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Don’t Let Your Self-Narrative Fool You | Teasing apart luck from skill in our decisions is difficult.
While most outcomes involve a combination of both, our improvement requires identifying what we should have done differently and what was out of our control.
Trouble is, when we try to identify what we did right or wrong, and what was good or bad luck, we tend to find ways of maintaining our positive self-image.
We want to look good in our own eyes and sometimes telling the truth would jeopardise that image. Unfortunately, that delusion can get in the way of becoming even better.
Where to Place the Blame
In 1958, Fritz Heider detailed the attribution theory, describing the ways people attach causes to actions and events. He lumped them into two categories:
External, situational causes.
Internal, dispositional causes.
A student who does poorly on a test might say the teacher doesn’t like them (external) or that they didn’t study hard enough (internal).
Related to the attribution theory is the fundamental attribution error — we overemphasise the internal causes of others’ behaviour. However, when we examine our own failings, we tend to look towards external causes.
The student will blame the teacher, the teacher will blame the student.
At least, that’s how it happens for bad outcomes. The narrative can flip when it comes to good outcomes, in which case the fundamental attribution error becomes the self-serving bias.
Rose-Tinted Glasses
The self-serving bias suggests that, when outcomes go our way, we readily accept their causes as being internally generated.
Our intuitions here are usually not inclined towards realism, but in keeping our personal narrative pleasant and comfortable.
They do this by convincing us:
our beliefs are correct
good outcomes are due to skill
bad outcomes are due to luck
we compare favourably to our peers
“The way we field outcomes is predictably patterned: we take credit for the good stuff and blame the bad stuff on luck so it won’t be our fault. The result is that we don’t learn from experience well,” writes Annie Duke.
(There is a caveat here: not everybody follows this pattern, particularly those with depression, or in cases of imposter syndrome. But in these cases it’s difficult to say we’re being more accurate, an overly pessimistic view is still in need of refinement — perhaps even more so.)
Narrative Adjustment
Given there are differences in our interpretations of our behaviour and others’ behaviour, it can be advantageous to switch places. Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes can help counterbalance the luck-skill seesaw.
When you fail or succeed, think about how you would interpret the same results had someone else been the recipient. What would you tell them if they came to you and asked for your interpretation?
Beyond imagination, you can ask someone else’s interpretation. Asking a neutral observer for their interpretation can yield a more accurate insight, as it’s not coloured in the feelings of failure or success.
What’s more, you can learn from others. Don’t assume their good results were lucky, find what they did right and adopt that behaviour into your own decision-making toolkit.
To improve your decision-making, Annie Duke recommends practising:
giving credit where it’s due
admitting mistakes
finding mistakes in good outcomes
being a good learner
“If we put in the work to practice this routine, we can field more of our outcomes in an open-minded, more objective way, motivated by accuracy and truthseeking to drive learning.” — Annie Duke
Knowing luck from skill will help you learn more efficiently. You’ll know what to practice and what to ignore. You’ll be less likely to make unnecessary adjustments or dismiss problems.
Don’t trust your gut reaction in these matters, dig a little deeper, be honest with yourself, and you might learn something new. | https://medium.com/understanding-us/dont-let-your-self-narrative-fool-you-97e022458fee | ['Sam Brinson'] | 2020-07-10 14:43:01.707000+00:00 | ['Skills', 'Bias', 'Luck', 'Self Improvement', 'Psychology'] |
Getting Started With FastAPI | Rest APIs are beautiful pieces of software that enable applications to communicate with a database or with other software very effectively.
The kind of operations which you can perform are as follows are GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, TRACE, etc. The GET method is generally used for fetching some information from the backend. For example, if an app (web/phone) wants to fetch some information from the database, it will use the GET method. POST is used for creating new information. PUT is used for updating already existing records. DELETE, as the name suggests is used for the deletion of records in a database. The TRACE method is used for debugging purposes and used for checking what is received on the other end when a request is invoked.
Since ages FLASK has been the most famous python framework for creating REST services. It is easy to use and deploy and can be used effectively for creating production-grade microservices.
FLASK has its own set of disadvantages though. It is not suitable for large applications. No admin site support. Does not provide any authentication mechanism. Lacks the powerful ORM tool which allows CRUD operations with any database.
Recently, some extremely good men out there have come up with brand new framework for Python to mitigate the issues mentioned above, called FastAPI
The makers and users of this framework claim that the APIs created from FastAPI are literally very fast. As fast as Node and Go based Rest APIs.
The official FastAPI website has multiple testimonials from developers working in major tech firms proving the effectiveness of this framework.
Without much ado let’s go ahead and write a few APIs using this brand new framework and see it in action.
Use pip to install fastapi and uvicorn as shown in fig 1 below. Uvicorn is ASGI server which we will be using for production. | https://medium.com/swlh/getting-started-with-fastapi-7774e6afe2e4 | ['Abhishek Bose'] | 2020-09-10 03:58:12.844000+00:00 | ['Fastapi', 'Python', 'Api Development', 'Rest Api'] |
What Compels Us to Write | What Compels Us to Write
Answering The Call
Photo credit: RetroSupply in UnSplash
I have always been drawn to the written word. Like most writers, I am a voracious consumer of books.
I read for information on most days because my day job demands it. My most content state is whenever I have a book in my hand. The pleasure that I get from soaking into a beautifully told story is immense.
Probably also like most writers, I have always felt a calling to join the guild. Growing up where I did, the title of ‘Writer’ failed to make the list of viable ways of making a living.
In my late teens, I was introduced to the world of black fiction writers. I revelled in the worlds created by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Ayi Kwei Armah and Chinua Achebe.
It took until my early twenties to discover the works of black, female writers. For reasons not limited to an under-representation of minority works in the publishing world and less-developed supply chains in developing countries, I was late to the party.
But, what a stroke of luck!
Being late to the party meant that I had loads of catching up to do. I devoured as many books as I could as quickly as I could — and I haven’t stopped since.
Half of A Yellow Sun
Girl, Woman, Other
How Long Til Black Future Month
The Colour Purple
The Bluest Eye
Parable of The Sower
…the list is wonderfully endless! | https://medium.com/swlh/what-compels-us-to-write-31ba29fa7fdc | ['Selali Onuoha'] | 2020-07-25 21:55:32.344000+00:00 | ['Innovation', 'Self', 'Self Improvement', 'Life Lessons', 'Writing'] |
How To Use Color In UI Design Wisely to Create A Perfect UI Interface? | Whenever found an interface that looks nice, clean and elegant, I save it. Now I have a collection of more than 100 UI interfaces. After learning, making use of or simply viewing it again and again, I finally realized something in common. It is always the color that steals my heart at the very first look. So here, I’d like to make a conclusion about how to use color in UI design wisely. A serious note first, what I wrote can’t turn you into an excellent UI designer magically, but I promise you’ll learn something here. If this is actually useful, please leave me a comment.
1. The magic power of color
Color can speak, as powerful as language. You just can’t argue me about that. Think back whenever you encounter a site or a product, it is the visual appearance, which largely depends on color, that always leaves you the very first impression.
So, what color can do actually?
1) Reflect the personality of a brand
Color can set the basic tone,mood, connotation and conception of a brand or a product. A research made by CCICOLOR says that users only take 90 seconds to estimate products online, and between 62% and 90% of the judgment of their initial view is upon the colorscheme.
2) Achieve better user experience
The right choice of color can support better readability of the information. Beside, it can increase usability sharply, such as strengthencall-to-actions, enhance navigation, stimulate intuitive interactions, satisfy aesthetic needs and visual solutions. In all, to create clear and harmonious style that meets users’ needs.
3) Influence the purchasing decision
According to Kissmetrics, the visual appearance of a product is the key factor influencing consumers’ purchasing decisions. Also, research from QuickSprout indicates that 90% of all product assessments have to do with color. Nowadays, many companies take Colors, especially color in UI design, as one of their marketing strategy.
2. Fundamental concepts about colors
Each color hasformed its unique meaning and connotation in the long run of human life. Read the meaning of each language, please check here.
3. Tricks to use color wisely
1) Choose the right color in the right usage pattern
We can’t say a color is “bad-looking”, only you use it wrong, then it may look bad. Imagine this, if Mcdonald’s uses gray and black instead of yellow and red, you still have a hungry appetite? Women wear black dress and red lipstick at party, why?
It looks sexy and charming, that’s it.
Different color conveys different meanings and senses. Use it wisely means hit the 5 “rights”: choose the right color, at the right time, in a right usage pattern, with the right users, and target the right goals.
If you want to use color in UI design wisely, please pay attention to the above chart, I am serious. Unless you would like to take a big risk to be unique.
2) Pay attention to BLUE
Why talking about blue?
Just have a look at your most commonly used Apps or sites, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Safari, etc. What’s in there? Yes, you’ll see, they are all in blue. Various kinds of blue.
According the research, blue is the NO.1 color that women and men both like. Blue is like everywhere, in nature, in sites, in clothes, etc. and as I enter the words, I see the interface of Microsoft Word is in blue.
Blue is definitely a safe color that can cultivate user’s trust and be accepted, blue is a typical example of color in UI design. If you have no better choice, just use blue.
3) Color variations between the background and the elements
Check the following interface:
Regardless of it’s blue again, let’s focus on the variations. The theme color is Blue, and the other elements are darker color variations and brighter color variations. But in all, they look good, harmonious and work with each other.
How to do it?
Just one simple golden rule:
“ Darker color variations are made by lowering brightness and increasing saturation. Brighter color variations are made by increasing brightness and lowering saturation.”
This is echoing what others have said, you can check this excellent observation at the source.
4) Golden ratio in color proportion — The Golden (6:3:1) Rule
You can’t walk away from color combinations completely when doing UI interface design. To combine color in UI design is easy, but how to avoid chaos and overload? how to get rid of plain and stay on sophistication?
Remember in mind the 2 principles:
The first is: 6:3: 1 rule
The 60% + 30% + 10% principle is the best proportion to reach balance among colors. This criterion can work perfectly by cultivating a balance, neat, harmonious interface that brings pleasure to the users. Also, it can ease users’ eye to move comfortably from one point to the next.
The second: max 3 primary colors
This rules match with the The Golden (6:3:1) Rule. It’s also a good way to avoid chaos and keep in balance in your color scheme.
5) Color combinations and Complement: clean and eye-friendly
What matters when delivering a harmonious color scheme? There are several factor need to consider:
First, Tints, Shades, and Tones
based on a “hue”, you can create many changing variations on the color wheel. There is a trick: adding white then you can get a hint, black for a shade, and grey for a tone. And here, i suggest use single color scheme.
Second, Contrast
Color contrast is also a practical method of color in UI design. Contrast can evoke various emotional response from users. Colors on opposite sides of the color wheel can generate the strongest contrast, like black and white. Strong contrast can draw users’ concentration and tension; while light contrast can bring comfort and please by displaying a relaxing and casual design.
Be careful not to pile it on, or you are causing troubles and confusions to the user.
6) Black, white and elegant
Black is the strongest of all the neutral colors, while white is the most used background color. As mentioned above, those two are the greatest level of color contrast. Adopt black with white properly, you can create a UI interface that looking elegant. This color scheme is mostly used in website. Black can give a feeling of sophistication, and white space can create a sense of freedom and imagination.
7) Get inspiration from nature and art
Nature and art are the main resources of color inspiration. Just go outside, look at the sky, you’ll see the most various and natural blue. Color in nature is the best choice to create a feeling of user-friendly and natural. To extract color from nature can ease users’ eye and bring them the magic power of beauty. While art is the direct reflection of nature, so just make the most of it.
8) Color knows about gender
It’s like born this way, women don’t like gray, orange, and brown. They like blue, purple, and green, while men don’t like orange, purple and brown. Men like blue, green, and black. It’s definitely a disaster if you doing a sporting design in purple. Just remember, whenever you are targeting to men, choose the color that convey maleness. Similarly, use female color to do the design that mainly used by ladies.
And one more, pink is not the universally-loved female color!
4. Tools and templates
Tools and anything that can be useful can make things much easier. Here i picked some of the best UI design tools for choosing color palettes. They can be a big time saver when adopt color in UI design.
Coolors.co is a professional color picker. It allows you to lock your selected color and press space to generate palette. You can also upload images and then make a color palette from it. Coolors.co also provides you a picker to modify reference point.
Mockplus is a smart tool to do UI interface design. You can import directly all kinds of sample projects and templates with nice layouts and interfaces. The coolest thing is that you can use the common functional page templates to quickly build some specific pages including homepage, sign in/up page, setting page, help/about page, search page, etc. Also, the color picker inside and various properties allows you create ideal UI elements.
Paletton is a good tool for to pick color. It’s kinda similar to Kuler but the good thing is that you are available to more than 5 tones. This tool is especially useful when you have picked your primary colors and want to generate extra tones.
It is a tool for checking foreground and background color combinations of all DOM elements and determining if they provide sufficient contrast when viewed by someone having color deficits.
A note: Do remember the usability is everything
To use color in UI design wisely can create a gorgeous UI interface, but creating gorgeous UI interfaces is never the final destination. To achieve the excellent user experience goal that can make users’ life happier is the key. So, in perspective of color choices and usage in UI, designer should always remember that the interface should be highly usable and clear. What can do and what can’t in user-centered should always carry weight. | https://uxdesign.cc/how-to-use-color-in-ui-design-wisely-to-create-a-perfect-ui-interface-2af42f901f4 | ['Trista Liu'] | 2017-10-19 03:01:09.031000+00:00 | ['Design Thinking', 'Design', 'UI', 'Colors', 'User Experience'] |
AI & Critical Thinking — The Future of Jobs 2020 (WEF) | AI & Critical Thinking — The Future of Jobs 2020 (WEF)
Skill shortages are more acute in emerging professions. The Future of Jobs report maps the jobs and skills of the future, tracking the pace of change. — World Economic Forum
Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash
The primary source of this article is The Future of Jobs Report 2020
The Future of Jobs Report provides the timely insights needed to orient labor markets and workers towards opportunity today and in the future of work. Now in its third edition (2016, 2018 & 2020), the report maps the jobs and skills of the future, tracking the pace of change and direction of travel.
The most relevant question to businesses, governments, and individuals is not to what extent automation and augmentation of human labor will affect current employment numbers, but under what conditions the global labor market can be supported towards a new equilibrium in the division of labor between human workers, robots and algorithms.
The technological disruptions which were in their infancy in previous editions of the Future of Jobs Report (2016 & 2018) are currently accelerated and amplified alongside the COVID-19 recession, as evidenced by findings from the 2020 Future of Jobs Survey.
It also aims to shed light on the pandemic-related disruptions in 2020, contextualized within a longer history of economic cycles and the expected outlook for technology adoption, jobs, and skills in the next five years.
My objective here is provide a quick summary of the 163 page report, from a career management stand point. The best resource for you to read is the original report.
What should I do next?
The key takeaways below answers the question we all have: “What should I do next?” so that we are ready to meet the challenges and demands of tomorrow.
Focus on core skills: Artificial Intelligence & Cloud Computing
Artificial intelligence is finding the broadest adaptation among the Digital Information and Communications, Financial Services, Healthcare, and Transportation industries. Big data, the Internet of Things, and Non-Humanoid Robotics are seeing strong adoption in Mining and Metals. The Government and the Public Sector industry show a distinctive focus on encryption. The adoption of cloud computing, big data, and e-commerce remain high priorities for business leaders, following a trend established in previous years. However, there has also been a significant rise in interest in encryption, nonhumanoid robots, and artificial intelligence. This report projects that in the mid-term, job destruction will most likely be offset by job growth in the ‘jobs of tomorrow’ — the surging demand for workers who can fill green economy jobs, roles at the forefront of the data and AI economy, as well as new roles in engineering, cloud computing, and product development.
Focus on the “human” advantage: Critical Thinking
The top skills and skill groups which employers see as rising in prominence in the lead up to 2025 include groups such as critical thinking and analysis as well as problem-solving, and skills in self-management such as active learning, resilience, stress tolerance, and flexibility. The tasks where humans are expected to retain their comparative advantage include managing, advising, decision-making, reasoning, communicating, and interacting. The reallocation of current tasks between humans and machines is already in motion. The augmentation of work will disrupt the employment prospects of workers across a broad range of industries and geographies. New roles may emerge that are more adapted to the new division of labor between humans, machines, and algorithms. This set of emerging professions also reflects the continuing importance of human interaction in the new economy, with increasing demand for care economy jobs; roles in marketing, sales, and content production; as well as roles at the forefront of people and culture. In addition to skills that are directly jobs-relevant, during the COVID-19 context of 2020, an increasing emphasis within learner reskilling and upskilling efforts on personal development and self-management skills.
Bottomline
Emerging roles that will be in demand are roles such as:
Data Analysts and Scientists, AI and Machine Learning Specialists, Robotics Engineers, Software and Application developers, as well as Digital Transformation Specialists.
However, job roles such as Process Automation Specialists, Information Security Analysts, and Internet of Things Specialists are newly emerging among a cohort of roles that are seeing growing demand from employers.
The emergence of these roles reflects the acceleration of automation as well as the resurgence of cybersecurity risks/jobs.
Roles which are being displaced by new technologies:
Data Entry Clerks, Administrative and Executive Secretaries, Accounting and Bookkeeping and Payroll Clerks, Accountant and Auditors, Assembly and Factory Workers, as well as Business Services and Administrative Managers.
My Two Cents | https://medium.com/towards-artificial-intelligence/ai-critical-thinking-the-future-of-jobs-2020-wef-42fa0f5a6b80 | ['Rajesh Verma'] | 2020-12-10 02:27:46.496000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Jobs', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Careers', 'Critical Thinking'] |
Welfare Checks Turn Deadly: You Might Want to Think Twice Before Calling the Cops | “Anyone who cares for someone with a developmental disability, as well as for disabled people themselves [lives] every day in fear that their behavior will be misconstrued as suspicious, intoxicated or hostile by law enforcement.” — Steve Silberman, The New York Times
Think twice before you call the cops to carry out a welfare check on a loved one.
Especially if that person is autistic, hearing impaired, mentally ill, elderly, suffering from dementia, disabled or might have a condition that hinders their ability to understand, communicate or immediately comply with an order.
Particularly if you value that person’s life.
At a time when growing numbers of unarmed people are being shot and killed for just standing a certain way, or moving a certain way, or holding something — anything — that police could misinterpret to be a gun, or igniting some trigger-centric fear in a police officer’s mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to their safety, even the most benign encounters with police can have fatal consequences.
Unfortunately, police — trained in the worst case scenario and thus ready to shoot first and ask questions later — increasingly pose a risk to anyone undergoing a mental health crisis or with special needs whose disabilities may not be immediately apparent or require more finesse than the typical freeze-or-I’ll-shoot tactics employed by America’s police forces.
Just recently, in fact, Gay Plack, a 57-year-old Virginia woman with bipolar disorder, was killed after two police officers — sent to do a welfare check on her — entered her home uninvited, wandered through the house shouting her name, kicked open her locked bedroom door, discovered the terrified woman hiding in a dark bathroom and wielding a small axe, and four seconds later, shot her in the stomach.
Four seconds.
That’s all the time it took for the two police officers assigned to check on Plack to decide to use lethal force against her (both cops opened fire on the woman), rather than using non-lethal options (one cop had a Taser, which he made no attempt to use) or attempting to de-escalate the situation.
The police chief defended his officers’ actions, claiming they had “no other option” but to shoot the 5 foot 4 inch “woman with carpal tunnel syndrome who had to quit her job at a framing shop because her hand was too weak to use the machine that cut the mats.”
This is what happens when you empower the police to act as judge, jury and executioner.
This is what happens when you indoctrinate the police into believing that their lives and their safety are paramount to anyone else’s.
Suddenly, everyone and everything else is a threat that must be neutralized or eliminated.
In light of the government’s latest efforts to predict who might pose a threat to public safety based on mental health sensor data (tracked by wearable data such as FitBits and Apple Watches and monitored by government agencies such as HARPA, the “Health Advanced Research Projects Agency”), encounters with the police could get even more deadly, especially if those involved have a mental illness or disability.
Indeed, disabled individuals make up a third to half of all people killed by law enforcement officers.
That’s according to a study by the Ruderman Family Foundation, which reports that “disabled individuals make up the majority of those killed in use-of-force cases that attract widespread attention. This is true both for cases deemed illegal or against policy and for those in which officers are ultimately fully exonerated… Many more disabled civilians experience non-lethal violence and abuse at the hands of law enforcement officers.”
For instance, Nancy Schrock called 911 for help after her husband, Tom, who suffered with mental health issues, started stalking around the backyard, upending chairs and screaming about demons. Several times before, police had transported Tom to the hospital, where he was medicated and sent home after 72 hours. This time, Tom was tasered twice. He collapsed, lost consciousness and died.
In South Carolina, police tasered an 86-year-old grandfather reportedly in the early stages of dementia, while he was jogging backwards away from them. Now this happened after Albert Chatfield led police on a car chase, running red lights and turning randomly. However, at the point that police chose to shock the old man with electric charges, he was out of the car, on his feet, and outnumbered by police officers much younger than him.
In Georgia, campus police shot and killed a 21-year-old student who was suffering a mental health crisis. Scout Schultz was shot through the heart by campus police when he approached four of them late one night while holding a pocketknife, shouting “Shoot me!” Although police may have feared for their lives, the blade was still in its closed position.
In Oklahoma, police shot and killed a 35-year-old deaf man seen holding a two-foot metal pipe on his front porch (he used the pipe to fend off stray dogs while walking). Despite the fact that witnesses warned police that Magdiel Sanchez couldn’t hear — and thus comply — with their shouted orders to drop the pipe and get on the ground, police shot the man when he was about 15 feet away from them.
In Maryland, police (moonlighting as security guards) used extreme force to eject a 26-year-old man with Downs Syndrome and a low IQ from a movie theater after the man insisted on sitting through a second screening of a film. Autopsy results indicate that Ethan Saylor died of complications arising from asphyxiation, likely caused by a chokehold.
In Florida, police armed with assault rifles fired three shots at a 27-year-old nonverbal, autistic man who was sitting on the ground, playing with a toy truck. Police missed the autistic man and instead shot his behavioral therapist, Charles Kinsey, who had been trying to get him back to his group home. The therapist, bleeding from a gunshot wound, was then handcuffed and left lying face down on the ground for 20 minutes.
In Texas, police handcuffed, tasered and then used a baton to subdue a 7-year-old student who has severe ADHD and a mood disorder. With school counselors otherwise occupied, school officials called police and the child’s mother to assist after Yosio Lopez started banging his head on a wall. The police arrived first.
In New Mexico, police tasered, then opened fire on a 38-year-old homeless man who suffered from schizophrenia, all in an attempt to get James Boyd to leave a makeshift campsite. Boyd’s death provoked a wave of protests over heavy-handed law enforcement tactics.
In Ohio, police forcefully subdued a 37-year-old bipolar woman wearing only a nightgown in near-freezing temperatures who was neither armed, violent, intoxicated, nor suspected of criminal activity. After being slammed onto the sidewalk, handcuffed and left unconscious on the street, Tanisha Anderson died as a result of being restrained in a prone position.
And in North Carolina, a state trooper shot and killed a 29-year-old deaf motorist after he failed to pull over during a traffic stop. Daniel K. Harris was shot after exiting his car, allegedly because the trooper feared he might be reaching for a weapon.
These cases, and the hundreds — if not thousands — more that go undocumented every year speak to a crisis in policing when it comes to law enforcement’s failure to adequately assess, de-escalate and manage encounters with special needs or disabled individuals.
While the research is relatively scant, what has been happening is telling.
Over the course of six months, police shot and killed someone who was in mental crisis every 36 hours.
Among 124 police killings analyzed by The Washington Post in which mental illness appeared to be a factor, “They were overwhelmingly men, more than half of them white. Nine in 10 were armed with some kind of weapon, and most died close to home.”
But there were also important distinctions, reports the Post.
“This group was more likely to wield a weapon less lethal than a firearm. Six had toy guns; 3 in 10 carried a blade, such as a knife or a machete — weapons that rarely prove deadly to police officers. According to data maintained by the FBI and other organizations, only three officers have been killed with an edged weapon in the past decade. Nearly a dozen of the mentally distraught people killed were military veterans, many of them suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of their service, according to police or family members. Another was a former California Highway Patrol officer who had been forced into retirement after enduring a severe beating during a traffic stop that left him suffering from depression and PTSD. And in 45 cases, police were called to help someone get medical treatment, or after the person had tried and failed to get treatment on his own.”
The U.S. Supreme Court, as might be expected, has thus far continued to immunize police against charges of wrongdoing when it comes to use of force against those with a mental illness.
In a 2015 ruling, the Court declared that police could not be sued for forcing their way into a mentally ill woman’s room at a group home and shooting her five times when she advanced on them with a knife. The justices did not address whether police must take special precautions when arresting mentally ill individuals. (The Americans with Disabilities Act requires “reasonable accommodations” for people with mental illnesses, which in this case might have been less confrontational tactics.)
Where does this leave us?
For starters, we need better police training across the board, but especially when it comes to de-escalation tactics and crisis intervention.
A study by the National Institute of Mental Health found that CIT (Crisis Intervention Team)-trained officers made fewer arrests, used less force, and connected more people with mental-health services than their non-trained peers.
As The Washington Post points out:
“Although new recruits typically spend nearly 60 hours learning to handle a gun, according to a recent survey by the Police Executive Research Forum, they receive only eight hours of training to de-escalate tense situations and eight hours learning strategies for handling the mentally ill. Otherwise, police are taught to employ tactics that tend to be counterproductive in such encounters, experts said. For example, most officers are trained to seize control when dealing with an armed suspect, often through stern, shouted commands. But yelling and pointing guns is ‘like pouring gasoline on a fire when you do that with the mentally ill,’ said Ron Honberg, policy director with the National Alliance on Mental Illness.”
Second, police need to learn how to slow confrontations down, instead of ramping up the tension (and the noise).
In Maryland, police recruits are now required to take a four-hour course in which they learn “de-escalation tactics” for dealing with disabled individuals: speak calmly, give space, be patient.
One officer in charge of the Los Angeles Police Department’s “mental response teams” suggests that instead of rushing to take someone into custody, police should try to slow things down and persuade the person to come with them.
Third, with all the questionable funds flowing to police departments these days, why not use some of those funds to establish what one disability-rights activist describes as “a 911-type number dedicated to handling mental-health emergencies, with community crisis-response teams at the ready rather than police officers.”
In the end, while we need to make encounters with police officers safer for people with suffering from mental illness or with disabilities, what we really need — as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People — is to make encounters with police safer for all individuals all across the board.
Source: https://bit.ly/2mndta1 | https://john-w-whitehead.medium.com/welfare-checks-turn-deadly-you-might-want-to-think-twice-before-calling-the-cops-7116cf97227c | ['John W. Whitehead'] | 2019-09-24 19:13:03.798000+00:00 | ['Special Needs', 'Politics', 'Mental Health', 'Welfare Checks', 'Police'] |
‘The Plot Against America’ Is Forcing Me To Confront Anti-Asian Racism | I felt that way until last night, when I watched the season finale of “The Plot Against America”, a show created by David Simon and Ed Burns about a dystopian American history if Charles Lindbergh, an isolationist anti-Semite, won the 1940 presidential election against Franklin D. Roosevelt. An adaptation of the 2004 Phillip Roth novel, the show quickly makes a turn supporting Lindbergh as a national hero to a dystopian reality where Jews are attacked and killed openly without any intervention from law enforcement or Lindbergh himself.
Some people watching the show may think that such a reality could never happen. However, you and I both know that such a reality absolutely could happen is happening to some degree. In “The Plot Against America,” a high-profile radio personality campaigning in an election against Lindbergh is assassinated in Kentucky. Lindbergh, the aviator who famously flew solo across the Atlantic Ocean, flies to Louisville and makes no public statement against the assassination and no denunciation against the violence and hate Jews face across the country.
The main family, the Levins, a working-middle class Jewish family living in Newark, are divided on Lindbergh. While Bess and Herman, the patriarch and matriarch of the family, stand tall against Lindbergh and his silence on antisemitism, the feelings of the rest of the family are more complicated. Sandy, the oldest son, sees Lindbergh as a hero and calls his parents “ghetto Jews” for their staunch opposition to them and their outspoken alarm to emboldened antisemitism. Bess’s sister, Evelyn, marries a rabbi named Bengelsdorf who openly supports who pushed Jews to assimilate more and openly supports Lindbergh. Before the Election of 1940, Bengelsdorf campaigns for Lindbergh and his support and loyalty become so strong that he and Evelyn end up becoming the token Jewish spokespeople for Lindbergh’s administration.
Like the Levin family depicted in “The Plot Against America,” each minority group has a very diverse range of views on how to handle racism, discrimination, and hate. For my entire life, Asian-Americans have had no paucity of ideological diversity. I have had many friends lament how college admissions have been racist against Asians, something I have spoken openly against. The same conversations have been had about supposedly biased medical school admissions.
I have never thought Asians have had it as badly as other minorities. We can walk down the street with almost no fear of being treated unfairly by law enforcement, and the cultural assumption of Asians is that we are “model minorities” who occupy the highest echelons of society through a fierce devotion to education and an unparalleled work ethic. As much as these assumptions may be limiting, we don’t have to worry about our safety. We don’t have to worry about our lives.
It wasn’t until this period that those assumptions finally went challenged. And it wasn’t until I watched “The Plot Against America” that those assumptions went seriously challenged.
In the show, Bengelsdorf is so much of a Lindbergh sympathizer that he introduces a bill through Congress named “Homestead 42,” a bill advocating for the relocation of Jews to the heartland of America. He constantly reassures people that Lindbergh does not stand by attacks against Jews and violence against Jewish-owned businesses, even though Lindbergh has made no such declaration himself. In one particularly frightening scene in the last episode, Herman and Sandy are driving through a part of the Midwest when a Klansman steps in front of their car, and slowly walks in front of it while staring Herman down. Sandy is shaking and Herman is reaching for his gun, before thankfully nothing happens. Even then, Bengelsdorf stood by Lindbergh.
I wondered whether my attitudes made me a Bengelsdorf. No, I don’t openly endorse Trump’s comments about the Coronavirus being a “Chinese virus,” but I also don’t speak out too openly against them because it’s not a priority. When violence is being committed against a lot of Asians in this country, when many a lot Asians can’t walk across the street without fearing an ethnic slur or even violence being lodged against them, why am I still silent?
No matter where we stand, violence and hate have no place in America.
The onus should lie on our leadership to speak out against hate and protect our civil liberties, but Trump, like Lindbergh in “The Plot Against America,” has made no public declaration against anti-Asian racism, and we can’t expect him to either. If there are any heroes in “The Plot Against America,” it was the ordinary people who refused to accept anti-Jewish rhetoric and hate. It was a tour guide who told someone making an antisemitic comment to stop. It was a family in Kentucky that housed an orphaned Jewish child after his mother was killed by the KKK.
Likewise, this historic moment will rely on ordinary people to stop racism and hate, Asian or not. It will require me to stop being so silent and keeping my disgust private when seeing an instance of anti-Asian violence, and for me, as much as I may stand against the toxic nature of traditional Asian values, I love my family and the people in America who look like me struggling to find their place in American society.
The least I can do, personally, is to confront the hate and speak out against anti-Asian racism during this pandemic. In “The Plot Against America,” the German American Bund is empowered to gather and raise swastikas after Lindbergh’s election. The silence of our leadership in denouncing anti-Asian hate has empowered more people to not feel accountable for their actions. That silence comes from Asians like me as much as it comes from non-Asians.
No matter where we stand, violence and hate have no place in America.
It didn’t when Muslim and Arab-Americans in the United States were discriminated against after 9/11, and it doesn’t now when hate crimes against Asians are on the rise. | https://medium.com/an-injustice/the-plot-against-america-is-forcing-me-to-confront-anti-asian-racism-ce4e495d544 | ['Ryan Fan'] | 2020-05-30 07:18:17.657000+00:00 | ['Television', 'Equality', 'Self', 'Race', 'Coronavirus'] |
Building a Question Answering System | First we compare our question to each and every document in the used dataset and determine the 20 most likely documents to contain the answer.
Secondly we put all the paragraphs of these 20 documents together and, again, comparing those with the question and determine 20 paragraphs to likely contain the answer.
Lastly we take BERT (the model by google) and try to extract an answer for every paragraph and select the answer in which the confidence score is highest — the answer where the model is most certain to have found the right answer.
The first two steps are called retrieval and the last one reading.
For comparing documents or paragraphs to our question we build vectors on our question as well as every paragraph and document. Then we put every vector in a large vector room and determine the similarity between the vectors and the question vector by calculating the angle between those vectors via the cosine similarity.
But why does this work?
Because these vectors and their direction represent different features: They can indicate which words or which meaning/content a given text has. For example one direction can mean baseball and another natural language processing. „Machine learning“, for example, would definitely be more similar to „NLP“ than „baseball“.
We choose those documents/paragraphs for the next step which have the highest similarity.
For the reading part we took a pre-trained multi-lingual model by google and trained it to answer questions on the english wikipedia. As previous studies have shown the cross learning effects to other languages are significant. So we can answer questions in multiple languages.
Conclusion
As a result we can answer questions on a given database in multiple languages. The results were quite promising. It works more accurate and is even faster than existing solutions (like cdQA by PNB Paribas).
But while delivering promising results, our solution faces some challenges. In a customer facing situation one had to reduce the number of false positives to (almost) zero, because giving a false answer to a customer could have economical importance.
To accomplish this, there are different approaches. For example:
- Intern beta testing, to see which answers get asked in support,
- pre screening, to let the customer see only the right answers,
- using the model only monolingual,
- and of course training on questions specific to the given datasets.
It is an exciting development and promising path, that we, thanks to Serviceware and TU Darmstadt, were able to explore. We were astonished how far we could get in merely three months. Probably because of the good support of Serviceware and their amazing team.
A special thanks to Niklas and Adrian, as well as Luisa.
And of course to Ji Yune Whang, Joshua Bodemann, Marcel Nawrath, Sebastian Marcus Meier and Wladislav Miretski — we really have been a great team. | https://medium.com/swlh/building-a-question-answering-system-bb49c320140c | ['Tristan Ratz'] | 2020-09-08 19:39:50.827000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Question Answering', 'Python', 'NLP', 'Squad'] |
A Silent Storm | A Silent Storm
Conflicted, or torn?
( Photo by Patrick Gillespie on Unsplash)
The fight is constant;
Inside my mind, I scream.
I rage.
Stop talking!
It’s always the same;
You expect me to agree.
You desperately try to sway me.
I cannot.
I will not.
You hate;
You criticize and demonize.
What has this world done to you?
To create this un-caged bitterness?
I cannot fathom.
But I nod, I shrug.
I silently hope you will just stop talking.
Just, stop.
Go to sleep, leave me in peace.
Oh, if only I could go back.
I would tell myself: no!
Walk away!
Is it too late? | https://medium.com/imperfect-words/a-silent-storm-92e45f8b3e53 | ['Edie Tuck'] | 2019-09-07 23:03:01.737000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Confusion', 'Anger', 'Conflict', 'Desperation'] |
IBM Cognos Analytics + Watson Studio Cloud: Better Together | IBM Watson Studio Cloud empowers data science teams to cleanse data, build and deploy AI models on the fully managed IBM Cloud. Cognos Analytics is IBM’s premier business intelligence solution for sharing actionable insights across your organization.
It’s our pleasure to announce the release of the Cognos Analytics and Watson Studio Cloud Integration. Cognos Analytics on Cloud and Watson Studio on Cloud now work better together. We’re connecting Cognos Analytics users to Jupyter notebooks in Watson Studio Cloud. Watson Studio also offers a suite of additional data science capability including AutoAI, access to GPU’s and SPSS Modeler.
Why integrate?
We’ve been hearing a lot of feedback from our business analytics and data science communities around pain points that data scientists and business analysts encounter. Namely, data science and BI teams are often siloed in a way that makes it difficult to access a single version of the truth. With this integration, we aim to provide data science and BI teams a single ecosystem to make the most of your organization’s data.
How does it work?
The integration between the two offerings serves as a bridge to empower data scientists and business analysts to collaborate on the cloud. Our first release supports ETL and data shaping use cases and future releases will include embedding capabilities. Data scientists can easily script against governed Cognos data in Watson Studio and share results back into their Cognos ecosystem.
For step by step instructions, check out our code pattern that walks you through an examination of credit risk-related data using Watson Studio and Cognos Analytics.
IBM Watson Studio helps data scientists and analysts prepare data and build models at scale across any cloud. Get started building models for free with Watson Studio on Cloud Pak for Data as a Service. | https://medium.com/ibm-watson/ibm-cognos-analytics-watson-studio-cloud-better-together-ac011059878f | ['Hafsah Lakhany'] | 2020-07-23 01:34:41.331000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Watson Studio', 'Announcements', 'Business Intelligence', 'Data Science'] |
How to Deploy Java Library on Maven Github Packages | Easy read, easy understanding. A good writing is a writing that can be understood in easy ways
Follow | https://medium.com/easyread/how-to-deploy-java-library-on-maven-github-packages-95f2c2af7b24 | ['Miftahun Najat'] | 2020-07-22 06:10:04.805000+00:00 | ['Apache Maven', 'Github Package', 'Java', 'Github'] |
Hidden Opportunities for You on the Blockchain | Some part of me did regret for not investing in cryptocurrencies. But then I realised trading is not my thing. I want to do things where I have an advantage. I had invested in learning blockchain for the past few months. Now, I see opportunities that are no so obvious but rewarding. Since the field is emerging, only a few people understand blockchain to a deeper level. A majority understand it to the surface level. Some just heard about it and has no clue what it is. You can benefit a lot if you can gain deeper understanding of the technology. Blockchain For Business course on edX by the Linux Foundation is a good one. Blockchain Revolution is a recommended read. Once you have good understanding of the fundamentals you can teach others, bring in your own ideas or even launch them. Here are some opportunities you can benefit from.
Writing Stories
Credits : xkcd
There are a lot of articles with jargons about Blockchain, but stories are less. There is a good audience who is looking for simplified explanations. Since it’s an emerging market a lot of ideas are still to be imagined. You can write about Blockchain by thinking about its use cases in different industries. Eg. How will Blockchain impact the health industry? or the education industry? You can also write by combining ideas from different fields. Made to Stick is a great book that can help you explain topics simply in an understandable way.
Teaching with a Heart
Credits : xkcd
I explored a lot of Blockchain courses in Udemy, Blockgeeks, etc. Some of these courses are good. But, there is a room for improvement. It can be made much simpler, interesting and engaging. I recently came across CryptoZombies. It teaches you to write a smart contract by building a game. It was on top of HackerNews. There is a good demand for such courses.
Validating Ideas
Credits : xkcd
You have a startup idea. You know it works when you put it out on the market with a basic version of the product (MVP). Only when people pay you money you can be sure. Typically starting to accept payments can be difficult. You need to register a company, complete the legal process, etc. Cryptocurrencies help you prevent such hassles. You can create a wallet, set up the API and start accepting payments in no time.
Starting up
Credits : xkcd
It’s difficult for non-techies to use blockchain themselves. Startups like Coinbase are addressing this market. There are potential in ideas which can help non-techies take advantage of Blockchain solutions like generating a smart contract, managing ICO funding, etc. I was exploring ICO turnkey solutions, most of them are expensive. You have to raise a seed round to afford such solutions. An affordable solution is definitely a need.
Creating Open Source Blockchain Projects
Credits : xkcd
In the age of the internet, creating communities have become easy. When Vitalik Buterin’s ideas on Bitcoin was rejected, he started the Ethereum project with people who shared his ideas. If you don’t have ideas, I suggest going through the open source Blockchain based projects such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc. Think of ways it can be improved, or combine its ideas with a different domain. Ethereum ICO feature is a combination of decentralised payment system + crowdfunding.
Contributing to Open Source Blockchain Projects
Credits : xkcd
A senior employee from the Linux Foundation addressed the problem that they need more contributors on their Hyperledger project. It’s rewarding to contribute to open source projects because it reflects your skill set. Employers value such open source contributions. If I want to hire someone, the first thing I do is to search for their Github profile and check for contributions.
Starting a Non-Profit
Credits : xkcd
The biggest problem the Blockchain solves is that it eliminates the middleman. Producers get reasonable revenue for the work. In India middleman has exploited the agriculture industry. Non-Profits are trying to use the Blockchain to connect consumers and farmers directly on the Blockchain. Find an industry you are familiar which is exploited by a middleman. Experiment ways you can use Blockchain to eliminate them. There you go, you have an idea for a non-profit.
Ethereum is one of the biggest social enterprises on the Blockchain. They have created a platform which can benefit programmers, entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs, miners, etc.
Investors can fund the Non-Profits with the help of a smart-contract. This means if only certain milestones are achieved the funding will be released. This will make Non-Profits more responsible for the work they do. Blockchain also increases transparency to the system. You can find out who exactly benefits from your donation on the Blockchain.
Raising Funds
Credits : xkcd
It has been never easier to raise investments for your idea. The biggest problem ICOs solved is anyone anywhere could be an investor. You don’t have to go through the tedious process or generate a certain amount of revenue to be eligible. Scamsters has taken advantage of these. In the future probably there would be some mechanism to prevent fraud. If you have an idea. investment wouldn’t be your biggest hurdle. You just need to convey the idea to the right people to help you raise investments. Entrepreneurs usually have these skills in their blood.
Emerging market brings in a lot of opportunities. So does the Blockchain market. Investing money is not the only thing that can be rewarding. Investing in reading, writing, programming, teaching and developing ideas on Blockchain can be more rewarding. If you can invest in these hidden opportunities when the massive adoption of Blockchain occurs, you will become thought leaders. Claps Please 👏 😬 .
I will write 5 kickass stories for you in the coming days. Please help me reach my goal by buying me some coffees. Suggest me your story topics here.
You can also donate cryptocurrencies.
BTC
1NywHKugDFsM5kmxnkKmwe5zRE6Es9JbPg
BCH
16jU3FswL23sYFtyKbEh7gfUdXzJRFzYfx
ETH
0x847376BC3e7459B4324df33bc17b2335Aa14AF05 | https://medium.com/hackernoon/hidden-opportunities-for-you-on-the-blockchain-b110a1e5bbcb | ['Febin John James'] | 2018-02-01 20:51:46.623000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Innovation', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Blockchain', 'Bitcoin'] |
Why Cryptocurrency will be the Next Operating System for Capitalism | Money won’t last forever — that is guaranteed
It didn’t exist when exchange evolved to become a feature of humanities first economic system, nor will it persist when there is no advantage to using it. That time is approaching far quicker than traditionalists care to admit.
The reality is that our evolution to a largely cashless society is almost complete. I rarely have money on me physically, I can count on one hand the number of times I have had cash in my wallet in the last 3 years. Paper cash and metallic coins are prehistoric.
That is what those who carelessly brandish Crytocurrency a bubble fail to comprehend. Money doesn’t care what you think. It is simply a means of exchange. When it’s utility is replaced by something more efficient it will become extinct. Right now it is a protected species with a few purists trying to revive it. Unfortunately, the poachers are pulling down each pillar which underpinned the system one by one.
Soon it will fall.
With Fiat valuations no longer tied to any commodity — with it’s price being entirely independent and it’s valuation contingent on what we collectively believe it to be — give me one sincere and serious argument which convinces me fiat isn’t also a bubble. Give me a coherent reason why that if we stopped believing in the value of paper money today it would be worth anything tomorrow. Without resorting to the argument of historical precedent, the size and scale of central banks or the promise these institutions have made to maintain a certain valuation what do you have to argue against it?Fundamentally it is still a question of trust and belief. This forces you to consider that there might be a technological solution which forces a level or trust and believe that is inconceivable in a human led system.
You argument might still be that cryptocurrency is a bubble, but I raise you the perspective that all money is. It is a product of our beliefs married to our hope that it’s value will remain. Ditto stocks, shares and bonds.
Money is, and has been for the last 30 years, an intellectual construct centred on humanities trust in Governance — but trust in these institutions is at a historical low. We don’t trust the reasons they give for the decisions they make, they’re incentives to act in our best interests or their ability to deliver a better future.
Cryptocurrency isn’t just the future because that is what a committed band of dreamers would have you believe. It is the future because it is a new operating system for a decentralised world. It is the future because it takes back control of the things we are most dependent on for us to subsist. It is the future because it is already here making a difference to how we act. Bitcoin has enabled a whole generation of Venezuelans to have an alternative to crippling inflation left unchecked by corruption.
No longer do we have to trust a government to reign over us and carelessly prescribe dangerous monetary policy which we must accept.
No longer must we accept situations of austerity forced upon us due to government intervention in a financial collapse where there was no punishment for any of the individuals who caused it.
No longer is our future dependent on the whims of governments.
You can make any argument you like about Cryptocurrency being over valued, about it being manipulated, about it not being a viable medium for high frequency transactions to occur.
That’s fine but what price do you place on control?
What price would you put on trust programmed in to an immutable ledger where those participating hold the keys to how the platform develops. Unilateral arbitrary decision making is replaced by consensus.
If you don’t understand the implications of that you’re not paying attention.
If you don’t understand how fiat money works, you’re not qualified to judge whether cryptocurrency will be successful or not, period. Equally, if you don’t understand the mechanisms for mining, the underlying technology that powers cryptocurrency or the economics of scarcity you aren’t qualified to tell anyone why it is a revolution.
So educate yourself and understand why things are changing, appreciate the technology underpinning the revolution. They you can positively impact the progress this new system can make. Otherwise you’re just another uneducated quack speculating to make a buck doing more damage than good.
With all that being true, if you believe in Crypto let the market come to you.Understand that the success of the system is contingent on an unwavering belief that throughout history innovation has always disrupted what currently exists. If a system is better, exponentially so, then nothing will ever be able to stand in the way of progress. For the same reason Google destroyed Yahoo, and Facebook vanquished MySpace, Bitcoin and Ethereum will destroy money.
In the same way Amazon has brutalised physical retail, Cryptocurrency will eradicate banks. If you don’t see this coming you aren’t paying attention.
Let the non-believers have their day, but the moment central banks pushed the button on quantitative easing they signed the death warrant of capitalism operating system that monopolised the world.
Capitlism isn’t going anywhere though. Cryptocurrency is simply a more efficient vessel which allows for its manifest destiny to be realised.
Progress is relentless.
Cryptocurrency is simply an upgrade | https://chrisherd.medium.com/why-cryptocurrency-will-be-the-next-operating-system-for-capitalism-ae5e1f823590 | ['Chris Herd'] | 2018-11-29 09:26:52.685000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Blockchain', 'Life', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin'] |
5 Marketing Trends for Small Businesses in 2017 | It is somewhat traditional to end off the year with a summary of emerging trends and predictions for the new year, but we understand that as a small business owner you probably want to spend the last few weeks of each year focusing on marketing, sales and customer service over the holiday season, not reading about what you should be doing in the new year. And sure, you could bookmark it to read at a later stage, but in all honesty, you know you’ll just forget about it hidden amongst all the other forgotten bookmarks.
So instead, we held off publishing our look at 2017 marketing trends for small businesses until now, when you’re focused on the fresh start the new year promises. We have selected five marketing practices all small businesses should already be following, and then delve into evolving trends within those practices. And while some similar reports have touched on virtual and augmented reality, we haven’t; purely because although these could find more common use in marketing, they’re not at a stage where they are accessible to small businesses.
And this article is all about small businesses.
1. Mobile-Optimised Websites
For several years now businesses have been told to either adapt their websites to being mobile-optimised, or risk alienating a large number of visitors. This warning has been repeated so many times that one would think that only new users of the internet aren’t aware of it. However, a survey of small businesses by Clutch found that 23% of the respondents still did not have a mobile-optimised website, which isn’t too much of a problem if more than 70% of your website traffic is from desktop computers. But waiting for that number to drop below 70% before getting your website optimised for mobile devices is not going to be a wise strategy in 2017.
Why?
Because Google announced in October 2016 that they would soon be splitting their search index in two: a mobile index, and a desktop index, with the mobile index eventually becoming the primary index used to respond to queries. While a desktop index will be maintained (for now), it will not be as up-to-date as the mobile index, which could result in your website appearing much lower on Google SERPs. This isn’t Google ostensibly punishing anyone whose website isn’t mobile optimised, but rather responding to the fact that most searches on Google are done using a mobile devicea. By prioritising the indexing of sites that are mobile-friendly, Google is able to return results that offer a better user experience regardless of the device used.
At this stage, there is no clear indication of when this change will happen, other than the “within months” statement made by Gary Illyes shortly after the October announcement.
You can prepare for this by checking whether your website is optimised for mobile devices, and then finding a developer who is able to make it mobile-friendly. There are three popular techniques for making websites mobile-friendly, with a responsive website being the simplest solution for small businesses with relatively uncomplicated websites.
2. Mobile Apps
2015 and 2016 saw the launch of several tools and services that have made it incredibly easy — and affordable — for small businesses to launch their own mobile app. And although several outlets wrote about app overload in 2016 as if it were a new issue, it is actually something that has been discussed as early as 2011, with the two primary causes remaining the same. These are:
Discoverability, and
Relevance
There is no magic wand to wave and fix discoverability; there are steps you can take to try and improve it, but these are always tempered by the limitations of the app stores. Relevancy, however, is something you have far more control over, and therefore it is also something you should be continuously paying attention to.
3. Discoverability
App Indexing
Google App Indexing was launched in 2013, but only expanded to include iOS in 2015. App Indexing makes it possible for Google to crawl and index the content of your app, much the same as they do with your website. If anybody does a search using Google on a mobile device, and the content of your app is a good match for the results, the person searching will see one of two things:
If they have your app installed they will see a result with an “Open in app” button which, when selected, will not only launch your app but also take them directly to the appropriate content.
button which, when selected, will not only launch your app but also take them directly to the appropriate content. If they don’t have your app installed they will see an “Install” button which, when selected, will take them to your app in the appropriate app store.
Source: Search Engine Watch
Unless you developed your app yourself, you should speak to your developer to find out whether they made app indexing possible, and if not, whether they can correct this.
App Store Optimisation
The biggest influence you have on the discoverability of your app is through app store optimisation (ASO), which is similar to SEO, but for your app, not your website. App store optimisation is not a new thing, but it is something that will continue to be extremely important until app discoverability experiences a major shift. App store optimisation depends on the following:
App Name — Names are cut off after the first 25–30 characters, so even though you are allowed up to 50 character for iOS apps (30 characters for Android), the most recognisable part of your app name should fit within the first 25 characters. For most businesses this should be the actual business name, and while you can add a few relevant keywords after the name, Apple have started to enforce a rule regarding terms and descriptions that are not part of the app name.
— Names are cut off after the first 25–30 characters, so even though you are allowed up to 50 character for iOS apps (30 characters for Android), the most recognisable part of your app name should fit within the first 25 characters. For most businesses this should be the actual business name, and while you can add a few relevant keywords after the name, Apple have started to enforce a rule regarding terms and descriptions that are not part of the app name. App Description — Only the first few sentences of your description are shown at all times, with users having to select the “more” link to see the rest. So while the description of your app should be as detailed as possible, including a full list of features and benefits, with strong use of relevant keywords, the first 1–2 sentences should be a concise and powerful summary of the app’s features.
— Only the first few sentences of your description are shown at all times, with users having to select the link to see the rest. So while the description of your app should be as detailed as possible, including a full list of features and benefits, with strong use of relevant keywords, the first 1–2 sentences should be a concise and powerful summary of the app’s features. App Icon — Like the name of your app, your app icon should be instantly recognisable to users already familiar with your business, yet clear and distinctive enough to entice new users. There is nothing wrong with using your business logo, as long as it has been properly adapted to the correct dimensions.
— Like the name of your app, your app icon should be instantly recognisable to users already familiar with your business, yet clear and distinctive enough to entice new users. There is nothing wrong with using your business logo, as long as it has been properly adapted to the correct dimensions. Keywords — Keywords are an extremely important part of app discoverability, with Apple having a separate keyword field (with a 100 character limit), while Google only looks for keywords in your app description. Given the impact keywords can have on app discoverability, selecting them is not a 5-minute task. Watch out for our upcoming guide on keyword research and selection.
— Keywords are an extremely important part of app discoverability, with Apple having a separate keyword field (with a 100 character limit), while Google only looks for keywords in your app description. Given the impact keywords can have on app discoverability, selecting them is not a 5-minute task. Watch out for our upcoming guide on keyword research and selection. Localisation — Localisation is closely linked to keywords, and involves one of two approaches. The first is translating your app description and content into a foreign language which, unless you are specifically targeting a non-English market, isn’t necessary for most small business apps. The second, however, is quite relevant to businesses targeting different geographical locations, and involves adapting your keywords to that market. A business targeting both US and UK users would not only have to change the spelling of some keywords, but also research which keywords are most relevant to each market. This too will be covered in more detail in our upcoming keyword research guide.
— Localisation is closely linked to keywords, and involves one of two approaches. The first is translating your app description and content into a foreign language which, unless you are specifically targeting a non-English market, isn’t necessary for most small business apps. The second, however, is quite relevant to businesses targeting different geographical locations, and involves adapting your keywords to that market. A business targeting both US and UK users would not only have to change the spelling of some keywords, but also research which keywords are most relevant to each market. This too will be covered in more detail in our upcoming keyword research guide. App Category — A final aspect of ASO worth reassessing is the category your app is listed under. Don’t simply accept that the current category is the best one without looking at what category your competitors are listed under. An additional factor to consider is whether your users would associate your business with this category; after all, these are the people you are trying to reach, and it won’t help if your users are looking for you in the wrong place.
Relevancy
While your efforts to improve discoverability will always be affected by factors you have little control over, making your app highly relevant to your target audience is something you have full control over. And relevancy, more so than discoverability, is what decides the success of your app: it is what users look for when deciding whether or not to install your app, and relevancy is what then influences whether or not they use your app regularly, and whether or not they keep your app installed on their device. It is foolish to believe that your app will be relevant to your existing customers merely by virtue of them being — well — customers. You need to make them — your customers — aware of how they will benefit from using your app in addition to supporting you. And the benefits should not be general, but personal.
Personalisation
Something that businesses have become very aware over the last few years is the impact that personalization has on how customers respond to marketing and offers, with the expectation of personalization only growing among customers. Even if you have begun experimenting with personalization, it is worth revisiting at the start of 2017 — in the UK alone the number of customers willing to share personal information and preferences in order to receive personalized offers jumped from 35% in 2015, to 43% in 2016. Key factors to consider when implementing or enhancing personalization, especially through your mobile app, are:
Collect only the information you need, and only as much as your customers feel comfortable sharing. 1 in 4 customers still find that personalisation borders on an invasion of privacy.
Don’t only personalise according to segments — or personas — but at the individual level too. One-to-one marketing is becoming accessible to small businesses now, with a mobile app a good platform on which to begin testing it.
There is an element of nostalgia that drives personalization, with Boomers and GenXers remembering a time when most of their shopping was done in small businesses, where the owner and assistants not only knew your name, they also remembered what you frequently bought, and what you liked and did not like. Even for Millennials, it replaces the feeling of being nothing more than a credit card with that of being an individual.
Individual areas of your app where you can focus on personalisation are:
Push Notifications
Although push notifications have a bit of a mixed reputation, there was a small increase in the number of users enabling push notifications between 2014 and 2015. If businesses continue to be honest and smart about the use of push notifications, this figure should continue to climb. Being honest is about stating clearly in your app description how push notifications are used — and following through with that “promise” — and possibly waiting for users to use the app once or twice before asking them to enable push notifications — which helps build trust.
Source: Vibes Marketing
Being smart about the use involves not sending push notifications too frequently — once or twice a week at most — sending them at the right time, and sending out personalised, small batch notifications, rather than a mass push to all users. Push notifications are not only a great feature for using personalisation, but it is also a feature that lends itself very well to one-to-one marketing.
Geo-Location Notifications
The fraternal twin of push notifications, using geo-location to send out highly targeted messages also works better when those notifications are personalised. Geo-location notifications are particularly useful for businesses that rely on foot traffic, especially if the business is located just outside of a high-traffic area, and the targeting zone is expanded to include the high-traffic section. Personalisation should still be a priority with these notifications, but one-to-one marketing is less important. General announcements, such as a store-wide promotion, or change to trading hours, can be pushed to all users entering your targeted area.
Loyalty Programs
We live in a time where it is now possible to pay for your purchases without reaching for your wallet or purse, so why are you still expecting your customers to carry a tatty old loyalty card? If your business has a loyalty program, but you haven’t yet enabled a digital version of it in your mobile app, 2017 is the year you should knuckle down and do it.
Source: Vibes Marketing
Vibes Marketing’s 2016 Mobile Consumer Survey showed that 73% of smartphone users are interested in saving their loyalty cards to their smartphone, with 63% of users stating they would also have a more positive opinion of a business that offers digital loyalty cards. But, as with push notifications, the benefit to both you and your customers is even better if the loyalty program is somewhat personalised — both purchasing requirements and rewards. The one-size-fits-all approach only worked in the past because you had no easy way to track and analyse user behaviour, which changes once you incorporate the loyalty program into your mobile app.
[Tweet “73% of smartphone users are interested in saving their loyalty cards to their smartphone”]
4. Native & Live Video
If the growth in popularity of video during 2016 was nothing more than a temporary trend, we would not be seeing the massive push to integrate them into popular social networks that continued right through to the end of 2016. Facebook and Snapchat have been on board for some time now, but as 2016 drew to a close we had the surprise introduction of live video on Instagram and Twitter. If what the bigger social networks are doing is not enough to convince you, maybe the following facts and predictions will:
Source: Cisco
By 2020, 75% of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video.
In the US, YouTube reaches more 18–49 year-olds than any broadcast or cable TV network.
More than 100-million hours of video are watched on Facebook every day.
In the first half of 2016, time spent watching video content on Instagram increased by more than 40%.
Snapchat users watch an incredible 10-billion videos per day.
The average internet user spends more than 16-minutes watching online video ads every month.
90% of user say that watching a video about a product helps their decision making.
92% of mobile video consumers go on to share videos with others.
46% of users take some sort of action after viewing a video ad.
64% of users are more likely to buy a product online after watching a video.
Source: Cisco, Tubular Insights and Insivia
Long-form written content isn’t being usurped by video, but video does make it possible to appeal to a larger audience, particularly when it comes to mobile devices. In 2017, video should not only be an important part of your social media strategy, but also of your ecommerce strategy (for businesses with an online store) in the form of product videos.
Source: Animoto
An eye-popping 96% of customers find videos helpful when shopping online, and 58% of customers find businesses who use video content more trustworthy. When adding product videos to your online store, they should:
Be placed on the product page, not a separate page.
They should be placed close to the conversion points of the respective product pages.
Be high-quality, and actually showcase the product. A video consisting of a static image with voice narration of the features and benefits is not a product video. Where possible show the product being used, and from multiple angles.
Not be too long. For complex products, your videos can run up to 5-minutes long, but for most products aim to keep the length below 60-seconds.
Possibly include user-generated content. You don’t need to create your own videos for every product you stock. Search through YouTube for videos created by actual customers, where the primary features and benefits are discussed and demonstrated.
[Tweet “58% of customers find businesses who use video content more trustworthy”]
When it comes to adding video content to your social media accounts, however, it should follow the same practices you already have in place for your social media strategy. This means focusing on the networks used by your target audience, and making sure that the videos you share appeal to that audience. General demographic surveys show that:
Source: Pew Research Center
79% of online adults use Facebook, with a generally even spread across the different age groups, though it skews slightly towards female users.
Source: Pew Research Center
32% of online adults use Instagram, with it being most popular with users in the 18–29 and 30–49 age groups. Instagram skews more heavily towards female users.
Source: Pew Research Center
Although Pew Research Center measures Snapchat as a messaging app, it is accessible to businesses, and should not be ignored by anyone targeting the 18–29 age group, with 56% of users falling in that group. It is almost equally popular with both male and female users.
You use of video on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat should not only take into consideration your target audience, but also the limitations and best practices for each network. Small businesses with limited resources may find it difficult to use video effectively on all three of these networks and should instead focus on the network with the largest share of their target audience.
Facebook
There are two entry points to video on Facebook for businesses: the first is native video (video content uploaded directly to your Facebook Page, rather than embedded YouTube or Vimeo video), and the second is Facebook Live. Native video has been around for awhile on Facebook, although it was only in 2016 that brands started using it more frequently. Facebook Live, however, only became widely available during 2016, but there is little doubt that Facebook is prioritising Live video over other content. Barely three months after rolling Live video out to all iOS users, Facebook announced that Live videos were watched 3x longer than non-live videos, and then adjusted the Newsfeed algorithm so that Live videos would appear higher than other content. Both live and native video require some planning to pull off successfully, and as with any marketing efforts, you should have a solid strategy that guides you with your use of video on any social media platform. Before looking at what some brands are doing with live and native video, you should be aware of best practices for both.
Native Video on Facebook — Best Practices
Most video types are supported, but MP4 is recommended
Video resolution should be 1080p or under.
Although video of up to 45-minutes is allowed, the optimal length is 30–60 seconds. Only go longer than 2-minutes if the content is truly compelling.
The video should work both with and without audio. Many users mute the audio on videos, so use closed captioning and text overlays to convey the most important parts of your message. But avoid using the automated captioning feature of Facebook, which can be more confusing than helpful.
Optimise your video for mobile devices, ensuring that any text you use in the video are still legible on a mobile screen.
Ditch the intro and get straight to the content. Your video is showing up on a timeline that users are scrolling through; they aren’t going to hang around waiting for the good stuff.
Although the product video for Redsbaby Bounce runs a little longer than 60-seconds, the pacing is great, not to mention they do an awesome job of showing features and benefits in action, accompanied by relevant text overlays.
Live Video on Facebook — Best Practices
Make sure you broadcast from an area with a strong signal. WiFi is best, but if you have to switch to using a mobile connection, you would want that to be 4G.
Announce your live broadcast a day ahead time with a written post on Facebook, and on other platforms where your audience is quite active. Give the exact time(s) you will be live.
Write a clear description of what will be happening during your live broadcast: are you going to be demonstrating one or more products, are you going to be responding to viewer questions, etc. Your description appears with your video, and helps viewers decide whether or not to tune in.
Remind viewers to tap on the Follow button that appears during a live video, so that they can be notified automatically of future live broadcasts. Try to respond to viewer comments and questions in real time, and use each person’s name in your reply.
Try to follow a consistent schedule, always broadcasting on the same day, and at the same time. This helps create anticipation, and can help build an audience of both past viewers and new viewers. However, you should remember that if you are broadcasting during the day, many people will be busy at work, or school. Experiment with broadcasting during the 1pm to 3pm period, when people take a lunch break, or between 6pm and 9pm, when people are at home, and winding down.
Have a clear idea of what you want to do, and what you hope to achieve, but don’t be afraid to experiment a little. You can do Q&A sessions, where your customers ask questions (about your business or specific products), you can do product launches and product demonstrations, and you can even take your audience behind-the-scenes, with restaurants giving a tour of the kitchen, and retailers showing what happens in the warehouse.
Try to broadcast for at least 10-minutes, but experiment with longer broadcasts to see how it impacts on your audience size.
Remember that live broadcasts are automatically archived by Facebook, so a video of your live broadcast will still be available for anyone who missed it.
Always end off with a closing line to announce the end of the live broadcast. If you already know when you will be broadcasting live again, announce the date and time.
Benefit Cosmetics have a great Facebook Live strategy, with each broadcast focusing on a specific topic, and viewers invited to submit their own questions relating to the topic.
Instagram and Snapchat
In mid-2016 Instagram launched a new feature that appeared to be directly copied from Snapchat, right down to the name — Stories. On both platforms Stories are collections of photos and 10-second videos that you share with your followers. You create a Story by selecting photos and videos, editing them by adding doodles, stickers and text, and then deciding who can view them — either your entire audience, or only selected followers. Each Story you create is only available for 24-hours, after which it ‘disappears’. There are subtle differences between Snapchat and Instagram Stories, and the most important difference for brands to consider is the audience. Instagram is used by more people than Snapchat, and while Instagram’s largest audience is within the 18–29 age group (similar to Snapchat), it still appeals to a significant number of 30–59 year olds. Additionally, Instagram’s audience still skews towards a larger female audience, while Snapchat is fairly balanced amongst male and female users. So deciding whether you are going to focus on Instagram or Snapchat depends on whether you only want to reach 18–29 year olds, and whether you are appealing to mostly men, women, or both genders. This infographic by One Productions explains the other differences between the two platforms:
Snapchat & Instagram Stories — Best Practices
Except in the case of a special event, Stories should be 1–2 minutes long. Consider too what your Story is saying: individual users can get away with a seemingly random collection of images and video clips, but, as a brand you should be sharing a Story — beginning, middle, and end. What should a user want to do after watching your Story?
If you clip includes audio, talk directly to your audience. And remembering that your Stories will be viewed on mobile devices, stick to shooting in vertical mode.
When adding text, make it more legible by adding a contrasting shade behind the text: if using white text, use a darker shade behind it, and with black text, use white or another light shade.
Plan your Stories. As stated earlier, your Stories should not be a hodge-podge collection of images and video clips.
Look at what other brands are doing with Stories and see how you can adapt this for your own audience.
Analyse what works, and adapt your strategy accordingly. Don’t be afraid to experiment, as long as you pay attention to the results.
Instagram also launched Live Video towards the end of 2016, and while the feature isn’t available to all users yet, it is worth considering once it is. Instagram Live is very much like Facebook Live — and can be used in similar ways for marketing purposes — with the big difference being that — unlike Facebook Live — there is no archive of your live broadcasts; your followers will not be able to rewatch any of your past live broadcasts.
The temporary nature of both Stories and Instagram Live position them well for short-term marketing efforts, particularly those designed to create a sense of urgency, and drive immediate results.
GrubHub and Everlane were both early adopters of Snapchat, and both show how other brands can cleverly use Snapchat (and Instagram Stories) to engage with their audience.
GrubHub’s SnapHunt campaign encourage user engagement in the form of contests, and because it ran over a number of days, it also encouraged users to return each day to see what the next SnapHunt involved.
Everlane takes their fans behind-the-scenes with longer Stories covering everything from factory tours, to spending the day with their creative team.
Twitter
Twitter has supported live video ever since acquiring Periscope in 2015, but the feature was only accessible through the standalone Periscope app. But on 14 December 2016, Twitter announced that watching and broadcasting live video would now be possible directly from the Twitter mobile app. This is great news for businesses whose audience is most active and engaged on Twitter, giving them access to similar features as found in live video on other platforms. And unlike Instagram Live, your live broadcasts can be rewatched by anyone, at any time.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is an important part of most marketing strategies, but it is only effective if it is adapted to the ever evolving wants and needs of your audience. Which means in 2017 you should be looking at the following as part of your content marketing strategy:
Purpose-Driven Content
Purpose-driven content is an offshoot of purpose-driven marketing, and with Millennials placing a high-value on businesses that aren’t driven purely by the pursuit of profit, but also by bringing about change in the world and the lives of their customers, it is a trend that should not be ignored by any business with a sizeable Millennial audience.
Source: Cone Communications
While purpose-driven marketing is focused on aligning your business with a cause, and then highlighting this in your marketing, purpose-driven content can either emphasise how when customers support you they also support a specific cause, or it can focus on having an impact on the lives of your customers.
Home Depot not only offer free in-store DIY workshops, but their website includes a library of detailed instructions on how to complete certain DIY projects. Each project is broken down into steps, with video clips for each stage of the project, and you will even be given a handy list of all the tools and materials you will need.
Toyota USA previously ran an Instagram campaign where they would donate $50 to Boys & Girls Clubs of America for every selfie posted using a specific hashtag, and in 2016 they ran a similar campaign linked to United Way Worldwide.
2017 should be the year you not only identify causes that are important to you and your audience, but also find ways in which you can use your content to make a positive impact on the lives of your customers.
Influencer Marketing
Most businesses have benefitted from a rudimentary form of influencer marketing at some point — word-of-mouth. But as a business owner you have no real control over how word-of-mouth spreads; you don’t know how big the circle of influence is, or even if it includes anybody from your target audience. True influencer marketing is different because you not only get to select the influencer, but you also control what they will be marketing. And with the proliferation of influencer marketing platforms, it is very much within reach of small businesses.
In simple terms, influencer marketing is getting someone else to spread your message, through a review of your products, your business or your services — either written or video. These reviews are exposed to the influencer’s audience on their website, and their social media network, with the benefit being that this type of marketing:
Helps build trust. People are inherently more likely to trust an endorsement coming from an individual they trust, rather than from a business.
Helps you reach a niche audience that closely matches your target audience.
Can be very cost-effective, with a better return on investment. For small businesses targeting smaller audiences, the monetary cost is usually minimal, and sometimes all that is required is sending a package of products to each influencer.
Before making use of any of the influencer marketing platforms, it helps to:
Define your goals — are you looking at increasing brand visibility or increasing sales? Knowing this will help you find the right influencer for your campaign.
Define your intended audience — you are not simply selecting the first influencer you come across. Knowing who you want to reach will help you select the influencer whose own network matches your target audience.
Compile loose guidelines — specify what you would like influencers to focus on and mention, but don’t be too rigid. They already have their own “voice” which shouldn’t change to match yours, or you risk overriding authenticity.
Personalisation
Personalisation is a big trend that touches on multiple areas of your marketing, including content marketing. Although personalisation in marketing can be narrowed to one-to-one campaigns, this isn’t what you would be looking at in your content marketing.
Source: eMarketer
Instead personalisation in content marketing will see you paying more attention to audience behaviour and demographics, and customising your content accordingly, not only in the form of what offers you promote (and on which platforms), but also in terms of content designed to help or benefit your audience. If you share posts or videos that cover the features and benefits of certain products, are you selecting products randomly, or according to what is popular with your customers?
5. Search Engine Optimisation
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is an ongoing task for any business with a website, with any changes to search algorithms affecting how your website ranks, and how you implement certain marketing practices. It is impossible to discuss these until they are announced, but there are two factors to consider early in 2017: popups and page speed.
Popups
In the early years of the internet, popups rapidly became the bane of browsers until the spread of popup blockers tamed the use of popups. But marketers recently rediscovered popups, and found that they were no longer hated, and generated some interesting results. However, it did not take long for some marketers to become a little too enthusiastic with the use of popups, turning them from something that wasn’t too bad, back to something that is not only annoying, but also horribly intrusive, particularly on mobile devices. As part of their effort to continually improve website accessibility on mobile devices, Google announced that after 10 January 2017 websites using popups, interstitials and other techniques affecting website accessibility may rank lower in search results. You can check how your site performs by using both the mobile-friendly test, and the mobile usability report within Google Webmaster Tools.
Page Speed
The mobile-friendly test performs multiple different tests when analysing any submitted URL, including a test on how quickly the website loads. This is an important factor to consider since:
[…] 30% of all online shopping purchases now happen on mobile phones. The average U.S. retail mobile site loaded in 6.9 seconds in July 2016, but, according to the most recent data, 40% of consumers will leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load. And 79% of shoppers who are dissatisfied with site performance say they’re less likely to purchase from the same site again.
Think With Google
In addition to the mobile-friendly test, you can also run page speed tests using the Web Page Test to identify specific performance issues on your website. This test will also give suggestions on how to eliminate any identified performance issues.
Conclusion
The online marketing space changes frequently, and quite rapidly at times, so this summary of marketing trends to follow and implement should not be considered in isolation. In particular, the use of video in your marketing strategy should be executed while constantly remaining aware of new developments, and shifts in usage and implementation among larger brands. Finally, none of these trends or practices should ever replace what you are already doing successfully; keep doing what works for you, and find ways of introducing, or trying, new strategies to complement or boost existing strategies.
And may 2017 be a very rewarding year for you and your small business. | https://medium.com/appinstitute/5-marketing-trends-for-small-businesses-in-2017-40f62e770a17 | ['Nabeena Mali'] | 2017-01-04 09:34:14.978000+00:00 | ['Marketing', 'Digital Marketing', 'SEO', 'Small Business Marketing', 'Small Business'] |
The art of saying “NO” | Method 2: Defer The Request
By postponing the event and holding the other person accountable for follow up, you can test how serious they are about it
I feel that there is nothing wrong with a direct “No”, but sometimes deferring the request can prove to be more clever and advantageous,
By putting off the request by weeks/months, and making the other person accountable for a quick follow up, you can find out who all are actually serious about the purpose. Let me give you my own example,
I receive a lot of requests to speak in college events, and majorly my calendar on weekends remains filled with events, so whenever I get a new request, I have to put it off by at least 2–3 weeks (Not by choice, since my calendar doesn’t accommodate it),
But, by doing so, I find that less than 20% of the organizers/people follow up.
The reasons might vary, they might have found another speaker, or they might have forgotten, but it gives me a very clear sense of who all were actually serious about having me as a speaker.
The whole point here is that this method gives you a clear sense of whether or not you should give your time. (But the method is not recommended for urgent requests).
How to do it?
Simple, just tell them in a polite way that you are occupied right now but you will be free after a definite amount of time, and tell them to follow up after that period of time.
A simple example — | https://medium.com/towards-self/the-art-of-saying-no-a0dd8e148a74 | ['Madhav Bahl'] | 2020-12-23 16:16:47.117000+00:00 | ['Personal Development', 'Personal Growth', 'Time Management', 'Efficiency', 'Productivity'] |
5 Tips to Get Her Back If She’s Slipping Away | 5 Tips to Get Her Back If She’s Slipping Away
Before you lose your relationship, try these.
Photo by Sam Burrisson Unsplash
Your relationship started strong, but the honeymoon phase is long gone. You knew that that was coming, but it somehow seems worse than you ever thought possible.
Now, she’s slipping away from you and you don’t know why.
It’s not like you expected the two of you to stay madly in love for the rest of your lives. The infatuation that brought you together at first was bound to fade one day, but after it did, happy companionship was eventually replaced by short patience, contempt, and even resentment.
You’re fine with having sex slightly less often, but you wish the lovemaking wasn’t so infrequent, and as lukewarm as it’s been lately.
You don’t want to lose your relationship. It’s not as if you suddenly realized you’re not a good match, there’s still a solid foundation — and you believe that’s worth fighting for.
The state of your relationship might not be entirely your fault, but it’s your responsibility. You do have the power to rekindle the romance, to make adjustments to bring the two of you closer together.
The good news is, if she sees you trying hard, chances are she’ll be inspired to try as well, and you’ll end up finding your way back to each other.
Be there
I recently dated a man who shared a piece of interesting advice he received from his mother: “Don’t leave your woman alone. If you let her sleep alone in bed, she’ll find someone else to keep her company.”
The advice is, of course, more than about sleeping arrangements — there are, after all, couples who find happiness sleeping in separate rooms — it’s about being there for your partner and not letting loneliness take over.
Sadly, too many men tend to withdraw from their partners when things aren’t going well. They work late even though they have no serious reason to stay in the office one minute overtime; they spend more time at the bar with friends than taking their partner out on date night; they spend twenty minutes inside the car parked in the driveway before summoning the courage to walk home at the end of the day.
They favor falling asleep on the couch in front of the TV instead of going to bed and keeping their partner company.
You don’t withdraw to be mean, it’s a defense mechanism. You’re protecting yourself from pain. You know you have your reasons, the atmosphere at home isn’t great. She’s been cold and distant. When she talks to you, it’s only to list everything you’re not doing for her and/or your family, which only makes you feel like a failure and withdraw even further.
Withdrawing might be how you protect yourself, but it doesn't help the situation. When you withdraw, you communicate to her you don’t want her company, and she feels rejected. She gets the message that you don’t want to face the issues of your relationship and that since you’re not listening, she should try harder to be heard, which only increases the nagging and the scolding — on the rare occasions you’re actually there for her to nag and scold.
Instead of withdrawing, be there. Come home right away at the end of the day. Turn off the TV and go to bed with her. Hug her and kiss goodnight. Put your phone down when she’s talking and really listen.
Be there, be present. Show her no matter how hard things get, you’re not going anywhere. Show her she doesn’t have to seek company anywhere else because she’s not alone.
Be there for her before she gets unbearably lonely — and decides the way to fix her loneliness is by leaving you.
Take some time to recharge, but make sure to always come back
Of course, you need time to recharge, we all do.
The difference between taking some much-needed time to recharge and withdrawing lies exactly in coming back.
Spending a Friday night with just the guys, or going on a hike by yourself is perfectly fine, as long as you make sure to come back to her afterward. But don’t come back to sit on the couch watching TV as if she wasn’t there, come back to spend some quality time together.
When you come back, be there. Be present.
Show her you can balance taking time for yourself and being there for her.
Leave room for silence
Relationships require tough conversations. Sometimes you need to sit in silence for a while for the hard stuff to come out.
In your anxiety to help, to solve the problem at hand, you might be too quick to offer a string of solutions. You’re too eager to ease the pain and too uncomfortable sitting there in silence, waiting for someone to say something.
You want to be her hero, so when she starts talking about her most recent work problem, you tell her how to fix it before she’s even done explaining how the situation makes her feel.
“Someone took my lunch from the fridge at work again,” she tells you.
“Well, I told you to start labeling your food, why didn’t you do that?” You reply. “Do you know who did it?”
“No, but I’m pretty sure it was Steve. He’s never liked me much, he’s always cutting me off in meetings — “
“ — You should just point-blank ask him,” you cut her off, reaching for the remote and turning on the TV. The conversation is over, at least on your end.
“Yeah, yeah… Maybe next time I will,” she says and leaves the room to take care of something in the bedroom.
You feel good, you solved her problem. She feels you think she’s incompetent for not knowing how to label her own food and weak for not confronting the people who antagonize her. She feels worse off than before, and it’s likely she regrets even bringing it up. Next time, she won’t.
If you had waited to hear the rest of the story you might have learned how she stood up to her rude coworker and held her ground in the meeting that morning, but since you didn’t leave room for silence and cut her off, she didn’t get to that part.
She doesn’t want to have to insist on some space to express herself. Not at home, not with you. She already does that a lot everywhere else with other people, she’s tired.
Sometimes, you have to let her know she’s welcome to say anything, you’re there to listen. You want her to vent, to explain her frustrations, and to find comfort in knowing you empathize with her struggles.
Stop believing what you have to say is more important, and leave some room for silence so she can fill it with her thoughts and feelings for a change.
Ask the right questions
Don’t ask, “Why didn't you?”
Ask, “How can I?”
How can I help? Is there anything I can do? How do you feel about it? What do you want to do?
These questions show her that you’re there, you’re listening, and you genuinely want to make her feel better, not jam a solution down her throat so she’ll shut up faster.
Mind the small daily rejections
You don’t have to reject your partner outright to cause her pain. Small daily rejections add up, and they can be as harmful in the long run as a big, blow-out fight in the short term.
Small rejections look like not calling to let her know you have to work late and won’t be home in time for dinner, not putting your phone away when she’s trying to tell you something important, not thanking her for doing her share of the housework — however big or small that is.
Small daily rejections add up to you taking your partner for granted. To avoid that, make an effort to be mindful of her, and thankful for everything good she brings into your life.
Bonus tip: consider professional help
The advice above is valid but generic. To fix specific problems in your relationship you should consider seeking help that’s tailored to your specific needs as a couple.
Professional help isn’t a guarantee of a perfect relationship, but it’s a safe space for you to have necessary, productive conversations and begin to find a way to work things out. | https://medium.com/hello-love/5-tips-to-get-her-back-if-shes-slipping-away-4ab7d27c0c4f | ['Renata Gomes'] | 2020-12-28 16:27:18.263000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'Love', 'Self Improvement', 'Psychology', 'Life Lessons'] |
Five Reasons to Get to the Mountains NOW | “Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.” -John Muir
As soon as we approached Auburn on the I80 and saw the Sierra mountains in the distance, something happened.The stress that had been gripping my brain released its clamming hold. The loneliness that had threatened my heart vanished. And that pit inside my stomach? I looked at the opening sky, took a sip of water, and digested it.
“We’re going to the mountains,” I told my daughter in the back.
“We are? Do you like it there, Mommy? Do you like mountains?”
“I do, love,” I said. “I do. And I think you might too.”
I didn’t just didn’t like it. I needed it. For 16 years California’s peaks and its wild ocean have been my saviors when city life got too jittery. I hiked, skied, and surfed across the state each weekend. And now, kid in tow, I needed respite from the pandemic and non stop NPR.
Unfortunately, other residents of the Bay Area had the same idea. But we ignored the crowds downtown and popular parks, and went out to secluded trails and played. Beaten paths weren’t our thing.
If you can brave the drive and do the due diligence to find uncrowded spaces, I encourage all of you to escape to nature.
Whether it’s the surf at Bolinas or the foothills of the Sierras, here are 5 reasons to get outside.
You feel insignificant compared to the towering peaks (or if near the ocean, the crashing waves). This means your problems are insignificant. You are in a different place, which forces a different frame of mind. People are nice to each other and band together. No, not the tourists, the locals. If you get off beaten paths into local areas and homes you’ll realize there’s a different, more wholesome way of living. They bake their own bread in non covid time. Nature’s beauty will astound you. The dire news on NPR will fade you see what the universe can create and replenish. You will be more determined to help preserve it. Cell phone service doesn’t work. If you go far enough out, you lose connection. And this, by far, is one of the greatest gifts. Even if for a few hours, focusing on the trees instead of your iPhone screen is better than any anti-anxiety medication.
“I like the mountains, Mommy,” said my daughter on our drive back.
“We will return soon, “ I told her.
Get outside. Go to the mountains. Heal your soul. Make a better world. | https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/five-reasons-to-get-to-the-mountains-now-523a6d818d5e | ['Heidi K. Isern'] | 2020-10-01 03:43:18.129000+00:00 | ['Lifestyle', 'Life Lessons', 'Coping', 'Mental Health', 'Outdoors'] |
a sonnet on self-pity | This paean of pity is getting quite boring
with cliché of rowing-boats slipping their mooring
and candles extinguished with love as a shadow-
sabemos que la guerra cansa al soldado.
The pestilent pathos increasing the drama
increases the aspect of pain’s panorama,
assault on the psyche, disease of the soma,
the sarx bearing marks of a soul’s haematoma.
There’s nothing to gain in the drain of compassion
when loathing is loud and self-hatred in fashion,
the lesions are lessons in life’s understanding
to build up the character, knowledge expanding.
These scars aren’t the herald of failure’s arrival
but potent reminders of strength and survival. | https://medium.com/no-crime-in-rhymin/a-sonnet-on-self-pity-5ce44bf3aa9f | ['James Khan'] | 2020-08-22 08:46:00.996000+00:00 | ['Depression', 'Poetry', 'No Crime In Rhymin', 'Sonnet', 'Mental Health'] |
How To Become A Successful Writer: The 50 Year Plan | Photo: Author
Birth — Age 4
As soon as you’re old enough to hold a writing instrument, start scribbling on your bedroom walls. This is your early-stage stream of consciousness, so don’t let your parents tell you it’s “wrong” or a “mess.” Eat a crayon.
Age 5–9
Advance to writing on yourself — not the alphabet per se, but some kind of secret code. This is another stepping stone towards greatness, and also good practice for a fallback career as a tattoo artist. If you don’t want to write on yourself, write on your sibling. If you don’t have a sibling, write on a friend. If you don’t have a friend, try an imaginary one. If you don’t have an imagination, I hope you’re at least cute or have nice hair because you’re limited to a life of nonfiction or current events.
Age 10–15
Start a secret diary. Complain that no one understands you and that life isn’t fair. This will be the most embarrassing writing of your life and you will most likely burn it before your 18th birthday. Start drinking.
Age 16–20
Keep more detailed, big girl diaries. Chronicle your depression, anxiety, medications, and all obsessive, toxic relationships. Refuse to notice a repetitive pattern in your dysfunctional behaviors. Use alcohol and drugs to numb yourself and avoid reality. Write while you’re drunk and/or high and insist it’s some of your best work. Do not listen to anyone who tells you you’re an alcoholic. Do not seek professional help. There is nothing wrong with you — you’re a brilliant, tortured artist and it’s sexy as fuck.
Age 21
Start calling your diary a journal. You’re an adult now.
Age 22
Start writing complaint letters. Complaining is a cathartic art form and as a struggling writer, you need to get your frustration and anger out somewhere. For example, you might send something like this to your building manager: Hey Maria. Quick question — why the fucking fuck is all I hear are fucking dogs barking? And also, who the fuck lives in apartment 607 because I hear her having sex all the time. This sucks. Thanks.
Age 23
Research your favorite authors, like Marquis de Sade or Kafka, and study their paths to success. If they committed suicide or died a drunk or OD’d, that means they were really good and you have really good taste in writers. Glamorize the lifestyle. Predict your own untimely demise and subsequent posthumous fame.
Age 24
Join a pretentious writing group and immediately start to complain about everyone in it. Realize you hate people and their opinions. Declare Charles Bukowski your idol.
Age 25
Start sending out fan mail to authors you admire. By authors, I mean anyone who has written anything, anywhere, or who is particularly cute. A model I follow on Instagram wrote a poem on a t-shirt and I slid into his DMs. Pro tip: Do not wait for a response.
Age 26
Finish your first “novel” about your descent into insanity via inebriated adventures gallivanting around New York as the outrageous daughter of one of the city's most well-known criminal attorneys. Enjoy hundreds of rejection letters, and a few agents hitting on you. Rewrite the novel three times, only to still be rejected and further tortured and confused. Remember that tons of famous authors were rejected at the beginning. Put novel on the back burner for 10 years. Start a new career making t-shirts for kids because kids need clothes and no one needs your writing.
Age 30–34
Self publish a short humor book called “Girls Are Weird,” that is only understood by introverted freaks. Make $475 and get a stalker who followed you home after a reading you did at a shithole on the Bowery.
Age 35
Write your second novel about how your suicidal alcoholic homeless lover saved your life. Get an agent. Get rejected by publishers. Get dropped by your agent.
Age 40–49
Do some freelance writing. Write perverse stories about the inappropriate men you’re sleeping with and publish them under a pseudonym because you’re not stupid and you know your family thinks you’re a joke and will disinherit you. Simultaneously start a blog called “Depressed Hot Girl,” even though it’s been at least twenty years since you were a girl, despite the fact that you’re still hot and somewhat depressed. Dodge calls from your family asking you to take the blog down after seeing half-naked pictures of you with a fake flamingo on your head. Leave the blog up for 5 years but never update it.
Age 49.5
Take blog down because you’re really not a girl anymore; by this point it’s indisputable.
Age 50
Experience your first pandemic. During the nationwide lockdown, come to the realization that the only thing to do is write. People need you now. Submit to Medium. Make $12 on your first piece. Submit again. Make $3. Take a depression break. A month later write a story about turning 50. Watch it go viral. Tell everyone. Rest on your laurels. You deserve it. | https://medium.com/slackjaw/how-to-become-a-successful-writer-the-50-year-plan-96be785343f3 | ['Pam Gaslow'] | 2020-11-05 02:59:35.950000+00:00 | ['Sarcasm', 'Writing', 'Humor', 'Advice', 'Writing Tips'] |
Dijkstra’s Shortest Path Algorithm in Python | From GPS navigation to network-layer link-state routing, Dijkstra’s Algorithm powers some of the most taken-for-granted modern services. Utilizing some basic data structures, let’s get an understanding of what it does, how it accomplishes its goal, and how to implement it in Python (first naively, and then with good asymptotic runtime!)
What does it do?
Dijkstra’s Algorithm finds the shortest path between two nodes of a graph. So, if we have a mathematical problem we can model with a graph, we can find the shortest path between our nodes with Dijkstra’s Algorithm.
Let’s Make a Graph
First things first. A graph is a collection of nodes connected by edges:
A node is just some object, and an edge is a connection between two nodes. Depicted above an undirected graph, which means that the edges are bidirectional. There also exist directed graphs, in which each edge also holds a direction.
Both nodes and edges can hold information. For example, if this graph represented a set of buildings connected by tunnels, the nodes would hold the information of the name of the building (e.g. the string “Library”), and the edges could hold information such as the length of the tunnel.
Graphs have many relevant applications: web pages (nodes) with links to other pages (edges), packet routing in networks, social media networks, street mapping applications, modeling molecular bonds, and other areas in mathematics, linguistics, sociology, and really any use case where your system has interconnected objects.
Graph Implementation
This step is slightly beyond the scope of this article, so I won’t get too far into the details. The two most common ways to implement a graph is with an adjacency matrix or adjacency list. Each has their own sets of strengths and weaknesses. I will be showing an implementation of an adjacency matrix at first because, in my opinion, it is slightly more intuitive and easier to visualize, and it will, later on, show us some insight into why the evaluation of our underlying implementations have a significant impact on runtime. Either implementation can be used with Dijkstra’s Algorithm, and all that matters for right now is understanding the API, aka the abstractions (methods), that we can use to interact with the graph. Let’s quickly review the implementation of an adjacency matrix and introduce some Python code. If you want to learn more about implementing an adjacency list, this is a good starting point.
Below is the adjacency matrix of the graph depicted above. Each row is associated with a single node from the graph, as is each column. In our case, row 0 and column 0 will be associated with node “A”; row 1 and column 1 with node “B”, row 3 and column 3 with “C”, and so on. Each element at location {row, column} represents an edge. As such, each row shows the relationship between a single node and all other nodes. A “0” element indicates the lack of an edge, while a “1” indicates the presence of an edge connecting the row_node and the column_node in the direction of row_node → column_node. Because the graph in our example is undirected, you will notice that this matrix is equal to its transpose (i.e. it is a symmetric matrix) because each connection is bidirectional. You will also notice that the main diagonal of the matrix is all 0s because no node is connected to itself. In this way, the space complexity of this representation is wasteful.
Now let’s see some code. Note that I am doing a little extra — since I wanted actual node objects to hold data for me I implemented an array of node objects in my Graph class whose indices correspond to their row (column) number in the adjacency matrix. I also have a helper method in Graph that allows me to use either a node’s index number or the node object as arguments to my Graph’s methods. These classes may not be the most elegant, but they get the job done and make working with them relatively easy:
I can use these Node and Graph classes to describe our example graph. We can set up our graph above in code and see that we get the correct adjacency matrix:
Our output adjacency matrix (from graph.print_adj_mat() )when we run this code is exactly the same as we calculated before:
[0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0]
[1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0]
[1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1]
[0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0]
[1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0]
[0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0]
If I wanted to add some distances to my graph edges, all I would have to do is replace the 1s in my adjacency matrix with the value of the distance. Currently, my Graph class supports this functionality, and you can see this in the code below. I will add arbitrary lengths to demonstrate this:
Which outputs the adjacency matrix:
[0 , 5 , 10, 0, 2, 0]
[5 , 0 , 2 , 4 , 0 , 0]
[10, 2, 0, 7, 0, 10]
[0 , 4 , 7 , 0 , 3 , 0]
[2 , 0 , 0 , 3 , 0 , 0]
[0, 0 , 10, 0 , 0 , 0]
And visually, our graph would now look like this:
If I wanted my edges to hold more data, I could have the adjacency matrix hold edge objects instead of just integers.
Dijkstra’s Algorithm, Ho!
Before we jump right into the code, let’s cover some base points.
Major stipulation: we can’t have negative edge lengths. Dijkstra’s algorithm was originally designed to find the shortest path between 2 particular nodes. However, it is also commonly used today to find the shortest paths between a source node and all other nodes. I will be programming out the latter today. To accomplish the former, you simply need to stop the algorithm once your destination node is added to your seen set (this will make more sense later).
Ok, onto intuition. We want to find the shortest path in between a source node and all other nodes (or a destination node), but we don’t want to have to check EVERY single possible source-to-destination combination to do this, because that would take a really long time for a large graph, and we would be checking a lot of paths which we should know aren’t correct! So we decide to take a greedy approach! You have to take advantage of the times in life when you can be greedy and it doesn’t come with bad consequences!
So what does it mean to be a greedy algorithm? It means that we make decisions based on the best choice at the time. This isn’t always the best thing to do — for example, if you were implementing a chess bot, you wouldn’t want to take the other player’s queen if it opened you up for a checkmate the next move! For situations like this, something like minimax would work better. In our case today, this greedy approach is the best thing to do and it drastically reduces the number of checks I have to do without losing accuracy. How?? Well, let’s say I am at my source node. I will assume an initial provisional distance from the source node to each other node in the graph is infinity (until I check them later). I know that by default the source node’s distance to the source node is minium (0) since there cannot be negative edge lengths. My source node looks at all of its neighbors and updates their provisional distance from the source node to be the edge length from the source node to that particular neighbor (plus 0). Note that you HAVE to check every immediate neighbor; there is no way around that. Next, my algorithm makes the greedy choice to next evaluate the node which has the shortest provisional distance to the source node. I mark my source node as visited so I don’t return to it and move to my next node. Now let’s consider where we are logically because it is an important realization. The node I am currently evaluating (the closest one to the source node) will NEVER be re-evaluated for its shortest path from the source node. Its provisional distance has now morphed into a definite distance. Even though there very well could be paths from the source node to this node through other avenues, I am certain that they will have a higher cost than the node’s current path because I chose this node because it was the shortest distance from the source node than any other node connected to the source node. So any other path to this mode must be longer than the current source-node-distance for this node. Using our example graph, if we set our source node as A , we would set provisional distances for nodes B , C , and E . Because E had the shortest distance from A , we then visited node E . Now, even though there are multiple other ways to get from A to E , I know they have higher weights than my current A → E distance because those other routes must go through B or C , which I have verified to be farther from A than E is from A . My greedy choice was made which limits the total number of checks I have to do, and I don’t lose accuracy! Pretty cool.
Continuing the logic using our example graph, I just do the same thing from E as I did from A . I update all of E 's immediate neighbors with provisional distances equal to length(A to E) + edge_length(E to neighbor) IF that distance is less than it’s current provisional distance, or a provisional distance has not been set. (Note: I simply initialize all provisional distances to infinity to get this functionality). I then make my greedy choice of what node should be evaluated next by choosing the one in the entire graph with the smallest provisional distance, and add E to my set of seen nodes so I don’t re-evaluate it. This new node has the same guarantee as E that its provisional distance from A is its definite minimal distance from A. To understand this, let’s evaluate the possibilities (although they may not correlate to our example graph, we will continue the node names for clarity). If the next node is a neighbor of E but not of A , then it will have been chosen because its provisional distance is still shorter than any other direct neighbor of A , so there is no possible other shortest path to it other than through E . If the next node chosen IS a direct neighbor of A , then there is a chance that this node provides a shorter path to some of E 's neighbors than E itself does.
Algorithm Overview
Now let’s be a little more formal and thorough in our description.
INITIALIZATION
Set the provisional_distance of all nodes from the source node to infinity. Define an empty set of seen_nodes . This set will ensure we don’t re-evaluate a node which already has the shortest path set, and that we don’t evaluate paths through a node which has a shorter path to the source than the current path. Remember that nodes only go into seen_nodes once we are sure that we have their absolute shortest distance (not just their provisional distance). We use a set so that we get that sweet O(1) lookup time rather than repeatedly searching through an array at O(n) time. Set the provisional_distance of the source node to equal 0, and the array representing the hops taken to just include the source node itself. (This will be useful later as we track which path through the graph we take to get the calculated minimum distance).
ITERATIVE PROCEDURE
4. While we have not seen all nodes (or, in the case of source to single destination node evaluation, while we have not seen the destination node):
5. Set current_node to the node with the smallest provisional_distance in the entire graph. Note that for the first iteration, this will be the source_node because we set its provisional_distance to 0.
6. Add current_node to the seen_nodes set.
7. Update the provisional_distance of each of current_node 's neighbors to be the (absolute) distance from current_node to source_node plus the edge length from current_node to that neighbor IF that value is less than the neighbor’s current provisional_distance . If this neighbor has never had a provisional distance set, remember that it is initialized to infinity and thus must be larger than this sum. If we update provisional_distance , also update the “hops” we took to get this distance by concatenating current_node 's hops to the source node with current_node itself.
8. End While.
With Pictures
Note that next, we could either visit D or B . I will choose to visit B .
Now our program terminates, and we have the shortest distances and paths for every node in our graph!
It’s Time To Code
Let’s see what this may look like in python (this will be an instance method inside our previously coded Graph class and will take advantage of its other methods and structure):
We can test our picture above using this method:
To get some human-readable output, we map our node objects to their data , which gives us the output:
[(0, [‘A’]), (5, [‘A’, ‘B’]), (7, [‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’]), (5, [‘A’, ‘E’, ‘D’]), (2, [‘A’, ‘E’]), (17, [‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, ‘F’])]
Where each tuple is (total_distance, [hop_path]). This matches our picture above!
Cool! Are We Done?
Nope! But why? We can make this faster! If all you want is functionality, you are done at this point!
For the brave of heart, let’s focus on one particular step. Each iteration, we have to find the node with the smallest provisional distance in order to make our next greedy decision. Right now, we are searching through a list we called queue (using the values in dist ) in order to find what we need. This queue can have a maximum length n, which is our number of nodes. Our iteration through this list, therefore, is an O(n) operation, which we perform every iteration of our while loop. Since our while loop runs until every node is seen , we are now doing an O(n) operation n times! So our algorithm is O(n²)!! That isn’t good. But that’s not all! If you look at the adjacency matrix implementation of our Graph , you will notice that we have to look through an entire row (of size n) to find our connections! That is another O(n) operation in our while loop. How can we fix it? Well, first we can use a heap to get our smallest provisional distance in O(lg(n)) time instead of O(n) time (with a binary heap — note that a Fibonacci heap can do it in O(1)), and second we can implement our graph with an Adjacency List, where each node has a list of connected nodes rather than having to look through all nodes to see if a connection exists. This shows why it is so important to understand how we are representing data structures. If we implemented a heap with an Adjacency Matrix representation, we would not be changing the asymptotic runtime of our algorithm by using a heap! (Note: If you don’t know what big-O notation is, check out my blog on it!)
Heaps
So there are these things called heaps. We commonly use them to implement priority queues. Basically what they do is efficiently handle situations when we want to get the “highest priority” item quickly. For us, the high priority item is the smallest provisional distance of our remaining unseen nodes. Instead of searching through an entire array to find our smallest provisional distance each time, we can use a heap which is sitting there ready to hand us our node with the smallest provisional distance . Once we take it from our heap, our heap will quickly re-arrange itself so it is ready to hand us our next value when we need it. Pretty cool! If you want to challenge yourself, you can try to implement the really fast Fibonacci Heap, but today we are going to be implementing a Binary MinHeap to suit our needs.
A binary heap, formally, is a complete binary tree that maintains the heap property. Ok, sounds great, but what does that mean?
Complete Binary Tree: This is a tree data structure where EVERY parent node has exactly two child nodes. If there are not enough child nodes to give the final row of parent nodes 2 children each, the child nodes will fill in from left to right.
What does this look like?
The Heap Property: (For a Minimum Heap) Every parent MUST be less than or equal to both of its children.
Applying this principle to our above complete binary tree, we would get something like this:
Which would have the underlying array [2,5,4,7,9,13,18] . As you can see, this is semi-sorted but does not need to be fully sorted to satisfy the heap property. This “underlying array” will make more sense in a minute.
Now we know what a heap is, let’s program it out, and then we will look at what extra methods we need to give it to be able to perform the actions we need it to!
So, we know that a binary heap is a special implementation of a binary tree, so let’s start out by programming out a BinaryTree class, and we can have our heap inherit from it. To implement a binary tree, we will have our underlying data structure be an array, and we will calculate the structure of the tree by the indices of our nodes inside the array. For example, our initial binary tree (first picture in the complete binary tree section) would have an underlying array of [5,7,18,2,9,13,4] . We will determine relationships between nodes by evaluating the indices of the node in our underlying array. Since we know that each parent has exactly 2 children nodes, we call our 0th index the root, and its left child can be index 1 and its right child can be index 2. More generally, a node at index i will have a left child at index 2*i + 1 and a right child at index 2*i + 2 . A node at index i will have a parent at index floor((i-1) / 2) .
So, our BinaryTree class may look something like this:
Now, we can have our MinHeap inherit from BinaryTree to capture this functionality, and now our BinaryTree is reusable in other contexts!
Alright, almost done! Now all we have to do is identify the abilities our MinHeap class should have and implement them! We need our heap to be able to:
Turn itself from an unordered binary tree into a minimum heap. This will be done upon the instantiation of the heap.
Pop off its minimum value to us and then restructure itself to maintain the heap property. This will be used when we want to visit our next node.
Update (decrease the value of) a node’s value while maintaining the heap property. This will be used when updating provisional distances.
To accomplish these, we will start with a building-block which will be instrumental to implement the first two functions. Let’s write a method called min_heapify_subtree . This method will assume that the entire heap is heapified (i.e. satisfying the heap property) except for a single 3-node subtree. We will heapify this subtree recursively by identifying its parent node index at i and allowing the potentially out-of-place node to be placed correctly in the heap. To do this, we check to see if the children are smaller than the parent node and if they are we swap the smallest child with the parent node. Then, we recursively call our method at the index of the swapped parent (which is now a child) to make sure it gets put in a position to maintain the heap property. Here’s the pseudocode:
FUNCTION min_heapify_subtree(i)
index_of_min = i
IF left_child exists AND left_child < node[index_of_min]
index_of_min = left_child_index
ENDIF
IF right_child exists AND right_child < node[index_of_min]
index_of_min = right_child_index
ENDIF
IF index_of_min != i
swap(nodes[i], nodes[index_of_min])
min_heapify_subtree(index_of_min)
ENDIF
END
In the worst-case scenario, this method starts out with index 0 and recursively propagates the root node all the way to the bottom leaf. Because our heap is a binary tree, we have lg(n) levels, where n is the total number of nodes. Because each recursion of our method performs a fixed number of operations, i.e. is O(1), we can call classify the runtime of min_heapify_subtree to be O(lg(n)).
To turn a completely random array into a proper heap, we just need to call min_heapify_subtree on every node, starting at the bottom leaves. So, we can make a method min_heapify :
FUNCTION min_heapify
FOR index from last_index to first_index
min_heapify_subtree(index)
ENDFOR
END
This method performs an O(lg(n)) method n times, so it will have runtime O(nlg(n)).
We will need to be able to grab the minimum value from our heap. We can read this value in O(1) time because it will always be the root node of our minimum heap (i.e. index 0 of the underlying array), but we want to do more than read it. We want to remove it AND then make sure our heap remains heapified. To do that, we remove our root node and replace it by the last leaf, and then min_heapify_subtree at index 0 to ensure our heap property is maintained:
FUNCTION pop
min_node = nodes[0]
IF heap_size > 1
nodes[0] = nodes[nodes.length - 1]
nodes.pop() // remove the last element from our nodes array
min_heapify_subtree(0)
ELSE IF heap_size == 1
nodes.pop()
ELSE
return NIL // the heap is empty, so return NIL value
ENDIF
return min_node
END
Because this method runs in constant time except for min_heapify_subtree , we can say this method is also O(lg(n)).
Great! Now for our last method, we want to be able to update our heap’s values (lower them, since we are only ever updating our provisional distance s to lower values) while maintaining the heap property!
So, we will make a method called decrease_key which accepts an index value of the node to be updated and the new value. We want to update that node’s value, and then bubble it up to where it needs to be if it has become smaller than its parent! So, until it is no longer smaller than its parent node, we will swap it with its parent node:
FUNCTION decrease_key(index, value)
nodes[index] = value
parent_node_index = parent_index(index)
WHILE index != 0 AND nodes[parent_node_index] > nodes[index]
swap(nodes[i], nodes[parent_node_index])
index = parent_node_index
parent_node_index = parent_index(index)
ENDWHILE
END
Ok, let’s see what all this looks like in python!
Whew! Ok, time for the last step, I promise! We just have to figure out how to implement this MinHeap data structure into our dijsktra method in our Graph , which now has to be implemented with an adjacency list. We want to implement it while fully utilizing the runtime advantages our heap gives us while maintaining our MinHeap class as flexible as possible for future reuse!
So first let’s get this adjacency list implementation out of the way. Instead of a matrix representing our connections between nodes, we want each node to correspond to a list of nodes to which it is connected. This way, if we are iterating through a node’s connections, we don’t have to check ALL nodes to see which ones are connected — only the connected nodes are in that node’s list. So, our old graph friend
would have the adjacency list which would look a little like this:
[
[ NodeA, [(NodeB, 5), (NodeC, 10), (NodeE, 2)] ],
[ NodeB, [(NodeA, 5), (NodeC, 2), (NodeD, 4)] ],
[ NodeC, [(NodeA, 10), (NodeB, 2), (NodeD, 7), (NodeF, 10)] ],
[ NodeD, [(NodeB, 4), (NodeC, 7), (NodeE, 3)] ],
[ NodeE, [(NodeA, 2), (NodeD, 3)] ],
[ NodeF, [(NodeC, 10)]
]
As you can see, to get a specific node’s connections we no longer have to evaluate ALL other nodes. Let’s keep our API as relatively similar, but for the sake of clarity we can keep this class lighter-weight:
Next, let’s focus on how we implement our heap to achieve a better algorithm than our current O(n²) algorithm. If we look back at our dijsktra method in our Adjacency Matrix implemented Graph class, we see that we are iterating through our entire queue to find our minimum provisional distance (O(n) runtime), using that minimum-valued node to set our current node we are visiting, and then iterating through all of that node’s connections and resetting their provisional distance as necessary (check out the connections_to or connections_from method; you will see that it has O(n) runtime). These two O(n) algorithms reduce to a runtime of O(n) because O(2n) = O(n). We are doing this for every node in our graph, so we are doing an O(n) algorithm n times, thus giving us our O(n²) runtime. Instead, we want to reduce the runtime to O((n+e)lg(n)), where n is the number of nodes and e is the number of edges.
In our adjacency list implementation, our outer while loop still needs to iterate through all of the nodes (n iterations), but to get the edges for our current node, our inner loop just has to iterate through ONLY the edges for that specific node. Thus, that inner loop iterating over a node’s edges will run a total of only O(n+e) times. Inside that inner loop, we need to update our provisional distance for potentially each one of those connected nodes. This will utilize the decrease_key method of our heap to do this, which we have already shown to be O(lg(n)). Thus, our total runtime will be O((n+e)lg(n)).
New algorithm:
INITIALIZATION
Set the provisional_distance of all nodes from the source node to infinity except for our source node, which will be set to 0. And add this data to a minimum heap. Instead of keeping a seen_nodes set, we will determine if we have visited a node or not based on whether or not it remains in our heap. Remember when we pop() a node from our heap, it gets removed from our heap and therefore is equivalent in logic to having been “seen”.
ITERATIVE PROCEDURE
3. While the size of our heap is > 0: (runs n times)
4. Set current_node to the return value of heap.pop() .
5. For n in current_node.connections , use heap.decrease_key if that connection is still in the heap (has not been seen) AND if the current value of the provisional distance is greater than current_node 's provisional distance plus the edge weight to that neighbor. This for loop will run a total of n+e times, and its complexity is O(lg(n)).
6. End While.
There are 2 problems we have to overcome when we implement this:
Problem 1: We programmed our heap to work with an array of numbers, but we need our heap’s nodes to encapsulate the provisional distance (the metric to which we heapify), the hops taken, AND the node which that distance corresponds to.
Problem 2: We have to check to see if a node is in our heap, AND we have to update its provisional distance by using the decrease_key method, which requires the index of that node in the heap. But our heap keeps swapping its indices to maintain the heap property! We have to make sure we don’t solve this problem by just searching through our whole heap for the location of this node. This would be an O(n) operation performed (n+e) times, which would mean we made a heap and switched to an adjacency list implementation for nothing! We need to be able to do this in O(1) time.
Solution 1: We want to keep our heap implementation as flexible as possible. To allow it to accept any data type as elements in the underlying array, we can just accept optional anonymous functions (i.e. lambdas) upon instantiation, which are provided by the user to specify how it should deal with the elements inside the array should those elements be more complex than just a number. The default value of these lambdas could be functions that work if the elements of the array are just numbers. So, if a plain heap of numbers is required, no lambdas need to be inserted by the user. We will need these customized procedures for comparison between elements as well as for the ability to decrease the value of an element. We can call our comparison lambda is_less_than , and it should default to lambda: a,b: a < b . Our lambda to return an updated node with a new value can be called update_node , and it should default simply to lambda node, newval: newval . By passing in the node and the new value, I give the user the opportunity to define a lambda which updates an existing object OR replaces the value which is there. In the context of our old Graph implementation, since our nodes would have had the values
[ provisional_distance, [nodes, in, hop, path]] , our is_less_than lambda could have looked like this: lambda a,b: a[0] < b[0] , and we could keep the second lambda at its default value and pass in the nested array ourselves into decrease_key . However, we will see shortly that we are going to make the solution cleaner by making custom node objects to pass into our MinHeap . The flexibility we just spoke of will allow us to create this more elegant solution easily. Specifically, you will see in the code below that my is_less_than lambda becomes: lambda a,b: a.prov_dist < b.prov_dist , and my update_node lambda is: lambda node, data: node.update_data(data) , which I would argue is much cleaner than if I continued to use nested arrays.
Solution 2: There are a few ways to solve this problem, but let’s try to choose one that goes hand in hand with Solution 1. Given the flexibility we provided ourselves in Solution 1, we can continue using that strategy to implement a complementing solution here. We can implement an extra array inside our MinHeap class which maps the original order of the inserted nodes to their current order inside of the nodes array. Let’s call this list order_mapping . By maintaining this list, we can get any node from our heap in O(1) time given that we know the original order that node was inserted into the heap. So, if the order of nodes I instantiate my heap with matches the index number of my Graph 's nodes, I now have a mapping from my Graph node to that node’s relative location in my MinHeap in constant time! To be able to keep this mapping up to date in O(1) time, the whatever elements passed into the MinHeap as nodes must somehow “know” their original index, and my MinHeap needs to know how to read that original index from those nodes. This is necessary so it can update the value of order_mapping at the index number of the node’s index property to the value of that node’s current position in MinHeap 's node list. Because we want to allow someone to use MinHeap that does not need this mapping AND we want to allow any type of data to be nodes of our heap, we can again allow a lambda to be added by the user which tells our MinHeap how to get the index number from whatever type of data is inserted into our heap — we will call this get_index . For example, if the data for each element in our heap was a list of structure [data, index] , our get_index lambda would be: lambda el: el[1] . Furthermore, we can set get_index 's default value to None , and use that as a decision-maker whether or not to maintain the order_mapping array. That way, if the user does not enter a lambda to tell the heap how to get the index from an element, the heap will not keep track of the order_mapping , thus allowing a user to use a heap with just basic data types like integers without this functionality. The get_index lambda we will end up using, since we will be using a custom node object, will be very simple: lambda node: node.index() .
Combining solutions 1 and 2, we will make a clean solution by making a DijkstraNodeDecorator class to decorate all of the nodes that make up our graph. This decorator will provide the additional data of provisional distance (initialized to infinity) and hops list (initialized to an empty array). Also, it will be implemented with a method which will allow the object to update itself, which we can work nicely into the lambda for decrease_key . DijkstraNodeDecorator will be able to access the index of the node it is decorating, and we will utilize this fact when we tell the heap how to get the node’s index using the get_index lambda from Solution 2.
And finally, the code:
Used to decorate the nodes in the Graph implementation below
MinHeap modified with lambdas to allow any datatype to be used as nodes
This final code, when run, outputs:
[(0, [‘a’]), (2, [‘a’, ‘e’]), (5, [‘a’, ‘e’, ‘d’]), (5, [‘a’, ‘b’]), (7, [‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’]), (17, [‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’, ‘f’])]
As we can see, this matches our previous output! And the code looks much nicer! AND, most importantly, we have now successfully implemented Dijkstra’s Algorithm in O((n+e)lg(n)) time! | https://medium.com/cantors-paradise/dijkstras-shortest-path-algorithm-in-python-d955744c7064 | ['Micah Shute'] | 2019-11-23 22:31:15.243000+00:00 | ['Algorithms', 'Programming', 'Python', 'Mathematics', 'Data Science'] |
Creating Your First Blockchain with Java. Part 1. | Making the Blockchain.
A blockchain is just a chain/list of blocks. Each block in the blockchain will have its own digital fingerprint, contain digital fingerprint of the previous block, and have some data ( this data could be transactions for example ).
I sure hope Nakamoto never sees this.
Hash = Digital Fingerprint.
Each block doesn’t just contain the hash of the block before it, but its own hash is in part, calculated from the previous hash. If the previous block’s data is changed then the previous block’s hash will change ( since it is calculated in part, by the data) in turn affecting all the hashes of the blocks there after. Calculating and comparing the hashes allow us to see if a blockchain is invalid.
What does this mean ? …Changing any data in this list, will change the signature and break the chain.
So Firsts lets create class Block that make up the blockchain:
As you can see our basic Block contains a String hash that will hold our digital signature. The variable previousHash to hold the previous block’s hash and String data to hold our block data.
Next we will need a way to generate a digital fingerprint,
there are many cryptographic algorithms you can choose from, however SHA256 fits just fine for this example. We can import java.security.MessageDigest; to get access to the SHA256 algorithm.
We need to use SHA256 later down the line so lets create a handy helper method in a new StringUtil ‘utility’ class :
This is mostly a carbon copy of the http://www.baeldung.com/sha-256-hashing-java
Don’t worry too much if you don’t understand the contents of this helper method, all you need to know is that it takes a string and applies SHA256 algorithm to it, and returns the generated signature as a string.
Now lets use our applySha256 helper, in a new method in the Block class, to calculate the hash. We must calculate the hash from all parts of the block we don’t want to be tampered with. So for our block we will include the previousHash , the data and timeStamp .
and lets add this method to the Block constructor…
Time for some testing…
In our main NoobChain class lets create some blocks and print the hashes to the screen to see that everything is in working order.
Lets test this…
The first block is called the genesis block, and because there is no previous block we will just enter “0” as the previous hash.
The output should look similar to this:
Your values will be different because your timestamp will be different.
Each block now has its own digital signature based on its information and the signature of the previous block.
Currently it’s not much of a blockchain, so lets store our blocks in an ArrayList and also import gson to view it as Json. (click here to find out how to import the gson library)
Now our output should look something closer to what we expect a blockchain to look like.
Now we need a way to check the integrity of our blockchain.
Lets create an isChainValid() Boolean method in the NoobChain class, that will loop through all blocks in the chain and compare the hashes. This method will need to check the hash variable is actually equal to the calculated hash, and the previous block’s hash is equal to the previousHash variable.
Any change to the blockchain’s blocks will cause this method to return false.
On the bitcoin network nodes share their blockchains and the longest valid chain is accepted by the network. What’s to stop someone tampering with data in an old block then creating a whole new longer blockchain and presenting that to the network ? Proof of work. The hashcash proof of work system means it takes considerable time and computational power to create new blocks. Hence the attacker would need more computational power than the rest of the peers combined.
hashcash, much wow.
Lets start mining blocks !!!
We will require miners to do proof-of-work by trying different variable values in the block until its hash starts with a certain number of 0’s.
Lets add an int called nonce to be included in our calculateHash() method, and the much needed mineBlock() method :
In reality each miner will start iterating from a random point. Some miners may even try random numbers for nonce. Also it’s worth noting that at the harder difficulties solutions may require more than integer.MAX_VALUE, miners can then try changing the timestamp.
The mineBlock() method takes in an int called difficulty, this is the number of 0’s they must solve for. Low difficulty like 1 or 2 can be solved nearly instantly on most computers, i’d suggest something around 4–6 for testing. At the time of writing Litecoin’s difficulty is around 442,592.
Lets add the difficulty as a static variable to the NoobChain class :
public static int difficulty = 5;
We should update the NoobChain class to trigger the mineBlock() method for each new block. The isChainValid() Boolean should also check if each block has a solved ( by mining ) hash.
Notice we also check and print isChainValid.
Running this your results should look like :
Mining each block took some time! ( around 3 seconds ) You should mess around with the difficulty value to see how that effects the time it takes to mine each block ;)
If someone were to tamper 😒 with the data in your blockchain system:
Their blockchain would be invalid.
They would not be able to create a longer blockchain.
Honest blockchains in your network will have a time advantage on the longest chain.
A tampered blockchain will not be able to catch up with a longer & valid chain. *
*unless they have vastly more computation speed than all other nodes in your network combined. A future quantum computer or something.
You’re all done with your basic blockchain!
Go on pat yourself on the back.
Your blockchain:
> Is made up of blocks that store data.
> Has a digital signature that chains your blocks together.
> Requires proof of work mining to validate new blocks.
> Can be check to see if data in it is valid and unchanged.
You can download these project files on Github. | https://medium.com/programmers-blockchain/create-simple-blockchain-java-tutorial-from-scratch-6eeed3cb03fa | [] | 2020-07-25 17:30:49.194000+00:00 | ['Tutorial', 'Java', 'Blockchain', 'Developer', 'Programming'] |
Progressive web apps(PWAs) are coming to a Safari near you | Safari is finally adding PWA features.
For those of you who have no clue what a PWA is or are confused about how to begin developing a PWA or dont know about it’s importance please read this post on PWA before you proceed.
Safari/Webkit has finally started adding features that constitute a PWA. Before we proceed its important for us to understand what features constitute a PWA. At the core of it only three
Web App Manifest Service Worker Cache API
These are the must have PWA features. PWAs are web apps that can be added to homescreen. And it works like a app when opened from homescreen without the browser window. You may ask what’s works like a app. In any native app when you open the app, the shell is always available. It may also show you last time’s data when offline or when loading. In traditional web apps you see a white screen then HTML loads and if it was a SPA(single page application) the js loads which makes ajax calls and then loads data.
By making optimal caching strategy, you can eliminate the initial white page. But here you are at the mercy of the browsers Overall Cache size/limit. One way to overcome this was the offline cache manifest. This was a very cumbersome way to achieve the above. Thankfully it’s deprecated.
At the starting of last year support for PWA looked like this | https://medium.com/awebdeveloper/progressive-web-apps-pwas-are-coming-to-a-safari-near-you-216812aba5a | ['Prathik S Shetty'] | 2018-09-27 03:50:39.983000+00:00 | ['Mobile App Development', 'Progressive Web App', 'Mobile', 'Web Development', 'Html5'] |
Marketing Retainers Are Cubes | For a marketing agency, having customers on retainers (vs. say, a number of one-off projects) can be a game-changer.
A twelve-month commitment from a customer means you aren’t placing all of your efforts into prospecting and selling new projects each month. With longer client commitments, your revenue now becomes more predictable and easier to forecast. We aren’t living “in-month, biting our nails pushing for a “Closed Won”. You also now get to spend more time, and show more value, to your customers. You can move from vendor to partner.
Okay, so yes. The intrinsic value — and argument for — marketing retainers is clear. But they aren’t going to appear out of thin air. And while creating the appropriate retainer model is a project within itself (tip: begin by applying a percentage mark-up on top of your effective hourly operating costs), a number of agencies struggle with how to properly and appropriately scale out bundled options made available to customers.
Cold Stone Creamery has “Like It, Love It, Gotta Have It”. Starbucks has “Tall, Grande, Venti”. Slack has “Free, Standard, Plus”. So how do you create a tiered set of options for right-sizing customers instead of just “Not Enough Value, Our Sweet Spot, and the Overpriced One”?
Get cubical.
In geometric terms, a cube is a symmetrical, three-dimensional, shape. It has six square, identically sized faces. Or you know — it’s a 3D square.
But how does this relate to marketing retainers and your agency’s current menu of services. In your standard service pack (or menu of services, or list of deliverables), each package should be visualized as a cube; essentially, every retainer has a width, a length, and a depth.
[For the following examples, let us operate under the hypothetical “Bronze, Silver and Gold” labels to your tiered marketing offering.]
WIDTH: Expand your services “horizontally” and add more options to the menu as needed. By scaling up in packages, more items can now be a part of the retainer. Going from Bronze to Silver, maybe now blogging becomes a deliverable where it hadn’t been in the previous tier. Or PPC management. Or creative services. Or lead nurturing.
(i.e. HubSpot, when moving from Basic to Professional editions, adds marketing automation into the software.)
HEIGHT: In services that appear in multiple retainer levels, scale up by increasing the frequency and/or the delivery cadence of these services “vertically”. For example, Bronze may have 2x blogs published a month, but Silver has 2x published blogs a week. Move from 4x Facebook posts a month to 12x organic posts a month.
(i.e. Slack’s Free version allows for up to 10 app integrations. A move to Standard uncaps that amount for unlimited integration options.)
DEPTH: By growing in “depth”, increase the technical aspect and approach to a particular service. Be more hands on with an integration or manage the sync between two platforms. By moving to Gold, add boosted posts or advertisements to the social management service. Include a defined A/B testing schedule on top of your landing page development service.
(i.e. Dropbox Business, when moving from Standard to Advanced, introduces SSO integration for logging in vs. requiring users to manually log ins to Dropbox itself.) | https://medium.com/get-stuff-dunn/marketing-retainers-are-cubes-f9334d51d96 | ['Kevin Dunn'] | 2018-02-21 20:15:11.741000+00:00 | ['Marketing', 'Digital Marketing', 'Digital Marketing Agency', 'Freelancing', 'Inbound Marketing'] |
How to Have a Successful UX Career at Google (Or Anywhere Else) | Learn how to “speak shark”
I am a huge fan of the reality TV show Shark Tank. For those not familiar, the basic premise is that entrepreneurs come out and pitch their business or product ideas to an audience of seasoned, successful businesspeople— the Sharks. Sharks grill the “guppies,” asking them detailed questions about how they’ll take their products to market, how they’ll make money, what their sales projections will be, and so on. Sharks then make offers to invest, so entrepreneurs get knowledgeable investors, Sharks get equity, and everyone wins. Or, quite often, everyone loses.
The antics of this entrepreneurial pressure-cooker are entertaining, but the show also demonstrates that business acumen and product savviness go a long way when trying to sell your ideas. The more knowledgeable and business-smart an entrepreneur is, the better they do under questioning. It’s an immensely valuable skill. I call this “speaking shark.” It means thinking like a CEO.
Fully understanding the product area you’re working in is one of the best ways UXers can position themselves as experts, united in true partnerships with both cross-functional teams and their end users. It’s not enough to just do product research, like competitive analyses or market surveys. You are the expert on the user, and that means understanding the full landscape in which your users exist. To get the lay of the land, read industry news, and understand where that industry and competitors are going. The goal is to build a POV on the product and business.
As a manager, encourage your team to think about the following prompts:
What business are you in? What problem are we solving?
For whom? Why?
How do we compete? What is our differentiator?
How do we make money?
What is the growth strategy? What are the ecosystem risks?
Upping your vocabulary and understanding of basic business and product terminology is another fairly simple way of being able to speak shark. Get familiar with business metrics like KPI, sales revenue, net profit margin, gross margin, customer lifetime value, and product metrics like daily/monthly active users (DAU, MAU), churn rate, conversion rate, engagement etc.
The type of product you work on — subscription vs. content sites vs. API products vs. e-commerce — will determine the metrics you gather. Regardless, as a design leader, you have to be able to understand the product and business metrics to be able to demonstrate how UX drives business value. | https://medium.com/google-design/how-to-have-a-successful-ux-career-at-google-or-anywhere-else-ea63624f74de | ['Jhilmil Jain'] | 2019-11-05 17:47:42.874000+00:00 | ['Opinion', 'Design', 'UX', 'Career Advice'] |
3 Key Steps to Get to the Top of Your Game | 3 Key Steps to Get to the Top of Your Game
Become a superior performer like this 7-time F1 world champion
Clive Mason/Getty Images
Lewis Hamilton now stands alongside Michael Schumacher at seven F1 world championships. He has surpassed him in race results and critical driver statistics. F1 has described him as its “most complete performer”. Yet, in his post-championship interview, he admits:
“I don’t think I’ve hit the limit yet.”
I’ve come across a lot of resources about Lewis — Obviously, the guy is a legend. And as with most great people, we see and admire the talent. The pure drive (pun intended). A man, literally, at the finish line. But I don’t think we talk enough about how he got there.
So, in this story, let’s look into Lewis Hamilton’s work ethic to understand how he sets himself up for success. I’ve broken it down into three core components with actionable advice. If you want to know what it takes to become a superior performer in any aspect of your life, just take it from this seven-time F1 world champion.
Focus: List Down One Thing You’re Not Great At (yet).
Lewis knew that though he had the talent, it was the ability to focus that would take him far. He had to have a clear focus on- and off-track. His trick?
“Every year, I write down where I’m not great, as there are plenty of places I’m not great. And then I ask ‘so how do we do that?’”
In your craft, career, personal life, there are a thousand ways to improve. But when you try to improve on so many fronts all at once, you’ll most likely end up with slim changes and a whole lot of frustration and fatigue.
Scattered improvement can only take you so far. It’s an intentional, strategic focus that will change the ballgame.
In action: What is one thing that if you focus on and manage to turn around, will make a huge difference in your performance? Make a note. Hammer it into your head. Zoom into that aspect and relentlessly go after it.
Learning: Do Your Homework.
Mastering your craft requires equal parts practice and study. As Lewis said:
“It’s a lot of studying — I’ve done more this year than I would have done last year. I never understood that when I was younger, I’d just arrive and drive. The amount of homework I do in the background is probably the reason you see the results that I get today.”
Not only do you have to push harder when it comes to the actual work, but you’ve got to go the extra mile when you’re off the record. Doing your homework means knowing the ins and outs of the craft and your performance. It means dissecting feedback and, quoting Lewis’ engineer, “just trying to find what’s the next thing that we can learn, where can we find that next bit of performance.”
In action: Immerse yourself in both practice and study. Are you a Medium writer? Study other writers. Analyze your writing. Understand the rules of the platform. Perhaps you’re a fitness coach? Study various fitness programs. Join a community. Develop fundamental knowledge of nutrition. Learn as much as you can.
Variety: Keep Your Hobbies.
As if his plate wasn’t already full, Lewis is managing his own clothing line with Tommy Hilfiger. But as it turns out, his creative pursuits actually help him behind the wheel. In this podcast, he says he comes to races in much better form when he’s actively involved in other projects than when coming from a dull, restful week:
“I do all these things and my mind’s being challenged all the time. I arrive at the race. And maybe I have slightly less energy, but mentally, I’m buzzing. And that is more powerful than having all the rest you can possibly want.”
This may sound counterintuitive to the extreme focus and dedicated learning mentioned earlier. But the lesson here is that variety plays a key role in stimulating your brain and enhancing your performance.
Don’t drop your other interests because you’re too hellbent on getting better. If you break your back and dedicate every waking hour of your day to improving, you might just end up with tunnel vision. As research has proven, you’ll perform better and think more creatively if you expose yourself to play.
In action: You don’t have to launch your own fashion line or grow some kind of platform. Simply make time for your hobby. Dabble in a new interest or join a diverse community. Keep yourself curious, challenge yourself to think differently, and you will reap the rewards in your performance. | https://medium.com/live-your-life-on-purpose/how-to-perform-like-a-7-time-f1-world-champion-cfc34e7f7116 | ['Ria Tagulinao'] | 2020-12-20 07:42:07.536000+00:00 | ['Performance', 'Personal Development', 'F1', 'Self Improvement', 'Productivity'] |
New Year, New Ewww | Written by
Daily comic by Lisa Burdige and John Hazard about balancing life, love and kids in the gig economy. | https://backgroundnoisecomic.medium.com/new-year-new-ewww-a17ae9cbe9dc | ['Background Noise Comics'] | 2019-01-04 04:16:41.490000+00:00 | ['Humor', 'Depression', 'New Years Resolutions', 'Mental Health', 'Comics'] |
Cats Who Have Owned Me | Cats Who Have Owned Me
Because, let’s be clear about these relationships
Me pinned in place by Blue, circa 1960. Photos provided by Remington Write.
His name was Blue and Mom said he was a Russian Blue; that’s all I remember.
I barely remember Gypsy, our black cat who got hit in the road. What I do remember about Gypsy was Mom and Daddy sitting me down to have The Death Talk (something I have kind of never really recovered from). Gypsy had had a litter before meeting her maker out on the curve of Weeden Road and we kept the one black kitten, George.
George was the runt with one leg twisted from being squashed into the corner of the womb by his four litter-mates. He had seven toes on every foot and could open closed doors by turning the knob. Back then we lived outside of town and he was a ferocious hunter, dragging dying rabbits back to the house or toying with a frantic mouse until it gave up and died. And since George had claimed me as his human, I took responsibility for trying to save his kills. That got me bitten more than once by frightened rodents.
Whatever other issues that came between my mother and I later in life (and there were many), she will always get credit for gently lifting each next bloody rabbit from my arms without ever giving me grief for ruining yet another set of clothes. She’d put the traumatized rabbit in a box by the fridge and tell me the next day that it was all better and back out by the garden.
The summer I was nine our world upended and with about six weeks warning Daddy quit his job at Putnam’s Garage, they sold the house and we moved from rural western New York State to Ohio (the story behind that one is a frigging novel). In Ohio, we lived right in town and about two blocks from that town’s crazy cat lady. Where there are crazy cat ladies, it turns out, there are fed up neighbors putting out poison. Less than a month after we got settled into the new place, George turned up sick. Mom and Daddy guessed he’d eaten some of the poison put out for the cat lady’s cats.
Poor George died in a box in the bathroom. For two days he lay there, eyes glassy and uttering low confused yowls. The first day after he died I couldn’t stop crying. The second day I kept crying because suddenly Mom was being incredibly kind and gentle with me which I wasn’t used to and wanted more of.
There were more cats after that, but none claimed me until Puss.
Years later, living very close to the edge of complete catastrophe in Cleveland, I found myself coming to in the basement after a drunken house party with a tiny, gray tabby kitten curled up under my chin. The kids had been tossing that kitten around earlier so when I left it was under my coat. That was Puss.
Puss lived 22 years. So far, that’s the longest continuous relationship of my life. I was 21 when I stole her from that party and 42 when, sobbing, I took her to the all-night animal clinic here in New York City under the Queensboro Bridge because she’d stopped eating and drinking water. In between, our lives went through any number of strange turns. There was the junk yard German Shepherd next door on Tomkins Ave that just about tore her to pieces. She recuperated from that and still loved prowling around outdoors. Because I grew up with what we called indoor/outdoor cats it never occurred to me to keep her indoors. She also outlasted three partners.
Puss sitting pretty in the mess before the move to NYC
When I was 36 and got my first apartment (yeah, late bloomer), Puss came into her own. Because it was a fourth floor walk up, she became an indoor cat and settled comfortably into being queen of her domain. The apartment had wide windowsills and a number of small crooks and crannies for her to tuck herself into. We lived together there for six peaceful years until I got this mad notion to move to New York City. I agonized over whether to drag my poor old cat with me. My former partner offered to take her, but I couldn’t leave her behind. She wouldn’t tolerate it. So off we went.
One day I walked into my room in the shared apartment where I lived in upper Manhattan and called her name. She was facing away from me on the bed and didn’t respond. That’s when I realized that she had gone deaf. It was only in that last year that there was any indication of her age. I stood weeping while the vet put her back into my arms with that catheter in her leg; I was sure that I had “killed my cat by bringing her to New York”. The kind young man pointed out that if I stayed in Cleveland she would still be 22 years old and likely to die soon anyway. Oh. Right.
I did not rush to submit myself to the sway of another cat. Instead I focused on what everyone had assured me was impossible: finding an apartment I could afford on my own in the city. It took 15 months, but I proved them all wrong. In 2002 I moved into my own rent-stabilized apartment in Harlem. And discovered I had mice. Many mice. Bold ones who would saunter out into the middle of the living room and look at me. Swarms of them congregating under the hood of my gas stove at night.
Time for that cat.
I’d go to Bide-a-Wee, a wonderful no-kill shelter and visit the kittens. They were a shell-shocked bunch, those little feral kittens usually separated too early from their mothers with crusted eyes, cowering and terrified. I was slowly recuperating from an autoimmune disorder that had really knocked me on my ass so I was not in any condition to be nursing tiny sick kittens.
Alice Through the Looking Glass
Black cats know about me, I think. Alice, with her sleek black fur and giant golden eyes, was the first of the Bide-a-Wee kittens to respond to my finger twitching between the bars of her cage. She was feral and cautious, but seemed healthy and inquisitive enough for me to pony up the adoption fee and take her home.
The moment I let her out of the carrier, she vanished. For three days there was no cat in that apartment. I looked everywhere. Under everything, inside of everything, even outdoors. Zero little black cat. Alice had slipped through the looking glass. Food was untouched and nothing appeared in the litter box.
Three days later as I sat on the toilet I saw a small black blur zip across the living room. For another week the only time I saw Alice was when I was on the john. Over time Alice took on her responsibilities for me with quiet authority. But she’d vanish as soon as anyone she didn’t know appeared. We understood one another.
Then came JJ, my very expensive stray cat. She’s a cagey one, JJ is. She took me hostage at 5 o’clock on a Sunday morning when I was coming home from a party in Brooklyn with my then-partner, Ric. We were stumbling along towards home when a tiny gray and black tabby kitten shot out of the nearby trash pile and fell on my foot on her back, looking up at me. What am I going to do? Kick a kitten?
Alice and JJ
With Alice snug in the apartment, there was no way I was bringing a street kitten (no matter how adorable) in. So Ric went and got the cat carrier and we caught a cab back down to the 24-hour animal clinic (yes, the same one where I took Puss at the end of her life). $300 later we knew she didn’t have feline leukemia and that she was a she, but the un-gendered name stuck. JJ was not feral and was clearly happy to have humans to boss around. This girl was socialized.
Bob, on the left was born without a tail, and her sister, Smokey
And she was pregnant. And if Alice was not thrilled with the new roommate, she was really not having it with five kittens in her domain. Actually, Alice was incredibly patient with the little fiends.
And here is where I tell you how kittens are always superior to puppies and babies. Every one of those five kittens got put into the litter box once and not one of them ever missed using the box again. Not one. Not once.
Living with five kittens can be incredibly fun but we were happy to find good homes for the fiends and Miss JJ had herself another trip to the vet to be spayed. Cats, similar to humans, don’t make great pets when they have the option of sexual activity.
Two years ago, while I was lost in the freelance wilderness, Alice developed diabetes. The vet offered the value-pack of syringes and insulin and sharps disposal bottles all for a mere $160. I would be testing Alice’s blood and taking her in for analysis weekly until we stabilized her blood sugar at $80 a visit. This would buy my tired old black cat some time but those regular visits to the vet would ensure she wasn’t going to be having much in the way of quality of life. After talking it over with friends I decided to keep her as comfortable as I could until it was time to let her go. She let me know when that was.
Now JJ rules supreme. She has a new human under her sway; this one however doesn’t recognize her authority, which makes living with the two of them a real opportunity for spiritual growth.
JJ rules
For most of my life I have submitted to the whims of some cat and I have to say there are worse whims to which one could submit. Way way worse. | https://medium.com/tenderlymag/cats-who-have-owned-me-9c81a0a6cfc7 | ['Remington Write'] | 2019-11-26 22:00:21.414000+00:00 | ['Cats', 'Pets', 'Relationships', 'Death', 'New York'] |
Here is what you need to do to get more stuff done… | Here is what you need to do to get more stuff done… Mo Follow Dec 21 · 3 min read
Photo from Unsplash
We all sometimes struggle with staying focused on our tasks: work, studies, revision, and other things besides. This can mean not getting enough done during the day.
Here are a few things, from personal experience, that you can do, to help you focus on whatever you are doing throughout your day.
Always keep the end goal in mind.
When you have a lack of focus or discipline, or you are not really enthusiastic about what you are doing, a good place to start is to remind yourself why you started working in the first place.
Do you want to pass a test with flying colors? Do you want to ace an interview? Do you want to grow your business?
Whatever your end goal is, keep that in mind, because this will give you the determination and the focus that you need to carry on.
Be organized: Set up a timetable and a to-do list.
Another reason for lack of focus is that you just don’t know what you are supposed to be doing. This is attributed to a lack of organization, and so this is why you need to have both a to-do list and a timetable.
The to-do list is where you put tasks that you need to complete, and also when you need to complete them.
The timetable is where you fit the tasks on your to-do list into your day so that you are organized for the day ahead.
Give yourself a break in between tasks.
A big reason that you may lack focus may be that, because you have been working for a few hours, you are just too tired to focus properly on your work.
So, remember to give yourself 10–20 minute breaks, to recharge your batteries, so that you can go back to your tasks rejuvenated and energized.
Have a good night’s sleep.
This is very important. Have an early night, and get the sleep that you need, so that you do not feel tired in the morning.
The morning is the most productive part of the day, and so feeling tired from the night before will hinder how much work you get done in this crucial time.
This brings us neatly to the final point…
Start your day with an effective morning routine.
A productive morning is an essential part of a productive day. Doing the same few things in the morning before you start your day can really help you stay focused for the day ahead.
It primes your brain for the work ahead, and it is a good way to get focused on the tasks that you need to complete.
I hope that you will use these tips to be more focused so that you can get more done during the day.
If you have got to this point in the article, please take the time to follow me for more pieces about studying, motivation, and life. Thank you. | https://medium.com/illumination/here-is-what-you-need-to-do-to-get-more-stuff-done-98e9dac3b53d | [] | 2020-12-21 14:59:32.625000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Motivation', 'Work', 'Focus', 'Life'] |
How to be a better Software Engineer | How to be a better Software Engineer
Building a career out of coding
The power of technology is constantly expanding, and the software industry is experiencing a boom. New applications and technologies are appearing on an almost daily basis. In addition, the number of programmers working on these applications is growing rapidly. As a result, the market for software engineers has been continuously growing, and new opportunities are arising on an almost daily basis.
How to become a Software Engineer?
Why learn programming?
With over 70% of all new jobs being created in the last 5 years, the demand for software engineers is growing rapidly. This growth can be traced back to an increased need for technical talent in an ever-increasing number of fields, including:
Enterprise infrastructure
Software development
Hardware systems integration
Cloud computing
Financial services
Automotive
The demand for talent is growing in the following industries, and the growth rate is expected to continue for some time.
How to build a software engineering career
However, we believe that many developers do not know what to do. Some are simply stuck in a programming rut where the code they write is good enough. Some have a hard time understanding the complexities of the industry, and others are simply losing interest in programming at some point.
In order to avoid this confusion the best solution is to map your potential career as a software engineer. This will give you a sense of where to go from here. It will also tell you which companies might be best for you if you do choose to pursue a career in software engineering. When you have a clear idea of what the company culture is like and what they are looking for in software engineers you can think of which company is going to be best for you. The more you know about the companies you want to join the more specific you can be about the kind of software engineering experience you’ll get. When in doubt start small and get used to the company environment. That way you can pick the right company for you.
The best course of action is to understand what you want to do and then get started.
A company in which you can do what you like, how you like, and how well you can handle the work is going to be a better place for you and the company.
How Can I Start a Startup?
A lot of people say they want to start a startup. There is nothing wrong with wanting to start a startup. But that doesn’t mean you have to.
Startup culture is not something you get from someone else, it is something you can build yourself.
Startup culture is not something you can go get in a classroom, and learn. Startups come from people, they have to be built by people.
The best way to learn about running your business is starting one yourself. Second best is reading books about it and talking to other people who have done it.
Research companies you want to work in
Talk to former and current employees. See company’s projects. Check what skills you’ll need for a given role. Ask questions — that’s the best way to learn about whether a particular position is for you.
In the end, if you want to work on interesting projects with motivated people, you need to know as much as you can about the options on the job market offered… or about a particular niche you’d like to start your own thing in.
In any case, good luck! | https://medium.com/data-science-rush/how-to-be-a-better-software-engineer-25376ab1e1ed | ['Przemek Chojecki'] | 2019-11-20 16:09:39.553000+00:00 | ['Work', 'Coding', 'Programming', 'Software Engineering', 'Software Development'] |
New Sight | A poetry publication brought to you by Assemblage to capture all of your disconnected thoughts and let them find their form.
Follow | https://medium.com/loose-words/new-sight-de3b936a54de | ['Shannon Mastromonico'] | 2020-05-06 12:53:04.937000+00:00 | ['Free Verse', 'Poetry', 'Writing', 'Spiritual', 'Micro Poetry'] |
Crafting walkthroughs of the UX prototypes | “If a picture is worth 1000 words, a prototype is worth 1000 meetings.” — Tom & David Kelley
Prototyping is a time-tested method for designing solutions and getting feedback early in the process. As a designer, we collectively, along with stakeholders, solve business problems by envisioning solutions and shaping the vision in the form of tangible interfaces. Here, prototypes are a great way to push our thinking, communicate ideas, and learn from evaluating the concepts. Prototypes help us fail-fast so as to uncover potential design problems and scenarios early on.
“Fail often so that you can succeed sooner.” — Tom Kelley
We all have our own way of prototyping and walking the stakeholders through the prototypes. I would like to share what has worked for me and what hasn’t. Please note I use AxureRP for wireframing and prototyping.
Here are the stages when I use prototype walkthroughs —
Very early in the design
Consider this as an informal evaluation of your concept. Your team has floated an idea and you are sketching it. Feedback on the sketches and paper prototypes ascertain the direction. Your concept may or may not align with Product Owner (PO), Business Analyst (BA). But, once you put it on paper, it gives a channel for discussion. You may also perform initial walkthrough peer designers.
When we build a wireframe, it may be desirable, but it may not be feasible considering the constraints such as team competency or time availability.
“The value of a prototype is in the education it gives you, not in the code itself.” — Alan Cooper
If your business stakeholders give green light to a wireframe that is not feasible in the budget, then you and your team will have a tough time in delivery. Hence, it is a good idea to run it by the internal team like PO, BA, Technical Architect, or the development team.
Walkthroughs at this stage reveal most of the design problems. At the end of every session, we note the changes expected and whether it is a go-ahead. It is your responsibility to fix the identifies issues. We perform the changes as agreed and we are ready for the stakeholder presentation.
When evaluating with stakeholders
We meet our stakeholders regularly to review different tasks in a prototype that are written in user stories. For this walkthrough, we focus on a section of the product that comprises a fixed set of user stories that the development team wants to take in next sprint. We fix the agenda of the meeting with the users and during the meeting, we focus on those items only.
“There are two different types of prototyping. First, the gut sense. You know how far you can take it. Second, you need experts to figure out weather or not it is attainable.” — Tony Fadell
We use tasks based on walkthroughs. Business stakeholders examine the usability of the product. They also evaluate if the product satisfies the needs. A user story based walkthroughs show is the part of the product is ready for user testing or not. The sessions are generally an hour long and we involve only a few people. Thus, the feedback is exactly to the point and revision is easier.
We walk through the prototypes and then work on refinements. Our stakeholders have access to the wireframes as they are available on the Axure Cloud. They can go through the prototype and can come back to us for any doubt or feedback. They have been proactively looking at it.
When evaluating with end-users
Generally, we try to involve new users in every session so we demonstrate the application to a large audience. The walkthroughs are always from the user perspective. We take one task at a time and use the interactive prototype to complete the task.
We record the sessions in MS Teams so the users can access the recording later. Each product wireframe is hosted on Axure cloud with a password and the URL is shared with the participants. After the session, we request users to comment in the wireframe for questions or suggestions if any. Most users don’t comment, and many times they don’t go through the wireframes after the meeting. Some users do need reminders. Thus, we keep accepting feedback for a few days to a few weeks.
“If you think good design is expensive, you should look at the cost of bad design.” — Ralf Speth
You might say, but the users may not be aware of how to use the wireframe? We actually show them how to use the wireframe, how to navigate, how to use hotspots in Axure. Sometimes we request them to demonstrate from their laptop or desktop, how they would perform a task in the prototype.
Some users may not be aware that this is a prototype and not the developed application. So we iterate in our sessions that — This is not the end product. This is a mockup and we can revise it as much as they want, as long the feedback is shared within a given time-window. This has helped the users to know we are not late in the process.
Please note there is also a separate team who performs usability evaluation. We receive feedback from them too that we incorporate as necessary.
Wrapping up
A prototype walkthrough is an effective way to communicate ideas with stakeholders. But, it is not sufficient for usability evaluation. For usability, you must evaluate the tasks with users in separate sessions. A guided walkthrough will help you onboard your stakeholders from business and technology. It will help you build confidence for a business that the product is meeting the needs and for technology that the product can be developed within time and budget. But, ultimately how your users will end up using your product is incomprehensible from walkthroughs.
References
David and Tom Kelley, Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All
Thanks for reading the article! If you would like to share your thoughts, please share them in comments below. | https://medium.com/design-bootcamp/crafting-walkthroughs-of-the-ux-prototypes-77022e30c1e2 | ['Sujit Devkar'] | 2020-10-21 04:57:58.352000+00:00 | ['Product Design', 'Design', 'User Experience Design', 'Prototyping', 'UX'] |
We Don’t Want a Mandalorian Movie, Thanks | Last week, Variety reported on the likelihood of a Mandalorian film in the future. In the article, showrunner Jon Favreau had this to say:
“The line is blurring now,” said Favreau. “Things that you would have only seen in the movie theater, you’re seeing on streaming, and I think it could go the other way as well.” Favreau said he’s in “no rush” to push the show beyond a streaming series. “But we’re definitely open to it,” he added, “and excited to see where the story leads us and have that flexibility — because there’s no rulebook now.”
I want to preface this by saying that I love everything about The Mandalorian and can’t wait for season two. And, after giving us the holy trilogy of Elf, Iron Man, and The Mandalorian, Favreau himself can do little wrong in my eyes. But this idea that the silver screen is the be-all and end-all for Star Wars is incredibly shortsighted, and is more likely to ruin what makes The Mandalorian special than improve anything. After all, the Disney-era films have been uneven at best, disasters at worst.
Season one proved beyond a doubt that Star Wars not only works on the small screen, it belongs there. The world of The Mandalorian is gritty and the stakes far more intimate, which is perfect for the format. By contrast, modern big screen Star Wars is all bombast and little substance. That isn’t to say you can’t tell Mando’s story writ large, and with Favreau in tow I’m sure it’d even be good. But when it’s working so well in the current implementation, why mess with it?
The bigger problem is one of segmentation. Putting part of the story on television and part in one or more films introduces unnecessary complexity. And it raises a philosophical question: does the show then become a way of serving up content for the flashier, more lucrative films, like a sort of cinematic JV? Does it establish stakes the movie pays off? How does the show not suffer in such scenarios?
Or does it establish a mini universe, with The Mandalorian as a hub, and spin-off movies focusing on tertiary characters and plots? Which is to say – lesser ones. No matter how you cut it, something (the show or the movie) will be less than it could be.
This is even putting aside the current theatrical landscape given the ongoing pandemic, which is to say, apocalyptic. Disney ended up moving Mulan to a Disney+ release. Black Widow has been moved twice now, and likely will move again before it finally settles (perhaps on Disney+ as well). The pandemic may (should?) end eventually. Perhaps by 2022 we’ll be piling into theaters and breathing all over each other again. Then again, why assume that will be the case?
The biggest issue though is the inherent suggestion that it somehow isn’t real Star Wars unless it’s big and loud. That it must be sanctified on the big screen in order to be legitimatized. That all roads must inevitably lead to the theater.
Marvel Studios is in the midst of a similar experiment, one in which the core MCU is augmented by stories told on Disney+. The difference is the MCU will remain the mechanism through which the major storytelling is told. The shows will supplement the films but remain optional. You can see the newest MCU film without having seen the shows and you probably won’t miss much. The shows will be optional, in other words, rather like Agents of Shield.
This feels different.
The new normal of streaming ubiquity has presented us with a new era of golden TV and a bevy of great content. But the fact that Disney is seriously considering splintering The Mandalorian across both film and television indicates that they are still stuck in the old ways of thinking. | https://medium.com/fan-fare/we-dont-want-a-mandalorian-movie-thanks-ef81e6e1c1f4 | ['Eric Pierce'] | 2020-10-26 13:28:29.272000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Star Wars', 'Television', 'Film', 'Movies'] |
Starting a Small Restaurant without Deep Pockets | Starting a Small Restaurant without Deep Pockets
How I started a successful eatery with no restaurant experience
Why Listen to an Amateur
I’m an engineer at a major defense company. 3 years ago I decided to start a restaurant with my brother-in-law who was also an engineer working at a telecommunications company. I read all the internet how-to guides, listened to webinars and podcasts, attended seminars by the Small Business Administration and Chamber of Commerce.
What did I learn? Not much really, a lot of it just states high level crap (create a business plan, location is everything) or assumes you’re sitting on a ton of cash. If you’ve been to one of those Rich Dad, Poor Dad workshops you know what I’m talking about, you don’t learn anything substantial until you pay for an advanced course. This guide is different, this is the real world from soup to nuts of building up a restaurant when you don’t have the experience or big bank account to back you up. I’m sharing with you things that restaurant consultants would overcharge you for and restaurants who’ve been through the struggle don’t openly share. This is the school of hard knocks.
Need Guts and there is No Glory
There’s absolutely nothing glamorous about opening a restaurant business. Let’s just get that out of the way upfront. It’s dirty, frustrating, takes a lot of hard work, you have to put in the sweat to make it work. Sacrifices have to be made to your family, to your friends, to all the fun things or hobbies you used to do. You’re not going to be out here hanging out your friends eating free food. Your motivation to succeed must be strong, you have to believe in yourself and the end result is you’ll be financially independent but more importantly you will unlock new doors. When you look out into a dining room full of conversation, laughter and clanking of silverware on plates it will all be worth it. If you’re just looking for a buck then invest elsewhere or hire someone to run it that does care.
Starting off I called a friend who’d owned a restaurant in the past. Asked him advice about starting a restaurant and his first question was:
Before we get into it, can I convince you not to do it?
Not exactly motivational but it’s what I needed to hear. Was I really prepared to endure the journey that looks easy to the outsider, with no experience could I truly make it in a vicious industry that chews up and spits out newcomers for breakfast?
The Odds
Get ready for it, there will be people who will tell you that you will fail. Soak it in. You’ve probably heard this stat:
9 out of 10 restaurants fail in the first year
We honestly couldn’t find any backing for this commonly touted intimidating number. We could find more studies pointing to a 25% failure rate so it’s more like:
Correction: 1 out of 4 restaurants will fail in the first year
Now understand this. If you’re a mom and pop shop like us we’re more likely to fail because we don’t have the deep pockets to do all the ideal things like state of the art stuff, mass marketing, stomaching a slow start. But turn that into an advantage, be focused, put your heart into it.
Success is my idol, being broke is my rival -Big Sean
Before you go on from here, you need at least two things:
Someone who can cook. This person is the magic sauce.
Someone who will help take care of everything else. Paperwork, logistics, accounting. This person is an essential complement to the magic sauce.
Set up a simple partnership agreement. We downloaded one off the inter webs because we didn’t have money for a fancy lawyer. Each person needs skin in the game, do a 50/50 if at all possible to keep things simple. Define a role and responsibility split and have an agreed way to resolve disputes. This area needs a whole write up of its own but start with that. We got a free consultation from a lawyer who said they could draft us an agreement at $200/hour. No thanks.
Total Expenses: $0
Do You Have the Product
Well congratulations you made it this no far. Don’t celebrate just yet, it’s time to begin taste testing.
You need an honest opinion so start off by inviting your friends, especially the ones that will be brutally honest. Have your friends invite their friends. Build up a representative menu from apps to entrees to desserts.
You have to get to a point where people can’t stop sampling your food, it has to be addictive. People should be talking it for days, reminiscing about how good it was. Understand though that not everybody will like everything. Figure out your signature dishes, what will separate you from the herd?
After getting a few taste testing parties under your belt it’s time to take it another level. Sign up for a local festival or farmers market as a food vendor, try out your wares on the general public. Better yet, get in touch with local, independent restaurants and do a pop-up. The realest opinions come when people actually have to pay for the food.
You can access for donations during the taste testings to defray the cost but let’s say you spend about $20 per person with 10 people per session and a total of 5 sessions over time.
Total Expenses: $1000
Count Your Bank
If your dreams haven’t been crushed yet now is the time for you and your partner(s) to count your bank. You want to keep your circle as small as possible, too many people results in too many opinions.
Calculate your free cash flows and your net worth. Understand each partners credit history and access to cash because you’re going to need to be able to withdraw, borrow and scrape for money to survive the buildout and opening phase.
Spreadsheets are your friend. We used Google Sheets to start collaborating on listing all our expected startup and operational expenses.
Kitchen: Think through your menu to think of the kitchen equipment needed. Watch The Founder, a movie about McDonalds, simulate a day-in-the-life by taping out an outline of your kitchen to truly understand how the kitchen will be laid out and how much space you will need.
Dining: Get an idea of your theme (sit-down, counter service). How big your dining area is will depend on how much you can afford. Staffing levels will depend on that too so factor that into your spreadsheet formulas. We went with a smaller 1,200 square foot space.
Form an LLC now and register for your Employee Identification Number, you’re going to need this for everything. Start up a business bank account, preferably with one that offers money for opening an account.
Takeaways from this phase:
You know how much money you’re working with.
Use this to figure out a reasonable rent range. You need to be able to get past buildout and have buffer to last at least 6–8 months (assuming you can negotiate some free rent).
Total Expenses: LLC filing -$125 + Business Checking Promotion +$300 = +$175!
Find Your Corner
Location, location, location. Right, it’s the obvious thing to say but all the good locations will come with a premium. You don’t want to get killed by rent because you have to assume that it will take time for your business to catch on and you don’t want to be eating high overhead costs.
Believe me, this isn’t the Field of Dreams.
If you build it they won’t come
Think of it like your mortgage payment, you don’t want it costing more than 25% of your planned monthly revenue.
You’ll want to get a commercial real estate agent, they’re good for scheduling appointments and all that but you still have to do your own homework. Remember they make a commission of the lease so it’s not like they care that much about whether it’s a good fit.
Scout the area, here are a couple keys:
Foot traffic
Visible from the street (or else the traffic count won’t help you)
Easily accessible. Do I have to make a weird u-turn or wait at a long light.
Parking. See how it gets during lunch and dinner on weekdays and weeknights.
Where will your customers come from during lunch?
For the lease, we got a lawyer to review for $300. Didn’t give us much besides a little peace of mind. Couple keys from the lease:
Rent escalation — try to get a delayed arrangement if possible. Instead of 2% per year, 10% after 5 years
Tenant improvement — you’re putting work in, landlord should chip in something
Free rent — get some free months rent for the buildout
Exclusivity — don’t want someone else in the plaza competing with you
Grease trap and A/C — these are essential things that can get expensive, make sure landlord covers it
Before you sign the lease, spend a lot of time scoping the area. After all commercial leases are typically at least 3–5 years so you’ll be here awhile. Get an idea of how many people come through, it’ll help validate your operating cost estimates a little. Remember to have fun with this step. Take time to discuss it with you partner(s) and dream about the future.
Total Expenses: $300
Build It Up
If you really want to do it up nice you need an architect, kitchen designer, interior designer. But we don’t have that luxury.
We weren’t building the next world wonder or a Michelin Star establishment, we just needed a simple space. Call it Japanese minimalist if you want to be fancy.
We drew up our design using Google Sketchup which gave us a scaled representation of what we needed and gave us the ability to do some experimenting with color themes and layouts. Using this we were able to find an architect to draw up our plans at a low cost with little revisions.
Get to know other restauranteurs, they may not all help out but usually most don’t have a problem sharing which general contractor they used. Shop around and get multiple quotes, don’t necessarily go with cheapest but with one that is the most transparent in their pricing. Buildout costs can easily balloon with an unscrupulous contractor.
Kitchen Equipment
At this point you should be pretty comfortable with your starting menu and extrapolated the equipment you need. There’s a lot of savings to be had on used equipment. For sure get used prep tables, pots and pans but be careful on cooling equipment like fridges, freezers and ice machines. We looked on Craigslist, OfferUp and auctions.
Furniture and Decoration
We saved a ton on furniture building a wall bench and tables ourselves. For example we got a quote of $5000 to build a bench for seating along the wall. Cost us $200 from Home Depot to build ourselves.
If you can find the furniture from another closed restaurant definitely a great option too but the DIY gave it more personality and sense of accomplishment.
For wall decor, we found great murals from Wall26.com that were easy to install as well as wood paneling from Wayfair for a modern wood look. If you have artsy friends lean on them for opinions and spend time on Pinterest, so much inspiration and beautiful ideas there.
This will be the most expensive which is why you have to keep a close in everything. Second generation restaurants will save you a lot but those will be in high demand so balance the buildout saving versus the premiums those leases will command.
Total Expenses: Construction and kitchen varies ($40k+), furniture ($1k+), decoration ($1k+)
Market Yourself
From the moment you sign the lease, start up the social media accounts. Instagram, Facebook. Twitter too if you’re so inclined, we use this as a quick way to communicate with our bank and follow local happenings.
You want to start building up your following and building excitement. Post in local Facebook forums and provide updates along your journey, you never know how impactful each connection will be in the future. Can write a novel in this area but you want to start getting a feel of the influencers you identify with as later in during grand opening you may want to partner with something. Some know jack about food and are only in it for money and popularity. Find ones that actually like your food, don’t reward the others (just a personal take).
Follow other restaurants, see how they market themselves. Social media marketing companies will come knocking. We’ve never tried it because they ask for too much but your call.
When close to opening reach out to local newspapers and news stations. Offer free food, don’t be shy about it. It’s more important to build your customer base and awareness so understand that you’re investing in your growth and success. Get some promotional swag (cups, glasses, shirts) and good luck with your grand opening. | https://medium.com/swlh/starting-a-small-restaurant-without-deep-pockets-728710ae09b1 | ['I Sun'] | 2020-05-25 16:41:38.877000+00:00 | ['Food', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Restaurant', 'Small Business'] |
Five Frightening Creatures You Didn’t Know About | It’s Halloween! To distract myself from the actual most frightening events this year (*cough cough voter suppression at the midterm elections cough*) I’ve compiled a list of five spooky creatures and their haunting habits! Enjoy.
1. The Bobbit Worm
A mix between a Coachella choker and the spawn of Satan, the bobbit worm is equal parts fabulous and terrifying.
Credit to Wikipedia for this spooky friend
It buries itself in sediment up to its neck, where it lies in wait for its prey.
The bobbit pictured on the left may look like it’s only a few inches — but it may be up to ten feet long under all that sand.
Then it launches itself with such speed and ferocity that it will often cut its victims in half with its scissor-like jaws!
If that wasn’t enough, it also ingests a toxin into its prey which allows it to be easily digested, even when much larger than itself.
You can consider the bobbit worm next time you take a swim in the ocean!
2. The Cordyceps Fungus
This fun fungus provides us with the closest thing we have to zombies in the known world.
“closeup photo of person's hand” by Daniel Jensen on Unsplash
This funky fungus infects a specific species of ant — the Carpenter ant (Camponotus leonardi). Once infected, the fungus takes over the ant’s brain, controlling its movements and mind by releasing chemicals that force the ant muscles to contract. Over seven days, the fungus tells its prey to abandon its nest and go find a grass stem at precisely 25cm above the ground. There, it tells the ant to bite into the leaf or stem, locking its mandibles and ultimately grows a long stalk through the ant’s head — bursting open to rain more deadly spores on the colony below.
3. Millipedes
“black and yellow caterpillar on dried leaf” by Jan Haerer on Unsplash
You might think I picked these spooky pals because they have thousands of legs. That IS creepy, true, but they come in at number three for a different reason:
They can actually taste what their victims experienced as they consume their victim’s flesh.
(In this case, the victim was a fallen leaf).
Spooky.
4. Vampire bats
Image by Mokele
It’s a bird, it’s a plane — no, it’s a vampire bat! Very much real and not a myth. These fearsome foes feed solely on the blood of their prey, and only when it’s fully dark. When they land on their prey, they carefully shave away the hair with their cheek razor-teeth, before sinking in their fangs, in a bizarre reenactment of Sweeney Todd’s barbershop.
What’s worse? Sometimes they aren’t successful in finding prey — so they beg for regurgitated blood from their colony-mates.
5. Tarantulas
These sinister spiders often have trouble taking actual bites out of their victims. Instead, they inject their prey (not only insects, but also larger prey like toads and mice) with venom to liquefy their flesh.
“post-molt Grammostola pulchripes stretching on web” by Elena Taranenko on Unsplash
They then drink the liquified bodies through their straw-like mouths, like an extra-potent protein smoothie.
These bad buddies are fiendish when mating. The males must quickly scuttle away from the females for fear of being eaten post-copulation! | https://zulie.medium.com/five-frightening-creatures-you-didnt-know-about-7886178b5d2f | ['Zulie Rane'] | 2018-11-01 11:58:04.305000+00:00 | ['Wildlife', 'Ecology', 'Animals', 'Science', 'Nature'] |
[Paper] 3D-CNN+LSTM: Deep Neural Networks for No-Reference (Video Quality Assessment) | Downscaling of the video can be used rather than the above procedure for generating the training data, however, downscaling can definitely affect quality perception of image/video, e.g., small distortions can become imperceptible after being downscaled.
On the other hand, keeping the original video resolution when applying 3D-CNN in VQM creates tremendous amount of memory requirement. This is one of the difference between the VQA task and image classification task.
Another issue with applying deep learning models in VQA lies in the amount of training data. By the above process, sufficient amount of data is generated for training deep neural networks with large number of parameters. | https://medium.com/swlh/reading-3d-cnn-lstm-deep-neural-networks-for-no-reference-video-quality-assessment-e70359cce64c | ['Sik-Ho Tsang'] | 2020-10-27 13:13:38.779000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence', 'Quality Assessment', 'Lstm', 'Vqa', 'Deep Learning'] |
27 Ways to Get More Done. While we’re waiting for a 30-hour day… | Whether we’re overwhelmed by that never-ending to-do list or simply distracted (thanks, Facebook), sometimes it feels like we just can’t get enough out of the day. Until 30-hour days are invented, follow these easy, effective tips for getting more done in the 24 we have.
Productivity Hero — Your Action Plan
1. Get enough sleep. Whoever coined the phrase “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” didn’t have all the facts straight. Not getting enough Zzz’s could hinder productivity at work, so try to get those recommended seven to nine hours of snooze time The cost of poor sleep: workplace productivity loss and associated costs. Rosekind, M.R., Gregory, K.B., Mallis, M.M., et al. Alertness Solutions, Cupertino, CA. 2010 Jan;52(1):91–8. !
2. Create routines. Make a habit of, well, sticking to habits. Schedule actions like writing emails at a certain time or hitting the gym after work, and try to do them daily. Soon that routine will happen on autopilot.
3. Wake up earlier. As long as you’re still able to squeeze in enough sleep, try extending the day by getting up an hour earlier — when it’s still quiet and there are fewer distractions.
4. Step away from the inbox. Incoming emails can be a nuisance. Make a habit to only check the inbox at certain times of the day to avoid getting sidetracked with requests and responses.
5. Make a daily to-do list. Stay away from huge to-do lists. Instead, create a daily list of realistic jobs to tackle, like folding laundry, scheduling a doctor’s appointment, or paying the cable bill. Break up big goals into micro-tasks, like going to a yoga class over getting six-pack abs, or writing a page over completing a thesis. Soon, the small things will add up to big accomplishments.
6. Take a midday workout break. Got writers’ block? Can’t fathom cleaning the bathroom? Try hitting the pavement. Working out during the day could actually boost productivity, so the time spent exercising could actually help us get more done later Employee self-rated productivity and objective organizational production levels: effects of worksite health interventions involving reduced work hours and physical exercise. Von Thiele Schwarz, U, Hasson, H. Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 2011 Aug;53(8):838–44. .
7. Don’t multitask. Our brains aren’t wired to juggle too much at once, and we can work nearly twice as fast if we do only one thing at a time Cognitive control in media multitaskers. Ophir, E., Nass, C., Wanger, A.D. Symbolic Systems Program, Stanford University, Stanford, CA. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2009 Sep 15;106(37):15583–7. Epub 2009 Aug 24. . (And nope, we’re not talking LOST time-travel.) Training improves multitasking performance by increasing the speed of information processing in human prefrontal cortex. Dux, P.E., Tombu, M.N., Harrison, S., et al. Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt Vision Research Center, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN. Neuron, 2009 Jul 16;63(1):127–38. . So remember those childhood manners and finish tasks one at a time.
8. Silence the phone. When it comes to getting stuff done, sometimes silence is key. Turn off email alerts and the cell phone ringer — that’s what voicemail is for!
9. Make a to-don’t list. Bad habits are just as significant as good ones. So make a list of things not to do because they make you unproductive (we’re staring at you, Netflix), and stick to it.
10. Brainstorm. Take some time to sit and get those creative juices flowing. Without distractions, brainstorming may be the way to come up with killer ideas in record time. Bonus: Creativity can make you happier.
11. Do those MITs. Nope, this isn’t college talk. MIT stands for most important tasks, and it’s a way to highlight the items that matter most on that to-do list. At the start of each day, write down a few things that must get done. Commit to tackling those tasks, and let the rest of the chips fall where they may.
12. Hit inbox zero. Sort every email once that inbox is open. Respond, file, draft, or delete. Keeping the inbox clean is key to staying organized and on point. (Just remember not to keep the inbox open when you aren’t organizing it.).
Gourmande in the Kitchen
13. Stay healthy. Just like… don’t get sick. (It may be easier said than done.) But health and productivity go hand in hand, so be sure to maintain good health habits, like eating well and washing up after hitting the gym Health and productivity as a business strategy: a multiemployer study. Loeppke, R., Taitel, M., Haufle, V., et al. Alere Brentwood, Tennesse, The Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine, 2009 Apr;51(4):411–28. !
14. Keep a pen and pad on hand. Make like Richard Branson and carry pen and paper (or your smartphone) to catch any useful thought that may come to mind. Up the creativity ante and make your own moleskin DIY style.
15. Shut off social media. Sayonara, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Social media can be a huge time suck. Studies have found that it can take up a significant chunk of time at the office, and may even predict lower grades in school. Make it a habit to unplug whenever you need to get something done.
16. “Eat the frogs.” We swear it’s a real term. Each day, once you’ve figured out your Most Important Tasks, do the task you’re least looking forward to first. That way, you’ll get it out of the way early and feel super productive, to boot. (No guarantees Prince Charming will emerge.)
17. Slow down. Read. This. Slowly. Getting stuff done isn’t always a matter of making it to the finish line first. Take time to reflect, brainstorm, and recharge. The added energy will make you that much more productive when you put your nose back to the grindstone.
18. Track time. Take a day to record how much time is spent writing emails, reading blogs, texting, etc. You may be surprised at how much time certain activities (ahem, browsing Pinterest) take up every day. Once you’ve figured out how your time is being used up, make it a point to prioritize what really matters to you (and cut out what doesn’t).
19. Don’t bounce around. Box off a specific amount of time for every task on your to-do list each day. Assign a chunk of the day for one project, and stay focused on that project during its designated time. Once that time is up, move on to the next mission.
20. Tune out. Those headphones will help tune out any distractions. Plus, coworkers and friends may be less likely to interrupt if they see we’re tuned in.
21. Look back. Schedule some time toward the end of each week to reflect on what you accomplished and make any necessary schedule tweaks for the following week.
22. Set triggers. Leave reminders around your workspace and home to help you remember what needs to get done. Place bills that need to be paid or books to be read out in the open, and stick post-it reminders on the fridge!
23. Eat well. What we scarf down for lunch may do more than satisfy hunger. Certain foods, like salmon, almonds, and carrots, can give us a much-needed boost of energy. So forgo the take-out and be picky at the cafeteria!
24. De-clutter. Get rid of anything that may cause distractions. Put away the dishes, fold clothes, and get rid of excess papers on the desk so you’re less likely to get sidetracked. Up the ante by implementing some Feng Shui principles in your workspace.
25. Say no. Don’t stretch yourself too thin. Learning to say no — to going out for drinks when you’re tired, to extra projects when you’re swamped — keeps us focused, prevents overwhelm, and may even ward off sickness.
26. Take a break. Carve out some quality “you” time each day to keep a balance between the busy world and your own inner life.
27. Download help. Still need to get sh!t done? Luckily there’s an app for that.
Also check out: How to Get Sh!t Done Working from Home | https://medium.com/thrive-global/27-ways-to-get-more-sh-t-done-120453067e0f | [] | 2016-12-18 17:21:45.991000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Work', 'Time Management', 'Productivity', 'Work Smarter'] |
A Better Excel Goal Seek using Python | Solving has been artifically slowed down for visualization.
Microsoft Excel has a great feature, “Goal Seek”, under the Data / What If… menu. Given a formula, it will calculate what the input needs to be in order for that formula to equal a specific result. It’s a very powerful but simple tool.
The standard “Goal Seek” feature while useful in many situations is somewhat limited. It can only solve for a single input cell, and there are no controls over the algorithm used.
There is the more sophisticated “Solver” add-in that also comes as part of Excel. This is like “Goal Seek” on steroids! It can handle multivariate functions, constraints, and has multiple optimization algorithms to choose from.
What if this still isn’t enough though? For more complex problems like global optimization or large scale optimizations, the default algorithms in the “Solver” add-in may not be sufficient.
Python and scipy.optimize
Python is many data scientists go-to tool, and for good reason! For optimization problems that go beyond the simple “Goal Seek” or “Solver” solutions found in Excel, the Python package scipy.optimize offers a more comprehensive array of algorithms.
Using scipy.optimize is a great solution if your model can easily be re-written in Python. However, if your model is already in Excel, or you prefer to stay in Excel, it is still possible to leverage the scipy.optimize functions from within Excel.
If you are new to Python and want to learn you can download the free e-book “The Ultimate Python Guide for VBA Developers™” here:
https://www.pyxll.com/ultimate-python-guide-for-vba-developers.html
Python Excel Integration With PyXLL
If you’re an Excel user and you want to use Python as a back-end to your workbooks, or if you’re a Python user and you want to use Excel as a front-end for your Python code, you can use PyXLL, the Python Excel Add-In.
There is no need to choose between the interactivity of Excel and the power and productivity of Python as you can integrate Python into Excel, and even use Python as a complete replacement for VBA.
PyXLL allows you to write worksheet functions (UDFs), Excel Macros, menus functions, ribbon toolbars, RTD functions and more all using nothing but Python — no VBA required.
Calling scipy.optimize from Excel
With Python running in Excel, we can now use scipy.optimize directly from within Excel.
To do the equivalent of Excel’s Goal Seek in Python, we would do something like:
from scipy.optimize import minimize minimize(objective_func, X)
Where X is the initial value of the inputs to the objective function. The objective function is what we’re trying to minimize, which in our case is an Excel formula.
Our objective function needs to wrap our model in Excel. In the same way as when we use Goal Seek, our model is simply a set of input cells and an output cell. Our objective function will set the values of the input cells, calculate the worksheet, and then read back the value of the output cell.
A simple case could be where the inputs were in cells C2 and C3, and the output was in C4. PyXLL makes it simple to access the Excel Application object and access cell values in the same way as you would in VBA:
from pyxll import xl_app
def objective_func(arg): xl = xl_app() # Copy argument values to input range xl.Range('C2').Value = float(arg[0]) xl.Range('C3').Value = float(arg[1]) # Calculate after changing the inputs xl.Calculate() # Return the value of the output cell result = xl.Range("C4").Value return result
Now we’ve got an objective function, we need some way of calling the optimizer. We can do this using an Excel macro written in Python using PyXLL’s @xl_macro decorator.
from pyxll import xl_macro, xl_app @xl_macro(shortcut='Ctrl+Alt+P') def optimize():
# Get the initial values of the input cells xl = xl_app() x = xl.Range("C2").Value y = xl.Range("C3").Value X = np.array([x, y]) # run the minimization routine minimize(obj_func, X, method='nelder-mead')
This macro can be assigned to a button or called via the shortcut specified.
Further Reading
There are more technical details and in-depth explanations of using Python’s scipy.optimize from Excel with PyXLL in this blog post:
https://www.pyxll.com/blog/a-better-goal-seek/
For more details about PyXLL, please see
https://www.pyxll.com.
If you are new to Python and want to learn download the free e-book “The Ultimate Python Guide for VBA Developers™” here:
https://www.pyxll.com/ultimate-python-guide-for-vba-developers.html
Please also see the scipy.optimize documentation here
https://docs.scipy.org/doc/scipy/reference/optimize.html | https://towardsdatascience.com/a-better-excel-goal-seek-using-python-fb6aff56e9f2 | ['Tony Roberts'] | 2020-05-29 14:35:48.067000+00:00 | ['Pyxll', 'Excel', 'Ms Office', 'Scipy', 'Python'] |
7 Over Sampling techniques to handle Imbalanced Data | 7 Over Sampling techniques to handle Imbalanced Data
Deep dive analysis of various oversampling techniques
Image by LTD EHU from Pixabay
Modeling imbalanced data is the major challenge that we face when we train a model. For dealing with the classification problems the class balance of the target class label plays an important role in modeling. For imbalance class problems i.e presence of minority class in the dataset, the models try to learn only the majority class and result in biased prediction.
Some of the famous examples of imbalanced class problems are:
Credit Card Fraud Detection Disease diagnosis Spam detection, and many more
The imbalance of the dataset needs to be handled before training a model. There are various techniques to handle class balance, some of them being Oversampling, Undersampling, or a combination of both. This article will cover a deep dive explanation of 7 techniques of oversampling:
Random Over Sampling Smote BorderLine Smote KMeans Smote SVM Smote ADASYN Smote-NC
For the evaluation of different oversampling models, we are using the Churn modeling dataset from Kaggle.
Performace of the Logistic Regression model without using any oversampling or undersampling technique.
1. Random Over Sampling:
Random oversampling is the simplest oversampling technique to balance the imbalanced nature of the dataset. It balances the data by replicating the minority class samples. This does not cause any loss of information, but the dataset is prone to overfitting as the same information is copied. | https://towardsdatascience.com/7-over-sampling-techniques-to-handle-imbalanced-data-ec51c8db349f | ['Satyam Kumar'] | 2020-11-12 03:51:41.857000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Imbalanced Data', 'Education', 'Data Science'] |
Anticipatory Anxiety in 2020. Human beings are wired to want to… | Anticipatory Anxiety in 2020
What it is and How to Effectively Cope With It.
Photo by Artem Kovalev on Unsplash
Human beings are wired to want to control their surroundings. Anxiety often arises in circumstances that we are not able to control or predict the future outcome…now add anticipation into the mix. 2020 has been a year where most of the events have been out of our control and there is high anticipation for what is to come.
So what does this do to our mental health?
Numerous research studies find that anxiety is three times more prevalent now than at the start of 2020. Anticipatory anxiety has taken over many people’s mental state — about a lot of things going on in our world right now. Anticipatory anxiety is defined as heightened anxiety, worry, or fear about future events. It is when we are fearful or worried about an outcome that is uncertain or the end result is out of our control. The worry and distress associated with anticipation can impact one’s social, emotional, and physical functioning.
The past six months have consisted of prolonged fear and worry, which most people are not used to experiencing. Anxiety here and there is common, however anticipatory anxiety for months on end has been contributing to many people reporting a decrease in their mental health state, resulting in them feeling hopeless, exhausted, and defeated. Being in a chronic state of heightened anxiety and fear of future events can result in people having difficulty concentrating, feeling emotionally numb, loss of interest in hobbies or social activities, sleep problems, rumination, or appetite loss.
There is a lot of uncertainty this year that individually and collectively we are not used to coping with. A global pandemic, civil unrest, a monumental election around the corner, awaiting a vaccine, worries about finances, and more. As a community, we are encountering ongoing anxiety and fear of what will happen in the months to come. The question “how will 2020 turn out?” is at the forefront of most people’s minds. To be honest, we do not know what will happen a week from today, in a month, or even at the end of the year. What will our lives look like as we enter 2021 in a few short months? Will we ever have a sense of ‘normalcy’ again? That safety net of familiarity or control has been taken away or minimized for many of us over this past year. The control we are used to, such as power over our daily routine, no longer exists as it used to eight months ago. When we are in the ‘driver’s seat’ of our day to day routine, we feel psychologically safe. We are programmed to want to control our surroundings and be the ‘driver’ of our lives — not a passenger along for the ride, waiting in anticipation for an outcome. Most of us can say that we have been in a situation where we have had anticipation about an outcome — such as a job interview, waiting on the results of an exam, waiting to get a text message, or even waiting for a ‘follow back’ on Instagram from a crush. This anticipation is typically temporary, opposite to the prolonged anticipatory anxiety we are facing individually and collectively in 2020. Anticipatory anxiety for long periods of time leaves us feeling in danger (physically and psychologically), constantly worrying, and in a state of panic about what is to come.
Not knowing when we can start returning to a pre-COVID work routine, a vaccine will be distributed, the outcome of the election, and the state of the future of the world is a lot to be alarmed about. If you are feeling increased anxiety during this time you are not alone. In a survey taken in June of 2020, over 40% of U.S. Adults reported increased struggling with mental health or substance use (with anxiety and depressive symptoms being most common) since the COVID-19 Pandemic. To cope with these new circumstances, people must start to pivot how they take care of themselves and their mental health. This may require some new coping strategies, emotional regulation skills, and seeking help in ways they may have not in the past.
Here are some ways to cope with Anticipatory Anxiety:
Get Enough Restful Sleep
Sleep and anxiety can form a cycle together as issues with sleep and anxiety often go hand in hand. Lack of sleep can increase anxiety and continue to worsen this cycle. Sleep gives your body and brain time to heal and rest from the stressors of the day. A rested mind can also better cope with anxiety and stress than a tired and exhausted mind.
Stay Present in the Moment
When we are anxious about the future, it is natural for our thoughts to go to the ‘worst case’ scenario. We do this as a coping mechanism when faced with uncertainty as it is easier to craft and control a ‘worst case’ situation than sit and wait for an outcome that is out of our control. When you find yourself in a negative mental spiral, gently bring yourself back to where you are in the present moment.
Talk to Yourself With Compassion
Anxiety and negative-self talk often do a dance with one another. When we are anxious, we speak harshly to ourselves. Negative self-talk can be damaging to our mind, body, and outlook on life. The way we speak to ourselves determines the way we act. Notice when you speak to yourself in a cruel manner (e.g. “why can’t I just do anything right?!” or “I am never going to be good enough”) and replace critique with compassion. Affirm yourself that you are doing the best you can during a very difficult time.
Take Care of Your Body
Ever heard of the ‘mind-body connection?’. Your mind and body are constantly working with one another. Research finds that one’s mindset has a direct impact on their physical health. When we are anxious, it can cause our body to respond with painful headaches, tense muscles, stomach problems, difficulty sleeping, dizziness, or high blood pressure. Moving your body can increase your serotonin levels (the chemical that impacts mood) and improves cognitive functioning. Set goals to move your body every day for at least 30–45 minutes a day to aid positive physical and psychological outcomes.
Stock Up on Self-Care
Self-care is an essential activity we must incorporate into our daily lives (especially during times of escalated and prolonged stress) to nurture our well-being and mental state. Taking care of ourselves is absolutely necessary to ensure a healthy mind and body. Self-care activities look from different person to person based on what their specific needs are. Activities can include mediation, doing an activity you enjoy, getting a seasonal latte, exercising, taking a warm bubble bath, doing a puzzle, painting, or reflective journaling.
Know That You are Not Alone in Your Experience
Even though your own anticipations and fears are unique to you, many of the experiences that we are going through as a world and society are new for people. Newness inevitably increases anxiety because we are fearful of the unknown. You are not alone in being anxious about what is to come. Your worries and anxieties are valid and shared amongst the rest of the world.
Talk to a Mental Health Professional
Many people have experienced an increase in stress and a decrease in their mental health during the past year. Mental health professionals are trained to help people navigate difficult circumstances, life transitions, anxiety, depression, loss, and other mental health conditions. A therapist can work with you to identify circumstances, thoughts, and behaviors that are interfering with your ability to live a mentally healthy life. They are also able to provide you with psychologically-researched methods to improve your well-being with emotional regulation strategies, cognitive behavioral therapy, and techniques for psychological distress symptom reduction. Find a therapist near you at Psychologytoday.com.
Photo by Anthony Tran on Unsplash
As circumstances shift, the ways we physically, emotionally, and mentally cope must shift as well. New circumstances call for new coping strategies. During unprecedented times, it is even more critical to take care of your mental and physical health. Remember, our minds and bodies are not used to managing anxiety for extended periods of time. As we come toward the end of the year and await answers and outcomes- make sure to prioritize sleep, self-care, and utilize coping strategies that reduce anticipatory anxiety.
Make sure you are taking time out of your daily routine to nurture your needs and seek the appropriate help you need from loved ones or a mental health professional if needed. | https://medium.com/joincurio/anticipatory-anxiety-in-2020-what-it-is-and-how-to-effectively-cope-with-it-fe0ee4afc3bd | ['Divya Robin'] | 2020-10-27 14:01:09.184000+00:00 | ['Depression', 'Self Improvement', 'Anxiety', 'Mindset', 'Mental Health'] |
This Is What Most People Get Wrong About Giving up the Ego | This Is What Most People Get Wrong About Giving up the Ego
It’s not egoless, it’s egomore
Have you ever wondered what the “ego” is?
Chances are you have. We all use phrases like “He has a big ego” and “He has a huge ego problem.”
This means we do have an idea about what it means. Yet, when asked, we fail to explain it.
Many of us refer to Freud’s work on the Ego. He classified the human psyche into three parts — Id, the Ego, and the Superego.
But the reason they’re so difficult to understand is twofold:
They’re not physical aspects What psychology tells us about Ego can often be misleading.
“Ego is a social institution with no physical reality. The ego is simply your symbol of yourself. Just as the word “water” is a noise that symbolizes a certain liquid without being it, so too the idea of ego symbolizes the role you play, who you are, but it is not the same as your living organism.”
— Alan Watts
For anyone who’s interested in spirituality, Ego comes up more often than not.
Yet, it’s dismal that the topic of Ego has also created more confusion than it has to. This confusion can often be the cause of misery for most people trying to overcome it.
The purpose of all spiritual practices is to realize your universal identity. But the ego keeps us from doing that. And a fine understanding of what you’re trying to overcome is necessary.
In that spirit, let’s explore what ego means. When someone says “you have an ego” it can mean a lot of things.
Psychological Ego
In the material world and in the works of popular psychologists, the ego is the identity of the individual sense. In Freudian and Jungian terms, it is the center of your awareness and the framework of your individual being.
To put it in simpler terms, whatever comes to your mind when you think of yourself is a part of your ego:
“I am a writer. “
“I am a businessman,”
“I like to eat pizzas without broccoli,”
“That car is mine,”
“I deserve the promotion more than John,” etc.
Any thought that considers yourself as a separate entity from others comes from the ego.
Spiritual Ego
In the spiritual world, one can portray the ego in different, esoteric ways. (It’s worth mentioning that the ego is the same, it’s the understanding of the ego that’s changing in psychological or spiritual contexts.)
In spiritual terms, the ego is anything that keeps you from realizing your Oneness with all Creation. That might seem “new-age” and “woo-woo” but it’s true.
The ego is the sole cause of our separation from our Higher Self, universal consciousness, and God.
In esoteric terms, the ego is a soul attached to the body. When the soul starts to think of its reality constrained to this physical world, it’s ego. The ego confines the soul to these bounds of limited potential in perpetuity. (Unless we do something about it, of course)
In his book Whispers from Eternity, Paramhansa Yogananda says:
When the Invisible, the One, became the many, He condescended to give freedom of choice and power of independent self-evolution to all His creations. So He gave to everything His own power — “to be able to do whatever one may want to do.” Thus, all things went farther and farther away from Him by believing in the cosmic delusion and painstakingly working for it. Yet, all things, by the right use of self-evolving reason, can move ever nearer and nearer to Him until the many again become the One. But the cosmic creation, or nature — being conscious, and having received unlimited independence — wants mostly to move farther away from the Divine Father, or God, thus creating self-imposed suffering from self-made or man-made laws of evil.
That’s a mouthful to understand. Yogananda is illustrating that God manifested into all souls and gave free will to each soul. This means man is free to believe whatever he wants. Thus, he believes that he’s only what he experiences through his material senses.
Even though man, in reality, is a soul, he refuses to see it and live his life in a cosmic delusion. God can't take this free will back from him. And that’s the essence of the spiritual path — to realize that you are a soul and not the ego — and to come to this understanding of your own will. | https://medium.com/illumination/this-is-what-most-people-get-wrong-about-giving-up-the-ego-a3a2f60135af | ['Shivendra Misra'] | 2020-12-01 04:23:12.659000+00:00 | ['Meditation', 'Ego', 'Spirituality', 'Mindfulness', 'Psychology'] |
Submission Guidelines for Current Writers | Submission Guidelines for Current Writers
Please read the following for Fearless She Wrote publishing standards
Photo by Kat Stokes on Unsplash
Last Updated: September 2020
Welcome to Fearless She Wrote!
We’re excited to have you as part of our writing team, and can’t wait to read and publish your work! To ensure the publishing process moves as smoothly and quickly as possible, please read through the following guidelines.
Turnaround Time
We will do our best to review all submissions within 24 to 48 hours, Monday through Friday. (We do not review submissions over the weekend, though you’re still welcome to submit during that time and we will review during the work week.) We’re three editors with full-time jobs, so please allow us a full 48 hours before following up.
*If edits are required, the clock starts again, due to the number of submissions we receive.*
Submission quantity
Please only submit one draft to us at a time. We have many writers who are waiting for us to review their work and want to make sure that every piece gets the attention it deserves. As soon as we’ve reviewed your draft, feel welcome to submit another.
Notes about editing
We reserve the right to make changes to any draft submitted to our publication (title/subtitle changes, picture changes, etc.), and will leave you a private note on your piece should we deem any large edits necessary. Smaller edits may include grammatical and/or spelling corrections, or the rewording of any sentences or phrases that are unclear. If we leave you a note about larger changes (title, subtitle, etc.) and we’ve not received a response from you after three days of our original editing note, the piece will be rejected.
*We ask all of our writers to keep their Private Note Settings On. Our editors leave notes for every single essay we receive, whether it’s accepted or rejected. If you’ve received a rejection without a note, you may want to check your Medium settings.
Story genre
We are looking for stories written as personal essays, with actionable messages and takeaways for our readers. We want to hear about your experiences, your opinions, the lessons that these things have taught you, and the lessons that your readers can learn from reading your story.
We do not publish poetry, open letters without actionable takeaways, or stories that read as journal/diary entries.
Story topics
We’re interested in powerful stories of womanhood, empowerment, feminism, and life experience. The drafts we publish will be well-edited, and without grammar or spelling mistakes.
Titles & subtitles
Make sure your title and subtitle in your article match the display title/subtitle and are written in title case format.
We are seeing a high number of submissions that have two different titles. If you are unsure about how to do this, read this Medium help article on custom titles.
Proper tags
Please review your tags before submitting your piece. We cannot stress this enough. We frequently receive amazing drafts that are not tagged in any of our categories — this delays the publication process for all.
Your story must be tagged in at least one of the following categories:
Feminism
Relationships
Sexuality
Women
Self
Removal of content from Fearless
When work is approved and published by the Fearless team, we expect that the work will remain in the publication, or be deleted from Medium entirely.
Our editorial team works hard to offer editing support to writers who are submitting work to the Fearless She Wrote publication. That time and support is not meant to be offered to writers who then later relocate their work outside of our publication.
The relocation of work initially published in Fearless to a personal profile or publication is grounds for immediate removal from the Fearless writing team.
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We will not be silenced. We will be fearless. And we will write. | https://medium.com/fearless-she-wrote/submission-guidelines-for-current-writers-5731180309a7 | ['Maggie Lupin'] | 2020-11-11 00:59:01.568000+00:00 | ['Writing Guidelines', 'Writing Tips', 'Writing', 'Fearless She Wrote', 'Submission Guidelines'] |
Everything you need to know about Flutter Europe 2020 | Flutter Europe is an initiative driven by European Flutter Communities to gather every passionate and learn how to create beautiful apps! The main goal is to share knowledge, improve skills and expand the community. This conference gave us the opportunity to meet the most recognizable Flutter developers from Europe and talk with some of them.
The framework is targeting mobile, desktop and web platforms with a single codebase. And it just works! It is now the most popular UI portable framework for the ambient computing world, and we could feel the hype during those two days.
Because it is a new cross platform framework, going full Flutter in companies is still quite rare. Only a few companies went all the way. The Flutter Europe conference was the right place to meet some of those companies. They all came with precious and strategic advices, talks and demos to convince our clients that choosing Flutter is a win-win situation that we have to take part in.
During those two days, we attended several talks around Flutter of course. Some talks were more interesting than others, and this article will highlight those that caught our attention.
Building Voice-First Flutter apps
Elaine Dias Batista, a french 🇫🇷 developer at SFEIR, showed us how to easily add voice commands to a Flutter application.
To add voice control on an app, you will have to pick libraries to handle
Wake word detection, as “Ok Google” Speech-To-Text, transform a voice into a literal String Natural Language Processing, trying to find the intention of thee user Then you can perform programmatically the action on your app And optionally, answer by voice response, using a Text-To-Speech SDK
The implementation can depend on the platform where your application will run (android / iOS), because some SDK like Siri are only available on one platform.
But a lot of SDK are available on Flutter, some are cloud-based, some are bridges to native SDK, but all of them work perfectly with Flutter!
She finished her talk by showing us a live demo of an application she adapted adding a voice control to switch to Dark Theme, impressive!
Bring Flutter to web
Rihanna Kedir, a Google Developer Exert on web technologies showed us what are the possibilities of FlutterWeb. The first use-case is to give the customer access to the application without having to download it from a store, but by just giving him access to an http link. It can be enforced by adding the Progressive Web App concept inside the Flutter’s project.
Another great use-case shown is to perform showcases of our app by directly adding a sample of the real application directly inside the static webpage, instead of a simple video or GIF. With this you’ll surely have a WOW effect!
This is a killer feature of Flutter, now it can really run everywhere, the sky’s the limit!
Flutter at work / Is Flutter ready for enterprise-grade applications / How to convince business to Flutter? Real-life cases
Flutter is a new technology, and like anything new, it divides thoughts. Developers will gain in productivity due to the power of the framework, but how to convince customers to embark on the Flutter adventure? This is a question that many companies are asking themselves, and which is currently the #1 obstacle to the adoption of this tool.
First of all, just explain to them why Flutter is not as any MultiPlatform language or Native SDK, Flutter is:
Simple, Productive, Cost efficient and Robust!
Time is a critical factor
For many companies, time is the main factor in the success of a project. And as we all know, time management is strongly linked to money management.
A developer carried out the 4 project natively on Android and iOS, then in React Native, in Xamarin and in Flutter, in order to expose the productivity on each SDK. | https://medium.com/ideas-by-idean/everything-you-need-to-know-about-flutter-europe-2020-bb57aaa9b98b | ['Florent Champigny'] | 2020-02-03 17:15:17.689000+00:00 | ['Design', 'Flutter', 'Android', 'Mobile', 'UX'] |
Excel in Python | I recently dove head first into the world of data science. Without much prior experience in programming language, learning Python was a challenge in and of itself. In fact, my fear of learning Python is what actually delayed my exploration of data science. Even after starting my data science journey, it took me a while to REALLY buy into Python. After all, why go through all the pain of learning Python when I can just do everything I need to do in Excel?
I come from a traditional finance background where most of my work was done through a complicated web of spreadsheets filled with pivot tables, vlookups, sumifs, conditional statements, and so on. If you come from a similar background as me, you can probably relate to my sentiment and attachment to spreadsheets.
In some sense, it’s a legitimate point. After all, what can’t Excel do? I’ve made my through a number of big companies where the majority of all the heavy lifting related to analysis, reporting, and planning were done through what I call the “Excel eco-system”. Additional features like Hyperion Essbase, SmartView, PowerPivot, PowerBI, and a number of really cool features available on Excel that do make it possible to work with data and get stuff done. In my field, Excel, Alteryx, and Tableau were sort of the go-to “Holy Trinity”.
So the question remains. Why Python?
Here are some reasons that finally convinced me to excel in Python!
It’s the number 1 programming language used by experts in the industry. Imagine traveling to a foreign country where they speak a completely different language than you do. How are you going to navigate your way around? How are you going to converse with other people? The same principle applies in the world of data science. If you don’t speak Python, you are going to be lost and get left out of all the great creativity and awesome things that are happening. Not to mention, if you want to work as a data scientist, pretty much all employers require some level of proficiency in Python.
You have so much more flexibility in Python than Excel. For instance, imagine running a linear regression model in Python vs Excel. In Python, you can do pretty much everything you need from EDA, Train/Test split, cross validation, feature engineering, scaling, fitting the model, producing predictions, and creating visualizations all in a few lines of Python codes. While possible to accomplish this in Excel, it will definitely require a lot more time and effort to do this.
Example of applying Ridge regularization with Train/Test split, scaling, and visualizations
Good news! You can still do “Excel-like” things in Python through Pandas. If you are used to framing data in terms of rows and columns, then Pandas is your new best friend! Filtering rows, converting columns, conditional statements, grouping, and many other features that you can do in Excel, you can also perform the same operations in Python through Pandas!
Example of Pandas Dataframe
Have you heard of Scikit-Learn? It’s an amazing machine learning library compatible with Python. You can import and instantiate a bunch of various regression (OLS, Ridge, Lasso, Enet) and classification (logistic, knn, decision tree, random forest, Gradient/Ada boost, SVM) models just with a few lines of codes. In addition, you can also import data preprocessing tools like StandardScaler, PolynomialFeatures and as well as useful modeling tools like train_test_split, cross_val_score, GridSearchCV, and Pipeline.
Learning Python has been such a great experience thus far. While I still have a lot more to learn in terms of developing best practices and being more efficient with my codes, it feels awesome to have Python under my belt as one of the tools that I can leverage to become a better data scientist.
If you are thinking about starting your journey in data science and you are unsure about Python, take it from me, it is an awesome programming language and you’ll be blown away by how much you can actually learn simply by just giving it a try. Whatever hesitation you may have, I hope I was able to give you a small glimpse of hope and motivation to just dive in and give it a try! | https://youngathpark1.medium.com/excel-in-python-591a3cfe8094 | ['Young Park'] | 2020-12-09 15:37:54.906000+00:00 | ['Excel', 'Python', 'Data Science'] |
Is Vibranium the strongest material in the Marvel Cinematic Universe? | Is Vibranium the strongest material in the Marvel Cinematic Universe?
Or is it just the most inconsistently depicted one?
With Black Panther: Civil War (not the title) recently released, everyone wants to know about Vibranium, the wonder material responsible for everything cool in the Black Panther universe. You may think I’m confused but I assure you, I’m not.
Captain America may have been the title star in Captain America: Civil War (is the title) but this movie was about the magnificently depicted King of Wakanda, played by the scene-stealing, super sexy, ultra-regal Chadwick Boseman as the Black Panther.
Every scene he’s in, you forget whose movie you’re watching. Yeah, Cap was nice too. But with the Panther’s appearance and pending movie in 2017(?) people are wanting to know what Vibranium is and the science behind it.
My email has lit up with questions about Vibranium. The overall gist of the questions say:
What’s the deal with Vibranium? Is it a metal? Or an alloy? Is it an element?
Does it deflect bullets or just stop them in their tracks?
Why does Wakanda have the only Vibranium on Earth?
How did Howard Stark get his supply to make Captain America’s shield?
Is it indestructible? How come Ultron seemed indestructible and just how the heck did Vision come to life after an infusion of Vibranium?
And the list went on… Looking through my archives, I have pieced together a primer on Vibranium. No, its not all-inclusive, because I need to sleep and because we all have better things to do than to remember the properties of a metal, that if it existed, no government would ever allow it to become public knowledge…Enjoy!
NOTE: There is very little real science involved in the meta-material known as Vibranium in the Marvel comics and Marvel Cinematic Universe. If such a material existed with these properties, it’s value would be without measure. With that said, we will discuss the capacities of the material in conjunction with its depictions in Marvel franchise materials.
The Answer-Man’s Archives: Vibranium
Vibranium is nowhere near the hardest or strongest metal in the Marvel Universe. It is, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the most inconsistent of meta-materials, having properties which reinforce and yet contradict previous depictions. And yet, we don’t care. As long as it’s doing cool stuff, we accept its properties and handwave them through.
Captain America’s shield for the win!
Vibranium’s inherent strength has little to do with why it is highly prized as part of an armor package. Instead, it is the underlying properties of the meta-material which creates its fantastic value and makes it one of the most sought-after materials on Marvel’s Earth.
Found only in the African nation of Wakanda, the technologies pioneered through the study of Vibranium give Wakandan science an extraordinary advantage making it one of the most technologically-advanced nations on Earth.
Defenses made with Vibranium are extremely tough, durable, and extremely stress-tolerant. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Vibranium alloys might be some of the strongest metals on Earth (so the claim does have a degree of merit in the MCU, if no place else).
The secluded nation of Wakanda, the only reputable source of Vibranium A on Marvel Earth. (And they really like cats.)
Don’t get me wrong, Vibranium IS an impressive metal but not because of its inherent strength. To have an understanding of why it makes a great armor you need to have a little background on this alien meta-material. I use the word meta-material because it exhibits abilities far outside the norm of normal elements found in nature such as iron, gold, osmium or other natural metals found on the periodic table.
What is Vibranium A?
Vibranium is an extraterrestrial material, (element, compound, alloy, meta-material — its actual nature is, like many super-materials in comics, not clearly defined, and different writers will define it differently) found in its greatest concentration in the African nation of Wakanda.
While Marvel will give a variety of answers, the extraterrestrial material called Vibranium (also known as Vibranium A) acts mostly like a metal; it is hard, durable and can be bonded with other metals in metallic alloys. These alloys allow the metal to be even more durable and suitable for use in armors.
In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Vibranium alloys are used in the development of Captain America’s shield created by Howard Stark. Stark claimed to have used all of the freely available Vibranium ever collected in the world (known to him, outside of the African nation of Wakanda.) It is suspected that Wakandan Vibranium was stolen and sold to Howard Stark (this may be the core of the eventual Black Panther movie — given the properties of this material, I would hunt anyone who managed to steal even a few pounds of this material down like a dog).
The unpainted Vibranium alloy shield presented to Steve Rogers during World War II. (Is there a designated painter?)
Why Vibranium matters
Where most metals have only their inherent durability to offer as a defensive measure, Vibranium and alloys of the metal have an extra meta-material property not found in any metals on Earth: The harder you hit Vibranium, the stronger it gets (until it breaks)…
We know Vibranium has limits to how much energy it can absorb (at least in the comics) when Iron Man and the Sub-Mariner team up against ROXXON, (after the standard superhero conflict in, Iron Man vol 1, #121).
Roxxon discovers a cache of vibranium on a remote undiscovered island. Roxxon, in addition to trying to claim the vibranium was dumping illegal toxic wastes and wanted to avoid prosecution. They mined the island until they are discovered by Iron Man and the Submariner who destroy their operation. Hoping to hide their involvement Roxxon blows up the island. The explosion, however triggers a reaction in the vibranium and once it has absorbed all of the energy of the powerful explosions, the material destabilizes and is destroyed.
Vibranium absorbs vibration or the transfer of kinetic energy used by weapons and bullets, i.e. when striking an armor or shield made of Vibranium, that kinetic energy is absorbed and stored within the molecular bonds of the material, temporarily.
Any energy absorbed does not pass through to the object beneath it. In the Marvel Universe, this means if you strike an object made of Vibranium, nothing happens because the metal absorbs the kinetic potential and disperses it among the metallic bonds of the material, holding the energy and releasing it slowly (and quietly).
Sonic weapons or any attack which uses vibration are completely harmless to Vibranium Alloys. This means bullets and other weapons which deliver kinetic energy will also fail to harm materials made of, or with, sufficiently applied Vibranium.
Not only does Vibranium absorb the mechanical energy, it increases the strength of the material making it stronger and more damage-resistant. However, there is a threshold and once the material has absorbed its threshold of energy, if it cannot release this stored energy in a timely fashion, it will be destroyed (though the energy will not be released violently unless redesigned and altered to do so by scientific processes.)
Technically, this would be applicable to anything which increases molecular movement in a material as well. This means Vibranium should offer some degree of protection against any attack which causes metals to heat up, since heat is the increasing of energy between molecules. There is likely to be a required amount of Vibranium present to gain these benefits, but that is a closely guarded secret of Wakandan science.
The Black Panther’s armored clothing protects him using a Vibranium mesh weave, which reduces damage from physical attacks or attacks which rely on the delivery of kinetic energy. This does not mean he can’t be harmed, it simply means the attack is blunted reducing its damage. In Civil War, we watch the Black Panther get struck by multiple medium-caliber machine-gun rounds to no effect.
Where does Vibranium originate?
While it has not been confirmed, Vibranium is believed to be an extraterrestrial material found in the greatest concentration in the Marvel Earth nation of Wakanda. Since the material has rarely left the continent, most scientists of the Marvel Universe have no familiarity with the material or its extensive physical properties.
More recent comics indicate: Captain Marvel inadvertently proved said theory to be true during a scuffle between survivors of the Infinity Event and the Spartax empire who relocated them, where the latter had been poisoning the planet and its nomadic inhabitants through the improper mining of said metal to rebuild their fleets. (Captain Marvel Vol 8 #5)
The scientists of Wakanda have the most experience with their version of the material and have managed to create many applications which have been used in military applications within the country and is used primarily in a defensive role by the royal family of Wakanda.
Vibranium comes in two known varieties, Vibranium A and Vibranium B. Each has differing properties. Until now, we have only discussed Vibranium A.
There has been no confirmation of the existence of Vibranium B in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (except for the scratching of Captain America’s shield by the Black Panther’s claws…see below).
Vibranium B (Anti-Metal Vibranium)
There is a second, little known version of Vibranium, an isotope perhaps, dubbed Anti-metal Vibranium (also called Vibranium B). This anti-metal version of Vibranium can with just a touch, disrupt the metallic bonds of any common metals not protected by force fields.
One touch of Anti-metal Vibranium and normal metals unzip, loosing both cohesion and strength. This substance is also believed to be alien in origin and found only in a exotic location known as the Savage Land found on the Antarctic continent.
The Savage Land — a place of mystery, mutants and the only functioning Jurassic Park: The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe #9 (1983)
Whether normal Vibranium can be converted into Anti-metal is unknown but the Wakandans do have small supplies of this Savage Land Vibranium on hand and have equipped the Black Panther with it.
The material coats his claws and often other weapons he uses, allowing him to tear through metallic substances with little effort. Materials made with Vibranium or Adamantium may have some degree of resistance to Anti-metal due to their advanced and unusual meta-material properties (such as Captain America’s shield).
Vibranium: Wonder Material
In the MCU we have seen Vibranium do or be a part of some amazing feats:
Captain America deflects a strike from Thor’s hammer and creates a shockwave which flattens a forest for a few hundred feet in every direction. (See earlier video — because it’s awesome)
Captain America uses the shield which should stop bullets from moving to instead bounce off the shield to strike a shooter. Cap also bounces an energy blast shot from Iron Man off of his shield.
Captain America can throw his shield, bounce it off a number of surfaces or targets and have it return to him, despite of, or perhaps because of the vibranium in his shield.
Ultron upgrades his final body with Vibranium and becomes incredibly tough; he’s able to fight the entirety of the Avengers to an effective standstill, until he is overwhelmed with energy attacks from Thor, Iron Man and the Vision.
Black Panther makes an armor mesh suit which renders him effectively bulletproof, and perhaps allows him to destroy metallic defenses with his clawed hands. In the comics, he even has it in the souls of his boots allowing him to drop from great heights and move without making a sound. (There was some talk of wall-crawling but Spider-Man said he would sue.)
Vision is a powerful, synthetic being born from a Vibranium-laced body created by Ultron and Helen Cho, programmed by Tony Stark and Bruce Banner using J.A.R.V.I.S.-based codes, and activated by the Mind Stone that was hidden inside the Scepter. (As depicted in Avengers: Age of Ultron)
It is even suggested that the Vision’s body may be composed of some heretofore unknown synthetic variation of Vibranium in his cellular structure, adding to his durability and possibly responsible for him being alive.
Vibranium: Slices, dices, makes Julienne fries…
You now know everything you need to know about Vibranium. | https://medium.com/panel-frame/is-vibranium-the-strongest-material-in-the-marvel-cinematic-universe-11e5d9cbe112 | ['Thaddeus Howze'] | 2016-05-16 15:57:50.010000+00:00 | ['Storytelling', 'Comics', 'Marvel'] |
Original 5 Haiku Series #5 | Get in Touch
Audrey Malone is a freelance writer, professional resume writer, and editor, including editor for Medium publication, ILLUMINATION’S MIRROR.
She’s also the owner and founder of ExpertResumeWritingServices.com, and founder of Medium Publication, Acne Free Skin Care Magic.
Feel free to join her Acne Free Skin Care Magic Mailing List for a Free Acne Treatment Ebook.
You may also join her Free Writing Course Mailing List for writing tips on how to improve your writing to become a top writer. | https://medium.com/house-of-haiku/original-5-haiku-series-5-e1104872ebec | ['Audrey Malone'] | 2020-12-30 05:09:06.523000+00:00 | ['Poerty', 'Haiku', 'Writing', 'Poetry On Medium', 'Creative Writing'] |
Matters of the Mind, with Dawson Church | Intersections and Roundabouts
Our understanding of the relationship between mind and matter has cascaded through history with such a dramatic thirst for answers that it has caused our effort to bifurcate into countless veins of study. Fragmenting our hopes of a cohesively unified and comprehensive perspective that, in all truth, would have likely been impossible to achieve in the first place.
Our journey towards these understandings has taken us all over the proverbial map, navigating our perspective through valleys of religion and mountain tops of scientific postulation. Through tangled forests of psychology, oceans of biological evolution, and arid deserts of secular spirituality.
Every field has cultivated its respective assertions and, where certain overlaps exist— largely on the fringes of each field of study — scoffs can be heard from the nuclei’s at the center. For instance, physics may hold firm in a physicalist interpretation of reality, whereas some layers of quantum physics support more idealistic notions of how consciousness (say, through the observer effect) is seen to have a significant impact on material reality.
These overlapping fringes, however, are usually and historically the volatile edges of study that prove just as creative as they do self-destructive. They are, by their very nature, sources of new ideas, mold-breaking and innovative, largely nonsensical but experimental enough that, from the pressure of scrutiny and criticism, diamonds can sometimes be generated.
And no more fringe-filled and overlapping areas exist than those which relate to consciousness. Whether intersecting with physics, astronomy, divinity, neurochemistry, evolution, or even (of late) technology, consciousness proves itself as dynamic and versatile a field of study as anything else.
On its own, consciousness doesn’t take us very far (in terms of palpability). But as soon as we begin infusing the study of consciousness with other streams of knowledge, we can see some remarkable revelations come to light. Maybe not so much in the fluffier applications of self-improvement (say, the laws of attraction or the powers of visualization) but in the more tangible fields of interest. Anywhere from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs or Jung’s work on the subconscious to the more modern work being done with artificial intelligence and augmented biotechnologies like Neuralink.
We may never come to know how the mind truly interacts with matter but we seem to have a cornucopia of possibilities at our disposal. While we understand certain premises, we may not necessarily buy into the various conclusions that follow them (i.e. a collective or universal consciousness). And while we know that there is undoubtedly some truth to the idea that we can, to one degree or another, materialize the kind of reality we seek to exist in, we stop short of praising the powers of our consciousness which seem to get us there — every time.
Everyone is privy to their own flavor of combinations when it comes to understanding consciousness, whether that entails a combination of biological understanding or one of a more spiritual context. Moreover, the idea that the mind can influence our reality in such a dramatic way isn’t exactly digestible for those who have accepted the more ‘verifiable’ and tactile means of navigating life (physics or mathematics, for instance). But, for countless others, it’s the only thing that makes sense.
And, for Dawson Church, author of numerous works which seek to highlight this apparent potential of our mind, it’s the only thing that he’s focused on elucidating through the devotion of his own life — to exemplifying this seemingly undecipherable relationship between mind and matter by working in his own unique overlapping edge of study. | https://medium.com/the-apeiron-blog/matters-of-the-mind-with-dawson-church-7ebac191d176 | ['Michael Woronko'] | 2020-11-10 11:02:36.723000+00:00 | ['Lifestyle', 'Consciousness', 'Life', 'Science', 'Philosophy'] |
Complex-PTSD is Caused by a War Zone of Toxicity | Complex-PTSD is Caused by a War Zone of Toxicity
As I battled through complex-PTSD, why do some things trigger me into reactions I hate myself for?
Photo by Marcus Lenk on Unsplash
Over the years and over probably hundreds of counseling sessions, I was diagnosed with complex-PTSD. Many of you know what PTSD or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is. You’ve probably heard it often associated with Veterans who have seen combat.
PTSD is typically associated with a single traumatic event or a series of traumatic events over a short window of time. Well, complex-PTSD is the result of prolonged episodes lasting years and is more interpersonal in nature. It is caused by parental abuse, sexual abuse, and repeated psychological abuse during early childhood development. You can read up more in-depth on Medical News Today, TalkSpace, and US News, all of which describe causes, symptoms, and treatments for complex-PTSD
There is a survey available to assist with the proper diagnosis as well. Unfortunately, complex-PTSD is often misdiagnosed as borderline Multiple Personality Disorder due to some similarities that manifest in how the individual handles certain emotional aspects of themselves. The survey is called an Adverse Childhood Event Survey, or ACES.
The ACES is a series of questions directed at finding out the safety levels felt by someone during childhood development. The survey is about ten questions long. A sample question would be something like, “Did you often or very often feel that no one in your family loved you or thought you were important or special?” There are also more probing questions that can potentially trigger memories, like “How often did a parent or adult in your home ever swear at you, insult you, or put you down?”
Let’s talk about my ACES score. My score is a 7. The problem is scores over 5 is that they can manifest into a multitude of mental health and physical health issues, including alcoholism and heart disease. You can do your own quiz, privately, via Stop Abuse Campaign.
So let’s talk about triggers, specifically mine, after a lifetime of abuse and trauma. Similar situations to what I endured are often triggers. I have a very difficult time listening to anyone speak down to kids. Mentions of suicide are actually a huge trigger for me, sending me into a panic for them and myself. Seeing, witnessing, or hearing of child abuse is a trigger.
I also have issues with put-downs, yelling, physical intimidation, intimacy, touching people, and even personal space. I had extreme difficulty trusting anyone and an even harder time discussing my true mental health with anyone. If anyone pushes me past my comfort zones, I shut down both mentally and physically. It’s like my head goes to another place, where I don’t see or feel anything.
I am fortunate enough that somewhere along the line, I realized that most of the actions that had occurred to me were very wrong. I have never touched illegal drugs a day in my life because I inherently knew that they would only become a crutch and I was at risk for addiction.
Let’s talk a little about being the “people-pleaser”. This was me in full effect, not too many years ago. I was a people-pleaser to avoid conflict. Any kind of conflict. I’d work harder to be the best employee because I didn’t want a confrontation with a boss. I’d self sacrifice myself to keep others off my back. I’d spend money or do things I didn’t want to do to keep people off my back. I adapted my personality into an extremely subservient mode. I did what I was told or what was suggested, no matter the cost. Including taking the blame for things, doing things that were wrong, and ultimately landing in jail because of it.
I hate to admit it, but going to jail was the absolute best thing that happened to me. It forced me OUT of abusive and toxic situations. It forced me to start really digging into why I was locked inside of a jail cell for days and weeks on end. I’m thankful for the guards that would talk to me and help me see that how certain people spoke to me wasn’t helpful. I’m thankful that yet another guard pointed out how down people actually talked to me. I’m thankful for the ladies that donated their time through their church to come to teach us and talk to us about a better tomorrow.
While I’m in survivor mode now and a completely different person than those fateful days back then, there are still things that will send me into a tailspin. Hearing that my daughter, who resides with her grandmother, thanks to the deep impacts of c-PTSD and landing in jail, has been told to kill herself has triggers me. It’s a new and additional layer of the abusive fears laid on by a narcissistic, evil individual.
It’s taken me years to understand that I can’t dwell in this rabbit hole of nightmares, insomnia, and severe anger. There are always those old trained thoughts that linger inside my head. The ones of guilt that it’s all my fault. It’s difficult to remember that I’m not the one telling someone to kill themselves. It’s difficult to not take on the responsibility of protecting my daughter. Which is extremely difficult to not do.
I have anger issues. I work a lot on emotional control. I also have to work on having normal emotions. I have to work on not taking more responsibility for someone else’s actions. I have to focus hard on what is mine to own and what isn’t. I have to work constantly at not allowing the swing of emotions and triggers to rule my responses.
I’ve worked for 15 years on having better boundaries. Sometimes those boundaries become too high. I’ve had to learn to “re-parent” myself with the assistance of a counselor and a lot of friends. I’ve had to focus on the positives and living life with gratitude and blessings, not letting negatives and pessimism take control. I have some form of therapy that I do every single day.
Life isn’t easy. It’s hard for all of us. Those new to understanding c-PTSD know the true depth of pain, often manifested as physical pain and emotional pain, understand just how hard it is. Those trying to understand what it is probably won’t ever fully grasp the depth of difficulty.
I’m all these years into recovery and I still battle. I am not alone either and I know that. Childhood abuse has deep, lifelong impacts. It impacts life even after the abuses ceased. It impacts relationships, work, self, and just about every facet of your life. There is no simple, easy cure. It takes time, patience and a whole lot of self-love mixed in. Even with all that, it still takes a long time to fully recover. Sometimes, I wonder if recovery will ever be a full recovery.
Just remember, there is no time table. There is help. You aren’t alone. Life can and will get better. I know I sound like some cheerleader or inspirational coach… I’m not. I’m not Tony Robbins. I’m not a therapist. I’m just a woman that lived with more trauma than anyone should ever endure. I struggle. I have swings of good and bad.
In fact, I’m writing because that’s part of MY therapy. To share and journal. To open up and be vulnerable. To trust myself and not care about what anyone “feels” is right or wrong.
I’ll be over here surrounding myself in laughter, love, and self-growth. I’ll be defending those that are like I am. I’m not here to make friends. I’m here to break the cycle and share my testimony. I’ve seen the glory of all that can be. I’ve held crying children in my arms and given them all the love my heart could. I’ve lifted others up and encouraged them to find their true self. I’ve called to others stuck in a rabbit hole and gave them a hand up.
To the survivors, stay strong. Together, we are stronger. More empowered to find victory in our battles over the past. | https://medium.com/invisible-illness/complex-ptsd-is-caused-by-a-war-zone-of-toxicity-f34db25d97cf | ['Doreen Barker'] | 2020-10-29 21:17:27.116000+00:00 | ['Mental Healing', 'Family', 'Mental Health', 'PTSD', 'Childhood Trauma'] |
How to Learn Storytelling If You Didn’t Grow Up With It | Authenticity is the holy grail in connecting with the audience with least effort. You have already experienced what you are talking about in your work. You just have to make it come to life in such a way that you were reliving it when it happened the first time.
The nostalgia is worth it whenever I share my past experiences in blogs. While writing itself, I learn a lot of lessons from just a single exposure. This compounding effect drives me to share more with readers.
Storytelling should feel like deja-vu. Make your audience a part of it. Walk with your audience by explaining the story in the same way as one student explains subject-matter topics to another. We all are learners who could use some storytelling skills.
Some people don’t grow up with storytelling.
I know I said something unconventional just now. But hear me out.
I am not talking about the stories we read in school. I have had proper primary education and read those stories from someone outside of my family, i.e., teachers.
Like every student, I even recited them for exams. Those stories are a load because you have to prove your lessons in the test. Geez, what a tax on short-term memory!
Out of hundreds of stories you read in school, there is an art of storytelling in the few ones you vividly remember till now. I am talking about that art you see in your parents’ stories. We learn a lot from our parents. This realisation came late to me and became stronger this year.
Who tells you stories mostly? The patient person, the calm one, the one who has all the time to shower the soft love. Hint: Your mother.
But my mother expired when I was 7.
Practical people don’t often tell stories. They give actionable advice.
My father is the most practical person I have seen so far. Storytelling approach is a big no from him. He doesn’t talk often. If I try to tell him a story, his expressionless reaction tacks a nail in my head. I almost lost the trust in the concept of storytelling.
I feel lucky when my father tells a story because he rarely does. When he starts, it is something I have to listen carefully. Otherwise, if I don’t walk through as he expects me to, then he won’t tell a story for a few months.
Wow! What a time for him to be stubborn. It is the kid’s right to be stubborn, not the parent’s. The one thing that’s ours, he took it!
Realising the power of storytelling from reading
I’ve developed the habit of reading in the past eight months. I am reaping huge benefits from it. I realised the power of storytelling when I started applying those lessons and shared my experiences with acquaintances by talking and with the world by blogging.
Now I know every person can describe his experience uniquely if they want to. Storytelling gives wings to your life which can even lift someone from misery. You don’t know the power of stories unless someone says this to you softly, “You inspire me buddy. Keep going and never stop. The world needs more people like you.”
Storytelling makes you an empathetic person. I didn’t know the power of storytelling until I started the challenge to write one blog every day to test my writing skills and see how it turns out.
It is difficult to describe the revelation of the strength of storytelling in words. But I think I have touched the reader’s heart if I spark that same emotion which I felt while writing.
Honestly, I will never know if I achieved it. But, feedbacks are sure ways to confirm this fact.
I am getting a lot of positive affirmations nowadays. Storytelling is the result of my imagination and experiences coupled together to convert every storm into a life-changing lesson which can help anyone facing similar problems.
Final words
My experience with storytelling? I have just scratched the surface.
I use symbolism a lot. I could write a 10 minutes long article about a 5-minute experience I had in the past if I learned something from it.
How to reach this level? You can do this by understanding what your emotions are trying to tell you. Instead of trusting them completely, see the change they are trying to show you and then make an informed decision. Your heart will thank you for it. You will feel lighter than ever.
Let’s cut to chase. It has a lot to do with emotional intelligence. I don’t know if there is an upper bound for this, but I will keep improving.
While in this journey of storytelling, the feedback from the community is even improving me every day. If you are a great storyteller, you will make great connections with people.
Your personal touch is what makes you different. If you grew up with storytelling, then it’s great. If you grew up with only practical advice, feed your imagination by reading.
This blog belongs to a series of posts I am publishing in this 100-days streak. Today is day 75. Navigate to the end of article 22, for the references from day 23 onwards. If you would like to read the ones before day 22, here is the first one that documents them in the end.
~ Sanjeev | https://medium.com/the-faculty/how-to-learn-storytelling-if-you-didnt-grow-up-with-it-7a5924deb914 | ['Sanjeev Yadav'] | 2020-06-08 00:18:11.154000+00:00 | ['Storytelling', 'Self Improvement', 'Family', 'Life', 'Empathy'] |
An Ancient Bible That Has No Moses | An Ancient Bible That Has No Moses
The weird tale of the Temple Scroll
One-sheet promo poster for “The Ten Commandments” (1956)
In 1955, one of the most remarkable manuscript discoveries in history had been made, or would be shortly. One of the key figures in its emergence, the Reverend Dr. Joe H. Uhrig, knew only that he was going to the ‘Holy Land’, to learn more about the Bible.
Returning to America, he resumed his career in the exciting new field of ‘televangelism’. His T.V. program, Hand to Heaven, was filmed in a ‘little country church’ in Alexandria, Virginia. He’d built it as a studio set. The cemetery outside was fake.
A nice touch — on the tombstones, rather than names, there were selections from the ‘Ten Commandments’.
It was a perfect expression of Christianity of the time, as much as the movie of The Ten Commandments which came out in 1956. The rugged, handsome actor playing Moses, the prophet of God, receives “the Law.” However Hollywoodized, this was the Bible that people loved. A show.
But the idea of a ‘new’ divine revelation was in the air, to the media-saavy showman at least. By early 1960, the Rev. Uhrig’s T.V. church was “padlocked by angry creditors,” the newspaper notes, as word spread that he “had gone to Beirut, reportedly to search for Dead Sea scrolls.”
He’d come into contact with the famous Kando
The tiny Syrian man in Bethlehem had become a dealer of the scrolls being dug up from caves in the desert. The lost library of the ancient ‘Essenes’ was coming back into the world. And from a friend of a friend made on his 1955 trip, Uhrig had learned of a scroll that Kando was keeping secret.
This was no brown and crumbling scroll, withered by time, like most of the others. It was huge, nearly twenty-seven feet long when unrolled. The parchment was thinner, its color described as ivory white.
In later years, scientists would study the preservative of its unique salt coating. But when Uhrig saw the scroll in 1960, it must have seemed like a miracle.
The Temple Scroll by David Harris. Courtesy of Israel Museum, Jerusalem
Uhrig couldn’t read the Hebrew text
His doctoral degree was from a diploma mill. The scroll’s contents were unknown. But he learned he could be of assistance in other ways. Kando didn’t exactly own the scroll. A found antiquity belonged to the state, which at the time was Jordan.
He could have handed it over for the usual payment, but Kando had a feeling that Israel might offer more? He couldn’t be caught making such a suggestion himself.
On terms of great secrecy, the Rev. Uhrig, on Kando’s behalf, approached Yigael Yadin, the archaeologist and Israeli military leader who had overseen the country’s involvement in the scrolls, and showed him a piece of the scroll.
Uhrig narrates later:
“I pulled it off. And I said, ‘I want to take this with me. This is the only way to prove to Yadin that this is genuine. He’s got to know what it is.’”
Uhrig had a clandestine meeting with Yadin, and named his price: $750,000. Bringing out the fragment, Uhrig recalled, Yadin’s “eyes popped”—but then the archaeologist handed it back?
“This is a deed to some property,” Yadin said, with little apparent interest. He would pay $130,000. That was all.
Only by comparing accounts later does the gamesmanship become clear. Yadin read the fragment to speak of the role of the High Priest of a Jewish temple—in a sacred text that was utterly unique.
He’d made a play to get it for less money.
Whatever benefit Uhrig saw for Israel, he also saw some for himself
He was to receive a commission from the sale. But then, maddeningly, Kando decided to wait for the price he’d really wanted: a million dollars.
“He had illusions that there would be some multimillionaire in the United States,” Uhrig later tells Biblical Archaeology Review. Disappointed, he returned to America to launch other schemes, eventually doing a stint in prison for mail fraud, before retiring to Florida.
Kando kept trying to sell the scroll. By early 1967, he’d engaged a Washington D.C. law firm to help with the matter, and they approached Frank Moore Cross, the scrolls scholar working out of Harvard, who’d be expected to know wealthy Christian contacts.
Cross agreed to discuss the matter, and followed the instructions he was given. He recalls his thoughts when standing on the remote street in Beirut where a meeting was to take place. “It was very dark. Garbage littered the walkways under the arches. One body more or less might not be noticed for days.”
A Mercedes appeared, and inside he sees Kando, and an interpreter, who says that he has “a great scroll to sell worth millions of dollars.” Cross was urged to come to Jerusalem to buy it, but never did.
Yadin hadn’t forgotten the matter
The following June, when the Six-Day War broke out, he sent soldiers to Kando’s home to force him to produce the secret scroll. Lifting a tile of his bedroom floor, Kando removed a shoe box. There it was, wrapped in cellophane.
The scene proved to be something of an international incident. The New York Times reported: “According to reliable sources, Kando was taken to Tel Aviv where he was kept under house arrest for five days.”
The fuss was, perhaps, a means for scholars involved with the scrolls to vent their anger. However anti-Semitic, they’d now have to deal with Israel to continue their work.
Cross, though, suspects Kando’s arrest had been for show. The dealer had to seem to be forced to give up the scroll to the Israelis, or run afoul of his Arab contacts. In reality, Kando had gotten the best deal he could get.
“When the story is revealed of how the scroll was acquired it will sound like one of the Thousand and One Nights,” Yadin says in an October 26, 1967 announcement of the scroll’s existence.
In a few updates, Yadin gives details from the scroll. It concerns a temple which was never built, he says. Just the dream of a sect whose defining idea was being, from exile, the true priests of the real, Jerusalem temple. Then that was destroyed, and no priests were needed any longer.
Toward the end of one news story, a curious detail:
“Yadin said that one of the surprising aspects of this newest scroll was its style, which is given as the word of God, and written mostly in the first person.”
An entire scroll of God speaking? In the Bible, there was nothing like it.
After a year of haggling, Kando was paid $105,000
And Yadin’s four-volume study of the ‘Temple Scroll’, as it was being called, came out in 1978.
This was, he writes, “a veritable Torah of the Lord.” God speaks, apparently from Mount Sinai, giving the instructions for the Israelites upon entering the Promised Land. They’re to build a temple, with procedures and purity laws—echoing language from the Bible.
But something was missing? Like Moses.
As Baruch A. Levine explains:
“The words of the Scroll are represented as God’s own words, and the role of Moses as the teacher of God’s word has been meticulously eliminated.”
A Bible rewritten — without Moses? And without any storytelling around the Exodus. No ten commandments. No walls of Jericho tumbling down. No giants or spies.
But this was a sacred text. It was a Bible. In 1984, shortly before his death, Yadin is out doing publicity for an English version of his book. He says:
“What was the Temple Scroll? It is nothing short of the second Torah, according to the Essenes.”
Perhaps Moses came to seem unnecessary to the plot. God could speak directly? As every hearer, then, becomes — the prophet.
With no worshippers left in that religion, the scroll was put on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where throngs came to see it.
A certain irony came in view, as Richard A. Freund notes in Digging Through History in 2016:
“Even with no Temple and no priesthood, the Dead Sea Scrolls and their home at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem became the new Temple of the modern religion of Israel, and the curator became the equivalent of the modern high priest of this secularized society.”
Scholars kept studying the scroll
With several other unexpected finds from the caves, the Temple Scroll was grouped into a category they would call the ‘Rewritten Bible’.
A 2002 paper by Bernard M. Levinson and Molly M. Zahn suggests it was an effort to revise the Bible into a superior work.
“By removing the repetitions and logical inconsistencies that stem from the highly redacted nature of the canonical Pentateuch, by increasing the text’s coherence and consistency, the redactor presents a more perfect Torah — one more worthy of God.”
Little about the Temple Scroll is really known. Why was it treated with a different finish than the others scrolls? Where had it come from? Scholars assumed it was found in ‘Cave 11’, in 1956, though Kando’s son insisted it was from the very first cave, found a decade prior.
Kando himself never spoke of the history he’d lived. Frank Moore Cross notes:
“There were attempts to record his memoirs, but he always refused. Now he is dead, and we shall never know his story. If he had recounted his part in the history of the scrolls, I doubt if any of us would have been able to distinguish between what was true and what was false.”
One is left to reflect on the story of the Syrian smuggler in Bethlehem who’d lived for years with the unknown words of God under his bedroom floor, in a shoebox.
Kando kept the enormous jar in which, he said, the scroll was found. It remains on display in the family’s souvenir store in Bethlehem. Any tourist can pose beside a clay container which, for millennia, held the only copy of a different Bible. | https://medium.com/history-of-yesterday/an-ancient-bible-that-has-no-moses-de6c095cf9f4 | ['Jonathan Poletti'] | 2020-12-27 18:25:59.624000+00:00 | ['Bible', 'Christianity', 'Books', 'Religion', 'History'] |
Why you should use MobX | Advantages of MobX
MobX has minimal boilerplate
Redux is notorious for it’s boilerplate. Here’s a simple api call recipe in redux, something every app has in one form or another:
That’s a lot of code to do something very simple, and that’s before we’ve added the minimal libraries to make redux usable in non-trivial applications — redux-thunk/ redux-saga , reselect (for momoization) and normalizr (for normalization).
In contrast a MobX store that does the same would be written like this:
And for those who are wondering that is exactly the same functionality as the previous redux example. Beyond being more concise it’s also much clearer and direct, there’s nowhere for extra functionality to creep up at you.
Unlike the redux example it automatically memoizes and there’s no need for thunk or saga to work in a real app. (It doesn’t normalizes though, that takes a bit more work to do)
There are various attempts to reduce the boilerplate — from redux itself, such as the actionCreatorCreator (I cringe just hearing that name) to full-fledged conventional libraries like ducks. Unfortunately they either didn’t live up to their claims or haven’t gained much popularity.
The extreme amount of boilerplate code isn’t limited to the logic layer part of creating redux reducers. It’s also added to the consumer part — react components:
Another option for state management in React is to use the Context api.
Let’s make the same api example with Context and Hooks:
That’s not too different from the MobX example — we only add createContext and Context.Provider . However we need to use Context.Provider and useContext every time we want state that needs to be used separately.
The more your application grows and state moves up the tree the more this becomes a common occurrence until your top level component looks something like this:
If you follow Kent C. Dodds’ guidelines on how to build state you’ll probably say that this shouldn’t happen because state should only be as close to the usage as possible and not all of it should stay at the top.
Unfortunately I find that a lot of common use cases require state to be hoisted to the top of the app — anything that needs to be shown in 2 sections of the app (such as in the main window and the sidebar, or navbar), for example: notifications/messages , authentication (and my user info), showing if a feed/group has more items to show, number of online users and a lot more.
Since you often bundle state and actions together with MobX it also lessons the problem of prop drilling — it’s much easier to send a single prop down several level than multiple ones, which makes your lower level components simpler. | https://medium.com/better-programming/why-you-should-use-mobx-5d3e1914eb0f | ['Alon Bar David'] | 2019-10-12 04:52:16.436000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Software Development', 'Front End Development', 'React', 'Programming'] |
How Ambition and Drive Contribute to Living a Balanced Life | Even when making almost daily progress in many of these and gaining points for them, I somehow didn’t feel like I was having fun. Then I realized that I had the ambition to write the book, the excerpt from which you are reading now, first. I wanted to see it come together and become a completed product.
So that was the game I wanted to excel in then, and I wanted to try the others later.
In the Balance Game, I used weekends and holidays to recharge, and I collected stars when I managed not to work too much on projects and work activities at those times.
But when I became aware of a burning passion, I made an exception for that one “ambition project.” I allowed myself to be creative in this project in my free time and weekends too. Mobile, scraps of paper, and the computer were all used as soon as creative thoughts appeared.
Awareness, kaizen, and gamification helped me enjoy this project and anything else that called for my attention on the weekends. This “ambition project” turned out to be a great game to play whenever I had a break between enjoying time with my husband and children, visiting family members and friends, or doing household chores or other things around the house, and I took a little time for myself.
I discovered that being creative in a project I was passionate about was one of the best things I could do for myself. | https://medium.com/illumination-curated/how-ambition-and-drive-contribute-to-living-a-balanced-life-4e7761d4e223 | ['Victoria Ichizli-Bartels'] | 2020-12-09 15:31:01.276000+00:00 | ['Ideas', 'Self-awareness', 'Gaming', 'Balanced Life', 'Ambition'] |
Within the Next 30 Years: Humanity Will Be Transformed by Exponential Growth | A Quick Recap: Evolution of Life on Earth in 4 Steps
About 4.6 billion years ago, our solar system, the sun and the Earth were formed.
Step 1
3.5 billion years ago, the first simple life forms, called “prokaryotes,” came into existence.These prokaryotes were super-simple, microscopic single-celled organisms, basically a bag of cytoplasm with free-floating DNA. They had neither a distinct nucleus nor specialized organelles.
Step 2
Fast-forwarding one billion years to 2.5 billion years ago, the next step in evolution created what we call “eukaryotes” — life forms that distinguished themselves by incorporating biological ‘technology’ into themselves. Technology that allowed them to manipulate energy (via mitochondria) and information (via chromosomes) far more efficiently. Fast forward another billion years for the next step.
Step 3
1.5 billion years ago, these early eukaryotes began working collaboratively and formed the first “multi-cellular life,” of which you and I are the ultimate examples (a human is a multicellular creature of 10 trillion cells).
Step 4
The final step I want to highlight happened some 400 million years ago, when lungfish crawled out of the oceans onto the shores, and life evolved from the oceans onto land.
The Next Stages of Human Evolution in 4 Steps
Today, at a massively accelerated rate — some 100 million times faster than the steps I outlined above — life is undergoing a similar evolution. In this next stage of evolution, we are going from evolution by natural selection (Darwinism) to evolution by intelligent direction. Allow me to draw the analogy for you:
Step 1
Simple humans today are analogous to prokaryotes. Simple life, each life form independent of the others, competing and sometimes collaborating.
Step 2
Just as eukaryotes were created by ingesting technology, humans will incorporate technology into our bodies and brains that will allow us to make vastly more efficient use of information (BCI) and energy.
Step 3
Enabled with BCI and AI, humans will become massively connected with each other and billions of AIs (computers) via the cloud, analogous to the first multicellular lifeforms 1.5 billion years ago. Such a massive interconnection will lead to the emergence of a new global consciousness, and a new organism I call the Meta-Intelligence.
Step 4
Finally, humanity is about to crawl out of the gravity well of Earth to become a multiplanetary species. Our journey to the moon, Mars, asteroids and beyond represents the modern-day analogy of the journey made by lungfish climbing out of the oceans some 400 million years ago. | https://medium.com/singularityu/within-the-next-30-years-humanity-will-be-transformed-by-exponential-growth-6fa89ddfc087 | ['Singularity University'] | 2017-02-28 14:02:00.614000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence', 'Evolution', 'Brain Computer Interface', 'Abundance', 'Singularity University'] |
Dockerizing Angular App With NodeJS Backend — Typescript Version | Dockerizing Angular App With NodeJS Backend — Typescript Version
Learn How to Dockerize and make it a deployable image
Photo by Bernd Dittrich on Unsplash
Docker is an enterprise-ready container platform that enables organizations to seamlessly build, share, and run any application, anywhere. Almost every company is containerizing its applications for faster production workloads so that they can deploy anytime and sometimes several times a day. There are so many ways we can build an Angular App. One way is to dockerize the Angular app with nodejs backend and create a docker image so that we can deploy that image any time or sometimes several times a day.
In this post, we look at the example project and see the step by step guide on how we can dockerize the Angular app with nodejs as a server.
Introduction
Example Project
Dockerizing the App
Running The App on Docker
Summary
Conclusion
Introduction
Nowadays, it’s very common to dockerize and deploy the Docker image in the production with the help of container orchestration engines such as Docker Swarn or Kubernetes. We are going to Dockerize the app and create an image and run it on Docker on our local machine. We could also push that Image into Docker hub and pull it whenever and wherever we need it.
Here is the complete guide on how to develop an Angular app with nodejs as a backend server. If you are not familiar with the process or you want to know before studying this guide, I would recommend you going through it.
Javascript Version
Typescript Version
Prerequisite
As a prerequisite, you have to install Docker for Desktop (whatever your OS is). Please follow this link to install Docker on your laptop. Once installed you can check the Docker info or version with the following commands. | https://medium.com/bb-tutorials-and-thoughts/dockerizing-angular-app-with-nodejs-backend-typescript-version-4136a3ce019e | ['Bhargav Bachina'] | 2020-08-08 05:01:01.143000+00:00 | ['Typescript', 'Angular', 'Docker', 'Programming', 'Web Development'] |
Pre-Sale Information | Since we are just a couple of days out from our pre-sale I wanted to detail all the information you will need to know about how it will work and how to purchase.
CryptoFights Pre-Sale will go LIVE on September 19th at 12pm EDT. When the timer strikes zero you will need to refresh the page and the buy buttons will be unlocked for purchase. All items listed will have a 30 second refresh showing the current inventory left. Buy fast as items are a first come first serve style. This means that while supplies last or who gets their ethereum transaction in first.
The PRE-SALE WILL ONLY BE LIVE FOR 14 DAYS. LIMITED QUANTITIES AVAILABLE.
Ways to Purchase:
Mobile: Coinbase Wallet (formerly Toshi), Cipher
Desktop: Metamask
Ethereum(ETH) will be the cryptocurrency used for buying items. Please make sure you have enough ETH ready for the pre-sale as if you wait your item might be sold out.
Prices are displayed on the right hand side.
Prices in ETH
PRESALE: https://presale.cryptofights.io
💵💵NEW REFERRAL PROGRAM — MAKE 10% OF ALL PURCHASES💰💰
We have just launched our referral program at the bottom of our pre-sale page. You need to have either the metamask wallet or mobile wallets to have your link appear. If it doesn’t appear but still want to use it you simply paste your ethereum wallet address on the end like so:
https://presale.cryptofights.io/#WALLETADDRESSHERE
Example:
How to see your items in the ENJIN Wallet
Download and install the ENJIN Wallet if you haven’t already. Once installed you can either create a new wallet or import an existing wallet. You want to IMPORT your wallet from metamask or cipher/toshi. This is the easiest way since you do not have to transfer items from one wallet to another.
Enjin Wallet Import Screen
After you import you will see your items in the collectibles menu.
Enjin Wallet CryptoFights Items
If you have any questions, comments, or concerns you can either join our Discord Server, Telegram Group, or email us.
Check out the how to play guide wiki entry.
Game Trailer: | https://medium.com/cryptofights/pre-sale-information-c27c22c40ac | ['Crypto Fights'] | 2018-09-17 21:52:10.054000+00:00 | ['Dapps', 'Gaming', 'Ethereum', 'Startup'] |
Direct Investment: Disrupting The 60:40 Portfolio | by Anne Szustek Talbot, VP of Content
Innovation: It’s a strategy that can both drive the strategy and be the backbone of your portfolio. Direct investment in startups is a trend that has gained ground among private investors as of late, and for good reason. In addition to the SEC’s new guidelines on what defines an “accredited investor,” paving the way for more people to invest in private equity and venture capital, and the Labor Department’s rule changes allowing for retirement funds to invest in PE, investors have a new line to capitalize on direct investment. The investor gets the satisfaction and sense of ownership that comes with investing in a project from the ground floor — and with a good chance of getting some double-digit, market-beating returns to boot.
Long only open to institutional investors such as pension funds or endowments, access to alternative asset classes such as direct investment in companies opens a venture capital-style approach to long-term investing that can help foster the development of new products and new businesses, all the while offering the opportunity to tap into a healthy source of yield with less correlation to what’s happening on Wall Street. Yet, perhaps the greatest potential benefit to direct investing in small businesses is one that offers returns beyond anything a bank can quantify: being able to make a direct impact in new, small businesses, helping to bolster the economy in a way that goes beyond stocks and bonds.
Beating the 60:40 portfolio
When it comes to putting together a retirement plan, the longstanding conventional wisdom is the 60:40 portfolio breakdown: three-fifths of that portfolio goes into equities, namely tracking the S&P 500; with the remainder going into Treasuries, considered to be the safest of bond investments. The asset allocation logic is thus: aim for a bit of returns and if things head south, those bonds will keep your retirement from going pear-shaped.
Sounds straightforward enough. Yet if you’ve been up on your economic and financial news over the past decade or so, you’d know that a contrarian viewpoint on this topic has more or less become the investment go-to. Given quantitative easing and interest rates that have been grazing zero, bonds, while secure, aren’t exactly a place to get steady returns.
If you hadn’t guessed, much about the present state of the markets defies conventional wisdom. For more than a decade now, the stable-yet-scanty returns on Treasuries and other high-rated bonds have left asset allocators on a search for yield that has gone across asset classes that push the boundaries of alternative investments, but of what is often considered a portfolio component. Fine wine, golf resorts, and vintage Lego sets have all been touted at some point as the latest hot source of yield to extract returns beyond what’s in the traditional 60:40 portfolio.
Granted, your investment adviser might not think the contents of your now-Millennial child’s toy closet is the surest bet to plump up your retirement fund. Nonetheless, looking beyond what’s on the crawl on your Bloomberg or CNBC screen can make sound financial sense. Low interest rates aren’t going away anytime soon. While equities have pulled quite a bit of heft on their own, a diversified strategy is a sound tactic.
Direct investing pays off
Family offices, which cater to high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients, occupy a unique space in the investment landscape. Straddling the space between individuals planning for retirement and larger institutional investors such as pension funds that have to answer to boards and public scrutiny, they have both the financial resources and management leeway to try strategies that might be too outsized for the individual investor yet not quite vanilla enough to pass the muster of a pension board. Essentially, family offices can be investment pioneers. This entrepreneurial investment spirit is helping literal pioneers.
Following the late 2000s recession, direct investment by family offices grew by 206 percent from 2010 to 2015, according to a recent study by data and research firm FINTRX. Over the past year, that amount grew 11 percent. Come 2020, roughly half of all family offices in the world make direct investments in companies, according to the study, which got a nod in a recent installment of New York Times columnist Paul Sullivan’s Wealth Matters vertical.
“There’s been an incredible recovery in the stock market, but how do I commit more to the public markets when I’m looking at these valuations and it’s still a rocky road ahead?” asked Eric Becker, founder of Cresset Capital and longtime investor in healthcare companies, in the column.
Private markets offer a source of alpha uncorrelated to what’s happening in the markets and the factors that influence them: say, geopolitics, pandemics, or natural disasters. What’s more, as Sullivan points out, some family offices are seeing the opportunity to make direct investments into startups as a way to give back to an industry that may have given their family its start. Beyond the charitable aspects, however, there is also institutional knowledge afoot. A family office has generations of insight into the sector into which they’re investing, giving a unique level of due diligence.
This literal in-house savvy is parlaying into some smart early-stage investments. According to data from both the FINTRX study and from family office research service Campden Family Wealth, the lion’s share of single family office direct investments and venture capital have been made during early-stage and seed rounds — and not without some healthy returns. Campden’s survey showed an average 14 percent return on their venture investments during the year leading up to the study; direct investments garnered an average 17 percent. To more than 85 percent of the 110 representatives of ultra-high-net-worth families, these returns either met or exceeded their expectations.
Avenues for direct investment
The next question is: how can investors connect with direct investment opportunities? Startup incubators are a good place for family offices, registered investment advisers, and other accredited investors to seek out projects and startups whose goals and interests align with those of their portfolios.
Does the idea of approaching a startup incubator still befuddle you? Take the approach that you’d take to identify sectors in which you’d be looking to make equities allocations. If, say, some sort of tech gadget would prove intriguing for example, look for an incubator that sponsors the development of future IPO-worthy gadgets. Often located either nearby — if not also working in tandem with — major research universities, these groups provide the business and management advice these scientists and engineers make to take their inventions beyond the prototype stage.
For investors, this means the chance to get in on a project at its very beginning. For inventors, it’s getting the capital stream needed to keep on researching and perfecting. In essence, it’s a chance for family offices and other high-net-worth offices to pay it forward to the next generation of industrialists. Projects that help bolster industries that are either crucial to COVID-19 recovery, like healthcare, or will grow independently of economic winds, such as the military, can offer opportunities for positive returns now and into the next market cycle.
Inventors and investors: They’re just one keystroke away from each other on the keyboard. Their goals align as well. Direct investment in innovation can offer more than a sizable gain in a portfolio. Putting money into the next great project helps plant the seed for more economic growth, helping economic recovery on several levels. Family offices and other private wealth institutions got their start from capitalizing on a good idea. Just because that’s how that family’s story started doesn’t mean that there can’t be another chapter. | https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/direct-investment-disrupting-the-60-40-portfolio-7a302aa66407 | [] | 2020-09-12 12:09:40.688000+00:00 | ['Investing', 'Startup', 'Asset Management', 'Finance', 'Family Office'] |
How to Manage Versions using Maven BOM, Gradle and GitHub | I have noticed that many great frameworks such as Spring Boot, Grails or Micronaut are using Maven bill-of-material (BOM) to manage versions of their dependencies aligned. Using BOM you can constraint the versions of transitive dependencies as well as it allows you to specify just the group and name of the module ane let the version be determined by BOM.
I wanted to bring the same smooth versions' management into our project so I've created a seed project to generate the BOM files easily. Although there is a java-platform Gradle plugin which is designed for generating BOM files I got inspired by the approach taken by Micronaut team and created a project which generated the BOM from a simple properties file and publishes it into GitHub Maven repository using GitHub Actions.
Creating BOM
You can use the seed project to easily create your own BOM file. The project follows very simple conventions:
(optionally) declare versions placeholders such as groovy.version in file src/main/versions/_versions.properties declare desired module version in a file src/main/versions/<groupId>.properties (for example src/main/versions/org.codehaus.groovy.properties ) either explicitly such as groovy = 2.5.4 or using the placeholder defined before groovy = groovy.version create a release on GitHub or just push a tag to the repository to release a new version of the BOM
Once the GitHub Action is triggered by the new tag and when it is finished then the BOM will be available at https://maven.pkg.github.com/<your org>/<your repo> .
Please, follow the documentation for a further reference.
Using BOM
To use the generated BOM you have to add the following lines into your Gradle build:
repositories {
maven { url 'https://maven.pkg.github.com/<repo>/<org>' }
} dependencies {
compile platform('<your group id>:<your bom name>:<version>')
// some dependency declared in the BOM
compile 'org.codehaus.groovy:groovy'
}
If you are still using an older version of Gradle you can also use the Spring dependency plugin: | https://medium.com/agorapulse-stories/how-to-manage-versions-using-maven-bom-gradle-and-github-b3fd94301655 | ['Vladimír Oraný'] | 2020-01-21 14:25:43.083000+00:00 | ['Tech', 'Java', 'Gradle', 'Groovy', 'Github'] |
Path towards the ‘Sustainable’ World ! | Sustainability is one of the foremost concern that humanity faces today. Stuart Hart in his book, Capitalism at Crossroads discusses about some of the frameworks that can be used to develop sustainable strategies.
Hart also discusses about how Worlds are in collision and how money economy is encroaching on nature’s economy and making undeniable and many a times not so welcoming changes in local markets/culture. Later he suggests how corporations can obtain real benefits by building a balanced sustainability portfolio. However, all these efforts require a holistic view of the scenario and any reductionist approach would not solve the problem in the longer term.
I would like to argue that since we are trying to fix the externalities created by the businesses, we need to focus on fundamental premises on which the businesses are built, since we inherit the business frameworks from times when sustainability was not an issue. Going back in time, during the imperial era, all the imperial powers were focussed on extracting as much resources from occupied territories to bring wealth back home, without paying any attention to the local communities and environmental impact. In fact many bigger corporations that exist today were found during the pre world war era.
Businesses today are defined by their ability to make profits. Profits as we know today is measured in terms of monetary performance. Given that we need to re look how we conduct business, we may need to redefine our definition of profit (which is actually inherited from imperial times and before). New definition of value(profit) might include not only economic value but ‘societal value’, encompassing all the three economies(money economy, traditional economy and nature’s economy). Michael Porter, professor at HBS terms this as ‘shared value’, while Umair, a blogger at HBR, in his book ‘The New Capitalist Manifesto’ termed this as ‘thick value’. The idea is essentially the same, unless we redefine the basic premise to do business, we cannot change the outcome beyond a certain threshold. It would require more fundamental rethinking of the pillars of business.
However to do that and make businesses believe that they are actually creating value, we need to come up similar complex mathematical models and metrics to keep track of ‘value’ created by corporations and any benefits that can be extended to them.
Making businesses choose more green strategies and create new technologies and efficient processes seems to me that they still lack the vision of the future. This is because, though they are trying to change how a particular business functions, but zooming out of the picture, still doesn’t fundamentally change the business scenario, where profits are primarily driven by economic benefits and which augments human behaviour of greed.
Measuring economic profit is a well established science. However, it is really cumbersome to come up with any generic model to measure ‘societal value’ as it may depend on geographies and local culture. This would create some non-deterministic calculations of profit which corporations are inherently opposed to, since they work better in deterministic world defined by proper laws. Therefore to solve the problem of sustainability it is important to develop frameworks that provides a metric based approach to measure ‘societal value’ without undermining the current economic benefits to the corporations.
To conclude, I believe, to be able to measure the ‘value’ created by businesses and disseminate that information to the stakeholders can bring about change in the way businesses function, and wipe out the problem of sustainability, as we know it today. | https://medium.com/all-things-philosophical/path-towards-the-sustainable-world-a47217950b45 | ['Anshul Pandey'] | 2017-12-09 02:42:22.967000+00:00 | ['My Thoughts', 'Business', 'Capitalism', 'Shared', 'Society'] |
Simple Notes App in Android (Java) | Programming the MainActivity
MainActivity.java imports
These are the imports needed for the application. If you don’t want to add this imports now, Android Studio will prompt you to hit Alt + Enter when you use them.
The main activity will already have an onCreate() method. Just above this method add the following line. This line will help us carry some crucial information to another activity through an Intent.
Next we are going to add the list of notes to the listView in the main activity. Add the following piece of code to the onCreate() method. So we are getting a list of files and adding them to an Array. Please ignore line 3 at the moment. Add it but we will come to it later. Then we are converting the array to an arrayAdapter with all filenames. Finally, we are adding the adapter to the listView.
Now we will write a program to create a note when the ADD Button is clicked. Add the following piece of code below the above piece of code in the onCreate() function itself. So first we will get the note heading and its content from the text fields and return an error if any text field is empty. Then we create a new file in the Android Internal Storage, and add the note content in it. The note heading will be in the file name, note_heading.txt where note_heading will be the note heading. Then we add the note heading to the listView.
And the final part of programming the MainActivity. Add this to the onCreate() function. When a user clicks on the heading in a listView he will have to see the content. Now, how do we go about doing that? We set a listener to the list items. We create an intent, to go to activity Note, and set heading as the value of the EXTRA_MESSAGE, which we had set at the beginning. And finally we start the activity, Note. | https://medium.com/swlh/simple-notes-app-in-android-java-9062d7bb3bc0 | ['Rushi Ranade'] | 2020-12-04 12:49:19.156000+00:00 | ['Java', 'Beginner', 'Android', 'Notes', 'Android App Development'] |
Aren’t trans people mentally ill? | “Ask Addi” is Join the Gender Revolution’s weekly advice column for questions about gender, transitioning or general LGBTQ+ issues. Click here if you’d like to Ask Addi a question, or find them on social media, #ASKADDI. Questions are answered anonymously so provide a pseudonym if you’d like.
Why are you encouraging people who are mentally ill when they should be getting help?— Concerned in Kentucky
Dear Concerned,
Most of the time, I ignore negative or trolling questions but your note seemed to be earnest so I decided to take your question.
Transgender people are not mentally ill. This is not my opinion but the findings of research sponsored by the American Psychiatric Association, American Medical Association and the World Health Organization that has been done over the decades.
It is true that when the first psychological diagnostic manuals were written in the 20th century, both homosexuality and “transsexualism” (later “gender identity disorder”) were included in the lists of things that can go wrong with a person’s psyche.
Photo by Jonathan Simcoe on Unsplash
Then a funny thing happened. They started doing research. Note the order there. First, it was assumed that being gay or trans was pathological and placed in diagnostic manuals, then they did the research on the subjects. The point of the research was to find the underlying cause of these assumed pathologies in order to improve treatment for them. What they found though is that there is no underlying pathology.
Being part of the LGBTQ+ community does not cause significant distress or impairment of personal functioning, the hallmark of mental illness. People who are gay or trans have no problem dealing with life, relationships or work. Once they understood this, the psychiatric community was forced to accept that being gay or trans are simply normal ways that people express their humanity.
First, they had enough evidence to say that being gay isn’t a disorder and they removed homosexuality from the diagnostic manual in 1973. Then with decades-more research done, they did away with the diagnosis “gender identity disorder” in 2013. The actual research into being transgender was done back in the 1980s and 90s but since the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) was last updated in 1994, it took a couple of decades to get it out of the manual.
The AMA actually beat the APA to the punch by recognizing gender dysphoria as a treatable medical condition in 2007. (That treatment is transitioning.) The WHO finally joined the American associations in 2018 when they removed being transgender from their diagnostic manuals after a final study in 2016.
Now, I understand that knowing that the scientific community doesn’t agree with your assertation isn’t going to change your mind. I and other trans people are all sick as far as you’re concerned. If you don’t mind, I’ll be listening to the professionals.
Photo by Sydney Sims on Unsplash
“But trans people have more depression and anxiety and commit suicide more often,” I imagine you objecting. You’d be right about that. We are more susceptible to depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and some other disorders. However, those issues do not come from being trans. They come from dealing with our society. We are constantly bombarded with the message that we are not wanted, that we shouldn’t exist. We can be refused employment so more of us live in poverty. We can be refused accommodations so more of us are homeless. We can be refused an education so more of us lack the skills we need to improve our lot in life. We’re attacked on the street for no other reason than existing. The reason so many trans people suffer from mental disorders is that they have a form of PTSD from living in our culture.
If you are really concerned about the mental health of trans people, help them. Stop accusing them of being ill, stop being part of the problem and work to get them the help they need to make it through this life.
Check out the first article in the series if you’d like to know more about Addi’s background or the Ask Addi Archive for additional columns. | https://medium.com/join-the-gender-revolution/arent-trans-people-mentally-ill-1cc7f26406e9 | ['Addison Smith'] | 2018-12-03 13:59:51.797000+00:00 | ['LGBT Rights', 'Mental Health', 'LGBTQ', 'Transgender', 'Gender Equality'] |
Three Excellent Exercises For Building Arm Strength | These three moves singlehandedly allow me to have strong and toned arms, and I’m certain of this due to the mere fact that I don’t do much else when it comes to arm workouts.
Now I’m not guaranteeing similar results as to mine, but I’m confident that if you do these moves on a regular basis (read: daily or every other day) you will notice a difference in the look and feel of your arms after one month.
That’s the beauty of exercise: It really freaking works!
It doesn’t take much time to perform these exercises either, so even if you only have 5 minutes in your day to spare, hit the floor and get to it. (Yes, it will make a difference! I just feel like I had to say that again.)
1. Tricep Dips
This move directly targets your triceps. I like to do at least 3 rounds of these with my legs fully extended in front of me. If you can’t quite get there yet, keep your knees bent, but be sure to not use your legs to lift you up… then you won’t be getting the most out of the move.
Here’s what you do:
While sitting on a chair or bench, place hands next to your hips on the edge of the chair, with legs stretched out before you, or knees slightly bent and feet flat on the floor.
Scooch your butt off the seat so you’re holding yourself up.
Slowly lower your body by bending your elbow to a 90˚ angle (or as low as you can go.)
Push yourself back up by straightening elbows
Repeat for 10 reps, 3x. Rest between rounds.
2. Push-Ups
These are the OG of arm exercises and you get a lot of bang for your push-up buck since it also works to strengthen your core.
Every day I try to get in at least 10 push-ups since you can literally do them anywhere. I’ll hit the floor next to my kid playing Legos and if he doesn’t take that as an opportunity to climb on my back I consider it a success. #momlife
Here’s how to properly perform a push up:
Palms on the floor, shoulder-width apart, directly below shoulders. Toes tucked under and body fully extended, making sure shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles are aligned in a plank position and your back is flat
Slowly bend your elbows and lower your chest as close to the floor as you can, keeping the body straight (no butts in the air!). Hold for a count and then push your way back up to starting position.
Tip: Pay attention to your elbows, you want them bending behind you, not out to the sides. This helps target your triceps even more.
In my experience, performing a push can be a difficult exercise to master, so don’t give up on them if you’re struggling. You can easily modify this exercise to help work your way up to a full push up.
Remember, it’s all about progress so even a small step toward achieving a big goal is always better than doing nothing at all.
Push-Up Modification:
To make it easier:
Perform the move from your knees or do the move standing about 1 foot in front of a wall and place hands on the wall. Slowly lean in towards the wall (your face coming awkwardly close to the wall), and then push away from the wall back to your starting position. Both variations will lighten the load that you’ll have to push against, making it much easier. Make sure to keep your body aligned.
To change it up:
A variation of the push up is a plank push up. This can build incredible strength and can help you to become much better at push-ups.
Start in full push up position with hands shoulder-width apart, shoulders right above palms. Check to make sure shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles are in alignment. You can also do this move from your knees, but make sure you’re still in a plank position- meaning your body is in a straight line from shoulders to knees. (No butts waving in the air!)
From either position, slowly lower one elbow to the floor, followed by the other elbow, so now you’re in a low plank.
Hold for a count and then place one palm back on the floor and push up to place the other palm back onto the floor so you’re back to your starting position. Repeat, alternating arms lowered, or do 5 with the right elbow coming down first and then switch to 5 with the left elbow coming down first.
3. Planks
So many variations this move cannot get boring.
There’s the crossover plank, x-plank, bear plank, push-up plank (from above), rotational plank, side plank, downward dog plank, jack plank and thread the needle plank just to name a nominal few.
The extra added bonus to this move is that it also strengthens your core and I know this because I don’t do a ton of sit-ups, I do a ton of planks and my core is stronger because of them.
This is a staple for any workout and they’re so simple to perform (at least I can easily advise you how to do them, but the actual process of doing them, well you know, that’s the hard part!)
Here’s the breakdown:
On the floor, come into a full push-up position. (Hands are directly under shoulders, elbows locked, toes tucked under, legs straight, making sure shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles make a straight line diagonally down from head to feet.)
Hold that position for as long as you can and each week try adding on a few more seconds. The key is to always be improving!
Planks are basic, simple and effective. Change it up by adding side leg taps, or bring one knee to the opposite elbow alternating legs… so many variations!
Adding these three moves to your routine, or starting a new routine with just these moves will make a difference in the shape and strength of your arms. Anyone can do these, just be safe, don’t overexert yourself and stick with it! Consistency is key! Skip a day, that’s ok, skip two that’s on you! Skip three and it’ll be a long time until you come back. Don’t let it get to that! | https://medium.com/project-slim-waistline/three-excellent-exercises-for-building-arm-strength-6c1b68bc8201 | ['Am Costanzo'] | 2019-09-13 17:32:34.529000+00:00 | ['Motivation', 'Weight Loss', 'Workout', 'Exercise', 'Fitness'] |
How To Refute The Irrefutable. | After an intense look deep into the skies, you easily conclude the sky is blue. Straight to Google you searched “Is the sky blue?”.
That’s the beginning of confirmation bias.
You really want to validate what you already believed to be true (that the sky is blue).
People are ready to believe a lie because they want it to be true. I don’t know where exactly I read it but I see it so evident in our nature.
The reason why little children learn faster than adults is simply because they have little to no presumptions on how the world works.
Kids are very open to learning anything new, since they previously know nothing about the subject matter. To them, it is an exciting opportunity to learn.
But, for the most of us, our openness to knowledge come to a plateau at certain ages while becoming adults.
At this point, we create for ourselves lens through which we access the world. Our opinions have been rock formed.
Even when we are unsure about what a discovery is all about. We only pick our conclusions and start a ‘research’ on our biases on the topic.
We are only curious as much as the findings are resembling our pre-conclusions.
What does that have to do with success?
Confirmation Bias is what happen when all links to make money online are probably another ponzi scheme.
In fact, you had concluded you don’t need to follow the link. Since you already figure what it is all about.
Similarly, you will conclude you cannot be an entrepreneur because you have always believe you are ‘called’ to be a teacher, lawyer or office worker.
They are all biases in our minds. You all crave to validate what we already believe.
What I have come to embrace in life is there are no truths, we can only try strive to be less wrong.
When the leadership guru, pastor and founder of EQUIP, John Maxwell wrote the book 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership in 1998, he was so sure about his ‘laws’ that he labeled them as ‘irrefutable laws’ (maybe the promoters pick that title).
However, in his revised and updated edition released in 2008 two of the Irrefutable laws were actually refuted by him.
This is not to tarnish the image of legendary leadership expert. In fact, I admire and respect him the more for accepting to be vulnerable in his attempt to be less wrong.
In essence, this simple art taught me a great lesson. You have to be ready to forgo your old limiting beliefs even if it means refuting the irrefutables.
Our culture of foolish consistency will not take us to higher grounds. When you don’t know something for sure be ready to learn the living truth about it. Going to the library with assumptions you are not ready to refute will do you no learning.
Reality is never real. If something challenge your reality but seat right with your logic, be ready to accept the new.
In business, forgo your preferences all today. The market is both the judge and the jury for what is worth their hard earned money.
Learn from your customers what they want and not what you think they want.
Pick books on how elite marketers go about marketing and not assume you already have the perfect PR team with the most astounding public stunts to make your products go viral.
Be open to new insights and be ready to refute the irrefutables!
Timmy Brain is a serial entrepreneur, author and business developer. I challenge popular thoughts on life, success, purpose and business. You can always reach me via my email or call me 08119933754 | https://medium.com/nano-writers/confirmation-bias-8663dc0e0eb2 | ['Timmy Brain'] | 2020-11-09 00:18:35.484000+00:00 | ['Psychology'] |
15 In Your Face Lessons from 2020 | What You Need to do to Succeed in 2021
Photo by Juan Ordonez on Unsplash
No need to write an introduction, the lessons say everything.
Read on…
Once again, this one is tried and true. When people show you who they are, believe it. I had to learn to stop making illusions out of what I wanted to see and simply believe what people show me whether it was good or bad. Life is precious, seriously. I know this sounds cliché. However, I had to ask myself on a regular basis, am I really living my life to the fullest, or am I living a life for someone else. I encourage you to ask yourself the same question. Who are you living for? People will have opinions, simply because they are entitled to them. You don’t have to always comment on anyone’s opinions. I have no right to argue with anyone’s opinions. People will state them and move on, therefore I shall do the same. I am careful about where I give my fucks. Somethings are not worth the argument, headache, worry, or irritation. Despite everything that has happened this year, life is good. I am alive and writing this article. That says a lot. It really is the small things that matter. Mindfulness is a real thing. Practice it, study, and do it. Your life will change drastically. Again once you become mindful, and I am no expert in it, however, like I said in number four, you become less concerned about certain things.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
7. Spend time with those who really matter to you.
8. Leave all petty stuff in 2020. Go into 2021 with a focused and intentional mindset.
9. Take a hard look at who you want to be in 2 to 3 years. Become that person now. Thanks Ben Hardy.
10. Always and I mean always have money set aside. Even if it’s simply $500. Life can change at the drop of a penny, therefore having something to fall back on is better than having nothing.
11. Get out of debt. Freedom comes when you don’t owe 20 credit card companies. I will leave this one here.
12. Figure out what is important. Ask yourself do you need or want something? There is nothing wrong with “wanting” anything. However, put your needs first, notice I said YOUR needs.
13. Learn a new skill or two. Always be a continuous learner. You never know when you will be asked to do something out of your comfort zone which will lead to something bigger and better.
14. Make a plan, and stick to the plan. However, give yourself grace if you deviate from the plan. There are 1000 different ways to get to your destination. Remember the journey is what matters.
15. Give when and where are you can. Even if it is $.25 or your time. It always comes back to you somehow, someway.
Finish 2020 strong. You are a winner. You are NOT defeated. | https://medium.com/the-partnered-pen/15-in-your-face-lessons-from-2020-6d8b25443baf | ['Marla J. Albertie'] | 2020-12-14 23:47:19.589000+00:00 | ['2021', '2020', 'Life Lessons', 'Productivity', 'Success'] |
Machine Learning Optimization Methods and Techniques | Top Optimization Techniques in Machine Learning
Now let us talk about the techniques that you can use to optimize the hyperparameters of your model.
Exhaustive search
Exhaustive search, or brute-force search, is the process of looking for the most optimal hyperparameters by checking whether each candidate is a good match. You perform the same thing when you forget the code for your bike’s lock and try out all the possible options. In machine learning, we do the same thing, but the number of options is usually quite large.
The exhaustive search method is simple. For example, if you are working with a k-means algorithm, you will manually search for the right number of clusters. However, if there are hundreds or thousands of options that you have to consider, it becomes unbearably heavy and slow. This makes a brute-force search inefficient in the majority of real-life cases.
Photo by the author.
Gradient descent
Gradient descent is the most common model optimization algorithm for minimizing error. In order to perform gradient descent, you have to iterate over the training dataset while readjusting the model.
Your goal is to minimize the cost function because it means you get the smallest possible error and improve the accuracy of the model.
Photo by the author.
On the graph, you can see a representation of how the gradient descent algorithm travels in the variable space. To get started, you need to take a random point on the graph and arbitrarily choose a direction. If you see that the error is getting larger, that means you chose the wrong direction.
When you are not able to improve (decrease the error) anymore, the optimization is over and you have found a local minimum. In the following video, you will find a step-by-step explanation of how gradient descent works:
Looks fine so far. However, classical gradient descent will not work well when there are a couple of local minima. When finding your first minimum, you will simply stop searching because the algorithm only finds a local one. It is not made to find the global one.
Photo by the author.
Note: In gradient descent, you proceed forward with steps of the same size. If you choose a learning rate that is too large, the algorithm will be jumping around without getting closer to the right answer. If it’s too small, the computation will start mimicking exhaustive search take, which is, of course, inefficient.
Photo by the author.
So you have to choose the learning rate very carefully. If done right, gradient descent becomes a computation-efficient and rather quick method to optimize models.
Genetic algorithms
Genetic algorithms represent another approach to ML optimization. The principle that lies behind the logic of these algorithms is an attempt to apply the theory of evolution to machine learning.
In the evolution theory, only the specimens that have the best adaptation mechanisms get to survive and reproduce. How do you know which specimens are and aren’t the best in the case of machine learning models?
Imagine you have a bunch of random algorithms. This will be your population. Among multiple models with some predefined hyperparameters, some are better adjusted than the others. Let’s find them! First, you calculate the accuracy of each model. Then, you keep only those that worked out best. Now you can generate some descendants with similar hyperparameters to the best models to get a second generation of models.
You can see the logic behind this algorithm in this picture:
Photo by the author.
We repeat this process many times, and only the best models will survive at the end of the process. Genetic algorithms help to avoid being stuck at local minima/maxima. They are common in optimizing neural network models. | https://medium.com/better-programming/machine-learning-optimization-methods-and-techniques-56f5a6fc5d0e | [] | 2020-12-07 21:19:18.359000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Data Science', 'Programming', 'Deep Learning'] |
Waiting for Gestalt | By Gene Wilburn
Gestalt (ge STALT). A word meaning, roughly, when the brain perceives with clarity that the whole of a system is greater than the sum of its parts, and everything clicks into one awareness. One can have a gestalten moment. But can one achieve a gestaltenexistence?
When I was coming of age intellectually at university in the early to mid 1960s, there were a number of explorations of the mind making the rounds. Existentialism, the sometimes bleak philosophy that arose strongly in Paris after the Nazi occupation at the end of World War II, was alive and well. Sartre, Beauvoir, and Camus were still publishing and there was something compelling in the message that you’re responsible for who you become, creating a personal integrity in the face of the meaninglessness and absurdity of the universe. This is, of course, an over simplification.
Along with the primary existential philosophers came “Theatre of the Absurd,” a literary form of existentialism, perhaps best seen in the play by Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot, in which “logical construction and argument give way to irrational and illogical speech and its ultimate conclusion, silence.” [Wikipedia, “Theatre of the Absurd”]
Another prevailing line of thought came from the field of psychology, in the form of Abraham Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs” with “self actualization” at the top of the pyramid. In its wake people were self actualizing all over the place, or at least that’s what they professed. It certainly launched a full-blown pop psychology business and fuelled New-Age-style thinking before “New Age” had even become a word.
A different branch of psychology, from Germany, had earlier in the century introduced Gestalt Theory, a holistic psychology that seemed to imply that if you could attain a gestalt with yourself and your environment, you could flow through it with understanding, and perhaps appreciation, in the way that listening to a symphony is an experience that transcends the individual notes of the musical score.
Looking back on this fifty years later, I think existentialism has held up rather well, especially when augmented with a generous helping of late Roman-style stoicism. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs still has a sound feel to it, though there is a sense that Western society, as a whole, has slipped down the pyramid a bit in this era of anti-enlightenment, anti-science populism.
But the one that still teases my mind is gestalt theory. At the turning of each decade I’ve been waiting for that gestalten moment when everything would click into place and I would reach an understanding — “Because something is happening here / But you don’t know what it is / Do you, Mister Jones?” [Bob Dylan, “Ballad of a Thin Man”]
The problem is, how does one achieve gestalt when everything keeps changing?
The Impact of the 1960s
I emerged from the 1950s like most boys who had reached their teens by the start of the 1960s, interested in cars, playing basketball, grooving to the week’s Top–10 radio, and thinking about going to university after high school. In other words, I was as cookie-cutter naive as one could be.
It was the folk music era which, in my relative isolation, I took to be the music of the Kingston Trio, Limelighters, Chad Mitchell Trio, Burl Ives, and that new group on the radio, Peter Paul and Mary. It was when I heard Joan Baez sing a couple of old ballads like “Barbara Allen” I began to perceive a different kind of folk music that was less slick and more personal. Back then it was just music I liked. Later it would change me.
My intellectual life began when I went to university where I first majored in engineering. It was a tough study, but I was getting by, being moderately good at math and logic. There was, however, a problem. I enjoyed learning folk music more than studying STEM subjects and the lyrics of Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs left me questioning what I was doing. I bought a guitar, learned a fistful of chords, and learned to sing and play the songs that were haunting me.
My taste in folk music had also led me to discover the Weavers, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Cisco Houston, and a rich vein of black blues singers from Big Bill Broonzy and the Rev. Gary Davis to Mississippi John Hurt. I loved all these voices of the people.
I couldn’t square my study of engineering with my awareness of what was happening. The civil rights movement in the American South highlighted the inappropriate treatment of black people. President Kennedy had been assassinated, then Martin Luther King, then Robert Kennedy. There was a strange, unpopular war being waged in Vietnam.
Things were changing, blowing in the wind, as it were, and the gestalt of the time was changing with it. I switched my major to English and my minor to French, and began studying literature with its plays, novels, poems, and essays. In French classes, we frequently read the existentialists Sartre and Camus. I studied philosophy, social history, and art history. I met and became friends with dozens of like-minded individuals, some male, some female, some straight, some gay, a few who were black or hispanic, all of whom shared a passion for literature, art, philosophy, and music. I had found my people.
Something happens to your mind when you embrace the Humanities — something that comes as a series of epiphanies that raises your consciousness into new realms of thought and feeling resulting from contact with the great writers, poets, playwrights, philosophers, artists, and musicians of all eras. It’s intoxicating and exhilarating and, as Thomas Wolfe proclaimed in the title of his novel, You Can’t Go Home Again. You’re changed.
You reach for a higher kind of gestalt, the gestalt of the modestly well-educated. You begin to read the New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Le Monde, The Times (London), The Guardian, Harper’s, Atlantic Monthly, The Globe and Mail, and university quarterlies. You listen to folk music, cool jazz, classical music, and opera. You see Verdi in the same tradition as Shakespeare, and taste the richness of Old English in Beowulf and the delightful Middle English of Geoffrey Chaucer.
It’s a heady experience, all in all, but the question always arises: what are you going to do with all this when you head out into the “real” world?
One Pill Makes You Larger, and One Pill Makes You Small
For one gestalten period it seemed as if the world had changed. The war in Vietnam was vigorously opposed, campus radicalism was on the rise, and hair got longer. The folk music I’d grown up with was woven into a new kind of rock music and the voices of Joni Mitchell, Grace Slick, Janis Joplin, and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young filled the airwaves, along with new bands like the Doors, Led Zeppelin, Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Santana, and Frank Zappa.
Alan Watts taught us about Zen, the tarot deck came back into fashion, and decorated VW vans filled with flower children with headbands, victory signs, peace medallions, and bloodshot eyes were common sights.
Among the reading favourites were One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me, Catch–22, The Vedas and The Upanishads, The Teachings of Don Juan, The I Ching and The Whole Earth Catalog.
Everyone was for “getting back to nature” and many communes were started, mostly ending in failure, and from the broadway musical Hair to massive rock concerts, it was assumed that the Age of Aquarius was upon us. The Mexican poet Octavio Paz described it as an “explosion of consciousness.”
It’s sometimes said that if you remember the 60s, you weren’t really there. My own memory of the time is patchy, with psychedelically-coloured gaps and an enduring sense of mysticism. But, like many, I didn’t see how it was sustainable. In the words of the Jefferson Airplane, “You are the Crown of Creation / And you have no place to go.”
The Origin of Species
The flower-power era couldn’t last, of course, because someone has to pay the bills. I trimmed my hair, picked up a degree in library science, and took a job. Through sheer good fortune I ended up as Head Librarian at the Royal Ontario Museum, in Toronto. It was there that I began hanging out with ornithologists, palaeontologists, mammalogists, geologists, mineralogists, ichthyologists, and entomologists, as well as archaeologists. It has shaped my thinking to this day. I had encountered the gestalt of scientific thinking and research.
One of the curators, a palynologist (one who studies modern and ancient pollens) challenged me with the question: “Have you read Darwin’s Origin of Species?” Being a lit major, I hadn’t, so I decided to give it a go.
What surprised me the most was how clear Darwin’s Victorian prose was. I was mesmerized by the concept of “descent with modification” or as it came to be known, “evolution.” Shortly after reading Origin, a new volume by Stephen Jay Gould passed through the library — a collection of essays entitled Ever Since Darwin. I gave this a read and subsequently read every book of essays Gould produced, culled from his monthly column in Natural History.
As a newly-minted amateur naturalist and birder I became hooked on reading science books written for the general public. The 60’s mantra “all is one” took on a philosophically material interpretation when I studied how the universe started, how suns ignited and planets formed, and how, on this one we call Earth, life sparked and evolved, going through great periods of diversity, extinction, more diversity, more extinction, and so on, leading eventually to a group of suddenly sapient simians. As Carl Sagan pointed out, we are made from the remnants of star dust, and every living thing on the planet is related.
My readings in science and science history led me to reaffirm the existentialist theme that life can be heaven or hell, but human beings mean very little in the face of the universe. I shed any last remnants of religion. Materially, we are bodies that live and die, each of us randomly sorted into different situations, different cultures, different countries and it’s these things that shape our sense of who we are.
There are people for whom science is enough. To paraphrase Darwin, there’s a grandeur to this concept of life and its descent with modification through time and its tangled branches and the sudden bursts of evolution that Gould referred to as “punctuated equilibrium.” This is a gestalt that most naturalists come to feel through their observation of life’s many remarkable species.
But is science alone enough to sustain the human spirit, or psyche, that je ne sais quoi that some people call a “soul”? Perhaps, and perhaps not, depending on the individual. What science does, for me, is to throw into relief all the amazing works of mankind, from art, history, philosophy, literature, and music to the increasing technological achievements that accompanied the industrial revolution.
By the time I had begun to assimilate this naturalistic view, information technology was picking up the pace. Television, radio, newspapers and other media shaped us and moulded us in ways that perhaps only Marshall McLuhan could sort out. But that was merely a preface of things to come: the computer revolution.
Bits, Bytes, and Qubits
From the late 70s onward the computer revolution picked up momentum until it reached nearly Biblical proportions: “And in that time a great change came across the land” [my paraphrase]. Computing became personal, portable, and profoundly ubiquitous.
Like others, I joined the revolution, pivoting my career from librarianship to Information Technology (IT). From the earliest whimsical days that included an ad in Byte Magazine for dBase II, entitled “dBASE II vs The Bilge Pump,” to the corporate adoption of personal computers as strategic tools in the workplace, to the computer (aka smartphone) in one’s pocket or purse, a virtual Pandora’s box of consequences was unleashed.
My work involved setting up workstations, email servers, database servers, storage servers, web servers, and firewalls, with a little programming tossed in for spice. I enjoyed decades of computing projects and by the time I retired, in 2006, the industry had progressed from 8-bit personal computers such as the Apple II, to 64-bit powerhouses running Microsoft Windows, MacOS, Linux, iOS, Android, and a few dozen lesser-known operating systems. Smartphones and tablets had become almost a birthright.
Computing begat digital photography, streaming audio and video, automobile electronics, appliance electronics, social networks, and, with lesser success, self-driving cars. I now listen to streaming music, watch streaming videos, and get my news and opinion pages from the Internet.
On another level, machine learning (ML) has grown and penetrated the Internet so such a degree that one can examine a product on Amazon and see ads for it within hours on Facebook. Privacy has suffered. The Internet, invented for the purpose of sharing scientific information, developed a dark side, the extent of which is still being assessed — surveillance, phishing attacks, the hacking of personal information, and possibly enough manipulation to sway elections.
The pace is still swift and the increasingly successful bids to harness Quantum Computing (whose basic unit of information is called a Qubit) will likely bring unforeseen changes. Nothing stands still.
End Game
“You can’t stop the future. You can’t rewind the past. The only way to learn the secret, is to press play” ~ Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why
In my retirement, I’ve once again become a student. I read incessantly, both fiction and nonfiction, I take the occasional online course, and I think, if not profoundly, at least genuinely. It aids thinking to have a philosophical framework to compare one’s thoughts to, and I continue to find the challenge of existentialism worthwhile for this. It’s an honest philosophy, derived from the human spirit looking at an irrational and uncaring, absurd, universe and deciding to carve out a personal meaning for being human. It’s a difficult challenge (never underestimate existential angst) but it’s more open and honest than clinging to a derived set of values, liberal or conservative, from those around us.
I’m beginning to understand why Camus used the story of Sisyphus to highlight the challenge. In the Greek myth, Sisyphus was condemned to roll a huge boulder to the top of a hill. Every time he reached the top, the boulder would roll back to the bottom and he was required to repeat the procedure, for eternity. “Camus claims that when Sisyphus acknowledges the futility of his task and the certainty of his fate, he is freed to realize the absurdity of his situation and to reach a state of contented acceptance. With a nod to the similarly cursed Greek hero Oedipus, Camus concludes that ‘all is well,’ indeed, that ‘one must imagine Sisyphus happy.’” [Wikipedia, “The Myth of Sisyphus”]
It would be neat and tidy, at this final stage of my life, to wrap up my thoughts with a pretty bow attached, but I’m unable to do so. There have always been random elements in our story that change the story itself: a colliding meteor, a world war, an economic depression, climate change, the overthrowing of the monarchy and aristocracy, the re-establishment of a wealthy set of plutocrats, the place you were born, the family you emerged from, the schools you attended, the number of freedoms, or lack thereof, of the prevailing government, and, not least, who you fall in love with. It is difficult to piece all this together into a holistic understanding. I am, in my final years, still waiting — waiting for gestalt. | https://genewilburn.medium.com/waiting-for-gestalt-e72da6a29c14 | ['Gene Wilburn'] | 2019-05-08 20:40:06.491000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Gestalt', 'Existentialism', 'Science', 'Philosophy'] |
The Latest: WSJ’s new initiative to reach audiences under 35 | The Latest: WSJ’s new initiative to reach audiences under 35
Subscribe to The Idea, a weekly newsletter on the business of media, for more news, analysis, and interviews.
THE NEWS
The Wall Street Journal launched a monthly digital magazine last week aimed at readers 35 and under. The magazine, called WSJ Noted, contains original content by a dedicated team as well as other Journal reporters and highlights relevant work published in other sections.
SO WHAT
WSJ now has more than 3 million total subscribers after digital-only subscriptions grew 20% year-over-year to 2.2 million as of May. WSJ also already has a “very large audience of people in universities” coming to its platforms, as Louise Story, WSJ’s chief news strategist and chief technology officer, told us last month. The company hopes Noted will continue these successes by helping it better connect with and monetize the younger audiences it already has on its platforms.
Noted is intentionally experimental — according to Story, it is primarily a way to “see what really resonates with younger audiences.” This is evident in its tagline, which is telling stories “for, with, and by” young audiences. For example, WSJ has recruited a group of 200 young people to be “Noted Advisers” who will provide feedback and story ideas and collaborate with the Noted team (and likely serve as an organic network of brand ambassadors). This builds on WSJ’s existing emphasis on audience engagement, for example, through callouts which “solicit feedback from the audience [who] come in with many different anecdotes and tips and pointers that would become great stories,” by involving the target readership throughout the reporting process.
This increased engagement may convert students to subscribers once they no longer receive access through universities, or more generally more relevant content may lead younger readers to hit up against the paywall more frequently. WSJ already has partnerships with 200 academic institutions, which provide access to their students; Noted could be key to keeping those young people reading — and subscribing — once they graduate. While Noted will have a heavy presence on Instagram and other platforms, its web presence will be behind WSJ’s dynamic paywall. Its monthly cover story, however, will live outside the paywall, and WSJ stories linked or excerpted in Noted stories will be free to read.
As Laura Hazard Owen notes in Nieman Lab, this strategy is distinct from other initiatives that aim to create a separate subscription product for younger audiences, like NYT Now — which was an app discontinued in 2016. By keeping Noted behind the paywall, is also distinct from the complimentary access that publishers like The New York Times and Bloomberg have been offering young audiences or new verticals like The Washington Post’s The Lily, which is, as of yet, not walled.
LOOK FOR
How this resonates with audiences — 18–35 is a large age range, and it’s not clear how much their needs overlap. Noted might end up skewing mostly towards the younger side of this spectrum — 10 of the 14 of the initial advisers spotlighted are currently undergraduate students.
Also, how well its off-platform-heavy strategy succeeds, and whether it leads to engagement on-site and readers hitting the paywall. | https://medium.com/the-idea/the-latest-wsjs-new-initiative-to-reach-audiences-under-35-78c1a164ca98 | ['Saanya Jain'] | 2020-07-07 21:16:00.914000+00:00 | ['The Latest', 'Journalism', 'Media'] |
A new design approach | A new design approach
How to structure a workflow step for your Slack app
Illustration and design by Josh Holinaty.
Adding a workflow step (or two) to your app helps people automate their work, by connecting their Slack workflows to your service — now available in developer open beta.
The future of workflows
Workflow Builder for Slack allows anyone to automate routine process and communication — all in a matter of minutes. Once triggered, a workflow runs a series of steps, like collecting form responses and sending Slack messages.
Now, Workflow Builder is more extensible than ever, because steps from apps can provide new functionality. They can add new features and allow builders to integrate with their everyday tools outside of Slack, all without writing a single line of code.
Let’s walk through how you (as a Slack app developer) can design your steps, so builders can create powerful workflows that make Slack users’ lives simpler, more pleasant, and more productive.
This guide is paired best with our steps from apps demo and tutorial, which walks through the technical details of workflow development.
How to think about designing your step
First, decide whether a builder needs to authenticate an account for your step to work. If it does, design that step configuration view first, since it will be the first part of step setup. Remove anything in that view that isn’t about connecting the necessary account, so that it’s clear how to proceed.
Then design the main step configuration experience, which should always show which account, if any, is connected and a way to disconnect it. This way, builders are clear on which account is being affected, or which account the step is acting on behalf of.
You’ll want to design your step to be as flexible as possible, so builders can leverage all of Workflow Builder’s features. For example:
Unbundle individual actions that are part of your core user flows. Instead of a workflow step that shows a form to a user and later creates a record based on that form, configure the step to simply generate a record. This allows builders to create more custom workflow forms. Creating, fetching, updating, and deleting your app’s primary record (i.e. tasks, tickets, leads, etc.) are all great candidates for individual steps.
Instead of a workflow step that shows a form to a user and later creates a record based on that form, configure the step to simply generate a record. This allows builders to create more custom workflow forms. Creating, fetching, updating, and deleting your app’s primary record (i.e. tasks, tickets, leads, etc.) are all great candidates for individual steps. Enable variable data from previous steps into the configuration of your step.
into the configuration of your step. Design your step to output variables for later use in a workflow, especially when creating a new record (i.e. a link to a record and its name).
in a workflow, especially when creating a new record (i.e. a link to a record and its name). Ask builders where to send messages instead of assuming. Don’t share to a channel automatically. Instead, let them choose where to send your precomposed message — or allow them to disable sending that message at all. This way, they can send their own message with variables from your step later in the workflow.
Remember to think of a specific step’s usefulness in the context of a complete workflow. That is, think of your step as a single action on the road to what someone wants to accomplish in Slack. Never assume a builder has prior knowledge of your step (or what it’s doing behind the scenes). You should not only think about your app’s steps in isolation, but also how different steps can build upon one another.
If it’s difficult to name your step in a clear and concise way, that’s a sign that you should consider splitting it into multiple steps with simpler names and a more specific purpose. As an added benefit, your configuration UI will get simpler. For example, instead of a step that creates a document and adds content, consider two separate steps that accomplish each action, respectively.
A real-world process to automate
Here’s a simple example.
Let’s imagine I’m a designer at a tech company (easy!), where all text must be reviewed by the writing team before I can release my latest designs to the world.
My company uses an internal app for project management called Task Manager, so I typically navigate to a website and create a task (including supplemental links and context) for the writing team to review my design.
I want to automate this process for my entire design team, so it’s a perfect Workflow Builder use case. Luckily, the development team that built Task Manager took advantage of the open beta and coded a workflow step for this Slack integration, which makes this easy! 🎉
Building a workflow
My workflow for requesting a review could look like this:
A workflow for requesting a final design review
This workflow adds “Request a review” to the ⚡️shortcuts menu in the #design-team channel. When selected, the workflow will prompt users to submit project information, then automatically create a task in Task Manager for review. It then sends a message with the variable data from the Task Manager workflow step.
Configuring a workflow step
Let’s take a look at how the Task Manager developers structured their step to make this workflow possible.
A view of the Task Manager step after it’s added to a workflow
You’ll notice that in each text field, I can use variables from previous workflow steps through “Insert a variable.” This is how I can send data from the form step to the Task Manager step. 👇🏾
The new “create a task” step versus the final configured step
As configured above, when someone runs the workflow and completes the form, Workflow Builder will send the final values of the selected variables to the Task Manager app. Voilà! Using a step from a Slack app, I’ve automated the process of requesting reviews for design projects.
Getting started
To spin up your own prototype of this example, you can follow our steps from apps tutorial. Cheers and happy building! | https://medium.com/slack-developer-blog/a-new-design-approach-6361bd546b7 | ['Diógenes Brito'] | 2020-07-30 18:56:48.144000+00:00 | ['Design', 'Slack Platform', 'App Development', 'Slack', 'Workflow'] |
Pool Reward Token DAO — Penjelasan | DAO Token Reward Pool — Explained
Three years of work make sure that the DAO token launches with an active reward pool from day 1, creating a growth… | https://medium.com/dao-maker-indonesia/pool-reward-token-dao-penjelasan-5d3420a9742d | ['Dao Maker Indonesia'] | 2020-12-01 15:34:14.221000+00:00 | ['Fintech', 'Startup', 'Decentralization', 'Venture Capital', 'SaaS'] |
The All-That-Really-Matters Top 3: Hope, Love, and Gratitude | #2: LOVE
Is there anything that can top the love a mother feels for her child?
If there is, I would say it’s the love a mother feels for somebody else’s child to the point where they save the child from a dangerous environment and give that child the chance to a remake his life.
In this heartbreaking story of a mother’s love, Carol Lennox touched me on so many levels. I grieve for her and all the mothers who have suffered, but it is also a story of inspiration and a call to action.
I feel inspired by the basic goodness of human beings. How else can we explain how a damaged boy, suffering from a traumatic childhood, could still show compassion and courage to a stranger who was being bullied in school? How else does that boy could grow up to be a good man, breaking the chain of crime and poverty that had damaged his family?
This story cries out for the need to help young black men and stem the tide of violent crime that engulfs our country.
There are far too many stories of good people dying due to a systemic lack of opportunity that goes way beyond excessive force used by the police.
#BlackLivesMatter | https://medium.com/top-3/the-all-that-really-matters-top-3-hope-love-and-gratitude-e8ea98c1a219 | ['Lon Shapiro'] | 2019-11-21 18:53:49.891000+00:00 | ['Gratitude', 'Writing', 'Love', 'Hope', 'Medium'] |
Content creators: be brave, not perfect | If Netflix has taught us anything, it is the importance of responding to changing patterns of media consumption. They have carved out a dominant position by taking risks, and challenging convention, and their influence is re-shaping the entertainment industry. ‘Better Call Saul’ for example, doesn’t need a blockbuster budget and shot-perfect cinematography to pull-in the Emmy nominations or to rake in over 2.5 million viewers.
Brands should take heed. They’re increasingly investing in customer experiences, and social channels like YouTube and Facebook are an established part of the marketing mix. But the sheer volume of brands competing for attention is a significant challenge. Two years ago Mark Schaeffer, predicted the onset of ‘content shock’ and he’s now presented evidence that major brand publishers are finding it harder to gain organic reach.
Near-constant dialogue with consumers is shifting the focus away from long-distance forward planning and toward responsive frameworks. Embracing the freedom to manoeuvre within a responsive framework can be an intimidating prospect. That’s where the bravery comes in. At a time when consumers are struggling with too much choice, it’s the role of the content creator to craft powerful and distinctive brand stories, and to create adaptive content that thrives in fast-moving environments where attention is at a premium.
Good content creators in the digital industry understand this — they’re sharp, nimble creatives who can shape a project with the humble resources and inside the restraints they’re given. They listen to their clients, interpreting the project brief within the context of wider business needs. This means doing the best with what they’ve got, in the time they’ve got. That rarely amounts to perfection, but it always gets results.
To really create sparks between consumer and brand, these creators need to be willing to head into the unknown. They need to be able to compensate for client and agency fears, to evaluate the ‘what if’s of a project and then formulate a story with emotive value and beauty. By raising brand awareness through these visual stories they can, step by step, build relationships that matter.
All digital spaces are saturated with underperforming content, and they’re only going to become more so, but the brands with content that expresses their values while making the digital landscape a more enjoyable place to be will be the ones who float to the top.
This is an exciting time for brands and agencies to work together to achieve positive cultural brand change. There’s an extremely creative future ahead for digital content — we just need to be brave enough and curious enough to explore all the possibilities.
By Jade Tomlin, Art Director at Hugo & Cat
To find out more about connected brand experiences, drop us a line at [email protected] | https://medium.com/nowtrending/content-creators-be-brave-not-perfect-44cf58e43972 | ['Hugo'] | 2017-06-07 10:43:42.352000+00:00 | ['Customer Experience', 'Marketing', 'Content', 'Brand Experience'] |
Q&A with Maya Draisin, SVP, Progress Marketing, TIME | Q&A with Maya Draisin, SVP, Progress Marketing, TIME
TIME has launched three new initiatives — TIME for Health, TIME for Learning, and most recently NextAdvisor — as well as expanded TIME for Kids under the umbrella of “improving people’s lives” over the past few months. We spoke to Maya about the strategy and execution behind the launches. Subscribe to our newsletter on the business of media for more interviews and weekly news and analysis.
Can you tell me about your path to TIME and your role?
I’ve been at TIME since October. I came from Conde Nast where I was on Wired for 17 years. In the last four or five years, I took on brand marketing for GQ, Golf Digest, Pitchfork, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker.
What was the impetus behind launching these products?
The super power of TIME is trust and accessibility for everyone all over the world. So we started thinking about consumer products that really spoke to a need in such a way that we made their individual lives better. You start looking at areas such as health care, education, personal finances, jobs, and personal development.
We started moving pretty rapidly in the direction of health in particular. When the pandemic hit, however, it became very clear to us that TIME for Kids and the ability for teachers and parents to handle distance learning was a huge critical need. As TIME for Kids has been in the classroom for 25 years, we had a real opportunity to support the teachers in our community and, by extension, the parents. On March 23, which is basically a week and a half after it became clear that kids were going to be home for school, we launched TIME for Kids’ free digital library, which made TIME for Kids 2020 available to anyone for free anywhere in the world. We’ve had 350,000 people sign up for that library.
In that, we really had our first experience with people responding to us and telling us how useful it was to them and telling us what else they needed, which ended up being additional languages. So we have since launched in both Spanish and Chinese as well as creative outlets, like art. Its intent was to go through the end of the school year, which would have been June, but we extended it through the end of July, just because people aren’t a hundred percent out of their homes.
On July 6, we’re launching Camp TFK, which is just an email sent daily offering five things — some games, arts and crafts — to help parents to keep their kids occupied.
We launched a video series with Adobe called Draw with Drew, which is an eight-part series featuring the creative director of TIME Kids and the editor-in-chief’s daughter, Rosie, who already had this organic drawing exchange over the years. We’ve had over 1.5 million views of the eight episodes, and people sending in their drawings or posting their drawings from all over the world, which we turned into a digital magazine.
TIME for Health launched a week ago. As a news organization we have a front row to the changing needs of people, and so we started to see that there was fatigue around the heaviness of coronavirus coverage. We decided that wellness information on how people can live better, live healthier, be more resilient would be useful.
We launched the set of six visual wellness magazines a week ago in a series of categories, the major ones being food, fitness, and sleep. This week, we’re launching two new magazines and we’ll just keep adding to this library.
That is really a first step in what we want to do for health, with the followup being an event series that starts on July 8, which is when we’ll have our first TIME for Health talk, in follow up to the very successful TIME 100 Talks. With them, it’s definitely less thought leadership and conversation and more practice. So the first one will be about meditation, and we’re looking at things that add utility and value that can help you make your wellness more actionable.
As for TIME for Learning, which we launched a week ago, we were looking at other needs. As we face 25% unemployment as well as people being furloughed or people going into the summer who might’ve had internships or other opportunities for professional development, there is a real need for people to be upskilled and reskilled as we reopen and they face the opportunity to find new jobs or to succeed in their same jobs.
We partnered with Columbia to create accessible business school programs. Normally Columbia has really incredible, hands-on executive education, but it’s 10 weeks and it ranges from $1,500 to $3,500. With the support of Deluxe [a financial services company for small businesses], we were able to bring that down under $200. So we launched five courses, four of which are $195, and one of which is a mini course at $65. They cover basic skills of negotiation, leadership, marketing, and finance to help people make use of this time to upskill.
How are you establishing a user demand for these products?
If I watch what editorial is covering and the tone that they take, you have a pulse on what’s going on in the culture, in our readership and beyond. Simultaneously, we are listening on social. Then, you can look at the data and see the rapid climb of the coronavirus newsletter, which is at 70,000 subscribers, and see the reading rates and pace of subscription change over time.
Also, there’s something very personal to it, too. We’re all in this together, and we started to feel it personally about how what’s needed changes.
Finally, these are larger societal trends — the need for mental wellness has just become more clear. So it’s a combination of anecdotal evidence and analytics.
How were you able to pull these different initiatives off in a short time frame?
It was because there were things in motion already. If you look at TIME for Kids, we were having a conversation about digital magazines for fall for the 2020–2021 school year to enhance features and be more multiplatform. When this hit, we were able to take conversations that had been going for a couple of months and were meant to launch in September and speed that whole process up.
In the case of TIME for Health, it is existing editorial content that our editors were able to curate and update and refresh for this.
Columbia was completely new, but they have a whole staff of exceptional faculty, so they could tap into that. That was probably the one that is most from scratch.
How are these initiatives being monetized?
They were all very different. TIME for Kids was done so quickly — pretty much in two days on a weekend — with the support of Google, AT&T, and HP. We are currently selling subscriptions for 2021. 350,000 people signed up for the free edition, two thirds of whom are new or not subscribers to TIME for Kids and not even subscribers to TIME.
TIME for Health is also currently planned through August with the great support of Merck on the digital destination and the free wellness magazine, and the video series is sponsored by CVS Health. It’s really a short term response to something that we will see if it turns into something more.
The Columbia partnership is a revenue share. While it is focused on the short term, if it works, we would be extending it, but it’s also part of TIME for Learning, which is an initiative that is bigger than this. Our goal is to reach K-12, college, and lifelong learners, and this is kind of a foray into the lifelong learning piece of things. We have TIME for Kids in the classroom for K through six, and TIME Edge for middle school. You’ll start to see us looking to venture into high school and college.
Most of these were done to solve a consumer and societal need in the moment, and we need to figure out how to monetize them. It’s kind of a cart before the horse on these, but in an exciting way. That approach — especially in TIME for Kids — got us where we needed to be faster.
They’re all areas that were strategically where we intended to focus. From the insights, they show up as the areas that TIME has permission to play.
We had the opportunity through this hard period of time to move quickly and start experimenting in these spaces, when otherwise we probably would not have moved as fast. What it ended up doing is forcing a bit of a test and learn approach. It really forces you to listen to the consumer and adapt to what it is they’re asking for — and to create a product that really fits their needs, as opposed to many of the other ways that products get created.
What’s in store for the future?
There’s a lot more — TIME for Learning and TIME for Health is a huge place to explore, and this is really just dipping our toe in the water. Another piece of this puzzle for what people need now are the jobs themselves, and so exploring that space to see if there’s anything that we can do to help with that.
We just launched a bunch of things, and now the real interesting work is in figuring out how to grow them.
What is the most interesting thing you’ve seen in media at an organization other than your own?
I am interested in responses to what is going on in the world that are not lip service but address a real need or make real change. Two examples of that that I’ve really admired lately. The first is Teen Vogue Prom — my old colleagues are always so en pointe. When school was cancelled, they recognized that seniors were going to miss prom, and jumped in to create a special virtual experience and lead into the big night with styling advice, makeup tutorials and dance lessons!
Secondly, while it may be showing my tech roots, I really appreciated that Alexis Ohanian, cofounder of Reddit, resigned from the board of Reddit so that he could be replaced by a Black candidate. While this is primarily a personal response, it is very on brand for him and his family, but also important when put in the context of the stance Reddit has previously taken on racist speech on the platform.
Rapid Fire Questions
What is the last book you read?
I’m reading three: Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad, Subscribed by Tien Tzuo about why the subscription model is your company’s future, and The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For by Charlotte Alter.
What is your first read in the morning?
Twitter.
What would you be doing if you weren’t in your current role?
I would probably be a floral designer.
Subscribe to our newsletter on the business of media for more interviews and weekly news and analysis. | https://medium.com/the-idea/q-a-with-maya-draisin-svp-progress-marketing-time-6d9065d2b7c7 | ['Saanya Jain'] | 2020-06-29 23:23:49.694000+00:00 | ['Journalism', 'Subscriber Spotlight', 'Media'] |
Review: Faster R-CNN (Object Detection) | 1. Region Proposal Network (RPN)
In brief, R-CNN [4] and Fast R-CNN [3] first generate region proposals by selective search (SS) [5], then a CNN-based network is used to classify the object class and detect the bounding box. (The main difference is that R-CNN input the region proposals at pixel level into CNN for detection while Fast R-CNN input the region proposals at feature map level.) Thus, in R-CNN [4] and Fast R-CNN [3], the region proposal approach/network (i.e. SS) and the detection network are decoupled.
Decoupling is not a good idea. Say for example, when SS has false negative, this error will hurt the detection network directly. It is better to couple them together such that they are correlated to each other.
In Faster R-CNN [1–2], RPN using SS [5] is replaced by RPN using CNN. And this CNN is shared with detection network. This CNN can be ZFNet or VGGNet in the paper. Thus, the overall network is as below:
Faster R-CNN
First, the picture goes through conv layers and feature maps are extracted. Then a sliding window is used in RPN for each location over the feature map. For each location, k (k=9) anchor boxes are used (3 scales of 128, 256 and 512, and 3 aspect ratios of 1:1, 1:2, 2:1) for generating region proposals. A cls layer outputs 2k scores whether there is object or not for k boxes. A reg layer outputs 4k for the coordinates (box center coordinates, width and height) of k boxes. With a size of W×H feature map, there are WHk anchors in total.
The Output of RPN
The average proposal size for 3 scales of 128, 256 and 512, and 3 aspect ratios of 1:1, 1:2, 2:1 are:
Average Proposal Sizes
The loss function is:
RPN Loss Function
The first term is the classification loss over 2 classes (There is object or not). The second term is the regression loss of bounding boxes only when there is object (i.e. p_i* =1).
Thus, RPN network is to pre-check which location contains object. And the corresponding locations and bounding boxes will pass to detection network for detecting the object class and returning the bounding box of that object.
As regions can be highly overlapped with each other, non-maximum suppression (NMS) is used to reduce the number of proposals from about 6000 to N (N=300). | https://towardsdatascience.com/review-faster-r-cnn-object-detection-f5685cb30202 | ['Sik-Ho Tsang'] | 2019-03-20 15:51:15.003000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Data Science', 'Neural Networks', 'Deep Learning'] |
New Book Releases: October 6, 2020 | THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF ADDIE LARUE, V.E. Schwab. In the 18th century, a young woman bargains with the devil for her freedom, and is granted the curse of an eternal life in which no one will ever remember her. But in 20th-century New York, a young bookseller remembers her name. This might be one of the most hotly-anticipated novels of the year; Schwab, who wrote the wonderful Shades of Magic series, is already working on a film adaptation. In a starred review, Library Journal writes that Addie LaRue is “another epic story of love and remembrance.” Read my mini-review here. Bookshop.
VAGINA PROBLEMS, Lara Parker. From the Deputy Editorial Director at BuzzFeed, a funny, incisive look at all the difficulties that plague the reproductive organs. A “candid, well-written memoir,” writes Publisher’s Weekly. Bookshop.
THE DEVIL AND THE DARK WATER, Stuart Turton. In 1634, a cursed ship leaves Batavia (now Jakarta) bound for Amsterdam. A diverse cast of characters must work together to save the ship from what — or who — is putting everyone in mortal danger. This novel, from the author of The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, is an enjoyable, exciting diversion; read my mini-review here. Bookshop.
THE HOLLOW PLACES, T. Kingfisher. A young woman discovers a portal that leads to alternative realities in her uncle’s house, but she soon discovers these places are haunted by mind-reading monsters. “With well-timed humor and perfect scares, this one is a keeper for horror fans,” writes Publisher’s Weekly. Bookshop.
DAUGHTER OF BLACK LAKE, Cathy Marie Buchanan. In England in the first century A.D., two generations of women must contend with the change brought by conquering Romans as the druids will do anything to hold on to power. I enjoyed this meditative, elegant historical novel; read my mini-review here. Bookshop.
WHEN WE WERE YOUNG AND BRAVE, Hazel Gaynor. A British teacher in Northern China must protect her vulnerable young students when Japan declares war on Britain and the United States. Bookshop.
BRIGHT AND DANGEROUS OBJECTS, Anneliese Mackintosh. A deep-sea diver is on the shortlist of people to colonize Mars, but if she commits, she’ll have to give up everything she knows — forever. “When Solvig finally makes her choice, the reader is left breathless, astounded by her courage. This is a deeply moving story,” writes Publisher’s Weekly in a starred review. Bookshop.
DEAR CHILD, Romy Hausmann. When a woman escapes her captor after fourteen years of imprisonment, the family to whom she returns swears she’s not the daughter they lost. A “tantalizingly disturbing debut,” writes the New York Times. Bookshop.
CUYAHOGA, Pete Beatty. A fictionalized tall tale (an amusing term in and of itself) about the comic misadventures of a Paul Bunyan-like man in early 19th-century Ohio. “As fun as any well-told campfire tale,” writes the Los Angeles Times in a glowing review. Bookshop.
MAGIC LESSONS, Alice Hoffman. In this prequel to Practical Magic, Hoffman unspools the story of the emergence of the curse that haunts the Owens family, beginning with a young woman accused of witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials. Aggregated critical reviews, Bookshop.
EARTHLINGS, Sayaka Murata, Ginny Tapley Takemori (Translator). From the author of the beloved Convenience Store Woman, a misfit whose best friend is a plush hedgehog becomes convinced she’s an alien. “A mind- and soul-expanding countercultural battle cry that is utterly one of a kind,” writes Bookpage. Aggregated critical reviews, Bookshop.
MISSIONARIES, Phil Klay. An Army Special Services medic and a foreign correspondent, both recovering from an adrenaline-fueled hangover from their years in the Middle East, head to Colombia, where cartels have imported American military tactics to wage their own wars. “Brutal, subtle, and witheringly savvy,” writes The Boston Globe. Aggregated critical reviews, Bookshop.
LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND, Rumaan Alam. On a luxurious, but remote, vacation, a family is disturbed by an older couple who arrive with news that a devastating blackout has hit New York City. “A signature novel for this blasted year,” writes NPR. Aggregated critical reviews, Bookshop.
OVER THE WOODWARD WALL, A. Deborah Baker (a.k.a. Seanan McGuire). Two exceptional children find themselves trapped in a magical world with talking animals and sentient trees. Bookshop.
THE NIGHTWORKERS, Brian Selfon. A crime family is thrown into chaos when their runner disappears with $250,000. “A sharp, surprisingly affecting debut,” writes Kirkus. Bookshop.
SNOW, John Banville. In 1957 Ireland, a Protestant detective is called to County Wexford to investigate the murder of a priest, whose body was found in the home of a wealthy, powerful local family. Bookshop.
THE SEARCHER, Tana French. A divorced detective moves from Chicago to what he assumes to be a peaceful village in Ireland, but when he gets roped into investigating a missing person case, he discovers his bucolic escape isn’t what it appears to be. Aggregated critical reviews, Bookshop.
THE WRONG KIND OF WOMAN, Sarah McCraw Crow. When her husband dies in late 1970, a woman must find a place for herself among his former colleagues whom he scorned and the activist group that springs up around them. Bookshop.
EVENTIDE, Sarah Goodman. In 1907 Arkansas, a teen whose father goes mad when her mother dies discovers that her parents were hiding dark secrets — secrets that some people in her town will go to dangerous lengths to protect. Bookshop.
HUSH, Dylan Farrow. In this YA fantasy, a girl is forced to contend with the dark forces that govern her society when her mother is murdered. Bookshop.
ZERO ZONE, Scott O’Connor. After a group of travelers experience what they consider a religious awakening inside an art installation and refuse to leave, the artist retreats from public life, feeling guilty about the part she played in the conflict. But three years later, a survivor comes forward, and the artist decides it’s finally time to reclaim herself and her art from those who try to take it for themselves. Bookshop. | https://angelalashbrook.medium.com/new-book-releases-october-6-2020-8326dc9cd804 | ['Angela Lashbrook'] | 2020-10-05 15:40:15.029000+00:00 | ['Books', 'Reading', 'Literature', 'Fiction', 'Culture'] |
Indians and Thank-yous | Photo by Debashis RC Biswas on Unsplash
I don’t know what are the names of these gentlemen, but I can assure you the second one is from India, not through the Kashmir reference but through the lack of thank you in his comment. You would know this too, if you are an Indian, that Indians in all their sweet oriental loveliness and graciousness always do forget to say “Thank You”. I had seldom seen an Indian saying “Thank you” in his own place, mind you I am talking about those “Desi” Indians of 80's and 90’s not about these kids of today who change their nationality with every Netflix series they watch.
One would, and I too went through that stage, of thinking that it is because they have an elevated sense of importance, a kind of arrogance, impoliteness, shyness, but no these aren’t the reasons, as per how I view it. After all, these are Indians, when do Indians have such arrogance and such shyness, they are frank and lovely and innocent, to begin with. So what does this peculiar habit ascribe to, what does this point to.
I will give my reason for this habit, that maybe wrong or inaccurate, but I think this is because of the motto of the Indian Heritage, a great sentence in the Maha Upanishads- “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” which means the world is one family. Indians take pride in this saying and most of them follow this saying without even trying to or consciously knowing it, they consider everyone to help them by default, they consider everyone their family and this is the reason they don’t say Thank You’s. As they say “there is no sorry and thank you between family and friends”. Indians hold on to this principle a bit tighter than others.
But still, there is a question lurking around i.e. why do they start saying thank-yous when they visit places or they are new at places. Now some things should remain mysteries.
Any other theories? Post them in response. Thank You :-) | https://medium.com/social-jogi/indians-and-thank-yous-dbc163afa1f5 | [] | 2020-12-27 15:50:51.379000+00:00 | ['Indian Culture', 'Articles', 'India', 'Writing'] |
Data Analytics- A Picture Paints a Thousand Rows | Data is the foundation of everything at the moment. It is the basis of business, marketing, and sales as well as the groundwork for change. There are many buzzwords associated with data such as; big data, data science, data analytics, and data visualization. I hope to clear some of these phrases up today and give you some insight into what these popular phrases actually refer to.
Data is simply information; it is information that has been collected and is usually used for research and reference. Big data is more complex, it is large amounts of data that is hard to analyze and process. Although big data can be difficult to work with, it is extremely valuable in fields such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and IOT (the internet of things). Data science is actually a field of study. It is the study of data and how we can extract valuable insights from the data that will further our understanding of the information.
By 2020, the accumulated volume of big data will increase from 4.4 zettabytes to roughly 44 zettabytes (44 trillion GB), that is a percentage increase of 900! With the projected increase in the volume of data produced this year, it is going to be essential to have people trained in the field of data science and analytics which will create new courses in universities and institutions and provide more job types for analytical minds.
Oracle’s mission statement expresses the importance of data and how much we can gain from it when it is properly understood.
Data Analytics vs. Data Visualization:
Data analytics, it is a term you have probably heard before. It is everywhere, constantly in the news in relation to breaches and security issues. But it is not all to do with privacy, in fact, when used correctly, data analysis can be extremely helpful in releasing new information that previously may have been misunderstood by the general population. If you have not heard of the term, or don’t quite understand what it means, here is a brief definition of data analytics from Techopedia: “refers to the qualitative and quantitative techniques and processes used to enhance productivity and business gain.”
Data visualization is the presentation of the information collected. These illustrations allow us to detect trends that may have gone unnoticed had the data stayed dormant in a spreadsheet. It allows us to gain new insights when we see the information portrayed in a clean and crisp diagram. Data analytics allows us to explore information like never before. Data visualization allows us to envision information like never before. The new technologies that are being produced are revolutionizing the way we see data. It is making data more accessible to a wider audience as visuals provide a universal image that a wider audience can understand.
I have included two very basic examples of using data visualization to represent analytics from social media. These in particular are my LinkedIn views and reaction statistics for the week of November 4th, 2019 to November 8th, 2019. These visualizations were created using the free online tool, DataWrapper.
LinkedIn Views: 04–08/11/2019
LinkedIn Reactions: 04–08/11/2019
For more advanced data visualization, Oracle provide a great tool on their analytics cloud service, I have included a free trial link here for readers to experiment with.
Data Analytics and Data Visualization: Use Cases
There is huge demand for data analysts as it is such a new and exciting area. According to BHEF and PWC America’s Data Science and Analytics Talent: The Case for Action Report “By 2020, there will be 2.7 million job postings for data science and analytics roles.”
Data is being used for so many things at the moment, particularly in business, advertising and marketing. One of the most interesting use cases of data analytics I have discovered is using data for social media analysis and response. A company that is doing great work with data and analytics is Sprout Social. This provides one place for all of your social media analytics and engagement. It allows you to manage your social media platforms, insights, analytics and engagement all on one site. You can also work on publicity content as a team. Beginning in 2010, raising one million dollars to having over 500 employees worldwide. They now have many awards under their belt such as the Glassdoor Top CEO Awards, 2019.
Another compelling way data is being used is in the Internet of Things. Data is the basis of the internet of things. IOT use technologies such as sensors to gather real time data. Data analytics complements IOT as it analyses the data collected by connected devices. There are many different types of analytics used in IOT. These include spatial analytics, streaming analytics, time series analytics and prescriptive analytics. When applied, these different types of analytics can release information and gain insight like never before.
Quote: Carly Florina- Former Executive, President, Chair of HP
To conclude, I hope you learned something new about data analytics. Data analytics is a new and fascinating area of technology today. The ways in which we view data is changing rapidly, it is an exciting area of tech to be in.
If you enjoyed reading this article, you can check out the podcast I did featuring Conor Warde, Business Development Manager, Ashik Wani of Docacquire and Daniel Sawko of Taina Technologies. We discussed interesting use cases of data analytics and how it is actually being use in industry, specifically in document and tax form analysis.
*All views and opinions discussed are mine and not that of Oracle* | https://medium.com/odcuriocity/data-analytics-a-picture-paints-a-thousand-rows-b6a86b15451f | ['Grace Byers'] | 2020-01-16 09:46:22.020000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence', 'Technology', 'Data Analysis', 'Data Science', 'Data Visualization'] |
How to Find Number of Distinct Islands? | How to Find Number of Distinct Islands?
Day 50— 100 Days to LinkedIn, Yahoo, Oracle
Photo by Marek Okon on Unsplash
Out of Free Stories? Here is my Friend Link.
100 Days to LinkedIn, Yahoo, Oracle
Introduction
Hey guys, Today is day 50 of the 100 Days to LinkedIn Challenge.
Free For Kindle Readers
If you are Preparing for your Interview. Even if you are settled down in your job, keeping yourself up-to-date with the latest Interview Problems is essential for your career growth. Start your prep from Here!
Last month, I have been researching to find out the Frequently asked problems from these Companies. I have compiled 100 of these questions, I am not promising you that you will get these questions in your interview but I am confident that most of these “interview questions” have similar logic and employs the same way of thinking from these set of challenges.
Before we move on to the first problem, If you are wondering why I chose LinkedIn, Yahoo and Oracle over FAANG are because I have completed a challenge Focusing on Amazon and Facebook Interview.
New Day, New Strength, New Thoughts
Day 50 — Number of Distinct Islands🏁
AIM
Given a non-empty 2D array grid of 0's and 1's, an island is a group of 1 's (representing land) connected 4-directionally (horizontal or vertical.) You may assume all four edges of the grid are surrounded by water.
Count the number of distinct islands. An island is considered to be the same as another if and only if one island can be translated (and not rotated or reflected) to equal the other.
Example🕶
11000
11000
00011
00011
Follow House of Codes for keeping up to date in the programming interview world.
Code👇
Algorithm
If you know the direction of an island, then the mirror will be the same permutation. Create a Set, to store the direction of the Islands. Traverse the grid, at each index check whether the cell is 1 which indicates a part of the island. For Each 1, Traverse in a Depth First Search so that you can store the direction in the Set. At the end of the traversal, return the Set of Islands🔚
Complexity Analysis
Time Complexity : O(R * C); R- No of Rows, C- No of Columns
Space Complexity : O(N) Number of Islands present in the Grid
Thanks for Making this #1 New Release 🖤
Further Reading
4 Incredibly Useful Linked List Tips for Interview
Top 25 Amazon SDE Interview Questions
Do you think you really know about Fibonacci Numbers?
9 Best String Problems Solved using C Programming
One Does not Simply Solve 50 Hacker Rank Challenges
End of the Line
You have now reached the end of this article. Thank you for reading it. Good luck with your Programming Interview!
If you come across any of these questions in your interview. Kindly Share it on the comments section below. I will be thrilled to read them.
Don’t forget to hit the follow button✅to receive updates when we post new coding challenges. Tell us how you solved this problem. 🔥 We would be thrilled to read them. ❤ We can feature your method in one of the blog posts.
Want to become outstanding in java programming?
A compilation of 100 Java(Interview) Programming problems which have been solved. (Hacker Rank) 🐱💻. This is completely free 🆓 if you have an amazon kindle subscription. | https://medium.com/dev-genius/how-to-find-number-of-distinct-islands-fa31e5d122f0 | ['House Of Codes'] | 2020-12-15 15:35:09.760000+00:00 | ['Computer Science', 'Interview', 'Java', 'Software Development', 'Coding'] |
How the Secular Therapy Project Helped Me Change My Life | Let’s face it. We all could use a little therapy. Childhood trauma sounds like it should be devastating, but sometimes it can be disguised as what everyone thinks is a normal upbringing. A person doesn’t have to endure physical abuse to end up with mental scars from childhood that have an effect on our daily lives.
There’s also the emotional toll interpersonal relationships impose on us throughout the years. Each encounter can be a lesson on how to behave with other people. Sometimes, the lessons are helpful. Other times, well… those encounters are how we all end up with coping mechanisms that are more detrimental to our mental health than they are helpful.
You might be wondering why I’m spouting this depressing drivel. Well, after 27 years on this planet, I decided to go to therapy and had to face a lot more than I ever expected. Three years later, I would like to share my journey and some of the things I have learned.
How I got here
My biological father chose not to take part in my life. He had his reasons.
Meaning, his wife and his two other children had no idea I existed.
I am the offspring of a Southern Baptist preacher’s daughter and a married Baptist minister of music. They met at work and had an affair after years of friendship.
The first time I remember meeting my father was on the sidewalk at the bank. He and my mother talked for a while and when they were done, I asked, “Mama, who was that man?”. She leaned down to me and replied, “That was your daddy.”
Great way to meet your father, right? I was 6.5 years old. He ended up meeting us at a play place later that day and we played air hockey. I didn’t tell him goodbye. That was the only in-person interaction I have had with my father in my entire life. After that, he sent a birthday card when I was 10 and called specifically to fuss at my mom about an online friend she made when I was 16.
I have set this particular stage for a reason: to convey one story. I remember the moment I decided to suppress emotions.
At the age of 13, I wrote a letter to my father. In it, I essentially asked him to have some type of relationship with me. I didn’t care if it was over the phone, through the mail, or any other medium he preferred. I wasn’t asking for much. I just wanted to know him.
While I carefully folded the letter and sealed the envelope, I thought to myself, “This is the last effort I will make to have a relationship with my father. If he doesn’t respond to me now, I don’t want anything to do with him in my future.” Pretty dire words from a 13-year-old, right?
It wasn’t my intention to suppress all of my emotions or to not deal with anything, but that’s the coping mechanism I developed.
Fast forward 14 years from that day and I find myself walking into a therapist’s office for the first time. I didn’t think the non-existent relationship with my father had any impact on my life. But boy could I not have been any more wrong!
Why did I make the decision to seek out therapy?
Looking back on my life, I can tell now that I had depression since I was a teenager. I slept all the time, found excuses to stay home, avoided interactions, etc. I also was still heavily indoctrinated in Christianity. The Southern Baptist variety where we stuck to the Bible like it was a “love letter from God” and took most things literally. I was taught the Garden of Eden was a real place and that Adam and Eve were the first humans. I never even questioned the logic behind any of the stories I had been told.
I used my religion as a shield against dealing with my emotions. I thought I shouldn’t be sad because God had my back. There was no reason on the planet for me to be upset. Not even when my own biological father blatantly chose to not be a part of my life. Because I had God as my father, right?
What I didn’t realize was that denying my emotions removed my ability not only to identify what was happening in my mind but it also stopped me from truly allowing myself to be vulnerable and connect with others. I spent years in unsuccessful relationships believing that I had done my best.
At the time when I finally decided to go to therapy, I had already given up my religion but I still held on to the idea that I had no real reason to be upset or sad. I was happy with my relationship, had a great job, doing well financially, and had the sweetest, coolest kid on the planet as my son. Life should have been grand, right? It wasn’t.
I was unconsciously isolating myself from my significant other and my child. I was avoiding emotions like the plague. I ignored dirty dishes and taking out the trash because I just did not have the mental capacity to put in the physical effort of cleaning up. I was keeping it together at work but shied away from really forming friendships and attachments. I could smile and joke around like everything was fine but as soon as the person walked away from my space, I put in my headphones and blocked out both the world and my own dark thoughts.
I never got to the point of wanting my life to end. I knew my son depended on me for everything and I couldn’t leave him in this world alone. However, I was pushing away everyone close to me so much that I was leaving him alone even while I was right there next to him.
Once I realized how much I had stopped talking to the people I cared about, including close friends, I knew I had to do something. What I had been doing for my entire life wasn’t working anymore.
How I found the Secular Therapy Project
I adore The Atheist Experience. I found it through The Thinking Atheist podcast videos, featuring the smooth, perfect-for-radio voice of Seth Andrews. Once I found the types of discussions Matt Dillahunty was having with people who called the show, I was hooked.
I happen to have a natural inclination towards debating and I learned a lot about philosophical arguments and logical fallacies from the discussions Matt had with callers. My mom always said I would argue with a brick wall by beating a dead horse. If I thought I was correct and had sources to back up what I said, I would be able to argue every point against another person to the point of being obnoxious.
So, The Atheist Experience show was fascinating to me. I remembered an episode where Matt was talking about Recovering from Religion, the Secular Therapy Project, and The Clergy Project. I figured I would give that a shot first before trying to find a therapist by other means.
To my delight, my home town had exactly ONE therapist registered with STP. One may be the loneliest number, but it was perfect for me.
Why STP is the shit
Signing up for STP didn’t take long. The fantastic part about STP is that all of the therapists are vetted by Recovering from Religion and use evidence-based, non-religious treatment plans. I didn’t have to worry about finding a therapist who was going to recommend I “take it to God” or “just pray about it”. I was able to look within a certain radius of my area and put in a basic description of the issues I was having. The therapists are kept anonymous while you are exchanging messages within the system. I understood it was to protect both of us.
After a few messages, I got my therapist’s contact information and filled out a form to begin therapy. We were even able to use my insurance to pay for the majority of visits throughout the year.
Because I live in the deep south, it is imperative to have both parties consider safety. I won’t name my therapist but I will say he is absolutely fantastic and has helped me in so many ways. He remains professional but also makes me feel at ease. He’s also pretty funny (even if it is in the most corny, dad joke kind of way). He always checks in to make sure what he is doing is helpful for me and truly listens to understand even when I’m making zero sense. The resources he has recommended have been invaluable. When I do have to pay by the session, it’s a reasonable price and doesn’t empty my bank account.
Within the first few therapy sessions, I learned a few things about myself. I was horrible at identifying my own emotions and had zero vocabulary for discussing them. I really didn’t ever take time to work through my feelings.
Developing an Emotional Vocabulary
We all know the words happy, sad, mad and content. We know the general sensations associated with those words. We know how someone’s face usually looks when any of those words can be used to describe their current mood. Happy typically means smiling and laughing. I know when I’m really happy I will be bouncing off of the walls and talking a lot. Sad typically means your head is held down. You may be frowning or shedding tears. I feel that an ugly cry has to be a universal human experience. If that is not something you have ever gone through, consider yourself lucky. 0/10 would not recommend.
However, what I learned is that with every feeling we have, there are usually at least 3 descriptive words we can use. That means happy, sad, mad, and content just become categories for other more specific words we can use to describe our feelings. For example, “happy” could mean joyful, proud, interested, appreciative, intimate, peaceful, or powerful, and each of those can have multiple meanings too. Did I just blow your mind? Because I know I felt like Pheobe on Friends when she said, “That is BRAND NEW information!” (Yes, I found a way to bring a meme into a blog post full of text. You’re welcome.).
It was difficult to realize, but saying I was sad about something wasn’t enough to help me understand where the sadness came from. I had spent so long avoiding the negative emotions (besides anger) that the concept of finding 3 words for the feelings I had seemed like an impossible task.
Identifying Emotions, Needs and Basis for Reaction
My therapist recommended I do this really weird thing. It’s called processing emotions. He said I should actually think about what I was feeling and try to label the emotions with descriptive words. All I could think to myself was, “Who does that?!?”. Apparently, that’s the healthy way to deal with the feelings you have in life. I resisted the temptation to roll my eyes. Why did I need to do that shit? I was fine!
You know, except for the fact I was in therapy because I was depressed to the point of being numb and severely isolating myself from the world. Oh, right… I probably needed to do that processing emotions shit more often. But how was I supposed to access a part of myself that I had not allowed out of a cage since I was 13??
I started with writing in a journal. A strange thing happened when I started writing down what I had been thinking. Thoughts that my conscious mind had not acknowledged started flowing out of me onto the paper. Dots I hadn’t connected before were laid out in front of me like Georges Seurat had put them together himself.
I would cry as I wrote because I was finally allowing myself to see and feel everything I had been suppressing for so long. It was hell. Not the fun kind of hell where all kinds of sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll are acceptable. No, the torture kind of hell where your nose is running and eyes are hurting from crying, your brain hurts from thinking too much and the pages of your journal are filled up with the things you never wanted to see again.
To further torture me, my therapist recommended a book called Getting the Love you Want by Harville Hendrix. He recognized a large portion of my issues stem from the relationships in my life. The book goes into how we choose partners based on childhood experiences that we want to resolve through our current relationships. All of which is not a conscious effort or decision.
The book explains that when we react negatively, it typically comes from an unmet, deep-seated need. With that logic, the next time I got upset about something, I stopped myself from reacting immediately and actually thought about why I had gotten upset. I journaled about the situation. That night, I was able to figure out the main reasons I react negatively — and everything goes back to my father. Talk about daddy issues, right?
However, the fact I was able to clearly draw a line between my feelings, the basis for the reaction, and the underlying need that was not being met, was a huge step in the right direction for me.
Learning to be Vulnerable
Feeling content or angry was always pretty easy for me. Those were the safe emotions. I could accept things that happened in the past and just live with it. I could get pissed off when someone didn’t treat me correctly. I was allowed both of those. It was feeling happy or sad that was frightening for me. If I felt happy, someone could take that away from me. I didn’t allow sadness because I couldn’t be weak.
What I have learned is when you don’t allow yourself to feel the whole spectrum of emotions, you don’t allow yourself to live life to the fullest. I still struggle with anxiety over feeling too happy. I still struggle to allow myself to feel sad or hurt. I struggle with sharing those emotions with another person. Being vulnerable enough to let someone see all that I am is truly terrifying. However, I understand that to love and be loved, to accept and be accepted, to acknowledge and be acknowledged, all require some level of vulnerability.
We even have to learn how to be vulnerable with ourselves. Feeling disappointed, hurt, neglected, abandoned; none of those make me a weak person. Seeing my emotions for what they are, and acknowledging where they come from, help me to be more emotionally resilient. Taking time to process helps me relate to others and maintain relationships.
Brene Brown’s words run through my head when I start to feel weak for having emotions and trying to talk about them, “Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weak.”
She was another torture device employed by my therapist to get me to connect to my emotions. She is a research professor at the University of Houston’s Graduate College of Social Work and is best known for her TED Talk “The Power of Vulnerability”. If you have never heard of her, I would encourage you to look her up. She is a fantastic speaker and her books are also amazing for dealing with courage, shame and vulnerability. She summed up the epiphany I had in therapy by saying, “We cannot selectively numb emotions. When we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions.” Now, where the hell was she when I was 13?
I’m not sure if I will ever be able to always go with the healthy way of processing emotions. All I know is I will forever be a work in progress and a person who strives to live my best life. We only get a short amount of time on this planet. I want to make sure I’m doing all I can to be the best version of myself, so I can give that best version to others.
Recognizing the need for a trained counselor is NOT something that should cause any shame. I have been very open about being in therapy and I brag to anyone who will listen about how much being in therapy has helped improve my life and relationships. I am a much stronger person than I used to be and have developed coping mechanisms that I never had the chance to before.
Taking care of your emotional and mental well-being is the best form of self-care anyone can do. I highly recommend it and encourage anyone reading and identifying with any part of my story to just check it out. It’s never too late to take care of you. | https://medium.com/excommunications/how-the-secular-therapy-project-helped-me-change-my-life-929f927ccfd9 | ['Recovering Religion'] | 2020-08-04 16:48:54.915000+00:00 | ['Religion', 'Healing', 'Life Lessons', 'Mental Health', 'Spirituality'] |
Massive collaboration | Massive collaboration
Inside the Psychological Science Accelerator.
Published in The Psychologist magazine, October 2020
At school, Neil Lewis Jr was always the ‘smart Black kid’. Aged nine, he and his family emigrated to Florida from his birthplace in Jamaica and he soon learned that his new classmates had low expectations of Black students. ‘They had a stereotype that Black people are not smart’, he explains, ‘so it surprised them that I did so well’. That sense of being judged in the light of racial stereotypes, he adds, has never really gone away. Through high school, university, and even now, as an Assistant Professor at Cornell University, he admits to a constant, nagging concern that any slip-ups on his part would only confirm other people’s preconceptions. ‘For me it’s still a regular experience being an academic where I’m often the only Black person in the room.’
As an undergraduate studying social psychology, Lewis learned about a study that resonated with his own experiences of racial stereotypes. The researchers, Claude Steel and Joshua Aronson, gave students at Stanford University a brief test. Some were told that it was measuring their academic aptitude. Others that it was a puzzle to be solved. For White students, these instructions made no difference to their performance. But amongst Black students, being told that their academic ability was being assessed led to poorer performance. In a further experiment, Black students performed worse if, prior to the test, they had been exposed to negative stereotypes about Black people. Again, White students were unaffected.
Steel and Aronson named this phenomenon ‘stereotype threat’. They argued that the distraction and anxiety caused by stereotypes can lead to poorer cognitive performance, becoming, in effect, a self-fulfilling prophecy. ‘I found it fascinating that scientists had actually studied this’, Lewis says. ‘It was one of the theories that really got me interested in becoming a social scientist in the first place.’
Since it was published in 1995, Steel and Aronson’s original study has been cited by over 9500 other research papers. It has also had real world impacts, prompting colleges and universities to adopt programs aimed at minimising stereotype threat and improving educational outcomes. In 2013, the concept of stereotype threat reached the US Supreme Court when the University of Texas at Austin was forced to defend its racial diversity policy for student admissions. It’s also been applied to other stereotypes — that girls aren’t cut out for maths, for example, or that elderly people necessarily have poor memory.
Lately, however, the evidence for stereotype threat has started to come undone. Attempts to replicate key findings have failed. Meta-analyses that pool the results of many individual studies suggest that the effects are smaller or more variable than originally thought — if they exist at all. Like others in the field, Lewis has begun to have doubts. ‘The phenomenon of being concerned that you might be judged in the light of these negative stereotypes, I think that’s real’, he says. What remains unclear is the extent to which those experiences actually affect performance. ‘Right now’, he admits, ‘I don’t know that we have a good sense of that’.
To try and answer this question, Lewis has turned to the Psychological Science Accelerator, a worldwide network of researchers prepared to take part in large-scale collaborative psychology studies. | https://medium.com/dr-jon-brock/massive-collaboration-a5ca2753b9de | ['Jon Brock'] | 2020-10-01 02:25:01.029000+00:00 | ['Open Science', 'Psychology', 'Collaboration'] |
Navigating Into the World of Machine Learning | With the rapid expansion of Machine Learning as a field of research, it’s not easy to keep up with everything that is being invented and discovered.
I have created a graph that will make the distinction of the types of machine learning systems easier to understand.
It is useful to keep in mind there’s more than one way (ML algorithm) to solve a specific problem. Usually, there are several that fit and it’s your duty to identify which is the best algorithm with the given circumstances of its implementation.
Nowadays, everything is being solved with neural networks; why use a sword to cut bread, when a knife would be sufficient?
The ML landscape looked from above, has mainly four different directions:
In the following weeks, I will delve into each topic and discuss its nuts and bolts.
Sum up
Hope this article helped you get a clearer idea how the ML landscape is generally separated.
Did I miss any types of learning? Let me know in the comments below.
I’d love to hear your ideas on what you’d like to read next — let me know down below in the comment section!
You can always connect with me via LinkedIn. | https://medium.com/swlh/navigating-into-the-world-of-machine-learning-1c1b10ae40b | ['Bardh Rushiti'] | 2020-09-24 16:27:57.133000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Reinforcement Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Ensemble Learning', 'Neural Networks'] |
Dynamic Programming Interview Questions: Unique Paths | Like our previous problem, we immediately know that we should use the bottom-up approach to solve this since we’re required to find all possible unique paths.
Base Case
In any bottom-up approach, we need to first establish some base cases. I think of base cases as cases that cannot be broken down any further — they’re the simplest form of a sub-problem. If I can compute them in one step, independent of any previous results, then it must be a base case. Usually a good start to finding a base case is to look at the problem’s smallest input size (i.e., an edge case). In our case, this would be m=1 and n=1. So how many unique paths if m=1 and n=1. It would just be 1.
OK — we have established a base case. Are there any more?
Remember that a robot can only move down or right at any point in time. That means that if m=1, the value of n doesn’t matter — there’s only one unique path to get there. Similarly, if n=1, the value of m doesn’t matter — again, there’s only one unique path.
Wow! This base case is even more insightful than the first one we established, which is merely a subset of this base case!
Moral of the story: Look for as many base cases as you can before trying to work your way up | https://medium.com/better-programming/interview-questions-unique-paths-d2bbeed53017 | ['Steffy Lo'] | 2020-06-26 17:46:37.801000+00:00 | ['Interview Questions', 'Python', 'Computer Science', 'Interview', 'Programming'] |
The Ultimate Guide To Instagram Growth in 2020 | 3k Followers in under 3 Months | Step 5: Grow an Audience and Communicate With Your Followers
Congratulations on publishing your first post on Instagram using the best practices approach. It is now time for the final step in this Ultimate Guide To Instagram Growth in 2020, which is to build a loyal community of followers.
Building a Community
As with treating your Instagram as a Business, you must also treat your followers as you would with your loyal clients and customers. This means interacting with them respectfully while engaging with their content frequently. Spend at least 15–30 minutes each day before or after you publish your post to like and comment on posts of your existing followers.
Moreover, revisit the list of large Instagram accounts in your niche that you have compiled and created in Step 3. With this list of Instagram accounts, go through their list of followers, and engage with Instagram users on their follower list by liking their posts or following their accounts (I recommend only following public accounts and skipping private accounts). The Instagram users following those large accounts are most likely also interested in your niche; therefore, there is a high probability your content will also resonate with them.
This is an important step in building brand awareness and establishing a large community of followers as it is an effective method of making those Instagram users aware of your account and your content. Without engaging with these users, you will only be reliant on your hashtags strategy to grow your followers. While this is possible for large and established Instagram accounts, it is vastly more effective to reinforce the hashtags strategy with this engagement strategy.
Misusing Instagram’s features will lead to an “Action Blocked” message
Best Practices
Following / Unfollowing Users: Follow a maximum of 25 users per hour with 10–20 being the optimum range you should stick with to stay on the safe side of Instagram’s rules. There is no precise number written on Instagram’s rules and policies; however, it is best to stick to the optimum range or your account will be “Action Blocked.”
Post Likes: When interacting and engaging with posts on Instagram, do not exceed liking more than 300 posts per hour, with the optimum range around 150–250. Again, there is no precise number written on Instagram’s rules and policies; however, it is best to avoid spamming likes and comments throughout your Instagram feed.
Action Blocked: An “Action Blocked” message is similar to getting a yellow penalty warning card on Instagram. You will not be able to like, comment, or follow (or all of the above) for a certain period and the visibility and reach of your posts will be inevitably affected. If you have read this guide and still did not follow the best practices outlined above and got your account “Action Blocked” it is best to avoid liking, commenting, or following any users for two-weeks time to lift your penalty from Instagram. | https://medium.com/the-innovation/the-ultimate-guide-to-instagram-growth-in-2020-3k-followers-in-under-3-months-b343c64ed6b7 | ['Songlarb', 'Deejai'] | 2020-08-07 18:40:26.466000+00:00 | ['Social Media Mar', 'Startup', 'Digital Marketing', 'Online Business', 'Instagram'] |
What I’ve learned about writing fiction and its “rules” | What I’ve learned about writing fiction and its “rules”
They are meant to be broken
Photo by Nicole Honeywill
“You must learn the rules in order to break them” is the advice a comic book legend gave the crowd at comic-con in 2017.
It was a panel led by comic book writers on what it takes to break into the industry, and what it means to be a storyteller as a whole.
They gave all the usual advice: utilize your secondary characters to bring out the various sides of your main, read different genres and forms of literature, write everyday, make a pentagram in the middle of a crossroads if you want to sign an agent, etc etc etc.
Then they dropped a paradoxical bombshell on me — “learn the rules in order to break them.”
I was 22 and confused as fuck.
I was in the crowd and hoped to hear some magical spell or tip that would help me finish my slow moving manuscript.
But instead what I got was some Yoda level wisdom that did nothing but confuse me and make me want to pull out one of those cliché clear erase boards and scribble incoherently until I figured out what the hell he meant.
So I scoured books. I learned “the rules.” I went to write my manuscript. And I wrote. And rewrote. And I read all of the fiction books I could get my hands on.
And I got even more confused because even some of the “greats” didn’t follow the rules. James Joyce once wrote a 3,687 word sentence. Mario Puzo (The Godfather) used adverbs like it was going out of style. James Baldwin wrote some of the most dense sentences I’ve ever read. But, nonetheless, I went back to my book and followed all of the rules.
3 years and 8 rewrites later, I finally get what the comic-book writer meant.
The “rules” aren’t “rules,” they’re guidelines.
They’re meant to help you stay the course if you start to stray too far away. They aren’t meant to be restrictive — they’re meant to give you a good idea of what your writing should look like.
The day I came to this conclusion is the day my writing got better. But it also led to other realizations.
Good writing works on a spectrum — your story doesn’t have to be perfect.
You probably shouldn’t tell more than you show, but if your plot and characters are engaging, you may get a pass.
People probably won’t notice your plot isn’t the most creative in the world if your prose strikes an emotional cord.
Your first act can be a little longer than your second and third if it’s helping build the world and move the story forward.
You can lack in one area if you make up for it in the next. I often read the reviews of “award winning” books just to see what critics said.
I’ve not once read a critique saying “this was the most perfect book ever written.” If the greats are allowed to be flawed, give yourself the same license.
Those three examples I gave above came from classics I’ve read before, and those three books were flawed just like anyone else’s. But — their strengths were so strong I didn’t even give a shit. I flew through those books because they were able to resonate with me one way or another. Work on becoming the best writer you can, not the most perfect one.
If we all followed the rules, we would all sound the same.
But really though. Imagine if we all followed the “short sentence rule.”
We’d all be monotone. And sound like aliens. Who’ve discovered the written word for the first time.
The flaws in our work are what gives us our special literary fingerprint. And by “flaws,” I mean what goes against the typical literary conventions. By all means, please fix typos and very confusing bits of dialogue. Don’t take what I’m saying as an excuse to put out a shitty book.
Rule breaking should be used like seasoning in recipes — just enough to add your own flavor.
You can use adverbs if you want. Just don’t go fucking nuts. It might be a little annoying for readers to read a sentence like:
“He effortlessly, beautifully, gracefully, ……”
Go easy on the adverbs. Space them out when you need them.
Experiment with form and literary conventions. I once read a book, Wettest County in The World, where the author never used speech tags or quotations. It honestly made it flow better for me. It seemed like natural speech and I still knew who was talking.
DISCLAIMER: His dialogue was unique to each character and specific actions lead into the conversations.
Yet again, good writing is on a spectrum. You can break the rules once you get a handle on them and have honed your style.
In conclusion — rules are like assholes, everyone has one.
Never start with prologues. Never start a sentence with “and.” Never write when you’re not inspired. Never ever start with a dream sequence. Never do this, never do that.
A large part of the early days of your writing career is honestly sifting through the mounds of advice to find which bits are useful. I read craft books and studied the works of much more superior writers to come to the observations I have today.
There are 6 rules I follow. I think these are universal amongst fiction writers:
Cut out excess words Don’t stop to edit, edit in waves. Do a first draft. Then a second. And so on. Give your drafts some distance before editing. Write everyday. Or as much as your schedule allows. Read as often as possible. Preferably words of writers better than you. Use strong verbs instead of flimsy words. “He walked” vs “He strode”
I feel anything other than those 6 above can be experimented with at the author’s discretion. (Feel free to disagree.)
Please don’t take my observations as me saying to be a lazy writer.
Put in the hours of practice. Read. Learn. Observe.
Yet again — a writer needs to know the rules before they can break them. A quick example using something non-writing related — I once asked my basketball coach why is it NBA players are allowed to do non-fundamentally sound things. He said “because they’re good enough to. Ya’ll aren’t.”
Think about that for a bit and apply it to writing. You must have the skills and experience first before you attempt to turn tried-and-true methods on their heads.
If you don’t want to use dialogue tags, learn how to make your dialogue stick out from character to character. You want to toss out your “plot,” make sure your characters are great and your prose is flawless. You want to write a prologue despite conventional wisdom saying otherwise? Make sure it sucks the reader in and reveals something you couldn’t know without it.
The beauty of creative writing is you can do what the hell you want, how you want! It’s an art form. A very beautiful one. It is even more beautiful when a writer puts their own fingerprint and style on a piece. So take out your laptop. Write your book. Write your short story. Pull out the rule book and commit all of it to memory — then toss the shit in the shredder. | https://medium.com/1-one-infinity/what-ive-learned-about-writing-fiction-and-it-s-rules-25a8b9c8437b | ['Danny Cherry'] | 2019-07-07 22:34:14.746000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Advice', 'Writing Tips', 'Fiction', 'Creative Writing'] |
What is Asexuality? | NEO.LIFE: How did you figure out you were ace?
Angela Chen: I came across the definition of asexuality in my teens. But I thought I was a straight woman, essentially because I wasn’t sex-repulsed. I hadn’t had sex yet but I expected that I would one day, and I would enjoy it “just like everyone else.” In my early 20s I was in my first relationship. That became the impetus for me to realize I was ace, not because of anything to do with actually having sex, but because there were all of these issues around [my partner] seeing the world and sexuality differently than I did. I had never understood or experienced sexual attraction the way allo people do, so when he said things like, “Everyone is always sexually attracted to everyone else all the time,” I imagined what I felt toward him, which … wasn’t sexual attraction: It was love that maybe could be expressed sexually, but it wasn’t just physical attraction. So I was imagining him experiencing [love] toward everyone, and it made me so jealous and threatened.
Once I realized those were very different things, I started asking myself: What is attraction? How is it that I could be in my early 20s and not celibate and not understand what attraction is? And how could all of us think about attraction and romance and desire differently? Why do we always put them together when they don’t have to be together, and what could be gained from separating them?
NL: What do we gain from separating attraction into categories like sexual, romantic, and platonic attraction?
AC: It gives you a better idea of exactly what you want. It gives us more options to think creatively about how we can get the things we want. For example, I think most people think that if you want a romantic relationship, that means you have to have a sexual relationship — but what if that weren’t true? What if there were other ways of living and other ways of being? I recently interviewed someone who is ace and is in a three-parent family with two other parents. I think most people think that if you’re going to have a kid, then you need one romantic partner. But what if we separated childcare from romance from sexuality? What other configurations could be possible?
Asexuality destabilizes the border between romantic and platonic attraction, because many aces are sex-repulsed but still feel romantic attraction. My allo friends are like, “This makes so much sense: In college I had this friend, and I felt like I was in love with them in this very romantic way — but then I thought maybe it wasn’t romantic because I wasn’t sexually attracted to them.” Once you start breaking down these feelings that were kind of confusing or ineffable, a lot of patterns become more legible.
NL: Have you thought about platonic relationships more during the pandemic? I feel like I miss my friends so badly right now, and they’re on my mind all the time.
AC: I think I have. Often we just lean on our significant other, if we have one, to provide all of the social and emotional benefits. Then once the pandemic happens you realize, “Oh, that was never feasible.”
I’m not aromantic, but a lot of aromantic aces talk about how much we need to reconsider what’s important in our lives and the roles that our friends play. Why is it that we always privilege our romantic relationships? Why does it seem so normal to move for our romantic partner but it doesn’t seem normal to make life changes for “just a friend”? Why is it that community and friendships are not often prioritized in the same way? Is the feeling different, or is it because there are different social norms?
I talk about how important it is to believe in the importance of our friends, but I fall into this trap, too. Currently I’m in a bit of a fight with a friend, and I caught myself thinking the other day that if she and I were in a romantic relationship, there’s no way I would have let this fight go on for as long as it has. I would have brought it up to her much earlier and talked it through, and instead I’m kind of being a coward, and we’re both avoiding each other.
Being ghosted by a friend can be just as painful as being ghosted by someone you were dating, but we don’t have the language to talk about it in the same way.
NL: Yeah, we don’t have models for having fights with friends the way we have fights with romantic partners. Instead of making up, we just let things drift away.
AC: It just can be so uncomfortable to be the one to have to break the social norm. Being ghosted by a friend can be just as painful as being ghosted by someone you were dating, but we don’t have the language to talk about it in the same way. And none of us wants to be the person to care too much. Of course I love my friends, but I don’t want to feel like I’m putting in all the work and they’re not putting in the work. I think there’s just so much self-consciousness about taking some things more seriously, and I think that there’s a lot of vulnerability in there, too.
NL: In January, the city of Somerville, Massachusetts began recognizing domestic partnerships that don’t require a romantic relationship and aren’t limited to two people. What are the benefits of this kind of legal structure?
AC: For me I would flip this around: Why should it only be limited to people that you’re romantically attracted to? That implies that the care you have for the people you’re romantically attracted to is always more important than the love that you’d have for a sibling or even just a friend. Why is it that these other forms of devotion are not valued as much? Why should I be banned from sharing health insurance with someone who is just as important to me? I think it is good to have benefits where you can provide for those that you care about. They shouldn’t only be limited to a very specific kind of caring.
NL: In the book you write about how asexuality doesn’t need to be a rigidly defined or permanent identity — you say that it has “porous borders.” Why do you think that the ace community is fluid like that? domestic partnerships that don’t require a romantic relationship and aren’t limited to two people. What are the benefits of this kind of legal structure?
AC: I think that people don’t talk about sexual fluidity enough. If you think you’re a lesbian for most of your life and you start being attracted to men, that shouldn’t mean that you were a fake lesbian. People think about “phases” as this kind of derogatory term, like you were never the real deal, but I think most people go through different phases in terms of personality and in terms of exploration, and I don’t think that needs to be denigrated.
With asexuality, because it’s so challenged still, because people still love to say, “You’re not ace — you’re just shy, or you’re just not old enough, or you haven’t met the right person.” I think maybe that has affected the ace community. It’s OK if you’re part of the community and one day you realize that you did meet the right person. It’s fine — go on and just be happy, and we were glad to have you here! And I think that’s a lovely way of looking at the community. I like the idea of ace-ness as a tool, a set of frameworks, a set of concepts, and you can apply them when they’re useful, instead of it being an obligation. | https://medium.com/neodotlife/what-is-asexuality-6ba1f49ed054 | [] | 2020-12-03 17:52:00.765000+00:00 | ['Books', 'Relationships', 'Self', 'Sexuality', 'Sex'] |
Catch Up On The Classics During COVID-19 | In no particular order…
First up, I recommend just about anything by British writer George Orwell, but I’m particularly going to suggest that you check out Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, both eloquent, page-turning dystopian narratives written in the 1940s. These two books are not just two must-reads within mid-century classics, but must-reads within dystopian fiction, speculative fiction, and two of my personal favourites.
Crossing the Atlantic, American writers J.D. Salinger with his 1951 novel Catcher in the Rye and Harper Lee with her 1960 To Kill a Mockingbird — both novels which tend to find themselves on high school reading lists. You might have read these when you were a teen or you might have passed them by, either way, if you haven’t ever read these at all or haven’t read these since you were a teen — these are well worth checking out.
African-American writer Richard Wright’s 1940 protest novel Native Son holds a combative history of acceptance and complaint within American public schools and libraries, is graphic and harrowing, and is a classic of African-American literature as it depicts the realities of African-American life in Chicago in the 1930s.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s isn’t just a film! Although if you want to watch it during quarantine obviously go for it! But the original 1958 novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote, along with the small selection of his short stories that often get bound together in its book form, is next on this list. Capote’s writing is exquisitely crafted, bringing you into the position of a somewhat neutral on-the-shelf but curious observer, with plenty to set your brain ticking.
Crossing the Pacific, Chinese writer Eileen Chang and her 1943 collection of short stories Love in a Fallen City is well worth picking up. Chang is often commended as one of the greatest Chinese 20th Century writers.
There are so many well-crafted, absorbing, challenging, and insightful books from this era. So, here are just a few more mid-century classics for you to catch up on during quarantine / self-isolation:
Guatemalan writer Miguel Ángel Asturias ’ 1946 classic novel The President
’ 1946 classic novel American writer Carson McCullers with her 1946 novel A Member of the Wedding
French-Algerian writer Albert Camus ’ 1947 novel The Plague (although that might sit a bit too close to home at the moment!)
’ 1947 novel (although that might sit a bit too close to home at the moment!) Japanese writer Osamu Dazai ’s 1948 post-war novel No Longer Human, a Japanese modern classic
’s 1948 post-war novel a Japanese modern classic American writer Ernest Hemingway ’s 1951 esteemed novel The Old Man and the Sea (if you haven’t read any Hemingway yet, definitely get into this!)
’s 1951 esteemed novel (if you haven’t read any Hemingway yet, definitely get into this!) British writer William Golding ’s 1954 dystopian novel Lord of the Flies which depicts a group of island marooned preteen boys in their attempt to survive and govern themselves.
’s 1954 dystopian novel which depicts a group of island marooned preteen boys in their attempt to survive and govern themselves. Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe ’s 1958 novel Things Fall Apart is often noted as his greatest work and cited as one of the most-read (if not the most widely read) books within modern African literature
’s 1958 novel is often noted as his greatest work and cited as one of the most-read (if not the most widely read) books within modern African literature South-African writer Es’kia Mphahlele ’s autobiographical 1959 novel Down Second Avenue , banned under apartheid, depicted the author’s struggle for an education and his challenges as a teacher under apartheid
’s autobiographical 1959 novel , banned under apartheid, depicted the author’s struggle for an education and his challenges as a teacher under apartheid American writer Sylvia Plath with her semi-autobiographical 1963 novel The Bell Jar
I hope this gives you some books to add to your TBR, and better yet, some books to enjoy reading while you stay home during this pandemic.
Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash
By the time this is all over, you’ll have caught up on some classic mid-century books — some of which may have been on your TBR for a while while others may have become new additions to your TBR after reading this article.
Happy reading, and be safe and well! | https://medium.com/inspired-writer/catch-up-on-the-classics-during-covid-19-1404be8b0425 | ['Anna Kirkpatrick-Jung'] | 2020-04-23 08:30:27.119000+00:00 | ['Quarantine', 'Reading', 'Covid 19', 'Coronavirus', 'Classics'] |
How coronavirus is driving improvements in online teaching | Yesterday I gave my first online class using an application developed internally at IE University, WoW Home. The result was far superior to the methodology I had been using systematically since the beginning of the pandemic. The WoW Room, which was opened in 2016 and about which I wrote at the time, has a 45 square meter screen made up of 48 smaller monitors mounted in a U-shaped configuration covering 230 degrees, along with cameras with automatic teacher tracking and 1,600 Watt of sound, which we have been using for several years now on several courses. I have used it on numerous occasions, typically to teach students working from different locations around the world, but for other uses as well.
But under the lockdown in Spain as part of the measures to contain the coronavirus pandemic, teachers are largely unable to use any of IE University’s facilities in the Spanish capital. Instead, the little sister of our WoW Room, the so-called WoW in a Box, has taken center stage: like its physical counterpart, it uses HTML5 and WebRTC to create, in a browser window, a virtual classroom that allows the professor to see all his or her students in video windows in real time, along with the presentation or other materials (videos, documents, etc.) that the teacher wishes to share, as well as tools such as real-time surveys, collaborative whiteboard, chat window, breakout rooms, etc.
The WoW in a Box has two versions: Studio, with a computer equipped with a very powerful graphic card and a lot of memory that can visualize a larger number of students and used on large monitors (some of them touch screens) within IE facilities; and Home, limited to a maximum of 37 students in simultaneous visualization, but which, as its name suggests, can be used from home. The layout I prepared yesterday can be seen in the image: on my laptop screen a part of the video wall appears, showing me in the upper left corner and my presentation. The video wall can be extended to see all 42 students in yesterday’s session, or the screen can be used for other resources, with the professor and the students who are speaking remaining visible on the left side of the screen. When a student speaks, his or her microphone is connected, which is muted when he or she is not speaking to prevent background noise.
I put the entire presentation on an additional monitor, so I know where I was at any given time and had some reference to the material as topics arise. One of the characteristics of my classes is that my presentations are not sequential: they are interactive, and I encourage students to interrupt and ask questions, which means that one session is never the same as another.
My students don’t usually take notes. Instead I pose a series of questions I expect them to internalize and understand by asking questions back. For this reason, the challenge of reconstructing this permanent interaction in a virtual environment is even greater, because it is based on a series of feedback cycles: when I ask a question, the students can “raise their hand” by clicking on a button, and I can enlarge the video wall and not only see their faces in real time, but also hear the ideas they want to put forward through the chat, along with a colored indicator of their participation rate during that session.
When the need arose to replace face to face classes with online teaching due to the coronavirus pandemic, IE University initially used Adobe Connect: a popular tool that most teachers know how to use, and which allows them to recreate, even if not completely, an interactive environment. This was to allow students who wanted to attend classes from home because they had been in contact with people with the virus or because they had visited areas at risk. But after we moved all teaching online, we used Adobe Connect to teach, first from empty classrooms, and then from home.
The idea now is to progressively extend the use of WoW in a Box to all courses, thus facilitating a level of interaction that is not simply a substitute for face-to-face classes, but a complete experience that also allows students to better understand virtual environments. Possibly, at some point in the near future, students will be able to attend these classes using virtual reality viewers.
Such a transition requires more than technology. The WoW Box is a clear example of maintaining the interaction that takes place in a classroom, ensuring that teachers and students are comfortable with the new format.
While there was room for improvement, Yesterday’s session showed that this kind of interaction can work. From my kitchen at home, so I could connect by cable to the router, I was able to launch some real-time surveys, see students raising (figuratively) their hands (and being able to remember the order much better than in a face-to-face class, but also deciding that we were going to move to another topic and “lower their hands” in a single click), and the students were able to raise doubts or ask for clarification. An environment, in short, that we could describe as even richer than the face-to-face class itself. After a certain number of uses, in fact, I can imagine myself in a face-to-face class missing some of the resources that I have in my virtual version: This must be the first time in many years of teaching I can say that.
The potential of this approach, as its use becomes more widespread, for example formats such as immersive videos or guest speakers in class, is immense. Even when the lockdown is lifted, I think this is an experience we will want to retain and develop further. | https://medium.com/enrique-dans/how-coronavirus-is-driving-improvements-in-online-teaching-809ee5e39153 | ['Enrique Dans'] | 2020-03-19 18:30:36.280000+00:00 | ['Ie University', 'Education', 'Coronavirus', 'Online Education', 'Teaching'] |
Web-Service for Pharmacists: How Data Science Can Help Pharmacists with Customer Care | People are known to shrink from bureaucratic procedures and get intimidated by the official hospital — or even GP office settings. In many cases, when they seek immediate relief, they go directly to local pharmacies where pharmacists face the need to offer prompt treatment based solely on described complaints. To reinforce the connection between a pharmacy and a patient, we created a system consisting of a pharmacist-oriented web-service and a patient bot service that are connected to a shared database.
Inna Ageeva, CEO at Sciforce, contemplates about the potential impact of the project on the pharmacy-level healthcare:
“In many countries people, when getting ill, go to pharmacies to seek for help. Pharmacists have to take decisions and to help their customers based on the described complains. Our project helps them use country-specific protocols via a web service to better understand the customer’s needs and take appropriate decisions. This product aims to improve health care services at the level of pharmacies and in might be of a big social impact for the countries with limited access to healthcare services”
Pharmacist’s web-service
The web service is based on the digitalized clinical practical guidelines for pharmacists. The database was populated from a variety of sources. For the Ukraine-based prototype, we collected information on medication and recommendations from pharmaceutical protocols approved by the Ministry of Healthcare of Ukraine. Then, we processed international guidelines and extracted information to an intermediate table. Then, we checked whether the medications are registered in Ukraine and whether they are the OTC drugs. We developed convenient algorithms to define symptom treatment and at present our web-service covers 15 symptoms of complete surveys, including online checking of life-threatening conditions.
From the user side, it requires several steps to obtain a recommendation. At first, a pharmacist chooses a symptom and fills in a questionnaire about life-threatening conditions. In case such condition is detected, a message appears suggesting that the patient should address a physician. In other cases, the pharmacist is redirected to the page to determine the symptomatic pharmacotherapy. After the patient’s interview, the system displays a result.
The result consists of several fields that might include patient state or a recommendation to contact a doctor, as well as recommended therapeutic groups and medications from each group and pharmaceutical care messages. Based on the results, a pharmacist can offer a better evidence-based solution, recommend the patient further examination at a healthcare facility, save the results as a medication history, or send a report on adverse effects.
Bot service for patients
The patient bot service we developed is a supplementary service connected to the pharmacist’s web-service that provides patients with information on their medication, including methods of administration and possible interactions. The aim of the service is to help patients with drug adherence and establish a connection between the patient and the pharmacist to enable further explanation and feedback. To get the information for online pharmaceutical care by a bot service, we executed a parsing of the ninth issue of Ukraine’s State Drug Formulary.
How it works
The under-the-hood the system is a multi-component. As a pharmacist fills in the online-survey based on the user’s complaints, the requests are sent to a back-end following by queries to a database to extract the information and record a user session. After that, a patient connects to the bot and inputs the resulting medication to obtain the basic info, causing next requests and queries to the same database.Technologically, we rely on Python and Django framework, and the relational database is developed with PostgreSQL.
According to Olha Marushchak, the author of the project, it is the strong connection between IT and pharmacy that made the project stand out among other outstanding ideas:
“We were the only one to present work that addresses pharmaceutical issues and the only one to work in the field of Information Technology. Most research was done on laboratory animals, especially in endocrinology and neurobiology. There was another girl from Odessa who had very strong statistics, but she did not present it as Data Science. I hope that with our project we raised Ukraine’s rating, showed that we have progressive ideas. We talked about the e-health system and about the medical reform and that our web-service can become a part of the nationwide reforms. We see that our project gets traction, so we plan to work harder and improve it and probably to publish a scientific paper — there is a good chance that it will be accepted by the academia.”
Viktor Kolchenko, who is responsible for the whole technical side of the project, also shares his impressions on being a software developer amid medical professionals: | https://medium.com/sciforce/web-service-for-pharmacists-how-data-science-can-help-pharmacists-with-customer-care-b0f728d37483 | [] | 2019-05-28 11:18:01.679000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence', 'Chatbots', 'Healthcare', 'Pharmaceutical', 'Data Science'] |
Design Documentation — Style Guides and Design Systems | What are Style Guides and Design Systems? The Style Guide establishes the root for visual presentations and a design system connects components, patterns, and visuals together to become one single source of truth for products and brands. Well, something like that and as there are many differences there are similarities as well. Style guides and design systems both save a lot of time and misunderstandings. They both increase the workflow and efficiency of the team. They are both documents with different content, they both have the same purpose — allowing multiple contributors to work consistently to create a consistently awesome experience for people and set a unified voice and tone for a brand.
The question is why don’t we simply call it documentation? Because they are simply just different kinds of documentations contributing to what is mentioned above and a lot more. Well, we can but there is a high probability that at some point we will have to explain the difference between the two in detail. Let’s begin with style guides as they are comparatively concise, compact, and visually viable to understand.
Style Guides
A style guide is a documentation of the guidelines for a brand’s visual and content elements. It defines the visual representation of a brand and establishes the root of its voice and tone. It is a document of the choice of colors, the prominence of the logo, and the language. It’s a document of all things you see, read, and remember about a brand. Companies, Agencies, brands, freelancers, designers, and developers deploy the style guide to avoid wasted time and efforts in bringing the brand’s message together. | https://uxplanet.org/design-documentation-style-guides-and-design-systems-a6e25c655a34 | ['Priyanka J'] | 2020-12-17 09:49:32.723000+00:00 | ['Design Handoff', 'Design Systems', 'Design', 'Style Guides', 'Design Documentation'] |
How to Build Deep Focus Into Your Organizational Culture | How to Build Deep Focus Into Your Organizational Culture
Building deep focus into your organizational culture equips you to grow and adapt to changing market conditions. Here’s how to do it.
Let’s say you’ve developed the habit of flexing your focus muscle. Maybe you’ve adopted certain contemplative practices like mindfulness meditation, or invested in a pair of noise-cancelling headphones that are working wonders for you. Perhaps you’ve taken it a step further and dug deep into our BLOCC framework.
Deep focus — those prolonged periods of time when you focus precisely on what you want to focus on — has become an integral part of your life. You simply can’t imagine going back to those work days of darting in and out between brief moments of focus and long stretches of distracted meandering.
For our free book on deep focus, click here.
Whatever got you to this point, let’s say your confidence is developing and you’ve even communicated to a few of your colleagues how important you think focus is.
In getting this far you’ve already completed the two most difficult steps:
(1) You’ve established a personal practice, and
(2) You’ve created a bridge to bring this practice into your organizational culture.
As such, you’ve internalized this crucial lesson:
Focus isn’t just a state, it’s a practice. (tweet this)
But this is where many of us get stuck. Where to from here? What’s the best way to ensure that the habits you’ve formed can begin to change your organizational culture?
After all, a workplace culture that places a premium on focus is one that will be better equipped both to grow and to adapt when market conditions change.
We are a work-in-progress like everybody else, but here are three ways we’ve been able to build our individual commitments into collective commitments and then (sometimes) into team habits so ingrained we barely think to do them anymore:
1. Take Team Size Seriously.
Deep focus can quickly lose its legs when teams are huge and the completion of a seemingly simple task has to go through too many people. This year our team grew significantly, which meant new teams were formed and existing teams now had additional teammates.
While we were ecstatic to hire such incredible people, we also made sure to keep top-of-mind how our own research has aligned with other research in the field to find this:
5–7 member teams are typically the most productive. (tweet this)
This number tends to be where workplace productivity peaks; it’s just the right amount of smart minds and different perspectives, without becoming a distracting party or a time-consuming drain just to make basic decisions.
Evaluate the size of your teams and the nature of their work to see if you can bring them down to an optimal size. This is especially important during those periods of growth when the excitement of bringing new talent on board can cloud the important process of reflecting on your existing project management methodologies.
Likewise, this clouding can happen when projects become more complex. It’s often our first instinct to think, Well, our team must grow to meet this increasing complexity.
But there’s a good chance, when you take a step back, that you’ll realize how you can meet that complexity more efficiently not by growing a team but by splitting it up.
2. Assess task focus and project focus.
And realize that all deep focus at work is not created equal.
In The Two Ways We Lose Focus at Work, Mark Nichols summarized task focus and project focus like this:
Sometimes, we’re losing focus in the moment, at the task level. This is when we’ve decided exactly what we’re going to work on, but we just can’t bring ourselves to get it done. This is a loss of task focus…. If lost task focus is the inability to hunker down and complete a task, lost project focus is the inability to even pick that task.”
Few of us as individuals have mastered the art of task focus and project focus, so what does this mean when we add in the complex dynamics of working on a team?
It means chaos, usually, and that it’s ultra-important to put a process in place so that everybody is on the same page.
Robin Kwong, Special Projects Editor at The Financial Times, told us he believes project clarity at the outset is paramount. Kwong makes sure each individual member of his team, before beginning any project, knows exactly what they should work on, when they should work on it, and why they are working on it in this particular order.
It seems simple, but this team-based ability to seriously organize task and project focus before pursuit of the larger goal means that each member of the team can establish deep focus because they know precisely what they should be working on.
It also means focus, depending on the influence of your particular team, is to some degree becoming embedded into the fabric of your organizational culture.
This strategy works for Kwong in one of the world’s preeminent business and economic newsrooms, it works for us, and we believe it (or some variant thereof) will work for you.
3. Establish focus signals.
This one can be as fun and creative as it is important.
As individual commitments to deep focus start rolling out, it’s important to grow them into habits (especially if you’re working in an open layout) that allow you to easily and quickly identify whether or not your colleagues are in deep focus.
Some teams signify this simply by wearing headphones. If an individual is wearing headphones, it’s a signal to their team that they are going deep.
Another focus signal can simply be sitting and working together.
In an open layout office, for example, members of a team within a tech company may be spread all over the workplace. They may communicate primarily through an app. But to avoid shoulder nudges from other members of the company, and otherwise make sure everybody knows that they’re focusing with their team, creating a signal by sitting together can do the trick — and through presentation alone can build deep focus into a part of your organizational culture.
As we have remote employees at Flow, and as many of our customers do as well, we needed a way to create a focus signal that worked for everybody. So we created a switch within our app called “Focus Mode.”
When an individual switches it on, all employees at the company know that that employee is focusing. Messages won’t be delivered to the focusing teammate until Focus Mode is switched off.
The possibilities for creating focus signals are limited only by your creativity, but we’ve found them to be an important component for simultaneously achieving and communicating the state of focus we’re in.
Truth is, focus is rarely brought up in discussions around organizational culture. But with important books like Group Genius from Dr. Keith Sawyer (which brings the individual concept of Flow State into the context of teams) paving the way for new books like Deep Work from Cal Newport, we think all signs are pointing to how business success will increasingly depend on a company’s collective ability to focus.
***
People illustrations: Jacob Dewey | https://medium.com/flow/how-to-build-deep-focus-into-your-organizational-culture-ef840ea62ce6 | [] | 2017-02-17 01:16:52.571000+00:00 | ['Leadership', 'Productivity', 'Management'] |
String Theory | how does a panic attack begin ?
nowhere like a wave deep out at sea
or like the wave which hides inside and
the smallest particles of matter or strings
which write the allegory of the cosmos
rain chant ring charm rain all day rain
when I close my eyes I wonder if I am imagining
it if I’m still asleep under the covers like a
dead man like a dead thing forgotten or
sleeping giant in a cave part of the mythical
cycle spring to winter
summer to fall birth to death | https://no-valis.medium.com/string-theory-446760032d6b | [] | 2019-01-02 17:15:44.588000+00:00 | ['Ideas', 'Poetry', 'Poetry On Medium', 'Dreams', 'Psychology'] |
Grief is Not A Choice | There is a common theme that comes up, like clockwork, in the various parental grief support groups I belong to on Facebook.
It goes something like this: someone will describe an encounter they had with a dear friend or a trusted therapist or a family member (people who generally have the griever’s best interest at heart). This person will advise the bereaved that it’s time to stop grieving.
The sentiment comes in a variety of flavors. I’ll paraphrase a few of them:
It’s time to move on.
Your child would want you to be happy.
You can have another baby.
Let him or her go. (I wish I was kidding with this one)
You need to get over it.
This is just a bump in the road.
You can choose to embrace life and be happy.
All of the above statements, but especially the last one, imply that grieving is a choice, that one can simply choose to be done with it.
This brand of advice is rampant no matter the age of the child or the cause of death. When a grieving parent hears some version of “it’s time to move on” from a well-meaning friend or relative, particularly someone who we expect will understand our level of pain, it feels hurtful and dismissive. It can even feel like a betrayal.
This topic comes up so frequently in closed Facebook groups because many parents aren’t comfortable posting to their own feeds about the level of pain we’re in, so we retreat to the safety and solidarity of our fellow bereaved.
I also suspect that for some of us, the belief that there is an acceptable way to grieve (which includes a fixed time limit) is so ingrained in our psyche that it’s hard not to feel like a failure or a freak when you still find yourself grieving and heartbroken over the course of many years. | https://jacquelinedooley.medium.com/grief-is-not-a-choice-e6ac7b4b4eaf | ['Jacqueline Dooley'] | 2019-10-06 15:43:11.236000+00:00 | ['Death', 'Self', 'Mental Health', 'Grief', 'Parenting'] |
What’s New in Revit 2021 | Welcome to Revit 2021. If you have been using the software for a while you will likely find moments of excitement with some of the new features (yay slanted walls!) while disappointment for a lack of others (search a hashtag or two on Twitter for some good grumbles). There’s a lot of what one would call minor tweaks, and I would say overall this is a good thing. Sure, there’s a lot Revit could do great, but it’s been doing a lot good for at least a decade, and until there’s a significant shift in the industry it’s still the most relevant BIM software out there.
In this post we are going to focus on Architecture specific features because that is the expertise of STEREO. We are also going to avoid diving into the new Generative Design features or Dynamo 2.5, as those things really require an in-depth exploration we will go into in later posts. So let’s look now at the features that are going to affect the way you work in Revit on a daily basis.
Linking PDFs
Aligned Tags
Striped Schedules
Turning Off Filters
Slanted Walls
Void Parameters
Survey Units
There’s some good stuff there! Hopefully it will help make your day-to-day workflow a little smoother. Anything new in Revit you’d be interested to see us go in-depth on? Let us know! | https://medium.com/paper-architecture/whats-new-in-revit-2021-172f839ca625 | ['Dan Edleson'] | 2020-04-15 05:25:36.475000+00:00 | ['Revit', 'Design', 'Bim', 'Autodesk', 'Architecture'] |
12 Ways to Begin 2021 With a Bang! | 1. Write down your vision
While setting goals and New-Years resolutions is not uncommon, going the extra mile to create a compelling VISION is very underrated!
The more precise you can be about what you want out of 2021 — the easier and more likely it becomes for you to achieve it.
Sit down for 10–15 minutes and imagine it’s the end of 2021. If this was your most fruitful year thus far, what would it look like? What would you have achieved? Who would you have become? How would you feel?
See what comes up and write it down as if it already happened. Don’t be afraid to dream big. The next 12 months are yours to create!
2. Go on a social-media fast
It’s easy to fall into your old patterns and habits if you always distract yourself with Facebook, Twitter or Instagram!
By refraining from social media for at least 2–3 days, you can dive deeper into setting your intentions and focusing on what’s most important to you.
Whether it’s your health; your relationships or business — take some time away from this busy digital world and zoom-in on what truly matters!
3. Unclutter your home
Living up to a new standard will naturally be difficult if your home is a mess!
Even if it’s organized, but filled with random objects you accumulated over the years — all this extra stuff can distract you and dampen your mind.
By getting rid of everything that’s no longer needed, you make space for something fresh!
4. Build a new habit
Pick a habit that will serve you well in 2021. Create a simple habit-tracker on paper; or use one of the many habits tracking apps such as Habitica, Habitify, Coach. me or Strides… Complete the habit as early as possible each day — and watch your confidence grow as you pile-up those check-marks!
5. Try a new sport or activity
A great way to vigorously kick-start this year is to try something new with your body. Whether it’s a new workout regime or a sport you’ve never tried before — get out of your comfort zone!
With lockdowns and restrictions worldwide, body-weight training methods like running, yoga or calisthenics can bring a breath of fresh air into your life.
6. Commit to a new diet
We can all eat just a bit better, cleaner or more mindfully…
Pick a dieting regime that suits your goals and values; or do some research and set-up your own eating parameters. Choose how you want to eat and stick to it for at least 2–3 months to see and feel the results!
7. Start a journal
Journaling is one of the oldest self-development tools known to man…
By emptying the contents of your mind and putting them on paper, you radically decrease your stress levels and increase mental clarity! There are many ways to journal — but let’s keep that for another time.
8. Build a passion project
If you have extra time on your hands and want to create an additional stream of income, start plotting a strategy for this new venture.
It doesn’t have to be complicated:
Brainstorm at least 10 ideas for how you could help other people through a mixture of your passions and skills. Pick 1-3 ideas that seem the most realistic, yet exciting. Look at the existing alternatives and businesses similar to your idea. Find and interview the potential buyers to understand their needs, desires, etc. As you distill your idea, create a prototype of your product or service. Find the most simple, cost-free way to test it and get relevant feedback. Adjust it based on the feedback and try to sell it!
9. Sign-up for a course
Whatever you want to change in 2021 — there’s a course for it.
It doesn’t matter if it’s losing weight, making more money, or learning to play guitar. Somewhere there’s a person who’s done it before — and they can help you!
You just have to identify what is it you want to learn this year and then go out and find the right course for you. Before you purchase, see if you like the teaching style and check out the curriculum to see if it targets your specific needs or challenges.
10. Hire a coach
Building on the previous point, hiring a coach is another great way to make sure you hit your goals for 2021 with ease and clarity. The process here is simple:
Pick a goal — perhaps something you’ve been struggling with or putting off for a while… Find someone who’s qualified (experienced) and willing to help you. Book a call with them to see if they are the right fit for you. Commit — both mentally and financially!
11. Curate your morning routine
The first hour upon waking up sets the momentum for the rest of your day…
And what is a year but an accumulation of 365 days?
If you make sure to begin each of those days with as much intention as possible, you will be set for success in 2021.
For instance, you could drink a glass of water and do some physical activity for your body; journal or read to expand your mind, or perhaps meditate and practice gratitude to uplift your spirit…
Whatever it is — try to build a positive momentum within the 1st hour of your day. The results may blow your mind. You can thank me later…
12. Do something epic
This last one is less of a tactic and more of a mindset.
Stop waiting around for things to change. Go change them. Be the change.
Don’t wait to see what 2021 has in store for you. Instead, what do YOU have in store for it?!
Try to do something BIG. Even if you fail — you will learn something. If you succeed (at least partially) — you build momentum. Either way, you will come out on the other side wiser, stronger, and more experienced in life!
2021 is the time to step into your greatness — one day at a time…
Start today. | https://medium.com/live-your-life-on-purpose/12-ways-to-begin-2021-with-a-bang-474faf0063c1 | ['Holistic Dan'] | 2020-12-28 01:38:28.547000+00:00 | ['Personal Development', 'Personal Growth', 'Motivation', 'Self Improvement', 'Inspiration'] |
Upgrade your Image Classifier with Balanced data | Upgrade your Image Classifier with Balanced data
How preprocessing & stratification can do wonders to image classifier performance
FER
This article walks you through the data munging techniques to refine the machine learning models for image classifiers, particularly facial emotion recognition. The R notebook containing the source code is available in the GitHub link here
In this project the ‘facial emotion recognition’ dataset, from the Kaggle competition Challenges in Representation Learning: Facial Expression Recognition Challenge is used. The data consists of 27000 training images (48 x 48 pixels of faces almost centred so that all the faces extend over equal spaces in the image ) and a test set containing 9000 images. This is a classification task is to categorize each image to one of seven classes (0=Angry, 1=Disgust, 2=Fear, 3=Happy, 4=Sad, 5=Surprise, 6=Neutral).
I tried several algorithms including Nearest Neighbour, Bayesian Classifiers, Decision Trees and Neural Networks to build machine learning model for the task. But, none of them was returning success rate above 30%. That left me wondering what went wrong and how to approach this task differently. Recently I came across an article by one of the top performers of the Plant Seedlings Classification Challenge, that suggests the readers deal with the imbalanced class problem before classifying the images.
In this article, I would explain how I built a better Image classifier with decision tree algorithm using clean balanced data and visualizations.
Step1: Explore the data
On visualizing the distribution of each class in the dataset, we understand that the dataset is heavily imbalanced.
A dataset is described as imbalanced if the classes are not represented approximately equal. [1]
Distribution of classes
There are more than 7000 ‘Happy ’images whereas the number of ‘Disgust’ images is less than 500. This would result in a biased classifier that predicts most of the images as majority class.
Popular algorithms like Decision Tree and Logistic Regression have a bias towards majority classes in the dataset [2]
To understand the complexity of the algorithm, I applied the technique t-Distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (t-SNE), which is considered the best approach to visualize high dimensional data.
t-SNE is a technique for the visualization of similarity data that is capable of retaining the local structure of the data while also revealing some important global structure such as clusters at multiple scales [3] t-SNE that visualizes high-dimensional data by giving each data point a location in a two or three-dimensional map[3]
The tSNE visualization of the original dataset shows us little insight into the class structure of the data.
t-SNE Original Dataset
Step 2: Partitioning
Next step is to partition the training dataset to train set & validation set. The validation set would be used for tuning and the final model will be evaluated using the test dataset
Step 3: Creating a benchmark classifier
The benchmark provides a basis for evaluating and comparing algorithms for learning from examples. [4]
If we create a benchmark classifier at this stage, the performance would be less than 27 %.
Benchmark Classifier Results
Step 4: Data Preprocessing
On Visualizing a random instance, it’s evident that the image is horizontally aligned and some amount of noise is also present as background.
Preprocessing methods normalises the image acquired from uncontrolled environments. [5]
Therefore all the images are first rotated & cropped as shown in the fig below.
Fig: Sample Image (i) Original (ii) Rotated (iii) Cropped
The instances are then centred and scaled to the range {0.8, 1.2}. The distribution of values in each pixel before and after the transformation can be plotted as.
Distribution of values in each pixel
Step 5: Feature extraction
Well, this is a high dimensional dataset with 2304 features. To reduce the dimensions, we can use the most widely used technique PCA.
Principal component analysis (PCA) is a statistical procedure that uses an orthogonal transformation to convert a set of observations of possibly correlated variables (entities each of which takes on various numerical values) into a set of values of linearly uncorrelated variables called principal components. [6]
PCA Output
From the PCA summary its clear that the first 25 principal components hold more than 80% of the data.
PCA Summary
The tSNE visualization after PCA is strikingly better, but most of the classes are mapped somewhat proximate and not categorized with clarity.
t-SNE PC 1–25
The same preprocessing steps and the orthogonal rotation from PCA are applied to the validation data and test data
Step 5: Stratification
In this step, we will deal with the imbalanced class problem in the train data.
SMOTE is an oversampling approach in which the minority class is over-sampled by creating “synthetic” examples rather than by over-sampling with replacement [1]
A combination of the synthetic oversampling of minority class (SMOTE)and random undersampling of the majority class, will give a nice balanced train data which can then be used to build a classifier that performs better. This is evident from the tSNE visualization of the new train data below
t-SNE Balanced Data
Step 6: Classification
We build a classifier using the prepared train data. From the Confusion matrix of the model, we could see that the overall accuracy has improved and is nearly 60 %.
Confusion matrix — Classifier trained using the processed data
Step 7: Hyper parameter tuning
By tweaking the complexity parameter (cp) we can reduce the relative error as shown in the plot below
Variation in Relative error with complexity parameter
Step 8: Build the final model
The last step is to build the final model with the tuned parameter (cp value with minimum Xval-Relative Error) and evaluate it using the test data.
The confusion matrix stats say the classifier performance has improved dramatically and the overall accuracy is greater than 90 %. Other performance metrics such as sensitivity, specificity etc too is better.
Confusion Matrix — Final model
Other Performance metrics comparison for various classes
Conclusion
The preprocessing, dimensionality reduction & balancing the dataset improved the performance of the decision tree classifier remarkably from 27% to 91%. Visualizing the high dimensional data using tSNE can give you a better idea of the distribution of classes, which can help significantly in preprocessing the data that can be used to build a better classifier.
References
[1] N. Chawla, K. Bowyer, L. Hall and W. Kegelmeyer, SMOTE: Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique (2002), Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 16, pp.321–357.
[2] Guest Blog, How to handle Imbalanced Classification Problems in machine learning (2017), [Blog] Analytics Vidhya
[3] L. van der Maaten and G.Hinton, Visualizing Data using t-SNE (2008), Journal of Machine Learning Research, 9, pp.2579–2605.
[4] Z. ZHENG, A benchmark for Classifier Learning (1993), In Australian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. World Scientific, pp.281–286.
[5] M.G. Sumithra and P. Rajeswari, A Survey: Pre Processing techniques for Facial Expression Recognition (2015), International Journal on Applications of Information and Communication Engineering Volume 1: Issue 1: January 2015, Pages:47–51, 1(1), pp.47–51.
[6] En.wikipedia.org, Principal component analysis (2018), [online] Wikipedia | https://towardsdatascience.com/upgrade-your-image-classifier-with-balanced-data-ddea93859c0f | ['Nishna Ajmal'] | 2018-12-23 13:36:31.453000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Visualization', 'Image Classification', 'Data Cleaning', 'Towards Data Science'] |
The Latest: Spotify signs a three-year exclusive licensing deal with Joe Rogan (May 26, 2020) | The Latest: Spotify signs a three-year exclusive licensing deal with Joe Rogan (May 26, 2020)
Subscribe to The Idea, a weekly newsletter on the business of media, for more news, analysis, and interviews.
THE NEWS
Spotify has signed an exclusive three-year licensing deal worth $100 million for The Joe Rogan Experience. The show is one of the most popular podcasts in the world with more than 190 million downloads per month. The podcast (and its archive), which had previously not been available on Spotify, will be available on the platform starting September 1 and become exclusive by the end of the year.
SO WHAT
Spotify has been investing heavily in podcasting in search of higher margins: Its contracts with record labels limit its profits from music subscriptions, so it’s hoping podcasts will diversify its audio offerings, and subsequently revenue. Though it will not be selling ads against the Joe Rogan Experience (Rogan is sticking with his previous agency, PMM), Spotify is betting that the show being exclusive to its platform will attract new listeners who will go on to become subscribers to its Premium product.
Spotify has used this exclusive-license arrangement in the past to bring fans of specific personalities like Joe Budden and Jemele Hill to its platform, with the hope of making it their new portal for all podcasts. Through these deals, it receives increased ad revenue from the consumption of other podcasts as well as some benefit from reducing churn of existing subscribers.
Spotify’s licensing approach stands in contrast to its acquisitions strategy, which has included big-name podcast production firms Gimlet Media and The Ringer. In those cases, audio content was not made exclusive to the platform whole-sale. Spotify instead focused on incremental ad revenue to help its margins and aimed to acquire new users with “ancillary, exclusive content like Gimlet Academy and extra Reply All episodes” as well as releasing episodes a few days before they were made available on other platforms.
The Joe Rogan Experience exclusivity deal also applies to Rogan’s “vodcasts” — video of podcast tapings — but Spotify will still allow short clips to be posted on YouTube to continue to reach and convert new listeners. Video versions of his interviews on YouTube have been key to discovery, particularly for audiences that don’t already listen to podcasts, thanks to viral clips.
LOOK FOR
What this means for video content in the app, given the news last week that Spotify is experimenting with video podcasts. It may also increase its ability to sign exclusive deals with YouTubers, as it did with the hosts of Mom’s Basement and given that Rogan had explicitly cited YouTube revenue as a reason for not joining Spotify earlier.
Spotify’s video podcast feature partly serves to smooth converting listeners used to consuming podcasts on YouTube. It is also another way of engaging and retaining its audiences: eMarketer recently found that video streaming of audio content has increased markedly while audio-only streaming has declined during the pandemic. Video would also open the door to higher-priced video ads.
How others respond to Spotify’s continued podcast spending. Bloomberg reported that both Apple and Amazon are pushing further into buying original podcasts; Amazon’s audiobook service, Audible, has already purchased shows from comedians Kevin Hart and Tiffany Haddish. | https://medium.com/the-idea/the-latest-spotify-signs-a-three-year-exclusive-licensing-deal-with-joe-rogan-may-26-2020-28e158679baf | ['Saanya Jain'] | 2020-05-26 21:36:48.933000+00:00 | ['Podcast', 'Media', 'The Latest', 'Streaming', 'Journalism'] |
Return Unused Pharmaceuticals to the Drug Store, Not on the Streets | Return Unused Pharmaceuticals to the Drug Store, Not on the Streets
I could have made $50,000 and chose not to.
Image By David Smart | Shutterstock
Before my uncle died, Donald amassed two extra-large garbage bags full of narcotics. He had clear vinyl bags of unused liquid morphine, boxes of Fentanyl patches, bottles of Ativan, Scopolamine, and of course, Percocet and Oxycodone. My uncle acquired sizeable quantities of drugs to ease his ever-increasing pain from terminal bone cancer, one of the most severe forms.
Donald wasn’t interested in taking pain medication and lived the majority of his time in denial of his medical condition, until close to the end when the threshold became unbearable. Over six months, his stockpile grew to a considerable size.
Two days before my uncle’s death, the palliative care doctor visited the family farm, where Donald remained throughout his illness. He recognized time was close. After a candid discussion with the doctor, I provided consent for Donald to wear a strong Fentanyl patch knowing in a matter of a few hours he would go into a state where we would never speak again. The decision broke my heart, given the close bond my uncle and I shared.
A few days later, on April 3, 2014, my uncle died. And for a while after Donald’s passing, I believed I had killed him. In reality, all I did was speed up the inevitable.
Image by Dangergirl Photography | The writer with her uncle Donald in 2012
It was mid-April 2014 when I sat at Donald’s farm, looking at the garbage bags. With the number of people at the farm, my first step was to hide the pharmaceuticals until I was less emotional and regained the ability to think with a clear mind. Time progressed, and it dawned on me, no one called to retrieve the narcotics — neither the Cancer Centre, the family doctor, nor the pharmacy. The plethora of drugs had fallen through the cracks of the system.
Up until his late fifties, Donald was a heavy smoker. And toward the end, he struggled to find his breath and required oxygen to sleep. Donald’s family doctor provided enough oxygen canisters to sustain a small army. Given I was his Power of Attorney for health and live-in primary caregiver for the last three months of his life, at times, I felt mental and physical exhaustion.
I’m not going to lie; there were moments in the evening when I sucked back concentrated oxygen to keep myself alert.
During a brief period, I became sleep-deprived and out of sheer frustration, popped Ativan. After this, my body shut down, and sleep took over. The drug messed with my internal clock, and in rapid succession, I halted taking the pills. It took four days to feel normal again, and for my body to stop craving, what I discovered, is a highly addictive drug and a potent benzodiazepine.
Image by Dangergirl Photography | Donald Bradburn, happy times 2012
The garbage bags remained hidden for an entire summer. Sometimes I forgot about them. Other moments, I’d wander past the closet where the narcotics were kept and remember. When the season edged toward fall, I decided to consult a man, who, we’ll call Jake. He had the pulse coupled with connections and provided me with an estimate of 60K (CAD) street value. Jake was willing to take the drugs off my hands, sell them, take a cut, and leave me with 50K.
Fifty-thousand Canadian dollars is a down-payment on a condo. It is a luxurious heli-skiing trip in the Western Rockies. Or the ability to go off the grid and recover from the guilt and pain from Donald’s death.
Fifty-thousand dollars also had the potential to become blood-money. Even if I was an indirect participant, the sale of the narcotics could kill a person and destroy the lives of those around them.
The next day, I drove the two heavy garbage bags to the local drugstore and offloaded the pile onto a stunned pharmacist. After the initial shock wore off, she took the drugs, and with a polite tone, thanked me, her head tilted to the side and mouth slightly open as I jetted off before questions were asked.
My story is familiar. Every day, narcotics are leftover from the death of a loved one. Unrecouped pharmaceuticals, if fallen into the wrong hands, can cause severe addiction or death. Where my story deviates is the sheer amount of drugs I held in my possession.
There is hope. Resources in Canada and the United States offer prescription drug return initiatives with the sole purpose of keeping narcotics off the street.
If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, look beyond the bank account. In this experience, I discovered the boundaries of my values, principals, and morals. Today I’m able to live with myself knowing I made the right decision and most likely spared the lives of people I will never get the chance to meet.
Resources
More like this: | https://medium.com/beingwell/return-unused-pharmaceuticals-to-the-drug-store-not-on-the-streets-54a77214ef14 | ['Lisa Bradburn'] | 2020-06-12 22:01:55.077000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Drugs', 'Ethics', 'This Happened To Me', 'Medical'] |
I Tried Jordan Peterson’s Self-Assessment to Understand My Career Trajectory | Why are some people successful — and others in spite of brains, talent and a pleasant character seem to struggle with their careers?
This question has puzzled me for a while and I wanted to find answers. There have been many gurus and approaches who tried to explain the determining factor for success. Grit, passion, discipline, practice — books have been written on these topics, but they never seemed to explain what I observed.
I knew people who were highly successful after changing sectors — so they lacked practice and insights in their new field. I know people who make a lot of money — but secretly loathe their job — so it can’t be passion.
Psychometrics indicate how you will (probably) perform
Digging into the research, I found correlations between IQ and income. But what caught my attention was the field of psychometrics — the scientific attempt to measure personality. As you can imagine, measuring such a complex and dynamic subject as a personality can be incredibly tricky. Often, the results can be misleading.
When measuring personality, researchers give you a questionnaire with items on your typical behaviors. You read statements and have to click on the scale of agreement. In recent years, the Myers-Briggs test, which has been converted to 16personalities.com became widely popular. Again, you fill out a questionnaire and receive a personality description — people are categorized into 16 personalities based on the factors of extraversion — introversion, sensing — intuition, thinking — feeling and judgement — perception.
The test is quirky and fun — and relatively accurate (FYI: I’m the “campaigner”). However, there seems to be a lot of criticism on that model, as you can see in the following video:
Therefore, I searched for another method and came across the Big 5 — a personality model based on the factors of extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism and openness. The model seems to be the most accurate when it comes to finding accurate correlations.
The controversial Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan B. Peterson has conducted a fair amount of research on the topic and offers a detailed test online. Peterson has become a public figure with various groups taking offense in his statements about gender and identity — but for the matter of this article, I’ll leave this battle out.
Be honest to yourself
While I initially tried to understand the success of others, my perspective changed to understanding myself. This is crucial as in the case of your very own career, it is easy to try to copy the success stories of others or blame management for lack of prosperity, when the truth often lies in yourself. You cannot copy another person, because you are yourself — your individual path to success depends on your own personality and approach towards the world.
On understandmyself.com you can take the personality assessment for 10 Dollars to receive quite a detailed description of how you function. The great advantage is that it is accessible and comprehensible — you don’t need a psychology degree to understand the test or the results. They are tangible.
After taking the test, you will receive insights of the Big 5 and two sub-aspects:
Agreeableness includes Compassion and Politeness
Conscientiousness includes Industriousness and Orderliness
Extraversion includes Enthusiasm and Assertiveness
Neuroticism includes Withdrawal and Volatility
Openness to Experience includes Intellect and Openness
My results weren’t surprising — except for a few details that matter.
I scored very high on the openness to experience scale.
My industriousness was high too, but I only scored low on orderliness, which does not make me exceptionally industrious. And it is true — orderliness in this sense is connected to creating order and routines, while I’ve always enjoyed loose schedules and spontaneity. While women on average score higher in orderliness than men — that is not the case with me.
So what do such results tell you about your career?
They indicate what might fit better for you. You can train yourself to balance out some of the shortcomings of each trait — but it requires a lot of effort and forcing your change into drastic change might not be worth it if it is against your nature.
Based on these results, I will never become the CEO of a corporation. That’s fine for me. However, I can be mindful about my deficits and push myself to create more stability. I formulated a clear goal to manage my schedule better with slots which are dedicated to work, private life and me-time. It’s a baby step, but changes don’t come overnight.
However, with high scores un extraversion and very high scores in openness to experience, I should cater to those traits and use them beneficially. As it fits my personality, I regularly try to meet new inspiring people for a coffee — this brings me novelty and feeds into the extraversion. Additionally, I make it a habit to be creative — this means to establish a writing routine (and become more orderly by it) to satisfy the need to stimulate my mind and learn more. Many writers — regardless if professional or not — will understand the urge to write and the effect if you withdraw from it. It’s not good.
Stop copying others!
Such self-assessments are made for people who are genuinely interested in their self-growth. You won’t like every result — but you shouldn’t be offended by your own personality. Every trait comes with benefits and challenges. Jordan Peterson often says:
“Pick your sacrifice!”
If you are mindful about your skills and shortcomings, it will be easier to navigate through your life. My main interest lies in my professional development when I assess myself, but I know that my traits affect every other aspect of my life — family, relationships, hobbies.
While the internet is full of success advice and obsessive analysis of high achievers, you might want to adapt some tactics — but you cannot adopt an entire personality. You might not become the most successful or richest person — but it’s good enough to own the path that is made for you. Stop copying others and walk the extra mile in finding what genuinely fits you. Good luck! | https://alicegreschkow.medium.com/i-tried-jordan-petersons-self-assessment-to-understand-my-career-trajectory-4b69fa0204ec | ['Alice Greschkow'] | 2020-09-15 13:28:11.167000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Self', 'Success', 'Careers', 'Psychology'] |
How to write your own Domain Specific Language in Python | Photo by Charl Folscher on Unsplash
In my quest to find investment insights I decided to automate the boring stuff and simplify backtesting of financial strategies.
I started creating a textual interface for financial backtesting with a few priorities in mind. I wanted it to be simple to use but adaptable to the complexity of financial strategies.
I decided to first define a formal grammar that will serve as a stepping stone towards a fully natural language interface. I ultimately want to be able to describe a trading strategy in words, allowing for missing elements, ambiguities and all the goodies of our spoken interactions, and obtain in return a well defined backtest.
Finally, the objective of this post is not that of discussing the benefits or fallacies of backtesting. But to give an overview on how to create your own Domain Specific Language using a Parsing Expression Grammar (PEG).
Why PEG
The choice fell on a PEG grammar and parser generator, for several reasons:
friends and peers recommended it
increasing popularity, see e.g. Guido Van Rossum’s series on PEG parsers
tooling and their perceived ease of use, e.g. 竜 TatSu
and finally, I liked the idea of using the Extended Backus-Naur Form (EBNF) meta-grammar to define my language, although this is not PEG specific
Also, since I wanted to focus on the language definition, I avoided hand-writing the parser. So, I used 竜 TatSu, which generates the parser from the EBNF grammar.
Why not regular expressions
Trading strategies have a finite set of defining components, so you might ask yourself why not use regular expressions to isolate them in a textual description?
While it sounds like an easy win, I decided against it and the reason is two-fold: first, I still needed to define which strategies I would support initially and how I would grow this set while controlling the complexity of the language.
Second, the premonition in “Why you can’t parse HTML with regex” by bobince strongly resonated with what I am trying to accomplish here 😅. Arguably, that’s the best answer on Stack Overflow and a foundational piece that any software engineer should at least read once!
In other words, I felt that regular expressions would have ended in a mess of edge cases stacked together in Jenga style, and waiting to crumble under the faintest change of a fundamental premise.
A simple grammar
The best way to describe what the formal grammar for backtesting can accomplish is through an example:
BUY TSLA IF SMA(5) > SMA(50)
That statement encapsulates the following cross-over strategy:
Buy Tesla if the 5-period Simple Moving Average of its prices crosses the 50-period moving average. Close the position, or go short, if the opposite condition is triggered.
The idea, is that a sharp change in the fast moving average indicates the beginning of a trend in the direction of the cross-over. So, if it crosses the slow moving average from below, then it should indicate an increasing trend, and a decreasing one in a downward cross-over.
And here is the final result in action:
An input box sends the text to the PEG parser which checks the syntax and provides meaningful feedback. Once the statement is validated, I create a backtest with plots and metrics. Network latency aside this happens in near real-time.
The grammar that defines statements like the initial example is listed below (a variation of the EBNF form):
@@grammar::BAAS
@@ignorecase::True start = statement $ ; statement
=
buysell asset if_expr [qualifier]
; buysell
=
'buy' | 'sell'
; asset
=
/[\w\.-]+/
; if_expr
=
'if' indicator binop indicator
; indicator
=
/\w+/ '(' number ')'
; number
=
/\d+/
; binop
=
'<=' | '<' | '>=' | '>'
; qualifier
=
'longonly' | 'shortonly'
;
To see it in action, save the above as base.ebnf (name and extension don't really matter) and have a python environment with TatSu installed (or pip install tatsu first) and execute from the command line:
tatsu --generate-parser base.ebnf --outfile base_parser.py
Then in python:
from base_parser import BAASParser text = 'BUY TESLA IF SMA(5) > SMA(50)'
parser = BAASParser()
parser.parse(text)
Which produces the following output:
['buy', 'TESLA',
['if',
['SMA', '(', '5', ')'],
'>',
['SMA', '(', '50', ')']
]
]
The output is now organized but not truly usable without the knowledge of the statement grammar. I’ll show how we can improve on that in a later section that explains how to annotate the parsed elements.
Grammar in detail
Before annotating or refining the grammar, let’s go over its rules.
The first two lines are TatSu directives:
@@grammar::BAAS
@@ignorecase::True
They specify the name of the grammar — BAAS — which determines the name of the parser, i.e. BAASParser , and the case sensitivity of the parser, which I set to case-insensitive.
Then, the first rule, which needs to be called start is:
start = statement $ ;
and simply says that some text input is valid if it is a statement followed by the end-of-input $ , or in other words by nothing else. I chose to follow TatSu’s examples and keep the start rule essential.
The statement rule is where I define the high-level structure of the whole language:
statement = buysell asset if_expr [qualifier] ;
that is, we buy or sell something if a certain condition is verified. The qualifier is an optional argument (enclosed by square brackets) to handle long-only strategies.
I spent most of my time deciding how a trading rule should read when spelled out in this language. I wanted it to be intuitive, comprehensive and extensible.
The buysell rule is:
buysell = 'buy' | 'sell' ;
that is the statement must begin with the literal buy or sell .
The asset is any supported ticker:
asset = /[\w\.-]+/ ;
which is a regular expression matching letters, number, underscores, dots or hyphens, e.g. BTC-USD.
While I stated that I want to avoid regular expressions, there is always a good measure and context for any tool. Specifically, I don’t want to handle parser context with positional anchors or look-ahead/behind assertions. Alternatively, I could rewrite the rule as:
asset = 'a' | 'b' | 'c' | ... ;
all the way to include the whole alphabet, numbers and some punctuation in the same fashion as the EBNF — Examples on Wikipedia show. However, this would make the grammar very noisy and I doubt it would actually be a performance gain in Python.
The if condition is the core of the trading strategy:
if_expr = 'if' indicator binop indicator ;
and it should start with an if and have a single comparison rule of two technical indicators. I kept it very basic on purpose to avoid introducing left-recursion.
The comparison is captured by binop which can be any of the literals:
binop = '<=' | '<' | '>=' | '>'
and it establishes an inequality rule.
The indicator rule in the conditional expression is defined as the name of the technical indicator and a numeric parameter enclosed in brackets:
indicator = /\w+/ '(' number ')' ;
And the number is:
number = /\d+/ ;
Both the indicator name and its parameter are regular expressions where the same caveats apply as for the asset rule.
Finally, the qualifier is simply:
qualifier = 'longonly' | 'shortonly' ;
In other words, the statement rule can end with the literal longonly ( shortonly ) to denote a strategy that can only buy (sell) the asset.
Parsing errors
TatSu generates a parser that is capable of meaningful parsing errors. However, the error message depends on the organization of your rules.
For instance, when I parse the statement with the missing parameter:
BUY TSLA IF SMA( > SMA(50)
I get the following error:
tatsu.exceptions.FailedParse: (1:17) Expecting <number> :
BUY TSLA IF SMA( > SMA(50)
^
Notice how the arrowhead is exactly positioned under the missing parameter. That’s because the number is a separate rule. However, if I were to incorporate the number into the indicator in the following way:
indicator = /\w+/ '(' /\d+/ ')' ;
then the error would only recognize an incomplete indicator, instead of the missing parameter. The parser will fail at the indicator rule but won’t tell us exactly where:
tatsu.exceptions.FailedParse: (1:12) Expecting <indicator> :
BUY TSLA IF SMA( > SMA(50)
^
Notice how the arrowhead is pointing at the whitespace before the indicator name.
So, don’t try to be terse but break down rules whenever you need meaningful errors.
Annotating parsed elements
As I mentioned earlier, parsing the input text into a nested list has limited usability. Thankfully, TatSu lets us annotate rule elements and outputs a dictionary instead of a list.
So instead of getting the following Abstract Syntax Tree (AST):
['buy', 'TESLA',
['if',
['SMA', '(', '5', ')'],
'>',
['SMA', '(', '50', ')']]]
We can get an annotated AST:
{'asset': 'TSLA',
'condition':
{'left': {'name': 'SMA', 'parameter': '5'},
'op': '>',
'right': {'name': 'SMA', 'parameter': '50'}},
'directive': 'buy',
'qualifier': None}
A dictionary is not only self-explanatory, compare AST['asset'] vs AST[1] , but in principle it does not require prior knowledge of the grammar. In fact, we could traverse the AST, e.g. with a walker utility class, and fetch the desired node by name.
You can annotate rule elements by prepending some_name: , so we can rewrite the relevant rules as follows:
statement
=
directive:buysell asset:asset condition:if_expr [qualifier:qualifier] $
; if_expr
=
'if' left:indicator op:binop right:indicator
; indicator
=
name:/\w+/ '(' parameter:number ')'
;
Notice the directive: , asset: , condition: , left: , right: , binop: , qualifier: , name: and parameter: annotations.
Open questions
In this post I try to give a practical example of how to create your own grammar using the PEG parser generator TatSu. I tried be explicit about some of the choices and issues I faced. However, some of those remain open and I would love to learn how they are usually dealt within the context of PEG grammars/generators or if alternatives exist.
How do you define custom error messages?
While TatSu already provides clear error messages, I prefer to tailor error messages to the end user. So, instead of saying:
tatsu.exceptions.FailedParse: (1:12) Expecting <indicator>
I opted for:
Expecting a technical indicator name followed by its parameter
To accomplish that, I capture TatSu errors and fetch a tailored error from a hardcoded dictionary.
How do you allow an element to take values from a set of literals?
For instance, I support a set of assets which I can widen at a later stage. I could write a very long exhaustive rule with alternatives hardcoded into the grammar, i.e. TSLA | AMZN | AAPL | ... .
But, this approach feels noisy and a loss of abstraction. So, I approach it with a subsequent pass against a hardcoded set.
Conclusion
I give an overview with a real case example on how to build your own Domain Specific Language in Python. The approach is useful if you need a more structured solution but don’t have the time or need to go all in.
To strike a compromise between my needs and getting the job done, I focus on the grammar definition and let TatSu create a parser for me.
So, if you have some time to spare but not a huge amount of it and need to lay down the foundations for an extensible solution, this might be the right approach for you too! | https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-write-your-own-domain-specific-language-in-python-a36b72d3e36c | ['Oleg Komarov'] | 2020-03-27 17:43:51.434000+00:00 | ['Python', 'Parsing', 'Language', 'Grammar', 'Software'] |
10 Directions to Take Your UX Career | Working for an agency gives you experience with many brands and project types that can inspire you creatively at each project kickoff. An agency’s ladder is about the same height as an in-house ladder depending on the company’s size. The main difference between agency work and in-house work is the culture. Agencies occasionally expect longer hours since you’re working for clients who can be demanding, but because you are there longer, you get some benefits like a more casual dress code, beer on tap, game rooms, etc.
If the agency has multiple locations, you may have various ladders to choose from and could hop from one to the next while remaining with the same agency. While waiting to move up into a managerial role, be sure to learn as much as you can about leadership and how you would want to manage a team.
3. Startup “ladder”
While you would technically be considered an in-house designer working for a startup, it’s also like doing all the roles at once like a freelancer and living the agency life of never leaving the office and wearing flip-flops. Sometimes you’re even choosing your title at a startup, so there are no rungs of the ladder to climb. At an interview, when you ask the traditional “what would my opportunity for growth be in this role?” the answer would be very optimistic, “the sky is the limit!” Startups can be invigorating if you’re passionate about the product or service but don’t hope for much of a life outside of work. Time is of the essence, and money is in short supply, so everything has to be very fast-paced.
Working for a startup at the beginning of your career when you’re single and don’t have many responsibilities is far more fun, and you get to try on a bunch of different hats to see where your passion lies.
4. Freelance
As a naturally anxious person, this choice puts me on edge, but it’s an important one to note. If you have the courage, portfolio, network, and a self-motivating personality, this is an exciting option. Freelance could be a valuable part of your career path if you need a break from the 9–5, are still developing your skills, or need a change of pace.
Anywhere on your career path after your junior design work, you could take the plunge to work for yourself and feel the wind of autonomy beneath your wings. Make sure to research what freelancing is really like before taking it on full time. There’s a lot to learn about quoting projects, client boundaries, over-communication, finding clients, and so on.
5. Industry SME
Another way to go about your career path is to become an industry SME (subject matter expert). You will continue to be marketable as you move from company to company because you already have so much background knowledge coming in. You can work on moving up the rungs as you shift around, but as I mentioned earlier, lateral moves aren’t the worst. You will most likely be in the workforce for about 45 years, and we’re on this earth to enjoy our lives; we don’t always have to be in such a hurry to move up quickly.
With this path, find an industry you’re passionate about and set forth learning and growing. If you’re ambitious and interested in becoming a CEO one day, this route is the path most traveled.
6. Industry hopping | https://uxdesign.cc/10-directions-to-take-your-ux-career-668e14abb692 | ['Danny Sapio'] | 2020-10-20 01:50:50.145000+00:00 | ['User Experience', 'Design', 'UX Design', 'UX', 'Product Design'] |
Activation Functions in Artificial Neural Networks | This article assumes a decent understanding of neural networks and backpropagation— for background, check this out.
In all neural networks, the core architecture consists of neurons within several layers; input, hidden, and output. As data is propagated throughout the network, weights adjust their values and help the net make a final prediction of some kind.
An example of a feedforward neural network
Weights and biases are commonly known for nets, but less popular is the concept of activation functions.
In this article, I’ll discuss what these functions do, different types of them, and their use cases. Let’s go!
Firstly… what are activation functions?
Activation functions are functions we apply to the input of our node — our ‘input’ being the weighted sum of all of the neurons’ inputs with the bias.
That may sound a little confusing, so let’s visually break it down.
Each input node, x, have respective weights that’re multiplied to their values. They’re all summed together along with the bias (b) value. Then, our activation function, f, is applied to that value.
Our weighted sum and bias our considered the neuron’s input, and are passed into our node where it undergoes the activation function. This produced value is considered the output of our neuron.
Ok, makes sense … why do we need them?
The main benefit and core reason for activation function usage is that it introduces non-linearity to our neuron’s output, allowing us to work with complex and large data. This means we can learn and make sense of complicated data.
Without activation functions, our outputs would entirely be linear — and linear equations significantly limit what our neural network is capable of.
By enabling non-linearities, we’re able to map and work with non-linear functions. Through being able to map inputs to outputs non-linearly, we can learn more complex things from our data.
The sigmoid activation function — clearly nonlinear
Activation functions make our neural networks more powerful!
Let’s now dive into the different types of activation functions!
There are several different kinds of activation functions, some applied in different areas or layers than others. Let’s unpack a few!
Sigmoid
When a sigmoid function is used, a value between 0 and 1 inclusive is outputted. The input, x, is passed through this equation to produce the output.
Here, x is the negative exponent for base e, representing Euler’s number (2.718…). This value is then added to 1 and becomes the denominator of the fraction, with 1 as the numerator.
Because this equation is a fraction, we receive our decimal output.
When our input is really big, e^-x becomes 0 due to how small 1/e^x would be. For example, if x was 20000, e^-x is equivalent to 1/e²⁰⁰⁰⁰. This solves to a number so small, a calculator will say zero. But remember, our denominator adds one to this variable. This means that we have 1/(1 + 0), aka 1/1, aka 1.
That’s why large inputs (x) produce one!
For super low negative values, like -20000, e^-x becomes e²⁰⁰⁰⁰. This value is the denominator, so the fraction would look like 1/(1 + e²⁰⁰⁰⁰). This extremely small number resolves to 0 on a calculator.
That’s why very low inputs (x) produce zero!
There is, however, a downside to this function that’s largely responsible for its low usage. Because the Sigmoid function outputs a number between 0 and 1, it isn’t zero-centered — it’s 0.5 centered. This makes optimization of a neural network harder than necessary. Additionally, it falls victim to the vanishing gradient problem, more of which will be discussed later.
Tanh (Hyperbolic tangent)
As you can see, this function and the sigmoid are very visually similar. However, differently, tanh goes from -1 to 1 inclusive.
As implied by the name, we use trigonometry with this function. The math is more complex, so just remember that using tanh we get a number between -1 and 1.
With the hyperbolic tangent function, we avoid the issue of not being zero-centered through having an output within the range of -1 and 1. Now, we are zero-centered, so we avoid issues with optimization. However, tanh’s exponential operations make it computationally expensive, and it still doesn’t overcome the vanishing gradient problem. This is why we now rarely use this function.
An issue with both of these functions as well is their saturation — high numbers are automatically snapped to 1.0 and very low numbers are snapped to 0.0. This means we can’t learn as much from our data when high inputs of different values all become the same thing — 1.0. And vice versa. These functions are only sensitive to changes around their midpoint.
Instead, we use ReLU, which avoids these issues!
ReLU (Rectified Linearity Units)
Visually, it’s easy to understand what’s happening here. Any input values under 0 are activated and become zeroes, whereas nothing is changed for input values over 0.
In a sense, it’s “half linear” — positive values remain the same whereas negative ones are snapped to zero.
How does this work mathematically? Here’s the formula for the function.
If x is our input and is negative, the output will be 0. This is because 0 is more than any negative value, and our max function looks for the highest value and outputs it. Therefore if x is negative, ReLU will output 0 as it’s the maximum value. If x is positive, this will be the output.
The issues with tanh and sigmoid are avoided with the ReLU function, which is why it’s so commonly used today. For instance, the vanishing gradient problem. This is when gradients shrink as the network backpropagates to values so small that weights are barely updated in the initial layers. As an example, sigmoids have a maximum slope of 0.25, so gradients get smaller as they’re multiplied with these values. However, with ReLU, the slope is always 1 if above 0, so gradients don’t get smaller. This means ReLU avoids the problem of vanishing gradients!
Additionally, because the function simply looks for a maximum number between the input and 0, it’s very computationally inexpensive.
However, the limitation with this activation function is that it should only be used in the hidden layers of neural networks. And, they’re often ineffective in RNNs.
For our output layers, we often use a sigmoid or softmax function for classification problems. Softmax functions produce a probability distribution of the input belonging to each class, whereas sigmoids are used more with binary classification. This is for when we have two classes, like Cat or Dog. Say we represented our classes numerically — with ‘cat’ as 0 and ‘dog’ as 1. Because sigmoid returns a value between 0 and 1 inclusive, we know whichever number the output is closer to is what the network predicts. For example, if the sigmoid in the output layer of this net outputted a 0.4, it predicted the image was a cat. Whereas if it outputted 0.79, it thinks the image is a dog. I go more into how this network would be technically built here.
For regression applications, we’d stick with linear functions.
While there are tons of different activation functions, today we covered the three most common. I encourage you to do more reading into the vanishing gradient problem, and other activation functions! Thanks for reading! | https://medium.com/swlh/activation-functions-in-artificial-neural-networks-8aa6a5ddf832 | ['Joshua Payne'] | 2020-01-07 12:06:16.519000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Activation Functions', 'Neural Networks', 'Artificial Intelligence'] |
What I’ve Learned As A Fresh Grad Marketing During A Global Pandemic | I’m sure that by now, many of you have had your fill of articles that tell you how to navigate your business in the current Covid pandemic.
Most of these articles come from industry experts with several years of experience under their belt; they are adept professionals who have many valuable lessons regarding the dos and don’ts of marketing.
Medium is full of these successful marketing gurus. I personally dig their content, mainly because their advice is almost always practical and comes with good intentions.
There’s just one small snag there: these articles aren’t really relatable. And I’m sure many of you in my position feel the same way too.
Unlike these experts, most fresh graduates have not had the chance to execute digital marketing campaigns or create content marketing strategies for their companies. Heck, some of us are probably still undergoing training!
The real issue here isn’t that the advice these marketing experts dispense isn’t good-in fact, they’re amazing- but speaking from a fresh graduate’s perspective, sometimes what we need in our moments of vulnerability isn’t professional counsel, but rather, some empathetic guidance.
It’s like how on occasion, you’d rather go to a friend than your parents or teacher for a listening ear- simply because they can relate better to you.
I’m pretty sure that there are many fresh graduates who just started their first full-time marketing job/internship in this Covid situation, and are utterly scared of how to proceed in their current job.
After all, no one wants to perform badly in their first-ever proper job, right?
If you’re a fresh graduate reading this, don’t worry! I’m here to give you some personal tips on how to approach your first marketing job. Do read on to find out. | https://medium.com/the-ascent/what-ive-learned-as-a-fresh-grad-marketing-during-a-global-pandemic-f66d4975630d | [] | 2020-10-24 16:03:49.885000+00:00 | ['Marketing', 'Self Improvement', 'Personal Development', 'Covid 19', 'Personal Growth'] |
Never as it Seems | As we left the house for our walk, and I skipped down the steps behind the kids, magnetic energy stopped me in my tracks. I turned my head back to look in the direction of the vibe — the pumpkin. It was pulling me closer until I was staring straight into it.
I saw an entire world — our world.
Through the pumpkin’s fibrous strands and seeds, I saw branches, clouds, the Moon, darkness, light, and a watchful eye. The inside of the pumpkin resembles the physical aspect of our world. Then my mind went right on to thinking, in what other ways does this relate?
There must be a deeper meaning.
I may not have been able to carve that pumpkin, but Nature did.
The squirrels gnawed till their tummies were full.
Naturally, light found a way into the darkness of the pumpkin.
That was the message — light will always find a way to shine.
Light and darkness can’t exist without one another. I feel as though light is calling out to be seen.
That pumpkin could have stayed in the dark — but it didn’t. The energy drawing me to the chewed-up pumpkin could have been absent — but it wasn’t. Inspiration was born from it all. | https://medium.com/chance-encounters/never-as-it-seems-b878162a11b7 | ['Melissa Bee'] | 2020-11-18 22:40:59.040000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Photography', 'Nonfiction', 'Short Story', 'Chance Encounters'] |
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