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Impacts of Brexit on Money Laundering Regulations | England is the first country to exit the European Union. Many economists argued that Britain’s exit from the European Union could have distributive and divisive effects for the EU and Britain. However, Britain did not give up its request despite all the predictions and established the Brexit Parliament. Brexit results are at a level that will significantly affect both the United Kingdom and the European Union countries. Therefore, it is a matter of curiosity about how the post-Brexit British economy will take shape.
AML Regulators in The UK
There are money laundering and terrorist financing laws and AML / CTF regulations by these laws created by institutions such as FATF worldwide. All financial institutions must comply with these laws and regulations. All financial institutions have to comply with these regulations, aiming to minimize the adverse effects of crime on the economy by reducing the risk of money laundering with the laws they have determined. Otherwise, institutions that do not comply with these laws receive specific administrative penalties. The regulations aim to detect and prevent financial crimes such as money laundering and terrorist financing. All entities subject to the UK Money Laundering Regulations must comply with policy and procedural obligations to minimize money laundering risk.
The Financial Conduct Authority(FCA) is the agency responsible for regulating the financial service industry, operating independently from the UK government. FCA aims to control financial institutions’ behavior in the retail and wholesale sectors, such as stock exchanges, e-money institutions, banks, credit companies, and building cooperatives. FCA’s regulations include the implementation of Customer Due Diligence (CDD) measures.
On the other hand, the UK government’s tax authority, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), are often responsible for collecting taxes, protecting UK borders from illegal activity, and auditing whether employers meet a minimum of employee wages. On the other hand, the NCA detects extensive organized criminal activities in the UK and imposes heavy penalties on individuals and institutions that operate. NCA is one of the leading organizations in the fight against money laundering. It has local and international collaborators in Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing.
For reading more about AML Regulations in UK, you can check our other content: Anti Money Laundering Regulations in UK
What is Brexit?
Brexit changed the course of the economy; It means Britain leaves the EU. It is derived from the combination of English words for United Kingdom and exit.
It is the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (United Kingdom) from the European Union (EU). The UK is the first and only country to leave the EU after 47 years of membership officially. The crisis in the eurozone is the most critical reason for going. Apart from this, the negative reflection of the European Union regulations on British companies, the increase in additional costs, and the British pound’s depreciation led the UK to the Brexit referendum.
Britain left the EU with 52% of the votes it received due to the referendum held in June 2016. The conservative government’s suspicions towards the EU prompted the secession process to begin. On 29 March 2017, according to Article 50 of the British Treaty on the European Union, the withdrawal process was officially launched with Parliament’s permission. However, when the EU accepted the proposal requested by the then Prime Minister David Cameron to apply other currencies other than the euro in Europe, David Cameron started an anti-Brexit campaign. Thereupon, he declared his resignation due to the people’s answer to the UK’s decision to leave the EU in the referendum held in June 2016.
Why The UK Made Brexit Decisions?
There are several reasons for the UK leaving the EU. The clearest one of these is the crisis in the eurozone. This decision to leave had economic effects in many EU and UK countries. Thus, with this decision, UK-based companies made many new decisions.
Also, we can explain why Britain wants to leave the EU in two different ways politically. Since 2008, the pressure of the European region in the UK has increased. The halt in trade volume expansion caused the UK to see the EU as a stumbling block. The restrictions imposed by the EU on its domestic and foreign trade network were the most significant factor in the UK’s Brexit decisions.
How Did Brexit Effect Money Laundering Regulations?
On 31 December 2020, the UK will complete the transition period to leave the European Union (EU). Brexit has many implications for many countries and industries. Still, it is a matter of curiosity to what extent the impact will be. With this UK’s decision, other questions are as follows: How will the regulatory environment take shape after Brexit? What will be the impacts of Brexit on anti-money laundering? According to 5AMLD, EU legislation should link UK financial providers to UK fund transfers by providing specific documents from official sources such as the government. At the same time, the UK’s acceptance as a “third country” is expected to slow down economic processes and harm trade, resulting in improved due diligence checks.
Slowing the process can increase the risk of money laundering and terrorist financing. In this case, businesses should implement an excellent risk-based approach process. The compliance of the laws with 6MLD makes this directive less of a concern for the UK. It is also the case for the UK that certain crimes are punished according to AML obligations. Although it is not known how the UK’s exit from the EU will affect these two directives, it is also a question of whether the 5AMLD and 6AMLD will be deemed valid after Brexit. | https://medium.com/@nurefanaltnba/impacts-of-brexit-on-money-laundering-regulations-1d33cac4d844 | ['Nurefşan Altınbaş'] | 2020-12-22 06:46:45.924000+00:00 | ['Brexit', 'European Union', 'Money Laundering'] |
How to scan the latest pairs added to Uniswap ? | Some of the CryptoTools data analytics users have been interested in finding a way to get the latest tokens trading on Uniswap, most probably as a trading analytics tool.
As a result, I’ve created a Google Sheet templates that helps you filter new tradable coins.
The sheet returns all new tradable pairs on Uniswap, giving constraints on the Number of Days the pair has been active, the Volume ($), the Liquidity ($), and the number of Transactions.
In order to get Uniswap’s analytics I used The Graph which is an indexing protocol for querying networks like Ethereum and IPFS. Anyone can use, build and publish open APIs, called subgraphs, making data easily accessible.
UNISWAP FUNCTION IN GOOGLE SHEETS:
Returns new tradable pairs on Uniswap, giving constraints on the Number of Days the coin is active, the Volume ($), the Liquidity ($), and the number of Transactions .
In Google Sheets =UNISWAP(7, 20'000, 30'000, 1'000)
For example, if I want to get the new Uniswap pairs where:
the pool was launched in the last 7 Days
the daily Volume is greater than $20'000
the Liquidity is above $30'000
and there has been more than1'000 Transactions since the launch
The formula becomes:
=UNISWAP(7,20000,30000,1000)
@param {days} the number of Days since the pair is active
@param {volume} the minimum Volume ($)
@param {liquidity} the minimum Liquidity ($)
@param {tx_count} the number of Transactions existant since creation
* @return a table (see GIF above)with all new tradable pairs on Uniswap and their number of Days since Active, the Volume ($), the Liquidity ($), the number of Transactions, exactly like the Token Scan view below:
More indicators for scanning ?
There are plenty more functionalities that can be added through the TheGraph API. Don’t hesitate to have a look at all available end points like:
totalSupply
untrackedVolumeUSD
liquidityProviderCount
If you are interested in getting some help in integrating more personalized indicators, DM me.
Conclusion
An easy accessible way to get the latest pairs on Uniswap using Google Sheets which can be used for data analytics, and as a trading tools for screening of new market participants. | https://medium.com/coinmonks/how-to-scan-the-latest-pairs-added-to-uniswap-31c4400cc2a6 | [] | 2020-12-28 13:55:54.087000+00:00 | ['Google Analytics', 'Data Visualization', 'Dex', 'Uniswap', 'Erc20'] |
A nudge toward hand hygiene: simple design features improved handwashing among Filipino students | By: Crystal Huang, Nhu Le, Meg Battle
Last week, we discussed how we designed and implemented behavioral nudges in Philippines schools. In this post, we’ll share what we found from evaluating their impact through a randomized controlled trial.
“Wash your hands with soap” is an imperative we often hear these days. During a pandemic like COVID-19, handwashing is key to slowing the spread of the virus. Even in non-COVID times, it is important for preventing the transmission of infectious diseases such as respiratory tract infection or diarrhea.
In the Philippines, the Department of Education (DepEd) has sought to increase handwashing among schoolchildren with their WASH in School (WinS) policy. WinS promotes group tooth-brushing with toothpaste, biannual de-worming in public elementary schools, daily group handwashing with soap, and other WASH-related activities and infrastructural improvements.
In previous research in public schools funded by UNICEF, however, IDinsight found that pupils in the provinces of Camarines del Norte and Puerto Princesa washed their hands with water and soap in fewer than 1 in 10 instances after using the toilet, even when adequate facilities were available. The HiFive program, a teacher-led handwashing educational campaign we previously evaluated, modestly improved handwashing rates — but not enough to lead to nationwide scale-up.
As our previous study and others indicate, large public education campaigns, even when they are effective at increasing knowledge about hygiene, do not automatically lead to behavioral change.[1] Even when people know they should wash their hands and can wash their hands, in the moment they may forget, or be in a hurry, or be too tired[2] to actually do so.
In 2019, with the support of UNICEF, USAID, and DepEd we began to test a different approach: low-cost, behavioral nudges to encourage handwashing in schools.
Behavioral nudges can help address the gap between knowledge and behavior. By changing the way choices are presented, nudges can make people more likely to do something desirable.[3] For example, to encourage handwashing, previous studies have found painting a bright footpath leading from the toilet to the handwashing station to be effective.[4] This is a contextual cue that that makes heading to the sink and washing your hands after toilet use more automatic.
We adapted successful designs from previous studies to the local context, and added new nudges based on field visits to school sites. This nudges design process is detailed in our companion blog post.
In the end, we installed:
· Painted footpath with spray-painted footprint from toilet stall to handwashing area
· Posters with simple visual handwashing messages in toilet stall
· “Watching eye” sticker above water source of handwashing area
· Arrow sticker pointing to soap dish by handwashing area
The long walk from the toilet stall to the handwashing station in a classroom in Zamboanga del Norte ©IDinsight/Nhu Le
Testing nudges
To understand how the nudges affected handwashing, we conducted a cluster randomized controlled trial among public elementary schools in Zamboanga del Norte. We randomly allocated 66 schools to the “treatment group”, where we installed nudges. We also randomly selected 66 “control group” schools, where nudges would not be installed.[5] In order to be eligible for the study, schools had to have adequate handwashing infrastructure such as toilet availability and regular water access. The schools in control and treatment groups were randomly assigned. This meant that each group of schools would on average be the same, except for the nudges. In other words, if the two groups had any differences in handwashing outcomes, we could attribute those differences to the impact of the nudges.
We installed the nudges in October 2019 and returned four months later in February 2020 to assess handwashing outcomes. To do so, we conducted direct classroom observation. Direct classroom observation leads to more objective estimates of handwashing than student self-report. To minimize the possibility of teachers and students behaving differently because they were being watched (observer effects), we did not disclose that we were specifically observing handwashing, and only stated that we were observing “regular classroom activities.”
You might have noticed that February 2020 was at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and reasonably asked if that had any effect on handwashing. The answer is that it very likely did. Though our data collection occurred just before widespread school cancellations and movement restrictions, teachers and students may have already been showing heightened vigilance over handwashing. In fact, shortly before we arrived, DepEd Zamboanga Del Norte division sent a memo about COVID-19 and the importance of handwashing to all schools. Luckily, our evaluation design randomized between treatment and control. Since we can reasonably assume any boost to base handwashing rates due to COVID would be similar across treatment and control, we were still able to obtain unbiased estimates of the impact of the nudges on handwashing rates.
Did nudges have an impact?
Nudges improved student handwashing behavior. Compared to students in control group schools, nudges increased handwashing rates among students in treatment group schools by 17 percentage points (equivalent to an increase of 148 percent), even four months after implementation. This indicates the impact of the nudges persisted over time. Because we measured outcomes only once, we are unable to determine whether and how their impact changed over time. The percentage point (pp) increase of 17.3 was comparable to the results of a study testing arrows & stickers in the US,[6] though lower than the impact estimates of school-based handwashing nudges in South Asia.[7] It is also higher than the HiFive program we previously evaluated. Nudges also led to a much smaller, 8.2pp increase in water-only handwashing, which can reduce bacterial contamination, but is significantly less effective than handwashing with water and soap.[8] The combined effect was an increase of 25.6 pp in handwashing with at least water. Pupils responded similarly across age groups and genders.
Nudges led to an increase in students’ handwashing rates after toilet use
The nudges also led to improved access to functional handwashing facilities. Compared to students in control schools, students in treatment schools were slightly more likely to have access to a functional handwashing facility near toilets, and 38 percent more likely to have access to a facility with soap.
Nudges increased soap and water availability in handwashing stations near toilets
Putting Together the Picture
But these results led us to other questions.
First, how exactly did schools improve access to functional facilities?
To get more insight into this process, we compared treatment impact between two types of handwashing stations: those with faucets and running water; and those with buckets holding stored water for handwashing next to the sink basin. It turned out that improved access to functional facilities is driven primarily by impact on facilities with stored water. Since teachers primarily maintain handwashing facilities day-to-day, the nudges appeared to have encouraged them to more consistently supply stored water and soap. The nudges not only positively affected student behavior, but also teacher behavior.
Second, since we saw a large increase in soap availability, did students wash their hands more simply because they had more opportunity (soap access) to do so, or because they actually changed their behavior?
We conducted mediation analysis to answer this question. Results indicate nudges increased handwashing rates, even after controlling for the nudges’ effect on soap availability. That is, this program simultaneously nudged students to wash hands with soap in classrooms that already had soap, and nudged teachers to provide soap where it was not already available.
Despite their low-cost, nudges generally remained in good condition after four months. More than 75 percent of every type of nudge we installed remained at the end of our observation, and the vast majority were still in good condition. The principals, teachers, and students we interviewed were also mostly enthusiastic about the nudges, though several school staff members emphasized that the school needed infrastructure improvements, particularly consistent water access, in order to take full advantage of the nudges. As one principal stated, “I am happy if there are new things in my school, especially if they are lasting, useable, and useful.”
Scaling up nudges: next steps
These results show that low-cost changes to the environment can drive longer-lasting, “sticky” behavior change. We found notable increases in handwashing rates four months after nudges were installed, which suggests that the contextual and visual cues we installed helped trigger habit formation. This finding is in line with other studies using incentives[9] and behavioral nudges,[10] which also found behavioral impacts several months post-program installation. However, since we only measured handwashing at one point in time, we’re unable to estimate treatment effects over time. Future studies might consider alternative (but more costly) data collection approaches such using real-time sensor data or liquid soap volume in order to measure persistence effects.
At a cost of less than $60 USD per school, we are recommending that the Department of Education scale up school-based nudges in other elementary schools in the Philippines, as a part of its WinS policy. Before implementing nudges, we recommend schools have minimum WASH infrastructure in place: functional toilets, functional handwashing stations, and water availability at least some hours of the day (running or stored), and dedicated school funds for soap.
We are in discussions with UNICEF and DepEd about how to implement these recommendations in the near future. Many schools are currently suspended due to COVID-19, both in the Philippines and in other countries. The nudges, which can improve handwashing rates after toilet use, and other measures promoting hand hygiene at other COVID-specific critical times, could help ensure a safer environment in schools for students when they return.
If you are interested in installing nudges in your school, stay tuned! In the next couple weeks, we will be releasing a ‘how-to’ guide for others interested in installing nudges in schools.
This research is made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The contents are the responsibility of IDInsight and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government. The project is also supported by the UNICEF WASH team in the Philippines.
Asterisks in graphs refer to: *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1
References
[1] Buck, E. D., et al., 2017. Approaches to promote handwashing and sanitation behaviour change in low‐ and middle‐income countries: a mixed method systematic review. Campbell Systematic Reviews, 13(1).
[2] Dai, H., 2015. The impact of time at work and time off from work on rule compliance: The case of hand hygiene in health care. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100(3), pp.846–862.
[3] Thaler & Sunstein, 2008. Nudge Theory. Yale University Press.
[4] This increased handwashing rates among Bangladeshi school chidren by 56 percentage points (Dreibelbis, R., et al., 2016. Behavior Change without Behavior Change Communication: Nudging Handwashing among Primary School Students in Bangladesh. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 13(1), pp.129).
[5] This sample size includes a generous buffer for attrition (i.e. not being able to follow up with some schools for data collection at endline). This was expected due to safety and security concerns because of armed conflict issues in the region, and section-level eligibility assessment of schools when installers visit. Four months later, we were able to observe pupil handwashing in 50 control schools and 49 treatment schools (with no observable differences in the remaining sample).
[6]Blackwell C, Goya-Tocchetto D, Sturman Z. Nudges in the restroom: How hand-washing can be impacted by environmental cues. Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy 2018; 2(2): 41–47
[7] Dreibelbis, R., et al., 2016; Grover, E., et al., 2018. “Comparing the behavioural impact of a nudge-based handwashing intervention to high-intensity hygiene education: a cluster-randomised trial in rural Bangladesh.” BMC Public Health 13, pp. 1050.
[8] Burton M, Cobb E, Donachie P, Judah G, Curtis V, Schmidt WP. The effect of handwashing with water or soap on bacterial contamination of hands. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 2011; 8: 97–104.
[9] Hussam, R., Rabbani, A., Reggiani, G. and Rigol, N., 2018. Rational Habit Formation: Experimental Evidence from Handwashing in India.
[10] Grover, E., Hossain, M.K., Uddin, S., Venkatesh, M., Ram, P.K. and Dreibelbis, R., 2018. Comparing the behavioural impact of a nudge‐based handwashing intervention to high‐intensity hygiene education: a cluster‐randomised trial in rural Bangladesh. Tropical Medicine & International Health, 23(1), pp.10–25. | https://medium.com/idinsight-blog/a-nudge-toward-hand-hygiene-simple-design-features-improved-handwashing-among-filipino-students-ae4fab1c94db | ['Crystal Huang'] | 2020-05-21 20:48:53.753000+00:00 | ['Behavioral Economics', 'Hand Washing', 'Impact Evaluation', 'Southeast Asia', 'Project Work'] |
The Roadmap for Aspiring Programmers | Technology in today’s world is predominantly based on computers, automation, and cybersecurity. Professions like hackers, software developers, artificial intelligence researchers, web developers, android developers, game developers, etc. have become very common and desired by thousands of people.
If you are one of those people who want to be part of this amazing world of tech and contribute to it as a programmer, as you are very well aware, you will need to learn to code.
Learning to code has become a necessity in today’s world anyway, but if you find yourself interested in it and want to really learn to code and don’t know where to start or where to move, this article is a must-read for you.
Every year, thousands and thousands of people start learning to code. They start for different reasons but there is a significant number of those who are not able to productively learn to code and get stuck in a loop and end up seeing that they haven’t received anything much productive. Hence, it is important that you keep the foundations strong from the start.
When one thinks of coding, the first question that comes to mind is the variety of languages that we need to choose from. And it is a justified dilemma as everyone comes with different expectations and if you end up learning the “wrong” language, you might waste weeks of hard work. Right? No.
You need to understand that all coding languages are basically just tools that are used to manipulate or create data that can be used further for different reasons. It doesn’t matter which language learn first and which you learn second but remembers that you cannot live your entire life with just one single language which you learned today.
That being said, also remember that if you pick any language at the start of your journey, complete it to the end. Many beginners do the mistake that they learn one language to some point and then leave it alone just because they think that the language they learned doesn’t have enough value or isn’t useful enough. Or many times they get a false perception that they have finished learning that language because the tutorial they were following has ended.
So, first, let’s define the principle that a beginner-friendly language must have:
The language should be easy to start with. The learning curve must not be too steep It should be useful in the future. It should be a language that supports object-oriented programming It should be good for competitive programming as well. It should be widely used in open source It should be easy to shift later It should not be objectively created for a specific purpose only
Now, coming back to the question, which language should you start with.
So basically, if you have no idea what you would want to do ahead in computer science or your professional life in general, I would recommend you to go for C++. There are several reasons for that. Firstly, if you learn C++, you create a temperament for coding. You learn a lot of interesting things which you wouldn’t if you were to start with any other language like Java or Python. Secondly, C++ is an object-oriented language that can be used very comfortably for Data Structures and algorithms. I personally don’t use C++ for a lot of things but when it comes to competitive programming or learning a data structure, I would definitely use C++. Generally, if you can accomplish something like learning C++, the rest of the languages will become way easier.
But, you need to remember the cost of all this. C++ can be, comparatively, a hard language to start with. Also, at some point in time, you will feel like the language is useless and cannot be applied in many places, which isn’t true, but it’s a general feeling most beginners have. So, if you want your journey to start with a nice and easy pace, I would strongly recommend Python. It is the easiest language you can probably learn. The only thing is that there is a lot of things that you cannot do with python as you move forward. But the good point here is that after learning Python, you have gateways into learning the artificial intelligence stuff like Machine Learning, Deep Learning, etc. And also, Python has many amazing libraries. Basically, they have a library for everything.
Whatever recommendations I gave until now were for people who don’t have any idea about what they want to do moving forward with the coding journey. Next to this, let us talk about the people who do have an idea.
Firstly, if you are interested in web development, there is no doubt at all that Javascript is the best choice. But remember, JavaScript may seem like a simple language, but it is in this simplicity that things start getting notorious. But overall, the journey of a JS developer is fun-filled and amazing. You will never be bored, I can guarantee you that. There is a lot to learn in this domain and the sky is the limit for learning about JS.
For those of you who want to get into mobile development, remember, there are many options here, but the one way I like to recommend a beginner is, divide the complete mobile development world into two parts, one for iOS, and the other for Android, obviously.
If you are interested in the vast world of Android Development, learn Java. This may seem like a piece of unusual advice, given that the official language of Android development is Kotlin now, but the reason I say so is that Java can be used for several other things and you will be able to learn Kotlin in very little time after that. Java as a language can be really amazing for DSA and is still used extensively. Also, Android still does support Java Development so you don’t need to learn Kotlin at all. But Kotlin is a beautiful language, and I would definitely recommend all the Mobile Development enthusiasts to learn it before moving directly to Android.
On the other hand, if you are interested in iOS, there are two options again, Objective-C or Swift, and I would surely recommend Swift. Swift is an extremely amazing language if you want to move towards developing for Apple devices.
But wait, that means that if you want to go for Mobile Development, you will have to learn three to four programming languages. Is there an easier way where you can learn one language which does good for both iOS and Android? Yes. Dart is a language developed by Google that can be used to create mobile applications for both android and iOS by learning the Flutter framework. It is not yet the best choice for any programmer but it is an amazing start which is a great option, but… it’s not for beginners yet. Hence, I would recommend you to first learn JavaScript or C++ or Python first and then learn Dart and Flutter later. You can learn more about the cross-platform mobile application development in JS using the ReactNative framework as well.
For game development, I would say it really depends on the engine you use. If you are going to use Unity, you must go for C++, while for Unreal Engine, you must learn C#. This is quite clear.
Another thing I wanted to highlight is that C# is actually a language which can be comfortably used for an endless number of thing just like Python. You can use C# for Game Development, Competitive Programming, Mobile Development, Web Development, and many more thing. C# is really an amazing language to start with. Also, it is non-conventional in many ways. So, if you want to learn a language that does it all while being good for beginners, C# is a nice language to start with.
There are many more streams that I could not complete here cause it will basically confuse you more and I don’t want that. In short, if you have to choose a language to start with, here are the final recommendations from my side:
Python — Easy, Intuitive, Simple, and extremely useful. JavaScript — One of the most widely used languages in the world and something which will get you into the world of Web Development very quickly. C++ — The language which teaches you how to learn to code. Something which I would very highly recommend if you want to learn to code and want to get deeply into the world of programming in general.
That is it. Chose one of these and I have ranked the languages above on the basis of difficulty to learn and usability in the real world. Other than the above, of course, C# is an amazing option anyway but I am not going to rank it. Let’s just give it a consolation prize.
Next, after choosing a language, the biggest confusion is about what to do after choosing a language. From where to learn? What to learn?
In short, I cannot answer this question for you directly because the question of where to learn is very subjective. If you want good resources, I can recommend that video tutorials are the best source of learning to code and remember to code while you watch it. You need to actively work while you are learning. Merely watch the tutorial will never be enough. ANd some very nice places to begin your search would be YouTube. If you have some money to spend, I would surely recommend you to go for either Udemy or Coursera, not because they sponsored me or anything, I took the above names only since I have actually experienced it.
The most important aspect of learning to code is that you need to continuously make some projects based on what you have learned up to that point in time. For eg. if you learned about the different types of variables in javascript today and how you can take input from the user, you must make a project which can take in the data from the user about their names and create a project where you can store the names of several people and print it to the console. Or, if you learned about operators today, make a project of a basic calculator and as you move forward, you can make the calculator better.
On a closing note, I would like to highlight that learning to code is majorly a game of consistency and hard work and you cannot ignore the role practice plays in it. It is more than just the languages you choose and the projects you make. It is about logic, creativity, and learning continuously. Even as you make a simple calculator for the hundredth time, you would learn something new. You need to remember that the basics that you learned at the start may be boring but itis this boring part that actually makes you the programmer you would become one day. Every big hacker, software developer, data scientist, and web and game developer started at the point you are at right now and had to bear the pain of doing the boring parts. You need to feel the pain of thinking about what you are typing on your text editor and not just go with the flow of tutorials. You need to question every single keyword that you write on your keyword. Be curious about everything you do and the language and the frameworks that you choose will not even matter. | https://medium.com/@utkarshluthra/the-roadmap-for-aspiring-programmers-a3e65223b759 | ['Utkarsh Luthra'] | 2020-12-14 09:20:58.213000+00:00 | ['Programming Tips', 'Learning To Code', 'Programming Languages', 'Programming', 'Coding'] |
The 10,000 Question Challenge — Your Blockchain Journey Starts Here | #10KQA — 10 000 Blockchain Question Challenge
Malcolm Gladwell’s book, “Outliers: The Story of Success,” refers to the “10,000 hour rule” as a rule that says it takes 10,000 hours of what Gladwell calls “deliberate practice” to become a world-class expert in any field. Satisfaction does indeed come from these long hours of hard work, but when you are at it long enough, practicing every day and getting closer to your 10,000-hour mark, you will see big results.
While some people don’t believe this rule to be true (some interesting details here by Nick Skillicorn), I have through my own experience found that hard work and dedication does in fact pay off, and the payout is far greater thereafter. How many times have you gone to the gym and felt your muscles ache and burn only to realize that after a while, and after several hard runs on the treadmill, you finally got the figure you wanted? How many hours have you spent coding on Assembler before you finally started getting into the flow of things, realizing that you’ve created something special?
It takes hard work and deliberate practice to get into the flow and become a master. And that was how the idea to start the 10,000 Question Challenge was born. The main goal of this challenge is to derive a better understanding of the blockchain by studying it and interacting with other experts. I am sure that a huge quantity of new ideas will rise to the surface during the process, and it will be interesting to chat with experts in the field as well.
What is the 10,000 Question Challenge?
For 2018, I would like to receive answers to 10,000 questions about the blockchain from the best experts in their respective fields. Why 10,000 questions? Why not… This number is not so large. There are, after all, more than 19,000 questions posted onto both of the Bitcoin and Ethereum forums.
So, my purpose is to create a gateway for beginners who want to take the plunge into the blockchain.
I have formulated the following categories myself, and I will organize the questions into four categories:
• Core Blockchain Development: This will cover everything from core blockchain technologies, to its development, to the methods of resolving the scaling problem, and cryptography in general (including understanding what will happen when quantum computers enslave the world).
• Profits (trading, ICO, mining): These will all be questions related to earning money and understanding how long the cryptocurrency hype will go on. It will be questions regarding the mechanisms of trading and the nuances that distinguish crypto trading from usual trading. There will be questions about investing into ICOs and the real profitability behind the new technologies that are being developed in this field..
• Real Disruptive models: There is the feeling that, in most cases, blockchain technology is farfetched, and there is no way to actually profit from implementing it into other markets (freelance services, the airline industry, the music industry, etc.). I would like to dive deep into these questions about how the blockchain can disrupt multiple industries, and to receive answers from the real practitioners and experts who have already implemented the blockchain in their fields with great success (by the way, there is a good article on this subject here by Haseeb Qureshi).
• Laws and regulations: Any questions regarding regulations, applicable legal practices, the legality of Bitcoin, and so much more will fall into this category. Will ICOs soon be regulated? Is it legal to pay a salary in crypto?
The discussion and selection of questions will happen on Slack or they will be gathered from social networks via the #10KQA hashtag. It is my hope that a large number of people are involved with this event.
Later on, a mailing with the chosen questions will be distributed every day. My team and I will moderate all of the messages and leave only the truly interesting ones. In addition to that, I will ask a question to people whom I consider to be experts in the field (there are plenty of them in our Howtotoken community). Also, feel free to recommend your own experts.
Once a week we will sum up the results here on Hackernoon in the form of the short essay, complete with descriptions of the interesting things that we have learned that week. We will select the most interesting questions, answers, and unexpected perspectives. I also hope that other participants will publish their own essays about what they have learned.
How to begin with #10KQA?
The hashtag for the challenge is #10KQA. All questions, as well as the answers with it, will be gathered by our team of moderators (for those of you who want to become a moderator just write in comments or just join the slack below). I believe that it will prove interesting for experts and blockchain startup owners to be able share their knowledge and achievements with anyone who wants to learn more about the crypto world.
If you are a trainee and want to ask your question or get a head start with 10,000 answers:
Subscribe to a newsletter here. Follow our updates on Twitter, or Telegram Discuss on Slack
If you’re an expert or a blockchain startup owner and want to give back to the community by answering a couple questions:
Answer on forum here
If you want to participate as moderator and help find the best questions by being a part of our team:
Just join Moderator Slack channel here
I will be appreciative of all participants, ideas, and discussions. I hope that we will all get something positive from the process and that unforgettable feeling of having a flow.
We need your claps👏 to reach more people since this is a new publication. Please spread this story with a tweet, facebook share, etc.
About the author:
Kirill Shilov — Founder of Geekforge.io and Howtotoken.com. Interviewing the top 10,000 worldwide experts who reveal the biggest issues on the way to technological singularity. Join my #10kqachallenge: GeekForge Formula. | https://medium.com/hackernoon/the-10-000-question-challenge-your-blockchain-journey-starts-here-98829f6b3cbc | ['Kirill Shilov'] | 2019-01-17 10:15:05.393000+00:00 | ['Challenge', 'Education', 'Blockchain', 'Bitcoin', '10kqa'] |
The Ultimate Deterrence | The reason why intense conflicts “leave behind a sense of security and calm that is not easily disturbed” is the destruction they cause. The First World War arose the question of “how to avoid war?”. Firstly, what was learned is that cooperation contributes to peace. However, it was not enough, as the Second World War took place no more than two decades later. Not only did the twilight of another Great War teach that security matter deserve as much attention as cooperation does, but also it inaugurated the ultimate deterrence factor: the nuclear bomb.
Approximately, a century before the deflagration of the First World War, the European powers came to the agreement of establishing an arrangement of balance of power, which came to be known as the Concert of Europe. During those almost a hundred years, the European nations, though not engaging in big conflicts, managed the nationalist rivalries by joining in an arms race. A nearly centenarian arms race, enhanced by the consolidation of the European national identities, laied the foundation of the conflict that would last between 1914 and 1918.
Subsequently, the liberal response was cooperation, understood as intensifying the international economic and political relations. Nevertheless, international institutions, such as the League of Nations, were not able to avoid a second conflict with similar dimensions. The Second World War revealed that the interdependence between nations must be accompanied by teeth, I. E mechanisms of sanctioning the peace disturbance.
Nonetheless, it is the existence of nuclear weapons, another “contribution” of the Second World War, which has marked the absence of great conflicts during the Cold War, and through the 21st century. The potential of destruction contained in a nuclear explosion was discovered after a controversial attack on two Japanese cities weeks before the end of the war. Since then, albeit seeking their own nuclear power, the great nations started negotiations to limit the use of this kind of weapon.
For the core of the study of international politics lies in the understanding of war and how to avoid it, the events of the 20th century constitute a fruitful source. Thus, there may be reason in affirming the contributions of intense conflicts for peace, as did Carl Gustav Jung, in the second half of the 20th century. | https://medium.com/@tayanetjader/the-ultimate-deterrence-94a4461e0379 | ['Tayane Tjäder Martins'] | 2020-12-24 14:25:28.056000+00:00 | ['International Relations'] |
It’s Time to Enlighten Your Soul | SPIRITUALITY | NEWSLETTER
It’s Time to Enlighten Your Soul
Image by 愚木混株 Cdd20 from Pixabay
Dear Spiritual Buddies,
I am back again to share and reveal some spiritual secrets with you. We have been discussing ways to embracing the change in our previous conversations, and the recent changes in Medium are just a testament to our spiritual ability.
As much as I appreciate the new change happening on this virtual platform, I am concerned about you — my spiritual family. Some of us are not technology savvy and face quite a few hardships in submitting stories to a publication. I want to tell you all that I am always ready to help you guys. So, if ever you face any trouble with submitting your work, please shoot me an email at [email protected]. I would try to respond as promptly as I can.
Everything in this world is uncertain. We have bought uncertainty, now what can we do about it? Let’s face it! And to face it, we must accept and adapt to it.
When we reflect on our last week, there were a lot of mysterious spiritual secrets revealed. Patrick Paul Garlinger (Patrick Paul Garlinger)shared “7 Signs You Are Awakening Spiritually,” a life-changing secret.
Moreover, to disperse the myths regarding #spirituality, I also shared a small secret called “What Everybody Ought to Know About Spirituality” in addition to other stories like We have bought uncertainty, now what, and the corroded soul.
I want to applaud all the creative writers who participated in our last prompt of Spiritual Love.
Big fat hug and Kudos to Ruchi Thalwal for sharing Dissolved And Melted In Your Love, Ivette Cruz for True Love, Shirley Willett for Spiritual Love, the Greatest Love of All, Sharon Brandon (Readywriter59) for Spiritual Love — (Weekly Prompt), and Ana-Maria Schweitzer for I Wish Love were Enough.
This week Lanu Pitan is featuring on our homepage for her consistent performance. She amazed us with The Random Act Of Kindness.
I would also extend my heartfelt gratitude to our spiritual writers:
Varun Jain — The Secret Ingredient, Bingz Huang— You Used to Fly, Pretheesh Presannan — At Its Mercy, Afiyah The Poet — Runaway Train, Michelle Lane — Caught By Beauty, and Claire Elaine — Time and Patience. | https://medium.com/spiritual-secrets/its-time-to-enlighten-your-soul-678843dfeae | ['Darshak Rana'] | 2020-10-27 03:50:14.932000+00:00 | ['Spirituality', 'Soul', 'Letters', 'Enlightenment', 'Spiritual Secrets'] |
Winding | Winding
Image by DanaTentis on Pixabay
Every morning we’d drive the same route to school. A right turn, past the Baker’s Springs sign and on to Duplex Road. The road was so narrow two cars could barely pass by without brushing up against each other. It had been serviceable thirty years ago when the sprawling Nashville suburbia in which we resided was a collection of farms and grassy green meadows, but now it seemed minuscule. Too small to even be called a road.
We wound past neighborhood after neighborhood — rows of two-story houses lined up next to each other, each abode covered partly by reddish brick and partly by plastic siding with indentations meant to look like wood grain. There were always mailboxes at the end of each driveway — the kind that were stuck up on wooden beams looking stately while peering out into the street with their red flags waving.
Soon we’d pass all the neighborhoods and submerge ourselves in green. A canopy of trees overhead — oaks and poplars, walnuts and dogwoods, maples and magnolias. The sticky air forced everything to be green, each leaf swaying under the weight of the moisture it held.
Out of the green, we’d emerge into a bygone era. Splintered and greyed wooden fences surrounded log cabins and majestic whitewashed clapboard homes alike while cows and horses grazed lazily in the morning sunlight. This part of the drive was never bad — no matter what lay on the other side of it.
We’d pass the Coca-Cola man, with his white-streaked log house covered head-to-toe in red memorabilia. We’d drive by the old gas station, with its tall rusty gas pumps and rolling glass-paned garage door. We’d pass the creaky old church with its bright red door and worn out pews.
Every morning, without fail, we’d drive this route — leaving at 6:45, stopping at Kirstin’s house to pick her up, and driving the fifteen minutes past and out of town to get to the high school. The radio would play, we’d sing along, and once we arrived we’d stumble out onto the sidewalk with our backpacks and lunch boxes and brace-faced smiles.
Every day we’d take that winding road — through it all to get to our destination. To the tests and papers, dances and plays, football games and band practices. It was something to get through to get to the ending. It was just a drive — just a winding drive into the day beyond. | https://thecreative.cafe/winding-2e568db6983f | ['Addey Vaters'] | 2020-12-16 17:03:05.069000+00:00 | ['Non Fiction Books', 'Nonfiction', 'Creative Non Fiction', 'Creative Writing', 'Flash Nonfiction'] |
Search jsonb objects in PostgreSQL Array of objects using Ruby on Rails | At Donamaid we have some problems with to JSONB array in PostgreSQL. We look up for two options, a PostgreSQL Array of jsonb objects or and PostgreSQL jsonb that contains an array of objects.
We select the PostgreSQL Array of jsonb objects because using this strategy, and we could figure out our problem. This approach allows us to use PostgreSQL Array and jsonb methods to query what we need. We follow the PostgreSQL Array functions and this Rails/PostgreSQL tutorial to build our solution.
Our context:
The array stores jsonb objects like:
{ token: "89203q47h928q73craaw", id: "SERVICE_ID"}
{ token: "733asdas8asdf9as", id: "OTHER_SERVICE_ID" }
Our problem:
We receive an webhook from some service. The webhook message has an authorization token. We need to check if some account have this token in their external_credential array
Our solution:
By this way, we can search if some of our accounts have the specific token stored in their external_credentials array.
João Fernandes' founded this solution’. | https://medium.com/@ghsmaniotto/search-jsonb-objects-in-postgresql-array-of-objects-using-ruby-on-rails-79f9184961cb | ['Gustavo Henrique Smaniotto'] | 2019-06-07 00:15:53.351000+00:00 | ['Json', 'Query', 'Arrays', 'Postgres', 'Rails'] |
Remote working during pandemic benefits employers and employees alike. | As the COVID-19 outbreak nears its first birthday, we find ourselves in a constant process of adaptation and change. The world as it currently is, doesn’t quite work the way we’re used to. Rules and safety measures alter the way we live our everyday lives, making it difficult to carry out even the simplest of tasks, but there are changes that made our life better.
In order to protect their employees, many companies switched to remote working (or telecommuting). Telecommuters can work from their homes, avoiding daily commutes, rushed breakfasts or cramped desks. This wouldn’t have been possible 15 years ago, but with the constant evolution of video-calling and cloud-based platforms, many tasks can now be accomplished without being physically present to a workplace.
The pandemic has forced some companies to accept the possibility of remote working, and it was for the better. Different studies show remote working triggered an increase in productivity, as well as in the general happiness of employees. And it makes sense if you think about it:
There is reduced work-related stress, it gives the flexibility to choose the working hours, it allows for more family time and it gives the comfort of your own personal workspace. It even encourages a healthy lifestyle, reducing the amount of fast-food eaten, as now it gives the chance, and time, for one to prepare its own meals.
In the US, The yearly cost to rent office space, per employee, can vary from 4,000$ to 14,000$.
There are also benefits for companies. Every employee needs a desk, good internet connection, a computer connected to a power grid, AC for the hot days, a clean workspace and rent. Not having to pay for these, businesses can make some hefty saves.
The pandemic is a grim situation, but it gives us the opportunity to adapt and make our lives more efficient, even after the crisis is over. | https://medium.com/@andrew-theodor/working-from-home-during-pandemic-benefits-for-employers-and-employees-alike-1756864fb85f | ['Andrew Theodor'] | 2020-12-13 09:46:39.913000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Health', 'Remote Work', 'Covid 19', 'Lifestyle'] |
Best Way to Deploy Your Smart Contracts On Ethereum | Bringing the best together
Introduction:
There are various ways to deploy Ethereum based smart contracts, some popular options are listed here:
Use migrations of Truffle framework. Use Ethereum wallet and MetaMask. Using Remix IDE and MetaMask.
I prefer the last option, and would suggest the readers of this blog to follow the same, as it is most optimised as far as gas consumption is concerned and it can also be used to debug contracts.
In this tutorial we will deploy a sample contract, which is initially available on Remix, using MetaMask, on Ropsten test network.
MetaMask Setup:
MetaMask
Step 1
Download the MetaMask extension. There are various options for browsers with MetaMask compatibility, however in this tutorial we use Chrome extension as reference.
Following is a tutorial you should follow to understand MetaMask and set up your own wallet on it, it is quite outdated but it is the perfect way for you to get the gist of things and get you started with MetaMask.
Step 2
You will need to create a suitable password, which will be used to encrypt and create a seed phrase.
Step 3
Keep the seed phrase somewhere secure and don’t share it with anyone, it can be used to retrieve your wallet.
Step 4
Change your network by clicking on Main Network and switch to Ropsten Test Network.
Network options
Step 5
Click on Buy, to get some free Ropsten Ethers.
Your new MetaMask account
Step 6
Go to the Ropsten test faucet and request some Ethers, they will be mined in some time and will be added to your Ethereum account on MetaMask.
Buy test Ethers
Step 7
In some time your account will look like this, and you will be ready to deploy your first test contracts on Ropsten.
Balance credited to your account
Using Remix IDE to deploy contracts:
Open the Remix IDE and you will see a pre-compiled contract file, namely ballot.sol. We will use this contract to understand how the deployment using Remix works.
Remix environment options
There are three kinds of options available for deployment in Remix:
JavaScript VM:
It helps you deploy your contracts in a JavaScript environment made available by remix, it gives you five Ethereum accounts with a balance of 100 Ethers each to deploy and test your contracts. Injected Web3 :
This will help you connect your MetaMask account to Remix and use the network you’re on for deployment. You can choose among “Ropsten”, “Rinkeby” and “Mainnet”. Ropsten and Rinkeby should be used for testing your contracts before deploying them. Web3 Provider:
You can use some explicit Web3 provider or can integrate it on your localhost and use it.
We will be using Injected Web3 as it is the easiest and widely used. So choose injected Web3 and proceed:
Step 1:
You will see your Ropsten account in the “Account” section of “Run” Subhead. This represents your current MetaMask account which will be used for all the required transactions. You can create more accounts on MetaMask and switch between them to connect different accounts to Remix. Please note that only one MetaMask account can be connected to remix at a time.
Step 2:
Enter number of proposals, which is a parameter required by constructor of Ballot contract and click create. You will see a MetaMask pop-up like the following:
Confirm transaction
This pop-up asks for a confirmation for the transaction you’re just about to create. I’ll explain the details mentioned and how to manipulate them one by one:
Gas Limit:
MetaMask calculates the maximum amount of gas that can be consumed by a transaction and displays it here, this amount of gas will be sent with the transaction, in case all the gas is not consumed during the transaction, remaining gas will return back to your account.
Gas Price:
It calculates the latest price which is being used in the Ropsten test network, it depends on amount of traffic within Ropsten Network. You can increase it for faster results.
Max Transaction Fee:
It represent the maximum estimated mining fee for the transaction. Is an estimate of costs in USD and Ethers.
Max Total:
Sub total of all the costs in USD/Ethers.
Step 3:
Once you submit your transaction, you can track it’s status in MetaMask or Ropsten Etherscan.
Track transaction in Metamask
Step 4:
Once the transaction is processed and is added to a block then you will see the contract at the bottom of “Run” section in Remix, as follows:
Deployed contract in Remix
You can see all the public functions and state variables of the contract here. Blue represents that a function/variable is constant and it won’t consume any gas during execution. Constant functions are those which does not result in value change of state variables, and thus don’t consume any gas. Similarly Red represents a function which will consume gas and should be carefully used, when you use it a MetaMask pop-up to confirm transaction will appear. You can set the required parameters and submit your transaction. There are some other functions which accept Ethers, and can be used to send Ethers to a contract, it is of a darker red colour. You can specify the value and the unit you will be using in the “Value” section labelled under “Gas Limit”.
Summary:
Understanding contract deployments is very necessary, and nascent developers make a lot of mistakes in this part leading to huge deployment costs and cumbersome testing mechanisms. This blog is a guide for beginners to avoid those mistakes and enjoy “happy development/deployment within solidity”. | https://medium.com/deqode/best-way-to-deploy-your-smart-contracts-e5f7b5a52baf | ['Ayush Tiwari'] | 2019-01-31 12:01:06.313000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Ethereum', 'Smart Contracts', 'Blockchain Technology', 'Metamask'] |
Add flyover to any app with Mapbox GL Director | Today, we are launching Mapbox GL Director, an interface to generate terrain flyovers for apps and websites. With Mapbox GL Director, set up a sequence of shots like in a video editing suite. Mapbox GL Director then generates code to paste into an application to create 3D flyovers. The tool is built on the new Mapbox GL JS SDK, using the Camera API, that just launched this morning, and leverages 3D rendering improvements in Mapbox GL JS v2 and the new Mapbox Sky API.
Build this…
Ethiopian Highlands
… using this.
Flyovers and 3D maps provide context and perspective, especially when terrain is part of the story. By following a GPX trace, bring users along for an Iditarod, a dangerous border crossing, a hike along the PCT, or their afternoon run. In the next few weeks, a GPX trace plugin is coming to Mapbox GL Director. Sign up for updates.
Interlaken, Switzerland
Terrain Plus Data
Overlaying data unlocks powerful new insights: landslide risk, microclimate zones, wildlife habitat range, solar mini-grid proposals, and more. In the coming weeks, there will be new features to overlay, combine, and style data directly within Mapbox GL Director. Sign up for updates.
Nightlights over Accra, Ghana. Source: VIIRS/NOAA
Build better together
The code behind Mapbox GL director is open source under an MIT license. You can contribute to the project or file bugs and feature requests on GitHub. | https://medium.com/devseed/add-flyover-to-any-app-with-mapbox-gl-director-d8d523dab2e1 | ['Drew Bollinger'] | 2020-12-08 20:36:03.172000+00:00 | ['3d', 'Mapbox', 'Maps', 'Visualization'] |
Actionable Data | Actionable Data
Where Design and Data Science Converge
First, be warned. What I am about to share is vague and nebulous.
It is also extremely powerful.
Actionable data is tech-stack agnostic. It can be applied using any of multiple tool sets. It is a paradigm — which is to say, a way of thinking. It grows from the well-known discipline of design thinking, applying the first two steps: empathy and problem definition. From there it zeroes in on a particular solution set: designing a data narrative that applies data science principles in the context of dynamic, interactive user experience.
Most of us in 2020 are overwhelmed and inundated by information. We feel powerless and enfeebled by all the bad news. Actionable data emphasizes the power of informed collective action.
Humans can self-organize, just like schooling fish.
What actionable data does is take a measurable, quantifiable data set and connect it to specific calls to action. In essence, it presents you with new information and instead of leaving you to mull (or stew) it provides you with ways to respond. The goal is always to empower users.
In my online talk for Innovation Women, I discuss one case study in depth: The Giving Map, built as a COVID-19 relief tool.
Created in partnership with Charity Navigator, this interactive map is updated daily with the most recent data on COVID-19 infection rates across the United States. Users can click on counties and view case data, while making a donation to charity in any of ten giving categories. The tagline “Give in the areas hardest hit” led to a remarkable response. One out of 15 people who saw our posts on social media visited our site. This was with zero name recognition or major media coverage. If you know anything about Internet marketing, you know how unusual those numbers are.
User survey findings suggest that even when users chose not to give through the app, the availability of options contributed to a richer and more meaningful user experience.
This is just one example of actionable data as a specific application of design thinking: empathy with a user who feels disconnected and powerless, in response to the problem of massive social and economic disruption from COVID-19 in the U.S.A.
If you as a business, government, or nonprofit entity know of a problem that has quantifiable data associated with it (measuring either the problem or the response) then you have an excellent candidate to build a data narrative.
This does not have to be high tech. In my talk, I give the example of a restaurant manager who chooses to share online feedback with staff via text. Many applications of actionable data are possible that require no coding (or at most, a spreadsheet).
Actionable data is not:
Cherry Picking — Picking one fact or statistic to make a rhetorical point and persuade users to take a given action.
— Picking one fact or statistic to make a rhetorical point and persuade users to take a given action. A Dashboard — Dashboards are great decision support tools, but they are typically developed to give a small group of users in a hierarchical organization multidimensional insights. By contrast, actionable data is designed to operate at scale. It is optimized for a many-user environment.
What is actionable data best for? Datasets that are:
Dynamic — data is constantly refreshed.
— data is constantly refreshed. User generated — user input is captured by system variables to generate new data types and new levels of interaction.
— user input is captured by system variables to generate new data types and new levels of interaction. Too big to count — did you know most people cannot easily count more than five objects at one time?
246 Toothpicks. The first person to guess the reference gets a prize.
Dynamic and user-generated content are wonderfully suited to actionable data — in particular, user-generated narratives are great for fundraising. But something as simple as a spreadsheet containing addresses of organizations in an informal cooperative network can, with a little massaging and some basic HTML, become actionable. Something as obvious as an interactive map with health advisories can and probably has saved lives over the past few days.
For Giving Map, we were able to build a custom API off the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus datashare using Microsoft Azure, along with a brand new responsive web app, in just under two months. But if you don’t have the resources to spare for this type of rapid ramp-up, don’t despair.
Maybe you are a food pantry or a soup kitchen. If you have a way to share how many people were served with food (or how many were turned away) each day that data is actionable. You can use it as a tool to engage donors, volunteers, and other stakeholders.
Maybe your organization works with houseless and homeless populations in a large city. You may not have daily updates on your clients, but you can give visitors to your website a walk-through of different neighborhoods, sharing relevant facts and situational data, and giving visitors a way to connect at the neighborhood level.
This is more than a gimmick. There is a richness to data-driven UX and UI which compels further interaction and engagement. When data is abstract and featureless, it is easy to tune out. People engage at the level where data becomes specific and granular. The more you break down a given set of facts, the more you humanize it.
These are only a few hypothetical examples. We live our lives immersed in data. Thus, the data stories we can construct are nearly limitless. | https://medium.com/swlh/actionable-data-cf25d388174d | ['Art Code'] | 2020-12-08 19:52:42.671000+00:00 | ['Design Thinking', 'User Experience', 'Social Enterprise', 'Data Visualization', 'Data Science'] |
Is Rape Male? | The Neglect of Many Victims of Sexual Assault
Discrimination against women and reinforcing gender roles by patriarchal power structures comes in many forms. One form of oppression that can be interpreted as one of the oldest and most powerful methods of punishing women is rape. The United States Department of Justice defines rape as “The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.” Historically documented cases of rape date as far back as 900 B.C.E. to Greek mythology. Of course, the term “rape” must have been common to make it into Greek mythology and an old concept. Even if it was a relatively new phenomenon in ancient Greece, that would still classify rape as more than 2000 years old.
Rape against women has been and still is ingrained throughout all civilizations. Any form of sexual assault is a severe form of oppression meant to demoralize, punish, and remove a woman’s agency over her own body. However, there is a hugely misconstrued component to rape culture that people today seem to neglect: who the victims are. In ancient Greek mythology, it was Zeus that rapes the Queen of Sparta, Leda, and Poseidon that rapes Medusa. The general public tend to believe that rape is always where a woman’s body becomes violated by a male figure, but is it always a man who rapes? When it comes to sexual assault, is it possible for gender roles to change places?
Since 1927, the United States Department of Justice defined rape as “the carnal knowledge of a female, forcibly and against her will.” For nearly 100 years, the definition remained the same until 2012 when the Department changed rape to “the penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.” Not only did they broaden the sexual acts against women, the justice system included men as victims. Contrary to the presupposition that only women can be raped, many men have more so recently come forward as victims of sexual violence. In 2016, the National Crime Victimization Survey announced that out of all sexual assault victims that year, 38 percent were men. Out of those cases, 68.6 percent reported female perpetrators. In terms of those men who experienced rape, 79 percent reported female perpetrators. Nearly 40 percent of sex crime victims were male, of which 70 percent reported being violated by women. The data here was astonishing, revealing that a huge majority of sexual male sexual assault victims were attacked by women, the complete opposite of the popular belief that these crimes only involve men dominating women.
In her article Is Violence Male? The Law, Gender, and Violence, Lucinda Joy Peach discussed how sexual abuse against women is trivialized and increasingly hard to prove in a court of law. She articulated how the justice system is male-oriented to protect men who abuse women. Gender bias in society’s institutions has made it seem that women were incapable of perpetuating violence, but only being victimized by violence. Peach argues that in the military women were not allowed to hold combat roles, as these positions could only be held by men: the “only gender” that can commit violence.
With these gender binaries in place, cases of sexual assault become much more biased and criminals harder to prosecute. Peach claims “Traditionally, male-dominated juries would do what the battered women did not do, for example, leave long before the abuse reached the stage where the use of deadly force was necessary to repel it.” But as seen before, men are also subject to sexual assault by women. But aren’t women only victims of violence, not agents? This would make men the only perpetrators of violence and never victims. However, this is clearly not the case. When society places gendered assumptions on any gender, these biases not only affect spectators in sexual assault cases, but plant gendered expectations onto victims as well. As much sexual assault cases go unreported by female victims, many go unreported male victims as well. Social pressures maintain the assumption that men are unable to be raped by women and that they can overpower them if in the situation. When raped by a woman, the man is hesitant to report it to anyone, for fear that no one will believe them. Even if the crime makes it to court, gender expectations make it hard to convince a jury that a man has sexually assaulted by a woman.
The bias of the justice system, jury, and society itself all factor in that contribute to the reason why so many sex crimes go unreported, so many rapes do not make it to trial, and so many people guilty of sex crimes remain unpunished. Sexual crimes will continue and possibly worsen if gender essentialism go unchallenged and we continue to place assumptions on people based on their biological categorization. A substantial shift in the way make assumptions based on gender, race, economic status, and other traits is crucial if oppression and discrimination are to be suppressed. On a global scale, intersectional identities need to be embraced to understand that every person is different, but should be treated the same. When we begin stereotyping and falsely placing differences upon groups of people is when we cater towards a future of injustice and repression. | https://medium.com/gendered-violence/is-rape-male-287adb55d72 | ['J Shing'] | 2018-03-28 00:20:39.743000+00:00 | ['Rape', 'Male Rape', 'Gender Norms', 'Male Victims', 'Sexual Assault'] |
Derrick Boseman on his brother Chadwick’s faith and spirituality — CALI FM RADIO | Chadwick Boseman landed his first major role as a series regular on Persons Unknown in 2010, and his breakthrough performance came in 2013 as baseball player Jackie Robinson in the biographical film . Boseman achieved international fame for playing superhero Black Panther in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) from 2016 to 2019. He appeared in four MCU films, including an eponymous 2018 film that earned him an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. As the first black actor to headline an MCU film, he was also named to the 2018 Time 100.
In 2016, Boseman was diagnosed with colon cancer. Boseman kept his condition private, continuing to act until his death from complications related to the illness in 2020. His final film, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, was released posthumously the same year to critical acclaim. In this youtube video interview, his brother, Derrick Boseman talks about Chadwicks faith and spirituality.
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Check out more great contributor stories HERE | https://medium.com/@mslashaunturner/derrick-boseman-on-his-brother-chadwicks-faith-and-spirituality-cali-fm-radio-b3813e4cbac1 | ['Lashaun Turner'] | 2020-12-27 03:00:26.309000+00:00 | ['Chadwick Boseman', 'Colon Cancer', 'Black Panther', 'Lashaunturner', 'Celebrity'] |
Essential benefits of power banks you should know | Almost everyone has faced the last-minute rush due to low battery and it would not be wrong to say that power banks have done a commendable job for it. Besides removing the battery anxiety, it has become everyone’s favorite with its incredible power-efficient technology. It’s another thing that people are still not completely aware of the benefits which it offers.
Sounds like you? Then what are you waiting for? Read it till the end line. After all, it is about getting to know more about your device. Also, if you don’t have any power bank, the next time you buy, you can select a power bank with such benefits to keep yourself a step ahead.
Looking at the modern smartphones batteries which don’t have the power to last longer than 24 hours, the invention of the power bank was of the utmost necessity. So let’s see what its benefits are.
Essential benefits of power banks you should know
1. Keeps your mobile charged
It of course comes amongst the essential benefits of power banks you should know. But we don’t think there is any need to explain this. As everybody knows what power banks aim for? Still, as we all know that mobile phones are now an essential thing to carry out the day to day activities. Power banks have helped us in staying connected with people more and also enjoy internet services without any trouble.
Yet there is an essential thing about which everyone needs to be aware and that’s its primary benefit. It can provide stable power at the time of need. We all know that there is hardly anyone who doesn’t access the internet nowadays. So it is usual for the gadgets like phones and laptops to always keep on working continuously. Therefore these devices also need continuous backup to keep up the way their users want.
Wait! Have you ever thought about how you can charge your mobile device when you can’t access electricity? This is where power banks can play a key role. Either you are on the move or working. You just have to connect your mobile device with the power bank through a cable and then you can carry on without keeping the stress of battery-low warning.
2. Diversity
What word comes to your mind after hearing “diversity”? You guessed right, variety and yes, power banks come in different varieties. But there is one thing that still lacks and it is finding a one-stop solution. Earkits is of course one such place and offers a wide variety of wholesale products and here it does not matter whether you are looking for wholesale mobile phone power banks, smartwatches, or Earbuds. Their product range starts from Earbuds and ends at car chargers and the best part is it offers power banks to as low as 6$, allowing you to choose a power bank that suits your budget.
3. Safe and Secure
They say a phone can save a lot of lives. Well said and why not? During any emergency, it plays a key role. But it wouldn’t be possible if your battery is about to get drained.
Ever tried traveling to a new location? Yes, there are various traveling modes. But you can’t be always on a flight or a bus. You must have to travel some distance on foot and for that navigation on your phone becomes a necessity as far as finding the right path is concerned. At that instant, only a power bank can save you from reaching a helpless situation.
4. Handy and Convenient
Nobody in this universal world can spend all his life at home. What we are trying to say is, if you are planning to go somewhere after a long time. Then don’t forget to include a power bank amongst your essential items.
There are times when the phone gets dead and it often gets hard to find such places where you can charge your phone. At that instant, only a power bank can save you from getting disconnected from the world.
5. Affordable
If you are planning to buy a power bank there is no need to worry about its price. As on the contrary, they are quite affordable and we hope at Earkits you will find one that suits your budget. The rest is they offer it in different sizes and with different specifications. Lastly, if you are looking for a one with high-quality; don’t worry all their products come with amazing specification s and at such a price that is sure to surprise you.
The essential benefits explained above have drawn the attention of many and who knows when you are going to experience it in real. But one thing is for sure you will feel mesmerized and your life is going to be easy like never before. | https://medium.com/@earkits/essential-benefits-of-power-banks-you-should-know-4404e3c4a0a2 | [] | 2021-03-04 16:42:05.397000+00:00 | ['Power Bank', 'Wholesale Products', 'Accessories', 'Mobile Accessories', 'Gadgets'] |
After I worked in a white-shoe tax office where I constantly saw people who lived in these dream… | After I worked in a white-shoe tax office where I constantly saw people who lived in these dream homes with $300K-$5M incomes and were the most miserable fucks I’d ever seen,
coupled with god knows how many younger Boomers and older Gen Xers who basically just wasted their entire lives slaving for their employers and sacrificing ANY enjoyment just to lose it all in 2008…if not now?
Yeah, I’m not buying the whole retirement SCAM.
it’s simply impossible to save that much with our nerfed incomes and high living costs; Boomers had more proportional living expenses and things like defined-benefit pensions that at least made some miserable job worth it…if those funds weren’t raided by the owners, or you didn’t need to tap them for medical bills. You truly have no control over how this plutocracy screws you. You can do everything “right” and all it takes is an accident or cancer diagnosis to siphon what little wealth you have to the rentier class.
It’s a scam. I save what I can, but I’m more concerned with building my IPs that I own and will pay royalties the rest of my life than shoveling it into what’s essentially a burning casino. | https://medium.com/@sonictoad/after-i-worked-in-a-white-shoe-tax-office-where-i-constantly-saw-people-who-lived-in-these-dream-e856edf87697 | ['Rachel Presser'] | 2020-12-08 12:25:01.696000+00:00 | ['Retirement'] |
How to Ask for a Raise | How to Ask for a Raise
Photo from Canva
A lot of time I get a call from candidates who started looking for a new job because of all they really want a 5–10 percent increase in their salary. They like their jobs, like their colleagues, like their role, and like their company. In the perfect world, they would just get their raise and they are happy as can be.
The first logical question I ask them is, have you asked for a raise? 90 percent of the time the answer is no. And the reason why the answer is no, is because no one really knows how to ask for a raise. Chances are if you have been at a company for over a year, you are in a good position to ask for a raise.
Here are 7 steps to ask for a raise:
1. Do your research
Figure out what the average salary is for your current role in your location. If you are below or at the average, this gives you great ammunition. If you are on the high end, don’t worry, you have tenure, and the next step will help.
Get these numbers from a few sources and consult a professional. Call your friendly neighborhood recruiter and get their professional opinion.
2. Collect your wins
What have you accomplished since your last review or since you started? Think of all examples of when you did something that brought the company money, saved the company money, increased efficiencies, or saved the company time. Brownie points if you did those things without being asked to.
Note all these wins down, quantify them as much as you can.
3. Think of a number
This is the real reason we are here, how much of a raise do you want? The average rate of inflation is between 2 to 3 percent so if you have a few wins you can speak about asking for a 5 percent increase is justifiable.
If you are below or average with some notable wins this year, asking for 10 to 15 percent can be totally doable.
If your research tells you that you are on the top end of your salary in the marketplace according to your role and you cannot think of many wins this year, a 20 to 30 percent increase maybe too much.
Find the number that makes sense to you and your family and think of a range. This is a negotiation so there needs to be some room.
4. Practice
Now that you have your number, data, and wins, put it together into a pitch. I would suggest starting with a few wins, then market research, and end off with the percentage increase you are after.
Think of what questions might arise, find answers to those questions.
Practice this pitch until it is comfortable for you. Practice in front of a mirror, in front of your pets or significant other.
5. Book a Time
I suggest being proactive and booking a time with your manager before your year-end review. Most companies set their budgets before year end-reviews, so you want to speak to your manager about 6 weeks before your annual review to ensure your increase is in their budget.
Set a time with your manager, set up a video call, or book a room.
6. Ask confidently
You have prepared for this, ask confidently, and answer any questions.
7. Be patient
Every company is different, so do not expect a yes right away. No could simply mean not right now.
If your manager or the company simply does not have the budget to give an increase this year, they will remember you asked and good companies will do it as soon as they are able. So be patient and keep up the good work, it will pay off later.
There you have it, 7 simple steps to ask for a raise. Good luck! | https://medium.com/@junecoffey/how-to-ask-for-a-raise-3b7e74cab96e | ['June Coffey'] | 2020-12-02 15:03:12.376000+00:00 | ['Salary', 'Career Advice', 'Career Change', 'Recruitment', 'Careers'] |
Is ‘perceived affordance’ out the door? | What does a handle on a door communicate to you? Pull-me!
Annoying if in fact you need to push the door to open it, even worse if the handle is further misrepresented with a sign that says ‘Push’.
Visual cues help set our expectations as to how we are to interact with the objects around us. Changing those visual cues even slightly can have dramatic effects on how we interact with our world. Take traveling abroad for example. I recently travelled to Chicago for a project I was running for KPMG, using the underground and crossing roads is trivial for me in London, but in a foreign country it took much more effort to interpret the environment around me and interact successfully (and safely)… I didn’t get run over, but I had to pay much more attention and it took slightly longer to make decisions.
The ability to give cues to users as to how they should interact, is the single most important concept to get right when building interfaces
The same is true in our digital environment. My experience over the last 20 years of consulting on user interface and user experience is that ‘perceived affordance’, the ability to give cues to users as to how they should interact, is the single most important concept to get right when building interfaces. Even more so than ever as the user spends more time flicking between interfaces, their decisions and interactions are rapid and they don’t have time to ‘think twice’ about an action. It needs to be instinctive, natural. Interfaces need to communicate what is about to happen, what action is required.
Flat design is a gorgeous trend, one which my agency Contra have adopted wholeheartedly, but as an interface designer / consultant, I have to work harder than ever to ensure that the interfaces I work on clearly represent their meaning to the user. The risk of not paying enough attention to this is obvious. Users won’t know what is expected of them when interacting with my work, they will get ‘lost’. Also, my clients will not get traction with their projects and will ultimately lose their user base / their competitive edge. It can even impact on their brand and their ability to market themselves.
A classic example of a disregard of perceived affordance can be found in the original Windows 8 release. Would any user, without being educated of the fact, instinctively move their mouse to the bottom right corner, click Settings > Power > Shut down to turn off their computer?
So, when you design your next flat UI, ensure that a button looks like a button and a title looks like a title. Ask yourself if it is obvious what you are asking a user to do at any given stage. What visual cues are you giving them? Are those cues consistent across your interface? Do your users need to learn how to interpret your digital world afresh or can they transfer their understanding from other digital worlds over to yours? How much effort are you asking your users to invest in learning your interface?
Start with these, get the basics right. Ensure that Push means Push and Pull means Pull and that your flat design doesn’t end up frustrating users and increasing friction.
by Ben Edge, Head of Digital / Creative Director | https://medium.com/contra-agency/is-perceived-affordance-out-the-door-d8e1596eb35e | ['Matthew Johnson'] | 2020-12-14 11:54:13.876000+00:00 | ['Digital Design', 'Web Design', 'Web Development', 'Digital Marketing', 'UX'] |
The Right Number of Hurricanes | Hurricanes on the Horizon
A year ago, I attended a lecture hosted by my University’s engineering department. The speaker was Dr. David Novog, who according to his biography is “an internationally recognized researcher and engineer with 25 years of experience in academia and industry, and holds an Industrial Research Chair in Nuclear Safety.” Further literature provided before the talk expands on Dr. Novog’s activities: “An emerging area of research in Dr. Novog’s group examines the vital role of large and small modular reactors (SMRs) in reducing humankind’s CO2 footprint and he is the Principal Investigator for the federally funded Small Modular Advanced Reactor Training (SMART) program.”
“The Grand Energy Challenge: An uncertain future and how nuclear energy can give us hope” was the title of his talk, and as an an advocate of nuclear power I looked forward to hearing his thoughts on the topic.
Near the beginning of Dr. Novog’s talk he presented a PowerPoint slide containing 4 images. Thinking back to that evening, I can picture three of the four: a hurricane, a forest fire, and a lake suffering a drought condition. I would later learn that the pictures provided motivation: if humanity did not move away from carbon dioxide emitting fossil fuels and adopt alternatives (such as nuclear) our world would witness storms of greater severity and frequency, forest fires of increased intensity, and a greater occurrence of lands suffering from drought.
After Dr. Novog completed his presentation I was keen to ask a question. The auditorium was filled with young engineers, just beginning to gather the tools for an upcoming career, and I wanted Dr. Novog to clarify something for them and myself. For anyone considering the profession of environmental engineering and, I asked, interested in reducing the severity and frequency of storms, and decreasing forest fire intensity, and reducing drought, how will they know when the problem is solved? I was not being facetious and clarified further. I wanted to know — given the current consensus purporting that anthropogenic C02 emissions are a major driver of these modern weather and weather related extreme events — what exactly is the right amount and severity of storms such as hurricanes? What is the right number of forest fires and what is the proper occurrence of drought? I felt it important that if one is going to tackle this problem of terrible man-made weather, the establishment of some metric of success would be needed.
Disappointingly, my question was not answered: Dr. Novog only acknowledged that events such as hurricanes, forest fires, and drought are getting worse. Implying strongly, it seemed, that these worsening conditions are the fault of mankind’s choice of fuel energy, and only will the environment return to “normal” once there is a retreat from the use of harmful CO2 emitters.
I do not consider it a leap of scientific deduction to conclude that Earth has experienced — from near its beginning I would assume — much in the way of weather and climate. Almost with certainty hurricanes, forest fires, and drought predate mankind and must — with even greater confidence — predate the industrial revolution where the burning of fossil fossils expanded rapidly. If we extend Dr. Novog’s thinking, are we to assume that the quality and quantity of weather events occurring before the 18th century industrial growth represent what is acceptable and that this is to be the baseline where, for success, we must return to today? It must be. I cannot imagine that any realistic measure of success could be more radical — it could not be, for instance, an expectation of complete elimination of hurricanes, forest fires, and drought.
This connection of individual weather events to mankind’s fossil fuel use raises many questions not easily answered.
For the hurricane that forms today how can we determine if it is man-made or natural, or some combination of the two? Do we proclaim it — at the end of its life — at least partially man-made only if it exceeds a certain level of destruction and death? If so, what is the appropriate threshold of destruction and death dividing the purely natural from the partially unnatural? If man-made (just a bit), then, do we conclude it an unacceptable storm, where the only solution lies in the elimination of the internal combustion engine, the oil or coal burning electric plant, and the charcoal briquette?
If a hurricane, by some measure, should be concluded as purely natural in origin — the type encountered had you lived 500 years ago — yet also results in destruction and death, how do we respond? Are such hurricanes free to roam about, but man-made ones stopped at the expense of the collapse of the fossil fuel industry and our modern energetic lifestyles? Are deaths from natural hurricanes acceptable while deaths from those man-made unacceptable? If fossil fuel use determines man-made hurricanes, should we determine the genesis of natural hurricanes and eliminate that cause too?
Applying destruction and death as the measure separating natural from man-made has a serious limitation — seems only after the event occurred is a storm’s causal origins determinable. Much better if we know such a fact aprior. However, if our reactionary steps are to be dependent on a storm’s genesis (man-made — reduce fossil fuel use, natural — ?) what is the pre-event data needed to support a properly informed decision? And about this data, what facts are needed and will collecting it be difficult? Curiously, if a storm is classified as man-made and blamed on fossil fuel burning, I wonder how many years earlier would the burning have had to stop, or to what extent reduced by, for that storm not to have formed? How could we ever answer such a question!
It becomes a bewildering conversation that grows ever more complicated.
Consider this. If specific weather events are getting worse, and we need a return to the “right” level of severity, do we have the accurate statistical records from 250 years ago (or more) clearly documenting worldwide hurricanes and fires and droughts of that pre-industrial age? We need such data, do we not, if our young environmental engineers are to have a target — a bullseye of success — to aim for?
Without knowing this baseline, we face a daunting problem: what tempers us from concluding — potentially endlessly — a direct link between fossil fuel use and individual weather events ascribed arbitrarily as “extreme?” If a clear dichotomy between normal (i.e. absent human contribution) and extreme does not exist — and what a challenge it will be establishing such a line — how are we to rationally pick our appropriate reaction? Lack of clarity on this question is evident today from these two examples: the two consecutive years of flooding along the Saint John river in New Brunswick and a recent airliner flight where passengers sustained injuries resulting from atmospheric turbulence. Whether true or not, for both events a connection was made to anthropogenic caused climate change. Given the intractable job of determining a cause, sadly it seems the temptation will continue to blame fossil fuel use for any destructive storm or fire or drought or related event that feels like it deviates from a “normal” that is held in our ephemeral memories.
Given that rivers have flooded over their banks for eons and the sun has been mixing the atmosphere for even longer we may face, at times, unpleasant earthy environments with or without fossil fuels. For this reason, it would be unfortunate if, in lieu of an understanding of what is natural and what is man-made, we erroneously react to this uncertainty and accept a fanciful believe in a climate utopia only after the last fossil fuel is burned by a human being.
And lastly, it is not beyond reason to think that our modern scientific society — powered to a great degree by fossil fuels — could imagine and develop technological solutions aimed at mitigating the detrimental impact from all storms, whether natural or man-made. Alas, to a large degree this is already true. | https://medium.com/@pbackman/the-right-number-of-hurricanes-47d404c7fb71 | ['Philip Backman'] | 2021-02-10 13:38:32.485000+00:00 | ['Energy', 'Weather', 'Climate'] |
How I Embrace the Suck | How I Embrace the Suck
Have you ever heard of the saying, “Embrace the suck”? Me either, until about a month ago and here I am mind changed, loving life. Not letting the negative chew me up and spit me out. Not allowing the negative things others say and do affect my thoughts or actions. I have chose to be myself, whether others like it or not, to bad for them.
So how did I finally achieve that mindset, you may ask? WELL, I started a new business with a company that truly opened my eyes to what I am really passionate about. With that I knew that my mindset had to change for the better. I knew that my down on myself vibe was not going to show people my passion and that I really wanted to help them in multiple different ways. To be able to help them financially, help them get healthier and help them turn that negative thought around to something positive. So on a timed working zoom with one of my team members, I chose to find a new podcast and listen to something that had to do with personal development. I found a podcast called “Unfuck your Brain” by Kara Loewentheil, and she had an episode named “ Embrace the Suck”. I listened to this episode and my brain just turned the light on.
When I say turned a light on, I mean like a mind blown message came through. A huge change in everything running through my head, like wowzers. That one podcast taught me how to turn every negative thought going through my head into a positive thought without any effort at all. With that being said, now I literally can read something that is negativity impacted and switch it around in my head without evening thinking, and even have one of those slightly annoying positive comments about what was said not being that bad. I sure some people out there get super annoyed with it all but that is just the person that I have become, and there is no going back to what I was before, just moving forward. I mean I even talked at one our team trainings about embracing the suck because it has impacted my vision of the world and I feel that everyone should step out of their comfort zone, be more positive, bring more value to the world. How do you do that? You get out of your comfort zone, you do the things, and you embrace the suck. Plain and simple. Embrace the suck will forever be my motto in life no matter how many people try to bring me down for it because they are stuck in a negative mindset of life.
So to end this I am going to once again tell you to embrace the suck and see how it impacts your life. | https://medium.com/@reasonstosmile/how-i-embrace-the-suck-e0e107f5d540 | ['Reasons To Smile'] | 2021-02-20 04:34:36.533000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Positive Thinking', 'Loving Life', 'Positivity', 'Loving Myself'] |
[Live Stream] Grayson vs Collins Hill | Georgia High School Football 12/30/2020 | Grayson vs Collins Hill | Georgia High School Football 12/30/2020
Rams
13–0
Eagles
12–2
The Collins Hill (Suwanee, GA) varsity football team has a neutral playoff game vs. Grayson (Loganville, GA) on Wednesday, December 30 @ 7p.
Game Details: AAAAAAA championship
This game is a part of the “2020 Georgia High School Football Playoff Brackets: GHSA — AAAAAAA” tournament. | https://medium.com/@ledomff3/live-stream-grayson-vs-collins-hill-georgia-high-school-football-12-30-2020-57498a00ba77 | ['Ledom Ff Sports Live'] | 2020-12-27 07:19:22.450000+00:00 | ['High School Football', 'American Football', 'High School', 'Georgia'] |
// Final Major Project // Research & Design — 05 | Emotion Object Mapping
In order to get a deeper understanding on young adults’ emotion well-being inside a home, I first list out the items that a home contains, then finally selected three objects from different locations and ask them to rate their emotion experience with their bed, desk and sofa from the pre-covid period until now.
Brainstorming the main objects we have inside our home
Turns out that apart from a person who continues to have positive emotion with these objects due to similar life experience, majority of them didn’t feel good about their work desk at home.
For sofa, everyone gave out different answers. Some like their sofa more because they could spend more time there for entertainment and family reunion, while one realised how really uncomfortable the sofa is, or it is just another relaxing spot apart from the bed.
For the bed, the answers were quite different as well. For people who didn’t have much interaction with the bed besides sleeping, they emotion experience towards the bed didn’t change. However, their mental state could also affect how they feel about the object. One participant felt less precious with the bed because she has spent so much time lying on it doing nothing during lockdown, versus, another participant felt more enjoyable staying in bed to reduce stress. | https://medium.com/@amberuxblog/final-major-project-research-design-05-4d4008bcc1 | [] | 2020-12-27 13:56:13.840000+00:00 | ['UX Design', 'Design Thinking', 'Design Process', 'Ux Strategy', 'Wellbeing'] |
Mindfulness Therapy And Cannabis Go Hand In (Relaxed) Hand | Mindfulness therapy can benefit cannabis consumers, whether it be yoga, meditation, or simply walking.
Our thoughts direct and drive our day-to-day experiences much more than many of us realize. Mindfulness therapy helps us tune into these underlying drivers, and when combined with cannabis, the practice can become even more powerful and therapeutic.
Mindfulness practices stem from eastern customs that date back millennia. Upon its arrival to the west in the 1970s, it was a radical, even cultish tradition. But, in the fast-paced nature of 21st-century life, mindfulness has become an essential salvation from the hectic nature of our collective existence.
Whether in the office, the sports field, or in managing family life at home, a mindfulness practice is needed now more than ever.
What is Mindfulness Therapy?
Mindfulness is the awareness that arises when we pay close attention to the present moment. It involves a degree of openness and non-judgemental awareness of the present experience.
Mindfulness therapy isn’t so much concerned with relaxation; instead, it revolves around a focus on increasing awareness of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that impede wellbeing. With regular practice, it’s possible to become more aware of shortcomings, to tweak ingrained behaviors, and put a stop to negative thought patterns.
And in what is good news for cannabis consumers, such practices are often enhanced with the intentioned use of cannabis.
Make a Deal With a Plant: Why Intention Matters
When using cannabis for any form of spiritual practice, intention is of primary importance. Just as with any other plant medicine, those that use cannabis as a spiritual ally maintain an almost sacred relationship with the plant.
By taking a few moments to set an intention and evaluate the appropriateness of medicating, it helps ensure continued mindful use. It’s a powerful habit that’s well worth building. While cannabis is a powerful healing ally, it can just as easily become a crutch to numb out when used without intention.
Mindfulness Therapy Techniques With Cannabis
Cannabis can really enhance any form of mindfulness practice. With its ability to help still the mind, increase awareness, sensual perception, and amplify any underlying emotional state, it can be a potent ally in the quest for inner stillness. Here are some mindfulness techniques that cannabis can help enhance.
Controlled Abdominal Breathing
Controlled breathing is a powerful way to release stress or anxiety. Due to busy modern lifestyles, many tend to practice shallow breathing into the upper chest. By breathing more deeply into the abdomen and feeling into the experience, we send a message to the nervous system that aids in promoting parasympathetic activity - the rest and digest branch of the nervous system.
To reinforce the activity, many find it useful to place a hand on their stomach and feel the deep inhalation. Practicing such breathing techniques with cannabis can allow for a deepening of the experience. It tends to open the patient up to a world of deeper feeling within. Controlled breathing is useful in feeling into where we’re holding onto tension within the body, especially in critical areas like the back of the neck, shoulders, abdomen, and chest. With the enhanced inner awareness that cannabis provides, it becomes much easier to breathe into the tightness and allow it to dissipate back into a state of equilibrium.
Cleansing Through Visualization
Cleansing the body through visualization is a particularly powerful technique under the influence of cannabis. After settling into a meditation routine, and with a quiet mind, use your hands to clean your body from top to bottom. The technique involves imagining a cleansing white energy emanating from your hands and slowly clearing the blockages beginning at the head and working down the face, neck, heart, and abdomen. It may sound far-fetched, but under the influence of cannabis, this can become a powerful cleansing technique for many.
Yoga With Cannabis
Yoga is more popular than ever in the west and for good reason. Not only does it increase flexibility, but it’s also effective at reducing stress, enhancing strength and cardiovascular function, and improving sleep. Do you struggle with motivation, focus, and aligning the breath in your yoga practice? Cannabis may help bring a more mindful approach to the session. Subtle shifts in time perception, coupled with the ability to feel more deeply into bodily sensations can take any ailing yoga practice to the next level.
Walking Meditation
Walking meditation can be a powerful practice with cannabis. It’s simple and effective. It involves walking slowly and trying to feel into every sensation the movement induces in the body. Focus on the soles of the feet, then straight up through the spine.
basically, try and feel how your foot falls on the ground. Then, focus further on how weight shifts from one side of the body to the other. Cannabis can really enhance these perceptions and turn an ordinary mundane task into something exciting and therapeutic.
What Does Science Say About Mindfulness Therapy?
Solid science backs up the wisdom of ancient cultures. The most popular studies to date describe how a mindfulness practice can help offset many of the common problems. This is true whether it be “tuning out” or uncontrolled mind-wandering.
A study published in the PLOS One Journal (2015) described how meditation can help counter habituation, the tendency to stop paying attention to new information in our environment. Another study published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (2012) investigated the benefits of meditation concerning the almost uncontrollable mind-wandering that’s unconsciously driven. Researchers found that mindfulness training can “reduce neural processes associated with mind-wandering and task-independent thoughts.”
A study published in the PLOS One Journal (2012) found that mindfulness practice improves our ability to solve problems. Researchers noted that “mindfulness meditation reduces cognitive rigidity”.
This means it enhances our ability to find novel and adaptive ways of responding to problems presented.
The Primal Need For Stillness
The fast pace of modern life and the associated technological advancements often obscure the time-tested techniques for wellbeing. The ancients knew only too well the importance of stilling the mind and reconnecting with deeper values. Many in the modern world struggle with it. But, the responsible and intentioned use of cannabis can help counteract those forces. And, it can help ensure a firm connection with the deep-rooted need for stillness. | https://medium.com/@rxleafmd/mindfulness-therapy-and-cannabis-go-hand-in-relaxed-hand-d248c26d847 | [] | 2020-12-21 17:19:55.592000+00:00 | ['Cannabis', 'Cannabis Medical', 'Mental Health', 'Mindfulness'] |
My Husband Had an Emotional Affair | They do exist. I know because it happened to me.
Photo by Rémi Walle on Unsplash
It all started when my husband started suddenly receiving late night and early morning text messages. A lot of them. We’d be lying in bed together at night, and the phone on his nightstand would incessantly light up with notifications.
Bing! Bing! Bing!
“Who is that?” I asked.
“No one,” he answered.
It turned out to be the new wife of a friend of ours. A woman who had moved across the country away from all she knew and her entire support system to be with her new husband.
Only the newly blessed union didn’t seem to be working out as planned. He traveled for work and was away much of the time, leaving her isolated and lonely in an unfamiliar town.
In her own husband’s absence, she was now leaning on my husband for emotional support and comradery, sometimes venting to him about her marriage and sharing intimate details of her life and feelings, which always seemed to be caught up in a flux of one crisis or another.
My husband was all too happy for the opportunity to don his Superman cape. He easily slipped into the role of knight in shining armor for his newfound damsel in distress.
The abundant attention, praise, and adoration she lavished upon him quickly became a drug for his broken psyche. | https://medium.com/heart-affairs/my-husband-had-an-emotional-affair-455a2368a00e | ['Kelsey Jane'] | 2020-07-29 05:39:50.861000+00:00 | ['Women', 'Infidelity', 'Sex', 'Relationships', 'Marriage'] |
How Zendesk Change Management Can Benefit Your IT Intensive Organization | Digital transformation is a major undertaking for any organization and after implementation, businesses continue to implement changes to further optimize operations. A robust change management strategy and processes are the key to a successful digital transformation. Zendesk change management enables you to take an effective and efficient approach towards a changing process — whether it is a changing ticketing process or an IT infrastructure change.
Why do organizations need change?
Traditional organizational hierarchies can be a hurdle when it comes to moving forward with the transforming digital world. With agile, disruptive, and innovative businesses in the industry, you need to move quickly in order to stay in the game.
According to IDC, 85% of enterprise decision-makers say they have a time frame of two years to make significant inroads into digital transformation or they will fall behind their competitors and suffer financially.
However, making major business changes is not easy and lack of proper management can lead to major problems. Multiple studies have shown that 75% of the change management initiatives fail. Why is that?
Poor employee adoption, lack of defined processes at every step, usage of outdated tools, lack of an integrated ITAM software, or inadequate focus on communication are some common culprits.
Zendesk change management when integrated with ITAM software streamlines your processes, helps you keep all the relevant information updated, and guides you through every step of the process.
In this blog, we will take a detailed look at how Zendesk change management can make your change management initiatives a success.
Types of Change Management
There are four types of change management initiatives that Zendesk change management can help you with:
1. Standard Changes
Standard changes are the ones that occur frequently in order to keep up with the ever-evolving digital world. These changes are low risk and due to their reoccurrence, organizations already have pre-established procedures for guidance.
The Change Management Wizard Process is perfect for such a scenario where you are going through a standard change and want to achieve maximum efficiency. Zendesk change management capabilities allow you to trigger a workflow that routes implementation actions on the relevant areas or groups.
2. Emergency Changes
Emergency changes are the ones that are urgent and have to be implemented as soon as possible. They may be as a result of a major incident and therefore, such changes have high failure chances.
However, if the procedure proves to be successful, it can be modified into a standard change protocol for when some similar incident pops up again. Zendesk change management allows you to set up the basis for such urgent incidents so you can have a streamlined workflow throughout.
3. Major Changes
As the name suggests, these changes are significant in terms of implementations, risks, and their impact on your business. Zendesk change manager works seamlessly with other apps for processes like tasks, approvals, and calendars to help you execute the change successfully.
Through Zendesk, you can easily generate tickets for approvals which are usually required for such huge implementations. Although the major changes usually differ based on the nature of change, size of the business, and complexity of the change, Zendesk’s easy management system makes this process much easier.
4. Normal Changes
Although these changes are somewhat similar to standard changes, they are more important than the standard ones. A normal change may translate into a change in IT infrastructure or a change to a particular service. These may include hardware, software, networking, or environmental changes. With various Zendesk change management workflows, you can be sure that you successfully execute these changes.
Navigating the way with Zendesk Change Management
Now let’s see how you can implement change in your organization and how Zendesk can help. Before you start off with the process, you need to properly plan the changes, get approvals from higher authorities and implement those changes. This process includes the following steps:
· Submission — The ticket would be initiated within Zendesk ITSM and the necessary information will be extracted from the integrated ITAM knowledgebase. Through Zendesk change management, you would be able to assign or change roles on the ticket, retrieve the users' database from the ITAM tool and delegate the tasks for a streamlined process.
· Planning — In this stage, further backup plans like change rollout plans or associated downtime estimation and other such factors are considered and decided upon. The equipment downtime information is updated on the ITAM tool so nobody checks it out during the management process.
· Approval — Change requests usually require authorization before the implementation phase. With Zendesk, once the ticket has been created, you can easily escalate it for approval. Automating the approval process means that the entire process is up to the pace and no approval requests are being overlooked.
· Implementation — Once authorized, the ticket is handed over for the deployment process. With Zendesk change management making it all easier, you can quickly create tasks, assign and coordinate with different teams and can also set up task dependencies to ensure that nothing is being missed out.
· Review — Upon the completion of the change, the changes are updated on ITAM software, a post-implementation review is carried out before the ticket is closed.
· Closure — You can record the outcome of the entire change management process as successful, failed, or incomplete. Recording these metrics would give you useful data for when the next change process comes along.
If you have integrated your Zendesk ITSM with an ITAM tool, you can also establish roles for change management activities like risk management checks, performance measurement and you can restrict access to authorized people only.
Change Management Best Practices
Following are the ways that can help you get the most out of Zendesk Change management:
1. Understand that every change process is different so identifying the change and its technicalities are important. Identify the risks and the downtime so there are no surprises later.
2. You should have processes rolled out for different types of change processes, save them in your ITAM knowledgebase so you don’t have to start from scratch every single time.
3. While assigning tickets on Zendesk, make sure that you are also assigning roles and delegating responsibilities to speed up and streamline the change process.
4. Put an effective approval mechanism in place so every relevant individual is aware of the changes and their impact before implementation. This can be made easier by integrating your service desk with an ITAM solution.
5. Communicate the expected changes, risks, and downtime with all the people who are going to be affected.
6. Always measure the progress and effectiveness of the change with real-time data tracking.
7. Implement continual maintenance and servicing schedules to ensure that your IT operations run smoothly.
8. Define your key performance indicators (KPIs) so you can demonstrate improvements.
Benefits of Zendesk Change Management with integrated ITAM
A formal change management process empowered through Zendesk should address many of the pain points in your IT operations. Following are a few benefits of Zendesk change management when it is powered with a robust ITAM tool:
· Change management processes help you save time in the long run. Once you have streamlined the processes and have laid down the standard procedures on Zendesk, these processes will become less resource-dependent. You can upload the relevant checklists and documents on the ITAM knowledge base for when the next change management process comes along
· You can schedule the changes and wouldn’t have to worry about rushing the deployments.
· With Zendesk change management tools and everything being tracked through an ITAM tool, you would have fewer change-related incidents.
· It would increase awareness about the change between departments and decrease the risk of missed impact assessments.
· With every step being tracked, you can see every change that has impacted the outcome of a project and can forecast better decisions for next time.
Read More: 6 Ways a Zendesk ITSM Integration With Your ITAM Software Will Benefit Your Business
About AssetSonar
AssetSonar is the leading software license management tool used by IT-intensive organizations and businesses all over the globe.
Sign up today for a free 15-day trial.
For more assistance, drop us an email at [email protected]. You can also visit our blog for detailed support posts.
Join the Conversation: Twitter | Facebook | https://blog.assetsonar.com/zendesk-change-management-264195cc9c70 | ['Assetsonar Team'] | 2021-03-16 12:29:40.697000+00:00 | ['Itsm', 'Best Practices', 'Change Management', 'Itam', 'Service Desk Management'] |
[097] — Office drones | Do you hate your job?
Do you hate the nine to five grind?
Do you hate the commute with hundreds of dreary faces staring at their phones on the train?
What would happen if it ended tomorrow? What if you were given a cardboard box and your marching orders?
Where would you rather be and would it have enough power to get you out of bed every day?
Ever sit at a meeting table and look around at the pale faces, dark shadows under their eyes and expanding paunches? Get the sense we are all dying in here one agenda item at a time?
Our sedentary lifestyles are killing us softly. | https://medium.com/100-naked-words/097-office-drones-1e33ca19b766 | ['Jet Ska'] | 2017-04-16 17:01:01.429000+00:00 | ['Culture', 'Work', 'Work Life Balance', '100 Naked Words'] |
Why Should Small Businesses Be Consistent On Digital Media? | Small businesses can be a unique challenge in many ways and might not be everybody’s cup of tea. Small set ups has to be operated within certain boundaries, which at times can be frustrating. Not to mention the challenge of quality manpower small enterprises always face. Same goes with digital marketing for small businesses. With an appropriate approach, small enterprises can benefit a lot more than they presently do. And they can do that without increasing their current budget and even save substantially on the same. Let’s look at some important benefits digital marketing has to offer to small businesses.
Very Economical
Not only small businesses, but big organizations also prefer this marketing method because of the cost effectiveness it offers. All digital marketing channels and platforms offer great solutions, along with a high ROI.
Maximum and Relevant Leads
In any best or worst scenario, the success of any business lies in its sales figures. And sales relies highly on leads that are generated. Not just that, getting relevant and convertible leads is very important. That’s exactly what channels like SEO do, by attracting direct traffic to your websites and webpages, thus giving you sales leads that really matter.
Social Media
Every business today is putting their best to reach out to customers and engaging them effectively. Doing that consistently, without overdoing it, is very important. Social media gives small businesses a great opportunity to reach out to a huge base that’s readily available. Moreover, it’s not just any customer base out there; there are huge load of people who are literally living on digital media today. It’s up to the small enterprises, to figure how to make the most of this sea of people available on this digital channel.
Customer Retention
Retaining a customer is one of the biggest challenges all organizations, irrespective of size, are facing in today’s business times. For small businesses, retaining customers is as important as it is to acquire. Apart from effective reach out, customer engagement, marketing, advertising, small businesses can also interact with customers on important factors like product feedbacks, reviews, complaints etc. Small enterprises should ensure that they address customer queries and / or suggestions promptly. Such actions helps businesses to develop a great relation with their customers and retain them as well.
On the other hand, it is always wise to be very particular on the digital marketing agency you go with. It has to be at least better than many. | https://medium.com/@vishnukadre1997/why-should-small-businesses-be-consistent-on-digital-media-49197ce59aae | [] | 2021-07-05 11:14:55.748000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Social Media Marketing', 'Digital Marketing', 'Marketing', 'SEO'] |
Custom CRM’s vs the template one. Processes automation during the… | Custom CRM’s vs the template one
While traveling, I was invited to a party that I didn’t count on. To get a good look, I decided to buy a blazer. Of course, I didn’t have time to make an individual cut, so I bought it in a mall. It looks good, sits well, fits almost everything, but it is not perfect. And this is not surprising, because you can not buy products designed for the mass market, which would suit everyone. Yes, for a party is enough, but for a business meeting?
In this article, we will look at such products for the mass market and individual development. However, we’ll compare not blazers but CRM’s.
WHAT IS CRM?
In short, a CRM system is a program for structuring work with clients.
What is the value of CRM systems? They store data about current and potential customers from various sources and optimize processes in sales, marketing and customer service. It’s central storage of information about them, transactions and other influences with a user interface with a set of features.
Regardless of the industry, optimizing customer relationships can be a lifeline during an economic recession. According to Bain & Company, in financial services, a 5% increase in customer retention produces more than a 25% increase in profit.
WHO WILL BENEFIT FROM THE CRM SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION?
Owners, founders and top managers of the business will get:
Control over indicators of operational work;
Quality analytics;
Systematization of the client base;
Planning and forecasting tool;
An additional measure of information security;
A tool for personnel management and task setting, as well as their delegation;
An information base for marketing, promotions and sales development.
On the other hand, employees, managers or specialists will also find a CRM-system as a useful working tool. With its help, it is possible to increase control over their own work and reduce responsibility for potential data loss. Moreover, it is more effective to build relationships with customers and set reminders of important events.
Even HR specialists CAN find CRM beneficial. Using it, they can easily create cards of employees, make notes on them, and evaluate each person’s effectiveness in the company, if it has this functionality.
However, the system does not work by itself ─ it is a tool. Its benefits can be obtained only after the proper implementation and staff training.
What functions and modules should be in your system? Ask yourself:
Which parts of the company’s business process architecture are weakest?
In which tasks, there is a high probability of error due to the human factor?
Do I need methods for collecting, structuring and storing information?
Do I need mechanisms for generating reports of a different type, evaluation of time costs?
What are the main factors that reduce the efficiency of businesses?
3 TYPES OF CRM PURPOSES
We can identify three types of purposes, whose functions often overlap.
Operational. Emphasize the automation of marketing, sales, service processes and achieving short-term goals. Transactions and documents are stored here. Newsletters, etc., are also conducted from it. Reporting in such systems is related, but not leading functionality.
Analytical type of system receives and analyzes the client’s data. Suitable for complex integration, for example, with the online store payment system. In other words, analytical CRM may serve the purpose of segmentation, assortment management, etc.
Strategic. Synchronize communications with customers and partners through different channels: phone calls, emails, chat-bots and social networks. Such CRM-systems may include a personal client cabinet. It is also possible to develop a set of components for project and task management.
There are two ways to implement the system: to buy a ready-made solution or order custom development.
READY-MADE SOLUTIONS
Ready-to-use CRMs include a set of essential tools. They often cover standard business processes and don’t delve into specific industries. Such an option is quite affordable and suits companies that wish to automate one or two aspects of work (such as conducting customer transactions and making calls).
Some solutions offer system additions. In this case, ready components are adjusted to the specifics of business under the requirements specification. The main task of the client is to correctly collect the requirements and present them to the developer.
Benefits:
Cover most of the needs of businesses in favoured industries, such as restaurants and retail stores;
Customer support, but most often you have to pay extra for it;
You can start using it faster. It only takes time to implement and set up.
Drawbacks:
Pre-made solutions are designed for the bulk consumer. They may lack the features you really need. The initial fee for a CRM system is less than for a custom one. But most providers provide their software on a subscription basis, which means you have to pay every month. Different functional modules, technical support and integration can be paid for as separate fees. The list of applications for syncing is often limited. If your business grows, along with the client base’s growth and the number of users of the system increases the fee. Moreover, CRM vendors do not always disclose the full list of paid services on their websites. For example, quite accidentally, you may find a surprise like a fee for overstoring. In the case of template CRM, you rely entirely on its provider. You do not get full control over the software and the accumulated database.
There are also free CRMs, but they are usually limited functionality. For example, it can be a version without technical support, updates, technical limitations, and advertising.
CUSTOM CRM
In a custom system, you can implement the most necessary functions for a particular business. What’s essential, not only the features you need, but also the user-friendly ones. Customized solutions fit those who:
needs to implement unique functions;
works in narrow niches;
interested in maximum security;
has developed complex business processes;
has accumulated considerable data about customers.
Custom CRM gives businesses the flexibility to adapt to new realities. The system can be developed to suit your needs and respond to challenges more effectively.
It’s possible to create your own unique process of working with the clients, where it’s essential to be on time with them when they’re ready to buy. Moreover, to work with the customers after they have already purchased. After all, it’s much easier for them to buy again than a cold customer who doesn’t know you and doesn’t trust you yet.
If many people are working on a project, you can implement a system of rules. For example, suppose a specialist doesn’t respond to an assignment within 24 hours. In that case, a notice should be sent to his or her supervisor.
Mobile adaptability
Smartphone access allows you to connect to the system via a mobile or adaptive cloud CRM web app. The main advantage is that sales managers can use the system’s tools and data, even on the road while communicating with clients. The mobile system can also manage schedules, analyze data, generate reports, and upload and download files. Because employees can get help in real-time, customers will always receive high-quality service.
Webmil web-production offers progressive web app development (PWA). This technology visually and functionally transforms a website into an app (mobile app in a browser). Thus, you can open the application with a mobile browser. For example, You can view previously downloaded information even without being connected to the Internet. You can even temporarily save a certain amount of data downloaded immediately during the next connection to the network.
Benefits
No monthly fee means savings in the long run. After a one-time investment in development, the software is yours.
The private developer can install additional features to the custom application on request.
The developer takes care of the migration of existing databases and synchronizes the new CRM or ERP with your old systems.
Custom software is developed, taking into account the niche, structure, and business processes of a particular company.
One of the disadvantages of custom systems is their cost. The initial investment will definitely be higher than the template version. It depends on the complexity of the project and the rate of the developer. Among the disadvantages are usually mentioned in a more extended period of implementation. After all, the program must first be designed and developed, and only then — to start the implementation and configuration.
The period of development and implementation is directly proportional to the price, because it depends on the complexity, the need to integrate with other applications, etc. However, it’s possible to create an MVP for CRM, a pivotal functionality to get started. This will allow you to launch a working system in a tight timeframe and add new features as needed.
CONCLUSION
Automation during the recession and its aftermath is one of the right ways to overcome it. And CRM is the optimal tool to work with the team and clients to retain them and further business development in 2021.
What CRM to choose depends on the specifics of a particular business. The choice may be influenced by the turnover, security requirements and the need to implement unique features. Unfortunately, template CRM solutions can not be fully adapted to all business processes, so we recommend you pay attention to custom.
The development of a working system can be ordered from us. We know that the ability to work “from anywhere in the program” is vital. Therefore we provide a function to create the necessary information cards from the point in the system where you locate.
We dig deep into our clients’ business goals and processes to develop solutions specifically for them. The goal is to automate the office routine and get rid of the human factor. We also offer system protection against hacking and employee training. | https://medium.com/@webmil/custom-crms-vs-the-template-one-who-wins-aef64d49d6da | [] | 2020-12-24 10:02:33.752000+00:00 | ['CRM'] |
The First Signs of Alcoholic Liver Damage Are Not in the Liver | The First Signs of Alcoholic Liver Damage Are Not in the Liver
Myfather died of alcoholic liver cirrhosis four years ago. It came as a surprise to all of us, even though it was clear he had a severe drinking problem for decades. It was especially surprising to me, as a former nurse and a recovering alcoholic. You would think I’d know more about liver problems and alcohol use than the average person. But the truth is, in the months before his death, I had no idea my father’s liver was struggling at all. Most people know about cirrhosis, but few people know how a liver goes from early damage to end-stage liver cirrhosis.
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The combination of my father’s death and my personal background lit a fire in me to know more. He was admitted to the hospital on June 24, 2016, and he died on July 18. Only 24 days passed between the first sign there was a problem and his subsequent death.
Now, hearing that he was in end-stage cirrhosis didn’t surprise me, given his heavy drinking. What did surprise me was that he’d visited several doctors and specialists in the months before his death, and no one knew his liver was struggling either.
So what happened? Does end-stage liver cirrhosis really sneak up that fast? Were there other signs that would have alerted someone to his failing liver?
As for why the doctors and specialists didn’t know what was happening, that mystery resolved reasonably quickly. The plain truth is that alcoholics rarely divulge the amount and frequency of their drinking to their doctors. This was the case for my dad. He had many health issues that he was trying to solve, but he protected his drinking habit fiercely. So he refused to spill the beans, even when it mattered.
The problem is that liver damage has numerous multifaceted symptoms that are confusing and associated with many other illnesses. Unless a doctor knows that the patient is an alcoholic, they may not know how to interpret what’s happening until it’s too late.
As he was dying, my father told me that he didn’t think to tell the doctors how much he was drinking. He said it was as if he blanked out and “forgot” to mention it. As crazy as that sounds, this strange “forgetting” is a common part of the alcoholic mindset. It may also be due to the metabolic and physical changes of cirrhosis itself.
There are many signs of liver problems, but oddly, none seem to point to the liver at first. And in fact, many of the first signs of liver damage occur in other parts of the body. Knowing these signs may help educate alcoholics and their families if they want to understand their risk of developing liver cirrhosis.
Liver damage has numerous multifaceted symptoms that are confusing and associated with many other illnesses. Unless a doctor knows that the patient is an alcoholic, they may not know how to interpret what’s happening until it’s too late.
Digestive signs
The liver plays a huge part in our digestive process. It filters out all toxins from food as well as helping to break down fats and glucose.
When a liver starts to slow down due to significant damage, it will reduce its digestive work. Instead, it will divert its energy toward vital functions like metabolizing medications and filtering toxins.
This means that symptoms like bloating, nausea, vomiting, gas, and diarrhea will start to increase. Over time, eating becomes more challenging. In the later stages of liver cirrhosis, toxins that can’t be filtered out begin to build in the bloodstream, which causes more nausea.
Cognitive signs
Although confusion and brain fog happen in end-stage liver cirrhosis, they can also be early signs.
The liver is responsible for filtering dangerous substances in the blood. It also helps regulate hormones, blood glucose, and vitamin absorption. In the early stages of liver damage, these processes can be interrupted. Inevitably, this affects our brain and nervous system.
This means that early liver problems can make you feel tired, confused, slow, and foggy. You may have some memory issues as well.
Neuromuscular signs
The liver stores vitamins required for the functioning of many organs and systems in the body — one of them is vitamin B1 or thiamine. A deficiency in this particular vitamin has been documented in many alcoholics with or without liver damage.
Unfortunately, alcohol inhibits the absorption of thiamine in the intestine. Over time, as the liver becomes damaged, it can no longer store thiamine in enough quantities. Thiamine deficiency is responsible for many neurological issues in people with alcoholism.
Symptoms of thiamine deficiency range from mild to severe and include things like: confusion, mental fog, lack of balance, pain and numbness in hands and feet, muscle weakness, rapid heart rate, digestive problems, flushing, and involuntary eye movements.
Thiamine deficiency happens in almost every alcoholic who consumes frequent and large amounts of alcohol. And if thiamine deficiency due to alcoholism is discovered, you can be sure the liver is suffering damage at the same time.
Many of the first signs of liver damage occur in other parts of the body.
Vascular signs
All alcohol consumption can lead to blood vessel dilation, causing flushing in the face and hands. Over time, this can cause damage leading to permanent redness in the face. Although many alcoholics have rosacea or spider-like veins on their faces, this is often benign.
However, spider angiomas are different from rosacea or spiderlike veins. They’re circular and have a central point called a spider nevus that is darker than the rest of the lesion. Spider angiomas are a sign of liver disease and can be present in the early stages. They often progress to more extensive and more numerous lesions.
Spider angiomas are caused by increased estrogen levels in the blood. When the liver becomes damaged, it can’t properly metabolize estrogens, which causes them to build up in the body.
Many women who are pregnant or taking birth control pills may have a few spider angiomas. However, in alcoholic liver disease, these lesions are often more frequent and accompanied by red palms and varicose veins in the esophagus.
These are a few of the main signs of alcoholic liver damage that happen outside of the liver. It’s important to know this because most of us have no idea how the liver functions and how it communicates distress.
The liver itself doesn’t show signs like pain or swelling in the early stages of liver damage. This contrasts with other organs like the heart or stomach, where any damage will emit pain or symptoms directly from these organs.
What happens with liver damage is that its many diverse functions become interrupted, causing symptoms in other parts of the body. This may explain why most people never think they have a problem with their liver.
Unfortunately, patients with alcoholism are rarely educated about these issues. This is because they often don’t reveal their drinking, to begin with. And even if they do, the symptoms are widespread and complex, which makes patient education challenging.
My goal in writing articles like this is to help educate regular people about alcoholic liver disease to understand their health and make better decisions.
It’s hard to say if my father would have changed his drinking habits if he knew more about his vague and complicated symptoms. But I think having proper education would have certainly helped him understand his risks and health problems better. | https://medium.com/@barbarajkillerd393/the-first-signs-of-alcoholic-liver-damage-are-not-in-the-liver-8d03e1683dfd | [] | 2020-12-25 19:23:46.409000+00:00 | ['Alcohol', 'Health', 'Body', 'Mental Health', 'Addiction'] |
Nazis and cryptocurrency: the evolution of Telegram | Nazis and cryptocurrency: the evolution of Telegram
How a tiny technology company became a platform for the far right, challenged authoritarian governments, and invaded the cryptocurrency world.
On March 24, Timothy Wilson, a 36-year-old white supremacist who had been on federal law enforcement’s radar for at least seven months, died in an exchange of gunfire with an FBI tactical team in Belton, Missouri, about 20 miles south of Kansas City.
Wilson, according to federal agents, was attempting to create a car bomb to use on the regional hospital in Belton, which he assumed was caring for coronavirus patients.
If you’re wondering what white supremacists see in the pandemic that might advance their cause, Wilson made it clear in a post on the messaging platform Telegram:
“If you don’t think this whole thing was engineered by Jews as a power grab, here is more proof of their plans…Jews have been playing the long game we are the only ones standing in their way,” he wrote under the name “Werewolfe 84”, in a post uncovered by The Informant, a website that reports on hate groups.
Timothy Wilson (Source: Facebook)
When you’re posting a selfie or sharing a cat video, Telegram probably isn’t the first social app that comes to mind. Unless you’re a true member of the digerati, you probably haven’t even heard of it.
But Telegram has an estimated 300 million users worldwide — the vast majority not white supremacists — and is growing. It may never become your favorite social media platform, but there’s a lot to like about Telegram.
It’s completely free and, unlike other social media, doesn’t vacuum up private information and bombard you with ads. It has also taken the right side in privacy fights with oppressive governments like Russia and Iran.
But there’s also the fact that the more unsavory groups banned from platforms like Facebook and Twitter — ISIS, Nazis, the far right conspiracy group QAnon — have all found a home on Telegram. The extremists have been so at home on Telegram that some refer to it as “Terrorgram”.
Telegram’s open door policy for extremists has long been known to law enforcement, journalists and academics. But Telegram may now be on the way to becoming a cryptocurrency trading platform, which could open up new avenues of financing for those very same hate groups.
And that’s something new and potentially troubling.
“Telegram has become a petri dish for extremism,” said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University-San Bernardino.
“The introduction of crypto currency can create a whole lot of networking that wasn’t previously there,” Levin said. “If propaganda is the motor oil of extremism, financing will be the gasoline.”
The Telegram story
Telegram founder Pavel Durov (Source: LinkedIn)
In 2006, Pavel Durov founded the Russian social network VKontakte, often shortened to “VK”, which was so successful that it became known as “the Russian Facebook.”
By 2014, after repeated disputes with the Russian security service, the FSB, VK had been targeted for acquisition by two companies with ties to President Vladimir Putin.
Durov lost control of his company, but ended up with a nice payout. According to the Moscow Times, he sold his 12 percent stake in VK for $300 million.
And Durov had a surprise. He and his brother Nikolai, a math and computer science whiz with expertise in cryptography, had been working on a new encrypted messaging service: Telegram, which was specifically designed to thwart the prying eyes of government security services.
Sometime around 2014, the Durovs and the Telegram team departed Mother Russia. In 2018, after refusing to provide encryption keys to the FSB, Telegram was banned by Russian government Internet censors.
The ban was never entirely successful. Telegram adopted a strategy of hopping from one proxy server to another, staying a step ahead of Russian censors. It remained available for most Russians and was even used by members of the government.
Last month, the Russian government lifted the ban on Telegram, effectively admitting that it had been defeated by Telegram’s hide-and-seek strategy.
“The Digital Resistance movement doesn’t end with last week’s ceasefire in Russia,” Durov wrote on his personal Telegram channel. “It is just getting started — and going global.”
Over its short life, Telegram has become known for two policies, both grounded in Durov’s bedrock libertarian philosophy:
A refusal to cooperate with snooping by governments all over the world (Russia, Iran, Indonesia, Bahrain, China, Pakistan, India), resulting in it being banned in many countries.
An open door policy to groups like ISIS, Nazis, and white supremacists, along with the far-right conspiracy group QAnon. Many of the groups landed on Telegram after being banned from platforms like Facebook or Twitter.
“I think that privacy, ultimately, and our right for privacy is more important than our fear of bad things happening, like terrorism,” Durov said at a conference in 2015.
But there’s more to Telegram than Nazis, terrorists and conspiracy theorists.
Pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong use Telegram to share information on abusive police officers. It has also become a popular messaging platform for the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency community. And respected news outlets like The New York Times, Bloomberg and Forbes magazine use it to promote their content, much as they do on Twitter.
Like many tech entrepreneurs, Durov has become something of a celebrity. In 2017, Bloomberg News reported spotting him “half-naked” on the hookup site Tinder.
In March, he shared wellness and lifestyle tips with his followers on Telegram. “In the last 15 years, I’ve had no alcohol, no caffeine, no meat, no pills and no fast food,” he wrote, adding that he limited his diet to nothing but fish and seafood.
To “improve will power,” Durov swims in the icy waters of Finland or Switzerland every winter. “If you ever faced the necessity to stay in a lake with a thin layer of ice on top for a few minutes, you are less likely to procrastinate when it comes to starting on a boring but necessary project,” he wrote.
When you sign up for Telegram, you get the following greeting: “Telegram is free and will always be free.“ It carries no ads. And some tests that I ran detected no personal data being sucked up for sale to advertisers.
All of which is laudable.
But it raises the question of how, exactly, Telegram stays afloat and continues to grow.
Monetizing 300 million free users
It’s not easy to determine where Telegram is actually located.
In addition to the server hopping strategy that defeated Russian censors, corporate records and statements by the company have linked it to locations in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Singapore and Dubai.
Currently, its corporate office appears to be in London, with an operations center in Dubai. Durov is a citizen of Saint Kitts and Nevis, which is part of the British Commonwealth.
Telegram is not a publicly traded company, which means it is not required to publicly disclose its finances. But there are hints about what keeps it afloat, the first being the reported $300 million payout Durov received when he sold his stake in VK.
“Pavel Durov, who shares our vision, supplied Telegram with a generous donation, so we have quite enough money for the time being. If Telegram runs out, we will introduce non-essential paid options to support the infrastructure and finance developer salaries. But making profits will never be an end-goal for Telegram,” the company said in a statement on its website.
There’s also the fact that Telegram appears to run lean and agile. The corporate analysis site Crunchbase estimates that it has somewhere between 11 and 50 employees.
And it’s not known for burning piles of cash acquiring other companies and products. Since its rollout in 2014, Telegram has remained laser focused on its core business: secure, private messaging.
Finally, and most interestingly, there’s Telegram’s cryptocurrency venture, rolled out in 2018, known as the “Telegram Open Network” or simply “TON”. The TON idea was to sell a blockchain-enabled crypto currency, much like Bitcoin or Ethereum, but known as “Grams”.
Visual representation of the “Gram” (Source: Bitcoinwiki.org)
Users would be able to buy, sell and invest in Grams. And — most important — each of Telegram’s 300 million users would have an online “wallet” that could be used to buy and sell goods and services with the cryptocurrency. If “User A” wanted to transfer funds to “User B”, it could all be done seamlessly using Grams and the Telegram platform.
The practical effect of offering the groups who populate the darker, extremist corners of Telegram easy access to cryptocurrency may be best illustrated by a white supremacist group known as the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM).
RIM, which seeks to re-establish a Russian monarchy, offers paramilitary training to extremists from Russian and other western European counties. In 2016 and 2017, two members of the far right Nordic Resistance Movement, who had been trained by RIM, carried out a series of bombings in Sweden. The targets included two sites housing asylum seekers.
In April, the U.S. government designated RIM a terrorist organization and placed sanctions on it, including a ban on any material support of the organization. But if that support were to come in the form of cryptocurrency, it’s likely that the transaction would already be complete by the time it was detected. The sanctions would be defeated.
And RIM, as it happens, is already on Telegram. It maintains an active recruiting channel, which is updated several times a day and has 487 subscribers.
Through analysis of blockchain data, it is sometimes possible to identify an account holder with “a high degree of mathematical certainty, “ said Hans-Jakob Schindler, a senior director at the Counter Extremism Project, an international policy organization that studies the extremist ideologies and financing.
“However, there is still a legal question whether such an analysis would be admissible in a court of law.”
Cryptocurrency ventures are often funded by an “initial coin offering” or ICO, which is much like the initial public offering that comes when a new stock goes on the market. The difference is that investors are buying coins, in this case Grams, instead of stock.
For the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Telegram ICO was in fact exactly like an IPO, except that the offering had not been properly approved and registered for sale with federal regulators. And for the SEC, that made it illegal.
By the time the SEC went to court in October 2019, seeking an order to halt the ICO, Telegram had already raised $1.7 billion from early investors. And according to the SEC suit, Telegram would soon be able to “flood” U.S. markets with Grams.
“Once Grams reach the public markets, it will be virtually impossible to unwind the Offering, given that many purchasers’ identities will be shrouded in secrecy, and given the variety of unregulated markets where Grams may be sold, including platforms that promise anonymity and encryption capability to mask transactions,” the SEC suit alleged.
A federal judge in New York blocked any further sale of Grams, which might have put an end to the prospect of Telegram’s 300 million users — white supremacists and QAnon among them — having easy access to encrypted financial transactions.
Or maybe not.
On April 30, Telegram announced that it would not be issuing Grams. But the software developed for selling Grams, including the “wallets” for every Telegram user, had already been made widely available by its developers on the open source sharing platform GitHub.
Within a month, at least three new initiatives based on the software developed by Telegram had appeared. And one, the TON Chinese Community, claims among its members companies offering a “TON mobile wallet” and an “open source client for Telegram.”
Telegram already offers a feature called “Bot Payments”, which allows developers offering goods and services to attach a “Pay” button to the bottom of their messages. When users tap the button, they are prompted for credit card and shipping information.
“Then you get what you paid for. Voila!” according to the Telegram promotion.
“Telegram is an open platform, so bot developers can implement the necessary APIs and accept payments from users starting right now, without lengthy approval dramas,” according to the promotion.
It is uncertain at this point whether the open APIs that Telegram already offers, in concert with the TON software, could be used by independent developers to offer cryptocurrency transactions to Telegram users. But a TON whitepaper published by Telegram said: “All these services can be integrated with third-party messaging and social networking applications, uniting the centralized and decentralized worlds.”
Telegram says it has no involvement in efforts to revive TON.
As for the $1.7 billion that Telegram took in from initial investors, it agreed to repay $1.2 billion to investors as part of its settlement with the SEC. It also agreed to pay an $18 million fine to the SEC.
“We look forward to continuing to pursue our other projects and avenues for innovation, and we hope the regulatory environment for blockchain technology in the US becomes more favorable for others in the future,” Durov said in a statement.
Far right groups
On June 21, the FBI and federal prosecutors announced that Ethan Melzer, a U.S. Army private stationed in Italy, had been charged with using an encrypted messaging application to share sensitive information about his unit’s upcoming movements with the Order of 9 Angels, also known as “O9A”.
O9A is described in court papers as a “Satanic anarchist organization” believing, among other things, that “Adolf Hitler was sent by our gods to guide us to greatness.”
According to the court papers filed against Melzer in Manhattan, he confessed that his goal was to “to facilitate a mass casualty attack” on his Army unit. The charges against Melzer do not mention Telegram specifically, but there are indicators pointing to Telegram as the platform used to pass the information to O9A.
First, the charges state that Melzer used the alias Etil Reggad. A check of Telegram shortly after the charges were announced turned up a user named Etil Reggad, pictured wearing a black ski mask.
Etil Reggad user information on Telegram. (Source: Telegram)
Second, the charges state that some of the planning for the attack took place on a messaging channel used by a neo-Nazi group known as the RapeWaffen Division, whose members promote rape as a weapon in race war and have connections to O9A. The RapeWaffen Division also has maintained presence on Telegram, although its public channel is no longer accessible.
Archived posting on the RapeWaffen Division’s Telegram channel (Source: ADL)
Telegram’s basic messaging features place it pretty much squarely in the same space as other encrypted services like Signal. But it has steadily added security and privacy features, such as end-to-end encryption of secret chats and the ability to easily delete messages across devices.
All of Telegram’s security features, however, don’t help white supremacists in their plotting if they aren’t careful about who they communicate with. And in at least two recent cases, they haven’t been.
The charges against Melzer state that while plotting the mass casualty attack on his Army unit, he was actually communicating with an FBI informant. Timothy Wilson, the white supremacist killed in a shootout with the FBI while planning an attack on a hospital in Missouri, had also been in touch with an FBI informant.
Levin sees the aggregation of extremists on Telegram as a tradeoff. “They’re obviously easier to track when they’re all on a large platform. But it’s also a bigger pool for them to recruit from,” he said.
In 2015, Telegram added a feature known as “broadcast channels”, which allows users to broadcast messages to unlimited numbers of followers, much as they can on Twitter. That feature is a benefit for groups seeking to recruit new followers.
“For clandestine radical right extremist groups, these public Telegram channels are indispensable for spreading their memes, forwarding content from similar channels and attracting new recruits,” wrote Megan Squire, a computer science professor at Elon University who tracks radical right activity online.
Telegram offers other benefits to its users, including the ability to store and share books, instruction manuals, videos and other content. A study by the Combatting Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy found that the file sharing feature had been particularly useful to the Islamic State and its followers. “Telegram has changed the landscape of instructional material distribution by developing a platform that combines extensive file sharing capabilities
in multiple file formats with lax regulation,” the study found.
Last year, Telegram apparently decided that when it comes to ISIS, there are limits. Europol, which acts as an information exchange for law enforcement agencies in the European Union, reported in November that it had collaborated with Telegram on the removal of terrorist content from the platform.
The Europol statement didn’t mention ISIS. But the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks radical right and jihadi groups online, reported that ISIS channels and accounts were in fact disappearing from Telegram, along with the accounts of many administrators of the channels.
“It’s unclear how Telegram’s removal algorithm worked, specifically, but it was far more targeted than anything the company had employed before,” SITE founder Rita Katz wrote in WIRED last month.
On June 23, there was further news about Telegram that might be alarming to extremists. The Russian news site KOD.RU reported that a database with information on several million Telegram users had leaked and been posted on the dark web.
No discussion of extremist groups on Telegram would be complete without touching on QAnon, the conspiracy minded group best known for spreading the theory that Democratic party leaders and government officials are members of an international pedophilia ring.
QAnon channel on Telegram (Source:Telegram)
QAnon and its followers, like other extremist groups, have been tossed from Facebook and Twitter. And like the others, they found a home on Telegram. QAnon maintains a channel called “Q Alerts” with 6,397 followers. Its on that channel that new statements from the group and its anonymous leader “Q” are announced to followers.
The FBI, in a law enforcement bulletin last year, described QAnon’s beliefs as follows:
“An anonymous government official known as ‘Q’ posts classified information online to reveal a covert effort, led by President Trump, to dismantle a conspiracy involving ‘deep state’ actors and global elites allegedly engaged in an international child sex trafficking ring.”
It may sound ludicrous, but the FBI found that such theories from the political fringe are likely to “motivate some domestic extremists, wholly or in part, to commit criminal and sometimes violent activity.”
A QAnon follower with more than a dozen knives was arrested by New York City police in April after threatening in social media posts to kill former Vice President Joe Biden.
A month earlier, a Staten Island man, said by his lawyer to be influenced by QAnon, was arrested and charged with the murder of a Gambino crime family underboss.
Recently, some of the best known far right channels have been removed from Telegram, including “RapeKrieg” and “Terrorwave Refined.” It’s not clear whether Telegram is launching the sort of board cleanup effort that it used against ISIS, or is simply targeting a few of the worst offenders.
“It’s worth noting that there are several other channels still up that are part of the ‘Terrorgram’ network, which raises questions about why those were not removed,” Joshua Fisher-Birch, a research analyst with the Counter Extremism Project, wrote in an email.
“In short, this is a first step, but it’s unclear what happens from here.” | https://medium.com/the-innovation/nazis-and-cryptocurrency-the-evolution-of-telegram-10b30681c240 | ['Ray Robinson'] | 2020-07-20 18:10:35.586000+00:00 | ['White Supremacy', 'Telegram', 'Social Media', 'Cyrptocurrency', 'Technology'] |
The Fireholder | “One more story father. WIll you please?” The wise eyes of the Hayr-thien considered the young girl from a deeply lined face. A soft smile formed on his lips. Drawing her close to him he replied,”The sun is yet above the trees, though night will draw soon. And yet, I believe there is time for one more tale. But tonight I am not your father, and you are not my daughter. You are Maella of the Great Forest, and tonight you hold the fire.” Slowly and gently he pulled a great cloak about his shoulders made from the bone-white feathers of Ghost Owls. “Come,” he said. He turned to leave the hut, but the girl caught his hand. Against her will small tears welled in her eyes. “Will I still be your daughter even after I’ve held the fire?” He turned and knelt before her. “Sweet Maella. Until the last tree of the Great Forest falls you are my daughter. Until the stars burn out and night is forever I am your father. And I love you.” Maella squeezed him tight, allowing herself a few more tears, but only a few.
Outside, the sun could barely be seen atop the tree line. The first stars of twilight were beginning to shine through the orange and gold haze of sunset. “Long ago,” the Hayr-thien said,” before the sun burned in the sky and the Earth had taken form there was a goddess, Laylannea, who fell in love with a god named Alluvian. So great was their love that their passion ignited the Sun. But as the ages grew long and the Earth had formed, Alluvian grew restless. He told Laylannea that he wished to explore the heavens, but that one day he’d return. Before leaving he fashioned the Moon as a gift and a promise. Alluvian said that he would never go so far that he could no longer see the light of the Moon, and that he would use it to find his way back to her. And so he became known as Alluvian the Starstrider. Great was Laylannea’s sorrow and numerous were her tears. Her tears watered the Earth, giving life to the Great Forest. After centuries of waiting, with no sign of her lover, she began to grow fearful for his safety. She went searching throughout the heavens scattering her tears across the sky. Even now they still twinkle and shine each night. Yet the Sun remains to warm us, and the Moon remains to guide us. A reminder to us that once there was only darkness, but love brought light to the heavens and the Earth.” He handed a blazing torch to Maella. “Fire protects and guides us too when the darkness comes. It is the only thing that holds them at bay. Tonight you will wield it and give our people safety.”
Maella took the torch proudly, feeling the smoothness of the well-shaped wood and the grooves from the intricate patterns carved along its length. The two walked to the edge of the village where the Great Forest grew thick, stretching on to the horizon and beyond. Passing into the trees, all fell deeply silent. The Moon was now shining brightly in the sky and Laylannea’s tears shined across the black bowl of the firmament, and yet they could see none of it. The trees of the Great Forest towered as high as a hundred men. Many were so thick that thirty men could hug the width of their trunks and never touch one another. They were as ancient as time itself. The walk seemed to stretch on for an eternity, until at last, by torchlight, Maella could make out a ladder, hewn of wood and woven cord, hanging from the largest tree she had ever seen. Even amongst giants, it appeared massive. The Hayr-thien stood by watching thoughtfully as Maella began the dangerous climb, still clutching the torch in one hand.
The climb went slowly. Only once did she slip. About halfway up she misjudged the distance to the next rung and lost footing. Her heart lurched into her throat, but she caught herself with her free arm. She held the torch firmly though, collected herself, and pressed on. Finally her hand reached the last rung, and she pulled herself up onto a large platform. The platform was anchored to the tree and stretched two thirds of its circumference. Seven large braziers sat evenly spaced along the length of the decking. To her right there was a large pile of firewood. She set about placing wood in the braziers and lighting each one in turn. The darkness was heavy now and the light was a welcome sight. It wouldn’t be long now until one of them came. Maella had never seen one before, but every night since she was a little girl she heard their thunderous footsteps, and the heaving sigh of their breath. Even now, the sounds sent shivers down her spine. Sometimes her father would take her into the forest at daybreak and show her the gashes, high up in the trees where their massive bulk had rubbed off chunks of bark and wood. And tonight they would come again, crashing slowly and breathing heavily, moving as giant phantoms through the heavy black. But tonight she held the fire. And the fire always pushed them back. She sat next to the middle brazier wrapping her arms around her knees. From this height she could just make out the Moon through the dense canopy. She pondered the tale her father had told her earlier. If it were true, she saw little comfort in the promise of a parting gift. One that had remained unrequited for centuries amidst tears of sorrow. But mostly she waited, fighting back her own tears. She was the fire holder, the guardian of her people, and guardians did not cry.
Far below, the Hayr-thien still stood, watching until the seventh fire began to burn. Off to his left and right he knew the other fires were being lit now. A ring of light to encircle the village. At last he turned to leave, a pale black form in the dark. His great Ghost Owl cloak made no sound as he walked out of sight. But somewhere far off in the wood, as faint as a whisper but as deep as thunder, he could hear the footsteps of giants. | https://medium.com/fictionhub/the-fireholder-cec737feefa0 | ['Fiction Hub'] | 2016-09-27 17:46:15.561000+00:00 | ['Short Story', 'Fiction'] |
LightGBM, XGBoost and CatBoost — Kaggle — Santander Challenge | LightGBM Model Training
Fundamentals of LightGBM Model
It is a gradient boosting model that makes use of tree based learning algorithms. It is considered to be a fast processing algorithm.
While other algorithms trees grow horizontally, LightGBM algorithm grows vertically, meaning it grows leaf-wise and other algorithms grow level-wise. LightGBM chooses the leaf with large loss to grow. It can lower down more loss than a level wise algorithm when growing the same leaf.
Source of Image
Light GBM is prefixed as Light because of its high speed. Light GBM can handle the large size of data and takes lower memory to run.
Another reason why Light GBM is so popular is because it focuses on accuracy of results. LGBM also supports GPU learning and thus data scientists are widely using LGBM for data science application development.
Leaf growth technique in LightGBM
LightGBM uses leaf-wise (best-first) tree growth. It chooses to grow the leaf that minimizes the loss, allowing a growth of an imbalanced tree. Because it doesn’t grow level-wise, but leaf-wise, over-fitting can happen when data is small. In these cases, it is important to control the tree depth.
When to use LightGBM ?
LightGBM is not preferred for a small volume of datasets as it can easily overfit small data due to its sensitivity. Hence, it generally advised for data having more than 10,000+ rows, though there is no fixed threshold that helps in deciding the usage of LightGBM.
What are LightGBM Parameters?
While, LightGBM has more than 100 parameters that are given in the documentation of LightGBM, let’s checkout the most important ones.
Control Parameters
Max depth: It gives the depth of the tree and also controls the overfitting of the model. If you feel your model is getting overfitted lower down the max depth.
Min_data_in_leaf: Leaf minimum number of records also used for controlling overfitting of the model.
Feature_fraction: It decides the randomly chosen parameter in every iteration for building trees. If it is 0.7 then it means 70% of the parameter would be used.
Bagging_fraction: It checks for the data fraction that will be used in every iteration. Often, used to increase the training speed and avoid overfitting.
Early_stopping_round: If the metric of the validation data does show any improvement in last early_stopping_round rounds. It will lower the imprudent iterations.
Lambda: It states regularization. Its values range from 0 to 1.
Min_gain_to_split: Used to control the number of splits in the tree.
Core Parameters
Task: It tells about the task that is to be performed on the data. It can either train on the data or prediction on the data.
Application: This parameter specifies whether to do regression or classification. LightGBM default parameter for application is regression.
Binary: It is used for binary classification.
Multiclass: It is used for multiclass classification problems.
Regression: It is used for doing regression.
Boosting: It specifies the algorithm type.
rf : Used for Random Forest.
Goss: Gradient-based One Side Sampling.
Num_boost_round: It tells about the boosting iterations.
Learning_rate: The role of learning rate is to power the magnitude of the changes in the approximate that gets updated from each tree’s output. It determines the contribution of each tree on the final outcome and controls how quickly the algorithm proceeds down the gradient descent (learns); Typical values between 0.001–0.3. Smaller values make the model robust to the specific characteristics of each individual tree, thus allowing it to generalize well. Smaller values also make it easier to stop prior to overfitting; however, they increase the risk of not reaching the optimum with a fixed number of trees and are more computationally demanding. This hyperparameter is also called shrinkage. Generally, the smaller this value, the more accurate the model can be but also will require more trees in the sequence.
Num_leaves: It gives the total number of leaves that would be present in a full tree, default value: 31
Metric Parameter
It takes care of the loss while building the model. Some of them are stated below for classification as well as regression.
Mae: Mean absolute error.
Mse: Mean squared error.
Binary_logloss: Binary Classification loss.
Multi_logloss: Multi Classification loss.
def light_gbm_model_run(train_x, train_y, validation_x, validation_y, test_x):
params = {
"objective" : "regression",
"metric" : "rmse",
"num_leaves" : 100,
"learning_rate" : 0.001,
"bagging_fraction" : 0.6,
"feature_fraction" : 0.6,
"bagging_frequency" : 6,
"bagging_seed" : 42,
"verbosity" : -1,
"seed": 42
}
# Given its a regression case, I am using the RMSE as the metric.
lg_train = lgb.Dataset(train_x, label=train_y)
lg_validation = lgb.Dataset(validation_x, label=validation_y)
evals_result_lgbm = {}
model_light_gbm = lgb.train(params, lg_train, 5000,
valid_sets=[lg_train, lg_validation],
early_stopping_rounds=100,
verbose_eval=150,
evals_result=evals_result_lgbm )
pred_test_light_gbm = np.expm1(model_light_gbm.predict(test_x, num_iteration=model_light_gbm.best_iteration ))
return pred_test_light_gbm, model_light_gbm, evals_result_lgbm # Training and output of LightGBM Model
predictions_test_y_light_gbm, model_lgbm, evals_result = light_gbm_model_run(X_train_split, y_train_split, X_validation, y_validation, X_test_original)
print('Output of LightGBM Model training..') Training until validation scores don't improve for 100 rounds
[150] training's rmse: 1.66447 valid_1's rmse: 1.63996
[300] training's rmse: 1.5765 valid_1's rmse: 1.5927
[450] training's rmse: 1.49849 valid_1's rmse: 1.55466
[600] training's rmse: 1.42919 valid_1's rmse: 1.52339
[750] training's rmse: 1.36631 valid_1's rmse: 1.49837
[900] training's rmse: 1.30931 valid_1's rmse: 1.47791
[1050] training's rmse: 1.25734 valid_1's rmse: 1.46143
[1200] training's rmse: 1.20984 valid_1's rmse: 1.44818
[1350] training's rmse: 1.16678 valid_1's rmse: 1.43796
[1500] training's rmse: 1.12698 valid_1's rmse: 1.42969
[1650] training's rmse: 1.09049 valid_1's rmse: 1.42292
[1800] training's rmse: 1.05661 valid_1's rmse: 1.41849
[1950] training's rmse: 1.02528 valid_1's rmse: 1.41488
[2100] training's rmse: 0.995869 valid_1's rmse: 1.41222
[2250] training's rmse: 0.968211 valid_1's rmse: 1.40996
[2400] training's rmse: 0.941985 valid_1's rmse: 1.40807
[2550] training's rmse: 0.917269 valid_1's rmse: 1.40669
[2700] training's rmse: 0.893978 valid_1's rmse: 1.40569
[2850] training's rmse: 0.871822 valid_1's rmse: 1.40492
[3000] training's rmse: 0.850995 valid_1's rmse: 1.40427
[3150] training's rmse: 0.831253 valid_1's rmse: 1.40393
[3300] training's rmse: 0.812591 valid_1's rmse: 1.40376
Early stopping, best iteration is:
[3289] training's rmse: 0.813895 valid_1's rmse: 1.40374
Output of LightGBM Model training..
Hyper-Parameter Tuning in LightGBM
Parameter Tuning is an important part that is usually done by data scientists to achieve a good accuracy, fast result and to deal with overfitting. Let us see quickly some of the parameter tuning you can do for better results.
num_leaves: This parameter is responsible for the complexity of the model. I normally start by trying values in the range [10,100]. But if you have a solid heuristic to choose tree depth you can always use it and set num_leaves to 2^tree_depth — 1
LightGBM Documentation says in respect — This is the main parameter to control the complexity of the tree model. Theoretically, we can set num_leaves = 2^(max_depth) to obtain the same number of leaves as depth-wise tree. However, this simple conversion is not good in practice. The reason is that a leaf-wise tree is typically much deeper than a depth-wise tree for a fixed number of leaves. Unconstrained depth can induce over-fitting. Thus, when trying to tune the num_leaves, we should let it be smaller than 2^(max_depth). For example, when the max_depth=7 the depth-wise tree can get good accuracy, but setting num_leaves to 127 may cause over-fitting, and setting it to 70 or 80 may get better accuracy than depth-wise.
Min_data_in_leaf: Assigning bigger value to this parameter can result in underfitting of the model. Giving it a value of 100 or 1000 is sufficient for a large dataset.
Max_depth: Controls the depth of the individual trees. Typical values range from a depth of 3–8 but it is not uncommon to see a tree depth of 1. Smaller depth trees are computationally efficient (but require more trees); however, higher depth trees allow the algorithm to capture unique interactions but also increase the risk of over-fitting. Larger training data sets are more tolerable to deeper trees.
num_iterations: Num_iterations specifies the number of boosting iterations (trees to build). The more trees you build the more accurate your model can be at the cost of: — Longer training time — Higher chance of over-fitting So typically start with a lower number of trees to build a baseline and increase it later when you want to squeeze the last % out of your model.
It is recommended to use smaller learning_rate with larger num_iterations . Also, we should use early_stopping_rounds if we go for higher num_iterations to stop your training when it is not learning anything useful.
early_stopping_rounds — “early stopping” refers to stopping the training process if the model’s performance on a given validation set does not improve for several consecutive iterations. This parameter will stop training if the validation metric is not improving after the last early stopping round. It should be defined in pair with a number of iterations. If we set it too large we increase the chance of over-fitting. The rule of thumb is to have it at 10% of your num_iterations .
So for my above implementation of LightGBM, initially for two of the LightGBM parameters as below got me a score of 1.47953 (in Kaggle Public Board)
"num_leaves" : 40,
"learning_rate" : 0.004,
And now if I only tune these parameters as below
"num_leaves" : 100,
"learning_rate" : 0.001,
I got my score very very slightly updated to 1.4714 (in Kaggle Public Board)
I also tried the below one (keeping ‘num_leaves’ at 70 to avoid over-fitting)
"num_leaves" : 70,
"learning_rate" : 0.001,
With this — I got a score of 1.47234 (in Kaggle Public Board)
Features Importance in LightGBM | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/gradient-boosting-lightgbm-xgboost-and-catboost-kaggle-challenge-santander-f3cf0cc56898 | ['Rohan Paul'] | 2020-11-22 11:27:23.246000+00:00 | ['Python', 'Kaggle', 'Data Science', 'Machine Learning'] |
3 Ways To Get Ready For Your C Section | You might already know that you’re having a C-Section or you may be absolutely adamant
that you will not be having one, but it’s baby who has the last word. You might find yourself
rushed into theatre with the choice taken out of your hands, so it’s worth mulling these
pointers over either way.
YOU STILL NEED A BIRTHING PLAN
This is your opportunity to have your say. Many women who plan a natural childbirth also
write down what they’d like to happen in the event of a C-Section.
Whether you give birth vaginally or by C-Section, you will want to capture those first
precious moments with your baby. Theatre can complicate things so do check if you can
bring your camera and also ask if your birthing partner can stay with you at all times.
If you would like to see your baby being born, then ask your medical team to lower the
screen and that they place baby on your chest straight away so that you get the all-
important skin-to-skin contact.
PERFECT PACKING
There’s a lot of things that will look the same, no matter how you plan to give birth, but C-
Sections come with certain considerations that will make your hospital stay more
comfortable.
Pack big pants that will come up to your waist and not sit on your wound. You’ll need these at home too.
Wear long dresses that aren’t pinched in around your waist. You’ll be keen to get back into your normal clothes after months in maternity wear, but you need to be kind to your stitches.
Don’t forget maternity pads — you’ll still have post-partum bleeding.
Think about some mint to aid digestion. Peppermint tea bags or peppermint oil capsules can help gastric discomfort as your bowel may be sluggish after surgery.
Don’t go overboard on packing your cosmetics or jewellery and don’t worry about getting a Brazilian wax — You won’t be allowed contact lenses, make-up, nail polish or contact lenses in theatre and you might not want to worry about who will look after your rings. Doctors won’t be concerned with topiary either!
HOME IMPROVEMENTS
You will be sore and uncomfortable after a C-Section, but there are useful things you can
do before you go in to hospital that will make life easier when you get out.
Make sure that you have lots of pillows on your sofa, or armchair, and your bed. It makes it easier to get up from and offers extra support.
Make sure that you have plenty of what you need and leave it in easy reach of where you are. Have a changing area both upstairs and downstairs so you down have to move too far to get what you need.
Fill your freezer full of meals so that dinner can take care of itself when you get home
When you are waiting for your C-Section, or in the first few weeks afterwards, it can feel as
if time is standing still. You may feel slow and out of sorts, but life will return to normal.
Resist the urge to do too much, too soon and go easy on yourself. | https://medium.com/@info_73965/3-ways-to-get-ready-for-your-c-section-960d9fa3eba | ['First Time Mama'] | 2020-02-20 10:54:07.425000+00:00 | ['Pregnant', 'Motherhood', 'Baby', 'C Section'] |
Jean-Jacques Rousseau — The Most Important Figure in the History of Philosophy | “The ancient republics of Greece, with that wisdom which was so conspicuous in most of their institutions, forbade their citizens to pursue all those inactive and sedentary occupations, which by enervating and corrupting the body diminish also the vigour of the mind. With what courage, in fact, can it be thought that hunger and thirst, fatigues, dangers and death, can be faced by men whom the smallest want overwhelms and the slightest difficulty repels?” -Jean-Jacques Rousseau, from the ‘’Discourse on the Arts and Sciences’ (1750)
The history of Western philosophy is dominated by convoluted abstractions and thinkers detached from the realities around them. Intellect offers great insights to possessors of it, but also comes with blind spots. These blind spots are more easily identified when the thinker is a professional intellectual whose hands are not occupied by a craft or who lack experience in some trade. The history of career philosophers — those library rats and expatiators of esoteric ‘truths’ — is one of decreasing value since the emergence of academic philosophy as distinct from theology (equally remote). This occurred in the Age of Enlightenment — perhaps the best example of an academic philosopher was Immanuel Kant — an icon of the intellectual with his head in the clouds whose sense of real adventure was so limited that he reportedly never left the area in and around the city of Königsberg. The history of the Age of Enlightenment is one in which philosophy came into its own with the rise of the public intellectual — the figure who was not so remote as to remain cloistered in some monastery or secluded in a lecture hall writing tomes that few would ever read. The figure of the public intellectual, and the public sphere, — which first emerged with Erasmus and the Renaissance Humanists after the development of the printing press — really matured in the eighteenth century.
I wrote an article detailing the emergence of Enlightenment and its relations (partly as a reaction) to the violence of the seventeenth century. In short, the Age of Enlightenment was a via negativa — a veritable Enlightened Age in relation to the preceding century of violence — the Thirty Years War on the Continent, the English Civil War, and the decades-long struggle for Dutch independence. The result of all of this struggle — over eight million casualties in the Thirty Years’ War, widespread destruction, diplomats being compelled (after decades of fighting) that toleration is a practical necessity with regard to freedom of religion, and new ideas about the nature of government from a string of thinkers — Hobbes, Locke, Grotius, Voltaire, and — ultimately the Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778).
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was the most important philosopher in history, a beacon of the best — and not so good — elements of humanity, deeply flawed but brilliant, a restless genius who reached for the stars — his political theory — a moral analysis of the nature of moral government — was problematic but also wonderfully insightful. His views were misunderstood, aped, and bastardized by the Jacobins while his human shortcomings were used by his detractors to marginalize his entire life’s work. Rousseau’s Discourse on the Arts and Sciences still stands as a brilliant and nuanced exploration of the link between cultural progress and moral decadence. He grounded his views of the world in his own experiences and built up from there. He avoided what Nassim Taleb calls ‘Platonicity’ — mistaking the map for the territory, giving too much credence to abstract models and not enough to experience. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was, indeed, the most antifragile philosopher in history (with the possible exception of some of the Roman Stoics). He clearly understood this while delineating his views on education in Emile.
“Man is born to suffer; pain is the means of his preservation. His childhood is happy, knowing only pain of body. These bodily sufferings are much less cruel, much less painful, than other forms of suffering, and they rarely lead to self-destruction. It is not the twinges of gout which make a man kill himself, it is mental suffering that leads to despair. We pity the sufferings of childhood; we should pity ourselves; our worst sorrows are of our own making.” -Jean-Jacques Rousseau, from ‘Emile’ (1762)
Rousseau’s ideas do have an anti-civilization bend to them — when the civilization becomes to decadent. He was critical of the effete French society in Paris and looked fondly to his native Geneva (then an independent republic) — though this was not mutual. The leaders of Geneva hated his Social Contract, for example. Decadent cities like Paris fared poorly in Rousseau’s understanding of the antifragile nature of humanity:
“Cities are the abyss of the human species.” -Jean-Jacques Rousseau, from ‘Emile’ (1762)
One cannot deny the massive benefits of the Industrial Revolution and civilization more generally. Indeed, going down this line of thinking, one can see it developing into the Green Anarchism of contemporary philosopher John Zerzan — here Zerzan focus specifically on the corrupting nature of symbols, particularly language:
“The process of transforming all direct experience into the supreme symbolic expression, language, monopolizes life. Like ideology, language conceals and justifies, compelling us to suspend our doubts about its claim to validity. It is the root of civilization, the dynamic code of civilization’s alienated nature. As the paradigm of ideology, language stands behind all of the massive legitimation necessary to hold civilization together. It remains for us to clarify what forms of nascent domination engendered this justification, made language necessary as basic means of repression” -John Zerzan ‘Elements of Refusal’ (1988)
To an extent, at least, on this last point. Ancient Athens lost its edge when it became a decadent city dominated by an effete literati. The Roman Republic declined with the rise of private opulence and public squalor. Heian Japan saw the decline and fall of the court aristocracy as they were too absorbed in Hollywood-style interest in intrigue and superficiality while the more practical samurai gained power in the countryside. The French Enlightenment was a period of potential and turmoil coinciding with decadence, decline, war, and debt. Paris was a major cultural center where artifice reigned supreme. Voltaire — prince of the philosophes (French philosophers) was a political ideologue with a rather strong narcissistic personality — he wrote triumphalist ‘histories’ and heavily edited the will of radical priest Jean Meslier in order to make himself, and not Meslier, the great avant garde thinker.
“Voltaire possessed the manuscript for more than 25 years before deciding to publish it anonymously in 1761 in Switzerland, in the form of extracts. In total he only published ten per cent of the original text, removing the materialistic and revolutionary chapters and retaining only the deconstruction of Christianity. In addition, he changed the end of Meslier’s will, pretending the priest was a deist like himself.” -Morgane Guinard
Rousseau was a bit of a nut — lashing out at friends like Hume — but he was probably the most authentic intellectual to ever walk the Earth. His body of works constitute a warts-and-all picture of a flawed man whose greatest ideas were not always fleshed out with the idea that they would be perfectly feasible. In this sense, one can view Rousseau rather like Leonardo da Vinci. Just as Leonardo spent years working on all sorts of machines (notably flying machines), and most did not work. So too, did Rousseau spend his life developing brilliant ideas, grounded in practical observations, which did not pan out. Rousseau presents us moderns with an account based in honest introspection whereas Voltaire presents us with dishonest artifice (admittedly, with a good style of writing). While Voltaire was innovative in some of his writings and forward-thinking in arguing for toleration, he was an ardent monarchist who thought of the common people as ‘the rabble.’ He was very much in favor of top-down, Enlightened monarchy.
Rousseau’s politics are harder to grasp. In his Discourse on Inequality (1755), Rousseau unintentionally laid the groundwork for his most famous political work — The Social Contract (1762). Rousseau delineated the negative aspects which developed out of early civilized society in a hypothetical state of nature grounded in his own experience of humanity and working backwards. Rousseau focused on the corrupting nature of civilizations. His work stands as a monument to the Enlightenment at its most self-critical — a necessary antidote to those high and mighty thinkers who see their own works as lights in the path to progress. Rousseau had taken up the task of exploring the link between cultural progress and moral decadence in an earlier essay — the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (1750).
Rousseau was chiefly concerned with the nature of inequality in his discourse of 1755. He argued that natural inequalities in the state of nature are quite small and relatively insignificant. The problem with advanced civilizations is that they magnify these inequalities to such absurd extents. He also mentions the negative health implications of modern societies. These points are significant because the antifragile nature of humanity is a biological, psychological, anthropological, and historical reality. Utopias are impossible — they are to politics what perpetual motion is to mechanics — complex, interesting, but staggeringly useless and futile attempts to achieve the impossible. Just as perpetual motion machines cannot be realized because they violate one or more basic laws of physics, so too utopias fail because they do not consider basic elements of human nature. Fyodor Dostoevsky detailed this quite brilliantly in his Notes From Underground:
“Shower him with all earthly blessings, immerse him so completely in happiness that bubbles dance on the surface of his happiness, as though on water; grant him such economic prosperity that he will have absolutely nothing else to do but sleep, eat gingerbread, and concern himself with the continuance of world history — and that man, out of sheer ingratitude, out of sheer devilment, will even then do the dirty on you. He will even put his gingerbread at risk and deliberately set his heart on the most pernicious trash, the most uneconomical nonsense solely in order to alloy all this positive good sense with his pernicious, fantastic element.” — Fyodor Dostoevsky
Rousseau did not detail the negative elements of human nature to the same degree as Dostoevsky, or Hobbes (the political thinker Rousseau is often contrasted with) and his outlook contains notable flaws because of this. However, his perspective is just as valuable centuries later because it highlights essential elements of the human condition as they relate to society, culture, politics, autobiography, education, and even anthropology.
The Age of Enlightenment was an age of intellectual giants, an age which gave birth to the practical Industrial Revolution, saw the publication of one of the most important books of general knowledge in history (Diderot’s Encyclopedia), and paved the way for the modern world. The intellectuals of the Enlightenment were not so much beacons of light along the path to modernity as insightful figures in a battered world they had inherited from the previous centuries of religious warfare. Practicality, grounded in the scars of the past, coupled with the development of early empiricism played a much bigger role. The Anglo-American Enlightenment shone brighter than that of the French. The French salon scene brought together interesting individuals but offered little practicality beyond Diderot and Rousseau. Voltaire was a great novelist but a pretty lousy public thinker beyond his advocacy for toleration. Interesting to think that the greatest philosopher of the French Enlightenment was not French — Jean-Jacques Rousseau proudly called himself ‘citizen of Geneva,’ the city of his birth and still considered him home.
Rousseau understood the value of simple living, the value of experience-based education (as opposed to learning by rote or through only books), the antifragile nature of humanity, and critiqued what one can call a dirty bourgeois existence of those wish to insulate themselves from reality. Entrepreneurship is a noble endeavor, as is a working class existence. What is less noble, however, is being a member of that superficial and inchoate mess of people between the two (who often have nothing but contempt for the two). I know not what Rousseau would have thought about the entrepreneurial spirit (though the temperament is the same as that of artists, psychologically speaking) — he was critical of inequality (how minor differences between people could be magnified in societies to such extreme degrees). What is needed is both a separation of political and moral perspectives as well as a way to reconcile the ingenuity of human endeavor (grounded in antifragility) and an experienced vision which cherishes the simple pleasures and aesthetic appreciation associated with Wabi-Sabi. | https://medium.com/digital-republic-of-letters/jean-jacques-rousseau-the-most-important-figure-in-the-history-of-philosophy-737fa9f45688 | ['Kevin Shau'] | 2020-10-03 22:47:50.960000+00:00 | ['Books', 'Society', 'Philosophy', 'History', 'Culture'] |
Build An 8-bit Spotify Controller | Phase 6 | All that’s left to do is pair our Spotify API logic in the Background script to the function calls in our Foreground script.
We won’t go into every function pairing here, we’ll show you one.
See the video tutorial for a detailed walk-through.
In the Foreground.js component we have our start_pause function message our Background.js script.
start_pause = () => {
chrome.runtime.sendMessage({ message: this.state.isPlaying ? ‘pause’ : ‘play’, payload: { isPlaying: !this.state.isPlaying } }, response => {
if (response.message === ‘success’) {
this.setState(_state => {
return {
isPlaying: !_state.isPlaying,
current_track: response.current_track
}
});
}
});
}
In our Background.js script, we catch that message, call the Spotify API, and send back a response to the Foreground.js component. | https://medium.com/@anobjectisa/build-an-8-bit-spotify-controller-phase-6-85629cb18819 | ['An Object Is A'] | 2020-12-24 16:35:31.039000+00:00 | ['Reactjs', 'Web Development', 'Chrome Extension', 'React', 'Programming'] |
Daily Digest 06/03/20 — MEP Joins Far-Right Vigilantes in Greece | Daily Digest 06/03/20 — MEP Joins Far-Right Vigilantes in Greece
ICC to Investigate War Crimes in Afghanistan///Serbian Paper References Battle Against Ottomans in Headline About People on the Move///German Mayors Ask to Accept Children From Refugee Camps//////Swedish Far-Right Politician Deported From Turkey Are You Syrious? Follow Mar 7, 2020 · 10 min read
Far-right MEP Ioannis Lagos in Evros. Photo credits: Left.gr
Feature: Golden Dawn MEP Among Fascist Vigilantes Attacking People in Greece
Ioannis Lagos, a longtime member of the far-right Golden Dawn party, was spotted at the Greek-Turkish border in Evros. He was photographed with members of local so-called “protection” groups and at least two police officers.
A far-right website published his activities, saying he was “actively participating in patrols organized by locals, to locate & turn over to the authorities the illegal immigrants-jihadists, that are crossing the borders by the thousands.” Clearly, he is an active participant in the violence being perpetrated against vulnerable people at the border and is making no effort to hide his presence.
This is not the first violent action that Lagos has participated in. In 2017, he was involved in an attack on an Athens school that planned to offer classes to children living in a nearby refugee camp. He and others stormed the school and punched teachers and parents just for daring to offer education to vulnerable children. Last year, he was found guilty of inciting violence that led to an attack on a community center in 2013. He is clearly a dangerous individual who should not be given the platform that a member of the European Parliament gets. It also shows a lot about the way violence against people on the move is unfortunately accepted by many in Greece since he shows no attempt to hide his actions.
If you are wondering what Lagos and his new buddies are up to, Greek journalists obtained video footage of one vigilante group’s actions in Evros. Most of these groups are farmers from the area who know the land well and use the powerful lights on their tractors to track movement. They work in tandem with the national guard and police to arrest people. The easy cooperation and overlap between Greek authorities and violent far-right militias should be worrying.
Far-right actors are moving their harassment of people on the move and their allies to the web as well as attacking them physically. Aegean Boat Report, which publishes crucial information on arrivals to Greece, has been spammed with over 100 negative reviews and comments on Facebook that are nearly identical. Their page was shared to several far-right Facebook groups and this was clearly a coordinated attack. This is part of a larger intimidation campaign taking place online and offline to scare off solidarity workers who could also stop information from getting to the outside world if they succeed in getting important pages like Aegean Boat Report taken down. These organizations need our support!
However, neo-Nazis and far-right vigilantes are not having a perfectly easy time. A group of five German and Austrian neo-Nazis who came to Lesvos were attacked by locals, sending one of them to the hospital. They allegedly came to “hunt refugees” and show solidarity with the Greek people, but for some reason posed as reporters looking for the “Greek perspective” on the issue of people on the move. When they were not receiving responses that satisfied them, they began provoking locals by shouting about the Kalavyrta massacre, when Nazis killed hundreds of Greek boys and men during the occupation. After that, they were punished and although police are allegedly searching for the attackers, local media is not sympathetic at all. “They should go as they came! There is no place for them on Lesvos!” Politikalesvos wrote. They have been identified as members of the “Identity Movement.” This post identifies them further and contains links explaining their violent pasts.
Another group of 10 German and Austrian “Identitarians” were deported by the Greek government after showing up at the Greek-Turkish border. This is not the first time the group has been involved in vigilanteism against people on the move — last year they were caught trying to attack people crossing on the sea route between Libya and Italy by boat.
Punishments are starting to trickle in for a select few who threatened people on the move and solidarity workers. On Lesvos, two locals who made threats against Efi Latsoudi and Refugee Support Aegean were given a three-month suspended prison sentence. While most of these far-right actors will go unpunished, it is still heartening to see that they are being met with resistance. | https://medium.com/are-you-syrious/daily-digest-06-03-20-mep-joins-far-right-vigilantes-in-greece-b6b2ed9381fa | ['Are You Syrious'] | 2020-03-07 11:32:04.655000+00:00 | ['Refugees', 'Digest', 'Greece', 'Far Right', 'Migrants'] |
Pharma: Are You Ready To Optimize Your Marketing Strategy? | Pharma: Are You Ready To Optimize Your Marketing Strategy?
Guide to Build a Digital Marketing Campaign
Traditionally, the pharmaceutical industry has been slow to adopt digital marketing techniques, especially beyond the website. Yet today, more pharma businesses are starting to use digital marketing tools, such as social media sites or e-commerce sites, to engage with customers and allow them to buy products online.
Digital marketing is certainly a more cost-effective way of communicating with customers, than traditional marketing.
Digital channels offer a more individualised and personalised type of engagement, ensuring that the correct stakeholders are receiving the correct information at the correct time.
Many pharma marketing managers agree that digital strategy will play a critical role in the marketing plans of the future, but many companies still lack the capabilities to fully integrate digital marketing into the wider business strategy.
The real problem is a shortage of digital marketers within the pharmaceutical sector. In particular, there is a lack of people with the necessary skills to drive digital change and leverage the opportunities that digital resources can offer to pharma businesses.
The competition to find the right people or partner who understand the industry and regulations and restrictions placed upon it, while at the same time have an intimate understanding of the new digital marketplace, has become relevant in the pharmaceutical sector.
The Digital Pharma Marketing: Overview and the Need To Build Integrated Digital Services Whitepaper explores digital marketing landscape and shares Guide to Starting a Pharma Digital Marketing Campaign
Get exclusive access to Whitepaper (it’s free). Sign up here! | https://medium.com/adelaide-terracciano/pharma-are-you-ready-to-optimize-your-marketing-strategy-a32364bb00f | [] | 2016-08-31 14:34:39.097000+00:00 | ['Pharmaceutical', 'Digital Marketing'] |
Beat the Block: An Insight To Gaining Back Control of Your Creativity. | As creatives, sometimes we hit a mentally-creative roadblock. It seems uncanny, right? Considering all the resources at our disposal to help us be creative. Well, it happens, and more often than you think. We all hope to cherish that one moment where whatever piece of creativity we conjure up in our mind is loved by the masses. Having to face the unforgiving world, not giving it a chance, is one less nuance we should have to worry about. I’m telling you, it is okay to put yourself out there.
Insecurities such as doubt, someone not liking it, or questioning your own abilities, can play a damaging role in your creative confidence. In a content-driven world, creative marketing has become more evident than ever. As we share our gifts, talents, and expertise, we are always looking for new ways to challenge ourselves to look at the world differently. Original concepts and innovative ideas also help reinvent the wheel by inadvertently drawing inspiration from literally anything we find interesting.
However, inconsistency can become our biggest flaw and insecurity if not treated properly. Personally, I draw inspiration based on how I feel or how a situation made me feel at the moment. For example, some of my best ideas through music are thought of on the spot. They are pulled from personal experiences, movies that I watched, people I’ve met, the colors I see, or just the overall sounds of outside and nature. I will also listen to different chord progressions, other music styles, watch YouTube videos on mixing, and utilize sampling. However, this inspiration only comes when it’s felt, not forced.
As writers, content creators, producers, directors, marketers, and business professionals, our persistence to keep creatively building, and moving forward, is most important when discovering a mental drain.
Below are six different techniques you can apply to help beat that creative block:
Create a Plan.
Although your creative process can come from an organic place of inspiration, it’s always good to go in with a plan on how you want to tackle your project. Write down thoughts, record it, make a rough draft, or sketch out an idea so you can see the vision/end goal of where you want it to go.
2. Change Your Environment.
A change of scenery is always a good way to get your ideas flowing. Take a stroll to your nearby park, go for a drive, or even travel somewhere. Use a new environment to expose yourself to a fresh new way of thinking. Look beyond your normal routine of work and creativity, and remember to take a second to inhale-exhale. A new place is a great way to clear your mind and understand your vision.
3. Listen to Good Music.
Music is a stimulus. Use a moment to listen to some of your favorite songs and draw inspiration from them by how it makes you feel. I personally enjoy old school 70s, 80s, and 90s R&B, and also current R&B music. In an article made by the Huffington Post (Fitzpatrick, Frank, Why Music, Part 6: Music and Creativity, April 12, 2013) was stated that “Music can help stimulate our imagination, one of the key components of the creative process. Listening to a song we love or fully immersing ourselves in a piece of beautiful music can shift our mood, create images in our mind, impact our limbic brain and open us up to new ideas.” So overall, you’ll be surprised by where it may take your imagination.
4. Revisit Your Creative Process.
In the midst of creating, sometimes we get so involved with what we’re working on, we miss the big picture of it all. Then we start to overthink in our minds again, building unwarranted insecurities. Don’t forget to take a break and go back to the drawing board. See what you missed, or what you can change, and adjust from there.
5. Practice, Practice, Practice.
We’ve all heard the phrase growing up, “Practice Makes Perfect” well, it’s true. You have to practice your craft to get better and gain a consistent routine of your creative process. Being consistently creative can change your whole trajectory in your workflow and thinking process.
6. Drink More Water.
Health is wealth, and hydration is very important. Your body needs water, plain and simple. In addition to sleep, diet, and exercise, conscious thinking will also be a benefit. These adjustments will allow you to become even more creative, and beat your mental block. Drinking water gives the brain more clarity, enhances expressiveness, and increases energy.
In conclusion, we all have a creative ability to use and contribute, but it can definitely be a dent in the process when you can’t seem to think of anything when you want to. Digest the proverbial steps mentioned above, and talk to others to get their perspective on this issue as well, and you’ll be well on your way to overcoming your mental block.
Visit the thejeniusbrand.com and follow @jenius.brand on Instagram for exclusives. | https://medium.com/@expressyourself/beat-the-block-e6ae394a1 | ['Jon J.'] | 2021-01-13 15:28:26.605000+00:00 | ['Music', 'Art', 'Tips And Tricks', 'Writers Block', 'Creativity Tips'] |
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Don’t wait, I would highly recommend you guys to try the graphics design service of manypixels. | https://medium.com/@snehilprakash29/manypixels-review-the-best-platform-for-graphic-design-services-b639cf35e6db | ['Snehil Prakash'] | 2020-02-19 20:05:59.754000+00:00 | ['Graphics Designing', 'Unlimited Graphic Design', 'Graphics', 'Graphics Design'] |
Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio [Book Summary PDF] | Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio [Book Summary PDF]
Principles Summary
Download Summary Here: https://www.bookcademy.com/summaries/principles-life-and-work.pdf
No matter our life situation, we all face problems which require a decision to be made. These decisions may be made in a split second or take weeks worth of deliberating, may be trivial and minor, or even life and death. Having guiding principles for making decisions eliminates much of the unnecessary stress and confusion caused by these choices. Many of these decisions are very common, and we do not realize the number of times they reappear throughout life. By having a set of principles used to make decisions, the decision-making process is simplified and, in a way, computerized.
Part I
In Principles, Ray Dalio begins in Part I by reflecting on his early days in life and how he got started on his path to success. Dalio guides readers through his career in the financial industry, beginning with making trades as a young man and eventually creating Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund in assets under management. Throughout his time at Bridgewater, Dalio realized that decisions can be better made when there are a number of set principles to follow on varying subjects. Principles is not only Dalio’s reflection on his life and what led to his successes (and failures), but also spells out the principles he uses both in his personal and professional life.
Part II
Part II: Life Principles in Principles concerns principles that can guide everyone through their lives. These principles allow us to look at life not as an uncrackable code, but rather as a somewhat predictable series of events which we repeatedly face and have previously navigated towards a decision. One of Dalio’s primary points throughout Part II, and the book as a whole, concerns a person’s duty to be open-minded. If we are closed off to others and their opinions, we not only will be alone in the world, but we will also miss learning valuable information which others could teach us.
In addition to our need to be open-minded, Dalio stresses our need to accept things for what they are, but also lays out for readers his own series of five steps to achieve our goals we set for ourselves. Another piece in Part II addresses people as a whole. People, according to Dalio, are all different from each other, but this is something that we should value. Others may possess qualities different from us which compliment us and can create better organizations and a better life. Finally, Dalio rounds out Part II by teaching readers the foundations of effective decision making. At the end of Part II is an effective “Summary and Table of Life Principles”, which allows readers to focus more on reading the content of the book and acts as a reference which we can later use to go back and reread or reflect on specific Life Principles.
Part III
Part III: Work Principles addresses the applications of Dalio’s principles outline to a person’s work, and how one can benefit in their work life from using such principles. This final section of Principles stresses that readers view their professional organizations as a type of machine, and that problems be brought to attention through a system of what Dalio calls “Radical Truth and Radical Transparency.” He goes on to emphasize the importance of all employees’ belief in the company’s mission, and that workers should be in an environment where sincere work and relationships are valued. Dalio continues to lay out his principles on how to properly select people who will fit with the organization, and explains his belief that having the right people working for an organization is more important than the actual work itself.
Although somewhat harsh, Dalio suggests using a system of training and testing all employees to ensure their proper placement in the organization, and, if warranted by a failure in testing or training, individuals who do not fit well or adequately perform the functions of their job be removed. Wrapping up his section on Work Principles, Dalio illustrates his principles concerning how to “Build and Evolve Your Machine.” While these are the principles used by Bridgewater Associates, Dalio reminds readers that they are able to select which principles fit well with their organization and modify others in order to best run their organization. By following the outline of principles throughout this book and by customizing and implementing them in one’s organization, decisions will be made more consistently and easily by management and employees will better understand the organization for which they are working.
Download Summary here: https://www.bookcademy.com/summaries/principles-life-and-work.pdf
Download Summary here: https://www.bookcademy.com/summaries/principles-life-and-work.pdf
A summary made by: Bookcademy.com
A book by: Ray Dalio
Enroll in the course based on this book here: Enroll Now | https://medium.com/bookcademy/principles-life-and-work-by-ray-dalio-book-summary-pdf-693a2b579a16 | ['Daniel Morales'] | 2019-11-06 19:14:30.318000+00:00 | ['Principles', 'Bookcademy', 'Ray Dalio Book', 'Principles Book', 'Ray Dalio'] |
Difficult Conversations in Support of LGBTQ+ Students | By Beverly Stuckwisch, Knowles Senior Fellow and Kaleidoscope Associate Editor, Knowles Teacher Initiative
Originally published in the Spring 2019 Issue of Kaleidoscope: Educators’ Voices and Perspectives by the Knowles Teacher Initiative
Difficult, uncomfortable conversations improved school culture for LBGTQ+ youth after our newly-developed gay-straight alliance faced community opposition.
Starting a Gay-Straight Alliance at School
I still feel like a novice teacher in many ways, but I have always felt strongly about my ability to advocate for students. In fact, student advocacy was promoted highly in my teacher preparation program and is an expectation for teacher valuation in Ohio. To try to build up that advocacy, in 2014, a colleague and I helped students start the first gay-straight alliance (GSA) at our small, rural high school that was located in a politically conservative community. We had excellent support from our principal. In fact, his daughter was the original president of the group.
At first, the GSA was primarily a social group — a place where LGBTQ+ students and allies could come once a week to be themselves without fear of judgment. The existence of the group spread by mostly word of mouth and by public address announcements, even though many of the students had no idea what the GSA initials represented. As that safe space began to develop and students were able to identify allies within the school, participants also began to develop a desire for more visibility and activism.
The Problems with Visibility
In April 2016, the GSA organized a recognition of the Day of Silence, “a student-led national event where folks take a vow of silence to highlight the silencing and erasure of LGBTQ+ people at school” (GLSEN, 2018). Participation was voluntary and the GSA set up a table in the cafeteria for students to sign up. Over 70 students participated in that first year.
While the students, my colleague, and I anticipated negative comments and pushback from some of the community, there were other issues that arose that we did not predict. A parent called the principal and complained that some of the GSA students had been going up to lunch tables informing people of the event, thus forcing the topic of homosexuality on her child.
Another parent was concerned that her child would be “forced to be silent for gay rights,” which was neither true nor an entirely accurate depiction of the event’s purpose.
Because of incidents like these, we recognized a need to be more transparent in our advertising of the event, perhaps appealing to individuals’ empathy by highlighting the disproportionate bullying, suicide, and murder rates for LGBTQ+ students. However, because of the parent concerns, the principal asked that students tone down the advertisement altogether — specifically by not going from table to table in the lunchroom and instead allowing interested students
to come to them. The day of the event came and went without too many issues. Students expressed hearing some homophobic and transphobic slurs in the hallways, but in general felt the event was a success.
Feeling more empowered, in the fall of 2016, the GSA students set their focus on making themselves more visible in the community. They knew there were students who either didn’t know about the group, weren’t allowed to attend, or weren’t ready to come out. They wanted to let those students know they weren’t alone. As a result, their next project was to create a compilation of the pride flags they felt represented their identities, drawn and colored by hand. Each flag would represent a student in the GSA, so the sheer number of flags would send the message they intended.
Because of the issues the previous year, I took a photo of the finished flag (Figure 1) and sent it to the principal for approval prior to hanging. Once we had that approval, it went up in a large blank space of the math hallway (somewhere we knew all students would pass at some point in their day). Two days later, my colleague and I were asked to meet with the principal during our lunch period. I felt sick to my stomach because I knew what the outcome of that meeting would be — the flag was coming down.
Figure 1. Compilation pride flag colored by GSA students. Photo Credit: Beverly Stuckwisch
The principal had been contacted by some parents, students, and at least one staff member who expressed issues with the flag. While he responded with defense to remarks that were flat-out discriminatory, he found himself stuck on some other issues raised. For example, the third flag from the right on the bottom row included the word “pansexual.” Some parents expressed they did not want the school to be educating their children on sexuality in any form and that the word itself hanging on the wall was in fact attempting to educate students on multiple sexualities. It was also brought to light that the school policies currently in place did not allow “noncurriculum groups” to hang flyers and posters inside the school. Although that hadn’t been enforced in the recent past, it would have to be enforced now — starting with taking the flag down.
My response was angry tears. I knew how much it meant to the GSA students and what taking it down would represent to them and those who’ve oppressed them. At the time, I was so emotional that I was unable to process my principal’s response or address it with him in an effective way. Instead, I let my feelings stew and blamed him harshly for not being able to see the future and predict what would happen when the flag went up. As someone who historically avoided conflict, it took nearly six months for me to feel like I could have a real conversation with him again.
Rising Tensions and a Difficult Conversation
The 2016 presidential election followed closely behind the flag incident. Students expressed concern and fear in GSA meetings. There was a rising tension in the air as transgender restroom rights were questioned throughout the nation. In April 2017, the GSA sponsored the Day of Silence again. Because of their inability to advertise in ways the students felt were effective, they had about half the number of participants as the previous year. The students, my colleague, and I felt stifled in how we could support activist work in the community, while at the same time feeling it was more important than ever. Partly because of the polarity of the political parties in the news, I found myself making blanketed assumptions about colleagues and community members that I knew to be politically conservative.
At a Knowles Teacher Initiative meeting, I expressed all of these feelings to a group of Knowles Teaching Fellows. It was in this setting that I was challenged to reconsider my assumptions. We identified a common thread of not knowing how to address difficult conversations in each of our settings. As a result, we decided to read Difficult Conversations (Stone, et al., 2010) and make it a goal to face those issues head-on.
In the final week of the 2016–2017 school year, I worked with my principal to host an open conversation about the GSA. The principal, superintendent, guidance counselors, about 10 staff members, five students from the GSA and one parent attended. Prior to the conversation, I emailed a document to staff and GSA students outlining the purpose of the conversation, as well as some conversations starters. The purpose was to:
• ensure that students and staff were on the same page about the purpose of the GSA,
• help make the conversation about GSA more positive in the community, and
• give a voice to anyone who had concerns or comments about the purpose of the GSA.
Initiating this conversation felt risky to me. I worried that either no one would attend or that someone would derail the conversation. I think that was the biggest reason why I waited until the end of the year. If it went well, we would be starting the new year with some footing. If it didn’t go well, we’d have the summer to recover and work on next steps. Figure 2 shows a visual representation of how the conversation went.
After the meeting, I felt like our conversation actually accomplished exactly what we hoped it would. Once everything was out in the open, it was clear that the more vocal staff members who were in opposition to some of the GSA’s activities did not understand the students’ situations or motives. At the beginning of the meeting, one staff member consistently stated that if LGBTQ+ students in our school were being bullied, then it was their responsibility to stand up for themselves and to report it. More than one person reached out to me after the meeting, referring to his comments as “victim blaming.”
One thing that was clear in the conversation, though, was that this staff member had never considered how difficult it would be for a student to advocate for themselves when no one else was advocating for them. More than one staff member was shocked to learn that some of those students had zero support at home and a few had even been kicked out of the house. Most importantly, some really good ideas came up for how to move forward and create a more inclusive learning environment for the next year.
Figure 2. Takeaways from the open conversation about the GSA.
Another, more personal, result of this conversation was that I was finally able to start to see some different perspectives. Planning events solely focused on the GSA and on LGBTQ+ topics was further isolating those students in the eyes of some community members. This was something neither I nor the students in the GSA had considered. Even if we disagreed with the way that some people responded, we couldn’t make progress until we at least recognized their feelings and concerns.
Moving forward, we wanted to focus more on partnering with other groups to help create a more inclusive community for all students. My hope was that through these projects, more students who needed the GSA would find it and other students would discover ways to stand up for their peers as allies. If one of the major goals of the GSA was to help students feel less alone and isolated in our school, then perhaps partnering with other groups to work on bigger projects and goals would accomplish just that.
Making Progress
At the beginning of the 2017–2018 school year, I reached out to all staff to create a professional learning community (PLC) to examine the culture of our school and our students’ experiences of harassment and bullying. Fourteen staff members joined the group and, eventually, four students joined as well. We met throughout the year, analyzing data from surveys, interviews, and focus groups with students as well as brainstorming ways to help students and staff engage more thoughtfully on topics of empathy and equity. To help join various students groups together, the PLC helped the National Honor Society prepare morning announcements for National Bullying Prevention Month in October. Another student club created a bulletin board displaying those announcements. Even though they couldn’t post flyers, the GSA students were allowed to continue to utilize the morning announcements as well and did so during Transgender Awareness week, announcing bullying and suicide statistics for trans students.
As predicted, there was at least one student and parent complaint about the announcements, but since we had made sure to follow all written school guidelines and focused solely on empathy building for trans students rather than on something more politicized like bathroom rights, it was very easy to defend our actions.
Both my colleague and I now work at different schools, for reasons unrelated to the challenges we faced advising the GSA. Prior to opening up the conversations I had previously been avoiding, I would have wrongly assumed that there were very few support systems for the GSA students other than my colleague and me. Instead, when I announced that I was leaving, two other teachers volunteered to be the advisors moving forward. Several others voiced support as well. Additionally, the city where the school resides hosted its first pride event in the summer of 2018. One of the GSA students even attended a planning meeting for the event, which led to them having a table to represent our school.
Looking back, I truly feel that my fear and unwillingness to have uncomfortable and emotionally charged discussions was one of the biggest things preventing the positive change I desired. Using difficult conversations to unpack my assumptions about people I perceived to have different values than me was the first step to real change.
Download Article | https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/difficult-conversations-in-support-of-lgbtq-students-b515dbac1278 | ['Knowles Teacher Initiative'] | 2020-02-28 18:22:33.910000+00:00 | ['LGBTQ', 'Teaching', 'Gay Straight Alliance', 'Teacher Voice', 'Difficult Conversations'] |
The Wound: Ignored, It Will Kill the Man-Made “Whole”. | The Slave Ship is a painting by the British artist J. M. W. Turner, first exhibited in 1840. It is now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
We are GOOD - for we are utilitarian!
We are just-ified, because WE sacrifice freedoms, by law, for the good of the man-made “whole”.
For its persistence, for its building, and for its permanence!
But, “The whole”?
The King, the “representative” body, the flag, the “city on the hill”, “civilization”, the marketplace: “the whole”, manifest on time’s shifting canvas — variantly.
Institutional human grandeur!
The Whole: In today it is “the marketplace” — In yesterday it was “The King”.
But what and whom are “the sacrificed”, whose “freedoms” are sacrificed in each time?
These, guardians of “the whole” — are they willing participants, the sacrificed? Do they know?! Did they know?!?
Does one sacrifice oneself?
Do you?
How many do?
How many are selfless patriots to this, “the whole”?
Very few!
Perhaps, even NONE!
Certainly, not the slaved — nor the collateral!
But, “The whole” must go on,
“The King” must live,
“The representative body”, must too,
and “The marketplace”! YES!
Man made — flat earth, astigmatic vision, born in flawed, weak original sin!
“The whole”, yet, Must live!
Long Live “The Whole”! Long Live The King!
And, what is sacrificed — who and how?
“The un-human”? “The inferior”? “The diseased”? “The old and irrelevant”? “The un-named”? “The mis-named”? “The without merit”? “The un-pedigreed”? “Defenders of the ‘untruth’”? Inside.
And Whom, outside?
On May 26, 2020, I dedicated this poem, The Wound, to Mr. George Floyd who on the day prior was brutally murdered in broad daylight by 4 Minneapolis Police officers.
Whom, do WE sacrifice — lawfully in man’s law?
Is it the black, the red, the yellow, the brown?
Is it that, white, who lives below the Dixon and the Mason line?
Is it that who lives in Indian country?
Or that who lives in rich country without roads and laws — where sand covers oil, or dense wood covers the earth — outside?
Or, is it that who carries a disease masked and occult?
Who are “the sacrificed”, WE sacrifice?
Whose, mother and brother? Whose, sister and husband? Whose, wife and son? Whose, town and nation?
These wounded carriers of the stain and scar THEY…. call injustice!
Or is it all just-ified for “The Whole” — no matter whom? No matter for how long this carried wound is alive!
A wound — or a delusion of mental and physical lassitude? Or a failure to accept and move on — weakness?
Is sacrifice, all sacrifice, just — because it is just-ified?!
Because it is passed?!
Perhaps there is no such thing as injustice — or justice!
Perhaps, it is all just-ified — at the altar of, THIS, “The Whole”!
Clean, pure, potent, living-not-dead, civilized…rich, self-absorbed, deserving of sacrifice — belligerent, mocking, indignant, ignorant, unhistoric of the wound, dripping with disdain and loud sarcasm for the word injustice….
Living and thriving only in this prosperous moment, blinded! Man-made “whole”.
For, NO, there is NO justice needed if the sacrificed were undone for “The Whole”.
There in NO wound in need of healing!
There is no need for such a word, justice, or its agents — for there is no just-ification needed to the sacrificed. It is just-ified! It is lawful!
Justice is dead to the Just-ified Whole!
“The whole” who carries the balm to heal the wound — but knows it not.
But Ignore the wound … think it a delusion — and it shall kill “the whole”!
For it is a mortal wound onto THE WHOLE, itself — just-ified and ignored…
blind to its own pathos — to our pathos!
It Dies.
We Die!
Be ware of the wound upon “The Sacrificed” soul!
For it lives inside and outside of time immortal…
in His just heart. | https://medium.com/@noorchashm/the-wound-ignored-it-will-kill-the-man-made-whole-d3698361790d | ['Hooman Noorchashm'] | 2020-05-26 23:59:25.781000+00:00 | ['Utilitarianism', 'Discrimination', 'George Floyd', 'Justice', 'Wound'] |
Greta, Malala, And My Two Daughters | Of all the pictures and videos of Greta Thunberg that have inundated media feeds this week, I was most moved by this picture of young Greta Thunberg, starting out alone, as most visionaries and ventures, noble or otherwise, do. I sent the photo to my daughters with the unwritten caption — look what your peers are doing and achieving.
The next moment, my memory time machine kicked in and transported me to a day five years ago.
Malala Yousafzai, a seventeen-year old teenager, born a few weeks before my older daughter, had won the Nobel Peace prize. My initial amazement at Malala’s young age, maturity and courage, was soon replaced by curiosity about her parents. What exactly had they done to raise such an extraordinary child?
Malala’s news had come on the heels of a tough week of silence and sulking at home while managing the demands of a teenage daughter who inhabited an all-pervasive bubble of entitlement. I expected her to be polite at home, focus on schoolwork and get some clarity on what major to pick in college the following year.
“The kids are under a lot of stress,” another Mom with a similar teen situation had responded, in an unsuccessful attempt to reassure me. Is going to school and managing academic expectations too much for a seventeen year old? Was I pushing her too hard? What kind of support did she need? Perhaps I should back off on my demands.
With news of Malala’s Nobel Peace Prize victory, I changed my mind. Here was a girl who was the same age as my daughter, who had managed to capture the attention of the fickle, news-worshipping majority for the right reasons.
I would have loved to meet Malala. But I really wanted to meet Malala’s parents.
Mrs. Yousafzai and I must have endured similar pregnancy-related symptoms in early 1997, before each of us gave birth to a baby girl. As I juggled teething troubles and toddler tantrums with a full-time job and childcare arrangements in the safety and comfort of the San Francisco Bay area, my counterpart halfway across the world must have struggled with providing a safe environment for Malala and her siblings in the Swat valley of Pakistan.
As the years went by, I chose a private preschool and personally dropped my child to school each morning. I bought her toys and crayons. I took her to the library and read to her each night. I arranged for swimming lessons and ordered her a pink bike with training wheels when she was four. As she grew up, I accompanied her to movies and let her hang out at the mall with friends, let her have unlimited wifi access and took her to Europe one summer. I showed her the world and brought the world to her through a new laptop. After all this, I had a sullen teenager who was confused about college and thought of herself as a normal teen, no different from her peers.
Malala struggled to get to school safely, lacked an adequate supply of books and didn’t know when or if her school would reopen. She expressed outrage publicly when her right to education was in question. She wrote a blog that gave insight into the secluded society that she lived in during a time of dramatic change, one that directly impacted her present and her future. She faced the consequences of standing out and speaking up for a cause that she believed in. She switched her focus from being a doctor to becoming a politician when she understood what her people needed most was a person to influence priorities and shape their future.
I made a list of questions for Malala’s mother. | https://byrslf.co/greta-malala-and-my-two-daughters-7526813688e8 | ['Ranjani Rao'] | 2019-10-02 16:21:53.388000+00:00 | ['Family', 'Parenting', 'Climate Change', 'Relationships', 'Beyourself'] |
The Richest Family Of All Time | The Rothschilds
If I were to ask you what family is the richest family to ever exist, you might make an educated guess and answer with a family such as the Rockefellers, or perhaps the royal family of England, Walmart family, or the Kardashians which wouldn’t be the worst of guesses.
But the richest family of all time and still to this present day is the Rothschild. This family is so peculiar and veiled in so much secrecy that the real truth is no one knows how rich they truly are.
The Rothschilds is a family of such significance that they’ve being tied to a number of deep and dark conspiracy theories that have massive implications that surround this family.
Any conspiracy theory out there that presumes the governments of the world are controlled by a small group of individuals, pretty much all point to the Rothschilds.
These conspiracies warn that this one powerful family is behind the curtain puppeteering massive changes in the culture of humanity. These changes include war, financial crises, racial oppression, and many more.
This family is also believed to be the bedrock of the Illuminati and many believe they control the modern course of humanity.
Money And Control
The most significant hint of the tremendous wealth is the family’s connection to the world banks. The idea is that the family can be tied to almost all of the world banks and they’re attempting to control every last one of them.
One of the most documented and notable members of the Rothschild family was quoted saying:
“I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the empire on which the sun never sets. The man who controls Englands money supply, controls the British empire and I control the British money supply”
Banking has been the cornerstone of the Rothschilds family for generations. The wealth amassed from this business was then diversified into various fields of investments which include: financial services, real estate, mining, energy, agriculture, winemaking, and non-profit organizations.
It’s generally believed by historians that the family played a massive rule in the Napoleon famed defeat at Waterloo in the early 1800s. During the time of the Napoleon wars, the Rothschilds were already incredibly wealthy.
It’s believed that they helped finance the British side of the war against Napoleon to end it. The amount they provided will be the equivalent of $900 million dollars in today’s exchange rate. This funding came in the form of precious metal shipments to the armies spread across Europe.
The Rothschild may have known in advance of Napoleon’s defeat, this made them buy up government bonds. Years later, they sold it for a 40% profit. The exact amount they made is not clear but if they considered it worth providing $900 million dollars to aid the British side during the war then it’s safe to say the profit was a whole lot of money.
Along with helping with the defeat of Napoleon, the Rothschilds have also been tied to the independence of Brazil. Portugal at the time wanted two million sterling before they can agree to grant Brazil their independence. Brazil under the oppression of Portugal, had no means to pay this money so the Rothschilds stepped in and paid the entire sum to the Portuguese government. In turn, Brazil had to pay its debt to the family over time with interest.
Influence On Gold Prices
One of the ways in which the Rothschilds have displayed their influence on the world is by setting the price of gold itself. From 1919 to 2004 the Rothschilds along with other leading traders in the gold industry met every so often to decide the price of the precious metal.
The earliest meetings were hosted and controlled by the Rothschilds themselves as they decided the cost of the metal that serves as the backbone to most economies. The metal that they own so much in excess.
Bail Out In American Resession
Before the great depression, America was running low on gold and experienced one of the first recessions in it’s young history. The president at that time in an attempt to save the nation, reached out to JP Morgan and the Rothschilds to bail out the United States government in the form of a loan.
A Family Shrouded In Secrecy
The thing with the Rothschilds is that you are never going to see them in the Forbes magazine. They’ve done such a fantastic job of not only concealing their wealth by diversifying it in a multitudes of outlets and through generations of heirs and successors. Some speculate that the wealth of this family surpasses one trillion dollars.
Rarely are known members of the family ever seen in public. But when they do so or make an appearance, they are hidden behind the wall of bodyguards and a caravan of black luxury sedans and SUVs. | https://medium.com/@stella-macus-writer/the-richest-family-of-all-time-cebfe518b423 | ['Stella Macus'] | 2020-12-25 09:33:50.655000+00:00 | ['Wealth', 'Richest', 'Gold', 'Family', 'Inheritance'] |
3 words that are holding you back | Avoid these bad words
Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash
Language choices which create a defeatist view of your situation before you even start are damaging; not just to your ability to succeed, but also to your belief system and motivation. This is especially true when times get tough. As a result, be cautious of the language you use in self-talk. Once you choose words that limit your potential, it’s a slippery slope, often ending in unrealized accomplishments and failed dreams. When you remove these three confining words, which are holding you back, from your vocabulary you will discover creative solutions for your problems and open the doors of opportunity to worlds beyond your consciousness.
3 Bad Words
But
But automatically discredits an idea. It indicates something is not true or possible for you. Using but limits your ability and fuels the belief that you are not good enough. Switching from but to and will enhance your creativity in finding solutions. For example if instead of saying, “I would like to play the piano, but I have no musical ability” you were to state, “I would like to play the piano and if I give myself enough time, I will be able to play a few songs I like.” The impact this change will bring to your practice routine and playing of the piano is astounding.
Later
When you say, “later” you assume the opportunity will be there when you take the time to consider it, if you ever do. There are so many factors that need to align for anything to come to fruition that later pushes all those forces away from you. Once momentum is halted, it is difficult to regenerate its energy. Later comes right before tomorrow, which is followed by never. If you need to put something off, fix a time to take action. At least then, you are moving the opportunity into your sites.
Later is the killer of opportunities. When you act on later you are filling a future time with an action that should take place now. As a result, the time in the future is not available. That is a big opportunity cost for procrastination. You will never know what would have been possible because you will be too busy taking care of things tomorrow which you should have done today.
Can’t
Can’t is the killer of all innovation. It speaks to your own perception with little thought of the limitless possibilities just beyond your scope of knowledge. When you catch yourself saying, “it can’t be done”, change your mindset to “How can it be done?” Only by accepting that a solution is possible will you be able to take the steps to achieve it. Thomas Edison said on failing to produce the lightbulb after thousands of tries, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Keep looking for solutions.
Limiting Beliefs
You deny yourself opportunity when you choose to use but, later and can’t. They perpetuate untrue beliefs about yourself, others and the world around you. Limiting language creates constricted thoughts. These bad words surrender control of your situation and opportunities to what others are willing to provide for you.
Thoughts are things, beliefs make them so, and actions solidify the beliefs. JB Glossinger
To understand this idea more clearly, let us examine how results are generated: Results are generated by actions. The quality of your actions is determined by your mindset, which comes from your beliefs. Beliefs are formed by your thoughts, and usually, thoughts are generated by words. Therefore changing the words you use to describe your thoughts will directly impact the results you will achieve.
Missed Opportunities
When you see an opportunity, grab it. Don’t worry if the timing is not right or you’re not ready for it. The perfect time for you to take action is now. That is why you are seeing the steps in front of you. The same thing applies in your daily life. While in motion, keep moving. Get something else done and knock another item off the to-do list. This frees you up for the unexpected. Opportunity favors the bold, so take a chance now. Don’t wait for later. This chance may never come around again.
Change your words, change your thoughts
These four techniques will help you to move in a more positive direction and reduce the impact of limiting beliefs on your life.
Where focus goes energy flows T. Robbins
Reframe — Change the words you use to describe the thoughts. Practice changing your statements from negative to positive. You can start by using and instead of but, replacing can’t with how can and later with now. Then take decisive action on those thoughts until they become ingrained habits you do with little thought.
Take action — Don’t look for excuses for not doing something which could be a turning point in your life. Take action today. Excuses and reasons are forms of procrastination, holding you back from your real potential. You will never know what you are capable of until you try and fail and try again.
Reflect — What is creating your roadblocks? How can you take your skills, abilities and goals to a higher level? Set some time aside to be alone. Reflect on and analyze where you have been, then consider what you need to do to take the next steps towards where you are going.
Positive affirmation — Use positive affirmations to focus on achievement and strength, not weaknesses and problems. Say I can…, I will…, and I am… to increase your confidence and build a belief that you are capable of achieving whatever you set your mind to. As Brian Tracy, motivational speaker and author of more than 80 books, says, “What you think about you bring about.” Create your own short and vivid affirmations to steer you through troubling times.
Avoiding negative self-talk and switching to positive inner-dialogues will help you to remove doubt from your life and welcome possibilities of achievement. We are too often focused on problems, and these limiting words encourage that. Beyond but, later and can’t create your own list of limiting words and find suitable replacements that expand your possibilities to create positive outcomes. Those will open your mind to solutions and discovery of endless possibilities. It all starts with the way you perceive yourself and your situation. Take what you have and do your best with it. | https://medium.com/illumination-curated/3-words-that-are-holding-you-back-554fb4173c77 | ['John Cunningham'] | 2020-10-08 04:55:01.305000+00:00 | ['Awareness', 'Self Improvement', 'Limiting Beliefs', 'Personal Growth', 'Positive Thinking'] |
Wearing Down My Nostrils, One Tissue at a Time | Backstory
I suffered from extreme hay fever in my early twenties.
An allergy test revealed I was allergic to pollen, animal hair and dust. The dogs and the dust I could handle, but I dreaded summer when the pollen pitched. It was like having a permanent head cold. Only the damn anti-histamines gave me relief — but they made me sleepy.
My first summer back in London in 1972 was a nightmare — the pollen count was high.
I couldn’t function at my temp secretarial assignments if I was dripping snot onto my shorthand notebook and sneezing over the typewriter keys at risk of splashing the paper rolled on the platen waiting for me to strike the words.
Unwilling to gain a reputation as the sniveling secretary, I took the pills.
The intensity of my hay fever has faded over the years, and I can usually manage without medication.
But I’m still allergic to politicians. | https://medium.com/the-bad-influence/wearing-down-my-nostrils-one-tissue-at-a-time-2219ba6c7988 | ['Caroline De Braganza'] | 2020-12-02 14:45:27.427000+00:00 | ['Poetry', '50 Words', 'The Bad Influence', 'Microfiction', 'Health'] |
Wonderful that you have highlighted the power of listening. | Wonderful that you have highlighted the power of listening. The answers can often be found right there. | https://medium.com/@mshudofsky/wonderful-that-you-have-highlighted-the-power-of-listening-53f346da4088 | ['Melanie Shudofsky'] | 2020-12-27 21:12:36.283000+00:00 | ['People', 'Inspiration', 'Personal Development', 'Communication', 'Life Lessons'] |
How Much Does It Cost To Build A Social Media App (Features, Business Model, Cost) | How much does it cost you to develop a social media app in 2020–21?, it is one of the most often asked questions by businesses. The typical cost to create a social media app like Facebook, Instagram, Tumbler, can be ranging from $35,000 to $50,000+, depending upon the factors like app type, features, complexity, design, software development and more that influence its development cost.
From Facebook to Instagram, Twitter to LinkedIn, Whatsapp to Snapchat, all have become a social media sensation of the town that is continuously booming on the internet these days.
With the projection that global social media users will reach by 4.41 billion in 2025 from 3.6 billion in 2020, it is fair enough to say that social media apps will quickly take the world by storm. In fact, the existing social media applications have already revolutionized the way people communicate with each other and have become an integral part of everyone’s life.
Moreover, the impact of social media apps have reached to that extent where the majority of people first check the notifications of the social media app on their smartphone in the morning. Right from checking what’s new in the work to keeping up with their friends and family, the smartphone users are widely using these apps for communications and interactions.
Now, many of you are wondering, how it can be rewarding for your business in 2020–21?
The truth is, a mindfully developed social media app can be helpful for both- you and your targeted audience. Since people are spending an average 2 hours 24 minutes on social media on a daily basis and this time has been growing since 2012. While there is no way to predict the future. But, considering the current statistics, it is fair enough to say that global usage of social media apps will likely to increase in the coming future.
Where millions of people are being engaged on social media apps for numerous topics on a daily basis, even highly functional websites fail to achieve that level of engagement that social media platforms provide. And this is the sole reason why businesses are spending in social media applications to fulfill the needs of the specific audience.
But, before stepping towards developing a social media app for your startup, it is important to understand a few things that help you achieve success in the thriving app development market.
Here are the key highlight of this blog:
Growing Popularity of Social Media Apps: Latest App Trends and Statistics
Type of Social Media Apps You Can Consider to Develop in 2020–21
Main Features and Functionalities that Can Make Your App Successful
Advanced Features To Create a Social Networking App
Development Team and Tech Stack Required to Develop Social Media App
Choosing the Best Social Media App Monetization Model?
How Much Does It Overall Cost to Build a Social Media App in 2020–21?
Let’s discuss each point in detail for better understanding:
1. Growing Popularity of Social Media Apps: Latest App Trends and Statistics
Undoubtedly, social media apps are growing at a rapid pace and can ensure you a great success in future. Still, it is worth analyzing the market and evaluating the statistics to determine the scope of launching your social media app in 2020–21.
Here are the key statistics of social media market that you need to know:
Wrap Up: Considering these fantastically powerful and flourishing figures, it is fair enough to say that social media apps will not go anywhere in future. This is why, number of progressive startups spring up like mushrooms and work hard to secure their place in the cutting-edge competitive market.
To achieve success, one thing you need to keep in mind, is to bring a unique and innovative app idea to change the whole concept of social media and offer value to the potential users that they never received before via communication channels.
So now the question is, how to develop a brilliant social media app and how much does it cost you?
To get the answer to this question, first you need to decide which type of social media app you want to create?
2. Type of Social Media Apps You Can Consider to Develop in 2020–21
There are a number of social networking apps developed for different goals and to attract different categories of people. So what’s your type of social media app?
Here are the few categories, from which you can easily choose:
Social Media Sharing Networks
This is one of the most common trending social networks, that provides the privilege to share and create video and photo content with your friends. Through this app, users can create short videos or start their video channel by using various photo filters and interesting features to make out the best from these social networking apps. And the perfect example of this type of social media networks are Instagram, Youtube, Snapchat and more.
Relationship Building Networks
Applications like Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin are the most widely used relationship building networks, leveraging millions of users from all around the world. These apps are working in three ways, developing personal contact networks, professional networks and also helping people to find suitable dating mates.
Social Content Publishing Platforms
Right from blogging to micro-blogging, social content publishing apps like Twitter and Tumbler are playing a great role. Investing in these types of applications is a real worth as it helps in generating traffic and increases the eagerness among users to create and share their thoughts with the world by utilizing this platform.
Discussion Forums
Discussion forums or Q&A service providing social media apps were the first on the internet. The prime goal of these apps is to exchange the knowledge and provide expert advice to the users through the forum.
Online Reviews
Today, in the digitized era, majority of the users are relying on the customer reviews and ratings of the products and services before making an online purchase. This type of social media app is really worth investing in as it helps in pushing forward the quality services of your business.
Conclusion: No matter, whatever kind of social media app you have decided to develop, make sure your app has:
Excellent UX/UI design that attracts the attention of the new users.
Delivery satisfying user experience.
Provide access to use apps anytime and in any location.
Integrated will all the latest features to ensure improved functionality.
Apart from all these, you must be wondering, what features are necessary to consider in developing brilliant social media apps in 2020–21?
3. Main Features and Functionalities that Can Make Your App Successful
The success of the app greatly depends upon the features and functionalities you choose to integrate in the app. And when it comes to launching social media apps, the game solely depends upon the features, its structure and UX/UI design of the app.
However, before you prepare a list of features, keep in mind that these are one of the biggest cost driving factors of the app.
Note: These are the rough estimations of building features, it can go less or above these figures depending upon the choice of mobile app development team you hire, feature you choose and complexity of the app you decide to develop. Moreover, the cost to develop the back-end of the app is still to be added in the app development cost.
So the list of expenses didn’t end here with this table. Since every business has different requirements and goals, therefore, social media apps are constructed with different sets of features. So customizing the app even with the basic features is a complicated task, therefore it is worth enough to hire a mobile app development company to develop a brilliant app.
4. Advanced Features To Create a Social Networking App
With the emerging technologies and increasing number of social media applications in the app stores, developing an ordinary app is not a sensible decision. Where Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumbler, and more already are leading the social media app industry, it’s time to incorporate advanced features in your app to redefine the user experience.
Here are the few advanced features and its development cost/time that you should consider in 2020–21:
AR Filters: Like Snapchat and Instagram, increase the curiosity of the users to try new photo filters everyday in your app. These apps offers you a bunch of AR based face filters right from enhancing features with beauty masks to adding dog’s ear to your face. To add these features to your app, you can use ML kit or ARCore, or simply choose to hire app developers to customize the filters without any hassle.
Like Snapchat and Instagram, increase the curiosity of the users to try new photo filters everyday in your app. These apps offers you a bunch of AR based face filters right from enhancing features with beauty masks to adding dog’s ear to your face. To add these features to your app, you can use ML kit or ARCore, or simply choose to hire app developers to customize the filters without any hassle. Pro Photo Editing : It’s amazing to give access to in-app picture editing features and allow users to customize their picture by using different photo editing tools. Developers can integrate editing features with the help of FFmpeg and allow users to leverage better editing options.
: It’s amazing to give access to in-app picture editing features and allow users to customize their picture by using different photo editing tools. Developers can integrate editing features with the help of FFmpeg and allow users to leverage better editing options. Location Based Content: This can be an exciting feature for your social media app to analyse the user’s location and start showing the content posted by the others with the same location tag. You can hire app developers to develop this feature by using Google Places.
5. Development Team and Tech Stack Required to Develop Social Media App
Building a social media app is a complex task, therefore, instead relying on freelancer or in-house development teams, it is always worth hiring mobile app developers experienced in developing such apps by leveraging latest technologies and proven methodologies.
Since Native iOS/Android app development requires various specialists, therefore you need to look for the dedicated team of developers including:
Project manager: Capable of understanding client’s requirements and able to get it executed from the development team.
Capable of understanding client’s requirements and able to get it executed from the development team. UX/UI Designer: To create beautiful design of the app which is simple, easy and seamless to access and ensure excellent user experience.
To create beautiful design of the app which is simple, easy and seamless to access and ensure excellent user experience. 2 iOS Developers: Expert in developing apps using platform specific programing languages.
Expert in developing apps using platform specific programing languages. 2 Android Developers: Experienced in creating apps using platform oriented programing languages.
Experienced in creating apps using platform oriented programing languages. Back-end Developer/ Front-end developer
QA Engineer: Who will deeply analyse your app and test it by running it over multiple platforms.
6. Choosing the Best Social Media App Monetization Model?
There is no use of developing any mobile app if it fails to make a profit for your business. While there are various monetizing methods, but here we have discussed some of the proven monetizing strategies to help you make best profit from your app:
In-App Advertising: Ads are the most common ways to generate profit from the app, but keep in mind to show relevant advertisements and in certain limits. Excessive amounts of ads can make your users panic and encourage them to uninstall the app.
Ads are the most common ways to generate profit from the app, but keep in mind to show relevant advertisements and in certain limits. Excessive amounts of ads can make your users panic and encourage them to uninstall the app. In-App Purchase: Most of the social media apps are free to use, but you can offer premium subscriptions to get some additional features.
The choice of the app monetization method is depending upon the audience you are trying to target, location of the users and operating system you choose to launch your app. Else, you can hire a mobile app development team to get better app monetization options.
7. How Much Does It Overall Cost to Build a Social Media App in 2020–21?
According to the survey report, the average price of developing a simple app is starting from $40,000 to $60,000, medium complex can cost you in between $61,000 to $69,000 and the complex app can go above $100,000+.
There are thousands of mobile app development companies around the world that claim to be best app developers and can ensure you the cheapest development cost and allow you to develop a social media app under $25,000.
But let me tell you, that’s just a marketing trap for you!
The truth is, there is no fixed price of social media app development, but with the average $50 per hour cost of the developer- a basic app can be developed at $15,000+, medium complex app will cost between $20,000- $30,000 and the complex apps usually goes beyond $50,000+ with all the modern features.
If you are thinking that high cost of developers will ensure you high quality, then, this is just a myth. The actual development cost of the social media app is greatly depending upon the skills, experience, geolocation and expertise of the development team that you choose to hire. So it is always worth to be choosy and calculated while hiring the mobile app developer for your next project.
Conclusion
With the end of this post, hopefully, you are able to estimate how much a social media app will cost you roughly. Building a complex social media app like Linkedin, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and more, it is worth to use an MVP approach to test the product concept first and what exactly you are trying to achieve through a social media app.
With so many features and functionalities, complexities, and technologies available to choose from, it is recommended to look for a mobile app development company that can easily evaluate your business requirements and be able to suggest your best solution with an accurate pricing model. | https://medium.com/flutter-community/build-a-social-media-mobile-app-its-cost-features-business-model-etc-62718c7d05e4 | ['Sophia Martin'] | 2020-11-02 05:04:54.940000+00:00 | ['Business', 'Mobile App Development', 'Technology', 'Mobile Apps', 'Startup'] |
011 SuperDike | Landscape architecture is the profession that invented the urban park system. But it has also been a tool for racist displacement and elitism. Can it be anti-racist? Can it help humanity adapt to changing climates? Discuss. | https://medium.com/landscapes/011-superdike-b22e024da73 | ['Kaji', 'Kazumitsu Kajihara'] | 2020-12-20 08:25:24.137000+00:00 | ['Japan', 'Adaptation', 'Climate', 'Landscape Architecture', 'Floods'] |
How to Verify Users in Express.js | If you’re building an application, you likely want a lot of users on your platform. However, you don’t just want a large number of users, you want real and high-quality users who will interact with your app. You want to verify those users.
It’s common for bots or users with fake email addresses and no intention of seriously using your application to register. One way to deal with this at the start is by making sure to verify users.
This article is a tutorial on user verification in ExpressJS and a continuation of my Express web development series. I will be building on top of the concepts discussed in my previous article on handling password resets.
The setup and required packages are specified in that article but you will be able to see what packages are used in the code examples.
I’d suggest taking a look at the other articles in the series first, although you should be able to follow along with this one regardless. Check out the project on GitHub if you’d like to track it as the series progresses.
Models
Let’s first create the model that holds the verification tokens. Navigate to the models folder and create a file called ‘UserVerification.js’. The file should have the following content:
const { Schema, model } = require('mongoose') const schema = new Schema({
user : {
type: Schema.Types.ObjectId,
ref: 'User',
required: true
},
token: {
type: Schema.Types.String,
required: true
}
}, {
timestamps: true
}) schema.index({ 'updatedAt': 1 }, { expireAfterSeconds: 300 }) const UserVerification = model('UserVerification', schema) module.exports = UserVerification
The model schema contains a token that will be included in the verification link, and the user it’s associated with.
Create an index on the ‘updatedAt’ field that instructs MongoDB to delete the record after 5 minutes from the time the record is updated. 5 minutes is reasonable for testing but you’ll want to increase this to something more reasonable in production.
In the user model, add a boolean ‘verified’ property to the schema. Set the default to false as the user would not be verified upon registration.
const { Schema, model } = require('mongoose') const saltRounds = 10 var userSchema = new Schema({
name: {
type: Schema.Types.String,
required: [true, 'You must provide a name']
},
email: {
type: Schema.Types.String,
required: [true, 'Email address is required']
},
username: {
type: Schema.Types.String,
required: [true, 'Username is required']
},
password: {
type: Schema.Types.String,
required: [true, 'You must provide a password']
},
verified: {
type: Schema.Types.Boolean,
required: true,
default: false
}
}) ... const User = model('User', userSchema) module.exports = User
Routes
Profile routes
The first route we have to create is the profile route. This route will simply render a template with the user’s profile details. Create a file in the routes folder named ‘profile.js’ and add a route that renders the ‘profile.html’ template.
const router = require('express').Router() router.get('/profile', (req, res) => {
if (!req.isAuthenticated()) return res.redirect('/login')
return res.render('profile.html')
}) module.exports = router
User verification routes
Now let’s create the routes that will handle user verification. In the routes folder, create a file named ‘user-verification.js’. To start with, the file will have the following contents:
const router = require('express').Router()
const { v4 } = require('uuid')
const { User, UserVerification } = require('../models')
const { sendEmail } = require('../helpers') /* Create routes here */ module.exports = router
Import the User and UserVerification models. Import the ‘sendMail’ helper function that we created in the previous article. This is simply a function that uses NodeMailer to send an email using the arguments passed to it.
Now let’s create the routes.
Create verification url
The first route is a get route ‘/verify’. This route is responsible for creating the verification URL and has the following contents:
router.get('/verify', async (req, res) => {
if (!req.isAuthenticated()) return res.redirect('/login')
if (req.user.verified) return res.redirect('back') const token = v4().toString().replace(/-/g, '')
const verificationUrl = `${process.env.DOMAIN}/verify-confirm/${token}` await UserVerification.updateOne({
user: req.user._id
}, {
user: req.user._id,
token: token
}, {
upsert: true
}) sendEmail({
to: req.user.email,
subject: 'Verify your email address',
text: `Here's your email verification link: ${verificationUrl}`
}) req.flash('verify_success', 'Check your email address for your verification link. It may take a few minutes')
res.redirect('/profile')
})
First, check if the user is authenticated. The user should only be able to request a verification link when they are logged in. If they aren’t, redirect them to the login page.
Check if the user is already verified. We don’t want to send a verification link if the user is already verified. If they are, redirect to the previous page.
Create the token and then the verification URL that contains the token.
Update the UserVerification record associated with the current user. Make sure to set the upsert option to ‘true’. We want to replace the current verification link so that only one can be active at a time, but we also want to create a new one if there isn’t one in the collection.
Send the email containing the user verification link, flash a success message urging the user to check their email address and then redirect to the user’s profile.
Verify user
The second route handles the link sent to the user:
router.get('/verify-confirm/:token', async (req, res) => {
if (!req.isAuthenticated()) return res.redirect('/login')
const token = req.params.token const userVerification = await UserVerification.findOne({
user: req.user._id,
token: token
}) if (userVerification) {
await User.updateOne({ _id: req.user._id }, { verified: true })
await UserVerification.deleteOne({
user: req.user._id,
token: token
})
sendEmail({
to: req.user.email,
subject: 'Verified',
text: `Congratulations ${req.user.name}, your account is now verified!`
})
req.flash('verify_success', 'Congrats, you are now verified!')
} else {
req.flash('verify_error', 'Verification link is invalid or has expired.')
} return res.redirect('/profile')
})
This route expects a token which we will validate later. First check whether the user is logged in, if not, redirect to the login page.
Extract the token from the url and query the UserVerification collection for a document with the current token and the current user.
If the document doesn’t exist, flash an error message stating that the link is invalid or expired.
If the document exists, update the user’s verified status to ‘true’ and delete the current UserVerification document in order to prevent the link from being clicked again (this would be pointless anyway but it’s good practice).
Send the user an email confirming their verification status and then flash a success message stating that the user has now been verified. Redirect to the user’s profile page afterwards.
Import routes
Go into the app’s entry folder and include the profile and user-verification routes with the following code:
app.use('/', require('./routes/profile'))
app.use('/', require('./routes/user-verification'))
Templates
There’s one new template that we need to create for this feature: the profile template.
{% extends 'base.html' %} {% set title = 'Profile' %} {% block content %}
{% if messages.verify_success %}
<div class="alert alert-success" role="alert">
{{ messages.verify_success }}
</div>
{% endif %}
{% if messages.verify_error %}
<div class="alert alert-danger" role="alert">
{{ messages.verify_error }}
</div>
{% endif %}
<div>
<h5>Hi, {{ user.name }}</h5>
{% if not user.verified %}
Your email is not verified,
<a class="btn btn-sm btn-warning" href="/verify">Verify Email</a>
{% endif %}
</div>
{% endblock %} {% block scripts %}
{% endblock %}
This template renders the error or success message flashed in the previous request. We have a div that displays the user’s name and a button to generate the verification URL conditionally based on the user’s verified status.
Conclusion
In this article, I demonstrated how to verify users in your Express application. There are many reasons you may want to verify users: You may want to make sure you have active, human users on your app or maybe you want to restrict features that require users to be verified.
Whatever the reason, I hope that this article has provided sufficient guidance on the flow and execution of the verification process.
The next article will be about creating user following and follower relationships using many-to-many relationships in MongoDB.
If you enjoyed this article, consider following my personal website for early access to my content before it gets published on Medium. Also, feel free to comment on this post. I’d love to hear your thoughts! | https://javascript.plainenglish.io/how-to-verify-users-in-express-js-24c020433b2a | [] | 2020-12-30 07:27:02.392000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Mongoose', 'Web Development', 'Expressjs', 'Programming'] |
Middleware Components (.Net Core) -Part 1 | Coming from a background of ASP.Net Webforms and ASP.Net MVC, one of the main features which strike me in .Net Core is the Middleware Components. If you have worked with earlier versions of .Net, prior to Core, you might have heard about the http handlers and modulers(I had a hard time learning it though). Well, in .Net Core, they are sort of replaced and in its place a single entity emerged and it is called the “Middleware Components”. So they can be viewed as something we can use to intercept the request, modify it while it goes through the system, and also can be used to alter the response. Simply speaking, middleware components, arranged in a chain, forms the request pipeline.
Middleware components are written (or registered) in the “Configure” method of “StartUp” class.
There are mainly two types of middleware components. Standard(built in) and custom middleware components.
let’s look at some of the standard ones(they are easy to understand also).
Welcome Page Middleware
We can create a simple welcome page for our .Net core app, using the “WelcomePageMiddleware”. This can be handy when you first set up the application, and ensure the requests are getting processed without any issues.
In the ‘Configure’ method of the startup class, replaces all the default code and just put app.UseWelcomePage();
(As I mentioned in my previous blog post, .Net core apps are highly modular. If we just want a simple welcome page, then we don’t need to start the application with all the burden of MVC or Web API components. We can add those things only when needed, along the way)
If we run the application now, we can see a simple, but beautiful welcome page
2. Static Files Middleware
This middleware components are used in an application which serves just static files from wwwroot folder when requested. For example, I have created a static html file called somemessage.html, and put it inside the wwwroots folder. Also I have updated the configure method as shown below:
when we hit F5, we can see the result as follows:
3. StatusCodePagesMiddleware
We generally see 500 Internal server error when some catastrophic error occurs at the server side which is not handled, or a 404 Not found error when the user sends an invalid request. Without properly handling these kinds of errors, the end user will be confused and may think that the application is broken.
In these kinds of scenarios, we can use the statuscodepagesmiddleware to display a friendly error code, as shown below.
4. DeveloperException Page Middleware
When you are in the development phase of your application, you wish to get as much information as possible when an error occurs. Well this middleware exactly gives you that. For demo purpose, I have set up a sample MVC application, and deliberately introduced a Null Reference exception.
here I will show you with/without the DeveloperExceptionPage middleware.
a) Without DeveloperExceptionPage
And the output is:
here, we just get a 500 Internal error. There are no specifics. Now lets look at the other case
b) With DeveloperExceptionPage
here I un-commented the UseDeveloperExceptionPage() method.
and here is the output:
I think the picture itself is self explanatory. Here we get the complete details o the exception including the stack trace, in a visually appealing manner.
5. ExceptionHandlerMiddleware in production.
The DeveloperExceptionMiddleware is handy when you are in the development phase of the application. But what about once the app is pushed to the production? Revealing the detailed information about an error can be useful for the malicious attackers. To get around this problem we can use ExceptionHandlerMiddleware. If an error occurs in production, the user is redirected to a pre-defined error page(without revealing the stack trace and all), which is consistent in look and feel with the rest of the application. For this, we need to incorporate minor changes only in the Configure method.
Conclusion:
Well, that was a humble beginning to middleware components. Lets look at how can we create custom middleware components in the next post.
Thanks for reading!
Say Hi to Author:
LinkedIn | https://medium.com/@avinashkarat007/middleware-components-part-1-eec773b37b7a | ['Avinash Karat'] | 2021-03-04 14:09:21.233000+00:00 | ['C Sharp Programming', 'Dotnet', 'Middleware', 'Dotnet Core'] |
Protests in Iraq Continue Against Iran Regime’s Proxy Terrorists and Corruption | Protests in Iraq — file photo
Reports from Iraq ongoing protests on November 1 and 2 against the Iranian regime’s deadly presence and systematic corruption by the government. The Iraqi people’s uprising is considered a blow to Iranian regime’s so-called “strategic depth.”
Since Iraq has a Shi’ite majority, the Iranian regime prolonged the war with Iraq, to reach its goal of creating the Shi’ite crescent.
The Iranian regime, as part of its strategy to export terrorism and chaos abroad, used the power vacuum in Iraq, after the second Gulf War, and expanded its influence in this country.
The regime’s terrorist proxy groups killed thousands of people. Many of the regime’s paid agents, including the former Iraqi Minister of Labor, Hadi-al Ameri, held top positions in the Iraqi government.
After years of the Iranian regime’s terrorism and meddling in Iraq’s affairs, in 2019 the Iraqi people started their “ October Revolution “ against the Iranian regime’s presence in Iraq and their government’s corruption, mostly related to Tehran’s influence.
In all southern Iraqi provinces where Shi’ite Muslims form the majority of the population, locals poured onto the street and chanted slogans against the Iranian regime.
The Iranian regime’s proxy terrorist groups assassinated many Iraqi activists in a bid to stop the uprising. But why?
Kataib Hezbollah Militias -Iraq
Domestic oppression and export of terrorism are the Iranian regime’s pillars of existence.
The major Iran protests in 2019, and subsequent protests and anti-regime movements throughout Iran, despite the regime’s oppression, are a testament to the regime’s oppressive policies for controlling the society.
The regime has always described Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, particularly Iraq, with its overwhelming Shiite majority, as its strategic depth. This notion was one of the main reasons for the regime’s prolonging of the Iran-Iraq war and creating the terrorist Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Quds Force. Iran’s nationwide uprising was preceded by mass protests in Iraq against Iranian interference in Iraqi society and political affairs. Both movements shocked the Iranian regime and shattered its strategic depth.
The increasing international pressure on the regime for its malign activities has pushed the regime into further isolation.
Thus, to preserve their grasp on power, the mullahs increased their terrorist activities in the region and around the world.
The elimination of the IRGC’s Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, who was implementing the regime’s evil plans in the Middle East, coupled with popular protests in Iraq and Syria also shattered the regime’s so-called “strategic depth.”
After 17 years of trying to occupy Iraq through ruthless measures and using terrorist proxy groups, the Iranian regime’s strategic depth is one step away from collapsing. The increased awareness of the Iraqi people, the elimination of Qassem Soleimani, and the regime’s increasing international isolation are among the main causes of the regime’s waning power in the region.
For years, the regime used its proxy groups to spread terror in Iraq and control the country. Now people are calling for these forces, including the so-called “Popular Mobilization Force” to be dismantled.
The Keyhan daily, known as the mouthpiece of the regime’s supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, in an article on October 25, while calling the uprising in Iraq a “great sedition,” expressed the regime’s fear of losing control in Iraq.
“Last year, the first protests were against corruption, unemployment and the government’s failure to provide public services. The protests overthrew several governments and overshadowed the entire Iraqi political situation,” Keyhan wrote.
Along with the PMF, the Iranian regime has many of its agents as Members of Parliament. Iraqi protesters have called for this parliament and the PMF to be dismantled.
“The new adventures of the suspicious groups in Iraq are launching street protests against the PMF. On the anniversary of the beginning of the street protests in the country, they wrote placards against the PMF forces and also against the Iraqi parliament,” Keyhan added.
Now, after having its puppet governments toppled one after another in Iraq, the regime fears losing control if the PMF or corrupt politicians are ousted.
Yet, Iraqi people have shown they will continue their protests until achieving the goal of ending the regime’s presence in Iraq.
Thus, for the crisis-riddled regime of Iran, that faces a restive society and growing international isolation, there will be more regional pressure. | https://medium.com/@masoud-dalvand/protests-in-iraq-continue-against-iran-regimes-proxy-terrorists-and-corruption-a936b93e4a53 | ['Masoud Dalvand'] | 2020-11-05 21:03:23.257000+00:00 | ['Terrorism', 'Iraq', 'Iraq Protests', 'Iran', 'Corruption'] |
Chapter 1: The Coffee Shop | The Field of Infinite Flowers
I’ve been coming to the same coffee shop since I was thirteen, and was finally allowed to go out alone. I’ve lived in the same small town my whole life, which happens to be located in Maryland. Berlin has always been my home, and there’s a coffee shop right off the corner of my street. It was as far as my parents would let me go alone, but I would always spend all day there. Not that much has changed. I’m sixteen and sitting in the same coffee shop doing my essay about how Mark Twain influenced American Literature. The waiters know me by name, and I always sit in the same spot, where I can plug in my 2018 fifteen inch MacBook that my parents got me for Christmas after bugging them all year for it. It feels like I never go farther than this spot. It’s like my body won’t let me. I sit back and sigh from boredom as I do not want to continue writing about Mark Twain. It’s only four in the afternoon and I feel drained. I take a sip of my half depleted cup of black coffee with extra sugar as I hear a familiar voice come from behind me.
“Luna, don’t overwork yourself now darling, you’ve been sitting in the same spot all day! How do you expect to be an English Professor when you can barely write an essay about who it is? Mark Twain? Whoever that is.” She saids as I turn around to catch a glimpse of her luscious dark skin cleaning the table behind me. She owns the coffee shop, and she’s known me since I was young since she is a friend of my parents. I call her Mrs. Riley.
“Mrs. Riley, that was my dream when I was nine, I want to be a psychiatrist now, it’s my major in high school. But what are you doing cleaning the tables? You usually only manage the cash register, and Beatrice usually wipes down everything? Is she not here today?” I ask with bubbling curiosity as I did not get my usual enthusiastic welcome when I walked in from Beatrice as I usually do.
“She called in sick today, and since Daniel left for college we are short staffed…” She said sighing as she moves onto the table next to me. “…Beatrice said she’d be back tomorrow so until then I have to hold the fort down myself.”
“You’re doing great, I’m sure everything will sort itself out eventually.” I say smiling hoping to lift her mood even the slightest bit.
“Hopeful as usual, that hasn’t changed since you were nine, and even younger than that.” She exclaimed walking away from me as a customer entered the shop to go take their order. I smile as I see the slight smirk on her face from my comment. I look down at my coffee and admire it in all it’s beauty. I’ve ordered the same thing since I was younger and have never gotten bored of it. I live a simplistic lifestyle and never really leave my comfort zone. I’ve been in online school since I was ten due to my overwhelming anxiety in school, and ever since I was eleven I have had my heart set on being a psychiatrist to help other people like me. I like keeping things as minimal as possible, and hate doing things things to drastic.
I look over to the window that I’ve always say next to. This is my seat and it has been. It has my imprint. I see the sun going down and look at the colors swirl in the sky. Pink into purple into blue. It looks so peaceful and fills me with a feeling that I have trouble explaining. I sip my coffee, and start packing up my things. I always get an overwhelming sense of sadness when I have to leave, though I know I’ll be back tomorrow. Things from an outside perspective may seem so simple, and I wonder how people view me. How Mrs. Riley and Beatrice view me. How my parents view me. I wish I knew. With that thought I place my hand on the gold handle that I’ve admired since I first stepped foot into this place. I step outside and feel the cool breeze on me, and look up at the sign. “Blue moon Café — Local Coffee Shop”. | https://medium.com/@kayxzen05/chapter-1-the-coffee-shop-a121c103d5b4 | [] | 2020-12-26 03:28:04.784000+00:00 | ['Fiction', 'Series', 'Love', 'Life', 'Mental Health'] |
A Look at Today’s Self-Cutting Phenomenon | A few years ago I asked a group of Form 5 kids what the Malay term was for “self-cutting”. Immediately a few of them told me it was “toreh diri”. Macam menorah getah, abang!
That was both cute yet tragic at the same time.
I then asked them if they had ever done it, if they had ever slashed themselves. Thankfully, nobody nodded or pointed to anyone else. I asked them if they know any friends from another school who had done some ‘toreh diri’. Some heads nodded.
Finally, I asked them if they knew why these kids cut themselves. They all said No.
Self-cutting has been around a long time. More common among young teenage girls than boys (and, nowadays, even pre-teens), it’s one of those sad trends which easily evoke disgust among peers if one doesn’t understand why. If you’re someone who struggles to grasp why someone would take a blade and create creepy stream-like scars on their arms, I hope the following helps.
How (Literally) Mind-numbing Pain is Created
Humans are strange. Zebras don’t even flinch when the tiger is barely fifty feet away; they only run when pursued. But us? We get stressed out when SPM is a hundred days away. Or feel anxious over what our bosses may not say about our report. Or worry about our car being broken into smack in the middle of watching Spider-Man. Or fret over potential replies to our latest tweets.
The ancient Stoics were spot on when they declared that people suffer more in imagination than reality. And modern biology has more or less erased the divide between physical pain and psychological pain; indeed now some experts are saying that mental and emotional pain can be felt as more intense than bodily wounds.
The bottom line is that humans have this uncanny ability to produce very real suffering solely in our own minds, a situation aggravated by social media and that 24/7 needle stuck in our veins called the smart-phone.
And who would suffer more if not teenagers whose matured/logical frontal lobes have yet to be fully developed? Our teenagers face judgment from peers and authority figures; they face expectations (which, to them, can appear sky high and impossible) and reminders of the need to achieve; they face smirks and comments about their physicality, their “cultured-ness” (or lack of), their looks, what they own, how they eat, etc.
The hyper-sensitivity of today’s political correct ideology doesn’t help; if everyone is on ‘guns-arm’ to point out what everyone else is saying or doing wrong — if being offended becomes a matter of identity and pride — this has the effect of keeping everybody walking on egg-shells all the time. Again, all such weight of the world above is jacked up with steroids the moment the kids open their phones, such that it becomes a real miracle why breakdowns and depressive episodes aren’t as frequent as they already are.
So why cut myself?
Because when the pain in my mind is so intense, slitting open my arms serves to immediately relief it. It’s almost like the principle behind those pills which ‘create’ a small problem in one part of your body (e.g. the stomach) in order to remove the greater existing pain from another (e.g. your head).
That’s one possible biological explanation.
Another deeper explanation is that self-cutting is about making one’s pain real i.e. letting the pain emerge, calling it forth, bring it out.
Because so much of mental pain cannot be articulated, organized, categorised — controlled — the act of self-cutting is akin to naming the demon which afflicts us (see note 1). To cut myself is, at the very least, to isolate and localize the agony in my soul, to place it ‘somewhere’ where I can then (hopefully) dispel it. As per William Davies:
“By channeling psychological harm into physical harm, a cutter gives their pain a tangible existence, which they themselves can see. It proves that they and their feelings are actually real, and can often become the basis of a routine that makes everyday life manageable again.” (Nervous States, p. 115)
According to this view, self-cutting reflects a desperate attempt to make the unreal pain real again, and thus to render life more livable. Ironically, at least a person who is deep into self-cutting is trying to stay alive and endure her sorrow.
If nothing else, we can predict that more and more self-cutting cases will occur. And they will not stop if parents continue to treat their kids as walking trophy-grabbers or exam-takers whose only role in life is to satisfy our need to feel good about ourselves. It’s funny how society always condemns school bullies, but we fail to see how when we foster excessive expectations on our children (based on, strangely enough, what another high-performing child managed to attain), we in fact behave as bullies.
In today’s pressure-cooker environment, I’d risk the claim that the balance between Discipline/Achievement and Play/Freedom needs to be tilted towards the direction of the latter. If in doubt, and obviously without condoning recklessness and outright indiscipline, let our children play more. Let them fail freely, experiment fearlessly, learn independently; heck, let those who’ve had nothing but structure all their lives ‘waste time’ guiltlessly.
Perhaps when love and friendship and joy are more real and most real, our kids will have fewer reasons to treat their hands like rubber trees at harvest time. | https://medium.com/@alwyn-lau/a-look-at-todays-self-cutting-phenomenon-d1efb71eacb2 | ['Alwyn Lau'] | 2021-03-14 13:37:59.553000+00:00 | ['Depression', 'Cutting', 'Schools', 'Teenagers'] |
Authentication with Azure AD and React | Overview
In this article, I’ll show you how easy it is to integrate Azure AD as an Authentication mechanism for your React Application.
We’ll use this authentication mechanism for future Articles.
Here’s a simplified high level sequence flow.
Prerequisites
Create a AD User for testing purposes
App Registration
Search for App Registration in Azure, and create a new App Registration. Fill in the fields below. For this example we’ll leave the callback URL as localhost over HTTP.
Figure 1: Register an Application
Take note of the Application(Client ID).
In the Authentication section, tick the ID Token checkbox.
Tick the ID Token tickbox
React App
Download and Install NodeJS. Open a command prompt or terminal and create a react application.
npx create-react-app my-app
cd my-app
Install the AAD Microsoft Authentication Library for React
npm install react-aad-msal msal --save
Add the following authProvider.js file, replacing the placeholders for Client ID with the one we generated above
//my-app/src/authProvider.js
// Msal Configurations
const config = {
auth: {
authority: '
clientId: '<Client ID>',
redirectUri: '
},
cache: {
cacheLocation: "localStorage",
storeAuthStateInCookie: true
}
};
// Authentication Parameters
const authenticationParameters = {
scopes: [
'user.read'
]
}
// Options
const options = {
loginType: LoginType.Popup,
tokenRefreshUri: window.location.origin + '/auth.html'
}
export const authProvider = new MsalAuthProvider(config, authenticationParameters, options) import { MsalAuthProvider, LoginType } from 'react-aad-msal';// Msal Configurationsconst config = {auth: {authority: ' https://login.microsoftonline.com/common' clientId: ' ',redirectUri: ' http://localhost:3000/callback' },cache: {cacheLocation: "localStorage",storeAuthStateInCookie: true};// Authentication Parametersconst authenticationParameters = {scopes: ['user.read'// Optionsconst options = {loginType: LoginType.Popup,tokenRefreshUri: window.location.origin + '/auth.html'export const authProvider = new MsalAuthProvider(config, authenticationParameters, options)
Update index.js with the below. This will just prompt for authentication straight away when you navigate to your app
//my-app/src/index.js import React from 'react';
import ReactDOM from 'react-dom';
import { AzureAD } from 'react-aad-msal';
import App from './App';
import { authProvider } from './authProvider';
ReactDOM.render(
<AzureAD provider={authProvider} forceLogin={true}>
<App />
</AzureAD>,
document.getElementById('root'),
);
Update App.js with the below. We’re just adding an Auth section to the sample provided to display the username as well as the actual JWT token for this tutorial purposes.
//my-app/src/App.js import logo from './logo.svg';
import './App.css';
import { authProvider } from './authProvider';
import { AzureAD, AuthenticationState } from 'react-aad-msal';
return (
<div className="App">
<AzureAD provider={authProvider}>
<span>Only authenticated users can see me.</span>
</AzureAD>
<AzureAD provider={authProvider} forceLogin={true}>
{
({login, logout, authenticationState, error, accountInfo}) => {
switch (authenticationState) {
case AuthenticationState.Authenticated:
return (
<p>
<span>Welcome, {accountInfo.account.userName}!</span>
<span>{accountInfo.jwtIdToken}</span>
<button onClick={logout}>Logout</button>
</p>
);
case AuthenticationState.Unauthenticated:
return (
<div>
{error && <p><span>An error occured during authentication, please try again!</span></p>}
<p>
<span>Hey stranger, you look new!</span>
<button onClick={login}>Login</button>
</p>
</div>
);
case AuthenticationState.InProgress:
return (<p>Authenticating...</p>);
}
}
}
</AzureAD>
<header className="App-header">
<img src={logo} className="App-logo" alt="logo" />
<p>
Edit <code>src/App.js</code> and save to reload.
</p>
<a
className="App-link"
href="
target="_blank"
rel="noopener noreferrer"
>
Learn React
</a>
</header>
</div>
);
} function App() {return ( Only authenticated users can see me. ({login, logout, authenticationState, error, accountInfo}) => {switch (authenticationState) {case AuthenticationState.Authenticated:return ( Welcome, {accountInfo.account.userName}! {accountInfo.jwtIdToken} Logout );case AuthenticationState.Unauthenticated:return ( {error && An error occured during authentication, please try again! } Hey stranger, you look new! Login );case AuthenticationState.InProgress:return ( Authenticating... ); Edit src/App.js and save to reload. https://reactjs.org target="_blank"rel="noopener noreferrer"Learn React ); export default App;
Run it
npm start
Sign in with the user you created above
Sign in with the user you created above
Accept the ability to Sign on and Read your Profile
Display the Username and ID Token (for demo purposes)
The ID token above can now be used as a bearer token when talking to a services backend. Here you can validate the ID token so you can then trust the claims in this token.
Decoded ID token
You can also invite users as guests to your Organisation and they can also authenticate to your Application.
Validating ID Token
In future articles we’ll use a java library to validate our JWT token, but for reference purposes you can do the following…
Extract the particular public key from the header kid claim in the JWT token e.g.
“kid”: “iBjL1Rcqzhiy4fpxIxdZqohM2Yk”
Next navigate to the following URL which contains various openid metadata, we’re interested in the “jwks_uri” field. This contains the list of public signing keys.
https://login.microsoftonline.com/{tenant}/.well-known/openid-configuration?appid={client id}
Now if we navigate to that address (jwks_uri), we’ll get a list of public keys.
https://login.microsoftonline.com/{tenant}/discovery/keys?appid={client is}
From here, we will find our kid (Key ID) from above and extract the corresponding public key located in the field “x5c” (x509 cert)
Now add the following wrappers around this key e.g.
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
public key
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
Open up jwt.io, paste in our JWT token and in the verify signature section, plug in the above and you should get a Signature Verified output
References | https://medium.com/@adrianhynes/authentication-with-azure-ad-and-react-ced9a829e083 | ['Adrian Hynes'] | 2020-12-20 06:51:09.584000+00:00 | ['Azure Ad', 'Authentication', 'Jwt', 'React'] |
Guide to choosing the best Career. | Don’t be the one who just does work to earn money, be the one who loves their work and have all the capability to do it. I have seen many people who don’t love their work but do it anyway and make their life frustrated in the long run. I have also met those people in my life who follow their passion and make it best by choosing it to make it their career. Here are some tips by which choosing a career can be easy without making a wrong choice. Nowadays, many youngsters are choosing their careers in Bartending, the hospitality industry because of the growing interest in this.
I can understand it can be crucial to choose the right career but follow these steps you will feel happy after applying it:
You should know about your Strengths — Every person is unique in their own way, have some special characteristics and strengths. Similarly, it happens with our weaknesses. Just find out how passionate you are about your skills! Are you good at making paintings, sketches? Will you find it easy to coach other writers? In which thing you are good? What are your strong skills? Find it.
A career test — Take a career test if you can’t choose it on your own. Just answer the questions and you will get to know about it. The career tests are focusing on your skills and strengths and then it will suggest a career that is compatible for you and provide you the 2 to 3 options.
Advice — Take advice from your friends who are doing something creative and they love! Ask other people who are professional in some other field. Ask them to give a piece of good advice so that you can choose a good career.
Start working as an Intern — With an internship, you will get some exciting job opportunities and get good career opportunities. If you start working as an intern it will help you to find how perfect and good you are in a particular job. An Internship can be paid or unpaid. Moreover, it will add more weight to your resume.
These are some key tips which you can choose for your career. | https://medium.com/galaxy-training-australia/guide-to-choosing-the-best-career-6c148249f6e4 | ['Jesper Morgan'] | 2020-03-11 07:29:03.026000+00:00 | ['Career Advice', 'Strength', 'Studying', 'Advice For Life', 'Courses And Training'] |
The Hype cycle of Magic quadrants, Cool vendors and Confused clients | The Hype cycle of Magic quadrants, Cool vendors and Confused clients
A review of Gartner & roundup of their recent Analytics Summit
It’s raining AI conferences these days. If you’re at a loss in deciding which one to attend and what to make of all the hype, you’re not alone. It takes serious effort to identify events that have meaty content, then separate marketing-speak from industry intelligence, and finally put the learnings to action.
I attended the Gartner Data & Analytics Summit in Orlando, earlier this month. With over 3000 people huddling together into 150+ sessions across 5 days, the energy levels were palpable. Throw-in exhibits from 111 vendors, workshops and one-on-ones with 100+ research analysts, this sounds crazier.
In this article, I will try and unravel this mystic ecosystem that Gartner has carefully built. We’ll see why buyers hold them in high regard, and what makes the sellers do anything to get featured in it. I will provide a broad overview of their analytics conference and the key industry trends discussed.
Gartner, for the uninitiated
Gartner is into research and advisory with a broad presence across technologies & industry verticals. With 15,000+ employees serving 12,000+ clients, not many realize that the company publishing ‘hype cycles’ and ‘magic quadrants’ is a $4 Billion giant, comparable in revenues to NASDAQ or Ferrari.
The 3 key business lines of Gartner, per its annual report are:
Research : The primary offering that accounts for ~75% of revenue, and encompasses all things cool about Gartner — magic quadrants, hype cycles, cool vendors, market guides, and research reports.
The primary offering that accounts for ~75% of revenue, and encompasses all things cool about Gartner — magic quadrants, hype cycles, cool vendors, market guides, and research reports. Consulting : This encompasses the customized solutions they provide their clients, on strategy, benchmarking and purchase decisions.
This encompasses the customized solutions they provide their clients, on strategy, benchmarking and purchase decisions. Events: 70+ conferences organized around the world, including popular ones such as Gartner Symposium/ITxpo and Gartner Analytics Summit.
While this in itself may not sound unusual, the way Gartner has woven all of these offerings together and created strong interdependencies with the market is remarkable. We’ll dive into that next to see what’s their superpower.
Gartner’s magical hold on the ecosystem
Research & content is the strategic asset that powers the Gartner engine. Analysts are visibly at the core of this system, aided by an army churning out the analysis and market research. The other two offerings of consulting and events ride on this and double up as channels to sell the research offerings.
The Gartner Engine
What turns the above standard business schematic into an efficient flywheel is the addition of buyers (enterprises that purchase software & services) and sellers (products, platforms and consulting players) into this picture.
Given the brand that Gartner has built, clients flock to them for advice on strategic technology decisions. They engage analysts to discuss issues that ail their businesses. They buy research reports and participate in their events to learn how to implement transformation programs.
Advisory at such a strategic level gives Gartner a huge influence on where the money gets spent. Gartner actively recommends vendors for clients to consider and also shares guidelines on how to evaluate them. That makes Gartner a force to reckon with, for the vendors.
Gartner and the Clients (such as Organizations buying analytics or other technology)
Gartner actively woos vendors promising them a sneak peek into what businesses really want. Vendors readily queue up for Gartner’s services to engage analysts and brief them on their own offerings. They pay to learn how to sell better, they buy the research reports and attend events to meet clients.
Getting into the mindshare of analysts increases the vendor’s chances of being featured in reports. Most marketing teams would kill for a mention in the magic quadrant. So, vendors vie for the spot by sharing their case studies, and client references.
Gartner, Clients and Vendors (such as Organizations selling tech products, platforms or services)
While clients and vendors pay to talk to Gartner, every such conversation also enriches Analysts with unique industry intelligence. This is assimilated and flows back into research reports and presentations as thought leadership, and is paid for by the same parties. Information is wealth and we can see how a smart recursive loop has been built into the system.
All this works in tandem because Gartner has secured the most prized asset, the network effect. As the market grows, Gartner’s stature only rises. This network effect is an entry barrier for new players, and it’s a winner takes all game, quite like the social networks of Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.
With all parties paying to get a slice of Gartner’s attention, there is a thin line that separates what’s fair from what constitutes a conflict of interest. While there are some dissenting voices, Gartner seems to be managing this well so far. Aggressive growth targets of any for-profit enterprise can be a distraction. Gartner has good credibility and how things pan out remains to be seen.
Insights from the Gartner summit in Orlando
People assembled for the Gartner Opening Keynote at Orlando
Now onto the recent Analytics summit at Orlando. With 8 tracks spanning all aspects of data — governance, engineering, visualization, machine learning, leadership, and strategy, there was something for everyone.
The big difference from all other events is that every session here is presented by Gartner Analysts, with the exception of vendor-sponsored talks, and guest keynotes. The sessions are quite like the Gartner research reports, well-packaged market summaries offering 30,000 feet views of the landscape and trends in the 2-5 year horizon.
With one of the highest vendor participation, the 100+ exhibits presented a good assortment of every data science product and platform the industry offers, all options under one roof. However, visitors ran the risk of hearing buzzwords of AI, Digital transformation and Insights repeated over and over!
Amongst several takeaways from the event, I’ve picked 3 for this article:
1. Willful Disruption: 7 digital disruptions you might not see coming
The 7 Digital Disruptions to watch out for (trends shown on the line, to the left; examples are on the right)
This session by Daryl Plummer was insightful and enjoyable. Businesses are disrupted all the time, and many of today’s giants will be unseated soon. This session laid out a framework for leaders to embrace willful disruption, to preempt the market forces. He covered 7 broad trends (see picture) that are expected to materialize in the mid-to-long term.
2. Digitopia 2035 — a peek into the future
Digitopia 2035 Trends: Will we soon rejoice in the ‘Joy Of Missing Out’, and splurge on privacy vacations?
Gartner launched the ‘Digitopia’ project last year, where volunteers from 25 countries contributed short stories on their view of life in 2035. Combining these stories on hope & aspirations with an extrapolation of digital trends, Frank Buytendijk took a stab at where the world is headed. Check this for some nuggets of insights, and how we can play a role as Pragmatic Futurists.
3. Creating a Culture of Innovation with Design sprints
Sketchnote of the session by Jake Knapp
Jake Knapp is the creator of design sprints and author of NYT best-selling book ‘Sprint’. From his days as a product designer of Encarta Encyclopaedia and a suite of products at Google, he showed how a new approach to innovation and rapid experimentation can help. It was fun to hear his high-energy, hilarious talk. Here are his website and a similar talk video.
Summary
On a closing note, the Gartner Summit provided a bird’s eye view of the data science landscape. The sessions demystified the latest buzz words with a long-term view of what’s coming. It was a good networking opportunity with data practitioners across the country, and with almost every vendor in the fray.
Having attended the event for a few years, I tend to agree with one of the attendees who had settled into a perfect rhythm of skipping the event every other year. His reasoning was that the biggest takeaways are the broad trends and they don’t change every year! | https://towardsdatascience.com/the-hype-cycle-of-magic-quadrants-cool-vendors-and-confused-clients-b8773d64538c | ['Ganes Kesari'] | 2019-04-01 14:13:37.552000+00:00 | ['Gartner', 'Analytics', 'Towards Data Science', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Data Science'] |
EdPresso Roundup: Top 5 flavors of quick coding knowledge | EdPresso shots are a new kind of Espresso shot but, instead of waking your body up with caffeine, they wake your mind up with knowledge. Just like shots of espresso, EdPresso shots are short and concentrated bits of coding knowledge, organized in an open-access library for developers of all skill levels. The time it takes to read one rarely exceeds four minutes, no matter the difficulty of the topic.
Also, like espresso shots, EdPressos come in many different flavors, some more popular than others. There are five shots that seem to have won over developers around the world. In this post, we will explore the top 5 questions searched by developers like you. | https://medium.com/educative/edpresso-roundup-top-5-flavors-of-quick-coding-knowledge-2f209b955dd0 | ['The Educative Team'] | 2020-01-27 21:32:13.600000+00:00 | ['Coding', 'Programming', 'Beginner', 'Development', 'Object Oriented'] |
#WorldMentalHealthDay: Look Beyond Yourself & Care for Others. | Mental health is a trending 21st-century issue that affects a person’s emotional state and physical output. Mental health becomes negative when you begin to engage in toxic activities or unhealthy/abusive relationships which could lead to depression and some times suicide.
The World Health Organization estimates that about 1 million people die of suicide annually around the world. Despite these frightening statistics, poor mental health can be addressed and extreme results like depression and suicide can be prevented if:
1. You talk to someone you trust like close friends, parents, colleagues, mentors or religious leaders to confide in them on issues bothering you
2. Seek professional counselling from a psychologist to get expert advice. | https://medium.com/climatewed/worldmentalhealthday-look-beyond-yourself-care-for-others-28a411295192 | ['Iccdi Africa'] | 2019-10-10 17:40:34.834000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Youth Development', 'Mental Health', 'Climate Change', 'Women'] |
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❖ ALL CATEGORY WATCHTED ❖
An action story is similar to adventure, and the protagonist usually takes a risky turn, which leads to desperate scenarios (including explosions, fight scenes, daring escapes, etc.). Action and adventure usually are categorized together (sometimes even while “action-adventure”) because they have much in common, and many stories are categorized as both genres simultaneously (for instance, the James Bond series can be classified as both).
Continuing their survival through an age of a Zombie-apocalypse as a makeshift family, Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), Wichita (Emma Stone), and Little Rock (Abagail Breslin) have found their balance as a team, settling into the now vacant White House to spend some safe quality time with one another as they figure out their next move. However, spend time at the Presidential residents raise some uncertainty as Columbus proposes to Wichita, which freaks out the independent, lone Akudama Drive out, while Little Rock starts to feel the need to be on her own. The women suddenly decide to escape in the middle of the night, leaving the men concerned about Little Rock, who’s quickly joined by Berkley (Avan Jogia), a hitchhiking hippie on his way to place called Babylon, a fortified commune that’s supposed to be safe haven against the zombies of the land. Hitting the road to retrieved their loved one, Tallahassee and Columbus meet Madison (Zoey Deutch), a dim-witted survivor who takes an immediate liking to Columbus, complicating his relationship with Wichita.
❖ ANALYZER GOOD / BAD ❖
To be honest, I didn’t catch Zombieland when it first got released (in theaters) back in 102. Of course, the movie pre-dated a lot of the pop culture phenomenon of the usage of zombies-esque as the main antagonist (i.e Game of Thrones, The Maze Runner trilogy, The Walking Dead, World War Z, The Last of Us, etc.), but I’ve never been keen on the whole “Zombie” craze as others are. So, despite the comedy talents on the project, I didn’t see Zombieland….until it came to TV a year or so later. Surprisingly, however, I did like it. Naturally, the zombie apocalypse thing was fine (just wasn’t my thing), but I really enjoyed the film’s humor-based comedy throughout much of the feature. With the exception of 102’s Shaun of the Dead, majority of the past (and future) endeavors of this narrative have always been serious, so it was kind of refreshing to see comedic levity being brought into the mix. Plus, the film’s cast was great, with the four main leads being one of the film’s greatest assets. As mentioned above, Zombieland didn’t make much of a huge splash at the box office, but certainly gained a strong cult following, including myself, in the following years.
Flash forward a decade after its release and Zombieland finally got a sequel with Zombieland: Double Tap, the central focus of this review post. Given how the original film ended, it was clear that a sequel to the 102 movie was indeed possible, but it seemed like it was in no rush as the years kept passing by. So, I was quite surprised to hear that Zombieland was getting a sequel, but also a bit not surprised as well as Hollywood’s recent endeavors have been of the “belated sequels” variety; finding mixed results on each of these projects. I did see the film’s movie trailer, which definitely was what I was looking for in this Zombieland 2 movie, with Eisenberg, Harrelson, Stone, Breslin returning to reprise their respective characters again. I knew I wasn’t expecting anything drastically different from the 102 movie, so I entered Double Tap with good frame of my mind and somewhat eagerly expecting to catch up with this dysfunctional zombie killing family. Unfortunately, while I did see the movie a week after its release, my review for it fell to the wayside as my life in retail got a hold of me during the holidays as well as being sick for a good week and half after seeing the movie. So, with me still playing “catch up” I finally have the time to share my opinions on Zombieland: Double Tap. And what are they? Well, to be honest, my opinions on the film was good. Despite some problems here and there, Zombieland: Double Tap is definitely a fun sequel that’s worth the decade long wait. It doesn’t “redefine” the Zombie genre interest or outmatch its predecessor, but this next chapter of Zombieland still provides an entertaining entry….and that’s all that matters.
Returning to the director’s chair is director Ruben Fleischer, who helmed the first Zombieland movie as well as other film projects such as 1 Minutes or Less, Gangster Squad, and Venom. Thus, given his previous knowledge of shaping the first film, it seems quite suitable (and obvious) for Fleischer to direct this movie and (to that affect), Double Tap succeeds. Of course, with the first film being a “cult classic” of sorts, Fleischer probably knew that it wasn’t going to be easy to replicate the same formula in this sequel, especially since the 1-year gap between the films. Luckily, Fleischer certainly excels in bringing the same type of comedic nuances and cinematic aspects that made the first Zombieland enjoyable to Double Tap; creating a second installment that has plenty of fun and entertainment throughout. A lot of the familiar / likeable aspects of the first film, including the witty banter between four main lead characters, continues to be at the forefront of this sequel; touching upon each character in a amusing way, with plenty of nods and winks to the original 102 film that’s done skillfully and not so much unnecessarily ham-fisted. Additionally, Fleischer keeps the film running at a brisk pace, with the feature having a runtime of 1 minutes in length (one hour and thirty-nine minutes), which means that the film never feels sluggish (even if it meanders through some secondary story beats / side plot threads), with Fleischer ensuring a companion sequel that leans with plenty of laughter and thrills that are presented snappy way (a sort of “thick and fast” notion). Speaking of which, the comedic aspect of the first Zombieland movie is well-represented in Double Tap, with Fleischer still utilizing its cast (more on that below) in a smart and hilarious by mixing comedic personalities / personas with something as serious / gravitas as fighting endless hordes of zombies every where they go. Basically, if you were a fan of the first Zombieland flick, you’ll definitely find Double Tap to your liking.
In terms of production quality, Double Tap is a good feature. Granted, much like the last film, I knew that the overall setting and background layouts weren’t going to be something elaborate and / or expansive. Thus, my opinion of this subject of the movie’s technical presentation isn’t that critical. Taking that into account, Double Tap does (at least) does have that standard “post-apocalyptic” setting of an abandoned building, cityscapes, and roads throughout the feature; littered with unmanned vehicles and rubbish. It certainly has that “look and feel” of the post-zombie world, so Double Tap’s visual aesthetics gets a solid industry standard in my book. Thus, a lot of the other areas that I usually mentioned (i.e set decorations, costumes, cinematography, etc.) fit into that same category as meeting the standards for a 12 movie. Thus, as a whole, the movie’s background nuances and presentation is good, but nothing grand as I didn’t expect to be “wowed” over it. So, it sort of breaks even. This also extends to the film’s score, which was done by David Sardy, which provides a good musical composition for the feature’s various scenes as well as a musical song selection thrown into the mix; interjecting the various zombie and humor bits equally well.
There are some problems that are bit glaring that Double Tap, while effectively fun and entertaining, can’t overcome, which hinders the film from overtaking its predecessor. Perhaps one of the most notable criticism that the movie can’t get right is the narrative being told. Of course, the narrative in the first Zombieland wasn’t exactly the best, but still combined zombie-killing action with its combination of group dynamics between its lead characters. Double Tap, however, is fun, but messy at the same time; creating a frustrating narrative that sounds good on paper, but thinly written when executed. Thus, problem lies within the movie’s script, which was penned by Dave Callaham, Rhett Reese, and Paul Wernick, which is a bit thinly sketched in certain areas of the story, including a side-story involving Tallahassee wanting to head to Graceland, which involves some of the movie’s new supporting characters. It’s fun sequence of events that follows, but adds little to the main narrative and ultimately could’ve been cut completely. Thus, I kind of wanted see Double Tap have more a substance within its narrative. Heck, they even had a decade long gap to come up with a new yarn to spin for this sequel…and it looks like they came up a bit shorter than expected.
Another point of criticism that I have about this is that there aren’t enough zombie action bits as there were in the first Zombieland movie. Much like the Walking Dead series as become, Double Tap seems more focused on its characters (and the dynamics that they share with each other) rather than the group facing the sparse groupings of mindless zombies. However, that was some of the fun of the first movie and Double Tap takes away that element. Yes, there are zombies in the movie and the gang is ready to take care of them (in gruesome fashion), but these mindless beings sort take a back seat for much of the film, with the script and Fleischer seemed more focused on showcasing witty banter between Columbus, Tallahassee, Wichita, and Little Rock. Of course, the ending climatic piece in the third act gives us the best zombie action scenes of the feature, but it feels a bit “too little, too late” in my opinion. To be honest, this big sequence is a little manufactured and not as fun and unique as the final battle scene in the first film. I know that sounds a bit contrive and weird, but, while the third act big fight seems more polished and staged well, it sort of feels more restricted and doesn’t flow cohesively with the rest of the film’s flow (in matter of speaking).
What’s certainly elevates these points of criticism is the film’s cast, with the main quartet lead acting talents returning to reprise their roles in Double Tap, which is absolutely the “hands down” best part of this sequel. Naturally, I’m talking about the talents of Jessie Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin in their respective roles Zombieland character roles of Columbus, Tallahassee, Wichita, and Little Rock. Of the four, Harrelson, known for his roles in Cheers, True Detective, and War for the Planet of the Apes, shines as the brightest in the movie, with dialogue lines of Tallahassee proving to be the most hilarious comedy stuff on the sequel. Harrelson certainly knows how to lay it on “thick and fast” with the character and the s**t he says in the movie is definitely funny (regardless if the joke is slightly or dated). Behind him, Eisenberg, known for his roles in The Art of Self-Defense, The Social Network, and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, is somewhere in the middle of pack, but still continues to act as the somewhat main protagonist of the feature, including being a narrator for us (the viewers) in this post-zombie apocalypse world. Of course, Eisenberg’s nervous voice and twitchy body movements certainly help the character of Columbus to be likeable and does have a few comedic timing / bits with each of co-stars. Stone, known for her roles in The Help, Superbad, and La La Land, and Breslin, known for her roles in Signs, Little Miss Sunshine, and Definitely, Maybe, round out the quartet; providing some more grown-up / mature character of the group, with Wichita and Little Rock trying to find their place in the world and how they must deal with some of the party members on a personal level. Collectively, these four are what certainly the first movie fun and hilarious and their overall camaraderie / screen-presence with each other hasn’t diminished in the decade long absence. To be it simply, these four are simply riot in the Zombieland and are again in Double Tap.
With the movie keeping the focus on the main quartet of lead Zombieland characters, the one newcomer that certainly takes the spotlight is actress Zoey Deutch, who plays the character of Madison, a dim-witted blonde who joins the group and takes a liking to Columbus. Known for her roles in Before I Fall, The Politician, and Set It Up, Deutch is a somewhat “breath of fresh air” by acting as the tagalong team member to the quartet in a humorous way. Though there isn’t much insight or depth to the character of Madison, Deutch’s ditzy / air-head portrayal of her is quite hilarious and is fun when she’s making comments to Harrelson’s Tallahassee (again, he’s just a riot in the movie).
The rest of the cast, including actor Avan Jogia (Now Apocalypse and Shaft) as Berkeley, a pacifist hippie that quickly befriends Little Rock on her journey, actress Rosario Dawson (Rent and Sin City) as Nevada, the owner of a Elvis-themed motel who Tallahassee quickly takes a shine to, and actors Luke Wilson (Legally Blonde and Old School) and Thomas Middleditch (Silicon Valley and Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie) as Albuquerque and Flagstaff, two traveling zombie-killing partners that are mimic reflections of Tallahassee and Columbus, are in minor supporting roles in Double Tap. While all of these acting talents are good and definitely bring a certain humorous quality to their characters, the characters themselves could’ve been easily expanded upon, with many just being thinly written caricatures. Of course, the movie focuses heavily on the Zombieland quartet (and newcomer Madison), but I wished that these characters could’ve been fleshed out a bit.
Lastly, be sure to still around for the film’s ending credits, with Double Tap offering up two Easter Eggs scenes (one mid-credits and one post-credit scenes). While I won’t spoil them, I do have mention that they are pretty hilarious.
❖ FINAL THOUGHTS ❖
It’s been awhile, but the Zombieland gang is back and are ready to hit the road once again in the movie Zombieland: Double Tap. Director Reuben Fleischer’s latest film sees the return the dysfunctional zombie-killing makeshift family of survivors for another round of bickering, banting, and trying to find their way in a post-apocalyptic world. While the movie’s narrative is a bit messy and could’ve been refined in the storyboarding process as well as having a bit more zombie action, the rest of the feature provides to be a fun endeavor, especially with Fleischer returning to direct the project, the snappy / witty banter amongst its characters, a breezy runtime, and the four lead returning acting talents. Personally, I liked this movie. I definitely found it to my liking as I laugh many times throughout the movie, with the main principal cast lending their screen presence in this post-apocalyptic zombie movie. Thus, my recommendation for this movie is favorable “recommended” as I’m sure it will please many fans of the first movie as well as to the uninitiated (the film is quite easy to follow for newcomers). While the movie doesn’t redefine what was previous done back in 102, Zombieland: Double Tap still provides a riot of laughs with this make-shift quartet of zombie survivors; giving us give us (the viewers) fun and entertaining companion sequel to the original feature. | https://medium.com/akudama-drive-series-2-episode-1-s02e01/akudama-drive-series-2-episode-1-s02e01-stream-429957473274 | ['Nike Pramudita'] | 2020-12-23 17:37:10.341000+00:00 | ['Adventure', 'Animation', 'Mystery'] |
The cure for ‘Industrial Disease’ is deliberate cold exposure. | The cure for ‘Industrial Disease’ is deliberate cold exposure.
A constellation of deadly maladies termed “metabolic syndrome” result from excess insulin, called hyperinsulinemia.
by Thomas P Seager, PhD
CEO Morozko Forge, LLC
Prior to the discovery of antibiotics and vaccines, the principal cause of death was infectious disease by pathogenic microorganisms.
What’s remarkable in the history of disease is the incredible resistance of medical professionals and societies to what was called “germ theory.” Despite definitive evidence of infection as the principal mechanism disease contagion in 1762, physicians clung to false beliefs in “miasma” and refused to adopt basic sanitation practices like hand washing — even after these practices were proven to save lives.
In our current post-industrial age, infectious disease is no longer the #1 killer. Instead, a much more complex constellation of diseases, including cancer, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, obesity and its complications, and Alzheimer’s account for over half the deaths in United States.
What’s remarkable is that all of these diseases have a common root cause called “metabolic syndrome,” yet physicians still stubbornly cling to false beliefs about cholesterol, carbohydrates, saturated fat, and the relationship between nutrition, metabolism, and health. as a consequence, medical institutions stubbornly cling to practices that keep making their patients sicker.
The problem has reached staggering proportions:
These non-communicable (i.e, non-infectious) diseases are so pervasive that nearly 60% of the American population is now considered obese or overweight, and the range of related medical, and psychological issues related to ‘Industrial Disease’ is almost too broad to comprehend. Table 1 below organizes and describes them.
What is now clear to all but traditional, institutionalized physicians is that the quality and quantity of human life depends on regulation of insulin.
And there are only three ways to keep your insulin levels healthy:
Keto eating: low carb, low gylcemic index, fasting, and/or calorie restricted. Exercise. Deliberate cold exposure: recruit and activate brown fat, consume blood glucose, and improve insulin sensitivity.
Everyone knows about the importance of diet and exercise.
At Morozko Forge, we specialize in deliberate cold exposure, because it may be the fastest, easiest, and most overlooked healing modality for recovering from the ill effects of modernity.
Morozko isn’t waiting for the medical establishment to imitate the benefits of deliberate cold exposure in a pill, or a surgical procedure. Our experiences of weight loss, health restoration, and metabolic regulation have been so profound that we will continue to experiment with our own protocols, and build a community of practitioners, scientists, biohackers, and engineers for sharing life-saving knowledge. | https://medium.com/morozko-method/the-cure-for-industrial-disease-is-deliberate-cold-exposure-2dd07f6a3ea4 | ['Morozko Forge'] | 2020-01-16 19:16:56.584000+00:00 | ['Autoimmune', 'Diabetes', 'Biohacking', 'Obesity', 'Wellness'] |
Virtual booths, online conference, and lots of work during this year’s Techsylvania | As the title clearly states, we recently put a lot of effort into creating the S&P experience for Techsylvania 2020: Beyond Borders. But let’s go to the beginning of the story.
Beginning of life as we did not know it
Back in spring, all our plans at S&P for the new quarter, and basically for the whole year, were a bit shaken. The majority of our team is still working remote, a proper team building was out of the question (we really wanted to top last year’s boat trip that you can read all about here), and lastly, we did not have any idea of what was going to happen with all the tech conferences and events that we were supposed to go to. Luckily, the amazing Techsylvania team dropped the news of an online tech conference. We were so happy that the theme “beyond borders” was literally becoming a reality, and we salute their initiative and passion to continue what they started, even under these challenging circumstances.
Preparations for the unknown
We were not familiar with the concept of having a virtual booth at a tech conference. The Techsylvania team guided us through the whole process, through the setup and all the possible scenarios that we had at our disposal to make our presence seen and memorable at the conference. But we knew we got four good months to plan it all out. The task list seemed easy and doable at first:
Create a virtual booth
Organize a satellite event
Host a workshop
Easier said than done — you can trust us on this! We did not want our interaction with the conference participants to look like a regular Zoom meeting, Skype call, or Google Hangouts call. Of course, these are great tools that come in handy more than ever with this pandemic, lockdown, and remote working. But it did not seem like the best choice for what we had in mind.
Step 1. Setting up the virtual booth
After thorough internet research where we scoured for cameras, lights, and microphones, we decided to let the professionals do their magic. We’ve joined forces with the team at NumaFilm. These guys know what they’re doing, and after one meeting at our office, they managed to use our space like it was designed for filmmaking. Together, we turned one of our favorite meeting rooms, the Gordon Ramsay room, into a literal studio. Just take a look at this set-up. | https://medium.com/salt-pepper/virtual-booths-online-conference-and-lots-of-work-during-this-years-techsylvania-adc8dde24848 | ['Flavia Mocan'] | 2020-10-06 08:49:37.240000+00:00 | ['Fuckup Nights', 'Devlife', 'Life At Salt And Pepper', 'Techsylvania'] |
Killing Nobles in the Square: the Távora Affair | Killing Nobles in the Square: the Távora Affair
The extermination of one of the most prominent Portuguese noble families of the 18th century
The attempted regicide of King Joseph I of Portugal, in 1758. Francisco Vieira de Matos
1759–1760. Source: Museu de Lisboa (Public Domain)
The Távora Affair, known in Portuguese as the Processo dos Távoras is one of the most shocking episodes in the Portuguese history of recent centuries. This 18th-century extermination of one of the most prominent families in the Portuguese Kingdom was a shocking, horrid event, even in today’s point of view.
It all started after the assassination attempt of King José I in 1758…
The Beginning
After the devastating earthquake and seaquake of 1755, in Lisbon, the Portuguese king, D. José I, settled his court in an elaborate complex of tents located in the Ajuda region of the capital — don’t be fooled it could be easily compared to a sort of Versailles. He lived in constant fear of another natural disaster and of another building falling on him, believing that his life was constantly threatened.
Rei D. José I de Portugal. Miguel António do Amaral 1773. Source: Hermitage Museum
At this time, the king’s court was lead by his prime minister Sebastião José de Carvalho e Mello, the future Marquess de Pombal (in Portuguese, Marquês de Pombal). Mello was vehemently against the old noble houses of Portugal and their backwards ideas on development. Once he reached the high-regarded position of Prime Minister, he decided to get his revenge on both the old nobility and the Jesuits, who had been against his struggle to amass power and influence.
Marquês de Pombal. Autor: Louis-Michel Van Loo. 1766. Câmara Municipal de Oeiras.
The “Conspiracy”
On the night of the 3rd of September 1758, three men attempted to ambush the king’s carriage. Although he escaped mostly unscathed — with only a slash to his arm — this event only increased the king’s fear for his own life, which had been a constant worry of his ever since the earthquake, three years prior.
In the following days, before the news of the attempt had been divulged, the prime minister took charge of the situation and captured and tortured two men that had been — allegedly — involved. They confessed their guilt and pointed to the Távora family as being responsible for the plot. According to them, they wished to put José Mascarenhas, Duke de Aveiro, on the throne. This seemed especially plausible because the king’s nighttime ride followed an encounter with his lover, D. Teresa de Távora e Lorena — who was the Marquess de Távora’s sister. They were the only ones with the means to know where the king would be that night since he was travelling disguised and in an unidentified carriage. | https://medium.com/history-of-yesterday/killing-nobles-in-the-square-the-t%C3%A1vora-affair-971010b92730 | ['Ana Esteves'] | 2020-12-30 09:03:14.019000+00:00 | ['Portuguese', 'Culture', 'Death', 'Death And Dying', 'History'] |
How we are going to get everyone flying | Atlas: Watfly’s single-seat VTOL aircraft
Flight is the most effective means of transportation. That is why the President flies around in a helicopter, celebrities in private jets, and why critical patients are flown in air ambulances. Still, personal flight remains a luxury, and for the rest of us, transportation means roads and soul-crushing traffic.
To democratize flight, we need flying cars. That is, an aircraft that is similar to a car: affordable to most, as easy to pilot as cars are to drive, as safe as commercial air travel, and with convenient, practical use. Said aircraft would eliminate aviation’s existing barriers to entry, and would do to aviation, what the automobile did for personal transportation.
Today, only a tiny group of people enjoy access to cheap and small recreational aircraft, ranging from power gliders and ultralights, to experimental airplanes. The thrill of flying these aircraft is huge, but they are statistically less safe than commercial aircraft, require substantial aeronautical ability, and hundreds of hours of flight training to pilot.
Why is flying the future?
Fixed-wing flight requires little infrastructure other than runways, but vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) further reduces this to near zero. Using this technology allows you to take off wherever you are and land where you need to be, without the need for a last mile solution.
In the air, there are no traffic lights, and no bottlenecks, meaning we can achieve higher sustained travel speeds and efficiency, leading to shorter travel times and allowing us to cover longer distances.
How are you making flight affordable?
Making air transportation affordable requires both affordable vehicles and affordable operational costs.
The first is achieved by:
Reducing development timelines and certification costs. A commercial airliner takes over 5 years and >$500m to certify. However, a small aircraft can be certified in under a year, leading to shorter development cycles which allows us to bring cutting edge performance to market, faster.
Reduced complexity: this goes hand in hand with aircraft price. Replacing internal combustion engines and jets with electric powertrains will reduce part count by 2 orders of magnitude.
Economies of scale: There is currently no flying vehicle being produced at automotive volumes. This has kept the prices high and limited the manufacturing techniques available. A small, electric VTOL aircraft such as Watfly’s would be the first aircraft to be produced at automotive volumes, drastically reducing the manufacturing cost.
Operational affordability: by replacing the cost of carbon fuels with electricity, the flight operating cost (FOC) is fractionated. The much simpler drivetrain — with fewer parts to fail/maintain — further reduces ground operating costs.
The other high cost of operating an aircraft today comes from pilot certification and training costs. Bringing flight to people at an automotive scale would increase the need for pilots beyond the current number of pilots in existence. In order to avoid this bottleneck and reduce the cost of flying our vehicles, Watfly will develop Autonomous Flight (AF) which will substitute human pilots and fly the aircraft from take off to landing.
State of the VTOL Industry
There are 100s of VTOL prototypes in development, with new projects emerging every week. Most of these are not designed to be flying cars, but rather more efficient helicopters. Truth is, no one looks at these 3 ton, 5 passenger, multi-rotor aircraft and thinks “I would like to buy one,” or “I could see myself flying that” and much less “I wonder if that fits on my driveway.” They are creating flying busses, not flying cars.
Our Master Plan
Our initial product will be a single-seat recreational aircraft under 254 lbs, priced as a luxury vehicle. It will fall within the most open aircraft category in the United States: ultralights. This means our vehicle will be pilotable without the need for a license or airworthiness certificate — although our aircraft will be built to meet or exceed those requirements. We will bring VTOL, an electric power-train, and computer assisted controls to the ultralight market for the first time, eliminating the need for runways, making flying as easy as flying a drone, and providing improved safety features.
This first luxury single seater — while revolutionary in its category — will not be a full fledged flying car. Ultralight aircraft can only fly in Class G airspace (~80% of the USA), ruling out flying in urban environments, thus reducing practicality. At the same time, a single seat, a high price tag, and a limited travel range all fall short of the flying car promise of an aircraft for the masses. In automotive terms, this will be our Model N, the model Ford produced prior to the first mass-produced car: the Model T.
All revenue generated will be directed towards the R&D of subsequent products, therefore, sales of our first luxury recreational aircraft will pay for the development of the ultimate flying car. The second product will be a two-seat aircraft — and without giving away too much — it will be certified to fly above regulated air spaces. Each iteration will lead to enhanced AF, longer range, and make the vehicles more affordable.
Get ready to fly.
Learn more at www.watfly.ca or drop me a line [email protected] | https://medium.com/@getmeflyingcars/how-we-are-going-to-get-everyone-flying-ea96fc959f38 | ['Gonzalo Espinoza Graham'] | 2020-02-21 16:51:45.375000+00:00 | ['Future', 'Technology', 'Flying Cars', 'Aviation', 'Watly'] |
Please, Mr. Prosecutor Mueller | Dear Mr. Prosecutor Mueller:
Can I speak frankly?
What is with you FBI guys?
Either you talk too much or you don’t talk at all.
First James Comey blabbed so recklessly about Hillary Clinton’s “careless” treatment of classified emails that he left millions of Americans with the impression that she was guilty of a crime, despite the fact that he had cleared her of all charges. Then he decided not to reveal that Trump was under investigation while reminding voters, eleven days before the election, to be sure and not forget about Clinton’s “email scandal” when they cast their votes. And now you — who we’ve been writing eager, pleading love songs to for two years — have apparently decided that you want to avoid the “political spectacle” of public testimony by refusing to have your appearance before Congress televised. Especially after Comey, that hurts. It really does.
It’s embarrassing now to recall much we’d pinned our hopes on you. It’s painful to look at the “Please Mr. Mueller” video now, and remember how we all laughed and cheered and, even though we knew it was a parody, had our hearts temporarily lifted, as we shared and plastered it all over Facebook and Twitter.
It’s kind of sad now to watch that video; it seems as naïve as imagining Elliot Ness actually was reincarnated as Kevin Costner. But — with all due respect, Mr. Prosecutor Mueller — maybe you are the naïve one, thinking that you can somehow remain “apolitical,” somehow manage what the press and politicos will do with your words, if your testimony isn’t televised. James Comey, if we believe his book, also thought he was acting in a scrupulously apolitical manner — and we know what his arrogant attempt to second-guess the consequences of his actions led to. Sure, I can understand your desire to avoid participating in what must seem, to a man of your “rectitude” (as Representative Nadler described you to Rachel Maddow) ) like a wild-west show. But the reality is that testifying behind closed doors will not avoid the circus; it will simply allow the clowns to continue to occupy center-stage.
And — again with all due respect — what century are you living in? Are you still using a quill pen? Did you not see (that was rhetorical, I know you did, because you actually came forward to complain about it — can we have some more of that please?) how shamelessly William Barr was able to distort and displace the reality of your careful, masterful report in one televised appearance?
Yes, I did read your report, and I did find it masterful. But as you surely must know, it’s also dense, detail-packed, ultimately (and frustratingly) withholding, and although those of us who have sifted through it have largely come to the same conclusion that had Trump not been President he would surely have been indicted on at least a few counts of obstruction of justice, the fact that the Report tops the best-seller lists does not mean tons of people have actually read it. William Barr, of course, was counting on that when he left that staggeringly false impression in the minds of Americans. Now, he and Trump are doing their best, blocking testimony to Congress, to see that “No Collusion, No Obstruction” remains indelibly stamped in the collective mind.
Trump and Barr seem to understand the political power of the televised appearance, and I’m trying to wrap my mind around why you do not. I know you are aware of the McCarthy hearings, which brought the dramatic turnaround of McCarthyism and Joseph Welch’s memorable “At long last, have you no decency?” into the living rooms of enthralled Americans. I know you remember when a sweating Richard Nixon lost the Presidential debates to a glamorous, cool Kennedy (those audiences who heard the debate on radio overwhelmingly rated Nixon the winner) and when John Dean called out the “cancer on the Presidency” in the Watergate Hearings. And then, of course, there’s the latest in the line of audience-grabbers: “No Collusion, No Obstruction.”
Like it or not, the mass media, while they may not be the message, carry the message louder and clearer than written argument — especially a complex one of over 400 pages, which landed in most people’s lives with the silent thump of a fallen tree in the forest that no-one is around to hear. Trump gets the impotence of argument and detail better than anyone and exploits it daily, as he tries to rewrite reality with repetitive mantras that brand people and events as he pleases. Heard often enough, they achieve the status of fact. A dry transcript cannot compete; we need you to come forward and speak.
For a long, long time now, Trump’s presence has verbally and visually dominated our lives, while you have chosen to remain invisible. We granted, even appreciated, that reticence during the years that you were investigating and writing your report. Admittedly, we were silly to endow you with capacity to save us. (What can I say, we are all feeling a bit desperate these days.) But if it was naïve to imagine that your report would zap public consciousness (the way, say, the lurid Starr Report did), we weren’t prepared to have it suppressed by an obstructionist Attorney General. (We should have been; Barr practically warned us.) Reading what you actually wrote after hearing Barr’s summary was gasp-inducing, the gap between text and spin was so broad. And watching the facts trickle out, bit by bit, fragmented and diluted by the passage of time and the impact of the week’s previous headlines was torture. I thought of all those people who, unlike me, do not have jobs that afford them the privilege of time to read lengthy reports. I imagined those people trying to piece the fragments together while louder, more insistent voices colluded in sustaining a false but more easily consumable narrative.
Now, in the face of constant stonewalling and gaslighting by Trump and Company, the American people need you to come out of the shadows. We need to have the fog lifted.
Dear Mr. Prosecutor Mueller: People throw the phrase “speaking truth to power” around promiscuously nowadays.
You, however, can actually do it.
Please, please do. | https://susanbordo.medium.com/please-mr-prosecutor-mueller-a5b26e79ecc2 | ['Susan Bordo'] | 2019-05-30 11:21:27.469000+00:00 | ['Television', 'Politics', 'William Barr', 'Mueller Report', 'Mueller'] |
İran’ın Sıcak Denizleri I: Bağdat | 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/consensusturkiye/i%CC%87ran%C4%B1n-s%C4%B1cak-denizleri-ba%C4%9Fdat-9619a5047c34 | [] | 2021-01-31 11:09:44.757000+00:00 | ['Iran', 'Irak', 'Bağdat', 'Şii Hilali', 'Politika'] |
Date Questions to Escape the Friend Zone | Date Questions to Escape the Friend Zone
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels
“Getting a date is the easy part,” Sam moaned.
I wasn’t surprised. With his striking blue eyes and chiseled jaw packaged into 6 feet of pure muscle, I could definitely see dates coming easily to him. It also helped that Sam was outgoing, hilarious, and kind.
“So what’s the problem?” I asked.
“So, here’s how the last few dates have gone. I meet a girl, we like each other, we talk for hours. It’s fun and enjoyable. Then, it’s the end of the night and I feel like I’ve made another great friend and am no closer to finding a girlfriend. How do I make the conversation romantic?” Sam looks at me with the earnest curiosity of a student on the first day of class.
“Ahhh, so it’s the conversion from friend to romantic interest that you’re struggling with?” I pondered.
“Yes!! Conversion! How do I get her to talk about her heart?” Sam jumped up excitedly.
“What do you guys talk about for hours?” I asked.
“You know — what we like reading, philosophy, hobbies, where we grew up, favorite restaurants, our jobs. The worst part is I know she’s attracted to me too but after a couple of dates like that…well, it’s the friend zone for me.”
Sam was extremely well-read and a great conversationalist but the questions he was asking on his dates were probably better suited for making friends or even bonding with a co-worker than a romantic interest. Turns out, talking about the weather is not a great primer for getting sexy. So, I wrote this list of questions for all the Sams out there.
A bit of warning though — these questions are not for the faint-hearted asker or responder. Like Sam, most people are far more comfortable with extended small talk and you may even find the questions confronting when they are inevitably flipped around to you. But if you are a curious person and have an equally adventurous partner, you’re in for a fun ride. Ready? | https://psiloveyou.xyz/first-date-questions-to-escape-the-friend-zone-165faf0213a3 | ['May Pang'] | 2021-04-05 19:34:13.280000+00:00 | ['Dating Advice', 'Love', 'Relationships', 'Dating', 'Life'] |
Sandipan Roy, Chief Strategy Officer, Isobar Asia-Pacific, discusses the ROI of Innovation | Following Spikes Asia Festival of Creativity in Singapore last month, we spoke to Sandipan Roy, Chief Strategy Officer, Isobar Asia-Pacific to discuss the ROI of innovation.
You discussed the ROI of innovation at the recent Spikes Asia festival. Can you tell us more about your thinking on that?
There’s sufficient macro-economic and corporate data to indicate that innovation either isn’t working or there’s not enough of it happening. Here are some quick data points:
· We are living in an era of economic stagnation. Our productivity rates are just about 1%. If the definition of productivity is maximising output with minimum input, then the delta has to be innovation. But if productivity is only 1%, obviously innovation isn’t a big part of it.
· Companies are sitting on massive cash reserves and distributing huge amounts of dividend every year. Trillions of dollars are trapped in low- to negative-yield financial instruments. And yet innovation is nowhere near getting its fair share of this cash. So, there is a lot of cash out there but it’s not finding its way into innovation.
· The start-up failure rate is high. The success rate of new products is abysmally low.
There is a Harvard Business School study that says over 84% of CEOs sees innovation as a board-level agenda but only 6% are satisfied with the success of their companies’ innovation.
So obviously, something is going wrong somewhere.
Why are businesses and brands unhappy with the success of innovation?
Fundamentally, there are a couple of problems with the way innovation is being done. One, innovation is more of a solutions-first approach, which means you build solutions that then have to find problems to solve, as opposed to the other way around. Two, even when big companies are doing innovation on the side i.e. skunkworks, startups, innovation teams, they find it difficult to integrate these outputs with their core business. So, when integration between the core and innovation sides results in failure, innovation is always seen as guilty before being proven innocent and in the core business, it’s exactly the opposite.
In spite of this, the disruption of legacy incumbents is inevitable. It’s not a question of ‘if’, it’s a question of ‘when’. It’s not an event called disruption, it’s a process of disruption. Every sector of the economy has already stated getting disrupted, the speed depends on how mature the technology in that sector is — so while technology may impact the speed, it is not the reason for disruption. GPS and mobile has existed for a couple of decades, but that never disrupted anything by itself. Uber had to put a business model around it to disrupt the transportation industry. Streaming has existed for a couple of decades, but Netflix had to put a business model around it to disrupt the entertainment and media business.
So where are companies going wrong?
The thing about disruption is the fact that more often than not, companies are not getting disrupted as much as they are destroying themselves. The crucial factor there is that they aren’t organising themselves around the customers’ needs. When companies are startups, in the stage of disrupting, the focus is always on customer needs for e.g. “how can I meet customer needs?” Once these startups start becoming bigger and better, they remove the focus on customer needs and on to their products instead i.e. “how can I make my product better?” The final nail in the coffin is when they feel their product is better, then they focus on their operations — “how can I make my company more efficient?”
Kodak is the poster child for how a big company got disrupted. But interestingly, they did do a lot of innovation — they improved their print quality, film quality, etc. But they were innovating on the wrong end of the business. They were innovating on their core processes and systems, while the disruption was happening on the consumer side of the business with new developments like Instagram and iPhones.
So, I think there’s a lot of fear amongst legacy incumbents — they dread cannibalization. They think that if they embark on innovation, they would cannibalize their own business. But I don’t believe companies can disrupt themselves. Very few companies have managed to disrupt themselves successfully such as Netflix, Facebook, or General Electric. But by and large, disruptive innovation is best done in another zone of the business and then integrated with the core in a systematic manner.
Is innovation still important to businesses and brands, or should we shift the focus?
Innovation is fundamental not just to success, but to the existence of any business because essentially innovation is about meeting customer needs in a new and different way, and not necessarily a better way. Innovation is fundamental to neutralize risks of disruption to the core business as well as to seek opportunities to be disruptive.
Where do you see the next opportunity for disruption?
I am very hopeful and passionate about healthcare. It contributes to a fifth of every economy’s GDP. Not disrupting healthcare means a big sector of the economy isn’t being impacted. We do see some progress, such as IBM Watson’s AI work with oncologists at Sloan Kettering, but it’s not happening fast enough for a number of reasons — regulatory, safety and security. The other area is education. With increased importance around re-skilling due to unemployment caused by automation, transformation of the education sector is of massive importance.
Finally, what’s your one piece of advice to businesses and brands on innovating?
Ultimately, there’s a demand and a supply side to every business and the successful existence of any business is to organise themselves around newer and different ways to meet unmet customer needs. Strategy is about value creation so identifying areas where value can be created or destroyed and then developing frameworks and mechanisms to institutionalise it is key to long-term success. | https://medium.com/isobar-global-blog/sandipan-roy-chief-strategy-officer-isobar-asia-pacific-discussed-the-roi-of-innovation-8e82352db00a | [] | 2017-10-19 13:51:40.983000+00:00 | ['Culture', 'Innovation', 'Spikes Asia', 'Digital Marketing', 'Return On Investment'] |
I will do excel data entry and virtual assistant job | Virtual assistant
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Thanks | https://medium.com/@piyalchowdhury1/i-will-do-excel-data-entry-and-virtual-assistant-job-10fa67e24161 | ['Jahidul Islam Pial'] | 2020-12-21 10:24:37.053000+00:00 | ['Facebook', 'Fiverr', 'Online Marketing', 'Virtual Assistant', 'LinkedIn'] |
Drunk Explorer Insults King and Loses His Life | The ill-fated armada
Sebald De Weert had his fair share of luck and misfortune. He was born in the cosmopolitan trading city of Antwerp in 1567.
There was nothing special about the sixth of 17 children. When his family fled the Spanish persecution, also known as The Spanish Fury of 1576, Sebald left with them.
They fled to Cologne before eventually gravitating to the Netherlands. Sebald, like any young Dutch man, was passionate about sailing and soon enlisted as a navigator on board a fleet of ships heading to the Indies.
A Rotterdam syndicate had high hopes of wealth with the plan to plunder Peru and Chile before heading to the Indies. The syndicate was made up of ex-refugees from Antwerp who had a major dislike of the Spanish.
The colonies in Peru and Chile were under Spanish control. Equipped for trade as well as war, five ships left port in 1598.
The ironically named ships were, Hope, Faith, Charity, Fidelity and Good News. Sebald got lucky. Before the ships had even reached the coast of Guinea (not very far at all), First Commander Jacques Mahu died.
Sebald was appointed captain of Faith when the original skipper became the overall Commander. Sebald couldn’t but help see this as a sign from god. A higher power blessing his life.
It wasn’t all plain sailing. The new Commander was risk averse and decided to winter on the Straits of Magellan. Simon De Cordes had failed to take advantage of favourable winds costing over 100 men their lives through starvation. It didn’t get any better for the fleet.
Once out of the straits, the wind and fog dispersed the fleet. The Good News suffered bad tidings as they were captured by the Spanish. Hope, ironically, vanished without a trace somewhere in the Pacific.
Fidelity, the faithful and loyal vessel, did make it to the Indies. Unfortunately the Portuguese took a fancy to her and captured the ship. Meanwhile Charity, captained by the infamous William Adams, rested in Japan with Adams trading his sailor status for that of a samurai.
Sebald was facing a mutiny. The crew no longer had the stomachs for a campaign that had veered so far off course with the lost of the entire fleet. Nobody felt like plundering anymore.
Forced to turn back, Sebald congratulated himself on a job well done. He had, after all, managed to chart the Falkland Islands. Yay Sebald! The syndicate naturally went bust. | https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/drunk-explorer-insults-king-and-loses-his-life-c07b73d9d4ea | ['Reuben Salsa'] | 2020-08-10 16:45:35.319000+00:00 | ['Salsa', 'Sailing', 'History', 'Trade', 'Business'] |
Prosthetics And Orthotics Market Size Worth $13.3 Billion By 2027 | The global prosthetics and orthotics market size is expected to reach USD 13.3 billion by 2027, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc., registering a 4.6% CAGR over the forecast period. Increasing incidences of sports injuries, rising incidence of osteosarcoma, and expanding geriatric population base are key factors driving the market.
Rising geriatric population across the globe has become a major factor driving demand for prosthetics and orthotics. For instance, as per the United Nations, the number of people aged 60 years or over globally is expected to more than double by 2050, increasing from 962 million in 2017 to 2.1 billion in 2050. The elderly are more susceptible to conditions such as osteoporosis and osteopenia, making them common users of various orthopedic solutions.
Increasing incidence of osteosarcoma in young adults and children is also driving the market to a great extent. Patients recovering from this surgery generally need orthopedic devices and prosthetics as a part of post-surgery treatment, which is slated to drive the market in the upcoming years. Around 800 to 900 new cases of osteosarcoma are reported in the U.S. each year as of 2018.
Click the link below:
https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/prosthetics-orthotics-market
Further key findings from the report suggest: | https://medium.com/@marketnewsreports/prosthetics-and-orthotics-market-841733bf322a | ['Gaurav Shah'] | 2020-12-23 07:00:59.188000+00:00 | ['France', 'Italy', 'Japan', 'Medical Devices', 'China'] |
Explore San Francisco via Alaska Airlines Reservations | San Francisco is the excitement, cultural and economic center of Northern California. Founded by Spanish settlers in 1776, the city is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The city became famous in 1849 as the home of the California Gold Rush and was then the largest city on the west coast. A popular city for tourists, San Francisco is known for its cool summers, fog, steep rolling hills, eclectic architecture and landmarks. Discover the beauty of this unique city on a budget, book your tickets through Alaska Airlines Reservations and take advantage of exciting offers at the time of booking.
Golden Gate Bridge
The world-famous Golden Gate Bridge is the symbol of this city. This wonderful 1.7-mile building connects San Francisco with Marin County and points further north. The bridge opens just before dawn and closes every night. The bridge was originally completed in 1937 and its gates are opened every day for the public to appreciate its beauty. After walking, don’t forget to visit the small museum on the southern side of San Francisco. In the museum, you can learn more about the bridge, including some interesting facts and history. You will also find a gift shop, snack bar and small restaurant on the same side.
San Francisco’s Chinatown
One of the oldest Chinatowns outside of Asia. is San Francisco Chinatown,Many of the Chinese who founded here the trader or migrant workers who work in the transcontinental railroad or as miners during the gold hunter. This scenic part of the city is located mainly on Grant Avenue, from Bush to Broadway. This place is suitable for dining, shopping, entertainment and more.
Alcatraz Island
One of the most famous attractions in Alcatraz Island. This old prison complex originally opened as a US military fort in the mid-1850s. It became a military prison in early 1900 and a safer federal prison in 1934. Visitors can easily recognize many of the prisoners who spent their time at The Rock. Most notable are Al Capone, Robert Stroud and Machine Gun Kelly. However, the prison closed the door in 1963. It reopened in 1973 for a public tour. Tickets to visit Alcatraz include a round-trip ferry to the island, a self-guided audio tour, and the opportunity to explore several other buildings. | https://medium.com/@eflightoreservations/explore-san-francisco-via-alaska-airlines-reservations-54bd8798355c | [] | 2020-11-27 08:15:43.442000+00:00 | ['San Francisco', 'Alaska Airlines'] |
How Close was the 2020 Presidential Election? It’s Complicated. | Figures have been updated to reflect recounts and the resulting small changes to the final voting figures.
All states (and DC) have now certified their presidential election results and while Biden won the popular vote by over seven million votes and handily won the Electoral College, it’s clear that the 2020 Presidential Election was far closer than is generally recognized; 43,423 votes in just three states made all the difference.
Please note, we’re talking about the actual results here. There’s simply no evidence of wide-scale or significant fraud. None. However, voter suppression on the other hand is real, pervasive, and a threat to American democracy. It should be talked about far more than it is. But that’s another subject.
While Trump and some of his most ardent supporters are unwilling to accept the result, the rest of the United States and the world is looking ahead to Biden’s presidency. Biden won the popular vote by over 7 million - the highest number of votes in US presidential history (Trump won the second-highest). It was a clear and decisive victory if not a landslide.
Biden won by a clear majority of both the popular vote and the Electoral College. But crucially his popular vote wins in the states that gave him his Electoral College victory were razor-thin.
With 306 electoral college votes, Biden clearly passed the 270 votes he needed to win but it was his victory in the three closest states that put him over the top. Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin all gave Biden a margin of victory of less than two-thirds of 1% in each state. The total number of votes was 43,423 (less than 0.03% of the around 155 million votes cast by Americans in the election).
Trump was far stronger in the most contested states than he was in the country as a whole (where Biden won by about 4 percentage points) meaning Trump had a major advantage in the Electoral College. In 2016 it was enough to win the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote, in 2020 he came close to doing it again.
The combined electoral college votes of Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin add up to 37. If these states had gone to Trump there would have been a 269–269 tie in the Electoral College and the election would have gone to the House of Representatives where Trump would have won (in a ‘contingent election’ each state gets one vote and Republicans have a majority of state delegations).
Of course, this is looking at an election in hindsight. The whole point is you can’t try and change a small number of votes in a few states to flip the election before (or after) the voting has taken place. Is 2020 unremarkable — could you say this about any presidential election — pick the closest states and show that a relatively small number of voters would change the overall result?
Not really. Trump’s strength in the Electoral College meant he came far closer to victory than you would expect from his popular vote share. If you look at the 2012 presidential election, where the percentage of the vote for both the Democrat and Republican candidates was similar to 2020, Romney would have had to have flipped 9 of the closest 15 states to change the result. These 9 states had a combined margin of 768,376 votes for Obama.
Perhaps the closeness of the result has been obscured for Democrats by the fear of a repeat of 2016’s shock Trump’s victory combined with the uncertainty as to how far Trump would go in refusing to accept losing. There’s just a sense of relief that Biden won and will be moving into the White House. Republicans seem to be too preoccupied with protesting about how Trump won rather than looking at the closeness of the actual result.
While Biden maintained a clear lead in polling throughout 2020, the election never seemed like a done deal. Perhaps it never could be with Trump’s unlikely 2016 shock victory in everyone’s memory. With polling’s mixed recent record and the genuinely increased difficulties that the industry is grappling with, no one could be certain of the result. But as some pointed out, it was Biden’s sizable polling lead that insulated him from a normal-sized polling error (which turned out to be the case).
But another way to look at 2020 is that it was almost a repeat of 2016. In 2016, the Trump campaign realized their only chance of winning the Electoral College was through the Rust Belt states. The decision of the Trump campaign in the last few days and weeks of the 2016 election to focus on these states was much commented on and maligned by many political pundits. Some like 538.com pointed out that it wasn’t a bad strategy for the Trump campaign, indeed it may have been their only plausible route to victory. They also pointed out the not inconsiderable possibility that Trump could win in the Electoral College but lose the popular vote.
Perhaps Democrats, who were hoping that 2020 would represent a wholescale repudiation of Trump, don’t want to consider how close Trump won, just like they don’t want to consider how, and why, Trump won in 2016.
So what would Trump have done differently in 2020 to win? Well, it’s hard to conceive how Trump could possibly have won the popular vote but it’s far easier to see how he could have eked out a win in the Electoral College.
One has to consider that without COVID-19 Trump could have won in the Electoral College. But could something much smaller have changed the result such as Trump’s choosing to act in the first debate (where he received much criticism for his performance) as he did in the third-scheduled debate? There was no second debate as Trump caught COVID-19 and refused to debate virtually. Maybe this would have been enough. Perhaps Trump should have been wearing a mask — it may well have cost him the presidency.
On a side note, one has to wonder what the reaction would have been of millions of Americans’ to a second Trump victory, yet again on a minority of the popular vote with the Democrat candidate gaining more than 50% of the vote? Trump would have had an even smaller percentage of the vote than the Electoral College-winner (and popular vote-loser) in 2000 or 2016 (or 1876).
Should the Trump campaign have focused more on Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin? Well with hindsight, yes but there were lots of states in play. To give the Biden campaign credit, they expanded the playing field and the critical implication of this was that it was hard to know where to spend time and energy for the Trump campaign — they were on the defensive in so many places.
There are implications for 2024 from all this. Trump or another Republican has an obvious path to victory and it runs right through the Rust Belt as well as Arizona and Georgia. Democrats will have to consider how Biden, over the course of his presidency, can firm up his support in these key states and if another Democrat was to run, how would they perform?
The 2020 results offer some indication of other states that could come into play in addition to Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin. Pennsylvania with its 20 electoral college votes only backed Biden by 80,555 votes. On the other side, Democrats will surely note that the three states with the smallest leads for Trump (in terms of % of each state’s vote) were North Carolina, Florida, and Texas with a whopping 82 electoral college votes up for grabs.
Another key question is, does Trump’s strength in the Electoral College apply to other Republicans? The debate about this will be key to Trump’s argument for why he should be the Republican nominee in 2024. If another Republican wins the nomination they will look at how they can equal Trump’s relative strength in the Rust Belt and how to win back Arizona and Georgia.
Between now and 2024, events in addition to demographic changes could combine with new presidential candidates that have strengths and weaknesses in a completely different arrangement of states. But with partisanship so high and few genuinely undecided voters, the 2020 election map gives us a good blueprint for the considerations that will dominate the 2024 presidential election strategies for both parties. | https://medium.com/@andyhigson/42-908-votes-the-2020-presidential-election-was-closer-than-you-think-884f89744f1 | ['Andy Higson'] | 2020-12-20 18:52:11.849000+00:00 | ['Politics', '2024 Elections', 'Current Events', 'United States', '2020 Presidential Race'] |
A Summary on the Immortality of Racism | Racism is a vile belief that poisons the mind of those with whom it resides. It is an irrational, immoral and unintelligent ideology. It seeks to destroy the humanity of those for which it takes aim.
Racism is practiced by those who were taught it, sheltered from the realities of life, and weak enough to continue practicing it upon adulthood. It is the ideology of the uneducated, irrational and the individual with a propensity toward hate. Racism is immoral at its very core because it aims to deny the human that which both God and nature bestowed upon them; the sovereignty of individual choice.
Humans, by the laws of God and nature, have the right to make their own choices, as long as those choices don’t infringe on the rights of others. Humans are the sovereign of their own selves. Among other things, this includes both the content of the mind and ability to make choices. Racism, however, claims that a human is not the sovereign of their own self. That, instead, a collective of their ancestors predetermined their future choices, capacity for reason, and even the very content of their mind.
As Ayn Rand said, racism is a primitive form of collectivism. It denies the human their inherent individual characteristics, and replaces it with a predetermined (and often wrong) assumption of the characteristics of a collective. Racism refuses to accept an individual’s humanity by denying them that which separates humans from animals, the capacity for reason. Racism is an immoral and unintelligent ideology. | https://medium.com/@theparadoxofvalue/a-summary-on-the-immortality-of-racism-1824f975eb3d | ['The Paradox Of Value'] | 2020-04-30 17:04:06.947000+00:00 | ['Ethics', 'Morality', 'Philosophy'] |
Software is the key to sustainability | We now face an urgent challenge to transition from fossil fuels to prevent the worst effects of climate change. Of course, all energy sources have some impact on our environment. But fossil fuels — coal, oil, and natural gas — do substantially more harm than renewable energy sources by most measures, including air and water pollution, damage to public health, wildlife and habitat loss, water use, land use, and global warming emissions. Still, fossil fuels are the largest sources of energy for electricity generation — they account for 80 percent of global energy consumption. Nevertheless, we are slowly moving in the right direction. U.S. Energy Information Administration analysis says that in April of 2019 U.S. monthly electricity generation from renewable sources exceeded coal-fired generation for the first time. Renewable sources provided 23 percent of total electricity generation compared to coal’s 20 percent. EIA also forecasts that renewable generation will continue to outpace coal in 2021. Moving from brown to green energy is imperative to achieve better lives.
Knowing that, what difficulties can we expect from shifting to clean energy?
To begin with, renewables are often highly dependent on the weather and time of year and cannot be switched on and off to produce energy any time people need it. The big sources — sun, wind, and water — come and go on nature’s schedule.
Additionally, the increasing reliance on renewables is expected to generate bigger demand peaks on the electricity market.
Long-term energy storage like batteries and software platforms that will stream real-time aggregation of telemetry from thousands of batteries to measure, forecast, optimize and control — together can solve a problem with the equation of demand and supply.
People can and do take control over their energy consumptions if given the tools to do so.
And as ‘time of use’ tariffs spread globally, thousands of power walls are installed in people’s homes to do peak shaving for an electrical utility. A rechargeable battery stores energy from solar panels during the day or from offpeak hours when grid energy is cheapest and uses that energy during the rest of the day. The remaining problem is that batteries cost approximately one arm and one leg. Some appliances will use more than the output of one battery, so families would probably need a few battery packs. The price of a solar setup including installation, supporting hardware and tax credits sometimes exceed $15,000. Hopefully, as the cost of batteries and solar panels continues to drop, going green and owning a battery-powered home in the future could be available for everyone.
Other than that, behind-the-meter systems like residential solar panel installations can be a great way to save on electricity bills and maximize how much of their own solar production customers are using. They can prioritize charging at-home batteries during low-cost times, arrange backup power for a house for days in the event of a power outage, charge electric vehicles, or even make some money buying and selling from the grid. In the case of wind and solar, excess generation can be sent through the meter and to the grid for credit on the electricity bill. All of this can be done with a corresponding app so residential customers can monitor their solar energy storage and see electric grid costs at different times.
Industrial customers also can eliminate expensive peak demand charges with a combination of solar and AI-powered energy storage. Battery farm stores huge amounts of energy from renewable sources and funnels it out to the grid when usage is high significantly reducing your business’s operating expenses.
Is there even more profitable approach? Yes, community-based power plants.
Edward, a Java Team Lead at Wamisoftware
«At the moment, our team provides the “Gilboa Iris” project with an algorithm for community-based power plants. Closed community is, for example, 300 houses that share one counter and are connected into one net. Based on collected historical data, the system calculates the best way to save on bills. Let’s say that in given time period you paid this much money, but if you have a PV (Solar Photovoltaic) and add a set number of batteries, the new price will be better resulting in 20 percent savings. The algorithm for community-based power plants determines at each point in time whether your neighbour wants to obtain energy, so you can give it to him if you have energy surplus. If the community doesn’t have storage to save energy, the algorithm sells it to power company. The advantage of local community is that there is a domestic price resulting from managing demands within it and you have an opportunity to buy both on local and external market. Rates in the latter are formed by power company, which makes them more expensive than on local market. In RD Energy project Wamisoftware team provides forecasts for Israeli power plant, so they know how many raw materials to purchase in order to prevent excess or deficiency. We also apply these forecasts for communities. Knowing the approximate quantity of consumption by every single individual in the community, we can harmlessly take their excessive energy, because we forecasted that after a certain time electricity will be cheap for recharging the batteries. For Backend Development we use Java, UI is made with React, and in the future we plan to break Monolith application into Microservices, we also plan to use C language for forecasting.»
But how exactly are predictions about peak loads made? The thing is, we can only know if there’s a high likelihood of a peak. Our goal is to discharge home battery packs during the peak grid load and the homeowner will use them for backup power. It is also important to control both when the batteries discharge and when they charge while spreading out the charging over a longer period of time. And once we’ve decided to discharge batteries to avoid the peak, how do we control them?
First, we bring all batteries together into hierarchical aggregations. It’s hard to virtually represent them in cloud software because of the diversity of installations, home loads, and uncertainty in communication.
Second, we need to aggregate local telemetry (power, frequency, and voltage measurements) and the telemetry across the virtual power plant as well. So at the same time, we have to take into account central optimization and local needs.
Third, having aggregated telemetry, we find out the capacity that’s available in the virtual power plant. Smart grid management platform learns and profiles the behavior of each prosumer, and chooses, automatically and in real time, the most cost-effective strategies for using, storing and trading energy. Based on price forecasts local optimization makes a plan for the battery, for example, the algorithm temporarily lowers the capacity of the battery in order to affect the peak. Huge aggregations demand different APIs and data processing patterns. Furthermore, developers are constantly dealing with complex concurrency issues. All these algorithms depend on the software platform.
The rise of renewable energy production creates the need for grid flexibility, distributed energy resources and information and communication technology can help provide that flexibility — if they are enabled and encouraged. Hardware is not on its own enough to replace fossil fuels while maintaining our current standard of on-demand and reliable power.
Software is really the key to enabling diverse components to act in concert.
What are your thoughts about it? 👇🏻 | https://medium.com/@info.wamisoftware/software-is-the-key-to-sustainability-78824f2c0f80 | ['Wami Wamisoftware'] | 2020-07-22 09:37:05.756000+00:00 | ['Distributed Generation', 'Powerwall', 'Software', 'Sustainability', 'Resources'] |
Four Books You Need to Read About School Shootings | I am not, however, advocating for guns to be taken away. There are benefits to guns. No, what made me rage-debate that bumper sticker was its loose logic, its sloppy facts, its off-the-mark assumptions. These same qualities plague much of the discussion around school shooters.
News about school shooters is inescapable now, but not so long ago, it was much rarer. In fact, “school shooters” was not a common term until the late 1990s, and only in the last few years have they been studied as a specific category of killer.
Here are four books that date from this proto-era. Think of them as setting the stage for our current gun control moment.
Erik Larson, Lethal Passage, 1994
Image from Amazon
On December 16, 1988, sixteen-year-old Nicholas Elliott walked into his high school, Atlantic Shores Christian School in Virginia Beach, Virginia, with murder on his mind. His target: another student named Jacob Snipes, who had been taunting Nicholas (Jacob was white, Nicholas black). A teacher, Karen Fairley, tried to stop Nicholas; he killed her and kept moving. He wounded another teacher, shot at a third, and menaced a group of students before he was subdued. Three Molotov cocktails were found in his locker. His book bag held the makings of a pipe bomb.
Erik Larson, who would go on to write nonfiction bestsellers such as The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, tells Nicholas’s story in Lethal Passage. He pioneers a lot of elements that are now standard. For instance, he lays out some shocking statistics:
70,000 Americans killed by guns in 1991–1993 150,000 gun-related injuries per year 8,050 people killed or wounded in Los Angeles County in 1991 (13 times the number of Americans killed in the First Gulf War)
He also quotes a student who told one newspaper that “All the kids said he was going to shoot someone.” Such quotes are turned up about every shooter, it seems.
The heart of the book is not the shooting but the gun Nicholas used: a Cobray M-11/9. Larson gives the history of this type of gun, starting with its invention by Gordon Ingram in the 1960s. He then traces Nicholas’s particular Cobray from assembly line to Atlantic Shores, highlighting the frauds and failures by which the piece ended up in an angry teenager’s hands.
“I researched that book very, very carefully,” Larson told me during an interview in 2016. “I learned to shoot, and I gotta say that shooting a handgun is a lot of fun.”
He praised guns as “exquisite works of engineering” before discussing what prompted him to write this book over two decades ago: gun culture, an all-too-familiar argument.
Gun culture bothered Larson then, and it bothers him now because “society bears all the costs of irresponsibility. We have to shift the costs to the gun owner. What that means is, yes, there should be a licensing process. There is nothing in the Second Amendment that says you can’t license and register firearms. Nothing.”
In a preview of the Parkland teens’ message, Larson reserved his most astringent criticism for the National Rifle Association, calling it “dystopian and paranoid” and claiming that the organization “is not about guns at all. It’s about libertarian politics.”
Dave Cullen, Columbine, 2009
Image from Amazon
Nicholas Elliott was a prototype. Over the next decade, more shooters appeared. All have been eclipsed by more recent killers — all but two: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.
On April 20, 1999, the two murdered fifteen people and injured twenty-four others inside Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado. The modern notion of school shooters was born in the bloodbath of that day. According to Malcom Gladwell, Harris and Klebold “laid down the ‘cultural script’ for the next generation of shooters.”
With infamy, of course, comes mythology. There were reports that certain students were targeted, that there were no warning signs, that the killers were misfits who had been bullied. Dave Cullen’s Columbine is an encyclopedic rebuttal of these myths.
Cullen’s big reveal is that Harris and Klebold, despite being most people’s definition of “school shooters,” were actually bombers. Their plan was to blow up their school. To that end, they planted two 20-pound propane bombs in the cafeteria, wiring them to detonate at 11:17am. Their shotguns and semi-automatics would be trained on people fleeing the burning building, and they had another set of bombs in their vehicles, set to go off at noon to take out first responders.
Harris — and if you take away a single thing from Cullen’s book, it should be this — was a sociopath.
All the bombs failed, thank God. Yet the attack was still well organized. The two planned for a year, dreaming of a widespread massacre, a strike at society itself. Their school was the first step, chosen for its convenience.
Nor were the two outcasts. Both had friends, were reasonably popular, played sports, joined clubs. Klebold was more withdrawn, depressive and suicidal, although he had a hot temper.
Harris — and if you take away a single thing from Cullen’s book, it should be this — was a sociopath. We know this from his journals, his website, and his home videos. Seemingly sweet and deferential, polite on the surface, he was stone cold underneath.
Cullen sums it up this way: “Klebold was hurting inside while Harris wanted to hurt people.”
Peter Langman, Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters, 2009
Image from Amazon
It seems 2009 was the year for landmark school shooter books. In that year, psychologist Peter Langman released his long-awaited study, Why Kids Kill. It was one of the first books to examine school shooters as a unique subset of killers.
Langman calls such killers “rampage school shooters,” which he defines as “students or former students [who] attack their own schools.” Their actions are “public acts, committed in full view of others,” and their victims are both people they dislike and people “shot randomly or as symbols of the school.”
The heart of the book is an examination of ten shooters: Evan Ramsey, Michael Carneal, Andrew Golden, Mitchell Johnson, Andrew Wurst, Kip Kinkel, Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, Jeffrey Weise, and Seung Hui Cho. They range in age from 23 (Cho) to 11 (Golden). Some killed only one or two people, whereas Cho murdered thirty.
Langman classifies each as psychopathic, psychotic, or traumatized. Psychopathic shooters are narcissists, lacking in empathy, normal on the surface yet sadistic. Psychotic shooters have hallucinations, delusions, disorganized thoughts, eccentric beliefs, and odd behavior. Traumatized shooters grew up as victims of abuse, domestic violence, and chaotic households.
Like Cullen, Langman is committed to debunking school shooter myths, calling them “factors that do not explain.” These factors are
Gun culture (though Larson does indict this)
Antidepressants like Prozac or Luvox
Detachment from school or feelings of alienation
Violent video games, movies, or television
Rejection
Depression
Bullying
If you wonder what Langman would make of more recent shooters like Adam Lanza and Nikolas Cruz, wonder no more: he has written a follow-up book, School Shooters: Understanding High School, College, and Adult Perpetrators, and maintains a website on the subject.
Stephen King, Rage, 1977
Image from Amazon
If school shooters had a Bible, it would doubtless be Rage. Written by Stephen King in 1977 under the name Richard Bachman, it is the story of Charlie Decker, a high school senior who, after being expelled, grabs a pistol from his locker, runs to his algebra class, and murders the teacher, Jean Underwood.
The students become his hostages. When another teacher, Peter Vance, tries to enter the room, Charlie kills him as well. Police show up, and the standoff lasts four hours, with Charlie agreeing to release the captives. When the police chief enters the classroom, Charlie moves as if to shoot him but is shot instead. He survives and ends up in a psychiatric hospital in Augusta, Maine.
At least five actual shooters have a known connection to this novel.
Jeffrey Lyne Cox (1988), who held sixty students at gunpoint in San Gabriel, California, was said by a friend to have read Rage over and over.
Dustin Pierce (1989), who had a nine-hour standoff with police in McKee, Kentucky, had a copy of Rage in his bedroom.
Scott Pennington (1993), who shot and killed a teacher and a school custodian in Grayson, Kentucky, wrote an essay on Rage and was upset that it received a low grade.
Barry Loukaitis (1996), who shot a teacher and three classmates and held some students hostage, said to them, “This sure beats algebra, doesn’t it?” (Charlie Decker in Rage comments that his act “sure beats panty raids.”)
Michael Carneal (1997), who shot eight students, had a copy of Rage in his locker.
After the Carneal incident, King told his publisher to “take the damned thing out of print.” It is the only King novel to be so consigned. He doesn’t think Rage turned those boys into killers; he saw the book as “a possible accelerant which is why I pulled it from sale. You don’t leave a can of gasoline where a boy with firebug tendencies can lay hands on it.” | https://pisancantos43.medium.com/four-books-you-need-to-read-about-school-shootings-d6ee23eda06b | ['Anthony Aycock'] | 2019-01-15 21:03:30.579000+00:00 | ['Guns', 'Schools', 'Shooting', 'Children', 'Books'] |
A brief history of graphic design | Key art movements that influenced graphic design
Now you have a better idea of how graphic design began with the earliest form of visual and written communication. Let’s dive into some key influential art movements that helped evolved graphic design.
You may notice how these art movements influence trends and how some of them even come back into style. It’s important to have a solid background in the history of design so you can understand where these trends come from and how to use them in your designs.
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau (“New Art”) flourished in western Europe and the United States from the 1880s until the First World War. It was a deliberate attempt to abandon the historical styles of the 19th century.
Creators of Art Nouveau sought to revive good workmanship, raise the status of craft, and produce a genuinely modern design that reflected the utility of the items they were creating. One distinctive characteristic of the style is the use of organic, asymmetrical linework instead of solid, uniform shapes.
Art Nouveau artwork by Alphonse Mucha, used to promote printing firm F. Champenois
Bauhaus
Bauhaus was an influential art and design movement that began in 1919 in Weimar, Germany. The Bauhaus school, founded by Walter Gropius, launched a new way of thinking.
Six months after the end of World War I, the school encouraged artists and designers to use their talents to help rebuild the broken society. The Bauhaus grammar — a triangle, a square, and a circle — evoked this back-to-the-basics mentality. They challenged everything, including the usual method of schooling.
They combined arts and crafts, classical and avant-garde styles, form and function. Bauhaus design incorporated minimalism, geometric shapes, and simple typography. While the Bauhaus bubble lasted for only 14 years, its influence remains in just about every aspect of modern life today.
Bauhaus design poster, 1923 (source)
Art Deco
Art Deco began as a celebration in Paris in 1925. The same decade that gave us The Great Gatsby, the affordable car, and the first film with sound.
Style, elegance, and sophistication are the epitome of Art Deco design. Art Deco uses simple shapes, stylized and geometric ornamentation, and elaborate use of expensive materials, both natural and synthetic.
Spanning architecture, furniture, fashion, sculpture, and more, Art Deco encapsulates the decadent spirit of the 1930s. The Rockefeller Centre, Chrysler Building, and Empire State Building were all designed in this style.
Chicago World’s Fair poster by Weimer Pursell, 1933 (source)
Swiss Design (The International Typography Style)
Building on the rational approach of the Bauhaus, this movement is all about function and universality. The style emerged in Russia, the Netherlands, and Germany in the 1920s and was further developed in Switzerland during the 1950s. Designers developed a cohesive, unified Modernist movement that became known as the Swiss Design or the International Typographic Style.
Logical, modular grid systems provided a structured framework to align different elements, something now considered essential for UI and graphic design. Realistic photography was preferred over more expressive illustration, alongside neutral sans-serif typefaces such as Helvetica.
Swiss design is minimal in nature. Minimalism has experienced a comeback in branding, UI design, and packaging. This trend is driven by influential companies such as Apple and Google who prioritize a clean, pared-back aesthetic above ornament and decoration. A vital contribution from the Swiss Design movement is their use of grids, can you imagine designing for the web without one?
Poster designs by Josef Muller Brockmann
Pop Art
Primarily a British and American cultural phenomenon that gained traction in the late 1950s and 1960s, Pop Art was named by art critic Lawrence Alloway because of the way it glorified popular culture and elevated common and unremarkable objects to iconic statuses.
The pop art movement began as a revolt against the dominant approaches to art, culture, and traditional views on what art should be. Sources of inspiration ranged from Hollywood movies, advertising, product packaging, pop music, and comic books, rejecting the pretensions of “high art” in favor of bold, graphic printmaking.
Whaam! by Roy Lichtenstein, 1963 (source: Tate)
Postmodernism
Postmodernism was a reaction against modernism. While modernism was based on idealism and reason, postmodernism was born from skepticism and suspicion of reason. Modernists valued clarity and simplicity. Postmodernists embraced complex and often contradictory layers of meaning.
Young designers of the movement questioned the “form follows function” philosophy associated with Modernism derived from the Swiss Design Style (or International Typography Style). Designers created freely, breaking rules of design with the use of collage, distortion, vibrant colors, and abstract type.
During the late 1970s, April Grieman became known for her postmodern experimentation with her typographic innovations and colorful collage style.
Cover for WET magazine designed by April Greiman, 1979 (source)
The digital age
The introduction of digital tools provided a new, revolutionary way of creating graphic design. In 1984, Apple introduced the Macintosh computer. It used a simple, user-friendly interface that said “Hello”, inviting consumers to be a creator themselves.
Photoshop launched in 1990 as a graphics editing software anyone could use to manipulate images and make professional designs. Basic programs like Microsoft Paint made graphic art accessible to the masses. | https://uxdesign.cc/a-brief-history-of-graphic-design-90eb5e1b5632 | ['Monica Galvan'] | 2020-10-29 20:24:09.153000+00:00 | ['Art', 'Creativity', 'Design', 'Graphic Design', 'Visual Design'] |
Consecutive Characters — LeetCode | Here’s another LeetCode Easy:
(It has been asked to interviewees at Microsoft this year)
Here’s my solution to this problem (faster than 97%):
One-Pass Solution
All you have to do here is loop through each character of the string, keeping count of the max occurrences of a given character. If in_row > maximum, we set the new maximum. Each iteration, we store the value of last, which stores the last character as a string.
The conditional statement, if maximum == 0, is there because if there are no instances where there are two characters in a row, we must return 1. If we don’t do this, it will return 0 instead of 1.
Here’s the submission report for the above code:
Faster than 97% of 100,000 Submissions
All of my source code is located here and my social links are here.
Feel free to reach out if you have any questions! | https://medium.com/@roodsoren/consecutive-characters-leetcode-1810c8a8408a | ['Soren Rood'] | 2020-12-22 21:22:03.936000+00:00 | ['Computer Science', 'Leetcode', 'Data Structures', 'Student', 'Algorithms'] |
A united Europe made us love to travel, COVID-19 is making us fear it. | Europe has begun its slow recovery from one of the most disrupting events in the past 70 years, the coronavirus pandemic. Striking a balance between a steady and fast economic recovery and granting public safety is a trivial task that the European Union must take care of.
As of today, the tourism sector has seen the worst impact since the 2008 sub-prime crisis, causing unprecedented economical damage.
It is paradoxical how travelling itself has been responsible for the spread of the virus that later has forced the entire continent to shut down every touristic activity. Without an available vaccine, it is hard to predict when we will be able to return to a sort of “normality“ regarding travelling. However, the current trials in the U.K. are raising the hope to go back to the pre-pandemic routine.
Something that is quite often forgotten is that travel is one of the main sources of income for many of the European countries. The EU 27 Nations are heavily dependent on tourism and almost 11% of the whole GDP of the Union comes from tourism. On the contrary, countries like the U.S. are only depending for 2.6% on touristic activities.
Clear examples can be cities like Paris or Rome with respectively almost 19 million and 10 million yearly international arrivals[1].
Yet, in Europe especially, tourism is a crucial component for economic stability. Data are important to understand the magnitude of the touristic flows in the EU.
In spring 2018, EU citizens have travelled more than 390 million times totalizing 34% of the yearly total. All over, the trips cumulated over €170 billion of spending input. The focus on the spring months highlights how the time span usually hold a fundamental economic inflow has been incredibly damaged by the necessary lockdown measures. (Tab 1)
Eurostat Travel Data
So, what is the real potential damage to the European Union?
Currently, there are almost 20 million[2] workers employed in travel and leisure or in travel-related sectors. A new JRC[3] report estimates that between 6.6 and 11.7 million of these jobs could be impacted by the loss of revenue that hospitality-related structures will have in 2020.
The worst-case scenario is a possible second wave that could deeply affect the purchasing power of Europeans and their willingness to travel, this, together with probable new restrictive measures could lead to incalculable economic damages.
Austria, Croatia, Greece, Italia, Malta, Slovenia, and Spain that have the most at stake considering how dependent they are on tourism.
Overall, in the EU the revenue drop is expected to be at around 50% for HORECA[4] activities and 70% for travel agencies. The downturn could create a 3% decrease in GDP for Greece and Portugal according to the External Sector Report 2020 delivered by the International Monetary Forum. A scenario that could harden the socio-economic situation of countries already struggling with endemic problems.
Depending on the evolution of the pandemic, the report forecast a decrease in tourist arrivals between 38% and 68% in 2020. The possible reopening of the borders and the complex welfare measures could possibly mitigate the economic downturn, however, a sector like tourism, uncertainty-adverse could lose many players in the next few years.
However, it is important to consider the effect that the pandemic will have on the willingness to travel and spend in the next year, a factor that could irreparably change the world of hospitality as we know it.
Quantifying 2020 effects may be misleading since the aftermath will carry on for more than just a year, and industry experts estimate that 2023 will be the first “back-to-normal” year. | https://medium.com/eu-u/europe-made-us-love-to-travel-covid-19-is-making-us-fear-it-b2915e339a1f | ['Filippo Bertolini'] | 2020-12-13 10:47:11.365000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'European Union', 'Travel', 'Economics', 'Hospitality'] |
Do You Crave Certainty? If So, Read This. | Some of us love certainty. We plan, a little too much as some say. And we love templates for what to do. If someone could point out “If X, do Y; if A, do B”, we’d be elated. A high need for certainty is how some of us feel psychologically safe.
Psychological safety is when we feel we can speak our minds. Whether we have concerns, ideas, questions or mistakes, we trust ourselves and the situation enough to say our piece. This is essential for teams to perform optimally. Because, picture a team where everybody goes with what the leader says, for fear of offending someone or rocking the boat. The dynamics of the group can easily lead to extreme polarisation of views, or the team living in LaLaLand away from reality. And, innovation, creativity and efficiency are born out of people daring to rock the boat, and then devising and integrating solutions.
And I know, when you read ‘love certainty’, you imagine a person who needs to be hand-held and spoon-fed.
That’s not true. There are plenty of high performers who love certainty. They are still highly productive even in the face of low certainty, except that this chasm between what they need and what they get means there are vast amounts of untapped potential. Or, situations leave them feeling anxious. Imagine, getting the certainty that you need and sleeping better– how much more energy would you have. How much brighter would you shine?
And here’s what you can do if you love certainty.
1. Clarify
Asking what exactly someone means, and to follow up for details doesn’t make you look stupid; in fact, it’s a bridge to connecting with someone else because you are interested.
Because you are keen on getting the facts right, and to ensure your meanings are aligned, that leaves less room for error. It’s like what they say in medicine– test, don’t guess.
This is way more effective than merely assuming.
In my experience, this makes someone a better communicator or coach; in fact, I attribute my success rate to the strategic use of questions.
Story time.
I remember as a young therapist, asking clients follow-up questions. These questions were short and simple, rather than nosy. For instance, I asked a client who had panic attacks on the tube, how long her commute was. My then-supervisor, on listening to my recording, hauled me up for asking unnecessary questions. I explained that the longer the commute, the more difficult the experience would be for said client. And, knowing how long she had to travel meant we’d tailor the treatment differently.
My client, on the other hand, told me she was grateful I asked the question. Because it helped her countdown to create safety, and she knew at which spot she could practise her exercises to reset her fear centre in her brain.
Similarly, I was chided for asking questions like how much a gram of a certain substance cost. Because if I needed to understand the extent of a client’s substance abuse, I had to calculate how much he was using, as compared to simply the amount he spent on a weekend. These questions helped us to get clear on the picture rather than assume. He told me I was the first psychologist who bothered asking, rather than judge him immediately for using substances.
I tell these stories because clarifying serves a function. It’s not just about you.
And, all the better if you love certainty.
So here’s what you can say:–
“This question/topic is really broad, can you tell me more?’
“When you say (issue), what exactly do you mean?”
“I learn best by examples. Can you run me through a case study/time you did this?”
When used sparingly and wisely, clarifying will evolve how you navigate relationships with others and yourself.
2. Scripts
In my Networking For The Socially Anxious and Introverts workshops, I always point this out: —
Those whom you admire for mastering social situations come from two backgrounds. The first grew up watching their elders navigate social interactions flawlessly; with a combination of nature and nurture, that became their inevitable destiny. The second started off socially anxious aka awkward; or as introverts, they were networking like extroverts, ending up feeling miserable and hopeless about their social skills.
The difference between this second group and the people lamenting “I’m not one of those privileged people raised with social skills and opportunity”, is that this group simply looked at the social masters and asked “How do I get there?”
Yes, like training a new muscle, it requires practise — that’s for you to organise and commit to. And the other two parts of the equation are mindset and skills. As you build up deliberate intelligent practise and skills, your belief about your competence skyrockets. You also start to buy into the idea that you are allowed to speak up, vis-à-vis fumbling awkwardly for the right words to say.
And skill comes in the form of scripts.
There are scripts for everything. From how to send your food back gracefully to saying no to something that drains your energy.
Before a potentially awkward conversation, you can simply write it and say “This sounds strange; this conversation is difficult for me, so I wrote it out, and am reading off a script”. Prefacing it changes everything.
Scripts are useful for asserting boundaries. Because people with a high need for certainty feel afraid to stand up for themselves, for fear that boundaries make them appear pugnacious, as they don’t know the right words to say. And so, they sometimes play too nice.
In these cases, some scripts you could benefit from include: —
“I’d love to give you the attention you deserve, and right now my energy levels are low. Let’s reschedule to speak about this for N minutes on (date and time)” — this way, you take care of yourself, and you set a time boundary for this interaction, rather than having it go on for potentially too long.
“This is something personal, and I’m speaking with (expert) about it. Thank you for caring, and I’d prefer to focus our time together on something we both share” — how to refocus attention away from something you do not want to talk about, or when dealing with unsolicited advice.
“I am happy to tell you about (situation) as a friend/colleague/(role). What I want to say in advance is, I do not want any advice or sympathy about it” — this way, you set the tone.
3. Acknowledge your uncertainty
I may be a psychologist but I’m not interested in merely going “feelings, feelings, feelings” till the cows come home.
What I know, however, is that we are extremely good at lying to ourselves about how we feel, and then it comes to bite us back with a vengeance.
Picture someone you know who goes “No, I’m okay” when they’ve gone through something devastating. They mantra it away, smile, and act tough. Except that you can’t lie to yourself. This goes on and on and on, until they explode. In something impulsive, like a drinking or shopping binge, or a breakdown. And then they go, “This is what happens when I trust my feelings”.
Wrong. This is what happens when you don’t let your feelings work with your mind. And you swing into impulsive behaviours or your body decides it’s time to force you to change something.
Here’s the deal.
Your feelings are not negative. It’s okay to feel anger, sadness, bitterness, frustration, jealousy, whatever.
Because we evolved emotions to guide us about what needs to change in ourselves and in the situation.
For instance, depression is an evolutionary mechanism to signal to us to withdraw, so we can conserve energy and recharge, before going back to the (literal or metaphorical) arena. Otherwise, we’d die. Evolution wants us to survive; it’s not perfect, so it does its best in its primitive way.
And when we pretend we’re not feeling ‘not okay’, that’s when we take these negative feelings too far. And then take us over, becoming parts of our identity. So from “I’m feeling depressed”, you become a depressed person.
The gist is, emotions are intel. Data. What you need to win any war. People who love certainty — myself include — tend to pretend they don’t. Because it sounds stupid or babyish. We should all be able to ad lib on demand, right? And then if we’re already good at that, then it sounds stupid to love certainty, right?
Except, our psychological safety drivers are what they are. So work with them, and they work for you.
Fighting with yourself and how you’re wired, simply incinerates energy, and makes you more uncertain about who you are.
And a very easy way to milk your love for certainty?
Acknowledge the complexity of what you’re experiencing. The thoughts, feelings, and body sensations.
It’s a cocktail, and so what if you’re feeling 50% upset, 30% relieved and 20% jealous?
Like Walt Whitman said, “I contain multitudes”.
Being certain about acknowledging what’s going on means you’re not enslaved by it.
4. Checklists
As a Type A++++ person, I love checklists. But I make sure I’m not consumed by them, so they’re used sparingly when I’m doing something different, building a new habit, or to ensure I’ve ticked all the boxes off a key project.
Checklists are fabulous for instilling a sense of certainty.
The simplest way is to invest five minutes, and I promise you this will buy you back exponentially more sanity and time. You’ll thrive, and you’ll love your energy levels.
Break down this undertaking into micro-steps, and then make a checklist out of them.
You can chunk these checklist items according to stage, time required, or similarity.
This way, you free up energy in your brain because the list looks easy-peasy rather than “OMFG 1 zillion items, I’m so overwhelmed, let me scroll instagram first”.
5. Spreadsheets
“This is something you can tell me, but you shouldn’t tell anyone else”, my friend laughs.
Because I spreadsheet my entire pantry.
For me, it makes perfect sense, takes very little time, and guarantees efficiency. Here’s why. I cook alot, from Mediterranean to Chinese to Persian cuisine. I have 20 types of salt, and 5 types of olive oil; and I use them all. And I make my own pasta.
Back in the day, I’d find that I ran out of turmeric, and then dug up 3 bags of herbs de Provence. That sucks. Especially when you’re a student trying to save money. So I spent an hour listing, classifying and spreadsheeting everything. These days, I know what I have, which I have extra supplies of, and what’s running low. When I’m out, I simply consult my spreadsheet.
I have a sense of control over my pantry, because I want that sense of control over my pantry. Without said spreadsheet, I do not feel control.
Now, I have clothes for every single occasion and about 50 pairs of shoes. I don’t care about knowing what exactly I have, and I already feel a sense of control with my current wardrobe setup. So, I have zero need to spreadsheet that.
In contrast, when I gave myself three months to pack up a decade of my British life to ship home, I used spreadsheets. 15 months after moving, I know what’s in what box. That’s efficient when I need to retrieve something.
Bottomline: You decide what you need to spreadsheet.
6. Flowcharts
And then there are complex situations that are new to you, or which you’re learning to navigate.
You know that if you go in blind, you’ll feel lost, and you can’t perform.
Here’s where the flowchart helps.
A simple one would be, “If yes, do/say/ask ___”, “If no, do/say/ask ____”.
Flowcharts can be used in situations like negotiating a promotion and pay rise, pitching a project, or how you’re going to live/work/play with someone.
7. Allow yourself some uncertainty
I see certainty as the bedrock for spontaneity.
If I’m certain that I know what to say, how to play by ear, and about who I am, then I can happily play.
I can explore and indulge in life, whilst trusting myself to make wise decisions and stay grounded.
As compared to feeling uncertain, second-guessing myself, and then making impulsive decisions where I have to clean up my messes over and over again.
Once I have that certainty, then uncertainty can be fun.
Sometimes, it’s a matter of reframing.
Like, if I don’t like this dish, then the worst that’s happened is I spent $20 to find out I hate it. But I’d still have enjoyed something else, and the company. As compared to obsessing over that one thing that went ‘wrong’.
At other times, it’s a matter of experimenting.
Such as, varying what you’ll say during a speech, rather than memorising it word-for-word. Because you already know the gist.
Maybe it’s not a big speech per se, but a simple presentation with a trusted team.
Or maybe you’ll decide you’ll wing it in a new networking context, because you have had enough practise, you can shake things up a little.
Start with low-stakes environments. That will teach you to be certain in your uncertainty, and that might be the best gift of all.
Indeed, I love certainty if possible. But I no longer feel anxious in situations that are ambiguous, nor do I second guess myself any longer. In fact, 90% of the external situations that I required certainty in, I no longer think about them– I simply roll my sleeves and get going, feeling confident. This is because I trust myself and my abilities, after experimenting with enough uncertainty.
And this is what it can be like for you. To ride the waves of life, and to taste the richness it can potentially gift you, because you’ve built strong enough bedrocks in yourself.
Want to make your need for certainty work for you? Book your free Chemistry Call here. | https://medium.com/adhd-superpowers/do-you-crave-certainty-if-so-read-this-bef72f52206 | ['Dr Perpetua Neo'] | 2020-12-08 15:31:12.503000+00:00 | ['Autism', 'Psychological Safety', 'Personality', 'Adhd', 'Performance'] |
Bitcoin and the Tyranny of Time Scarcity | Economics is the social science of cooperating and competing to overcome the immortal tyrant of time scarcity. In this never-ending struggle, one of our most important tools is money—a socioeconomic emblem of human time. For centuries, time was the only absolutely scarce substance in the universe, but now a novel money has also exhibits absolute scarcity—Bitcoin.
A Tyrant of Time Immemorial
All human action inescapably occurs within the bounds of time. As the universally shared element of experience, time is the grand paradox of nature; it heals all wounds, yet ultimately ravages all things. Each of us feels a current of time that is totally impersonal; in a ruthlessly egalitarian manner, time flows equally for rich and poor, sick and healthy, young and old alike. The temporal flows we experience cannot be reproduced, reversed, or stopped. At an intrapersonal level, our allotment of time is as scarce as our lifespan is limited. Interpersonally, time scarcity manifests as the total time we can collectively allocate towards serving one another; whether we are making goods, providing services, or gaining knowledge — we have but a finite quantity of hours to commit towards our efforts. In this sense, time scarcity is the immortal tyrant subjugating all of us mortals. Only through cooperative action can we break free of the restraints time scarcity clasps upon us.
Society is the sum total of cooperative actions taken, a social order that is, paradoxically, shaped by competition among its constituents — free people. Actions intent on improving our relationship with nature, which enhance our quality of life by saving us time, necessarily involve the use of natural resources. If one seeks to dig ditches faster, he will first need to construct a shovel — a tool that requires wood from a felled tree, refined metal ore, and expertly shaped screws to hold the (earth-shattering) device together. Since the Earth we share is physically finite its natural resources are inherently scarce, and we must each compete to earn our own fair share. In a world that is as physically abundant as our ingenuity will allow, it is ultimately only our finite time that constrains us from producing more of anything we want.
Existing under the ubiquitous tyranny of time scarcity, it’s natural for animals to adopt more energy efficient means of satisfying their wants. The “Law of Conservation of Energy-Mass” is the 1st Law of Thermodynamics; an inviolable principle of the universe that organisms (lazily and cleverly) follow to the letter. Predators in the wild frequently make expected-value calculations when deciding whether or not the anticipated energy expenditure in pursuit of a particular prey is worth the caloric value of the meal, should the hunt be successful (most hunts have low chances of success). Even herbivores like koala bears economize their physical movements to maximize their consumption of eucalyptus leaves per exertion. Of course, these decisions are not (likely) based on any mathematical knowledge, but rather on instinct.
Similarly, driven by an instinct to overcome the oppression of time scarcity, us humans have always found ways to uncover and extract ever-more natural resources as we “hunt” for satisfactions to our wants. We have literally “just scratched the surface,” as our efforts haven’t even taken us halfway into the Earth’s crust, its thinnest and outermost layer. Through generations of trial and error, with our collective learnings accumulated in heuristics, written knowledge, and methodologies, mankind has steadily economized his productive efforts, gradually making more and more use of his time. The fruits of our labor are evident: the price of all natural resources, in terms of time necessary to produce them, has steadily decreased over the long-run as technological advancements continually increase our productivity — our capacity to produce the greatest results with the least effort. Metal prices over the past two centuries are a testament to this:
Evincing the simple truth of mankind’s ever-rising productivity is gold: as the annual new supply flow of this extremely rare metal remains steady, it makes no sense to consider other natural resources (which are less rare than gold) as scarce in any practical sense. Indeed, only time scarcity truly constrains our creative output. In this sense, time — both individually and collectively — is our most precious and scarce resource. Each of us seek to extend and savor our time on Earth. As a population, we strive to economize our actions and increase our productivity to attain the greatest results possible with minimal use of time and effort. Indeed, the purpose of the world economy is to accelerate our collective productivity gains through innovation and trade; in a term, to gain energy efficiency — our sole emancipator from the hardships imposed by time scarcity.
Trade Interconnects Us
Acts of trade (or interpersonal exchange) interconnect us into economic networks which increase our productivity by virtue of our inherent comparative advantages: a diversity of skills, experience, and know-how that arises naturally among us. Trade allows us to focus on our comparative advantages and become ever-more specialized in our skills over time. This positive-sum game undergirds all economic activity; by working as a cooperative ensemble we become more productive than we would be working as isolated individuals. Our economic interdependence makes us collectively more productive and prosperous. This cooperative dynamic is commonly called the “division of labor” and the general purpose of society is to foster an environment which favors its proliferation.
The division of labor enables each of us to concentrate on what we do best and increases our collective productivity: meaning it lets us produce the same amount in less time or a greater amount in the same time. Alternatively, we can choose to use these newfound time savings to innovate. Innovation involves the creation of tools and technologies to help us do even more in less time (i.e. digging with a shovel instead of by hand). As innovative new tools and ideas become diffused into society through trade, more time savings are generated, and this process becomes recursive into a self-reinforcing, virtuous cycle with no known natural limit:
By specializing, trading, and innovating societies create a (literal) wealth of time savings that can be spent productively or leisurely. By spending time savings productively, societies create wealth — the accumulation of time saved in the form of capital. Anything that economizes human action — tools, knowledge, or even relationships — is considered capital, as it provides a way for us to more quickly satisfy our wants. Said simply, as we become more productive, we accumulate more capital — a form of frozen time savings. In this respect, we have come a long way over the past two centuries:
Money: Mankind’s Masterwork
Money is the most marketable (or readily exchangeable) capital in an economy; it is the most liquid measure of time savings — a social chronometer of sorts. Money is the technology we use to measure and move the value of our time savings across time and space. The primary function of money is to store value, meaning that it must (at a minimum) retain its own exchange value across time. Naturally, as our collective productivity increases, the value of money rises in tandem, and prices expressed in it decline. The secondary function of money is to mediate exchange, meaning that it can be exchanged for anything in the marketplace — goods, services, or knowledge. Money is sought by all seeking to trade their way into satisfying personal wants (this includes everyone that isn’t entirely self-sufficient). The tertiary function of money is to quantify exchange ratios, meaning it is used to denominate prices across the minds of market participants. Consider how we think in dollars, or in our local currency, when deciding whether and how much to buy or sell of anything in the marketplace. Interestingly, this “unit of account” function of money is so deeply etched into our mental machinery that it actually changes how we think and perceive the world.
Besides these three functions, monetary technologies generally exhibit the following traits:
Scarcity: resistance to money supply manipulations and, thus, dilutions to its monetary unit value (difficult to produce) Divisibility: ease of accounting and transacting at various scales (separable and combinable units) Portability: ease of moving value across space (high value to weight ratio) Durability: ease of moving value across time (resilient to deterioration) Recognizability: ease of identifying and verifying the monetary value by other parties in a transaction (universally identifiable and verifiable)
Whatever good is most impervious to the depredations of time, transference, and greed is naturally selected as “money”. The monetary technology selected freely in a marketplace is referred to as “hard money”; a haven for liquid value (exchangeable time savings) that resists the ravages of time, damages related to transference across space, and intentional misappropriations by those vicious two-legged apes (people). In these respects, monetary metals have been historically superior due to their durability and portability, making them ideal for storing value across time and space, respectively. With the advent of coinage, which standardized each monetary unit, the divisibility and recognizability traits of these metals were greatly enhanced. Critically, the scarcity of monetary metals is governed by natural laws that are beyond the control of man, making their supplies (mostly) resistant to greedy manipulations. Gold became, and remains, the prime monetary metal of the world precisely because of its superior relative scarcity — historically, it has been the best reflector of absolutely scarce time.
Gold is the hardest monetary metal to produce and nearly every ounce ever mined remains part of its extant supply today, as it is chemically an ultra-stable element. Taken in combination, these properties made gold the best medium for storing value across time, as its supply is the most resistant to change, and therefore the most inflation-resistant. By providing sufficient monetary characteristics (divisibility, portability, durability, recognizability) coupled with superior physical scarcity, gold was naturally selected as money on the free market (hard money). With a (low) reproducibility and physical scarcity most closely aligned with the absolute irreproducibility and scarcity of time, gold has been the most credible store of value historically — which explains why freely acting individuals have hoarded it for centuries. More technically, gold’s superior stock-to-flow ratio makes it more resistant to supply inflation (and, its corollary, monetary value dilution) than all other monetary technologies (prior to the invention of Bitcoin).
Game Time
To understand gold’s ascent, we must realize the actions of people in free markets are driven by game theory. In game-theoretic terms, a “game” is any situation in which people can win or lose — as is the case in markets. A “strategy” is just process for making decisions. Game theory is applicable in any domain where people must decide whether to cooperate or compete. For instance, if you and I are being chased by a bear, my decision to run or fight is not based on how fast I am, but rather how fast I think you are. Game-theoretically, I only need to be faster than you, not the bear, to ensure my survival. Such assessments of interpersonal dynamics are also closely related to economics and monetary evolution.
In the context of monetary evolution’s relationship with time: free market participants choose hard money over all other monetary technologies because its resistance to supply increases most closely reflects the immutable flow of time. No matter how much time was allocated to gold production, its supply resisted inflation more than any other monetary metal, causing people to coalesce around its use as a superiorly sound store of value. In game theory terms, gold production became the “Nash Equilibrium”, a game state in which everyone follows the same strategy because there is no advantage to be gained by switching to any other strategy. So long as people sought to maximize their freedom from time scarcity by accumulating capital, collectively produced more than they consumed, and accomplished these goals through trade, gold remained the best proxy for the scarcest economic resource — time.
Unicity of Time and Money
Time is the only irreversible element in existence. Its directionality is imparted by the ever-growing entropy of the universe — as defined by the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. This “Thermodynamic Arrow of Time” which points us into an increasingly chaotic universe is, in fact, the only irreversible aspect of reality; every other natural process is symmetrical, making it impossible to discern whether an event is unfolding forward or backward in time. As such, this universally objective and unidirectional flow of time provides our purest reference point for all values (of the seven key metrics maintained by the Systeme Internationale of Units and Measures, six are rooted in the time it takes light to move through a vacuum). Gold, then, as the most difficult commodity to produce no matter how much time was allocated towards its extraction, served as the best market proxy for the objective purity of ever-flowing time. It is commonly said that time is money, but few realize that the reciprocal is also true — money is time.
Beyond relative irreproducibility, hard money exhibits other properties akin to the natural flow of time. Markets naturally optimize for a hard money that is as impersonal, irreversible, and unstoppable as the flow of time to which it is anchored, and which it is intended to epitomize in the marketplace. As hard money arises naturally as the result of countless market interactions in which individuals seek to trade their goods for steadily more exchangeable goods, it is inherently beyond the control of any single individual, nation, or central bank. This makes hard money apolitical and impersonal; it cannot be used to benefit any one group over another. In other words, hard money tends to be politically neutral, like time.
Hard money is also equity-based, meaning that physically possessing gold as an asset, for instance, is 100% equity and 0% debt (a bearer asset). This makes payments in gold immune to reversal, unlike those made with monopolistically imposed debt-based monies, called fiat currencies, which are liable to the whims of bureaucrats, who can choose to confiscate, censor, or deauthorize fiat currencies at any time, for any reason. Finally, hard money is unstoppable, in the sense that if I flip you a gold coin, there is no single authority on Earth that can block or devalue that transaction. Hard money, like gold, derives its value from freely acting individuals choosing the best monetary technology available to them.
Sacred Sovereignty
Bearer assets, like gold, offer another significant advantage — each individual unit is self-sovereign. Sovereignty refers to the freedom to take action as one sees fit. As Rosseau said: “Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.” The struggle of history has been the need for flexible coordination of human action on a large scale against the usurpation of individual sovereignty that the institutions built for this purpose typically impose. Paradoxically, as mankind pursued large scale mobilization of his efforts to overcome the natural tyranny of time scarcity, he gave birth to an artificial tyrant that engorges itself by consuming our individual sovereignty — the government and, its apparatus of thievery, central banking. True sovereignty originates at the individual level; it naturally reigns when our individual expressions, whether verbal or financial, are unmanipulable by others. When a government censors your speech or a central bank devalues your dollar, it is a violation of your individual sovereignty. Let no one prevent you from speaking your mind or spending your time and money as you see fit. We are each our own supreme ruler:
Gold is a self-sovereign bearer asset whose credibility and value as money is derived from the combined sovereignty of countless self-interested individuals exercising free choice in the marketplace. When a good gains value on the free market, it is a result of market participants finding it useful, making sacrifices for it, and, thereby, imbuing it with part of their individual sovereignty. Since gold achieved dominance on the free market as a result of countless “votes” in the form of self-interested trade decisions by a faceless multitude across history, it can be considered the monetary materialization of popular sovereignty — the founding principle of Western Civilization:
Although it’s an ancient monetary technology, gold still forms the prime monetary sovereignty layer of Earth, as it underpins all governmental sovereignty. In turn, governments use this power to monopolize the market for money (via their central bank henchmen) and insulate fiat currencies from direct monetary competition. Such insulation is the only way debt-based monies can survive alongside hard money. Gold and other bearer assets are final extinguishers of debt, as payments in them carry no associated liability. Modern central banks still perform final settlement exclusively in gold and actively engage in market machinations to suppress its price (see Gata.org); a testament to the primacy of this ancient monetary metal.
Den of Thieves
Despite this misappropriation of gold’s sovereignty by government for its own self-seeking purposes, fiat currency is no longer anchored to gold, making it highly reproducible at near-zero cost. Indeed, fiat currency is the softest form of money in history; it can (and in virtually all cases does) suffer from counterparty risks such as censorship, deauthorization, or hyperinflation. Hard money is anchored in the reality of time to secure the time savings of its holders; fiat currency is a political tool that facilitates the institutionalized system of time-theft known as “expansionary monetary policy” perpetrated by central banks globally.
Although governments legally compel us to use fiat currencies today, these rules are only enforceable due to their vampirism — the sucking of sovereignty out of gold holdings. Ironically, this stolen power is used to monopolize violence and silence dissent. Government sovereignty, then, is derived from the agglomerated self-sovereignty of its gold hoards; which, in combination with the anticompetitive artifices it erects (legal tender laws, capital controls, capital gains taxes, etc.) in the sphere of money, explains why gold has been confiscated and its private ownership outlawed repeatedly throughout history:
There is only one reason for such confiscatory acts: governments grasping for more power; a means to usurp gold’s self-sovereignty, an embezzlement of power which itself originates in the actions of free people selecting a monetary technology in the marketplace; a tragedy at the heart of all modern economies. As the axiom says: “Whoever has the gold, makes the rules.”:
Prime Money
In this sense, gold is prime money: as its physical possession underpins the sovereignty of governments, which misappropriate it to enforce central bank money production monopolies on free people. Paradoxically, it was the actions of free people that generated the sovereignty that is now wielded against them by governments and central banks. This “duopoly of monopolists” has proclaimed time and time again that gold is irrelevant, a mere monetary artifact, and that they alone will lead the world economy to a brighter future. Ignore anti-gold propaganda; just watch their actions:
Although gold resisted supply manipulation in many ways, it is far from perfect. Through the London Gold Pool and other machinations (seriously, see Gata.org) central banks cornered the market on gold, enabling them to surreptitiously suppress its price and better insulate fiat currency (soft money) from direct competition with gold (hard money). Market manipulation like this is only possible because of our passivity. In surrendering our sovereignty to unaccountable institutions like central banks, we cede conscious control over most aspects of our lives. Remember: central banks engaged in “expansionary monetary policy” are actively stealing time from free people; as they increase money supplies, they reallocate claims on productive capital from the majority to a politically favored few. This parasitism on the savings of society extends the working lives for most of the citizenry. In this way, monetary inflation is a direct violation of private property rights and individual sovereignty. It is worth repeating: human action is the essence of sovereignty; it is our actions that instill institutions with this divine quality intrinsic to free people. Let us all exercise the utmost vigilance in deciding which institutions to empower with our sacred sovereign energies:
Hard Money Renaissance
Against this usurpation of our individual sovereignty by government, we find hope in the emergence of a modern innovation called the internet — the universal exchange engine for knowledge. The internet has already democratized and disintermediated many aspects of our lives — from lodging and transportation, to media distribution and commerce. Compositionally, the internet is a set of open-source protocols (known as the internet protocol suite) for permissionlessly moving information worldwide in an instant. Constructed in a free market manner, through years of cooperation and standardization efforts, the internet is the greatest knowledge network in history. Today, we all benefit from this readily-accessible library of human knowledge:
As Milton Friedman so aptly pointed out in 1999, about ten years before the invention of Bitcoin, the one thing the internet lacked was a secure, private “e-cash”:
“The one thing that’s missing, but that will soon be developed, is a reliable e-cash, a method whereby on the Internet you can transfer funds from A to B, without A knowing B or B knowing A.”
Friedman’s prescience proved astonishingly accurate. Coming into the 21st century, we had two key inceptors for digital hard money: gold, the ancient and prevailing monetary sovereignty layer (representing an unmanipulable money supply), and the internet, the ultimate engine of exchange (representing global interconnectivity or liquidity). By combining and building upon the economic properties of both, Bitcoin is a momentous monetary innovation that has achieved the divisibility, portability, durability, and recognizability of pure information infused with the absolute scarcity of time. As the internet gives us freedom to express and absorb ideas without obstruction, Bitcoin gives us the freedom to express and receive value in a hard money that cannot be stopped. In this sense, Bitcoin is the latest evolutionary layer of the internet protocol suite; a quantum leap over the monetary “Nash Equilibrium” gold represented.
Historically, gold has become more difficult to extract with the passage of time due to chemistry, physical rarity, and game theory. Gold is the ancient anchor to the prime economic reality of time scarcity, precisely why it remains the prime money of modernity. Time is the most objective measure for our intersubjective (opinion-based) valuations, as it is the one unarguable aspect of existence. In a society run on hard money, price levels naturally decline over time as our productivity grows in tandem with the division of labor. Put another way, hard money tends to appreciate over time as human knowledge becomes more specialized. In this way, increases in the value of hard money reflect how far humanity has liberated itself from time scarcity.
Liquidity of Time and Information
Conceptually then, money is both frozen time (as a means of storing time savings) and liquid time (as a means of exchanging time savings). We earn money by sacrificing our intrapersonal time and can trade it for commensurate sacrifices from others. As such, anyone that gains control over a money supply, and can manipulate it at will, can steal time savings directly from the users of its money via the shadow tax of inflation. To shed light on the true nature of fiat currency in one line, let’s call it like it is: a pyramid scheme built atop gold that is subject to unlimited supply inflation. Since it bears repeating: inflation is intrapersonal time theft — a legally enforced injustice.
Manipulation of money supplies has other consequences. Money is an economy’s main informational utility; a touchstone to measure the value of the time savings (or spending) expected to be made possible by an economic good in the future. When a money supply is manipulated, the objectivity of its measurement ability is compromised. This breakdown of money’s informational utility is called price signal distortion. Such manipulation makes economic calculation less reliable and causes entrepreneurs to overborrow, misallocate capital, and, ultimately, degenerates time savings as capital is consumed instead of being compounded through reinvestment. Price signals provide a system for “market participant telecommunications” and can be explained as follows:
Price signals are the navigational instruments for entrepreneurs sailing the tempestuous seas of markets, and money is the medium through which these signals propagate. Said another way: money is a measurement system for value (a temporal quality) in the same way a ruler is for length (a spatial quality). The less elastic the supply of money is, the better it fulfills this mensural purpose. If you are measuring a table with a ruler that you cannot trust, then you can’t be sure whether you’re measuring the table or the ruler; you cannot distinguish the signal (the actual length) from the noise (changes in unit of measurement). Gold outcompeted historically because of its relative supply inelasticity, which made it both the best store of value and conveyor of price signals. Uniquely, Bitcoin is a money with perfect supply inelasticity; it is the most uncompromising measurement system for value the world has ever known. In this sense, Bitcoin is like an inviolable ruler: a perfectly objective unit of measurement for the endless variations of market values.
Therefore, the more closely a money supply is credibly congruent with the absolutely scarcity of time, the better it communicates the time savings generated by our collective productivity gains. In this way, both gold and Bitcoin share the same principal attractiveness: they are more closely reflective of the impersonal, irreproducible, irreversible, unstoppable, and absolutely scarce nature of the experiential element money is intended to symbolize in the marketplace — time.
Temporal Anchorage
When money is disconnected from time scarcity (as fiat currency is), its “skin in the game” is compromised and the economies it facilitates start suffering from distorted price signals, malinvestments, recessions, and an exacerbated boom-and-bust business cycle. As with most systems, money requires skin in the game to function properly — meaning that money must be costly to produce, otherwise those who can produce it cheaply will do so to steal the value of time savings stored therein (as central banks do).
For gold, the costs associated with mining provide this critical skin in the game characteristic. For Bitcoin, an ingenious composite of proof-of-work energy expenditure (skin in the game) and economic incentives (game theory) enabled it to digitize scarcity. In this sense, Bitcoin’s blockchain is like a bridge between physical and digital reality — the first incarnation of a digital asset with provable scarcity. An innovative amalgamation of open-source software and behavioral economics, Bitcoin was designed to be a monetary network that reproduces itself relentlessly:
From this perspective, the value of mining both gold and Bitcoin is the “unforgeable costliness” that each represents — a measure of the time sacrificed in production, which is redeemable for the time of others. Imbued with digital scarcity, Bitcoin preserves the advantages offered by gold’s physicality (self-sovereignty, irreversible transactions, final settlement) while eliminating its disadvantages (ease of confiscation, expensive safeguarding, high settlement costs). Digitization also makes Bitcoin a weightless, intangible, and (potentially) everlasting monetary technology. As a totally impersonal and self-sovereign monetary network capable of adopting market-proven features from competitors over time, while simultaneously resisting changes that negatively impact its users, Bitcoin may be the last evolution we ever see in global prime money. Gold is the “pristine collateral” which underpins the entirety of the highly-levered fiat currency financial complex; Bitcoin is poised to become the foundation for an entirely new economic order.
Monetary Horizons
In the near future and for the first time in history, the world will have a money that is harder to produce than gold. A fixed supply of 21 million units makes Bitcoin absolutely scarce — a property never before achieved by anything other than time itself. In the same way that Galelio’s invention of the telescope led to discoveries that reoriented our relationship with space, so too has the invention of Bitcoin led to the discovery of absolute scarcity; a bewildering breakthrough that perfectly parallels and will forever change mankind’s relationship with time. Soon, in accordance with its perfectly predictable issuance schedule, Bitcoin will become the scarcest liquid asset in human history. At this point, Bitcoin will become the monetary technology most closely aligned with the absolutely scarce nature of time. From there, every block produced will (asymptotically) further perfect this alignment until the last Bitcoin in mined in the mid-22nd century:
The supreme divisibility, portability, durability, recognizability, and scarcity characteristics of Bitcoin constantly increase the likelihood (via the Lindy Effect) that it will continue to outcompete gold and fiat currencies in its long climb toward becoming global prime money. Bitcoin, with a supply more closely aligned with the prime economic reality of time scarcity, is slowly but surely *undermining* gold’s role as prime money. The word *undermine* literally means “to dig under fortifications to collapse them”. In this sense, Satoshi designed Bitcoin to “dig deeper” into reality than gold and, in doing so, undermine its role as prime money by more closely mirroring the fundamental nature of time. As a result, the value of fiat currencies will also diminish as gold slips from its position of primacy.
Temporal Metaphor
Time is the ultimate experiential element we all share. It is ruthlessly egalitarian, flowing equally for all alike. Time is our objective anchor in a world of ceaselessly shifting intersubjective valuations. Abstractly, money is our metaphor for time. As a tool, it best serves mankind when its supply is as inelastic as the absolute scarcity of time. Here, gold does well; yet Bitcoin, the first money with a supply that is absolutely scarce, reflects time perfectly.
Money is the medium through which many minds become one; it is the coordinating mechanism of human action. Money matters because only through cooperation and innovation do we mortals gain ground in our struggle against the immortal tyrant of time scarcity. Perhaps one day to be regarded as the most impactful technology ever invented, Bitcoin is simply a tool for saving time; it stores the value created from our time spent serving one another, reduces the time needed to establish trustful coordination, and it protects our mutually generated time savings from confiscation. Furthermore, Bitcoin promises to reduce the money, capital, and life wasted in warfare. Bitcoin accomplishes this by transcending laws and outcompeting money production monopolies, which use taxation via inflation to stealthily fund perpetual warfare. As Ron Paul said: “It is no coincidence that the century of total war coincided with the century of central banking.”:
Bitcoin also promises to help generate even more time savings by deepening the division of labor, a direct result of financial disintermediation, the benefits of which flow to everyone. Finally, Bitcoin encourages us to adopt lower time preferences and think long-term. Hard money incentivizes us to save and invest, and disincentivizes excessive debt and spending, since it naturally appreciates over time as our collective productivity grows. Fiat currency is the reverse: it pushes up our time preferences and disintegrates societies. As the repeated fall of ancient civilizations shows, monetary integrity and social cohesion are inexorably linked.
Breaking the Chains
Bitcoin belongs in a certain class of momentous innovations — like antiseptics, electricity, or the internet — that either extend our lifespans individually or enhance our productivity and, therefore, our time savings collectively. These innovations expand our relationship with time in one or more ways: extending life expectancies, lowering time preferences, or enhancing productivity. Bitcoin promises to contribute to all three by being the best self-sovereign savings technology in history: reducing death tolls and capital destruction from warfare by financially starving governments, incentivizing savings and investment in innovation, and accelerating our productivity gains by reducing artificial and arbitrary trade frictions.
Bitcoin has the potential to bend the grand arc of human history back towards a free market paradigm. Bitcoin is doing this in the market for money, and its underlying technology may one day be applied to other markets like equities, bonds, and real estate. Going forward, Bitcoin promises to further liberate us from the clutches of time scarcity, eliminate time theft via inflation, reinvigorate individual sovereignty, and, as a cumulative result, radically increase social scalability worldwide. As Alfred North Whitehead said:
“It is a profoundly erroneous truism repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they’re making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking about what we’re doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.”
As we continue our endless contentions with time scarcity, government-authorized money monopolies remain a scourge on our humanity. Central banking, an institution of monetary socialism and systemized time theft, has repeatedly wounded our individual sovereignty, time preferences, and freedoms throughout history. We mortals must break the shackles of this oppressive institution and focus our energies on innovating against time scarcity — the immortal tyrant. In doing so, we will create a world in which our children, their children, and all future generations are born able to live totally self-sovereign lives — forever free from the chains of governmental tyranny.
By Robert Breedlove
Oct, 2019 | https://medium.com/the-bitcoin-times/bitcoin-and-the-tyranny-of-time-scarcity-1d1550dfd8b0 | ['Robert Breedlove'] | 2020-11-14 02:56:36.590000+00:00 | ['Money', 'Economics', 'Freedom', 'Time', 'Bitcoin'] |
I decided NOT to move from Tampa to San Diego and it changed my life | Photo by Katie Drazdauskaite on Unsplash
I was home from school, visiting my parents in between semesters. One day my good friend Patrick called and told me he’d bought a van and wanted to drive from Tampa to San Diego. “You should come with me” he said. Hell yeah, that sounds…shit, I have to go back to school. Thanks anyway homie.
I walk into my dad’s office and tell him Pat’s moving to San Diego and wants me to drive with him. He tells me to sit down and write out the pros and cons for each opportunity. I do the exercise and it’s overwhelmingly obvious: I’m going back to school. I have an apartment, roommates, a lease. I’ve already picked my classes next semester. Besides, Pat’s had a history of shitty cars, who knows if the van would even make it across the country? My dad motions toward the door and says, “okay, let’s go get your ticket” (this was a long time ago, there were actual human travel agents who procured flights for you).
We get in the car. It’s a long ride across town but we eventually pull the needlessly large, blue, dented 1985 Impala into the strip mall parking lot.
The travel agent office is a perfect square, with 8 or 10 people inside seated at uniformly aligned desks with oversized headsets on, their phones blinking with hopeful travelers waiting impatiently. My dad pulls the door open and makes an announcement: “this kid needs a ticket to Tampa!”
That was a single seminal moment that changed the course of my life. I was going to Florida. I was taking the risky option, the fun option, the option I actually wanted to take but was afraid to admit. At the last minute I was throwing the plan out the window and doing something completely different.
A couple days after I got there, Pat’s mom’s drunk boyfriend kicked us out of their house, effectively starting the trip a week before we were scheduled to go. We had a couple of friends flying in to join the adventure, and we still had tons of work to do on the the GIANT, roundish, dingy white utility van with a decorative bass line stripe on the side. We called it the “White October” and it was just as shitty as I expected. With days before we could leave, we had to find somewhere to stay. We ended up sleeping in the parking lot of a Super Wal-Mart. This was one of the worst case scenarios for me, but we lived through it (it was honestly sort of fun).
The rest of the trip was an amazing, once in a lifetime experience. From Tampa we drove down to Miami where our back passenger side wheel almost fell off. We listened to a “Color me Badd” cover band in Sarasota. The alternator stopped alternating in Pensacola and some dudes in a pickup pushed us at 50 miles per hour across a highway by the bumper (Joe turned to me and said, honestly, that we might die). We ate gas station hot dogs in Alabama, experienced Bourbon Street in Louisiana, drove 30 hours straight through Texas, visited old friends in Phoenix, drank too much in general, fought amongst ourselves, and had the absolute time of our lives. The van broke down many more times, finally succumbing to its shittiness just over the border from Arizona in the hills of California. Two of us got a ride from Border Patrol to the nearest town, slept on the floor of a motel lobby, took the 7:10 AM, multi-hour, motion sick bus ride to the next nearest town, rented a car, then hauled ass back to get the two poor souls who waited with all of our stuff in the van. We rolled into San Diego in a Dodge Intrepid piled high with everything the four of us owned.
As my dad obviously knew— I learned more about myself on that trip than I possibly could have in geology classes. I learned I could survive. That I didn’t need a plan and that I had the ability to adapt. I learned that the ideal outcome for a given situation may not be possible, and that’s okay. I learned that with good people around you, anything is doable no matter the obstacle.
I never made it back to school in Portland. | https://medium.com/@jason-bowden/i-decided-not-to-move-from-tampa-to-san-diego-and-it-changed-my-life-f893f04ec511 | ['Jason Bowden'] | 2020-12-13 05:33:45.553000+00:00 | ['Adventure', 'Learning', 'Friends', 'Roadtrip', 'Travel'] |
Like it or not - CEO’s are Chief Customer Officers | This past Friday for a new startup I am working with, we were running a big pilot. A key partner custom crafted a one-of-a-kind product for us. The company is in stealth now, so apologies for being a bit evasive!
To run the pilot end-to-end, we needed to get the custom product delivered. There are several 3rd party delivery services available now that are well-funded and complete millions of deliveries each year. We spoke to the main players in this space letting them know about the pilot opportunity. After vetting the services, we decided on one to partner with for this pilot.
The product was going to be ready to be picked up from the South Side of Chicago at 2:30pm to me in River North a few miles away. We set the drop-off time to be 4:30pm at the latest, even though it’s a 15 minute drive max.
The driver was supposed to be assigned 20 minutes or so prior to the pickup time of 2:30pm, and this occurred at 2:36pm. A little late, but no big deal. They then didn’t pickup the product until 4:14pm. Not great, but we said it needed to be delivered by 4:30pm and it looked like the vendor could still get this done. 4:30pm on the dot and got the notification from the vendor that the delivery was made!
Ok, key learning opportunities … Next time specify a shorter time window, or we could optimize for the pickup time not the drop off time, or we could change the notification style to not create concern… lots of ideas!
My building’s doorman didn’t call up to let me know about the package, but I decided to head down and pick it up. I checked the front table amongst the other deliveries and it wasn’t there. Checked the package room, wasn’t there. Asked the doorman and he said he hadn’t seen it. Looked at the confirmation from the 3rd party delivery service and I saw a picture of my building, not of the package delivered there.
Shit.
Went to the Help section of the app and waited on hold to get someone from customer service for what seemed to be an eternity. Nobody picked up. Then decided to email, text and then call our main sales contact for the 3rd party delivery vendor. She called back quickly and said she was going to check right away.
This was bad. This was really bad. How do we call the partner that spent so much time and energy on the one-of-a-kind product and tell them it was never delivered? This was our first test. Would they trust us again?
20 minutes go by and my sales rep calls me back. The product was stolen. It was apparently the second item stolen by this driver on Friday and the service was made aware of it by me. They locked the driver out of the system as he was now unreachable and off the grid. A few minutes later a sales manager called and asked what he could do. I said I’d really like to get this resolved asap and he said they would be back in touch soon.
It has been crickets. I even reached out to the CEO of the 3rd party delivery services provider on LinkedIn that night and haven’t heard a peep.
Fortunately our creative partner was forgiving and was willing to try again. We joked that what they created was so amazing, the delivery driver stole it!
When telling this story to friends and family over the weekend, it just was unfathomable that this could occur, but in life, things happen. We need to get over it, learn the lessons and move on quickly. Life is too short. | https://medium.com/subconscious-ventures/like-it-or-not-ceos-are-chief-customer-officers-aa34b779aad3 | ['Jason Weingarten'] | 2020-12-21 17:16:06.143000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'CEO', 'Venture Capital', 'SaaS', 'Customer Service'] |
Energy: Brown versus Green | Do you really care where your energy comes from?
It’s a sad reality. Most people just don’t think about where their energy comes from. Brown energy; fossil fuels like coal or oil — dirty, smelly, gooey and messy, versus green energy; renewable energy sources such as solar or wind — ahhh, feel the fresh air. We all know brown energy clearly pollutes and harms the environment and, obviously, green energy is better for all of us, but when it comes down to it, it just doesn’t matter enough for most consumers to change their energy consumption behaviour.
What does matter, for most consumers, is the cost of the energy. If it hits hard in the wallet, it matters. So if a customer can choose the source of their energy, chances are, for the most part, most consumers choose the cheapest source, no matter what it is.
Granted, there are those who are more actively concerned and purposely seek out greener sources of energy — people who are passionately concerned and active in the battle against pollution and climate change — but by and large, this is not the case. For the average Joe, it’s all about cost, at the end of the day.
Subsidies and Penalties
So, governments who actively seek to change power grids over to green energy might dangle an artificial carrot on a stick — providing subsidies for renewable energy sources — making it artificially cheaper — or by just using the stick — penalising brown energy sources, coercing customers to begrudgingly change behaviour with additional fees or taxes, or else!
For now, with the renewable energy sector in its infancy, it still costs more to derive energy from renewables. This is temporary, as the cost of renewable energy is dropping, and quickly. Solar energy, in particular, is getting cheaper as technology is becoming more efficient and cost-effective. But in the meantime, while costs are still higher for green energy, how could consumers be coaxed into choosing green energy without bureaucratic systems of reward and punishment?
What if a token system rewarded green energy choices, providing a monetary reward for choosing renewable sources? What if, instead of a complicated and costly system involving a large bureaucratic workload with artificial rewards and punishments, these rewards could be implemented via blockchain smart contracts and through the free exchange of energy between generators and consumers without a centralised agency?
Energi Token makes it matter
A token exists for this purpose: Energi Token, or ETK. It is an Ethereum-based ERC20 token that, once disseminated to consumers, businesses, and other agencies, could be used as a method of payment and reward for energy generation and consumption. Consumers, choosing to use renewable energy, could be rewarded for their green decision with tokens that can be used to purchase the energy, perhaps from a neighbour who generates a surplus of solar power, maybe from a solar farm in a nearby county, or possibly from a wind farm off the coast. Renewable energy generators could sell their green energy to customers directly for the tokens, which circulate through the economy. This not only motivates the consumption of renewable or green energy; it also encourages its production.
Consumers will care more if the choices they make consuming energy directly impact their pocketbooks. The Energi Token will motivate greener energy consumption — a key in the battle against pollution and climate change. ETK makes the choice between brown and green energy matter. | https://medium.com/energitokennews/energy-brown-versus-green-b502a45a30d2 | [] | 2018-04-25 08:34:28.499000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain', 'Green Energy', 'Climate Change', 'Energy'] |
This isn’t How You Say “No to Racism.” | Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
French and Turkish players have to wake up!
For those who watch soccer, I believe you know what I am talking about. For those who don’t, let me sum this up very quickly.
In a nutshell,
During the UEFA Champions League game yesterday, both the Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) and Istanbul Basaksehir’s players decided to walk off the stadium when the 4th official (referee) spat racist remarks at one of the coaching assistants during the game. Basaksehir’s Cameroonian assistant coach Pierre Webo was flashed a red for protesting against a referring decision.
This was what the 4th official said (loosely translated from his native language, Romanian, by the media):
“The black one over there. Go and check who he is. The black one over there, it’s not possible to act like that.”
And the imbecile’s response triggered the 22 players to walk their butts off the pitch.
I find this totally unfair to the fans who were eager to watch them play. I find that the players let their anger get the better of them.
Many might disagree with me. But I believe that they made a stupid move and the players could have responded to the racist remarks in a more mature manner.
Show your strength on the pitch
All 22 players (and the reserves on the bench) are at the stadium for one significant reason. It is for their love for football. If they don’t love football and don’t love playing football, then they shouldn’t even be there. At that moment, all of the players forgot their purpose. At that moment, they let respecting another human being overrule a football game.
Doc Rivers, an NBA veteran, said this to his players when they had to face a similar racist situation. He said:
“We are never going to be victims.”
Doc and the players were expected to boycott the game — instead, they designed their own protest, made the statement center court pre-game, and went back to play the game.
Likewise, the French and Turkish players should have finished the game. They should have played their best for the game, telling the world that racist comments are not more important than their love for the game. They should not have become victims. By walking out, they became the victims.
Show love, not hate
Racist comments were made. Players got angry and they walked out. And the score was:
Racism 1 People 0.
People showed unity the wrong way during that game. People of color had their feelings hurt. And this hurt resonated beyond the stadium.
Instead, they should have shown unity on the pitch by producing a good game and show unity amongst their team mates. When someone scored, they should have celebrated with hugs and love, regardless of the color of the skin. If the goalkeeper was a person of color and he kept a clean sheet, everyone should have praised him and gave him a pat on his back. If the defenders were persons of color and they did a fantastic job defending against the other team, then that should have been welcomed with hugs and kisses at the end of the game.
There are millions of fans who are watching games via the TV. It would have been a louder statement if they did this instead of running back to their locker rooms in anger and frustration over a racist comment.
At the end of the game, all the players could have simply walked out the pitch, hugging Webo and holding their heads held high- telling everyone that they respect the game and the coaches who act of their guides.
Show the Press who you are
After any football game, there will be a post-match press conference where the press will interview both the coaches and players.
And this should have been an excellent platform for them to voice out their anger and frustration. There were some heavyweight players on the PSG team like Kylian Mbappe and Neymar Jr — who have millions of followers all around the world.
Either Mbappe or Neymar should have grabbed the mic and said that people should not react to racism with more hate but to show the world what you are capable of so that ignorant people will look past the color of the skin and praise your talent. Racism can be stopped with talent. And this could have been easily highlighted via the press conference.
Also, the Turkish players could have used this opportunity to do something likewise and even praise Webo for his coaching efforts and their appreciation towards Webo on how they groomed them. It would have been an eye-opener for those who have not appreciated Webo to finally appreciate him as a coach. There would have been more visibility for him rather than being seen solely as a victim of racism that day.
At the end of the day, you need to ask yourself this question. Do you forever want to be victim of racism and not do what you love or do what you love and should how capable you are to the world?
Don’t let racism stop you from living your dream. | https://medium.com/@arulvelan85/this-isnt-how-you-say-no-to-racism-e4ac8d9bc71b | ['Arul Velan'] | 2021-03-08 13:19:33.587000+00:00 | ['Sports', 'Soccer', 'Thinking', 'Lists', 'Racism'] |
Hello Mother, Hello Father (BIG 10 Series 5) | “Honor your father and mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.” Exodus 20:12 (Big Ten Series)
Throughout my childhood and adolescence, there was no more quoted commandment than this one: “Honor your father and mother.” For young children, this one can be easier to keep than for teenagers. For young kids, parents are still superheroes; they can do no wrong. But once adolescence hits, the relationship becomes a lot more strained.
In his letter to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul refers to this fifth commandment as the first commandment with a promise. That is to say, if you honor your father and mother, you will have a long life in the promised land. I can see where Paul gets that idea, but I always have read this commandment as the first commandment with a threat — kind of the whole “your parents brought you into this world they can take you out of it” sort of thing. But that just may be reflective of my own upbringing!
Growing up, I never heard the back half of this commandment. The promise wasn’t part of the equation, so this commandment was about submission to my parents will. But that is not the point of this commandment.
Honoring one’s parents is not about never rebelling or always acquiescing to their will. Rather it is about respecting the experience of those who have already walked a lot of the road that we are going to be walking on. A good portion of the experience of our elders (parents and others) comes from failure. Failure is one of the best teachers and has the ability to impart tremendous wisdom.
Honoring our elders is about listening to that voice of experience, the voice that has already faced some of the most treacherous paths ahead of us and can help us to avoid some of the hurdles in our way, and as a result, help our days to be longer and better.
The flip side of this coin is that it is of supreme importance that parents, and the elders of our communities, take the time to speak that voice into the lives of the young. In the New Testament, discipleship is a big theme for that very reason. Those who have walked with Christ for a long time impart their knowledge, wisdom, and experience to those who are just setting out on the journey of faith.
It is easy to look at a church like ours and feel like we don’t have much to offer that would appeal to the younger crowd. That may be true when it comes to the flashing lights and rock band styles of worship that we see in the mega church movements. But we possess a commodity that is far more valuable than any light show, the collective experience of those sitting in the pews all around you.
As a pastor, it can be frustrating when some of the oldest members of a congregation think that they are all done, all used up, with nothing left to offer. That, my friends, is 100% pure unadulterated poppycock. It is precisely the grandmas and grandpas in our midst that should be trying to mentor and disciple whatever youth happen to be in your sphere of influence. Do not ever discount your experience and the wisdom you can share! Just look at all you’ve faced, all you’ve survived, to get where you are. You have a story to tell and share with the young in our midst.
So get out there. Develop relationships with the young and allow them to honor your wisdom as you make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.
Learning from one another,
Pastor Mike | https://medium.com/revmikeumc/hello-mother-hello-father-big-10-series-5-e27e2d663a02 | ['Mike C Desotell'] | 2019-10-09 14:04:19.068000+00:00 | ['Simple Theologian', 'Honor Mother And Father', 'Christianity', 'Parents'] |
I am glad that you loved this piece. | I am glad that you loved this piece. I have a soft corner for birds, wildlife, and the environment. And I like to experiment with my writing style.
Honestly, I had no idea about the ‘biophilia hypothesis.’ Thank you for expanding my knowledge. I appreciate it. | https://medium.com/@meetmamun/i-am-glad-that-you-loved-this-piece-3da838b4be13 | ['S M Mamunur Rahman'] | 2020-11-21 07:04:35.190000+00:00 | ['Nature', 'Birds', 'Environment'] |
Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bell | NCiR’ THROWBACK TUESDAYS
Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bell
I submit to your sweet spell
by Joe Váradi
Twinkle, twinkle, little bell
I submit to your sweet spell
When you shine your gleaming white
All in the world seems just right
Little green dot your companion
Finer sight than the Grand Canyon
What a classy congregation —
You two are my validation
Antidote to my frustration
Writer’s block annihilation
But when you stay grey and dark
With no punctuation mark
Not a clap to comfort me
Emptiness is all I see
Twinkle, twinkle, little bell
I submit to your sweet spell | https://medium.com/no-crime-in-rhymin/twinkle-twinkle-little-bell-4e970666258e | ['Joe Váradi'] | 2020-11-10 15:27:18.215000+00:00 | ['Humor', 'Poetry', 'Satire', 'Nursery Rhymes', 'Social Media'] |
7 key differentiators of UCASH from every other crypto | Blockchain agnostic and inclusive
The real game changer in crypto is a token which is blockchain agnostic as well as inclusive. Governance is one of the pain area in cryptocurrencies. In a decentralized network disagreements are common which leads to forks and it affects the network. One such side effect is high rise in transaction time and cost. The end user of the network is often affected. Being blockchain agnostic and inclusive allows the UCASH ecosystem to be independent of any one blockchain implementation, and also allows all of them to be accessed and used whenever beneficial, or required by its users.
IBO
The most popular crowd funding mechanism for cryptocurrencies aka ICO is so 2016. UCASH introduced the novel concept of Initial Bounty Offering (IBO) in the crypto space. While a few cryptos had used bounties to spread the word before, UCASH’s entire crowd funding mechanism involves bounties. It brings back the age old value transfer system of barter. You do something for the UCASH network and in return be rewarded with UCASH tokens.
MSB Location for Cash to crypto
Cash to crypto
The biggest pain area in crypto is not able to convert your fancy digital tokens into liquid cash. While there are a few exchanges, not every person is tech savvy to understand keys and do the transfer. Many people still prefer converting your crypto by interacting with an actual human being. UCASH has introduced the concept of “Converters”. For those who are tech savvy then of course there is provision of mobile and online converters.
Compliance & Regulations
One of the basic tenets of the traditional financial system is the requirement of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know-Your-Customer (KYC) protocols for servicing clients. There are mechanisms in place to root out and prosecute nefarious misuse and abuse of the financial network, and protect consumers from fraud, scams, and other loss or accidental entanglement in criminal activities.
Multi Currency Support
U.CASH has the goal of supporting almost every utilitarian fiat currency, digital currency, and assets that it possibly can. U.CASH is meant to be universal platform for the movement and usage of user funds.
Multiple Use cases and highly flexible system
Few of the features provided by the flexible system of UCASH -
Repository for storage of multiple digital asset types.
Integrated ISO 20022 Compliant Payments Messaging for transaction messaging, internally and externally to allow U.CASH to plug into the existing financial ecosystem where and when required, and set up the U.CASH platform for future interoperability involving advanced features.
Multi signature wallets for additional security
Decentralized backups to secure user funds and keys
Bill payments for utilities like telecom and internet
Mobile payments and recharge
Value locking mechanisms like tokens backed by fiat money or assets like bonds and securities
Notarization of documents on blockchain
Enable loading of Visa card and payment wherever VISA NFC is enabled
Partnerships and developed product before exchange listing
Most ICOs just have a whitepaper. With UCASH, a working prototype and real partnerships are already in place. Any user can test the portal at this link. In Ontario, Canada there are already multiple MSBs which are part of the UCASH network.
READ MORE ABOUT THESE DIFFERENTIATORS ON THE U.CASH WHITEPAPER | https://medium.com/ucash/7-key-differentiators-of-ucash-from-every-other-crypto-13f63ce0842c | ['Kiran Vaidya'] | 2017-12-04 04:35:52.177000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Ibo', 'Bitcoin', 'Ucash', 'Cryptocurrency'] |
A Figma Plugin to Publish Your Designs with 1 Click | Feel free to jump in the comments to provide feedback. Also, if you have friends or colleagues that will benefit from this Plugin, don’t hesitate to share our early access subscription: https://makers.so
1. 🎨 Brand and Logo Design
Makers Logo
Makers is all about accelerating product development for non-technical people. The goal is allow any Figma user (Designer, Product Manager, Founder, etc) to launch their designs into a fully responsive, SEO friendly website. No code required.
Why Makers? Well, the creators (or makers) economy is changing the landscape for the next generation of entrepreneurs. I want to help them succeed. This is for the Makers!
Why a heart with three different shapes and colors? Heart represents love. That’s what I feel for my users. Different colors represents diversity. Different shapes represents different UI components that compose a site.
2. 👨💻 Public Pages
How will the Plugin work?
In order to have full control of your design, I’ll have a list of UI components that you can add to your canvas and customize them as you want. This will make sure your site is responsive and won’t be buggy. Next week I’ll share an actual demo of the Plugin working 🙌
Because of the complexity of the application, I’ll have to ask you to create an account to be able to map your specific designs to your domain and sites. However you can use the Plugin without an account (I’ll only ask for an account to publish or preview your designs).
These are the first screens. Thoughts?
Makers Figma Plugin Public Pages
3. 🔑 Private Pages
These are the pages only signed up users will have access to. Not too much to comment here.
Makers Figma Plugin Private Pages
Y ou can subscribe to early access at https://makers.so
4. 🚀 Publish Workflow
These are the steps you’ll need to go through to publish your site.
Select the entry point of your site (Home Page) Review all your pages’ metadata. This allows you to have great SEO Choose your Custom Domain Review the URL routes for your site And finally add a custom Favicon and a Google Analytics tag (both optional)
Makers Figma Plugin Publishing Workflow
That’s it for this week. If you came thus far, thank you! It mean I’m doing something right 😎
I hope to see you around the Plugin soon. Have a great day! | https://medium.com/@johndamaia/building-a-figma-plugin-to-publish-your-designs-with-1-click-dd144ad35e94 | ['John Da Maia'] | 2021-09-07 09:58:14.335000+00:00 | ['Figma Plugin', 'Figma', 'UI Design', 'Web Design', 'Design'] |
‘Major’ news: First rescue dog makes his way to the White House | ‘Major’ news: First rescue dog makes his way to the White House
Biden’s dog choice brings up importance of adopting shelter dogs
This is not Major, but this German Shepherd is just as cute. (Photo credit: Paul Postema/Unsplash)
Let past politicians tell it, dogs are presidents’ best friends. And as President-Elect Joe Biden prepares to transition into the White House in January 2021, his two German Shepherds — Major and Champ Biden — will paw their way in, too, possibly hanging out in all the favorite spots where former President Barack H. Obama’s dogs — Bo and Sunny — used to be. But what makes Major especially interesting is he’s the first rescue dog to make it into America’s home.
According to Delaware Humane Association’s Facebook page, Major was adopted in November 2018 after the Bidens had been fostering him. He joined their other dog, Champ.
Photo credit: Delaware Humane Association Facebook page
First there was Champ
Seeing a German Shepherd tapping his way around the White House brings a level of normalcy back to the presidency — considering a historical tradition of presidents having pets. It’s also pretty cool to know that Joe Biden got the OK to get a dog right around the time Sasha and Malia Obama did. While former President Obama made his announcement about a family pet onstage during his 2008 Victory Speech in Grant Park (Chicago), Dr. Jill Biden (and upcoming First Lady) gave her husband the OK to get Champ after Biden had been vetted as VP in 2008. She even taped pictures of different dogs on the back of the seat in front of Biden on his campaign plane, according to Town & Country, so he could get ready for his new four-legged gift. Then Major joined the family 10 years later.
Then there was Major
Obviously it’s always a heart-warming moment for dog lovers to see pups running around or posing for photos on social media. But in this case, it’s more than just Joe Biden with a couple of German Shepherds. Their decision to choose their second dog the way they did is also significant. Major’s background should remind potential dog owners about why it’s a good idea to foster dogs (to know whether you’re fully equipped to keep them long term) and adopt rescue dogs. (Champ was from a breeder.)
According to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), approximately 6.5 million of companion animals end up in U.S. animal shelters nationwide — every year. There are only slightly more dogs (3.3 million) as there are cats (3.2 million). Oddly, this is good news because, in 2011, the number of dogs entering shelters was 3.9 million.
For a variety of reasons, approximately 1.5 million shelter animals are euthanized — 670K dogs per year. Of that number, 620K are stray dogs. For dog lovers who simply don’t have the time, energy or consistent finances to house a dog, there are always opportunities to donate to ASPCA so they can help take care of homeless dogs until a permanent home is an option. Or, maybe you’re “the option.” Browse through reputable local shelters before going to a breeder. (And help spread the word about new pups for your family members and friends who opted out of neutering or spaying their own dogs. Maybe you could help pitch in for that procedure to be done to avoid the risk of them having to consistently find homes for new puppies.)
While it’s easy enough to wag a finger at pet owners who cannot take care of the animals, some new dog owners are really convinced they can take care of these dogs until a vet bill rolls in. And not everyone has VP level funds to take care of two dogs at once. According to the American Kennel Club, taking care of a dog can cost anywhere from $14K-$15K for dogs who live for 10 to 15 years.
Small dog: $15,051 (average life expectancy of 15 years)
Medium dog: $15,782 (average life expectancy of 13 years)
Large dog: $14,480 (average life expectancy of 10 years)
But if you know you can afford a dog long term while worried about pricey adoption rates, pet adoption doesn’t always have to cost big bucks up front. For example, Chicago’s Animal Control rates are only $65. However, the pet adopter would be required to visit a veterinarian for any necessary shots and/or exam outside of those covered, within a 14-day time period. Chances are high that if you end up paying a higher amount in the beginning, this exam has already been completed. Make sure you get any necessary paperwork to fulfill your city’s pet requirements.
But let’s say you don’t have the funds right now to foster or adopt a dog, but you still want to be around these fluffy balls of love. Consider volunteer work at dog shelters, too. (Profits for dog walkers, dog sitters and dog boarders have dramatically decreased since COVID-19 hit in March, but you can also sign up for this, too.) For potential dog owners who are on the fence, temporary dog boarding, dog walking, fostering and volunteer work will allow you to have a better understanding of what it’s like to take care of a dog if you have not done so before.
In the meantime in between time, make sure to follow the First Dogs in the Biden camp to see what they’re up to in the coming weeks and years to come. | https://medium.com/doggone-world/major-news-first-rescue-dog-makes-his-way-to-the-white-house-8032fdcfd9db | ['Shamontiel L. Vaughn'] | 2020-11-09 22:28:48.850000+00:00 | ['Dogs', 'Pet Adoption', 'White House', 'Joe Biden', 'Animal Shelters'] |
Rowling in the Deep | Rowling in the Deep
Rowling’s letter is a play-by-play on how an ally felt persecuted by the community she sought to understand, and ended up on the wrong side as a result.
The mob came before Rowling’s mind was made up. She chose sides accordingly.
The first article I saw on J. K. Rowling’s now infamous essay dealt with tattoos. Then I saw some memes. Then I hit Google to figure out what in the Hufflefudge was happening. I read her essay three times and still feel lost and confused as to what its main point was about, and how or why this very intelligent woman felt this would be anything other than damaging.
But what I did manage to glean was this: the essay is bleeding with frustration and resentment. She lays out a blueprint as to how she started out wanting to become a better informed ally of the trans and LGBTQ community and ended up a Trans Exclusionary Feminist. This is a loss to her trans fans and allies. But it’s a loss that could have been prevented.
This is a disorienting time for old school feminists like Rowling. On the one hand, some of the highest in the land are still trying to roll back abortion, and are out to limit women’s healthcare every chance they get. Women still can’t get equal pay, still are victims of sexual violence and harassment, and are still read as “shrill” and “unlikeable” when they assume political power. Lots of the old-wave feminist goals are still in play and unresolved.
On the other hand, the new wave says that the term “women” is not only outdated, but prejudiced, and that what needs to happen is a complete tear-down of the language we use to address those issues. And there’s absolutely a battle between those two groups that stalls both agendas. It’s frustrating for the older crowd to say “women need access to breast-cancer screenings” and someone to come back with “why do you assume all women have breasts?” (That’s a straight up quote from a younger sibling’s college class).
Some of the old school feminists are unwilling to accommodate what they see as trans-only issues — which is wrong — while the new wave doesn’t respect the work that’s been done by the old one to get the conversation to a new level. But there doesn’t seem to be a place for disagreements and discussion to happen civilly anymore.
All the “safe-spaces” are only safe if you tow the line. Colleges, which used to be spaces to debate, are now also language-policed. Doxing, screen-shotting, and contacting people’s employment are commonplace.
And then there is the completely legit fear some bio-women have about sharing “private” spaces with bio or trans men. When I was in a college sex and gender class, a queer girl declared that allowing men, biological or trans, into the women’s bathroom was tantamount to allowing rape. It was a ludicrous argument in my mind, because a rapist clearly doesn’t respect the rule of law, and isn’t going to stop because a sign on a door tells him to.
But it gave me pause because I knew this girl was a hardcore liberal and ally in every sense except for this one. And it wasn’t some random hatred of trans people: it was genuine fear.
It’s deeply ingrained in women from an early age to never undress with a male around (often unless you’re married) and to a lot of women, especially older ones like JKR, suddenly it seems like they’re being told that certain men are allowed in their spaces and if they’re uncomfortable, they’re prejudiced.
Rowling’s obviously spent a lot of time reading and thinking about this, and most likely ended up on the wrong side because the people who wanted her so badly on theirs sent her a barrage of hatred and anger. It’s human to turn away from that. She found acceptance with the “exclusionary” feminists because they’re also getting daily internet beat-downs.
Imagine if her feed had been flooded with people saying “I know that you, as a woman and domestic abuse victim, just want to feel safe in places designated for you. As a trans-person, that’s all I want too.” Or “the struggles of women and girls aren’t being forgotten — they’re being expanded, and you’re a part of that!”
That’s inclusivity. That’s acknowledging the fears and concerns of the old by allying them with the new. That’s allowing safe spaces to be places safe to miss-think and misspeak, to ask questions, and to acknowledge that every marginalized group is dealing with some level of trauma, and as anyone whose been in a support group knows, even when we disagree, there’s a right to be heard.
To win hearts and minds, that fear needs to be addressed and dealt with head on. Both groups — the old school and the new — understand the fear and threat of being hurt, emotionally or physically, by cis-men. Both groups need each other’s understanding and numbers to get women of all types equal protection under the law and equal safety in their day to day lives.
We have a great deal in common. We should be able to talk about fear without hating one another for it. We should be able to face our fears head on and challenge ourselves to be more open and expansive. We should trust we are strong enough to hear a differing opinion and find a way to ally it with our mission.
We need to convince the Rowling to look forward, and her detractors to look back. We will find ourselves, and our mission, there. | https://medium.com/equality-includes-you/rowling-in-the-deep-4555c6e79702 | ['Laurel Bowery-Hill'] | 2020-12-15 00:16:09.853000+00:00 | ['Cancel Culture', 'Jk Rowling', 'LGBTQ', 'Feminism', 'Unpopular Opinion'] |
Circular Rotating Gradient Ring-Swift & XCode | Prerequisites
A basic understanding of Swift and iOS Development.
Jumping in
A unique simplistic style can make your application stand out and add a nice feel. Using gradients correctly could be exactly what’s needed to spice up the UI! Let’s get started.
Add Some Views
We need a UIView and a UIImageView. Add these two blocks. Name them anything you would like. I chose profilePhotoRingView and profilePhoto. Make sure you use your own image name though. Being explicit with your naming conventions will help out big time as the application scales and more devs join the team!
lazy var profilePhotoRingView : UIView = { let oli = UIView() oli.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false oli.backgroundColor = .clear oli.isUserInteractionEnabled = true oli.clipsToBounds = true oli.layer.masksToBounds = true return oli }() lazy var profilePhoto : UIImageView = { let oli = UIImageView() let image = UIImage(named : "demo_wall")?.withRenderingMode(.alwaysOriginal) oli.image = image oli.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false oli.backgroundColor = UIColor .white oli.contentMode = .scaleAspectFill oli.layer.masksToBounds = true oli.layer.borderColor = UIColor .white.cgColor oli.layer.borderWidth = 1.5 oli.isUserInteractionEnabled = true return oli }()
Add and Constrain
Add the profilePhotoRingView first so it appears under the profilePhoto. Call the addViews function in the viewDidLoad.
func addViews() { self.view.addSubview(profilePhotoRingView) self.view.addSubview(profilePhoto)
self.profilePhotoRingView.centerYAnchor.constraint(equalTo: self.view.centerYAnchor, constant: 0).isActive = true self.profilePhotoRingView.centerXAnchor.constraint(equalTo: self.view.centerXAnchor, constant: 0).isActive = true self.profilePhotoRingView.heightAnchor.constraint(equalToConstant: 50).isActive = true self.profilePhotoRingView.widthAnchor.constraint(equalToConstant: 50).isActive = true self.profilePhotoRingView.layer.cornerRadius = 25 self.profilePhoto.centerYAnchor.constraint(equalTo: self.profilePhotoRingView.centerYAnchor, constant: 0).isActive = true self.profilePhoto.centerXAnchor.constraint(equalTo: self.profilePhotoRingView.centerXAnchor, constant: 0).isActive = true self.profilePhoto.heightAnchor.constraint(equalToConstant: 48).isActive = true self.profilePhoto.widthAnchor.constraint(equalToConstant: 48).isActive = true self.profilePhoto.layer.cornerRadius = 24 }
Gradient Setup
Add the gradientLayer variable and a Boolean to control viewDidLayoutSubviews().
var gradientLayer: CAGradientLayer! var hasViewBeenLaidOut : Bool = false
Add the handleGradientLayer function.
func handleGradientLayer() { self.gradientLayer = CAGradientLayer() self.gradientLayer.frame = profilePhotoRingView.bounds self.gradientLayer.startPoint = CGPoint(x: 0.5, y: 0.0) self.gradientLayer.endPoint = CGPoint(x: 0.5, y: 1.0) self.gradientLayer.colors = [UIColor .blue.withAlphaComponent(1.0).cgColor, UIColor .blue.withAlphaComponent(0.9).cgColor, UIColor .blue.withAlphaComponent(0.8).cgColor, UIColor .blue.withAlphaComponent(0.7).cgColor, UIColor .orange.withAlphaComponent(0.6).cgColor, UIColor .orange.withAlphaComponent(0.5).cgColor, UIColor .orange.withAlphaComponent(0.4).cgColor, UIColor .orange.withAlphaComponent(0.3).cgColor, UIColor .orange.withAlphaComponent(0.2).cgColor, UIColor .orange.withAlphaComponent(0.1).cgColor] self.profilePhotoRingView.layer.addSublayer(self.gradientLayer) self.addGradientRingRotation() }
Why so many colors?! This allows for the decending fading effect on top of the gradient, very cool! One error here though, let’s add the addGradientRingRotation function. Firstly, add the CAAnimationDelegate protocol.
func addGradientRingRotation() { let fullRotation = CABasicAnimation(keyPath: "transform.rotation") fullRotation.delegate = self fullRotation.fromValue = NSNumber(floatLiteral: 0) fullRotation.toValue = NSNumber(floatLiteral: Double(CGFloat.pi * 2)) fullRotation.duration = 3.0 fullRotation.repeatCount = Float.infinity fullRotation.isRemovedOnCompletion = false profilePhotoRingView.layer.add(fullRotation, forKey: "360") }
Easy right! Now, isRemovedOnCompletion will make sure your gradient keeps spinning if you exit the application and return — This is just one possible implementation.
Lastly, let’s add the handleGradientLayer function to viewDidLayoutSubviews().
override func viewDidLayoutSubviews() { super.viewDidLayoutSubviews() if self.hasViewBeenLaidOut == false { self.handleGradientLayer() self.hasViewBeenLaidOut = true } }
That’s it! Now watch your gradient spin in all her glory! Feel free to play with the duration and alpha values of the gradient to get the exact look you’re after! If you would like to see more gradient implementations, let me know in the comments below! | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/circular-rotating-gradient-ring-swift-xcode-f3e48c38b5ba | ['Charlie Arcodia'] | 2019-10-27 15:42:37.579000+00:00 | ['iOS', 'Swift Programming', 'Mobile App Development', 'iOS App Development'] |
Got Any Fux to Spare? | Quick Black History Month Shout-out … slash PSA for White Saviors.
“Please Sir, my bowl for fux-to-spare is so empty!”
It’s still Black History Month and on any given day, I am tasked with regenerating the branches of my Fux-to-Spare-Tree because I’m fully preoccupied thinking about the following:
The safety/sanity of my Black Life in America, especially as I strive to protect the growth and well-being of my Black Children in America. The violent and measurable threats to our collective survival (e.g. “the school-to-prison-pipeline”) are compounded by the failures of those in positions of power to even understand my lived experience. The cost of living in Seattle vs. the cost of having critical thinking skills in Seattle. The “many mansions” I have access to are purely metaphorical. My advanced degrees set me back like … at least $150k, and I have already performed Viking burials in my head for run-of-the-mill American dreams like “home-ownership.” Other important stuff like the effect of police brutality and systemic racism on children, the constant violent displacement and theft from my global indigenous family here and around the world, the pure debacle of our current national election politics, the safety of immigrants caught in the eye of the alt-right storm, xenophobic Coronavirus hysteria, the insidious nature of anti-Muslim sentiment across media, and maybe also the more petty fact that I’m currently missing Carnival at home in Trinidad, which is my goddamn birthright.
All this to say, that “traffic safety” ranks pretty low even for me these days and I have been working as a consultant for SDOT to engage the public in the messaging around these issues.
But if I claim to care about people at all, especially non-white people who have nuanced and complex intersectional identities, then I kinda have to care about traffic safety because statistically, it isn’t the White-identified, wealthy, cis-men who are getting injured or killed in these traffic incidents (although they may be involved)— it’s folx who look like me who are suffering!
All this to say, if there is a field nearby where you can plant and regrow some of our precious fux, please consider sowing the following seed and please let that sucker spread as far and as wide as possible (preferably in the form of a meme*):
Rainier Ave S. averages more crashes per day than any other street in Seattle.
Billboard Photography by Tariqa Waters (Martyr Sauce), featuring Lain Littlejohn and Luzviminda Carpenter.
And as Charles Mudede wrote, “That’s just not normal.”
Normal has certainly taken on new territories in recent history. But what I hope some people are now beginning to see is that it’s not really an accident (systemically) when the most vulnerable folx are also tasked with not getting themselves run over or run into when walking, or riding, or driving in their own neighborhoods.
We can do better and we should.
But on behalf of all of us, I’d like to ask …
If you are procrastinating doing something much more pressing, perhaps you can make the time to help us keep this conversation going. I’m proud of SDOT for course correcting and making space for the folx most affected to lead this conversation. If you live on/around Rainier Ave S. in Seattle and have been affected by the traffic, I want to hear your story.
Tell it to me in the form of a meme*, or email [email protected] with a short narrative describing what you or your family/friends experienced on Rainier Ave S. | https://medium.com/@NatashaM/got-any-fux-to-spare-947c863f74 | [] | 2020-02-21 20:36:53.672000+00:00 | ['BlackLivesMatter', 'Transportation', 'Traffic', 'Messaging', 'Community Engagement'] |
Artem Finance protocol is Decentralized lending platform based on blockchain technology | Artem Finance protocol is a Decentralized lending platform based on blockchain technology which enhance the lending of crypto currency in the blochchain space and offer the largest liquidity opportunities for cryptocurrencies and assets.
Artеm аllоwѕ еvеrу uѕеr tо еаrn, dероѕіt, іnvеѕt аnd trаdе uѕіng blосkсhаіn аnd DAррѕ іn аn untruѕtwоrthу wау wіthоut thе involving of any third party broker. Artem Finance ecosystem is a blockchain-based project which combines both the investing and the lending together. The combination of both market together will make them more attractive and interesting.
What is ARTT?
The Artem is managed through the “Artem Foundation”. “Artem Foundation” is a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) whose offerings will sooner or later be shared with the aid of residents all over the world. we proposed Artem Token (ARTT) as a governance token. All debtors and lenders collaborating in the carrier will obtain ARTT governance tokens thru the mechanism of “liquid mining” based totally on their contributions. ARTT holders will be capable to take part in neighborhood governance via proposals or voting, to enforce decentralized governance, and to achieve ARTT ether clever contracts and neighborhood administration rights.
The total issuance of ARTT tokens is 4,204,800 ARTT.The 4,204,800 ARTT issued by Artem will be 100% publicly distributed to all users participating in the service.Artem is based on the Ethereum blockchain and gives system supporters 0.5 ARTT for every block confirmed (about 15 seconds).50% (0.25 ARTT) is allocated to the borrower and the lender.
ARTT will match the interest rate of each market at any time and allocate it to each lending market (such as ETH, USDC, USDT, BAK, etc.). Participants can obtain a certain percentage of ARTT by depositing or borrowing through an Ethereum account and the amount is fairly distributed based on the proportion of the loan amount.
Based on respect for personal private property rights, ARTT will not lock up positions, and holders can transfer or trade through Ethereum on their own.
THE ARTD
Now let’s talk about ARTD — the new upcoming token of the Artem Protocol. After seeing the huge success of ARTT and due to the high demand of the community the Artem team has come up with a new token named ARTD.
The pre-sale and public sale of ARTD will begin soon and after that, the listing will be initiated.
The Pre-sale link is below:
https://artdeco.artem.finance/
There will be also a discounted price for a total of 200,000ARTD available for the early buyers during the presale stage.
The ARTD presale is priced 1ETH=2000ARTD.
After the pre-sale stage, there will be two sales rounds will be initiated:
1st round — 1ETH=1000ARTD; Supply — 400,000ARTD
2nd round -1ETH=550ARTD; Supply — 600,000ARTD
The ARTD listing is done at a high price and ARTD/ETH trading pair will be available on Uniswap once the sale is completed！
Official ARTD presale address — 0x3bfcA8c915316103438D4f364293844657570c97
Visit the link below for more information:
Website: https://artem.finance/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Artem_Protocol
Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/KJT4FhOTB05CkqQRR5GlTQ
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ArtemFinance
NFT Claiming: https://artdeco.artem.finance
Uniswap Link: https://info.uniswap.org/token/0x77df7953083dcd4a8898dba296d899afef20067
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -
BTT profile: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2315529
ETH ADDRESS: 0x96a655dd12e25D2B78E0DEd44ec9Df42a97bc3d3 | https://medium.com/@mojtaba56k/artem-finance-protocol-is-decentralized-lending-platform-based-on-blockchain-technology-367df265ae0f | ['Mojtaba Karami'] | 2020-12-11 07:06:22.615000+00:00 | ['Art', 'Ethereum', 'Nft', 'Blockchain Technology', 'Eth'] |
Questions Parents Should Ask Before Sending Children Back to School | Questions Parents Should Ask Before Sending Children Back to School
Research Reveals Teachers’ Concerns About Returning to School
Photo by Ivan Aleksic on Unsplash
Educators, parents, students, legislatures, anybody concerned about the health of children desire to know if it is safe for schools to reopen. The answers vary according to location, size of school, grade level, and who is asked. There exist no absolute answers.
Should schools reopen? The many variables make answering such a broad, overwhelming question difficult. A survey of educators responding to two questions provides insights that empower all stakeholders in education.
First question: How long have you taught?
The responses ranged from 2 to 35 years.
When totaled, more than 500 years of teaching experience were represented by the responses.
A diverse group of respondents representing multiple areas of education participated: core and elective teachers, instructors in grades K — 12, school nurses, counselors and administrators.
Second question: What concerns you about returning to school during the pandemic?
Feedback is divided into categories. Repeated concerns are combined to synthesis the main ideas.
If you are a concerned citizen, directly or indirectly involved in education, ask these questions. The answers or lack of answers provide information to what degree a school is prepared to open. Then, if you are a parent, couple the information with your child’s specific needs to make decisions that are safe and appropriate for your family.
Sanitizing
Who is responsible for sanitizing spaces, supplies, and furniture?
How often does sanitizing occur?
Is there protocol for sanitizing specific areas or items in the school? (Desk, chairs, books, manipulatives, supplies, pencil sharpeners, door handles, art supplies, tools etc.)
Protocol
Is there a consistent protocol? If yes, is it consistent within a building, across grade levels, within a district or statewide?
Who are the experts who established the protocol?
How is the protocol being communicated to teachers, parents, and students?
Is there a plan to address people who are resistant to following protocol?
For instance, if a student refuses to wear a mask (if masks are required), what happens? Some districts have stated the student will be sent home. What action takes place if the parents is unavailable or unwilling to pick up the student from school?
Or what if a parent doesn’t not support the requirement to wear masks? The law is that all children must be provided a free and appropriate education. How will this be addressed?
Transitions
How are safe transitions being implemented?
Do all students move through the halls at the same time?
Are lunches staggered? Currently, in many schools lunches are already staggered and lunch room are filled to capacity. In some of these buildings students eat lunch as early as 10:30 so as to have time to feed all students. How with this crowding situation be addressed?
Transportation
Will additional busses be added to the routes?
What is the maximum number of students on a bus? How many will be assigned to one seat?
How often will buses be sanitized?
Elective Classes
How will resources be shared and cleaned? (i.e. paint brushes in art class, cooking ingredients in home economics, tools in automotive, instrument in music, equipment in PE, computers etc.)
What is the plan to transport students to magnet schools and feeder school for special programs such as vocational classes?
What systems are in place for higher risk classes that have a greater potential to spread the virus such as choir and athletics?
Resources
How will teaching resources be shared among students? Many curricula have class copies of workbooks, novels, or manipulatives.
Can a classroom set of books be used repeatedly from period to period?
Does an adequate budget exist to create multiple copies of materials that once were shared?
Masks (if required)
Is any form of mask acceptable? Is there anything (writing, pictures, symbols) that is unacceptable on masks?
How long can a mask be used?
How often should a mask be washed? Who washes the mask?
If a mask is not returned to the school, is a student provided a new one each day?
How will the school address religions that do not support face masks?
Are additional masks available if one gets lost, stolen, torn, or soiled?
Do young children understand the seriousness of the situation to keep their masks on throughout the school day?
Is there adequate supervision during non-instructional times such as recess and lunch to monitor students?
Social Distancing
What is the total number of students allowed in a classroom? Will this number be adjusted for the age and size of the students?
Many classrooms have tables with 4–6 students. Will these be exchanged for desks for social distancing?
How are lockdowns and fire drills being modified to adjust for social distancing?
The questions above were submitted by concerned teachers. Notice the questions focus on the safety of the students in most cases. They are not self-serving and teacher centered which I found quite impressive. They reflect teachers desires to protect the children.
There are more questions that could be asked, but if the school you are investigating can answer all or most of these concerns, there is most likely a safe environment awaiting your child. If few of the questions have complete and direct answers, then you don’t need additional questions. You already have all the answers you need. | https://medium.com/home-sweet-home/questions-parents-should-ask-before-sending-children-back-to-school-7bbd9eaf49e1 | ['Brenda Mahler'] | 2020-08-14 12:39:41.150000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Schools', 'Politics', 'Teachers', 'Education'] |
Why Startup Founders Quit, and What Investors Can Do | Grit should be the number one factor investors look for when putting their money into early-stage companies. Grit determines whether startup founders have the resilience to endure the endless trials of entrepreneurial life. The current paradigm of investment analysis considers traditional business plan and pitch analysis, including the team’s experience, market size, and traction.
This methodology works, and by works, 93% of funded startups still fail, regardless of the strength of their business plan. This is because business plans are exactly that, plans. They don’t tell investors whether the startup team has what it takes, the grit required to deal with the difficulty of building a company. Business plans are important, they demonstrate an ability to think into the future and subject-matter expertise, but no business plan or pitch competition measures the grittiness of a startup’s team.
Until now, grit has been challenging and costly to measure. Subject to boring surveys, high costs, and unreliable due to bias. Advances in machine learning and natural language processing have changed this. BizPsych Labs gives investors the ability to measure grit, in less than 30 minutes, without hiring an analyst or Ph.D. Even better, BizPsych Labs provides precision insights to improve grit. This improves a founder’s chance of success and saves investors millions.
What is Grit?
Angela Duckworth, a leader in Grit research at the University of Pennslyvania, defines grit as:
Perseverance and passion for long term goals. Being gritty enables people to work towards challenging goals, to overcome obstacles despite failures, and to conquer adversity.
Although grit is correlated with the big five personality traits, like conscientiousness, it is not measured through traditional personality testing. Additionally, it is not related to IQ. Grit is a composite of several factors; including:
courage
conscientiousness
endurance
resilience
excellence
Grit Predicts Success
Grit is more likely than any other factor to predict success when facing adversity. Psychological researchers have been studying the impact of grit on performance in the military, academia, and business.
The military, particularly special forces training, is known for testing an individual’s resolve. Through grueling exercises, military instructors test candidates’ physical, mental, and psychological limitations. Being a startup founder is similar to the military; success takes everything you have, and your resolve will be tested in every way imaginable.
At universities, gritty students outperformed their peers, achieving higher GPAs. Interestingly, grit was associated with lower SAT scores, suggesting that grit rather than college entrance exams are a better predictor of educational success.
Additionally, grit predicts the retention of sales representatives. Sales is an essential part of building a startup. It is filled with rejection, requiring perseverance to succeed. Researchers tested variables including demographics, experience, and personality traits. They found that grit was the most accurate predictor of whether salespeople had what it took to stay the course.
Investor Roadblocks: Bias and Intuition
Most people, investors included, are prone to unconscious biases. As people, we read into things that aren’t true, making incorrect and costly conclusions. We see evidence of characteristics that are unsubstantiated. It takes a degree of humility to accept that our intuition can be wrong.
Whether it is someone’s physical appearance, the way they present, or the sound of their voice, investors are often incorrectly convinced that a startup team has the attributes required to succeed. The fact that 93% of funded startups fail identify a truth.
Investment analysis needs new metrics
Making matters worse is the need for social desirability. The internet is full of useless articles, irrelevant self-help advice, and redundant opinions describing the attributes of successful startup founders. In an attempt to be desirable to investors, entrepreneurs conform to these norms. The unfortunate truth is that words do not translate into action, but they do skew perceptions, frequently resulting in significant financial losses.
BizPsych Labs, Grit, and Revolutionizing Investing
BizPsych Labs built the first investor tool that accurately measures a team’s grit in less than 30 minutes. By using natural language processing, BizPsych Labs has eliminated the biases that plague other forms of self-reporting.
In addition to grit, BizPscyh Labs tests for resilience, psychological safety, trust, and collective vision. Research in organizational psychology, namely Google’s Project Aristotle, has identified these factors as the strongest predictors of team success.
Going beyond psychometric analysis, the BizPsych Labs system provides pinpointed AI coaching recommendations to improve performance and ROI.
Data science is changing the way investors conduct their analysis. The future will go beyond traction, business plans, and financial metrics. It will go from correlation to causation, providing opportunities for better outcomes. | https://medium.com/@bizpsychlabs/why-startup-founders-quit-and-what-investors-can-do-289519f83e7d | ['Max Burwick'] | 2020-12-23 18:30:36.081000+00:00 | ['Startup Lessons', 'Success', 'Resilience', 'Grit', 'Investing Tips'] |
coRona data #3: automatizace na Google cloud platform | 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/etnetera-activate/corona-data-3-automatizace-na-google-cloud-platform-3058d8b5b3db | ['Jiri Stepan'] | 2020-12-17 07:34:09.972000+00:00 | ['Data Studio', 'Covid 19', 'R', 'Google Cloud Run', 'Google Cloud Platform'] |
Confessions Of A $100,000 Copywriter | He was a referral, so I had to be a little bit polite. He booked time on my calendar and I sent him across some samples to review.
“Tim said you’re a great writer, good to work with. I was reading the samples you sent over, and I thought to myself: ‘I bet this guy wants to make a hundred thousand dollars this year!’”
Imagine a pause here. A pregnant one. Eight and a half month’s worth.
“I don’t bill by the year,” I said. I started up on my option for a monthly retainer.
“Nah, I’m serious. We’ll get a contract started, and you’ll be on your way to making $100k a year.”
I had heard this before. It was the same pitch I heard when I sold vacuum cleaners door-to-door. It’s what you hear when your friend really wants to tell you about how they’ve found financial freedom with a vitamin shake.
It’s not that I couldn’t use a hundred grand, who couldn’t?
There’s just a weird stipulation when one person offers you that much money to write.
You might get it as an advance for a novel. If that’s the case, you’ve already written five novels, three of them were turned into movies, one of which starred a bubbly Disney airhead.
You might also get that kind of money if you are handling a VERY large copy project. The type you have to hire other writers for. The kind that comes with TV commercials on national broadcast and writing in product placements for the movies.
A referral? And one who opens the conversation with cash?
“Imma send you a link,” he says to me. It pops up in my email, and I open it. It’s a three-page job description that reads like a sales pitch.
The third sentence in: I’m here to resolve all of the woes you have as a freelance writer.
He’d handle the prospecting; he’d close the sales. I’d put pen to paper.
“I need someone who can work fast,” he says. “I need copy turned around in like 24 hours, tops. Can you do that?” | https://medium.com/the-ascent/confessions-of-a-100-000-copywriter-cb076fce4ca9 | ['David Pennington'] | 2019-11-22 13:11:01.367000+00:00 | ['Copywriting', 'Lifestyle', 'Careers', 'Writing', 'Freelancing'] |
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