Your data scientists will understand that nuance. As the product manager, you should strive for the simpler method first and be open to discussing trade-offs with your data science team.
However, it is not a binary AI v. traditional programming. Often-times, many applications use AI and programming techniques together. Once a machine understands unstructured data, traditional programming can then take over.
Let’s think about an example of a self-driving car. When AI models can take in unstructured data and identify a potential obstruction, you can program the system to warn the human driver. AI and traditional programming often work together to actualize an end to end scenario for the user. In fact, you can think about defining an AI solution as AI = ML + traditional programming.
Traditional programming and AI together can also help manage the cost of errors. For instance, if you are building a loan rating AI model in finance, you have to account for the legal risk of calling a “poor” loan “good.” You can program a rule that alerts a human to do further expert review on loans that had out of usual range inputs.
Consideration 2/2:
Are people ready?
Short answer:
Think beyond your immediate team and secure budget for the long term.
Long answer:
You should enable the teams around you. The earlier the better. Your executives must understand that AI is a long term investment because of the ongoing iteration that will have to occur to get it right.
Here are some key considerations for the teams around you:
Support team:
How will the support team differentiate between defects related to the AI model versus the software? Who should they route the request to — the data science team or the developers — and when?
Lab services team:
In the B2B context, it is common to have a “lab services” team to help enterprise customers deploy and customize their solutions. What happens if customers want to retrain the model for their specific needs? How do you enable your lab services team to handle these requests? How do you enable your lab services team to be ready for that? This will involve up-skilling and creating new business processes. It will help you to have a ‘champion’ in the organization to work with you to develop these changes.
Sales team:
On the sales side, they’ll run across a mix of enterprise customers out in the field. Some customers will be experts in data science. They will want to know the ins and outs of the algorithm and what the model’s accuracy metric is. You’ll have to equip the sales team to be able to answer those questions with confidence. On the flip side, the sellers may run into customers who can be too enthusiastic about AI and what it can do. The sellers need to learn how to manage high expectations while still show the solution’s value to the customer. You’ll have to equip the sales team with the right FAQ documents, training sessions, and positioning so they can manage this wide range of customers.
Marketing team:
For marketing, there is a fine line between wanting to tell a good story and overselling. How will the marketing team describe the AI product in a way that’s clear on what it does today vs tomorrow? In the beginning, it might be helpful to have a strict QA process with them. I wasn’t afraid to review the different messaging that comes out and have SMEs sanity check the messaging before it’s published.
Executive team:
It’s important to start socializing early that AI product management is a ‘cycle’. You’ll need to plan for the long term and secure data science resources that can help you in later phases even after the product releases. You don’t want to ask for short-term resources.
Data science team:
How do you respond to feedback on the model and improve it over time? AI is very probabilistic — if the data changes the model needs to change — so there needs to be a way to capture feedback. Having a team on standby that can review the feedback and enhance the model over time will serve you well.
IT team:
Your IT team will need to deploy the model and they will need to know how to deploy it and if there are frequent iterations.
Test team:
They need to understand how to deal with probabilistic errors.
Overall Tips
Err on simplicity. The simpler the method you can use to solve it, the better.
AI = ML + traditional programming.
Enable all the teams around you early.
Secure budget from executives for the long term.
Read on for Part 2 and 3 for setting priorities and gathering training data. | https://medium.com/ibm-watson/ai-product-management-p1-how-do-you-know-if-your-organization-is-ready-to-support-ai-e4c34991f404 | ['Stella Liu'] | 2020-03-10 14:49:14.046000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Product', 'Editorials'] |
Has Apple Won with Apple One? | Has Apple Won with Apple One?
Why I will be getting Apple One and if it makes sense for you.
All technology podcasts, magazines, blogs and websites have covered Apple One in great detail. They go over the things that could be better, like larger iCloud storage sizes for each option, and discuss Apple’s clear goal in getting more into services.
These things about Apple One are interesting but I wanted to talk about how one specific tier not only benefits me but feel it may be one of the best deals Apple has ever offered.
I have been big fan of iCloud storage and the benefits of having all of my photos, messages, app data and other data in constant sync with the Apple cloud storage. Making it available on my Mac, iPad, or iPhone anytime I need something. Not only does Ulysses sync each post that I have started writing, but if I forgot to email a document that is in my downloads folder on my Mac, I can get that document through my iPhone and email it from there.
Apple’s 2 TB iCloud tier was my biggest reason for why I now only buy iPhones and iPads with the base storage option. If you have enough iCloud storage and you trust Apple to optimize and store your data that is not being used in the cloud, you don’t need a ton of local storage. It also makes it so whatever device you pickup you know you will always have access to the same data. It is magical.
So, iCloud storage for me is a big necessity. Not only do I have all of my data syncing but I also have my wife’s data syncing as well using the Family Share feature. So, all the same things that I can do with my gear, I also have set up for my wife. The biggest benefit of all though, is iCloud Photo sync. We are using about 500 GB of the 2 TB storage for just our photos syncing to iCloud.
Now looking at the other services the Apple is offering in the Premium bundle, I am currently only signed up for Apple Music (Family plan), News+, and AppleTV+ (still on the free trial from iPhone 11 Pro). So picking this option I will also be getting Apple Arcade and Fitness+. I had Arcade for a while but didn’t fall in love with any game and Fitness+ is not yet available, so we will see how good that is.
Overall though I am already paying for two-thirds of the services offered in the Premier bundle. Once AppleTV+ trial ends I will be paying $39.96 in total for all of my services without the bundle.
So, right off the bat I am going to be saving $15.01 by signing up for the Premier bundle since it only costs $29.95. If you don’t currently pay for News+ for $9.99 a month, I know many people think it isn’t worth it, this bundle still saves you $5.00 and you are getting News+ extra, let alone all the other services not mentioned
If we break down the cost of all the services in the Premier bundle it equals to about $54.94. That is almost double the $29.95 that Apple is charging for their top-tier Apple One bundle. Even if all I do is continue to use the four services I have and never use the other ones, I am still saving money which is pretty great.
I look forward to seeing how Fitness+ goes. Since we are all stuck at home and I have an Apple Watch, I am very curious to see if I take advantage of this service for my new workout routine. I am also interested in Arcade more now that I have an iPad. When Apple Arcade was originally announced I only had a MacBook Pro and iPhone, so I am curious to try some of these games on my iPad.
I really hope that Apple comes up with more bundle options in the future. Right now the only one I see worth it is the Premier option. But if I were to recommend any of these to friends or family it would be difficult. This is mostly due to the small storage options for both the Individual and Family option. I think you can add more storage on top of the bundles if you want but that defeats the purpose of a bundle since you will be paying separately for more.
For now, though, I am going to jump on this deal as soon as it becomes available in the next month or so. The benefit of saving money is huge but also having a single charge each month will also be better. Right now all of my services are charged on different days for different amounts which can be annoying. Having a single charge each month makes my minimalist brain tingle with excitement. | https://medium.com/techuisite/has-apple-won-with-apple-one-adaa7d7a9186 | ['Paul Alvarez'] | 2020-09-22 14:13:04.680000+00:00 | ['Events', 'Gadgets', 'Technology', 'Apple', 'Services'] |
Cover Up or Someone Will See You | Photo by Anton Malanin on Unsplash
Stay warm, we told you.
Here is a long skirt to cover your bare knees. And a dress too big — but don’t worry, you’ll grow into it.
And here. Another sweater — handknit with you in mind. Put it on before you offend someone.
Prayer shawls and sackcloth. Heavy drapes to hide your figure. Trust me, this is a good look for you.
Too hot? You get used to it.
Too itchy? Well, you can’t just strip it all off. Everyone will see. You do realize you’d have to peel off each layer to get at what’s scratching your skin.
Now you’ve gone and done it. A wide heap at your feet.
Some of us look away. Some of us try to shield you. Some grab your discarded clothing and fling it back, hoping it will stick. Go back to the way you were, they cry.
Some others draw closer. They sit with you in your nakedness. They sit with tall backs. They lean close.
I see you’re one of those who won’t rush to re-dress. You close your eyes and soak the sunlight straight into your blood vessels. You walk and don’t even mind when blades of grass get stuck between your toes. You run headlong into the ocean. You spin in circles, kicking up sand. You laugh.
Eventually you’ll go back to your garment pile. You’ll flap each one out in the wind. You might find one or two pieces that still fit. You might put one careful finger through a sleeve.
Or you might find, on a cold night, that a huddle by a fire is a better way to keep warm. | https://medium.com/indian-thoughts/cover-up-or-someone-will-see-you-40cff8109a7 | ['Courtney Christine'] | 2019-07-01 16:11:17.112000+00:00 | ['Self-awareness', 'Religion', 'Self Improvement', 'Self', 'Poetry'] |
Tune Into Product Marketing Field Notes | Kicking off a weekly (b)log of observations and useful learnings on this field
Since entering product marketing in 2013 I’ve developed a fascination with a field where no two jobs are alike. Where expectations vary wildly by situation. A career path whose #1 FAQ is what its purpose even is (just Google “What is product marketing?” to see what I mean). And where every project demands a focused, roll-up-your-sleeves and just plain figure it out approach.
Against this backdrop I’ve started to think of myself as a less-than-silent observer of a field slowly emerging from obscurity into enough focus to understand its broad contours. I’m often asking the same basic questions:
“When you boil it all down, what do I really need to focus on to do this right?”
“What’s specific way to successfully approach this situation right now?”
“How to navigate my career in this — today, tomorrow, and long-term?”
I’ve explored questions like these in long-form articles for We Are Product Marketing, Product Marketing Alliance and other outlets. I’ve thought about them in large corporations to early-stage startups, and as a PMA ambassador, and Pragmatic alumni. I’ve connected with so many others making their way in the field seeking guidance and advice just like myself.
So I’m starting Product Marketing Field Notes to document a regular weekly learning log as I journey forward. These field notes will be short, to-the-point, and explore whatever strikes me most at that moment in time. And given that this role sits at the intersection of just about every team and discipline, I’m open to whatever that may be — from messaging to rockstar presentations, managing a meeting, and anything else that impacts how this job gets done.
I believe we’re translators, strategists, storytellers, gatekeepers, planners, creators and so much more. And with detailed notes of at least one path through this field we can be armed with a way forward to inspire out own.
If you want to learn along with me, tune into the field notes and lets journey together. See you next week! | https://medium.com/product-marketing-field-notes/introducing-product-marketing-field-notes-a8c596c69977 | ['Rebecca Geraghty'] | 2020-12-30 18:36:45.791000+00:00 | ['Marketing', 'Product Marketing', 'Product Management'] |
12 Questions on the Future of Design | Dong-Ping Wong (Family): Buildings, mostly.
Jasmina Grase: I design everyday objects with a moment of discovery. Sustainable improvements to our fast lifestyle. Right now I’m a co-founder of “MIITO” and the studio “Chudy & Grase.”
Tim O’Reilly: I make books, conferences, and big ideas that help organize communities of practice — ideas like “open source,” “Web 2.0,” “makers,” or “open government” (“government as platform”).
Colin Raney (Formlabs): We design/make 3D printers.
Grase, Wong, Raney, O’Reilly, and Waldman
Matthew Waldman: I created NOOKA Inc. to bring the revolution of interface design to fashion and objects. That said, I’m best known for my timepieces that express the ideas of universal global language.
Emily Fischer (Haptic Lab): Physical projects and textiles that explore haptics — the body’s sense of touch.
Eric J. Winston (SFDS): Fabrication and design.
Hidden (John van den Nieuwenhuizen & Vitor Santa Maria): We design poetically simple audio projects.
Fischer, Desbiens, Winston, the Hidden team, and Perry
Justin Nagelberg (Parallelogram): I design objects that try and explore form and function in new, unexpected, and ideally more interesting or useful ways.
Nicholas Desbiens: I am an architect, computational designer, and, most recently, the creator of fahz, the 3D printing project that lets you put your face in a vase.
Marco Perry: Pensa is a consulting firm that works with startups and Fortune 500 firms for just about any consumer project. We spun off another company that makes the D.I.Wire, the first desktop CNC wire bender.
Bapu, Thrift, Danzico, and Nagelberg
Pavan Bapu: I’m the co-founder of a consumer electronics startup called Gramovox, and we reimagine vintage audio design with modern technology.
Liz Danzico: Chair of the MFA Interaction Design program at the School of Visual Arts, and creative director at NPR.
Scott Thrift (The Present): I’m an artist and I produce work on time. | https://medium.com/kickstarter/12-questions-on-the-future-of-design-f4ef3d69375f | [] | 2018-05-09 15:37:38.774000+00:00 | ['Industrial Design', 'Design', 'Technology', 'Graphic Design', 'Information Design'] |
The basics of Monte Carlo integration | Crude Monte Carlo method
The crude Monte Carlo method is the most basic application of the concept described above:
Random draws x_i are made over X following a uniform law.
We compute the sum of f(x_i), multiply it by (b-a) and divide by the number of samples N.
To illustrate the process, let’s take a concrete use case: we want to integrate the beta distribution function beta(x, 50, 50) over the interval [0 ; 0.55] as it is described on figure 3 below. If X is a random variable that follows this beta law, this integral corresponds to P(X <= 0.55), which can be calculated exactly with the cumulative density function (c.d.f.) of the beta(x, 50, 50) density law: it gives 0.8413. We will try to approach this number through Monte Carlo integration.
Beta distribution function to integrate
figure 3
Monte Carlo estimator
As describe earlier, we will do N = 10 000 random draws of x_i using the uniform distribution. Then, we compute the integral estimation and the associated error using the following formulas:
Crude Method with python
figure 4
The blue points correspond to the 10 000 values of f(x_i) computed from the uniform draws we made over X.
We can already notice that because the draws were made uniformly over X (i.e. the horizontal axe), we have quite some space and less overlapping between the points when the slope of the curve increases.
Geometric estimation of the area under the curve
Another way to compute the integral is to make a geometric approximation of the integral. Indeed, by using uniform random draws over both x and y axes, we map a 2D rectangle that correspond to the desired range [x_min ; x_max] and compute the ratio of points under the curve over the total points drawn in the rectangle. This ratio would converge to the area under the curve with N, the number of draws. This idea is illustrated in figure 5.
Geometric approximation with python
figure 5
Importance Sampling
The idea behind Importance Sampling is very simple: as the error of the Monte Carlo estimator is proportional to the standard deviation of f(x) divided by the square root of the number of samples, we should find a cleverer method to chose x_i than the uniform law. Importance Sampling is in fact a way to draw x_i to reduce the variance of f(x). Indeed, for the function beta(x, 50, 50) we noticed a lot of x_i over [0 ; 0.55] will give a f(x) ~ 0, while only few values of x around 0.5 will give f(x) ~ 8.
The key idea of Importance Sampling is that we use a probability density function (p.d.f.) to draw samples over X that will give more chance to high values of f(x) to be computed, and then we weight the sum of f(x) by the chance that x happened (i.e. the value of the p.d.f.).
Following this idea, the integral we try to approximate will became:
Integral value approximation with Importance Sampling
with:
N: number of samples
f: function to integrate
g: p.d.f. chosen for the random draws over X
G: the inverse function of g
And the variance of f used to compute error of the estimator becomes:
Variance of the estimator with Importance Sampling
Back to our use case with the beta(x,50,50) distribution function, it seems that using a normal distribution centered at 0.5 as the g function could help us. The links between f and g are shown on figure 6 below.
figure 6
Figure 7 below shows the results of using such a method to integrate beta(x,50,50) over [0 ; 0.55]. The density of the points also shows the relevance to use of the Gaussian p.d.f compared to the uniform law to choose x_i: the x_i points are concentrated in areas of interest, where f(x_i) != 0.
Importance Sampling with python
figure 7: Importance Sampling (left) vs Crude Integration (right)
Methods comparison
Here is the summary of integral values and relative errors. We reduce x4 the error with the Importance Sampling method.
Integrating 3D functions
Figure 8 takes an example of 3D jointplot mapped on a 2D space (x_A, x_B). This example is taken from the analysis of Bayesian A/B tests. The blue contour plot corresponds to beta distribution functions for 2 different variants (A and B). The idea is to compute the probability that variation B is better than variation A by calculating the integral of the joint posterior f, the blue contour plot on the graph, for x_A and x_B values that are over the orange line (i.e. values where x_B >= x_A ).
Joint probability density function to integrate
figure 8
Thus, let’s compute the integral that corresponds to the area below the blue 3D bell for values of x_A and x_B that respect x_B >= x_A (upper to the orange line on the graph). This time we will draw N = 100 000 samples.
With the crude method:
Integral value: 0.7256321849276118
Calculation error: 0.01600479134298051
With Importance Sampling
Integral value: 0.7119836088517515
Calculation error: 0.0018557917512560286
The importance sampling method enabled to reach an almost x10 more precise result with the same amount of samples.
Conclusion
The crude method and importance sampling belong to a large range of Monte Carlo integration methods. Here you have all the material to implement these two techniques in python with no more than usual libraries as numpy and scipy. Keep in mind that Monte Carlo integration is particularly useful for higher-dimensional integrals. With the example we came through, we got a x10 improvement regarding precision for the 3D case, while it was a x4 improvement for the 2D case.
References | https://towardsdatascience.com/the-basics-of-monte-carlo-integration-5fe16b40482d | ['Victor Cumer'] | 2020-11-06 16:13:55.814000+00:00 | ['Monte Carlo Method', 'Python', 'Numerical Integration', 'Data Science'] |
See, Memory: Divorce in the Time of Corona | See, Memory: Divorce in the Time of Corona
To be able to accept love also meant to be able to be hurt. I didn’t want to hurt her but I didn’t know that I would be hurt by her self-protection.
Photo credit: Shutterstock
By Chris Wiewiora
I had a photo of L. that I took of her the day before she first said, “I love you.” The golden hour’s sunset lit Mobile Bay. Rose bushes in a roundabout unfurled with blossoms and jutted with thorns. L.’s wavy brown hair hung loose in the humidity of Fairhope, Alabama. She looked out from big ladybug-eyed sunglasses at me. I knew the deep wells of blue behind their lens. I had stared into her eyes and said “I love you” first.
L. hadn’t said anything back to me. She didn’t think she could. It was such a deep emotion — love — and to be so open meant to be so vulnerable. To be able to accept love also meant to be able to be hurt. I didn’t want to hurt her but I didn’t know that I would be hurt by her self-protection.
I had kept that photo of L. on my desk in grad school in the Midwest. Then, I hung it near my desk when we moved to the Southwest. By the time we returned to Orlando, I had moved the photo to a bookcase with a photo of her from our wedding. That photo of L. moved away from me until I moved away from her without a photo of her.
I searched for L. online — the only place I could find her in a quarantined world. She kept her social media accounts private. I wasn’t trying to find her life alone now; I wanted to find her life with me back then.
I found her on a resume site. She wore the pale orange shirt I knew V-ed down to buttons. I remembered her in dark jeans, but I didn’t remember her in lipstick. She wore two bright strokes that made her bleached smile whiter. She posed her head in a tilt and her bangs swept across her forehead and curled around her ears where I used to arrange it.
The resume photo was from our first apartment together where she began what became a career in supporting the people of nonprofits’ larger visions. She was so welcoming and organized and kind at a front desk entry-level job that of course, she moved into working with membership and events. I don’t know how many people knew that drained her, but in a way that she wanted to use her energy for a connective cause. I don’t know if any of her co-workers knew she kept a photo album of all the appreciative notes they wrote her. I don’t know if she knows that I keep her notes, the last pieces of her, the very language of the woman I had loved.
I found her on a craft site. She looked cooly serious and seriously cool. She wore the pink plastic glasses that she love, love, loved, but hated to lose when she went to spit out the window while I was driving her to the airport for a trip home. Her bangs were fresher, while the rest of her hair piled into a bun. Her lips pinked. Her lobes dangled with coin-like copper earrings. Her eyes looked direct. She wore the white sweater top that I don’t know if she had to part with from the Midwest.
Behind her in the craft photo, I could see the garage sale bookshelf that I had bought and she had stained. I knew the shelves held a hardcover of Charlette’s Web, an orange wooden pony, seashells from the Atlantic beaches, a case of quarters from certain years of her life, a glamour shot of her dad with a mustache, her old Florida license plate, and her alphabetized novels that she just liked to run her hands along the spines even though she ended up usually going to one of the six by Jane Austen. Above the bookshelf, she pinned prints she made and posters she bought. In an empty gray frame she strung with green yarn she hung Polaroids of her childhood Labs, a donut keychain, a postcard of a strawberry girl, and so many other discoveries, inspirations, and remembrances.
I found her on a streaming site. She wore black plastic glasses that framed her face with her bangs. She gave that photo smile of being true and goofy. Her denim jacket laid on her shoulders that carried so much.
The streaming photo was taken during my family’s Thanksgiving, L.’s last Thanksgiving with us. My five cousins and what we call the little cousins, my four sets of aunts and uncles, my immediate family, and several cousins’ in-laws all hugged L. close. She cut herself out of our photo.
I found her on her life-documenting site. Her hair was lighter than ever. Not as brown, but also not as thick. She straightened it and parted it down the middle. She wore reflective sunglasses that only showed what she wanted to show: her taking a selfie of herself. A red pole or a gutter at an airport or a shopping store gave a mysterious unsolvable clue. She looked like she was nowhere or places that were now abandoned.
I had always known L. as an intensively private person. I believed she felt like her life was only hers. I thought that the purpose of her life was finding the purpose in her life, by herself.
I found her on her profile site. Her hair looked freshly cut and sprayed. I wondered when she had last done either with everything closed. She wore a smile that I couldn’t tell if it was real anymore. She stood in our final apartment. It looked empty.
I wondered if L. searched for me.
Maybe she kept our wedding photos somewhere in storage. She could crack open a plastic container or cut open a taped box. She would see me in a tux with a rose on my heart and her in her gorgeous dress and us together in front of all our family, everybody in Orlando, all of whom we should have asked for help when we returned not as together as we had left.
Maybe she kept the photo of me in the Black Hills of South Dakota on one of my grad school trips. My buddy took it of me in my red running shirt and brown jeans with the plains behind me where we had seen a herd of buffalo spill across the prairie and then wash over the land’s saddle. I doubt she still keeps my photo beside her bed like she did.
Maybe she kept the photo of me in a green polo with saw palms behind me. My brother was cropped out of that photo. My parents had wanted photos of us before I left Orlando for the Midwest with L. L. kept that photo in a metal locket on a keychain so she could open the clasp whenever she wanted to see me until she didn’t anymore.
Maybe she didn’t keep any of those photos of me, or maybe she doesn’t want to look there. If she looked online she would find me with my writing.
She would see me downtown in Orlando at Church Street Station for a typical portrait in a stairwell and alcove with me sitting on metal steps and smiling in front of a torn poster when the SunRail was just a dream for commuting to work on a train. She would see my stubble darker, but the same buzzcut. She would see my goofy Write the Future shirt that I loved until it got stained.
She would see me at Brookside Park in the Midwest. She would see my closed-mouth smile. She would see my blue Oxford shirt spotlighted in the golden hour for our engagement photos. She wouldn’t see herself in her turquoise top and flower printed skirt holding my hand on a bridge over the brook.
She would see me at the Museum of the American Indian in D.C. for a conference. I had flown from the Southwest and she had flown from the Midwest. A prism fractured the white spotlight into reds and yellows bathing my hat hair, lighting up my round glasses, and illuminating my ready-to-crack smile looking at the camera, looking at her, looking at the woman I wanted again.
She would see me walking away from her through an orange threshold at Bryce Canyon. She would see the limestone belittling me in my sage baseball hat, blue fleece, khakis, and black backpack. She could probably hear the silence from so many hikes we took when we didn’t talk.
Maybe she found us when I wrote about us dressing up for Halloween:
She would see me in a brown wig with the bangs cut. She would see me wearing her ribbed blue shirt knowing that underneath was her padded bra that we had stuffed. She would see me in her long skirt I had worn so I hadn’t had to shave my legs. She would see herself under my orange cap remembering piling her hair up under there. She might remember buttoning up my blue shirt and sticking out her stomach like a bit of belly while caving in her chest to hide her breasts under two sports bras. She would feel the cinch of my belt around a pair of slacks. She would see our smiles again; hers behind faux stubble and my clean face with my Monroe mole.
She would see us fifty years in a now nonexistent future. She would see me trying not to smile from a scowl under a newsboy cap. She would see my red flannel tucked down into hiked up gray sweatpants. She would see herself in her white blouse and black vest with stars and cats and a crescent moon. She would know that we both held Werther’s in our pockets to give out to young folks at the party we attended. Would she remember her arm around me and mine around her both of us gray-haired and aged with dye and make-up that she put on us like a spell that cast us as slow but steady finishers of a fool’s golden anniversary?
No matter where we look we won’t find the feeling of the past in Fairhope. We won’t find ourselves at the Hangout Music Festival, since music festivals are probably gone like an encore’s last echo. We won’t find ourselves filling up water bottles at a shared garden hose. We won’t find ourselves walking across the sand kept in instead of out of a beach. We won’t ride hip to hip on a ferris wheel above it all. We won’t spend the night in a motel and wake up in bed together. She won’t say so bravely, so surely, “I love you.”
—
This story was previously published on The Good Men Project. | https://medium.com/hello-love/see-memory-divorce-in-the-time-of-corona-dfa6c539f552 | ['The Good Men Project'] | 2020-06-07 02:26:00.834000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'Love', 'Marriage', 'Divorce', 'Coronavirus'] |
Microsoft Excel — How Do I Quickly Create a Workbook with Multiple Tabs? | Let’s Do This
1 — Create tabs, color-coded if it makes sense
Create list of tabs — color code them the way you want the tabs to appear.
Example creating 50 rows of monthly dates; each year is a different color.
New Workbook — Create a Tab List
Create worksheet tabs (I use the ASAP Utilities add-in for this — covered previously in this Medium post)
Highlight cells to convert to worksheet tabs
Select ASAP Utilities → Sheets → 2. Insert multiple sheets…
Invoking ASAP Utilities to generate worksheet tabs from a List
The following dialog box pops up:
Make sure the “Color sheet-tabs..” option is checked
Click “OK”
ASAP Utilities Dialog Box — add Multiple Sheets
The new tabs are created in seconds…
New Worksheet Tabs created from List
Now, DELETE the TabList page. | https://medium.com/lets-excel/microsoft-excel-how-do-i-quickly-create-a-workbook-with-multiple-tabs-2dfe46bb711c | ['Don Tomoff'] | 2018-01-17 00:51:51.221000+00:00 | ['Microsoft', 'Excel', 'Automation', 'How To', 'Productivity'] |
Maybe You’ve Never Loved | The Older Woman
Then one day, an older woman came to her mother’s house. They were having a conversation about these topics. So the girl joined in and shared some of her experiences of love.
“I don’t know if anyone really loves me.” She said with a sad, fearful face like an abandoned puppy on a rainy day.
She told the older woman about her frustrations — how much her mother tried to control her, how much her father had been unfair to her when he left, how heartbroken she was when her boyfriend broke up with her, and how her friends were too selfish to listen to her stories.
The older woman listened patiently and, in the end, said only one sentence:
“Maybe you never loved.” The older woman smiled kindly and left.
It took the girl by surprise. From the other side of the table, her smile seemed so patronizing, sending the girl’s mind on a journey of defensive anger.
“How dare she say something like this? She doesn’t even know me. What does she know about love? Maybe she is the one who’s never loved.”
Little did the girl know that this was going to become one of her last tantrums.
To say that the older woman’s words had planted a seed in the girl’s mind is an understatement. Those words had gone straight into her subconscious like bullets, shattering her fragile ego and clearing the way for a whole new range of questions. | https://medium.com/the-masterpiece/maybe-youve-never-loved-b5bc1f353433 | ['Daniele Ihns'] | 2020-11-17 14:45:21.780000+00:00 | ['Love', 'Wisdom', 'The Masterpiece', 'Self', 'Psychology'] |
A Girl’s Best Friends | She’s always with those animals,
Cat, dog, horse,
Nearby, underfoot, in the way,
Companions, friends, guards.
She insists.
They love me
But I’m the boss. | https://medium.com/genius-in-a-bottle/a-girls-best-friends-a4f9ed1658f6 | ['Susannah Mackinnie'] | 2020-11-08 03:13:15.485000+00:00 | ['Childhood', 'Animals', 'Life', 'Poetry', 'Storytelling'] |
What No One Tells You About 2 Steps of Manifestation | Step 1: Do not break the chain
Day 1: You are so positive and filled with happiness and doing manifestation practices.
Day 2: Same as above
Day 10: Same as above
Day 11: A small thought of doubt is implanted in your subconscious mind
Day 12: That little thought of doubt/dis-belief grows faster
Day 13: You are trying to be positive but unable to focus on the positivity
Day 14: No result so far, no significant change or the manifestation of your desire
Day 15: You started blaming or thinking negatively about Law of Attraction and thinking over and over of your past or failures
Day 16: Again, you wanted to be on track with positive thoughts/thinking.
Day 17: No No No, Day 17 should be DAY 1. Have you understood the secret now? To be precise, if you are positive for 14 days and if you become negative entirely on the 15th day, then you have to start from day 1.
Negative thoughts will destroy all your hard work on the first fourteen days, and from day 16, if you want to back with a positive thinking mindset, it will be considered as Day1 because you have broken the chain!
Never get disappointed or never disbelieve for one day and spoil all the previous days’ efforts.
I have seen many practitioners in this mindset. They all do the right things. They all positive for several days, and when something is not coming their way, they start feeling low or sad.
It will make them to square one again. We all have only one life, and we should always keep our self-focused on the right thing. If your desire is not manifested, you never know something big might be there for you!
So, never get sad or depressed or feeling low for the delay of your manifestation. You will get what you create. You will get the best of the best. “Have a never-ending FIRM belief even though your manifestation takes time, is the secret.” | https://medium.com/the-partnered-pen/what-no-one-tells-you-about-2-steps-of-manifestation-3808da49a5a | ['Rajesh Vairapandian'] | 2020-08-04 11:18:36.591000+00:00 | ['Law Of Attraction Works', 'Universe', 'Philosophy', 'Visualization', 'Self Improvement'] |
Understanding Transformers, the Data Science Way | The above figure must look daunting but it is easy to understand. So just stay with me here.
Deep Learning is essentially nothing but a lot of matrix calculations and what we are essentially doing in this layer is a lot of matrix calculations intelligently. The self-attention layer initializes with 3 weight matrices — Query(W_q), Key(W_k), and Value(W_v). Each of these matrices has a size of ( Dxd ) where d is taken as 64 in the paper. The weights for these matrices will be trained when we train the model.
In the first calculation(Calc 1 in the figure), we create matrices Q, K, and V by multiplying the input with the respective Query, Key, and Value matrix.
Till now it is trivial and shouldn’t make any sense, but it is at the second calculation where it gets interesting. Let’s try to understand the output of the softmax function. We start by multiplying the Q and Kᵀ matrix to get a matrix of size ( SxS ) and divide it by the scalar √d. We then take a softmax to make the rows sum to one.
Intuitively, we can think of the resultant SxS matrix as the contribution of each word in another word. For example, it might look like this:
Softmax(QxKt/sqrt(d)) (Image by author)
As you can see the diagonal entries are big. This is because the word contribution to itself is high. That is reasonable. But we can see here that the word “quick” devolves into “quick” and “fox” and the word “brown” also devolves into “brown” and “fox”. That intuitively helps us to say that both the words — “quick” and “brown” each refers to the “fox”.
Once we have this SxS matrix with contributions we multiply this matrix by the Value matrix(Sxd) of the sentence and it gives us back a matrix of shape Sxd(4x64). So, what the operation actually does is that it replaces the embedding vector of a word like “quick” with say .75 x (quick embedding) and .2x(fox embedding) and thus now the resultant output for the word “quick” has attention embedded in itself.
Note that the output of this layer has the dimension (Sxd) and before we get done with the whole encoder we need to change it back to D=512 as we need the output of this encoder as the input of another encoder.
Q: But, you called this layer Multi-head self-attention Layer. What is the multi-head?
Okay, my bad but in my defense, I was just getting to that.
It’s called a multi-head because we use many such self-attention layers in parallel. That is, we have many self-attention layers stacked on top of each other. The number of attention layers,h, is kept as 8 in the paper. So the input X goes through many self-attention layers parallelly, each of which gives a z matrix of shape (Sxd) = 4x64. We concatenate these 8(h) matrices and again apply a final output linear layer, Wo, of size DxD.
What size do we get? For the concatenate operation we get a size of SxD(4x(64x8) = 4x512). And multiplying this output by Wo, we get the final output Z with the shape of SxD(4x512) as desired.
Also, note the relation between h,d, and D i.e. h x d = D | https://towardsdatascience.com/understanding-transformers-the-data-science-way-e4670a4ee076 | ['Rahul Agarwal'] | 2020-10-10 06:04:18.474000+00:00 | ['Deep Learning', 'NLP', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Data Science', 'Machine Learning'] |
Men Need to Consent, Too | Men Need to Consent, Too
What’s good for the gander is good for the goose
image by Ulkar — purchased by the author
This is why feminism is important to all humans.
Consent isn’t a gender issue.
It’s an individual human issue.
Vulnerability = anti-masculine in our culture. Little boys are “sissies” if they cry.
Bottom line?
Let’s all respect each other as fellow humans and engage in sex with those who are enthusiastic. | https://medium.com/survivors/men-need-to-consent-too-b8d5f59ce3bd | ['Toni Tails'] | 2020-09-11 16:33:20.375000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'Life Lessons', 'Mental Health', 'Feminism', 'Life'] |
FRIEND SOFTWARE CORPORATION PARTNERS WITH NAPKIN GIS | Bringing GIS technology and OpenStreetMap to Friend
Friend Software Corporation and Napkin have decided to form an active partnership with the aim of bringing next generation GIS technology to market via the new and powerful Friend Cloud and Sky Computing Platform.
Geographic Information System (GIS) is a framework for recording, managing and working with data on top of a geographical topography.
Napkin brings a lot of map related experience into the Friend project. As such, Friend and Napkin will collaborate in bringing maps into the Friend Workspace such that all Friend users have readily available map features as part of their user experience.
Napkin’s OpenStreetMap integration and GIS technology in particular will be a great contribution to the Friend platform. Friend Software Corporation will take an active part in making sure Napkin’s technology, its products and services are elegantly inserted into the Friend ecosystem.
Friend Software Corporation will share its network of developers, customers and partners with Napkin to ensure that its GIS product and services are accelerated into the marketplace.
As a Friend Application, Napkin will allow users to actively work on maps, adding and editing data points in a collaborative environment, offering users a professional workspace available using a single sign-on.
As an API, Napkin will enable developers to build rich applications using maps and GIS features.
“Napkin is a great example of the new breed of software technologies that are challenging the status quo and de facto monopolies in the software industry. We’re proud to help spread Napkin’s technology and look forward to seeing maps used in the Friend Workspace by new and existing users and customers”, says Hogne Titlestad, COO and founder in Friend Software Corporation.
Friend OS is a cloud desktop environment and operating system that can deliver powerful cloud solutions on any device. For developers, it brings a ton of useful features and components that make web software better. Image shows a concept Napkin GUI design in the Friend Workspace.
“The Friend platform offers us a great new way to expand our software’s functionalities and capabilities, and the philosophies of the Friend platform are something we really believe in.
We are privileged to work with the developers at Friend, and we are looking forward to a great partnership”, said Andreas Atakan, CEO and founder of Napkin.
About Napkin
Napkin was founded in 2019 in Norway, developing a GIS solution built to get the job done faster, easier and cheaper.
Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are systems designed to create, manipulate and analyze geographical data. GIS software offers powerful mapping tools, used in sectors ranging from healthcare to oil and gas.
Napkin aims to deliver a web-based GIS software that can rival existing solutions, and also allow users quick and easy access to the power of GIS.
Our vision is to challenge de facto monopolies in the GIS market, and offer a solution where users without prior experience can easily get started.
Napkin GIS is fully compatible with existing software and web-based solutions, but is improving on and making GIS ever more accessible.
About Friend Software Corporation
Friend Software was founded in 2014 in Norway, developing both decentralized as well as enterprise cloud- and internet-based software. FSC has customers and partners all over the world who shares a need for excellent and flexible cloud solutions.
FSC delivers Friend OS, the Internet OS, a cloud infrastructure technology with a (DaaS) “Chrome OS” alternative and desktop with Android and iOS apps for smartphones and tablets. With these technologies, customers gets a new level of integration, access and flexibility where they can build the ultimate cloud solution at a low price point.
Friend OS offers multiple powerful functionalities and capabilities like; customizable cloud storage, video conferencing, software distribution (Windows and web apps), user account management, permissions and roles and much more. | https://medium.com/friendupcloud/friend-software-corporation-partners-with-napkin-gis-f2bd1456bd95 | ['Hogne Titlestad', 'Co-Ceo', 'Founder', 'Friend Software'] | 2019-07-17 06:43:12.046000+00:00 | ['GIS', 'Web Development', 'Cloud Computing', 'Offshore', 'Shipping'] |
How Important Is It to Have Failed at Something in Life? | How Important Is It to Have Failed at Something in Life?
According to a psychologist, a boxing coach, a urologist, and a Mars simulation commander
Most of us spend our entire lives trying to avoid mucking up. But unless you’ve never had any dreams or goals or really any sort of ambitions at all, chances are you’ve failed at something at least once in your life. And it’s also just as likely that your “failure” laid the foundation for your subsequent or ultimate success.
By nearly every measure, in fact, failure is a learning experience and a stepping stone toward growth. It’s why NASA astronaut Charles Camarda believes that the tragedy of the Columbia space shuttle — which broke apart above Texas in February 2003 — has provided both current and future engineers with a motto to live by: “Where there is failure, there is knowledge and understanding that doesn’t come with success,” reported Anna Haislip for Colorado Daily.
To find out just how vital failure is in the context of succeeding in life, I asked a bunch of people who know its importance intimately.
The Man Who Literally Teaches People to Pick Themselves Up Off the Floor
William Trillo, boxing coach: I speak to fighters often about failure. In a sport that’s all about, “What have you done for me lately?” boxers think a loss is a death sentence. But a loss can be more beneficial than just taking a bunch of easy fights.
The problem is that everyone in this day and age is so fixated on that zero. Floyd Mayweather has lived or died with that zero. He says he’s the best ever, but to keep that zero, he’s taken on less than the best talent out there. He’s shied away from putting that zero on the line. Maybe had he lost once, he might be more willing to embrace other fights because that mark of perfection will be gone. But because he’s so protective of that goose egg, he hasn’t always taken the best fights being offered.
Once you get out of a guys head that a loss isn’t a death sentence and it can help further his career, the ones who embrace that go on to have a better career. It’s a sense of relief because they’re not as afraid of the loss and they’re willing to do more than they would otherwise. They’re going to be more aware not to let that happen again. There’s greater clarity in their self-reflection. In the end, they got the loss, they took it like a man, they’re still here and they’re ready to fight on. The loss didn’t destroy them.
The Woman for Whom Every Failure Has Been A Vital Lesson for Future Generations
Carmel Johnston, Mars simulation commander: I feel like everything is a lesson one way or another, so failure really isn’t possible. There were many times that we tried something that didn’t work as planned, but that doesn’t mean it was a failure. So whether you get what you expected or something different, you can always learn something from the outcome.
The Man Who Helps Guys Work Through Their Sexual Failures
Jamin Brahmbhatt, board-certified urologist: I hate to use the word failure, because when you have something unexpected happen, even if it’s something we know can happen, it’s tough. In this case, it could be a reversal vasectomy that didn’t work. Or the reversal worked, but the couple is still unable to get pregnant. Or you get surgery to remove the prostate cancer but now you have erectile dysfunction. Basically, even though you may go through all this stuff and you know it’s a possibility, the only way to deal with these unexpected results is to have that open line of communication.
Patients and their families are very receptive that we’re being real with them. You learn from these experiences that the best medicine is honest medicine. Most of us in medicine are very honest with overall expectations — we know based on research that nothing is 100 percent. That’s why we spend most of the time discussing unexpected outcomes as well as risks and side effects.
Failures are only failures when you don’t learn from that experience. Medicine is an art, not a hard-and-fast science, so experience plays a role. The other thing is, we’re dealing with human life. Someone’s body, their mother, father, wife, husband — that’s where the big emotional factor comes in. That’s why we can take unexpected results very hard. It’s mentally straining because we’re dealing with human life, which is irreplaceable.
The Woman Who Helps People Understand Just How Important Their Failures Are
Amy Kim, clinical psychologist: A lot of people define failures that aren’t really failures. I’m hesitant to call anything a failure because everything is an opportunity to learn and grow. For example, a relationship that doesn’t work out isn’t a failure. Two people got together, they tried to make it work and it didn’t work out. That’s not a failure.
Still, I do think that having that experience — which some may categorize as a failure — allows you to take what you’ve learned and move forward. Let’s say you didn’t know you could trust someone, but after your last relationship, now at least you know that’s possible. Having an experience about really feeling connected and understood means that’s possible in the future based on direct experience.
Not doing things out fear will keep you limited. People who are afraid of making decisions out fear of failure will be paralyzed, which is why failure — and again, I hate to call it that! — is necessary for growth. Challenges push you to grow, they teach you new things about yourself and they make your life richer. A life without failures means you’re not doing a whole lot.
Andrew Fiouzi is a staff writer at MEL. He last wrote about the presidential alert system.
More Andrew: | https://medium.com/mel-magazine/how-important-is-it-to-have-failed-at-something-in-life-f1dbec157bef | ['Andrew Fiouzi'] | 2018-10-09 15:01:02.274000+00:00 | ['Failure Stories', 'Mental Health', 'Self Improvement', 'Failure', 'Mental Toughness'] |
Visualizing 3D Seismic Volumes Made Easy with Python and Mayavi | Image by Author
Visualization of migrated, post-stack seismic volumes is a very crucial component of interpretation workflows, be it to pick salt domes, interpret horizons, identify fault planes, or classify rock facies.
While there are already professional tools like OpendTect and Petrel available to experienced seismic interpreters, setting up a project from scratch in either of these software tools can be overwhelming for beginners and non-specialists, considering all of the various parameters that need to be set before one can visualize the seismic volume of interest. This is not to mention the inconvenience of working with different data types for processing and loading data for visualization, especially in the context of Data Science projects with seismic volumes — repeatedly converting seismic data back and forth between different data types at different stages of processing can be very time consuming and inconvenient for users.
I recently came across a very handy, open-source visualization tool, Mayavi, that allows seamless integration of visualization of 3D data like seismic volumes into data science workflows with Python. It is made all the better owing to its very interactive capabilities, where one may drag inline/crossline/depth slices throughout the volume at different angles to examine the features of interest. An example screenshot of such a 3-D visualization is shown below.
Figure 1: Visualizing a 3-D seismic volume with Mayavi
This post will walk you through some basic code to get you up and running with using Mayavi for visualizing seismic volumes along with their various interpreted features by seismic interpreters.
Installation
Detailed instructions for downloading Mayavi and setting it up for use with Python may be found directly on its homepage. Refer here for more details.
Importing Mayavi into Python Environment
For our purposes, we will be concerned with using the mlab API for using Mayavi as a 3-D plotting tool in python scripts. Assuming everything went smoothly in the last step, use the following code snippet to import mlab:
import numpy as np # import numpy for data loading
from mayavi import mlab # import mlab
Loading Seismic Data into the Python Session
Seismic datasets usually come in the popular .segy (pronounced: seg-y) format. In addition to storing amplitude data, segy files contain a variety of header information, like the crossline and inline numbers associated with each trace, time sample information etc. However, popular machine learning and data science tools usually ask for data to be in the form of numpy arrays. If your data happens to be in segy format, you may use the popular python package, Segyio, to convert it to a numpy array. See here, for more details, instructions, and examples on using Segyio, refer to their GitHub page.
For the rest of this post, we assume you are working with the Netherlands Offshore F3 Block’s seismic data and its interpreted labels, as developed by the OLIVES lab at Georgia Tech. For more information on this work, refer to the Github page here. Notice that converting the data to numpy format will make it lose tertiary information contained in the headers of the original segy file. But this is OK, since we are usually interested just in the amplitudes and labels for the specific purpose of visualization. Use the following code snippet to load both the raw seismic amplitudes and the associated rock facies labels as 3-D arrays.
seismic_path = 'data/train/train_seismic.npy'
label_path = 'data/train/train_labels.npy' seismic = np.load(seismic_path) # load 3-D seismic
labels = np.load(label_path) # load 3-D labels
Setting up a Figure Object
Creating a visualization instance with Mayavi consists of two components: setting up a figure environment and secondly, populating this figure with views of the data one is interested in. This concept is somewhat similar to how one performs visualization with the popular Matplotlib library in Python. Set up the figure object using the code below:
fig = mlab.figure(figure='seismic', bgcolor=(1, 1, 1), fgcolor=(0, 0, 0))
Viewing Inline/Crossline/Depth Slices in the Seismic Volume
This is where we add views of data to the figure object we just created. To view orthogonal slices in 3-D data arrays, the function in mlab API we are interested in is volume_slice. It takes as input the data array, the index of the slice one is interested in, the orientation of the slice, and the figure object to populate with this information. You may add as many slices in either of the three orientations you want. The slice index specifies the slice you will be looking at the first time the figure pops into view, but being interactive, you may then drag it to the position you want. See the code snippet below for visualizing slices along each of the crossline, inline, and depth orientations in the seismic volume we loaded above.
scalars = seismic # specifying the data array mlab.volume_slice(scalars, slice_index=0, plane_orientation='x_axes', figure=fig) # crossline slice mlab.volume_slice(scalars, slice_index=0, plane_orientation='y_axes', figure=fig) # inline slice mlab.volume_slice(scalars, slice_index=0, plane_orientation='z_axes', figure=fig) # depth slice mlab.show()
This produces the visualization shown below:
Figure 2: Inline, Crossline, and Depth slices visualized with mlab’s volume_slice function
You may want to explore different colormaps to suit best your application. One may also add information to the axes in this figure by a slightly modified version of the code snippet above:
scalars = seismic # specifying the data array mlab.volume_slice(scalars, slice_index=0, plane_orientation='x_axes', figure=fig) # crossline slice mlab.volume_slice(scalars, slice_index=0, plane_orientation='y_axes', figure=fig) # inline slice mlab.volume_slice(scalars, slice_index=0, plane_orientation='z_axes', figure=fig) # depth slice mlab.axes(xlabel='Inline', ylabel='Crossline', zlabel='Depth', nb_labels=10) # Add axes labels mlab.show()
This produces the figure below:
Rendering Multiple Data Arrays on the Same Figure
Finally, one may render multiple data arrays onto the same figure object for an even more enriching experience with visualization. The interpretations of the seismic volume we used label all voxels in salt domes as the integer ‘3’. This is done by invoking the mlab API’s function, contour3d, that plots iso-surfaces in a 3-D volume given a list of integer(s) associated with the iso-surface(s). The following snippet of code overlays the interpreted salt dome in the migrated dataset on to the raw seismic amplitudes, producing the figure shown underneath:
scalars = seismic # specifying the data array mlab.volume_slice(scalars, slice_index=0, plane_orientation='x_axes', figure=fig) # crossline slice mlab.volume_slice(scalars, slice_index=0, plane_orientation='y_axes', figure=fig) # inline slice mlab.volume_slice(scalars, slice_index=0, plane_orientation='z_axes', figure=fig) # depth slice mlab.contour3d(labels, contours=[3], figure=fig) # plot isosurface mlab.show()
Summary
Visualization is a crucial tool in any interpreter’s toolbox. Conventional seismic visualization packages offer several inconveniences when it comes to visualizing migrated seismic volumes, especially for data science workflows. This is where the popular visualization package, Mayavi comes in, providing several handy features for quickly and efficiently setting up visualizations of migrated seismic volumes and their interpretations. We walked you through using some of these features in a Python environment. We hope this post proves beneficial to interpreters and non-experts in their interpretation workflows involving Python. | https://towardsdatascience.com/visualizing-3d-seismic-volumes-made-easy-with-python-and-mayavi-e0ca3fd61e43 | ['Ahmad Mustafa'] | 2020-12-28 23:08:27.404000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Seismic Surveys', 'Interpretation', 'Visualization'] |
Create a Network Graph in Power BI | Data Science / Power BI Visualization
Create a Network Graph in Power BI
A quick start guide on building a network graph with a few simple clicks of the mouse.
Photo by Alina Grubnyak on Unsplash
In a previous article, I wrote a quick start guide to visualize a Pandas dataframe using networkx and matplotlib. While it was fun to learn and explore more about network graphs in Python, I got to thinking about how to present the results to others who don’t have Python or Jupyter Notebook installed in their machines. At TaskUs, we use Power BI for most of our reporting so I began to search for a custom Power BI visualization that can take the data and transform it into a meaningful network graph.
Enter Network Navigator.
Network Navigator is a custom visual in Power BI that is created by Microsoft. It allows you to “explore node-link data by panning over and zooming into a force-directed node layout (which can be precomputed or animated live).”¹ In this post, we’ll walk through the steps needed to create a network graph using the custom visual.
First, let’s get our data. You can download the sample dataset here. Then, we could load the data into Power BI Desktop as shown below:
Select Text/CSV and click on “Connect”.
Select the file in the Windows Explorer folder and click open:
Click on “Transform Data”.
Click on “Use first Row as Headers”.
Click on “Close & Apply”.
Next, find the three dots at the end of the “Visualizations” panel.
And select “Get more visuals”.
Point your mouse cursor inside the search text box and type in “network” and hit the “Enter” key and click on the “Add” button.
Wait a few moments and you’ll see the notification below. Click on the “OK” button to close the notification.
You’ll see a new icon appear at the bottom of the “Visualizations” panel as shown below.
Click on the new icon and you will see something similar to the picture below.
With the new visual placeholder selected, click on “Reporter” and “Assignee” in the “Fields” panel and it will automatically assign the columns as the Source and Target Node.
Let’s add labels by clicking on the paintbrush icon.
Click on “Layout” to expand the section and scroll down until you see the “Labels” section.
Click on the toggle switch under “Labels” to turn it on
and voila!
That’s it! With a few simple clicks of the mouse, we’re able to create a network graph from a csv file. | https://towardsdatascience.com/create-a-network-graph-in-power-bi-be232991ee06 | ['Ednalyn C. De Dios'] | 2020-05-23 06:27:33.442000+00:00 | ['Network Graph', 'Visualization', 'Power Bi', 'Data Science', 'Towards Data Science'] |
Why Bill Gates Creates Content? | Why Bill Gates Creates Content?
You are the third richest person in the world and you write blog articles and film YouTube videos. Why is that?
Bill Gates is now the third richest and maybe one of the busiest person in the world. Usually we see that the people who run ultra-rich and big organizations aren’t dealing with making videos or blogging, but Bill is different: He has been producing content both on his own website and in various platforms such as YouTube.
It was interesting to me at first for someone like Bill Gates to deal with this kind of work. After all, consider the financial value of Bill Gates’ time spent producing content! But when I thought a little more, I started to think the situation was very different.
The change of my mind started with Bill Gates’ little essay “Content is The King”. Bill wrote this essay in 1996: When the big digital publishing companies weren’t fully formed and personal creators weren’t fully exist. This article reveals Bill’s vision and reasons of his current content production.
Let me tell you from the start. Bill’s content production is not based on such a large purpose. Bill told the New York Times the reason why he started publishing the contents of the book recommendations:
A few years ago I started thinking it would be fun to share some of these notes with the public, I have always loved reading and learning, so it is great if people see a book review and feel encouraged to read and share what they think online or with their friends. Bill Gates
Bill Gates’ reasons for publishing content are actually quite similar to the reasons we produce content. (Some of us also do content production to earn money, of course.)
For the remainder of the article, I’ll cover Bill’s reasons for producing content. You will see that these reasons are actually everybody’s reason. I hope that Bill’s reasons become your reasons.
Just For Writing
Yes, just for writing. Writing can be relaxing and fun. For example, some of Bill’s posts tell about funny events from his life such as Warren Buffet doing pushups on his 50th birthday.
Also, everyone needs writing: Writing is a great tool both for fun and for improving our storytelling. After all, all you need to do to be a better narrator is storytelling, right?
Improving Communicate With People
Especially with COVID-19, many people started to come up with absurd conspiracy theories like “Bill Gates helped the spread of the coronavirus”. This is not a good perception for Bill.
His contents can help change the way people view him. (Although I don’t personally think that such people’s views on any subject might change, maybe it is.)
At the same time, due to the large number of people reading and watching Bill Gates’ content, anything he proposes can grow very quickly. For example: Khan Academy. You probably know Khan Academy, but let me explain it briefly for those of you who don’t: “Khan Academy is an American non-profit educational organization created in 2008 by Sal Khan, with the goal of creating a set of online tools that help educate students.”
Khan Academy made its first big leap forward in 2010 when Bill Gates said he was using Khan Academy for his children’s education and now Khan Academy is one of the largest online education organizations in the world! This is a very huge power, right?
To Inspire People
People like Bill take part in many projects to set an example for other people: interviews, documentaries, donations, etc.
Creating content is indeed a great tool to set an example for, inspire other people. As a matter of fact, Bill shares a lot of content on his blog and YouTube channel explaining what they are doing at his own organization, Bill & Melinda Gates foundation. Frankly, I can say that Bill’s content like this is inspiring for me as well.
Branding
Just as every company needs a very good branding, we humans also need a good brading. If we can imagine that a company with Bill’s personal net wealth can enter Fortune 500 companies, the “Bill Gates” brand can be regarded as a huge company. That’s why, Bill Gates needs a very good branding.
His contents are very important for his branding. Consider Bill Gates’ current book recommendations: Bill is one of the best known book reviewers in the world right now. I can truly say that his blog posts have changed the book publishing world. You can read this article about this topic.
Maybe you know Bill Gates started a new Podcast with famous actor Rashida Jones. The podcast is called “Bill Gates and Rashida Jones Ask Big Questions”. While I was writing this article, they only published 5 episodes. This is really new podcast. Actually, I like it. I recommend the podcast to all. The most interesting thing about this podcast for me is that it belongs to “Gates Production”. Maybe, in the future, GatesNotes might actually turn to a publishing organization. Of course, none of us can know this for sure. | https://medium.com/notes-of-our-thoughts/why-bill-gates-creates-content-592b173aded2 | ['Can Balkaya'] | 2020-12-28 10:15:21.970000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Bill Gates', 'Writing', 'Content Creation', 'Pandemic'] |
Sometimes I Feel Like I’m Losing My Voice | Photo by Arantxa Treva via Pexels
Sometimes I Feel Like I’m Losing My Voice
A writer’s lament
And I know it’s the overwhelming year that’s nearly behind me and feverishly thinking about the one ahead of me but as a writer, I cannot lose my voice. I am not talking about the physical sound from the use of my vocal cords but my writer’s voice — the authenticity that is me.
There’s pressure all around us. As creatives, we strive to pursue a place in the artistic world where we can be heard, but in a sea of sames, how can our differences stand out? The one thing I do not want to lose as it pertains to my craft is my uniqueness.
I do not want to lose myself in the sea of sames. I have worked hard to carve out space in this world for myself and my way of giving people the ideas that come to me as I toss and turn at night.
This — this writing thing is my freedom song. I write about my life. I write about what I wish my life was. I write about the beauty of the lives of others. And I write about the untruths and could-bes and would-bes of this world. There is a space of peace that shows itself when I am writing.
There’s pressure all around us. As creatives, we strive to pursue a place in the artistic world where we can be heard, but in a sea of sames, how can our differences stand out?
I lose myself in the words.
Of late, I have felt as if I am pulling words from the pit of my stomach, stretching them out to their true length, and delivering them to a wholesale warehouse for direct manufacturing. What I’m trying to say is, it’s been hard.
If you’re reading this and nodding your head in agreement, I wish I had the answer. What I have told myself to do is, “Practice more. Stress about things less. Just write, Tre.” It’s working. Little pep talks have become my friends.
Every so often, I have to remind myself that no matter how many clones there are touting the same advice, using the same template, and running around after each other to see who can push out the most articles per week, I must remain who I am.
Of late, I have felt as if I am pulling words from the pit of my stomach, stretching them out to their true length, and delivering them to a wholesale warehouse for direct manufacturing.
And who I am is my voice.
I have lasted five, almost six years on Medium and fourteen on WordPress, growing each year and giving a little bit more of myself at the same time too. I refuse to follow a cookie-cutter pattern or waddle behind a crowd chasing too-good-to-be-true outcomes.
I want to stand in line by myself, but I also want to share that line with others who will not strip the beauty of themselves away to put on the skin of those who lose themselves just to get ahead. I am here. I work hard to keep my presence pure. I don’t want to be like anyone else.
But sometimes I feel like I’m losing my voice. And should it seem like I have dear reader, I urge you to tap me on the shoulder and bring me back to earth.
Please. | https://medium.com/cry-mag/sometimes-i-feel-like-im-losing-my-voice-26b287e4300d | ['Tre L. Loadholt'] | 2020-12-07 17:02:56.406000+00:00 | ['Cry', 'Writing', 'Life', 'Essay', 'Creative Writing'] |
The Dark Crystal: A Story of Deep Healing | Poster illustration by Richard Amsel
Everyone has a few nostalgia laden favorite films from their past. As a child of the 80s, some of mine were The Neverending Story, Labyrinth, The Muppets Take Manhattan, and, of course, The Dark Crystal. Jim Henson’s fantasy epic from 1982 is coming into something of a revival since Netflix will be releasing a 10 part prequel series this Friday. To prepare for the series, I revisited the film this week for the first time in a decade. While I remembered the high fantasy elements, it’s only as an adult that I see past the adventure of the plot to its underlying heart.
For those unfamiliar with it, The Dark Crystal follows the story of a Gelfling, Jen, one of the last members of a race murdered because a prophecy says a Gelfling will kill the land’s ruling class, the Skeksis. The Skeksis live in a castle that houses the mystical Dark Crystal. They use the crystal to cheat death and have extended their lives for almost a thousand years. An upcoming celestial event, The Great Conjunction, will supercharge the crystal and allow the Skeksis to become immortal, if, that is, Jen is unable to repair the Dark Crystal by returning its lost shard.
Sound complicated? It is. To add to the basic plot, you have a cast of Mystics (the ancient antithesis of the Skeksis), Podlings (small scavenger creatures that are being enslaved), Kira (the only other surviving Gelfling), her racoon/dog Fizzgig, an army of giant beetle soldiers (the Garthim), and the oracle, Aughra.
The film opens with a voiceover explaining that the Crystal was shattered a thousand years before. The cracking of the Crystal created the two races of the Skeksis and the Mystics. These two species are connected by the Crystal and what happens to one member of the Skeksis will also happen to one member of the Mystics. We see this when the Skeksis emperor dies and the eldest Mystic, Jen’s surrogate father, dies at the same time. While the Skeksis emperor crumbles into dust, dissolving from his artificially lengthened life, the eldest Mystic simply fades away into a shimmer.
Before death, the eldest Mystic revealed that Jen must journey to see the oracle, Aughra, as she is the holder of the crystal shard that can repair the Dark Crystal. The Mystic conjures images for Jen from a pail and we see that Aughra’s home is in the shape of a great glass brain. This fact never fails to delight me.
Aughra herself remains one of my favorite characters in any film. She is an ancient female with rams horns curled under her wild gray hair. She has exaggerated breasts and buttocks, whiskers, and no time for your shit. She is a remnant of the deep past and lives in an observatory. Her machine which tracks the movements of the heavens lets her stride the line between science and magic.
One of the things that The Dark Crystal does best is synthesize our own world into itself allowing us to see our archetypes more clearly. Aughra isn’t just the fabled wise old woman, she is equal parts shaman and astronomer. For her the two realms are one, indeed, she finds it silly that everyone doesn’t know as much as she does. The world isn’t complicated from her point of view. Things are as they are and the faster you realize and accept that the better off you’ll be. Her horns are an a callback to some of the earliest goddess imagery and to Shamanism, a belief system that originated in part from the hallucinogenic urine of reindeer. Reindeer are the only species of deer where females also have antlers and Shamans the world over often incorporate antlers and horns into their ritual regalia.
While Jen puzzles over which of the crystal shards Aughra has given him to choose from (yet another Hero’s test), he realizes that the Mystics song is connected to the Crystal. He takes out his flute and plays the same tone causing the true shard to glow. Picking it up, he sees a vision of the Crystal being shattered. Ripped out of the past by the sound of breaking glass, the armored Garthim attempt to capture Jen.
He uses the rotating planetary model to evade them while Aughra, fearless as ever, commands the Garthim to leave. She’s unsuccessful and a lantern is knocked over in the scuffle. Her home now in flames, she orders Jen to flee with the shard. If he is unable to make his way to the Castle and repair the Crystal, the sacrifice of her home will have been for nothing. We see Jen outside the Observatory, fire engulfing the great glass brain that the Oracle used to inhabit.
Continuing on his journey, Jen must pass through a swamp. It’s a beautiful place where the natural order of life is observed. Strange plants and animals compete to eat each other with amusing results. Jen, unused to any environment outside the desert valley he grew up in, falls into a bog and is caught in the thick mud. As he tries to free himself, a cloaked figure approaches. This is Kira, the last female Gelfling.
She has the power to talk with animals and calls out to the creature buried in the bog. Jen is raised from the mud and when he and Kira touch, they discover they are telepathic and share their earliest memories. Both of them had been saved and raised in secrecy, each believing themselves to be the last of their kind.
Kira takes Jen to her surrogate family, the Podlings. These small, peaceful creatures are welcoming and have a raucous party for Jen. Though Kira’s racoon/dog, Fizzgig, is unsure about Jen, he too warms to the newcomer. Unfortunately, their revelry is short lived as the Garthim have tracked Jen into the swamps. They capture Podlings to be used as slaves while Kira takes Jen and escapes.
Kira consistently saves Jen for much of the second act. It is revealed that she, as a female, has wings and they come in quite handy escaping from the Garthim as she and Jen make their way into the castle. Fizzgig and Kira both are reluctant to enter but Jen, now finding his own courage, knows that the Crystal must be repaired. If the Skeksis are allowed to rule forever, their world will be laid to waste.
The two manage to make it to the Crystal just as the Great Conjunction begins. The world’s three suns are coming into alignment and the remaining Skeksis are all gathered. Kira, weakened, throws the shard to Jen who sits atop the Crystal. She is stabbed as the suns activate the Crystal. Jen plunges the shard back into place as the Mystics finally arrive at the Castle. The Skeksis shriek as the beams of the Crystal catch them, holding them in place as they merge together with the Mystics.
The resulting shining beings explain to Jen that, in their hubris, they had shattered the Crystal. The shining beings were split into their darker aspects, the cruel, greedy Skeksis, and their better impulses, the peaceful, gentle Mystics. These newly restored beings return Kira to life and leave the world they had split with their Crystal of Truth, darkened no more.
This is no doubt a complex tale. When it first debuted, parents were upset about the darker aspects of the film though it was able to recoup its $25 million production budget. For me, the dark parts of the film are what make it so memorable. I was two when the film came out but got it on VHS for my seventh birthday. The tape would no longer play by the time I was in high school.
The Dark Crystal is more than an epic fantasy. It’s a tale of deep healing. The shining beings shattered the Crystal of Truth with the lie that they knew better (hubris). They were smarter. They could control the Truth and make it what they wanted it to be. That initial lie caused their psyches to split and made the dark Skeksis, those that seek power at all costs, and the too gentle Mystics. I say too gentle because emotions like anger are necessary to be complete and whole. One doesn’t have to act on anger to hurt another, but it is foolish to deny it. That only leads to more problems.
Jen and Kira, the male and female aspects of the self that the Dark and Light aspects sought to control, are a necessary pairing. They are the literal representation of balance. Fizzgig is the ancient cautious “warning bell” that we each possess. Aughra is our intellect and intuition. All of them provide vital pieces necessary to heal the Dark Crystal, the lie, and have the shining beings admit their mistakes so that they can then be rectified.
It’s a powerful journey that the Gelflings undertake. In the fantasy realms of what could be seen strictly as a children’s film much deeper Truths are found. That, for me, is what makes Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal storytelling at some of its finest. | https://medium.com/cinesuffragette/the-dark-crystal-a-story-of-deep-healing-9d7abad18593 | ['Kate Taylor'] | 2019-08-29 03:11:26.845000+00:00 | ['The Dark Crystal', 'Fantasy', 'Review', 'Psychology', 'Film'] |
Honeybee Rights in Ancient Ireland | Ireland. The island of saints and scholars…and honey.
The ancient Celts considered beekeeping so important to the livelihood of the people and the fertility of the land that a list of laws and extensive legal rights were devoted solely to bees and their keepers. Called the “Bech Breatha” in Irish- the Bee Judgements, they were found in the indigenous legal system of the Celts known as Brehon Law. Out of all of the laws in the Brehon tract relating to land or agriculture, it was the role and significance of the honeybee that received the most detail. Eighteen pages of the ancient Brehon Law were devoted exclusively to bees.
Ancient writers noted the abundance of beehives in Ireland as compared to other places. Until the spread of cane and beet sugar to the country, honey was the only sweetener, and was also used as a preservative and medicine. The practice of beekeeping was widely understood; every home kept hives in their garden for honey and beeswax, and the detail of the Bech Breatha reflected the importance of bees.
The Bee Laws considered the importance of domestic hives and honey as well as naturally occurring wild swarms. The laws go into extraordinary detail. There were at least 6 different traditional terms in the Irish language for the varieties of wild bee swarms. For example, if you found a swarm around a neighbor’s house, and captured it to bring home to your hive, you had to give three quarters of the honey produced by the swarm to your neighbor. But if you found it in a tree, you could keep half of it. The four nearest farms to a domestic hive were entitled to a share of the honey each year, and a swarm of bees every fourth year. There were also specific considerations for wild hives and swarms found on cultivated land and on land not under cultivation. If you found a swarm on common land, you were required to give one ninth of the honey to your local chieftain (1).
They were seen as more than just an economic commodity; the Bech Breatha also regarded the bees themselves as having legal status. The custom was that bees should be treated as a member of the family. In Irish folklore there is the notion of “telling the bees”. They were considered easily offended, and must be told the news of any events in the family. Tradition states that in the event of a death of their owner, the funeral sweets must be shared with them, and the hive adorned with a black ribbon. This custom of ‘telling the bees’ all news was considered very important, as bees and the hive were powerful symbols of community and a connection to the otherworld, and were thought to be messengers of the gods to many cultures in ancient Europe.
The Bee friend by Hans Thoma
Destruction of bees was a very serious offense and a devastating misfortune. There were laws against stealing hives, and even compensation for those stung by another’s bees.
The “Bee Judgments” showed a progressive sensitivity to not only the honeybee, but also to the environment. Brehon Law derived from indigenous Celtic ancestral customs which had been passed on orally from one generation to the next. Brehon Law survived until the 17th century when it was superseded by English common law. It is unknown how long it had been in practice orally before it was written down in the 4th century in a document known as Senchus Mor.
The ideology behind the Brehon laws were unique and sophisticated. It was a complex and humane system of law, advanced for its time. The Brehon law system is the second oldest recorded law system only after Sanskrit. The body of law as a whole is often called “Brehon Law” but is originally called Fenechus, which means “that which relates to the Feine” the free classes that formed ancient Irish society (2).
They are believed to be the oldest and most egalitarian of legal systems in old Europe. The laws were administered by Brehons (Brithem in Irish), who came after the Celtic druids. They were wandering lawyers, whose role was to preserve and interpret law, and who remembered and recited the laws via poetry, much like in the Bardic and Druidic oral tradition. The position of a Brithem evolved from the job previously performed by the Celtic Druids; they were required to remember all of the laws, which took years of training and was a highly respected position in society.
Notably, the system was enforced by the people themselves, without needing a police force. This seems to suggest that the governance came from within the people’s intimate connection to the earth, governed by principles evidenced in nature which were universally acknowledged and agreed upon.
It’s no coincidence that a system of law deriving from Druidic wisdom would fiercely protect bees: Druids have always had a relationship to bees. This bond between bees and Druids is preserved in the ancient Scottish adage: “Ask a wild bee what the druids knew.”
Bees are considered sacred in the Druid tradition. The Druids of Northern Europe revered the bees for their ability to pollinate flowers and crops and produce the elixir of honey, which was regarded as sacred, as a precious gift from the goddess of the land herself.
Bees symbolize the work of the Druid. Like the bee that is guided by the sun, the Druid navigates by the light of her own higher self. She forages among the blossoms to bring nectar back to the tribe. She perfects her wisdom and then shares it for the benefit of all (3).
“Druids, bees and trees form a golden triad, each sharing in a relationship of vital mutualism, cooperation and symbiosis. Bees pollinate trees, and trees feed and house bees. Druids interpret, protect and nurture both trees and bees as sources of health, wealth, wisdom, and access to the faery world”(4).
In Celtic society, bees were believed to have secret knowledge, and transmit communications between ours and the otherworld (4). Bees were traditionally the messengers from the divine world. In the earliest known written literature of Ireland, the Song of Amergin, bees are referenced twice. The Druid poet Amergin spoke of all of the natural wonders of the Irish land once; the salmon, the boar, the ocean, the stag, the wind, the hawk, the thorn. It was only bees that were prominent enough to be referenced twice in his famous invocation. One line: “I am a tear the Sun lets fall”, is a metaphor for honey also seen in ancient Egypt, and in another, “ I am the queen of every hive”. This suggests the importance of the bee to the ancient Druid interpretation of the natural world.
This interpretation was more than just a mystical approach. It stemmed from a knowing that human survival is intricately entangled with the bees. There is an old Welsh saying, “The day the bees stop humming the world will end.”
This was a core value present in Celtic culture. Celtic spirituality understood that the relationship between the people and the land was essential for the health of both, and sought to emphasize the connection between ecology and holiness. Celts made no distinction between the spiritual and secular worlds, and believed in the importance of living in harmony with the natural world. This love of nature had its genesis deep in ancestral beliefs based in the sacredness of the Earth (5).
The Celtic peoples viewed human destiny as being intertwined with the destiny of the Earth. They sought fulfillment and holiness in intimacy with the larger Earth community, because they saw the Earth community as part of the larger dimension of their own being. They perceived themselves and their lives to be inextricably linked with the natural world.
As it was then, so it is now. Bees make life possible for the rest of us. We can’t live without them. We know know with scientific proof that bees play a vital role in our food web. About 75 percent of our key crops rely on insects for pollination. The ancient Celts were right: we are inextricably intertwined in a relationship that cannot be disentangled.
But fast forward to modern times; right now the honeybees and pollinating insects are in scary, rapid decline due to the pesticide use and commercial agriculture practices of the past hundred years. A 2013 paper in Nature found that if even 30 percent of a species is lost, the effects can be so devastating other species in that system can go extinct.
“If insects were to vanish,” Harvard entomologist E.O. Wilson said, “the environment would collapse into chaos.”
Ancient Celtic spirituality, stemming from even more ancient ancestral wisdom, contains within it seeds of sacred knowledge about caring for the land. Due to their intimate relationship with the environment, learning about the ways in which the ancient Celts interpreted the natural world could provide wisdom needed to respond to the current environmental crisis.
Relationship was the heart of ancient Celtic spiritual culture. Justice was based on and derived its authority from an understanding of right relationship. For the Celts, who saw no real distinction between secular and spiritual matters, true authority came from the spirit of sovereignty held within the land; to the life-giving power and the fertility of the land itself. To live well required one to live in right relationship with oneself, with other people, with the land, and with the divine (5).
Bee Goddess from Rhodes, 7th Century BCE
When right relationship to another was evaded or ignored, a breach of justice occurred. Resolving the issue involved an acknowledgement of the breach, and taking action that led to right relationship.
With no precedent in the current collective consciousness for bees having legal status, and cultural norms that tend to ignore insects entirely, it can be difficult to find effective solutions to the problem of declining honeybee populations. Looking back into indigenous mentalities about bees could provide insight and wisdom. Instead of trying to find a solution within the current paradigm, a new thought paradigm could be created to bring the needed changes to fruition.
Taking a page from the Bech Breatha, bees would be respected for the ecosystem services they provide, and a new restorative economy could be conceived. The transition from an extractive economy into a restoration economy would necessarily be underpinned by an emerging collective awareness that all is interconnected.
As Marriane Williamson described it, “You must master a new way to think before you can master a new way to be.”
Indigenous cultures around the world have left us with a legacy of wisdom to pull from. A treasure map to rekindle a reverence for the holiness of ecology. What would it look like to revive ancient Earth centered laws such as the “Bech Breatha” and bring them into practice in modern society today?
Giving honeybees rights and legal status would mean it would be illegal for any agricultural practice to harm them or jeopardize their habitat. It would once again be a grave offense to harm honeybees, along with all of the attendant social shame that such an offense would bring. A restoration economy would become the economy that provided social capital, knowing that living in right relationship with honeybees and other pollinators was living in right relationship with oneself. Much in the same way the Brehon Laws did not need a police force, because the people lived in a culture which fostered right relationship.
A pesticide company making profit from harming bees and fertility would once again be seen as an egregious and unlawful offense; an affront to the very spiritual laws of the Earth, and restitution to bring the act back into harmony and right relationship would be demanded. Following the precedent from indigenous law of the Celts, chemical companies would be made to pay restitution for damages done to honeybees and to the people’s chance at abundance, which is intimately tied to the fertility of the land.
That money could then be funneled back to beekeepers, who could then work to replenish the health of their colonies and increase fertility on their land. Research could be funded on creating and designing hives that foster their well being. Educational programs on the necessity and interconnectedness of our elders the bees could be designed to be taught in schools. All of which would increase the fertility of the land, and the future prosperity of its citizenry.
“Your mind is the garden, your thoughts are the seeds, the harvest can either be flowers or weeds.”
If we plant the seeds of Earth-based justice and economy now, perhaps the next generation will be the ones to water them into being, journeying through the past to create a golden future, the way the honeybee follows the sunlight to make her magical honey. The ancient past provides a rich prologue; a winding path back to the sacred, instinctual knowledge of those who came, and thrived, before us.
Want to Help Protect the Honeybee?
If you’re interested in learning about beekeeping hands-on, check out the many WWOOF farms in the US that offer educational opportunities by visiting WWOOFUSA.org
If you’re interesting in getting involved politically, check out Bee City USA, an intiative of the Xerxes Society, whose aim is “Making the World Safer for Pollinators, One City at a Time.” | https://medium.com/swlh/honeybee-rights-in-ancient-ireland-e8f480206210 | ['Jennifer Tarnacki'] | 2020-08-31 16:02:54.890000+00:00 | ['Bees', 'Ireland', 'Beekeeping', 'Outdoors', 'Environment'] |
Use Min-Width, Not Max-Width, in Your CSS | Use Min-Width, Not Max-Width, in Your CSS
Your websites should be mobile-first, not mobile-last
I am unhealthily addicted to inspecting the websites I visit. Maybe it’s a sign that I’ve been a developer for too long, but I really do enjoy dissecting the websites I stumble upon as I surf the internet. Sometimes I’m stuck dismembering a website for hours, ultimately forgetting why or how I even arrived at the website in the first place.
You learn a lot when you dissect other peoples’ websites. I’ve seen clever JavaScript optimizations and mind-blowingly genius CSS hacks. But you at least see a lot of terrible code. I would like to talk about one common design flaw that I’ve seen far too frequently. Max-width.
Let’s say you want your images to have a width of 100% on mobile devices and 50% on desktop. You could accomplish this by typing this CSS:
An example of desktop-first CSS. The default width of images is set to 50%, and is then increased to 100% for devices with a small screen width. The image is made by the author.
You could also enter this CSS and achieve the same result:
An example of mobile-first CSS. The default width of images is set to 100%, and is then decreased to 50% for devices with a large screen width. The image is made by the author.
In the first example, we set the width of images to be 50% by default but increase the width to 100% for devices with small screen widths. Meanwhile, in the second example, we default at a width of 100% for images and then reduce the width to 50% for devices with large screen widths.
These two pieces of code will produce the same result. As such, you might feel inclined to believe that choosing between them is arbitrary. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The website will take longer to load for whichever device has to load more CSS rules. In the first example, mobile devices have to load two rules, while desktop devices need to read only one. In the latter, the roles are switched. The first example is desktop-first, while the latter is mobile-first. | https://medium.com/swlh/use-min-width-not-max-width-in-your-css-e6898fcf6a78 | ['Jacob Bergdahl'] | 2020-11-17 10:33:46.084000+00:00 | ['CSS', 'Technology', 'Development', 'Programming'] |
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