title
stringlengths 1
200
⌀ | text
stringlengths 10
100k
| url
stringlengths 32
885
| authors
stringlengths 2
392
| timestamp
stringlengths 19
32
⌀ | tags
stringlengths 6
263
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Making New Year’s resolutions that you can actually keep | As Christmas, and the end of a very challenging year approaches, Liz Clare, MD of health therapy provider Cell Regeneration, shares her thoughts on how to make, and keep New Year’s resolutions.
Liz Clare, MD of Cell Regeneration
Many of us like to make New Year’s resolutions, but how many of us keep to them?
According to YouGov, in 2019 just under half (47%) of those who made New Year’s resolutions say they managed to keep some, but not all. Another 28% say they kept none of their resolutions.
Despite this, Britons are willing to try again, and 27% of Britons say they are planning on making commitments for 2021…
I can imagine this year it was a lot trickier to keep resolutions, what with gyms closing, not being able to travel, or see family and friends.
In fact, this new year will be different from any that has come before.
2020 was the year that slowed us down and perhaps made us reflect upon our lives more than ever. National restrictions meant our freedoms of movement and choice, health, and seeing loved ones were threatened in ways we had never previously experienced.
So are the impending resolutions more important than ever? Or just more poignant? Given everything we’ve been through, will they be harder to keep?
I feel it is important to make resolutions as we try to reflect upon and better ourselves. I have an overall vision of how I would like my life to be, so to me, my resolutions are the steps I need to take on that journey to achieve my desires.
I would like to share my process and my resolutions here, and I hope the following steps help you to make resolutions that you can keep.
Decide on your resolutions:
What are your resolutions for 2021? What did 2020 teach you? What is important to you? What makes you feel excited with the thought of accomplishing them?
More than ever this year, I learnt that seeing my family and friends is important to me. I have also really missed experiencing other cultures. I am dearly hoping for more freedom in 2021, and if that is possible, my first resolution is to travel more, either to the places I miss or have never been before.
I have also embraced how truly important health is. So, for my second resolution I am going to learn more about myself and my body, and continue to stay as fit and healthy as possible. My third one is to buy a house! Something I have wanted to do for a long time but have lacked the means until now.
The difference between ‘knowing’ and ‘doing’:
We know what we should be doing, it’s the actually doing it that’s the hard part. We know we need to do regular exercise, we know that smoking is bad for us, we know that we should stay hydrated, and we know that by keeping our physical self strong and fit, we benefit our emotional state. By taking the steps to reduce stresses on our body, it will give us better sleep, clarity of thought and ability to manage pressure — all of which can help us to succeed in achieving our New Year’s resolutions.
Hold yourself accountable:
Only we can make ourselves accountable and my suggestion would be to make a plan. Do it in 12-week increments and spend time every week working towards those goals. Make it a ritual: perhaps on a Sunday, make a point of sitting down to recap and plan the next week. One of my favourite productivity books is ‘The 12-Week Year’ by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington, which I use whenever I need a bit of help getting back on track.
The importance of your mindset:
Keep your mind focussed on what you want to achieve, reminding yourself on a daily basis, and fixing your mindset to one of success and positivity. Tell yourself “I will achieve my goal”. This will help you keep to your resolutions.
We should always be evolving emotionally and physically, so if you keep your mind focussed on why you are making these resolutions, it helps you to stick with them. For example, if you make a resolution to get yourself healthier in 2021, your end goal might be to complete couch to 5k. So by keeping that clear in your head you can picture the end result, making it easier to get out running on a cold morning.
The smaller habits are the easiest to change:
For instance, to achieve better health, you could start by cutting out alcohol in the week, or changing your food shopping habits and buying organic wherever possible. Use the stairs instead of the lift, and pace when you take a phone call. By taking these small steps towards a big goal such as the C25K, you will make significant inroads into your journey and increase your chances of success, making the overall resolution much easier to keep.
Choose your influences:
I’m referring not just to the people you hang out with, but to the social media accounts that you follow. Be sure to look at a variety of influences surrounding you. A little tip — do not start with Facebook. Follow Instagram accounts of genuine, inspirational people, living healthy lives and succeeding at the things you want to achieve. Ask yourself: what do you want, who do you want to be? By keeping track of accounts like gyms, physiotherapy clinics, personal trainers and athletes, you will find yourself influenced and inspired regularly, helping your resolve when it comes to keeping your resolutions.
For more help and advice on how to be a healthy you this New Year, visit mbst-therapy.co.uk | https://medium.com/@cell-regeneration/making-new-years-resolutions-that-you-can-actually-keep-1d5ad478f707 | ['Cell Regeneration - Mbst'] | 2020-12-07 15:34:54.819000+00:00 | ['Resolutions', 'New Year', 'Mbst', 'Health'] |
On ADHD and the Norweigan Flame | Oh, where do I begin? Isn’t it ironic that it takes a global pandemic enforcing a year of stay-at-home so my ADHD ass could drop the facade and come out of the closet?
Don’t get me wrong, getting to know that I am ADHD was such enlightenment. Years of suffering -white man’s kinda suffering- made sense. All the pieces came together. Imagine complaining for years and not receiving a fulfilling treatment/response, only to know that you have been complaining about the wrong issue. It is like your hand is cut off, yet you complain about how long it takes you to wear socks.
“It was never the anxiety. It’s the ADHD all along”
My mind has been occupied more lately with an old flame that I never imagined it will be reignited again. I am not happy about it. Among all other distractions, love interest is my least favorite. The ebb and flood between us, which I appear to be enjoying a lot, only leaves me with more questions, which they seem to end up with the simple truth, that we are never ever going to be a thing. A mental loop of minutes, that’s all it takes, to go back to the same simple premise, “You are never going to be a thing”. However, the question is, Do I want us to be a thing from the first place?
The truth is, I don’t know. I really don’t. When G. asked me this, I always campaign that my feelings are over, which can be the case btw. This could be a new distraction, crafted particularly because I have other things to do. I see a pattern, indeed. I also come to know -the hard way- that the grass is always greener on the other side. It is easy and natural to extrapolate how fun and exotic it would be if we became a thing, which is clearly, an old bleak mind game, because after all, people are people. They do shit, and they are always much less interesting than you think they are, including me. Plus I’m sure it seemed it’ll o be “fun” as well with the previous exs, who I politely describe them as anything but fun.
I’m keeping three more thoughts for upcoming stories; keeping it short and breezy for now, and also because “I am Jack’s restless leg.”
With love (which I’ve got a lot of),
J.A. | https://medium.com/@Xanax_Diaries/on-adhd-and-the-norweigan-flame-ea0a749eef77 | ['Dumpster Fire'] | 2020-12-14 12:10:07.385000+00:00 | ['Truth', 'Adhd', 'Expectations', 'Love', 'Restlessness'] |
Why Indian Middle-Class Suffer The Most? | Why Indian Middle-Class Suffer The Most?
Middle-Class Children
Generally, people in Indian society talks about middle-class suffering. Even in history, we don’t find proper documentation of middle-class life. And if we see the composition of this class, it’s always changing with time. Mainly farmers, group C or D employees always remain in this class. They were suffering in British ruled India and even their position is the same. But they are the most satisfied class in society.
“Even after 74 years of independence, they are hustling to get a better life.”
Even the necessities of the 21st century such as food, education and medical facilities, etc. are not available to them. Now if you ask them about their present condition they sound hopeless. But if you try to dig deeper you will find many problems in the system and class itself. Majorly we can segregate the problems in 3-P i.e Politics, Policies and People.
Indian Election
Politics — The elected government in India at every level i.e centre, state and panchayat have failed to build trust with them. Influence of caste-politics, corruption and not holding important ministries by their elected leaders or their ignorance are delaying their overall development from a long time. Policies — Every ruling government introduced some policies to uplift them such as Kisan Rojgar Yojana, Mahatma Gandhi Employment Guarantee Act, etc. But most of the time it lacks proper implementation. People — People in the middle-class are mainly working class. They are less educated so they are not able to avail the government’s benefit. Even the digitalization of documentation for availing/enrolling in some schemes/policies they need some middle- man or assistance. Some times they are unaware of the benefits or policies specially designed to ensure their betterment.
“The country is independent but even now middle-class is dependent on others to earn it’s living.”
Middle-Class
Everyone knows the problem plus solution and even the leak in the implementation. But even after knowing responsible authorities are not working on it. This is just a failure of government! Government has to make committees comprising of bureaucrats, anthropologists, sociologists, economists, lawyers, etc. to come up with a concrete solution to their problems. And to strengthen India on global fronts, proper implementation of committees suggestions on middle-class is a must.
And if we get successful in eradicating the major problems of middle-class such as education, medical facilities, etc. it will be a great achievement!
— Keep Reading…and if you like the article kindly clap, comment and follow! | https://medium.com/@princekrkushwaha/why-indian-middle-class-suffer-the-most-a9b8edd79216 | ['Prince Kumar Kushwaha'] | 2020-09-06 05:15:51.862000+00:00 | ['Society', 'India', 'Life', 'Anthropology', 'Sociology'] |
Create and Dockerize a project with RASA, Flask and Mongodb with Docker and Docker-compose | Create and Dockerize a project with RASA, Flask and Mongodb with Docker and Docker-compose Raoof Naushad Follow Jul 16 · 8 min read
I was searching for tutorials for setting up and dockerizing an intent and entity recognition model. After some search I was able to find docker containers of rasa, rasa_core, rasa_nlu etc. Since I just wanted to use my own architecture which I developed using virtual environment I thought of adding the RASA nlp engine inside my web_app container. This blog will give you an understanding of how you can deploy an NLP engine for intent and entity powered by Flask deployed by Docker.
Here I attach the github link for the project for more reference.
What are the things you need to install?
Flask RASA Docker and Docker-compose Mongodb
In this blog I am not going to explain how you wanted to download, install and configure 3 and 4. But I will add reference if you need.
There are lots of cool stuffs you can do with Docker and Docker-compose just read the document if you are curious.
I hope you installed and configured everything. Now I hope docker and docker-compose is there in your machine. You can check it by typing docker — version also docker-compose can be checked with docker-compose --version command. You will get the output as below.
Generated By Author
I also hope that mongodb is there on your machine. You can check that with typing mongo you will get output as below.
Generated By Author
This also means that mongodb is running and you can communicate it with the port address mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017 which is default. You can try and play with some basic commands of mongodb if you want to.
We need to install some packages now!
Before that let’s setup everything in virtual environment. So let’s install virtual environment. Follow the steps if you are new to this.
## Installing virtual environment
pip install virtualenv
## Create a virtualenv with python3
virtualenv -p python3 venv
## Activate the virtual environment
source venv/bin/activate
Generated by Author
Now you are in venv install some packages inside venv to start working.
pip install flask rasa Flask-PyMongo requests
now let’s create a rasa sample rasa engine. Rasa with great community support and easy to use mechanism help us starting our project with one single command. Create a directory called rasa_engine and cd into it. type rasa init . It will ask you to some queries answer it and you will get a project structure along with model trained on your machine itself.
Generated By Author
I am not going to explain the project structure of rasa except the one we use and what it does because it is well documented in RASA docs. Check it.
data we need to place our data in .md or json format in data folder. you can already see the data there.
format in data folder. you can already see the data there. models is where our model get stored.
config.yml is where you have to keep the pipeline of your training.
That’s all it. I don’t need the rest for my task I am going to remove those.
My final rasa_engine project structure will look like this.
Generated By Author
Go to your project directory. Now for training an nlu model you can use this command.
rasa train nlu -c rasa_engine/config.yml — out rasa_engine/models/ -u rasa_engine/data/
Now using the below command you can run an webserver for nlp engine
rasa run -m rasa_engine/models/ -p 5055 --enable-api
Using postman or curl command check out your nlp engine response. A post request with the below format will on http://localhost:5055/model/parse this will give you response.
Generated By Author
Now we will create a flask app to serve this and mongodb to store the response.
Creating flask app and configuring mongodb and Rasa engine
Create a file called app.py in your project directory. And check out the code below
Generated By Author
Generated By Author
I will explain this code. It is simple actually.
1) We are creating a flask application
2) Creating a connection to the mongodb and creating objects for mongodb database and collection.
3) There are two endpoints / for checking the app is working.
4) /parsed when called send a post req to nlp engine which is running and get response back.
For checking this
1) Run rasa engine in a terminal with the above command.
2) Run the app.py with the command python3 app.py
Generated By Author
Generated By Author
Now the final and important part let’s deploy this using docker
Creating a Docker Container for this application.
Let’s divide this into two parts.
DockerFile
We need to write a dockerfile. But before that lets create two important files.
A) requirements.txt:
This will be used to install all depencies when docker container is build.
Generated By Author
B) Entry point script file — engine_start.sh
This script file will be used as an entry point when docker is build and run. So we need to add two things here. One is to enable RASA_ENGINE API and also to run the flask app.
Generated By Author
So out final project structure will be like this
Generated By Author
Now we will move to the Dockerfile
Generated By Author
What does this file do?
Pulling an Ubuntu 18.04 image from docker hub updating and installing important packages like python, nano, sudo etc Adding user and adding permissions Copying everything from out current working directory to the destination directory inside docker. Creating our working directory Adding to path since the packages we install via requirements.txt will be installed there. Upgrading pip and installing depencies in requirements.txt Exposing RASA_ENGINE and APP ports outside of the container. Starting our entry point. So whenever Docker runs it will start with that script. That means it start enabling RASA engine and APP.
Now we need an another container for mongodb to work with. This can be created with an image of mongodb directly pulled from docker hub.
let’s work on Docker-Compose.yml
Generated By Author
Generated By Author
Let’s walk through this:
After specifying the version and services, we have to specify the services (containers) we want to build. So here there are two containers
a) webapp : For our flask and rasa
b) mongodb : For our mongo database In webapp container we specified the location to build and docker file. Also we named container and specified some environment variables.
MONGODB_DATABASE: flaskdb
MONGODB_USERNAME: mongodbuser
MONGODB_PASSWORD: password
MONGODB_HOSTNAME: mongodb
Before when we tried this experiment with virtual environment we didn’t used authentication for mongodb database. But for the security here we are using authentication. For that we created the environment variables. I will show where we will change this in our app.py
4. Here we specified network for connecting mongo and webapp inside the container. Also we expose ports from container to the host machine. Last but not the least we mount the volume with current directory and directory where the project resides in docker container. This will really help when you need to change the code we can change it in our host machine and changes will reflect inside container.
networks:
- backend ports:
- "5056:5056"
- "5055:5055" depends_on:
- mongodb volumes:
- .:/home/accubits/ivr/
5. mongodb server is just same as the webapp server except for the fact that instead of building an image we are loading mongo:4.0.8 image from docker hub and give it a container name. And we also reference some environment variables like mongodb username and password as i said for more security.
6. The yml file continue with volume and network that we have already covered.
7. Atlast we specify the network and volume and their drivers.
For more details about each of the variables and its usage Docker documents are too good you can give it a shot.
Here I changed app.py little for authentication of mongodb. Check that below.
Generated By Author
I know it took a lot of time but PAIN IS GAIN
Now you can deploy you NLP APP where ever you want with just one command.
chmod +x engine_start.sh
Incase if you are getting error try to give permission to the executable script in the host machine
docker-compose up
## or docker-compose up -d for daemon mode.
Finished building container — Generated By Author
You can check the response with postman or curl command.
Generated By Author
If you want to enter into the docker container you can use the below command and experiment it like an ubuntu machine.
## For the webapp container
docker exec -it webapp bash
## For the mongodb container
docker exec -it mongodb bash
As I said this tutorial just showed how you can merge these technologies from development to deployment.
You can improve with
1) Adding more data for your use case
2) Configuring pipeline for your use case and data
3) Add custom components etc.
4) More processing on the web app side. | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/create-and-dockerize-a-project-with-rasa-flask-and-mongodb-with-docker-and-docker-compose-75c9c6e3c74b | ['Raoof Naushad'] | 2020-07-27 13:08:15.272000+00:00 | ['Mongodb', 'Docker Compose', 'Rasa', 'Docker', 'Flask'] |
Complete disarray | Trying to understand JavaScript array methods
Photo by Melanie Pongratz on Unsplash
An array is a data structure which can store multiple variables. Let’s just say it works like a file drawer. There is an amplitude of array methods, of which I will cover seven.
As a heads up, none of the methods covered in this article modify the original array.
The following array will be used for all examples:
const theArray = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]; // Original array
You can access values in the array by using indices. Indices start from 0, so theArray[0] == 1.
map() returns a new array
map() returns a new array created from the results returned from the provided function.
Let’s create a function that multiplies the provided value by 5.
const multiply = val => val * 5; // OR const multiply = function(val) {
return val * 5;
}
And now we invoke map() on our array.
theArray.map(multiply);
This is what happens (sort of).
function(theArray) {
let newArray = Array(10); // new array with the same size
newArray[0] = theArray[0].multiply();
newArray[1] = theArray[1].multiply();
newArray[2] = theArray[2].multiply();
newArray[3] = theArray[3].multiply();
newArray[4] = theArray[4].multiply();
newArray[5] = theArray[5].multiply();
newArray[6] = theArray[6].multiply();
newArray[7] = theArray[7].multiply();
newArray[8] = theArray[8].multiply();
newArray[9] = theArray[9].multiply();
return newArray;
}
Let’s store the returned array in a new object.
const mappedArray = theArray.map(multiply); mappedArray; // (10) [ 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50 ]
// the first number (10) indicates the size of the
// array
filter() returns a new array
filter() returns a new array consisting of all values that return true from the invoked function.
Let’s create a test.
const isBiggerThan5 = val => val > 5; // Returns true if bigger than
// 5.
And then we create a new array.
const filteredArray = theArray.filter(isBiggerThan5); filteredArray; // (5) [ 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 ]
some() and every() return a boolean
some() returns true if at least one value returns true from the invoked function, and every() only returns true if all values return true from the invoked function.
Let’s create the functions.
const someTest = val => val > 5; // Same as isBiggerThan5()
const everyTest = val => val > 5; // Also the same.
Without further ado, let’s invoke the functions.
theArray.some(someTest); // true, some values are bigger than 5. theArray.every(everyTest); // false, not all values are > 5.
reduce() returns a value
reduce() returns the total produced by the invoked function. For every time the function is invoked, the return value is added to the total.
Here is our reducer.
const reduceTest = (total, val) => val + total;
And here we go.
theArray.reduce(reduceTest); // 55 (1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10)
These are all the function invocations.
reduceTest(0, 1); // Starting total is 0, returns 1
reduceTest(1, 2); // Returns 3
reduceTest(3, 3); // Returns 6
reduceTest(6, 4); // Returns 10
reduceTest(10, 5); // Returns 15
reduceTest(15, 6); // Returns 21
reduceTest(21, 7); // Returns 28
reduceTest(28, 8); // Returns 36
reduceTest(36, 9); // Returns 45
reduceTest(45, 20); // Returns 55
It is also possible to set the initial total value.
theArray.reduce(reduceTest, 50); // 105 (50+1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10)
toString() and join()
These methods return a string made from the array. toString() returns a comma separated string whereas join() let’s you choose the separator.
theArray.toString(); // 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10
theArray.join(" < "); // 1 < 2 < 3 < 4 < 5 < 6 < 7 < 8 < 9 < 10
The end
You made it all the way through! Great job! I hope you enjoyed it, and that you’ve got a better understanding of these seven array methods.
As a final word, I’d like to mention that all these methods can be chained together (not all at once…): | https://medium.com/@nilkun/complete-disarray-a7c62f406662 | [] | 2019-03-03 07:10:32.636000+00:00 | ['Front End Development', 'Array Methods', 'Web Development', 'JavaScript', 'Arrays'] |
Investors Believe the Space Industry Will Continue to See Growth in 2019 | Although there is some apprehension regarding parts of the commercial space industry, as well as worry over a lack of returns, most investors still believe that funding for space ventures will continue to grow in the near future.
Representatives of numerous venture capital (VC) and other financial firms, which have invested in smallsat and other space startups said, during the SmallSat Symposium session, that money would continue to be investedinto these kinds of companies in 2019.
Seraphim Capital, which is a VC firm that invests in the space industry conducted a study which found a 30% growth in space investments in 2018, totalling $3.25 billion. At the conference on Feb. 6, Mark Boggett, the chief executive of Seraphim Capital said he believes that momentum is going to continue because there are so many different space-related activities happening in 2019, so he feels the outlook is positive.
During a different panel on finance that was held on Feb. 5, all members agreed that industry funding would rise this year. For instance, Shahin Farshchi, a partner at Lux Capital believes that there will be a continued trend towards more investments at higher valuations, especially in “breakaway” companies from all sectors of the market and not just related to space.
However, some such as Tess Hatch, an investor at Bessemer Venture Partners, are not so positive. During a finance workshop at the conference on Feb. 4, Hatch said she foresees an enormous crash in the 3rd of 4th quarter of 2019. Thus, Hatch is encouraging all of her companies to take additional capital now to cover at least the next two years as she feels it will become much harder to raise money in 2020.
Moreover, Hatch stated that the crash would not only affect the space industry but would impact any company looking for funding from VC firms, due to a general economic slump. She said she feels that any start-up backed by VCs will face issues.
However, not every investor agreed with Hatch’s predictions. For example, Farshchi countered that one should not be raising capital out of fear that money will dry up in the future. Farshchi remarked that there was lots of capital available during the last recession and as long as you have a great company you should not worry about finding investors to back it.
Nevertheless, Farshchi said that although there is still lots of early-stage funding for startups, and money for large companies in the later stages, it’s companies in the middle that could get be affected.
One issue is the lack of exits, which is how investors get a return on their investment. An exit means the sale of a company or an initial public offering of stock. However, there have hardly been any large exits of space startups recently.
Boggett said he felt that the major problem for new space companies is that none of them are showing strong growth in revenue and it’s impossible to have a good exit without that revenue growth. However, Boggett believes we’re only a year or two away before we start to see stronger revenue growth and better exits. Now it is a question of if investors will be patient enough to wait for that revenue growth.
Investors will also be watching existing companies as they scale. For example, during a panel, they discussed OneWeb, a broadband satellite company launching its first satellites later in February. Some fear that OneWeb’s failure, or delays to other large ventures, could put overall space investment at risk.
Chris Boshuizen, the operating partner at Data Collective VC, said he is a little bit concerned that if at some point one of these large companies fails it could cause the whole industry to unravel, especially in areas such as small launch vehicles.
However, Rob Coneybeer, managing director of Shasta Ventures. Pointed out that capital markets, in general, are formed around psychology and expectations. He added that he would bet over 50% of people who understand the space industry believe OneWeb is going to fail.
Regardless, any issues that OneWeb or other large ventures come across are unlikely to affect investment in 2019, according to Boggett, it might only become a problem in 2020.
Learn more on Asgardia.Space | https://medium.com/life-on-the-other-planets-whats-new/investors-believe-the-space-industry-will-continue-to-see-growth-in-2019-6b6c9558e3a6 | [] | 2019-02-25 05:06:30.730000+00:00 | ['Venture Capital', 'Investment', 'Investing', 'Space', 'Space Exploration'] |
“Toward what island-home am I moving” | by Joanna Klink
Toward what island-home am I moving,
not wanting to marry, not wanting
too much of that emptiness at evening,
as when I walked though a field at dusk
and felt wide in the night.
And it was again the evening that drew me
back to the field where I was most alone,
compassed by stems and ruts,
no light of the fixed stars, no flashing in the eyes,
only heather pared by dry air, shedding
a small feathered radiance when I looked away,
an expanse whose deep sleep seemed an unending
warren I had been given, to carry out such tasks —
that I might find nothing dead.
And it was again the evening that drew me
back to the field where I could sense no boundary —
the smell of dry earth, cool arch of my neck, the darkness
entirely within myself.
And when I shut my eyes there was no one.
Only weeds in drifts of stillness, only
stalks and gliding sky.
Come, black anchor, let us not be harmed.
The deer leafing in the dark.
The old man at the table, unable to remember.
The children whose hunger is just hunger,
and never desire.
— Poetry, November 2012
Joanna Klink’s most recent book of poems is Raptus (Penguin 2010). She teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Montana-Missoula. | https://medium.com/the-hairpin/toward-what-island-home-am-i-moving-acb23c59fd8 | ['The Hairpin'] | 2016-06-02 00:43:51.930000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Featured Poet', 'Joanna Klink'] |
Make Sourdough Biscuits from Scratch | Recipe
Make Sourdough Biscuits from Scratch
You’ll love the way they taste!
My sourdough biscuits are ready to rise—photo by author.
Since the pandemic started, I have been cooking with a sourdough starter and looking for ways to use the discard that I just can’t throw away. My niece recently posted a recipe for caramel apple bombs using canned biscuit dough and store-bought apple pie filling. They looked delicious, but I thought I could add more flavor by using sourdough biscuits.
I began looking at all the biscuit recipes I could find in my cookbooks and online. They all were basically the same. I wanted to use the sourdough starter to leaven the biscuits instead of the baking powder and baking soda used in traditional recipes and even most sourdough biscuit recipes I found.
I came across one recipe that didn’t use those items and used it to guide my own version. I wanted my biscuits to be light and tangy. I wanted them to be easy to make and not require special ingredients. I came up with three versions that anyone can make easily.
Ingredients — My Favorite Version
2 Cups (284 grams) all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon (24 grams) granulated sugar
¾ teaspoon (4 grams) Kosher salt
8 (170 grams) tablespoons very cold unsalted butter
¼ cup (60 grams) very cold milk
¼ cup (60 grams) sour cream
1 cup (227 grams) sourdough starter, recently fed
Mix the dry ingredients together
First, in a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, and salt. Using a fork, cut in the cold unsalted butter. I usually use the fork to mash the butter into small pieces and then use my hand to gently mix it into the dry ingredients, breaking up large chunks with my fingers.
You want the butter to be cold so that it will take some elbow grease. You want to have small pea-sized pieces of butter in the mixture when you are finished. It should not be smooth but somewhat chunky. I like to put the bowl in the refrigerator while I mix together the wet ingredients, just to keep it chilled.
Mix the liquid ingredients together
In a separate, smaller bowl, mix your recently fed starter, sour cream, and milk. Stir together until the mixture is smooth. I usually mix this up several hours before making the biscuits and putting it into the refrigerator to get it as cold as possible.
Your starter should be cold before combining these ingredients. I will take my starter out of the refrigerator, feed it, and let it rest on the counter for an hour. Then, I will put it in the refrigerator to get it very cold before mixing it into my recipe.
Combine the wet and dry mixtures
Once you have let your mixtures chill for a few minutes, pour the wet mixture into the bowl with the dry ingredients. Gently fold the dry ingredients over the wet until it is just combined. The dough will be a little shaggy and slightly sticky.
Dust your counter with 1–2 tablespoons of flour and dump the dough out onto it. Gently fold the dough over and mash it flat 3–4 times. If the dough becomes too sticky, sprinkle a little more flour on the counter.
Let the dough rest in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes if it has become too loose and hard to handle. Once it has firmed up, roll the dough into a single layer that is ¾" thick. Using a 2 ½" cutter, cut out 6 biscuits. Place them into a greased 9" round pie dish or cake pan. You can also use a cast-iron skillet.
Reroll the scraps and cut more biscuits. You will get between 8–10 biscuits cut. Melt a tablespoon of butter and brush the tops of each biscuit.
Proof your biscuits
Unlike traditional biscuits, you need to give the sourdough time to leaven these. It will take between 3 and 4 hours to complete the rise. This is called proofing.
I have a proofing drawer in my oven, but I usually opt for a simpler way to proof bread. I put a pan of boiling water in the bottom of my regular oven and turn on the oven light. This raises the temperature in the oven to the perfect level for helping bread to rise. The hot water prevents the bread from drying out before it can rise.
Bake your biscuits
After your biscuits have risen, remove them from your oven. Also, remove the pan of water from the bottom. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. After it is preheated, brush melted butter on the top of each biscuit, if you wish, and bake them for 20–25 minutes.
Test for doneness by sticking a toothpick into one of the biscuits. If it comes out clean, they are done. If you have a kitchen thermometer, the biscuits will be done when they reach 200 degrees.
Several variations you can try
There are several variations that I experimented with that are almost as good as this recipe. The first variation simply uses ½ cup of milk instead of ¼ cup of milk and ¼ cup of sour cream. If you don’t like the tanginess of sourdough, this would be a good option for you.
The second variation substitutes ½ cup of buttermilk for the ¼ cup of milk and ¼ cup of sour cream. I think this version is slightly tangier than my favorite version. If you love that tangy sourdough taste, this version may be for you.
Finally, if you just don’t have that sourdough made or don’t have time for all that waiting, you can simply use a non-sourdough version. Instead of the sourdough starter, milk and sour cream used in the original recipe, use 1 cup of buttermilk, 2 teaspoons of baking powder, and ¾ teaspoon of baking soda. In this version, you will bake them immediately, without needing to proof them.
Yummy, good
These biscuits do take some time to make, mostly waiting time, but they are so worth it. They make delicious Apple Bombs, which I make using my own apple pie filling recipe. The original recipe includes using a square of caramel, but since we have diabetics in our family, I leave out the extra sugar.
You could drizzle them with a combination of caramel sauce and sugar icing, if you liked, or just leave them plain and add a scoop of ice cream.
I am planning to try using this recipe to make cinnamon rolls. Instead of cutting out biscuits, I will roll the dough out, spread melted butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon over the surface and roll it into a log. Then I will cut 1" slices and place them in my pie plate and let them rise before baking them.
However you make these, they will be a hit!
Bon Appetit! | https://medium.com/the-cookbook-for-all/make-sourdough-biscuits-from-scratch-d0b7be327f1d | ['Patricia Davis'] | 2020-11-07 11:49:53.805000+00:00 | ['Recipe', 'Cooking', 'Lifestyle', 'Food', 'Baking'] |
Just Shut Up and Say Their Pronouns | Just Shut Up and Say Their Pronouns
By saying ‘it’s difficult’ to adjust to using new pronouns, you’re telling a nonbinary person that their existence is an inconvenience
Artwork by @hattedhedgehog on Instagram. Their work is available on T-shirts on Redbubble.
The #IAmNonBinary took over Twitter on Friday. The beautiful campaign showed that non-binary people come in all forms and that there isn’t a wrong or right way to be non-binary.
Lately, the non-binary identity has received a lot of attention. ‘They’ became officially recognized as a singular, gender-neutral pronoun by dictionaries in 2019 (but it actually has always been one).
It was also labeled the “word of the decade.”
However, there still seems to be a learning curve for its use. Or perhaps, in some cases, it is a flat-out refusal to learn and do better.
Some people continuously challenge it instead of just accepting it and moving on with their lives. Others, like young children, catch on to the practice fairly quickly.
In elementary school, my grammar lessons always taught me that you refer to persons of unknown identities as they, never the clunky phrase, “he or she.” Perhaps my teachers’ reasoning back then was not about inclusivity, but the practice still stuck and has made the singular pronoun a non-issue for me as an adult.
Not everyone had the same grammar curriculum or remembers it. There is a lot of pushback against the use of they/them. One of the main complaints I hear about it is:
“I keep thinking you are talking about multiple people!”
Well, here’s a solution to that: Use those context clues like it’s third-grade reading time and it will be obvious that “they” is referring to only one person in the scenario.
Here are some examples:
“Their favorite color is turquoise.”
“They were wearing a blazer.”
These statements are clearly about one person, but if you’re still confused, try these:
“They asked me to marry them.”
“I had sex with them last night.”
(No shade towards polyamorous people, of course, but most people only sleep with one partner, so this example works for the majority).
This tweet by author Amanda Jetté Knox also helped put the issue into perspective:
If you are going to grumble about how hard it is to adjust, think about it as analogous to any of these situations:
When your friend gets married and goes by a new last name
When the year ends and you have to write a new year on everything you sign
When your Pokemon evolves and has a new name
If these are too abstract for you, remember that the bottom line is that none of this is about you.
When you make a big deal about how difficult it is to adjust to using new pronouns or names, you are telling the nonbinary person in question that their existence is an inconvenience.
Stop thinking about how “awkward” the singular pronoun ‘they’ feels on your tongue and think about them for two seconds.
Think about how much it stings for them to hear the wrong pronouns coming out of your mouth. How maybe their chosen name and their pronouns are the first things that ever made them feel like everything made sense for once. Like a new pair of jeans that fit just right. Like a song that describes their emotions in ways they never could.
Of course you don’t entirely understand what being non-binary feels like. No one is asking you to.
All they are asking is for you to take the information they gave you about themselves and use it. That’s it. It is literally the least you could do for them.
I am a queer cisgender woman and I cannot say I will ever know exactly what it feels like to exist in the middle space of the gender binary Venn diagram, but I can put aside that lack of personal experience and any confusion I may have, and simply call people by their names and their proper pronouns, and you can too.
This isn’t a “look at me, I am better than you” post. I fuck up pronouns and names too. I don’t always get it right.
The first time I met a person who used they/them/theirs was five years ago, and I am sad to say that the attitudes around the pronouns haven’t changed as fast as the Internet sometimes makes it seem.
This was written out of my frustration with people who have a hernia every time they are asked to use they/them. It costs nothing (okay, maybe at first it costs slightly more brainpower) and is a simple matter of respect.
If you use a “freedom of speech” argument to explain why you won’t adjust your language accordingly, then every nonbinary person you misgender has a right to refer to you with derogatory names.
But they won’t. Because they are almost always going to be the bigger person. And it’s time you thought about putting your pettiness aside and doing the same.
*Note: Not all nonbinary people use they/them pronouns. | https://medium.com/an-injustice/just-shut-up-and-say-their-pronouns-732cffe7b90f | ['Kristen Pizzo'] | 2020-01-13 23:58:12.911000+00:00 | ['Gender', 'Genderqueer', 'Identity', 'LGBTQ', 'Nonbinary'] |
Monitoring and evaluation for civic tech: Part 1 | Monitoring and evaluation for civic tech: Part 1
Hi! I’m Merlin, Code for Canada’s new Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Lead. I’m also an urban geography PhD candidate and Senior Fellow with the Centre for Urban Policy and Local Governance. Recently, I worked with the Ministry of Education and the Open Government office with the Province of Ontario. Before that, I spent four years working on local government reforms in Ghana.
Common themes through my professional and academic experience are leadership development, civic engagement and using monitoring and evaluation for learning.
I was introduced to the civic tech community through my research and work in open government, specifically inclusive civic engagement. I watched with interest as the movement gained traction in Ghana and I was excited to see there was momentum in Canada. I have been a friend of Code for Canada since the beginning, having interacted with their team through my work with the Open Government office in Ontario. And as part of a group that (re-)launched Civic Tech London, I’ve experienced the challenges of civic tech organizing first hand.
“I’m excited to work with thoughtful and civically-minded people across the country to figure out how we can use monitoring and evaluation to bring the civic tech movement to the next level.”
I’m passionate about civic participation, and I appreciate how technological tools can create new dialogue and engagement with a broad reach. The idea of civic-minded individuals using technology to improve interactions between the government and the public immediately intrigued me, but I felt out of place as a non-techy person.
I could only imagine that people who were non-techy and outside of the public sector would also feel intimidated. This, however, is where civic tech shines: its inclusivity. Techy people need non-techy people to make sure whatever the tools they are creating work for the greatest amount of people possible. While technology, and access to it, is potentially exclusionary, the civic tech community is an incredible balancing force.
Follow Merlin on LinkedIn and Twitter
While still nascent, the civic tech movement in Canada takes a lot of its direction from similar movements around the world. But it feels right. Intuitively, we know that using technology to make engaging with government easier is a good thing. What’s missing is a sustained look at how it’s being done and what works the best.
Monitoring and evaluation are inherently about “proving” that what you as an individual, civic tech group, or an organization are doing, has an impact. It’s also about “improving” where and how you invest your resources, to maximize that impact (I use the word ‘impact’ in a broad sense, to reference making a difference). I know a lot of people are thinking this way, but inherently dealing with human behaviour, government systems, and the potentially far-reaching externalities of technology is messy.
“The risk here is limiting civic tech initiatives to those that can be counted, and missing the nuances of dealing with human behaviour and capacity building.”
Code for Canada is in a good position to take on the messiness of M&E within Canada’s civic tech movement. And to provide support to others seeking to better demonstrate the positive impact civic tech is having in Canada. I’m excited to work with thoughtful and civically-minded people across the country to figure out how we can use M&E to bring the civic tech movement to the next level.
I think being proactive and developing an internal approach to M&E is important to fend off imposed metrics from well-meaning, but uninformed external entities. Governments and funders generally prefer counterfactual approaches to M&E, but these are often inappropriate for civic tech initiatives. The metrics I see most often are website hits or the number of people who sign up for a program. The risk here is limiting civic tech initiatives to those that can be counted, and missing the nuances of dealing with human behaviour and capacity building.
I want to figure out the best ways to evaluate our work with a level of rigour that makes the results meaningful. I want to challenge (and invite others to challenge) our perceptions of what is possible. I don’t think experimental approaches, like randomized control trials, are appropriate for a lot of the work we do. But I’m open to having my perspective challenged, and I want to launch conversations with others interested in the field.
If you’re working on similar things, I’d love to connect. Send me a message at [email protected] and we can chat! | https://medium.com/code-for-canada/welcome-merlin-chatwin-to-code-for-canada-df836fcd84b6 | ['Merlin Chatwin'] | 2019-10-21 19:57:06.194000+00:00 | ['How We Work', 'Monitoring And Evaluation', 'Impact', 'Civictech', 'Code For Canada'] |
Barre With Sarah | Not a big fan of barre? That’s okay! I have been sampling a whole host of other workouts this year, so I thought I’d end the blog with a few of my go-tos, most of which are free(!):
BollyX: I stumbled upon a free 10-minute workout on their YouTube channel and after 10 minutes I was HOOKED (as in I’ve already done about 40 hours of their dance classes in the last few months).
They have some content that is free, but their paid content is fantastic. They have a library of about ~400 songs and they also offer lots of livestream classes. I signed up for their special deal — just $49 for a lifetime membership (yes, you read that correctly). I’ve never ever done any workout like this one and it’s added a lot of joy to dark winter days.
Suzanne Bowen Fitness : This is where I take online barre classes and it’s worth the $14.99/month. They offer many different plans and challenges, but I tend to just pick the workouts I like. I appreciate that there is a huge variety — short 4–5 minute workouts and hour-long classes.
Hi-Lo, Cardio Dance, Indoor Walking, Easy HIIT: There are three different channels that I’ve come to love, and these boost my spirits and my step count when the weather feels too dreary outside.
Up to the Beat Fit: Gina B. is a ball of positivity and energy, and I love her easy-to-follow hi-lo, dance, and walking workouts. This lady has great music and loves a good theme. She also offers paid content but I’ve still not made it through all of her free videos, so give them a try if you’d like a mood boost.
Reps to the Rhythm: Keoni’s channel is pretty new (he started posting videos this summer) but this is a great indoor replacement for a walk. His steps are simpler, but he has good music, a fantastic attitude, and often has cat guest stars in his workouts. He also posted a great 10k step workout (almost an hour and a half) and that was a fun way to challenge myself!
Jessica Smith TV: Jessica has a ton of free workouts (more than 400!) of various lengths. She does tons of HIIT and easy cardio workouts, but I really love her agility workouts. She moves at a fast pace but easy to follow. If you’re a dog person you’ll love all of the guest appearances by her dog, Peanut.
Jenny Ford Fitness: Jenny is a fantastic step aerobics instructor! Her routines are fun but easy to follow, which is not that common with step instructors these days. She has a series called Step Hero that teaches you the basics, but my favorite workouts are her March and Step Across America, where she films a step and a marching workout in each of the 50 states (some of them are still upcoming). She is one of the most encouraging instructors around!
Yoga: I’m really, really picky when it comes to yoga, but I have managed to find two instructors that are a good fit for me. Yoga tends to feel a little too new-age for me, but these two instructors have a nice balance.
Julia Marie Yoga (and some selected other folks on Psyche Truth): Julia Marie is fantastic! She is matter-of-fact, down-to-earth, and funny! She doesn’t take herself to seriously and meets you where you are in your practice. I found her videos through Psyche Truth, but you can also find her content on Amazon Prime and Yoga Plus. She has some great series, like a 14-day series for beginners or a 30-day series for weight loss (the one I signed up for — not for weight loss but because it was 30-days and I missed the weight loss part).
Psyche Truth has some other great videos, but some of their content also feels a little sketch. If you are going to check out their channel be aware that some of the workouts, especially the core or barre or cardio workouts, don’t always come with good form. Sometimes they focus a bit too much on weight loss for my liking, so watcher beware.
Brett Larkin Yoga: I’m only a few workouts into Brett’s channel. but there seems to be a lot of potential. She tends to teach her classes outside and it gives them a relaxing vibe. She’s expressive, and cuing is her strength. There is a wide range of content on her channel and some of it felt a little too new-agey for me. But I appreciate her style and the variety of workouts that she offers.
Finding new stuff: Sometimes you need to mix it up! When I need a shake-up of my routine I head over to PopSugar Fitness to find something to try. PopSugar produces tons of original content, both by some of their own instructors, including lovable and relatable Anna, but mainly by inviting famous fitness personalities to offer free workouts (always complete with an invitation to their pay services).
Beware — not every instructor or workout will be a fit, and there are some pretty advanced workouts on the channel, so try to find a workout that matches your fitness level.
Even though there have been some duds, through PopSugar I’ve found some faves like Christa Dipaulo (cardio kickboxing), Keaira LaShae (hip hop dance and tabata), Jeanette Jenkins (HIIT and kickboxing), and the LIT Method (high-intensity, low-impact workouts). Who knows — you might find a new favorite workout just because you took a chance on a class you wouldn’t have otherwise taken.
So that’s all on the fitness front for me right now! Thanks for stepping into my barre world and for your support on this journey. I’m excited to get back in front of the camera on January 11th, after a much-deserved teaching break.
Stay healthy, stay safe!
Sarah | https://medium.com/@sarahannenity/barre-with-sarah-f8829acfc65a | ['Sarah Carr'] | 2020-12-22 22:53:01.485000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Barre', 'Barre Workout', 'Exercise', 'Fitness'] |
J1mmy is surprising his fans with NordVPN discount — see how to get it | Video games are tons of fun, and they are becoming more popular with each successful release, such as Witcher 3, the Dragon Age series, Half-Life and more. Furthermore, they evolved from single-player campaigns into activities that you can enjoy with your friends playing multiplayer at the same time. One of such games is Runescape, an MMORPG, where you can go on quests, fight other monster or players, or collaborative to defeat level bosses. And J1mmy is a famous gamer and YouTuber that releases exciting content, including a lot on Runescape. There’s another exciting thing in there, a recommendation and a discount for NordVPN — a privacy protection service, so let’s see what’s that all about.
How to get J1mmy NordVPN discount?
J1mmy genuinely cares about his viewers’ online privacy, and that’s why he is advising to use a renowned privacy protection software NordVPN. He is also giving away a generous 70% discount for the service, which will reduce its price to just $3.49/month for a three-year plan. You can get the service from Google Play by clicking here, or download it for your iOS by following this link.
Click here to get the exclusive 70% NordVPN discount from J1mmy
What does NordVPN offer?
A VPN is a Virtual Private Network, and it has many use cases, so let’s go over each point by point.
NordVPN uses military-grade encryption to protect your Internet traffic from third party spectators;
This service allows you to change your IP address and prevent online tracking via it;
By changing the IP address, you can also bypass geographical restrictions and unlock full streaming services libraries;
There’s a 24/7 professional customer support team that will help with any issue you may encounter;
5000+ high-speed servers will ensure you will never run out of places to connect, wherever you are;
You can choose between obfuscated servers, P2P servers, double VPN servers, and onion over VPN servers depending on what your needs are;
Additional encryption is highly advised on public Wi-Fi networks that usually have week security configurations, and can greatly benefit from VPN cyber protection.
Still not convinced?
J1mmy is a fun YouTuber, and I, being an RPG video games fan, spent a lot of hours shuffling through his content. However, video games are not to everybody’s liking, and you might’ve missed a recommendation to stay safe online with NordVPN. More YouTubers value what this service has to offer, and I can name at least two of them.
You can check out Tech Rules YouTube channel that will keep you updated on the latest news in the technology world. Or visit Binkov’s battlegrounds for some mindblowing military tech analysis and battle research videos. Both of them are also recommending NordVPN for privacy protection!
Click here to get the 70% NordVPN discount while it’s still there | https://medium.com/@blackmark220/j1mmy-provides-great-nordvpn-discount-c75baf37b73b | ['Mark Black'] | 2020-06-22 09:48:01.038000+00:00 | ['Deal', 'Privacy', 'Discount', 'VPN', 'Cybersecurity'] |
It’s Reading Time | Are you in need of something to read? Well, have no fear for I have a few stories for your reading pleasure.
So, kick back and relax and I hope you enjoy these stories. Thank you for reading!
Enjoy my work? Buy me a cocktail!🍸 | https://medium.com/jennybwriter/its-reading-time-3ee06d69a6b | [] | 2020-12-24 03:35:05.177000+00:00 | ['Publishing', 'New Story', 'Writing', 'Reading', 'Ｍedium'] |
An Economy of Place Part 14: Food Systems 2 | An Economy of Place Part 14: Food Systems 2
Situated between the south coast of England, close to the French coastline lies Jersey — the largest of the Channel Islands, a self-governing dependency that is part of the United Kingdom but still uniquely independent. It is well known for its beaches, hiking, the German occupation during WW2 but probably most famous as a tax haven to which Britain’s wealthy can successfully go to avoid taxation. A traditional, private and tight-knit community of approximately 108,000 with a GDP of $6billion, the island has more recently played host to the experiment of an incredibly bright and compassionate systems thinker who set out to find a way to change the fortunes of a marginalised group in Jersey’s food system.
Set up in October 2018, SCOOP — the Sustainable Cooperative, is the brainchild of India Hamilton and Kaspar Wimberley. Their goal was to create a sustainable food supply system, in the shadow of the existing traditional food system, by leveraging the values of the stakeholders within the system and designing a response that maximised positive impact on the whole system.
Launched as a consumer cooperative, today SCOOP has nearly 350 fee paying members, sells more than 700 unpackaged products, turns over just over £750k per annum and employees 7 people on a living wage. Close to 3 years later, SCOOP’s voyagehas been an evolutionary learning journey which has combined a number of different approaches. India’s inspiration’s include service design specialists Prof. Francesco Mazzarella and Dr Laura Santamaria as well as leading thinkers in the regenerative development movement such as Daniel Christian Wahl.
Before she returned to her family home on the island, India had already gleaned a lot of experience developing cooperative interventions to build food community in Hyderabad, India. There she sought a way to experiment with an approach that circumvented the strong dominating food system narratives that nutritional food access depends on what you can afford. Instead she looked at the idea that people assign very different values to food and will spend very different amounts on food nutrition as a basis for systemic innovation. Using the emerging trend for healthy juicing in the more affluent middle classes, she found that creating high quality, high value juices from waste in the fruit farming system such as leaves, stems, rind — all of which contain high nutrient value and taste — you could keep the whole fruit to sell at next to nothing to poorer families to improve their nutritional intake. An experiment that was to prove foundational in SCOOP.
Back to Jersey. The very different pathways into SCOOP for India and Kaspar have also contributed to its success. India’s systemic understanding developed both academically and in the field, added to Kaspar’s local cultural insights, created a combined zone of genius that found the right recipe for change (pardon the pun) at SCOOP. “If you consider that economic, systemic and structural challenges are manifestations of culture, you need to deeply understand culture to design a systemic change project,” explains India. “The arts can act as a catalyst for social movements, culture shifts and emancipatory processes so we wanted from the outset to include creativity and art as well as the economics of social justice, in our project. The capacity to listen deeply and with humility and curiosity to understanding our communities — other people’s deep interests, skills and personal journeys alongside trying to understand why things are the way they are — has been critical to our work.”
The Morning Boat: art installation project incollaboration with Future Farmers. Photo: Monica Levdahl
Whilst Kaspar set about testing the boundaries for cultural change in the community through at art led project The Morning Boat, India carried out a stakeholder inquiry to look for systemic opportunities and barriers to change based on a service design approach. Both service design and regenerative development seek to provide a process for working successfully with complexity. One is problem oriented, the other potential focused but both are systemic.
To create a sustainable food supply system which included both production and consumption, the team wanted to focus on ecologically-focused farming which in Jersey meant organic. At the time of beginning the research, despite the growing popularity of organic food across Europe, organic farming had dropped in Jersey by 80% by 2014. The organic farmers weren’t able to create a supply model that suited the increasing dominance of supermarket chains that were popping up as the main source of food supply on the island. There were only 6 organic farmers who used just 50% of their land. Help for them from the local government has filtered away, and labelled them as uncommercial and bad at marketing their produce to the supermarket system. They were isolated from the main food system and in a precarious position in terms of livelihood, cultural heritage, social equality and their efforts to be good stewards of the land.
Holding community talks about the future of food
India’s inquiry took in policy, social, environment, and business contexts looking for insights from four main questions:-
what is your current practice?
what has worked, what has not?
how do you project yourself into the future?
what are the challenges and barriers you see?
This kind of approach is reflected in many emergent processes that are increasingly popular in change fields. Otto Scharmer’s Theory U includes an ‘exploratory’ phase looking at the field gathering knowledge and insight from the system. Regenerative Development looks at The Story of Place which covers biological, cultural, ecological patterns throughout history to inform what the next evolution of people and place might be. No matter the process used, the quality and character of the practitioner to build empathetic relationships and activate a deep sense of caring about the community the project serves, is always key to success.
The research painted a complex picture of barriers and opportunities.
After four months of exhaustive investigation, the SCOOP team not only had a clear, holistic view of the system and how it operated on Jersey, they had also started the slow process of building friends and trust in their work. The main questions to work on emerged as:
clear evidence of marginalisation of the organic community ; how to find a way to bring them into the system successfully
; how to find a way to bring them into the system successfully how do we differentiate between local markets that will build local capacity and decisions that drive the race to the bottom?
between and decisions that drive the how do we define principles for ways of working and at the same time prevent divisiveness
and at the same time how do we overcome historical inbuilt cultural trauma that is a legacy of previous bad decisions
that is a legacy of previous bad decisions the structure in Jersey supports importing; what new infrastructure do we need?
do we need? what simple policy, education and investment options do we need?
do we need? how can we shift technical lock-ins?
Since its birth in 2018 SCOOP as always taken a multi-faceted approach to change with key pillars of its work being disrupting thinking through art and cultural initiatives, looking for systemic acupuncture points where change could have the most impact, and increasing the opportunities for marginalised changemakers in food and agriclture. In regenerative development we often use frameworks to help us in our work. Here is SCOOP’s work mapped against a tetrad.
A Tetrad: a useful framework for managing activities developed by J G Bennett
GROUND: A linear food system dependent on imports and supermarkets; gradual disintegration of local organic agriculture; marginalised few organic farmers with no routes to market; cultural entropy for change.
GOAL: Build a food cooperative with a successful economic model to demonstrate that alternative approaches can be commercial, disproving one of the foundational belief against change.
INSTRUMENTS:
- Disrupt the cultural entropy through art-inspired projects and connective conversation
- Respond to the developing environment with interventions that build knowledge about different approaches to food and allow a physical experience of that difference
- Build developmental capacity in the team
DIRECTION
- Consistently challenge marginalisation and lack of diversity/biodiversity in the system
- Always seek actions that demonstrate the positive potential of systemic change
- Non-confrontational proof that alternative systems deliver sustainable inclusion
SCOOP could be said to have 4 core pillars that have contributed to its success to date.
1) An economic model that works
The SCOOP system is designed on structural barriers, systemic problems to resolve in order to give a level playing field for a particular type of farmer — a marginalised small organic producer. The SCOOP economic model is a consumer cooperative with a quorum for the board, a very collective approach to decision-making, and a strong system of trust and commitment. | https://medium.com/activate-the-future/an-economy-of-place-part-14-food-systems-2-15c85c3c8865 | ['Jenny Andersson'] | 2021-06-24 07:04:53.972000+00:00 | ['Food Systems', 'Service Design', 'Systems Thinking', 'Social Enterprise', 'Regenerative Economy'] |
【像人生一樣無趣，卻是最符合你我生活型態的手機】 — Google Pixel 5 | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/%E6%9C%89%E9%BB%9E%E7%AA%AE-%E7%88%B8%E7%88%B8%E7%9A%84%E8%B3%BC%E7%89%A9%E7%AD%86%E8%A8%98/%E5%83%8F%E4%BA%BA%E7%94%9F%E4%B8%80%E6%A8%A3%E7%84%A1%E8%B6%A3-%E5%8D%BB%E6%98%AF%E6%9C%80%E7%AC%A6%E5%90%88%E4%BD%A0%E6%88%91%E7%94%9F%E6%B4%BB%E5%9E%8B%E6%85%8B%E7%9A%84%E6%89%8B%E6%A9%9F-google-pixel-5-74c27ec03554 | ['Seitei Huang'] | 2020-11-20 02:19:39.192000+00:00 | ['Mobile', 'Digital Life', 'Mobile Phone'] |
What are the things you’re trying to do? | …m increasingly convinced that figuring out how to get in the right room is the proper way to think. If I am trying to do something, I ask myself, the question same question Chris Sacca did: “how do I get in the room with five people that are world class at this?” | https://medium.com/connected-well/what-are-the-things-youre-trying-to-do-2299cd2b3483 | ['Robert Merrill'] | 2017-07-09 18:05:05.842000+00:00 | ['Business', 'Strategy', 'Entrepreneurship'] |
NEED OF SMART CONTRACT DEVELOPMENT IN SURATA | Direct WhatsApp- https://bit.ly/2op0VQr
Website Visit- https://bit.ly/2nJJwBV
Contact No: +91–9870635001
Smart Contract Development
As variety one Blockchain development company, we have a tendency to facilitate corporations to make sturdy digital protocols that validate conditions of a legal contract between 2 or a lot of peers, over personal and public blockchain networks.
Smart Contract Development
Implement sensible contracts to alter social control in RootStock and Ethereum. we are going to write your sensible contract’s code firmly.
What square measure sensible Contract Process?
A sensible contract could also be a code that predefines a gaggle of rules beneath that the parties to that smart contract accommodates act with each other . typically|this can be} often the sole style of localized automation. sensible contracts assist you send and receive cash, shares, property, or something helpful throughout a clear, conflict-free and predefined means whereas avoiding the services of a middleman.
Features
Smart contracts square measure capable of pursuit performance in real time, and should bring vast value savings. Compliance and dominant happen on the fly. therefore on urge external data, a smart contract wants data oracles, that fetches the information .
Smart Contracts square measure
Self-verifying
Self-executing
Tamper resistant
Smart Contracts can;
Turn legal obligations into machine-controlled processes. Guarantee a larger degree of security. Decrease reliance on trustworthy intermediaries.
Lower dealing prices provide United States a decision which we are going to assist you develop blockchain applications specific to your engineering business ways. we have a tendency to perceive the technology, the platforms, and so the developers.
Smart MLM
Smart Contract Development Company | Services
Moreover, sensible Contracts give complete aid in legal and money fields, especially , by simplifying and automating routine processes that individuals presently pay vast fees to lawyers and banks by removing middlemen like retailers from a offer chain. The blockchain is good for storing sensible contracts because of its unchangingness and decentralization. sensible contract knowledge is encoded on a shared ledger, creating data safer , keep among the blocks.
Whether you’d wish to type payment through cryptocurrencies or secure your transactions through sensible contracts, we’ll produce electronic contracts among the correct direction in step with the client’s business wants. we have a tendency to hold huge experience in making sensible Contracts over Ethereum and Tron for many industries like attention, transport & supply, automobile, land , accounting & finance, etc.
Smart Contracts Development
Services sensible contract development services
Smart Contract design
smart contract development services
Smart Contract style and Development
smart contract development services
Smart Contract Audit
We offer sensible contract validation services to provide a smart contract free from bugs and breaches.
smart contract development services
Smart Contracts improvement
We optimize sensible contracts before readying to help purchasers save Ethereum gas.
Blockchain sensible Contract Development Services Company
The sensible Contract could also be a virtual contract that is formed victimisation blockchain platform for unchangingness and security functions. This sensible contract square measure typically signed between 2 parties while not third party involvement, terms & conditions square measure drawn in step with the authority folks.
Smart Contract knowledge square measure keep among the ledger that enhance it’s security. Theses tempting traits created sensible contract to face out of the box additionally gained numerous trade attention.
Our team of skilful developers has the experience of developing all types of sensible contracts on numerous blockchain platforms together with Ethereum, Binance Chain, Hyperledger, EOS, and Corda, and languages together with Solidity, Golang Vyper, Truffle and a lot of.
Smart Contract Development?
Our well-knowledge and trained developers works on developing the sensible settle for numerous blockchain platforms as per our cherished client necessities
100% bug free sensible Contract security code is given assured safety and flexibility
Smart Contract Development Services once we have a tendency to work on this specific answer, we have a tendency to confirm that it’s crafted as per the precise nature of your product or service. With our sensible contracts, you will give a sturdy base for your company and outflank all the competitors.
With the ability of our developers, your company gets the only results ANd implements this answer in an impeccable manner. we have a tendency to modify your business to understand feats at minimum expense and equip the platform with the foremost pioneering merchandise.
Smart Contract Development Services.
If so, then sensible contracts square measure the right answer for you. Execute business agreements and obligate all the parties concerned among the contract mechanically with none middleman with our sensible contract development services.
Smart contract development square measure typically tired completely different platforms such Hyperledger cloth, Ethereum or others. Our sensible contract development and auditing services will assist you alter all of your tasks.
smart contract
Top sensible Contract Development
Looking for prime sensible contract development firms? Here’s a listing of sensible contract blockchain companies with reviews and ratings. sensible contract programming permits you to trade money, property, shares, or something of significant value throughout a simple means whereas keeping off from the administrations of a middleman. sensible contracts blockchain possesses the facility to defy the principles & penalties a touch sort of a customary contract. Also, it naturally implements the correspondent obligations. want this tech? Below is that the list ready by sensible corporations of best sensible contract firms to cater your wants.
SMART CONTRACT improvement
Because the sensible contracts square measure joined to blockchain, the information becomes changeless and so the necessity for third party is eliminated, that thereby automates business method and hamper additional prices.
Osiz technologies, a supposed sensible contract development company deliver top of the range sensible contract solutions for start-ups to enterprises. Our professionals square measure updated to the earth category technologies, together with new innovations in blockchain technology. whether or not it’s building sensible contracts for your existing blockchain or implement new sensible contract for your enterprise, we have a tendency to concentrate on developing self corporal punishment digital contracts, customizable for any style of industries. we provide the foremost correct sensible contract services, to form certain merely|that you just} simply profit with right automation method to cut back budget items and time.
Optimizing sensible contracts for value
people who square measure engaged on Blockchain, particularly on Ethereum, should have detected concerning sensible Contracts. Optimizing sensible contracts for value. people who square measure engaged on Blockchain, particularly on Ethereum, should have detected concerning sensible Contracts. whereas writing contract code we’ve to be terribly careful otherwise, a user will end up losing plenty of Gas.
Overview:
A developer has to be terribly careful whereas writing these contracts, otherwise, the user/creator of those contracts might end up losing several Gas. And someday, it’s about to exceed the block gas limit additionally and in such cases, those contracts will not even get deployed on the network. to look at ‘block gas limit’ construct, please look here. in brief it defines the utmost quantity of gas all transactions among the entire block combined square measure allowed to consume. The developer should understand these operations and therefore the means abundant they consume gas.
Bottom line is to put in writing down optimized contract code. And to undertake to that, the developer ought to be at home with ‘opcodes’. Let’s look at variety of those directions and perceive their behaviour. | https://medium.com/@digital91703/need-of-smart-contract-development-in-surata-e61af277fcd1 | [] | 2021-06-17 10:57:43.742000+00:00 | ['Smart Contracts', 'Smartcontract Mlm', 'Smartcontractdevelopment'] |
Single Women Deserve to Send Out Holiday Cards, Too | Single Women Deserve to Send Out Holiday Cards, Too
Don’t skip out on holiday cards just because you don’t have a family — celebrate & share your life as it is
Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash
I have a love-hate relationship with holiday cards. I love receiving them in the mail. I love the feelings of connection they inspire. I love the way they bring light to the darkest part of the year — a note from a loved one, no matter how far away they might be.
But then there’s the Instagram aspect of it (which started long before social media was a part of our lives). I remember a time in the early 90’s when suddenly, people were sending out sophisticated, professionally-shot family photographs on heavy cardstock paper with metallic accents and beautiful graphics. Everyone always looked so perfect. So happy. It was like an ad out of Martha Stewart Magazine.
I admit, as a young woman, I longed to send out cards like that one day. I’d file away ideas in my head: seasonal puns, color palettes, fonts… It was something I saved in my mental hope chest, to show off the family I thought I’d one day have.
I wanted to send out holiday cards when my last partner and I moved in together in 2009. I’d assumed we were going to get married and start a family someday soon, so it seemed like a logical thing to do. But my partner declined. He didn’t want to pose for holiday card photos — it was too “couple-y” for Mr. Commitmentphobe — and eventually, I gave up on the idea.
After our relationship ended and I found myself creeping closer to 40, I wanted to send out holiday cards so badly. But I was single. Each December, I found myself under a pile of the cutest cards I’d ever seen — families, kids, married couples… I only had one family member who was a single woman who sent out cards each year, and they were just the generic kind that you buy at the grocery store with a thoughtful note inside.
It was something I saved in my mental hope chest, to show off the family I thought I’d one day have.
I wanted pizazz. I wanted people to open a card from me and be so wowed, they’d already be excited for what I had up my sleeve for the following year. I wanted to make them smile. And feel loved. And brighten their day. As an artist, I wanted my cards to be beautiful — to give the eye pleasure, to thrill with tiny, expert details.
But what on earth would I send? A photo of myself? Why did that feel so vain? Other people did it all the time — just with the rest of their family. Somehow, without a partner or children, I felt that it was inappropriate to send a card with my own photo on it. | https://medium.com/liberty-76/single-women-deserve-to-send-out-holiday-cards-too-7e12c1d103b9 | ['Yael Wolfe'] | 2020-08-21 05:04:44.397000+00:00 | ['Culture', 'Feminism', 'Family', 'Christmas', 'Holidays'] |
Resolving Ubuntu Boot-Time Freezing Issue(for Systems having Nvidia Graphics) | As NVIDIA has low compatibility with Linux so it causes the problem of freezing when drivers are not installed properly. When we install a Linux in a system having Nvidia Graphics the system freezes causing the unnecessary problem to the user. Event some times it interferes with other drivers and causing problem liking heating of laptop fan not working etc.
In this article, I will discuss how to avoid freezing when booting Ubuntu in systems having Nvidia Graphics.
A few days ago, I decided to switch from Windows to Ubuntu and the same problem happened with me. While installing Ubuntu my system froze and was not responding and I had to shut it down forcefully.
I have HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop which comes with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 and has Windows 10 pre-installed on the 128 GB SSD and 1 TB of HDD. When I removed windows and installed Ubuntu. It was showing the purple screen then it froze there. Nither mouse nor keyboard was working. I had to turn off the device by holding the power button. And it was the same story every time I started my laptop.
Purple Ubuntu Screen Freeze
I had to work for two continuous days trying to find out what the problem was I installed different versions of Ubuntu and took my laptop to HP Service centre to check if there was a problem with my laptops Hardware. Finally, I found the problem lied with Graphis compatibility.
If you have a similar problem this is how you can solve it.
Let’s see how to avoid/overcome this problem.
There are many temporary solutions to this but I will discuss the most optimal and permanent way of avoiding this issue.
Step 1:
While installing Ubuntu, make sure to disable your graphics.
While installing you will be directed to the Grub menu, there you will see different options. You have to continue with the option of “safe graphic”. Safe Graphics Option is available in ubuntu 19.04 & above. If you go for “normal installation” there are chances that your system will freeze even while installing Ubuntu.
So to avoid this go with the “safe graphic” option.
Select Install Ubuntu (safe Graphics)
Step 2:
While installing connect your system to the internet and select the option Download updates while installing Ubuntu.
This will ensure your system downloads a driver for Nvidia Graphics.
Skipping this option may again lead to freezing of your system while booting into it.
Check the Download Updates while installing Ubuntu
Step 3:
When you successfully install Ubuntu and restart your system. Open the Additional Driver from the menu and wait for a few seconds.
Click on Additional Driver
It will show all the proprietary drivers available. Select any proprietary driver and click apply the change.
Select any Proprietary Driver
It will install the new driver.
Step 4:
If you have a UEFI secure boot(as in my case) enabled, it will ask you to set a password (you can set any simple password). Enter Your Password And press Next.
Enter a Password here
Once the installation finishes, it will ask you to restart the system.
Step 5:
Once you restart your system you will see a purple screen with options. You can either choose:
-Continue boot
or
-Enroll MOK
With Continue boot there are chances that all the features of the new driver won’t work correctly.
That’s why you should go with Enroll MOK.
Select Enroll MOK and press Enter
Select Enroll MOK
Then you will move to the next page saying [Enroll MOK]. Select Continue and press Enter.
Select Continue
This will again lead you to a new page asking you to Enroll the key? Select Yes and press ENTER
Select Yes
Then you will be asked to enter your password. Enter the password you set in Step 4. (When you type the password it won't show anything)
Enter Your Password
It just shows this screen, You enter your password here and press Enter.
Then at last it will ask to reboot your system. Select Reboot and press Enter.
Reboot your System
This will restart your system.
This will solve your problem of freezing which happens due to the incompatibility of Nvidia with Linux. | https://medium.com/@rajshashwat/resolving-ubuntu-boot-time-freezing-issue-for-systems-having-nvidia-graphics-e416bc7a674a | ['Shashwat Raj'] | 2020-12-25 14:14:18.896000+00:00 | ['Installation', 'Ubuntu', 'Graphics', 'Linux', 'Nvidia'] |
Why Do We Drink Alone? | By Bruce Hodges
This post originally appeared on the Ria Health Blog. Ria Health offers flexible treatment for alcohol use disorder from a smartphone app.
Photo by Anthony Tran on Unsplash
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 era, we’ve heard warnings about the perils of drinking in isolation. And it’s true that, stuck at home, many people have been filling their time with alcohol. But through all the pandemic-related self-confinement, what is a person supposed to do? Never drink again? Does having a few cocktails by yourself make you an alcoholic? Why do we drink alone? And above all, what should we do about it?
Drinking As a Social Habit
For many people, getting together for a drink is a way of convening, of celebrating, of catching up with friends and colleagues. On a normal weekday, millions of people mark the end of the day by patronizing a local watering hole. But with bars and restaurants restricted or closed for the past year due to COVID-19, some people have transferred that after-work libation to home. Sometimes, the desire to drink outweighs social factors.
Opening a beer from a home fridge doesn’t generally mean there’s a problem, whether or not another person is in the room. But if one beer eventually becomes an entire six-pack or more, suddenly the evening can dissolve into a blur.
Some people have been holding virtual cocktail parties on Skype, Zoom, or other media. But as pleasant as those may be, there is no denying the loss in actual human communication. And further, after the party is over, feeling that loss may be acute, causing more drinking.
Why Do We Drink Alone?
Reasons for solitary drinking are numerous: worry, depression, anger, trauma, or boredom. Some people use alcohol to alleviate pain, but sharing the source of that pain with others — meaning, talking about it — produces equal anxiety. Others are merely ashamed that they want to drink a lot, and would rather have their indulgence — their “weakness” — out of the public eye. They feel better drinking at home, where they can collapse later, with no one else to put the brakes on their behavior.
It’s true that some people drink because they’re bored. (We would politely point them to the Internet, home of millions of healthier distractions.) Others are aware they drink a little too much, but aren’t sure what to do about it. In a 2016 Vice article, the writer ponders what the actual damage would be — the damage from overdrinking — and asks a couple of doctors for their honest comments. Addiction specialist Dr. Joel Porter cautions, “You might become dependent in ways you don’t foresee. This is what happens to people. They start drinking to get over a Sunday hangover, then this turns into Monday, and then slowly it starts to affect their personal relationships, and then they have other reasons to drink.”
Drinking Alone vs Drinking in Public
To put it bluntly, a big reason people drink alone is that it’s cheaper. (Not to mention, if it’s at home, you don’t have to get dressed.) Why spend $15 on a Cosmopolitan, when for a few dollars more, you can buy an entire bottle of vodka? And especially now, many people are seeing an uncertain financial future and trying to save money.
For someone drinking alone in public — granted, right now this is less of an issue — safety concerns should be front and center. Those who drink excessively, without a trusted friend nearby, risk being vulnerable to strangers. At best, this might mean losing a wallet or purse. But at worst, inebriation can decrease awareness of someone spiking a drink with a substance like Rohypnol (the commercial version of flunitrazepam), a powerful sedative and so-called “date-rape” drug.
Further, at a bar, one may silently ponder, “Have I had too many? How will I get home?” A good bartender will caution patrons who have had a little too much. But others may or may not be concerned.
Some Signs Worth Noting
If you’re drinking alone, you may not have another person to help you check your behavior (always a good idea). Here are some signs that could indicate a problem:
Thinking about alcohol excessively during the day
Increasing tolerance to alcohol, requiring more drinks
Depression, anxiety, and mood swings
Loss of motor control or blackouts.
If you live by yourself, it’s not a bad idea to have a trusted friend check on you now and then. Just a simple phone call, e.g., “I’m making sure you’re all right,” can make a big difference.
Photo by Anthony Tran on Unsplash
Does Drinking Alone Encourage Alcoholism?
Solitary drinking doesn’t mean a person will automatically slide into alcohol use disorder (AUD). Most sources will acknowledge that one or two glasses of wine with dinner is generally not problematic.
But people drinking alone are more likely to develop signs of AUD. Why? When drinking with friends, people tend to pace themselves; if a friend says, “OK, one more,” it’s more likely that others in the group will follow. Similarly, if the same friend says, “You know, I’m good,” that example may inspire others to resist ordering another round.
But at home, without others to comment or give feedback, these guardrails are not in place. It’s easier for someone alone to decide, “Just one more won’t hurt.”
Does Drinking By Myself Mean That I’m an Alcoholic?
Not necessarily, though it would be wise to monitor your consumption. Lockdown or no lockdown, drinking two bottles of wine every day is not going to make the world a better place (and your liver might agree). You might observe what time of day you drink — always a key factor — and try to look at what frame of mind you’re in. Are you trying to relieve pain, either physical or mental? Are you simply looking for something else to do?
It’s an understatement to say this has been a stressful year. Many people have been isolated. People who might normally be out and about, filling restaurants and bars, have been coping with that stress by choosing to drink at home. We are not going to begrudge anyone a drink. (You might be interested to know the Queen of England’s drinking routine — though the reports don’t explicitly say whether she drinks alone, or with friends.) But right now it’s worth making sure that one drink doesn’t turn into a personal health crisis.
What’s To Be Done?
To those for whom being alone produces anxiety — even fear — alcohol can provide temporary solace. At Ria Health, our counselors understand this. We know there are people who have rarely experienced being alone, especially for this length of time. And for some of those people, it’s easy to reach for the wine.
Ideally, a drink now and then, whether with friends or without, is only that — no more, no less. Other people want alcohol out of their lives completely, and we affirm that route for those who choose it. Or, we can help you achieve moderation, and put alcohol back into its proper place: as a part of your life, but not as the reason for living. Learn more about how online treatment works. | https://medium.com/@riahealth/why-do-we-drink-alone-a666e90c2241 | ['Ria Health'] | 2021-04-14 01:39:34.884000+00:00 | ['Alcoholism', 'Loneliness', 'Covid 19', 'Drinking Alone', 'Isolation'] |
This Founder Has Built a Personalized Food Knowledge Base for People With Chronic Illnesses | This Founder Has Built a Personalized Food Knowledge Base for People With Chronic Illnesses
CEO and Founder Mory Bahar
Six in ten adults in the United States are currently living with at least one chronic disease. Four in ten adults in the United States have two or more. Chronic disease is the leading cause of death and disability in America and accounts for the nation’s $3.5 trillion in annual health care costs, the CDC notes.
There are many lifestyle risks that result in chronic conditions, like tobacco use, lack of physical activity, excessive substance abuse, and poor nutrition, to name a few. And in the midst of a global pandemic, those suffering from these certain underlying medical illnesses are more at risk than ever.
According to the CDC, healthy eating is essential to staying well across the lifespan and a proper diet can help people with chronic diseases manage their conditions and prevent complications. Yet despite these benefits, maintaining a healthy diet and lifestyle can be challenging, and many people struggle to stay afloat. Personal Remedies, a StartUp Health company since 2018, is helping to change that. Their advanced technology enables custom diet plans that can lead to remarkable outcomes for patients and the world’s rapidly increasing chronic illness challenges.
“We are capable of providing fully automated and completely personalized guidance that takes into account a patient’s or consumer’s multiple illnesses, allergies, dietary preferences, and medications,” Mory Bahar, CEO and Founder of Personal Remedies, told StartUp Health.
The Challenge
There are six key nutrients that the body needs to function properly: carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, vitamins, minerals, and water. Easy enough, right? Well, there are also hundreds of different diseases and conditions, hundreds of lifestyle restrictions, and hundreds of foods, adding up to thousands of unique possibilities to consider when determining the right dietary choices for someone who lives with multiple limitations.
“The biggest challenge for dieticians and doctors and specialists is the fact that they know their conditions well, like obesity, diabetes, heart disease,” Bahar said. “But, the moment you introduce all of these other restrictions, they are not accustomed to that and they have to go back and do other research before they can give you any guidance.” That is where Personal Remedies comes into play.
The Solution
Their team of professionals obtains research from top sources such as the US National Institute of Health (NIJ), the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), MedLine (PubMed), EU agencies, top universities and clinics in the United States, and then compiles it into one comprehensive science-backed database of food-disease interactions, allergies, dietary preferences, and food-drug interactions, allowing users to create nutritional plans tailored to their needs.
How it Works
“How we do it?” Bahar explained. “Imagine your favorite food, let’s say raw oysters. Now, imagine some chronic illness, let’s say pancreatic cancer. There are no NIH-funded studies, no research or clinical trials underway to tell us whether oysters are harmful or helpful to pancreatic cancer. But, there are tons of data and research available that tell us about relationships between various nutrients and various chronic illnesses. And there is a ton of information available about the nutrient content of raw oysters or any other foods. So what our algorithm and software do is take all of that data and research into account in order to establish and quantify that relationship between every food and every illness in our knowledgebase. Once we do that, then it’s very easy for us to tell you ‘here are the top 10 foods that are good for you and here are the top ten foods that are bad for you,’ because we’ve already quantified all of those relationships, and we can sort that data and find the top foods that are helpful to your health or harmful to your health. We can also slice and dice it based on food groups, meats, fish, shellfish, nuts and seeds, desserts, beverages, and so on.”
Get Started
Personal Remedies allows you to create your own health profile where you can list any health conditions, allergies, current medications, dietary restrictions, or fitness goals you may have, and get a fully personalized list of suggested foods, natural sources, and natural remedies to live a healthier lifestyle.
The team also offers one of the largest collections of mobile apps on the market, each focused on one chronic illness and its common comorbidities, available on both the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. | https://healthtransformer.co/this-founder-has-built-a-personalized-food-knowledge-base-for-people-with-chronic-illnesses-c15fc3026272 | ['Startup Health'] | 2021-02-22 23:26:30.857000+00:00 | ['Innovation', 'Moonshots', 'Chronic Illness', 'Nutrition', 'Nutrition And Fitness'] |
Electrifying the Transportation Grid and Sharing DC Power | Electrifying the transportation grid is a daunting but doable task, using methods such as HVDC, battery storage, hydrogen fuel cells, more electrified buses and rail. Electrified space heating will require much more electricity than is already produced (where will it come from?)
Alternative technology experts in search of changes in our infrastructure to increase energy efficiencies mention three things: electrifying the transportation grid, the sharing of excess renewables via large DC power grids, and the electrification of space heating. Large scale transportation electrification might include (but not be limited to) massive rail electrification, extensive usage of electric autos, electric auto trains (roads that power cars as they move in groups as they charge off that road). Building electrification may include a massive conversion from fossil fuel burning to electric heat pumps. The electricity might come from large desert photovoltaic arrays, hilltop and shallow ocean wind chargers, wave-energy arrays and hydroelectric systems with perhaps some short-term dependence on redesigned nuclear or scrubbed natural gas plants, all shuttling time of use energy between markets according to need via large DC transmission lines.
The state of renewables is currently manageable because it is not more than 25% of the energy produced in any market, and can contribute during the day (when it is most likely available) while gas (or sometimes coal) generated plants augment at night, during bad weather, or when renewables are otherwise not available (ie much of the time). Elon Musk’s Tesla battery storage systems notwithstanding, energy storage is prohibitively expensive (currently about 30 times the cost of the energy produced, per kwh), so naturally the question becomes “what will we do when renewables become 50% or more of energy produced and coal plants are offline?” which is more or less the upcoming scenario in California and Germany (very soon) and many other places by the year 2030. At the same time, there is pressure to limit the use of oil for powering cars, buses and trains, and limit natural gas for heating (some California cities have already banned natural gas for use in heating new buildings). Naturally, energy “moderates” such as myself, while lauding these energy goals, see a kind of “train wreck” coming, unless energy storage becomes very cheap very fast. More likely, natural gas cleansed through Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) or better Carbon Capture and Utilization (CCU) and Bill Gates modified Nuclear plants will need to be a “bridge”, while we wait for energy storage costs to come down and renewables to take over completely.
A great means of avoiding the energy storage problem is the use of high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission lines, already built between many states (and countries) by utility companies to balance energy demands. There are currently several such lines in Europe (between Scandinavian countries and Germany, and between England and France, for instance), the “Pacific Intertie” between Oregon and Southern California (laid in coastal waters in the 80s), and several in India, China, Russia, and the rest of the world. These HVDC networks can and may decrease the need for storage in our Country, as they create the possibility that the “renewable-rich” west and southwest could sell renewable energy to the relatively “renewable poor” East and Southeast. There are HVDC projects proposed that will shuttle windfarm energy from Oklahoma to the Southeast, and perhaps someday, other Great Plains states to the East Coast. The change in time zones would mean that energy produced at 4 pm Central Time in the Winter, might be readily available at a primetime 5 pm Eastern time demand, plus it would be energy delivered to a much bigger market, all of which might preclude the need for massive energy storage.
Without getting into the historical “Tesla AC vs Edison DC” debate, AC was originally the choice to carry high voltages over long distances with low line-loss, as high voltage DC technology was unknown until the coming of the semiconductor age, about 40 years ago. HVDC grid ties are advantageous as they are not phase dependent like AC transmission lines, and they have less transmission loss compared to HVAC. Overall, the transmission of electricity has traditionally suffered from nearly 50% loss (35% converting fuel to electricity in the generating plant, 15% in transmission). Though about half the 15% transmission loss is unavoidable because of stepping up and stepping down voltages through various devices, HVDC can lower line loss over long distances (more than the “break even” point of about 250 km). At 1000 km, HVDC line losses are about 20% lower than HVAC, which really adds up when you’re moving large amounts of power. Challenges to the implementation of HVDC are of course cost, and sometimes right of way (although they can generally occupy the same right of way as existing HVAC lines, or even road or rail right of ways), and sometimes safety (as HVDC is an emerging technology and doesn’t yet have the track record of HVAC). Another complication is not really knowing where the future renewable generation will take place…will it be primarily near the ocean (most likely the West Coast), the desert (most likely the southwest) or the Great Plains? Naturally, an HVDC line between West and East Coast would be ideal, but no one has ever built an HVDC line that extensive (the longest is the 2375 km Rio Madiera line in Brazil), and such a line would have to be close to 5000 km long and go over the Sierras and Rockies (difficult).
Another potentially large offset of the renewable energy storage problem is the introduction of electric vehicles on a massive scale, since each has a battery pack and could theoretically store about three days worth of energy. If EVs were charged during the day (when renewables were operational) this may also be a storage problem offset. Note here that although EV batteries are relatively expensive, they are worth the expense as they offset standby losses (ie wasted energy at stoplights), plus there is really no other current means of powering an EV, unless you consider the advent of hydrogen fuel cell cars (fuel cells are essentially another type of “battery”) or a roadway electrified car (via an electrified rail or maglev type system)
In Sweden, there was a recent pilot project in which an electric rail was placed within a roadway, for the purpose of charging electric cars. The concept is simple and similar to that which powers many electric trains. This concept might be part of a combined DC distribution and EV charging system (both creating expanded uses for renewables). Maglev highways may be the ultimate technology for car electrification, as they may eliminate the need for contacts between car and electrified rail (the vehicle rides on a magnetic cushion, which also eliminates friction). However, there are currently few trains in the world running on Maglev systems (due to first cost and some technical problems), so Maglev auto trains may not be in our near future.
Meantime, the full electrification of the transportation system has similar challenges. Although Maglev trains are quite energy efficient (reducing drag and eliminating electrical contacts), they are costly to build and inflexible (when first-cost for a fixed-rail system is great, you need to hope that ridership is high). The more traditional electrified third rail or overhead electrification systems currently used for most light and heavy rail in the world are cheaper to build and safer, though less efficient.
On the space heating side, electric heat pumps are being proposed as another way to use renewables in real time (without storage) while increasing efficiencies and weaning ourselves off fossil fuel. This is a noble idea, but not without criticism. For one thing, the current demand for space heating is enormous, and would overwhelm the relative trickle that renewables currently produce. Next, there is the irony that much of the current electricity comes from fossil fuels. However, electric heat pumps (which can provide both heating and cooling) are a great bet for the future, when renewables are more plentiful.
Finally, there is the proposal that renewables be used to make hydrogen, to be used with hydrogen fuel cells, which though currently pricey, could solve the storage problem. In addition, this would eliminate the need for remote renewable installations to have transmission lines (instead they might have a hydrogen tank, which was periodically replaced).
The issue of renewables, energy storage, HVDC, and electrified transportation and space heating is enormous and dynamic. It will be dealt with in future articles.
Like this article? Read more in Vern Scott’s new book “Civil (Engineering) Disobedience”, available on Amazon.com | https://medium.com/@scottvern/electrifying-the-transportation-grid-and-sharing-dc-power-7a89d05e0b9a | ['Vern Scott'] | 2021-01-03 03:38:11.252000+00:00 | ['Heat Pumps', 'Hydrogenfuelcell', 'Global Warming', 'Renewable Energy', 'Vehicle Electrification'] |
What I Think About the French Paradox — As a Nutritional Sciences PhD | Cheese and butter
Ah yes, now this essay is getting ripe. Cheese and butter consumption was certainly very high in the French diet and has also been questioned to have a role in explaining the French Paradox.
The first point I want to make is that cheese consumption in France cannot be compared to cheese consumption in the United States. In the US we consume mostly mass-produced cheeses and “processed cheese products”. These products cannot be compared to French cheeses because the microorganisms used to make the cheeses are different. Legendary French cheeses like soft-ripened cheeses of Normandy, the hard cheeses of the Alps, or the blue cheeses of southern France all have unique microorganisms that affect their nutritional value. Could something about the microorganisms in French cheeses or the compounds they produce be responsible for the French Paradox?
Short-chain fatty acids (SCFA)
Cheese and butter are two dietary sources of SCFA. These are the same SCFA produced by gut microbes after we consume dietary fiber and SCFAs may explain why consuming dietary fiber is beneficial for human health. It’s possible that cheese and dietary fiber could be targeting some of the same biological pathways! SCFA (especially one called butyrate) are now being studied to have positive benefits on metabolic health and obesity (5).
In 2015, a group of researchers tested how cheese consumption influences SCFAs in the gut by feeding 15 healthy young males three types of isocaloric diets containing either low-fat milk, cheese (semi-hard cow’s milk), or butter but no other dairy products (6). Both the cheese and milk diets increased two types of SCFAs (Acetate and propionate) but only cheese increased butyrate.
Ripened and moldy cheeses
Another group of researchers was interested in how ripened cheese consumption may have favorable effects on blood glucose concentrations and liver fat accumulation in mice that were obese and diabetic.
Ripened cheese consumption reduced liver fat accumulation in obese and diabetic mice (7). The same effect WAS NOT seen when mice consumed a non-ripened cheese. Three popular ripened cheeses widely consumed in France are Brie, Camembert, and Roquefort.
Moldy and blue-veined cheeses contain compounds that have anti-bacterial properties. Feeding mice a protein extract from Roquefort cheese reduced inflammation in mice injected with an inflammatory stimulus (8). This is very important because inflammation and heart disease go hand-in-hand.
These data indicate several mechanisms (possibly related) by which consumption of these types of cheeses could reduce the risk of heart disease and improve metabolic health. Cheese is also a dietary factor more unique to France than wine or vegetable consumption. | https://medium.com/in-fitness-and-in-health/what-i-think-about-the-french-paradox-as-a-nutritional-sciences-phd-427465902b27 | ['Brandon J Eudy'] | 2020-12-21 15:39:49.951000+00:00 | ['Wine', 'Cheese', 'Diet', 'French', 'Nutrition'] |
Nobody’s Special PLACE | by PRESS NYC Parents for Responsive, Equitable, Safe Schools
A very vocal, single-minded lobbying group in New York, has declared the only way to “protect [New York City’s] specialized high schools” is to “preserve the competitive, objective and academic-focused” Specialized High School Admissions Test, or “SHSAT,” as the sole basis for entrance to these schools. According to Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum & Education, or PLACE NYC, any changes to this single-criterion policy would cause these “gems” of our city to decline.
The unspoken premise is that it’s the high-scoring students themselves who determine these schools’ excellence, so if we altered the selection mechanism, we’d diminish that quality. By this logic, a school’s quality is determined by the students who attend.
Teens Take Charge members at a protest.
But if schools are “good” and “bad” based on who enrolls, then what function does a school itself serve?
The SHSAT conversation has crystalized into who is worthy of the “best” education, and who is not. A dyslexic student who excels on projects but not tests; a student juggling multiple caregiving demands; a high-performing student who spends hours at soccer or debate practice — any student who is not laser-focused on preparing for this one test and does not exceed the ever-rising cut-off score — all, under this PLACE paradigm, fall among the undeserving.
To support a test which screens out 95% of Black and Latinx students who take it, is to perpetuate white supremacy. Its supporters, aware that the test does not disenfranchise all students of color, merely deflect, stating that if racism were at play, it would affect the Asian American population in the city.
Utilizing the success of Asian Americans as a way to dispel criticisms of racism, also known as the “model minority myth,” aligns with an American habit; a similar mythology was once imposed on the Jewish American community, and college admissions essays were created to screen out Jewish applicants. On November 17, Vanessa Leung, Chair of the Panel for Educational Policy, spoke powerfully about the harm this myth causes: “As an Asian American, I am tired of our community being used as a wedge. … It’s not only used historically to justify under-investments in communities of color across our country, but it actually … renders those who are suffering in the Asian-American community invisible… We need to …make decisions in our public schools centered around each other’s humanity, but also with a view of equity.”
It’s widely known that while two-thirds of the city’s students are Black and Latinx, they make up just 20% of Specialized High School students. Less known is that 70% of Asian American students who take the SHSAT are unable to qualify, and around 80% end up in non-Specialized high schools. Most students of every demographic in NYC are denied entry, and the false narrative of how this system helps the AAPI community must be met with facts: the vast majority of AAPI students are not served by these schools at all. And while the mayor was right during his November 23 press conference to offer an apology for excluding the Asian community from the reform process, the admissions policy remains inequitable and flawed.
Like Ms. Leung, we believe that every child — regardless of their parents’ admissions savvy, their test prep regimen, or any other factor — deserves high quality public schools, simply for being a young human to whom we owe our best. Instead of more “specialized” schools, let’s instead make every high school spectacular. Let’s provide the resources for deep, meaningful learning. Let’s do away with scarcity-by-design. All students deserve a public education that cultivates empathy, critical thinking, and cultural competency, and ensures young people become the community-oriented, engaged citizens needed for our democracy to flourish.
The existing system is championed by those who have figured out how to win at this game, with the rules as they are, and who are willing to say or do anything to protect the status quo, no matter the harm to children in all communities. We must reject this, and demand an equitable education for all of our children, whether that includes a specialized high school or not.
PRESS NYC, Parents for Responsive, Equitable, Safe Schools, is a parent collective, who hold the education press and the NYC mayor accountable. We lead on CECs, build learning communities with students, write anti-racist curriculum, have expertise in the challenges of navigating the system for students with disabilities, and demand that parents are able to engage with the DOE in their language. We expect the DOE to be responsive to the communities it serves, centered on equity, & grounded in health & safety. | https://medium.com/@safeschoolsny/nobodys-special-place-4b769ad5c350 | ['Parents For Responsive Equitable Safe Schools'] | 2020-12-19 01:29:30.494000+00:00 | ['High School', 'Screened Admissions', 'Shsat', 'NYC', 'Integrate'] |
Gold Christmas present | The last weeks of November are the time when we slowly begin to think about Christmas presents for loved ones. A wide market, filled with various assortments, does not make our choice much easier. Why should you bet on gold products? How to invest in them? Gold is an ore that, despite temporary drops, is constantly gaining value. For centuries, it has been synonymous with wealth and luxury. Buying jewelry is a real problem, after all, the quality and style of workmanship differ from one manufacturer to another, so there are thousands of types of gold jewelry. A secondary issue is the fact that when paying for jewelry, we do not buy gold but the goldsmith’s product on which additional fees are imposed, e.g. craftsman’s labor. The optimal choice, therefore, is to invest in gold bars, to which only the cost of production and the dealer’s margin are imposed — lower than those imposed on jewelry. A gift in the form of a gold bar will not be cashed immediately, but will wait for a specific purpose. During this time, it can be assumed with a high degree of probability that the price of the ore will increase, and therefore the value of the gift will continue to increase. The funds donated in this form will become a private emergency reserve. A gift in the form of a gold bar, so it can be considered a practical group. Ore comes in a variety of forms, and speaking of a gift in the form of a gold bar it can also be one weighing e.g. 1 gram. | https://medium.com/@yellowgoldcompany/gold-christmas-present-8250e723e125 | ['Yellow Gold Company'] | 2019-11-21 09:59:38.941000+00:00 | ['Gold'] |
Crypto — RadixDLT: A dose of nuance: Scalability (millions and millions of TPS!?) | This piece arose out of a bit of irritation with the widespread tactic of creating hype, even FOMO with superficial claims in the crypto space.
Of course, marketing usually is that shiny piece of silver that attracts birds that are flying by. Therefore it shies away from getting into the nuts and bolts of the good or service they try to gain awareness for. The technicals are often longwinded or to be honest boring to most customers. But when every project represents itself as a piece of silver the entire space becomes blinding with all the light it is reflecting. Let’s land and inspect if there really is value.
Scalability is one of those topics that gets abused by claims of millions and millions of TPS. I would like to inject some nuance in this area by pointing out that there are different types of scalability. Consequently, scalability statements should specify to which type it refers to.
Let’s enter deep shard space!
There are 2 categories of transactions to be discerned on a distributed ledger. The distinction is made by the presence of a smart contract. Application logic scaling is on most DLTs much harder to do than simple value transfers. This is also the case for Ethereum as can be seen on below graphic used by Vitalik Buterin on a presentation given on Coindesks virtual conference ‘CoinDesk invest: ethereum economy’ that started on 14th of October 2020.
‘Generic EVM applications’ are trailing behind the ‘simple payments’
In those 2 categories there are 3 distinct types of transactions
Visual representations can be found in below images. The article header image provides an explanation of all the components we can see here (check it out first before continuing here as things will be much easier to follow).
These types are ordered from least complex to most complex.
User to user transaction
User to smart contract (or dapp) transaction
Smart contract to smart contract (or dapp to dapp) transaction
Although this is an abstraction for the purpose of conceptually being able to talk about this subject matter. How it technically looks like might be different from ledger to ledger. This because the answer might be different on the question: ‘What is being stored on each shard?’
Let’s couple back to Radix.
According to Dan Hughes, founder and CTO of Radix, both ‘simple payments’ and ‘generic EVM applications’ in the terms of Vitalik will scale to the same degree, and that is linearly. Below an excerpt of the AMA session held on Radix’ telegram channel
Radix #AMA session of 29/09/2020 (on telegram: https://t.me/radix_dlt)
Every loved pet has a nickname. ‘Cerby’ is the nickname of ‘Cerberus’ which is the name for the novel distributed ledger technology Radix research and developed over the course of 7 years. Many iterations preceded it, beginning with the well-known blockchain. I would recommend this article to continue your rabbit hole journey into Radix: https://medium.com/@radixdlt/dan-and-radixs-tech-journey-70752de17629
Here the same concern is uttered. TPS claims are often only applicable for the simple value transfers which are the easiest to scale. The real proof is in the pudding called smart contract scaling.
I’ve started off with a sharded ledger representation to set myself up for a little bridge into ‘Composability’ (to be expanded on in a future article).
I want to put out there that the blockchain trilemma (scalability, decentralization, security) coined by Vitalik might not be telling the complete story. According to Radix there’s a fourth element namely composability.
When sharding is implemented in favour of scalability, there is a risk elements are broken in this new quadrilemma (scalability, decentralization, security, composability)!
When dapps are located in different shards of a blockchain they are unable to be atomically composed together. This means that different smart contract transactions of these dapps can not be put together as one anymore because they reside on different shards. They have to communicate via an intermediary (often a chain) which introduces latency and increases complexity. This would mean a whole array of (combined) functionalities dapps provide on an unsharded ledger are broken (e.g. flash loans). I do want to include that grouping related dapps in shards is a workaround but then there might creep in once again scalability issues and decentralization issues.
Radix claims to have come up with a solution that keeps the elements of the quadrilemma intact. This intershard case is resolved by a consensus mechanism they named ‘Braiding’ (this as well to be expaned upon in a future article together with ‘Composability’).
What I’d like you to takeway from this article are 2 key messages:
There are different types of transactions to be scaled with each their own difficulty.
=> When projects claim a number of TPS ask yourself: “Are these claimed TPS numbers applicable on all types of transactions?” With the introduction of sharding there is an element that was taken for granted namely ‘composability’. Sharding a blockchain made it come to the forefront as the fourth piece of the puzzle.
=> When projects claim high scalability ask yourself: “Is scalability achieved while keeping composability (and decentralization and security) intact?”
How important composability is depends on the type of application but it seems like that the strength of most dapps comes from this tying together of multiple features as one. Succes as one, failure as one. Alot of these dapps enable functionalities that weren’t before possible. Functionalities in both the individual as well as composed (combined as one) sense.
If you are a crypto enthusiast (for whatever reason: idealistic, technological, investment wise, …) just like I am then I would recommend looking into what Radix has to offer. On all fronts this project is very exciting. I sound like a shill right now so the best course of action is to perform your own trial by critical fire of Radix’ claims. Your motives can be to gain extra insight in the value of the crypto projects you are currently invested into or to scout for the next opportunity. | https://medium.com/@hermesradvocado/crypto-radixdlt-a-dose-of-nuance-scalability-millions-and-millions-of-tps-aee9c3b094ed | ['Hermes Radvocado'] | 2020-11-03 11:43:20.795000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Distributed Ledgers', 'Radix', 'Bitcoin', 'Ethereum'] |
bahria university medical and dental college karachi teaching job 2020 | Pakistan's number one online job site which connects talent with opportunity | https://medium.com/@4466154/bahria-university-medical-and-dental-college-karachi-teaching-job-2020-e0fbfb5047db | ['Tasleem Shah'] | 2020-12-18 18:51:00.373000+00:00 | ['Jobs', 'Government', 'SEO', 'Blogging', 'Blogger'] |
Arlula Satellite Imagery API Upgrades | Happy Holidays and Welcome to API version 2020–12
At Arlula, we’re always looking for ways to make satellite imagery much more accessible, so are pleased to announce some new updates to our API that will go live on the 29th of December 2020. We are expanding the capabilities and changing the structure of our API, so this new update may require you to update your integration and/or SDK to support the new version going forward.
We’ve included a description of the new updates and core features below, and as always the full Arlula API documentation can be viewed at www.arlula.com/documentation and you can create a new free account by visiting https://api.arlula.com/signup
Image Courtesy of SpaceWill Info
Updates in Version 2020–12
1. Minimum Area Ordering
The largest change for this release is exciting new functionality that streamlines Minimum Area Ordering. After receiving user feedback we have simplified and provided more functionality around Minimum Order Quantities (MOQ), which will ultimately make ordering much easier and more affordable than ever.
We have introduced logic that now allows us to calculate the supplier specific MOQ over your desired AOI. What this means is that we can now provide you a price specific to your AOI, rather than the scene in its entirety. Further to this, if your AOI is less than the MOQ for a supplier, we can automatically quote you on the smallest MOQ that encompasses your AOI. For point searches, we similarly construct a minimum order around the point and provide pricing for that area.
This results in some significant changes to the search result objects the API returns. The full details of which are available on our documentation page, but to summarise:
The price no longer contains a scene and AOI pricing object, but is instead a single pricing object for the AOI/minimum order
The overlap field is now always included in a result.
The overlap.polygon field now describes the polygon to be ordered, which may have been enlarged to meet the minimum order.
The overlap.percent field is now an object, providing the overlap of the overlap.polygon order with both the scene, and your original search area.
The trim field is no longer part of the new order endpoint.
2. Coordinate ordering reversal
The coordinates in our bounding and overlap.polygon fields are now in the geoJSON standard for coordinate sets. As a result, points in those fields are now in a [longitude, latitude] order, replacing our old [latitude, longitude] order. This will hopefully make polygons easier to load into common geometry libraries and GIS tools with us now using the more common format.
3. Order Expiration
We have added an expiration field to order objects. This field will appear in both the order list, and order get endpoints of the API, and describe the date and time after which an order’s resources will no longer be available for download via the order resource get endpoint or dashboard. You will have to backup your satellite data locally before the expiry period occurs.
Orders for public datasets such as Landsat will not expire, and thus have their expiration set to null. Similarly, orders that are not yet complete will have an expiration of null.
For more details about the expiration period, please consult our documentation and terms of service.
4. API Deletion
By request we have added support for users being able to delete API accounts/credentials from the platform.
This is considered to be a tool of last resort, If credentials have been leaked, we advise you to change the API key and secret in the API details page. This does however, provide a means if you have completely lost the API secret for a given API.
5. Webhook Event Wrapping
Webhooks have been a core tool for receiving updates about the state of an order since the API went public. This change is a first step towards us making them more useful, and to support more messages in the future.
Webhook events now have an envelope that identifies the event that happened, and when it happened, along with the usual payload.
Webhooks will now receive a POST request with this envelope, with the order details as the payload
> {
> “Event”: “archive.order.complete”,
> “Timestamp”: “2020–12–16T07:04:24.711Z”,
> “Payload”: { … the normal payload … }
> }
This also introduces a few new events when orders enter specialized states, and unique event types for users using custom B2B ordering. Full details are available in the documentation.
For more details please view our documentation at www.arlula.com/documentation, you can create a new free account by visiting https://api.arlula.com/signup
If you have any questions at all, please feel free to contact us.
On behalf of everyone at Arlula, I hope you has a happy holiday and a well-deserved break! | https://medium.com/@arlula/arlula-satellite-imagery-api-upgrades-84c43a9509f4 | [] | 2020-12-23 01:13:28.115000+00:00 | ['Space', 'API', 'GIS', 'Geospatial', 'Python'] |
Advent Of Code — Perfectly Spherical Houses in a Vacuum — Puzzle 3 | Hello ! I’m Xavier Jouvenot and here is the third part of a long series on Advent Of Code. You can find the previous part here
For this new post, we are going to solve the second problem from the 3rd December 2015, named “Perfectly Spherical Houses in a Vacuum”. The solution I will propose in C++, but the reasoning can be applied to other languages.
Part 1
The Problem
The full version of this problem can be found directly on the Advent of Code website, I will only describe the essence of the problem here:
Santa is delivering presents to an infinite two-dimensional grid of houses. He starts by delivering a present to the house at his starting location, and then an elf at the North Pole tells him, via radio where to move next. He moves one house at the time either to the north ( ^ ), south ( v ), east ( > ), or west ( < ). Each time, Santa visits a house, he delivers one present, but, the elf giving the instructions to Santa drank too much eggnog, and made Santa visiting houses more than once. So, we have to found out how many houses receive at least one present.
For example:
>> makes Santa deliver one present to 3 houses, the one in which he starts and the 2 houses to the east from there.
makes Santa deliver one present to houses, the one in which he starts and the 2 houses to the east from there. ^v^v^v^v^v makes Santa deliver a bunch of presents to 2 houses.
Solution
Here I will describe the thought process I’ve used to arrive to the solution.
First, we have to know the location of Santa on the grid of houses, which means we need his Coordinate.
struct Coordinate { int x{0}; int y{0}; }; Coordinate santaPosition;
Now that we have Santa’s location, we have to store the path that Santa goes on. The simplest way to describe this path is a list of Coordinates .
#include <vector> using Path = std::vector<Coordinate> Path santaPath;
We have finally every structures to handle the problem. Now, we have to get the path taken by Santa.
// Adds the house where Santa start to deliver presets santaPath.emplace_back(santaPosition); for(auto direction : input) { // Modify Santa's location switch (direction) { case '^': ++santaPosition.y; break; case '>': ++santaPosition.x; break; case '<': --santaPosition.x; break; case 'v': --santaPosition.y; break; } // Adds the new location to Santa's path santaPath.emplace_back(santaPosition); }
Finally, we have the path taken by Santa.7 All we need to do now, is to found out the number different houses there is on Santa’s path. For that, we are going to use 2 std algorithms : std::sort and std::unique.
#include <algorithm> std::sort(std::begin(santaPath), std::end(santaPath)); auto it = std::unique(std::begin(santaPath), std::end(santaPath)); const auto numberOfHousesVisited = std::distance(std::begin(santaPath), it);
Note that, to be able to use those algorithms, we have to specify the operators == and < of the structure Coordinate .
I encourage you to go look at the full solution used in this sample of code on my GitHub.
Part 2
Problem
This problem is the same as the part one, except that now, there are two “delivery men”, Santa and Robo-Santa. Both start at the same position and take turns moving based on instructions from the elf. We still have to found out how many houses receive at least one present.
For example:
Solution
Most of the source code is very similar to the part 1, so we will only focus on the differences. To start, we can integrate a common structure to Santa and Robo-Santa, that I called DeliveryMan .
struct DeliveryMan { Coordinate position; Path path; }; DeliveryMan santa, roboSanta;
When collecting the instruction, we can switch between the delivery man receiving the instruction with a ternary instruction.
DeliveryMan deliveryMan; deliveryMan = deliveryMan == &santa ? &roboSanta: &santa;
And finally, once we’ve sorted both Santa and Robo-Santa paths, we have to merge them before using std::unique.
std::vector<Coordinate> mergedPath; std::merge(std::begin(santa.path), std::end(santa.path), std::begin(roboSanta.path), std::end(roboSanta.path), std::back_inserter(mergedPath));
And that’s it about the interesting point of this part. You can check the full solution of this code on my GitHub.
Conclusion
You can note that the solutions written in this post, don’t include all the sources to make running programs, but only the interesting part of the sources to solve this problem. If you want to see the programs from end to end, you can go on my [GitHub account]https://github.com/Xav83/AdventOfCode/tree/2015.03/2015/Day3), explore the full solution, add comments or ask questions if you want to.
Here is the list of std methods and containers that we have used, I can’t encourage you enough to look at their definitions :
Thanks for you reading, hope you liked it 😃
And until next part, have fun learning and growing. | https://medium.com/@xavier-jouvenot/advent-of-code-perfectly-spherical-houses-in-a-vacuum-puzzle-3-19f6ff4eeac | ['Xavier Jouvenot'] | 2019-06-24 06:01:03.166000+00:00 | ['Cpp', 'Cpp17', 'Programming', 'Cpp11', 'Advent Of Code'] |
Forecasting Deaths From COVID-19 in North Carolina up to the End of 2020 | Updating the model with new data
Here’s the entire Jupyter Notebook containing all code and previous model estimations
After downloading the data from the NC DHHS, I cleaned it to only include days after the first death from COVID-19 was recorded in NC on March 25th this year. I then load it in using the Pandas library.
# Loading in most recent data updated as of today Nov. 3rd
NCcovidNew = pd.read_excel('NCcovidNew.xlsx', sheet_name='Sheet 1')
Next, we assign our X and Y variables, in this case, date and deaths, and then reshape our data as needed.
date = NCcovidNew['Date']
y = NCcovidNew['NC Deaths']
date.shape # 224 days of data # Reshpaing the data
x=np.linspace(224,1,224)
x=np.reshape(x,(224,1))
y=np.array(y)
y=np.reshape(y,(224,1))
Refitting the model
Scikit-learn makes linear regression simple to implement with the following:
reg = linear_model.LinearRegression() # Constructing SKlearn model
reg.fit()
Yep, that's it. However, since our model will be a 2nd order polynomial regression taking the form h(x)=a+bx+cx², we need to assign a polynomial feature term that takes degree=2 as one of its arguments. The following code encompasses the entirety of the model.
poly_f=PolynomialFeatures(degree=2,include_bias=False) # Instantiating quadratic term X_poly=poly_f.fit_transform(x) # Applying quadratic transformation reg.fit(X_poly,y) # Fitting transformed data to model # Assigning variables to the model's parameter estimates a=reg.intercept_[0]
b=reg.coef_[0][0]
c=reg.coef_[0][1] print(“a (Intercept term) =”,a)
print(“b (Coefficient 1) =”,b)
print(“c (Coefficient 2) =”,c)
Here are the model’s parameter estimates:
a (Intercept term) = -64.88491059525245
b (Coefficient 1) = 10.06007469864205
c (Coefficient 2) = 0.04522201123331129
Putting it all together
Using Matplotlib once again, let's plot the data for daily deaths as a scatter plot and then overlay the data with our model’s forecast for the next 58 days leading up to December 31st.
plt.figure(figsize=(14,14))
plt.scatter(x,y) x=np.linspace(282,1,282)
x=np.reshape(x,(282,1))
plt.xlim(0, 290)
plt.ylim(0,8000) plt.plot(x, a + b*x+c*np.power(x,2), "r") plt.title('Predicted vs Actual COVID-19 Deaths in NC')
plt.xlabel('Days since first recorded death')
plt.ylabel('Deaths') plt.axvline(x=224+58,color='b') # Blue vertical line corresponds with Dec. 31st
plt.axhline(y=a + b*(224+58) + c*(224+58)**2,color='b')
plt.axhline(y=a + b*(224) + c*(224)**2,color='g') # Corresponds with today's death total of 4,457
The model, a simple quadratic equation, fits the data quite well. The vertical and horizontal green lines correspond with today's date, November 3rd, and death count of 4457. The blue lines correspond with December 31st’s date and predicted death count. So what is the predicted death count on 2020’s final day?
Prediction
In order to predict deaths by December 31st, we need to plug in the corresponding x-value into our model which takes the form of h(x)=a+bx+cx². The following code accomplishes this:
deathsByNewYears = a + b*(224+58) + c*(224+58)**2 # Forecasting 58 days into the future from today print("Predicted number of deaths on Dec. 31st:",int(deathsByNewYears))
And the output:
Predicted number of deaths on Dec. 31st: 6368
The model estimates 1,911 more deaths from COVID-19 will occur in the 58 days between today and the year’s end, culminating in 6,368 deaths on 2020's final day. Some future improvements that I’d like to make include calculating and displaying shaded confidence intervals in order to provide a true probabilistic forecast rather than an extrapolation of a simple curve. Likewise, I’d also like to create a dashboard for the model so that it automatically updates its parameter estimates and forecasts as new data is uploaded to the NC DHHS and then fed into the model.
Take this all with a grain of salt
To be clear, I’m not an epidemiologist nor an expert of any kind for that matter, but I do have a passion for data and storytelling. As for the model’s prediction, my overly optimistic gut feeling is that the true death total won’t eclipse 6000 by year’s end, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.
Globally, the virus is on a renewed tear, prompting many European nations to reinstate ‘wave-breaking’ shutdowns upon breaking previous records for new cases. In the U.S. new data are increasingly pointing towards a bleak winter as in the last two weeks records for the daily number of new cases have been set and shattered on successive days, most recently last Friday, when 98,500 infections were reported. President Trump also recently suggested at a campaign rally that he would fire Dr. Fauci after the election.
The key figure to watch for is hospitalizations since hospitals see seasonal increases in patients admitted in the winter due to the seasonality of the Flu. Hospitals already dealing with seasonal increases in patients may become overwhelmed in the face of widespread revived coronavirus outbreaks. Unfortunately, hospitalizations have been marching higher since the end of September and show little sign of letting up. | https://medium.com/@ali-alsous/forecasting-deaths-from-covid-19-in-north-carolina-up-to-the-end-of-2020-e475cb5d6901 | ['Ali Alsous'] | 2020-11-09 19:52:17.182000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Python', 'Regression', 'Data Visualization', 'Data Science'] |
Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Europe is facing the challenge of terrorism | As if a global pandemic wasn’t enough, Europe has become the epicenter of a new and worrying wave of attacks by Islamic extremists. France, which in recent years has been the victim of several terrorist attacks, is once again the protagonist of three episodes within a few days: the beheading of a professor found guilty of having shown cartoons on Muhammad in the newspaper Charlie Hebdo, the killing of three people in the Notre Dame Cathedral in Nice and the attempted murder of a Greek Orthodox priest in Lyon.
During a speech given in early October, President Macron announced an action plan against Islamist separatism, introducing a draft law to strengthen the secularism of the country that will be officially presented on December 9. France has the highest European percentage of Muslim citizens (5.7 million, equal to 8.5% of the population) and the estimate for 2050 will see this figure increase, reaching between 12.7 and 18%, depending on the migratory incidence.
During 2020, numerous mosques and Koranic schools were closed as they were considered places of radicalization and other associations would be in the sights of the Ministry of the Interior. Macron would like to prevent external actors from continuing to influence national Islamic communities (currently 151 imams are paid by Turkey, 120 from Algeria and 20 from Morocco) and he wants the imams to be educated in France, as well as to strengthen controls on schools and places of worship.
France is not the only European victim of this new round of violence. On 2 November it was the turn of Austria, hit in the night before the start of a new lockdown. The 20-year-old Austro-Macedonian Kujtimi Fejzulai, supported by some accomplices, opened fire on passers-by at various points in the center of Vienna, killing 4 people and wounding 22, before being shot dead. The attacker belonged to the “Lions of the Balkans”, a jihadist-style group born in 2018 and whose members live and operate in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
The accusations for lack of attention, mainly linked to the release of the attacker after a short period of detention (he had in fact already been arrested in 2018 after an unsuccessful attempt to reach Syria), inevitably fell on the judiciary, on the secret services and on the internal services responsible for monitoring and countering terrorism.
Although episodes of religious violence have been sporadic in recent years (the Austrian Muslim community is quite integrated, unlike the French one), during the war in Syria there were over 300 foreign fighters who left Austria to fight in the ranks of the Islamic State; an indication of the considerable extremist substratum. Here too, the government had taken steps to close some mosques, including the one where the young terrorist is believed to have radicalized.
The social rift caused by these attacks has inevitable repercussions on the domestic and international political landscape, especially in the French case. A more extreme position allows Macron to approach a slice of the electorate that in recent years has increasingly turned towards Marine Le Pen, a likely opponent in the 2022 elections. The clash with the Turkish President Erdogan, an opposer in various conflict scenarios and champion of the Islamic cause in all respects, gave the French president a scapegoat that unites not only the national but also the European public opinion.
This polarization, however, only exacerbates the existing frictions, which are the result of a failed integration model and migration policy. If we want to avoid the clash of civilizations, we must be aware that the process to be followed are long and tortuous and require the effort of all actors, both political and religious. This path must inevitably pass from the firm condemnation of violence, the respect for personal and collective freedoms and the acceptance and adaptation to national laws.
The fight against extremism (not religions) is the only way to be able to live peacefully between different cultures.
Davide Garavoglia
…
This article was originally posted in Italian on Polikós: https://www.polikos.it/geopolitica/2020/11/non-solo-covid-leuropa-di-fronte-alla-sfida-del-terrorismo/ | https://medium.com/@davidegaravoglia/amidst-the-covid-19-pandemic-europe-is-facing-the-challenge-of-terrorism-694219d58366 | ['Davide Garavoglia'] | 2020-11-16 13:36:40.620000+00:00 | ['Europe', 'Attack', 'France', 'Terrorism', 'Macron'] |
Don’t I Know You | As the fourth and final song faded, the DJ in our club at the north end of Waikiki kept the crowd pumped for another set of nude women on stage under the flashing black lights. These men were mostly military dudes who were barely legal (21) to drink alcohol on the island, on their way to or coming from Desert Storm.
I collected my money and made my way off the center stage. The balls of my feet were throbbing and I couldn’t wait to release my toes. Beads of sweat tickled the small of my back and my cocaine-fueled heart was thumping inside my chest. The applause, cheers, and whistles from the floor were palpable.
I never felt more beautiful.
I reached the edge of the stage and kicked off my six-inch stilettos preparing for my final set which was located in-between the center stage and the dressing room near the back of the club. This area was a much smaller space because it was an actual shower stage, complete with a jet-stream runway. In a running shower, our work area had dozens of miniature water fountains arching toward our feet — stretching down each side of the narrow path inside a ten-inch Plexiglass shield. Our very own Stripping Sneeze Guard for the foot-fetishists of the world.
Still naked from my previous show, I grabbed the bills I had collected in each garter on my thighs, tossed them in a ball on the floor, covering the stash with my hot pink Spandex mini dress. After exchanging non-verbal assurances that my loot was safely guarded by my favorite bouncer, Tuli, I stepped into the shower stall (surrounded by three walls of Plexiglass) and turned on the water.
Waving a smile to the audience, I began to sponge up with the bottle of Prell shampoo which was generously provided by one of the other dancers — she knew the optics were a huge money-maker. Prell gave a bright, lime green neon glow under the black lights. We all looked like The Hulk but with less muscle and bigger tits.
The shower stage always drew in a big crowd, even without the Prell. A nude chick, sudsing up with wet hair, strutting up and down a jet stream runway — what’s not to love?
Deana followed my set and I loved her taste in music, which meant I’d have a blast performing my wet-n-wild show while she worked the center of the room. I threw her a smile from my corner, nodding in appreciation as Epic by Faith No More vibrated through the speakers. We both mouthed the words to the crowd:
“You want it all, but you can’t have it. It’s in your face, but you can’t grab it!”
Teasing customers was fun— even more so when the music was rad.
Receiving tips in the shower was different from collecting the dollar bills in our garters while dancing on the main (dry) stage. Customers loved slapping the money on our wet bodies. Never one to disappoint, I always bent over, legs together — standing on the tips of my toes with my ass proudly in the air. This pose allowed the guys to spank us — if they did so with paper money. After a couple of songs, most of us would write things with wet bills. We would place them on the see-through shower walls, like “Thank you” or “Tip Me.” The guys took such pleasure in sneaking a touch; I just loved the cash. Some girls hated the spank-tips but I didn’t mind. As long as they tapped quickly, never going south of the border, I was cool.
As Deanna’s last song of her set began my ass-slappers started to thin out, leaving me alone to survey the audience. My hips swayed to Fire Woman, by The Cult; another kick-ass song choice.
I was all smiles in tune with the guitar riffs until my eyes landed on a familiar face from high school walking through the red velvet curtain in the front of the club.
Mutherfucker.
My eyes bolted off the runway to the dressing room and I thought of running, but my body was frozen seeking comfort in the pockets of my breath. The cigarette smoke-filled air served equal parts drama and suspense and he walked straight toward me as soon as he recognized who I was. Pretending not to see him, I spun around whipping my Prell-soaked hair like I was a backup dancer in MTV’s Beach House.
My world was suddenly in slow motion. The butterflies inside my belly choked on the reality of his presence.
“Hey, hey… !” I knew he was talking to me but ignored him and kept dancing. I focused on the DJ waiting impatiently for the song to end.
“I know you. Christine, right?” He pushed.
What the actual fuck.
Christine? Nobody called me by that name. Nobody even knew me as her since I started stripping four years ago in 1987. My stage name was Stephanie; Christine was buried in the chaos of my past.
Realizing he wasn’t going to stop trying to talk to me, I replied. “Nope. I’m Stephanie.” My voice was shaking and my knees struggled to support my trembling, wet body. Now, instead of feeling beautiful, I was suddenly aware that I was unarmed, completely naked, and not at all prepared for our reunion.
“No, you’re Christine. I know you.” His smirk was exactly the same.
“Wrong girl,” I said without blinking. Suddenly I wished I really was The Hulk.
“No, you went to Kaiser High School!” His smirk morphed into an actual smile.
How can you..?
With unabashed purpose, I lowered my body to my knees on the shower runway tile so I could be level with his eyes. I was still trembling but there was no way he was going to win. Not this time.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. My name is Stephanie. You got the wrong girl.” I looked him square in the face, determined to erase that night years ago when I was a 13-year-old away at canoe paddling camp on the north shore beach in Haleiwa.
He took a sip of his beer, shook his head, and rolled his eyes. He knew I was full of shit; and I knew that he knew.
The DJ began to speak and I was saved. I bolted for the corner edge outside the shower and grabbed a towel from Tuli. I left behind my cash, shoes, and the dress still rolled-up in a corner next to the mirrored wall, which covered the stage-side of the club. Tuli was concerned but couldn’t leave his post. I bolted past my old high school pal — through the crowd to the dressing room. He tried to block me but I kept walking.
In the safety of the space with the other girls getting ready for their sets, I pulled a breath from the well of my past and felt started to cry. My body was still trembling and I clutched onto my friend Alison feeling like I was going to pass out. She stopped lining her lips in front of the mirror and focused on me. I couldn’t speak.
“What, honey? What happened?” Alison held me close and rubbed my back, still damp as my wet hair dripped down my skin.
Still, no words.
“Did someone asshole touch you?” Alison was pissed off, and I could tell she was ready to kick some customer’s ass.
Shaking my head no, I opened my locker and pulled out my purse. I couldn’t stop panting.
“Holy shit, Stephanie, what the fuck!?” She went from angry to worried.
I dumped some blow on the dressing room counter and snorted it up my nose as fast as I could. Alison kept rubbing my back.
“It’s okay, sweetie.” Her tone shifted again — this time she was maternal and calming, like the mom I always dreamed of having.
Sitting naked on the stool with my towel draped around my hips, I wiped my tear-soaked cheeks and found the words.
“I saw him,” I whispered. My breath was heavy but I felt lighter after speaking.
“Who?” She offered me a cocktail napkin as a tissue.
“The motherfucker who raped me.” | https://medium.com/sexography/dont-i-know-you-fe059be8b2b0 | ['Christine Macdonald'] | 2020-10-25 18:52:21.625000+00:00 | ['Pain', 'Drugs', 'Sex', 'Life', 'Abuse'] |
Your weak leadership moments are a disaster to your company’s long-term mission and culture. True? | So you reckon you’re a good leader? Your MBA, drop-in sports team captaincy and ego tick all the boxes, right? Plus, I forgot to mention, you say all the right things to those above you in the food chain at work? Congratulations. I have nothing more to teach you, my work here is done. You and your company are destined for the top.
Maybe.
How many times have you stuck your head in the sand? Ignored integrity because it felt awkward? Or been the ego that suffocates the company mission, culture and — most importantly — the team?
Here’s a little story from a client. Take from it what you will.
She was working as a senior manager in a tech firm last year. The firm is growing exponentially. The senior management work out of a US valley and visit the satellite offices around North America periodically.
Lots of changes were taking place and this particular satellite office was being visited by a director outside of my clients immediate 'silo’, 'vertical’, 'chain of command’… a boss person from another department.
This director, according to her story, was pretty arrogant. Full of themselves. ‘Fun’ passive aggressive. Communicated terribly. Knowledgeable about their skill-set (great!) but coupled with a massive ego (oh no..). Seemed to be floating around on the laurels of their MBA certificate and European wine knowledge. I’m sure you get the picture, these people walk amongst us..
The visit purpose was to plan for changes to the satellite office. Visit came and went and my clients important perspectives on prospective operational changes (she being the primary eyes-and-ears on the ground in the local ecosystem) were ignored. No surprise considering the director’s personality.
And so the client reported this to her own director. Who listened — and did nothing to push forward the many, valid perspectives. Head in the sand time for whatever reason..
Yes, a familiar story.
The changes promoted by the ego-driven director subsequently occurred and my client’s input was ignored. The staff on the ground in the satellite office had no choice and no say, so much for change management theory etc.
End of story?
Maybe. And definitely maybe if you only think in short-termism. How about going macro on this and thinking strategically?
I’m sure you’re already ahead of me on some of this.
You see, going to business school and being good in your individual skill doesn’t make you a leader. Being arrogant — and not listening to others— doesn’t make you strong. And having concerns voiced to you by your team, which may conflict with a peer colleague surely warrants discussions? Not taking it up with your fellow director in this case is essentially weak. For a zillion reasons.
You sow the seeds of work problems and work-culture doom at the times leadership doesn’t address this kind of thing in the right way. If this is going wrong, other things are likely to be too. Improvements take humility.
Your people — your staff — are your greatest asset, without them you’re just another horse in the race. And guess what — another company is the favorite and (strategically) going to be the winner because they understand their team and culture better.
Some solutions? Start with asking yourself these obvious but important questions:
What are the benefits of having discussions with your subject matter experts? What happens if you ignore them? How in your role as a senior leader can you empower those around you? Even if employees don’t report to you, they see YOU as a leader. Earn your money, lead them too. What can you do right now to get out of your ego-comfort zone? What can you learn from those 'below' you in the company pecking order?
Clearly my client has a point. She left the company and has accelerated to an executive role in a rival tech firm. Why would you hang around in an environment where the leaders say they are all about the company mission and culture, but reality is different? It takes more than a foosball table and free meals to make a team. I know, we did it in the military with neither of the above.
Incidentally, the original firm continues to grow, but how much MORE could it accelerate, both fiscally and holistically if the leadership culture was really and truly empowering, the management had the moral courage, integrity and humility to do what is right MORE OF THE TIME?
True leadership is hard work. It’s an ever-learning quest to improve on. As a leadership adviser and coach I work with my clients to open up the visibility on their shortcomings so they can accelerate quickly and overtake the opposition. These realities are not a diluted version via classroom teaching but discussed and developed alongside them on the job.
If you want the tactical and strategic advantage to win the business battle and the business war, don’t rely on your education, limited work leadership experience and your captaincy of your local beach volleyball team. Do more. Improve daily.
Work with a coach (me!) and see what you can really be. I guarantee you will become better.
OUT | https://medium.com/@gordon.bondbourne/your-weak-leadership-moments-are-a-disaster-to-your-companys-long-term-mission-and-culture-fact-44ea8de33585 | ['Gordon Patrick Newell'] | 2020-01-09 17:31:26.961000+00:00 | ['Coaching', 'Management', 'Improvement', 'Business', 'Leadership'] |
The Art of Creating a Mixtape — A Data Science Approach | Tracks are complex, and single descriptors like artist, album, or genre are not sufficient enough to capture their underlying ‘feel’. So I needed a way to capture more information and get an idea of my ‘inventory’ of songs before I began selecting. Iteratively, this led to a functional prototype of an interactive dashboard that would allow me to roam my library of music in map-form (as visible above) in a more informative manner than swiping down on a list.
The dashboard served as an exploratory research tool — allowing me to see the spatial mapping of other mixtapes (albums) — as well as an organization tool to select tracks for my playlist.
Here is a quick sample of me first finding a not-so-positive (low valence) but high energy song and then connecting it with a song from a specific artist (The Bleachers):
Sound Features
To understand underlying properties of songs, I thought of doing my own sound analysis but then found that Spotify has done some great work in calculating Audio Features. Here are the ones that, after some filtering, proved to be useful creating a spatial mapping:
Acousticness: “A confidence measure from 0.0 to 1.0 of whether the track is acoustic.”
“A confidence measure from 0.0 to 1.0 of whether the track is acoustic.” Danceability: “ Danceability describes how suitable a track is for dancing based on a combination of musical elements including tempo, rhythm stability, beat strength, and overall regularity.”
Danceability describes how suitable a track is for dancing based on a combination of musical elements including tempo, rhythm stability, beat strength, and overall regularity.” Energy: “Energy is a measure from 0.0 to 1.0 and represents a perceptual measure of intensity and activity. Typically, energetic tracks feel fast, loud, and noisy.”
“Energy is a measure from 0.0 to 1.0 and represents a perceptual measure of intensity and activity. Typically, energetic tracks feel fast, loud, and noisy.” Loudness: “The overall loudness of a track in decibels (dB). Loudness values are averaged across the entire track and are useful for comparing relative loudness of tracks.”
“The overall loudness of a track in decibels (dB). Loudness values are averaged across the entire track and are useful for comparing relative loudness of tracks.” Valence: “A measure from 0.0 to 1.0 describing the musical positiveness conveyed by a track. Tracks with high valence sound more positive (e.g. happy, cheerful, euphoric), while tracks with low valence sound more negative (e.g. sad, depressed, angry).”
Technical Details of Mapping in 2D
I scaled the above features (+ some others) them into normal distributions, and then used TSNE to reduce them into 2 dimensions, allowing me to create the ‘Music Map’ you see above. Now we have a birds eye-view of a song library where each song is mapped relative to another rather than a meaningless list of endless items. I also used K-means clustering in high-dimensions to get groups of songs — each colour represents a different cluster — which serve as cognitive landmarks on the map indicating separation and borders. I like maps, I think spatiality helps knowledge organization and, in turn, makes it easier to build cognitive maps. Cognitive maps facilitate capturing connections between items. I then calculated linear gradients across the X and Y axis for each of the audio features and annotated it with the arrows that indicate the direction of flow.
How to interpret graph
Each circle-dot is a song and its placement reflects its relativity with other songs. As an example, songs on the left differ from the songs on the right more significantly than from the songs in the center.
The longer and further the flow arrow is from the center of the map, the stronger the flow in the respective direction. As an example, the bottom left of the map contains significantly acoustic features as the acousticness gradient arrow is long and far from centre. On the other hand, loudness gradient arrow is small and closer to center of the map indicating that though there is somewhat of a correlation of louder songs in the top right quadrant of the map, the correlation is weak.
gradient arrow is long and far from centre. On the other hand, gradient arrow is small and closer to center of the map indicating that though there is somewhat of a correlation of louder songs in the top right quadrant of the map, the correlation is weak. Colours are clusters meaning same coloured points are grouped together in higher dimensions and they help to see the boundaries where two groups overlap.
This kind of graph-based UI is something I’ve been thinking about and experimenting with on various fronts like blog posts, tweets, etc. because I think changing User-interface structures could also change the way we think.
Interactive Controls
Control Panel for Music Map
Of course, staring at colourful dots is not exactly informative so I made it interactive with labels and added controls to filter and focus the map. I also added interactive features to select songs to add to your mixtape and track their positions on the map.
Interactive Features:
The Controls tab can filter the map based on various properties of songs.
tab can filter the map based on various properties of songs. The Artists tab also allows to filter on artists.
tab also allows to filter on artists. The Explore tab shows details of tracks as you hover over them on the map.
tab shows details of tracks as you Hovering over a song will also highlight other songs in the same album on the map and their ordering.
will also highlight other songs in the same album on the map and their ordering. Clicking a song will add it to your mixtape table below the map where you can click the preview button to get a quick 30sec snippet from the middle of the song.
will add it to your mixtape table below the map where you can click the preview button to get a quick 30sec snippet from the middle of the song. Toggle buttons on the top right allow you to toggle different map views.
Mapping out a Mixtape
After exploring, researching, and making your selection, you can then see the final spatial journey of your Mixtape.
Sample Mixtape Spatial Journey
Coming back to our initial principles of mixtapes: we’ve used underlying sound features to emphasize and design for Flow — we can design movement from various parts of the map like taking a listener from a good-vibe acoustics, to depressing but energetic pop, to a mellow shoe-gaze dream-pop sequence. Part of designing for Flow is researching the movement of other albums by your favourite artists on the map. Order is accounted for, we hand-pick our songs one by one in a sequence. And finally, Authenticity, though one can’t guarantee sincerity, our map contains songs from our own library. Therefore, at the very least, the structure allows for authentic, sincere selection of songs that have indeed infected us as we expect them to infect another. | https://towardsdatascience.com/the-art-of-creating-a-mixtape-a-data-science-approach-1902065b1d1d | [] | 2019-03-08 16:26:58.434000+00:00 | ['Spotify', 'Data Visualization', 'Spotify Playlist', 'Music', 'Data Science'] |
Multi-Track Diplomacy in Afghan Peace Process and Pakistan | Multi-Track Diplomacy in Afghan Peace Process and Pakistan
In contemporary era, to resolve any conflict, all nine tracks of diplomacy can be successfully applied for positive outcome. Taking the recent Afghan Peace Process as a case study, there it requires every track for peaceful settlement and harmony in the country. The USA, in the Trump administration, the first and foremost it initiated the peace process with track 1 and 1.5 with Talibans. In July, 2018, the officials and unofficial of the US and Taliban set pre-negotiations for ending a long going war in Afghanistan. At the same time, other countries such as Pakistan, Turkey and now Iran are helping the US to extend its communication and cooperation with the Afghan warriors. These countries have opted the religion, ethnic ties, trade, funding and peace activism for peace building in the country. As Pakistan has ethnic ties with Pakhtoons and Talibans, it uses approaches of track four and seven for robust conflict resolution mechanism. After releasing Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani of nine years of detention in Pakistani prison, Pakistan convinced the Talibans to agree on table talks which was impossible for the US to open this door of reconciliation.
Moreover, the USA applied track eight of diplomacy that is of adequate funding in the country. The country pledged to 3.3 billion dollars in funding to Afghan forces. Americans also promised the Talibans for infrastructure building in the war affected sites of Afghanistan. This approach of peacemaking not only paves the way for intra-Afghan dialogue, but also opens the path for stable negotiations. However, with the track one alone, the USA hardly could achieve such tremendous milestone in peace process at Doha, Qatar in January, 2019. Had there been no Pakistan, there would have been no such effective beginning of peace process. In addition to it, various local and international NGOs are primarily involved in community-based rehabilitation and development programmes. They have been using aid as as leverage for resolving inter-communal conflicts and promoting community cohesion.
In some cases this group of NGOs has been able to resolve a potentially violent conflict at the community level. The locals of Afghan are now praising these aids and hoping for better future in the country. These NGOs are also helping in changing the perception of the residents that foreigner are not necessarily invaders. Hence, track nine of diplomacy is of public opinion that is effectively operated upon Afghan peace process. For conflict resolution, multi-track diplomacy is the one of the best approaches to peace making in the country and the region.
contact at Sodhar32 @gmail.com | https://medium.com/@sodhar32/multi-track-diplomacy-in-afghan-peace-process-and-pakistan-3abb15adc850 | ['Masroor Sadar'] | 2021-08-10 08:03:37.368000+00:00 | ['Diplomacy', 'Peace Studies', 'Afghanistan', 'Peace', 'Pakistan'] |
Become deeply adaptable today, or else | The ESG edge
The particulars vary, naturally, by company, industry and location. That’s precisely why it takes adaptability, which is attitude combined with capability, an openness to the excitement of risk and uncertainty combined with the skill and empowerment to act on the spot and make the judgment calls that manage situations successfully as they unfold. It has become the primary skillset for the Age of Climate Adaptation we are in.
If you’re an ESG company, you have a clear edge, since you have ingrained sustainability and best Environmental Social and Governance practices over the years, enough to earn a place in the thriving $35 trillion ESG investment market and the trust of portfolio managers.
That’s why this is the time for you to lead on adaptation, and you now have the C-CAM model and the TCFD framework to make the process far easier and way faster. If you’re not ESG, think of COVID-19 as the spark to go for it. You’ve set up teams to manage the crisis — start there!
E and S signal that you care about planet and people and back up your conscience with visionary programs and initiatives. As we’re seeing with COVID-19, that is a huge fundamental.
The G, your governance, your approach to leadership, might be an even bigger ingredient when it comes to pivoting to this new variety of deep adaptability — from the focus you’ve had up to now on slashing emissions, preserving biodiversity, and otherwise solving climate change, to a new focus on preparing for and recovering from climate impacts (like COVID) already upon us and the inevitable ones to come.
That’s because deep adaptability doesn’t happen automatically. It does for some people, but not for most, and you want it in everyone everywhere across the company. So you must trigger it, nurture it, deliberately, culturally, institutionally, and that requires a certain organizational constitution. Your ESG practices and mindset give you a head start, and there is no better time than now to shoot higher.
So let’s begin. The immediate priority is the coronavirus. Stretching your company’s response and adaptability for another couple of years of COVID takes two things simultaneously: an action agenda and communications. There is simply no time to do the first before starting the second. Both must happen at the same time.
An action agenda
So far, you’ve been managing the immediate as we all wait for the economy to reopen. But we learned this week in this definitive article what that reopening will likely look like and why we must all go back to the drawing board and deepen the action agenda. We also learned from this one by Bill Gates how long it it will likely take for medicine to eliminate the COVID risk altogether. Articles like this one, this one and this one offer a deeper glimpse.
The restaurant example is particularly daunting and illustrates what every company, no matter your size and industry, must now adapt to. Operationally, as a local economy begins to reopen, you must put in place the most rigorous possible kitchen and supply-chain practices to give customers and employees the confidence they won’t be infected. Dining-area distancing and cleaning practices, too. As you do, show customers real-time via cameras in your kitchen. Provide education on your website and via direct email and social media. And more.
The creativity, discipline and consistency required, the sweet spot between supervision and autonomy, to sustain such an effort for as long as it takes in every business unit, and to launch this level immediately — well, that’s what we’re talking about.
Multiply that by all your locations, with the varying economy-opening pace and policies, and across all your suppliers, for 18 months or more, and you can see the next-level complexity — and therefore how fast you need to move on this agenda and how thoroughly you need to delegate and empower across the organization, if you expect your company to have a shot at being among the winners.
And it’s not just on your end. For the coronavirus to remain in check across geographies and not rekindle and explode anew, customers themselves must act with rigorous discipline. So must your competitors and every business in all industries.
So you also have to engage in customer education, trade associations, policy task forces, etc., to be part of a broader systemic solution that is now as critical to your own preservation and profitability as everything you do inside your four walls. Welcome to deep adaptability.
Again, the particulars vary. The starting point, though, is to realize this is not managed with temporary measures for a few weeks of stay-at-home lockdowns. The restrictions under any reopening scenario change the game, vary per location, and will vary over time.
That is the nature of this virus. It is too aggressive and will not go away soon. Defeating it takes rolling restrictions, and to navigate those restrictions takes a bottom-up, empowerment-driven cultural approach to enterprise-wide decision-making across your organization, along with smart top-down direction and strategy. That level, in such a tight time frame, calls now for the second part of the equation.
Enterprise-wide communications
Start with internal and direct comm to prep your people and stakeholders, and then direct your messaging at customers and the public. Your company may have to do both at once. Ideally, though, you want internal and direct to precede.
Why? Because the whole point is to deepen the adaptability of everyone everywhere across your organization, so they can then better care for and make smarter autonomous decisions that affect external stakeholders.
Each corporate department manages distinct stakeholders — customers, suppliers and partners, banks and investors, trade associations, community groups, regulators, the media, the general public and others specific to your business. The communication has to be tailored and strategic for each.
For that to be fast and optimized, apply the Five Tasks of internal and direct communications:
Paint a visual picture of what society will be like under all these restrictions and rigorous practices. It’s a natural human bias to shrink from an action when the picture looks blurry or complicated. Simplify and clarify it for them, and notice how much faster everyone will get it and feel empowered to act accordingly. Deploy smart messaging and creative. You do this for every comm effort. The human dynamics are so particular this time — the level of personal protection and responsibility needed, the humanity of it all, the high stakes, the anxiety, as well as the excitement and optimism mentioned above — that the strategy and execution must be different. Spark high engagement. This, too, is a tried and true practice, and every good (particularly ESG-driven) HR director knows the 10-or-so levers to pull. But once more, COVID is pushing the agenda, and that calls for communication strategies across those 10-or-so levers to engage everyone everywhere and bring out the deep adaptability in all of them. Build a deep adaptability culture. This is engagement’s partner, because engagement is needed to build a culture, but culture-building includes other pieces, mainly systems, structures and values. And there’s comm designed for these parts, as well. Trigger events. Another thing we know from behavior science is that most people, most, do not express what they really feel about a thorny subject. And COVID is a thorny subject! So they remain passive when action is most needed. That is the one thing you do not want across your company. Items 1–4 help bring this out and spark deep adaptability, but research tells us one of the most effective strategies are trigger events within and outside the company. Set up a team to track and insert them in your communications.
The speed and precision with which you must pivot on this requires not just the traditional comm skillset from your agency and in-house team. It also helps if they have the knowledge and instinct to manage natural-disaster and risk-management communications, as well as the behavior-science expertise to know what message and creative hot buttons to push to elicit fast and focused participation by everyone everywhere. So you shouldn’t use just anyone anywhere to do this for you. Select wisely. | https://medium.com/predict/become-deeply-adaptable-today-or-else-fdf0fc63ea21 | ['Alexander Díaz'] | 2020-05-07 14:41:58.618000+00:00 | ['Management', 'Future', 'Predict Column', 'Sustainability', 'Climate Change'] |
EVEROAD: Develop kindness & creativity in your company | Creating an atmosphere of kindness in the workplace is a smart and modern business approach that has been becoming more and more popular in France over the last few years. Statistics show overall company performance is better when kindness is spread around.
The old excuse of telling colleagues who ask for help that it is not your responsibility or your job is now seen as insensitive and selfish especially in the startup world. Opening your door to a coworker in need is now seen as the norm in present business models and overall company mentalities. No matter the level of the request, a kind response or even a smile often boosts creativity and enhances team spirit.
Company leaders often wonder how they can create a kinder more cohesive atmosphere in all their departments. Here is a fresh, fun idea of a game that we have recently played at Everoad which has been really successful so don’t hesitate to try it in your company.
“Gorilla & Peanuts”
Few weeks ago, during a tough work period linked to our high objectives at a really key period of our development, we were in need of a fresh and peps moment. As Office & Happiness Manager of Everoad, I suggested to all our teams that we play a fun mystery game called “Gorilla & Peanuts”. I wanted to empower one of your main values, which is “People first”. People will be the reason for our success, and it’s also the reason why Everoad started and lives every day.
The rules were simple: each one of us is a ‘Gorilla’ and has to randomly draw the name of a colleague who then becomes his ‘Peanut’ for the week. During the week the Gorilla had to take care of their Peanut with the aim of ensuring they had a nice week and work environment without being unmasked. At the end of the week, the Peanuts had to guess who had taken care of them all week and find out who was their Gorilla.
In the beginning, the game was received with mixed feelings. Some enjoyed the concept right away whereas others were shy or even sceptical about the purpose of the game or its effectiveness so they showed little interest in the idea.
It gave incredible motivation
However, when the first little mysteries started to surface, including pictures shared on our Slack of what the Peanuts received, it gave incredible motivation and energy to other Gorillas to be better than others and always more innovative. We then witnessed an amazing level of attention and intrigue between participants and the excitement and spirit of the game was on the rise.
Since images speak louder than words, let’s discover more about the game in pictures. Below we have an impressive selection amongst more than 60 pictures published on the display board in our office space
Kindness is Key
From chocolates and candy to breakfast treats with flowers and candles through to poems and short notes, people were getting more fond of their Gorillas with every new surprise and the curiosity was mounting.
You can make an impact at any level, anytime
Another of our values is “All owners” that we define as “You can make an impact at any level, anytime.” We demonstrated it during this week because on the contrary for the “forgotten Peanuts” (it even became a new channel on Slack), received presents and little notes from other volunteers of the company. It proves how human fit and compassion were strong!
Watching the smiles and hearing the laughs all week long, I have to say that I was really proud of the team! Almost everyone played the game and demonstrated a great level of creativity, generosity, and kindness.
It was a good life lesson that showed how thoughtfulness and compassion, when mixed with creativity, can produce so much joy and fun in taking care of each other. It was interesting to see that it become a phenomenon at Everoad because of the way it was presented and communicated. The impact was great!
Never underestimate teamwork!
Finally to conclude, this little game taught us different key things: first, we underestimated how kindness and taking care of each other has a positive impact on the wellness of people, we should all think about it carefully and keep it in mind every single day. We have also realized how it is nice to give free rein to one’s imagination and creativity. And finally, it has raised awareness of how energy spreads and is contagious when highlighted. This was the most impressive impact and we learned how much we should communicate on what we do to motivate people to do their maximum and give everything.
As our CEO said at the end of the week: | https://medium.com/everoad/everoad-develop-kindness-creativity-in-your-company-4fdfa5971214 | ['Laura Corcos'] | 2019-07-03 15:59:18.370000+00:00 | ['Company Culture', 'Happiness', 'Kindness', 'Creativity', 'Startup'] |
Firebase Emulator Suite | Advanced tools for developers build and test apps locally
Image from firebase.google.com
What is Firebase Emulator Suite?🤔
Before on year ago at Firebase Summit 2019, Google has been introduced new feature into the Firebase. They introduced Firebase Emulator Suite. An advanced tools for developers build and test apps locally using Cloud Firestore, Realtime Database, Authentication, Cloud Functions, Cloud Pub/Sub and Firebase Hosting. Local development with Local Emulator Suite can be a good fit for your prototyping, development and continuous integration workflows.
Image from firebase.google.com
So basically with Firebase Emulator Suite have tools to run your web or mobile app in locally. This might help you to testing or debugging your app.
So which Firebase features and platforms are supported?🤔
According to the Firebase documentation Firebase Local Emulator Suite allows you to test your code with our core products in an interoperable way. The Cloud Functions emulator supports HTTP functions, callable functions, and background functions triggered by Cloud Firestore, Realtime Database and Cloud Pub/Sub; the Cloud Functions emulator does not support background functions triggered by Auth or Cloud Storage for Firebase. For Cloud Firestore and Realtime Database emulators, Security Rules emulation is built in.
Image from firebase.google.com
Setup Firebase Emulator Suite
To better understand this let’s connect emulator suite with our web application.
To setup emulator suite first of all we need to install Firebase CLI. Following command will install Firebase CLI.
npm install -g firebase-tools
Once your installation is completed you must log into your Firebase CLI
firebase login
After authentication create your web application and in that project folder run the following command.
firebase init
‘firebase init’ command will initialize Firebase on your project folder. I already added Firestore, Function, Hosting and Emulators to the project folder.
After adding necessary tools to the project, we can start our Firebase Emulator. To do that run the following command.
firebase emulators:start
Done! Now our Firebase emulator is running. To view the Firebase Emulator and status run http://localhost:4000 on your browser. | https://medium.com/@piumsudhara/firebase-emulator-suite-62a527d134db | ['Pium Sudhara'] | 2020-12-18 15:27:06.595000+00:00 | ['Firebase Emulator Suite', 'Ｍedium', 'Firebase'] |
The Devil’s Bargain Went Down to Georgia | “Oracle of the Deplorables”
John Fredericks has been broadcasting his own morning radio show from Georgia for several weeks and recently launched a Georgia edition of his Star News network of digital newspapers.
A self-described “oracle of the deplorables,” he has been explicit in criticizing the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and in challenging radio host Erick Erickson as a former ‘Never Trumper’ whose eventual support for the president was never sincere.
Frederick’s has been touring extensively including to cities outside of Atlanta. Places where newspapers have shrunk and outlets seeking affluent or young demographics have mostly abandoned save for the “what do these Trump supporters in a small-town diner think” stories every few months.
In Georgia, Fredericks’ and Bannon’s radio shows are only available via stream, but Fredericks is asking for contributions from listeners with promises of buying a radio station in the state.
The John Fredericks Radio network currently includes several stations in Virginia. Some are also owned under the name MAGA Radio Network.
The liberal watchdog Media Matters describes Star News as “a growing network of partisan websites that dress up right-wing media content and talking points to look like local news. The organization’s explicit aim is to deliver pro-Trump propaganda to residents of battleground states, coating local news in the same grievance- and conspiracy-filled vernacular as is used by outlets like The Daily Caller and Breitbart.”
Media Matters also posted its own article on Nov. 24th about conservative hosts critical of Georgia Republicans and Erickson.
While these Georgia MAGA media efforts are still dwarfed by the ratings and reach of the state’s legacy newspapers and radio, a sign of its influence is the number of state legislators who have appeared on Fredericks’ radio show, signed on to various calls for a special session, and lent their names to fruitless amicus briefs.
In those interviews, the legislators tend to mention the large volume of calls and constituent pressure they are getting. “A lot of folks are angry.”
In addition, some state politicians and the state Republican party itself are now advertisers on Georgia Star News.
Is it to reach conservative voters or a kind of protection money?
Or just a cruder version of what Fox News and WSB radio have done for years.
As I’ve been arguing for some time, Fox News, Erick Erickson and Cox Media Group’s talk radio stations WSB in Atlanta and WGAU in Athens have long had ethically questionable relationships with state Republican leaders.
But now, with President Trump himself attacking many of those leaders, such access and exclusive interviews are a sign of swamp-like corruption.
To Bannon’s War Room brethren, a state with Republican majorities in both houses of the state legislature and a lock on all statewide offices should not have flipped to Biden.
That its Republican establishment is unwilling to use all aspects of its power, from demanding resignations to calling a special session to criminal investigations of voting rights groups is a sign of the Republic’s decline.
And for conservative media to not go all in for Trump now, is betrayal. | https://medium.com/@brianpbannon/the-devils-bargain-went-down-to-georgia-76fc39c56a63 | ['Brian Bannon'] | 2020-12-15 14:21:38.362000+00:00 | ['Steve Bannon', 'NPR', 'Georgia Politics', 'Media Criticism'] |
Digital Marketing: Importance, Applications, and Challenges | Inbound is quickly becoming the marketing method of choice for many businesses — and for good reason! Marketers love it because it brings good-fit prospects right to their door. Consumers love it because it doesn’t rely on interrupting them. Everyone’s happy! Right? Maybe not.
While many marketers have found success with inbound, many others are still struggling. If you are facing difficulties with inbound, you’re not alone. Inbound marketing problems are more common than you think, but there are ways you can solve them. What are some of the biggest challenges marketers face (and what can you do about them)?
The Top 5 Challenges Marketers Face
1. Generating (Quality) Traffic
Solid lead generation is pivotal to inbound marketing success. Why? Because once you’ve generated leads, inbound allows you to nurture them through the buyer’s journey by providing helpful information and to guide them toward a purchase decision.
Inbound marketing is about creating valuable content that answers your prospects’ questions. When people think you have something to offer them, they will be more likely to provide you with their contact information. Now you have a lead that’s definitely interested in what you have to offer. Your job is to nurture this lead by providing helpful information until they’re ready to make a decision.
The problem here is that many businesses struggle with lead generation in the first place. Without generating leads, it’s impossible to nurture them!
In HubSpot’s State of Inbound 2018, 61% of marketers reported that generating traffic and leads is a top challenge. Without reaching new prospects and attracting new customers, it can be difficult to sustain growth. After all, if no one is visiting your website, your sales funnel will be empty.
To solve this problem, you should:
Revisit your buyer personas. The first question you should ask yourself is: are you targeting the right people? Give your buyer personas enough detail so you know exactly who you are targeting. Ultimately, this will allow you to create content that truly speaks to them.
Reconsider your content. What type of content does your audience want? Some people like reading blogs, while others prefer an entertaining video. Find the right medium for your prospects and use it to create interesting and relevant content.
Optimize. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the key to being found on search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. More visibility on search engine pages means more customers coming to your website.
Invest in paid search. SEO is the best way to up your organic search engine rankings, but paid search is a fast and easy way to get noticed by your audience. It complements your SEO and fills in any gaps by directing your prospects to the right landing pages.
Bring visitors back to your site with retargeting. Have you ever visited a website, only to see their ads all around the internet over the next few days? That’s retargeting. These ads reintroduce your brand or products to your prospects so you stay top-of-mind.
2. Information Overload
The popularity of inbound marketing means that there’s a lot of information already out there in many industries. Google’s current count of indexed pages is approaching fifty billion pages. It can be hard to break through the clutter and have your voice heard if you don’t have something new to add.
To overcome this challenge, start by taking a deep look into the problems your customers are having. What is getting in the way of their success and how can you help? Even if there is already abundant content about common solutions, you may be able to offer a different perspective, an easier explanation, or a fresh approach.
You should also explore new ways to engage with or present information to your audience. When you have a clear understanding of who your audience is and where they are hanging out online (think: social media, forums, etc.), you can begin to have meaningful conversations with real people. Once you have their attention, you can gently nudge prospects over to your other digital assets.
3. Tools and Technology
Without the right tools, it’s unlikely you’ll see success from your inbound efforts. To smoothly execute your inbound strategy, invest in scalable resources that let you do more in less time.
With the abundance of tools available, it can be a challenge for marketers to sort through their options and find the most suitable technology for their campaign. In fact, HubSpot’s State of Inbound report found that 24% of marketers struggle in identifying the right tools and technologies for their needs. How, then, do you pick the ones that add value to your marketing?
As a HubSpot Platinum Certified Agency Partner, we recommend learning about and using HubSpot tools; even the free tools can add lots of value. Regardless of whether you use HubSpot, here are some other tools that you should have in your arsenal:
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software. Keep track of, organize, and learn more about your contacts. This helps you get to know your customers better, so you know how to sell your business to them.
Social Media Publisher. This should integrate a calendar, scheduling tools, and monitoring capabilities for easy social media management.
Social Media Publisher. This should integrate a calendar, scheduling tools, and monitoring capabilities for easy social media management. Marketing Automation Tool. Inbound is about nurturing your leads. A marketing automation tool helps you guide your leads to a purchase decision and prevent them from falling through the cracks.
Analytics Tools. How do you track the actions people take on your website? Explore available analytics tools. Google Analytics is a great option — are there others that suit your needs?
Pick the right tools by looking at what your business truly needs. To benefit from your investment, go for software or technology that is simple enough for the whole team to learn and use.
4. Overwhelming Data
Inbound marketing provides you with an extraordinary amount of data. Many marketers struggle with what to focus on. From determining your buyer persona to choosing the most effective method of tracking your ROI, the amount of information that you need to understand and the process is seemingly endless.
But when done right, it’s possible to track all of this new information.
Take some time to research the data options that are available to you. You’ll likely be confronted by a sea of options, from consumer trends to complex calculations based only on eye movement. The key to preventing information overload is zeroing in on data that will be most useful to you.
Pare it down to the essentials by asking yourself: What’s important to me? Which metrics will measure whether I’m achieving my goals?
Much of the data available to you will be interesting, but if it doesn’t inform your decisions, don’t take on the additional struggle. Only add in new figures that are critical to your success.
5. Securing Enough Resources
You’ve already formulated effective strategies — the only problem is putting them into motion. Many marketers see it as a challenge to get enough hands-on deck and secure a sufficient budget without having to pull the plug before they see results.
Impressing people in big offices is usually the way to secure a bigger budget. This becomes easier if you’re able to prove the return for every marketing dollar.
If you’ve been wondering how to solve your marketing problems given your lean budget, it could help to show the decision-makers the direct link between your marketing activities and sales results. Your marketing efforts should collect leads and track them from start to finish, instead of simply passing those leads on to sales. Regardless of whether the lead ends up being rejected by sales or turning into a repeat customer, you can tie your leads back to your marketing activities. That way, your organization’s decision-makers have enough data to appreciate the benefits of increasing your budget.
To secure resources, you must also be able to measure and prove your return on investment. Without ROI tracking, it could be difficult to prove ROI, and without ROI, there would be no budget.
The problem is, proving the ROI of every single marketing activity is no walk in the park. This is especially true if two-way communication between your marketing and sales teams does not exist.
To overcome tracking and proving ROI-related challenges marketers face, you should:
Determine your goals. What do you want your marketing to accomplish? Do you want to generate leads? Expand your reach? Establish your status as a thought leader? Clearly defined goals help you determine what needs to be measured.
Determine KPIs. How will you know whether you’ve reached your goals? You can’t measure ROI without measuring progress toward your goals, so make sure your team is aligned on what key performance metrics you’ll be measuring.
Invest in tools. How you’re going to measure your ROI is just as important as knowing your goals. If you want to see whether blogging has generated more leads, onboard Google Analytics. If you want to prove that your social media campaign is working, utilize tools like Twitter Analytics or BuzzSumo.
Align your marketing and sales. Proving ROI involves making a strong case for dedicating resources and time as well as establishing links between your marketing activities and sales results. Create a service-level agreement (SLA) to close the gap between your marketing and sales efforts. Then, use marketing software and a CRM solution to see how many leads your marketing activities have generated.
Overcome Inbound Marketing Roadblocks
The solutions to challenges marketers face range from quick fixes to complex resolutions. You may need to thoroughly evaluate your current marketing strategy and its performance or do some restructuring from top to bottom. The good news is, you’re not alone. A good skillset and expertise in helping businesses succeed with inbound, New perspectives can help you overcome these roadblocks. | https://medium.com/@harsshtrivedi/digital-marketing-importance-applications-and-challenges-92f28bfa8ce2 | ['Harssh Trivedi'] | 2020-12-26 14:32:40.282000+00:00 | ['Marketing Strategies', 'Digital Marketing Tips', 'Digital Marketing', 'Marketing'] |
The 4 Habits of Highly Efficient Professionals for Business Success | People are often working hard on the wrong things. Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard. - Caterina Fake
Do you often feel like you have so much to do but never find enough time? Have you heard or read all those “Enhance Your Work Productivity” tips and still feel like you are unable to lead a productive life?
If yes, then let me tell you something that will blow up your mind.
According to a recent survey, 40% of professionals reported that their work-life is extremely stressful, among which, 25% consider their jobs as their number one stress in their lives.
Shocking, right?
Yeah.
Now, you must be wondering, then what should I do to achieve a more proactive and productive work life?
Here are some basic productivity tips to regain control of your work life and be an efficient professional.
Habit 1. Plan what are you going to do today
How you plan, organize, concentrate, and handle the performance of tasks are some of the topmost elements that influence your productivity. Besides, your ability to accept, react, and evolve with the changes determines your daily life success. This is why, it is suggested to best visualize your day by creating a list of everything you have to do throughout the day so that you can analyze your performance and pending tasks at the end of the day.
Pro Tip: Add half or at least an extra 20% of the estimated time to your approximate calculation of how long it should take to finish each task.
Habit 2. Open your mail only a couple of times a day
Many of us are used to opening our email all the time to check if we have received an important message or a lead coming by. We are desperate to answer emails right away as we do not want our customers or colleagues let down or go away. Though this seems normal, after analyzing it closely, you will get to know that this is hampering your work productivity badly and you are continually cutting your important tasks. Thereby, it is suggested to check your email only a few times a day.
Pro Tip: Pick a certain time slot throughout the day to check your email, whenever it works best for you.
Habit 3. Take small breaks frequently
When you think you have the least time to rest, then that is the time you need to rest the most. Your work productivity will increase significantly if you take 15–20 minute breaks in every 2 hours between work. Moreover, this will clear your brain, you will feel stress-free, and allow you to focus better.
Pro Tip: The idea is to take these few minutes of rest to stretch, breathe, relax, hydrate, or just not think about anything.
Habit 4. Get rid of distractors
By this, we do not mean that you should isolate yourself completely from the world. This means you should try to block or remove stimuli that might attract your attention when you are busy with something else.
For example, you can wear headphones to cancel out ambient noise, eliminate things you do not need from the table, or work in stable environments where the temperature, light, or noise are not generating interruptions.
Pro Tip: Do not work in front of the TV (unless it is part of your job), keep your mobile aside, and do not check it in every five minutes.
Wrapping Things Up
To be more efficient in your professional life, you need to learn how to blur the things that do not bring you closer to your goal and be more focused. In this article, we have disclosed 4 tips to be more productive and accomplish crucial tasks.
Now it is your turn; to take action and apply what you read and, above all, make it part of your life. | https://medium.com/@joshianjana100/the-4-habits-of-highly-efficient-professionals-for-business-success-9fe08ee5dd | ['Anjana Joshi'] | 2020-12-17 14:32:21.835000+00:00 | ['Professional Development', 'Tips', 'Smart Working', 'Working From Home'] |
Bharti Bhatnagar Is A Chennai Based Makeup Artist. | Bharti Bhatnagar Is A Chennai Based Makeup Artist. Born And Raised In Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, She Lived In Delhi For Several Years Before Moving To Chennai, India.
She owned a Salon in Chennai, West Saidapet “Bharti J Beauty Salon & Bridal Studio”
An International Certified Professional Makeup Artist With More Than 7+ Years’ Experience In The Areas Of Wedding Makeovers, Bridal Beauty Makeup, Party & Event Makeup, Collaborative Studio Photo Shoots, And Makeup Education, Bharti Has Learnt From Her Clients One Worldwide Rule: Women Want To Stare Lively, Flawless And Beautiful. It Is This Principle That Determines A Signature Style That Is Womanly And Natural. She Is A Very Down-To-Earth Person.
Bharti Is Known For Creating Exceptionally Beautiful Brides And Provides Make-Up Trials. She Is Adoring About Her Work And Believes In Flawlessness At All Costs. She Always Wants To Make Every Bride’s Dream Come True And Make It The Most Unforgettable Day Of Her Life.
Bharti Always Trusts That Every People Awaits The Influx Of The Bride With Patiently Flabbergasted And Wants To Catch Her First Glimpse; Hence To Make It Impressive And Dazzling Is Her Accountability.
Bharti Genuinely Enjoys Her Ability To Connect People Of All Different Walks Of Life Together Through Beauty And Self-Appreciation. | https://medium.com/@bhartijmakeovers/bharti-bhatnagar-is-a-chennai-based-makeup-artist-11a7a71a1f98 | ['Bharti Bhatnagar Makeovers'] | 2021-11-22 08:19:37.600000+00:00 | ['Bridal Makeup', 'Bridal Studio', 'Bridal Makeup Artist', 'Makeup', 'Beauty Salon'] |
Review: MGK-Hotel Diablo, 2019 (4th Album) | Must Listens-el Diablo, Glass House, Floor 13, Roulette, I Think I’m Okay
el Diablo 10/10 I love this jazzy type beat and his flows on this track, one I personally listen to Hollywood W**re 9/10 callout to snakes in various different relationships where people are just trying to play you Glass House Feat Naomi Wild 10/10 I enjoyed Naomi for the chorus, and the verses were captivating as well as meaningful, this is a sad song be warned Burning Memories Feat Lil Skies 9/10 This track is about blood relatives that aren’t family, because being family is not just a rank to be respected, it is also a title to uphold Floor 13 10/10 Great beat with guitar in the background, good chorus, several flow switches, feels almost like 2 songs, one calm, one hyped Roulette 10/10 loved the beat choice, the flow switches on this track, chorus was captivating Death In My Pocket 8/10 I liked the beat and the flow switches on this track, sentimental, and existential song Candy Feat Trippie Redd 3/10 the chorus is reaching for a hit on this one, not a fan, the verses aren’t very impressive and Trippie Redd Waste Love Feat Madison Love 3/10 Slow song about regretting decisions he has made that lost him a love, not very captivating for me 5:3666 Feat Phem 7/10 Slow track about missing somebody, distrust of family, and depression I Think I’m Okay Feat YungBlud, Travis Barker 10/10 A song about depression, self medicating, and losing somebody you care about because you got in your own way too many times
8.1/10 | https://medium.com/@tristian-browne1616/review-mgk-hotel-diablo-2019-4th-d2063fc801a5 | ['Tristian T. Browne'] | 2019-04-02 00:00:00 | ['Album Review', 'Music', 'Lyrics', 'Rap', 'Hip Hop'] |
Have You Ever Heard Of Google’s Free Digital Marketing Course? It’s Definitely Worth Taking! | Have You Ever Heard Of Google’s Free Digital Marketing Course? It’s Definitely Worth Taking!
Photo created by the author.
Did you know that Google is offering a free Digital Marketing Course and is one of the best courses they offer? This is an excellent opportunity if you want to learn more about this course from Google and get certified in the Fundamentals of Digital Marketing, whether you are just starting out a career or business, or you just want to brush up your skills with it.
Digital Marketing can be defined as, “An advertising through a digital channel. Digital channels such as web applications, mobile applications, search engines, social media, email websites, or any new digital channel.” With today’s generation, marketers consider digital marketing to be an entirely new endeavor that requires new ways of customer approach, new ways to understand consumer behavior, and is more enhanced as compared to traditional marketing.
As a graduate of Entrepreneurial Management, I was more exposed and trained in the ways of traditional marketing. It is, as they say, that now is the time to move forward and embrace the diverse new culture of going digital because this is where our world revolves now. Gone are the days of physical distribution of product pamphlets and physical copies from magazines and newspapers. Now is the time to use digital media, and what better way to do it than now where the thriving internet is an important necessity for everyone else in the world?
This Digital Marketing Course is free to access by everyone and can be taken at your own pace and your own time. This is an ultimate treat because it comes with a free certificate from Google. Make your time productive now and take this super-packed course that will surely fill up your digital knowledge skills. | https://medium.com/@mrylncndy/have-you-ever-heard-of-googles-free-digital-marketing-course-it-s-definitely-worth-taking-17132a5af908 | ['Mary Elaine'] | 2020-12-13 20:03:14.461000+00:00 | ['Social Media', 'Career Development', 'Digital Marketing', 'Google', 'Online Courses'] |
HOW TRUMP EXPANDED HIS COALITION | Lessons for Liberals from the 2020 Election
“IT’S IMPORTANT TO ME that everyone has a place in this country . . . that anyone who’s willing to work hard can live here and feel like they belong” — those were the words of Abigail[1], a voter who I had the pleasure of interviewing weekly over the closing months of the 2020 presidential race. A lifelong Republican, Abigail voted for Trump in 2016 but had admitted to me that she felt regret. She managed a business in a wealthy, cosmopolitan suburb outside of Washington D.C.; she admired diversity, professed support for women’s reproductive rights, and as a mother of two, kindness was important to her. As the summer of 2020 unfolded with a bungled pandemic response and intensifying racial tensions, she felt increasing indisposition toward Trump; she always held umbrage with his rhetoric, but now she felt a burgeoning doubt in the president’s competence and ability to lead a divided nation.
Conventional wisdom in the pundit-sphere pegged voters like her — educated white suburban moms — as a critical constituency that would hand the election to President-Elect Joe Biden. That was the logic behind the campaigns, behind the millions poured into The Lincoln Project, even behind Joe Biden as a candidate. A coalition of turned white women, fired up minorities, and a sliver of the president’s own base of non-college educated white males would accomplish the rare feat of removing an American incumbent. The United States’ most illiberal president in modern history would be removed by its most diverse coalition — and then everyone on the bus would clap.[2]
Evidence seemed to support this narrative through the cycle: historically wide and stable polling leads for Biden, levels of civil unrest unseen since closing of the 1960’s, a broad-based social justice movement, a steady trickle of Republican defections and feel-good anecdotes of turned Trump voters. After two months of Abigail expressing persistent indignation at the president’s behavior, at his divisiveness to me on the phone, I had the sense that we were in store for a historic condemnation of the president. The voters had other plans.
On November 3rd, Abigail decided to cast her ballot for Donald John Trump last minute. Along with her, an increased share of Blacks and Hispanics cast ballots for a second Trump term. Now, it’s important to preface any discussion of Trump’s relative successes with the fact that he also experienced a historic loss for a sitting incumbent. Biden bucked historical trends and won the White House with the highest vote count ever recorded. However, we are comparing the results to the background of polling, punditry, takes, forecasting and campaigning that preceded it. Biden didn’t win a landslide electoral victory — with gains in the house and a decisive senate majority — fueled by a clear rebuke of the president. He reliably underperformed the polls; Democrats lost seats in the house and are in a dogfight in Georgia for a narrow senate majority. Biden won critical states with tight margins through gains in the suburbs and a massive swing in white men and senior citizens — not some progressive fantasy uprising of the marginalized.
But this essay is about Trump’s performance, not Biden’s. If exit polls and county level analysis is any indication, it seems that against all conventional wisdom Trump diversified his coalition from 2016. He traded a chunk of his support among white men for modest gains with minorities. While he did not win the largest share of non-white voters for a modern Republican[3] (that honor belongs to George W. Bush in 2004), Trump made vast improvements over both McCain and Romney. Additionally, whereas white women handed Democrats the house in 2018, they seemed to maintain their support for or even slightly warm to Trump in 2020. It is clear that even in loss, Trump managed to expand the Republican coalition.
This wasn’t what anyone expected. Liberals were counting on a stunning rebuke from women and “POCs”. Even Republicans like Sen. Lindsey Graham, before prostrating himself to the Commander in Chief, warned in 2015 that Trump’s brand of race-baiting xenophobia would do long-term damage to the party and diminish their prospects with Hispanics, a demographic that they’ve been courting in vain since the admonitions of Karl Rove. They were wrong. Donald Trump’s brand of politics put his party closer to Sen. Marco Rubio’s professed aim of a “multiethnic working-class coalition” than it has been in fifteen years. Once again Democrats, Republicans, pollsters, forecasters and other paid brainiacs fundamentally misunderstood the electorate. If the discourse following 2016 upset was centered around understanding the stunning “Whitelash,” the conversation following 2020 will be devoted to understanding why the marginalized groups that the intelligentsia pegged as the president’s victims ended up warming up to him.
TRUMP’S PERFORMANCE IN 2020. The nature of 2020 has made exit polling a particularly difficult science this election. In contrast to past years, the exit polls were a combination of in person exit polls taken at polling places and phone polls of voters who voted by mail or early-in person.[4] Considering the partisan divisions on who voted when, and the pollsters efforts to compensate for that, there is likely more “noise” in the results than past years. Nevertheless, there isn’t particular reason to mistrust the direction of the polling shifts; the shifts in support by race seem to comport with precinct analyses[5] and one wouldn’t expect gender to be particularly distorted by when people voted.
Voter Turnout. At over 160 million ballots cast, the 2020 election had the largest vote count in American history and the highest vote turnout in over a century. Because of the remarkable uptick in turnout from 2016, both Trump and Biden were able to expand their gross electorates, and both could increase their shares of the same key demographics by increasing turnout — what mattered is who increased turnout and their respective vote shares more. Biden won this contest, but it is clear that Trump was able to increase his turnout by shoring up support from his party, registering hundreds of thousands of new voters (beating Democrats at their own game), and making inroads with some women and minorities.
Exit Polls. Exit polls show that Trump was able to increase his support among blacks up to approximately 12%, a 4 point increase from 2016 and the highest Republican share of the black vote since 1996. Perhaps even more surprisingly, the president improved his performance with Hispanic (or what the Democrats, probably to their expense, call “Latinx”) voters by around 3 points from 2016 — just under a third of Hispanic voters favored a second Trump term. Additionally, Trump improved 7 points with Asian voters — a constituency the DNC has pinpointed as long-term investment. Finally, as a special affront to pollsters, who forecasted a historic gender gap of up to 31 points,[6] the actual gap sharply reverted to the mean of around 10 points.[7] White women’s support for the president held firm, and Trump made clear gains with women of color.
Precinct Analysis. Again, the racial shifts in the exit polls is largely reflected by the precinct analysis in crucial swing states. Hispanic Miami-Dade county was responsible for around 75% of Trump’s gain in net votes in Florida.[8] In North Carolina, majority black counties warmed to Trump, and Robeson County, home to the Lumbee Tribe, flipped solidly red.[9] Across Florida, George and North Carolina, Trump improved his showing in majority black precincts by 2 points and in majority Hispanic precincts by over 11 points.[10] Trump made similar gains with Hispanics in Texas and Arizona.
I will assert that I personally was not surprised by the racial shifts; I’m intimate enough with people from these backgrounds to know the lamestream media and Democratic establishment was missing a crucial story there. But being familiar with white women, having worked on a 2018 congressional race where they were critical for victory, and having the opportunity to interview one over the course of the race, their stable or slightly increased support for Trump was an extraordinary subversion of my expectations. However, it’s important not to draw the wrong story from the data — this isn’t a “Blexit” or a mass realignment (yet). In total, a vast majority of women and minorities supported the Democratic nominee; Biden got more net votes among these groups than Hillary Clinton, helping him win the presidency. However, the increased turnout — a perennial progressive goal — modestly improved Trump’s vote shares with constituencies that Democrats rely on. Given Trump’s character, and frankly, the project of the Republican Party, this is extremely alarming and reveals dangerous cracks in the Democratic Party’s desired coalition.
WHAT 2020 TAUGHT US. If this election cycle and the past four years have taught us anything, it’s that there’s a fundamental fragility in the liberal vision for this country; many Americans are susceptible to demagoguery and misinformation, and even for those who are not, partisanship can discipline them into dangerous complacency. Liberals cannot rely on them to have an “Aha!” moment. What needs to happen is an aggressive campaign that meets people where they are. To do that, we need to make sure 2020 taught us the right lessons; those lessons also happen to be the reason that Trump was able to expand his electorate. Through data, reporting, and personal anecdote, I hope to illuminate what they are.
Demographics is not destiny. Democrats will not be able to ride the demographic wave to comfortable electoral margins; rather than shift American public opinion, as non-whites grow in their relative share of the population, they will likely simply start falling into existing patterns of partisanship. Given their disproportionate support for Democrats, I expect a long run regression to the mean could only mean increasing relative support for Republicans in the future. We may have just seen the beginnings of this in 2020. As Hispanics become more embedded in the country’s social fabric; through assimilation intermarriage and cultural absorption — they’ll simply stop seeming and feeling so different. As Asians prevail as the highest-income group, I suspect that their posterior — second, third and fourth generation Americans — will trend towards the voting habits of high-income whites. Blacks pose a special case, but it’s very plausible that a combination of dissatisfaction with the status quo, exhaustion with a perceived pandering and condescension, religiosity, and the continued work of high-profile black republican celebrities and influencers (Kanye West, Diamond and Silk) will push more of them into the ranks of the Republican party. If liberals have any hope of demographic shifts handing them majorities into the future, they’re going to have to understand the people who comprise them.
Women aren’t fundamentally different than the electorate at large. I’m frankly a little embarrassed to have believed that women would be “more vulnerable” to campaign dynamics and that some magical maternal instincts would activate in response to Trump’s rhetoric to more than double a historically stable gender gap in favor of Biden. I’ve learned that this sort of wishful (possibly sexist) ideation should be discarded in favor of the reality that women are basically caught in the same patterns of reliable partisanship as the electorate at large. Any professed dismay at a candidate’s character or rhetoric would mostly succumb to the discipline of partisan identity. This is precisely what happened with Abigail. After months of exasperation with the president’s behavior and flirting with the prospect of casting a democratic ballot, she yielded to her more essential instincts: “I just couldn’t get myself to vote for Biden.”
People gave Trump credit for the pre-COVID economy. While Democrats privately rejoiced over the fact that Trump was presiding during the greatest economic contraction since the Great Depression, it turns out that assigning accountability for the COVID induced recession was more complicated. Until around late October, issue pollsters found that voters still slightly favored Trump to handle the economy; and even those polled were evenly split on who they trust on jobs.[11] Surprisingly, in the fall, around 56% of voters reported that they were better off than they were four years ago. Right before the pandemic, 61% of respondents said that they were better off than they were in the Obama years.[12] The lesson here is that the idea of the electorate mechanically punishing incumbent parties for economic downturns is dated; the narrative around accountability for the downturn matters. Trump was credibly able to blame a foreign virus and the opposition’s heavy-handed lockdown response. In many instances, this caused sections of the electorate to trust the opposition with the economy less. This was explicitly the case with Abigail, who when probed over why she voted for Trump, told me that “I have people on payroll, and I just can’t trust that Biden won’t do another lockdown.”
On balance, people may have primarily associated Trump with the slightly accelerated economic expansion before the pandemic, no matter the pains Democrats went through to attribute it to Obama. If the Trump campaign had any message discipline, it was in hammering down record low unemployment for blacks, Hispanics, and women. Progressives balked at this reductive characterization of the economic situation, where underemployment, stagnant wages, and high costs of living were harming the prospects of all of these groups — but in the end, the Trump narrative seemed to make a dent in their base. By rejecting the optimistic Trump narrative that Nobel-prize winning economist Robert Shiller suggested had a hand in improving consumer confidence and lengthening the expansion,[13] Democrats looked like “haters and naysayers.”[14] In 2020 and 2016, the narrative was more important than — and even in critical in affecting — the economic fundamentals.
For newer Americans, the politics in their country of origin matters. As an “Asian” American, Trump’s 7 point improvement with the demographic wasn’t surprising. For one thing, most Asian countries represented in the United States have a predominately negative view of China, and I know personally that Trump’s tough rhetoric on “the Communist Party of China” turned many of these voters on to him. Biden’s claims of xenophobia rang as tone deaf and weak. A particularly interesting anecdote is where one of my mother’s coworkers, a Uyghur woman on a green-card who had family members stuck in Xinjiang province, said she loved Trump because he was the only one who would stand up for her people. The fact that he had condoned the concentration camps according to his own national security advisor and that his administration is admitting a record low number of refugees did not register with her. Now she couldn’t vote, but on hearing on this Muslim immigrant woman of color’s love for Trump, I knew that Democrats had a severe messaging problem.
Many Indians also warmed to Trump (exit polling categories doesn’t separate them, but pre-election polling shows a modest shift),[15] as his brand of politics resonated with the nationalist (really, fascist) uprising back home. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a historically powerful and popular prime minister, particularly with the kinds of upper-caste Hindus that immigrate to the United States. His rapport with Trump was well known and well covered in Indian media, this probably turned a good deal of Hindus on to him (astoundingly, my own family members, who were trying to bypass legal immigration procedures with phony asylum claims based on religious persecution, liked Trump!). Segments of America’s model minority are more sympathetic to reactionary politics and authoritarianism than we give them credit for.
Finally, as has been covered ad nauseam, Trump’s charges of socialism against the Democratic party likely had a very real impact on Hispanic voters.[16] Not obvious perhaps is that his comparisons of the party agenda with Venezuela-style socialism was probably effective with some not only because they don’t want to be like Venezuela, but because of many from the neighboring countries aren’t particularly fond of the Venezuelan refugees pouring in to their countries of origin (source: my Peruvian roommate).[17] In the end, Trump was able to shave off some of the Democrat’s minority support because these people aren’t the down-trodden little guys who Democrats want them to be, they’re full-fledged people with their own histories, cultures and even deep-seated bigotries — how very American.
We don’t hear and see the same things. The most important lesson — in fact the macro lesson that encompasses all the others — is that Americans are not hearing and seeing the same things. This may sound like a banal point, anyone paying attention knows how bifurcated our media has become. But the point I’m making is more sophisticated, and more important than this. Yes, media polarization and social media means in some instances we’re seeing different content; what’s more interesting though is how we’re responding so differently to the same things. President Trump isn’t really micro-targeting his messaging; his campaign might do this in the digital realm but if anything, the Democrats have been doing this even better. No, his rallies and his twitter feed go to a mass audience; his voters themselves are segregating his message by projecting their own hopes and anxieties onto his heavily stylized language. His style allows people to pick where he’s being sincere, and where he’s being a blowhard — different people make different selections.
Rather than targeting different images to different people, the president has presented a singular gestalt image — where what you see depends on where you look. Like the famous internet memes “The Dress”[18] or “yanny laurel,” once someone’s seen or heard one version its near impossible to convince them of the alternative perception. Trying to convince a Trump fan to see an incompetent bigot is more like trying to convince someone that “The Dress” is blue when they see gold than a matter of intellectual debate.
This is why my mom’s muslim coworker could see a humanitarian where my family members see kindred spirit to Modi’s anti-muslim Hindu nationalism. Additionally, where white liberals heard attacks on Hispanics, many Hispanics themselves didn’t hear it as an assault on themselves.[19] No, when Trump was attacking drug dealers, criminals and rapists he wasn’t attacking them, he was attacking those townies back home, the bad ones.
The difference between 2016 and 2020 Trump is clear when you compare his Inauguration speech to his 2019 speech. American carnage gave way to unbridled American optimism, a narrow message began to accommodate a larger audience. I would argue that in 2016, the president won because of a disciplined singular narrative: “you’ve been cheated by a corrupt status quo designed to help outsiders, I will fight to help you.” In 2016, it was easy to tell Trump was addressing a white anxiety. Three years into his presidency however, his image splintered — he messaged on broad based inclusive economic growth, had appointed conservative justices, and made very direct appeals to minorities. Trump the nativist multiplied into Trump the jobs creator, Trump the bulwark against socialism, and even Trump the humanitarian. In contrast to Trump the insurgent, Trump the president offered a gestalt image that broadened his appeal.
CONCLUSION. In the days and weeks following the 2020 election, I could tell that many Democrats, particularly on the far left, learned the wrong lessons. Many saw Trump’s expanded appeal as evidence that systemic racism and sexism were even more pervasive than we thought. Hispanic and Black men were attracted to Trump because of an innate machismo, white women were continuing to uphold a racist patriarchy that benefitted them. To these people, what was needed was more education, more activism. I doubt that’s the answer.
I don’t doubt that some voters were motivated by latent racial anxieties or sexism; but for most of these people it’s unconscious, and they don’t want a sensitivity training. Abigail didn’t vote for Trump because of racial anxiety — and I looked for it. She didn’t care about school zoning in our county bussing kids from the Hispanic neighborhoods, or high-density housing being built near her home (“I think that’s good. I want my kids to know not everyone is like them.”) She weirdly liked Kamala Harris. Trump’s racial rhetoric offended her; she voted for him because she didn’t trust Biden. When asked about the president’s corruption, his authoritarian instincts, she retorted “well that’s what checks and balances are for, right?” While many voted for Trump out of anger and racial resent, I suspect that Republicans on the margins voted for him because of a basic faith and optimism that our institutions could withstand the ramblings of a very rude man. They felt it was safe enough to fall back into their partisan identities.
It would be easy to write off the votes of white women as irresponsible complacency towards a racial hierarchy that benefits them if its purported victims — blacks and Hispanics — didn’t also warm to Trump. No, these people didn’t vote for Trump because they thought he would uphold a racial hierarchy.
We know this: Democrats’ attempt to convince more voters that Trump was a racist (or worse, that they were secretly racist, but they just didn’t know it) didn’t really work. To them The Dress is firmly gold, not blue. Trump’s gains among minorities after four years of shouting “racism!” should be a hard lesson for liberals, and likely a source of vindication for Republicans for years to come (“If Trump was a racist then why . . . “). Instead of doubling down on that strategy, as many progressives are inclined to, we have to try something different. Instead of trying in vain to get people to see the flip side of the gestalt image, give them something prettier to look at instead. I believe this is more or less what happened this election. The pundits have pegged the 2020 election as a referendum on character. That’s probably the case, but I don’t think that Biden swung the white vote because he convinced new people that Trump was a racist misogynist, I think that many voters were just ready to change the channel. It’s important that we know what actually worked.
To sum up, Trump’s ability to expand his coalition with the very people who were supposed to rebuke him teaches us that Americans are more complicated, and America more interesting than any modeler can capture. People won’t behave how we want or expect them to, and some probably delight in doing precisely the opposite.[20] There’s a natural resistance to being pegged as a perennial victim; people desire a sense of agency. There is probably a perverse satisfaction in voting for someone you’re not “supposed to” — I would argue that there’s a characteristically American rebellious spirit behind it. Trump earned more support among these groups not because they wanted to ingratiate themselves to a racial hierarchy, but rather because they are becoming ever more American, warts and all.
[1] Alias is used to protect the interviewee’s identity.
[2] This is a reference to an internet meme. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/and-then-the-whole-bus-clapped
[3] A Republican after the realignment of 1964
[4] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/exit-polls-can-be-misleading-especially-this-year/
[5] Precinct shift maps show shifts to Trump in predominately black and Hispanic counties; most notable is Miami-Dade county which may have solidified Florida as a Republican state.
[6] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/09/29/daily-202-trump-faces-historic-gender-gap-heading-into-first-debate/
[7] https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-joe-biden-donald-trump-voting-rights-elections-84ef3db79532c0029894ff25a316370b
[8] https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-florida-election-win-hinged-on-big-gains-in-miami-dade-11604518272
[9] https://www.fayobserver.com/story/news/2020/11/12/nc-vote-between-trump-and-biden-shows-gop-dem-shifts-2020-election/6227924002/
[10] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/forecast-president.html
[11] https://www.usnews.com/news/elections/articles/2020-10-21/poll-biden-pulls-ahead-of-trump-on-handling-of-economy
[12] https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/321650/gallup-election-2020-coverage.aspx
[13] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/20/shiller-recession-likely-years-away-due-to-bullish-trump-effect.html
[14] This is my favorite turn of phrase from Boris Johnson.
[15] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/despite-small-shift-toward-donald-trump-2/3rd-of-indian-americans-back-joe-biden/articleshow/78139899.cms
[16] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/caudillo-or-crusader-against-socialism-florida-s-latinos-debate-trump-n1100036
[17] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/02/peru-rechazo-ilicito-de-personas-venezolanas-que-buscan-proteccion/
[18] https://www.wired.com/2015/02/science-one-agrees-color-dress/
[19] This is a great Ezra Klein podcast on the issue https://open.spotify.com/episode/4V2GXkWuh0IxsYWvbfDmzV?si=dxNS7MSTR3K3ZhypDt81QQ
[20] See, Kanye West | https://medium.com/@rambocalrissian/how-trump-expanded-his-coalition-b330b3f94abf | ['Rambo Calrissian'] | 2021-01-02 14:52:04.179000+00:00 | ['Patriarchy', 'Race', 'Hispanics', 'Donald Trump', '2020 Presidential Race'] |
Clearing My Mind, Starting With My Room. | Clearing My Mind, Starting With My Room.
Photo by The Creative Exchange on Unsplash
Since I’ve moved to Grand Rapids (that was 4-almost-5 years ago) I haven’t really had my own room. In these 4-to-5 years I’ve slept on a mat that was on the floor, then upgraded to cot with a mat on top and then finally to an actual bed. The first night I slept on the bed was wonderful because it was mine. (And because it was off the floor and not uncomfortable like the cot!)
At this point I shared a small room with one of my sisters and it was a complete mess! There were dirty clothes everywhere along with phone chargers and headphones scattered along the bedroom floor. There was a tiny, black, Ikea desk sitting against the wall that had accumulated 2 monitors, a keyboard, 2 speakers, a mouse (the gadget, not the rodent!), along with many empty water bottles and dirty dishes. We didn’t have any dressers to put our clothes in, so we had to use plastic shelving units.
So because we had 2 beds, a desk and shelving units to hold our clothes; we barely had space. And when we went into quarantine, keeping the house clean was a tough job by itself (because I couldn’t get any help), so I gave up on my room. I pushed it off to the back of my mind saying, “I’ll get to it when I can.”
Yesterday my sister and I moved to a different room, a much bigger room; we decided to obviously split the room in half. We were able to fit all of our clothes, our beds and a couple of the shelving units and still have a ton of room leftover. Afterwards, we went to Goodwill and picked out a desk and chair for me. Getting it up the stairs was hard but doable. My sister had gone out later and got herself a new desk; to replace the small desk she had left in the old room for our brother to have.
Now that we got all of the stuff out of the old room, I could finally see the mess that I’ve been neglecting for a very long time. There’s empty water bottles, dirty socks and underwear, and the atrociously thick layers of dust and dirt was appalling! When I saw the mess I couldn’t help but feel ashamed that I was living in such filth.
Today it is my goal to attack this mess of mine so my brother could finally move into the room. Ever since Sunday night, all I could think about was cleaning my mess and then I realized what my new room stands for as well as the old room.
My new room (or at least my side of it) represents my mind, my world; kind of like a projector of my mental health. Now that I’ve really gotten my life on track (eating healthy, getting up and staying up, doing my chores, being a good sibling and daughter, keeping good hygiene, etc.), it’s a lot cleaner and more spacious. The old room shows the old me and what an absolute mess I was but not without improvement.
I wish school taught me the importance of keeping your bedroom clean before I graduated high school. (Along with other things that I’ve learned since I graduated almost 5 months ago!)
Yes, some say to clean your room but I don’t think they truly understand the meaning behind those simple words.
P.S. My parents said they’re just glad it’s a bunch of empty water bottles and not empty liquor bottles.
So I guess it could be worse… | https://medium.com/@amcairns02/clearing-my-mind-starting-with-my-room-178ea99f0d29 | ['Abigail Cairns'] | 2021-11-30 19:20:04.279000+00:00 | ['Everyday Life', 'Nonfiction', 'Mental Health', 'Cleaning'] |
Amal totkay growth mind-set | in Song of the Lark | https://medium.com/@chaudhry-nouman165/amal-totkay-growth-mind-set-fcb3cc6d5eb3 | ['Chaudhry Nouman'] | 2020-12-26 06:11:21.357000+00:00 | ['Amal Academy', 'Self Improvement'] |
HOW DO I LOSE BELLY FAT | Belly fat is more than a nuisance that makes your clothes feel tight.
It’s severely harmful.
One form of belly fat- called visceral — is a major risk factor for type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and other conditions (1Trusted Source).
Many health organizations use body mass index (BMI) to categorize weight and predict the risk of metabolic disease.
However, this is misleading, as humans with excess belly fat are at an increased risk even if they look thin (2Trusted Source).
Though losing fat from this area can be difficult, there are several things you can do to reduce excess abdominal fat.
Here are 8 effective tips to lose belly fat, backed by scientific studies
Eat plenty of soluble fiber
Soluble fiber can additionally assist you to lose weight by increasing fullness and reducing calorie absorption. Try to include plenty of high fiber foods in your weight loss diet.
2. Avoid foods that contain trans fats
Some research have linked a high intake of trans fat to increased belly fat gain. Regardless of whether you’re trying to lose weight, limiting your intake of trans fat is a good idea.
3. Don’t drink too much alcohol
Excessive alcohol consumption has been associated with increased belly fat. If you need to reduce your waistline, consider drinking alcohol in moderation or abstaining completely.
4. Eat a high protein diet
High protein foods, including fish, lean meat, and beans, are best if you’re looking to shed a few more kilos round your waist.
5. Reduce your stress levels
Stress may promote fat gain around your waist. Minimizing stress should be one of your priorities if you’re trying to lose weight.
6. Don’t eat a lot of sugary foods
Excessive sugar intake is a major cause of weight gain in many people. Limit your intake of candy and processed foods high in added sugar.
7. Do aerobic exercise (cardio)
Aerobic exercise is an effective weight loss method. Studies suggest it’s particularly effective at slimming your waistline.
8. Cut back on carbs — especially refined carbs
A high intake of refined carbs is associated with excessive belly fat. Consider reducing your carb intake or replacing refined carbs in your diet with healthy carb sources, such as whole grains, legumes, or vegetables.
I Recommend you The best flat belly Tonic and also A Custom Keto Diet Plan for a healthy weight loss
If you found This helpful, please Upvote | https://medium.com/@ifeanyindubuisi240/how-do-i-lose-belly-fat-e8aa03e097bc | ['Ifeanyi Ndubuisi'] | 2021-12-19 12:30:22.890000+00:00 | ['Ketogenic Diet', 'How To Lose Belly Fat', 'Keto', 'How To Lose Weight Fast', 'Keto Diet'] |
How I Reinvented What It Means for Me to be a Writer | I haven’t been consistent in my writing blog since Jan 2019. I haven’t been a WRITER (in my own eyes) since before then. This is clear from my weekly posts dropping down to 18 in 2019, and only 8 this year.
But I am a Reinventor by nature: I craft my life, created my identity, and follow my inner fire. And at my heart, I’m still a writer underneath it all. But I had, at least in my actions and my thoughts, given up on this piece of myself.
Unbecoming a Writer
I have 16 novels.
To just give you the context, of those 16, 13 are “complete” drafts. Of those 16, 10 are “viable” for the future. Interestingly, the 3 unfinished are in that viable category, alongside my trilogy (all 3 books are completed drafts but need edits), and 4 stand-alone stories.
Aside from those ‘challenge’ NaNoWriMo projects I do not plan to continue working on (i.e. they were dead by the end or I never planned to revisit them), the last long-term creative writing projects I worked on out of joy and the pull to write… were in 2016. Looking at my annual writing stats, I fell off the wagon by the end of 2017.
I began Skeletal in 2016. It’s only 10k done. I wrote the final book of my trilogy in November 2016. I then wrote and had published two short stories in anthologies.
And then aside from the odd moment I picked up The Felled Gods (first drafted in 2014) because I sent it to a beta reader who was interested.
Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash
A Decade of Annual Wordcounts:
2009: 50,138 — 2010: 55,300
2011: 50,131 — 2012: 80,052
2013: 81,210 — 2014: 150,263
2015: 104,912 — 2016: 90,244
2017: 100,002 — 2018: 62,001
2019: 51,173
My 11-yr total: 875,426 words of fiction
I had planned not to do NaNoWriMo this year. It would be my 11th year. The last 4 years have left me with 50,000 words of rubbish I’ve hated by the end. I’ve felt good about “ticking the box” but I’m not Being a Writer in them.
I haven’t been a writer in so long.
And yet, somewhere at the end of November 2020 I felt the spark to want to work on stories again. I’ve taken a couple of weeks off between day-job transitions and (thanks to my life coach for stopping me from throwing myself into DO ALL THE THINGS) am taking my own damn advice.
Photo by Laurenz Kleinheider on Unsplash
The Importance of Reflection
I started my self-development business as a baby idea in 2017 while burnt out and depressed. In hindsight, this took the place of my writing time, of my creativity outlet, and although I love the work and am still working on things (having reinvented it to work for me and be clearer for those seeking support), it’s the first week of December and I’m feeling the GAP in my path.
If you’ve known me a while, or follow me on the biz side, you know I identify one of the massive issues with self help is Not Pausing to Reflect.
Like I’ve apparently not truly done for 5 years, hah. >_> <_< #HumanBeing #NotPerfect
Post-Reflection Planning
I’d love to say I took my own worksheets, realised the block, worked through it in my planner and decided to become a writer again. That’s what the reinvention teacher part of me wants to say happened. That this was obvious and simple and I just fixed the problem.
In reality, I had to force myself to finish reading a fiction book (my 3rd fiction book in 2 damn years: again, really might have noticed the signs of writerly-avoidance if I’d paid attention but hindsight is grand and all that) and then spent 4 damn hours crying on the sofa as I grieved for the part of my identity that I no longer share with the world.
Thankfully, she’s still here, and just making the decision to let her write again (without any steps beyond that) has reignited the fire in me in a matter of days.
But the true pivot for me, was in considering giving up ‘writer’ from my identity. I recognised that I have too much going on in my life, and considered all of the things that take my time and attention.
The places I spend my mental energy.
“If I have a few hour to spend on A or B, which would I pick for now?”
In asking this, I considered putting my novels away for a solid period of time.
And I realised that I can’t. it doesn’t even feel like an option. It just felt wrong in my body. Giving up other things did not.
And that was it. I re-opened my writing blog up and began this post. I opened up Scrivener and my manuscript, and here I am, feeling more alive in the last 16 hours than I have in over a year.
Feeling like myself again.
Photo by Halacious on Unsplash
Moving Forward
So for December my current plan is to just let myself write and read, whenever and whatever. I want to explore how just making that decision impacted my wellbeing and sense of identity, even before I opened up my manuscript and story binder.
Because my biggest reinvention story was in shaping my life as a writer.
Want to watch my journey as I reintegrate writing into my life? Here are the best places to connect with me:
I worked full-time the whole way through all lockdowns so this is my first 10-days-off-in-a-row since my honeymoon in 2016. But I’m aware a lot of people have had time-off this year with the pandemic:
Have you had any revelations this year? | https://medium.com/change-your-mind/how-i-reinvented-what-it-means-for-me-to-be-a-writer-d7496ba25ac8 | ['Katy-Rose'] | 2020-12-15 10:32:39.498000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Self Improvement', 'Reinvention', 'National Novel Writing', 'Identity'] |
Stablecoin Emerge: Libra Coin, JPM Coin, and BUSD | Stablecoin Emerge: Libra Coin, JPM Coin, and BUSD
Facebook, with its Libra Coin project, came as a shock for many, a coin that will be backed by many other big-time companies. The well-known J.P Morgan, after his emphatic rejection towards cryptocurrencies, is now the first bank to launch its own. JPM Coin will be available for Chase bank clients as a means of digital payment option. Recently, I read Binance, famous crypto exchange, announced they would be launching their own Stablecoin named BUSD the coin will be backed by USD. “BUSD is being built in association with Stablecoin issuer Paxos, which will serve as its issuer as well as custodian of fiat reserves. “Paxos is leading the digital trusts space, and we are excited to work with them in developing our native Stablecoin,” said Binance CEO, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao.”
Many say that Stablecoins go against Bitcoins original purpose, eliminating third-party entities regulations, Stablecoins can be pegged to a specific asset or fiat currency thus also dependent on that assists economy and regulations.
The idea of Stablecoins is interesting because it may be more comfortable for people to move from fiat to a Stablecoin, instead of a regular cryptocurrency. Users may feel more confident investing in something that is back by a fiat currency that they are more used to using.
I believe one of the biggest things people struggle with when it comes to crypto, besides the use and understanding of its technology; it is hands down the volatility. People are scared of investing and losing money. It is understandable because crypto has had the tendency to fluctuate but also rise significantly. Nonetheless, all investments have a certain amount of risks involved; and crypto is no exception; the only difference is that crypto is often in the eye of the hurricane.
According to Investopedia, “Stablecoin refers to a new class of cryptocurrencies which offer price stability and/or are backed by reserve asset(s). In recent times, Stablecoins have gained enough traction as they attempt to offer the best of both world’s — the instant processing and security of payments of cryptocurrencies”.
Up until recently one of the most popular Stablecoin created by owners of crypto exchange Bitfinex; stable coin Tether a coin backed by USD. Tether went through some drama back in 2018 with speculations of bitcoin price manipulation. On June 13, 2018, John M Griffin and Amin Shams from the University of Texas released a study that investigates whether Tether, a digital currency linked to the U.S. dollar, had influenced Bitcoin and other altcoin prices during their peaks. Curiously on the same day, Bitcoin hit its lowest rate in the past three months. The study was carried out by analyzing blockchain data, where they found that purchases made with Tether were timed following market downturns, and the result of this noticeably increased Bitcoin prices. Finally concluding that Tether was being used to provide price support, thus manipulating the value of bitcoin. I believe one way or another this may have overshadowed this particular Stablecoin, but mostly it is unfortunate to think crypto might have been tampered with.
You may or may not be a fan of Stablecoins; the truth is nowadays, there is room for everyone in this space. I believe these types of coins have to exist as an option for those who are more reluctant towards crypto. JP Morgans coin undoubtedly shows signs of feeling the need to target different markets; it might not be 100% bitcoin protocol but for many, it may be a step closer towards digital money adaptation and hopefully one step closer into cryptocurrency.
I hope you enjoyed it.
By: Carolina Pérez
Twitter: @carolinaninap | https://medium.com/@carolinaninap/stablecoin-emerge-libra-coin-jpm-coin-and-busd-22fa962c4c6b | ['Carolina Pérez'] | 2019-09-10 13:43:05.596000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Binance', 'Jp Morgan', 'Stable Coin', 'Crypto'] |
Home Deep Cleaning Services in Bavdhan, Pune | S3 Care Services is a renowned company in cleaning services and registered as the top-rated cleaning services company in Pune for many years. S3 Care services are world-class standards professional home/house cleaners in Pune, providing the best service ever for deep home cleaning. We use natural cleaning products or government-approved chemicals only for cleaning, which doesn’t damage the look of your house and its belongings. We follow an immensely customer-friendly approach so that our clients get maximum satisfaction with quality service. We believe that customers are the king of the market and providing them the best service with complete satisfaction is our duty.
S3 Care Cleaning Services — Perfect Solution for all your cleaning needs (Residential & Commercial)
We understand the customer’s requirements, and everybody wants to make every corner of their home or house always clean and bright. S3 Care cleaning professionals make impossible cleaning tasks possible with their skills and experience. We are not afraid of any cleaning tasks as we have highly skilled professionals who provide the best home deep cleaning in Pune. Moreover, we provide various types of cleaning services which are available for both commercial and residential buildings. We are efficient in offering cleaning services very quietly on your premises, so you can continue doing your work without any disturbance and feeling their presence.
Services Covered by us in Home Cleaning.
Floor Cleaning: We use disinfecting chemicals and machinery equipment to remove the deep layer of dust from the floor surface.
We use disinfecting chemicals and machinery equipment to remove the deep layer of dust from the floor surface. Cleaning of Toilet and Bathroom: We do deep scrubbing of bathrooms, disinfect & sanitize it properly.
We do deep scrubbing of bathrooms, disinfect & sanitize it properly. Clean All Surfaces: Its surface, including steel, wooden, and glass of furniture and floor.
Its surface, including steel, wooden, and glass of furniture and floor. Walls & Ceiling: In the entire house, we remove dust from all the walls and ceiling.
In the entire house, we remove dust from all the walls and ceiling. Kitchen Cleaning: Clean all the parts of the kitchen, including all furniture and electrical textures.
Clean all the parts of the kitchen, including all furniture and electrical textures. Window Cleaning: All of all the glass doors and windows in the house with proper care.
All of all the glass doors and windows in the house with proper care. Other Cleaning:Cleaning of electrical appliances, ceiling fans, switchboards, etc.
https://www.s3deepcleaningpune.com/home-and-office-deep-cleaning-services-in-bavdhan.php | https://medium.com/@jayeshos00/home-deep-cleaning-services-in-bavdhan-pune-7fe19c5e8f9b | [] | 2021-12-22 09:18:43.285000+00:00 | ['Cleaning', 'Cleaning Services', 'Cleaning Company'] |
A Largely Forgotten Band that is Great — Interpol | (Pintrest)
Few bands have the ability to insidiously suck you in like taking a drink of water when you didn’t even realize you were thirsty. Take a small sip and before you know it you’re on your seventh gulp and you’ve guzzled half the bottle. You listen to a bit of one song and have the sneaking suspicion there is something more to explore. You listen to a few more. Soon after, you’re Googling lyrics and looking up old interviews. Few musical acts retain this aura.
Many 90’s kids will remember the early 2000’s music scene quite well. The days when you would come home from school, grab a Capri-sun and mindlessly have TRL on in the background as you calculated the area of a triangle for math homework. Kanye’s early stuff, Lil Jon’s “Get Low”, and “Yeah” by Usher were completely unavoidable, even if pop music wasn’t your bag. Alt rock kids might have been more into Coldplay or the Killers. Take a stroll down the narrow indie music alley, and you’d find emo kids listening to The Strokes or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. However, a band lies lurking below the public’s memory of this time period in music, only truly appreciated by a lucky few. This band is Interpol. Unfortunately many failed to discover their haunting genius. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with shallow pop music, but for those who yearn for something deeper, feel free to swan dive into Interpol’s glorious abyss.
First off, the vocals and lyrics: Paul Banks’ baritone snarl will not immediately enthrall you, but behind his monotone façade, there might as well be a ransom note cut out of a bunch of different magazines. Ph.D. students could write dissertations on their interpretations of these songs. Banks’ was clearly influenced by Kurt Cobain and Black Francis writing songs that can’t be picked apart too easily. His lyrics are laced with clues stretching from obscure novels to serial killers. Some samples from his rap sheet:
“Stella Was a Diver and She was Always Down” — Could be about a prostitute, mental illness, an addict overdosing or Bank’s favorite beer, Stella Artois. There is evidence to all four, however the jury is still out.
“Leif Erikson” — In one of Banks favorite novels from college, the The Illuminatus! Trilogy, a character takes a girl down into a submarine to have sex. The name of the girl: Stella. The name of the submarine: Leif Erikson. Add lines “her rapid glow was like braille to the night”, “my sentimental side should be held with kids gloves” and “I left my urge in the icebox”. Intimacy is the obvious theme, but what this all means exactly is up for interpretation.
“Evil” — Banks was curious about serial killers and this song is inspired by the Rosemary West killings with “shards under the belly” and “grease inside my hand”. It’s written from the perspective of Fred West attempting to commutate with Rosemary’s spirit, from his jail cell (“it took a lifetime with no cellmate”), while awaiting trial and meditating on the ‘evil’ he has done before taking his own life. However, this is all an educated guess pieced together from fan forums.
(Radio X)
Now for the wall of sound behind Banks’ words: Place Daniel Kessler’s guitar melodies and Carlos Dengler’s bass lines in a dryer, put in your quarters and let them tumble and turn. The guitars and bass constantly flip-flop in prominence on most songs, creating a sort of double-helix effect, a staple of Interpol’s sound. Look up the isolated bass tracks to “Obstacle 1” or “PDA” on YouTube to hear Dengler’s genius. Then place all this on top of drumming so steady the Taj Mahal could be built upon it.
Their first album, Turn on the Bright Lights, is a collage of the dark and moody. It sounds like they hired Duran Duran to do the synthesizers, but only after they’d been bitten and turned into a vampires. The Killer’s Brandon Flowers claims he listened to the Turn on the Bright Lights on repeat while they were recording their first album and even the most casual listener can detect Interpol’s synth influence on Hot Fuss. The opener “Untitled” sets the mood like no other. “PDA” might have the most beautiful outro of any song ever. “Obstacle 1” is sharp and lingers in your subconscious. “NYC” speaks to self actualization after disappointment and contains the album’s title, “it’s up to me, now turn on the bright lights”. “Say Hello to the Angels” builds like an approaching freight train only to arrive as a magic carpet woven with intricate guitars. “The New”- throw standard verse-chorus-verse song structure down the garbage disposal.
Their second album, Antics, is more commercial, for lack of a better term. A concertgoer compared the experience of singing the opener “Next Exit” with the crowd, to being in a cult. “Slow hands” is a marauding track with a chugging bass line. Poppy rockers “Public Pervert” and “C’mere” are a delight. “Not Even Jail” provides another stunning outro. “Narc” alludes to deception in a relationship, “its just, you, me, and this wire”. After the release of Antics, in 2004, they separated themselves from The Strokes’ shadow, appeared at prominent European music festivals and toured with The Cure.
(WordPress)
Their stage presence was nothing to scoff at. They often dressed in tailored suits, were clean-shaven, wore primarily black and perfected the balance of confidence yet aloof. Dengler would often wear an empty gun hostler, which he deemed stylish. Search “Interpol Live Eurokennes” on YouTube to witness them at the height of their powers.
Dengler left the band after their fourth album and their music became more experimental, leaving only true fans to enjoy their art as their commercial success dwindled. Meet Me in the Bathroom, by Lizzy Goodman offers an epic oral history of their rise in the New York City music scene, but as time passes, Interpol’s legend remains tucked away only to be found by those willing to search through musical history or are given the odd Spotify recommendation. They are one of the last bands to hold an element of mystery in their art. Amazing how something so unique and decadent can be easily forgotten. | https://medium.com/@drewdaugherty/a-largely-forgotten-band-that-is-great-interpol-b263a13db2eb | ['Drew Daugherty'] | 2020-11-26 00:29:56.214000+00:00 | ['New York City', 'Interpol', 'Music', 'The Strokes', '2000s Music'] |
Life after Corona — what could we improve? | Photo by Yingchih on Unsplash
Luckily I, nor my family or friends, have had Coronavirus/Covid-19 yet, or at least, I don’t think we have. My heart goes out to everyone that has and will be affected by it.
We are, as a family, choosing to severely restrict our movements and self-isolate as much as possible. It does seem slightly strange to do so when our schools are still open, but hopefully our government are doing their best to keep the country running whilst ultimately minimising the number of deaths. It’s hard to know what is best. But I trust that governments, and those in charge, are doing their utmost to get everyone through it.
Right now — people have time to contemplate things, I’m sure we’ve all been thinking about things a lot more deeply. What is important, who we care for, what freedoms we have — the lot.
I’ve also been trying to imagine how we could improve things after this pandemic has hopefully passed so that we are better-prepared next time.
I think the Corona Virus is going to have a profound impact on the world, potentially even years from now. Given that I have some time, I thought I’d detail some of the topics that I’ve been pondering:
Digital
Video conferencing Voice controlled devices Biometric tracking
Non Digital
Availability of thermometers Handshaking, and social contact Shop protocols
Let’s start with digital. Before I do, I realise that living in the UK, we are blessed with Internet access. Whilst we don’t have 100% coverage in the UK, we are very lucky. Internet access of course means we get real-time information — and right now, in the middle of a world pandemic, this is not to be forgotten. Think about all the regions and people that don’t have access to the internet — they are more at risk because they lack the advice and information to protect themselves.
Video Conferencing
We’ve used Video Conferencing at our company since it was pretty much released to the world. At the agency I run, we have full-time remote staff that work around the world — so we use Google Meets most days. Before that we’ve used Skype and a variety of other video-conferencing platforms.
So Video conferencing is very much a standard weekly practice in my life. However, reading about people self-isolating in their homes and hearing about people recount having to video call their husbands/wives and children within the same house to ask for simple tasks, puts a whole new dimension on it.
Video-conferencing platforms, whilst fairly easy to use, can still be hugely improved. The ability to quickly create multiple calls quickly and easily, using voice commands, could be better. New devices that are well setup for room-to-room, house-to-house conferencing (e.g Google Home, and Alexa Show) could be dramatically improved.
Here’s an experiment for you … try initiating a video or voice call using only your voice (no touching the screen) between 2 voice enabled devices if you are lucky enough to have 2 or more. If not try calling another Alexa/Google Home.
Did it work?
Probably not — not without touching a screen or having to use an app, and if it did … it’s not as quick or as straight-forward as it could be, is it?
Voice controlled devices
II’m guessing the average person no longer takes for granted how viruses spread. If one more person says don’t forget to wash hands, I might lose my mind!
This pandemic has also made us all realise the number of people lost to the common flu (and other viruses) too. So, it’s made me realise, we need WAY more voice-controlled devices in our lives — and to limit the number of things we touch.
So, how about Voice-controlled:
Lifts
Doors
Windows
Cars?!
Because voice controlled lifts aren’t commonplace, have you seen the adapted lifts in China?!
In China, some lifts have been modified to enable travellers to select the floor they want without touching the keypad!
Biometric Tracking
Whilst we know all the stats and graphs we are seeing aren’t the full extent (only the reported data), it’s been impressive to see the plethora of open-source data being made available for analysis.
If I can move aside the privacy concerns for a moment (which obviously can’t be ignored), can you imagine how much better we’d have fared as a species if we’d be able to track everyone’s health in real-time. It would take some effort — but I believe the upsides would be enormous. It would help governments, hospitals plan and also organisations like the WHO to monitor things with quicker and more informed insight. Companies could monitor staff wellbeing, and individuals could be more self-conscious of their own health.
I’m sure there are a multitude of other ways digital could help us should the world ever face this type of thing again. Hopefully some new businesses are created or improved off the back of the disaster the world is facing. After all, adversity often leads to opportunity.
Some other topics I’d like to raise, that aren’t purely a digital play:
Availability of thermometers
I am shocked and appalled at the lack of digital thermometers available on the web to buy. Unless people have been panic buying, and that has lead to a shortage, trying to buy an ear or forehead thermometer (for under £30) has been a 2-day, unsuccessful mission. There are lots of cheap (£1-£2) ones out there, but the more I read the more I realised how inaccurate they are and not even worth the money (albeit cheap). Perhaps there is more to it than I am giving credence to, but I am shocked at how much a digital thermometer is these days. How much did those Glass Mercury ones we had in the 80s cost?! I realise they were very risky and potentially dangerous, but every house seemingly had one?
It’s rare to need one, but when you need the info, you need it. I hope the availability and price can come down.
2. Handshaking, and social contact
I’m sure I’m not the only person to be thinking about it, and without doubt not the first to advocate it, but I think it’s time we abolished handshakes, kisses on cheeks and general contact to greet one another. This might be over the top, and when there isn’t a pandemic on, why not go back to normal? Well I for one have realised just how many people don’t realise they need to wash their hands on a regular basis, and I also think we’ve been spreading viruses (non-fatal and fatal) without realising for so long … why not adapt and have non-contact greetings as standard … air high fives, special waves, feet dances — whatever works. Time to move on from the hand shake I say.
3. Shop protocols
To me, it took far, far too long for Shops to catch on that they should limit certain items to one per person (in the context of a pandemic). Days/weeks for some supermarkets. Surely when you see a rush of items, as a store manager, you can get ahead of this and limit purchasing? Better protocols and practices will hopefully be borne out of this — because whilst I agree it’s stupid that we had so many people panic buying toilet roll (which still slightly baffles me), the shops and supermarkets could have done so much better on this front.
Anyway, a few random thoughts from me on some things I think could be improved. What do you think we can do better, if there is next time? | https://medium.com/@arniie/life-after-corona-what-could-we-improve-c246528497da | ['Arniie Arnold'] | 2020-03-17 16:06:15.307000+00:00 | ['Corona', 'Improvements', 'Coronavirus', 'Virus', 'Pandemic'] |
Multi-Collateral Dai: What to do for the upcoming upgrade | Multi-Collateral Dai: What to do for the upcoming upgrade
How to prepare for the upgrade — beginning Monday the 18th — and what to expect from the new multi-collateral Dai in your favorite non-custodial wallet. imToken Follow Nov 14, 2019 · 5 min read
MakerDAO will officially release Multi-Collateral Dai on November 18th. A milestone in the stablecoin field.
With this upgrade, Dai will support more collateral types and the long-awaited Dai Savings Rate (DSR). The collateral types promises to increase the stability of Dai while making various DeFi applications simpler and more economical.
How to prepare for the new Dai?
On November 18th, 3:00 PM UTC (i.e. 11:00 UTC+8), your Dai tokens will rename to Sai. From that time on, the token symbol Dai will be used for the new Multi-Collateral Dai.
You should:
Use migrate.makerdao.com — i.e. MakerDAO Migrate in your imToken’s Browser — to exchange your Sai to Dai If your Dai exists in a third-party application such as Compound, you need to extract it before you can migrate
After migrating, you can receive interest on your Dai by locking your Dai into the Dai Savings Rate contract in your imToken Browser on the Oasis DApp.
New users can directly get Dai through Maker’s official DApp or other markets.
The old Dai is now ‘Sai’
Dai (now: Sai) is the first decentralized stablecoin issued on Ethereum. The single collateral Dai is issued by over-collateralized Ethereum, anchoring 1 Dai to a value around 1 US dollar.
The core mechanism incentivizes creation and destruction of outstanding Dai by adjusting the rate with which Dai is borrowed.
However, the single-collateral Dai (Sai) depends on the price of ETH. If there is a black swan event in the market, the short-term sharp decline in ETH price may affect the stability of Dai.
Price fluctuations of Dai in the past year (from coinmarketcap.com)
Introducing multi-collateral Dai
Multi-Collateral Dai (now: Dai) is different from Dai (now: Sai) in the following two aspects.
Multi-Collateral Dai supports a wider range of crypto as collateral, hence the name Multi-Collateral Dai adds a Dai Savings Rate (DSR): A way to receive interest on Dai that is locked in a smart contract Multi-Collateral Dai uses Auctions and Keepers to prevent both debt and surplus from building beyond certain points
Using more collateral types aims to increase the stability of Dai, and helps to offer higher supply. Oversimplified, each collateral token has different price swings, which makes the average more stable than that of just one collateral type.
The first collateral types will be ETH and BAT, and new collateral type will be voted in through the MakerDAO governance.
By adding the Dai Savings Rate (DSR),the MakerDAO team is adding another governance tool to adjust the behavior of Dai holder. As DSR is interest that Dai holders get by locking Dai, the DSR can influence the price of Dai from the demand side in two ways:
If the market price of Dai is below 1 USD, the Dai Savings Rate will increase. This boosts demand, which should increase the market price of Dai up towards the 1 USD target price.
If the market price of Dai is above 1 USD, the Dai Savings Rate will decrease. This stifles demand, which should reduce the market price of Dai down towards the 1 USD target price.
In addition, the single-collateral Dai uses a clearing mechanism to sell collateral at a discount. For better price discovery, the multi-collateral Dai will use an auction clearing mechanism, thereby reducing the risk of the collateral falling sharply in a short period of time.
What you can do with the new Dai
1. Lock Dai to Obtain Interest
Any holder can lock Dai into the Dai Savings Rate contract and receive interest.
You can unlock Dai and receive the interest earned from the deposit rate contract at any time. For example, deposit 100 Dai at a deposit rate of 5% per year and withdraw 105 Dai after 12 months.
2. Deposit into the lending market
Currently, the DeFi market offers a series of decentralized lending applications. For example, both Compound and Dharma support Dai, and users can deposit Dai into such lending applications to earn interest. At present, Compound locks more than 21 million Dai, with an annualized income of 4.98%. The annualized revenue of Compound will change according to market supply and demand.
3. Leverage Your Collateral
There are a couple of tools, such as dydx, that make it easy to invest into ETH with Dai you lend for ETH. However, leveraged trading is a high risk, so please be cautious.
See you on November 18! 😉 | https://medium.com/imtoken/multi-collateral-dai-what-to-do-for-the-upcoming-upgrade-c55f546afad4 | [] | 2019-11-15 02:35:15.185000+00:00 | ['Ethereum', 'Featured', 'Blockchain', 'Dai'] |
Grief and Long Dark Nights — Solstice Reflection | image from Astronomy.com
Christmas used to be the happiest time of the year, and then it wasn’t. My first bitterly dark Christmas was in 1989, the first Christmas after my divorce. My daughters spent that holiday with their father, and all I felt was desolate loneliness.
Fast forward through many losses and dark times to December 2003. I was working full time as the Director of Christian Formation and Programs at a fairly large church. One of my responsibilities was to lead a comprehensive caring ministry program, providing outreach and support to congregation members dealing with their dark and difficult struggles. I had the idea of offering a worship service on the Solstice, the longest night of the year. We called it the Blue Christmas Service. It was quiet, meditative, with no “Merry Christmas” Carols. By the way, many wonderful advent hymns can be used. It was not a huge gathering, but it was deeply meaningful for those who attended.
In 2005, after I had left to attend seminary, the Senior Pastor changed the format of the Solstice Gathering to a Jazz service, not quiet, not contemplative, and not a safe place for people experiencing grief during the holidays. The Senior Pastor was more interested in attracting a lot of non-church members to the service to increase her attendance statistics and bring in additional offering money. I learned that most churches are abysmal at grief support. When I had the opportunity to offer another Blue Christmas in 2008, I did and it was also well-received but small.
From 2014 to 2020, I worked as a hospice chaplain. The holidays can be a very painful time for families who have lost a loved one or patients who are facing a terminal diagnosis. Most churches ignore the grief of their members and limit their pastoral care to a brief memorial service. Very few congregations offer an ongoing grief support class or group.
I am familiar with grief and loss, I am also aware that this pandemic comes with an epidemic of grief as well as sickness. I am an empath and I feel the grief and fear that is pervasive in our world today. The spike in COVID19 infections since Thanksgiving has literally taken my breath away. I had so much trouble breathing, several nights I either could not sleep or feared that I would die in my sleep. I have been isolated at home since March because I am over 65 and my health history puts me in the high-risk category.
My husband works in a small nonprofit. They have been careful, but one of the staff members tested positive for COVID. My husband was tested and after waiting for several days, his test came back negative. My breathing difficulties were so bad that I finally decided to go to a drive-through testing site. Then I waited for days while my symptoms got much worse. My test came back negative. By that time, I desperately needed to seek medical attention from a medical system that is overwhelmed exhausted, and justifiably fearful. It was a most unpleasant experience. I was tested again, this time with an instant test.
Over two weeks had passed and I gradually started to feel just a tiny bit better. Once I was able to get a full night’s sleep I made even more progress. I never got a diagnosis. I still don’t know what I had, but I was very sick. My story is not unique. I am very relieved that I can breathe again. I still tire very easily but I am sleeping much better.
I am willing to consider that the extreme tightness I felt in my chest, and my inability to breathe, could very well have been symptoms of grief exacerbated by my gift of empathy.
Today is a cosmically powerful day. It is the darkest time of the year (for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere). Yet, there is also a powerful alignment of Saturn and Jupiter, lighting up the Western horizon early in the evening that is visible to the naked eye. As a long time student of astrology, I understand this event as the dawning of a new Epoch.
Astrologers refer to Saturn and Jupiter as the social planets, whereas the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, and Mars are more personal in their archetypal expressions. Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto are transpersonal planets, their movements and alignments affect the earth and the entire solar system. Throughout 2020, Pluto, Saturn, and Jupiter were combining their archetypal energies to fuel the death, fear, dismantling of social structures, and extremely divided ideologies. That energy is finally letting go and moving forward.
For many years astrologers have warned that 2020 would be a dark and destructive year. The pandemic and an increase in fascism and uprisings were expected. Pluto is the Lord of the Underworld and we all felt his destructive energy in 2020. However, Pluto also brings resurrection and transformation. Studying astrology and archetypal cosmology has helped me to see that even in the darkest of hours, “this too will pass.” Nothing is permanent. The universe is evolving and we are too.
Still, there is so much to grieve. If you aren’t feeling the grief, then you just might be the source of the grief. Those who refuse to accept the reality and dangers of COVID19 are contributing to Pluto’s death and destruction. They are contributing to the grief. No one is spared because we are not separate, we are woven together into one cosmic tapestry. Our divisions and our sense of separation or superiority are illusions (and Neptune the grand illusionist has also been a member of the 2020 cosmic cast of players). BTW — Trump’s lies can be linked with the placement of Neptune in his birth chart.
2021 will not be like 2020, but it will also present challenges and threats. As we pass the annual solstice and move into the New Year, the days will get longer and there will be more sunlight. The pandemic is far from over. The destruction and damage inflicted on the social institutions we depend on to hold together a civil society are real. We cannot build back better, because the old normal cannot be restored. Personally, I don’t want to continue systems that create extreme economic inequality. We need to envision and create a new social order that acknowledges our shared destiny.
Today marks the dawning of a new Epoch. Saturn and Jupiter are moving from Capricorn to Aquarius, from a conservative earth sign to a freedom-loving, humanitarian, inventive, and even rebellious air sign. Saturn and Jupiter connect every twenty years creating a generational social ethic. They remain in the same element (earth to air, or water, or fire) for two hundred years creating an “Age.” We are officially shifting from a social ethos focused on materialism, exploitation of the earth, authoritarianism, and patriarchy (Capricorn) to a social ethic of freedom, humanitarianism, and intellectual advancement. We are shifting from a culture that primarily values “ownership and materialism” to one that will place a higher value on “knowledge and humanitarian ideals” (Aquarius). Going forward, what you know will be valued more than what you own.
This is also the beginning of an 800-year cycle, so we can look back to the 13th Century, the last time Saturn and Jupiter began a 200 year age in Air signs.
As Jupiter and Saturn move forward to Aquarius, Pluto remains in Capricorn until 2023–2024. Pluto’s placement in Capricorn will continue to dismantle and destroy the institutions created about 240–250 years ago, including the United States of America. We are being called to create, or bring to life, new institutions with the traits of Aquarius. New leaders will emerge with a collaborative non-authoritarian ethos, the kind of leaders that bring out the leadership abilities of everyone around them. I hope that some of the readers of this essay feel that call to serve the greater good. We are the leaders we have been waiting for, and the cosmos is calling us to envision a more just, compassionate, and regenerative world.
Today, I invite you to enter the darkness and tend to your grief. As a hospice and bereavement chaplain, I described grief as a “demanding companion.” I advised people to open the door and welcome in their feelings of grief because when we don’t the grief sabotages our other emotions. Everyone grieves in their own highly personal way, but everyone grieves. Unacknowledged grief can cause physical illness.
Looking back on the last few weeks, I can acknowledge my personal losses. I am no longer a hospice chaplain and I miss being with people. Today, I will take it easy and welcome my grief with soft advent music, several cups of hot tea, and a nice warm bath.
If you are alone with no one to talk to; if you want an empathetic listener; please reach out to someone you trust, or reach out to me with a comment to this post. | https://medium.com/@robynmorrison/grief-and-long-dark-nights-solstice-reflection-7037793d4755 | ['Robyn Morrison'] | 2020-12-21 18:38:36.364000+00:00 | ['Solstice', 'Grief And Loss', 'Covid 19 Crisis'] |
What Are We So Hungry For? | Howl
What Are We So Hungry For?
And why do we keep reaching for the things that don’t sustain us?
Photo by Hosanna Nield on Scopio
I met him at work. I really didn’t like him, but I could tell he liked me. When he asked me out, I said yes, even though I didn’t want to. I was only 19 and by then, I’d learned that I was on this planet to please men. I thought I had to do what they wanted. That’s all I knew of the world — not my will, but theirs.
So I said yes.
I’m not sure how I ended up thinking I was in love with him. I’m not sure how I ended up lying in his bed, tipping my face up, waiting for him to kiss me. I’m not sure how we ended up having sex, and I definitely don’t remember how it came to pass that we moved in together shortly after.
All I know is that I was starving. I had spent the last seven years feeling like a gazelle on the savanna, looking over her shoulder for any evidence of the lions that lurked there. I had spent the last seven years avoiding them, or bandaging my wounds when one caught me by the ankles.
Suddenly, I had a lion. I wouldn’t have to worry, anymore. Finally, finally, I could stop being afraid all the time.
I had someone to protect me.
But he tried to pressure me to drink. He tried to pressure me to smoke. He told me I was ugly and fat and disgusting and that he was the only person who would ever be able to love such a pathetic creature. He ridiculed me in front of his friends and they all laughed, looking me up and down. He slept with my best friend when I was out running errands. He squeezed me and twisted my limbs and pushed me against the walls until I cried and begged him to stop.
For a while, it seemed like a small price to pay, letting one lion slowly tear me to pieces, rather than trying to outrun them all. | https://medium.com/sexography/what-are-we-so-hungry-for-53967102cd4c | ['Yael Wolfe'] | 2020-08-19 04:36:04.010000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'Howl By Yael Wolfe', 'Love', 'Self Love', 'Sexuality'] |
Why the Fight for Wolves Matters | Wenaha pack breeding female, Dec 6 2018 (Photo courtesy of ODFW)
Why the Fight for Wolves Matters
For decades now the third week of October has been celebrated by wolf conservation organizations across the country as Wolf Awareness Week. Since the gray wolf was first protected under the Endangered Species Act in 1974, there have been continuous battles fought for the recovery of the species on both the federal and state level.
To even the most dedicated wolf advocates, this fight can feel exhausting, especially as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is poised to deliver on its promise to remove the wolf’s endangered species protections by the end of the year.
Yet Wolf Awareness Week is a perfect opportunity to reflect on the many successes achieved over the years as a result of these battles, particularly in the past decade. There could be no discussion of wolf “recovery” in many regions of the West were it not for these efforts.
In every state where wolves live today, there’s been a fight to keep them there. In California, which is home to only a single wolf pack, a court victory defeated a legal challenge by the livestock industry that tried to overturn the 2014 state listing of wolves.
Simply keeping healthy wolf populations alive, even with federal protection, has been a struggle that almost inevitably is settled by lawsuits.
In Oregon, the Center for Biological Diversity and our allies sued in 2011 to stop the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife from killing members of the first wolf pack that had established itself in the state after a 60-year absence. This led to greater protections for the species during the earliest stages of recovery there. The state is home to nearly 160 wolves as of 2019 — but they still live in only 12% of the state’s suitable wolf habitat.
Similar legal action ended the killing of wolves by the Idaho Department of Fish and Game in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness in late 2015. Before that the state’s “management” plan had authorized the sustained killing of up to 60% of its wolves in order to artificially inflate elk populations for the benefit of a small number of commercial outfitters and hunters. Earlier this year wolf killing by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services program in Idaho was successfully restricted.
Wolf advocates have also had to fight, again and again, to stop the use of traps, snares and poisons to kill wolves. Our efforts have resulted in statewide bans on M-44 cyanide bombs in Idaho and Oregon, and in April a lawsuit brought by conservation groups halted the use of lethal traps and snares by Wildlife Services in identified suitable wolf habitat in Northern California.
Our hard work has also paid off in helping to reform long-broken wolf management policies. In September the governor of Washington directed the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission to draft new rules governing the killing of wolves involved in conflicts with livestock. We hope Washington can soon pivot away from a lethal management style that has killed 34 wolves since 2012 — 29 on behalf of the same livestock owner, in prime wolf habitat in the Colville National Forest.
Soon wolves may even roam the wilds of Colorado once again. Following years of advocacy by a large coalition of organizations, more than 200,000 Coloradans signed petitions in December to place Proposition 114 on the November 2020 ballot. If voters approve Prop. 114, Colorado Parks and Wildlife will have to develop a wolf restoration and management plan based on science and statewide public hearings and begin to reintroduce wolves by Dec. 31, 2023.
Wolf advocates have fires to put out constantly, and likely we always will. But we’ve accomplished remarkable things for these beautiful animals, and it’s because those who love and advocate for them will never give up. This is not an option, since the forces that sought to eradicate wolves in the first place have not gone away. No longer is it just the livestock industry or federal and state government agencies that oppose wolf protections. Now sport-hunting groups, anti-government coalitions, right-wing think tanks, and the politicians and lobbyists propped up by these groups all work together, bent on preventing the peaceful coexistence of people and wolves.
Yet the rising tide of public sentiment is against these forces and in favor of saving wolves and the wild. Federal delisting of the wolf in 2013 was met with overwhelming public and scientist opposition. The latest call to delist has met with even more. As past victories have shown, if we keep fighting for wolves, we will prevail.
Amaroq Weiss is the senior West Coast wolf advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity. | https://medium.com/center-for-biological-diversity/why-the-fight-for-wolves-matters-by-amaroq-weiss-643c15e7c2b6 | ['Amaroq Weiss'] | 2020-10-23 20:49:53.168000+00:00 | ['Opinion', 'Endangered Species', 'Oregon', 'Wolves', 'Conservation'] |
Pensamientos | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/voces-en-espa%C3%B1ol/pensamientos-1cd49791997b | ['Gb Rogut'] | 2020-08-13 03:29:37.929000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'Poesía', 'Español', 'Poetry', 'Love'] |
Winter Woods | Brightscapes: The Way To Beauty
Winter Glow #468
gouache paint on Bristol paper
2.5" x 3.5" (6.35 cm x 8.89 cm)
NOT A PRINT OR REPRODUCTION
202111103
© copyright Mike Kraus
To purchase, please visit: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1097209298/winter-woods-468-artist-trading-cards-25
STARTS TODAY!!!
Join us at the
ONLINE GRATEFUL ART SHOW
at:
https://www.facebook.com/events/4285414921507031/
It is the place to find and buy amazing art. Browse unique, hand-crafted items in ceramics, jewelry, glass, mixed media, photography, wood, leather, fiber, metal, wearable art, digital, paintings, prints and so much more!
Having Fun During COVID-19
https://mikekraus.blogspot.com/p/covid-19coronavirus-resources.html
Mike Kraus was born on the industrial shoreline of Muskegon, Michigan. After earning his Fine Arts Degree from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, he attended Grand Valley State University for his graduate degree. From there, he gained varied experiences from the Chicago Architecture Foundation, Art Institute of Chicago, Hauenstein Center For Presidential Studies, Lollypop Farm Humane Society, and the Children’s Memorial Foundation. And every place he worked, he had his sketchbook with him and found ways to be actively creative. In 2014, Kraus became a full-time artist by establishing Mike Kraus Art. Since then, he has sold thousands of paintings that are displayed in nearly every state and dozens of countries. Currently, Kraus lives in Rochester, New York with his beautiful wife and goofy dog.
For more information or custom order, please visit:
Store: MikeKrausArt.etsy.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MikeKrausArt
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/MikeKraus/
Instagram: https://instagram.com/mikekrausart
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/mkraus
Twitter: http://twitter.com/MikeKrausBlog | https://medium.com/@mikekraus-30477/winter-woods-d0a939aff992 | ['Mike Kraus'] | 2021-11-29 13:39:42.896000+00:00 | ['Christmas', 'Party', 'Festivals', 'Show', 'Events'] |
#RadicalReadz: Aloha Betrayed | To honor Indigenous Peoples’ Month, our #RadicalReadz for this month is Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism by Dr. Noenoe Silva. In this book, Silva examines native Hawaiian’s political, economic, linguistic, and cultural resistance to American domination during Hawaiian Annexation in 1887. Drawing from contemporary sources written in the “mother tongue” of native Hawaiians, Silva uplifts the long-ignored experiences of native Hawaiians during Hawaiian Annexation. This well researched and innovative book is a tribute to the plight and perseverance of native Hawaiians and Indigenous people around the world. Furthermore, it is a reminder that for many of us the land we inhabit today is a product of forceful colonization, a fact we should all be mindful of during Indigenous Peoples’ Month and beyond. | https://medium.com/@thegatheringforjustice/radicalreadz-aloha-betrayed-8cf217809711 | ['The Gathering For Justice'] | 2020-11-21 19:49:25.704000+00:00 | ['Indigenous People', 'Indigenous Rights', 'Racial Justice', 'Colonialism', 'Book Recommendations'] |
Obedience Is Not Easy, but It Is Simple | Today, I read Joshua 7.
The Israelites had already gone up against Ai and failed miserably, losing about 30 men.
Now they were told to go up against them again? I can imagine the soldiers saying, “Are you kidding me? Did you see how big they were, and how fast on their feet?”
Can the simple act of obedience change the odds?
I am sure, if they dared to think about the past, they would realize and remember that obedience to the Lord God does change everything!
Some of those soldiers lost friends on that battlefield. The fear must have been tangible!
And yet, at the word of the Lord through Joshua, they went. The new plan was a good one, one they would not expect. Half the men lay in wait behind the city, while the other half ran for their lives again…. Okay, not really. They just coaxed them out of the city, playing to their pride because of the earlier victory.
I can imagine the warriors at Ai, laughing and slapping each other on the back….“Haha, they are back for a second smackdown! Well, we will gladly oblige; come on guys!”
Then God told Joshua to hold out the javelin, and they would win.
We would like to think that the soldiers were good and obedient, not doubting at all. But I still think some of the men were like, “Oh, yeah, Moses did that too. Just what is Josh trying to do? Show us he is as good as Moses?”
That’s not to say they didn’t do what they were told, but they were human after all.
And they had already been defeated once by this foe. Yet, God had so many times before delivered armies and kings into their hands. Hadn’t He promised?
Can you hear the what-ifs running around in the minds of the people? I am sure going out against these men again was not easy. It could potentially cost them something — or everything. Yet, God had said He would give this city, this land, to them.
We seldom have to face actual physical wars in this part of the world. That would be so scary! But I am sure that there are times when we know we need to obey something God has told us. We squirm, and whine and cry, or sometimes throw ourselves to the ground and do the all-out tantrum thing.
I am sure none of you have ever had this experience…
But when you finally choose to get up and do what He said, laying aside the fear, love, lust, money — whatever it is that you need to let go of, — obedience is very simple.
After you have taken the first dozen steps, you look at the whole thing and think, ‘That wasn’t as hard as I thought it was. Why did I struggle with it so long? Why didn’t I just obey the first time?’
I have a children’s song in my head now:
Obedience is the very best way to show that you believe
Doing exactly as the Lord commands, doing it happily
Action is the key, do it immediately, joy you will receive
Obedience is the very best way to show that you believe
O-B-E-D-I-E-N-C-E
Obedience is the very best way to show that you believe “O-B-E-D-I-E-N-C-E”
We want to live pure, we want to live “clean,” we want to do our best
Sweetly submitting to authority, leaving to God the rest
Walking in…
If you are struggling with something you know God wants you to do — whether it is to step out beyond your comfort zone or let go of something so close to you that it seems part of you — take heart.
It is hard! But, honestly, when we get past our will, our fear, our stubbornness, and just obey, we will find it is actually very simple. And the best thing we could do, even if we don’t see that right away.
Remember Moses? It was said that as long as he held the staff up, they prevailed in battle (Exodus 17). How did they know that?
He must have let his hands down once or twice, even just out of sheer exhaustion.
We might not get it right the first time. But the good news — amazingly — is that God is merciful and longsuffering. And, just as Moses had, there are friends to help us if we are humble enough to ask.
As hard as the thing you are called to do is, the blessings, peace, and joy on the other side are so worth it.
So, step out, let go, or whatever the thing is God is nudging you in your heart to do. He is on the other side, just waiting with arms open wide. | https://medium.com/koinonia/obedience-is-not-easy-but-it-is-simple-80d1bb5129d2 | ['Sue-Ellen Howe'] | 2020-05-09 17:38:16.126000+00:00 | ['Koinonia', 'Struggle', 'Obedience', 'Christianity', 'Hope'] |
No, Elliot Page Coming Out as Trans is Not a ‘Loss’ for Queer Women | No, Elliot Page Coming Out as Trans is Not a ‘Loss’ for Queer Women
Coming out is never a loss.
Rich Polk/Getty Images
Elliot Page, known for his work in Juno and The Umbrella Academy, publicly came out as nonbinary in a letter posted on Twitter and Instagram on Tuesday. In response, Page received an outpouring of love and support, as well as a wave of transphobic backlash.
While some people asked ignorant, albeit well-meaning, questions about what it means to be nonbinary, others straight up mocked Page’s gender identity and likened being trans to waking up one day and identifying as an inanimate object. And still, others referred to his coming out as a “loss” or “betrayal.”
One Twitter user wrote, “I find it depressing how many young lesbians now feel that, because they do not perform or feel invested in conventional femininity, they can no longer be women. And so they shift from identifying as lesbian women to straight men. Compulsory heterosexuality all over again.”
“If coming out as transgender brings the actor…any measure of peace, then I am glad for them. But my heart also breaks as the lesbian community grows smaller. Again. And loses a role model. Again.”
Now, there’s a lot to unpack, but it’s clear that this person is making a lot of assumptions and ultimately does not understand what compulsory heterosexuality actually is.
First of all, Page clearly states that he is trans and queer in his coming out letter, not straight, so this bad faith argument does not even apply. He’s also nonbinary, not a trans man. Secondly, compulsory heterosexuality deals with sexual orientation, not gender identity. So again, not applicable.
Of course the most salient takeaway from the aforementioned tweet is that Page’s coming out is viewed as a loss because he is no longer a role model for the lesbian community. And I’m here to tell you that’s ridiculous.
Page does not owe anyone anything. It is not his job or responsibility to be a role model for any given community at the expense of his own happiness and well-being.
Not to mention, he can still be a role model for the entire LGBTQ+ community. Page is a queer, nonbinary person in TV and film who uses his platform to shine a light on the many injustices queer and trans people face every day. That sounds like a role model to me.
As far as representation goes, there are still lesbian and bisexual women in media. They haven’t all disappeared into thin air. Kristen Stewart was just in a gay holiday movie. And it goes without saying, but trans people need representation too.
Page is also just one person, who is now one of a handful of nonbinary people in Hollywood. His identity as a trans person is not a threat to queer women or lesbian representation.
There is nothing more freeing than coming out and living as your authentic self, and lesbians and queer women should know that better than anyone else. Sometimes it just takes time to find the right words and language for people to come to terms with who they are.
So no, Page’s coming is not a loss. In fact, coming out is never a loss. Being trans is never a loss.
You know what is a loss? Losing people to bigotry and violence. 2020 has been the worst year on record for anti-trans violence. At least 40 trans and gender non-conforming people have been murdered this year, a majority of whom were trans women of color. And Page, being the role model that he is, highlighted that in his coming out letter.
I’m proud of Page for coming out and letting the world know his truth. That kind of honesty and vulnerability isn’t easy. I hope the people in his life show him the kindness and acceptance he deserves, and I hope he continues to make art and use his platform for good, TERFs be damned. | https://medium.com/an-injustice/no-elliot-page-coming-out-as-trans-is-not-a-loss-for-queer-women-b8793bf4b701 | ['Catherine Caruso'] | 2020-12-05 04:50:13.682000+00:00 | ['Culture', 'Transgender', 'LGBTQ', 'Equality', 'Media'] |
The 1957 Penrose Annual — a graphic design time capsule | I know it’s been a long time since I posted, but hey, quite a lot has been going on over the last few months ;)
I picked up a few editions of U&lc (which I’ll post about soon) from Matt Lamont and he also had this 1957 Penrose Annual — Volume 51. It may be a little dog eared but I could not resist it. The cover was enough but then Matt shared some of the inside and I had to get it.
Being a Graphic Arts trade annual it’s an incredible blend of writing from the time, trade ads and technique examples. Best of all that means, stock variations, inserts, overlays, print variation and some wonderful ads.
Some here are some of the things that caught my eye. Also at the bottom I’ve added the contents pages for reference, incase there’s something someone is looking for.
First up here are a few spreads: | https://medium.com/paper-posts/the-1957-penrose-annual-a-graphic-design-time-capsule-bb5434095880 | [] | 2020-07-16 19:51:00.967000+00:00 | ['Linotype', '1950s', 'Graphic Design', 'Typography', 'Penguin'] |
Pacifica: The New Continent | Photo by Muhammad Saushan on Unsplash
Pacifica: The New Continent
In his 1995 novel “Distress” science fiction author Greg Egan described “Stateless” a floating man-made island in the Pacific. Stateless was, as its name suggests, an ex-territory with its own rules and had been constructed in quest for a better world.
It’s 2020. Most of the materials seem to be in place. I say let’s build it.
“The Great Pacific Garbage Patch” is a huge area in the middle of the pacific ocean that, due to the nature of oceanic currents, has become populated with all sorts of floating debris. It is a patch made of humanity’s discarded plastics and other floaters, a stain on the ocean we have created, and it’s huge.
From earthzine.org
By some estimates the size of the patch is more than 1.5 million square kilometers — more than twice the size of Texas and over four times the size of Germany.
This “garbage” has many useful properties. First of all — it floats. Second — it’s right where we need it and Third — it’s free. We can collect it and bind it together into a large floating mass. When it’s big enough, a research station will be built on it. Wind, solar and wave generated electricity can power the station. The technology exists and is available. At some point topsoil can be created from compost and sea sand. Crops can be grown and then livestock. Eco-tourism will be the initial source of revenue as young enthusiasts arrive to volunteer and work to enlarge the land area and enrich the new environment.
Let’s name it Pacifica and make sure it becomes a place of peace.
A sample of ocean-borne plastic waste. From youtube.com
The garbage patch is not very dense in some areas. In order to collect enough material to construct the floating infrastructure for Pacifica a network of collector ships will be deployed. This technology already exists — it was designed to clean lakes and seas from this type of waste. The only difference is that the collected plastics and other floaters will be gathered into large nets that, when connected will create a large floating body. The nets themselves will be created from fibers that can be produced from the same plastic waste. This can be done aboard ships and later on a facility on Pacifica itself.
Clusters held together by polymer fibers will in turn be clustered together with thicker wires and so on. This scaling construction will ensure better durability and resilience of the Pacifica’s underlying structure. Even if something comes loose other capsules remain firm. The underlying structure must be big and robust enough to withstand waves and storms and create a steady plateau. Careful design will ensure the edge areas allow corals to settle and create natural reefs all around Pacifica.
From: Pikist.com
Pacifica will begin as a small floating mass but soil manufacturing and planting of crops and trees can commence relatively early. The more resilient plant breeds will come first and set the stage for additional types of flora. As Pacifica grows and more land-mass is added additional permanent structures will be build. First compost and fiber manufacturing facilities along with crew quarters. Later a docking bay for ships, a landing pad for helicopters, offices, hotels and shops.
Pacifica will start with a working group of volunteers (The Pacifica Workgroup or PWG) that will coordinate the first steps and set up the first fundraising campaign. This campaign will collect the necessary funds for the first exploratory operations and planning.
Pacifica will be administered by a non-for profit organization that will be established when first funding for the project is received. The organization (“Org”) will be in charge of recruiting the necessary scientists, engineers and workers that will make Pacifica a reality. The Org will also recruit the necessary thinkers, writers and speakers that will detail the path of Pacifica’s society and make it a community many will wish to contribute to and join.
The Org will allocate shares to volunteers and residents of Pacifica in quarterly shareholder conventions by majority vote. The convention will appoint a chief executive officer to the Org who shall appoint officers as necessary to maintain and develop Pacifica and grow its landmass and civic services.
Special working groups shall be appointed during the first convention to formulate processes and procedures. Until such time as independence is declared the law of the land shall be determined by the Org under maritime convention.
At a time as chosen by the majority of shareholders but not before the number of permanent residents of Pacifica shall number one hundred thousand, a special working group shall be created to draft a constitution for Pacifica and make arrangements to declare its independance.
The constitution shall be drafted to ensure that Pacifica be dedicated to the progress of humanity, preservation of our home planet and furtherance of knowledge among all people.
And may the wind be at our backs | https://medium.com/@ubrison/pacifica-the-new-continent-c48185e74e0b | ['Uriel Brison'] | 2021-01-02 08:59:09.498000+00:00 | ['Climate Change', 'Ecology', 'Science Fiction', 'Global Warming', 'Oceans'] |
Wannabe Plastic Surgeon Dismembers His Parents After They Cut Him Off | Wannabe Plastic Surgeon Dismembers His Parents After They Cut Him Off
Joel Guy Jr., Lisa Guy and Joel Guy Sr. Source.
Joel Guy Jr.’s father Joel Sr. was a pipeline engineer and his mother Lisa worked in Human Resources at an engineering company. As a result, Joel Jr. grew up in a very privileged and lax household; he never once held a job as his parents supported him financially throughout his entire life; they paid for his tuition at Louisiana State University, his rent in Baton Rouge and anything else he required. Joel’s sister Angela later stated that their mother felt like she ‘only worked to give her paycheque’ over to her son.
Things changed in November of 2016. The Guy’s had grown tired of paying for their then 28-year-old sons' decade-long education to become a plastic surgeon and cut him off. They decided it was time for him to learn financial responsibility, to get a job and stand on his own two feet.
The Guy’s were looking forward to their retirement. All of their children were fully grown adults and they felt it was the right time to sell their Goldenview Lane home in West Knox County and move to Surgoinsville, a small town in Hawkins County, Tennessee.
Before the move, the couple decided to host one final holiday dinner at their home; Thanksgiving. Their children and grandchildren attended the dinner, including Joel Jr. who drove up from Lousiana and would be staying in a spare bedroom for the entirety of the weekend.
Although tensions were high between Joel Jr. and his parents due to their recent decision to withhold financial support, his siblings noted he appeared to be in a relatively good mood during the get-together; he was upbeat, friendly and outgoing. Joel’s siblings later stated that this was unusual; he was usually quiet and kept to himself.
It was later discovered that Joel Jr.’s so-called happy and cheerful disposition was all an act to deflect attention from himself. He knew that if he appeared at all agitated during the holiday, he might be singled out as a suspect for the brutal murder of his parents, which he had been planning for weeks.
Joel Jr. entering Walmart where he purchased his murder supplies. Source.
On November 7, 2016, Joel Jr. purchased hydrogen peroxide and muriatic acid from a hardware store. On the 18th, he purchased a timer, bleach and extension cords. On the 19th, he purchased his murder weapon, a Ka-Bar knife. On November 21st, Joel Jr. made his final purchase; a plastic 45-gallon container.
The Murders
On Saturday, November 26, 2016, Lisa Guy was grocery shopping at Walmart while her husband Joel Sr. worked out in their second-floor home exercise room. Joel Jr. walked into the exercise room and attacked his 61-year-old father with a knife. Although Joel Sr. attempted to fight back, it was of no use. He was stabbed fourty-two times. The entire room was covered in blood splatter including the walls, the torn blinds and an exercise machine that had flipped over during the struggle.
When Lisa arrived home she placed the groceries on the ground in the foyer and walked upstairs where she too was suddenly attacked by her own son. The 55-year-old mother had been stabbed thirty-one times and nine of her ribs were broken.
Immediately following the murders, Joel Jr. gruesomely dismembered his parents' dead bodies. He cut off his father’s hands which he left on the floor in the exercise room. He then proceeded to cut off his parents' legs, arms and heads. Joel Jr. put his mother’s head into a pot which he then placed onto the stove and turned the burner on. Joel Jr. then placed the rest of his parents’ limbs and their torsos into the large bin and submerged them in chemicals in an effort to dissolve them.
Joel Jr. then drove to the same Walmart his mother had just gone grocery shopping at and purchased medical supplies for several cuts he had sustained during the attacks. He drained what he could out of his parents’ bank accounts and drove back home to Baton Rouge where he visited a student medical clinic to have his wounds treated.
A Gruesome Discovery
When Lisa didn’t attend work on Monday her boss knew something was amiss; she rarely ever missed work and if she did she would have phoned in. The police decided to conduct a welfare check. When they arrived at the Guy’s home, they could see the groceries scattered on the ground by the front door but there no sign of any movement within the house.
The doorknob of the back door to the house was also missing. Fearing the worst, the authorities decided to enter the home.
The Guys’ home. Source.
Fortunately, the authorities were able to access one of the couple's vehicles which contained a garage door button which they then used to gain entry into the home. When they made their way through the garage into the home, the smell of chemicals was overwhelming and the home was incredibly warm; the thermostat had been turned up to 90 degrees.
The authorities walked into the kitchen where they noticed a pot on the stove, which had been left on. They opened the lid to find Lisa’s head boiling. They then made their way upstairs and from the hallway, they were able to see the dismembered hands of Joel Sr. strewn about in the exercise room. In the bathroom, authorities found the rest of the couple's body parts submerged in chemicals in the large bin.
Inside the bedroom where Joel Jr. had spent his weekend, authorities found a backpack. The backpack contained a journal that detailed his heinous plan to murder his parents and collect on their $500,000 life insurance policies. The plan was five pages long. In it, Joel Jr. wrote, “Money, all mine. I get the whole thing.”
Joel Jr.’s journal detailing his plans to murder his parents. Source.
Joel Jr. was arrested on Tuesday, November 28, in Louisiana. A meat grinder and tanks of gas were found in the trunk of his vehicle. He had planned to return to Knoxville, dispose of his parents’ remains using the meat grinder and set their house on fire. Fortunately, Joel Jr. was unable to carry out the rest of his morbid plan.
The Trial
Joel Jr. Source.
Despite the overwhelming evidence against him, Joel Jr. pled not guilty. He showed no remorse and no reactions during the murder trial. His main — and only — goal was to have a cell all to himself. In order to retain a private cell, Joel Jr. wrote he would prefer the death penalty if it allowed him to be alone in prison. His request was denied by the judge since the death penalty was not something the state was seeking. When his attempt failed, Joel Jr. threatened to gouge out the eyes of his cellmate:
“I’m writing this letter because I don’t want to end up with a disciplinary infraction, or worse, more criminal charges, nor do I logically believe that this gentleman deserves to be blind. I don’t know what to do. I shouldn’t be allowed access to another person while they’re unconscious.”
Joel Jr.’s relatives described him as a greedy and selfish monster and advocated for his execution. Since the death penalty was not a possibility, they requested he spends the rest of his life in prison stating that ‘cohabitation in the general population would be cruel to him’ due to his ‘social abnormalities.’
Knox County Criminal Court Judge Steve Sword fulfilled their wishes; on October 2, 2020, now 32-year-old Joel Jr. was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder, three counts of felony murder and two counts of abuse of a corpse. He was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences in November of 2020. He will not be eligible for release for 130 years and will most likely die in prison.
Conclusion
The crimes Joel Jr. committed against his parents were inhumane and purely motivated by gaining ownership of his parents’ assets and life insurance. Although he claims to be mentally unstable, prosecutors argue Joel Jr. is in fact a highly intelligent being whose actions were calculated, premeditated and deliberate, that ‘he knew what he was doing.’
Thanks to the quick actions of Lisa’s boss, authorities and investigators who worked tirelessly at capturing Joel Jr. he will spend the rest of his life in a prison cell.
Joel Sr. and Lisa Guy. Source.
Joel Sr. and Lisa’s children described the couple as wonderful people who were larger than life. They had a great sense of humour, were compassionate and incredibly kind-hearted. Joel Sr. loved to laugh and tell hilarious stories to his children. Lisa was incredibly generous and would give the shirt off her back to anyone. The couple, who were married for thirty-one-years, were the ‘loves of each other's lives.’
Sources: Law and Crime, WVLT 8, Kiro 7, Wikipedia, WBIR 10, Boston 25 News | https://medium.com/chameleon/after-being-cut-off-son-brutally-murders-dismembers-his-parents-eb75806ec62d | ['Fatim Hemraj'] | 2020-12-27 19:02:03.029000+00:00 | ['Family', 'Justice', 'True Crime', 'Crime', 'Murder'] |
the work of Silence | What if all the silence of the world
gathered herself at will?
and kissed the night, and kissed your night
O! such black and still.
What if summer would not turn around
and winter came once more?
A mist, you find, is knocking-
she’s knocking at your door.
And if this mist were living,
what forests would she bear?
and should the trees be caught out singing,
who else might you meet there?
It will take such silent guessing.
It will take the mess of song.
The method is the madness. Think!-
it’s not what calls you home.
Ask of what are your fears made
when the silence finally comes:
remain afraid to greet your voice here?
or else speak with us in tongues. | https://medium.com/loose-words/the-work-of-silence-71723380be11 | ['Siân Griffin'] | 2020-11-06 20:55:42.064000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Call To Action', 'Awakening', 'Silence', 'Poem'] |
Self Improvement Strategy: Allow All Environments to Positively Inspire You | Experts and motivational speakers will tell you to surround yourself with positive people and to spend your time in positive environments.
That’s some damn good advice, but there’s another angle to consider: use every environment you’re in to positively inspire you.
We can’t 100% control the environments that we find ourselves in, so we have to make the most of them. Here’s an example of my day and how I put this idea into practice:
I woke up at a friend’s house and at times, it’s a nice environment. Others times it’s a bit challenging to deal with. This morning was both and I thought to myself about the blessings that I have.
After that, I looked at the environment that I was in as being great because it still afforded me the chance to get my important work done. It also allowed me to look at people in that environment and be happy that I’m not facing problems that they are. | https://medium.com/@deanteyoung/self-improvement-strategy-allow-all-environments-to-positively-inspire-you-34835ade9e9a | ['Deante L. Young'] | 2020-12-18 17:02:28.122000+00:00 | ['Positive Thinking', 'Motivation', 'Life Lessons', 'Inspiration', 'Self Improvement'] |
Skate! Skate! Skate! | I was filling out the application for my youngest daughter to play soccer in the Police Athletic League. It was the first or second Saturday after the start of school year. The league organizer, a well-known community activist who had immigrated from Ireland decades before, looked me dead in the eye and asked, “Would you like to be a coach, Dexter?”
I almost puked. I played little league baseball and even a couple of seasons of youth soccer in the W-town, a rich, white suburb of Boston, but I was a terrible athlete.
There was no way I was going to be a coach. My intent was to sign my kid up for the soccer league, stand on the sidelines, cheer when appropriate and compliment other parents on how well their kids played.
At game’s end, I’d say goodbye and tell my daughter how well she played on the walk back home. The thought of coaching 11- and 12-year old boys and girls (mostly boys) who lived in a public housing project a few blocks away from my single-family home in a neighborhood of Boston was too alien to contemplate.
Growing up in W-town did not prepare me for this.
“Ah, I can’t coach,” I said. “I don’t really know how to play soccer. I was never all that athletic,” I said to the league organizer.
“Maybe you didn’t hear me the first time,” she said. “Would you like to coach?” It was a command framed as a question. I looked at the league organizer and then at my 11-year-old daughter. She peered up at me with that questioning look on her face that said, “You aren’t going to wimp out on me, are you?”
“Oh, OK, I’ll coach,” I said. “When’s the first game?”
“In about 20 minutes.”
“OK,” I said. “Bianca, you stay here I’ll be right back.
A few minutes later I returned to the soccer field wearing a gray sweatshirt and a ball cap. I carried a clip board with a single sheet of paper on it and a pen in my pocket. I simply had no idea what I was doing, but I was at least going to look the part of a coach.
Minutes later, I found myself yelling from the sidelines in support of a group of 10- and 11-year-old boys and a couple of girls as they played against a team without a coach.
We lost the game 5–0. We were simply overrun. It was humiliating, but it was our only loss that season.
Before the next week’s game, I was able to recruit a recent graduate from medical school who was working in the radiology department at a Boston hospital to be my assistant coach. She had played soccer in college before knee injuries ended her career. She was kind, soft-spoken and astoundingly beautiful.
The fact that she knew how to run a 20-minute practice before the games was a real boon, but the crucial factor was her beauty. The young boys were simply not going to lose a game in her presence.
They crushed the opposing teams without remorse or hesitation.
Of course, I made a great show of being the coach as I ran up and down our half of the field yelling stuff like “Get back on D!” and “This is our house!”
Yes, I know, telling my charges to “Get back on D” is more appropriate for basketball or maybe even hockey, but what the hell, my goal was to convey to them that I gave a damn about whether or not they won or lost and that I desperately wanted them to win.
Indifference was not a sin I was going to be guilty of. Ineptitude and I had been longtime companions.
But indifference?
Never.
At some point I realized that I was, mutatis mutandis, channeling the spirit of a man who coached high school hockey team in W-town decades before.
His name was Kevin Crowe.
***
The summons came over the speaker during last period, sometime during the first semester of eight grade. During the end of day announcements, the vice principal — a man rumored to have a metal plate in his head as a result of a war injury — reported that W-town’s high school hockey team needed an equipment manager for the upcoming season and anyone who was interested should go see Mr. Crowe who taught gym at the junior high where I was a student.
I had no interest in hockey. The one time I played ice hockey on a pond close to my house, I fell into a hole a fisherman had cut into the ice, bruised my thigh, soaked my left leg up to my crotch. I limped home with the left leg of my snow pants frozen.
In sixth grade I had played in an after-school floor hockey league and had the distinction of scoring two goals against my own team. Eventually, I scored a total of three goals against our opponents, which brought my net goal production to one.
I had no athletic talent. I admired, envied and feared those who did, which made my decision to ask for the job inexplicable.
To make my decision to apply for the job even more unfathomable, Coach Crowe scared me to death. Rumored to be former drill sergeant in the United States Marine Corps, his specialty was making seventh and eighth graders do leg-lifts, sit-ups and push-ups until they could no longer move. He was exactly the type of guy I did my best to stay away from, with good reason.
Let’s face it. I was a little and brittle kid and had been for a long time. I got the sense I was different in kindergarten when Mrs. Dolliver, a kindly woman whom I adored, invited me to sit next to her and asked me to draw the picture of a man with the paper and the crayons she provided. It was toward the end of the year and was happy to bask under her undivided attention so I took my time as I drew the picture she asked.
When I was done, I handed it to her.
“Dexter, the man in your picture doesn’t have any hands or feet,” she said with a clear look of dismay on my face. “Why doesn’t he have any hands or feet?”
I quickly took the paper back and added the missing appendages in hopes of pleasing her, but the damage was done.
I got sent to summer school.
In the years since, I have imagined myself responding with the obvious answer.
“The omissions are intentional,” I should have said. ”It’s symbolic of my feelings of impotence and immobility. I mean, what the hell. I’m five. What do you expect?”
My one memory of summer school is of playing a board game and being just a roll of the dice away from winning the game and getting my piece of candy when one of the other students, a boy a couple of years younger than me with a hearing aid of some sort, got a lucky roll of the dice and moved his marker past mine and then into the winning spot.
When the teachers handed him the candy that was meant for me, I exploded in sadness and fury at the injustice of it all. “I never win at anything,” I wailed. The teachers called my mother to bring me home.
Like I said, I was a piece of work.
But when I heard the announcement about the job opening, I knew I had to go see Coach Crowe and ask for the job. Part of me sensed that putting myself in his orbit — even in a tangential way — was a risk worth taking.
I had an overpowering sense of my own uselessness and being equipment manager seemed like a way out.
I made my way down Coach Crowe’s office and told him I wanted the job and it was mine.
The job didn’t require much work except to attend the dozen or so games, most of which took place at a ramshackle hockey rink located two towns over. Between periods, I handed out sliced oranges and water bottles to the team in the locker room and sat on the bench with the team during the games.
As modest as the tasks were, they were a lifeline to something better.
After the first season, I had a varsity letter jacket. Yes, it had the humiliating “MGR” affixed to the letter itself, which a few players on the team mocked, but the fact was, as a non-athlete, I lettered in a high school sport even before I set foot in the building. It was, to borrow a phrase from my brother, “pissa.” When I started freshman year, I knew a few upperclassmen who gave me rides home from school. By alternate turns they harassed and looked out for me in the hallways of the school.
The real upshot was that I was able to step into the inner sanctum of winners. Little and brittle as I was, I got to tag along with young men who by virtue following the instructions of Coach Crowe, had earned the right to compete in the state championships at the Boston Garden.
I walked on the ice at the Garden before they played stood and wept in the locker room after they lost to a private school in the first round of competition. I got caught up in the drama of the team’s success and was crushed by its loss. Coach was there with the players, telling them this is how it goes for most teams in the playoffs, that only one team wins it all, and that he was proud of them.
I saw what manhood looked like, if only from a distance.
Another benefit of the job was that it forced me to pay more attention to the physical world from which I had been estranged and a lot of it had to do with the run-down rink where the team played.
W-town had at one time a rink of its own for a few years and I have vague memories of skating their once with a childhood friend, but the town sold the property because it was too costly to operate.
The story, as I remember it, is that the team did not know the rink was closed until very close to the start of the season, forcing Coach Crowe to scramble to find a place to skate for the upcoming season.
Unlike W-town’s lost rink, which was, to steal a phrase, a clean, well-lighted place, the other rink in which the team found itself was a poorly designed dump. You could see the look of despair on the faces of the visiting teams as they walked into the building. It was an ugly building where they were very likely going to get trounced by Coach’s team.
The locker rooms were placed right next to the entrance, up a set of wooden stairs that the layers had to walk down and across a cement floor — in their skates — to get onto the ice. Rink officials had placed rubber mats on the cement floor to protect the skates and these mats would collect salt and other detritus from the soles of people’s boots as they came in from outside.
The team’s benches were on the opposite side of the rink from the locker rooms, requiring players, coaches and trainers to bring their gear across the ice before the game. To get to the bleachers, visitors had to walk a narrow passage between the snack bar and the timekeeper’s box adjacent to the rink. The one thing that did work was the refrigeration unit. The building was cold.
The locker rooms had no lockers, just benches attached to the walls and the men’s room stank with urine, probably from the drunks who pissed into the sink because of a shortage of urinals and stalls in the bathrooms. Just making my way through this building was a chore that required me to pay attention to my surroundings in ways that I hadn’t previously.
Many years later, when I saw Coach Crowe at an awards ceremony where he was belatedly inducted into W-town’s athletic hall of fame, he said to me, “I was always afraid you were going to catch a puck in the head.”
He was right to worry.
I was in my own little world.
During a scrimmage at the rink, one of the players got hurt. “Dexter get some ice,” Coach said. I looked at him mystified. I had a vague sense he wanted me to go out onto the rink and get some ice, but I wasn’t sure and anyways, people got hurt out there and that was the last place I wanted to go.
“Where should I get it?” I asked in the vain hope that there was a freezer in the snackbar where I could get the ice. Coach looked at me with dismay “Go out onto the ice and get some ice.”
I opened the gate, stepped out onto the ice and wonder of wonders, I discovered that I was able to scoop up with my hands the frozen powder that had been shaved off the surface by the skates of the players as they got on and off the ice. As I came back in with two handfuls of the ice, Coach said to no one in particular, “He’s standing next to 17,000 square feet of ice and he asks ‘Where can I get some ice?’”
In retrospect, I have concluded that I knew damn well where I was supposed to get the ice.
I wasn’t confused; I was afraid.
And under the force of Crowe’s verbal boot in the ass, I stepped out on the ice and came back a little bit less fearful of the world than I was before.
I can’t say I was particularly good as manager. The tasks were simple and not all that demanding, but for a kid like me, they were at the outer edge of my capabilities. My most humiliating moment was when two or three 10- or 11-year-old kids, whose older brothers had just gotten their ass kicked by W-town by some ridiculous score of 10–1 — or something close to it, stole the sticks from the team’s bench after the game.
They took advantage of the confusion stemming from an end-of-the game brawl after which both teams headed straight to the locker rooms — without retrieving their sticks from the benches. Stealing the sticks was an obvious attempt to get revenge for the humiliation inflicted on their older brothers in the game they just lost — resoundingly. Their older brothers had stepped onto the ice thinking they were hockey players only to find out that they weren’t. They had Coach Crowe and the team he led to thank for that.
I chased after the thieves briefly as they ran out of the rink with the sticks cradled in their arms, but as I got close to them, I realized that I was going to have to have some sort of physical confrontation to get the sticks back.
I did the math.
If I was successful in tackling the ten-year-olds and getting even some of the sticks back, I was going to be forever remembered for having manhandled kids about half my size. And if they had somehow bested me — a very likely possibility — I was going to be forever remembered for having been bested by kids half my size.
It was a lose-lose situation, so I gave up pursuit.
The look of disdain on Coach’s face when I told him about the sticks being stolen was withering, but what hell, his team had just crushed their opponents to the point where the only way they could salvage their self-esteem was to start a fight and steal their sticks, which could be replaced. My incompetence got lost in the confusion and I kept my job.
***
Despite my screw-up over the hockey sticks, I returned as manager for two more seasons during which I saw what winners looked like. I learned that Coach spent a huge amount of time on physical conditioning — leg lifts, push-ups and the like and that this paid off in the later periods of the games. Other teams might do well in the first half of the game if they had good skills, but by the end of the game, W-town had just exhausted them. Tired teams lose games and our guys didn’t tire.
The other guys did.
Coach knew how to motivate his players. One memory I have is of him instructing his players to yell, “Skate! Skate! Skate!” at the top of their lungs before the game. I yelled it along with them, caught up in the frenzy. It was an intoxicating moment.
I learned how other teams acted like they had won a game in the playoffs when they beat us in a regular season game, which only happened a few times. It took place once at an away game at a much nicer rink than ours. After the game the opposing team chanted, “We’re number one! We’re number one!” into the ventilation ducts so that we could hear it in a clear attempt to taunt us.
It was kind of pathetic because, W-town had already qualified for the playoffs and was going to be playing in the Garden. The highlight of the other team’s season was beating W-town in their last regular season game. Coach Crowe responded with disdain as the chant came into our locker room through the vent in the ceiling. He looked at his players and shouted, “Who’s Going to the Playoffs?”
“WE ARE!” the team roared in response.
“WHO’S GOING TO THE PLAYOFFS?”
“WE ARE!”
“WHO’S GOING TO THE GARDEN?”
“WE ARE!”
The other team said nothing. I could imagine them sitting sullenly on the benches in their locker room. Their season was over and W-town’s wasn’t.
We were going to The Garden. They weren’t.
***
Through it all, I wore my letterman’s jacket as a talisman, as a symbol of mastery and self-confidence to which I aspired but had yet to achieve.
Then came a controversy over the amount of money W-town was paying its high school coaches. The controversy got on the radar of the hockey team captains who declared that the team was going to the School Committee — en masse — and advocate for more money for Coach Crowe.
I had no idea how much he was being paid, but I had a pretty good sense of how much time and energy he was investing into the team and figured he was entitled to more money.
One of the captains looked at me and said, “Are you going?”
“Yeah, I’ll go.” I had no idea why they wanted me to go. I imagined that I would sit in the back of the crowd of players that would show up at the meeting while the captains advocated for higher salaries for the coaches of all the teams.
When the time came, I showed up and looked around for the players to see where they were congregated. They hadn’t showed up. Not one. And there I was — the stick boy — who showed up. It was kind of humiliating. Here I was, a jock-sniffing chump who showed up to advocate for a coach of a sport I didn’t know how to play.
I was the stick boy.
It would have been one thing for me to stand in the back of the crowd of hockey players, but to presume to speak on their behalf?
That’s insane.
I went to the pay phone at the library across the parking lot from the school administration building and called the captain who had harangued me into going. “No one’s here!” I said.
“You’re kidding me.”
“No!”
“They all said they would show.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You gotta do it,” the captain said.
“Me? I don’t even play a sport! I can’t do it.”
“You gotta do it. You showed up. You can’t back out now. There’s no one else.”
My doom had been pronounced. I hung up the phone and walked into the building and up the stairs to where they held the School Committee meetings. I talked to someone about why I was there, that I wanted to talk about the money they were paying athletic coaches and asked what I was supposed to do.
The secretary told me that the general public could make offer comments to the members of the committee toward the beginning of the meeting.
People — adults — started looking at me. Some people looked me inquisitively as if to say, “What are you doing here. Are you really going to go through with this? Come on kid, just go home.”
I wanted to slither out the door, but I didn’t want to be a quitter. Coach Crowe and the guys on the team had let me into their inner sanctum to see the drama of their lives, their wins and their losses. I witnessed their triumphs, their crucifixions and their resurrections.
They trusted me, let me into their world, which was a hell of a lot bigger than mine.
I simply could not repay their trust with cowardice.
So I stayed to endure whatever humiliation I had coming to me. I went into the bathroom, took a leak so I wouldn’t wet myself while talking to the School Committee.
I looked at myself in the mirror as I washed my hands and knew it was going to be a disaster.
And as I looked in the mirror, I realized that if I flopped, the humiliation I would endure wasn’t anything I hadn’t already been through, because like I said, I never win at anything.
And so I soldiered on through the feeling of ineptitude that I had become so familiar in early adolescence. The gift of it all was that I had become comfortable with being uncomfortable. I was used to it. So whatever happened, it simply didn’t matter.
When I went back into the meeting room, I saw Mr. Brown, my social science teacher in junior high. He was probably there to speak about coaches’ salaries, just like I was. I don’t think he was all that happy to see me. He was probably afraid I was going to mess things up.
The meeting started, the chairman went through the preliminaries and then announced that if anyone from the general public had anything to say to the committee, now was the time to do it. I waited a moment and then raised my hand. Everyone looked at me and a few people regarded me with disdain, a disdain that I shared.
“What’s he here for?” their faces asked. The chairman invited me to speak.
I got up to the microphone and told them who I was, where I lived and began my spiel. I had no script, absolutely no idea what I was going to say.
“Right now I’m the most uncomfortable person in this room,” I said, eliciting nervous laughter from the audience.
As I said that sentence, one part of my asked the other part of my brain, “What the hell are you doing? Why start with that? Is that the best you got? Start talking about why you’re here! These people already know how uncomfortable you are. You didn’t have to tell them that!”
WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” one part of my brain screamed at the other.
In response, the part that had hijacked control of my faculties, without my permission, told the other part to settle down and that it was going to be all right.
My mouth said something about people in W-town caring a lot about high school athletics, about how we have an athletics program that people are proud of.
Then I got to the point.
“But if you don’t start paying high school coaches in this town the money they deserve, athletics in this town will become a joke.”
That was a little rough, a bit too challenging. It’s not as if I was an athlete myself.
I paused for moment wondering what to say next.
Then it came to me. I knew what to say.
“And then I won’t be the most uncomfortable person in the room!”
I said it with an unmistakable tone of triumph in my voice, as if I had solved a puzzle and walked away from the microphone.
The audience erupted in laughter. Even the people on the School Committee laughed. And Mr. Brown smiled ecstatically. The next day he gave me a letter of congratulations, proof that I had pulled it off.
I was quoted in the paper.
Dad was proud as hell. “Where did you come up with that?” he asked.
I was as mystified as he.
I had earned my letter. | https://medium.com/@dextervanzile-18513/skate-skate-skate-140f65139a19 | ['Dexter Van Zile'] | 2021-01-14 19:19:57.141000+00:00 | ['High School', 'Coach', 'Adolescence', 'Hockey', 'High School Sports'] |
AWS Proton and Tale of So Many Options | If you weren’t aware AWS re:Invent is just now wrapping up and there have been a lot of announcements. One that stuck out to me was AWS Proton.
Before I say anything about that service specifically let me jump back to the first time I was evaluating creating a service environment in AWS. We had a greenfield project and we could pick essentially any deployment mechanism we wanted. This was ~5 years ago, so containers weren’t mainstream enough for us to feel comfortable jumping into that pool, but we were still weighing several
ElasticBeanstalk EC2 Instances managed by Systems Manager AWS Opsworks Stacks(before there were other opsworks options) Auto scaled instances deployed to with codedeploy
And on top of all of that we were working through CloudFormation trying to grapple with what it meant to manage all of these environments with Cloudformation templates. I finally asked an AWS solutions architect, “It seems like there is a ton of overlap between all of these services.”
And he said, “……..yes there is.” The punch line is that AWS creates services with overlap to give you subtle variations on solutions. If you have an environment that closely matches an ElasticBeanstalk template you can use it and get moving quickly. If you love Chef but don’t want to pay for chef server you can use Opsworks Stacks. If you need the fine grain control of creating your own environment you can do it in EC2.
My struggle was in weighing these very similar options and making a choice on a solution. I’ve been going through that same struggle with AWS Proton. There are a lot of different serverless and CI/CD management options available inside of AWS and it can be dazzling to try to understand how they all fit together
AWS Proton AWS Cloudformation AWS CDK AWS CDK Patterns (e.g. the ECS patterns) AWS ECS Copilot AWS ECS CLI AWS SAM
I use a few criteria when evaluating which tool to use for a new environment. The first is how common is your use case and how strict are your security requirements.
Opinionated but transparent: SAM, ECS CLI, ECS Copilot, AWS Proton Flexible: Cloudformation, CDK Frameworks with lots of examples: CDK Patterns, SAM, ECS CLI, Cloudformation Framework you’ve spent time in: If your use case is special get comfortable with one of the flexible frameworks, but typically pick the one you’ve done the most with
And you can wind up orchestrating all of these with combinations of codepipeline and codebuild.
You can design and build the smoothest CICD pipeline, but it will provide zero value if the team has workflow that doesn’t work with it (did I tell you about the time no one was merging to master?), so the second criteria are how engaged the development team is in maintaining the IaC and how interested they are in learning about infrastructure.
With all of that lets briefly break down the services I listed above
AWS Proton
Proton looks flexible because it’s jinja on top of cloudformation you can do anything you can with cloudformation. I don’t think it would lend itself towards developer insight or experimentation. I would use this when
You have a lot of microservices that use consistent AWS services You have a separate infrastructure team You need strong guardrails in place to ensure cost/security/reliability You have a developer team that is comfortable being a little distant from the details of their app deployment
From the looks of it you will probably wind up with some clicking in the console to create and publish Proton template updates.
My main impression from Proton is that AWS is acknowledging that
Not all teams are going to CICD every aspect of their app deployment (Proton seems more friendly with the console than with a CICD pipeline for the templates) Not all development teams will manage their own infrastructure Some infra teams need to be able to set out guardrails for how apps are deployed in their environment
Cloudformation
Cloudformation has incredible service coverage and documentation. The downside is that the templates can be verbose and you may not like the defaults it picks. Use cloudformation when
You have slowly changing infrastructure You have strict security requirements You use a wide variety of AWS services You don’t want to learn one of the programming languages CDK is available in
CDK and CDK Patterns
CDK essentially puts a programming language on top of cloudformation. It’s a great gateway for getting developers to start interacting with infrastructure through code (between you and me you need the same amount of infrastructure knowledge to use either). The downside is that it will insert a lot of defaults and depending on your security requirements those may not work for you. Use CDK when
You have an infra team that’s willing to learn one of the programming languages CDK is available in You have rapidly changing infrastructure and want to see those changes in code You have strict security requirements and need to be able to see the defaults (they’re there if you dig)
Use CDK patterns when
They fit the stack you’re trying to build You won’t have to modify them to get your environment the way you way You have a development team that’s engaged in managing their infrastructure
AWS ECS Copilot and ECS CLI
I haven’t used copilot much, so I have fewer opinions here. From what I can tell you should use them when you’re in a containerized world.
You aren’t too concerned about creating lots of repeatable stacks with parameters (like you would with Cloudformation) You fit solidly into the ECS world without the need to orchestrate other services in the same tool
All of the other tools fit pretty smoothly into Codepipeline (Cloudformation can be versioned next to your app, CDK can run in a codebuild job triggered by codepipeline, etc). But ECS Copilot will be a little more work to get a fully managed stack.
AWS SAM
AWS SAM is really useful — it’s AWS’s response to the Serverless Framework and does pretty similar things. SAM is helpful when you fit into the serverless world (i.e. your application is all Lambda functions), but you still need to create similar environments with parameters on top of them. Use SAM when
You are app is 100% serverless and mostly uses constructs supported by SAM You want to embed your app environment with your app code You may need to break out to cloudformation at times You are going to use the SAM Local tools for testing
There you have my breakdown of a few different app deployment services. There’s plenty of overlap here, and each of these services can get you to successfully deploying an app to production. My last few tips on choosing one are | https://medium.com/@rollingwebsphere/aws-proton-and-tale-of-so-many-options-63009e5b8342 | ['Brian Olson'] | 2020-12-17 13:28:58.269000+00:00 | ['Aws Proton', 'AWS', 'DevOps', 'Serverless', 'Cicd'] |
A Tour to Rawalpindi | Rawalpindi, commonly known as Pindi, is a city in the Punjab province of Pakistan.
The Real Story
Rawalpindi (“Village of Rawals”) occupies the site of an old village inhabited by the Rawals, a group of yogis (ascetics).
Where exactly it’s located…
Rawalpindi lies on the Potwar Plateau, 9 miles (14 km) southwest of Islamabad, the federal capital; the two are jointly known as the “twin cities” on account of strong social and economic links between the cities.
The Best Part?
Rawalpindi is an important administrative, commercial, and industrial center of Pakistan. It enjoys the status of Pakistan’s major military city as it is home to the headquarters of Pakistan Army.
That’s not at all…
The city also has numerous suburban housing developments that serve as bedroom-communities for workers in Islamabad. Connected to the M-1 and M-2 motorways, Rawalpindi is a major logistics and transportation center for northern Pakistan; it also serves as a hub for tourists visiting Kashmir, Taxila, Gilgit-Baltistan.
Due to Price flexibility, Rawalpindi is affordable to everyone.
So,
Are you thinking of owning your house?
I am pleased to tell you that you can even consider buying 3 marla house for sale in Rawalpindi or any kind of property in Pakistan in Rawalpindi.
There is a landscaped aesthetically. Provision of basic facilities including electricity, gas, water supply, and sewerage is ensured in most areas. Escape the fatigue of long distances with various amenities present in the area such as schools, masjid, parks, shops, and restaurants. | https://medium.com/@mileyparker456/a-tour-to-rawalpindi-1ef4ebd0640f | ['Izzah Kamal'] | 2019-07-01 09:19:51.667000+00:00 | ['Housing', 'Tourism', 'Rawalpindi', 'Pakistan', 'Tour'] |
Co-Hosting ~ Some thoughts | What are you trying to do? This will inform your search for a co-host. As a co-host myself I can tell you why I do it and this might help in your decision making process.
I co-host on two shows, The Real Food Chain and Permaculture Plus. I do so because a friend, Rich, asked me too. I accepted because, in many ways I am the ideal listener to these shows. That’s a clue. The ideal listener is a fan of the show, supports the ethos and thrust of the vision and brings a slightly different understanding from the producer. It reinforces the vision for the show.
I bring a different perspective to these shows from Rich. He comes at the visions from a suburban point of view and I bring a rural slant to the shows. He gardens, I’m setting up a small regenerative farm. You can see how these positions reinforce and support each other while giving a wider feel and depth to the shows.
Now there is another perspective I’ve seen. I observed an advertisement for a co-host. This went along the lines of: I need a new co-host, someone who will argue with me no matter what I say. The current co-host is too nice and accommodating. If that’s what you’re looking for then go for it. Conflict for its own sake to generate interest and comment.
This is not how I would do things but it is a legitimate form, particularly for political or sports based shows. I think there’s more than enough conflict in the world myself but that’s me.
Over time, life changes, co-hosts can come and go. Don’t be welded onto a particular person. The vision for your show can change too. This may necessitate a change in co-host or a need to bring in another. It’s your show, go with it.
The other advantage from a co-host is the generation of creative ideas. Having more than just yourself seems to create a total greater than the sum of its parts. Content ideas can be a stumbling block, at times. Two minds on the lookout for ideas is a helpful thing.
It may, with someone you don’t know that well, be necessary to have a written contract for a co-host. I’ll do this, you do that and so on. Especially if the show becomes a great success and the money starts to flow. As we, of certain age, know, nothing breaks up some friendships like money. Think of how a will tears certain families apart.
Takeaways | https://medium.com/@redocean112_17433/co-hosting-some-thoughts-a22646079bb0 | ['Jon Moore'] | 2019-03-07 21:21:00.971000+00:00 | ['Podcasting', 'Ideal Listener', 'Jmpodcastingservices', 'Co Hosting', 'Podthoughts'] |
drowning | i drown in my emotions
of heart sickness and pain
wondering when the end will come
i struggle for air
choking on what could be
and what couldve been
not having the power to
be the initiator
of the things i want and need
im thrown around
like a doll at a slumber party
hair pulling
arms bending
hurt wrangling from
within my chest
the unspoken words
wanting to break free
but not being able to
i swallow them down
with so much force
i almost choke on them
pushing back the tears
i put one foot in front of the other
and walk away
i feel like ive been taken hostage
and can only say
what the perpetrator wants me to say
what the perpetrator wants to hear
goodbye everyone
dont worry about me
ill be fine
but i wont be
i wont ever be
the hope i once had
of living life and finding love
has been squeezed out of me
every last drop funneling
into the dark abyss i
find myself in
vast and open and sad
i drown in my emotions
of heart sickness and pain
wondering when the end will come
when the perpetrator will shoot me
in the back of my head
when the dark abyss will swallow me whole
and spit me out
leaving me with nothing
but a broken brain
and a black heart | https://medium.com/@halleee/drowning-ea53e30b48da | [] | 2021-08-25 06:20:09.086000+00:00 | ['Travel Writing', 'Writing', 'Poetry', 'Mental Health', 'Poem'] |
The Truth On Trump’s Recent Firing Of My Wife | Source: pic via
I was working out on Tuesday morning when I got the call from my mom. She doesn’t usually call in the morning unless something is happening.
She said, “Hey. So just a heads up. Your dad is leaving a bit early. There’s something breaking on Twitter right now.”
I got off the phone and thought, “Here we go.”
http://www.bbycafe.com/mxc/t-v-b1.html
http://www.bbycafe.com/mxc/t-v-b2.html
http://www.bbycafe.com/mxc/t-v-b3.html
http://www.bbycafe.com/mxc/t-v-b4.html
http://www.bbycafe.com/mxc/t-v-s1.html
http://www.bbycafe.com/mxc/t-v-s2.html
http://www.bbycafe.com/mxc/t-v-s3.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/a-v-i1.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/a-v-i2.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/a-v-i3.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/a-v-i4.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/a-v-i5.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/a-v-i6.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/a-v-i7.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/a-v-i8.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/a-v-i9.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/a-v-j1.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/a-v-j2.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/a-v-j3.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/a-v-j4.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/a-v-j5.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/a-v-j6.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/a-v-j7.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/a-v-j8.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/a-v-j9.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/a-v-k1.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/a-v-k2.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/a-v-k3.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/a-v-k4.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/a-v-k5.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/a-v-b1.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/a-v-b2.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/a-v-b3.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/a-v-b4.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-d1.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-d10.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-d2.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-d3.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-d4.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-d5.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-d6.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-d7.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-d8.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-d9.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-e1.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-e10.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-e2.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-e3.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-e4.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-e5.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-e6.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-e7.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-e8.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-e9.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-f1.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-f2.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-f3.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-f4.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-f5.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-g1.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-g10.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-g2.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-g3.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-g4.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-g5.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-g6.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-g7.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-g8.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-g9.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/f-v-d1.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/f-v-d2.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/f-v-d3.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/f-v-d4.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/f-v-d5.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/g-v-i1.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/g-v-i2.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/g-v-i3.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/g-v-i4.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/g-v-i5.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/g-v-i6.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/g-v-i7.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/g-v-i8.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/g-v-i9.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/g-v-o1.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/g-v-o2.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/g-v-o3.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/g-v-p1.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/g-v-p2.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/g-v-p3.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/g-v-p4.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/g-v-p5.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/g-v-p6.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/g-v-u1.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/g-v-u2.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/g-v-u3.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/g-v-u4.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/g-v-u5.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/g-v-u6.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/g-v-u7.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/g-v-u8.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/g-v-u9.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/f-v-d6.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/f-v-d7.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/f-v-d8.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/f-v-d9.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/f-v-e1.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/f-v-e2.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/f-v-e3.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/f-v-e6.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/f-v-e7.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/f-v-e8.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/f-v-f1.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/f-v-f2.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/f-v-f3.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/f-v-f4.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/f-v-g1.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/f-v-g2.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/f-v-g3.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/f-v-g6.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/f-v-g7.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/f-v-g8.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/mi-v-a17.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/mi-v-a18.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/mi-v-a19.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/mi-v-a20.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/mi-v-a21.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/mi-v-a22.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/mi-v-a23.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/mi-v-a24.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/mi-v-a25.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/mi-v-a26.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/mi-v-l1.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/mi-v-l10.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/mi-v-l11.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/mi-v-l12.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/mi-v-l13.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/mi-v-l14.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/mi-v-l15.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/mi-v-l16.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/mi-v-l2.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/mi-v-l3.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/mi-v-l4.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/mi-v-l5.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/mi-v-l6.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/mi-v-l7.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/mi-v-l8.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/mi-v-l9.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/t-v-v1.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/t-v-v2.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/t-v-v3.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/t-v-v4.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/t-v-v5.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/t-v-w1.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/t-v-w2.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/t-v-w3.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/t-v-w4.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/t-v-w5.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/t-v-x1.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/t-v-x2.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/t-v-x3.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/t-v-x4.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/t-v-x5.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/t-v-x6.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/t-v-y1.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/t-v-y2.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/t-v-y3.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/t-v-y4.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/t-v-y5.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/t-v-y6.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/t-v-y7.html
http://www.ffbim.fr/eur/t-v-z1.html
http://www.ffbim.fr/eur/t-v-z2.html
http://www.ffbim.fr/eur/t-v-z3.html
http://www.ffbim.fr/eur/t-v-z4.html
http://www.ffbim.fr/eur/t-v-z5.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/b-v-a1.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/b-v-a2.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/b-v-a3.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/b-v-a4.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/b-v-a5.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/b-v-a6.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/b-v-b1.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/b-v-b2.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/b-v-b3.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/b-v-b4.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/b-v-b5.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/b-v-c1.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/b-v-c2.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/b-v-c3.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/b-v-c4.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/b-v-c5.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/b-v-d1.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/b-v-d2.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/b-v-d3.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/b-v-d4.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/b-v-e1.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/b-v-e2.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/b-v-e3.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/b-v-e4.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/b-v-e5.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/b-v-e6.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/u-v-b1.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/u-v-b2.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/u-v-b3.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/u-v-b4.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/u-v-b5.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/u-v-b6.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/u-v-b7.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/u-v-b8.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/u-v-b9.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/u-v-b10.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/u-v-b11.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/u-v-b12.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/u-v-b13.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/u-v-b14.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/u-v-b15.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/u-v-b16.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/u-v-b17.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/u-v-b18.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/u-v-b19.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/u-v-b20.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-n1.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-n2.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-n3.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-n4.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-n5.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-n6.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-n7.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-n8.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-n9.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-o1.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-o2.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-o3.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-o4.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-o5.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-o6.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-o7.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-o8.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-o9.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-p1.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-p2.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-p3.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-p4.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-p5.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-p6.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-p7.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-p8.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-p9.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-q1.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-q2.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-q3.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-q4.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-q5.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-q6.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-q7.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-q8.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/h-v-q9.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-n1.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-n2.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-n3.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-n4.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-n5.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-n6.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-n7.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-n8.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-n9.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-o1.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-o2.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-o3.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-o4.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-o5.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-o6.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-o7.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-o8.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-o9.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-p1.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-p2.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-p3.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-p4.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-p5.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-p6.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-p7.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-p8.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-p9.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-q1.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-q2.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-q3.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-q4.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-q5.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-q6.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-q7.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-q8.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/h-v-q9.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/u-v-b1.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/u-v-b2.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/u-v-b3.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/u-v-b4.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/u-v-b5.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/u-v-b6.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/u-v-b7.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/u-v-b8.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/u-v-b9.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/u-v-b10.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/u-v-b11.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/u-v-b12.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/u-v-b13.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/u-v-b14.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/u-v-b15.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/u-v-b16.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/u-v-b17.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/u-v-b18.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/u-v-b19.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/u-v-b20.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/f-v-h1.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/f-v-h2.html
http://www.heli-one.com/wed/f-v-h3.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-h1.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-h2.html
https://www.mybalancemeals.com/vnc/f-v-h3.html
Three years ago, my dad took the job as the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. He oversaw a number of big agencies. The heads of the National Security Agency (NSA), The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and others, reported directly to him. That all ended on Tuesday night at midnight.
I wanted to clear up a few things because my world has been blowing up over the past few days. | https://medium.com/@allroundersohan/the-truth-on-trumps-recent-firing-of-my-wife-ca7feef75703 | [] | 2020-12-02 19:46:01.367000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Vacation', 'Politics', 'Games', 'News'] |
Development Update July 17, 2018 | Mobile Wallet Performance Improvements | Kanban | The FAB Foundation provides technical updates related to the project every week.
Smart Contract Web API and Web Wallet
Tasks completed during the last week of development on the Web API include
Imported the journal/log component into the Fab API
Moved the Node2 replica set collection onto Node12
Share acquired and published operations to SendRawTransaction (ie. “send original transactions”) to handle large and complex data requests
Test and update new solution of multi replica set nodes
Kanban research for joining and finding the starting point
For the web wallet, the team is currently in the process of adopting HD/deterministic wallet functionality from the mobile wallet to put into the web wallet. They are also preparing code and looking to write up a release plan in the near future.
Mobile Wallet
The Android version is available. Improvements to the UI, workflow and other performance needs are being implemented to further improve the system based on user feedback. The IOS version of the mobile wallet is being reviewed by the Apple Store and will be available for download after review. The Android version can be downloaded and used at http://fabcoin.pro/runtime.html and Google Play.
For more detailed text and video tutorials, please refer to the official website https://fabcoin.co/help and our Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsY3NGs2HTs.
Kanban
After several months of research, Kanban is currently in the implementation stage! Kanban is one of FAB’s breakthrough technologies for coordinating FAB’s decentralized public blockchain and our Annex chains. It is what keeps the network decentralized while helping provide the scalable features.
Kanban currently has two teams working in different coding languages developing the protocol. The JS/TS group code is now open for reference by blockchain enthusiasts interested in tracking or joining development. KanBan will have a number of important features that are set for subsequent release.
Community Development
The FAB community is growing stronger each , and the FAB Global Ambassador Program is currently progressing well.
Global Women in Blockchain Announce The FAB Foundation as their Official Education Arm
The FAB Foundation has been appointed as the official education arm of the Global Women in Blockchain, the world’s premier network for women in the decentralized tech community. As the education arm of the Global Women in Blockchain(GWB), FAB will provide content, accreditation programs, on-boarding and more to members within the network.
The news of the partnership between the two organizations comes as the Global Women in Blockchain (GWB) are preparing for the ChainXChange conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA August 13–15, 2018 at the Mandalay Bay. FAB will ensure all blockchain content provided through sponsors GWiB is educational.
Noted speakers include Steve Wozniak the Co-Founder of Apple, Paul Krugman a Nobel prize-winning economist, Molly Bloom, Common, Gary Vaynerchuk, Nina Nichols and more.
Visit https://chainxchange.io/2018/public/enter.aspx for more information and to join us at the conference.
FAB Foundation Nominated for Markham Business Award of Excellence in Innovation
The FAB Foundation has been announced for the 2018 Markham Business Award of Excellence in Innovation, highlighting the several innovations the organization has made in technology.
Ambassador Program
The first FAB Ambassador meet-up event will be held in Beijing by Beijing on July 21, 2018 (Saturday). The event is completely free and was organized by our FAB ambassadors in the region.
Venue: Shun Chuang Cafe, 1st Floor, Building 6, №6, Ronghuiyuan, Antai Street, Shunyi District, Beijing (900 meters from Hualikan Station, Metro Line 15). Please sign up for WeChat: anxanx.
We welcome all interested parties to apply to join our team focused on creating change in the community. https://fabcoin.co/ambassador-program
fabcoin.co
On the official website the past week was spent adding accessibility features to the site, adding backend administration uses and search engine optimization tweaks.
In the next week, we will be making changes to the home page and making the website more mobile friendly. | https://medium.com/fast-access-blockchain/development-update-july-17-2018-mobile-wallet-performance-improvements-kanban-fbe9396abbe6 | ['Fab Info'] | 2018-07-17 12:44:11.296000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin Wallet', 'Updates', 'Development', 'Smart Contracts', 'Tech'] |
Intro to Post-Structuralist French Philosophy for Data Scientists (Part II) | Why Post-Structuralist? What’s Structure?
What is structuralism? Philosopher Simon Blackburn paints an anthropological view of structuralism as:
“…the belief that phenomena of human life are not intelligible except through their interrelations. These relations constitute a structure, and behind local variations in the surface phenomena there are constant laws of abstract structure.”
Influenced by the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure, French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss explored the universals of human culture, such as kinship structures (matrilineal or patrilineal? communal or individual?) and their corresponding effects on taboos of incest. A similar interest in structure inspired work on abstract mathematical structures by the Bourbaki group in the 1960s. The notion of structure has had a lasting influence on sociology, too, tracing back to the work of Emile Durkheim and Karl Marx. More recently, Anthony Giddens developed “structuration theory” analyzing social systems as self-regulating, invisible structures constantly shaping and constraining the social behavior within them.
Generalizing, we can say the following. Structure is what allows patterning, and thus regularity, to be observed against a fixed background, providing a center from which all elements are oriented. At this level, structures permit and define the identities of elements which, taken together, constitute the structure. Indeed, the identity of the elements cannot be determined except by reference to the element’s relations to other elements. Let’s look at these ideas more closely.
Structures: Self-regulating Systems Closed Under Transformation
Jean Piaget gives a nice treatment of structuralism that may resonate with data scientists. Piaget says structures are different from mere aggregates and have three necessary properties:
Wholeness: Although composed of individual elements subject to unique laws, the elements together define the structure as structure. The system does not rely on elements external to it. Transformation: Elements within the structure can be transformed according to sets of laws which define the nature of the transformations. Self-regulation: Transformation of elements never yields results external to the system. In other words, all transformations of elements lead only to elements internal to the system (in mathspeak: the structure is closed under transformation). Structures self-preserve themselves, though they may evolve when elements are transformed within them.
So with that background, we can understand what exactly Derrida was reacting against and why people call him a “post-structuralist.” He is rejecting the idea that there is only one structure (Western logic/metaphysics) or only one way of ascribing identity to an event or thing. Remember that Wittgenstein claimed in his Tractatus that logic was the (only possible) description of that very structure. If we go outside the structure, we must remain silent.
Derrida, however, argues that we unnecessarily limit ourselves if we think this way because we, as humans, possess the power to define new structures (and corresponding identities) at will. Let’s now look at some key influencers of Derrida before we jump into his actual writings.
Photo by Evan Dennis on Unsplash
Forebears of Derrida: The Three Masters of Suspicion
When first approaching Derrida it helps to have a basic familiarity with the ideas of those who have influenced him. Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx have been referred to as the “masters of suspicion” for the way in which they have questioned the ideological bases and methods of Western knowledge production. Derrida will combine these ideas in a rather idiosyncratic way to critique the foundations — the axioms, so to speak — of Western logic. One general concern is whether logic is a description or an idealization of thought. If it is a description, then whose description does it correspond to? If it’s an idealization, then whose ideal is it? For more background see Part I here (Hegel & Foucault).
Nietzsche
All three thinkers shared a similar concern with a kind of “false consciousness.” Let me explain. For Nietzsche, our inherited (Judeo-Christian) moral values turn out to be contingent and not necessary truths, based on historical contingencies, such as who defeated whom in battle. Truth and power were two sides of the same coin. Everything we believed to be true was, in reality, an expression of the will to power (in Foucault’s words, “the will to truth”). The powerful use the linguistic guise (or “discourse”) of truth to hide and close off questioning about the origins of their power. The exquisite skeptic, Nietzsche claimed there were no facts, only interpretations. If God was dead, and God’s intentions contained the truth behind the meaning of things and their names, then the truth could now never be known. Truth is a mere rhetorical device clothed in metaphysical garb, given to us in order to preclude an infinite regress of skepticism about its foundations.
Freud
Freud’s contribution is slightly different. Based on a kind of “hydraulic model” of the mind, his work revealed the ego’s battle against the id in his book Civilization and its Discontents. Freud explained that what we thought were our “true” desires and needs were actually symbols of a much deeper, repressed need for something else (typically unresolved sexual urges). There was a vast unconscious network of impulses scurrying around in our minds of which we were, of course, unaware. The neurotic person was one whose ability to repress these animalistic urges was less than perfect. Freud’s ideas of powerful unconscious drives went against the influential ideas of Plato and Aristotle, where man was essentially rational and his virtuous soul was kept in neat and proper order by reason. We are not pre-formed Cartesian subjects capable of achieving perfect self-knowledge, but incomplete fractured entities. Our incompleteness as subjects puts limits on our objects of knowledge.
Marx
Marx implores us to take up the skepticism of Nietzsche and see how those in power have used an ideology of truth to repress and alienate those without power from their true potential as humans. Marx’s focus was on liberation: on freeing persons from their ideological shackles — the institutions, norms, and practices of a society — that blinded them to their true nature. The idea of false consciousness in Marx relates to our mistaken pursuit of our interests, when in fact these “interests” reflect the goals and needs of the powerful ruling classes (note the connection with recommender systems: they claim to recommend what we are “interested in” but actually reveal what the company is interested in selling). We have confused appearance with reality. If we could transcend this state of false consciousness, as the movement of the Hegelian dialectic supposes, we could finally realize our true interests. The ruling classes are those with the means of material production (e.g., economic capital) and this is what grounds ideology through a process of reification, or a “naturalizing” of what is accidental and contingent and treating it as necessary and fixed.
Photo by Dan-Cristian Pădureț on Unsplash
Exposing the Internal Contradictions of Western Metaphysics
The literary technique of Deconstruction is famously associated with Derrida. Roughly put, the idea is that structures contain the seeds of their own destruction. Western thought, obsessed with reason since Plato, has unknowingly relied on a system of rhetorical metaphors masquerading as reality. It has imposed a way of thinking, a structure to thought (logic), and defined it in such a way that anything not following its rules is therefore illogical. Deconstruction broadly seeks to reveal the dominant rhetorical devices implicit in Western philosophical thinking, and encourage us to instead view what was previously fixed and solid as flexible, capable of infinite play through the creative interpretation of signs.
Here’s a metaphor of my own to help make sense of things. Imagine pulling a single thread from an old sweatshirt and the sweatshirt instantly unravels, revealing it to be nothing more than some loosely held-together threads. Pulling the thread is analogous to exposing the internal contradictions of the structure. In this case, structures are systems (“totalities”) of Western thinking which put (Western) logic and (Western) reason at the top of the metaphysical hierarchy. The contradiction is that what they assume to be necessary is in fact contingent. The tunnel vision of Western thinking, and its assumption of the possibility of absolute knowledge, prevents it from ever achieving absolute knowledge!
By systematically excluding other kinds of knowledge from its canon, it is necessarily forced to fail in its goal of attaining complete knowledge.
A Binary Misinterpretation of Derrida: Us vs. Them
Derrida’s work itself is a performance piece against the totalization of Western metaphysics in modern life. Yet today some people use his ideas to promote a totalization of academic thought in the name of social justice. It’s true though, his ideas were deeply shaped by his outsider experience as an Algerian-born Sephardic Jew growing up in Post-World War II France. You have to remember he came of age during the 1968 Student Movement.
In the modern political sphere, there seems to be an intuitive appeal for grand-narratives (filtering historical events to fit a simplified causal arc) and binary thinking. Derrida would have been repulsed by the binary, us vs. them logic used to stifle opposing, marginalized views. Derrida might argue that America is experiencing something similar to a Nietzschean transvaluation of values, expressed as a will to power under the banner of social justice. In response to calls for social justice, Derrida would have said something like “Whose Justice, Whose Rationality?” (see Alisdair MacIntyre’s 1988 book of the same title). We should be wary of anyone calling to stifle the voices and perspectives of others.
Binary logic is a logic of power: it makes it exceedingly easy to exclude, to round-off. But reality is inherently messy and complex. Binary logic is at its most repressive when forcing something which sits perfectly between two poles to move completely to one or the other. Derrida wants to focus our attention on the liminal space between quantized values: to the analog continuity of being rather than digitally discrete Being. We gain from recognizing, not ignoring, the complexity of Being.
Remember Hegel and his dialectic of synthesis-antithesis? Well, we might interpret Derrida as doing something similar: by accepting that things may be both A and not-A (perhaps at a later time) we open ourselves to the understanding of an even greater unity, where we see each prior instance as a limiting case of something grander and more abstract.
Derrida also was deeply impressed by cybernetics and information theory. We must at some point round off measurements of real numbers in order to do anything useful with them. We must compress them. Imagine if you had to send someone all the digits of pi! But when this rounding process is repeated over and over, this eventually leads to unpredictability. It is a fact of our existence as finite beings (i.e., we don’t have infinite storage capacity) that “chaos” will eventually present itself as the unpredictability of systems. In short,
Binary logic is great at compression, but bad at truth. Truth is nice, but could take forever to transmit.
Similar to how Gödel and Turing showed the limits of logic using the tools of logic itself, Derrida sets out to deconstruct the totality of Western metaphysics — using the very concepts of Western metaphysics. If Derrida can reveal the illogic of logic, if he can introduce doubt as to its foundations, then he provides a motive for change.
The Dilemma of Continuous vs. Discrete, Analog vs. Digital
Derrida is really getting at fundamental metaphysical questions about the nature of reality. Derrida and Gilles Deleuze were fascinated by a tension central to information theory: how do we balance our needs for compression with truth?
If we compress too much, we lose essential structure and become susceptible to the effects of noise. We might think redundancy can shield us against the harmful effects of noise, but this shield costs something — namely, transmission time and storage space.
To virtually guarantee you receive my message correctly, I could send you 1000 extra copies. But then you’d have to be able to store all of them and they’d take a while to send. By the time you receive them, they may no longer be useful! (It’s kind of like when you discover you never responded to a friend’s Facebook message from six months earlier and you realize it would be kind of useless to respond to “Hey, you want to hang out this weekend?” half a year later, so you don’t respond).
Likewise, I could send you a single, perfect copy of my message, but if I’m unlucky and something happens to my message, you’re not going to get the exact message I sent. It’s brittle without the shield of redundancy.
Logocentrism, Science, and The Metaphysics of Presence
Much like the Frankfurt school Critical Theorists who decried the effects of following instrumental reason to its logical conclusion — leading to the horrors of Auschwitz — Derrida’s task is to protest the dominance of Western metaphysical thinking, passed down since Plato’s theory of the forms. He calls this Western bias towards the use of reason logocentrism.
Logocentrism is the striving inherent to Western metaphysics towards totality, the idea that subject can reach perfect self-identity with object. If we achieve a complete description of the world, then the identity of knower and known dissolves and there is perfect transparency between subject and object. Objects are unmediated by any kind of re-presentation (they are fully present to the subject!). Knower and known are indistinguishable. Logocentrism is this quest for perfect self-transparency between knower and known, subject and object. It is the immediate and unmediated presence to consciousness of eternal and immutable essences — these are called Eidos in Greek.
If mind acts as a mirror of nature, then logocentrism is the striving towards making this mirror as transparent as possible via the logical reduction of a complex reality. If logocentrism were successful, then our internal representations of an external reality would be identical with reality and we would know the mind of God.
Even today we find traces of logocentrism in our most modern scientific theories of the universe. Here is Stephen Hawking in A Brief History of Time:
If we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle to everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we would truly know the mind of God.
Appearance and Reality
We have now come back full-circle to the age-old philosophical problem of distinguishing between mere appearance and reality. We now see why Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche are referred to as the Masters of Suspicion and why they had such an impact on Derrida. Each of these thinkers made the startling claim that what we naively assumed to be reality was merely appearance.
Two related questions now arise:
When does a thing under a different representation stop being that thing? What distinguishes a thing and a representation of that same thing and two separate things?
The Nature of Uncertainty in Probability and Statistics
Derrida’s ideas have even deeper implications for the concept of uncertainty. Now, the subject of uncertainty has a complex past and there are differing views about what it is. Neural network pioneer Bart Kosko, for instance, says we need fuzzy logic on the basis of a distinction he makes between epistemological and metaphysical uncertainty. The crux of the debate is whether uncertainty is located in objects themselves (fuzzy logic), or in observers of objects (subjective Bayes).
Metaphysical uncertainty: The identity of something is not indeterminate due our lack of knowledge about it. The object itself is intrinsically fuzzy. No amount of information we receive can change this! Roughly put, fuzzy logic is a mathematical framework where elements in fuzzy sets have membership functions expressing the degree of membership in various sets (but these degrees don’t need to sum to 1). Traditional set theory (i.e., ‘crisp set theory’) is, from the point of view, just a special case of fuzzy set theory in which membership functions can only take on the two values of 1 or 0.
Epistemological uncertainty: The identity of something is determinate, but we lack enough information to settle the question completely. This is broadly the subjective Bayesian view of uncertainty. Bayesian statistician Dennis Lindley argued that fuzzy logic was unnecessary because the only kind of uncertainty that mattered was epistemological uncertainty, and Bayes’ formula gives us all the tools we need to deal with it.
Here are a couple geometrical examples to illustrate some of these questions. They have to do with identity and difference and they challenge the binary logic essential Western scientific thinking.
Sine & Cosine as 2D Projection of a 3D Unit Helix
Are sine and cosine really just 2D projections of a 3D unit helix? Derrida would say there’s no answer to this question. There are no truth conditions for definitively settling the issue: we choose one representation when doing so suits our particular problem at hand. This is effectively the neo-pragmatist position on truth taken by philosopher Richard Rorty. Derrida would claim this is a case of metaphysical, as opposed to epistemological, uncertainty.
Back to Plato’s Cave: are sine and cosine really just 2D projections of a 3D unit helix? Source: Reddit.
Triangle Inequality
Here’s another geometric example illustrating some problems of perspective and identity. When the interior angles approach 0, the length of z approaches x+y. When the left and right interior angles of this triangle get to 0, the triangle collapses into a line. At that point, how would we distinguish between a line and a triangle? Is the figure a line, or is it a special case of triangle with 0 degree angles? Is it neither? Both?
The Triangle Inequality. Source: Wikipedia.
Liminality and The Logic of Classification Accuracy
A confusion matrix showing four possible outcomes of binary classification. Note there are two (FP, and FN) ways to make an error and one may be much worse than the other in social or ethical consequences. Source: Wikimedia.
Anyone who has spent time working with highly imbalanced datasets knows accuracy is a bad metric to evaluate a classifier’s performance. The reason is of course that when one class is, for example, 10X more common than the other, it’s very easy to achieve high accuracy by simply predicting the most common class in every new case. Assuming my test set is drawn from from the same distribution as my training set, if it has 100 observations and I know from the training set that 99% them are negative, then I can simply predict negative for all test cases to achieve 99% accuracy.
The problem in using accuracy to measure predictive performance is that it assumes all errors (FP/FN) have uniform cost. If we ask of our predictive algorithm that it maximize accuracy, it will do this. This is the double-edged sword of Adorno & Horkheimer’s instrumental reason at its finest. But the way it does so may not align with what we expect.
So what will happen? The algorithm will trade-off bad predictions of the minority class for good predictions of the majority class! After all, overall accuracy is simply a weighted average of the accuracies of each individual class weighted by the proportion of training examples in the class. Because minority class predictions occur less often, the algorithm wastes no “effort” in correctly classifying them. In short, it merely does what any instrumentally “rational” agent might do when asked to maximize some objective.
Simplicity of Binary Classification & Performance Metrics in ML
Derrida would not like the logical simplicity of many ML classification tasks. Reality moves, grows, changes: there is no black and white — only varying shades of gray.
Digital representations work through compression, by rounding or capping a continuous input signal into a discrete number of bits (assuming log base 2). We can see why digitalization of human experience is problematic: digital circuits might store a continuous voltage of 1 if inputs exceed some value, and 0 if they fall short of some threshold. But what happens to all those analog values that, by chance, fall between these two margins?
Derrida is asking us something similar here. What would happen if we didn’t “round off” our complex social reality to make gender and ethnic identities fit some discrete values? We set classification thresholds, compute confusion matrices and corresponding ROC curves. Derrida would point out that while some particular cutoff threshold would maximize our ROC curve, given a different context another cutoff might be better. There is no “single” best cutoff: it all depends on how it’s applied.
Derrida drew on ideas from logic, physics, and information theory to argue that there was no final truth about the meaning of a given text outside of a given frame of reference. Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash
With that general overview of themes, let’s dig into some actual work of Derrida. The discussion below draws mostly on ideas from his book Limited Inc.
Derrida and the Problem of Context
Derrida is perhaps most famous for his insistence that it is a precondition for the possibility of communication that there be no absolutely determinable contexts of signification or meaning. Derrida sought to jettison the ancient Greek/Platonic ideal of logos, that there exists some pure form of intelligibility in a concept or event — that an event could ever be understood outside of a frame of reference, from God’s point of view. Plato, for example, held that logos is what accounted for the ability of particular cases (tokens) to refer back to general, abstract forms (types). Tokens are understood as tokens because they partake in the general form or Eidos.
Semantic Communication
For Derrida, any kind of semantic communication through the written mark (what he refers to more generally as writing) implies an absence of presencing (meant in the Heideggerian sense of truth as aletheia, as disclosure or uncovering of Being, see my post here for more details) when the mark is received and “decoded.” Yet the original presencing must include the conscious state of the sender of such a message. But once this state is signified via the written mark (once this presencing has been re-presented in its written, symbolic form) it is dead and must now function in the absence of the original intention of its author.
Derrida says “representation supplants presence,” or carries or stands in for what originally was present. The act of writing itself brings a “rupture” between it and the context of its production which are “inscribed” in the written mark. Yet we can nevertheless communicate without knowing who the author of the mark was or what the “collectivity of presences” inscribed in the mark were. Derrida is not trying to eliminate the notion of meaning, but instead point out a problem in an account of semantic communication he traces back to the ancient Greeks.
Photo by Mark König on Unsplash
Detaching Sign from Signifier
Upon the moment of reception of a sign, the context — including the conscious experience of the receiver — has changed. Space and time have passed between the original authorial act of inscription and its reception as text. But Derrida argues that there is no need to posit, as a traditional correspondence theory of truth might, that the referent of the mark (in its productive context) must be present in order for the mark to be made intelligible by its receiver. Indeed, the absence of its original author is a source of creative strength for the text.
In fact, that the signified (referent) and signifier (the written mark) can be detached is what permits communication as such. If the mark could only refer to the original singular moment of its inscription, then by definition it could never be iterable. But since marks are indeed iterable, it follows that whatever the receiver receives, is not quite what was sent.
To illustrate this point, Derrida adduces the citation. The effect of citation is to cut off the “vouloir-dire” of a mark from its “given context,” and permit the “engendering of an infinity of new contexts in a manner which is absolutely illimitable.” In other words, I can cite anyone out of context and thereby produce a new context. I can do this an infinite number of times and thereby generate an infinity of possible meanings for a set of marks.
This phenomenon is what’s behind the decontextualized “sound bite” and also seems to drive the creative power of open-source libraries/packages in various programming languages. The original author of package created these functions to solve some particular problem, but I can find a use for the same function in solving my own, different problem.
Today I would argue that our digitally recorded behaviors are essentially “behavior bites,” extracted from their originary moments of intention and repurposed and interpreted in a way useful for data collectors.
Photo by Oleksandra Bardash on Unsplash
Iterability of Writing and Chomsky’s Discrete Infinity
This functioning in differing contexts depends on the “iterability” of the sign. The iterability of writing is a precondition for the existence of writing. Iterability is what ties repetition of identity to difference (“alterity”). For it is through replication that identification is even possible. Re-cognition assumes cognition: regularity cannot occur prior to the ascription of identity to events. But it is through a kind of gestalt switch, or re-framing, that suddenly the identity of a repetitive event is cast in a new light. I am reminded of the difference between discrete and continuous numbers, between analog and digital Being.
Derrida’s concepts of citation and iterability have an affinity with Noam Chomsky’s characterization of the “discrete infinity” of human language, summarized in his New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind:
Human language is based on an elementary property that also seems to be biologically isolated: the property of discrete infinity, which is exhibited in its purest form by the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, . . . Children do not learn this property; unless the mind already possesses the basic principles,
no amount of evidence could provide them. Similarly, no child has to
learn that there are three and four word sentences, but no three-and-a
half word sentences, and that they go on forever; it is always possible to
construct a more complex one, with a definite form and meaning. (pgs. 3–4)
Photo by ev on Unsplash
Behavioral Data as Public Signs
What does Derrida got to do with data science? Derrida’s ideas help explain how our digitally recorded behaviors (our personal data) become detached from conscious, intentional presence (our subjective experience online), thereby becoming digital “public signs’’ which can be algorithmically manipulated and combined in novel ways by recommender system designers.
Derrida is not saying that the notion of “meaning” can be eliminated. He is claiming that meaning is irreducible to what appears to us in a text because distanciation between author and reader severs us from the original authorial moment of intention. This act of distanciation, however, gives us an opportunity for creative play in advancing new and original interpretations of signs.
Digital distanciation opens the question of whose interpretations count and how these interpretations are put into action and applied to real people
For example, many digital platforms use recommender systems (and increasingly reinforcement learning) to determine the content and format of our online experiences. But on what interpretations do these recommendations rest? The downside of digital distanciation is that we can now never know the original “true’’ intention in the absence of the original act of the data subject, if such a thing existed. What did you really mean when you clicked the “buy now” button? Did you intend to buy it, or was it a mistake?
As long as data subjects do not possess legal rights to enter into dialogue with data collectors, they cannot negotiate the meaning of their digital behaviors. Data collectors, in an effort to save money and time, choose to re-present and not present the author of the data to account for his behavior. To me, however, it’s not clear why this must be so.
Why should others get to one-sidedly interpret a representation of my action in my absence?
GDPR: Personal Data Rights for Dialogue and Interpretation
If we follow the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we let the data subjects themselves decide what their digitally recorded behaviors mean. If you’re interested in reading more and learning about the philosophical foundations of the GDPR, you can check out our paper Beyond Our Behavior: The GDPR and Humanistic Personalization. | https://towardsdatascience.com/intro-to-post-structuralist-french-philosophy-for-data-scientists-part-ii-d00cd8194174 | ['Travis Greene'] | 2020-12-11 10:34:49.009000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence', 'Data Science', 'Ethics', 'Social Justice', 'Philosophy'] |
There’s More to Life Than Just Living It, It’s in Giving It | Each one of us desires to live our best life.While living our ‘best life’ may mean different things for every individual, a ubiquitous truth remains:
Identifying a need in someone’s life and making a move to meet that need is truly rewarding.
We definitely cannot deny the beguiling nature of getting and grasping more for ourselves, because each of us, to an extent, has a voracious appetite for everything that makes us feel good about ourselves and makes life more comfortable and desirable for us.
If we are not careful to pause, however, and evaluate ourselves periodically, we are likely to keep feeding our narcissistic nature and morph into self-centered monsters, insouciant to our immediate surroundings.
It’s OK to live or work towards living our best lives, but we must remember that an important piece to the ‘best life’ puzzle is to be a blessing to other people even in the smallest ways we can think of.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
God allows us to have needs because he has also made provision for those needs to be met through the wisdom, resources, gifts, blessings and skills he has placed in people. And no one is left out, we each have something unique to offer.
I write from a Christian perspective, where love for God is extrapolated to love for your neighbor. In practical terms, many of us are guilty of being too busy professing our love for God and ignoring the rudimentary task of seeking the welfare of the person next to us. If we were intentional about seeking opportunities to bless each other with what God has graced us with, we would inadvertently be approaching God’s ideals for the world He created.
And pleeeeease, can we not limit this to the clichéd giving out of food and [used] clothes to the needy? These are great acts of service we must keep at, but if we are keen-eyed enough we will find so many other needs beyond food and clothes waiting to be met:
Can you talk to the cleaner in your office about his long-term goals for life and spur him on? Can you befriend that teenager with identity issues and become her mentor? Invest your time in the young person who needs career guidance?
Don’t look too far, someone needs to hear your story so they don’t give up, people need encouragement, hope to cling on to in desperate times, people need SALVATION!
people need salvation
Someone needs a shoulder to cry on; a mother/father figure; a listening ear; a prayer partner; a friend; an honest opinion. Teach someone a skill you’ve acquired; go the extra mile as you serve your clients, customers or patients. The elderly need love, care and attention…
This list is definitely not exhaustive, and these things may seem insignificant, but they may go a long way to make a difference in someone’s life. Go and be a blessing to someone, don’t just live your life, give it! You just may be God’s answer to someone’s need. | https://medium.com/christ-for-youth-international/theres-more-to-life-than-just-living-it-it-s-in-giving-it-cb5cb530d8dd | ['Cyi Blog'] | 2020-03-21 12:54:58.470000+00:00 | ['Giving', 'Affect Your World', 'Living'] |
Herb-Robert | Herb-Robert growing in a shaded corner of my garden.
Herb-Robert, Geranium robertianum, is a native wildflower with pink star-shaped flowers. Each flower has five petals and is the most striking of pinks. The foliage is palmate and green in colour and there is often a red hue to the stems (Royal Horticultural Society). It flowers from May through until December (Lippert and Podlech, 2010). If you handle the plant, you will notice that it carries a strong and unpleasant scent.
This member of the Geranium family dislikes acidic soil and is found growing anywhere where there is some shade (Wildlife Trusts). It is a plant of woodland, hedgerow and coastal areas (Woodland Trust). It is considered to be a weed in the garden and spreads rapidly due to its exploding seed pods (Royal Horticultural Society).
Traditionally, herb-Robert was believed to treat a number of medical conditions including, nose-bleeds, stomach upsets and headaches. The plant was also used as an antiseptic and some believe it to be a useful mosquito repellent (Wildlife Trusts).
References
Lippert, W. and Podlech, D. Wildflowers of Britain and Europe HarperCollins, London, 2010
Royal Horticultural Society https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?pid=991 (last accessed May 2020)
Wildlife Trusts https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/wildlife-explorer/wildflowers/herb-robert (last accessed May 2020)
Woodland Trust https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/plants/wild-flowers/herb-robert/ (last accessed May 2020) | https://medium.com/@ueaecologyben/herb-robert-e887b506dbfc | ['Uea Ecology Ben'] | 2020-05-07 07:57:06.021000+00:00 | ['Wildlife', 'Plants', 'Weeds And Wildflowers', 'Garden', 'Nature'] |
Add interactivity to your charts in Angular apps with d3.js | As you may understand, we update the svg dimension, then the chart config (arcs for pie/donut, axis scales for bars) and finally, we repaint all the chart which means slices for pie/donut or bars and axis for bar chart.
Interactivity
It may be interesting to add some cool stuff like a tooltip which will follow the mouse move. Or if you prefer some labels near your bars or slices. Let’s put some dynamism with transitions (ease functions and delay) too.
Tooltip
Adding a tooltip requires few changes. First add, a CSS rule to component:
styles: [
`div.tooltip {
position: absolute;
text-align: center;
width: 80px;
height: 40px;
padding: 5px;
font: 12px sans-serif;
background: black;
color: white;
border: 0px;
border-radius: 8px;
pointer-events: none;
vertical-align: middle;
z-index: 10;
}`
]
You can notice the mousemove callback argument data structure changes between pie and bar charts. This comes from the the data we provide :
this.slices.data(this.pie(this.dataSource)); // For pie chart
this.bars.data(this.dataSource); // For bar chart
A smooth tooltip yeah!
Labels
Bar chart
Here is the corresponding CSS rule for labels:
svg text.label {
fill: black;
font: 15px;
font-weight: 400;
text-anchor: middle;
}
The code to adapt
Pie chart
For the pie chart, we are going to display the name on each slice above 5%, and values on the ones over 25%. Here is the code:
Donut chart
Don’t forget to update the code to transform your pie to donut chart:
private setArcs() {
const thickness = .75; // Or any value you want
this.arc = d3.arc()
.outerRadius(this.radius)
.innerRadius(this.radius * thickness);
}
Then, specify label properties for the total and hovered item.
It renders this:
Of course, I could have used css classes but I prefered managing styles programmatically to avoid numerous files.
Transitions (animations)
The transitions in d3.js are quite easy to manage.
3 methods to apply on d3 objects like bars or slices add some dynamism to your chart.
this.bars
.transition()
.ease(d3.easeBounce) // or any other ease function (optional)
.duration(150) | https://itnext.io/add-interactivity-to-your-charts-in-angular-2-applications-with-d3-js-78fd3718e6fb | ['Adrien Miquel'] | 2020-05-09 11:18:40.443000+00:00 | ['Data Visualization', 'Web Development', 'JavaScript', 'D3js', 'Angular'] |
How to design beautiful bar charts in Excel | There’s nothing more boring than a standard Excel chart. You might argue that the default settings “are just fine,” but ask yourself: is your goal to be “just fine”?
Assume you more than doubled your sales revenue over a year, working as Head of Sales for my Newsletter, Fundraisedd. Congratulations, that’s amazing, please ignore the shameless plug!
Now, say you want to showcase this in a bar chart. This is what Excel gives you out of the box.
As we said before: it does “just fine,” but you did amazing. It’s time your charts achieve as much as you do!
Let’s look at how you could spruce things up a little! | https://uxdesign.cc/how-to-design-beautiful-bar-charts-in-excel-65bb20f0f4e1 | ['Nicolas Carteron'] | 2020-12-21 13:58:35.420000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Excel', 'UI', 'Design', 'Data Visualization'] |
7 Life-Changing Books You Can Devour In A Single Day | 7 Life-Changing Books You Can Devour In A Single Day
#2 and #5 will only take you 30 minutes to read
Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash
You think I just “click-baited” you, huh?
You think it’s impossible to read a “life-changing” book in just one day, don’t you?
But let me tell you something…
It’s possible.
How do I know?
I know because I’ve done it.
And you know what?
It’s not that hard either. You just need to know which books to read.
Obviously, you won’t be able to read Leo Tolstoy’s 1,296-page “War and Peace” in one day. But if you’re like the average adult who can read about 300 words per minute (or 18,000 words per hour), then you can easily read a short 150 page book in a single afternoon.
This is why I compiled a list of 7 life-changing short books that you can devour in a single day.
Yes, I mean it.
These 7 books will significantly change your life in major ways and they only require a little bit of your time. That’s a great ROI.
I hope you enjoy! | https://medium.com/books-are-our-superpower/7-life-changing-books-you-can-devour-in-a-single-day-72536765a02f | ['Vincent Carlos'] | 2020-11-21 18:23:58.362000+00:00 | ['Ideas', 'Self Improvement', 'Productivity', 'Life', 'Books'] |
A Brief Introduction to DeFi | In this article, I would like to explain what DeFi stands for. In the end, you will have a better understanding of what DeFi means — not only for you as an individual, but also for the world and your financial freedom.
Ethereum: The Digital Finance Stack
Ethereum is a platform that doesn’t need to be presented to the reader. With smart contracts, we can imagine the Ethereum platform literally as a free world of unlimited possibilities for all kind of decentralized applications. Just as the Internet creates tools for content creators, Ethereum does the same by enabling the creation of new financial services. Why Ethereum? Compared to the DeFi on Ethereum, the Lightning Network makes Bitcoin available for micro-payments, but at the moment, it is unusable for functionality like the smart contractors on which the entire DeFi ecosystem stands. Other networks such as EOS, Cardano, Dfinity and many others with smart contracts can potentially be useful for DeFi, but so far the Ethereum network is the market leader.
To begin with, I would like to note the difference between “open-finance” and “decentralized finance”. These terms often come together, even though they are two different terms with different meanings. Open-finances point to the banking services industry in traditional (centralized or fiat) finance, where startups provide specialized services in a limited geographic region. A good example is the Revolut application, which many people consider to be a bank, but in fact, it is a fintech application that has a banking license but is not involved in the deposit guarantee fund, which is not a reliable signal. Decentralized finances, on the other hand, often act as pseudo-anonymous, potentially censor-resistant, globally available and much more transparent due to operations run on publicly accessible blockchains.
In a relatively short period of time, a package of decentralized financial services appeared on the Ethereum network. Anyone with an Internet connection and crypto wallet has now access to a full spectrum of financial services. I will gradually explain the different categories that logically follow one another.
DEX — Decentralized exchanges
Decentralized exchanges have one big advantage over traditional, centralized exchanges. They get rid of the risk of misappropriation of user data, and/or popularly said “hacking”, and hence the leakage of private keys to user wallets. A decentralized exchange will allow the user to trade with funds without the need to register or verify an account and especially without an intermediary, only with the user’s own wallet (most often Metamask). The user deals directly with the smart contract, which in this case acts as a safe and transparent administrator. Like any solution, DEX has its advantages and disadvantages. Security can be an unquestionable advantage, and although it may not seem so at first glance, from a security perspective, the processing time of the transaction and the gas charges the user has to pay for each transaction. This mechanism makes manipulation of the market a bit more difficult. Unfortunately, the downside may be a much smaller user base and thus a narrower orderbook (fewer open deals) and especially poor liquidity.
For these disadvantages, the Uniswap project, which is one of the best known within the DeFi ecosystem, may be the solution. Uniswap not only delivers decentralization but also solves the orderbook problem by implementing the smart contract with which the user interacts with the store, keeping the tokens in reserve and thus not having to associate the user with a particular open position or wait for a new order. These smart contract pooling token reserves are referred to as “reserve pool”.
Home page of Uniswap.exchange
Uniswap, presents itself as a protocol for automated exchange of ERC-20 tokens on the Ethereum network. Unlike traditional DEX, Uniswap does not use an order book but instead uses an algorithmic pricing mechanism that guarantees liquidity and provides low spreads. This mechanism is very simple which allows relatively simple operations directly with Ethereum smart contracts. This provides additional security benefits and, thanks to simplicity, low gas fees.
Each ERC-20 token traded on Uniswap has its own pool and also an ETH pool. The price of the token is determined by the ratio of the ETH pool (fund) size to the traded token pool size. Whenever someone sells a token for ETH, the amount of token in the pool increases and vice versa. This gradually reduces the price of the token. Whenever someone buys an ETH, the amount of Uniswap token will decrease and the amount of ETH will increase, increasing its cost. This pricing mechanism is automatic, so there is no need to create orderbooks. Instead, the price is adjusted through arbitration. Each time the price of the Uniswap token is lower than the market, it is preferable to trade the Uniswap token and thereby gradually adjust the price to the market.
Reserve funds or liquidity pools only partially solve the liquidity problem. They certainly have tremendous potential for growth, as adding an additional liquidity pool to the network is relatively easy, but they still do not create a fully liquid market. Each operation on a smart contract is limited by the time it takes to process a transaction on the Ethereum network, which can be a significant limitation.
DEX is a separate chapter on which much could be written, but it is important for this article as a gateway to the DeFi ecosystem and the financial freedom it represents, even though centralized exchanges that continue to run “trustless” variants of their own services. For example, Binance and Bitfinex already offer their own decentralized exchanges.
Stablecoins
Several attempts have been made tokenize physical assets over the past few years, but the trend and demand has consistently indicated an interest in tradable tokens. Thanks to the Ethereum platform and the flexibility of smart contracts, different token variations have arisen over time with different functions and uses. The Cryptokitties phenomenon in 2017 was the arrival of increased interest in issuing new virtual assets, the so-called NFT (non-fungible tokens — ERC-721), which is based on the demand for “virtual assets” in the market.
Stablecoin is a kind of asset that is “backed” — covered by another asset, commodity or anything that represents the value. For example, in the case of stablecoin Tether, its price is covered by the dollar value, ie 1 Tether is US $ 1. Thus, this cryptocurrency is not subject to market volatility such as Bitcoin.
The most popular are currently Tether (USDT) and DAI. Although they come from one family, there are substantial differences between them. The biggest differences are in the question of centralization and decentralization.
Tether is a centralized stablecoin that requires a “trusted manager”. This may be a bank or fund that holds value as collateral, which in the case of USDT is a dollar. At the same time, it carries out audits and verifies that each issued USDT is covered by the same amount in dollars. However, this creates opportunities for abuse and Tether admitted that USDT has been underpriced several times.
DAI, on the other hand, is a decentralized stablecoin that utilizes market mechanisms implemented in Ethereum smart contractors to maintain its USD-bound value. Its collateral does not represent the amount of dollars locked in a bank account like USDT, but its users who manage Dai using the Maker platform where they actually store assets as collateral to Dai. Thus, Dai is a truly decentralized stablecoin and the cornerstone on which most of the DeFi ecosystem has been built.
Makerdao & Dai
Dai is a freely tradable ERC-20 token on the Ethereum network. Anyone who has a wallet on the Ethereum network can own, receive, transfer or exchange DAIs on decentralized exchanges. No authority controls it and therefore no one can restrict or stop it from being published. Its stable price is ensured by the “stabilization mechanism”, which we will explain later.
DAI works on the principle of secured loans, where the user puts security in the form of ETH into smart contracts and gets the loan in the form of DAI stablecoin. In the context of a smart contract, this means that the ETH sent by the user in exchange for the DAI to the smart contract is exchanged for the WETH, which is subsequently stored, pooled as PETH in CDP, otherwise known as “Collateralized Debt Position”. The wallet holder does not have access to ETH in the CDP until the user repays the DAI loan.
Source: DeFi.Pulse January 2020
With the acquired DAI, user can continue to trade or use DAI in DeFI dapplications, but this means that there is the same market mechanism of supply and demand as another cryptocurrency, so a stabilization mechanism is needed. This mechanism can be better explained by the diagram below.
In case of coordinated network attack, MakerDAO has the ability to manage DAI stablecoin, and the platform users can vote together to revert the changes. Maker’s has a capability to act in a means of intervention if necessary, but in no way can affect the cost of DAI.
The good thing about DAI is that its stabilization mechanism is not just a theory like in many other platforms, but has been successfully implemented from its start. To date of releasing this article, the stabilization mechanism has not failed in any way, while the daily trading volume is still in millions of USD and the market capitalization is nearly 90 million USD.
DAI is a great example and a successful implementation of the cornerstone of decentralized finance — stablecoin, as well as a great example of how it can work in such an environment without intermediaries or any authority.
Decentralized financial markets
Many fintech companies and modern banks now promise consumers greater control over their resources. These are misleading promises because in most cases banks still manage assets and the client must trust the bank, that the bank will take good care of his funds. They may be faster and more convenient, but they are not fundamentally different from old banking.
True innovation only comes with full control in the user’s hands and immediate access to assets. This innovation is conditional on freedom and free access to user assets and financial products. The second condition is the openness of the code and transparency. All protocols are open-source, so anyone can develop new financial products and people from all over the world can collaborate and come up with new forms of value creation. This can lead to even faster innovation and a strong “network effect”.
DeFi already provides a variety of common financial tools and products as open-source protocols that ensure that the user is always the only administrator of his assets. The DeFi ecosystem is growing every day and a global financial market is slowly emerging with programmable assets and services that not only serve the user but are completely in his hands. Here is a growing list of projects that extend the DeFi ecosystem.
The infographics below presents protocols and projects within DeFi. Many of these services are free and decentralized versions of traditional financial products.
Infographics of DeFi Ecosystem for the year 2019
Today, however, most of these protocols make no money. Many of them are successful, according to some sources, but only time and market inscrutability will show whether they bring real value to the protocol.
Some of the DeFi projects focus purely on the development of smart contracts, for various financial products, unlike many projects from previous years, do not implement their own token or token economy, they provide purely smart contract services. A good example is projects such as Compound and Synthetix.
The diagram below shows how much ETH is currently in DeFi. The screenshot is taken from Defi.Pulse, which monitors key metrics for DeFi projects and follows the latest trends in this field.
Source: DeFi.Pulse January 2020
Today a lot of development is happening in the DeFi ecosystem and even startups are beginning to understand that to create new decentralized products or applications, it’s not necessary to build their own network, but everything can be a one-man-show with a smart contract on Ethereum. | https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/a-brief-introduction-to-defi-aa1e06b87188 | ['Ondrej Sarnecký'] | 2020-04-01 14:51:21.875000+00:00 | ['Finance', 'Defi', 'Smart Contracts', 'Ethereum', 'Blockchain'] |
Perfection is the Enemy of Progress! | Chinese New Year is the biggest holiday in China, during this time of the year millions of chinese people travel back to their hometowns and millions travel to nearby countries such as Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Korea and Japan.
Last Chinese New Year the education company I was working for, decided to reward all the employees with an all inclusive paid holiday in Thailand.
We spent 9 days in the land of smile and it was amazing.
We flew from Shanghai to Phuket.
It wasn’t the first time in Thailand for me, I had already visited the country three times before, but it was the first time in Phuket.
Before, I mainly travelled in the north of the country, backpacking, hitchhiking and couch-surfing.
This time the style was totally different.
We stayed at a very fancy resort, all activities were previously arranged and we always moved by coach.
We were more than 70 people doing everything together almost all the time.
For many of my travel companions was the first time in Thailand and for few of them the first time out of China.
I can’t deny that the resort life and not having to plan or worry about anything was pretty enjoyable, I just followed and enjoyed, but most of all everything was free.
In those 9 days we went snorkelling in crystal-clear water, we sailed to pristine beaches, we enjoyed massages and delicious local food, we visited temples and we went shopping.
It was the first time for me to have such a kind of experience.
My travels are always less planned, more frugal, and much much less luxurious.
Me and three other were staying in a beautiful villa with 2 bedrooms, a nice kitchen and a big living room. From my bedroom I had direct access to the swimming pool.
Oh boy, I miss that swimming pool!
One of the planned activities was sailing to a small island off the coast of Phuket for our last relaxing day before flying back to Shanghai.
Once we landed, as soon as everybody got off the catamaran we used to reach the island, we gathered together to take a group picture.
As you can immagine, to take a group picture with so many people is not an easy task.
The sun was above us, it was hot and if you don’t know, chinese people, like most of asians, don’t really like to be exposed to the sun.
Everybody was impatient, moving and trying to create some shadow to keep the sun away, somebody simply using hands, somebody using smartphones or simply large hats.
Amongst us was the general manager of the company and when everybody was ready, he said something that I couldn’t agree more with.
To the guy who was taking the picture, he said: Hey, perfect doesn’t exist!
What he meant was: don’t wait to have a perfect shot, because it won’t happen. If you wait too long people will be more and more uncomfortable under the sun, if you are too fast people are not ready, if you wait for everybody to look at the camera at the same time you gotta wait forever.
If you want the job done you can’t wait for perfection.
Churchill once said: “Perfection is the Enemy of Progress”.
I really like the picture we took and it is a great memory for me.
It looks great, even better than perfect because perfection doesn’t equals greatness.
Perfection is more a technical standard, but it is imperfection and spontaneity that make things unique and amazing, perfection is just a concept to aim to. And while we aim, we have to do, try, fail, try again, fail again, fail better, learn, progress, improve, learn.
Perfection is necessary but what must be understood is that perfection is not the goal. If you have something you want to achieve you can’t wait for a perfect time, you can’t wait to have the perfect tools, the perfect know how, the perfect conditions.
You have to do what you can with what you have. At least it’s a first step that will bring you closer to your destination and your goals, and will move you away from the static position where you were stuck inactive, waiting for the perfect time, the perfect moment, the perfect condition. That perfect situation doesn’t exist, so jump and learn on the way.
You want to work out? Don’t wait to have the adequate equipment, the right clothes or shoes. Start, start now. You can always get what you need later, and chances are you will realise that all you need is less than what you thought.
You want to start a diet? Don’t wait for Monday, start with your next meal.
You want to learn a language? You can virtually listen to endless material in any language anytime, don’t wait to find a teacher or a school. You can always do that later.
Don’t let the idea of perfection stop you from starting or doing whatever you want to.
Just jump, now!
SAM | https://medium.com/@samniubi/perfection-is-the-enemy-of-progress-fa2418b58711 | [] | 2019-06-26 12:17:10.236000+00:00 | ['Travel', 'China', 'Perfection', 'Thailand', 'Photography'] |
[READING]-Active Birth: The New Approach to Giving Birth Naturally (Non) | DOWNLOAD>>>>>> http://co.readingbooks.host??book=1558320385
Active Birth: The New Approach to Giving Birth Naturally (Non)
READ>>>>> http://co.readingbooks.host??book=1558320385
Janet Balaskas led a movement of women who refused to give birth lying down. She has been teaching women about active birth ever since. In this updated and Americanized guide, Balaskas explains how to prepare for and experience a truly natural birth. She leads the pregnant woman through yoga-based stretching exercises and massage practice, and describes the stages of labor and comfortable positions for each, at home or in a hospital. Balaskas has also included a chapter on water birth as well as postpartum exercises.
Books are a valuable source of knowledge that affects society in different ways. Whether you are reading a masterpiece by an award-winning author or narrating a bedtime story to children, the significance of books cannot be overemphasized.
Human beings need to learn and stay informed, which are crucial needs that books can fulfill. They are also essential for entertainment and enable individuals to develop wholesome mindsets throughout their lives.
“Millions of books have been published over the years and they continue to be an integral aspect of people’s lives around the globe.
From making it easier to understand different aspects of life to serve as worthwhile companions that take you through challenging times, books have proven to be precious commodities.
Books are essential in a variety of ways that go beyond enriching your mind or entertaining you. They have stood the test of time as reliable references for centuries. They stimulate your senses and promote good mental health. Other benefits include enhancing your vocabulary, allowing you to travel through words, and inspiring positivity through motivational literature.
While the internet and television are useful in their own ways, nothing can compare to a great book. Books ignite your imagination, give you new ideas, challenge your perspectives, provide solutions, and share wisdom. At every stage of your existence, you can find a relevant book that will add value to your personal and professional life.
Books are filled with knowledge and they teach you valuable lessons about life. They give you insight into how to navigate aspects of fear, love, challenges, and virtually every part of life. Books have been in existence since time immemorial and they hold secrets of the past while providing a glimpse of the cultures of previous civilizations.
A book has the power to change or reinforce how you feel about your surroundings. It is a therapeutic resource that can equip you with the tools you need to stay on track and maintain a good attitude. Whether you want to learn a new language or delve into the intrigues of nature, there is a book for every situation.
There are numerous reasons why books are important. Reading books is a popular hobby as people around the world rely on them for relief and entertainment. Books contain records of history and are used to spread vital information. Reading books helps to improve your communication skills and learn new things. It can be useful for easing anxiety among students and professionals.
Other reasons that highlight how important books are in their positive impact on intelligence, writing abilities, and analytical skills. Books give people a great way to escape into another dimension. They are packed with endless possibilities for adventure and experiences that would be difficult to access in reality.
It is essential for people to strive to include books in their daily lives aside from using them for academic or professional purposes. They aid emotional and mental growth, boost confidence, and sharpen your memory. It is natural for people to be curious and want to learn more, which is why books are still significant today.
Books are a valuable source of knowledge that affects society in different ways. Whether you are reading a masterpiece by an award-winning author or narrating a bedtime story to children, the significance of books cannot be overemphasized.
Human beings need to learn and stay informed, which are crucial needs that books can fulfill. They are also essential for entertainment and enable individuals to develop wholesome mindsets throughout their lives.
“ | https://medium.com/@susanhawkins_92024/download-http-co-readingbooks-host-book-1558320385-223816d912cb | [] | 2021-12-13 01:30:42.680000+00:00 | ['Download', 'Reading', 'Book', 'Read', 'eBook'] |
SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK! | SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK!
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels
I know what you’re thinking the answer is “WHEN SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK!!” and while I do agree to a certain extent, I think that sleep is very important.
The problem is that when you are running a startup, if you have employees, if you are working on your own or even if you have a family and/or a full-time job then it can be hard to make time for yourself and get the right amount of sleep.
I used to be able to get by on very little sleep but now as an entrepreneur with an international team of people working for me, I find that my sleeping habits have suffered greatly.
I’ve had many discussions with other entrepreneurs about how much sleep they get and each one has said different things. Some say they get by on anywhere from 3–5 hours of sleep per night, some say they need 8–10 hours, some say more than 10.
My recommendation is this:
First off take a good look at your lifestyle and make sure your diet is in check and that you are getting the right amount of exercise (which for me personally has been difficult to do).
If that doesn’t help then try reducing your time spent on social media (because even though we love it it can really suck away valuable hours from our day).
Finally if all else fails then go ahead and take a look at trying to get more sleep but just make sure you are doing everything possible before trying this because people tend to slack off on this after the first week or so because they think “hey I’m not getting enough sleep anyways so might as well stay up later.”
It can be easy for startups especially if everyone else around you is doing it too but just remember we all know how important putting our best foot forward is when trying to raise money or acquire new customers/clients so don’t let yourself go overboard on this one either because as we all know too much isn’t good!
What are the best tips for getting more sleep as a startup founder?
First off make sure you are taking care of your body. This means eating healthy, trying to get enough exercise and if you have any medical conditions then make sure you take care of those too.
Next, make sure you aren’t spending too much time on social media (again I know I know but it can really suck) and finally just remember that it is okay to say “no” to things and that you shouldn’t feel bad about taking time for yourself either.
A lot of people don’t take this seriously but I can tell you from personal experience that when I was in Junior College I got less than 6 hours of sleep per night consistently for years. As a result I had trouble focusing in class and most importantly suffered from extreme brain fog throughout the day.
It wasn’t until I started taking more time off and sleeping longer that I noticed how much more focused and productive I was. This is why if you are an entrepreneur then you need to value your time and just be aware that it is okay to take some downtime to allow yourself to recharge.
I hope this post has helped you out in some way and as always if you have any questions or comments feel free to drop them below in the comment section.
About the Author
I am the Founder of Cudy Technologies (www.cudy.co), a full-stack EdTech startup helping teachers and students teach and learn better. I am also a mentor and angel investor in other Startups of my other interests (Proptech, Fintech, HRtech, Ride-hailing, C2C marketplaces and SaaS). You can also find me on Cudy for early-stage Startup Founder mentorship and advice.
You can connect with me on Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexanderlhk) and let me know that you are a reader of my Medium posts in your invitation message. | https://medium.com/@alexanderlhk/sleep-is-for-the-weak-87941ce7009b | ['Alexander Lim'] | 2020-12-24 14:01:13.647000+00:00 | ['Sleep', 'Startup', 'Founders', 'Founder Stories', 'Productivity'] |
Connect Google Sheets to MongoDB and Automate Updates with Triggers | A simple guide to connect sheets with MongoDB and automate updates.
Using the ‘Stitch’ service in MongoDB not longer works since this is now deprecated and has been replaced with Realm.
I’ll show you how to connect google sheets to MongoDB and automate updates with triggers using Realm in this article (you can also watch the YouTube video I made here if you prefer video format).
The first step is to create a MongoDB account if you haven’t already. You can signup and create a free one with ~half a GB of storage.
Create a new cluster and select your preferred cloud provider and region (this can take a few minutes to complete setting up).
Source: MongoDB
Once the cluster is created click on the ‘Realm’ button near the top left corner.
Then click the green ‘Create a New App’ button near the top right.
Name the application whatever you want and once created click on ‘3rd Party Services’ under the “Build” section on the left hand side of the screen. Click the ‘Add Services’ button and then click the ‘HTTP’ option. Name and add the service.
Next, click on the ‘Add Incoming Webhook’ button. We can leave the settings to whatever is specified by default unless you want to change them. Go to the ‘Function Editor’ tab and replace the code there with the code below:
exports = async function(payload) {
const mongodb = context.services.get("mongodb-atlas");
const eventsdb = mongodb.db("googlesheetsdb");
const eventscoll = eventsdb.collection("animal_records");
const result= await eventscoll.insertOne(payload.query);
var id = result.insertedId.toString();
if(result) {
return JSON.stringify(id,false,false);
}
return { text: `Error saving` };
}
Click the ‘Run’ button in the bottom right of the text editor and then click ‘REVIEW & DEPLOY’ to deploy this code on the app.
Once deployed go to your Goolge Sheet and click tools -> script editor.
And then replaced the empty default ‘MyFunction()’ with the below code:
function connectToMongDB(){
var sh1 = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().getSheetByName(“Sheet1”)
var rng = sh1.getDataRange().getValues();
for(var i=1;i<rng.length; i++){
var formData = {
‘name’: rng[i][0],
‘designation’:rng[i][1]
}
var params = {
‘method’ : ‘post’,
‘payload’: formData
}
var getId = UrlFetchApp.fetch(‘<YOUR_WEBHOOK_URL>’, params);
sh1.getRange(i+1, 4).setValue(getId);
}
}
Notice, the sheet name in the third line is “Sheet1”. Make sure this is the same name as the name of your sheet in the Google Sheets. Also note, the last line of code with update the fourth column (column D) of our google sheet with a confirmation code from MongoDB that that row has been recorded. If you don’t want this then just get rid of the last line.
In the second to last line we’ll need to update the
'<YOUR_WEBHOOK_URL>'
with the unique webhook URL associated with our deployed service.
Go back to the deployed service and in the settings tab under the ‘WEBHOOK SETTINGS’ section copy the webhook URL and then paste this in place of
'<YOUR_WEBHOOK_URL>'
in the Google Sheets script.
Run the code in the Google Sheets script editor, making sure to name and save the script and giving MongoDB access to Google Sheets. If you get a “Script function not found: MyFunction” error just click the run button again as the function name hasn’t updated.
Once this runs we can go back to our cluster and click on the “collections” tab and then the name of our application. This will show us the data pulled in from our Google Sheet as well as the confirmation IDs for that row of data. If you kept the last line of code that we used for our service then the confirmation IDs will now be shown in the specified column of the Google Sheet.
Lastly, we’ll likely want to automate the data being pulled from the Google Sheet. We can do this by going back to the Google Sheets script editor and clicking the clock symbol to the left of the run arrow.
Click the “Add Trigger” button. We can then configure this run the script in Google Sheets based on various criteria, such as every time the sheet is updated (e.g. from a Google Form) or some interval of time.
Save this and now we our Google Sheets will automatically update our MongoDB cluster!
Thanks for reading and make sure to check out the YouTube video and subscribe there and on here for more technical guides! | https://medium.com/@trevorstanley/connect-google-sheets-to-mongodb-and-automate-updates-with-triggers-323cbd0d5228 | ['Trevor Stanley'] | 2020-11-27 22:07:38.004000+00:00 | ['Google Sheets Script', 'Technical Guide', 'Automation', 'Google Sheets', 'Mongodb'] |
Pyka: the Future of Electric Autonomous Airplanes | Pyka’s plane is designed for aerial applications to spray crops safely, quickly and cost efficiently. Their novel aircraft, which they have scrappily delivered using relatively little prior funding has already flown thousands of paid miles and passed key regulatory approval steps. In the future, the same plane can be used for a myriad of applications across the transportation industry.
For the agriculture industry, it is a groundbreaking milestone in the management of farms. Pyka can spray 135 acres/hour at 2 gallons/acre water rates, carrying a 450 pound payload capacity, cruising at 90mph, and taking off and landing from a 150 foot space. Their technology leverages state of the art 3D aerial mapping and path planning to identify and avoid obstacles autonomously and with multiple layers of failover controls to ensure security. The plane includes many advanced systems including proprietary flight computers, battery pack designs, spray systems, and motors.
The founding team of Pyka exemplifies extraordinary collaboration and partnership. Pyka is lead by CEO, Michael Norcia, who previously designed aircraft at Zee Aerospace and Joby Aviation. Michael has that unique combination of ambition and humility that is required to create something truly world-changing. He has also surrounded himself with a phenomenal set of leaders including Nathan White, Kyle Moore and Chuma Ogunwole who bring software, finance and operations experience from Waymo, Google, Stanford, and Morgan Stanley.
It is an honor to support Michael and the team to transform one of the most important industries in the world that provides our global food supply. | https://medium.com/prime-movers-lab/pyka-the-future-of-electric-autonomous-airplanes-f97e5371da6d | ['Dakin Sloss'] | 2021-02-25 07:54:55.751000+00:00 | ['Agtech', 'Funding', 'Aviation', 'Electric Vehicles', 'Autonomous Vehicles'] |
Generating Random Numbers In R | In this first simulation tutorial, we going to look at generating random numbers for simulation in r programming. If you read the previous articles you can see simple functions to generate random numbers. Let’s begin with to first subject.
If you are new to r programming and do not know certain topics and want to practice, you can improve yourself by starting here. From here, you can review data visualization topics and improve yourself with exercises.
What Is Simulation And Why We Do Simulation?
simulations are experiments created to try out certain projects. If you do not have data for an experiment, you can create your own data with random numbers. It is also used to check the output. You can experiment with simulation to find errors in your project.
Rnorm Function Syntax
It is used to generate random numbers with mean and standard deviation with the rnorm function. where the average of all random numbers generated is equal to the value used in the function.
rnorm(n,r)
n = number of data to be generated
r = the ratio of randomly generated numbers
Rnorm Function Example
Now let’s see what we have learned in a real example. In this example, we will construct 10 random numbers after that we going to use these random numbers for creating graphics. If you don’t know creating a graphic you should read this article.
r$> x <- rnorm(10 , 1)
r$> y <- rnorm(10 , 2)
r$> plot(x , y)
Continue In My Master Designer. | https://medium.com/@mymasterdesigner/generating-random-numbers-in-r-727ddfca4447 | ['My Master Designer'] | 2020-12-16 18:12:40.820000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Programming', 'R', 'Data Science'] |
Machine Learning with or without Human Supervision | Machine Learning with or without Human Supervision
Choosing Machine Learning algorithms
Machine Learning (ML) systems can be classified according to the prior knowledge on the data and type of output it is already known for our training samples.
Supervised Learning
This is the first type of ML system you will probably deal with when starting to learn about Machine Learning. It is called Supervised Learning(SL) because you already know the expected output value the algorithm should return. Therefore, the training data that you feed the system already includes the desired solutions, known as labels (data consisting of a set of training examples where each is a pair consisting of an input and the desired output value).
The goal of Supervised Learning is to find the function that models relationships and dependencies between the target prediction output and the input features.
Regression
A typical Supervised Learning task is to predict a future target continuous numeric value, such as the price of a house, given a set of features(numbers of rooms, area, etc) called predictors. This is known as Regression.
To train the algorithm you have to feed it with a great number of examples of houses, including both the predictors and their labels (e.g. sale price)
Other real time examples :
What will be the value of the USD equivalent to Bitcoin on a future date? |How long will it take me to go from the office to home | What will be the sales values for next month?
Regression algorithms:
Linear Regression
Logistic Regression
Polynomial Regression
Etc.
Classification
It is also a typical SL task, however it differs from regression in the way it does not try to predict a numeric value but assign a value to one of the existent classes. The goal is to predict a discrete value, e.g. {1,0}, {True, False}, {spam, not spam}.
Classification vs Regression. Source
Other real time examples :
Is this email Spam or not? | Will the customer by the product? | Is the client happy? | Will the customer leave our bank? | Can the client apply to new credit?
Classification algorithms: | https://medium.com/diogo-menezes-borges/machine-learning-with-or-without-human-supervision-b47b3a2835f3 | ['Super Albert'] | 2018-10-17 14:16:45.959000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence', 'Technology', 'Machine Learning', 'Education', 'Data Science'] |
Men’s Shirt Online at Low Prices | Get indian made Shirts form a crucial aspect of men’s clothing and it suit men of all ages. They come in a range of color combination, designs, and patterns. Shop for casual, party wear and formal shirts from leading brands including iswadeshi, iswadeshi India no.1 online shopping platform we provide indian made product | https://medium.com/@iswadeshi0/mens-shirt-online-at-low-prices-e481999ed17b | ['I Swadeshi'] | 2020-12-25 06:28:55.610000+00:00 | ['Men Shirt', 'Swadeshi', 'Online Shopping', 'Shirts For Men'] |
3 Top Andrew Yang Moments from Democratic Debate #4 | On Tuesday October 15th, 2019 the top 12 Democratic presidential candidates faced off for the 4th time. It was by far Andrew Yang’s strongest performance and there were some key moments during which he differentiated himself from the other candidates.
DISCLAIMER — I am a biased human being, and here are my biases:
a) I donated to and voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primaries
b) I donated to both Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard in 2019
c) My four favorite candidates, in order:
Andrew Yang
Tulsi Gabbard
Bernie Sanders
Elizabeth Warren
With that out of the way, here are the 3 most crucial Andrew Yang moments of the Democratic Debate:
Universal Basic Income (Yang) vs. Federal Jobs Guarantee (Bernie)
CNN asked: What is the best way to face the threat of automation eliminating American jobs?
Bernie Sanders’ proposal is to create a Federal Jobs Guarantee. Bernie’s argument is that there is plenty of work that needs to be done, from our crumbling infrastructure to creating more sustainable energy sources, and that Americans want to work. According to Bernie, he’ll be able to create 15 million jobs for Americans rebuilding our roads, bridges, and airports and create another 20 million jobs with his Green New Deal.
Andrew Yang’s flagship proposal to combat automation is to provide a Universal Basic Income (UBI) of $1,000 per month to every American citizen 18 and older.
Yang’s response to Bernie’s proposal:
a) Not everybody wants to work for the federal government. And what if the job you are assigned by the government is not something that you are good at? What if it’s a job you have no interest in doing?
b) A Federal Jobs Guarantee does not recognize the work being done by our caregivers such as stay-at-home moms and those who take time off of work to take care of an elderly parent. These are also meaningful roles which may not contribute to our GDP but nonetheless adds value to our society.
Let’s take a step back and truly evaluate what implementing a Federal Jobs Guarantee would look like.
Remember how tough it was to pass and implement Obamacare? From the Republican opposition to the HealthCare.gov rollout?
How much more difficult would it be to CREATE a jobs program for 35 million Americans? Jobs that are in every city and state. Jobs that provide value to its workers and society at large.
Most importantly, jobs that match people’s skills and interests.
After all, it won’t do much good to force people into a job they dislike and they’re not very good at.
Furthermore, there will be additional expenses on top of the salaries and benefits paid to the millions of Americans. Buildings for people to work out of. Computers and equipment that are used to do the work. Recruiters, HR, administrative assistants, the whole nine yards.
But another question is: what will these workers do when their project is complete? For example, let’s say they fix a road, which is a part of the crumbling infrastructure. What’s the next step when that particular road has been built?
Now compare that to collecting taxes and shooting a direct deposit of $1,000 per month to every American citizen.
Much easier to implement.
Interestingly enough, studies done on Universal Basic Income have shown that a UBI actually has a positive correlation with entrepreneurship. In both India and Namibia, UBI was correlated with working even longer hours and starting new businesses. Specifically, in Namibia’s UBI experiment, entrepreneurship rates quadrupled and in India’s UBI experiment, entrepreneurship rates tripled. This makes intuitive sense because if you know that the people around you have extra money to spend, you can launch a new service or product they are capable of paying for.
It makes much more sense to increase entrepreneurship through UBI, meaning people will be doing jobs they are good at, instead of assigning them a federal job they may suck at.
But this doesn’t have to be a zero sum game. Bernie’s proposal makes sense. For example, 73% of the roads in Illinois and Connecticut are structurally deficient. The increased business costs from having bad infrastructure costs us about half a trillion dollars of GDP every year.
So yes, some federal jobs definitely need to be created to address our crumbling infrastructure and sustainable energy problem. But whether there is enough work for 35 million people to do for a lifetime is worth questioning.
Just cut them a monthly check. Quick and easy win. And then we can move on to creating federal jobs as well.
As a quick side note, a Universal Basic Income of $12,000 per month automatically lifts everyone out of poverty and has positive correlation with mental/physical health outcomes as well as educational outcomes. And no it does not cause inflation because we would not print new money, we would transfer the wealth. I cannot do the concept of UBI justice here, so please check out Scott Santens the UBI expert.
2. Automation (Yang) vs. Bad Trade Policies (Warren)
Elizabeth Warren stated that blaming automation was a “good story” but not true. Instead, Warren blames bad trade policy as well as corporate greed. She proposes requiring 40% of every board of directors to be elected by the employees, so that companies will not be able to make decisions without the input of its workers.
Andrew Yang countered by sharing that it is indeed automation which is eliminating American jobs. We can already see that there are self-serve kiosks at McDonald’s. In addition, Amazon is the reason 30% of our small businesses are closing. (Given that Amazon’s warehouses are run by robots, the small business closures should count under job losses due to automation.) Yang also brought up the fact that with 3.5 million truck drivers and 7 million other Americans who work at the gas stations, motels, and diners the truckers spend money at, almost 11 million jobs will be eliminated once the technology for self-driving trucks are perfected in the mid 2020's.
Sure, job loss is partially due to bad trade policy and corporate greed, but according to a study done by the Ball State University, 85% of job losses have been due to automation. According to another study done by Princeton, which focused specifically on the steel industry, the invention of the minimill eliminated 75% of the jobs in steel.
And though Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders blame “bad trade policy”, NAFTA destroyed 700,000 jobs but created 5 million more jobs. Meaning yes, it eliminated manufacturing jobs in the Rust Belt, since Mexican plants could produce them more cheaply. But it created service jobs, since more truck drivers and warehouse shippers are now needed to import the products from Mexico into the United States.
Elizabeth Warren’s angle is that corporate greed is causing job loss, but the corporation willing to move a manufacturing job to Mexico is the same corporation that is willing to automate its workers’ jobs away. Her proposal is to limit this greedy behavior.
And although the spirit of her argument is correct, just like Bernie Sanders’ Federal Jobs Guarantee, it sounds like another implementation nightmare. I suppose that there would be a government agency which audits and checks to make sure corporations are following the rules set down in a Warren administration. But of course these corporations would hire an army of lawyers and accountants to continue screwing over their workers as much as possible without going to jail.
Both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren will be fighting an uphill battle….because greed is a part of human nature.
But we can flip the script and use human greed to our collective advantage. If putting $1,000 a month in every American’s pockets triples or quadruples the entrepreneurship rate like it did in India and Namibia, we would no longer need to depend on corporations for jobs.
All around the economy we already see how technology and entrepreneurship is dissolving the power corporations once had. The entertainment industry is one good example, in which independent artists are doing much better than they ever had in the past as they are no longer at the mercy of record labels. We can also see the same dynamics play out in the food and beverage industries, in which new, innovative products are constantly taking away market share from the established big food companies. A Universal Basic Income would only accelerate this process further.
3. Value Added Tax (Yang) vs. Wealth Tax (Warren)
Elizabeth Warren correctly points out that we cannot generate the funds we need by increasing income tax. This is why both she and Bernie Sanders propose implementing a wealth tax.
The problem with a wealth tax is that it’s surprisingly tricky to implement. There is a great article written by N. Gregory Mankiw (Harvard economics professor and author of the economics textbooks used at most colleges). In the article, Mankiw argues:
a) Wealthy people will find ways to avoid their taxes. Specifically, Elizabeth Warren proposes implementing a 2% wealth tax on anything above $50 million. A married couple worth $100 million would end up paying $1 million per year in taxes. But if that married couple decides to “divorce” on paper, they would “only” by worth $50 million each, exempting them from Warren’s tax. If a married couple with $250 million and three adult children wanted to avoid the tax, they would get divorced on paper and give $50 million to each of their adult children as a gift. This would help them avoid paying $4 million taxes per year.
b) It’s tough to evaluate someone’s net worth. For example, what is the best way to evaluate Riahanna’s net worth? Sure we may know how much cash she has on hand today, and we may know how much her assets are worth. But we don’t know how much money her songs are currently “worth” and how much they will generate in royalties several decades from now. Yet, both those estimates need to be made in order to come out with someone’s net worth. Another example is a small business owner. Part of the value of any small business is its “goodwill”, comprised of its reputation and network of customers. How do you go about measuring this?
More importantly, Andrew Yang countered Elizabeth Warren by pointing out that European countries like Germany, France, Denmark, and Sweden have already tried a wealth tax and gotten rid of it because it’s hard to implement and did not generate as much revenue as anticipated.
On the other hand, the same European countries which tried and failed at implementing a wealth tax successfully switched to implementing a Value Added Tax (VAT), which, for simplicity’s sake, will basically manifest as a sales tax on non-essential items. Essential items, which are exempt from VAT, include groceries and internet access in these European countries.
The common argument against VAT is that it will cause inflation in prices since the companies manufacturing non-essential items will increase the price and pass it on to the customer.
This is only partly true but does not explain the full story.
Andrew Yang proposes a 10% VAT on non-essential items. All Americans will receive $1,000 a month in return.
The only people this will impact negatively are people spending more than $10K a month on non-essential items. If someone spends $10K a month on non-essential items, the 10% VAT will now increase that spending to $11K a month. However, receiving $1,000 a month will offset that increase, and so this person breaks even.
According to a study, most Americans spend $1,500 a month on non-essential items. The 10% VAT will cause the prices of these things to rise to $1,650, penalizing the average American by about $150 per month, but the $1,000 freedom dividend will allow them to be ahead by $850 for the month.
The VAT is a much more efficient way to collect taxes from the wealthy since it’s only the wealthy who would spend more than $10K per month on non-essential items. Studies have shown that unlike the wealth tax, the VAT is much harder to avoid.
CONCLUSION
In all three of these instances, Andrew Yang used facts and numbers to differentiate himself from the other progressive candidates and to explain why his policy proposals would be easier to implement.
Please check out Andrew Yang’s other proposals such as Democracy Dollars (which will eliminate corporate lobbying by giving every American $100/year that can only be sent to politicians) and opioid decriminalization.
Go to www.yang2020.com to learn more.
Previous writings:
Why Layoffs Are a Good Thing: How we all benefit from robots taking our jobs
God’s Opinion on Trumpcare
3 Life Lessons from Playing Beer Pong | https://medium.com/@AaronPyon/3-top-andrew-yang-moments-from-democratic-debate-4-924996ba9762 | ['Aaron P'] | 2019-10-17 22:47:31.186000+00:00 | ['Andrew Yang', 'Elizabeth Warren', 'Basic Income', 'Bernie Sanders'] |
Salesforce Data Security | For Salesforce Admin, Security Researchers & Pen-Testers
Context
SAAS or Software as a Service, is a software delivery model where a software is made accessible via web. To an extent, it is like a web application. Also, using SAAS is like a privilege, the infrastructure and platform of the SAAS application is completely managed by the vendor.
CRM or Customer Relationship Management, helps a business organisation to maintain their relationship with its customers. Software has been built to manage CRM efficiently. Now, don’t get confused with the word customers here, for example, let’s consider an e-commerce application, the e-commerce company would use CRM to maintain relationship with their suppliers (not customers who buy), check their activity, provide analytics on how they do and enable support.
Salesforce offers SAAS applications for CRM. These SAAS application can be entirely managed and customised via an admin panel, which means you can make the SAAS app live in no time using the admin panel itself. The coding effort required is minimal and it involves one of Salesforce programming technologies. Customisation via other programming languages are also present, but the former is the most preferred.
All good ? How about the security controls? Well, a set of security controls are offered as part of the admin panel to manage user and data permissions.
Salesforce Architecture
Core Components
By now, you must have realised Salesforce SAAS apps is all about managing data. The backend of these apps is like any other data management software, they store data in tables, use queries to process them and expose functions to retrieve them. Tables and data are the core and the security controls have been designed for them. Lets take a look at these core components:
Objects are like database tables, there are standard objects, that are provided by Salesforce and one can create custom objects too
are like database tables, there are standard objects, that are provided by Salesforce and one can create custom objects too Fields are like table columns
are like table columns Records are like table rows
For example, In a customer support kind of application, all customer issues can be managed using the Salesforce standard “Case” object. This is how the mapping would look like.
Case Object
Security Controls
Ok, so we know what objects, fields and records are. Let’s try do a simple visualisation based on whether these are accessible or not for a user.
Objects, Fields and Records — Simple Visualisation
The user has access to “Case” and “Contacts” objects, but not Accounts
The user has access to all fields in “Case” object and only “Name” field in Contacts object
The user has access to a few records in “Case” and “Contacts” objects
The most important point you have to understand from this visualisation, a user needs to have an object level access first before accessing a field and then a record. However, this understanding will change, but we will see it later under Permissions conflicts section.
Well, thats exactly how the permissions are set by Salesforce too, but there is a couple of detailing that Salesforce adds. Let’s now look at the first detailing, the access options.
Access Level for Objects, Fields and Records
If you are assigning permissions to an object, field or record, you are not just enabling access, you are assigning one of these access options. In our visualisation, you can now replace the ticks and cross marks with these access options.
The second detailing is the different security controls that Salesforce provides to assign these access options. Sounds too complicated ? Nah, Remember the first visualisation? it is for a single user, but in reality, if we were to be setting permissions for an entire organization, a user to user basis isn’t going to work. We might have to group them, say create profiles for common users or create Role Hierarchies, or sometimes group users within a profile to assign permissions exclusively or set permissions at an organization level. Well, that’s exactly what the security controls are for, there are around seven.
Profile (applicable to object/field level only), a set of permissions that are assigned to a group of users performing the same function. A user is attached to a single profile.
a set of permissions that are assigned to a group of users performing the same function. A user is attached to a single profile. Permission Sets (applicable at object level only), a set of permissions that are assigned to users within a profile. A user can be attached to multiple permission sets.
a set of permissions that are assigned to users within a profile. A user can be attached to multiple permission sets. Org. Wide Sharing Defaults (applicable at record level only) is choosing the organization wide default access level for object records. By default, only the users who created the records will have access to them.
is choosing the organization wide default access level for object records. By default, only the users who created the records will have access to them. Role Hierarchies (applicable at record level only) are creating Roles that map to an organisation’s hierarchy. This helps create vertical sharing. A simple example would be, a manager role would have access to all the records of the manager’s direct reports.
are creating Roles that map to an organisation’s hierarchy. This helps create vertical sharing. A simple example would be, a manager role would have access to all the records of the manager’s direct reports. Sharing Rules (applicable at record level only) are created to provide horizontal sharing. A simple example would be a manager sharing records with a fellow manager
are created to provide horizontal sharing. A simple example would be a manager sharing records with a fellow manager Apex Managed Sharing (applicable at record level only) is providing permissions to records via code for the ones that are not available via UI. A simple example would be if a manager wants to share an information with a different team member who is not related in anyways
is providing permissions to records via code for the ones that are not available via UI. A simple example would be if a manager wants to share an information with a different team member who is not related in anyways Manual Sharing (applicable at record level only) lets you share individual records with users, but this is limited to “Classic”, you can consider “Classic” to be an older version of the admin panel configuration, the upgraded one is called “Lightning”.
The applicability chart for the security controls is as follows:
Salesforce Security Controls — Applicability Chart
Though profiles might look similar to role hierarchies, they both are placed at different levels. Profiles are only to give users the first level of access to an object, whereas role hierarchies are the one that provides access to records. Of course, they could have made it simpler, but that’s how the security controls work.
Stitching it all together
Now, let’s add the access options and security controls to our visualisation and see what it looks like
Data Security — Overall Picture
User is now assigned to a profile, multiple permission sets, a role and also has sharing rules enabled
Objects have access options like read, create etc. enabled and fields have read access options
Records have a minimal org. wide sharing defaults to begin with and the permissions are expanded via roles, sharing rules, apex managed sharing etc.
Profiles and permission sets are only for objects and fields permission, they give access only to metadata. Roles and sharing rules are for records permission, they give access to records.
Permission Conflicts
There is still one other layer we need to understand and that’s most important one. Our initial understanding was, a user needs to have an object level access first before accessing a field and then a record. This is correct, but there are scenarios where the record level permissions can be different from the object level permissions.
Let’s take a real world scenario, a supplier raises a support ticket because the supplier’s login didn’t work. In the backend, a case is raised under the “Case” object. Let’s take a look at the different permissions set for the supplier user.
The supplier user’s object permissions lets the user perform read, create, edit and delete on the “Case” object
Object and field permissions are inter-dependant, a user needs to have an object access to have access to its fields. This is simple.
But when it comes to record permissions, the object permissions are both dependant and independent.
Now since the supplier user has access to the “Case” object, the supplier user also owns the created records. In this example, the supplier user has access to the “login didn’t work” case record. The supplier user should be able to read, edit or delete this case record. This is where the object permissions are dependant on the record permissions.
on the record permissions. Since the supplier user has read, edit, and delete permissions on the “Case” object, should the supplier user be able to read, edit or delete other cases raised by fellow suppliers? Ideally, the supplier user shouldn't be able to perform these operations. This is where the record permissions can work independent of the object permissions. The whole purpose of record permission being a separate entity is to manage the record permissions of the user that user does not create. This is where the record level security controls come into picture.
There are different possible combinations to this. It can be confusing and this confusion can cause misconfigurations, hence it is key to understand how conflicts work.
Security Controls - Top 3 Review Pointers
Here is a set of pointers that can help you review these security controls.
Record permissions are critical, lack of understanding and misconfigurations can lead to sensitive data leakage. Unauthenticated user is called a “Guest User” in Salesforce. There is a separate profile that exists for a guest user. Though Salesforce has a history of upgrades for the guest user security, it is critical that the security controls for the guest user are thoroughly reviewed. Not doing so can lead to sensitive data leaks that could be CRITICAL. Sometimes, by mistake you can override permissions provided in the UI by using a few functions in the code, so always remember - “Keep it simple”.
Interested to know, how Salesforce applications are pen-tested, take a look my two part blog. Part-1 and Part-2 here.
I hope you enjoyed reading the blog :) Good Day ! | https://medium.com/@praveen-kanniah/in-simple-words-salesforce-data-security-controls-d2544ea05fe | ['Praveen Kanniah'] | 2021-07-12 04:43:45.678000+00:00 | ['Application Security', 'Salesforce', 'Salesforce Security', 'In Simple Words'] |
Range by David Epstein | Range by David Epstein Book Summary
The #1 New York Times bestseller that has all America talking: as seen/heard on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, Morning Joe, CBS This Morning, The Bill Simmons Podcast, Rich Roll, and more.
Shortlisted for the Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award
“If you’re a generalist who has ever felt overshadowed by your specialist colleagues, this book is for you.” — Bill Gates
“The most important business — and parenting — book of the year.” — Forbes
“Urgent and important. . . an essential read for bosses, parents, coaches, and anyone who cares about improving performance.” — Daniel H. Pink
Plenty of experts argue that anyone who wants to develop a skill, play an instrument, or lead their field should start early, focus intensely, and rack up as many hours of deliberate practice as possible. If you dabble or delay, you’ll never catch up to the people who got a head start. But a closer look at research on the world’s top performers, from professional athletes to Nobel laureates, shows that early specialization is the exception, not the rule.
David Epstein examined the world’s most successful athletes, artists, musicians, inventors, forecasters and scientists. He discovered that in most fields — especially those that are complex and unpredictable — generalists, not specialists, are primed to excel. Generalists often find their path late, and they juggle many interests rather than focusing on one. They’re also more creative, more agile, and able to make connections their more specialized peers can’t see.
Provocative, rigorous, and engrossing, Range makes a compelling case for actively cultivating inefficiency. Failing a test is the best way to learn. Frequent quitters end up with the most fulfilling careers. The most impactful inventors cross domains rather than deepening their knowledge in a single area. As experts silo themselves further while computers master more of the skills once reserved for highly focused humans, people who think broadly and embrace diverse experiences and perspectives will increasingly thrive.
https://bookpedia.co/book/1435005899/range | https://medium.com/@booklovers/range-by-david-epstein-2d9cff0119c0 | ['Book Lovers'] | 2020-12-22 21:58:48.347000+00:00 | ['Psychology Books', 'Book Summary', 'Best Psychology Books', 'Books And Authors', 'Book Review'] |
What do you know about Grey Colour and how they become a symbol of hope? | A ray of hope in the grey sky
Photo by 青 晨 on Unsplash
Pantone has just announced that Pantone 17–5104 Ultimate Gray & Pantone 13–0647 Illuminating will be the theme colours of 2021.
2020 is the year of pandemic and human across the globe were force to lock themselves up in the house in order not to catch the deadly virus. Grey was widely known to be a symbol of mourning and solitude. So, what makes Patone choose ultimate grey as the colour of the year in 2021?
It was the colour of Pebble. | https://medium.com/@crumpledticket/what-do-you-know-about-grey-colour-and-how-they-become-a-symbol-of-hope-692b3238c8b7 | ['Edith Sam'] | 2020-12-11 03:47:34.328000+00:00 | ['Advise', 'Grey', 'Universe', 'History', 'Life'] |
Five Senses, Three Questions, and One Trivia Factoid | Five Senses, Three Questions, and One Trivia Factoid
Why we’re talking about data sensification—and a behind-the-scenes chat with Nadieh Bremer and Shirley Wu!
Have you s̶e̶e̶n̶ sensed what’s going on at Nightingale lately? It’s Data Sensification Week 1 of 2! That’s right — we had so much great content about all the ways we can smellify, sonify, tastify, and physicalize data that we expanded our theme week to a theme fortnight.
Why are we talking about data sensification? We think that pushing ourselves to experience data differently — outside of our usual visual mediums — can be enlightening. (We were going to write ‘eye-opening,’ but, you know.) Sometimes sensifying data helps us communicate information that would otherwise be invisible (Amy on data smellification) or inaccessible (Stina on data sonification); sometimes it helps cultivate wonder or empathy; and sometimes it’s just plain fun — or delicious, as the case may be (Vanitha on data tastification).
We’ve got five senses, after all — might as well use them.
Three Questions with… Nadieh Bremer and Shirley Wu
In other exciting, tactile news, dataviz designers and long-time collaborators Nadieh Bremer and Shirley Wu announced the publication of their ‘Data Sketches’ book! Ahead of the announcement, we had the opportunity to sit down and ask them our Three Questions… but to keep things interesting and to see how well they really know each other, we asked Nadieh and Shirley to answer for each other, Newlywed Game-style.
1. If you could be any type of chart, what would you be?
Nadieh answering for Shirley: I know Shirley wouldn’t be a standard chart that you could make with any old library that lets you do dataviz. She would be some sort of beeswarm, but one that uses natural shapes with many complex components.
Shirley answering for Nadieh: There are two parts to this question. First, what’s Nadieh’s favorite chart form? I keep thinking hex maps. Hexagons are Nadieh’s favorite shape. She’s never really used a hexagon in her projects, but her logo is like a hexagon map. Then the second part of this question is, what is Nadieh in chart form? She’d be a remixed chord diagram. Her very first Data Sketches on the Lord of the Rings reminds me of a remixed version of a chord diagram. It’s beautifully curved and has beautiful colors, but it’s a remix. It’s not standard.
2. If you were stuck on a desert island, what viz would you want to create and what would you use to make it?
Nadieh for Shirley: Shirley would want to create something that exists in the physical space. A data art installation. Maybe she’d use the coconuts laying around with the palm leaves. But, she would want to be able to use her laptop to do part of it because she loves coding. It’s part of her flow. She would need a powerful battery! She’s always creative. She’s doing stuff with resin right now, making these very cute earrings. Hers would not be a visualization as much as an experimentation with the materials available to her.
Shirley for Nadieh: Neither of us starts by thinking about a chart and then making it. We start with the data and the message we want to convey visually. I think that Nadieh would do something about the animals on the desert island, or maybe the stars.
3. What is one visualization that has inspired you?
Nadieh for Shirley: Shirley’s inspired by things that are not dataviz, like the cherry blossoms in Japan and art.
Shirley: Yeah, Nadieh did a good job answering that. What’s on my wall is a lot of art. There’s Harry Potter Fantastic Beasts. I love the color usage. Then, there’s Ghibli. My inspirations are always changing, depending on what I’m trying to do. Currently, I’m really inspired by Mona Chalabi and the way that she tells such short, bite-sized stories on Instagram. She’s really figured out how to present a story and capture people’s attention — not just from an aesthetic perspective, but she’s figured out Instagram as a storytelling tool; the way that she does pacing is very good. And there’s a TED Talk from Aaron Koblin. That was my first dataviz inspiration, where I thought, “Oh, I didn’t know you could do that with code and data.”
Shirley for Nadieh: Nadieh takes inspiration from astronomy, like her Figures in the Sky sky map. She gets a lot of inspiration from the sky.
Nadieh: For me, there’s not one chart that really stands out. There are several that I admire, that I turn back to for different projects. There’s one that’s a little more special because it was the first one where I saw that dataviz could be more than bar charts and line charts. It was done by Jan Willem Tulp, who coincidentally happens to be another Dutch data visualization designer — he had a visualization called “Ghost Counties” that he made for a competition co-hosted with the Eyeo Festival. He won that competition and, I don’t know how, but I stumbled upon his visualization. It was so eerily beautiful and well done. It was so different from other visualizations that I’d seen before. It really stuck with me. It was an eye-opener for me.
“Ghost Counties” by Jan Willem Tulp, winner of the 2011 Eyeo Festival Data Visualization Challenge, source: http://tulpinteractive.com/
Write All About It!
Thank you for answering our call for Data Sensification submissions! Now, we’re asking for your help developing content for upcoming theme weeks. Do you use a platform like TikTok or Twitch to workshop or share your dataviz? If so, we’d love to hear about it. Or, what about the intersection of data visualization and culture? Riffing off of Giorgia Lupi’s MOMA Fashion Landscape, we’d love for you to write about other ways that dataviz and culture intersect.
In the Wild
Fun visualizations from around the interweb:
“Scented candles, an unexpected victim of the COVID-19 pandemic”, source: https://twitter.com/kate_ptrv/status/1332398737604431874?s=20
Giorgia Lupi, “My 2020 in Data (So Far),” in The New York Times, source: https://www.printmag.com/post/giorgia-lupi-s-2020-in-the-nyt
Mala Deep Upadhaya’s response to our Viz This! call, interactive link: https://public.tableau.com/profile/maladeep#!/vizhome/mass-mobilization/MassMobilization
Trivia
Data is our jam (the sensification puns just keep coming!), so we thought we’d wrap up this newsletter with a trivia question. We’ll share the answer in the next issue.
What everyday activity uses all five senses?
In Case You Missed It
What to Expect from Visualizing Expectations
What if persistence isn’t some innate superpower? Our resolve depends on our expectations. And, our expectations depend on the available information. Eli Holder demonstrates how expectation-setting is a powerful use case for information design.
One of Eli’s examples of tracking progress toward a financial goal.
Drawing Cultural Position: Transmission of Power Among Ancestors and Descendants
We connect to the past through the concept of lineage. Ancestry plays a role in our present social position, as individuals, members of a group, or subjects of a nation. Paul Kahn explores the forms and themes of lineage diagrams in his latest post.
Lineage diagram examples
More from Nightingale
Reactions to Using Tableau for the First Time
Information Design Round-Up: COVID-19 Edition
Complements that Diverge
Drawing Out ‘Data Sketches’ | https://medium.com/nightingale/five-senses-three-questions-and-one-trivia-factoid-e50a519f9956 | ['Claire Santoro'] | 2020-12-03 18:00:07.041000+00:00 | ['Data Physicalization', 'Communication', 'Dataviz', 'Data Visualization', 'Newsletter'] |
How to use death as motivation | If you are like most people, you get simply paralysed by the thought of someday dying. Yet death can inspire you greatly if you learn to accept it and let it fuel your passions. Some people avoid to even think about dying, getting busy and ignoring the fact that it will inevitably happen someday. But this subject will come up inevitably, at old age. So why not get it sorted out right now?
This article will teach you how to accept and embrace death. Let it energise your life and give new focus to your everyday actions. All of this acceptance comes from the stoic philosophy, that is, in my opinion, one of the best life philosophies to follow. However, you should never get fooled into following anything blindly. Think for yourself and adapt the teachings of this article in your own way. Every human being is different and learns in a different way, so find your own way, always.
“The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else.” — Ernest Becker
Visualise and accept
The first thing you must do, on your journey of accepting death as part of life, is visualising. Imagine in your head the day of your funeral. All of your loved ones gathered up around your coffin. See yourself as an observer and look at your own funeral.
That day will come. It may come today, tomorrow, in one month, one year, or 50 years. Lying to yourself will never help! You may feel fear and dread while doing this, but it will be worth it.
Now, while observing this scene, look at your loved ones and think: what is it that I wanted to do more while I was alive? Who did I want to spend more time with? To whom I never said an honest and simple “I love you!”?
After doing this, you may notice a sense of regret but also appreciation, because you are still alive and can do all the things that you did not. You will realise how important it is to spend time with the people you care for. You or they may die at any time. So, the next time you see someone you care for, be kind, spend more time with them. Cut off social media, games and other things that keep you busy and be grateful for their company.
What do I really want from life?
Most people are only thinking about surviving. They choose a career, or it is chosen for them, just to make money, start a family, have children and die. But is that all you want to do with your life?
What are your passions? What gives you a sense of importance and makes life beautiful for you? What do you enjoy doing? What is your purpose?
Answering those questions is crucial to living a fulfilling life. You may not have the answer to them right now. You may only find that answer after months or even years of introspection.
Remember, you must die. In your moment of death, looking back on your life, what did you really want to do?
Exploit regret
After doing the exercise of visualising your own death you will notice that regret is a common factor. You will feel regret for everything you have not done yet and you wish you would have.
Take those feelings in and never block them. They will show you what you truly want from your life.
Envision yourself in the last minute before you die. The very last moments of your life. Just imagine that, in one minute, your life will end.
After doing this, you will know exactly what you really want to do with your life. What it truly means for you. Because regret is there, showing you what you want. At the very least, if you still not find what you really want to do in life after this, it will start you on the journey of finding that purpose.
Personally, I do this at least once a month. I see myself dying at one moment, and think what I wanted to do, if I had more time to live. This helps me make the best choices in life. Be it professional or personal.
Choose your own path
Some people say that each human being is unique. I tend to disagree, no matter how much some people may hate it. Read and understand the following:
You are as free and unique as you make yourself.
Society may impose rules on you. You friends and family may impose rules on you. Your religion may impose rules on you. But at the end of the day, when you feel miserable, hateful, hurt, in pain and lost… does society, your family, your friends or anyone else feel the same?
They will not, you will be the only one feeling those dreadful feelings. What you need to understand is that:
Everyone likes to judge, but no one wants to be responsible.
Live true to yourself, like you would die at any moment
As I said before, you may die at any moment. So I am asking you, from a human being to another human being: Do you want to live for yourself or do you want to live for somebody else?
If you want to live for yourself, live according to your own nature. Listen and learn from others, but never follow their life philosophies.
Follow your own path. If the path is not yet built, as is in most cases, build your own!
As humans, we must always thrive to push humanity forward. Each individual is crucial in doing this. Because, when you think about it, everything that was created in this world, was, at a time, one person’s idea.
So, realise that you have to:
Die someday — momento mori;
Live life on your own terms;
Create something new for yourself and for the world;
Appreciate the people around you, your experiences and everything the universe, God or whom-ever you believe in, brings in your life.
Live each moment like it is your last. Live true to your nature and to who you truly are. Death comes to us all. But not all truly live their lives. Be someone who does.
Gain Access to Expert View — Subscribe to DDI Intel | https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/how-to-use-death-as-motivation-c4097d87b58f | ['Stefan Pircalabu'] | 2020-12-27 15:39:02.676000+00:00 | ['Death', 'Fear', 'Life Lessons', 'Stoicism', 'Life'] |
Every time I see a wishing star | My wish list is the same: Peace Health Love Laughter A forever love For the world And all who live upon it
Share your own one-line poem on the theme as a response to this post, or write a stand-alone piece if you prefer. Tag your piece “One Line” and, if you have a stand-alone poem, be sure to leave a link in the response section below.
FYI: Responding to this or any Chalkboard prompt adds you to the prompt notification list. | https://medium.com/chalkboard/everytime-i-see-a-wishing-star-4e6e9b62d459 | ['Kathy Jacobs'] | 2017-09-26 19:02:02.701000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Chalkboard', 'Wish', 'One Line Poetry Prompt'] |
Letter to 2020 | Letter to 2020
Dear 2020,
The first time I wrote about you was December 31st, 2019. In blue marker, I scrawled this into my journal: “January 2020 → Into the Unknown.” I had no idea what I was wishing for. You ended up being every unknown. You ended up being all the things that I never expected.
You gave me two and a half good months. You let me watch “Little Women” in theaters with my angel of a friend before she moved across the world. You flew me to a new city with two teachers, and watched as we cried from laughter in the back of an Uber stuck in traffic. You taught me to dance on stage unafraid. You snubbed Scarlett Johansson at the Oscars but still let me yell at the TV about it with my best friends. You spent hours each weekend seeing me paint cardboard, saw through wood, and cut out confetti, preparing for an event that would never happen; I still don’t regret it. You gave me my last high school formal, and my best high school formal, because my friends did my hair, and I got to wear my pink heels, and we all ate pizza and strangely, also cereal, before the dance had even started. You walked with me to the voting booth as I cast my first ever in-person vote on Super Tuesday. You cloaked me in red for what ended up being my last day of school.
And then, on March 13th, you took my anticipations for the future, pounded them into a gray dust, and threw them into the wind: gone and to be forgotten. In the next months, you crossed out prom and graduation and summer traditions from my calendar, then left the rest of the year blank for me to fill in. At the end of July, you flattened out the page of my new year’s resolutions and painted over “start college” in black, only to crumple the paper and throw it out after. In September, you watched me start two jobs that would change my life, but which would never be strong enough to change the reality of my year. I feel lucky despite this. In October, you brought me an anxiety I have never known, eased slightly by nervous time calling and writing to voters; it was barely enough. In November, you sent me to the hospital and declared Biden president-elect in the same week. It was overwhelming and exhausting and glorious. The news brought me hope for the first time all year. Healing brought me clarity.
2020, you have frustrated me beyond belief but given me nowhere to let out the anger. You have hollowed out a longing space in my stomach for the friends who I cannot walk within six feet of. You have filled me with wonder about who I could’ve been, who I might’ve been, if this year had not unfolded the way that it has. Often, you made me feel like I was moving backwards. You made me question myself over and over. You berated me with judgement over whether or not I was spending my time meaningfully, but then forced me to realize that no one gets to decide what has meaning but me.
You have taught me, the hard way, that I have a purpose untethered to the labels that this year has stripped from me. You have left goodness on my front porch to remind me that it exists in this world regardless of cumulative negativity. You have given me long talks with good friends on the phone. You have shown me how deeply the people in my life care for me, fully, without restraint. You have taught me the significance of friendship: it counts for so much. You have brought old friends back into my life. You have strengthened friendships that could’ve faded with distance, but which remained. You have comforted me in the truth that no one has had it easy, no one has evaded this pain. You have comforted me in the truth that my struggles have been valid, and still that my privilege is immense, too grand to comprehend, a gift that I can never repay. You have wrapped this gratitude around me like an invisible scarf, unwilling to let it slip, unwilling to let me forget it at the door.
I don’t know what 2021 will bring, but I’m not as caught up in the new year as I used to be. I believe that things will happen for a reason or for no reason, will happen whether I want them to or not. But I enter January with a novel acceptance for the elements of life which I cannot change. For all the good and all the bad of the past, I am warming up to the future. I am thanking it for another day, another month, another year, I am thanking it for health and safety and stability. 2020, I leave you stronger than when you first met me. Here is to another year of meeting myself where I am. Here is to hoping despite it all.
- M | https://medium.com/@michal-goldstein/letter-to-2020-28c9c7f41e0b | ['Michal Goldstein'] | 2020-12-27 21:50:55.896000+00:00 | ['Letters', 'New Years Resolutions', 'Covid 19', 'New Year', '2020'] |
AirPods Are Apple’s Next Big Brand | AirPods Are Apple’s Next Big Brand
The new AirPods Max are more than new headphones — they’re a coronation of a core brand
Apple’s AirPods Max. Photo: Apple
Never underestimate the value of a good brand. With the all-new AirPods Max, Apple has christened AirPods as a core brand on almost equal footing with its iconic Mac line.
Think about it. While AirPods Max Bluetooth headphones may have the same H1 audio beating heart as AirPods Pro (and, not coincidentally, Apple’s Beats Solo Pro), they look nothing like a pair of AirPods. Sure, AirPods Max are an audio product, but these are not pods. In fact, in the industry, we traditionally refer to over-the-ear headphones as “cans.”
There’s nothing wrong with Apple slapping the AirPods brand name on its newest audio product. It makes perfect sense for the company to officially position “AirPods” as a crucial brand — one that, like the Mac before it, is more of an idea than a fixed thing or concrete look and feel. Macs, after all, range from a tiny boxlike device (the Mac Mini) to all-in-one devices like the iMac to the hulking art deco Mac Pro. Like the AirPods line, Macs feature the same core technology: macOS and, until very recently, Intel CPUs.
As they say on The Mandalorian, “This is the way.” It’s how Apple builds on an idea whose success may have caught even the company by surprise. When I wrote a few years ago that AirPods are now one of Apple’s most important products, I wasn’t kidding. After initially being derided for their oddball looks, the in-ear Bluetooth buds caught the buying public’s imagination in an almost original iPhone–like way.
The brand is so important that AirPods Max got Apple’s most interesting and forward-learning design in a generation, pulling in some of the company’s favorite materials — anodized aluminum, stainless steel, and Apple-designed stitched fabric — and combining it with new materials like memory foam and flexible mesh. It’s even a place for Apple to crossbreed design and functionality concepts: AirPods Max feature a digital crown based on the same one you have on your Apple Watch.
The most oddball feature might be the Smart Case, which turns your headphones into a sort of tiny handbag in which the headphones are only thing you carry.
I was a bit surprised that Apple made the leap from in-ear buds to headphones, basically skipping the wraparound hybrid design favored by the company’s Beats by Dre brand (see Powerbeats Pro). Now, though, I realize that Apple didn’t want to mix the brands or aesthetic.
Even though the design is different, AirPods Max do extend the original AirPods concept in a big way. The larger device makes room for more powerful audio components, like a 40-millimeter dynamic driver and dual neodymium ring magnets, which should lead to better, louder, and deeper (read “bass”) sound.
From left to right: Apple AirPods Max, top view of right ear controls, left-side stitching inside earphone. Composite photo: Apple
They take active noise cancellation (ANC) to the next level with eight microphones devoted to countering ambient noise and the natural seal from the memory foam ear cups, which are held on by magnets and therefore removable, probably for easy cleanup. Like AirPods, a one-button control enables “transparency mode,” which lets in outside noise that actually comes through the headphone speakers.
The dual H1 chips, one in each ear, will help enable fast pairing with iOS devices, as well as computational and spatial audio. AirPods Max headphones also include gyroscopes and accelerometers for positional audio. How that all plays out in the real world, I have no idea yet.
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-lille-v-celtic-match-direct-fra00.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-lille-v-celtic-match-direct-fra01.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-lille-v-celtic-match-direct-fra02.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-lille-v-celtic-match-direct-fra03.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-lille-v-celtic-match-direct-fra04.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-aek-v-leicester-live-gr00.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-aek-v-leicester-live-gr01.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-aek-v-leicester-live-gr02.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-aek-v-leicester-live-gr03.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-aek-v-leicester-live-gr04.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-hoffenheim-v-gent-live-sony-liv00.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-hoffenheim-v-gent-live-sony-liv01.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-hoffenheim-v-gent-live-sony-liv02.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-hoffenheim-v-gent-live-sony-liv03.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-hoffenheim-v-gent-live-sony-liv04.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-milan-v-sparta-ita00.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-milan-v-sparta-ita01.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-milan-v-sparta-ita02.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-milan-v-sparta-ita03.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-milan-v-sparta-ita04.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-tottenham-v-antwerp-live-sony-liv00.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-tottenham-v-antwerp-live-sony-liv01.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-tottenham-v-antwerp-live-sony-liv02.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-tottenham-v-antwerp-live-sony-liv03.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-tottenham-v-antwerp-live-sony-liv04.html
https://www.patchworkposse.com/cva/tvc/video-aek-v-leicester-live-gr00.html
https://www.patchworkposse.com/cva/tvc/video-aek-v-leicester-live-gr01.html
https://www.patchworkposse.com/cva/tvc/video-aek-v-leicester-live-gr02.html
https://www.patchworkposse.com/cva/tvc/video-aek-v-leicester-live-gr03.html
https://www.patchworkposse.com/cva/tvc/video-aek-v-leicester-live-gr04.html
https://www.patchworkposse.com/cva/tvc/video-hoffenheim-v-gent-live-sony-liv00.html
https://www.patchworkposse.com/cva/tvc/video-hoffenheim-v-gent-live-sony-liv01.html
https://www.patchworkposse.com/cva/tvc/video-hoffenheim-v-gent-live-sony-liv02.html
https://www.patchworkposse.com/cva/tvc/video-hoffenheim-v-gent-live-sony-liv03.html
https://www.patchworkposse.com/cva/tvc/video-hoffenheim-v-gent-live-sony-liv04.html
https://www.patchworkposse.com/cva/tvc/video-lille-v-celtic-match-direct-fra00.html
https://www.patchworkposse.com/cva/tvc/video-lille-v-celtic-match-direct-fra01.html
https://www.patchworkposse.com/cva/tvc/video-lille-v-celtic-match-direct-fra02.html
https://www.patchworkposse.com/cva/tvc/video-lille-v-celtic-match-direct-fra03.html
https://www.patchworkposse.com/cva/tvc/video-lille-v-celtic-match-direct-fra04.html
https://www.patchworkposse.com/cva/tvc/video-milan-v-sparta-ita00.html
https://www.patchworkposse.com/cva/tvc/video-milan-v-sparta-ita01.html
https://www.patchworkposse.com/cva/tvc/video-milan-v-sparta-ita02.html
https://www.patchworkposse.com/cva/tvc/video-milan-v-sparta-ita03.html
https://www.patchworkposse.com/cva/tvc/video-milan-v-sparta-ita04.html
https://www.patchworkposse.com/cva/tvc/video-tottenham-v-antwerp-live-sony-liv00.html
https://www.patchworkposse.com/cva/tvc/video-tottenham-v-antwerp-live-sony-liv01.html
https://www.patchworkposse.com/cva/tvc/video-tottenham-v-antwerp-live-sony-liv02.html
https://www.patchworkposse.com/cva/tvc/video-tottenham-v-antwerp-live-sony-liv03.html
https://www.patchworkposse.com/cva/tvc/video-tottenham-v-antwerp-live-sony-liv04.html
https://www.alouettecheese.com/cva/tvc/video-aek-v-leicester-live-gr00.html
https://www.alouettecheese.com/cva/tvc/video-aek-v-leicester-live-gr01.html
https://www.alouettecheese.com/cva/tvc/video-aek-v-leicester-live-gr02.html
https://www.alouettecheese.com/cva/tvc/video-aek-v-leicester-live-gr03.html
https://www.alouettecheese.com/cva/tvc/video-aek-v-leicester-live-gr04.html
https://www.alouettecheese.com/cva/tvc/video-hoffenheim-v-gent-live-sony-liv00.html
https://www.alouettecheese.com/cva/tvc/video-hoffenheim-v-gent-live-sony-liv01.html
https://www.alouettecheese.com/cva/tvc/video-hoffenheim-v-gent-live-sony-liv02.html
https://www.alouettecheese.com/cva/tvc/video-hoffenheim-v-gent-live-sony-liv03.html
https://www.alouettecheese.com/cva/tvc/video-hoffenheim-v-gent-live-sony-liv04.html
https://www.alouettecheese.com/cva/tvc/video-lille-v-celtic-match-direct-fra00.html
https://www.alouettecheese.com/cva/tvc/video-lille-v-celtic-match-direct-fra01.html
https://www.alouettecheese.com/cva/tvc/video-lille-v-celtic-match-direct-fra02.html
https://www.alouettecheese.com/cva/tvc/video-lille-v-celtic-match-direct-fra03.html
https://www.alouettecheese.com/cva/tvc/video-lille-v-celtic-match-direct-fra04.html
https://www.alouettecheese.com/cva/tvc/video-milan-v-sparta-ita00.html
https://www.alouettecheese.com/cva/tvc/video-milan-v-sparta-ita01.html
https://www.alouettecheese.com/cva/tvc/video-milan-v-sparta-ita02.html
https://www.alouettecheese.com/cva/tvc/video-milan-v-sparta-ita03.html
https://www.alouettecheese.com/cva/tvc/video-milan-v-sparta-ita04.html
https://www.alouettecheese.com/cva/tvc/video-tottenham-v-antwerp-live-sony-liv00.html
https://www.alouettecheese.com/cva/tvc/video-tottenham-v-antwerp-live-sony-liv01.html
https://www.alouettecheese.com/cva/tvc/video-tottenham-v-antwerp-live-sony-liv02.html
https://www.alouettecheese.com/cva/tvc/video-tottenham-v-antwerp-live-sony-liv03.html
https://www.alouettecheese.com/cva/tvc/video-tottenham-v-antwerp-live-sony-liv04.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-aek-v-leicester-live-gr00.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-aek-v-leicester-live-gr01.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-aek-v-leicester-live-gr02.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-aek-v-leicester-live-gr03.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-aek-v-leicester-live-gr04.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-hoffenheim-v-gent-live-sony-liv00.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-hoffenheim-v-gent-live-sony-liv01.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-hoffenheim-v-gent-live-sony-liv02.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-hoffenheim-v-gent-live-sony-liv03.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-hoffenheim-v-gent-live-sony-liv04.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-lille-v-celtic-match-direct-fra00.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-lille-v-celtic-match-direct-fra01.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-lille-v-celtic-match-direct-fra02.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-lille-v-celtic-match-direct-fra03.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-lille-v-celtic-match-direct-fra04.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-milan-v-sparta-ita00.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-milan-v-sparta-ita01.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-milan-v-sparta-ita02.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-milan-v-sparta-ita03.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-milan-v-sparta-ita04.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-tottenham-v-antwerp-live-sony-liv00.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-tottenham-v-antwerp-live-sony-liv01.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-tottenham-v-antwerp-live-sony-liv02.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-tottenham-v-antwerp-live-sony-liv03.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-tottenham-v-antwerp-live-sony-liv04.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-Antwerp-v-Tottenham-live-sony-liv00.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-Antwerp-v-Tottenham-live-sony-liv01.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-Antwerp-v-Tottenham-live-sony-liv02.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-Antwerp-v-Tottenham-live-sony-liv03.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-Antwerp-v-Tottenham-live-sony-liv04.html
https://www.patchworkposse.com/cva/tvc/video-Antwerp-v-Tottenham-live-sony-liv00.html
https://www.patchworkposse.com/cva/tvc/video-Antwerp-v-Tottenham-live-sony-liv01.html
https://www.patchworkposse.com/cva/tvc/video-Antwerp-v-Tottenham-live-sony-liv02.html
https://www.patchworkposse.com/cva/tvc/video-Antwerp-v-Tottenham-live-sony-liv03.html
https://www.patchworkposse.com/cva/tvc/video-Antwerp-v-Tottenham-live-sony-liv04.html
https://www.alouettecheese.com/cva/tvc/video-Antwerp-v-Tottenham-live-sony-liv00.html
https://www.alouettecheese.com/cva/tvc/video-Antwerp-v-Tottenham-live-sony-liv01.html
https://www.alouettecheese.com/cva/tvc/video-Antwerp-v-Tottenham-live-sony-liv02.html
https://www.alouettecheese.com/cva/tvc/video-Antwerp-v-Tottenham-live-sony-liv03.html
https://www.alouettecheese.com/cva/tvc/video-Antwerp-v-Tottenham-live-sony-liv04.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-Antwerp-v-Tottenham-live-sony-liv00.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-Antwerp-v-Tottenham-live-sony-liv01.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-Antwerp-v-Tottenham-live-sony-liv02.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-Antwerp-v-Tottenham-live-sony-liv03.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-Antwerp-v-Tottenham-live-sony-liv04.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/V-ideo-Celtic-v-Lille-liv-hd-t-v-01.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/V-ideo-Celtic-v-Lille-liv-hd-t-v-02.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/V-ideo-Celtic-v-Lille-liv-hd-t-v-03.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/V-ideo-Celtic-v-Lille-liv-hd-t-v-04.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/V-ideo-Celtic-v-Lille-liv-hd-t-v-05.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/V-ideo-Celtic-v-Lille-liv-hd-t-v-06.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/Video-uefa-v-live-sa-5.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/Video-uefa-v-live-sa-6.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/Video-uefa-v-live-sa-7.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/Video-uefa-v-live-sa-8.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-celtic-v-lille-live-uefa-liv-2.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-celtic-v-lille-live-uefa-liv-3.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-celtic-v-lille-live-uefa-liv-4.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-celtic-v-lille-live-uefa-liv-5.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-celtic-v-lille-live-uefa-liv-6.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-milan-v-sparta-ita-5.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-milan-v-sparta-ita-6.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-milan-v-sparta-ita-7.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-milan-v-sparta-ita-8.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-milan-v-sparta-ita-9.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-tottenham-v-antwerp-liv-tvc1.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-tottenham-v-antwerp-liv-tvc2.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-tottenham-v-antwerp-liv-tvc3.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-tottenham-v-antwerp-liv-tvc4.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-Leicester-v-aek-athens-live-sony-liv-2.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-Leicester-v-aek-athens-live-sony-liv-3.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-Leicester-v-aek-athens-live-sony-liv-4.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-Leicester-v-aek-athens-live-sony-liv-5.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-lille-v-celticdirect-tbz1.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-lille-v-celticdirect-tbz2.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-lille-v-celticdirect-tbz3.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-lille-v-celticdirect-tbz4.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-hoffenheim-v-gent-live-sony-li-tv1.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-hoffenheim-v-gent-live-sony-li-tv2.html
https://www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr/tourisme/tvx/video-hoffenheim-v-gent-live-sony-li-tv3.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/V-ideo-Celtic-v-Lille-liv-hd-t-v-01.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/V-ideo-Celtic-v-Lille-liv-hd-t-v-02.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/V-ideo-Celtic-v-Lille-liv-hd-t-v-03.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/V-ideo-Celtic-v-Lille-liv-hd-t-v-04.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/V-ideo-Celtic-v-Lille-liv-hd-t-v-05.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/V-ideo-Celtic-v-Lille-liv-hd-t-v-06.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/Video-uefa-v-live-sa-5.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/Video-uefa-v-live-sa-6.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/Video-uefa-v-live-sa-7.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/Video-uefa-v-live-sa-8.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-celtic-v-lille-live-uefa-liv-2.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-celtic-v-lille-live-uefa-liv-3.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-celtic-v-lille-live-uefa-liv-4.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-celtic-v-lille-live-uefa-liv-5.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-celtic-v-lille-live-uefa-liv-6.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-milan-v-sparta-ita-5.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-milan-v-sparta-ita-6.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-milan-v-sparta-ita-7.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-milan-v-sparta-ita-8.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-milan-v-sparta-ita-9.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-tottenham-v-antwerp-liv-tvc1.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-tottenham-v-antwerp-liv-tvc2.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-tottenham-v-antwerp-liv-tvc3.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-tottenham-v-antwerp-liv-tvc4.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-Leicester-v-aek-athens-live-sony-liv-2.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-Leicester-v-aek-athens-live-sony-liv-3.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-Leicester-v-aek-athens-live-sony-liv-4.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-Leicester-v-aek-athens-live-sony-liv-5.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-lille-v-celticdirect-tbz1.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-lille-v-celticdirect-tbz2.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-lille-v-celticdirect-tbz3.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-lille-v-celticdirect-tbz4.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-hoffenheim-v-gent-live-sony-li-tv1.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-hoffenheim-v-gent-live-sony-li-tv2.html
http://forcescompare.uk/nvt/video-hoffenheim-v-gent-live-sony-li-tv3.htm
Apple didn’t make the AirPods Max foldable, but they do have nifty telescoping stems and a sort of flexible tent of fabric in the headband, which should help with fit and reduce the dreaded headphone “head dent.”
In some ways, these are more traditional headphones. There’s no wireless charging, they’re not rated for water or sweat resistance, and when using a bidirectional cable, they work as wired headphones.
The most oddball feature might be the Smart Case, which turns your headphones into a sort of tiny handbag in which the headphones are only thing you carry. It automatically puts the AirPods Max into a low-power state and leaves an opening to charge via a Lightning cable, but there’s no auxiliary power in the case. You should get 20 hours of playback, supposedly even with ANC turned on, and you can get another 1.5 hours of playback with a five-minute charge.
Even with the eye-popping price ($549) and the fact that Beats Solo Pro headphones, with 22 hours of battery life, ANC, and the H1 chip, sell for $150 less, Apple’s canny decision to expand the AirPods brand with an ultrapremium product is a smart one. People love their AirPods and embraced the higher-end, noise-canceling AirPods Pro. But that design can never be immersive. Now you have an immersive AirPods choice.
I’m certain of two things: Early AirPods Max inventory has probably already sold out, and growth of the AirPods brand has only just begun.
WRITTEN BY
Tech expert, journalist, social media commentator, amateur cartoonist and robotics fan.
Follow
211
211 | https://medium.com/@katrinakaif73928/airpods-are-apples-next-big-brand-b0f5f2bbff40 | [] | 2020-12-10 19:37:15.927000+00:00 | ['Apple', 'History', 'Hotel'] |
Stevia Market Size Worth $553.7 Million By 2024 | The global stevia market size is expected to reach USD 553.7 million by 2024, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc., progressing at a CAGR of 6.1% during the forecast period. Soaring demand for low-calorie sweeteners is expected to be a major factor propelling market growth. Considering the market is still at a nascent stage, the market is yet to realize its full potential.
Stevia contains rebaudioside-A and stevioside, which are responsible for imparting high degree of sweetness without any side effects on health. This is the major reason for the growing demand for stevia over the past few years.
Stevia acts as a natural sugar substitute. The production process starts with a herbal plant called stevia rebaudiana, which is a member of the Chrysanthemum family and grows naturally in the forests of Brazil and Paraguay. The components of stevia leaves responsible for the plant’s sweetness are glycosides.
Beverages form the largest application segment and in 2015, accounted for 34.7% of the total volume. This can be attributed to increasing market penetration of stevia in various soft drinks, juices, teas, and nectar. Companies such as PepsiCo, Inc. and The Coca-Cola Company have incorporated the product in their diet soft drinks and are marketed as drinks with no side effects on consumer health. Biotechnology companies are marketing the product in various forms such as liquids and powders. It is expected to replace sucrose in various food products including confectionery jellies, traditional cakes, biscuits, and other baked products.
To request a sample copy, click the link below:
https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/stevia-market
Further key findings from the report suggest:
The global market generated USD 337.7 million in 2015 and is anticipated to progress at a CAGR of 6.1% during the forecast period
Beverages accounted for the largest share by application in 2015, holding 34.7% of the total volume. The segment is expected to witness the fastest growth over the forecast period owing to increasing use of stevia in various carbonated drinks to expand consumer base
Asia Pacific was the largest market, accounting for 35.3% of the global market volume in 2015. Positive outlook of the food and beverage sectors in China, Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam is expected to promote the consumption
PureCircle Limited, GLG Life Tech Corp, and Stevia Corp are some of the major producers. Stevia First Corp, Cargill, and Evolva S.A. are other major players in the market. These players are integrated across various stages of the value chain in order to improve their contribution margins and gain higher market share
About Grand View Research:
Grand View Research, Inc. is a U.S. based market research and consulting company, registered in the State of California and headquartered in San Francisco. The company provides syndicated research reports, customized research reports, and consulting services. To help clients make informed business decisions, we offer market intelligence studies ensuring relevant and fact-based research across a range of industries, from technology to chemicals, materials and healthcare.
For More Information: www.grandviewresearch.com | https://medium.com/@marketnewsreports/stevia-market-8b02fc3433f3 | ['Gaurav Shah'] | 2019-11-21 09:36:33.992000+00:00 | ['Beverage', 'Tabletop Sweeteners', 'Stevia', 'Pharmaceutical', 'Food'] |
My Post-Election Guide to Surviving in a Dying United States | Advocating Equality
I’m a proponent of equality. I’ve been fighting in various areas of society to change people’s hearts and minds about racial equality for nearly two decades. Our nation is better off when there is more fairness in all things. Over the past year of researching and analyzing data and history, it’s hard to accept that such an easy problem can’t be cured because our entire American culture relies on racial inequality for its existence. Inequity is made possible by immoral factors such as racism, hate, exploitation, doctrines of unfairness, and political propaganda. These characteristics are in our national DNA. I’ve spent many sleepless nights coming up with ways to communicate with readers who may want to try new ways of solving old problems, because you can’t fix something if you don’t believe it’s broken.
Advocating for equality has been quite the learning experience. It’s difficult. It’s not even fun. Racial equality feels like it’s a matter of my life or death. I’ve had to lower my expectations of humanity. We are not as civilized and humane as I thought we were. It’s been a disheartening journey.
But I haven’t given up.
My Strategy
My strategy to counter this nation’s successful campaigns of inequality has been simple: Talk to white people in practical ways to help them see the absurdity of racism, the driver of all racial inequality. It has worked, but not as often as I liked because of the sheer nature of whiteness and white supremacy. Social media’s algorithms and artificial intelligence don’t help.
I’ve also been straddling the fence about who I want to talk to going forward. On one side, there’s helping Black people understand this fight for equality really isn’t our battle. We have no power in this dynamic. Most times, we aren’t able to affect significant changes fast enough for us to feel some relief. It hasn’t been easy. Then there are the challenges of trying to break through the glut of propaganda, “woke” warriors, and liberal talking heads who turn the fight for equality into a one-, two-, or three-topic election (immigration, the Supreme Court, or health care). And then there’s getting through to white people. That’s . . . hard. Period. The most effective tools Black people have are our storytelling abilities. Getting white folks to listen to us has been challenging. Getting white people to see themselves as the primary obstacle to achieving equality has been a struggle. Getting white people to move to the action phase has been torturous.
If the concept isn’t presented in a palatable way for my white readers, their comments reflect it. I used to spend a lot of time going back and forth with people who disagree with me, but then I learned a lot of these folks were mansplainers and trolls hiding behind fake racist profiles just out to harass and discourage women and writers of color. Achieving racial equality means dealing with lots of distractions. Anything diverting attention away from Black people focusing on racism is a distraction.
My method of educating my readers is uncensored and unvarnished. It’s not for the faint of heart. Personally, I feel Black people have done ourselves a disservice by being “nice” to people about racism and inequality. How can we continue being nice to people who are trying to kill us about their trying to kill us? We cannot, and I will not. My thoughts on white fragility are that it’s not my problem or my concern. If you’re going to learn from me, you’re going to have to toughen up, gather yourself, and get your life together, or go find the training wheel content for beginners and snowflakes. I don’t breast feed other folks’ children. Feelings are the last thing I’ll be concerning myself with when I write from now on. The truth hurts sometimes. Racism hurts far more than any emotional injury whiteness claims from hearing our words.
I was a contributing writer for Our Human Family’s Fieldnotes on Allyship: Achieving Equality Together. To have had a hand in creating a body of work that I believe in and feel will help many people—once the white noise and fear of homegrown terrorist violence subsides (hopefully)—was inspiring.
Things I Wish I’d Done Differently
Advocating for equality has been quite the learning experience. It’s difficult. It’s not even fun. Racial equality feels like it’s a matter of my life or death. I wished I could have done live videos, but those can be a blessing and a curse. Plus, people are lazy. They’d rather watch a video than read words on a page. Coronavirus has made it so that we can’t travel. I had to cancel my trips to Costa Rica, Italy, and Greece because nobody wants our nasty Covid non-compliant butts in their country. And while some countries have lifted their travel bans because they are desperate for tourism dollars, the risk is too great for travelers and the poor islanders alike. I can’t put good people at risk for a few days of pleasure.
I wish I would have used more social media platforms. I wish I could have done live videos, but those often seem to be more of a curse than a blessing. Sometimes people are lazy and don’t want to read. They’d rather hear the wisdom than read it. Maybe I could have taught more people on the benefits on equality had I used alternative methods. I wish I had transitioned to other writing platforms like some other outstanding writers who were once on Medium. Medium seems to appreciate diversity and antiracism when the mood strikes them in spells and they have peculiar curating methods when it comes to matters of race. Getting ample exposure has been challenging. This platform has been my preferred method of communicating messages on equality. Writers of Color are likely going to do more to spread our messages of equality, love, and antiracism.
I wish we didn’t have Covid so that allies and People of Color (POC) could have local mixers and meetups where we have real discussions about racial inequality, social injustice, and racism, kind of like support groups/TED Talks. People of different races are more alike than we are different, and we need to be in spaces where we can start seeing this. Hopefully, when outside opens again, this would be an option for those interested in continuing on their antiracism and equality journeys.
I wish I had said more, but talking about inequality and racism is extremely unpopular. The subject of equality has an expiration date, like peanut butter. People have a mindset that you can’t or shouldn’t say things that are unpopular. Sometimes, even expressing general thoughts gets your head chopped off. I’m learning just how free we are not in America.
Going Forward after the Election
Going forward after the election is going to be hard, like breaking up with someone you love, but you know they aren’t any good and never meant you well. I have seen America and I cannot unsee it. Both Democrats and Republicans engage in practices that create inequity in our society; they just have different methods and use different tools. Anti-Blackness isn’t practiced only by white people, People of Color engage in it, too, including many Black people from the African diaspora. As long as there are free markets and capitalism, there will always be inequality and racism.
I have no more patience for the ignorance of whiteness or its insistence upon being comfortable; its comfort means my discomfort, and I’m not spending the last part of my life being uncomfortable for whiteness. I’m about protecting the Black community, my children, and my parents. I’m happy that there are a few good allies around the world who are willing to support us on our journey. This place we’re in is a place of uneasiness, but it’s familiar. I liken it to being the new and only Black person in a white space, where you dodge friendly white fire and stares from those who believe you don’t deserve to be in their space, and the lone ally is afraid to speak to you because of the pecking order in whiteness. And that pecking order is always more important than my Black life and comfort.
November 4, 2020, will be a new day for me, regardless of who wins this election. I’ve watched so many groups steal our Black movement, silence our Black anger, change our narrative, give us an agenda that is not ours, blame us for things that definitely aren’t our fault, and decenter Black people (again). I’ll be working to pick up the pieces of our shattered and broken lives. Hope is hard to find when every guardrail meant to protect America has not held. It’s discouraging to see lawlessness and injustice flaunted in our faces. That so many white people believe in inequality more than they do humanity is shameful.
Seeing America as it truly is has changed my life forever and I will never be the same. Sometimes I feel like giving up on the snail’s crawl towards equality. I don’t want to keep focusing on something I can’t control. I don’t want to keep pouring my energy into a people who have an incurable love affair with inequality. I don’t want to have to fight for things others believe I shouldn’t have the privilege of accessing.
Black people are getting it from all sides. We get it from hardcore conservative and casual liberal racism. We’re dealing with People of Color and their anti-Blackness. The Russians, Iranians, and Chinese are picking on us online with the help of the federal government. We have anti-Black Black people. We have Black celebrity treason. (See Kanye, Ice Cube, and 50 Cent.) We have the mainstream media’s negative bias, dutifully provided by white journalists who have spent little to no time around Black people.
We’re stuck with a political party that doesn’t understand its Black populations and People of Color, or so they pretend not to understand. We’re led by a gang of senior citizen white men and women who seem to be as plentiful as the clouds in the sky. They’ve perfected indifference. We live in a nation that has declared war on certain sub-groups of its citizenry. The federal government calls Black people who cry out for their lives extremists and has banned Critical Race Theory Studies, which examine the how our nation’s laws, institutions, and history are inherently racist. We the People can’t learn the truth if the liars in power make it impossible to discover. How do we keep fighting for equality when we have so many things and people fighting against us? Living like this is unsustainable.
I’ll be drinking a few more adult libations and preparing for the civil war the racists have been planning since 2008 because no matter who wins, the racist genie isn’t going back into the bottle. The Confederacy of American Dunces will incite violence regardless who wins the election because the snowflakes, who have no legitimate reason to be aggrieved by anything, have grievances about everything that doesn’t center them. I’m preparing for my future like I’m married to a malevolent narcissist, except my spouse is half of the country. I’ve learned I can’t trust my country, and that my country won’t protect me.
Beginning November 4, 2020, I’m not tolerating racism, but my enthusiasm for pursuing equality will probably wane a lot. Why is human decency so difficult a concept to grasp? Why does everything have to be a competition?
Black autonomy is going to be front and center for me. We’ve lived four years with ignorance, stupidity, racism, white nationalism, Covid, loss, grief, and propaganda. I’m tired. I don’t want to be around any person who possesses any characteristics that cause loss, grief, or trauma. I won’t be tolerating racist friends, and I won’t be hosting or entertaining racist strangers. Online or in person.
I’m not loving everybody anymore because everyone ain’t worthy of the love I have to give. Going forward, I’m loving up on Black people, because America has done a number on our psyches. We’ve been blamed when we shouldn’t have been. We’ve been targeted because we’re easy targets. We’ve been ignored by those responsible for protecting us. We Black folks need to work on our collective mental health because this has been a wild twelve years. A lot of us have been dealing with racism No one is going to uplift us but us. Loving Black people back to life is where I’m going from here.
I look forward to continuing to write about issues concerning Black communities and Black people, namely American descendants of enslaved people. There has been a consistent campaign to deny our agency, ignore our suffering, and use us to build others up while other groups and people tear us down. It’s time for us to have family meetings, put our collective feet down, tend to our wounds, and work to make ourselves whole again.
The next three weeks will determine what I’ll be saying, and definitely where I go from here. Until then, I’ll be coping with the fact I can’t see my father. I can’t travel. I can’t see my children or grandchildren. I can’t enjoy live music or support my favorite restaurants.
I’ll continue to be the responsible Black woman I’ve always been. I’m still going to put others’ needs before myself. I’ll wear a mask always and hibernate for the rough winter ahead. I’m planning on protesting in January, because I know this election is a generational change and cultural shift of sorts. I’m committed to local politics, local and national social justice, and Black liberation. There has to be something better than this, and I’m looking for it.
It’s going to be a cold, hard winter in quarantine, and I have to prepare for the wrath of angry white women who are angry because they weren’t elected to be the first female vice-president should the Democratic ticket get elected. God forbid an accomplished, qualified Black woman jumps to the front of the line for some power. I also have to prepare for continued racism should the current occupant of the White House be re-elected.
It’s always something in America with racism. Always.
America is dying, and I don’t know if it can be revived. Moving forward at this point, all I can muster up for the rest of 2020 is a good attitude, one-half of a rainbow, the stick of a lollipop, and all the players of Team Whoop-Ass.
The fight continues . . . | https://medium.com/our-human-family/6c325a2fbdbe | ['Marley K.'] | 2020-10-28 06:36:26.534000+00:00 | ['Election 2020', 'Equality', 'Race', 'Our Human Family', 'Life Lessons'] |
Subsets and Splits
No saved queries yet
Save your SQL queries to embed, download, and access them later. Queries will appear here once saved.