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30 Lessons About Life You Should Learn Before Turning 30 | 30 Lessons About Life You Should Learn Before Turning 30
Lessons I eventually learned, but wish I could have mastered a long time ago…
Photo by Julian Hochgesang on Unsplash
1. Life is a delicate balance between “ready, aim, fire” and “ready, fire, aim.”
Chances are you naturally lean toward one of these approaches: either unnecessarily cautious or foolishly ambitious.
The reality is that some situations call for great care and deliberation, while others call for you to dive right in before you have time to convince yourself not to.
If you’re taking out a huge loan to start a business, you need to be cautious. If you’re thinking of starting a YouTube channel you just need to get started.
Either way, you better learn the difference.
2. You should automate as many things as possible
Steve Jobs developed a uniform of a black turtleneck, Levi’s blue jeans, and white New Balance sneakers.
Mark Zuckerburg mostly sticks to a gray t-shirt.
Barack Obama would choose between a charcoal gray and a navy suit every day.
The more time and energy you spend on things that don’t matter, the less you will have for the things that do matter.
Develop defaults in every area of your life: outfits, meals, morning routines, etc. You want as much of your life running on auto-pilot as possible so that you have the ability to manage the parts that most people never get under control.
3. Journey>Genesis
I’m not talking about the bands here (although I think the point would still stand). What I mean is that the process is more important than the act of starting.
We spend a lot of time celebrating the start of things, but not nearly enough time encouraging people when things get tough. And they always get tough.
4. You’ll be happier if you love the journey more than the destination
Not only is the journey more important than the starting line, it’s more important than the finish line.
If all you care about is the mountaintop, the climb is going to be rough.
The other thing about the finish line is that it’s a moving target. Once you get close to one finish line, you’ll spot another one just beyond it that’s even more appealing.
5. Your relationships will all change drastically
In college, I had an amazing community of friends including a close-knit inner circle and I figured that we were going to stick together for the long haul.
But life happens and for the most part we’ve gone our separate ways. There’s no hard feelings here. I realize this is the way life works.
I also have several family members who have recently moved further away. Those relationships will be different now that we can’t see them as often.
As long as you fight to maintain several relationships that are deep enough to sustain you in the present, you’ll be able to stand firm amid the ebb and flow of people coming and going from your life.
6. The past is best used as a wellspring of gratitude
There are two enormous mistakes when it comes to the past: dwelling on the negative aspects or romanticizing the positive ones.
But I don’t believe you should never look back. I’m all about living in the moment, but all that lead you to this moment was important too.
When you look back, focus on the things that you can be grateful for now. Every one of us has had ten thousand amazing things happen to us that we didn’t deserve. We’ve been treated to moments of true beauty worth cherishing. Don’t turn your back on all you’ve been given.
7. Procrastination is okay if it works
Everyone seems to hate procrastination, but it’s not always bad. Most people who procrastinate come through in the 11th hour and things work out fine.
Yes, it might be stressful getting there, but you have lots of areas in your life that need work. If procrastination is getting the job done, maybe it’s not the first thing you should look to fix.
That being said…
8. Procrastination is a silent killer of your deepest dreams
When it comes to your dreams, there’s no external accountability. You can’t come through at the 11th hour because there is no defined 12th hour. There are no deadlines unless you create them yourself.
Most people never stop and define their deepest, most important goals. This allows them to procrastinate on them indefinitely.
If you don’t come out and say that you want to write a novel, it’s not going to happen.
This is why I created a 10 Year Plan for a Remarkable Life, and why I think you should create one too:
9. You can be spontaneous even when you have plans
When it comes to creating a 10 Year Plan, one of the biggest objections people have is that they value spontaneity and don’t want to be tied down.
Fair enough, but it’s important to remember that your plans, your goals, and your calendar are there to serve you, not the other way around.
If you want to change something, change it. If you want to be spontaneous, be spontaneous.
Plans set you in the right direction so you don’t drift off course. If you need to pivot because your values and priorities change, go ahead.
It’s just as spontaneous to seize an unexpected opportunity when you had plans as when you didn’t.
10. Money can buy a lot of things, but the most important thing it can buy is freedom
Call it Financial Independence, call it retirement, call it escaping the rat race, call it whatever you want. Having enough money saved up gives you the freedom to live life on your terms.
You can do the work that you want to do when you want to do it and in the style you want to do it.
This is attainable for most people, but you have to be intentional about it. I lay out the mechanics of it in this article:
11. The people that are holding you back mean well
When you decide to make the leap from average to awesome, you’ll run into a surprising amount of resistance from people who should love and support you.
They don’t think they are discouraging your dreams, they think they are saving you from disappointment. They have no idea that they are pulling you back toward mediocrity.
Be grateful that they care, but have the wisdom to know when not to listen.
12. Getting older isn’t a bad thing
I used to dread turning 30, but my 30’s are shaping up to be the best decade of my life so far.
Yes there are inevitable declines that come with age and yes, seasons do change in life. Your 30’s probably won’t have the same vibe as your 20’s. But each season has its advantages and you learn to appreciate them in their time.
13. Happiness should be a central focus in marriage: the other person’s happiness
What I hate about the concept of looking for “the one” is that it sets up this idea that marriage is about finding someone who completely meets your needs. Not only is this never going to happen, it’s not what marriage is in the first place.
If you choose to get married, do it with the mindset of having an opportunity to love the other person well.
If you think that marriage was designed to make you happy, well, you know what the divorce rate is…
14. Finding yourself is great, losing yourself is better
This piggybacks off the last point. Ironically, the best way to be happy is to pursue the happiness of others instead of your own.
There’s a lot of focus today around self-discovery and “finding yourself” has always been something that young people were stereotypically supposed to do.
I think introspection and self awareness are very important. But my advice is as soon as you’ve learned what you need to know, get the focus off yourself as quickly as possible.
15. It’s okay to fail at stuff
I’ve spent way too much of my life being afraid to fail at things. This fear leads to inaction and inaction stunts your growth.
Here’s a news flash: no one has ever gotten good at anything without failing. Ever.
How do you think you learned how to walk?
Sometime in our childhood, we pick up this idea that failing is something to be embarrassed about. The sooner you banish that silly idea from your brain the better.
16. The one thing you should be afraid of is regret
Too many people have this backwards. They fear failure but not regret.
Once you have truly experienced both, you’ll realize that there’s no comparison: regret is a million times worse than failure.
Regret is a problem that becomes worse and worse with age. Regret at 30 isn’t so bad, there’s plenty you can still do about it. Regret at age 70 or 80 is brutal.
The choices that you make now really matter. Give some thought as to how your future self will evaluate them.
17. How you manage your energy is even more important than how you manage your time
When it comes to productivity, the focus is often on time management. This makes sense since using your time well is certainly a component of productivity, but it’s far from the full picture.
If you want to get important things done, you also have to manage your energy and attention. It doesn’t matter how much time you allocate to something if your brain is fried and you can’t concentrate on the task at hand.
If you haven’t learned to to take a mental rest and prepare yourself for another bout of work, your productivity will suffer.
18. Your health is your wealth
Time is even more important than money.
The most likely thing that will rob you of your time is poor health. The leading causes of death are all chronic diseases. If you die early, there’s a small chance it will be a fluke accident and a large chance it will be the culmination of poor habits.
Do what you can to severely limit your consumption of sugar and processed foods. Go on walks. Eat home cooked meals. Spend time with people you love.
The default way of living is the path to chronic disease. If you want a different outcome you need different habits.
19. Everyone knows something you don’t
People say this all the time and don’t mean it.
I mean it.
The people you think are stupid. Your political enemies. The people who got brainwashed by a cult.
Everyone.
I’ll go one further: even if you are on the right side of a debate, there’s an overwhelming chance that your opponent knows something about the debate that you do not.
Have the humility to listen and you’ll keep growing.
20. Experimentation is the best way to vet advice
You’re going to be exposed to a lot of advice, much of it will be contradictory.
Avoid fat — no, carbs — wait, calories — excuse me, I meant nightshades — wait, really it’s the omega-6’s that are the problem.
Large scale studies are expensive and the science behind complicated issues moves slowly. That’s not a knock on science, that’s just a suggestion that the fastest way forward is to conduct a series of n=1 experiments.
This applies to all areas. Some personal finance gurus say to cut lattes and invest the difference. Some say it’s not worth the effort. You have no idea whether or not it is until you try it out. Try giving up something that’s a habitual part of your life for a month. If you don’t miss it, great. If it’s the worst month of your life, maybe look somewhere else to save a few bucks.
21. Focus on the smallest changes that make the biggest difference
The pareto principle — also known as the 80/20 rule — says that 80% of the results come from 20% of the causes.
In other words, you can almost always find opportunities where small changes make an enormous difference.
For instance, when it comes to losing weight, cutting soda and juice is just one change, but it can completely transform your health.
22. Keep a journal
It can take a little time to get used to the habit of keeping a journal, but it’s worth it.
Most people are in a reactive mode all day long. The practice of journaling teaches you to turn inward in reflection and to proactively bring something to the page.
23. If you can be grateful for how far you’ve come, excited about where you are going, and are in love with the journey, you are winning.
This represents a healthy relationship with time: past present and future.
Grateful for the role of the past.
Excitement for a future that you are actively trying to create.
A love for the journey you are on and the precious present moment you are in.
That’s winning.
24. Find meaning in your obstacles
Consider this powerful section from the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain:
Unhappy people tend to see setbacks as contaminants that ruined an otherwise good thing (“ I was never the same again after my wife left me”), while generative adults see them as blessings in disguise (“ The divorce was the most painful thing that ever happened to me, but I’m so much happier with my new wife”). Those who live the most fully realized lives — giving back to their families, societies, and ultimately themselves — tend to find meaning in their obstacles.
25. If you don’t like the story you are telling yourself, tell yourself a different story
The only lens you have through which to view your existence is that of a story.
You are constantly narrating your own life to yourself.
You get to control the story.
The facts never change, but it’s the story that resonates with you.
Telling yourself that you are a loser is a story. Telling yourself you used to be a loser but are turning it around is also a story. Same facts, different results.
Choose wisely.
26. Your weaknesses are your strengths
When I was a kid, I took medication for ADHD.
I’m not sure if I ever had ADHD, but even if I did, there’s no way I’d ever take medication again.
What I have isn’t a weakness, it’s a competitive advantage. It’s a superpower.
I couldn’t pay attention for eight straight hours of school even if you paid me, but I can focus plenty well on the things that I care about.
My inability to sit and behave for eight hours might not fit the modern education system, but why should I care about the modern education system?
27. Try to separate how you spend your time from how you make your money
There’s only one way to make money: selling.
Most people sell their time for money.
A better approach is to invest your time creating something that you can sell besides time.
This was a core thesis of my book on money.
28. The only sensible attitude is gratitude
You will often be tempted to complain about your life.
This isn’t a great look.
You have been given so much that you don’t deserve.
What did you do to deserve your beating heart?
Everything you have is a gift.
Not only is gratitude right, it’s therapeutic and healing.
Gratitude is the greatest psychological hack on the market.
29. The only thing that goes up with age is maturity
As you get older, every single natural ability begins to decline.
Your physical and mental potential peak in your early 20’s.
It’s still possible to improve your body and mind with age because chances are you weren’t anywhere close to your potential in your early 20’s. For instance, I’m in better shape in my 30’s than I was for most of my 20's.
But my body will eventually decline.
My mind will cease to work as quickly.
The areas where I will always be able to improve are my wisdom and character.
Take care of your body, but if you want to peak as a person later than 21, you should focus on your character and wisdom.
30. Lessons aren’t learned from lists
Yes, I recognize the irony of concluding a listicle post with this point.
Too many people read lists like this, feel good for a minute, then move along unchanged.
The only way you will grow is to get out there, experiment, and put things into practice.
I really hope you liked this list. But more importantly, I hope you do something with it. | https://medium.com/the-post-grad-survival-guide/30-lessons-about-life-you-should-learn-before-turning-30-6249873501e5 | ['Matthew Kent'] | 2018-10-16 15:15:57.687000+00:00 | ['Personal Growth', 'Life Lessons', 'Personal Development', 'Productivity', 'Life'] |
Is it really that easy? | Become and overnight success…
The post says, follow these simple rules and…
Build your empire….
Save up to 12 month of living expenses
Develop 3 or more income streams
Start making passive income
Have a destination in mind
Become an overnight success…
Ah, ok! Got it.
You have seen this before or certainly something similar.
All very good and it makes everything look so simple. Glamourous. Exciting.
On all honesty it is not that bad an idea and the list is correct in a way, it just misses out on a lot of the detail and all importantly, it does not give much of a timeline.
It is so simplistic that you may very well quit the rat race and succeed in getting off the treadmill if you do follow it. But, and here is the rub, the chances are pretty high that you will be right back on that proverbial treadmill after a year, if not less than a year, if you do not build more of a robust plan.
If you are working in a job now, like me, then start with the obvious, start at stage one as above. Save up the 12 months of expenses but understand that this is a double sided sword that also needs the focus on your expenses… and also understand that it will be a slog unless you decide to make it otherwise.
Give it your own Vision and Purpose.
What is your WHY?
Only you can frame that vision correctly and give it the right narrative that delivers on your incentive.
Saving up the 12 months ‘income’ to cover living expenses is a whole lot easier if you also cut down on your actual living expenses. Start pulling in the waistband on your expenses now. You will be amazed when you run a budget and a spending tracker at just how much you can waste on the mundane and the unnecessary.
So here, I also said INCOME in brackets, because that is what you are doing. You are possibly not going to have an income for a year so what you save has to take care of what all of your income would have taken care of for that period… that can be a fair amount of money, especially if you also put aside some money for the things that might jump up and bite you in the ass — fender bender, burst water pipe or leaky roof. These kind of things need to be accounted for.
Saving your income and then pressing GO on your new big adventure is one thing, dipping into your savings/income to maintain or invest in your new big thing is another, this is a big trap that many fall into. If you do this, your income will dwindle and disappear fast.
You have to isolate your savings/income and see it for what it is and nothing more. It is your income. It is not your own personal venture capitalist investor that will support your new business venture in times of need.
It is the money that will keep you fed and watered and a roof over your head.
Don’t get caught out on this because it will put extra pressure on you. Find another way, there is money to be sourced if you need to get at it, do your own research and swallow some of your pride on this part.
The ‘passive income’ and ‘have sources of income from three other streams’ is also easier said than done. My thoughts on this are don’t wait, do that now. In fact do that at the same time as everything else…
Interlude: Everything is not in steps, there is no step 1, step 2, step 3…. or 5 steps to financial freedom and all that crap, there is just do it.
Do it all at the same time — you have the skills to already juggle many things you just don’t know that you already do it. You are just juggling the wrong things at the moment; iPhone surfing, texting, Netflix binging while on your computer shopping for that new thing and planing your next day at work. See, you have been in training for juggling so many things at the same time for so long, you just didn’t know it.
To build your empire you should be juggling your job, your 9–5 (again a fallacy, a 9–5 is actually an 8–7 for most people so keep that in perspective) …and while working that 9–5, you should be juggling your learning curve as you grab the new skills you might need for the next big thing, juggling the researching and looking at any possible competition, you should also actually be doing the next big thing and you should be refining this so you steadily improve and all along while doing this, you should be living your life and getting decent sleep and nutrition.
You exhausted yet?
You see this is where my point peaks, you will be exhausted and you do definitely need to have a destination. The vision and purpose part that will keep you motivated for most of the route. For me it is all about the pending Time Freedom that I can benefit from in the long term that will be gained from my current projects.
But it is a marathon. You have to keep this in perspective …
When you roll-up everything I have mentioned above and put it into the context of your life, you will not become what you want to become overnight. Not even in a year, you have to think longer term and put more effective and realistic timelines in place.
“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.” Bill Gates
Manage the ego that comes with the building a entrepreneurial business and put everything you are aiming to be, or striving to achieve, into this perspective and stay the course.
Keep what you are working on close to you and share with others as and when you need to, then, maybe…
…you just might become an overnight success. | https://medium.com/@i-robertson/is-it-really-that-easy-222b205dcd63 | ['Iain Robertson'] | 2020-12-29 06:16:45.635000+00:00 | ['Money Mindset', 'Success', 'Financial Freedom', 'Saving', 'Mindset'] |
New to UX Design? Feeling Overwhelmed? | Did you read that Sidebar article about UX Writing?
Did you see the new augmented reality software that Apple created?
Have you seen Android’s new design pattern?
Did you see the latest Google I/O talks?
Have you read ‘Hooked’ ?
You been on Dribbble lately?
Did you complete that online UI course with Design Labs?
Did you see the latest intercom podcast with Julie Zhuo?
Have you joined The Designership’s Slack room, it’s such a great resource for designers?
Did you see the latest interview article with Interface Lovers?
How is your side project going?
Are you going to the meet up tonight?
Have you finished your portfolio?
Did you write that Medium article you were talking about doing?
Did you see that new prototyping tool that just came out?
arghhh…
…there’s a lot to keep up with isn’t there?
Feels a bit overwhelming?
You’re not alone 🤓 | https://uxplanet.org/new-to-ux-design-feeling-overwhelmed-40ea8e330ab1 | ['Guy Ligertwood'] | 2018-06-10 10:25:36.915000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Productivity', 'Self Improvement', 'Design', 'UX'] |
Dubai Offers 7 Amazing Things You Can Buy For Less Than 50 AED | The first thing that comes to mind when we think about Dubai is luxury. There is a lot of luxury in Dubai, but it’s also about the little things. A traditional good costing only AED 20 is available in Dubai. Curious? The following items are under 50 AED in Dubai. You’ll be thankful when you read the entire list.
Arabic Lanterns
Dubai is filled with dainty lanterns. Glass and mirrors adorn the traditional lanterns in Emirati houses, adding to the ambience. In addition to being a great decor piece, they also feature intricate details and an overall design that makes them a must-have. At places like Dragon Mart, Karama Souk, etc. you can purchase these beautiful lanterns for just AED 30.
2. Dubai Spices
Spices from Dubai never seem to be enough. The best part? Not only are they authentic and flavorful, but they are also relatively inexpensive. They can transform bland dishes into mouth-watering ones with just a few twists. Spices are the perfect gift for anyone who enjoys cooking or who wants to give them as a gift. Purchasing spices at Dubai Souk can cost you between AED 10 and AED 25.
3. Kava Pots & Coffee Sets
In Dubai, the coffee set is more popular than traditional Arabic coffee. Coffee, Kava, and other pots with intricate carvings are quite common in Dubai. There is something Arabic about them. At Dubai Souk and other supermarkets, you can get them for less than AED 20, so that’s just the base price.
4. Camel Milk Chocolates
Dubai is not only known for Camel Milk Chocolates but also for making them a must-have. The camel milk chocolates come in a variety of flavours, such as whole milk, 70% cocoa, macadamia, dates, and spiced. Besides tasting great, these are also excellent gifts. From AED 44 to AED 165, camel milk chocolates can be purchased. At duty-free shops, Dubai Mall, camel farms, etc., you can find Al Nassma kiosks selling these treats.
5. Hookah Pipes
Hookah pipes can be found everywhere in the world. They are, however, nothing like the original Arabic pipes. If you are making a list of the things to purchase in Dubai, do not forget to add a bit of tradition. You can also use a hookah pipe as a decorative element in your home, even if you don’t want to engage in the activity. A decent pipe can be purchased for AED 50, while one that costs a bit more can be purchased for AED 200.
6. Incense Holders
The incense Dubai offers are fantastic. Many stores in Dubai sell these items, and they are widely used in religious celebrations and wedding ceremonies throughout the UAE. Buying a decent holder for AED 30 is a good deal, as the starting price is AED 15, which is still a great price for the quality. Spice Souks and malls both carry these.
7. Lamps
Do you love Aladdin? Then this Arabian Lamp is for you. Buying them is like travelling back in time to when Aladdin lived. Each lamp features intricate carvings and inlaid stones. Despite their unique shapes and sizes, they make for an interesting purchase in Dubai. They can be purchased at the Karama souk for an average price of AED 45.
Conclusion
We hope you enjoyed our article about Dubai offering 7 amazing things you can buy for less than 50 AED. If you are planning a trip to Dubai, make sure to check out this list of 7 things you can buy for less than 50 AED. If you enjoyed this, then please share it with your friends on social media! | https://medium.com/@iflynfeast/dubai-offers-7-amazing-things-you-can-buy-for-less-than-50-aed-56e8dec22257 | ['Manishaa Dubey'] | 2021-12-20 09:42:36.839000+00:00 | ['Trip', 'Dubai Tour', 'Travel Writing', 'Dubai', 'Travel Tips'] |
10 Reasons To Send New Year Gifts — Sweet Box | 10 Reasons To Send New Year Gifts
The New Year is almost here, which means it’s time to think about New Year gifts and plans for your New Year’s Eve celebrations. If you’ve never thought about New Year’s gifts before, this is the perfect year to get started. After what has been a massively eventful and very challenging year for all Australians, there’s never been a better time to show your support and appreciation to loved ones. There are several people you might want to send a New Year’s Gift to this year, including:
Your staff or colleagues
Your close friends
Your family and relatives
Clients of your business
Your neighbours
Your children’s teachers
Your boss or director
Hosts of your New Year’s party
For many people, New Year gifting is a relatively new concept. That’s why our team of bakers and dessert curators have pulled together a list of ten reasons why you might want to send New Year gifts. Keep reading below to get some gifting inspiration and understand the many benefits of delivering gifts over the New Year period. There’s a good reason for everyone to get around the New Year gifting bandwagon!
The start of the New Year is the most effective and appropriate time to send client appreciation gifts. If you run a business and have clients, it’s very fitting to send them a New Year gift. The end of the calendar year is often a time when businesses and individuals evaluate their expenses over the past year and decide whether they want to continue working with certain businesses in the coming twelve months. To ensure they reflect on your business positively and choose to continue working with you, you should send them a New Year client appreciation gift.
Sending gifts to your corporate clients will also help your brand stand out from the crowd and ensure you are still recognised as the most favourable company amongst your competition. To keep your gift as professional and impressive as possible, you might also want to consider branded gifts and personalised gift hampers Sydney.
Remember that some businesses take time off over the New Year period, and individuals may be on holiday with their family, so you might want to send the gift prior or after the New Year celebration. For this exact reason, we also recommend gifting presents that won’t go out of date or expire quickly (in case your gift receiver doesn’t get the present until a couple of weeks down the track). We strongly recommend custom sugar cookies Sydney or non-perishable gift hampers Sydney for effective client appreciation gift in the New Year.
If you forgot to send a Christmas gift to somebody in your life, a New Year gift is the best way to make it up to them. As we’ve mentioned in previous blogs, it can be really difficult to remember all the people you need to gift over Christmas (especially if you have a large workplace or a massive family). Thankfully, if you accidentally forgot someone from your Christmas shopping list, there is an opportunity to fix the error. Just get a suitable New Year gift or gift hamper delivered to their door.
Additionally, not everybody celebrates Christmas, so a New Year gift may be more appropriate for people who have certain religious beliefs or don’t engage in Christmas festivities. This is particularly applicable in a corporate environment or workplace where you may not know the beliefs of your colleagues or employees. A New Year gift will ensure you aren’t offending anyone, but you are still showing deep appreciation and acknowledgement of their loyalty to your company. Why not present your workplace with custom cookies to celebrate the New Year?
Let’s not beat around the bush — 2020 was a difficult and tragic year for many Australians. It began with horrendous bushfires and then concluded with a pandemic. Everyone is hoping that the next twelve months will be better and less ‘eventful’ than the previous year or so. With many people feeling disadvantaged and in dismay due to the events that have taken place this year, there is one way you can attempt to cheer them up for the 2021 — with a gift hamper Sydney or personalised cookies!
To help your friends, family and acquaintances get into a positive mood for the New Year, surprise them with a thoughtful and motivating gift. It will allow them to feel loved and respected.
In a corporate setting, gifts are a great way to motivate and encourage your team to perform well. Coming back into the office after the Christmas holiday period can be challenging for many people — it’s hard to get back into work mode after having a fun and relaxing few weeks with family and friends. However, a New Year’s gift will help them feel welcomed back into the office and driven to be productive.
We recommend leaving the New Year’s gifts on your employees’ desks so they can be surprised with it on their first day back at work. A custom sugar cookie gift, paper pack or simple gift hamper will do the trick and get the positive vibes flowing throughout the office.
Are any of your friends about to have a baby or get married? You might be able to link your New Year’s gift into a baby shower bonbonniere or wedding hamper Sydney. If your friends have big celebrations or events coming up in the next twelve months, a small and thoughtful gift in the New Year will help them feel more relaxed and comforted that they have a friend to rely on. Just search online to find bombonieres for weddings, Christmas sugar cookies, baby shower cookies, and personalised cookies Sydney.
Hosting a New Year’s party can be a time-consuming and expensive project. That’s why it’s important that you show your appreciation to the party hosts by gifting them with gift hampers Sydney or personalised cookies. It’s a thoughtful and easy way to say thank you for their efforts.
If you are hosting a New Year’s party event for your friends or family, you might to hand out custom cookies or personalised cookies Sydney as bonbonnieres to your guests. It will keep their stomachs full and ensure they are impressed by your party hosting skills.
If you have had problematic relationships with your neighbours in the past, a friendly gift might help to ease tensions and ensure you can get along in the New Year. You don’t have to spend large sums of money — for example, an affordable custom cookie can achieve this goal. When wrapped and styled professionally, a simple cookie treat will make an enormous positive impact.
A New Year gift to neighbours can also get them on your side if you ever need their help. There are plenty of reasons why it’s beneficial to be on good terms with your neighbourhood. Essentially, it’s a pre-thanking gift for keeping an eye on your property while you’re away from home.
Gifting isn’t just fun for the person who receives the hamper or present. Researching, designing and buying New Year’s gifts can be fun for you too! Studies and research from around the globe actually suggest that gifting is more fun for the gifter than the giftee, because it allows them to feel as if they’ve done something meaningful and thoughtful for their friends and family. When ordering gift hampers Sydney, some companies will let you customise your hamper, which many people find enjoyable and exciting.
Some people have been financially setback by the global events of 2020, so a gift in the New Year could really make a difference to their lives. Think about all the people in your life and try to recall whether any of them have lost their job or endured difficulties over the past twelve months. If you are in a position where you can afford to gift these friends and family in need, then go ahead.
Food hampers and food gifts are a fantastic present idea, as they are useful and practical to everyone. Instead of sitting in a cupboard unused, they will actually help to reduce the food bill at the next grocery shop, or provide some treats to people who need the mood booster.
New Year gifting isn’t as common and popular as Christmas gifting or birthday gifting, however it is an effective and fun way to show your love and appreciation to people that matter in your life. If you are looking to purchase christmas sugar cookies or personalised cookies, contact The Sweet Box today or keep reading below to learn about our dessert offerings.
Where can you get New Year gifts in Sydney?
At The Sweet Box, we are proud to offer a wide range of dessert gifts and gift hampers Sydney. While our specialties include bombonieres for weddings, baby shower cookies, paper packs and hampers Sydney, we can also provide a range of New Year’s gifts. No matter if you need a sophisticated gift for a corporate setting, or a fun gift for friends and family, we have products to suit your needs.
New Year gifting doesn’t have to be expensive or elaborative. If you are on a tight budget or already had a large expenditure over the Christmas period, you can opt for smaller and more cost-effective New Year gifts. For people who are budget conscious, we highly recommend gifting friends and family with a New Year’s custom sugar cookie. Sugar cookies are a simple, cute and modern way to show appreciation or love towards people in your life, and they can be customised to suit the person you are gifting it too. You might like to have a personalised message printed onto the cookie fondant, or you can have “Happy New Year” written on top of the cookie. Custom sugar cookies are one of the cheapest New Year gifts, plus they are tasty and delicious — it’s no wonder they are such a popular gift idea. Some of the reasons why we recommend custom sugar cookie gifts include:
Sugar cookies are customisable
They can have any text printed onto the fondant
You can easily find and order custom sugar cookies Sydney
Cookies are cost-effective and won’t break the budget
Sugar cookies are tasty and loved by everyone
Bulk sugar cookies are easy to purchase
They are guaranteed to put a smile on the face of the gift receiver
Personalised sugar cookies are easy to distribute and can be sent in the mail
Alternatively, to really impress your gift receivers, you can select a more expensive and substantial New Year’s gift. In this case, we recommend gift hampers Sydney. Common products found in popular gift hampers include candles, desserts, cookies, body and bath items, and gift vouchers.
To browse our full range of dessert gifts and hamper products, browse our website today or contact our team on 1300 052 073. We can’t wait to start working with you and develop a personalised dessert creation that will make jaws drop at your new event or special occasion.
You may also like our most popular Christmas gifting ideas | https://medium.com/@thesweetboxau/10-reasons-to-send-new-year-gifts-sweet-box-5ab4492ea865 | [] | 2020-12-24 11:50:22.769000+00:00 | ['New Year Resolution', 'Gift Hampers Sydney', 'Personalised Cookies', 'New Year Gift Ideas', 'Custom Cookies'] |
How to Build a Mobile Fintech App? | Everything is getting digitalize because of the convenience and accessibility that we are getting out of it. From anywhere, in the home or on-the-go, we can access everything from shopping to education with just a simple click. Nowadays, getting a hold on your finances and cash flow is also important for business owners and professional accountants. According to statistics, here are some facts that should be considered for the popularity of Fintech apps.
65.3% of Americans will be using Digital Banking by 2022
66.7% of people around the globe will be using digital wallets and mobile banking apps by the end of 2020.
Fintech will take 33.3% of loan granting and applying process in the USA by 2022.
Another report stated that the adoption of finance apps has increased by 354% over the past five years.
More and more financial sectors and companies are endeavoring to improve the digital experience for the customers. Increased demand for such services is the reason why Fintech and Regtech domains are continually growing all around the world.
In this article, we will discuss in detail about the Fintech apps, their usage, features, and how to build a mobile Fintech app.
So, let’s begin:
Why we need payment solution apps?
There are many benefits and usage attached to an online payment solution app. Some of these advantages are listed below for your reference.
A mobile payment solution app can help a business achieve better cash flow management. With a Fintech app system integrated into a company, the stakeholders are aware of every transaction. They can take advantage of mobile apps to check-in and out of cash from the business account.
With the help of mobile payments, small businesses can reduce costs, such as bank charges, excessive staff to monitor transactions and other overheads, and a better evaluation of their cash flow position.
Being the most convenient way, mobile devices’ popularity has increased immensely. Everything is available online. To make the buying and selling process easy on mobile devices, these mobile payment solution apps are essential.
Companies are eager to develop a more improved version of online shopping apps to compete in a tight market. Better and easy-to-use payment solution apps will attract more customers.
The appetite for Fintech apps is steadily growing. Over the past decade, banking applications have ceased to be an exclusive domain of the young and the tech-savvy. They have earned their place in every generation’s financial management routine. In many respects, Fintech mobile apps have taken over many activities formerly performed only by tellers, and such apps will only keep gaining more traction.
Benefits of Fintech Applications for Businesses and Customers
A Fintech app is mutually beneficial for a business and its customers. Without getting it delayed, let’s have a look at some of these benefits.
Low Cost of Development and Maintenance
Fintech apps not only provide customer feasibility but also help reduce the cost of development and maintenance for companies. If a company develops a separate app for iOS and Android platforms, it will cost them twice as much as building a Fintech app using cross-platform options available such as Cordova, Xamarin or React Native. Since the first two solutions are not popular among developers and offers low experience for users, choosing React Native is a much better option. Also using React Native for mobile financial app development can lower the cost even up to 60 %.
Economic Benefits of Fintech Apps
Fintech apps provide considerable benefits to the economy. Businesses, especially small and medium-sized businesses, are very crucial to economic growth. These SMEs face the most difficulties in securing the financing they need to survive and prosper. With the Fintech app, not only are they saving development costs, but they would also save the cost of hiring people to manage cash flow and manage finances. With Fintech apps, data aggregators can synchronize financial data from various financial institutes to one single platform helping to reduce the compliance costs for businesses.
Improving Customer Experiences
With so much feasibility to conduct transactions through smart devices such as mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and other, Fintech apps are making the customer experience more productive and pleasurable.
Stimulating User Engagement
With Fintech apps comes Push Notification, which helps to stimulate user engagement by providing them info about transactions/costs on their account. They are also very useful when targeting specific users with some information or marketing data.
After having a brief introduction of the benefits we can reap from Fintech Apps, it’s time to understand what features make the best Fintech app.
What are the core features of a successful Fintech mobile app?
Like any other app, the popularity of the platform depends on the feature that it offers to the customer. Based on our research, here’s the list of top feature that makes the best Fintech mobile app.
Simple-to-Use and Understand
Fintech apps give power to customers so they can avail of advanced services to manage their financial operations. One of the most essential ingredients for the success of any Fintech app is its simplicity.
The idea of any Fintech mobile app is to provide simple analytical tools that compile financial data, display transaction histories, and create financial programs with a simple interface. Every Fintech app should have real-time analytics and statistics that track finances, helping users and their companies recover revenue.
The apps should also include ID analytics to minimize user risks. To make the app more attractive to clients, financial sectors now including features to make the processes of money borrowing and private debt deal investments much easier compared to the standard bank credit application.
Protection and Security of Sensitive Data
Fintech apps are designed to deal with the most sensitive data of customers involving financial transactions. Privacy and security of users’ data is the priority to address. Rapidly increasing cyber threats and attacks have made users less confident in Fintech apps. The company should not only meet regulation and compliance policies but also need to provide full cybersecurity to the users.
Typical security features include:
Lockout of the profile after the third failed login attempt. However, the limit should be 6 attempts if one’s has to be PCI compliant. The app should always ask to reenter the password while updating any information in the profile. Display only the last three digits of the Credit/Debit Cards. Integration of voice and face recognition. Integration of fingerprint authentication in addition to 2-Factor Authentication.
Blockchain and Cryptocurrency
Blockchain or Cryptocurrency has taken over the financial world after the popularity of BitCoin. Although the payment method has not yet become global because of a lot of prudential aspects attached to it. Blockchain, along with other functionalities, is also an anonymous payment method where data packets have been transferred without letting anyone know its origin. This payment option is yet not approved by many government authorities, yet some financial sectors have adopted it.
API Integration
Application Programming Interface is the basic foundation of building an online platform. It allows large applications by integrating multiple platforms without rebuilding each one of them again and again. A modern online form or SaaS may be combined with dozens of APIs from the same ecosystem without the end user even knowing it. It is the API that lets developers add functionality where a user can tap on geolocation to find a nearby ATM.
The importance of APIs in Fintech apps are already heavily used to provide partially automated due diligence, KYC/AML processes.
Support
Companies need to add 24/7 live chat or ticket support in Fintech apps. Someone likes the interaction with humans; others prefer chatbots. To manage time and cost, companies can combine them both. Build a reliable support service to provide a helping hand to everyone in need.
Give Power to the Customer via Personalization
Your every customer is different with different needs. But understanding the customer’s taste is what makes your product unique. The Fintech app should provide a personalized experience to its users. Fintech apps help companies and business to gather the data of customer taste and buying trends and later analyze it to create a personalized app for users. Fintech app integration with personal applications, including social media, establishes the strongest possible relationship with the user. As a result, financial operations are more enjoyable and bring people closer together.
Let’s look at the step-by-step process of creating a Fintech app.
How to build Fintech Mobile App — Step by Step Guide
Fintech app development is not a child’s play. It needs a lot of technical knowledge. So, you would need to hire a well-experienced team of developers who have exposure in the same field. Just to brief the procedure to you, here’re the steps involved in creating a Fintech app.
Step # 1: Do your research and make a plan for the look and features of the app. You need to define the scope of MVP and overall features. You also need to validate your idea based on availability.
Step # 2: You need to form a team of developers, either in-house or outsourced, to develop the app. The communication process between the developer and you should be crystal clear.
Step # 3: You need to choose your technology stack. What does it mean? Well, there are many languages to design applications. You can select between native technologies for Android [like Java and Kotlin], iOS [like Swift or Objective C]. As discussed earlier, both the apps will be developed separately, which will increase the development cost.
The second approach is to build PWA (Progressive Web App) — it might generate the native feel of an app but doesn’t allow us to use native mobile features like biometry.
The third and most recommended approach that will save 60% of your cost is to design the app using Cross-platform app development — it allows you to write only one codebase for both platforms (iOS and Android). Next, it is transpired to the platform-specific native language.
Step # 4: Design UI/UX of your app with vibrant colors and easy-to-use functionality. The app should not be crowded with unnecessary features. It should have everything available on the dashboard without having a hunt for options.
Step # 5: Test your app by launching a Beta phase to a selected number of loyal customers or within the organization to gather feedback. Later, once the app is bug-free, you can launch it in the market officially.
Step # 6: With the latest innovations and on-going changes in the IT sector, you will need to Improve and update your application time-to-time.
If you decide to go with an outsourced developer team, then Selleo is one option you should consider. Here’s how we create mobile payment solutions.
How we create Fintech applications?
At Selleo, we have a team of highly-experienced professionals for UI/UX design, Customer Software Development, DevOps & Cloud Consulting, APIs Development. We aim to assist our clients with customized and personalized technical specification development. While working with many clients over the years, we have gathered business insight, which helps us to provide custom Fintech applications with API integrations and developing web solutions for industries in which regulatory compliance is a key.
We create successful mobile payment apps in react-native because it offers several nice features like:
Code reusability
A large community of developers
It offers optimal performance
Reduce Development cost
Personalized and simple UI
Third-Party Plugin Support
What Common Issues Business Can Resolve via Selleo Fintech App
Our motive was to build an app that allows users to take a snap of transaction receipts and upload them through the mobile application. We aimed to develop an option through which a company can control their finance and communicate with the workforce (users) by notification displays. It can be a message from the company to the customer through firebase cloud messaging or vice versa.
The application allows changing its layout to be looking like the cooperating company wants to.
We also assist our users in integrating security features like biometry verification, uploading pictures right from the device, sending push notifications, and contacting integration that is unavailable on the browser.
Summing Up
Fintech applications have taken the financial world by storm. Becoming one of the greatest opportunities for many business and application developers. It is said that traditional organizations will collaborate with Fintech companies 80% more times in the next 3 to five years. Having an opportunity of creating the Mobile Payment Applications using react-native that reduced the cost of development attracted the financial institutions more toward Fintech Apps.
Moreover, with Fintech apps, customers have a much better experience and feasibility of conducting their financial transactions.
If you are considering developing your Fintech app, you should better consider all the points we covered in this article. You can also contact us for more help and hire an experienced developers team. | https://medium.com/selleo/how-to-build-a-mobile-fintech-app-2fd7def0a333 | ['Łukasz Kubok'] | 2020-07-22 13:27:17.217000+00:00 | ['Mobile App Development', 'Software Development', 'Fintech', 'PWA (Progressive Web App)', 'React Native'] |
Virat Kohli is still India’s Test captain | Virat Kohli is the Test captain of India for the upcoming South Africa series. Even though Virat was sacked as captain of the One Day International (ODI) team and voluntarily relinquished the role in Twenty20 Internationals (T20Is). The 33-year-old, however, has not been India’s best Test batsman for the past few years.
Read more: Lucknow Appoints Andy Flower as Head Coach
BATTINGTESTODIT20IFCMatches9725495129Innings16424587212Runs780112169322710050Balls1383013061234017733Highest254* v South Africa183 v Pakistan94* v West Indies254* v South AfricaAvg50.6559.0752.0451.53SR56.4093.17137.9056.67Not Out10392517Fours87211402901185Sixes23125913850s27622935100s2743034
After the announcement of Virat Kohli’s removal as ODI captain, he made some “revelations”. During a press conference on Wednesday, Kohli refuted Ganguly’s claim that Kohli was consulted before the captaincy decision was made by the board. He even denied that Ganguly had requested Kohli to continue as T20I captain.
Read more: Rashid Khan will Return to Sussex for County in 2022 T20 Blast
Ganguly later avoided questions on the matter and said, “I have got nothing to say. We will deal with it, leave it to the BCCI.”
Amid this controversy, Virat Kohli and his Test team departed for their South Africa tour in a chartered plane from Mumbai on Thursday morning.
Read more: Ben Manenti and Tom Curran Out of BBL 2021–22 | https://medium.com/@babacric/virat-kohli-is-still-indias-test-captain-635eafee7901 | ['Baba Cric'] | 2021-12-20 05:30:00.886000+00:00 | ['Cricket', 'Viratkohlicaptaincy'] |
No More Partridges in Pear Trees | No More Partridges in Pear Trees
Photo by McGill Library on Unsplash
As our family stood huddled in sweat pants before a karaoke program, which was playing synthesized Christmas songs over our home computer, it occurred to me that this was not the family Christmas caroling scene it once might have been. Before my thoughts launched into despair over the commercialism, glitz and high technology of Christmas in the new millennium, I took heart instead with another thought.
I was thinking of a tradition we started the year we were married. It involved the twelve days before Christmas and a grown-ups’ version of an advent calendar. Each day, starting on December 12th, my husband and I alternate opening windows, which are labelled one through twelve to discover a secret message bestowing the bearer a special gift. We flip a coin to see who gets to start first. At the end of the year we rearrange the order and occasionally replace an idea to keep the surprises fresh and appropriate.
It’s true, we get no milking maids, no turtle doves and no partridge in a pear tree, but we think we have improved upon the theme of yore. You be the judge.
Borrowing the tune from The Twelve Days of Christmas, I have summarized our yearly tradition below. Keeping our fast-paced culture in mind, so as not to bore anyone, I’ve foregone the first eleven verses and cut to the Twelfth Day. I think you’ll get the picture:
On the Twelfth Day of Christmas my true love gave to me:
An early Christmas present
A half hour of pleasure
A gift card to Amazon
A takeout of sushi
An online dancing class
A bouquet of flowers
Three hours of housecleaning
SLAVE FOR A DAY
Champagne and chocolate
Head to toe massage
Gourmet dinner
And breakfast and coffee in bed
We have not lost the meaning of Christmas. We have only packaged it differently to suit the times.
And best of all fellow writers, the process of observing this disturbing trend ended up stimulating a new and endearing holiday writing tradition. Now, each year when we give gifts, we have to re-write a Christmas song with new words and give that along with the present. It adds great fun to gift giving and keeps my pen moving, even during the business holiday season. | https://medium.com/afwp/no-more-partridges-in-pear-trees-44cfcd4d1ad4 | ['Marijke Mccandless'] | 2020-12-22 15:02:38.355000+00:00 | ['Singing', 'Christmas', 'Advent', 'Tradition', 'Love'] |
Блокчейн конференция — Decenter Cryptoevent Moscow 2018 | The Bitbon System is a large-scale infrastructure project, which represents a decentralized platform for Contributing. https://www.bitbon.space/en/home
Follow | https://medium.com/bitbon/%D0%B1%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%BA%D1%87%D0%B5%D0%B9%D0%BD-%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BD%D1%84%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%86%D0%B8%D1%8F-decenter-cryptoevent-moscow-2018-86c5b2439649 | ['Bitbon System'] | 2018-06-18 07:42:27.751000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Fintech', 'Bitbon', 'Conference', 'Blockchain Technology'] |
Consistently blown away by how good these wines are. | Consistently blown away by how good these wines are. Don’t mean to sound surprised, but face it: there’s always an asterisk dangling on wines from some regions. When you see Lodi, there’s an asterisk. When you see Temecula or Sierra Foothills, there’s an asterisk in the back of your mind from the wine’s you’ve tasted from there. For some people, Paso Robles or Oregon or even Napa get an asterisk, maybe even the entire state of California. But these wines are so solid, so pure and clean–I don’t want to say ‘mainstream’, as homogenousness is something we should all be working against. But we have all tasted enough Sierra Foothills wines to know there can be a *profile*: extra baggage the region sometimes carries which can, on one hand, make them unmistakable, but frequently they are in heavy doses, making the products stand out heavily from the typicity of the variety grown in more established regions.
This thing right here? It would be fun to taste this in a line-up of usual suspects from Santa Barbara–anywhere on the Central Coast–or Sonoma or North Coasts. There’s none of those things which often come raging out of Foothills wines: burnt, pruny nuances, overt alcohol or fleshiness. Bright and rich in the nose, the light garnet pumps spiciness and volcanic soil hard into your nostrils. Clean pitchy leather, a bit of blackstrap, gorgeous stewed-cherry fruit calm and even-keeled. Thick and sweet-smelling, it’s got a lot of flesh to cover, and I don’t think the alcohol is particularly low: I’m gonna guess 14-7.
Tasting it confirms everything in the bouquet. Concentrated FAR beyond the density in the glass, brightly acid-edged berry–dark and ridiculously extracted–coats all surfaces, causing teeth-wiping reflexes from your tongue. It is a BIG Grenache, with fiery tannins going head-to-head with the buttery depth of the cherry, blackberry, plum and blood orange. The black heart of the structure creases the middle, forming a small crevice all paths flood to, and–despite the almost sinful young age–provides a clean exit for all contributing parties.
An astounding version of the variety–one I would highly recommend to all fans of this chameleon grape.
2018 LAVA CAP Grenache Sierra Foothills California 14.7
http://www.lavacap.com/ | https://medium.com/@zvoiture/consistently-blown-away-by-how-good-these-wines-are-946ef1b80cd5 | ['Stephen Mcconnell'] | 2020-12-19 02:38:17.739000+00:00 | ['Sierra Nevada', 'Food And Drink', 'California', 'Wine', 'Wine Review'] |
How to Recognize Misinformation and Stop Its Spread | How to Recognize Misinformation and Stop Its Spread
A Call for Writers to Change the World
Photo by Nijwam Swargiary on Unsplash
The Information Age is decaying.
With our current trajectory, we are transitioning into an Age of Misinformation.
People are exploiting and extrapolating fake news and “alternative facts” to manipulate others for their own personal gain. We don’t have to go very far back in our history to see the truth of this. Take a look at Pizzagate, climate change, or COVID-19 to see a variety of false claims, some absurd, yet still hold danger if believed (injecting bleach anyone?)
Recently, I came across The Misinformation Age by Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall. Published in January 2019, O’Connor and Weatherall do an excellent job at raising awareness of the prevalence of misinformation due to the easy access we have to new information. We are in a community that no longer values respecting facts. Instead, we strive to create our own reality by providing truth that best suits our needs.
In New York Times’s review of The Misinformation Age, they warn that “Such pretensions to reality-creating grandeur amounts to little more than a vulgar, self-defeating cynicism.”
As writers, it can be tempting to create our own reality by bending facts to fit our needs. You see how well fake news circulates on social media (research states roughly 63% of BuzzFeed’s articles are clickbait and social media is the epicenter for misinformation). Anyone can post anything without being held accountable for fact-checking, and misinformation typically gets farther than fact. Researchers at Indiana University found that misinformation often goes viral because “information overload and finite attention span of users limit the capacity of social media to discriminate information on the basis of quality.”
I’m going to assume that you are not writing just to make a quick buck. Trust me, there are much easier ways to do that. If you are serious about becoming a professional writer, you need to be able to measure the validity of your sources and provide the most accurate information possible to your readers.
Writers can have a very valuable position in the lives of their readers because they are willing to do the research for them. Essentially, you are sifting through all of the garbage out there to find facts and present them to your readers in a format that is easy to understand.
This can be hard to do because of the vast amounts of information you have to sort through in order to discern what is true. I have found that I typically spend more time researching for an article than I do actually writing it. If you want to be taken seriously as a writer, you need to establish your credibility. Here is a quick list of what I do to ensure that my information is credible, and by extension, my own writing remains credible.
Always Use Multiple Sources
Because of the prevalence of misinformation, it is important that you ensure that multiple people are saying the same thing. In any given article, I typically will try to find five sources that I could potentially pull from before I start writing. These sources typically come in the form of accredited news companies, books, or peer-reviewed research.
In most cases, this doesn’t take me long. One way to find multiple sources quickly is to look at what your other sources site as their sources. If the first source is credible, it will lead you to other credible sources. I have often found the article or research that I site the most from following someone else to that source.
Truthfully, I usually don’t end up using all of the sources that I find in the final product of my writing. That’s okay. The purpose of doing extensive research is not to directly quote it all in your writing. It is so you can ensure that you are becoming a credible source.
Look at the Website Itself
You can usually tell the credibility of a website without digging too deeply. Look at the author and any other information displayed about an article. If you can’t find a ton there or aren’t sure, I’ve found it helpful to go to the home page of the website it’s published on. Now that I’ve been around the block a few times, there are websites that I know I can rely on.
Another thing I like to look at is the author. I have a list of writers that I trust as people that do their homework. If they have written on similar topics in the past, I’ll often follow their sources at the start of my research.
On the flip side, there are sources that I have completely blacklisted. I never use articles I find on social media or clickbait websites. I wouldn’t say that you should completely dismiss them, but the news there is much more questionable, and I don’t always give myself time to sift through it.
Try to Find Contradicting Websites
If you still aren’t sure if the information is true or not, try to find an article written from an opposing point of view. For example, if I’m looking at a political topic, I will try to find sources from both a Democratic and a Republican standpoint.
The truth is, humans suck at being unbiased. We can’t keep our opinions out of what we write. Even your history books are jaded by opinions. If you are worried that someone’s opinion is keeping them from sharing the full story with you, don’t be afraid to look for someone with the opposite point of view.
When in Doubt, Don’t Use It
In the end, don’t use a source if you are still questioning its value. I wouldn’t recommend forming your opinion around it, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend using it in your writing. There are plenty of credible sources that deserve to be distributed, and these are the facts that we should be seeking out. | https://medium.com/bulletproof-writers/how-to-recognize-misinformation-and-stop-its-spread-a11305d15f20 | ['Logan Beddes'] | 2020-11-30 18:58:06.661000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Blogging', 'News', 'Writer', 'Misinformation'] |
Bitcoin Puzzle #1: Building Blocks | The main goal of the talk was to show, which building blocks are used in top cryptocurrency and how they interact with each other in its implementation. This talk and series’ intended audience is developers of all levels, since we are development company.
The goal for this story is to build a basis for the “Bitcoin Puzzle” series, that will provide deeper technical and economical dive into the new world of cryptocurrencies and ways they can change our lives.
But for now, let’s start building Bitcoin!
Hash Functions
One of the very basic block to build Bitcoin is a “hash function”.
Image from Wikipedia. Note, that same input always produces same hash, while some different inputs might have same hashes.
The main purpose of hash function (according to Wikipedia) is to map an arbitrary size data to a fixed size value. This mapping should follow simple rules:
Determinism: Same input must produce same output.
Same input produce same output. Uniformity: Different inputs should produce different output, that are uniformly spread across function’s range. Since hash function’s range is usually fixed and small, it is impossible to strictly follow this rule, so collisions, when hash(a) = hash(b), are always possible.
Different inputs produce different output, that are uniformly spread across function’s range. Since hash function’s range is usually fixed and small, it is impossible to strictly follow this rule, so when hash(a) = hash(b), are always possible. Avalanche effect: Even minor change in input should lead to significant change of output — this rule is not always true, however, hash functions used in Bitcoin follow it.
If you’re interested in counter-example: in “perceptual hash” functions similar inputs produce similar outputs. This property is called “continuity”.
Even minor change in input lead to significant change of output — this rule is not always true, however, hash functions used in Bitcoin follow it. If you’re interested in counter-example: in “perceptual hash” functions similar inputs produce similar outputs. This property is called “continuity”. It should be really-really hard to find a collision. Depending on what data is used to search for collision, such property is called:
- “Pre-image resistance” — if you know the hash value, it is impossible to calculate message, such that hash(message) = value.
- “Second pre-image resistance” — if you know message, it is impossible to calculate another message, such that hash(message) = hash(another_message).
- “Collision resistance” — it is impossible to find two messages with same hash.
The combination of all these four properties allows us to be quite certain, that nobody can change our data, without also changing its hash. In such case, the hash function is called “cryptographic hash function” and its value is called “digest”.
Homework question: when receiving data (message and its digest), is correct to claim that data is not changed by a third party, if cryptographic_hash(data.message) equals data.digest? Check your answer here.
Asymmetric Cryptography
Nowadays, everyone has heard of public/private keys and algorithms like RSA (named after surnames of authors Rivest, Shamir, Adleman) or ECC (Elliptic Curve Cryptography). Those are also used in Bitcoin and we will now describe ideas of asymmetric encryption and way it is implemented.
The key idea under asymmetric encryption is, that one key is used to encrypt message and only its’ sibling key from the pair can be used to decrypt. Usually, you keep one of keys safe — that’s private key. The other one is shared — public key. In case someone wants to securely send you a message, your public key is used to encrypt the message, and only you can decrypt it. Cool, right?
Here is a complex image that does not really help to understand details of RSA, but I will explain:
In the image above, it is assumed that “HELLO” is translated in our computer as number “2”. The public key is a pair of numbers (5, 14) and the encrypt function is (X⁵ mod 14). The private key is (11, 14). Now, after encryption, source message becomes “4” and, after decryption, it is back “2”. You can check this with any other number (less than 14), e.g. (11⁵ mod 14) = 9 and (9¹¹ mod 14) = 11, decrypted back. Note: in real life the all the numbers (5, 11, 14) are calculated using a pair of enormously large primes and are even bigger, than those primes.
Most of asymmetric encryption algorithms are based on trapdoor functions. These are functions, which are:
Easy to calculate forward , e.g. 2⁵ mod 14 = 4.
, e.g. 2⁵ mod 14 = 4. Hard to calculate back , e.g. hard to find X, such that X⁵ mod 14 = 4.
, e.g. hard to find X, such that X⁵ mod 14 = 4. Easy to calculate back, if you know some additional info, called “trapdoor” and equal to 11 in our case. So, to find X, such that X⁵ mod 14 = 4 we use formula X = 4¹¹ mod 14 = 2.
Elliptic Curve Cryptography
The key difference between RSA and ECC is the trapdoor function used, in RSA it is (x^a mod b), while ECC is more complex. Here is one more image:
The function (red) is an elliptic curve: y^2 = x^3 + ax + b.
The black dot, moving around the curve is our “trapdoor function value”, that is calculated forward. Each function step is drawing a line from point “A” and projecting new point of curve intersection to another half of the curve (up or down). It turns out, that given many steps, it is very hard to find the starting point, so this function is hard to calculate back. But, there is also a trapdoor possible, which allows to find the starting point easily (trapdoor explanation is too heavy to explain here).
How private and public keys are used
Using someone’s public key, you can securely message someone. But, since it all is based on functions, you could also use private key to encrypt something.
Homework question: what is the point of sending private-key-encrypted message to someone, given that anyone could intercept and decipher it, using your public key? See answer just below!
When private key is used to encrypt something, it is quite obvious, that anyone can decrypt it. But this situation gives one good benefit: it is you and only you, who could encrypt the message in such way, that your public key decrypts it. It means, that if you share your message along with its encrypted version, then anyone can check the authenticity of the message, by comparing deciphered message value to publicly shared one. This is how digital signatures work. And, by the way, in real-world only hash of message is encrypted. | https://medium.com/pseudo-blog/bitcoin-puzzle-1-building-blocks-92b8fbbb583a | ['Rustem Mustafin'] | 2018-05-29 16:55:38.383000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Blockchain Technology', 'Assymmetric Encryption', 'Hash Function', 'Bitcoin'] |
A Tough Negotiation | Prompts = Collector, Lawyer, Tough
Photo by Senjuti Kundu on Unsplash
‘Tough! No deal!’
Harry Windless, lawyer for a reclusive art collector, grimaced. He’d done deals with obstinate painters, egotistic sculptors, even criminally insane dioramaists. But this negotiation with a precocious four year old prodigy was taking the cake.
‘Mrs. Mundy, can I appeal to your better judgement?’
‘It’s her decision. And part of home schooling. You need to work with her.’
He didn’t know what else to offer. She didn’t want money, tickets to Disney (any of them), a pony, candy… He was lost.
‘You haven’t used the magic word!’
‘Umm… please?’
The girl smiled. ‘Now we can start talking.’
Links to other sites where I publish:
Instagram = https://www.instagram.com/one_hundred_words_by_parz
Facebook = https://www.facebook.com/Parzival-Sattva-427507144484255
Blogger = https://onehundredwordsbyparz.blogspot.com
Medium = https://medium.com/100-word-or-less-stories
YouTube = https://www.youtube.com/user/parzivalsattva
And a link to where my Lovely Lady Love (who also operates the camera) posts her art: https://www.youtube.com/user/recyclinggoddess
Join in on the fun of making a story from the same prompts I do! https://www.facebook.com/groups/565109053911712 | https://medium.com/100-word-or-less-stories/a-tough-negotiation-7a145c40011f | ['Parzival Sattva'] | 2020-12-05 08:45:27.800000+00:00 | ['Flash Fiction', 'Microfiction', 'Artist', '100wordstory', 'Negotiation'] |
How Intense Academic Pressure Is Harming Your Child | Image by Наталия Когут from Pixabay
The beginning of the school year brings upon a mixture of feelings. On one hand, I’m ready for school to be back in session. I love keeping to a schedule, watching the kids’ grow physically, emotionally, and academically over the course of nine months. Most of all, I love having a break in the day to get my stuff done.
Then there is the flip side, the carefree aspect of summer dwindles as classroom assignments start pouring in, the competition of life kicks back into gear and the high of laying poolside and relaxing falls by the wayside.
I wish I could bottle up summer so when negativity comes out and the pressure builds, I take my elixir and sprinkle it upon another parent’s head saying “remember that good feeling”.
Release The Pressure
Why are some parents so concerned with the teachers their children get? The moment our kids got their classroom assignments, the chill atmosphere of summer all but disappeared. From a kid’s point of view, they want to make sure they have friends in their class. Sometimes they want a certain teacher, but it’s not necessarily the highest priority. They want someone to chat, hang out with and be their buddy for the next nine months.
This is the opposite of what I see in the mindset of some parents. Yes, it’s been ingrained that our children do well in school and succeed but what about their happiness. Some parents I talked with all so worried their child wasn’t placed with a teacher who was up to their standards. Instead of trusting the district, they decided to take matters into their own hands confronting unassuming parents and staff about their child. Could it be there was a reason their child was placed with a certain teacher? Who knows?
While I did want my kids to receive certain teachers this year based on their academic standards, I let my opinion slide. I let them guide the conversation instead of voicing my thoughts on the subject. My goal was to help them find friends in their class so they would be excited about their first day of school.
Kindergarten Is Still About Play
The pressures of school start way too young. Why did it become a thing to prepare your child academically for kindergarten?
I’ve recently talked with parents who are concerned their child isn’t reading yet, before the school year has even started. You would think by now my youngest would be reading War and Peace because I’ve done this three times already. On the contrary, he’s still trying to figure out what some letters are.
And guess what, I’m not concerned. A ton of growth happens in the first couple years of school. I don’t feel the pressure to teach him at home because initially he will learn it best from someone who has the skills to do so. I’m perfectly happy reading with him and working on letters once it’s learn at school.
My oldest has even taught him how to do simple addition problems and really it’s fun for her to play teacher. As a bonus, he learns a little bit of math. But it’s not because I force him to sit down and do flash cards every day.
As far as preparing him for Kindergarten, socially and academically he’s ready to go. I’m not sending him off to high school today with a bank full of knowledge. I’m sending him to the place that will give him a good introduction to school, let him play while learning and progressively teach him along the way.
None of my kids knew how to read before Kindergarten started, but all now read well above their grade level. So am I concerned for what my 5 year old knows before his first day of school? No, but it reminds me that this pressure to do well in school is a constant uphill battle.
Learning At Their Own Pace
This year my middle schooler’s biggest concern was many of her friends were placed on a different team. Meaning she has to step out of her comfort zone and make new friends. She doesn’t care about the level of learning per se, she wants to have comfort in knowing people in her class. With that, her friends are in a higher level class, and the reality is she wants to be with them.
My past experience shows that I get where she is coming from. Many of my friends in high school were enrolled in AP classes. That level was not where I excelled at, but I wanted to be there so I could hang out with them. There were times, I signed up for classes way above my comprehension level in order to seem smarter. In the end, I didn’t do so hot in those classes. Luckily some teachers recognized I was struggling and moved me to a more appropriate class. Others didn’t, making it frustrating and resulting in me not wanting learn the subject.
I felt the pressure to be placed in higher level classes because my friends were and thought it would be best for my own academic goals. I only felt this pressure because my friends all spoke in this manner. Hmm, wonder where they got that from?
At my home, there wasn’t a ton of pressure to push myself beyond my limits in order to get into a “better” college. My mom didn’t show remorse for my class schedule, teacher assignments or grades for that matter. She didn’t stick her nose in my school business, therefore allowing me to work through problems and learning my own lessons.
I try really hard to let my kids do the same because I am not the one taking the tests, turning in homework or learning the material. I’ll be there as support but when it comes down to it, this is their chance to figure it all out in a safe environment. | https://medium.com/the-instinct/how-intense-academic-pressure-is-harming-your-child-960d00b2973b | ['Abbey Fatica'] | 2019-08-16 18:58:30.087000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'Life Lessons', 'Education', 'Parenting', 'Wellness'] |
LIVING IN A BI-POLAR MATRIX (PART VII) | So how could it be one can relate to someone they do not know via just a television show or random connection developed from a coffee at Starbucks? It is hard to believe that the relatability of something or a person unfamiliar can be easier than folks just one phone call or five minutes living under the same roof. The characters of people that I do not know is easier, as twisted as it seems, than the genuine investment through close relationships. How can it be that friends could be the result of choices an individual makes versus family that is in somehow selected from a higher source of intelligence and energy.
Many people have argued that such an understanding is a mistake and whatever source is allowing for what could seem as an inconvenience to be the right context to live within. Therefore, as we look at the choices to be made or perceived less ideal state of affairs, one can see how the battle of a more in depth scrutiny. Not always know the why means life must happen to figure out the reasons as to the explanation. Sometimes the mystery of the present and the future can only be enjoyed unless we go through them in real time.
Click below link to receive complimentary printable from initial purchase of CCEL Art & Design Store by sending contact name, email address, and contact number to [email protected] | https://medium.com/@mjabizgrowth/living-in-a-bi-polar-matrix-part-vii-8ff4ea4221d1 | ['Marcus Austin'] | 2020-03-11 23:12:35.381000+00:00 | ['Death And Dying', 'Mindfulness', 'Mind', 'Death', 'Mindset'] |
Photography Tips For Beginners | Photography Tips For Beginners
So, you’ve finally decided to do it. You’ve either shelled out the money for a fancy new camera, or you’ve simply picked up your iPhone and thought, “Today is the day I’m going to start my photography journey.” Well congrats! Taking that first step to become a photographer takes a lot of motivation. We know that right now you are probably feeling a little lost and confused about where to start, but don’t worry, we’re here to help! Here are our top 7 photography tips for beginners:
Get to know your camera.
Whether you’re experimenting with portrait mode on your phone or playing around with the shutter speed on your Canon, it is important that you learn how these features affect the final shot. This means you need to set aside lots of time to practice. First, start out by experimenting with one feature at a time, then as you learn how to utilize the various features your camera has to offer, start testing out various combinations. Try incorporating a 100mm zoom with a 1/100 of a second shutter speed, or try taking photos at different times of the day while playing around with your camera settings. Remember, there are no wrong answers when it comes to photography, whether or not you’re pleased with your shots is what matters the most.
Take your camera everywhere.
Don’t ever miss the perfect photo-op. We suggest taking your camera everywhere you go, so you are always ready to get the perfect shot. If your camera is cumbersome, try using a camera strap! Although they make look and feel weird at first, you’ll be glad you invested in one. Camera straps allow you to quickly grab your camera, rather than awkwardly fumbling through your bag, so you’ll never miss the perfect photo opportunity. Not sure where to get one? Check out this camera strap from Amazon.
Shoot everyday.
Think about photography the same way you think about brushing your teeth. In order to maintain proper oral hygiene you must brush your teeth everyday, multiple times a day. The same goes for photography. If you want to improve your photography skills, you must practice consistently. Maybe you’re going for a walk and you notice a unique wall covered in graffiti; snap a pic of it! Try to look for cool visuals that strike your fancy each day, and photograph them so you can improve through repetition.
Here’s another pro tip: print out a few photos each month, so you can look back and evaluate your progress. Doing this will help you physically see how you have improved as a photographer, and will keep you motivated.
Experiment with manual modes.
Don’t let your camera do all the work for you. Instead, move to manual mode and take control. This is one of the biggest steps you will take as a photographer. Switching the power from the camera to the photographer will feel daunting at first, but with practice you’ll be glad you took the leap. Your eye is better than the camera’s (we promise), so overtime you will learn how to manually adjust your camera settings to take the perfect photo!
Save some money.
Photography is an expensive hobby, so we recommend saving money whenever you can. If you’re looking to buy a new high-quality camera, try purchasing a used one instead. Doing this may save you hundreds of dollars, and you will still have access to a professional grade camera. A few places to find excellent used cameras include: Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, and LetGo.
Along with this, try acquiring your additional equipment slowly and carefully. Avoid buying into a particular system of equipment to reduce the risk of future switching costs and compatibility issues. Also, remember there is no particular piece of equipment that will make your photography perfect. Improving your photography is all about practice, patience, and research.
Ask for help.
If you’re just starting out, you will not know everything there is to know about photography. Even if you conduct countless hours of research and practice everyday, there is always room to grow. This is when asking for advice comes into play. Similarly to when you want someone to proofread an essay before submitting it, you want someone else to take a look at your shots and provide feedback on how you can improve your work. The best people to seek out are other photographers, because they have been through the same learning process as you. Consider joining photography groups on Facebook like this one, and ask other members to provide constructive criticism on your photos. Members are always happy to provide detailed advice and praise, and don’t forget to do the same for them!
Share your work.
Remember that shot you took yesterday…WOW, now that was a great snap! Sometimes, however, sharing a photo you are proud of can feel a little nerve racking. As you consider posting it on Instagram or Photos of Us, you may start to over-analyze your work. You think, “Maybe I should’ve used a different lense,” or “The lighting might be a little too bright in this shot.” The best advice we can give you is to go for it and own the shots you love. Not everyone is going to be your biggest fan, but that’s okay! Being proud of your own work is what is the most important to your individual success.
We hope that you find these tips to be useful! Let us know if you put any of them into practice, or tweet any additional tips you have to @Photos_Of_Us! Happy snapping! | https://medium.com/@photosofus/photography-tips-for-beginners-285293ae3dda | ['Photos Of Us'] | 2018-11-14 21:16:14.207000+00:00 | ['Photography', 'Photos', 'Photographer', 'Photography Tips', 'Wedding Photographer'] |
Stablecoins Explained | What are stablecoins (fiat-collateralized like USDT, crypto-collateralized, and non-collateralized ones), and problems they are named to solve: basic guide and examples
In recent years digital currencies, and blockchain technologies in a broader sense, have garnered much attention and sparked wide interest. Despite this, the cryptocurrency market remains highly volatile. Even technical analysts with years of experience often cannot give confident predictions. Take a look at today’s chart: in the last 48 hours bitcoin dropped from $7,380 down to $6,360 after a steady week-long climb, not to mention altcoins, which suffered a much painful fall percentage-wise.
Reason for existence
If cryptocurrencies are ever going mainstream, they must find a solution to this problem. In an effort to address this problem, people came up with stablecoins. A price-stable cryptocurrency is a digital currency that is pegged to an asset. Each token of such cryptocurrency is usually backed by a reserve.
There are three types of stablecoins:
fiat-collateralized,
crypto-collateralized,
and non-collateralized.
Fiat-collateralized
Fiat-collateralized stablecoins have reserves in fiat currencies, or commodities. For example, Each USDT token corresponds to $1, each DGX — to 1 gram of gold, each petro — to a barrel of Venezuelan crude oil. So whenever you buy, say, a USDT token, your dollar gets deposited to the USDT reserve, and you can redeem your dollar at any time by selling your USDT.
These stablecoins are usually issued and managed by a central organization, which is obviously a big deal breaker for many. Another drawback of fiat-pegged stablecoins is that they are not very scalable in that one would need a lot of money as collateral for tokens that can be minted practically out of thin air.
Crypto-collateralized
A crypto-collateralized stablecoin is backed by a reserve in one or more cryptocurrencies. At first one may think that this does not make any sense but it does. These stablecoins are overcollateralized so as to remedy any possible price fluctuations of the underlying asset. And those who buy these stablecoins are normally incentivized through interest payments.
Reserves of these stablecoins are usually controlled by decentralized organizations, or DAOs. For example, Dai, pegged to USD but collateralized in ETH, is issued by MakerDAO. Havven uses a more sophisticated dual-token system where Havven tokens, accumulated through fees, act as collateral for USD-pegged nUSD.
Though many complex mechanisms are implemented to ensure stability of these stablecoins, crypto-collateralized cryptocurrencies are still a risky investment.
Non-collateralized
Non-collateralized stablecoins, as you would suspect, do not have any collateral in reserve. Instead, they mirror fiat currencies using a complex mechanism called seigniorage shares. Without going into technicalities, we can explain the mechanism as a smart contract that maintains the stable value of the coin by decreasing or increasing the supply. It works according to the fundamental economic law of supply and demand.
If the coin is more expensive than the underlying asset, the contract simply mints new coins. If, however, the coin trades at a lower price that the asset it is pegged to, the smart contract buys out a portion of coins, using accumulated excess profits. This decreases the total amount of coins in circulation, which in turn increases the coin’s value.
However, these contracts often do not have sufficient funds to buy enough coins to even the prices out, which is a major drawback of non-collateralized stablecoins. Projects like Basis and Saga are ambitious and yet they have a lot to work on. | https://medium.com/finrazorcom/stablecoins-explained-32ea7a63a81c | ['Finrazor Team'] | 2018-10-03 08:30:51.578000+00:00 | ['Stablecoin', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin', 'Fintech', 'Blockchain'] |
The Best Digital Marketing Agencies in Dubai | UBL International-UBL Digital World is the best digital marketing companies in Dubai . UBL’s Digital Marketing team is spread across Dubai and produces the best business ideas. They carry out the entire digital marketing strategy, from planning to final implementation. The SEO specialists will maximize your online potential, resulting in more consumers. They provide Digital Marketing and Web-related services to companies all around the world. As a leading SEO Service provider in Dubai, they deliver high-quality Digital Marketing and SEO services as well as prompt replies with no hidden fees. Relax while the SEO Experts work for you to increase your profits. McCollins Media- McCollins Media is a Dubai-based digital activation firm that has been providing high-quality digital marketing services since 2010. They employ a combination of strategy, consumer intelligence, and cutting-edge technology to solve customers’ challenges and help them achieve their goals. They design compelling online and mobile apps and generate leads through SEO and SEM methods. They also use tried-and-true social media marketing tactics to boost their clients’ social media presence, which is critical for thriving in a competitive industry.
3. Digital Marketing Sapiens-Sapiens Digital Marketing in Dubai provides a comprehensive and cutting-edge variety of digital marketing services. This digital marketing business assists its clients with online reputation management in addition to the normal site and app design and development, SEO, and SMS and email marketing. Their online reputation management services assist you in projecting a favorable image for your business across several platforms, putting you ahead of your competition. | https://medium.com/@bibuthomasz99/the-best-digital-marketing-agencies-in-dubai-759756dcdd79 | [] | 2021-12-29 08:58:38.181000+00:00 | ['Digital Marketing Company', 'SEO', 'Digital Marketing', 'Seo Serivice', 'Digital Marketing Agency'] |
What I learned From Being an Abortion Designated Driver | Do: Understand that this is not about you.
For the sake of this article, let’s just assume you’re a pro-choice progressive with no moral or ethical qualms about abortion. So you’re in the driver’s seat, a willing participate ready to safely chariot your passenger to the nearest women’s clinic.
That’s your job. And that may be ALL it is.
Here’s the thing: today isn’t about you. You may be in the driver’s seat but you’re not the one who should be controlling the day.
If she wants to talk, let her talk. If she wants to drive in silence, shut the f*ck up. If she asks for advice, give it to her. If she asks for the weather report, give it to her. If she asks for a Hershey’s Kiss, reach gesture to the glove compartment that you have preemptively stocked with candy, tissues, and extra large sanitary pads (more on that later).
This may be harder than you realize. Because hey, you’re in this now too and you have a LOT of feelings. Believe me, I know — I’m EGREGIOUSLY self-involved.
But hijacking the day isn’t the right move, lady. However you’re feeling, I guarantee she’s feeling hella worse. However tough you think the next few hours will be, they’re gonna be monumentally harder for her.
So for the moment, be a partner. Be an ally. Be sure to use your turn signals.
Don’t: Stay in the car
Unless she explicitly tells you to. And even then, make sure she’s sure. Then confirm again.
But in all other cases, this isn’t a curbside drop off. She isn’t getting an eye exam or a root canal. She is about to have an invasive, challenging procedure and she shouldn't have to go through it alone. So park the damn car and get your ass out of the car.
There will be paperwork to fill out. There will be downtime. Be good company. But remember the golden rule: this isn’t about you. I don’t care how self-conscious you are about your new haircut. Yes, I know you were over-ambitious and cut too much off. Now’s not the time to bring it up.
Don’t: Ask the Nurse Practitioner for Xanax
She won’t give you one. Plus, you’re the one who has to drive home, dummy.
Do: Hold her hand
Don’t let go. No matter how hard she squeezes. You may not have gotten that Xanax but it’s still nothing compared to the discomfort she’s in.
You may have to be brave for both of you right now, but you got this.
Do: Take care of your friend for the rest of the day
Remember those XL pads in your glove compartment? Time to put them to use. Aren’t you glad you bought them beforehand?
Because there’s nothing worse than having your headstrong friend insist on getting them herself on the way back from the clinic. Take it from me, following a pained young woman around CVS, reminding her she just had a SURGICAL PROCEDURE and would she PLEASE JUST WAIT IN THE CAR and let me get them, is not a cute look.
Cancel your plans for the rest of the day. Even if she wants to be alone, be available.
She may change her mind. You may end up ordering Chinese food that you both eat in her bed while watching a silly rom-com about phone sex operators. And at one point she may softy kick at your head and give you a thankful smile for being there and making the day a little easier.
It’s the least you can do. It’s the easiest thing. And it may make all the difference.
Don’t: Forget to take care of yourself
You know how I said this isn’t about you? Well, up until now that’s been true. By now your friend cozied up in her bed with an extra blanket, bottle of ibuprofen, and extra pads at arm’s reach. Go you.
But here’s the other thing. Whether you realize it or not, you went through something today. How you internalize that may surprise you. And I think the worst thing you could do is try to bury or ignore those feelings.
Maybe you pride yourself in being a strong, resilient woman but find yourself crying as you drive home from her apartment. And you’re not sure why.
Maybe it’s because out of everyone, she called you. Not her best friend, not the man involved, not her sister — but you. And you feel sad that in such a vulnerable moment she didn't feel like she could confide in the people closest to her and you really hope you were enough.
Maybe it’s because you know how easily the roles could have been reversed and you wonder who you would call. Maybe it’s because you feel so unbelievably grateful to live in a state where you would have options and access, and you’ve been blissfully ignorant of your privilege.
But instead of playing out every possible scenario about why you feel the way you do, wouldn't it be better to stop trying to muscle through it and just FEEL it?
Do something nice for yourself tonight, ok? Ice cream. Wine. Whatever you want. Be around people. Or be alone. Whatever you want.
You may not realize it, but you were brave today. You may not realize it but you did a good thing today. | https://medium.com/the-virago/what-i-learned-from-being-an-abortion-designated-driver-a4b514acfece | ['Elisabeth Tsubota'] | 2020-12-22 18:49:25.171000+00:00 | ['Friendship', 'Reproductive Rights', 'Women', 'Abortion', 'Lessons Learned'] |
Navigator Spotlight: Burgeon Plant Co. | Co-Owner Hector Rivera presents a cactus
Burgeon Plant Co. owners Jasmine Garza and Hector Rivera inherited a deep love of plants from their families. Hector’s grandparents were migrant farm workers. Jasmine’s grandmother loved taking care of plants. Towards the end of her life, Jasmine’s grandmother found comfort in the plants her granddaughter would bring to her.
Entrance to Burgeon Plant Co. decorated for the holidays
Hector pursued a degree in Plant Science at Texas Tech University and the pair both worked with plants before pursuing their own business. In January this year, they started vending at pop-ups. They soon graduated to a truck and asked their Instagram followers where they wanted to see them activate. As it turns out, the Southern end of Downtown and the Southside had a true need for a local plant shop. The pair found a permanent location on South Presa and Burgeon Plant Co. Was born. “We like that you can walk down the street and there’s all these restaurants and shops you can check out,” says Jasmine. “Or you can just take a walk down the River Walk.”
Co-Owners Jasmine Garza and Hector Rivera
They’ve expanded their services to include consultations for both residential and commercial clients. In store, they carry local artists’ works, which range from sketches to ceramic pots. The store sits next to an artist, tattoo shop, and coffee shop. Their community supports one another through promotions. Jasmine emphasizes the importance of these local connections. “You’re supporting your local economy [when you shop local],” she explains.
Some of the local art for sale at Burgeon Plant Co.
Hector also points out that local nurseries and plant shops like Burgeon Plant Co. can deliver a higher quality product as they have the time to ensure product quality and offer specific guidance to clients.
The power of plants is more relevant than ever, according to Hector. “It helps with your mental health and makes the room feel a little livelier,” he explains. In an era when many people are sequestered in their homes, often alone, plants are a way to lift one’s spirits.
During this holiday season, if you are thinking of a loved one, consider getting them the gift of a plant or local art to brighten their day.
Flowers for sale at Burgeon Plant Co.
Centro San Antonio’s Main Street Economic Development Program is part of the City of San Antonio’s Recovery and Resiliency Plan. The Main Street Navigator team conducts outreach to micro and small businesses to provide support and connect them to critical capital and business development resources. If you own a business downtown, contact us at [email protected]. For more Main Street resources, please visit centrosanantonio.org | https://medium.com/@centrosanantonio/navigator-spotlight-burgeon-plant-co-33ad6e2ec7cf | ['Centro San Antonio'] | 2020-12-04 16:31:55.158000+00:00 | ['Small Business', 'Flower Shop', 'Texas', 'Horticulture', 'San Antonio'] |
Mapping EdTech Investments in 2020: Where Did the Money Go? | COVID-19, for all its disastrous effects on countless lives, has accelerated a positive trend that we’ve all been witnessing over the past few years: the move towards digital education. As schools and universities were shut down worldwide in March 2020, parents, educators and students alike scrambled to find a close substitute to something we think of as irreplaceable: in-person education.
As a response to these unusual circumstances, education-themed companies have proliferated across the world. Investor interest in these companies has increased, even as economic downturns reverberated across the world. To understand and quantify the (increased) value that society has put on this industry, I look at the investments made in the Education Technology — EdTech- field so far in 2020 (from January 1st to September 1st). I sourced my data from the Crunchbase database of funds raised by startups. A further, original step in this blog post is my categorization of EdTech companies into 14 sub-fields (e.g., K-12, Higher Education, Tutoring Marketplace, Workforce Development). The latter will help us understand the relative importance of these fields in 2020 vs. in other years. | https://medium.com/swlh/mapping-edtech-investments-in-2020-where-did-the-money-go-ac55dc737918 | ['Kenza Bouhaj'] | 2020-09-09 17:46:53.309000+00:00 | ['Investment', 'Venture Capital', 'Covid 19', 'Education', 'Edtech'] |
Turkey From Israel | I could see Istanbul from the plane. Staring out of the Cessna window at the sprawling city below, from the coastline to the horizon, it was hard to believe that there was anything else to Turkey.
“That’s the future of Europe. And the Middle East,” quipped an Israeli official seated beside me.”There’s so much going on there right now, in the coming decades, it will be impossible to avoid doing business with them.”
That business, of course, was not just economic. He meant diplomatic and military, as well.
Few could have predicted the transformation of Istanbul Mayor Recep Tayyip Erdogan into an Islamist Ataturk, trying to reboot Ottomanism and putting half the country in jail. Or Turkey’s 2017 invasion of northern Syria.
For Israel, perhaps more than any other former member of Turkey’s former Ottoman Empire, the writing was more clearly on the wall than it was for others — except, maybe, Germany.
Then a military ally, Israeli fighters used the country as a base for training and surveillance of neighbouring Iran. The officials I was travelling with were en route to discuss transporting water from the Euphrates, via tanker, to Israel.
The negotiations were a sign of a more optimistic era, a full two decades before the current warming of relations between Israel and its Gulf State neighbours, united in their opposition to Iran.
Turkey was our Saudi Arabia then, offering Israel opportunities for regional partnership with a Muslim state, and a convenient base for operations against Tehran, who, like today, was using Lebanon, instead of Syria, as a border.
9/11 hadn’t happened yet, and neither had the Al-Aksa Intifada. Though Turkey was not a participant in the peace process, there was no doubt that the warming relations between the two countries were impacted by it and would also grow cold as a partial consequence of its failure.
“Whatever happened to the Kurds?” I asked my father, who I was accompanying on this trip, for the day, from Tel Aviv.
A maritime transport expert, fluent in Arabic, who spoke passable Turkish, this was one of several assignments he had been given like this, in the 1990s, by successive Labour governments — in this case, led by Ehud Barak.
“Don’t make mention of that when we’re on the ground,” he said. “This is a different era, and we don’t want to bring up any unpleasantness,” Elie cautioned me.
Israel had armed Kurdish separatists, starting in the mid-1960s, helping pave the way for what became a number of regional guerrilla organisations, leading to the Kurdistan Workers Party, best known as the PKK.
The then-Turkish government, led by Bulent Ecevit’s Democratic Left Party (DSP), had just been reelected two months before, buoyed by the capture of PKK chief Abdullah Ocalan, forming a coalition government with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), who again run the country today, as partners with Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP).
The silence requested was noteworthy. I was just a PhD student, home for the summer from North America. But because this was a government delegation, the expectation was that we’d be under surveillance.
The hints of today’s Turkey, twenty years later, are obvious. My father’s fear of being monitored, though warranted of anyone on government business abroad, anywhere, were an echo of today’s tense security state, following the 2016 coup attempt.
Reigniting the civil war with the country’s Kurdish population, one of Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s first responses that followed was to launch a new counterinsurgency campaign against the PKK, devastating cities in Kurdish areas, and jailing members of the Kurdish-led Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which had polled beyond expectation in the country’s 2015 general elections.
My father’s request for silence, in hindsight, was my entry into this continuum of conflict, which proceeds to this day, under the auspices of what one might dub Erodgan’s Islamo-populism, replete with all the usual us vs them, people-vs-the-elites trappings. The elites, of course, being the left, and the West.
The continuity between then and now has its gaps, though. The idea that Israeli officials, like the ones I travelled to Istanbul with, would be making such commutes, to negotiate huge, strategically sensitive contacts, are a no-go. The new normal, as has been the case for the last decade is conflict, not trade.
Since Israel’s disastrous raid on the Gaza flotilla in 2010, which killed nine Turks, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has turned into one of the Palestinians only regional champions, alongside Iran. And tensions continue to rise between Jerusalem and Ankara over Cyprus’ gas fields, which Israel helped develop.
If I were to make the same kind of trip today, it would be Greece, which has largely replaced Turkey as Israel’s most significant and powerful ally in the Mediterranean. From deepening commercial ties to military training exercises, it’s all there.
As much as regional integration, anywhere in the Mediterranean, is a good thing for Israel, particularly through Greece, there’s something missing with Turkey being absent from the occasion. My perspective is entirely personal. Turkey is more the Middle East than Greece, even though both are also European.
It’s something that Jews of Mediterranean origin particularly feel, including from Greece, who were often Sephardic, of Turkish background. My paternal grandmother and great-grandparents, though Palestinian, were Turkish subjects, and spoke the language. My father’s Turkish was passed down.
Even though it was just a municipal poll, Ekrem Imamoglu’s victory in Saturday’s Istanbul election brought me back to this same moment, nearly twenty years ago to the day. Securing a crushing defeat over Erdogan’s AKP party, and its mayoral candidate, Binali Yildrim, I was reminded of what might have been if Erdogan had not run Turkey so long.
Supported by a broad coalition of parties, including the Kurdish HDP, Imamoglu’s own Kemalist CHP party took 54% of the vote, while the AKP only secured 45%, astonishing observers, who assumed that the poll — am Erdogan rerun of the March mayoral vote also won by Imamoglu — would secure an AKP win.
The exact opposite proved to be true, confounding sceptics who predicted this vote would be rigged and bring about the government’s preferred leadership. Even if it was, the numbers were likely too great to pretend what the real result was.
While the international press has celebrated the result as the beginning of the end of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, belying my regional roots, I’m a bit less sanguine. And a bit less focused on the defeat being just about Turkey.
Few world leaders have come to epitomise the excesses of populism more than Erdogan. That fact that he could reinvent it, before it had become as widespread in central and eastern Europe, in Middle Eastern vernacular, was the first proof the virus was global, long before Trump and Bolsonaro got elected.
The fact that it is Middle Eastern, as well as European, gives me hope that the other regional populist despot, my own premier, Benjamin Netanyahu, will one day, finally be voted out of office, too. In spite of, I might add, his own voter suppression tactics, such as installing cameras in voting booths in Arab majority areas.
That’s the only way I can rationalise the possibility of taking another such trip to Turkey, with Israeli government officials like my father and his colleagues, in the future. Hopefully, as Imamoglu’s victory indicated, I won’t have to shut up about the Kurds, either.
Not that I’d ever get invited again. My father passed away in 2015. But you get the idea.
Joel Schalit is editor of The Battleground. Photograph courtesy of World Humanitarian Summit. Published under a Creative Commons license. | https://medium.com/thebattleground/turkey-from-israel-71305de62537 | ['The Battleground'] | 2019-06-26 19:16:29.007000+00:00 | ['Turkey', 'Europe', 'Middle East', 'Israel', 'Behind The Lines'] |
Designing Session Length | I have never finished a single game of Dota Underlords.
I really wanted to. See, when Dota Autochess became popular, I kind of missed the fun because I felt it to be too time-consuming, so when Valve announced a stand-alone mobile version of it, I was a bit thrilled.
So I started my first session, cautious but hopeful that I’ll finally get to find out what all the fuss was about. At first, I didn’t understand any of the things going on, but I decided to give it a chance and play some more… and more… and fifteen minutes later I started to realize with horror that my first game is still going, and I have no idea when it ends, and my break is ending, and I have another meeting, and since it’s an online game I can’t really pause it, and I closed it and never came back that day. I tried a few more times later, but with the same result.
Let’s talk about history.
Nintendo’s Super Mario; also — no, not that far into history
When I was starting my career in game development, most games seemed to be very monolithic, either having no separators like levels or locations whatsoever or trying as hard as possible to hook you up on the story and drag you through the game in one go. What is even more important, the levels were usually unpredictably long, so you would often find yourself in a situation where you would like to play a bit more, but not an hour or two the next level would take. So you had to either leave unsatisfied at the beginning of the level, or leave frustrated and unfulfilled in the middle, or leave tired at the end of the level.
By that time I started to realize I don’t really have as much time for games as I — or the games themselves — would like to. I was reading reviews of the new FPS’ angry with the fact that there was no 20, 40, 80, 100 hours of content like there used to be while struggling to understand where I would find 100 hours of free time to spend them in the same single-player game.
That was the time when I often bought new games and rarely finished them.
Then I stumbled into a really different game.
Far Cry 3 was a revelation of sorts to me. It featured the not yet infamous tower climbing mechanic, an open world, and outposts scattered along the map. It was not the first game to do all that, but to me, it was the first game where those elements clicked together to create something more than the sum of its parts: an effective single player session-based game.
The game gave you small digestible objectives, which gave you a sense of fulfillment and, which is very important, had more or less constant — or at least predictable — duration.
So if I had a lot of time, I could climb a tower, unlock a new part of the map and explore it; if I had less time, I could storm outposts in the unlocked portions of the map.
Every outpost was a simple puzzle consisting of similar elements:
scout the area
find the outpost’s special features intended by a level designer, be it a caged tiger or explosive barrels
study the patrol routes
carefully eliminate the enemies (or go guns-blazing) and lift your flag.
The beauty of it all was that after ticking the last checkbox, I could decide for myself if I want to play a bit more and go to the next outpost (or some even shorter task), or if that’s enough for today and I can log off with clear mind.
At this time, Ubisoft games recreate that great structure with varying success, in my opinion. They tend to gravitate towards some incredible gigantism, where those session-based pieces are so thickly spread through locations so large that it becomes too much and their similarities start to be really evident — not even talking about their experiments with leveling system, where you could easily destroy a level 10 militia spearman and struggle to scratch the same militia spearman of level 20.
An immersive level 9 enemy in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey
Nevertheless, I think that if you are a f2p developer, you should pay close attention to Ubisoft games as pioneers of translating session-based ideas to “big” single-player games.
The idea of always giving the player something to do but also giving them control over how much time they want to spend in-game at any given moment is incredibly important for mobile games. Even now, a lot of game designers don’t really think about constructing games with varying session lengths; but in great mobile games, like Supercell’s Clash Royale, they do just that.
So think about your game: if the player only has 5 minutes, can they spend them in your game and leave with a sense of fulfillment? If yes, can they stay longer? | https://medium.com/strike-the-pixels/designing-session-length-29ff15ac556 | ['Andrey Panfilov'] | 2019-12-08 13:44:31.244000+00:00 | ['Game Development', 'Gaming', 'Game Design'] |
The Federalists | The Federalists
Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, leaders of the Federalist Party. — Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
The Federalist Party was started
During the year Seventeen Ninety-One.
They navigated waters uncharted,
Being the first faction ever begun.
The nation’s first political faction
Was led by Alexander Hamilton.
John Adams was also in the action,
As well as some other important men.
The Federalist Party did control
National government for some decades.
Keeping conservatism was the goal,
But the party would soon lose to new trades.
While the Federalist Party dissolved,
The party allowed issues to be solved. | https://medium.com/a-few-lines-of-history/the-federalists-4747392ff886 | ['Danielle Gibson'] | 2020-11-25 03:51:04.208000+00:00 | ['Government', 'History', 'Politics', 'Poetry', 'American History'] |
L & D | L & D
A Poem
Prompt on Responsibility
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
Leave behind personal bouts
Erase from thoughts selfish gains
Leaders stand out unannounced
Desires the greatest possible good,
Each man his needs
Reassuring healing weak limbs
Showing empathy to a sick
Honouring deeds of loyalty
Instilling hope in calamity
Peace promoting among keen | https://medium.com/spiritual-secrets/l-d-f0dad06d96ee | ['Johannes Mudi'] | 2020-12-19 14:52:49.598000+00:00 | ['Spirituality', 'Poetry', 'L And D', 'Responsibility', 'Spiritual Secrets'] |
What cryptocurrencies could learn from Visa and Mastercard to reach mass adoption | The history of money is a very old one. Starting back to Sumer civilization, its evolution has been linked to many technological improvements and societal changes. Indeed, prior to digital writings, money took many other shapes. Some we are still using today, like paper notes and metal coins. Some we are not and sound quite original, like clay tablets, shells, teeth and even feathers. But whatever the shape, money always had the same purpose: being a unit of account, a store of value and a medium of exchanges.
When the mysterious “Satoshi Nakamoto” created the Bitcoin and the first blockchain protocol in 2009, he wanted to develop an asset that would rely on cryptography and be used just like money. However, the Bitcoin, and the other cryptocurrencies that emerged in its wake, have never been able to operate as genuine money, because of their extreme volatility. For instance, in 2017 the price of the Bitcoin jumped from 1.000$ to 20.000$, and then went back under 6.000$ in just 6 months, making it hard to be a reliable unit of account and a stable store of value.
Still, cryptocurrencies can play a role of medium of exchanges. With potentially cheaper fees and faster transactions than the traditional solutions, they also have the ability to work without a central authority for preventing frauds and validating operations. From that perspective, financial blockchains are not really competing against traditional currencies like the dollar, the euro or the yen. They are rather threatening payment solutions such as exchange systems, money transfer platforms and of course payment cards. In their attempt of disruption, it could be relevant for the organizations behind those innovative projects to apply the same strategies that make firms like Visa or Mastercard succeed.
First, like every company with a two-sided platform business model, those firms had to convince both actors (say retailers and consumers) to adopt their product. To do so, some banks like Bank of America, the original creator of Visa, simply send plastic cards with a 500$ credit limit to its customers. If banks had some losses at first, they also turned every single customer into an ally, willing to help them convince retailers to adopt their new payment system. Soon, millions of debit and credit cards were in circulation and massively used.
Second, in their early days, payment cards were not user friendly at all. To be sure customers were really able to pay, retailers had to call by phone the banks and make them approve every single transaction. The payment process was particularly painful and it only improved when chips and magnetic stripes were implemented to payment cards. Those incremental innovations strengthen the initial disruption, allowing transactions to be completed in few seconds by simply swiping the cards into payment terminals and voilà !
By creating wallets and distributing for free some usable assets (better known as tokens in the cryptosphere), the developers of cryptocurrencies could gain their first users and promoters. Some of the teams that develop blockchains are already doing it with operations called Airdrops. However, those operations are more dedicated to people that are already initiated to cryptocurrencies and eager to make profits by selling them in the future. To be adopted by the whole population, crypto-based companies should better put blockchain assets in the hands of random people. Assets these people could use straight away for their inherent purpose and not just for pure speculation.
Also, Bitcoin’s blockchain can only handle 3 to 4 transactions per second and Ethereum’s blockchain, the second biggest one, just 20. On the other side, Paypal and Visa can respectively handle 193 and 1.667 transactions per second. Moreover, there are more than 1.900 different cryptocurrencies today and this number never stops growing. While credit cards are working on the same kinds of terminals, most of the blockchain protocols require different solutions to operate. To get the edge on credit cards and money transfer solutions, cryptocurrencies have to extend their scalability and become interoperable between each others.
To conclude, if the potential of disruption of cryptocurrencies is colossal for the financial sector (and also for many other ones like energy, gaming, luxury or supply chain), still, they might never be considered as genuine money. And this is not such a problem. Sometimes innovations are not impacting things the way they were initially thought. As long as they find some valuable use cases, they have a good chance to have a bright future in front of them. The one thing they should do is to give consistent proofs of their performance and utility. And when the path is not clear, many clues can be found in the history of previous innovations. | https://medium.com/tech-away/what-cryptocurrencies-could-learn-from-visa-and-mastercard-to-reach-mass-adoption-4e9591476034 | ['Antonin Cobolet'] | 2018-08-30 07:01:02.107000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain', 'Bitcoin'] |
The Little High-Speed Rail Engine that Could? | With Biden soon to be in charge and some design changes, Gov. Newsome may have CA High-Speed Rail saying “I think I can…I think I can…”
One evening, Prince Newsom settled onto a large comfy sofa with his four children Tessa, Hunter, Brooklynn, and Dutch, to read a bedtime story, “The Little High Speed Rail Engine that Could”. “Once upon a time” Prince Newson began, “in the fiefdom of California, there were two wise princes named Prince Arnold and Prince Jerald, who wanted to build a clean and fast choo-choo train from the magical city of San Francisco to the far-off and mystical lands of Los Angeles. These two Princes knew that it would take many coppers from the hard-working peasants, and much gold from the treasury vaults of the fiefdom of California to build this fantastic and whimsical train, but they promised that it would make the good people of the fiefdom of California happy, as it would be faster and cleaner and safer than any train ever built before. But Princes Arnold and Jerald then walked away to other business and entrusted the planning of this magical train to various knaves and jesters of the court who conspired to route the magical train through the uncharted and costly areas of the Valleys of San Joaquin through the out-of-the-way villages of the Fields of Baker and the Ceds of Mer instead of the friendly and inexpensive medians of center on the 5’s of Interstates, whilst hiring the roguish consultants of engineering who did not foresee the overruns of costs involving the technologies of tunnels and the domains of eminents through the twisted routes of expediencies of politics. Though the Nice King of all the lands had liked this plan and promised to send more gold to build it, he was in time replaced by the Dark King who didn’t like the plan and promised to take back much of the gold the Nice King had promised. At this point Tessa interrupted “but the Princes could have upgraded the Pacifics of Southern lines with concrete ties and banked turns at a much lower price!”, while Hunter belted out “and the 5s of Interstate’s median could have been used at a fraction of the price of exclusive Central Valley right of way!” just as Brooklyn yelped “or Elon Musk could have built a 5’s of Interstate’s Hyperloop, with a Tehachapi tunnel to Palmdale” while soon after Dutch barked out “and ACE commuter train tracks could’ve been used to facilitate a cheap and easy route from Los Banos to San Jose”!
“Verily, verily my children” replied Prince Newsom, somewhat wearily, as he set out to answer their questions as best he could. “Sometimes the most noble of plans go awry, so let me expel my breath thusly…a big expensive important train might be routed from Los Angeles through 20 miles of gilded tunnels of Tehachapi, through the Fields of Baker and the Ceds of Mer and 14 miles of silvery tunnels of Pacheco, to the Trains of Cal to San Francisco, but this train might cost 100 billion in coppers and gold, while saying ‘I am an important train…a train that can get from LA to SF in 2–1/2 hours…too important to save money for the good people of the fiefdom of California’, or we could keep the old trains running on the current tracks of the Pacifics of Southern, but that might say ‘I am an old train that belches toxic vapors whilst going from SF to LA in 7 hours, if you want me to go faster I cannot…I cannot…I cannot’ or maybe…just maybe, with a trimming of the gilded list of roguish engineers of consulting and demystification of the technologies of tunneling, we could bore through the 30 miles needed through the Mounts of Tehachapi more cheaply and efficiently, for $100 to $200 million in coppers and gold per mile, and then utilize the straightened Commuters of Altamont tracks and Medians of 120, connecting with the BARTs of Pleasantons and minus some of the bewitching Tunnels of Overruns, towards the Caltrains of San Joses, facilitating a future Unions of Pacifics spur to the Sacras of Mento. This way my dear children, we could have a little train that could, one that could go from the stations of trains in SF to LA in 3 hours for $65 billion, a train that might run cleanly and efficiently while telling the knavish kings in the Houses of White “I think I can…I think I can…I THINK I CAN!”
…and thus, said the good Prince Gavin as he put his now sleepy-eyed children to bed, our kingdom would depend less upon tunneling increments of technologies involving guidances of electronics, energies of savings, and bore sizes of optimals, and more upon right of ways of existings and bridge and tunnels structures of availables, which as Goldilocks might say, are “juuuust right”, but that is a bedtime story for another evening.
Like this article? Read more in Vern Scott’s new book “Civil (Engineering) Disobedience”, available on Amazon.com | https://medium.com/@scottvern/the-little-high-speed-rail-engine-that-could-932eb1e212b5 | ['Vern Scott'] | 2021-03-12 18:21:30.866000+00:00 | ['High Speed Rail', 'Tunneling', 'Gavin Newsom', 'Rails', 'Caltrain'] |
The Creative Life Is Not For The Faint Of Heart | Being a creative person sucks sometimes.
“Running a start-up is like chewing glass and staring into the abyss.” -Elon Musk
I know Elon was talking about running a start-up there, but I think the same principle can be applied to creatives in general.
I think a lot of us get lost in the tales of massive success from writers like Jeff Goins and Michelle Schroeder.
We get so lost that we never contemplate what life is actually like for THEM.
Do they have any more security than we do?
Did they hit a point in their career where all they had to do was basically hit a button to create money?
I don’t know, but I do know this… | https://medium.com/the-mission/im-warning-you-the-creative-life-is-not-for-the-faint-of-heart-f68b327e7205 | ['Tom Kuegler'] | 2018-03-23 12:39:42.946000+00:00 | ['Tech', 'Life Lessons', 'Writing', 'Creativity', 'Life'] |
Improve your site’s SEO and Google ranking with React SSR | Imagine this, you have finished building the website for your business. It took you several weeks to do because you programmed it yourself with that framework that everyone seems to love, called React. You’re super excited to roll out your site, and for good reason! You trust that after a few weeks you will have hundreds of daily visitors. But time passes and… nothing. It even seems that your site is not even on Google.
What happened? Did you do something wrong? Well not really, it’s not that you’ve done anything wrong. It is simply that frameworks such as React or Angular do not get along very well with Google’s algorithm and have a terrible SEO (Search-Engine Optimization). But I have good news for you! There is a technique you can use to improve the ranking of your React websites. This technique is called Server-Side Rendering or SSR and in this post you will learn how to integrate it with React. In addition, you will learn how to automate the deployment process with DevOps.
To follow this post, I recommend that you have basic notions about React and your computer’s terminal. I also recommend that you know about Firebase, since we will use it to deploy our React site, although you can use the hosting that you like the most.
SSR? What’s that about?
The concept of SSR is very simple. Frameworks like React or Angular use JavaScript to render the content of the website on the client’s side, which is known as Client-Side Rendering (🤯) or CSR. This has many advantages, but since all of the website’s content is rendered on the client, Google’s bots do not “see” anything. To solve this you can take the code of your site and run it on a server so that your content is generated before it reaches the client, that’s what SSR is all about.
Keep in mind there are other alternatives to solve this problem for frameworks like React. You can use prerendering to convert your site’s content to static content, but if you constantly generate content this is not the best option.
With that said, let’s get started building our React app.
Creating our basic React application
To create our React application we are going to use create-react-app. Optionally, you can use my sample project to follow this post, which can be found in the following GitHub repo. So we enter our terminal and in the folder of your choosing, run the command:
npx create-react-app react-firebase-ssr
This will generate the basic configuration for our application. Surely, we also need a router for our site, so we are going to install react-router. In our project folder we run the command:
npm install react-router
Now, you can add whatever content you want to your React website. BUT, when you configure the react-router, add the component <BrowserRouter> in the root of the application, that is, in the index.js file, like this:
const rootElement = document.getElementById('root'); const app = (
<BrowserRouter>
<App />
</BrowserRouter>
); render(app, rootElement);
Keep this in the back of your head. Also, taking advantage of the fact that we are in the index.js file, we are going to change the last line to:
rootElement.hasChildNodes()
? hydrate(app, rootElement)
: render(app, rootElement);
This line, in simple terms, means that if our application is run on the server, only hooks, listeners, etc. will be added to the already generated HTML. And if it runs on the client, all of the content is rendered. So our index.js file would look like this:
import React from 'react';
import { hydrate, render } from 'react-dom';
import { BrowserRouter } from 'react-router-dom';
import App from './App';
import './index.css'; const rootElement = document.getElementById('root'); const app = (
<BrowserRouter>
<App />
</BrowserRouter>
); rootElement.hasChildNodes()
? hydrate(app, rootElement)
: render(app, rootElement);
Using React Helmet to generate the meta tags for our site
An important step to improve the SEO of any website is to add meta tags to each HTML file on the site. Of course, our React site only has one index.html file, but we can use a library called React Helmet to dynamically generate meta tags. To install it we are going to run the command:
npm install react-helmet
Using this library is as simple as wrapping your meta tags in the <Helmet> component on each page of your site. That is why I recommend you create a special Metatags.js component to contain your meta tags so you can just pass the information you want through props. This component would look something like this:
import React from 'react';
import { Helmet } from 'react-helmet'; const Metatags = ({ title, description }) => {
return (
<Helmet>
<title>{ title }</title>
<meta name="description" content={ description }/>
{/* You can add as many meta tags as you like in this component */}
</Helmet>
)
} export default Metatags;
For further explanation of why meta tags are so important for SEO and to generate your own meta tags I recommend you this site.
Integrating SSR into our app with CRA-Universal
So far our site has been a run-of-the-mill React app, so it’s time to integrate the SSR part. For this we are going to use the cra-universal library. We run the following commands:
npm install -D cra-universal
npm install @cra-express/core
npx cra-universal init
This will install the necessary dependencies and generate a server folder along with the app.js and index.js files. I also recommend adding the following commands in the “scripts” section of your package.json `, which we will use later.
"scripts": {
...
"start:ssr": "cra-universal start",
"build:ssr": "cra-universal build",
}
Now we need to make a couple of changes to the app.js file. Remember the configuration we made of the react-router earlier? The reason we did such configuration was because now we need to wrap our <App/> component with the <StaticRouter component in the handleUniversalRender function, like this:
const handleUniversalRender = (req, res) => {
const context = {};
const el = (
<StaticRouter location={ req.url } context={ context }>
<App />
</StaticRouter>
);
return context.url ? res.redirect(301, context.url) : el;
}
We also need another configuration to render our meta tags server-side. In the arguments of the createReactAppExpress function we are going to add the onFinish method, as shown below:
const app = createReactAppExpress({
clientBuildPath,
universalRender: handleUniversalRender,
onFinish(_, res, html) {
const { title, meta } = Helmet.renderStatic();
const newHtml = html
.replace('</head>', `${ title }</head>`)
.replace('</head>', `${ meta }</head>`);
res.send(newHtml);
}
});
What the onFinish method does is inject into the HTML the meta tags that we define with React Helmet. In the end, the app.js file of the server is as follows:
import { createReactAppExpress } from '@cra-express/core';
import React from 'react';
import { Helmet } from 'react-helmet';
import { StaticRouter } from 'react-router-dom';
import path from 'path';
let App = require('../src/App').default; const clientBuildPath = path.resolve(__dirname, '../client'); const handleUniversalRender = (req, res) => {
const context = {};
const el = (
<StaticRouter location={ req.url } context={ context }>
<App />
</StaticRouter>
);
return context.url ? res.redirect(301, context.url) : el;
} const app = createReactAppExpress({
clientBuildPath,
universalRender: handleUniversalRender,
onFinish(_, res, html) {
const { title, meta } = Helmet.renderStatic();
const newHtml = html
.replace('</head>', `${ title }</head>`)
.replace('</head>', `${ meta }</head>`);
res.send(newHtml);
}
}); if (module.hot) {
module.hot.accept('../src/App', () => {
App = require('../src/App').default;
console.log('✅ Server hot reloaded App');
});
} export default app;
To test that our site works with SSR we need to run the npm start and npm run start:ssr commands in different tabs of our terminal. Once we are satisfied with our site we can run the command npm run build:ssr to generate a production build. At this point you can upload the app to your preferred hosting, but here we are going to use Firebase Hosting and Cloud Functions to deploy it.
Deploying our site to Firebase
If you don’t have the Firebase CLI tools yet you can install them with the command npm install -g firebase-tools . I recommend that you create a new project in the firebase console. Now we are going to run the firebase init command in the root of our application. You will have to select your Firebase project and choose hosting and functions to add to the project. The public folder for hosting will be build. Then it will ask you if you want to write your Cloud Functions with JavaScript or with TypeScript, but since we will only add one function you can choose JavaScript. It will also ask you if you want to configure the project as SPA, answer yes. To finish the process, 2 Firebase files will be generated in the project folder.
Now we need to configure the firebase.json file to redirect our hosting to our Cloud Function. So our firebase.json looks like this:
{
"hosting": {
"public": "build",
"ignore": [
"firebase.json",
"**/.*",
"**/node_modules/**"
],
"rewrites": [{
"source": "**",
"function": "ssr"
}]
},
"functions": {
"predeploy": []
}
}
Notice how I left the predeploy line empty, since otherwise it can give us linting errors when we want to upload our Cloud Function.
Before writing our Cloud Function we have to change the access point of our CRA-Universal app, because we won’t need to listen to the server on any port. So we have to create a crau.config.js file in the root of our project, which will contain the following:
module.exports = {
modifyWebpack: config => {
const newConfig = {
...config,
output: {
...config.output,
libraryTarget: 'commonjs2'
},
entry: './server/app.js' // It was './server/index.js' before
};
return newConfig;
}
};
Note that we are changing the access point from index.js to app.js . Now we need to rebuild the production build with the npm run build:ssr command.
We also have to install our React dependencies in our functions folder, as well as the fs-extra library that we will use later, using the commands:
cd functions
npm install fs-extra @cra-express/core react react-dom react-helmet react-router-dom
cd ../
Finally we can write our Cloud Function, which is not rocket science. In the index.js file of the functions folder we write:
const functions = require('firebase-functions');
const app = require('./dist/server/bundle').default; exports.ssr = functions.https.onRequest(app);
And that’s it for the Cloud Function. However, we have a little problem, we need to copy the dist folder into the functions folder and remove some files. We could do it manually, but… no one has time for that 🤣 so let’s write a script to do it for us. We create the copy-app.js file inside the functions folder and write the following:
(async() => {
const srcPath = '../dist';
const copyPath = './dist';
await fs.remove(copyPath);
await fs.copy(srcPath, copyPath);
await fs.remove(`${ copyPath }/package.json`);
await fs.remove(`${ copyPath }/package-lock.json`);
await fs.remove('../build/index.html');
})();
This will copy the dist folder into functions, removing the original along with the package.json files and the index.html file from our build. Don’t worry, our Cloud Function will be the one that serves our HTML. I also recommend adding the command "copy": “node copy-app" inside the scripts section of the package.json file in the functions folder.
So, the process to deploy our application to Firebase ends up as follows:
We create our production build: npm run build:ssr We move to the functions folder and run our script to copy our build:
cd functions
npm run copy
cd ../
3. We deploy to Firebase: firebase deploy
BONUS: Automating our deploys with Cloud Build
Our React with SSR app is ready at this point. However, the deployment process ended up being a bit tedious and involved. In order to automate our deployments we are going to use GitHub together with Google Cloud Build to do a process of CI/CD (Continuous Integration and Delivery) or DevOps.
First you need to create a new repository on GitHub (it can be public or private) and make an initial commit.
git add .
git commit -m "initial commit" git remote add origin [email protected]:<your-repo>.git
git push -u origin master
Next, make sure that it activates the Cloud Build API for your project in the GCP console. You need to give Cloud Build access to your Firebase project, so you need to go to the IAM menu and give Firebase Admin permission to the account ending with @cloudbuild.gserviceaccount.com .
Setting up Firebase IAM permissions to Cloud Build
Firebase is not available in the default NPM image on GCP, so we need a community builder, which is nothing more than a Docker container with the firebase-tools installed. First you need to install the Google Cloud SDK and then clone the community builders repository and upload it to Google Cloud, like this:
cd cloud-builders-community/firebase git clone https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/cloud-builders-community cd cloud-builders-community/firebase gcloud builds submit --config cloudbuild.yaml . cd ../..
rm -rf cloud-builders-community
Watch out if you are on Windows, because you need to change the CRLF characters to LF characters in the firebase.bash file of cloud-builders-community/firebase in order to upload it to Google Cloud. More information about this here.
Once you upload the builder to Google Cloud you will be able to see it in the container registry page.
Container Registry page with Firebase container
Now we need to define the steps that Cloud Build will have to follow to build and deploy our project. For that we create the file cloudbuild.yaml in the root of the project.
steps:
# Install dependencies
- name: 'gcr.io/cloud-builders/npm'
args: ['install']
# Build
- name: 'gcr.io/cloud-builders/npm'
args: ['run', 'build:ssr']
# Install cloud functions dependencies
- name: 'gcr.io/cloud-builders/npm'
dir: 'functions'
args: ['install']
# Copy to cloud functions
- name: 'gcr.io/cloud-builders/npm'
dir: 'functions'
args: ['run', 'copy']
# Deploy
- name: 'gcr.io/[TU-PROYECTO]/firebase'
args: ['deploy']
Take into account that in this file you can also define many additional options, for example, to run your unitary tests if you so wish.
Almost done! We just need to connect our GitHub repository with Cloud Build by registering the build trigger. Make sure to point the trigger to the cloudbuild.yaml file.
Creating the build trigger in Cloud Build
Now we just need to create a new commit and push it to GitHub. Cloud Build will begin building the application and you can see the progress in the GCP console. That’s it! If you need more information to work with Cloud Build, I recommend this article. | https://medium.com/@alantheace/improve-your-sites-seo-and-google-ranking-with-react-ssr-66d02eae54cb | ['Alan Acuña'] | 2020-12-24 00:13:55.079000+00:00 | ['Ssr', 'React', 'Firebase', 'SEO', 'DevOps'] |
Image manipulation detection using Deep Learning | What is the problem we are trying to solve?
In this era of powerful software, we can easily edit any image. One of the most powerful software for this is Adobe photoshop using which we can easily change, crop, delete or do many more things to any part of the image.
These images can then be a part of fake news which is a major problem nowadays for every major social media platform. This problem also exists in various domains where documents are used which can be easily manipulated.
The IEEE Information Forensics and Security Technical Committee (IFS-TC) launched a detection and localization forensics challenge, the First Image Forensics Challenge in 2013 to solve this problem.
Further information about the problem:
Research paper 1
Research paper 2
IEEE Challenge
Introduction
To solve this problem first we will build a model to detect whether an image is authentic or manipulated. If the image is manipulated then we will try to predict the manipulated region of the image.
Different ways to manipulate an image:
Image Splicing: Copying regions from an authentic image and paste them to other images. Copy-Move: Copies and pastes regions within the same image. Removal: Eliminates regions from an authentic image followed by inpainting.
About the dataset
For the Classification task, the model was trained on the CASIA2 and IEE IFS-TC datasets.
For mask prediction, only IEEE IFS-TC dataset is used to train the model.
CASIA2 : It contains 7408 authentic and 5123 fake images.
IEEE IFS-TC dataset: It contains 1050 authentic 450 manipulated images along with their 450 masks.
Mask of a fake image is a black and white (not grayscale) image describing the spliced area of the fake image. The black pixels in the mask represent the area where manipulation was performed in the source image to get the forged image, specifically it represents the spliced region.
Fake image with corresponding mask
Architecture
We will use transfer learning in both classification and mask prediction tasks since this technique gave the best results in my experiments.
Classification Model
Mask Prediction Model
UNET from segmentation models library is used with different backbone models for this task
About the filters used in the mask prediction model
SRM Filter: SRM features gather basic noise features. SRM quantifies and truncates the output of these filters and extracts the nearby co-occurrence information as the final features. The feature obtained from this process can be regarded as a local noise descriptor. We directly use the noise features as the input to the noise stream network. The backbone convolutional network architecture of the noise stream is the same as the RGB stream.
The three SRM filter kernels used to extract noise features.
ELA Filter: Error Level Analysis (ELA) permits identifying areas within an image that are at different compression levels. With JPEG images, the entire picture should be at roughly the same level. If a section of the image is at a significantly different error level, then it likely indicates a digital modification.
ELA highlights differences in the JPEG compression rate. Regions with uniform coloring, like a solid blue sky or a white wall, will likely have a lower ELA result (darker color) than high-contrast edges.
Look around the picture and identify the different high-contrast edges, low-contrast edges, surfaces, and textures. Compare those areas with the ELA results. If there are significant differences, then it identifies suspicious areas that may have been digitally altered. | https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/image-manipulation-detection-using-deep-learning-dedcb7a84d06 | ['Sankalp Chawla'] | 2020-10-29 01:29:06.743000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence', 'Convolutional Network', 'Image Manipulation', 'Computer Vision', 'Deep Learning'] |
Brian Mingham Highlights His Best Money Saving Tips | As the moratorium on evictions comes to an end on January 31st, 2021, there is increasing anxiety among millions of Americans as the security of their financial future has been brought into question. The pandemic has highlighted the need to save for a ‘rainy day’, and while we are still recovering from its effects, it’s never too late to start saving. As the Founder of CFSI Loan Management, a leading nationwide construction risk management firm, Brian Mingham knows how important it is to stick to a budget. If you’re looking for some guidance on how to save your money effectively to work towards your financial goals, look no further because he is here to cover the basics.
Start an Emergency Fund
It is important to continually practice saving. If you don’t already, start putting money away every time you receive a pay cheque. Brian Mingham explains that doing so will allow you build an emergency fund. An emergency fund is usually three to six months of your income and will provide you with peace of mind. When you start taking control of your finances, it’s important to start with small, achievable goals and move your way up from there. Once you’ve saved enough money to constitute an ‘emergency fund’, you can then start working towards saving for your college fund, retirement, and other financial goals.
Face Your Poor Spending Habits and Create a Budget
Figuring out how much money to put away will depend on how much money you make and what your other expenses are. Brian Mingham suggests building a monthly budget to gain a better understanding of where you are spending your money in order to cut unnecessary expenses. Until you quantify how much money you spend eating out, on entertainment, or shopping, it can be challenging to build habits that allow you to responsibly save money. It’s also hard to come to terms with your current poor spending habits, but it’s necessary to get back on track. He suggests downloading a budgeting app, like Mint, PocketGuard or Goodbudget, to help keep you on track. Many of these apps connect to your bank account and are completely free to use.
The 24-Hour Rule
If you fall victim to impulse shopping, you may want to create rules around spending to start building better habits. For example, you may want to create a 24-hour rule. Brian Mingham explains that this means avoiding buying expensive or unnecessary items until you have had 24-hours to think about it. This reduces the odds of making poor purchasing decisions. If you find yourself purchasing unnecessary items from marketing e-mails, click ‘unsubscribe’. The goal here isn’t to cut all spending, but to become conscious of what you are spending your money on in order to make better choices.
The Bottom Line
Lastly, Brian Mingham stresses the importance of planning ahead and being prepared. If you are going to go grocery shopping, make a list and stick to it. If an item you continually purchase is on sale, stockpile it to save money. Plan your meals ahead of time instead of eating out. Bring coupons with you to purchase necessary items at the grocery store. Use public transit whenever you can — avoid taking Uber or Lyft. These small adjustments can make a big difference when it comes to achieving your financial goals. | https://medium.com/@brianmingham/brian-mingham-highlights-his-best-money-saving-tips-6af39063a442 | ['Brian Mingham'] | 2020-12-07 19:45:00.169000+00:00 | ['Money', 'Saving', 'Saving Money', 'Money Management', 'America'] |
Here’s a little moodboard for your quarantine days. | It’s good to sometimes get off your phone and write or read your thoughts away :)
Warm sweaters for you and your soul.
Completing the day with your favorite comfort show. (My personal favorite would be Friends)
Be kind to yourself. | https://medium.com/@strawberiis/heres-a-little-moodboard-for-your-quarantine-days-930fc5995ed4 | ['Strawberiis'] | 2020-12-23 08:49:45.258000+00:00 | ['Mood', 'Quarantine', 'Mood Board', 'Quotes', 'Self Improvement'] |
What’s the Difference Between Web Design and Web Development? | Website designer and website developer are both terms you hear endlessly bandied around online. Here are some clear definitions for your peace of mind, if you’ve been finding yourself wondering.
In Essence, the Difference is…
It’s actually pretty clear, depending on how you define words like design and development. Website design centres on aesthetics. Design, layout, fonts, image use, animation and video. All the elements that make websites look great at a surface level.
Website development is all the stuff beneath that surface-level aesthetics. It’s the mechanics and functionality of the site. It’s making sure everything works and links together right, all while prioritising speed, functionality and reliability. Both are vital.
Web Design Focuses on Design, Obviously!
A web designer might use software like Adobe Photoshop. They put together different ideas and develop a design for the end product. This is vital for web developers to work from when it comes to creating the underlying structure.
In a sense, web designers are a weird fusion of architects and interior decorators. Web developers are somewhere between architects and builders. Both are absolutely necessary when it comes to constructing a website, but the roles aren’t exactly separate and a good deal of back and forth and communication is essential to producing a solid end product.
That Means… Web Development Focuses on Development
Obviously, without web developers to actually code the website, all you end up with is a blueprint and some pretty pictures of what things could look like. Web developers do the all-important job of turning ideas and designs into functional, usable websites.
It’s not always the case that initial designs function in the actual construction and usage of the site. This is where things get even more grey and confusing. UX testing websites is a vital part of making sure the product is fit for end purpose and requires both web designers and web developers to get it right.
Both Roles Crossover Plenty
The fact is, both roles crossover a lot, and there’s a lot of communication required to actually build a quality website. Many website designers will be able to code and program to some degree, and many web developers will have some degree of design chops. This is necessary simply when it comes to facilitating extensive communication and development.
At the end of the day, whether you’re trying to figure out what skill you’ll need to get into web design or development, or trying to figure out who you need to get your site off the ground, the answer is generally the same. You need both. There is so much crossover and necessary communication that you won’t run into many successful web designers or developers who don’t have knowledge of the other role. | https://medium.com/@emmagoldsteinvo/whats-the-difference-between-web-design-and-web-development-a1b9999fb21a | ['Emma Goldstein'] | 2019-07-19 16:11:10.308000+00:00 | ['Website Development', 'Design', 'Website Design'] |
Celebrity World | I hope one day
I can become
An actor and director
And then
Maybe I can own a movie studio
And make movies and TV shows
And then
Hopefully
We can all have a good time
Hanging out at awards shows | https://medium.com/@darrinatkins/celebrity-world-1b9e69b458ff | ['Darrin Atkins'] | 2020-12-22 17:03:33.616000+00:00 | ['Celebrity', 'Hollywood'] |
When Should We Speculate About Politicians’ Health? | When Should We Speculate About Politicians’ Health?
Let’s worry more about politicians’ attitudes toward their health rather than about their particular health issues.
Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash
On September 1st, President Trump posted the following Tweet:
Initially, no one connected the President’s diss to any source. Some media outlets speculated that Trump was referring to excerpts from a new book, Donald Trump v. The United States, that addressed his unannounced, fall 2019 trip to Walter Reed Medical Center. Then someone tracked down a Tweet from CNN Political Analyst Joe Lockhart, who questioned whether Trump had a past stroke. Even with this context, given the extra detail Trump provided in the above Tweet (e.g. specifically referencing Walter Reed, writing “mini-strokes” instead of “stroke” in the post), many political commentators theorized that Trump is trying to end the discourse surrounding his fitness for the Presidency by disclosing some real details about his health but stating that they are lies.
Ever since Trump announced his campaign for President in 2015, every armchair psychologist has speculated about his health. In their defense, he has provided them with a lot of material. Before the 2016 election, he dictated a letter signed by his doctor that said he would “be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” He recently bragged about doing well on an exam that he claimed showed his incredible intelligence; it is used to monitor cognitive deficits in people with neurological conditions. And besides proposing alternative reasons for that Walter Reed visit, we constantly analyze Trump’s behavior and speech patterns for symptoms of disease.
Partially in response to the discourse, partially because the President loves to nag, Trump has accused both of his Presidential competitors of being physically or mentally unfit for office. In September 2016, Hillary Clinton had pneumonia and fainted during a ceremony commemorating 9/11. Images from that incident provided the Trump campaign with material to promote conspiracy theories about Clinton being secretly ill. Now he accuses Joe Biden, someone only three years older than him, of being unfit for office because of his age. The Trump team has also advanced a theory that Biden may have a neurological disorder. Because of the conjecture, and some justified concern about his age, Biden recently released a medical report to the public.
Disability rights laws have helped destigmatize employees’ physical and mental health issues in many American workplaces. It is thus surprising that speculation about others’ health still plays as major of a role in national politics as it did in the 1930s, when FDR hid his paralysis from the public because he didn’t want Americans to perceive him as “weak.”
Doesn’t it seem like a low blow to attack a politician for their health — something they cannot always control — instead of for their moral values or proposed policies or past actions? Even if some candidates have health issues, if they receive necessary medical care, they should be able to perform their jobs well. Attacks on the health of major political figures may also stigmatize some health issues among the public again, making it more difficult for millions of people to receive equal opportunities and treatment.
But we should have some knowledge of politicians’ mental and physical fitness, particularly our elected leaders, as they are supposed to serve the public interest. And we pay their salaries. If leaders do not have the capacity to do their jobs well, even while undergoing treatment, they are failing us.
When speculating about leaders’ health, we must then separate the illnesses themselves from the discourse and focus on the leaders’ responses to their illnesses. Two questions should guide our thinking:
Does it seem like the illness is impeding the leader from getting work done?
How does the leader publicly discuss their health?
The first question would best be addressed by leaders’ staff or inner circles. Nevertheless, we can still get some answers to them from analyzing leaders’ behavior during public appearances. We can observe their attention span or adherence to social norms. One might want to examine leaders’ events schedule as well to see if they have changed their work load. Regarding the second question, we can analyze the tone leaders use when discussing their health. Are they boastful or grateful? Do they rarely mention their health or, on the opposite side of the spectrum, do they talk about it in great detail? We may also want to check whether their claims seem true. In an extreme example, if a leader said they never got sick you would know they are lying, as most people catch bacterial or viral infections regularly.
Shinzo Abe, the Prime Minister of Japan, announced his resignation last week after his ulcerative colitis symptoms got significantly worse. He stated during a press conference: “I cannot be Prime Minister if I cannot make the best decisions for the people.” He has a long, very public history with colitis. During his first term as Prime Minister in 2007, he also resigned because of the severity of his symptoms. When he assumed the position again in the 2010s, the public trusted him based on the reasoning he provided for the first resignation to assume that his colitis wouldn’t affect his decision-making abilities during his second term. His behavior should serve as a model to all leaders. Not only did he openly recognize the restraints placed on him by the illness, but his response humanized him to his people. The Japanese weren’t concerned about his health because they trusted him — they expected him to be relatively honest.
In contrast, Trump seems to think he is invincible. On all topics, he hates to admit to any weakness, and frequently spreads lies when there is verifiable evidence of the truth. So when he talks about his health, he speaks in extremes. The discourse about his health persists because we interpret all of his statements as exaggerated or false — that is what we expect. And we have many pieces of evidence that show the President exhibiting weird behavior in public. When we cannot trust a leader to tell the truth about their health, we should have an outside institution test their capacity to serve. Former President Jimmy Carter once recommended that, besides getting evaluated by the President’s Doctor (who is a member of the US military), an independent team of doctors should also assess the President’s health to make sure their medical results are objective.
With the American Presidential election just two months away, let’s try to add more nuance to the discourse about both candidates’ physical and mental fitness. It is not wise to base your vote on perceptions of health, but you can and should critique politicians’ attitudes toward their health. After all, the way politicians address their health may be indicative of their approach to leadership too. | https://medium.com/politics-fast-and-slow/when-should-we-speculate-about-politicians-health-f1d76a73babc | ['Savannah Wallace'] | 2020-09-04 15:39:43.341000+00:00 | ['Leadership', 'Election 2020', 'Health', 'Politics', 'Government'] |
The Washington Post Can’t Stop Babbling About Russians ‘Hacking Our Minds’ | The Washington Post has published another article warning its readers that the Russians are “hacking our minds”, this one authored by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria.
“Russia hasn’t just hacked our computer systems. It’s hacked our minds.” blares the ridiculous, propagandistic headline for an article about “the Russian model” of propaganda which “rests on the principle that people get convinced when they hear the same message many times from a variety of sources, no matter how biased.”
Which is funny, since this is not the first time WaPo itself has repeated this cartoonish narrative about Russian mind-hackers.
Just two months ago the Washington Post editorial board published an article titled “The U.S. may be safe from foreign interference in this election. But what about perception hacking?”, which opens with the line “Russia and other adversaries may not need to hack the election if they can hack something else: our minds.”
The paranoid screed unironically argued that Russia is using its super powerful propaganda engine to make people paranoid and doubtful of US electoral systems, which could actually have an adverse effect on the US election. As though telling people their mental and perceptual faculties are being hacked by a hostile foreign enemy with the goal of influencing the election would not make them paranoid and doubtful of US electoral systems.
Zakaria’s piece builds on this already established theme by parroting the still completely evidence-free claim that Russia was responsible for the far-reaching cyber intrusion into the IT company SolarWinds, whose cybersecurity we recently learned was left so unprotected that its update server’s password was literally “solarwinds123”.
“But what about the perhaps more insidious Russian efforts at disinformation, which have helped to reshape the information environment worldwide?” Zakaria asks. He then does a few mental gymnastics to tie Russia’s propaganda campaign to Donald Trump, because of course he does, and leaves the reader with the closing line, “The problem is not just that Russia has hacked America’s computer systems. It seems to have hacked our minds.”
WaPo keeps hammering this narrative about powerful Russian mind-hackers as though Russia is the only nation with an existing propaganda campaign on the world stage and not one of the weaker ones doing so. The US government itself openly uses propaganda on foreigners with programs like Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia and Voice of America, which actually serve the more important function of presenting the illusion that those are the only form of US government propaganda.
In reality the plutocratic class which owns the mass media works closely with the US government and sets up its institutions to only elevate voices which advance narratives that are favorable to the status quo those plutocrats have built their kingdoms upon. WaPo itself is owned by the richest man in the world who is also a CIA contractor and sits on a Pentagon advisory board. The unofficial propaganda operations of the oligarchic empire give it a massive edge in international narrative control that dwarfs both official US propaganda programs and anything the Russian government could ever come up with.
Among some very stiff competition, one of the dumbest recurring themes in western imperialist media is the idea that world affairs, entire electoral and governmental systems, and even our very minds, are being controlled by a nation with the same GDP as South Korea. Russia does not have an especially strong sway over the world stage, it just happens to be one of the few remaining power structures which have resisted absorption into the US-centralized empire and is being targeted with a propaganda campaign aimed at changing that.
Russia is not hacking your mind. If anyone is hacking your mind, it’s the vast globe-spanning power structure loosely centralized around the United States which has been aggressively propagandizing you into supporting the continuation of status quo politics since you were born.
The dawn of political insight comes when you realize that propaganda is not just something that is done by other nations to other people. It is done by your own rulers, in your own nation, and it is being done to you.
____________________
Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Poems For Rebels or my old book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.
Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2 | https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/the-washington-post-cant-stop-babbling-about-russians-hacking-our-minds-85a0d71ed5d3 | ['Caitlin Johnstone'] | 2020-12-19 04:02:28.232000+00:00 | ['Washington Post', 'Politics', 'Propaganda', 'Russia', 'Media Criticism'] |
Mastering XPATH for Selenium Testers [With Locator CheatSheet] | ✅ Join us — https://sendfox.com/thetestingacademy
In this video, We are discussing XPath in selenium web driver and we are going to master them one by one.
✅ What is XPath?
XPath can be used to navigate through elements and attributes in an XML document.
XPath is a syntax for defining parts of an XML document
XPath uses path expressions to navigate in XML documents
Mastering XPath/ CSS is essential for the Selenium test automation engineers to locate dynamic web elements, elements without ids or names, and elements with dynamic ids and names.
✅ Why do we need to learn many XPath?
Locating elements with partially static attribute values
Locating elements with respect to a known element
Locating elements without attributes or without unique attributes
XPath can do bidirectional navigation (Going forward and backward)
✅ Types of XPath
Absolute XPath starts with the root break when minor structural changes lengthier and hence they are not readable /html/body/header/div/a /html/body/header/div/a
Relative Xpath Relative XPaths are started with two forward slashes ‘// locating elements with respect to an element with known (solid) XPath //form/div[@id =’divUsername’]/input Absolute XPaths are faster than the relative XPaths
🚀 Day 11 Task: Mastering XPATH for Selenium Testers
🚀 Thread: https://scrolltest.com/automation/day11
🚀 All Task List: https://scrolltest.com/automation/task
🚀 Watch Full Playlist: https://scrolltest.com/automation/playlist | https://medium.com/@scrolltest/mastering-xpath-for-selenium-testers-with-locator-cheatsheet-e9d80f8f5d1d | ['Pramod Dutta'] | 2020-06-14 17:07:52.850000+00:00 | ['Selenium', 'QA', 'Testing', 'Test Automation', 'Web Development'] |
From BLM to ANTIFA. Do All Groups Corrupt People’s Morality? | The Impact of Social Categorization Membership
Following the shocking media portrayal of the rape and death of Kitty Genovese at a busy neighbourhood located in New York City in 1964, social psychologists have studied the effects of social influence on the phenomenon known as the bystander effects. Many factors have been found contributing to whether an individual witnessing a potentially harmful situation will intervene or simply become a bystander. Studies such as that conducted by Levine & Crowther, utilized data from four experiments focusing on group size, social categorization and bystander behaviour, finding that bystander effect was more important when there was no group-level social relationship between participants and the targets. Also, findings showed that social category membership and group size only promoted intervention (helping) when the victim in need was identified as a member of the in-group (exclusive group of people who share the same interests or identity). Results even revealed that factors such as gender could have an effect on bystander intervention, showing women were less likely to intervene in the presence of men, and male participants were more likely to intervene in the presence of female participants. As a result, explaining the lack of intervention during potentially dangerous situations involving other individuals can be largely due to the effect of pertaining to a group and the morally corruptive influence that may be embedded in its members. Social categorization to groups can lead to members neglecting to intervene in out-group situations, even when such situations become dangerous and require help from out-group victims.
Neuropsychological research focusing on group influence and bystander effects have also deonstrated important evidence. Findings from fMRI research on young adults show that while brain regions involved in attention and visual processing increased in activity as group size increased, regions associated with action in motor regions showed decreased activity as group size increased. Moreover, brain areas associated with daily helping behaviour and the regulation of emotional states of oneself and others showed a decrease in activity with increase in group size. In other words, group influences such as group size are shown to trigger neural responses and activate certain brain areas that link to a decrease in helping behaviour.
Understanding the Costs and Rewards of Intervention
On the other hand, studies challenging the assumption of group influence on the negative impact on people’s morality should also be noted. Evidence from a series of experiments by von Bommel et al. suggested that when participants increased their public-self-awareness (i.e. presence of a camera), this was enough to make them help more when in the presence of other bystanders. Therefore, individuals who are in the presence of audience and become more publicly self-aware may be more likely to be motivated to help due to the concerns of being held accountable for their own behavioural actions by other bystanders. In other words, group influence for the bystander effect can be reversed if individuals become aware of the reputational costs and rewards for their intervention and are thus more publicly self-aware.
Photo by Austin Kehmeier on Unsplash
One vs. Many
Similarly, research on bystander effects have also revealed that the requirement of interdependence can affect the helping behaviour of individuals. For example, findings from a study conducted on Austrian university students showed that when the study required only one helper participants were less likely to help if more bystanders are available to also help compared to when many helpers are required, participants will be more likely to intervene. These results can explain the reversal of bystander effects by making the suggestion that individuals use rational considerations when judging whether to intervene in a situation or not and such rationalities may increase helping behaviour. As a result, this could mean that individuals may be more influenced to help when the assistance of many people are required, even if other bystanders are already present, due to their rational processes rather than group influence itself.
Photo by Perry Grone on Unsplash
The Role of Empathy
Empathy can be defined as the “ability to understand and share others’ emotion, which plays a key role in social behaviours”. A number of models and hypotheses view empathy as an emotional state which can have individuals display altruistic behaviour (remember this? selfless helping behaviour), such as the empathy-altruistic hypothesis. Subsequently, empathy has been utilized by social psychologists as evidence when investigating the corruptive nature of groups. This can be illustrated through studies such as that by Stürmer et al. After conducting two separate experiments focusing on empathy and helping behaviour between in-group and out-group members using Muslim and non-Muslim German university students, it was found that empathy was a strong indication of helping intentions when the target and participants were of a similar cultural background (in-group) compared to when both were of different backgrounds (out-group). Also, findings showed that the more intragroup (within the same group) similarities found between the participant and the target affected the impact of empathy on the target. Therefore, such evidence suggests that members of a group tend to be less empathetic as well as altruistic towards out-group individuals. This can be viewed as evidence for the potential corruptive influence groups may have on its members morality as the lack of empathy towards other out-group individuals tends to be characteristic of group normality.
Research focusing on racial group membership effects on neural responses of empathy have found similar results. Findings from a study conducted using fMRI and behavioural surveys on Chinese and Caucasian college students while watching clips of racially similar (in-group) or racially dissimilar (out-group) individuals either receiving painful or non-painful stimulation show that brain-specific empathic responses decreased significantly when viewing out-group faces. This establishes the assumption that group influence can have a significant impact on neural activation in the brain which can lead to morally questionable behaviour such as decreased empathy for non-similar races.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
Yet, findings from studies focusing on empathy and group influence can provide evidence to also suggest that showing empathic behaviour to other groups can in fact increase the helping of the group overall. Research conducted on American university students using a fund allocation task found that participants who were induced to feel empathy (i.e. ‘imagine how the person feels’) towards a drug addicts interview had reported more positive attitudes toward people addicted to drugs (an overall stigmatized group) and were even more likely to allocate more student funding to agencies helping drug addicts than those who were not induced. Similar, but less significant findings were found when participants were told that the scenario was fictional. This would suggest that it is clearly possible for groups to use empathy as a technique to increase altruistic behaviour towards other stigmatized groups and change attitudes of stigmatized groups overall rather than corrupting the moral behaviour of its members.
Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash
The Danger of Parochial Altruism
Another method for investigating the corruptive effects of group influence on an individual’s morality can be evident through the observation of changes in altruistic behaviour. Parochial altruism can be defined as “a person’s self-sacrifice to benefit their own group (in-group love) and to derogate, hurt and sabotage competing out-groups (out-group aggression)”. This type of altruism can give researchers insight into the impact which groups may have over its members moral behaviour towards others. For example, studies focusing on parochial altruism and in-group prosociality (behaviours to benefit others of the same group)through the use of a version of the public goods game on undergraduate students found that many participants in the aggression condition chose option ‘Project B’, which required them to invest 1 monetary unit (MU) in order to gain double the amount as well as take away a MU from the victimization group. Participants in this condition also chose option ‘Project C’, whereby the participants would sacrifice a MU in order to take away a MU from the victimization group. The behaviour found in this study are consistent with that of parochially altruistic behaviour, demonstrating members acting in a sacrificial manner to benefit their in-group, while showing hostility and aggression to the out-group. This suggests that having a membership to a group can have an influence on a person’s behaviour towards other people outside the group, which in some cases, can include morally corruptive behaviour such as hostility and aggression.
Further studies highlight the importance of biological components that can trigger parochial altruistic behaviour in an individual when the in-group confronts a perceived threat from a competing out-group. A series of experiments conducted on male participants and using the prisoner’s dilemma found that individuals who were given oxytocin (a peptide hormone produced in the brain and playing a role in social bonding), compared to a placebo, had displayed higher levels of in-group trust as well as in-group love. These individuals also showed “defensive forms of out-group aggression when out-group threat was eminent”. This demonstrates that the humans have evolved predisposition to be able to promote one’s social life as well as defend and protect one’s group against external threats. As a result, being part of a group can increase the likelihood of triggering an individual’s biological mechanisms such as increased levels of oxytocin to display in-group prosocial behaviour and even defensive behaviour towards out-group individuals, reinforcing the assumption that members of a group are more likely to display morally corruptive behaviour such as parochial altruism.
Photo by Robina Weermeijer on Unsplash
Suceptible but not Definitive
However, studies on individuals under group influence have also shown altruistic behaviour towards out-group individuals as an effect of group membership. Researchers studying social influence and parochial altruism in Chinese students aged 4–15 years found that when told to participate in a dictator-game experiment, students tended to adjust the number of stickers they would allocate to a different-class recipient (target) based on the information they were given on how much a same-class recipient (reference) gave to the target, increasing their giving to the target when the reference was seen as more generous. Such findings imply that although individuals can be susceptible to in-group influence to behave in accordance with the group, individuals also adjust their helping behaviour to in-group and out-group individuals based on how they treat each other. In other words, being part of a group does not suggest that individual members are bound to behaving in a demoralized manner, but can instead follow the altruistic behaviour exemplified by other members towards out-group individuals.
Author’s Opinions and Conclusions
The aim of this article has been to investigate the different reasons for the corruption of individual morality through group pressure and social influence. Using scientific evidence, a number of key aspects of social behaviour were highlighted to provide explanations for the possibility that being under group influence could lead to decreased empathy towards out-group members, the lack of intervention in dangerous scenarios and the emergence of parochial altruism. The evaluation of contradictory findings was also utilized to emphasize the criticism of the use of evidence concerning the social behaviour attributes as valid explanations for group corruption of morality. Based on the evidence gathered, it could be concluded that various factors exist that explain morally corruptive behaviour and should be considered when combining with the influence of groups.
This partcular piece was written a few years back and having found it again, I could not help but to find the relevance of this article to the current state of societal issues happening now. At a time where we are unsure of which groups to support, which groups are having a negative influence on society and overall how our own morals are being affected by all the intense social influence occurring, it is important to evaluate the arguments of groups and understand the manner in which they treat other out-group members. Movements such as Black Lives Matter (BLM) are so extensive and have awoken a worldwide response that it is easy to lose yourself in what is being reported about the group and the cause compared to how the movement may actually respond to others. The next time you truly want to evaluate the motives and genuine behaviour of certain groups such as BLM and ANTIFA to distinguish corruption and helpful behaviour, focus on the level of empathy the group shows, the level of intervention during dangerous situations and whether parochial altruism is present. | https://medium.com/@adrianparis/from-blm-to-antifa-do-groups-really-corrupt-peoples-morality-b148dc1616cb | ['Adrian Paris'] | 2020-06-10 22:32:15.493000+00:00 | ['Groups', 'Corruption', 'Social Psychology', 'BlackLivesMatter', 'Morality'] |
Show data on mouse-over with d3.js | You’ve made it to a point with your data project that you’d like to add mouse over effects. First of all- congrats! You’ve made a graph! If you haven’t made a graph yet, I suggest following my donut chart tutorial. I’ll be building off of it here, so it may be a helpful reference.
Where should mouse-over code go?
To get started, let’s figure out where this code needs to be. Looking at our donut chart example, let’s find the path variable we created.
var path = svg.selectAll('path')
.data(pie(totals))
.enter()
.append('path')
.attr('d', arc)
.attr('fill', function (d, i) {
return color(d.data.title);
})
.attr('transform', 'translate(0, 0)')
This code creates the different segments of our donut chart. If we want something to happen when the user hovers over them, it should go here.
Adding a simple hover effect
To get started, let’s add an effect that changes the opacity of the segment on hover. We’re going use the .on method to add mouseover and mouseout effects to path . The mouseover changes the opacity to .85, and the mouseout changes it back to 1.
Now path looks like:
var path = svg.selectAll('path')
.data(pie(totals))
.enter()
.append('path')
.attr('d', arc)
.attr('fill', function (d, i) {
return color(d.data.title);
})
.attr('transform', 'translate(0, 0)') //Our new hover effects
.on('mouseover', function (d, i) {
d3.select(this).transition()
.duration('50')
.attr('opacity', '.85'); .on('mouseout', function (d, i) {
d3.select(this).transition()
.duration('50')
.attr('opacity', '1');
Awesome! You should see the opacity slightly change as you hover over each section. Time to move on to something a little more complex.
Showing values on hover
To show the value of each segment on hover, we’ll need to add a few more pieces than last time. Let’s start with a div where the value will go.
We need to add a div that appends to the body, but isn’t visible. I added this right before path :
var div = d3.select("body").append("div")
.attr("class", "tooltip-donut")
.style("opacity", 0);
We need to make this div visible when the user hovers over each segment, and make it disappear again when the user moves on. We’ll do this in path :
var path = svg.selectAll('path')
.data(pie(totals))
.enter()
.append('path')
.attr('d', arc)
.attr('fill', function (d, i) {
return color(d.data.title);
})
.attr('transform', 'translate(0, 0)')
.on('mouseover', function (d, i) {
d3.select(this).transition()
.duration('50')
.attr('opacity', '.85'); //Makes the new div appear on hover:
div.transition()
.duration(50)
.style("opacity", 1);
})
.on('mouseout', function (d, i) {
d3.select(this).transition()
.duration('50')
.attr('opacity', '1'); //Makes the new div disappear:
div.transition()
.duration('50')
.style("opacity", 0);
});
Now we need to put the value into the div and place it near the user’s mouse. If you just want to show the value, html(d.value) is all you need to do for that. We’ll be using d3.event.pageX and d3.event.pageY to place the div near the user’s mouse. Feel free to adjust the +/- values to get the placement right for your graph.
div.html(d.value)
.style("left", (d3.event.pageX + 10) + "px")
.style("top", (d3.event.pageY - 15) + "px");
For my donut chart, I wanted to show the percentage, not the value. My data set uses d.data.all for the totals of each data set. I added a variable called num to calculate the percentage, and then used the same code as above.
let num = (Math.round((d.value / d.data.all) * 100)).toString() + '%'; div.html(num)
.style("left", (d3.event.pageX + 10) + "px")
.style("top", (d3.event.pageY - 15) + "px");
Note: Using Math.round() when calculating percentages makes sure you get nice whole numbers.
If you’re only using one data set, or all of your data sets have the same total, you can use d.value and hardcode the total like this:
let num = (Math.round((d.value / 1038) * 100)).toString() + '%';
Our finished div and path javascript looks like this:
var div = d3.select("body").append("div")
.attr("class", "tooltip-donut")
.style("opacity", 0); var path = svg.selectAll('path')
.data(pie(totals))
.enter()
.append('path')
.attr('d', arc)
.attr('fill', function (d, i) {
return color(d.data.title);
})
.attr('transform', 'translate(0, 0)')
.on('mouseover', function (d, i) {
d3.select(this).transition()
.duration('50')
.attr('opacity', '.85');
div.transition()
.duration(50)
.style("opacity", 1);
let num = (Math.round((d.value / d.data.all) * 100)).toString() + '%';
div.html(num)
.style("left", (d3.event.pageX + 10) + "px")
.style("top", (d3.event.pageY - 15) + "px");
}) .on('mouseout', function (d, i) {
d3.select(this).transition()
.duration('50')
.attr('opacity', '1');
div.transition()
.duration('50')
.style("opacity", 0);
});
Styling the div
The styling I used is pretty minimal. Make sure you used the class .tooltip-donut in the div you created so the css will work (or change both to whatever you want, just make sure they match).
div.tooltip-donut {
position: absolute;
text-align: center;
padding: .5rem;
background: #FFFFFF;
color: #313639;
border: 1px solid #313639;
border-radius: 8px;
pointer-events: none;
font-size: 1.3rem;
}
Your chart now has hover effects! Great job!
If you have any issues and want to see my full code, check it out on github.
I’ve also written tutorial about adding hover effects and showing data on mouse-over for a scatter plot or line chart. | https://medium.com/@kj_schmidt/show-data-on-mouse-over-with-d3-js-3bf598ff8fc2 | ['Kj Schmidt'] | 2019-03-13 21:23:13.865000+00:00 | ['Data Visualization', 'JavaScript', 'Data', 'Donut Chart', 'D3js'] |
Be Born in Me ~ You Will Hold me in the End | “They are here to take me home now. Everything is true and it is better than we ever imagined. I will see you soon.” — CFB
Happy Christmas Dear Reader,
What did you write down yesterday? I hope you have begun to hold him as your own. If you have there is an inherent promise that you also hold in your hands. That is the promise that he will hold you in the end.
Someone had the good sense to write down my Grandfather’s last words. They were simply this, “They are here to take me home now. Everything is true and it is better than we ever imagined. I will see you soon.” The short time we had together was a time when he constantly wanted me to see Jesus and embrace him. I would not do that until he had been gone for five years.
We get excited about signs and portents like plagues and planetary conjunctions when what we can see daily is that Jesus promised to hold us at the end of things. Whether that is my reaching the clearing at the end of the journey or Jesus coming back to collect me, I long for it. I know that this journey is one to a place that is better, richer, and more than I can ponder.
This is why I carry Christmas in my heart all year long. I do not spend a single day without pondering the promise of that great and immanent celebration of Christ (that is what Christ-mass means). It is not the momentary instances of joy and excitement. I do treasure that. It is the long view that enchants me. It is the time when Christmas keeps the promise that it makes from December to December.
I embrace that promise in the Dog Days of Summer. I try to live that promise in the green of Spring and the fire of Autumn. I am writing down that I believe that Jesus will hold me in the end. He will hold all who will allow it and that is a beautiful thing. He will flood the world with his love for us.
As we turn to Christmas Eve, I long for you to have the gift that matters most. I deeply desire for you to embrace Jesus and embark on this journey of faith and following. I love you, Dear Reader. Please share with me the thoughts you write down. If you have questions, you can send those as well. We are on the verge of Christmas and it has promises to keep.
Promises to Keep — Trans-Siberian Orchestra
Christmas time
On a cold December morning
All is calm
And the world is still asleep
Christmas lights
That have been caught without warning
Gently glitter on
Stars to wish upon
All the world is at peace
Christmas time and the year will soon be leaving
Cloaked in time till it’s just a memory
Christmas stays if we don’t forget its meaning
Days go quickly by
Years they multiply
And we go searching for thee
And the dream is still alive
From that first December morning
And it always will survive
As long as we can see
That the dreams we find in life
Are the dreams we tend to seek
And Christmas has its promises to keep
Christmas time
And the moments just beginning
From last night
When we’d wished upon a star
If our kindness
This day is just pretending
If we pretend long enough
Never giving up
It just might be who we are
Wishing you joy in the journey,
Aramis Thorn
Mat 13:52 So Jesus said to them, “That is why every writer who has become a disciple of Christ’s rule of the universe is like a homeowner. He liberally hands out new and old things from his great treasure store.”
(͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Every human story is part of the great story that leads to the Father getting everything back to Good.
Contacts for Aramis Thorn:
#aramisthorn
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“They are here to take me home now. Everything is true and it is better than we ever imagined. I will see you soon.” — CFB | https://medium.com/@bdsnso1992/be-born-in-me-you-will-hold-me-in-the-end-d0750a36065 | ['Aramis Thorn'] | 2020-12-23 10:18:36.972000+00:00 | ['Journey', 'Christmas', 'Love', 'Following Christ', 'Faith'] |
The Wonderful World of Completely Random Facts — Issue 2 | A Sinking City
Mexico City is sinking at a rate of 18 inches per year. Unfortunately the city was built by the Aztecs in the middle of a lake that had formed in a volcanic crater. As the city continued to grow, the soil compacted and the water was removed from the underground aquifer, further adding to the problem.
Come back again for more Completely Random Facts here on Fact World. For more fun fact articles, travel on over to Knowledge Stew here on Medium. | https://medium.com/fact-world/the-wonderful-world-of-completely-random-facts-issue-2-baa93284ca6d | ['Daniel Ganninger'] | 2020-12-18 06:23:10.132000+00:00 | ['Trivia', 'Fun', 'World', 'Interesting', 'Facts'] |
3 Simple Strategies In Implementing The Law Of Attraction Principles | Photo by Tomas Anunziata from Pexels
Perhaps you’ve heard of Law Of Attraction and you have been curious about it, but you shove it in the back burner to explore later.
Here’s a low-down on the principles of Law Of Attraction and how to implement them in your life.
But first things first. Let’s define Law Of Attraction.
Law Of Attraction refers to the principle of attracting your heart’s desire by focusing on them.
In a nutshell, it means you attract what you think about most of the time.
It’s similar to the principle behind self-fulfilling prophecy.
The difference is self-fulfilling prophecy is focusing on things unconsciously while Law Of Attraction focuses on things with intention and with the desire to fulfill it.
Simple. Right?
So, whatever you desire in your heart, say for instance, you would like to have a fantastic breakfast tomorrow, by mere thought, you’re priming your mind to have a hearty meal for breakfast. Now, included there would be visualizing what would qualify for a fantastic breakfast for you. Perhaps that would be having, bacon, sunny side up eggs, toast, and the like.
And true enough, the next day, that’s what you look for and these things gravitate to you.
On the other hand, you can also focus on negative things and they will get attracted to you as well.
The universe understands your heart, your intention, and your subconscious mind. It sends to you what you have been focusing on.
If you want to leverage the power of Law Of Attraction, here are some simple strategies to follow:
1. Always be grateful.
What this means is that you are always thankful for what you have. This will set you up for a more positive outlook in life.
Law Of Attraction works more if you have a joyful heart. You tend to see the beauty in things when you are happy. Joy and happiness are a prerequisite in order to get your desires fulfilled.
· If you continue to remind yourself of this, you will create a habit of finding what’s the seed of equivalent benefit of everything. Everything becomes a learning experience. You welcome all experiences as positive.
· Remembering what you are grateful for every moment, your mind becomes receptive to all good things in life. You start looking and finding more fantastic things happening in your life. You start to attract memories and events that make you feel fantastic to be alive.
· Being grateful reminds you that you create your circumstances in your life and that you can create wonderful effects every single moment. You will no longer be a recipient of experiences, but rather you become a participant in creating your fantastic moments.
2. Leave thoughts that create negative effects.
If things are not getting the way you want it and frustration, anger, or antagonism become your mood. Put a pause to everything. Take a break. Take a walk. Find what’s good that’s happening right now. Do this until you start smiling and laughing. Remember, you attract what you mostly think about. Angry thoughts beget more angry thoughts. Happy thoughts beget more happy thoughts.
· You have the power to shift your focus. But between, negative focus and positive focus, there’s a space of time. Allow your negative thoughts to calm down and shift your focus on something else that will make you smile. For instance, you were not able to do what you planned on doing that day. You feel frustrated. Change that mood into a more positive one by focusing on what good that happened. You’re not able to finish your writing that day, but you’ve had restful nap you have been planning all week but never get around to doing. Love everything that happens.
· Sometimes, a passage from a book or a video on YouTube can uplift you. Find something that will help you feel better in all the resources you find around you. The goal is to shift your mood. To smile. To laugh. Smile brings more smile. Laughter brings more laughter.
3. Articulate what you want clearly.
Have you heard of the phrase by Rumi: What you seek is seeking you? The thought you have is uniquely yours and those are desires that are uniquely yours as well. The fact that you have that thought, it is signpost or a message that you might need to pursue it should you make that decision. Law Of Attraction says that whatever you desire with great intent and clarity, it will come to pass.
· What you think about all the time will become the focus of your attention and action, provided it is defined clearly. Action is spurred by your thought and your emotion. The more you visualize about what you desire, you will be led into a series of actions that will eventually fulfill what you’re seeking.
· The clearer you get as well as the truest reason on why you desire what you desire will help align your thought an emotion in tackling this. When thoughts and emotion are one, you become powerful in finding the resources you need to get closer to your goal. The universe understands you completely. It also knows if you’re unclear. It helps you though to get clarity over time by providing you instances that will help you see with laser-like focus on what you need to see.
Understanding how Law Of Attraction works will automatically get you grooved in and it will help you implement and experiment on it. Have fun with it. The principle behind all this is that you have the power to attain anything you set your mind to do. There are forces in the universe that will help you along the way. Just make sure you are enjoying the journey because Law Of Attraction works when you’re joyful. | https://medium.com/@dolfor2000/three-simple-strategies-in-implementing-the-law-of-attraction-principles-8bb4273efe95 | ['Rodolfo Rabonza'] | 2020-12-08 01:27:13.727000+00:00 | ['Positive Thinking', 'Law Of Attraction', 'Goal Setting', 'Goals', 'Strategies For Success'] |
Write With Us | Do you write poetry?
Do you write poetry in more than one languages?
Do you struggle to get your poetry published at ‘famous’ publications?
Do you feel your poetry is not valued elsewhere?
Would you like to start writing poetry?
If you replied YES to any of the questions above, we’d like to hear from you.
But I write poetry only in English, you might think. NO WORRIES — we have polyglot poets who can help translate your work into various languages; German, Urdu, Hindi, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, and French, to name a few.
We are not here to backstab, badmouth, do politics, or criticize your work. Instead, we are here to support you, help you write better poetry, learn new language skills, and most important of all — ensure you make new friends who speak various languages from all around the world.
Write with us, not for us. Together, we can learn writing poetry in multiple languages. Let your poetry be translated and read by those who don’t understand your language. Let the love flow through your polyglot words.
If you’d like to be added as a writer, please:
Drop us an email at: [email protected] mentioning your Medium user name.
Or comment on this post, and we’ll add you within 24 hours.
Image from Europe Language Jobs
Cheers,
Salam and Kevin | https://medium.com/polyglot-poetry/write-with-us-2f0bbcfe59f2 | ['Salam Khan'] | 2020-05-05 12:50:25.741000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Polyglot', 'Write With Us', 'Polyglot Poetry', 'Invitation'] |
How to Avoid a Catastrophe: Lessons for Communicators from Futurist Amy Webb | A highlight of each year’s Online News Association conference is futurist Amy Webb’s presentation on the trends that will impact the future of news, technology, and information. This year marked a turning point in Webb’s 10 years of presenting at ONA.
Source: Future Today Institute, 2017
Instead of presenting an optimistic vision of how technology will improve the quality and distribution of news, Webb painted a dystopic future, cautioning that if communicators and publishers do not recognize where some trends are leading, they could contribute to the decline of the industry, society, and possibly democracy.
These trends include the rising volume of fake news, the market dominance of a small number of technology companies, the commoditization of personal data, and the likelihood that other countries are harnessing social platforms to sow confusion and chaos.
“What’s about to happen is going to fundamentally alter journalism,” she says. “We are going to wind up on the other side of this with a media landscape that we may not recognize.”
But Webb believes there are three possible versions of what’s to come.
In her optimistic prediction, media leaders take immediate actions to preserve publishers’ independence and foster a strong democracy. Social and business leaders think through the implications of technological advances to avoid threats to individual rights.
In her pragmatic prediction, media leaders are reactive and have minimal influence in shaping technology. Some businesses will thrive, but the public’s trust in institutions may further wane. This is the path that Webb sees as most likely to happen at current levels of innovation.
Her final prediction is the catastrophic prediction. In this scenario, a handful of tech companies have an unbalanced influence on the rest of society, the media industry fails to innovate and loses public trust while bad actors use technological advances to create further chaos in the news cycle. The changes pose an existential risk to democracy and global security.
If it sounds grim, that’s because it is. That’s why Webb encouraged all attendees to be proactive and to prepare for the technology as if it exists today. Her recommendations apply to all communications leaders, not just news publishers, editors, and reporters.
Here are the three key insights from Webb’s presentation. For each we map out the best- and worst-case scenario and one thing you can start doing today to support the best-case scenario for your organization and society.
1. What happens after websites?
Soon, you won’t type information into a browser or click through an app. Instead, you will ask a question to your mobile device or smart speaker and you’ll receive an audio response. Webb calls this the “zero-user interface” setting.
Users will have conversations with machines, and the computers will know the type of information the user is looking for and will respond instantly. The interactions will be intuitive, but there will be a trade-off in knowing whether the information is coming from a credible source.
“In a zero UI setting, it will be awkward to cite sources and news brands,” Webb says.
How will communicators ensure that their organization is properly cited when it is the source of a voice search? Which voice queries should surface information about the organization? How do marketers build a brand reputation without a visual identity? How do companies plan to surface in voice results without SEO or content marketing?
Optimistic case:
In a best-case scenario, organizations will begin to test business models, ask what happens next, and plan for a future that’s less visual and more conversational. But right now, Webb says organizations are building voice applications for Alexa and failing to think about how voice will impact their revenue.
Catastrophic case:
Without a proactive business plan, organizations could lose control of the media landscape. Nine organizations — groups like Facebook and Google — would control the revenue opportunities for news organizations and the advertising channels for other businesses. Without trusted news sources, fake news could thrive, possibly increasing the risk of global turmoil.
One action you can take today:
Prepare for the future by observing the voice search habits of a three-year-old. Children who can’t type or read are using their parents’ smartphones and tablets with the help of voice assistants. The head of design for Google Search and Assistant, Hector Ouilhet, uses the interactions between his daughter and Google’s voice search to understand how the technology should evolve to meet user needs.
2. The importance of the open web
The current atmosphere of fake news combined with concerns about privacy, monopolies, free speech, and automation will drive governments to regulate how these platforms can be used to share information. Webb and others predict that this will result in a “splinternet” with each country having varied access to news and information.
Optimistic Case:
One way to avoid this future is for organizations to advocate for better news and information practices, such as verification for trusted sources of news and information, Webb says. This could cut down on the rise of fake news, ease the distrust that audiences are already feeling toward media and other institutions, and decrease the pressure for governments to regulate access.
Catastrophic Case:
Without these regulations, communicators could spend more time customizing content approaches, studying the legalities of online distribution, and contextualizing the news environment in places where they want to advertise or share information. The proliferation of systems will be difficult to manage and thus have a higher risk of cyberattacks. In this environment, there is greater potential for widespread misinformation campaigns, says Webb.
One action you can take today:
Use this study of the most trusted news sources in 2017 to shape your approach to earning the public’s trust. In an analysis of the most common three-word phrases used to describe sources, the researchers found that the most credible reporting showed multiple sides of a story or was shared by multiple news organizations.
3. Computer recognition gets eerily accurate
Platforms like Snapchat and Instagram are already using visual recognition technologies to create photo filters that interact with people and objects in the real world.
“Visual computing allows us to do things like recognize and interpret human health, emotion, and characteristics,” Webb says.
This technology has the potential to be creepy — for example, some cities in China have used visual recognition to call out jaywalkers — but it can also be useful. In the future, communicators may be able to use recognition technologies to customize experiences for their audiences.
Optimistic Case:
More organizations use visual computing data to create and distribute stories in unique ways. These groups recognize the risks of cognitive bias and establish procedures to avoid inadvertently putting others at a disadvantage.
Catastrophic Case:
The worst-case scenario is nearly the opposite, with people and organizations negatively impacted by the decisions of algorithms and many dealing with what Webb calls “digital graffiti” — malicious digital content created by bad actors and overlaid onto real-world settings through augmented reality.
One action you can take today:
Play with Google’s Teachable Machine. It’s a demo that illustrates how artificial intelligence can learn from images. You train the machine, and watch it learn. You’ll come away with an understanding of visual identification and machine learning. Train the machine accurately and you can see the benefits of AI, but mislead the machine, and you can begin to understand concerns about algorithmic biases.
Become adapters, not adopters
The key to preparing for these technologies is to become early adapters, rather than early adopters, Webb says. “I don’t want you to go out and find all of the latest, coolest tech,” she says, “… I want you to start thinking in a different way. I want everybody to start taking incremental actions on trends each and every day.” We hope the exercises we’ve shared here will help you begin.
With contributions from Liza Kaufman Hogan, director of Atlantic Media Strategies’ editorial team. | https://medium.com/atlantic-57/how-to-avoid-a-catastrophe-lessons-for-communicators-from-futurist-amy-webb-34112650ddbb | ['Sarah Harkins'] | 2017-10-20 18:57:39.056000+00:00 | ['Communication', 'Media Trends', 'Future', 'Technology', 'Social Media'] |
How Much of Your Home Life Will Be Automated in 2030? | How Much of Your Home Life Will Be Automated in 2030?
Automation is already taking over your home and your workplace. We’re using complex algorithms to handle back-end processes, and we have in the tech industry for many years, but now users are starting to create their own mini algorithms. For example, if you have a smart home device like a smart thermostat, you may have it set to raise the temperature around 5 pm, in anticipation of you getting home from work, but lower the temperature around 8 am, when you leave for work. ReadWrite Follow Sep 4, 2019 · 6 min read
This is automation-taking care of the tasks you’d do otherwise, without your manual input. And as you might suspect, a greater portion of your life is going to be automated in the future as new apps, new devices, and other kinds of new technology emerge.
But exactly how much of your home life will be automated by 2030? And is that level of automation a good thing?
The Problem With Defining Automation
When you think of automation, you probably imagine a robot taking care of the housework for you, or a TV wiping itself down like it’s out of a Jetsons cartoon. But automation isn’t always so overt. In fact, it tends to creep up in our lives slowly until we take it for granted; in fact, you could feasibly include your alarm clock, an invention that’s been around since 1787, as a form of automation.
It’s also hard to define automation because it’s hard to say how much human input is necessary to negate the definition. For example, if you make a manual tweak to your automated thermostat cycle, is that no longer considered automation? What if you only use the automated temperature cycling one day a week?
With that in mind, we need to be careful about how we talk about automation in the home environment.
What’s Hard to Automate
Instead of thinking of all the things that could be automated in 2030, it’s easier to list all the things that would be extraordinarily difficult to automate by 2030. While the pace of technological development is always increasing (and breakthroughs are hard to predict), there are still some significant challenges in the fields of AI and automation. If we study these unique challenges, it should be easy to guess which elements of your home life will remain untouched by automation for the foreseeable future.
Force control. For starters, robots have significant trouble trying to exert precision force control. As a human being, force control is so intuitive we don’t realize how complex it really is. We’re able to pick up a small, fragile glass in a manner that’s firm enough to hold it in place by soft enough not to break it. We’re also able to squeeze a stress ball as tightly or as loosely as we want. But for a robotic agent, this is incredibly difficult, especially in an environment that’s always changing, or when dealing with objects of variant fragility. Accordingly, tasks that require some degree of force precision, like mixing drinks or grooming the dog, are unlikely to be automated for some time.
For starters, robots have significant trouble trying to exert precision force control. As a human being, force control is so intuitive we don’t realize how complex it really is. We’re able to pick up a small, fragile glass in a manner that’s firm enough to hold it in place by soft enough not to break it. We’re also able to squeeze a stress ball as tightly or as loosely as we want. But for a robotic agent, this is incredibly difficult, especially in an environment that’s always changing, or when dealing with objects of variant fragility. Accordingly, tasks that require some degree of force precision, like mixing drinks or grooming the dog, are unlikely to be automated for some time. Complex or multi-faceted tasks. Similarly, tasks that require multiple steps, or rely on some complex level of understanding are unlikely to be automated. It’s straightforward to develop a machine or an app that can do one specific thing-like control the heating and cooling units of your home. But for something more complex, like cleaning the house, there are many individual steps involved and many physical skills that are required to do the job. In the meantime, you’ll have to clean your own house, or hire another human being to do it.
Similarly, tasks that require multiple steps, or rely on some complex level of understanding are unlikely to be automated. It’s straightforward to develop a machine or an app that can do one specific thing-like control the heating and cooling units of your home. But for something more complex, like cleaning the house, there are many individual steps involved and many physical skills that are required to do the job. In the meantime, you’ll have to clean your own house, or hire another human being to do it. Tasks that require a communication interface. Some tasks require some communication interface to be automated successfully; for example, a robot attempting to complete some task may make a call to a succession of other machines to determine whether it’s appropriate to take a specific action. This is important for data-intensive applications and for precision work that needs information from multiple other units to be executed properly.
Some tasks require some communication interface to be automated successfully; for example, a robot attempting to complete some task may make a call to a succession of other machines to determine whether it’s appropriate to take a specific action. This is important for data-intensive applications and for precision work that needs information from multiple other units to be executed properly. Tasks with multiple conditions. It’s simple to create an algorithm with a binary input and output; for example, a paper towel dispenser will provide a towel if it senses a hand and will not operate if it doesn’t. By contrast, it’s hard to create an algorithm with multiple interconnected conditional requirements. The more variables you have controlling the need or direction of a given task, the harder that task will be to automate.
It’s simple to create an algorithm with a binary input and output; for example, a paper towel dispenser will provide a towel if it senses a hand and will not operate if it doesn’t. By contrast, it’s hard to create an algorithm with multiple interconnected conditional requirements. The more variables you have controlling the need or direction of a given task, the harder that task will be to automate. Personal interaction. Of course, AI has always had a problem replicating personal interaction, or substituting our need for human interaction. This is a more complicated issue, reaching far beyond the limitations of pure automation, but it’s still worth considering. While many modern jobs stand to be automated by 2030, any job that requires some degree of human-to-human contact or interaction (like therapy or social work) is likely safe. The same is true of personal interaction in your home life, though it’s unlikely you’d want to automate that in the first place.
What You Can Expect
So what kinds of automation can you expect to come to your home in the next 10 years or so?
Sensors everywhere. First, you can expect your home to have sensors everywhere, provided you consent to having them. They’ll study your patterns of your behavior, and take note of different environmental changes-like the number of dust particles in the air. Some of these data will be used to automate tasks directly. Other data will be collected and used by smart home tech companies trying to solve more complex automation problems; the more data they have to analyze, the closer they’ll get to finding a proper solution.
First, you can expect your home to have sensors everywhere, provided you consent to having them. They’ll study your patterns of your behavior, and take note of different environmental changes-like the number of dust particles in the air. Some of these data will be used to automate tasks directly. Other data will be collected and used by smart home tech companies trying to solve more complex automation problems; the more data they have to analyze, the closer they’ll get to finding a proper solution. Lighting changes. Lighting is one of the most ubiquitous household features, and it usually has only a binary output; the light is either off or on. We already have some tricks and technologies to help us automate out lighting, such as timers that turn lights on at a given time or sensors that turn lights on when we’re in a room, but these aren’t typically convenient for the average homeowner because schedules and needs can be unpredictable. More refined controls and behavioral predictions could revolutionize this within the next few years.
Lighting is one of the most ubiquitous household features, and it usually has only a binary output; the light is either off or on. We already have some tricks and technologies to help us automate out lighting, such as timers that turn lights on at a given time or sensors that turn lights on when we’re in a room, but these aren’t typically convenient for the average homeowner because schedules and needs can be unpredictable. More refined controls and behavioral predictions could revolutionize this within the next few years. New kitchen protocols. Many kitchen-related and kitchen-adjacent activities, like cooking, shopping for groceries, and some types of cleanup, could soon be automated-or at least partially automated. While this would require the interaction of multiple devices and apps to collect the data necessary to make a decision, the output actions (like adjusting the oven to a certain temperature) aren’t particularly complex.
Many kitchen-related and kitchen-adjacent activities, like cooking, shopping for groceries, and some types of cleanup, could soon be automated-or at least partially automated. While this would require the interaction of multiple devices and apps to collect the data necessary to make a decision, the output actions (like adjusting the oven to a certain temperature) aren’t particularly complex. Health-related notifications. The healthcare industry is one of the most likely fields to enter the IoT space, giving patients remote monitoring devices and more opportunities to get the care they need without coming into the doctor’s office or hospital. Accordingly, our home lives may soon provide us with more helpful automation to keep us in good health, like intelligent reminders to take certain medications, or notifications when certain biomarkers are falling below or rising above certain thresholds.
The healthcare industry is one of the most likely fields to enter the IoT space, giving patients remote monitoring devices and more opportunities to get the care they need without coming into the doctor’s office or hospital. Accordingly, our home lives may soon provide us with more helpful automation to keep us in good health, like intelligent reminders to take certain medications, or notifications when certain biomarkers are falling below or rising above certain thresholds. Recommendations over tasks. Rather than wholly automating our home lives, it’s likely that automation and algorithms will prioritize making recommendations. For example, rather than simply turning the lights off at a certain time or playing a certain movie based on our preferences, algorithms would give us a prompt to take these actions, giving us a final stage of input before taking a specific course of action. Incidentally, this could also go a long way in making technophobes feel more comfortable integrating new technologies into their home lives.
Automation and AI still have a long way to go before they completely take over our jobs and our home lives, but the smart home revolution has already begun. Don’t expect your 2030 home to be radically different than the home you enjoy today; while there are many novel features that could be automated or partially automated within the next few years, there are significant challenges in the way of more advanced functionalities. | https://medium.com/readwrite/how-much-of-your-home-life-will-be-automated-in-2030-readwrite-122c086ef6b0 | [] | 2019-11-14 21:25:04.010000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence', 'Automation', 'Smart Home', 'Internet of Things'] |
3 Questions to Separate Good and Bad SaaS Project Requests | Wearing both the hats of Customer Success and Professional Services, I’ve found that a primary function of my role is to help customers imagine what is possible with the software. In conversation they bring ideas to the table and I help them assess the validity of those ideas. There are ideas of all shapes and sizes, it’s exciting but also overwhelming.
Like an investor you have limited resources, primarily time. Often, picking one project means cooling the jets on another prospect. So how do you know which to pick? It’s not as simple as the one that pays the most…
These three questions help me sift through the dreams and qualify mutually beneficial high value opportunities. The goal is not only to satisfy your customer but to do right by the company and invest your energy into activities that provide a strong return.
What is the Project’s Business Value?
This is the first question I ask, always. I want to know why they’re considering the project and make sure they have a strong case for it.
Overlook this step and you run the risk of sinking time and energy into a “flavor of the month” idea that will fizzle over time. Maybe interest doesn’t wane, but the idea doesn’t have a strong enough case to win an endorsement from the customer’s management.
Sound bad? That’s the best case scenario. Worse off, build and deliver the project only for the customer to find out it was a straw man and did not provide the right outcomes. Trust will be damaged and that is not worth the short term revenue boost of a one-time project.
To the best of your ability you have to ensure the expected outcomes of a prospective project have been clearly thought out. Without this answer you are at risk of wasting time and eroding trust.
Ask this question and one of two things will happen. You receive a positive answer and a box has been checked; milestone reached keep on going. You receive a negative or non-existent answer. Now you’re ahead of the problem and can say no because you’re doing what’s best for the customer. This helps build trust. By asking this question you always win.
Will the Customer’s Value Metric Grow?
Before we get into this question let me define value metric as the scalable lever that account growth is based on. Common examples include licenses, usage, storage, or premium features.
Why is this important? Subscription models are driven by retention and expansion. A good project has lasting value, in other words recurring revenue. A project that does not affect recurring revenue is a one-time deal. You were paid for your time, but the investment has no dividend.
Prioritize opportunities that facilitate expansion. That means picking the right types of projects for the right types of customers. I’ll always take the $5,000 project that adds $1,000 ARR of users over the $10,000 project with no account growth.
To help qualify projects this way, ask your customer how much more capacity will be needed after the project is deployed or when the project is functional, what the next step is for maturing their business.
Can the Core Functionality be Re-Used?
I’ve found projects fall into one of three categories: (1) been there, done that; (2) duplicate and elaborate; (3) uncharted territory. The last category is the most troubling because it means research, trial and error, and you’re probably stretching the capabilities of the software.
To safeguard your investment of time and energy, exploratory projects should include some element that can be used again in a future project. Building an integration with a new CRM will be costly and to justify that expenditure you should have other accounts who have the same need. Even better, that venture will facilitate new business. Instead of charging the customer an exorbitant amount for the time it takes on an exploratory project, I prioritize projects where the learning is applicable to other opportunities and treat it as an investment in learning.
We want to be long-term greedy. The previous two questions aim to establish symbiotic growth, the customer grows so the company grows. But this question can help identify if an opportunity will be mutually beneficial when shared growth is not a given. | https://medium.com/growth-85/3-questions-to-separate-good-and-bad-saas-project-requests-61e6db4cf67c | ['Jonathan Hsu'] | 2020-04-22 13:46:00.950000+00:00 | ['Entrepreneurship', 'Customer Service', 'Startup', 'Business', 'Customer Success'] |
Submission Rules (?) | I grew up wanting to be a teacher. Teaching would be a job with both the structure and the creativity I craved. Alas, that didn’t happen. Instead, a series of unplanned events pushed me into bookkeeping — again, a profession requiring structure but, sadly, very little creativity. Seriously, you don’t want a bookkeeper or an accountant who applies much creativity to their work! Trump thinks otherwise, but I won’t go there.
With that said, Weeds & Wildflowers submissions must abide by only a few rules/suggestions:
Keep it clean. Colorful language is one thing, but vulgarity is another. If you are fuzzy on the definition of vulgarity, look it up.
All photos and images must be your own or uncopyrighted. Use a free photography source such as Unsplash, which is linked to Medium and very easy and legal to use. If you don’t know how to access Unsplash from Medium, ask me. Please claim your photos with a credit beneath the picture or a blanket statement of photo ownership at the beginning.
All quotes and websites must be referenced. If you don’t know how to do that, ask me.
Although I once wanted to be an English teacher, I am too old to be a stickler for all the grammar and punctuation rules of our very confusing English language. Do the best you can. Use a site like Grammarly, if you want. I may make minor adjustments to a piece, but as long as your intent is clear, I won’t sweat the small stuff.
I will, as I figure it out, add tabs for different sorts of stories/pieces, but I am not limiting W&W to specific topics. My desire is to create a space for “older” voices, but that doesn’t necessarily mean voices in older bodies. Some of us were born old, myself included. Perhaps, I should rephrase that as experienced voices. Here are some submission ideas that I favor but aren’t exclusive:
Life stories of all sorts are great. Tell us what made you who you are. I am particularly fond of the life stories of marginalized people — people who struggle to be accepted for who they are.
Because of my strongly-immigrant family, I want to feature immigrant stories — immigrants here in America or other countries — experiences in their new lands, as well as memories from their homelands. I want to learn who you are, how you think, how you got where you are, and your experiences once you arrived. Let’s embrace and learn about one another in defiance of our national prejudices.
In the same vein as immigrant stories, travel stories also have a place here. Tell us where you went, why, and what happened there. Dazzle us with photos of places some of us may never see in person.
Nature and animal stories are faves of mine. As this publication has a garden theme, I am all for gardening photography, stories, and advice. Thinking of Louise Peacock and nan fischer, as I write this.
I have a passion for photography and welcome photo submissions of all sorts. Fred Shirley and Tracy Aston popped in my mind just now.
Poetry — all styles. Some talented poets — Anna Rozwadowska, Tracy Aston, antoinette nevitt and Sherry Kappel, for instance— were added as contributors here — looking forward to some stellar poetry!
Humor — not my specialty but I love to be amused — Harper Thorpe, Mark Starlin, and Jack Herlocker immediately come to mind. Let’s laugh together!
That’s it, fellow Weeds & Wildflowers, although I reserve the right to add to this list should the need arise, and I hope it won’t!
Let’s tell stories in words and pictures! | https://medium.com/weeds-wildflowers/submission-rules-281c309dbabc | [] | 2020-09-02 00:57:11.583000+00:00 | ['Submission Guidelines', 'Writers On Medium', 'Publication', 'Writing'] |
Stank Culture | Stank Culture
An unfashionable Anti-Poem dedicated to Stan Twitter & TikTok teens
Image Courtesy of PNGWave
Stank Culture
Your cool couture is CANCELLED
Distressed worse than a damsel.
Best get out of the house
Decompress and delouse.
Casting shade but not sorry
Youth’s just part of the story.
Here today, gone tomorrow
Who’ll Stan by your late show?
Look — these locals are pissed
U & mutuals have dissed
Stressed them out with spilt tea;
Skinny legend? Guilty plea!
Trendy slang gets ‘snatched’
Here for sh-nacks, duly stashed…
:P~ | https://medium.com/illumination/stank-culture-4b51d98e3db7 | ['Obsidian Eagle'] | 2020-11-24 08:32:24.404000+00:00 | ['Rhymes', 'Poetry', 'Pop Culture', 'Linguistics', 'Critique'] |
On God, or something, or anything | On God, or something, or anything
In the summer of 2019 I traveled to the Peruvian Amazon and tried something called Ayahuasca. It led me to face some deeper questions about myself and the world around me that I’d like to share more broadly.
I’ve wanted to share these ideas for a while, and now seems like a good time: I’ve quit my job at Waymo and I’ve started to work full-time on an idea, Junto Community, that was inspired by these experiences.
This is an excerpt from a larger book that I’ll be publishing (a travel journal from my time in Peru, and how I’m trying to make sense of the world afterwards).
Pachamama, a goddess revered by the indigenous peoples of the Andes (credit)
Have you ever had that strange feeling where you momentarily tune out of your usual, everyday perspective, and wonder: why am I inside of a monkey that I can control with my thoughts?
It’s an unsettling thought, and it almost feels funny saying out loud, but so much of life is totally, hilariously inexplicable. Even the most simple questions sound bizarre when said out loud, like: why do I hallucinate stories of parallel realities when I go unconscious every night? What’s up with that?
As we’re mindlessly scrolling applications, watching TV, or doing the dishes these pesky thoughts can kind of pop though the veil of the everyday. Most of the time there’s not much to do with these questions other than put them on the shelf to deal with later, and we let the fundamental strangeness of our existence take a backseat.
In the summer of 2019 I found a window of opportunity to tackle these questions a little more directly: I had the chance to go to the Amazon to try Ayahuasca. For those that don’t know, Ayahuasca is a hallucinogenic brew that people in the Amazon have been taking for thousands of years.
They call it “the vine of the dead,” people who take ayahuasca consistently report leaving their bodies, going to a geometric fractal plane, and meeting spirits and entities that communicate with them. It seemed strange, but the reports were pretty consistent. At the very least it seemed like a productive way to face some of these existential questions I had head on.
My experiences in Peru changed me a lot, and it actually did offer some new perspectives on answering some of life’s bigger questions. In particular, though, it changed my perspective on how I view what “God” could be.
Ok… is everything ok?
Hold on, “God” is a very loaded term. I’m not saying I have suddenly become intensely religious or one of those seemingly off-kilter “weird” people that are a little too into God. No, I’m not trying to persuade you to join my cult. No. Nothing like this. However, it made me think quite deeply about what I think God is, and it is motivating my next journey (chapter?) in life so I think it would be useful to share with others.
The word “God” is steeped in many connotations and feelings, so it makes it hard to talk about. Let me try and be more specific with what I’m saying when I mean God…
I mean the something “else” in our heads that seems to guide us. That little voice of intuition in our heart, that instinct in our gut, or the conscience in our head. The feeling that there’s something greater than me guiding my life in ways I don’t fully comprehend. Something like that. It’s hard to say exactly.
It might be easy for a more materialist minded person to ascribe those feelings of “something else-ness” to simply our subconscious thought or random neurological coincidences that we give meaning to, and this is how I felt for most of my life too.
Yet after my experience in Peru it’s not so easy for me to say that what I felt and came in contact with was simply just a projection of my unconscious, or random firings of neurons in my brain that I’m piecing together into a story. What I saw and what I felt were literally beyond my imagination, it was so exotic and specific in a way that I could never have anticipated.
So do I believe that I encountered a spirit or entity? I definitely had the experience of communicating with something, but whether they actually were “spirits” or just my imagination, I can’t make any definite claims.
I think it’s totally possible that it’s both. Whatever I encountered in Peru — spirits, entities, God, or whatever you might call them — could potentially be both me and the thing I’m interacting with. It could be both external and internal.
Buying into the idea that I actually interacted with something outside of myself is a big leap. It’s not an easy one to make, and it’s something I’ve been grappling with for a long time afterwards. Maybe you’re interested in trying Ayahuasca yourself, or maybe you’re willing to hear me out, either way, I’m hoping to take you along for the ride and explain exactly what I saw, and why I think it’s important to share my story.
Jumping down the rabbit hole
Picture yourself, if you can, in my shoes: You’ve traveled to the jungle alone, you’ve had to do a special diet for a few weeks (no oils, no red meat, no alcohol, or sex), you met the Shaman two days ago, did a purging ceremony yesterday (yes, this means throwing up), and finally today is the day you take Ayahuasca.
It’s night time, you’re sitting in a circle with a group of people you just met, and the shaman has laid out in front of him various musical instruments and religious iconography. He hands you the brew, you set your intention, drink one of the most foul tasting things ever, and sit back down and wait for the effects to come on. The shaman is singing songs, called Icaros, but everything else is silent except for the backdrop of the amazon and all the animals calling out into the night. People around you start throwing up. You hear mumbling every now and then. People seem to be in trances. You close your eyes and strange patterns start to appear. At first they’re elusive, and it takes some focus to bring your attention to them. Then they become stronger and stronger, until when you close your eyes you are totally engulfed in these fractal geometries.
At this point it’s more helpful to look at a drawing. Maybe this one from Alex Grey helps:
Image from Alex Grey
For those of you that haven’t tried a psychedelic before, think about when you close your eyes there are sometimes elusive little static-like patterns if you focus for long enough (give it maybe a minute or two with your eyes closed).
Sometimes it feels like our brain plays with the patterns on our eyelids and you can see little things. Or maybe, think about staring up into a bumpy texture on the ceiling as you’re falling asleep as a kid, sometimes little patterns and pictures would emerge. It’s kind of like that, but more colorful and geometric.
After a while of these geometries, my body began to go numb. The patterns got stronger and stronger until I felt totally engulfed by them. Then, I felt like I went somewhere else. Again, it’s hard for me to explain, and it is better shown in art.
Image from Alex Grey
In this sort of space, where everything seemed to be moving and growing in ways I cannot explain, it seemed like there were “things” there that were trying to communicate with me. It’s hard to say what they were, but you’re here on the ride with me. Let’s figure this out together. Hopefully you trust me, I’m trying my hardest to be accurate with everything I saw, but I’m only human and this is all coming from my own memory.
It seemed like they could understand me, and what I was thinking, and respond. Again, It’s hard to describe what it is. But let’s use the word “spirit” for now. Again, a very loaded term. But it’s as good of an approximation as I can make.
One thing was certain though, it seemed like each spirit was not constrained by the same laws of physics as I was. It wasn’t bound to a meat-body. Each spirit seemed like it was manifested with different intentions and seemed to have individual personifications.
There were many spirits, but there was one in particular that I came into the presence of who I can only define as Pachamama (to use someone else’s term).
Artist’s depiction of Pachamama (credit: Bill Bell)
Pachamama, or so they call her in Peru, seemed infinite, no beginning or ending to her fractal faces, constantly morphing, she was composed of every animal. She was part cat, part snake, part bird, and so on. She was clearly feminine, and it seemed that although she interacted with our world, she extended much past it. She was a healing presence.
You might be asking, where exactly did you see her? It was all just in my mind, I would close my eyes and then seemingly leave my body into another fractal realm where I was able to interact with these things. It’s beyond my ability to describe perfectly, it’s fundamentally ineffable. I can’t put you there and show you what it was like while reading this.
Imagine something like the most lucid dream you’ve ever had, where you can focus intently on specific objects inside of the dream without ever waking up. Yet, similar to when you’re in a dream, you’re a little “out of it.” Still though, everything felt as real as me talking to you in person. It’s really hard to describe.
I felt like a character in the book flatland, and these things were a higher dimensional being that was interacting with me. Pachamama, for example, extended past my imagination, I couldn’t fully “see” her but I could see a part of her, at least. Some might describe her as a spirit, or even go as far as to say it’s an “alien” consciousness. However, to describe her as alien would imply that she’s foreign, but she seemed to consist of only natural forms — other animals. They refer to her as the goddess of the earth, and for many in the Amazon she represents mother earth. So it doesn’t really make sense to refer to her as “alien,” but she wasn’t the only thing I interacted with though.
Artist depiction of flat land. The feeling was of lower dimensional beings interacting with higher dimensional ones. (Image credit: Valero Doval)
There were other spirits that might be easier to refer to as alien, that seemed to be more foreign. There was, for example, something that kept showing me visions of riches and power, that did not seem to be made of natural forms. This seemed darker, demonic even. I’d feel more comfortable referring to that as an “alien.” It came to me many times, always whispering in my ear, and asking me to follow it, offering me visions of being a king and having dominion over others.
Whatever it was, it seemed technologically advanced, and it showed me its ability to control and dominate, and how it has affected other civilizations. I would be teleported from place to place, time period to time period — Germany, India, Egypt, as it showed me its influence. Every time I refused, it would leave and then come back later.
It seemed as though there was a whole ecosystem of spirits that I could interact with and have some sort of influence over us when we enter into these altered states. It was beyond imagination.
Sounds a little crazy, what do you make of it?
If we make the leap of faith and assume that they exist at least in part outside of my head, then there are some really crazy implications. Maybe we can start with what others have experienced and see if there are any parallels to draw. Throughout history there have definitely been people who have had similar experiences, right?
It really interests me that these “spirits” seemed to have a history with humans. People have been taking ayahuasca for thousands of years. Pachamama has been a part of the cultural heritage of the indigenous Peruvian people for a very long time. The Eleusinian mysteries in Plato’s era seemed to hint at similar rituals where they would go to “meet the Gods.” The shamans talk about your “relationship” with the spirits. People seem to have had relationships with these spirits for a long time. How do they affect our world? How have they affected us throughout history? Do they meddle in the affairs of humans? Do they care?
If these beings truly exist as autonomous agents outside of our imagination then they seem to inhabit a different world that is extended from our three spatial and one temporal dimension universe. Who is their “God?” Do they have something even more powerful or all-knowing that they interact with? Is it turtles all the way down?
It’s hard to reconcile the individual personifications of each spirit with the feeling of unity and oneness that is experienced on Ayahuasca. At one point I went into a white light where “I” as a concept did not even exist anymore. This is a commonly reported experience of “entering a white light.” When I was there it seemed like a singularity. It felt like my entire phenomenological experience had been condensed down into one point. There was no experience of time or space. At that point it seemed almost obvious that everything in this universe was connected, and it was all manifestations of a thing that we are all a part of. Why then does there seem to exist multiple distinct extra-dimensional entities? Shouldn’t it be just the one God that represents a unification at the top of the inter-dimensional hierarchy?
Maybe these beings are themselves just manifestations of the same universal God. Or instead it could be that these beings are just a different manifestation of life that exists in such a different way than ours that it is hard for us to fully wrap our minds around. Either way, there seemed to be a common language that existed between these entities and me. Not language in terms of words or symbols, but something that seemed post-symbolic, the pure expression of thought and feeling. We could communicate love, fear, curiosity, understanding and phenomenological experience to each other. It seemed like we shared a common mental, rather than physical, substrate on which both I and these things existed within.
The question then becomes why would “bad” things manifest themselves if they’re an extension of a supposedly benevolent higher power? Where are these evil tempting spirits coming from?
In part, they must come from my own projection. Every experience that I had was filtered through me. In other words, imagine an alien trying to communicate with a human: it can only use ideas that the human understands, so it must analogize everything into these concepts so that we could have a chance at understanding them. So despite seeing all these things, I had to analogize them into things I understood, and my own limited interpretation could affect it. So, really, I have a hand in creating both the good and the evil.
It’s interesting that I could play a part in the creation of these ideas of spirits and of God. It seems like there is a bootstrapping mechanism at play where I can only experience transcendence if I believe in its possibility. If I close myself off to the possibility that I can interact with spirits or with God then I reject any of the potential signs of supernatural phenomena existing. If I’m not open to the experience my belief that there is no world outside of what we can typically perceive is self-reinforcing. If I make the jump to accepting that it could be a possibility, then I can auto-manifest these phenomena into occurring simply by my interpretation of the same experience. I guess this is commonly referred to as “faith” where you have to make a leap of faith to experience some level of spirituality. Ayahuasca, maybe, accelerates that leap.
Leap of faith
Joscha Bach has an interesting perspective of religion, he says that God is a software program that is implemented in the minds of the believers. Because the believers believe in God, God is real. These programs are implemented onto people to create the super-organism of societies where their incentives become aligned to work together towards a common goal. In this way, society is the real life manifestation of God. For example, if we all believe in heaven and hell, then doing selfish things that hurt others becomes dis-incentivized, therefore it becomes easier to work together. Or, in more secular terms, if we all believe in the power of a currency, then we can align ourselves with it to get people to work together productively.
In this way God is a distributed software super-organism that lives in the heads of people. The important thing here is that although these Gods are programmed in by culture and society, they are in fact real because the people who have faith actually do interpret their daily phenomena through the lens of a world in which a God exists. On the other side of the coin one could argue that God is not real because we are fabricating it in our minds. However all phenomena are fabricated and interpreted by our mind — to quote Dumbledore: “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”
Then, who defines these Gods? Do we as humans define them, and manifest them into existence? It’s interesting to contrast how different cultures define their Gods. I noted after one of the Ayahuasca sessions that the visions I see are all things that are filtered through my own understanding and language. When we have a feeling that is non-verbal and are asked to articulate it we have to make analogies to things that we can communicate verbally. I think this is similar to what happens when we experience something that feels transcendent. It is ineffable. So to bring it into our world and communicate it to ourselves and to others we need to filter it through ourselves and through our culture. Therefore each God is constructed by the society and culture that experiences it, and they may group some experiences and personify them into different spirits, but they’re all trying to make sense of similar experiences of transcendence and interacting with something greater than ourselves.
Are there any commonalities in how people have defined their Gods among different cultures? A common theme between each religion is accepting how little control we have over the complexity of the world around us, and surrendering to something larger than ourselves that can help guide us and give us structure. In other words sacrificing our short-term desires for something greater. It’s a sacrifice between the selfish interests of the individual, and the greater good of the community. Religion acts like a glue to hold the society together and give it values that align themselves together to create a greater being.
Can we create our own Gods? If cultures can create their own religions and Gods why can’t we do it ourselves? How do you get yourself to believe something you create though? There’s a missing piece, you can’t force yourself to believe in something you created. So how did anyone create a God in the first place? Did they do it as a trick to get others to believe it? I thought this might be the case for a while, but that would mean that all the priests, prophets, and shamans would be liars. I find that hard to believe now, especially having some first hand experiences with what I can only describe as transcendent phenomena.
After my experiences I am convinced that people truly do have transcendental experiences and some of these people can bring some of the transcendental phenomena and teachings to our world. They are our prophets, messiahs, saints, etc…
On the other hand, I’m open to the possibility, that there is some element of a “Noble Lie” at play and that societies often hijack the transcendent experience to append values that help them construct the society that they want, and is not in the necessarily totally in the interests of the people who believe it.
The simple fact is that there are mysteries in this world that we can’t explain. Even on a daily basis our body goes numb and we hallucinate stories in our head that we just forget upon waking up. We peer into tangent realities that our brain makes every night, it’s hard to explain some of the daily experiences we have, let alone the bigger questions in life. I’ve been avoiding the biggest question I have for myself though, how do *I* define God?
How do I define God?
Big grey beard guy in the sky? (Credit: God the Father by Cima da Conegliano, c. 1515)
I grew up Catholic, and like most children I believed what my parents told me. They told me there was a God and that Jesus died for our sins. As a kid I remember going to church and I remember praying and feeling like I had a relationship with God and that he loved me. Sometimes I felt like I could speak to God and he would listen and even give me responses. I would keep track of every lie I ever told, and would confess them, and I’d try to be nice to people because that’s what God wanted.
Somewhere along the line as I matured I felt that, similar to Santa Claus, God was just another thing my parents told me about so I’d do what they tell me to. I noticed that not all of my friends and their families believed in God, or that they even believed in different Gods, and that they had a perfectly happy and wholesome life. Does this mean all my friends are going to hell? Why do they seem to have as nice lives and families as I do, despite not believing? Won’t the devil get to them? It seemed obvious to me at the time that God is just a thing people tell each other to feel at ease with the greater questions in life: where do we come from, is there a meaning to life, what happens when we die, why am I trapped inside of a monkey I can control with my thoughts etc…
Then I started to explore altered states of consciousness and I realized that there is much more to life than meets the eye. Our waking consciousness is only one wavelength of the totality of the universe and there is a lot more “out there” that I can experience through turning off the default-mode-network. I started to get into meditation, psychedelics, and lucid dreaming and other mind-bending exercises where I could play with what I thought were fundamental objects of perception in consciousness: the line between the observer and the observed could be blurred, the ego or “self” could be turned off. Part of me thinks that these could just simply be effects of my own delusion into thinking that there has to be more to life, and that life is just more interesting if I think there is “something out there.” It’s hard even to trust your own senses when it comes to experiencing these things, let alone someone else’s interpretation. Maybe I’m just writing and thinking about these things to feel like I’m interesting. That’s a real possibility. It could just be ego-derived delusion, and this is a scary thought. Something that is reassuring though is that it is a shared mystery, and other people have experienced things similar to what I have. So I don’t feel totally alone in my potential delusion.
Sometimes looking back on life all the seemingly random events at the time appear in retrospect to come in the form of lessons, tests, or totally crazy coincidences. It feels right to say that things happen for a reason, even if at the very least we are just interpreting the events and fitting them into a narrative to give them a meaning or purpose in the story we leave behind.
There’s also a feeling of things that “feel” right or wrong, small or large gut instincts that often dictate who I enjoy spending time with. For lack of a better expression, it’s just people I “vibe” with. I can’t fully know someone, but there’s still that inexplicable deeper connection that you have with certain people, certain places, certain songs or art.
I’m certain that we only perceive of a small fraction of the total phenomena that is available to see, and then only understand a small fraction of the phenomena that we can perceive. For example we can only see a narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum, what else is happening out there that we just can’t detect? I think we just cannot access the whole picture, we’re not programmed to see it all. We can only pick up a narrow band of light with our eyes, I think that it could be the case that we are only tuned to receive a narrow band of consciousness. Rather than consciousness being an emergent property of our bodies, it feels to me that it could be something like a rhythm that is in sync with some music that we tune into. Like a radio that is picking up frequencies from elsewhere.
I’m very open to the possibility that my signal is just inhabiting my body for a period of time, and that when my body dies, that signal lives on in a different medium that is incomprehensible to me at the moment. If that’s the case then it’s possible that my signal has encountered other people’s signals before, maybe not their specific incarnation in this moment, but something about them. It’s interesting that I am the sum of certain traits of my ancestors, in a way they are all living through me. Both physically through the expression of DNA that I have received from them and behaviorally through the teachings and culture they have passed down.
Recently, my grandmother died, and last night I had a dream where I saw her. We spoke. She told me some very reassuring things. Again, this could simply be a projection that my mind is creating and I experience, just another “meaningless” dream, but I’m open to the possibility that she lives as a concept in my head and even though she has died she still lives in my head, and the relationship that I have with the image of her that I’ve created is no less real than the relationship I had with her in waking life. You could say that my grandmother lives through me, the image of her that I have in my head is real. In a way, all of my friends and people that I come across live through my perception of them. We are all distributed concepts, where each individual that perceives someone is creating a portion of the person they see. We live in their heads, and potentially nowhere else.
So what happens when we’ve been forgotten? When we have no living ancestors? I think this comes down to the same fundamental question I had about the spirits I saw on ayahuasca. Do they exist outside of the experience someone creates of them in their head? Does anything exist if it’s not being experienced by anything? Is there a fundamental thing outside of the perceptual hallucination and story that the brain is telling itself, what is the fundamental reality of the thing I’m interpreting? Maybe we’ll never know what something truly “is” outside of our interpretation of it. It’s impossible really. The fundamental layer of “base” reality doesn’t really exist. Reality only exists as a perceptual projection into a conscious being that creates a model of the universe that helps them orient themselves and make sense of it at least enough to survive and reproduce.
So where do we go when no one experiences us? What does it mean to experience someone? To see them with our eyes, to interact with them in our thoughts? What about seeing a piece of art that they made, or reading something they wrote? What if the thing someone created impacted how a second person thinks, and then you interact with that second person, but not the first? Are you experiencing the first person through the second? Through a chain of influence it becomes a butterfly effect of all the interactions and things you’ve said to the people around you, that move out like a wave into the collective experience of humans, animals, plants, even the nature around us. The things we do have a huge effect on the world around us. In a very real sense no one really ever dies, their specific identity might fade, but their impact will reverberate in a chain of events that will be felt as long as the light of consciousness doesn’t fade.
If you were to take a group of humans and put them on mars and separate them entirely from the rest of the group, you could say that the collective they create, the spirit of their community, their cohabitation with the natural world around them, and their future aspirations and goals they have would become their God (or Gods). Their collective imagination, aspirations, conscious, unconscious (to invoke Jung), all become their God. They may personify them and give the God attributes and even experience the God just like we experience each other in dreams. I think that Gods are not exactly an emergent property of the collective, I think that similar to a group of cells that work together to become a tissue, and than organizes to become organs, and so on until they form an arm or a leg and organize into an animal, the spirit of the collective working together is another level of cohesion and cooperation to create a new whole, and the God that they create is the contract that they have with the society.
In this sense we are God and God is not real. It’s a contradiction, like the answer to all the great questions. God exists through us in our imagination, but it is like a collective dream that we all share. In a way even reality is a collective dream that we reach consensus on. I’d say God is as real as our everyday waking world is real. Both primarily exist through the distributed perception and consensus of billions of conscious beings that work together to create a cohesive picture of where we are and where we’re going.
A curious question is that if this is the case, why have we decided on this reality? Do we get to choose? How much control do we really have? Do we have any control at all? Are we mostly NPCs (non-playable characters in a video game), or is there a player behind me that can control my life as if I were being simulated in a video game? In a way I think we’re all avatars for something else, something that can connect the external world we perceive into the internal world inside of us. We’re all the heroes in our journey. We can become NPCs if we let ourselves slip from an active seat into a passive seat, but we can also play life and see where it goes. So if life is like a massive multiplayer RPG (role-play game), who made the levels?
Who made the dream? Did we make it? The collective “we,” the collective God. Are there more levels? What are we playing for? Why does anything exist at all? Is it possible for nothing to exist?
I’m not convinced that there is a creator that is separated from the created. I think it’s a bootstrapping mechanism at play. It’s like an Escher painting of the hand drawing itself, where we create the thing and are the thing that is created at the same time. To ask who created the universe is to ask who created my last thought. This is a good question too, where do my thoughts really come from?
(Credit: M.C. ESCHER’S “DRAWING HANDS”)
Is it the other player on the other side that’s playing my character? Does he create my thoughts? Is it just one player, or multiple players? Oftentimes it seems like I’m being tugged in multiple directions, different motivations that conflict inside of me. This seems to imply that we are receiving influence from multiple places at once. Again I think the answer here is a contradiction, I think our thoughts come from the collective imagination and from ourselves. I think the fundamental perception shift is that thinking of the world in a “me” vs “it” is fundamentally wrong. We are all manifestations of a collective consciousness. To think we are separate from the world is just delusion. My thoughts are everyone’s thoughts.
So how do these beliefs really affect how I live my day-to-day life? Benjamin Franklin says that it doesn’t really matter what you believe, as long as the outcomes of what you believe are positive in the world. All of this mumbo jumbo doesn’t really matter if I don’t apply it to my life in a positive way. Fundamentally I think it’s simply: treat others like you want to be treated. That phrase sounds deceptively simple at first, but there are deeper ways to look at it if we make the perspective shift from “me (ego)” vs “it (other)” to simply “us.”
If you allow yourself entertain that perspective shift, you are in a sense the other, so mistreating others around you is inflicting a wound on yourself, and your life will suffer as a result. I believe in karma, not in the sense that there is an ethereal bean counter in the sky tallying all the good and bad things you’ve done, but I do think that often in life we are tested and our soul’s intentions in this world reverberate into the collective, doing negative things to the others will come back to you. Maybe not in this life necessarily, but maybe in a way that we don’t have knowledge of yet as the negative action resounds through time. Maybe if we do well in this level we go to a better level, who knows. I think it’s not about the levels though, or thinking you’ll get something in return for being a good person.
It’s easy to say “be a good person” but to define what “good” is can be very difficult. Plato himself was not able to define what “good” is, he likened it to staring directly into the sun. In Plato’s metaphysical worldview the “good” is the form that gives rise to all the other forms. It is what enlightens justice, virtue, beauty, etc.
Plato conceptualized “Good” as a universal force that gives rise to the rest of the world. It is like a fundamental substrate on which all other things derive their from. I think many in the more “new-age” community would have a similar conceptualization when talking about love.
(Image Credit Alex Grey)
What Plato is really talking about when he is trying to define “Good” is he’s trying to define “God.” He equates God and Good. In the Republic he says society should be led by those who have the best understanding of the form of the Good, and that they should align society based on this concept. Then the individuals should align themselves with the society. In this way the definition of “Good” is a way of forming social cohesion and a way so that a mutual sacrifice can be made by all the constituents of the society to create a greater whole. I think a lot about emergent properties, they’re everywhere among us. Down to the individual cells forming a greater whole that emerge into tissues, organs, animals, humans, and then they form groups and tribes that have their own emergent properties. Each level of emergent identity has its own spirit and individuals work together to achieve common goals.
We’ve ended up in another loop, to define God we must define Good and then also define the collective being that we want to create, only then can we align ourselves with that collective being and serve God, the community, and be a good person.
So how should we define a “Good” society?
There have been people that tried to walk through and describe how they’d build their own society, like Plato, but it’s… tough. Fundamentally I believe that people should be given access to tools and information so that they can improve themselves and then the community. If we want to change the world we must first change ourselves. This is a process of mastering ourselves and our negative patterns of behavior over time to give us the internal peace, happiness, and self-love to progress the world.
We need to heal from the collective trauma that individuals experience, and that is passed down from our ancestors. We need to heal individually so that we can evolve collectively. If we do not focus on ourselves first and heal our own problems, how can we expect to make an impact on the greater community on society? I often think that we can start with ourselves, searching inside ourselves until we achieve a level of self-mastery that can then be expanded to help others achieve their own self-actualization. If we lived in a society that helped everyone achieve self-actualization and then allow them to pursue their highest aspirations, then I think this would be a very productive and happy society.
An issue that can be raised is that maybe if everyone is self-actualized and works on their own independent trajectory how will we create a collective and unified structure? I think the structure cannot be imposed top-down, structure is an emergent property that always occurs bottom-up. Once the structure is built bottom-up then there are ways to make it more efficient top-down and to make sure consensus is built. I think that consensus in general is oftentimes better built in a distributed way, with direct access from the individuals to the collective decisions. Not everyone will necessarily be happy with the orientation, but they should be allowed to leave and make their own structures.
If multiple structures exist how will we handle potentially terrible consequences if there are disagreements between two super-organisms competing for the same resources? If we are all unified under the umbrella of one super-organism then there wouldn’t be as much violence, but there might something else that kills us. A disillusionment in quiet with the system, a nihilism that lurks in and causes widespread depression until the society kills itself. Sometimes things need to die to make way for new ideas. Like a phoenix. I am not advocating for violence, but I do believe in competition and evolution over time. The better, more resilient ideas will rise to the top depending on how well their society improves the lives of the people involved. Societies live and die by the people. If the people don’t believe in the values, then the culture will die out.
So there is a useful thought: the societies that have more longevity have Gods that best serve its people. The “software protocol” and collective imagination that is shared by those people is helping them. The old religions have lasted for a long time, so there is likely something to be said about the values of the people that believe them and how they contribute to each individual’s self-actualization. The closer they come to an ideal “God” the more likely it is that their civilization and collective spirit will last.
Characteristics of good civilizations
For a civilization to have longevity it must give us tools and values to be able to live in harmony with nature. If their God teaches them to exploit the land, animals, and live in a non-sustainable way, then no matter the rest of the civilization’s values, it is destined to be doomed.
The religion or society also needs to provide tools and values to forgive themselves and others for the inevitable terrible things that happen. I think forgiveness is at the heart of good societies. As humans we cannot always do the right thing. We should always try to do the right thing, but sometimes we fail, and sometimes we fail in grave ways. The religion should teach self-love to be able to overcome our faults. Tools to be able to listen to our mental state, and to get peace from things that have been on our mind.
A lot of our suffering comes from a sense of isolation and separation. This is in part due to us feeling like we have an “ego” and “us” that is different from “them.” It’s this ego that makes us feel separated. It’s much easier to heal damage as a community. Nothing heals more than talking to a loved one. At one point during my ayahuasca experience I asked Pachamama “how do I get rid of the ego that I have” her answer was simply: “love heals all.”
The religion should inspire hope for a better future, for themselves and for the collective. It should give people a reason to wake up in the morning with an excitement about the things to come. It should create a positive outlook on life. If we don’t have a vision for the future that we want to move towards, then we stagnate and die. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a goal, but at least some reassurance that better days are ahead, or that if you follow your values you’ll see the fruit of your labor.
One of the most important fruits of our labor are our children, and ensuring the health and safety of children and setting up rules to make sure they grow up to be someone we’re proud to pass down the torch to. We are multi-generational agents passing down culture and values to the next generation to help them thrive and do the same with their own children. Through our children we are immortal in a sense, and a great part of our legacy can live through them. Families are important and give us a tremendous sense of purpose.
I mostly meant real children, but I also mean children in a broad sense — things that you create during your lifetime that live on after you die. That can be pieces of art, ideas, projects, companies, that have life after you’re gone. A good religion should also promote people to create these projects that will outlive them. These are the things that have a lasting impact on the future of our species. This creation brings us closer to the eternal, and closer to God, since the work goes into the broader collective and shapes its future.
Image credit (Alex Grey)
At one point during the peak of an Ayahuasca experience I felt my ancestors around me, and I was able to speak to them. They told me to do them justice, and to get strong to fight for good in the world. It was an interesting message to receive. It’s one that I’ve reflected a lot on. Strength is good. Not to be used to attack others or inflict pain, but to be able to fight for the values you believe in. I think a good religion would also empower its citizens to be strong mentally and physically so they can defend the values they believe in and protect the people they love.
I don’t want to make it seem like I’m trying to create my own religion, I’m really, really not. I’m just trying to take distill some fundamental features of the positives of religion and some ideas of where to start in terms of my own self-actualization: caring for nature, increasing a capacity to forgive and heal from mistakes, having a less ego-centric worldview, creating a vision of the future that is positive, aligning my life for the possibility of one day having children and being able to raise them properly, creating things that will live past me when I die, and having the strength to fight for these values.
The dark side of religion
Although I’ve listed the positive features of religion, I feel as though I also need to keep in mind the dangers also found in religion. Some religions impose a sort of hierarchical structure, where only a certain class of people have access to the transcendental and only they have access to the authority of God. This creates a bottleneck and huge concentration of power. Like most concentrations of power, it is easily corrupted. Therefore I think it is important to have access to the transcendental experience for anyone willing to venture deep into that world. No one should be allowed to play as God, you should be able to directly experience it.
Religion has often been used as a way to dominate and control populations of people. To get them to buy into structures that increase the welfare of the high class, and keep the lower classes in line with it. Nietzche had a very dim view of Christianity, and said that the “two great European narcotics are alcohol, and Christianity.” I think he’s on to something, but he’s not giving full credit to the positives in religion (and alcohol sometimes!), we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are huge positives with religion that can help us a lot. We just need to protect from the institution of religion hijacking the transcendental to create a hierarchical and dominating structure on society in order to keep things predictable and protect the “haves” from the uprising of the “have-nots.”
Having a monopoly on spirituality is similar to a monopoly in the free-market. We should be able to decide what we believe, and not be forced to have any values for the sake of anyone. Spirituality should be a free-market endeavor, and we should be allowed to worship and create our Gods however they seem fit to us. If people choose “bad” Gods that hurt them and the community, they will be weeded out from the marketplace eventually. It’s only a matter of time.
It’s interesting to think about why people would create these “bad” Gods. Some people claim to worship the devil. They may have a very different definition of what the devil is, but I have a hard time believing that someone can live a fruitful and civilization-preserving life with the values of the devil. I think it’s mostly just a joke, immaturity, or a big middle finger to a society that seems to have left them behind.
When I did Ayahuasca I really did come in contact with something dark. It kept trying to tempt me, and would show me visions of myself ruling as a king. It would tell me I would be rich if I followed it. It was paranoid. It showed me visions of how it had used its power throughout history, and put people in positions of influence and power in the world. I had visions of swarming bugs in hierarchical organization, almost like slaves working in a stimulated frenzy for a technologically advanced alien civilization. The goal was to enslave and addict. It was very eerie. I’m not saying anything like this is necessarily real, but I did experience it, and it does seem to have some unfortunate parallels to our real life. I had to make a real decision as to which path I would follow. It felt like a real decision. I was shown two paths. I chose a humble path illuminated meekly and went that direction.
In that direction I saw families coming together, and people with love in their hearts supporting each other. The good was the many, and the wicked were the few. It was a very surreal experience.
I do think that to some extent we all need to make a decision in our lives. It is easy to shut down and think firstly about protecting ourselves in a world of scarcity and fending against others, alone in the world. There is another vision though, opening ourselves up and letting go of the scarcity mindset for one of abundance. There’s enough for everyone to thrive. Life isn’t zero sum. You can nurture things to grow until everyone has enough, and we can all make it together.
If we let the forces of dark nihilism overcome us and prevent us from seeing that life is beautiful and abundant, then our civilization will inevitably collapse. If we think nothing matters and we live for nothing, then this disconnect from meaning will be our end. It’s easy to say nothing matters, and that we shouldn’t take anything seriously. There’s something charming in the absurdist nihilism that says let’s just laugh and have a good time, and not think too hard about it. And there’s absolutely something to that, life is all about playing. There’s no destination, we should just dance to the music, and have a good time. That childlike curiosity and playfulness is a light that we should encourage. Yet it isn’t all there is to life.
It is important to realize that there is some darkness looming on the horizon, and we should actively dance away from that. We should be happy and light, but also know when to be serious and be there for each other in times of need. Accepting that we don’t know the deeper answers to the fundamental question shouldn’t lead us to “well no one knows, so it doesn’t matter,” instead it should lead us to “we should keep an open mind and try to live a good life however we define it to be.”
I think it’s important to realize that no one really knows, so we shouldn’t take ourselves too seriously about it. It’s easy to get ideological about religion, and to become intolerant of others who disagree with core features of your belief system. We should fight for what we believe in when others are intolerant to us, but never try to impose beliefs or hate someone for disagreeing. There are many ways to live life, and many ways of being happy and at peace with yourself and the world.
Mostly I think we should just keep in mind the gratitude for being alive and being able to experience life and its mysteries. There’s a big responsibility on our shoulders to do good in the world with what we’re given, but I think that weight shouldn’t prevent us from enjoying the little moments in life and how beautiful life can be.
My next project
Circling back to Ben Franklin’s idea that it doesn’t really matter what you believe as long as the outcomes of what you believe are positive, I’m trying to apply the perspective laid out above to a new project, Junto.
If we were to start from a clean slate, how would we build a society? We have tons of new tools today that allow us to align people in new and exciting ways. For example, how would our founding fathers have used the internet? Smart contracts? Decentralized finance?
With Junto we’re trying to give people access to tools to build their own communities in a bottom-up fashion, and align the incentives to build new kinds of social and peer-to-peer contracts that unlock the latent value all around us.
If we boil down society into its fundamental building blocks, we’re left with a network of incentives that guide our actions. It’s game theory. At the society level we try to align people’s self-interest with the interests of the community. What if we could build our own societies from scratch? How much better could we make them?
What we’re trying to do is give people the tools to effectively organize and create their own alignment for communities. For example, we have created a peer-to-peer smart contract that allows people to hold collateral against each other in an easy way. This contract can be executed, for example, to hold collateral for lending out items to others. Or used generally as a “promise” to do something in the future.
We’re building it out as a social website to give people access to all these tools and build communities with their circles of trust, or expand even further to the community at large. I’m really excited about it, and I’m hoping to launch something soon for it.
I think that if I died with this being my life’s work, that would be a positive thing. People should be able to form communities freely with all the tools they need and as little intervention as possible.
Conclusion
I’ll probably keep thinking about these questions for as long as I live. This serves as a snapshot for my worldview at the moment. I’m curious how it will change over time, and whether these values will serve me in life going forward. We’ll see. If you’re reading I want to say thank you and I’m curious to hear your thoughts about all of this. Maybe you’ll help me clarify my thoughts more over time. If you’ve made it this far, thank you!
Please share with others who you think would find this interesting! I’m happy to meet other people who this resonates with. Especially people who also like to build things and could help with Junto Community.
Also thank you to all my friends and family that I’ve bounced these ideas off of since I was a kid. These ideas are as much theirs as they are mine. I take no ownership of the thoughts since they’re made up of all the books, podcasts, YouTube videos, and people I’ve met throughout my life. Thank you all.
This is the first essay I’ve ever published, and there are some (more popular) people I’d really love to have read it — it’s a big ask, but I might as well try — since their thoughts have influenced me quite a bit: Joscha Bach, Stewart Brand, Brian C. Muraresku, Conor White-Sullivan, Naval Ravikant, Jordan B. Peterson, Joe Rogan (lol might as well try), and Lex Fridman.
Thank you to Jon, Chris, Diego, for reviewing earlier drafts of this
Thank you for reading! If you’d like to get updates on the progress with Junto, you can follow me on Twitter @LarrotizPablo
Pablo | https://medium.com/@pmoncada/on-god-or-something-or-anything-how-ayahuasca-changed-my-perspective-on-life-e000c89b4b4d | ['Pablo Moncada-Larrotiz'] | 2021-05-13 18:32:31.936000+00:00 | ['Spirituality', 'Psychedelics', 'Ayahuasca', 'Religion'] |
The Looming Specter of the Dormant Voter | The myth of red states and blue states gets on my nerves. And I live in one of the reddest states, Alabama, where the shift away from the Solid South that began with Nixon in the late ’60s was then built into bedrock by Reagan in the ’80s. Though there were two to three decades of two-party politicking in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, the Red Wave of 2010 moved the state Democratic Party from 136 years of legislative control to losing every statewide office. Alabama didn’t just get a super-majority, we got a super-duper-majority, and by 2016, significant portions of the Alabama ballot were occupied by Republicans running unopposed.
But that changed a bit by 2017, when we had a special election to fill the vacated US Senate of ever-Trumper Jeff Sessions, and the narrow victory went to Democrat Doug Jones, an attorney from Birmingham. After the state’s speaker of the house was indicted on ethics charges in 2014 and both the governor and the chief justice left office amid scandals in early 2017, there was a visible chink in the red armor. Amid the strife, an uneasy coalition eked out a Jones victory by a margin of 50% to 48% over his Republican opponent. But national media always viewed Jones’ position as tenuous and were talking about his defeat in 2020 almost immediately after he got elected. Though I’m normally a listener and a supporter of public radio, even NPR’s Ari Shapiro took a little time in mid-November 2020 to rub it in about his predicted loss. This question started off the interview:
SHAPIRO: You know, when you were elected in 2017, about 674,000 people voted for you. And this year, about 914,00 people voted for you, many more. And yet you lost in a landslide. So how do you interpret that?
And this one came nearer the end:
SHAPIRO: I don’t want this to sound rude, but there are going to be people listening to you thinking to themselves, he lost by 20 points, why should we give any weight to what he has to say?
Maybe because he’s a capable attorney with two years of experience as a US senator . . .
The reason that the red-state/blue-state narrative gets on my nerves is: it insinuates that minority parties have “lost” in the way that a sports team loses a game, which leads some potential voters to buy into a narrative of certain and perpetual defeat. Why waste the time, energy, and gas, when it won’t matter if I go and vote? My “team” will lose anyway.
To illustrate the either-or narrative’s flaws, consider the presidential election of 2020. Donald Trump won Alabama with 62.2% of the vote, defeating Joe Biden who garnered 36.7% and Libertarian Jo Jorgenson with a scant 1.1%. Pundits would say, Trump’s 25-point victory painted the state red again! Looking at it in a different way, vote totals for the two men — Trump’s 1.44 million and Biden’s nearly 850,000 — add up to 2.3 million votes. Alabama has 4.9 million people living here, and according to the census, 22% are under age 18, so that means that 3.82 million are adults. Doing some simple math, about 1.5 million adults — some registered, some not — didn’t vote. That number exceeds (slightly) the winner’s total. Donald Trump was allotted 100% of the electoral-college votes from Alabama, making it a red state, with the votes of about 38% of the state’s adults, over Biden’s 23%, but still neck-and-neck with the 38–39% who cast no ballot. That’s a lot of leeway, especially since the last five presidential elections have been close. In terms of coalitions of voters, red is for Republican and blue is for Democrat, but what color would we use for the mixture of frustrated refusal to participate, non-committal apathy, forgetfulness, and disenfranchisement? Light gray, maybe, or beige.
Despite the myth of “important” elections, which are now hyped like entertainment events, what matters about politics is the period between elections, when those selected for office govern in a system that Abraham Lincoln described as “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” The day after an election, it isn’t over. It’s just getting started. If our favorite sports team loses on the court or the field, it really is over, but we can’t start going to their practices to question their coaches- but in politics, we can. And, dare I say, we should. The narrative that emphasizes a single day’s victory-or-defeat would be better replaced by a belief in political participation that goes beyond one day every other year.
My question, as an editor of this project, is: what about that dormant 38%? Certainly, many of those Alabamians would vote with the current majority, supporting Republican candidates for statewide and national offices. But how many of them? And perhaps even more importantly, why did nearly two out of five adults not vote? I’ll leave those questions there and extend this invitation not to Alabamians alone but to all Southerners who’d like to write personal essays to share their answers to those questions, or others like them. The deadline for the first reading period is coming in a few days, but there’s plenty of time to make the next deadline on February 15.
Meanwhile, if you’re a proud independent like me, take a look at the Purple States of America website, to see what shades your state has been over the last forty years. | https://medium.com/nobodys-home/the-looming-specter-of-the-dormant-voter-3be36abb4bb9 | ['Foster Dickson'] | 2020-12-20 17:18:46.879000+00:00 | ['Voting', 'Politics', 'Trump', 'Republican Party', '2020 Presidential Race'] |
Is Your BV Stuck to Your IUD? | The story ends well; my friend promptly removed hers, and soon after, both of her infections vanished. And when I followed, mine did too. I did simultaneously go on oral antibiotics, followed my a week-long lactobacilli cure, but the BV cleared already a day after the IUD had been removed.
While it all worked out in the end, it’s beyond me that in all of the most popular health resources online (such as Healthline, Mayo Clinic and Web MD, etc.), the link between BV and IUDs is not mentioned. It’s first when you search for the two together do you discover the many credible medical resources pointing it out, which means you first have to suspect this connection on your own. Why was I never informed of this risk by medical personal when offered the option of an IUD in the first place? Why did it take tenfolds of visits to doctors, gynecologists and STI testing centers for my friend and I before anyone brought up the possibility?
While a BV is usually harmless, it can reek hawoc on your sex life, and when it becomes chronic, and if left untreated, it can increase your risks of contracting STIs or develop into pelvic inflammatory disease, which may lead to infertility. Why didn’t any of the health professionals I talked to seem to worry about this for a second?
While I’m now so happy to have my all-natural, healthy self back, I continue to be enraged by the seemingly systematic trivialization of the risks posed on women related to birth control and sexual health. I keep wondering why there are still so few, if any, options that do not risk either our mental or physical well being—or both. And, as always, why the viable options for men are still not on the market.
While IUDs work great for many, and are wonderful in that they offer an effective, non-hormonal birth control method, their potential for encouraging the growth of unhealthy vaginal bacteria should be widely known! Had I had known when I got mine what I do now, I could have been spared countless amounts of worry, stress and pain, and not to mention money, on something that could have been easily avoided. | https://medium.com/sexography/is-your-bv-stuck-to-your-iud-b283aa2ca18b | ['Ena Dahl'] | 2020-12-12 14:02:31.877000+00:00 | ['Womens Health', 'Advice', 'Sexual Health', 'Sexuality', 'This Happened To Me'] |
COSMOLOGY VERSUS COSMOGONY | Cosmology is the branch that examines the universe. it explores the universe from its birth to the end and is related to everything about the universe, from the nature of the universe and the nature of its contents. In contrast, cosmogony is concerned only with the genesis and origin of the universe.
Cosmology
According to NASA, cosmology is the scientific study of the large-scale properties of the Universe as a whole. It endeavors to use the scientific method to understand the origin, evolution, and ultimate fate of the entire Universe. Like any field of science, cosmology involves the formation of theories or hypotheses about the universe which make specific predictions for phenomena that can be tested with observations. Depending on the outcome of the observations, the theories will need to be abandoned, revised, or extended to accommodate the data.
A scientist who studies cosmology is called a cosmologist. Basically, cosmologists want to know what the universe was like billions of years ago. They want to understand how it is today. They also want to find out what the universe will be like billions of years in the future.
To understand the universe, cosmologists first needed to know our place in it. About 400 years ago, most people believed that Earth was at the center of the universe. They thought the Moon, the Sun, and the other planets all traveled around Earth. Nicholas Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton helped us to learn the truth. We now know that the Moon travels around Earth. Earth and the other planets in our solar system travel around the Sun.
About 100 years ago, astronomer Edwin Hubble made observations that showed the universe was getting bigger and bigger! This led most cosmologists to believe in a theory called the Big Bang. The Big Bang theory says the universe began with a huge explosion ten to twenty billion years ago. Cosmologists think the universe did not exist before the Big Bang.
Cosmologists use the data gathered by telescopes and astronomy satellites to help them understand the universe. They also use computers to model their ideas. Each new discovery helps them to understand more about the past, present, and future of our universe.
Cosmogony
The word cosmogony is derived from the combination of two Greek terms cosmos and genesis. Cosmogony thus has to do with myths, stories, or theories regarding the birth or creation of the universe as an order or the description of the original order of the universe. Cosmogony is the study of the origin, and sometimes the development, of the universe or the solar system, in astrophysics, religion, and other fields. When we are discussing the origins of natural systems; we are working in the arena of cosmogony. Basically, cosmogony is the creation of the universe.
Cosmogony is a theory of how the universe began. The discipline focuses on theories of how the universe and galaxies were formed, the development of these entities, and astronomical cartography to provide a map of the known universe. There are two cosmogonies today. Something did it or did itself. The first theory is the Big Bang Theory (that the universe came into being suddenly). The Big Bang is today's predominant cosmogony, which maintains that the cosmos was created between 13 and 20 billion years ago from the random, cosmic explosion (or expansion) of a subatomic ball that hurled space, time, matter, and energy in all directions. Everything the entire cosmos — came from an initial speck of infinite density known as a singularity. This speck (existing outside of space and time) appeared from nowhere, for no reason, only to explode (start expanding) all of a sudden.
The second theory in cosmogony posits that something caused the universe to be formed; it was planned or created by a god, not spontaneous. That is, it took place outside of the natural realm before the natural realm existed.
It seems that any discussion of today’s Big Bang cosmogony would be incomplete without asking the question, What about God? This is because cosmogony is an area where science, philosophy, and faith have to meet. Whether random or designed, the initial creation of the cosmos was a supernatural event.
What are the differences between cosmology and cosmogony?
The suffix “-logy” comes from the root word logos so often thought of as “the Word” of God. This word ending deals with the concepts of dynamic motion and articulation. The combination of cosmos with logos then yields a word that describes the dynamics and motion of the world or universe. The word “cosmology” then deals with the operation of the world or universe.
The suffix “-gony” comes from the same root as the word “genesis” which means “beginnings.” Thus, the ending of a word with “-gony” would deal with the starting, origin, initiating, beginning, or becoming of that subject. The word “cosmogony” deals with the origin of the world or universe.
So, we can say that cosmology is the study of the universe such as laws, constants, etc. it is what scientists do today it is the observable cosmos. Cosmogony is the theory of the origins of the cosmos. So, in cosmology we can study all these things today, they exist, and we can observe them. Cosmogony goes back to the origin of the cosmos, theories about the origin of the cosmos. | https://medium.com/@kaganur/cosmology-versus-cosmogony-79b540429510 | ['Kağan Ur'] | 2020-12-27 11:31:50.306000+00:00 | ['Cosmology', 'Universe', 'NASA', 'Cosmos', 'Cosmogony'] |
Avoiding an Epic Data Visualization Fail | Avoiding an Epic Data Visualization Fail
It’s simple — answer the question
Effective data visualizations have some common characteristics, which is to communicate a message clearly and quickly. It is always fun to find one that makes you scratch your head. Usually, when you see an ineffective data visualization, there is a marketing message [look how cool this is! Alternatively, even you can do this!] not far behind.
Authors use data visualizations to answer an implied question or at least clarify a point. For instance, a manager might want to convince his boss that more support staff is needed and prepare a line chart showing the ticket arrival trend. In essence, the chart answers the question “Are more trouble tickets being opened?” or “What is the trouble ticket trend?” or even “How many trouble tickets were opened last week?”
What is the Question
I want you to study the following data visualization for a moment and ask yourself, “What question does this data viz answer?” or “What point does it clarify?”
What are you talking about sir?
Was it “What is the ticket arrival rate?”
At first, I thought the question was “What is the ticket arrival rate” or “Which day is the busiest?” These would be logical questions for a manager trying to plan the staffing hours for a Support department. The chart appears to be time-series related with weekday as the time and sort of indicated by the title Number of ticket raised in the last week, per day by the department.
So a quick analysis would be “The first of the week is rough, then it heats up again at the end of the week.” However, if you examine the x-axis, you might notice that the days are not in sequential order (Sunday, Monday, Tuesday).
Then I thought, “Oh they must be ranking the days by arrival”. However, Friday is listed first and it was not the day with the most traffic. If the days were ranked, then Monday would be the first day. I cannot tell from this chart what the second biggest day is without more study.
Was it “Who opens the most tickets?”
Maybe the chart meant to emphasize the department, perhaps the question was “Who opened the most tickets last week?” This would help the manager understand if one department needed additional staffing. It’s relatively easy to see that Support (blue line) opened the most tickets, but which department was second? If you had to rank them, in what order do they belong?
Just like with figuring out the ranking of the days, you have to start counting in your head. If you are the manager reviewing this chart — it costs you time.
How would you grade this chart on “efficient communication” when the manager needs a calculator or notepad to figure out what happened?
Have you determined what is wrong with the axis yet? The creator used the defaults and the software placed weekdays in alphabetical instead of sequential order. This is an example of what can happen when you let the software do the work for you.
Data Visualization Makeover
Is it possible that this humble data visualization is trying to communicate too much information at once? Moreover, it ends up doing nothing but creating confusion. There are two questions: What is the daily arrival rate and Which department opened the most tickets? I think it’s confusing to have it in one chart — you spend too much time trying to figure out the information.
There are 2 questions: What is the daily arrival rate and Which department opened the most tickets?
Here’s my suggested makeover using SAS Visual Analytics and some interactive reporting. Let’s put the data in one panel but use separate charts. In this example, the top chart shows the overall arrival rate for the week and the bottom charts provide details on who opened the tickets and the main issues. If the manager wants to see the week before, she can select it from the drop-down.
Also, I added a reference line that contains the average tickets opened per week as an example. You need a baseline to know if you are getting more or fewer tickets than you usually receive. Probably a line that showed the average per day would be more useful since there is variation.
What I like about SAS Visual Analytics is adding the interactivity. When you look at this data, it’s noticeable that Monday had the highest tickets. The manager can click on the point, and the report instantly filters to show the department with the most tickets that day and their associated issues. Support opened the most tickets and in general MS Office was the main issue.
For more details, the manager can click the department name to determine the issues. By hovering slightly, you can see there were 92 issues opened by Billing that day. Moreover, when you click the bar, the issues chart updates to show the main issues. Nice.
I would probably add a link to the Issues that allowed the manager to see a list of the open ticket or maybe their current status. Also, I would want a tab that showed the fix response time, overdue tickets, and other similar metrics.
Your Takeaway
Even without the interactivity, when I split the chart into two charts, it made it easier to understand the information at a glance. The interactivity made the data easier to understand and answer questions on the spot. Plus the manager could use a tablet to review this information while waiting for a meeting to start.
What do you think? What might you have added or taken away? | https://towardsdatascience.com/avoiding-an-epic-data-visualization-fail-76205af354a9 | ['Tricia Aanderud'] | 2019-03-09 12:26:25.826000+00:00 | ['Analytics', 'Data Visualization', 'Visual Thinking', 'Reporting', 'Data Analysis'] |
A Vue Modal Manager (via Vuex) | Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
I have a love/hate relationship with modals. I love how they:
- Focus users on a task
- Don’t disorientate users as much as a new page
- Let users see that their data/information is still there (in the background)
- Can hide relevant (but maybe unnecessary-for-this-session) content/forms until they’re needed
BUT! I find them annoying to manage.
Final code and app is at the bottom 😉
Issues and Traditional Solutions
Historically, I’ve made a modal wrapper component around my modals with props such as open , and emit events such as close which are pretty self explanatory.
This works great until you need multiple locations to open that modal (e.g. contact form). Because it relies on props and emit, you can either:
Just include another instance of that component where you need it — meaning you must duplicate the open prop and close handler in each location
Use an event bus or store (Vuex) to manage the modal open state and handle a close event — But you then need to create store records for each modal (states/getters/mutations/actions)
But recently I wondered if I could just have a modal manager which didn’t need hardcoding in either component data/methods or Vuex states/getters/mutations/actions…
My Alternative
The Store
The best way I could think of achieving this was a Vuex modal store, which tracked which modal was open, and could close that modal if needed; but could manage the modals by a property of the modal itself — I chose name .
My namespaced (“modals”) store
It’s pretty much just an array ( open ) state which can have names added to or removed from via open() and close() actions.
Side note: When I add a name to the open array I use unshift to make sure it’s at the beginning, and when I return the “active” modal I get the first element in the array. This saves me from mucking about with array lengths etc.
The Wrapper Component
The modal template is also relatively standard:
- Its content is only created if isOpen
- It’s made up of a clickable overlay which can close the modal
- It also has a close button
- It has a slot for content
A few extra points: The overlay is hidden if it’s not active (stops the window getting darker for every modal opened); I use click.self (so you can still interact with the content without it closing); and the content slot makes the close() method accessible as a property of the slot scope (if needed by the user). | https://medium.com/@xon5/a-vue-modal-manager-via-vuex-1ae530c8649 | ['Keagan Chisnall'] | 2020-02-10 03:05:58.649000+00:00 | ['Vuejs', 'Vuex', 'Modal', 'UI', 'Vue'] |
23 Productivity Hacks That Will Actually Make You Happy | These productivity techniques will keep you on track and happy.
1. Turn Off Alerts
It’s terribly tough to get into your Zen zone when your phone is buzzing every few minutes. Depending on how chatty your phone is, you may get notifications for everything from emails to retweets. It’s essential you shut these notifications off! Trust me, you’ll see efficiency skyrocket once you tell your phone to shut its blabbering mouth.
2. Ignore the News
As I lengthily discussed in an earlier article about productivity, the news can be a tremendous time sink. The idea that we need to keep up to date on the news is largely outdated. Most of what passes as news today is prettily packaged garbage — it’s trivial, depressing, and unreliable. If something major happens, you’ll find out one way or another. Instead, focus your attention on what’s useful and actionable in your life.
3. Exercise in the Morning
It’s been shown that exercising in the morning can greatly improve your productivity. Exercise energizes rather than exhausts you, contrary to what the couch potatoes might tell you. (Not that I’m judging. I can be very spud-tacular myself at times.)
Exercising also promotes good health (quick, alert the press!), and some studies have shown that exercise can improve your mood for up to 12 hours following your workout. Less stress, more efficiency — it’s definitely worth setting that alarm 30 minutes earlier.
4. Have 30-Minute Meetings
As Jeff Haden notes in an Inc.com article, “whoever invented the one-hour default in calendar software wasted millions of people-hours.” The truth is that most meetings never need more than 30 minutes to accomplish their missions. Many really only need 15 minutes. Don’t be a calendar-default deadbeat. Next you’ll tell me you kept your phone’s default ringtone, too.
5. Drink Water
Most of us don’t drink nearly as much water as we should. Our bodies thrive on water — just like the rest of the world! Drinking more water gives you more energy, keeps you healthy, and gives you an excuse to get up for bathroom breaks so you’re not stuck in a chair all day (which is horrifically unhealthy too, so you’re killing two birds with one water bottle).
6. Give Yourself a Break, Man!
You work hard — you deserve a break! Maybe with a Kit Kat, maybe with a cup of tea, maybe with a walk in the park. It’s easy to burn yourself out if you try to work at full throttle all day long. The truth is that our minds just aren’t designed to work that way. For optimal productivity, try the popular and praised Pomodoro technique — work for 25 minutes, then give yourself a five-minute break.
7. Don’t Be Afraid to Say No
This one is a pretty standard productivity tip, but it makes the rounds for a reason — when you’re too eager to please, you often end up getting in over your head. Remember, it’s not simply a matter of being agreeable — when you take on too much, all your work suffers. You may end up missing deadlines, and despite good intentions, you could end up disappointing others when you are unable to meet the extraordinary expectations you’ve created for yourself.Sometimes you just have to say no, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
8. Hug Your Dog
Many studies have shown how having pets can promote physical and mental well-being. Employees who are allowed to bring their dogs into the office are less stressed and often report more job satisfaction. There’s nothing like a cuddle with a furry friend to alleviate some of that toxic stress.
9. Make the Most of Lost Hours
Depending on your commute, you may spend hours driving to and from work in your car. Those hours don’t have to be wasted — consider scheduling calls in the morning that you can take during your drive to work. Subscribe to popular industry podcasts and listen to them on the way home. Stuck waiting at the boarding gate before a flight? Catch up on industry news and articles.Make the most of those previously wasted hours.
10. Silence Your Inner Perfectionist
New college grads still try to pass off perfectionism as the ultimate worst-trait-that-isn’t-really-a-bad-trait in interviews, but it’s time to recognize that being a perfectionist really is a dangerous deal. Yes, a single piece of work canalways be better, but what are you sacrificing by laboring over slight improvements? Do the best you can do in a reasonable amount of time, and then stop. Your inner perfectionist can be helpful, but it also needs to be kept in check.
11. Down With To-Dos, In With Scheduling
Have you ever had that to-do item that simply wouldn’t disappear? It hovers at the bottom of the list or scratched in the corner, petulantly scowling at you for days, weeks, even months! As more time passes, you feel even less inclined to give it attention.
We’ve all been there — it’s just one of the reasons I’m saying out with the to-do list and in with scheduling. As Eric Barker, a writer for The Week notes in the article “How to Be the Most Productive Person in Your Office — and Still Get Home by 5:30,” scheduling requires you to be realistic about what you can get done. It makes you seriously sit down and consider your available time and what specific slots you can designate to completing certain tasks in a given day.
To-dos are pipe dreams. Scheduling is a game plan. Studies show that even scheduling free time can be rewarding and can result in better quality of time spent — even if that time spent is playing PS4 or reading a Stephen King novel.
12. Declutter That Desk
Clutter is extremely stress-inducing. A messy desk can make you feel overwhelmed and anxious, so clear those papers, throw out those old paper coffee cups, and feel that heart rate go down.
13. Equip Yourself With an Arsenal ofProductivity Tools
Staying on task can be tough, but there are tons of great tools available to help you out. Don’t ignore these handy helpers — when someone offers you an ax in the zombie apocalypse, you take it, don’t you?
For tracking your time management, try Toggl or Yast.
Are you a savvy social manager? Go with Hootsuite, which offers a central dashboard for managing all your social media accounts. Also consider Buffer, which makes it super easy to share found articles across various social sites.
For saving articles to read at your leisure, go with Feedly, Pocket, or Evernote. These apps are compatible across devices; you can earmark a blog post on your laptop and read it later on the train via smartphone.
Sick of forgetting passwords (then resetting them, getting an email, and choosing a new password, which you’ll forget again next time)? Try LastPass, which keeps tabs and secures all your various passwords for you. If you use numerous accounts in one day (and who doesn’t?), this one can be a serious timesaver.
There are plenty more tools out there, so always keep your eye out for new productivity pals to help you in your workday.
14. Begin With Brussels Sprouts
Brussels sprouts have traditionally been the vegetable reviled by children across the country (although now that roasting is in, their reputation is improving). The truth is that you’ll enjoy those pork chops and potatoes much more if you eliminate the Brussels sprouts first. The same is true for productivity — eliminate your least favorite tasks right off the bat, and you’ll find the rest of your day to be more pleasant and productive.
15. Eat Breakfast!
Breakfast truly is the most important meal of the day — it’s no ruse put on by Dunkin’ Donuts. A morning meal gives you the fuel you need to be present and productive at work, so don’t skip it.
16. The Two-Minute Rule
The general productivity consensus is that if a task takes less than two minutes to complete, you should finish it immediately. Whether that means responding to an email or confirming a doctor’s appointment, get those small (but often weighty-feeling) tasks done with, rather than let them collect and snowball.
17. Don’t Drown in the Shallow End of the Pool
When a hundred little tasks are nibbling at your brain, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and lost at sea. However, a little perspective can do you good — remember to not sweat the small stuff. If you’re going to worry, worry about the big things, not the little ones.
18. Verbal Commitments
It’s easy to break a promise to yourself, but it’s much harder to break a commitment you’ve made to another person. Words have weight and power — make vows to friends (and ask them to hold you accountable), and you may find it easier to keep commitments you wouldn’t necessarily hold yourself to.
19. Get Your Sleep On
Another tried-and-true classic — you absolutely need sleep if you want to be productive. Sometimes you might feel that if you only stayed up a few hours later, you’d get more done, but major sleep loss will ruin the entire following day.
In fact, Margaret Heffernan notes that losing one night’s sleep is cognitively equivalent to being over the alcohol limit (with none of the fun parts, unfortunately). Equipment needs to be properly cared for to work correctly. Your brain is no different! Getting a good night’s sleep of seven to eight hours is mandatory, not optional.
20. Sign In on Sunday (Just for a Minute)
Sunday is definitely a day for relaxing, but if you’re often overwhelmed come Monday morning, logging in briefly Sunday evening may help you alleviate some of that Monday mania. You don’t need to make calls or even answer emails — simply assess what your Monday game plan will be, and you’ll sleep a little more soundly.
21. Make Bad Habits Difficult for Yourself
Sometimes the best way to break a bad habit is to make things incredibly difficult for yourself. If you hate that you watch too much TV, keep the remote control in the upstairs closet. If you can’t help but surf the Web when you need to be focusing on a blog post, disconnect your Wi-Fi for a bit. While the extreme lengths you take to avoid certain habits can seem excessive, once those habits are broken it will be well worth the struggle.
22. Make Sure Your Goals Are Realistic
Setting unrealistic expectations for yourself sets you up for failure. Don’t be afraid to start with baby steps and work up from there. If you want to be an Excel master, start by trying to learn just one new Excel tip a day. If you want to run a marathon, start by getting out for a run a few days a week. Your goals shouldn’t be lofty ideals you never plan on reaching — they should be real and attainable. Once you meet your goals, create new ones that raise the bar a bit higher.
23. Stay Positive!
A positive outlook goes a long way toward keeping you happy, healthy, and productive. Count your blessings, and seek out the silver linings.
This new infographic by Visme shows you how to do exactly that:
Infographic made by Visme.
Originally published in Inc.com
About The Author
Larry Kim is the CEO of Mobile Monkey and founder of WordStream. You can connect with him on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. | https://medium.com/marketing-and-entrepreneurship/23-productivity-hacks-that-will-actually-make-you-happy-498a60a1eee0 | ['Larry Kim'] | 2017-04-29 15:36:32.890000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Life Lessons', 'Learning', 'Productivity', 'Business'] |
I’m Not a Christian Anymore, but I Still Speak in Tongues | My First Experience
I was on my way home from quitting a part-time job I hated. Sitting on the train heading back to my University, I felt a weight lift off my shoulders and began to sense unintelligible utterances that wanted to come out welling up inside me. A familiar aura accompanied the feeling. I had experienced it once before while I was laying in bed late at night after a day teaching English at a school in Italy.
It was a full immersion English camp, so I didn’t speak Italian, and the students and family I lived with didn’t speak much English. I had a lot of time in my thoughts. I was a Christian at the time, so laying in bed, unable to sleep that night, I began to pray. Suddenly, the energy in the room started to shift. I looked at the closed door and had the nearest happening to a vision I’ve ever experienced as I vividly saw smoke in my mind’s eye, coming through the crack under the door. I intuitively trusted this haze and felt it as a presence entering the room. It enveloped me, and I began to cry as I felt the sensation of my body simultaneously lifting off the bed and weight similar to an LSD trip. I began to speak the words, “It’s you” over and over again through my tears.
The experience lasted less than five minutes, and the next morning I woke up with an unexplainable peace that I could almost taste and smell. It was this same tangible serenity I felt on the train that day after I quit my job, so I trusted a spiritual experience was about to unfold. I got off at my stop and allowed the utterances in my heart to manifest. It was a peculiar feeling, and throughout my twenty-minute walk home, the language grew in intensity to the point where I no longer felt I was controlling it. I was walking down the street, speaking gibberish and welcoming the highest high I’ve ever felt. The “speaking in tongues” eventually subsided and I sat on my bed stunned and perplexed by what had just occurred.
Becoming More Open To Spiritual Encounters
Both of these experiences weren’t normal for me. I grew up in a cessationist Christian culture where we believed that the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit ceased after the early Christians built the Church and used miracles to spread the gospel. These miracles were no longer needed. I was therefore distrustful of Christians who spoke in tongues or embraced other aspects of Charismatic Christianity, so to experience it for myself was quite a trip.
Once I opened myself up to the Charismatic experience, I began to experience other phenomenons, such as “holy laughter” (laughing uncontrollably in ecstasy), “the jerks” (pleasurable, involuntary jolts of the body) and “falling in the Spirit”, which you may have seen on TV when people fall prostrate, perhaps after a minister touches their forehead.
I left the Church almost seven years ago, but I still speak in tongues and occasionally experience “the jerks”. I would now classify myself as a spiritual agnostic theist, meaning I do still believe in some form of God, but I don’t accept that I can know God exists with absolute certainty. I add the “spiritual” label because it’s a step further than believing in something bigger than myself; I actively attempt to connect with that Being. I have found value in continuing to nurture my spiritual self through various customs, including yoga, meditation, scripture, non-dualistic thinking, Sufism, and the rich mystic tradition of the Church. My spirit is also edified by continuing the practice of speaking in tongues.
What Is Speaking in Tongues?
Also referred to as glossolalia, speaking in tongues means different things to different people. It is essentially a language unknown to the person saying it, either believed to be a natural language used somewhere in the world, a heavenly language for personal spiritual edification or a message from God to the congregation, which then needs to be translated by someone with the spiritual gift of translation. Theologists would classify my experience under personal edification.
Glossolalia originates at least as early as the New Testament and has marked various movements in the Christian tradition, most recently the Charismatic movement of both Protestant and Catholic Churches beginning in the 1960s. This movement was born out of Pentecostalism, the beginning of which was the Azusa Street Revival in the first decade of 20th century Los Angeles.
As mentioned, some Christians don’t believe the gift of speaking in tongues exists anymore; some believe everyone has the ability after “baptism in the Spirit”, and others believe only part of the congregation receives it. There are also various expressions of it, including “singing in the Spirit”, which is tongues in melody form — another method I use.
People who speak in tongues describe the experience in different ways: peaceful, euphoric, loving, emotional, transcendent, exhilarating, cathartic. Spontaneous tongues are characterized by “an intense uprush of vocalizations that is a product of a religious altered state.” In contrast, context-dependent glossolalia “originates as an idea about glossolalia in the speaker’s mind.” The first time I spoke in tongues, it was a spontaneous experience. I have had similar experiences since, but mostly it is more similar to “context-dependent” glossolalia which leads to spontaneous tongues. In other words, I consciously begin speaking in tongues and somewhere in the middle of the session, I no longer feel I am controlling the phrases. I also start to feel the positive feelings associated with speaking in tongues.
It’s also worth noting that I am mainly speaking to the Christian tradition of speaking in tongues and that glossolalia is not exclusive to Christianity.
What Does the Research Say?
A series of new studies commenced after the start of the Charismatic movement of the 1960s.
Linguistics
Linguists agree that speaking in tongues is not language as we know it. William J. Samarin who conducted a five-year cross-cultural study in the 70s describes it as “meaningless but phonologically structured human utterance, believed by the speaker to be a real language but bearing no systematic resemblance to any natural language, living or dead. [It] consists of strings of syllables, made up of sounds taken from all those that the speaker knows, put together more or less haphazardly but emerging nevertheless as word-like and sentence-like units because of realistic, language-like rhythm and melody.” Anthropologist and linguist Felicitas Goodman discovered that there are also similarities in tongues regardless of culture or time.
Psychology
Glossolalia is not considered to be a sign of mental illness. In fact, a recent study on almost 1,000 clergy members in the UK found those who spoke in tongues to be more emotionally stable than those who did not. Researchers have theorized that those who are susceptible to therapeutic hypnosis may share similarities in dopamine activity with people who have a propensity for glossolalia, but this is still to be studied.
Neuroscience
There have been instances of temporal lobe transients (a sort of pleasurable, electrical micro seizure in the brain) showing up on EEGs during a prolonged session of speaking in tongues.
A study in 2006 got the attention of the New York Times when it found that the frontal lobe of subjects engaging in glossolalia was relatively quiet (a key difference between meditation and speaking in tongues). The frontal lobe is responsible for voluntary movement, language expression and executive control over what you say and do. Lead researcher Andrew Newberg adds,
“The scans also showed a dip in the activity of a region called the left caudate, the area involved in motor and emotional control, so it may be that practitioners, while mindful of their circumstances, nonetheless cede some control over their bodies and emotions.”
This echoed my experience of feeling I wasn’t always in control of the words coming out of my mouth while speaking in tongues. Newberg says,
“It seems to be something that someone can ready themselves to do, but once they are fully into it, they experience being ‘taken over’ by it. The people we studied certainly were not in their usual state of consciousness and required some effort to stop them from the practice. They also seemed to require several minutes before ‘coming back’ to their usual state.”
Another recent study on Pentecostals showed a decrease in cortisol (the stress hormone) and an increase in α-amylase activity. Christopher Dana Lynn of the research team says,
“I predicted people with more glossolalia experience would have lower cortisol, which they generally did. Amylase is a little more difficult to interpret, but the higher rate of amylase among those with more glossolalia experience is interpreted as greater stability.”
Final Thoughts
I’m not sure what speaking in tongues is or what it means, but the spiritual edification I receive along with the pleasurable sensations and reduction in stress is enough to convince me that it is still of value to my life. It sits on my shelf of spiritual tools I reach for when I connect to something bigger than myself; a vehicle that assists me in becoming more loving, present and free. | https://medium.com/spiritual-secrets/im-not-a-christian-anymore-but-i-still-speak-in-tongues-6de2ff1f4701 | ['Chelsea London'] | 2020-10-27 14:56:30.929000+00:00 | ['Spiritual Experience', 'Religion', 'Spirituality', 'This Happened To Me', 'Mysticism'] |
How to Turn on Spell Check in Sublime Text | Original photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash; Sublime Text logo via Fair Use
Recently, I was writing some some HTML using Sublime Text for an article that I was writing. The tag completion and tab spacing were the features I really wanted (I’ve done it free-typing before, and it’s just way too manual and error-prone), but I was missing out on a key feature and didn’t it realize it until later: spell check.
As I was working on the HTML, I was also adding and editing some lines to my page here and there, and unfortunately, I made a typo.
Now, the backstory as to how I got there isn’t too important, but the experience made me realize I really wanted spell check in my Sublime Text. Since I do a lot of web development in general, I would want another check beyond my own eyes to make sure any typos don’t make it out to user-facing pages.
How to turn spell check on
In Sublime Text, go to Preferences > Settings.
A new window will open:
On the left-hand side are the default Sublime Text settings all in one JSON file. On the right-hand side, you can override any setting in the default file simply by choosing a different value for the key.
Let’s ctrl+f (Windows) or cmd+f (Mac) for spell_check . If you just type up to spell , actually, it’ll find the correct key.
Now, on the right-hand side, simply set spell_check to true like so:
Now, when you have something misspelled in Sublime Text, there will be a jagged red line underneath the word: | https://medium.com/dev-genius/how-to-turn-on-spell-check-in-sublime-text-45b2d82cb1a | ['Tremaine Eto'] | 2020-11-24 08:39:56.611000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Software', 'Software Development', 'Programming', 'Front End Development'] |
Councilman Chris Buoni resigns after seven years of service | Councilman Chris Buoni resigns after seven years of service
Buoni annouced at the Feb. 5 council meeting that he is moving out of New Jersey.
Medford councilman Chris Buoni resigned on Feb. 5 after seven years of service on council, including one year as deputy mayor in 2013 and one year as mayor in 2014.
Buoni announced at the Feb. 5 council meeting that he is moving out of New Jersey — for now.
“This state is on a pathway to ruin. New Jersey will go bankrupt, I have no doubt,” Buoni said.
Buoni said that regardless, New Jersey is a great state and this might not be the last of him. He said that he might return back to New Jersey at some point.
“If I do, I hope I can move back here to Medford Township,” Buoni said.
Mayor Chuck Watson said that together they have worked hard to serve Medford Township and they have become good colleagues and friends.
“You and I have become very good friends and you may not be sitting here at council anymore, but we’ll still be good friends,” Watson said. “Thank you for your service to our community, but that you mostly for your friendship.”
Buoni said that this resignation is tough and bittersweet for him, however, after his years of service it has become routine.
“In my case it’s good to move on,” Buoni said. “I just hope that Medford continues to find people of quality and make great decisions.” | https://medium.com/the-medford-sun/councilman-chris-buoni-resigns-after-seven-years-of-service-5bdaa60e8d95 | ['Melissa Riker'] | 2019-02-22 19:58:57.885000+00:00 | ['New Jersey', 'Community'] |
Let Your Kids Know How Stressed You Are | Let Your Kids Know How Stressed You Are
Whether you’re anxious about Covid-19 or something else, it’s best to fess up
Photo: Tom Werner/Getty Images
Stressed-out parents may think it’s perfectly logical to hide their stress from the kids, but a new study published in the Journal of Family Psychology suggests children see right through the deception, and it just stresses them out, too. The advice: Let it out, within reason.
“It is important that we are honest with our children about our feelings, including negative emotions like stress or upset,” says study leader Sara Waters, PhD, an assistant professor in Washington State University’s Department of Human Development. “This does not mean that we should share all the details of our upset with our children or that we should take our stress out on them.” But pretending everything is fine when it’s not can backfire, the research suggests.
Waters and her colleagues brought 107 volunteering parents into a lab setting, along with their children ages seven to 11, and split them apart. Parents were forced to do something stressful — giving a speech about themselves to a small audience of arm-crossed, head-shaking critics — and then each had a conversation with their child about a topic both had ranked as high in potential for conflict. Half the parents were asked to suppress their emotions, the other half not.
The advice: Let it out, within reason.
All the parents and children were wired with stress monitors to measure signs of stress, such as elevated heart rates.
When a parent suppressed emotions, both they and child were less engaged and less warm with each other, according to scores given by volunteers who watched videos of the interactions and who didn’t know what instructions had been given to each parent.
“That makes sense for a parent distracted by trying to keep their stress hidden, but the kids very quickly changed their behavior to match the parent,” Waters explains. “So if you’re stressed and just say, ‘Oh, I’m fine,’ that only makes you less available to your child. We found that the kids picked up on that and reciprocated, which becomes a self-fulfilling dynamic.”
Emotional authenticity pays off
When moms suppressed their emotions, their children showed more signs of stress, too, as measured by the sensors and also as rated by objective viewers. That didn’t happen with dads, however.
Perhaps fathers didn’t transmit suppressed stress because often they “tend to suppress their emotions around their children more than mothers do,” and the kids are used to it, Waters says. “But it was more abnormal for kids to see their mom suppressing their emotions, and they reacted to that.”
The study was well designed, and importantly included fathers, who are often omitted in this type of research, says Mary Alvord, PhD, a psychologist practicing in Maryland and co-author of the book Resilience Builder Program for Children and Adolescents.
Alvord says that because the research involved relatively mild stressors, it can’t necessarily be generalized to more serious stress. But she says the study adds to evidence suggesting parents should be “emotionally authentic” with their children and talk to them about stressful or difficult news or events “in as calm a state as possible.”
This increases the chance their child will also stay calmer and therefore better absorb and handle the information. (Separately, Alvord recently provided several suggestions on how to talk to kids about the coronavirus.)
“This does not mean that we should share all the details of our upset with our children or that we should take our stress out on them.”
Keep calm and…
Waters agrees the study looked at relatively mild and short-lived stress, much different from pandemic stress. “But the ways we support our children through it are not that different,” she tells Elemental.
Her advice, for both mothers and fathers, aims to make the parent a role model of emotional resilience:
Ask what your child has heard about the pandemic and what they’re worried about.
Really listen, and make it safe for them to express themselves.
Be honest about your stress, without sharing more information than is needed.
Show them what you do to feel calmer and discuss tactics for them.
“It is important that we as parents find ways to manage our stress effectively (which starts with acknowledging it) and include our children in these efforts,” Waters says. “It is okay to not be okay right now.” And then, she says, try not to worry about your children too much. “Kids will work their way through it as long as they have a supportive caregiver. They’re good at it.” | https://elemental.medium.com/let-your-kids-know-how-stressed-you-are-9b7bdec45e3 | ['Robert Roy Britt'] | 2020-04-27 05:31:01.393000+00:00 | ['Stress', 'Psychology', 'Mental Health', 'Parenting', 'Coronavirus'] |
Creating Spring Boot CRUD Rest APIs with Data JPA and JDBC— Part 1 | Spring Boot is a highly used and popular framework in Java which is easy to start with and understand as well. In order to get a head start into the framework we will be creating a Spring Boot Application which exposes REST APIs to create, edit, retrieve and delete a user.
Technology Stack
Spring boot framework Maven 3.6.3 MySQL 8.0.19
Setting up the Project
Go to https://start.spring.io/ Choose the Project type depending on what build tool you want to use. We have chosen maven as the build tool. Choose the Spring Boot version Fill in the Project Metadata info. Add the dependencies . In the case of this project we need Spring Web, Spring Data JPA, MySQL Driver. Generate the project and import it in your preferred editor
Dependencies
Setting up a Spring Boot Project
Setting up the Database
Create database userdb in MySQL
Create table user
The User Model will contain the following attributes — id, first name, last name, gender and age.
REST API Endpoints
Create User
Method: POST
Endpoint: /users/save-user
Update User
Method: PUT
Endpoint: /users/update-user/{id}
Delete User
Method: DELETE
Endpoint: /users/delete-user/{id}
Get all Users
Method: GET
Endpoint: /users
Get User by Id
Method: GET
Endpoint: /users/{id}
Project Layout and Implementation
Project Layout
application.properties — This contains configuration of the spring boot project like database properties, port number, etc .
application.properties
server.port indicates the port number the application will run on spring.datasource.username and spring.datasource.password indicates the username and password of the database being used. spring.datasource.url indicates the url of the database spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto is a Spring Data JPA property which manipulates how the database schema will be transformed on application startup. The values can be create (creates a new schema every time the application is started), create-drop (the schema is dropped once the application is stopped and only created once the application is started again), update (updates the schema in case of any change) and validate (only validates the schema, not making any changes). spring.jpa.properties.hibernate.dialect property makes hibernate generate better SQL for the database
ENTITY — The Entity class is mapped to the respective table in the database. It is a bean which represents the table structure.
User Entity
In the above figure the User entity is mapped to the user table in the database using @Table annotation where the name property specifies the name of the table.
The annotation @Entity annotation specifies the class an an entity bean and defines that a class can be mapped to a table.
The fields of the User class are mapped to the columns of the user table using @Column annotation. In case the name of the field and the column is different, name property can be used to map the field to the differently named column.
@Id annotation specifies the field which will be the primary key of the entity and @GeneratedValue specifies that the field will be automatically generated according to the specified strategy like in the above case the Identity strategy.
PERSISTENCE LAYER — This layer helps in transforming the business objects to database rows and vice versa, containing the logic to persist data to or retrieve data from the datastore.
UserRepo for Data Access
We are using Spring Data which simplifies the data access procedure for databases. JPA (Java Persistence API) is a API specification for object relational mapping which maps the objects of a class to rows of a table (in this example — maps User class to user table).
The Repository interface represents the DAO layer which takes care of database operations.
In the above example JpaRepository can carry out basic CRUD operations and also contains API for pagination and sorting without us having to specify the methods separately. With the help of this the boilerplate code written to access data is reduced.
The Entity (User) and the datatype of the primary key (Integer) of the entity ( i.e the field marked with @Id ) are specified as well.
PRESENTATION LAYER AND SERVICE LAYER
Presentation Layer — This layer contains REST Controllers which expose the REST endpoints to the client , receives the Rest API request, transforms the JSON received by the client to the mapped model object present in the Rest API as parameters. The model object is then transferred to the service layer.
Presentation Layer Structure
In the above figure UserController annotated with @RestController annotation making it a controller which receives HTTP requests from the client. It returns an object which is directly written into the HTTP response as JSON or XML. The annotation is a combination of @Controller (marks a class as a Spring MVC controller) and @ResponseBody (tells a controller that the returned object returned is to be serialised into JSON and written into HTTP response) annotations.
@RequestMapping maps HTTP requests to the handler classes/methods of REST controllers.
@PostMapping, @GetMapping, @PutMapping, @DeleteMapping annotated methods handle the respective HTTP POST, GET, PUT, DELETE requests matched with given URI expression.
Service Layer — Implements any business logic on the request model and uses the methods exposed by the Data Access Layer.
UserServiceImpl class is the service class which is autowired in UserController. It exposes the methods of the service layer in the controller.
Service Layer Structure
@Service annotation is a specialisation of @Component annotation. It is used to define service-layer classes.
Implementation of REST CRUD APIs
Creating a User
@RequestBody converts the HTTP Request body to java objects using HTTP message converters.
The user object received in createUser method of UserController is then passed to the service layer.
createUser method in UserServiceImpl receives the user object from the controller and saves it in the database using the JpaRepository UserRepo and returns the saved user back to the controller.
Updating a User
@PathVariable annotation binds the request parameter of the handler method to the URI making it dynamic. Hence it is used for data passed in URI. In the above example id is the path variable which can have dynamic values.
The user object along with the id received in updateUser method of UserController is then passed to the service layer.
updateUser method in UserServiceImpl receives the user object and id from the controller, checks if data is present in the database corresponding to that id using findById method of the JpaRepository. If data is present, the user object is copied to the updatedUser object using BeanUtils.copyProperties() and saved in the database corresponding to the id. The updated user is then returned to the controller.
Deleting a User
The id received as the path variable in deleteUser method of UserController is passed to the service layer.
deleteUser method in UserServiceImpl receives the id from the controller, checks if data is present in the database corresponding to that id using findById . If data is present, it is deleted using the delete method of JpaRepository.
Retrieving all Users
getUsers method of UserController calls the service layer method.
getUsers method in UserServiceImpl uses the findAll method of JpaRepository to retrieve all users from the database. The data is then passed back to the controller.
Retrieving a User by ID
The id received as the path variable in getUserById method of UserController is passed to the service layer.
getUserById method in UserServiceImpl receives the id from the controller, checks if data is present in the database corresponding to that id using findById and retrieves the user. If user is present, the retrieved user is returned to the controller.
Testing the APIs with Postman
Creating a User
Updating a User
Deleting a User
Retrieving all Users
Retrieving a User by ID
Find the link to complete code here
Find Creating Spring Boot CRUD Rest APIs with Data JPA and JDBC — Part 2 here | https://medium.com/@anvipuri14/creating-spring-boot-crud-rest-apis-with-data-jpa-and-jdbc-part-1-9eb0d6cd1358 | ['Anvi Puri'] | 2020-11-25 12:07:46.122000+00:00 | ['Java', 'Spring Boot', 'Coding', 'Rest Api', 'Spring'] |
America’s Greatest Mystery: Guys in Pickup Trucks | I do not like the men I see
Who sit in trucks and parks, for free.
Why do they wait? Why are they there?
Is it wrong for them to sit, and stare? | https://medium.com/muddyum/americas-greatest-mystery-guys-in-pickup-trucks-768b825e7228 | ['Jean Campbell'] | 2020-12-20 23:18:24.888000+00:00 | ['Dr Seuss', 'Loneliness', 'Humor', 'Poetry', 'Men'] |
Proof Positive Scam Detection | Can it really be possible to recognize every single scam? Let me tell you how your protection works right now, and how you can improve it today.
Reputation is the key to our heart. We shoot the messenger because we expected better from them. The reason we place our trust in the messenger is simple: It is too exhausting to verify each individual message. Imagine you were selling your house for cash. Would you have the bills checked? What if the buyer was your lifelong best friend and they told you they got them fresh from their bank? Didn’t your distrust just decrease with each additional layer of reputation added?
Email protection today works a lot like that. You trust your email provider to keep you safe. And your email provider tends to trust messages from other email providers for you if that provider looks good. In this case, being trustworthy means their servers are well configured, their domain name service (DNS) records are well kept and secured, and they follow all the best practices.
There are also many technical specifications to follow, and they have complicated technical names and acronyms like DKIM — standing for “Domain Key Identified Mail” — or SPF, which is the short-hand for “Sender Policy Framework.” Both are frameworks that come together in the “Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance” policy, which abbreviates to DMARC.
All these standards have one single goal: To allow mail servers to decide which other mail servers to trust. But if applied rigorously, these frameworks will also stop and delete a lot of good mail that should have arrived at the recipient.
Just imagine this in the real world and if for every 10 letters you sent, only 6 would reach their destination. I guess you would have some choice words for your postal service then.
It is for good reason that mail providers use these principally as indicators. Many users have partially disarmed these mechanisms because they believe the damage of losing important email is the bigger risk. So, email providers try to use pattern recognition and AI to analyze your email and understand whether it is likely real or fraudulent.
Such systems are very fragile and find themselves in a very asymmetric risk and reward scenario. Scammers only need to fool them once to reach millions of users, which is what appears to have happened to Microsoft Office365 recently:
So, should they trigger much earlier and more aggressively? Only if you are willing to accept a totally unreliable email provider. Some mails arrive, others don’t. It seems completely random, and you will have no idea what you missed. Sometimes you may find out later that you missed an important email; other times, you won’t.
All these systems work on a balance between false positives, messages that were incorrectly flagged as scam, and false negatives, scam messages that the system missed. Shift the balance aggressively toward avoiding false negatives at all cost and the number of false positives shoots up dramatically.
So filtering is necessarily only partially effective. This is why so many people have high hopes for universal DMARC adoption: Each mail server could then make sure the other mail server is legitimate and supposed to communicate on behalf of an organization. Will we ever get to this point? Hopefully, but I dare not predict when because old habits die hard. Just look at the number of fax machines still in operation.
And once this goal has been achieved, what is next? Mail servers are still only messengers. This brings us back to the beginning of the article. Should we blindly trust each message because it seems to have come via a trustworthy messenger? And what do we know of the process that made the messenger accept the message in the first place?
The best we can hope for with traditional approaches is to make sure the messengers are mostly trustworthy and filter out some of the scam that still makes it through. It will be gradually better than what you know today — but not radically so.
For a radical improvement, we would need a way that secures each individual message as it is being handled by the messengers. That’s been impossible so far, mostly because there has been no way to verify the sending side as it was hidden behind its messenger. Vereign Seal fundamentally changes that.
With this new approach, each message gets its own cryptographic seal to protect the message’s authenticity and integrity. Each seal encodes all the necessary information to verify its message and access additional sender and recipient records, with built-in blockchain protection against tampering and manipulation. This is the same technology that makes Bitcoin secure against forgery, and now protects each of your messages.
Added to each message as a QR Code, a Vereign Seal allows to bring up a web verification app that unlocks the seal, obtains all the available records, verifies them against the blockchain, and displays the result. Available as add-ins for Office365 and Gmail, you can also verify each Vereign Seal against the blockchain right in your inbox.
Likewise, the add-ins can seal each message locally in your browser before sending them off via Gmail and Office365. This also works locally on your desktop or mobile with up-to-date versions of Microsoft Outlook
The Vereign Seal also supports and helps enhance our messengers, the many different email servers, by allowing them to seal each message as it passes through, effectively testifying to the recipient each message has been locally checked, verified, and sent off correctly. Receiving messengers can also testify having received a sealed message correctly and let the sender know that the message has been accepted.
But what if someone tried to mislead users by adding a false Vereign Seal that led to a fake landing page?
Like a 3-year-old’s drawing of a banknote would be obvious to you, such a fake seal would be immediately obvious to each add-in and messenger that receives such a mail. There would be no doubt this message is a scam. It cannot result from misconfiguration or honest mistakes. There are no false positives.
For the first time, 100% Proof Positive Scam Detection is possible. But it gets better. Such falsified seals can trigger tripwire alerts, allowing for countermeasures and appropriate responses. No scam undetected. For would-be scammers, staying far away from Vereign Seal is their last, best hope of success.
This is why you should install it right away and also ask your friends to do the same.
What’s next
If you are a user of Microsoft Outlook or Office 365, you can try out the Vereign Seal Add-In right now from Microsoft AppSource. For instructions, please see the Vereign Community forum. Also we would love to get your feedback and questions in the forum.
As a user of Google, you’ll still have to be a little patient as Google is still reviewing the add-ins. They should normally become available in January, latest.
And if you’re an email service provider, gateway service vendor, or other participant in the email ecosystem and would like to see what we could be doing together: Get in touch — and let’s talk! | https://medium.com/@ggreve/proof-positive-scam-detection-4f636a0c85d6 | ['Georg C. F. Greve'] | 2020-12-24 09:20:40.878000+00:00 | ['Dkim', 'Spf', 'Blockchain', 'Email', 'Dmarc'] |
You Are Peculiar ( Redemptive Right ) | You Are Peculiar ( Redemptive Right )
Acts 10:15 AMP, And the voice came to him again a second time, What God has cleansed and pronounced clean, do not you defile and profane by regarding and calling common and unhallowed or unclean.
Beloved, the new creation is cleansed and made clean by God. What God has cleansed let no man defile or profane or call common. This is what the Lord Himself told Peter the Apostle. The Apostle Peter was a Jew and he knew the law so much. He has practiced the law from his childhood until he became an Apostle of Jesus Christ.
Being a Jew he knew from the law of Moses that it is unclean to eat certain animals ( Leviticus 11 ). He knew that salvation is not for the gentiles ( John 4:22 ). He knew that the Jews were peculiar people. They are dear to God and God is a God of the Jews or Israel, not the gentiles or the heathen ( Romans 11 ). Therefore, the Lord showed him this vision in other to teach him that the table has changed. The blood of the lamp has made all things clean. The prize is paid. Salvation has come to all. God is now a God of the whole world as He was from the beginning. God is now a God of the gentiles too ( Romans 11:11 ).
The Jews were so peculiar to extends that they have never lost a battle. The times they were defeated was when they rejected God and served idols. Despite all these things when they repent, He forgives them immediately and raise a savior for them. The Lord Himself has been the defense of Israel. Anyone that touches Israel touches the apple of His Eye ( Zechariah 2:8 KJV, For thus saith the Lord of hosts; After the glory hath he sent me unto the nations which spoiled you: for him that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye.
In Joel 3:2, God said Israel is my heritage. See how God fought and delivered them from Egypt. See how God anointed King Cyrus and put all nations and kings under him just for him to set Israel free. The man had Idols but he said i will still anoint you because of my people Israel ( Isaiah 46:1–5 ).
Naman rose against Mordecai but not long after he lost everything and he was executed. Before, his execution, this is what his wife and wise men told him. Esther 6:13 KJV; And Haman told Zeresh his wife and all his friends everything that had befallen him. Then said his wise men and Zeresh his wife unto him, If Mordecai be of the seed of the Jews, before whom thou hast begun to fall, thou shalt not prevail against him, but shalt surely fall before him.
Beloved, the new creation has the same benefits from God and even more. Jesus said: John 14:12, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father” Can you imagine, He walked on the sea, commanded the storms to be still, changes water into wine, multiplied bread and fishes, healed the sick, raised the dead, causes the cripple to walk and the blind to see. Demons screamed and flee by his presence and this same Person said we can do greater than all He did because He is with the Father.
Can you now see how peculiar you are? Wikipedia says to be peculiar means to be “different to what is normal or expected; strange,” The Cambridge dictionary says: to be peculiar is to be unusual and strange, sometimes unpleasantly. Beloved, you are not a normal human being. You are unusual and unusual things should happen through you. Every devil should bow to you. No situation or circumstance should bring you down. You are like Mordecai. It will look like Naman is winning but the game will turn in your favor. No sickness should stay in you forever. You are to heal the sick. Say to that sickness or that problem that enough is enough. Begin to see your peculiarity and manifest it.
After the Apostle Peter had that trance, his perception changed. He began to see the finished work of Jesus in all believers. He began to see that they are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a PECULIAR PEOPLE. The Apostle Peter went ahead to say that what makes the New Creation Peculiar is because we are called out of Darkness into Light to show the praises of God. HALLELUJAH! ( 1 Peter 2:9–10 KJV, But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light: [10] Which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy ).
See, you are unpredictable, everyone can feel the wind and hear the sound of the wind but no one can tell where it came from and where it is going. Your enemies will look at you and marvel. ( John 3:8 KJV, The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst does not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit ).
This is who you are; strange, unusual, unexpected, different, out of the ordinary, exceptional, rare, extraordinary, remarkable, puzzling, mystifying, mysterious, baffling, unaccountable, and uncommon. YOU ARE VICTORIOUS!
God Bless You!
#You Are Victorious!
Like! Comments, Share! | https://medium.com/@kojoofori/you-are-peculiar-redemptive-right-fe555ad20adc | ['Benjamin Ofori'] | 2021-03-22 21:44:08.893000+00:00 | ['Religion', 'Faith', 'Victorious Living', 'Christianity', 'Christian Living'] |
How To Find Seasonality Using Python | How To Find Seasonality Using Python
Parsing seasonality from time series data can often be useful in data analytics. It helps with analyzing seasonality for decision making as well as for more accurate forecasts. Python can be used to separate out these trend and seasonal components.
Dataset
Overview
The time series data we’ll be analyzing is the Kansas City Crime Summary — more specifically the number of Breaking & Entering crimes per month. Do you think there will be any seasonal components to this data? Let’s find out.
Initial Visualization
To start, the original data is visualized below using Power BI — this helps to see any seasonality that can be spotted visually. There appears to be an overall downward trend and what looks like some seasonality as well — February is often the lowest point, while crimes increase in the summer and into the Holidays.
However, how much is related to seasonality vs. trend and how would we automate separation of seasonality components?
Data Overview
Seasonal Decomposition
Overview
The statsmodels library in Python has a seasonal_decompose function that does just this. Given a time series of data, the function splits into separate trend, seasonality, and residual (noise) components.
After loading and reformatting the data, the date and metric will be fed into this function to parse out the separate pieces.
Data Load
To get the data in the right shape, there are 4 main steps to take:
Read in the data: Data will be read into a pandas dataframe using the pandas.read_csv function. Pull out just the date and metric columns: We only need the date component (monthly for this dataset) and metric (the Burglary/Breaking and Entering column). Normalize the data: Since each month has a different number of days, dividing the monthly totals by number of days in the month gives a more comparable average daily count to use. Set the dataframe date index: Setting our date column to be the index of the pandas dataframe allows for an easier setup when using the seasonal decompose function. Additional examples on setting an index can be found here.
The code for these four steps is as follows:
Step 1: Data Load
# Load Data
df = pd.read_csv("../data/Kansas_City_Crime__NIBRS__Summary.csv")
# Choose only necessary columns
df = df[['Date', 'Burglary/Breaking and Entering']]
# Normalize Metric
df['Burglary/Breaking and Entering'] = \
df['Burglary/Breaking and Entering'] \
/ pd.to_datetime(df['Date']).dt.day
# Set date index
df = set_date_index(df, 'Date') # custom helper function
There is one custom function used as a helper, set date index, to abstract away date formatting into a separate function.
It creates a copy of the dataframe (to leave the original data intact), sets the date column to a datetime type, and finally sorts and sets the index.
Helper function: Sorting and Setting a Datetime Index
def set_date_index(input_df, col_name='Date'):
"""Given a pandas df, parse and set date column to index.
col_name will be removed and set as datetime index.
Args:
input_df (pandas dataframe): Original pandas dataframe
col_name (string): Name of date column
Returns:
pandas dataframe: modified and sorted dataframe
"""
# Copy df to prevent changing original
modified_df = input_df.copy()
# Infer datetime from col
modified_df[col_name] = pd.to_datetime(modified_df[col_name])
# Sort and set index
modified_df.sort_values(col_name, inplace=True)
modified_df.set_index(col_name, inplace=True)
return modified_df
Trend vs. Seasonality
The next piece is actually running the seasonal decomposition. The dataframe is passed in as an argument as well as period=12 to represent our monthly data and find year-over-year seasonality.
# Seasonal decompose
sd = seasonal_decompose(df, period=12)
combine_seasonal_cols(df, sd) # custom helper function
One additional helper function was used to simply add the results to our original dataframe as new columns.
Helper function: Combining seasonal_decompose with Original Columns
def combine_seasonal_cols(input_df, seasonal_model_results):
"""Adds inplace new seasonal cols to df given seasonal results
Args:
input_df (pandas dataframe)
seasonal_model_results (statsmodels DecomposeResult object)
"""
# Add results to original df
input_df['observed'] = seasonal_model_results.observed
input_df['residual'] = seasonal_model_results.resid
input_df['seasonal'] = seasonal_model_results.seasonal
input_df['trend'] = seasonal_model_results.trend
Output
Finally the results were written to a local csv file to be visualized in Power BI. If this was a recurring process, we could setup an API or use cloud services to host our model; however, for a one-time run a local csv file will do just fine.
Output Results for Visualization
df.to_csv("../data/results.csv")
Visualize Results
Visualizing the final result, the new seasonal (dark blue) and trend (orange) lines are added to the original chart.
A slight downwards trend has been identified along with a seasonal component (adding or subtracting up to 4 crimes per day from the trend).
The neat part of this methodology is that the trend, seasonal, and residual components are additive back to the original time series. You’ll see in the visualization below, adding the trend and seasonal components more or less gets back to the original dataset (residual/noise is the remaining piece).
Final Result
Crimes seem to be lowest in February due to seasonality (cold weather?), and ramp up throughout the summer months and into the holidays.
Summary
Using the statsmodels library in Python, we were able to separate out a time series into seasonal and trend components. This can be useful for forecasting — for example, extending a trend and then adding back the same seasonal ups and downs into the future. It can also be helpful when analyzing degree seasonality is important — ex: if you wanted to see what time of year to focus resources.
Interested in your thoughts, if you found this approach helpful or have used different approaches in the past to solve similar issues — comment below!
All examples and files available on Github. | https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-find-seasonality-using-python-73547ebf322 | ['Barrett Studdard'] | 2020-12-23 22:35:41.373000+00:00 | ['Statistics', 'Data Science', 'Data Analytics', 'Machine Learning'] |
Traditional December Celebrations Around the World | December is the month when the day in our part of the world is at its darkest.
December is the month of winter solstice. The winter solstice in the northern hemisphere occurs in December each year, but the dates vary from 20 to 23 December. This is the time when the sun “turns”, and the days ahead will slowly lengthen.
It’s the time when we stay indoors for the most part.
What does December stand for?
For many, December is synonymous with Christmas.
As children, we remember this part of the year as Christmas decorations, school holidays, snow, lots of snow. And gifts, and time with siblings and parents, the TV classics and the special Christmas mood.
It is the time of year when people send nice Christmas greetings to each other, there is a real Christmas mood and there must be candles of all kinds that are lit everywhere. And of course Christmas music.
Christmas means a lot of different things, but most of all it means free time to gather both oneself and the family. Christmas is a time where you slow down, retreat a little and take care of family, friends and yourself. We enjoy traditional food, have time off from work and time for what really matters in life.
December is a month with many lights — and it is a time that almost everyone has a special relationship with.
— What does December mean to you?
Here is the writing challenge from Blue Insights for December 2020:
What December Means to Me | https://medium.com/blueinsight/traditional-december-celebrations-around-the-world-6ceac4da9cbb | ['Øivind H. Solheim'] | 2020-12-02 23:18:56.135000+00:00 | ['Writing Prompts', 'Cultural Prompt', 'Christmas', 'Blue Insights', 'Happiness'] |
By Its Own Hand | Writer and copyeditor. “What doesn’t kill us gives us something new to write about” ~ J. Wright
Follow | https://medium.com/the-junction/by-its-own-hand-a1a1c31c7bb2 | ['Danna Reich Colman'] | 2020-06-23 18:59:29.805000+00:00 | ['Pandemic', 'George Floyd', 'Poetry', 'BlackLivesMatter', 'Donald Trump'] |
On the word ‘Brand’ | Branding is a major part of the effort to combat the Covid pandemic as well as the BLM movement. Where does it come in to play with each and should we ever stop paying attention?
(Your author in Wilson, KS.)
Whether it’s two people speaking, or a commercial, every new interaction is the transmission of one brand to another and each subsequent interaction is an iteration on the established dynamic. Branding lets us know what to expect from something or someone and in most cases, gives us enough information to tell us how to engage back. Continued exchanges serve to update the dynamic. The most timeless example is The Boy Who Cried Wolf. The boy begins with a trusted brand; people believe his claim that there is a wolf eating the sheep. After repeatedly raising false alarms about the wolf though, the protagonist’s brand evolves to one that merits a response of indifference, which ultimately becomes his undoing.
With the above in mind, every utterance — written or otherwise — is at a minimum, an ask for attention. Often times, the ask is greater — a response or the provision of money. One side makes an expression and the other is given the opportunity to decide what to do next. In this sense, communication of any sort is an exchange. The first to communicate makes an offering, and the other side reciprocates, though not necessarily commensurate with the opening bid. So, the thought of writing begs the question “is what I’m offering worth of what’s being asked in return?” In this case, I’m asking you to read my newsletter each week. My hope is you will, but the resulting statistics (open rate, link clicks, un-subscribes, etc.) will be the ultimate judge. This dynamic is what can sometimes make communication exhausting and the task of expression, especially to a group of people, daunting.
The Covid pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement have given rise to two of the more notorious ways to broadcast a brand and both have made me feel exhausted in different ways. In case you haven’t noticed, this week’s newsletter has been a bit light on supporting facts or hyperlinks. That’s because I’ve spent most of the week driving cross-country from Myrtle Beach to Denver with friends, without desktop internet. Along the way, we made dozens of stops, and these two channels for expression branded each place we visited by way of the prevalence or scarcity or each’s supporting paraphernalia. At one gas station in rural Kentucky, I was immediately asked where I was visiting from and only after leaving the store did I realize it was because I was the only person inside wearing a mask.
Because branding and communication are an exchange, consideration must be taken in advance in order to anticipate the audience’s reaction. In most cases, this consideration lends itself to a tacit conscientiousness of the audience’s feelings and their current circumstances. Charmin uses cutesy cartoon bears to advertise its toilet paper because to varying degrees, we’re ashamed of the sounds and smells our bodies make. If the brand wrought shame upon us by pointing out our propensity to make stinks while scrolling twitter for ten minutes, people likely would take their business elsewhere. Charmin coddles our egos and sensibilities by personifying the bears and averting our attention from the very act its product exists to clean up.
At their cores, the BLM movement and the wearing of a mask are about consideration for others. BLM challenges us to combat racism so that the law can be applied equally and justly and so that all of us, not just a lucky few, can live unencumbered by systems of oppression and prejudiced modes of thought. We wear masks not only because we don’t want to get infected, but also because we don’t want those around us to get infected. Nobody is upset that bathroom doors exist, nor is anyone upset that FAA regulation covers all airline passengers equally. It’s an unfortunate irony that expressions of support for these two issues, whose genesis is rooted in the desire for each of us to live the best life possible, is that they elicit such polarizing opposing reactions.
This is what makes understanding the opposing sides of pandemic suppression and BLM so difficult. Not taking the pandemic seriously and not advocating for equality establishes your brand as one that doesn’t believe we’re all deserving of an equal shot to make the most of our lives. It’s one thing make a misstep, perhaps by making a thoughtless generalization, and offer contrition later. It’s another to set out in the world each day sans mask, or to feel threatened by people asking for universality in the application of the law. In a more just world, branding yourself so selfishly would eventually lead you to a similar fate as the boy in Aesop’s parable, and people would just ignore you all together.
*Song of the post, in honor of our great American interstates. RIP Scott Weiland, don’t do heroin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjJL9DGU7Gg&feature=emb_logo
Postscript: My first two posts for this newsletter haven’t used the word ‘brand’, the center of the title, once. I’ve been toying with the idea of writing for the sake of it for over a decade, and easily my biggest trepidation was the impact it would have on other people’s perception of me.
I’m cynical; it’s hard to buy the earnestness of companies, most politicians, or any public-facing entity when couched in each message is one of those entities asking for something from me. If it’s difficult to believe in much, there doesn’t seem like a lot of reason to believe myself in this arena either. This is part of my brand, but is also a self-created impediment that stopped me for so long from getting to this monumental place of a third newsletter. | https://medium.com/brandsmeanalot/on-the-word-brand-4f44be336516 | ['Jared Holst'] | 2020-08-23 23:06:19.166000+00:00 | ['Kansas', 'Brands', 'Charmin', 'Activism', 'Stone Temple Pilots'] |
Simple Living — Samu. Don’t think about work as labor. | Don’t think about work as labor.
Photo by Katie Drazdauskaite on Unsplash
This concept has many names but mostly remains the same.
Buddhists prior to migrating to china received food & money from supporters whereas after moving to the mountains of china, they were no longer able and had to come up with their own means of survival. Cultivating their own crops & fields became a form of practice.
Working and eating became closely attached.
Primarily, if you didn’t work for what your food, then you wouldn’t be allowed to eat the food harvested.
Working allows us to forget our own problems and escape our thoughts for long enough to see the clarity to solve or approach our problems.
Seeing our work as “Samu” allows us to think of our work mindfully, showing it to ourselves as an educating process where there is the potential to learn something we didn’t know before starting the work no matter how grueling.
There is a certain respect that our work deserves, this mindfulness is exactly that. When our work is respected by our inner monologue, we not only show respect to the work but also to ourselves.
Caring for what provides for us, it in return, provides for us if we allow for it.
Living simple is much like caring for a simple houseplant. Too much intrusion and we can harm the plant, too little attention and the plant can also be harmed. There is a careful balance to which we will only find with practice and dedication. Such dedication that can only be revealed with time.
A simple life becomes only that when we work out the unnecessary complexities.
Take a moment to think about things in your life that have unnecessary troubles, just this step alone is how you begin your journey.
Where there is a will, there is a way. | https://medium.com/@connorhearld/simple-living-samu-cfb6c8dbc63e | ['Connor Hearld'] | 2020-12-16 21:17:19.791000+00:00 | ['Minimalism', 'Motivation', 'Productivity', 'Simple Living', 'Time Management'] |
✨ MHN’s #MakeThingsApril ✨ | I used to think that a key component of love was consistency; the parts of our life that stayed with us for a long time, that were always there, constituted love. I later learned that time doesn’t factor in at all. I have loved strongly but fleetingly. I have had love arrive on my doorstep at the most inopportune moments and I have had love reside in the most unreachable places. My longest relationship (so far) has been the most love-starved one, wax-sealed with the glaring red stamp of violence and abuse. Love has been planted, nurtured, but died before emerging from the topsoil. Love doesn’t lend its mind to the frivolities of time.
A part of me is still learning what love is, but most of me is now well-acquainted with it. I’m incredibly blessed and am now in a stable, healthy and beautiful relationship with someone who has been a welcome component of that process. But whether I’m with someone or not, I feel much more secure in my knowledge of what love is. That sureness and steadfast belief has taken root deep within me and I know that it isn’t about to budge. I have so much love to give, I love so many things, and I receive so much love in return.
I can’t write about something I love because my love does not exist singularly. It branches outward, in an infinite number of forms and reaches an infinite number of things and people and places, and it is in constant motion. Some days I feel so full to the brim with love that I might burst, that I have to gather up every shard of love from every crevice and hold them all tightly together. Love is my friend, at last, and we do know each other well, but we’re still on that parallel learning experience. We don’t know every crease and contour of each other just yet.
I love my partner; his guitar-string-plucking hands wrapping around me in a way that is all-encompassing but gentle and kind, his gift of always knowing the right combination of words to make me feel comforted, his patience, his grace, his adaptability, his reliability, knowing that his shoulder will always be there to rest my weary head on and that he will always be by my side during this learning process.
I love my best friend; her uniquely creative brain, her unfathomable determination in the face of adversity, her acceptance of limitations, her insistence on still pushing those limitations anyway, our shared adoration of cats and beaches and tea-shops housed in old buses.
I love my family; their unquestioning support and pride toward me in everything I do, the knowledge that an unconditionally loving family is a gift to be treasured, my mum’s unbeatable resilience in whatever hand she is dealt, my dad’s kind heart and fierce defence, watching my younger siblings grow and change and become themselves.
I love nature. I love writing. I love walking. I love photography. I love criminal law. I love reading. I love strong feminist ideals. I love mental health advocacy. I love creating and crafting and sculpting. I love resting at the end of it all. I love organisation. I love my little desk and all its collected treasures. I love my constant cat companions. I love big jumpers and mugs of coffee and plaited hair. I love fresh face cloths and blank notebooks and hot water bottles. I love houseplants. I love outdoor plants. I love scrunchies and earrings and embroidered hoops. I love miniature versions of things that should be much bigger. I love the colour yellow. I love cloth bags and backpacks and my little red satchel. I love bookmarks and birthday cards and old photographs. I love in endless, un-quantifiable amounts.
When love has, for so long, been used in defence of indecency, or stretched taut around a secret agenda, or only comes from an alcohol-sodden brain, it is a beautiful, wondrous blessing to meet it for real. I have an endless amount of love within me to give and I now believe I am intrinsically worthy of reciprocity. I love so many things and I do not plan on stopping. | https://medium.com/@hollylmckenna/mhns-makethingsapril-82c102c14d47 | ['Holly Mckenna'] | 2020-04-23 00:08:15.309000+00:00 | ['Make Things April', 'Meaning', 'Love', 'Personal Essay', 'Creative Non Fiction'] |
Hands-On Learning … From Afar: From Career-Technical Instruction to Physical Education, How Teachers Are Adapting Applied Learning Amid the Pandemic | By Danielle Dreilinger
Linda Romano, a nursing teacher at the Newburgh Free Academy in New York, demonstrates to her students bed bathing from home using a doll to simulate a patient. (YouTube)
Wearing navy scrubs, teacher Linda Romano reviewed bed-bathing on a new mannequin last month: an American Girl baby doll.
“She is completely set up in her bed, she has a visitor — Mr. Lamb — and she’s holding her [patient] call bell,” Romano told her students over online video from her grown daughter’s pink bedroom.
Yes, the Newburgh Free Academy teacher’s school in New York was closed for COVID-19. But her seniors were stressed about their upcoming Certified Nursing Assistant exam. So Romano, who had started the school’s Nurse Aide Program, made do. It was just one creative way that teachers in more applied fields such as career-technical education, physical education and family and consumer sciences are continuing to educate students during the pandemic.
The sudden need for distance learning is an especially tall order for these teachers, for several reasons. Their fields are hands-on and equipment-heavy, with limited use of textbooks or digital media. Most of them have rarely taught online. And though their districts and schools offer help with e-classrooms such as Schoology or Google Classroom, there’s not a lot of district support to adapt lessons when you’re the only teacher in your subject area.
“I have to be honest — I was really scared,” said Scott Stone, agriculture teacher at Centralia High School in Missouri. “This is uncharted territory for many of us.”
“I honestly didn’t have much of an idea” what to do, family and consumer sciences teacher Angie Ehlers said.
Nonetheless, like Romano, they’re rising to the challenge.
It helps that resources are flooding the market. Many textbook and equipment companies have temporarily unlocked their online resources, allowing Stone’s students to “weld” on the VRTEX Virtual Welding Simulator using just a mouse. His district couldn’t pay for the online curriculum, he said.
Dan DeJager, 2019 SHAPE America High School Physical Education Teacher of the Year at Meraki High School in Sacramento County, California, had hoped to find a publisher for his exercise card game. But when the crisis hit, he released the deck to print and play at home for free. With push-ups, crunches and squats, the 54-card Super Deck can exhaust even the most antsy third-grader.
“Folks need help,” he said.
Professional organizations and peer social media groups are buzzing as well with ideas and tutorials. “I binged on every webinar I could find,” Romano said.
Romano emerged from teaching her first online class exhilarated. It was good to see students’ faces on video, she said. “I just missed them!” And although her plan for the first virtual session was a simple check-in, the students wanted a lesson. “They were getting a little bored,” she said. “They just seemed like they needed to see each other.” They were even on time.
Still, online options can’t serve the entire curriculum or the entire student body in these subject areas. With long-term care centers closed to visitors, Romano is searching for alternatives for the clinical component of her classes. Ehlers’s Child Development students were supposed to volunteer in the school’s prekindergarten. Brian Miller, principal of Kern High School District’s Regional Occupational Center in Bakersfield, California, switched classes to a career readiness unit because it didn’t require equipment.
Such obstacles pile up fast. A significant minority of Stone’s students in Centralia, Missouri, don’t have reliable internet or a device at home they can use for school — and the library is closed. He can’t let them into the school greenhouse or ask them to purchase plants or pots, so he’s having them journal about the grass growing in their yards. Stone initially thought his brainwave was dumb, he said. “But I can’t think of any other way to make this happen!”
Even family and consumer sciences, the class formerly known as home economics, can’t expect students to buy ingredients or own an electric mixer. You can’t assign a particular recipe when “we don’t know what the kids have access to,” Ehlers said. So instead she created five-by-five Bingo cards for each subject. Students “win” by completing five tasks across, diagonal or down, or one task in each column, and posting evidence of their work to Schoology. The options include finding a recipe for their favorite dessert, sending friends “random messages to cheer them up,” interviewing parents or grandparents about their lives, creating a quarantine budget, cleaning and organizing their room or doing the laundry.
“Parents are going to love me!” Ehlers said.
Of course, physical education isn’t just about getting your heart rate up — there’s also learning proper technique, understanding how exercise fits into a healthy lifestyle and interacting with other people. Just like there’s a difference between a YouTube eye shadow tutorial and a cosmetology class that is geared to certification standards and covers sanitation and business — as well as shimmery powder. The teachers acknowledged that they weren’t yet covering the entire complexity of their subjects. They’re taking the new reality day by day, starting with review and the basics while they figure out how to teach new skills and critical thinking.
Ehlers has an entire new class of seventh-graders who have never taken her subject before. Right now, she’s just trying to fill two weeks, she said, as she explores how to do her usual teaching of higher-order thinking skills — the math of measurement, for instance. Maybe they’ll take a new recipe a classmate tried at home and discuss its components and why each ingredient matters, she said.
Simulated computer welding doesn’t teach you how to get the angle right when you’re holding a welding stick, Stone said. But at least students will “get some of the basic groundwork,” he said.
“There’s going to be bumps in the road. But just keep trudging forward,” Stone added. “The students are resilient, and we have to be, too.”
These teachers hope that the crisis provides, instead, a deeper lesson about the importance of their subjects.
“What better time to learn about infection control than now?” Romano said.
“Being physically active, being physically literate, the benefits go beyond credits and grades,” DeJager said — especially in a stressful time.
And the COVID-19 closures offer teachers the chance to learn as well. “Everybody’s going to be better as a result of this situation. We’re all going to be better teachers and we’ll gain so many skills,” Ehlers said. At least, “I hope that will be the case.”
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See The 74’s ongoing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic here. | https://the74million.medium.com/hands-on-learning-from-afar-from-career-technical-instruction-to-physical-education-how-1582a9f34f33 | [] | 2020-04-03 15:15:06.867000+00:00 | ['Teaching', 'Education', 'Coronavirus'] |
Mozilla saves us from IE, again | Last month I started the development of an augmented reality application in the web platform thanks to The Immersive Web Working Group, for bringing augmented reality to the web. Everything was going very well, and I’ve tested on some android device such as Samsung A20 and Samsung A50s until the devil showed up and started to push me into the valley of despair.
Sadly this time I found that the famous or infamous browser of iOS, the great, Safari lingers a lot beyond the web standard. Apparently, Apple has chosen to step in the way Microsoft, used to be, and we, developers clearly remember the time that we had a tough time writing a code that works both in IE and other browsers. Steve Jobs’s legacy is becoming the next IE. Last time Mozilla interfered and popularized its great browser Firefox and saved us from the tides. It took me a long time to figure out that I don’t need to use JQuery to interact with the DOM and the world of javascript is safe again to adventure.
Ok, now is the time to present the hero, the one who brought the WebXR standard to iOS and saved lots of headaches for me, and released me from the damn of Safari. ladies and gentlemen let me introduce you to Mozilla WebXR Viewer.
check the link below website to know there are serious people out there that are not happy with the way Safari is.
Safari is new IE
Beware: A couple of days before I just encountered another issue with Safari, I had a component that I wanted to convert to an Image using html2canvas library, but about 78 pixels of the top cropped for no reason on Safari, I struggled for two days and couldn’t make it work, and the interesting part is that it works fine on android and windows in whatever browser your name and it doesn’t work in Safari. I’m suspicious that maybe this is Safari’s fault again, I don’t know. | https://medium.com/@trappedmind/mozilla-saves-us-from-ie-again-268d3b5ee9ed | ['Trapped Mind'] | 2021-01-01 00:17:32.310000+00:00 | ['Webxr', 'Apple', 'Augmented Reality', 'Mozilla'] |
Q&A with Ashley Fern, Director of Digital Content and Strategy, Betches Media | Q&A with Ashley Fern, Director of Digital Content and Strategy, Betches Media
This week, The Idea spoke with Ashley Fern to learn more about how Betches Media leverages audience feedback and maintains a unified brand image across different channels and satellite communities. Ashley recently launched the company’s newest vertical, Betches Travel. Previously, she helped build the Betches Brides vertical, including its podcast. Subscribe to our newsletter on the business of media for more interviews and weekly news and analysis.
Can you give me a brief overview of your team and role?
I’m the Director of Digital Content and Strategy at Betches Media. I joined a little over a year ago and at the time it was a new role for the company.
I manage Betches Media’s digital strategy across all platforms including our website, social media accounts, podcast, and video. I also work closely with our brand partnerships team.
My job is to connect all of the different content we produce and make sure we’re telling a cohesive story. This means that regardless of whether an audience member is a site reader, podcast listener, or Instagram follower, they will still be aware of what Betches Media is doing across different channels. Our focus is to deliver a consistent message — what you listen to, for example, will be supported by what you might then go on to read on our site.
Underneath me, my department is comprised of the editorial and social teams. Editorial includes our Editor-in-Chief Sara Levine, editorial assistants, and our network of freelance writers. Our social team is made up of social media managers who run our main instagram handle (which is our most well-known social media with 6.9 million followers) and our 12 satellite communities such as @betchestravel, @dietstartstomorrow, and @betches_sup. All together, we have over 8 million instagram followers across our 13 accounts.
What does your day-to-day look like?
My work is very meeting-based. My week usually starts off with a social content brainstorm that is led by our editor-in-chief that I help oversee. That same day, I also have a weekly sales and partnership meeting. I also meet with each person who manages a satellite account to determine what our current priorities and initiatives are. Aside from that, I meet with our three founders and serve as a liaison between upper management and our more specific teams.
What has been your favorite initiative to work on so far?
If you had asked me three months ago, I would’ve told you that it was our Betches Brides vertical, which I launched last March. I created the Instagram account, produced the podcast, and managed the Facebook group that currently has 10,000 members. At the time, a lot of people in our office, including myself, were engaged. And, because we see ourselves as maturing with our audience, launching a brides vertical seemed like a natural and appropriate opportunity.
Most recently, however, I launched Betches Travel, which garnered 40,000 instagram followers in its first week of launch. When we launched this, our strategy was to make sure that every satellite account had a piece of media that was travel-related but catered to that respective vertical. By doing this, we could move audiences from one vertical to another.
What drew Betches Media to travel?
Millennials are obsessed with travel largely because of Instagram. But, we noticed that there really isn’t a platform to get real travel advice. You could go on TripAdvisor, but you don’t know whether the reviews are trustworthy.
We want to create a space that provides honest reviews and experience of ourselves as audience members. A picture may be worth a thousand words but we want to help tell the authentic story behind it.
This has led us to create travel guides as well as hotel and restaurant profiles (and, of course, memes and tweets) based on our own criteria cards. With our first restaurant profile we rated the restaurant not only on its food quality, but also on things millennials care about in the travel space like the cost, the availability of gluten-free and vegan options, and the ease of making food adjustments.
What challenges did you face when launching these verticals?
I think the hardest thing is finding messaging that hits everyone’s budget and demographic.
With some of our early Betches Brides podcasts episodes, for example, we featured vendors that we loved but we received a lot of the feedback that it wasn’t accessible to our audience’s price range. So, we pivoted our messaging to be more inclusive. Our appeal lies in the fact that we’re reaching our audiences not as industry experts but as people that they can relate to.
Luckily, our audience is super engaged. They love responding to everything and voicing their opinions. And, of course, we love listening to their opinions because we don’t want to create content that they don’t find useful.
When we began looking into travel, we posted 20+ polls asking our audiences about their preferences: Do they stay in boutique hotels, Airbnbs, or hostels? Do they fly first class or economy? I tracked all these responses with our consumer insights and analytics manager and began to identify both the things that would draw in our audiences and also the things that would alienate them. We quickly learned that while our audiences are very open to spending money on travel, they want to know how to make it go further.
What is the most interesting thing (product, tool, article, social channel, special project, redesign, etc.) that you’ve seen from a media outlet other than your own?
The New York Times publishes interactive playlists that take readers through an artist’s album and reveals the backstory behind an album. The artist’s previous tracks are integrated and the reader gets to learn more about the the inspiration behind the album. As someone who loves to read, I love the idea of an interactive book where you get to listen to a song while reading about it. It’s an awesome way to bring words to life.
Rapid Fire
What is your first read in the morning?
Instagram feed or email.
What was the last book you read?
Lie to Me by J.T. Elison
What job would you be doing if you weren’t in your current role?
I would be a party planner. | https://medium.com/the-idea/q-a-with-ashley-fern-director-of-digital-content-and-strategy-betches-media-965c65c1d8e0 | ['Tesnim Zekeria'] | 2020-02-19 18:44:01.506000+00:00 | ['Journalism', 'Travel', 'Digital Strategy', 'Subscriber Spotlight', 'Brand Identity'] |
Colts vs Steelers Live Stream 4K NFL Football 2020 How To Watch | Watch NFL Football Game Live Stream for FREE, TV Coverage, Replays, Highlights from Anywhere at Anytime. Optimized for PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Android, PS4, Xbox One, and Smart Tvs.
Colts vs Steelers Live Stream NFL Week 16: How to watch, live stream Saturday games on CBS All Access NFL live stream: How to watch every NFL week 16 game online The NFL live streams for week 16 are here and giving us a mix of Christmas Day games and leftovers that will keep us entertained throughout the cold days.
When the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Indianapolis Colts face each other on Sunday, you will see each other reflected. Playoff contenders led by tough defenses and veteran quarterbacks in their later stages.
Except for one big difference, of course. The Steelers are in a disappointing three-game slump after starting the 11–0 season, while the Colts (10–4) have won four of five and are peaking at the right time.
The biggest game of the week finds the Colts visiting the Steelers, to see if they can do more damage to the once-undefeated, now ever-eroding squad. Plus, the Titans (10–4) and Packers (11–3) go to battle in a serious evening of Sunday Night Football.
Not everybody pays for cable these days. There are tons of cord-cutters out there that use streaming services to watch their favorite shows, and those people want to do the same to watch their favorite sports teams, recognition of that fact, the folks at the CBS mothership have partnered with the NFL to allow CBS All Access customers the opportunity to stream all NFL on CBS games and content live.
CBS All Access was a pretty sweet deal even before this partnership, as subscribers got the opportunity to stream more than 8,500 episodes from hit CBS shows, for as little as $5.99 a month. Now, you get an even better deal. If you don’t pay for cable and prefer to use streaming services, or even if you simply aren’t home every weekend and want to watch the NFL anyway, you can now do that via your mobile device thanks to CBS All Access.
How to get CBS All Access
Signing up is easy too. You simply go to the CBS All Access landing page and pick the plan you want to purchase. Click here if you want to go straight to the free one-week trial. Please note: there is a seven-day free trial available for new customers.
Sign up this week to make and you’re going to be on the NFL streaming bandwagon before the rest of your friends.
Saturday’s NFL games on CBS All Access
Signing up for the service this week is going to net you a pretty sweet little set of games* too, just in time for a heated playoff race in both conferences.
Pittsburgh has been on a downward spiral since the calendar hit December, as the Steelers They haven’t scored 20 points in a game since Week 11. Dropping a game at Buffalo in a short week is nothing to be ashamed of, but the losses to Washington and Cincinnati raise questions about how competitive this team really is.
Once the favorite for the №1 seed and the only Bye in the AFC, the Steelers now they only lead the Browns by one game and could head into a Week 17 game where the winner takes it all for the AFC North crown. Meanwhile, the Colts they have the same record as the leading AFC South Titans, but lack a tiebreaker. They can secure a playoff berth this week with a win and a loss or a draw for Miami or Baltimore, or a draw and a loss for the Dolphins or Ravens.
If the season ended after Week 15, these teams would meet at Heinz Field for a first-round matchup. There is a lot of football to play and, depending on how this game plays out, they could meet in January, in Pittsburgh or Indianapolis.
Time and Channel Steelers vs Colts
Kickoff: Sunday, December 27 at 10 am PT / 1 pm ET in the United States. 12 pm in Mexico.
TV: CBS in the United States. Fox Sports in Mexico.
Spread: Colts -1.5
Three things to keep in mind
1. Can Ben Roethlisberger be a threat beyond 10 yards?
The advertiser of the Steelers He has really shown his age in the last few weeks. His predicted passing yards per pass attempt have dropped to 6.9 yards, 27th among qualified quarterbacks. His inability or refusal to pitch downfield has made the offense one-dimensional and easy to predict.
Falls have been a problem all season, but his receivers finally held onto the ball last week against the Bengals. The problem was that Roethlisberger he couldn’t hit them. He completed only 52.6 percent of his passes, his worst rate since Week 8 of the 2016 season, and was completely ineffective beyond 10 yards. He connected on a 23-yard touchdown with Diontae JohnsonBut overall it was an embarrassing 1 of 14 with an interception in such passes.
By sticking to short passes, Roethlisberger he’s allowed linebackers and safeties to play close to the scrimmage line and close out their running game. Benny Snell Jr. amassed 84 yards on 18 carries last week, and James Conner is expected to return from a calf injury, but the Steelers they have rushed for 100 yards just once in their last nine games. The Steelers they need an effective and complete passing game to open up the rest of their offense and score at least 20 points once again.
2. Will the Colts continue to dominate the rotation margin?
The Colts They have an elite quick defense and a capable secondary, but the unit has really shined for the great plays it creates. Indianapolis is tied for first in turnovers differential (plus 12) and third in forced turnovers. It has also been crucial to his winning streak of late with 11 in his last five games and a margin of plus seven in his last three.
The Steelers They’ve also capitalized on opponents’ mistakes, with the second-highest number of forced turnovers in the league. However, those big plays have been reduced to a dribble with injuries to linebackers Devin Bush, Bud Dupree and Robert Spillane. During their three-game losing streak, the Steelers forced just two turnovers while turning the ball six times.
It’s no secret that gaining turnover margin is key to winning matches, but that has been especially true for players. Colts, who are 1–3 when they lose that battle and 8–0 when they have the lead this season. Because of the way these teams are trending, the Colts seem to have the upper hand, so Steelers things will have to change quickly.
3. Which team will have the advantage in third attempts?
Another category that could apply to most matchups, this phase of the game will be a fascinating view of what kind of team will advance Steelers.
Pittsburgh they had been a solid team at third time this season, ranking third in defense (36.6 percent) and 16th in attack (42.1 percent). During his three-game streak, his defense has held up (15 of 45), but the offense fell absolutely flat. The Steelers they converted just 11 of 41 third-down chances, including a 1-for-10 performance against the Bills.
On the other hand, Colts have performed poorly in this category throughout the season (40.2 percent conversion rate (23) and 43.5 percent allowed (21), and have participated in more shootouts as the season progressed. three-game stretch, they made 17 of 33 attempts and allowed opponents to convert 21 of 40 chances at third down.
The Steelers Will they get back on track against a defense that hasn’t been able to make enough saves? Finding success again here will be critical to winning this game at home and changing the season as a whole.
Pittsburgh Steelers vs Indianapolis Colts
The Steelers They were never quite as good as their undefeated record a few weeks ago implied, but it’s hard to imagine the team isn’t really good. However, the Colts look like true contenders built around many of the strongholds that prompted Pittsburgh to his 11–0 mark.
Don’t rule out Steelers at the moment, but they are lucky to have two more weeks to get back on track before the games actually start in the playoffs. Perhaps by then they will have solved their problems.
Can a 1–13 team have a letdown game? With the Jets having little else to play for besides the antipathy of their fans, the Browns should have few problems moving the ball. Sam Darnold theoretically also has a plus matchup, but he remains a quarterback in Year 3 who doesn’t do much well, even when he’s well protected.
I’m not ready to fully yell “THE RAVENS ARE BACK!” because their defense has burgeoning issues and they are still missing their best blockers, but New York doesn’t look like the team to expose those flaws. For all the deserved love the Giants’ defense has received this season, they have fallen victim to two creative, diverse running games in the last two weeks. The Ravens will make it three straight.
Houston Texans 28, Cincinnati Bengals 23
1 p.m. ET (FOX) | NRG Stadium (Houston)
It’s hard to overstate how well Deshaun Watson has played this season and how poor virtually every other component of the Texans operation remains. That’s why I can’t quite trust Houston winning easily on Sunday.
Chicago Bears 24, Jacksonville Jaguars 17
1 p.m. ET (CBS) | TIAA Bank Field (Jacksonville, Fla.)
Jaguars coach Doug Marrone says that Gardner Minshew and Mike Glennon are suddenly competing for snaps in practice again, which is either obfuscation or deserves condemnation. Much of Mitchell Trubisky and David Montgomery ‘s recent surge can be tied to the incredibly soft stretch of defenses they’ve faced, a stretch that continues in Jacksonville.
The NFL regular season is getting down to its final moments, and you’ll have plenty of chances to turn on your TV and watch NFL football this week.
Christmas Day, a Friday in 2020, featured one NFL game. Then there were three more on Saturday. Sunday’s two afternoon windows will feature a total of 10 games, and then you’ve still got Sunday and Monday night games. This will actually be less Sunday afternoon games than there have been in a while, so the Week 16 coverage map provides ample opportunity to watch your favorite team play.
Fox gets the double broadcast window this weekend, with CBS only sending one game to each market. That means a big audience for the late-afternoon matchup of Seahawks-Rams, which might not otherwise see much attention outside of the west coast. But as those two teams compete for the NFC West title, the majority of the country will see it.
Below are the full NFL coverage maps for Week 16, plus a list of major TV markets and the CBS and Fox games that will be presented in each on Sunday.
WEEK 16 NFL PICKS:
Against the spread | Straight-up predictions
NFL coverage map Week 16
(NFL coverage maps courtesy of 506sports.com)
Green: Browns at Jets
Yellow: Bears at Jaguars
Blue: Panthers at Washington (Late)
Orange: Broncos at Chargers (Late)
TV schedule for NFL Week 16 games
Below are the Sunday afternoon NFL games that will be broadcast regionally. There will have been four games played before Sunday, with one on Christmas Day and three on Saturday. There’s also Sunday Night Football between the Packers and Titans, followed by a Monday night game between the Bills and Patriots.
CBS coverage
Indianapolis Colts at Pittsburgh Steelers (1 p.m. ET)
Chicago Bears at Jacksonville Jaguars (1 p.m. ET)
Cleveland Browns at New York Jets (1 p.m. ET)
Carolina Panthers at Washington Football Team (4:05 p.m. ET)
Denver Broncos at Los Angeles Chargers (4:05 p.m. ET)
Fox coverage
Atlanta Falcons at Kansas City Chiefs (1 p.m. ET)
Cincinnati Bengals at Houston Texans (1 p.m. ET)
New York Giants at Baltimore Ravens (1 p.m. ET)
Philadelphia Eagles at Dallas Cowboys (4:25 p.m. ET)
Los Angeles Rams at Seattle Seahawks (4:25 p.m. ET)
Here is everything you need to know so you can watch, listen to or stream this week’s Pittsburgh Steelers game. Time is running out for the Steelers to secure the AFC North and the tough, physical Indianapolis Colts are coming to town. This one is an AFC showdown you won’t want to miss.
Game information:
Indianapolis Colts (10–4) @ Pittsburgh Steelers (11–3)
Kickoff: Sunday, December 27 at 1:00 pm ET
Venue: Heinz Field
Weather: Clear with temps in the 30s
Broadcast:
Television: CBS
Jim Nance (play-by-play)
Tony Romo (analyst)
Tracey Wolfson (sideline)
Online: You can also tune in online with NFL Game Pass and FuboTV (try it for free).
Radio: Westwood One and Steeler Nation Radio will have the game, as well as WDVE 102.5 FM & WBGG 970, AM local.
You can also follow the game with us @TheSteelersWire and of course here on Steelers Wire with our live updates during the game, along with highlights of all the key moments from this week’s game. Join us straight after the final whistle for more in-depth coverage, injury updates, and analysis of all the action. | https://medium.com/@havahog544/colts-vs-steelers-live-stream-4k-nfl-football-2020-how-to-watch-8551f97e5847 | [] | 2020-12-27 10:32:09.054000+00:00 | ['Live', 'Colts Vs Steelers', 'NFL'] |
Reflection on Amal Totkay: | We, desis, are very different creatures, species out of the world, exceptional in their unique ways. We have specific manners and methods. We make a fixed mindset, and we usually live on it until the day we die. Our lives depend on totkays and Jugaad, but we’re content this way.
Think Different, Be unique.
But there is something that needs to be changed, and that is fixed mindsets.
Growth Mindset is important!
With a growth mindset, you can achieve whatever you want through hard work and dedication, making you resilient and passionate. There are five simple steps if you’re going to change your fixed mindset to a growth mindset. Let’s take a look at the steps quickly.
Self-Talk: It is an essential part of you; it depends on your thoughts, beliefs, questions, and ideas. So, the more positive you are, the more favorable your self-talk will be.
Get out of your Comfort Zone: The most challenging and beneficial tip is getting out of the comfort zone. It can not be easy for everyone, but they can be unbeatable once they come out of it.
Keep Trying, Accept the change!
Create New habits: Once you come out of your comfort zone, you start creating new patterns.
Don’t hesitate to try out new things.
Ask for Help: We should never feel embarrassed about asking people for help. We should always embrace constructive feedback from our dear ones.
Asking for help is not a bad thing.
Fake it till you make it: Don’t fake it till you make it; get busy making it! Be authentic, and be yourself!
Have some faith in yourself!
What I learned from all this is that a growth mindset is necessary, or else without it, you’ll always stay in your bubble with no confidence and zero and usual skills. My favorite totkays were getting out of my comfort zone and fake it till you make it, and I’ll give my best shot in implementing both in my life. | https://medium.com/@sarashahmed01/reflection-on-amal-totkay-ece067957cf0 | [] | 2020-12-25 09:59:57.435000+00:00 | ['Reflection', 'Amal Totkay'] |
“A Christmas Wish” Film Review | It would be nice if the Lifetime channel were to focus its efforts on creating quality rather than quantity. One of the latest Christmas themed made for television films Lifetime put out, A Christmas Wish, is marginally adequate.
Written and directed by Emily Moss Wilson, the film revolves Maddie’s title desire for her sister. Maddie wishes for her sister, Faith, to experience true love for the first time. The following day, Faith meets Andrew. Is Andrew, seemingly perfect, Faith’s one true love? Whilst anything is possible, Wyatt seems the better fit.
Maddie only wants the best for her sister. This is what most siblings want for family members. Seeing Faith not spend her life alone is Maddie’s wish for her sister.
The film stars Hilarie Burton, May Badr, Brett Beoubay, Adalyn Bergeron, Amy Brassette, Ryan Broussard, Kenneth Kynt Bryan, and Ryan Cabrera.
The main aspects focus on Faith’s career and her love life. Even though Wilson touched upon various tropes found in such productions, whilst some were twisted and redefined, much more could have been done to make A Christmas Wish stand apart from the numerous other television films the channel produces.
Image Credit: IMDb.com
The only facet of the production that resonated with me was the inclusion of gay characters Grant and James. Grant, Wyatt’s brother, is married to James. With my believing representation is a must, Lifetime should be commended for doing the right thing. Showing every part of society accurately, especially the LGBTQ community, is something entertainment production companies should do as a matter of course.
A Christmas Wish was televised on Lifetime Thursday, 28 November 2019. With the channel pushing out so many Christmas themed films, it’s clear there wasn’t enough space on the December schedule to cram them all in. Lifetime should seriously rethink the quantity over quality thing the channel currently has going. | https://medium.com/pop-off/a-christmas-wish-film-review-ac667b8fad8b | ['Shain E. Thomas'] | 2019-12-03 02:05:56.796000+00:00 | ['Movies', 'Writing Prompts', 'Holiday Films', 'Film Reviews', 'Entertainment'] |
GET & Statebox — Scalable blockchain tickets for the masses | The GET Protocol is all about making the ticketing industry more transparent and accountable. By for example by making data points about the ticket trade on the primary and secondary market accountable for the public. Together with our partner Statebox we developed a process that accomplishes just that. In this blog, I will explain what this first of its category, scalable blockchain ticketing approach exactly entails.
On Friday the 7th of June at 10:00 sharp the largest blockchain powered ticket sale to date will embark. The tickets for 2 shows in the Philps Stadium Eindhoven(capacity 30 000+) will go up for sale. Over the course of a full year, we expect to sell and resell all the tickets for these 2 events via the GET Protocol and Statebox API.
For more information and details about this specific sale itself, check out the organizer’s official channels or those of the ticketing company servicing the ticket sale: GUTS Tickets. In the remainder of this blog, the role of the GET Protocol in this ticket sale will have center stage.
What makes the ticketing of this event different?
With the help of the GET Protocol, GUTS Tickets makes a stance against resale and ticket fraud in the ticketing market. In a nutshell, this means that every step in the lifecycle of a ticket is made publically accountable and traceable via a technology called blockchain.
For those interested in the nuts and bolts of the implementation, rest assured. The Statebox powered ticket explorer will be the first repository of the GET Protocol that will be fully open sourced. Following this, the repositories of other components of the GET ticketing system will be made public. Until we created a fully open, inclusive and transparent ticketing system fueled by its native token GET.
Why is transparency needed in ticketing?
If you are more interested in the ‘why’ question I recommend the blog linked below.
Without a doubt a great blog Kasper. But, as anybody with basic knowledge about blockchain will be able to tell you, is that blockchain technology isn’t really known for its ability to get a lot of stuff done. Processing large amounts of data in a secure and most of all in a cost-efficient manner is a challenge. Fully agreed! I personally agree and actually believe on-chain scaling will remain a problem in the future. The inherent added complexity of on an immutable ledger and trustless consensus conflict with processing efficiency on a fundamental level. A point this blog drives home.
This is all a nerdy way of saying that it is generally easier to make to a decision alone as opposed to making this decision with a group of possibly malicious and anonymous people on the interwebz. YouTube explainer video about Blockchain technology.
The experience-driven conclusion, that using blockchain ‘out of the box’ is unpractical, we learned ‘the hard way’ during a real-world ticket sale in the tail end of 2017. Read more about this experience in this blog:
Note: Of course it was not only this experience that made us decide to make our blockchain registration ‘smarter’. Execution cost and the limited capability to store any sort of event/ticket meta-data on-chain also posed big motivators to seek a more fitting technology to provide tickets and events with the much needed accountability.
After improving the Ethereum runner ability to register tickets in pulses we used this improved ‘real-time’ blockchain registration of all ticket trades on the GET Protocol during the majority of 2018. See one of the transaction runners here: ETHERSCAN LINK TO 122 000 tx registrations. | https://medium.com/get-protocol/get-statebox-scalable-blockchain-tickets-for-the-masses-3dae7bf1ce5d | ['Kasper Keunen'] | 2019-06-06 16:05:20.926000+00:00 | ['Scalability', 'Ethereum', 'Ticketing System', 'Tokenization', 'Blockchain'] |
French Open 2019 Predictions — Will Rafael Nadal extend his reign in Parisian Clay? | After six weeks of grueling competition, tennis fans all over the world will start focusing on the Roland Garros for the climax of the European clay court season. The 123rd edition of the French open will start this Sunday with defending champion Rafael Nadal looking to win an unprecedented 12th title in the recently renovated “Court Philippe Chatrier”.
This article will evaluate Rafael Nadal chances of defending his title based on his past performances, current form, health and projected opponents.
Past Performances
Ever since his debut in 2005 Nadal has dominated Parisian Clay winning 11 out of the 14 tournaments held so far. His first loss in the tournament came in 2009 against Robin Söderling after 31 match win streak. However, the Spanish player reclaimed the title in 2010 and went on to be the first player to have win 5 consecutive French Open titles. Novak Djokovic ended his record breaking 39 match win streak in 2015 and he had to withdraw prior to his third-round match of 2016 tournament due to a wrist injury.
In 2017, an impeccable Nadal comeback with vengeance to win his 10th French Open title without losing a set and became the only male player ever to win 10 singles titles at the same Grand Slam event. He was equally dominant in 2018 and went on to win the title only losing one set during the entire tournament.
As you can see in the chart given below, he has an astonishing 91.7% win rate in clay courts after 468 ATP tour level matches. This improves to an unimaginable 97.7% at Stade Roland Garros. Thus, based on past performance you cannot look beyond the King of Clay when looking for the favorite to win French Open.
Rafael Nadal’s career statistics (Source — https://www.atptour.com/en/players/rafael-nadal/n409/fedex-atp-win-loss)
Current Form
As usual, Rafa started his clay court season at Monte Carlo after withdrawing from both Indian Wells and Miami due to a hip injury. Summary of his performances are given below;
Performance summary of 2019 European clay court tournaments (Source — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Rafael_Nadal_tennis_season)
Nadal has a 14–3 record in clay courts this season with an ATP World Tour Masters 1000 title at Rome. While any other player would be extremely confident with 82.4% win percentage going in to the French Open, this has been a tough year for the King of Clay, based on the high standards he set throughout his amazing career.
In fact, if we look at his returns on clay since 2005, this year is his worst after the struggles of 2015 where he went to the French open with a 10–4 record losing all four tournaments that he took part. Chart given below shows his clay court stats since 2005. Table given below, further proves the fact when considering all matches in clay.
Rafael Nadal’s Clay court win percentages from 2005–2019 (Source — https://www.atptour.com/en/players/rafael-nadal/n409/player-activity)
However, if you look beyond the numbers and focus on the actual facts you might see an entirely different story.
In Monte Carlo, Rafa struggled with his serve and had to survive some tough moments with Guido Pella before he was comprehensively beaten by a Fabio Fognini master class. In fact, Fognini served for the match at 5–0 and 40–0, but Nadal saved three match points, broke back to avoid a bagel.
Even though, he struggled against Leonardo Mayer in the second round of Barcelona Open, there was a noticeable improvement in his confidence and movement. However, that was not enough to trouble an impressive Dominic Theim, who defeated Nadal in straight sets. He improved further in Madrid, before going down to a spirited Stefanos Tsitsipas in three sets. However, in Rome we saw the Rafa Nadal we used to see on Clay. With a much improved service game Nadal handed four bagels, including a one to Novak Djokovic in the final.
Thus, even though statistics suggest otherwise, Nadal’s journey suggest he is peaking at the right time to defend his French Open title.
Health Concerns
Since he was forced retire from the 2018 US Open semifinal against Juan Martin del Potro due to a knee injury, Rafa suffered a series of setbacks which prevented him from competing till end of 2018. He again suffered a hip injury which led to his withdrawal from Indian Wells and Miami. Even though, he lacked confidence in his fitness at Monte Carlo, those fears faded away as he gathered games under his belt.
Therefore, we can conclude that Nadal is fully fit ahead of the French Open.
Draw Analysis — Projected opponents and predictions
Overall, I believe Rafa had a favorable draw. Especially, since both of his main rivals, Djokovic and Thiem are in the opposite half. Let’s go through his projected opponents;
Round 1 and 2
Rafa will play against couple of qualifiers in the first two rounds. Even though, he has not played any of them before, I do not expect anyone to trouble him as John Isner did in 2011.
Prediction — Nadal to win both matches comfortably in straight sets. Expect a bagel or two.
Round 3
Nadal is expected to meet 2016 French Open quarter-finalist David Goffin in third round. Goffin’s has been experiencing modest returns in 2019, since his return after recovering from an elbow injury that ended his 2018 season abruptly. Rafa lead their head-to-head 3–1, winning all previous encounters on clay. Given his current form, it’s hard to imagine that Goffin will challenge Rafa.
Prediction — Should be a straight sets win for Nadal.
Round 4
Nikoloz Basilashvili, Richard Gasquet and Guido Pella will be the favorites to meet Rafa in fourth round. Based on his consistent performances on clay in 2019, I believe Brazil Open winner Pella will reach the round of 16. Even though, Pella failed to win a set in their three previous meetings, he might pose some discomfort to Rafa, especially, if a set goes for a tie-break.
Prediction — Rafa to win in three closely contested sets.
Quarterfinal
Purely based on the rankings, Kei Nishikori is projected to be Nadal’s quarterfinal opponent. Kei reached the quarterfinals or better in last three Grand Slam tournaments to be defeated by the eventual winner Novak Djokovic each time. Can he go a step further and reach the final this time since Djokovic is in the other half? I doubt it. In fact, I believe Daniil Medvedev will beat him in the fourth round to set up a quarterfinal clash with Nadal.
Medvedev had an inspiring start to the clay court season by reaching the semifinal of Monte-Carlo Masters beating Djokovic and Tsitsipas en-route. He continued in this rich vein of form to reach the finals of Barcelona Open beating Nishikori in the semifinals. Even though, he had couple of early exits since then I would expect him to defeat Nishikori in long competitive battle.
Rafa and Medvedev has not played each other previously, so I expect this to have some close moments. If Medvedev plays to his potential, I think he can take a set away from Rafa.
Prediction — Medvedev to take a set from Nadal. However, Rafa will win in four sets.
Semifinal
All tennis fans would be hoping to witness the 39th Fedal on Parisian Clay. Though, can Roger Federer reach the semifinal? I think he will do his best, as this would most likely be his final appearance at Roland Garros. However, he will face some tough competition from Diego Schwartzman in the fourth round which believe he will overcome in a long 4 or 5 set encounter.
His opponent for the quarterfinal will be the Greek sensation Stefanos Tsitsipas who will conquer Frances Tiafoe and Stan Wawrinka en route to the quarterfinals. In the quarterfinal, I would expect Tsitsipas to beat Federer in 4 close sets to deny a much anticipated battle between Rafa and Federer.
Nadal has the 3–1 advantage over Tsitsipas after beating him at Rome Masters.
Prediction — Nadal will extend his head-to-head advantage to 4–1 over Tsitsipas by overpowering him is straight sets.
Final
Favorites to reach the quarterfinals from the top half;
· Novak Djokovic to defeat Borna Ćorić in four sets · Fabio Fognini to defeat Dušan Lajović in four sets · Dominic Thiem to rout Fernando Verdasco in straight sets · Juan Martín del Potro to beat the last French hope Lucas Pouille in four sets
From there onward, Djokovic will reach the semifinals by flattening Fognini in straight sets and Thiem will get the better of Del Potro in four or five closely contested sets.
Even though Novak Djokovic has a 6–2 advantage on head-to-head, Thiem has become an exceptional force in clay courts. He will end Djokovic’s chances of holding all four Grand Slam for the second time by getting the better of Djokovic in close match that goes the full distance.
Dominic Theim has a 4 victories over Rafa and all four of them are on clay. However, he lost to Rafa in straight sets in last two French open tournaments, once in 2017 semifinal and the other in the 2018 final. His performances on clay this year has been somewhat inconsistent. While, he suffered early exits in Monte-Carlo and Rome, he played exceptionally well in Barcelona.
However, the question remains whether he can conquer the biggest challenge in men’s tennis — beating Rafael Nadal in a final in front of 15,000+ fans at Court Philippe Chatrier.
Prediction — Nadal to win his 12th French Open title and 18th Grand Slam title by overwhelming Dominic Theim in 4 closely contested sets.
Rafael Nadal is predicted to defeating Dominic Thiem in 2019 French Open final to win his 12th title on Parisian clay (Source — http://www.chinadaily.com)
Do you agree with the predictions? If not, who do you think will win the French Open 2019?
I would love to know your thoughts. Leave comment! | https://medium.com/the-sports-niche/french-open-2019-predictions-will-rafael-nadal-extend-his-reign-in-parisian-clay-c82e93ddef93 | ['Indika Jayasinghe'] | 2019-05-25 11:34:18.757000+00:00 | ['Tennis', 'Sports Betting', 'French Open', 'French Open 2019', 'Rafael Nadal'] |
Happy Kwanzaa, Day 5, Kuumba (Creativity) | A feast of celebrating the seven days, the seven principle of Kwanzaa
Photo by Rebecca on Unsplash
Photo from BK Reader
Christmas, Thanksgiving special family days
New Year’s day, many celebrate their way
unlike Kwanzaa that teaches
all hearts whom ear it reaches
principles to begin, you now hear
lessons to prevail throughout the year
making a difference far and wide
making integrity, your inward guide
with Umoja, unity, for all
Kujichagulia, self determination, making the call
Ujima, collective work and responsibility, time to stand tall
Ujamaa, cooperative economics, share your goods
Nia, purpose, set the example like you should
Kuumba, creativity, individually and group too
Imani, faith, fulfilling everyday like glue.
For additional reads: | https://medium.com/illumination/happy-kwanzaa-1ee8c9f8c7a | ['Ep Mcknight'] | 2020-12-31 15:45:41.729000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Life Lessons', 'Poetry', 'Startup', 'Life'] |
Progress Report on XEP | Since we released the “The New Chapter — Electra Protocol” announcement, the Electra Protocol team has been diligently working to strengthen XEP as we get ready to take it to new heights. As we are getting closer to XEP’s release date, we want to take the time to share some essential step-by-step information regarding how we intend to conduct the activation of the XEP blockchain and its related resources. We feel that these steps will allow for a stable and secure environment as we move forward.
New Pre-mine:
The premine for Electra Protocol will total 3 billion coins. To ensure trust and credibility through the community, the team decided to release 1.5 billion during the mainnet launch. The remaining will stay locked during 2021, with 500 million released each year over the next three years.
Total premine: 3 Billion XEP
Initial premine, 2021: 1.5 Billion XEP will be unlocked
January 2022: 500 million XEP to be unlocked
January 2023: 500 million XEP to be unlocked
January 2024: 500 million XEP to be unlocked
Purpose of the premine:
The premine will only be used to cover the costs for expenses such as exchange listings, development costs, infrastructure, marketing, bounty distribution, and other third-party needs.
Premine addresses will be made public on our website.
Phase 1:
To expedite the release of the first version of the XEP blockchain, the team decided that the initial version will include the following features:
Block size : 10MB
Block Time : 80 seconds
Algorithm : SHA256 — PoS V3.0e
Segwit : Enabled
BTCcore used : v0.21.0 (latest)
Average TPS: 1500
The wallet and GUI will be released as a simplified version. This will allow the team to utilize this active transition period to focus on getting XEP listed on exchanges and coin tracking platforms such as CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko. This wallet version will be used during the presale, allowing users to transfer their coins to their wallets, which will enable them to start staking.
Release of XEP Wallet v.1.0
We will release a base wallet for desktops towards the completion of the phase one milestone. The desktop wallets will be used during the presale and airdrop distribution to store your XEP coins. There will be no mobile wallets at this time for XEP storage.
Phase 2:
As we move into the second phase, our developers will continue developing the XEP blockchain, where they will implement validator nodes and other unique features. It is a top priority to have this completed during Q1 of 2021. Meanwhile, the team will continue to work on an all-new UI wallet. In addition to improved security, users will see many improvements to the updated wallet in comparison to the classic QT wallet.
Release of XEP Wallet v2.0
The team will work towards developing an improved version of v1.0, which will include many new features and an enhanced graphical interface.
Mobile Wallets:
We anticipate Q1 of 2021 to be an extremely busy period, which could prevent our developers from focusing on our mobile wallets; however, once this initial hectic period has passed, the team will prepare mobile wallets for the Android and iOS platforms. Please stay tuned for forthcoming information throughout this period.
Presale from premine
Over the past two weeks, the team has received many suggestions and recommendations from community members. While the majority suggested that we not set a low selling price, after much consideration and discussion, the team has decided to set the presale price starting at the 5 Satoshi price level. Users who want to buy from the presale will be able to buy XEP through soon to be announced exchanges.
Funds raised from the presale will be allocated to achieving T1 exchange listings and very critical costs afterward.
As an incentive for presale participants, we have set a special reward system where the early XEP adopters will be rewarded a higher staking bonus, which will occur until the airdrop distribution.
The team plans to put approximately 650–700 million XEP into scaled sell walls for the presale process. Sell orders will be placed either on single or multiple exchanges, which will list XEP.
* We reserve the right to change the amount of XEP during the presale period.
Rewarding of the presale participants;
From January 1 through January 10: 365% APR (1% daily) bonus of the purchase sent to the wallet for each full day confirmed.
*At least one stake is mandatory in order to earn the bonus.
Eligible participants will need to complete the following steps:
Buy XEP from an exchange
Send to the wallet in a newly created address (1 deposit = 1 new address)
Submit the transaction ID in the dedicated Google form provided in due time
Do not move the coins after the deposit to be eligible for the bonus.
Unlock to start staking
Important notice:
January 11, we will check the form and the addresses.
1 day = 1080 confirmations (80s block time)
Bonus will be distributed on February 15
Bonus max is 10%
Examples of bonus distribution for presale buyers
Example 1:
A user buys 10 million XEP on January 1 at 00:01 AM and immediately sends it to the wallet and enables staking.
On January 11, this wallet has staked at least once, and the transaction gets 11,878 confirmation in the blockchain.
Bonus will be 11,878/1080 = 10.99 = 10%
This user will receive a bonus of 1,000,000 XEP for his 10 million XEP purchase
Example 2:
A user buys 50 million XEP on January 5 at 00:01 AM and immediately sends it to the wallet and enables staking.
On January 11, this wallet has staked at least once, and the transaction gets 6,480 confirmation in the blockchain.
Bonus will be 6,480/1080 = 6%
This user will receive a bonus of 3,000,000 XEP for his 50 million XEP purchase
Airdrop Application:
We have completed the development of the airdrop application for both PC and Mobile wallets. On January 1, 2021, we will release the following information.
The link for which you will be able to download the application
Instructions on the steps you will need to take
Guidance on the information you will need to enter
Exchanges:
The XEP team is currently in contact with existing ECA listed exchanges. We have reached listing agreements with some of the current exchanges; however, we are still negotiating with the remaining.
As we explained in the presale section, our primary goal is to be listed on T1 exchanges, and we will continue to make this our priority.
Website and Explorer Progress:
The entire XEP team is currently working on several aspects of the Electra Protocol project. While we are preparing an exceptionally fast explorer, we may choose to release our first explorer in a simplified form, with less focus on the GUI oriented block explorer. Our goal is to release the improved explorer during Q1 of 2021.
In addition to the above, we have secured our domain name and website hosting provider. We plan to transfer the domain name to our hosting provider within the coming month. As we continue to progress further into the next chapter of the Electra Protocol, we will continue to share updates and information relevant to the project.
Very Important Reminder:
Please stay vigilant and aware that there are individuals acting as imposters of XEP team members on various social media channels. These individuals may do such acts as attempting to help you during the airdrop process. We have already identified some fake accounts and will continue to watch for others that may come about. If you find yourself in need of help, please be sure that you are communicating with a support team member. You will find our support team only on our official channels, and they all have an official group title. You should also be aware of the fact that we will never contact you first. A true sign of an imposter is the fact that they will reach out to you first. If someone reaches out to you, please do not provide the individual with any of your account information or click on any link they may send to you.
*** NO “AIRDROP” WEBSITE OR “APPLICATION” WILL BE RELEASED BEFORE JAN.1
The Electra Protocol Team | https://medium.com/@electraprotocol/progress-report-on-xep-595f42aa1c30 | ['Electra Protocol'] | 2020-12-18 13:17:47.673000+00:00 | ['Crypto', 'Airdrop', 'Xep', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Electra Protocol'] |
Wisdom from Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come | As Ebenezer Scrooge once observed, the festive season can be expensive. Enjoy good cheer all year round with our wisdom from Christmases Past, Present and Yet to Come.
Scrooge is probably the most famous of all Charles Dickens’s creations. He’s also, perhaps, the most misunderstood. You probably remember him as just a selfish old miser. What people forget is that he had good reasons for his penny-pinching ways. The Ghost of Christmas Past shows us a deprived child and a hard-up young man, desperate to escape his former circumstances. It isn’t really nastiness that makes Ebenezer what he becomes — it’s fear that he might end up that way again.
Of course, Scrooge learns his lesson just in time, after receiving some heavy-duty advice. But he could have saved himself a lot of trouble — and terror — if he’d seen a different kind of adviser much sooner. He could then have enjoyed a life of financial ease without having to be so mean or miss out on the joys of Christmas.
We’ve summoned up our own three spirits of advice so that you can feel secure without being a Scrooge.
Lessons of Christmas Past
Here are a few blunders that you may have made in the past — perhaps sending a ghostly chill through your finances:
Spending more money than thought: Have you splashed out on flash gifts to impress someone, only for the items to gather dust? Think harder about what loved ones will really value and use, and your money won’t be wasted.
Social media rivalries: There’s huge online peer pressure to be seen to be having the perfect Christmas. If you’ve ever bought extravagant decorations, Christmas crackers containing jewellery or electronics, or far too many presents for your kids just so you can post impressive photos on Instagram (yes, we’re onto you), then take a step back and ask yourself if it was worth it.
Letting Christmas catch you by surprise: Christmas comes every year, and it’s always costly — yet somehow you keep forgetting to budget for it. This year, work out how much more you spend over the holiday, divide it by twelve, and add this amount to your monthly savings plan. That way, next Christmas should be paid for in advance with much less last-minute stress.
Tips for Christmas Present
No, not just tips on what presents to buy, but general wisdom and insights for the here and now:
Combine gifts with charity: For the right person, a carefully chosen charitable donation can be the perfect gift. Sponsoring a child, an endangered species or another good cause will help you both feel the Christmas spirit, while providing a sponsorship pack that can be unwrapped on the day. If you choose your recipient wisely, this could be far better received than a more materialistic gift — so don’t be afraid to be different.
Try volunteering: You can ease the annual guilt of over-indulgence by giving up some of your time during the winter break period. Charities such as Crisis, FoodCycle, AgeUK and Re-engage are always in need of extra help at this time of year. Delegate some of your domestic festive duties to a family member and lend a hand to those less fortunate. You’ll enjoy your own Christmas all the more.
Remember that charity can save you money too: If you’re a higher rate taxpayer and you make charitable donations using Gift Aid, you can claim back the difference between your rate of tax and the basic rate — that is, £25 for every £100 you donate. You can do this through your tax return. You can save even more tax if you plan to leave money to charity in your will. Money bequeathed to charity is exempt from inheritance tax, and if you give away at least 10% of your estate then the overall rate of inheritance tax drops from 40% to 36%.
Don’t waste the bonus: If you’re lucky enough to get a Christmas bonus in your pay packet, resist the urge to blow it all on extra lights. If you haven’t let Christmas catch you by surprise (see above) you should aim to put at least some of it aside for a rainy (or snowy) day. You have a number of options here: put it into savings, invest it, add to your children’s savings, make an overpayment on your mortgage, or even make an extra pension contribution to benefit from additional tax relief.
Guidance for Christmas Yet to Come
The future is nothing to be scared of. By looking ahead, you can be ready to enjoy it when the time comes:
Save! It’s the simplest advice, but saving little and often is by far the best way to build up your spending power. Think of saving as a way to focus your efforts on the things that really matter, rather than letting your hard work go to waste on trivial things that don’t make you happy.
Invest for the future: Christmas is the time for children — and if you have children, you also have some easily foreseeable financial goals. For instance, you know when they’ll start and leave school, and when they’ll reach adulthood, so you can plan a long-term investment strategy as soon as they’re born — or even sooner.
Think of the elderly (that’s you, in the future!): Give your future self the ultimate Christmas present by planning your retirement income a long way in advance. The earlier you can optimise your pension plans, the more comfortably-off you’ll be when you finally stop work.
If you would like to talk about any of the issues in this article or need more general help with your finances, please get in touch with us.
This article first appeared on Unbiased.
Read this article on the NorthStar website. | https://medium.com/@ns_wm/wisdom-from-christmas-past-present-and-yet-to-come-712ad8f4b15d | ['Northstar Wealth Management'] | 2020-12-22 19:47:38.728000+00:00 | ['Money', 'Christmas', 'Financial Planning'] |
Value Network project history — a lookback to 2018 | Everything starts from the past, so does the Value Network project.
It is crucial to take a little look back because it can tell you a little more about our background, vision, and priorities.
In early 2018, on top of altcoins’ hype, I looked at the market and tried to check for any valuable and promising ideas. Looking at it from 2020, it looked easy, but at the moment, in the mass of hyped projects, it wasn’t so.
One of the ideas I loved was the idea of crypto-backed loans — very similar to loans for the liquid assets that banks, financial institutions, and individuals are using every day in the fiat world.
Need proofs? Here are some artifacts from back in the days:
Whitepaper (2018) — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Y79hJ-GmQC3sOHDpmhClDZ193zyf6H8xNepo6_BeAmU/edit?usp=sharing
Demos (on Russian) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bAT6xyJy-w and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U62itS5eDMw
Presentation (2018) — https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vAAYKZ-FFdbhkyyJeIvP4tJcz83IGU_N/view?usp=sharing
The initial liquidity of the token was one of the main problems we’ve faced and the reason to freeze the project these days.
And I was thrilled to see this problem solved through placing tokens of the projects on DEXes like Uniswap and Sushiswap. So do in Value Network 2020, we’ll put the token on DEXes (planned date — till the end of 2020) to let the community decide on its price in the future.
The MVP of the Prediction Markets platform will be released till February 2021.
The description of our token economy will be in one of the next posts. | https://medium.com/@valuenetworklive/value-network-project-history-a-lookback-to-2018-9cc5c30eb2ad | ['Value Network Defi Products'] | 2020-11-24 10:04:48.957000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Markets', 'Defi', 'Prediction'] |
The to-do list | Put up a curtain
Hang another
Craft a closet, fix a door
Pain the room, but nothing too bright
A calm, warm white
Check this box,
Cross another
Send the email but not the other
(Too much there to uncover)
Wash forty-one dishes, scrape them all first
Then take out the trash
Pay seven bills, and only one’s past
Traffic school, PowerPoint, plaster holes to be filled
Not to mention the shed in the back to be killed
So many boards to take down and move over
Into a fence that might never get built
(if I’m perfectly honest about all of this guilt)
Make divorce appointments and don’t forget blood work
Oh, and your career! There’s so much to plan
Make sure to text friends, too. Maintenance spam.
Self-care, childcare, charity work
Weeding, darning, personal branding
Forget it. I think I’ll drink whisky instead | https://medium.com/100-naked-words/the-to-do-list-6647a74d2607 | ['Virginia Savage'] | 2017-05-01 05:01:01.818000+00:00 | ['Divorce', 'Life', '100 Naked Words', 'Social Media', 'Work Life Balance'] |
SIMDAQ Marketing Road Map Q4 2018 | We are glad to share our current and future plans! Here is our “Marketing Road Map Q4 2018”. There are three main directions of our development.
1. Increasing the number of platform users
We are going to create and test different campaigns and analyze the best traffic sources.
· Google AdWords
· Facebook campaign
· Twitter campaign
· YouTube campaign
· Banner campaign
· Bounty campaign “Bitcointalk forum”
· Bounty campaign “Twitter & Blog”
· Waves cross marketing campaigns
· Other cross marketing campaigns
· Articles and releases publishing campaign
2. Platform Engagement & User Retention
It is very important to entertain users and make them use and love our product.
· Educational content creation
· Video content creation
· Launch of Customers’ mechanics
· Offer and Incentivization Program
3. Increasing website conversion rate
LP is the main field and real oportunity to introduce our product so it is very important to improve it.
· Optimization of pages’ design
· Text content creation
· Video content creation
· Set up and optimize conversion funnel
· Add incentives to act right away | https://medium.com/simdaq-blog/simdaq-marketing-road-map-q4-2018-44ad08fabd9c | [] | 2018-10-05 12:29:36.654000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Altcoins', 'Cryptocurrency News', 'Bitcoin'] |
Configuration data migration in Salesforce | Data migration from one environment to another(or one sandbox to another) has always been a daunting task in Salesforce. The sandbox clone feature that Salesforce came up with recently leaves you much to be desired since the configuration data in Prod keeps changing as more gets added over time and sandbox refresh does not bring in all the data to the Developer sandboxes in particular.
So the burning questions still remains unanswered. How do you bring the configuration data to sandboxes(developer) easily? By configuration data I mean the custom object data and not Custom settings or Custom Metadata.
Well, you have a couple of options:
Use a 3rd party tool that can assist you with migration( Retains the relationships as well) — Incurs huge cost
that can assist you with migration( Retains the relationships as well) — Incurs huge cost Use dataloader.io to do the export & import — Needs to be done manually every time to set up the relationships based on ExternalIDs or any other unique field.
to do the export & import — Needs to be done manually every time to set up the relationships based on ExternalIDs or any other unique field. Use SFDX export/import commands — Comes with it’s own limitations which can be found in the following link — https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.api_rest.meta/api_rest/resources_composite_sobject_tree.htm
Does that mean there’s no one easy way? Do not lose hope yet as you have not run out of options. But seriously, I was hoping Salesforce itself would come up with one as this requirement seemed so trivial. Also the data commands which are on offer, have some silly limitations which render them almost unusable.
Instead of being fussy and waiting for them to come up with a better way, I thought of coming up with one of my own. Of course this is not without limitations, but I figured it might be better than a lot of other options available out there for handling a simple requirement. This rather is an extension of the data commands offered by Salesforce and not a standalone tool in itself. However, I have tried to iron out most of the limitations and a few still prevail.
To make the usage of the tool easier, I have even come up with a npm package which can be installed with the below command:
npm install sfdx-migrate — save
What does the tool do?
The tool helps you export multiple object data from a source org to a destination org with just 2 function calls. The uniqueness of the tool is in the fact that the relationships between the objects are retained regardless of how complex the relationships are.
The tool is simply an extension of the import/export data commands offered by Salesforce.
Why are the data commands not good enough?
The data commands operate on the premise of some serious limitations that it’s almost impossible to get the work done using them. Below mentioned are a few:
They expect you to specify the entire hierarchy of the data in a single SOQL(using sub queries) to be able to import the data with relationships.
They have a limit of 200 records in a single transaction during import.
They expect you to create a plan definition file which will be used during the import to set up relationships and resolve dependencies.
The migration of data with self dependency(parent-child relationship between the same object) does not work out of box.
They seem to have been built with the intent of using them manually for migration.
How does the tool work?
The tool internally uses the data commands but does some post processing on the data retrieved to make it easier to import. It also splits the huge chunk of records into batches during import to resolve the self dependency and also to work around the limitation of 200 records. All this without having to specify the relationships in a single SOQL.
Let us now get into the detailed implementation details of the tool. The tool works in 2 steps:
Export
The data to be migrated is exported using the ‘sfdx force:data:tree:export’ command and after the export is successful, some post processing is run on the records. The gist of the entire process is mentioned in the steps below:
The objects to be exported are to be specified in the form of SOQL queries in ‘queries.json’ ( created in a location which is specified as a parameter to the import/export call ) , in the order of dependency with the parent object at the top followed by its children.
created in a location which is specified as a parameter to the import/export call , in the order of dependency with the parent object at the top followed by its children. The relationships are to be specified with the __r.[API Name] notation in the SOQL.
notation in the SOQL. For every entry specified in ‘queries.json’ file, the export command is run a and the results are stored in ‘ sfdx-out’ folder.
folder. Once all the object data is exported to the ‘sfdx-out’ folder in the specified directory, the tool goes through each object data file and finds out the objects this particular object is dependent on by finding out fields which end with __r and get the type of the relationship along with the field used to identify the related record.
and get the type of the relationship along with the field used to identify the related record. It then goes through the dependent object data files to pull out references to the records referred in the object of interest data file which are usually in the format ‘ @[ObjectAPIName]Ref[xyz] ’. The API name of field used to specify the relationship is used as a key to search the records. The reference to the record is returned.
’. The API name of field used to specify the relationship is used as a key to search the records. The reference to the record is returned. The references returned are used to replace the field values that end with __r of the records in the object of interest file. The field names are also changed to end with __c which is what the import command expects.
A dependency.json file is created to store the dependencies between objects which gets used during the import step.
The above steps are repeated for every object mentioned in the query definition file.
Import
After the Export, all the input data files in sfdx-out folder will be processed and stored in the sfdx-our-processed folder in the specified location which gives you a chance to review if all the references are resolved appropriately. The import process is then carried out in the following steps:
For every object in the query definition file, records which do not have a dependency on any object(including itself) i.e. records with no ‘@[ObjectAPIName]Ref[xyz]’ are identified. If the number of independent records is more than 200, the subset is split into chunks of 200 and for every chunk, the below steps are performed: Invoke the ‘sfdx force:data:tree:import’ command on a chunk of 200 records The command returns IDs of the inserted records. Using the dependency.json, update the references in the dependent files which handles the self dependency as well. The returned IDs are updated on the records in memory by adding a field “Id” on every record. Repeat the process till all the independent records are inserted. After steps 1- 6 are performed, all the self dependencies would be resolved. Now records without “Id” and no ‘@[ObjectAPIName]Ref[xyz]’ are picked and Steps 2–7 are repeated till no such record exists. Step 1–7 are performed on every object mentioned in the queries.json file.
How to use the tool?
Detailed instructions on how to use the tool are given on the npm package details page and the GitHub repository page a well. From a high level, one just needs to follow the below steps:
Install the aforementioned package
Import it in the main file of your nodejs script.
Invoke the Export function by specifying the root location of you project
Login to the source org.
Once the data is retrieved are processed successfully, Invoke the import function by specifying the root location of you project.
Login to the destination org
Limitations
Since the tool is built on top of the sfdx data commands, few limitations still remain. Below mentioned are a couple of them
The maximum number of records that can be retrieved per object is 10000.
The tool still imports the records in batches of 200 so the import can take long if the data is huge.
The tool expects the data files to be in the same folder to be able to resolve dependencies as this happens outside the org after export.
Although there are a few limitations with the tool, it should definitely not discourage someone from using it as the limitations are quite trivial and the tool in itself is not designed to cater to huge data migrations. The package will clearly save a lot of time and effort for a developer. There might be few initial niggles with the package to start with which I am planning to fix over the course of time as and when I come across scenarios that do not work. In the meantime I would also publish the code in the repository for people to contribute and take it forward. This for sure is a good idea until Salesforce comes up with one of its own.
You can find the code to the tool on Github. | https://medium.com/swlh/configuration-data-migration-in-salesforce-ce3e2041bc25 | ['Aneesh Bhat'] | 2020-03-10 17:47:55.167000+00:00 | ['Datemigration', 'Npm Package', 'Salesforce', 'Nodejs', 'Sfdx'] |
Land of Endless Shadows and Mass Rage | Land of Endless Shadows and Mass Rage
Photo by Author
The flight time from Lagos to my last destination, Pointe Noire, ought not to have taken over five hours. But, because there were no direct flights from Lagos, the journey took a circuitous route that lasted over 24 hours. We spent one night in Addis Ababa before resuming our flight in the opposite direction the following day. Just before dusk, our flight finally touched down at Pointe Noire in the Republic of Congo.
On the first day, taking off from Lagos, our flight headed for the Ethiopian capital city of Addis Ababa. It was my first time in Ethiopia. The sprawling airport is nestled in a vast depression with rolling peaks in the faraway horizon. Unlike what one gets back at Lagos, the air was cool and dry. Far and near, rolling hills and verdant grassland interspersed the landscape surrounding the airport.
Many of the passengers on my flight were traveling to other South and Eastern African countries. I was to lodge at the airline’s hotel with some of them before we all resume our respective flights the following morning. We disembarked the plane and the protocols at the Immigration were soon completed. Afterward, we joined the Toyota Coaster bus in batches to lodge at one of the designated hotels for the night.
No sooner have we settled down for the ride that a discussion ensued with one of my co-travelers. As it was already dark and with the lights turned off inside the bus, I couldn’t make out her features. But her voice and ascent were unmistakable. The Zambian woman was bemoaning her experiences in Nigeria.
“Nigerians, I don’t understand them. They are so noisy. Everywhere you go, they are so uncouth, impatient, and even rude. As a group, Nigerians could be very mean. But when you relate with them at a one-to-one level, they could be so warm, and amiable. In fact, you may even enjoy their company and start liking them. But me, I don’t understand them at all.”
Her grievances were real. I waited for her to finish before I interjected. “I am from Nigeria. Everything you said about my country is true.” Hearing my response, all the passengers kept calmer. Several eyes turned toward the direction of my voice. All ears were ready to hear what this unabashed Nigerian guy had to say.
Photo by Author
Thereafter, I recited a family story as told from my wife’s perspective. When I got married, my wife and I do not speak the same language. At home, English language is our lingua franca. My brothers often come to visit. Occasionally, heated conversations will ensue between me and my siblings to the bemused spectacle of my wife. Since she doesn’t speak our dialect, all the chants and rants between me and my brothers were lost on her.
While our heated exchanges were on, my wife will often stay by the corner watching and wondering what these brothers were always quarreling over. According to her, she used to wonder, “Why are these brothers always screaming at one another and quarreling on every visit.” At the end of every one of such heated diatribes she always notices that these “quarreling brothers” always end their boisterous exchanges in warm, back-slapping, smiles and laughter.
Only then were her fears allayed as she reflects within her mind, “So you people were not quarreling or at loggerheads after all.” At the end of my story, my co-travelers erupted in laughter.
Today, as I recollect that experience, I wished that the situation in my country were as benign as that brotherly banter I still have with my siblings today. In today’s Nigeria, the only group that is not enraged are little children who know little or the insane who are living in blissful ignorance or members of the ruling classes and the “useful idiots” who are participating in or celebrating in this land of misrule.
One index of a healthy, free, and democratic society is its ability to deal constructively with differences and disagreements. ~ Os Guinness He who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves. ~ Abraham Lincoln
Nigeria and her teeming millions are hemorrhaging to the point of mutually assured self-destruction. This is due to the absence of covenantal solidarity that ought to exist between citizens of the same nation.
In the Last Call for Liberty, Dr Os Guinness, described this as “the tragedy of the commons. In a highly individualistic society, each person takes back a little of their public commitment, thinking that their part is so small that no one will notice.”
In today’s Nigeria, only little children or abysmal simpletons will not shed tears for the Hobbesian state of affairs in the land. The former group could be forgiven but not the latter who prefer living in ignorance like the proverbial ostrich that hides its head when beset by events it would rather not confront.
Last October, Nigerians long caught between the two evils of COVID-19 pandemic and institutionalized police brutality erupted in mass protests. The #endSARS protests which started peacefully in many cities ended in violence with loss of lives and massive destructions of private businesses and government infrastructures.
It was an ill-wind that brought losses and tears to many innocent lives. The government and the entire country have been puttering in an uneasy calm with simmering violence ever since. Why has it proved so tough to end the SARS brutality? The answer is simple. If you are a Nigerian, you know that the “SARS attitude” virus is present in the chest of (almost) all Nigerians.
What you hear of, “The seen” is the brutality meted out on the masses (villains and angels) by a renegade unit of the police force. “The unseen”, like the hidden mass of a floating iceberg, is the hidden SARS like violence that Nigerians unleash on their fellow Nigerians at every opportunity.
You need no other evidence to prove that this endemic virus in our nation than the way the masses who were protesting against police brutality became brutal in their treatment of police and other law enforcement agents when the policemen were overwhelmed by rampaging mob of protesters.
Directly or indirectly, no Nigerian has been left uscathed by traumatic recurring tales of police brutality and several extra-judicial killings. I am not in any way justifying or excusing police brutality, unnecessary use of excessive force or their countless inhumane acts on innocent citizens.
It must be stated that when it comes to the subject of their dealings with their fellow citizens, many Nigerians (I mean civilians) are as brutal as the dreaded former SARS police force.
Some Nigerians who are complaining about police brutality are ready to threaten you with, “I will call SARS police to arrest you.” over some simple misunderstandings. In Nigeria, your life could literally be hell because your neighbour has some slight “connections in the high places” advantage over you.
You never know who a man is until you give him some power.
In Nigeria, we celebrate our fellow nationals who after “escaping” from our beleaguered shores rose to influential positions in Western countries. But back home, you can be living in a community for several generations and yet still be treated as a total stranger. Even strangers are supposed to be treated with hospitality.
“Charity”, as the saying goes, “begins at home.” In Nigeria, charity begins outside. That is why Nigerians and their governments will shout BLM to racism and mistreatment of their fellow Africans in Europe and America while keeping mute over tribally motivated genocidal in-fightings back at home. | https://medium.com/muse-2-muse/land-of-endless-shadows-and-mass-rage-634249eaf71c | ['Christopher Akinlade'] | 2020-12-15 20:36:12.891000+00:00 | ['Growth Mindset', 'Society And Culture', 'Nigeria', 'Good Government', 'Civility And Respect'] |
The Dutchman vs. the Devout Muslims | by Chris Seck
In mid-January, a Dutch court ordered prosecutors to put a right-wing politician, Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders, on trial for making anti-Islamic statements. Wilders is being accused of hate speech, and to date, he has been put under police protection due to death threats from angry Muslims.
Consider what Wilders did to offend Muslims. According to the BBC, he “made a controversial film” that “likened the Koran to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.” The film was called Fitna, an Arabic term meaning “disagreement” or “division.” The film includes a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his head, as well as Koranic verses juxtaposed alongside images of terrorist attacks. In short, this film was designed to shock, provoke, and insult.
This incident brings forth questions. Why did Wilders have to insult Islam, a religion of 1.3 billion people? What did he hope to gain from releasing this film? Was he not aware that this film would be considered deeply insulting to the Muslim faith?
Too often, many secular Western thinkers assume that when devout Muslims threaten violence after their Prophet or religion is insulted, they are somehow being irrational. But although it is not a logic that everyone will agree with, there is a clear reasoning behind what those Muslims do. If you are a devout Muslim who believes that heaven and hell are real places, it would seem quite rational to live your life trying to honor God, who alone has to power to determine your eternal fate. Even a lifespan of a hundred years — no matter how luxurious — is like a drop in the bucket compared to the eternity that is to follow. In a nutshell, being faithful to God is more important than being politically correct.
If this narrative seems familiar, it should. For centuries, Western Christians too once believed that pleasing God was more important than pleasing men. These Christians were unapologetically devout — they would tolerate no insults against Jesus, the Bible, or the Virgin Mary. They would rather lose their lives than allow anyone to mock the Savior of Mankind. Often, they would even use their political power to enforce a Biblical code of conduct on society — against adultery, idolatry, and a host of other sins.
Today, of course, times have changed in the West, especially in America. Religion no longer holds a sacred place in society, and it has become commonplace to mock religion in general and Christianity in particular. Countless episodes of blasphemy abound. But one particularly jarring incident occurred in 2006, when pop star Madonna made a public performance mocking the crucifixion of Christ, arguably the most important event in Christian history. In response, some concerned Christians wrote letters and email petitions, but millions of milquetoast believers remained silent or indifferent.
But for devout Muslims across the world, letters and email petitions are not enough. In 2005, when the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad, protests and violence broke out in not just the Middle East, but also across Europe, Africa and Asia. Although many of these Muslim protestors were poor and uneducated, they shared a sincere devotion to their religious beliefs — even though their behavior was arguably extreme and excessive.
Although America is generally a secular nation, we do consider some things sacred, one of them being the issue of race. Imagine how most Americans might react if a senator sponsors a bill to replace Martin Luther King Jr. Day with a holiday celebrating the birthday of a Confederate general, say Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson. Most Americans would probably be outraged because we see Dr. King as a hero whose life helped pave the way for racial reconciliation in this country. And if somebody were to write a book publicizing Dr King’s occasional acts of adultery and plagiarism, he or she would likely be treated as a social leper. In this country, Dr. King is seen as a secular saint on the issue of race, and attacking Dr. King’s memory is rightly considered sacrilegious. And just as Americans want the race issue to be handled with sensitivity, many Muslims too want their religion to be handled with sensitivity.
One day, the United States, like Holland today, will have to answer tough questions about the limits of tolerance. Should society treat those who mock other people’s religions as harshly as it treats racists, i.e. as social lepers? Or, should society instead allow a free-for-all situation — consistent with the First Amendment — where everyone can freely mock anyone else on the basis of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and everything else? | https://medium.com/stanfordreview/the-dutchman-vs-the-devout-muslims-49a9355ce4d6 | [] | 2016-12-11 01:33:21.144000+00:00 | ['Islam', 'Muslim'] |
Remembering Jeremy Bentham | Remembering Jeremy Bentham
By James Cooper & Joshua James
Jeremy Bentham, Courtesy of https://ethics.org.au/big-thinker-jeremy-bentham/
It is no secret that utility is of particular interest to the FINTECH industry. After all, our regulators are still trying to determine whether cryptocurrencies are a utility or a security, a currency or a commodity. Some may consider a utility in a physical sense, as a necessary service to promote a better life: clean water, energy, communication, and transportation infrastructure. These all provide a foundation for a modern society to flourish. In a more economic sense, utility is the concept of ‘usefulness’ of a specific good or service.
With this understanding of modern utilities, we can modify our understanding of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). Utility tokens already exist; they are issued to fund the development of digital goods or services offered by the originator of the asset in both physical and digital spaces. This dynamic concept of a utility token may, in fact, provide a framework for the application of classical utilitarian philosophy in modern globalized economies.
The work of Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) is most instructive here. The English philosopher created the idea of utility as an aggregate of positive action towards the common good. He laid the foundation for the modern philosophy of Utilitarianism, raised from the roots of the Enlightenment during a time of industrialization. Bentham focused on social reform from legal, economic, and philosophical perspectives as his world underwent rapid change. And that was before Discord, Tiktok, and Bitcoin.
Applying Bentham’s theories to FINTECH, we see that Utilitarianism may be a model to explore utility as a measurement of liberty itself in a distributed system, more-so than a way to discreetly track the exchange of commodities, securities, or even digital assets between peers. We know goods and services already move within these developing systems and yet, there seems to be a growing conflict around which goods and services should utilize the technology; further, who should have authority over such systems as they scale in the information age?
Bentham proposed that the less restricted a utilitarian system is for any individual, the better it becomes for all individuals. This is particularly so if each party is seeking to expand their own liberty without limiting that of their peers. Perhaps liberty exists in a system where authority is dynamically defined, unique to each jurisdiction it might serve. The answer may revolve around the abstraction of authority away from the individual, or any centralized group of individuals in the form of an organization or jurisdiction, and towards a liberty-utility contract operating dynamically between all peers and spaces equally.
Utilitarian contracts represented as smart contracts may interact in a digitally egalitarian system without creating conflict at a higher degree than an intrinsically centralized system. If they succeed, new systems of governance must also exist to enable these process-based systems to interact across recognized borders, while also limiting friction between modern and legacy systems. An even greater value proposition is possible if these actions could occur without introducing unnecessary complexity or additional costs.
As these new digital utility systems are developed, new forms of organizations may find their spotlight on the world’s stage as modern standards are redefined globally. These dynamic constructs, known as Distributed Autonomous Organization (DAOs), have a checkered past. Some would argue, however, they have a promising future. These process-centric constructs help data driven systems communicate securely by coming to consensus around rules and procedures that govern smart contract interactions. They also bring about efficient conflict resolution while distributing value back to individuals and other traditionally structured organizations such as non-profit and community-based groups.
With these rapidly distributed digital interactions defined, a comparative model for blockchain utility, based on the concepts of classical utilitarianism is made possible. Where the least restrictive limitations, that offer the most value to the most number of users, become the framework for governance in a dynamic socioeconomic system. Centralization in this technology stack is not only theoretically limited but structurally so. This decentralized nature may offer the most potential value for users who begin to store their own utility within it, thus helping to redefine the ecosystem in which they exchange their own labor for assets as a form of payment.
With global attention focused on advancing distributed finance across borders, in light of governmental responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, it is time to protect the value of liberty in relation to utility. With the right philosophy, an expansion of liberty through utility may increase the value of the economies they service without limiting the freedom of their users. Jeremy Bentham, we need you now.
An excellent summary of Bentham’s contributions to the philosophies of law, government, and socioeconomics can be found hosted on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. | https://medium.com/@ponderjaunt/remembering-jeremy-bentham-2c6c6c0acf3d | [] | 2020-11-11 22:41:37.583000+00:00 | ['Law', 'Philosophy', 'Economics', 'Distributed Ledgers'] |
Step Two: Screw up | Hi. It took me forever to write that first word. These first few sentences. I’m bad at beginnings, I’ve not much experience with endings, and I’m still trying to figure out what adjectives to put in the middle. It’s funny; writing my thoughts in the public domain is a lot harder than typing them into a Word file or scribbling them in my notebook. I think this time, it’s because I took so long to think of a title. Naming things is difficult. Naming things makes them more real than they were before.
I never know where to begin. I’ve got so many ideas, so many seedlings of projects I just didn’t know how to cultivate. That’s why I’m missing Step One on this page. I don’t know how to begin, so may as well jump right into it, right? The way the saying goes, the first step is always the hardest step, but I disagree. Anyone can start a blog, or a garden, or a New Year’s resolution, but how many can keep it? I won’t be the first one to feel this way; I’m sure someone with far more street cred than I has already told you the difficulties of the second step. How many times have you started to say something, only to cut yourself off and say “Never mind” instead? Following through can be dangerous. It takes a certain amount of recklessness to say “screw it” and forge on ahead. At least, that’s how I’ve approached these things. Scared to send an email to a professor? Grit your teeth and hit CTRL-ENTER. Afraid to break the silence to ask for something? Give yourself an imaginary roundhouse kick to the rear and get moving. I guess what I’m saying is, inertia is a bitch. Newton’s Third Law has relatability far beyond the realm of classical physics. But once you’re moving, you’re moving, hey? That’s how I see it. I’ve gotten the wheels turning by writing this stream-of-consciousness monologue, and I’ll be fulfilling Step Two as soon as I hit “Publish”. If anyone’s reading this, I guess I’ve succeeded. Pandora’s Box is open, and so forth. Be prepared for the onslaught of vices. And Hope. She’s here for the ride, too. | https://medium.com/@al-wong/step-two-screw-up-774bcc1456db | ['Al Wong'] | 2020-12-02 04:22:42.795000+00:00 | ['First Post', 'Overcoming Fear', 'New Blog', 'Getting Started', 'Thoughts'] |
Connected Intelligence Requires Compromise | Connected Intelligence Requires Compromise
Last week I started a new series of articles on the Connected Intelligence Revolution and the challenges that companies face in this new era. Specifically we took lessons from the residential irrigation industry and connected garage door openers.
Today we’re going to look at security cameras and connected lights to learn the simple lesson that companies need to make trade-offs in developing products for the Connected Intelligence era.
Photo by Tobias Tullius on Unsplash
For some reason that escapes me now, several years ago we decided that it would be good to have a security camera watching the front of our house, so we bought a Ring doorbell. That was a pretty incredible product that opened our eyes to all the activity going on around our house (mostly animals) that we had previously been blind to.
But there were a couple of limitations to the Ring. The first was that the only logical place to put it was next to the front door. Second, the original version didn’t have the clearest video with only 640x480 resolution (that has been resolved in more recent versions of the product). Finally, the camera only captured video when it detected motion. We knew we were missing things either because the motion sensor didn’t trigger, or the recording started too late.
Next we tried a Dropcam. Dropcam was a ground-breaking streaming camera that was simple to set up anywhere, was always recording, and had crisp HD video. Google acquired Dropcam and rebranded the camera under their Nest smart home brand. There were two big issues with the Dropcam — first it was an indoor camera (so we set it up inside a window, pointing out into the yard, which didn’t work great), and it had to be plugged into a wall outlet. Nest now offers outdoor versions to which we’ve since upgraded. But the outdoor camera still needs to be plugged into an outlet, which significantly constrains where you can place it.
Next we bought an Arlo system with three completely wirefree cameras connected to a hub in the home. As a “wirefree” solution, the Arlo is battery powered, so you can mount the camera anywhere. Unfortunately, like the Ring, the Arlo only records when motion is detected. Arlo does have one other advantage over Ring and Nest, it doesn’t require a subscription. The Ring plans start at $30/year and the Nest plans start at $60/year. Arlo does offer plans (starting at $3/month) for longer video storage and they even offer an option for 24x7 recording (although this requires the camera to be plugged into an AC outlet).
We still use all of these cameras around our home, leveraging each one’s strengths as appropriate, but the main point is that each of these companies had to make decisions in their product design and those decisions involve compromises and trade-offs that impact the usefulness of their products.
I want to focus on two specific decisions that security camera manufacturers (and many other IoT companies) are forced to make: battery vs. AC power, and subscription plan options.
While AC outlets are available throughout our homes, they are much less common on the outside of our homes. So, battery-based cameras enjoy the benefit of being able to be mounted anywhere without running power cables to a nearby power source.
However, camera batteries must be recharged or replaced regularly. My Ring battery probably lasts 6–9 months between charges while each of my Arlo cameras need to be recharged every 4–6 months, depending on the amount of activity. Since recording video consumes significant power, battery-based cameras cannot support continuous recording.
Similarly, IoT companies need to make decisions about the subscription plans they offer. Unlike a traditional, non-connected product, devices in the Connected Intelligence era drive additional ongoing costs for the product company — especially in the security camera space where a significant amount of video storage is provided to the consumer.
However, Google’s changes to their plan pricing have been my greatest frustration with their product, and for as little as the Ring doorbell does, I question the value of paying an ongoing subscription. The fact that I can keep adding Arlo cameras to my system without incurring a subscription fee has helped keep me loyal to the company.
Of these three companies, Arlo has probably worked the hardest to try to eliminate compromises and offer consumers the best of all worlds. Arlo cameras can be placed anywhere wire-free, or you can power the camera with a solar charger, or you can plug the camera in to an AC outlet. If plugged in, you can (for $10/month) add continuous video recording for an Arlo camera. Arlo also offers the best subscription-free option plus paid subscription options with worthwhile upgrades (2K or 4K video, longer video storage, and continuous video recording).
But it’s probably impossible to avoid all trade-offs.
Connected lighting is another space where I’ve seen meaningful compromises and trade-offs. At VisuALS Technology Solutions, as we focused on restoring independence, dignity, and hope for those with debilitating conditions, we studied various options for enabling those we serve to be able turn lights on and off in their homes.
Smart lighting is one area where an innovative incumbent has enjoyed strong success in the face of very active new entrants. The Hue system from Philips Lighting quickly established an early leadership position. This system uses a hub connected to your home network that then communicates wirelessly to multiple special light bulbs in your home.
But Hue is far from being the only game in town. Early challengers focused on eliminating the need for a hub, integrating WiFi or Bluetooth directly into the lightbulb. (Philips has similarly added Bluetooth into their Hue bulbs, eliminating the need for the hub, and added a line of WiFi connected bulbs.) But other options we considered at VisuALS included smart light switches (for ceiling fixtures) and smart plugs (for lamps).
So one of the trade-offs that smart lighting companies need to consider is whether or not to use a hub. A hub makes it easier to integrate multiple devices (e.g. controlling all the living room bulbs at once), may make it easier to integrate with other devices in the home (e.g. smart speakers), provides a secure way to connect the devices when not home, and can use protocols like Zigbee which use less power and may be less expensive to integrate into light bulbs than WiFi. Requiring a hub, however, increases the initial cost of adding smart lighting to your home, and increases the initial set-up complexity.
Another trade-off is whether to build the smarts into the bulb or into a switch or plug. Using a smart switch or plug allows the use of any light bulb, reducing the cost of the consumables that you regularly replace. A smart switch or plug, however, costs several times the cost of a single smart bulb. Replacing a light switch is also a much more complex and dangerous project than replacing a light bulb, often requiring an electrician.
As Arlo has done in the security camera space, Philips has been able to largely overcome the compromises caused by these trade-off decisions by expanding their product line to cover all of these options. This optionality, however, translates into complexity for the consumer as he seeks to figure out how to capture the power of the Connected Intelligence Revolution in his own home.
In other words, sometimes overcoming tradeoffs merely introduces another tradeoff. Welcome to the revolution! | https://clearpurpose.media/connected-intelligence-requires-compromise-fad49cf7e9a | ['Russell Mcguire'] | 2020-10-05 20:17:18.777000+00:00 | ['Security Cameras', 'Connected Intelligence', 'Smart Lighting', 'Strategy Tales'] |
Dataset or Research Question: Which comes first? | Like anything in Science (be it of Data), we can figure things out by experimenting, so let’s try sticking to asking a research question first and then finding dataset. Put this dilemma aside for a while, and start cleaning the cobwebs in your mind to search for a forgotten project idea, i.e. a shiny research question to put your data analysis skills in use! It’s okay if your question is vague in the beginning because as per the data analysis process, it is refined only after we dive into dataset. So at this stage, you start thinking:
What should I analyze — it should be definitely something unique? What are those research topics which often pop up in my head and I become curious to find their answers (though I never tried to find them yet, due to my laziness)?
By this time, you’ll get at least a couple of ideas and you’re able to form some unique vague questions from them. Let’s consider what I came up with:
Is there any correlation between the number of tabs open in one’s browser and specific psychological traits? *eyes gleaming with excitement — time has come to get the answer of why I have 50 tabs open right now*
But here’s a catch: Is this question “answerable by data” which is “already present” and is “accessible to you”?
Many may wonder (at least I used to did), we’re living in the age of Big Data & Internet, data is present everywhere and to access it we just need some searching on Google. But in reality, it’s not that simple! Let’s break down why is it so, to the three phrases I’ve quoted above:
1. Answerable by Data?
When you put “data for the number of browser tabs open and psychological traits” in Google search box, you will get a list of articles explaining internet FOMO, multi-tab mania, etc. But notice that they do not present any dataset about the question we have, rather they are themselves answering the question — conclusive reports which discuss possible psychological reasons. So the question we started with does have an answer (partial, though). But what we are looking for is some data that we can analyze to answer it ourselves. Maybe we’re not searching it the right way, let’s try searching directly on the data sources.
2. Accessible to You?
Some of the articles which appeared in our search did mention the results of some research and cited the research paper’s link. But when you click over them, you’ll find that they haven’t made their data accessible to the public — this brings us to the next part. There is another limitation of our unique & vague research question, that the data we’re looking for should be freely available. So you go to the free data sources on the web as enlisted here:
Or search it with Google’s Dataset search engine with “free” filter but unfortunately you still won’t find any relevant dataset for the question we started with.
3. Already present?
At this point, it starts to make sense that maybe no such open access research has been conducted yet that’s why no dataset is present — openly! But is it possible for us to collect it? Sometimes, it is easy to do so by scraping it from multiple webpages or by using an API, thereby preparing a dataset ourselves. Otherwise, you have to conduct a survey to collect data as researchers do. Unfortunately, the research question we started with, falls in the latter category where we will need to involve psychologists to design a survey and then conduct it on web browser users. Not only it is time-consuming but also infeasible unless you’re backed by the R&D department of an organization. Are you?
So what’s the feasible solution? Reverse engineer it! Find a dataset first and then ask the question. But like me, you might be wondering doesn’t it limit the uniqueness we wanted in our research question — this way it will be the same as what others have already done. Well, here’s a subtlety we were missing from the beginning in this way of thinking. If we were searching for a dataset for a unique research question, then the datasets (if present) would be those which someone has collected for their research, i.e. our research question would not have been unique in the first place. It can be entirely unique only when you are the first one to collect the data. But, if you use some accessible dataset, it can still be partially unique because chances are — someone has not asked a question on the dataset which you may come up with! | https://medium.com/swlh/dataset-or-research-question-which-comes-first-d24fc7cdde1e | ['Jaladh Singhal'] | 2020-07-01 00:16:50.828000+00:00 | ['Research', 'Dataset', 'Data Analysis', 'Data Science', 'Data'] |
Spider-Man: Morales — Pro Tips and Tricks on PS5 | Image: Marvel
Spider-Man Morales, an adventure game released just the previous month has already caught the eyes of a lot of PlayStation players. Both PS4 and PS5 are enjoying the game to the peak. They are having sheer fun! Want to join them? You should be left behind. But before you think of playing Marvel’s Spider-Man on PS5, there is something else.
What? You need adequate tips and tricks to get the better of this super-powered adventure game. You need to grip these tips and tricks to unlock a lot of things and master numerous tricks in your quest to save New York. That will help you to probably hit the streets swinging. And that’s where exactly this article comes in.
This article provides a sneak-peek into some of the major tips and tricks you will need in Spider-Man Miles Morales PS5. Let’s have a look at them.
Stay and fight in the air
The main point to remember before you even use this trick is to usually dodge the incoming gunfire Circle. When you remember this, you will be very effective when fighting in the air. Any antagonists launched won’t fight back and as for those you left on the ground, they are vulnerable and can’t get reach of you.
With this aerial combat, taking on numerous combat challenges in an attempt to unlock Air Marshall’s skill is very possible. With that done, your damage output is increased. There are three things to consider when dealing more damage; the Swing kick, Air Launch, and Air Yank. When all these are prioritized, you will shift all your focus in the air and thus you will reduce chances of being attacked. Aerial combat also enables you to knock your foes off the rooftops.
What should you do when you fight enemies that can yank out of the air? The best approach in this situation will be to take them out first. Also, make use of Perfect Dodges or Web Throws. They help you to stay grounded but on your toes.
To send your enemies skywards, try holding down Square. Dash and jump (some of the Venom abilities), may be used to send your enemies into the air.
Bigger Vs Smaller enemies — Who to fight?
Since some enemies offer a big threat than others, you should prioritize the right enemies to combat. This will make your life easier.
But how do you approach this? Venom blasts or special attacks should be used to open up big enemies. The problem comes in when they all try to hit you at the same time. You should also be wary of ranged enemies. These tend to fire from range and can be a huge threat especially when your focus is on closer enemies. So, try to identify which enemies pose a huge threat and try eliminating them first.
Start with the challenges
These challenges enable you to learn all the basics and thereby will help you in unlocking vital skills. There are a lot of challenges that Peter Parker sets up for you around the city. Try clearing all of them as soon as you can. Each test you take on be it traversal, stealth or combat unlocks an ability for you on successful completion. A perfect dodge against armed enemies with instant takedowns and huge damage in the air are some of the abilities you can unlock on completing the challenges.
Use correct attacks for the right enemies and avoid button mash
There are a lot of enemies in the Spider-Man Miles Morales PS5 game. Each enemy requires a special attack to be taken out. Use of a web yank will take away protection from enemies with shields and other club waving enemies. If you encounter underground minions of the Tinkerer that always have giant fists, use a Venom attack. It destroys all their weapons.
Button mash should only be used where necessary. You can’t use it in a crowd as you will be raining ineffective blows on an enemy that is protected.
If the going gets tough, feel free to run away
In case the combat overwhelms you then why not consider taking to your heels? It is far much a wise decision in such a scenario. In this game, there will be some fights involving a lot of enemies with a lot of combinations. You will find yourself surrounded by a lot of assailants with shields, clubs, or guns in one or two scenarios. That becomes very difficult to handle. Even with that, don’t run away in such a way that you give the enemies much space.
So what should you do? Since it will be very difficult to take on multiple enemies at once, use the ample room in the interior to relocate. With that, you will be able to gain your control back as you will eliminate them one by one as they follow you there.
Diving and Swinging
Diving helps you to build on speed whereas swinging is ideal for height or speed. A click on the left stick will enable you to dive and gain a lot of speed when you are swinging. Maximum height can be attained by holding the swing much longer. This will help you to arc upwards before you begin to lose momentum. It helps you to clear a lot of buildings in such a short time.
Know your gadgets
There are four gadgets that Miles can use. The Web-Shooters, which are the most common gadgets are used in damaging enemies and trapping them to restrict their movement in such a short period. The other important gadget is Holo-Drone. This will summon holographic players to offer assistance to players.
Use the Remote Mine to grab onto an enemy. The Remote Mine can also be activated once you choose to attack the enemies. The last gadget is Gravity Well. And this will bring a crowd of enemies together and knocks them down momentarily making it easier for Miles to attack them. The good thing is that you can upgrade each of these gadgets with Taking Parts or Activity Tokens.
Conclusion
Becoming a pro in Spider-Man Miles Morales is a piece of cake. It only requires you to master the tips and tricks mentioned in this article.
Written By Rizwan Ahmad
Syndicated Originally from GamingUncle. | https://medium.com/gaminguncle/spider-man-morales-pro-tips-and-tricks-on-ps5-bd8f291cc751 | ['Rizwan Ahmad'] | 2020-12-20 17:08:13.002000+00:00 | ['Spider Man Miles Morales', 'Gaming Tips', 'PS4', 'Ps5', 'Tips And Tricks'] |
Zen of Open Source | When can a project be defined as open-source? When, as the word says, you open the source code and make it available to other people.
Of course, this is the first concept behind the open-source philosophy. But there is more.
Open source license
To make a project open-source first, you need to release it with a certain license. In fact, there are a lot of them. They all share the main philosophy, but differ from each other in small points. Here are some examples:
Apache License 2.0 (Apache-2.0)
3-clause Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) license (BSD-3-Clause)
2-clause Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) license (BSD-2-Clause)
GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)
MIT license (MIT)
But which one to choose?
Choose license
First, you need to understand who your project is for. For example, do you want everyone to be able to take a cue from your project and redistribute an improved version under a different name? Then you need an MIT license. Do you want your project to be shared with others and others to contribute directly to your project? Then you will need a GPL license (v2/v3). If, on the other hand, your goal is to simply work in a team, then you will choose an Apache license.
There are many types of licenses and you can create your own. A good reference point to understand what to choose is choosealicense.com
What else?
If it seems all over and done with, well you’re wrong. You’ve made your project open-source via an open license, and that’s a good thing and right, but there’s more to it.
In 1998, some people like Linus Torvalds (author of the Linux kernel), Tim O’Reilly (founder and head of O’reilly Media), Bruce Perens (co-founder of the GNU / Debian project) and Eric S. Raymond (free blogger) coined the term open-source.
As I said before, open-source is a philosophy, a thought, something abstract applicable to something real. This is an excerpt from the Open Source Definition below:
Free redistribution. The license cannot prevent any party from selling or leasing the software. Anyone must be able to make as many copies as he wants, sell or give them away, and he doesn’t have to pay anyone to do that. Source code. The program must include the source code. Deliberately obfuscated code is not allowed. This is because the source code is needed to modify or repair a program. Derivative works. The license must allow modifications and derivative works and must allow their distribution under the same terms as the license of the original software, as the software is of little use if it cannot be modified for maintenance, for example for the correction of errors or porting. on other operating systems. Integrity of the author’s source code. The license may prohibit the source code from being distributed in modified form only if the license permits the distribution of “patch files” with the source code for the purpose of improving the program at the time of construction. No discrimination against individuals or groups. The license must be applicable to all, without any discrimination however noble the objective of the discrimination may be. For example, the license of use cannot be denied even to police forces of dictatorial regimes. No discrimination of sectors. Similarly to the previous condition, this prevents licensing of use in certain sectors from being denied, however deplorable these may be. Therefore, the use of such software to produce chemical weapons or other instruments of mass destruction cannot be prevented. License Distribution. The rights to the program must apply to everyone to whom the program is redistributed, without the need to run an additional license. The license does not have to be specific to a product. The rights to a program must not depend on the program being part of a particular software distribution. The license must not contaminate other software. The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed one. The license must be technologically neutral. No terms of the license need to be proclaimed on any single technology or interface style.
From this excerpt it is clear that everything concerning the freedom of oneself and of the others on something that is created (a software, but it can also be a project of a very complicated origami on paper), no longer has an individual property, designed on the single individual, but reflects the will of many people, without considering irrelevant human aspects, such as sex, religion, sexual orientation, economic prosperity and much more. When you decide to open source your own project, you’re not just sharing something, you’re creating a piece of the future for all of humanity.
The Zen
I am an open-source developer who develops his projects and thoughts in Python, a programming language that puts simplicity first and versatility second.
With every open source project I start, I reread this code:
>>> import this
The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than *right* now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea. Namespaces are one honking great idea-- let's do more of those!
>>>
This not only helps me to write a beautiful and readable code (for me and for others, since it will have to be open-source), but consistent with a philosophy, that of the Python Software Foundation.
From that list of (apparently random) advice and words, there is indeed an ethics; here, I have created one regarding the open-source philosophy.
Conclusion
The Zen of Open Source, by Matteo Guadrini Inclusive is better than exclusive
Abstract is better than specific
For many it is better than for himself
Modular is better than monolithic
Think twice about implementation
Explain well the reasons for your project
Be as specific as possible
Think like a child and write like an adult
Start with a simple project - if it's complex to explain, it's a bad idea
Life is one, don't be afraid to express yourself or make mistakes - a community is ready to correct you
Never say it's impossible - there's always a way
What you thought is not the only way - try them all
Be free to choose
I always start a project thinking about these phrases. | https://medium.com/@matteo.guadrini/zen-of-open-source-9b7865eb9bf0 | ['Matteo Guadrini'] | 2021-09-08 13:51:28.448000+00:00 | ['Linux', 'Apache', 'Python', 'Gnu', 'Open Source'] |
Mapping transitions | This week marks Business School’s research week, with professors from different disciplines introducing research methodologies and topics of interest in respective fields. I attended talks from the Economics, Finance, and Information systems department, seeking to better envisage a career in academia and research. I came to realize, that the optimal flexibility and lifestyle of a research and academia career came only after years of ongoing commitment — niche areas of study and research, the challenges of field and lab research, and applications or contribution towards society. It could be a solitary, prolonged, tedious, and rigorous journey. As Professor M***** C*** suggested, “If you dive head in into a field without passion or personal interest, it might be hard to persevere.” “Compared to industry work, our feedback phases are long. Traders get feedback immediately from their daily P&L, managers from their clients within a day, yet professors can commit a few months or years before hearing back about journal decisions and peer feedback.” With societal frenzies on certain “hot” fields promising envisioned returns on investment, there might be people who dive head in without thinking much about personal interest. Yet, without personal conviction or interest, it might be hard to persevere through challenges and the ups and downs often encountered throughout the extensive research journey.
How do I feel after listening to such talks? Do I have a strong calling for a career in research and academia? “Research and teaching are very contrasting fields of work.”, says *****. Research demands patience and thorough contemplation on niche subjects, facing huge amounts of data, analysis, field research, trial and errors, and discussions within a niche group of professionals. Higher education lecturing exposes you to bright minds of tomorrow — interactive, enlightening, and rewarding (in my POV haha). I enjoy human interaction — the sense of personal reward has always been evident throughout past teachings in FCAs, group interactions, and reaching out to people from diverse backgrounds. On the other hand, I enjoy solitary time in reflection, writing, and organizing ideas into text, yet I wonder about extending commitment on niche fields for prolonged periods of time. I probably will not enjoy such research dynamics as much, in comparison — data facing, theory led, industry integrating (serious efforts), solitary, and tedious.
I started looking at graduate school choices. Initially, I started wondering about my motivation. Small voices in my heart questioned, “You enjoy simple abundance. Being close to home, cherishing the simple abundances in life, and learning each day should be adequate. You are content with your level of commitment, values, and achievement at this current stage. What exactly are you further seeking for? From Taiwan, to Hong Kong, and now, you are planning for the next journey — another city, another school, another phase of career. It will be a commitment, challenge, and phase of exploring, adapting, and integrating. Why? For what?” In retrospection, I must have came across similar self-questioning back in high school. Taiwan promises familiarity, comparative stability, and comfort. Yet, I chose to step out. It has been an uncomfortable journey with many challenges, failures, and regrets. Yet, this departure from comfort zone also blessed me with immense learning opportunities, shaped personal values, and came with an unique resilient confidence after experienced walked through. I don’t regret such a decision.
Diving deeper into such decision, I’d ask what the initial trigger of stepping outside was. Curiosity. Discontent. Aspiration. These were triggers that pushed me to explore fields of uncertainty, make commitments, and take in challenges along the way. So I guess these would continue to be forces driving me forward, on explorations in graduate studies despite the complexity, uncertainty, and distance from my current starting point.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
Transitions
Excitement, apprehension, insecurity, revitalization. These are the emotions when we envision and encounter the journey of transition, no matter in life stages, academia pursuits, or geographical switch. Planning for transition requires long-term perspective, risk-taking adaptability, and active exploration. Such mindsets are broadened with imagination, curiosity, and conviviality — we plan with more nonconformity and ingenuity. In contrast, such planning could be limited due to constraints — resource and time availability and current-stage distractions that require our attention. In return, this results in limited perspective, reined vision, and practicality before aspirations.
It seems like yesterday when D*** and I met with M****** three years ago, the two of us wondering about the vast ranges of possibilities that university would bring us. Naïve, unassuming, and curious, it never occurred to us that the years ahead were welcoming us with different challenges, while mutual support bounded us towards the still ongoing journey. Last Friday, we met again with M******, and it was amazing how three years apart accelerated growth and perspective. The questions we pondered and the matters brought to the table were not of academic pursuits, but rather planning towards post-graduation and possibilities leading forward.
When in search of further studies, clarification of hygiene factors and motivation factors are of utmost importance. Initially, I was in search of further studies with simplified goals in mind — areas of interest, prestige of institution, career transition, geographic exploration, and practicalities of time and budget.
This enabled me to narrow down my choices into focus — I started off with interested areas: Financial economics, Political economy, Data analytics, International relations, Public Policy, or a blend of the above. By narrowing the areas down with geographical location, school reputation, and studying practicalities, a number of programs surfaced, and I was assured of my direction… but only for a while. I started pondering if those were just hygiene factors that I considered. I asked myself if I had a clear goal in mind, the transition that I’d want to achieve after these further studies. Public sector? Private sector? A change of geography?
A person of experience might look back in retrospection of his or her wealth of experience and assure you that you assemble puzzles and connect the pieces and form a picture of greater clarity as you embark on the journey. I might not have a clear idea, feel a bit lost, and that is ok. “A lot of things will change in the initial years of your job. Whether you like it or not, you will know. And that will be the time for you to consider further studies, a transition, and plan forward.”, says M******. I agree and disagree. We might be too dependent on a certain level of comfort or lifestyle after accommodating to daily routines — of our school, our jobs, or responsibilities. At that stage, thinking about possibilities from scratch might be too late.
University is a time with comparatively loosened schedule in such imagination in our future blueprint — right now with my graduation “next-step” clarified, I have a huge window of independence for imagination. With hygiene factors clarified in further studies, think about your motivation factors. Take a further step — the courses in depths, the level of commitment required, and talk to people of knowledge and expertise. In retrospection, I have feared stepping into areas of unfamiliarity, stepping away from it in pursuit of getting better at areas where I excel. Yet, the greatest learnings chip in when we step outside our comfort zone, head-in with previously exotic frontiers. Didn’t you perceive DCF models as complicated and tedious? Yet the rewards of understanding the estimations required, the inter-connectedness of the line items, and the prediction of a firm’s health gave a rounded and rewarding sense after hours of devotion in the piece of work of art. Didn’t I perceive the French language as perplexing and mysterious? Yet the fruits of understanding a language was extremely rewarding, with the ongoing journey of learning each day.
Attending panel discussion sessions organized by the FDSC nurtured perspective on Hong Kong’s broader financial industry and the technological disruptions stimulating transition. Insur-tech, virtual banking, traditional financial services, and cross-selling of accounting and consulting services combined with the expanding of geographic market focuses were the topics discussed in the great panel sessions. I found it rewarding the the areas that I previously least understood were tapped into with further clarity, especially in areas of insurance and Fintech which I once had one-sided biases and incomplete knowledge. “Get a broader understanding of issues emerging. Delve into topics of interest. Pay attention to rapid transformations in the industry and globally, which enables you to share sensitively, engage more purposefully, and communicate effectively.” For me, emerging markets, technology, gender equality, education, and political economy has always yielded an attraction. But these shouldn’t be 紙上談兵。Translate them into real action, with forethought and perseverance. | https://medium.com/emily-c-h-li/mapping-transitions-52394d5959cc | ['Emily Li'] | 2019-10-27 01:18:03.558000+00:00 | ['Transitions', 'Graduate School', 'Taiwan', 'Hong Kong', 'Education'] |
An open letter to the mom who doesn’t deserve mothers day. | I was seventeen. Seventeen years old when you decided you’d had enough of me. I couldn’t sign a lease, get a credit card, or even go to the doctor. I was so young when you decided I could make it all on my own. I hadn’t even finished school yet. I didn’t know who I was yet.
As I sit at work, on mothers day, seeing all the happy families with mothers who care, I don’t know whether to feel angry or sad. So I guess I feel both. I remember how close we used to be. You were my best friend. I guess that’s changed. I don’t know what happened, but I’m sorry for whatever I did that made you not want to love me anymore.
No matter how many times you hurt me, it hurts the same. I see so many people with mothers that love them, and I don’t know why I can’t have that. Remember when you held me after my dad broke my heart the last time? Remember when you promised you’d never let me feel that pain again? You were right. Because my father had hurt me my whole life. It didn’t hurt as bad as the woman I looked up to most in the world abandoning me when I was at my lowest. That was a pain I’d never felt before.
So I’ll wish a happy mothers day to the woman who has been more of a mother to me than you. I’ll wish a happy mothers day to the coworker who opened her home to me when you took yours away. I’ll wish a happy mothers day to my best friend who had held me close as I bawled my eyes out to her about things I wanted to cry to my mother about. I’ll wish a happy mothers day to my manager, who bought me countless meals because I hadn’t eaten in days because I couldn’t afford to.
I’m sorry, mom. I’m sorry I wasn’t more like my sister. I’m sorry for whatever I did that made you give up on me. I’m sorry for not being a great daughter.
I’m sorry you couldn’t love me anymore. | https://medium.com/@blythecorrderoi/an-open-letter-to-the-mom-who-doesnt-deserve-mothers-day-e5e9490ee627 | ['Blythe Corrderoi'] | 2019-05-13 06:56:24.779000+00:00 | ['Sad', 'Mothers Day', 'Abandonment', 'Abandoned'] |
What Are The Advantages of Linux Operating System | What Are The Advantages of Linux Operating System
What is Linux?
LINUX is a kernel or Operating System which is distributed under an open-source license. Its list of features is kind of like UNIX. The kernel can be a program that takes care of simple things at the bottom of the Linux Operating System, such as making hardware interact with software.
Why does the OS need one?
You see a screen every time you turn on your computer where you perform various tasks, such as blogging, surfing the web, or watching a video. How does the processor on your computer know that you simply are asking it to run an mp3 file? So, you would like an operating system to find out on your computer operating system. Now you are going to use a common OS like windows, Apple OS X. What advantages it provides over other OS choices.We also provide Linux coaching in Chandigarh
Architecture of Linux architecture has the subsequent components:
Kernel: Kernel is the core of the Linux based OS. It visualizes the common hardware resources of the PC to supply each process with its virtual resources. This makes the method seem as if it’s the only process running on the machine. The kernel is additionally liable for preventing and mitigating conflicts between different processes.
Different types of the kernel are:
Monolithic Kernel
Hybrid kernels
Exo kernels
Microkernels.
System Library:IT is the special sorts of functions that are wont to implement the functionality of the OS.
Shell: it’s an interface to the kernel which hides the complexity of the kernel’s functions from the users. It takes inputs from the user and implements the functions of the kernel.
Hardware Layer: This layer consists of peripheral devices like RAM/ HDD/ CPU, etc.
System Utility: It provides the functionalities of an OS to the user.
Advantages of Linux
The main advantage of Linux is its open-source OS. This suggests the ASCII text file is available for everybody and you’re allowed to contribute, modify and distribute the code to anyone with no permissions. Regarding security, Linux is safer than the other OS. It doesn’t mean that Linux is one hundred PC secure; it’s some malware for it but is a smaller amount vulnerable than the other OS. So, it doesn’t require any anti-virus software. Software updates are simple, and regular on Linux. Various Linux distributions are available so that you’ll use them consistent with your requirements or consistent with your taste. Linux is freely available to use on the web. It has large, community support. It provides high stability. It rarely slows down or freezes and there’s no way to reboot it after a brief time. It maintains the privacy of the user. The performance of the Linux system is far above other operating systems. It allows an outsized number of individuals to figure at an equivalent time, and it handles them efficiently. It is network friendly. The flexibility of Linux is high. There’s no got to install an entire Linux suit; you’re allowed to put in only required components. Linux is compatible with an outsized number of file formats. It is fast and straightforward to put in from online. It also can install on any hardware even on your old computing system. It performs all tasks properly albeit it’s limited space on the hard disc.
LINUX Language use in aircraft
The aviation business and sport is about as mission-critical as any human activity. Pilots have an implicit expectation of their aircraft being well-built, ergonomic, predictable, reliable, and safe to fly. Certified aircraft is designed and constructed to the requirements of engineering and efficiency that greatly exceed those of any other consumer product.
In my view, similar high expectations should be met by any computing environment used for aviation-related applications. I also assume that the Programming environment with the greatest potential to achieve such high expectations is the free software development paradigm and the LINUX operating system. This document aims to provide links to software applications running under GNU/Linux that are beneficial to commercial, private, or military) pilots, airlines, airports. The majority of the software packages mentioned in this release can be distributed freely and come with source code. I will happily however provide entries from any vendors that are GNU/Linux compatible for commercial products. | https://medium.com/@aaradhyasingh7895/what-are-the-advantages-of-linux-operating-system-32aff62b8d2f | ['Aaradhya Singh'] | 2020-12-24 12:31:51.825000+00:00 | ['Linux Training', 'Linux Tutorial', 'Linux Coaching Chandigarh', 'Linux'] |
How to Create a Writing Portfolio When You Have Zero Experience | Photo by Andrej Lišakov on Unsplash
How do you gain experience when you have no experience? It is a question that has befuddled college graduates and career transitioners for years, and which is only getting worse in our gig economy. Companies no longer invest in employees from the get-go, they no longer have an interest in improving the people they hire, but instead, seek someone pre-trained and perfect for that one piece of work they need. This is making it even harder to get started when you have no experience.
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This new landscape has the frustrating consequence of reinforcing social inequalities because when no one will pay you until you can prove your ability, that means that your first experiences have to be done for free. Kids from richer families can afford to do an unpaid summer internship and land their first byline, or volunteer at a local paper — those that are less well off will meanwhile be working full time to pay for their next semester.
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This is an annoying reality, but luckily, whatever your background, even with 0 experience, it is possible to catch up. After all, all you need is to land one writing job, and from then on, you will have experience to showcase.
The question is how do you get that first job. Say you have seen a perfect gig on Upwork, and you need to show your portfolio to apply. Or you’ve got a response from an editor about that pitch you sent, and they’re asking for writing samples. | https://medium.com/@ditraj75/photo-by-andrej-li%C5%A1akov-on-unsplash-88ec3fea58c9 | ['Dit Raj'] | 2020-12-17 17:15:08.076000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Politics', 'Food', 'News', 'Joe Biden'] |
Project Update 12: 31.08.2018 | FuzeX Team here presents the last Project Update of August. Over the last month, FuzeX Team has dedicated in many ways to further boost FuzeX project by concluding the partnership with Dash and Allbit exchange. Also, the team has publicized FuzeX Project to a larger audience by successfully closing airdrop and bounty events. Kindly note that this Project Update consists of details regarding additional exchange listing, and buyback as it was announced.
Buyback Announcement
Buyback Period : July 31 to August 31, 2018
July 31 to August 31, 2018 Buyback Wallet Transfer ETH : 2,200 ETH
2,200 ETH Wallet Address :
[CoinBene] 0x83f5d1b4074a70400cec48a08ade302318778235
[CobinHood] 0x6fce228b9b5d610f6dcAe55620487b96d694AbEa
[CoinBene] 0x83f5d1b4074a70400cec48a08ade302318778235 [CobinHood] 0x6fce228b9b5d610f6dcAe55620487b96d694AbEa Buyback Usage Information:
On July 31, the buyback began with 0.000095 ETH/FXT in the main intention to stabilize the FXT price and settle the large sales volume on the market to raise its value. In the midst of a downturn in the ETH market, we faced difficulties due to the decrease in value of the available operating fund, and excessive selling volume, but were able to implement the buyback volume that we announced with our initial goal as the top priority.
Although all of the official buybacks has been completed, we have come to a decision to proceed with an additional buyback with a different wallet address in the future, after careful consideration of the current value of ETH and market conditions. However, we are concerned about the possibility of this additional buyback becoming a target for short-term investment schemes. FuzeX Team will not disclose the actual period and the buyback amount, and process buyback with a new wallet address. Then disclose the usage details when all buyback has been completed.
The purchased FXT will be locked for a certain period of time so that it will not affect the market. The locked tokens will be used for FuzeX projects and marketing in the future after the unlock.
New Exchange Listing : CPDAX
Listing Date : September 11, 2018
CPDAX is a top 50 exchange in the world operated by CoinPlug, a blockchain specialist firm established in 2013. As a member of leading blockchain ecosystems such as Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), R3 and Hyperledger, CoinPlug pioneers the Exchange 2.0 platform that combines global ecosystems.
The company developed the first bitcoin ATM in Korea. Since 2013, Coinplug has been setting industry standards with products such as okBitCard (a prepaid card), a simple authentication process using a secret key, an international wire-transfer platform, and Fido-ledger, a private blockchain.
FuzeX Team is very pleased to be listed on CPDAX, which is one of the leading the innovation businesses at the heart of the blockchain ecosystem. As a team, FuzeX will further endeavor to meet the expectations of everyone who waited for the KRW/FXT pair listing.
Please visit CPDAX official website to learn more details.
Events
Block Festa
The FuzeX Team has demonstrated the FuzeX card for the first time in front of many VIPs from all over the world at the BLOCKFESTA that ran from August 22 to 23. The audience included renowned figures such as Roger Ver, Bitcoin.com CEO and FuzeX advisor. The FuzeX card was praised by many participants for making cryptocurrency an applicable payment in everyday life.
World Blockchain Forum(WBF) London : September 2018
The FuzeX Team will participate in the World Blockchain Forum (WBF) in London from September 3 to 5 as a Gold Sponsor. The WBF, where FuzeX Project had made its debut, is the lynchpin between industry and enterprise in the blockchain space. This year WBF will delve deeper into the future of initial coin offering (ICO) and the background behind the emergence of security token offering (STO).
The forum will feature in-depth panel discussions and presentations by global experts on leading corporations’ role in the blockchain industry, the blockchain sector’s influence on all sectors, and blockchain ecosystem. The business development team manager Alex from FuzeX will also participate as a speaker, and talk about the potential and future prospects of FuzeX Project with the enthusiastic crowd.
BPS Speaker’s Presentation Video
The video of FuzeX CEO Andrew Bae delivering a presentation at the Blockchain Partners Summit has been released. It features the overall contents of the project, including the background behind the launch of FuzeX project, and the direction of the project development. | https://medium.com/fuzex/project-update-12-31-08-2018-6f0728355e8 | [] | 2018-09-03 11:34:19.532000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'ICO', 'Blockchain', 'Ethereum'] |
Meet Grace. | “So many people showed up to help — I cried because I was so excited,” Grace recalls. “Now, a year later, we have over half of our student population as members.”
With the rapid growth of the club, Grace decided to start a GoFundMe during her senior year of high school to help cover the cost of card making materials. The 500 members of the Letters of Love club meet once a month tucked into the back of the art classroom to craft their important heartfelt messages to children staying at the nearby children’s hospital.
The mission of Letters of Love was something that resonated with many others. There are now over 20 clubs worldwide, and that number is expected to grow to 100 by next year. And just one year into its infancy, Letters of Love was granted 501(c)(3) status to establish the club as a nonprofit organization. So far, the club members have crafted and sent out over 60,000 cards, but Grace’s vision doesn’t end there. While coronavirus sweeps the nation, Grace has a plan in motion to help out.
“We’ve started a video campaign to help the kids in the hospital who aren’t able to see friends and family due to COVID-19,” Grace explains. “We wanted to find a way to let those kids know that the whole community is fighting for them and loving them during this time.”
Letters of Love has been asking folks to send in short videos with a few encouraging words for children spending time in the hospital without loved ones around. The community has certainly shown up — videos from professional athletes on the Minnesota Vikings and the Minnesota Wild have come in, as well as clips from high-profile actors and comedians. After the coronavirus passes, Grace has growth in mind for the new nonprofit organization.
“I decided I’m going to take a gap year before college to focus on building our nonprofit organization,” she says.
With emotional support for children at the heart of her cause, Grace is working on writing a children’s book. From there, she plans to facilitate animal therapy for children in the hospital — both things that require monetary donations from generous folks who believe in her cause. Grace’s passion for helping others started at a young age, but she hopes age doesn’t hold anyone back from making a difference.
“I think kindness is the most beautiful part of being human,” Grace says. “The smallest acts of kindness, such as making a card for someone, can change their life. You’re never too young or too old to make a difference — you can change the world with small acts of kindness.”
Learn how you can support Grace’s organization, Letters of Love.
Letters of Love is accepting videos through the end of May and you can submit a video of your own to [email protected]. | https://medium.com/gofundme-stories/meet-grace-87b62c9c350d | [] | 2020-05-28 12:31:00.926000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Gofundme Kid Heroes', 'Inspiration', 'Health', 'Philanthropy'] |
If a child dies in the womb, that is a still birth. | If a child dies in the womb, that is a still birth. It unfortunately happens everyday without causing death to the mother. Many women know what it is like to delivery a dead child. One that died on it’s own, natural causes. Our bodies have a process to deal with babies that die in the womb. Killing a “malformed” child is still murder. I believe people with “malformations” deserve to live too. If a mother is to under go chemo or any other life saving procedure, abortion is still a choice — delivery is the other option. If you can undergo one — you can undergo the other. Murder is not the right decision, ever. If I had cancer and needed chemo but was pregnant, I would delivery the baby as soon as possible and take my chances. The baby is on my team, not my opponent. I would walk hand in hand with her and I would never sacrifice my own child’s life for my own. Nobody should be killing babies. It is always murder and it is NEVER justified.
And if anybody hates women — it is those that champion abortion. A women is just that — WOMAN — we create life, we grow babies, we nurture newborns. Women’s empowerment has taken all the power away from women. I’d love to see a man go through 12 hours of natural labor to push out 10lbs of human life and give up every selfish thought to replace it with motherhood. Men do not have what we have. That is not all we are — it is our extra — it is what makes us untouchable. Being a mother is a power not a hinderance. Children add to our lives, not take away from them. | https://medium.com/@rjbella/if-a-child-dies-in-the-womb-that-is-a-still-birth-f219a68ac01b | ['Rachel Rogers'] | 2020-12-01 11:28:23.584000+00:00 | ['Pro Life', 'Abortion'] |
Why I Joined BioBox as The Director of Marketing (3/3) | In The Beginning
At university I majored in Biomedical Sciences and minored in International Development. When I graduated, I aimed for a career in Global Health and somehow landed in the world of Advertising, loved it and stayed there for 3 years. There was always a small thought in the back of my head that said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if I could merge my love for science and marketing?”
A quick look at a job board could tell you that these opportunities were few and far between and I often told myself, “Maybe someday, but not now.”
In The Middle
The now came sooner than I thought and it started with these 7 words:
“I think I need to hire you.”
I spit out my coffee that day. My glorious productivity juice, completely gone to waste across my entire white desk.
These 7 words set off a series of events that resulted in 1 emotional rollercoaster, decision trees, pro/con charts, negotiations and an endless consumption of coffee to encourage my already high anxiety.
I was sitting on the fence for a long time.
Then our CEO said to me,
If there’s anything I can promise you, it’s that you’ll gain an arsenal of valuable skills that can take you anywhere you want to go.
I knew in that moment that the BioBox team was serious about helping me develop the skills I wanted to have and moulding me into the marketer I wanted to become.
So I took a chance, and now here I am.
Beyond what the role could offer me in terms of experience, I made the jump because it was so evidently clear why everyone else was there. If you’ve had the chance to read my colleagues’ posts, you’ll find that their personal experiences and purpose are so deeply ingrained in the company’s DNA. And for me, there’s no greater case for being employed here, than to be working with people who know what they’re doing and WHY they’re doing it.
From a marketing standpoint, it has been a privilege to market a product that solves the pain points expressed by our industry. It’s one thing to market something I believe in, and another when the industry is actively asking for a solution we’re already building. The more the scientific community vocalizes their concerns, the more convinced I am that BioBox is a solution that needs to be created. I feel a sense of responsibility in magnifying the work of my peers and it’s my job to ensure that their work is seen, heard and understood.
During the time I have been working at BioBox, I can confidently say that the team has given me ample support to run with my own ideas and initiatives. In 4 short months I have had to opportunity to:
Develop the entire website from scratch (twice) — prior to BioBox I did not know how to code.
Build and monitor all digital acquisition channels
Manage all social media platforms & content creation
Lead sponsorships & partnerships
My ability to do these things are made possible by a team who consistently pushes me to produce good work, seek opportunities and take risks.
In The End (which is really a new beginning)
So at this point in the post, you have watched a pretty epic dance video(IMHO) and learned about my brief history in 5 minutes or less. And now you’re probably wondering what the two have in common.
Whenever new opportunities come along, I never know where they will lead. When I auditioned for a dance team 7 years ago, I didn’t know that it would play a part in defining my life. The same way that the opportunity to join BioBox came out of left field and is reminiscent of my early dance days.
Both events are representative of a new start, with a sprinkle of mystery.
As for the outcome of this event? Well I don’t know, you’ll have to follow along and find out. | https://medium.com/@BioBox_/why-i-joined-biobox-as-the-director-of-marketing-3-3-a65e0c5ac6a2 | [] | 2020-12-07 14:52:30.453000+00:00 | ['Genomics', 'Biotechnology', 'Startup Life', 'Startup Marketing', 'Saas Marketing'] |
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