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A Wreck Home | Slayed by this earth,
I slither to search
A life in this earth,
A home,
Wrecked,
Filled with gross pictures of the dogs,
Eating each other’s flesh,
There perched and waif,
I try to look beyond,
In the pellucid lake,
Sitting beside a goldfinch,
Conquered in the silence,
All these murmurs,
Of my home; | https://medium.com/painted-with-words/a-wreck-home-3070f1f3611c | ['Vaghawan Ojha'] | 2019-02-15 06:14:44.841000+00:00 | ['Poetry On Medium', 'Poetry', 'Lonliness', 'Art', 'Life'] |
Why Should You Join a Fellows Program? | As a college senior, contemplating post-graduation plans can feel exciting and overwhelming. Numerous decisions are at play, from pursuing full-time employment to applying to graduate schools, among other opportunities.
To add to the complexity of choices, there does not always seem to be a clear decision, especially given cultural pressures and expectations from peers or family.
Simply put, we are eager to start well. But what’s the best way to do that?
Weighing options after college
Faced with these circumstances, I vividly remember weighing the options and realizing that buried beneath the desire to begin my professional career was an even stronger desire to build a foundation of Christian community rooted in a rich understanding of how to practically apply the gospel to every facet of my life.
Recognizing that God has called us to “present (ourselves) as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (Romans 12:1) in every facet of our existence, the need for an endeavor that would strengthen a sense of calling to lead and serve others at home, the workplace, the church, and the world at large became crucial. Suddenly, spending the first year after college as a Fellow made a great deal of sense.
Luke Farley, a current Trinity Fellow and graduate of Washington and Lee University, wrestled in a similar way with his post-college plans.
“Upon graduating from college, I was eager to discern how I could best steward my gifts and abilities for the sake of God’s kingdom,” Luke says. “The Fellows Program has helped me to see everything in light of God’s greater vision for the earth and his people. Because of this, I have been formed spiritually and professionally — grown in love for Christ, and gained valuable experience in the workplace.” — Luke Farley
Seamless immersion into a church community.
Among the many reasons to join a Fellows program, the centrality of the church and its community makes the experience especially rich:
Just as Fellows are eager to engage in the life of the church, so too do church members intentionally engage with the Fellows to build relationships, help them serve the ministries of the church, and actively look for high caliber jobs or graduate school opportunities after the program.
Fellows also have the opportunity to grow in their understanding of God’s word under the teaching of church and seminary staff.
The program intentionally links Fellows to mentors and host families that model Christ-like love and hospitality.
The Fellows Program also provides a robust curriculum of leadership and vocational discernment tools that allow Fellows to explore their calling, even as they serve in the workplace and community.
With the lure of post-graduate work, finding a meaningful community, joining a church, serving the local community and beyond, connecting with men and women who can serve as mentors, and building strong relationships in a new city can easily become a lower priority than career advancement.
I remember talking to one of my fellow seniors about why I was going to do the Fellows Program the following year,” recalls Raleigh Fellow and Wheaton College graduate Hayes Thielman. “Instead of joining the Program, my friend, like many in college, took a high-paying, career-building job. A year later, he not only quit but moved to a different city.” The reason? “This was, unfortunately, due to a lack of community in his life,” Hayes says.
“As recent college graduates, it can be easy to fall into the lure of financial stability and building a career — important items indeed. However, how much more important is it to have a strong community of believers you can go out and serve the world from?”
Indeed, Fellows programs are especially appealing because they are experiential, not just theoretical. You work in an entry level capacity as you receive top-notch teaching and instruction from program leaders and church staff. What’s more, the professional career you continue after Fellows will be enriched by intentional involvement in the church, and guidance and counsel from mentors — all under the influence of the gospel and God’s redemptive work in our world.
This post was originally posted on the Fellows Initiative blog by Evan Norfleet. | https://medium.com/muncie-fellows/why-should-you-join-a-fellows-program-4ca73baddea9 | ['Muncie Fellows'] | 2019-03-31 18:55:19.563000+00:00 | ['Graduation', 'Careers', 'Christianity', 'Leadership', 'Faith'] |
‘Stocking Stuff’ | ‘Stocking Stuff’
In short, stockings were traditionally set out near a fireplace for St. Nick to fill with goodies for the kids.
Plain ol’ everyday socks were used back then. These days, however, one can find styles like NFL-themed ones, personalized ones, ones with photos on them and anything that could be thought of.
I have one that looks like a figure skate and the three guys have red quilted ones.
In our home, ‘Santa’ always brings these items; orange, Life-Saver, Skittles or Hubba Bubba candy book, a candy cane, giant Lindt milk chocolate bars, socks and gourmet hot chocolate packs plus a few other things that vary each year.
The other things can include stuff like special pens, toys, gift cards, candies, chocolates, magazines, travel games and books.
Unwrapping gifts is the best part and makes the process last longer so Santa usually makes sure most or all gifts are individually wrapped.
As well, the boys open them whenever they wake (for Luke that’s usually about 4 or 5am) though the presents are often kept until Mom and Dad get up.
What are your traditional stocking stuffers?
Ornaments? Gingerbread cookies? Chocolates? Candy? Hand-made items?
For an interesting history of the stocking, check out this article:
Sending all the happy wrapping and stocking-stuffing vibes to each one of you over the next few days ;)
-Becky | https://medium.com/@beckyboughton/stocking-stuff-4664e4300f27 | ['Becky Boughton'] | 2020-12-23 01:15:51.737000+00:00 | ['Fun', 'Parenting', 'Christmas', 'Tradition', 'Christmas Traditions'] |
Basic of -What is the Pre and Post Emergent in Agriculture? | As the name suggests, pre-emergence is a stage before the weeds sprout whereas post-emergence is a stage when weeds have grown enough to gain some height and could be seen. This article aims to provide basic as well as essential knowledge regarding pre and post-emergence in agriculture. Along with such description, this article will also cover the developments and strategies in the field of agriculture to prevent the production of weeds.
Weeds could not always be considered as bad plants but are plants that are of no use, affecting the yield potential of agricultural fields. Many of the time they spread throughout the field unnecessarily for no use so should be removed instantly before spreading. To save cultivation development from weeds, there are some techniques and terms to be known:
Annual and perennial Weeds:
Before moving towards the remedies you must know weeds. To save your fields from them, you must be able to understand their growth period, types, and effects.
You must know what annual and perennial weeds are. Annual weed sprouts in spring through fall, grow for a single year, and usually spreads throughout fields through seed pollinated by birds, humans, etc. They should be killed before the seed again starts growing. Perennial in contrary to Annual is creepier and most difficult to be removed completely, as it can flourish year after year. These weeds contain both seeds and creepy roots so they could only be killed by both pre and post-emergent herbicides.
Herbicides:
The use of herbicides is one of the best ways to kill weeds, through chemicals. The pre-emergence herbicide kills weeds before they sprout. They do not prevent germination. Pre-emergence herbicides not only kill sprout weeds but also kill the underground weeds. Pre-emergence herbicides are used after crops have been cultivated but weeds have not yet evolved out.
Post-emergence herbicides effectively kill all those weeds breading from the soil. Such weeds have attained some height and foliage this time and with that, they are also effective in spot treating individual pests. Many times both pre and post-emergence herbicides are used to get rid of weeds completely, one when the weeds sprout and the other when crops have to a level.
Pre and post herbicides should be used correctly with care and on the targeted area, as they are situation-specific and crop-specific.
Herbicides should be applied according to the nature of the plant. Early spring and spring-fall are the most effective times for herbicides to be used. Herbicides should be incorporated deeply into the soil, to get better results. Some herbicides could be harmful if you do not know the proper way of using them otherwise; herbicides are not bad as some are used in horticulture as well.
Weed management strategies:
Weed and soil ecology is key to achieve effective tools, strategies, and options to prevent weeds effects and to save cultivation development. These strategies are also very favorable for producing methods in the cropping system, effective for not just controlling weeds but also for a better understanding of biodiversity and the relationship between soil and soil organism.
In understanding soil ecology, the relationship between soil and soil organisms should be understood. An eye should be kept on soil’s microbial population and natural diversity. Apart from using herbicides another process such as soil degradation, covering crops as in process of mulching, and using repellents, are some other process to get rid of weeds and pests.
Pre and post-emergent weeds are one of the major problems in the field of agriculture. If dealt with properly with the help of proper scientific strategies could be handled easily but if not taken as a serious issue could badly affect the yield potential of fields, resulting in a loss.
The article has presented a detailed study of pre and post-emergent in agriculture together with all the aspects and techniques to face them such as proper soil monitoring and using herbicide or through mulching. And productivity within the field by studying soil and weed ecology to get rid of weeds and attain maximum yield within the area. | https://medium.com/@supplysolutionsadvisors/basic-of-what-is-the-pre-and-post-emergent-in-agriculture-bb74c75547f6 | [] | 2020-12-14 11:46:25.713000+00:00 | ['Agriculture', 'Cultivation', 'Weed Control', 'Emergent'] |
Development Update October 24, 2018 | The Force is Here | The FAB Foundation provides technical updates related to the project every week.
The Force: Scheduled Fork
The moment we have all been waiting for is hear. FAB’s development team has worked long and hard and is now ready for phase 1 of “The Force”. (Read in depth details of “The Force” here.)
The FAB team began deploying smart contracts and upgrades in the test network in real time in early August. This new upgrade also adjusted the mining mechanism for self-propelled mining. This version is the original Force Basic Edition. The upgraded main new features include: upgrade mining algorithm to EquihashFAB, support for smart contracts and compatibility with Ethereum contracts; 150 second block time, and anti-Asic attacks.
Fast Access Blockchain will be hard-forked at a height of 235,000 blocks (tentatively October 28, 2018). To properly run the new forked network, you will need to download the new software. Visit http://fabcoin.pro/runtime.html to download your new full node or wallet.
The old wallet program is still available, but be sure to update the latest version by the 28th. In order to facilitate your mining transactions you will need to upgrade.
Mining Details
- The block time has been adjusted to 150 seconds.
- anti-ASIC attack technology added
- Currently only NVIDIA graphics card mining is supported, and AMD graphics cards are not supported at this time.
More Details
The FAB team will actively deal with the various questions of the fork. For any questions and inquiries, please email [email protected] or [email protected]. Alternatively, reach out to the team on Twitter and Telegram which you can find below.
Mobile Wallet
We are making significant improvements in the mobile wallet to allow for tokens. These include:
Details in the confirmation dialog for tokens
Unnecessary dependencies have been removed from the JS file.
Unused features have been removed from the wallet management.
Improve the sorting optimization of token receiving for wallet management.
We are also continuously improving the User Interface and Experience.
Kanban
Kanban PBFT Consensus
The PBFT configuration of the Kanban (Universal State Layer) is almost complete. Currently, the configuration allows for thousands of transactions per second during testing.
We are working to set up the sharding process for shard groups.
Kanban Tangle Version
Our second formulation of Kanban is through the Tangle version. This past week we have changed the communication protocol on the Kanban diagram, deleted the Navigator completion between nodes and changed the Tangle communication component based on the real p2p network to immediately perform real communication and broadcasting. The team has also localized voting and consensus components based on the new protocol.
Next week:
Verify that new instances/tips of the API are embedded in any single node and execute on other nodes according to the new protocol.
Set the node registration based on the node public key and displays a list of neighboring nodes, node groups, and all graphs.
Improve the Tangle network and support three different concepts, including vertices, edges and network paths.
Simulate some network paths and display them on the Tangle viewer, which will display the network based on the new front-end tools (whole network, group/shard network, and node graph). Join a new instance and pass the workflow to the network based on the new p2p protocol.
Update the embedded public API to get all the business rules that have been defined.
Embed the redis version in the Kanban map and run it before the node.
Create a network verification path after any new nodes want to join the graph.
Smart Contract
Completed Work:
- V16.2.3 Fasc — Branch: Testing and problem solving in progress
- V16 — fabcoin-dev sm01 — Branch: Equihash parameters and difficulty adjustment — completed
- testnet / mainnet test — bug fix
This week, the smart contract fabcoin-dev / sm01 backend was released to complete the equihash difficulty parameters. We are building the Ubuntu (Nvidia, no mining) / windows / IOS / CentOS; AWS configuration node | https://medium.com/fast-access-blockchain/development-update-october-24-2018-the-force-is-here-e97a9f2827eb | ['Fab Info'] | 2018-10-25 15:51:46.505000+00:00 | ['Decentralization', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Development', 'Smart Contracts', 'Updates'] |
Thanking Message: Healthcare Management, Nursing, and Patient Safety Conference Attendees | Greetings. UCG would like to express heartfelt thanks to you for participating and presenting as a talk at the 9th Emirates Healthcare Management, Nursing, and Patient Safety Conference on April 6–8, 2021.
We hope that you found the conference informative and worthwhile. We believe that our diverse and dynamic group of speakers and panelists provided in-depth insight. This conference’s primary goal was to bring together global Pathologists and Pathology professionals, researchers, professors worldwide in an open dialogue, under one roof, to discuss the research innovations, experience, case studies, results.
Your presence helped make this event a great success; your enthusiasm and positive spirit helped make our time together both productive and fun. We wish you all the best and hope you continue to engage with the UCGConferences. Stay tuned for upcoming events by visiting; https://nursing.universeconferences.com/
Presentations will be uploaded on our YouTube Channel. Subscribe to stay Up to date: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS1TFe3nzRlREovQIjYMPkg
Once you subscribe you will be notified and you can watch your session along with your colleague’s presentation.
Over 40 live presentations and posters from different organizations and thousands of viewers worldwide gave their time, experiences, views, and resources to attend and contribute. You made the HNPSUCG Conferences a success, and it was a great pleasure to see so many of you there!
Hopefully, you enjoyed both the scientific part and the social program and that you used the opportunity to extend your existing networks. I am sure that the cooperation with most of you will continue in the near future UCGConferences.
UCG Conferences would like to give special thanks to the Keynote Speakers, Chairpersons, Speakers, Posters of the conference, and to the viewers. Furthermore, effective teams who did outstanding work in hosting and organizing the event successfully.
We are organizing the 10th Emirates UCG edition on Healthcare, Nursing, and Patient Safety on December 15–16, 2021, Dubai as well as virtually, If you have research work to submit or you want to attend as a delegate, kindly go through the website here: https://nursing.universeconferences.com/
We look forward to your attendance at the 10thHNPSUC.
Thanks again for a truly memorable contribution. We hope you can join us again.
Call for Paper:
Call for Abstracts is now open for the 10th Emirates UCG edition on Nursing, Healthcare Management and Patient Safety, Dubai, UAE during December 15–17, 2021 with the motto “Connecting Leaders in Healthcare Transformation and Bringing Learning Life, Together Towards Building Quality for a Safer Healthcare”.
The presenting speaker/author must register and pay the registration fee (please note that registration is required in order to be included in the final program, to have the abstract published in the online “Book/proceedings” of Nursing, Healthcare Management and Patient Safety 2021, and to be invited to submit an abstract for publication in the official Proceedings.
Conference Key Sessions:
Track 1: Nursing
Track 2: Healthcare Management
Track 3: Patient Safety
Track 4: Public & Community Healthcare
Track 5: Patient Education
Track 6: Healthcare Informatics
Track 7: Healthcare Innovations
Track 8: Digital Healthcare
Track 9: Preventive Medicine
Track 10: Health Promotion
Track 11: Technology and Nursing Science
Track 12: Nursing Education and Research
Track 13: Globalization and Health
Track 14: Coronavirus Deadly Impact on Humans
Track 15: Artificial Intelligence
Track 16: Sports Medicine in Health
Track 17: Legal and Ethics in healthcare
Track 18: Advance Care Planning (ACP)
Track 19: Medication Safety
Track 20: Patient Safety Tools and Solutions
Track 21: Infection, Prevention and Control
Track 22: Mental Health
Track 23: Big data on health and data mining
Track 24: Midwifery And Women Health Nursing
Track 25: Pediatric Nursing
Track 26: Diabetes Nursing
Track 27: Clinical Nursing
Track 28: Patient Safety in Pharmacy
Track 29: Home Care Safety
Track 30: Mental Health Nursing
Track 31: Quality improvement
Track 32: Telenursing
Track 33: Occupational Healthcare
Track 34: Healthcare Services
Track 35: Healthcare Marketing
Track 36: Sexual Health
Track 37: Primary Care
Track 38: Precision medicine | https://medium.com/@ucgconferences/thanking-message-healthcare-management-nursing-and-patient-safety-conference-attendees-ee1f5ff3b10b | ['Utilitarian Conferences Gathering'] | 2021-05-08 08:28:40.163000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Nursing', 'Healthcare', 'Medical', 'Corona'] |
Why I think Estonia is the ideal country for startup businesses | Why I think Estonia is the ideal country for startup businesses
I can come up with new business ideas and also can explain them in English. That is why I could enjoy an exciting career as a legal and business consultant, serving international clients back in Japan. But I had never thought about starting a company with those inspirations. Why? Precisely because I was a young woman living in Japan.
I remember people often made jealous comments about me being invited to the dinner meetings with lucrative international clients as “the flower on the table”, when in fact I was there to win their trust and sweep them from other firms by advising how they should modify their services or even suggesting a new service to better match with the local consumer needs within the Japanese legal framework. I also remember whenever I made inquiries to the authorities and potential business partners on my client’s behalf, I was always initially rejected with the same typical Japanese dialogue: “No one has done what you are trying to do, so you shouldn’t.” or “Will you bring an older guy like me so we can talk? You are just a girl.”
Japan is clearly not the best place for startups, let alone for promising women. You may not have been able to believe what I am talking about, but thanks to the Tokyo Olympic Chief (now resigned) and the former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori who recently gained international recognition for his ridiculous sexism comments, now you have a better grasp of the situation.
10 years of working in Tokyo, I have had enough as a young dashing Japanese woman and I was also living through the winter of my personal life in 2019. So I decided to take a year of sabbatical in Estonia where I would say, the Bohemian spirit still shines onto us instead of sunlight in the wintertime. I totally liked my new life because Estonians see the value in what you can do (or potentially can do), not how old you are or what gender you were born with. I am convinced that Estonia is the place for me, so I have been trying my best to find a way to stay in Estonia past my visa expiry.
As soon as I saw the ad of the business idea contest, Prototron, which “help you create a functional prototype and start a successful business” (quoted from its website), neurons sparked in my head and connected all my pain points and vague ideas in a second.
Let’s submit my business idea, get help in making a startup company, and receive the residence permit as a startup founder!
It was already the night of the deadline, so I quickly named my idea for an eco-friendly platform of restaurant meal subscriptions as “Meal Plan” and wrote up 2400 words of my business plan in 2 hours of adrenaline rush. I saw myself as the least hopeful to get into the top 50 out of 195 business ideas, but Prototron still gave me the chance to present my idea out of my head to the world. That is how my startup journey suddenly started, and I could see for myself why Estonia is known to be an ideal place for startups.
Meal Plan mobile app prototype: As part of the Prototron contest assignments, I learned how to make a mobile app UI design for the first time in my life. It was a very intimidating task until my mentor gave me a great advice. Anyone can do this on the free web-based graphic software, Figma!
For entrepreneurial-minded people, Prototron offers free workshops on Zoom for the selected contestants and on their FB page for anyone interested, plus the maximum of €35,000 equity-free fund for the first prize winner. For innovative tech startups, Tehnopol offers a 6-month incubation programme on an equity option agreement without any monthly fees. For the production phase of funding in the absence of Kickstarters and IndieGoGo in Estonia, there are local crowdfunding platforms such as Fundwise and Hooandja. The government only takes 20% of the corporate income tax at the time of distribution (as long as the profits are retained or reinvested, no income tax applies for that portion of profits), the labour costs in Estonia are more affordable than those of other developed countries, and the immigration policy opens favourable gateways for startup companies.
It seems to me that in Estonia, if you know what you want to achieve and are brave and committed, people help and give you the opportunities. It is not just about startups, but I also feel this in everything I do here.
Are you now curious about what kind of business ideas are growing up in the Prototron contest? You can check out the emerging teams of innovative entrepreneurs on the Estonian crowdfunding community, Fundwise until 18th June. Normally, the finalists of the Prototron contest get to showcase their startup ideas at the Latitude startup conference, however, this year the conference itself is cancelled due to Covid-19. So currently, Fundwise is the only place we can publicly exhibit some of the Prototron contestants. You can also follow their startup journey on Prototron’s Facebook page!
EDITED 09.06.2021
Update 1: My business idea, “Meal Plan” is now a finalist in the Prototron contest. The news came in just last evening!!
Update 2: The Latitude 59 startup conference is now confirmed to be held in a small outdoor+indoor special version, limited for 500 participants, on 18th June as the infection rate in Estonia rapidly dropped lately. There is no fancy dinner on this year’s Latitude conference due to Covid-19, but the pitch stages are open and a smaller investor-startup matchup space is also open. I will be speaking on the pitch stage and also in the demo deck! | https://medium.com/illumination/why-i-think-estonia-is-the-ideal-country-for-startup-businesses-58f6fa8e5bdf | ['Lady Wait-Rose Japan'] | 2021-06-10 00:33:07.598000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Accelerator', 'Personal Development', 'Startup Life', 'Incubator'] |
Longest Paying Hyip Investment | Longest Paying Hyip Investment
If You are looking for the Longest Paying Hyip Investment then QubitTech is the Solution. QubitTech is a Registered Company is has proven to deliver great products to its Users. The Company has paid all its Users Since Inception.
QubitTech is a Company that Uses Quantum Technology to deliver Effective Results in Various Activities such as;
-Crypto Trading
-Offering Crypto Trading Analysis
-And Powering its Ecosystem.
QubitTech began Operation in June of 2020 and Officially Launched in October 2020 in Dubai. The Platform has Experienced Massive growth and Achievement Ever Since. With Over 170,000 Users Worldwide, 44 Offices opened in 12 Countries, 175 Webinars held by Leaders on the Platform and Being Published in about 15 Big Media Including Yahoo Finance & Yahoo News, It is safe to Say that QubitTech is Growing and Expanding at a Fast Rate and this Growth is Fueled by the Amazing Products the Platform Provides and A Very Lucrative Affiliate Program.
The main goal of QubitTech is to reach platform’s capitalization value of 10 billion USDT and to have more than 10,000,000 users by 2025.
QubitTech Registration
Step 1
Click here to Register
Step 2.
Fill in the registration fields and click “Log in”
Step 3.
A confirmation email will be sent to your mail (after activation, you can get into the private office)
Step 4.
QubitTech Investment Packages
Activate Your Account by Purchasing a Desired Package of Your Choice.
On the main page, select the desired package
Step 5.
QubitTech Payment
We choose the payment method ETH or BTC and an Address is generated for You by QubitTech.
Step 6.
QubitTech Payment Confirmation
We send the exact amount and click “I paid”. After a Short period you can start receiving your daily profits.
QubitTech Withdrawals
To withdraw funds, you need to add your BTC or ETH wallet address on the QubitTech platform. To do this, use the button of ‘Wallet’ on the account page.
When adding a new wallet address on the QubitTech platform, for security reasons, the withdrawal of funds will be blocked for 3 days after adding a new address.
Any rewards and bonuses can be withdrawn every day.
The minimum withdrawal amount is 10 USDT. there is a withdrawal fee of 2.5%.
The withdrawal is available in BTC and ETH.
The withdrawal process usually takes from 30 minutes. In some cases, and with a heavy load on the blockchain network, the withdrawal process can take up to 48 hours.
QubitTech Investmemt Packages and Services.
QubitTech offers Various Investment Plan and Services.
1. Digital License
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There are 4 packages and 8 types of Digital License Packages they Include;
Package 1 — $100(Bronze) or $500(Bronze+) License
Package 1 — $1000(Silver) or $5000(Silver +) License
Package 1 — $10000(Gold) or $25000(Gold+) License
Package 1 — $50000(Platinum) or $100000(Platinum+) License
Any digital licenses can be activated using BTC or ETH. At the End of Each day Users will recieve daily profits on QubitTech platform According to the Profits made By QubitTech after Trading A host of Cryptocurrencies. Each QubitTech user can have an unlimited number of active digital licenses.
The daily rewards are the percentage of up to 2%. The total result for any digital licenses is 250% and A Digital License will expire after 10months.
Rewards on a digital license are calculated every day after 15:00 (UTC). If you activated a new digital license before 15:00 (UTC) today, then the reward accrual should be expected the next day after 15:00 (UTC).
After receiving a total reward of 250%, the digital license is automatically deactivated. The daily rewards on digital licenses are paid only in USDT.
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2. Corporate License
Qubittech Corporate Licenses allow users of QubitTech to Purchase houses, cars, goods or services at a Discount.
For Example, You want to Buy a Car then you would be given a discount of 60% of the Actual Cost, You will have to Deposit only 40% of the Actual Cost of the Car after 4–5 months you will receive 100% of the Actual Cost of the Car.
After the expiration of corporate license (1–5 months), you will be credited the full USDT amount to make the Purchase in your wallet balance on QubitTech platform.
You Must Activate a Digital License to Qualify for Purchasing a Cooperate License.
To apply for a corporate license, you must purchase The Package that Matches the Type of License.
Real estate License(Discount 70%)- to Qualify Activate Digital License from Gold to Platinum+
Car Corporate License(Discount 60%) -to Qualify Activate Digital License from Gold to Platinum+
For paying credit services (Coming Soon on the Platform)
For paying travel services(Coming Soon on the Platform)
For buying a device(Coming Soon on the Platform)
The maximum cost of the corporate license is limited by the total cost of the digital licenses activated by the user. Payment for a corporate license is made in USDT’s from the user’s wallet balance.
Please note that there is an important requirement for all users after the expiration of the corporate license: you need to provide a detailed report on your purchase within 1 month after receiving full USDT amount under the corporate license.
It should include:
1) copy of sale contract/purchase receipt;
2) video and photo report;
3) QubitTech products opinion letter.
If a report is not provided, your activated digital licenses will be blocked (until you provide a report).
Click to Purchase Cooperate Licenses
3.QubitTech Cashback License
Qubittech CashBack license provides exclusive access to receiving of CashBack up to 100% on any purchases made at any time, anywhere in the world.
Users can receive CashBack for absolutely any kind of expenses: house rent; shopping for groceries, clothing or household appliances and electronics, payments for any services.
The minimum activation cost for a CashBack license is 500 USDT.
The maximum CashBack license’s value is 100,000 USDT.
Each user can have only one activated CashBack license.
The maximum available amount for CashBack reservation is 20% per month of the total CashBack license value.
User needs to send a request (it can be made through a special form) to receive CashBack for any purchases.
You need to attach payment receipts, contact information, leave a comment (optional) in the application.
You can track your requests’ status for CashBack in a special section with your requests’ full history.
CashBack is credited gradually over approximately 4 months.
The first payment for the reserved CashBack occurs immediately after the request is approved.
The available CashBack for reserving can be seen in the special string “Available to request”.
Keep an eye on the “Available to request” string and apply for a CashBack reservation on time.
Click here to Purchase CashBack Licenses
4.QubitTech Trading Robots
QubitTech also Developed their Trading Robots that Can be Purchased on the Platform.
There are Two types of Robots, Flat Robot and Trend Robot
Flat Robot is designed for trading in the cryptocurrency market during periods of price correction. Trend Robot is designed for trading in the cryptocurrency market during periods of steady growth or decline in prices.
Instructions for Connecting the Robots Can be Found on the Website.
QubitTech’s platform gives users one trading robot for free when you purchase a license of 1000 USDT or more. The Robot License does not Expire.
Also There are More Projects on QubitTech’s Roadmap.
QubitTech Affiliate Program.
To become a member of QubitTech Affiliate Program, you need to purchase a digital license (from 100 USDT) and invite at least one new user to both your left and right binary legs.
Click here to Join Affiliate Program
There are 5 types of Bonuses you can receive when you become an affiliate with QubitTech.
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Qubittech Direct bonus is a reward you get when you Refer a New User that Registers Directly with Your Referral Link and Purchases a digital licenses.
Also, a direct bonus is rightly called a referral bonus.
Direct Bonus Examples
You Purchased a Bronze License(100USDT)
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QubitTech Team Members
QubitTech was founded by professionals that have experiences in various fields which allows the Company to adequately determine the most effective strategy for the platform’s development and to also achieve competent and timely application of advanced technologies, as well as identify the key needs of the market and its customers
QubitTech CEO
Greg Limon is the Chief Executive Officer of QubitTech.
He is also the Co-founder and shareholder of the Toronto-based DigiMax Global, which helps companies from all over the world to effectively conduct STOs.
Greg conducted two successful IPOs and participated in numerous venture projects.
QubitTech CMO
Marc Swickle is the Chief Marketing Officer of QubitTech.
He has Over 25 years experience in international investment banking. Marc attracted more than € 50 million to Asian startups focusing AI Robotic Trading. Marc is acting as an adviser to the Ministry of Energy of Thailand
Other Team Members Include
Iakov Ashurov — Master Distributor in CIS countries
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Andreas Tissen — Education advisor of QubitTech Academy
Mr. Hwang, Chi wen — Master Distributor in Thailand
Aram Barzani — Chief Master Distributor in Iraq
Marco Nastasi — Master Distributor in Latin America
QubitTech Events
QubitTech Organizes New Events Called Basecamp In Different Countries and Across Different Continents. You Must Achieve the Rank Set By QubitTech to Attend the Event. This New Innovation by QubitTech is to Teach Affiliates Effective Methods to Market the Platform and Bring the Community Together to Share Ideas and Insights. QubitTech Always Make sure the Event is A Memorable one for All its Users who are Present at the Venue.
Languages Supported by QubitTech
QubitTech Is Available in About 15 different Languages:
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Disclaimer: This Article Contain Affiliate Link | https://medium.com/@boscrypto/longest-paying-hyip-investment-2e2af486463b | [] | 2021-02-05 05:26:18.273000+00:00 | ['Earn Money Online', 'Quantum Computing', 'Network Marketing', 'Passive Income', 'MLM'] |
The Gift of God | The Gift of God
Christ for Youth International
“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Romans 6:23
God is a giver of good things, and He cheerfully gives gifts to His children. There is nothing you have today that you did not receive from God. However, we compare all the wonderful gifts God has given to us, the greatest is Himself. God offered Himself for us when we were without strength. In that, while we were yet sinners Christ Jesus died for us.
His life introduced to us eternal life and also brought us into the presence of God. The veil which separated us has been torn, and by His death on the cross and His resurrection, He became our righteousness. We live today justified before the Father because of the gift of righteousness that Christ Jesus gave to us.
As believers, it is our responsibility to fully accept the work of Christ and not be ignorant of what we have received. There are many believers who have been deceived by the enemy to think Christ is not enough for them. Many are looking for happiness and satisfaction in other places, oblivious of the fact that Christ is enough.
In this Christmas season, there is nothing better than to receive Christ and all His goodness in your heart. Do not allow ignorance or pride to withhold God’s blessings from you. Allow Christ to have His full work in your life so that you will be a blessing to others.
Thank You, Jesus, for offering Yourself for us. Help us to acknowledge Your goodness in our lives.
Further Reading: 1 Peter 1:3–4 / John 3:14–17
Prophetic Declaration: Psalm 91 | https://medium.com/christ-for-youth-international/the-gift-of-god-39ed76d79f81 | ['Precious Moment'] | 2020-12-31 17:09:50.490000+00:00 | ['Gifts', 'Youth', 'Precious Moments', 'Family', 'Christ'] |
Crack the Amazon Data Scientist Interviews | Ex-FAANG Data Scientist | Do you aspire to become a Data Scientist, ML Engineer, Applied Scientist or Research Scientist at Amazon?
This guide will provide you comprehensive details about the interview process and preparation tips to help you ace the data interviews at Amazon.
Hi, I’m Dan, the founder of datainterview.com and a former data scientist at PayPal and Google.
Here’s me in my Noogler mode when I joined Google as a data scientist in 2019 :)
I created dataInterview.com to help a candidate such as yourself ace data science interviews and land your dream role at a top company. Make sure to check it out!
Before we start, please note that that the exact interview experience at Amazon can vary given the role, team, and interviewer’s preference. In general, the details and tips provided should be helpful with your interview prep.
Table of Contents
About Amazon
As you might already know, Amazon is a conglomerate of multiple businesses from e-commerce (Amazon.com), consumer tech (Alexa), cloud computing (AWS), streaming (Prime + Twitch), and e.t.c. Given this horizontal scale, Amazon offers a lot of job opportunities in data-roles across various teams such as:
Search — Develop and employ a search ranking and recommender system on products offered on Amazon.com. AWS — Function as an external-facing consultant supporting AWS customers such as enterprise clients, or improve the engineering and user experience of the AWS interface. Alexa — Apply information retrieval, search and Q&A systems to support Amazon’s core consumer-based AI product, Alexa. Supply Chain Team (SCOT) — Apply quantitative analysis and modeling to automate and optimize Amazon’s supply chain of physical goods. Amazon GO — Improve the shopper’s experience on Amazon’s GO stores. Prime Video — Improve customer onboarding and engagement of Amazon’s streaming service. Fashion Technology — Apply computer vision and machine learning to provide personalized customer experiences for shoppers in the fashion category. Finance — A cross-functional team that supports various finance teams across Amazon’s businesses. Primarily, the team focuses on financial modeling and analytics. Security — Build fraud and spam detection systems to detect and prevent maladaptive users.
The bottomline is that Amazon provides various roles. So, ultimately, knowing the team interviewing you is an important attribute when preparing for interviews.
1. Roles
Let’s take a look at data roles typically hired at Amazon. Note in advance that, despite the distinctions in each role, the data fundamentals required are the same. The candidate must possess strong foundations in statistics, probability, machine learning, and coding. In addition, understanding Amazon’s leadership principles is vital.
Data Scientist
The core focus of data scientists at Amazon is delivering analytics solutions, creating models, and running AB testing. Depending on the business, team, and project, the core focus will vary from one data science role to another.
For instance, a data scientist in the Alexa — Onboarding team may focus on devising customer success metrics. Another data scientist in the shopping experience team may predominantly run experimentations to optimize the shopping experience among users. Finally, a data scientist in the AWS team may function as a consultant who may build custom model solutions for AWS enterprise clients.
The bottomline is that the role is just one attribute that defines the type of work you will be doing. You need to consider related attributes such as the team and business you will be placed under.
Below are the key responsibilities and qualifications for the data scientist role at Amazon. Note that the details vary by level and team.
Key Responsibilities
Build models using machine learning, statistical modeling, probability, and other quantitative techniques.
Design, run and evaluate an AB test to optimize the user experience.
Design metrics that measure user behaviors such as onboarding, engagement and churn.
Build dashboards with key metrics for business stakeholders.
Ability to make sense of business problems and messy data sets.
Adapting to the latest modeling techniques.
Competencies in SQL and programming languages such as Python and R.
Evaluate models and improve baseline solutions by new data signals and modeling techniques.
Coordinate with researchers, software engineers, and business stakeholders to frame a vague problem into a specific objective.
Communicate clearly in writing and speaking to both technical and non-technical partners.
Basic Qualifications
Bachelor’s Degree
2+ years of experience with data scripting languages (e.g SQL, Python, R etc.) or statistical/mathematical software (e.g. R, SAS, or Matlab)
2 years working as a Data Scientist
Preferred Qualifications
Master’s degree or PhD in computer science, statistics, information systems, economics, mathematics, or similar
Strong proficiency in SQL and coding languages (i.e. R, Python)
2+ years of industry experience working with large-scale, complex datasets to create machine learning solutions for optimization, forecasting and/or fraud detection.
2+ years of industry experience in data analytics roles involving data extraction, analysis, and communication.
Strong competency in statistical modeling such as linear and logistic regression models.
Strong verbal and writing skills when communicating with technical and non-technical stakeholders
Experience in supervised models and/or unsupervised clustering.
Direct experience analyzing A/B experiments
Demonstrated record in identifying project goals and direction under ambiguity.
Machine Learning Engineer
The machine learning engineer role at Amazon is similar to the ones seen in other FAANG companies. In general, ML engineers utilize expertise in software engineering, machine learning, and statistics to build and deploy machine learning models. In addition, they focus on building scalable modeling pipelines that support server requests efficiently.
As an ML engineer at Amazon, you are plugged into a product area, collaborating with data scientists, software engineers. and business stakeholders in creating and launching production models. Given the emphasis on software engineering, ML engineers often have computer science backgrounds and knowledge in deep learning algorithms. Teams that actively recruit ML engineers are shopping, Alexa, and AWS.
Below are the key responsibilities and qualifications for the machine learning engineer role at Amazon. Note that the details vary by level and team.
Key Responsibilities
Build and productionize models using machine learning, statistical modeling, probability, and other quantitative techniques.
Design, run and evaluate an AB test to optimize the user experience.
Understands distributed computing framework (e.g. Spark).
Design and build text-based storage and indexing systems in large distributed computing environments.
Coordinate with data scientists, researchers, software engineers, and business stakeholders to frame a vague problem into a specific objective.
Communicate clearly in writing and speaking to both technical and non-technical partners.
Basic Qualifications
Ph.D. or M. SC + 4 years of industry experience in computer science, machine learning, or related discipline.
Depth and breadth in state-of-the-art computer vision, recommender system, search, and other machine learning technologies.
Experience in deploying, monitoring, and iteratively improving the production machine learning models.
Proven track record of innovation in creating novel algorithms and advancing the state of the art in computer vision and deep learning.
Strong understanding of distributed systems and system designs.
Experience working with real data.
Ability to develop practical solutions to complex problems.
Strong communication and collaboration skills.
Proficiency in programming languages (i.e. Python, Java).
Preferred Qualifications
Ph.D. with multiple years of industry experience in computer science, machine learning, or related discipline.
Experience in deploying, monitoring, and iteratively improving the production machine learning models.
Publications at top-tier peer-reviewed conferences or journals
Understanding of Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and project planning/execution skills including estimating and scheduling.
Ability and willingness to multi-task and learn new technologies quickly.
Applied Scientist / Machine Learning Scientist
The applied scientist, or sometimes branded as the machine learning scientist, focuses on research and application of machine learning within a particular product. Like data scientists, they grasp the fundamentals of statistics and machine learning but possess deeper knowledge about advanced ML techniques and algorithms.
One might wonder how the applied scientist role is different from the ML engineer role given that both require strong advanced knowledge in ML. The primary difference is that ML engineers have a broader focus on building scalable pipelines and systems that support ML models while applied scientists focus more on the research and application of the ML models.
For instance, an applied scientist in the SCOT team may build demand prediction models for the inventory management team. Another example could be that an applied scientist in the search team may focus on developing and implementing new search and recommender systems for customer products.
Below are the key responsibilities and qualifications for the applied scientist role at Amazon. Note that the details vary by level and team.
Key Responsibilities
Build and productionize models using machine learning, statistical modeling, probability, and other quantitative techniques.
Research and implement novel machine learning and statistical approaches
Coordinate with data scientists, researchers, software engineers, and business stakeholders to frame a vague problem into a specific objective.
Communicate clearly in writing and speaking to both technical and non-technical partners.
Basic Qualifications
Ph.D. or M. SC + 4 years of industry experience in computer science, machine learning, or related discipline.
Strong foundation in model development, model validation and model implementation.
Experience in deploying, monitoring, and iteratively improving the production machine learning models.
Proven track record of innovation in creating novel algorithms and advancing the state of the art in computer vision and deep learning.
Strong understanding of distributed systems and system designs.
Experience working with real data.
Ability to develop practical solutions to complex problems.
Strong communication and collaboration skills.
Proficiency in programming languages (i.e. Python, Java).
Preferred Qualifications
Ph.D. with multiple years of industry experience in computer science, machine learning, or related discipline.
Experience in deploying, monitoring, and iteratively improving the production machine learning models.
Publications at top-tier peer-reviewed conferences or journals
Ability and willingness to multi-task and learn new technologies quickly.
Research Scientist
The research scientist at Amazon is primarily focused on developing state-of-the-art algorithms in search, recommender systems, computer vision, natural language processing, and artificial intelligence. Equivalent roles in other FAANG companies would be AI researchers at Google and Facebook. Their works have a broader implication on Amazon as a whole, and they publish their work in the form of research papers in ML and AI journals.
Below are the key responsibilities and qualifications for the research scientist role at Amazon. Note that the details vary by level and team.
Key Responsibilities
Take ownership to define business problems, analyze and design solutions for complex problem areas and/or opportunities in existing or new business initiative
Own the delivery of modeling solutions for an entire business application.
Evaluate cross-team perspectives, use quantitative methods to derive justification, and build consensus on a roadmap on the required level of analyses to meet a goal.
Understand how easily a recommended solution can be implemented in a production software system and/or operational process.
Apply advanced scientific methods and principles, mathematical theory and/or statistical analysis to improve upon existing approaches.
Research the state-of-the-art ML and AI techniques that have broad usage across products.
Basic Qualifications
Ph.D. or M. SC + 4 years of industry experience in computer science, machine learning, or related discipline.
Depth and breadth in state-of-the-art computer vision, recommender system, search, and other machine learning technologies.
Experience in deploying, monitoring, and iteratively improving the production machine learning models.
Proven track record of innovation in creating novel algorithms and advancing the state of the art in computer vision and deep learning.
Strong understanding of distributed systems and system designs.
Experience working with real data.
Ability to develop practical solutions to complex problems.
Strong communication and collaboration skills.
Proficiency in programming languages (i.e. Python, Java).
Preferred Qualifications
7+ years of hands-on experience applying theoretical models in an applied environment
Significant peer-reviewed scientific contributions in premier journals and conferences
Proven ability to work effectively in a cross-functional team
Ability to work on a diverse team or with a diverse range of coworkers
2. Interview Process
Recruiter Call (30 Minutes)
The initial meeting with Amazon is a 30-minute recruiter screen, which is designed to screen the role-fit, culture-fit and logistics of the candidate.
Before the call
The recruiter sees your job application that includes a resume and an optional cover letter in the applicant tracking system (ATS). Your application is algorithmically ranked based on how well your candidacy matches the roles described in the job posts. Recruiters will typically prioritize applications with higher ranking to contact first.
During the call
During the call, which is about 20 to 30 minutes, the recruiter will format the meeting in the following structure:
Introduction — The recruiter will describe more details about the role expectation and team.
Candidate background — This is a chance to share your story. The recruiter will ask, “Tell me about yourself.” You can provide a high-level description of your academic and career backgrounds. Some follow-up questions include: “Why do you want to work for Amazon?”
Logistics — The recruiter usually asks the following: Where are you located? Are you a U.S. citizen? If not, do you need an employer sponsorship for your visa? What are your availabilities for technical interviews?
Follow-Ups — The recruiter will detail the next steps in terms of when you should hear back and technical rounds. This is your chance to ask as many questions as you can to map out the technical interviews end-to-end. The more information you have, the more you can leverage it to prepare for interviews.
After the call
After the call, the recruiter will follow up with the hiring manager with notes gathered about the candidate’s background, technical screening, logistics, and culture fit. If the recruiter and hiring manager believe that you have potential, then they will advance you to the first technical round.
Preparation Tips
To demonstrate a really good impression, make sure you prepare the following:
Create a short elevator pitch explaining why you want to work for Amazon.
Project a friendly and positive impression during the call.
Prepare questions to ask in advance. For instance, ask questions that will help you gather as much information about the interviews as possible: how many rounds? What is the type of each round? Who is the interviewer? Gathering this information can help you design a prep strategy.
Phone Screening (45 to 60 Minutes)
The aim of the technical phone screen is to assess the candidate’s communication ability and technical aptitude in coding, SQL, statistics and/or machine learning. Just like other tech companies, the technical screen is 45 to 60 minutes, and it is conducted by a hiring manager or senior data scientist Depending on the role, level, and team, the interview questions vary. In general, you can expect questions from a combination of topics including past project experience, coding, SQL, statistics, machine learning and/or Amazon’s leadership principles.
For instance, a phone screen could be structured as:
5 Minutes — Introduction 20 Minutes — Python coding 15 Minutes — ML breath questions or a case problem 5 Minutes — Q&A with the interviewer
Another example could be:
5 Minutes — Introduction 10 Minutes — Python coding 10 Minutes — SQL 15 Minutes — ML + Statistics breath questions 5 Minutes — Q&A with the interviewer
In addition to the variability in topics covered in a phone screen, there are cases when a candidate has two rounds of phone screens before an on-site. For instance, a candidate could end up in the following process:
Phone Screen Round 1
5 Minutes — Introduction 20 Minutes — Python coding 15 Minutes — ML breath questions or a case problem 5 Minutes — Q&A with the interviewer
Phone Screen Round 2
5 Minutes — Introduction 20 Minutes — Discuss previous projects and research 15 Minutes — Amazon leadership principles 5 Minutes — Q&A with the interviewer
The bottomline is that, when interviewing for data-roled at Amazon, expect variability in the question topics and number of phone screens. So, coordinate with an Amazon recruiter to get as much information as possible about the interview process, and cover as much breath leading up to the phone screen.
Preparation Tips
In general, for the preparation tip, here’s what you need to do:
Practice SQL questions Practice coding questions Prepare for LP Cover breadth on statistics and machine learning
For more Amazon interview questions, check out datainterview.com!
On-Site Rounds (5 to 6 Hours)
The on-site at Amazon is the hardest stage of the interview process. You will be on 45-to 60-minute interviews back-to-back with a short break. The interviews, as a whole, touch on various topics from statistics, SQL, coding, machine learning and leadership principles.
To thrive in the on-site stage, the ability to retain focus and remain calm under pressure is required.
Let’s overview the rounds in the on-site stage. Note that the rounds and questions vary given the role (data scientist vs MLE vs applied scientist vs research scientist). Lastly, for more details, on each of the question types, jump to the Question Types section.
Machine Learning — Breath, depth, and case-based questions on machine learning, deep learning. Depending on the roles, the questions could be domain-specific. For instance, the MLE — Search or Applied Scientist — Search could be asked on NLP and learning to rank theories and case questions (i.e. How would you solve a cold start problem?). Statistics — Breath, depth, and case-based questions on statistical theory, probability, regression modeling, and experimentation. Data scientists should hone in on the fundamentals of statistics. Expect breath-style questions such as “What is the p-value?” and case-style questions that may involve designing experimentation for Amazon’s product. Coding — Expect algorithms and data structure problems especially for MLE roles. For data scientists, you can expect easy algo. questions that require string and/or integer manipulations. In addition, expect data manipulation questions that require you to use vanilla code or a third-party library to wrangle a table. These question styles are similar to SQL table manipulation given that you are using a programming language of your choice, such as Python and R. SQL — The SQL round is quite common and standard across all FAANG interviews. Essentially, you are given a set of tables and one to three problems to solve using common SQL clauses such as JOINS, WHERE, and GROUP BY and window functions such as AVG and SUM. Leadership Principles — This is Amazon’s behavioral round. Essentially, you need to convey compelling stories that convey the leadership principles at Amazon. For more details jump to the Question Types section.
In terms of how the rounds are structured, here are examples:
Example 1 — Data Scientist Role
Coding + SQL Statistics — Breath/Depth/Case ML — Breath/Depth/Case Leadership Principles Leadership Principles
Example 2 — MLE Role
Machine Learning — Breath + Leadership Principles Machine Learning — Case + Leadership Principles Data Manipulation Coding + Leadership Principles Algorithms & Data Structure Coding SQL Manipulation + Leadership Principles
Preparation Tips
To demonstrate a really good impression, make sure you prepare the following:
Brush up on statistics and machine learning fundamentals. Create a deck of index cards with key concepts. Be able to explain each concept with completeness and brevity.
Practice mock interviews by pairing up with study buddies or FAANG instructors at datainterivew.com.
Remember Amazon’s leadership principles and practice telling stories that convey the attributes.
Anticipate questions you will be asked during the interview. Work with the recruiter to get key information such as the # of rounds, interview types, and general preparation tips.
3. Question Types
Machine Learning
The machine learning questions can be categorized into three types — breadth, depth, and an applied case.
Breath-style questions
What is the variance-bias trade-off? What is the curse of dimensionality? How do you perform feature selection? What is the random forest model?
Depth-style question
Suppose you increase the minimum sample size per leaf in terminal nodes, what happens to the variance and bias of the random forest model? Explain the difference between the ADAM optimizer and gradient descent. Explain the difference between RESNET vs CNN.
Applied case problem
Design a recommender system for the Amazon grocery app? How would you solve a cold-start problem in a recommender system? How would you build a forecasting model?
For data scientists: Expect some fundamental questions breath-style and depth-style statistical learning problems like logistic and linear model fundamentals. Don’t be too concerned with deep learning unless you mention this on your resume. You won’t be tested on it.
For ML engineers / applied scientists / research scientists: Expect deep-dive questions on machine learning theory and applications. In addition, whatever you place on your resume + role requirement, expect questions on the topic. For instance, if you apply for a team that uses computer vision, and your resume mentions it, expect questions on the topic.
Statistics
Fundamentals of statistics are required to perform well across all the data roles at Amazon. Expect “product-style” interview questions in the statistics portion that asks how to design an AB test. Similar to the ML question types, expect coverage in-breath, depth, and applied case problems. Once again, the role defines the type of questions you should expect:
Breath-style question
What is the Simpson’s Paradox? What is the p-value? What is the logistic regression model?
Depth-style question
What are the differences among type I, type II, and type III error rates? If an outlier is present, how does this affect the assumption of a linear model?
Applied-case problem
How would you build an onboarding metric for Amazon shoppers? How would you design an AB test on a marketing campaign?
For data scientists: Definitely expect one or two rounds focused on statistics. Expect all the styles of questions. Brush up on the fundamentals and applications of statistics, probability and regression modeling.
For ML engineers / applied scientists / research scientists: Unless the role requires AB testing, you may or may not encounter a statistics-specific round. You could expect breath-style questions on statistics. But, in terms of depth and applied-case style questions, expect such questions on ML theory and applications, less on statistics. The only exception is that you do have a statistics round.
Coding
Expect algorithms and data structure problems especially for MLE roles. For data scientists, you can expect easy algo. questions that require string and/or integer manipulations. In addition, expect data manipulation questions that require you to use vanilla code or a third-party library to wrangle a table. These question styles are similar to SQL table manipulation given that you are using a programming language of your choice, such as Python and R.
Algorithms and Data Structures — Leetcode-style questions Statistical Coding — A problem that requires you to write a statistical function such as, given a list of actuals and predicted values, computing the MSE, MAPE, and such. Table Manipulation — SQL style questions
For all roles, expect a combination of the three question styles mentioned.
SQL
The SQL round is quite common and standard across all FAANG interviews. Essentially, you are given a set of tables and one to three problems to solve using common SQL clauses such as JOINS, WHERE, and GROUP BY and window functions such as AVG and SUM.
Leadership Principles
This is Amazon’s behavioral question. Essentially, you need to convey compelling stories that convey the leadership principles at Amazon. General tip — remember all the principles and create one or two stories that convey the attributes.
Customer Obsession Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers. Ownership Leaders are owners. They think long term and don’t sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their own team. They never say “that’s not my job.” Invent and Simplify Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify. They are externally aware, look for new ideas from everywhere, and are not limited by “not invented here.” As we do new things, we accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of time. Are Right, A Lot Leaders are right a lot. They have strong judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs. Learn and Be Curious Leaders are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves. They are curious about new possibilities and act to explore them. Hire and Develop the Best Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognize exceptional talent, and willingly move them throughout the organization. Leaders develop leaders and take seriously their role in coaching others. We work on behalf of our people to invent mechanisms for development like Career Choice. Insist on the Highest Standards Leaders have relentlessly high standards — many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders are continually raising the bar and drive their teams to deliver high quality products, services, and processes. Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed so they stay fixed. Think Big Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaders create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results. They think differently and look around corners for ways to serve customers. Bias for Action Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk-taking. Frugality Accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and invention. There are no extra points for growing headcount, budget size, or fixed expense. Earn Trust Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully. They are vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing. Leaders do not believe their or their team’s body odor smells of perfume. They benchmark themselves and their teams against the best. Dive Deep Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and are skeptical when metrics and anecdotes differ. No task is beneath them. Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly. Deliver Results Leaders focus on the key inputs for their business and deliver them with the right quality and in a timely fashion. Despite setbacks, they rise to the occasion and never settle. Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer Leaders work every day to create a safer, more productive, higher-performing, more diverse, and more just work environment. They lead with empathy, have fun at work, and make it easy for others to have fun. Leaders ask themselves: Are my fellow employees growing? Are they empowered? Are they ready for what’s next? Leaders have a vision for and commitment to their employees’ personal success, whether that be at Amazon or elsewhere. Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility We started in a garage, but we’re not there anymore. We are big, we impact the world, and we are far from perfect. We must be humble and thoughtful about even the secondary effects of our actions. Our local communities, planet, and future generations need us to be better every day. We must begin each day with a determination to make better, do better, and be better for our customers, our employees, our partners, and the world at large. And we must end every day knowing we can do even more tomorrow. Leaders create more than they consume and always leave things better than how they found them.
Where can you find more practice problems?
For more prep content, check out datainterview.com :)
There are advanced tips on how to prepare for data science interviews and land your dream job at top companies such as Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google.
The flagship product, the monthly subscription course (updated every month), contains the following core features:
Case in Point — 40 data science case problems and solutions AB Testing Course — 12+ lessons on AB testing Mock Interview Videos — 4x1-hour recordings of mock interviews based on technical screenings at top companies. Question Bank — A list of statistics and ML questions commonly asked in interviews. SQL Drills — SQL problems and solutions to help you ace SQL rounds. Slack Study Group — Network with a community of job candidates and data science instructors who work in FAANG companies.
P.S.
Here are additional resources that can be helpful for your prep :) | https://medium.com/datainterview/crack-the-amazon-data-scientist-interviews-ex-faang-data-scientist-78189a5a689e | ['Dan Lee'] | 2021-09-03 14:37:44.414000+00:00 | ['Data Scientist', 'Interview Questions', 'Data Science', 'Machine Learning', 'Python'] |
ACryptoS DAO Vote: Should we publish the source code of our Venus Vaults’ Strategies? | We were the first to launch Vaults farming on Venus Protocol, and remained the only ones for 3 weeks after, accumulating a TVL of more than $2M in our Venus Vaults alone. We have published all our smart contract code before, but we did not publish the source code of our Venus Vaults’ Strategies at first, as I was curious to see how much of a competitive edge it would give us. Now that Beefy has released their Venus Vaults, we should now review if we would like to publish our source codes.
Considerations
Beefy’s Venus implementation is a relatively poorer one. We can see this before reviewing their source codes:
This means we can harvest and compound our assets 5 times more often than them at the same cost, and their users pay many times more in gas fees compared to ours.
More importantly, they are achieving a leverage (ratio of total supply + borrow on Venus, to the principal) of ~3X compared to ~3.67X on our Vaults, which means our Vaults have a yield advantage of about 23.3% above theirs.
Looking at their source code, they can adjust the leverage somewhat in a coarse fashion, but any increase in leverage would result in an exponential increase in their already expensive gas costs.
It is my assessment that to match the efficiency and efficacy of our Vaults, Beefy would need to almost completely rewrite their Strategy, essentially taking a fundamentally different approach. I feel it is likely they would not be able to achieve this without outside help, if we do not release our source codes.
OTOH, if we do release our source codes, it will almost surely be immediately copied, and we would lose any competitive advantage from it. However, we may attract more funds from investors who were previously unwilling to deposit into unpublished contracts, and may increase overall trust and transparency in our protocol.
Background
We’ve had a few requests to publish the source codes of our Venus Vaults’ Strategies since they went live, including somewhat aggressive ones from Beefy devs and admins, accompanied by disparaging comments belittling us for believing our strategies gave us an edge.
I did not know Roman was a Beefy dev at this time, and he did not disclose this when asking us to publish our source. I do agree somewhat with his argument here though.
Wait what
“Roman” is a Beefy dev? Interesting…
You’re welcome.
We’ve also had some feedback from the community who felt we should keep the source unpublished. Although it did make me feel a little uneasy.
We continued to get pressure to publish the source shortly after Beefy’s first Venus Vault went live, so I promised to put this to a vote.
Vote here: https://vote.acryptos.com/#/acryptos/proposal/QmbVJoGoiGLU6e6cNyHeDR6WJYQmQdrBNiFEbGaYEb6SK6 | https://medium.com/acryptos/acryptos-dao-vote-should-we-publish-the-source-code-of-our-venus-vaults-strategies-8e744daf64c2 | ['X'] | 2020-12-18 23:57:19.925000+00:00 | ['Defi', 'Binance Smart Chain', 'Yield Farming', 'Yield Optimization', 'Smart Contracts'] |
A day in the life of a copywriter | This article first appeared on the Copify Blog.
Ever wanted to spend a day in the life of a copywriter? You may be surprised to learn that copywriters don’t actually spend all day writing clever and inspiring prose. Instead, their day-to-day responsibilities can be much more varied. Freelance copywriters, in particular, are running their own business, so their responsibilities include admin duties too. If you’re just starting a career in copywriting and you’re wondering what the typical daily routine is like, take a look below.
The morning routine
Responding to emails and messages
If you already work from home, you’ll know how important it is to have a strict morning routine, whether it’s as simple as getting up at the same time each day or showering and eating before you open your laptop. Many copywriters will start with general admin tasks, like checking and responding to emails and taking a look at their calendar or content schedule for any upcoming deadlines. However, you may also find it’s beneficial to check your social media platforms now as well so you can reply to comments or publish a new post.
Another important step during the morning routine is to check any professional networks you’re signed up to, like LinkedIn. This way, you’ll never miss any new messages or job opportunities, especially if a client has reached out to you and is hoping for a timely response. Remember, punctuality and maintaining good levels of email etiquette are vital skills any copywriter should master.
Creating a to-do list
After handling any important messages or emails, a good copywriter will make a to-do list for the day ahead. A successful copywriter should already be skilled in managing their time and juggling a number of projects at once, but a to-do list will make prioritisation much easier, and it ensures nothing is forgotten about or missed.
To boost your motivation and build momentum, you might prefer to start the day with a quick and easy task. Once this is out of the way, you’ll be able to concentrate on more pressing jobs.
Finishing a job/meeting a deadline
The most important part of any copywriter’s day is the actual content creation. Therefore, if you have an upcoming deadline, you’ll need to set aside enough time to finish the job you’ve been working on. Whether this involves adding more words to complete the copy or making some final edits after a thorough proofread, this will usually be the most important task of the day. As such, it may take up the rest of the morning and even the start of the afternoon.
Some days you may be required to write SEO-optimised landing pages or an email campaign, while on others you may find yourself writing a sales brochure or copy for a digital advertisement. The joy of copywriting is that every day brings a new challenge, even if your routine stays the same.
The afternoon routine
Researching your next subject matter
After taking a lunch break, most copywriters will return to the copy they were working on before dinner. However, if you’re starting a new job, you will need to do some subject matter research before you can begin writing any new copy.
No matter the content type, to do a good job copywriters need to know as much as possible about the subject material, including specific knowledge about the service or product as well as the client. Sometimes, clients don’t supply a lot of information, so you may need to contact them again for more guidance. However, it always pays to do your own independent research as well, so make sure you set aside some time to do this when you’re creating a to-do list — even if it’s just half an hour each day.
Completing important admin tasks
Admin tasks can be mundane and feel like a real chore, but they’re important for staying on top of impending deadlines and finances.
A copywriter’s daily administrative duties can include:
• Billing clients and filling in time sheets
• Writing invoices and contracts
• Calculating quotes
• Chasing up clients who haven’t paid their invoices
• Recording any expenses
• Processing payments
• Returning phone calls
• Responding to emails
• Creating/working to a content plan for self-promotion
• Posting or scheduling posts on social media
As with most chores, the longer you put them off, the worse they become. A good copywriter will schedule time each day to keep on top of these tasks.
Submitting proposals and finding more work
Copywriting is a competitive industry, but there are plenty of clients looking for experienced and talented writers. However, it’s important to remember they won’t all come to you, which is why a successful copywriter always sets aside time to work on new proposals. Some days may be busier than others, so fitting this into your schedule can prove challenging. However, try scheduling some time alongside your admin duties, as some days you may find you have fewer administrative jobs to do.
If submitting new proposals every day isn’t a realistic goal for you, you could try joining a copywriting agency or search through job boards to find new opportunities.
Finally, relax!
Once you’ve completed your to-do list for the day, it’s finally time to relax! If you work from home, you may find it hard to completely switch off, but it’s important that you step away from your desk. Whether you enjoy exercising, reading or indulging in a good TV series, setting boundaries and sticking to your working hours is vital for a good work-life balance.
A day in the life of a copywriter
Kate Toon, a copywriter and the founder of The Clever Copywriting School, sums up a day in the life of a copywriter perfectly:
“The truth is, we don’t spend all our time writing. As we’re running our own businesses, we also need to focus on other tasks like winning new clients, managing finances, marketing ourselves and so much more.”
If you’re a copywriter and you’re looking to access a variety of writing jobs, check out Copify today. You’ll be able to gain valuable writing experience and improve your skills, which will better prepare you for future copywriting jobs. | https://medium.com/@jess_90990/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-copywriter-8eaef021c9de | ['Jess Thistlethwaite'] | 2019-02-15 16:54:52.687000+00:00 | ['Copywriting', 'Copywriter', 'Blogging'] |
aws Glue :: A nightmare to developers | First thing, I don’t hate aws or aws glue in particular. I think it is a wonderful service offered by amazon to process big data. Then why the headline, well aws has made major tradeoffs while integrating their other big data solutions to work alongside /integrate with “glue” and they are not good for development.
BootTime: Spinning up spark clusters does take some time, but they should be consistant on an average. Boot time can take anywhere from 1 minute to 15 minutes. Usually this is not a problem in production as we know that we have to wait for maximum of 15 minutes to start the process and processing can take several hours to complete. It can be a huge problem during development. Even to catch a basic error, developer has to wait till job starts running.
Isn’t it developer has to check these “basic” errors before pushing to glue job and expect to work the same way? Not possible for most of the cases specially where GlueContext is been used.
Glue Context: is a wrapper built on Spark that connects glue to other big data services offered by aws (athena/Redshift). This integration is an issue for developers.
GlueContext is not opensource, that can be installed locally to check the services.
Spark has been modified in some cases such as jdbc (database connection to load data from redshift or any similar services) so that will force developer to use Glue Context. Ofcourse there are work arounds, but to figure out if these work arounds actually work, you need to test it in Glue Job.
Things would have been easier if athena is kept as pure as presto and Spark was not modified to integrate to other services.
Why would you have to try these in Job, you can use Zeppelin notebooks?
Zeppelin Notebooks: These notebooks does offer very identical environment to glue. Are very expensive to test out only few parts of the code whereas Jupyter notebooks would have been more than enough. Google’s similar service dataproc and azure databrics offers these at ease.
Monitoring Job Run(boto3): Waiters are calls that can be made to check the status of any long running task. For instance moving a large file from one bucket to another can take some time, there is a waiter available that notifies once the task is completed. For glue there are no registered waiters, application code has to take care of monitoring glue job run (long-poll).
Constraint check: glue has some limitations on invoking glue jobs and these contraints are quite practical and hard to cross. Issue is how easy it is for developer to check these contraints before invoking a new job run?
Lets look at those limitations that are necessary if you are orchestrating the entire service (programmatically invoking glue, calling other things once processed)
Number of concurrent job runs per account: 250
Number of concurrent job runs per job: 1000
Maximum DPUs used by a role at one time: 300
There are no direct api to get count of “concurrent job runs per account” or “Maximum DPUs used by a role at one time” . The only way that is possible is:
get list of all Jobs defined
get list of all job runs for all defined jobs (loop)
filter only running jobs in all job runs, get dpu allocated
sum all the dpu’s collected from previous step
also handle throttle exception when calling api’s
My current solution above mess: | https://medium.com/@neoatmatrix/aws-glue-a-nightmare-to-developers-752c1e6d4476 | ['Abhishek Kulkarni'] | 2019-09-15 10:07:40.382000+00:00 | ['Spark', 'AWS', 'Big Data', 'Apache Spark', 'Aws Glue'] |
Predicting the leaps of Schrödinger’s Cat | Predicting the leaps of Schrödinger’s Cat
Researchers have deciphered one of the key mysteries of quantum mechanics — predicting sudden ‘leaps’ in a system’s state. Thus devising a method to finally rescue the most famous moggy in science history.
Yale researchers have figured out how to catch and save Schrödinger’s famous cat, the symbol of quantum superposition and unpredictability, by anticipating its jumps and acting in real time to save it from proverbial doom. In the process, they overturn years of cornerstone dogma in quantum physics.
The discovery enables researchers to set up an early warning system for imminent jumps of artificial atoms containing quantum information.
Yale researchers have found a way to catch and save Schrödinger’s famous cat, the symbol of quantum superposition and unpredictability. (Kat Stockton)
Schrödinger’s cat is a well-known and paradoxical analogy used to illustrate the concept of superposition — the ability for two opposite states to exist simultaneously — and unpredictability in quantum physics.
The idea as presented by Erwin Schrödinger is that a cat is placed in a sealed box with a radioactive source and a poison that will be triggered if an atom of the radioactive substance decays. The superposition theory of quantum physics suggests that until someone opens the box, the cat is both alive and dead — a superposition of states. Opening the box to observe the cat causes it to abruptly change its quantum state randomly.
Thus forcing our hypothetical feline to be either dead or alive.
Don’t jump! Predicting quantum leaps
The quantum jump or leap refers to a discrete — non-continuous — and random change in the state when it is observed.
This new experiment — performed in the lab of Yale professor Michel Devoret and proposed by lead author Zlatko Minev — peers into the actual workings of a quantum jump for the first time. A study announcing the discovery appears in the June 3rd online edition of the journal Nature.
The results reveal a surprising finding that contradicts Danish physicist Niels Bohr’s established view — these jumps, say the researchers, are neither abrupt nor as random as previously thought.
For a tiny object such as an electron, molecule, or an artificial atom containing quantum information (known as a qubit), a quantum jump is a sudden transition from one discrete energy states to another. A key element of developing quantum computers is dealing with the jumps of the qubits — which are the manifestations of errors in calculations.
The enigmatic quantum jumps were theorized by Bohr a century ago, but not observed until the 1980s, in atoms.
Devoret, the F.W. Beinecke Professor of Applied Physics and Physics at Yale and member of the Yale Quantum Institute, explains: “These jumps occur every time we measure a qubit.
“Quantum jumps are known to be unpredictable in the long run.”
Minev continues: “We wanted to know if it would be possible to get an advance warning signal that a jump is about to occur imminently.”
The experiment was inspired by a theoretical prediction by professor Howard Carmichael of the University of Auckland, a pioneer of quantum trajectory theory and a co-author of the study.
Researchers say reliably managing quantum data and correcting errors as they occur is a key challenge in the development of fully useful quantum computers.
The Yale team used a special approach to indirectly monitor a superconducting artificial atom — three microwave generators irradiating the atom enclosed in a 3D cavity made of aluminium. This doubly indirect monitoring method — developed by Minev for superconducting circuits — allows the researchers to observe the atom with unprecedented efficiency.
Microwave radiation stirs the artificial atom as it is simultaneously being observed — resulting in quantum jumps — the tiny quantum signal which results can be amplified without loss to room temperature. Thus allowing the signal to be monitored in real time.
This enables the researchers to see a sudden absence of detection photons. This tiny absence alerting researchers to an imminent quantum jump.
Devoret continues: “The beautiful effect displayed by this experiment is the increase of coherence during the jump, despite its observation.
“You can leverage this to not only catch the jump — but also reverse it.”
Why is this so significant?
The crucial point, the researchers say, is that while quantum jumps appear discrete and random in the long run, reversing a quantum jump means the evolution of the quantum state possesses, in part, a deterministic and not random character; the jump always occurs in the same, predictable manner from its random starting point.
Minev says: “Quantum jumps of an atom are somewhat analogous to the eruption of a volcano.
“They are completely unpredictable in the long term. Nonetheless, with the correct monitoring, we can with certainty detect an advance warning of an imminent disaster and act on it before it has occurred.
In addition to its fundamental impact, the discovery is a potentially major advance in understanding and controlling quantum information. One of the major hurdles with controlling quantum systems is their inherent randomness.
Whilst this development doesn’t remove that non-deterministic nature — nothing can, it’s intrinsic — the ability to predict this randomness is invaluable.
Original research: DOI: 10.1038/s41586–019–1287-z | https://medium.com/swlh/predicting-the-leaps-of-schr%C3%B6dingers-cat-advanced-warning-of-randomness-in-quantum-mechanics-c8071ca3a662 | ['Robert Lea'] | 2019-06-03 15:22:52.708000+00:00 | ['Physics', 'Quantum Physics', 'Science', 'Quantum Computing', 'Quantum Mechanics'] |
Success Tips How to Become a Successful Real Estate Agent in India | Success Tips Behind Successful Real Estate Agent
India’s real estate market is versatile and yet, competitive, especially for real estate agents. To be successful in this market, it is important for all property brokers to understand consumer behavior and what kind of marketing innovation will help them to get more leads, to keep one’s business afloat.
Today, Being Real Estate Experts, we want to share our journey of success in the real estate market helping you with the 100% proved success tips behind successful real estate agent.
Key Points Need to Keep in your Mind:
• First of all, you need to understand one basic point i.e. being a real estate agent, you have to deal with different clients and different homes, going with the market trend every day. You will not just follow one strategy to move ahead of your competitors.
• Registration process is also not an exhausting process. With advanced transparency and enforcement of improvements like RERA, the real estate industry is now in a better zone.
Success Tips Behind Successful Real Estate Agent
Don’t Always Target on Selling
No doubt, knowing good sale tactics is the fruitful point for real estate agents but don’t always focus on making a hard sell. When you initiate the real estate business, it is much better to focus on excellent photography skills and writing creative descriptions about property listings instead of going for hard selling skills.
Transparency with Your Buyer:
Show the true things to your buyers. Suppose if you are not sure about the builder’s track record, don’t commit anything fake to your buyer. Don’t make false promises to keep them stuck with your associate. It’s your duty to make them aware of every possible risk associated with their property.
Think Like a Small Business
Thinking like a small business rather than an employee will serve as a powerful stone in the path of success. Invest in long-term goals and healthy relationships with the best marketing tips in the real estate business can help you to grow faster in the race.
Cultivate an Online Presence
Once you will get your client, the very first thing he or she can do is online research about your brand. If you are absent on social media platforms with less engagement of customers, it will soon drop your business down.
What can you do is to initiate with the basic website or a Google listing. It will gradually boost your online presence with time.
Develop a Business Plan: Tips Behind Successful Real Estate Agent
Implementation and execution of the business plan is the main strategy of an ideal business owner. Don’t run behind the buyers keeping aside your business plans since it can lead to failure.
Networking is the Key
While working with your clients, you can even face a few clients whose requirements are out of your stock. Instead of turning them off, take help from your fellow agents to match your client criteria. In this way, you will able to help your peers as well as customers at the same time.
Never make Assumptions
Never run your business on assumptions. Always rely on useful facts especially in case of documentation and property valuation. You should be RERA registered for your properties.
Maintain Connections with Past Clients
You don’t need to make extra marketing efforts to satisfy your customers. You can just take the help of your regular and satisfied customers to get more referrals. What can you do is to publish their testimonials on your website. Their feedback will help to invite more potential buyers to your site. Creating goodwill in the market is very crucial to become a successful real estate agent.
ParamHomes — Top Real Estate Consultants in Delhi NCR
ParamHomes beautiful and successful journey begins from a few numbers of people whose innovative methods and combined efforts lead to the graph of ParamHomes raised higher. Real Estate Investors are aware of the quality, consistent, and trustworthy work offered by the real estate Experts of ParamHomes.
Commitment and Healthy Relationship with its customers are everything to this real estate company progressing at a faster pace.
Bottom Line
Grabbing a real license requires both money and time but it can also secure your job in the real estate industry. If you are a passionate real estate agent having multiple ideas for your buyers and real estate investors, it can be a most promising future for you and your family. You can work flexible according to your comfort zone. More will be your time and efforts, more success you will achieve both in terms of job satisfaction and money. Following these success tips behind successful real estate agent, you can make your dreams come true in the real estate industry | https://medium.com/@realestateadvisor/success-tips-how-to-become-a-successful-real-estate-agent-in-india-dbd96cfa6bcd | ['Realestate Advisor'] | 2020-12-25 08:19:30.916000+00:00 | ['Real Estate', 'Param Ho', 'Property'] |
Nightfall | Photo by Martin Adams on Unsplash
I spend days just digging through the
Crust of myself
And find everything within me
Sings with fluidity,
With perpetual motion
And a dripping kind of
Temporariness
That eats through itself
In waves
It’s too bright outside
But the dark feels like a
Bear trap
Hidden under the leaves of
The day’s success
I still find that subtle
Metal-toothed
Nothing
And it eats me
Just enough to
Let me
Live
And I keep walking,
My liquid soul
Dripping from my
Shins | https://medium.com/scrittura/nightfall-955feaa614ae | ['Bradon Matthews'] | 2020-12-27 19:37:00.826000+00:00 | ['Confessional Poetry', 'Reflections', 'Melancholy', 'Free Verse', 'Poetry'] |
Fun Thing To Do at Whole Foods | Unpeel a banana, look at bruises, yell “who did this to you?”
Then point to each customer and say, “was it him? Tell me!” | https://medium.com/slackjaw/fun-thing-to-do-at-whole-foods-587507c447b8 | ['Robbie Pickard'] | 2016-11-15 18:33:03.787000+00:00 | ['Humor', 'Food', 'Comedy'] |
The Energetics of an Encounter and Potentials of Participation | In this discourse, I intend to explore the energetics of an encounter with an Oak tree through a phenomenological and experiential Goethean Science methodology. The experience instigated an inquiry into our role in an evolving ecological consciousness. The inquiry aims to inspire deeper participation in our natural world and illuminate Humanity’s meaning in the animate understanding of Gaia and the Cosmos. What is our purpose as a species? Would the Earth be better off without us…? To this, I strongly argue, no. We hold deep purpose in our potential. Here I will attempt to articulate a subtle yet highly substantial meaning to our presence on the planet and in the web of life.
We are weavers, able to perceive and poetically express a sense of self. We, humans, possess an advanced reflective consciousness, which allows us to mirror the intricate and inherent beauty of all beings back unto themselves. This reflective process could possibly hold the key to the evolution of collective consciousness. We may be here to simply inquire into the nature of existence, providing a circle of questions for Gaia to know herself more deeply.
In order to articulate this spiral towards meaning, we must first seed a contextual constellation from which we will relate to and refer from. We will explore Goethean Science, the nature of self, the participatory reality, and openly ask, “Is the world enriched by our engagement?”
A Science of Qualities
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the 18th-century poet, and scientist practiced a radical way of perceiving and participating in the natural world. His work as a scientist is often overlooked by the mechanistic worldview, which has prevailed for the last few centuries. Goethe’s approach followed his romantic roots. He developed a participatory relationship with plants through dedicated and open observation, which led to a number of important discoveries and progressions in the field of biology. Goethe’s qualitative approach was in direct contrast to the analytical and linear methods employed by mainstream science.
René Descartes, the provincial father of Modern Science, proposed a separation of mind and matter and distinction of subject and object granting the scientist a God’s eye view of the cosmos. He pushed forward an objective reality that our limited sensory organs are not able to grasp and which may ultimately be measured. This approach wished to wash away any semblance of subjective experience and denied the participatory nature of reality. As well, this methodology insinuated an inherently flawed human perspective.
The Cartesian way sought to understand the world as a system of independent reactionary parts, which functioned solely on a series of mathematical laws. Reductionism is used to cut the context out of observation and fragment the system into mechanical parts. Every interaction, in this view, is causal and deterministic, which justified a feeling of control over Nature and emphasized an inanimate perspective. With this understanding, a predictable clockwork universe was constructed. This methodology gave rise to countless technological marvels though has also allowed the destruction and exploitation of our natural world. As well, the Cartesian Model has ceased to cohere with many of the revolutionary 20th-century unveilings such as Quantum Mechanics, Epigenetics, and Gaia Theory.
Goethe’s poetic approach to science is a qualitative complement to the quantitative Cartesian way. This animistic and holistic approach is essential to our continuing inquiry into the nature of the Earth, the Cosmos, and our dynamic selves. Goethe acknowledged himself as an active participant in the phenomena, seeking to immerse in the life process of coming-into-being. As surmised by Mark Riegner, “The observer… becomes an active, but transparent, vessel so that the phenomenon itself ‘thinks’ in the mind of the observer, and thus a communion takes place that transcends both subject and object.” (Riegner 2013: 1) Through the awareness of his own subjectivity, Goethe endeavored to enter an observation without any previous conceptions that may affect his perceptions. He reasoned to “Seek nothing beyond the phenomena for they themselves are the theory.” (Seamon 1998: 24). In mainstream science, there is no acknowledgment of the observer, let alone the very limiting conceptions the observer may be imposing on the observed. There is also a suffocating trend to form the hypothesis as a statement and then set out to prove it, as opposed to the Goethean way of open inquiry. Goethe believed that “…the mind function[s] as an organ of perception instead of the medium of logical thought.” (Bortoft 1996: 21) With an embodied engagement in the phenomenon, he thought with the plant as opposed to thinking about it. This shift in perspective identifies the observed as a being in its own right and through this respect opens a dialogue. Goethe also spoke of moving into the act of seeing. By experiencing the experience, we step more fully into the phenomenon and release the limiting subject/object paradigm. These techniques allowed Goethe to narrow the gap between his conceptions and perceptions and receive clear knowledge of the happening.
To acknowledge our inherent participation, openly inquire without seeking to impose, and by stepping directly into experience, Goethe dove into the science of qualities. When this feeling and intuitive way is combined with the quantitative Cartesian methodology, a holistic approach to science emerges. Acknowledgment of the psyche, observer, and animate nature of the observed are essential aspects in unfolding the timeless questions of How and Why.
An Encounter with Oak
On a sunny autumn morning, I set out to visit an ancient Oak tree I had spent time with week’s prior. This particular tree is the eldest amongst a row of native Beech, Maples, and Oaks growing on the southern bank of the River Dart. As I approached this grandmother arbor from afar, I began to consciously shift my mental state into an active receptivity. Step by step her crown begins to tower over my head. The age and immensity of this being dawns on me, I estimate 33 meters tall and over 300 years old. This is an elder. I slow down and progress with respect. Once my feet are beneath the branches I remove my shoes and take note of my mental state, “What am I bringing to this encounter?” In order to relax the body and mind, I spend some minutes meditating and shift into the mode of receptivity. Time to slow down into the Oak’s context, the temporal experience of a tree is much more patient than the modern human’s. As well, I begin to explore the Oak’s spatial context. Circle around the trunk three times, first round looking down at the ground where the wide outset of roots appear, then eye-level to the trunk of intersecting patterns outlined in bark, and lastly up into the weaving branches overhead. I gain a sense of sprawling fractal patterns that echo from trunk to branch to bud. Stepping back, I continue to change my context and angle of perspective to gain a greater sense of this being’s body, observing the tree from all sides, up close and from afar. Finally, I sit and feel ready to open a dialogue with the ancient Oak. I inquire, careful to ask an open question that may portray the phenomena, and not simply seek to explain it. Intuitively, a query comes to mind, “How do you sense me, Oaktree?” All at once, I am expanded by a new quality of silence. Acorn kerplunks into the Dart, Raven caws in the distance, Oak leaves scrape in the breeze, Sun’s beams buzz, breath deepens, I receive a response, an active absence, this land is alive and so am I.
My eyes close for a practice of exact sensorial imagination. I recreate the tree and all aspects as best I am able in my mind’s eye. Eyes open to observe Oak again, moving a bit deeper into the details, now noticing the spiral nature of the branches, the reaching quality of the buds. Eyes close, recreate the tree with more accuracy. Eyes open, an oscillation between observing and imagining. Through the process, new qualities emerge; I begin to sense an energetic extension of the tree. I sense vortex lines of organizing energy emanating up the trunk and out the crown wrapping down to the inflection point about a meter above the ground and equally balanced lines reflecting down through the roots wrapping up to the same inflection point above the ground. Two dynamic toroids mirrored at the Oak’s base. This shape spirals in my mind’s eye, complimenting the spacing and proliferation of branches rising up the trunk. The tree’s field overlays and interweaves with mine, creating unique patterns of energy from which new qualities may emerge.
Immersed in this energetic encounter, I lose the ingrained sense of independence to a wondrous feeling of interbeing. For moments I soak in Oak-ness and feel myself as much deeper than mind and much wider than matter. For moments, I am the tree and the tree is me, an energetic exchange in which time and space seem to stretch past the point of recognition towards the enfolded zero-point, the infinite and infinitesimal dimensionless.
Shown below is an illustrated expression to further understand the phenomenon I actively partook in. The first few sketches represent my experience of the Oak’s energy field. The last drawing uses the medium of projective geometry to express the third quality by the emergence of the color green between the yellow and blue patterns that represent the Oak and me respectively. I believe this third quality emerged from the superposition of our unique energetic patterns.
And my feet are on the ground; I blink and wiggle my toes. The moment has passed; I am an independent entity once more, though certainly altered by the experience. My body feels softer, lighter and with a stable ease, a residual feeling of Oak-ness is present in every cell. I look up and see the tree more clearly than before, is she brighter? Or are my eyes lighter? Observing the surroundings, the sun has shifted in the sky, the breeze has gently picked up and the whole landscape seems to be shining. My gaze returns to the glistening leaves and I sense an acknowledgment from Oak. I feel a bond has formed. In the long slow walk back to my books, I ruminate that Oak may have absorbed a bit of my human-ness and that maybe the tree too has been enriched by our shared experience.
The Oak and I met in communion, an emergent encounter that began with respect and genuine inquiry. As we engaged in energetic exchange, a third and previously unknown quality entered, one that lays beyond the limits of written language. I still sense this quality as a feeling of wholeness, of interbeing, of being held while also holding. Some words emerged from our communion that I continue to sit with and unravel.
The sound sings the song.
Quantum physicists speak about an “all-encompassing organic pattern” (Zukav 1979: 73) and David Bohm’s Holomovement points to a participatory reality in which every thing or “relatively independent sub-totality” (Talbot 1991: 49) is projected from the same dimensionless source. Thus the universe is holding itself up by its bootstraps. Every being, wisp of wind and mote of dust is interwoven in the interdependent fabric of the universe. The poet, William Blake, best writes this quality of being,
To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour. (Blake 1863)
Sense of Self
The pioneering psychoanalyst Carl Jung states, “The self is not only the centre but also the whole circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious; it is the centre of this totality, just as ego is the centre of consciousness.” (Jung 1963: 389)
For the purposes of coherence, we will denote the uppercase Self as Jung’s “whole circumference” to include our ecosphere, Gaia, while denoting the lowercase self as the ego-self.
(Freeman 2014)
All life holds a sense of Self through a series of cognitive feedback loops, which sense and respond to the local environment. As Fritjof Capra affirms, life is a cognitive process (Capra Course 2016). A single-celled amoeba shows aliveness through an awareness of surroundings: a sense of food and the creature moves towards, a sense of danger and the creature moves away. More complex creatures, such as the deer, possess a deeper awareness through their multifaceted cognition. Deer have sharp eyes, tuned ears, and a powerful nose, which when combined with tactile sense, gives rise to a spatial understanding of existence. With this, the deer holds a deep awareness of the environment and sense of Self. The deer moves towards food and away from predators, though also decides where to rest, takes care of young, and knows when it is time to hunker down for an impending storm. In both creatures, there is a sense of the wider Self, scaled from a drop of dew to a vast forest.
Awareness of Self via cognition is at the heart of the life process. The complexity in cognition relates to a wider sense of Self, which correlates with a depth of consciousness. Thus the sensing of Self is an expression of consciousness.
Let us now turn our attention inwards towards the human being. The human cognitive process is so highly complex that we sense elements of the Self through evolved sensory organs while simultaneously sensing our internal environment (the ego-self) through the thinking process. As well, we are even able to sense the process of sensing. Capra states, “Not only do we know, we know that we know.” Ibid.
This sense of self, the knowledge that there is a who, combined with a sense of the sensing, enables a unique ability to shift the how. Once we know that we are making decisions, we may shift how we make them. In this great freedom of choice comes an equally great opportunity for responsibility. We are freed from instinct, we do not always know what to do, and this may be an inherent part of the human condition. We are born helpless, knowing nothing, and thus are required to learn and develop throughout our lives. This continuous inquiry gives rise to an immense quest of the Unfinished.
We are beings of meaning and have been asking questions since time immemorial. Kurt Vonnegut dances these words this in his classic Cat’s Cradle,
Tiger got to hunt, Bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder, “Why, why, why?” Tiger got to sleep, Bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand. (Vonnegut 1963: 106)
Participatory Reality
Imagine a wild rose, a beautiful perennial with bright petals, a long stem, and incisive leaves. This unique plant being has been shaped by a continuous turning of seasons. An early spring may have invited a long stalk here and a family of deer one year may have stumped the shrub short of blooming there. The rose’s present form has been informed by the passage of time.
Now, from where did this wild rose emerge? It formed from the seed, which formed from a previous iteration of the wild rose, which too formed from an ancestral seed. By looking upstream, we may surmise that enfolded within this flower is every flower that ever came before. We may also gather that all ancestral environments inform the present wild rose. Now let’s peer in the other direction and acknowledge that enfolded within this wild rose is the seeded potential for every future rose that may ever come-into-being. Thus, enfolded within this single flower is the transcendence of time; expressed through an interdependent relationship with all ancestors and potential descendants.
Spatially, where does this rose end? Surely with the roots, though those are connected to an ever-reaching mychorrizal network that takes in nutrients from the soil and forms into flower. Or it must end with the leaves, though those too absorb photon particle-waves from the sun and alchemize into usable energy that forms into plant matter. Wherever we look, we see that the energetic extension of the wild rose grows far beyond our initial conception. Pollen from the bee, carbon dioxide from our lungs, liquid water from the atmosphere, the flower lives through all of these essential relations. The wind, soil, sun, stars, and all living beings interdependently inform into flower. The entire cosmos and beyond, everything and no-thing are enfolded within the wild rose. Within the living breathing process of the plant is an implicate order of unfathomable depth, a wholeness being expressed through the superposition of form, patterns, and awareness that we name Wild Rose.
When we see the Wild Rose in all her infinite manifestation through our very human lens, we tend to explicate and unfold, to pluck a petal and observe only a single expressive fragmentation of the implicate whole. However, we can use our extended human capacities to look very deeply, unraveling the mystery and history of the ecological and emotional dimensions. Using microscopes we have the ability to notice the presence of mitochondria, which our rational mind rides all the way back to the primordial endosymbiotic merging some ~1,500 million years ago! As well we perceive the color of the petal and are able to understand how the reflection of sun’s light attracts pollinators to share nectar and spread pollen with immense eco-communities. We may inhale the lustrous smell of the petal’s perfume and be swept away in memories and emotions the flower has now invited inside our psyche. This continues, we have the ability look deeper and feel further. If we use the petal as an access point, then within this unfolded part is also the enfolded whole.
So, why pluck?
When communing with the flower, an opportunity opens for new qualities to emerge. Through our explicating mind and expressive abilities, we are able to feedback this newfound knowledge to the flower so she may know herself more fully by our participation. Through this process, the Self may find a deeper sense of realization and a mutual self-actualization occurs. Carl Jung was tuned into this essential aspect of humanity,
“The self in its divinity (i.e. the archetype) is unconscious of itself. It can become conscious only within our consciousness. And it can do that only if the ego stands firm.”
(Jung 1973: 335–6)
We are a way for consciousness to know itself.
Inquiry
Is the world enriched by our engagement?
With our uniquely human gifts of inquiry, perception and expression, we are able to study the nature of existence and then feed our gained knowledge back to the whole. Each time we go around this hermeneutic circle of impression and expression, we spiral closer to the meaning beyond words. We act as opening agents, Self induced operators of continual recreation.
As well we are an expression of Nature. When we are enlightened by our engagement with the natural world, then surely, so is She.
Please! Participate fully in the unfolding and evolving world around you! Feel the beauty, connection, and wholeness gained from our unique contribution. Find meaning, purpose, and Self-actualization in natural presence. May all beings be free, including me. Om Loka Samasta Sukhino Bhavantu.
Yes. | https://medium.com/@tuck.yates.tyrrell/the-energetics-of-an-encounter-and-potentials-of-participation-2069bd03e821 | ['Tuck Tyrrell'] | 2019-10-09 14:01:01.462000+00:00 | ['Phenomenology', 'Encounter', 'Ecology', 'Goethe', 'Gaia'] |
The MetaCert Protocol: Token Sale Schedule & How To Avoid Fraud | ☞ The Token Sale Breakdown is here.
The Private Sale
On August 23, 2018, Tokens for MetaCert Protocol will go on sale. The Private Sale ends on October 31, 2018. The sale is open to anyone, anywhere in the world, except for North Korea and China.
Private Sale Information
Seed Round: 500M tokens will be sold at $0.007 per token ($3.5M / 41.67% discount)
Pre Round: 600M tokens will be sold at $0.009 per token ($5.4M /25% discount)
If you would like to participate in the private sale, please join our Telegram group and send a private message to our COO, Ian Hayward t.me/ianhayward
The Public Sale
The Public Sale starts on November 1, 2018 and ends on November 15th, 2018.
When commenting on one of our papers, please leave a comment on the Medium posts — this will allow us and other community members to respond to your questions and comments. It will also make it easy for us to share links to our responses when asked the same questions inside Telegram or on Twitter.
How To Protect Your Crypto
Private Key
Over 10% of all money within the Crypto world is stolen by cybercriminals. MetaCert will NEVER ask you for your private key for any reason. Do not type your private key into any website.
Wallet
Buy a hardware wallet right now. We highly recommend coolwallet.io because it’s super easy to use, very secure and it will soon have the MetaCert Protocol integrated into the service to protect you from fraud. You will see a green shield for wallet addresses that have been verified. Buy it now.
Cryptonite
Install Cryptonite right now. It’s the best browser software in the world when it comes to protecting you from phishing scams. Make sure the shield turns from black to green whenever you visit one of our websites or social media accounts. If it’s not green, assume it’s malicious.
Telegram
Cybercriminals will send you private messages on Telegram, pretending to be me or someone on my team. Ignore them. We will NEVER send you a private message on Telegram unless you message us first.
Email
MetaCert will only email you to remind about important information related to finalizing the token sale registration process. If you have any questions come to our Telegram group t.me/metacert
By installing Cryptonite you’ll be protected when opening links inside email on your computer.
Twitter
Imposters will pretend to be me on Twitter. They will post tweet about special offers. Ignore all special offers on Twitter — because I will never promote anything. Cryptonite will protect you from these bad actors — if you don’t see a green shield for my tweets assume it’s a fake account.
Telegram Community Engagement
We have one of the most engaging and positive crypto communities that I’ve seen, and I’d like to keep it that way. Here are some basic rules of engagement that I’d like to continue throughout and beyond the Token sale.
Be nice to other members of the community. Discuss the MetaCert Protocol project and / or security and privacy on the Internet. Feel free to discuss other projects — as long as it’s related to cybersecurity. Share knowledge. Do not speculate on, or discuss Token valuation. I refer you back to point 2.
That’s it.
Oh, did I mention that it’s vital you install Cryptonite? Install it right now if you’re not already using it. metacertprotocol.com/cryptonite
📖 Read our White Paper
📖 Read our Technical Paper
☞ Don’t forget to click 👏🏻 to let MetaCert and others know how much you appreciate this post.
☞ Join our Telegram channel where you can engage with the core team and the community. https://t.me/metacert | https://medium.com/metacert/the-metacert-protocol-token-sale-schedule-how-to-avoid-fraud-d0a761f42105 | ['Paul Walsh'] | 2018-08-23 17:46:29.356000+00:00 | ['Metacert', 'Blockchain', 'Cybersecurity', 'Ethereum', 'Bitcoin'] |
Reinventing Teaching and Learning in Mathematics Education — Part 2: Synchronous, Online Learning & Formative Assessment Practices | Welcome back to Flipping the Focus.
This is the 2nd post in a 5-part series devoted to re-imagining how assessment practices in mathematics education can be improved, in part, with pedagogically-driven uses of technology.
Part 1 of the series provided an example of pedagogical principles that can be used when making decisions about how a variety of tools and representations — including interactive, digital technologies — can be leveraged to improve student learning.
In this post, you’ll have an opportunity to learn more about synchronous learning and how it can:
relate to classroom practice; and
work with hybrid and online learning models.
You’ll also have the chance to begin:
learning about Thinking Classrooms through the vignette, below;
through the vignette, below; sharing your own and/or asking other educators about their experiences with different models of learning and modes of delivery; and
expanding your professional learning network around assessment practices, various models of learning, and modes of delivery in mathematics teaching and learning.
Introduction
Reinventing, now more than ever, how technology supports math teachers and students is so important. Educators need high-quality teaching resources, pedagogical supports, and professional learning that engender and communicate respect for equity and inclusion.
So much of the educational landscape has been changing — evidenced by the current, global paradigm; shifting priorities; and efforts to hybridize learning models and make online learning successful — for example, synchronous online learning.
What is Synchronous Learning?
Synchronous learning occurs in real-time — i.e., in real-time, it allows educators the opportunity to connect with their students such that the immediacy of feedback is greater.
When this mode of delivery is done remotely and online, with the support of video-teleconferencing platforms and a host of web-based applications, note that synchronous learning is but one aspect of authentic and engaging online learning.
Just like effective teaching requires opportunities for students to engage in self- and group-directed learning activities, educators working in an online environment can help support their students’ learning preferences by intentionally incorporating asynchronous learning activities into their teaching.
For example, by incorporating asynchronous learning opportunities, educators can delay some of their feedback so that students can continue thinking and re-focus their attention on reflection and metacognition (Desmos, 2016).
There are also many high-impact instructional practices in mathematics that we often associate directly with formative assessment practice — establishing learning goals, co-constructing success criteria, and interacting with descriptive feedback. On some occasions, other practices might be thought of as influencing formative assessment practices like the use of problem-solving tasks, documenting and reflecting on how students use tools and representations, and actively listening to students during math conversations; while at other times, the use of other practices inform instruction and come about as a result of ongoing, formative assessment — e.g., teaching about problem solving, intentional and well-positioned use of direct instruction, small group instruction, deliberate and purposeful practice, and flexible groupings. Of course, these distinctions are but one way to think about the complex relationship between instruction and assessment: in many situations, practices that inform instruction become those that influence assessment, and vice-versa. For example:
We might decide to facilitate a math conversation to better uncover students’ thinking (inform); on other occasions, our assessment points to students being ready for a conversation that helps to consolidate their learning (influence).
While a small group of students is working on a task, observations and conversation indicates that direct instruction (in the form of hints and answering keep-thinking questions) is necessary (influence); on other occasions, direct instruction with several groups and/or the whole class points to using questions that are focusing in nature, followed by encouraging students to continue working on the task in small groups (inform).
What might seem to be a dichotomy — practices that inform and/or influence — is much-needed to ensure that educators and their students are better able to interact with descriptive feedback that is based on the development and refinement of success criteria.
When it comes to formative assessment, the decision to use practices in ways that make us think versus uncovering and re-purposing our thinking moves us closer to attaining learning goals.
The remainder of this post focuses on the following:
examining and reflecting upon a conceptual model for synchronous online teaching and learning in mathematics in Secondary grades;
sharing our own and connecting to the experiences of others with synchronous online teaching and learning across all divisions — primary, junior, intermediate, and senior …
… and all of this to help our professional community of practice support one another by providing the best answers we have, at this time, to the following question:
How can teachers best implement these instructional practices with fidelity
in synchronous online learning?
Vignette: Bringing Thinking Classrooms to Life Online
Secondary School Example: Problem-based Learning in Mr. Stewart’s Mathematics Classes
Introduction :
Mr. Stewart recognizes the value in providing space for his students to think, communicate, and make visible their mathematical ideas and struggles, and to ask questions of one another. It’s within these spaces where he’s better able to listen to conversations and observe and document his students’ thinking – all of this to provide timely, descriptive feedback to his students on how they’re working towards mathematical learning goals and monitoring their responses to feedback – feedback, generally, coming in the form of hints and questions that spur students to continue thinking.
READ MORE … | https://medium.com/@flippingthefocus/reinventing-teaching-and-learning-in-mathematics-education-part-2-synchronous-online-learning-ec1b7d231de | ['Christopher Stewart'] | 2021-01-08 11:54:05.804000+00:00 | ['Learning', 'Education', 'Teaching', 'Mathematics', 'Inclusion'] |
With AI and Criminal Justice, the Devil is in the Data | With AI and Criminal Justice, the Devil is in the Data
In the criminal justice context, it’s easy for bias to creep into risk assessment tools. The devil is in the data.
Vincent Southerland — Executive Director, Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law, NYU Law
APRIL 9, 2018 | 11:00 AM
If we have learned anything in the last decade about our criminal justice system, it is how astonishingly dysfunctional it is. Extensive investigations have revealed persistent racial disparities at every stage, a different kind of justice for the haves and the have nots, and a system that neither rehabilitates individuals nor ensures public safety. In short, the system is in crisis.
Rather than scrapping everything and starting anew, many criminal justice stakeholders have turned to technology to repair the breach through “risk assessment tools.” Also labeled artificial intelligence, automated decision-making, or predictive analytics, these tools have been touted as carrying with them the potential to save a broken system, and they now play a role at nearly every critical stage of the criminal justice process. If we’re not careful, however, these tools may exacerbate the same problems they are ostensibly meant to help solve.
It begins on the front lines of the criminal justice system with policing. Law enforcement has embraced predictive analytics — which can pinpoint areas allegedly prone to criminal activity by examining historical patterns — and then deploy officers to those areas. In Chicago, for example, the predictive tools analyze complex social networks through publicly accessible data in an attempt to forecast likely perpetrators and victims of violent crime.
Once an individual is arrested, they are likely to be subjected to a pre-trial risk assessment tool. Such tools are used to inform the thinking of a judge who must decide whether to incarcerate that person pending trial or release them. Pre-trial risk assessments attempt to predict which of the accused will fail to appear in court or will be rearrested. Some states have used these pre-trial tools at the sentencing and parole stage, in an attempt to predict the likelihood that someone will commit a new offense if released from prison.
While all of this technology may seem to hold great promise, it also can come with staggering costs. The potential for bias to creep into the deployment of the tools is enormous. Simply put, the devil is in the data. All risk assessment tools generally rely on historical, actuarial data. Often, that data relates to the behavior of a class of people — like individuals with criminal records. Sometimes it relates to the characteristics of a neighborhood. That information is run through an algorithm — a set of instructions that tell a computer model what to do. In the case of risk assessment tools, the model produces a forecast of the probability that an individual will engage in some particular behavior.
That order of operations can be problematic given the range of data that fuels the forecast. Data scientists often refer to this type of problem as “garbage in, garbage out.” In a historically biased criminal justice system, the “garbage in” can have grave consequences. Imagine, for a moment, a city where Black people made up 67 percent of the population, but accounted for 85 percent of vehicle stops, 90 percent of citations issued, 95 percent of jaywalking charges, 94 percent of those charged with disobeying the order of an officer, and 93 percent of the arrests made by the city’s officers.
What about a city where Black people comprised 54 percent of the population, but 85 percent of pedestrian stops and 79 percent of arrests by police, and were 2.5 times more likely to be stopped by the police than their white counterparts? Or a police department that singled out a city’s Black and Latino residents for 83 percent of all stops, but 88 percent of the stops resulted in no further action?
These aren’t imaginary cities or made-up numbers. They are drawn from Ferguson, Missouri; Newark, New Jersey; and New York City, respectively. It is now well known that the police forces in these cities engaged in racially biased policing on the false assumption that doing so was an effective means of fighting crime. In the case of Ferguson, fighting crime was only half the goal; generating revenue for the municipality through law enforcement was the other.
Now consider the potential harm done when police departments like these use their crime data to feed the algorithms and models used to predict behavior. If one only examined the data, the working assumption would be that white people rarely engage in criminal activity. Most algorithms would simply predict that these disparate numbers represent a real, consistent pattern of criminal behavior by individuals.
The data provides a distorted picture of the neighborhoods where crime is happening that, in turn, drives more police to those neighborhoods. Police then come into contact with more people from those communities, and by virtue of more contact, make more arrests. Those arrests — regardless of their validity or constitutionality — are interpreted as indicative of criminal activity in a neighborhood, leading to a greater police presence. The result, as mathematician and data scientist Cathy O’Neil calls it in “Weapons of Math Destruction,” is “a pernicious feedback loop,” where “the policing itself spawns new data, which justifies more policing.”
Any system that relies on criminal justice data must contend with the vestiges of slavery, de jure and de facto segregation, racial discrimination, biased policing, and explicit and implicit bias, which are part and parcel of the criminal justice system. Otherwise, these automated tools will simply exacerbate, reproduce, and calcify the biases they are meant to correct.
These concerns aren’t theoretical. In a piece two years ago, reporters at ProPublica sparked a debate about these tools by highlighting the racial bias embedded in risk assessments at pretrial bail hearings and at sentencing. That study found that Black defendants were more likely to be wrongly labeled high risk than white defendants.
Humans have always deployed technology with the hope of improving the systems that operate around them. For risk assessments to advance justice, those who seek to use them must confront racism head-on, recognize that it is infecting decisions and leading to unjust outcomes, and make its eradication the ultimate goal of any tool used. When the data reveals racism and bias in the system, risk assessment tools must account for that bias.
This means privileging the voices of communities and those with experience in the criminal justice system so that the quantitative data is informed by qualitative information about those numbers and the human experiences behind them. It means employing the tool in a criminal justice ecosystem that is devoted to due process, fairness, and decarceration.
Finally, it requires the implementation of frameworks that ensure algorithmic accountability. An Algorithmic Impact Assessment is one such framework, proposed by the research institute AI Now in the context of New York City’s efforts to hold public agencies accountable in their automated decision-making. AIAs do so by publicly listing how and when algorithms are used to make decisions in people’s lives, providing meaningful access for independent auditing of these tools, increasing the expertise and capacity of agencies that use the tools, and allowing the public opportunities to assess and dispute the way entities deploy the tools.
No system or tool is perfect. But we should not add to the problems in the criminal justice system with mechanisms that exacerbate racism and inequity. Only by making a commitment to antiracist and egalitarian values and frameworks for accountability, can well-intended reformers ensure that these new tools are used for the public good.
Vincent Southerland is the executive director of the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law at NYU School of Law. He previously served as a senior counsel with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, where he focused on race and criminal justice, and as a public defender with The Bronx Defenders and the Federal Defenders of New York.
This piece is part of a series exploring the impacts of artificial intelligence on civil liberties. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the ACLU. | https://medium.com/aclu/with-ai-and-criminal-justice-the-devil-is-in-the-data-304b4edebf7d | ['Vincent M. Southerland'] | 2018-04-16 17:15:35.405000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence', 'Bias', 'Data', 'Ai And Civil Liberties', 'Criminal Justice'] |
It was Elf | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/the-musing-llama/it-was-elf-269dc1133276 | ['Deborah Digges'] | 2020-12-27 06:41:21.559000+00:00 | ['Christmas', '2020', 'Children', 'Humor', 'Cartoon'] |
Understanding the Difference Between Function & Class Components in React | Understanding the Difference Between Function & Class Components in React
Using components in React with a better understanding of how they affect your App’s Performance has always been a confusing topic, and developers end up having a bulky code base that gets harder to manage through time. So, the major answer that you will hear that Class Components provide access to more features like (state), but with Hooks that not valid anymore.
You must have heard about one of them having better performance, but performance depends on what the code is doing rather than choosing a class or function. The performance is almost the same and can make differences using various optimization techniques.
Function Components
Consider A Component. Let’s take an example using a simple component that simulates a network request with setTimeout and shows a confirmation alert. If props.user is ‘Mohit’ it will simply show ‘Followed Mohit’ after 3 seconds.
In the example above you can use arrows or function declaration both work the same way.
Implementing the above example in class:
Oftentimes people mistakenly look at both the same way, but there is a difference between their implications. To observe the difference you can open the code sandbox I have created for a better understanding.
Open the code sandbox given above and run the code, now try these steps to measure the difference.
Click on the follow button. (function or class you can choose any of it) Change the selected profile before 3 seconds pass. Now read the text alert.
You will notice when we click on the follow button (using a function component) and then switch to a different profile, it shows the previous user name instead of what we selected later 3 seconds pass. But when we press the follow button( using a class component), it shows the newly selected user name every time. You will getter a better understanding by running the sandbox on your own.
In this example, if you press the follow button on ‘Mohit’s’ profile and then change the selected user you are still going to see Mohit in the alert dialogue box in case of function component. And in the case of the class component, you will notice the switched profile name in the alert dialogue box.
As you can see, the first behavior is totally what we claim to be correct for us, as my component shouldn't get confused about who I followed!.
So what can be the reason for this buggy behavior?
To understand this let us take a closer look at the showMessage method in our class.
The class method reads from this.prop.user and props are immutable in React so they can never change, but this has always been mutable & that’s the whole purpose of this in a class as React mutates it over in render and lifecycle method so that we can the fresh version in the render. If our component re-renders while already being in the process, this.props will change & the showMessage method reads the user from ‘too new ‘ props.
This shows an interesting relationship in the nature of User Interfaces, and if we say UI is a function of the current application state, the event handlers are a part of the render result. But scheduling a timeout that reads this.props breaks the relation.
So let’s say there is no such thing as function components, what would be the solution to this problem then?
If we want to somehow ‘repair’ the connection between render and correct props and the showMesage callback which reads them. One way we can achieve this possibility is by reading this.props early during the event and then pass them through the timeout completion handler. Still, this approach will make the code more error-prone at the end, and we can’t use more than one prop and also we can't access the state & we will end up having the same problems again.
Even if we put the alert code inside handleClick won't answer the bigger problems. The aim is to structure our code in such a way that allows splitting it into more methods and also being able to read the props and state corresponding to the render related to that call.
What if we bind the methods in the constructor?
Remember that the problem is in reading this.props too late, not with the syntax we are using, so it won’t solve this problem. Bit problem can be solved if we rely on JavaScript closures. However, closures are avoided as it is hard to think about a value that can be mutated overtime. So if we use closures over props or state from a particular render, we easily can count on them.
Function components capture the rendered values:
But what the point of having a class if we are defining the functions inside render.
When the parent component renders the ProfilePage with different props, React calls the ProfilePage function again & the event handle that we already clicked which belongs to the previous render having its own user value is being read by showMessage. And that’s why in the above sandbox example when we click on follow Mohit after changing the selected user it still shows ‘Followed Mohit’. | https://javascript.plainenglish.io/understanding-the-difference-between-function-class-components-in-react-35279a119d29 | [] | 2020-12-26 17:09:33.795000+00:00 | ['Web Development', 'React', 'JavaScript', 'App Development', 'Programming'] |
Reality doesn’t exist | The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you.
These are essentially the first sentences in the first book on leadership I ever read: Leadership is an Art by Max Depree, probably about 8 years ago.
“Define reality” — what does that really mean? Isn’t there just one, like, “real” reality — and some see it, and some don’t? Case study: Donald J. Trump?
It took me quite some years to realize that in fact, no: there is no such thing as #onereality , we all have our own, and we have the power to shape it.
In Buddhism, this is called “emptiness,” which Wikipedia unhelpfully describes as follows (selective quoting):
All things are empty of intrinsic existence and nature.
Ah, of course!
The classic example to illustrate this concept is the example of a pen.
Yes, this:
What is a pen, really? To you and me, it’s likely a tool we can use to write. To a dog, it’s likely a chewing toy. To an ant, it’s likely an unwanted obstacle.
So, what is the “real” answer? What is a pen, really?
The answer is there’s no one reality. It’s different for everybody, based on who we are and our previous experience in relation to the object. The object in itself is “empty”: the only reason you and I treat it as a writing device is because of us, not the object itself.
Of course, this is not just the case for a pen, it’s true for everything.
And this brings us back to the Max Depree quote: what leaders need to do is help define this reality for people. Something happened — how do we frame it?
Website went down: revenue lost or opportunity for a lot of valuable learning?
Somebody resigns: problem because of inevitable slow-down in work to be done or opportunity to hire somebody even better, or bring in some fresh blood into the team?
Start-up went bankrupt: all that money, time and effort down the drain or so many lessons learned?
Pandemic: end of humanity as we know it or the time we learned remote working is more viable than previously understood?
Shed burned to the ground: stuff gone forever or effective way to get rid of old junk?
Glass: half empty or half full?
Everything is going to shit: we’re doooooomed or boy, once we make it out, we will have grown so much as people!
Which one is it? There’s no “real” answer, it’s just a viewpoint and way of looking at it.
Well, not just — it actually matters a lot how we define reality for ourselves and others. One definition can drain our energy or even push us into depression, another can give us energy to do more.
Viktor Frankl, a famous Austrian psychologist said:
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Same concept, phrased differently. Frankl is a Nazi death camp survivor. I would be quite comfortable describing a death camp as a “challenging environment” to keep defining reality in an optimistic manner, but Frankl attributes his survival to exactly this ability.
So, this is what we must do as well. And this is where a lot of our energy should go. That’s why Depree describes it as our “first responsibility.”
There’s a lot of stuff going on in the world right now that most people would label as “not great.” It’s our job to make sense of it all, and find the framing, the definition of this reality to keep us going, and ideally even pushes us to be better getting out of it than we were going in.
Is hard? Yes. It is energy draining? Absolutely. Can we always keep this up? Who knows, but let’s try anyway. There’s a learning opportunity in everything.
Thank you. | https://medium.com/@zef/reality-doesnt-exist-b80141588c94 | ['Zef Hemel'] | 2020-12-22 07:18:59.414000+00:00 | ['Philosophy', 'Mindset', 'Reality'] |
AI CHATBOTS to improve customer service costs | Businesses spend nearly 1 trillion in customer service costs each year. Customer support executives spend most of their time in a day attending to repetitive queries. This not only drains the cost-efficiency of an organization but also leads to slow responses in cross-channel communications. Delayed responses impact the customer experience significantly causing a higher customer churn rate.
Per a study by Deloitte on the future of customer service, 56% of companies are already investing in Conversational AI to enhance their cross-channel interactions with customers.
AI and NLP-powered virtual assistants will help companies to slash their contact center costs significantly while improving customer experiences by sending instant, automated responses.
Trending Bot Articles:
Moreover, it is not only about automation or speeding up the process, but what holds more importance here is providing customers with natural, human-like, personalized responses.
AI chatbots shoot intelligent responses to customers based on historical data, and intent and contextual analysis to derive real business value by winning customer trust and loyalty. Let’s take a look at the infographic to understand how AI chatbots are reducing customer support costs by minimizing wait time, cutting down dependency on human agents, and promoting self-service:
Also, read about 9 Reasons Why Low-Code/No-Code Platform Is the Best Choice for Increasing Adoption of Virtual Assistants
To book a Free Demo please Click Here | https://chatbotslife.com/ai-chatbots-to-improve-customer-service-costs-7d70d757ac43 | ['Enterprise Bot'] | 2021-03-24 13:33:54.424000+00:00 | ['Chatbots', 'Customer Service Cost', 'Customer Experience', 'Conversational Ai', 'Customer Service'] |
Untitled | HOW CHATBOTS CAN LEADS GENERATIONS AND SALES:
If you are any person who is running a business on internet then this article is worth reading for you.This will take only your 5-6 minutes but can benefit you in millions so go ahead and give a read to this amazing article.
Are you tired and had spent hours to find a fact that why your business is not growing,why your website is not going to appeal customers and why your customers are not satisfied with your management although you are providing them good services then you are lacking to communicate with your customer in an effective way .Yes it’s a fact that communication is the main key to access towards customers.
Chatbots are the revolutionary invention in the field of artificial intelligence that can help your business to grow. A chatbot is an AI based customized software which is designed to communicate with the customer without any human intervention and supports the CSS and makes it more efficiently during peak hours and seasons.”
It is a basic and important tool in your business marketing.Chatbot was first introduced by Facebook in 2016 and in just short period of six months 4% companies implement this technology for their marketing purposes.A study shows that 80%of the companies will have chatbot program by 2020.Juniper Research claims that business and consumer can save up to 2.5billion hours through the use of chatbot by 2023,and they can also save their customer service cost by 70% of total.These facts are amazing.
A research says that most of your customers or clients leaves the website even before 1 minute after visiting because they don’t know how to use and where to go.Chatbot can resolve this and makes it simple if you have a chatbot program on your website this will start a conversation with the visitor “ Hey!what can I do for you?”this will engage the customer provides a basic information but an amazing fact is that this program can also give answers to the customer’s questions within a seconds.
This kind of strategy appeals to the customer,traffic on the website automatically grows and builds a good relationship between customer and management.Customer comes to know that you value your customers.A chatbot works 24/7 so you don’t need to worry about your customer service.Chatbot solves user queries and complains with automated responses all round to clock.
Getting stopped over calls and listening to customized response is the thing that can leads user to get frustrated but in a chatbot platform all these problems can be solved by live chats and timely responses without wasting of time and putting a load to customer service team.
All the above mentioned uses are just a start a lot more to know about this program..A chatbot is just like a jackpot for your business.This program captures the users attention,gains a basic data within a short span of time in most effective way and will going to show them products what they want to see and buy.This is not enough the gained data will be saved by chatbot and this software is going to re-use it in a future.
Saving a personalized data by customer service is the most hardest task to do and this process is the attention and time gainer still has the chance of error.If you have a chatbot platform this is going to be an easy task as it saves the personalized data and will use it for future purposes.In this way chatbot will not cut off user and management relationship even for a second and helps to stay connected with a user forever.
Your customer service team spends an hours to promote business through different ideas but chatbot can make your way easier in this aspect too.Whenever your business site has a new stock or offers chatbot program will notify the user about it as per according to their personal preference as it saves the specified data of an individual user.
This eliminates the human errors,provides better customer satisfaction,seamless user interface and more.All these ways you can lead a generation and increase your sales.Its the ultimate future!
A chatbot for website of an e-commerce business is the complete and full proof solution it will decreased your customer service cost helps you to compete in a business marketing, leads a generation.It can also improve your external environment as well as provide you help in maintaining a good internal communication.A chatbot is a solution of all. | https://medium.com/@areebahidayat135/untitled-1664e2957cb7 | [] | 2020-12-24 18:57:31.155000+00:00 | ['Chatbots For Business', 'Future Of Work', 'Need To Know'] |
Untimely Death | My brother died last night, February 14, 2016. Today, I will be going to the morgue to identify his body. But I know it is him. Why did you go out last night? I told you I felt something really bad was going to happen to you. But you did not listen. You never did…. #sad
…
Today is my graduation. Words cannot express the joy I feel as I finally receive my Bachelor’s Degree in Civil Engineering, class of 2015. My mom and brother are smiling so proudly from the stands. I smile. I did it for you. #happy
We go out to eat later on to my favorite restaurant, La Ocha. Mmmm I can’t wait to eat that beef fried rice and Chowmein. My mother takes a photo of me and my brother with her polaroid camera. I say I want to keep it. As soon as it develops my mother hands it to me. My heart stops. My face turns ghostly.
“What’s wrong honey?” my mother asks with a puzzled look on her face.
I show her the photo. She looks at me with that same puzzled face.
“I don’t see anything other than the photo I just took of you and your brother.”
“Yeah, what’s up with you,” says my brother as he looks over to see the photo.
“I…I thought I saw you in a costume with blood dripping everywhere,” I stammer. Then, I look to the photo and I do not see anything.
The waitress passes by, “Any dessert?”
“Yes, we would like the mango and sticky rice,” requests my brother.
Maybe it was just in my head? My brother proceeds to talk about what he plans on doing with his summer. #shocked
…
I look around at our small apartment and feel warmth as I look at the lights around the Christmas tree. My mom is in the kitchen finishing up the hot chocolate. Mmmm the smell of tamales of potato is filling the place. Nothing I love more than this feeling. #warmth
As soon as I sit down to drink my hot chocolate in front of the fireplace, my brother walks in.
“Hey guys! Sorry I’m late. I was just picking up some last minute gifts,” he smiles as he walks towards me. “Mmmmm I can’t wait to eat these tamales.”
We gather around to pray and thank God for all the blessings he has sent our way.
“How about a photo in front of the tree,” my mom asks, “I want to send it to your cousins.” She goes to grab her Polaroid. “Say cheese!”
She still treats us like little kids. I sigh. She just loves us so much. I squeeze my brother tight and smile big.
“I want to take a photo of the polaroid to post on Instagram,” I say as I am already taking the photo from my mother’s hands.
No. My face turns ghostly.
“What’s wrong,” my mother asks. No words can escape me.
“Yeah, what’s wrong,” says my brother as he snatches the photo I was staring at.
This is not possible. This cannot be happening. No way. There is no way!
“I….I…,” I stutter, “I saw you in a bunny mask with blood dripping everywhere! You were dead” #scared
“What’s wrong with you? There’s nothing here. You’ve probably had a long day. I’m going to go get you some water. Sit down and relax. We are going to open presents soon,” my brother states. Am I going crazy? Am I just tired?
I did not mention that I heard a whisper say “Valentine’s Day.” #creepy
…
It is the evening of February 14. My boyfriend is taking me out to Red Lobster. I have not mentioned anything to my family about my worries. I get ready and do my makeup extra nice because it is Valentine’s Day.
As I wait to get picked up, I enter my brother’s room. “Please don’t go out tonight. Just this one night. I feel it deep in my heart that something terrible will happen if you do. Promise me please.” #worried
“Yeah, yeah. I promise,” he waves his hand at me to exit his room as he continues playing Call of Duty. I don’t think he even heard me. #littlebrothersneverlisten
…
It’s February 15. I am in the morgue, waiting for the attendant to uncover the sheet.
“Please identify the body if you are familiar with it,” states the worker.
On the side of the table, I see a bunny mask covered in blood. My heart skips a beat.
“It’s him,” I mutter, “That is my brother, Alex Marquez.” #death | https://medium.com/el-sereno-community-garden/untimely-death-d291c528213 | ['Stephany Morales'] | 2019-10-29 22:21:00.004000+00:00 | ['Sad', 'Death', 'Messages', 'Valentines Day', 'Short Story'] |
Clandestine | She saw her on the first day of volleyball practice.
Green highlights adorned her black hair, which was thrown into a high ponytail. Her complexion was relatively dark when compared to her own fairness, and her green eyes sparkled with joy and concentration when she hiked a ball to the other side of the net.
“Hike!” She yelled, her voice slightly hoarse yet still melodious. The biceps in her left arm flexed as she smacked the ball towards her team mates, sweat trickling down her back and moistening the black jersey with her surname “Martins” printed on her back.
The smile on her face was blinding, dazzling every boy that ever looked in her direction, as well as a less obnoxious member of the cheering squad.
Kate’s eyes were fixated on the cheerful girl in the volleyball court, who was being tackled into a massive group hug by her fellow team mates. She didn’t hear the cheering team captain blow her whistle to signal the start of their new routine — she didn’t realise she had zoned out completely until she felt someone gave a hard pull to her blonde hair.
“Kate Willis! Eyes front and centre and listen to the damn whistle!” The head cheerleader snapped. She nodded frantically, her golden ponytail bobbing up and down. This time, as the whistle blew, she kicked and did leaps right on beat — and her eyes were fixated on the cheerful volleyball player in the volleyball court.
She envied the Martins girl with a passion. The volleyball player could yell and laugh all she wanted, and play the sport that the cheerleader had wanted to play since year two. She could wear her heart on her sleeves, instead of hiding her heart behind the horrid pompoms and wearing the hideous, mortifying uniform when Kate wanted to wear merely a baggy t-shirt, skinny jeans and a pair of Converse trainers.
Sometimes, when she wasn’t so caught up with cheer leading practice, she would duck into a school hoodie and flip the good over her head. She’d observe the volleyball team practice from the bleachers, occasionally noting some points that they should work on, and mentally reminding herself to stay behind — alone — another time to put what she observed into practice.
Cheering was her sport, but volleyball had been her dream. | https://medium.com/@takanorikarlyn/clandestine-4d23bd391c09 | [] | 2020-12-27 08:03:59.263000+00:00 | ['Girls', 'Schools', 'LGBT', 'Sapphic', 'Fiction'] |
Ethlus.io How to triple your crypto currency in safe mode no matter the market price | in In Fitness And In Health | https://medium.com/ethlus/ethlus-io-how-to-triple-your-crypto-currency-in-safe-mode-no-matter-the-market-price-71d860b022db | ['Ethlus Winning Machine'] | 2018-09-03 11:42:13.813000+00:00 | ['Ethlus', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain', 'Ethereum', 'Bitcoin'] |
This is my 100th Medium story. | This is my 100th Medium story.
Nope, I’m not going to share my work. (Check my profile!) Instead, let’s discuss the best part of Medium: other writers. I now have friends around the world with different backgrounds, lifestyles, and beliefs who enrich my life daily. Here are just a few (I only have 150 words!).
Sarah J. Baker — Awesome Aussie with passion for the environment and equality
Kristi Keller — A skillful, spirited writer whose work takes me to new places with joy
Kim McKinney — My soul sister in North Carolina whose words make me laugh and cry
Carl L Lane — A bold writer who enriches my understanding of race, society, equality, and more
Remington Write — Midwestern girl who embraces NYC life and enchants with words
Connie Song — Making music daily with beautiful poetry
Tracy Stengel — Fellow Michiganian who brings love and light to every topic
So many more…love you all! | https://medium.com/everything-shortform/this-is-my-100th-medium-story-3373226a3ec1 | ['Tina L. Smith'] | 2020-12-13 14:55:33.354000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Creativity', 'Nonfiction', 'Writers On Medium', 'Short Form'] |
What is the Role of Journalists in Holding Artificial Intelligence Accountable? | What is the Role of Journalists in Holding Artificial Intelligence Accountable?
The Wall Street Journal is experimenting with a new approach for reporting how smart algorithms work, beyond simply describing them.
Image Credit: Gabriel Gianordoli/ WSJ
Journalists, who routinely ask questions of their sources, should also be asking questions about an algorithm’s methodology. The rules created for algorithms need to be explicit and understood. The Wall Street Journal has been experimenting with a new approach to explain how AI works by letting readers experiment with it.
“Interactive graphics can provide insights into how algorithms work in a way beyond simply describing its output. They can do this by acting as safe spaces in which readers can experiment with different inputs and immediately see how the computer might respond to it,” said deputy graphics director Elliot Bentley.
“To make this accessible and non-intimidating, it’s important to design a straightforward interface with minimal controls, and also provide informative and immediate feedback,” Bentley added.
Image Credit: Gabriel Gianordoli/ WSJ
The most recent example of letting readers experiment with algorithms is our story, “What Your Writing Says About You,”published as part of the Leadership issue of Journal Reports. The news experience offers an interface allowing people to enter text such as an essay, cover letter, blog post or business email and receive results from algorithms that rate the content by different parameters. By including detailed methodology and source notes, we allow our audiences to understand how machine learning and natural language processing can determine context, language mastery, meaning and even your mood from the choice of words.
“These explorable explainers allow us to not only go deeper, but also to give the readers a perspective on subjects like AI that we can’t give them by simply writing more great stories. It immerses them in a unique way in a subject we know they care about,” said Journal Reports editor Larry Rout.
In a previous Graphics project entitled “How Facial Recognition Software Works,” Bentley explained that readers need only to enable their webcam and begin moving their head around in order to play with a facial-recognition algorithm. It then provides clear, real-time feedback using a series of visual overlays. Another example of this is “Build Your Own Trading Bot” in which we attempted to demystify algorithmic trading by designing a user-friendly interface and a rewarding feedback loop to encourage readers to experiment with the mechanics.
How Facial Recognition Software Works. Credit: Elliot Bentley/WSJ
Journalism and algorithmic accountability
We might not notice it, but artificial intelligence affects multiple parts of our lives. These algorithms decide whether an individual qualifies for a loan, whether a resume is seen by a recruiter, which seat a passenger is assigned on an airplane, which advertisements shoppers see online and what information on the internet is shown to users. Transparency of the data that feeds these processes is crucial both for consumers to better understand what they encounter and for organizations to shape their business strategy.
Given the challenging nature of auditing algorithms, it’s important to consider how the practice of journalism can be leveraged to hold AI systems accountable. In his forthcoming book, Northwestern University professor of computational journalism Nicholas Diakopoulos introduces the notion of algorithmic accountability reporting as an approach to highlight influences that computer programs exercise in society.
“Operating at scale and often affecting large groups of people, algorithms make consequential and sometimes contestable decisions in an increasing range of domains throughout the public and private sectors. In response, a distinct beat in journalism is emerging to investigate the societal power exerted through such algorithms.
There are various newsworthy angles on algorithms including discrimination and unfairness, errors and mistakes, social and legal norm violations, and human misuse. Reverse engineering and auditing techniques can be used to elucidate the contours of algorithmic power,” Diakopoulos explained.
The “black box” problem in AI
When certain decisions are derived through an algorithm, it’s often hard to pinpoint why or how an automatic output was derived. This introduces the problem of the “black box” algorithm whereby correlations are made without rules set by humans. This term is often used as a metaphor for algorithms in which the process to reach a certain outcome cannot be seen in full.
“Auditing algorithms is not for the faint of heart. Information deficits, expectation setting, limited legal access, and shifting dynamic targets can all hamper an investigation. Working in teams, methods specialists working with domain experts can, however, overcome these obstacles and publish important stories about algorithms in society,” Diakopoulos added.
It’s indeed relevant to dissect how computers make decisions and to comprehend how smart systems are created. For example, the AI powering the set of analysis in “What Your Writing Says About You” is provided by Factbase, an AI company which makes its algorithms open source, peer reviewed, and available for examination.
In “What Your Writing Says about You,” we explain the underlying scientific methodology behind each output, including the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level — developed in 1975 by the Department of Defense to review readability level of military materials — as well as the Treebank methodology created by the University of Pennsylvania to evaluate linguistic structure of text.
“It’s important, as much as is possible, to understand the parameters under which the AI or algorithms arrived at its conclusions. What parameters it examines, and how it analyzes it, provides transparency to its thinking, per se, which in turn makes it more clear how it decides what it decides,” said Bill Frischling, founder of FactBase.
This issue is prevalent in artificial intelligence, partly because the systems are not necessarily designed to explain how they do certain things, but to just do them. This is also a byproduct of algorithms learning by themselves; they make causal links not based on human instruction but on self-identified patterns.
Newsroom collaboration
The Wall Street Journal’s news hub in New York City.
There are, of course, technical gaps to developing this type of reporting on algorithms, which can be addressed by working cross-functionally with data scientists, computational journalists and technologists. Increasingly, it’s important to foster a culture of collaboration throughout the newsroom and bring multiple perspectives into the process of story planning and development.
“A project such as this which taps so many areas of expertise and aligns them is a pleasure to be part of. What started with WSJ Lab’s original outline of possibilities was honed by a team of editors at Journal Reports to focus on specifically what our writing reveals about us. Our interactives team wrangled the code, user interface and graphic visualization,” said news editor Demetria Gallegos.
“Then, privacy experts from our legal and data teams, our social and off-platform colleagues and homepage and mobile editors weighed in to ensure the experience is optimized for every reader,” Gallegos added.
The odds for a successful collaboration can be increased if the organization is able to foster an environment where journalists are encouraged to test new ideas, to seek feedback, and to share best practices even if experiments are unsuccessful. Building this “feedback loop” can enable news professionals to mitigate the uncertainty of experimentation as well as inform the broader newsroom strategy.
“When we are thinking about how to create an innovative news experience, we have to consider how readers already ingest news — and how much further they are willing to go. In our discussions during the story planning process, we ran through various scenarios of how the tool could work, based on different criteria. We then ruled out things that would require too much time or too many steps. We also had to be sensitive to how much information people are willing to disclose. We designed this interactive story to be fun enough to get readers in, engaging enough to have them read through it, take the quiz, play the game etc. And if they end up sharing their results on social media, we know we did it right,” explained news editor Cristina Lourosa.
Journalistic standards and technological evolution
Just because a certain result came from a computer, it doesn’t mean it’s right. Artificial intelligence is programmed by humans and consequently it can make mistakes. The ethical considerations inherent to using AI are far and wide.
“Understanding the source of information whether it’s from a person or algorithm is not only crucial for the news industry but as well, for democracy,” said Kourosh Houshmand, a computational journalist at Columbia Journalism School.
The practice of journalism is about questioning the world around us, and that same principle still applies even when a piece of software played a role in a particular outcome such as determining the price of a product, evaluating how a person feels based on their writing or selecting a candidate for a job interview.
“We can help readers understand how technology works by explaining how the algorithms get their results and then pointing to the source documents and formulas that power the calculations,” said graphics reporter Nigel Chiwaya.
An effective way to understand AI is to experiment with it, comprehend the nuances of how algorithms make decisions and how those decisions may affect our lives. | https://medium.com/the-wall-street-journal/what-is-the-role-of-journalists-in-holding-artificial-intelligence-accountable-9a6321e5a265 | ['Francesco Marconi'] | 2020-04-20 08:43:10.910000+00:00 | ['Algorithms', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Journalism', 'Best Practices', 'Ethics'] |
The story of being Dad. | “Come soon, come soon- he is having trouble breathing…. maybe sinking”. My mom rushed to the hospital cafeteria as my sister and I were catching up a cup of coffee after another endless night of staying awake caring for Dad.
I sprinted like I never had before dashing through the cancer ward into his room- half expecting that they would be injecting him with morphine as they did the night before. While that would still make me wince in pain as it made him wince in pain, I hoped it was just that. As I dashed into his room and held his hand, he was gone. I knew it before even the doctor said it to us.
At that moment at 17, I felt everything a young man would feel- despair about the future, anger that it was happening to us, a sinking loss that I did not know how to feel- and I must confess betrayal and grief.
At 17, it just felt so unfair !!! 20 days later I would turn 18, 3 days later my Dad would turn 66. My betrayal stemmed from the fact that I was a late kid- born to my Dad when he was 48 and my Mum when she was 40; well late by the standards of the 1980’s and 90’s. Often, I would be asked “ Is he your grandfather, is the lady who comes to meet you at lunch your grand mom?”. That would mortify me as it would mortify any teenager.
The betrayal, self-loathing and pity continued for about 2 years till 1999 (separate story on what changed). Why did I have to walk into the rain and find out the route to my Engineering Admissions? Who do I talk to for my career choices? Where was he- when I needed him the most?
Over the years, post Dad I had the opportunity to be blessed with great Father figures who helped shape my outlook towards life at various stages- maybe it was Dad watching over me. As I listened to some of them speak fondly about Dad and as I gathered more memories of my Dad while cleaning up his cupboard post his death, I started slowly piecing and understanding my Dad’s lessons a little better.
Here are some of the lessons that I recall from memory and have been long treasured in my heart.
(a) Let Life Happen: Dad was the oldest of 9 kids born in rural India. 5 brothers and 3 sisters followed after him. To add to his own 3 kids. We might not have had much growing up, but Dad always bore his responsibility with a smile. Never stressed, never overtly unhappy. Maybe it was his faith, maybe it was love? I will never fully know. But all I know is Dad let life happen- keeping values dearest to him closest to his heart: his family, his friends and his love for learning. (PS: Yes- my love for reading is his legacy.)
One day during his cancer treatment, I asked Dad how did he think his life went? He said “While I am stressed about Mom and you since you are so young, I am fully satisfied that my values of faith, learning and hard work will ensure that I have left enough. The rest incidentally might be a little money that you might find once I am gone”
(b) Life is too short for disputes: Dad used to stump me. I used to always wonder how he would be good to people who were always using him for short term gains. I don’t remember our exact conversation but once when I asked him, he said “Life is a long term game- you may think you are winning the quarterly result; but if you do not get it right your long term balance sheet will look ugly”.
PS: For all those who think I still have a bone to pick with them, remember I am still work in progress :). Dad was 50 + when he said this; I have some way to go to reach there.
(c ) Enjoy the simple moments: My dad was a stickler for our evening prayers and would often give us a stern look if we sounded distracted. You can only imagine my look of surprise when he one day stopped in the middle of prayers listening to the ice cream vendors cry and instructing me to go get ice cream. Well that was just Dad for you- stern as ever but spontaneous in his love.
I once asked him why did we have to go every vacation to Mangalore to meet our grandparents. Why could we not go see the Taj and other lovely places in India or overseas. While I suspect it could also have been limited resources, Dad would always say “When you grow up and fly across the world, I will come with you wherever you want so that we spend time together. Now, let us go and see my parents so that we spend time together”.
Love for learning, simple ambition, forgiveness and simplicity of life are the legacy of my Dad’s lessons to me. Dad was by no means perfect; but 48 years or not- he was an imperfect Dad in perfect love.
And in all these years, guess when was it that I missed him the most?
It was when I carried my daughter Annika the first time and I realized I was now “Dad”. Felt a heavy sense of responsibility but then thought of Dad and said “Hey, let life happen”
I now realize my feelings at 17 stemmed from an incomplete understanding of Daddy and maybe life itself. I am no longer unhappy that I lost him at 17. The Rajesh Khanna line from the movie Anand- where incidentally Rajesh Khanna dies from Cancer — has him saying “Babu moshai Zindagi lambi nahin badi honi chahyein”. Translated in English as “ Life should not be long, but should be big and impactful”
Miss you Daddy. Happy Fathers’ Day. | https://medium.com/@speakyourmind/the-story-of-being-dad-53ba2713bc90 | ["Savio Roshan D'Souza"] | 2021-06-20 07:03:38.766000+00:00 | ['Dads', 'Father And Son', 'Life', 'Life Lessons', 'Happy Fathers Day'] |
One Hundred Years Too Soon | Committed to nothingness —
my liberty became your muse,
shifting the goal posts
you watched me chase and adore you,
if I ever fall like that again —
it will be one hundred years too soon. | https://dabboh76.medium.com/one-hundred-years-too-soon-4ebd97a2ca7f | ['D Abboh'] | 2020-04-08 11:54:45.691000+00:00 | ['James Baldwin', 'Humanity', 'Relationships', 'Poetry', 'Liberty'] |
Practicing Devotion | Dear Readers and Writers
Congratulations on being positive. I know you are holding up alright. I am confident about that because I can see it in your writing. Give yourself a pat on the back.
I am also in a positive state of mind.
I am reading and watching Ramayan these days. Ramayan is a holy book of Hindus, but that’s not the point.
To me, Ramayan is not just a religious book; but a spiritual guide to living. I like the way it teaches us life lessons through its stories.
After I finished reading the first chapter, I made a promise to myself that I will adopt at least one of its teachings per day.
Today, I am practicing devotion.
Devotion does not necessarily imply one’s loyalty to God. It means to do, think, and feel everything in life with pure love and full attention.
I am practicing devotion in everything I am doing today, whether it is writing, reading, cooking, breathing, or taking care of my body.
I am practicing being loyal to myself.
This activity is not only fun, it also helps in grooming my ability to stay calm.
How about you? I hope you are also finding new ways of learning and having fun.
I am thankful to you for sending positive energy through your spiritual stories.
Keep floating in Tranquility.
Thank you 🙏
Simran Kankas
#Stay Blessed #Stay Healthy | https://medium.com/spiritual-tree/practicing-devotion-f70a49f0d43f | ['Simran Kankas'] | 2020-04-29 10:48:50.780000+00:00 | ['Mindfulness', 'Letters', 'Devotion', 'Self Improvement', 'Spirituality'] |
Why We Hate It When Authors Write Themselves Into Books We Love | Great writers are those who help us to view our world differently, challenge our ideas and our opinions. They enable us to appreciate things we never have before and to come up with novel ways of putting together old knowledge to form something completely new. Their description elicit images of what we haven’t seen before but now have the ability to imagine through the way the use language. They give us a blanket of familiarity in which to wrap ourselves as well as the chance to travel to far off places we may never have the chance to visit in real life but feel that we have after reading their work.
The best books cast a spell over us. They let us get lost in the world of suspended disbelief and invite us to forget that this world we’ve now become invested in and the characters we have grown attached to are all made up by the author. Being lost can sometimes feel so perfect. It holds the capability of choosing which world we want to be a part of while muting the one we really live in, even if only for a short while.
As I read a great book, I have the need to process everything. to think about and rework what I read. I personalize the way I view the characters which helps me empathize with them. I rework the details of the story’s narrative into something that makes sense to me when I express it to myself. The effect of a book that has touched me in someway continues long after I have closed it’s cover. It gives me something to contemplate and consider, something to examine or relate to during unpredictable moments.
Sometimes a wonderful book will give me the words to define something that I haven’t been able to before, things I had a sense of but couldn’t express either to myself or to others. At times I’ll find a passage in a book that helps me cope better with the realities of my life when I am forced to return to it after putting the volume down. The better a book is, the that more it will hold me in its grasp, making me late for just about everything else as I swear this it really the last chapter.
All of this becomes less likely and far harder to accomplish, however, when the writer takes the liberty of writing themselves into their novel. I think a big part of this is that we want to believe we came upon all of these discoveries ourselves. When an author inserts themselves into the story, it has a tendency to break the trance, preventing us from escaping our more stressful or mundane real life, and seems to suggest that there is no magic in the real world. Sometimes it can feel cruel.
When the author is there with us in the story and interacts with the characters directly, we can feel like all of our discoveries weren’t truly ours at all. We view everything we have come to know about what happens in the book as nothing more than the author’s construction, seeing whatever we feel we learned, as belonging to them. It seems as if it’s all just what they intended for us to see and to comprehend which they merely taught to us largely without our involvement. The author’s presence can detract from our ability to view a story from our own point of view based on our unique way of perceiving things.
Without the author’s presence we relate to what occurs in a novel based on our own perception. In part, this is dictated by what we choose to attend to which is influenced by our individual interests, attractions, history, background, experiences, relationships and beliefs about how the world works. We can’t perceive what we don’t take note of. The various elements of a novel will resonate differently for each of us and there may be some things certain people notice that others don’t, which has to do with what we find meaningful.
This is not to say we shouldn’t appreciate the craft of storytelling, the composition of a skillfully imparted plot, that is artfully paced and told through three dimensional characters. But the individual aspects we pay particular attention to, those which resonate with us which we use to create our version of the story within the author’s, are based on who we are not who they are.
In this way, we construct our own understanding of the book along with a host of other things that are off the page. This gives the novel added “legs,” such that it becomes increasingly relatable to us in terms of our lives, our dreams and fantasies, our successes and failures, our beliefs, our relationships and our general world view. The author has provided the framework for all of this to happen and by stepping away from their story, shows that they trust us to take it where we will. They share their work with us by letting the story become ours ours as well. One way they do this is by not looking over our shoulder, waiting to correct our course when we deviate from their intent or view of the stories meaning.
An author writes with a purpose in mind, and chooses to tell a specific story in a particular way through the stories characters, selected literary devices and techniques. In this way they are already in the tale even if not as an actual character. Like the reader, what the author imparts is determined by their own preferences, perceptions, world view, and understanding of how people interact. When they feel the need to take it a step farther, however, by jumping into the book themselves their influence can feel a bit too much for us.
We may even come to see this feigned transparency as a bluff which serves some sort of meta literary function for the author. So, along with resenting them for hijacking our perceptions, we may also feel annoyed by the sense that they aren’t even doing it honestly but only as a part of the technique they use to construct the prose.
When they fully place themselves there within the pages, it can feel heavy handed and even, at times, manipulative. When an author tears down the wall of illusion that stands between them and us, the sudden transparency can feel like when the curtain is pulled open exposing the wizard in the land of Oz with the same result. The magic needed to fully transport us somewhere else, disappears.
This leaves us with a novel which though perhaps brilliantly written from a technique standpoint, lacks the power of transformation. This power is generated through our effort to uncover the meaning of the story and the characters through which it unfolds such that we come to our own understanding of the work in a way that is individually meaningful to us. To do this, we must be left to our own devices, without the author holding our hand by traveling into the novel with us. | https://nataliefrank.medium.com/why-we-hate-it-when-authors-write-themselves-into-books-we-love-d94acd5971fa | ['Natalie Frank'] | 2019-01-16 19:11:21.129000+00:00 | ['Novel', 'Fiction', 'Fiction Writing', 'Writing', 'Reading'] |
Poetry Is Therapeutic | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/flicker-and-flight/poetry-is-therapeutic-72b517e617bc | ['Terry Mansfield'] | 2020-12-20 01:07:43.261000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Humor', 'Therapy', 'Poetry', 'Self'] |
Happy birthday little Felix! | One year ago today, our little Feisty Felix graced the world with his presence. To be Felix’s mom is the greatest joy, fear, frustration, laughter, pain, and surprise I could have ever expected, but I would not trade any of this.
I’ve struggled with what to write today. How do I possibly sum up the most life-changing year? And how can I explain all the little things that were actually huge things for Felix to accomplish without delving deep into the hardships of NICU and post-NICU life? Because after all, today is a happy day — the happiest of days. One year ago today, I got a second chance at life and my little boy lived.
The week before Felix was born was the scariest time. I didn’t know if he would make it and if he did make it, I had no idea what challenges we would face. I remember getting my last ultrasound just a few days before he was born, and crying bitter tears in my car because it was the first time I realized how much I loved that little thing and how much I wanted him to survive.
For those that know me well, you’ll know that I’ve wanted to be a mom forever. Even as a little girl, my favorite games to play were mommy and baby. I waited 33 years, getting all my ducks in a row, and partaking in so many adventures so that when my time to be a mom did arrive, I could fully enjoy it with zero regrets. And I’m so glad I did because I never had to make the difficult choice of being there with my son or having to provide for my family — I could do both and I continue to do so, enjoying my time at home with my baby and simultaneously working in an amazing job.
The first time I saw Felix, the day after he was born, I knew I would go to the ends of the earth for him. I remember seeing those delicate little fingers and toes and thinking what a miracle he was. Then the nurse lifted his hat over that little face, and he took my breath away. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but he was beautiful. He had this perfect little nose and lips, and a little pointy chin. He looked like a little genie. I could have stared at him forever.
The NICU staff was incredible. They took amazing care of my little baby and for that, I will always be grateful. He would not be here if not for them. We nearly lost him several times, and their quick actions saved him again and again. I won’t go into details and perhaps save these types of stories for another day, but needless to say, that to have made it this far is a true miracle.
In the NICU, sometimes it’s hard to feel like a parent. I had major imposter syndrome for a long time, because he was too fragile to hold, to comfort, to change, or to feed. And so, in many ways I felt like I wasn’t a true mother just yet. We celebrated all the normal firsts, but sometimes it was the tiny accomplishments that were treasured above all else because they helped us become Felix’s parents.
The first time a nurse let me change his diaper was a true milestone. I was scared, trying not to hurt that fragile soft skin and so I ever so lightly dabbed him with a soft cloth. It took about 5 minutes to change that one diaper, even when Felix barely moved because I was terrified of hurting him. At the time, I hadn’t held Felix yet and so that one moment helped my imposter syndrome subside a bit.
The first hold was the first moment I truly felt like a mom and it continues to be one of my most cherished memories, especially because it almost didn’t happen at all. In those first two weeks of life, Felix’s oxygen needs steadily increased. Finally, one day we found out that Felix had reached the maximum level of support they had available in the NICU. If his oxygen levels dropped or he stopped breathing, there was nothing they could do for him. Our only hope was to give him steroids. There was a decent chance they wouldn’t work and even if they did, there could be long term side effects. It was a horrible situation, but we had no choice.
The steroids worked. And the progress was almost instantaneous. Only two days after we thought we would lose our little boy, Felix was well enough that I was able to hold him. My world literally shook that day as an earthquake rocked the East Bay. I held him steadily against my chest, his breathing rate slowed down, and his oxygen saturation remained stable. It was a small miracle, as most babies that fragile couldn’t tolerate being held. But Felix was and continues to be happiest with his parents.
There are so many other milestones from the NICU that I could talk about: the first decorations we placed in his room to try to provide a sense of home, the first time he got to wear clothes — nearly two months after he was born — because it meant he could finally hold his temperature stable and could sleep with an open incubator, the first time we heard him cry a few weeks after birth was heartbreaking as his voice was a little hoarse from being intubated but it also meant his lungs were healing enough that he could breathe using a CPAP machine, every time he moved to a new and lower oxygen setting was one step closer to home, when we moved to the back rooms of the NICU — where only the babies that don’t need one-on-one care can reside, his first bottle, and of course when we could finally take him home — 5 months after he was born.
It’s been nearly seven months since Felix came home and although cold/ flu/ RSV and now COVID have kept us mostly home-bound, it’s been such an incredible opportunity to spend this time together as a family of three after spending so much time apart. There’s so much I love about Felix, but here are just a few things.
His first true smile was the day we took him home. I think he must have sensed something exciting was happening. We had gotten tiny little mouth quirks previously, but the day we took him home, he graced us with a big, unmistakably happy smile. His smiles have only continued to get better. He often graces us with giant, open-mouthed grins and little gurgly giggles, coos, and sometimes even deep belly laughs. Making Felix smile is the best feeling in the world.
I love how much Felix shows us that he cares. The way he looked at and continues to look at Bryan is just amazing. This little boy loved his daddy even when he was a tiny little thing, and why wouldn’t he? Bryan adores him and makes him laugh like nobody else. When Felix was in the NICU, sometimes he would cry inconsolably during a diaper change, after getting blood drawn, or if he was scared. Yet, he would immediately stop crying the moment I picked him up. I remember this one time, a doctor was examining him and he worked himself up. I picked him up and immediately stopped the crying. The doctor was amazed and said to me: wow, you can really tell Felix loves his mom. To this day, Felix still loves being held and he enthusiastically reciprocates, nuzzling his head against our chests, and wrapping his little arms around our shoulders. Lately, I’ve loved when he reaches out for me to pick him up or when he gives us little open-mouthed kisses. I don’t think that will ever get old.
I love how brave, stubborn, and adventurous he is. This kid is a little explorer and loves figuring out how things work. He willingly reaches out his little hand to touch new things, whether they are leaves on trees, our dogs, bubbles, the messiest food, water out of the faucet, or my hair! Recently, he learned that when he opens his hands when we make him “clap” he can make sounds. His little face lights up in a joyous smile. When he first came home, he figured out that if he kicked the walls of his bassinet, he could make the animals on his mobile jiggle. He loved falling asleep watching them shake. To this day, he usually lulls himself to sleep by kicking at his mattress. I think the best example though is when Felix was born. He was a tiny, 12 inch, 1lb 6 oz little baby boy. His lungs weren’t fully developed, and yet he cried. He wasn’t even supposed to breathe and doctors warned us he would likely need to be resuscitated — if he survived the birth, but he came into the world with a triumphant shout, and gosh darn it, he would breathe! The doctors gave him some oxygen and he managed to breathe on his own for two hours!! Although he quickly tired out and had to be intubated, he could breathe and he continues to defy expectations to this day.
I love how patient he is. I still pump six times a day to provide milk for Felix. Although Bryan tries to watch Felix while I pump, sometimes a meeting comes up or Felix wakes up from a nap. Oftentimes, he just lays there silently cooing to himself while playing with hands or feet, and waits for me to finish. I’ve never met a baby like him before. We’ve often been complimented for how patiently he waits while we’re at the doctor’s office instead of screaming for us to go. He is truly one-of-a-kind.
And I love all the other little and big moments we’ve shared over the past year, including: the first time he met his extended family including grandparents and aunt/ uncles, the first time we could see his entire face after taking off his oxygen cannula, his first two teeth that have made his smiles all the cuter, his first time in a pool, his first walk among the redwoods, our first walk at the park when he saw geese and a giant lake for the first time, the first time he went on a front-facing harness walk and stared mesmerized at the trees moving in the wind, singing songs to him while he smiles at us, when he sat up for the first time, the first time he opened his eyes, the first giggle, when he first said mam in the middle of the night — calling out for me to help him, when he discovered the joy of peek-a-boo, when he tried watermelon for the first time, nightly bath time, reading books while he helps us turn the pages, rolling the ball back and forth, sitting outside in the warm breeze, the day he discovered his feet, the day he became brave enough to try to pet Riley and Kiwi, when he learned to bounce while standing, every time he rides on Bryan’s shoulders, and so many more.
This year has been so incredible and we are so lucky to have spent it with Felix. While we still have a few hurdles to overcome, I know we can do it together and my hope is that the next year can bring us many more smiles, adventures, and milestones, and much less anxiety and tears. Happy birthday little Felix! Here’s to many, many more. | https://medium.com/@silviacsb/happy-birthday-little-felix-9f450a3d5324 | ['Silvia B'] | 2020-07-03 19:11:46.280000+00:00 | ['Moms', 'Babies And Young Children', 'Nicu'] |
Content Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Business [Infographic] | Infographic
Creating content that people like and want to engage with is very important for your content marketing strategy. Attention! content is far more than just blog posts, articles, and press releases.
Here are some effective content marketing strategies you need to know.
Create Infographics: You can use statics and graphs to create an easy-to-understand visual presentation. Infographics are much more effective than long, boring, articles. People love visual marketing!
SlideShare: You can re-purpose your PowerPoint presentation more engagingly. SlideShare is a very popular website. Many people visit it every day to find free information.
Create an eBook: If you’re a blogger, you have a ton of content. Re-purpose what you have and create a guide or an interesting eBook that you can attract more interested people and visitors.
Polls: You can ask a target group of people (target audience) some questions and report your findings on your blog and share it on social media.
Memes: This is a great way to have fun and to attract more people. Stats show that people love memes.
Offer Free Trials: People love to test products risk-free. Also, is a very effective way to attract more customers. If your product meets their needs and has a large impact on them, you will get more sales and profits! Awesome Tip!
Webinars: This is a great way to teach a topic, or give a detailed inside look at your product or service. This is a great way to produce business leads.
Use Free Beginners Guide: Beginners’ guides are a great piece of content that has very high engagement rates. It also makes the reader feel like an insider. It’s a great opportunity to promote your business for free.
Create an Online Magazine: Producing your virtual magazine is a great form of content marketing. It’s a different but effective way to promote your business. An online magazine can attract more new customers.
Use a Podcast: This form of content is very popular. All you need is quality content, a format plan, and a mic. Attention! Don’t copy what everyone else is doing. Think about what your audience wants to hear and learn about.
Create Videos: People and search engines loves video. Don’t forget that YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world. Video is also great for educational content. You can turn your blog content into effective videos.
Learn from the Masters: Look at the leaders in your industry and learn what marketing strategies they are using. Attention! Don’t copy them, but use it as a guideline.
Use Quizzes and Calculators: People love quizzes or using an online calculator to figure out how much money they will save. There are many free online tools to create quizzes or calculators.
Take Action Now!
As you know you can use many content marketing strategies to grow your reach and your business. Also, most of them are free or low-cost. So you need to take action now!
If you want to create a successful business you need to work hard every day! No Work No Business! | https://medium.com/@johntsantalis/content-marketing-strategies-to-grow-your-business-infographic-7360b904d41c | ['John Tsantalis'] | 2020-10-16 03:07:26.737000+00:00 | ['Content Marketing', 'Infographics', 'Success', 'Business', 'Growth'] |
SEO Rankings in Google in 2021 | Although the results of these changes vary, the algorithm adjustment reflects an overall shift in management that is traveling in SEO. Whichever industry you are in, you should pay attention to whether you want to continue achieving high rankings for your website and when these changes occur.
All valuable information is provided by the best SEO services company in Agra
Let us look at some of the major ways to improve your SEO ranking in Google in 2020.
1. High-quality material
Google was smart in its calculations because the search engine was the first to launch. In fact, all the information he has given is to write great content ‘.
However, with the growth of machine learning, Google can claim some success by reliably analyzing the deeper, more semantic value of some content. Progressively, the calculation is designed to assess content based on an individual’s ability to fulfill the precise intent of the trip. To debunk jargon, this also means that keyword targeting is becoming increasingly less important, favoring articles that actually simplify problems and answer questions.
In producing high-quality articles, it is possible to dramatically improve your site ranking. This is because high-quality content increases the odds of users spending long hours on their own pages. Additionally, it reduces the bounce rate on your site and — most importantly — provides value for the consumer. In supplying value to your audience, you will increase your chances of visiting your website again and again.
To create high-quality articles, you need to pay attention to the following:
1. Long-form in-depth articles
2. Search intent
3. Keyword research
4. Rich snippets
5. Long-form articles
6. Long-form posts
Google algorithms now favor longer-form content than shorter counterparts — concluding that the extra length means the bit is more likely to have more detailed, quality responses.
This does not mean that you should start writing additional paragraphs just to advance the word count. If the content is well worth the length, and the information is sufficiently complex, detailed, and wide enough to warp the width — then readers will probably stay.
Search aim
Search intent identifies the highest goal of a person working with search engines. Over the years, Google has been better at deciding the intent of individuals searching online. Google ranks the page higher if they fit the search phrase other than the search intent of a particular search query. Because of this, it is certain that the content of your page matches the search intent of your intended audience.
Keyword research
Most classic search engine optimization strategies are based around keyword placement; Exactly what keywords to use, which mixes, where to place them, and with what frequency. Previously, however, it contributed content that was loaded with search phrases that are not relevant to the content or consumer. Nowadays, fulfilling the intent of a search phrase is just as important, if not more so, than such a search phrase itself.
This doesn’t mean that each one of your keyword strategies is now meaningless. But keywords for keywords won’t do much for your search engine optimization plan — especially if they haven’t found anything, specifically, to do with surrounding sentences or posts. Usually, if keywords appear naturally in your text, you will end up ticking these boxes without actually trying.
The snippet may be a result that Google shows the user in search results. A rich snippet is an expression used to refer to a structured data mark-up that site operators can extend to their existing HTML, resulting in allowing search engines to better understand the information included on each web page Huh.
Rich snippets can also increase your flat-rate speed and reduce your bounce rate, as they provide users with a better preview of your content before clicking.
2. Superb on-page optimization
Ensuring excellent on-page optimization is an essential part of improving your SEO ranking. To achieve this, you will need to consider:
Title tag and meta description
Heading and subheading
Arrangement of internal and external links
Schema mark-up
Voice optimized SEO
Title tag and meta description
Title tag and meta description
A name tag is an HTML element that defines the title of a webpage. Title tags are displayed as clickable titles on program result pages. These are important for social sharing, usability, and SEO. The title tag of your webpage should be an accurate description of the content found in it. Your name tag is very important for local SEO because it determines the name of your screen in search engines. This is also the first thing a visitor sees.
The search engine shows meta descriptions in search results mostly when the search-for term is within the description, so it should match the articles and include the keywords in your focus.
Headings and subheadings
Heading and subheading are important for SEO because they help users and search engines understand and read the text. They act as signposts for readers and make it easier for people to understand what a web page is about.
Internal and external connection construction
Internal links are links that direct the reader to the target page on your website. On the other hand, external hyperlinks are links on various websites.
Internal hyperlinks link to your content and give Google a better idea of the structure of your website, while external links to useful and reliable content make it possible to build an authoritative brand (and help Google find it Is what your content is).
Schema mark-up
Schema is the mark-up code you can put on your website to help search engines identify important information on every page. This is excellent for SEO posts as it enhances the user experience and makes it easier to find your content.
Voice optimized SEO
In the early days of Amazon Alexa and Microsoft Cortana, the search engine optimization world focused on the possibility of a voice optimized SEO content. So far, it has started slow. All of this began to change at the end of 2018, with Google’s speakable mark, and it is only set to be of greater importance in the coming years.
The lowly mark-up lets you mark sections of your articles that will be a relevant verbal response to a voice search. Consider voice feedback as an award, and mark-up is also the tool you use to nominate your personal content. From that point on, Google’s algorithms will analyze the content and select the most relevant contender. There is every possibility that as 2020 progresses, it may expand to more types of content; In particular, those who answer fast and simple questions in a digestible format.
3. Create a secure Site
One simple step you can take to increase your search engine optimization ranking is simply by switching from HTTP to HTTPS. Since 2017, Google has secured websites’ if they are not under HTTPS. HTTPS provides users with 3 major layers of security:
Authentication — which prevents a man in between attacks and guarantees that a user is communicating using the exact website they had planned.
Encryption — which provides privacy by assessing exchanged data, in turn ensuring that the negotiation will be kept private and the data will be protected.
Data Integrity — which prevents the information from being secretly altered or corrupted during the transfer.
If someone visits your site and receives an alert from Google that the page is not protected, you can guess that they won’t be moving around to check their content. What’s more, Google has publicly stated that the security of sites is a rank signal in the search algorithm, so having an HTTPS page can help you detect higher rankings on search engines as well.
With Google in favor of winning and improving your website SEO conditions — creating a secure website will also help reduce your bounce rate — as visitors are more likely to stay when the site is declared protected. The bounce speed, for all intents and purposes, is the percentage of users who land on your site and leave without visiting another page. A high bounce rate, then, indicates that your site failed to convince visitors to view and explore your article or offerings. According to a study by Rocket Fuel, the bounce rate between Ararat is ideal.
Now, to extend the typical time spent on your site, monitor your content and see what works best. It is possible that your title or call to action is not working — this is why it is important that you do A / B testing. To work best together with your audience, attempt to create different landing pages, using different content forms and language. It is worth noting that large images can certainly slow down the load time of your website — so that you should watch out for it and delete any files in the host that are not being used. Ideally, your site should load within 1–3 minutes.
4. Build a Site that works well on mobile phone
People now socialize with Google on a good assortment of platforms. The search giant cannot tailor all search results to people with only computer keyboards and computer screens.
Content written for desktop displays does not look exactly the same on mobile or tablet devices. For logical reasons, there is usually less space on the mobile version of a webpage than on the original desktop.
Very recent discourse on cellular SEO optimization suggests that because more mobile searches are being created than ever, publishers should evaluate them. While this is true, it misses the nuance.
It was once the case that website-optimized content would rank better on all devices, regardless of how friendly it was to mobiles. It is currently the case that mobile-optimized content ranks better on all devices, regardless of how friendly it is to sites.
Without realizing this, organizations receiving proportionately less mobile traffic can happily convince themselves that they don’t have to fret about cellular optimization. However, the success of your cellular ranking affects your internet ranking — even in the event that you have hardly any cellular views on your own website.
B2B sites are among those that receive less mobile traffic, as people take these websites to work on the desktop. It is understandable that B2B sites were not in a hurry of cellular optimization trends like other sites. But, it is not more important how many visitors to your website are on cellular. Google has decided that mobile optimization is the way forward, and web development in Agra that want to stay ahead of the rankings will need to make sure they pay attention to the changes.
From now on, Google will place what it does in the index based on the mobile version of your website. You do not need to get a mobile site for mobile-indexing, but if your website is not mobile-friendly, you will find it difficult to rank it. To find out how you score, you are able to make a mobile-friendly assessment of Google.
When adopting or designing your site, keep the word mobile-first in mind. Test your site on a mobile device to test the layout, is responsive, clear, and simple to navigate on small screens. Be sure to keep your eye on load time as well, as this will definitely affect your SEO ranking.
5. Enhance user experience and site architecture
Google has always said that their first priority will be consumers, and content that meets their needs will always execute the best. Despite their intentions, this has not always been the case — and it has taken years to reach the point at which algorithms are intelligent enough to properly subtract very good content to get a user’s search query.
When it is optimizing content in a voice and mobile searches, or selecting broad content that meets the deeper, more semantic needs of searches, changes to the Google algorithm all produce this enhanced user experience. Are capable of.
A great way to enhance the user experience and increase your search engine optimization ranking is to help users know what they are looking for intuitively. You can achieve this by ensuring that your site has good navigation and architecture. After all, the more attractive a website is to your customers — the more attractive it will be to search engines.
To improve site design, it is necessary that your site’s hierarchy is logical. Navigation and structure should make it easy for visitors to get the information they are looking for. Information should be easily available and the design of this website itself should be easy. Complex structures and obscure signposting can turn people off and click them from your page.
Does strong website design keep people on your site longer, but it will also help search engine crawlers to locate more pages on a website. Ideally, the user should have the ability to come to any page on your website within three or four clicks. | https://medium.com/@shivaweb/seo-rankings-in-google-in-2021-330067eb1c26 | [] | 2020-12-25 06:57:53.244000+00:00 | ['Web', 'Web Development', 'Website', 'Web Design', 'App Development'] |
Make You Grow With Leadership Podcasts | In this article, we’ll share the top leadership podcasts to inspire you, make you grow your career and personal life while learning. Podcasts continue to grow in popularity as a convenient way to stay on top of all kinds of topics. As a result, the field is becoming steadily more crowded. In a recent check of iTunes showed more than 100 podcasts with the word leadership in their title. Some are focused on special interests like sales, religion, or the issues faced by women in leadership. But there are some that stand out from the rest. Here are a dozen of the best:
Dose of Leadership
The dose of leadership has interviews with leaders from all areas of life including military, business, and even faith-based leaders. The show aims to teach leaders and aspiring leaders how to develop themselves and the organization they lead.
Leadership Podcasts To Inspire: HBR IdeaCast
The Harvard Business Review (HBR) is a magazine produced by a subsidiary of the university. It’s a renowned publication that comes out six times a year, and it covers all sorts of topics including management, strategy, finance, and more.
IdeaCast is one of several podcasts that fall under the HBR umbrella. Its focus is on interviewing leaders in business, and each episode takes a deep dive into a different aspect of what makes the current guest a success.
Whereas other leadership podcasts tend to put all the focus on interviewing their guests. IdeaCast leans more towards tackling broader concepts. It has episodes on everything from rethinking poverty to improving meetings in the workplace. Each only lasts around 30 minutes, which means it’s fairly easy to stay up to date with the latest releases.
Leadership and Loyalty
In this show, Baron seeks to inspire leaders to lead purposeful lives for holistic excellence. He hosts leaders from various spheres of life to discuss the leadership model that promotes loyalty in leaders and their followers.
Leadership Podcasts To Inspire: Behind the Brilliance
Lisa Nicole Bell describes herself as an entrepreneur, artist, and lover of snacks. When she’s not trying out fruity treats, she’s interviewing other innovators and creatives on Behind the Brilliance.
Although Bell’s roster of guests isn’t as impressive as, say, Ferriss’, that sometimes adds to the value of the podcast. Her episodes that feature writers tend to be particularly interesting. When she’s not conducting interviews, she answers listeners’ questions during in-depth solo recordings.
Finally, few business or leadership podcasts offer better representation for people of all walks of life. So, not just celebrities or CEOs.
Women’s Leadership Podcast
Sabrina Braham podcast’s prime target is women but anyone can benefit from the tips. It discusses ways you can achieve success and become a leader in your niche by living to your potential.
The Tim Ferriss Show
The Tim Ferriss Show is one of the most popular business podcasts in the world. Moreover, it’s easy to see (or hear) why. For each episode, Ferriss interviews a guest who’s at the top of their field. In addition, breaks down the tactics and routines they’ve used to climb there.
Some of the shows’ past guests include world-renowned figures such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, LeBron James. Peter Thiel. Malcolm Gladwell, Bob Iger, and many more. Ferriss pulls from every field for his guests and in the course of an hour and a half. Moreover, dives deep into what drives each of them to excellence.
In between long-form interviews, Ferriss also releases shorter pieces on the books he’s been reading lately. His taste in literature is eclectic, so those episodes may also be worth your time.
Final Words
We trust you enjoyed our list of leadership and management podcasts. A huge thank you to all the above hosts for the work they do to bring us this great information.
No matter what you listen to or read (don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter, below!), make lifelong learning a habit to continue to expand your knowledge, build further skills, and never let your brain end up with cobwebs. | https://medium.com/visualmodo/make-you-grow-with-leadership-podcasts-3705267cb4d0 | [] | 2020-03-11 03:15:04.545000+00:00 | ['Leadership', 'Podcast', 'Leadership Development', 'Leadership Skills'] |
Smart Contracts vs. Application-Specific Blockchains | Besides the addition and subtraction of numbers on a distributed ledger (i.e. cryptocurrencies), blockchains hold the power to provide most — if not all — of the services that centralized computing can provide. Thus, as the community of builders continues to grow, we have seen the very beginning of not only decentralized money, but also decentralized file storage, computing services, financial services, real-life asset ownership records, supply-chain management, personal identity, energy distribution, health records, governance, and more.
Critical for the success of decentralized applications (dApps), however, is the ability for developers to efficiently control the input and output of the data being decentralized. To date, there have been a limited number of options available for developers to accomplish this, but at least two new blockchain projects I’m aware of are working on a fundamentally different approach. Below, I’ll briefly describe the ongoing evolution dApp development options and explain why application-specific blockchains hold tremendous promise for the future of the industry.
Smart Contracts
Fundamentally, it is important to understand that blockchains are run by machines that essentially do three things: networking, consensus, and state management.
These machines must run application-layer software that is responsible for updating state. In the case of blockchains like Ethereum, a turing-complete(ish) virtual machine is the application layer. (For those unfamiliar, the software programs that developers deploy onto blockchain virtual machines are often called Smart Contracts.)
And therefore, to date, for the vast majority of developers out there trying to build decentralized applications, the main option has been a one-size-fits-all application layer (i.e. the Ethereum Virtual Machine, EVM), which runs on a network of computers that produce blocks only every 15 seconds or so. Not only is this painfully slow for many applications (especially given the delayed finality of state), but because of the broad-sweeping and complex nature of the EVM, it is devastatingly easy to introduce bugs (the DAO bug, the Parity bugs, etc..).
From this perspective, then, it’s not surprising that the value of pretty much every cryptocurrency on the planet has taken a ~80–90% drop this year; the hype and speculation has been way out ahead of the technology promising to give us all sorts of decentralized applications with mainstream adoption.
How do we fix this?
Many are trying.
The main approach teams are taking is to tweak, streamline, and/or simplify a blockchain’s virtual machine and governance policies to make it less maddening to develop and update reliable applications (indeed, developer adoption will be a critical metric — if not the critical metric — to watch for in 2019).
A few representative examples from among the 40+ teams working on this include Tezos, Dfinity, and Hedera Hashgraph.
Tezos is introducing a new programming language called Michelson (a low-level, stack-based, strongly/statically typed, and purely functional language) that is interpreted directly by the Tezos VM and allows for formal verification of the mathematical correctness of smart contracts. Michelson also has high-level features like maps, sets, lists, cryptographic primitives, and arbitrary precision integers. Designed to be more “correct” than EVM’s efficient and broad-sweeping design, the idea here is that Michelson will be significantly less error-prone than Solidity, and it will be able to handle the lightweight transaction logic needed for most on-chain smart contracts (leaving the more heavy computations to be done off-chain). Importantly, Tezos is implementing a flexible on-chain governance system to make upgrades to the protocol as needed.
Dfinity on the other hand, self-described as “Ethereum’s crazy sister”, is attempting to double-down on the Ethereum approach and create an insanely efficient/performant world computer that has its own AI-powered “Blockchain Nervous System” that can upgrade the protocol on the fly. Dfinity’s VM will be compatible with the EVM (still using Solidity as its main high-level language), and the vision is for there to be millions of computers available in the network to facilitate the building of decentralized versions of AWS, Google, Facebook, etc…
And as a final example, Hedera Hashgraph is taking a totally different approach to Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) by not technically being a blockchain. Instead, Hedera is a DAG (Direct Acyclic Graph) that allows developers to use a Java SDK to build applications in concert with file storage and Solidity-based smart contracts, if needed. Hedera’s aim is to allow developers the flexibility and speed needed to create nano-transaction-based applications (e.g. fair and reliable pay to publishers, reduced-spam email, etc…)
Application-specific blockchains
While there are no lack of teams making tweaks to smart contract VM nuances, supporting developer architecture, and/or governance, there are at least two teams — the Cosmos Network and Polkadot — that are offering developers a fundamentally different way to create decentralized applications.
The Cosmos Network has proposed the use of Application-Specific Blockchains, which offer developers the ability to build out the exact application layer needed to update state, while also providing customizable software for networking and consensus (i.e. Tendermint). As you can imagine, rather than working in a one-size-fits-all VM and governance environment, with the Cosmos SDK developers can pick and choose available npm-like modules (or of course build their own) that include features like staking, slashing, tokens, accounts, inter-blockchain communication, governance, etc…
Similarly, Polkadot allows developers to create parachains, which are analogous to Cosmos’ zones, where application-specific blockchains can be built. Thus, Cosmos has zones that connect to hubs, and Polkadot has parachains that connect to relay chains.
An important difference to note here is that Polkadot’s infrastructure will provide shared security (i.e. a common set a block validators) right out of the gate by design, whereas Cosmos will be requiring developers to initially recruit their own validators from scratch. The benefit for those building on Cosmos via this approach is even more sovereignty over performance (e.g. someone else’s app can’t slow or take down the network), but this comes at the expense of needing to rally validators to participate. (That being said, the Cosmos Network is also planning to support shared security shortly after its mainnet launches, so there will be both options for developers, as needed.)
Which are more promising, new smart contract platforms or application-specific blockchains?
Like most things in crypto, the answer is that it depends and we’ll have to wait to see how the technology develops. There will likely be many applications where slow finality and a generic VM will be acceptable, whereas other applications will require a highly-tuned VM and governance environment for specific use cases.
In fact, considering the overall ecosystem, we can think of projects such as Dfinity and Hedera Hashgraph as creating blockchains that will be highly optimized for specific types of applications (e.g. a decentralized AWS, a decentralized Visa network, etc…). Polkadot and the Cosmos Network are certainly noteworthy because if such blockchains offering various forms of VMs aren’t suitable, developers can build their own blockchains without having to fork an existing chain and do the additional heavy lifting of maintaining networking and consensus software.
Thus as developers who are building decentralized applications consider all the parameters that their network will require (speed, scalability, security, governance, identity, payments, etc…), there will almost certainly be a wide range of underlying technology options available.
Personally, I’m extremely bullish on the approach of building a custom application layer leveraging your own code and open source modules (similar to how web/mobile apps are built today), where — to start — you can leverage shared security until your application warrants it’s own validator set for additional sovereignty and security.
Moreover, both Cosmos and Polkadot are planning build and deploy a zone/parachain ASAP that supports the EVM (e.g. see Ethermint). This will allow existing applications that require faster transaction speeds to port over their underlying infrastructure, and it will give the multitude of developers learning Solidity today an initial place to land.
Then, I suspect we’ll quickly see an increasing number of teams try out both the tuned-VMs on newer chains and application-specific blockchains on Cosmos, Polkadot, and any other networks that leverage this approach.
Is the blockchain community overly fractionalized?
As a final thought, it’s important to note that the number of teams out there who have the DevOps/OpSec chops to run performant and secure nodes is limited (maybe a couple hundred teams, at best?). These teams, some of whom I’ve written about previously, are currently split amongst many competing blockchains, which is undoubtedly slowing overall progress of the blockchain/DLT industry.
However, this is not the first time we’ve seen this; open source software development has already proven to be extremely powerful over time.
Consider the unix/linux world, for example. The “fractionalized” development of Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian, Fedora, etc.. (and even MacOS, Android, etc…) still collectively produced the dominant operating systems that run our computers today.
I’m certainly not alone in believing, optimistically, that we’ll see the blockchain space develop in a similar fashion.
—
Author’s note: Thanks in advance for any suggestions/corrections for this article; I very much welcome feedback. Feel free to subscribe to my personal newsletter where, in addition to crypto, I also write occasionally about health science and startup life. Special thanks to Andy, Tony, and Lorien for review and insightful conversations about the above article. And finally, before you leave, please feel free to comment below (or inline above), hit the clap button, and/or share this article with a friend. Let’s keep the conversation going. Thanks! | https://medium.com/figment/smart-contracts-vs-application-specific-blockchains-27e96a753226 | ['Will Little'] | 2018-12-14 16:01:13.858000+00:00 | ['Smart Contracts', 'Blockchain', 'Polkadot Network', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Cosmos Network'] |
3 compelling Japanese concept for personal development | The experience of personal growth is a fantastic feeling. Overcoming obstacles you never expected you would learn different skills, find out new sides about yourself and gain insights. Below you will learn about three Japanese concept you can apply while working on personal growth that will not add stress and help you develop in your own pace towards your goals.
Kaizen
Instead of pursuing for a massive change at once, aim making a minor one daily under a long time. Kaizen means continuous improvement, but if you’re to improve by 1% this will make a huge change. During the long run, you will have less stress but still continue towards your goal. Say you wish to develop a new habit, doing so gradually will have a greater success rate than starting out with too much at once. Imagine how much you can improve if you just try to do 1% better than yesterday each day.
Oubaitori
It’s not a secret that we feel worse by comparing ourselves to others. But we still do. The Japanese concept Oubaitori means that we should not compare ourselves. People who spend too much time on social media platforms feel worse than those who spent the time on alternative activities. Social media cause stress, anxious, low self-esteem and loneliness. Same goes if we compare our achievements to others, where we feel less happy what we achieved in relationship to others. Instead, focus on what you want to change and measure your progress.
Ikigai
Ikigai is the meaning of life, what motives you and get you excited. This gives you inner strength energy and brings satisfaction. Ikigai motivates you, keeping a strong Ikigai will fuel and help to continue on personal development. This is great as a charged battery, so you can feel you have the resources you need to take the steps needed.
Conclusion
Combining the tree Japanese concept of Kaizen, Obaitori and Ikigai can help you on your way towards your personal goals. First, strive for small changes during a long time will help you succeed better than making to big change at once. Second, make sure to focus on your own results and don’t compare yourself to others. Third, find your ikigai, your purpose, will help you keep your fire to keep going. | https://medium.com/@swecreatives/3-compelling-japanese-concept-for-personal-development-b87de9d98e2f | [] | 2020-03-18 12:24:41.226000+00:00 | ['Personal Development', 'Personal Growth', 'Mindset', 'Concept', 'Japanese'] |
Tropical Depression Eta is moving toward Cuba after leaving at least 100 people dead in Central America | At least 100 people are dead and thousands have been evacuated after Tropical Depression Eta slammed into Central America, flooding homes and bringing devastating landslides.
The storm has re-entered the Caribbean Sea and is forecast to pass over Cuba Saturday night into Sunday morning and then head toward the Florida Keys or south Florida late Sunday, according to the National Hurricane Center.
The storm currently has winds of 35 mph but is forecast to become a tropical storm again Friday evening, with further strengthening likely through early Sunday, the hurricane center said.
Tropical storm watches were issued for south Florida from Jupiter Inlet southward on the east coast and from Bonita Beach southward on the west coast, as well as the Florida Keys. The government of the Bahamas issued a tropical storm watch for the northwestern Bahamas, including the Abacos, Andros Island, Berry Islands, Bimini, Eleuthera, Grand Bahama Island and New Providence.
Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez declared a state of emergency Friday as the county monitors the storm’s track.
https://hdfs.msu.edu/sites/default/files/2020-11/mobios-pod-among-us-impostor-pinup23.pdf
https://hdfs.msu.edu/sites/default/files/2020-11/mobios-pod-among-us-impostor-pinup23.pdf
https://www.posts123.com/post/845588/sdaghhstdjhrtgsdg
http://www.raptorfind.com/link/799083/https-hdfs-msu-edu-sites-default-files-2020-11-mobios-pod-among-us-impostor-pinup23-pdf
https://pastelink.net/27him
https://dcm.shivtr.com/forum_threads/3267410
https://friendpaste.com/6J53OIe31tYBhjiTJitXT2
https://www.mydigoo.com/forums-topicdetail-193929.html
https://paiza.io/projects/kq_FmLEd-8tkqYcLM6V5iw?language=php
The Miami-Dade area may experience heavy rain and gusty winds through the weekend, according to a county government news release. Rainfall amounts between Friday and Monday are expected to range between 6 and 10 inches.
“We are looking at experiencing heavy rainfall through Monday and possible tropical storm force winds beginning Sunday,” Gimenez said.
In the Guatemalan village of Quejá, landslides and flooding caused by the storm left at least 100 people dead and more than 150 homes buried, Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei said Friday.
The scenes out of the country are heartbreaking. People leaving their flooded homes, walking to safety in waist deep water, some carrying the few belongings they were able to save. In Puerto Barrios, a man was seen carrying a dog to safety in the floodwaters, while others were sitting on higher ground outside their flooded homes.
“This morning we counted four deaths; That figure has now risen to over 50 deaths due to the mudslides happening in the area of Huehuetenango and San Cristóbal,” Giammattei said.
The catastrophic rainfall caused deadly mudslides, leaving at least 25 homes buried in the central area of San Cristóbal, with approximately 50 people inside, according to Giammattei.
Rescue crews are on their way to the area on foot because access is severely hampered as roads have been destroyed by the severe rains, the President said.
More than 33,000 people have been impacted by the landslides and floods so far. At least 1,800 people have been evacuated and 400 are in shelters, according to official data.
Eta on its way to Cuba and Florida
But Tropical Depression Eta is not done yet.
It’s expected to strengthen back into a tropical storm by Friday night, as it heads northeast toward Cuba.
It is currently forecast to pass over Cuba on Saturday night into Sunday morning before turning back to the northwest and entering the Gulf of Mexico early next week, according to CNN meteorologist Robert Shackelford.
The storm is expected to bring tropical storm-force winds, surf and heavy rainfall.
A tropical storm warning is in effect for the Cayman Islands and the Cuban provinces of Camaguey, Ciego de Avila, Sancti Spiritus, Villa Clara, Cienfuegos and Matanzas. A tropical storm watch is in effect for the Cuban provinces of La Habana, Artemisa y Mayabeque, Pinar del Rio and the Isle of Youth.
After pummeling that region, Eta is expected to head toward Florida.
As the storm moves across Cuba and over the Straits of Florida, it will enhance the heavy rainfall potential across southern Florida, especially across the east coast metro region.
“Recent heavy rain across the region has led to saturated ground and urban flash flooding could become a threat by the end of the weekend and into early next week depending on the forward movement of the storm,” CNN meteorologist Derek Van Dam said.
But it is still unclear how strong Eta will be by the time it approaches Florida, he added.
A flood watch is in effect for the southeastern coast of Florida, from Friday evening through Tuesday evening, with 5 to 10 inches of rainfall possible.
Miami-Dade County will be opening an evacuation center at 2 p.m. ET Saturday for residents living in mobile homes, low-lying areas, or anyone else who needs refuge, according to a county government news release.
All county Covid-19 testing sites in the area have been closed and will remain closed until the storm passes and conditions are safe to reopen, the release said.
Eta had made landfall along the coast of Nicaragua as a Category 4 hurricane on Tuesday afternoon. | https://medium.com/@inonamerkovana/tropical-depression-eta-is-moving-toward-cuba-after-leaving-at-least-100-people-dead-in-central-8fc55ec88e94 | ['Inona Merkovana'] | 2020-11-07 13:21:21.499000+00:00 | ['Cuba', 'America', 'Weather', 'Storms'] |
More Awesome 100-Year-Old Life Hacks You Need To Try | The term “life hacks” may be new, but people have always loved short-cuts that make everyday tasks a little easier. In the early 1900s, British cigarette company Gallaher began printing life hacks on the cardboard stiffeners inserted in paper cigarette packages. While some of the life hacks don’t stand the test of time, most of them are still surprisingly good a hundred years later.
A life hack is any trick, shortcut, skill, or novelty method that increases productivity and efficiency, in all walks of life. — Wikipedia
Corky’s Revenge
Don’t you hate when those pesky corks don’t let you shove them in the bottle like good little stoppers? You may try trimming the corks, but you’ll also get cork dandruff in your wine, and that’s no good for anyone! Instead, roll those suckers under your shoe! Sure your chardonnay will taste like a foot, but at least it will stay fresh! Who the heck wants moldy, old wine anyway?
The New York Public Library/George Arents Collection
It may happen that the cork is slightly too large for the bottle you wish to fit. Do not pare cork down with a knife; a better method is shown in the picture above. Roll cork under the sole of the foot, exerting steady pressure. This will be found to reduce the size of the cork without injuring the smooth surface. — Gallaher LTD
A Grain of Salt
Got mucus clogged up your snout? We’ve got your cure right here. Just grab your salt shaker, lean back, and snort away! Do it every day to keep those pipes clog-free! Don’t worry about the strange looks you’ll get at restaurants. Tell them Gallaher sent you, and all will be well.
The New York Public Library/George Arents Collection
Take a pinch of ordinary table salt up the nostrils just as you would a pinch of snuff. Then gargle the mouth and throat with warm water — being careful not to swallow it. Do this each morning before breakfast. — Gallaher LTD.
Lung Power
If there’s one thing a cigarette company can help you improve, that’s your lung power! Just stand on your feet balls — wait — that doesn’t sound right. Just stand on your tippy-toes, lean way back, and inhale until your lungs are full of air. If you start coughing up blood — you’re doing it right!
The New York Public Library/George Arents Collection
Stand erect on the balls of the feet, and with head held well back. Then inhale deeply until the lungs are fully inflated, gradually exhale, falling the chest to sink first — followed by the lungs. Repeat exercise several times, both morning and evening. — Gallaher LTD
Huff, Puff, and Blow Down
This hack will be sure to impress that cutie you’ve been eyeing. Next time you go to a party, bring a brick and paper bag. Lay the brick on the table and dare anyone to blow it down like the little piggy they are. When they are done huffing and puffing, make them feel sheepish by sticking a paper bag under the brick and blowing into it. That brick will fall right over, and that cutie I mentioned earlier is sure to laud you a hero. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Big Bad Wolf!
The New York Public Library/George Arents Collection
… Take a paper bag and stand the brick upon it. Now gather up the mouth of the bag and blow into it a good puff of air: the brick will be easily overturned. — Gallaher LTD
Get Some Tail
Are you looking for some fresh tail? Here’s how to find it. If you’re buying a boiled lobster at the lobster store, tell them you need to check it for freshness. Then lay that bad boy out and give the tail a pull! If it snaps back — fantastic! It’s time to get your lobster on! If the tail slowly curls back into place — you may have gone into a parallel universe where everything moves in slow motion or — that is some rank, old lobster! Please don’t buy it!
The New York Public Library/George Arents Collection
If, when buying a lobster, you are in doubt as to its freshness, just pull back the tail, then suddenly release it; if the tail flies back with a snap, the lobster is quite fresh, but if it goes back slowly, you may be pretty sure the lobster has been boiled and kept for some days. — Gallaher LTD
Secure Your Nuts
No, really. That’s what this life hack is all about. The card below explains how to keep these bad boys secure. There’s something about sticking pins in a nut and boring holes — none of that matters, though. The most important thing is that I get to say securing nuts.
The New York Public Library/George Arents Collection
Nuts can be made more secure by having a bent pin put through a hole bored into the bolt. The nut should be as “tight” as possible before the pin is inserted. Sometimes it will be found necessary to have the hole bored right through the nut as well as the bolt. — Gallaher LTD
Dirty White Hat
We all know how inconvenient a dirty white straw hat can be — especially when everyone is looking down their noses from beneath their glistening, pure-as-the-fresh-driven-snow — straw hats. Well, worry no more! All you have to do is brush it, rub a lemon on it, brush it again, and put some gum on it. Easy peasy! Now you can stay stylish and looking fly.
The New York Public Library/George Arents Collection
The hat should be well brushed to remove any loose dust, and then rubbed with half a lemon. This will clean the straw in a surprising fashion. Finish off with a glaze of clean gum and carefully brushed all over, your hat will look like a new one. — Gallaher LTD
Foggy Specs
Tired of those steamy glasses blocking your view? I’ve got some good news for you! All you have to do is soap those suckers up and give them a good rub-down. Make sure you don’t try this with liquid soap. It doesn’t have quite the same effect. That reminds me, I need to call my eye doctor.
The New York Public Library/George Arents Collection
… if the glasses are daily rubbed with soap and well polished afterward, a very thin invisible film of soap remains, which has the effect of preventing condensation of moisture on the glasses. — Gallaher LTD
Damp Beds
If you frequent strange beds, then this is the life hack for you! Never leave home without your trusty hand mirror. Just stick it between the sheets and see if it gets fogged up. If so, that is one soggy bed you have there. Run for the hills! Be sure to take a break at some point and sanitize that mirror.
The New York Public Library/George Arents Collection
In order to detect dampness in a strange bed and so be warned of danger, a small hand mirror should be slipped between the sheets and left for a few minutes. Any mistiness or blurred appearance of the mirror’s surface when withdrawn is an indication of dampness, and the bed should not be slept in. — Gallaher LTD
One More Life Quack — I mean, Hack
Ever wanted to draw a duck without taking your pencil away from the paper? That’s a silly question — we’ve all wished for that at some point in our life. Well, this is your lucky day, friend. Just follow the diagram below, and you will impress everyone with your exceptional artistic and pencil-not-leaving-paper skills!
The New York Public Library/George Arents Collection
These life hacks are a lot of fun, and there are hundreds of them. Be sure to check out the NY Public Library’s digital collection when you get a chance. I think these vintage life hacks could give 5-Minute Crafts a run for their money!
Even More Century-Old Life Hacks!
The New York Public Library/George Arents Collection
The New York Public Library/George Arents Collection
The New York Public Library/George Arents Collection
Want to see even more? Your wish is my command! | https://medium.com/random-awesome/more-awesome-100-year-old-life-hacks-you-need-to-try-a21dc362859f | ['Toni Tails'] | 2020-09-28 11:56:15.868000+00:00 | ['Humor', 'Creativity', 'Productivity', 'Life', 'History'] |
Scott Boland Snatches the Ashes From England’s Reach on Debut | When we talk about dream debut’s for players in sport, our minds flash to young players scoring a goal, making a big play, or making noticeable impacts on games at a tender age.
Scott Boland however decided to shyly defy all of that. In quite humble fashion, the Victorian finished with jaw-dropping figures 6–7 in just four overs to win Australia the third test as well as retain the Ashes by midday. It’s probably best to ask anyone from the dugout but him about how monumental the entire event is as he reluctantly embraced the worship from his home crowd at the MCG whilst doing so.
Scott Boland celebrating his maiden test wicket in Mark Wood.
The 32 year old stepping into his home ground with two wickets in his first over in the previous day but continues to reaffirm broadcasters of his own disbelief of how quickly tables turned.
“I knew we were in a good chance of winning, but I didn’t know it’d happen so quickly”
Day 2 was an eventful one, with Australia for the first time in the series looking vulnerable with the bat as they only managed an 82 run lead but they too took some major positives leading into the third as Boland and Starc took two a-piece, bringing in Root for the final time this year to steady the ship for the England side alongside Stokes. Despite some clean hitting down the ground from both, it wasn’t to last as Stokes was the first of six to make the walk back to the dressing rooms after Starc seamed one back in from off stump to bowl Stokes through the gate. The wicket’s from there continued to fall as Boland relentlessly hit good lengths, continuously making the batsmen ask questions about it’s seam movement on a pitch that was slowly beginning to flatten from which Green also went and joined the celebrations as he crashed the ball into Anderson to finish things off.
Scott Boland truly has a lot to remember about this performance and it’s almost certain that the fans in Melbourne won’t let him forget it either. After the game-winning performance, the fast-bowler finishes the test as the second aboriginal player to represent Australia in men’s test cricket after the iconic Jason Gillespie. He also became the recipient of the Jason Mullagh medal, commemorating the Australian Aboriginal tour of England in 1868. If that wasn’t enough, he’s also achieved the third best figures on debut for an Australian in Australia, but even a statistic as significant like that loses it’s light to the memories Boland has forged into tens of thousands of fans in the MCG, and the millions who will watch the historic moment back.
England will once again look back and reflect on what’s gone wrong. With poor managerial decision making in the first half of the series, it’s clear to say that there is a growing gap in skill levels between the two sides. England is going through a time where they need to continue backing their openers in Hameed and Burns whilst their bowlers lack an X factor to break apart an Australian batting line-up when partnerships develop despite Anderson’s success. Their approach as a whole in Australia has looked a defensive one as they look to contain runs rather than take wickets whilst Australia add to their depth in both areas England seem to have the most issues. Marcus Harris’ innings will surely hold weight as he steered the side to their total without a Labuschagne or Warner masterclass and Boland joins an increasingly dangerous looking group of fast bowlers alongside his peers in Starc, captain Cummins, and Green, as well as Hazelwood and Neser who look to be fit for the next battle.
-Mohammed M Ali | https://medium.com/@mohammedaliwrites/scott-boland-snatches-the-ashes-from-englands-reach-on-debut-2a1711f4ed52 | ['Mohammed M Ali'] | 2021-12-28 03:17:16.740000+00:00 | ['Cricket', 'England Cricket', 'Australian Cricket', 'The Ashes', 'Cricket News'] |
Coffee Chat Series #1: Getting Ahead as an Early-Career Designer | Are you an Early-Career Designer?
You think of yourself as “new to designing professionally.” Maybe you’re still in school, with an internship or two under your belt. Or, perhaps you graduated in the last 1–2 years and are in the midst of your first or second design job. Or, maybe you’ve decided recently to switch careers.
You don’t yet consider yourself an expert in any aspect of design, whether it’s interfaces or graphics, user experiences or design processes. You may feel you’ve got solid fundamentals and a decent understanding of what good design is, but you can’t yet produce consistently excellent solutions at the level you aspire to, and you believe you are still a good ways off. You look around and can easily enumerate many types of design problems that you haven’t experienced before and would love to cut your teeth on.
You play a support role in bigger product initiatives. In larger teams, you might be paired with a senior or lead designer who is acting as a mentor or creative director. In smaller teams, you may be getting detailed briefs and specific direction or feedback from a CEO or product leader. You don’t typically feel comfortable pushing back on the problem you’re asked to solve or the feedback you receive because you’re mostly in observing and absorbing mode.
You’ve a long and adventurous career ahead. You’re just getting started, and you’re going to leave footprints.
Your superpowers
A lot of early-career designers I know don’t assume that they have any superpowers. They figure they’ve got a lot to learn, and not a lot they can contribute. This couldn’t be further from the truth! Pretty much everyone I know raves about working with these people. Why?
Flexibility. As an early-career designer, you come in with practically no bad habits or preconceived notions. You’re not weighed down by the past, so you adapt easily to new tools and processes. Non-existent are the grumblings of, “Well, in my day, we did X or Y and it was so much better…” Within a few years, I’ve seen many people go from n00b to expert designing on some new platform, technology, or cultural trend. And given the rate at which this industry changes — a lot — this kind of flexibility is a huge advantage. When paradigms shift — whether from analog to digital, or web to mobile— you’ll notice that a new generation of pioneers are at the forefront, rather than the established big names from the past. The only way forward is through change, and early career designers are some of the best at adapting.
Curiosity. If you’re new to the field, you’re brimming with a thousand questions. Everything is interesting and novel. You look at problems with a clean slate, which sparks new thoughts and ideas. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve shown a design proposal and gotten earnest questions from early-career designers like “What problem are you trying to solve?” or “Why does this need four steps?” that made me recheck my assumptions and realize a better solution. Asking for the sake of understanding is powerful; it reminds everyone else to not get lost in the shortcuts that inevitably build up over the course of a long career; it invites us to go back to first principles and reclaim that beginner’s mindset.
Enthusiasm. Just a few weeks ago I chatted with a designer who had taken on mentoring an intern during the summer. I asked her how the experience was. “Simply amazing!” she gushed. “The team loved our intern. Everyone felt so much more energetic with him around!” I hear variants of this story over and over again. As an early-career designer, your genuine and bright-eyed excitement stirs even the most cynical of souls. Problems that more experienced designers have solved half a dozen times already are made to feel fresh again, boosting everyone’s mood. Don’t underestimate how much of a gift this is. Enthusiasm fosters enthusiasm.
Ability to try new things and take risks. At this stage, this much is true: you have far more to gain than to lose. You don’t have a reputation to protect. You haven’t specialized in a particular area of expertise. You don’t have a deep history that people can draw assumptions from. This is the time to take risks! This is the time to raise your hand on the tasks that nobody else wants to do; to join the companies or teams that feel like underdogs; to volunteer for the projects that seem impossible or at the very least, incredibly complicated. This is the time to make like Shakira from Zootopia and “Try Everything.” The worst that can happen is that you get deeper insights into what you don’t like — a valuable learning! The best is that you discover you’re capable of far more than you realized.
Habits for Success
What are the daily practices that have outsized returns for early-career designers? After hundreds of conversations and observations of their career trajectories, this is my short list:
Focus on quantity of work produced. There is a famous study where an instructor for a photojournalism class divided his students into two groups. The first was told that they would be judged solely on quantity — ie, 100 photos submitted gets you an A, 80 gets you a B, etc. The second group was told they only had to produce one photo at the end of the course, and they would be judged solely on how good that one photo was. Guess what? When all was said and done, it turns out that the quantity group did better on both quantity AND quality. In doing the work of producing dozens of photos, they experienced firsthand what made for better composition, lighting, focal length, etc. Meanwhile, the quality group sat around for hours theorizing about what the “perfect” photo was, and then produced one mediocre piece. When designing to solve a problem, try as many different solutions as you can, then scrutinize the pros and cons of each. Trying to “save time” doing something that’s “good enough” isn’t the goal — instead, shore up your fundamentals through a constant stream of high output.
Show your work as often as you can, to as many people as you can for feedback. When I was getting started, I didn’t do this much, and it’s one of my biggest regrets. My excuse was always: “Oh, we already have a weekly team critique — I’ll just show my stuff then.” The truth was, I was embarrassed to ask for feedback, especially on early work that I knew wasn’t totally there. I worried other designers would think less of me if they saw my in-progress work. So I’d sit in my corner and try to perfect my designs before anyone saw them. Unfortunately, by doing this, I missed out on learning faster — I got critique feedback late, I passed up opportunities to get one-on-one advice and coaching, and nobody thought I was particularly proactive. Later on, as a manager, the designers who impressed me the most were those who didn’t let their egos get in the way of their growth, the ones who readily said, Can you take a look at my latest work? I’m struggling with the layout or I’m not sure how to approach this problem and I’d love to talk it through with you first. Ask for honest feedback and listen to it seriously. Iterate based on that feedback. Approach multiple designers you admire for their take on your work. Don’t be discouraged if some days, your work doesn’t meet your (or someone else’s) bar, or you don’t think you’re getting better fast enough. The only way forward is through the work, and through getting more and more perspectives that help you improve.
Work on your growth areas. The conventional wisdom for career growth is to Focus on your strengths. This is good advice in general, but I caution you to not take it seriously at the early career stage. Why? Because right now, investing in your fundamentals — especially shoring up your weaknesses — doesn’t cost you much and will benefit you every day for the rest of your career. If you aren’t strong at visuals, now is not the time to say, “Ah well, I’ll never be a great visual designer anyway, so why bother?” Be wary especially in situations (as in larger companies) where roles tend toward specialization, because you might be tempted to hand off visual work to an expert instead of trying to improve yourself. Even if you have zero aspirations to be an icon expert or a visual systems designer down the road, the more you improve those skills now, the more valuable you will be in every design job down the road. Same goes for other design hard skills — interaction design, motion, product thinking, etc — or soft skills like communication, persuasion, organization, proactivity, or leadership.
Ask questions all the time. As Euripedes said, “Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.” Asking questions is the fastest way to learn. Don’t know what an acronym stands for? Ask. Don’t see why your colleague used blue instead of purple on this button? Ask. Can’t really follow the logic behind why your team’s top priority is X instead of Y? Ask. You don’t have to agree with every answer, but you’ll gain a whole lot of context and perspective.
Raise your hand and try everything. Set a goal to try 3 things you haven’t done before every month. They could be new projects, new initiatives, or new practices. If an opportunity comes along and you’re not sure if you’re going to like it or be successful at it, raise your hand. You’ll be better off for the experience, no matter how it goes.
Read books about human culture and psychology. An underrated aspect of becoming a top designer is accumulating a better understanding of human motivation and behavior. Why do people do what they do? How do they process information? When do they behave rationally and irrationally? When does a behavior become habitual, and why? Some books in this category that I’ve found useful: Thinking Fast and Slow; The Design of Everyday Things; Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind; Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results; Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas and Others Die; Predictably Irrational; The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion; How to Win Friends and Influence People.
Misconceptions and Obstacles to overcome
In my coffee chats with designers, we’ll often talk about what we wish we knew when we first got started. A few traps stand out again and again as misconceptions that hinder success:
Learning is more important than “proving yourself.” Remember: you have much to gain and very little to lose at this stage. Ask any money manager what the most powerful concept is to build wealth and you’ll hear the same answer over and over again: compound interest. Learning is the compound interest for your career, and the sooner you get started, the richer the rewards will be at the end of five, ten, or twenty years. Resist the temptation to “prove yourself” at the beginning. If you have the choice between banking a surefire success by playing it safe or taking a risk to learn something new, default to the latter. Unlike roles, titles, or rewards, which are fleeting, knowledge and experience gained is permanent. Nobody can ever take that away from you.
Your career is your responsibility, not anyone else’s. If you’re lucky, you will have many folks in your life who will support, encourage and help you in your journey— managers, peer colleagues, mentors, family and friends. But even if you don’t, remember this: your career should matter more to you than to anyone else. So look first to yourself to get where you want to go. You are not entitled to the generosity of others, nor can you control what they choose to do (though I’m always inspired by the warmth and helpfulness of the design community at large). It doesn’t do you any good to blame your environment or your manager if you’re not happy with your progress. You are the captain of the ship of your career, so ask yourself what you need to change.
Designing well is about solving problems for your intended audience, not about coming up with things you personally like. As an early-career designer, I took huge pride in my personal taste. I felt that I had an elevated understanding of aesthetics, of simplicity, and of the journey towards the ideal. But through the course of learning to design for millions, then billions, of people, time and time again I was humbled by the waves of reality. The designs I personally loved best didn’t always have the biggest impact. In fact, often they crashed and burned. I loved minimalism — the more spacious and elegant the interface, the better— but many people out there, especially those newer to the web, appreciate clear, wordy labels over stark icons. Creating excellent work isn’t about me and what I thought was lovely; it’s about meeting our users where they were and empathizing with their needs so we can solve their problems. Resist relying too much on your own assumptions and desires, and seek the truth of what really matters to your audience.
Mentorship starts with asking good questions, not asking for a mentor. It’s natural for early career designers to be excited about getting mentored by folks they look up to. But here’s the thing: 9 times out of 10, getting “mentorship” isn’t like gaining admittance into some sort of program (unless it happens to be structured that way— this is the 1 in 10 case). There’s typically no application process. It’s not a binary thing, like you’re either X’s mentee or you aren’t. In fact, trying to formalize it by asking Can you be my mentor? is awkward, because mentorship should be like any normal relationship — two people who like and enjoy each other’s company want to spend more time together. Refrain from immediately asking someone to spend regular time with you. If they don’t know you well, why would they say yes? Instead, start with genuine questions and low-commitment asks. I’m a huge fan of how you do X — can you share with me some advice for how I can also improve at X? or Can I invite you for a coffee to discuss X? If that goes well, then you can make another ask or request to make it a more regular occurrence.
Reflection Questions to Ask Yourself
The best thing you can do for your career is not to listen to what someone else has to say (this article included), but to get in the habit of regularly asking yourself deep questions. You’re the only one who knows your true heart and where you want your career to go, so keep these questions in mind:
Which qualities of people around me do I admire, and how can I learn from them? Seeing is believing. If a colleague does something that leaves you thinking, Damn, I wish I could do that— maybe its the simplicity and elegance of their design work; maybe its their attention to detail; maybe its the compelling way they make arguments— count your lucky stars that you get to see them work that magic and that you have the opportunity to learn from them. Admiration doesn’t have to be all or nothing. You can appreciate a particular skill or trait without admiring everything about a person. Make a list of those qualities, and then ask yourself how you might get better at them. Can you ask that person to give you feedback? Can you request that they deconstruct their process? Can you make notes of their specific tips and tricks?
How can I find out more about my likes and dislikes? It’s perfectly natural to respond to a question like “What am I meant to do with my life?” with I have no f-ing clue right now. You can’t rush discovering the answer; it’ll emerge in its own time, through first-hand experience with the kind of work that gives you the greatest satisfaction. But what you can do is put yourself in situations where you’re constantly testing new scenarios and learning about yourself in the process. These experiments might not all be successful, but think of Thomas Edison, who said, “Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.” You may try things and learn that you despise certain tasks but love others — this is what self-discovery looks like. if you don’t get out of your comfort zone, it will take you much, much longer to find your true calling.
What things gives me energy, and what sucks away my energy? This is is a simple reflection question to contemplate at the end of a month, quarter or year that is a baby step towards answering the much bigger existential question of “What am I meant to do with my life?” Simply observe which activities give you energy and feel rewarding, versus what make you feel heavy and discouraged. Don’t react or change your actions based on a particular month or quarter’s answer; narrowing your area of opportunity too quickly is limiting. Instead, note them and jot them down. What’s valuable is understanding the larger trends or patterns over the years — I am energized by people who take their responsibilities seriously and share my optimism in the future — not specific examples like I don’t enjoy working with Taylor.
What are my unique strengths and growth areas? Like the question above, this is an important reflection question to understand yourself better. Make note of your strengths, but don’t ignore your weaknesses — instead, focus on improving them to establish a better foundation for the future. Continue to broaden your field of experiences, but periodically take stock of what things come naturally to you, and what you struggle more with. | https://medium.com/the-year-of-the-looking-glass/coffee-chat-series-1-getting-ahead-as-an-early-career-designer-12d0c0aaec67 | ['Julie Zhuo'] | 2019-09-11 15:31:02.161000+00:00 | ['Design', 'Learning', 'Career Advice', 'Product Management', 'Designer'] |
Eureka! Europe’s Green Dream | by Christoph Nedopil [1] and Erik Solheim [2]
COVID-19: making a once-in-a-lifetime crisis into a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Europe
Europe’s prospects could not be better, but, its challenges have rarely been greater:
First, there is the economic and social stress, unemployment, feeling of lack of progress and identity conflicts, which Covid-19 has only accelerated. This is giving rise to populist and conspiratory forces.
Second, there is the seemingly binary choice between aligning Europe with the fast rising China and the historic ally, the US, now with an erratic government that threatens to undermine the liberal and multilateral order. This order was led and underpinned by the US, but provided the basis for Europe’s wealth and post-war peace.
Finally, the biggest threat to Europe is not limited to Europeans, but threatens the entire world and its populace. The triple environmental crisis of climate change, pollution and loss of biological diversity.
Yet, by having to address such an unprecedented event as the corona pandemic, Europe has been given a once-in-a lifetime opportunity to develop a coherent response to address all three challenges: The economy and social cohesion within the continent, its soft power internationally, and the ecological resilience in each country. A “good” crisis should not be wasted, we should build back better. For this, Europe needs to dream big. Europe must find a convincing answer that will serve its citizens better than the alternatives — today, tomorrow and in the future.
Most of Europe is already dreaming — it is dreaming a Green Dream. Technocrats with their Green Deal and the Green Finance Taxonomy. Voters by electing mayors and local governments with green agendas.
Green is not only a party. Green has become Europe’s dream.
But, as we argue here, dreaming alone won’t suffice: much action is required to fit green into Europe’s social contract that is defined by its diversity. And while many elements of a European technical framework for its green dream are in place, much stronger leadership is required in three dimensions to make the dream reality.
Europe’s Social Contract
Future developments in Europe depend on whether its citizens feel “European”, with a shared narrative and a belief that the European system serves each and every citizen better than the alternatives. This is the essence of the contract between Europe and its citizens.
To understand what defines Europe and its social contract, a lot has been written and said. In her speeches to European parliament in 2007 and 2018 German chancellor Angela Merkel praised “diversity” and the “willingness to compromise” as core European values: The freedom and possibility to develop ideas and explore plural opinions has required Europeans to create a unique political, economic and social framework. The promise of Europe has been to allow all types of European opinions and lifestyles to flourish — from Öland to Sicilia, from the Scottish Highlands to Transylvania — a promise no-one thought possible after World War II.
And most Europeans have found a plurality of political voices in the European arena. In the US, people can choose between the “for” and “against” of two parties representing ever more opposing views. In China, all people should support the one party. Europeans, while often being annoyed by endless political debates, should cherish the necessity to criticize and build coalitions in multi-party systems where more inclusive opinions are necessary. This might make decision-making slower, but ideally more balanced.
This European contract is by design not without friction as interests and technology are in constant motion. But it is exactly this constant development and friction that defines the European social contract. What is necessary to make it successful is a framework and direction that unites the many pieces of the European puzzle.
While Europe’s opinions and cultures provide for diversity, deeper currents also unite Europeans. Europeans are not questioning the state as in the US, nor are they believing in a state as strong as in China. Hardly any Europeans question the idea of the welfare state, where government provide fundamental services like education, health and infrastructure. Europeans with some few exceptions are liberal on social, religious and cultural issues. Europeans want to balance work and life, and believe in working in multilateral frameworks. Above all, Europeans seem intent on protecting what we see as European, even when that definition in itself is in question.
“90% of Europeans want to protect the environment”
When Europeans are asked about the next challenges to tackle, a staggering 90% wants to protect the environment. Climate change has for years been the most or among the most important concerns for Europeans across all countries. Of course, Europeans also fear job losses and economic insecurities. Yet, Europeans believe job losses are likely to be caused by climate change. When the political and business leaders drag their feet on environmental protection, Europeans take to the streets: A “save-the-bees” petition to protect insects and biodiversity in Bavaria, Germany in 2019 saw people lining up for hours in the cold February rains to become the most-voted-for petition. Millions of Europeans joined the Friday’s for Future movement in 2019 calling for governments to urgently address climate change.
Building a green Europe has become the common dream for most Europeans. A dream that can contribute to a credible European identity. Over the years, European institutions have already developed some leading green frameworks to support the green dream. The EU Taxonomy published in April 2020 is to date the most ambitious and clearly defined framework for environmentally aligned investments. The EU agreements on phasing out emissions and protecting biodiversity are among the most forward-looking in the world. Europe’s emission trading scheme is the world’s most advanced, aligning Europe strategically with the Paris agreement to limit climate change. The recently developed strategy for phasing out single use plastics is the most developed of any major power.
Making the European Green Dream come true
Addressing short-term challenges post-Covid19
To protect the European social contract on which the dream is built in the short-term after the pandemic, leaders must prioritize stabilizing the economy and create jobs (apart, of course, from ensuring its citizens’ health). According to recent studies by the likes of Oxford University, McKinsey and the International Energy Agency (IEA), Europe should spend its — surprisingly aggressive — EUR 750 billion stimulus as well as their national stimulus for “green” investments to generate employment and economic returns. For example, 10 million USD investments in green energy creates 75 jobs, three times more than the same investment in fossil fuel energy. This requires strong leadership to not bail out yesterday’s industries against the existing lobbies, but use the momentum to build back better and set the stage for long-term green growth.
Green Stimulus is more job-creating than fossil-fuel stimulus (Source: McKinsey)
Three foundations for long-term Green Dreaming
In the medium- to longer-term, European needs to build three foundations for a solid green European dream.
First, Europe needs green leadership that inspires and that allows the many puzzle pieces of Europe to be put in their place — in all regions of Europe, poorer and richer. Leadership will in particular mean working with business and communities to develop green policies and green business frameworks, while avoiding a prescriptive industrial policy. The diversity of Europe should be harnessed — with failures being an inevitable part of the green journey.
To invigorate this can-do spirit and be a cheerleader along this journey, Europeans leaders at all levels need to become better at telling the story of the European green dream. As an example: renaming climate change to “climate emergency” in November 2019 may galvanize some people through fear. But it does not provide an inspiring direction forward.
The need of the hour is a positive narrative, the optimistic can-do attitude of winners.
The European Green Deal provides a possible framework, but risks getting stuck in technocratic sloganeering. Europe’s green dream must inspire many more layers of society — from its cities to the start-ups, from its art to its architecture. It is not a short-term goal, but a goal that requires the enthusiasm of many generations across all spheres of society.
Both carrot and stick are needed. Europe most of all needs incentives to move forward, but also sanctioning mechanisms to punish laggards. The failure to sanction environmental destruction or continuing to support environmentally harmful activities (e.g. in financing fossil fuels, in subsidizing harmful agricultural practices) undermines trust in leadership and trust in the seriousness of the green dream.
Second, it is critical to avoid culture or identity wars based on negative presumptions regarding “green”. While the vast majority of Europeans support a green direction for the continent, there is always a danger that green issues turn into polarized societies, based on fake news or real conflicts of interest. In most of Europe young, highly educated women in cities are in the green driving seat while less educated male workers in rural areas make up for the opposite pole. Even If most green policies can be carried through anyhow, it’s critical to create broad consensus. The green transformation must be seen as just, it must create better jobs, it must be framed in a language appealing to everyone, it must avoid being an urban movement and it should stop all finger pointing.
Finally, Europe needs a clear strategy for its international partnerships to build a green Europe. Most of the environmental problems that Europe is facing are not confined to Europe, but matter to the whole world. Conversely, the actions of the rest of the world matter immensely to Europe. To truly benefit from a green Europe, leaders in the European capitals need to better reign in their reflexes of letting their short-term national interest trump more promising European goals. This only accelerates the centrifugal forces in Europe with all the negative consequences. Rather, Europe should work as much in multilateral institutions as possible to find solutions that are relevant to the global community. At the same time, in those cases where multilateral institutions are being undermined, Europe should support them by building alliances with partners who are willing to tackle environmental problems in the shorter term. European leaders should actively support emerging economies and work with those international partners who are in line with Europe’s green strategy. It should provide these countries with better investment conditions and more aid, while being clear that it does not support activities that undermine green development. Partnerships on green development with China and India are particularly important. And the US after a Biden victory will soon bounce back as a major partner for green development. American government, states and business will again be aligned in the fight against climate change and destruction of nature.
By being a reliable partner with clear domestic and international strategic policy, the expected result is an increase in Europe’s soft power, which in turn should lead to positive reinforcements: more economic opportunities in green economic sectors, attraction of international top-talents, and more convening power to set a green global agenda. Ideally, a green Europe will not have to choose between partners, but will be the partner of choice.
Eureka! A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a Green European Dream
Few doubt that the world is changing and that Covid-19 will be an accelerator for change. Yet, the big question is what the change will be and who will lead it. For Europeans, a change to a Green Europe is still a dream. But it is the dream that most Europeans dare to dream.
If there was ever a time to make the dream come true, the money to do it and the urgency to act, it is now. Eureka! Europeans, we can realize the Green Dream!
About the authors:
[1] Dr. Christoph NEDOPIL WANG is a German, who for the past 3 years has been working in China on green development, first with the German government and now as Director for the International Institute of Green Finance. Previously, he lived in the US for 3 years, where he studied and worked at Harvard University.
[2] Erik SOLHEIM is a Norwegian politician and diplomat. He is the former Minister of Environment and International Development of Norway and the former Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme. He is currently a senior advisor to the World Resources Institute | https://medium.com/digital-diplomacy/eureka-europes-green-dream-4f1c7975040a | ['Christoph Nedopil'] | 2020-07-29 10:46:33.393000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Green', 'Recovery', 'Europe', 'Future'] |
Government is a business! Not. | There are thousands of articles detailing Donald Trump’s many flaws, and mistakes.
Lots of those articles are mine.
Trump is a horrible, no good, rolling shitshow of badness. Chaos and havoc fountain out of him and his family (#trumpcrimefamily) and splash sewage downward.
We all know that. Some of us are glad. Some of us are tolerant. Most of us are horrified.
I totally get all that.
So now what?
What do you do when the leadership is as useless as tits on a boar?
Brave people will try to step into the vacuum. When there is a crisis it brings out the best in a lot of people. They discover leadership abilities they never had before.
Some of them are thwarted by a jealous, incompetent blowhard with power.
Some of them don’t ask for permission and just do what needs doing.
When I saw that joke I had already started to think that the states should band together and face Trump and his lackeys as a united coalition.
They could call this coalition the “United States” or something snappy like that.
Let’s run the government like a business!
Trump & Co. (#trumpcrimefamily) are among the conservatives that think the government should be run like a business.
It’s not a business. Trump chafes at the fact that he can’t fire or punish governors he doesn’t like. They are mere middle managers, after all.
Say what?
Who owns the national stockpile of … whatever? Cheese, powdered eggs, nukes, PPE?
Since Jared Kushner thinks the government is a business, the stockpile belongs to the company. The states are company employees. That’s why it made perfect sense to him to say “The national stockpile doesn’t belong to the states.”
Hey Jared, who do you think paid for all that shit? Hint: it wasn’t you.
And the next time you yell “Nanny State!” remember that a nanny is an employee hired to serve the family.
How liberals see it
A government is a family. Everyone is pretty much required to contribute if they can, so the weakest ones are cared for … because we are humans and not lizards or lobsters. (Besides, how do you define “contribute”? Do you want Grandma to watch the baby or not?)
The government is run entirely on contributions (voluntary or not) from individuals and companies.
The government doesn’t make a product to sell at a profit.
Everything the government does from Navy Seals to school lunches is “pre-paid” by the citizens of the country.
New Orleans did not get a bill from FEMA after Katrina. The people of Louisiana had already paid for those rescue helicopters, those life jackets, those temporary lodgings, those trailers, and relocation expenses. George W. Bush wasn’t doing them a personal favor because the Louisiana governor had praised him in the correct style and amount.
Family as country, country as family.
There are many fundamental differences between conservatives and liberals. One of the most glaring differences is how we see government.
Liberals see government as a natural extension of society and society as a natural extension of family.
Conservatives see government as an oppressive external force that should be weakened, if not destroyed … well … not really. It is a massive cash cow, after all. You can give billions in contracts to friends. Said friends will now owe you bigly. It’s all just business.
When Democrats are in power, the Republicans believe (or say they believe) they are the unwilling victims of This Oppression. They are vague on what that could be. You know what’s oppressive. Just read the papers.
When Republicans are in power, well, “When you’re president they let you do anything you want. har har.” You can fire inspector generals, collude with hostile foreign powers, obstruct justice, insider trade, use foreign governments to help #trumpcrimefamily get re-elected. Anything you want.
Government is us
When you equate society with family, you have a sense of all being in “this” together. Ideas and policies are discussed and debated. Pretty much everyone agrees on the outcome even if they hotly disagree on how to achieve it. A few powerful (or wealthy) people have a lot of sway and influence, but can be overruled. It’s a bit messy and a lot of work.
A fascist dictator is also, in some ways, a parent figure. “You are frightened and weak,” he says. “I will take care of you and protect you from total annihilation.” Ronald Reagan used that line to great success. So did George Bush the Lesser. Donald Trump follows in their footsteps.
Fascist people abdicate their responsibility to govern themselves and hand that chore over to someone big and tough and strong. He’s a bastard, but he’s our bastard. Man-o-man, he’s really sticking it to the libs! har har.
You can’t be infantilized without your cooperation. The fish is never just rotten at the head.
Where does the buck stop?
I do understand that there are dysfunctional families. Society has a responsibility to help in some way if it can.
When a society — and therefore the government — is dysfunctional, then something needs to happen. That won’t happen until someone — a lot of someones — take responsibility.
I’m not saying it’s your job alone but you may need to put down the remote and get up off the couch. In extremist, you might have to vote, make a phone call, or send an email.
Or you can leave it to some strongman (and it’s nearly always a man) to run things for you.
Then you can stay on the couch.
___________
Susan Cogan wears a lot of different hats but she is primarily a writer. She is the author of more than a dozen books and hundreds of articles and blog posts. She is also a CTI-trained life coach, Buddhist, artist, wife, and body servant to three cats.
If you enjoyed this story, please show your appreciation by visiting:
www.coganbooks.net or www.susanbcogan.com | https://medium.com/the-national-discussion/government-is-a-business-not-419d6a2cfe2e | ['Susan Brassfield Cogan'] | 2020-05-18 03:52:22.393000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Fascism', 'Corruption', 'Trump', 'Government'] |
Passing methods as props in Vue.js | Recently, I learned a new trick for keeping my Vue components more DRY.
You might be used to passing methods down to child components using custom event names like this…
// Calling custom fish component
<fish v-bind="{color, size}" @swim="swim" /> // Inside custom fish component
...
<button @click="$emit('swim', data)">
...
But there is another more succinct way…
// Calling custom fish component
<fish v-bind="{color, size, swim}" /> // Inside custom fish component
...
<button @click="swim(data)">
...
In the first case, Vue is using the event system, and in the second the method prop is a simple callback. There are some reasons for using one approach over another, depending on context, of course.
Some find that keeping data and callbacks separated into props and events makes their components more clear and easier to understand. The docs provide an important distinction about using a custom event…
…the child component is still completely decoupled from what happens outside of it. All it does is report information about its own activity, just in case a parent component might care.
So if you don’t need to completely decouple your child component from its parent, you too can benefit from this sleeker syntax!
If you liked this trick, you can check out Keeping props DRY in Vue.js. | https://medium.com/front-end-weekly/passing-methods-as-props-in-vue-js-d65805bccee | ['Mauro Perez'] | 2018-11-09 18:25:53.020000+00:00 | ['Vuejs', 'JavaScript', 'Best Practices', 'Front End Development', 'Components'] |
Writing Goals: 2021 [Part 10] — Trust the Process | 10 part series for writers to consider what we did in 2020 and will do in 2021.
We pick up from last week with our year-end attempt to help Go Into The Story readers set and achieve their writing goals for 2021. To revisit the process of self-reflection from last week, here are the links:
Part 1: Looking Back
Part 2: Assessing Where You Are
Part 3: Where Do You Want To Go As A Writer?
Part 4: Practical Matters
Part 5: Going Public
This week we shift the focus to a more pragmatic part of the discussion, considering a variety of tips about how to manage time and projects more efficiently. Here is what we have thus far:
Part 6: Schedule
Part 7: Time Management
Part 8: First Draft
Page 9: The Only Way Out Is Through
Today: Trust the Process
This is probably my favorite writing mantra. It’s both practical and spiritual, which pretty sums up my experience of the act of writing.
Trust the process.
There is prep-writing (brainstorming, research, generating plot elements, developing characters, story structure, scene breakdowns, outline), then there is page-writing (type FADE IN and continue writing until you type FADE OUT). Those two components represent the practical part of the process, but out of that ‘grunt work,’ a more spiritual aspect emerges: suddenly, you hear a character say something to you, or a character may refuse to act the way you planned, or a scene sequence you worked out in advance implodes once you start writing it, or a whole other way of approaching a subplot may leap to mind.
Whatever happens at every step of the way, a writer must learn to trust the process.
For some writers and some stories, the process can be neat and straightforward. For others, the process can be confounding and circuitous.
Every writer is different. Every story is different. Every process is different.
The writer must learn to accept that and trust that they are where they are for some reason.
M. Night Shyamalan supposedly wrote five drafts of The Sixth Sense until he had this startling realization: the Protagonist, Malcom Crowe (Bruce Willis), was dead.
J.R.R. Tolkien finished the first chapter of what would become “The Lord of the Rings” in February, 1938, then didn’t turn in the final manuscript until 1950. On two occasions, after writing hundreds of pages, Tolkien went back to page one and started all over. What if Tolkien had not trusted his creative process? We might never have known one of the world’s most remarkable pieces of literature.
Trust the process.
I hit upon that phrase when I was teaching one of my online screenwriting courses in response to a student who was seemingly stuck in their story. A year or so later, I stumbled onto this book, “Trust the Process: An Artist’s Guide to Letting Go”. It’s an excellent read, one I highly recommend, and it raises an interesting point about trust, that second part “letting go.”
Letting go of what?
Often what happens when we get ‘stuck’ in our writing, it’s not so much about the story, it’s about what we bring to the writing process — expectations, plans, fears, doubts. Any time we step out of the story, our active engagement in the writing process, we run the risk of losing ourselves in the day-to-day world as well as our hopes and dreams. For example, we may get caught up in seeing the story as a bridge from our life today to our imagined life in Hollywood as a working screenwriter. To carry that weight of ‘responsibility’ into a writing session, that attachment, can easily encumber our actual writing — and soon we’re stuck, not because of the story, but what we are bringing to the writing.
Trust the process / let go — all very Zen, yes? I guess. It also suggests that we look at the Writer in relation to Story not as an “I — It” relationship, but an “I — You” dynamic, something we explored here.
Trust the process.
Try tacking that mantra up onto the wall where you write.
And then believe it.
I hope you’ve enjoyed and benefited from this 10-part series. Would love to hear your reactions and reflections in a RESPONSE.
Good luck with your writing goals in 2021! | https://gointothestory.blcklst.com/writing-goals-2021-part-10-trust-the-process-b34a9b3a7a0e | ['Scott Myers'] | 2020-12-19 13:13:04.087000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Productivity', 'Fiction', 'Creativit', 'Screenwriting'] |
Flash Games as told by Flash Creators #13: Adam Saltsman | Every week during the 100 Days for Flash, we celebrate the history of Flash games and the peoples who made them by asking Flash creators about the Flash games that inspired them, influenced their works, or simply games they find noteworthy. For more informations, go to The Museum of Screens.
This week’s Flash creator is Adam Saltsman, game designer, maker of Canabalt, cofounder and director of the game studio Finji (Night in the Woods, Overland, etc…) and producer of the open source Flash game development library Flixel. I asked him about Flash games that influenced his work, here is his answer…
Redder (2010)
Redder is one that still stands out to me but i find myself mostly thinking about Kyle Gabler’s experimental games from like Carnegie Mellon times… there’s not a specific one that stands out to me, but the idea that it was ok to make something small and weird and sort of weirdly specific and focused i think had a huge impact on me and especially on the kinds of flash games i wanted to make
Darwin Hill (?)
Thank you very much to Adam Saltsman. You can follow him on Twitter or visit Finji’s official website. | https://medium.com/@touloutoumou/flash-games-as-told-by-flash-creators-13-adam-saltsman-bc098e285a4b | [] | 2020-12-27 18:51:31.227000+00:00 | ['Flash', 'Videogames', 'Internet'] |
2019 Crypto Compliance: Year in Review | 2019 Crypto Compliance: Year in Review
By Crystal Blockchain Analytics
Overview of the 2019 Global Cryptocurrency Compliance Industry
2019 was a year of preparation and standardization for the cryptocurrency industry, as regulators around the world came together to enforce tangible legislation impacting the ecosystem. In the U.S., SEC Chairman Jay Clayton spoke candidly to a Senate Committee in December, informing them that the SEC is taking a measured yet proactive regulatory approach to crypto that will both foster innovation and capital formation while protecting investors and U.S. markets.
In June 2019, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) published its “Guidance for a Risk-Based Approach to Virtual Assets and Virtual Asset Service Providers” giving countries until June of 2020 to implement these guidelines. The EU’s 5th Anti Money Laundering Directive (5th AML Directive) also included a definition of cryptocurrencies, as well as more advanced AML regulatory requirements for obligated entities. The EU Member States have to transpose the requirements of the 5th AML Directive by 10 January 2020.
Some countries have already begun to change their legislative frameworks in advance of these major global regulatory changes. South Korea has already begun taking legal measures to stamp out unregistered exchanges, and financial regulators in Singapore will introduce a Payment Services Act in January 2020. China has also taken steps to advance KYC legislation ahead of the release of their state cryptocurrency.
Crystal Blockchain’s International Bitcoin Flow Report highlighted just how much regulation has influenced (and will continue to influence) the flow of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies between registered and unregistered exchanges. The team has also published an interactive fund flow map on its website with updated data and statistics from the report.
Overview of Bad Actors & Malicious Activity with Crypto in 2019
The use of bitcoin for darknet market operations has undoubtedly seen an increase in activity in recent years, but now it’s easier than ever to track these activities due to the public blockchain’s transparency and immutability. The Crystal analytics team has created a report on darknet activities and bitcoin to analyze and measure bitcoin use on the dark web.
Crystal’s Crypto Compliance
This year, we aggressively pursued updates and improvements to our platform to make it easier for our clients to comply with upcoming 2020 regulations. The team has been enhancing due diligence practices and account reviewing for our customers by enhancing our risk storing tools and creating a concise case management system for shared investigations. We have also added customizable alert functionality as well as additional fund flow verification for enhanced risk management.
Our platform now supports analysis of four major cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Ethereum (as well as ERC20 and ERC721 tokens), Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin. Our public blockchain and wallet coverage continues to grow and our algorithms reviewing these blockchains continue to improve. In compliance with current and future regulations, Crystal Blockchain’s advanced risk-scoring algorithm and address-listing function is based on information gathered from known sanctioned entities.
We are looking forward to the year ahead in crypto compliance. We will be adding more currencies to the platform soon, including Tether & Ripple, and we will be continuously updating our platform settings for easier and more efficient compliance and investigation.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our clients for your continued support. We wish you a happy holiday season — see you in 2020!
Best,
The Crystal Blockchain Team | https://medium.com/meetbitfury/2019-crypto-compliance-year-in-review-by-crystal-blockchain-3fce08c07e66 | ['Crystal Blockchain'] | 2019-12-27 13:27:51.746000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Blockchain', 'Bitcoin', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Crystal Blockchain'] |
Rachel Rank | CEO, 360Giving
“I wish the social sector did more to leverage its voice and influence as an expert network that understands issues in detail and has the long view and concrete proposals on how to address them.”
As someone running a social sector organisation can you describe what the challenges are?
Balancing the external engagement opportunities and networking (and needing to be opportunistic with those) with day to day internal demands, including board engagement, strategic planning and fundraising.
Who do you go to, where do you go to or what do you read/listen to for support, and renewal?
My board, who are hugely supportive but also hold my feet to the fire; my mentor, Simon Burrall; a network of women CEOs that I’m in; my team, who I try to share most things with as part of building a team that’s trying to create long-term behaviour change — we share ideas, build straw men, bring our contacts in & try not be insular in our thinking.
Twitter has proved extremely useful for getting quick ideas, intros & making connections. Also a network of like-minded individuals in our target organisations who tell me what they and others really think about our work. I don’t have time to read much and its a source of frustration, but I try to set aside 1–2 hours each week for certain blogs, newsletters & news articles (I have a list I can share if useful?). For personal headspace/renewal, I enjoy podcasts.
Who do you think of as fellow travellers and why do they matter?
People running small, start ups that are reliant of grants; people working on open data standards (OpenContracting, IATI, OpenOwnership); female CEOs, who have generally been more open with me about how they balance the pressures of running a non-profit or start up. They matter because they’re either facing similar challenges (fundraising, managing growth and expectations, workload) or similar technical issues (data quality, data literacy, infrastructure that people want but don’t really understand what it takes to get it in place).
What are the biggest trade-offs you are having to make at the moment in terms of running the organisation?
How much time I spend doing external engagement, advocacy and promoting our work versus fundraising, reporting and supporting staff. It never feels comfortable having to choose between the two so I’ve had to learn to be brutal with prioritising, delegate to the point it feels uncomfortable and to not sweat the small stuff — its taken me a while to get to this point and to feel ok about saying no to people.
I’d like to see more alliances coming together to talk about an issue and work on joint strategies.
What do you wish the social sector did more of? And less of?
More of — Leveraged its voice and influence as an expert network that understands issues in detail and has the long view and concrete proposals on how to address them, e.g. on homelessness, disability rights, poverty, climate change, etc. I’d like to see more alliances coming together to talk about an issue and work on joint strategies.
Less of — talking about innovation. The word is used too much and I sense is partly driven by funders and the need to appear new, exciting and different. It’s ok to keep on keeping on, and focus on fixing or delivering a specific thing.
If you were designing a programme of support and training for the kind of social sector leadership that we need today, what would be the essential ingredients? | https://medium.com/socialleaders/rachel-rank-eb56927aba13 | ['Cassie Robinson.'] | 2019-03-11 09:18:25.309000+00:00 | ['Leadership', 'Social Change', 'Digital', 'Data', 'Social Justice'] |
The day my life story went viral | This is the introduction to my book, The Internet is My Religion, which is available now in paperback, and can also be shared for free online because internet.
I’d just flown into New York. I was staying at a random stranger’s apartment near NYU that I’d found through Airbnb after Facebook informed me that we had three mutual friends. The wi-fi password was not on a sticky note in the kitchen like it was supposed to be. I texted the owner, but she didn’t know what the password was. Why was this not a big deal? If the water wasn’t working, that would be a crisis, but I could do without a shower before I could do without internet!
I was a little high strung. Crazy nervous, really. In two days I would be giving the most important speech of my life. Standing in front of 800 of the most influential political and technology professionals in the world, I was going to tell a deeply personal story about religion that I wasn’t even sure I could get through without crying. I had no idea how they would react, and I was terrified that I’d be booed off the stage.
The morning of the Personal Democracy Forum, I sat between Ben Rattray from Change.org and Jay Rosen from NYU in the first row as I waited for my turn to speak. It felt like I was the only person in the entire room not staring at a glowing screen. Instead, I was staring at the floor reciting the speech over and over again in my head. Then three friends — Lea, Ramin, and Jesse — walked in and sat behind me. They were the only ones who knew what I was about to do
Micah Sifry, the conference organizer and a great friend, called me to the stage. I repeated the first line of the speech in my head, Growing up I had two loves: Jesus and the internet. And then I started.
In the Christian faith, giving one’s testimony about how Jesus saved your life is the necessary rite of passage. It’s the personal story of transformation that spreads the Good News from person to person, one by one, to every corner of the earth. These stories of faith in Christ formed the basis for the infrastructure behind the most powerful movement in human history. So on that day, I shared my struggle with faith, my story of transformation, my testimony — with a twist.
Towards the end, people started clapping. I waited, but then everyone kept clapping and started standing up! It was the last thing I expected. I finally got my head together and motioned that I had one more thing to say, just one more thing.
When I finished, the place erupted again. I had managed not to cry, just barely. But, looking around the room, it seemed like others hadn’t. Completely exhausted, totally overwhelmed, and fully unable to process what was happening, I snuck out through the side entrance of the auditorium. A couple people from the audience ran after me. More people kept coming, but my friends finally found me and steered me away. Alone, we stared at each other in disbelief.
“What just happened?!”
“Um … I think you just started a religion.”
“Oh my God, I forgot this was being livestreamed.”
And then Ramin asked, “Did you see Twitter?” That got everyone’s attention.
There were thousands of tweets.
Within a couple days, the video had been seen 300,000 times and I had a major publisher offer me a $100,000 book deal. Agents were crawling all over me. They told me I could sell my story for a million dollars if I wanted and there would be a hundred copies in every bookstore.
But what no one knew was that Lea and I had been working on a book for over a year. It was through that process with her that I’d come to discover what I really believed, and why I knew — and knew I had to tell — my story.
I was an activist and a geek. I saw my strength as building technology infrastructure for leaders and had just started a new company, NationBuilder, to do exactly that. But I’d learned about the power of stories while producing documentaries. The stories we tell create our culture. They illuminate our worldviews. It took me a long time to accept that possibly the most important thing I could offer wasn’t something I would build, but was simply telling my story.
I believe that there is a new worldview. One based on internet values and the connectedness of all humanity — where instead of waiting for a savior, we create the future. And I now know that I’m not the only one who feels this way.
I turned down the book deals and told the agents to go away. We’re publishing this on the internet, for free. For this story, there really is no other way. I have faith that you will share it with your friends, family, and community — that’s the only way it will exist in the world. But most importantly, I hope that you will share your own story, your testimony, your faith in what’s possible when God just happens. | https://medium.com/galleys/the-day-my-life-story-went-viral-4f5fb96ee854 | ['Jim Gilliam'] | 2015-08-13 19:27:35.735000+00:00 | ['Storytelling', 'Religion', 'Internet'] |
RiCI Honors Veterans | In recognition of the upcoming 242nd birthday of the United States Marines Corp and Veterans Day, a large group of RiCI offenders celebrated with a banquet, highlighting the five military branches. Offenders in attendance were educated on the history of the Veterans Day. A host of offenders were commended for their service to our country, as many attendees were US Veterans.
The ceremony was coordinated by the SMART program. The SMART program (Structured Military Advanced Readiness Training) was established at RiCI in 2015 as an extension of the IVA (Incarcerated Veterans of America). The group consists of men who’ve made a daily commitment towards living a disciplined, principled, structured lifestyle.
During the course of the festivities, the IVA conducted an impressive drill team routine. Four of the military branches of government were well represented by RiCI offenders attending the banquet.
Multiple speakers in attendance spoke during the banquet about taking pride in past service. Those speakers included Air National Guard Nick Alexander, Retired US Marine Ryan Legg, RiCI Captain Robert Benedict and RiCI Corrections Officer James Jamerson. Jamerson has retired from the US Army and has been awarded with two Purple heart awards during his service.
The veterans were all acknowledged by the keynote speakers and the reminded that being a Veteran can never be taken away from them. Former military service wasn’t required to attend the banquet, however those attending have dedicating themselves to live their lives according to a military based life-style and maintain a positive disciplinary record while incarcerated. | https://medium.com/drc-insider/rici-honors-veterans-f45c25e19513 | [] | 2017-11-13 16:04:24.864000+00:00 | ['Prison', 'Military', 'Veterans'] |
A Beginner’s Guide to Hadoop’s Fundamentals | Literally, Hadoop was the name of a toy elephant — specifically, the toy elephant of Doug Cutting’s (Hadoop’s co-founder) son. But you’re not here to learn how, or from where, Hadoop got its name! Broadly speaking, Hadoop is a general-purpose, operating system-like platform for parallel computing.
I am sure I do not need to mention the severe limitations of a single system when it comes to processing all the big data floating around us — it is simply beyond the processing capacity of a single machine. Hadoop provides a framework to process this big data through parallel processing, similar to what supercomputers are used for.
But why can’t we utilize supercomputers to parallelize the processing of big data:
There is no standardized operating system (or an operating system like-framework) for supercomputers — making them less accessible to small and mid-sized organizations
High cost of both the initial purchase and regular maintenance
Hardware support is tied to a specific vendor, i.e., a company cannot procure the various individual components from different vendors and stack them together
In most cases, custom software needs to be developed to operate a supercomputer based on the specific use case
Not easy to scale horizontally
Hadoop comes to the rescue as it takes care of all the above limitations: it’s an open-source (with strong community support and regular updates), operating system-like platform for parallel processing that does not rely on specific hardware vendors for ongoing hardware support (works with commodity hardware) and does not require any proprietary software.
There have been three stable releases of Hadoop since 2006: Hadoop 1, Hadoop 2, and Hadoop 3.
Let’s now look at Hadoop’s architecture in more detail — I will start with Hadoop 1, which will make it easier for us to understand Hadoop 2’s architecture later on. I will also assume some basic familiarity with the following terms: commodity hardware, cluster & cluster node, distributed system, and hot standby.
Hadoop 1 Architecture
Following are the major physical components of the Hadoop 1 architecture:
Master Nodes:
Name Node: Hadoop’s centralized file system manager, that keeps track of the number of blocks a data file was broken into, the block size, and which data nodes will save and process each file block — without saving any data within itself
Secondary Name Node: Backup for the Name Node, but not on hot standby
Job Tracker: Hadoop’s centralized job scheduler that is responsible for scheduling the execution of a job on data nodes
Each of the above nodes represents an individual machine in a production environment, working in the master mode, that are usually placed in different racks in a production setup (to avoid the failure of one rack bringing down multiple master nodes).
Slave Nodes:
Data Nodes: Individual machines/systems where the working files, in the form of data blocks, are stored and processed upon
Task Tracker: A software service to monitor the state of the Job Tracker, keep track of activities being performed by the Data Node, and report the status to the Job Tracker. One Task Tracker for each Data Node
The slave nodes cannot function without the master nodes and are fully dependant on the instructions that they receive from the master nodes before undertaking any kind of processing activities. To ensure continuous uptime, slave nodes send a heartbeat signal to the name node once every three seconds to confirm that they’re up and active.
All the above master and slave nodes are interconnected through networking infrastructure to each other to form a cluster.
In terms of processing capacities, Job Tracker is more powerful than the Name and Secondary Name Nodes with neither requiring substantial storage capacity. However, the data nodes are the most powerful machines within the cluster with substantial RAM and processing capabilities.
Deployment Modes
Following are the three primary deployment or configuration modes supported by Hadoop:
Standalone Mode: All Hadoop services (i.e., each of the Name Node, Secondary Name Node, Job Tracker, and Data Nodes) run locally on a single machine within a single Java Virtual Machine (JVM). However, the standalone mode is seldom used nowadays Pseudo Distributed Mode: All Hadoop services run locally on a single machine but within different JVMs. Pseudo Distributed Mode is usually used during development and testing activities and for educational purposes Fully Distributed Mode: Used in a production setup, where all Hadoop services run on separate and dedicated machines/servers
What is a Job in Hadoop?
A Job in the Hadoop ecosystem is analogous to a Python script/program that one can execute in order to perform a certain task(s). Just like a Python script, Hadoop’s job is a program(s), typically as a JAR file, that is submitted to the Hadoop cluster in order to be processed and executed on the input (raw) data that resides on the data nodes and the post-processed output is saved at a specified location.
Hadoop’s Software Components
Now let’s move on from Hadoop’s physical infrastructure to its software components. The core software components of Hadoop are:
Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) used for data storage and retrieval MapReduce, a parallel processing Java-based framework, is Hadoop’s programming arm that processes the data made available by the HDFS
MapReduce is further comprised of:
A user-defined Map phase, which performs parallel processing of the input data
A user-defined Reduce phase, that aggregates the output of the Map phase
Just to be clear, Hadoop is a parallel processing platform providing the hardware and software tools to allow parallel processing) that then makes available the MapReduce framework (i.e., a bare-bone skeleton that can be customized based on the user requirements) for parallel processing. But MapReduce is not the only framework supported by Hadoop — Spark is another.
Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS)
HDFS is the file-management component of the Hadoop ecosystem that is responsible for storing and keeping track of large data sets (both structured and unstructured data) across the various data nodes.
In order to understand the working of HDFS, let consider an input file of size 200MB. As explained earlier, in order to facilitate parallel processing on data nodes, this single file will be broken down into multiple blocks and saved on the data nodes.
The default split size (that is a global setting and can be configured by the Hadoop administrator) in HDFS is 64MB. Therefore, our sample input file of 200MB will be split into 4 blocks — where 3 blocks will be of 64MB and the 4th block will be 8MB. The splitting of the input file into individual blocks and saving them on specific data nodes is taken care of by HDFS.
One critical aspect to take note of here is that the splitting of the input file by HDFS happens on the client machine that is outside the Hadoop cluster and the name node decides the placement of each data block into the specific data nodes, based on a specific algorithm. So the client machine directly writes the data blocks to the data nodes once the name node has provided it with the block placement strategy.
The name node, acting as the Table of Contents of a book, remembers the placement of each data block within the various name nodes, together with other information, e.g., block size, hostname, etc., in a file table called the File System Image (FS Image).
Failure Management of Data Nodes
So what happens in case of failure of a data node? The failure of even one data node will result in the entire input file being corrupted — since one piece of our puzzle has gone missing! In a typical production setup, where we are usually dealing with data blocks of hundreds of gigabytes, it is highly inefficient and time-consuming to push the original data file back into the Hadoop cluster.
To avoid any potential data loss, backup copies of data blocks on each data node is kept on an adjacent data node. The number of backup copies to be made of each data block is controlled by the Replication Factor. By default, the replication factor is set at 3, i.e., every block of data on each data node is saved on 2 additional backup data nodes so that the Hadoop cluster will have 3 copies of each data block. This replication factor can be configured on a per-file basis at the time of pushing the source data file into HDFS.
The backup data node will kick-in as soon as any data node fails to send a heartbeat signal to the name node. Once a backup data node is up and running, the name node will initiate another backup of the data block so that the replication factor of 3 holds throughout the cluster.
Secondary Name Node
In Hadoop 1.0, the Secondary Name Node acts as a backup of the Name Node’s FS image. However, and this was one of Hadoop 1.0’s primary limitations, the Secondary Name Node does not operate in a hot standby mode. Therefore, in the event of the Name Node’s failure, the entire Hadoop cluster will go down (data will be present in the Data Nodes, however, it will be inaccessible since the cluster has lost the FS image), and the contents of the Secondary Name Node need to be manually copied to the Name Nome.
We will go over this later — but this limation was addressed with the release of Hadoop 2.0, where the Secondary Name Node acts as a Hot Standby.
Hadoop 2.0
Hadoop 2.0 is also sometimes known as MapReduce 2 (MR2) or Yet Another Resource Negotiator (YARN).
Let’s try to understand the salient architectural differences between Hadoop 1.0 and Hadoop 2.0. Remember that, in Hadoop 1.0, the Job Tracker acts as a centralized job scheduler that splits up a specific job into multiple jobs before passing them on to individual data nodes — where the individual tasks on the data nodes are monitored by the Task Tracker that then reports back the status to the Job Tracker. In addition to its job scheduling responsibilities, the Job Tracker also allocates the system resources to each data node in a static mode (that is, the system resources are not dynamic).
Hadoop 2.0 replaces the Job Tracker with YARN while the underlying file system remaining as HDFS. In addition to MapReduce, YARN also supports other parallel processing frameworks, e.g., Spark. YARN can also support up to 10,000 data notes, compared to only 4,000 data nodes supported by Hadoop 1.0’s Job Tracker.
YARN has 2 components: Scheduler and Applications Manager. Both these tasks were managed single-handedly by the Job Tracker in Hadoop 1.0. Separating these distinct responsibilities into YARN’s individual components allows better utilization of system resources.
Further, the task trackers on each data node were replaced by a single Node Manager (that works in the slave mode) in Hadoop 2.0. Node Manager communicates directly with YARN’s Applications Manager for resource management.
As alluded to earlier, in addition to a Secondary Name Node, Hadoop 2.0 also has a Hot Standby Name Node that seamlessly kicks-in in case of Name Node’s failure. The Secondary Name Node comes in handy in case of the failure of both the Name and the Hot Standby Name Node.
What is MapReduce?
As the name suggests, MapReduce is comprised of the following 2 stages with each stage having 3 further sub-stages:
Map stage
All 3 sub-stages of the Map stage are performed or acted upon in each of the data blocks residing in the individual data nodes — this is where parallelization kicks-in within Hadoop.
Record Reader
The Record Reader is pre-programmed to process one line at a time from the input file and produces 2 outputs:
Key: a number
Value: the entire line
Mapper
Mapper is programmable to process each key-value pair output from the Record Reader one at a time based on any required logic or the problem statement. It outputs additional Key-Value pairs based on a user-defined function it was programmed to perform.
Sorter
The output from Mapper is fed into the Sorter that lexicographically sorts (obviously! 😊) the keys from the Mapper’s output. In case the keys are numeric, then the Sorter will perform a numerical sorting. The Sorter is pre-programmed and the only configuration possible is to implement sorting on values.
Reduce stage
At the end of the Map stage, we will have multiple Mapper outputs, one from each of the data nodes. All these outputs will be transferred to a separate, single data node where the Reduce operation will be implemented on them.
The 3 sub-stages of the Reduce operation are:
Merge
Intermediary outputs from each Map operation are appended to one another to result in a single merged file.
Shuffler
Shuffler is another pre-programmed built-in module that aggregates together the duplicate keys as present in its input, resulting in a list of values for each unique key.
Reducer
Shuffler’s output is fed to the Reducer, which is the programmable module of the Reduce stage — similar to the Mapper. Reducer produces output in key-value pairs based on what it is programmed to perform as per the problem statement.
Practical Example
I will use a very simple, non-ML problem statement to try and explain the mechanics and the workflow of MapReduce. Consider an input file with just 2 statements as follows:
Processing big data through Hadoop is easy
Hadoop is not the only big data processing platform
Our task is to find the frequency of words in the input file, the expected output being:
Processing 2
big 2
data 2
through 1
Hadoop 2
is 2
easy 1
not 1
the 1
only 1
platform 1
Going through the MapReduce stages explained above:
the output of Record Reader after reading the first line will be:
Key: 0 (file/line offset — the starting position)
Value: Processing big data through Hadoop is easy
Key: 0 (file/line offset — the starting position) Value: Processing big data through Hadoop is easy We can program the Mapper to do the following:
Step 1: Ignore the input key
Step 2: Extract each word from the line (tokenization)
Step 3: Produce the output in key-value pairs where the key is each word of the line and value is the frequency of that word in the input line
Accordingly, Mapper’s output after processing both lines will be something like this:
Processing 1
big 1
data 1
through 1
Hadoop 1
is 1
easy 1
Hadoop 1
is 1
not 1
the 1
only 1
big 1
data 1
processing 1
platform 1
The output from the Sorter will be something like this:
big 1
big 1
data 1
data 1
easy 1
Hadoop 1
Hadoop 1
is 1
is 1
not 1
only 1
platform 1
processing 1
Processing 1
the 1
through 1
Shuffler’s output will be something like this:
big 1, 1
data 1, 1
easy 1
Hadoop 1, 1
is 1, 1
not 1
only 1
platform 1
processing 1, 1
the 1
through 1
Reducer can be programmed to do the following:
Step 1: Take the key-value pair from Shuffler’s output
Step 2: Add up the list values for each key
Step 3: Output the key-value pairs where the key remains unchanged and the value is the sum of numbers in the list from Shuffler’s output
Step 4: Repeat the above steps for each key-value pair received from the Shuffler
Accordingly, Reducer’s output will be:
big 2
data 2
easy 1
Hadoop 2
is 2
not 1
only 1
platform 1
processing 2
the 1
through 1
Use Cases of MapReduce
Certain industry use case of MapReduce include:
searching for keywords in big datasets
Google used it for wordcount, Adwords, page rank, indexing data for Google Search, article clustering for Google News (recently Google has moved on from MapReduce)
Text algorithms such as grep, text-indexing, reversing indexing
Data mining
Facebook uses it for data mining, ad optimization, spam detection
Analytics by financial services providers
Batch, non-interactive analysis
Conclusion
Right, so this was a very high-level and non-technical introduction to the world of Hadoop and MapReduce. Obviously, there are several other Hadoop components that I have not even touched upon here, e.g., Hive, Zookeeper, Pig, HBase, Spark, etc.
Please feel free to reach out to me if you want to discuss the above content, or that in any of my previous posts, or anything in general related to data analytics, machine learning, and financial risk.
Till next time, rock on! | https://towardsdatascience.com/a-beginners-guide-to-hadoop-s-fundamentals-8e9b19744e30 | ['Asad Mumtaz'] | 2021-01-04 12:59:10.250000+00:00 | ['Hadoop', 'Big Data', 'Data Analytics', 'Data', 'Technology'] |
Design and Future | *This text is part of a class about the relationship between design and future in the Interaction workshop (1st year course) at the Design School of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. At this course we encourage students to be curious about the capacities of design as a tool to understand and transform the world at the same time.
From the future to “the futures”
Before even beginning to talk about the concept of future, I think it’s important to briefly speak about time, which could be understood as a major concept in which the future is contained. Time –not in a scientific but in a social sense– doesn’t exist by itself if not as something we’ve created as a measure of our actions. Everything we do can be measured in time and it even tells us if we are being efficient or not. The existence of time is important as it allows us to orientate and situate ourselves in history as individuals and as society and therefore it gives context to our actions. The clock then becomes a symbol of said importance of time, a materialization of how our lives revolve around a measure that’s socially constructed and not necessarily fits us all: “With the presence of the clock, time will be dissociated from the rhythm of the planets and the seasons, from experience and memory” (trad. from Carrasco & Recio, 2014). That’s how without realizing, we live in a constant state of awareness about how our actions reflect in the future. We do or stop doing things hoping they will assure us a better future that –according to our clocks– seems to never arrive.
The future, in a linear conception of time, it’s what’s ahead of us. The things that have not happened yet but it’s not an empty space but one that’s already outlined by the consequences of our present actions. That’s why we are able to destabilize the future –even if it seems already written– through our everyday practice in the present. Trying to predict the future makes no sense, science and technology have not been able to do it for centuries and it only reflects how badly we want to control everything. What we are actually able to do is to dream and imagine what could happen, the potential futures. Those potential futures can be classified in 4 large groups that take us out of the linear conception of time and replace it with a number of cones fanning out from the present to the future (Dunne & Raby, 2013). The 4 groups are:
PROBABLE: This is where most designers operate. It’s the one that best describes what is likely to happen if we continue doing things the same way and without any major crisis ahead. PLAUSIBLE: This is the space of what could happen, it’s the place for planning and foresight. It’s where things don’t seem desirable but are quite convincing. A few years ago, we could have placed the covid-19 pandemic here. POSIBLE: This is where today’s world links with every suggested future, even the ones that sound like fantasy. There are not impossible future scenarios, just some that are out of our current understanding of science and some others where we can’t imagine the path to them yet. PREFERABLE: The future where probable and plausible intersects according to our aspirations. But it seems important to ask ourselves: preferable for whom? and under what circumstances?
Nowadays, specially in the middle of multiple crises we are facing and with the constant advances in science and technology around us, we have lost our capacity of dreaming about new future scenarios and are instead beginning to just hope that things will work out someway. Contradictorily, we could use some of that dreaming to take our minds off to more desirable future scenarios.
But, to which idea of time are we referring to when we talk about present or future? The capitalist idea of time has separated productive from reproductive time and has made us value the first one above the other. Carrasco and Recio also refer to productive time as “measured time” (Carrasco & Recio, 2014) because it’s the time others are measuring for us and we have no control over it. We tend to project our lives from a productive point of view: Where will I be working? What will I be producing? Instead of asking ourselves how our everyday lives will be, how those activities without payment we love so much will be. As this understanding of time is directly related to a neoliberal model of development, our society tends to marginalize those whose time can’t be measured for productive purposes such as children, elder or homeless people. Maybe a more egalitarian society should be based on equal management of our individual times. In the current pandemic scenario with constant lockdown periods around the world, it’s been particularly interesting to see people face the domestic activities previously invisible to many of them and see how much effort it takes to keep the house going. In many ways, what is uncomfortable of working or studying from home is the disappearance of the border between productive and reproductive spaces. But, which are the activities that give meaning to our lives? Which ones do we want to project into the future? How would a socioeconomic system that allows us to balance them better be?
Why is it important to think about the futures from design?
“Design is inherent about future (…) while ideas about possible futures are internal representations in the mind, designers externalize those ideas and give them a coherent representation that communicate ideas about the future with others thereby increasing awareness and understanding about possible futures across wider audiences” (Heidaripour & Forlano, 2018)
Design, beyond it’s known capacity of problem solving –which is the most popular way of understanding the discipline–, has the potential to show us that other future narratives are possible because we can experience them through design interventions and prototypes. This is why events that destabilize –for better or worse– our everyday lives are a matter of concern: they show us other ways of doing things are possible, they enter the future into negotiation and propose a future where things now considered extraordinary could be the rule.
“Although ideas about the future are not applicable for immediate action, they inform us and créate a culture of thought that gradually impacts our current practices and social orders. In other words, through the construction of everyday practices, the practice of formgiving to alternative futures could destabilize dominant power relations.” (Heidaripour & Forlano, 2018)
When we bring the future to the present through our designs, we are choosing towards which future we want to move. It’s not about trying to predict the future but about giving access to the possibilities that it has so new and alternative futures could be discussed, debated and used to collectively redefine where we want to go as society. The choice of which future we want to materialize is –without a doubt– a political act and can’t be done from innocence and ignorance as it has been done so far. We are so blinded by how easy it is to objectively understand our users that we have ethically and politically distanced ourselves from our practice. We believe to be materializing the dreams of the majority but we haven’t even questioned who that majority actually is. We have left our voice out of our designs, they have our style but do they communicate our ideas? We prefer to be silent than uncomfortable. All social aspects can be modified (trad. from Carrasco & Recio, 2014), we only need to convince and mobilize enough people to make it happen and we can do it by letting them experience the alternative futures through our designs. In the current multidimensional crisis scenario it’s worth asking ourselves –through design–: How could a new relationship between government, market, citizenship and consumption be?
How does a designer approach futures?
What seems to conflict most designers about speculation about alternative futures is to design for non-existent scenarios, therefore design things that can’t be sold because they belong to a fictional scenario. We are so familiar with the market dreams that we’ve lost the capacity of dreaming our own futures and even less the collective ones. Outside the market we are free to experiment but at the same time nobody knows we are doing it. Let’s not forget that above all things we design relationships, we mediate the interaction between actors and their consequences and we amplify ideas. We must not ignore these capacities but use them in our favor to open the debate about what world we want to live in.
As professionals, we feel pressured to make useful things, things that serve an immediate purpose, things that solve “design problems” we’ve found, but thinking there’s a “design solution” to every “design problem” is a conceited and innocent idea. It’s hard for us to think of design that only seeks to generate reflection and debate fulfills a function in society just because it doesn’t give an answer to a question but instead opens us to curiosity and moves us towards a process of analysis and critical thinking about the world around us. The critical capacity of design is equal or even more powerful than its capacity to communicate ideas. We have the ethical and moral responsibility to make ourselves aware of how norms, values and other social constructs are produced and reproduced in society through the things we design.
Something many alternative design practices have in common –such as design explorations, design research, speculative design, among others– it’s that they move outside of what we consider possible and even real. When we design for how things could be we open new and much richer possibilities for ideas and dreams. The antagonist here would be a design that says yes to everything and accept inequality as an unalterable condition, it reinforces the status quo without trying to understand and modify the world. If we intend to know and transform the world, we have to observe and describe it first, we can’t project and tell stories about a desired future without understanding the relationships that exist in the present.
Our responsibility with the future
In addition to the already mentioned multidimensional crises we currently live in, there’s a strong critique from the citizens to the professionals. We are supposed to build a bridge between two groups that refuse to touch: the ones who decide how we live and the ones who live by the consequences of the first group decisions, but we are not fulfilling this task and instead we are just increasing the distance between them as we explain with our technical concepts to those “on top” how those “on the bottom” live and think (trad. from Fauré, 2014). As professionals we’ve had the privilege of participating in spaces of critical reflection and must try to actually shorten the distance between the ends of said bridge. At the same time, as members of the society we have the responsibility to not conform with how things are and dream about other ways of doing things. Finally, as designers, we are challenged to prototype those dreams so many people as possible can access them. When are we going to stop materializing the dreams of the industry and beginning to materialize the dreams of the society? It’s not about just adapting methodologies as design thinking from one sphere to another –from business fields to public policies for example– because as those methods have been thought and produced for business they are trapped seeking for quick answers that can be achieved in the short term. The market is not willing to question the current context because it’s comfortable in it and all his actions are towards sustaining it. If we just transfer these forms of design from private to public we are also transfering the customer-service way of relationship between the government and the citizens. The public sphere should not be a space for that kind of logic but a space of cooperation and shared responsibilities between the ones involved towards a common goal.
To question the current values and paradigms doesn’t take away from us the capacity of design for the present but it challenges us to stay updated as to methodologies and topics to work with. It doesn’t have to be better, but it has to show alternatives instead of answers. | https://medium.com/@patriciaisidora/design-and-future-224b68aec3c6 | ['Patricia Sánchez'] | 2021-01-21 22:06:06.157000+00:00 | ['Responsibility', 'Alternative Futures', 'Design'] |
Vlocity — Industry Solutions. Author: Amol Chate | Author: Amol Chate
Customer Success Platform for the Industry Revolution
Is your customer looking forward to adapting the last lap on the customer success journey?
The most probable answer is to move on with Vlocity.
Three-time Forbes Cloud 100 winner, Vlocity is an “Industry Cloud” pioneer built in partnership with
Salesforce and now Salesforce company. Vlocity increases sales, service and marketing agility, operational
efficiency and faster time to value for cloud and digital adoption across the enterprise.
It provides Industry-Specific cloud software to transform your business for the below verticals.
Communications Media & Entertainment Energy and Utilities Insurance Health Government
Customer Centric Transformation
How it’s making an impact on the business and helping in many means like driving customer-centric
transformation
Platform Capabilities:
Data Model
Card UI Framework
DataRaptor Tool
OmniScript Process Designer
Process Library
Business Capabilities:
Enterprise Product Catalog
Order Capture and Fulfilment
Contract management
Configuration Price Quote
Vlocity Solution Simplified Structure
How Industry Solution make difference
Let’s understand how its help business with real time scenario
Customer using Salesforce for a specific industry like Communication, Insurance, etc. Below listed few examples
Without Vlocity:
There would almost to build all use cases from scratch
Understand industry and create sustainable data model: This is a very critical part and took a lot of time to
understand industry and business before creating a data model
Need custom development for industry-specific process example: in communication industry changing
the service provider is a very common to use case that needs to develop with custom logic
With Vlocity:
Industry Data model will fall into place
Vlocity has Process Library is ready to use in build industry process just plug and play
Omni channel will give you the power to design your process.
Card UI framework you can use multiple data sources to pull data in one layout.
DataRaptor will give distinct capabilities to fetch data from any object and get output fields in JSON format
without code.
How Card UI and DataRaptor works
Let’s take a look at how Card UI use DataRaptor use case
DataRaptor can give output in JSON format and will be used as input to Cards and layout. One layout can have multiple cards and each card can pull data from different sources. This will give huge power without any code
and help developers to do a lot many things.
DataRaptor can have the below interface type:
Extract
Load
Transform
We will use DataRaptor to Extract data from Account and Case and use it as input to Card UI
Create DataRaptor
DataRaptor Extract
Create raptor select interface type to Extract and provide input
Select output fields you want to display in cards and see automatically Json output in
right corner without any code.
We can preview output by providing input and execute you will see Json output. This
Json data can be used in Cards and show on UI.
Layouts & Cards
We have created Layouts and Cards and use data source as data raptor we created in last
steps.
Add required fields on the card and make sure all fields required in card should be data
raptor output.
Add required actions on cards as per business scenario.
Finally, after activating the card you can see all data from different data raptors on the layout.
Cards give the option to filter the data. All this will be just point and click.
Customer Success Platform for the Industry Revolution
This is a simple use case to show how easily we can achieve requirements using Vlocity.
Apart from this, there are many more advantages of Vlocity industry solution like order orchestration can be
achieve natively, reusing processes, capability of Enterprise Product Catalog, Contract Lifecycle Management,
Configuration Price Quote. | https://medium.com/@apisero/vlocity-industry-solutions-47e3b5f8c204 | [] | 2021-01-22 16:42:58.073000+00:00 | ['Mulesoft', 'Salesforce', 'Vlocity'] |
MR Glasses In 2020 Are Beyond Imagination | GodView Light V5 Is Redefining What An MR Glasses Can Be, And Should Be! | Today, GodView announced the launch of their innovative new 5K Super Waveguide MR glasses. With Wi-Fi 6 connectivity, 300 inch virtual screen, and an incredibly lightweight design, GodView delivers a totally immersive portable multimedia visual experience. Available Now On Kickstarter.
Kickstarter Campaign Video
300" Immersive Viewing Experience
GodView is a revolutionary solution that delivers an extradimensional experience for multimedia. These 5K MR glasses connect wirelessly via 5G to cast any content onto a stunning high definition 300 inch virtual screen without ghosting, graininess, or optical grating, allowing visual details that can’t be seen with typical displays or headsets. The virtual display features binocular 110-degree wide field of view (FOV) that naturally merges virtual enhancements into the real-world for incredibly immersive multimedia, gaming, and productivity that is compatible with smartphones, laptops, desktops, and game consoles.
“Our team has been passionate about innovation in the field of near eyes display devices for years but we quickly recognized that two factors were limiting AR/MR products from wide-spread adoption. The first generation devices were heavy, bulky designs that were impractical for portability and daily use. Second, the devices were cost prohibitive to most people. Using the latest technologies such as Wi-Fi 6 and 5G we were finally able to break these barriers. GodView is a next-generation innovation that puts a 300 inch virtual screen into a regular sized pair of glasses. The experience has to be seen to be believed, a virtual 5K super high definition screen that transforms multimedia and goes with you anywhere. ” Zhengfang Qian, Founder & Creator
Foldable & Compact As Your Fashionable EDC
The GodView design is like no other augmented reality headsets or glasses available on the market. They weigh just 55g by eliminating the heavy on-board battery and processor of typical headsets and by utilizing the Super Waveguide optical solution made of lightweight resin. They resemble stylish sunglasses in size and weight while providing a totally private cinematic experience. The glasses use a compact Wi-Fi 6 bridge power supply that can work continuously for over 4 hours, to wirelessly cast multimedia to the virtual display for the ultimate high definition visual experience at home or on the go.
The glasses are also capable of myopia adaptability and can self-tune clarity for myopia of -8~0D, which means near-sighted users can see clearly and comfortably without wearing contact lenses or their everyday glasses.
The GodView 5K Super Waveguide MR Glasses are transforming the way users experience visual multimedia. They are a game-changer for personal mobile cinema, gaming and productivity and are stylish and ultra-portable. Available now on Kickstarter with special pricing for early adopters. To learn more visit the Kickstarter Campaign Here. | https://medium.com/@crowdfundingdaily/mr-glasses-in-2020-are-beyond-imagination-godview-light-v5-is-redefining-what-an-mr-glasses-can-c38e3ff9688a | ['Crowdfunding Daily'] | 2020-11-20 09:53:32.895000+00:00 | ['Crowdfunding', 'Kickstarter', 'AR', 'Indiegogo', 'VR'] |
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THE STORY
After graduating from Harvard, Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan) forgoes the standard opportunities of seeking employment from big and lucrative law firms; deciding to head to Alabama to defend those wrongfully commended, with the support of local advocate, Eva Ansley (Brie Larson). One of his first, and most poignant, case is that of Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx, who, in 62, was sentenced to die for the notorious murder of an 2-year-old girl in the community, despite a preponderance of evidence proving his innocence and one singular testimony against him by an individual that doesn’t quite seem to add up. Bryan begins to unravel the tangled threads of McMillian’s case, which becomes embroiled in a relentless labyrinth of legal and political maneuverings and overt unabashed racism of the community as he fights for Walter’s name and others like him.
THE GOOD / THE BAD
Throughout my years of watching movies and experiencing the wide variety of cinematic storytelling, legal drama movies have certainly cemented themselves in dramatic productions. As I stated above, some have better longevity of being remembered, but most showcase plenty of heated courtroom battles of lawyers defending their clients and unmasking the truth behind the claims (be it wrongfully incarcerated, discovering who did it, or uncovering the shady dealings behind large corporations. Perhaps my first one legal drama was 624’s The Client (I was little young to get all the legality in the movie, but was still managed to get the gist of it all). My second one, which I loved, was probably Primal Fear, with Norton delivering my favorite character role. Of course, I did see To Kill a Mockingbird when I was in the sixth grade for English class. Definitely quite a powerful film. And, of course, let’s not forget Philadelphia and want it meant / stand for. Plus, Hanks and Washington were great in the film. All in all, while not the most popular genre out there, legal drama films still provide a plethora of dramatic storytelling to capture the attention of moviegoers of truth and lies within a dubious justice.
Just Mercy is the latest legal crime drama feature and the whole purpose of this movie review. To be honest, I really didn’t much “buzz” about this movie when it was first announced (circa 206) when Broad Green Productions hired the film’s director (Cretton) and actor Michael B. Jordan in the lead role. It was then eventually bought by Warner Bros (the films rights) when Broad Green Productions went Bankrupt. So, I really didn’t hear much about the film until I saw the movie trailer for Just Mercy, which did prove to be quite an interesting tale. Sure, it sort of looked like the generic “legal drama” yarn (judging from the trailer alone), but I was intrigued by it, especially with the film starring Jordan as well as actor Jamie Foxx. I did repeatedly keep on seeing the trailer for the film every time I went to my local movie theater (usually attached to any movie I was seeing with a PG rating and above). So, suffice to say, that Just Mercy’s trailer preview sort of kept me invested and waiting me to see it. Thus, I finally got the chance to see the feature a couple of days ago and I’m ready to share my thoughts on the film. And what are they? Well, good ones….to say the least. While the movie does struggle within the standard framework of similar projects, Just Mercy is a solid legal drama that has plenty of fine cinematic nuances and great performances from its leads. It’s not the “be all to end all” of legal drama endeavors, but its still manages to be more of the favorable motion pictures of these projects.
Just Mercy is directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, whose previous directorial works includes such movies like Short Term 6, I Am Not a Hipster, and Glass Castle. Given his past projects (consisting of shorts, documentaries, and a few theatrical motion pictures), Cretton makes Just Mercy is most ambitious endeavor, with the director getting the chance to flex his directorial muscles on a legal drama film, which (like I said above) can manage to evoke plenty of human emotions within its undertaking. Thankfully, Cretton is up to the task and never feels overwhelmed with the movie; approaching (and shaping) the film with respect and a touch of sincerity by speaking to the humanity within its characters, especially within lead characters of Stevenson and McMillian. Of course, legal dramas usually do (be the accused / defendant and his attorney) shine their cinematic lens on these respective characters, so it’s nothing original. However, Cretton does make for a compelling drama within the feature; speaking to some great character drama within its two main lead characters; staging plenty of moments of these twos individuals that ultimately work, including some of the heated courtroom sequences.
Like other recent movies (i.e. Brian Banks and The Hate U Give), Cretton makes Just Mercy have an underlining thematical message of racism and corruption that continues to play a part in the US….to this day (incredibly sad, but true). So, of course, the correlation and overall relatively between the movie’s narrative and today’s world is quite crystal-clear right from the get-go, but Cretton never gets overzealous / preachy within its context; allowing the feature to present the subject matter in a timely manner and doesn’t feel like unnecessary or intentionally a “sign of the times” motif. Additionally, the movie also highlights the frustration (almost harsh) injustice of the underprivileged face on a regular basis (most notable those looking to overturn their cases on death row due to negligence and wrongfully accused). Naturally, as somewhat expected (yet still palpable), Just Mercy is a movie about seeking the truth and uncovering corruption in the face of a broken system and ignorant prejudice, with Cretton never shying away from some of the ugly truths that Stevenson faced during the film’s story.
Plus, as a side-note, it’s quite admirable for what Bryan Stevenson (the real-life individual) did for his career, with him as well as others that have supported him (and the Equal Justice Initiative) over the years and how he fought for and freed many wrongfully incarcerated individuals that our justice system has failed (again, the poignancy behind the film’s themes / message). It’s great to see humanity being shined and showcased to seek the rights of the wronged and to dispel a flawed system. Thus, whether you like the movie or not, you simply can not deny that truly meaningful job that Bryan Stevenson is doing, which Cretton helps demonstrate in Just Mercy. From the bottom of my heart…. thank you, Mr. Stevenson.
In terms of presentation, Just Mercy is a solidly made feature film. Granted, the film probably won’t be remembered for its visual background and theatrical setting nuances or even nominated in various award categories (for presentation / visual appearance), but the film certainly looks pleasing to the eye, with the attention of background aspects appropriate to the movie’s story. Thus, all the usual areas that I mention in this section (i.e. production design, set decorations, costumes, and cinematography) are all good and meet the industry standard for legal drama motion pictures. That being said, the film’s score, which was done by Joel P. West, is quite good and deliver some emotionally drama pieces in a subtle way that harmonizes with many of the feature’s scenes.
There are a few problems that I noticed with Just Mercy that, while not completely derailing, just seem to hold the feature back from reaching its full creative cinematic potential. Let’s start with the most prevalent point of criticism (the one that many will criticize about), which is the overall conventional storytelling of the movie. What do I mean? Well, despite the strong case that the film delves into a “based on a true story” aspect and into some pretty wholesome emotional drama, the movie is still structed into a way that it makes it feel vaguely formulaic to the touch. That’s not to say that Just Mercy is a generic tale to be told as the film’s narrative is still quite engaging (with some great acting), but the story being told follows quite a predictable path from start to finish. Granted, I never really read Stevenson’s memoir nor read anything about McMillian’s case, but then I still could easily figure out how the movie was presumably gonna end…. even if the there were narrative problems / setbacks along the way. Basically, if you’ve seeing any legal drama endeavor out there, you’ll get that same formulaic touch with this movie. I kind of wanted see something a little bit different from the film’s structure, but the movie just ends up following the standard narrative beats (and progressions) of the genre. That being said, I still think that this movie is definitely probably one of the better legal dramas out there.
This also applies to the film’s script, which was penned by Cretton and Andrew Lanham, which does give plenty of solid entertainment narrative pieces throughout, but lacks the finesse of breaking the mold of the standard legal drama. There are also a couple parts of the movie’s script handling where you can tell that what was true and what fictional. Of course, this is somewhat a customary point of criticism with cinematic tales taking a certain “poetic license” when adapting a “based on a true story” narrative, so it’s not super heavily critical point with me as I expect this to happen. However, there were a few times I could certainly tell what actually happen and what was a tad bit fabricated for the movie. Plus, they were certain parts of the narrative that could’ve easily fleshed out, including what Morrison’s parents felt (and actually show them) during this whole process. Again, not a big deal-breaker, but it did take me out of the movie a few times. Lastly, the film’s script also focuses its light on a supporting character in the movie and, while this made with well-intention to flesh out the character, the camera spotlight on this character sort of goes off on a slight tangent during the feature’s second act. Basically, this storyline could’ve been removed from Just Mercy and still achieve the same palpability in the emotional department. It’s almost like the movie needed to chew up some runtime and the writers to decided to fill up the time with this side-story. Again, it’s good, but a bit slightly unnecessary.
What does help overlook (and elevate) some of these criticisms is the film’s cast, which are really good and definitely helps bring these various characters to life in a theatrical /dramatic way. Leading the charge in Just Mercy is actor Michael B. Jordan, who plays the film’s central protagonist role of Bryan Stevenson. Known for his roles in Creed, Fruitvale Station, and Black Panther, Jordan has certain prove himself to be quite a capable actor, with the actor rising to stardom over the past few years. This is most apparent in this movie, with Jordan making a strong characteristically portrayal as Bryan; showcasing plenty of underlining determination and compelling humanity in his character as he (as Bryan Stevenson) fights for the injustice of those who’s voices have been silenced or dismissed because of the circumstances. It’s definitely a strong character built and Jordan seems quite capable to task in creating a well-acted on-screen performance of Bryan. Behind Jordan is actor Jamie Foxx, who plays the other main lead in the role, Walter McMillian. Foxx, known for his roles in Baby Driver, Django Unchained, and Ray, has certainly been recognized as a talented actor, with plenty of credible roles under his belt. His participation in Just Mercy is another well-acted performance that deserve much praise as its getting (even receiving an Oscar nod for it), with Foxx portraying Walter with enough remorseful grit and humility that makes the character quite compelling to watch. Plus, seeing him and Jordan together in a scene is quite palpable and a joy to watch.
The last of the three marquee main leads of the movie is the character of Eva Ansley, the director of operations for EJI (i.e. Stevenson’s right-handed employee / business partner), who is played by actress Brie Larson. Up against the characters of Stevenson and McMillian, Ansley is the weaker of the three main lead; presented as supporting player in the movie, which is perfectly fine as the characters gets the job done (sort of speak) throughout the film’s narrative. However, Larson, known for her roles in Room, 6 Jump Street, and Captain Marvel, makes less of an impact in the role. Her acting is fine and everything works in her portrayal of Eva, but nothing really stands in her performance (again, considering Jordan and Foxx’s performances) and really could’ve been played by another actress and achieved the same goal.
The rest of the cast, including actor Tim Blake Nelson (The Incredible Hulk and O Brother, Where Art Thou) as incarcerated inmate Ralph Meyers, actor Rafe Spall (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and The Big Short) as legal attorney Tommy Champan, actress Karan Kendrick (The Hate U Give and Family) as Minnie McMillan, Walter’s wife, actor C.J. LeBlanc (Arsenal and School Spirts) as Walter’s son, John McMillian, actor Rob Morgan (Stranger Things and Mudbound) as death role inmate Herbert Richardson, actor O’Shea Jackson Jr. (Long Shot and Straight Outta Compton) as death role inmate Anthony “Ray” Hinton, actor Michael Harding (Triple 2 and The Young and the Restless) as Sheriff Tate, and actor Hayes Mercure (The Red Road and Mercy Street) as a prison guard named Jeremy, are in the small supporting cast variety. Of course, some have bigger roles than others, but all of these players, which are all acted well, bolster the film’s story within the performances and involvement in Just Mercy’s narrative.
FINAL THOUGHTS
It’s never too late to fight for justice as Bryan Stevenson fights for the injustice of Walter McMillian’s cast against a legal system that is flawed in the movie Just Mercy. Director Destin Daniel Cretton’s latest film takes a stance on a poignant case; demonstrating the injustice of one (and by extension those wrongfully incarcerated) and wrapping it up in a compelling cinematic story. While the movie does struggle within its standard structure framework (a sort of usual problem with “based on a true story” narrations) as well as some formulaic beats, the movie still manages to rise above those challenges (for the most part), especially thanks to Cretton’s direction (shaping and storytelling) and some great performances all around (most notable in Jordan and Foxx). Personally, I liked this movie. Sure, it definitely had its problem, but those didn’t distract me much from thoroughly enjoying this legal drama feature. Thus, my recommendation for the film is a solid “recommended”, especially those who liked the cast and poignant narratives of legality struggles and the injustice of a failed system / racism. In the end, while the movie isn’t the quintessential legal drama motion picture and doesn’t push the envelope in cinematic innovation, Just Mercy still is able to manage to be a compelling drama that’s powerful in its story, meaningful in its journey, and strong within its statement. Just like Bryan Stevenson says in the movie….” If we could look at ourselves closely…. we can change this world for the better”. Amen to that! | https://medium.com/@ver-ww84-2020-sub-esp-hd/wonder-woman-1984-2020-p-e-l-i-c-u-l-a-completa-en-espanol-latino-hd-ab45d9940882 | ['Ver Sub Esp Hd'] | 2020-12-26 02:40:44.270000+00:00 | ['Adventure', 'Movies', 'Fantasy', 'Action'] |
JV Meaning — Considerations for a Joint Venture Agreement (with Samples) | First published — https://docpro.com/blog30/5-things-to-consider-for-a-joint-venture-agreement-with-templates
What is the meaning of a Joint Venture (JV)? The abbreviation “JV” is short for joint venture. A joint venture is a business arrangement where 2 or more parties agree to combine their assets and resources with the aim to fulfil a specific business activity. In a joint venture, parties are responsible for all things associated with this particular business activity, including the profits, losses and expenses etc. However, apart from the joint venture, the parties and their own personal businesses are not affiliated in any other way. For more information on joint ventures, please visit: https://docpro.com/cat33/setup-of-business-entity/joint-venture-agreement.
Before you decide to set up a joint venture agreement, it is important to keep a few things in mind:
1. Purpose and Objective of the Joint Venture
You should decide on what you would want the joint venture to accomplish and the goals of this business.
Decide with your business partner(s) the specifics of the business venture:
Where will you be doing the business?
How will you be doing it?
What are the main business goals?
Be as specific and detailed as possible so that all parties in the joint venture are clear and in agreement to avoid future disputes.
Also, consider if a joint venture is necessary. Is a joint venture the right type of arrangement in light of the purpose or relationship? Would other alternatives suffice? For example:
Co-operation agreement
Research and development agreement
Licence or franchise agreement Distribution or agency agreement
Supply of goods or services contract
Merger or acquisition
Would these agreements fit better with your current business needs already?
2. Scope of the Joint Venture
Read more at: https://docpro.com/blog30/5-things-to-consider-for-a-joint-venture-agreement-with-templates | https://medium.com/@marketing_80588/jv-meaning-considerations-for-a-joint-venture-agreement-with-samples-4cf5f92fc369 | [] | 2020-12-25 05:02:25.762000+00:00 | ['Business Planning', 'Partnerships', 'Agreement', 'Joint Ventures', 'Business Development'] |
Tips for treating your remote employees with more respect | I’m a co-founder at a San Francisco based startup, but I spend most of my time working from Brussels, so I find myself on both sides of this issue.
Know their time zone, and use it when scheduling things.
This doesn’t mean you as employer/manager need to spend as much time during the middle of the night as they do. It’s their business to accommodate your workday. I’m just saying, know the time difference, and when scheduling things, use their time zone. Know their holidays, religious and/or secular.
Beyond acknowledging their time off, say something nice. Let them know their cultural traditions have value to you. Ask questions, you’ll learn something interesting. Use more !s in your written communication.
Many folks who use English as a Second Language (ESL) can have difficulty interpreting whether or not you’re joking, being sarcastic, or happy/frustrated without the accompanying punctuation. The difference between “Thanks.” and “Thanks!” can be really important to an ESL employee. Or, when “ok.” to you refers to a positive affirmation, write “ok!” instead. Include them on news/discussions that you think only pertains to your local team.
Remote workers are detached from the mothership, and it’s your job to make them feel more connected and valued as team members. Conversational threads that emerge from simple topics such as “I’m going to order some more toilet paper for the office” can turn into significant bonding scenarios as people joke around. Make sure the remote team members can take part in the frivolity. Conflicts between remote employees can be difficult to address.
Identify them early and move towards mediation and resolution quickly. It’s much easier for remote employees to be hostile to each other, and for longer than for on-prem employees. Go visit them.
Nothing says “you’re an important team member” more than a trip to meet folks in person. Second-best would be to fly them out to visit the mothership on a regular basis — but for many remote workers, travel isn’t a good option for a variety of reasons. Talk to them. Socialize.
When a meeting starts, don’t just go straight into business. Get into talking about sick kids, how the weekend/vacation went, the drama of last night’s Eurovision Song Contest, or the latest football/baseball/cricket/quidditch match.
But you knew this, right? What else did I miss? | https://medium.com/tag-bio/tips-for-treating-your-remote-employees-with-more-respect-a94e7258dfe3 | ['Jesse Paquette'] | 2020-03-07 04:35:08.383000+00:00 | ['Management', 'Globalization', 'Leadership', 'Teamwork', 'Outsourcing'] |
7 Tips to Make the Most Out of Your Pet Projects | 7 Tips to Make the Most Out of Your Pet Projects
Spoiler alert: Working late into the night is not one of them
Photo by Kyle Hanson on Unsplash.
I’ve started so many side projects. Little or not so little, most of them were focused on one thing: making myself learn something new.
Although I’ve taken on several pet projects since I started coding more than seven years ago, year after year, I end up having less and less time to dedicate to them. Being more efficient has become inevitable if I want to keep going.
Building real stuff is definitely the best learning method for me, and during my last side project (a word search game using Flutter), I realized a few patterns that really helped me make the most of it. Hopefully, they will help you too. So, let’s get to them!
Note: I’ll use examples from my last endeavor to make my points a bit clearer. | https://medium.com/better-programming/7-tips-to-make-the-most-out-of-your-pet-projects-db8ffd49c847 | ['Douglas Navarro'] | 2020-07-15 15:46:23.524000+00:00 | ['Software Engineering', 'Programming', 'Software Development', 'Productivity', 'Learning To Code'] |
The Top 10 Mistakes Crypto Newcomers Make | Image courtesy of Pixabay
Note: This story was written by Jon Creasy, and has been posted to BlockChannel with permission.
Obligatory Disclaimer: To modify a quote from Tim Ferris, “I am NOT a financial advisor, and none of this advice should be taken without speaking to a qualified professional first. Also, my results [are most likely] due to pure luck and zero skill.” But…this is working for me.
As I was going through the awesome new “Quora-for-Crypto” platform Cent the other day, I decided to ask my fellow cryptonians about their worst beginner mistakes. For a reward of $10 worth of ETH (‘cause you get paid to answer questions over there), I got some awesome answers.
Here, for your pleasure, is a list of the ten mistakes every newcomer to crypto should avoid like the plague.
1. Not #DYOR (Doing Your Own Research)
At the end of the day, you are the one using your hard-earned cash to purchase cryptocurrency. If you don’t understand the product, or the value, and you’re only listening to “experts” on Medium, Twitter, or Slack who tell you when to buy and sell, you’re going to get in big trouble and lose a lot of money.
As my friend from Cent brilliantly pointed out, “If you rely on someone other than yourself to buy crypto, you also have to rely on them to know when to sell.” Don’t be a noob. Do your own research.
2. Don’t start mining expecting big profit
It’s true, the original miners of Bitcoin and Ethereum are most likely now multi-mega millionaires. It may be tempting to go out and buy your very own rig to start getting “free crypto” ASAP, BUT DON’T DO IT (without DYOR first).
The reality is that mining takes up loads of electricity — so unless you can get ultra cheap/free electricity, mining is simply not worth it — unless you live in Siberia and own a massive warehouse that can store hundreds of rigs. Even then, it’s probably best for newcomers to avoid mining.
If you really want to get into that sort of thing, consider proof-of-staking with Decred, or maybe vesting with NEM (BlockChannel reminds you to always do your own research, and never directly take advice from 3rd parties without due diligence).
3. Lack of patience
I have to admit that this one can be a toughie, especially if you keep up with crypto Twitter at all. We are inundated with “OMG HUGE PUMP BUY BUY BUY” or “Welp, looks like BTC is trashed, better sell.”
While this info may have some merit, it is physically impossible to keep up with it all, and, generally speaking, the patient are the most rewarded. For instance, I gained 46,000% growth by just holding my Decred for two years. Had I sold when it was worth $0.20, I would have lost around $18,000.
This doesn’t necessarily mean no gains can be made from short term trading. Quite the opposite is true. But if you do decide to trade short term, have a plan, and stick patiently to that plan.
To quote my idol Warren Buffett, “the stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient.” Crypto is similar to the stock market in this respect.
4. Selling when it’s “high enough”
“It’s never to high HODL.”
What my friend on Cent meant by this is that you never know how valuable a certain token will get. I bought Ether when it was worth about $8.00, and I must say that it was tempting to sell when it was worth $100. I would have regretted that badly.
It’s important to make a plan for selling your crypto. You must have an end-game, and you must stick to it, no matter what. Was it stressful watching my portfolio lose ~$10k in 36 hours? Of course. Did I sell? Absolutely not.
5. Not holding your private keys
This may be the largest mistake in the crypto community to date. If you’re unfamiliar with what your “private keys” are, or what types of wallets you should be using, check out this previous article.
Hundreds of millions of dollars have been lost because people entrusted all of their crypto to an exchange that was compromised, or a wallet service that crashed. Always hold your keys. K? K.
6. Failing to find a good community/s to learn from
I really liked this example mistake from Cent. Personally, I’m who I am today because of the support, encouragement, and knowledge that I’ve picked up from amazing crypto-communities. Going it alone is not an option here. You need good crypto friends.
A few of my favorite communities:
7. Sending to the wrong crypto-wallet in an exchange
This is a technical mistake that a ton of people do pretty often, and it’s easy to fix.
SLOW DOWN.
Double-check that the exchange wallet you’re sending funds to matches the token you’re sending. Don’t send BTC to an ETH wallet. Don’t send OMG to a CVC wallet.
It may be ok to send multiple tokens to MyEtherWallet as long as they’re ERC20, but it is NOT ok to do that on exchange wallets. Don’t lose your crypto. Send to the right wallet.
8. Not keeping hard copies of everything
Let me be very clear here. I’m certainly not advocating you keep a Word doc with all your passwords stored on it. That isn’t a hard copy.
What I mean here is that you write down all your passwords, private keys, etc., print them off, and store them somewhere secure. This way, if your computer should crash, or get stolen, or compromised, you can restore all of your crypto onto another device.
9. Not using 2fa or saving records of the code
I totally understand that exchanges can be a necessary evil. However, that does not excuse you from enabling two-factor authentication whenever possible, and saving the restoration code somewhere offline.
I learned my lesson with Mailchimp, thank goodness. I forgot to save the restoration code, and when I got a new phone I had to contact customer support to get my account unlocked.
There isn’t customer support in most cases of the crypto world whenever you neglect to back up your two-factor authentication. So please, do that.
10. FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)
FOMO haunts us all. Thoughts like “If only I had gotten into the SchmeckleToken ICO” spur us into making rash decisions down the road, because we’re afraid we’re going to “miss out.”
Reign it in. Realize that there are new opportunities in the crypto world every single day, and you’re better off just DYOR and telling FOMO to leave you alone.
So there you have it. Ten mistakes every crypto newcomer should avoid. I hope one helped you! If so, comment below, tell me which one, and hit the 👏 to help others find this article. | https://medium.com/blockchannel/the-top-10-mistakes-crypto-newcomers-make-d3b75203dd6f | ['Jon Creasy'] | 2017-12-13 20:05:12.700000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Investing', 'Blockchain', 'Ethereum', 'Cryptocurrency'] |
Truth in the Post-Truth Era: It’s Not That Complicated | A lot has been said recently about ‘post-truth’. If you’re at all interested in understanding our culture, the term seems to show up everywhere. The usual narrative runs like so:
Each of us lives in our own bubble. Increasingly, we become so secure in our bubbles that we start accepting only information, whether it’s true or not, that fits our opinions, instead of basing our opinions on the evidence that is out there. As a result, our individual abilities to separate accurate ideas from wrong-headed assertions are deteriorating. All we do is reject evidence that contradicts our favorite politician by declaring the source to be unreliable on the very grounds that it tells a different story than the one we’d like to be true. Consequently, we’re poorly informed and, more and more, unable to spot false claims for what they are.
For example, in The Death of Expertise, Cornell philosopher Shaun Nichols worries that “the average American” has base knowledge so low it has crashed through the floor of “uninformed”, passed “misinformed” on the way down, and is now plummeting to “aggressively wrong”. And this is playing out against a backdrop in which people don’t just believe “dumb things”, but actively resist any new information that might threaten these beliefs. In True Enough journalist Farhad Manjoo similarly laments that “people are more apt to be wrong about basic things than ever before.”
In this essay, I want to evaluate these claims.
I first explore the theory. Why, according to these people, are we living in a “post-truth era”? Is it true that many of us have “aggressively wrong” beliefs? I follow-up with a deep-dive into the data. How dangerous are the effects of selective exposure, filter bubbles, fake news, and so on? Are we losing touch with the truth?
Making sense of post-truth
I go into more depth about the explanations of fake news and post-truth elsewhere, but here is the basic idea.
Information — everything you know about the world — was once gathered and disseminated by a handful of trusted institutions (mainstream media and the academy). These days, however, whole segments of the population have dismissed all neutral authority on ‘truth’ and ‘facts’ as untrustworthy.
As a result, citizens of diverse political persuasions can increasingly live in their own bubbles, consuming only views similar to their own, and rationalize falsehoods by simply rejecting contradicting data by rejecting their source. “Each group lives in its own echo chamber,” author Eli Pariser thus submits in The Filter Bubble. “Which it believes is the “true” reality.”
The fear is that this tendency goes way beyond innocent cherry-picking: people will genuinely forget the difference between ‘opinions’ and ‘facts’. Locked in a self-reinforcing bubble, we believe what we want to believe and maintain that whatever fantasies we’ve concocted have an equal right to be called ‘true’ as everything else.
By insisting that all the fact-checkers and hypothesis testers there are phonies, these people discredit the very possibility of a socially validated reality, and open the door to tribal knowledge, personal knowledge, partisan knowledge, and other manifestations of epistemic anarchy.
The proof is in the pudding
The concern is that all these interlocking developments have combined to create a maelstrom of unreason that’s thwarting rational debate and spreading an epidemic of misinformation.
Now, that sounds like an intelligent — and fearsome! — story. But, so far, it’s purely theoretical. A reality check is indispensable.
Anti-intellectualism, some people’s rejection of knowledge-gathering transpartisan authorities and shared objective standards for truth, lying politicians, fake news, increasing possibilities for technological control — these are all real things. But how impactful are they? Are we as poorly informed and susceptible to manipulation as Praiser and others presume we are? Does fact-free spin and propaganda really work so well, on so many people?
And there were lies
One inspiration for coining the term “post-truth era” has been the observation that some politicians seem not to care so much for the truth. Yet that’s hardly enough to justify labeling ours a post-truth era. Politicians have always lied.
For instance, the expression “credibility gap” had its heyday during the administration of Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s. As popular science author Steven Pinker recalls:
The bending or inverting of truth by people in power has long been consequential, leading, for example, to the Spanish-American war, the First World War, the Vietnam War, and the Iraq War, right up to the near miss in the Persian Gulf in 2019. — Steven Pinker, Why We Are Not Living in a Post‑Truth Era
Gesturing at lying politicians, then, doesn’t support post-truth diagnoses. Truth and power have been in a troubled relationship since long before 2019.
Another factor contributing to the post-truth impression has been, as we saw, the recent prominence of fake news. However, this too is hardly a new phenomenon: spreading false information is a practice as old as the hills. The title of the forthcoming volume Fake News Nation: The Long History of Lies and Misinterpretations in America, is self-explanatory, though the long history is by no means confined to America. Pinker once more:
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the hoaxed proceedings of a secret meeting of Jews plotting global domination, was advanced as fact by a number of prominent people in subsequent decades, including the industrialist Henry Ford. Countless pogroms, lynchings, and deadly ethnic riots have been sparked by rumors of the alleged perfidy of some minority group.
If today is the era of post-truth, when, exactly, was the halcyon age of truth? Is there such a thing as unbiased reporting? Has there ever been?
The truth is, truth has never been high on the agenda of homo sapiens.
You might object that all this leaves out the most crucial ingredient of post-truth anxieties: the increased role of online environments. Fake news, perhaps, spreads faster and infiltrates our information ecology deeper than ever before. Many worries have been had over filter bubbles and digital manipulation, two distinctly digital phenomena.
Let’s take these points in turn, starting with the former.
No need to worry about filter bubbles
In his excellent Aeon Magazine piece, philosopher C Thi Nguyen defines the bubble after which Eli Praiser named his book as “an informational network from which relevant voices have been excluded by omission.” When we take networks built for social reasons and start using them as our information feeds, the initial thought goes, we miss out on contrary standpoints and run into exaggerated degrees of agreement.
The deeper fear is that the algorithms of Facebook and Google provide us with personalized search results and news feeds, so that we are less confronted with world views, opinions or facts that do not fit with what we already believe. This is the story Praiser puts forward. It has been echoed by MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte (Being Digital) and legal scholar Cass Sunstein (Republic.com 2.0), who warned about the Web turning into everybody’s narcissistic “Daily Me” feed.
Is this long-standing concern becoming an actual problem?
Eli Pariser’s favorite factoid in support of his hypothesis, with which he starts his book, is that Google now personalizes search results according to 57 different signals. He had some friends Google some terms, and they got different results. Since it’s just one case, this is hardly compelling evidence as such.
Yet, Pariser believes that Google’s 57 varieties or amount to ideological frames. However, independent analysts aren’t seeing the problematic import Praiser attaches to this fact. Here’s Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of law and computer science at Harvard: “In my experience, the effects of search personalization have been light.” There are also anecdotes that cancel out the one Praiser reports. Political journalist Jacob Weisberg, for instance, reports an experiment in which he asked politically diverse Twitter followers to search for ideologically loaded terms and got almost identical results.
It seems the Internet isn’t fostering mental rabbit warrens just yet.
Pariser is also mistaken, it seems to me, in assuming that personalization narrows our perspectives rather than broadening them. Through most of history, information filters have been imposed involuntarily. By contrast, wouldn’t it make sense that our growing access to people and data increases exposure to viewpoints deviating from our familiar diet of opinions? Just ask your grandmother how many non-Christians or non-Muslims or non-Hindus, or whatever — you get the point — she had talked to when she was your age.
Just look at Twitter, the alleged symbol of divide: it confronts you with people who don’t think like you on a daily basis.
To support this picture, studies have shown that conservative and liberal bloggers link to each other to a surprising degree. And new data does, in fact, seem to show that people on Facebook see posts from the other side and that people regularly visit websites with opposite political affiliation.
If that’s right, then filter bubbles might not be such a serious threat. The pattern of selective exposure that has Pariser and co worried is heavily concentrated among a small subset of people.
Digital manipulation is ineffective
Likewise, the belief that fake news is displacing truth itself needs to be examined for its truth.
What, to begin, is fake news? It is not merely false information conveyed by reportage. As the word ‘fake’ suggests, fake news requires intentional deception; honest reporting errors are not fake news. Fake news is when committed partisans try to erode their opponents’ support by tricking persuadable voters. Or when, for example, shady groups with links to Russian military intelligence deliberately manufacture (online) untruths. For these creators, fake news needs to travel widely not only to generate clicks, but also to change minds.
Let’s follow the by-now trusted recipe and ask for proof: how susceptible are we? Is digital deception making us believe false things?
I believe the answer is “No”, for three reasons.
The first piece of data: in their analysis of fake news in the 2016 American presidential election, three social scientists found that it took up a minuscule proportion of the online communications (far less than 1 percent) and was mainly directed at those with extremely views, willing to accept anything as long as it’s good for their side. It takes a particular psyche to be tricked into accepting fake news as true. The vast majority of people didn’t fall for these hoaxes.
And while the risk of information polarization of course remains, the percentage of the public saying that media outlets try to report news without bias jumped from 23% to 43% between 2016 and 2017 (according to polling by the Freedom Forum Institute).
Finally, more and more studies have been published by political scientists who experimented with interventions to change people’s politics. The results are consistent: digital manipulation doesn’t work. Want to use advertising to influence voters during the American elections? “We argue that the best estimate of the effects of campaign contact and advertising on Americans’ candidate choices in general elections is zero.” Thinking of spreading biased information about the of of election candidates? “We find no evidence overall that typical, nonpartisan voter information campaigns shape voter behavior.” And what about information about corrupt politicians? “The aggregate treatment effect or corruption information on vote share in field experiments is approximately zero.”
Zero!
I think there’s only one conclusion. For fake news to get to you, you have to already be marinated in a partisan fever swamp. For you to ‘mistake’ dubious information as the truth, it seems you have to do so willingly. When you consume fake news as news, there’s no one playing a number on you except yourself.
The takeaway
The combination of rising partisanship, ostensible disregard for the facts, and technological advancements have created fears of widespread “echo chambers” and “filter bubbles”. Their presence, the fear goes, would cause growing ignorance and stupidity.
I’ve argued these warnings are overstated.
For one, behavioral data indicate that only a tiny subset of people have profoundly skewed media consumption patterns. Rather than turning us into solipsistic twits, digitalization breaks down barriers between groups who traditionally subscribe to clashing worldviews
Moreover, there is no reason to think the digitalization of information undermines the ability of sane folks to differentiate what’s likely sound from what’s almost certainly not. Concerns about digitally manufactured lies getting the better of us are understandable, but they seem to miss the mark.
Not to worry: you’re neither in a filter bubble, nor being tricked into believing false things (unless you want to be). Perhaps filter bubbles sound bulletproof in theory. In practice, the bullets pop them all too easily. | https://medium.com/the-understanding-project/truth-in-the-post-truth-era-its-not-that-complicated-60650df61521 | ['Maarten Van Doorn'] | 2019-12-12 12:40:18.530000+00:00 | ['Culture', 'Philosophy', 'Politics', 'Psychology', 'Social Media'] |
I’m Spending This in Thanksgiving With My Next Relatives | When my daughter was three, she found a mouse outside in the grass. Without hesitation, she grabbed it by the tail and picked it up for us all to see.
‘Look!’ she shrieked, ‘A partly-dead, partly-alive mouse!’
Although she’s now 9, this moment remains one of her earliest memories, and the phrase ‘partly-dead, partly-alive’ has made it into our family lexicon.
This year, more than ever, I’ve been thinking of the phrase in terms of my family. My family — and yours, and everyone else’s — is partly-dead, partly-alive.
I don’t mean it in the morbid sense like we’re all just a moment away from a cat-attack that leaves us seizing out in the yard.
What I mean is that part of my family is dead and part of my family is still alive. When life feels full of gray areas like it does right now, it’s almost comforting to have something so black and white to think about.
In the alive column are my kids, my husband, and my mom and dad. I have three siblings and assorted aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, and nephews. They are spread out across the country, wrapped up their own 2020 narratives. And they’re all fine — as fine as any of us are right now.
But since I won’t be seeing any of them over the holidays this year, I have found myself thinking a lot about the other part of my family. This includes the people who are no longer alive but are nonetheless, part of my family. In this category are all four of my grandparents, as well as many great-aunts and great-uncles. Also on this side is my mother’s baby brother, who died of cancer at 50, which is an age that seemed old at the time, but now seems tragically young.
I can’t complain about this balance. Life is inevitably a moving equation of subtractions and additions, and I’m lucky to have special people in both the dead and alive column.
Most of the time though, it’s my living family members that demand attention. The texts, calls, photos, zoom meets, and gifts all go to them. In a typical year, the week before Thanksgiving would be a volley of recipes, eating times, seating arrangements, and guestlists. I’d be giving my kids a crash course on table manners and making sure we all had at least one decent outfit to take on the long drive to my parents’ house in upstate New York.
This year though, we are making no plans. We are mashing no potatoes and playing no after-dinner card games.
And so, like many of you, I’m faced with an emotional and logistical void.
What I’ve noticed though, is that the other part of my family — the dead part — keeps creeping in to fill the void. More than ever, I’ve been thinking about my grandmothers. One died while I was in high school and the other passed away only recently, but both were a force to be reckoned with in my early life.
When I was young and they were both alive, I thought of them only as old ladies who made casseroles for church suppers and drove big long sedans — always five to ten miles slower than the speed limit.
But lately, I’ve been wondering more about other parts of their lives. I’ve been wondering which decade was their happiest and what their biggest regrets were. Both lived through many elections, several wars, and the passing of Roe v. Wade. There are things that I look up on Wikipedia that I’m sure either of my grandmothers would know off the top of their heads.
I’ve been wondering if they wished they had more children or if they wished they never had children at all. Did they feel fat when they looked in the mirror and suffer from deep-seated anxiety that was layered over in cosmetics from the Avon lady and knitted vests?
Were they happy in their marriages, or after five or six decades, were concerns about happiness pushed aside by the contentment that comes from predictability?
This leads me to think about my grandfathers. One was short, the other was tall. Both were dairy farmers and both were staunch conservatives. I know from their testimonies in church that they were single-issue voters: abortion. But I also know that they would have hated Trump for a hundred other reasons. And I wonder what they would have done in the voting booth this year.
One grandfather, in protest of the government, always refused to wear a seatbelt. I now wonder — would he put on a mask for the sake of all of us, or would he travel the countryside bare-faced, untethered by safety restraints of any kind?
Then my thoughts wander to his sister, my great aunt. Though she died in the early 2000s in her mid-80s, I’ve often wished for the chance to revisit our last conversation. It happened on Thanksgiving as we were all squeezing in one more piece of pie.
“I think Hillary Clinton will be president one day,” she said, beaming.
I regret not demanding an explanation. In an era defined by 9/11 and a second Bush in office, what gave her the audacity to suggest such an outlandish idea? Furthermore, in a family of conservatives, how did she — my great Aunt with two white pigtails and purple leather mocassins — end up a liberal Democrat? But I was a dumb college student, probably itching to leave the table so I visit my boyfriend or talk to my college friends over AIM on my desktop computer, so I didn’t.
On one hand, it’s sad to think of how many opportunities I missed with my dead relatives. But I also know it’s unrealistic to think that I would have spent my teenage years and 20s focused on drawing wisdom out of elderly people in armchairs instead of traveling, studying, and aggressively following the belief that I already knew all I needed to know about life. So instead of wallowing in regret, I’ve just been spending time thinking about them with love and nostalgia.
For the first thirty-five years of my life, the sight of my grandmother spilling food onto her bosom and then dabbing at it with a wet napkin was as common as seeing a squirrel or a bluejay out my window. The difference is though, that I’ll see squirrels and bluejays for the rest of my life, but I’ll never again see my grandmother’s face feign surprise when an errant cranberry plops down on her snowy white blouse.
But that’s ok. Trust me, with a 4 and a 9-year-old, there’s still plenty of stained shirts in my life.
And most of the time, I spend a lot more time thinking about my kids than my grandmother. But this year, I’m changing it up. Of course, I’ll feed my kids — I’m not a monster. But my heart, my mind, and my thoughts — they’ll be with my dead relatives, dropping cranberries, predicting elections, and trying to find answers to the questions I never asked.
If you like this type of story about partly-alive-partly-dead animals, try this:
The Joy and Sadness of Loving a Good Dog
How our dead dog Cooper gave us one final happy memory in the woods.medium.com | https://medium.com/@curtismhun/im-spending-this-in-thanksgiving-with-my-next-relatives-db288867886a | [] | 2020-12-12 19:43:32.776000+00:00 | ['Coronavirus', 'Health', 'Thanksgiving', 'Wellness'] |
The Current State of Smart Contract Upgradeability | Rudimentary Approaches to Upgradeability
Here we’ll take a look at some more approachable, yet less suitable solutions to smart contract upgradeability. Though these are not optimal approaches, they are at the core of what is used today.
Registry contracts
Registry contracts are probably the simplest approach to upgradeability, but in this case, with simplicity comes some serious flaws.
It works using two contracts: the registry contract and the logic contract. The registry contract exists only to point users to the current version of the logic contract. Whenever the logic contract is upgraded, the owner of the registry contract can update the address at which the logic contract is upgraded.
Example from Consensys
This approach is disadvantageous because anytime a user wants to use the contract, they must first look up the current address. Failing to do so could potentially lead to fund loss. It is also very difficult to migrate data to the new contract, and thus this process must be carefully considered to avoid failure.
Proxy contracts
Proxy contracts are used to forward data and calls to the logic contract. With a proxy contract, users can always call the same contract address, and it will simply be forwarded to the current logic contract.
This approach works by making use of the DELEGATECALL opcode. DELEGATECALL is an opcode provided by the EVM for use in assembly. It works just like a normal call, except that the code at the target address is executed in the context of the calling contract. This means that values like `msg.sender` and `msg.value` are preserved. Essentially, DELEGATECALL allows the target contract to make calls on behalf of the callee.
Example from Consensys
Though this approach avoids the problems involved with registry contracts, it has problems of its own. For example, data storage can easily fail if managed improperly. If new contracts have a different storage layout from the previous contract, the data may be corrupted. This implementation also prevents you from receiving return values from functions, limiting its use cases.
Storage contracts
Like the previous approaches, this approach requires your logic contract, along with a secondary contract. In this case, the second contract is an eternal storage contract. This technique works by separating the logic and data. The logic contract can be upgraded anytime, and since the data storage is external, your data is protected.
Of course, this approach is also fundamentally flawed. If a bug or exploit is found in the storage contract, it cannot be upgraded without corrupting current data stores. The other issue with this approach is that the logic contract needs to make an external call to view or modify data, using extra gas. | https://betterprogramming.pub/the-current-state-of-smart-contract-upgradeability-ff2b8bbe4725 | ['Kaden Zipfel'] | 2019-12-01 13:09:58.139000+00:00 | ['Engineering', 'Smart Contracts', 'Ethereum', 'Blockchain', 'Solidity'] |
Her Eyes | I can not count the ways her eyes beguile me. How brilliantly they shine from the hanging light.
So blue in color I feel as if I could drown in their depth, clear as snow yet black as night. She is a mystery to me and has gained my devotion, but she is not dearest to my heart.
There is a girl in the market whose eyes are the color of lilac and she is most precious to me.
Julia carries my world on her shoulders. I met her on a rainy Tuesday when I had stopped by the market to buy some bleach. As I looked up into her eyes I was trapped. Nothing could keep my gaze from those eyes. As she read my total in her droll southern voice I handed her my money.
Her hands looked so soft I longed to hold them. Heaven smiled upon me as her hand brushed along mine as she handed me my change. I wanted nothing more than to stand there for eternity and look into her eyes, but the line forming behind me and her farewell forced me to take my leave.
I returned the next day, but my heart crashed into my chest when another poorly groomed adolescent in desperate need of acne medication was behind the counter where she should have been.
Though slightly set back I was not swayed from being within sight of her captivating eyes.
I approached the boy when he was finished placing egg cartons underneath the gallon of milk within the older woman’s shopping bag and asked him when Julia might return.
Young and naive he told me Julia only works on Saturday and Sunday. Today was Monday, a pounding started within my head as I thought of waiting so long to see those eyes.
With desperation hidden within me, I pressed the boy for more information as he was focusing his attention on ringing up a large purchase of cat food for the obscenely obese women behind me.
With no hesitation he offered up the information that Julia only lives around the corner from the market, she is also single and lives only with her small dog. I had him describe the house and with great haste, I was on my way up the street towards her eyes.
I wanted nothing more than to surprise her, to see the look on her face when I appear.
I was not disappointed. When afraid the eyes look more dazzling than anything I have ever noticed.
So bright and so wide as if you could see the small white ball in all of its entirety.
Though seeing her eyes wide with fear did them no justice to what they look like now.
Shining in the hanging light within their jar her eyes capture me daily, but I have found another whose eyes hold my gaze with such rapture my heart may burst.
Maria’s eyes are the color of melted chocolate I’m not sure if I can wait much longer to visit her. | https://medium.com/for-the-twisted-writers/her-eyes-e22fd261f020 | ['Barbara King'] | 2020-12-22 22:07:50.716000+00:00 | ['Short Fiction', 'Short Story', 'Thriller', 'Horror Fiction', 'Horror'] |
Trends in Semantic Parsing — Part 2 | An unsupervised Bayesian model
This paper was published in ACL 2011 [1], back when statistical methods were still being used for NLP tasks. But with the recent forays into generative models, I feel it has again become relevant to understand how such methods worked. The task of frame semantic parsing can be broken down into 3 independent steps:
Decompose the sentence into lexical items. Divide these items into clusters and assign a label to each cluster. Predict argument-predicate relations between clusters.
Frames essentially refer to a semantic representation of predicates (such as verbs), and their arguments are represented as clusters. For sake of convenience, we refer both of these structures as semantic classes. For example, in the sentences:
[India] defeated [England].
[England]. [The Indian team] secured a victory over the [English cricket team].
Here, ‘defeated’ and ‘secured a victory’ both belong to the frame WINNING, while ‘India’ and ‘Indian team’ are grouped into the cluster labeled WINNER.
The authors proposed a generative algorithm which makes use of statistical processes to model semantic parsing. We can summarize the model as follows, for a particular sentence:
The distribution of semantic classes is given by a hierarchical Pitman-Yor process, i.e.,
We start with obtaining the semantic class for the root of the tree from the probability distribution which is a sample drawn from the above Pitman-Yor process.
Once the root is obtained, we call the function GenSemClass on this root.
Since the current root only has a semantic class, we obtain its syntactic realization from a distribution over all possible syntactic realizations, which is given as a Dirichlet Process with the arguments as the base word and a prior.
Essentially, the base word w is obtained from a geometric distribution, and the subsequent words are obtained by computing the conditional probability of dependency relation r given w, and the next word p given r.
For each argument type t, if the probability of having at least 1 argument of type t is non-zero, we generate an argument of that type using function GenArgument, until that probability becomes 0.
The GenArgument function again computes the base argument from the distribution of syntactic realizations, and then obtains the next semantic class again from the hierarchical PY process.
We then recursively call the GenSemClass function on this new class.
This is the essence of the algorithm. Basically we get a semantic frame from the PY process, and then generate the corresponding syntax from a Dirichlet process. This is done recursively, hence the need for a hierarchical PY process. For the details of the stochastic processes, you can look at their Wikipedia pages. For the root level parameters, a stick-breaking construction is used, but I am yet to look into the details of this method. However, I suppose this is similar to the broken-stick technique used to estimate the number of eigenvalues to retain in a principal component analysis. | https://medium.com/explorations-in-language-and-learning/trends-in-semantic-parsing-part-2-bf12fd6301d6 | ['Desh Raj'] | 2017-11-07 18:50:12.168000+00:00 | ['Naturallanguageprocessing', 'Deep Learning', 'Parsing', 'Text Mining', 'Machine Learning'] |
The Insignificance Of Human Emotions | The Insignificance Of Human Emotions
“There are many flaws of humans. However, the one flaw that makes humans, imperfect are emotions” — Apathetic Philosophy
As per the quotation used above, It states that the quality and presence of “Human Emotions” is a constant flaw in every human being.
The Justification Of The Invalid Demands Proposed by Emotions
Humans are known to be social beings, It is an established fact that every human being requires their emotional needs as much as physical needs and this is an upfront that stands as a basic need. The need for social support or in terms of human quotations “A friendly ear” or “A touch of affection” and this is basically an exchange if explained in simple terms. An exchange of needs, how are emotions related to basic needs? It is quite simple to think about it.
“Friendship” or “A Deep bond” are basically exchanges of favor through a manner that is considered as an act of kindness or this can also be re-phrased as “Responsibility” to justify the give-free trade of favors. As per the term “Give-Free trade” it is meant to signify the trade of two individuals under an impression that it is a free trade with no exchange yet the other person always expects a return of favor. As the most intelligent species on earth, it sure is a Trump card as when a certain individual fulfills a need or task for the other person before he/she demands it. It serves as an obvious front of returning the favor by any means believed by human psychology. Therefore, the most kind people with the disguise of a soft heart is often popular with other humans as everyone is allowed to fulfill their emotional needs or simply ask for a favor when needed without the guilt or the front known as “Trade”. Having a friend serves as both emotional and physical needs due to the fact that they are willing to trade anytime and are always easily available, It also helps to attract more friends in the circle creating a wide exchange. However, it must also be taken into consideration that emotions are not also just a simple exchanged. After all human are social beings and to satisfy their personal interest, “Friendship” is the most soft front to find someone who shares a similar mindset or a similar quality they both share to deepen the reliability on their trade partners.
All species of animals or creatures always require a way to produce an offspring to continue their generations or more accurately put, simply to share their lust to mate with a suitable partner. Thus, this lust of re-producing or sharing the pleasure has been changed in terms of meaning to avoid the guilt of calling it as a body interest resulting it to be a bond known as “Love”.
“Love” is the ultimate front to put up when an individual shares an interest on the others abilities or just the sexual lust, Some may even choose for a partner for Love if he/she is a suitable companion who can provide more emotional support than the average can do. It is simply a agreement of partnership to trade their needs in a more deeply involved way for a longer period of time and more prioritized. This strategy of trading their needs, avoids the insignificant guilts or regrets and also adds an advantage to demand for attention or sympathy if in any case with a valid reason one can leave. The reasons to leave this partnership can be a loss of interest in a single constant individual or if the other partner doesn’t repay the debts on the terms they agreed on. If in any case the proposed partner refuses, the other individual has a valid reason to be seen as deprived and depressed to attract sympathy and other partners for replacement.
( The term “Depression” is quoted as a stage where an individual lacks emotional needs)
“Depressed” or “Sad” are also one of the tricks or factors used by Mankind to gain companions and get known among other humans. An individual who claims to be depressed attracts the sympathy of others. Sympathy is another form of a proposal to a kind trade. In this method to gain more companions in order to exchange more needs and wants, it is beneficial for both sides. Due to the fact that one individual, helping another individual in the name of sympathy is often known to be nice or gentle among other humans. However, an individual being kind to one is also kind to others, and therefore gaining popularity in a good will is the best way to wield authority over others by returning their favors in a good will. Such salvation is basically a currency that passes on to one another to benefit oneself by disguising oneself as a kind and thoughtful individual to gain popularity and trust, kindness can also be used to solve self-guilt by helping the other person therefore it is Lie fabricated on the sole purpose of self-satisfaction and benefit. It also provides a sign that symbolizes that the individual is an available trader. As for the one receiving sympathy attracts more traders and thus this cycle continues.
However, to disguise the true nature of human intentions or to simply avoid the guilt of the masses. Every society applies certain rules and create a different opinion mindset that re-assures the individuals of it’s pure intention and care.
It is also noteworthy that some individuals accept and truly feel these ideals known as “Love” towards another available partner. This feeling is basically as explained in science, a chemical called “Dopamine” is released to the brain to feel its emotional pleasures. In other words, the other individual becomes a necessity for one’s emotional needs. That affection and love is the only pure form of Love that exists. No matter how much it is broken down to see its true nature, there is no spot left for explanation in a logical sense. As it is a pure form of Emotion. The willingness to fulfill any needs or wants for the other person without any payment or expectation is a complete affection-based feeling that exists in rare cases.
“Your body cares about your social needs because millions of years ago, it was a great indicator of how likely you were to survive. To avoid that your body came up with social pain.” — Loneliness Matters: A Theoretical and Empirical Review of Consequences and Mechanisms, 2010
Therefore, In conclusion
Human emotions are mostly based on the sole purpose of self-satisfaction and interest, even though it has indeed developed as a psychology, it is yet not purely based on pure emotions.
References- Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens), Cigna U.S. Loneliness Index, 2018, The lonely society? , 2010, Loneliness. Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection, 2008, How Loneliness Begets Loneliness, 2017 | https://medium.com/@flamostudios6592/the-insignificance-of-human-emotions-40e2cfa9d93e | ['Anindo Ibrahim'] | 2021-07-06 16:41:21.302000+00:00 | ['Human', 'Nihilism', 'Thoughts And Feelings', 'Emotions', 'Thoughts'] |
Grid, the new face of spreadsheets | Grid has raised $4.6M in total. We talk with Hjalmar Gislason, its CEO.
PetaCrunch: How would you describe Grid in a single tweet?
Hjalmar Gislason: GRID is the new face of spreadsheets. It empowers anyone to turn their spreadsheets into beautiful, interactive web content and securely share with their colleagues, without learning any new skills.
PC: How did it all start and why?
HG: Since starting my last startup — DataMarket — in 2008, and then joining Qlik through an acquisition in 2014 I believe I’ve learned a lot about how people and companies work with data, what they want to do with data and how they’re trying to accomplish that. The more I learned, the more I saw spreadsheets *everywhere*, being used for *everything* — including things they were obviously not designed to do. So I decided I needed to understand them better; understand fundamentally what spreadsheets are, why they are so ubiquitous, and by extension if there were some opportunities there.
So I dove in and started a few streams of research, anywhere from reading up on spreadsheet history and asking everyone I met about their spreadsheet usage, to gathering a large collection of real world spreadsheets and studying them to understand what they were all about. I ended up capturing some of my findings in a three-piece series on Medium called “3 things you don’t understand about spreadsheets”:
These posts form a sort of foundational understanding on which GRID stands as a business. However, if I were to sum my findings up in one sentence it would be that spreadsheets are the knowledge worker’s answer to the question: How can I get things done NOW (without talking to IT)?
In other words, spreadsheets empower business users — the domain experts themselves — to take care of a lot of their own every-day IT needs. The fact that they can is a testament to spreadsheets’ power, but you don’t have to spend a lot of time around spreadsheets — or in business in general — to realise some of spreadsheets’ obvious shortcomings.
And that’s where I saw an opportunity: What if we could give the — almost 1 billion — spreadsheet users a tool that would leverage their existing spreadsheet skills and assets but overcome many of those shortcomings.
That is what GRID is all about.
PC: What have you achieved so far?
HG: The co-founding team came together last fall. The first two of us sat down on September 1, 2018 and started hammering away on keyboards. Since then we’ve gone through two funding rounds: a $1M Angel round in October 2018 and a $3.5M Seed round in March 2019. The team has grown to 13 people. We started our Alpha testing in March and are just about to get ready to roll out our Beta.
PC: How will you use your recent funding round?
HG: The funding we closed in March will be used to develop the initial commercial version of GRID, prepare the initial go-to-market plans, and do a “controlled” launch of the product to learn and confirm what we need to accelerate our plans and make the product generally available in 2020.
PC: What do you plan to achieve in the next 2–3 years?
HG: In 3 years we see GRID having grown to 100s of thousands of users, and passing the $5M mark in ARR while still in a rapid growth phase. In terms of where the product will be, we haven’t yet publicly revealed too much about even the initial version, so it is too early to talk about specifics, but let’s just say that we’ll have given spreadsheet users around the world a way to make their spreadsheets and spreadsheet skills a lot more valuable. | https://medium.com/petacrunch/grid-the-new-face-of-spreadsheets-41dbc23d4ecf | ['Kevin Hart'] | 2019-08-25 09:16:01.090000+00:00 | ['Spreadsheets', 'Effectiveness', 'Data', 'Data Visualization', 'Data Science'] |
What 2020 Taught Me about Building a Business — It’s a Networks Game | How business and networks come together
The term ‘networking’ reminds most of us about the haphazard connection requests we’re all victims of on Linked In. Or the networking events where it’s all about getting something in as short a time as possible. It’s easy to be cynical about it.
This year, I’ve discovered a different perspective. Creating a network that provides us with opportunities and support is about giving. A fact which has surprisingly sound scientific backing.
So how is a business a network’s game? Let’s look at two examples.
In a great study on the art world led by the applied network science pioneer Albert-László Barabási, we can clearly see the hidden network dynamics we’re up against.
Barabási and his lab team looked at how artists become popular and identified only a handful of galleries in the world where exhibiting your work makes a difference to your success. Be featured there and you become a well known artist and the value of your works skyrockets. Do literally anything else, and you will only see marginal returns.
Artists have a very limited direct influence on whether their work shows up in this handful of world-class galleries. You can’t cold-call the gallery offering your works to be exhibited, regardless of how motivated you are. Instead, it’s about how well the artists are connected to the curators at these institutions through their networks.
Where it’s hard to measure performance, it’s networks that drive success.
Closer to home, we have the story of one of the most successful tech startups in history — Dropbox. In the beginning, Drew Houston, the founder of Dropbox founder, was advised to find a co-founder at the right time — he did. He also found himself at YCombinator — one of the best connected and most supportive startup hubs in the world. Later on, Dropbox created a brilliant growth strategy, relying almost entirely on network effects, that got them to where they are today.
They got key advice, support and feedback from the right people at the right times. They were able to hire the right people and get the product right, ending up with a massively successful business.
Barabási’s key insight from his studies on network success is this: Where it’s hard to measure performance, it’s networks that drive success. It’s a spectrum — on one end we have areas where it’s difficult to measure performance, such as art, becoming a celebrity or early stages of building a business. That’s where network effects are strongest. On the other, we have areas where it’s easy to measure performance — repetitive work and sports. That’s where it’s easy to reward those with the highest performance, and so that metric determines success.
So how can we apply this new perspective? Naval Ravikant, the CEO and founder of AngeList, offers a way to build strong authentic networks: “Play long-term games with long-term people”. People that receive highly sought after positions “are trusted, because the relationships they’ve built and the work they’ve done has compounded. They’ve stuck with the business and shown themselves […] to be high-integrity people.”
With this long term perspective in mind, it’s much easier to see how generosity and honesty come into play. As Naval shows in his writings, most good things in life come from compound interest. So we shouldn’t look to build relationships around short-term gains. Instead, create long-term friendships and alliances with people you genuinely find interesting and would like to be around. This way seems a lot more fun and results in a life filled with interesting people. It also happens to be the one that supports our business best. | https://medium.com/curious/what-2020-taught-me-about-building-a-business-its-a-networks-game-dcb3606ae9b5 | ['Milosz Falinski'] | 2020-12-23 10:29:40.486000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Networking', 'Growth', 'Business'] |
Making-of: Trails of Wind. How we created a map of the global… | Making-of: Trails of Wind
How we created a map of the global architecture of airport runways, which turned out to be a wind map.
This article is a collaborative work by David Elsche, Steffen Hänsch, and Sascha Collet.
While Flying on a plane the man-made structures and how they change the face of the earth are overwhelming. The bird’s eye view casts a whole other light on how humans interact with landscapes, using every valley for villages, shaping fields around forests, building highways through mountain passes. Some of the largest man-made structures, however, are the ones needed for air travel itself: airports. But why they were built the way they are and how is the direction a runway faces determined?
After doing some research we found out that most airport runways are built in the average wind direction of that location to prevent crosswind landing, which could be dangerous for airplanes and passengers alike. In regions with very irregular wind directions, runways are often designed in various directions to ensure a smooth course of operation. That is why, in regions like these, airports don’t just have parallel runways but form distinct shapes, like triangles and squares, depending on how wind directions usually change.
Airport Runway Shapes
We concluded that the orientation and the gigantic number of airports theoretically could provide information about the general wind direction of a region, as airports reflect the wind directions in their architecture.
Data Exploration
Tools JupiterLab, Altair
In the search for a suitable record, we came across the Ouraiports page. It contains an extensive collection of all airports in the world that also provides further information like passenger frequency, altitude above and below sea level and another dataset with detailed references about the runways (length, width, surface, etc.). After removing irrelevant data like heliports, closed airports and runways without coordinates we compared the runway dataset with the airports dataset.
As you can see many of the runways in the dataset are not georeferenced, which is why a large number of runways cannot be represented. The resulting lack of many airports is especially noticeable in South America, Africa and Papua New Guinea.
After visualizing the runways rudimentarily using Folium to see deviating runway lines in the dataset, we removed errors manually.
Runways differ greatly in terms of their length and width and in most cases follow the specifications of aircraft types that land on the airport. The required length of a runway for the take-off of an aircraft type depends on a variety of properties like weight, aerodynamics, engines and the local air pressure and ranges between a few hundred meters up to several thousand meters for an A380 (see page 130).
This visualized dataset shows that there is a much clearer structure by the width of the runway than by the length.
To compare the runway directions, it was important to display them uniformly. We computed the midpoint between the runway endpoint coordinates with Geographiclib and calculated the angle of rotation compared to the north-south-axis to project the lines later on the map.
After calculating the respective angle it’s time to have a look at the global runway orientation. Therefore we reduced the orientation to almost a semicircle of 179° to avoid double counting the angles (since landing strips can be flown on from both sides) and to give a clearer representation.
What is striking here is the elevated orientation of the runways in the direction of the magnetic north. A clearly increased number can be seen north-south (0°) as well as at the east-west-axis (90°), with smaller peaks are at 45° and -45°.
For further use in a web application, all unimportant information was removed and exported in a final JSON file. The coordinate points were rounded to six digits after the decimal point to decrease the file size. | https://towardsdatascience.com/trails-of-wind-39967f07a67f | ['David Von Buseck'] | 2019-07-14 09:17:39.373000+00:00 | ['Aviation', 'Travel', 'Design', 'Maps', 'Data Visualization'] |
Easy Database Access with NHibernate in .NET 5.0 | Adding Persistence with NHibernate
To add persistence, we need three elements:
The first element is adding and configuring NHibernate
The second element is changing the TodoListRepository class to use NHibernate to store and read objects.
The third element we need a mapping between the TodoList class and the underlying relational table
NHibernate, Fluent NHibernate and Entity Framework
There are several options for object-relational mappers (ORMs) for .NET. These choices include NHibernate (“NH”) and Entity Framework (“EF”). Without going into much details beyond mentioning briefly discussing the two main reasons, we will be using NH in this article.
The first reason is that there appear more articles about EF than NH. Also, many examples and the tooling in Visual Studio give EF the preference. This is not surprising as EF is pushed heavily by Microsoft. This doesn’t mean, though, that it should be the default, let alone default choice. It is not a sacrilege to replace Microsoft’s option with an option developed and maintained by a large open-source community. This article (and more in the future) aim at making NH more accessible by showing how easily it can be introduced.
The second reason is that in my work I observe an increasing number of clients who run into significant issues with EF, many of which could have been avoided by using something other than EF. There are different types of issues but most of them appear gradually as a project grows in size. Yes, all of the problems can be solved. However, at times that is very time consuming and the problems have a tendency to reappear. Please note, though, that my opinion is that if EF works for you, then don’t change it.
In this article, we’ll be using NHibernate. To make code even simpler to write, we’ll be using a nuget package named Fluent NHibernate. This library makes configuring NHibernate and writing mapping code much easier. More about this shortly. Let’s get started.
Adding and Configuring NHibernate
Go to directory “/app/CmdLine” and run the following command to add Fluent NHibernate to the project:
dotnet add package FluentNHibernate
Although FluentNHibernate includes NHibernate as an indirect reference as well, this may not be the most recent stable version. To ensure it is, run the following command to add a direct reference:
dotnet add package NHibernate
Switch back to directory “/app” and run “dotnet test” to confirm we didn’t break anything.
Open the file containing class Database. Right after method “CreateServices()” add the following method “CreateSessionFactory()”:
In this piece of code in line 9 we run the migrations. Then in lines 11 to 18 we configure NHibernate using the fluent interface provided by Fluent NHibernate. In lines, 12 to 14 we provide the information about which SQL dialect and connection string to use. Lines 15 to 17 configure the mappings to be used (more on that later). Line 16 describes where to look for mapping classes. In line 17 we tell Fluent NHibernate to look for column names with suffix “Id” to identify foreign keys. For example, let’s assume we already had a table for the items in a TodoList. In that case that table would have a column “TodoListId” to store the information about which to-do list the item belongs to. Finally, in line 18 we build the session factory (more on this shortly).
With this in place, we can update our code in test class “TodoListRepositoryTests”. We add a private field “_sessionFactory” and then assign it a value in method “SetUp()”. The resulting file looks as follows:
Again, confirm with “dotnet test” in folder “/app” that everything still works.
Session and Session Factory in NHibernate
Both a session and session factory are key concepts in NHibernate. Conceptually a session represents a connection to a database. It is cheap to create. The session factory is an object that manages those sessions, e.g., it maintains a pool of session and decides whether a session can be reused. A session factory is fairly expensive to create in terms of runtime overhead. Generally, you will create just one instance within your application in most cases.
When we need a session, we’ll get it from the session factory. We then perform some work, e.g., we query for data, we add new objects, or we remove objects. Once we are finished with that work, we close the session to indicate that we are done with it. If we need another session, we just get a new one from the session factory.
Let’s return to the TodoListRepository. We need a new session for each the “Save()” as well as the “GetById()” method. A good option is to pass the session factory to the repository as a dependency in the constructor. Here is the repository class with that modification in place:
Accordingly, we need to change the code in the test class so we pass the session factory to the TodoListRepository constructor (line 18 in the following snippet):
And again, we confirm that our test passes by running “dotnet test” in directory “/app”.
Mapping between Objects and Table Rows
The next step is to update the implementation of methods “Save()” and “GetById()” in class TodoListRepository. As explained above this is what we need conceptually for each of the two methods:
Get a session from session factory Do work, e.g., query for data, persist objects, delete objects Close the session to indicate we no longer need it.
The code looks to be fairly simple, given that we have the session factory in the variable “_sessionFactory”:
With this pattern we can now change the implementation of the TodoListRepository to the following:
Note, how the “Save()” method returns the id of the persistent object. NHibernate takes care of generating the id. For most scenarios it is very useful to return the object id from this method as it tends to make the client code more readable. Note also, how in line 17 we call “session.Flush()” to ensure our changes are written to the database. In a future article we make this more explicit by adding explicit transaction handling. That will allows us to remove the “Flush()”-call.
If we run “dotnet test” now, the test will fail with an error message as follows:
The error message already gives a clue: NHibernate doesn’t know how to map the object to a row in a relational table. Let’s fix this.
In project “CmdLine” create a folder “Maps” inside the existing folder “DataAccess”, then add a class name “TodoListMap” with the following code:
To be on the safe side, here is the location of that file:
Note line 9: In a previous article we created the table with Fluent Migrator and gave it the name “List”. Line 9 maps class “TodoList” to the table “List” in the database. I use this for illustrative purposes here. We’ll resolve this in a future article which will allow us to remove line 9 from the map file.
Re-run “dotnet test”. This time we’ll notice a different error:
We can resolve this by changing the implementation of our domain class “TodoList” to the following:
Note, how we made both properties “virtual” (lines 7 and 8).
If we now run “dotnet test” in directory “/app” we will see the test pass:
Awesome! We just managed to make the first test succeed. We replaced the trivial implementation of the repository with a proper one that uses NHibernate as the object-relational mapper (ORM).
As we observed, this wasn’t too hard, given the meaningful error messages along the way that guided us to resolve those problems quickly.
We now have in place a test that demonstrates that we can store and read objects to and from a relational database. Before we summarize and look at next steps, allow me a couple of additional thoughts. | https://medium.com/nerd-for-tech/easy-database-access-with-nhibernate-in-net-5-0-3cc7e36510c9 | ['Manfred Lange'] | 2021-02-21 03:12:40.898000+00:00 | ['C Sharp Programming', 'Orm', 'Nunit', 'Fluent Nhibernate', 'Nhibernate'] |
Motivating Myself Into 2020 | Now what?
Queue: Me Too by Meghan Trainor
One of the things I learned is that calling the shot does two things. It motivates me to get off my ass and do the work AND it actually kind of makes me feel like a badass.
Trying to harness that feeling is important to propel yourself into achieving your goals. As many as 80% of all New Years' resolutions fail. That might be why a quick search to find the source this time of year brings up more articles on habits and less on science.
That’s why I like the podcast the Happiness Lab (and specifically an episode on gratitude). It is easy to listen to Me Too, and enjoy the playfulness of the song and lyrics, but it also motivates me to be grateful for my life and the opportunities I can forge for myself. The Happiness Lab identifies that gratitude is a stronger motivator than willpower. That is why the majority of New Years’ resolutions will fail by January 17th. In fact, the running app Strava calls January 19th Quitters Day because that is when most people abandon or stall on their fitness goals.
It only takes .05% of a year to fall behind.
Knowing that the odds are against me, is motivating though. I am grateful that I am mobile enough to attempt to run thousands of miles. I am grateful I am able to have space and disposable wealth to read a book a week. I am grateful for co-workers and partners that let me explore opportunities as a potential board member, teacher, and community activist. When I take this lens, hitting my goals is about showing my appreciation and admiration, not putting a “W” on the board for my ego and ego alone. When I listen to Meghan though, I know there is a little ego to attempt these things and that is okay. | https://medium.com/@mattglazer/motivating-myself-into-2020-cd37cf2a92e0 | ['Matt Glazer'] | 2020-01-14 14:21:01.136000+00:00 | ['Resolutions', 'Planning', 'Productivity', 'Motivation', 'Habits'] |
65 ways to dodge boredom this winter | Since there’s no place to go — let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. It’s ever a song were written for winter 2020, it’s that one. A lot has been said about what we’ve lost in 2020, but having no place to go has meant creative attempts to dodge total boredom. I’ve benefitted from friends, acquaintances and even stray dog walkers who’ve recommended things to keep me occupied. This list is an attempt to return the favour.
TV shows I’ve enjoyed
1. Self-Made (Netflix)
2. The Boys (Amazon)
3. Unorthodox (Netflix)
4. 5 bedrooms (BBC)
5. Strike (BBC)
6. Bodyguard (BBC)
7. Contact (Channel 4)
8. Good Omens (Amazon)
9. The Catch (Amazon)
10. The Ambassador (Amazon)
Documentaries
1. Daughters of Destiny (Netflix)
2. Dogs (Netflix)
3. The Social Dilemma (Netflix)
4. Fyre (Netflix)
5. The Boys’: The Sherman Brothers Story (Disney+)
Classic Films
1. Casablanca
2. My Man Godfrey
3. His Girl Friday
4. The Fugitive
5. Independence Day
6. West Side Story
7. Mulan (The 1998 version)
8. Overboard
9. Miracle on 34th Street (The 1947 version)
10. 84 Charing Cross Road
Fiction books
1. Bel Canto, Ann Patchett
2. The Plague, Albert Camus
3. Orphan X, Gregg Hurwitz
4. Big Little Lies, Liane Moriarty
5. Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens
Audiobooks
1. Talking to Strangers, Malcolm Gladwell
2. Becoming, Michelle Obama
3. The Inimitable Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse
4. The Ride of a Lifetime, Bob Iger
5. Sherlock Holmes, Stephen Fry
Non-fiction
1. Indistractable, Nir Eyal
2. Educated, Tara Westover
3. Loonshots, Safi Bahcall
4. The Spy and the Traitor, Ben Macintyre
5. Fashionopolis, Dana Thomas
6. Never Split the Difference, Chris Voss
7. Range, David Epstein
8. Rebel Ideas, Matthew Syed
9. What Money Can’t Buy, Michael Sandel
10. Invisible Women, Caroline Criado Perez
Online Courses
1. Behavioural Economics with Rory Sutherland (42Courses)
2. Think Like Sherlock (42Courses)
3. Blue Ocean Strategy (Quantic)
4. Ancient Philosophy: Plato and his predecessors (Coursera)
5. Mountains 101 (Coursera)
6. Chinese for Beginners (Coursera)
7. Big History: Connecting Knowledge (Coursera)
8. Blockchain and Business: Applications and Implications (Coursera)
9. The Science of Well-being (Coursera)
10. Ecology: Ecosystem Dynamics and Conservation (Coursera)
Podcasts
1. The Missing Crypto-queen, Jamie Bartlett
2. Revisionist History, Malcolm Gladwell
3. The Happiness Lab, Laurie Santos
4. Americast, BBC
5. The Rise of the Iron Men, Misha Glenny
Newsletters
1. James Clear
2. Nir and Far
3. Connor Swenson
4. Farnam Street
5. theSkimm | https://medium.com/@alizakr/bored-in-the-house-2873dd83d646 | ['Aliza R'] | 2021-01-08 15:54:22.298000+00:00 | ['Education', 'Self', 'Health', 'Books', 'Self Help'] |
What Happened When I Tried Viagra? | What Happened When I Tried Viagra?
And why do men get to have all the fun?
Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash
Jack* and I had a fabulous sex life. The kind of sex filled with quiet and loud moments. We found that sweet spot between serenity and suspense.
But as the months wore on, something came between us—something…persistent.
Jack had a neverending erection.
Ok, maybe not neverending. But as soon as he came…it was Lazarus dick five minutes later.
Now, I know what you are thinking. Groundhog Day sex sounds like a good problem to have, right? But who has time to have sex for three hours? I don’t. And while I have come up with some creative excuses for missing book deadlines, my “boyfriend’s erection is keeping me up at night” wasn’t going to fly. (If my editor is reading this…that was a joke. All my excuses are real. Even the one about the incurable skin rash.)
So one day, I asked him, “Hey, Babe…What’s with your erections lately?”
Jack was an honest man. He knew lying was futile, so he immediately confessed. He was taking the little blue pill.
I was shocked. I guess I never suspected erectile dysfunction (ED) drugs because Jack certainly didn’t need them. He was 35. Healthy. And I had communicated over and over to him how much I enjoyed our sex life.
But if he was taking it without a need, why couldn’t I?
And so with a few crackers and a brave gulp…I tried Viagra. | https://medium.com/fearless-she-wrote/what-happened-when-i-tried-viagra-643d2ec900b9 | ['Carlyn Beccia'] | 2020-12-14 19:17:42.473000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Science', 'Feminism', 'Humor', 'It Happened To Me'] |
Introduction to Neural Networks, Advantages and Applications | Introduction to Neural Networks, Advantages and Applications
Artificial Neural Network(ANN) uses the processing of the brain as a basis to develop algorithms that can be used to model complex patterns and prediction problems.
Lets begin by first understanding how our brain processes information:
In our brain, there are billions of cells called neurons, which processes information in the form of electric signals. External information/stimuli is received by the dendrites of the neuron, processed in the neuron cell body, converted to an output and passed through the Axon to the next neuron. The next neuron can choose to either accept it or reject it depending on the strength of the signal.
Now, lets try to understand how a ANN works:
Here, w1, w2, w3 gives the strength of the input signals
As you can see from the above, an ANN is a very simplistic representation of a how a brain neuron works.
To make things clearer, lets understand ANN using a simple example: A bank wants to assess whether to approve a loan application to a customer, so, it wants to predict whether a customer is likely to default on the loan. It has data like below:
So, we have to predict Column X. A prediction closer to 1 indicates that the customer has more chances to default.
Lets try to create an Artificial Neural Network architecture loosely based on the structure of a neuron using this example:
In general, a simple ANN architecture for the above example could be:
Key Points related to the architecture:
1. The network architecture has an input layer, hidden layer (there can be more than 1) and the output layer. It is also called MLP (Multi Layer Perceptron) because of the multiple layers.
2. The hidden layer can be seen as a “distillation layer” that distills some of the important patterns from the inputs and passes it onto the next layer to see. It makes the network faster and efficient by identifying only the important information from the inputs leaving out the redundant information
3. The activation function serves two notable purposes:
- It captures non-linear relationship between the inputs
- It helps convert the input into a more useful output.
In the above example, the activation function used is sigmoid:
O1 = 1 / (1+exp(-F))
Where F = W1*X1 + W2*X2 + W3*X3
Sigmoid activation function creates an output with values between 0 and 1. There can be other activation functions like Tanh, softmax and RELU.
4. Similarly, the hidden layer leads to the final prediction at the output layer:
O3 = 1 / (1+exp(-F 1))
Where F 1= W7*H1 + W8*H2
Here, the output value (O3) is between 0 and 1. A value closer to 1 (e.g. 0.75) indicates that there is a higher indication of customer defaulting.
5. The weights W are the importance associated with the inputs. If W1 is 0.56 and W2 is 0.92, then there is higher importance attached to X2: Debt Ratio than X1: Age, in predicting H1.
6. The above network architecture is called “feed-forward network”, as you can see that input signals are flowing in only one direction (from inputs to outputs). We can also create “feedback networks where signals flow in both directions.
7. A good model with high accuracy gives predictions that are very close to the actual values. So, in the table above, Column X values should be very close to Column W values. The error in prediction is the difference between column W and column X:
8. The key to get a good model with accurate predictions is to find “optimal values of W — weights” that minimizes the prediction error. This is achieved by “Back propagation algorithm” and this makes ANN a learning algorithm because by learning from the errors, the model is improved.
9. The most common method of optimization algorithm is called “gradient descent”, where, iteratively different values of W are used and prediction errors assessed. So, to get the optimal W, the values of W are changed in small amounts and the impact on prediction errors assessed. Finally, those values of W are chosen as optimal, where with further changes in W, errors are not reducing further. To get a more detailed understanding of gradient descent, please refer to http://www.kdnuggets.com/2017/04/simple-understand-gradient-descent-algorithm.html
Key advantages of neural Networks:
ANNs have some key advantages that make them most suitable for certain problems and situations:
1. ANNs have the ability to learn and model non-linear and complex relationships, which is really important because in real-life, many of the relationships between inputs and outputs are non-linear as well as complex.
2. ANNs can generalize — After learning from the initial inputs and their relationships, it can infer unseen relationships on unseen data as well, thus making the model generalize and predict on unseen data.
3. Unlike many other prediction techniques, ANN does not impose any restrictions on the input variables (like how they should be distributed). Additionally, many studies have shown that ANNs can better model heteroskedasticity i.e. data with high volatility and non-constant variance, given its ability to learn hidden relationships in the data without imposing any fixed relationships in the data. This is something very useful in financial time series forecasting (e.g. stock prices) where data volatility is very high.
A few applications:
ANNs, due to some of its wonderful properties have many applications:
1. Image Processing and Character recognition: Given ANNs ability to take in a lot of inputs, process them to infer hidden as well as complex, non-linear relationships, ANNs are playing a big role in image and character recognition. Character recognition like handwriting has lot of applications in fraud detection (e.g. bank fraud) and even national security assessments. Image recognition is an ever-growing field with widespread applications from facial recognition in social media, cancer detention in medicine to satellite imagery processing for agricultural and defense usage. The research on ANN now has paved the way for deep neural networks that forms the basis of “deep learning” and which has now opened up all the exciting and transformational innovations in computer vision, speech recognition, natural language processing — famous examples being self-driving cars.
2. Forecasting: Forecasting is required extensively in everyday business decisions (e.g. sales, financial allocation between products, capacity utilization), in economic and monetary policy, in finance and stock market. More often, forecasting problems are complex, for example, predicting stock prices is a complex problem with a lot of underlying factors (some known, some unseen). Traditional forecasting models throw up limitations in terms of taking into account these complex, non-linear relationships. ANNs, applied in the right way, can provide robust alternative, given its ability to model and extract unseen features and relationships. Also, unlike these traditional models, ANN doesn’t impose any restriction on input and residual distributions.
More research is going on in the field, for example — recent advances in the usage of LSTM and Recurrent Neural Networks for forecasting.
ANNs are powerful models that have a wide range of applications. Above, I have listed a few prominent ones, but they have far-reaching applications across many different fields in medicine, security, banking/finance as well as government, agriculture and defense.
In my next post, I’ll explore a bit more on the usage of ANN for time series forecasting.
Liked what you read? To learn ANNs in more detail, register for the 8 week Data science course on www.deeplearningtrack.com — next batch starting soon. | https://towardsdatascience.com/introduction-to-neural-networks-advantages-and-applications-96851bd1a207 | ['Jahnavi Mahanta'] | 2017-07-12 03:32:19.461000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Neural Networks', 'Deep Learning', 'Analytics'] |
Birds of my park- i’ll never forget | 3. Indian white eye/ Oriental white-eye
CLockwise : Oriental white eye on a pine tree and OWE on the wire in our park.
This is a small bird unable to find due to its size and camouflage. Hyperactive little yellow bird with an off-white belly and white “spectacles.” Found in a wide range of habitats, from mangroves to gardens to forest edge; generally favors more open forested areas, not dense tangles. Travels in flocks, sometimes mixed in with other species.
Note light bouncing flight. Gives bright but faint “sweet!” calls both while foraging and in flight. oriental White Eye birds are easily identified by the distinctive white ring around eyes and always found in small groups feeding insects or nectar. The species is found in a wide range of habitats from the Indian subcontinent to Southeast Asia.
Pair
Description : This bird is small (about 8–9 cm long) with yellowish olive upperparts, a white eye-ring, yellow throat, and vent. The belly is whitish grey but may have yellow in some subspecies. The sexes look similar.
A fully developed Chick flew from the nest.
Scientific name: Zosterops palpebrosus
Other names : सफेद आँख का पक्षी ( Hindi )
Distribution: scrub to moist forest
Habitat: resident breeder in open woodland on the Indian subcontinent.
Diet: They forage in small groups, feeding on nectar and small insects.
Total 3 Nests of Indian White Eye during Lockdown in my park Let us see :
#Story no. 1 : When I saw them with wings !!..
The Day was 21 May 2020
My first ever chicks seen in my life.
We all were there in the fourth phase of lockdown.
God gave me a ray of hope from our park after we lose Bulbul’s eggs.
That evening, my father ordered me to go to the gardener in the park to tell him about some work.
So, When I went to call him, I went to the park to call the gardener, but the gardener showed me one thing and after seeing that thing, I got mad with happiness, then I came home and picked up the phone and took that picture given below.
The cute chicks opening mouths for the food.
I saw the 3 chicks of a bird sleeping in a small nest which was very little just like the size of my hands and those chicks were very cute, their little wings also came out, That was for the first time that I saw chicks of any bird with my own eyes . it seemed that they were at least 5 to 6 days old. The naked chicks had now worn their feathers. Then, I shooked the branch on which the nest was made. Then, a child woke up from sleep and considered me his mother and opened his mouth, and just saying that — “mother first give me food. I am very hungry, my siblings are sleeping right now”. so, I quickly took a picture of that.
May 22, 2020, Friday
I decided last night that I would wake up early in the morning and go to the park to see which bird these kids belong to. I went to the park with my father. We saw a little movement in the nest and a yellow bird was sitting in it. On May 22 I saw this bird first time in my life ever. That was your small bird — Indian White Eye.
Rest in Peace cute chick……..
But, unfortunately the next day on May 23rd the nest was empty and one chick died in it and ants were eating it. #RIP Sorry chick. I couldn’t do anything. So I have lost these too also same as of Bulbul’s eggs and was able to spend only 2 days with me.I shook the nest he was not waking up for food. As it had said goodbye to all of us. It probably died due to the heat yesterday because it was a very scorching sunny day yesterday and When the gardener cut that tree, the sunlight was direct on them. So in the nest , the chick was uprooted and his beak was also dry and there was no sign of the other two as you can see in the picture given. It seemed that the mother had taken the rest of them somewhere. Otherwise, if there was no other big animal, those two children would have eaten, then why would they have left that child ??.
To read to continue full sad story of the cuties of Indian White eye. Click the link given. In English and In Hindi too.
#Story no. 2 : Hardwork : Nature is Unique
The typical clutch is mainly 3 Eggs.
Walking in the park in the morning is good for health.
One day when I was walking in the park in the morning. Then, I saw a small greenish-yellow bird with white eyes. Google says that this bird is known as ‘The Indian White Eye’ she had something like cotton in it’s mouth. So I thought that it must be making it’s nest, there was another bird as well. Whoever may be male, there were small twigs in it’s mouth as well. So I followed those two birds and they entered a tree.
So Both of them went on this tree.🌳🌳
Thus, they Decided to settle their family on a short but, dense tree.
I keep them captured till 21 days From 21 June to 11 July and this time no one was there to disturb us. All of the three chicks of the Indian White Eye fly free in the sky.
During these lockdown and unlock days. I have saw total 3nests in my locality. Birding or bird watching is very amazing to fresh the mind. See how much hardwork the birds done to raise their young ones.
Full story is not here. Don’t miss it out. link is already there for you. Again for you in english and hindi.
#Story no. 3 : The excellent arts of Nature!!..
In “ Hardwork: Nature is Unique “ The journey of the chicks of Indian White Eye was successful. From their birth to the first flight, they happily flew into this emancipate sky.
I have never found many nests in my life as seen in coronavirus during the lockdown.
Again 3 Eggs were laid by the another white Eye.
But the main thing is that the nest which was the last Indian white-eyed bird made. suddenly, it broke down one day due to heavy rain. Which I brought home, but the miracle happened that in the same place an another Indian White Eye made a nest which was looking like a swing, and laid three eggs same as previous White-eye.
broken Nest due to the rain
Again eggs were by the Indian white who rebuilt the nest at the same spot on the same tree. Probably both of them will be friends and both of them would have talked that from here my chicks flew to touch the border of this beautiful sky, you too can try here.
At that time the nest had been made a bit bigger. That was my fifth nest during Lokdown after Tailorbird’s nest. I traced them for 10 days From 2nd of august to 12th August. That was the journey of the first chick from nest to first flight during the delightful days of Raksha Bandhan to janamashtami .
Continue White eye story also in this link given above.
We saved one of them Indian White Eye chick
Rescued chick putting in the nest again.
when I went to park in afternoon to buy something from Vita booth I saw that one thing was moving on grass and several crows were flying in the sky. when I went close to it. It was the small cutie of Indian white eye maybe it was separate from its family. I tried to find its parents but I was not able to find them because they gone in the morning only. so, I helped it as crows were flying (crows are scavengers as well as predators too) in the sky. I didn’t want to took any risk at that time.so I took a wooden stick from Park and I took the chick at my home.
I took a wooden stick from Park and I took the chick at my home to protect
my dad and mom were very happy to see it as it was very tiny. when the crows flew away. I kept the chick again to its home (nest).
The saved white eye chick from crows
I hope that we will able to see more excellent arts of nature. Now the Tailor Bird’s and Indian white eye’s chicks have flew away. | https://medium.com/@aaryanbhalla/birds-of-my-park-ill-never-forget-cf0b2008f761 | ['Aaryan Bhalla'] | 2021-03-24 11:07:09.138000+00:00 | ['Lockdown Diary', 'Birding In India', 'Birds', 'Birding', 'Lockdown'] |
Create an Animated VR Site With 30 Lines of Code | Note: The live code for this tutorial can be found here
Adding VR Into Your Site Is Easy
Adding virtual reality into a website is as simple as using regular HTML thanks to a library called A-Frame, which is a framework for building virtual reality in the web.
In the same way that you initiate HTML content with the <body> tag and add text using something like the <h1> tag, A-Frame lets you initiate a VR scene using the <a-scene> tag and you can add 3D content into your scene using tags like <a-box> , <a-sphere> , and more.
It’s worth checking out the A-frame starter example to see just how easily this is done.
What we are building
My example will be slightly more complex than the A-Frame starter scene. Instead of building a pure VR scene, I want to overlay 2D content on top of the VR scene. In this way, the VR aspect acts as a fun background and you can still display 2D content on the screen. Pretty cool, let’s get started!
High Level Code Overview
There are three core tasks to be accomplished here:
Create the VR Scene
Create the HTML overlay container
Add HTML into the container
I recommend following along with the live code here.
Create the VR Scene
First we must load the A-Frame library into the HTML code. Second, we will load aframe-extras which is a user created library that adds a few additional components we can use. In this case, we want to use the <a-ocean> component.
To import these libraries, add the following into the HTML <head> section:
Now we are ready to create a VR scene.
The <a-scene></a-scene> tags are used to initiate a VR scene, and 3D objects are placed inside of these tags. The basic components of any 3D scene are: a camera, lights, and of course some 3D objects. <a-scene> creates a camera and basic lighting by default.
Our scene will consist of the <a-ocean> tag which has a cool wave animation, and a few lights to add some color into the scene. To create the lights, the <a-light> tag is used and properties are added to set the color and position.
Adding a property to an A-Frame element is the same as adding a property to an HTML element. Below is an example of how to set the color property to "red" on a <a-light> element.
The code for the entire seen in only six lines of code and shown below:
Create the Overlay Container
By default, the VR scene takes up the whole screen. In order to overlay 2D content, we must create a new set of <div> tags and use CSS to tell the browser that we want that div and all of its contents to sit above the VR scene.
We will first create an overlay class using CSS. Note I've added additional styling that uses CSS flexbox to center everything inside of this overlay container.
Add Some HTML
Lastly, we need to some content into the overlay container. For this example, I’ll just add some text.
The full HTML for our overlay section is:
And that’s it! With this, we have created a 2D overlay on top of a VR scene. The full HTML code (with comments) for this example is:
Glitch is one of the best sites for quickly creating and sharing projects. Remix the code for this project here.
Some inspiration for how to tweak this example: | https://medium.com/swlh/create-an-animated-vr-site-with-30-lines-of-code-7691bf808f34 | ['Mike Turck'] | 2020-07-25 21:15:41.678000+00:00 | ['Beginner Javascript', 'JavaScript', 'Virtual Reality', 'VR', 'HTML'] |
When should we conceive? | Our bodies were designed to wander around a jungle for 30–40 years, having our head ripped off by a sabre-tooth tiger or dying of some infection. Young girls went through puberty at around 10–12 years old and had conceived a child in those days in their early teens. The grandmother was in her late 20s and helped the teenage girl look after the baby. The fathers were all less than 25 years old and most did not survive beyond age 40.
Heart disease and cancer were almost unheard of with the vast majority of people dying from trauma or infection. This article published in the Journal “Maturitis” came to the disturbing conclusion that older fathers affect the health of their partners and put unborn children at risk. The article reviewed 40 years of research looking at the effects of paternal age on fertility, pregnancy and the health of the conceived child.
My eldest granddaughter, Edith
It has been well established that women conceiving over the age of 35 have issues in 3 areas:
Fertility The health of the mother during pregnancy The health of the unborn child and also health throughout the life of the child following birth.
We therefore have to ask the question, does the age of the father affect any of these factors? Advanced paternal age has been defined as anywhere between 35–45. In the United States of America, children born to fathers older than 45 has increased 10% over the past 40 years.
The study showed clearly that men conceiving beyond the age of 45 have issues in the following areas, almost certainly related to reduction in testosterone, sperm degradation and quality:
Reduced ability to conceive Increased risk for pregnancy complications affecting the mother such as gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia (which is severe hypertension, kidney problems and fluid retention), along with preterm birth Problems for the child-including late stillbirth, preterm birth and low Apgar scores (which are indications of the health of the child at birth), low birth weight, increased tendency to seizures and birth defects such as congenital heart disease and cleft palate. As the child ages there are increased risk for childhood cancers, schizophrenia, ADHD and autism.
To take the example of schizophrenia, the incidence is 1 in 141 infants for fathers conceiving below age 25 but increases to 1 in 47 for fathers older than 50. It is also an interesting fact that older fathers struggle with fertility even when their partners are younger than 25.
With the increasing trend in our society for women to delay having children, this is typically associated with older fathers conceiving as well. Many people want to establish their careers and enough money to be able to fund the child’s existence. But, we must ask ourselves at what cost? There is no doubt that many older parents do conceive normally and have normal healthy children. But when the older parents do have children with some significant disability or the mother’s health is significantly affected by the pregnancy, this can lead to disastrous consequences for the family. I fully understand that our modern world has changed and there are increasing demands from many angles on individuals and families. But it is better to work and live closer to our physiology and thus consider having children at a much younger age for the health of all involved.
Another important point that seems to be forgotten here is that parents conceiving older means that you have to tolerate teenagers in your 50s and 60s which is not an easy task. Teenagers can certainly make a parent’s life misery by their (at times) objectionable behaviour and it is my view that you certainly need to be young and energetic to cope with this.
Another factor here that no one is really considering is that of grandparents. As people wait to conceive, they increasingly rely on members of their family and in particular grandparents to assist in the upbringing of the children and if they wait too long, the grandparents have either passed on or are too old to really get involved at a significant level. It would be my suggestion that we need to start a firm debate in society around these issues as I believe this current generation of parents will be creating significant social problems at many levels. | https://medium.com/@drrosswalker/when-should-we-conceive-ab3ada4d5a83 | ['Dr Ross Walker'] | 2019-06-03 04:51:52.684000+00:00 | ['Fertility', 'Pregnancy', 'Infertility', 'Baby', 'Parenting'] |
Technology & Society: An Interknit Relationship | I always believed Technology and Society are not just interdependent but causal and one cannot exist in the absence of the other. For example, think of technology as just a tool and nothing more. A tool is effectively an article which helps us perform our daily chores with ease and efficiency. What if we invest our time into making more efficient tools? It will end up in greater efficiency but to use this new tool there maybe be certain requirements (inevitable), which means that the consumer or the society will have to adapt to it in order to yield better results. Long story short, it is a recursive cycle where the advancements in one lead to changes in the other and it just goes on.
The course has helped me get a theoretical background to most of my intuitions in terms of technological determinism [1], social constructionism [2] and most importantly the technological transfer [3]. I will briefly put forward my understandings from the course in a couple of examples below. One would be Netflix and the other being Uber.
Netflix has changed the way we consume media. For two decades it has been at the forefront of consumer research, recommendation systems and quality content [4]. When it finally decided to expand its services to the Indian market they faced many setbacks. This is a classic case of technology transfer as well as the social construction of technology in the Indian context. India is a land of diverse languages and cultures so, their expectations from a player like Netflix would be to introduce a good amount of quality regional content at an affordable price like the homegrown Hotstar and Voot. The Indian market demographics forced Netflix to release Netflix specials like Sacred Games, Lust Stories, Ghoul, Selection Day, etc. [5] Not only that, in order to survive the Indian competition they even partnered with Google Pay for subscription payment services along with the usual debit/credit cards. Understanding the Indian market which mostly comprises of youth they even released a plan worth Rs.200 per month which allows one mobile screen per account. Keeping in mind the Indian telecom network speeds Netflix has been able to provide Standard Definition content in just 500Kbps speed [8]. What started as an uncensored platform may soon be regulated in India because of the recent outbreaks in various parts of the country because of the vulgarity and nudity in many shows like Sacred Games and Leila [6]. All these sociological factors have led to major technological decisions in Netflix, especially in the Indian subcontinent. In my previous article, I discussed another aspect of how Netflix has shaped our perspective of self and acts as a soft power shaping our thoughts and ideologies [7] but for Netflix to exist in such an ecosystem it has to shape itself to fit in.
Previously I used to think that Netflix observes our streaming patterns to suggest as well as put in/suggest more shows of our interest but now (with the help of the course) I realised that in order to do so it should make shows which connect to the demographics. For example, they made Selection Day which captures Indians’ love for cricket, Sacred Games which captures the rawness and ‘desi-masala’ etc. In the end, it’s the audience that decides the direction of Netflix’s progress. Similarly Uber had to partner with Paytm for payments and also in order to bridge the gap it followed Ola into incorporating autorickshaw services as well because autorickshaws are still a large section of how we commute in India unlike other countries in the West. All of this is possible because of the huge market that India has to offer and hence these technologies have been trying to understand the market and provide services accordingly.
It is quite evident from the above examples that society plays a huge role in the development and design of technologies and technologies don’t just push it on to society to adopt. There is a smooth synergy between technology and society which may sometimes be latent to the consumers. The evolution of technology and society is like a loop which means that the decisions in one lead to the changes in the other.
PS: This blog post is my reflection of the HSS course called Technology and Society where we try to understand the emergence and structure of different technologies and societies and how they influence each other.
REFERENCES: | https://medium.com/@t-ksai1998/technology-society-an-interknit-relationship-f489cd12fb79 | ['K. Tejas'] | 2019-09-18 13:38:49.284000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Society', 'Netflix', 'India', 'Sociology'] |
React-Native Navigation Giriş | React Navigation | React Navigation
Routing and navigation for your React Native apps | https://medium.com/@onermehmet/react-native-navigation-giri%C5%9F-9213717be044 | ['Mehmet Öner'] | 2020-12-28 11:08:39.121000+00:00 | ['React Native', 'Javascript Frameworks', 'React Native Navigation', 'Mobile App Development', 'React'] |
Nightingale: Our First Year | It’s honestly hard to believe that it has been only a year since I announced the founding of Nightingale. As the editor-in-chief, it’s been an exhilarating journey of friendships, meetings, late-night editing, and the daily joy of sharing articles (and voices) that we all care deeply about. Here, on our first birthday, I thought I’d take a few moments to share some reflections and thank-yous. I’ll try not to get too philosophical.
While it’s thrilling to consider what we have done, we also need to take stock of how different the world we live in today is. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to shape global societies in ways that we are still struggling to understand. Like everything, Nightingale has its own set of pandemic-related challenges and opportunities, so it’s difficult to really imagine what our next year will look like when our present is so chaotically uncertain. That said, let’s take a look back on the last year.
Initial concepts for Nightingale’s logo
A dream made real
It all started when I took my dream of starting a dataviz-focused publication to Elijah Meeks shortly after he co-founded the Data Visualization Society (DVS) with Amy Cesal and Mollie Pettit. Being a very popular writer himself, Elijah said a journal was already on the top of his mind.
A year ago, there were not as many places to publish articles specifically about dataviz-related issues outside of academic journals or product/tech forums. The Medium landscape was focused mainly on data science, and both Elijah and I posted our articles in that community (he was the big fish, myself a minnow) but we both knew it wasn’t the right fit.
Elijah and I presented the newly formed Data Visualization Society (DVS) to Medium, and our resulting partnership helps us to compensate all our writers, illustrators, and editors while amplifying our work. This partnership allowed us to create our publication’s infrastructure as well as fund the first year of the DVS itself. After a check-in with our members this past winter, we continued our partnership with Medium and continue to look forward to new opportunities.
The first step in delivering on our goals
Nightingale launched with a few goals: to support our members regardless of their tenure, to nurture new voices, and to expand the discourse of information design and data visualization.
While we had ideas about the form this would take, we didn’t really know what would happen. In the past year, we have featured articles by luminaries in our field, hosted interviews with great minds, and introduced many first-time writers to our community.
Since July 15, 2019, we are been proud to have published 340 articles by 189 authors. This work has spanned a staggering array of themes from how-tos, ethical discussions, historical explorations, interviews, and comics. These articles range in subject from board games and environmentalism to Dutch pop music and Sportsviz by way of chart taxonomies, D3, data physicalization, plotters, and visual symphonies. Today, one of our writers, Alexandra Khoo, also helps celebrate our anniversary by exploring those goals further in her one-year retrospective article. | https://medium.com/nightingale/nightingale-our-first-year-c28731d7a0c4 | ['Jason Forrest'] | 2020-07-15 15:33:01.107000+00:00 | ['Data Visualization', 'Data', 'Dataviz', 'Data Humanism', 'Dvsintro'] |
Build Data Transformation Pipelines using Scikit-learn | Photo by tian kuan on Unsplash
Cleaning up data is a crucial part of any machine learning procedure. A good machine learning practitioner should always be aware that data cleanup plays a vital role in preparing the data so that the machine learning model can understand the dataset better, ultimately providing better results as a model. There are many methods and procedures involved with cleaning up data, some of them very simple and some of them very sophisticated. Since datasets are unique, a unique set of processes should be crafted to transform each one of those datasets into something that can be used to train a model.
Here, I will be talking about creating a simple pipeline that will prepare a dataset to be used with machine learning algorithms. First, we’ll take a look at the dataset. I intend to use the New York City Airbnb Open Data which is available for free @ kaggle. You can download the CSV file from Kaggle and load it to a Jupyter Notebook using Pandas.
Let’s look at the dataset to identify what kind of features we’re dealing with here.
Columns of the dataset and types of data they contain
As you can see, there are 16 columns with different types of data. They need to be preprocessed accordingly. Also, you might have noticed that columns ‘last_review’ and ‘reviews_per_month’ have some significant amount of missing values. You may see that some attributes are numerical and others carry ‘object’ data. They could hold any type of python object. After loading the dataset and examining them, you’ll see that they are strings except ‘last_review’ which clearly contains dates. Furthermore, you might notice that there is a chance ‘room_type’ being a categorical attribute. Let’s check if it is categorical by counting the number of distinct values in it.
Counts of distinct values of room_type
This is in fact, a categorical attribute, containing 3 types of data.
Next, we’ll go on to plot histograms for numerical attributes of the dataset. | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/build-data-transformation-pipelines-using-scikit-learn-e36c9d5280e3 | ['Hiran Hasanka'] | 2020-12-10 06:34:50.927000+00:00 | ['Python', 'Scikit Learn', 'Machine Learning'] |
Do we understand Freedom? | None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who believe they are free.- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)
Never has the world witnessed such stunning stupidity. In the face of an exploding pandemic, the need to wear a mask has collided with America’s most sacred ideology: Freedom. Untethered, devoid of common sense, and all about me.
I live in Europe. Freedom is better understood here, thanks to minds like the German philosopher and statesman, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He taught us Freedom is meaningless absent its flipside: responsibility. We also learn from Goethe that Freedom is not absolute. It’s forever in competition with order and justice.
Like the expression, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, Europe understands there’s a price to Freedom. It can only be enjoyed by everyone if it’s not exploited by a minority of simpletons. This lesson did not come easily.
Unlike America, the European head is not so deeply buried in symbols that it can’t see the light of day. Even in semi-dictatorial Hungary, a coherent set of guidelines were put forward and followed. Nobody complained about their Freedom being robbed; instead, they appreciated the collective effort to restore it.
In Europe, there was little debate about mask-wearing. Like others in the world who live with their eyes open, we simply got on with it. This responsibility was onboarded with the same acceptance given to speed limits and traffic signals. We obeyed because we recognized that these measures are for the common good, of which we’re part.
Not in America. For many there, speaking of the common good is tantamount to communist propaganda.
Unaware of Freedom’s full meaning but convinced they own the trademark to it, many Americans feel that wearing a mask infringes on their right to be lazy unapologetic dumbasses, or LUDs. Rising to the occasion from their couch slouch, AR-15 in hand, this is the LUD’s moment in history. A time to throw-down the gauntlet and demand one’s Freedom from the oppressive face mask mandate. Tyranny must be stopped in its tracks.
Consumed by the world of hoaxes, conspiracies, fake news, and fluffernutter sandwiches, LUDs see themselves as the sentinels of Freedom. They represent the core of Trump’s infamous base. As he said in Nevada during the 2016 campaign: I love the poorly educated. To which the poorly educated clapped energetically. The bliss of ignorance recorded for all time.
So strong is the lore of the LUD that even those who know better feel the need to play along. For example, Georgia governor Brian Kemp is aware of the benefits of wearing masks. Still, to align himself politically with the president and his LUD supporters, Kemp has mandated that the mask cannot be required. To make his point, he’s doing what every American freedom fighter does: he’s suing. This time Atlanta’s black female mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, who is requiring face masks.
It’s a pure Trumpian big swinging dick move. A twofer for Kemp: appeasing Trump’s LUD base, and putting down a black woman. Hail Dixie!
In South Dakota, Governor Kristi Noem said this week: “the mask situation with kids and with adults is very mixed research, and the science has not proven what’s effective and what isn’t.” [italics added]
I have two observations of this statement. First, when people use the word “situation,” it’s usually a sign that BS will follow. On this, Kristi doesn’t disappoint. Second, a political science graduate, Noem demonstrates her rhetorical skills in the art of lying with a straight face, and evidence that she likely failed every course involving numbers. Noem sites no sources for her claims of mixed research and unproven science, and neither does her ideological leader, Mr. Trump. Should there be a second term, rewards will be in order for demagogues of her caliber.
Too busy wooing the White House, it would seem Noem doesn’t know of Japan. Located across the ocean, way over there, and far from American shores, Japan is a country that adopted the face mask during the 1919 pandemic. One hundred years of mask-wearing habits have allowed this densely populated country, with 38% of the US’s population, to limit its COVID-19 deaths to 1,001. If Japan was performing as the US, they would have had 58,000 deaths by now, not 1,001.
Still a land of brilliant minds and bounding opportunities, it’s startling to see America as a land of losers. The science of dealing with COVID is defined by political affiliation, not biology.
Whatever happened to those innocent and eager can-doers who saved Europe?
In the century after Goethe, we saw the triumph of delusion in Europe and paid its price in millions of lives and trillions of dollars. As things went from bad to worse, hatred spread like a pandemic and Europe became a living hell. Twice in a century.
As fears mount, delusions rise. It’s America’s Chernobyl moment, as spoken by Valery Legasov’s character (in episode 5 of the HBO miniseries):
We are so focused on our search for the truth, we fail to consider how few actually want us to find it. But it is always there, whether we see it or not, whether we choose to or not. The truth doesn’t care about our needs or wants. It doesn’t care about our governments, our ideologies, our religions. It will lie in wait, for all time.
It’s daybreak America. Time to wake up and smell the coffee!
Thoughts and Ideas is also now on substack! thoughtsandideas.substack.com | https://medium.com/indian-thoughts/do-we-understand-freedom-7ec4de89c08e | ['Fred Eberlein'] | 2020-08-08 19:03:31.987000+00:00 | ['Europe', 'Goethe', 'History', 'Freedom', 'Trump'] |
Record $8 Million Funding for Queensland’s Social Enterprise Sector | The Queensland Social Enterprise Council (QSEC) President Richard Warner welcomed the Queensland Government’s $8 million commitment to assist the creation of jobs for vulnerable Queenslanders, announced through the Queensland Budget.
Minister for Employment and Small Business and Minister for Training and Skills Development Di Farmer said the Social Enterprise Jobs Fund aimed to help new and existing operations to grow, creating more jobs and providing needed services and products to customers.
“Throughout the COVID pandemic social enterprises have been working tirelessly in their local communities and through the Social Enterprise Jobs Fund we want to develop the capacity and capability of this sector, to build on these successes and open up new opportunities,” Ms Farmer said.
“Social enterprises support some of the state’s most vulnerable people by creating jobs and delivering other social benefits, as well as contributing to our economy.
“Over the coming two years the Queensland Government will work to develop the market and foster strong and vibrant social enterprises across the state.”
Incoming QSEC President Mr Warner said he was excited to work with the Government on the roll out of the Fund.
“We’re delighted to see our sector advocacy efforts recognised through this significant level of funding, and particularly grateful for Minister Farmer’s support in this early stage of the Government’s response to local economic solutions.”
The Fund will support social enterprise sector development and job-creation which in turn increases capacity to tackle issues of homelessness, access to food, health and education, cultural and social inequities and environmental issues.
“We look forward to working with our sector partners and the Queensland Government to support emerging local solutions as enterprises strive to go beyond business as usual in these very unusual economic times,” Mr Warner concluded. | https://medium.com/@socialchangecentral/record-8-million-funding-for-queenslands-social-enterprise-sector-de2d7ea139eb | ['Social Change Central'] | 2020-12-17 09:17:30.162000+00:00 | ['Qsec', 'Emma Kate Rose', 'Queensland', 'Elise Parups', 'Funding'] |
What exactly mean by Copy on Write in Swift ? | If you are preparing for iOS interview this is the one of those questions interviewer is asking.
Copy on write says if two variables are supposed to hold exactly same value, then both of them should be pointing at same object unless mutation is needed.
Fig. Copy on Write in Swift
The new memory is created only when write operation is called. Till the time write operation is performed then only copy of object is created to avoid memory westage.
Why it is needed ?
To enhance the performance.
Consider following code snippet.
Snippet Copy on write example with array
Here, array1 and array2 both having same content. They are pointing to same memory location. You can see in the console output.
Snippet Copy on write example with array
Here, array1 and array2 both having different content. They are pointing to different memory location. You can see in the console output for reference.
Swift has already implemented copy on write for arrays and dictionaries.
But, not for custom objects.
That’s it for this concept. I really hope you liked the article. | https://medium.com/@sneharke/what-exactly-mean-by-copy-on-write-in-swift-6529cb7f87af | [] | 2021-09-13 08:35:06.295000+00:00 | ['Ipad Developer', 'Swift Programming', 'Copy On Write', 'Ios Development', 'Iphone App Development'] |
Did I become unemployable? | First time this question popped into my mind was more or less 3 years ago… but let’s tell this story from the beginning.
Hi, my name is Marco, 41 years old, Italian even though I moved abroad 11 years ago.
I graduated in Veterinary and I also got a Master’s Degree in Ethology. A little later, around 2008–2009, a global economic crisis happened, PANIC everywhere!
Back then I was 29 and I just moved to Barcelona (Spain). At that time I didn’t know the language or anyone in Barcelona so I started to accept any kind of job. For a while I was a waiter, a pet sitter, a dog trainer, and then a web developer. At this point you should be thinking..what? Didn’t you study about animals? How and when did you learn about web development?
Well, all fair questions and the answer is very simple.. since I was a little kid I’ve always been attracted to computers, I loved to play video games and drawings. So when I decided to start from scratch in a new country I also realised that maybe It was time for me to take new and unexpected professional paths. Actually, maybe, I have to thank the 2009 economic crisis if I start to learn about web and software development on my own. But let’s go back to the story…
After a few interviews I finally started my career as a Software Developer in Barcelona. At the beginning as a freelancer I was working for companies that were outsourcing the production due the unstable economic context. Then in 2012 I moved to Ireland, I think that actually it was there that I got for the first time the role as “Software Engineer”.
In Dublin it was also where I started to run into the start-up ecosystem. From there on I always join companies at its early stage ( 3–6 people max.) and then after a few months, the start-up evolution pattern. Small rooms full of people until you move to a bigger office which in the beginning looks almost empty but then day by day all chairs and all desks will be fulfilled and you get the feeling that you are not anymore “needed”, so as Mary Poppins you decide to fly away :)
So far everything looks normal, doesn’t it?
2016 was the year that radically changed my career! I moved back to Spain and after a long hiring process I joined a Danish media company that was going to open a new office in Barcelona. Back then something that I was not 100% aware of I was going to start to work in a company practising a Self-Managing culture. WTF is Self-Managing?
I will now give you a very simple explanation of what Self-Managing means for me (but I strongly suggest you to read more about it here). Well, self-management is not a conventional way to organise a company. In this different work frame the company, for instance, trusts its employees and gives them the freedom to do their job without supervision of any kind by managers or bosses. It’s literally a flat organisation. Development teams, for instance, like the ones I joined myself, have the ownership and the responsibility of what they are developing.
In a few months Barcelona office became a success, we all were doing a great job with the product, being able to self-manage the entire development process while we were also growing a lot and everyone was doing his best to make the company and the product succeed. Each individual was cooperating with the others, organising their own tasks, setting OKRs, breaking down milestones, learning and teaching to each other. People were pretty happy to go to work, open to share knowledge with their coworkers. Finally we became a sort of family having fun inside and outside the office. It was really great.
Honestly I have to admit that in the beginning I was both really fascinated by this new concept of work and really sceptic about it. But then over the past 5 years I have seen awesome things happen.
Then again the “Mary Poppins” feeling arrives and I decide to leave.
2018 was the first time I started to look for a job with the clear understanding of what I do NOT want. “I do not want a boss/manager that has no clue about what is my job, telling me what I have to do or how I have to do it.” It was hard, too hard, almost impossible.
Back then I was lucky, I was approached by some ex-coworkers to build up together a revolutionary AI tech. We were going to start Abzu.ai. I have to admit that, building up an entire company from scratch trying to do it through self-management is way harder than just building up an office! But even if it was harder than we expected we succeeded. :D
We were founded and we started to develop our new AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). The technology was shining since the first moment and yes, it took longer than we estimated before we were able to actually throw some real problems to our AI.
We were also trying to frame the self-managing structure of the company, so we had teams, task-forces, retros, feedback sessions, monthly gatherings, everything was discussed and solved all together giving space for all different opinions. People were motivated to go constantly out of their comfort zone to help others in their tasks or to find creative solutions. It was like an anthill where ants were constantly cooperating for the success of the colony.
Even though we were split between Barcelona and Copenaghen we always met every month to spend 3 days (physically) together and do some fun activities.
Our anthill was growing and doing really well. I remember the first time that Danish media spoke about Abzu, the interviewer was freaking out with the fact that our employees self set their own wages. Actually people keep freaking out when they get this. :) (TheOrg)
Few months ago the Covid-19 pandemic happened and in my opinion this was the perfect opportunity for our culture to shine! At ABZU we decided to close our two offices (BCN & CPH) and we stayed home.
But actually nothing really changed for us. Our routines, our check-ins, our standups, our meetings and all the product development were there, moving forward as nothing happened. We also add a new team activity to our calendars: “Remote Friday Beers’’ all together, every week! Then we launched our product on the 21st of April 2020, exactly as we had planned a year earlier. Nothing could have stopped us, not even the global pandemic of the 21st century, ether the fact we were located in 5 countries and 2 continents, we made it!
It was a great momentum for all Abzoids.
A couple of months ago, the “Mary Poppins” feeling came back again, this time was harder than before but I needed to leave and go for the next chapter of my journey.
And now again, I’m out there looking for the next challenge, fully aware of what I do not want to.
I don’t like to manage other people but I don’t like to be managed by others either. The only thing that I want to do is to cooperate with other people, to share our knowledge and experience and make some very cool stuff.
The problem is that it seems to me while (as a good ant) I was evolving myself into a better and more productive human being, the rest of the companies got stuck in their hierarchical and closed structures where employees are just resources (neither that valuable)!
In the last few years I saw on LinkedIn the increase of several new trendy positions right when I was trying to flat the hierarchical pyramid.
For example : “Team Lead”! Wow! It sounds really cool and is an awesome position! But wait a second! From what I learned in the last 5 years everyone actually could be a Team Lead. Everyone, even the junior guy has something to teach and, not less important, even the most experienced guy has something to learn! Why should I give more value to the experience of a Senior than to the creativity of a Junior.
So here we go, at the beginning of my story: Did I become unemployable?
Is really my only option to build up my own company (again) and set up my little happy space? Does anyone else, out there, realise that the hierarchical structure is killing talent, creativity and unicity in their employees? | https://medium.com/@marcosomma-work/did-i-become-unemployable-13e7f43264bc | ['Marco Somma'] | 2020-12-09 15:13:32.147000+00:00 | ['Flat Organization', 'Work Challenges', 'Self Management', 'Employees', 'Social Change'] |
The Cathedral of Notre Dame and the Dogma of Modernism | The Cathedral began construction in 1160 and has survived the French Revolution, World War I, World War II, potential terrorist attacks and is now facing a new battle with the French State.
This month marks the one year anniversary of a great fire that devastated the great Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris. Damaging and destroying a symbol of French Catholicism and its priceless treasures. With the Cathedral still standing immense structural damages and restoration works must be undertaken in order to restore the glory and dignity of this great Cathedral and preserve a symbol of Western Catholicism for generations to come.
Yet, efforts to restore this Cathedral to its original glory have had to face the ignorance and barbaric passions of our age whose interests are to undermine and destroy the authentic purpose and place of this Cathedral in French history.
History of Notre Dame
During the expansion of the Roman Empire into France between 50 BC to 10 AD, the Romans introduced aqueducts, transportation systems and the rule of the law to this region of Western Europe. As the Roman Empire grew in its stature and prestige, barbarians from Northern Europe, Eastern Europe and the British Isles sought to take on Rome. Political turmoil caused by the lust for power and ambition was a constant threat to Rome and her empire with numerous external and internal enemies.
Such challenges eventually forced the Romans to accept certain ‘barbarian clans’ within its Empire and grant them Roman citizenship and authority to manage their own political affairs independently without the influence of Rome.
In 313, the Edict of Milan helped paved the way for the acceptance of the new Christian religion and by the end of the 6th and 8th Century, what is today modern day France, became predominantly Christian due to the work of the first Christian missionaries in mainland Europe. Towards the end of the 11th and 12th Century, Christianity in the West was at its intellectual and cultural peak. Numerous schools of learning, new religious orders, the construction of new Cathedrals and centers of arts and culture were established across the continent.
It is at this time that France and the city of Paris became a center of cultural excellence and home to the first university established by the Catholic Church in 1150 (University of Paris), followed by the construction of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in 1160. The Cathedral was a project undertaken by Bishop Maurice de Sully, following the precedence at the time where major Cathedrals were being constructed in large dioceses across the Christian world. By 1290, the Cathedral was complete adopting the Gothic style of architecture and funded by the generosity of the French Royal Family and the faithful.
The Cathedral also followed precedence at the time adopting a form of architecture that drives the person to look towards the heavens and to witness the union of God and man during prayer and mass.
Interior of St. Denis, Paris, a Abbey Church adopting the Gothic style of architecture, similar Cathedral such as Duomo in Milan, Cologne Cathedral and Westminster Abbey in London adopt the same form of architecture.
Over the course of history, various editions were added to the great Cathedral, including priceless relics, works of art and important celebrations marking the timeless presence of the Church that has served the faithful and the people of France for countless generations. Towards, the end of 16th Century, the enlightenment sought to undermine the role of Catholicism in West and to reshape the West in its own image.
In 1789, the French Revolution, adopting the principles of the Enlightenment, sought to assert itself on the world stage by removing its enemies predominantly Catholics, the Royal Family and serious intellectuals. The protagonists of the French Revolution targeted intellectuals, academics, the Church and Catholics. Its efforts were successful with the death of hundreds of thousands of Catholic families and noblemen who opposed the radical ideology of the enlightenment. Such atrocities also resulted in the end of religious freedom for Catholics and the Church in France.
At this time, the Cathedral of Notre Dame was ransacked and transformed to center of worship for a new state sponsored form of religion-the Cult of Reason and the Cult of the Supreme Being. Catholics were beheaded in close proximity to this Church with their remains being recently discovered as early as the 1970s.
Towards, the end of the 1700s and at the start of the 1800s, Napoleon came to power and restored the original integrity of the Cathedral for the time being. During his reign, French Catholicism which had been on its knees had lost religious orders, the faithful and schools of formation that took centuries to build had some breathing space to establish herself. But this time was brief and her efforts were cut short.
With the advent of nationalism and new political uncertainty with World War I and II, Socialism, Marxism and the rise of the welfare state. Such challenges undermined the Christian values and principles that have forged the West. Values and principles that are alien to the Christian faith and the Christian way of life.
After the devastating fires of April, 2019, Emmanuel Macron, the President of France and the age of post modernism sought to follow in the footsteps of his predecessors by implementing political policies and ideologies that go against the very intellectual and spiritual fabric that has kept this Cathedral preserved and standing for many centuries.
Macron has sought to restore the Cathedral before the Paris Olympics of 2024, failing to take into consideration the depth of artistic refinement and construction techniques that were intended to ensure that this structure would last for eternity. His political demands has also resulted in the high probability of adopting ‘post modern’ artistic features to the Cathedral that goes against its spiritual fabric and will destroy its integrity as a House of God.
Notre Dame and the Age of Ignorance
Great efforts have been undertaken by the press, post modern architects, civil authorities and elected officials determined to turn this Cathedral into a religious amusement park with strange and ridiculous proposals that make mockery of Catholicism, Catholics and Catholic culture. Such efforts is a reflection of the lost soul of Western Civilization that constantly seeks to ignore its own history, culture, knowledge and tradition without taking into account why it chooses to live in a state of ignorance.
Proposals have been submitted to turn the Cathedral into a greenhouse with plant. Introduce a swimming pool on the rooftop etc. Such heresies of post modernism dictate that man determines the nature of his own reality, where pleasure, ignorance and arrogance triumph over truth and humility.
It is this ignorance that is the greatest threat to authentic human flourishing, religious freedom, the culture of life, the sanctity of human life and artistic refinement. It is this ignorance that is destroying the Church in France and in Europe.
In order to return the West and the world to a culture rooted in the natural law, it is essential that one must live an examined life and understand the nature of things. For even the ancients knew that the unexamined life is not worth living. It is this case, the great Cathedral of Notre Dame must be restored to its original integrity. Preserving knowledge, memory and identity in an age where relativism and ignorance seeks to reduce man to a state of non existence and barbarianism. | https://medium.com/st-ambrose-press/the-cathedral-of-notre-dame-and-the-dogma-of-modernism-cf38c70cee68 | ['Joel Fernandes'] | 2020-07-14 09:45:53.835000+00:00 | ['Notre Dame De Paris', 'Notre Dame Fire', 'Catholicism', 'Paris', 'Philosophy'] |
Mayor Johnson forms Mayor’s Anti-Hate Advisory Council | DALLAS — Mayor Eric Johnson on Wednesday announced that he has formed the Mayor’s Anti-Hate Advisory Council in light of statistics that show a rising number of hate crimes in Dallas and across the country.
The new advisory council will meet regularly to discuss ways to make the City of Dallas and its police department better equipped to both respond to and prevent hate crimes and to promote a culture that is tolerant and understanding. The announcement comes after the FBI released a new report showing that nationwide, hate crimes hit at a 12-year high in 2020. Dallas also saw an increase last year.
The Mayor’s Anti-Hate Advisory Council includes key community leaders who are representative of various segments of the city’s population.
“Dallas is a welcoming city, one that embraces its diversity and works to overcome the racial and economic divisions sowed by generations that have long past,” Mayor Johnson said.
But, the mayor added in his remarks, “we cannot afford to ignore or downplay hate. Nobody should feel uncomfortable or unsafe in Dallas because of who they are — because of their race or ethnicity, their sexual and gender identities, their religion, or their national origin.”
The new mayoral advisory council is Mayor Johnson’s third. He previously formed the Mayor’s International Advisory Council and the Mayor’s Domestic Violence Advisory Council. Both remain active.
The inaugural Mayor’s Anti-Hate Advisory council will include 16 people. Mayor Johnson named four co-chairs: Sammie Berry, Minister of Dallas West Church of Christ and Chair of Dallas Area Preachers and Church Leaders; Sherry Goldberg, Chair of the Community Security Initiative of the Jewish Federation of Greater Dallas; Gary Sanchez, Board Chair, North Texas LGBT Chamber of Commerce; Sanjiv Yajnik, President of Financial Services, Capital One Financial Corporation.
“I love the city of Dallas, but we have work to do to eliminate hate,” said Berry. “We need to look at the value systems, the policies, and the laws that allow hate to fester. We need to work diligently to educate and eliminate hate and hate crimes here in our city. This advisory council gives us an excellent forum to work with Mayor Johnson on these critical issues and on building a better Dallas.”
“I applaud Mayor Johnson for his commitment and vision for our great city,” said Goldberg. “As a group, we must work together to combat and eliminate hate of all forms. Strength comes in numbers. When we all join in and work cohesively, our city will be rewarded now and for generations to come.”
“Hate has no home here in Dallas,” Sanchez said. “Regardless of one’s race, appearance, views or identity, everyone deserves to walk the streets of Dallas with a sense of safety and respect. I thank Mayor Johnson for this opportunity, and I am looking forward to working with my fellow co-chairs and committee members to drive hate out of our city and make Dallas a welcoming place for all those who live here, work here, or are simply passing through.”
“I am heartened to see our region’s deep commitment to inclusivity, and call upon everyone to condemn all acts of hate,” said Yajnik. “Efforts to drive positive change cannot end until every member of our community feels safe, valued, heard and supported. I’m honored to work hand in hand with Mayor Johnson and key community leaders to help foster belonging for all in the greater DFW area.”
Here is the full Mayor’s Anti-Hate Advisory Council: | https://medium.com/dallasmayor/mayor-johnson-forms-mayors-anti-hate-advisory-council-3aa5425d6043 | ['Tristan Hallman'] | 2021-09-15 20:14:56.789000+00:00 | ['Dallas', 'Diversity', 'Press Release'] |
What is the problem with our housing? | Modern housing is in a crisis and it’s obvious. Supply and demand, wealth and income inequality, the working homeless — these things show us there is a deep fault line in our modern housing system. But what is the problem behind it? We know the symptoms of a sick housing system, but what is the actual illness? Like a doctor, we must look at the symptoms to find the cause, and we need to understand the body to understand the symptoms. In other words, we need to define what a house is and what it does in order to find what is wrong with modern housing.
Originally, a house was a cave that our ancestors sheltered in to keep warm and out of the rain. As human civilisation grew, so too did our houses. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that culture informs architecture. Nations, religious groups, and local communities have different ways of building, designing, and living in their homes. Some cultural groups, termed nomadic, even reject what we would think of as a typical, fixed location abode for one that can move with the livestock or the game or their whims. All of these groups use houses for different reasons, and so value different aspects of housing, with many of these values descending from the things that make their culture unique.
So what are modern, western culture values in housing? We can see some of what it values by looking at what people call the “best” houses. A few things immediately stand out: the size of a home is one of the biggest attractors to a modern western home, and there often seems to be no limit to the best size for a home. Mansions with the number of rooms approaching triple figures are upheld as fantastic houses, even though many of these rooms aren’t even used the majority of the time. This tells us that it isn’t the number of rooms, or the size of a house even, but the status and the wealth needed to have a house that large.
In a similar way, we can look at the opposite: tiny houses. These designs have few rooms utilising a minimum amount of space. Yet, these homes are praised by architects and homeowners alike, reinforcing the idea that the number of rooms and the size is not the only thing people value directly in a house. However, people usually like at least one bedroom per person, or a shared bedroom for a couple, implying that people value having a space that is their own.
Different people also value different rooms in the house. For example, a car enthusiast might want a large garage and workshop filled with cars and tools, while someone who loves food might want a fully stocked kitchen and a large pantry. These different values differ among individuals as well as between cultures, but they all tend to be important when people are looking for a new home.
It may be tempting to label our newfound love for homes that have our interests in mind as a product of modern materialism, but this isn’t really true. Houses and palaces hundreds of years old have had libraries for the homeowners’ books, and people have always wanted room for their tools and for the things they use for leisure (a home-brewing setup for example).
We can also look at the other end of the spectrum to understand what people want at the minimum from a house, by looking at the houses people don’t idealize (frequently inhabited by people at the bottom of society, the poor). Houses that look bad on the outside, that are falling apart and have leaks and draughts, and those that are too small are all seen as undesirable to most people, but for the poor, there is no alternative. It is easy to see what people value in a house in this sense: they want the house to work correctly so it isn’t falling apart, they want its appearance to be up to a reasonable standard to uphold its status value, and they want space of their own inside which is not found in a smaller home. All of these values reinforce what we have learned from the opposite end of the housing spectrum.
We do have cases that defy what we might expect, and can often suggest a hierarchy of values. Tiny houses are great examples of this. On the surface they appear too small for most people (most tiny house won’t exceed 50m², whereas the average house size in New Zealand is 149m²), however, many people are flocking to tiny houses. This suggests people can value efficiency of the use of space over the raw size of the house, backing up our theory of a hierarchy of values.
All of these changes in what we value in a house suggest that we no longer see a house like the caveman saw a cave — as a way to shelter and stay warm. For better or for worse, houses have become an integral part of our lives, a place for recreation, a status symbol, and a major investment in someone’s life.
All of the things we value in a house come from our culture and ourselves, but our houses can affect us as well. A cold, damp house is unpleasant to live in and can cause physical and mental health problems from prolonged exposure. Homes with little to no natural light can be bad to live in for too long, as Vitamin D from the sun has been linked to positive effects in disease prevention and mental health. The Chinese have the concept of Feng Shui, where ornaments and plants, orientations of furniture and doors, and even the house itself can affect a person’s life.
Looking at what we have found, it is a natural next step to say that the problem of housing is houses not fitting people’s values, or that someone’s purpose for a house might not match what the house can do. How do we remedy this? I believe that we have seen the answer before.
Tiny houses were a trend that ran counter to what we might think that people needed a minimum amount of space and rooms to be happy with their home. Instead, tiny homes focused on efficient use of the space they had, and people were willing to sacrifice a part of this value of space and room numbers in order save money and efficiently use the space they had. This efficient use of space is a direct result of the design of the house, and an intelligent one at that. If we can apply this ethos of efficient design to satisfy the other things people value in a home, then we are a step closer to solving our housing problem.
The way the market is going (and some might say we’re there now), many people won’t be able to buy a home, let alone one that can satisfy all their values. The tiny house design ethos of efficient, and therefore cost effective use of materials and space can help with this. Building homes for cheaper and having more houses in the same amount of land should lower the price of houses in a rational market enough that more quality homes are available to more people. However, the problem is that existing houses cost a lot to buy, knock down, and replace with tiny houses, and in fact, many of the houses being built are not built with efficiency of space or materials in mind. If we can build and sell more houses that use space and materials efficiently and build more efficient houses on unused land, then we can shift the housing market in a positive direction.
What solution do we have then? We need to build a house that is efficient in both cost and space, and has enough room to satisfy what a modern person wants in a home, such as space for recreation and leisure. Surely if such a house existed it would be used by now right?
It does.
It has.
(Well, not exactly.)
The design I’m referring to is the Geodesic Dome. They’re light, strong, efficient with space and heating, and satisfying many of the conditions we require for a successful modern house. So why don’t we see them everywhere? The shape is an obvious one, which I’ll discuss later, but one reason is that while many were built in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, the ones built were not very well-constructed. They leaked profusely, required construction materials manufactured in shapes that were often not available off the shelf, and had moisture and sound insulation problems on the inside of the dome.
However, despite all the negatives with the houses, the things that people had predicted that made them great had come true. They were easy to construct, with teams of four or five people constructing the frame in a few days. The design (if constructed properly) was energy efficient, with many people reporting vastly reduced heating bills. The strength of the design made them very resistant against extreme weather and natural disasters.
Like any new technology, people tended to remember the failures rather than the successes of something that promised so much, and domes slipped in popularity. But with new technologies in sealing, acoustics, and manufacturing, this is the perfect time for the design to have a comeback.
One thing that has endured in the dislike for domes is the actual shape of them — next to conventional rectangular, right-angled houses, they look weird. I’ll be honest, when I first saw a geodesic dome house, I didn’t ever think I’d want to live in one. After a bit of exposure to them, the shape grew on me, such as the Judge Residence in the Hollywood Hills (which was unfortunately demolished).
I actually grew to love the design. The more I thought about it though, was that in this day and age with the direction of the housing market and the way climate change will affect our lives, if I can choose a home that’s cheap and affordable, and has environmental benefits, why should I discount it simply because it’s not a design that I’m used to?
Writing something off simply because we’re not used to it is a narrow way of looking at the world, and an option that we increasingly don’t have the luxury of taking. Like with what values we prioritise in our lives when choosing a house, we need to realise that some priorities shouldn’t be as strict as others.
The design of geodesic domes may not for everyone, this much is clear. If people can learn to look past the appearance and see the strengths of the design then they can find a home that can satisfy anyone’s desire for a functional home. If we all built and lived in cheap, functional homes then our housing problem disappears and we are left with better housing for all. | https://medium.com/oneislandearth/what-is-the-problem-with-our-housing-3670aa4d8a68 | ['Alex Ryde'] | 2018-11-12 22:37:04.705000+00:00 | ['Problem Solving', 'Housing', 'Housing Crisis', 'Geodesic Dome', 'Tiny House'] |
Build Your Own Shining City On a Hill | Photo by Mohammad Asadi on Unsplash
Build Your Own Shining City On a Hill
The search for mentors begins with your doing some mentoring first
One of my favorite Medium writers, Rebecca Stevens A., inspired this story when she wrote the following article yesterday:
Rebecca points out the aching challenges that talented women, and most particularly women of color, face in the workplace. They are many and varied, and I strongly recommend you visit her piece. This is what I am responding to, as I promised her in a comment.
From her article:
So today, I’m making a plea. I’m seeking an honest to God mentor who understands. Someone I can learn from and someone who can learn from me. For the relationship to be sustainable, it needs to go both ways.
I would love to find someone who is unafraid to have those uncomfortable discussions around social justice, race, Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ rights, and gender inequalities but to name a few. I’d like to find someone open-minded, who acknowledges and is aware of all the privileges that they might have. I would like to find someone who understands the power dynamic in the world and in the workplace. Someone who sees how white supremacy and white privilege determines who has power and who does not, who is immediately conferred respect and who isn’t, who is immediately trusted and who isn’t. I would love to have a mentor who simply understands, for it is only then that that mentorship will help us both meet our full potential.
This is just my idea, so please take it for what it’s worth, and see if you can do anything with it. This is for any and all of you who, like Rebecca, seek a mentor.
First, background. In 1997, I was facing horrific financial challenges, my marriage was on the rocks. My ex and I had just moved to Spokane. I put out three hundred resumes. Got one interview. Didn’t get the job. Two things happened in quick order: my marriage dissolved, and I had to file bankruptcy.
Not things you want in the paper. But there you are.
As part of my attempt to find work, I attended all kinds of meetings all over town, from the local Chamber of Commerce to Business and Professional Women. I ran into plenty of folks who didn’t want to know me because they saw me as a threat. Big Fish Little Pond People.
And. I kept meeting simply extraordinary women of color, women of power, women who were senior execs, entrepreneurs, writers, artists, dancers, all of whom shared one key characteristic: they felt isolated and lonely. Spokane in 1997 was and still is a rather lily-white place, and home to a few too many White Supremacist organizations. I’d had no clue when I moved there.
These women didn’t feel particularly comfortable. Me neither.
Bingo.
I formed what I jokingly called The Great Broads. First, I met with a German-Hispanic woman. The following month I brought in another high-powered woman. Sparks flew. I cherry-picked women from all those groups, vetted them, for competence, a positive focus and a willingness to throw in when others needed advice and mentoring.
I cherry-picked women leaving Fairchild Air Force base, pilots and navigators (One Hispanic, one Japanese) of immense talent with multiple degrees and NO business savvy. I dragged them in and they got mentored. One of them, a woman who is the living example of how to pay it forward, is Graciela Tiscareno-Sato, whose work is all over Linked In. She is THE shining example of a woman who got mentored and is paying it forward big time.
We changed lives. Our own and each other’s.
The group later renamed itself The Hubbel Group (sounds like financial advisors). My Jewish Berkeley PhD refused to meet with the Chamber of Commerce as a “Great Broad,” which was fine by me. By that point, the group had gotten a name for itself for good reason.
We were doing damned good things for women of consequence in Spokane.
One of those women later became a mayor. Just saying.
We were featured in the book Networking Magic by Jill Lublin.
Wanna know how?
Here’s what we did:
We met one Thursday a month for lunch at a local restaurant. About 15–16 people typically showed up, always different, with a few steady regulars. The time line was 90 minutes SHARP. After I introduced the new person, we got down to business.
This was the format I used and which you are welcomed to steal for your own:
What are you good at(You MAY NOT SAY I am a people person, or risk collective groans). This is where you own your professional real estate. What are you CELEBRATING right now? What do you need help with today (This isn’t a bridge game, you don’t get to pass, you MUST ask for assistance with something.)
Each person at the table must go. Once she has thrown down the gauntlet for assistance, everyone else throws down their best ideas, referrals, suggestions and best practices. They are competing to have the best ideas without knowing they are competing.
Each person walks away with a slew of ideas and information. Everyone else gets to listen to others ,and invariably they contact each other offline. Business relationships form, deals happen, closer mentoring connections evolve. This is what happens when we offer guidance, advice, help and nurturing. We end up getting it ourselves.
Why this worked:
I vetted EVERYONE. I selected members specifically for diversity, high levels of professional competence, a willingness to give and an ability to receive. Nobody got in but through me, which ensured the quality of person, which protected the group’s integrity. If anyone got ugly or negative or nasty, they were removed from the group. One and done. It was a protected space. Everyone came away with value, everyone gave value, and it fed all of us from a business standpoint while also supporting all of us emotionally. And to that end, we added a once a month Friday girls night out where we could talk about anything other than business.
I built what I could not get with women who were, like me, feeling isolated and lonely. Those connections lasted a long time. The Hubbel Group ultimately got me back on my feet, I found work, and a way to serve. So did everyone else.
Every single time after lunch when I finally got out to the parking lot, several women would still be out there next to their cars, talking business. Never failed.
If I hadn’t had to return to Denver to care for my dying mother, this group would still be my passion. As it was, the sixty some women who were part of that group saved my butt, and were great servants to each other, with friendships lasting to this day. The Hubbel Group, back in 2000, was the most diverse group in Spokane. That’s because I built it to ensure extraordinary diversity.
When you and I are in need, the single best way to ensure that you get it is to give it.
Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash
While we are indeed in challenging times due to Covid, there is no reason why you and I couldn’t form an online Zoom community of cherry-picked folks who could benefit from collaborating.
I’ll repeat that: they need to be able to benefit from collaborating. That means that the exchange of wildly diverse ideas, driven by the diversity of color, culture, religion, business, experience, age, etc. automatically guarantees free and divergent idea exchanges.
If you want to be mentored, consider who else might also need mentoring, and why. Who else could benefit from a regular meeting where, if you set courageous ground rules, each person could benefit hugely from other’s experiences?
Courageous ground rules would mean things like: no bitching, complaining, no personal attacks, whining and nothing toxic. If you need to discuss difficult issues, by all means lay out the challenge. But do so without toxicity, outline the issues and state what you are seeking. What are potential resolutions? What are the experiences of the group? What are the potential ways forward? How are you going to measure progress?
Brainstorming rules apply: all ideas are valid. WE NEVER SHOOT DOWN AN IDEA. Because why? An crazy-ass idea might just have a kernel of great genius within it.
Photo by Melissa Askew on Unsplash
This group taught me a few things. First, that if I want friendship and support, the fastest way to get it is to find others who need it and make sure we ALL get it from each other.
The other is that a tight set of rules protects you, protects the group. You as former of the group, facilitator and monitor have the sacred responsibility to stand by those rules and protect people, as I had to constantly do, from women who wanted to crash my community.
Why? They were MLM folks. They saw my group as sitting ducks for their down line. They were furious that I barred entry. My group loved me for it. You have got to set rules, and stand by them.
If you are going to work with execs, you MUST honor the time frame. With a Zoom meeting, you might keep it to 45–60 minutes. End on time every time without exception. People want to hang out longer, that’s on them. YOU honor their executive time, they will love you for it.
I chose not to charge anyone. That worked for me, because each time we met what I gained in insight, education and friendship far outweighed any fees. Ultimately the group steered me to legal help that got me my VA disability and a lot more. You cannot put a value on such things.
Rebecca wants a mentor. She, and you, and I all deserve one. My primary mentor died in early early nineties a few years ago, and in doing so she shoved the torch into my hands. I am paying it forward. This is the formula as I built my group. My suggestion (and I am happy to build on this) is consider how you might turn this into a mastermind group, or any other kind of collaboration for the greater good of all.
I just threw down the gauntlet. We need each other. My challenge is how will you give others what YOU need, and in that magnificent way that the Universe works when we commit ourselves to service, get everything we needed and much, much more to boot?
For a Medium example of mentoring, please see Dr Mehmet Yildiz. There’s a reason he has legions of raving fans (me included).
Lots of ways to do this, but he began by cherry-picking writers he most favored. Created an accepting, supporting, diverse community. Worked incredibly hard to protect it. Still does.
Hm. Sounds familiar.
Something to that. What will you do to turn your need into a gift for others? | https://medium.com/illumination-curated/build-your-own-shining-city-on-a-hill-4ccf0a3b770 | ['Julia E Hubbel'] | 2020-12-18 16:34:46.662000+00:00 | ['Business', 'Mentorship', 'Success', 'Personal Development', 'Entrepreneurship'] |
Adventures of Photogrammetry in Babylon.js | Turns out, the smaller the object is, the higher fidelity image you are going to need. Unless you have a tripod or something to keep your hand steady, its hard to get a non-shaky video. You also want to make sure the object is in the center frame for most of your video which can be a little tricky as you're manually circling around the object, trying to capture both high and low images. I heard capturing in slow mode can help counter this too. Make sure to not capture a ton of the background. I found that also led problems with small objects. Best angles came from when the camera was looking more downward at the object.
That’s when I thought I’d give it another try, perhaps with a larger object. I personally found going outside was the perfect solution. Lots of natural light from the sun and space to walk around a larger object at a distance. This was key because my camera didn't have to focus on the tiny details and could just capture the object as a whole. This created a smooth, consistent video that became perfect for the algorithm.
Once I had a solid data set that was properly generating the mesh, things were pretty simple from there. With a couple quick buttons clicks I was able to generate a textured mesh and boom, its looked just like the real thing.
From here we export it to a FBX and turn into a GLB for Babylon. For this set I simply used Blender to export again. Voila we have a GLB we can just drag into the sandbox to take a took. Wow how stunning. From here we can import into any Babylon.js project. For my demo I just made a playground with 2 photogrammetry meshes.
Well here's another catch. If we took a look at the number of polygons, we would see there are thousands and thousands…almost a million polygons. Now Babylon.js does a great job at rendering these at 60 fps. But there is a bit of overhead when it comes to loading. Granted being able to load such a gorgeous asset in only seven seconds is still remarkable, but this can feel slow if you’re used to really fast playground loads. I would definitely suggest using an async function for loading your models. Still, in the playground this can lead to a bit of slowdown for development every time you are refreshing. If you really want that high polygon model for the final production, I’d suggest using something stand in while you are developing. Another thing we can do however is lower the count by using a decimation modifier in Blender. This can reduce the count by a fraction, just keep an eye on the quality as you go lower and lower. In the end it’s a choice for what you want to do in your scene, how fast you want to run, and how many models want to have.
Another thing to think about is lighting. When creating the textured mesh in 3DF Zephyr, lighting from your photos will already be taken into account. Therefore, it’s important to remember if you using lights on other parts of your scene you should either disable the lighting on the mesh, or at least think about what you trying to achieve. Double lighting can look weird if you’re going for realism. Definitely something to keep in mind.
Finally, don’t forget about mobile! Surprisingly most phones within the Babylon team were able to render these scenes, but do keep in mind it can be very taxing in the hardware. Perhaps a lower and higher polygon version for mobile vs desktop.
So there you have it. A couple tips and tricks for dealing with photogrammetry in Babylon.js. I would 100% recommend trying it out sometime if you want to create a visually impressive model, especially if don’t have the modeling skills like myself ;)
Babylon.js can remarkably render even the expensive models and still run at 60 fps no sweat. Just be cautious of those load times by using other software to downscale it, especially if load time is important. I know that’s something I will probably do on my next demo for sure. Until then, have fun taking those videos/photos and can’t wait to see what you all create!
Photo by Ailbhe Flynn on Unsplash
Seen you real soon,
Pamela Wolf — Babylon.js Team
https://twitter.com/ms_Destiny14 | https://medium.com/@babylonjs/adventures-of-photogrammetry-in-babylon-js-68f786c952b6 | [] | 2021-06-24 20:23:06.814000+00:00 | ['Photogrammetry', 'Babylonjs', 'Graphics', '3d Modeling'] |
UX for a pandemic response | Meanwhile, features that once felt minor at a small scale suddenly were critical. For instance, a “back to top” button on lengthy pages, or automatically collapsing lists of services into accordions on mobile. Our alert banner had seemed like something that might be nice to have, someday, in case of a major earthquake perhaps. We thought it would be used in the rarest of occasions. Unfortunately, we found ourselves needing to use it all the time!
For us, having sensible web templates and components is another aspect of disaster preparedness.
When the pandemic hit, it definitely stress-tested the templates we had built. Going forward, we can use this experience to design more flexible templates, but also to reassess the ones we already have. When you see something you designed being used in a way that you did not intend, it’s a chance to reflect on whether something requires a new solution, or if there is more you can do to better meet the need.
Checking your health before going to work
Aside from getting information to the public, we also worked on tools and services to keep things running during a pandemic.
Our UX designer Nicole worked on a vital tool for City staff to verify their health before reporting to work. Some City services (including the Emergency Operations Center) depend on staff being physically present — a tricky prospect in 2020. We needed a tool for them to answer basic health questions, then generate a screen they could show as a “pass” when entering a City building.
Although it seems relatively easy for employees to have simply answered questions from a paper list, doing it online meant their answers could be collected in a daily report for department heads. Plus, the employee could get a confirmation screen that clearly tells them (and their workplace) whether they are “Cleared for work”.
This was our first form that provided dynamic confirmation screens after submission.
In only a week, the team launched an online form for City staff to answer questions about their health, as well as the back-end tools for editors to create different confirmation screens. Getting forms away from paper and PDFs is a big problem for us to tackle, so this was important progress that paved the way for more forms and services since then.
One thing made this form different from most other government forms: people use it on a daily basis.
After talking to City staff and doing usability testing, we made a few improvements to focus on the use-case of a tool used repeatedly by “expert” daily users. First, we used browser cookies to save people’s data, so they don’t need to retype basic things like their name and workplace address. We also streamlined the flow from 7 pages down to 3 by grouping the questions by topic. | https://medium.com/san-francisco-digital-services/ux-for-a-pandemic-response-f0275148e4e2 | ['Lauren Jong'] | 2020-12-17 21:07:24.994000+00:00 | ['Covid Response', 'UX Design', 'Civictech', 'San Francisco'] |
A mother. A baby. Two burglars | The Devil’s hour
Ican hear the wood of the floor groans as it disturbs the tranquility in my room. It is three am — known as the devil’s hour to believers. The hour when the veil is thin between the natural and supernatural world. In my country it is known as the hour where burglars snatch your altered consciousness back to reality. I am in South Africa, my country of birth. A country with a high murder rate, ranked fifth most dangerous country out of 144 countries. I am in my apartment, with my one-year daughter. Alone and scared.
Earlier this evening, my boyfriend James and I had our mid-week celebration of food, wine and conversations delectable of humor and laughter. The night was less gracious as the time ticked away after two glasses of wine. James settled my one year old daughter in my bed. She pulls the blanket over her head. An usual hobby to fall asleep. It is the middle of August in our town, Bloemfontein. We experience a semi-arid climate with chilly days and slightly cloudy skies. After we played the game of stay or go, James dragged his feet to the staircase. I am by no means a fan of the staircase that is shaped in the form of a centipede dunked in rust. I love James. He is not the father of my daughter. We’ve been dating for six months.
I raise my head from the pillow and support my body weight with my right elbow. I blink owlishly. An eerie feeling send a shiver down my spine. A visceral reaction travels through my body. A sliver of moonlight spill into the room, not enough to transmit relief to the darkness, but enough to navigate a definite movement in my room. I jolt my body in a point of awareness. My abdominal muscles tighten and a sheer fluttery evolves in my stomach. I stretch my shoulders back and push my chest out. My back touch the wall behind me and I shrunk away. The hair stand up at the back of my neck. I rub my hands vigorously over my arms.
The conversation
A silhouette with greater height than average approach me. He stops at the edge of my bed. I squint my eyes in a curious way. “Who is it?,” I asked in a soft tone of voice. “James is that you?” Why would James be back at this hour? How did he did he enter. He does not have a key to my apartment?” “Are you alone?” The voice is low and gravely. My heart punch violent blows against my rib cage. It beats like an African drum during an ancestral ceremony.
Seconds pass. It gives the feeling of hours. The man move from the edge of my bed to my bedroom window. He peeps through the curtain and walk back to the bed. “Where is your husband? He owe us money. We are here to collect our money.” My eyes adjust to the darkness and I can see his teeth. It is flawless, white and detailed. I smell a mixture of sweat and nicotine. I pull my legs up to my chest to hide my baby. I swing an extra piece of my blanket over her in a theatrical move to blind him from her presence.
“Yes I am alone and my husband is not here now. “Did this men entered the wrong apartment? I don’t have a husband. Is he talking about James? James has a job and have adequate money. He is new in this town and barely know people. “My friend is waiting outside your kitchen window. We are here to collect the money from your husband. He owe us $479,92” “But I don’t have a husband. Should I tell him I lied or should I play along? I have $4.98c in my purse. Is this what happens during the devil’s hour? Perhaps this is dream that I will dislike in the morning.” The man’s words are blurry and less easy to understand.
The Jump
I hear a loud thumb in the kitchen. Footsteps approach my bedroom. A second man enters. He stares at me. He speaks in one of the eleven language of my country. A language I lack to master. They laugh as if this is a prank out of control. “Get out of your bed”, the first man orders. I grapple to interpret the scenes of this occasion. “What about my baby? What if he discovers her? What if she starts crying? I can’t get out of bed. I am half-naked. My T-shirt barely covers my bottom. What if they rape me and my daughter wakes up? What if they take my baby.” I lift my feet with elegance out of the bed. The men smirk while I attempt to stretch my T-shirt that dangles over my hips. My baby remains unnoticed. She does not wake up easily. Her following feed is at five am. “Come. Walk to the balcony.” The man who is in charge pulls his jacket slightly to the side to display his weapon. I open the door. I stand on the balcony.
My facial muscles shake in an attempt to warm up as my teeth chatters freely. “Since your husband is not here and you failed to give us our money, we are giving you two choices. You can jump or we rape you?” “But my….” I think about my daughter. “We are two stories high from the ground. “ It is not that far. I can jump, run and look for help. There is a 24hour garage next to our flat. It is a two minute run.” In a last attempt to escape this devil’s hour I beg them to come back the next day in the hope that they will leave. Their laughter gives tribute to this hour. I am vulnerable. Tears roll down my cheeks in the absence of sound. I pray to God. I pray to the universe. I pray to my ancestors. I pray to whoever can protect my daughter. I jump.
The Aftermath
The cold air fills my lungs. Gravity pulls me faster than estimated. How do I perform a proper leap? An unfortunate situation. I land flat with both feet on concrete. Pain instantly greets my my toes, feet, ankles and right wrist. In an effort to balance myself, I press forward with my right arm. I wrench at the sharp sensation that shoot through my arm. I am flat on my backside. My baby is in the bedroom. This is all a blur.
The squeaky sound of my door is a hint that they are leaving the apartment. I need to move but the unplanned physical sensation is beyond what I can bare at the moment. I collapse in a stupor. I need to get to the petrol station . I can hear the two men dribbling down the staircase. They are coming for me.
I press on my left hand and get on my knees. My image resembles a three-leg dog. I crawl over stones, litter and sharp objects. It stings badly. I am at the end of the alley and see the street lights. I crawl on my knees and one hand. I am half-naked. The cars pass me. Some fast and others slow. I reach the pavement in an attempt for someone to notice me. No one stops. I cry out loud. The sting in my arm complement my swollen wrist. My knees are bleeding. My toes and ankles are swollen. I am at the back of the petrol station. If I can crawl until I reach the corner in the hope that a petrol attendant will see me. Then it happens. I see a shadow approaching the corner. It is them. It is over. I sit flat on my behind. Hopeless.
Angels
Aelderly woman appears. She has a blanket wrapped around her waist. Many South African cultures use blankets to represent their specific ethnic groups. She calls out to me. I call out to her. She screams for help. The woman run to me and wrap the blanket around me. More shadows appears around the corner. It is three men. One of the man rush to assist us. Then I see them. The other two men that came around the corner with the petrol attendant are the burglars. They stroll pass me and smile as if it’s the first time they see me. One of them place his finger over his mouth signing that I keep quiet. Bile violently escape my mouth . The elderly woman try to console me, unaware of the danger that lurks beside me. The men move on. The petrol attendant carries me in the shop. The elderly woman call the emergency police number 911. I recognize the women. She works here at the convenient store. The police arrives. The elderly woman explain the story to them as I have told it to her.
They rush to my flat and return minutes later with my baby. She is asleep and unaware of the commotion. I cling to my baby and ask for atonement in her ears as my tears wet her blanket. “ Did they rape you?” No. “Assault you?” No. A feeling of guilt and sadness pours over my body as the police officer whisper with care in my ears. The ambulance arrives. They lift me in the ambulance. My daughter is safe on my chest. James arrives at the hospital after the police informed him. We cried and comfort each other. James takes my daughter to my parent’s house.
Ghosts
After a week in the hospital, I return to my apartment with James. He moves in temporarily. I detest the apartment, the staircase, my bedroom and even my balcony. The nightmares are cruel and violent. The investigation is slow with no progress. Memories of the police interrogation a day after the accident haunts me. They found fingerprints of the two men inside my kitchen but never made an arrest. James suggests that I move in with him until I fully recover. Both my legs are in plasters and I am in a wheelchair scheduled for six weeks. My daughter stays with my mom and I stay with James in my apartment. Feelings of hopelessness and shame embrace me daily.
James wash me daily since my arm and both legs are in plaster. He carries me to the toilet at night. He arrives home during his lunch break to prepare lunch for me and secure that I have the essentials until he returns after work. The plasters are removed after six weeks. James asked me to be his wife. Despite our love that is so deep and genuine, we end our engagement shortly after. The incident left scars on both of us.
The nightmares never left for remaining months of our relationship. It entered my next relationship that led to marriage and later to divorce.
Lost , Found and survival
I lost a part of me the night I jumped. I lost a part of my sanity. I lost my faith. I lost my James. I found guilt. I found doubt. I found loneliness. I greeted an illness that negatively affects how I feel, the way I act.
I survived. | https://medium.com/@mullertessa7/a-mother-a-baby-two-burglars-20710f2dff5a | [] | 2021-07-20 10:31:25.675000+00:00 | ['Baby', 'Burglary', 'Mothers', 'Survived', 'Grace'] |
My Dating Life Does Not Determine My Blackness | My Dating Life Does Not Determine My Blackness
Photo: Image Source/Getty Images
This past August, I started making resources on Instagram for folks interested in practicing ethical non-monogamy (ENM). The face of polyamory and ENM is overwhelmingly White and typically displays structures that replicate monogamy or coupledom. In this, I wasn’t really represented as a queer Black person who practices solo polyamory (meaning I am essentially my own primary partner). So I began working on ways to expand that. I’ve cultivated a humble following, but with that, naturally, comes the trolls.
Even though my work is about relationships, I try to stay vague about my own love life, though I occasionally show my partner and some of my friends in my stories. Because the approximately three people I’ve chosen to show my followers are White and I am loudly pro-Black on the internet, I was suddenly dubbed a fraud. I was pestered about whether I dated Black people, the number of folks I date, the race of my partner(s), along with a litany of other invasive comments on multiple posts. I decided not to answer directly, because I don’t think I owe anyone an explanation.
However, I wonder if these trolls, who are often Black men, see my choice in friends and lovers as hypocrisy. If I’m claiming to further the representation of people of color in the community, why does it look like I only spend time with White people?
The answer to that question is multifaceted and relies on proximity and coincidence, not intention. Ultimately, the folks I’ve chosen to show are the few people I currently spend time with. Why? We’re in a pandemic, and few people can agree to the strict guidelines my bubble follows. I do have other partners within my bubble, but I don’t show them because the relationship isn’t there yet. When I do spend time with people outside my bubble, it’s infrequent. Sometimes I post when I’m with my friends. Other times, I don’t because I’m more preoccupied with catching up on much-valued time with my non-White friends and lovers. I know that I have non-White partners, but I didn’t realize I needed to display them in order to reaffirm my commitment to my community, as well as my identity.
This is a commonality for Black women on the internet, especially those who dare to talk about politics. Our partners are policed because we advocate for ourselves and our people. Dancer and actress Kelechi Okafor has written about her experience of “hiding” her White husband. My friend and fellow bisexual polyamorous advocate Gabrielle Alexa Noel has also gotten hate for having a non-Black partner.
Black women are hit with the double punch of misogyny and racism. In so many ways, Black women are told that we are not desirable to anyone but Black men and fetishizers. Or we’re haunted by the misogynistic dating gurus of the past who say we’re asking for too much and not giving enough. With this rhetoric, we’re told to stay in our place.
Why does proximity to Whiteness invalidate our Blackness? How can it invalidate Blackness?
A study published in the American Sociological Association’s journal Sociology of Race and Ethnicity shows that some Black men (like my trolls) perceive Black women who date White men as “social climbers.” They perceive Black women who date White men as tending to be higher educated and more attractive and less like Black men. Is this the problem I’m facing? Is the assumption that I think I’m too good for Black men? Is the assumption that I think I’m better than them? Or is the assumption that I think White men are better than them? Do Black women belong to Black men? Is that what it is? How did we get here?
I’m still trying to figure it out, but either way, the backlash has been painful.
I grew up in quiet, conservative southern New Jersey, where Confederate flags were common and I was the only Black girl in my AP and honors courses. I’ve had to unpack so much of the anti-Blackness that has been thrown at me—desirability politics, comments like “Well, you’re not like really Black,” fetishization, and outright slurs — and I’ve learned to fortify.
I’ve bypassed my shame from adolescence and am now able to fully fall in love with Blackness. I love it in myself. I love it in others. I appreciate myself so much more now, after being taught to have disdain and hatred for my features. I can see the undercurrent of White supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism that rules the country I live in, and I try to thrive in spite of it. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I falter.
So you could see why someone claiming that I don’t have this love for Blackness is incredibly jarring. I’ve fought to find it my whole life.
What seems to be missing in the criticisms of folks who date outside their race is nuance. Of course, there are folks who date outside their race and fit into problematic tropes. There are women and men who fetishize interracial relationships, assuming they’re eradicating racism one beige baby at a time. There are folks who claim non-Black folks are so much better to date because they’re exotic or have a fairer temperament. And there are folks who enter interracial relationships and allow themselves to be worn down by constant microaggressions, letting the anti-Blackness at home seep into their soul.
That’s not me. It never could be me. I thought that would be more clear, considering how often I express how we need to advocate for ourselves in relationships.
When I meet prospective partners, I must be prepared to combat homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, classism, and a thousand and one other sociopolitical factors.
I date folks who align with my values. I date folks who make me smile. I date folks who love me hard and long, and show up every day, and make fun of me when I drop everything all the time. There is no race requirement for that. In fact, I’ve seen many women date other Black folks and still experience bigotry within their relationships. Anti-Blackness is universal. We all must unlearn it. Racism is not the only landmine we face when choosing partners. When I meet prospective partners, I must be prepared to combat homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, classism, and a thousand and one other sociopolitical factors.
Having a White partner will not ensure that I get paid my worth as a Black woman. Having a White partner will not make a cop stop seeing my hair and skin color as dangerous. Having a White partner will not erase the systemic violence inflicted upon my family.
The reality is that many people of color do not view women dating outside their race in a favorable manner. Whatever the reason, whether it’s self-preservation, jealousy, entitlement, misogynoir, or just general hotep-ery. It’s important to understand that there are people beyond the timeline. Instagram is a snapshot into people’s lives. I show silly little moments spent with the few friends this pandemic allows me to share space with. I don’t show the deeply intimate moments between me and my partners. I don’t share each moment I spend on the couch, cackling with my cousin. I don’t share the conflicts or the resolution. I share the lessons I learn.
The rest is for me. | https://zora.medium.com/my-dating-life-does-not-determine-my-blackness-85d106e8c35b | ['Gabrielle Smith'] | 2020-12-07 19:13:42.609000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'Race', 'Equality', 'Dating', 'Black Women'] |
Traveling to take pictures | Traveling to take pictures
This has been taken from a post I wrote several years ago. Allison Mahmood Jul 21·3 min read
We all travel from time to time some more often some less and usually there is that idea about interesting pictures that you could take while you are there, but it doesn’t always work out. Here are some tips to improve the photos you bring back from there.
Firstly there is the times when you travel with others (for ex. family). If you are traveling with people who themselves are not into photography than they often expect you to do one thing while you know that is not what you want to do so you either just don’t take as many pictures as you would like or ignore them and go out on your own. A good thing when traveling with people like this is to take as little things as possible a camera and one prime lens is enough. This means that whenever they ask you to take a picture of something than you often don’t have the lens that make a good picture of that thing so they will soon stop after they see that the pictures they asked you to take aren’t anything special and are as good or worse than what they can take with their phone so they will eventually stop. If you happen to have a prime that is one of the more general ones like 35mm or 50mm than this might not work. In a situation like that just sit down with them and explain to them why what they want is not ideal. If this doesn’t work than just leave your camera at home at forget taking pictures while traveling with them and instead plan a trip that you will go to with your fellow photographers or on your own.
If you travel with people that share your passion for photography than you should have a good time as long as you are on good relations with them. For what you should take with you it’s simple take your camera and one or two lens. If you need anything else like a tripod take that, but remember they all will also have their gear so there is a high chance that they will have the things that you happen to need, but don’t have with you.
Lastly there is the option of traveling on your own which is the most practical if you belong to the group of people that go out shooting in insane times just because they have a sudden urge to take pictures. Also if you like to spend extremely long times at one place than traveling on your own is the ideal option. You should take just the basic necessities and leave all the excess lenses, back-up bodies and etc. at home, because even if you don’t mind carrying all that gear it will still get in your way.
But the main point of all of this is to have fun even if you are being bothered by people who have no idea about photography or if you are traveling with your friends who love photography and share the same interests as you. | https://medium.com/@allisonmahmood/traveling-to-take-pictures-215c864bad80 | ['Allison Mahmood'] | 2021-07-21 07:04:13.177000+00:00 | ['Travel', 'Photography', 'Gear', 'Pictures'] |
60 days to become a game developer. Days 58 & 59. | Hi there! Here is a recap of Wednesday and Thursday, Days 58 & 59 of my 60 day challenge to become a Unity Game Developer!
OMG! This week FLEW by. I can’t believe this is the second to last post in this challenge. Holy moly, its both bitter sweet and surreal to be this close to the end. But something really amazing happened yesterday, we officially published our game!
Take a look at this awesome trailer for our game made by none other than the talented Ryan Yamura! I am seriously so proud of our team!!
GO PLAY IT NOW HERE — →>>>>>>>>>>https://gamedevhq.itch.io/nova-star !!!!
These two days were spent mostly doing market research, brainstorming with the team about how we wanted to approach our marketing efforts and just finishing up the little last minute things so that everything can come together for publishing this game!!
Another thing that I worked on was the readme.md on our github page.
Here is how I approached this:
The readme file in github is surprisingly tricky at first in the sense that it’s not just a “word-like” document that you can intuitively add stuff to and format. It actually uses Markdown, a light weight markup language, and so there is specific syntax needs to be used in order to get the readme file to look professional and well formatted.
Luckily, there’s some pretty good resources out there and just took a little bit of playing with.
Here’s some quick tips in case you’re interested:
So, for the most part I only had to worry about 3 sections. The general summary, the features list, and instructions on how to play the game. To do this was pretty simple. The project name already defaults with a heading, which is created using a hashtag. For the the summary I did not have to do any kind of formatting so I just typed out the verbiage. Next, for the first section highlighting the features I knew I wanted a break between the summary and the sub heading as well as after the verbiage. To do this I added in </br> which creates one line of spacing; I did the same for the instructions section. I also added 3 backticks before and after each of those sections to create a nice looking block. This can be used to highlight a section like I did or for code.
Here’s what it all looks like:
Click on image to see details.
You may have noticed some weird link looking thing about an image in there. This is for the image I wanted to place in the file. There is a little trick I learned to easily add images into the readme pages. So first thing you have to do is in your repo open a new issue by clicking on issues….
then click on new issue.
From there just drag and drop your image into the body section of the issue form.
After a few moments a new image link should automatically be created which you can copy and paste right into your readme file as shown in the earlier clip. PLEASE NOTE: Do not submit the new issue request, just close out the file without saving it. That is it! Seems a little janky I know, but this is a much faster solution than having to deal with dropping the image into your repository or hosting it somewhere else and using relative links to grab them.
Here’s the final result:
That was it for days 58 & 59! The next time I post will be THE. LAST. POST. OF. THIS. CHALLENGE!!! Whoa. I was going to power through and get it up tonight since its the last day but to be honest I’m a bit spent from this week and I really want to think and write about this experience with a fresh brain. With that said….
I’ll see you tomorrow. | https://medium.com/@mar-mcrae/60-days-to-become-a-game-developer-days-58-59-52fc33c49f36 | ['Mar Mcrae'] | 2020-12-19 18:11:36.151000+00:00 | ['Challenge', 'Gamedev Noob', 'Challenges And Growth', 'Unity Game Development', 'Game Development'] |
How to launch a quality app for entrepreneurs | Is testing a necessity or a waste of time? Most companies are unanimously in agreement with the first option, but these days there are supporters of the other point of view. In our line of work there have been cases in which, through chasing deadlines and the desire to release a new product as soon as possible, the customer has neglected to pay sufficient attention to this key stage. Either it came at the wrong moment, when the staff didn’t have the necessary specialists available and there was no time to find a competent outsourcing team, or the testing was carried out but not in enough depth. The result is wasted money, a failed project, and the loss of existing customers, while any chance of attracting any new ones can be completely forgotten.
It is evident, therefore, that the testing of a software product is one of the most important stages of its development. Indeed, before a company can present their new product to consumers, they must be 100% sure of its performance. It is therefore essential to identify critical bugs on time, check all vital product functionality, conduct a robust interface analysis, and implement any recommendations for improvement. The expertise of the testers at this point should be second to none.
Understanding the importance of this stage, SKB LAB invited OmegaLab specialists onto their project.
The Challenge
Our task was to instantly integrate ourselves into the project to conduct a detailed screening and to improve the web service and mobile applications of a well-known bank. We were to work as part of the SKB LAB team. To ensure the timely detection and guaranteed elimination of any critical bugs, it was necessary to employ both automated and manual testing. Only such multi-stage testing as this would allow SKB LAB to avoid critical errors, ensure the smooth and precise operation of the web services and release a high-quality product.
The timeframe for the project was 31 weeks.
31 weeks / 6 employees / 3 objectives
The Project
5 of our QA specialists joined the project: 3 of them in the regression team to ensure the quality of the main section, 1 was involved in the product team, and 1 worked on testing automation. As such, the OmegaLab team constituted around 1/4 of the SKB LAB regression team, the cooperation having started with the engagement of one person.
Most of our specialists took part in regression (i.e. regression testing), checking whether the functionality was working correctly following the update before everything went into production. The testing architecture was chosen, alternating: 2–3 days allotted to conduct 600–700 tests of the web service, meanwhile 1000–1200 tests of the mobile application for iOS and Android were also carried out. This architecture was not determined by chance. As a result, tasks are distributed according to access rights and workload. One person goes through cases and analyses bugs, while someone else helps to create test clients.
Our technology stack and team comprised of:
vpn, vdi, slack, wiki (confluence), youtrack, testlink, jenkins, gitlab, tfm
1 Project manager
5 Testers
About the client
SKB LAB is an IT-project, created to develop a web service and applications for an innovative mobile bank for individuals and corporations. The bank was created on a modern IT-platform that provides entirely remote financial management for their customers’ ventures. The bank’s clients have access to settlement and cash services, deposits, merchant acquiring, online cash desk, online accounting, tax calculation and payment, legal advice, detailed analytics, and many other services.
The Results
As a result, the bank will offer their customers prompt and uninterrupted operation of web services and applications with updated functionalities. The bank’s mobile application has already won several achievements in industry ratings and is recognised as the best in the market for entrepreneurs. It is a pleasure to be involved in such developments.
As for SKB LAB, the company has found in us reliable partners, ready to engage quickly in any stage of a project, be it testing, design or development. In the future we will be able to significantly save time and resources for SKB LAB that they would usually spend on recruitment for the project. Our partnership will help SKB LAB to maintain the high quality of the application and successfully develop their business in the future.
*1st place in the Business Mobile Banking Rank 2020 for the best mobile bank for iOS and Android
“Throughout the project, we realised that the expertise of the specialists isn’t limited to the scope of the assigned tasks. They always suggest, predict, and recommend the best solution according to the situation. In addition to hard skills, all the specialists have soft skills. Together, these qualitatively distinguish OmegaLab from other development companies. I can confidently say that, in OmegaLab, we have found a reliable partner who can be entrusted to solve even the most demanding of tasks.”
R.Faruhshin
QA Team Lead at SKB LAB | https://medium.com/@omegalab/how-to-launch-a-quality-app-for-entrepreneurs-fbd832796d94 | [] | 2020-12-18 14:30:28.816000+00:00 | ['Regression Testing', 'Mobile Banking', 'Mobile Apps', 'Web Services', 'Software Development'] |
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