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HIPPA vs. GDPR: major acts regulating health data protection | With a growing share of electronic and online data flow in healthcare, as well as propagation of e-health services, more concerns are raised about the protection of patients’ privacy and secure their personal data. The healthcare ecosystem becomes increasingly complex and is focused around the services, care and products provided to its patients. At the same time, in response to technology advancements, healthcare facilities and organizations become part of digital transformation that promises better care and service. However, with deeper digitalization, the risk of cyber-attacks exponentially increases as well.
The importance of keeping personal information both private and secure is ultra-critical in the healthcare industry. Though the laws and standards for data protection vary in different countries, in his post we are going to compare the two regulations on data protection in the Western world, namely HIPPA and GDPR.
HIPPA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act)
Region: USA
Year of adoption: 1996
Domain: Healthcare
Data covered
Sensitive patient data, that is individually identifiable information relating to the past, present, or future health status of an individual that is created, collected, or transmitted, or maintained by a HIPAA-covered entity in relation to the provision of healthcare, payment for healthcare services, or use in healthcare operations, including:
1. Health information such as diagnoses, treatment information, medical test results, and prescription information
2. National identification numbers and demographic information such as birth dates, gender, ethnicity
3. Contact and emergency contact information
Entities covered
entities providing treatment, payment, and operations in healthcare;
business associates with access to patient information who provide support in treatment, payment, or operations;
subcontractors and any other related business associates.
Essence
Companies that deal with protected health information must have physical, network, and process security measures in place and follow them.
Security actions required
The HIPAA has specific physical and technical safeguards for organizations hosting sensitive patient data, including:
1. Limited facility access and control with authorized access in place.
2. Policies about use and access to workstations and electronic media.
3. Restrictions for transferring, removing, disposing, and re-using electronic media and ePHI.
4. Access control allowing only for authorized personnel to access ePHI.
5. Using unique user IDS, emergency access procedures, automatic log off, and encryption and decryption
6. Audit reports or tracking logs that record activity on hardware and software
Penalty
The federal fines for noncompliance are based on the level of perceived negligence and can range from $100 to $50,000 per violation (or per record), with a maximum penalty of $1.5 million per year for each violation.
Related legal acts
HIPAA Privacy Rule, or Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information that establishes national standards for the protection of certain health information.
Security Rule establishes a national set of security standards for protecting specific health information. The Security Rule operationalizes the Privacy Rule’s protections by addressing the technical and nontechnical safeguards that covered entities must put in place.
The Internet of Things Cybersecurity Improvement Act of 2017 is a U.S. Senate bill that lays ground rules for IoT device security. While the legislation only applies to government agency affiliates and suppliers, it can become a benchmark for device manufacturing that would influence commercial production.
GDPR (the EU General Data Protection Regulation)
Region: EU
Year of adoption: 2016 (in effect since May 25, 2018)
Domain: No specific domain
Data concerning health is considered as a special category of data and provides a definition for health data for data protection purposes.
Data covered
All types of personal data that directly on indirectly identifies an individual in paper, electronic, or online format, including:
1. Basic identity information such as name, email, address, and ID numbers
2. Web data such as location, IP address, cookies data, and RFID tags
3. Health, genetic, and biometric data
4. Racial or ethnic data
5. Political opinions
6. Sexual orientation
Entities covered
public and private companies and organizations that are registered in EU or have an establishment or subsidiary in the EU;
organizations outside the EU that offer goods or services to citizens of the EU and request or re-use the personal data of EU residents;
companies having more than 250 employees;
companies having fewer than 250 employees but the organization’s practices impact the rights and freedoms of EU citizens or include certain types of sensitive personal data.
In practice, that means approximately all companies.
Essence
The governing principle is ensuring the GDPR privacy by design and by default, so that the privacy standards are built into the technology and offered to the user by default, shifting the burden of privacy protection from the user on to the company or organization.
Security actions required
GDPR has specific instructions for what types of security action may be required:
The encryption and pseudonymization of personal data. Regular testing, assessment, and evaluations of the effectiveness of technical and organizational policies for ensuring the security of the data. Provisions for confidentiality, integrity, availability, and resilience of processing systems and services. In the event of a physical or technical incident, organizations are entitled to restore the availability and access to personal data in a timely manner.
Penalty
The fines for noncompliance issued by the GDPR authorities can reach up to EUR 20 million or 4% of annual worldwide turnover, whichever is higher.
Related legal acts
The Data Protection Directive (Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data (PII (US)) and on the free movement of such data) was a preceding European Union directive adopted in 1995 to regulate the processing of personal data within the European Union. | https://medium.com/sciforce/hippa-vs-gdpr-major-acts-regulating-health-data-protection-10b1e3d5c28c | [] | 2020-01-29 15:11:09.392000+00:00 | ['Data Protection', 'Data Privacy', 'Hippa', 'Gdpr', 'Healthcare'] |
Why I Stopped Using Debuggers | My programming journey started with C. C was not a programming language you could easily tame. Often, it would revolt and try to convince me to give up programming.
C bugs were perfectly content to play hide and seek with me. I would fix a bug only for a new, more hideous one to show up.
C is perhaps not the hardest programming language compared to Assembly or Fortran, but as a millennial, C was a fierce programming language to begin with — especially when I was up against a dirty piece of code.
In hindsight, though, learning C was worthwhile.
It was a good warmup for the languages I worked with later on: C++, MATLAB, JAVA, and Python.
What is strange or stupid — pick what you want — is that I spent half of my programming life debugging without knowledge of the existence of helper tools like debuggers.
The first time I used a debugger was five years after I started coding — exactly when I started coding with Python.
My first IDE was Code::Blocks, and although Code::Blocks had a debugger, I wasn’t aware of it. | https://betterprogramming.pub/why-i-stopped-using-debuggers-bc6064d3ca2d | ['Mohammed Ayar'] | 2021-07-16 13:26:53.572000+00:00 | ['Python', 'Software Engineering', 'Debugging', 'JavaScript', 'Programming'] |
Transportation Analytics Market Size Worth 21.8 Billion By 2027 | The global transportation analytics market size is expected to reach USD 21.8billion by 2027, registering at a CAGR of 15.6% from 2020 to 2027, according to a new study conducted by Grand View Research, Inc. Increasing expenditure of governments in transportation sector across the world and the growth of smart cities vis-à-vis urbanization are the major driving forces fostering the market growth. Moreover, consumerization of big data, advancements in analytics technology owing to artificial intelligence and machine learning will aid the utility of analytics in the transportation industry. Besides, acquisition of analytics startups, mergers and collaboration, and research and development investment in technology enhancement of analytics by major industry players will boost the market growth.
As per the published report by Transport Research Centre of Czech Republic, in 2018 there are around 500 million surveillance cameras across the world, generating 15 billion gigabytes of data per week. This number will double every two years, which will be stored and analyzed for improving and streamlining the public transport situation. The potential of data collection and its analysis will also be harnessed through growing application of intelligent transport systems across the world. Moreover, the data collected from the sensing platforms such as intra vehicular and urban sensing platform will help in achieving the primary aim of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) such as access and mobility, economic development, and environmental sustainability. All the precedent factors will help boost the market growth over the forecast period.
As per automobile industry estimates, in 2015 there were around 1.3 billion vehicles plying on the road worldwide and with growing economy in developing regions, the number is expected to rise over 2 billion by 2040. The development of new roads and bypasses will not suffice the ever increasing traffic level loads in urban areas across the globe. However, with the combination of new transport analytics solutions and communications technology with the aid of Artificial Intelligence (AI), large amount of traffic data can be analyzed in real time to cope the growing number of vehicles. Such developments across the transportation and communication sector will propel growth of the market for transportation analytics solutions over the forecast period.
Click the link below:
https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/transportation-analytics-market
Further key findings from the study suggest: | https://medium.com/@marketnewsreports/transportation-analytics-market-41b4e7ccb6f0 | ['Gaurav Shah'] | 2020-12-18 11:50:39.559000+00:00 | ['IoT', 'Machine Learning', 'Technology', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Transportation'] |
Dismantling the elite perspective on Farm Bills | Gurcharan Das, a corporate veteran, author and the former CEO of P&G India recently wrote a widely shared opinion piece for the Times of India titled “Don’t kill 2nd green revolution: Rolling back farm reforms would privilege a small but vociferous group over the silent majority” , highlighting how the widespread protests against the recent farm bills are just a result of ‘lack of marketing efforts’ of our honorable PM and involve only few big stakeholders. So, I decided to dig a little deeper into the farm bills and the resulting protests to check if his point-of-view is really grounded in reality. But before presenting my thoughts and findings, I’d like to clear what these 3 ‘Historic’ farm bills essentially talks about.
The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020:
This Bill allows the farmers to sell their produce outside the Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) regulated markets. The APMCs are government-controlled marketing yards or mandis. So, the farmers clearly have more choice on who they want to sell.
The government’s logic, as articulated by Mr. Das is that the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) is an obsolete institution from an age of scarcity, meant to protect the farmer but has now become his oppressor, a monopoly cartel fixing low prices for the farmers’ produce, forcing distress sales.
2. The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020:
This Bill makes provisions for the setting up of a framework for contract farming and allows farmer to enter into forward agreements for their agricultural produce.
3. The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill, 2020
The amendment made in this bill aims to remove commodities like cereals, pulses, oil-seeds, onion and potatoes from the list of essential commodities. It will do away with the imposition of stock-holding limits on such items except under “extraordinary circumstances” like war.
The logic behind the amenment is that this provision will attract private sector/FDI into farm sector as it will remove fears of private investors of excessive regulatory interference in business operations and promote cold-storage infrastructure.
Some of the important facts and figures pertaining to Indian Agriculture:
Approximately 60 percent of the Indian population works in the industry, contributing about 18 percent to India’s GDP [Source: Statista] The proportion of landless laborers (among people engaged in this sector) has went up from 28% (27 Mn) in 1951 to 55% (144 Mn) in 2011 [Source: Indian Express] 86% of all landholdings in India are small (between 1 and 2 hectares) and marginal (less than 1 hectare — roughly half a football field). The average size among marginal holdings is just 0.37 ha [Source: Government Data] According to a 2015 study by Ramesh Chand, now a member of Niti Aayog, a plot smaller than 0.63 ha does not provide enough income to stay above the poverty line[Source: Indian Express] 40% of the 24 lakh households that operate on landholdings smaller than 0.01 ha are indebted. The average amount is Rs 31,000.[Source: Indian Express] MSPs are announced for around 23 crops, actual procurement happens for very few crops such as wheat and rice. Moreover, the percentage of procurement varies sharply across states [Source: Government Data]
Now that I’ve set the context right, let me try to dismantle the perspective of Mr. Das and why I feel that it is an elitist POV.
1. Mr. Das enunciated that the government is thinking in the long term whereas the farmers and opposition have a short-term vision, which I believe is exactly the opposite. Farmers are actually concerned about the long term impacts of giving an ‘option’ to sell directly to the private players. This may seem like a very good option on paper, however, I want to present a contrary point of view from a long term perspective. Consider a situation where a small farmer has an option to sell his yield to APMC at an assured price (MSP) or to a private player directly (private players would be happy to do so because of tax-saving). Now initially, there would be a competition between the APMC and private players and hence, private players are more likely to offer a better price to the farmers because of their deep-pockets. This will naturally result in the shutting down of APMC in a few years and hence resulting in a monopoly/oligopoly of the private players. Once this happens, it is natural to assume that a private player(s) can decide the price of yield arbitrarily for the cost benefits (without any legal framework in place to help farmers). This scenario that I just presented to you is not unfounded. In 2006, Bihar government decided to abolish APMC and it proved to be disastrous for the farmers in the state as reported by the Mint: “Bihar is among the leading producers of maize in India and the third-largest producer of fruits and vegetables after Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. For maize, this year most farmers reported getting a price of ₹1,000–1,300 per quintal, as against the official minimum support price (MSP) of ₹1,850. For wheat too, farmers in Bihar reported receiving prices 10–15% lower than the MSP” [Source: https://www.livemint.com/opinion/columns/lessons-from-bihar-s-abolition-of-its-apmc-system-for-farmers-11600962615201.html]
This can be further understood from the example of Jio entering the telecom market and undercutting the competition aggressively (Including BSNL) using its deep-pocket. This resulted in an oligopoly in the market and now the prices are completely in the hands of these few players who are gradually increasing the prices over time.
2. To quote Mr. Das: “A third lesson is that a small, organised, and well-funded group in a democracy can hijack the nation’s interest when the majority is silent and unorganized. Behind the protests are arthiyas, buying agents in APMC mandis, who stand to lose Rs 1500 crore a year in commissions, plus rich farmers of Punjab”
No doubt that the protests include these stakeholders as their livelihood is directly linked with the ecosystem of AMPC (thousands of people work in APMCs including laborers, accountants and licensed middlemen). But I want to highlight that there are farmers of all sizes participating in the protests (covered in some media as well) to raise their valid concerns which Mr. Das conveniently left out to reinforce his biased opinion on the matter. This not only shows his elite perspective on the issue but also his lack of understanding of the ground reality.
3. Inter-state selling that the government is boasting about is a complete lie because it has always been there and farmers were never restricted under any law (however, licensed middlemen in the APMC were restricted) to sell their produce in another state. But they usually chose not to, because of high transportation and storage expenses as compared to the marginal profit they’ll get after selling it to other markets.
4. The Second farm Bill talks about encouraging farmers to strike deals with large corporates in terms of contract farming, but there are hundreds of cases where they have been exploited time and again by the corporates because of low bargaining power as a result of small landholdings (86% of Indian farmers have less than 2 hectares of land). Furthermore, the government has not talked about any legal framework to handle the resulting disputes (Only SDM as the dispute solving authority).
5. Third bill which talks about hoarding is providing the seemingly unlimited stocking option to the private players, which can obviously result in artificial price fluctuations and further exploitation of farmers.
6. The biggest argument in favor of farm bills, as per the government is that it will end the ‘Middlemen’ from the supply chain, which again is not grounded in reality. This can again be understood from the example of Bihar as well other countries with private market for agricultural produce. Instead of eliminating the middlemen completely, this system is likely to replace government licensed middlemen to private middlemen (which are less accountable) because Indian agricultural sector is flooded with small farmers with lower production capacity. It doesn’t make business sense for the companies to directly deal with these small farmers. Instead, they are more likely to employ a local aggregator who would buy the yield from various small farmers and further supply it to the companies while keeping a commission.
All these points are enough to prove that the bills are more favorable towards the companies and not legally empowering to the farmers. Mr. Das, being a corporate stalwart would naturally see this as a ‘Reform’ with his biased and elite POV inclined to favor the private players. | https://medium.com/@puneet-kakkar121/dismantling-the-elite-perspective-on-farm-bills-317c87a46060 | ['Puneet Kakkar'] | 2020-12-10 08:32:14.988000+00:00 | ['Narendra Modi', 'Protestors', 'Protest', 'Gurcharan Das', 'Farm Bill'] |
Cohort analysis with Pandas and Seaborn | Cohort analysis with Pandas and Seaborn
Introduction
The objective of this notebook is to show, step by step, how to implement a cohort analysis with Pandas and Seaborn.
Coming from an R background, I like working with pipes and to chain commands to modify a DataFrame. The idea of writing this article came when I was trying to implement this analysis with Python and struggled with the existing tutorials. Therefore, the main objective of this post is to present the code — if you are curious about cohort analysis, there are plenty of articles available online.
Cohort analysis
What is a cohort analysis ?
Cohort analysis is a type of analysis that follows a group of customers over time. For example, instead of analyzing our customers individually, we group them by date of sign-up in our app. In this way, we can analyze whether a marketing campaing implemented in a given month was effective or not.
Why does it matter ?
Cohort analyses matter because churn is one of the main problems faced by companies nowadays, and every information that can lead to less churning is a valuable business information.
Olist data
To show how to implement a cohort analysis with Pandas and Seaborn , I will work with the Olist dataset. It is available on Kaggle and provide a good example of an e-commerce dataset. The schema of the data is available in the link above.
The Olist plataform connects small business owners (the sellers) with customers from all over Brazil. Understanding whether sellers come back to the platform after their first sale is a crucial business question for Olist.
Therefore, I will make the cohorts based on the month of the first sale of each seller. With this cohorts, I will track the proportion of sellers from each cohort that came back to the platform in the subsequent months.
Hence, we must connect the olist_sellers_dataset where the id of each seller is located with the olist_orders dataset where we can find the date of each sale ( order_purchase_timestamp ) in the platform. These two tables are connected through the olist_order_items_dataset .
1. Import the required packages
2. Load the data
3. Join the data
Join the datasets, convert date to correct type, remove observations outside the analysis boundaries, and select relevant columns:
4. Create the cohorts
To find the cohorts, we must find the first appearance ( order_purchase_timestamp ) of each individual seller ( seller_id ). To do that, I'll order the dataset by date of sale and drop the duplicates in the seller_id column.
5. Merge and calculate delta
In the next step, we need to:
Merge the seller_cohort DataFrame with df on the seller_id column;
DataFrame with on the column; Assign a column with the months of each sale;
Assign a column that calculates the difference in months between the date of sale and the cohort ( delta ).
Before proceeding with the analysis, it’s important to visualize the size of each cohort we just created to see if there are no clear problems in the data:
As we can see, there were some variability in the number of new sellers joining Olist in the period under analysis, but nothing really outstanding that invalidate our exercise in this post.
6. Count sellers in each cohort per delta and calculate the proportion
The next step consist in:
Counting the unique sellers in each delta by each cohort;
Counting the total sellers in each cohort (the number of sellers in the first month, i.e., when delta is equal to zero);
Calculating the proportion of sellers present in each cohort afterwards.
7. Pivot the DataFrame
Now we have all the information we need to calculate make the cohort analysis, but it is in the long format. The following step consists in applying a pivot method to reshape it:
8. Plot with Seaborn
With the pivoted column, we can simply use the sns.heatmap function to visualize the cohorts:
Conclusion
It’s interesting to note that the first cohort was relatively more loyal to Olist than the cohorts that followed, with a participation rate 6 months after their first sale in the platform that was similar to the participation rate of the other cohorts. It’s also noteworthy that the cohort “2017–07” was also loyal to the brand. Now it is up to the marketing team of Olist to investigate further why some of the cohorts presented churn rates much lower than the others and act upon this information.
Full code
The notebook with the full code of this analysis can be found here: https://github.com/joaomacalos/Medium/blob/main/cohort-pandas-seaborn.ipynb | https://medium.com/@joaomacalos/cohort-analysis-with-pandas-and-seaborn-dd90c8ba5cdc | ['João Pedro S. Macalós'] | 2021-04-24 19:20:59.972000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Seaborn', 'Pandas', 'Cohort Analysis'] |
Naval Ravikant on The Power of Habit Loops | On a recent episode of The Knowledge Project Podcast, I interviewed Naval Ravikant, an amazing polymath.
While the conversation lasts over two hours and full of more wisdom than most of us will get in a year, I wanted to share with you this excerpt on habits.
Most of the people that I know that read quite a bit, they have a reading habit like you. You’re described as a very habitual person, where did that come from?
… I don’t think I’m more habitual than anybody else. I think human beings are entirely creatures of habit. Young children are born with no habit loops. They’re essentially born as blank slates. Then they habituate themselves to things and they learn patterns and they get conditioned and they use that to get through everyday life. Habits are good. Habits can allow you to background process certain things so that your neocortex, your frontal lobe, stays available to solve brand new problems. We also unconsciously pick up habits in the background and we keep them for decades. We may not realize that they’re bad for us until we’re ready to move on them. To some extent, our attitude in life, our mood, our happiness levels, depression levels, these are also habits. Do we judge people? How often do we eat? What kind of food do we eat? Do we walk or do we sit? Do we move? Do we exercise? Do we read? These are habits as well. You absolutely need habits to function. You cannot solve every problem in life as if it is the first time it’s thrown at you. What we do is we accumulate all these habits. We put them in the bundle of identity, ego, ourselves, and then we get attached to that. I’m Shane. This is the way I am. I’m Naval. This is the way I am. It’s really important to be able to uncondition yourself, to be able to take your habits apart and say, “Oh, okay, that’s a habit that I probably picked up from when I was a toddler and I was trying to get my parents attention. Now I’ve just reinforced it and reinforced it and reinforced it and I call it a part of my identity. Is it serving me anymore? Is it making me happier? Is it making me healthier? Is it making me accomplish whatever I want to set out to accomplish right now?” In fact, I would argue, I’m less habitual than most people. I don’t like to structure my day. To the extent that I do have habits, I’m trying to make them more deliberate rather than accidents of history.
What’s a habit that you’re trying to change right now? What are you working on?
I did a lot of habit changes over the last few years. I’ve now got a daily workout that I do, which is a great habit. I cut down heavily on drinking. It’s not totally eliminated, but it’s mostly gone. I dropped caffeine. I’m not on the paleo diet, although I’d like to be, so I’m on a variation on it that I call the faileo diet. I try to be paleo, but I fail at it constantly. I don’t beat myself up over it because I feel that even approximating toward it is better than where I’ve been historically. Like that, I tried to build a meditation habit but I failed. I have made a habit of being “meditative.” I’ve gone through lots of habits. Probably the one that I currently would like to cultivate is doing yoga more regularly. I haven’t formulated a plan around that. By the way, I reject a lot of the stuff that’s being peddled around today about how you perform and break habits. I know there’s this very popular book, one that I even recommended, which talks about the science behind habits. One of its depressing conclusions, I think this came of Stanford, was that you can’t break habits, you can only replace them. That’s BS. I’ve definitely broken habits completely. I think you can uncondition yourself. You can untrain yourself. It’s just hard. It takes work. It takes effort. Usually the big habit changes comes when there’s strong desire-motivators attached to them. The yoga one I’m going to work on. I don’t yet have a great plan on that one. I haven’t tackled that one properly yet. A big habit the I’m working on, which is going to be really hard to explain in any way that any normal human being will understand this, but I’m trying to turn off my monkey mind. I think, when we’re born as children, we’re pretty blank slates. We’re living very much in the moment. We’re essentially just reacting to our environment through our instincts. We’re living in, what I would call the “real world.” When puberty comes along, that’s the onset of desire, it’s the first time you really, really want something and you start long-range planning for it. Because of that, you start thinking a lot and start building an identity and an ego to go and get what you want. This is all normal and healthy. It’s part of being the human animal. I think at some point it gets out of control and then we are constantly talking to ourselves in our head. We’re playing little movies in our heads, walking down the street, but no one’s actually there. Of course, if we started voicing this thought in your head that you’re always having, you’d be a madman and they’d lock you up. The reality is if you walk down the street and there are a thousand people in the street, I think all thousand are talking to themselves in their head at any given point. They’re constantly judging everything that they see. They’re playing back movies of things that happened to them yesterday. They’re living in fantasy worlds of what’s going to happen tomorrow. They’re just pulled out of base reality. That could be good when you’re doing long-range planning. It can be good when you’re solving problems. It’s good for the survival and replication machines that we are. I think it’s actually very bad for your happiness. In my mind, the mind should be a servant and a tool, not a master. It’s not something that should be controlling me and driving me 24/7. I’ve taken on this idea that I want to break the habit of uncontrolled thinking, which is hard. If I say to you, “Don’t think of a pink elephant”, I just put a pink elephant in your head. It’s an almost impossible problem. It’s more something that has to be guided by feel, than guided by actual thinking or thought process. I’m deliberately cultivating experiences, states of mind, locations, activities, that will help me get out of my mind. All of society does that to some extent. In some sense, the people chasing thrills in action sports or flow states or orgasm or any of these states that people really strive to get to, a lot of these are basically just trying to get out of your own head. They’re trying to get away from that voice in your head and this overdeveloped sense of self. At the very least, I do not want my sense of self to continue to develop and become stronger as I get older. I want it to be weaker and more muted so that I can live much more in present every day reality and accept nature and the world for what it is and appreciate it very much as a child would. Then not have to seek happiness through external circumstances, chasing the fits of preconceived notion that I have.
Wow. There’s a lot there I want to ask questions on.
That’s a tough one. That will take years. That’s not a six-month habit. That’s a ten-year habit.
Do you think there’s a difference between turning off versus suppressing your monkey mind?
Absolutely. Suppression doesn’t work. When you try to suppress, that’s the mind suppressing the mind. That’s just you playing games with yourself. I think it’s a very hard problem.
I want to go back to kind of unconditioning. You basically stopped drinking alcohol. How did you work on deprogramming yourself from the social settings and environments that you’re in where alcohol is probably available all the time and what benefits have you seen as a result? I mean, are you isolating these habits when you’re changing them so you know, “Oh I sleep better because I’m not …”
The alcohol one is an interesting case study because the alcohol habit came from two things. One was availability. Just being in situations where alcohol is available and accepted and something you’re supposed to do. The second is the desire. You want to do it because you’re trying to accomplish something else. When I unpacked that, I realized a couple of things. The availability came from, if I’m out at night in an environment where alcohol is being served, that’s the availability. If you want to avoid that, stay in. Staying in is not fun, so what do you do? I started this daily workout regimen in the mornings. If you’re working out in the mornings, you can’t stay up too late at night. If you can’t stay up too late at night, you can’t be drinking too much. If you screw up a few times, then your morning workout is terrible. You have a headache. You feel bad. When you’re working out every day, you can checkpoint yourself very easily. This exact thing that I do every single morning is suddenly harder, so therefore I’m weakened for the alcohol from last night. The morning workout checkpoint really helped me understand the consequences of consuming alcohol before. The more interesting question is why am I doing it? That basically boils down to: I was doing it to survive longer in a social environment that I wasn’t particularly happy in. I essentially had to stun my brain into submission. There are better ways to do that. One of those is only associate with people where you don’t have to drink to be around them. That really narrowed my friend circle and it narrowed the kind of events that I go to. There’s a little bit of a substitution effect. Some of what the substitution effect was I was drinking so that I wouldn’t be thinking. What I went back to is, can I cultivate these states of not thinking too much? If I can get there another way then that will take away some of the urge to drink. Then there’s some substitution. For example, I switched from hard alcohol to red wine. Red wine is inherently self-limiting. You have two cocktails, the next thing you want is another cocktail. You have two glasses of red wine, at least for me, I usually have a headache. I’m done at that point. It’s very self-limiting. Some of it is just a function of age. I’m 43 now. I don’t think I can make it through a single glass of wine without having some negative consequence build up. I still drink. I don’t believe in the words like never and always. I think that’s a way of limiting yourself and self-disciplining yourself. It makes me less free and less happy at some level. I just want to be naturally in a position where I don’t need it and I don’t desire it. That’s kind of what I’ve been working more on.
What habit would you say most positively impacts your life? | https://medium.com/thrive-global/habits-have-the-power-to-make-or-break-your-life-c2494a667ff | ['Farnam Street', 'Shane Parrish'] | 2017-03-01 19:43:05.345000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Life Lessons', 'Productivity', 'Self Improvement', 'Work Smarter'] |
2020 examining the role of modernity today | image from knowyourmeme.com
Introduction
If a Time traveler approached you on New Years Eve of December 2019 and told you that in the year 2020, Climate change in Australia would become a matter of life or death. There would be protests; riots and petitions worldwide calling for the defunding of the police and that tensions between the already unstable relationship of Donald Trump and Kim Jung Un would escalate. As well as the fact that a virus would emerge from Wuhan in Central China that would not only force people to remain in their homes for three months but drastically force us to reevaluate our basic societal etiquette on the basis of communal gatherings. Would you believe them? Consequently, as a direct result of this I think we can all agree that 2020 has been nothing short of a real life Science fiction novel and as such in this analysis I will be discussing the role of Modernity in today’s global epoch and my beliefs on whether we are better off as a collective species because of it or not.
image from imagepop.com
What is Modernity?
Modernity or being ‘modern’ is a phrase used to define the present day generation’s advancements in the realm of science and technology, corporal governance within present day nations as well as the use of socioeconomics and basic communal values. Furthermore, as an ongoing process modernity can be closely examined through an analysis of cultural disparity amongst post-modern and pre modern civilizations. In addition to this veracity, although modernization has brought many undisputable benefits to the human race in the form of a lower mortality rate, reduction in deaths evoked by sickness or starvation in addition to threats of climate change in our everyday life nevertheless, it did not come without it’s challenges. Although modernity is characterized through the advancement of a postmodern societies ethical ,social and political facilitations, suffering and inequality are still plaguing the world today. Comparatively, one may even argue that the vulnerability and anguish being experienced by populations across the globe in todays epoch is not only unprecedented but taking place at an alarming rate. Consequently, baring this in mind; would you say our present day generation are amicable in the use of modernity as an ongoing process.
image from blogsofancientfaith.com
What is Globalization?
Globalization is a term often used to describe the ever growing not only interdependence of nations but interconnectedness of the world’s economies, cultures, social facilitations, political analytics in addition to populations. This phrase did on the other hand, only gain recognition once it was coined following the end of the Cold War in the late1900’s in an attempt to articulate the current state of the world.
Challenges to Modernity
image from knowyourmeme.com
Nonetheless, regardless of this actuality perhaps the greatest challenge to modernity today rotates around the loss of belief in religion, faith and the higher powers of Mother Nature. This can be noted through the change in societal ethical beliefs and values regarding not only longstanding human conduct but the earth’s resources from pre-modern societies in comparison to todays. As a direct result of this veracity we are forced to argue the affectivity of our modernization today as the threat of climate change could not be greater, poverty and inequality have never been more prevalent as well as the fact that conflict and violence on the basis of prejudice has never been more prevalent .Nevertheless, pre-modern societies lived in close proximity to nature and as such they venerated the earth and their living environment as one would an ancient deity and as such the earth’s atmospheric conditions and weathering were far superior and conducive than today’s. Comparatively , one may even argue that in today’s global epoch we live in a modern society that ultimately practices these opposite ideals on the basis of greed and overindulgence. This veracity can however be noted as excessive pollution still exists, many animal species are on the border of extinction and that deforestation continues at such a significant rate that certain ecosystems are being exposed to the dimensions of vulnerability.
What’s more, another challenge set on by the process of modernization through globalization rotates around the loss of tradition, heritage and noble values amongst developing nation-states. This veracity can be noted as in certain ‘Third World’ countries modernization through science and technological development have introduced a new set of socialistic goals on the basis of materialism, individualism and hedonic beliefs. In addition to this actuality, as a direct result of the perpetual nature of modernization through globalization, an over emphasis was placed on some these nations to become ‘developed’ and as such in an attempt to achieve this goal in a timely manner many of these nations would place an insufficient investment in national institutional structure in the form of education in addition to personal development. This did however consequently, result in a weak level of literacy skills nationwide in addition to a fragile set of moral values easily swayed by temptation.
Image from knowyourmeme.com
Furthermore, as a direct result of the systematic framework imposed by globalization through modernization our society has become engulfed by the constant clash of varying eroded values that many considered noble in the past. The reality of this quandary can however be noted as, in many countries today the rich legacy of freedom, equality and social justice bequeathed by earlier generations has become overloaded due to the institutional frameworks inability to conduct interstate reconciliation in addition to living life on the premise of ‘just keep life going! ’Consequently, as a result of the states inability to address and tackle these social issues too their entirety many states today baring this title exist in a realm of crisis. The dimensions of this actuality can however be noted through the protests that took place in honor of George Floyd world wide.
Hence Fourth, in conclusion it is my belief that the practice of local wisdom must be integrated amongst the global community in order to counteract the negative effects of modernization through globalization inflicted upon present day societies. Moreover, I also believe in order to escape the dimensions imposed by this quandary as a collective human society we will have to make social awareness and empathy a priority amongst our youth. Furthermore a new form of simplicity and mental fortitude must be not only taught and planned to learners but the wider community as a whole .It is my belief that if we practice these ideals we may be able to negate the unwanted consequences of modernization today.
Image from Redpeper.com
References
Fogu, C. (2008). Modernity is Crowd. Modernism/Modernity, 15(4), 813–817. doi: 10.1353/mod.0.0029
Harvey, P. (1999). Landscape, Modernity and Exclusion in Dubrovnik. Anthropology Today, 15(6), 21. doi: 10.2307/2678359
Modernity | culture. (2020). Retrieved 22 December 2020, from https://www.britannica.com/topic/modernity
Mulyono, M. (2017). The Problems of Modernity and Identity in Globalization Era. Journal Of Maritime Studies And National Integration, 1(2), 106–111. doi: 10.14710/jmsni.v1i2.1819
The Challenges of Modernity -. (2020). Retrieved 22 December 2020, from https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebookoflife/the-challenges-of-modernity/
Thomas, J. (2004). Archaeology’s Place in Modernity. Modernism/Modernity, 11(1), 17–34. doi: 10.1353/mod.2004.0028 | https://medium.com/@ntsikayezwefakude/2020-the-year-that-keeps-giving-examining-the-role-of-modernity-today-1d5631a8b19a | ['Ntsikayezwe Yahya Fakude'] | 2021-01-25 13:11:31.285000+00:00 | ['Ethics', '2020', 'Modernity', 'Social Justice', 'Analysis'] |
Salesforce Acquiring Slack Signals “SaaS 2.0” | Salesforce’s announcement that it was acquiring Slack for $27.7 billion in cash and stock signaled a monumental shift in terms both of the future of enterprise software and, more broadly, the future of work.
Specifically, it signaled the end of the era that Salesforce itself created — that of full-stack packaged cloud apps liberated from the limitations of on-premise software.
That era — call it SaaS 1.0 — constituted a quantum leap in mankind’s ongoing march towards full digital transformation, mostly by making software more available.
But it didn’t bring us all the way there. Software remained siloed, and as a result, its value remained limited. Specifically, two categories of software tools emerged: one for where people worked, and another for where data was stored. The two could only be bridged manually or with a lot of deep technical work.
Salesforce’s acquisition of Slack is an acknowledgment that this siloed approach is massively inadequate — that, in simple terms, you must meet people where they’re at.
Call it SaaS 2.0.
This next wave of SaaS will be less about where software is run, and more about how it is leveraged holistically, with a focus on where people work.
The difference will be stark. For example, users will be able to access data managed in Salesforce from within their preferred interface (be it Slack or any other system). This means users will be able to execute quality work without leaving their preferred interface. The integration will come not as an afterthought or as a “patch,” but as an integral part of the solution’s design.
That’s an absolute game-changer in terms of efficiency, flexibility, and usability.
It’s also an example, more broadly, of technology working for people, instead of demanding that people work for technology.
To make a difference, SaaS 2.0 software will need to be more adaptive and more flexible. Instead of an endless line of apps providing purely standalone experiences, it will give birth to platforms that are process-centric and that provide customizable and connected experiences.
Most importantly, it will feature operating systems that finally, more seamlessly bridge the divide between where data is stored / businesses are run and where people spend their time.
It’s a big, important step. It’s a step I’m especially encouraged to see, given how I’ve spent the better part of the last decade developing a platform designed precisely for this purpose of not only empowering our companies’ most valuable assets — which are our people — but of realizing software’s promise of real and complete digital transformation.
The $27.7 billion that Salesforce paid for Slack is, in this sense, an acknowledgment of this new paradigm and an investment in our future. | https://medium.com/swlh/salesforce-acquiring-slack-signals-saas-2-0-77a59011f35e | ['Sagi Eliyahu'] | 2020-12-13 14:33:34.863000+00:00 | ['Software', 'Salesforce', 'Slack', 'SaaS', 'Future'] |
Self-Reflections: Why I Write | Some might wrongly assume that I write these articles from a place of moral superiority; that I’m looking down at those around me as lesser beings who need to be lead in the right direction to find salvation. This, however, cannot be further from the truth. You see, in reality, I’m writing these articles directed at the “other me”. The part of me that represents all the parts of myself that I don’t like; the cowardice, laziness, addiction, perfectionism, selfishness, and so, so many more weaknesses that I possess. In reality, I’m not directing those words to you, the reader, I’m directing them towards myself, hammering home the ideas I’ve learned.
Honestly, I share these articles with the public in the hopes that anyone who has gone through similar struggles can see they’re not alone. For those who are currently undergoing them to see that there’s a way out. And for those who have yet to undergo them to spot the signs early and avoid disaster.
Some people may be turned away from these articles because the idea of “philosophy” has a boring, dusty, snobby connotation to it. The process seems long, arduous, and tiresome in the world we live in of instant-gratification, desires, greed, and gluttony. Gone are the days of self-reflection, moral integrity, and virtuous character. Why look within ourselves and fix the deep-rooted problems when there’s a whole world out there that can bring us instant relief, however fleetingly?
The society we live in is meant to keep us dependant on the small drips of temporary joy we receive from all the mind-numbing, hollow, nutrient-lacking pleasures that are constantly bombarding us at every turn. Drugs, alcohol, sex, money, cars, clothes, video games, and so much more. These are all comparable to dessert; they might be delicious and enjoyable in the moment, but you can’t live off them. Eventually, you’ll be left feeling sick, weak, tired, and nasty.
The deeper things in life, however, philosophy, religion (and I mean The Truth, not that distorted garbage that’s meant to sap you dry of your money), and science, will bring true meaning to one’s life. This Truth can be compared to a nice filling meal. The type of meal that after you’ve finished leaves you feeling full, lively, strong, and retains a big smile on your face.
When you’ve finally found your Truth, you’ll find that you don’t need these distractions anymore to feel happy. You don’t need drugs, sex, money, video games, etc. to feel great about yourself. You’ll start desiring to partake in more fulfilling, satisfying, and up-building activities. Reading, writing, drawing, exercising, and the like will start to feel more enjoyable. You’ll be drawn to those things which make you a better person.
As I’ve begun exercising and journaling/writing more regularly I’ve become less satisfied with watching shows that have little value or playing the video games I grew up with. Instead, I now look forward to exercising each day, I am excited to write about my next topic, and my fears and anxieties shrivel up. This doesn’t mean I’m completely fixed, I don’t think I ever will be in this system, but I can at least embrace the broken parts, fill them with gold, and use them to teach others. | https://medium.com/@theyoungmachi/self-reflections-d8bcb67eb28f | [] | 2020-12-27 16:20:58.909000+00:00 | ['Philosophy', 'Life Lessons', 'Self Improvement', 'Wisdom', 'Life'] |
With the coronavirus mutating, what does this mean for us? | The flights have been suspended, yet again. But this time, it’s a mutant virus, a newer version of the existing coronavirus.
There are a lot of questions in everyone’s mind, so let’s start one by one.
Dr Dad on a quick telephonic conversation with Dr. Gaurav Nigam, MD, put forward the following questions and now it is here for you to read.
Q.Is this new variant a new virus?
A. No, the new variant is a mutated version of the existing virus, also being called as B.1.1.7.
Q.Why do mutations occur?
A. Mutations occur as the virus replicates. Sometimes in the cycle of virus spread, certain sequences get changed in the virus and that’s called a mutation.
Q.What is the difference between the mutant virus and the old SARS COV2?
A. The newly mutated virus has few mutations. Around 23 of them. Whereas most of them were either damaging to the virus, but they also pointed towards how the virus may spread.
Q.Does this mean this virus will spread more easily?
A. As not much data is yet available but what different agencies are telling, according to them, this virus is much more transmissible than the older virus. It is spreading rapidly in southern England. Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London, estimates that the variant has an increased transmission rate of 50 to 70 percent compared with other variants in the United Kingdom.
Q.Does this virus cause severe symptoms and disease?
A. So far the studies have not pointed out the disease being more severe than the infection from sars cov 2.
Q.What is the origin of this new variant?
A. As the virus infects the host, the immune system starts clearing the virus. But, in some immunocompromised patients, the virus lives for a longer time and thus replicating for a longer duration. During this duration, there are high chances for the virus to undergo mutation.
There’s also a theory that when the virus infects certain animals like minks etc, they act as a reservoir for the virus and that might also help in the mutation.
Q.What about the existing vaccine? Will it not be effective anymore?
A. The answer to this is most likely No. As the immune system makes protein against the antigen when it is introduced through the vaccine, the antibodies that are made should ideally take care of the newer variation as well.
Though this is too early to say anything with 100 % certainty most experts are saying that the current vaccines should be more or less effective.
This being a new mutation, scientists all over the world are trying to study it and gather the information that might be useful for further advances.
For the time being: the traditional precautions of handwashing, social distancing, and wearing masks is definitely a winner.
Source: https://drdad.in/with-the-coronavirus-mutating-what-does-this-mean-for-us/ | https://medium.com/@drdad/with-the-coronavirus-mutating-what-does-this-mean-for-us-69980d21763 | ['Dr Dad'] | 2020-12-27 03:12:53.297000+00:00 | ['Coronavirus', 'Coronavirus Update', 'UK', 'Covid 19', 'Drdad'] |
NCAA Men’s Basketball 2015–2020 Seasons Data Analysis | I did the following analysis on some college basketball data as a final project in a class I recently finished. The course was an introduction to R, so all of the analysis shown below was done using R.
Import & Pre-Processing:
Included below is a snapshot of the first 5 columns of the data. The only pre-processing involved was to re-name all of the columns to more intuitive names and also to create a subset of the original data frame that is made up of only teams from the so-called Power 5 Conferences (ACC, Big 10, Big 12, PAC 12, and SEC)
First 5 Columns and First 6 Rows of the Dataset
Analysis of Categorical Variable — Conference:
The primary goal in doing this analysis is to determine what statistics ultimately translate to wins. First, we’ll look at the number of wins by each of the Conferences in the data set. The total number of wins for each Conference from the whole dataset is summed and displayed in a basic barplot using a color gradient based on the win values.
We can also see the variations in the number of wins by each of the power 5 conferences. The equivalent boxplot using the full dataset was too crowded, so only the Power 5 Conference subset was used here. As can be seen from the boxplot, the median value of wins is very similar between the conferences. The Big 12 Conference seems to have the tightest range from the minimum to the maximum while the Big 10 seems to have the widest range. The one outlier here is from the SEC and is for Kentucky in 2015. That team went 38–1 and eventually made it to the Final Four. Below the plot, we can see the average number of wins for each Conference is very similar among the power 5 conferences.
Average Wins by Conference
Analysis of Numerical Variable — Wins Correlation:
The primary goal of this analysis is to see what stats correlate closely to wins — mainly what stats should teams strive most to improve in order to increase wins and ultimately postseason success? First, we’ll take a look at the correlations between every statistical variable in the dataset compared to the Wins values.
Correlation Between Each Column and Wins
The two most closely correlated stats to wins are PWR Rating and Wins over Bubble Teams. Looking at a scatterplot of Wins vs. Power Rating, with a color gradient representing Wins Over Bubble Teams (wins over teams that are considered “on the bubble” of making it to postseason play) there is a very clear correlation between these variables.
PWR Rating and Wins Over Bubble can be misleading, however, as they do not necessarily result in wins but often times the reverse is true. Wins can lead to a better power rating and obviously more wins over bubble teams. So, although there is clearly a high correlation, it may be more telling to look at the next two highest correlated stats, Adjusted Offensive Efficiency and Adjusted Defensive Efficiency. The ACC school of Duke University, consistently one of the best college basketball teams in the country, is highlighted for reference. The conclusion is that Adjusted Offensive Efficiency and Adjusted Defensive Efficiency are two excellent stats to track when trying to project a team’s win total.
Adjusted Offensive Efficiency vs. Wins (Duke Highlighted)
Adjusted Defensive Efficiency vs. Wins (Duke Highlighted)
Analysis on 1 Set of Variables:
Focusing on the Power 5 Conferences — we can look at how the conferences compared based on the number of teams they had finish in each of the postseason stages. There is only 1 champion each year and only 1 team that finishes 2nd. There are 2 teams each year that finish in the final four, or “F4”. There are 4 other teams that finish in the elite 8 every year, or “E8”, 8 teams finish in the sweet 16, or “S16”, 16 teams finish in the round of 32, or “R32”, 32 teams finish in the round of 64, or “R64”, and only 4 teams finish each year in the round of 68, or “R68”. Any team that did not make it to the postseason has an “N/A” in that column. We can start by looking at the margin table summing the values for conferences and postseason eliminations for the power 5 conference subset, with a simple bar plot showing the data as well.
Round of Postseason Eliminations by Conference
Focusing again on just the Power 5 Conferences, a lot of variation can be seen in the number of wins by where teams finished in the postseason. | https://medium.com/@tomwp123/ncaa-mens-basketball-2015-2020-seasons-data-analysis-d8575e6bc1c5 | ['Tom Petry'] | 2021-08-05 18:51:38.028000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'College Basketball', 'Data Analysis', 'Exploratory Data Analysis', 'Correlation'] |
The 3 stages of a game called entrepreneurship | The 3 stages of a game called entrepreneurship
There are a plethora of theories and lifecycles shared by experts, successful entrepreneurs or even the self-acclaimed #startupgurus. As I strive my way to being the second one on the list, sharing my two cents in this ocean. Fidato Dec 13, 2020·5 min read
How would you do it? What’s going to be the ROI? How do I exit? What’s your LTV or CAC?
Life of an entrepreneur
These are a few questions that I often use to get bombarded with during 2019 when I went for funding pitch. Though I often believe it was too early for me to be going out for funding, it really did act like a bunch of learning for me, which I have shared in this blog over here. Bootstrapping a startup has its own challenges; coming from a family where I had my fair share of support and resistance from my parents for my decision to pursue my dream, startup journey wasn’t all that glossy as it always perceived.
When you just know how to float in a swimming pool, and you challenge yourself to cross the 20 ft deep stretch of an ocean, you move your hands in each and every direction, with some you move forward and upward, with some you just stay at the same point drowning further down. I was in sort of a similar situation when the only thought in mind was to anyhow survive and learn to swim while you gasp every breath that you can steal, as a result, of buoyancy.
What really inspired the whole idea | Source: https://myintellectualheart.wordpress.com/2019/08/25/time-money-and-energy-conundrum/
Recently I was in a discussion with one of my friends and as the discussion transitioned to a more serious tone, I just sort of summarised the whole life of an entrepreneur in three broader stages, which I believe any entrepreneur could fit into:
Usual stages of a startup funding
Entering the valley of death(Access to funds but no learning)
This stage, like for any other journey is the time when you’re filled with energy, motivation is breaming over the edge, and you’re all set to hit the bullseye. You’re aware of the harsh realities of taking the untrodden path, yet you decide to be oblivious of all the facts. You start off with your life savings or initially borrowed money or funding, and take the leap of faith.
Experience Level — Nil
— Nil Funds — Savings or Borrowed
— Savings or Borrowed ROI — Highest
— Highest Risk Factor — Highest (additional risk as the person has shown no roadmap of success or signs of persistence)
— Highest (additional risk as the person has shown no roadmap of success or signs of persistence) Time Period — 1–2 years
Gasping for breath (Lack of funds, progressive learning curve)
As you evolve from the previous stage, you have had your share of learning and failures. You are trodding the path with more confidence, showing persistence, but still confused; that could probably be the tell-tale signs of your success. This, for most entrepreneurs, is a stage where they are struggling hard to meet their ends. The realisation strikes them about the unnecessary expenses that they have done, but since they have drained out most or all of the amount, they are finding ways to gasp for breath. Once the person is able to sustain through this stage, they are more or less bound to hit the bullseye. The person is able to derive the requisite lessons and work on improvising his approach.
Experience Level — Moderate
— Moderate Funds — Dwindling or Exhausted or On track for break-even
— Dwindling or Exhausted or On track for break-even ROI -Moderate to High
-Moderate to High Risk Factor — Risky but manageable (towards the end of the stage)
— Risky but manageable (towards the end of the stage) Time Period — 10 months to 15 months
The final flight (Funds and structured roadmap)
By now, you’ve nearly dedicatedly invested 1.5 years to 3 years into building your dream startup. One thing that’s really important is to get an expert opinion on legality and compliance from the start; otherwise, this could lead to an unprecedented breakdown before the final flight(or fight). You’re aware of the mistakes, the structured roadmap, a lot of pieces of the puzzle which for a very long time seemed to find their right fit, are now on their own getting into place. Your focus of discussions changes from striving to find the right product to how to scale the product. Your MVP is sorted, and now just last stage is left and that is either to bootstrap your way to success or go for the funding.
Experience Level — Moderate to High
— Moderate to High Funds — Either bootstrapping sustainably or raising funds
— Either bootstrapping sustainably or raising funds ROI — Low, Moderate or High(depending on the timeline of investment)
Low, Moderate or High(depending on the timeline of investment) Risk Factor — Low
— Low Time Period — > 3 years(from date of taking the plunge)
No doubt, the life of an entrepreneur is really thrilling, but does anyone know of the fears that reside in his heart? It’s really difficult to envisage what an entrepreneur has to go through to reach the heights. It’s always lonely at the top, however, the view is mesmerising enough to take anyone’s breath away. But it’s lonely!
Once you’ve cracked it for your life, what really matters is now scaling it to an undisputable market leader or making it a unicorn. The struggle is still there, but as you complete the world’s most expensive MBA called the life of an entrepreneur, then there is no looking back. | https://medium.com/@beyonduntold/the-3-stages-of-a-game-called-entrepreneurship-ed2c6ba4c7cb | [] | 2020-12-13 12:42:44.607000+00:00 | ['Bootstrapping', 'Life Of An Entrepreneur', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Startup', 'Funding'] |
Half-naked Tree | Half-naked Tree
A poem from the end of fall
Photo by Erico Marcelino on Unsplash
Your green clothes
fell off, leaf by
leaf so that all
you wear now
is an aged waste
clothe, crinkling.
The wind will blow
even that last
remnant away,
yet you sway
to the beat of rain,
which bathes you
in puttered blessings.
Do you taunt me?
There — your frock.
It falls — wet, knowing
that from mist
it came and to mist,
it will return.
The downpour hastens
these carbons coming
into the earth. | https://medium.com/scrittura/half-naked-tree-983dfaffe16 | ['Rox Applesmith'] | 2020-12-23 06:41:09.674000+00:00 | ['Nature', 'Vulnerability', 'Change', 'Fall', 'Poetry'] |
DIY — Tips to make awesome pictures of your baked goods. | Isn’t a picture worth a thousand words?
So, then a meme or infographic must be worth a thousand likes, right?
Nowadays posting visuals on social media has become one of the most popular fuel to your success online.
And luckily every smartphone is equipped with a decent camera.
Also, we all are blessed with plenty of editing apps which you can download for free.
With these hands-on tips and tricks, we can effectively make our baked goods pictures, more pleasant and attractive.
1. Clean start
Remove fingerprints, dust and other dirty spots and starts with a clean lens every time and again.It’s really a small effort that makes a huge difference.
2. Hurry up
Your baked goods will look at their best when they come straight out of the oven or kitchen So, make sure you are prepared.Think beforehand about where you want to take the picture, prepare the setting and arrange the attributes you want to use.
3. Bright light
Natural light is key. The best light for pictures is daylight; take this into consideration when you pick a place to take the picture.
Avoid using the flash on your phone or camera because it will make the structure and color fade away.
4. Perspective
The angle you should choose to take the pictures depends on the composition of your dish or the filling and layers of your baked goods.
When the dish has no real height dimension, you can take a picture from the top.
Taking a picture from the side will give your picture more depth and reveals what’s inside.
5. No zoom
Be Alert! Zooming in may reduce the quality and sharpness of your picture.
Do not use the zoom for a close-up. Just move the camera closer.
6. The set
The food should be the center point of the picture. Backgrounds that are too busy will distract the attention of the food.
You can add something extra to your picture but at the same time make sure you don’t lose the focus on the food.
And yes, almost every phone has a focus setting so make sure you are using that to make distracting backgrounds blurry.
7. Finishing touch
In the app store you can find plenty of tools for photo editing. Use tools like Contrast, Brightness, Warmth and Structure for food pictures and it is always better to try the editing tools.
Just experiment with the different tools, see what happens and decide what looks visually more pleasing.
8. Make it worth to share
In today’s visual world it is essential to be able to make a good picture that can travel around. But what’s even more important is that you enthuse your customers to share their pictures of your shop & offering to the world.
So always make your product presentation stand out, choose attractive branded packaging materials for your taking-away orders and make sure your shop interior is neat and tidy.
Originally published at https://davars.com. | https://medium.com/@tropolite/diy-tips-to-make-awesome-pictures-of-your-baked-goods-b7678df04b77 | ['Davars Group'] | 2019-11-16 13:09:49.625000+00:00 | ['Pictures', 'Tips', 'DIY', 'Baking', 'Photography'] |
Hope Unleashed | Sushi, I just don’t like
Though it’s pretty, rolled up tight
A bento box, neat packaging
Makes it no more appetizing
Flowerless ferns in places unseen
Paint muted forests luscious green
Spore, no seed fuse skin with skin
Imparted from a source within
I’ve scaled many a mountain peak
More than actually touched my feet
From the top the view was grand
Every trek down I‘d crash land
I lost balloons once I let go
Empty hands have none to show
And that’s when hope is at its best
Since it’s been my theme I’ve been blessed
The Lord of hope looked in my heart
And knew I needed a brand new start
What words He gave I wrote in faith
Now the hope I lost is back in place
Tho‘ trials and tribulations seem
A never-turning evergreen
Boundary waters against a levee strong
Keep gargoyles out that don’t belong
I wrote this from a prompt of 7 random words with a theme of hope.
Bento box, ferns, mountain peak, lost balloons, evergreen, Boundary waters, gargoyles | https://medium.com/@tqhousecatmom/hope-unleashed-bc1b33f25bd | ['Mary Hood'] | 2020-12-18 12:49:22.093000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Journey', 'Christianity', 'Faith', 'Hope'] |
Umbrella Network Updated Tokenomics | Data underpins everything we do in technology. It fuels our applications, and without it, they would not be able to function. It’s why big data is a $220+ billion market opportunity and one of the fastest growing technology sectors. Companies like Snowflake, a cloud-based data software company, recently IPO’ed for a staggering $70 billion. Within the blockchain ecosystem, oracle leader Chainlink has reached $9.5 billion as of January 2021. The other leading oracle in the market, Band, has also recently achieved $250 million in market cap, while another less mature project, API3, has already reached $100 million. As the blockchain community continues to embrace the growing influence and adoption of oracles and their place in the market, we’re excited to introduce the tokenomics for Umbrella Network’s token, the $UMB.
When we set out on this journey to create a community-owned, scalable oracle, we never imagined the amount of enthusiasm and support we would get from the market, nor the amount of progress we would make developing a robust product and forging strong partnerships across the industry. Currently, Umbrella’s product is already in private testnet, and we’re working with projects like Linear Finance, with whom we recently entered into a strategic partnership. We are confident UMB is on its way to join the ranks of the top oracle projects in the blockchain space. And as a community-owned oracle, we look forward to taking the journey with you.
Table 1: DeFi Oracles by Market Capitalization
On 30 November 2020, we released our Initial Proposal for the UMB Token as a post on Medium. We received an outpouring of support, comments, suggestions and feedback to that blog post. Thank you for your incredible interest in Umbrella Network. And thank you for joining us in our mission to decentralize the governance of oracles and provide the blockchain community the secure and affordable data they so desperately need to run their projects. From your feedback, we have taken valuable input and updated our token plan.
Key Tokenomics Summary:
$UMB to be used in Delegated Proof of Stake as a voting token towards delegated governance
$UMB to be used to earn rewards and share of user fees
Token holders will be able to participate in governance via validator delegates
Total Max Token supply of 500 million $UMB
Long term vesting schedules (> 70% of total token supply will have 4 year linear vesting)
Low initial circulating token supply of 10 million tokens or 2% of total supply
Initial Market Capitalization of ~$500K, based on IDO price
Umbrella utilizes a Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) that benefits from the active participation of the community and token holders. $UMB Utility Tokens will serve as both 1) Governance tokens, as well as 2) Staking tokens to generate rewards and a share of user fees.
$UMB Token holders will have the option to stake their tokens with a validator of their choosing in order to participate in the governance of the Umbrella Network. The validator will act as their selected representative, and will be able to use the staked tokens to earn rewards and fees in the Proof of Stake consensus elections. Those fees will then be distributed to the original token stake. At no time will the validator have custody of the tokens.
There will be a maximum supply of 500 million $UMB tokens at any given time. $UMB will be an ERC20 token.
The $UMB token pool has long vesting schedules for almost all participants, including the investors. We were very fortunate to have long-term minded investors who agreed to 18 month linear vesting with ZERO initial unlock. Our team, development fund and other early contributors are all subject to 48 months linear vesting. In other words, the tokens are released over a very long period of time. Umbrella Network’s inflation is low compared to other projects.
As a result, $UMB will have a very low initial circulating supply of just 10 million in circulation, translating to an initial market capitalization of approximately $500,000 at time of IDO. When compared to other oracles in the market with far less product and traction, Umbrella will have a very low market cap.
Table 2: UMB Token Distribution
Umbrella Network is the first decentralized, community owned oracle solution for the DeFi market. We truly believe a community owned oracle is the best avenue to create a product that stays true to the principles of decentralized finance, and that will have longevity and contribute towards the growth and innovation within the industry as it matures. Our tokenomics are structured to reflect that, and as we begin this journey with our token buyers, validators, and partners in the community, we hope you will come along for the ride. | https://medium.com/umbrella-network/umbrella-network-updated-tokenomics-cd2f2e12a1d5 | ['Umbrella Network Team'] | 2021-02-04 16:15:30.569000+00:00 | ['Tokenomics', 'Umbrella Network Token', 'Oracle', 'Umbrella Network News', 'Defi'] |
Why Your iPhone is Slow | #3. Check the Memory Usage
The phone may be performing slow if the amount of free memory is low. If you’ve had the iPhone for over a year, take a lot of photos, or have a lot of apps installed, checking the memory usage periodically is good practice. Unused apps and photos that take up a lot of memory should be deleted. The iPhone storage can be managed by going to:
Settings > General > iPhone Storage
Image provided by author
Delete unused apps
As shown above, the iPhone storage screen provides a breakdown of the memory usage per app. If you choose to delete an app, select it from the list and press the Delete App option.
Image provided by author
2. Delete Messages, Photos and Music
Messages, photos and music all contribute to the overall iPhone storage usage. Selecting Messages from the iPhone Storage list gives the top conversations, photos, and GIFs/Stickers that can be deleted. Selecting Music displays all of the songs and memory size, with the option to delete. Photos will need to be deleted through the Photos app.
3. Clear “Other” | https://medium.com/macoclock/why-your-iphone-is-slow-a7edd7f23ebc | ['Julie Elise'] | 2020-12-24 05:36:17.749000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'iOS', 'Productivity', 'iPhone', 'Phone'] |
For “evermore”: an album review | The cover for Taylor Swift’s ninth studio album, “evermore”
After folklore flourished through the fall, Taylor Swift welcomed winter with the peaceful piano of her ninth studio album, evermore, released on Dec. 11 through Republic Records.
Swift announced the new album on social media, less than 24 hours before it was available for download or streaming. evermore concludes a laundry list of accomplishments by Swift in 2020, who debuted two documentaries in addition to the sister albums.
folklore, loved for its eloquent lyrics and unexpected indie vibes, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and became the best selling album of the year. In comparison, evermore appears lackluster. Although the album is anticipated to be a success and compliments its predecessor, evermore is void of energetic songs after lead single and opening track “willow,” whereas folklore laced “the last great american dynasty,” “mirrorball,” and “betty” between the tender tracklist.
However, evermore evokes feelings of nostalgia; the music reminisces on Swift’s earlier catalogue, which she is currently rerecording.
In the first of three songs to have a feature, “no body, no crime,” Swift and Los Angeles-based pop rock band HAIM channel the bitterness of “Better Than Revenge” from 2010’s Speak Now and the nonchalance of “I Did Something Bad” from 2017’s reputation to punish infidelity with homicide in a haunting narrative that echoes the country roots of Swift’s self-titled debut.
“coney island,” the second song to have a feature, alludes to lyrics in Swift’s past discography. The question asked in the first verse, “Did I close my fist around something delicate,” bluntly connects with penultimate single from reputation, “Delicate.” Matt Berninger, frontman of collaborating band The National, asks in the bridge, “Were you standing in the hallway with a big cake, happy birthday?” bringing listeners back to bonus track “The Moment I Knew” off 2012’s Red before the following lyric, “Did I paint your bluest skies the darkest gray?” reminds them of Speak Now’s “Dear John.”
But the real star of evermore is lucky number track 13, “marjorie,” a sweet tribute honoring late opera singer and Swift’s maternal grandmother, Marjorie Finlay. Swift is no stranger to writing songs for family — “The Best Day” from Fearless and “Soon You’ll Get Better” from Lover are both dedicated to mom Andrea — but “marjorie” stands out among them. With lessons taught in the lyrics such as, “Never be so kind, you forget to be clever / Never be so clever, you forget to be kind,” and “Never be so polite, you forget your power / Never wield such power, you forget to be polite,” Swift unites everybody who ever lost someone who inspired their life in a year surrounded by loss, but provides a promising reminder that, “What died didn’t say dead / You’re alive, you’re alive in my head.” Marjorie is alive in the song as well, as her soprano vocals angelically back the song.
evermore ends a hopeless year with a false sense of “happiness” and heaps of heartbreak, but if the listener is left with chills, there is a cardigan to help with that. | https://medium.com/@kelsimaddock/for-evermore-an-album-review-162a12200d11 | ['Kelsi Maddock'] | 2020-12-18 17:17:58.788000+00:00 | ['Album Review', 'Musi', 'Evermore', 'Taylor Swift'] |
A Record Number of Google Autonomous Vehicles on the Roads. And Not A Single New Accident | At Silk, we’re curating a project that tracks Google’s reports and visualizes them in interactive maps and charts. Follow the project to get email notifications for every update.
Note: the date of incidents prior to June 2015 is approximate. Google only reported the month in which they occurred. So, for instance an incident reported for May 2014 will have 01/05/2014 as date.
Note: Silk has been discontinued as of Dec. 15th 2017 so links are broken and visualizations are static. Will replace them asap.
Every month Google is mandated to publish a report summarizing crash data and incident information for accidents involving Google Autonomous Vehicles (aka Google Cars). To date all crashes have been the fault of human drivers that struck Google Cars. In September, Google added 20 new vehicles to the fleet driving in public roads of Mountain View, California and Austin, Texas. Through the end of September 2015, there at total of 48 Google Cars out and about. That’s 20 more than were reported in the August, an increase of 71%. The fleet broke down to 34 Google cars driving in Mountain View and 14 in Austin. This is a record high since Google began reporting figures.
Despite this increase, there hasn’t been a single incident reported for the month of September. In fact, Google has been tweaking its robotic driving algorithms to better account for previous obstacles such as confusion over right-of-ways when meeting cyclists at intersections.
Because of the added number of cars and the lack on new incidents,, the per-mile-driven accident rate dropped to 7.5 per 1,000,000 miles from the 7.9 per 1,000,000 miles of August.
To put this in perspective, Google Cars have an accident rate that is roughly 2.5 times the national rate for “property-damage-only crashes”, as reported by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. However, most experts believe very few of the millions of minor accidents end up in NHTSA reports so Google Cars may in fact be outperforming human drivers when this is taken into account.
Over half the accidents occurred when a human driver was controlling the Google Car.
Only eight of the 16 total incidents occurred when the car was engaged in autonomous mode. Of the remaining, in six the car was in manual driving mode and in two the car was initially in auto mode, but the driver was able to take manual control of the wheel as the other vehicle approached. Human intervention might not be possible in the future. Google’s wants to build a car “without a steering wheel or pedals”.
According to Google, every accident was the fault of the driver of the other vehicle. What’s more, 13 of the 16 incidents involved another car hitting the Google car from behind.
The type of events described in the report seem to indicate that self-driving technology wasn’t the cause of the crash. On the contrary, they imply that a human error on the part of the driver of the other car was the likely cause of the accident. With the number of miles driven continue to increase and the exposure of Google Cars to public roadways continuing to increase, it is looking more and more like Google Cars will actually make our roads safer by taking human drivers away from the wheel and preventing them from rear-ending other drivers or causing other sorts of accidents.
While Google’s AV technology seems well sophisticated for public streets after more than 2 years of testing, the car itself might still need improvements. In almost all the crashes, 14 out of 16, it was the Google car that reported some damage. The other car, which likely caused the accident in the first place, was damaged only in two instances | https://medium.com/silk-stories/a-record-number-of-google-cars-on-the-roads-and-not-a-single-new-accident-56d92639b053 | ['Alice Corona'] | 2017-12-13 16:28:39.566000+00:00 | ['Self Driving Cars', 'Google Car', 'Data Journalism'] |
The DNA of the Global E-Commerce Market Is Changing With The Impact Of The Pandemic | E-commerce is the logistics because we have to move the products from the merchants to the consumer who is ordering the product. Even if you are committed to offering the best product in the world to the customer at the most affordable price, if you fail to deliver at the expected speed and quality, you will fail.
If you cannot deliver the goods that meet the expectations of the customers at a speed that will satisfy the customer, you have no chance of success. If you cannot manage the delivery operation effectively you can’t provide fast supply and distribution. Return rates of products purchased especially in the clothing segment are approaching 40%. There is no way to solve this operation with conventional cargo systems. You have to use location-based smart systems supported by mobile applications.
Instead of trying to send products from a limited number of warehouses to the whole country, new generation procurement technologies developed with augmented intelligence. You can easily collect e-commerce orders locally where they come from, focus on location-based orders, instantly see the stock status of approved product suppliers in that region.
TIRPORT starts a new era in e-commerce logistics with its RapidChain technology
RapidChain is developed by TIRPORT as a “Last Mile Delivery” technology. It aims to accelerate e-commerce logistics and optimize all supply chain and delivery processes.
RapidChain: How it works?
Whether it is a GSM operator, a bookstore or a clothing store chain, if they integrate RapidChain technology into their e-commerce infrastructure, they can bring their suppliers / dealers together with the customers in a smart way. For example; a mobile phone may be purchased from a major GSM operator’s website but it can be delivered to the customer on the same day from the nearest authorized dealer.
Young Chinese people expect their morning purchases to be delivered during the day
Chinese consumers expect the products they purchase from the websites to be delivered on the same day. If the delivery is not completed during the day, they can write negative comments. Consumers are less and less patient with multi-days shipping periods and more and more companies offer 1 day fulfillment.
China is the biggest e-commerce market in the world and this market is still growing quickly. Z and Y generation Chinese consumers expect products they bought in the morning to be delivered during the same day. Not just to the home or workplace, he or she wants to be flexible about delivery address. They want to be able to redefine their delivery address based on their daily schedule. It makes them happy to be able to receive the product at the shopping mall he goes to or at Starbucks where he has a chat with his friend. Even the feeling of flexibility in delivery makes him or her comfortable.
Digitalization is rapidly transforming our daily life. Everything is changing; the way we do business, our work place and the state administration. The pandemic process, which has taken over the whole world since December 2019, has triggered the spread and acceleration of digitalization. Penetration of Digitization in education, trade and business management has grown exponentially.
Pandemic has grown the global e-commerce market by 70% within a year
In 2019, the rate of e-commerce among the total retail sales in the world was around 10%. About $ 4 trillion was spent on e-commerce. Penetration before the Pandemic; 20% in China, 14% in the US, 12% on average in Europe, in Turkey was around 6%.
E-commerce volume is running for 7 trillion dollars.
As of the end of 2020, the global e-commerce volume is running for 7 trillion dollars. There is a complete e-commerce revolution in China, the ratio of e-commerce in total trade has approached 40%. In Turkey, it came to 14%.
36.5% of Internet users use e-commerce in Turkey. E-commerce volume runs to 200 Billion TL at the end of 2020.
While 20% of internet users were using e-commerce before the pandemic, this rate increased to 50% at the end of 2020. Internet prevalence increased much more in this period when working from home was concentrated and education was completely switched to remote mode. The rate of access to the Internet from home raises to 90.4% in Turkey. 79% of our population now has internet access. 36.5% of those who access the internet shop online at various frequencies. 51,731,134 people have access to e-government in Turkey. 700 institutions offer 5.334 services over e-government. 62.2% of the population in Turkey has become highly benefit from e-government services.
With the effect of Covid-19, the effective use of e-commerce in domestic and foreign trade has gained importance. The e-commerce volume, which was 55.9 billion TL in the first six months of 2019, increased by 64% in the first six months of 2020 to 91.7 billion TL. The amount of e-commerce, which was 136 billion TL in 2019, is expected to exceed 200 billion TL by the end of this year.
78% of online shoppers are under the age of 45
According to the data of the Ministry of Trade; In e-commerce, 37.5% of the users are between the ages of 25–34, 22.5% between the ages of 35–44, and 18% between the ages of 18–24. In other words, e-commerce was that 78% of the users are under the age of 45.
60% of the total e-commerce in Turkey gathered in three provinces: three major cities with 31.3% of Turkey’s total population, it is twice the share of e-commerce. Istanbul has a share of 47%, Ankara 8%, and Izmir 5%.
Customers expect services far beyond traditional delivery systems
Turkey E-commerce seems to grow by over 70%. As the volume grew exponentially, customer dissatisfaction also increased significantly. Applications to consumer arbitration committees have exploded, returns have begun to force companies considerably. The biggest source of complaints are “late deliveries” and “barriers in return processes”. In particular, the messages of the cargo companies “we went address but were not there” disturb consumers. Those notes, which are actually dropped without visiting the address, damage the reputation of cargo/delivery companies.
TIRPORT’s RapidChain technology also eliminates this kind of delivery problems. Even if cargo staff went to the address, RapidChain Technology prevents some process notes like “we went to the address but was not at the address”.
RapidChain Business Model
RapidChain can also optimize return processes at the same delivery operation. When the courier arrives at the building for delivery, they can see the addresses near that building waiting to be collected for return.
Many traditional retail chains’ top selling stores have become the online stores. There are lots of store chains whose online sales have increased by more than 400% with the pandemic effect. Even classic grocery chains have begun to set up delivery networks that will provide delivery within hours. Cargo companies insist on working with traditional agency systems. However, they are not able to meet the developing demands of their consumers with their classical organizational structure. Many large manufacturers cannot deliver at least 40% of the products, they need to ship during the day. Because courier companies cannot receive for that amount of delivery. Some large e-commerce sites have started to establish their own distribution organizations in big cities where orders are high. Those who continue to distribute with traditional methods will not be able to remain a player in the sector in the near future. Cargo solutions, -supported by increased intelligence and location-based technologies, are candidates to change the main players in the sector.
The DNA of e-commerce is changing, and the biggest change will be in supply and distribution technologies. How ready are you? What are you doing to be ready? | https://medium.com/@akin-10877/the-dna-of-the-global-e-commerce-market-is-changing-with-the-impact-of-the-pandemic-73d26ffd938f | ['Akın Arslan'] | 2020-12-15 14:21:08.327000+00:00 | ['Last Mile Delivery', 'Logistics', 'Delivery', 'Trucking Industry', 'E Commerce Market'] |
Good cop, bad cop, carrots and sticks | The EU dangle trade talks in front of Britain
Theresa May tries to blend into the colour scheme (Picture by Getty Images)
Come dine with me
With Brexit talks stalled and her big Florence speech not having punched through the deadlock as hoped, Theresa May went to dinner. Flanked by her Brexit man David Davis, the prime minister flew into Brussels to meet with the European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker. Although billed as a formerly arranged private dinner, the timing of the meeting — days before a crucial summit of the EU 27 leaders — was widely interpreted as an attempt to push things along.
The outcome? Hugs, smiles but no real resolutions. Both May and Juncker said that negotiations ‘should accelerate’ but neither gave any indications as to how that could happen.
Mixed messages
The climax of the week was the crunch Brussels pow-wow. Addressing the leaders of the 27 EU countries at the start of the summit, the prime minister’s message seemed to be ‘give me something to work with here’.
And thus began a hectic two days of mixed messages. With 27 heads of state all wanting to get their point across, things started to get confusing.
Dangling the carrot 🥕…
But flexing the stick❗️…
Good cop from Germany 🙂….
Stern cop from France 😠….
The summit was not a total waste 👍🏼…
But we’ve only got eight weeks to sort it out 🗓….
Back at home
After all that, the prime minister also has to deal with the rebellious kids on the backbenches. The European Union (Withdrawal) Bill , AKA the ‘breathtaking power grab’ / ‘an orderly Brexit’, is on hold and will not be debated next week as originally planned.
Don’t worry prime minister, it’ll stop hurting after a while
Follow upday UK on Twitter and Facebook 👍
You can follow Bora Kwon on Twitter, here 😳
Questions or suggestions? Write to us at [email protected] 👋 | https://medium.com/upday-uk/good-cop-bad-cop-carrots-and-sticks-43d7f53f7c7c | ['Bora Kwon'] | 2017-10-21 04:47:00.655000+00:00 | ['European Union', 'Europe', 'Brexit', 'Politics', 'UK Politics'] |
Why Christians Should Stop Saying “Amen” | Let me draw an analogy. Imagine you are attending a friend’s wedding. You take your place in the pew, and seated next to you is a man who has flown from far away especially for the occasion. He speaks no English and has never been to the country before, but due to long acquaintance with the groom has come to join the celebration.
The ceremony proceeds until that final moment where the priest says loudly and gladly, “I now pronounce you husband and wife,” and turning to the groom exclaims, “You may now kiss the bride.” The building fills with happy sighs, with cheering and rounds of applause. The newly-married couple then exit, with the bridal party, and everyone else then follows.
What did the man from far away see? He has watched the ceremony, heard and observed the exchanging of vows and rings. Then the priest uttering his final few words, the couple kissing, and all leaving. The man grasps the overall significance of the occasion — he’s at a wedding, he knows that much, and has been to weddings in his own country — but because he speaks no English, has never been to England before, and has not seen an English wedding ceremony until now, he cannot understand each particular moment or appreciate every peculiar detail.
It seems fair to say, in this hypothetical scenario, that the man from far away could not have known just how important was that kiss the bride and groom shared; how it symbolised the sealing of the marriage vows, marking the crescendo of the whole ceremony. To him, reasoning from observation, the kiss was simply the last thing you ‘did’ before the ceremony came to an end and everybody left.
The man’s ignorance of the kiss’s significance is like our ignorance of the significance of amen. Many of us understand amen only to mean “the prayer is over,” as though it were a word we append to our prayers like a kind of liturgical punctuation. But as the kiss does not function to mark the end of the ceremony, neither does amen function to mark the end of our prayers. The word amen occurs at the end, as does the kiss, but this is not what amen means. | https://medium.com/the-coffeehouse-clerics/why-christians-should-stop-saying-amen-71006a8fd72 | ['Alex Rowe'] | 2019-01-09 07:00:54.150000+00:00 | ['Spirituality', 'Faith', 'Christianity', 'Religion', 'Theology'] |
Moths in Space | Moths in Space
A poem
Which are the stars, and which are their paparazzi?
The stars hold my gaze.
They wink and sparkle
and burn ablaze.
My atoms: moths
knocking each other askew
in a whirlwind rocket
to the modest moon.
But it’s being afar
that makes bright beautiful.
The sun is a star
that will eat you whole
if you get too close.
So we learn:
don’t touch the stove.
Be a flower, or a tree.
Reach for the warmth,
light and energy,
but keep your roots
in the cool shade of soil.
Grow up with ambition;
grow deep from turmoil.
The top-heavy only tumble;
The heavy-rooted never fly.
So you see,
there’s significance in our scars;
only humans lose their way
while reaching for the stars. | https://wormwoodtheweird.medium.com/moths-in-space-82e33c01a104 | [] | 2020-03-10 22:09:21.268000+00:00 | ['Self-awareness', 'Self', 'Creativity', 'Life Lessons', 'Poetry'] |
Five “Lost & Found” Senses of Campus Ministry Amidst COVID-19 | To minister on a college campus is to know that God could have called me anywhere for this season, yet he chose the campus as the daily context for my spiritual formation. As someone who has walked the stretch of NYU on West 4th Street a few thousand times since receiving my chaplain ID, I know that to be called to the campus is also to know, quite intimately, the distinct sights and sounds of these grounds.
What happens when the telltale sensory details of the campus experience cease to exist? What are we to make of campus ministry when the campus is closed? These questions lingered in the air as I stood outside NYU’s Kimmel Center on a Thursday evening last month, just one day after classes had officially been moved online. The answers felt as elusive then as the supposed dawn of spring.
What felt disorienting wasn’t just the sight of an empty staircase in the student center or an eerily quiet Washington Square Park — it was also the conspicuous absence of the food cart aromas outside Stern and the familiar rush of students heading to class, always insistent on crossing the street without so much of a glance at the crosswalk signals overhead. In the absence of these touchstones it suddenly felt transgressive to be in a space where I once thought I belonged.
In times like these, it feels tempting to take our cues from the trees — look at them standing there guarding the park — stoic and unmoving, patiently waiting for the seasons to change, dutifully absorbing all the pain and anguish that we humans have expelled into the air. Yet if it is their job to produce oxygen, it is my prerogative to breathe and see and feel and taste. With each breath I resist numbness and lean a little more fully into the five senses that enliven the human experience.
I: Sight
“…and the Lord turned and looked at Peter…” Luke 22:61
What a gift it is to be able to see people in the fullness of who they are. Now that our campus fellowship primarily interacts via the two-dimensional space of Zoom, I miss the sight of the clusters of students rushing every which way on the second floor of our campus center. This was my view every week as I tabled at the top of the Kimmel staircase, gazing out at the expanse of Fifth Avenue from behind the bright orange InterVarsity tablecloth that covered the table. I miss the sight of Richie, the second-floor NYU security guard who always worked that shift; the warm smiles of recognition from the students who remembered me; and the sparks of curiosity in students’ eyes as they shared about their faith backgrounds and peppered me with question after question.
I miss going on prayer walks with my students and having our eyes opened to people and corners of campus that had previously gone unnoticed. And yet I wonder, with objectively less things to fix our eyes on in quarantine, where and how might we be called to focus our vision? How might we need to rediscover what it means to simply behold and gaze upon the beauty of the Lord? And what are the new ways of seeing that my students and I are being invited to lean into in this season? Father, revive my vision. Remove anything that has been blinding me so that I might not miss what is right before my eyes.
II: Touch
“Moved with compassion, Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him, and said to him, “I am willing; be cleansed.”” Mark 1:41
If I had to describe my understanding of the NYU chaplain role in one image, it would be an open hand reaching out to touch and be present with students’ pain and suffering in its many forms. Trying to care from afar, unable to even offer tissues to those who are grieving, runs counter to what feels natural and appropriate in this time. I feel this acutely as students ask for prayer when they need to stay up all night to care for ailing grandparents; mourn the passing of professors, relatives, and friends’ parents; and grapple with an increase in anxiety, confusion, and despair — all at the hands of a virus that cannot be seen but is unmistakably felt. Helplessness creeps in when I come face to face with the vast reach of the virus and the reality of our human limits.
Students who were once a subway ride away are now eighteen-hour plane rides away. Seniors whom we would have been able to bless and send through the laying on of hands are now scattered across various time zones. This is more than just six feet of social distance. And yet through it all I am stunned by how readily tears come in times of worship these days, as I am overwhelmed by the nearness of God in the midst of this heaviness and separation. It has caused me to wonder — how has our wrestling with our human finitude been widening or narrowing my distance from God? How has the decrease in human contact revealed the areas in our lives and systems that ache for a touch from the hand of God? And in our yearning for his touch in our helplessness, where are we yet being invited to pray for presently intangible realities to come to pass? Father, renew my compassion and my longing for you. Allow me to experience the comfort of your embrace when all else feels distant.
III: Sound
“While he was still speaking, there came from the ruler’s house some who said, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Teacher any further?” But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.”” Mark 5:35–36
I love this scene in Mark 5. I imagine the people with backs turned and voices hushed, chiding the synagogue ruler for his audacity to hope, and urging him to leave before anyone else, especially Jesus, can hear. In spite of their best efforts, Jesus overhears everything. He isn’t inconvenienced. His voice cuts through the clamor with authority, reaching the ears of the one most in need of a word of life, when everyone else believed that death already had the final word.
As we settle into a longer quarantine, I know there are distinct sounds of life that I won’t hear for a while. This year, the fellowship that I staff won’t gather to worship together with a full band at Basileia, our annual summer conference in the Adirondacks. We will miss the sort of resonance that comes with finding yourself surrounded by individuals singing or crying out to God with all of their being. As news continues to pour in, I’m noticing that my ears aren’t used to hearing the voices of this many pundits and commentators, each one louder than the first, until it all starts to sound more like a noisy gong or clanging cymbal. In the whir, I need to hear the gentle whisper of God. I need to hear more than vague reassurances and hollow platitudes, and I need to hear from the one who is Love. Which words or voices will I make room for in this season and allow to have full authority in my life? How can I cultivate new patterns of worship and prayer that produce the same kinds of joyful noise that I miss hearing in community? How can I join my voice to the chorus of those honoring and embodying a sacrificial love that’s filled with faith rather than fear? Father, tune my ears to rightly hear your voice. Let me worship, pray, and love in response to your voice.
IV: Smell
“Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.” John 12:3
It’s been said that our sense of smell is the one most closely linked to memory. When I smell my mom’s coffee brewing in the mornings now, I remember the aroma of New York City’s coffee shops — a distinct blend of concentration, companionship, and caffeine. The scent of roasted coffee reminds me of the moments I spent in Irving Farm, the coffee shop on West 3rd, seated across from freshmen sorting through questions of faith during their very first week of college. The smell of fries baking in the oven reminds me of the meals I shared with students in the NYU dining halls as they considered stepping into first-time leadership roles within our fellowship. While these discipleship conversations are still happening, they are now playing out against the backdrop of a global pandemic that has brought with it grief and a whole new set of questions that demand attention. I am grateful to still be able to sit remotely with students as they explore what it looks to be whole-hearted disciples in this season.
Speaking of disciples, I wonder — did the disciples in the John 12 passage remember the extravagance of Mary’s offering every time they caught a whiff of perfume for the rest of their lives? What, then, are the enduring smells and memories of this season that will carry over into the next? Are they aromas that bring life to a dying world and uphold devotion over indifference? Father, may each memory and smell that floats in the air draw me closer to your heart. Let my entire life be filled with the fragrance of devotion to you.
V: Taste
“They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over.” Matthew 14:20
Sometimes it feels like a miracle of its own to have food left over after sharing dinner with a group of college students. Perhaps what is more remarkable, though, is how such small group gatherings — filled with good food, hearty laughter, and rich conversation — can feel like a feast. As I hunger for those experiences of being able to break bread together, whether with students at FIT or with my staff team in Midtown Manhattan, I recognize that I am not, and have never been, entitled to these blessings. They are gifts of grace that have filled and nourished me in more ways than I know.
I want my students to enjoy these gifts again soon, but even more than that, I want them to hunger and thirst for the living God. When spiritual hunger pangs arise all around me, am I directing them to the One who alone satiates these aches and delights our souls with the richest of fare? As I marvel at the ways the Lord has gifted grace upon grace out of his fullness, how can I more generously feed and give to those in need? And whether it’s reading Scripture aloud in the mornings or digesting passages together in the evenings, what are the new ways we can all feast together in the presence of our Father? Father, you alone can satisfy my deepest hunger. Remind me of the miraculous nature of your abundant provision.
—
I long for the day when my ministry updates will no longer consist of Zoom screenshots with mere faces on a screen. I long to share photos again of full, embodied beings delighting in each other’s presence — hands held in prayer, heads thrown back in laughter, hearts savoring the aromas and flavors of a nourishing meal — a visible, audible, and palpable joy. And yet in the waiting, would you, O Father, revive our senses. We need you. Amen. | https://medium.com/@lin.sarah.j/five-lost-found-senses-of-campus-ministry-amidst-covid-19-972c954070ef | ['Sarah J. Lin'] | 2020-04-23 05:53:35.233000+00:00 | ['Prayer', 'College', 'NYC', 'Ministry', 'NYU'] |
195 Invited On December 17 By Prince Edward Island | With the year-end approaching rapidly, the Canadian provinces are organizing their final draws. While 2020 has been the best for immigration, the provinces are trying to invite as many immigrants as possible to begin the year on a positive note.
Canadian PR Visa From The Comfort of Your Home! Discover Your Immigration Options Today!
On December 17, Prince Edward Island hosted its very last draw of 2020. Provincial Nominee Programs permit the territories and provinces of Canada to pick immigration candidates who satisfy their labour market requirements. A total of 195 invitations were distributed by the Prince Edward Provincial Nominee Program. Candidates in the Express Entry and Labour Impact categories received 174 invitations. The rest of the invitations, 21 in total, were assigned to candidates in the Business Impact category.
The province will now wait until January 2021 to organize its next draw for skilled workers.
Brief overview of the categories:
The Labour Impact category targets international candidates who have already secured a job offer in Prince Edward Island. They should also ask for support from their future employer. The three streams under this category are Intentional Graduate, Skilled Worker and Critical Worker.
As an enhanced PNP, the Express Entry category of the PEI PNP functions alongside the federal Express Entry system. Qualifying candidates receive a score on the basis of their education, professional experience, age and language proficiency. The applicants who manage to get a provincial nomination receive 600 extra CRS points. With their increased scores, these candidates have a significantly higher chance of getting an Invitation to Apply during the next Express Entry draw.
Lastly, the Business Impact category caters to intentional entrepreneurs who are willing to run a business in PEI. | https://medium.com/@betterplaceimmi/195-invited-on-december-17-by-prince-edward-island-27523c6eb61c | ['Betterplace Immigration'] | 2020-12-23 12:13:49.674000+00:00 | ['Prince Edward Island', 'Betterplaceimmigration', 'Canada Immigration', 'Canada', 'Immigration'] |
Basic Instincts: Saving President Trump | By Michael Willard
If Clarence the angel from Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” were to visit Trump Town, he would have one, gentle piece of advice for our impeached President: “Suck it up”.
At almost anytime prior to the US House of Representatives passing two articles of impeachment, Trump had an out that — being cutesy here — “trumps” his “perfect” phone call where he admits bribery.
It might not be too late now to burnish his legacy.
There is a chance, however small, he might not always be remembered as a failed businessman who defrauded charities and with his greatest mark being as a reality show barker.
Better tardy than never, he could issue the following statement:
“I made a rookie mistake, and I lied about it. I should have known, but in business life, I made deals. This was a bad deal. I apologize for it.
“I was new to he ways of politics, but I am learning every day. And, by the way, unemployment is down, the stock market is up and Melania is a fine First Lady.”
Yes, sure, it would be incriminating. It would be totally out of character. However, it would show a smidgin of character, as well as fortitude to do the right thing and admit the obvious.
It is interesting that of all the arguments against impeachment by the GOP not one person listed the President’s sterling character, his compassion or, in fact, his basic grasp of common sense and comity.
I am not holding my breath for such a result. Eventually, there will be a trial in the Senate and, of course, he will be acquitted. As former Republican Sen. Jeff Flake said, the GOP is also on trial.
It will take longer for that august body to be convicted of malfeasance in the public opinion court, but it’s around the corner. My old boss, former Senate Leader Robert Byrd is crying in his grave.
Byrd, from the outset and in his first Democratic caucus speech, said he was the President’s friend (Carter), but never the President’s man. He led a Senate majority of leaders.
Sen. Mitch McConnell, on the other hand, has turned the Senate into a Dante’s ring of hell where sycophants reign supreme. He makes Charles Dickens’ fictional Uriah Heep appear cool
But, suspend disbelief for just a moment: What if Trump were to acknowledge he had been foolish, though not criminal? In other words, question my bad judgment, and not my misplaced motives.
What if — for Clarence the angel to get his wings — Trump had to have a Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus-style epiphany? What if he were to — all of a sudden — stand up to the Kremlin’s Putin?
My guess — and I am no soothsayer — Trump’s anemic poll numbers would improve. America loves a redeemed sinner. Still, for certain, he would be no Ronald Reagan, not even close.
Now the big question: Why would I, a democrat with a little “d” and sometimes a big “D”, offer our 45th President an escape passage. There is a simple reason:
Unlike Republicans in the Congress, I value our democracy. Any political issue pales in comparison. And wouldn’t it be nice for Clarence to get a new set of wings in 2020. | https://medium.com/@michaelwillard/basic-instincts-saving-president-trump-19f135daa5f1 | ['J. Michael Willard'] | 2019-12-24 05:21:08.033000+00:00 | ['2016 Election', 'Impeachment', 'Trump', 'Apology Forgiveness'] |
I recently stumbled on this myself. | I recently stumbled on this myself. I only read the tourism boards history. Sounds like a pretty boring place. No matter how board I am I’m not gang raping little girls. If I wanna skip the rape and a month of travel but still go to a scandalous island I’ll go to Grand Cayman. | https://medium.com/@hogantorah/i-recently-stumbled-on-this-myself-f66404d33ad6 | ['Hogan Torah'] | 2020-12-15 10:19:46.766000+00:00 | ['Sex', 'History', 'Travel', 'Sexual Assault', 'Culture'] |
Python Functions | Photo by: Glen Carrie
When I was in kindergarten, I hated color pencil pouches. It was extremely messy. You just dump all your color pencils there, pencils, scissors, rulers, etc. It would take forever to find the right pencil. When you write a program, you are basically dumping code into a big pouch to hold it all. It can get extremely messy. Thankfully, we have functions to make our job easier. Today, we are going to go through just that in python, so open up your favorite editor, open your mind, and get ready to have some fun.
Functions
Functions are a handy tool to recycle and group code. It can perform any task, return values, and accept arguments. Let’s go through a basic function.
def example_function():
print('Hello World!')
In order to build a function, we need to use the keyword def, then we name the function and place parenthesis right after, we use the colon to let python know we are going to start writing the function code, we indent the code, and we are done! In order to use our function, we just write the name of it and use parenthesis. Python will perform the code inside the function after we do that. In our example we just print the string “Hello World!”. However, let’s say that we wanted to print a custom message if a name is passed.
def example_function(name=None):
if name == None:
print('Hello World!')
else:
print("Hello {}.".format(name))
Now, we added logic to check if there is a name, so it can print a custom message. However, if there is no name, then it will default to “Hello World!”. As you can see, we can set a default value to our parameter. The default value can be anything. However, let’s say that we didn’t know how many people we need to greet. We can do the following for that situation.
def example_function(*args):
if len(args) == 0:
print('Hello World!')
else:
for i in args:
print('Hello {}'.format(i))
We use the *args parameter to tell our function that we can have 0, or we can have 0 < arguments passed. The key here is the *. We can name our arbitrary argument anything as long as the * is passed. Python will package all arbitrary arguments passed in a tuple. Now, let’s assume we wanted to print a greeting depending on the season.
def example_function(season,*args):
if len(args) == 0:
print('Hello World! Happy {}.'.format(season))
else:
for i in args:
print('Hello {}. Happy {}.'.format(i,season))
It is important to remember that because we have the *args keyword, we cannot set our parameters equal to our arguments such as season = ‘Summer’ because you will get a syntax error. Let’s continue. Now, let’s assume that our requirements change. Now, we do not want to print the string just return the values, and each name will have a different season. We can do something like the following.
def example_function(**kwargs):
if len(kwargs.items()) == 0:
return 'Hello World!'
else:
return ['Hello {}. Happy {}.'.format(name,season) for name, season in zip(kwargs.keys(),kwargs.values())]
There is a bit to go through. First, we use the **kwargs to tell python that our function will receive named arguments. For example, Alex=”Winter” or Jose=”Summer”. Then, we check the length of items to see if we need to trigger the default message. Keep in mind that we have to use the .items() because python will pack kwargs in a dictionary. Last, we iterate through our dictionary to generate our custom message. We do this by packing both keys and values using zip(), then we use list comprehension to iterate over our zip values. Once we generate the message, we use the return keyword to tell python to return the values for external use.
Annotations
In python there are some cool tricks to annotate your functions to give other developers more information. This helps you too! That way you wont come back later on and wonder “What does this code do?”. Let’s review annotations.
#Function that adds 2 to an integer def add_two(num:int) -> int: """
Arguements:
num: Can be any integer.
Returns:
An integer that has been increased by 2. Function that adds 2 to any integer. """
return num + 2
This function looks a little different than our previous functions. Let’s examine this code from top to bottom. First, we have a # above our function. If you are experienced with python you know what this is, but if you are new, then this is a comment. ALWAYS comment your code. This comment will be extremely helpful when you have to go back to this section, or if someone else has to go back to this section. Next, the line that defines our function looks extremely different, but let’s examine why this helps. Our argument is followed by a colon which is followed by the data type of what the argument should be. Outside of our parenthesis, we have an arrow that points to the data type that our function will return. Keep in mind that these aren’t rules, so python will not enforce the data types. For example, if you pass the function a float, then python will perform the operation and return a float. They are just annotations. The last thing thats different is the comment inside our function. This is called a docstring, and they are used to give information to the developer using the function. This is faster than going back looking for the file, then the function, then figuring out what it does. The docstring typically list the arguements and what they take, what the function returns, and a brief explanation. They can be as long as you like, but this does not mean they should be long.
Bonus
Python functions cannot be empty, but there is a cool trick to be able to have an empty function.
def bonus():
pass
The pass keyword literally tells python to skip over. This way you can have an empty function, but you can use the keyword in a variety of ways. For example, debugging and testing.
KEEP IN MIND it’s generally not very good practice to leave empty functions in your code.
Wrap Up
Functions are literally the most useful thing in programming. Why? Because it leads to writing less code since you are reusing it, it leads to less time debugging since you can isolate issues faster, and it leads to better code maintenance since you can update a couple lines of code in a central place. This is also known as object oriented programming or OOP for short. | https://medium.com/swlh/python-functions-3789ba401f6d | ['Alejandro Colocho'] | 2021-02-03 21:49:42.446000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Python Programming', 'Python', 'Object Oriented', 'Data Science'] |
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Global market severely affected as Trump rocks the trade agreement over slow nods from China | Global market severely affected as Trump rocks the trade agreement over slow nods from China Uttara Jindal May 6, 2019·1 min read
By: Uttara J Malhotra
Global markets have been in doldrums as US threatens to raise tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods to 25 percent from the initial 10 percent. This seems to be tactic being used by Trump to mount pressure on China to speed up its trade agreement.
The recent tweets by Trump are indicative of his certain frustration when he has remarked at Chinese trade agreement “moving too slow.” At the equity market side, that was largely depending on the trade agreement coming through, the numbers have fallen sharply. The evident trade war is already being reported to have lead to loss of billions of dollars for both countries, not to mention, inflicting collateral damage on export-reliant economies and companies from Japan to Germany.
It is being reported that Chinese shares have plunged more than 6 percent, while U.S. stock market has fallen 1.6 percent. Oil prices have sunken deep down and the Chinese yuan has also taken a beating. | https://medium.com/@uttarajindal.sgi/global-market-severely-affected-as-trump-rock-the-trade-agreement-over-slow-nods-from-china-a89981022ba0 | ['Uttara Jindal'] | 2019-05-08 16:46:06.124000+00:00 | ['Trade', 'Chin', 'USA', 'Trump', 'Oil And Gas Industry'] |
I Deleted All Social Media From My Life and This Is What Happened | An assessment after 1 month:
It’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
It wasn’t that hard. Maybe because the decision had had time to mature for many months before I made it. And because I knew why I was doing it.
The hardest part was not being able to share my photographic work on Instagram anymore. Because I am a photographer too. But I decided that my mental health was more important than that.
Removing all forms of social media from my life has brought many benefits. Here is a summary.
I am much more focused.
Scrolling teaches us to be deconcentrated. To unplug our mind and put it under an infusion of uninteresting scrolling images before our empty gazes.
I have regained some of my ability to focus.
Just like the concentration I had as a child. When I grew up, I missed those long afternoons spent reading. It was as if I couldn’t focus anymore. Now I understand why.
I am also less distracted, thanks to the drastic reduction in notifications.
I now can focus on what matters.
On myself. What I want to do with my life. Without any unsolicited outside influence. I am in my own little bubble.
“Remove all these useless tools. It’s a wonderful world.” — The Social Dilemma
I have more time.
I used to get lost in endless scrolling. I grew lazy. Do you feel mentally tired? A good scrolling session doesn’t require to turn on any brain cell.
Which means that I was losing one to several hours of my day, every day.
Now that I no longer have this easy and constant distraction, I read a lot more. Up to 1 or 2 hours more each day. It feels good to focus your attention on something really meaningful, something that adds value to your life.
My screen time has decreased a lot. The only screen time I have now is when I’m working on my laptop. And that’s already enough.
I have a lot more time in general. Less time for a ‘fake community’, more time for my real community: my loved ones.
I have realized that, contrary to what we are led to believe, life is better without.
They have created a false need. But when we no longer have it, we lack nothing. On the contrary, it’s as if I had freed myself.
Social media have only brought one positive thing in my life. When I was younger and discovered myself as a homosexual. It made it easier for me to see that there was a community, people like me. I could learn from what I saw of them, and that helped me to build my identity.
But I’m sure I would have done just as well without it.
We don’t need it. Why would you want to see what other people’s lives are like? You only see what they allow you to see.
It makes us envious. Curious in an unhealthy way. Narcissistic. It puts us in competition with each other. It erases our individuality.
Why make a spectacle of us?
I believe that this constant need to show ourselves reveals a void in our lives. | https://medium.com/the-ascent/i-deleted-all-social-media-from-my-life-and-this-is-what-happened-8aabbd8d15db | ['Auriane Alix'] | 2020-10-22 18:33:36.180000+00:00 | ['Self', 'Mental Health', 'Social Media', 'Life', 'Self Improvement'] |
How to Find Jobs in Canada (Off-Campus)| 7 Tips to Ensure You Land That Interview! | If you are reading this post, first of all — Congratulations! You’ve reached a major milestone in your life — Be it completing school or simply having made the decision to look for new opportunities. And for those of you who are in the process of planning to move to Canada in order to further your career, great choice!
The tips and strategies I share in this post have certainly helped me in my journey to becoming a Business and Data Analytics professional and should generally apply to any kind of job-hunt, no matter the field or country; My personal experience, however, is rooted in Canada — particularly the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). I’ve had the fortune of facing the job-hunt twice since 2019 — once after graduating from my Master’s program as an international student and the other time while pivoting into a new role amidst the pandemic.
I find that the most prominent issue faced while seeking employment is the frustration surrounding not getting enough interview callbacks after having applied to a laundry list of jobs. It’s common for such feelings of frustration to compound into despair within no time especially if you’re a newcomer to the country, feeling the pressure of settling into a new country whilst managing your immigration status and finances. Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s perfectly normal to feel that way, and it’s all part of the process — A process that millions of us have lived through with much success
Hopefully, the tips I have to provide will prepare you to take the brunt of the job hunt (it rhymes!) and keep you on track to landing those interviews back to back.
Watch my YouTube video where I talk about this topic in detail, and with examples. If you’re crunched for time, no worries! Scroll below for a quick checklist of focus items (in that particular order).
1. LinkedIn is King
Set up your profile today and start connecting with professionals in your area of interest. Make sure your profile is complete and up to date.
Tip: Ensure search engines are indexing your profile in the search results by setting your profile link to public
2. Build a Personal Brand
Your online presence matters. Though optional, it is highly recommended you maintain an online portfolio showcasing your interests and skills. It could be a website, an article or a blog; a social media account, or an educational platform that you have contributed to (e.g YouTube, Kaggle, GitHub).
Food for thought: Imagine you are a recruiter at a large firm and want to know more about the candidate (yourself) in order to make a decision about contacting them. Where would you go?
3. Resumé Resumé Resumé
I cannot stress the importance of having a crisp, clean, and effective resume. It is so important that I had to say it thrice for effect! If you think about it, this is the one document showcasing your lifetime’s worth of experiences and achievements. So spend some time and craft it wisely.
Tip: Avoid using online resume templates that have graphics and symbols as Application Tracking Systems (ATS) are usually unable to accurately parse non-text objects. Wherever possible, upload the file in a Word .docx or .pdf format.
4. Build a Network (a.k.a Make Friends with Professionals)
In the process of building your personal brand and resume, you will have gained a better understanding of where your strengths and interests lie. It’s a good time to then start thinking about how you can leverage this newfound awareness to connect with like-minded professionals in the area of your interest. LinkedIn can be a great place to start extending your network beyond your peers from school or coworkers from previous jobs. Reach out to industry experts with the sole purpose of seeking information, advice, and/or support on challenges and experiences — You may even end up learning about a job opportunity not published online.
Networking is a good way to get insight into the industry and gives you an opportunity to learn from others’ experiences. It is also a great way to practice ‘selling’ your personal brand to others.
5. Find Jobs (Literally!)
Okay! By now you will have laid the foundation for your job search. You look great on paper, you look great online, and have even managed to make trusted friends in organizations who can potentially vouch for your greatness! The next step is to actually perform the search. Indeed, Glassdoor and Randstad are some popular job boards. Personally, LinkedIn is my most preferred platform when it comes to learning about different companies and job vacancies. I would also recommend attending career fairs to learn about companies that are actively hiring and/or companies that you would not have heard of otherwise. Once you’ve done your homework and shortlisted a set of target companies that you think would be a good fit, simply log in to their respective careers websites and start an application!
6. Customize your Resume and Cover Letter
Tailor your resume and cover letter with the keywords mentioned in the job description. This is particularly helpful in case companies are using AI tools to match candidates’ applications with the posted job description. Besides the benefit of passing AI checks, using the same jargon as the company can help the recruiter better understand how you could potentially add value to their team.
7. Be Open to Learning
Chances are there will be multiple job listings that match your interests exactly but you find that you only meet, say, 60% of their criteria for eligibility. Don’t be discouraged, but also avoid applying for it just to try your luck. Make an effort to close any gaps in your skillset by taking up online courses or by doing some extra reading on the side (this prepares you for more types of opportunities, in fact!). Hiring Managers appreciate when you go the extra mile to improve yourself.
In Conclusion
In all likelihood, you’ll be switching jobs a couple of times in your career, and having a framework that you can build from is super advantageous. Hopefully, I’ve been able to help you lay the foundation for the journey you’re about to embark on with this post. I wish I could tell you that there was one tried-and-tested job-hunt strategy that works for everyone, but unfortunately, there isn’t :(
Rest assured, you will learn something new in this process — something that’s unique to your own journey. It’s all onward and upward thereafter. Good luck!
If you found this information helpful, or know a friend who might benefit from the same, let them know by sharing this link. You can also subscribe to my YouTube or find me on Instagram @krithisudhir where I will be sharing insightful content on similar topics and strategies that helped me get set up for success. Thank you | https://medium.com/@krithisudhir/how-to-find-jobs-in-canada-off-campus-7-tips-to-ensure-you-land-that-interview-7e17137425aa | ['Krithi Sudhir'] | 2022-01-04 23:47:36.157000+00:00 | ['Interview', 'Career Advice', 'Canada', 'Job Hunting', 'Resume'] |
How to Get Better at Talking to People | This is how I did it
Happy Saturday everyone. Let me preface the following advice by stating that I am in no way the best talker-to-people out there. But, I do know of a way to get better at it from personal experience. How is that, you may ask?
Grab a phone and call a bunch of random strangers. That’s how I did it. Now, why the hell did I do that and why might you want to? Story time. Grab some popcorn.
About a year back, my buddy and I decided we wanted to be wholesalers. For those of you who don’t know, wholesaling is just sourcing deals for real estate investors at a discounted price. Whatever you lock a property down for, you tack on whatever mula you want to make and then sell it to the investor for that price. In the end, you make whatever you sold it for minus what you got it for. Essentially, you’re the middle man.
But how does one find the deals in the first place? By pounding the damn phones all day. That’s how. At least, that’s one of the cheapest ways. So as a couple of penny-pinching college seniors at Penn State, that was the approach we took.
Now let me tell you, if you’ve never cold-called before, few things get your heart jumping more than calling a bunch of strangers to ask if they’d like to sell you their home for less than it’s worth. In other words, I was sh*tting bricks.
Two things are sure to happen in this scenario. The first is that you will get a bunch of different responses that fall on a spectrum from downright rude on one side to incredible friendly on the other, with most falling in the middle.
The second is that you will slowly but surely get more comfortable talking to strangers with every call you make. Don’t get me wrong, you will still pace around and pretend there’s something else you should be doing rather than calling stranger number 43 — “God I REALLY need to organize my wallet right now.”
But that thought of “OHHH GOD IT’S HAPPENING” when you hear the ringing on the other line will lessen over time. And when you take a step back and notice that you wouldn’t rather die than the person actually picking up the phone, congratulations, you’re getting better!
It’s no secret that talking to people is a vital skill; one that when mastered will serve its masters very well. And it’s no coincidence that tons of successful people suggest getting into sales because guess what! You’re learning transferable skills! Specifically, you’re honing your skill in the art of interaction; of dealing with people.
Now, you might be thinking Oh I’m just naturally bad at talking to people, that would never work for me. Nonsense. Talking to people is a skill like any other, and like other skills, you only get better by putting in the reps.
That said, in my experience, forcing yourself to talk to strangers on the phone is a really good way to get those reps in. So if you’re like me and want to get better at talking to people, grab a phone and a list of numbers and start calling peeps! | https://medium.com/@geofflane/how-to-get-better-at-talking-to-people-4b543ae19f36 | ['Geoff Lane'] | 2020-12-26 18:35:31.737000+00:00 | ['Skills', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Growth', 'Entrepreneur', 'Sales'] |
New Year’s Eve All Hilarities In One Immaculate Occasion | New is the time of felicities people celebrate the new year eve with multiple festive activities. The most exhilarating things that we can enjoy on the eve of a new year can bring so lost enjoyments back in our pocket. So we have decided to bring all this festive exhilaration in one place so you can fully enjoy this once in a year moment.
Mesmeric Pyrotechnics
Fireworks are the most fascinating. People use different sorts of arsonists to excite themselves and also others. New year’s eve is the one place where you are comfortable celebrating whatever you want to do. Pyrotechnics are usually the most excitable way that most people use just at the time of new years eve. However, People go crazy just before the time of the new Year incipient moment. Sometimes pyrotechnics are dangerous as they are explosive so you need to be careful to celebrate your festival with the arsenite of pyrotechnics.
Exclusive Cuisines That Are Alluring
New years eve surely brings a lot of happiness for everyone the departure of the years reminds us that how we have spent our last year and how we are going to spend the upcoming year. People prepare mouthwatering dishes for the celebration as they want to enjoy the most fascinating moment of the year. lavish dine is everyone’s choice and why not you want to e3njoy the most of your festive occasions.
Frolicsome Outing
You must be wondering that how people manage to gather in an influx especially, on the special occasion of a new year. People came together to different places to enjoy the year’s most fascinating festival. New years eve just can not be better without gathering at a festival. It will be all inspiring tonight as the people will be in the search of that magical moment. | https://medium.com/@medicalboy5008/new-years-eve-all-hilarities-in-one-immaculate-occasion-1a9d518b3f0a | ['Kashan Shahnawaz'] | 2021-12-31 14:38:12.505000+00:00 | ['New Year', 'Festivals', 'Outing', 'New Year Party', 'Carnival Cruise'] |
I’m Not Going to Forget What I Saw at the Capitol | Jan 6th, Copyright C. Schreck
“If you brought a weapon, it’s time to get your weapon!”
There is a man standing on the windowsill of the Capitol building, screaming, the glass shattered behind him. Squat, husky, bearded, wearing a cowboy hat. He brandishes a crowbar in one hand and a bullhorn in the other. Thousands of voices are yelling for a charge forward. “Now or neveerrrrr!” someone shouts behind me. “Everybody push!!!” Yells a woman. I wish the crowd wasn’t so dense so I could turn to see her, she doesn’t sound like the type who would encourage insurrection in her day-to-day life. The crowd is reaching a boiling point and the anger seems to be contagious. I’m scanning my immediate surroundings and see another photographer trying to move out. “I’m following you.” I say grabbing the stranger’s shoulder. “This is getting fucking dangerous.”
A few times during Wednesday, January 6th I felt like danger was imminent. As protestors climbed the inauguration risers on their way to attack the building, I am keenly aware of how heavy we are and how I can feel hollow space below us. Angry marchers carrying various flags would bang flagpoles on the wooden floor as if to summon yet more glorious patriotism but I could feel each hollow bang with my feet. We are packed too tightly to breath at times, I worry that a small bomb or sudden disturbance will cause a stampede. I am aware of how people look at my camera and sound equipment and ask who I work for with an angry sneer. Almost every outlet is fake news and no one is hiding their hostility. Lastly, as the crowd cheers on protestors beating the door, a man yells, “Let them fire!” and I feel sick to my stomach. The crowd roars.
An hour earlier, on my journey from the president’s speech at the ellipse to the West entrance of the Capitol, I climbed up the risers to the lower platform, under the very recognizable dais where presidents take the Oath of office. I passed several people sporting Metro police gear on my way up. One man holding a police tear gas canister showed it off proudly. “How did you get that?” I asked, “Pulled it off a cop!” I asked him how he got close enough to police to pull an item from them and not get hurt, I didn’t understand until I saw the interaction with the two groups that rioters were easily pulling helmets shields and mace canisters through the half-opened swinging doors. I moved to enter the hidden stairwell within the scaffolding to the upper risers and shifted to let a petite, older lady come through. She was wearing a full police helmet proudly. A young men slapped her back and congratulated her, “I don’t know you but damn I’m proud of you!” the shirtless 20-something lauded. The woman could have been a grandmother, her face was so sweet.
Finally on the upper level, 50 feet or so from the door I can see the entire scope of this. I would estimate fifteen thousand people on this upper deck. The chant “Fight for Trump” is overwhelming. There’s one entryway on the West side and younger men decked in militia gear are pushing into the entryway. I’m also now aware the crowd is so tight that whatever decision they make, you are going to be a part of it, whether you want to or not. When I hear “PUSH!” I force my way away from the door, landing a few feet under the window as it’s being broken. Viewers look on with cel phones trained in, everyone is streaming, everyone is gathering likes. The crowd wants this, they all want it, there is no going back, “Give me liberty or give me death!” they scream.
I don’t want to forget this moment. I don’t want it to be twisted in the weeks that follow as arm chair MAGA fans discuss how peaceful it actually was and that there were only “ a few bad apples” or probably invaded by that faceless, omnipresent enemy: ANTIFA. This was a tidal wave. The men breaking the windows, kicking at the West entrance doors from above were elevated, on display, visible to everyone. A rabid crowd cheered them on. We all saw what was happening.
This isn’t to say people didn’t try to stop the destruction. In one video I capture, the breaking of a window with a crow bar, a man with a red had steps in to stop it. There is a struggle that pushes a large group of us down several steps. “That’s Antifa, trying to STOP us” a woman next to me says angrily. I turn to look at her and have a hard time reconciling the words with the person, we could just as easily be in line next to each other at a Starbucks, making polite conversation as we wait for peppermint mochas. “Go home if you do not want to go inside this building” says a second bullhorn man. “Fuck that shit!” responds Peppermint Mocha, “Break it! Break it! Break it!.”
A woman accuses a man who is trying to stop destruction of being a traitor.
When we stand again there is an older man chiding the group, a salt and pepper dad-type. “You’ve already broken through the glass door over there, what are you doing with this window?” Peppermint Mocha focuses in on the older man, “WE HAVE TRAITORS AMONG US!” She alerts the crowd. “He’s trying to stop everybody! This guy here! He’s trying to stop them!” Another voice joins her, “He’s Antifa!”
I want this burned into your memory: Those who tried to stop the destruction of a government building, who tried to stop rioters with the intention of occupying it to overturn an election, they were accused of being Antifa.
On the video I watch later I am able to see guns, knives, and several militia insignias. There are 3 percenters, Proud Boys, local militias with little or no online presence. Some seem made up as a search only returns video game references or memes. The jokes are a deflection, a distraction, a way to say, “It wasn’t that serious.” Until it was. The real winners of the day are Army Navy surplus stores and the merch tables I think to myself. Everyone is covered in MAGA gear, flags, facepaint. It’s not a politician anymore or even something like a favorite sports team. It’s an ideology, a religion, it thinks for you and makes your decisions. It takes the coffee out of your hand and puts a crowbar in it, it fills you with anger and drags you to this place here and now. It paints the world a certain color and gives you lenses where you can clearly identify those you need to keep close or remove from your life. It tears out the guardrails of critical thinking. The people around me are open antennas, divining rods, from select sources they absorb any message and act on it. I’m in a sea of gas-soaked rags and someone will light a match any minute now.
“NOW OR NEVER!” I hear again, this time closer. “FUCKING BREACH” the voice screams, directly behind me. Bullhorn man steps into the window and continues, “I’ll give you all the information you need. This is not a peaceful protest,” he continues, “they are hitting us in the head with batons!” To his left a line of men are ramming into the doors yelling “Heave! Ho!” I don’t find out until later the pushing is in fact crushing an officer. This may be where you can forgive some people for not knowing the gravity of what they were doing, the entryway vestibule is long and someone at standing height would not be visible to some of the crowd, those pushing a few feet back could not have known they were hurting a person. Thankfully, he did survive. How culpable is a crowd for cheering this on without understanding what was going on just out of sight? Those who could see the pain as he screamed and bled didn’t stop, who can say if those behind would have either? Those who have tried to stop or reason with the crowd have been denounced as traitors and Antifa. “They’re using live ammunition inside,” I hear someone announce, “a woman was shot.” My stomach sinks, someone has died for this, for all of this.
The destruction of doors and windows is visible to most in the crowd.
“This is your country,” Bullhorn continues, “they’ve already taken it away! What are you going to do fucking SIT HERE?! Get your weapons ready!” As I’m following my new photographer friend down through the crowd a loud bang echos, tear gas begins to clear the crowd quickly. My fears of being trampled dissipate and the crowd moves swiftly and quickly down the stairs and out.
Freezing, overwhelmed, scared, I reach the courtyard below and look back. The sun is setting making DC an ominous gray-blue. A cloud of tear gas is visible, the capitol lights turning on look like fire. I turn away and work on getting to a safe place.
A half hour later, in a hotel with the heat on full blast, I warm my purple toes in a hot shower while files transfer to a hard drive. I’ve been shut off from news most of the day thanks to an overload of streaming cel users. I can’t understand the scope of this. I nervously flip between stations wondering why I can’t hear anyone playing the “Fight for Trump!” chant (but surprised to hear “Hang Mike Pence” which must have come from the East side or the lower part of the West.) A friend checking in confirms the woman being shot and sends the video which had accidentally aired on CNN un-edited a few moments before. She is wheeled on a stretcher, her chest covered in blood. In a moment of error the network has shown her naked, a wound above her bare breasts, the EMT is giving her CPR but it’s a foregone conclusion. Her open eyes are lifeless. I put my phone down and silence it.
I’ve not eaten anything since my red-eye the night before and walk down to the lobby to see if there is a vending area. The small room of coolers and pre-packaged sandwiches is overrun with riot attendees. I grab several bags of chips and fruit and wait to pay behind the red hats. The conversations filling the room confidently describe the innocence of those involved, the peaceful intentions, the spotting of infiltrators. I know how information grows and evolves in these groups and I know in a short time with these people, as it will be with my family, the story will change. There are only minutes until a fresh wave of videos purporting false flags, infiltrators, deep fakes, crisis actors… I can practically write them in my head. I can hear the fiction in its infancy coming out of the mouths of people. The new version of today grows in realtime and crystalizes, it morphs around me. 4 years of patient reason with Trump supporters is pushing down on me, the air around me is thick, their laughter is shameful.
In the hours that follow, my uncle sends me an InfoWars video showing “proof” the protest was peaceful. The video shows a bewildered older man who witnessed no violence but is sure of the event’s innocence. It shows no proof. Another video shows a man displaying cel phone footage of “Antifa busses with police escorts.” As it turns out, there were white shuttles with escorts — for the event organizers. “Are you starting to see?!” he writes. For him this is definitive proof, no other evidence is needed.
Over the weekend, safe at home, I facetime with my conservative mother, she listens patiently but my description of what has happened is met with resistance. “Mom we are blood, do you think I’m not telling you the truth? Everyone could see what was happening. Everyone wanted it to happen.”
“Well,” she responds, “I just know that you are very liberal.” The debate continues until I sit at the computer and show her the video I’ve shot. “Well… we’ll see.” The conversation trails off, and we eventually say our goodbyes. I love my family but I feel lost.
I don’t think those who condoned the riot — and even those who were there cheering in the crowd — will come to terms with what January 6th really was. They will find a comfortable storyline for the day and let the ugly parts wash away safely, conveniently erased. They will construct a story that lets them be there and be heroic without the guilt. I will not forget the voices of the people around me at the Capitol. You will not whitewash what you’ve done here today, I am not letting you write a new history where you avoid blame. I’ve seen you, I’ve recorded you, and I will remember your words. | https://medium.com/@carriemakesmovies/im-not-going-to-forget-what-i-saw-at-the-capitol-11d620984f95 | ['Carrie Schreck', 'Truly Fake'] | 2021-09-11 06:32:52.459000+00:00 | ['Capitol Riot', 'Trumpism', 'Capitol Building', 'Trump', 'Capitol'] |
A Weakness is Something You Can Change… | I have been narrowing down everything in my life into two categories. Things I can do something about and things that I can not do anything about.
I am speaking from personal experience when I say that I think we spend too much time dwelling on things that we can not control. Everything from our partners, what our co-workers or bosses are doing, to the way we look .
It is a harsh reality that we can control a very small percentage of what goes on in our lives. When you start letting go of what you can not control your world starts changing.
On a personal level, if there is something about you that you can not change it is not a weakness, these are the things that define you and your unique perspective of the world. Lean into your perceived weaknesses and share them with the world. You may be surprised at who shows up to thank you for doing so. | https://medium.com/@jonjkuhn/a-weakness-is-something-you-can-change-2c7cc9e9d1f4 | ['Jon Kuhn'] | 2020-12-26 20:10:47.821000+00:00 | ['Positive Thinking', 'Self Image', 'Positive Mindset'] |
Healthy Apps: Use or Not to Use? | Healthy Apps are mobile Applications which are used for implementing regular positive health practices in peoples’ life. Also some of these Apps have functions to monitor users’ health status, these means the applications provide some basic statistics using the data users added to the App. Healthy Apps may be used for developing different habits and health practices.
First of all, let’s discuss sports Apps. Some of them provide online workout with a coach. Workout may be recorded or may be in real-time, in this case the coach can give you feedback on your practice and explain to you how to do exercises properly.
Secondly, there is such a category as “healthy lifestyle” Apps. These Apps usually remind you to drink water, do some sports and sometimes help to eat healthy food and control for calories and proteins, fats and carbohydrates. Some healthy Apps can be connected with smart bracelets or smart watches, this would allow to take into account user’s activity and sometimes basic parameters such as heart rate.
Thirdly, mental health Apps, which is a new category of healthy Apps which allow users who can not afford therapy to get support and somehow deal with mental health issues (Baumel, 2019). However, you should be careful using mental health Apps as not all of them were created with the support of specialists and almost none of them were proved to be successful for dealing with mental health diseases (Wang et al., 2020). What is more, according to Wang (2020) research some mental health Apps may be harmful for their users’ mental health.
Fourthly, new applications for women have recently become popular. These are Kegel exercise Apps to strengthen the pelvic floor. They are usually used by women who are recovering from childbirth and sometimes by women who got testimony from the doctors to strengthen the pelvic floor. These Apps usually explain the way Kegel exercises should be done and also users can connect the Kegel device with special sensors detecting the technique of the exercise. When the device is connected to the app the App sends notifications to the user to correct the technique.
As you can see, there are a lot of different Apps which are supposed to help people to be healthy and control their health status. However, nowadays we can not be sure that these applications would be useful for us. Peng et al. (2016) have conducted a qualitative study of healthy Apps usage. Six focus groups and five individual interviews were conducted in the Midwest region of the U.S. with a mixture of 44 smartphone owners of various social economic status. As a result you can see below some reasons to use (or not to use) healthy Apps.
For some people it is hard to adopt healthy Apps and get used to the new format of self health care. Some people have difficulties with continuing using healthy Apps, they forget about them or just do not see the result and stop using the App. Online activity may be much more interesting and instead of doing sports online some people prefer to watch new movies. Lack of motivation does not allow people to regularly use healthy Apps. Lack of motivation is also related to the absence of a tutor in the App, so not everyone has enough motivation to do some exercises without the need to report about the results. However, Apps know how to motivate you. Tracking for awareness and progress is an important part of any App. The majority of them provide some statistics about a user’s success in training or diet and sometimes routine exercises may be done in a playful way. To better motivate users to use the App there are “reminder” functions. However, for some users these reminders may be annoying and this is the other reason to stop using the App. Goals setting is important both for those who know what they want to improve and for newcomers who are just starting taking care of their health. So, Apps provide the “goals setting” function which is a great way to motivate yourself and continue training or following the healthy diet. Information provided in the App and ability to get personalised guidance attracts people as all the necessary information and guidelines are gathered in one place. So, the user does not have to look for any unknown term, technique or special diet — he or she can get it in the App. However, sometimes users are not sure about the credibility of the information they get in the App. So,App’s rating and reviews from other users is an important characteristic of the App. The reason why some people even do not start using healthy Apps is that they care about their personal information and do not want to share it with anyone. Each App should have confidentiality policies, however sometimes the leak of information may happen.
So, it is up to you to decide whether to use healthy Apps or not. Stay tuned! | https://medium.com/@healthy-spacer/healthy-apps-use-or-not-to-use-2049f527a2a5 | ['Healthy Spacer'] | 2020-12-16 19:12:29.455000+00:00 | ['Habits', 'Mobile Apps', 'Smartphones', 'Healthy Mind', 'Mental Health'] |
Working with Geospatial data — Part:4, Cloud Optimized GeoTiffs | Introduction
What is CoG? — A cloud optimized GeoTIFF is a regular GeoTIFF file, aimed at being hosted on a HTTP file server. Its internal structure is friendly for HTTP get requests.
It uses famous Byte serving technique. It is the technology that lets you stream a video or music file online and skip forward or backwards through the content. Instead of having to download the full video file, you can tell the server that you want to start at a particular point.
The COG format works the same way by allowing users and processes to access just the portion of a raster file that they need.
COG can do the same thing to Geospatial data what youtube did for video streaming
Why CoG?
Efficient Data Access — Suppose we have 10GB GeoTIFF stored in cloud server. Now we want to make NDVI map of small portion of dataset.
Before CoG — we would have to download whole 10GB dataset then clip your area of interest, then do the processing.
After CoG —Download only desired part of dataset and do the processing. It makes process super efficient.
2. Reduced Duplication of Data — Accessing COG’s with cloud workflows enables diverse software to all access a single file online instead of needing to copy and cache the data.
3. Image Processing of the fly — With CoGs, we can create an micro-service in Flask, Django etc to do image processing on the fly. CoG also removes the need of gdal2tiles like services to view GeoTIFFs on the browers. Several web based platforms like Planet.com, Digital Globe etc are using CoG to do processing on the fly.
For Example — Farmshots is using Planet’s CoG dataset to calculate NDVI on the fly. They didn’t donwload any images from planet’s to their servers rather did all the processing on the fly fetching data from Planet’s server.
Farmshots applying an NDVI to Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF’s pulled in dynamically from Planet
4. Legacy Compatibility — Traditional GIS software is able to treat Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF’s just like normal GeoTIFF’s, so data providers need only produce one format
Try it yourself — Try putting any Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF to a storage service like S3 etc. Just copy and paste the link in the urls given below. You could visualize your dataset on the fly.
Liked it? Do you want to have customization in the processing? Do you want to know how Farmshots like company leverages CoG to do custom processing?
I have create two Github repository
CoG converter — This will convert your standard GeoTIFF file to Cloud optimized GeoTIFF. Repo link Tiling — This repo will help you create an API via which you can do custom processing like visualization of Elevation models, calculate NDVI or even run Deep Neural Networks on the fly. Repo Link [Updated]
For detailed tutorial on cloud optimized GeoTIFF, refer this link. | https://medium.com/@manishsahu/working-with-geospatial-data-part-4-cloud-optimized-geotiffs-d0bf2f456f19 | ['Manish Sahu'] | 2020-06-26 08:17:57.224000+00:00 | ['Gdal', 'API', 'GIS', 'Geospatial', 'Python'] |
I have been very tentative about using social media to get word of my writing out there. | I have been very tentative about using social media to get word of my writing out there. But I do have a website now. And have found Medium a great place to find good reads and connections. I’m looking forward to reading the new memoir by Melissa Gouty. I met her through her publication on Medium. Thank you for these ideas. | https://medium.com/@ranjaniwriter/i-have-been-very-tentative-about-using-social-media-to-get-word-of-my-writing-out-there-1b5b5761a161 | ['Ranjani Rao'] | 2020-12-19 02:50:32.819000+00:00 | ['Marketing', 'Writing Life', 'Social Media'] |
Chasing Goodbyes | By Arindam Roy | Project: Mechanic of Machine Learning
Employees leaving a firm and the turnover process is perhaps the costliest loss to a lot of industries. An employee can choose to exits a firm due to a multitude of factors, ranging form retirement, poaching, dissatisfaction to the good old getting fired. In this article, I discuss how machine learning can help us predict employee attrition and change the way we leave our jobs.
The Challenge
Predicting why an employee would leave is close to impossible. Often times it is not due to a single factor, but a cumulation of them. Thus, predicting the people who would leave has been anybody's guess until recently. But now, with improving focus on employees and machine learning, we can find trends in the data to search for groups who are more likely to leave. Further, attention to the issues faced by these people can significantly bring down the employee turnover rates. So, the hypothetical business problem I have taken up is: to develop a risk model that forecasts the likelihood of employee attrition in a business based on historic data. In this exercise, I have used data created by IBM (available on Kaggle) as an example. I have done an in depth analysis and solution development of this dataset using logistic regression. You can find the analysis on my GitHub and my notes on logistic regression in the same repository.
List of all features
Hypothesis
The functional idea behind this activity is that an employee’s chance of attrition can be predicted by the feedback and metrics maintained. Further insights might lie in the data of whereabouts of the employee, like the distance from office, married or not, age, rate of travel, et cetera. This is proven when we compare the mean p-value of the group that stayed vs the group that left the firm.
About Logistic Regression
Logistic regression is a way of predicting a binary value feature, by calculating the probability of the feature based on all other feature values and fitting it to a probability curve, trained on historical data (The other features may not be binary in nature and can have any nature). Though this method in theory, can also be used for multi discrete value features as well, it is not usually recommended, as there are better models to do so. (Please see notes on repository for further understanding.)
Roadmap to implement
Now that we have an understanding of logistic regression, allow me to walk you through the implementation process. Firstly we check for any unclean data (Null value, blanks, etcetera | There is none for this case). Then, we do visualizations and draw observations and assumptions. Post this, we split the data into our train and test sets. We fit the data to our train model and predict for our test model values of people going out.
My Observations and Assumptions (Please find in repository)
My fit results (Please find in repository)
Business Solution
By implementing the above model, a firm can predict the employees who are at risk of leaving at an accuracy of 84%. The company can work with these employees on the pain-points and reduce the attrition rate, retaining people, culture, value and lastly, cost. For some, it can be as simple as the distance of commute, for others, it can be a bunch of issues, but striving to keep each employee will surely produce results in the long run. This model gives great opportunity and insight into the workforce for any employer.
An Ugly Truth
I realize that that up till this point, this article is written as if there were no evil in the world, so I would like to discuss the downsides of the model. Any employer can flip the use of this solution and can try to find & fire those at risk, generating revenue and keeping the sure-shot long term employees (This is one of many adverse uses ). But I would like to remind that such cynicism often leads to catastrophe, thus I am optimistic that this model cannot be used in the upside down fashion for sustainable purposes.
Conclusion
Machine learning has and will change the way we do a lot of things. Leaving our jobs seems to be just another one in the bucket. The solution developed looks to be robust for a rather small dataset and can be brought to great use. Implementing it correctly will generate huge amount of value. Implementing it for the wrong reasons will surely be perilous for everyone involved.
About project Mechanic of Machine Learning:
I am a mechanical engineer by education. Now, I want to deep dive in the world of Machine Learning, hence the name, mechanic of ML :D. I have taken up this project to understand the in-depth mathematics involved in regularly used ML algorithms. Under this project, I will be sharing useful material and links as I explore this domain. The objective is to learn and spread the same. Stay tuned to my GitHub for updates!
References: | https://medium.com/@arindamroy11235/chasing-goodbyes-91fc5d851922 | [] | 2021-01-14 02:07:38.077000+00:00 | ['Logistic Regression', 'Human Resources', 'Machine Learning'] |
Past Or Future Lives! – Transmigration To Reincarnation – Never Ending Story? | Past Or Future Lives! – Transmigration To Reincarnation – Never Ending Story?
Predestined Purpose in Life, speaking a strange language, unexplained talents, memories otherwise impossible, are some of our reincarnating evidence we have in these lives or other lives. Why does our possible past life recall fade through life? Is it only us humans that transmigrate – or does every living creature live a Never Ending Story?
Pablo Picasso, Blaise Pascal, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart are just a few names that are synonymous with ‘Child Prodigy’. How did such humans in such early life develop such maturity in their fields so quickly? Freak Evolution, Divine Intervention, Previous life consciousness spill-over or Past Life abilities passed along? – Or Transmigration of the Spirit?
An explanation for this ‘improbable knowledge’ is telepathy, however telepathy wouldn’t show such bias and isolated shared experiences of knowledge or higher callings. Telepathy is far more in the here and now. Reincarnation Recall, however, is far more highly accepted as the clearly remembered experiences or mysteriously acquired knowledge as far more personal (spiritual) and ‘actually lived’ first hand by the recipient.
Alternative explanations are that telepathy becomes the device, for the recipient to take on this knowledge or experiences, at a precise time of passing from the sender spirit. In any form, a question remains that why is it mainly children who are the recipients of these telepathic gifts? In either theory or reality, whether it is purely reincarnation or telepathy or both (as a device) they are still ultimately separated by the outcomes.
Transmigration or Reincarnation – memories and past life awarenesses fade as most of life gets in the way through our current lives. (Encouragement or discouragement of awareness can play a hinging part by those around us). Knowledge/Information can feasibly be sent telepathically by the living or deceased (via energy/frequency), however, shining talents and/or abilities of speaking and understanding other languages, composing a symphony at age of eight is clearly beyond fluke or telepathy.
Possession and manipulation by a spirit, (good or bad), is always a remote possibility, but we must ask ourselves – to what end?
Imprinting memories and personal nature as creatures do is still in the equation of all the possible explanations of the special knowledge and abilities, but the usual reincarnation testimonies are that of (actually living this ‘other’ life).
Consciousness Survival and the concept of time not existing outside of the paradigm of human or animal flesh brings assurance of life after death, and disparity of continued existence has to be fathomed in a whole new way. Whether depending on our earthly issues; such as guilt, anger, grievances, even non-acceptance, the non-time factor still exists and whether we choose or whether we are chosen for a different body and time is completely irrelevant to the scheme.
In any case, psychologists and psychiatrists helping patients with controlled regression, (moments of passing over in other lives), hear countless testimonies of similarities. These similarities being the similar experiences experienced as those who have experienced OBEs (Out Of Body Experiences). Ultimately, this consistent collaboration of evidence from far and wide does bring together a consensus, and hopefully this consensus builds upon a multitude of further questions and comfort for many.
Lucid Empire | https://medium.com/@imagetomedia/past-or-future-lives-transmigration-to-reincarnation-never-ending-story-ac6ea6f404ef | ['Lucid Being'] | 2019-01-02 20:05:18.251000+00:00 | ['Spirituality', 'Life', 'Marketing', 'Magic', 'Money'] |
20+ Electoral Maps Visualizing 2020 U.S. Presidential Election Results — DataViz Weekly Special Edition | All eyes on election maps! Yes, they could be misleading. And even widely misleading. But it can be at least so fascinating to look at them, especially at times like this! So, we have curated a list of over twenty reputable resources — as of now, to be precise, 24 and counting! — where you can watch the live results of the 2020 United States Presidential election in compelling data visualizations. At the same time, it is a great chance for you to investigate and understand how election maps (and some other graphics) can look and work in practice.
Vote counts may be different on different platforms and update as more data becomes available out there — it’s absolutely okay. The election results are still partial. Over the coming days, all numbers will be adjusted to match the real, final vote count. Just in case: We’ve added only reliable sources — notable, reputable media outlets.
Without further ado, check out maybe the most important data visualizations these days! (Electoral vote count numbers in the text last updated on November 9th, 2020, for each source.)
#1. ABC News
ABC News became one of the first major media outlets to launch an online election results mapping feature on the website. It happened even before Election Day, so the map displayed zero votes for all candidates at first.
U.S. presidential election results as currently shown on ABC News:
Biden 279
Trump 214
(Last updated here in the text on November 9th. Click the map link above to see the updated visualization(s) on the ABC website.)
Data source: National Election Pool (NEP) / Edison Research.
ABC’s election map project is based on a choropleth map visualization. Hover over the states to see the partial results as of now. Click on a state to drill down to the county level.
#2. Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera provides two views of the election results data: a cartographic map (or a cartogram) and a traditional geographic, choropleth map. Click on a state while exploring Al Jazeera’s election maps and you’ll see the latest results for the respective state.
U.S. presidential election results as currently shown on Al Jazeera:
Biden 290
Trump 214
(Last updated here in the text on November 9th. Click the map link above to see the updated visualization(s) on the Al Jazeera website.)
Data source: The Associated Press (AP).
#3. BBC
BBC graphically represents the latest election data in a choropleth map and in a cartogram. It is possible to click on a state to drill down to the county level right away.
U.S. presidential election results as currently shown on BBC:
Biden 279
Trump 214
(Last updated here in the text on November 9th. Click the map link above to see the updated visualization(s) on the BBC website.)
Data source: National Election Pool (NEP) / Edison Research.
#4. Bloomberg
Bloomberg offers a look at the key vote statistics with the help of a cartogram and a choropleth map. You can see the percentages when hovering over a state. To learn more about the situation and outcome in a certain state, click on it and you’ll be directed to the dedicated page with a lot of numbers shedding light on how the election has unfolded in that state.
U.S. presidential election results as currently shown on Bloomberg:
Biden 290
Trump 214
(Last updated here in the text on November 9th. Click the map link above to see the updated visualization(s) on the Bloomberg website.)
Data source: The Associated Press (AP).
In addition, Bloomberg uses its own turnout model to estimate the percentage of total votes counted. So here you will also find other interesting graphics such as the “Turnout vs. Vote Margin” chart.
#5. CBS News
CBS News provides a cartogram to explore the vote count progress. Data with details by state and county are available in the table view right there below.
U.S. presidential election results as currently shown on CBS News:
Biden 279
Trump 213
(Last updated here in the text on November 9th. Click the map link above to see the updated visualization(s) on the CBS website.)
Data source: National Election Pool (NEP) / Edison Research.
#6. CNN
CNN has two choropleth maps for you to watch how the election of the United States President unfolds. There, you can check out CNN’s projection of the outcome and check out who is leading where in reality. It is easy to filter the battleground and flipped states using built-in options.
For details, hover around CNN’s election and click to drill down to counties.
U.S. presidential election results as currently shown on CNN:
Biden 279
Trump 213
(Last updated here in the text on November 9th. Click the map link above to see the updated visualization(s) on the CNN website.)
Data source: National Election Pool (NEP) / Edison Research; CNN also claims to produce a call “only after an extensive review of data from a number of sources.”
#7. CTV News
Canadian CTV News offers two basic visual ways to explore the latest election results data. There are a choropleth map and a cartogram available on the website. The election maps by CTV News allow you to mouse over the states to quickly find out who is taking the lead where. Click on the state you are interested in zooming into it and seeing county-by-county details.
U.S. presidential election results as currently shown on CTV News:
Biden 290
Trump 214
(Last updated here in the text on November 9th. Click the map link above to see the updated visualization(s) on the CTV website.)
Data source: The Associated Press (AP).
#8. Deutsche Welle
German DW’s U.S. electoral map choices also include the two most popular forms of geographic election data visualization. You are right, those are cartographic and choropleth. The way these visuals are configured on the DW website, they make it easy to explore who is winning in each state as well as take a closer look at the situation by county.
U.S. presidential election results as currently shown on DW:
Biden 290
Trump 214
(Last updated here in the text on November 9th. Click the map link above to see the updated visualization(s) on the DW website.)
Data source: The Associated Press (AP).
#9. The Economist
The Economist shows the breakdown of electoral votes by state using the bubble map data visualization technique. Plus, there is also another peculiar election map that displays the leader by county scaled according to the population density in the corresponding area. Hover around for more information.
U.S. presidential election results as currently shown on The Economist:
Biden 279
Trump 214
(Last updated here in the text on November 9th. Click the map link above to see the updated visualization(s) on The Economist’s website.)
Data source: Decision Desk HQ and The Economist.
#10. El País
Spanish newspaper El País has a pretty, interactive choropleth map that visualizes live results of the presidential election in the United States of America. As is always the case in such graphics, different colors help easily find out who of the two main candidates, Joe Biden or Donald Trump, is currently leading here and there. To get a little bit deeper understanding of how the race goes, just mouse over the states.
U.S. presidential election results as currently shown on El País:
Biden 279
Trump 214
(Last updated here in the text on November 9th. Click the map link above to see the updated visualization(s) on the El País website.)
Data source: unknown.
#11. The Financial Times
FT’s election map makes use of squares to visualize how many Electoral College votes the candidates are receiving in each state based on the latest data on how the vote count unfolds. Beyond the map, there are charts revealing whether Trump and Biden are performing as previously expected by experts.
U.S. presidential election results as currently shown on FT:
Biden 290
Trump 214
(Last updated here in the text on November 9th. Click the map link above to see the updated visualization(s) on the FT website.)
Data source: The Associated Press (AP).
#12. Fox News
The election map by Fox News is all choropleth. The view can be switched between states and counties. Everything is interactive, so feel free to hover and click around. Each state has an individual page that shows more details as well as historical data.
U.S. presidential election results as currently shown on Fox News:
Biden 290
Trump 214
(Last updated here in the text on November 9th. Click the map link above to see the updated visualization(s) on the Fox website.)
Data source: The Associated Press (AP).
#13. The Guardian
The Guardian visualizes the state and county results of the election in the United States in a choropleth map. In addition, it also makes good use of bubble maps to depict Electoral College votes as well as popular vote margins. The interactive form makes it easy to explore the details.
U.S. presidential election results as currently shown on The Guardian:
Biden 290
Trump 214
(Last updated here in the text on November 9th. Click the map link above to see the updated visualization(s) on The Guardian’s website.)
Data source: The Associated Press (AP).
#14. NBC
NBC provides a choropleth election map. For details on the outcome in a certain state, just hover over it. Or click on it to get on its individual page with county-level information and more election statistics including exit polls. Don’t miss out on the extra graphics representing data on early voting, and voting trends by demographics.
U.S. presidential election results as currently shown on NBC:
Biden 279
Trump 214
(Last updated here in the text on November 9th. Click the map link above to see the updated visualization(s) on the NBC website.)
Data source: National Election Pool (NEP) / Edison Research.
#15. The New Yorker
On The New Yorker, the electoral data is displayed in a choropleth map which can be changed to a cartogram. The results by state are clearly shown on hover. County information is also available — just click the state you want to explore.
U.S. presidential election results as currently shown on The New Yorker:
Biden 290
Trump 214
(Last updated here in the text on November 9th. Click the map link above to see the updated visualization(s) on The New Yorker’s website.)
Data source: The Associated Press (AP).
#16. The New York Times
The New York Times offers four interactive geographic visualizations of the 2020 U.S. presidential election data. In addition to the two most widespread election map types, choropleth (by winner) and cartographic (electoral votes), the newspapers created a bubble map to display the size of lead and a map with arrows to depict vote shifts in margin from 2016.
There are also other interesting graphics in the same project. For example, look at the charts showing how the vote count is progressing in the states where it is still ongoing, including vote share and vote margin over time.
U.S. presidential election results as currently shown on NYT:
Biden 279
Trump 214
(Last updated here in the text on November 9th. Click the map link above to see the updated visualization(s) on the NYT website.)
Data source: The Associated Press (AP) and National Election Pool (NEP) / Edison Research.
The New York Times also claims to “take into account a number of factors before declaring a winner,” including AP’s and Edison’s race calls, “as well as analysis of the votes that have been reported so far.”
#17. NPR
NPR’s electoral data visualization project includes three views of the election data. In addition to the “Geography” (choropleth) and “Electoral” (cartographic) maps, there is “Margins” (a diagram with bubbles). Hover for more information. Click to visit the states’ profiles featuring charts of demographic trends.
U.S. presidential election results as currently shown on NPR:
Biden 290
Trump 214
(Last updated here in the text on November 9th. Click the map link above to see the updated visualization(s) on the NPR website.)
Data source: The Associated Press (AP).
#18. POLITICO
POLITICO has a choropleth map visualizing states by leader and a cartogram showing electoral votes as of now. You can additionally investigate the ways left to win and the demographics of the flipped states. State profiles contain a lot of extra graphics representing the election outcome in each state.
U.S. presidential election results as currently shown on POLITICO:
Biden 290
Trump 214
(Last updated here in the text on November 9th. Click the map link above to see the updated visualization(s) on the POLITICO website.)
Data source: The Associated Press (AP).
#19. RBC
Russian RBC’s election map (choropleth, of course) is very simple but provides all the basic information. You can hover over the states to see the latest vote distribution across the United States.
U.S. presidential election results as currently shown on RBC:
Biden 273
Trump 217
(Last updated here in the text on November 9th. Click the map link above to see the updated visualization(s) on the RBC website.)
Data source: Bloomberg and Fox News.
#20. Reuters
Reuters maintains an interactive choropleth map that lets you click on a state to drill down to counties. A cartogram is helpful in understanding the weight of each state’s choice when it comes to Electoral College.
U.S. presidential election results as currently shown on Reuters:
Biden 279
Trump 214
(Last updated here in the text on November 9th. Click the map link above to see the updated visualization(s) on the Reuters website.)
Data source: National Election Pool (NEP) / Edison Research.
#21. USA TODAY
USA TODAY shares live results in a choropleth map. Hover or click to see the results in a certain state. Each state has its page where it is possible to see the vote details by county.
U.S. presidential election results as currently shown on USA TODAY:
Biden 290
Trump 214
(Last updated here in the text on November 9th. Click the map link above to see the updated visualization(s) on the USA TODAY website.)
Data source: The Associated Press (AP).
#22. Vox
Vox made a choropleth map to allow the readers to keep track of the 2020 election in a convenient manner. To see the results in a certain state, hover over it; to look into the situation, including how the candidates are performing across counties, simply click on the state you would like to explore.
U.S. presidential election results as currently shown on Vox:
Biden 279
Trump 214
(Last updated here in the text on November 9th. Click the map link above to see the updated visualization(s) on the Vox website.)
Data source: Decision Desk HQ.
#23. The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal’s election map visualizations include a cartogram, where states are sized proportionally according to electoral votes, and a choropleth map. Mouse over a state to see the latest ratings and click for further details.
U.S. presidential election results as currently shown on WSJ:
Biden 290
Trump 214
(Last updated here in the text on November 9th. Click the map link above to see the updated visualization(s) on the WSJ website.)
Data source: The Associated Press (AP).
#24. The Washington Post
The Washington Post’s election map is choropleth-only. It’s interactive, so feel free to move your mouse over it and click on the states you would like to learn more about. In addition to the map-based data visualization, you can take a look at several key states and what share of votes have been counted in each of them as of now and over time.
U.S. presidential election results as currently shown on The Post:
Biden 279
Trump 214
(Last updated here in the text on November 9th. Click the map link above to see the updated visualization(s) on the WaPo website.)
Data source: National Election Pool (NEP) / Edison Research and The Associated Press (AP). | https://medium.com/data-visualization-weekly/20-electoral-maps-visualizing-u-s-election-results-a1bec436d87f | [] | 2020-11-10 07:42:40.640000+00:00 | ['Election 2020', 'Data Visualization', 'Maps', 'Voting', 'Data Science'] |
An introduction to Delta-v | My new space-tech thriller, Delta-v, comes out on April 23! I thought I’d share some thoughts on the inspiration and research behind the book — and why it’s more science than fiction.
Cover letter that accompanied early Delta-v galleys
Delta-v (delta-vē ; noun, informal) — a change in velocity; a measure of the impulse needed to reach an intended trajectory; typically symbolized as ‘Δv’.
Dear Reader,
A new space race is on — and this time not just governments will take part.
As a boy growing up in the 70’s and 80’s, I was transfixed by all things space. Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series inspired me to dream of an interplanetary future. I watched every Shuttle launch, and spent countless hours in the library reading science fiction and perusing the works of space pioneers like Peter Glaser and physicist Gerard O’Neill — whose 1977 book, The High Frontier, fascinated me. O’Neill proposed 20-mile-long colony ships orbiting Earth in deep space, while Glaser planned to create a cislunar economy by building massive solar arrays in orbit to transmit clean electricity back to a (then) energy-starved world. At the time their plans received serious consideration within NASA and in mainstream media.
But new sources of fossil fuel soon ‘solved’ Earth’s energy crisis, and launch costs for the Space Shuttle remained stubbornly high. So O’Neill’s and Glaser’s visionary ideas faded from view.
And now here we are — 40 years later. Overuse of those same fossil fuels, whose momentary shortage once inspired orbiting solar arrays, is now heating our world to dangerous levels. A recent report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states that humanity has just 12 years to drastically reduce carbon emissions or face a ‘climate catastrophe.’
Avoiding the imminent effects of climate change will require nothing less than a complete rebuilding of the energy infrastructure of the world in the next several decades. And it will have to be done while still delivering economic opportunity to billions of people. But how?
One way is to follow O’Neill’s and Glaser’s plan and lift our most carbon-intensive industry — power generation — off Earth’s surface and into orbit, drastically reducing our impact on Earth’s ecosystem. In the process, we can unify humanity toward a common goal — preserving our home planet — while also sowing the seeds for sustainable economic growth and outward expansion into the solar system.
However, despite rocket reusability it still costs too much to launch large constructs into low Earth orbit. Even if money was no object and sufficient launch facilities existed, tens of thousands of rocket launches would also damage the environment.
So where do we obtain the resources necessary to build huge orbiting solar arrays and kick-start an entire space-borne economy without making things worse here on Earth? And how do we accomplish it before the worst effects of climate change set in?
The answer lies with near-Earth asteroids — some of which can be reached with less acceleration than it takes to reach our own Moon. Millions of tons of resources (iron, nickel, cobalt, water, nitrogen, and more) can be mined and returned from asteroids to cislunar space, where buyers in an off-world commodities market could use them to build solar arrays, off-world manufacturing plants, orbiting habitats, and more.
Delta-v tells the story of the very first such commercial asteroid mining expedition. Eight adventurers drawn from all walks of life — cavers, ex-soldiers, former astronauts, BASE jumpers, and mountain climbers — who undertake an epic journey that’s more science than fiction. It’s a story featuring heroes who already walk among us and whose tools are even now being forged by startups around the globe.
In the course of researching Delta-v, I met with real-world space entrepreneurs, billionaire rocket pioneers, NASA scientists, and economists. I visited rocket ship garages in the Mojave Desert and walked the corridors of NASA Headquarters.
My goal was to bring readers on a realistic, perilous voyage as humanity takes its first, tentative steps into the cosmos — realizing that the biggest risk of all is for humanity to remain here on Earth.
I hope you find that journey as thrilling and inspiring as I do.
Sincerely,
Daniel Suarez | https://medium.com/@Daniel_Suarez/an-introduction-to-delta-v-2ddabed2cd4a | ['Daniel Suarez'] | 2019-04-08 05:30:29.885000+00:00 | ['Deltav', 'Asteroid Mining', 'Space Exploration', 'Space Tech Thriller', 'Science Fiction Adventure'] |
SkillFlow — Designing a Slackbot. Personal Project, 2015 | Personal Project, 2015 | User Experience | Duration: 3 months
🐦 @hunterrice20
Problem
I was seeking to build a deeper foundation for my web development capabilities, and like any fledgling developer, I turned to Stack Overflow for programming help. For the most part, it served its purpose, but when it came to broader concepts, the deferred Q&A format became limiting.
I approached the best web developer I knew and sought to build a more interactive, real-time solution.
Ideation Process
Exploration
I liked the idea of utilizing the tight knit programming community and hackathon space to build the platform on.
Building on Slack was a natural decision, as it would facilitate integration into these existing communities.
User Persona
Starting in the hackathon universe, we would need to populate the platform with both students & mentors in order for the product to be useful and effective. I developed a basic user persona for each of our target demographics, and kept them close by for reference throughout the UX design process. | https://medium.com/@hunterrice/skillflow-designing-a-slackbot-3b3695c08ae7 | ['Hunter Rice'] | 2020-06-17 14:34:29.225000+00:00 | ['Slack', 'Hackathons', 'Stackoverflow', 'Conversational UI', 'Bots'] |
The Duality of Man — A moment of clarity | Everything we do hinges on a conflict of choice. Sometimes the conflict is between choices that are interchangeable and SOMETIMES… the conflict is between choices that are incompatible. And when these incompatible choices have equal appeal, there arises a problem of duality.
Peace thru war. Nothing reeks of duality more than this sentiment. Within a nation, a civil war rages on. A benevolent intermediary with the intention of instilling peace and bringing relief to the innocent, picks a side it decides is on the right side of the argument based on convictions held by both sides, which has unfortunately led to said civil strife. A very objective approach, relativity be damned! Before committing to a full-scale ‘involvement’, courtesy requires a communication to ‘those guys who are on the wrong side of things’, that they immediately rethink their stance and come in for a peaceful resolution. The ‘NO’ buzzer beeps from the other side as they say that ‘THEY ARE in the right of things’ and that they will continue to carry out their campaign to achieve the desired ends. Well now, that puts everyone in a quandary. Unfortunately, all situations arising from conflicting viewpoints are plagued by them. And when convictions are infallible, no one backs down.
Photo by Jordy Meow on Unsplash
A landing party is required, the intermediary decides. We will go there ourselves, identify the root cause, dispel the wrong ideals, by force if necessary, and all in the name of peace. Any bastard who is not going to see eye-to-eye on this, we will take them down. And so, with the good intent of making peace within a warring nation, the intermediary force goes en massé with the directive, kill… only to preserve the peace.
The fundamental flaw here (subjectively speaking), is that war is seen as a necessary and even an appealing choice to precede a movement towards peace, also an equally or more so an appealing choice (again, subjectively speaking). Because at cell level, among the fighting soldiers, the policy makers and the warmongers, duality rears its head, confusing and blurring all lines of morality; ‘No one wants a war, but everyone wants profit’, ‘The only way we can bring about peace to that nation is if we wage war against one faction and destroy it’, ‘Man I don’t wanna kill, but I will kill anyone who wants to kill me’. As each cell attempts to justify it conflicting convictions, the bigger meanings of life and morality are lost in the mists of duality. It is a system flaw built in to mankind. A flaw aimed at triggering natural selection through self-destruction. Unfortunately, we are not designed to be instinctively self-aware in this regard as a species but limited to achieving clarity on our own moments of duality as single, isolated cells.
Therein dawns realization; is any one person qualified to speak against the duality of man when we are all, to some measure, inflicted by it? | https://medium.com/@sulandesilva_26300/the-duality-of-man-a-moment-of-clarity-f0bf5d146c38 | ['Sulan De Silva'] | 2019-02-15 07:43:05.972000+00:00 | ['Duality Of Man', 'Duality', 'Morality', 'Peace And War', 'Moment Of Clarity'] |
TTC & … | 今天要來發摟一個我很不熟的題目：跨大西洋科技貿易聯盟。拜登上任以來第一次出訪，去了歐洲。除了G7峰會，他也要去布魯塞爾，跟Von der Leyen一起宣布EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council (TTC)。
去年年末，越接近美國選舉，各種重返跨大西洋合作的討論一時無兩；川普確定掰掰之後，布魯塞爾樂壞了，大西洋對面終於換回來一個穩定可預期的夥伴。在12月的時候，執委會（和外交事務委員會）就提出了A new EU-US agenda for global change。
著眼於歐盟與美國聯手對抗在全球範圍內，以科技大國之姿，快速崛起的中國。為什麼是聯盟呢？執委會提案建立一個強而有力的多邊機制，並支持理念相近夥伴國家（也就是願意遵守國際義務與普世價值的民主國家）加入。
這點其實有點乘著川普政府的勢頭，當時老川對中國窮追猛打，與一些中東歐國家共同發表雙邊聲明「不使用受外國政府控制廠商所提供的網路基礎設施」。不過儘管對抗中國，阻止中國成為數位科技領域的規則制定者，算是大西洋兩邊的共識，但在一些關鍵的問題上，像是增加對科技巨頭的管制，美國始終不願鬆口。畢竟規則一旦確立，那美國很難再為帶給美國政府龐大稅收的Amazon、Google、Facebook受到歐盟貿易調查而靠北。
The European Union and the United States will announce a wide-ranging partnership around technology and trade next week…
過了大半年， 雙方將在6月15日宣告TTC的成立與運作細節。雖然尚未公布任何文件，但根據去年底執委會的提案，促進科技創新、貿易規則設定等等，沒意外應該會是重點。
除此之外，整整一年來雙邊深受全球供應鏈斷鏈斷所苦，不斷強調重組全球供應鏈的必要這點（註：這甚至已是執委會被批評是浪費歐洲人血汗錢的2030數位羅盤計畫的一環）看來，科技基礎設施全球供應鏈的穩健必定是核心之一，但要怎麼個穩健法呢．怎樣才夠穩健呢．歐盟真要自己蓋半導體廠，還是他要仿效美國的作法，想辦法把台積電拉過去投資呢？
小英今年三月在哥本哈根論壇關於供應鏈合作是這麼說的：
Taiwan will continue to engage with the EU and other democratic partners to establish a more resilient supply of critical goods such as semiconductors and medical supplies,
然後他補充：
A BIA would not just help secure our supply chains; it would protect our mutual geopolitical and economic interests, and send a message about the partnerships and values on which our interests depend. | https://medium.com/@luyeh88/ttc-2ee3850fa3df | ['Lu Yeh'] | 2021-06-12 14:47:35.179000+00:00 | ['Trade And Tech', 'Transatlantic', 'Semiconductors', 'Taiwan', 'Ttc'] |
Why Choose Flutter for MVP Application Development? | Are you looking to start your own business? But, stuck on how the things will work out? Here’s a suggestion why not build an MVP (Minimal Viable Product). MVP is the simplest version of a mobile application that solves several problems and can help to validate a business idea. Additionally, Flutter for MVP application development can make your business grow and understand the loopholes.
MVP Application Development Characteristics
Design Simplicity
Cost-Effective Development
Limited Features
Small Scale Integration
With the above characteristics, you can promote your brand and launched the product in the market along with reaching your potential customers. If your customers/users aren’t happy with your application, then MVP can save your money and resources by abounding the old one and starting a new project without spending a significant amount on it.
Flutter Mobile App Development Services
Flutter helps in developing a unique and attractive User interface where if you’re looking for a custom app building, then use Flutter mobile app development services that work as the right source for you. Check a few of the listed services such as:
Cross-Platform App Development
Customized App Development
Flutter Widgets Development
Enterprise Mobile Solution
Custom User Interface Development
Flutter App Testing ServicesWhich brands implement MVPs?
Dropbox: Dropbox was facing difficulties before implementing MVP as there was an issue related to the cloud storage platform, and Dree Huston resolves the problem by giving video MVP as a solution.
Dropbox was facing difficulties before implementing MVP as there was an issue related to the cloud storage platform, and Dree Huston resolves the problem by giving video MVP as a solution. Airbnb: Previously, Airbnb was only showing budget-friendly stays, but after getting feedback from users, they implemented MVP, which later shows pictures of their flats and more.
Previously, Airbnb was only showing budget-friendly stays, but after getting feedback from users, they implemented MVP, which later shows pictures of their flats and more. Buffer: Butter had limited functionality and later implemented MVP, where the flutter app developer uses lean methodology.
Butter had limited functionality and later implemented MVP, where the flutter app developer uses lean methodology. Instagram: Today, Instagram is a platform to share a photo or video that uses various filters. MVP was added to it, and the number of features can be updated to it.
Today, Instagram is a platform to share a photo or video that uses various filters. MVP was added to it, and the number of features can be updated to it. Uber: Years ago, transportation was far more complicated than today. But uber has implemented MVP to allow people could book a taxi or tab via phone and track the location accordingly.
What is Flutter?
In 2018, Google developed Flutter. Flutter is a cross-development platform that builds a high-performing app for iOS and Android. This platform comes with enhanced features such as bug fixes and other widgets.
Why Flutter is the ultimate solution for MVP?
Flutter has a community of more than 1000 developers that works under giant Google. Using Flutter, mobile app development companies do not require a large amount to spend during experimenting. Use inbuilt tools and features that come with great UI along with it.
Ways in which Flutter help in developing an MVP
1. Attractive design will draw many investors
It becomes essential to bring investors potential ideas. The Flutter comes with an enhanced collection of UI features and other interactive maps. However, it helps developers to customize widgets and accelerate APIs supported by Flutter.
2. Develop cost-effective apps
Today, there’s no issue for the cost any more as it can develop for both platforms quickly. As Flutter supports cross-platform, it only requires one codebase to write on both platforms. Using this user can get a maximum number of issues fixed, and code can be reused whenever needed to.
3. The speedy app development process
aflutter helps developers to view the changes made to app coding. With this quick change are made, and the overall app development process accelerates to become faster. Additionally, the reload features will help developers to fix the bugs with ease.
How Flutter makes the right choice to build MVP?
We can say that Flutter is a game-changer for MVP development as the flutter app developer can start using Flutter with a minimum learning curve. So, this means less code and can set-up quickly whenever you want as it doesn’t require any powerful machine.
Few of the prime reasons what makes Flutter an excellent choice to build MVP
Flutter comes with a large community where businesses need not spend much on licensing.
App development becomes more accessible and simplified.
It comes with an excellent user interface to create an interactive user interface.
It is beneficial for startups and business firms where a dedicated widget engine is used as cross-platform tools to attract UI components.
Final Verdict
Since Flutter is launched by Google, the team makes it a reliable option when people ask why one should go with Flutter for MVP development. Also, huge brands are nowadays using Flutter to develop apps and make a modification to their existing ones. So, if you’re looking for a platform to paint your imagination into an impressive UIs then, Flutter is a one that offers excellent opportunities to build high-performance mobile apps that fits your needs quickly.
Hire Flutter application developer as we are one of the best flutter mobile app development companies to provide a wide range of serving technology across all different parts of the world.
Originally published at https://www.concettolabs.com on October 31, 2019. | https://medium.com/@manish_41106/why-choose-flutter-for-mvp-application-development-a9ffb40e6fac | ['Manish Patel'] | 2019-11-01 06:50:54.691000+00:00 | ['Mobile App Development', 'Android App Development', 'Iphone App Development', 'Hybrid App Development', 'Flutter App Development'] |
3 quotes for Dec 25 | We are constantly consuming our thoughts. Cows, goats, and buffalo chew their food, swallow it, then regurgitate and rechew it multiple times. We may not be cows or buffalo, but we ruminate just the same on our thoughts — unfortunately, primarily negative thoughts. We eat them, and then we bring them up to chew again and again, like a cow chewing its cud.
— Thich Nhat Hanh
Yeah, that’s me. The past year, I’ve become a bit more aware of this and tried to work on it. It is interesting and frustrating. But I think I’ve made tiny forward progress with this.
This is not just about overthinking, which I do. This is about constant buzzing in the head, repetitive thoughts that just never seem to go away. What a waste of time!
I had the opportunity to connect with a couple of my students who are extremely knowledgeable in these affairs and they were able to point me in a couple of directions.
I stumble along. I’ve caught myself making progress. It is slow. It is work. But it feels good. Most times. | https://medium.com/@arvindashok/3-quotes-for-dec-25-b70baf84bbd7 | ['Arvind Ashok'] | 2020-12-25 13:29:54.028000+00:00 | ['Discussion', 'Quotes', 'Questions'] |
Why did WTI price fall to a negative and is this any good for India? | Why did WTI price fall to a negative and is this any good for India? Aradhana Gotur Apr 23, 2020·3 min read
Folks, today we will discuss the historic plunge in WTI oil prices.
Had you ever imagined a time when oil sellers would pay buyers to get rid of their stock?
Eh, how’s that even possible?
But, hey it is happening now and we aren’t kidding!
Remember when OPEC declared a crude oil production cut to boost prices? If you don’t know about it, you may read it here for a better understanding of what’s happening and why.
Coming back to the point, so just over a week before, both OPEC and non-OPEC members agreed to cut oil production to prop up falling prices on account of the dampened demand for crude oil triggered by COVID-19.
Well, turns out, it did not help.
On Mon, the 20th Apr 2020, something historic happened in the oil market. So much so that it startled producers and investors alike and sent global benchmark indices diving.
Reason?
The May futures of West Texas Intermediate (WTI), an American benchmark for crude oil, fell 305% and closed at -$37! (we had given you a spoiler just in the beginning).
Why did the WTI price touch a negative?
No one has ever heard of the oil price dipping to negatives. So, what explains this unprecedented behaviour now? Let us examine the reason for this oil market crash.
Ever since COVID-19 set foot, the demand for crude oil was plummeting. What can you expect when people across the globe are locked down and industries are shut? With no to low demand for oil, the prices plunged significantly. A dampened demand for oil due to coronavirus’ impact created an oversupply of oil in the world. Now, it’s not like oil is air, right? Meaning, it needs storage space. And when millions of barrels of oil are accumulating because of low demand and consumption, oil needs more place to be stored. But the US has so much oil now that Cushing (Oklahoma) is running out of storage space. And refineries are charging a bomb, if at all they are willing to house the barrels. Literally, the entire world is facing storage woes. The WTI futures for May futures were set to expire on Tue and investors who held the contract were to take physical delivery of oil barrels. They simply can’t hold on to the WTI futures and refuse to take physical possession, right? But with no place to store physical barrels, investors were at their wits end, which forced them to go on a selling-spree. This means, investors literally sold their WTI oil futures contracts to avoid storage and price issues. No wonder why WTI oil futures contracts fell below the zero level and touched -$37!
What does the historic decline in crude oil prices mean to India?
Now, you may think that such a plunge in oil prices is good for India, given we are the world’s 3rd largest crude oil and 4th largest liquefied natural gas importer (we import ~80% of our crude oil needs). Note this, every $ rise in the price of oil adds ~Rs 11,482cr to our import bill, results in a balance of payments, and lowers the value of the rupee. Ultimately, fuel-dependent companies transfer such high costs to end consumers. Continue reading here. | https://medium.com/@aradhana-gotur/why-did-wti-price-fall-to-a-negative-and-is-this-any-good-for-india-912601e9e1bf | ['Aradhana Gotur'] | 2020-04-23 11:31:14.706000+00:00 | ['Low Crude Oil Prices', 'Coronavirus', 'Wti Futures', 'Current Events', 'Covid 10'] |
Are Digital Nomads Ruining Communities Around the World? | The rise of the digital nomad started in the early 2000’s with the spread of wifi internet, massive growth of tech startups, and low-cost ease of travel.
Since then — for better or for worse — it has evolved quite a bit…
There was the late 2000’s with the release of Tim Ferris’s bestseller The 4-Hour Workweek — which introduced how to outsource your most time-consuming tasks to low-cost admins in SE Asia. Coupled with living on a smaller budget and using the internet for leverage — followers of the book became the next wave of DNs…
However, this mostly applied to US citizens and others in 1st world countries that benefited from super-good visas and the advantageous exchange rate.
In the mid-to-late 2010’s, more companies started to work remotely and regions around the world started to accommodate these traveling workers…
Where Ferris’s book ushered in a community of entrepreneurs ready to create a business that fit their lifestyle — the next evolution became more friendly to non-entrepreneurs. People that still wanted to travel and work from anywhere, but had no issue with working for a company in the ‘standard 9–5’.
Photo by Mike Swigunski on Unsplash
Today, due to COVID-19, the digital nomad scene has hit peak intrigue — some may even say mainstream levels.
Whereas before it was solely entrepreneurs and highly-skilled, tech workers moving to the same handful of locations around the world — now nearly any job that doesn’t require a physical presence, in any town with a half-decent WiFi signal becomes a potential remote working hotspot.
So with this new remote lifestyle (which the current majority of workers favor) the looming question becomes…
Are digital nomads/remote workers helping or hurting communities around the world?
As with most things, I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle with benefits and costs to these new nomadic workers.
Downsides
Photo by Rens Greveling on Unsplash
The first thing that comes to mind with remote workers invading another town is the difference in culture.
Let’s be real — a lot of tech bros and gals are pretty douchey…
I didn’t say most…just a good amount.
When these folks infiltrate a sleepy, beach town demanding cappuccinos with a new art design on every coffee, and the locals haven’t been to either Melbourne or Brooklyn — the cultures are bound to clash…
Now nomads are generally problem-solving people — so anything that doesn’t match their expectations isn’t seen as a ‘different culture’ — they see them as problems that need to be solved…
And if that means someone that was used to New York’s fast-paced, killer-attitude storms into a Costa Rican surf town — welllllll, they’re going to have some cultural issues.
Which brings me to the next point…
Classism.
Someone making an average US/Euro/Aussie salary that moves to a town where the majority of locals are paid a small percentage of that is going to have a huge wealth gap. When there are various industries in a foreign town/city, this may not affect society much — but when tourism becomes the primary industry, it’s bound to have a working & serving class (been to Bali anyone?).
Photo by Anton Luzhkovsky on Unsplash
When digital workers first start moving to a town, this has a lesser impact.
During this time — smaller numbers of various cultures and income levels don’t overpower local culture and customs. However, over time, when remote workers hit a certain percentage of the local population — they can’t help but begin to influence the local culture.
This creates gentrified towns and islands.
Now, most of these traveling workers don’t want this to happen. They sincerely want assimilate to wherever they are settling…
…but they’ll likely leave within a few months and new similar tourists will move in to fill their shoes. Therefore they don’t have the same skin in the game that a lifelong ‘x-er’ has about their hometown.
Benefits
With all the bad shit behind us — lets talk about the benefits of these computer-wielding laborers.
The first and most obvious benefit is the influx of money into smaller communities that could better use it.
For the past decade or so, cities like NYC, SF, etc. lost productive innovation in everyday businesses. I believe this helped catapult the ‘uber-hipster of everything movement’ — AKA I don’t know what else to innovate, so let’s find a fad from the 70’s/Soviet Union/etc. and charge a ridiculous amount because it’s super cool.
I couldn’t be more excited for money and innovation to flow into the countrysides, deserts, mountains, and beach towns around the world. The fusion-created businesses in these areas are going to be amazing!
Not only will this migration affect everyday businesses, but it has already helped bring tech influence — and other skills mostly found in cities — to the rural areas around the world.
The lazy, city-slicker problems — like figuring out how to get groceries delivered directly into your refrigerator so you don’t have to get off the couch — will change to — how can we increase crop yields, regenerate land to use less CO2, and other real-world problems.
Photo by Martin Bisof on Unsplash
Along with the addition revenue flowing into rural communities — remote workers may actually help relieve some the pressures of classism that I spoke of before. I think domestic, remote workers actually will help relieve classism within countries as the income distributions won’t be as city/rural specific.
And this migration won’t just be good for communities…
It’ll be good for workers too.
Mental health and burnout is a pandemic in city life. Rural life tends to be more laid-back and connected to reality. Live and work in NYC for a year and you’ll feel like it took 5 off your life.
It’s no secret that office workers could use a bit less stress — and I’m sure on the other side, there’s a few folks in rural towns across the globe that wished things moved a bit faster in their little corner of the world.
We could all use a bit of balance.
Furthermore — the more people move to different regions and work remotely, the more companies will get used to it. This may work against the current corporate employee that expects to keep their $100K+ salary — but hell they’re probably willing to take a pay cut to live wherever they want anyway.
Future
Photo by Andy Kelly on Unsplash
So what does the outlook on a remote working future look like…
With the spread of knowledge, will come the democratization of jobs.
Wage gaps will shrink, stress levels will lower, new innovative businesses for global workers will arise, and there will be more innovation happening in and around smaller communities.
So it’ll be a perfect world right!?
Haha let’s be real…we’re descendants of apes…
But things will continue to evolve as they always have. Where I still see some of the slowest moving bottlenecks…many that seem ridiculous to those of us who have been living and working remotely for years now…
Visas
Taxes
Healthcare
Short-term housing
…basically the industries to become a true global citizen.
After bouncing around for many years — I’ve realized it’s much more enjoyable and effective to stay longer-term in any one location. But most nomads are pushed around due to governments being silly(aka f*cktards).
People that stay put for longer — with more security — become more a part of the community which leads to stronger relationships, more community-based philanthropy, better work, and more innovation. | https://medium.com/@pjmanning/are-digital-nomads-ruining-communities-around-the-world-1a46c5039a81 | ['Pj Manning'] | 2021-01-08 01:42:06.872000+00:00 | ['Remote Workers', 'Remote Working', 'Digital Nomads', 'Travel', 'Remote Work'] |
Day 5: Why Haven’t I Written A Novel Yet? | I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed at the moment, as most of us do from time to time (or all the time).
I am only 23 years old, but I still feel behind in accomplishing my goals, namely, in writing a book. I have achieved other things. I have a master’s degree, a full-time job, a fiance, real friendships. But I have not yet written a book. And it sort of makes me feel like a failure. I suppose I feel a bit like a fraud because I haven’t done what I’ve told everyone I want to do.
I did not quite realize how strongly I felt about this until writing the above paragraph. If writing a book was something I have wanted to do for years, why I have I not done it? Why am I not prioritizing it?
I do think a lack of time is a somewhat legitimate reason. Really, I guess it’s not so much a lack of time as it is feeling as though there are higher commitments to my time. Which there are, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there is no time for novel writing.
Another reason is likely fear, as I mentioned in my first post. At this point, I have a lot of mental resistance built up to the idea.
I think the key to getting over this will be in waking up early again, like really early. Like 5:00 to 6:00 early. I’m happiest in the 7:00 to 8:00 range, so that is really early to me.
I was listening to the Inforium podcast episode “How to Read More," and in it the one of the hosts states that he reads early in the morning because he feels as though there’s enough time left in his day to justify spending some of it reading. I feel like that is what I will have to do with my novel, at least for now. Someday I hope I’ll be able to just sit down and right, but at the moment that strategy isn’t working.
Now to convince my body to wake up at 5:00 AM. | https://medium.com/@kailygarcia/day-5-why-i-havent-written-a-novel-yet-af06f7e05b7d | ['Kaily Garcia'] | 2021-06-16 12:12:49.504000+00:00 | ['Writers On Medium', 'Writing Every Day', 'Daily Blog', 'Writing', 'Writers Life'] |
A Moment of Change: Challenges and Opportunities When Covering Hate Speech and Mis/Disinformation | Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, news coverage of hate speech and mis/disinformation has skyrocketed. What was once a sleepy beat led by freelancers and activists has become a central topic of coverage for almost every news organization. As the news cycle is transformed by coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and coverage of the 2020 presidential election ramps up, this beat is again at a critical juncture.
To better understand the challenges and changes associated with this inflection point, we conducted 10 in-depth interviews with prominent journalists covering this beat. These interviews underscore critical debates in the field about platform accountability, the news agenda and news organizations’ infrastructure and support systems.
Key Takeaways
PLATFORM ACCOUNTABILITY AND AGENDA SETTING
Takeaway #1: The resource journalists most need is access to the data associated with social media and search platforms. Journalists need better data about what’s visible on platforms and who it is accessible to, as well as stronger tools for data management.
Stronger, more in-depth work on platform accountability is only possible with additional platform visibility and data management infrastructure to support journalistic work and research.
Takeaway #2: Since the bulk of news coverage has shifted to public health concerns, and because news organizations themselves are affected by COVID-19, the pandemic will be as significant a turning point for this beat as the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Further, our understanding of platform accountability will change as COVID-19 takes a stronger grip on the news cycle.
As the pandemic dominates the global news cycle, news organizations will choose to cover the pandemic at the risk of not covering other important beat-related subjects. Within the context of such a change, platform accountability reporting will shift from a techno-criticism framing to a public health framing as the pandemic persists across the world. There is also a greater likelihood that reporters on other beats will stumble onto pandemic-related hate speech and mis/disinformation as more reporters become COVID-19 reporters; this is one example of how the working practices of news organizations are being impacted as the pandemic affects workplace procedures and coverage strategies.
Takeaway #3: Because both the 2020 U.S. presidential election and COVID-19 require careful coverage of mis/disinformation, this beat is likely to become a permanent one.
Coverage of the 2020 U.S. presidential election will become as much a public health beat as it is a political one. This change to the news agenda will increase the need for coverage on this beat, inflame current political tensions, and possibly generate fatigue on the part of newsrooms and journalists. The prevalence and visibility of mis/disinformation in the 2020 election might also cause a shift in the current support and recognition of this beat.
Takeaway #4: As growth on this beat has skyrocketed, concerns about oversaturation are beginning to rival awareness of strategic silence and the risks of amplification.
Journalists clearly recognize the risks of amplification and the need for strategic silence, and have established reporting practices that account for these considerations. However, they also express concerns about unchecked growth in this beat. In an environment where most stories focus on the 2020 election and COVID-19, concerns of oversaturation (related especially to increased news coverage, changes in audience attention and the prevalence of mis/disinformation) have come forward as a possible challenge to work on this beat.
NEWS ORGANIZATION INFRASTRUCTURE AND SUPPORT SYSTEMS
Takeaway #5: Constant exposure to bad actors while covering this beat can lead to negative mental health consequences and safety concerns for reporters and their families.
Taking care of mental health and safety is essential for reporters to be able to perform this work. Oftentimes, safety concerns revolve around those close to journalists, e.g. their family and friends. Aspects of a journalist’s personal identity can affect how comfortable and safe they feel while doing their reporting.
Takeaway #6: There is a deep disparity in resources available between freelance and staff journalists, which can be seen as a reflection of larger problems within the journalistic field.
Freelance journalists have a much harder time consistently accessing resources such as editors, data tools, and security infrastructure- resources that are critical to being able to report on this beat efficiently. Some freelance journalists in this area also feel that their work is being absorbed by staff reporters in larger newsrooms, causing tension and feelings of job insecurity.
Takeaway #7: Although reporters specialize in hate speech and mis/disinformation online, they are still heavily dependent on traditional reporting methods.
While being online and on social media is a key element of the job, traditional reporting methods like attending events, collecting sources, and picking up the phone to talk to others are just as important on this beat. Training on this particular beat is oftentimes informal since the beat changes very quickly and tools are ever-evolving. The most technically adept journalists may not be the best mis/disinformation reporters if they do not also have a strong background in traditional methods.
Takeaway #8: Evaluating success based on broad impact measures rather than a single measurement is critical to doing productive work in this space.
Across the board, thinking about audience and impact were the most important considerations for journalists when deciding what to publish. Focusing on any one metric like SEO performance or clicks/shares is not adequate to measure impact. Reporting on those affected by the bad actors instead of amplifying the bad actors themselves, as well as choosing when to be strategically silent, are critical editorial decisions.
Recommendations
Based on the findings from our interviews, we’ve prepared a set of suggested actions for stakeholders in this space, including technology platforms, non-profits, academics, editors and journalists, as we collectively navigate this critical moment for news coverage and society as a whole. These actions are based on key needs and challenges such as navigating relationships with technology platforms, mitigating potential risks of this beat and furthering support systems for those working in this space. These recommendations are discussed in more detail in the report. | https://medium.com/mit-media-lab/a-moment-of-change-challenges-and-opportunities-when-covering-hate-speech-and-mis-disinformation-c7d0f1edc05c | ['Mit Media Lab'] | 2020-06-08 17:02:09.008000+00:00 | ['Community', 'Data', 'News', 'Misinformation', 'Journalism'] |
Not All Men, But Especially Not Me | Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash
The other day while I was talking to a group of friends about my experiences with sexism and sexual harassment, I had a unique interaction with one of the men in the group. After saying I wished that more men would pay attention to the subtle acts of misogyny around them so they could speak out against them, I was asked if I would speak out against misandry the way I was asking for men to speak out against misogyny.
I had never been asked that before and, after giving it some thought, my answer was no
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a people pleasing pacifist and I want everyone to be treated well. I’ll speak up for anyone receiving unjust criticism or any form of abuse because we all deserve respect, because in the end, we are all equal.
The reason I said I would not speak out against misandry specifically is because women are asked to deal with a lot in every area of their life. And they are given relatively little power to do so.
During the last several years, there’s been a shift in how the general public addresses women, which started with the Me Too movement. While it began inspiringly enough as a way to direct attention to the problems with sexual harassment and assault that women face daily, especially in the workplace, it led to … not much.
The problems women face didn’t go away or change in any significant way. Instead, women now have to endure sexual harassment in the workplace, along with listening to men complain about how they can’t even talk to women anymore without getting in trouble, as well as reassuring them that not all men are bad.
And it’s true, not all men are bad. But good men often let bad men get away with being bad. Which is bad.
Reports have found that 81% of women have experienced sexual harassment in their lifetime. Women are already at a disadvantage in a number of different ways, being underrepresented in global government, in courtrooms, and on executive boards, while making up just under half the workforce in the United States. Women spend roughly twice as much time as men doing unpaid household work, taking time away from personal growth, socializing, and other hobbies. Most women have already grown up with the idea that they must advocate for themselves in order to be treated with equal respect, whether on a subconscious level or not, and to ask them to also defend and reassure men is asking for too much.
So I won’t call out misandry as such, because men are in such a position of power that they don’t need my defense. However, I desperately need men to stand up for me as a woman.
I don’t need men having conversations with me in private about how they support me. I need men supporting my ideas and opinions in public conversations.
I don’t need men telling me how sorry they are that I’ve experienced harassment. I need men telling other men to stop harassing me.
I don’t want men sliding in my DMs with messages of equality that are thinly veiled as requests for reassurance that they’re one of the good ones. I want men to acknowledge that women are at a disadvantage and ask what they can do to help.
What can men do to help, you may ask? They can help by being aware. By being open to the experiences of the women and other marginalized people around them, listening to examples of harassment, and paying attention so that they can recognize those instances moving forward and speak up.
We need equality and we need good men speaking for equality to the men who may not see that need. As a woman I can raise my voice to speak up for myself, but I need men to help my voice be carried. | https://medium.com/ragtag-and-bobtail/not-all-men-but-especially-not-me-7176ed64ac0 | ['Bryony Marge'] | 2020-11-16 16:03:12.022000+00:00 | ['Sexual Harassment', 'Feminism', 'Allyship', 'Sexism'] |
Unit testing the unusual android components | The Agenda
To start of with we know how important are unit tests. It helps us write better quality code. The manual testers and QA’s can save lot of their efforts. Unit tests are very handy to measure the test coverage and what not.
There came a lot of architectural patterns from the old MVC to the latest MVVM, MVI etc. The main trick behind all these architectures are to loosely couple and separate the business logics, API calls, database operations and the views so that everything can be independently tested.
So the general use cases cover business logics, API calls, database operations and the views. What about all of our other android components? As we all know android components can be classified as four namely,
Activities, Services, Broadcast Receivers, Content Providers.
If we look at it deeply we would notice that a lot of us including me aren’t giving much attention to unit testing broadcast receivers and services as it’s all system driven events. In this part we will majorly focus on unit testing the broadcast receivers and why its safe to test despite it being system driven.
Example use case
Let’s start of with a simple example.
public class OutgoingCallReceiver extends BroadcastReceiver {
@Override
public void onReceive(final Context context, Intent intent) {
final String phoneNum = intent.getStringExtra(Intent.EXTRA_PHONE_NUMBER);
AsyncTask.execute(new Runnable() {
@Override
public void run() {
SharedPreferences preferences = context.getSharedPreferences("MyPrefs",
Context.MODE_PRIVATE);
SharedPreferences.Editor editor = preferences.edit();
editor.putString("phone", phoneNum);
editor.commit();
}
});
}
}
That’s a simple receiver that gets triggered whenever there is an outgoing call from our phone. That looks really fine why to unit test this?
Well we can only answer that question when we write test for that receiver. Let us do that.
Let us prepare our setUp() function and initialise all the objects required for testing. I am going to make use of Mockito for mocking objects wherever required.
public class OutgoingCallReceiverTest {
private OutgoingCallReceiver mOutgoingCallReceiver;
private Context mContext;
// Executes each task synchronously using Architecture Components.
@Rule public InstantTaskExecutorRule instantExecutorRule = new InstantTaskExecutorRule();
@Before public void setUp() throws Exception {
mOutgoingCallReceiver = new OutgoingCallReceiver();
mContext = mock(Context.class);
}
}
2. Let us think of the happy case first happy case is our intent passed into the receiver has the data we expect. In that scenario let us explore if our code passes the test.
@Test public void test_receiver_all_intent() {
Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_NEW_OUTGOING_CALL);
intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_PHONE_NUMBER, mockPhoneNo);
mOutgoingCallReceiver.onReceive(mContext, intent);
AsyncTask.execute(new Runnable() {
@Override
public void run() {
SharedPreferences preferences = mContext.getSharedPreferences("MyPrefs",
Context.MODE_PRIVATE);
// Verify that the received phone no data is correct.
String phone = preferences.getString("phone",null);
assertEquals(mockPhoneNo, phone);
}
});
}
Now when I run this test it passes.
Happy case passes happily!
3. Now comes the case where I am not going to pass any intent data. Then let us see what happens to our receiver. So my test function is going to be like this,
@Test public void test_receiver_no_intent() {
mOutgoingCallReceiver.onReceive(mContext, null);
AsyncTask.execute(new Runnable() {
@Override
public void run() {
SharedPreferences preferences = mContext.getSharedPreferences("MyPrefs",
Context.MODE_PRIVATE);
// Verify that the received phone no data is correct.
String phone = preferences.getString("phone",null);
assertNull(phone);
}
});
}
So the expected result is this test should pass as we don’t have any phone no string set to our intent object as the intent itself is null. The phone that we try to retrieve from the preferences will of course return the default value we have set i.e; null. Let us run this and see.
Test case failed!
Oops ! The test case has failed. As I can see the logs the problem is because in our receiver we haven’t handled the null scenario of intent object. This is where TDD (Test Driven Development) comes into picture.
Let us go back to our receiver code and handle this and run our test again,
public class OutgoingCallReceiver extends BroadcastReceiver {
@Override
public void onReceive(final Context context, Intent intent) {
if (intent != null && intent.getExtras() != null) {
final String phoneNum = intent.getStringExtra(Intent.EXTRA_PHONE_NUMBER);
AsyncTask.execute(new Runnable() {
@Override
public void run() {
SharedPreferences preferences = context.getSharedPreferences("MyPrefs",
Context.MODE_PRIVATE);
SharedPreferences.Editor editor = preferences.edit();
editor.putString("phone", phoneNum);
editor.commit();
}
});
}
}
}
Yay! .. We got this passed too
Now we have all cases covered. The coverage will be almost close to 100%. But that’s not where things come to an end. Broadcast receivers are really tricky.
By definition the system expects you to finish with the broadcast very quickly (under 10 seconds). Source : https://developer.android.com/guide/components/broadcasts
So we have to cover this scenario too. Luckily the android JUnit framework provides us timeout inbuilt object exceeding which the test case will automatically fail . We can use it like this,
@Test(timeout = 10000) public void test_receiver_all_intent() {}
@Test(timeout = 10000) public void test_receiver_no_intent {}
Summary
Thus we can clearly say we tend to miss out some conditions and important test scenarios in components like broadcast receivers and services too. In the next part we’ll explore how to handle various unit test scenarios in services. | https://medium.com/mindorks/unit-testing-the-unusual-android-components-part-1-a5cfa35cf06d | ['Ramkishore V S'] | 2018-10-07 16:23:57.470000+00:00 | ['Android', 'Unit Testing', 'Android App Development', 'Tdd', 'AndroidDev'] |
Biological Systems, Organizational Systems, and Catalyzing Change w/ Matt Craig | Recored by Dave Prior
In this episode of SoundNotes, Matt Craig joins Dave for a discussion that centers around comparing the way biological systems and businesses function and respond to change. In a biological system, enzymes bring elements together that catalyze reactions and keep iterating until they find an effective response. (Think of the body’s immune system learning to fight off a cold.) At LeadingAgile, our coaches and consultants serve in a similar manner helping to catalyze change within our client’s organizations. Matt is a Principal Consultant at LeadingAgile and he specializes in strategic and sustainable organizational health and improvement. But his background also includes the study of medicine and this has led to compelling insights into the parallels that exist between biological and organizational systems and how they respond to foreign elements and change.
Contacting Matt
Contacting Dave
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Feedback/Questions
If you have comments on the podcast or have questions for the LeadingAgile coaches that you’d like to have addressed in a future episode of LeadingAgile’s SoundNotes, you can reach Dave at [email protected]
LeadingAgile CSM and CSPO Classes
For information on LeadingAgile’s upcoming public CSM and CSPO classes, please go to http://www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/
Use the discount code: LA_Podcast to receive a 15% discount on the class. | https://medium.com/@leadingagile/biological-systems-organizational-systems-and-catalyzing-change-w-matt-craig-471b75e75ac6 | [] | 2021-02-04 15:18:10.802000+00:00 | ['Agile', 'Change Management', 'Agile Transformation'] |
Letting Go of Modesty in a Turkish Bath | How A Visit To A Muslim Country Revealed My Own Prudish Tendencies
Photo by Genessa Panainte on Unsplash
“When you enter the Turkish bath your breathing becomes slow and regular, your mind calms down and your muscles relax.”
So said the brochure at the Istanbul hotel where my friend and I were staying for the week. We had just finished a difficult term teaching primary school in London. Maybe a day in a Turkish bath was just the thing we needed to let go of our stress.
Arriving In Istanbul
How did two female teachers, one American and one Australian, find themselves in Instanbul over the half-term holiday? Online research of course. I found an amazing deal for a flight + hotel within my budget. My fiance refused to go with me. He couldn’t bring himself to take time off over the half-term holiday when every other family in Britain had exactly the same holiday. The jump in holiday prices reflected this. But I had found a great deal so I invited an Australian colleague and friend to come along with me. She jumped at the chance to explore a new country.
The next thing we knew we were checking into a modest hotel located in the heart of Istanbul. The morning after our arrival, I woke first and decided to brave the shower room — a musty, wall-papered space that appeared to be a former bedroom. The smell of damp paper pervaded the room as I closed and locked the door. I tried unsuccessfully to keep the spray of water away from the wallpaper. At least the water was hot.
Feeling refreshed I unlocked the door and gave it a pull. Nothing happened. I pulled again, harder. Still nothing. Leaning back I put my full weight into pulling. The door didn’t budge.
“Caroline,” I called to my sleeping friend, “I’m stuck in the shower room.”
Caroline came over and pushed from the other side of the door. I pulled and she pushed. Finally, we managed to get the door open. From then on, we left the door ajar when we showered.
Breakfast was on the top floor of the hotel and consisted of stuffed grape leaves, olives, cheese, spicy sausage, egg, cucumbers, tomatoes and bread with honey and jam. The first time I looked out of the floor-to-ceiling windows and saw the delicate minarets and colorful domes of the city’s many mosques, I was charmed. The views from the breakfast room more than made up for my unpleasant shower.
Looking out the window, I was filled with the excitement exploring an entirely new city gives me, the giddy, stomach-fluttering kind.
Exploring
My friend and I headed out into Istanbul. Wearing a long skirt and flowing, long-sleeved top, I hoped to blend in. With my dark hair and dark eyes, I figured I could pass for Turkish, but somehow the Turkish carpet sellers knew I wasn’t local. Not only that, they somehow discerned that I was American.
“American lady, hello! Come to my carpet shop,” they called. “I have beautiful rugs just for you. Free Turkish coffee if you come have a look…”
I tried to explain that I was an American primary school teacher who could barely afford rent in one of the most expensive cities in the world let alone a Turkish carpet. I didn’t have the money for one. Neither did I have the space in my tiny room in a house-share in London.
The carpet sellers didn’t buy it. I guess the usual American tourists had deeper pockets than I did. So much for blending in with the locals. I brushed off the carpet sellers with the expertise of someone used to brushing off street vendors in Tijuana.
Caroline and I visited the Blue Mosque first, awed by the 20,000 handmade ceramic tiles inside. Next, we admired the massive dome, Byzantium architecture, and Christian mosaics of the Hagia Sophia — the former Christian Eastern Orthodox cathedral. I was utterly charmed by the beauty of Topkapi Palace. Stories of harems intrigued me as I tried to imagine what life was like for its women living in what was essentially a gilded cage.
The next day, we went on a Bosphorus Strait boat cruise. We admired the European and Asian coastlines of Istanbul. From the boat we got a private glimpse of the palatial residences and exotic gardens lining the water. Cruising along in our small tour boat between two major continents was a magical experience.
Visiting the Turkish Bath
Finally, we booked a day at one of the oldest Turkish baths in the city. The brochure claimed that Florence Nightingale, Omar Sharif, John Travolta, and Cameron Diaz had all visited the bath.
Caroline and I went in through the ladies entrance where we were ushered into changing rooms. I put on my bathing suit and wrapped the small, thin towel around my hips. Together, we walked out into the steam room.
“No! No!” said a commanding voice as a woman rushed over and yanked off the straps of my bathing suit. Bewildered, I looked around and saw that the other women in the room were naked.
Blushing, I removed my swimsuit and tried to cover myself with the tiny towel.
“I am your Turkish Mama,” said the older woman as she grabbed my hand and lead me over to a warm marble slab. “Sit down. You relax.” Then, she left.
Caroline and I sat on the warm marble slab, breathing in the steam and sweating as we discussed our experiences thus far. We kept our eyes averted. After all, we hadn’t been friends for long. We were both new to the school. I was very aware of my discomfort at being naked. I knew it was cultural so I tried to let go and relax. I could see that Caroline was just as uncomfortable as I was. I studied the impressive dome in the middle of the room and the architecture of the oldest Turkish bath in Istanbul, trying not to look at my friend as we conversed.
“One day we’ll look back on this and laugh,” I said.
When we were thoroughly soaked in sweat, my Turkish mama returned. She grabbed my hand and lead me to a central platform where she indicated that I should lie on my stomach. Then, she poured buckets of warm water all over my body. She scrubbed me with olive oil soap and gave me a massage. I giggled when she scrubbed my feet. It tickled. I finally relaxed and let my mind drift.
The next thing I knew, she was tugging my arm and telling me to roll over. What? She wanted me to lie on my back. I closed my eyes and held my breath as she dumped buckets of water on my front side. I was no longer relaxed. Not with the front side of my body fully exposed. My Turkish mama set about massaging the front side of my body. This was new. Well, if Cameron Diaz could do it, so could I.
Next, my Turkish mama took out a loofah mitt and scrubbed my entire body. I couldn’t believe all the grime that came off with the dead skin. Even after my frequent hotel showers. After my body was thoroughly scrubbed and glowing (I think several layers of skin came off in the bath), my Turkish mama shampooed my hair. Again, came the buckets of warm water. I felt like I was drowning on dry land.
Finally, she pulled out a comb with the Turkish bath logo printed on it. “You keep this after,” she said. I looked around for the conditioner. I have thick, curly hair and never attempt to comb it without a generous helping of the stuff. The conditioner was nowhere to be seen. I gulped. My Turkish mama attacked the knots in my hair with relish. My eyes watered as she pulled and tugged. Chunks of hair came out on the comb. I winced as she worked on a particularly large knot. Finally, she was finished. I exhaled. She smiled and stepped back so I could feel my smooth, but decidedly thinner hair.
Caroline and I left the Turkish baths that day forever changed. Our friendship had reached a new level because of this shared experience. It was a day I will never forget.
As restrictive as many in the west view Muslim countries, it is interesting to note that in certain settings, Muslim women are more free from inhibitions than we are.
“Craft must have clothes, but truth loves to go naked.” — Thomas Fuller
Maybe being naked and vulnerable in a Turkish bath is a far more honest and authentic experience than a day in a Western spa… | https://medium.com/writerontherun/letting-go-of-modesty-in-a-turkish-bath-e81550c7d09d | ['Becky Grant'] | 2019-06-18 20:32:26.269000+00:00 | ['Feminism', 'Istanbul', 'Turkish Bath', 'Travel', 'Culture'] |
Carta pública contra o posicionamento do DataCamp ao caso de assédio sexual | Public letter against DataCamp stand on the sexual harassment case
On the last week (April 4th of 2019) DataCamp, one of the main platform in Data Science learning, published a blog post on the sexual harassment case involving an executive and an employee. The blog post clearly states that even though DataCamp condemns such actions, the executive didn’t get any strong punishment. Other than that, there aren’t mentions on what measures were taken to avoid this kind of thing from happening again or even what happened to the employee that denounced the harassment.
DataCamp also deliberately blocked the blog post from being indexed by search engines, this means that the official note can’t be found by someone that is searching for it. This fact was brought to the public attention by one of DataCamp’s instructors in another tweet that stated: this behavior isn’t the default in the rest of the posts on the company’s website.
At least two DataCamp’s instructors posted public letters asking people to refrain from using the website and to demand more drastic measures. Noam Ross’ and Julia Silge’s posts also tell that many conversations happened internally with DataCamp in search for a more “pacific” and definitive solution. Many communities also took a stand against DataCamp including Rstudio.
We from Pizza de Dados, the first Brazilian podcast about data science, reject any act of harassment and believe that this can not and should not go unpunished. The way that DataCamp chose to deal with this situation is weak, to say the least. We also believe that this matter should’ve been discussed in a more transparent way and that more effective measures against the aggressor should’ve taken place no matter their role.
We appreciate the position that many instructors had in openly asking their friends and students to boycott the platform risking their income in the process. We are taking part in supporting the movement against such actions by removing all links that direct to DataCamp courses from our official guide to data science materials in Portuguese and also removing links from the episodes postings from our podcast. | https://medium.com/pizzadedados/carta-publica-contra-o-posicionamento-do-datacamp-ao-caso-de-assedio-sexual-7bd6d2b53c2f | ['Pizza De Dados'] | 2019-04-22 15:18:30.972000+00:00 | ['Python', 'Rstats', 'Data Science', 'Metoo'] |
The Joy of Giving | Photo by Martin Jernberg on Unsplash
In our well known and ancient Indian epic, THE MAHABHARTA, Arjuna, the famed warrior questions his divine charioteer, Krishna, about the noblest giver in the land. Krishna, being the wittiest, replies “Karna is without doubt the finest example of generosity in the kingdom”. The answer irks Arjuna. Karna is one of his biggest rivals on the battlefield. He frowns deeply and says nothing. Krishna, noticing Arjuna’s furrowed brow and the competitive gleam in his eyes, hides a smile. The subject is dropped for the time being, but several days later, Krishna devises a skilful test.
“Do you see those two mountains ?” Krishna asks Arjuna, as they are riding together one evening. As Arjuna turns his gaze, the tall peaks in the distance begin to shimmer and reflect the light. The two mountains have turned into solid gold. “Now Arjuna, I have a task for you,” says Krishna, “ You must distribute these two mountains of gold among the poor villagers who live in the foothills. Let me know when you have given away every last pebble of it.”
Excited by this opportunity to impress Krishna and the world with his philanthropic abilities, Arjuna summons all the villagers together and addresses them grandly. “Listen,” says Arjuna, “For I bring glad news. I will be distributing these two glorious mountains of gold amongst all of you.” A gasp of wonder and delight rises from the audience, and the air fills with songs in praise of the great warrior Arjuna. Energised by the admiration, Arjuna sets about creating a master plan for the collection and distribution of the gold.
For two straight days and nights he shovels gold ceaselessly from the mountain. Not stopping an instant for food, water, rest or sleep. And yet, to his bafflement and utter dismay, the mountains remain undiminished. The more he shovels the more there remains. Forced to the brink of exhaustion, he seeks Krishna out. “I must take a few days of rest before I continue,” he confesses wearily.
In response, Krishna summons Karna into his presence. “Do you see those two mountains?” Krishna asks of Karna. “Yes,” returns the noble warrior. “You must distribute them among the poor villagers who live in the foothills. Let me know when you have given away every last pebble of it.” Without a moment’s hesitation Karna calls out to two villagers who happen to be passing by at that moment. “Do you see those two mountains?” Karna asks them. “Yes,” comes the response. “Those two mountains of gold are yours to do with as you please,” says Karna with a smile bright as the sunrise. And just as easily as he utters these words, he bows to Krishna and walks away.
Arjuna sits dumbfounded this turn of events. Krishna turns to him, his voice rich with love and wisdom beyond the ages. “Arjuna — in your mind the gold occupied a place of high value, and you were sub-consciously attracted to it. You had a muddied approach for giving. You tried to strategise and divide up the gold according to who you thought was most worthy of the gift. But these petty calculations tired your spirit, and over time, you were forced to realise that the mountains’ abundance is far beyond the capacity of your individual head, heart and hands.” Arjuna silently absorbed the truth of these words into his being.
“And what about Karna?” he finally ventured to ask. “The gold meant nothing to Karna,” returned Krishna easily, “For him the true gift was not the gold but the act of giving in itself. He had no calculations to make, nor was he seeking anything in return by way of acknowledgement or praise. He offered everything with a clear heart and a pure mind, and having given he moved on to meet the next moment. And that, dear Arjuna, is a true sign of a person on the path of Awakening.”
In today’s technology driven world it is easy to lose sight of the important things in life.Although our lives maybe hectic and at times seem rather trouble some, there are others whose lives are far worse by comparison. As a successful human being, we are given many opportunities by god to improve each day as an individual.So in the celebration of each door of opportunity that has opened for us by god, let’s give something back.This story of “The Joy of Giving”by anonymous author will allow us to show our appreciation by giving back to community. It will help us to experience the value of our life by making someone else feel more valuable, by helping someone believe that there are people who really do care about those who are less fortunate.
To sum up as said by Zig Zaglar
“Be helpful when you see a person without a smile…….give them yours”.
There is enormous power in giving to others with no expectation of receiving anything in return.Practical givers understand this and give almost instinctually of Time,Talent and Treasure.When you witness someone who truly gives from the heart, it is truly something to experience. | https://medium.com/@gayatripawar79/the-joy-of-giving-fb0ff2d0d32f | [] | 2020-07-02 15:51:45.975000+00:00 | ['Giving', 'Smile', 'Happiness In Life', 'Joy', 'Kinitro'] |
Get Vertical — The Hiker Mindset. I’m not sure why, but the Appalachian… | I’m not sure why, but the Appalachian Trail has always intrigued me. The very idea of it is merely audacious, a footpath that travels almost the entire distance of the American East’s ancient mountain range. After 480 million years, the Appalachians have mellowed out to a smoothness that rivals some of the whiskeys produced in its arms. I’ve always thought I’d hike the trail, kind of a given for some reason. Last week, I finally began, giving the path a 51-year head start to get ready.
My first 56.5-mile effort reinforced some of the rare basic wisdom I’ve been able to collect over my first five decades, mostly, never under-estimate any situation, especially if it can kick you in the ass. Thanks to excellent fitness training from F45 in Raleigh, I was physically prepared for the trip and I had done a few prep hikes in Umstead Forest carrying ‘some’ weight. I also had the confidence of hiking to Everest Base Camp a couple of years ago so my mindset was good as well, or so I thought. When I first put my fully loaded pack on with water, I knew I was in for something different and that my frame of mind would drive my overall experience.
I’ve been reading and thinking about Mindset for about year now and seeking to understand better how my mindset affects my relationships, work, physical fitness, etc. At the beginning of the year I was doing my annual goal-setting around the new year and came across this quote:
“How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself?” — Epictetus
No kidding, how much of our lives do we focus externally on what others demand from us? Why not flip the script and demand the best from ourselves versus worrying about what anyone else thinks or does. I built my entire 2019 mindset around the simple idea that if I demand the best for my physical, mental and emotional health, everything else will take care of itself. If I require the best for myself in my work, it will help me focus on what matters most and not chasing things that don’t add value. By demanding the best for my family, they will benefit from my time and attention. This simple direction has already paid many benefits as I’ve worked to change my lifestyle to better reflect this mantra.
I find hiking to be one of the best activities for deep thinking. Once your body is engaged in the repetition of the hike, your mind opens up to so many possibilities and you can quickly dip into wrapping your thoughts around all kinds of ideas and challenges. The entire 5-day trip became an excellent opportunity to spend some quality time thinking about our business at Photofy and similar to our activity, where we’re headed. Here are some mindset insights gained from the journey.
Scott checks the map as we cross through the Walisi-Yi Center at Neels Gap
Understand Your Geography — As many people know, you can learn to do almost anything from YouTube. I use the video platform to get a grounding of places I’m going to hike, sail or visit. You can see different perspectives from real people who have taken the trip and a great understanding of what to expect. Far beyond the slick promo reels from tourism boards or outdoor brands, the actual insights of people who have done what you’re about to do is invaluable and will give you an understanding of what’s to come. This approach works with almost any business issue. Someone has taken the journey that you are own. Competitors, customers and partners are all creating content and for the most part, it’s easily accessible. Slide Share alone has thousands of ‘maps’ of almost any type of business like this presentation on AI startups. Visualize your hike and it will help you have confidence in your journey. Flexibility is Key to EVERY Plan — Our initial travel plans to Springer Mountain were disrupted as we were headed out. We planned to stay the first night in Atlanta after we flew in and then head to the mountain early the next morning to have a full day to shake down over a few miles and get used to the trail. Our ride had a last minute conflict and couldn’t take us so we improvised, using the Marta train from the airport to get us north of the city and beyond some of the Friday afternoon traffic and then we had a Lyft driver take us to our lodging near the mountain which was also arranged on the fly. Checking in we inquired about transport to Springer, and they had some business cards of locals that provided that service. (we knew this existed because of some of the videos we had watched). No matter how good your plan is, it will always be affected by outside forces. Being mentally prepared to adapt as the environment changes will help keep the goal in plain sight.
3. Stay Organized — I’m mildly OCD and typically repack and refold my clothes in my suitcase when I travel. I’ve found that this simple task just helps me stay focused on the day ahead. When hiking long distance and carrying everything on my back, the pack organization is critical for maintaining harmony. By taking some extra dedicated time each day to repack all of my gear which also had stuff sacks for internal pack organization, I knew where everything was and could strategically place it for use. Our first two days were frigid and laced with on and off rain so having easy access to my rain gear was comforting should it be needed. I find that having a daily plan that ladders to my overall week, month, quarter and year help me stay focused and create efficiency for my time.
4. Set Goals Jointly With Your Team — My hiking companion Scott Steele and have worked together on projects for several years now. We know how to work with each other and this came to be very helpful to get through our days. Each day we would review the route together and discuss potential camping and water opportunities along the way. We both then knew what to expect and could share our relative progress throughout the day. We knew how each other were doing physically, checked in with each other on hydration and nutrition and planned stops accordingly. At Photofy, we collectively build our quarterly goals including hard measurements as an entire team. Every person knows what we are trying to accomplish and what specific areas of focus we all need to achieve to be prosperous. | https://medium.com/@katadhin/get-vertical-the-hiker-mindset-293705316cc1 | ['John Andrews'] | 2019-04-11 20:38:38.225000+00:00 | ['Appalachian Trail', 'Hiking', 'Goals', 'Mindset', 'Teamwork'] |
CEO Mindset: How to get over depression as a teenager | CEO Mindset: How to get over depression as a teenager
This article is suggested by SUWIE, a very good person from Germany Venom Kage Aug 10·3 min read
You’re reading this which means that whether you, your friend, or your family members need help getting over depression. But don’t worry I got you covered, here’s an article telling you how to get over depression(especially as a teenager). So without any further ado, let’s get started.
Since the end of World War II, the number of depressions around the world has skyrocketed. Depression is a disease that can destroy lives and families. Many people try different forms of treatment before any improvement is realized. Many are not so lucky and end up paying the ultimate price. Drugs and medications are one way to treat depression. However, there is In recent years there has been a lot of criticism about the number of medicines we take. Depression can be treated naturally and if possible, the natural approach should be tried first.
A good night’s sleep is essential. Sleep and mood are closely linked. When we are tired, we react to things differently than when we have had enough sleep. Remember to sleep well and regularly. Caffeine and other stimulants should be avoided. They give you temporary energy but are known to deplete your serotonin levels. Low serotonin levels are a major cause of depression. Take a multivitamin every day. This is especially important if your lifestyle causes you to skip meals. Low vitamin deficiency has been linked to depression.
You may want to try to get in touch with your spiritual side. This can be done in various ways. If you enjoy going to church, this is a good opportunity. You may also want to look into prayer and meditation. You don’t have to be overly religious to be spiritual. There are many ways to get there.
Finally, you can try to exercise more. This means no marathon training. Start slow and build up as you feel the need. Exercise helps to release endorphins, making you feel stronger. There are also the health benefits associated with increased activity. The natural approach can be effective. It can also have other positive influences on your overall health.
The natural approach is not always the best or most effective. However, if the depression is not severe and the person is not suicidal or incapacitated, it is recommended that at least the
natural way a chance. Many natural remedies can be tried before trying drugs and medicines.
Those who suffer from depression should avoid excessive alcohol consumption. Alcohol is a depressant, so it slows down your body. It can react to your body’s chemistry and make your condition worse. Alcohol is also a poison that the body does not need.
Try to eat a balanced diet. Loss of vitamins and minerals is directly linked to depression. Make time to eat, despite the kind of lifestyle you have.
You may want to consider cognitive behavioral therapy. This will help you refocus your thoughts and generate a more positive feeling. Your thoughts directly affect your mood. The more negative they are, the more likely you are to become depressed. If you lead a stressful lifestyle, stress management training may be for you. Stress can be the cause of all sorts of ailments, not just depression. Keeping your stress levels low and learning how to deal with highly stressful situations can go a long way to improving your depression. You may want to try to help others. Sometimes it helps to volunteer and help the less fortunate. It can be very rewarding and wipe out some of those negative thoughts
about yourself.
With that, I would like to end this article here and if you found it helpful or worth reading, please share it with your friends or family. Good day! I’ll be back soon with another article. | https://medium.com/@venomkage/ceo-mindset-how-to-get-over-depression-as-a-teenager-438a9102118f | ['Venom Kage'] | 2021-08-10 19:10:13.674000+00:00 | ['Anti Depression', 'Depression', 'Antidepressants', 'Depression Treatment', 'Positivity'] |
Epic Abstract Poem For Homework | Leprechaun mowing a lawn.
He likes wearing a gown at dawn.
Yawning, fawning his newly brawn.
Crowning a badly drawn rundown.
Crying remembering life at rewind.
It just reminds him of what went wrong.
Don’t frown Mr. Fairy.
But I see none fairly.
Except if you desire fantasy.
It is just a fictional story.
Let’s just let it die peacefully.
Don’t be too greedy or you will end up eating grease
Who is famous in Greece?
Wasn’t it always Keanu Reeves?
But does he own a Mercedes?
Oh nevermind, it’s Archimedes?
Wrong. he is from Egypt, where the red sea is.
When Ramses and Moses once rendezvous.
You probably meant the Greek geek Aristoteles.
Ravioli Who is Oli?
No one is truly kingly.
Maybe it is Jokowi?
Anyway, who cares about we?
Coronavirus about to kill me.
Coronavirus all about counting statistic theory.
Everyone says problem solved with quantum gravity.
While Einstein invents atomic bonds and relativity.
Life isn’t relevant anymore and need more pity.
The government likes money.
They don’t have anything morally.
Don’t see it in one way.
This is kind of a diss track anyway.
Sike, this poem doesn’t seem to end.
Yikes, I don’t have to lend my reign.
Maybe you can be quiet in my closet.
but don’t misunderstand yet.
I am not a cereal killer.
While you are a serial eater.
Did I jumble those up?
I am stupid perhaps.
I am always tinkering when there’s Mr. Fiu.
Could not think of anything I may have miss a few.
All this time Elon Musk renew.
Pewdiepie the host of Meme Review.
Both of them knew each other new.
Everything rhyme with you.
Ramping up this useless poem.
It took endless revise and revamp.
Coronavirus to sum it up.
But life is not sum excel tab. | https://medium.com/@gashifaldi/epic-abstract-poem-for-homework-e26c57208b5a | ['Gashif Aldi'] | 2020-11-26 04:30:25.168000+00:00 | ['Homework', 'Writing', 'Science', 'Poem', 'Elon Musk'] |
Unfinished…Adventures in Scala | Photo by Alexandra Nicolae on Unsplash
We always seemed to end in the wrong spots. They weren’t cliffhangers — it wasn’t that there was some shocking realization we’d come across and put to the side in order to draw us back in. It was simply that no matter how far we’d come, we were never actually finished. Sure, we solved individual problems and put together pieces of the puzzle — but the puzzle was infinite. There were no borders or bounds, we didn’t know where it started or even remotely where it finished. In fact, there weren’t even actual pieces, we were creating those too.
But we were making progress. We were building knowledge, bit by bit. And along the way, it always amazed me the extent to which we would find ourselves discovering things that didn’t just apply to Scala, didn’t just apply to principles behind math or logic, didn’t just apply to computer programming, but reached far into the sometimes chaotic and sometimes monotonous, but always enthralling experience of living, learning, growing, and connecting.
Can we ever really say anything in life at all is actually complete? Actually finished? It is relatively easy to start something and see immediate progress but achieving a recognized end is often difficult. It becomes an asymptotic journey. Observing incremental progress gets harder, especially when there isn’t an exact measurement or scorecard and no actual “finish line” appears in the distance where you can hear the growing cheers of crowds as you get closer and closer to crossing and collapsing with joy. But even while knowing that there might never be the epitome of a finale (pending encores?), even while knowing that there are millions of unanswered questions, even while having zero idea what the first step even is, even while facing an impossible mountain that doesn’t have an actual peak — we still need to begin somehow. It will make a difference.
We started my Scala endeavor amidst us watching the world around us collapse as we knew it; mired in uncertainty as a pandemic infected the globe, the stock markets crashed, and friends became unfortunate and innocent threats. The best scientists and doctors around the world waged battle on this virus, seeking to discover aspects of it that would allow for a strategic and effective eradication. But extreme uncertainty clouded every path forward. This almost made it the opportune time to tackle Scala — an unknown to me but something tangible and alluringly conquerable to shift my focus towards, grappling with and making one world less uncertain with assured knowledge. Ironically, however, even Scala has no single correct path to an answer, and it took experimentation and floundering to uncover these methods and syntax. But every time we did, the linter and complier told us there was success. We weren’t fighting an invisible and unpredictable enemy but were working side by side with an acquiescent ally.
“Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.” — Jonathan Swift
Other intersections unexpectedly emerged between this invisible virus that was finding its way into the lungs of unsuspecting bystanders and our quest of enabling me to learn enough about Scala in order to no longer be a sponge of a student, but a true thought partner.
I learned how to deal with things that I couldn’t see.
When the antagonist is something visible, it is much easier to wrap your mind around it and make rational decisions. When in the physical presence of the “concept” in question, you have to use of more of your senses to gain an understanding, and the fine-tuned and often taken-for-granted touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing all provide material advantages as your brain comprehends. Though, beware, that doesn’t mean you still can’t be tricked! Take smallpox, a deadly and extremely contagious disease and an obvious foe. Individuals became contagious when sores appeared and remained contagious until the very last smallpox scab fell off. The threat was apparent, and with that visible threat you possess a legitimate reason to protect yourself. However, as we walked around masked in a world of the lurking coronavirus, every single person seemed to look at each other differently, changing behaviors while contemplating the unknown paths of a microscopic infection that might not even be present at the moment.
As I transitioned from working with two dimensional accessible excel tables to writing functions meant to manipulate multi-dimensional and expansive realms of unreachable data, I too had to conceptualize and envision in a way that was not at all tangible, the paths these functions would take as they burrowed in the data. I had to change the way I thought about things and not just rely on what I could see.
People only show you what they want you to see. You can go on endless quests of discovery, observe interactions and reactions and nuanced hints. You may think you ask all the right questions and that openness and honesty is returned with the same — but there will always be some sort of facade — even if it is unconscious, a shield that exists and filters thoughts, opinions, and judgements. Aristotle would probably say we require that shield — that brutal honesty needs to be filtered to a golden mean of honesty. Others might argue that being brutally honest can be the height of shedding responsibility for outcomes and placing the burden all on the other person. While it is hard, we have to be open to allowing other people to know who we truly are. And maybe that means making sure that when the questions are asked, we are open to hearing them, and open to responding with the truth in our souls even when not directly asked.
With Scala I had to learn how to directly ask the right questions. I had to learn how to precisely dictate exactly what I wanted and not leave anything to interpretation. And Scala had no problem showing me things I didn’t want to see — no cowardice in hiding the true output (though, admittedly, it also had no qualms about telling me that what I was asking made absolutely no sense with what I thought I wanted to know). But what does it mean to actually know something?
I’d never been one to “look under the hood” of things. Sure, I’d learn how something worked — but I never thought it was completely necessary to absolutely understand every single nuance. I could very easily press the “I believe” button and be able to move on, having learned what I thought I needed. In contrast, during nuclear power school, my friend Jimmy would spend hours and hours painstakingly ensuring he understood how the most minute aspects provided foundations for the equations and formulas we were applying. For the first time in my life — Scala made me want to “look under the hood.” It made me want to truly understand what I was telling the computer to do with every single keystroke and symbol. I sought to understand. I didn’t just seek to know. | https://medium.com/@penguinscan2fly/unfinished-adventures-in-scala-sarah-895d2664ce3c | ['Sarah Kuehl'] | 2020-11-06 16:13:09.820000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Relationships', 'Scala', 'Learning To Code', 'Data Science'] |
Beyond the Flat Earth | Beyond the Flat Earth
A field guide to all the Earthers
Flat Earthers: Believe the Earth is flat.
Hollow Earthers: Believe the Earth is full — of aliens, dinosaurs, and fun.
Mearthers: Believe Earth is actually Mars, and Mars is actually Earth. Also called Switcheroo Earthers.
Invisible Earthers: Believe Earth cannot be seen by aliens, which is why they never visit. Also called Peekabearthers.
Nerfers: Believe the Earth is a soft, cushiony planet and therefore safe for children of all ages.
Eggers: Believe someday Earth is gonna hatch.
Birther Earthers: Believe Mother Earth was not born in the United States.
Juggled Earthers: Believe Earth and the other planets in our solar system are being juggled by a massive celestial circus clown, which would explain a few things.
Falling Earthers: Believe Earth is plummeting through space at speeds we can’t feel or comprehend. What happens when we hit the universe’s floor? That all depends if you’re a Bouncer or Splatter.
Bouncers: A subset of Falling Earthers and Juggled Earthers, believe the Earth is made of rubber and will bounce off God’s roof or whatever harmlessly.
Splatters: A noisy contingent of the Falling Earther, Juggled Earther, and Egger communities are not as optimistic.
Denim Earthers: Believe…duh. Also called Jearthers.
Turders: Believe Earth is the poop of God.
Turduckearthers: Believe Earth is a planet inside a space duck inside a cosmic turkey.
Turduckdoodlers: Believe Earth is a planet inside a space duck inside a cosmic turkey that was eaten by a celestial poodle, who is a good boy. | https://medium.com/slackjaw/beyond-the-flat-earth-5a141b50586 | ['Mark Peters'] | 2019-07-14 14:06:02.483000+00:00 | ['Satire', 'Humor', 'Flat Earthers', 'Earth', 'Conspiracy Theories'] |
It Is Time For QR Codes To Come West | QR codes — popular abroad, funny looking barcodes here in the U.S. In reality, they hold the power to bring a stale medium to life.
Savvy marketers have been talking about the impact that QR codes are going to have on advertising for a long time, but I’m more intrigued by the impact they are going to have on the medium of print in general.
A couple of days ago, I was reading an article about Cee Lo’s new “Fuck You” video in the print version of the New York Times. It wasn’t alive at all. It was black and white. It was print.
Now, imagine if there was a QR code on the NY Times page that I could scanned with a QR code app on my IPhone. Upon scanning, my IPhone would “link” to a blog post on NYTimes.com with Cee Lo’s video. I’d be engaged and my experience would have been thoughtfully enhanced. As a not-so-insignificant side effect, page views on the NY Times blog are increased and ad revenue increases.
Doesn’t this seem like a no brainer? | https://medium.com/my-digital-soapbox/it-is-time-for-qr-codes-to-come-west-cc14d72bbd71 | ['Ross E. Sheingold'] | 2016-05-26 19:11:26.716000+00:00 | ['Digital Marketing', 'Qr Codes'] |
The Farewell | image by author
Death,
they say you are
the finest dance of all
a crown of splendor
that is freedom.
Though I stay here
made of mud
you will melt with the moon
court the stars
run with the wolves
of your dreams.
Benevolent gardener
the earth bows low to you
she enshrines your kisses
in a field of flowers
your breath
in the misty rains
your laughter
in the holy wind
her smitten sunsets will reverberate
with the colors of our bliss.
Hushed by the fall of darkness
your ghost moves in me now
taking shelter in my astral heart
finding refuge
in the rhythmic
hidden chamber
of my aorta.
Andrea Juillerat-Olvera 2020 | https://medium.com/the-rebel-poets-society/the-farewell-6cc4643ff950 | ['Andrea Juillerat-Olvera'] | 2020-12-31 21:05:43.872000+00:00 | ['Death', 'Poetry', 'The Rebel Poets Society', 'Farewell', 'Poem'] |
How to Get the Perfect Front Door for your Dream Home | When asked what is the most important thing in this world for you, apart from your family, friends and of course your pet animal (because they are not things) what would be your answer? Well, when it comes to material possessions, for most people it is their house, the one that they have spent years in planning about and have certainly sacrificed on various things to save enough for that one dream home. There is no harm in loving things, especially when it comes to your house because that is the place which you share with the most important people in your life. Whether you live with your parents, or are a parent of yourself and in the phase of raising a family of your own, we all have certain dreams and ideas about how our house should be which is completely fine. However, where to start with? Yes, you guessed it; it always starts with entrance, i.e. the front door!
When it comes to home doors, we always have this need of enhancing them in one way or the other. The best way to enhance your front entry is to get an iron door installed. There are a bunch of reasons as to why iron doors manage to keep up with their image in the market and how their qualities do not let anyone think about any other possible options. If you have heard of them or experienced it by looking at your neighbor’s entry door, you probably are thinking about enhancing your front gate too. We have good news for you, this is certainly the best time to do it; the weather supports your decision. The reason behind saying this is the fact that getting an iron door installed can be best done during summers, you certainly do not want to get any outdoor renovation done during winters; it just requires a lot more effort and energy from both your side and the labors.
If that is not enough, here is another valid reason for getting an iron door for your entrance: Iron doors are famous for their ability to fit in. No matter what type of an entrance you have or what style you prefer, iron doors will adjust according to your needs. You can get your customized iron door exactly the way you want. It comes in different sizes, different shapes, various colors and a range of unique designs. It’s up to you; if you want you can choose from the numerous options available both in single and double sized doors or if you prefer picking all the minute details of you iron door to have the perfect aesthetic, you can opt for customized doors.
Whatever your decision is, once you have decided for sure, just go for it. You have got the best quality, best designs, and above all, the perfect season to get it done as well, what is left to wait for now? We hope that you get exactly what you are looking for and that your dream home has the perfect entrance! | https://medium.com/@irondoorgate/how-to-get-the-perfect-front-door-for-your-dream-home-705703589cf8 | ['Door Gate Depot - Wrought Iron Doors Los Angeles'] | 2019-03-21 17:47:51.579000+00:00 | ['Iron Doors', 'Iron Doors Dallas', 'Wrought Iron Doors', 'Iron Doors Nevada', 'Home Improvement'] |
Why Did Oil Drop Into the Negatives? | Chart of US Crude Oil, from Reuters
On Monday, April 20, 2020, the price of US oil dropped to -$37.63. This was shocking, bringing attention from across the globe. But why did oil drop so low, and why into the negatives?
A clarification.
Oil as a whole didn’t drop into the negatives. More specifically, the May 2020 futures contract for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) is what fell into the negatives. June 2020 contracts, along with Brent Crude Oil did not go negatives at the time. Before we explain why the May 2020 futures contract went negatives, lets first explain Crude Oil futures.
How Crude Oil futures work.
Crude Oil futures are traded on the NYMEX with the ticker symbol CL, between 6PM to 5PM ET. These contracts contain 1000 barrels of oil that are physically delivered once the contract settles. What this means is that when the May contract settled, traders who held onto a call (in other words, bought the contract) are responsible for the physical delivery of the oil.
Why did the May 2020 futures contract go into the negatives?
Not only was there an increased supply and decreased demand as mentioned in my previous article, but there was also no place to store oil. The May contract expired on Tuesday, April 21, and with traders not able to store oil at facilities meant to store the commodity, they were forced to sell their contracts beforehand even if it meant that they would be paying another person to buy it. This loss would be less than the cost of carrying oil.
A quick lesson on contango.
Crude Oil Futures Quotes, from CME Group
If you were looking at the price for all futures contracts, you would have realized that as the time till the contract settles increases, the price of the contract also increases. The general reason for this is because of the cost of carry, such as storage costs and insurance. However, overtime this spread in price reduces as the contract’s settlement date approaches. In many markets, such as with Bitcoin, traders can take advantage of the contango. This is done through an arbitrage, where traders sell contracts with a large premium and buy spot to lock in a profit.
Interested in reading more articles like these?
Share our articles to those who are interested, follow the Junior Economist, and checkout articles written by others on the Junior Economist! | https://medium.com/junior-economist/why-did-oil-drop-into-the-negatives-752c504c0857 | ['Fahim Ahmed'] | 2020-05-14 21:31:54.723000+00:00 | ['Oil', 'Trading', 'Economy', 'Investing', 'Futures Trading'] |
My Recap of KubeCon 2019’s “Running Istio and Kubernetes On-Prem at Yahoo Scale” | This article will summarize a talk given by Suresh Visvanathan & Mrunmayi Dhume of Verizon Media at KubeCon San Diego 2019. If the video recording of the presentation is posted, I will link it here directly in the article so you can follow along.
Yahoo! has more than 18 production grade Kubernetes clusters; Visvanathan’s team operates one that has more than 150,000 containers, 500 applications, and 1,000,000 requests per second.
Their most mission-critical applications, such as Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo! Finance, and Yahoo! Home, are deployed and enabled by Kubernetes and Istio platforms.
The talk covered how the teams worked on modernizing their platform to a microservices architecture. Among their goals were: | https://medium.com/cloud-native-the-gathering/my-recap-of-kubecon-2019s-running-istio-and-kubernetes-on-prem-at-yahoo-scale-d5621907fb6e | ['Tremaine Eto'] | 2019-11-20 21:28:45.497000+00:00 | ['Software Engineering', 'Technology', 'Software Development', 'Kubernetes', 'Istio'] |
The flawed reasoning behind the Bell vs Tavistock judgement | On 1st December 2020, the High Court issued its ruling on the case brought against the only gender identity service for children in the UK, the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. The ruling was disappointing for the transgender population of the UK; it has been decided that transgender children are unlikely to be able to consent to puberty blockers, and therefore transgender youth will have their access to puberty blocking drugs severely limited. Whereas before this ruling, doctors at the clinic could provide puberty blockers to certain children experiencing gender dysphoria, now they will have to apply for a “best interests” order from the court in order to access them.
The disappointment about the court case is not only due to the result, however. A lot of disappointment comes from how the court made its decision, as it is clear from reading the full document that if better information was available to the judges, the case might have gone differently.
One point on which the court was arguably correct was to criticise the record keeping of the Tavistock clinic. Tavistock was unable to supply statistics on the proportion of their patients given puberty blockers in years before 2019/20; the precise numbers of patients who went on to take cross-sex hormones (CSHs) in later years; and other data. Perhaps it had something to do with lack of funding or staff, as they would clearly have access to all the data in their patient files, but the data was not collated. Perhaps it had something to do with the rules around keeping data on patients who had been referred to adult services. I don’t know, I don’t work for the NHS, but it would be nice to have that data, given that GIDS is one of the largest clinics for trans youth in Europe, and there’s little in the way of statistics on this demographic in general.
It’s clear from their testimony that Tavistock are very methodical in their treatment of trans and gender non-conforming children and young people. In order to be prescribed puberty blockers, the patient has to have shown signs of persistent gender dysphoria (GD), a strong feeling of incongruence with one’s sex and distress resulting from that. They have to have felt this for an extended period of time. Patients undergo a series of appointments assessing the suitability of intervention, with long waits between appointment times. Tavistock was able to provide the data for the 2019/20 cohort of patients, which revealed that 161 children (out of thousands referred to the clinic) were referred to GIDS for puberty blockers, and more than half of those 161 were over 15 years old. Tavistock described its lengthy process of ensuring the patients understood the ramifications of treatment. This debunks the popular myth pushed by critics that hordes of young children are fast-tracked into taking drugs. However, the court case was not about the clinic’s practices; it was about whether children are able to consent to taking puberty blockers.
The general logic of the judgement is this: children are not mature enough to be able to understand the ramifications of taking hormone blockers and subsequent therapies, therefore they might make a decision which has an adverse effect on their health or causes them to regret their choice, therefore they should not be able to make that choice.
So, regret, how common is it?
One of the claimants in this case was Keira Bell, a young woman who regrets her transition to a more masculine body. She chose to take puberty blockers at age 16 and progressed to testosterone at age 17, and then a double mastectomy at age 20. Bell’s regret is unfortunate, but it is important to remember that regret regarding transgender therapies is an extremely rare occurrence. Most studies and surveys put the rate at about 2% or less, much lower than regret over cosmetic surgery or gastric bands. Granted, these studies usually cover adults, but given that strong gender dysphoric feelings in children are a good predictor of persisting gender dysphoria in adulthood, the information is still relevant. Also, this study covers adolescents too, the age range that Bell would have been a part of. The fact is that Bell is an anomaly, not representative of trans children in general.
Additionally, from her testimony and comments she has given in interviews, it is clear that Bell regrets the results of medical decisions she made after puberty blockers, once considered a mature adult. For example, she regrets no longer having breasts. Her time on puberty blockers have very little to do with this, given that her mastectomy was undertaken many years later. Bell could have chosen to come off the puberty blockers and live life as a cis woman. She could have even chosen to continue with blockers and commence testosterone therapy but keep her breasts. She had all options open to her and she was 20 years old at the time of the latest intervention. Therefore, her testimony does not support the assertion that trans children might regret taking puberty blockers.
There is evidence that trans children think a lot more about the ramifications of puberty blockers than clinicians give them credit for. This study details the thought processes of many of these individuals, and it characterises these young people as very mindful about the risks of treatment. Some key findings of the qualitative study:
One could explain the viewpoint of the adolescents by the fact that adolescence is a period in which short-term rewards are more important than long-term rewards, even when choosing for an immediate reward can mean a later loss or risk… However, the adolescents also showed that they seriously weighed the short- and long-term consequences, and consciously chose for the treatment. Furthermore, they showed a remarkable insight and altruism in their willingness to participate in research, which also meant they were able to look beyond their own short-term interests. It is striking that several interviewed gender dysphoric adolescents gave arguments which were also mentioned by opponents among care providers, for example doubts about the ability of adolescents to make decisions regarding medical treatment at the age of 12 or younger. The adolescents sometimes seemed to be even more cautious than some of the professionals.
Bell truly is not representative of trans youth and her situation should not dictate law for the rest of the population.
The court proceedings understate the evidence for puberty blockers being of benefit to trans children.
The claimants used an unpublished, not as of yet peer-reviewed study to call into question that they are of any benefit at all. This is odd, as all evidence so far is to the contrary. Children and young adults that seek puberty suppression are adamant that it has saved their life; that the blockers have allowed them to think about their gender and what further medical steps they wish to take without the distress caused by developing secondary sex characteristics. Additionally, if the young trans person wishes to medically transition once an adult, their results may be cosmetically better (according to some) than if they had not taken puberty blockers, and they may need fewer surgeries in future. The benefits of puberty blockers are immense, so much so that with medical intervention, psychological wellbeing of trans adolescents improves to the same health as the general population. This is the very reason why they should be accessible to trans youth.
I am unsure why the unpublished study has findings that disagree with all previous evidence so far. According to the court document:
The reported qualitative data on early outcomes of 44 young people who received early pubertal suppression. It noted that 100% of young people stated that they wished to continue on GnRHa, that 23 (52%) reported an improvement in mood since starting the blocker but that 27% reported a decrease in mood. Noted that there was no overall improvement in mood or psychological wellbeing using standardized psychological measures.
It could be that this data is not indicative of the effects of puberty suppression at all, but that the issue is the UK’s hostile attitude towards trans people. The media is saturated with articles speculating whether the trans population are dangerous, criminal, or lying. This is bound to affect mood. Low mood could be a societal problem rather than a medical one.
Regardless of why this particular unpublished study has differing findings to the rest of the body of literature, the court put unreasonable weight on its findings. Other papers should have been considered, rather than this one which has not been peer-reviewed.
Conversely, the court overstated the risks of puberty blockers.
Puberty blockers are mostly reversible, you can stop taking them and normal hormone function will resume. There are some areas of concern; namely, bone density, fertility, and possible neurological effects. There are a couple of very good articles that weigh up the risks and benefits of puberty blockers. The article in the Journal of Medical Ethics outlines why the possible reduction of bone density is less concerning than one may think. There would still be a very low risk of fracture, and there are ways to mitigate bone density loss, such as ensuring vitamin D is adequate and exercising regularly. Once sex hormones are introduced, either via cross-sex hormones or by cessation of puberty blockers and resuming natal sex hormones, bone density improves. Regarding other risks, loss of fertility is not a concern to some trans people, and there are ways to store gametes for future use, including some experimental methods to store immature gametes. If the young person decides transitioning is not for them, resumption of puberty will restore fertility. As for neurological effects, the claimants brought up a study in sheep which indicated there may be some harmful results of puberty suppression, but a small study in humans which was not presented at court indicated that this probably isn’t the case: there was no difference in cognitive function between those who took puberty blockers and those who did not.
Their skewed perception of a risky treatment with arguable benefits, as opposed to a beneficial treatment with arguable risks, probably contributed to the judgement.
The court repeatedly stated that it was not up to them to determine whether there are benefits or risks, but given that weighing up benefits and risks is critical to decision making, and the court case was about whether children can do that, it’s important that the court was given an accurate picture of these benefits and risks. I do not believe they were given this, and their skewed perception of a risky treatment with arguable benefits, as opposed to a beneficial treatment with arguable risks, probably contributed to the judgement.
It is necessary to say here that a lot of weight is put on the fact that studies on trans children (or trans people in general) are often small, and this is often interpreted as a reason why we should discount the study. Bear in mind that the trans population is very small, and so any study is also by necessity small. Remember that the number of children referred for puberty blockers this last year was only 161 individuals. It’s not going to be possible to do large studies. Nonetheless, those longitudinal studies or meta-analyses that do exist are overwhelmingly in support of treatment.
The court says there is confusion over why puberty blockers are prescribed.
This is nonsense. In paragraph 52 they say “There is some dispute as to the purpose of prescribing PBs”, backed up with a statement that does not actually demonstrate a dispute but rather why some might think there is a dispute. Later, in paragraph 134:
There is a lack of clarity over the purpose of the treatment: in particular, whether it provides a “pause to think” in a “hormone neutral” state or is a treatment to limit the effects of puberty, and thus the need for greater surgical and chemical intervention later.
Both are true! Both necessarily have to be true, for how do we provide a pause to think without limiting the effects of puberty? It is impossible to pause time, therefore we must pause the effects of time i.e., the changes that come with puberty. Puberty blockers are only provided to those seeking to limit the effects of puberty, and so doing that allows them the time to decide what to do regarding transition when they’re an adult. There is no dispute here: only the purpose and the method used to achieve it.
Reducing the need for further interventions later is a bonus, for those who continue on to transition, but if puberty is resumed as normal, secondary sex characteristics will develop as normal.
They make the flawed judgement that puberty blockers lead to CSHs, and allow that to be the crux of the argument that children can’t consent.
The real reason puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones are linked.
This is the huge logical leap that I’ve already written a (much shorter) piece on. In short, they assume that since most of the people that take puberty blockers go on to take cross-sex hormones, that puberty blockers might actually cause people to take cross-sex hormones, which is bad reasoning with no supporting evidence. It is simply a correlation due to the demographic of people being studied (trans people). If the child, when they’re older, decides they aren’t trans after all or don’t want hormones for any other reason, they can decide not to take that course, and there are individuals who decide this (around 2% cease treatment after being given time to think). The gender clinics must assess patients again before CSHs are prescribed to determine whether or not this is the right path for them; it is not an automatic step from puberty blockers to CSHs. While it is true that most children and adolescents on puberty blockers choose to continue on to CSHs, this is because only a small number of children who question their gender identity get prescribed puberty blockers in the first place, in particular those who are persistently dysphoric and have been for some time. In other words, the ones who are most likely to actually be trans. To find out if puberty blockers actually cause persistent gender dysphoria, you’d have to give puberty blockers to all children regardless of gender dysphoria (so cisgender children too) and measure how many of them go on to take CSHs, and those studies obviously do not exist.
However, because the court decided that puberty blockers and CSHs are irrevocably linked, they decided that the child must weigh up the risks of CSHs as well as the risks of puberty blockers, and as this is such a huge decision to make for a child, they cannot possibly consent. I find it ludicrous that this is the reasoning they’ve gone with — that we’re talking about risks of a possible treatment the patient isn’t taking yet — but that is the crux of the court case.
This judgement erodes Gillick competency.
Gillick competency is a term used in UK medical law which describes guidelines to assess a child’s maturity to be able to consent to medical treatments without parental consent. It’s vital for a teenager’s access to contraception, for example, when their parents might not be supportive. To expand on that example, birth control is not without risks and side effects, nor is having sex at a young age, potentially in an unsafe manner, but a doctor’s duty is to weigh up those risks with the benefits of a child not becoming pregnant and to act in the best interests of the child. This case is no different, only the benefits of puberty blockers were dismissed and the risks overblown.
The case went into some of the previous rulings around Gillick competency. One of the statements from Lord Scarman was particularly insightful:
The truth may well be that the rights of parents and children in this sensitive area are better protected by the professional standards of the medical profession than by “a priori” legal lines of division between capacity and the lack of capacity to consent since any such general dividing line is sure to produce in some cases injustice, hardship, and injury to health.
In other words: leave the medical decisions to the doctors. This judgement is in direct opposition to that ethical and legal standard.
It is obvious from the court case that the court knows nothing about trans healthcare; they repeatedly state that it is not up to the courts to decide medical or scientific fact. They know this is not their area of expertise, and yet they come to the decision that it is their role to decide what is in the best interests for gender non-conforming children. We have no idea what these “best interests” orders will look like or how they will be obtained, but we do know they will be court orders, not a conversation between a board of medical experts and the patient in question. This is unnecessary and dangerous gatekeeping.
It is likely that because gender dysphoria is in the cultural zeitgeist, the court is treating it differently than other conditions. The court would probably not, in 2020, intervene with prescribing birth control medications to under-16s, despite new evidence of long-term side effects emerging since Gillick competence first came into law. Similarly, it does not intervene with experimental epilepsy medications or ADHD medications. In general, these decisions are left to doctors and research teams. The same should be true for the prescription of puberty blockers for the small proportion of children or adolescents for whom the doctors determine it is necessary. Gender dysphoria should be no different to any other diagnosis.
Autism Spectrum Disorder was brought up multiple times by the claimants and Transgender Trend, in the context that there are a “worrying” number of female-to-male children with ASD requesting puberty blockers. It should go without saying but I will do so anyway: autistic people can and should make their own decisions about their own bodies.
Applying Gillick competency differently to trans or autistic people than to cis or neurotypical people is a dangerous precedent to set.
Transgender Trend were allowed to contribute but not Stonewall or Mermaids.
The court argued that this was because Stonewall and Mermaids wished to contribute items to the case which were not relevant. However, given the demonstrated lack of knowledge the court has about trans people, it’s unlikely they have the competence to assess what is relevant. Tavistock were unable to provide the statistics the court asked for, but perhaps Mermaids would have some of those statistics as they work with trans children and their families. Transgender Trend spent a lot of their time calling into question whether puberty blockers are effective, something Stonewall, Mermaids and the body of medical research on the subject can attest to. Additionally, paragraph 103 says: “Much of [the director of Transgender Trend’s] evidence focused on the increase of referrals to GIDS of teenage natal girls and the cultural factors, including material on the internet and social media, which may play a part in this.” How is this deemed relevant but Mermaids’ and Stonewall’s contributions are not?
Having one extremely biased group contributing to the case without representation from the other side influenced the way the court ruled.
Transgender Trend was described by the court document as: “an organisation that provides evidence-based information and resources for parents and schools concerning children with GD.” This is laughable. They are a hateful propaganda organisation, as evident from their website.
Having one extremely biased group contributing to the case without representation from the other side, in conjunction with the lack of attention given to data on positive effects of pubertal suppression and heavy speculation on the risks, probably influenced the way the court ruled. I am shocked they thought that a group called Transgender Trend would contribute in any way fairly. In fact, beyond Transgender Trend’s statement, most of the claimants’ “expert” witnesses were health professionals without any expertise in trans healthcare and with troubling connections to anti-LGBT Christian groups. This case had a heavy anti-trans bias from the start, and the judges should have been aware of this.
It is unethical to deny these drugs.
I recommend reading this and this, from the Journal of Medical Ethics and the Journal of Ethics respectively. The benefits of puberty suppression were downplayed in this court case but puberty blockers are an invaluable intervention for a young trans person’s mental and physical wellbeing. The science is clear on this. Those articles above weigh up these benefits with the risks and come to the firm conclusion that puberty blockers are ethical to prescribe. Critically: “It would be unethical to allow a patient to suffer through the distress of pubertal development when we have a way of preventing the distress it causes.”
Applying Gillick competency differently to trans or autistic people than to cis or neurotypical people is a dangerous precedent to set.
So, what are the effects of the judgement?
There have been some developments since the 1st December. Firstly, NHS England took the advice of the court and stopped all referrals for puberty suppressors as soon as the judgement was announced, despite not being required to do this until the 22nd December. This caused a lot of anxiety for gender dysphoric children and their parents who were being seen by Tavistock or on their waiting list. The judgement was stayed until the 22nd December or the appeal, whichever comes latest, and Tavistock have requested to appeal which means treatment should not have been interrupted for these young people. The NHS could have waited to see if the situation became clearer, for example if the appeal was successful, or if the “best interests” order and the process for getting one was better explained. This immediate reaction with nothing to replace it is cruel.
According to a clinician that works with trans patients, NHS England has also been overzealous when it comes to 16- and 17-year-olds, suspending treatment in opposition to the judgement’s guidelines. This is beyond what is legally required. As per the court judgement, those over 16 are assumed competent and a best interests order is only required in cases where there is doubt. It is not known why NHS England have halted all treatment but it seems reckless of them to do so.
No advice on alternative treatment pathways or support has been made public by NHS England. There is currently no process for obtaining a “best interests” order, so appointments have simply been cancelled. Patients have been left in limbo.
Private practices are not required to adhere to the judgement, and nor do doctors overseas. I anticipate an increase in trans youth accessing these services to obtain blockers; this is already common within trans healthcare in general because of the long waiting times on the NHS and this further barrier will only exacerbate the issue. This creates, or rather widens, a class barrier to trans healthcare, as these options are expensive and only available to those whose families can afford it. For those who are not privileged enough to afford this course of action, the internet may be able to provide, but with none of the careful monitoring. No bloodwork, no bone density scans, no fertility advice, no dosage control. This court judgement will put trans children at more risk than they were at before.
This widens a class barrier to trans healthcare.
Much like contraception I suppose — if people are going to do it anyway, there’s no sense in making it less safe for them. Abstinence is never the best policy.
So, that’s the whole of it: we don’t know when appointments will resume; we don’t know how “best interests” orders will be obtained, or how long it will take to receive one; and we don’t know the impact this judgement will have on the health of young trans people. What we do know is that this court case was a sham. Don’t believe me? Read a lawyer’s take on the case here, here and here. | https://medium.com/@matrimtait/the-flawed-reasoning-behind-the-bell-vs-tavistock-judgement-58bca490a532 | ['Matrim Tait'] | 2020-12-24 08:37:44.722000+00:00 | ['Legal', 'Transgender', 'Gender', 'UK', 'Tavistock'] |
$NKTR: A Tale of Wall St. Manipulation More Sordid Than GameStop | “Put simply, I hypothesize that Nektar is the subject of a short and distort scheme, kicked off by Plainview LLC’s hit piece and maintained by hedge funds employing all of the levers at their disposal, including paid message board ‘trolls,’ corrupted Wall St. ‘news’ entities and frequent manipulation of share price.”
The recent situation with GameStop (GME) has shed light on the shady practices of many institutional investors, including hedge funds. Building on that awareness, let’s examine a sector in which Wall Street manipulation is aided by the misrepresentation of scientific results: biotech. A prime example of this is the case of Nektar Therapeutics ($NKTR), which has promising fundamentals and compelling scientific and clinical results. I am long $NKTR, and have been adding to my position for 18 months. Please consider my comments with this in mind. As some of you know, I have written about my experience with scientific misconduct in academia, and about the institutional collusion employed to silence whistleblowers. Here, I discuss Wall Street’s treatment of Nektar, which I hypothesize is a particularly sordid example of a short and distort scheme. Hedge funds have taken large short positions in Nektar, and seem to be regularly manipulating this stock’s share price and narrative, aided by a sophisticated effort to flood online message boards with inaccuracies and by the gaming of algorithmic and high-frequency trading. As retail investors flee, large financial institutions scoop up discounted shares. Many retail investors are bamboozled and swindled, while Wall St. fat cats benefit from lax regulation and a culture of impunity. It is an operation that was kicked off by a short-seller’s (now discredited) report and maintained using all of the levers at Wall Street’s disposal.
3D Structure of interleukin-2 (IL-2) by “Swiss Model User” 26 Oct. 2019 fair use under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International, via Wikipedia
Nektar is essentially a platform company, with pegylated protein therapeutics and small molecules making up the majority of its pipeline. Pegylation is employed to modify these molecules’ half-lives, bioavailability, target engagement, etc. One of Nektar’s most clinically-advanced compounds is pegylated IL-2, known as NKTR-214 or bempegaldesleukin (“bempeg”). Various IL-2 constructs (famously Proleukin developed by Cetus and Chiron and later acquired by Novartis) have been used to treat certain cancers, both systemically and locally, but half-life and toxicity have often been limiting. While NKTR-214 is not efficacious for treating cancers as a single agent, a growing body of clinical data, supported by subsequent mechanistic investigations, suggests that NKTR-214 potentiates immuno-oncology (IO) therapeutics such as Opdivo (Bristol-Myers-Squibb $BMY) and Keytruda (Merck $MRK). It appears that NKTR-214’s pegylation both “pro-drugs” the IL-2 protein and affects its engagement with the IL-2 receptor complex in host cells. There’s a lot of peer-reviewed research on the subject, and I won’t attempt to review it here; the working hypothesis is that NKTR-214 in combination with certain IO drugs helps to prime patients’ immune systems to specifically destroy tumor cells without eliciting treatment-limiting systemic T-cell expansion. NKTR-214 is in a number of late-stage clinical trials. Preliminary data show that for indications such as metastatic melanoma, Opdivo combined with NKTR-214 elicits a complete response (e.g. clearance of detectable tumors) far more frequently than Opdivo alone, and far more frequently than the current standard of care, while the toxicity of the combination is indistinguishable from that of Opdivo alone. Intriguingly, NKTR-214 appears to induce responses in tumors that express low levels of PD-L1 (this PD-L1 “negative” expression is otherwise correlated to poor responses to treatment with Opdivo and Keytruda). The expansion of these IO therapeutics — as a consequence of coadministration with NKTR-214 to PD-L1 negative tumors — would itself represent a major differentiation from the single agents. Ongoing and newly-expanded clinical trials by BMY (maker of Opdivo) and NKTR show these companies testing the hypothesis that NKTR-214 is an IO potentiator for an array of tumor types besides melanoma. Building off of its in-house immunomodulatory expertise, Nektar is presently trialing a number of other investigational compounds designed to harness innate and adaptive components of patients’ immune systems to fight cancer and to treat autoimmune diseases. Despite its promising pipeline and about $1 billion in cash on hand (from its joint development agreement with BMY and from various milestone payments), NKTR trades at a fraction of what I feel is its fair share price. Over the last 18 months, in response to the release of clinical data that would send most other biotech stocks soaring, Nektar’s stock price briefly spikes and then rapidly declines. Why is this?
Having followed this therapeutic space (non-antibody protein therapeutics generally and cytokine therapeutics specifically) for a while, I had a small investment in Nektar in the summer of 2018, when its share price had run up as a consequence of its preliminary clinical results with NKTR-214. As is often the case for investigational molecules, the efficacy of NKTR-214 was lower than early trials with small numbers of patients initially suggested but was still significantly better than the standard of care for metastatic melanoma. Moreover, NKTR-214 was looking like a promising IO potentiator for other cancer types (as it still does). In October 2018, an entity called Plainview LLC, founded by one Aaron Wedlund, published a report punningly entitled “NKTR-214: Pegging the Value at Zero.” I eagerly read Wedlund’s manifesto, which disclosed Plainview’s short position in Nektar. Lengthy and technically dense, it looked damning to Nektar at first glance. Since I perform deep diligence on the science of my biotech investments, I was familiar with much of the body of literature surrounding IL-2. As I read and re-read Plainview’s “report,” I realized that out-of-context portions of figures from peer-reviewed papers and carefully-curated subsets of data were cherry-picked and woven together to support a short thesis at odds with the totality of IL-2 literature, and with Nektar’s and others’ well-controlled clinical data. In the research world, we call the selection of non-representative data to support a hypothesis “results fabrication,” and that’s what I believe happened here. After digesting Plainview’s Frankenstein-like “report,” my first thought was that it might be time to look for NKTR buying opportunities. On cue with the release of Plainview’s hit piece, Yahoo Finance’s Nektar “conversations” message board — the primary online forum for Nektar’s retail shareholders — started filling with a horde of new users who had eerily similar posts, with matching grammar, colloquialisms, etc. Attempts by others on the message board to dissect Plainview’s hit piece were buried by down-votes, by repetitious distortions, and by relentless ad hominem attacks on anyone who didn’t share the short thesis. This coincided with hedge funds’ taking large short positions, retail investors fleeing, and large institutions (including Invesco and Blackrock) steadily acquiring shares.
As the clinical trials of NKTR-214 rolled on into 2019, every data readout made Plainview’s report less likely to be accurate. The deepening of melanoma patients’ responses to Opdivo plus NKTR-214 relative to the control arm would only make sense if NKTR-214 worked. Biomarker data collected in order to elucidate NKTR-214’s in vivo mechanism(s) of action were likewise inconsistent with Plainview’s assertions. In the summer of 2019, Nektar disclosed a manufacturing error in some batches of NKTR-214. Manufacturing difficulties, especially for protein therapeutics, are not uncommon even in big pharma. Since a mix of “good” and “bad” NKTR-214 batches had been used in clinical trials, Nektar informed the FDA, and together they performed a retrospective data review that binned patients by batch. Moreover, Nektar disclosed the cause(s) and remedies for its manufacturing difficulty to the FDA and to its partner BMY. While Nektar stock sold off further on this news, and online message boards and Wall Street “news” outlets lit up with the short thesis, BMY and Nektar announced that the FDA had granted Breakthrough Therapy Designation for NKTR-214 plus Opdivo in metastatic melanoma. Such a designation suggests that Nektar, BMY, and the FDA were satisfied that the manufacturing problem was corrected and that the NKTR-214 plus Opdivo doublet showed sufficient promise to be put on a fast track toward potentially accelerated approval. Yet analysts and online news-propagating bots (e.g. “Simply Wall St.,” “BidAskBot,” and the like) made it seem as if NKTR was in terminal decline. Institutional ownership increased as retail investors ran for the exits. Through the remainder of 2019 and thereafter, positive results on subsequent clinical trials of NKTR-214 and other compounds in Nektar’s large pipeline have been followed by a barrage of online misinformation and by the creation of a narrative entirely at odds with Nektar’s clinical data and with the expansion of its trials based on these data. I hypothesize that this misinformation campaign is highly coordinated and that it is organized by hedge funds manipulating Nektar’s price. Every positive piece of news that should have led to a share price increase was followed by a modest rise and then decline, with trading patterns highly suggestive of hedge fund manipulation. If you don’t believe me, have a look at the charts and judge for yourself. When negative news unrelated to Nektar’s main pipeline arose (e.g. the FDA’s foreseeable rejection of NKTR-181, a pegylated opioid derivative that was designed to be a less-abusable pain medication), it was trumpeted by Wall St. “news” outlets, under titles like “Its opioid dissed by FDA advisors, SF drugmaker abandons program.” Yet positive news items related to Nektar’s most important pipeline — its oncology molecules such as NKTR-214 — were studiously ignored and/or systematically buried on message boards and by Wall Street’s various “news” bots and aggregators.
Put simply, I hypothesize that Nektar is the subject of a short and distort scheme, kicked off by Plainview LLC’s hit piece and maintained by hedge funds employing all of the levers at their disposal, including paid message board “trolls,” corrupted Wall St. “news” entities and frequent manipulation of the share price. Who might this scheme benefit? At present, Nektar is 97% institution-owned, and one can see from SEC filings that those institutions vacuumed up shares on the cheap as retail investors were scared away. Hedge funds benefit from a tiny retail float — which I posit that they, in a coordinated manner, helped to create — because it enables them to manipulate the share price and profit from its fluctuations. Big financial institutions, who hold the majority of Nektar’s shares, make some money by lending these shares to short-sellers, but continue to acquire and hold Nektar equity because they expect — contrary to the public-facing narrative — that Nektar will have clinical success. With a number of late-stage clinical readouts anticipated in 2021 and 2022, I think that positive news is likely on multiple fronts.
Having acquired bargain-priced shares throughout this putative short and distort operation, and planning to remain long as Nektar’s huge portfolio of investigational compounds matures, why did I write this piece? I did so because my experience investing in Nektar has given me insight into just how corrupt Wall St. may be. Hedge funds and large financial institutions not only have informational asymmetry with respect to retail investors, they also possess the resources to manipulate stock prices to fit desired narratives. In Nektar’s Yahoo stock forum, posters who are presumably aligned with the hedge funds have spent 18 months openly gloating about how they manipulate Nektar’s stock price, even accurately predicting when and to what extent the price will be pushed down on a given day. Could they be imposters? Sure. But I suspect that their gloating reflects the truth. With so many shares in institutional hands, hedge funds can have their way with companies like Nektar, making money off of share price movements that they create, and notably employing short-selling maneuvers. At the time of my writing, Nektar is one of the most shorted biotech companies, yet 97% of its shares are owned by institutions. Who are the losers? Retail investors who couldn’t evaluate the merits of the short thesis, and who sold their shares at discount prices. Nektar and its employees who for all of their missteps, have built what I feel is one of the most underappreciated pipelines in biopharma. It is ultimately patients who lose when headwinds are unfairly blown against biotechs like Nektar, a company that appears to be working in good faith to make cancer less lethal. In the discussion of short-selling and share prices, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that most businesses are groups of people trying their best to create useful things, whether consumer goods or cancer drugs.
I have heard short-selling defended as a tool with which markets can identify companies engaged in fraud, thereby protecting against distortions. How is it not distortion when short sellers create a thesis built on the misrepresentation of science, as I think was done to Nektar? How is honest market functioning served when it is in powerful financial institutions’ interests for such short and distort schemes to be created and maintained? I wonder if the ability to short-sell securities is creating more market distortion and perverse incentives than its proponents claim that it prevents. It’s not surprising that outraged investors have been targeting shorts’ manipulation of GameStop, giving the hedge funds a small taste of their own medicine. Whether retail investors will choose to punish the manipulators of biotech stocks remains to be seen. But anyone who discounts the armies of small investors, aware of Wall Street’s corrupt playbook, does so at significant peril. | https://medium.com/@caffeinatedchemist/nktr-a-tale-of-wall-st-manipulation-more-sordid-than-gamestop-142f09b987b5 | ['Louis E. Metzger Iv'] | 2021-02-03 19:34:59.974000+00:00 | ['Hedge Funds', 'Investing', 'Clinical Trials', 'Biotechnology', 'Pharmaceutical'] |
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Crypto rabbit-hole: the saga continues. | Disclaimer: The views expressed herein are my own and do not reflect the view of any third party. This is not a recommendation to buy or sell securities or other products and should not be considered investment advice.
I spent the last year going deep down the cryptoasset rabbit hole. (Side note: If you’re just getting started, check out my crypto primer.) Below is my latest thinking on areas I find interesting:
Regulated Moats
The number of cryptoasset holders grew to ~20-25M since 2011. In comparison, the number of banked adults worldwide grew by ~700M over the same period. One of the major building blocks to widespread adoption is to get more people owning (& feeling safe owning) the category. This could take several shapes:
Regulated exchanges, particularly mobile-first ones. For comparison, mobile-first banking is what drove the increase of banked accounts worldwide.
Financial infrastructure “copies” for crypto: custody, insurance, etc. Things to make institutions feel comfortable investing in crypto.
Other forms of on-ramps that provide retail or mass-market investors with access without (1) the need to deploy significant fiat capital and (2) the mental load or fear of not knowing which assets to select. These could be: (a) index funds (cf Bitwise HOLD10), (b) round-up-the-change models (eg. Acorns, but for crypto), (c) investment management (cf. Scout), etc…
Why these are interesting:
Regulation makes them hard to build, so they have natural moats.
Regulation makes them regional, so there is natural fragmentation & opportunity to diversify.
Value is proportional to volume (vs price) and should at-scale be uncorrelated from cryptoasset swings.
Value accrues to equity in the corporation and largely uncorrelated from which cryptocurrencies ultimately win.
Products that own the user relationship
Throughout the ages, companies that have created immense shareholder value have: (1) owned the relationship with their end user, (2) had some form of demand-side increasing returns (aka. network effects), particularly if they could create new networks or new network shapes. There’s no reason to believe this won’t also be true in crypto. If you believe, as I do, that the protocol layer will become commoditized over time (cf. John Pfeffer’s paper), then more value is likely to accrue to the “experience layer.” Some interesting potential examples:
For utility cryptoassets : “banks” that hold SoV tokens (eg. Bitcoin) and dynamically shift in & out of non-SoV tokens to purchase protocol resources/tokens on an as-needed/spot basis. Think a file storage app that automagically provisions the cheapest utility storage resources behind the scenes
: “banks” that hold SoV tokens (eg. Bitcoin) and dynamically shift in & out of non-SoV tokens to purchase protocol resources/tokens on an as-needed/spot basis. Think a file storage app that automagically provisions the cheapest utility storage resources behind the scenes For tokenized securities : being the tokenization / administrator layer for tokenized securities (eg. Harbor for real estate, a similar play for tokenized equity). This also puts you in a great position to be the market maker for primary & secondary transactions.
: being the tokenization / administrator layer for tokenized securities (eg. Harbor for real estate, a similar play for tokenized equity). This also puts you in a great position to be the market maker for primary & secondary transactions. For new tokenized assets: Platforms to transact attention, DNA, healthcare records (eg for pharma research), etc…
Reasons these are interesting:
Owning the user relationship + network effects are historical great sources of value for businesses. No reason to assume this won’t work in crypto
These won’t be quick flip ICOs but will have to be built over the long-run into long-lasting businesses. This hopefully means the entry valuations more resemble non-crypto investments.
A parallel ecosystem in Asia
Technology (search, communications, commerce, …) and finance (currency exchange, banking, credit, etc…) have both historically followed a parallel model in Asia. It’s possible crypto will buck the trend but early signs seem to indicate otherwise. As with non-crypto tech, Asia is a notoriously difficult market to tract but also present potentially enormous opportunities.
What’s not interesting
I’d be remiss if I didn’t state the things I don’t find as interesting:
Utility cryptoassets. These may create a lot of value but I don’t see the path for them claiming any of it. It’s the crypto equivalent to undersea internet cables or open source software.
ICOs. They’re overpriced, useless, and likely illegal. Why would you want to hoard the crypto equivalent of Chucky Cheese tokens?
Businesses that add crypto to places where it’s not value-add to their customers. If your product doesn’t need to be distributed and censorship-resistant, don’t use a cryptoasset. Startups are hard enough. Don’t make a difficult challenge worse. Remember, VCs are not your customers.
If you liked reading this, follow me on Twitter. | https://medium.com/yanda/crypto-rabbit-hole-the-saga-continues-ca518b39ba1a | ['Yan-David Erlich'] | 2018-07-11 16:21:53.407000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency'] |
An internship in the age of COVID | About the author: Amarins Laanstra-Corn ’23 is an FSI The Europe Center Global Policy Intern with the Lisbon Council. She is currently an International Relations major at Stanford University.
I began my internship at the Lisbon Council, a Brussels based social science and economic think tank, in the beginning of June. But as the majority of undergraduate students who chose to pursue internships in the middle of the global COVID-19 pandemic, I was quickly ushered into the confines of remote work. It was a drastic shift from my original expectations of bustling offices, non-virtual meetings and the opportunity to explore a foreign country to a workspace defined by isolation and reduced novelty, also known as the dining room in my childhood home in Washington, D.C.
Initially, I was filled with doubts. First because I am a firm believer in the power of in-person relationships and interactions and second because working from home presented its own set of additional challenges such as limited networking experience, missed cultural opportunities, and most importantly, a consistent six hour time difference between Brussels and the East Coast. This meant that for more than half of my workday, my coworkers would either be eating dinner or asleep. This also resulted in taking on more responsibility than I had previously anticipated. I would receive assignments at four in the morning, meetings between my organization and collaborators would happen at five am, and there was no one to help with clarifying questions throughout the day, which meant that when I was working on a project — with usually a next-day deadline — I would have to do so fast and independently. I also knew from doing a quarter of online classes at Stanford the month prior, that I was someone who often suffered from Zoom fatigue and the burnout caused by constantly being online. However, despite my hesitation, I pressed forward and the most shocking thing occurred, I loved it. Not that my original doubts didn’t exist or cause problems, there were moments of deep frustration caused by the challenges of remote work; however, they all seemed to be subdued in the light of the work I was doing. I felt motivated and challenged by the independence and subject of my research, and even felt I had discovered new queries of interest to pursue beyond my time at the Lisbon Council. I managed to get over my zoom fatigue by having productive and meaningful conversations with my coworkers, where we included tidbits and stories about non-work related matters in order to add some laughter to the day. And even though a couple thousand miles apart, I felt I have built lasting and meaningful relationship with my colleagues. I am enjoying my time at the Lisbon Council. And although it might mean I have to wake up a few hours earlier, I am truly grateful for this experience. | https://medium.com/freeman-spogli-institute-for-international-studies/an-internship-in-the-age-of-covid-e476f7838a6b | ['Fsi Student Programs'] | 2020-08-07 22:43:28.441000+00:00 | ['Stanford', 'Fsi Students', 'Internships', 'Tecfsi'] |
Empower Your Users | A friend and serial entrepreneur once gave me a piece of advice:
Better to be a plumber than a journalist.
By and large, you’ll build a stronger business doing something for a customer they unpleasant or boring than if the task was inherently exciting or compelling. The trick, then, is to find something you like doing that’s in demand but doesn’t appeal to most people.
I was reminded of this adage when I recently visited the offices of Intuit, makers of TurboTax and QuickBooks. Few of us here in the U.S. want to fill out paperwork for the IRS, and most small business owners don’t set up shop to deal with the books at the end of the month. I’m more than happy to hand that over to Intuit in the same way I’d call a plumber to unclog a drain or replace a toilet; I don’t want to deal with any part of it.
From Drudgery to Delight
Intuit, not afraid to set the bar high, wants customers to have a delightful experience when dealing with their finances. They call this philosophy Design For Delight (D4D for short), and it’s all over their campus.
One of many D4D reminders on the Intuit campus
This isn’t just a slogan, either; you can see how this attitude has made it into their shipping products. TurboTax avoids most data entry by instead having you taking a picture of your W-2 with your smartphone, for example. If I can get my taxes done without even sitting down at a desk, and get back to what I’d rather be doing, well, that’s awesome.
Empowering Workers
There is a flip side, though: to enable the delightful experience I have as a customer, someone needs to deal with my taxes at some point. And by the same token, someone needs to put their boots on and fix the plumbing. So how does that happen? How can we improve that?
I believe this is where another mindset is needed. We need to give sharp knives to badasses.
Credit: sblackley on Flickr
This phrase blends elements of Kathy Sierra’s BADASS: Making Users Awesome and one of Pixar’s senior programmers describing his work as building “sharp knives and crazy tech for storytellers.” The idea is that the users are both experts in their domain and responsible adults who don’t want tools with childproof locks on them.
Yes, he could cut himself. But this ain’t his first rodeo. (Credit: jamesjustin on Flickr)
If this knife isn’t sharp, it is fundamentally useless. With software, the system can’t be so locked down that it prevents a human being with good judgment from taking the correct action. (If it is, they’ll go outside the tool. There’s always a way.) If users can adjust their own workflows, even better. Some trade-off is inevitable when you “let air in” and enable employees to solve their own problems.
This attitude of enablement sits atop a pattern I see time and time again. The discussions I’ve had with users of enterprise software show that employees tend to be extremely capable people who want reliable tools, not gimmicky gadgets or a magical robot that thinks for them.
Credit: frankieroberto and vxla on Flickr
Delight still has its place, mostly in areas where I’m not looking to become a badass. Kathy’s book uses the phrase “compelling context” to denote a domain in which a user wants to excel. In my example, plumbing and tax preparation are not compelling contexts, so I’ll happily pay for a delightful solution to the problem—and then I’ll get back to my compelling contexts like photography or playing the guitar. In those areas, I’m buying sharp knives.
If you’ve worked in customer support, you may be skeptical. I get it. But, please…go talk to some users in their environment and watch them work. Odds are, they’re as good at their jobs as you are at yours. See how they’re absorbing everything around them and still delivering results while flipping back and forth between six different apps. And bring your lead developer with you (like I did), so you all walk away with a healthier, less paternalistic, and ultimately more compassionate perspective. | https://medium.com/appiphony-llc/empower-your-users-11c113a4a0b4 | ['Ross Belmont'] | 2015-12-13 20:27:30.254000+00:00 | ['Badass', 'User Research', 'Delight'] |
Ode To A Toad: Kiss The Frog Goodbye | So you searched the entire Internet for advice, huh? You asked your friends and you asked yourself the same dreaded question
repeatedly: Is he really interested in me?
He doesn’t always take and return your calls. He ignores your text messages. He blows hot and cold at a rate that you can’t keep up with. Here at The Aesthete, we do things a little differently and dynamically. I’m not going to give you a long list of signs that a guy is interested in you. Instead, I have a poem especially for you. If this poem resonates with you, you’ll know what to do.
Roses are red,
Violets are blue
If he isn’t calling,
He’s just not that into you. If your cell-phone chimes,
And all you get are one word texts,
Say hello to your soon to be ex. If he’s too busy to talk every day,
Now is your chance to walk away. If he read your text and he didn’t reply,
Maybe your new guy isn’t all that fly. Love is priceless,
This we know,
But kissing frogs is a long walk down that road. Heartbreak is senseless,
But love is blind.
Blind, deaf and, dumb. If he’s too senseless to see your worth,
Do yourself a favor and get rid of that jerk. If he’s heartless and insensitive,
He just doesn’t care.
This is your queue to get out of there. If he’s hateful and spiteful,
He’ll never be delightful. If he’s not treating you right,
Eliminate him tonight.
You asked and I answered. Now you have another question: What now? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.
Sunflowers are lovely and so are you,
Don’t waste your time being listed as number two.
Be your own best friend and love will never come to an end. | https://medium.com/@theaesthetemagazine/ode-to-a-toad-kiss-the-frog-goodbye-f4a3f08444c4 | ['The Aesthete'] | 2021-06-17 10:27:46.471000+00:00 | ['Relationships Love Dating', 'Relationship Advice', 'Relationships', 'Advice', 'Writing'] |
Everyday Environmentalism | Happy Earth Day! Not sure why I spared the exclamation point, things haven’t gotten better at all since we celebrated our first Earth Day in 1970. We’re officially in trouble.
It used to be that you were an environmentalist or tree-hugger if you cared about the planet, now the act of caring seems a whole lot less altruistic and more like common sense. In fact, environmentalism is a bit of a selfish thing for me; I actually want to be able to breathe clean air for the duration of my life and leave my kids with a place they can call home (Mars doesn’t seem like it’s their thing).
One thing is for sure, we can’t continue our parasitic relationship with the planet. At the risk of being overly prescriptive, here’s a short list* of changes I’ve made in my and my family’s lives in the hopes of making our planet a better place for all of its inhabitants. I hope they are helpful to you.
*I didn’t include reference links as there is a ton of data out there that supports all of these points — Google it! | https://medium.com/@therealtasneem/everyday-environmentalism-96761c583025 | ['Tasneem Manjra'] | 2020-04-23 04:55:13.108000+00:00 | ['Pollution', 'Earth Day', 'Environment', 'Plastic Pollution', 'Environmentalism'] |
Contingency (Star Divers Book 2) | High octane racing, mecha boss fights, planet-sized dungeons, LitRPG
The battle for Bane begins…
Breq’s journey continues as he and his guild escape into unexplored regions of the universe chased by bounty hunters and a rival high level guild. If his comrades are to survive, Breq must use all his ability on their behalf. Whether racing top-of-the-range craft, fighting mecha bosses, or exploring planet-sized dungeons, Breq’s every action and reaction is put to test.
Across the galaxy on a ruined Earth, Talves is trapped inside Bane. With no quests, no interface, and no way to logout, he forces himself to survive no matter how harsh the decisions he is forced to make. As he loses his humanity, Talves becomes a cold-hearted being with the power to turn the entire world upside down.
When Breq faces Talves, the stakes are higher than ever and the choices between good and evil are blurred.
What would you be prepared to do to survive? To ensure your friends survive?
Star Divers Contingency is a mix of LitRPG, survival horror, and cultivation.
Affiliate Link: https://amzn.to/38G2jBU | https://medium.com/litrpg/contingency-star-divers-book-2-1513d7c17129 | ['Alex Itsios'] | 2020-12-26 20:18:33.203000+00:00 | ['Virtual Reality', 'Litrpg', 'Stephen Landry', 'VR', 'Star Divers'] |
Mainnet 3.0 Update — TFUEL Burning and Transaction Fee Increase | As we march towards a June 30 release of Mainnet 3.0, a key protocol extension is the introduction of TFUEL burning where Elite Edge Nodes will burn at least 25% of each TFUEL payment to the network. In addition to this, network transaction fees and smart contract fees are also burned taking these TFUEL perpetually out of circulation.
In order to better align value with the transaction volume on Theta blockchain, a moderate increase in the gas fee on Theta protocol is necessary. Currently, the fees on Theta network are near zero, and after the proposed increase would still be sufficiently low and cost effective for smart contracts and Dapps with transaction fees of 0.3 TFUEL for send transactions, 20 TFUEL to deploy a smart contract, and 1 TFUEL to interact with a smart contract. The table below shows the estimated fees in USD based on today’s TFUEL price for Theta before and after the update, along with Ethereum for comparison:
While Theta transaction fees increase, they are still 90% to 95% lower than the current fees on Ethereum, making Theta more affordable to transact and build smart contracts. This increase in fees will more closely align token utility value with usage of the Theta blockchain. As more smart contracts are deployed on Theta including video platform rewards and micropayments, NFTs, DeFi and other Dapps, significantly more TFUEL will now be burned by usage of Theta blockchain.
As reference, today’s Theta network processes approximately 100,000 transactions per day with less than 4% being NFT mint and buy-sell transfer interactions via smart contracts. With our planned growth for the ThetaDrop NFT marketplace, licensing of our platform to third-parties and other expansion plans, we forecast that NFT interactions with Theta smart contracts alone will reach 600,000 transactions per day, at which point nearly 250M TFUEL will be burned per year, cancelling out the majority of annual TFUEL inflation.
As part of Mainnet 3.0, TFUEL staking will also be introduced serving as a temporary TFUEL sink in addition to transaction and network fees permanent sink, so in the long-term we anticipate a deflationary model as more TFUEL is burned and permanently taken out of circulation. Ultimately, this will lead to the most optimized and balanced state where TFUEL utility value is maximized and stable.
Since launching Mainnet 1.0 in the Spring of 2019, transaction fees have been set low on Theta blockchain when the majority of Validator Nodes were run by Theta Labs. Now, the protocol is quickly approaching a fully decentralized state with the addition of CAA as an Enterprise Validator along with Google, Sony, Samsung, Binance, Gumi, Blockchain.com and a private equity institutional group. Theta Labs is running fewer than half of the validators and is staking less than a third of the total amount of THETA. While this is a positive for Theta protocol as a whole, a decentralized network can become more vulnerable to certain attacks than one with some centralized controls. Specifically, an attack spamming small transactions could flood the network and slow or even halt block production, which famously happened to Ethereum and other major blockchains in the past. As Theta gains more prominence these attacks could pose a challenge to Theta blockchain integrity as well. The best way to prevent these flood spam attacks is by a moderate increase in the gas fee on Theta protocol, which still keeps fees far lower than on Bitcoin or Ethereum, but high enough to make it costly to attempt an attack. In this way as an additional benefit, the increase in fees will make the Theta blockchain more robust and protected against attackers as it continues to become more decentralized.
The Theta transaction fee increase will be included in the next protocol update and hard-fork estimated to take effect around Thursday/Friday June 10–11, exact block height will be announced via our Twitter, Discord, and Medium. | https://medium.com/theta-network/mainnet-3-0-update-tfuel-burning-and-transaction-fee-increase-f1aa03b9459f | ['Theta Labs'] | 2021-06-04 09:37:10.442000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Staking', 'Thetadev', 'Blockchain'] |
Creating an experience for a daily Subscription Plan for Swiggy: UX Case Study | Hey you, yes you, the awesome reader who has taken some time off to read this article about my case study, welcome to a case study where we tried creating an experience inside the Food Delivery App-Swiggy , to help users discover the feature, configure their subscription based on their daily needs and buy.
How it all began?
So recently I was a part of a UX Design Hackathon, conducted by Growth School, it was a 48 hours event where we were given 5 Problem statements and we have to chose one of them and make a design solution right from the scratch in the given time frame. Overall it was an awesome experience which pushed me to my limits and turned out to be a great learning curve.
Now I just wonder that even coming from engineering background why I never took part in hackathons?
Also there is a Surprise waiting for you at the end of the article. Nope, DO NOT SCROLL to the end just or you will miss the fun😁
Problem Statement & Reason for Opting it!
So our problem statement and the reasons why we chose it are as follows,
Due to the pandemic, a lot of people have been ordering food daily from Swiggy. However, Swiggy has noticed that most people don’t order every day from them. To make sure that these customers from Swiggy every day, they are planning to launch a food delivery subscription. Create an experience inside the swiggy app to help users discover the feature, configure their subscription based on their needs and buy
Why did we picked it?
All team members had a thorough knowledge about this product (Swiggy) as everyone had used it before. Food is something everyone can relate to and if you are living away from your home who wouldn’t like a hygienic food delivered at his doorstep with a hassle free experience? Given the time constraints, we ourselves could be the users and share the experiences that we have had previously. Comparing other problem statements, we thought it would take us more time on research to understand the core problems faced by those users.
🎬Action Plan:
In order to have a successful execution of the “ To-Do Things” it’s essential to have a roadmap and since we had to update our mentors about our progress after every 12–15 hours we decided to create presentations/notion documents about our project progress. Below are the steps which we took,
Choosing Problem Statement (Day 1)(3 hours) — Since it is a must and ample time should be devoted to it, we gave it sufficient time and completed this task well in time. Decided on responsibilities (Day 1)(2 hours) — As they say with great power comes great responsibility. Preparing for Presentation for Review 1 (Day 1) (90 Minutes) Desk Research (Day 2) (2 hours) — Though in such time specific events it is tricky to come up with responses but we collected whatever we could lay our hands upon. Primary Research (Day 2) (4 hours) — Again requires good investment of time but we decided to lay emphasis on it as a good research acts as a strong backbone for the design stage. Deciding on HMW (How might we) questions (Day 2) (30 minutes) — How we could reframe the problem statement. Deciding on the Subscription Model (Day 2) (4 hours) — We made 3 models and eventually decided to go with the feasible one. Wireframing and Prototyping (Day 2) (6 hours) — Covered both the Low and the High Fidelity ones after the initial paper one. Preparing for Presentation for Review 2 (Day 2)(90 Minutes) — This time rather than a ppt it was a notion document. Testing stage (Day 3) (2 hours) — We sent our wireframes to the users we interviewed and received their feedback. Video Preparation (Day 3) (4 hours)— We were asked to showcase our findings, research, design via a 7 minutes long video by screen recording.
“L et the cat come out of the bag at the end” 😁
12. Showtime (Day 3)— Final presentation!!!
Desk Research
It was mainly accomplished by two of the team members and we came to know about these points from our findings.
Slow recovery in the order demand for online food delivery is expected by August end, the overall orders for the year 2020 is expected to be 50%-60% lesser than total orders of 2019 The online food delivery market of India is expected to grow with a CAGR of 27.4% through the future period of 2019–2025 F India Food online delivery industry has recovered 75–80% of its pre-covid Sales. The online order volume recovery is much below 50%
Frequency of ordering restaurant food from food delivery apps after the coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdown in India as of May 2020.
Image Courtesy: Times of India
5. The future of online food ordering seems to be very bright as there is a continuous increase in urbanization.
6. Also, India has the largest population in the age group of 18–36 years which is also regarded as the vibrant and dynamic population has the potential of earning and spending more.
7. This will influence the habit of using online food ordering apps. Even, the events like IPL, FPL and KPL may put a positive impact upon the using of online food apps as during these events, lakhs of Indians especially youngsters remain stitched to their television for hours.
Primary Research
After secondary research it was time for the primary one as it will lay the foundation of the strategy and design part. So we sent out a google doc questionnaire which could help us in quantitative research and at the same time help us in identifying the right audience to interview, we interacted with 3–4 people and got to know about their views.
Here is a Quantitative Research Analysis (Online survey) in a form of a pie chart as collected from the users: | https://medium.com/@amanmathur21/case-study-creating-an-experience-for-a-daily-subscription-plan-for-the-swiggy-app-f9e49c3c92af | ['Aman Mathur'] | 2020-12-16 06:47:28.874000+00:00 | ['Hackathons', 'Food', 'Swiggy', 'Case Study', 'Subscription'] |
British Auto Show Makes us Rethink | Being born in 1993 helps describe how I started to learn about cars. I grew up surrounded by magazines, posters and sticker albums, so the first ones I could tell apart were Ferrari F50, Jaguar XJ220, and Lamborghini Diablo, to name a few. My family has always been impressed with how I could talk about them even at a low age, especially when I’d skillfully handle the fake questions my father and aunt would ask to tease me. However, those talks often had an anticlimactic end: What’s your favorite car?
Over the years, I learned that the supercar of the moment was the answer that would most easily avoid an awkward moment but, to tell the truth, I’ve never been fascinated with what I now refer to as superlative models — performance coupes, flashy limousines or rugged pickups. I admire them for many reasons, sure, but I’ve always been thrown off by how “unrealistic” they are: expensive, suitable in few environments, and/or easy to become obsolete. This is why the topic of this story has surprised me so much. | https://medium.com/cardesignchronicles/festival-of-the-unexceptional-encourages-car-fans-to-rethink-c1544bc931f6 | ['Danillo Almeida'] | 2020-06-06 00:52:25.287000+00:00 | ['English', 'Design', 'History', 'Cars', 'Past'] |
Collect, Save and Report Linux System Activity Information | Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
SAR
The SAR command reports content of selected activity counters in the Linux System which are collected using sysstat over a period of time. You can select information about specific system activities using flags.The data can be redirected to an outfile which can be interrogated later.
Are you using a large SQL query and at the same time running your backup? Well we can report on the performance using the below commands.
CPU & Disk Performance:
We can run the below command to report on our CPU utilisation every 10 minutes.
[root@server ~]# sar -u
01:30:01 PM CPU %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle
01:40:01 PM all 0.11 0.00 0.09 0.00 0.02 99.78
01:50:02 PM all 0.10 0.00 0.09 0.00 0.02 99.79
Average: all 0.11 0.00 0.09 0.00 0.02 99.78 01:51:22 PM LINUX RESTART 02:00:01 PM CPU %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle
02:10:01 PM all 0.12 0.00 0.10 0.00 0.02 99.77
02:20:01 PM all 0.11 0.00 0.09 0.00 0.02 99.78
02:30:01 PM all 0.12 0.00 0.11 0.04 0.02 99.72
02:40:01 PM all 0.12 0.00 0.09 0.00 0.02 99.77
Average: all 0.12 0.00 0.09 0.01 0.02 99.76
We can also use the -b flag to report on disk utilisation.
Report on Network Activity
Do you want to see statistics from your network devices? For e.g. lets report data on our network interface cards. I only have one NIC on my Centos 7.
[root@server~]# sar -n DEV
01:30:01 PM IFACE rxpck/s txpck/s rxkB/s txkB/s rxcmp/s txcmp/s
01:40:01 PM ens5 1.96 2.00 0.46 0.35 0.00 0.00
01:40:01 PM lo 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
01:50:02 PM ens5 1.93 1.96 0.45 0.35 0.00 0.00
How about printing data for a specific time period?
Lets filter the output based on timestamp and also pull up information from a particular log file by adding the file name as an argument to the sar command. | https://medium.com/@gauravkar/collect-save-and-report-linux-system-activity-information-e72b32567c5 | ['Gaurav Kar'] | 2020-07-19 14:50:30.066000+00:00 | ['Report', 'Performance', 'Linux', 'Monitoring'] |
How to Host a Static Website on Github for Free | Yeah, that’s right. Unlike many websites that require you to purchase hosting and domain, GitHub lets you upload a static website on their platform using Github Pages for free. Let’s make it clear that a static website means the content will not frequently change, i.e., a basic HTML and CSS site, which is a good starting point for beginners as well as experienced programmers. Let’s start by discussing why it is a good idea to host your website on GitHub.
(Note: This article contains some affiliate links, which means if you buy something using those links, i ll get a commission without costing you anything extra)
Reasons/Advantages to host your website on Github Page
There can be a lot of reasons and advantages to hosting your website, the most prominent are:
To make your profile, as many developers prefer to host their profile on Github To create a portfolio and showcase your skills to potential clients especially your front-end skills You want to set up your blog where you can share articles or how-to tutorials You already know basic Git, and you want to enhance your learning about Git further. In that case, I will suggest you learn about GitHub gist, GitHub actions, and CI/CD tools as well
In this article, we will discuss how to set up a website for free, what tools you need to have, what will be the URL when the site is published, how many sites you create on Github. So let’s keep moving.
Let’s get started
Hosting a website on GitHub page is not rocket science; instead, it is so simple that even if you have just started programming and knows basic HTML and CSS and basic Git commands like add, commit and push you can do that. If you do not see these git commands don’t worry, the commands we ll use will be explained as well. If you want to learn Git then I will suggest you read my another article to get yourself familiar with git basics:
We will be discussing two variants of hosting a website on Github. You can work on either one or both of them because most of the procedure is the same in variant 2. The difference is in the domain name when your site is live. So if you are creating a personal profile, then choose variant 1, its URL will be shorter, and if you are doing any other website, its URL will be longer, then choose variant 2.
Variant 1: Hosting a personal page on GitHub with domain https://<username>.github.io
First, we will create a demo application, that works on our desktop PC
Step 1: Setup Git, Register GitHub account, and create a repository
Go to https://git-scm.com/downloads and download Git by choosing your operating system: Windows, Mac, or Linux and install.
Then, go to https://github.com and sign up. After signing up, click on the plus sign and choose a new repository (a repository is like GitHub gives you a folder/directory where you keep your code files and folders on GitHub). When it asks you to enter a name, type the name in the format <your_username>.github.io so since my username on GitHub is ows-ali, I will write ows-ali.github.io | https://medium.com/any-writers/how-to-host-a-static-website-on-github-for-free-f47b12790775 | ['Owais Ali'] | 2020-12-23 08:27:02.218000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Coding', 'Website', 'Github', 'Live'] |
Mapping Drones for Professional Surveyors | The information below was given to us during an interview with drone operator Madison D. from Landpoint, a surveying company in Louisiana. Madison is researching the potential applications and benefits of unmanned technology in the surveying industry. Madison uses a Stratos Aerial fixed-wing UAV with DroneDeploy (and a DJI Inspire 1 on the side).
Click to open the maps below (in a new tab) to explore them:
The story
Topographic surveys are an essential part of all land development projects
In this instance, a new real estate subdivision was under development in Northern Colorado. Before homes could be constructed, an extremely accurate topographic survey was necessary for a couple of reasons:
To ensure the initial land development (physical alteration of the land) was successful so that it allows for proper water runoff for drainage. To document subdivision topography in relation to the adjacent river’s floodplain for flood damage prevention and flood insurance purposes.
Subdivision development can be an expensive operation — especially if progress has fallen behind schedule
This particular project was weeks behind due to frequent inclement weather (notice the low-lying areas in the orthomosaic reference map above that are still holding rain water). | https://medium.com/aerial-acuity/case-study-830cfc23db55 | [] | 2016-07-29 18:06:23.156000+00:00 | ['GIS', 'Mapping', 'Drones', 'Surveying'] |
Ushering in an ageless future | For years, futurists have attempted to predict when, in the future, we will finally achieve the “technological singularity’’ — a technological breakthrough so profound, it changes the course of humanity. Specifically, futurists have been talking about the moment when super-human artificial intelligence becomes reality. Or — to put it simply — when computers become smarter than people.
However, at Centaura, we believe that the world needs to prepare for a different singularity — one that might arrive even before super-human intelligence. It’s the moment when humans have the power to slow down — and even reverse aging.
Stepping back: what the “singularity” is
The idea of the “singularity” first became popular nearly thirty years ago by the science fiction writer Vernor Vinge. In his essay The Coming Technological Singularity, he famously declared, “Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.”
Today, the idea of the “technological singularity” is highly debated — both in terms of its theoretical possibility and its ethical consequences. Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, for example, suggested that we would still be wondering whether or not artificial intelligence that surpasses human capabilities is possible by the end of the century.
Even if we do reach the “singularity” in the near future, it is still unclear what that will actually look like.
Perhaps the bigger takeaway from the entire “singularity” debate is that technology and science are evolving at an unprecedented pace, making what once seemed impossible — possible.
The “aging” singularity
Perhaps no problem has vexed humanity more than the problem of aging. Whether it’s finding a cure for cancer or the development of new vaccines against deadly diseases, increasing longevity — the number of years a person lives — has long been a staple of modern medicine.
More recently, however, scientists have been attempting to not just increase humans’ lifespans, but actually slow — and even reverse — the degenerative processes altogether. And at Centaura, we believe that the only way to do that is to tackle the root causes: to uncover the biological origins of age-related diseases and then develop targeted therapies to combat them. What’s more, the ability to make that goal a reality is closer than you might think.
In just the past few years, scientists have made major advances in anti-aging science. They were able to extend the lifespan of worms by 45% with an enzyme-blocking molecule and extended the life of fruit flies by 65% with probiotics. Even more promising — a single dose of gene therapy stopped an aging disorder in mice.
These experiments prove that aging can be tackled by modern science, and by 2035, Centaura aims to bring the first anti-aging treatments to humans. That’s only fifteen years away. And when it happens, humans will have the ability to radically extend both their lifespans and their healthspans (the number of years spent in good health). Few technological advances have as much potential to radically change civilization.
Imagining an ageless future
The world has an “aging” problem. Nearly every country faces a growing proportion of individuals aged 65 and older, and the number of people aged over 80 is expected to triple by the year 2050. This is creating enormous pressure on public health and social welfare systems.
Unfortunately, without treating aging as a “disease” — one whose cure needs to be found — developed countries around the globe are facing a grim future: one where pension and healthcare systems are overburdened and the workforce is not large enough to support the national economy or infrastructure.
Imagine then that people lived longer. Living to one hundred would no longer be an achievement, but the norm. More importantly, even at 120, you would have the health and strength of a 40-year-old.
Progressively better health would ease the burden on already taxed healthcare systems. What’s more, if individuals are living until they’re 150 or 250 years, retirement at age 65 no longer makes sense. They’ll need to think longer term in terms of both their financial and mental health, and their continued contributions to the workforce will only serve to stimulate the economy and push for improved global decision-making. Think about it: the world becomes more complex by the day and those best suited to tackle the complexity are those with a wealth of knowledge and years of experience — in other words, older generations.
Of course, these same individuals will also get to reimagine their futures — without limits. With an extra 100 to 200 years in good health, regrets could become a phenomenon of the past. Those who are 60 will have a chance to try the one or two careers they didn’t get a chance to try earlier in life, while at 80 they might decide to run their first marathon or cross off that final destination on their travel bucket list.
When people have the time to enjoy several lifetimes worth of experiences, the world is not only a more productive place — but a happier one.
The other side of the coin
But wait, if healthcare systems are already taxed, won’t more elderly only exacerbate the problem? That’s the myth of the“aging society”.
Right now, the phenomenon of aging is equated with physical and mental decline. The problem isn’t so much that people are living longer; it’s that they’re living longer in a state of continuously declining health. Those who are aging aren’t contributing economically to society and, at the same time, require more extensive healthcare treatment for age-related diseases.
However, if we increase not just people’s lifespans but their healthspans, we have a demographic situation like that described above: people will continue to contribute to the economy as they get older, all without needing costly healthcare treatment.
As Andrew Scott, Professor of Economics at London Business School, puts it: think of it like inflation. If people only paid $1.18 for two movie tickets in the 1950s and now tickets cost $9.11 per person, has going to the movies really gotten more expensive, or are we just making more money?
Similarly, just because society is becoming chronologically older doesn’t mean society has to become physically and mentally older.
The next 15 years
A singularity is coming — it’s just not the one scientists and futurists have long foretold. Recent advancements in anti-aging science have proven that halting degenerative processes is possible. And, once the root causes of aging are identified, scientists like those at Centaura can craft treatments to stop aging at the source. Of course, the first step in significantly extending your lifespan is taking care of your health, and that needs to happen right now. 2035 isn’t that far away, and by making healthy lifestyle choices, such as exercising and eating right, today, when the first anti-aging treatments finally do arrive, they’ll have a greater impact.
The fact is: a new future is coming. But rather than preparing for one where the robots take over, we need to start preparing for one where people are living 150–200 years long, all in good health. What will that mean at an individual, local, and national level? What will people be able to accomplish with all that extra time? What does an ageless future look like?
It’s time we all began dreaming bigger.
Follow Centaura on Facebook and Linkedin to stay up-to-date with all of our latest news. | https://medium.com/@centaura-science/ushering-in-an-ageless-future-b799e517baf | [] | 2020-12-08 15:14:24.253000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Health', 'Biotechnology', 'Aging'] |
12.23.2020 | Growing up, I struggled heavily with mental health. I went to a school district where staff and faculty did not believe in mental health. I was told that my anxiety and my depression was a figment of my imagination and that if I just applied myself, I wouldn’t have issues. Throughout high school, I took constant blows to my self-esteem and my confidence. My struggles with depression and anxiety grew worse. My mental health got so bad that I couldn’t eat or sleep. The worst part is, nobody could see how much I was falling apart because I refused to burden others with my issues. I smiled, giggled, laughed but it was never truly genuine. I struggled for so long in silence because I couldn’t admit that I needed help. That’s why I joined Medium. I wanted a platform to spread my stories and my artwork. I will also use this platform to spread kindness, creativity, and friendship. You are not alone. You are strong, you are important, and you are loved.
Again. You are strong, you are important, and you are loved. | https://medium.com/@smoothcriminal93/12-23-2020-62e328a0e4e | [] | 2020-12-23 22:48:25.577000+00:00 | ['Love', 'Kindness', 'Friendship', 'Hello World', 'Mental Health'] |
10 Design Patterns every Software Architect and Software Engineer must know | Any business exists to solve a real human problem. It could be to increase speed, reduce cost, improve convenience, add pleasure to life or make the knowledge available at the fingertips. Technology often used to solve these business problems. But then why the design patterns are important? Typical challenges with IT system are Availability, Scalability, Resiliency, Data Management, Performance and Security. Before going into design patterns it is important to get clarity of these words.
Availability: Availability is the percentage of time system is up in a defined timeframe. A system can be down because of multiple reasons like software errors, network issues, load issues, DDos (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks and infrastructure hardware issues. Availability is measured as a percentage as below.
Scalability: In 2014, Flipkart - an Indian online retailer went on to apologise to customers as big billion sale could not cope up with customer demands because of scalability issues. Scalability is a factor of computing resources, data storage needs, messaging infrastructure and cost. There are two ways to sort out scalability issues. The first one is vertical scaling where you would keep on increasing the capacity of the resources the second one is horizontal scalability where you add more nodes. There are pros and cons with either of these approaches. Typically, vertical scaling is faster, but has limitation beyond a certain point of time and horizontal scaling takes more time and offers close to infinity scaling.
Scalability is how the system resources can cope up with unpredictable customer demands.
Resiliency: You went on to buy a watch on an e-commerce site. You did not like the design and you want to look for more options. You selected few dropdown boxes with design, color, price filters and clicked on search button. Now you would expect to see picture of the watch, price data, some specifications like Band Material Type, Watch Movement, Colour, Delivery Date. What if delivery date microservice was down that time? As an architect, you have multiple options now. Do not show that field at all, show a static message that “We are calculating the accurate delivery date, please be patient”, or you pick up a date range and show to the customer.
Resiliency is the ability of a system to gracefully handle the failures and recover from failures as soon as it can.
Data Management: Data management plays a crucial role in scalability, availability, security and resiliency. Architectural decisions related to data management depends on what type of application you are building. Is it write heavy (more user transactions), read-heavy (reports), meant to do analytics (forecasting, customer segmentation), time series (log processing) or Datawarehouse (data analytics). Few other factors that would influence are data consistency, data availability, data storage and archival strategy.
Performance: Scalability and performance are interrelated. If there are more users compared to what the system can handle, it is natural that the system would encounter performance issues. How to deal with this? Either you increase the resources or reduce the number of users. Of course, the second choice is not ideal because you would end up losing the business. In fact, we will sort out these performance issues when you sort out scalability issues. I just want to remind you, scalability can’t solve all the performance issues but can solve some issues. For example, if the performance issues are the result of badly written DB query, scaling the resources without fine-tuning the query will prove to be a disastrous decision.
Security: Building secure systems gives an assurance to users that their data is in safe hands. Data integrity and data durability are equally important. It is very similar to when you put your money in the bank. If you deposited one million dollars in the bank, you do not want to lose that money (Safe), you would want the bank to always say you deposited one million -no mistakes here (Integrity) and even after 10 years you go to the bank, you will still have that one million dollars money (Durability).
As you now got the basics right, let's look at important patterns one by one. No design pattern is a magic pill for all the issues. One needs to choose depending on the use case.
Scalability and Performance
CQRS: Command Query Responsibility Segregation is first introduced by Greg Young. As the name suggests it is about segregating the write and read responsibilities. Write and read can happen from a single database or multiple databases. But the data model is different. CQRS easily fits into event sourcing architecture. Consume the events as and when they occur and write into “Write DB”. For display or reporting purposes read from the “Read DB”. To make this even more exciting, you may use normalized RDBMS for write and denormalized NoSQL DB for “Read”. Commands are typically queued for asynchronous process and a query can never modify a DB. One very good benefit is you can independently scale the DBs
CQRS — Command Query Responsibility Segregation
Data Management, Security
2. Anti Corruption Layer pattern: This pattern was initially described by Eric Evans in Domain-Driven Design (DDD). Let me introduce this with a story. Martin and Sheela work in a retail chain. Martin works in the customer order team and Sheela works in Loyalty Card team. From the DDD perspective, Martin and Sheela belong to two different domains and typically they do not interact with each other. One day Sheela wanted to make a change in her system. The change is to know the location of the customer so that she can offer additional loyalty points based on the location. However, she doesn't know Martin. Even if she knows, Martin may not agree to her change as he has to change his API. However, she knows that Srinivas is Martin’s manager. She approaches Srinivas to make the change. In this case, Srinivas is an Anti-Corruption Layer. This pattern is typically used when you have legacy systems and modern applications and you are in the journey to migrate. This layer contains all the logic that is required to translate the requests from modern systems. The biggest challenge in introducing this layer is, it will add one more hop for the user and adds to latency. A decision must be taken between speed vs. data.
Anti Corruption Layer
Resiliency, Fault Tolerance
3. Circuit Breaker Pattern: When you travel in flight, there is an oxygen mask and a life west, which is rarely paid attention to other than the air hostess who demonstrates passionately. The reason is very evident. These are used only when there is a failure. Your basic assumption is your flight will not fail, it is not required for you to use and so you will not pay attention. But this is not true for IT systems.
“Everything fails all the time” — Werner Vogels, AWS CTO
I am sure you heard about many famous websites being down because of various reasons. In a distributed environment anything can fail at any time.
As an architect, you can’t prevent failures. You can only design to handle the failures.
Circuit breaker pattern prevents an application from performing an operation that is almost certain to fail. Let me explain this. Your system is suddenly experiencing load and there are more API requests than it can handle. For instance, service typical response time threshold is 5 second and now requests are taking more than that and your service starts sending 500 responses back. Keeping aside the bad experience to the user, your system might completely give up if there is more load beyond a certain point. Now it is time to stop more requests.
Let's compare this with how an electrical circuit breaker works. Did you ever encounter this? You just switched on a plug and your electricity is suddenly gone. Now you may need to go to your switchboard either in the basement or in your main hall and ON the switch that went off. This is where the circuit breaker is in action in the real world. What is this doing? As the load is high, the electricity was stopped to prevent further damage.
Lets now come back to our world. The circuit breaker pattern has three states. Closed, Open and Half Opened. In the closed state, everything is normal and your system works as it is intended. When there is an issue, the circuit breaker opens and data flow cuts off. This means that intended requested are not served to users. Half Open tries to test the waters after some wait time, to see if the problem still exists. If it is successful, state gets changed to closed so that system comes back to normal. If it is not successful, it will go back to open state.
Circuit Breaker — Closed State
Circuit Breaker — Open State
Scalability, Resiliency and Performance
4. Event Sourcing: This pattern became popular in recent days as data became new oil. This pattern suggests that, do not just store the state of an action but an entire history. Let’s say you are building a banking application. A customer will have multiple debits and credits in a period of time. Let's say the customer starts with $1000. On Day 1, she credits $50, on Day 2, she debits $100, on Day 3 she credits $150. At the end of day3, she will have $1100. However, in the case of Event Sourcing, you store all the transactions without losing a single action. When you have this data you can use for multiple purposes. While you can definitely tell what is her bank balance at any point of time by doing a quick calculation on the fly, you can also understand her banking patterns which otherwise not possible.
Event Sourcing
Let's look at one more example. You are building a movie ticket booking system. For a popular movie, you will see a lot of rush from the audience, which will cause scalability issues. Customer may book, cancel or hold the seats. Let's say the theatre has 200 seats. You need to constantly calculate available seats to make the number visible to the next customer. This is where event sourcing will be handy. Instead of calculating the available seats as a CRUD operation, you will go through all the events and finally arrive to a number.
Scalability, Resiliency, Fault Tolerance and Performance
5. Publisher-Subscriber pattern
This is popularly called as Pub/Sub pattern. In a cloud based system, modules of one system need to communicate with modules of same or another system asynchronously. Let me give an example. You are building a leave management system. Whenever an employee applies for a leave, you need to inform, Timesheet module, Scheduling module and Payroll module at the same time. This can be done with an async call. These modules just consume data. They will not validate the data. However, when an employee applies for leave, balance verification must be a sync call (typically a REST Api call), as an employee must not apply for leave when there are no balances (well, goes with HR policies of the organization)
One more example here. Imagine that you are a news sourcing company and you gather the news from various input mechanisms. Your end-users are newspapers and publishing companies. Then you capture the news on the ground and publish to your customers. If your customer is a sports magazine, they will only consume sports-related news or if your customer is a finance website, they will only use finance related to data. Your responsibility is to capture what is happening in the world without losing a single event. It is up to the customers to decide what they want to consume. You can also create materialized views for further consumption.
Pub Sub Pattern
Message brokers as mentioned in the picture best used for asynchronous communication. Whenever there is a need for resilient and fault-tolerant applications, Pub-Sub pattern comes handy. There are plenty of options for Message broker, Apache Kafka, Apache Active MQ, AWS Kinesis, IBM MQ. Apache Kafka is most popular, known for high performance and zero loss of data.
Scalability, Data Management and Performance
6. Sharding Pattern: If you invest in stock market, it is a well-proven strategy that you will not put all your money in one single stock. You will create a portfolio of stocks and invest. With this approach, if one stock price goes down you still will have other stocks making some profits.
Don't put all your eggs in a single basket.
Sharding takes a similar approach. In this pattern, you will divide data into multiple partitions or shards. This massively improves the scalability. This pattern comes under horizontal scalability, not vertical scalability. What will happen if the data is stored in a single data store? Same as single stock in the above example. If the datastore goes down, your users will not be able to access the data causing lot of pain. Beyond a certain point, you will encounter storage issues, computing power, network and bandwidth issues. If you are servicing users in different locations, having one data store will add to latency issues.
Sharding improves the scalability, performance and fault tolerance. There are multiple ways to come up with sharding strategy. The strategy goes with your use case.
Range-based Sharding: Suppose if you are storing customer data, you may look at storing based in pin code or zip code range. The disadvantage with this model is your customer data may not be equally distributed
Vertical Sharding: If you are building an e-commerce application, you might store customer demographic details in one shard and customer buying transactions in another shard. This gives an opportunity for you to scale as you needed.
Hash-based Sharding: This is a widely used strategy. If you have 5 shards to store customer data. You take for example customer unique id and apply modulo 5.
Some fun maths for you now.
How to calculate Modulo 5 of any number. It is simple. Let’s say the number is 23. Divide this number by 5. You will get 4.6. Now take 4 and multiply by 5. You get 20. Now do 23–20, you will get 3. Thus, the answer to “What is 23 mod 5?” is 3.
Hash-based sharding will have challenges in long run. What if you would like to add one more shard after an year. You need to change the sharding logic and the capacity in the data store goes for a toss. The solution is consistent hashing.
Data Management
7. Strangler Pattern: Wikipedia meaning of Strangler is an epiphyte whose aerial roots eventually strangle the tree on which it grows. Today pretty much every organization is moving from monolithic to micros services. This journey is not going to be easy in any means. When you migrate to a new system from a legacy system, you systematically move the functionality to the new system instead of a big bang approach. If you are migrating a legacy monolithic application to cloud microservices application, this pattern comes handy. Eventually, when the migration is over, the user directly interacts with modern applications. In this pattern, the small functionalities (or micro services) that are built and getting migrated, eventually kills the main system. Find more details on this pattern from Martin Fowler’s blog.
Strangler Pattern
Data Management, Security
8. Saga Pattern: This is the best pattern to manage data consistency in a distributed system. Before the internet and WhatsApp, people used to travel to relatives and friends home personally and give marriage invitations. This is seen as inviting with respect. Anyways, keeping this aside, what if the marriage cancels by any chance? You do not want your relatives and friends to come on that day. The best way is you again travel to each person’s place and tell them that marriage got cancelled. (Not a positive example. But that's life). This is exactly Saga pattern. The first paper on Saga pattern was published in 1987.
There are two ways to implement sagas pattern. Event/Choreography design and Command/Orchestration Sequencing Logic. Choreography design is very complicated. Lets look at Command/Orchestration Sequencing Logic. I will now take the example of flight booking application. This is the sequence when you book a flight.
Select a seat (Seat Service) Select Meal (Meal Service) Pay for booking (Payment Service) Available seats now get updated to deduct one seat (Booking Service)
Saga Orchestrator
Let's look at the sequence of events:
Booking Service saves a available seat for user and asks Booking Saga Orchestrator (BSO) to start a Book seat transaction. BSO sends a “Do Payment” command to Payment Service, and it replies with a Payment Succesful message BSO sends a Confirm a seat command to Seat Service, and it replies with a Seat Confirmed message BSO sends a Book a meal command to Meal Service, and it replies with a Meal Confirmed message.
Let's say payment service fails. You do not want to offer a free seat and a free meal for your customer. Now BSO sends a command to roll back the seat booking and meal booking. A very good and detailed explanation of Saga Pattern can be found here
Availablity, Resiliency
9. Throttling Pattern: If you ever visited any famous Indian temples on a good day, there will be 50K to 100K devotees. The Darshan time (time in front of God) lasts for just few seconds but they spend in the queue anywhere between 4 to 8 hours. Temple administration usually controls the crowd by putting them in small compartments with some seating facility. Lets says there are 20 compartments and one final queue before “darshan”. Around 200 people will fit in one compartment. As the time progresses, people move from compartment 1 to compartment 2 and so on until they hit the final queue. This is called Throttling.
When it comes to IT applications, most of the times load is predictable until unless there are some black swan events. E-commerce site gets more load during festive season or when there is a sale. For a banking system there may be more load during the time when the salary is getting credited. For a time capturing system, there will be peak load during morning, afternoon and evening time. One option to handle these peak loads is to auto scale the resources. Second option is to put a limit on the number of transaction that the system can process and start throttling the remaining transactions. With this, the SLAs are met and system continues to function as it is intended.
Throttling
Availablity, Performance
10. Static content hosting pattern: On a typical website, the content that doesn't change is called static content. It is generally created using HTML, CSS and Javascript. Javascript is not mandatory, can also be done with just HTML and CSS(or Sass). The dynamic website will have a logic to run on the web server and usually does CRUD operations on data which is not possible to be served by the static website. Dynamic websites depend on server-side processing, including server-side scripts such as PHP, JSP, or ASP.NET or Node.js. For example, you would like to know the price of a product before buying, you would like to pay your electricity bill, you want to post happy birthday on your friend’s timeline, or even complicated, you would like to implement your options strategy of a stock. All these require a dynamic website. With the emergence of AWS, Azure and Google cloud platform static hosting doesn’t need your own server to run. For example, you can host your static website on Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) without a need to spin off a new server. in addition, you can speed up your site by using Cloudfront which will store the files at the edge location close to users.
If you have reached till here, I am sure you are passionate about making a difference to your customers and bringing best in class solutions to make a difference to their lives. If you liked the article please clap and click follow. | https://medium.com/@ravindraelicherla/10-design-patterns-every-software-architect-must-know-b33237bc01c2 | ['Ravindra Elicherla'] | 2021-02-24 08:46:21.805000+00:00 | ['Architecture', 'Scalability', 'Design Patterns', 'Resilience', 'High Availability'] |
Progress cannot wait for the TNDP | At ChangeTN, we are very clear with the driving force behind what we do: Progress cannot wait. Nowhere is that more accurate than the Tennessee Democratic Party (TNDP).
Photo by Lindsay Henwood
Let me clarify why ChangeTN, a non-partisan progressive organization, feels the need to become involved in the internal elections of the state Democratic Party. As progressives, we use the tools available to push forward progress to improve the lives of working people.
The Tennessee Democratic Party is a tool that should be used by progressives to push forward our agenda. Right now, the weak state of the TNDP not only harms Democrats, but it also undermines the progressive future of Tennessee.
We need a TNDP that ensures all candidates have access to immutable infrastructure. We need a TNDP that sees climate action, healthcare for all, and justice transformation as core principles. We need a TNDP that fights to win municipal seats to build a bench for the future.
To build a better TNDP, we need a progressive chairperson that understands campaign infrastructure, is committed to coalition building between moderates and progressives, and can fundraise to power the party’s efforts.
Since the TNDP is a tool that so many organizations depend on, this chair’s election should not be a closed process. Even though the electorate is limited to the TNDP Executive Committee, we believe that this conversation about the chair and the party’s future should be a public process.
To that end, ChangeTN, in cooperation with other progressive leaders and organizations statewide, has released our endorsement application for TNDP Chair.
After the application period closes on December 1, 2020, we will release our recommendations and work with progressives across the state to organize constituent communication with TNDP Executive Committee representatives.
Progress cannot wait, even for internal party politics. | https://medium.com/@matthewrpark/progress-cannot-wait-for-the-tndp-b5b39f9eb4a7 | ['Matthew Park'] | 2020-11-09 16:29:34.061000+00:00 | ['Tennessee', 'Progressive', 'Democratic Party'] |
How Do You Measure Success? (A Lawyers’ Tale) | “Things used to be so very different.”
It was the start of a fascinating conversation I had with a corporate lawyer a few weeks ago.
He described how, until earlier this year, his morning routine involved putting on a pinstripe suit and mentally preparing for a hectic day of traveling, meetings, and contract drafting and reviewing. His job was to navigate his corporate clients through the complex legal challenges of a global economy.
He had little time to catch his breath — let alone reflect on what he was doing or why.
He measured success by the number of billable hours, the long hours he worked, the size and reputation of his corporate clients, and, of course, his salary and bonuses.
While listening, I was reminded of Groundhog Day — a dismal existence in which routines, habits, and the expectations of others dictate your life. There must have been a lot of posturing going on.
But I am a lawyer myself and understand where he was coming from.
What seemed obvious was that his life is different now and he is having doubts about going back to the way things were. He gave the impression that he doesn’t care much for the old version of himself.
He explained how the disruptions of 2020 had reset his work and helped him open his eyes to another way of life. He felt healthier, has a better work-life balance, and is working on becoming a new kind of lawyer.
The conversation stuck with me. One phrase that he used, in particular: “How should we measure success?”
It is a question we all ask ourselves at some point in our lives. Late at night when we are lying in our beds. Or, early in the morning, when we briefly catch our own reflection in the mirror and ask: “What am I doing and why does it matter?”
For sure, such thoughts aren’t always healthy. And, they can easily seem a little self-important. But, from time to time, it helps to ask such questions and think about what is valuable in our work and what we might do to improve things. I am sure most of us want a little less routine and a little more sparkle.
Goodbye box-ticking
Legal work is largely standardized. And this is OK. There is no need to continuously reinvent the wheel. The use of templates makes sense. It makes work more efficient — but not necessarily cheaper. The introduction of LegalTech tools only contributes to the standardization of large chunks of legal work.
But this standardization has a downside. A lawyers’ contribution is increasingly viewed as a “box-ticking” exercise. “Do we have a contract?” “Are the legal documents available?”
It’s astonishing to see how few people actually understand (or care) what’s in these documents. The only thing they care about is the existence of the “necessary” legal document that they can then sign.
Here are three scenarios that I have experienced recently.
An agreement has been signed. The clauses are fantastic (in the best lawyers’ prose). The only problem is that they don’t reflect the intentions of the contracting parties.
The contract clauses are cumbersome and convoluted. A few weeks ago, I discussed the meaning of a contractual clause with five experienced lawyers, and we couldn’t agree on its intention. We literally had five different interpretations of the same words.
Non-lawyers draft an agreement (because they are under the impression that they need one). But the wording is nonsense, written in a language that they imagined is “proper legal English.”
Goodbye disconnect
The world has become more complicated. We (as consumers) have to accept more and more online terms and conditions. I recently bought a new gaming laptop and had to click through a dozen “agreements” before I could start using my shiny, new purchase.
The option was to accept or not to use the full potential of the computer. There was no way to “renegotiate” the terms. Not that I intended to do so.
I opted for the quick way and accepted all of them without reading any of the terms and conditions. I am lawyer and I don’t even bother. I suspect I am not alone — can anyone read these statements without switching off?
Goodbye “archaic” rules
Lawyers often like to see themselves as the “moral compass” of an organization. This can be amusing or irritating to others, I know, but it is a common view amongst the lawyers, at least.
To make sure that employees do the right thing, lawyers are good at drafting (and co-creating) policies and guidelines. And the number of such policies and guidelines are only increasing. Working from home. The use of social media. The use of emojis. If you work in any organization, you know the kind of thing.
However, there two issues here. The policies are often “over-lawyered” products covering the least significant issues. Good business leaders recognize this and send the lawyers back to the drawing board. They might be smart and first ask about the number of pages of the policy. I bet you that the “lawyer version” is far too long.
Another problem is that these new rules often have unintended side-effects. They kill innovation and entrepreneurship in an organization, particularly when employees have to comply with all these stringent processes and procedures.
All this leads to the obvious question: Do we still need lawyers?
The successful lawyer
The lawyer of today understands that a “no rules” or “simple rules” strategy will often have a better result. Also, a successful lawyer is tech-savvy, knows how to build and manage a community, and excels in collaborating with others.
I was reading a tech review about a voice-activated and connected light bulb a few weeks ago. It was the usual tech review about the hardware and software of the product. But it was the end of the review that caught my attention. The reviewer appreciated the company’s privacy policy, which was drafted in plain English.
The tech review shows a significant trend. It isn’t about looking smart (and drafting inaccessible legal terms and conditions, which people accept without any thought) but being smart (creating confidence and trust).
And the trust can only be created by explaining legal terms in plain language. It will usually even make sense to include graphics and illustrations. The combination of legal thinking and design thinking about language, visuals, and animations is undoubtedly becoming a crucial skill for every lawyer.
This takes me back to my original questions: “How do we measure success? What am I doing and why does it matter?”
The conversation with the corporate lawyer made me question the uniqueness and “value-added” of legal thinking. Sure, at their best, the old-fashioned lawyer brought precision to complex situations and accurately documented a clear picture of a snapshot in time.
But this is no longer enough. More emphasis needs to be put on technology, better, more authentic, communication and bringing precision and clarity in an accessible and understandable way.
The last part is really important, by the way. Everything is about community-building, better communication, transparency, and improved understanding. Otherwise, any trust quickly disappears. | https://medium.com/swlh/how-do-you-measure-success-a-lawyers-tale-6db2231f654f | ['Erik P.M. Vermeulen'] | 2020-10-25 21:19:43.291000+00:00 | ['Education', 'Business', 'Innovation', 'Self Improvement', 'Law'] |
The Self-Titled Interview: Dave Porter | Is New York the place you like to vacation in rather than live?
[Laughs] I lived in New York for a very long time, during my twenties. I went to school just outside New York City, at Sarah Lawrence College. And I lived in New York until I was 30. Then I was part of an exodus of people who left New York after 9/11. I moved to LA in 2002. And that’s where I’ve been since. But I still have a New York number because when I first moved to LA, I had clients in both places and shuttled a lot back and forth.
You must have had no choice but to live in LA once you got involved with more major TV shows.
That’s totally true. I wish I’d done it earlier in my life. I hemmed and hawed about it for a bunch of years, but I was having a fun time and making a good living writing music for commercials and documentaries — the kind of work you find in New York as a composer. But to do the dramatic stuff, you absolutely have to be in LA. It was a sobering transition, moving to LA, because I thought my New York credits would help me leapfrog ahead of people. But of course, it didn’t, so I spent a couple of years on the couch watching Law and Order, waiting for the phone to ring.
Is being a composer as competitive and cutthroat as being an actor?
It is. You’d be amazed at how many composers are cycling throughout LA. It’s very competitive, right up there with acting, directing, and writing. There’s just a lot of talented folks. The good news is there’s more work than there’s ever been in terms of quality television to work on. But it’ll never be enough for all the people who want to do it.
Right; it’s not just Law and Order spinoffs anymore.
Yeah, I never had a TV in my twenties, so it was novel when I moved to LA. LA is a very different town; in New York, you can walk out the door and entertain yourself. In LA, you kinda have to have a plan. You have to have your people, and things going on, and that takes a while. The first few years are pretty tough for most people who move to LA.
But you said you were part of an exodus. Does that mean you already had friends there?
It was a different world. I had one friend who lived in LA but there were others coming from New York around the same time. It was kinda find-your-own-way. Lots of people will tell you that the first friends you make in LA won’t be the ones that last; you’re just desperate for people to hang with, to get out of the house. It’s a process of finding your own crew. But now I feel like I have as good of friends in LA as I once did in New York. I still miss my friends in New York though.
Yeah. I’ve been away for about a year and a half after living about a decade there, and that’s the one thing I miss the most — the people. That, and the feeling that you could walk for five minutes and feel like you’re part of something, whereas LA can feel very compartmentalized.
Yes. You can see a lot going on but you’re not invited. | https://medium.com/self-titled/composer-dave-porter-discusses-his-work-on-breaking-bad-better-call-saul-the-blacklist-and-2af0aca60a0e | [] | 2016-08-03 03:59:37.385000+00:00 | ['Music', 'Better Call Saul', 'Breaking Bad', 'Culture', 'Preacher'] |
Entrepreneurs of Compassion. | When Sally moved into her new neighbourhood, it was nothing like what she was used to before. A small studio apartment in the suburbs, with hardly any ventilation and sunlight to shine through her muslin curtains, it seemed that now those curtains were only there to be used as a big cloth to tie up dirty laundry in the future, which was now. Sally was a successful Fashion Consultant at a high-profile clothing brand. As the pandemic struck the world, her company was one of the first to start letting go off employees and still begging them to do them a favour by writing letters of resignation.
“What? Resignation?” was all Sally could say.
Not expecting much of a reception from her new neighbourhood, all Sally could focus was on quickly stuffing up inside her new studio apartment. Her previous neighbourhood was pretty renowned for walking around with their chins a little too high up, infact mostly looking around at things with the corner of their eyes so that it was easy for them turning a blind eye on things they didn’t want to acknowledge. But unlike them, these new neighbours noticed every little thing. For instance, even Sally’s casual clothes were way more trendy and expensive than there Sunday dresses. And these people surely noticed that.
As Sally was busy unpacking her luggage, somebody knocked at her door. It was the matronly secretary. She gave Sally her customary speech for all the new tenants ending with a tad bit of a warm invitation to her house, which was unusual for Sally. Secretary’s visit was followed by two more neighbours whom Sally thought to be nosey at first but later on found herself mulling over the tiny bit of conversation she had with them. To her actualisation, they weren’t nosey at all. They were courteous and warm. Not sniggering on her misfortune like the people she used to be surrounded with earlier did, but actually understanding what she might have gone through to end in a small studio like that surrounded by people like them. By people like them I mean, people who mostly depended on their parishes to help them survive and wore the least expensive but always clean and ironed clothes. Others were there too, but the majority belonged to them. People, whom she won’t have even acknowledged before but now was talking to and actually having a great time. These people taught Sally something what all her friends attending some ‘Art of Giving’ classes couldn’t. They showed compassion. Real compassion, not the chanting one. And coming from a cut-throat working environment, it tasted quite lovely to her. Sitting in her studio apartment all day long and thinking about various innovative ideas as to how to get back roaring on her feet, her compassionate neighbours actually helped her achieving that state of mind to be able to focus on that.
As couple of months went by, Sally observed that the women in her building, including a famous girl cricketer didn’t invest much in there appearances, probably, because they thought it’s expensive to look that way and definitely not worth their time. But those women never failed to compliment Sally whenever she dressed up. They definitely had the taste.
It wasn’t long before Sally got her new business idea! She was bustling with energy as her new idea totally and totally appealed to her! She wanted to dress up all those women beautifully with lovely cuts and colours and maybe just compromise only a bit on the fabric, as she needed to be careful with her finances too. Never before had she gotten an idea like that! What was it? Looked like Sally was just reciprocating to their compassion, only just a bit more creatively. That was it! Soon, Sally started sketching and even stitching some pieces with some tailors as the backbone of her future-budding-business. Seeing Sally’s designs and colours even the oldies couldn’t help flocking at her door! Not just Beautiful, her clothes were very affordable too. Well, that was Sally’s plan. And she succeeded pretty well, literally bouncing back on feet and stronger than ever before! That’s the magic of compassion. So next time, when you see someone grieving or going through some losses, all you have to do is be compassionate. It literally costs nothing and builds lives for the purpose of strengthening quality Humanity! | https://medium.com/@nikitasahay228/entrepreneurs-of-compassion-489945a26576 | ['Nikita Sahay'] | 2020-12-21 12:49:01.223000+00:00 | ['Entrepreneurship', 'Compassion'] |
Two Birds on the Wing | Freelancer, mediocre chef, and the guy telling you to go to the gym more often than he’s willing. I enjoy writing haikus, tell me what they mean to you. | https://medium.com/@adamraycronk/two-birds-on-the-wing-15c944b18cc0 | ['Adam Ray Cronk'] | 2020-12-02 21:46:36.979000+00:00 | ['Haiku', 'Poetry', 'Birds', 'Selflessness', 'Poetry On Medium'] |
The Conflicting Meanings of “Meaningful Meat” | Photo by Pascal Debrunner on Unsplash
Every so often, I experience a spasm of quixotic impatience at the slow advance of veganism. It’s painful to imagine the suffering endured daily by the animals living under human dominion, and all but intolerable to contemplate that suffering multiplied by years, decades, or even centuries. I try to be both pragmatic and optimistic in my approach to food ethics, but I have my moments of weakness, and in those moments, I sometimes fantasize about how things would be if I were Benevolent Dictator of the World. Wouldn’t Earth be a better place if I could simply order the bobby calves¹ reunited with their mothers, the breeding sows set free, or foie gras confined to the dustbin of history?
When a fist raised in ethical outrage feels inadequate, it’s easy to be seduced by visions of an iron glove. But while I imagine the world’s carnists² smiling and thanking me as they adapt themselves to the new plant-based world order, this kind of swift and unilateral transition to veganism — if it could really be effected — would be anything but peaceful. Rather, it would entail an onslaught of psychic and physical violence. And, in reality, it would be immoral and self-defeating to trade the large-scale suffering of animals for the large-scale suffering of the humans who eat and wear them.
Violence would be necessary not only because humans are creatures of habit, but because our dietary choices are simultaneously an expression of our personal preferences, our ethical convictions, and our connection to community and culture. In a nutshell, we identify with what we eat. You don’t just eat mushroom stroganoff, you’re someone who eats mushroom stroganoff — or spinach fatayer, or apple pie, or roast suckling pig. We readily perceive an attack on our dietary choices as an attack on our identity.
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash
The tension that arises when our diet puts those aspects of our identity at odds was eloquently captured by Alicia P. Q. Wittmeyer in a recent opinion piece for the New York Times. Although Ms. Wittmeyer is uneasy with the environmental and ethical implications of eating animal products, she views the shared preparation and consumption of “meaningful meat” as an indispensable link to her Chinese Malaysian heritage. As the child of an immigrant, raised thousands of miles from her mother’s birthplace, Ms. Wittmeyer has found links to her heritage hard to come by. And it’s difficult to imagine a more meaningful dish than the suckling pig that Ms. Wittmeyer eats at her mother’s end-of-chemo party. The pig is not only a connection to southern Chinese cuisine and Chinese Malaysian culture in the large, but a specific connection to her mother, whose childhood in Malaysia was marked by the annual preparation of roast suckling pig on Tomb Sweeping Day.
The roast pig demonstrates how traditions (carnist or otherwise) can at once honour our ancestors, bind our families, and strengthen our diasporas. Traditions underwrite our group memberships, and culinary traditions — because they unite sensory and social experience — are particularly helpful in the quest to harmonize our individual and collective identities.
Photo by Christina Warner on Unsplash
But if customs are not lightly put aside, nor are they beyond reproach. To paraphrase Cyprian, custom that sidesteps the truth is only the antiquity of error. That is, a customary belief may enshrine an error of fact; a customary practice may enshrine an error of ethics.
When it comes to eating meat, moreover, we should speak not only of the antiquity of error but the antiquity of terror. The pigs sacrificed on Tomb Sweeping Day are just one example:³ however respectfully these animals were treated, and however justifiable their sacrifice from the perspective of those who sacrificed them, it is still a bald fact that thousands of innocent creatures — intelligent creatures capable of play, love, and suffering — had their lives cut short for human purposes.
I don’t mean to litigate the actions of previous generations, nor to argue that the morality of an action can be divorced from its historical context. But in this example as in many others, if we perpetuate the custom, we are making a political and moral commitment. After all, even the most stable traditions change, evolve, and sometimes disappear. Our choices enlist us in that process, either resisting or encouraging the change.
Ms. Wittmeyer’s endeavor to stay connected to her Chinese Malaysian heritage is admirable. We should not lightly dismiss the traditions that others choose to engage in, any more than we should dismiss our own traditions — and that implies a need for respect, dialogue, and patience in the fight against animal injustice. Certainly, reflecting on Ms. Wittmeyer’s article has made it that much harder for me to entertain my dictatorial fantasies.
But the next time you eat a meal containing “meaningful meat,” consider not only the meanings the meat carries for you, but those it carries for the animal whose flesh you’re eating, and others of its kind. | https://medium.com/@yoshw/the-conflicting-meanings-of-meaningful-meat-74c16cb67405 | ['Yoshua Wakeham'] | 2020-02-28 03:53:08.647000+00:00 | ['Culture', 'Ethics', 'Veganism', 'Vegan', 'Tradition'] |
MWC Barcelona 2021: Key Announcements and Highlights | MWC Barcelona, or the Mobile World Congress, is the grandest annual event in the mobile communications industry. Organized by GSMA, the event has been held yearly since 1987, bringing together various players in the industry from around the world.
Last year’s was canceled owing to the Covid pandemic. But this year — after being put off from February (the month it holds usually) — MWC21 happened.
It started on June 28 and ran through July 1, having both in-person and virtual participants, in Catalonia, Spain.
Key announcements
Although few, there were striking revelations — mainly from industry stalwarts like Lenovo, Samsung, and the American mobile chipmaker, Qualcomm.
Lenovo announced a new tablet device, the Lenovo Yoga Tab 13 (a tablet with a kickstand), and a second-gen Smart Clock with a wireless charging dock.
Samsung, among other things, gave insights into its One UI Watch, a new platform that powers the coming Galaxy Watch, and which debuts the Wear OS the company co-created with Google.
Qualcomm announced its newest first-rate processor, the Snapdragon 888+ 5G, with a clock speed of 2.995GHz, up from the 2.84GHz on the Snapdragon 888.
A 4YFN (4 Years from Now) session, for startups, during GSMA’s Mobile World Congress 2021 #MWC21 | Photo by JJxFile via Wikimedia Commons
The 4YFN (4 Years From Now) event
Also, core at MWC21 was GSMA’s annual event for startups and innovators, 4YFN. The yearly event currently features programs (the Connectivity Hub, Digital Hub, Fintech Hub, Impact, and Investors programs), conferences, summits, and exhibitions— all geared towards supporting “startups, investors and companies to connect and launch new business ventures together.”
This year, 4YFN was merged with MWC Barcelona and, alongside other perks, availed some 400 international startups the chance to capture the interest of top funds, venture capitalists, and corporate venture capitalists.
Attendees at MWC21
GSMA has revealed that this year’s MWC had
over 20,000 people who attended in-person
around 100,000 unique virtual and daily viewers on MWC21 and partner platforms
representation from around 165 countries and territories, 117 of those in-person
over 1000 exhibitors, sponsors, and partners
millions who tuned into MWC21 content through global syndication via 1000+ national and international broadcasters
over 50% of attendees being Directors
1,500 CEOs and C-Suite executives.
Commenting on the event’s success, GSMA’s director-general, Mats Granryd, expressed delight:
“I am proud of the team for delivering a high-quality event in an extraordinarily complex environment. The pandemic has indelibly changed how we gather. We had to develop new health and safety protocols and a hybrid platform but, we did it! It was only possible because of a community of support for which I am very grateful.”
GSMA’s Mobile World Congress 2021 #MWC21 | Photo by JJxFile via Wikimedia Commons
Next: MWC22
One source quoting Mats Granryd has it that next year’s MWC will return to the usual February slot.
“We do want to be going back to the February Barcelona rhythm once 2021 is done,” said Mats. “A lot of product launches are happening towards the beginning of the year, so we’d like to time that into our event.”
And officially, as shared in a press release yesterday, GSMA has scheduled 2022’s MWC to run from February 28 through March 3. | https://medium.com/ezewholesale/mwc-barcelona-2021-key-announcements-and-highlights-460202b39ed3 | ['Eze Wholesale'] | 2021-08-27 14:40:25.111000+00:00 | ['MWC', 'Mobile', 'Consumer Electronics', 'Smartphones', 'Mwc21'] |
Custos x Despesas — Saiba a diferença | in In Fitness And In Health | https://medium.com/treasy/custos-x-despesas-saiba-a-diferen%C3%A7a-84bdf0266d6b | [] | 2017-07-14 14:23:52.356000+00:00 | ['Custos', 'Financas', 'Despesas'] |
Introducing BakerySwap, an AMM Dex on Binance Smart Chain | Eaten your fill of raw fish? The Bakery doors will be opening soon, and we’ve got a new, smarter (and cheaper) farming experience ready to serve up.
Why Binance Smart Chain?
To be frank, Ethereum’s current gas fees have been exorbitant to say the least and the barrier to entry for participating in on-chain activities is only getting higher and higher. Enter Binance Smart Chain. By leveraging BSC, we will be able to increase the speed of transactions while massively reducing the fees at the same time. Perfect, right?
BakerySwap in a nutshell:
No pre-sale and no pre-mine. Fair distribution of all BAKE tokens
The BakerySwap team will only receive 1% of all BAKE farmed (i.e. the Bakery team gets 1 BAKE token for every 100 BAKE farmed).
Maximum rewards for BAKE stakers. The BAKE-BNB pool will earn 10x rewards compared to other pools.
The first Binance Smart Chain AMM to offer alt-coin liquidity pools (LPs) such as LINK, DOT, etc.
One of the very first to utilize Binance Smart Chain for an AMM DEX.
We’re taking full advantage of the Binance community by providing arbitrage opportunities amongst BEP2 and BEP20 tokens that are hosted on Binance.com or on the Binance DEX.
How does BakerySwap work?
BakerySwap is the next iteration of the by now infamous Uniswap. It’s like Uniswap, but faster, cheaper and dare we say it… tastier? In addition to all of the above, liquidity providers will also be rewarded with BAKE tokens from which they can earn a share of BakerySwap’s trading fees and use for voting as part of BakerySwap’s governance.
Initial Liquidity Pools(LPs)
BakerySwap has 2 types of liquidity pools:
With BAKE rewards. Without BAKE rewards.
This is to facilitate the creation of new LPs by the community. Only designated LPs will have BAKE rewards and among those the reward multiplier for each will vary, typically based on the value they provide to BAKE holders.
The initial set of LPs and BAKE reward multipliers as below:
BEP20 BAKE-BNB, 10x BAKE rewards
BEP20 BUSD-BNB, 3x BAKE rewards
BEP20 ETH-BNB, 1x BAKE rewards
BEP20 BTC-BNB, 1x BAKE rewards
BEP20 DOT-BNB, 1x BAKE rewards
BEP20 LINK-BNB, 1x BAKE rewards
Trading fee and reward distribution
BakerySwap applies a 0.30% fee to all swaps, of which 0.25% will go to Liquidity Providers (LPs).
Liquidity providers are given liquidity pool tokens (Bakery LPs) that represent their share of each pool, and can earn a portion of the fees collected in these pools when removing liquidity.
LPs can then stake their Bakery LP tokens to farm BAKE token rewards.
How will BAKE release and distribute?
BAKE tokens will be gradually released to liquidity pools according to their respective reward multiplier (e.g. 1x , 3x , etc).
Early farmers (or as we like to think of them, early “bakers”) will be greatly rewarded in terms of the initial “BAKE per block” release.
Initial release schedule:
First 30,000 BSC blocks (approx 1 day) — 400 BAKE per block
30,001–900,000 BSC blocks (approx 29 days) — 300,000 BAKE reduced day by day, 255 BAKE per block on average
900,0001 BSC blocks until full supply released (approx 11 months) —300,000 BAKE reduced month by month, 73 BAKE per block on average
The total supply of BAKE is 731,745,000
The team will receive a relatively low share of rewards during the entire BAKE farming period, which is 1 BAKE for every 100 BAKE farmed.
Some updates here:
[9/18/2020]The community thought BAKE released too fast, so we launched a series of votes to decide whether we should reduce the BAKE release and how much should be reduced. According to the voting results of the community, we added a burning pool to burn 75% of the newly released tokens.
[9/18/2020]We added a BAKE staking pool with 3x reward multiplier based on suggestions from the community.
[9/20/2020]We added BAKE-BUSD pool and BAKE-DOT pool with 8x reward and 2x reward respectively.
[9/24/2020]We added USDT-BUSD pool and also adjusted the multipliers for other pools.
[9/25/2020]We executed the 3rd round of 50% BAKE reduction.
[9/29/2020]We launched Bakery NFT COMBO. Users can stake combos to get BAKE, the pool for combos staking is 10x.
[9/29/2020] Based on the community’s feedback, we increased the reward for the combo pool to 20x.
[10/16/2020]We increased BAKE Staking pool from 5x to 7x, and ended the DOT-BNB and LINK-BNB farming pool.
[10/28/2020]We decreased the rewards for Combo pool from 20x to 12x, and increased the Burning pool’s from 260x to 268x
[3/9/2021] In order to build a sustainable Bakery ecosystem, we did some adjustment of the rewarding mechanism, check this article: https://bakeryswap.medium.com/adjustment-of-bake-rewarding-mechanism-to-build-a-sustainable-bakery-ecosystem-a0349e3da4c
Start farming BAKE tokens on September 14th, 2020 at 3:59PM GMT.
Early BAKE farmers get 10x rewards at maximum release! | https://medium.com/@bakeryswap/introducing-bakeryswap-an-amm-dex-on-binance-smart-chain-ad84f5f24645 | [] | 2021-05-05 01:52:23.941000+00:00 | ['Binance Smart Chain', 'Binance', 'Defi'] |
Mainframe Developer Cockpit Simulator | To date, mainframe developers have used native source code managers like CA Endevor, and editors like the green screens of ISPF or, more recently, Eclipse. While these tools have served mainframe shops admirably for decades, the next-generation of talent knows and loves different tools, and even Eclipse is considered primitive by today’s standards.
Today, 87% of developers use Git and appreciate its collaboration-centric paradigm, derived from its open source origins. Eleven million developers use Visual Studio Code and appreciate features like syntax highlighting, intelligent code completion, snippets, and embedded Git as well as the ability to personalize the environment. These tools, when combined with CLIs, CI/CD pipelines, etc., are the engine of digital transformation.
Should the next-generation of mainframe developers be required to adopt the legacy tools?
Modern developer tooling powered by Zowe
Software engineers are in perpetually high demand so, like others, mainframe teams need to find ways to attract and retain talent. Imposing legacy tools, as effective as they may be, may not be as attractive as allowing them to use tools they already know and love. Opening the platform to these tools makes the mainframe a more appealing career choice.
Now, with enabling technologies like the open source Zowe framework, VS Code extensions like Code4z and the CA Endevor Bridge for Git, a modern toolchain is available to developers of mainframe code, including sysprogs. Critically, these tools enable mainframe teams to modernize-in-place, without lifting and shifting code and without disrupting existing developers. They also offer the ability to easily leverage enterprise CI/CD toolchains including components like Jenkins, SonarQube and Jest that are also often familiar to the next-generation. To learn how Zowe opens the door to off-platform DevOps tooling, and offers value adds like Single Sign-On (SSO) and MFA, read “Z is for Zowe, the Open Path to Mainframe DevOps”.
Developer Cockpit Simulator
These Zowe-enabled tools help new-to-mainframe team members be productive immediately — even on Day 1 — by lowering the learning curve.
In the digital age, an organization’s codebase is its ‘crowned jewels’. It defines how they deliver value and how they compete. For companies running mainframe applications written in COBOL and other mainframe-centric languages, a modern toolchain is the first step to meaningful software modernization, including robust cross-platform applications and broader polyglot development.
In addition to being attractive to the next-generation of talent, these tools also provide a degree of future-proofing. New cloud-based IDEs like Eclipse Che, Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces and GitHub Codespaces preserve not only the look and feel of VS Code but also innovations like the Language Server Protocol (LSP) and Debug Adapter Protocol (DAP).
However, for both career mainframers and new-to-mainframe developers, understanding how the technology comes together can be challenging.
Developer Cockpit Simulator
To demystifying this new toolchain, Broadcom created an interactive simulator called the Developer Cockpit [link]. Featuring Visual Studio Code, Zowe and Git, the Developer Cockpit simulates a realistic environment for a COBOL/CICS/Batch/Db2 developer complete with relevant VS Code extensions, Zowe CLI plug-ins and sample scripts. It provides visibility into the holistic experience and the open source enablers behind-the-scenes. And access to a script library provides the cockpit with “autopilot” capabilities which are especially helpful for new team members.
Try out the Developer Cockpit Simulator and let us know what you think!
See the complete set of VS Code extensions
See the complete set of Zowe CLI plugins
Learn more about Zowe
Learn more about CA Endevor Bridge for Git
Learn more about LSP
Learn more about DAP
Learn more about Eclipse Che | https://medium.com/modern-mainframe/mainframe-developer-cockpit-simulator-6cc518193444 | ['David Mcnierney'] | 2020-11-19 17:44:06.216000+00:00 | ['Mainframe', 'Git', 'Github', 'Vscode', 'DevOps'] |
CodeChain Foundry | CodeChain Foundry is a blockchain engine based on a composable module system. Users can write their own modules in addition to bringing in those written by others in order to construct an arbitrary blockchain application. Foundry is under active development and going to release its first working version soon. In this article we briefly introduce the core idea of the project.
Consensus
As Foundry started from CodeChain, we took advantage of such verified implementation of blockchain. Both CodeChain and Foundry use Tendermint, a Byzantine fault tolerant PoS consensus. The CodeChain team has successfully developed its own Rust implementation of Tendermint, and thoroughly tested it over a couple of years. It is working well with the mainnet of CodeChain even as we speak. Foundry is incorporating such well implemented and verified works, including other essential components such as P2P networking and DB.
Module System
Upon execution of a transaction that is essentially a state transition, the module system will be told to execute the transaction from the underlying consensus engine. Transactions will be delivered to the responsible modules, and those modules will handle the execution of the transactions, which might also involve communications with other modules.
Foundry provides a powerful and general module system that supports:
Multiple runtimes for multiple kinds of modules : each module can be written in various languages requiring different runtime environments. Thus, languages compiled to executables or WASM modules can be supported, as well as those requiring an interpreter or virtual machine like Python and JavaScript.
: each module can be written in various languages requiring different runtime environments. Thus, languages compiled to executables or WASM modules can be supported, as well as those requiring an interpreter or virtual machine like Python and JavaScript. General communication system based on services : details are explained in this article.
: details are explained in this article. Configurability by the app-descriptor : Users can compose an application from various modules, specifying how to exchange services between each module and the consensus engine. It is human readable, declarative, and easily auditable.
: Users can compose an application from various modules, specifying how to exchange services between each module and the consensus engine. It is human readable, declarative, and easily auditable. Reusability by well-defined and targeted interfaces between each module and the consensus engine : this makes modules independent, decoupled, and clear in one’s responsibilities. Each module can be easily adapted and reused.
: this makes modules independent, decoupled, and clear in one’s responsibilities. Each module can be easily adapted and reused. Security by sandbox and services. Modules will be sandboxed and can affect the outside world only via services explicitly specified by the app-descriptor. Each module exposes its interface exactly as the user allowed in the app-descriptor.
Module
Modules are independent components that make up an application. They cooperate to function as a blockchain application along with the consensus engine. Each module has its own state, and may define its own transactions. Imagine a really simple cryptocurrency application. Typical implementations would consist of the following modules:
Account module : manages sequences and balances for accounts. It defines a payment transaction to transfer tokens. It will, at the very least, provide an interface for other modules to access accounts’ sequences, because other modules’ transactions will likely depend on sequences anyway.
: manages sequences and balances for accounts. It defines a payment transaction to transfer tokens. It will, at the very least, provide an interface for other modules to access accounts’ sequences, because other modules’ transactions will likely depend on sequences anyway. Staking module : provides the validator set of Tendermint to the consensus engine. It might query balances of accounts to determine the stake of each.
: provides the validator set of Tendermint to the consensus engine. It might query balances of accounts to determine the stake of each. Sorting module: Sorts transactions in the mempool by priority and excludes those made invalid by recent transactions. The sorting module is consulted when proposing a block to pick transactions for inclusion. It is also consulted when evicting invalid or lower priority transactions when the mempool is full.
IBC and Lightclient
Besides the module system, Foundry has some useful built-in modules: the IBC modules. IBC stands for Inter-Blockchain Communication, and the IBC modules function as a connection end of verifiable chain-to-chain communication. You can communicate with other blockchains built with Foundry, and with completely different chains too as long as they meet the IBC requirements. See this article to learn more about what IBC is and how we implemented it.
Light client is a special algorithm to cryptographically verify the state or transactions in blockchain without using the whole state. It is key in constructing a truly decentralized (where you do not need to trust anybody) and practically utilizable network made possible by light-weight nodes. We have implemented and tested the light client of Foundry while implementing IBC (see this article to know how IBC and a light client are related). Foundry will eventually have a stand-alone light client for its users that can be used for all chains built with Foundry.
Future
One of Foundry’s ultimate goals is to have an active and rich ecosystem of diverse modules. Since we have already established a general module system and its communication protocol, we can add more types of module runtimes continuously. Users will be able to easily write their own business logic in whatever language they want, especially simple scripting languages. Users can easily compose such custom modules with other common popular modules to construct their own applications. | https://medium.com/codechain/codechain-foundry-8c6df5e08c82 | ['Junha Yang'] | 2020-08-31 08:34:25.355000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Codechain', 'Foundry'] |
Don’t Leave Home Without it! | Quick fire tip #55: Dial into conference calls.
Yes, there are ways to improve your desk set-up. But even better is to get up and go for a walk. | https://medium.com/realistic-life-management-rlm/dont-leave-home-without-it-1447e831a5bf | ['Paolo Cuomo'] | 2021-03-20 12:56:08.965000+00:00 | ['Life Hacking', 'Quickfire', 'Productivity', 'Work', 'Quickfire Tips'] |
How To Manage Team Related Issues in PM Environment? | An Issue management software is a great deal of help in planning, reporting and tracking issues on time. However, not all issues turn out to be technical. Sometimes as a project manager, you are confronted with non-technical issues that fester and affect your Team’s performance.
Here is a list of 5 seemingly common but equally useful tips that will help you resolve team performance issues on a permanent basis:
1. Avoid Nepotism and Biases On Priority
As a manager, it is your duty to create a positive and optimistic environment for your team to work under. Each member of your team, whether it is the person with the least number of responsibilities or the one that has the project’s business value resting on his shoulders, all of them should be equally motivated to play their role in the project’s completion.
Equal motivation stems from equal treatment. Refrain from singling out members for praise or reprimand. Practice fairness at all times and at all levels. This involves:
According to the latest report by McKinsey, companies with racially and ethnically diverse teams are 35% more productive than teams that lack diversity.
Limiting the gender pay gap to a minimum.
In 2018, McKinsey & Company reported a 23% mean difference in their gender pay gap. To address this pay gap, McKinsey has announced to allocate 40% of their upper quartile roles to females by 2020.
Providing an equal number of bonuses for all team members. A Gender Pay Gap study by Gartner in 2018, revealed that the ratio of payment bonuses between male employees and female employees still has a disparity of 96%:88%.
2. Acknowledge Your Team’s Performance
Often times, employees start feeling mundane, after weeks and months of their hard work is left unnoticed and unappreciated. Soon this kind of attitude turns into a dreadful habit, where team members lose focus and stop giving their best input. A Psychometrics survey revealed that 58% of the respondents believed their engagement at work would improve if their leaders recognized their work.
To avoid such productivity-killing behaviors from spreading within your workplace, you need to make the door swing both ways. Let your team know they are valued by applauding their strengths. Try not to focus solely on their weaknesses. Instead, sit with them and guide them with constructive feedback.
A survey conducted by Harvard Business Review stated that 72% of the participant employees think constructive feedback from their managers can help improve their performance.
3. Avoid Micromanaging your Team’s Work
Poor employee morale can gravely affect the overall stability and scope of a project. Employees suffering from low self-esteem and low confidence issues tend to become a liability to the management. One leading cause of such a case is micromanagement on part of the leader. Managers who incessantly monitor every minute detail of their team’s performance do not realize the detrimental effects they are causing on employee engagement as well as morale.
Such a level of over-involvement from the manager weakens the team’s trust that needs to exist between the leader and his team. Constant delegation of work and pestering your team with strict guidelines to follow single-handedly eliminates the synergy needed in team performance.
A Trinity Solutions Survey shows that 85% of employees shared that micromanagement had a negative impact on their morale, whereas 71% of the respondents said it served as an obstacle in their performance.
By limiting constant involvement in your team’s work, you can encourage them to:
Take initiatives as a result of good morale
Increase overall performance by sharing ideas and plans with other team members
Feel motivated about their progress at work, which will directly decrease the turnover of a business.
Additional Reading: Top Team Management Software: The Top 20 Team Management Software of 2020
4. Take Immediate Action Instead of Procrastinating
Good management leads by example. If you want your employees to deliver on time and exude responsible behavior, not only do you as a project manager, need to gain their trust but set an example from your own actions. Take immediate and powerful charge of problems and issues your team suffers from. Address these problems in time. If you overlook or let a problem linger, it will reflect adversely on your reputation as well as your management abilities.
Team members should be given a reason to care for their contributions in the workplace. Such care can only be instilled in employees only when they know that their needs are given equal attention as well. In other words, to harbor a symbiotic workplace environment, a good project manager always aims to gain the trust of their employees.
PWC survey of CEOs revealed that employees working in workplaces that are rich in trust are 106% more energetic than workplaces lacking trust.
5. Establish Transparent Communication
According to Deloitte’s fourth annual Ethics & Workplace Survey, 46% of the respondents account for lack of transparent communication in their leadership as one of the main reasons for finding new employment.
A big number of teams performance related issues such as discomfort, misunderstandings, emotional stress, and personal crisis can all be single-handedly resolved with transparent communication.
For a healthy team relationship, it is important that a project manager renders himself approachable. So that his team members do not hesitate in approaching him for any work-related purpose. Create a two-way communication channel that allows your team members to share their personal issues affecting their performance. This way, not only will it provide you with team accountability but help you in finding solutions to their problems that may otherwise hamper project productivity.
In conclusion, issue management is vital for preserving the stability and efficiency of a project. Good management is incomplete without good issue management. Give these tips a try and let us know in the comments below, how helpful did you find each of these tips in managing team performance issues. | https://medium.com/@ntaskmanager/how-to-manage-team-related-issues-in-pm-environment-3b99cefb1005 | [] | 2020-04-03 13:20:36.448000+00:00 | ['Teamwork', 'Projects', 'Team Collaboration', 'Team Management', 'Team'] |
Wondering Why You Should Choose AK Clinics For Your Hair Transplant? Here’s Why! | Getting a hair transplant in Bangalore is not a decision that you should take lightly — firstly, this is a surgical procedure, which means that you need to put a good amount of thought into whether you want to get this procedure done or not. Additionally, this is not a procedure that you choose to get done on a whim because it could literally make or break the way you look. If you have serious hair loss and are seeing bald spots, you could possibly be a candidate for a transplant, but it is imperative that you first meet with an expert and get a proper and official diagnosis for the same.
If you have been told by a hair restoration or hair transplant surgeon that you are a good candidate for a transplant, your next step needs to be choosing a good clinic and that for most people, would be the greatest task of all. Thankfully, there are a few hair transplant clinics that have been able to establish a good name for themselves, courtesy of the talent and experience of the doctors and the services they offer. If you are in Bangalore, AK Clinics would be an apt choice for you and there are several reasons why you should consider this clinic for your transplant.
· The very foundation of a successful transplant lies in the hands of a quality hair transplant surgeon and at AK Clinics, you get the best of the best. With world-renowned hair transplant expert, Dr Kapil Dua at the helm, this is a place where some of the most talented and experienced hair restoration specialists practice their craft. When you walk into the clinic for the very first time, you will not be asked to sign up for any procedures. Rather, you will be given a thorough examination, post which you will be privy to a consultation, where all the options will be discussed with you and the best course of action will be charted out.
· Should you be an ideal candidate for a transplant, you will be advised about the appropriate one for you — is your hair loss diffused and more in the vein of an overall thinning, FUE might be a better choice for you. FUT would be suggested to you if you have large bald spots or need a larger number of grafts. In the hands of a really experienced doctor, you will have little to worry about, because they will be able to gauge the appropriate procedure for you with ease and ensure that it is completed with efficiency and efficacy.
· A high-quality hair transplant surgeon will not be able to achieve much if they don’t have access to the right tools, equipment and machines. At AK Clinics, patients have access to some of the most modern machines, which ensure that your procedure is completed with ease and speed as well.
· While most regular clinics will offer you only basic procedures, at AK Clinics, you get to choose from a huge array of options — so while the traditional and most popular FUE and FUT are offered, there is also the option of Bio FUE, a state of the art procedure that has been created and developed in house at AK Clinics. This procedure brings the finesse of an FUE and adds the healing and rejuvenating powers of PRP therapy as well. Moreover, there are procedures such as scalp micro pigmentation and even Giga sessions on offer at AK Clinics.
· Even the most talented surgeon will not be able to complete a hair transplant in Bangalore without a support staff that is just as well trained and experienced. At AK Clinics, there is an army of trained technicians and support staff, who ensure that every transplant procedure is completed with extreme care and immense efficiency.
In case you are still wondering whether you should choose AK Clinics for your procedure or not, talk to us or walk into our clinics and allow us to clarify all your doubts. | https://medium.com/@akclinic/wondering-why-you-should-choose-ak-clinics-for-your-hair-transplant-heres-why-4d0a41bc4d00 | ['Ak Clinics'] | 2021-12-22 10:30:53.956000+00:00 | ['Hair Transplant Bangalore', 'Hair Transplant Clinic', 'Hair', 'Hair Care', 'Hair Transplant'] |
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